Document: Power of attorney from Willem de Key and Jan Claessen Smal to Isaack Allerton to sell in Virginia a shipment of horses from Curaçao

Before me, Cornelis van Tienhoven, secretary of New Netherland, appeared Mr. Willem de Key, merchant here and Jan Claesen Smal, master of the ship ’t Wapen van Nieu Nederlandt, who in the presence of the undersigned witnesses declared that they had empowered, as they hereby do [ empower ], Mr. Isaack Allerton, in their, the principals’, names and to their profit and benefit to sell in Virgina twenty or twenty-five Curaçao or Aruba horses. In case, before the arrival of Jan Smal, with the aforesaid ship in Virginia, the aforesaid Mr. Isaack Allerton should, in the absence of Jan Smal, make any contract in Virginia, said Allerton must include in said contract a reservation that the sale shall be null and void if the horses happen to die on the voyage, or the ship be wrecked, in order that the principals may not be subject hereafter to any trouble on that account; and if the aforesaid Isaack Allerton act agreeably to the orders of the principals, they shall hold as valid whatever shall be done by said Allerton. The ship having arrived in Virginia with the horses, the horses, as sold by the attorney, shall be delivered by the skipper, Jan Smal, and the payment for them received by him in his ship. In witness whereof this is signed by the principals in the record, the 5th of June anno 1647, in New Amsterdam.

Jan Kalessen Smal
Willem de Key