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Vriessendael was a patroonship on the west bank of the Hudson River in the seventeenth century province of New Netherland. The homestead or plantation was located at what is now Edgewater, New Jersey, and was the first known European settlement in what would become contemporary Bergen County. It has also been known as Tappan, which referred to the wider region of the New Jersey Palisades, rising above the river on both sides of the New York/New Jersey state line, and to the indigenous people who lived there and were part of wider group known as Lenape (later called Delaware Indian). It was established in 1640 by David Pietersen de Vries (c. 1593-c.1655), a Dutch sea captain, explorer, and trader who had also established settlements at the Zwaanendael Colony and on Staten Island. The name can roughly be translated as De Vries' valley. De Vries also owned flatlands along the Hackensack River, in the area named by the Dutch settlers as Achter Col. Vriessendael was destroyed in 1643 in reprisal for the slaughter of mostly Wappani who taken refuge at Pavonia and Corlears Hook. The incident was one of the first of many to take place during Kieft's War, a series of often bloody conflicts with bands of Lenape, who had united in face of attacks by the settlers.
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