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Title: Colonial days in old New York
Author: Alice Morse Earle
Release date: December 5, 2023 [eBook #72327]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLONIAL DAYS IN OLD NEW YORK ***
COLONIAL DAYS
IN
OLD NEW YORK
BY
ALICE MORSE EARLE
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1896
_Copyright, 1896_,
BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
_TO_
_THE SOCIETY OF COLONIAL DAMES_
_OF THE_
_STATE OF NEW YORK_
_THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A LOYAL
AND LOVING MEMBER_
_THE AUTHOR_
_PREFACE_
_This book should perhaps have been “intituled” Colonial Days in New
Netherland, for much of the life described herein was in the days of
Dutch rule. But it was New Netherland for scarce half a century, and
the name is half-forgotten, though it remained, both in outer life and
in heart, a Dutch colonie, even when the province was New York and an
English governor had control. In New Netherland, as in every place
where the Dutch plant a colony, as in South Africa to-day, Dutch ways,
Dutch notions, the Dutch tongue lingered long. To this day, Dutch
influence and Dutch traits, as well as Dutch names, are ever present
and are a force in New York life._
_Fair and beautiful lay the broad harbor centuries ago before the
eyes of Hendrick Hudson and his sea-weary men; a “pleasant place” was
Manhattan; “’t lange eylandt was the pearel of New Nederland;” the
noble river, the fertile shores, all seemed to the discoverers and to
the early colonists to smile a welcome and a promise of happy homes.
Still to-day the bay, the islands, the river, the shores welcome with
the same promise. In grateful thanks for that welcome and for the
fulfilment of that promise of old,--for more years of life in New
York than were spent in my birth-place in New England,--and in warm
affection for my many friends of Dutch descent, have I--to use the
words of Rabelais--“adjoined these words and testimony for the honour I
bear to antiquity.”_
_ALICE MORSE EARLE._
_Brooklyn Heights,
September, 1896._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE LIFE OF A DAY 1
II. EDUCATION AND CHILD-LIFE 14
III. WOOING AND WEDDING 45
IV. TOWN LIFE 70
V. DUTCH TOWN HOMES 98
VI. DUTCH FARMHOUSES 115
VII. THE DUTCH LARDER 128
VIII. THE DUTCH VROUWS 154
IX. THE COLONIAL WARDROBE 172
X. HOLIDAYS 185
XI. AMUSEMENTS AND SPORTS 204
XII. CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS 227
XIII. CHURCH AND SUNDAY IN OLD NEW YORK 261
XIV. “THE END OF HIS DAYS” 293
COLONIAL DAYS
IN
OLD NEW YORK
CHAPTER I
THE LIFE OF A DAY
At the first break of day, every spring and summer morn, the quiet
Dutch sleepers in the old colonial town of Albany were roused by three
loud blasts of a horn sounded far and wide by a sturdy cow-herd; and
from street and dooryard came in quick answer the jingle-jangle, the
klingle-klangle of scores of loud-tongued brass and iron bells which
hung from the necks of steady-going hungry Dutch cows who followed the
town-herder forth each day to pastures green.
On the broad town-commons or the fertile river-meadows Uldrick Heyn
and his “chosen proper youngster,” his legally appointed aid, watched
faithfully all day long their neighbors’ cattle; and as honest herdsmen
earned well their sea-want and their handsel of butter, dallying not
in tavern, and drinking not of wine, as they were sternly forbidden
by the _schepens_, until when early dews were falling they quit their
meadow grasses mellow, for “at a quarter of an hour before the sun goes
down the cattle shall be delivered at the church.” Thence the patient
kine slowly wandered or were driven each to her own home-stall, her
protecting cow-shed.
In New Amsterdam the town’s cow-herd was Gabriel Carpsey; and when his
day’s work was done, he walked at sunset through the narrow lanes and
streets of the little settlement, sounding at each dooryard Gabriel’s
horn, a warning note of safe return and milking-time.
Until mid-November did the morning cow-horn waken the burghers and
their _vrouws_ at sunrise; and when with cold winter the horn lay
silent, they must have sorely missed their unfailing eye-opener.
Scarce had the last cow departed in the early morn from her master’s
dooryard, before there rose in the gray light from each vast-throated
chimney throughout the little town a faint line of pale, wavering
smoke blown up in increasing puffs with skilful bellows from last
night’s brands upon the hearth. And quickly the slender line of smoke
grew and grew to a great cloud over each steep-roofed house, and soon
with the smell of the burning brush and light pine that were coaxing
into hot flames the sturdy oak back and fore logs, were borne forth
also appetizing odors of breakfast to greet the early morn, telling of
each thrifty _huys-vrouw_ who within the walls of her cheerful kitchen
was cooking a good solid Dutch breakfast for her _mann_.
Cans of buttermilk or good beer, brewed perhaps by the patroon, washed
down this breakfast of suppawn and rye-bread and grated cheese and
sausage or head-cheese; beer there was in plenty, in ankers, even in
tuns, in every household. Soon _mynheer_ filled his long pipe with
native tobacco, and departed with much deliberation of movement; a
sturdy, honest figure, of decent carriage, neatly and soberly and
warmly clad, with thrift and prosperity and contentment showing in
every curve of his too-well-rounded figure. Adown the narrow street
he paused to trade in peltries or lumber, if he were middle-aged
and well-to-do; and were he sturdy and young, he threshed grain on
the barn-floor, or ground corn at the windmill, or felled wood on
the hillside; or perchance, were he old or young, he fished in the
river all day long,--a truly dignified day’s work, meet for any sober
citizen, one requiring much judgment and skill and reflection.
And as he fished, again he smoked, and ever he smoked. “The Dutch are
obstinate and incessant smokers,” chronicles the English clergyman
Wolley, Chaplain of Fort James, New York, in 1678, “whose diet,
especially of the boorish sort, being sallets and brawn and very often
picked buttermilk, require the use of that herb to keep their phlegm
from coagulating and curdling.” The word “boorish” was not a term of
reproach, nor was the frequent appellation “Dutch bore,” over which
some historians of the colony have seen fit to make merry, both boor
and bore meaning simply _boer_, or farmer. “Knave meant once no more
than lad; villain than peasant; a boor was only a farmer; a varlet was
but a serving-man; a churl but a strong fellow.”
What fishing was to the goodman of the house, knitting was to the
goodwife,--a soothing, monotonous occupation, ever at hand, ever
welcome, ever useful. Why, the family could scarce be clothed in
comfort without these clicking needles! A goodly supply of well-knit,
carefully dyed stockings was the housekeeper’s pride; and well they
might be, for little were they hidden. The full knee-breeches of father
and son displayed above the buckled shoes a long expanse of sturdy
hosiery, and the short petticoats of mother and daughter did not hide
the scarlet clocks of their own making. From the moment when the farmer
gave the fleece of the sheep into the hands of his women-kind, every
step of its transformation into stockings (except the knitting) was so
tiresome and tedious that it is wearying even to read of it,--cleaning,
washing, dyeing, carding, greasing, rolling, spinning, winding,
rinsing, knotting,--truly might the light, tidy, easy knitting seem a
pastime.
The endless round of “domesticall kind of drudgeries that women are
put to,” as Howell says, would prove a very full list when made out
from the life of one of these colonial housewives. It seems to us, of
modern labor-saved and drudgery-void days, a truly overwhelming list;
but the Dutch _huys-vrouw_ did not stagger under the burden, nor shrink
from it, nor, indeed, did she deem any of her daily work drudgery. The
sense of thrift, of plenty, of capability, of satisfaction, was so
strong as to overcome the distaste to the labor of production.
She had as a recreation, a delight, the care of
“A garden through whose latticed gates
The imprisoned pinks and tulips gazed,”
a trim, stiff little garden, which often graced the narrow front
dooryard; a garden perhaps of a single flower-bed surrounded by
aromatic herbs for medicinal and culinary use, but homelike and
beloved as such gardens ever are, and specially beloved as such
gardens are by the Dutch. Many were the tulip bulbs and “coronation”
pink roots that had been brought or sent over from Holland, and were
affectionately cherished as reminders of the far-away Fatherland. The
enthusiastic traveller Van der Donck wrote that by 1653 Netherlanders
had already blooming in their American garden-borders “white and
red roses, stock roses, cornelian roses, eglantine, jenoffelins,
gillyflowers, different varieties of fine tulips, crown-imperials,
white lilies, anemones, bare-dames, violets, marigolds, summer-sots,
clove-trees.” Garden-flowers of native growth were “sunflowers, red and
yellow lilies, morning-stars, bell-flowers, red and white and yellow
maritoffles.” I do not know what all these “flower-gentles” were,
but surely it was no dull array of blossoms; nor were their glories
dimmed because they opened ever by the side of the homely cabbages and
lettuce, the humble cucumbers and beans, that were equally beloved and
tended by the garden-maker.
And the housewife had her beloved and homelike poultry. Flocks of
snowy geese went waddling slowly down the town streets, seeking the
water-side; giving rich promise of fat holiday dinners and plumper
and more plentiful feather-beds; comfortable and thriving looking as
geese always are, and ever indicative of prosperous, thrifty homes,
they comported well with the pipe-smoking burgher and his knitting
_huys-vrouw_ and their homelike dwelling.
There was one element of beauty and picturesqueness which idealized
the little town and gave it an added element of life,--
“Over all and everywhere
The sails of windmills sink and soar
Like wings of sea-gulls on the shore.”
The beauty of the windmills probably was not so endearing to the
settlers as their homelikeness. They made the new strange land and the
new little towns seem like the Fatherland. The Indians greatly feared
them; as one chronicler states, “they durst not come near their long
arms and big teeth biting the corn in pieces.” Last, and not least
in the minds of the thrifty Dutch, the windmills helped to turn to
profit the rich harvests of grain which were the true foundation of the
colony’s prosperity,--not the rich peltries of beaver, as was at first
boastfully vaunted by the fur-traders.
As the day wore on, the day’s work was ended, and a neighborly
consultation and exchange of greetings formed the day’s recreation. The
burgher went to the little market-house, and with his neighbors and a
few chance travellers, such as the skippers on the river-sloops, he
smoked again his long pipe and talked over the weighty affairs of the
_colonie_. In the summer-time goodman and goodwife both went from stoop
to stoop of the close-gathered houses, for a _klappernye_, or chat all
together. This was a feature of the colony, architectural and social,
and noted by all travellers,--“the benches at the door, on which the
old carls sit and smoke.” Here the goodwife recounted the simple events
of the day,--the number of skeins of yarn she had spun; the yards of
linen she had woven; the doings of the dye-pot; the crankiness of the
churning, to which she had sung her churning charm,--
“Buitterchee, buitterchee, comm
Alican laidlechee tubichee vall.”
Perhaps she told her _commeres_, her gossips, of a fresh suspicion of
a betrothal, or perhaps sad news of a sick neighbor or a funeral. This
was never scandal, for each one’s affairs were every one’s affairs; in
the weal or woe of one the whole community joined, and in many of the
influences or effects of that weal or woe all had a part. It was noted
by historians that the Dutch were most open in discussion of all the
doings of the community, and had no dread of publicity of every-day
life.
Of this habit of colonial neighborliness, Mrs. Anne Grant wrote in
her “Memoir of an American Lady”--Madam Schuyler--from contemporary
knowledge of early life in Albany:--
“The life of new settlers in a situation like this, when the very
foundations of society were to be laid, was a life of exigencies.
Every individual took an interest in the general welfare, and
contributed their respective shares of intelligence and sagacity to
aid plans that embraced important objects relative to the common good.
This community seemed to have a common stock, not only of sufferings
and enjoyments, but of information and ideas.”
When the sun was setting and the cows came home, the family gathered on
stools and forms around the well-supplied board, and a plentiful supper
of suppawn and milk and a sallet filled the hungry mouths, and was
eaten from wooden trenchers and pewter porringers with pewter or silver
spoons. The night had come; here were shelter and a warm hearthstone,
and, though in the new wild world, it was in truth a home.
Sometimes, silently smoking with the man of the house, there sat in the
winter _schemer-licht_, the shadow-light or gloaming, around the great
glowing hearth, a group of dusky picturesque forms,--friendly Mohawks,
who, when their furs were safely sold, could be welcomed, and were ever
tolerated and harbored by the kindly Swannekins; and as the shadows
gathered into the “fore-night,” and the fierce wind screamed down the
great chimney and drew out into the darkness long tongues of orange and
scarlet flames from the oak and hickory fires (burning, says one early
traveller, half up the chimney), there was homely comfort within, and
peace in the white man’s wigwam.
“What matter how the North-wind raved,--
Blow high, blow low, not all its snow
Could quench that hearth-fire’s ruddy glow.”
And the blanketed squaw felt in her savage breast the spirit of that
home, and gently nursed her swaddled pappoose; and the silent _Wilden_,
ever smoking, listened to the Dutch _huys-moeder_, who, undressing
little Hybertje and Jan and Goosje for their long night’s sleep, sang
to them the nursery song of the Hollanders, of the Fatherland:--
“Trip a troup a tronjes,
De vaarken in de boonjes,
De koejes in de klaver,
De paarden in de haver,
De kalver in de lang gras,
De eenjes in de water plas,
So groot myn klein poppetje was.”
Or if it were mid-December, the children sang to Kriss-Kringle:--
“Saint Nicholaes, goed heilig man,
Trekt uw’ besten tabbard aan,
En reist daamee naar Amsterdam,
Von Amsterdam naar Spange,
Waar Appellen von Orange
En Appellen von Granaten
Rollen door de straaten.
“Saint Nicholaes, myn goeden vriend,
Ik heb uwe altyd wel gediend,
Als gy my nu wat wilt geben
Zal ik un dienen als myn leben.”
Then the warming-pan was filled with hot coals, and thrust warily
between the ice-cold sheets of the children’s beds, and perhaps they
were given a drink of mulled cider or simmering beer; and scarcely were
they sleeping in their warm flannel _cosyntjes_, or night-caps with
long capes, when the curfew rang out from the church belfry. It was
eight o’clock,--_’t Is tijdt te bedde te gaen_. The housewife carefully
covered “the dull red brands with ashes over” for the fire of the
morrow, and went to bed. The “tap-toes” sounded from the fort, and
every house was silent.
And as the honest _mynheer_ and his good _vrouw_ slept warmly in
their fireside alcove, and softly between their great feather-beds,
so they also slept serenely; for they were not left unprotected from
marauding Indian or Christian, nor unwatched by the ever-thoughtful
town authorities. Through the little town marched boldly every night
a sturdy _kloppermann_, or rattle-watch, with strong staff and
brass-bound hourglass and lighted lanthorn; and, best of all, he bore a
large _klopper_, or rattle, which he shook loudly and reassuringly at
each door all through the dark hours of the night, “from nine o’clock
to break of the day,” to warn both housekeepers and thieves that he was
near at hand; and as was bidden by the worshipful _schepens_, he called
out what o’clock, and what weather;--and thus guarded, let us leave
them sleeping, these honest Dutch home-folk, as they have now slept for
centuries in death, waiting to hear called out to them with clear voice
“at break of the day” from another world, “A fair morning, and all’s
well.”
CHAPTER II
EDUCATION AND CHILD-LIFE
As soon as the little American baby was born in New Netherland, he was
taken to the church by his Dutch papa, and with due array of sponsors
was christened by the domine from the _doop-becken_, or dipping-bowl,
in the Dutch Reformed Church. New Yorkers had a beautiful silver
_doop-becken_ in 1695, and the church on the corner of Thirty-Eighth
Street and Madison Avenue has it still. It was made in Amsterdam from
silver coin and ornaments brought by the good folk of the Garden
Street Church as offerings. For it Domine Henricus Selyns, “of nimble
faculty,” then minister of that church, and formerly of Breuckelen,
and the first poet of Brooklyn, wrote these pious and graceful verses,
which were inscribed on the bowl:
“Op’t blote water stelt geen hoot
’Twas beter noyt gebooren.
Maer, ziet iets meerder in de Dorp
Zo’ gaet nien noÿt verlooren.
Hoe Christús met sÿn dierbaer Bloedt
Mÿ reÿniglt van myn Zonden.
En door syn Geest mÿ leven doet
En wast mÿn Vuÿle Wonden.”
Which translated reads:--
“Do not put your hope in simple water alone, ’twere better never to
be born.
But behold something more in baptism, for that will prevent your
getting lost.
How Christ’s precious blood cleanses me of my sins,
And now I may live through His spirit and be cleansed of my vile
wounds.”
This christening was the sole social or marked event of the
_kindeken’s_ infancy, and little else do we know of his early life. He
ate and slept, as do all infants. In cradles slept these children of
the Dutch,--deep-hooded cradles to protect from the chill draughts of
the poorly heated houses. In cradles of birch bark the Albany babies
slept; and pretty it was to see the fat little Dutch-men sleeping in
those wildwood tributes of the Indian mothers’ skill to the children of
the men who had driven the children of the redmen from their homes.
Children were respectful, almost cowed, in their bearing to their
parents, and were enjoined by ministers and magistrates to filial
obedience. When the government left the Dutch control and became
English, the Calvinistic sternness of laws as to obedience to parents
in maturer years which was seen in New England was also found in New
York.
“If any Child or Children, above sixteen years of age, and of
Sufficient understanding, shall smite their Natural Father or Mother,
unless provoked and forct for their selfe preservation from Death
or Mayming, at the Complaint of the said Father or Mother, and not
otherwise, they being Sufficient witness thereof, that Child, or those
Children so offending shall be put to Death.”
A few prim little letters of English children have survived the wear
and tear of years, and still show us in their pretty wording the formal
and respectful language of the times. Martha Bockée Flint, in that
interesting and valuable book, “Early Long Island,” gives this letter
written to Major Ephenetus Platt “at Huntting-town” by a little girl
eleven years old:--
EVER HONORED GRANDFATHER;
SIR: My long absence from you and my dear Grandmother has been not a
little tedious to me. But what renders me a Vast Deal of pleasure
is Being intensely happy with a Dear and Tender Mother-in-Law and
frequent oppertunities of hearing of your Health and Welfair which I
pray God may long Continue. What I have more to add is to acquaint you
that I have already made a Considerable Progress in Learning. I have
already gone through some Rules of Arithmetic, and in a little Time
shall be able of giving you a Better acct of my Learning, and in mean
time I am Duty Bound to subscribe myself
Your most obedient and
Duty full Granddaughter
PEGGA TREADWELL.
In the Lloyd Collections is a charming little letter from another Long
Island miss, ten years of age. The penmanship is elegant and finished,
as was that of her elders at that date.
We have, however, scant sources from which to learn of the life of
children in colonial New York. No diarist of Pepysian minuteness tells
of the children of New Netherland as does the faithful Samuel Sewall of
those of New England; no collections of letters such as the Winthrop
Papers and others recount the various items of domestic life. There
are none of the pious and garrulous writings of ministers such as
Cotton Mather, who in diary and various literary compositions give
another side of their life. We have no such messages from the colonial
Dutch. In whatever depended on the use of “a flourit pen,” posterity is
neither richer nor wiser for the Dutch settlers having lived. Nor were
their English successors much fonder of literary composition. Nothing
but formal records of churches, of courts, of business life, offer to
us any pages for study and drawing of inference. And from these records
the next hint of the life of these colonial children, sad to relate, is
to their discredit. The pragmatic magistrates kept up a steady prying
and bullying over them. In New Orange, in 1673, “if any children be
caught on the street playing, racing, and shouting previous to the
termination of the last preaching, the officers of justice may take
their hat or upper garment, which shall not be restored to the parents
until they have paid a fine of two guilders,” which, we may be sure,
would insure the miserable infants summary punishment on arriving home.
Matters were no better in New Amsterdam. One amusing complaint was
brought up against “y^e wretched boys” of that settlement, and by one
high in authority, Schout De Sille. One of his duties was to patrol
the town of New Amsterdam at night to see that all was peaceful as
befitted a town which was the daughter of the Dutch government. But the
poor _schout_ did not find his evening stroll altogether a happy one.
He complained that the dogs set upon him, and that tantalizing boys
shouted out “The Indians!” at him from behind trees and fences,--which
must have startled him sorely, and have been most unpleasantly
suggestive in those days of Indian horrors; and his chief complaint was
that there was “much cutting of hoekies” by the boys,--which means, I
fancy, playing of tricks, of jokes, of _hoaxes_, such as were played on
Hock-day in England, or perhaps “playing hookey,” as American boys of
to-day have been known to do.
As years passed on, I fear some of these young Dutch-Americans were sad
rogues. They sore roused the wrath of Albany legislators, as is hereby
proven:--
“Whereas y^e children of y^e s^d city do very unorderly to y^e shame
and scandall of their parents ryde down y^e hills in y^e streets of
the s^d city with small and great slees on the lord day and in the
week by which many accidents may come, now for pventing y^e same it
is hereby publishd and declard y^t it shall and may be lawful for any
Constable in this City or any other person or persons to take any slee
or slees from all and every such boys and girls rydeing or offering to
ryde down any hill within y^e s^d city and breake any slee or slees in
pieces. Given under our hands and seals in Albany y^e 22th of December
in 12th year of Her Maj’s reign Anno Domini 1713.”
In 1728 Albany boys and girls still were hectored, still were fined by
the bullying Albany constable for sliding down the alluringly steep
Albany streets on “sleds, small boards, or otherwise.”
Mrs. Grant, writing of about the year 1765, speaks of the custom of
coasting, but not of the legislation against it, and gives a really
delightful picture of coasting-joys, which apparently were then
partaken of only by boys. The _schepens_ and their successors the
constables, joy-destroying Sivas, had evidently succeeded in wresting
this pleasure from the girls.
“In town all the boys were extravagantly fond of a diversion that
to us would appear a very odd and childish one. The great street of
the town sloped down from the hill on which the fort stood, towards
the river; between the buildings was an unpaved carriage-road, the
foot-path beside the houses being the only part of the street which
was paved. In winter the sloping descent, continued for more than a
quarter of a mile, acquired firmness from the frost, and became very
slippery. Then the amusement commenced. Every boy and youth in town,
from eight to eighteen, had a little low sledge, made with a rope like
a bridle to the front, by which it could be dragged after one by the
hand. On this one or two at most could sit, and this sloping descent
being made as smooth as a looking-glass, by sliders’ sledges, etc.,
perhaps a hundred at once set out from the top of this street, each
seated in his little sledge with the rope in his hand, which, drawn
to the right or left, served to guide him. He pushed it off with a
little stick, as one would launch a boat; and then, with the most
astonishing velocity, precipitated by the weight of the owner, the
little machine glided past, and was at the lower end of the street
in an instant. What could be so delightful in this rapid and smooth
descent I could never discover; though in a more retired place,
and on a smaller scale, I have tried the amusement; but to a young
Albanian, sleighing, as he called it, was one of the first joys of
life, though attended by the drawback of walking to the top of the
declivity, dragging his sledge every time he renewed his flight, for
such it might well be called. In the managing this little machine some
dexterity was necessary: an unskilful Phaeton was sure to fall. The
conveyance was so low that a fall was attended with little danger, yet
with much disgrace, for an universal laugh from all sides assailed the
fallen charioteer. This laugh was from a very full chorus, for the
constant and rapid succession of this procession, where every one had
a brother, lover, or kinsman, brought all the young people in town
to the porticos, where they used to sit wrapt in furs till ten or
eleven at night, engrossed by this delectable spectacle. I have known
an Albanian, after residing some years in Britain, and becoming a
polished fine gentleman, join the sport and slide down with the rest.”
Mrs. Grant tells of another interesting and unusual custom of the
children of Albany:
“The children of the town were divided into companies, as they called
them, from five to six years of age, until they became marriageable.
How those companies first originated, or what were their exact
regulations, I cannot say; though I, belonging to none, occasionally
mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that
I spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as
many boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited
number; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company,
who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence among the
rest were called heads of the company, and as such were obeyed by the
others.... Children of different ages in the same family belonged to
different companies. Each company at a certain time of the year went
in a body to gather a particular kind of berries to the hill. It was
a sort of annual festival attended with religious punctuality. Every
company had a uniform for this purpose; that is to say, very pretty
light baskets made by the Indians, with lids and handles, which hung
over one arm, and were adorned with various colors. Every child was
permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once
besides, during winter and spring. The master and mistress of the
family always were bound to go from home on these occasions, while
some old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an
ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved and dried fruits, nuts
and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider or a syllabub;
for these young friends met at four and amused themselves with the
utmost gayety and freedom in any way their fancy dictated.”
From all the hints and facts which I have obtained, through letters,
diaries, church and court records, of child-life in any of the colonies
or provinces among English, German, Swedish, or Dutch settlers, I am
sure these Albany young folk were the most favored of their time. I
find no signs of such freedom in any other town.
It has been asserted that in every town in New York which was settled
under the Dutch, a school was established which was taught by a
competent teacher who received a small salary from the government,
in addition to his other emoluments; and that after the reign of the
English, begun in 1664, this public salary ceased, and many of the
towns were schoolless.
This statement is not confirmed by a letter of Domine Megapolensis
written from Albany in 1657. He says plainly that only Manhattan,
Beverwyck, and Fort Casimir had schoolmasters, and he predicts, as a
result, “ignorance, a ruined youth, and bewilderment of men’s minds.”
Other authorities, such as Mr. Teunis G. Bergen, state that this
liberality where it existed should be accredited to the Dutch church,
not the Dutch state, or Dutch West India Company. In truth, it was all
one matter. The church was an essential power in the government of New
Netherland, as it was in Holland; hence the West India Company and the
Classis of Amsterdam conjoined in sending domines with the supply of
burgomasters, and likewise furnished school-teachers.
When Wouter van Twiller arrived in 1633 with the first military
garrison for New Amsterdam, he brought also envoys of religion and
learning,--Domine Everardus Bogardus and the first pedagogue, Adam
Roelandsen. Master Roelandsen had a schoolroom assigned to him, and he
taught the youthful New Amsterdamites for six years, when he resigned
his position, and was banished from the town and went up the river to
Renssellaerwyck. I fear he was not a very reputable fellow, “people
did not speak well of him;” and he in turn was sued for slander; and
some really sad scandals were told about him, both in and out of court.
And some folk have also made very merry over the fact that he took in
washing, which was really one of the best things we know about him, for
it was not at all a disreputable nor unmanly calling in those times.
It doubtless proved a very satisfactory source of augmentation of the
wavering school-salary, in those days of vast quarterly or semi-annual
washings and great _bleeckeryen_, or laundries,--which his probably
was, since his bills were paid by the year.
A carpenter, Jan Cornelissen, tired of his tools and trade, left
Renssellaerwyck upon hearing of the vacant teacher’s chair in New
Amsterdam, went down the river to Manhattan, and in turn taught the
school for ten years. Jan was scarcely more reputable than Adam. He lay
drunk for a month at a time, and was incorrigibly lazy,--so aggravated
Albanians wrote of him. But any one was good enough to teach school.
Neither Jan nor Adam was, however, a convicted and banished felon, as
were many Virginian schoolmasters.
This drunken schoolmaster was only the first of many. Until this
century, the bane of pedagogy in New York was rum. A chorus of colonial
schoolmasters could sing, in the words of Goldsmith,--
“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains
With grammar and nonsense and learning;
Good liquor I stoutly maintain
Gives genius a better discerning.”
Occasionally a certain schoolmaster would be specified in a
school-circular as a sober man; proving by the mentioning the
infrequency of the qualification.
As the colony grew, other teachers were needed. Governor Stuyvesant
sent to the Classis of Amsterdam for “a pious, well-qualified, and
diligent schoolmaster.” William Vestens crossed the ocean in answer to
this appeal, and taught for five years in one room in New York; while
Jan de la Montagne, with an annual salary of two hundred florins,
taught at the Harberg--later the Stadt-Huys--and occupied the position
of the first public-school teacher.
For years a project of building a schoolhouse was afloat. A spot had
been fixed upon, and some money subscribed. In 1649 the Commonalty
represented to the West India Company that “the plate was a long time
passed around for a common school which has been built with words,
for as yet the first stone is not laid.” In response to this appeal,
a schoolhouse was at last erected. Still another school was opened
by Master Hoboocken, who taught in the Governors’ bowery, where
Dutch-American children were already beginning to throng the green
lanes and by-ways. He was succeeded by Evert Pietersen, who was engaged
as “Consoler of the Sick, Chorister and Schoolmaster;” and all persons
without distinction were ordered not to molest, disturb, or ridicule
him in either of these offices, but to “deliver him from every painful
sensation.” Many of the other schoolmasters had filled similar offices
in the church and community.
This public school, maintained with such difficulty and so many rebuffs
through these early days, was successfully continued by the Collegiate
Dutch Church after the English possession of New York; and it still
exists and flourishes, as does the church. This should be a matter of
civic pride to every New Yorker. The history of that school has been
carefully written, and is most interesting to read.
Many other teachers were licensed to give private lessons, but these
public and private schools did not satisfy ambitious New Yorkers.
A strong longing was felt in New Amsterdam for a Latin School. A
characteristic petition was sent by the burgomasters and _schepens_ to
the West India Company:
“It is represented that the youth of this place and the neighborhood
are increasing in number gradually, and that most of them can read
and write, but that some of the citizens and inhabitants would like
to send their children to a school the principal of which understands
Latin, but are not able to do so without sending them to New England;
furthermore, they have not the means to hire a Latin schoolmaster
expressly for themselves from New England, and therefore they ask
that the West India Company will send out a fit person as Latin
schoolmaster, not doubting that the number of persons who will send
their children to such a teacher will from year to year increase until
an academy shall be formed whereby this place to great splendour
will have attained, for which, next to God, the Honorable Company
which shall have sent such teacher here shall have laud and praises.
For our own part we shall endeavor to find a fit place in which the
schoolmaster shall hold his school.”
The desired “gerund-grinder”--to use Tristram Shandy’s word--was soon
despatched. The fit place was found,--a good house with a garden. He
was promised an annual salary of five hundred guilders. Each scholar
also was to pay six guilders per quarter. But Dr. Curtius’s lines fell
in difficult places; he could keep no order among his Latin-school
pupils, those bad young New Amsterdamites, who “beat each other and
tore the clothes from each other’s backs,” and he complained he was
restrained by the orders of parents from properly punishing them. (I
may say here that I have not found that New York schoolmasters were
ever as cruel as were those of New England.) A graver matter to honest
colonists was his charging a whole beaver-skin too much per quarter to
some scholars, and soon he was packed back to Holland. His successor, a
young man of twenty-two, who had been tutor to Stuyvesant’s sons, had
better luck, better control, and a better academy; and New Amsterdam
to “great splendour was attained,” having pupils from other towns and
colonies, even from so far away as Virginia.
The relations between church, school, and state were equally close
throughout all New Netherland. Thus, in 1661, Governor Stuyvesant
recommended Charles De Bevoise as schoolmaster for Brooklyn; and
when Domine Henricus Selyns left the Brooklyn church, Schoolmaster
De Bevoise was ordered to read prayers and sermons, “to read a
postille” every Sabbath until another minister was obtained. He was
also a _krankebesoecker_, or comforter of the sick. Even after the
establishment of English rule in the colony, the connection of Dutch
church and school was equally close. When Johannis Van Eckellen was
engaged by the Consistory of the Dutch church in Flatbush in October,
1682, as a schoolmaster for the town, it was under this extremely
interesting and minute contract, which, translated, reads thus:--
ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT made with Johannis Van Eckellen, schoolmaster
and clerk of the church at Flatbush.
1st. The school shall begin at eight o’clock in the morning, and go
out at eleven o’clock. It shall begin again at one o’clock and end at
four o’clock. The bell shall be rung before the school begins.
2nd. When the school opens, one of the children shall read the morning
prayer, as it stands in the catechism, and close with the prayer
before dinner. In the afternoon it shall begin with the prayer after
dinner, and close with the evening prayer. The evening school shall
begin with the Lord’s Prayer, and close by singing a Psalm.
3rd. He shall instruct the children in the common prayers and the
questions and answers of the catechism, on Wednesdays and Saturdays,
to enable them to say their catechism on Sunday afternoons in
the church before the afternoon service, otherwise on the Monday
following, at which the schoolmaster shall be present. He shall
demean himself patient and friendly towards the children in their
instruction, and be active and attentive to their improvement. 4th.
He shall be bound to keep his school nine months in succession, from
September to June, one year with another, or the like period of time
for a year, according to the agreement with his predecessor, he shall,
however, keep the school nine months, and always be present himself.
CHURCH SERVICE.
ART. 1st. He shall be chorister of the church, ring the bell three
times before service, and read a chapter of the Bible in the church,
between the second and third ringing of the bell; after the third
ringing he shall read the ten commandments and the twelve articles
of Faith, and then set the Psalm. In the afternoon, after the third
ringing of the bell, he shall read a short chapter, or one of the
Psalms of David, as the congregation are assembling. Afterwards he
shall again set the Psalm.
ART. 2nd. When the minister shall preach at Brooklyn or New Utrecht,
he shall be bound to read twice before the congregation a sermon from
the book used for the purpose. The afternoon sermon will be on the
catechism of Dr. Vander Hagen, and thus he shall follow the turns of
the minister. He shall hear the children recite the questions and
answers of the catechism, on that Sunday, and he shall instruct them.
When the minister preaches at Flatlands, he shall perform the like
service.
ART. 3rd. He shall provide a basin of water for the baptisms, for
which he shall receive twelve stuyvers, in wampum, for every baptism,
from the parents or sponsors. He shall furnish bread and wine for the
communion, at the charge of the church. He shall furnish the minister,
in writing, the names and ages of the children to be baptized,
together with the names of the parents and sponsors; he shall also
serve as a messenger for the consistories.
ART. 4th. He shall give the funeral invitations, and toll the bells,
for which service he shall receive, for persons of fifteen years of
age and upwards, twelve guilders; and for persons under fifteen, eight
guilders. If he shall invite out of the town, he shall receive three
additional guilders for every town; and if he shall cross the river to
New York, he shall have four guilders more.
SCHOOL MONEY.
He shall receive for a speller or reader in the day school three
guilders for a quarter, and for a writer four guilders.
In the evening school, he shall receive for a speller or reader four
guilders for a quarter, and for a writer five guilders.
SALARY.
The remainder of his salary shall be four hundred guilders in wheat,
of wampum value, deliverable at Brooklyn Ferry; and for his service
from October to May, two hundred and thirty-four guilders in wheat, at
the same place, with the dwelling, pasturage, and meadow appertaining
to the school to begin the first day of October.
I agree to the above articles, and promise to observe the same to the
best of my ability.
JOHANNIS VAN ECKELLEN.
Truly we have through this contract--to any one with any powers
of historic imagination--a complete picture of the duties of the
schoolmaster of that day.
When the English came in power in 1664, some changes were made in
matters of education in New York, but few changes in any of the
conditions in Albany. Governor Nicholls, on his first visit up
the river, made one significant appointment,--that of an English
schoolmaster. This was the Englishman’s license to teach:--
“Whereas the teaching of the English Tongue is necessary in this
Government; I have, therefore, thought fitt to give License to John
Shutte to bee the English Schoolmaster at Albany: and upon condition
that the said John Shutte shall not demand any more wages from each
Scholar than is given by the Dutch to their Dutch Schoolmasters. I
have further granted to the said John Shutte that hee shall bee the
only English Schoolmaster at Albany.”
The last clause of this license seems superfluous; for it is very
doubtful whether there was for many years any other English teacher
who eagerly sought what was so far from being either an onerous or
lucrative position. Many generations of Albany children grew to manhood
ere the Dutch schoolmasters found their positions supererogatory.
Women-teachers and girl-scholars were of small account in New York in
early days. Girls did, however, attend the public schools. We find
Matthew Hillyer, in 1676, setting forth in New York that he “hath kept
school for children of both sexes for two years past to satisfaction.”
Dame-schools existed, especially on Long Island, where English
influences and Connecticut emigration obtained. In Flushing Elizabeth
Cowperthwait was reckoned with in 1681 for “schooling and diet for
children;” and in 1683 she received for thirty weeks’ schooling, of
“Martha Johanna,” a scarlet petticoat,--truly a typical Dutch payment.
A school bill settled by John Bowne in Flushing in 1695 shows that
sixpence a week was paid to the teacher for each scholar who learned
reading, while writing and ciphering cost one shilling twopence a week.
This, considering the usual wages and prices of the times, was fair pay
enough.
We have access to a detailed school bill of the Lloyd boys in 1693,
but they were sent away from their Long Island home at Lloyd’s Neck to
New England; so the information is of no value as a record of a New
York school; but one or two of these items are curious enough to be
recounted:--
£ _s._ _d._
1 Quarter’s board for boys 9 7 6
Pd knitting stockings for Joseph 1 4
Pd knitting 1 stocking for Henry 6
Joseph’s Schooling, 7 mos. 7
A bottle of wine for His Mistris 10
To shoo nails & cutting their har 7
Stockins & mittins 3 9
Pd a woman tailor mending their cloaths 3 3
Wormwood & rubab for them 6
To Joseph’s Mistris for yearly feast and wine 1 8
Pair gloves for boys 2 6
Drest deerskin for the boys’ breeches 1 6
Wormwood and rhubarb for the boys and a feast and wine for the
schoolmistress, albeit the wine was but tenpence a bottle, seems
somewhat unfair discrimination.
