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Title: Historic towns of the middle states
Editor: Lyman P. Powell
Release date: November 19, 2025 [eBook #77274]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1899
Credits: Greg Bergquist and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE MIDDLE STATES ***
American Historic Towns.
Historic Towns of New England.
Edited by LYMAN P. POWELL. With Introduction by GEORGE P. MORRIS. Fully
illustrated. Large 8ᵒ, $3.50.
Historic Towns of the Middle States.
Edited by LYMAN P. POWELL. With Introduction by ALBERT SHAW. Fully
illustrated. Large 8ᵒ, $3.50
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON
[Illustration: _The “Half-Moon” on the Hudson—1609._
_From a painting by L. W. Seavey._]
American Historic Towns
HISTORIC TOWNS
OF
THE MIDDLE STATES
Edited by
LYMAN P. POWELL
Illustrated
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK & LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1899
COPYRIGHT, 1899
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
[Illustration]
PREFACE
In offering to the public the second volume of _American Historic Towns_
the editor desires to bring three facts to the consideration of the
reader.
1. This being the middle volume of a series dealing with the older towns
along, or near, the Eastern coast, it is hoped that the title _Historic
Towns of the Middle States_ will seem not inappropriate.
2. The plan which underlay the making of the first volume, _Historic
Towns of New England_, has in the main been followed. Each author has
invariably been chosen because of unique fitness for his special task.
The editor believes that in every case the enthusiasm of the native or
the resident will be found wedded to the perspective of the _litterateur_
or scholar. No effort has been made to harmonize divergencies in style or
judgment, for obvious reasons. The success of the first volume has set
the stamp of approval on the method of the series, and the editor is glad
to announce that a volume on the Southern towns will shortly follow this.
3. The chapter on Princeton first served as an address in 1894 before
the Historical Pilgrims on the last day of their Pilgrimage, which is
described in _Historic Towns of New England_, pp. iii.-v.
To the making of this volume many have contributed in various ways. The
editor is under special obligation to his wife, Gertrude Wilson Powell,
for such assistance as makes her really a co-editor of the volume. Dr.
Albert Shaw, and Mr. Melvil Dewey too have given freely of their counsel
and encouragement, and the editor is happy to acknowledge their great
kindness.
LYMAN P. POWELL
ST. JOHN’S RECTORY, LANSDOWNE, PENNSYLVANIA, October 17, 1899.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION Albert Shaw xv
ALBANY Walton W. Battershall 1
SARATOGA Ellen Hardin Walworth 39
SCHENECTADY Judson S. Landon 71
NEWBURGH Adelaide Skeel 107
TARRYTOWN-ON-HUDSON Hamilton Wright Mabie 137
NEW YORK CITY Joseph B. Gilder 169
BROOKLYN Harrington Putnam 213
PRINCETON William M. Sloane 251
PHILADELPHIA Talcott Williams 297
WILMINGTON E. N. Vallandigham 335
BUFFALO Rowland B. Mahany 367
PITTSBURGH Samuel Harden Church 393
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
Transcriber’s Note: The illustrations listed as “Seal of Tarrytown”
and “Seal of New York City” were not, in fact, printed in the book.
Illustrations have been moved to the nearest paragraph break, which may
be on a different page.
PAGE
THE “HALF-MOON” ON THE HUDSON, 1609 _Frontispiece_
From the painting by L. W. Seavey.
ALBANY
OLD CHART OF NIEU NEDERLANDT[1] 5
PLAN OF ALBANY, 1695[1] 11
OLD DUTCH CHURCH, ERECTED IN 1715 ON SITE OF ORIGINAL CHURCH
ERECTED IN 1656[1] 13
ST. PETER’S CHURCH ERECTED IN 1715. FORT FREDERICK IN THE
BACKGROUND[1] 15
From a water-color sketch in the British Museum.
MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER[1] 23
From the painting by Colonel Trumbull.
STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER[1] 25
From the painting by Ezra Ames.
VAN RENSSELAER MANOR-HOUSE, 1765[2] 26
SCHUYLER MANSION, 1760[1] 27
WEST SIDE OF PEARL STREET, FROM STATE STREET TO MAIDEN LANE, 1814[1] 31
VIEW OF ALBANY, 1899[2] 33
JOHN V. L. PRUYN 35
SEAL OF ALBANY 37
SARATOGA
SARATOGA LAKE, N. Y. 40
MAP SHOWING HISTORIC AND OTHER DRIVES IN THE VICINITY OF SARATOGA
SPRINGS 42
SARATOGA BATTLE MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y. 43
NORTH BROADWAY, SARATOGA SPRINGS, 1898 47
GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER 50
Bronze statue in niche of Saratoga monument, Schuylerville, N. Y.
CONGRESS SPRING IN 1820 52
KAYADROSSERA PATENT, WITH GREAT SEAL OF QUEEN ANNE PENDANT, 1708 55
Original in Saratoga County Clerk’s Office.
WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION, 1776 57
From tablet on Saratoga battle monument, Schuylerville, N. Y.
“OLD WELL,” FREEMAN’S FARM, BATTLE-GROUND, BEMIS HEIGHTS, SEPT.
19, 1777 61
GENERAL DANIEL MORGAN 63
CONGRESS SPRING, 1898 66
SIGN, “PUTNAM AND THE WOLF,” ON PUTNAM’S TAVERN, SARATOGA SPRINGS 67
Original sign in Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga Springs, N. Y.
SEAL OF SARATOGA 70
SCHENECTADY
COLONIAL HOUSE, UNION STREET 72
VIEW ON STATE STREET 74
“THE BLUE GATE” ENTRANCE TO UNION COLLEGE GROUNDS 77
GLEN-SANDERS MANSION, ERECTED 1714 82
FIRST REFORMED (DUTCH) CHURCH 87
ELLIS HOSPITAL 90
EDISON HOTEL 93
UNION COLLEGE, 1795 99
STATUE, SITE OF “OLD FORT” 100
“THE BROOK THAT BOUNDS THRO’ UNION’S GROUNDS,” UNION COLLEGE 103
ELIPHALET NOTT 105
President of Union College for sixty years.
SEAL OF SCHENECTADY 106
NEWBURGH
WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT NEWBURGH[3] 109
JOEL T. HEADLEY[4] 111
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH 113
ANDREW J. DOWNING[4] 116
HENRY KIRKE BROWN[4] 119
HEADQUARTERS OF MAJOR-GENERAL KNOX AT VAIL’S GATE[3] 123
CLINTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT LITTLE BRITAIN, NEAR NEWBURGH 124
CLINTON STATUE IN COLDEN SQUARE, NEWBURGH 126
THE WILLIAMS HOUSE[3] 129
MONUMENT ON TEMPLE HILL, NEAR NEWBURGH[5] 130
THE VERPLANCK HOUSE[5] 131
Baron Steuben’s headquarters, where the “Nicola Letter” was
written.
WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT FISHKILL[6] 133
CHARLES DOWNING[4] 134
SEAL OF NEWBURGH 135
TARRYTOWN-ON-HUDSON
BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF TARRYTOWN 139
From a photograph by F. Ahrens.
THE POCANTICO RIVER 149
From a photograph.
OLD MANOR-HOUSE (“FLYPSE’S CASTLE”) AND MILL, TARRYTOWN 151
THE OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW 153
From a drawing by W. J. Wilson.
INTERIOR OF THE OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW, PRIOR TO ITS
RESTORATION IN 1897 155
From a photograph by F. Ahrens.
MONUMENT TO THE CAPTORS OF ANDRÉ 159
From a photograph by F. Ahrens.
WASHINGTON IRVING 161
“SUNNYSIDE” 163
The home of Washington Irving.
THE JACOB MOTT HOUSE, WHERE KATRINA VAN TASSEL WAS MARRIED 165
Now occupied by the new Washington Irving High School.
SEAL OF TARRYTOWN 166
OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW MILL 167
NEW YORK CITY
FIRST SEAL OF THE CITY, 1623-1654[7] 170
MAP OF ORIGINAL GRANTS[7] 171
THE FORT IN GOVERNOR KIEFT’S DAY 174
PETER STUYVESANT 176
SEAL OF THE CITY IN 1686[7] 177
JOHN JAY 179
ALEXANDER HAMILTON 180
FRAUNCES TAVERN 183
THE STADT HUYS 191
STAINED-GLASS WINDOW IN “BOWLING GREEN OFFICES,” SHOWING GREEN
ABOUT 1760[8] 193
GOVERNMENT HOUSE[8] 195
FEDERAL HALL 196
ST. PAUL’S CHURCH 199
CITY HALL 200
GRANT’S TOMB, RIVERSIDE DRIVE 203
WASHINGTON ARCH 209
SEAL OF NEW YORK CITY 211
BROOKLYN
VIEW IN BROOKLYN IN THE OLDEN TIMES 215
DENYSE’S FERRY 217
The first place at which the British and Hessians landed on
Long Island, August 22, 1776. Now Fort Hamilton.
BUSHWICK TOWN-HOUSE AND CHURCH, 1800 223
SECTION OF MAP OF BROOKLYN, 1776 231
BROWER’S MILL, GOWANUS 233
The Yellow Mill is seen in the distance.
MONUMENT TO MARYLAND’S “400” 241
NAVY YARD 243
In foreground 5.5-inch breech-loading gun, with mount
and shield, taken from Spanish cruiser _Vizcaya_, after
destruction of Spanish fleet, July 3, 1898; also submarine
mine from Guantanamo.
FORT LAFAYETTE, NEW YORK NARROWS 245
BROOKLYN INSTITUTE MUSEUM 246
HENRY WARD BEECHER 247
SEAL OF BROOKLYN 249
PRINCETON
THE LINE OF HISTORIC CATALPAS 253
A VIEW OF THE FRONT CAMPUS 255
JOHN WITHERSPOON 260
WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT ROCKY HILL, N. J., NEAR PRINCETON 261
MORVEN 263
RICHARD STOCKTON, “THE SIGNER” 269
HALL IN THE MORVEN HOUSE 273
BATTLE OF PRINCETON. DEATH OF MERCER 277
From the painting by Col. J. Trumbull.
NASSAU HALL 287
PRESIDENT JAMES MCCOSH 293
SEAL OF PRINCETON 296
PHILADELPHIA
READING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 299
From an old French print.
THOMAS PENN 303
From a painting owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania,
copied by M. I. Naylor from the portrait in the possession of
Major Dugald Stuart.
SECOND STREET, PHILADELPHIA, SHOWING THE OLD COURT HOUSE ON THE
LEFT 305
From an engraving by W. Birch & Son.
FRANKLIN IN 1777 307
After the print reproduced from the drawing of Cochin.
THE PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY 309
The old building on Fifth Street, now demolished. From an
engraving by W. Birch & Son.
CARPENTER’S HALL, PHILADELPHIA 313
Wherein met the First Continental Congress, 1774.
THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL 315
From an engraving by W. Birch & Son.
INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA, BEFORE 1876 319
THE MORRIS HOUSE, GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA 321
DR. WILLIAM PEPPER[9] 324
FRANK THOMSON[9] 326
THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 331
SEAL OF PHILADELPHIA 333
WILMINGTON
PLAN OF CHRISTINA FORT, 1655 338
RESIDENCE OF THE LATE THOMAS F. BAYARD[10] 342
OLD SWEDES’ CHURCH 345
REV. ERIC BJORK[11] 348
BISHOP LEE 349
THOMAS F. BAYARD 351
SHIPLEY BUILDING[11] 354
OLD FRIENDS’ MEETING-HOUSE 356
HOUSE OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 359
CITY HALL 361
NEWCASTLE COUNTY COURT HOUSE 363
SEAL OF WILMINGTON 365
BUFFALO
JOSEPH ELLICOTT 368
Founder of Buffalo.
