Museum Collections

The Flushing Remonstrance, considered the earliest demand for religious freedom made by American colonists, was signed on December 27, 1657 by a group of citizens who were affronted by the persecution of Quakers and opposed to Peter Stuyvesant's policy banning all religions outside of the Dutch Reformed Church. After several of the signers were arrested and the town government of Flushing removed, John Bowne openly defied the ban and allowed Quakers to meet in his house. Bowne was arrested in 1662 and banished to Holland, where he argued for religious freedom before the directors of the Dutch West India Company. In 1663, Stuyvesant was ordered to allow dissenting faiths to worship freely. The 1661 Bowne House still stands, a monument to religious freedom and the best-preserved example of Anglo-Dutch vernacular architecture in the country.