There is an excellent list of the clothing of a New York schoolboy of
eleven years given in a letter written by Fitz-John Winthrop to Robert
Livingstone in 1690. This young lad, John Livingstone, had also been in
school in New England. The “account of linen & clothes” shows him to
have been very well dressed. It reads thus:--
Eleven new shirts
4 p^r laced sleves
8 plane cravets
4 cravets with lace
4 stripte wastecoats with black buttons
1 flowered wastecoat
4 new osinbrig britches
1 gray hat with a black ribbon
1 gray hat with a blew ribbon
1 dousin black buttons
1 dousin coloured buttons
3 pr gold buttons
3 pr silver buttons
2 p^r fine blew stockings
1 pr fine red stockins
4 white handkerchiefs
2 speckled handkerchiefs
3 pair gloves
1 stuff coat with black buttons
1 cloth coat
1 pr blew plush britches
1 pr serge britches
2 combs
1 pr new shoees
Silk & thred to mend his clothes.
In 1685 Goody Davis taught a dame-school at Jamaica; and in 1687 Rachel
Spencer died in Hempstead, and her name was recorded as that of a
schoolmistress. In 1716, at the Court of Sessions in Westchester, one
of the farm-wives, Dame Shaw, complained that “a travelling woman
who came out of y^e Jerseys who kept school at several places in Rye
parish, hath left with her a child eleven months old, for which she
desires relief from the parish.”
It is easy to fancy a vague romance through this short record of the
life of this nameless “travelling woman” who, babe in arms, earned a
scanty living by teaching, and who at last abandoned the school and the
child whose birth may, perhaps, have sent her a nameless wanderer in a
strange country,--for “the Jerseys” were far away from Rye parish in
those days.
There was a schoolmistress in Hempstead at a later date. She was old
in 1774. I don’t know her name, but I know of the end of her days. The
vestry allowed her forty shillings, “to be dealt out to her a little
at a time, _so as to last her all winter_.” She lived through that
luxurious winter, and died in 1775. Her coffin cost twelve shillings,
and Widow Thurston was paid six shillings for digging the grave for
her old crony and gossip. Schoolmistresses were not many on Long
Island,--can we wonder at it? Had this dame been one of the penniless
church-poor in a Dutch community (which Hempstead was not), she would
probably have had forty shillings a month instead of a winter, and a
funeral that would have been not only decent in all the necessities
of a funeral, but a triumph of prodigality in all the comforts and
pleasures of the mortuary accompaniments of the day, such as wine, rum,
beer, cakes, tobacco, and pipes.
The “book-learning” afforded to colonial girls in New York was
certainly very meagre. Mrs. Anne Grant wrote of the first quarter of
the eighteenth century:--
“It was at that time very difficult to procure the means of
instruction in those island districts; female education was, of
consequence, conducted on a very limited scale; girls learned
needlework (in which they were indeed both skilful and ingenious)
from their mothers and aunts; they were taught, too, at that period
to read, in Dutch, the Bible, and a few Calvinistic tracts of the
devotional kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few girls read
English; when they did, they were thought accomplished; they generally
spoke it, however imperfectly, and few were taught writing.”
William Smith, the historian of New York, writing during the year 1756
of his fellow townswomen, and of education in general in New York,
gives what was doubtless a true picture of the inelegance of education
in New York:--
“There is nothing they [New York women] so generally neglect as
Reading, and indeed all the Arts for the improvement of the Mind, in
which I confess we have set them the Example. Our Schools are in the
Lowest Order, the Instructors want Instruction, and through a long,
shameful neglect of the Arts and Sciences our Common Speech is very
corrupt, and the Evidences of a Bad Taste both as to thought and
Language are visible in all our Proceedings publick and private.”
One obstacle to the establishment and success of schools and education
was the hybridization of language. New Yorkers spoke neither perfect
Dutch nor good English. It was difficult in some townships to gather an
English-speaking jury; hence, naturally, neither tongue could be taught
save in the early and simpler stages of education. It was difficult
for those little Dutch-men who heard Holland-Dutch spoken constantly
at home to abandon it entirely and speak English in the schools. The
Flatbush master (himself a Dutchman, but bound to teach English)
invented an ingenious plan to crowd out the use of Dutch in school.
He carried a little metal token which he gave each day to the first
scholar whom he heard use a Dutch word. That scholar could promptly
turn the token over to any other scholar whom he likewise detected in
using Dutch, and he in turn could do the same. Thus the token passed
from hand to hand through the day; but the unlucky wight who chanced to
have possession of it when the school day was over was soundly whipped.
In default of “spilling,” as one master wrote in his receipts, and in
which he was somewhat shaky himself, he and all other colonial teachers
took a firm stand on “cyphering.” “The Bible and figgers is all I
want my boys to know,” said one old farmer. When the school session
opened and closed, as we have seen in Flatbush, with prayer and praise,
with catechism every day, and special catechising twice a week, even
“figgers” did not have much of a chance. All the old Dutch primers that
I have seen, the _Groot A B C boeks zeer bekwaam voor de yongekinderen
te leeren_, contain nothing (besides the alphabet) but religious
sentences, prayers, verses of the Bible, pious rhymes, etc.; and dingy
little books they are, not even up to the standard of our well-known
New England Primer.
Though the Dutch were great printers of horn-books, I do not find that
they were universal users of those quaint little “engines of learning.”
If used in Dutch-American schools, none now survive the lapse of two
centuries; and indeed only one can be found in a Holland museum. Mr.
Tuer, the historian of the horn-book, states that there is one in the
museum at Antwerp, printed by H. Walpot, of Dordrecht, Netherlands, in
1640; and a beautiful silver-backed Dutch horn-book in the collection
of an English clergyman at Coombe Place, England; and a few others in
public libraries that are probably Dutch. Dutch artists show, by their
frequent representations of horn-books in paintings of children, that
the little _a-b-boordje_ was well known. In the “Christ blessing Little
Children,” by Rembrandt, the presentment of a child has a horn-book
hanging at his side. In several pictures by Jan Steen, 1626-79,
horn-books may be noted; in one a child has hung his horn-book on a
parrot’s perch while he plays. In 1753 English children used horn-books
in New York as in the other provinces, for they were advertised with
Bibles and primers in the New York newspapers at that time.
Printed arithmetics were rarely used or seen. Schoolmasters carried
with them carefully executed “sum-books” in manuscript, from which
scholars copied the sums and rules into small blank-books of their own.
One, of a Gravesend scholar in 1754, has evidently served to prove the
pupil’s skill both in arithmetic and penmanship. The book is prefaced
by instructive aphorisms, such as “Carefully mind to mend in every
line;” “Game not in school when you should write.” The wording of the
rules is somewhat curious. One reads:--
“Rule of Bartar, which is for exchanging of ware, One Commodity for
another. This Rule shows the Merchants how they may Proportion their
Goods so that neither of them may sustain loss. Sum. Two Merchants
A. and B. bartar. A. hath 320 Dozen of Candles @ ⁴⁄₆ per Dozen; for
which B. giveth him £30 in Cash and y^e Rest in Cotton @ 8d per lb. I
demand: how much Cotton B. must give A. more than the £30 in Cash.”
As commerce increased and many young men sought a seafaring life,
navigation was taught, and advanced mathematics. In 1749 the notice
of a Brooklyn “Philomath” on Nassau Island shows that he could teach
“Arithmetick vulgar and decimal; Geometry plain and Spherical;
Surveying, Navigation in 3 kinds, viz: Plain Mercator and Great
Circle Sailing, Astronomy, and Dialling.” Thus did this Philomath
meet the demand of the day. In 1773 the Flatbush Grammar School was
taught by John Copp, who also took scholar-boarders, who “have the
advantage of being taught geography in the winter evenings, with many
other useful particulars that frequently occur to the teacher,” which
seems to present a rather melancholy picture when we reflect on the
other particulars of good coasting and skating that then were around
Flatbush, on the _Steenbakkery_ for instance, which, doubtless, would
frequently occur on winter evenings to the scholar-boarder.
CHAPTER III
WOOING AND WEDDING
The domestic life of the Dutch settlers flowed on in a smooth-running
and rather dull stream, varying little through either honor-bearing or
discreditable incident from day to day. Any turbulence of dissension
or divorce between husband and wife was apparently little known and
certainly little noted. Occasionally an entry which tells of temporary
division or infelicity can be unearthed from the dingy pages of some
old court-record, thereby disclosing a scene and actors so remote,
so shadowy, so dimmed with the dust of centuries, that the incident
often bears no semblance of having happened to real living folk, but
seems rather to pertain to a group of inanimate puppets. One of these
featureless, colorless, stiff Dutch marionettes is Anneke, the daughter
of boisterous old Domine Schaets, the first minister at Fort Orange.
A fleeting glimpse of her marital infelicity is disclosed through the
record of her presence in Albany under the shadow of some unexplained
and now forgotten scandal. To satisfy her father’s virtuous and severe
congregation, she refrained from contaminating attendance at Communion.
The domine resented this condition of affairs, and refused to appear
before the Consistory though summoned four times by the _bode_. He
persisted in irritatingly “ripping up new differences and offences;”
and he disregarded with equal scorn the summons of a magistrate to
appear before the Court; and he was therefore suspended from his
clerical office. All was at last “arranged in love and friendship,”
leaving out the dispute about “Universal Grace,” which I suppose
could not be settled; but daughter Anneke was ordered off to New York
to her husband, “with a letter of recommendation; and as she was so
headstrong, and would not depart without the Sheriff’s and Constable’s
interference, her disobedience was annexed to the letter.” It is
pleasing to know, from the record of an “Extraordinary Court holden in
Albany” a month later,--in July, 1681,--of a very satisfactory result
in the affairs of the young couple.
“Tho: Davidtse promisses to conduct himself well and honorably towards
his wife Anneke Schaets, to Love and never neglect her, but faithfully
and properly to maintain and support her with her children according
to his means, hereby making null and void all questions that have
occurred and transpired between them both, never to repeat them,
but are entirely reconciled: and for better assurance of his real
Intention and good Resolution to observe the same, he requests that
two good men be named to oversee his conduct at New York towards his
said wife, being entirely disposed and inclined to live honorably and
well with her as a Christian man ought, subjecting himself willingly
to the rule and censure of the said men. On the other hand his wife
Anneke Schaets, promisses also to conduct herself quietly and well and
to accompany him to New York with her children and property, not to
leave him any more, but to serve and help him and with him to share
the sweets and the sours as becomes a Christian spouse: Requesting all
differences which had ever existed between them both may be hereby
quashed and brought no more to light or cast up, as she on her side
is heartily disposed to. Their Worship of the Court Recommend parties
on both Sides to observe strictly their Reconciliation now made, and
the gentleman at New York will be informed that the matter is so far
arranged.”
We can certainly add the profound hope, after all this quarrelling
and making up, after all those good promises, that Anneke’s home was
no longer “unregulated and poorly kept,” as was told of her by the
Labadist travellers during their visit to Albany at that time. The
appointing of “two good men” as arbitrators or overseers of conduct was
very usual in such cases; thereby public adjustment in open court of
such quarrels was avoided.
Tender parents could not unduly shelter a daughter who had left her
husband’s bed and board. He could promptly apply to the court for an
order for her return to him, and an injunction to her parents against
harboring her. It has been plain to see in all such cases which I have
chanced upon in colonial records that the Court had a strong leaning
towards the husband’s side of the case; perhaps thinking, like Anneke
Schaets, that the wife should “share the sweets and the sours like a
Christian spouse.”
In 1697 Daniel Vanolinda petitioned that his wife be “ordyred to go
and live with him where he thinks convenient.” The wife’s father was
promptly notified by the Albany magistrates that he was “discharged to
shelter her in his house or elsewhere, upon Penalty as he will answer
at his Perill;” and she returned to her husband.
In the year 1665 a New Amsterdammer named Lantsman and his wife,
Beletje, were sorely estranged, and went to the courts for settlement
of these differences. The Court gave the matter into the hands of
two of the Dutch ministers, who were often assigned the place of
peacemakers. As usual, they ordered the parents of Beletje to cease
from harboring or abetting her. The husband promised to treat her well,
but she answered that he always broke his promises to her. He was
determined and assiduous to retrieve her, and finally was successful;
thus they were not made “an example to other evil housekeepers.”
A curious feature of this marriage quarrel is the fact that this
Lantsman, who was so determined to retain his wife, had been more
than recreant about marrying her. The banns had been published, the
wedding-day set, but Bridegroom Lantsman did not appear. Upon being
hauled up and reprimanded, his only proffered excuse was the very
simple one that his clothes were not ready.
When Anniatje Fabritius requested an order of court for her husband
to vacate her house with a view of final separation from him, it was
decided by the arbitrators that no legal steps should be taken, but
that “the parties comport themselves as they ought, in order that they
win back each other’s affections, leaving each other in meanwhile
unmolested”--which was very sensible advice. Another married pair
having “met with great discouragement” (which is certainly a most
polite expression to employ on such a subject), agreed each to go his
and her way, after an exact halving of all their possessions.
Nicasius de Sille, magistrate of New Utrecht and poet of New
Netherland, separated his life from that of his wife because--so he
said--she spent too much money. It is very hard for me to think of a
Dutch woman as “expensefull,” to use Pepys’ word. He also said she was
too fond of schnapps,--which her respected later life did not confirm.
Perhaps he spoke with poetic extravagance, or the nervous irritability
and exaggeration of genius. Albert Andriese and his wife were divorced
in Albany in 1670, “because strife and difference hath arisen between
them.” Daniel Denton was divorced from his wife in Jamaica, and she was
permitted to marry again, by the new provincial law of divorce of 1672.
These few examples break the felicitous calm of colonial matrimony,
and have a few companions during the years 1670-72; but Chancellor
Kent says “for more than one hundred years preceding the Revolution no
divorce took place in the colony of New York;” and there was no way of
dissolving a marriage save by special act of Legislature.
Occasionally breach-of-promise suits were brought. In 1654 Greetje
Waemans produced a marriage ring and two letters, promissory of
marriage, and requested that on that evidence Daniel de Silla be
“condemned to legally marry her.” He vainly pleaded his unfortunate
habit of some days drinking too much, and that on those days he
did much which he regretted; among other things, his bacchanalian
love-making of Greetje. François Soleil, the New Amsterdam gunsmith,
another recreant lover, swore he would rather go away and live with the
Indians (a terrible threat) than marry the fair Rose whom he had left
to droop neglected--and unmarried.
One curious law-case is shown by the injunction to Pieter Kock and
Anna van Voorst. They had entered into an agreement of marriage, and
then had been unwilling to be wedded. The burgomasters and _schepens_
decided that the promise should remain in force, and that neither
should marry any other person without the permission of the other and
the Court; but Anna did marry very calmly (when she got ready) another
more desirable and desired man without asking any one’s permission.
It certainly gives us a great sense of the simplicity of living in
those days to read the account of the suit of the patroon of Staten
Island in 1642 against the parents of a fair young Elsje for loss
of services through her marriage. She had been bound out to him as
a servant, and had married secretly before her time of service had
expired. The bride told the worshipful magistrates that she did not
know the young man when her mother and another fetched him to see
her; that she refused his suit several times, but finally married
him willingly enough,--in fact, eloped with him in a sail-boat.
She demurely offered to return to the Court, as compensation and
mollification, the pocket-handkerchief which was her husband’s
wedding-gift to her. Two years later, Elsje (already a widow) appeared
as plaintiff in a breach-of-promise suit; and offered, as proof of
her troth-plight, a shilling-piece which was her second lover’s not
more magnificent gift. Though not so stated in the chronicle, this
handkerchief was doubtless given in a “marriage-knot,”--a handkerchief
in which was tied a gift of money. If the girl to whom it was given
untied the knot, it was a sign of consent to be speedily married. This
fashion of marriage-knots still exists in parts of Holland. Sometimes
the knot bears a motto; one reads when translated, “Being in love does
no harm if love finds its recompense in love; but if love has ceased,
all labor is in vain. Praise God.”
Though second and third marriages were common enough among the early
settlers of New Netherland, I find that usually attempts at restraint
of the wife were made through wills ordering sequent loss of property
if she married again. Nearly all the wills are more favorable to the
children than to the wife. Old Cornelius Van Catts, of Bushwick, who
died in 1726, devised his estate to his wife Annetje with this gruff
condition: “If she happen to marry again, then I geff her nothing of my
estate, real or personal. But my wife can be master of all by bringing
up to good learning my two children. But if she comes to marry again,
then her husband can take her away from the farm.” John Burroughs, of
Newtown, Long Island, in his will dated 1678 expressed the general
feeling of husbands towards their prospective widows when he said, “If
my wife marry again, then her husband must provide for her as I have.”
Often joint-wills were made by husband and wife, each with equal rights
if survivor. This was peculiarly a Dutch fashion. In Fordham in 1670
and 1673, Claude de Maistre and his wife Hester du Bois, Pierre Cresson
and his wife Rachel Cloos, Gabriel Carboosie and Brieta Wolferts,
all made joint-wills. The last-named husband in his half of the will
enjoined loss of property if Brieta married again. Perhaps he thought
there had been enough marrying and giving in marriage already in that
family, for Brieta had had three husbands,--a Dane, a Frieslander, and
a German,--and his first wife had had four, and he--well, several, I
guess; and there were a number of children; and you couldn’t expect any
poor Dutchman to find it easy to make a will in all that confusion. In
Albany may be found several joint-wills, among them two dated 1663 and
1676; others in the Schuyler family. There is something very touching
in the thought of those simple-minded husbands and wives, in mutual
confidence and affection, going, as we find, before the notary together
and signing their will together, “out of love and special nuptial
affection, not thereto misled or sinisterly persuaded,” she bequeathing
her dower or her father’s legacy or perhaps her own little earnings,
and he his hard-won guilders. It was an act significant and emblematic
of the ideal unison of interests and purposes which existed as a rule
in the married life of these New York colonists.
Mrs. Grant adds abundant testimony to the domestic happiness and the
marital affection of residents of Albany a century later. She states:--
“Inconstancy or even indifference among married couples was unheard
of, even where there happened to be a considerable disparity in point
of intellect. The extreme affection they bore their mutual offspring
was a bond that forever endeared them to each other. Marriage in this
colony was always early, very often happy, and very seldom indeed
interested. When a man had no son, there was nothing to be expected
with a daughter but a well brought-up female slave, and the furniture
of the best bed-chamber. At the death of her father she obtained
another division of his effects, such as he thought she needed or
deserved, for there was no rule in these cases.
“Such was the manner in which those colonists began life; nor must
it be thought that those were mean or uninformed persons. Patriots,
magistrates, generals, those who were afterwards wealthy, powerful,
and distinguished, all, except a few elder brothers, occupied by their
possessions at home, set out in the same manner; and in after life,
even in the most prosperous circumstances, they delighted to recount
the ‘humble toils and destiny obscure’ of their early years.”
Weddings usually took place at the house of the bride’s parents. There
are some records of marriages in church in Albany in the seventeenth
century, one being celebrated on Sunday. But certainly throughout the
eighteenth century few marriages were within the church doors. Mrs.
Vanderbilt says no Flatbush marriages took place in the church till
within the past thirty or forty years. In some towns written permission
of the parents of the groom, as well as the bride, was required by
the domine before he would perform the marriage ceremony. In the
Guelderland the express consent of father and mother must be obtained
before the marriage; and doubtless that custom of the Fatherland caused
its adoption here in some localities. The minister also in some cases
gave a certificate of permission for marriage; here is one given by “ye
minister at Flatbush,”--
Isaac Hasselburg and Elizabeth Baylis have had their proclamation in
our church as commonly our manner and custom is, and no opposition or
hindrance came against them, so as that they may be confirmed in y^e
banns of Matrimony, whereto we wish them blessing. Midwout y^e March
17th, 1689.
RUDOLPH VARRICK, _Minister_.
This was probably to permit and authorize the marriage in another
parish.
Marriage fees were not very high in colonial days, nor were they
apparently always retained by the minister; for in one of Domine
Selyns’s accounts of the year 1662, we find him paying over to the
Consistory the sum of seventy-eight guilders and ten stuyvers for
fourteen marriage fees received by him. The expenses of being married
were soon increased by the issuing of marriage licenses. During the
century dating from the domination of the British to the Revolutionary
War nearly all the marriages of genteel folk were performed by special
permission, by Governor’s license, the payment for which (a half-guinea
each, so Kalm said) proved through the large numbers a very welcome
addition to the magistrates’ incomes. It was in fact deemed most
plebeian, almost vulgar, to be married by publication of the banns for
three Sundays in church, or posting them according to the law, as was
the universal and fashionable custom in New England. This notice from a
New York newspaper, dated December 13, 1765, will show how widespread
had been the aversion to the publication of banns:--
“We are creditly informed that there was married last Sunday evening,
by the Rev. Mr. Auchmuty, a very respectable couple that had published
three different times in Trinity Church. A laudable example and worthy
to be followed. If this decent and for many reasons proper method
of publication was once generally to take place, we should have no
more of clandestine marriages; and save the expense of licenses, no
inconsiderable sum these hard and depressing times.”
Another reason for “crying the banns” was given in Holt’s “New York
Gazette and Postboy” for December 6, 1765.
“As no Licenses for Marriage could be obtained since the first of
November for Want of Stamped Paper, we can assure the Publick several
Genteel Couple were publish’d in the different Churches of this
City last Week; and we hear that the young Ladies of this Place are
determined to Join Hands with none but such as will to the utmost
endeavour to abolish the Custom of marrying with License which Amounts
to many Hundred per annum which might be saved.”
Severe penalties were imposed upon clergymen who violated the law
requiring license or publication ere marriage. The Lutheran minister
performed such a marriage, and the _schout’s_ “conclusion” as to the
matter was that the offending minister be flogged and banished. But as
he was old, and of former good services, he was at last only suspended
a year from power of preaching.
Rev. Mr. Miller, an English clergyman writing in 1695, complains that
many marriages were by justices of the peace. This was made lawful by
the States-General of Holland from the year 1590, and thus was a law in
New Netherland. By the Duke’s Laws, 1664, it was also made legal. This
has never been altered, and is to-day the law of the State.
Of highly colored romance in the life of the Dutch colonists there
was little. Sometimes a lover was seized by the Indians, and his fair
betrothed mourned him through a long life. In one case she died after
a few years of grief and waiting, and on the very day of his return
from his savage prison to his old Long Island home he met the sad
little funeral procession bearing her to the grave. Another humbler
romance of Gravesend was when a sorrowing widower fell in love with a
modest milkmaid at first sight as she milked her father’s cows; ere the
milking was finished he told his love, rode to town on a fast horse for
a governor’s license, and married and carried off his fair Grietje. A
century later a fair Quakeress of Flushing won in like manner, when
milking, the attention and affection of Walter Franklin of New York.
Another and more strange meeting of lovers was when young Livingstone,
the first of the name in New York, poor and unknown, came to the
bedside of a dying Van Rensselaer in Albany to draw up a will. The
dying man, with a jealousy stronger than death, said to his beautiful
wife, Alida Schuyler, “Send him away, he will be your second husband;”
and he was,--perhaps the thought provoked the deed.
Even if there were few startling or picturesque romances or brilliant
matches, there was plenty of ever-pleasant wooing. New Amsterdam was
celebrated, just before its cession to the English, for its young
and marriageable folk and its betrothals. This is easily explained;
nearly all the first emigrants were young married people, and the years
assigned to one generation had passed, and their children had grown
up and come to mating-time. Shrewd travellers, who knew where to get
good capable wives, wooed and won their brides among the Dutch-American
fair ones. Mr. Valentine says: “Several of the daughters of wealthy
burghers were mated to young Englishmen whose first occasions were
of a temporary character.” The beautiful surroundings of the little
town tempted all to love-making, and the unchaperoned simplicity of
society aided early “matching.” The Locust-Trees, a charming grove on
a bluff elevation on the North River a little south of the present
Trinity Churchyard, was a famous courting-place; or tender lovers could
stroll down the “Maiden’s Path;” or, for still longer walks, to the
beautiful and baleful “Kolck,” or “Collect,” or “Fresh Water,” as it
was sequentially called; and I cannot imagine any young and susceptible
hearts ever passing without some access of sentiment through any green
field so sweetly named as the “Clover Waytie.”
There were some curious marriage customs,--some Dutch, some English.
One very pretty piece of folk-lore, of bride-honoring, was brought to
my notice through the records of a lawsuit in the infant town of New
Harlem in 1663, as well as an amusing local pendant to the celebration
of the custom. It seems that a certain young Harlem couple were honored
in the pleasant fashion of the Fatherland, by having a “May-tree” set
up in front of their dwelling-place. But certain gay young sparks
of the neighborhood, to anger the groom and cast ridicule on his
marriage, came with unseemly noise of blowing of horns, and hung the
lovely May-tree during the night with ragged stockings. We never shall
know precisely what special taunt or insult was offered or signified by
this over-ripe crop of worn-out hosiery; but it evidently answered its
tantalizing purpose, for on the morrow, at break of day, the bridegroom
properly resented the “mockery and insult,” cut down the hateful
tree, and committed other acts of great wrath; which, being returned
in kind (for thrice was the stocking-full tree set up), developed a
small riot, and thus the whole affair was recorded. Among the State
Papers at Albany are several letters relating to another insulting
“stocking-tree” set up in Albany at about the same date, and also
fiercely resented.
Collections for the church poor were sometimes taken at weddings, as
was the universal custom for centuries in Holland. When Stephanus
Van Cortlandt and Gertrude Schuyler were married in Albany, in 1671,
thirteen guilders six stuyvers were contributed at the wedding, and
fifteen guilders at the reception the following day. At the wedding
of Martin Kreiger, the same year, eleven guilders were collected; at
another wedding the same amount. When the daughter of Domine Bogardus
was married, it was deemed a very favorable time and opportunity to
take up a subscription for building the first stone church in New
Amsterdam. When the wedding-guests were all mellow with wedding-cheer,
“after the fourth or fifth round of drinking,” says the chronicle,
and, hence generous, each vied with the other in good-humored and
pious liberality, they subscribed “richly.” A few days later, so
the chronicle records, some wished to reconsider the expensive and
expansive transaction at the wedding-feast, and “well repented it.”
But Director Kieft stiffly held them to their contracts, and “nothing
availed to excuse.”
It is said that the English drink of posset was served at weddings.
From the “New York Gazette” of February 13, 1744, I copy this receipt
for its manufacture:--
“A Receipt for all young Ladies that are going to be Married. To Make a
SACK-POSSET.
From famed Barbadoes on the Western Main
Fetch sugar half a pound; fetch sack from Spain
A pint; and from the Eastern Indian Coast
Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast.
O’er flaming coals together let them heat
Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet.
O’er such another fire set eggs, twice ten,
New born from crowing cock and speckled hen;
Stir them with steady hand, and conscience pricking
To see the untimely fate of twenty chicken.
From shining shelf take down your brazen skillet,
A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it.
When boiled and cooked, put milk and sack to egg,
Unite them firmly like the triple League.
Then covered close, together let them dwell
Till Miss twice sings: _You must not kiss and tell_.
Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon,
And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon.”
Many frankly simple customs prevailed. I do not know at how early a
date the fashion obtained of “coming out bride” on Sunday; that is,
the public appearance of bride and groom, and sometimes entire bridal
party in wedding-array, at church the Sunday after the marriage. It
certainly was a common custom long before Revolutionary times, in New
England as well as New York; but it always seems to me more an English
than a Dutch fashion. Mr. Gabriel Furman, in his manuscript Commonplace
Book, dated 1810, now owned by the Long Island Historical Society,
tells of one groom whom he remembered who appeared on the first
Sunday after his marriage attired in white broadcloth; on the second,
in brilliant blue and gold; on the third, in peach-bloom with pearl
buttons. The bride’s dress, wholly shadowed by all this magnificence,
is not even named. Mrs. Vanderbilt tells of a Flatbush bride of the
last century, who was married in a fawn-colored silk over a light-blue
damask petticoat. The wedding-waistcoat of the groom was made of the
same light-blue damask,--a delicate and deferential compliment. Often
it was the custom for the bridal pair to enter the church after the
service began, thus giving an opportunity for the congregation to enjoy
thoroughly the wedding-finery. Whether bride and groom were permitted
to sit together within the church, I do not know. Of course ordinarily
the seats of husband and wife were separate. It would seem but a poor
show, with the bride in a corner with a lot of old ladies, and the
groom up in the gallery.
On Long Island the gayety at the home of the bride’s parents was often
followed on the succeeding day by “open house” at the house of the
groom’s parents, when the wedding-party, bridesmaids and all, helped
to keep up the life of the wedding-day. An old letter says of weddings
in the city of New York:--
“The Gentlemen’s Parents keep Open house just in the same manner as
the Bride’s Parents. The Gentlemen go from the Bridegroom’s house to
drink Punch with and give Joy to his Father. The Bride’s visitors
go in the same manner from the Bride’s to her mother’s to pay their
compliments to her. There is so much driving about at these times
that in our narrow streets there is some danger. The Wedding-house
resembles a bee-hive. Company perpetually flying in and out.”
All this was in vogue by the middle of the last century. There was no
leaving home by bride and groom just when every one wanted them,--no
tiresome, tedious wedding-journey; all cheerfully enjoyed the presence
of the bride, and partook of the gayety the wedding brought. In the
country, up the Hudson and on Long Island, it was lengthened out by a
bride-visiting,--an entertaining of the bridal party from day to day
by various hospitable friends and relations for many miles around; and
this bride-visiting was usually made on horseback.
Let us picture a bride-visiting in spring-time on Long Island, where,
as Hendrick Hudson said, “the land was pleasant with grass and flowers
and goodly trees as ever seen, and very sweet smells came therefrom.”
The fair bride, with her happy husband; the gayly dressed bridesmaids,
in silken petticoats, and high-heeled scarlet shoes, with rolled and
powdered hair dressed with feathers and gauze, riding a-pillion behind
the groom’s young friends, in satin knee-breeches, and gay coats and
cocked hats,--all the accompanying young folk in the picturesque and
gallant dress of the times, and gay with laughter and happy voices,--a
sight pretty to see in the village streets, or, fairer still, in the
country lanes, where the woods were purely starred and gleaming with
the radiant dogwood; or roads where fence-lines were “white with
blossoming cherry-trees as if touched with lightest snow;” or where
pink apple-blossoms flushed the fields and dooryards; or, sweeter
far, where the flickering shadows fell through a bridal arch of the
pale green feathery foliage of the abundant flowering locust-trees,
whose beautiful hanging racemes of exquisite pink-flushed blossoms
cast abroad a sensuous perfume like orange blossoms, which fitted the
warmth, the glowing sunlight, the fair bride, the beginning of a new
life;--let us picture in our minds this June bride-visiting; we have
not its like to-day in quaintness, simplicity, and beauty.
CHAPTER IV
TOWN LIFE
The earlier towns in New Netherland gathered usually closely around
a fort, both for protection and companionship. In New Amsterdam, as
in Albany, this fort was an intended refuge against possible Indian
attacks, and also in New Amsterdam the established quarters in the new
world of the Dutch West India Company. As the settlement increased,
roads were laid out in the little settlement leading from the fort to
any other desired point on the lower part of the island. Thus Heere
Straat, the Breede Weg, or Broadway, led from the fort of New Amsterdam
to the common pasture-lands. Hoogh Straat, now Stone Street, was
evolved from part of the road which led down to the much-used Ferry
to Long Island, at what is now Peck Slip. Whitehall Street was the
shortest way to the East River. In front of the fort was the Bowling
Green. Other streets were laid out, or rather grew, as needs increased.
They were irregular in width and wandering in direction. They were not
paved nor kept in good order, and at night were scarcely lighted.
In December, 1697, city lamps were ordered in New York “in the dark
time of the moon, for the ease of the inhabitants.” Every seventh
house was to cause a lanthorn and candle to be hung out on a pole, the
expense to be equally shared by the seven neighbors, and a penalty of
ninepence was decreed for every default. And perhaps the watch called
out in New York, as did the watch in Old York, in London and other
English cities, “Lanthorne, and a whole candell-light! Hang out your
lights here.” An old chap-book has a watchman’s rhyme beginning,--
“A light here! maids, hang out your light,
And see your horns be clear and bright
That so your candle clear may shine,” etc.
Broad Street was in early days a canal or inlet of the sea, and was
called De Heere Graft, and extended from the East River to Wall Street.
Its waters, as far as Exchange Place, rose and fell with the tide.
It was crossed by several foot-bridges and a broader bridge at Hoogh
Straat, or Stone Street, which bridge became a general meeting-place,
a centre of trade. And when the burghers and merchants decided to
meet regularly at this bridge every Friday morning, they thus and
then and there established the first Exchange in New York City. It
is pleasant to note, in spite of the many miles of city growth, how
closely the exchange centres have remained near their first home. In
1660 the walks on the banks of the Graft were paved, and soon it was
bordered by the dwellings of good citizens; much favored on account
of the homelikeness, so Mr. Janvier suggests, of having a good,
strong-smelling canal constantly under one’s nose, and ever-present
the pleasant familiar sight of squat sailor-men and squat craft before
one’s eyes. In 1676, when simple and primitive ways of trade were
vanishing and the watercourse was no longer useful or needful, the
Heere Graft was filled in--reluctantly, we can believe--and became
Broad Street.
The first mention of street-cleaning was in 1695, when Mr.
Vanderspiegle undertook the job for thirty pounds a year. By 1701
considerable pains was taken to clean the city, and to remove
obstructions in the public ways. Every Friday dirt was swept by each
citizen in a heap in front of his or her house, and afterwards carted
away by public cartmen, who had threepence a load if the citizen
shovelled the dirt into the cart, sixpence if the cartman loaded his
cart himself. Broad Street was cleaned by a public scavenger at a
salary of $40 per annum paid by the city; for the dirt from other
streets was constantly washed into it by rains, and it was felt that
Broad Street residents should not be held responsible for other
people’s dirt. Dumping-places were established. Regard was paid from an
early date to preserving “the Commons.” It was ordered that lime should
not be burnt thereon; that no hoopsticks or saplings growing thereon
should be cut; no timber taken to make into charcoal; no turfs or sods
carried away therefrom; no holes dug therein; no rubbish be deposited
thereon.
Within the city walls all was orderly and quiet. “All persons who enter
y^e gates of y^e citty with slees, carts and horses, horseback, not
to ride faster than foot-tap.” The carters were forced to dismount
and walk at their horses’ heads. All moved slowly in the town streets.
Living in a fortified town, they still were not annoyed by discharge
of guns, for the idle “fyring of pistells and gunns” was prohibited on
account of “ill-conveniants.”
The first houses were framed and clap-boarded; the roofs were thatched
with reeds; the chimneys were catted, made of logs of wood filled and
covered with clay; sometimes even of reeds and mortar,--for there were,
of course, at first no bricks. Hayricks stood in the public streets.
Hence fires were frequent in the town, breaking out in the wooden
catted chimneys; and the destruction of the inflammable chimneys was
decreed by the magistrates. In 1648 it was ordered in New Amsterdam
that no “wooden or platted chimney” should be built south of the
Fresh-water Pond. Fire-wardens--_brandt-meesters_--were appointed, who
searched constantly and pryingly for “foul chimney-harts,” and fined
careless housekeepers therefor when they found them.
It is really surprising as well as amusing to see how the citizens
resented this effort for their safety, this espionage over their
hearthstones; and especially the wives resented the snooping in
their kitchens. They abused the poor _schout_ who inspected the
chimney-hearths, calling him “a little cock, booted and spurred,” and
other demeaning names. In 1658 Maddaleen Dirck, as she passed the door
of the fire-warden, called out tantalizingly to him, “There is the
chimney-sweep at his door,--his chimney is always well-swept.” She
must have been well scared and truly repentant at the enormity of her
offence when she was brought up before the magistrates and accused of
having “insulted the worshipful fire-warden on the highway, and incited
a riot.”
In spite of vigilance and in spite of laws, foul chimneys were
constantly found. We hear of the town authorities “reciting that they
have long since condemned flag-roofs, and wooden and platted chimneys,
but their orders have been neglected, and several fires have occurred;
therefore they amplify their former orders as follows: All flag-roofs,
wooden chimneys, hay-barracks, and hay-stacks shall be taken down
within four months, in the penalty of twenty-five guilders.”
The magistrates further equipped the town against conflagration by
demanding payment of a beaver skin from each house, to purchase with
the collected sum two hundred and fifty leather fire-buckets from the
Fatherland. But delays were frequent in ocean transportation, and the
shoemakers in town finally made the fire-buckets. They were placed
in ten groups in various houses throughout the town. For their good
order and renewal, each chimney was thereafter taxed a guilder a year.
By 1738, two engines with small, solid wooden wheels or rollers were
imported from England, and cared for with much pride.