LAFAYETTE SQUARE 371
A GLIMPSE OF BUFFALO HARBOR 375
ST. PAUL’S CHURCH 379
MILLARD FILLMORE[12] 383
BEACON ON OLD BREAKWATER 386
DELAWARE AVENUE, SHOWING BISHOP QUIGLEY’S HOUSE 388
DR. JOHN CRONYN 389
WILLIAM I. WILLIAMS 390
SEAL OF BUFFALO 391
PITTSBURGH
AN EARLY RESIDENT OF PITTSBURGH 395
From the statue by T. A. Mills in the Carnegie Museum.
SUN-DIAL USED AT FORT DUQUESNE 398
THE EARL OF CHATHAM 403
From an oil painting in the possession of the Historical
Society of Pennsylvania.
BLOCKHOUSE OF FORT PITT. BUILT IN 1764 406
PLAN OF FORT PITT 409
PHIPPS CONSERVATORY 415
THE COAL FLEET 419
CARNEGIE INSTITUTE 421
COURT HOUSE 425
SEAL OF PITTSBURGH 426
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION
BY ALBERT SHAW
The designation “Middle States” has a negative, rather than a positive,
significance. In our later history, as well as in that of our colonizing
and federalizing periods, the term “New England” has had a definite
value for many purposes besides those of geographical convenience: and
it is equally true that “the South” has meant very much in our American
life besides a mere territorial expression. But the “Middle States” lack
the sharply distinguishing characteristics of the other groups. In more
senses than the strictly literal one, the two immense States of New York
and Pennsylvania, with one or two smaller neighbors, have occupied middle
ground.
If New York, on the one hand, has been somewhat closely related to
New England, Pennsylvania has had many neighborly associations with
Maryland and Virginia. New Jersey, meanwhile, has been a close link
between Pennsylvania and New York. The development of New England was
dominated in a marvellous way by a set of ideas, religious, political
and philosophical, that belonged to a certain phase of the English
Reformation. Virginia and other settlements to the southward had their
origins in a colonizing movement that was more typically representative
of contemporary English manners, views and ways of living. The
aristocratic system would have disappeared rapidly enough in the South
but for the gradual extension of an exotic institution,—that of African
slavery.
The Middle States had a more varied origin,—one that does not lend itself
so readily to the purposes of contrast and generalization. The Hudson,
called by the Dutch the North River, and the Delaware, which they called
the South River, were both entered by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in
the employ of the Dutch East India Company, in 1609; and apart from an
extremely limited settlement of Swedes on the west bank of the Delaware,
it was the Dutch who controlled the beginnings of European settlement
along the seaboard of what afterward came to be known as the Middle
States section. The Dutch colonization was not large, but it had a strong
and persistent influence upon the subsequent development of New York and
the region round about.
The gradual predominance in New York of men of English speech and
origin came about partly by infiltration from the New England colonies
and partly by direct migration from England. There resulted a natural
and harmonious fusion between the Dutch pioneers on the Hudson and the
English-speaking colonists. Various Dutch institutions survived long
after the English language had come into general use.
Before the grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn, the settlers on the
Delaware had been mainly Swedish, Dutch or otherwise from continental
Europe. William Penn’s colonists at the outset were largely English
Quakers, and some years later there arrived great numbers of Germans,
some French Huguenots, and a good many Scotch-Irish Protestants.
Thus, as compared with New England on the one hand and the Southern
colonies on the other, the Middle States had cosmopolitan, rather than
purely English, origins. This cosmopolitanism has remained, as a leading
factor in all their subsequent history. The spirit of compromise and
tolerance that had been developed in the middle section by the contact
of different nationalities was of incalculable value when the time
came for the co-operation of the thirteen colonies in the struggle for
independence, and in the subsequent formation of their federal union.
If the colony which developed into the Empire State, and that which came
to be known as the Keystone State, had occupied some other geographical
position than the one they held as a buffer between New England and the
South, the history of America might well have taken a wholly different
course. For there was almost as much difference in institutions, life
and points of view between the New Englanders and the Virginians of
Colonial days as between the New Englanders and the Canadian Frenchmen
across the St. Lawrence. But the transition from New England to New York
was easy, and involved no violent contrasts. There had been a steady
movement of population from the New England States westward across the
eastern boundary line of the State of New York. On the other hand, it
was comparatively easy for Maryland and Virginia to co-operate with
Pennsylvania. In so far, indeed, as population had extended back from the
tide-water districts into the hill country and the Appalachian valleys,
the settlement both of Maryland and Virginia had proceeded very largely
from Pennsylvania.
Thus the Middle States had a great mission to perform in uniting and
holding together the more extreme sections. In the development, after
the Revolutionary War, of the country west of the Alleghanies, this
harmonizing influence of the Middle States was very conspicuously shown
in the creation of the great commonwealth of Ohio, and only to a less
degree in the making of a number of other States in what has now come to
be called the Middle West—the region that produced men of the type of
Lincoln and Grant, and that joined with the old Middle States in later
crises to preserve the Union and fuse its elements into a homogeneous
nation.
No communities in the world lend themselves more profitably to the study
of history than these which are described in the present volume. Concrete
illustration aids no less in the study of history than in that of the
physical sciences; and these towns of the Middle States illustrate
not only the more recent tendencies that have marked the course of
human history, but also lead us back by easy stages to an insight into
conditions of an earlier time. For example, the survivals of the Dutch
_régime_ in New York quicken a sympathetic interest that greatly aids the
comprehension of the international career of the Netherlands. On the very
day when these remarks are written, the larger news of the world—that
which is history in the making—concerns itself with two widely severed
scenes of early Dutch colonization. From Paris comes the decision of the
Venezuela arbitration tribunal, involving principally the material and
legal facts as to the extent of Dutch exploration and settlement in the
same general period as the Dutch colonization of New York. The relations
of the Dutch and English in successions and exchanges of jurisdiction on
the northern coast of South America can only be understood in the light
of the history of the settlements at the mouth of the Hudson River.
In like manner the conditions of Dutch settlement in South Africa in the
middle of the seventeenth century are best comprehended in connection
with the story of contemporary Dutch colonization in America. The
Knickerbockers of New York and the Boers of the Transvaal are of common
origin,—a fact frankly recognized by the Holland Society of New York in
its expressions of sympathy with the Dutch element in South Africa in its
struggle against fate.
The history of the communities of Pennsylvania affords a convenient
initiation into much of the complex religious and ecclesiastical history
of Europe. Penn brought the Quakers and other fine English stock from the
middle and north of England for reasons that go to the very heart of the
English life of the seventeenth century. A little later the Protestant
Germans of the Palatinate came in great numbers, impelled by motives
to understand which is to find oneself essentially comprehending the
conditions of Church and State that so disturbed and harassed Western
Europe for a long period. Thus, to study the great city of Philadelphia
in its origins, its later accretions and its existing conditions, is to
find inviting avenues leading into many fields of historical inquiry both
of the new world and the old.
What single spot could one find anywhere that would more naturally
stimulate the study of political and economic history in the nineteenth
century than old Castle Garden at the lower end of New York City, through
which millions upon millions of immigrants have entered the Western world
to find contentment and prosperity? Many of these came from Ireland;
and the municipal life of New York City has been profoundly affected by
that fact. To answer the question why these people left Ireland and, in
leaving, why their destination was New York rather than some port in the
British colonies, is to review the history of the Irish land system, the
Irish Church and the political administration of Ireland for several
generations.
An enormous element of the present population of New York, as well as
of the country at large, is made up of a comparatively recent German
immigration, to understand which one must learn something of the German
revolutionary movement of 1848, the growth of German militarism and the
conditions under which educational progress in Germany has outstripped
the average material prosperity. Still more recently there has been a
huge immigration of Russian Jews, with local effects of a most marked
character in the city of New York. To know why these Jews have come is to
look into racial, political, and economic conditions throughout the great
empire of the Czar.
To study the main routes of communication in a region like our Middle
States is to gain an insight into the relations of physical conditions
to historical development that will be of no little use in the study of
other origins and remoter periods. It would be hard to exaggerate the
importance, for instance, of the part that the Hudson River has played in
the history of the Western Hemisphere since its discovery and settlement
by the Europeans. The route by way of the Hudson, Lake George and Lake
Champlain afforded in the early times the one interior passage to the St.
Lawrence from the settlements on our seaboard.
Much of the land adjacent to the river was granted in large tracts under
the Dutch system to patroons, so called, who were virtually feudal lords.
Upon some of these tracts there still survive various peculiarities of
the feudal system of land tenure. To know something of what feudalism
meant as respects the control of the land, the student might find a
worse method than to trace back the history of one of these Hudson River
estates to the period of the Dutch grant, in order to get so much nearer
to the survivals of the mediæval system in Europe.
At the spot where I live on the Hudson, and where I am now writing,
the environment is suggestive of almost three centuries of American
history. I look out upon the great stream which Hudson navigated in
the _Half Moon_ in 1609, and upon which sailing craft have been plying
almost continually ever since. I see great steamers passing where Fulton
first experimented with steam navigation. The highway near by is the
old Albany post-road, this immediate part of which was known as Edgar’s
Lane and was opened in 1644. This morning I heard the pleasant notes of
a coaching-horn, and looked out to see a stately four-in-hand on its way
to the city, a forcible reminder of at least a century and a half of
regular mail coaching on that same road. My home is a part of what was
the old Philipse manor; and at Yonkers, a few miles below, one finds the
manor-house, now in constant use as a municipal building. It was partly
built in 1682, and assumed its present dimensions in about 1745.
On this very ground, and on the hills lying to the eastward, Washington’s
army was encamped for a number of weeks in 1777, and near by is the
well-preserved colonial house where Washington and Rochambeau sojourned
for some time, and where the Yorktown campaign was planned. In the
river at this point, on several occasions, the British frigates made
appearance, the last of these being the final meeting between General
Washington and General Sir Guy Carleton, in May, 1783, on the suspension
of hostilities. A few miles farther up the road one comes to the lane
that leads to Washington Irving’s “Sunnyside,” with its tablet stating
that the house was first built in the year 1650.
With these older historical souvenirs in mind, I turn to the southward,
and there, as a reminder that the current of American history flows on,
and that our past is in no manner detached from the present and the
future, I see, standing out in bold relief on the horizon, the tomb
of General Grant, while anchored in the river lies the _Olympia_, the
flag-ship of Admiral Dewey, just now returned from adventures as fraught
with history-making results as was the presence of Hudson’s _Half Moon_
in this same river two hundred and ninety years ago.
The historical significance of the Hudson might be illustrated in some
such way at many another point upon its banks. The location of Albany
is particularly to be noted as one evidently intended by nature for an
important rendezvous. In the earlier period Albany and the Saratoga
district, and certain points of advantage in the Mohawk Valley, were of
great strategic importance. They were natural gateways, which had to be
held first against the Indians and Frenchmen, and afterward against the
British. Their later importance has had to do with canals, railroads and
the development of commerce.
But of Albany it must be said that it has also the distinction of being
one of the three or four chief law-making centres of the English-speaking
world. In no other way has the State of New York exerted so wide an
influence upon the country at large as in the working out of laws and
institutions which have been re-enacted almost without change by a great
number of the other States of the Union. Thus Albany has been a great
training school in politics and legislation.
Before the days of railroad building, the Erie Canal was the greatest
undertaking that this country had witnessed in the improvement of its
transportation facilities. This waterway connected the Great Lakes with
the Atlantic by way of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys; and among other
results of a far-reaching nature there followed the development of the
city of Buffalo, a commercial and manufacturing community founded in the
opening years of the nineteenth century, and destined in the twentieth
to achieve such growth and splendor as few men are yet bold enough to
anticipate.
We have seen in our generation fierce rivalry for the occupation of
Khartoum, at the head of Nile navigation, with one expedition succeeding
another until the final success of the English under General Kitchener.
The possession of Khartoum was known to carry with it the control of
the fertile Soudan beyond, as well as to affect the permanent mastery
of the valley of the lower Nile to the Delta. In some such manner the
French and English in the middle of the eighteenth century appreciated
the strategic importance of the point at the junction of the Alleghany
and the Monongahela rivers, where the Ohio took its start, and from which
navigation was unobstructed all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It was in
large part the struggle for the site of Pittsburgh that gave Washington
the military training and the large perception of the future of America
that fitted him for his great tasks of leadership. The development of
Pittsburgh and the opening of the Ohio furnish most instructive and
interesting chapters in the history of our country.
