De Vries, James Cornelius

James Cornelius De Vries was originally from the Netherlands. Engaged in the transport of goods. In 1864 he moved to Vladivostok in order to establish his own business. Before that, he had been involved in the transportation of goods along the Amur and Shilka for several years. ^[1] James Cornelius came from a family of merchants and was himself a merchant of the first guild, which at that time was considered quite significant. On the peninsula, De-Frieze organized a profitable farm, built a sawmill on the Suifun River, set up a dairy farm and regularly supplied Vladivostok with milk, cream, cottage cheese and other products. The De Vries trade shop was located in Vladivostok on the site of the current GUM in Svetlanskaya Street. Since the path was not close, the merchant ordered to lay out a scythe from the peninsula to the city, along which the products were delivered. He had only two houses: in one he received guests, and in the other he lived with his family. De Vries became a very active Russian citizen. The following year, after the arrival of De Vries, he commissioned the Kunst & Albers company to build a house on his own project. It was a solid and beautiful building, despite the fact that it is wooden and one-story. It stood on Beregovaya Street until the same firm put in its place a new stone multi-storey building. Now this is the building of the Physicotechnical Institute in Vladivostok.

Information about the future fate of De Vries is rather contradictory.

One of the historians and researchers, the author of several books, claims that De Frieze in 1897, having sold all his property, hastily left for America . One of the reasons for this sudden departure was the death of the entrepreneur's beloved daughter. And to this day, old-timers show a place on the peninsula where she was buried: a mound to which a shady linden alley leads.

The German journalist in his book "Kunst and Albers" provides other information. De Vries died in 1881 . His widow sold a quarter of a hectare of urban land to Gustav Kunst for 3 thousand rubles. The acquired land was a very convenient place for the construction of a new trading house, as it lay on the opposite side from the old building of the company. Now here is located GUM.

In 1883, the widow of De Vries - Elizabeth died. One of her heirs, Saxon loyal Emma Lande, sold the following two plots of land to the same firm. Four more allotments belonging to De Vries were in the possession of his daughter Katarina, who, after the death of her parents, returned to her father’s homeland and married the miller Mads Nielsen. In February 1884, Gustav Kunst visited the Nielsen and bought the remaining Vladivostok lands from them for 30,000 marks.

Legends of the personality of De Vries are no longer associated with the entrepreneur himself, but with the figure of his eldest daughter. Which one is unknown.

According to one version, the daughter of De Vries fell passionately in love with a simple fisherman-poacher. To prevent unequal marriage, De Vries sent him to recruit, which implied at that time 25 years of military service. Unable to stand the separation, the girl threw herself off a cliff into the sea and drowned.

According to another, much less romantic version, the daughter of De Vries died from a bite of an encephalitis tick. And finally, according to the third version, she drowned during a storm along with other passengers traveling by sea to Vladivostok - then this was the only possible way from the peninsula to the city. Perhaps that is why one of the capes of the peninsula is called Cape Drowned . ^[2]

In honor of James Cornelius De Vries, the peninsula in the Amur Bay and the village of the same name in the Nadezhda district of the Primorsky Territory are named.