In Albany similar wooden chimneys at first were built; we find
contractors delivering reeds for roofs and chimneys. “Fire-leathes” and
buckets were ordered. Buckets were owned by individuals and the town;
were marked with initials for identification. Many stood a century of
use, and still exist as cherished relics. The manner of bucket-service
was this: As soon as an alarm of fire was given by shouts or
bell-ringing, all citizens of all classes at once ran to the scene of
the conflagration. All who owned buckets carried them, and from open
windows other fire-buckets were flung out on the streets by persons
who were delayed for a few moments by any cause. The running crowd
seized the buckets, and on reaching the fire a double line was made
from the fire to the river. The buckets filled with water were passed
up the line to the fire, the empty buckets down. Any one who attempted
to break the line was promptly soused with a bucket of water. When all
was over, the fire-warden took charge of the buckets, and as soon as
possible the owners appeared, and each claimed and carried home his own
buckets.
There was a police department in New Amsterdam as well as a fire
department. In 1658 the burgomasters and _schepens_ appointed a
_ratel-wacht_, or rattle-watch, of ten watchmen, of whom Lodewyck Pos
was Captain. Their wages were high,--twenty-four stuyvers (about fifty
cents) each a night, and plenty of firewood. The Captain collected
fifty stuyvers a month from each house,--not as has since been
collected in like manner for the private bribing of the police, but
as a legalized method of paying expenses. The rules for the watch are
amusing, but cannot be given in full. They sometimes slept on duty,
as they do now, and paid a fine of ten stuyvers for each offence. They
could not swear, nor fight, nor be “unreasonable;” and “when they
receive their quarter-money, they shall not hold any gathering for
drink nor any club meeting.”
Attention is called to one rule then in force: “If a watchman receive
any sum of money as a fee, he shall give the same to the Captain; and
this fee so brought in shall be paid to the City Treasurer”--oh the
good old times!
The presence of a considerable force of troops was a feature of life in
some towns. The soldiers were well cared for when quartered within the
fort, sleeping on good, soft, goose-feather beds, with warm homespun
blankets and even with linen sheets, all hired from the Dutch _vrouws_;
and supplied during the winter with plentiful loads of firewood,
several hundred, through levy on the inhabitants; good hard wood,
too,--“no watte Pyn wood, willige, oly noote, nor Lindewood” (which was
intended for English, but needs translation into “white pine, willow,
butternut, nor linden”).
No doubt the soldiers came to be felt a great burden, for often they
were billeted in private houses. We find one citizen writing seriously
what reads amusingly like modern slang,--that “they made him weary.”
Another would furnish bedding, provisions, anything, if he need not
have any soldier-boarders assigned to him. One of the twenty-three
clauses of the “Articles of Surrender” of the Dutch was that the
“townsmen of Manhattans shall not have any soldiers quartered upon
them without being satisfied and paid for them by their officers.”
In Governor Nicholl’s written instructions to the commander at Fort
Albany, he urges him not to lend “too easey an eare” to the soldiers’
complaints against their land-lords.
Since in the year 1658 the soldiers of New Amsterdam paid but twenty
cents a week for quarters when lodged with a citizen, it is not
surprising that their presence was not desired. A soldier’s pay was
four dollars a month.
They were lawless fellows, too lazy to chop wood for their fires; they
had to be punished for burning up for firewood the stockades they
were enlisted to protect. Their duties were slight,--a drill in the
morning, no sentry work during the day, a watch over the city gates at
night, and cutting wood. The military code of the day reveals a very
lax condition of discipline; it wasn’t really much of an army in Dutch
days. And as for the Fort and the Battery in the town of New Amsterdam,
read Mr. Janvier’s papers thereon to learn fully their innocuous
pretence of warlikeness.
There was very irregular foreign and in-land mail service. It is with a
retrospectively pitying shiver that we read a notice, as late as 1730,
that “whoever inclines to perform the foot-post to Albany this winter
may make application to the Post-Master.” Later we find the postmaster
leisurely collecting the mail during several weeks for “the first post
to Albany this winter.” Of course this foot-post was only made when
the river was frozen over; swift sloops carried the summer mail up the
river in two or three weeks,--sometimes in only ten days from New York
to Albany. I can fancy the lonesome post journeying alone up the solemn
river, under the awe-full shadow of old Cro’nest, sometimes climbing
the icy Indian paths with _ys-sporen_, oftener, I hope, skating
swiftly along, as a good son of a Hollander should, and longing every
inch of the way for spring and the “breaking-up” of the river.
In 1672, “Indian posts” carried the Albany winter mail; trustworthy
redmen, whose endurance and honesty were at the service of their white
friends.
The first regular mail started by mounted post from New York for
Boston on January 1, 1673. His “portmantles” were crammed with letters
and “small portable goods” and “divers bags.” He was “active, stout,
indefatigable, and honest.” He could not change horses till he reached
Hartford. He was ordered to keep an eye out for the best ways through
forests, and accommodations at fords, ferries, etc., and to watch for
all fugitive soldiers and servants, and to be kind to all persons
journeying in his company. While he was gone eastward a locked box
stood in the office of the Colonial Secretary at New York to collect
the month’s mail. The mail the post brought in return, being prepaid,
was carried to the “coffee-house,” put on a table, well thumbed over by
all who cared to examine it, and gradually distributed, two or three
weeks’ delay not making much difference any way.
As in all plantations in a new land, there was for a time in New
Netherland a lack of servants. Complaints were sent in 1649 to the
States-General of “the fewness of boors and farm-servants.” Domestic
servants were not found in many households; the capable wife and
daughters performed the housework and dairy work. As soon as servants
were desired they were speedily procured from Africa. The Dutch brought
the first negro slaves to America. In the beginning these slaves in
New Netherland were the property of the Dutch West India Company,
which rented their services. The company owned slaves from the year
1625, when it first established its authority, and promised to each
patroon twelve black men and women from ships taken as prizes. In 1644
it manumitted twelve of the negroes who had worked faithfully nearly
a score of years in servitude. In 1652 the Government in Holland
consented to the exportation of slaves to the colony for sale. In
1664 Governor Stuyvesant writes of an auction of negroes that they
brought good prices, and were a great relief to the garrison in
supplying funds to purchase food. Thus did the colony taste the ease of
ill-gotten wealth. Though the Duke of York and his governors attempted
to check the slave-trade, by the end of the century the negroes had
increased much in numbers in the colony. In the Kip family were twelve
negro house-servants. Rip van Dam had five; Colonel de Peyster and the
Widow Van Courtlandt had each seven adult servants. Colonel Bayard,
William Beeckman, David Provoost, and Madam Van Schaick each had three.
On Long Island slaves abounded. It is the universal testimony that
they were kindly treated by the Dutch,--too kindly, our English lady
thought, who rented out her slaves. Masters were under some bonds
to the public. They could not, under Dutch rule, whip their slaves
without authorization from the government. The letters in the Lloyd
Collection in regard to the slave Obium are striking examples of kindly
consideration, and of constant care and thought for his comfort and
happiness.
The wages of a hired servant-girl in New York in 1655 were three
dollars and a half a month, which was very good pay when we
consider the purchasing power of money at that time. It is not till
the eighteenth century that we read of the beginning of our vast
servant-supply of Irish servants.
There was much binding out of children and young folk for terms of
service. In Stuyvesant’s time several invoices of Dutch children from
the almshouses were sent to America to be put to service, and the
official letters concerning them show much kindliness of thought and
intent towards these little waifs and strays. Early in the next century
a sad little band of Palatines was bound out in New York families.
It may prove of interest to give one of the bonds of indenture of a
house-servant in Albany.
“THIS INDENTURE witnesseth that Aulkey Hubertse, Daughter of John
Hubertse, of the Colony of Rensselaerwyck deceased hath bound herself
as a Meniall Servant, and by these presents doth voluntary and of her
own free will and accord bind herself as a Meniall Servant unto John
Delemont of the City of Albany, weaver, by and with the consent of
the Deacons of the Reformed Dutch Church in the Citty of Albany, who
are as overseers in the disposal of the said Aulkey Hubertse to serve
from the date of these present Indentures unto the full end and term
of time that the said Aulkey Hubertse shall come to Age, all which
time fully to be Compleat and ended, during all which term the said
servant her said Master faithfully shall serve, his secrets keep, his
lawful commands gladly everywhere obey, she shall do no Damage to her
said Master nor see it to be done by others without letting or giving
notice thereof to her said Master: she shall not waste her Master’s
goods or lend them unlawfully to any. At Cards, Dice, or any unlawful
Game she shall not play whereby her said Master may have Damage: with
her own goods or the goods of others during the said Term, without
License from her said Master she shall neither buy or sell: she shall
not absent herself day or night from her Master’s service without
his Leave, nor haunt Ale-houses, Taverns, or Play-houses, but in all
things as a faithful servant, she shall behave herself towards her
said Master and all his during the said Term. And the said Master
during the said Term, shall find and provide sufficient Wholesome and
compleat meat and drink, washing, lodging, and apparell and all other
Necessarys fit for such a servant: and it is further agreed between
the said Master and Servant in case the said Aulkey Hubertse should
contract Matrimony before she shall come to Age then the said Servant
is to be free from her said Master’s service by virtue thereof:
and at the expiration of her said servitude, her said Master John
Delemont shall find provide for and deliver unto his said servant
double apparell, that is to say, apparell fit for to have and to wear
as well on the Lords Day as working days, both linning and woolen
stockings and shoes and other Necessarys meet for such a servant to
have and to wear, and for the true performance of all and every of
said Covenant and Agreements the said parties bind themselves unto
each other by these presents.”
This indenture was signed and sealed in the year 1710, and varied
little from those of previous years. Sometimes the apparel was fully
described, and was always good and substantial--and Sunday attire was
usually furnished. Sarah Davis, bound out in Albany in 1684, was to be
taught to read and knit stockings; was to have silk hoods and a silk
scarf for church wear, and substantial petticoats and waistcoats, some
of homespun, some of “jersey-spun,” others of “carsoway,” which was
kersey.
“Redemptioners,” bound for a term of service as domestic and farm
servants, also came from the various European States; and good servants
often did they prove, and good citizens, too, when their terms of
service expired. There also opened in this emigration of redemptioners
a vast opportunity for adventure. In the “New York Gazette” of March
15, 1736, we read of one servant-girl adventurer:--
“We hear that about two years ago a certain Irish gentlewoman was
brought into this province a servant, but she pretended to be a great
fortune worth some thousands (was called the Irish Beauty). Her master
confirming the same a certain young man (Mr. S***ds), courted her; and
she seemingly shy, her master for a certain sum of money makes up the
match, and they were married and go to their country-seat; but she
not pleased with that pursuades her husband to remove to the city of
New York and set up a great tavern. They did so. Next she pursuades
her husband to embark for Ireland to get her great portion. When he
comes there he finds her mother a weeder of gardens to get bread. In
his absence Madam becomes acquainted with one Davis, and they sell and
pack up her husband’s effects, which were considerable, and embark for
North Carolina. When they come there they pass for man and wife, and
he first sells the negroes and other effects, then sells her clothes
and at last he sells her for a servant, and with the produce returns
to his wife in Rhode Island, he having made a very good voyage.”
They were constantly eloping with their masters’ or mistresses’
wardrobes, sometimes with portions of both, and setting up as
gentlefolk on their own account. We find one Jersey girl running a fine
rig: dressed in a velvet coat and scarlet knee-breeches, with a sword,
cocked hat, periwig, and silken hose, she had a gay carouse in New York
tap-houses and tea-gardens, as long as her stolen twenty pounds lasted;
but with an empty stomach, she ceased to play the lad, and went sadly
to the stone ketch. I turn regretfully from the redemptioners; they
were the most picturesque and romance-bearing element of the community.
But little is known of the early practice of medicine in New
Netherland, less than of the other American colonies, and that little
is not of much importance. It must be remembered that the times were
what Lowell has felicitously termed the twilight through which alchemy
was passing into chemistry, and the science of medicine partook of
mysticism. Astrology and alchemy were not yet things of the past. From
the beginning of the settlement the West India Company paid a surgeon
(Jacob Varravanger was the name of one) to live in New Amsterdam and
care for the health of the Company’s “servants.” But soon so many
“freemen” came--that is, not in the pay of the Company--that some
doubts arose in the minds of the Council whether it would not be
better to save the salary, by trusting to independent practitioners.
There were three such in New Amsterdam in 1652. They made pills and a
terrible dose of rhubarb, senna, and port-wine, called “Vienna Drink.”
But folk were discouragingly healthy in the little town in spite of
poor water, and lack of drainage, and filth in the streets, and the
Graft. Van der Donck said, “Galens have meagre soup in that country;”
and soon the poor doctors, to add to their income, petitioned the
Director that none but surgeons should be allowed to shave people. This
was a weighty matter, and after profound consideration, the Council
gave the following answer:--
“That shaving doth not appertain exclusively to _chirugery_, but is
only an appanage thereof. That no man can be prevented from operating
herein upon _himself_, or doing another this friendly act, provided
that it be through _courtesy_, and that he do not receive any money
for it, and do not keep an open-shop of that sort, which is hereby
forbidden, declaring in regard to the last request, this act to belong
to _chirugery_ and the health of man.”
And the surgeons on shore were protected against the ship barbers,
who landed and who made some pretty grave mistakes when attempting to
doctor in the town. In 1658 Dr. Varravanger, somewhat disgusted at the
treatment of the sick, who, if they had no families, had to trust to
the care of strangers, established the first New York Hospital, which
was, after all, only a clean and suitable house with fire and wood and
one good woman to act as matron.
There was no lack of physicians,--half a dozen by 1650. A century
later, the historian of the province pronounced the towns to be
swarming with quacks.
One tribute to old-time medicine and New York medical men we owe
still. The well-known Kiersted Ointment manufactured and sold in New
York to-day is made from a receipt of old Dr. Hans Kiersted’s, the
best colonial physician of his day, who came to New York in 1638. The
manufacture of this ointment is a closely guarded family secret. He
married the daughter of the famous Anneke Jans; and, in the centuries
that have passed, the descendants have had more profit from the
ointment than from the real estate. There were plenty of “wise women”
to care for the increase of the populace; the New Amsterdam midwife
had a house built for her by the government. It was a much respected
calling. The mother of Anneke Jans was a midwife. They were licensed to
practise. Here is an appointment by the Governor in 1670:--
“Whereas I am given to understand that Tryntje Meljers ye wife of
Wynant Vander pool a sworn and approved midwife at Albany in which
Imployment she hath Continued for y^e span of fourteen years past
in good reputation not refusing her assistance but on y^e contrary
affording her best help to y^e poorer sorte of people out of Christian
Charity, as well as to ye richer sorte for reward, and there being
severall other less skilfull women who upon occasion will pretend to
be midwives where they can gain by it but refuse their helpe to y^e
poore. These presents Certifye That I doe allow of y^e said Tryntje
Meljers to be one of y^e profest sworne midwives at Albany, and that
she and one more skilfull woman be only admitted to Undertake ye same
there except upon Extraordinary occasions. They continuing their
Charitable assistance to y^e poore & a diligent attendance on their
calling.”
The small number of settlers, the exigencies and hardships of a
planter’s life, the absence of luxuries, as well as the simplicity of
social manners among the Dutch, prohibited anything during the rule
of the Dutch in New Netherland which might, by a long and liberal
stretch of phraseology or idealization of a revered ancestry, be termed
fashionable life.
They occasionally had a merry dinner. Captain Beaulieu, a gay Frenchman
who brought a prize into port, gave a costly one for fourteen persons;
and as he did not pay for it, it has passed into history. Governor
Stuyvesant had a fine dinner given to him on the eve of one of his
“gallant departures.” De Vries has left us an amusing account of a
quarrelsome feast given by the gunner of the Fort. Eating and drinking
were ever the Dutchman’s pleasures.
With the establishment of English rule there came to the town of the
Governor’s residence, in the Province of New York as in the other
provinces, a little stilted attempt at the semblance of a court.
Formal endeavors to have something of the nature of a club were made
under the English governors, to promote a social feeling in the town.
A letter of the day says, “Good correspondence is kept between the
English and Dutch; to keep it closer sixteen families (ten Dutch and
six English) have had a constant meetting at each other’s houses in
Turnes twice every week in winter and now in summer once. They meet at
six at night, and part at about eight or nine.” The exceedingly early
hours of these social functions seem to accent the simplicity of the
life of the times even more than the absence of any such meetings would
have done. The arrival of a new Governor was naturally an important
and fashionable event. When the Earl and Countess of Bellomont landed
in New York in 1698 they were, of course, greeted first with military
salutes; four barrels of gunpowder made sufficient noise of welcome.
Then a great dinner to a hundred and fifty people was given. It was
presided over by the handsomest man in town. Mayor de Peyster, and the
fare consisted of “venison, turkey, chicken, goose, pigeon, duck and
other game; mutton, beef, lamb, veal, pork, sausages; with puddings,
pastry, cakes and choicest of wines.” It was a fine welcome, but such
dinners did not come every day to the Governor; he had other and
sorrier gatherings in store. Soon we hear of him shut up eight days in
succession in Albany (as he said in his exceedingly plain English) “in
a close chamber with fifty sachems, who besides the stink of bear’s
grease with which they were plentifully bedaubed, were continually
smoking and drinking of rum,” and coming back to town in a “nasty slow
little sloop.” No wonder he fell dangerously sick with the gout.
Mrs. Grant, writing of New York society in the middle of the eighteenth
century, said:--
“At New York there was always a governor, a few troops, and a kind
of little court kept; there was a mixed, and in some degree polished
society. To this the accession of many families of French Huguenots
rather above the middling rank, contributed not a little.”
This little important circle had some fine balls. On January 22, 1734,
one was given at the Fort on the birthday of the Prince of Wales, which
lasted till four in the morning. Another was given in honor of the
King’s birthday. “The ladies made a splendant appearance. Sometimes as
many as a hundred persons were present and took part.”
Occasionally a little flash of gossiping brightness shows us a picture
of the every-day life of the times in the capital town. Such a bit of
eighteenth-century scandal is the amusing account, from Mrs. Janet
Montgomery’s unpublished Memoirs, of Lady Cornbury, wife of the
Governor, Lord Cornbury. She died in New York in 1706, much eulogized,
and most ostentatiously mourned for by her husband. Mrs. Montgomery’s
account of her is this:--
“The lady of this very just nobleman was equally a character. He had
fallen in love with her ear, which was very beautiful. The ear ceased
to please and he treated her with neglect. Her pin-money was withheld
and she had no resource but begging and stealing. She borrowed gowns
and coats and never returned them. As hers was the only carriage in
the city, the rolling of the wheels was easily distinguished, and then
the cry in the house was ‘There comes my lady; hide this, hide that,
take that away.’ Whatever she admired in her visit she was sure to
send for next day. She had a fancy to have with her eight or ten young
ladies, and make them do her sewing work, for who could refuse their
daughters to my lady.”
What a picture of the times! the fashionable though impecunious
Englishwoman and the score of industrious young Dutch-American
seamstresses sitting daily and most unwillingly in the Governor’s
parlor.
One of the most grotesque episodes in New York political history, or
indeed in the life of any public official, was the extraordinary notion
of this same Governor, Lord Cornbury, to dress in women’s clothes.
Lord Stanhope and Agnes Strickland both assert that when Cornbury was
appointed Governor and told he was to represent her Majesty Queen Anne,
he fancied he must dress as a woman. Other authorities attribute his
absurd masquerade to his fond belief that in that garb he resembled the
Queen, who was his cousin. Mrs. Montgomery said it was in consequence
of a vow, and that in a hoop and head-dress and with fan in hand he was
frequently seen in the evening on the ramparts. A portrait of him owned
by Lord Hampton shows him in the woman’s dress of the period, fan in
hand. Truly it was, as Lewis Morris wrote of him to the Secretary of
State, “a peculiar and detestable magot,” and one which must have been
most odious and trying to honest, manly New Yorkers, and especially
demoralizing to the soldiers before whom he paraded in petticoats. When
summarily deposed by his cousin from his governorship, he was promptly
thrust into a New York debtor’s prison, where he languished till the
death of his father made him third Earl of Clarendon.
CHAPTER V
DUTCH TOWN HOMES
The first log houses of the settlers, with their “reeden roofs,”
were soon supplanted by a more substantial form of edifice, Dutch,
naturally, in outline. They were set with the gable-end to the street
and were often built of Dutch brick, or, at any rate, the gable-ends
were of brick.
Madam Knights’ description of the city of New York and the houses is
wonderfully clear, as is every account from her graphic pen, but very
short:--
“The Buildings are Brick Generaly, very stately and high though not
altogether like ours in Boston. The Bricks in some of the Houses are
of divers Coullers and laid in Checkers, being glazed, look very
agreable. The inside of them is neat to admiration; the wooden work,
for only the walls are plaster’d, and the Sumers and Gist are planed
and kept very white scour’d as so is all the partitions if made of
Bords.”
Albany long preserved its Dutch appearance and Dutch houses. Peter
Kalm’s description of the city of Albany is a good one, and would well
answer for other New York towns:--
“The houses in this town are very neat, and partly built with stones
covered with shingles of the White Pine. Some are slated with tiles
from Holland, because the clay of this neighborhood is not reckoned
fit for tiles. Most of the houses are built in the old way, with the
gable-end towards the street; the gable-end of brick and all the other
walls of planks. The gutters on the roofs reach almost to the middle
of the street. This preserves the walls from being damaged by the
rain, but it is extremely disagreeable in rainy weather for the people
in the streets, there being hardly any means of avoiding the water
from the gutters.
“The street doors are generally in the middle of the houses and on
both sides are seats, on which, during fair weather the people spend
almost the whole day, especially on those which are in the shadow of
the houses. In the evening these seats are covered with people of
both sexes, but this is rather troublesome, as those who pass by are
obliged to greet everybody unless they will shock the politeness of
the inhabitants of this town. The streets are broad and some of them
are paved; in some parts they are lined with trees. The long streets
are almost parallel to the river, and the others intersect them at
right angles.”
Rev. Samuel Chandler, chaplain of one of the Massachusetts regiments,
stopped several days in Albany in the year 1755. He tells of the
streets with rows of small button-trees, of the brick houses curiously
flowered with black brick and dated with the same, the Governor’s house
having “two black brick-hearts.” The houses one story high with their
gable-ends “notched like steps” (he might have said with corbel-steps),
were surmounted with vanes, the figures of horses, lions, geese, and
sloops. There were window shutters with loop-holes outside the cellars.
Smith, the historian of New York, writing at the same time, calls
the houses of all the towns, “built of brick in Dutch taste.” Daniel
Denton, writing as early as 1670, tells of the “red and black tile (of
New York) giving at a distance a pleasing aspect to the Spectators.”
All the old sketches of the town which exist, crude as they are,
certainly do present a pleasing aspect.
The chief peculiarity of these houses were the high roofs; some
were extraordinarily steep and thus afforded a garret, a loft, and
a cock-loft. There was reason and economy in this form of roof. The
shingle covering was less costly than the walls, and the contraction
in size of second-story rooms was not great.
Very few of the steep roofs in the earliest days had eave-troughs,
hence the occasional use in early deeds and conveyances of the
descriptive term “free-drip.” At a later date troughs were made of
sections of the bark of some tree (said to be birch) which the Indians
brought into town and sold to house builders. Then came metal spouts
projecting several feet, as noted by Kalm. In 1789, when Morse’s
Geography was issued, he speaks of the still projecting water-spouts or
gutters of Albany, “rendering it almost dangerous to walk the streets
on a rainy day;” but in New York more modified fashions obtained long
before that time.
The windows were small; some had two panes. When we learn that the
ordinary panes of glass imported at that time were in size only
six inches by eight inches, we can see that the windows were only
loop-holes.
The front doors were usually divided as in Holland, into an upper and
lower half. They were in early days hung on strap-hinges, afterwards
on heavy iron hinges. In the upper half of the door, or in a sort of
transom over the door, were set two round bull’s-eyes of heavy greenish
glass, just as are seen in Holland. Often the door held a knocker of
brass or of iron. The door usually opened with a latch.
The inventories of the household effects of many of the early citizens
of New York might be given, to show the furnishings of these homes. I
choose the belongings of Captain Kidd to show that “as he sailed, as he
sailed” he left a very comfortable home behind him. He was, when he set
up housekeeping with his wife Sarah in 1692, not at all a bad fellow,
and certainly lived well. He possessed these handsome and abundant
house furnishings:--
One dozen Turkey work chairs.
One dozen double-nailed leather chairs.
Two dozen single-nailed leather chairs.
One Turkey worked carpet.
One oval table.
Three chests of drawers.
Four looking-glasses.
Four feather beds, bolsters, and pillows.
Three suits of curtains and valances.
Four bedsteads.
Ten blankets.
One glass case.
One dozen drinking-glasses.
Four tables.
Five carpets or rugs.
One screen frame.
Two stands.
One desk.
Two dressing boxes.
One close stool.
One warming pan.
Two bed pans.
Three pewter tankards.
Four kettles.
Two iron pots.
One skillet.
Three pairs of fire irons.
One pair of andirons.
Three chafing dishes.
One gridiron.
One flesh fork.
One brass skimmer.
Four brass candlesticks.
Two pewter candlesticks.
Four tin candlesticks.
One brass pestle.
One iron mortar.
2¹⁄₂ dozen pewter plates.
Five pewter basins.
Thirteen pewter dishes.
Five leather buckets.
One pipe Madeira wine.
One half-pipe ” ”
Three barrels pricked cider.
Two pewter salt-cellars.
Three boxes smoothing irons.
Six heaters.
One pair small andirons.
Three pairs tongs.
Two fire shovels.
Two fenders.
One spit.
One jack.
One clock.
One coat of arms.
Three quilts.
Parcel linen sheets, table cloths, napkins, value thirty dollars.
One hundred and four ounces silver plate, value three hundred
dollars.
The early New Englanders sat in their homes on stools and forms, and
very rarely on chairs. It is not so easy to know of Dutch furnishings,
for the words _stoel_ and _setel_ and _banck_, which are found in early
inventories, all mean a chair, but also may not have meant in colonial
days what we now designate as a chair. A _stoel_ was really a seat of
any kind; and _stoels_ there were in plenty among the first settlers.
As Cowper says:
“Necessity invented stools,
Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs,
And Luxury the accomplished Sofa last.”
In this natural succession came the seats of the colonists. The leather
chairs with double rows of nails--in Captain Kidd’s list--were a very
substantial and handsome piece of furniture.
Tables there were in all houses, and looking-glasses in all well-to-do
homes. The stands of Captain Kidd were small tables. The carpets named
after the tables were doubtless table-covers. The early use of the word
was always a cover for a table.
A truly elegant piece of furniture--one in use by well-to-do folk in
all the colonies--was a cupboard. Originally simply a table for the
display of cups and other vessels, it came to have shelves and approach
in form our sideboard. An inventory of a New York citizen of the year
1690 names a “Holland cupboard furnished with earthenware and purslin”
worth fifteen pounds. Another owned a French nut-wood cupboard of about
the same value. Cupboard-cloths usually accompanied them. A few of
these cupboards still exist, usually their exact history forgotten,
but still known as “Holland cupboards.” As long as the inventories of
estates of deceased persons were made out and registered with much
minuteness of detail, a single piece of furniture could be traced
readily from heir to heir, but unfortunately only the older inventories
display this minuteness.
One unusual word may be noted, which is found in New York inventories,
_boilsted_, _bilsted_, or _billsted_--as “a boilsted bed,” “a boilsted
bureau.” The “Century Dictionary” gives _bilsted_ as the native name
of the American sweet-gum tree, the liquidambar, but Mr. Watson says
_boilsted_ or _bilsted_ meant maple,--hence these articles meant a
bureau of maplewood, etc.
A very common form of bedstead in early days, both in town and farm
houses, was the one built into the house, scarcely more than a bench to
hold the bedding, usually set into an alcove or recess. In a contract
for the “Ferry House,” built in Brooklyn in 1665 (the house in which
the ferry-master lived), we read one clause thus: “to wainscot the east
side the whole length of the house, and in the recess two bedsteads
(betste) one in the front room and one in the inside room, with a
pantry at the end of the bedstead.”
This alcove _betste_ was much like a cupboard; it had doors which
closed over it when unoccupied and shut it from view. This does
not seem very tidy from our modern point of view, but the heavily
curtained and upholstered beds of other countries gave but little
more opportunity of airing. Adam Roelandsen, the first New York
schoolmaster, had these _betste_ built in his house; and Jan Peeck,
the founder of Peekskill, had four _betste_ in his country home, as
certainly were needed by a man who had--so he said--“a house full of
children and more besides.”
The _sloep-banck_, or _slaw-bunk_, was another form, a folding-bed.
This was also set within closet doors or hanging curtains. It was an
oblong frame filled in with a network of rope or strips of wood, set
apart like the slats of a bed. This frame was fastened to the wall at
one end, the bed’s head, with heavy hinges; and at night it was placed
in a horizontal position, and the unhinged end, or foot of the bed, was
supported on heavy turned legs which fitted into sockets in the frame.
When not in use, the frame was hooked up against the wall and covered
with the curtains or doors.
Other _sloep-bancks_ were stationary. One sold in Albany in 1667 to
William Brouwer was worth ten guilders. Parson Chandler as late as
1755 said the beds in Albany were simply wooden boxes, each with
feather-bed, undersheet, and blanket cover. The kermis bed, on which
the Labadist fathers slept in Brooklyn, was a pallet bed. Another
bedstead often named was the _trecke-bedde_, or the _sloep-banck
ap rollen_, which, as its name implies, was on rollers. It was a
trundle-bed, and in the daytime was rolled under a high-post bedstead,
if there were one in the room, and concealed by the valance of calico
or chiney.
The beds were deep and soft, of prime geese feathers. For many years
the custom obtained of sleeping on one feather-bed and under another
of somewhat lighter weight. The pillow-cases, called “pillow-bears,”
or pillow-clothes, were often of checked linen. The hangings of the
bed when it was curtained were also, in families of moderate means,
of checked and striped linen, in wealthier houses of kidderminster,
camlet, and harrateen. With English modes of living came English
furniture; among other innovations the great carved four-poster, which,
richly hung with valances and tester, was, as Mrs. Grant said, “the
state-bed, the family Teraphim, secretly worshipped and only exhibited
on rare occasions.” The bedsteads of Captain Kidd with valances and
curtains were doubtless four-posters.
A notable feature in the house-furnishing of early colonial days was
the abundance and good quality of household linen. The infrequency
of regular washing seasons and times (often domestic washing took
place but once in three or four months) made a large amount of bed,
table, and personal linen a matter of necessity in all thrifty, tidy
households. One family, in 1704 (not a very wealthy one), had linen to
the amount of five hundred dollars. Francis Rombout, one of the early
mayors of New York, had, at the time of his death, in the year 1690,
fifty-six diaper napkins, forty-two coarse napkins and towels, thirteen
table-cloths of linen and diaper, fifty-one “pillow-bears,” thirty
sheets, four bolster-covers, ten checked “pillow-bears,” two calico
cupboard-cloths, six table-cloths, four check chimney-cloths, two of
linen; worth in all, twenty-one pounds eleven shillings.
Mynheer Marius, who was worth about fifteen thousand dollars,--a rich
man,--had eight muslin sheets, twenty-three linen sheets, thirty-two
pillow-cases, two linen table-cloths, seven diaper table-cloths,
sixty-one diaper napkins, three “ozenbergs” napkins, sixteen small
linen cupboard-cloths. Colonel William Smith of Long Island was not
so rich as the last-named Dutch merchant, but he had six hundred
dollars’ worth of linen. John Bowne, the old Quaker of Flushing, Long
Island, recorded in his diary, in 1691, an account of his household
linen. He had four table-cloths, a dozen napkins, a dozen towels, six
fine sheets, two cotton sheets, four coarse linen sheets, two fine
tow sheets, two bolster cases, nine fine pillow-biers, four coarse
pillow-biers.
In 1776, the house furnishings of a house in Westchester County in
the “Neutral Ground,” were removed on account of the war. The linen
consisted of fifty-one linen sheets, eleven damask table-cloths, one
linen table-cloth, twenty-one homespun cloths, four breakfast cloths,
twelve damask napkins, fifty-six homespun napkins, fifteen towels,
twenty-nine pillow-cases.
This linen was usually kept in a great linen chest often brought from
Holland. Made of panelled oak or of cedar, these chests were not only
useful, but ornamental. They were substantial enough to have lasted
till our own day, unless wantonly destroyed as clumsy and cumbersome,
and a few have survived.
There was one display of wealth which was not wholly for the purpose
of exhibiting the luxury and refinement of the housekeeper, but also
served as a safe investment of surplus funds,--household silver.
From early days silver tankards, spoons, dram-cups, and porringers
appear in inventories. Salt-cellars and beakers are somewhat rare; but
as years crept on, candlesticks, salvers, coffee-pots, teakettles,
snuffers, bread-baskets, and punch-bowls are on the list. When Captain
Kidd, the pirate, was a happy bridegroom in 1692, as a citizen of
respectability and social standing, he started housekeeping with three
hundred dollars’ worth of silver. Magistrate Marius had at the same
time a silver tankard, three salt-cellars, two beakers, a mustard pot
and spoon, twenty-seven sweet-meat spoons, four tumblers, nine cups
each with two ears, a salver, a mug and cover, a baby’s chafing-dish,
a fork and cup. Governor Rip van Dam had in silver three tankards,
a chafing-dish, three castors, two candlesticks, snuffers and tray,
two salvers, a mug, salt-cellar and pepper-pot, and a large number
of spoons. Abraham de Peyster had a splendid array: four tankards,
two decanters, two dishes, three plates, eleven salvers, two cups and
covers, two chafing-dishes, six porringers, four sauce-boats, two
punch-bowls, three mugs, four sugar-dishes, a coffee-pot and tea-pot,
seven salts and shovels, a saucepan, four pairs snuffers and stand, a
mustard-pot, a bread-basket, a dram-bottle, tobacco-dish, nine castors,
six candlesticks, one waiter, twenty-three forks, three soup-spoons,
two punch ladles, ten table-spoons, ten teaspoons, two sugar-tongs;
truly a display fit for a fine English hall. We may note in this, as
in many other inventories, that the number of small pieces seems very
small and inadequate; ten teaspoons and twenty-three forks appear
vastly disproportioned to the great pieces of plate.
These outfits of silver were, of course, unusual, but nearly all
families had some pieces; and even on farms there would be seen fine
pieces of silver.
Curious forms of Dutch silver were the “bite and stir” sugar boxes,
often shell-shaped, with a partition in the middle. On one side was
placed the loaf sugar, which could be nibbled with the tea; on the
other, the powdered or granulated sugar, which could be stirred into
the teacup with a tea-spoon. Another graceful piece was the _ooma_,
or sifter, for the mixed cinnamon and sugar with which many sprinkled
their hot waffles. An _ooma_ resembled a muffineer. The name was
derived from the Dutch _oom_, an uncle, and the article was a favorite
gift of an uncle on the wedding day of niece or nephew. We find Dutch
dames leaving by will “milk-pots shaped like a cow,” a familiar form
of Dutch silver, and can readily believe that much silver owned in New
York was made in Holland.
Coming from a country where the manufacture of porcelain and
stone-ware was already of much importance, and the importation of
Oriental china was considerable, it is not strange that we find more
frequent mention of articles of china than in the English colonies. For
instance, Mayor Francis Rombouts came to this country as clerk for a
Dutch commercial house and died in 1690. He had a cupboard furnished
with earthenware and “purslin:” twenty-six earthen dishes, earthen
pots, twelve earthen “cupps,” six “purslin cupps,” six earthen “juggs,”
six pitchers, which was really a very pretty showing. Doubtless the
“purslin” was Delft. In the list of early sales at Fort Orange,
earthen-ware appears. In New England, in similar sales, its name would
never be seen.
Trim and orderly pieces of furniture, as well as pretty ones, were the
various hanging wall-racks for plates, knives, and spoons. I presume
they were shaped like the ones still in use in Holland. We find in
inventories _lepel-borties_ (which were spoon-racks) as early as 1664.
When an oaken plate-rack was filled with shining pewter plates, Delft
dishes, or even red earthen “Portugese ware,” it made a thoroughly
artistic decoration for the walls of the old Dutch kitchen. There were
also stands or boxes with divisions for holding knives and forks.
CHAPTER VI
DUTCH FARMHOUSES
The old Dutch homestead of colonial times fitted the place and the
race for which it was built. There was plenty of solid level earth
for it to stand on,--so it spread out, sunny and long. The men who
built it had never climbed hills or lived on mountain-tops, nor did
they mean to climb many stairs in their houses. The ceilings were low,
the stairs short and steep, and the stories few; a story and a half
were enough for nearly every one. The heavy roof, curving slightly
inward, often stretched out in front at the eaves to form a shelter
for the front stoop. Sometimes in the rear it ran out and down over a
lean-to to within six or eight feet from the ground. Sometimes dormer
windows broke the long roof-slope and gave light to the bedrooms or
garret within. This long roof contracted the walls of the second-story
bedrooms, but it afforded a generous, useful garret, which to the
Dutch housekeeper was one of the best rooms in the house.