The quaint or curious or heroic beginnings must always have their
fascination; and it is likely enough that for a long time to come they
will take a little more than their normal or proportionate share of the
page of history. But real history is learning also to concern itself
with other things. The story of Princeton, now so largely that of
Revolutionary annals, will henceforth increasingly be the story of the
life and work of a great university. That of Pittsburgh will become in
expanding proportions the story of the development of the arts and crafts
and of manufacturing in this country, and of the struggle of skilled
labor for an ever-larger share in the advantages made possible by the
enormous increase in the volume of production. The story of Philadelphia
will, to an increasing extent, be that of the best housed and most
contented of all the great communities in the world, full of evidences of
private thrift and the domestic virtues, while exhibiting the paradox of
a relatively low degree of efficiency in matters of common concern like
municipal administration.
The historic towns of the Middle States are now engaged in the making
of history in ways very different from those of the Colonial and
Revolutionary periods, but in ways certainly not less important. But
their future will be the wiser and happier for a studious devotion to the
records of their honorable past, and they cannot be too zealous in the
perpetuation of the old landmarks.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE MIDDLE STATES
ALBANY
“This antient and respectable city.”—(_Washington, 1782._)
BY WALTON W. BATTERSHALL
Albany, unlike the proverbial happy woman, has not only age but a
history. Its age is indicated in its claim to be the second oldest
existing settlement in the original thirteen colonies. The claim is
fairly sustained, but we must remember that the alleged discoveries and
settlements of those nomadic times are a trifle equivocal. On the other
hand, the historical significance of Albany is based on two unquestioned
facts: for a century it guarded the imperilled north and west frontiers
of Anglo-Saxon civilization on the continent; for another century it has
been the legislative seat of the most powerful State in the Republic.
On the 19th of September, 1609, _old style_, the yacht _De Halve Maen_,
six months from Amsterdam, in command of Henry Hudson, dropped anchor
a few miles below the present site of Albany. Four days spent in the
exchange of civilities with the Indians and the taking of soundings from
the ship’s boat farther up the stream, convinced the speculative explorer
that the beautiful river among the hills gave no promise of a water path
to China, and the _Half-Moon_, freighted with wild fruits, peltries and
pleasant impressions, turned her prow homeward.
From the Dutch and also the English point of view, the English skipper
of the Dutch ship had discovered the river. It appears however that
in 1524 Verrazzano put a French keel, _La Dauphine_, far up the same
stream, to which he gave the name La Grande, and, some time after, French
fur traders built a rude _château_, or, as we would say, fortified
trading-post, on Castle Island, just off the hills of Albany. But the
France of Francis I. had no colonizing grip, and La Nouvelle France was
simply a name which stretched along the Atlantic seaboard on the French
charts of the sixteenth century.
On the return of Henry Hudson, his discovery was claimed by his patrons,
the Dutch East India Company. They named the river the Mauritius[13]
(Prince Maurice’s River), and the outlying country, known as Nieu
Nederlandt, had good report in Holland for its furs and friendly savages.
The Amsterdam merchants were alert, and other Dutch vessels, following
in the wake of the _Half-Moon_, pushed up the river to the head of
navigation. There they found on the west bank the Maquaas, or Mohawks,
and on the east bank the Mahicans, or Mohegans, with whom they had
profitable transactions.
To consolidate and protect their ventures, a group of merchants
petitioned the States-General of Holland for the exclusive privilege
of traffic with the aborigines on the river. The elaborate map of Nieu
Nederlandt which they presented with their petition was discovered in
1841 in the royal archives at the Hague, and a facsimile is now in the
State Library at Albany.[14] A license for three years was granted.
Thereupon, in 1615, the ruined _château_ on Castle Island was rebuilt,
equipped with two cannon and garrisoned with a dozen Dutch soldiers. In
compliment to the Stadtholder, it received the name of Fort Nassau.
This occupancy in force of Castle Island (now called Van Rensselaer
Island) was brief, for the spring freshets proved too much for even the
amphibious Dutch musketeers and traders, and it hardly can be called a
settlement.
It is an interesting fact, that the valley of the Hudson narrowly missed
the honor of being settled by the passengers of the _Mayflower_. Under
the November skies of 1620, that historic vessel, with its valuable cargo
of religious and political seed-corn, for several days had been beating
about the point of Cape Cod. Old Governor Bradford, with quaint spelling
and phrasing, tells the story of the mishap:
“After some deliberation had amongst them selves and with yᵉ
mʳ of yᵉ ship, they tacked aboute and resolved to stande for
yᵉ southward (yᵉ wind and weather being faire) to finde some
place aboute Hudsons river for their habitation. But after they
had sailed yᵗ course aboute halfe yᵉ day, they fell amongst
dangerous shoulds and roring breakers, and they were so farr
intangled ther with as they conceived them selves in great
danger; & yᵉ wind shrinking upon them withall they resolved to
bear up again for the Cape.”[15]
[Illustration: OLD CHART OF NIEU NEDERLANDT.]
Thus Plymouth Rock became the intellectual door-stone of the New World,
and the banks of the Hudson inherited one of the sad “might-have-beens”
of history. However, Douglas Campbell, in his trenchant and disturbing
book, _The Puritan in Holland, England and America_, has told us that the
distinctive principles of our American social and political life show, on
critical inspection, the Dutch hall-mark.
The America of 1621 was much more of a “dark continent” than the Africa
of fifty years ago. The adjective applies both to the skin of the
autochthons and the mind of the explorers. In the commercial circles
of Amsterdam, Nieu Nederlandt was supposed to be a part of the West
Indies. Therefore it was that the new company which was devised for its
exploitation and chartered in the year mentioned, took the name of The
Dutch West India Company.
Under its auspices, in March, 1624, the ship _Nieu Nederlandt_ sailed
from Amsterdam by the accustomed route of the Canary Islands for the
Mauritius River. She carried thirty families, chiefly Walloons, refugees
from Belgium who had settled in Holland, and a few Dutch freemen. Some of
the families were landed on Manhattan Island, but the majority proceeded
up the river and selected for their settlement the fat meadow on the west
shore above Castle Island. Under the shadow of the clay hill on which the
Capitol now lifts its masses of sculptured granite, they built rude huts
sheathed in bark, and a little log fort which they named Fort Orange. The
Indians were friendly and eager to barter, and enthusiastic reports were
at once sent over to Holland, with corroborative otter and beaver skins.
Two years after this settlement at Fort Orange, the Dutch West India
Company purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for sixty guilders in
high-priced goods and, planting a colony and fort on the south end of
the island, brought up the population of Nieu Nederlandt to two hundred
souls. The Company, desiring to stimulate colonization, in 1629 projected
the manorial or patroon system; a combination of feudal idea and Latin
name, _patronus_. Killiaen Van Rensselaer, one of the directors and a
rich merchant of Amsterdam, at once obtained an extensive grant of land
south of Fort Orange and, by the purchase of the land from the Indians
and the planting of a colony, became the patroon of Rensselaerswyck. He
never visited his “colonie,” but before his death in 1646, he had sent
from Holland over two hundred artisans and farmers, and included in his
manor a territory forty-eight by twenty-four miles, and also another
tract of sixty-two thousand acres.
Thus Albany began with a Dutch imprint, which to this day has given to
the city its distinctive mark. Forty years of Dutch sagacity and thrift
rapidly developed the colony. It was on the whole a prosperous period,
enlivened by chronic disputes between the garrison and the manor, and
disquieting rumors regarding belligerent Indians and the French. It
throws on a small canvas sturdy personages and stirring events. Brandt
Van Slechtenhorst, the stiff upholder of the manor claims against the
doughty Pieter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General; Domine
Megapolensis, the first Dutch minister; and the flitting figure of the
Jesuit missionary, Father Jogues with his hands mangled by the Mohawks
and kissed by the Queen of France, would make any canvas picturesque. To
take Washington Irving’s delicious bit of humor too seriously shows a
melancholy lack of humor.
Certainly the Dutch burghers of Albany did not take very seriously the
English occupation of Nieu Nederlandt in 1664. The seizure was colored by
an old claim of uncertain dimensions based upon the Cabot discoveries,
which for a long time had strained the relations between England and
Holland concerning colonial matters. The capitulation was bloodless,
and to Albany it brought little change, save that the English flag, in
place of the Dutch, fluttered over the ramparts of Fort Orange, which
took the name of Fort Albany in commemoration of the Scotch title of the
Duke of York, the new lord of the province. The great manorial grant was
confirmed, and in all its habits of thought and life the colony remained
Dutch. The happiest change and perhaps the most startling shock came
from the fact that the Duke of York, bigot as he was, broke the tradition
of the period and introduced in his province religious toleration.
The English came, but the Dutch remained. The old Holland stock on
the bank of the Hudson kept its root in the soil and has made vital
contributions to the American hybrid, which have had scant recognition in
our popular histories. The fact is, the Dutch were not given to writing
books. They had fought for their religion and motherland, and had held
them both against the assault of a powerful foe, but the recital of the
story they left to the more expert tongues and more eloquent pens of
Englishmen. Their type of character and social usage has proved its vigor
and worth by its quiet persistence and dominance in New York life of
to-day. In old Albany, even under English rule, ideas and customs which
had their birth behind the dykes of Holland were conspicuously in the
ascendant.
[Illustration: PLAN OF ALBANY, 1695.]
Albany became a city in 1686 by a judicious charter granted by Governor
Dongan. A diagram in the Rev. John Miller’s _Description of the Province
and City of New York_, published in London, 1695, gives us an idea of
the new-born city. It consisted of about a hundred houses surrounded by
a stockade, which was pierced to the north and south by narrow gateways.
Above the stockade the most conspicuous objects were the pyramidal roof
of the Dutch church at the foot of Jonker Street (now State Street),
surmounted by three small cannon, and, on the eminence at the upper end
of the street, the bastions of Fort Frederick, which had inherited the
responsibilities and honors of the dismantled Fort Orange.
For about forty years after the peaceful seizure by the English, the old
Dutch church, where the prosperous burghers worshipped, and a Lutheran
church of somewhat intermittent life but hospitable to outsiders sufficed
for the religious needs of the city. The officers of the garrison,
however, and probably most of the soldiers were Church of England men.
There was much in the service of the Dutch Church of that day which must
have suggested pleasant reminiscence. Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday
were festivals brought from Holland, and were duly celebrated in the
church and at the fireside. Queerly enough, in the accounts of Pieter
Schuyler, the deacon of the Dutch church in 1683 and the first mayor
of the city, we read that “the 13th of January was observed as a day of
fasting and prayer, to divert God’s heavy judgment from falling on the
English nation for the murder of King Charles, martyr of blessed memory,”
and that the expenses therefor were seventeen guilders.
[Illustration: OLD DUTCH CHURCH, ERECTED IN 1715 ON SITE OF ORIGINAL
CHURCH ERECTED IN 1656.]
But the theological coin of the Synod of Dort, whether acceptable or not
to the English, was more or less inaccessible, being hid in the napkin
of the Dutch language. Evidently there was need of an English house of
worship in Albany. In 1714, therefore, Governor Hunter issued letters
patent granting a plot of ground in Jonker Street below the fort for
a church and cemetery. The Common Council made protest. The point at
issue was a question, not of doctrine, but of municipal rights. They
issued notice to suspend the laying of the foundations. They arrested
the workmen. They petitioned the Governor. They sent a messenger by
express in a canoe to New York,—a journey in those days of such magnitude
that the church was well under way by the time the return voyage was
accomplished. Despite all obstacles, the work went on and in the course
of a year the first English church west of the Hudson was built. The two
churches, the Dutch at the foot and the English at the head of State
Street, were the chief ecclesiastical landmarks of eighteenth-century
Albany. Like rocks in a stream, they stood in the broad thoroughfare and
preserved the magnificent approach to the future Capitol.
