The Dutch did not come to the New Netherlands on religious considerations, for Holland tolerated religious freedom, but they came for gain—immediate gain from the fur and peltry trade. They did not early come to settle and for nearly twenty years after Hudson’s exploration and glowing account of it very, very few indeed who came over to engage in, or employed in the fur trade, became settlers. It is said that Sarah Rapelje, a daughter of one of the Walloon settlers, born June 7, 1625, was the first white child born in the New Netherlands. The first reference to the population at Fort Orange (Albany) published seems to have been in a work published in Amsterdam in 1628, which says: “There are no families at Fort Orange. They keep twenty-five or twenty-six traders there.” The report made by the Nineteen in 1629 to the Lords States General said: “All who are inclined to do any sort of work here procure enough to eat without any trouble and therefore are not willing to go far from home on an uncertainty.” It was apparent that if the Dutch West India Company was to prove a success in the New Netherlands a different course must be pursued, for Virginia and New England were being settled and their territory, in many respects better, was not. The Dutch West India Company, modeled after the Dutch East India Company, having powerful fleets, sailing along the coasts of South America and the West Indies, preying on the Spanish commerce, capturing their vessels and cargoes and amassing wealth thereby, sought to induce men of wealth, daring, and ambition to relieve them of the undertaking of settling and developing the New Netherlands, which, instead of a source of revenue, had become a burden. They hit upon what was called the Patroon scheme—based upon the Feudal System—a system of land tenure and service prevalent in Europe during the Middle Ages—a system inevitably tending to exalt the Patroon into a lordly baron and to degrade his subject into a serf. One who sought the distinction of the title of a Patroon (or Patron) of New Netherlands was entitled to hold as a perpetual inheritance, handing it down in the line of the oldest son, an estate having sixteen miles frontage on one side of a navigable river or eight miles on each side, extending as far into the country as the occupiers would permit. The Patroon must obtain Indian title, which usually cost but a trifle. He was empowered to hold civil and criminal courts on his estate and his decisions were practically final. He appointed the officers and magistrates in all the cities and towns in his territory. In order to be invested with this honor, these privileges and powers, he bound himself to take or send over at least fifty emigrants over fifteen years of age to settle on his patent within the next four years.