On May 24, 1626, one of the most famous real estate transactions in history took place: the director-general of New Netherland, a colony of the United Provinces of the Netherlands located in the northeast of America, bought the island called Manhattan from the Lenni-Lenape Indians for sixty florins.
Peter (Pierre) Minuit (c. 1590-1638) was born in the German town of Wesel. His parents were Walloon (or French-speaking Protestant) refugees who had fled the southern Netherlands when the political situation had become unfriendly to Protestants under Catholic Spain.