[Illustration: ST. PETER’S CHURCH, ERECTED IN 1715, FORT FREDERICK IN THE
BACKGROUND.
(FROM A WATER-COLOR SKETCH IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.)]
Little as it was, Albany was the nest of important events and a maker
of history in those troublous days. Second to New York in size and
resources, it served as a wary sentinel and tremulous alarm-bell to the
exposed province. For well-nigh a century, all beyond it to the west
and north, except the hamlet of Schenectady and the French settlements
on the St. Lawrence, was wilderness and savages. It occupied a post of
the gravest peril and responsibility. We get a glimpse of the situation
and of the current history in the scene on that Sunday morning, the
9th of February, four years after the granting of the charter, when
Symon Schermerhoorn, shot through the thigh, told at the north gate of
the stockade his breathless story of the night attack and the horrible
massacre at Schenectady.
Between the hostile French in Canada and the little frontier city on
the Hudson roamed the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy, upon whose
friendship and fealty in large measure hung the destiny of the English
possessions. The stockade, thirteen feet high, would have been of little
account if that living bulwark of savage allies had yielded to the arms
or the bribes of the French. That the bulwark did not yield, that the
fealty of the Indians was won and, through every peril, kept unbroken,
was owing to the sagacity and honorable dealing of the government and
burghers of Albany. _The House of Peace_—this is the name which the
Mohawk sachem, at one of the council-fires, gave to the Albany of those
olden days, and, in the graphic phrase of his Indian oratory, he pictured
at a stroke its political value and place in history; for there, by
repeated formal treaties and habitual friendly intercourse, were riveted
the “Covenant Chains” which made the confederation of the Six Nations the
guardians of the feeble province.
There is a scene in _The History of New York_, by William Dunlap,
which is illustrative. The date is 1746 and the central figure is the
celebrated Col. William Johnson, Indian agent, whom George II. made a
“baronet of Great Britain.”
“When the Indians came near the town of Albany on the 8th of
August, Mr. Johnson put himself at the head of the Mohawks,
dressed and painted as an Indian war-captain. The Indians
followed him painted for war. As they passed the fort, they
saluted by a running fire, which the governor answered by
cannon. The chiefs were afterwards received in the fort-hall
and treated to wine. A good deal of private manœuvring with the
individual sachems was found necessary to make them declare
for war with France before a public council was held. The
Iroquois took to the 23d of the month for deliberation, and
then answered, the governor being present.”
During the French wars, Albany, from a military point of view, was
probably the most animated spot on the continent. It was the storehouse
for munitions of war and the rendezvous for the troops. English
regulars and provincial militia swarmed in and about the city. After
the unsuccessful campaigns of 1756 and 1757, the town was filled with
refugees, reciting the slaughter of the garrison at Fort William
Henry, and the murder and havoc wrought by the Indians in pay of the
French. Hundreds of loyal Indians, with their squaws and papooses,
encamped under the stockade. The houses and barns were filled with
wounded soldiers brought from the seat of war. In the pauses of the
campaigns, notwithstanding the horrible rumors and actual disasters,
the “dangerously accomplished” English officers made merry life in old
Albany, picturesque details of which are given in that charming chronicle
of colonial days, _Memoirs of an American Lady_ (Mrs. Philip Schuyler),
by Mrs. Grant of Laggan.
In the opening of the campaign of 1758 there was grief and consternation
in the province. Tidings came that Lord Viscount Howe had been killed
in a skirmish on the march against Fort Ticonderoga. The body of the
brilliant soldier was brought to Albany by his friend, Captain Philip
Schuyler, and was buried beneath the chancel of the English church. The
stone recently unearthed in the village of Ticonderoga, which bears the
inscription, evidently scratched by a knife or bayonet, _Mem of Lo Howe
killed Trout Brook_, probably marked the spot where Lord Howe fell. There
is abundant evidence that his body now lies beneath the vestibule of St.
Peter’s Church. The _Church Book_ of the parish contains the following
entry: _1758, Sept. 5th. To cash Rt for ground to lay the Body of Lord
how & Pall £5. 6. 0_.
In the following year, the fateful victory of Wolfe on the Plains of
Abraham gave Canada to England and ended the hard-fought duel between the
Latin and the Anglo-Saxon for the sovereignty of the continent.
Some years before this, the Stadt Huys, the old City Hall of Albany,
was the scene of a significant event which was the prelude of one
still more momentous. There in 1754 Commissioners from the several
provinces convened to renew the “Covenant Chain” with the Six Nations,
and to discuss the best methods for uniting and defending the colonial
interests. The foremost spirits and political prophets of the colonies
composed the assembly. Numerous Indian sachems, with their stately
bearing and barbaric splendor, decorated the scene of the deliberations.
The “Plan” adopted by the convention was not accepted by the Crown, but
it was the first attempt to articulate the idea of a colonial union, and
it bore two names, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Hopkins, which in due
time were affixed to the Declaration of Independence.
Before the lightning flashed in the volley at Lexington, there were
centres of influence throughout the colonies breeding storm. Albany
was one of them. The heart of the old Dutch town was fired with the
indignations and enthusiasms of the time. There were tories of course,
but the temper of the city and the attitude of those who controlled the
situation are indicated by the fact that, when the Province of New York
had fairly opened the fight, the old fort on the hill was extemporized
into a tory jail.
As early as November, 1774, the freeholders of the city appointed a
_Committee of Safety and Correspondence_, which proved a vigorous
agent in propagating the war spirit and furnishing men and money for
the Continental army. The following names appear on its lists: John
Barclay, _Chairman_, Jacob C. Ten Eyck, Henry I. Bogert, Peter Silvester,
Henry Wendell, Volkert P. Douw, John Bay, Gysbert Marselis, John R.
Bleecker, Robert Yates, Stephen De Lancey, Abraham Cuyler, John H.
Ten Eyck, Abraham Ten Broeck, Gerret Lansingh, Jr., Anthony E. Bratt,
Samuel Stringer, Abraham Yates, Jr., and Cornelis van Santvoordt. In
the records of the committee occurs this significant minute: “Pursuant
to a resolution of yesterday, the Declaration of Independence was this
day read and published at the City Hall to a large Concourse of the
Inhabitants of this City and the Continental Troops in this City and
received with applause and satisfaction.”
At the beginning of, and all through the struggle for independence,
Albany was a strategic point of the utmost importance. The war-office in
London and the British commanders in the field recognized that it was the
key to the situation in the north. There is a passage in the oration of
Governor Seymour at the Centennial Commemoration at Schuylerville, the
actual scene of Burgoyne’s surrender, which condenses and interprets one
of the most important chapters in the history of the Revolution.
“It was the design of the British government in the campaign of
1777 to capture the centre and stronghold of this commanding
system of mountains and valleys. It aimed at its very
heart,—the confluence of the Hudson and the Mohawk. The fleets,
the armies, and the savage allies of Britain were to follow
their converging lines to Albany, and there strike the decisive
blow.”
As sometimes happens, the blow struck the striker. Col. Philip Schuyler,
the young officer who brought the body of Lord Howe to its burial,
was an ardent patriot and the most distinguished citizen of Albany.
On the recommendation of the Provincial Congress of New York, he had
been appointed by the Continental Congress a major-general in the
armies of the United Colonies and had assumed command of the Northern
Department. He was displaced in favor of General Gates, but he retained
the confidence of Washington, and it was he who planned and conducted
the campaign which resulted in the victory of Bemis Heights and the
surrender of Burgoyne. This event broke the formidable menace that hung
over the province and the colonial cause. The defeated British general
found himself in the hands of a courteous foe, and for several months he
meditated and mitigated his disaster amid the elegant hospitalities of
the Schuyler mansion in Albany.
[Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER.
(FROM A PAINTING BY COL. TRUMBULL.)]
In 1797, “this antient and respectable city of Albany” (to quote the
courtly compliment of Washington) became the capital of the State. At
the close of the Revolution, New York had not yet determined its seat
of government. From 1777 to 1796 it peregrinated between Kingston,
Poughkeepsie, Albany and the city of New York. Not until the twentieth
session of the Legislature was the long dispute settled. The geographical
advantages of Albany finally carried the day, and for the last hundred
years the site of the frontier fort has been a political arena and an
illustrious seat of legislative and judicial power.
The Albany of “modern times,” as the phrase is understood in our American
life in which everything is new except human nature, has preserved few of
the ancient landmarks. The only souvenirs are the bronze tablets which
were devised at the Bicentennial in 1886, and which now designate the
historic sites in the city. If one, reverent of ancient and vanished
things, make pilgrimage to the tablet near the curb on the lower edge of
the Capitol Park (a block above the site of Fort Frederick), to the one
on the corner of Broadway and Steuben Street (the site of the northeast
gate), and to the one near the curb on lower Broadway two blocks from
State Street (the site of the southeast gate), he will define quite
accurately the girdle of the _palisadoes_ which protected old Albany.
[Illustration: STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER.
(FROM A PAINTING BY EZRA AMES.)]
If he pass the memorial of the northeast gateway, a place of memorable
outgoings and incomings, and continue up Broadway about three quarters
of a mile, he will find a bronze tablet bearing the inscription:
“Opposite Van Rensselaer Manor-House. Erected 1765. Residence of the
Patroons. This spot is the site of the First Manor-House.” It was an
unpretentious one-story building of Holland brick, half fortress and
half dwelling. The final Manor-House, on the other side of the road, was
a structure of another fashion. At the time of its erection, 1765, it
was considered the handsomest residence in the colonies. Thither Stephen
Van Rensselaer brought his young bride, Catherine, daughter of Philip
Livingston, and his babe, who became General Van Rensselaer. It stood
amid the drooping elms of a large park and was decorated with a taste
and luxury startling to the period. In 1843 the building was enlarged
and enriched by the elder Upjohn. Once a stately mansion, the scene of
splendid hospitalities, it has shared the American fate of obstructive
antiquities in thriving towns. The railroad and the “lumber district”
crowded and finally strangled it. For several years it stood empty and
dismantled, and obviously had outlived both its beauty and its use. In
1893 the stone and timbers were transported to the Campus of Williams
College, where they were reconstructed into the Sigma Phi Society
building, which perpetuates a remote suggestion of the famous Manor-House.
[Illustration: VAN RENSSELAER MANOR-HOUSE, 1765.]
In the southern part of the city, on Clinton Street, is a bronze tablet
which designates the sister of the Manor-House, the Schuyler mansion,
built by the wife of General Philip Schuyler while he was in England
in 1760. This historic relic stands on a plateau above the street,
surrounded by a remnant of the original garden, but the broad avenue,
shaded by elms, which once gave approach to the mansion from the river,
is overgrown with houses. Though used at present as an orphan asylum
under the charge of the Order of St. Francis de Sales, it retains
substantially its original features. It is a dignified and spacious
house; not remarkable architecturally, but fragrant with history. Here
Burgoyne enjoyed his imprisonment. Here Washington, Lafayette, Count
de Rochambeau, Baron Steuben, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, Aaron Burr, and other notable men of old were entertained.
Here Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler were married, December 14,
1780. Besides famous guests and weddings, its chief feature of historic
interest is the staircase, apropos of which, we quote from Mr. Marcus
Reynolds’s article on _The Colonial Buildings of Rensselaerswyck_ in _The
Architectural Record_ of 1895.
“Here is shown the famous tomahawk mark. In 1781 a plan was
made to capture General Schuyler and take him to Canada. A
party of tories, Canadians and Indians surrounded the house
for several days, and at length forced an entrance. The family
took refuge in the upper story, leaving behind in their haste
the youngest member of the family, Margaret Schuyler, afterward
the wife of the patroon. An elder sister going to rescue the
infant, was pursued by an Indian, who threw his tomahawk at her
as she fled up the stairs. The weapon entered the hand-rail
near the newel, and the mark is still shown, which would be
conclusive evidence if the same story were not told of the Glen
house in Schenectady, the only house unburnt in the massacre of
1690.”
[Illustration: SCHUYLER MANSION, 1760.]
