Stuyvesant.

Stuyvesant. PETER, governor of New York, was born in Holland in 1592, became governor of Curaçoa, and lost a leg in the attack on St Martin, and in 1646 was appointed captain-general of the New Netherlands. He proved a vigorous but arbitrary ruler, a rigid Sabbatarian, and an indignant opponent of political and religious freedom. Yet he did much for the commercial prosperity of the city, which received its name of New Amsterdam in 1653, and which he would fain have held against the English in 1664, when it became New York. He afterwards lived at his farm, the 'Great Bouwerie,' whose name survives in one of the older streets of the city which soon covered it; and there he died in 1672.