The long side of the house was usually set to receive the southern
sunshine; if convenient, the gable-end was turned to the street or
lane; for, being built when there were poor roads and comparatively
little travel, and when the settlers were few in number, each house was
not isolated in lonesome woods or in the middle of each farm, but was
set cosily and neighborly just as close to those of the other settlers
as the extent of each farm would allow, and thus formed a little
village street.
The windows of these houses were small and had solid wooden shutters,
heavily hinged with black-painted iron hinges. Sometimes a small
crescent-shaped opening cut in the upper portion of the shutter let in
a little dancing ray of light at early dawn into the darkened room. In
the village as in the city the stoop was an important feature of the
house and of home life. Through the summer months the family gathered
on this out-door sitting-room at the close of day. The neighbors talked
politics as they smoked their evening pipes, and the young folk did
some mild visiting and courting. As the evening and pipes waned, little
negro slaves brought comfortiers, or open metal dishes of living coals,
to start the smouldering tobacco afresh in the long Dutch pipes.
The cellar of these old farmhouses was a carefully built apartment, for
it played a most important part in the orderly round, in the machinery
of household affairs. It was built with thought, for it had to be cool
in summer and warm in winter. To accomplish the latter result, its
few small windows and gratings were carefully closed and packed with
salt hay in the autumn, and a single trap-door opening outside the
house furnished winter entrance. Within this darkened cellar were vast
food-stores which put to shame our modern petty purchases of weekly
supplies. There were always found great bins of apples, potatoes,
turnips, and parsnips. These vegetables always rotted a little toward
spring and sprouted, and though carefully sorted out and picked over
sent up to the _kamer_ above a semi-musty, damp-earthy, rotten-appley,
mouldy-potatoey smell which, all who have encountered will agree, is
unique and indescribable. Strongly bound barrels of vinegar and cider
and often of rum lay in firm racks in this cellar; and sometimes they
leaked a little at the spigot, and added their sharply alcoholic fumes
to the other cellar-smells. Great hogsheads of corned beef, barrels
of salt pork, hams seething in brine ere being smoked, tonnekens of
salted shad and mackerel, firkins of butter, kilderkins of home-made
lard, jars of pickles, kegs of pigs’ feet, or souse, tumblers of spiced
fruits, graced this noble cellar. On a swing-shelf were _rolliches_ and
head-cheese and festoons of sausages. On such a solid foundation, over
such a storage-room of plenty, thrift, and prudence, stood that sturdy
edifice,--the home-comfort of the New York farmer.
On the ground-floor above were low-studded rooms, one called the
_kamer_, which was the parlor and spare bedroom as well; for on
its clean sanded floor often stood the best bedstead, of handsome
carved mahogany posts, with splendid high-piled feather-beds, heavy
hangings, and homespun linen sheets and pillow-cases. Back of this
_kamer_, in the linter, was the milk-room. The spinning-room with its
spinning-wheels was the sitting-room, or occasionally the kitchen, and
the bedroom adjoining was called the spinning-room _kametje_. There
were often four or five spinning-wheels in a family, and their merry
hum meant lively work. The furniture of these rooms was in character
much like that of townhouses, and all had sanded floors. Above these
rooms were comfortable chambers; and above the chambers the garret.
A more loving pen than mine has drawn the old garrets of the Flatbush
farmhouses, with their cast-off furniture, old trunks, and bandboxes;
the unused cradle and crib; the little end window with its spider-webs
and yellow wasps buzzing angrily, and beating with extended wings
against the dingy panes, or sitting in dull clusters, motionless and
silent, along the moulding; the rough chimneys; the spinning-wheels and
looms, the wooden pegs with discarded clothing. Mrs. Vanderbilt says:--
“The shingled roof which overarched the garret in all its length and
breadth was discolored by time, and streaked and stained with the
leakage caused by hard northeast storms; there were tin-pans and
sea-shells apparently placed at random over the floor in a purposeless
way, but which were intended to catch the drip when the warped
shingles admitted the rain. In winter there were little drifts of snow
here and there which had sifted through the nail-holes and cracks.”
The garret was a famous drying-place in winter-time for the vast
washings. Often long adjustable poles were fitted from rafter to rafter
to hold the hanging garments.
In the garret, beside the chimney and opening into it, was the
smokehouse, sometimes shaped like a cask. Too heavy and big to have
been brought in and up to the garret, it was probably built in it.
Around this smokehouse were hung hams and sausages, and sides of bacon
and dried beef. These usually were not cured in this garret smokehouse;
that was simply a storage-place, in which they could be kept properly
dry and a little smoked.
Of the _kamer_, or parlor, of New Amsterdam Irving wrote, with but
slight exaggeration of its sanctity and cherished condition:--
“The grand parlor was the _sanctum sanctorum_, where the passion for
cleaning was indulged without control. In this sacred apartment no
one was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and her confidential
maid, who visited it once a week, for the purpose of giving it a
thorough cleaning--always taking the precaution of leaving their
shoes at the door, and entering devoutly on their stocking-feet.
After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it with fine white sand, which
was curiously stroked into angles, and curves, and rhomboids, with a
broom--after washing the windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture,
and putting a new bunch of evergreens in the fireplace--the window
shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and the room
carefully locked up till the revolution of time brought round the
weekly cleaning-day.”
Mrs. Grant fully confirms and emphasizes this account as applicable to
the parlors of country-houses as well.
The kitchen was usually in a long rambling ell at one gable-end of
the house, rarely in an ell at right angles to the main house; in it
centred the picturesqueness of the farm-house. It was a delightful
apartment, bustling with activity, cheerful of aspect. On one side
always stood a dresser.
“Every room was bright
With glimpses of reflected light
From plates that on the dresser shone.”
The shining pewter plates, polished like silver, were part of every
thrifty housewife’s store; a garnish of pewter, which was a set of
different-sized plates, was often her wedding-gift. Their use lingered
till this century, and many pieces now are cherished heirlooms.
Methods of cooking and cooking utensils varied much from those of the
present day. The great brick oven was built beside the fireplace;
sometimes it projected beyond the exterior of the building. It had a
smoke-uptake in the upper part, from which a flue connected with the
fireplace chimney. It was heated by being filled with burning dry-wood
called oven-wood. When the wood was entirely consumed, the ashes were
swept out with an oven-broom called a _boender_. A Dutch oven, or Dutch
kitchen, was an entirely different affair. This was made of metal,
usually tin, cylindrical in form, and open on one side, which was
placed next the fire. Through this ran a spit by which meat could be
turned when roasting. A bake-kettle, or bake-pan, was a metal pan which
stood up on stumpy legs and was fitted with a tightly fitting, slightly
convex cover on which hot coals were placed. Within this bake-pan hot
biscuit or a single loaf of bread or cake could be baked to perfection.
Across the chimney was a back-bar, sometimes of green wood, preferably
of iron; on it hung pot-hooks and trammels, which under the various
titles of pot-hangers, pot-claws, pot-clips, pot-brakes, and crooks,
appear in every home-inventory. On those pot-hooks of various lengths,
pots and kettles could be hung at varying heights above the fire.
Often a large plate of iron, called the fire-plate, or fire-back, was
set at the back-base of the kitchen chimney, where raged so constant
and so fierce a fire that brick and mortar crumbled before it. These
fire-backs were often cast in a handsome design, sometimes a Scriptural
subject. These chimneys were vast in size; Kalm said you could drive
a horse and cart through them. Irving says they were “of patriarchal
magnitude, where the whole family enjoyed a community of privileges and
had each a right to a corner.” Often they were built without jambs.
Madam Knights wrote in 1704 of New York townhouses:--
“The fireplaces have no jambs (as ours have), but the backs run flush
with the walls, and the hearth is of tiles and is as far out into the
room at the ends as before the fire, which is generally five foot in
the lower rooms, and the piece over where the mantle-tree should be is
made as ours with joiners’ work and as I suppose is fastened to iron
rods inside.”
The kitchen fireplace was high as well as wide, and disclosed a vast
smoky throat. When the week’s cooking was ended and the Sabbath was
approaching, this great fireplace was dressed up, put on its best
clothes for Sunday, as did all the rest of the family; across the top
was hung a short petticoat, or valance, or little curtain gathered
full on a string. This was called a _schouwe-kleedt_, a _schoorsteen
valletje_, or sometimes a _dobbelstee-tiens valletje_, this latter in
allusion to the stuff of which the valance was usually made,--a strong
close homespun linen checked off with blue or red. This clean, sweet
linen frill was placed, freshly washed and ironed, every Saturday
afternoon on the faithful, work-worn chimney while it took its Sunday
rest. In some houses there hung throughout the week a _schoorsteen
valletje_; in others it was only Sunday gear. This was a fashion from
early colonial days for both town and country. In the house of Mayor
Rombouts in 1690 were fine chimney-cloths trimmed with fringe and
lace, and worth half a pound each, and humbler checked chimney-cloths.
Cornelius Steenwyck a few years earlier had in his “great chamber”
a still gayer _valletje_ of flowered tabby to match the tabby
window-curtains. Peter Marius had calico valances for his chimneys.
A description given by a Scotchwoman of fireplaces in Holland at about
this date shows very plainly from whence this form of hearth-dressing
and chimney were derived:--
“The chimney-places are very droll-like; they have no jams nor
lintell, as we have, but a flat grate, and there projects over it
a lum in a form of the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or
ruffled pawn around it.”
When tiles were used for facing the fireplace and even for hearths,
as they often were in the _kamer_, or parlor, they were usually of
Delft manufacture, printed in dull blue with coarsely executed outline
drawings of Scriptural scenes. In the Van Cortlandt manor-house, the
tiles were pure white. I have some of the tiles taken from the old
Schermerhorn house in Brooklyn, built in the middle of the seventeenth
century and demolished in 1895. There were nearly two hundred in each
fireplace in the house. The scenes were from the Old Testament, and
several, if I interpret their significance aright, from the Apocrypha.
The figures are discreetly attired in Dutch costumes. Irving says of
these Scripture-tiles: “Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage;
Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; Jonah appeared most manfully
bursting out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of fire.”
To these let me add the very amusing one of Lazarus leaving his tomb,
triumphantly waving the flag of the Netherlands.
Sometimes the space between the open fireplace and the ceiling of
the _kamer_ was panelled, and it had a narrow ledge of a mantelpiece
upon which usually were placed a pair of silver, brass, or pewter
candlesticks and a snuffers with tray. Occasionally a _blekker_, or
hanging candlestick, hung over the mantel. In some handsome houses the
sur-base was of tiles and also the staircase; but such luxuries were
unusual.
Domestic comfort and kindly charity sat enthroned in every room of
these Dutch homes. Daniel Denton wrote of them as early as 1670:--
“Though their low-roofed houses may seem to shut their doors against
pride and luxury, yet how do they stand wide open to let charity in
and out, either to assist each other, or relieve a stranger.”
In these neighborly homes thrift and simple plenty and sober
satisfaction in life had full sway; and these true and honorable modes
of living lingered long, even to our own day. On the outskirts of a
great city, within a few miles of the centre of our greatest city,
still stand some of the farmhouses of Flatbush, whose story has been
told _con amore_ by one to the manner born. These old homesteads form
an object-lesson which we may heed with profit to-day, of the dignity,
the happiness, the beauty that comes from simplicity in every-day life.
CHAPTER VII
THE DUTCH LARDER
There is no doubt that the Dutch colonists were very valiant
trenchermen; more avid, perhaps, of quantity and frequency in their
food than exacting of variety. Cardinal Bentivoglio (the diplomatist
and historian) writing at the time of the first emigration to New
Netherland, says that the greatest pleasures of the Hollanders were
those of the table. This love of eating made them provident and lavish
of food-stores in emigration; and the accounts of scant supplies, poor
fare, and dire starvation which are recorded of other colonies, never
have been told of the _vol-gevoedt_ Dutch. Then, too, they landed on a
generous shore,--no rock-bound coast,--Hendrick Hudson said the finest
soil for cultivation that he ever set foot on. The welcoming fields
richly nourished and multiplied the Hollanders’ store of seeds and
roots and grafts. The rye quickly grew so tall that a man could bind
the ears together above his head. Van der Donck saw a field of barley
in New Netherland in which the barley stems were seven feet high.
Domine Megapolensis stated that a Rensselaerwyck _schepen_ raised fine
crops of wheat on the same field eleven years in succession. Two ripe
crops of peas or of buckwheat could be raised on the same land in
one season. The soil seemed inexhaustible; and fields and woods also
offered to the settlers a rich native larder. Among these American food
supplies came first and ever the native Indian corn, or “Turkie-wheat.”
The Dutch (fond of all cereal foods) took to their liking and their
kitchens with speed the various forms of corn-food.
Samp and samp porridge were soon their favorite dishes. Samp is Indian
corn pounded to a coarsely ground powder in a mortar. Like nearly all
the foods made of the various forms of Indian corn, its name is of
Indian derivation, and usually its method of preparation and cooking.
Roger Williams wrote of it:--
“Nawsamp is a kind of meal pottage unparched. From this the English
call their samp; which is the Indian corn beaten and boiled.”
Samp porridge was a derivative of Indian and Dutch parentage. It was
samp cooked in Dutch fashion, like a _hutespot_, or hodgepot, with
salt beef or pork and potatoes and other roots, such as carrots and
turnips. These were boiled together in a vast kettle, usually in large
quantity, as the porridge was better liked after several days’ cooking.
A week’s supply for a family was often cooked at one time. After
much boiling a strong crust was formed next the pot, and sometimes
toward the end of the boiling the porridge was lifted out of the pot
bodily--so to speak--by the crust and served crust and all. Samp was
pounded in a primitive and picturesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed
block of wood, or the stump of a tree. The pestle was a heavy block of
wood shaped like the interior of the mortar and fitted with a handle
attached to one side. This block was fastened to the top of a growing
sapling which gave it the required spring back after being pounded down
on the corn. Pounding samp was slow work, often done in later years
by unskilled negroes and hence disparagingly termed “niggering” corn.
After those simple mortars were abandoned elsewhere they were used on
Long Island; and it was jestingly told that skippers in a fog could
always get their bearings off the Long Island coast because they could
hear the pounding of the samp-mortars.
Suppawn, another favorite of the settlers in New York, was an Indian
dish made from Indian corn; it was a thick corn-meal and milk porridge.
It soon was seen on every Dutch table, and is spoken of by all
travellers in early New York.
From the gossiping pages of the Labadist preachers we find hints of
good fare in Brooklyn in 1679:--
“Then was thrown upon the fire, to be roasted, a pail full of Gowanes
oysters which are the best in the country. They are fully as good
as those of England, better than those we eat at Falmouth. I had to
try some of them raw. They are large and full, some of them not less
than a foot long. Others are young and small. In consequence of the
great quantities of them everybody keeps the shells for the burning
of lime. They pickle the oysters in small casks and send them to
Barbados. We had for supper a roasted haunch of venison which he had
bought of the Indians for three guilders and a half of sea-want, that
is fifteen stivers of Dutch money (fifteen cents), and which weighed
thirty pounds. The meat was exceedingly tender and good and also quite
fat. It had a slight aromatic flavor. We were also served with wild
turkey, which was also fat and of a good flavor, and a wild goose,
but that was rather dry. We saw here lying in a heap a whole hill of
watermelons which were as large as pumpkins.”
De Vries tells of an abundant supply of game in the colony; deer (as
fat as any Holland deer can be); great wild turkeys, beautiful birds
of golden bronze (one that he shot weighed thirty pounds); partridges
and pigeons (in such great flocks that the sky was darkened). Domine
Megapolensis says the plentiful wild turkeys and deer came to the
hogpens of the Albany colonists to feed; fat Dutch swine and graceful
red deer must have seemed strange trough companions. A stag was sold
readily by an Indian for a jack-knife. In 1695 Rev. Mr. Miller said a
quarter of venison could be bought “at your door” for ninepence. Wild
swan came in plenty, “so that the bays and shores where they resort
appear as if they were dressed in white drapery.” Down the river swam
hundreds of gray and white-headed geese nearly as stately as the swan;
Van der Donck knew a gunner (and gives his name, Henry de Backer) who
killed eleven gray geese with one shot from his gun. Gray ducks and
pelicans were plentiful and cheap. Gone forever from the waters of
New York are the beautiful gray ducks, white swan, gray geese, and
pelican; anent these can we sigh for the good old times. The Earl of
Strafford’s letters and despatches, telling of the “Commodities of the
Island called Maniti ore Long Ile wch is in the Continent of Virgenea,”
confirms all these reports and even tells of “fayre Turkees far greater
than here, five hundred in a flocke,”--which must have proved a noble
sight.
The river was full of fish, and the bay; their plenty inspired the
first poet of New Netherland to rhyming enumeration; among them were
sturgeon--despised of Christians; and terrapin--not despised. “Some
persons,” wrote Van der Donck in 1656, “prepare delicious dishes from
the water terrapin, which is luscious food.” Two centuries and a half
of appreciation pay equally warm tribute to the terrapin’s reputation.
Patriarchal lobsters five and six feet long were in the bay. Van der
Donck says “those a foot long are better for serving at table.” Truly a
lobster six feet long would seem a little awkward to serve. W. Eddis,
in his “Letters from America” written in 1792, says these vast lobsters
were caught in New York waters until Revolutionary days when “since the
late incessant cannonading, they have entirely forsaken the coast; not
one having been taken or seen since the commencement of hostilities.”
Crabs, too, were large, and some were “altogether soft.” Van der Donck
corroborates the foot-long oysters seen by the Labadists. He says the
“large oysters roasted or stewed make a good bite,”--a very good bite,
it would seem.
Salted fish was as carefully prepared and amiably regarded in New York
as in England and Holland at the same date. The ling and herring of
the old country gave place in New York to shad. The greatest pains was
taken in preparing, drying, and salting the plentiful shad. It is said
that in towns, as in New York and Brooklyn, great heaps of shad were
left when purchased at each door, and that the necessary cleaning and
preparation was done on the street. As all housewives purchased shad
and salted and packed at about the same time, those public scavengers,
the domestic hogs, who roamed the town-streets unchecked (and ever
welcomed), must have been specially useful at shad-time.
At a very early date apple-trees were set out and cultivated with much
care and much success. Nowhere else, says Dankers, had he seen such
fine apples. He notes the Double Paradise. The Newtown pippin, the
Kingston spitzenburgh, the Poughkeepsie swaar-apple, the red-streak,
guelderleng, and others of well-known name, show New York’s attention
to apple-raising. Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, spoke of the splendid
apple-orchards throughout New York in 1749, and told of the horse-press
for making cider. Cider soon rivalled in domestic use the beer of
the Fatherland. It was constantly used during the winter season,
and, diluted with water, sweetened, and flavored with nutmeg, made a
grateful summer drink.
Peaches were in such lavish abundance as to become uncared for. The
roads were covered with fallen peaches which even the ever-filled hogs
would not eat. Plums were equally plentiful. Cherry-trees were planted
in good numbers and produced in great quantities. “All travellers and
passers-by could pick and eat at will,” says Kalm. Comparatively scanty
and poor are peaches, plums, and cherries in New York State to-day.
There were also plenty of vegetables: _cibollen_ (chibbals), _peasen_
(pease), _chicoreye_ (chiccory), _karoten_ (carrots), _artichock_
(artichoke), _lattouwe_ (lettuce), _beeten_ (beets), _pastinaken_
(parsnips), _radys_ (radish), and many others. Pumpkins and squashes
abounded, but do not appear to have been in as universal use as in New
England. _Quaasiens_ were so easily cooked “they were a favorite with
the young women,” says one authority; they “grew rapidly and digested
well,” also were qualities accorded in their favor. Under the name of
_askutasquash_, or vine-apples, Roger Williams sung their praises.
Musk-melons, water-melons, and cucumbers were grown in large number
and excellent quality. Whether they cooked the _Duyvel’s broodt_, the
picturesque Dutch name for mushrooms, I know not, but the teeming woods
of the Hudson valley offered them rich and abundant store of this
dainty food.
The Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited Albany in 1749. He has left to
us a very full account of Albany food and fashions of serving at that
time. He found the Albanians faring as did their great grandfathers in
the Netherlands, who were sneeringly called “milk and cheese men,” and
he found them rasping their cheese as had their far-away forbears in
Holland, and as do their descendants in Holland to this day. He writes
thus:--
“The inhabitants of Albany are much more sparing than the English.
The meat which is served up is often insufficient to satisfy the
stomach, and the bowl does not circulate so freely as among the
English.... Their meat and manner of dressing it is very different
from that of the English. Their Breakfast is tea, commonly without
milk. About thirty or forty years ago, tea was unknown to them, and
they breakfasted either upon bread and butter or bread and milk.
They never put sugar into the cup but put a small bit of it into
their mouths while they drink. Along with the tea they eat bread
and butter with slices of hung beef. Coffee is not usual here: they
breakfast generally about seven. Their dinner is buttermilk and bread
to which they sometimes add sugar, and then it is a delicious dish
to them: or fresh milk and bread: or boiled or roasted flesh. They
sometimes make use of buttermilk instead of fresh milk to boil a thin
kind of porridge with, which tastes very sour but not disagreeable
in hot weather. To each dinner they have a great salad prepared
with abundance of vinegar and little or no oil. They frequently eat
buttermilk, bread and salad, one mouthful after another. Their supper
is generally bread and butter, or milk and bread. They sometimes eat
cheese at breakfast and at dinner: it is not in slices but scraped
or rasped so as to resemble coarse flour, which they pretend adds to
the good taste of cheese. They commonly drink very small beer or pure
water.”
The “great salad dressed with vinegar” was doubtless “koolslaa,”
shredded cabbage, which we to-day call coleslaw. It was a universal
dish also at that time in Holland. A woman-traveller there in 1756
wrote:--
“Everything of vivers is dear in Holland except vegetables, upon which
the commons live all summer, and the better sort a great deall. Every
body, great and small, sups on sallad with oil and vinegar.”
The Dutch were famously fond of “bakers-meats,”--all cakes and
breads,--and excelled in making them, and made them in great variety.
There was early legislation with regard to bakers, that they use just
weights and good materials. In 1656 they were ordered to bake twice a
week “both coarse and white loaves, both for Christians and Indians,”
at these prices: Fourteen stuyvers for a double coarse loaf of eight
pounds, with smaller loaves at proportionate prices; and eight stuyvers
for a white loaf of two pounds. Two years later the coarse wheat loaf
of eight pounds was definitely priced at fourteen stuyvers in sea-want,
ten in beavers, and seven in silver. The bakers complained, and a
new assize of bread was established at a slightly higher rate. Under
Dongan’s charter bread-viewers were appointed; then the bread had to
be marked with the baker’s initials. I have puzzled over a prohibition
of any bakers selling _koeckjes_, jumbles, and sweet cakes, unless he
also had coarse bread for sale; and fancy it was that the extravagant
and careless purchaser might not be tempted or forced to buy too costly
food. One baker was prosecuted for having gingerbread in his window
when he had no coarse bread. There were also “pye-women” as well as
bakers.
Favorite articles of food were three kinds of fried cakes of close
kinship, thus described by Irving,--“the doughty doughnut, the tender
olykoek, the crisp and crumbling cruller.” The doughnut was an equal
favorite in New England, and was in some localities called a simball,
or simblin; which was a New England variant, a Puritan degradent of
the simbling-cake, or simnel, of the English Mid-Lent Sunday. In New
England country-houses doughnuts were eaten, indeed, are eaten, all the
year around three meals a day; but Mrs. Vanderbilt says the Dutch in
Flatbush only made them from November through January, because at that
period the lard in which they were cooked was still fresh. She also
says they were limited in their public appearance to the tea-table or
for children to eat “between-meals.” I don’t know that I am willing to
acquiesce in her assumption that when the Pilgrims were in Holland the
English goodwives learned to make doughnuts from the Dutch _vrouws_,
and thus be forced to yield doughnuts to the other triumphs of “Dutch
colonial influence.”
The famous _olykoeks_, or _olijkoecks_, were thus concocted, as given
by an old Dutch receipt of the year 1740 belonging to Mrs. Morris
Patterson Ferris:--
“About twelve o’clock set a little yeast to rise, so as to be ready
at five P. M. to mix with the following ingredients: 3³⁄₄ pounds of
flour, 1 pound of sugar, ¹⁄₂ pound of butter and lard mixed, 1¹⁄₂
pints of milk, 6 eggs, 1 pint raised yeast. Warm the butter, sugar
and milk together, grate a nutmeg in the flour, add eggs last. Place
in a warm place to rise. If quite light at bedtime, work them down by
pressing with the hand. At nine next morning make into small balls
with the hand, and place in the centre of each a bit of raisin,
citron, and apple chopped fine. Lay on a well-floured pie-board and
allow them to rise again. They are frequently ready to boil at two
o’clock. In removing them from the board use a knife, well-floured,
and just give them a little roll with the hand to make them round.
Have the fat boiling, and boil each one five minutes. When cool roll
in sifted sugar.”
The name means literally oil-cakes, and they were originally boiled
or fried in oil. They were called “melting,” and I am sure from this
description of the process of manufacture they were delicate enough to
deserve the appellation. The Hessian officers in Revolutionary times
give eloquent approval of these “rich batter-cakes.”
Tea-cakes which were made both in New England and New York were what
Mrs. Vanderbilt calls “izer-cookies.” They were so termed from the
Dutch word _izer_, or _yser_, meaning iron; for they were baked in
long-handled irons called wafer-irons, which often had the initials of
the owners impressed in the metal, which impression of course rendered
the letters in relief on the cakes. Often a date was also stamped
on the irons. These wafer-irons sometimes formed part of a wedding
outfit, having the initials of the bride and groom intertwined. The
cakes were also called split-cakes because, thin as they were, often
they were split and buttered before being eaten. Other wafer-cakes
were called _oblyen_. Cinnamon-cakes resembled a delicate jumble with
powdered cinnamon sprinkled on top. Puffards, or _puffertjes_, were
eaten hot with powdered cinnamon and sugar, and were baked in a special
pan, termed a puffet-pan. Wonders were flavored with orange peel and
boiled in lard. Pork-cakes, made of chopped pork with spices, almonds,
currants, raisins, and flavored with brandy, were a rich cake. The
famous Schuyler wedding cake had among other ingredients, twelve dozen
eggs, forty-eight pounds of raisins, twenty-four pounds of currants,
four quarts of brandy, a quart of rum. This was mixed in a wash-tub.
Many of these cakes are now obsolete. In one of the old inventories
of the Van Cortlandt family, in a list of kitchen utensils is the
item, “1 Bolly-byssha Pan.” This is the Anglicized spelling of
_bollo-bacia_,--_bolle_ the old Dutch and Spanish word for a bun, or
small loaf of flour and sugar; _bacia_ the Spanish for a metal pan. In
old receipts in the same family the word is called _bolla-bouche_ and
_bolla-buysies_. The receipt runs thus:--
“To a pound of flower a quarter of a pound of sugar, the same of
butter, 4 egs, sum Nut-Meg and Senamond, milk & yeast, A pint of milk
to 2 pound of flower.”
Domestic swine afforded the Dutch many varied and appetizing foods.
Two purely Dutch dishes were _rolliches_ and head cheese. _Rolliches_
were made of lean beef and fat cut in pieces about as large as dice,
then highly seasoned with herbs and spices, sewed in tripe and boiled
for several hours. This roll was then pressed into an oblong loaf,
which made pretty slices when cut and served cold. Head cheese, or
_hoofd-kaas_, was similar in appearance, but was made of pigs’-feet and
portions of the head chopped fine, boiled in a bag, and pressed into
the shape of a cheese. This also was served in cold slices.
_Speck ende kool_, pork and cabbage, was another domestic stand-by;
fried pork and apples were made into an appetizing dinner dish. Roast
ducks were served with pork-dumplings,--of which the mystery of
manufacture is unknown to me.
A great favorite of the Dutch is shown through this advertisement in
the “New York Gazette” of December 17, 1750:--
“The Printer hereof, ever mindful to please and gratify his Customers,
finding but little Entertainment at present suitable to the Genius of
many; has been obliged to provide for the Winter Evening Diversion of
such of his Friends as are that way inclined, A Parcel of the Nuts
commonly called KESKATOMAS NUTS which he sells at _One Shilling_ per
Half a Peck. N. B. They are all right ‘Sopus and of the right sort.’”
A writer in the “Literary World” in 1850 thus defines and eulogizes
these nuts:--
“Hickory, shell-bark, kiskitomas nut!
Or whatsoever thou art called, thy praise
Has ne’er been sounded yet in poet’s lays.”
Michaux, in his “North American Sylva,” says that many descendants
of the Dutch in New Jersey and New York still call the hickory-nut
_Kisky-Thomas-nuts_. The name is derived from an Indian word, not from
the Dutch. These nuts were served at every winter evening company,
great or small. Mrs. Grant tells of their appearance on the tea-table.
Of the drinking habits of the Dutch colonists I can say that they
were those of all the colonies,--excessive. Tempered in their tastes
somewhat by the universal brewing and drinking of beer, they did not
use as much rum as the Puritans of New England, nor drink as deeply as
the Virginia planters; but the use of liquor was universal. A libation
was poured on every transaction, every action, at every happening in
the community, in public life as well as in private. John Barleycorn
was ever a witness at the drawing up of a contract, the signing of a
deed, the selling of a farm, the purchase of goods, the arbitration of
a suit. If either party to a contract “backed out” before signing, he
did not back away from the “treat,” but had to furnish half a barrel
of beer or a gallon of rum to assuage the pangs of disappointment.
Liquor was served at auctions or “vendues” free, so Madam Knight
says,--buyers becoming expansive in bidding when well primed. It
appeared at weddings, funerals, church-openings, deacon-ordainings, and
house-raisings. No farm hand in haying-field, no sailor on a vessel,
no workman in a mill, no cobbler, tailor, carpenter, mason, or tinker
would work without some strong drink, some treat. The bill for liquor
where many workmen were employed, as in a house-raising, was often a
heavy one.
A detailed example of the imperative furnishing of liquor to workmen is
found in the contracts and bills for building in 1656 the first stone
house erected at Albany, a government house or fort. It cost 12,213
guilders in wampum, or about $3,500, and was built under the charge of
Jan de la Montague, the Vice-Director of the Fort. Every step in the
erection of this building was taken knee-deep in liquor. The dispensing
of drink began when the old wooden fort was levelled; a tun of strong
beer was furnished to the pullers-down. At the laying of the first
stones of the wall a case of brandy, an anker (thirty-three quarts) of
brandy, and thirty-two guilders’ worth of other liquor wet the thirsty
whistles of the masons. When the cellar beams were laid, the carpenters
had their turn. Two barrels of strong beer, three cases of brandy, and
seventy-two florins’ worth of small beer rested them temporarily from
their labors. When the second tier of beams was successfully in place,
the carpenters had two more cases of brandy and a barrel of beer.
The beams had already received a previous “wetting;” for when brought
to the building they had been left without the wall, and had been
carried within, one at a time, by eight men who had half a barrel of
beer for each beam. There were thirty-three beams in all.
All the wood-carriers, teamsters, carpenters, stone-cutters, and masons
had, besides these special treats, a daily dram of a gill of brandy
apiece, and three pints of beer at dinner. They were dissatisfied, and
“solicited” another pint of beer. Even the carters who brought wood
and the boatmen who floated down spars were served with liquor. When
the carpenters placed the roof-tree, a half-barrel of liquor was given
them. Another half-barrel under the name of tiles-beer went to the
tile-setters. The special completion of the winding staircase demanded
five guilders’ worth of liquor. When the house was finished, a _kraeg_,
or housewarming, of both food and drink to all the workmen and their
wives was demanded and refused. Well it might be refused, when the
liquor bill without it amounted to seven hundred and sixteen guilders.
The amount of liquor required to help in conducting an election was
very great. In 1738 James Alexander and Eventhus Van Horne paid over
seventy-two pounds for one election bill. Liquor then was cheap. This
sum purchased sixty-two gallons of Jamaica rum, several gallons of
brandy, eight gallons of lime-juice, a “pyd” of wine which cost sixteen
pounds (I don’t know what a “pyd” could have been), a large amount of
shrub, and mugs and “gugs” and “bottels.” There were also two bagpipes
and a fiddler.
Let me give, as a feeble excuse for the large consumption of beer,
cider, etc., that the water was poor in many of the towns. Kalm wrote
of the Albany water:--
“The water of several of the wells was very cool about this time, but
had a kind of acid taste which was not very agreeable. I think this
water is not very wholesome for people who are not used to it. Nearly
every house in Albany has its well, the water of which is applied to
common use; but for tea, brewing, and washing they commonly take the
water of the river.”
What can be the other “common use” to which well-water was applied,
except putting out fires,--which is an infrequent use?
In New York City the water was equally poor. The famous Tea-water Pump
supplied in barrels for many years the more fastidious portion of the
community. Perhaps we could scarcely expect them to drink much water
when they had to buy it.
Our notions of life in New Netherland have been so thoroughly shaped
by Diedrich Knickerbocker’s tergiversating account thereof, that it
would be difficult for us to make any marked change in the picture
he has painted. Nor do we need to do so. For though the details of
public and official life and characters in that day have been wilfully
distorted by Irving’s keen humor, still the atmosphere of his picture
is undeniably correct, and the domestic life he has shown us was the
life of that colony. I find nothing, after much illumination through
careful examination of old records and the contemporary accounts given
by early travellers, to change in any considerable degree the estimate
of every-day life in New Netherland which I gained from Irving, save in
one respect,--the account of Dutch table manners, and the attributing
to the Dutch burghers of lax hospitality at dinner-time, which I cannot
believe. Madam Knight wrote of her New York hosts in 1704:--
“They are sociable to one another, and Curteos and Civill to
Strangers, and fare well in their houses.... They are sociable to a
degree, their tables being as free to their Naybours as themselves.”
Mrs. Grant, writing of Albanians half a century later, gives a
detailed description of their manners as hosts, which might serve as
an explanation of apparent inhospitality in the time of Walter the
Doubter:--
“They were exceedingly social, and visited each other very frequently,
beside the regular assembling together in porches every fine evening.
Of the more substantial luxuries of the table they knew little, and of
the formal and ceremonious parts of good breeding still less.
“If you went to spend a day anywhere, you were received in a manner we
should think very cold. No one rose to welcome you; no one wondered
you had not come sooner, or apologized for any deficiency in your
entertainment. Dinner, which was very early, was served exactly in the
same manner as if there were only the family. The house, indeed, was
so exquisitely neat and well regulated, that you could not surprise
them; and they saw each other so often and so easily that intimates
made no difference. Of strangers they were shy; not by any means from
want of hospitality, but from a consciousness that people who had
little to value themselves on but their knowledge of the modes and
ceremonies of polished life disliked their sincerity and despised
their simplicity. If you showed no insolent wonder, but easily and
quietly adopted their manners, you would receive from them not only
very great civility, but much essential kindness.... After sharing
this plain and unceremonious dinner, which might, by the bye, chance
to be a very good one, but was invariably that which was meant for
the family, tea was served in at a very early hour. And here it was
that the distinction shown to strangers commenced. Tea here was a
perfect ‘regale,’ accompanied by various sorts of cake unknown to us,
cold pastry, and great quantities of sweetmeats and preserved fruits
of various kinds, and plates of hickory and other nuts ready cracked.
In all manner of confectionery and pastry these people excelled; and
having fruit in great abundance, which cost them nothing, and getting
sugar home at an easy rate, in return for their exports to the West
Indies, the quantity of these articles used in families, otherwise
plain and frugal, was astonishing. Tea was never unaccompanied with
some of these petty articles; but for strangers a great display was
made. If you stayed supper, you were sure of a most substantial
though plain one. In this meal they departed, out of compliment to
the strangers, from their usual simplicity. Having dined between
twelve and one, you were quite prepared for it. You had either game
or poultry roasted, and always shell-fish in the season; you had
also fruit in abundance. All this with much neatness, but no form.
The seeming coldness with which you were first received wore off by
degrees.”
It may be noted that Mrs. Grant gives a very different notion of
Albany fare than does Kalm, already quoted; and she wrote scarce a
score of years after his account. She tells--in this extract--not
of wealthy folk, though they were truly gentle-folk, if simplicity
of living, kindliness, and good sense added in many cases to good
birth could make these plain Albanians gentle-folk. And in truth it
seems to me a cheerful picture,--one of true though shy hospitality;
pleasant of contemplation in our days of formality and extravagance of
entertaining, of scant knowledge of the true home life even of those we
call our friends.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DUTCH VROUWS
There is much evidence to show that the women of Dutch descent of the
early years of New Netherland and New York had other traits than those
of domestic housewifery; they partook frequently of the shrewdness and
business sagacity and capacity of their Dutch husbands. Widows felt no
hesitation and experienced no difficulty in carrying on the business
affairs of their dead partners; wives having capable, active husbands
boldly engaged in independent business operations of their own; their
ventures were as extended and fearless as those of the men. They traded
for peltries with the Indians with marked success. I suspect part of
the profit may have come through the Indian braves’ serene confidence
in their own superior sagacity in bargaining and trafficking with the
“white squaws.” The Labadist travellers wrote thus despitefully of a
“female-trader” in Albany in 1679:--
“This woman, although not of openly godless life, is more wise than
devout, although her knowledge is not very extensive, and does not
surpass that of the women of New Netherland. She is a truly worldly
woman, proud and conceited, and sharp in trading with _wild_ people
as well as _tame_ ones, or what shall I call them not to give them
the name of Christians, or if I do, it is only to distinguish them
from the others. She has a husband, who is her second one. He
remains at home quietly while she travels over the country to carry
on the trading. In fine, she is one of the Dutch female-traders who
understand the business so well. If these be the persons who are to
make Christians of the heathen, what will the latter be?”