With all its historic associations, Albany is not conspicuous for the
scenery it has furnished for the enchantments of poetry and romance;
still it is not altogether destitute of literary honors. Its colonial
life figures in the _Satanstoe_ of the great Fenimore Cooper and in
Harold Frederick’s _In the Valley_. The Normanskill, which tumbles into
the Hudson at the south end of the city, flows through the Vale of
Tawasentha, the scene of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. The hills and forests
about the city suggested many a delicate detail in the woodland rhythms
of Alfred Street, who made his home and burial-place in Albany. Its old
Dutch life with its sedate charm has been pictured by a living Albanian,
Leonard Kip; and probably the house still stands on Pearl Street or
Broadway, in which Henry James found the charming girl who stood for his
_Portrait of a Lady_.
On the east bank of the Hudson, in old Greene Bosch, opposite the city,
decays the dishonored ruin of Fort Crailo. The date, more or less
mythical, is 1642. It was the headquarters of General Abercrombie, and in
the garden back of the house a derisive British surgeon, Dr. Stackpole,
composed the immortal jingle of Yankee Doodle. If, in 1800, one stood
on the southeast corner of State and North Pearl Streets, opposite the
famous elm which Philip Livingston planted in 1735, his eye glancing up
the street to the north would be arrested by a picturesque relic of Dutch
Albany, the Vanderheyden Palace. Of course it has joined the departed,
but its ghost appears in Washington Irving’s _Bracebridge Hall_, and its
old weather-vane now swings above the porch of Sunnyside.
Some of the colonial structures were fine and famous in their day, but in
truth, in our American towns, imposing architecture is a thing of recent
date. Few cities give more favorable sites for architectural effects than
the three hills of Albany. It is not too much to say that the wealth
and taste of its citizens have conspired with its peculiar advantages
of position. The architecture of Albany has an exceptional value. The
City Hall, with its Romanesque doorways and majestic campanile, is a fine
specimen of the great Richardson. The Albany City Savings Bank, recently
constructed, is a classical gem, inadequately set, but cut by a master
hand. Its Corinthian monoliths and graceful dome satisfy the eye, and
the whole structure is a suggestive instance of what trade can do in the
interests of art.
[Illustration: WEST SIDE OF PEARL ST. FROM STATE ST. TO MAIDEN LANE, 1814.
1. VANDERHEYDEN HOUSE. 2. PRUYN HOUSE. 3. DR. WOODRUFF’S HOUSE.
(FROM A WATER-COLOR SKETCH BY JAMES EIGHTS.)]
The four examples of ecclesiastical architecture of more than local
interest are the North Dutch Church, an exceptionally good specimen of
the style which obtained in the beginning of the century; the Cathedral
of the Immaculate Conception, with its lofty double spires emphasized
by the site, and its spacious interior treated with taste and dignity;
St. Peter’s Church, with its noble lines, artistic windows and finely
detailed tower,—“one of the richest specimens of French Gothic in this
country”; and the Cathedral of All Saints, whose unfinished exterior
encloses columnar effects and a choir-vista which remind one of an
impressive mediæval interior and give the edifice a distinctive place
among the churches of America.
[Illustration: VIEW OF ALBANY, 1899.]
These architectural monuments, however, and the city itself are
overshadowed by the new Capitol. This massive structure, since its
corner-stone was laid on the 24th of June, 1871, has absorbed over twenty
millions of dollars. The enormous bulk, the difficult foundations,
the obdurate granite, the elaborate sculptures, the mistakes and
afterthoughts, sufficiently account for the money. The old Capitol,
which stood in front of the southeast corner, well-nigh could be tucked
into one of its great pavilions. The edifice is of such cost, size, and
architectural importance, that one discusses it as he might discuss
Strasburg Cathedral or the weather. Claiming simply the freedom of
personal impression, one may say that its weakest feature is the eastern
façade, which gives an inadequate suggestion of the size of the building
and moreover is dwarfed by the projecting mass and lofty ascent of the
gigantic stairway. He may also say that the Capitol declares its highest
points of architectural interest in the constructive and decorative
treatment of the interior.
The edifice has been built with the advantage of large ideas and
limitless resources, and the disadvantage of fluctuating ideas and a
succession of architects. These facts have left their imprint on the
structure but, with all that can be said in criticism of details and of
unused possibilities, it can fairly be ranked among the great buildings
of modern times.
As one approaches Albany, the colossal bulk of the Capitol thrust against
the sky seems to dominate the city as the great cathedrals of Europe
dominate the towns that have grown or decayed under their shadow. But
there are other structures and artistic things, representing the local
life, that are worthy of remark.
The State Museum of Natural History, in Geological Hall, a block below
the Capitol, vies with the State Library as a credit to the State and the
haunt of the student. It is one of the largest and best arranged museums
in the country, and its collection of the paleozoic rocks of New York,
which figure so largely in the nomenclature of geology, is a monument to
an eminent name in the scientific world, James Hall, late State Geologist.
[Illustration: JOHN V. L. PRUYN.]
Near the Capitol Park is the Albany Academy, in whose upper rooms Henry
and Ten Eyck demonstrated the electrical facts which were applied by
Morse. Up the hill, on the southwest corner of the city, stand the
pavilions of the new Hospital, built in 1899, and the Dudley Observatory,
of note in the stellar world. On Washington Avenue is Harmanus Bleecker
Hall, built from the fund held in trust for more than half a century
by Chancellor Pruyn and Judge Parker. On State Street opposite the
Capitol is the building of the Historical and Art Society, which, though
new-born, has already done valuable work in collecting sequestered relics
of history.
Under the elms in Washington Park are two fine bronzes: Caverley’s statue
of _Robert Burns_ and Rhind’s statue of _Moses at the Rock of Horeb_.
Fortunately one of the earliest and two of the noblest creations of the
sculptor Palmer are in the city of his home: his _Faith at the Cross_,
his _Livingston_, and his _Angel of the Resurrection_.
Albany the Old has become Albany the New. In many ways the new is more
energetic and more splendid than the old. The town is large enough
to show the characteristic features of our American life in its more
sensitive and vigorous centres, and small enough to retain local color
and distinctive traits. It is self-centred, believes in itself, and has
the instinct to discern and the habit of demanding the best things. It is
a place where the finest flavors of the old life linger in and temper the
broader spirit and more robust movement of the new life; a place that
perpetuates its traditions of social elegance and hospitality; a place,
too, that has been the cradle and home of men of commanding force, who
have contributed to the highest life of the nation and have left their
names on enduring structures of thought and art and economic organization.
The city lies at the intersection of the great thoroughfares of traffic
and travel in the richest and most densely populated portion of the
republic. Its facilities for production and distribution may give it
in the future an enormous industrial development. This fortune is not
unlikely, but, to those who estimate in large ways the values of life, it
cannot heighten the beauty or deepen the charm of the Albany of to-day.
[Illustration: SEAL OF ALBANY.]
[Illustration]
SARATOGA
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GREAT WATERWAYS
BY ELLEN HARDIN WALWORTH
There are names which are more than famous—they have a distinct
individuality; their sound to the ear or appearance on the page arrests
attention, arouses interest, and presents a clear picture to the mind.
Such a name is Saratoga, with its romantic record, its picturesque
scenery, and its beautiful village,—the “Queen of Spas.” Nature has
furnished Saratoga with a regal setting on the lower spurs of the
Adirondack Mountains, the last elevations of the Palmertown range, on the
edge of the world’s first continent.
[Illustration: SARATOGA LAKE, N. Y.]
Here where the Laurentian rocks stand out boldly over the sands of the
old Silurian sea, and where the mighty waterways sweep down from the
great northern gulf southward, and from the great northwestern lakes
eastward, lies Saratoga Springs. These valleys, bearing the waters of
Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the upper Hudson on the north, and of
the Mohawk River on the west, have been for centuries the great war-paths
of the Indians and of civilized nations. If America is not old, at
least her maturity is marked in this region by the scars of war, and by
the lines of struggle for the sovereignty of the great waterways. Here
are veritable ruins,—old Fort Carillon, later “Old Ticonderoga,” Fort
Frederick, afterward Crown Point, and traces here and there of the line
of forts extending from the Indian carrying-place at Fort Edward down on
either bank of the Hudson to old Saratoga, now Schuylerville, where the
great monument commemorative of Revolutionary victory marks the national
character of that struggle, and where, eight miles below, at Bemis
Heights, fourteen granite tablets, each a monument five or six feet in
height, mark the fighting-ground. Through the Mohawk Valley are signs of
the “Long House” of the Six Nations, of massacres and battles, that tell
their story of three centuries.
[Illustration: HISTORIC AND OTHER DRIVES IN THE VICINITY OF SARATOGA
SPRINGS.
BY E. H. WALWORTH.]
The story of Saratoga cannot easily be limited to Saratoga Springs,
although it has fifteen thousand inhabitants who retain their quaintly
rural government and cling to the appellation of “village.” Village
though it be, it is imposing with its stately hotels, spacious streets,
large business houses, many beautiful villas, fine public halls, handsome
churches, and numerous valuable mineral springs; which, like the
residences, are set amid magnificent trees, forest pines and cultivated
elms that rival the famous trees of New Haven. From the surrounding hills
the village seems to nestle in the original wilderness. But it is always
active,—in winter with its toboggan slide, snow-shoe club, trotting
matches on the ice-bound lake, and snow-bound streets rolled to marble
smoothness for gay and luxurious sleigh-riding; in summer, its brilliancy
is often compared with that of Paris. In the loss of the old-time social
exclusiveness it has gained in cosmopolitan character and in the rich
variety of its life and amusements.
[Illustration: SARATOGA BATTLE MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]
In considering the story of Saratoga, we cannot confine our attention
to the town of Saratoga Springs, with its sharply defined boundaries
and rectangular lines of political division which mark the limit of the
voters for supervisor at the annual town-meeting. But if we include
the county in our narrative, then, indeed, may we recall the vision
which presents the individuality of the name Saratoga. For Saratoga
County is outlined by a great eastward and southern sweep of the Hudson
River for seventy miles from its narrow gorge at Luzerne, where the
wild savage chief of colonial days leaped across the mighty river to
escape his pursuing foe, down over the precipitous Palmer’s Falls, and
over the cavern-haunted Glen’s Falls, and onward to old Fort Edward,
where its waters turn shortly to the south and pursue their troubled
way along the “hillside country,” which received here its Indian name,
“Se-rach-ta-gue,” which means “hillside country of the great river.”
It is also said that in the Indian language Sa-ragh-to-ga means the
“place of the swift water,” in allusion to the rapids and falls that
are in contrast with the “still water” a few miles below. Thence the
Hudson flows on until it receives the four sprouts or mouths of the
Mohawk River, which spreads out from the precipitous falls at Cohoes.
This great intersecting western valley separates the northern from the
southern highlands of New York, and is, like the great northern valley,
a natural highway and thoroughfare. In the angle formed by the junction
of these two long, deep valleys or passes through the mountain ranges,
“in the angle between the old Indian war-trails, in the angle between
the pathways of armies, in the angle between the great modern routes of
travel, in the angle formed by the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson
rivers,” is Saratoga County, the Saratoga of history and romance. Not
only the stealthy tread of the Iroquois sped over these hills, not only
the swift canoe of the Algonquin shot over these streams, but also the
disciplined armies of France and of England marched and countermarched,
fought by day and bivouacked at night on this ground, from the time
that Hendrick Hudson opened the lower valley of the Hudson River, and
Samuel Champlain discovered the broad lake that bears his name, until the
Revolutionary period closed.
While Jamestown was still struggling for existence, and Plymouth Bay
was still unknown, the contest had already begun in the northern
valley of the Hudson which initiated its long service to the progress
of the western world. This remarkable triangle, the Saratoga and
Kay-ad-ros-se-ra of the Indian occupation, and the Saratoga County of
the present time was, like Kentucky, “the dark and bloody ground,” the
hunting- and fishing-place of the Five Nations on the south, and their
enemies, the Algonquins, on the north. Here each summer, in search of
fish and game, they built their hunting lodges on Saratoga Lake, called
by the Dutch, who believed it to be the “head-waters” of the Hudson,
“Aqua Capita.” Every season brought conflict between the savage tribes,
and later the French, year after year, marched down from Quebec and
Montreal to intimidate their unceasing foes on the Mohawk.
