Such a singular and improbable story attracted great local attention,
and in 1870, Francis Vincent, publishing his "History of Delaware,"
wrote: "The author found this incident in both Lednum and Foot, and
has seen a copy of this painting. It is in the possession of James R.
Oldham, Esq., of Christiana Bridge, the only male descendant of Herman
in Delaware State. He is the seventh in descent from Augustin
Herman."--Page 469.

In 1875, Rev. Charles P. Mallery, of Chesapeake City, a part of the
Bohemia Manor, wrote in the Elkton (Md.) _Democrat_ as follows:
"Herman resided on the Manor for more than twenty years, during which
time he once rode to New York on the back of his favorite horse, to
reclaim his long-neglected possessions there. He found his land
occupied by squatters.... They secured him, as they thought, for the
night; but he soon found means to escape by leaping his horse through
a forced opening, swimming the North River, and continuing his flight
through New Jersey until he reached the shore opposite Newcastle,
where he swam his horse across the Delaware and was safe.... Dr.
Spotswood, of Newcastle, told me that there was a tradition in his
town that the horse was buried there." Augustin Herman made the first
drawing of New Amsterdam, and early maps of Maryland and New England.
He was the first speculator in city real estate in America.

[Footnote 1: The Bohemia Manor is a tract of 18,000 acres of the best
land on the Delaware peninsula. It was granted to Augustine Herman,
Bohemian, whose tombstone, now lying in the yard of Richard Bayard, on
the site of Herman's park, bears date 1661. He received the manor for
making an early map of Maryland, and granted a part of the land to the
sect of Labadists. In the course of a century it became the homestead
of Senator Richard Bassett, heir of the last lord of the manor, and of