In 1628, the Reverend Jonas Michaëlius, the first minister of the Dutch Reformed Church in America, arrived in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. That August, he wrote to an Amsterdam preacher that he wanted "to place [Native American] students under the instruction of some experienced and godly schoolmaster, where they may be instructed not only to speak, read, and write in our language, but also especially in the fundamentals of our Christian religion." It appears that some form of Dutch "school" existed on Manhattan no later than 1632, when a marriage contract instructed a husband to "keep [his step-children] at school."
In August 1637, the Dutch West India Company and the Classis of Amsterdam, the supervising body of the Dutch Reformed Church, licensed Adam Roelantsen to open a state-funded school in Manhattan, which opened in 1638. The school began as a co-ed school located south of Canal Street, but became an all-boys institution at the end of the 19th century.