This “Margaret Filipse” was the daughter of Adolph Hardenbrook who settled in Bergen, opposite New Amsterdam. She was the widow of the merchant trader Peter Rudolphus De Vries when she married Frederick Philipse. Her second husband was a carpenter by trade, who worked for Governor Stuyvesant; but on his marriage with the wealthy Widow De Vries, he became her capable business partner, and finally was counted the richest man in the colony. She owned ships running to many ports, and went repeatedly to Holland in her own ships as supercargo. She was visited by Dankers in Amsterdam in June, 1679. According to the custom of his religious sect, he always called her by her Christian name, and wrote of her as Margaret. He says:-- “We spoke to Margaret, inquiring of her when the ship would leave. She answered she had given orders to have everything in readiness to sail to-day, but she herself was of opinion it would not be before Monday. We offered her the money to pay for our passage, but she refused to receive it at that time, saying she was tired and could not be troubled with it that day.” They waited patiently on shipboard for several days for Madam Philipse to embark, and at last he writes:-- “We were all very anxious for Margaret to arrive, so that we might not miss a good wind. Jan and some of the other passengers were much dissatisfied. Jan declared, ‘If this wind blows over I will write her a letter that will make her ears tingle.’” Landing at an English port, the travellers bought wine and vinegar, “for we began to see it would go slim with us on the voyage,” and Margaret bought a ship which was made ready to go to the Isle of May and then to the Barbadoes. Over the purchase and equipment of this ship arose a great quarrel, for “those miserable, covetous people Margaret and her husband” tried to take away the Charles’ long-boat because timber for a new one was cheaper in New York than in Falmouth, England. Naturally, the passengers objected to crossing the Atlantic without a ship’s-boat. Dankers complained further of Margaret’s “miserable covetousness,”--that she made the ship lay to for an hour and a half and sent out the jolly-boat to pick up a ship’s mop or swab worth six cents; and the carpenter swore because she had not furnished new leather and spouts for the pumps. Dankers explained at length the enhancement of the Philipse profits through some business arrangement and preferment with the Governor, by which Frederick Philipse became the largest trader with the Five Nations at Albany, had a profitable slave-trade with Africa, and, it is asserted, was in close bonds with the Madagascar pirates. Whether “Margaret” favored this trade with the pirates is not known; but it could probably be said of her trade, as of many others in the colony, that it was hard to draw the dividing line between privateering and piracy. Her calling was not singular in New Amsterdam. The little town abounded in women-traders.