1613 and 1633; two died in an early age. Early career For many years Blommaert was involved in a company which traded in copper from Angola and the African coast, together with Frans Jacobsz. Hinlopen, and Lucas van der Venne. In 1615 Jacob le Maire carried a letter from his father Isaac le Maire to be presented to Governor Reynst, with an offer to smuggle goods to his son-in-law in Amsterdam. Blommaert was investigated in Amsterdam by the board of the East-India Company on January 30, 1616 about a vessel, named Mauritius de Nassau, sailed from a Dutch port, under the command of Jan Remmertszoon from Purmerend. The ship was ostensibly destined for Angola, but from there she was ordered to direct her course for "Terra Australis." The plan, therefore, was, from the west coast of Africa to sail southward to Tierra del Fuego, and then Around 1619 he settled on Keizersgracht and bought a lot (30x170 ft) where a new house was built, next to Laurens Reael. In 1620 Isaac Coymans, a broker, became his brother-in-law. New Netherlands By 1621, he invested in the Amsterdam chamber of the Dutch West India Company and was appointed director in October 1622. In 1623 he and Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Samuel Godijn en Albert Coenraetsz. Burgh were investigating the possibility of the slave trade in Angola. In 1624 his grandfather Jacob Hoefnagel became one of the three mayors in Göteborg and president of the court of justice for a while. Louis de Geer received the official monopoly on the copper and iron trade in Sweden and decided to settle there. In 1627 Blommaert had an argument with Pieter Trip about 34 Swedish guns. In 1628 he collaborated with Van Rensselaer, Godijn and Burgh. Godyn, Van Rensselaer and Samuel Blommaert send two persons to New Netherland to inspect the country. Gilles Housset and Jacob Jansz Cuyper bargained with the natives for a tract of land reaching from Cape Henlopen to the mouth of the Delaware River. This was in 1629, three years before the charter of Maryland, and is the oldest deed for land in the state of Delaware. The purchase was ratified in 1630 by Peter Minuit and his council at Fort Amsterdam. A company was formed to colonize the tract that included Blommaert, Godin, Van Rensselaer, Joannes de Laet (a geographer), and David Pietersen de Vries. A ship of eighteen guns was