Certain traits of a still more influential and widely known
female-trader in New Netherland are shown to us in Dankers’ pages
through slight but extremely vivid side-lights, but which (having been
written on shipboard) may perhaps be taken with the grain of palliative
salt which should frequently be cast upon the condemnatory utterances
of sea-weary, if not sea-sick, passengers on the raging deep when they
regard everything connected with the odious ship which confines them.
We are introduced to this colonial woman of affairs in the sub-title of
the journal, which states that the journey to New Netherland was made
“in a small Flute-ship called the Charles, of which Thomas Singleton
was Master; but the superior Authority over both Ship and Cargo was in
Margaret Filipse, who was the Owner of both, and with whom we agreed
for our Passage from Amsterdam to New York, in New Netherland, at
seventy-five Guilders for each Person, payable in Holland.”
This “Margaret Filipse” was the daughter of Adolph Hardenbrook who
settled in Bergen, opposite New Amsterdam. She was the widow of the
merchant trader Peter Rudolphus De Vries when she married Frederick
Philipse. Her second husband was a carpenter by trade, who worked for
Governor Stuyvesant; but on his marriage with the wealthy Widow De
Vries, he became her capable business partner, and finally was counted
the richest man in the colony. She owned ships running to many ports,
and went repeatedly to Holland in her own ships as supercargo. She was
visited by Dankers in Amsterdam in June, 1679. According to the custom
of his religious sect, he always called her by her Christian name, and
wrote of her as Margaret. He says:--
“We spoke to Margaret, inquiring of her when the ship would leave. She
answered she had given orders to have everything in readiness to sail
to-day, but she herself was of opinion it would not be before Monday.
We offered her the money to pay for our passage, but she refused
to receive it at that time, saying she was tired and could not be
troubled with it that day.”
They waited patiently on shipboard for several days for Madam Philipse
to embark, and at last he writes:--
“We were all very anxious for Margaret to arrive, so that we might
not miss a good wind. Jan and some of the other passengers were much
dissatisfied. Jan declared, ‘If this wind blows over I will write her
a letter that will make her ears tingle.’”
Landing at an English port, the travellers bought wine and vinegar,
“for we began to see it would go slim with us on the voyage,” and
Margaret bought a ship which was made ready to go to the Isle of May
and then to the Barbadoes. Over the purchase and equipment of this
ship arose a great quarrel, for “those miserable, covetous people
Margaret and her husband” tried to take away the Charles’ long-boat
because timber for a new one was cheaper in New York than in Falmouth,
England. Naturally, the passengers objected to crossing the Atlantic
without a ship’s-boat. Dankers complained further of Margaret’s
“miserable covetousness,”--that she made the ship lay to for an hour
and a half and sent out the jolly-boat to pick up a ship’s mop or swab
worth six cents; and the carpenter swore because she had not furnished
new leather and spouts for the pumps. Dankers explained at length the
enhancement of the Philipse profits through some business arrangement
and preferment with the Governor, by which Frederick Philipse became
the largest trader with the Five Nations at Albany, had a profitable
slave-trade with Africa, and, it is asserted, was in close bonds with
the Madagascar pirates. Whether “Margaret” favored this trade with the
pirates is not known; but it could probably be said of her trade, as of
many others in the colony, that it was hard to draw the dividing line
between privateering and piracy.
Her calling was not singular in New Amsterdam. The little town abounded
in women-traders.
Elizabeth Van Es was the daughter of one of the early Albany
magistrates. She married Gerrit Bancker, and on becoming a widow
removed to New York, where she promptly opened a store on her own
account, and conducted it with success till her death, in 1694. In the
inventory of her effects were a share in a brigantine, a large quantity
of goods and peltries, as well as various silver-clasped Bibles, gold
and stone rings, and silver tankards and beakers, showing her success
in her business career. The wife of the great Jacob Leisler, a Widow
Vanderveen when he married her, was a trader. Lysbet, the widow of
Merchant Reinier, became the wife of Domine Drisius, of New York. She
carried on for many years a thriving trade on what is now Pearl Street,
near Whitehall Street, and was known to every one as Mother Drisius.
The wife of Domine Van Varick also kept a small store, and thus helped
out her husband’s salary.
Heilke Pieterse was the wife of the foremost blacksmith of New
Amsterdam; and as he monopolized the whole business of Long Island, he
died very rich,--worth at least ten thousand dollars. Not overwhelmed
or puffed up with the inheritance of such opulence, Heilke carried on
her husband’s business for many years with success.
Margaret Backer was another successful business woman. For years she
acted as attorney for her husband while he was in foreign countries
attending to that end of his great foreign trade. Rachel Vinje,
involved in heavy lawsuits over the settlement of an estate, pleaded
her own case in court, and was successful. Women were constant in their
appearance in court as parties in contracts and agreements.
The Schuyler family did not lack examples of stirring women-kind.
Margaret van Schlictenhorst, wife of the first Peter Schuyler, being
left a widow, managed her husband’s estate in varied business lines
with such thrift and prudence that in her will, made at eighty years of
age, she could assert that the property had vastly increased. She was
not out of public affairs, for during the Leisler troubles she was the
second largest subscriber to the fund in support of the government;
and she also lent money to pay the borrowed soldiers. Her niece,
Heligonda van Schlictenhorst, a shrewd spinster, was a merchant, and
furnished public supplies. The daughter of Peter Schuyler married John
Collins. A letter of his, dated 1722, shows her capacity. I quote a
clause from it:--
“Since you left us my wife has been in the Indian country, and Van
Slyck had purchased what he could at the upper end of the land; she
purchased the rest from Ignosedah to his purchase. She has gone
through a great deal of hardship and trouble about it, being from home
almost ever since you left us; and prevailed with the Indians whilst
there with trouble and expense to mark out the land where the mine
is into the woods. Mrs. Feathers has been slaving with her all this
while, and hard enough to do with that perverse generation, to bring
them to terms.”
The picture of these two women in the wilds, treating and bargaining
and trading with the savages, seems curious enough to us to-day. Women
seem to have excelled in learning the Indian languages. The daughter
of Anneke Jans was the best interpreter in the colony, and served
as interpreter to Stuyvesant during his famous treaty with the Six
Nations.
Many of the leading taverns or hostelries were kept by women,--a
natural calling, certainly, for good housewives. Madam Van Borsum was
mistress of the Ferry Tavern in Breucklen. Annetje Litschar kept the
tavern which stood near the present site of Hanover Square. Metje
Wessell’s hostelry stood on the north side of Pearl Street, near
Whitehall Street.
More successful still and bold in trade was Widow Maria Provoost.
Scarce a ship came into port from Holland, England, the Mediterranean,
West Indies, or the Spanish Main, but brought to her large consignments
of goods. Her Dutch business correspondence was a large one. She, too,
married a second time, and, as Madam James Alexander, filled a most
dignified position, and became the mother of Lord Stirling.
In a letter written by her husband, James Alexander, to his brother
William, and dated October 21, 1721, there is found a passage which
gives extraordinary tribute to her business capacity and her powers of
endurance alike. It reads thus:--
“Two nights agoe at eleven o’clock, my wife was Brought to bed of a
Daughter and is in as good health as can be Expected, and does more
than can be Expected of any woman, for till within a few hours of her
being brought to bed She was in her Shop, and ever Since has given
the price of Goods to her prentice, who comes to her and asks it when
Customers come in. The very next day after She was brought to bed she
Sold goods to above thirty pounds value. And here the business matters
of her Shop which is Generally Esteemed the best in New York, she with
a prentice of about 16 years of age perfectly well manages without the
Least help from me, you may guess a little of her success.”
He closes his letter with a eulogy which can be cordially endorsed by
every reader:
“I must say my fortune in America is above my Expectation, and I think
even my Deserts, and the greatest of my good fortune is in getting so
Good a Wife as I have, who alone would make ae man easy and happy had
he nothing else to depend on.”
Madam Alexander accumulated great wealth, and spent it handsomely.
She was the only person in town, besides the Governor, who kept a
coach. Her will is an interesting document, and shows a fine style
of housekeeping. The enumeration of great and lesser drawing-rooms,
front and back parlors, blue and gold leather room, green and gold
leather room, tapestry room, chintz room, etc., show its pretension and
extent. She lived on Broad Street, had a fine garden laid out in the
Dutch taste, a house full of servants, and spent her money freely as
she made it thriftily. A very good portrait of her exists. It shows an
interesting countenance, with fine features, a keen eye, and indicating
robust health. She is not dressed with great elegance, wearing the
costume of the day,--a commonplace frilled cap, folded kerchief, close
sleeves, such as we are familiar with in portraits of English women of
her time.
Jane Colden, the daughter of Governor Cadwallader Colden, was of signal
service, not in trade, but in science. A letter written by her father
explains her interest and usefulness:--
“Botany is an amusement which may be made agreeable to the ladies who
are often at a loss to fill up their time. Their natural curiosity and
the pleasure they take in the beauty and variety of dress seem to fit
them for it.
“I have a daughter who has an inclination to reading, and a curiosity
for Natural Philosophy or Natural History, and a sufficient curiosity
for attaining a competent knowledge. I took the pains to explain
Linnæus’ system, and to put it into an English form for her use by
freeing it from technical terms, which was easily done, by using two
or three words in the place of one. She is now grown very fond of
the study, and has made such a progress in it as, I believe, would
please you, if you saw her performance. Though she could not have been
persuaded to learn the terms at first, she now understands to some
degree Linnæus’ characters,--notwithstanding she does not understand
Latin. She has already a pretty large volume in writing of the
description of plants. She has shewn a method of taking the impression
of the leaves on paper with printers’ ink, by a simple kind of rolling
press which is of use in distinguishing the species. No description
in words alone, can give so clear an idea, as when assisted with a
picture. She has the impression of three hundred plants in the manner
you’ll see by the samples. That you may have some conception of her
performance, and her manner of describing, I propose to enclose some
samples in her own writing, some of which I think are new genera.”
Peter Collinson said she was the first lady to study the Linnæan
system, and deserved to have her name celebrated; and John Ellis,
writing of her to Linnæus in 1758, asks that a genus be named, for her,
Coldenella. She was also a correspondent of Dr. Whyte of Edinburgh,
and many learned societies in Europe. Walter Rutherfurd enumerates her
talents, and caps them with a glowing tribute to her cheese-making.
We find the women of the times full of interest in public affairs and
active in good works. In the later days of the province, we learn
of the gifts to the army at Crown Point in 1755. In those days the
generous farmers of Queens County, Long Island, collected one thousand
and fifteen sheep, and these were “cheerfully given.”
“While their husbands at Great Neck were employed in getting sheep,
the good mothers in that neighborhood in a few hours collected nearly
seventy good large cheeses, and sent them to New York to be forwarded
with the sheep to the army.” Kings County defrayed the expense of
conveying these sheep and cheeses to the army; and a letter of
gratitude was promptly returned by the commander-in-chief. Sir William
Johnson, who said,--
“This generous humanity is unanimously and gratefully applauded here
by all. We pray that your benevolence may be returned to you by the
great Shepherd of the human kind a thousand fold. And may those
amiable housewives to whose skill we owe the refreshing cheeses long
continue to shine in their useful and endearing stations.”
Kings County and Suffolk also sent cheeses, and we learn also:--
“The Women of County Suffolk ever good in such Occasions are knitting
several large bags of stockings and mittens to be sent to the poorer
soldiers at Forts William Henry and Edward.”
In studying the history of the province, I am impressed with the debt
New Yorkers of Dutch descent owe, not to their forefathers, but to
their foremothers; the conspicuous decorum of life of these women and
their great purity of morals were equalled by their good sense and
their wonderful capacity in both domestic and public affairs. They were
as good patriots as they were good business women; and though they
were none of them what Carlyle calls “writing-women,” it was not from
poverty of good sense or natural intelligence, but simply from the
imperfection of their education through lack of good and plentiful
schools, and also want of stimulus owing to absence of literary
atmosphere.
A very shrewd woman-observer, writing in the middle of the eighteenth
century of the Dutch, gives what seems to me a very just estimate and
good description of one of their traits. She says: “Though they have
no vivacity, they are smarter, a great deal smarter, than the English,
that is, more _uptaking_.” Those who know the exact Scotch meaning
of “uptaking,” which is somewhat equivalent to Anthony Trollope’s
“observation and reception,” will understand the closeness of the
application of the term to the Dutch.
The Dutch women especially were “uptaking;” adaptive of all
comfort-bringing methods of housekeeping. This was noted by
Guicciardini in Holland as early as 1563. They were far advanced in
knowledge and execution of healthful household conditions, through
their beautiful cleanliness. Irving says very truthfully of them: “In
those good days of simplicity and sunshine a passion for cleanliness
was the leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test
of a good housewife.” Kalm says: “They are almost over nice and cleanly
in regard to the floor, which is frequently scoured twice a week.” They
found conditions of housekeeping entirely changed in America, but the
passionate love of cleanliness fostered in the Fatherland clung long in
their hearts. Their “Œconomy” and thrift were also beautiful.
An advertisement in the “New York Gazette” of April 1, 1751, shows that
the thrift of the community lingered until Revolutionary times:--
“Elizabeth Boyd gives notice that she will as usual graft Pieces in
knit Jackets and Breeches not to be discern’d, also to graft and foot
Stockings, and Gentlemens Gloves, mittens or Muffatees made out of old
Stockings, or runs them in the Heels. She likewise makes Childrens
Stockings out of Old Ones.”
Other dames taught more elegant accomplishments:--
“Martha Gazley, now in the city of New York, Makes and Teacheth the
following curious Works, viz.: Artificial Fruit and Flowers and
other Wax-Work, Nun’s Work, Philligree and Pencil-work upon Muslin,
all sorts of Needlework, and Raising of Paste, as also to Paint
upon Glass, and Transparent for Sconces with other Works. If any
young Gentlewomen, or others, are inclined to learn any or all of
the above-mentioned curious Works, they may be carefully taught and
instructed in the same by said Martha Gazley.”
Mrs. Van Cortlandt, in her delightful account of home-life in
Westchester County, says of the industrious Dutch women and their
accomplishments and occupations:--
“Knitting was an art much cultivated, the Dutch women excelling in
the variety and intricacy of the stitches. A knitting sheath, which
might be of silver or of a homely goose-quill, was an indispensable
utensil, and beside it hung the ball-pin-cushion. Crewel-work and
silk embroidery were fashionable, and surprisingly pretty effects
were produced. Every little maiden had her sampler, which she began
with the alphabet and numerals following them with a Scriptural text
or verse of a metrical psalm. Then fancy was let loose on birds,
beasts, and trees. Most of the old families possessed framed pieces of
embroidery, the handiwork of female ancestors. Flounces and trimmings
for aprons worked with delicately tinted silks on muslin were common.
I have several yards of fine muslin painted in the early days with
full-blown thistles in the appropriate colors. Fringe looms were in
use, and cotton and silk fringes were woven.”
Tape-looms were also found in many households; and the weaving of tapes
and “none-so-prettys” was deemed very light and elegant work.
Though to the Dutch is ascribed the invention of the thimble, I never
think of the Dutch women as excelling in fine needlework; and I note
that the teachers of intricate and novel embroidery-stitches are always
Englishwomen; but in turn the English goodwives must yield to the Dutch
the palm of comfortable, attractive housewifery, as well as shrewd,
untiring business capacity.
CHAPTER IX
THE COLONIAL WARDROBE
The Dutch goodwife worked hard from early morn till sunset. She
worked in restricted ways, she had few recreations and pleasures
and altogether little variety in her life; but she possessed what
doubtless proved to her in that day, as it would to any woman in
this day, a source of just satisfaction, a soothing to the spirit, a
staying of melancholy, a moral support second only to the solace of
religion,--namely, a large quantity of very good clothes, which were
substantial, cheerful, and suitable, if not elegant.
The Dutch never dressed “in a plaine habbit according to the maner
of a poore wildernesse people,” as the Connecticut colonists wrote
of themselves to Charles II.; nor were they weary wanderers in a
wilderness as were Connecticut folk.
I have not found among the statutes of New Netherland any sumptuary
laws such as were passed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia,
to restrain and attempt to prohibit luxury and extravagance in dress.
Nor have I discovered in the court-records any evidences of magisterial
reproof of finery; there is, on the contrary, much indirect proof of
encouragement to “dress orderly and well according to the fashion and
the time.” Of course the Dutch had no Puritanical dread of over-rich
garments; and we must also never forget New Netherland was not
under the control of a government nor of a religious band, but of a
trading-company.
The ordinary dress of the fair dames and damsels of New Amsterdam has
been vividly described by Diedrich Knickerbocker; and even with the
additional light upon their wardrobe thrown by the lists contained in
colonial inventories, I still think his description of their every-day
dress exceedingly good for one given by a man. He writes:
“Their hair, untortured by the abominations of art, was scrupulously
pomatumed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a
little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads.
Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of
gorgeous dyes, though I must confess those gallant garments were
rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made
up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen’s
small-clothes; and what is still more praiseworthy, they were all
of their own manufacture,--of which circumstance, as may well be
supposed, they were not a little vain.
“Those were the honest days, in which every woman stayed at home, read
the Bible, and wore pockets,--ay, and that, too, of a goodly size,
fashioned with patchwork into many curious devices, and ostentatiously
worn on the outside. These, in fact, were convenient receptacles where
all good housewives carefully stored away such things as they wished
to have at hand; by which means they often came to be incredibly
crammed.
“Besides these notable pockets, they likewise wore scissors and
pincushions suspended from their girdles by red ribbons, or, among the
more opulent and showy classes, by a brass and even silver chains,
indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives and industrious spinsters.
I cannot say much in vindication of the shortness of the petticoats;
it doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings
a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with
magnificent red clocks; or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and
a neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high-heeled leathern
shoe, with a large and splendid silver buckle.
“There was a secret charm in those petticoats, which no doubt entered
into the consideration of the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a
lady was in those days her only fortune; and she who had a good stock
of petticoats and stockings was as absolutely an heiress as is a
Kamtschatka damsel with a store of bear-skins, or a Lapland belle with
plenty of reindeer.”
A Boston lady, Madam Knights, visiting New York in 1704, wrote:--
“The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch,
especially the middling sort, differ from our women, in their habitt
go loose, wear French muches wch are like a Capp and head-band in one,
leaving their ears bare, which are sett out with jewells of a large
size and many in number; and their fingers hoop’t with rings, some
with large stones in them of many Coullers, as were their pendants in
their ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as Young.”
This really gives a very good picture of the _vrouws_; “loose in their
habit,” wearing sacques and loose gowns, not laced in with pointed
waists as were the English and Boston women; with the ornamental
head-dress, and the gay display of stoned earrings and rings, which
was also not the usual wear of New England women, who generally owned
only a few funeral rings.
In the inventories of personal estates contained in the Surrogate’s
Court we find details of the wardrobe; but as I have enumerated
and defined all the different articles at some length in my book,
“Costume of Colonial Times,” I will not repeat the definitions here;
but it should be remembered that in the enumeration of the articles
of clothing, many stuffs and materials of simple names were often of
exceedingly good and even rich quality. From those inventories we have
proof that all Dutch women had plenty of clothes; while the wives of
the burgomasters, the opulent merchants, and those in authority, had
rich clothes. I have given in full in my book a list of the clothing
of a wealthy New York dame, Madam De Lange; but I wish to refer to it
again as an example of a really beautiful wardrobe. In it were twelve
petticoats of varying elegance, some worth two pounds fifteen shillings
each, which would be more than fifty dollars to-day. They were of silk
lined with silk, striped stuff, scarlet cloth, and ash-gray cloth.
Some were trimmed with gold lace. With those petticoats were worn
samares and samares-a-potoso, six in number, which were evidently
jackets or fancy bodies; these were of calico, crape, “tartanel,”
and silk. One trimmed with lace was worth three pounds. Waistcoats
and bodies also appear; also fancy sleeves. Love-hoods of silk and
cornet-caps with lace make a pretty head-gear to complete this costume,
with which was worn the reim or silver girdle with hanging purse, and
also with a handsome number of diamond, amber, and white coral jewels.
The colors in the Dutch gowns were almost uniformly gay,--in keen
contrast to the sad-colored garments of New England. Madam Cornelia de
Vos in a green cloth petticoat, a red and blue “Haarlamer” waistcoat,
a pair of red and yellow sleeves, and a purple “Pooyse” apron was a
blooming flower-bed of color.
The dress of Vrouentje Ides Stoffelsen, a very capable Dutchwoman who
went to Bergen Point to live, varied a little from that of these town
dames. Petticoats she had, and waistcoats, bodies and sleeves; but
there was also homelier attire,--purple and blue aprons, four pairs of
pattens, a fur cap instead of love-hoods, and twenty-three caps. She
wore the simpler and more universal head-gear,--a close linen or calico
cap.
The head covering was of considerable importance in New Amsterdam, as
it was in Holland as well as in England at that date. We find that it
was also costly. In 1665 Mistress Piertje Jans sold a fine “little
ornamental headdress” for fifty-five guilders to the young daughter
of Evert Duyckinck. But it seems that Missy bought this “genteel
head-clothes” without the knowledge or permission of her parents, and
on its arrival at the Duyckinck home Vrouw Duyckinck promptly sent back
the emblem of extravagance and disobedience. Summoned to court by the
incensed milliner who wished no rejected head-dresses on her hands,
and who claimed that the transaction was from the beginning with full
cognizance of the parents, Father Duyckinck pronounced the milliner’s
bill extortionate; and furthermore said gloomily, with a familiar
nineteenth-century phraseology of New York fathers, that “this was
no time to be buying and wearing costly head-dresses.” But the court
decided in the milliner’s favor.
It is to be deplored that we have no fashion-plates of past centuries
to show to us in exact presentment the varying modes worn by New York
dames from year to year; that method of fashion-conveying has been
adopted but a century. The modes in olden days travelled from country
to country, from town to town, in the form of dolls or “babies,”
as they were called, wearing miniature model costumes. These dolls
were dressed by cutters and tailors in Paris or London, and with
various tiny modish garments were sent out on their important mission
across the water. In Venice a doll attired in the last fashions--the
toilette of the year--was for centuries exhibited on each Ascension
Day at the “Merceria” for the edification of noble Venetian dames,
who eagerly flocked to the attractive sight. Not less eagerly did
American dames flock to provincial mantua-makers and milliners to see
the London-dressed babies with their miniature garments. Even in this
century, fashions were brought to New York and Philadelphia and Albany
through “milliners’ boxes” containing dressed dolls. Mrs. Vanderbilt
tells of one much admired fashion-doll of her youth who had a treasured
old age as a juvenile goddess.
A leading man of New Amsterdam, a burgomaster, had at the time of his
death, near the end of Dutch rule, this plentiful number of substantial
garments: a cloth coat with silver buttons, a stuff coat, cloth
breeches, a cloth coat with gimp buttons, a black cloth coat, a silk
coat, breeches and doublet, a silver cloth breeches and doublet, a
velvet waistcoat with silver lace, a buff coat with silk sleeves, three
“gross-green” cloaks, several old suits of clothes, linen, hosiery,
silver-buckled shoes, an ivory-headed cane, and a hat. One hat may
seem very little with so many other garments; but the real beaver hats
of those days were so substantial, so well-made, so truly worthy an
article of attire, that they could be constantly worn and yet last for
years. They were costly; some were worth several pounds apiece.
Gayer masculine garments are told of in other inventories: green silk
breeches flowered with silver and gold, silver gauze breeches, yellow
fringed gloves, lacquered hats, laced shirts and neck-cloths, and
(towards the end of the century, and nearly through the eighteenth
century) a vast variety of wigs. For over a hundred years these
unnatural abominations, which bore no pretence of resembling the human
hair, often in grotesque, clumsy, cumbersome shapes, bearing equally
fantastic names, and made of various indifferent and coarse materials,
loaded the heads and lightened the pockets of our ancestors. I am glad
to note that they were taxed by the government of the province of New
York. The barber and wig-maker soon became a very important personage
in a community so given over to costly modes of dressing the head.
Advertisements in the newspapers show the various kinds of wigs worn
in the middle of the eighteenth century. From the “New York Gazette”
of May 9, 1737, we learn of a thief’s stealing “one gray Hair Wig,
one Horse hair wig not the worse for wearing, one Pale Hair Wig, not
worn five times, marked V. S. E., one brown Natural wig, One old wig
of goat’s hair put in buckle.” Buckle meant to curl; and derivatively
a wig was in buckle when it was rolled on papers for curling. Other
advertisements tell of “Perukes, Tets, and Fox-tails after the
Genteelest Fashion. Ladies’ Tets and wigs in perfect imitation of
their own hair.” Other curious notices are of “Orange Butter” for
“Gentlewomen to comb up their hair with.”
This use of orange butter as a pomatum was certainly unique; it was
really a Dutch marmalade. I read in my “Closet of Rarities,” dated
1706:--
“The Dutch Way to make Orange-butter. Take new cream two gallons, beat
it up to a thicknesse, then add half a pint of orange-flower-water,
and as much red wine, and so being become the thicknesse of butter it
has both the colour and smell of an orange.”
A very characteristic and eye-catching advertisement was this from the
“New York Gazette” of May 21, 1750:--
“This is to acquaint the Public, that there is lately arrived from
London the Wonder of the World, _an Honest_ Barber and Peruke Maker,
who might have worked for the King, if his Majesty would have
employed him: It was not for the want of Money he came here, for he
had enough of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, that he
advertises hinself, BUT to acquaint the Gentlemen and Ladies, That
_Such a Person is now in Town_, living near _Rosemary Lane_ where
Gentlemen and Ladies may be supplied with Goods as follows, viz.:
Tyes, Full-Bottoms, Majors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut
and bob Perukes: Also Ladies Tatematongues and Towers after the Manner
that is now wore at Court. _By their Humble and Obedient Servant_,
“JOHN STILL.”
With the change from simple Dutch ways of hairdressing came in other
details more constrained modes of dressing. With the wig-maker came the
stay-maker, whose curious advertisements may be read in scores in the
provincial newspapers; and his arbitrary fashions bring us to modern
times.
From the deacons’ records of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany we
catch occasional hints of the dress of the children of the Dutch
colonists. There was no poor-house, and few poor; but since the church
occasionally helped worthy folk who were not rich, we find the deacons
in 1665 and 1666 paying for blue linen for _schorteldoecykers_, or
aprons, for Albany _kindeken_; also for _haaken en oogen_, or hooks and
eyes, for warm under-waists called _borsrockyen_. They bought linen
for _luyers_, which were neither pinning-blankets nor diapers, but a
sort of swaddling clothes, which evidently were worn then by Dutch
babies. _Voor-schooten_, which were white bibs; _neerstucken_, which
were tuckers, also were worn by little children. Some little Hans of
Pieter had given to him by the deacons a fine little scarlet _aperock_,
or monkey-jacket; and other children were furnished linen _cosynties_,
or night-caps with capes. Yellow stockings were sold at the same time
for children, and a gay little yellow turkey-legged Dutchman in a
scarlet monkey-jacket and fat little breeches must have been a jolly
sight.
CHAPTER X
HOLIDAYS
The most important holidays of the early years of the colony were,
apparently, New Year’s Day and May Day, for we find them named through
frequent legislation about rioting on these days, repairing of damages,
etc. It has been said that New Yorkers owe to the Dutch an everlasting
gratitude for our high-stoop houses and the delights of over two
centuries of New Year’s calling. The latter custom lived long and
happily in our midst, died a lingering and lamented death, is still
much honored in our memory, and its extinction deeply deplored and
unwillingly accepted.
The observance of New Year’s Day was, without doubt, followed by both
Dutch and English from the earliest settlement. We know that Governor
Stuyvesant received New Year’s calls, and we also know that he
prohibited excessive “drunken drinking,” unnecessary firing of guns,
and all disorderly behavior on that day. The reign of the English did
not abolish New Year’s visits; and we find Charles Wolley, an English
chaplain, writing in his journal in New York in 1701, of the addition
of the English custom of exchange of gifts:--
“The English in New York observed one anniversary custom and that
without superstition, I mean the strenarum commercium, as Suetonius
calls them, a neighborly commerce of presents every New Year’s Day.
Some would send me a sugar-loaf, some a pair of gloves, some a bottle
or two of wine.”
A further celebration of the day by men in New York was by going in
parties to Beekman’s Swamp to shoot at turkeys.
New Year’s calling was a new fashion to General Washington when he came
to New York to live for a short time, but he adopted it with approval;
and his New Year’s Receptions were imposing functions.
For a long time the New Year was ushered in, in country towns, with
great noise as well as rejoicing. All through the day groups of men
would go from house to house firing salutes, and gathering gradually
into large parties by recruits from each house until the end of the
day was spent in firing at a mark. The Legislature in March, 1773,
attempted to stop the gun-firing, asserting that “great damages are
frequently done on the eve of the last day of December and on the first
and second days of January by persons going from house to house with
guns and other firearms.” In 1785 a similar enactment was passed by the
State Legislature.
In the palmiest days of New Year’s calling, New York City appeared
one great family reunion. Every wheeled vehicle in the town seemed
to be loaded with visitors going from house to house. Great four and
six horse stages packed with hilarious mobs of men went to the house
of every acquaintance of every one in the stage. Target companies had
processions; political bodies called on families whose head was well
known in political life. The newspaper-carriers brought out addresses
yards long with rhymes:--
“The day devoted is to mirth,
And now around the social hearth
Friendship unlocks her genial springs,
And Harmony her lyre now strings.
While plenty spreads her copious hoard,
And piles and crowns the festive board,”
etc., etc., for hundreds of lines.
The “copious hoard” of substantial food, with decanters of wine, bowls
of milk punch, and pitchers of egg-nog, no longer “crown the festive
board” on New Year’s Day; but we still have New Year’s Cakes, though
not delivered by singing bakers’ ’prentices as of yore.
May Day was observed in similar fashion,--by firing of guns, gay
visiting, and also by the rearing of maypoles.
A very early mention of a maypole is in June, 1645, when one William
Garritse had “sung a libellous song” against Rev. Francis Doughty, the
preacher at Flushing, Long Island, and was sentenced in punishment
therefor to be tied to the maypole, which in June was still standing.
Stuyvesant again forbade “drunken drinking,” and firing of guns and
planting of maypoles, as productive of bad practices. I don’t know
whether the delight of my childhood, and of generations of children
in Old and New England up to this present May Day on which I am now
writing,--the hanging of May baskets,--ever made happy children in New
York.
There was some observance in New York of Shrovetide as a holiday-time.
As early as 1657 we find the sober Beverwyck burghers deliberating
on “some improprieties committed at the house of Albert de Timmerman
on Shrovetide last.” As was the inevitable custom followed by the
extremely uninventive brain of the seventeenth and eighteenth century
rioter, were he Dutch or English, these “improprieties” took the
form of the men’s parading in women’s clothes; Pieter Semiensen
was one of the masqueraders. Two years later the magistrates were
again investigating the “unseemly and scandalous” celebration of
Shrovetide; and as ever before, the youth of early Albany donned
women’s clothes and “marched as mountebanks,” as the record says, just
as they did in Philadelphia and Baltimore and even in sober Boston.
We find also for sale in Beverwyck at this time, noisy Shrovetide
toys--_rommelerytiens_, little “rumbling-pots,” which the youth and
children doubtless keenly enjoyed.
At an early date Shrovetide observances, such as “pulling the goose,”
were prohibited by Governor Stuyvesant in New York. A mild protest
on the part of some of the burgomasters against this order of the
Governor brought forth one of Stuyvesant’s characteristically choleric
edicts in answer, in which he speaks of having “interdicted and
forbidden certain farmers’ servants to ride the goose at the feast
of Backus and Shrovetide ... because it is altogether unprofitable,
unnecessary, and criminal for subjects and neighbors to celebrate such
pagan and popish feasts and to practise such customs, notwithstanding
the same may in some places of Fatherland be tolerated and looked at
through the fingers.” Domine Blom, of Kingston or Wyltwyck, joined
in the governor’s dislike of the game. But there were some of the
magistrates who liked very well to “pull the goose” themselves, so
it is said. It was a cruel amusement. The thoroughly greased goose
was hung between two poles, and the effort of the sport was to catch,
snatch away, and hold fast the poor creature while passing at great
speed. In Albany in 1677 all “Shrovetide misdemeanors were prohibited,
viz.: riding at a goose, cat, hare, and ale.” The fine was twenty-five
guilders in sea-want. What the cat, hare, and ale part of the sport
was, I do not know.
In New York by the middle of the eighteenth century Shrove Tuesday was
firmly assigned to cocking-mains. The De Lanceys were patrons of this
choice old English sport. Cock-gaffs of silver and steel were freely
offered for sale in New York and Maryland newspapers, and on Shrove
Tuesday in 1770 Jacob Hiltzeheimer attended a famous cock-fight on the
Germantown road. We cannot blame honest New Yorkers if they did not
rise above such rude sports, when cock-fighting and cock-throwing and
cock-squoiling and cock-steling obtained everywhere in Old England at
Shrovetide; when school-boys had cock-fights in their school-rooms;
and in earlier days good and learned old Roger Ascham ruined himself
by betting on cock-fights, and Sir Thomas More boasted proudly of his
skill in “casting a cock-stele.”
Mr. Gabriel Furman, writing in 1846, told of an extraordinary
observance of Saint Valentine’s Day by the Dutch--one I think unknown
in folk-lore--which obtained on Long Island among the early settlers.
It was called _Vrouwen dagh_, or Women’s day, and was thus celebrated:
Every young girl sallied forth in the morning armed with a heavy cord
with knotted end. She gave to every young man whom she met several
smart lashes with the knotted cord. Perhaps these were “love-taps,”
and were given with no intent of stinging. Judge Egbert Benson wrote,
in 1816, that in New York this custom dwindled to a similar Valentine
observance by New York children, when the girls chased the boys with
many blows. In one school the boys asked for a _Mannen dagh_ in which
to repay the girls’ stinging lashes. I hazard a “wide solution,” as Sir
Thomas Browne says, that this custom is a commemorative survival of an
event in the life of Saint Valentine, one of the two traditions which
are all we know of his life, that about the year 270 he was “first
beaten with heavy clubs and then beheaded.”
The English brought a political holiday to New York. In the code of
laws given to the province in 1665, and known as “The Duke’s Laws,”
each minister throughout the province was ordered to preach a sermon on
November 5, to commemorate the English deliverance from Guy Fawkes and
the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.
From an early entry in the “New York Gazette” of November 7, 1737, we
learn how it was celebrated that year, and find that illuminations, as
in England, formed part of the day’s remembrance. Bonfires, fantastic
processions, and “burning a Guy” formed, in fact, the chief English
modes of celebration.
“Saturday last, being the fifth of November, it was observed here
in Memory of that horrid and Treasonable Popish Gun-Powder Plot to
blow up and destroy King, Lords and Commons, and the Gentlemen of
his Majesty’s Council; the Assembly and Corporation and other the
principal Gentlemen and Merchants of this City waited upon his Honor
the Lieutenant-Governor at Fort George, where the Royal Healths were
drunk, as usual, under the discharge of the Cannon, and at the Night
the city was illuminated.”
All through the English provinces bonfires were burned, effigies were
carried in procession, mummers and masqueraders thronged the streets
and invaded the houses singing Pope Day rhymes, and volleys of guns
were fired. In some New England towns the boys still have bonfires on
November 5th.
In the year 1765 the growing feeling with regard to the Stamp Act
chancing to come to a climax in the late autumn, produced in New York
a very riotous observance of Pope’s Day. The demonstrations really
began on November 1st, which was termed “The Last Day of Liberty.”
In the evening a mob gathered, “designing to execute some foolish
ceremony of burying Liberty,” but it dispersed with noise and a few
broken windows. The next night a formidable mob gathered, “carrying
candles and torches in their hands, and now and then firing a pistol at
the Effigy which was carried in a Chair.” Then the effigy was set in
the Governor’s chariot, which was taken out of the Fort. They made a
gallows and hung on it an effigy of the Governor and one of the Devil,
and carried it to the Fort, over which insult soldiers and officers
were wonderfully patient. Finally, gallows, chariot and effigies were
all burnt in the Bowling Green. The mob then ransacked Major James’s
house, eating, drinking, destroying, till £1500 of damage was done.
