The entries for August 1728 document that the new governor of New York and New Jersey, John Montgomerie, asked the Commissioners of Indians Affairs to send Laurence Claessen to Iroquoia to invite the Six Nations to a meeting with Governor Montgomery by going “from Nation to Nation in the Manner usual.” They gave the orders to Claessen and informed the governor that they had done so.
This is as good a place as any to insert these paintings of Claessen and his son that now hang on the walls of the Schenectady County Historical Society. They remind us that every time Claessen was sent on a mission like this, he left a family behind. Or perhaps the boy in the picture came with him sometimes.
In Library and Archives Canada’s digital copy of the original minutes, the entry for May starts here on p. 259.
The Albany Indian Commissioners 