y the Labadists set sail for
Europe.

In 1683 the two Labadists returned again to Maryland, bringing with
them the nucleus of a colony. In the meanwhile Augustine Herrman had
repented of his bargain, and it was only by recourse to law that the
Labadists compelled him to live up to its terms. The deed he executed,
dated August 11, 1684, was to Peter Sluyter (alias Vorstman), Jasper
Dankers (alias Schilders), of Friesland, Petrus Bayard, of New York,
and John Moll and Arnold de la Grange.[9] The tract conveyed embraced
four necks of land eastwardly from the first creek that empties into
Bohemia River, and extended at the north or northeast to near the old
St. Augustine or Manor Church. It contained 3,750 acres. Those
engaging with Sluyter and Danckaerts in the transaction were all
professed converts to the Labadist faith. It may be noted in passing
that the Petrus Bayard named in the conveyance, and who for some time
was an active member of the Labadist community, was an ancestor of the
late Thomas F. Bayard, ambassador at the Court of St. James.

[Footnote 9: Baltimore County Land Records.]

When fairly settled upon Bohemia Manor, the Labadists undertook
communal modes of life and industry, such as characterized them at the
European centre of the church, which was Wieuwerd, in Friesland. They
cultivated tobacco extensively, and engaged in the culture of corn,
flax, and hemp, and in cattle-raising. Their expressed zeal for the
conversion of the Indians did not take any practical form. At its most
flourishing period the colony did not number as many as a hundred
persons, and in the year 1698 a division of the tract occurred.
Sluyter, who was the active head of the colony, reserved for himself
one of the necks of land and became wealthy. He died in 1722. Some
form of organization had been maintained among the Labadists even
after the division of the land, but five years after the death of
Sluyter the Labadists had ceased to exist as a community. The division
in 1698 which marked the disintegration of the community occurred at
about the same time as a similar division of the estates of the mother
church at Wieuwerd. There the disintegration came about through
consultative action; in Maryland, by the logic of events.

The founder of the system of religion which came to be known as
Labadism, Jean de Labadie, was born in France, at Bourg near Bordeaux,
on February 13, 1610. His father was a French noble and a soldier of
fo