The next day it was announced that the delivery and destruction of the
stamps would be demanded. In the evening the mob started out again,
with candles and a barber’s block dressed in rags. The rioters finally
dispersed at the entreaties of many good citizens,--among them Robert
R. Livingstone, who wrote the letter from which this account is taken.
In 1774, November 5th was still a legal holiday.
There still exists in New York a feeble and divided survival of the
processions and bonfires of Guy Fawkes Day. The police-prohibited
bonfires of barrels on election night, and the bedraggled parade of
begging boys on Thanksgiving Day are our reminders to-day of this old
English holiday.
There was one old-time holiday beloved of New Yorkers whose name is now
almost forgotten,--Pinkster Day. This name was derived from the Dutch
word for Pentecost, and must have been used at a very early date; for
in a Dutch book of sermons, written by Adrian Fischer, and printed
in 1667, the title of one sermon reads: _Het Eersts Tractact; Van de
Uystortnge des Yeyligen Geests over de Apostelen op ben Pinckster
Dagh_,--a sermon upon the story of the Descent of the Holy Ghost on the
Apostles on Pinkster Day.
The Jewish feast of Pentecost was observed on the fiftieth day after
the celebration of the Passover, and is the same as the Christian
holy-day Whitsunday, which is connected with its Jewish predecessor
historically (as is so beautifully told in the second chapter of
Acts), and intrinsically through its religious signification. The week
following Whitsunday has been observed with great honor and rejoicing
in many lands, but in none more curiously, more riotously, than in old
New York, and to some extent in Pennsylvania and Maryland; and, more
strangely still, that observance was chiefly by an alien, a heathen
race,--the negroes. It was one of our few distinctively American
folk-customs, and its story has been told by many writers of that
day, and should not now be forgotten. Nowhere was it a more glorious
festival than at Albany, among the sheltered, the cherished slave
population in that town and its vicinity. The celebration was held on
Capitol Hill, then universally known as Pinkster Hill. Munsell gives
this account of the day:--
“Pinkster was a great day, a gala day, or rather week, for they used
to keep it up a week among the darkies. The dances were the original
Congo dances as danced in their native Africa. They had a chief,--Old
King Charley. The old settlers said Charley was a prince in his own
country, and was supposed to have been one hundred and twenty-five
years old at the time of his death. On these festivals old Charley
was dressed in a strange and fantastical costume; he was nearly
barelegged, wore a red military coat trimmed profusely with variegated
ribbons, and a small black hat with a pompon stuck on one side. The
dances and antics of the darkies must have afforded great amusement
for the ancient burghers. As a general thing, the music consisted of
a sort of drum, or instrument constructed out of a box with sheepskin
heads, upon which old Charley did most of the beating, accompanied by
singing some queer African air. Charley generally led off the dance,
when the Sambos and Phillises, juvenile and antiquated, would put in
the double-shuffle heel-and-toe break-down. These festivals seldom
failed to attract large crowds from the city, as well as from the
rural districts.”
Dr. Eights, of Albany, wrote still further reminiscences of the day.
He said that, strangely enough, though all the booths and sports
opened on Monday, white curiosity-seekers were, on that first day, the
chief visitors to Pinkster Hill. On Tuesday the blacks all appeared,
and the consumption of gingerbread, cider, and applejack began. Adam
Blake, a truly elegant creature, the body-servant of the old patroon
Van Rensselaer, was master of the ceremonies. Charley, the King, was a
“Guinea man” from Angola,--and I have noted the fact that nearly all
African-born negroes who became leaders in this country, or men of
marked note in any way, have been Guinea men. He wore portions of the
costume of a British general, and had the power of an autocrat,--his
will was law. Dr. Eights says the Pinkster musical instruments were
eel-pots covered with dressed sheepskin, on which the negroes pounded
with their bare hands, as do all savage nations on their tom-toms.
Their song had an African refrain, “Hi-a-bomba-bomba-bomba.” Other
authorities state that the dance was called the “Toto Dance,” and
partook so largely of savage license that at last the white visitors
shunned being present during its performance.
These Pinkster holidays became such bacchanalian revels in other ways
that in 1811 the Common Council of Albany prohibited the erection of
booths and all dancing, gaming, and drinking at that time; and when the
negroes could not dance nor drink, it was but a sorry holiday, and
quickly fell into desuetude.
Executions were held on Pinkster Hill, and other public punishments
took place there.
In the realm of fiction we find evidence of the glories of Pinkster Day
in New York. Cooper, in his “Satanstoe,” tells of its observance in New
York City. He calls it the saturnalia of the blacks, and says that they
met on what we now know as City Hall Park, and that the negroes came
for thirty or forty miles around to join in the festivities.
On Long Island Pinkster Day was widely observed. The blacks went, on
the week previous to the celebration, to Brooklyn and New York to sell
sassafras and swingling-tow, to earn their scanty spending-money for
Pinkster. They were everywhere freely given their time for rioting, and
domestic labor was performed by the masters and mistresses; but they
had to provide their own spending-money for gingerbread and rum. They
gathered around the old market in Brooklyn near the ferry, dancing for
eels, blowing fish-horns, eating and drinking. The following morning
the judge’s office was full of sorry blacks, hauled up for “disorderly
conduct.”
On Long Island the Dutch residents also made the day a festival,
“going to pinkster fields for pinkster frolics,” exchanging visits,
and drinking schnapps, and eating “soft-wafels” together. About twelve
years ago, while driving through Flatlands and New Lots one beautiful
day in May, I met a group of young men driving from door to door of the
farm-houses, in wagons gayly dressed with branches of dogwood blossoms,
and entering each house for a short visit. I asked whether a wedding or
a festival were being held in the town, and was answered that it was an
old Dutch custom to make visits that week. I tried to learn whence this
observance came, but no one knew its reason for being, or what holiday
was observed. Poor Pinkster! still vaguely honored as a shadow, a ghost
of the past, but with your very name forgotten, even among the children
of those who gave to you in this land a name and happy celebration!
Various wild flowers were known as Pinkster flowers. The beautiful
azalea that once bloomed--indeed does still bloom--so plentifully
throughout New York in May, was universally known as “pinkster flower”
or “pinkster bloom,” and along the banks of the Hudson till our own
day was called “pinkster blummachee.” The traveller Kalm noted it in
1740, and called it by that name. Mrs. Vanderbilt calls it “pinkster
bloomitze.” I was somewhat surprised to hear a Rhode Island farmer,
in the summer of 1893, ask me whether he should not pick me “some
pinkster blossoms,” pointing at the same time to the beautiful swamp
pink that flushed with rosy glow the tangles of vines and bushes on
the edge of the Narragansett woods. It is interesting to know that by
many authorities the name “pink,” of our common garden flower, is held
to be derived from the Dutch _Pinkster_, German _Pfingsten_, and owes
its name, not to its pink color, but to the season of its blooming. In
other localities in New York and New Jersey the blue flag or iris was
known as “pinkster bloom.”
Throughout New England the black residents, free and in bondage, held
high holiday one day in May, or in some localities during the first
week in June; but the day of revelry was everywhere called “Nigger
’Lection.” In Puritandom the observance of Whitsunday was believed
to have “superstition writ on its forehead;” but Election Day was a
popular and properly Puritanical May holiday; therefore the negro
holiday took a similar name, and the “Black Governor” was elected on
the week following the election of the white Governor, usually on
Saturday.
There was some celebration of days of thanksgiving in New Netherland as
in Holland; they were known by a peculiar double name, fast-prayer and
thank-day. These days did not develop among the Dutch in the new world
into the position of importance they held among English colonists. In
1644 the first public Thanksgiving Day whose record has come down to us
was proclaimed in gratitude for the safe return of the Dutch warriors
after a battle with the Connecticut Indians on Strickland’s Plains near
Stamford. A second Thanksgiving service was announced for the 6th of
September, 1645, whereon God was to be “specially thanked, praised, and
blessed for suffering” the long-wished-for peace with the Indians.
This service was held on Wednesday, which was usually the chosen day of
the week. In 1654, at a Thanksgiving ordered on account of the peace
established between England and the Netherlands, services were to be
held in the morning; the citizens were to be permitted “to indulge in
all moderate festivities and rejoicings as the event recommends and
their Situation Shall permit.” That these festivities were not always
decorous is shown by the fining and punishment of some young lads for
drunkenness on one Thanksgiving Day.
Various were the causes of the commemorative services: peace between
Spain and the Fatherland; the prosperity of the province, its peace,
increased people, and trade; a harvest of self-sown grain (the fields
having been deserted for fear of Indians). In 1664 Domine Brown, of
Wyltwyck, asked for an established annual Thanksgiving; but there are
no records to show that this desire was carried out, though from 1690
to 1710 they were held almost every year.
CHAPTER XI
AMUSEMENTS AND SPORTS
Daniel Denton, one of the original settlers of Jamaica, Long Island,
wrote “A briefe Description of New York” in 1670. When he speaks of
the “fruits natural to the island” of Long Island, he ends his account
thus:--
“Such abundance of strawberries is in June that the fields and woods
are dyed red; which the country people perceiving, instantly arm
themselves with bottles of wine, cream, and sugar, and instead of
a coat of Mail every one takes a Female upon his Horse behind him,
and so rushing violently into the fields, never leave till they have
disrobed them of their red colors and turned them into the old habit.”
“Rushing violently into the fields” seems to have been the normal
condition of all the colonists as soon as the tardy American “spring
came slowly up the way.” On every hand they turned eagerly to open-air
outings. Houses chafed them; gipsy-like were they in their love of
fresh air and the country wilds.
In New York were the bouweries close at hand; and Nutten Island (now
Governor’s Island), “by y^e making of a garden and planting severall
walks of fruit trees in it,” made a pretty outing-spot. Mrs. Grant
wrote at length of the Albany youth and their love of out-of-door
excursions:--
“In spring, eight or ten of the young people of one company, or
related to each other, young men and maidens, would set out together
in a canoe on a kind of rural excursion, of which amusement was the
object. Yet so fixed were their habits of industry that they never
failed to carry their work-baskets with them, not as a form, but as
an ingredient necessarily mixed with their pleasures. They had no
attendants, and steered a devious course of four, five, or perhaps
more miles, till they arrived at some of the beautiful islands with
which this fine river abounded, or at some sequestered spot on its
banks, where delicious wild fruits, or particular conveniences for
fishing, afforded some attraction. There they generally arrived by
nine or ten o’clock, having set out in the cool and early hour of
sunrise.... A basket with tea, sugar, and the other usual provisions
for breakfast, with the apparatus for cooking it; a little rum and
fruit for making cool weak punch, the usual beverage in the middle of
the day, and now and then some cold pastry, was the sole provision;
for the great affair was to depend on the sole exertions of the boys
in procuring fish, wild ducks, &c., for their dinner. They were all,
like Indians, ready and dexterous with the axe, gun, &c. Whenever they
arrived at their destination, they sought out a dry and beautiful spot
opposite to the river, and in an instant with their axes cleared so
much superfluous shade or shrubbery as left a semicircular opening,
above which they bent and twined the boughs, so as to form a pleasant
bower, while the girls gathered dried branches, to which one of the
youths soon set fire with gunpowder, and the breakfast, a very regular
and cheerful one, occupied an hour or two. The young men then set out
to fish, or perhaps to shoot birds, and the maidens sat busily down to
their work. After the sultry hours had been thus employed, the boys
brought their tribute from the river or the wood, and found a rural
meal prepared by their fair companions, among whom were generally
their sisters and the chosen of their hearts. After dinner they all
set out together to gather wild strawberries, or whatever other
fruit was in season; for it was accounted a reflection to come home
empty-handed. When wearied of this amusement, they either drank tea
in their bower, or, returning, landed at some friend’s on the way, to
partake of that refreshment.”
Suburban taverns were much resorted to at a little later date by all
town-folk, and “ladies and gentlemen were entertained in the genteelest
manner.” New Yorkers specially liked the fish-dinners furnished at an
inn perched on Brooklyn Heights; and twice a week they could drive to
a turtle-feast at a beloved retreat on the East River, always taking
much care to return over the Kissing Bridge, where, says with approval
a reverend gentleman, a traveller of ante-Revolutionary days, “it is
part of the etiquette to salute the lady who has put herself under
your protection.” More idyllic still was the rowing across the river
to Brooklyn, to the noble tulip-tree near the ferry, with its great
spreading shadowy branches, so cool in summer suns, and glorious with
tropical blooms, and hospitable with a vast shining hollow trunk which
would hold six or eight happy summer revellers within the sheltering
walls. Would I could sing The Tulip-Tree as Cowper did The Sofa; with
its happy summer groups, its beauty, its pathetic end, and the simple
joys it sheltered,--as extinct as the species to which the tree itself
belongs!
Occasional glimpses of pretty country hospitality in country homes
are afforded through old-time letters. One of the Rutherfurd letters
reads:--
“We were very elegantly entertained at the Clarks’, and everything of
their own production. By way of amusement after dinner we all went
into the garden to pick roses. We gathered a large basket full, and
prepared them for distilling. As I had never seen Rose-water made,
Mrs. Clark got her still and set it going, and made several bottles
while we were there. They were extremely civil, and begged us whenever
we rode that way in the evening to stop and take a syllabub with them.”
This certainly presents a very dainty scene; the sweet June
rose-garden, the delicate housewifery, the drinking of syllabubs make
it seem more French than plain New York Dutch in tone and color.
The Dutch were no haters of games as were the Puritans; games were
known and played even in the time of the first settlers. Steven Janse
had a _tick-tack bort_ at Fort Orange. Tick-tack was a complicated
kind of backgammon, played with both men and pegs. “The Compleat
Gamester” says tick-tack is so called from touch and take, for if you
touch a man you must play him though to your loss. “Tick-tacking” was
prohibited during time of divine service in New Amsterdam in 1656.
Another Dutch tapster had a trock-table, which Florio says was “a kind
of game used in England with casting little bowles at a boord with
thirteen holes in it.” A trock-table was a table much like a pool
table, on which an ivory ball was struck under a wire wicket by a cue.
Trock was also played on the grass,--a seventeenth-century modification
of croquet. Of bowling we hear plenty of talk; it was universally
played, from clergy down to negro slaves, and a famous street in New
York, the Bowling Green, perpetuates its popularity. The English
brought card-playing and gaming, to which the Dutch never abandoned
themselves.
By the middle of the eighteenth century we find more amusements and
a gayer life. The first regularly banded company of comedians which
played in New York strayed thence from Philadelphia in March, 1750,
where they had been bound over to good behavior, and where their
departure had given much joy to a disgusted Quaker community. It was
called Murray and Kean’s company, and sprung up in Philadelphia like a
toadstool in a night, from whence or how no one knows. The comedians
announced their “sitting down” in New York for the season. They opened
with King Richard III., “written by Shakespeare and improved by Colley
Cibber.” They also played “The Beau in the Sudds,” “The Spanish Fryer,”
“The Orphan,” “The Beau’s Stratagem,” “The Constant Couple,” “The
Lying Valet,” “The Twin Rivals,” “Colin and Phœbe,” “Love for Love,”
“The Stagecoach,” “The Recruiting Officer,” “Cato,” “Amphitryon,” “Sir
Harry Wildair,” “George Barnwell,” “Bold Stroke for a Wife,” “Beggar’s
Opera,” “The Mock Doctor,” “The Devil to Pay,” “The Fair Penitent,”
“The Virgin Unmasked,” “Miss in her Teens,” and a variety of pantomimes
and farces. This was really a very good series of bills, but the actors
were a sorry lot. One was a redemptioner, Mrs. Davis, and she had a
benefit to help to buy her freedom; another desired a benefit, as he
was “just out of prison.” They were in town ten months, and seem to
have been on very friendly terms with the public, borrowing single
copies of plays to study from, having constant benefits, ending with
one for Mr. Kean, in which one Mrs. Taylor was “out so much in her
part” that she had to be apologized for afterwards in the newspapers.
She had a benefit shortly after, at which, naturally and properly,
there “wasn’t much company.” Miss George at her benefit had bad weather
and other disappointments, and tried it over again. At last Mr. Kean,
“by the advice of several Gentlemen having resolv’d to quit the stage
and follow his Employment of writing and hopes for Encouragement,”
sold his half of “his cloaths” and the stage effects for a benefit,
at which if the house had been full to overflowing the whole receipts
would not have been more than two hundred and fifty dollars. John
Tremain also “declined the stage” and went to cabinet-making,--“plain
and scallopt tea-tables, etc.,”--which was very sensible, since tea was
more desired than the drama. A new company sprung up, but “mett with
small encouragement,” though the company “assured the Publick they are
Perfect and hope to Perform to Satisfaction.” Perhaps the expression
“the Part of Lavinia will be _Attempted_ by Mrs. Tremain” was a wise
one. All this was at a time when a good theatrical company could easily
have been obtained in England, where the art of the actor was at a high
standard.
We gain a notion of some rather trying manners at these theatres. The
English custom of gentlemen’s crowding on the stage increased to such
an extent, and proved so deleterious to any good representation of the
play, that the manager advertised in “Gaines’ Mercury,” in 1762, that
no spectators would be permitted to stand or sit on the stage during
the performance. And also a reproof was printed to “the person so very
rude as to throw Eggs from the Gallery upon the stage, to the injury of
Cloaths.”
For some years a Mr. Bonnin, a New York fishmonger, entertained his
fellow-citizens and those of neighboring towns with various scientific
exhibits, lectures, camera obscuras, “prospects” and “perspectives,”
curious animals, “Philosophical-Optical machines” and wax-works, and
manifold other performances, which he ingeniously altered and renamed.
He was a splendid advertiser. The newspapers of the times contain
many of his attempts to catch the public attention. I give two as an
example:--
“We hear that Mr. Bonnin is so crouded with company to view his
Perspectives, that he can scarce get even so much time as to eat,
drink or say his Prayers, from the time he gets out of bed till He
repairs to it again: and it is the Opinion of some able Physicians
that if he makes rich, it must be at the Expense of the Health of his
Body, and of some Learned Divines it must be at the Expense of the
Welfare of His Soul.”
“The common topics of discourse here since the coming of Mr. Bonnin
are entirely changed. Instead of the common chat nothing is scarce
mentioned now but the most entertaining parts of Europe which are
represented so lively in Mr. Bonnin’s curious Prospects.”
Mr. Bonnin is now but a shadow of the past, vanished like his puppets
into nowhere; in his own far “perspective” of a century and a half, he
seems to me amusing; at any rate, he was all that New Yorkers had many
times to amuse them; and I think he must have been a jolly lecturer,
when he was such a jolly advertiser.
Also in evidence before the public was one Pachebell, a musician. The
following is one of his advertisements in the year 1734:--
“On Wednesday the 21st of January instant there will be a Consort of
music, vocal and instrumental for the benefit of Mr. Pachebell, the
harpsicord parts performed by himself. The songs, violins and German
flutes by private hands. The Consort will begin precisely at six
o’clock in the house of Robert Todd vintner. Tickets to be had at the
Coffee House at 4 shillings.”
Amateurs often performed for his benefit, and even portions of
oratorios were “attempted.” His “consorts” were said to be ravishing,
and inspired the listeners to rhapsodic poesy, which is more than
can be said of many concerts nowadays. Those who know the “thin
metallic thrills” of a harpsichord--an instrument with no resonance,
mellowness, or singing quality--can reflect upon the susceptibility of
our ancestors, who could melt into sentiment and rhyme over those wiry
vibrations.
The favorite winter amusement in New York, as in Philadelphia, was
riding in sleighs, a fashion which the Dutch brought from Holland. The
English colonists in New England were slower to adopt sleighs for
carriages, and never in early days found sleighing a sport. The bitter
New England weather did not attract sleighers.
Madam Knights, a Boston visitor to New York, wrote in 1704:--
“Their diversion in winter is riding in sleighs about three miles out
of town, where they have houses of entertainment at a place called the
Bowery; and some go to friends’ houses, who handsomely treat them. I
believe we mett fifty or sixty sleighs one day; they fly with great
swiftness, and some are so furious that they turn out for none except
a loaded cart.”
An English parson, one Burnaby, visiting New York in 1759, wrote of
their delightful sleighing-parties; and Mrs. Anne Grant thus adds her
testimony of similar pleasures in Albany:--
“In winter the river, frozen to a great depth, formed the principal
road through the country, and was the scene of all those amusements
of skating and sledge races, common to the north of Europe. They used
in great parties to visit their friends at a distance, and having an
excellent and hardy breed of horses, flew from place to place over
the snow or ice in these sledges with incredible rapidity, stopping a
little while at every house they came to, and always well received
whether acquainted with the owners or not. The night never impeded
these travellers, for the atmosphere was so pure and serene, and the
snow so reflected the moon and star-light, that the nights exceeded
the days in beauty.”
William Livingstone, when he was twenty-one years old, wrote in 1744 of
a “waffle-frolic,” which was an amusement then in vogue:--
“We had the wafel-frolic at Miss Walton’s talked of before your
departure. The feast as usual was preceded by cards, and the company
so numerous that they filled two tables; after a few games, a
magnificent supper appeared in grand order and decorum, but for my
own part I was not a little grieved that so luxurious a feast should
come under the name of a wafel-frolic, because if this be the case I
must expect but a few wafel-frolics for the future; the frolic was
closed up with _ten sunburnt virgins lately come from Columbus’s
Newfoundland_, besides a play of my own invention which I have not
room enough to describe at present. How’ever, kissing constitutes a
great part of its entertainment.”
Kissing seemed to constitute a great part of the entertainment at
evening parties everywhere at that time.
As soon as the English obtained control of New York, they established
English sports and pastimes, among them fox-hunting. Long Island
afforded good sport. During the autumn three days’ hunting was
permitted at Flatbush; in other towns the chase was stolen fun.
A woman-satirist, with a spirited pen, had her fling in rhyme at
fox-hunting. Here are a few of her lines:--
“A fox is killed by twenty men,
That fox perhaps had killed a hen.
A gallant art no doubt is here,
All wicked foxes ought to fear,
When twenty dogs and twenty men
Can kill a fox that killed a hen.”
Fox-hunting was never very congenial, apparently, to those of Dutch
descent and Dutch characteristics; nor was cock-fighting, the
prevalence of which I have noted in the preceding chapter. Occasionally
we hear of the cruel sport of bull-baiting, though not till the latter
half of the eighteenth century. In 1763 the keeper of the DeLancey Arms
on the Bowery Lane gave a bull-baiting. Brooklyn was specially favored
in that respect during the Revolution, when the British officers took
charge of and enjoyed the barbarism, and Landlord Loosely of the
King’s Head Tavern helped in the arrangements and advertising. Good
active bulls and strong dogs were in much demand. The newspapers of
the times contain many advertisements of the sport. One in poor rhyme
begins:--
“This notice gives to all who covet
Baiting the bull and dearly love it.” etc.
I frequently recall, as I pass through a quiet street near my home,
that in the year 1774 a bull-baiting was held there every afternoon for
many months, and I resolutely demolish that hollow idol--the good old
times--and rejoice in humane to-day.
As early as 1665 Governor Nicholls announced that a horse-race would
take place at Hempstead, “not so much for the divertissement of youth
as for encouraging the bettering of the breed of horses which through
great neglect has been impaired.” In 1669 Governor Lovelace gave orders
that a race should be run in May each year, and that subscriptions
should be sent to Captain Salisbury, “of all such as are disposed to
run for a crown in silver or the value thereof in wheat.” This first
course was a naturally level plain called Salisbury Plains, and was so
named after this very Captain Silvester Salisbury, Commander of Royal
Troops in the province, and an enthusiastic sportsman. Its location was
near the present Hyde Park station of Long Island.
Daniel Denton, one of the early settlers of Jamaica, Long Island, wrote
in 1670 thus:--
“Towards the middle of Long Island lieth a plain sixteen miles long
and four broad, upon which plain grows very fine grass that makes
exceeding good hay; where you shall find neither stick nor stone to
hinder the horse-heels, or endanger them in their races, and once a
year the best horses in the island are brought hither to try their
Swiftness and the swiftest rewarded with a silver Cup, two being
Annually procured for the Purpose.”
The “fine grass” was what was known as secretary grass, and, curiously
enough, this great plain was abandoned to this growth of secretary
grass for more than a century after the settlement and cultivation of
surrounding farms; this was through a notion that the soil was too
porous to be worth ploughing. Even a clergyman sent out by the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts testified to the
beauty of Salisbury Plain, calling it “an even delightsome plain, most
sweet and pleasant.” Delightsome it certainly proved to lovers of
horse-racing.
On February 24, 1721, a race was held on this plain which attracted
much attention. The winning horse was owned by Samuel Bayard. The race
was given by “the inhabitants of Queens County on Nassau Island.” The
name of the course had by this time been changed to Newmarket. In 1764
a new course was laid out; and in 1804 the racing moved to a field east
of the Old Court House, and in 1821 it was transferred to the Union
Course on the western border of Jamaica. The story of this course is
familiar to sportsmen.
Frequent newspaper notices call attention to the races held at this
Hempstead Newmarket. From the “New York Postboy” of June 4, 1750, I
quote:--
“On Friday last there was a great horse race on Hempstead Plains which
engaged the attention of so many of the city of New York that upwards
of seventy chairs and chaises were carried over Brooklyn Ferry the day
before, besides a far greater number of horses. The number of horses
on the plains exceeded, it is thought, one thousand.”
In 1764 we find the Macaroni Club offering prizes of £100 and £50. At
those races Mr. James De Lancey’s bay horse Lath won. On September 28,
1769, the same horse Lath won a £100 race in Philadelphia.
In October, 1770, Jacob Hiltzheimer, a well-known lover and breeder
of horses in Philadelphia, went to the races on Hempstead Plains,
and lodged at a “public house” in Jamaica, with various other
gentlemen,--lovers of races. Two purses of £50 were given, but Mr.
Hiltzheimer’s chestnut horse Regulus did not win.
A London racing-book of 1776 says of this Hempstead course:--
“These plains were celebrated for their races throughout all the
Colonies and even in England. They were held twice a year for a silver
cup, to which the gentry of New England and New York resorted.”
Another famous race-course of colonial days was the one-mile course
around Beaver Pond in Jamaica. This was laid out before the year 1757,
for on June 13 of that year a subscription plate was won by Lewis
Morris, Jr., with his horse American Childers. Another course was at
Newtown in 1758, and another at New Lots in 1778.
I find frequent allusions in the colonial press to the Beaver Pond
course. The “New York Mercury” of 1763 tells of a “Free Masons’
Purse”--for best two in three heats, each heat three times round Beaver
Pond--free-masons were to be “inspectors” of this race.
At the time of the possession of Brooklyn and western Long Island by
the British during the Revolutionary War, there constantly went on a
succession of sporting events of all kinds under the direction of the
English officers and a notorious tavern-keeper Loosely, already named,
who seemed to devote every energy to the amusement of the English
invaders. An advertisement in “Rivington’s Gazette” November 4, 1780,
reads thus:--
“By Permission Three Days’ Sport on Ascot Heath formerly Flatlands
Plain on Monday. 1. The Noblemen’s and Gentlemen’s Purse of £60 free
for any horse except Mr. Wortman’s and Mr. Allen’s Dulcimore who won
the plate at Beaver Pond last season. 2. A Saddle, bridle, and whip,
worth £15 for ponies not exceeding 13¹⁄₂ hands. Tuesday. 1. Ladies’
Subscription Purse of £50. 2. To be run for by women, a Holland smock
and Chintz Gown full-trimmed; to run the two in three quarter-miles;
first to have the smock and gown of four guineas value; second, a
guinea; third half a guinea. Wednesday. Country Subscription Purse of
£50. No person will erect a booth or sell liquor without subscribing 2
guineas to expenses of races. Gentlemen fond of fox-hunting will meet
at Loosely’s Kings Head Tavern at day break during the races. God Save
the King played every hour.”
It will be seen by this advertisement that the rough and rollicking
ways of English holidays were introduced in this woman’s-race. The
women who ran those quarter-miles must have been some camp-followers,
for I am sure no honest Long Island country-girls would have
taken part. At other races on this freshly named “Ascot Heath”
hurling-matches and bull-baitings and lotteries added their zest, and
on April 27, 1782, there was a three hundred guineas sweep-stakes
race. These races were held at short intervals until October, 1783,
when English sports and English cruelties no longer held sway on Long
Island.
At these races, given under martial rule, some rather crooked
proceedings were taken to recruit the field and keep up the interest;
and good horses for many miles around were watched carefully by their
owners; and when a gentleman attending the races viewed with surprised
and indignant recognition his own horse which had been stolen from him,
he promptly applied for restitution to Mr. Cornell, of Brooklyn, who
had entered the horse; and when the race was finished, the horse was
returned to its rightful owner.
Other localities developed race-courses. “At Captain Tim Cornell’s
Poles, on Hempstead Plains,” Eclipse and Sturdy Beggar ran for “Fifty
Joes” on March 14, 1781. In 1783 Eclipse and Young Slow and Easy ran
for a purse of two hundred guineas. At Far Rockaway, in 1786, Jacob
Hicks, “from a wish to gratify sportsmen,” laid out a mile course
and offered prizes where no “trussing, jostling, or foul play were
countenanced; if detected, the rider will be pronounced distanced.”
On Manhattan Island were several other race-courses. In 1742, a race
was run on the Church Farm, just a stone’s throw north-west of where
the Astor House now stands. I have seen many notices of races on this
Church Farm which was the valuable Trinity Church property. In October,
1726, a Subscription Plate of twenty pounds was run for “on the Course
at New York.” The horses were entered with Francis Child on Fresh
Water Hill. Entrance fee was half a pistole. Admission to the public,
sixpence each. In the 1750 October runs, Mr. Lewis Morris, Jr.’s horse
won on the Church Farm course. The chief racing stables in the province
of New York were those of Mr. Morris and of Mr. James De Lancey. The
former won a reputation with American Childers; the latter with his
imported horse Lath. The De Lancey stables were the most costly ones
in the north; their colors were seen on every course for ten years
previous to the Revolution, and they were patrons of all English
sports. A famous horse of James De Lancey’s was True Briton. It is told
of this horse that Oliver De Lancey would jump him back and forth from
a standstill over a five-barred gate. There was a course at Greenwich
Village on the estate of Sir Peter Warren, and one at Harlem, another
at Newburgh.
Many advertisements of other races with names of horses and owners
might be added to this list; but I think I have given a sufficient
number to disprove the vague assertions of Frank Forester and other
writers of the history of the horse in America, that little attention
was paid to horse-raising in the northern provinces, and that there
were a few races on Long Island previous to the Revolution, but it is
not known whether taking place regularly, or for given prizes. There
was no racing-calendar in America till 1829, but there are other ways
of learning of races.
CHAPTER XII
CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS
The court records of any period in our American history are an
unfailing source of profit and delight to the historian. In the town
or state whose colonial records still exist there can ever be drawn a
picture not only of the crimes and punishments, but of the manners,
occupations, and ways of our ancestors and a knowledge can be gained of
the social ethics, the morality, the modes of thought, the intelligence
of dead-and-gone citizens. We learn that they had daily hopes and plans
and interests and harassments just such as our own, as well as vices
and wickedness.
In spite of Chancellor Kent’s assertion of their dulness and lack of
interest, the court records of Dutch colonial times are not to me dull
reading; quaint humor and curious terms abound; the criminal records
always are interesting; even the old _reken-boeks_ (the account-books)
are of value. These first sources give an unbiassed and well-outlined
picture, sometimes a surprising and almost irreconcilable one; for
instance, I had always a fixed notion that the early women-colonists
of Dutch birth were wholly a quiet, reserved, even timid group; not
talkative and never aggressive. It was therefore a great thrust at my
established ideas to discover, when poring over an old “Road Book” at
the Hall of Records in Brooklyn, containing some entries of an early
Court of Sessions, an account of the trial of two dames of Bushwyck,
Mistress Jonica Schampf and Widow Rachel Luquer, for assaulting the
captain of the Train-Band, Captain Peter Praa, on training-day in
October, 1690, while he was at the head of his company. These two
vixens most despitefully used him; they beat him, pulled his hair,
assaulted and wounded him, and committed “other Ivill Inormities, so
that his life was despaired of.” And there was no evidence to show
that any of his soldiers, or any of the spectators present, interfered
to save either Peter’s life or his honor. The offence which provoked
this assault is not even hinted at, though it may have arisen from the
troubled state of public affairs. Captain Praa was a man of influence
and dignity in the community, an exiled Huguenot, of remarkable skill
in horsemanship and arms. In spite of all this, it appears probable
that the sentiment of the community was in sympathy with the two
turbulent assaulters and batterers, for they were fined only six
shillings and three pounds respectively. They threw themselves on the
mercy of the Court, and certainly were treated with mercy.
There are, however, few women-criminals named in the old Dutch and
early English records, and these few were not prosecuted for any very
great crimes or viciousness; the chief number were brought up for
defamation of character and slander, though men-slanderers were more
plentiful than women. The close intimacy, the ideal neighborliness of
the Dutch communities of New York made the settlers deeply abhor all
violations of the law of social kindness. To preserve this state of
amity, they believed with Chaucer “the first vertue is to restraine and
kepen wel thine tonge.”
The magistrates knew how vast a flame might be kindled by a petty
spark; and therefore promptly quenched the odious slander in its
beginning; petty quarrels were adjusted by arbitration ere they grew
to great breaches. As sung the chorus of Batavian women in Van der
Vondel’s great poem:--
“If e’er dispute or discord dared intrude,
’Twas soon by wisdom’s voice subdued.”
In spite, however, of all wariness and watchfulness and patience, the
inevitable fretfulness engendered in petty natures by a narrow and
confined life showed in neighborhood disputes and suits for defamation
of character, few of them of great seriousness and most of them easily
adjusted by the phlegmatic and somewhat dictatorial Dutch magistrates.
In a community so given to nicknaming it seems strange to find such
extreme touchiness about being called names. Suits for defamation were
frequent, through opprobrious name-calling, and on very slight though
irritating grounds. It would certainly seem a rather disproportionate
amount of trouble to bring a lawsuit simply because you were called a
“black pudding,” or a _verklickker_, or tale-bearer, or even a “Turk;”
though, of course, no one would stand being called a “horned beast”
or a “hay thief.” Nor was “Thou swine” an offensive term too petty to
be passed over in silence. The terrible epithets, _spitter-baard_ and
“Dutch dough-face,” seem to make a climax of opprobriousness; but the
word _moff_ was worse, for it was the despised term applied in Holland
to the Germans, and it led to a quarrel with knives.
I wish to note in passing that though the Dutch called each other these
disagreeable and even degrading names, they did not swear at each
other. Profanity was seldom punished in New Amsterdam, for practically
it did not exist, as was remarked by travellers. Chaplain Wolley told
of “the usual oath” of one Dutch colonist,--the word “sacrament.”
The colonists were impatient of insulting actions as well as words.
Sampson said in “Romeo and Juliet,” “I will bite my thumb at them,
which is a disgrace to them _if they bear it_;” so “finger-sticking”
was a disgrace in colonial times _if unresented_, and it was actionable
in the courts. The man or woman who pointed the finger of scorn at a
neighbor was pretty sure to have the finger of the law pointed at him.
The curious practice of the Dutch settlers alluded to--the giving of
nicknames--may be partly explained by the fact that in some cases
the persons named had no surname, and the nickname was really a
distinguishing name. These nicknames appear not only in the records
of criminal cases, but in official documents such as the patents for
towns, transfers of estates, civil contracts, etc. In Albany, in 1655
and 1657, we find Jan the Jester, Huybert the Rogue, Jacobus or Cobus
the Looper, squint-eyed Harmen, the wicked Domine. On Long Island were
John the Swede, Hans the Boor, Tunis the Fisher. In Harlem was Jan
Archer the Koop-all (or buy-all). In New York, in English days, in
1691, we find Long Mary, Old Bush, Top-knot Betty, Scarebouch. These
names conveyed no offence, and seem to have been universally adopted
and responded to.
It would appear to a casual observer glancing over the court-records
of those early years of New York life under Dutch supremacy, that the
greater number of the cases brought before the magistrates were these
slander and libel cases. We could believe that no other court-room
ever rang with such petty personal suits; to use Tennyson’s words,
“it bubbled o’er with gossip and scandal and spite.” But in truth
slander was severely punished in all the colonies, in New England,
Virginia, Pennsylvania; and it is not to the detriment of the citizens
of New Netherland that they were more sharp in the punishment of such
offences, for it is well known, as Swift says, that the worthiest
people are those most injured by slander.
The slander cases of colonial times seem most trivial and even absurd
when seen through the mist of years. They could scarce reach the
dignity of Piers Plowman’s definition of slanders:--
“To bakbyten, and to bosten, and to bere fals witnesse
To scornie and to scolde, sclaundres to make.”
