Document: Order on a petition of Teunis Cray

Teunis Craay having sold his house at public auction on the 13th of December 1655 to a Jew, Salvador Dandrada, appeared on the 23d of the same month, requesting that he be allowed to convey the aforesaid house and lot to the Jew, which the director general and councilors disallowed, having been induced thereto for important reasons. Whereupon he requested that the director general and councilors, as having the right of estimation, be pleased to take it on themselves for the offered price; if not this, and if he has to put it up for auction again, which he shall have to do in order to satisfy his creditors, because he intends to depart for the fatherland, that the director general and councilors, if it should come to less, would help him bear the losses and expenses, because he was unaware that no real estate could be conveyed to Jews.

The director general and councilors, having deliberated thereon, and in consideration that he is a man needed by his family, having a house full of children, resolve that he should have the aforesaid house auctioned off once again, and that the the director general and councilors, if it should come to less than offered by the Jew, would bear half of the difference.

And whereas the aforesaid house was sold once again at public auction on the 20th of January last past, and brought in f296 less that the Jew had offered, he now humbly requests that he may be credited for the sum of f148 on his account.

The director general and councilors grant this to him for the foregoing and many other considerations, order the bookkeeper to credit him for such. Ady ut supra. (Was signed:) P. Stuyvesant, N. de Sille, La Montagne, Cor. van Tienhoven.[1]