In 1642, and again in 1645, the Iroquois in retaliation hastened along
the old war-trail at the foot of Mount McGregor and returned each time
laden with their tortured captives, the French prisoners and their Indian
friends. The two famous expeditions of Courcelle, Governor of Canada,
and of Lieut.-Gen. de Tracy, made their way in 1666 through the valley;
first on snow-shoes, to starvation and despair—and again with the buoyant
tread of a victorious legion. In 1689 the Iroquois followed the old
trail on their way to that massacre of Montreal which emphasized what is
justly called the “heroic age” of that poetic and devoted settlement.
The French and Algonquins again in 1690 bivouacked at these springs as
they descended to the cruel massacre of Schenectady. And in the same year
the English, led by Fitz John Winthrop, made a fruitless march over the
historic war-path.
[Illustration: NORTH BROADWAY, SARATOGA SPRINGS, 1898.]
The French, urged by Frontenac, came down the valley in 1693, destroyed
the castles of the Mohawks, and started on their return with three
hundred prisoners. The news created intense excitement through the
whole Province of New York. Governor Fletcher hurried up from New York
City, Major Peter Schuyler hastily gathered three hundred white men and
three hundred savages for defence, and was joined by Major Ingoldsby
from Albany with an additional force. Coming along the old trail, the
French and Indians halted with their captives about six miles north
of the village of Saratoga Springs, at a point near Mount McGregor at
King’s Station. The battle-ground lies on the terrace, which is distinct
from the foothills of the mountains, and has long been known as the
“old Indian burying-ground.” On this plateau, so near the gay streets
of Saratoga, the camp-fires of a thousand hostile men throwing up
entrenchments flared through the night. On the following day the English
sustained successfully three fierce assaults on their works, and the
French, worn with the long journey, were glad to retreat in the darkness
of a raging storm, as night fell on their wounded and captives.
Again, during Queen Anne’s War, beginning in 1709, old Saratoga, which
lies at the mouth of the Fishkill, was so seriously threatened that
Major Schuyler built a fort below the mouth of the Batten Kill. In 1731,
the French built Fort Frederick at Crown Point. From this stronghold,
during King George’s War, which began in 1744, they swung their forces
with deadly effect upon the English settlements. The forts at Saratoga
were then refitted and manned, but not in time to prevent the terrible
massacre of old Saratoga in 1745.
History has recorded and poetry sung the woes of Wyoming and of Cherry
Valley, but the silence of the virgin forest has encompassed the tragic
events that occurred at Saratoga on the fatal morning of the 17th of
November, thirty years before the Revolution.
“Profound peace had reigned in the old wilderness for a
generation, and the fertile soil had filled the smiling land
with fatness. Many dwellings and fruitful farms dotted the
river bank; long stables were filled with sleek cattle, and
around the mills were huge piles of timber waiting the market
down the river.”
The scowling portholes of the old Schuyler mansion seemed to laugh
between the tendrils of the creeping vines. Suddenly, in the early
morning, the scene of peace and prosperity was changed to slaughter,
pillage, and destruction. Philip Schuyler, the elder, was offered
immunity in the midst of the fray, but he spurned safety at the expense
of his neighbors, and was shot to death in his own doorway. The houses
and forts were burned to the ground, the cattle killed or burned in their
stalls, and only one or two inhabitants escaped to tell the tale.
[Illustration: GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER.
BRONZE STATUE IN NICHE OF SARATOGA MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]
This war was a prelude to the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War,
which, with its five campaigns, raged continuously through the war-worn
valley of the grand northern waterways. Nearly a century and a half of
struggle, first of the French discoverers and missionaries with the
savages, and then of the Frenchmen and Iroquois, and later the French,
the Indians, and the English, had proved the importance of this valley
as the northern doorway to the country. Of the three expeditions first
planned to be sent simultaneously against the French—one under Braddock
against Fort Duquesne, another under Shirley against Niagara, and another
under Johnson against Crown Point,—the third was considered the most
important.
In August, Major-General William Johnson took command in person and
pushed on to the outlet of Lake George, intending to build a fort at
Ticonderoga as a defence against Crown Point, to which the French had
extended their possessions in the last interval of peace. Before his
design could be accomplished, desperate warfare disturbed the placid
waters of the beautiful lakes and so discolored their outlying waters
that time has not yet effaced the name of “Bloody Pond.”
Abercrombie’s campaign in 1758 was a fatal mistake. The brilliant hope
inspired by his fine army of Regulars with their splendid accoutrements,
his thousands of boats paraded on the broad lake with banners flying and
strains of music unknown in the wilderness, was turned to gloom when a
few days later the boats returned laden with the dead and dying, and
carrying the body of the beloved Lord Howe.
Again, in 1759, the war-trail of old Saratoga was trodden by an English
army, twelve thousand strong, under the command of the successful Lord
Amherst. In the autumn the final conflict came when the death of Wolfe
signalled the triumph of England, and the great waterways passed under
the sovereignty of the Anglo-Saxons.
[Illustration: CONGRESS SPRING IN 1820.]
For some years, Sir William Johnson suffered from the effects of a wound
received in the hip during the war. In 1767, his Indian friends told
him about the “Great Medicine Waters” of Saratoga, and carried him by
boat and on a stretcher to the mysterious spring. The waters proved so
beneficial that he was able to return over the “carrying-place” unaided
and on foot. The waters which he drank were taken from the High Rock
Spring of Saratoga Springs. Once they overflowed the cone-like rock
through which they now rise and from which they are dipped, and the rock
was gradually deposited and formed by the overflow. The process has
lately been repeated by new springs like the Geyser and the Champion,
which for some years threw the water several feet into the air, leaving
a heavy cascade-like deposit about the opening. Gradually the waters
subsided, the geyser effect was lost, and like the High Rock Spring they
have fallen below the level of the ground.
In the year (1767) of Sir William Johnson’s expedition, the old land
troubles with the Six Nations were settled amicably at the Fort
Stanwix conference, where over three thousand red men met the English
commissioners. The complaints of alleged frauds in purchase and surveys
included the Kayadrossera patent, which covered 700,000 acres lying
between the Hudson and the Mohawk, obtained by grant in 1703 and
confirmed in 1708.
Yet quiet did not prevail. The restless spirits of the wilderness were
stirred by their first political aspirations. The Schuylers, whose
possessions extended over the old Saratoga hunting-ground, awoke the
farmers to an interest in the burning questions of the day. Sloops
sailing up the Hudson brought rumors of riots in New York City, and
of the resistance offered by the Sons of Liberty to the execution
of the Stamp Act. When news came that no good patriot would wear
imported garments, the women redoubled their efforts to produce from
spinning-wheel and loom the homespun fabric. As the King grew more
determined, and the people learned more clearly what rights were theirs,
the British soldiers became violent and the patriots more indignant and
outspoken. The first military order of the home government to put the
forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga on a war basis was quickly followed
by the tramp of soldiers through the wilderness. The rumble of artillery
and of commissary wagons broke once more the stillness of the forest.
The farmers who lived along the old war-trail revived by the evening
fireside the stories of the French and Indian wars. The Indians, quick
to discern the coming storm, began once more, under the influence of
the Johnson family (allied to them through Brandt and his sister), to
destroy property and massacre the unprepared. The settlers of the “long
valley” were bearing at this time the brunt of the preliminary warfare of
the American Revolution. They met the issue bravely. While they fought,
their wives and daughters gathered in the crops, melted into bullets
the treasured pewter teapots and sugar-bowls, learned to shoot, to
barricade their houses or their little forts, and to conceal themselves
from prowling bands of Indians and savage Tories. It was then that the
Royalist Governor Tryon, taking refuge on a war vessel, exclaimed, “The
Americans from politicians are now becoming soldiers.” Had he witnessed
the courageous deeds of the women of the great waterways, he would
perhaps have added, “The women from housekeepers are becoming farmers and
fighters.”
[Illustration: KAYADROSSERA PATENT, WITH GREAT SEAL OF QUEEN ANNE
PENDANT, 1708.
ORIGINAL IN SARATOGA COUNTY CLERK’S OFFICE.]
[Illustration: WOMEN OF THE REVOLUTION, 1776.
FROM TABLET ON SARATOGA BATTLE MONUMENT, SCHUYLERVILLE, N. Y.]
New anxieties arose in the Province of New York as rumors multiplied
of the advance in stately procession of a new and splendid army of the
British, recently arrived in Canada, down the old war-path through
Champlain and Lake George on the way to Albany to unite with the British
wing ascending the Hudson River. Inspired by General Schuyler, commanding
the American army, the farmers seized whatever firearms they could find
and hurried to his camp. The women of Albany hammered the leaden weights
from the windows of their houses, moulded them into bullets, and urged
on the men. The militia of New England, aroused by the invasion, came by
hundreds and by thousands until the river hills were covered. The hasty
breastworks planned by Kosciuszko were completed, and the rude recruits
were hurriedly formed into regiments and brigades. Gates, who superseded
Schuyler, lay with his staff in the rear of the army, while Morgan with
his riflemen held guard at the western extremity of the entrenched camp
on the hills, with his headquarters at Neilson’s. This was the defensive
camp of the Americans at Bemis Heights, and it stretched from the river
bank westward over the hills about two miles and faced the north. Here
they lay in wait for Burgoyne, who had rallied from his repulses at
Bennington and Fort Stanwix, and was pressing down the bank of the Hudson
River toward Albany from Fort Edward.
On the 13th of September, a bridge of boats was stretched across the
Hudson River—just below the mouth of the Batten Kill—for the passage
of Burgoyne’s army. They halted for the first night amid the charred
wheat-fields of General Schuyler’s farm on the south side of the
Fishkill. On the morrow they hastened on to Coveville, and thence to
Seward’s house, where again their white tents were spread over the
country.
On September 19th Burgoyne moved forward to outflank the American camp on
the west. An obstinate fight of many hours about the old farm-well and
in the great ravine followed, and the British failed in their attempt to
pass the Americans or to weaken their line. But they held persistently
to the position they had taken at Freeman’s Farm and at the close of
the battle fortified their camp from the point on Freeman’s Farm in a
line to the eastward on the bank of the river, where they built three
redoubts upon three hills. The fortified camp of the Americans lay about
a mile and a half below in a line parallel with the British. Here, within
bugle-call of each other, for two weeks, the hostile forces sat upon the
hills of Saratoga, frowning defiance at each other, and ready to open
the conflict at a moment’s warning.
Burgoyne waited in vain for the Americans to attack him behind his works,
and for a message, hourly expected, that Clinton would come from New
York to his relief. Hunger pressed sorely upon the army. The brilliant
conquests he had pictured to himself were fading from his grasp. He
called his officers together in council. Silence and gloom hung over
them. Should they advance or retreat? His imperious will dictated the
advice he desired. Finally Fraser sustained the commander. An advance
was ordered. On the 7th of October the British marched from their
entrenchments in battle array. Burgoyne led the centre; Fraser a flanking
column to the right; the royal artillery to the left, and the Hessians
in reserve. Like a great bird of prey they settled in line of battle
upon the broken ground that separated them from the American camp. Gates
took up the gauntlet thus thrown down and exclaimed, “Order out Morgan
to begin the game.” With a word to his command the watchful and heroic
Morgan dashed into the struggle, scattered Burgoyne’s advance-guard,
rushed on against the trained forces of Fraser, and swept them from the
position to the left which they had taken in advance. With masterly skill
and courage, Fraser rallied his men, and was forming a second line of
defence, when he fell mortally wounded.
[Illustration: “OLD WELL,” FREEMAN’S FARM, BATTLE-GROUND BEMIS HEIGHTS,
SEPT. 19, 1777.]