To show their character, let me give those recorded in which Thomas
Applegate of Gravesend, Long Island, took an accused part. In
1650, he was brought up before the Gravesend court for saying of a
fellow-towns-man that “he thought if his debts were paid he would have
little left.” For this incautious but not very heinous speech he paid a
fine of forty guilders. The next year we find him prosecuted for saying
of a neighbor that “he had not half a wife.” Though he at first denied
this speech, he was ordered “to make publick acknowledgement of error;
to stand at the publick post with a paper on his breast mentioning the
reason, that he is a notorious, scandalous person.” This brought him
to his senses, and he confessed his guilt, desired the slandered “half
a wife” to “pass it by and remit it, which she freely did and he gave
her thanks.” Next Mistress Applegate was brought up for saying that a
neighbor’s wife milked the Applegate cows. She escaped punishment by
proving that Penelope Prince told her so. As a climax, Thomas Applegate
said to a friend that he believed that the Governor took bribes. The
_schout_ in his decision on this grave offence said Applegate “did
deserve to have his tongue bored through with a hot iron;” but this
fierce punishment was not awarded him, nor was he banished.
When the tailor of New Amsterdam said disrespectful words of the
Governor, his sentence was that he “stand before the Governor’s door
with uncovered head, after the ringing of the bell, and to declare that
he falsely and scandalously issued such words and then to ask God’s
pardon.”
The magistrates were very touchy of their dignity. Poor Widow Piertje
Jans had her house sold on an execution; and, exasperated by the
proceeding, and apparently also at the price obtained, she said
bitterly to the officers, “Ye despoilers, ye bloodsuckers, ye have
not sold but given away my house.” Instead of treating these as the
heated words of a disappointed and unhappy woman, the officers promptly
ran tattling to the Stadt Huys and whiningly complained to the Court
that her words were “a sting which could not be endured.” Piertje
was in turn called shameful; her words were termed “foul, villanous,
injurious, nay, infamous words,” and also called a blasphemy, insult,
affront, and reproach. She was accused of insulting, defaming,
affronting, and reproaching the Court, and that she was in the highest
degree reprimanded, particularly corrected, and severely punished; and
after being forbidden to indulge in any more such blasphemies, she was
released,--“bethumped with words,” as Shakespeare said,--doubtless well
scared at the enormity of her offence, as well as at the enormity of
the magistrate’s phraseology.
The notary Walewyn van der Veen was frequently in trouble, usually for
contempt of court. And I doubt not “the little bench of justices” was
sometimes rather trying in its ways to a notary who knew anything about
law. On one occasion, when a case relating to a bill of exchange had
been decided against him, Van der Veen spoke of their High Mightinesses
the magistrates as “simpletons and blockheads.” This was the scathing
sentence of his punishment:--
“That Walewyn Van der Veen, for his committed insult, shall here beg
forgiveness, with uncovered head, of God, Justice, and the Worshipful
Court, and moreover pay as a fine 190 guilders.”
This fine must have consumed all his fees for many a weary month
thereafter, if we can judge by the meagre lawyers’ bills which have
come down to us.
Another time the contumacious Van der Veen called the Secretary a
rascal. Thereat, the latter, much aggrieved, demanded “honorable and
profitable reparation” for the insult. The _schout_ judged this epithet
to be a slander and an affront to the Secretary, which “affected his
honor, being tender,” and the honor of the Court as well, since it was
to a member of the Court, and he demanded that the notary should pay
a fine of fifty guilders as an example to other slanderers, “who for
trifles have constantly in their mouths curses and abuses of other
honorable people.”
Another well-known notary and practitioner and pleader in the busy
little Court held in the Stadt Huys was Solomon La Chair. His
manuscript volume of nearly three hundred pages, containing detailed
accounts of all the business he transacted in Manhattan, is now in the
County Clerk’s Office in New York, and proves valuable material for the
historiographer. He had much business, for he could speak and write
both English and Dutch; and he was a faithful, painstaking, intelligent
worker. He not only conducted lawsuits for others, but he seems to
have been in constant legal hot water himself on his own account. He
was sued for drinking and not paying for a can of sugared wine; and
also for a half-aam of costly French wine; and he was sued for the
balance of payment for a house he had purchased; he pleaded for more
time, and with the ingenuous guilelessness peculiar to the law said in
explanation that he had had the money gathered at one time for payment,
but it had somehow dropped through his fingers. “The Court condemned to
pay at once,”--not being taken in by any such simplicity as that. He
had to pay a fine of twelve guilders for affronting both fire inspector
and court messenger. He first insulted the _brandt-meester_ who came to
inspect his chimney, and was fined, then he called the _bode_ who came
to collect the fine “a little cock booted and spurred.” The Court in
sentence said with dignity, “It is not meet that men should mock and
scoff at persons appointed to any office, yea a necessary office.”
He won one important suit for the town of Gravesend, by which the right
of that town to the entire region of Coney Island was established; and
he received in payment for his legal services therein, the munificent
sum of twenty-four florins (ten dollars) paid in gray pease. He kept
a tavern and was complained of for tapping after nine o’clock; and
he was sued by his landlord for rent; and he had a yacht, “The Pear
Tree,” which ran on trading trips to Albany, and there were two or
three lawsuits in regard to that. He was also a farmer of the excise
on slaughtered cattle; but, in spite of all his energy and variety of
employment, he died insolvent in 1664. The last lawsuit in which Lawyer
Solomon had any share was through a posthumous connection,--the burgher
who furnished an anker of French wine for the notary’s funeral claimed
a position as preferred creditor to the estate.
A very aggravated case of scorn and resistance of authority was that
of Abel Hardenbrock against the _schout_ de Mill. And this case shows
equally the popular horror of violations of the law and the confiding
trust of the justices that the word of the law was enough without
any visible restraining force. Hardenbrock, who was a troublesome
fellow, had behaved most vilely, shoving the _schout_ on the breast,
and wickedly “wishing the devil might break his neck,” simply because
the _schout_ went to Hardenbrock’s house to warn his wife not to
annoy further Burgomaster De Peyster by unwelcome visits. Hardenbrock
was accordingly seized and made a prisoner at the Stadt Huys “in
the chamber of Pieter Schaefbanck, where he carried on and made a
racket like one possessed and mad, notwithstanding the efforts of
Heer Burgomaster Van Brught, running up to the Court room and going
away next morning as if he had not been imprisoned.” It was said with
amusing simplicity that this cool walking out of prison was “contrary
to the customs of the law,” and a fine of twenty-five florins was
imposed.
For serious words against the government, which could be regarded
as treasonable, the decreed punishment was death. One Claerbout van
ter Goes used such words (unfortunately they are not given in the
indictment), and a judgment was recorded from each burgomaster and
_schepen_ as to what punishment would be proper. He was branded,
whipped on a half-gallows, and banished, and escaped hanging only by
one vote.
All classes in the community were parties in these petty slander suits;
schoolmasters and parsons appear to have been specially active.
Domine Bogardus and Domine Schaets had many a slander suit. The most
famous and amusing of all these clerical suits is the one brought by
Domine Bogardus and his wife, the posthumously famous Anneke Jans,
against Grietje von Salee, a woman of very dingy reputation, who told
in New Amsterdam that the domine’s wife, Mistress Anneke, had lifted
her petticoats in unseemly and extreme fashion when crossing a muddy
street. This was proved to be false, and the evidence adduced was so
destructive of Grietje’s character that she stands disgraced forever in
history as the worst woman in New Netherland.
Not only were slanderers punished, but they were disgraced with
terrible names. William Bakker was called “a blasphemer, a street
schold, a murderer as far as his intentions are concerned, a defamer, a
disturber of public peace,”--the concentration of which must have made
William Bakker hang his head in the place of his banishment. They were
also rebuked from the pulpit, and admonished in private.
Perhaps the best rebuke given, as well as a unique one, was the one
adopted by Domine Frelinghuysen, who had suffered somewhat from slander
himself. He had this rhyme painted in large letters on the back of his
sleigh, that he who followed might read:--
“Niemands tong; nog neimands pen,
Maakt my anders dan ik ben.
Spreek quaad-spreekers: spreek vonder end,
Niemand en word van u geschend.”
Which, translated into English, reads:--
“No one’s tongue, and no one’s pen
Makes me other than I am.
Speak, evil-speakers, speak without end,
No one heeds a word you say.”
The original Court of the colony was composed of a Director and his
Council. In 1656, in answer to complaints from the colonists, the
States-General ordered the election of a board of magistrates, in
name and function like those of the Fatherland; namely, a _schout_,
two burgomasters, and five _schepens_. The duties of the burgomasters
and _schepens_ were twofold: they regulated municipal affairs like a
board of aldermen, and they sat as a court of justice both in civil and
criminal cases. The annual salary of a burgomaster was fixed at one
hundred and forty dollars, and of a _schepen_ at one hundred dollars;
but as these salaries were to come out of the municipal chest, which
was chronically empty, they never were paid. When funds did come in
from the excise on taverns, on slaughtered cattle, the tax on land,
the fees on transfers, etc., it always had to be paid out in other
ways,--for repairs for the school-room, the _Graft_, the watch-room,
the Stadt Huys. It never entered the minds of those guileless civic
rulers, two centuries ago, to pay themselves and let the other
creditors go without. The early city _schout_ was also _schout-fiskaal_
till 1660; but the proper duties of this functionary were really
a combination of those pertaining now to the mayor, sheriff, and
district-attorney. In the little town one man could readily perform
all these duties. He also presided in Court. An offender could thus be
arrested, prosecuted, and judged, by one and the same person, which
seems to us scarcely judicious; but the bench of magistrates had one
useful power, that of mitigating and altering the sentence demanded by
the _schout_. Often a fine of one hundred guilders would be reduced to
twenty-five; often the order for whipping would be set aside, and the
command of branding as well.
Sometimes justice in New York was tempered with mercy, and sorely it
needed it when fierce English rule and law came in force. Felons were
few, but these few were severely punished. A record of a trial in 1676
reveals a curious scene in Court, as well as an astonishing celerity in
the execution of the law under English rule and in the English army.
Three soldiers stole a couple of iron pots, two hoes, a pair of shears,
and half a firkin of soap. They were tried in the morning, confessed,
cast into “the Hole” in the afternoon, and in the evening “the Governor
ordered some persons to go to the prisoners and advise them to prepare
for another world, for that one of them should dye the next day.” On
the gloomy morrow, on Saturday, the three terror-stricken souls drew
lots, and the fatal lot fell to one Thomas Weale. The court of aldermen
interceded for him and finally secured his reprieve till Monday. The
peaceful Dutch Sunday, darkened and shocked by this impending death,
saw a strange and touching sight.
“In the evening a company of the chiefe women of the City, both
English and Dutch, made earnest suite to the Governor for the
Condemned man’s life. Monday in the morning the same women who came
the last night with many others of the better sort, and a greater
number of the ordinary Dutch women, did again very much importune the
Governor to spare him.”
These tender-hearted colonists were indorsed and supplemented by the
petition of Weale’s fellow-soldiers in the garrison, who pleaded the
prisoner’s youth and his past usefulness, and who promised if he were
pardoned never to steal nor to conceal theft. As a result of all this
intercession, the Governor “graciously” granted pardon.
This promise and pardon seem to have accomplished much in army
discipline, for thereafter arrests for crime among the soldiery were
rare. Five years later a soldier was accused of pilfering.
“The Court Marshall doth adjudge that the said Melchoir Classen shall
run the Gantlope once, the length of the fort: where according to
the custome of that punishment, the souldiers shall have switches
delivered to them, with which they shall strike him as he passes
between them stript to the waist, and at the Fort-gate the Marshall
is to receive him, and there to kick him out of the Garrison as a
cashiered person, when he is no more to returne, and if any pay is due
him it is to be forfeited.”
And that was the end of Melchoir Classen.
Gantlope was the earlier and more correct form of the word now commonly
called gantlet. Running the gantlope was a military punishment in
universal use.
Another common punishment for soldiers (usually for rioting or
drinking) was riding the wooden horse. In New Amsterdam the wooden
horse stood between Paerel Street and the Fort, and was twelve feet
high. Garret Segersen, for stealing chickens, rode the wooden horse
for three days from two o’clock to close of parade with a fifty-pound
weight tied to each foot. At other times a musket was tied to each foot
of the disgraced man. One culprit rode with an empty scabbard in one
hand and a pitcher in the other to show his inordinate love for John
Barleycorn. Jan Alleman, a Dutch officer, challenged Jan de Fries, who
was _bedridden_; for this cruel and meaningless insult he too rode the
wooden horse. In Revolutionary days we still find the soldiers of the
Continental Army punished by riding the wooden horse, or, as it was
sometimes called, “the timber mare;” but it was probably a modification
of the cruel punishment of the seventeenth century.
A sailor, for drawing a knife on a companion, was dropped three times
from the yard-arm and received a kick from every sailor on the ship,--a
form of running the gantlope. And we read of a woman who enlisted as a
seaman, and whose sex was detected, being dropped three times from the
yard-arm and tarred and feathered.
These women petitioners for Soldier Weale of whom I have told, were
not the only tender-hearted New Yorkers to petition for “mercy, that
herb of grace, to flower.” During Stuyvesant’s rule his sister,
Madam Bayard, successfully interceded for the release, and thereby
saved the life, of an imprisoned Quaker; and in September, 1713, two
counterfeiters were saved from the death penalty by the intervention of
New York dames. We read, “Most of the gentlewomen of the city waited
on the Governor, and addressed him earnestly with prayers and tears
for the lives of the culprits, who were accordingly pardoned.” When
two sailors rioted through the town demanding food and drink, and used
Carel Van Brugh so roughly that his face was cut, they were sentenced
to be fastened to the whipping-post, and scourged, and have gashes cut
in their faces; the wife of Van Brugh and her friends petitioned that
the sentence should not be carried out, or at any rate executed within
a room. Doubtless other examples could be found.
The laws of New Netherland were naturally based upon the laws and
customs of the Fatherland, which in turn were formed by the rules of
the College of XIX. from the Imperial Statutes of Charles V. and the
Roman civil law.
The punishments were the ordinary ones of the times, neither more
nor less severe than those of the Fatherland or the other colonies.
In 1691 it was ordered that a ducking-stool be erected in New York
on the wharf in front of the City Hall. The following year an order
was passed that a pillory, cage, and ducking-stool be built. Though
scolds were punished, I have never seen any sentence to show that
this ducking-stool was ever built, or that one was ever used in New
York; while instances of the use of a ducking-stool are comparatively
plentiful in the Southern colonies. The ducking-stool was an English
“engine” of punishment, not a Dutch.
The colonists were astonishingly honest. Thieves were surprisingly few;
they were punished under Dutch rule by scourging with rods, and usually
by banishment,--a very convenient way of shifting responsibility.
Assaults were punished by imprisonment and subjection to prison fare,
consisting only of bread and water or _small beer_; and sometimes
temporary banishment. There was at first no prison, so men were often
imprisoned in their own houses, which does not seem very disgraceful.
In the case of François de Bruyn, tried for insulting and striking the
court messenger, he was fined two hundred guilders, and answered that
he would rot in prison before he would pay. He was then ordered to be
imprisoned _in a respectable tavern_, which sentence seems to have some
possibility of mitigating accompaniments.
In 1692 it was ordered in Kings County that a good pair of stocks
and a pound be made in every bound within Kings County, and kept
in sufficient repair. In repair and in use were they kept till this
century. Pillories too were employed in punishment till within the
memory of persons now living. The whipping-post was really a public
blessing,--in constant use, and apparently of constant benefit,
though the publicity of its employment seems shocking to us to-day.
The public whipper received a large salary. In 1751, we learn from an
advertisement, it was twenty pounds annually.
Some of the punishments were really almost picturesque in their
ingenious inventions of mortification and degradation. Truly it was
a striking sight when “Jan of Leyden”--a foul-mouthed rogue, a true
_blather-schuyten_--was fastened to a stake in front of the townhouse,
with a bridle in his mouth and a bundle of rods tied under each arm,
and a placard on his breast bearing the inscription, “Lampoon-riter,
false accuser, defamer of magistrates.” Though he was banished, I am
sure he never was forgotten by the children who saw him standing thus
garnished and branded on that spring day in 1664. In the same place a
thief was punished by being forced to stand all day under a gallows,
a gallows-rope around his neck and empty sword-scabbard in his hand, a
memorable figure.
And could any who saw it ever forget the punishment of Mesaack Martens,
who stole six cabbages from his neighbor, and confessed and stood for
days in the pillory with cabbages on his head, that “the punishment
might fit the crime;” to us also memorable because the prisoner was
bootlessly _examined by torture_ to force confession of stealing fowls,
butter, turkeys, etc.
He was not the only poor creature who suffered torture in New
Amsterdam. It was frequently threatened and several times executed.
The mate of a ship was accused of assaulting a sheriff’s officer, who
could not identify positively his assailant. The poor mate was put to
torture, and _he was innocent_ of the offence. The assailant was proved
to be another man from whom the officer had seized a keg of brandy.
Still none in New Amsterdam were tortured or pressed to death. The
blood of no Giles Corey stains the honor of New Netherland.
Sometimes the execution of justice seemed to “set a thief to catch a
thief.” A letter written by an English officer from Fort James on
Manhattan Island to Captain Silvester Salisbury in Fort Albany in 1672
contains this sentence:--
“We had like to have lost our Hang-man Ben Johnson, for he being taken
in Divers Thefts and Robbings convicted and found guilty, escaped his
neck through want of another Hangman to truss him up, soe that all the
punishment that he received for his Three Years’ Roguery in thieving
and stealing (which was never found out till now) was only 39 stripes
at the Whipping Post, loss of an Ear and Banishment.”
We have the records of an attempt at capital punishment in 1641; and
Mr. Gerard’s account of it in his paper “The Old Stadt-Huys” is so
graphic, I wish to give it in full:--
“The court proceedings before the Council, urged by the Fiscal,
were against Jan of Fort Orange, Manuel Gerrit the Giant, Anthony
Portugese, Simon Congo, and five others, all negroes belonging to the
Company, for killing Jan Premero, another negro. The prisoners having
pleaded guilty, and it being rather a costly operation to hang nine
able-bodied negroes belonging to the Company, the sentence was that
they were to draw lots to determine ‘who should be punished with the
cord until death, praying the Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and
Earth, to direct that the lot may fall on the guiltiest, whereupon’
the record reads, ‘the lot fell by God’s Providence on _Manuel Gerrit,
the Giant_, who was accordingly sentenced to be hanged by the neck
until dead as an example to all such malefactors.’ Four days after the
trial, and on the day of the sentence, all _Nieuw Amsterdam_ left its
accustomed work to gaze on the unwonted spectacle. Various Indians
also gathered, wondering, to the scene. The giant negro is brought out
by the black hangman, and placed on the ladder against the fort with
two strong halters around his neck. After an exhortation from Domine
Bogardus during which the negro chaunts barbaric invocations to his
favorite Fetich, he is duly turned off the ladder into the air. Under
the violent struggles and weight of the giant, however, both halters
break. He falls to the ground. He utters piteous cries. Now on his
knees, now twisting and groveling on the earth. The women shriek.
The men join in his prayers for mercy to the stern Director. He is
no trifler and the law must have its course. The hangman prepares
a stronger rope. Finally the cry for mercy is so general that the
Director relents, and the fortunate giant is led off the ground by his
swarthy friends, somewhat disturbed in his intellect by his near view
of the grim King of Terrors.”
Up to February 21, 1788, benefit of clergy existed; that is, the
plea in capital felonies of being able to read. This was a monkish
privilege first extended only to priestly persons. In England it was
not abolished till 1827. The minutes of the Court of General Quarter
Sessions in New York bear records of criminals who pleaded “the
benefit” and were branded on the brawn of the left thumb with “T” in
open court and then discharged.
As the punishments accorded for crimes were not severe for the
notions of the times, it is almost amusing to read some fierce
ordinances,--though there is no record of any executions in accordance
with them. For instance, in January, 1659, by the Director-General
and Council with the advice of the burgomasters and _schepens_ it
was enacted that “No person shall strip the fences of posts or rails
under penalty for the first offence of being whipped and branded, and
for the second, of punishment with the cord until death ensues.” It
is really astonishing to think of these kindly Dutch gentlemen calmly
ordering hanging for stealing fence-rails, though of course the matter
reached further than at first appeared: there was danger of a scarcity
of grain; and if the fences were stolen, the cattle would trample
down and destroy the grain. Later orders as to fences were given which
appear eminently calculated to be mischief-making. “Persons thinking
their neighbors’ fences not good, first to request them to repair;
failing which to report to the overseers.” In 1674 all persons were
forbidden to leave the city except by city-gate, under penalty of
death; this was of course when war threatened.
The crime of suicide was not without punishment. Suicides were
denied ordinary burial rites. In Dutch days when one Smitt of New
York committed suicide, the _schout_ asked that his body be drawn on
a hurdle and buried with a stake in his heart. This order was not
executed; he was buried at night and his estates confiscated. When Sir
Danvers Osborne--the Governor for a day--was found dead by his own act,
he was “decently interred in Trinity churchyard.”
Women in New York sometimes made their appearance in New York courts,
as in those of other colonies, in another rôle than that of witness
or criminal; they sometimes sat on juries. In the year 1701, six good
Albany wives served on a jury: Tryntje Roseboom, Catheren Gysbertse,
Angeneutt Jacobse, Marritje Dirkse, Elsje Lansing, and Susanna Bratt.
They were, of course, empanelled for a special duty, not to serve on
the entire evidence of the case for which they were engaged.
Many old records are found which employ quaint metaphors or legal
expressions; I give one which refers to a custom which seems at one
time to have been literally performed. It occurs in a commission
granted to the trustees of an estate of which the debts exceeded the
assets. Any widow in Holland or New Netherland could be relieved of all
demands or claims of her husband’s creditors by relinquishing all right
of inheritance. This widow took this privilege; it is recorded thus:--
“_Whereas_, Harman Jacobsen Bamboes has been lately shot dead,
murdered by the Indians, and whereas the estate left by him _has
been kicked away with the foot by his wife who has laid the key on
the coffin_, it is therefore necessary to authorize and qualify some
persons to regulate the same.”
There was a well-known Dutch saying which referred to this privilege,
_Den Sleutel op het graf leggen_, and simply meant not to pay the
debts of the deceased.
This legal term and custom is of ancient origin. In Davies’ “History
of Holland” we read of a similar form being gone through with in
Holland in 1404, according to the law of Rhynland. The widow of a great
nobleman immediately after his death desired to renounce all claim on
his estate and responsibility for his debts. She chose a guardian, and,
advancing with him to the door of the Court (where the body of the dead
Count had been placed on a bier), announced that she was dressed wholly
in borrowed clothing; she then formally gave a straw to her guardian,
who threw it on the dead body, saying he renounced for her all right
of dower, and abjured all debts. This was derived from a still more
ancient custom of the Franks, who renounced all alliances by the
symbolic breaking and throwing away a straw.
In other states of the Netherlands the widow gave up dower and debts
by laying a key and purse on the coffin. This immunity was claimed by
persons in high rank, one being the widow of the Count of Flanders.
In New England (as I have told at length in my book, “Customs and
Fashions in Old New England,”) the widow who wished to renounce her
husband’s debts was married in her shift, often at the cross-roads, at
midnight. These shift-marriages took place in Massachusetts as late as
1836; I have a copy of a court record of that date.
I know of but one instance of the odious and degrading English custom
of wife-trading taking place in New York. Laurens Duyts, an agent for
Anneke Jans in some of her business transactions, was in the year 1663
sentenced to be flogged and have his right ear cut off for selling
his wife, Mistress Duyts, to one Jansen. Possibly the severity of the
punishment may have prevented the recurrence of the crime.
After a somewhat extended study and comparison of the early court and
church records of New England with those of New York, I cannot fail to
draw the conclusion--if it is just to judge from such comparisons--that
the state of social morals was higher in the Dutch colonies than in the
English. Perhaps the settlers of Boston and Plymouth were more severe
towards suspicion of immorality, as they were infinitely more severe
towards suspicion of irreligion, than were their Dutch neighbors. And
they may have given more publicity and punishment to deviations from
the path of rectitude and uprightness; but certainly from their own
records no fair-minded person can fail to deem them more frail, more
erring, more wicked, than the Dutch. The circumstances of immigration
and the tendencies of temperament were diverse, and perhaps it was
natural that a reaction tending to sin and vice should come to the
intense and overwrought religionist rather than to the phlegmatic
and prosperous trader. In Virginia and Maryland the presence of many
convict-emigrants would form a reasonable basis for the existence of
the crime and law-breaking which certainly was in those colonies far in
excess of the crime in New Netherland and New York.
I know that Rev. Mr. Miller, the English clergyman, did not give the
settlement a very good name at the last of the seventeenth century;
but even his strictures cannot force me to believe the colonists so
unbearably wicked.
It should also be emphasized that New Netherland was far more tolerant,
more generous than New England to all of differing religious faiths.
Under Stuyvesant, however, Quakers were interdicted from preaching,
were banished, and one Friend was treated with great cruelty. The
Dutch clergymen opposed the establishment of a Lutheran church,
and were rebuked by the Directors in Holland, who said that in the
future they would send out clergymen “not tainted with any needless
preciseness;” and Stuyvesant was also rebuked for issuing an ordinance
imposing a penalty for holding conventicles not in accordance with
the Synod of Dort. Many Christians not in accordance in belief with
that synod settled in New Netherland. Quakers, Lutherans, Church of
England folk, Anabaptists, Huguenots, Waldenses, Walloons. The Jews
were protected and admitted to the rights of citizenship. Director
Kieft, with heavy ransoms, rescued the captive Jesuits, Father Jogues
and Father Bressani, from the Indians and tenderly cared for them.
No witches suffered death in New York, and no statute law existed
against witchcraft. There is record of but one witchcraft trial under
the English governor, Nicholls, who speedily joined with the Dutch in
setting aside all that nonsense.
CHAPTER XIII
CHURCH AND SUNDAY IN OLD NEW YORK
Sunday was not observed in New Netherland with any such rigidity as
in New England. The followers of Cocceius would not willingly include
Saturday night, and not even all of the Sabbath day, in their holy
time. Madam Knight, writing in 1704 of a visit to New York, noted:
“The Dutch aren’t strict in keeping the Sabbath as in Boston and
other places where I have been.” This was, of course, in times of
English rule in New York. Still, much respect to the day was required,
especially under the governing hand of the rigid Calvinist Stuyvesant.
He specially enjoined and enforced strict regard for seemly quiet
during service time. The records of Stuyvesant’s government are full of
injunctions and laws prohibiting “tavern-tapping” during the hours of
church service. He would not tolerate fishing, gathering of berries or
nuts, playing in the street, nor gaming at ball or bowls during church
time. At a little later date the time of prohibition of noise and
tapping and gaming was extended to include the entire Sabbath day, and
the _schout_ was ordered to be active in searching out and punishing
such offenders.
Occasionally his vigilance did discover some Sabbath disorders. He
found the first Jew trader who came to the island of Manhattan serenely
keeping open shop on Sunday, and selling during sermon time, knowing
naught of any Sunday laws of New Amsterdam.
And Albert the Trumpeter was seen on the Sabbath in suspicious guise,
with an axe on his shoulder,--but he was only going to cut a bat for
his little son; and as for his neighbor who did cut wood, it was only
kindling, since his children were cold.
And one Sunday evening in 1660 the _schout_ triumphantly found
three sailors round a tap-house table with a lighted candle and
a backgammon-board thereon; and he surely had a right to draw an
inference of gaming therefrom.
And in another public-house ninepins were visible, and a can and
glass, during preaching-time. The landlady had _her_ excuse,--some came
to her house and said church was out, and one chanced to have a bowl in
his hand and another a pin, but there was no playing at bowls.
Still, though he snooped and fined, in 1656 the burgomasters learned
“by daily and painful experience” that the profanation of “the Lord’s
day of Rest by the dangerous, Yes, damnable Sale or Dealing out of
Wines Beers and Brandy-Waters” still went on; and fresh Sunday Laws
were issued forbidding “the ordinary and customary Labors of callings,
such as Sowing, Mowing, Building, Sawing wood, Smithing, Bleeching,
Hunting, Fishing.” All idle sports were banned and named: “Dancing,
Card-playing, Tick-tacking, Playing at ball, at bowls, at ninepins;
taking Jaunts in Boats, Wagons, or Carriages.”
In 1673, again, the magistrates “experienced to our great grief” that
rolling ninepins was more in vogue on Sunday than on any other day. And
we learn that there were social clubs that “Set on the Sabbath,” which
must speedily be put an end to. Thirty men were found by the _schout_
in one _tap-huys_; but as they were playing ninepins and backgammon
two hours after the church-doors had closed, prosecution was most
reluctantly abandoned.
Of course scores of “tappers” were prosecuted, both in taverns and
private houses. Piety and regard for an orderly Sabbath were not the
only guiding thoughts in the burgomasters’ minds in framing these
Sunday liquor laws and enforcing them; for some tapsters had “tapped
beer during divine service and used a small kind of measure which is
in contempt of our religion and must ruin our state,”--and the state
was sacred. In the country, as for instance on Long Island, the carting
of grain, travelling for pleasure, and shooting of wild-fowl on Sunday
were duly punished in the local courts.
I do not think that children were as rigid church attendants in New
York as in New England. In 1696, in Albany, we find this injunction:
“y^e Constables in eache warde to take thought in attending at y^e
church to hender such children as Profane y^e Sabbath;” and we know
that Albany boys and girls were complained of for coasting down hill
on Sunday,--which enormity would have been simply impossible in
New England, except in an isolated outburst of Adamic depravity. In
another New York town the “Athoatys” complained of the violation of
the Sabbath by “the Younger Sort of people in Discourssing of Vane
things and Running of Raesses.” As for the city of New York, even at
Revolutionary times a cage was set up on City Hall Park in which to
confine wicked New York boys who profaned the Sabbath. I do not find so
full provisions made for seating children in Dutch Reformed churches as
in Puritan meeting-houses. A wise saying of Martin Luther’s was “Public
sermons do very little edify children”--perhaps the Dutch agreed with
him. As the children were taught the Bible and the catechism every day
in the week, their spiritual and religious schooling was sufficient
without the Sunday sermon,--but, of course, if they were not in the
church during services, they would “talk of vane Things and run
Raesses.”
Before the arrival of any Dutch preacher in the new settlement in the
new world, the spiritual care of the little company was provided for
by men appointed to a benign and beautiful old Dutch office, and
called _krankebesoeckers_ or _zeikentroosters_,--“comforters of the
Sick,”--who not only tenderly comforted the sick and weary of heart,
but “read to the Commonalty on Sundays from texts of Scripture with the
Comments.” These pious men were assigned to this godly work in Fort
Orange and in New Amsterdam and Breuckelen. In Esopus they had meetings
every Sunday, “and one among us read something for a postille.” Often
special books of sermons were read to the congregations.
In Fort Orange they had a domine before they had a church. The patroon
instructed Van Curler to build a church in 1642; but it was not until
1646 that the little wooden edifice was really put up. It was furnished
at a cost of about thirty-two dollars by carpenter Fredricksen,
with a _predickstoel_, or pulpit, a seat for the magistrates,--_de
Heerebanke_,--one for the deacons, nine benches and several
corner-seats.
The first church at Albany, built in 1657, was simply a block house
with loop-holes for the convenient use of guns in defence against the
Indians,--if defence were needed. On the roof were placed three small
cannon commanding the three roads which led to it. This edifice was
called “a handsome preaching-house,” and its congregation boasted
that it was almost as large as the fine new one in New Amsterdam. Its
corner-stone was laid with much ceremony. In its belfry hung a bell
presented to the little congregation by the Directors of the Amsterdam
Chamber of the West India Company. The _predickstoel_ was the gift
of the same board of West India Directors, since the twenty-five
beavers’ skins sent for its purchase proved greatly damaged, and hence
inadequate as payment.
This pulpit still exists,--a pedestal with a flight of narrow steps and
curved balustrade. It is about four feet in height to its floor, and
only three in diameter. It is octagonal; one of the sides is hinged,
and forms the entrance door or gate. All the small trimmings and
mouldings are of oak, and it has a small bracket or frame to hold the
hour-glass. It stood in a space at the end of the centre aisle.
“I see the pulpit high--an octagon,
Its pedestal, doophuysje, winding stair,
And room within for one, and one alone,
A canopy above, suspended there.”
From the ceiling hung a chandelier, and candle-sconces projected from
the walls. There were originally two low-set galleries; a third was
added in 1682. The men sat in the galleries, and as they carried their
arms to meeting, were thus conveniently placed to fire through the
loop-holes if necessity arose. The bell-rope from the belfry hung down
in the middle of the church, and when not in use was twisted round a
post set for the purpose.
This church was plain enough, but it was certainly kept in true Dutch
cleanliness, for house-cleaners frequently invaded it with pails
and scrubbing-brushes, brooms, lime, and sand. Even the chandelier
was scoured, and a _ragebol_, or cobweb-brush, was purchased by the
deacon for the use of the scrubbers. The floor was sanded with fine
beach-sand, as were the floors of dwelling-houses. I find in the
records of the Long Island churches frequent entries of payments for
church brooms and church sand,--in Jamaica as late a date as 1836. In
1841 the deacons bought a carpet.
In 1715 the second Albany church was built, on the site of the old one.
As Pepys tells of St. Paul’s of London, so tradition says this Albany
church was built around the first one, that the congregation were only
three weeks deprived of the use of the church, and the old one was
carried out “by piece meal.” At any rate, it was precisely similar in
shape, but was a substantial edifice of stone. This building was not
demolished until 1806.
The sittings in this church sold for thirty shillings each, and were,
as it was termed, “booked to next of kin.” When the first owner of a
seat died (were he a man), the seat descended to his son or the eldest
of his grandsons; if there was no son nor grandson, to his son-in-law;
this heir being in default, the sitting fell to a brother, and so on.
When the transfer was made, the successor paid fifteen shillings to the
church. A woman’s seat descended to her daughter, daughter-in-law, or
sister. Sittings were sold only to persons residing in Albany County.
When a seat was not claimed by any heir of a former owner, it reverted
to the church.
This church had some pretence to ornamentation. The windows were
of stained glass decorated with the coat-of-arms of various Albany
families. The panes with the Van Renssellaer and Dudley arms are still
in existence. Painted escutcheons also hung on the walls, as they did
in the church in Garden Street, New York. This was a custom of the
Fatherland. A writer of that day said of the church in Harlem, “It is
battered as full of scutcheons as the walls can hold.”
The meeting-house sometimes bore other decorations,--often “Billets of
sales,” and notices of vendues or “outcrys.” Lost swine and empounded
swine were signified by placards; town meetings and laws were posted.
In the Albany church, when there was rumor of an approaching war with
France, “powder, bales,” and guns to the number of fifty were ordered
to be “hung up in y^e church,”--a stern reminder of possible sudden
bloodshed. “Y^e fyre-masters” were also ordered to see that “y^e
fyre-ladders and fyre-hooks were hung at y^e church.”
In 1698 a stone church was built in Flatbush. It cost nearly sixteen
thousand guilders. It had a steep four-sided roof, ending in the centre
in a small steeple. This roof was badly constructed, for it pressed out
the upper part of one wall more than a foot over the foundation, and
sorely bent the braces. The pulpit faced the door, and was flanked by
the deacons’ bench on one side and the elders’ bench on the other.
Of the seating arrangement of this Flatbush church Dr. Strong says:--
“The male part of the congregation were seated in a continuous pew
all along the wall, divided into twenty apartments, with a sufficient
number of doors for entrance, each person having one or more seats.
The residue of the interior of the building was for the accommodation
of the female part of the congregation, who were seated on chairs.
These were arranged into seven rows or blocks, and every family had
one or more chairs in some one of these blocks. This arrangement of
seats was called ‘De Gestoeltens.’ Each chair was marked on the back
by a number or by the name of the person to whom it belonged.”
When the church was remodelled, in 1774, there were two galleries,
one for white folk, one for black; the benches directly under the
galleries were free. In the centre of the main floor were two benches
with backs, one called the Yefrows Bench, the other the Blue Bench. The
former was for the minister’s wife and family; the other was let out to
individuals, and was a seat of considerable dignity.
Many of the old Dutch churches, especially those on Long Island, were
six-sided or eight-sided; these had always a high, steep, pyramidal
roof terminating in a belfry, which was often topped by a gilded
_weerhaen_, or weathercock. The churches at Jamaica and New Utrecht
were octagonal. The Bushwick church was hexagonal. It stood till
1827,--a little, dingy, rustic edifice. This form of architecture was
not peculiar to the Dutch nor to the Dutch Reformed Church. Episcopal
churches and the Quaker meeting-house at Flushing were similar in shape.
