Dutch West India company for the period prior to 1700 had been sold as scrap to paper mills. Nonetheless, his research in various European archives discovered a good deal material on the early history of New York. After diligent search he found many official documents preserved in other archives, such as the minutes of the States General. The year 1809 had seen Washington Irving's satirical A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. In 1829, the New York Historical Society published William Smith Jr.'s The History of the Province of New York: From Its Discovery to the Appointment of Governor Colden in 1762. Smith was a New Yorker, who did not consult Dutch-language sources directly, but did use some translations. According to historian Joseph Meany, Smith's presentation of the Dutch was not a balanced one. The Board of Trustees of New York Historical Society included members of some of New York' s most prominent old Dutch families. At the urging of the New-York Historical Society, the state legislature appropriated funds to appoint an agent to gather and transcribe documents relating to New York's colonial history from various European archives. Brodhead was appointed (1841) by Governor William H Seward to undertake the work, and in four years gathered from England, France and the Netherlands some eighty manuscript volumes of transcriptions, largely of documents which had not hitherto been used by historians. According to historian J. Franklin Jameson, "[n]ever did an American state send out a better record-agent." Little escaped his search. During this time, he made the acquaintance of Edward Everett, American ambassador to the Court of St James's. He returned to New York in August, 1844. These transcriptions were subsequently edited by Edward O'Callaghan (vols. i.-xi., md.) and by Berthold Fernow (vols xii.-xv., md.), and published by the state under the title Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York (15 vols., 1853–1883). Together they produced "...the single most important collection of primary documents on New York's colonial period." London In 1846, President James K. Polk appointed George Bancroft as minister to London. Gansevoort Melville, older brother of author Herman Melville, was secretary of the American legation in London, where he also served as his brother's literary agent. When Gansevoort died in May 1846, his boyhood friend John Brodhead, was appointed to succeed him, and also took