The sharp whistle of Morgan called his men once more to action. They
charged, while Poor and Larned attacked the centre and the right. The
battle swayed back and forth through the great ravine. Another charge
from Morgan and the British retreated to their entrenchments. At this
moment the impatient Arnold, stung to madness by the slights put upon him
by Gates, dashed across the field. He gathered the regiments under his
leadership by his enthusiasm, bravery, and vehemence. He broke through
the lines of entrenchments at Freeman’s Farm. Repulsed for a moment, he
assailed the left and charged the strong redoubt of Breyman which flanked
the British camp at the place now called Burgoyne’s Hill. The patriot
army, fired with hope and courage, crowded fearlessly up to the very
mouth of the belching guns of the redoubt, won the final victory of the
day, and then, exhausted by the desperate fight, dropped down for a few
hours’ rest before they took possession of the British camp.
[Illustration: GENERAL DANIEL MORGAN.]
But there was no rest for the defeated army. Silently and sullenly
during these hours, they withdrew from the works at Freeman’s Farm, and
huddled closely together under the three redoubts by the river. Here
the women, Madam Riedesel, Lady Ackland, and others, trembled and wept
over the dying Fraser. Here the hospital stood with its overflowing
throng of the wounded and the dead. The great and princely army waited
in doubt and despair while their commander wavered in his plans. Should
he try to hold his dangerous ground, should he risk another engagement,
should he retreat? The last course was chosen. On the following night a
retreat began as the last minute-guns were fired magnanimously by the
Americans, in honor of Fraser’s funeral, which took place at sunset. The
sun fell behind the heights upon which the exultant Americans lay; heavy
clouds followed, and quickly after, amid the drenching rain, the army of
Burgoyne, abandoning their sick and wounded, began the retreat up the
river.
Retracing their steps from Bemis Heights, the scene of their disaster,
they followed up the river road to the Fishkill and the Schuyler mansion,
which they burned to the ground. Failing here in an attempt to make
a stand against the advancing Americans, they fell back, formed an
entrenched camp, and planted their batteries along the heights of old
Saratoga. In this camp they still hoped to hold out until relief should
come up the Hudson from New York. Here the romance and pathos of the
campaign culminated, as described by Madam Riedesel, the accomplished
and beautiful wife of the Hessian general, in her thrilling account of
the retreat and of the agonizing days that followed. At the Marshall
house, where she had taken refuge, the cannonballs thrown across the
river crashed through its walls, and rolled along the floor, so that the
sick and wounded were driven into the cellar where she and her children
and the broken-hearted widows of the dead were suffering, watching, and
starving. Frail by birth and rearing, Madam Riedesel stood in the doorway
of the cellar, and with arms outspread across the open door held at bay
the selfish, brutal men who would have crowded out the sick and dying.
Burgoyne and his army, entrenched on the hills, and with the river
below, yet had no water to drink, except a cupful brought now and then
for the faint and wounded from the river by the British women, on whom
the gallant Americans, ever tender toward woman, would not fire.
[Illustration: CONGRESS SPRING, 1898.]
Finally, driven to the last extremity, with the Americans on the north,
where Stark had seized Fort Edward, to the east, where Fellows held the
river bank, and to the south, where Gates had thrown his victorious army,
Burgoyne sent in his terms of surrender. Almost on the site of old Fort
Hardy, his brave but unfortunate troops laid down their arms, and near
the site of the old Schuyler mansion, which they had so recently burned,
Burgoyne surrendered his sword to General Gates. Along the road, just
across the Fishkill, the American army stretched in two lines, between
which the disarmed prisoners were marched to the shrill notes of the fife
and the measured beat of the drum, to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” played
for the first time as a national air.
[Illustration: SIGN “PUTNAM AND THE WOLF” ON PUTNAM’S TAVERN, SARATOGA
SPRINGS.
ORIGINAL SIGN IN GRAND UNION HOTEL, SARATOGA SPRINGS, N. Y.]
General Schuyler, the hospitable and magnanimous, was on the ground.
Neither the slight he had received from Congress nor the injuries
inflicted on him by the British could quench his generous nature. He
rejoiced with his victorious countrymen, he sympathized with the fallen
enemy, he protected and cared for the helpless women.
During the summer of 1777 he had cut a road from his farm at old Saratoga
through the wilderness to the High Rock Spring, already famous for its
medicinal properties. He built a small frame house on the ledge of rocks
overhanging the spring, and here for several summers his family came with
him for rest and recreation as they had formerly gone to the comfortable
mansion at old Saratoga. This was replaced by a rude cabin, and there,
in 1783, Washington was entertained when, with General Clinton, he came
to visit the Saratoga battle-ground. The party proceeded northward to
Ticonderoga, and on their return stopped at High Rock Spring. General
Washington was so strongly impressed with the value of the water and the
beauty of the region that shortly afterward he tried to buy the property,
but Livingston, Van Dam, and others had already secured it.
The events of the Revolution had discouraged the few settlers who first
came to the springs, and for years afterwards but two log cabins offered
a shelter to adventurous tourists. In 1791, Gideon Putnam cleared his
farm at Saratoga, and Governor Gilman of New Hampshire in 1792 discovered
Congress Spring. Putnam built his large boarding-house and tavern, and
far-seeing and liberal-minded, he purchased extensive tracts of land and
secured the foundation of the beautiful and prosperous village which
is now a delight to visitors and a valued home to its residents. It is
essentially a place of “homes,” where people of large or small means are
assured of that quiet and ease which cannot be found in cities or towns
which depend for their prosperity on active commercial or manufacturing
interests.
[Illustration: SEAL OF SARATOGA.]
[Illustration]
SCHENECTADY
THE PROVINCIAL OUTPOST OF LIBERTY
BY JUDSON S. LANDON
Schenectady was settled in 1662. To give to the story of the settlement
its proper character among the beginnings of free institutions in America
it is necessary to recall the fact that the States-General of the
Netherlands in 1621 chartered a trading concern, the Dutch West India
Company, granted it the monopoly of the fur trade in New Netherland, and
permitted it to govern, so long as it could, whatever colonies might
inhabit the territory. The company thus formed ruled over the territory
from 1624 to 1664, when the English, trumping up a stale claim of prior
discovery, interfered and took possession.
The company’s rule was arbitrary, but not without good features. Traders
are not apt to cavil over religious dogmas,—the company permitted
freedom of conscience and worship. Subjects and servants render better
obedience and service if treated with kindness and justice. The directors
of the company seemed to know this, and professed to govern accordingly,
but their governors sometimes found pretexts for the injustice which
promised the surest profits.
[Illustration: COLONIAL HOUSE, UNION STREET.]
Some of the colonists insisted that the people ought to have a part in
the government. The Dutch governor, when he most needed their support,
would promise concessions. He sometimes seemed to have begun to make
them, but he made none that were substantial. Why should the trading
company sentence itself to death?
Agriculture was necessary for the food-supply of the new province, and
promised customers for the imports from Holland. Liberal terms were
extended to the agriculturist. Men of wealth were tempted by offers of
vast tracts of land, with a sort of feudal sovereignty, on condition that
each of them would establish fifty families upon his domain. Among others
the manor or lordship of Rensselaerswyck was established, embracing
nearly all the territory now comprised within the counties of Albany and
Rensselaer. Literally its jurisdiction was subject to that of the West
India Company, but practically it was independent of it. The company
established a trading and governmental post at Beverwyck or Fort Orange,
now Albany, and exercised supreme jurisdiction, exclusive of that of
Rensselaerswyck, for at least musket-range about the fort.
Among the colonists and traders who had been attracted to Beverwyck
and Rensselaerswyck were some intelligent and enterprising men, mostly
Protestant Dutchmen, who, after varied experience but general good
fortune in the province, resolved to go apart by themselves and establish
a community where justice equality and liberty could be secured and
enjoyed, free from the overlordship of a patroon, and as remote as was
practicable from contact with the grasping West India Company, either at
Fort Orange or Manhattan.
[Illustration: VIEW ON STATE STREET.]
The leader of these men was the founder of Schenectady, Arendt Van
Curler. He was the nephew of Killiaen Van Rensselaer, and came from
Holland in 1630 as director of his uncle’s principality. This he managed
with great success for many years. All accounts agree in describing him
as a man of honor, benevolence, ability and activity. His unvarying
fairness and tactful address soon secured for him the respect and
confidence of all who knew him, and especially of the Mohawk Indians.
In their opinion he was the greatest and best white man they ever knew.
They decorated him while living with the distinction of “very good
friend,” and honored him when dead by calling other governors “Curler”
or “Corlear,” a title which still survives with the same meaning in the
language of the scattered remnants of their tribe. It was through his
good offices that peace was secured between the province and the Five
Nations, among whom the Mohawks were the foremost, and preserved unbroken
during his life. By following his policy peace was long maintained after
his death.
The beauty and fertility of the Mohawk country early attracted his
attention. A letter addressed by him in 1643 to the “Noble Patroon” at
Amsterdam exists, in which, after giving an account of his stewardship
as manager of his uncle’s interests, he writes that the year before he
had visited the Mohawk country, where he found three French prisoners,
one of them being the celebrated Father Jogues, “a very learned scholar,
who was very cruelly treated, his finger and thumb being cut off.” These
prisoners were doomed to death, but Van Curler succeeded in effecting
their release. Father Jogues, however, eager for the salvation of their
souls, returned to them two years later, to suffer martyrdom at their
hands. In this letter Van Curler writes:
“Within a half-day’s journey from the Colonies lies the most
beautiful land on the Mohawk river that eye ever saw, full a
day’s journey long.” He says “it cannot be reached by boat
owing to the strength of the stream and shallowness of the
water, but can be reached by wagons.”
[Illustration: “THE BLUE GATE” ENTRANCE TO UNION COLLEGE GROUNDS.]
Another part of this letter is worth transcribing:
“I am at present betrothed to the widow of the late Mr.
Jonas Bronck. May the good God vouchsafe to bless me in my
undertaking, and please to grant that it may conduce to His
honor and our mutual salvation. Amen.”
We know that the good lady long survived him, and as his widow was
conceded some special privileges by the government.
“The most beautiful land” upon which Van Curler looked, was the Mohawk
Valley, embracing Schenectady and extending far to the westward.
As he stood upon the crest of the upland southwest of the present
city, where the sandy plain abruptly ends and gives place to the rich
bottom-lands a hundred and fifty feet below, he looked northwesterly
upon a wide expanse of meadow, through which the Mohawk River, gleaming
in the sunlight, slowly wended. His eye rested upon the outline of that
break in the mountains where the Mohawk has gorged its bed, through which
in our day the New York Central Railroad passes from the seaboard to
the Mississippi without climbing a foot-hill. It is the only level pass
through the great Appalachian chain between the St. Lawrence Valley and
the Gulf of Mexico. Not a tree and scarcely a bush grew upon this plain,
but here and there were scattered patches of beans, corn and pumpkins,
the fruit of the industry of the Mohawk women; and upon the higher ground
where Schenectady now stands, the second great castle of the Mohawks, the
Capitol of the Five Nations, stood, surrounded by many wigwams of the
tribe. The nearer hills and the more distant mountains were clothed with
forests. This cleared and fertile intervale, set in its forest frame,
was due to the volume of water which in the spring freshets pours down
the river. Three miles east of the city its channel is crossed by great
ledges of shale rock, through which the river has cut its way, which
still remains too narrow for the immediate passage of its waters when
greatly swollen. These, overflowing and enriching the bottom-lands above,
also denude them of their forest growth.
The Indian name of the place was Schonowe, the first syllable pronounced
much like the Dutch “schoon,”—beautiful. Some of the Dutch, sharing Van
Curler’s idea of the beauty of the place, wished to call it _Schoon_,
beautiful, _achten_, esteemed, _del_, valley,—_Schoonachtendel_. The
Indian name and the Dutch substitute were combined and confounded in a
various and perplexing orthography which remains to us in the deeds,
wills and other papers of that time, from which the name Schenectady was
finally evolved.
Although Van Curler was attracted thus early by this beautiful land, it
was long before he could realize his purposes. He married the Widow
Bronck and continued the care of his uncle’s interest in the manor of
Rensselaerswyck. But despite the success of his management the longer
he stayed the more he saw and deplored the evils inherent in the feudal
system. To his enlarged and benevolent mind the system itself was
essentially one of serfdom.