When the bold sea-captain De Vries, that interesting figure in the
early history of New Netherland, arrived in churchless New Amsterdam,
he promptly rallied Director Kieft on his dilatoriness and ungodliness,
saying it was a shame to let Englishmen see the mean barn which served
Manhattan as a church; and he drew odious comparisons,--that “the first
thing they build in New England after their dwelling-houses is a fine
church.” He pointed out the abundant materials for building creditably
and cheaply,--fine oak wood, good mountain stone, excellent lime; and
he did more,--he supported his advice by a subscription of a hundred
guilders. Director Kieft promised a thousand guilders from the West
India Company; and Fortune favored the scheme, for the daughter of
Domine Bogardus was married opportunely just at that time; and as has
been told in Chapter III., according to the wise custom of the day in
Holland, and consequently in America, a collection was taken up at
the wedding. Kieft asked that it be employed for the building of a
church; and soon a stone church seventy-two feet long and fifty-five
feet wide was erected within the Fort. It was the finest building in
New Netherland, and bore on its face a stone inscribed with these
words: “Anno Domini 1641, William Kieft, Director-General, hath the
Commonalty built this Temple.” It was used by the congregation as a
church for fifty years, and for half a century longer by the military
as a post-building, when it was burned.
There was no church in Breuckelen in 1660. Domine Selyns wrote,
“We preach in a barn.” The church was built six years later, and
is described as square, with thick stone walls and steep peaked
roof surmounted by a small open belfry, in which hung the small,
sharp-toned bell which had been sent over as a gift by the West India
Company. The walls were so panelled with dark wood, the windows were
so high and narrow, that it was always dark and gloomy within; even in
summer-time it was impossible to see to read in it after four o’clock
in the afternoon. Services were held in summer at 9 A. M. and 2 P. M.,
and in the winter in the morning only. The windows were eight feet from
the floor, and were darkened with stained glass sent from Holland,
representing flower-pots with vines covered with vari-colored flowers.
This church stood in the middle of the road on what is now Fulton
Street, a mile from the ferry, and was used until 1810.
These early churches were unheated, and it is told that the half-frozen
domines preached with heavy knit or fur caps pulled over their ears,
and wearing mittens, or _wollen handt-schoenen_; and that _myn heer_
as well as _myn vrouw_ carried muffs. It is easy to fancy some men
carrying muffs,--some love-locked Cavalier or mincing Horace Walpole;
but such feminine gear seems to consort ill with an Albany Dutchman.
That he should light his long pipe in meeting was natural enough,--to
keep warm; though folk do say that he smoked in meeting in summer
too,--to keep cool. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Albany
and Schenectady churches had stoves perched up on pillars on a level
with the gallery,--in high disregard or ignorance of the laws of
calorics; hence, of course, the galleries, in which sat the men, were
fairly heated, while the ground floor and the _vrouws_ remained below
in icy frigidity. It is told of more than one old-time sexton, that he
loudly asserted his office and his importance by noisy rattling-down
and replenishing of the gallery stoves and slamming of the iron doors
at the most critical point in the domine’s sermon. Cornelius Van
Schaick, the Albany sexton, made his triumphant way to the stoves,
slashing with his switch (perhaps his dog-whip) all the boys who
chanced to be in his way.
The women of the congregation carried foot-stoves of perforated metal
or wood, which were filled with a box of living coals, to afford a
little warmth to the feet. Many now living remember the scratching
sound of these stoves on the boards or the sanded floor as they were
passed from warm feet to cold feet near at hand. _Kerck-stooven_
appear on the earliest inventories, were used in America until our own
day, and still are used in the churches in Holland. In an anteroom in
a Leyden church may be seen several hundred _stooven_ for use in the
winter.
It is stated of the churches in New York City that until 1802 services
were held, even in the winter-time, with wide-open doors, and that
often the snow lay in little drifts up the aisles,--which may have been
one reason why young folk flocked to Trinity Church.
One very handsome church-equipment of the women attendants of the Dutch
Reformed church was the Psalm-book. This was usually bound with the
New Testament; and both were often mounted and clasped with silver.
Sometimes they had two silver rings at the back through which ribbons
could be passed, to hang thereby the books on the back of a chair
if desired. Sometimes the books had silver chains. Rarely they were
mounted in gold. The inventory of the estate of nearly every well-to-do
Dutch woman, resident of New York, Albany, or the larger towns, shows
one, and sometimes half-a-dozen of these silver-mounted Psalm-books.
Elizabeth Van Es had two Bibles with silver clasps, two Psalm-books,
and two Catechisms. These books were somewhat dingily printed, in old
Dutch, on coarse but durable paper; the music was on every page beside
the words. The notes of music were square, heavily printed, rough-hewn,
angular notes,--“like stones in the walls of a churchyard,” says
Longfellow of the Psalm-book of the Pilgrims. The metrical version of
the Psalms was simple and impressive, and is certainly better literary
work in Dutch than is the Bay Psalm-book in English.
The services in these churches were long. They were opened by reading
and singing conducted by the _voorleezer_ or _voorzanger_,--that
general-utility man who was usually precentor, schoolmaster,
bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, and often town-clerk. As ordered
by the Assembly of XIX., in 1645, he “tuned the psalm;” and during
the first singing the domine entered, and, pausing for a few moments,
sometimes kneeling at the foot of the pulpit-stairs, in silent prayer,
he soon ascended to his platform of state. The psalms were given out
to the congregation through the medium of a large hanging-board with
movable printed slips, and this was in the charge of the _voorleezer_.
Of course the powers of this church functionary varied in different
towns. In all he seems to have had charge of the turning of the
hour-glass which stood near the pulpit in sight of the domine. In
Kingston, where the pulpit was high, he thrust up to the preacher the
notices stuck in the end of a cleft stick. In this town, at the time
of the Revolution, he was also paid two shillings per annum by each
family to go around and knock loudly on the door each Sunday morning
to warn that it was service-time. In some towns he was permitted to
give three sharp raps of warning with his staff on the pulpit when the
hour-glass had run out a second time,--thus shutting off the sermon.
The _voorleezer_ is scarcely an obsolete church-officer to-day. In 1865
died the last Albany _voorleezer_, and the Flatbush _voorleezer_ is
well remembered and beloved.
The clerk in New Amsterdam was a marked personage on Sunday. After
he had summoned the congregation by the sound of drum or bell, he
ceremoniously formed a pompous little procession of his underlings,
and, heading the line, he carried with their assistance the cushions
from the City Hall to the church, to furnish comfortably the
“Magistrate’s Pew,” in which the burgomasters and _schepens_ sat.
The deacons had full control of all the funds of the church; they
collected the contributions of the congregation by walking up and
down the aisles and thrusting in front of each “range” of seats in
the face of the seated people small cloth contribution-bags, or
_sacjes_, hung on a hoop at the end of a slender pole six or eight
feet in length,--fashioned, in fact, somewhat after the model of
scoop-nets. This custom--the use of so unfamiliar a medium for
church-collecting--gave rise to the amusing notion of one observant
English traveller that Dutch deacons passed round their old hats on the
end of a walking-stick to gather church-contributions.
Often a little bell hung at the bottom of the contribution-bag, or was
concealed in an ornamenting tassel, and by its suggestive tinkle-tinkle
warned all church-attendants of the approach of the deacon, and
perhaps aroused the peaceful church-sleepers from too selfish dreams
of profitable barter in peltries. In New Utrecht the church _sacje_
had an alarm-bell which sounded only when a contribution was made. A
loud-speaking silence betrayed the stingy church-goer. The collection
was usually taken up in the middle of a sermon. The _sacjes_ stood or
hung conveniently in the deacon’s seat. In Flatbush and other towns
the deacons paused for a time in front of the pulpit--_sacje_ in
hand--while the domine enjoined generosity to the church and kindly
Christian thought of the poor. The collection-bags in Flatbush were of
velvet.
It is said that stray Indians who chanced to wander or were piously
persuaded to enter into the Fort Orange or Albany church during
service-time, and who did not well understand the pulpit eloquence of
the Dutch tongue, regarded with suspicious and disapproving eyes the
unfailing and unreasonable appearance of the _karck-sacje_; for they
plainly perceived that there was some occult law of cause and effect
which could be deduced from these two facts,--the traders who gave
freely into the church-bags on Sunday always beat down the price of
beaver on Monday.
The bill for one of these _karck-sacjes_ was paid by the deacons of the
Albany church in 1682. Seven guilders were given for the black stuff
and two skeins of silk, and two guilders for the making. When a ring
was bought for the sack (I suppose to hold it open at the top), it cost
four guilders. This instrument of church-collection lingered long in
isolated localities. It is vaguely related that some _karck-sacjes_ are
still in existence and still used. The church at New Utrecht possessed
and exhibited theirs at their bicentennial celebration a few years
ago. The fate of the _sacje_ was decreed when the honest deacons were
forced to conclude that it could, if artfully manipulated by designing
moderns, conceal far too well the amount given by each contributor, and
equally well concealed the many and heavy stones deposited therein by
vain youth of Dutch descent but American ungodliness. So an open-faced
full-in-view pewter or silver plate was substituted and passed in its
place. In 1813 the church at Success, Long Island, bought contribution
plates and abandoned the _sacje_. Some lovers of the good old times
resented this inevitable exposure of the amount of each gift, and
turned away from the deacon and his innovating fashion and refused to
give at all.
I ought to add, in defence of the _karck-sacjes_, and in praise
of the early congregations, that the amount gathered each week
was most generous, and in proportion far in advance of our modern
church-contributions. The poor were not taken charge of by state or
town, but were liberally cared for in each community by its church;
occasionally, however, assistance was given through the assignment to
the church by the courts of a portion of the money paid as fines in
civil and criminal cases. In New York a deacon’s house with nurses
resident, took the place of an almshouse.
Often during the year much more money was collected than was needful
for the current expenses of the church. In Albany the extra collections
were lent out at eight per cent interest; at one time four thousand
guilders were lent to one man. The deacons who took charge of the
treasury chest in Albany each year rendered an account of its contents.
In 1665 there were in this chest _seelver-gelt_, _sea-want_, and
_obligasse_, or obligations, to the amount of 2829 guilders. In 1667
there were 3299 guilders; also good Friesland stockings and many ells
of linen to be given to the poor.
In some churches poor-boxes were placed at the door. The Garden Street
Church in New York had two strong boxes bound with iron, with a small
hole in the padlocked lid, and painted with the figure of a beggar
leaning on a staff,--which, according to the testimony of travellers,
was a sight unknown in reality in New York at that time.
The “church-poor,” as they were called, fared well in New Netherland.
Of degraded poor of Dutch birth or descent there were none. Some poor
folk, and old or sickly, having a little property, transferred it to
the Consistory, who paid it out as long as it lasted, and cheerfully
added to the amount by gifts from the church-treasury as long as was
necessary for the support of those “of the poorer sort.” To show that
these church-poor were neither neglected nor despised, let me give
one example of a case--an ordinary one--from the deacons’ records of
the Albany church in 1695. Claes Janse was assigned at that time to
live with Hans Kros and his wife Antje. They were to provide him
with _logement_, _kost_, _drank_, _wassen_ (lodging, food, drink, and
washing), and for this were paid forty guilders a month by the church.
When Claes died, the church paid for his funeral, which apparently left
nothing undone in the way of respectability. The bill reads thus:--
Dead shirt and cap 16 guilders.
Winding sheet 14 ”
Making coffin 24 ”
1 lb. nails, cartage coffin 3 ” 10 stuyvers.
2 Half Vats good beer 30 ”
6 bottles Rum 22 ”
5 gallons Madeira Wine 42 ”
Tobacco, pipes, and sugar 4 ” 10 ”
3 cartloads sand for grave 1 ” 10 ”
Gravedigging 3 ”
Deacons give three dry boards for coffin and use of pall.
With a good dry coffin, a good dry grave, and a far from dry funeral,
Hans Claes’ days, though he were of the church-poor, ended in honor.
The earlier Dutch ministers were some of them rather rough characters.
Domine Bogardus, in New Amsterdam, and Domine Schaets, in Fort Orange,
were most unclerical in demeanor, both in and out of the pulpit. Both
were engaged in slander suits, the former as libeller and defendant;
both were abusive and personal in the pulpit, “dishonoring the church
by passion.” The former was alleged by his enemies to be frequently
drunk, in church and abroad; and, fearless of authority, he seized
the pulpit as a convenient and prominent platform from which he could
denounce his opposers. From his high post he scolded the magistrates,
called opprobrious names (a hateful offence in New Amsterdam),
threatened Wouter Van Twiller that he would give “from the pulpit
such a shake as would make him shudder.” He even arbitrarily refused
the Communion, thereby causing constant scandal and dissension. The
magistrates doubtless deserved all his rebukes, but in their written
admonition to him they appear with some dignity, expressing themselves
forcibly and concisely thus: “Your bad tongue is the cause of these
divisions, and your obstinacy the cause of their continuance;” and it
is difficult now to assign the blame and odium of this quarrel very
decidedly to either party.
The domine did not have everything his own way on Sundays, for the
Director drowned his vociferations by ordering the beating of drums and
firing of cannon outside the church during services; and denounced the
sermons in picturesque language as “the rattling of old wives’ stories
drawn out from a distaff.”
The Labadist travellers thus described the Albany domine:--
“We went to church in the morning [April 28, 1680], and heard Domine
Schaets preach, who, although he is a poor old ignorant person, and
besides is not of good life, yet had to give utterance to his passion,
having for his text ‘Whatever is taken upon us,’ etc., at which many
of his auditors, who knew us better, were not well pleased, and in
order to show their condemnation of it, laughed and derided him, which
we corrected.”
In turn the Lutheran minister was dubbed by the Dutch domines “a
rolling, rollicking, unseemly carl, more inclined to pore over
the wine-kan than to look into the Bible.” And we all know what
both Lutherans and Dutch thought of the Quaker preachers; so all
denominations appear equally rude.
The salaries of the ministers were liberal even in early days; that
of Domine Megapolensis (the second minister sent to New Netherland)
was, I think, a very fair one. He agreed to remain in the colony six
years, and was given free passage for himself and family to the new
world; an outfit of three hundred guilders; a salary of three hundred
guilders a year for three years, and five hundred annually during the
three remaining years; and an annual tithe of thirty schepels of wheat
and two firkins of butter. If he died before the term expired, his wife
was to have a pension of a hundred guilders a year for the unexpired
term. The first revenue relinquished by the West India Company to the
town of New Amsterdam was the “tapster’s excise,”--the excise on wine,
beer, and spirits,--and the sole condition made by Stuyvesant on its
surrender, as to its application, was that the salaries of the two
domines should be paid from it.
As time passed on, firewood became one of the minister’s perquisites,
in addition to his salary, sixty or seventy loads a season. We find the
Schenectady congregation having a “bee” to gather in the domine’s wood;
and the Consistory supplied plentiful wine, rum, and beer as a treat
for the “bee.”
What Cotton Mather called the “angelical conjunction” of piety and
physic sometimes was found in the person of the ministers of the Dutch
Reformed church, but not so constantly as among the Puritan ministers.
Domine Rubel, sent out by the Classis of Amsterdam, was settled over
the churches in Kings County. He was more devoted to the preparation of
quack medicines than to the saving of souls. One of his advertisements
of March 28, 1778, reads thus:--
“It has pleased Almighty God to give me the wisdom to find out the
_Golden Mother Tincture_ and such a Universal Pill as will cure
most diseases. I have studied European physicians in four different
languages. I don’t take much money as I want no more than a small
living whereto God will give his blessing.
JOHANNES CASPARUS RUBEL, Minister of the
Gospel and Chymicus.”
This does not let us wonder that after a while his parish became
dissatisfied with his ministrations, and that he ended his days in
dishonor.
The employment of the Dutch language in the pulpit in New York churches
lasted until into this century. Naturally, Dutch was used as long
as the Classis at Amsterdam supplied the churches in America with
preachers. In 1744 Domine Rubel and Domine Van Sinderin were sent to
Flatbush, the last ministers sent from the Classis of Amsterdam to any
American church; but at their death the Dutch tongue was not silent in
the Flatbush church; for their successor, Domine Schoonmaker, lived
to be ninety years old, and never preached but one sermon in English.
With his death, in 1824, ceased the public use of the Dutch language
in the Flatbush pulpit. Until the year 1792 the entire service in his
church was “the gospel undefiled, in Holland Dutch.” Until the year
1830 services in the sequestered churches in the Catskills were held
alternately in Dutch and English. Until 1777 all the records of the
Sleepy Hollow church were kept in Dutch; and in 1785 all its services
were in Dutch. In September of that year, a little child, Lovine Hauws,
was baptized in English by the new minister, Rev. Stephen Van Voorhees.
This raised a small Dutch tempest, and the new domine soon left that
parish.
In New York City the large English immigration, the constant
requirements and influences of commerce, and the frequent
intermarriages of the English and Dutch robbed the Dutch language of
its predominance by the middle of the eighteenth century. Rev. Dr.
Laidlie preached in 1764 the first English sermon to a Dutch Reformed
congregation. By 1773 English was used in the Dutch school, and young
people began to shun the Dutch services.
The growth of the Dutch Reformed church in New York was slow; this was
owing to three marked and direct causes:--
First, from 1693 until Revolutionary times Episcopacy was virtually
established by law in a large part of the province,--in the city and
county of New York, and in the counties of Westchester, Richmond,
and Queens; and though the Dutch Reformed church was protected and
respected, people of all denominations were obliged to contribute to
the support of the Episcopal church.
Second, the English language had become the current language of the
province; in the schools, the courts, in all public business it was the
prevailing tongue, while the services of the Dutch Reformed church were
by preference held in Dutch.
Third, all candidates for ministry in the Dutch Reformed church were
obliged to go to Holland for ordination; this was a great expense, and
often kept congregations without a minister for a long time. The entire
discipline of the church--all the Courts of Appeal--was also in the
Fatherland.
In order to obtain relief from the last-named hampering condition,
a few ministers in America devised a plan, in 1737, to secure
church-organization in New York. It took the slow-moving Classis of
Amsterdam ten years to signify approval of this plan, and a body was
formed, named the Cœtus. But this had merely advisory powers, and in
less than ten years it asked to be constituted a Classis with full
ecclesiastical powers. From this step arose a violent and bitter
quarrel, which lasted fifteen years,--until 1771,--between the Cœtus
party, the Reformers, and the Conferentie party, the Conservatives. The
permission of the Classis of Amsterdam for American church independence
was finally given on condition of establishing a college for the proper
training of the ministry of the Dutch Reformed church. The Cœtus party
obtained a charter from George III. for a college, which, called
Queens College, was blighted in its birth by the Revolution, but lived
with varying prosperity until its successful revival, under the name of
Rutgers College, in 1825.
CHAPTER XIV
“THE END OF HIS DAYS”
As soon as a death had been announced to the dwellers in any
little town in colonial New York, by the slow ringing or tolling
of the church-bell, there went forth solemnly from his home the
_aanspreecker_, or funeral-inviter (who might be grave-digger,
bell-ringer, schoolmaster, or chorister, and who was usually all four),
attired in gloomy black, with hat fluttering long streamers of crape;
and with much punctilio he visited all the relatives and friends of
the deceased person, notified them of the death, advised them of the
day and hour of the funeral, and requested their honorable presence.
This inviting was a matter of most rigid etiquette; no one in these
Dutch-American communities of slightest dignity or regard for social
proprieties would attend a funeral unbidden. The _aanspreecker_ was
paid at regular rates for his service as living perambulating obituary
notice, according to the distance travelled and the time spent, if he
lived in a country town where distances between houses were great.
In 1691 the “inviters to the buryiall of deceased persons” in New York
were public officers, appointed and licensed by the Mayor. Their names
were Conradus Vanderbeck and Richard Chapman, and they were bidden
to give their attendance gratis to the poor. A law was passed in New
York in 1731, setting the fees of “inviters to funerals” at eighteen
shillings for the funeral of any one over twenty years of age; for a
person between twelve and twenty years, twelve shillings; for one under
twelve years, eight shillings. For a large circle of friends these
sums seem small. The Flatbush inviter in 1682 had twelve guilders for
inviting to the funeral of a grown person, and only four guilders in
addition if he invited in New York,--which was poor pay enough, when we
think of the long ride and the row across. In 1760 we find the New York
inviter, Evert Fels, advertising his change of residence, and that he
can be found if needed next King’s Stores. It is easy to imagine that
the _aanspreecker_ must have been a somewhat self-important personage,
who doubtless soberly enjoyed his profession of mortuary news-purveyor,
and who must have been greeted wherever he went with that grewsome
interest which in colonial days attached to everything pertaining to
death.
This public officer and custom was probably derived from the Romans,
who used to send a public crier about, inviting the people to the
solemnization of a funeral. In the northern counties of England each
village had its regular “bidder,” who announced his “funeral-bidding”
by knocking on each door with a great key. Sometimes he “cried” the
funeral through the town with a hand-bell. In New York the fashion
was purely of Dutch derivation. In Holland the _aanspreecker_ was an
official appointed by government, and authorized to invite for the
funerals of persons of all faiths and denominations who chanced to die
in his parish.
In New York, ever bent on fashions new, the _aanspreecker_, on mournful
mission intent, no longer walks our city avenues nor even our country
lanes or village streets; but in Holland he still is a familiar form.
Not, as of old, the honored schoolmaster, but simply a hired servant
of the undertaker, he rushes with haste through the streets of Dutch
towns. Still clad in dingy black of ancient fashion, kneebreeches,
buckled shoes, long cloak, cocked hat with long streamers of crape, he
seems the sombre ghost of old-time manners. Sometimes he bears written
invitations deep bordered with black; sometimes he calls the death
and time of funeral, as did the Roman _præco_; and sometimes, with
streamers of white, and white cockade on his hat, he goes on a kindred
duty,--he bears to a circle of friends or relatives the news of a birth.
Before the burial took place, in olden times, a number of persons,
usually intimate friends of the dead, watched the body throughout
the night. Liberally supplied with various bodily comforts, such as
abundant strong drink, plentiful tobacco and pipes, and newly baked
cakes, these watchers were not wholly gloomy, nor did the midnight
hours lag unsolaced. The great _kamer_ in which the body lay, the
state-room of the house, was an apartment so rarely used on other
occasions than a funeral that in many households it was known as the
_doed-kamer_, or dead-room. Sometimes it had a separate front door
by which it was entered, thus giving two front doors to the house.
Diedrich Knickerbocker says the front door of New York houses was never
opened save for funerals, New Years, and such holidays. The kitchen
door certainly offered a more cheerful welcome. In North Holland the
custom still exists of reserving a room with separate outside entrance,
for use for weddings and funerals. Hence the common saying in Holland
that doors are not made for going in and out of the house.
Men and women both served as watchers, and sometimes both were at the
funeral services within the _doed-kamer_; but when the body was borne
to the grave on the wooden bier resting on the shoulders of the chosen
bearers, it was followed by men only. The women remained for a time in
the house where the funeral had taken place, and ate _doed-koecks_ and
sipped Madeira wine.
The coffin, made of well-seasoned boards, was often covered with black
cloth. Over it was spread the _doed-kleed_, a pall of fringed black
cloth. This _doed-kleed_ was the property of the church, as was the
pall in New England churches, and was usually stored with the bier in
the church-vestibule, or _doop-huys_. In case of a death in childbirth,
a heavy white sheet took the place of the black pall. This practice
also obtained in Yorkshire, England.
Among the Dutch a funeral was a most costly function. The expenditure
upon funeral gloves, scarfs, and rings, which was universal in New
England, was augmented in New York by the gift of a bottle of wine and
a linen scarf.
When Philip Livingstone died, in 1749, his funeral was held both in
New York and at the Manor. He had lived in Broad Street, and the lower
rooms of his house and those of his neighbors were thrown open to
receive the assemblage. A pipe of wine was spiced for the guests, and
the eight bearers were each given a pair of gloves, a mourning-ring,
a scarf, handkerchief, and a monkey-spoon. At the Manor a similar
ceremony took place, and a pair of gloves and handkerchief were given
to each tenant. The whole expense was five hundred pounds. When Madam
Livingstone died, we find her son writing to New York from the Manor
for a piece of black Strouds to cover the four hearse-horses; for
a “Barrell of Cutt Tobacco and Long Pipes of which I am out;” for
six silver tankards and cinnamon for the burnt wine; he said he had
bottles, decanters, and glasses enough. The expense of these funerals
may have been the inspiration for William Livingstone’s paper on
extravagance in funerals.
A monkey-spoon was a handsome piece of silver bearing the figure or
head of an ape on the handle. _Mannetiens_ spoons, also used in New
Netherland, were similar in design. At the funeral of Henry De Forest,
an early resident of New Harlem in 1637, his bearers were given spoons.
A familiar and extreme example of excess at funerals as told by Judge
Egbert Benson was at the obsequies of Lucas Wyngaard, an old bachelor
who died in Albany in 1756. The attendance was very large, and after
the burial a large number of the friends of the dead man returned
to the house, and literally made a night of it. These sober Albany
citizens drank up a pipe of wine, and smoked many pounds of tobacco.
They broke hundreds of pipes and all the decanters and glasses in the
house, and wound up by burning all their funeral scarfs in a heap in
the fireplace.
In Albany the expense, as well as the rioting, of funerals seems to
have reached a climax. It is said that the obsequies of the first
wife of Hon. Stephen Van Rensselaer cost twenty thousand dollars. Two
thousand linen scarfs were given, and all the tenants were entertained
for several days.
On Long Island every young man of good family began in his youth to
lay aside money in gold coin to pay for his funeral; and a superior
stock of wine was also saved for the same occasion. In Albany the cask
of choice Madeira which was bought for a wedding and used in part, was
saved in remainder for the funeral of the bridegroom.
The honor of a lavish funeral was not given to the wealthy and great
and distinguished only. The close of every life, no matter how humble,
how unsuccessful, was through the dignity conferred by death afforded a
triumphal exit by the medium of “a fine burying.”
In the preceding chapter the funeral of a penniless Albanian is noted;
in 1696 Ryseck Swart also became one of the church-poor of Albany.
She was not wholly penniless; she had a little silver and a few
petty jewels, and a little strip of pasture land, worth in all about
three hundred guilders. These she transferred to the church, for the
Consistory to take charge of and dole out to her. A good soul, Marritje
Lievertse, was from that time paid by the church thirty-six guilders
a month for caring for Ryseck. I do not doubt she had tender care,
for she was the last of the real church-poor (soon they had paupers
and an almshouse), and she lived four years, and cost the parish two
thousand two hundred and twenty-nine guilders. She died on February
15, 1700, and, though a pauper, she departed this life neither unwept,
unhonored, nor unsung. Had she been the cherished wife of a burgomaster
or _schepen_, she could scarce have had a more fully rounded or
more proper funeral. The bill, which was paid by the church, was as
follows:--
g. s.
3 dry boards for a coffin 7 10
³⁄₄ lb. nails 1 10
Making coffin 24
Cartage 10
Half a vat and an anker of good beer 27
1 gallon Rum 21
6 gallons Madeira for women and men 84
Sugar and _cruyery_ 5
150 Sugar cakes 15
Tobacco and pipes 5
Grave digger 30
Use of pall 10
Wife Jans Lockermans 36
-------------
232 guilders.
Rosenboom, for many years the _voor-leeser_ and _dood-graver_ and
_aanspreecker_ in Albany, sent in a bill of twelve guilders for
delivering invitations to the funeral,--which bill was rejected by the
deacons as exorbitant. But the invitations were delivered just the
same, for even colonial paupers had friends, and her coffin was not
made of green wood held together with wooden pegs, which some poor
bodies had to endure; and the one hundred and fifty _doed-koecks_ and
Madeira for the women very evenly balanced the plentiful beer and wine
and tobacco for the men. Truly, to quote one of Dyckman’s letters from
Albany, “the poor’s purse here was richly garnisht.”
An account of Albany, written by a traveller thereto in 1789, showed
the continued existence of these funeral customs. It runs thus:--
“Their funeral customs are equally singular. None attend them without
a previous invitation. At the appointed hour they meet at the
neighboring houses or stoops until the corpse is brought out. Ten or
twelve persons are appointed to take the bier altogether, and are not
relieved. The clerk then desires the gentlemen (for ladies never walk
to the grave, nor even attend the funeral unless a near relation) to
fall into the procession. They go to the grave and return to the house
of mourning in the same order. Here the tables are handsomely set and
furnished with cold and spiced wine, tobacco and pipes, and candles,
paper, etc., to light them. The house of mourning is soon converted
into a house of feasting.”
In New York we find old citizens leaving directions in their wills that
their funeral shall be conducted in “the old Dutch fashion,” not liking
the comparatively simpler modern modes.
The customs were nearly the same in English families. At the funeral of
Hon. Rufus King at Jamaica, Long Island, in 1827, which was held upon
an exceptionally hot day in April, silver salvers holding decanters
of wine and spirits, glasses and cigars, were constantly passed, both
indoors and out, where many stood waiting the bearing of the coffin to
the grave.
The transition of the funeral customs of ante-Revolutionary days into
those of our own may partially be learned from this account written in
1858 by Rev. Peter Van Pelt, telling Domine Schoonmaker’s method of
conducting a funeral in the year 1819:
“The deceased had, many years before, provided and laid away the
materials for his own coffin. This one was of the best seasoned and
smoothest boards and beautifully grained. As I entered the room I
observed the coffin elevated on a table in one corner. The Domine,
abstracted and grave, was seated at the upper end; and around in
solemn silence, the venerable and hoary-headed friends of the
deceased. A simple recognition or a half-audible inquiry as one after
another arrived was all that passed. Directly the sexton, followed by
a servant, made his appearance with glasses and decanters. Wine was
handed to each. Some declined; others drank a solitary glass. This
ended, again the sexton presented himself with pipes and tobacco. The
Domine smoked his pipe and a few followed his example. The custom
has become obsolete, and it is well that it has. When the whiffs of
smoke had ceased to curl around the head of the Domine, he arose
with evident feeling, and in a quiet subdued tone, made a short but
apparently impressive address. I judged solely by his appearance and
manner; for although boasting a Holland descent, it was to me an
unknown tongue. A short prayer concluded the service; and then the
sexton taking the lead, followed the Domine, doctor, and pall-bearers
with white scarfs and black gloves. The corpse and long procession of
friends and neighbors proceeded to the churchyard.”
Not only were materials for the coffin secured and made ready during
the lifetime, but often a shroud was made and kept for use. Instances
have been known where a shroud was laid by unused for so many years
that it became too yellow and discolored to use at all, and was
replaced by another. Sometimes a new unlaundered shirt was laid aside
for years to use as a _doed-hemde_. Two curious superstitions were rife
in some localities, especially on Long Island; one was the careful
covering of all the mirrors in the house, from the time of the death
till after the funeral; the other the pathetically picturesque “telling
the bees.” Whittier’s gentle rhyme on the subject has made familiar
to modern readers the custom of “telling the bees of one, gone on the
journey we all must go.”
Both an English and Dutch funeral fashion was the serving to the
attendants of the funeral of funeral-cakes. In New York and New
Netherland these were a distinctive kind of _koeckje_ known as
_doed-koecks_, literally dead-cakes. An old receipt for their
manufacture is thus given by Mrs. Ferris: “Fourteen pounds of flour,
six pounds of sugar, five pounds of butter, one quart of water, two
teaspoonfuls of pearlash, two teaspoonfuls of salt, one ounce of
Caraway seed. Cut in thick dishes four inches in diameter.” They were,
therefore, in substance much like our New Year’s cakes. Sometimes they
were marked with the initials of the deceased person; and often they
were carried home and kept for years as a memento of the dead,--perhaps
of the pleasures of the funeral. One baker in Albany made a specialty
of these cakes, but often they were baked at home. Sometimes two of
these _doed-koecks_ were sent with a bottle of wine and a pair of
gloves as a summons to the funeral.
In Whitby, England, a similar cake is still made by bakers and served
at funerals; but it is sprinkled with white sugar. In Lincolnshire and
Cumberland like customs still exist. “Burial-cakes” were advertised by
a baker in 1748 in the Philadelphia newspapers.
It is frequently asserted that funeral rings were commonly given among
the Dutch. It seems fair to infer that more of them would have been
in existence to-day if the custom had been universal. Scores of them
can be found in New England. There is an enamelled ring marked “K. V.
R., obit Sept. 16, 1719,” which was given at the funeral of Kileaen
Van Renssalaer. One of the Earl of Bellomont is also known, and two
in the Lefferts family, dating towards the close of the past century.
I have heard of a few others in Hudson Valley towns. Perhaps with
gifts of gloves, spoons, bottles of wine, _doed-koecks_, scarfs, or
handkerchiefs, rings would have been superfluous.
It will be noted in all these references to funerals herein given that
the services were held in private houses; it was not until almost our
own day that the funerals of those of Dutch descent were held in the
churches.
Interments were made under the churches; and, by special payment, a
church-attendant could be buried under the seat in which he was wont
to sit during his lifetime. The cost of interment in the Flatbush
church was two pounds for the body of a child under six years; three
pounds for a person from six to sixteen years of age; four pounds for
an adult; and in addition “those who are inclined to be permitted
to be interred in the church are required to pay the expense of
every person.” I don’t know exactly what this ambiguous sentence can
mean, but it was at any rate an extra charge “for the profit of the
schoolmaster,” who dug the grave and carried the dirt out of the
church, and was paid twenty-seven guilders for this sexton’s work for
an adult, and less for a younger person and hence a smaller grave.
Usually the domines were buried in front of the pulpit where they had
stood so often in life.
After newspaper-days arrived in the colony, there blossomed in print
scores of long death-notices, thoroughly in the taste of the day, but
not to our taste. In the “New York Gazette” of December 24, 1750, we
find a characteristic one:--
“Last Friday Morning departed this Life after a lingering Illness the
Honorable Mrs. Roddam, wife to Robert Roddam, Esq. Commander of his
Majesty’s Ship Greyhound, now on this Station, and eldest Daughter
of his Excellency our Governor. We hear she is to be Interred this
Evening.
“Good Mr. Parker--Dont let the Character of our Deceased Friend, Mrs.
Roddam, slip through your Fingers, as that of her Person through those
of the Doctors. That she was a most affable and perfectly Good-Natured
young Lady, with Good Sense and Politeness is well known to all her
Acquaintances, and became one of the most affectionate Wives.
“Immatura peri, sed tu felicior, Annos
Vivi mens, Conjux optime, vive tuos
were the Sentiments of her Later Moments when I had the Honour to
attend her. As this is intended as a small Tribute to the Manes of my
dear departed Friend, your inserting of it will oblige one of your
constant Female Readers and Humble Servant.”
Another, of a well-known colonial dame, reads thus;--
“Last Monday died in the 80th year of her Age, and on Thursday
was decently interred in the Family Vault at Morrisania: Isabella
Morris, Widow and Relict of his Excellency Lewis Morris, Esq., Late
Governor of the Province of New Jersey: A Lady endowed with every
Qualification Requisite to render the Sex agreeable and entertaining,
through all the Various scenes of Life. She was a pattern of Conjugal
Affection, a tender Parent, a sincere Friend, and an excellent
Oeconomist.
She was
Liberal, without Prodigality
Frugal, without Parsimony
Chearful, without Levity
Exalted, without Pride.
In person, Amiable
In conversation, Affable
In friendship, Faithful
Of Envy, void.
She passed through Life endow’d with every Grace
Her virtues! Black Detraction can’t deface;
Or Cruel Envy e’er eclipse her Fame;
Nor Mouldering Time obliterate her Name.”
The tiresome, pompous, verbose productions, Johnsonian in phrase and
fulsome in sentiment, which effloresced on the death of any man in
public life or of great wealth, need not be repeated here. They were
monotonously devoid of imagination and originality, being full of idle
repetitions from each other, and whoever has labored through one can
judge of them all.
It does not give us a very exalted notion of the sincerity or value of
these funeral testimonials, or the mental capacity of our ancestors, to
read in the newspapers advertisements of printed circulars of praise
for the dead, eulogistic in every aspect of the life of the departed,
and suitable for various ages and either sex, to be filled in with the
name of the deceased, his late residence, and date of death.
Puttenham in the “Arte of English Poesie,” says: “An Epitaph is an
inscription such as a man may commodiously write or engrave vpon a
tombe in few verses, pithie, quicke, and sententious, for the passer-by
to peruse and judge vpon without any long tariaunce.”
There need be no “long tariaunce” for either inquisitive or irreverent
search over the tombstones of the Dutch, for the dignified and simple
inscriptions are in marked contrast to the stilted affectations,
the verbose enumerations, the pompous eulogies, which make many
English “graveyard lines” a source of ridicule and a gratification
of curiosity. Indeed, the Dutch inscriptions can scarcely be called
epitaphs; the name, date of birth and death, are simply prefaced with
the ever-recurring _Hier rust het lighaam_, Here rests the body; _Hier
leydt het stoffelyk deel_, Here lie the earthly remains; or simpler
still, _Hier leyt begraven_, Here lies buried. Sometimes is found the
touching _Gedach-tenis_, In remembrance. More impressive still, from
its calm repetition on stone after stone, of an undying faith in a
future life, are the ever-present words, _In den Heere ontslapen_,
Sleeping in the Lord.
Not only in memory of those dead-and-gone colonists stand these simple
Dutch tombstones, but in suggestive remembrance also of a language
forever passed away from daily life in this land. The lichened
lettering of those unfamiliar words seems in sombre truth the very
voice of those honored dead who, in those green Dutch graveyards, in
the shadow of the old Dutch churches, _in den Heere ontslapen_.
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