The patroon was lord of the manor, the owner of all the land and of a
fixed share of all the produce of his subjects or tenants, with the right
of a pre-emption of all the surplus beyond what was necessary for their
support. They took an oath of allegiance to him: they could not hunt
or fish or trade or leave the manor without his consent or that of his
representative. If they sold their tenant right and improvements, a part
of the price was his. His will was the law, for his subjects renounced
their right of appeal to the provincial government from his decrees or
those of his magistrates. He was an absentee, and measured the merit of
his agents by the amount of their remittances. The government of the
province as administered at Fort Orange or at Manhattan was as good as
could be expected from a trading company, but was odious to men of Van
Curler’s enlarged understanding.
The firearms of white men at Beverwyck and in Rensselaerswyck began
to impair the value of the hunting grounds in their vicinity, and Van
Curler learned that the Indians might consent to sell their lands at
Schenectady. He looked about for associates in the purchase of the
lands and their settlement, and sifted out fourteen. He applied to the
Director General or Governor of the province, Peter Stuyvesant—whose real
qualities and worth and those of his good subjects the pen of Irving
has replaced with the genial travesties of his enduring caricature,—and
obtained his reluctant consent to the purchase. He then applied to the
Indian chiefs. They too were reluctant. Schonowe was the site of one of
their most ancient castles. It had long been their favorite home. Their
traditions covered many generations, but no tradition reached back to
their first coming. Still they well remembered that Hiawatha had lived
here, two centuries or more before.
[Illustration: GLEN-SANDERS MANSION, ERECTED 1714.]
Hiawatha, the chief, of whom the Great Spirit was an ancestor, and whose
wisdom, goodness and valor far surpassed that of other men, was the
founder of the confederacy of the Five Nations. He devoted his long life
to the good of his people, teaching them to live nobler and better, and
finally was borne in the flesh to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Longfellow
sings of Hiawatha with no stint of poetic license, but his harmonious
numbers do not surpass the Indian estimate of his qualities. No doubt
there was such a man, of exceptional wisdom, valor and influence, and
that he disappeared without being known to have died. Around his memory
tradition, employing the figurative language of the Indians, accumulated
myths and magnified them.[16]
Van Curler was persistent, and in the end the Indians could not find
it in their hearts to deny their “very good friend,” and the deed was
formally executed and delivered at Fort Orange, July 2, 1661.
The founders entered into possession. The Indians bade them welcome, and
began to move their wigwams up the valley. It was their first step in the
many stages of their unreturning journey toward the setting sun. Their
own sun thus passed its zenith, but they did not know it.
The colonists fixed their home or village lots upon the land above the
sweep of the river floods, occupying for this purpose that part of the
city west of the present Ferry Street. They assigned to each proprietor
a village lot, two hundred feet square; a larger lot for a garden just
south of the village, and a farm upon the bottom-lands beyond, with
privileges in the outlying woodlands. Other settlers joined them. They
sold them village lots and farm and garden lands, until the farm lands of
the Van Curler grant were disposed of. Those who came still later bought
village lots, but they had to buy farms of the Indians from lands outside
of the Van Curler grant. Mechanics, traders and workmen came who did not
want land, or lacked the means to buy it. Many of the proprietors were
rich enough to own slaves, which—or shall I say whom?—they brought with
them. Very soon by dint of industry their houses were built of the lumber
sawed at their own mills, their farms were promising abundant crops,
their gardens were blossoming, while their cattle were grazing in more
distant pastures.
In this little republic the freeholders were the source of authority.
By them and of them five trustees were elected “for maintaining good
order and advancing their settlement.” The “Reformed Nether Dutch
Church” was early established with its elders and deacons, and later,
with its settled domine, maintained a guardianship over the people and
especially the widows, orphans, and the poor. The community was under
the titular jurisdiction of the province; the laws of Holland were in
force with respect to contracts, property rights, and domestic relations,
and were observed as a matter of course. The governor appointed the
trustees or their nominees, _schepens_ or justices of the peace, and they
appointed a _schout_ or constable, with large executive powers. This
official, conscious of his power, and arrayed in a garb denoting it,
solemnly pointed his pipe stem and sometimes even shook his sword, at
the wayward. If any were so refractory as not to mend their ways after
such an admonition, he haled them before the schepen. This magistrate,
as his commission was construed, had the right so to supply the defects
in the Dutch laws and the ordinances of “Their High Mightinesses, the
noble Dutch West India Company,” as to “make the punishment fit the
crime.” This meant that he could impose such a fine as the schout thought
collectible, or such other punishment as he would undertake to inflict.
Causes of great gravity, such as complaints by the traders at Beverwyck
that the accused had infringed upon their monopolies, were brought before
that jurisdiction, but the records disclose no practical benefits to the
complainants.
[Illustration: FIRST REFORMED (DUTCH) CHURCH.]
In 1664, two years after the first settlement, the province and its
government passed by conquest from the Dutch to the English. This made
but little change at Schenectady. The system of government already
begun was continued. The manor of Rensselaerswyck was confirmed to the
patroon with some change in the sovereignty, but none in his property
rights. Beverwyck became Albany, the county of Albany was established,
and embraced Schenectady. The court at Albany took jurisdiction of such
larger causes as the “Duke’s Laws,” conferred upon it, and the minor ones
remained as before within the jurisdiction of the local magistrates.
There were but few ministers of the gospel in the province, and it was
not until 1684 that the Reverend Petrus Thesschenmaecher, a graduate
of the University of Utrecht, was installed as their first resident
pastor or domine. It was a memorable day, when that pious man, in his
black silken robe, ascended the high pulpit of the church edifice which,
loopholed for musketry together with his dwelling-house, awaited his
coming, and in the deep solemn guttural of his Nether Dutch speech,
led the worship of his dutiful flock. These Dutch Protestants did not
agonize about God’s wrath like the Puritans; they assumed His loving
care, as a child does its father’s. The ordinances and forms of worship
prescribed by the Church were regarded as duties to be observed as well
as privileges to be enjoyed, and the higher the social or official state
of the individual, the more prominent and circumspect must he be in his
religious observances. One of the documents of that day opens in these
words: “We, the justices, consistory, together with the common people
of Schanegtade, conceive ourselves in duty bound to take care of our
reverend minister.” It is signed by the justices, elders, deacons and
many others who, we must assume, were “common people.” There remains a
marriage contract in which a widower and a widow recite how much property
each brings to the marriage state; the widow enumerating among other
property three slaves, for whose freedom upon her decease, however, she
provides. No doubt the justices, the consistory, the freeholders and the
common people observed this order of precedence on this and all like
occasions; the widow being preceded by a slave bearing a warming-box for
her feet, a metrical version of the Psalms, and the book of devotion
containing the liturgy, the _Heidelberg Catechism_, the _Confession of
Faith_ and the canons of the Church, as all these had been approved by
the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619.
Long before this learned graduate of the University of Utrecht was
secured, the Rev. Gideon Schaets, minister at Albany, was permitted
by his Church to visit Schenectady at least four times a year, upon a
week day (“since it would be unjust to let the community be without
preaching”—so the record at Albany recites), and administer the Lord’s
Supper, baptize the children and officiate at marriages. Marriage,
however, was a civil function over which a magistrate was competent to
preside. As early as 1681 the Church had an investment for the support
of the poor of 3,000 guilders, which had reached 4,000 guilders in 1690,
when the Church perished in the destruction and massacre of that year.
[Illustration: ELLIS HOSPITAL.]
The inhabitants of this frontier village, who welcomed with open hands
and glad hearts their first domine, might well be pardoned if there
was a leaven of worldly pride in their greeting. Where else in all the
provinces was there a more prosperous, more generous, more intelligent
and better ordered people? There was no lack of substantial plenty. Who
more than they were entitled to establish a Church and have a domine
of their own? In October, 1683, the first legislative assembly chosen
by the freeholders was summoned to convene in New York, to frame laws
for the province. By the governor’s proclamation Schenectady had been
accorded a representative, and thus its importance in the body politic
was recognized. The village was the frontier bulwark of civilization,
where the white man and the Mohawk Indian, by keeping faith with each
other, kept bright the chain of friendship which made the Five Nations
the allies of the Province of New York. To guard against French and
Indian incursions, a stockade had been built around the village. This
was a high fence made of three rows of posts set together firmly in
the ground. There was a gate upon the north and south sides, and a
fort within the stockade at each gate. Although often alarmed, it was
not until the war between England and her allies and France, which was
soon declared after James II. abdicated the crown of England in the
revolution of 1688 and William and Mary came to the throne, that this
frontier village was seriously threatened. Jacob Leisler, a Dutch trader
and captain of a military company, of great zeal but of small ability,
seized the government in the name of William and Mary and brought
confusion among the people by his presumption. The common people favored
Leisler. They “blessed the great God of Heaven and Earth for deliverance
from Tyranny, Popery, and Slavery.” The aristocracy opposed him, and
complained that “Fort James was seized by the rabble, that hardly one
person of sense and estate does countenance.” Their wisest leader, Van
Curler, had long been dead;[17] and the people of Schenectady became
hopelessly divided. Warnings were frequent, but vigilance was relaxed,
and at last the blow fell upon a defenceless people.
[Illustration: EDISON HOTEL.]
On the night of the 8th of February, 1690, one hundred and fourteen
Frenchmen and ninety-six Indians, sent by Frontenac, Governor General of
Canada, after a twenty-two days’ march from Montreal, through the snow
and the wilderness, stole in through the open gates of the stockade,
massacred sixty of the inhabitants, plundered and burned about sixty
houses—leaving only six—and carried away thirty captives. The survivors,
who were fortunate enough in the confusion to escape either by accident
or flight, numbered about two hundred and fifty. Their distress cannot be
described. They buried their dead, their beloved pastor being among the
slain. They made what provision they could against the severity of the
winter and then took thought of the future. Should they abandon the place
where for a quarter of a century they had lived in peace and plenty, and
seek safety elsewhere? Help and counsel came to them from Albany, Esopus
and New York, from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and not least from the
friendly Mohawks, all encouraging them to stay. Indeed, there was no
place of assured safety in the whole province. The war threatened all
the English colonies. The colonies sent their delegates to New York,
where they concerted measures for the common defence. This was the first
general American Congress. To abandon Schenectady would be to encourage
the enemy, to endanger the whole province by discouraging its allies,
the Iroquois or Five Nations, causing them to distrust the valor and
prowess of the English arms, and possibly to embrace the oft proffered
alliance of the French. Schenectady must be held, cost what it might.
The survivors finally concluded to stay. Twenty-four of the freeholders
subscribed to a paper, stating:
“In the first place, it is agreed to resort to the North Fort
to secure our bodies and defend them.
“Secondly, that the crops or fruits of the earth—that is, the
winter grain, shall be in common for the use of all, and all
the mowing lands for this year.
“Thirdly, the widows shall draw their just due and portions.
“If any one will voluntarily depart or draw up for Canada, he
shall yet have his full share and the benefits.
“Every one that shall stand to these articles shall obey the
orders of their officers, on the penalty of such punishment
as shall be seasonable, without expecting any favor, grace or
dissimulation.”
The survivors began the work of reconstruction and defence. Every
able-bodied man became both citizen and soldier, ready for service at
home or on scout or picket or skirmish duty, wherever the approach of
the enemy was to be feared. Schenectady became a military camp where
the provincial troops, reinforced by detachments from New England and
by their Iroquois allies, made good the safety of Schenectady and thus
kept watch and ward over the English dominion in North America. They
recognized Governor Leisler’s authority and sent a representative to the
two sessions of his Assembly held in April and October, 1690.[18]
The warlike state of things existed from 1690 until after the peace of
Ryswyck in 1697. Upon the return of peace, Schenectady began to resume
its former state and prosperity. The people rebuilt their church and
called the Rev. Bernardus Freerman as their pastor. How dear he became to
them the many children named in his honor attest. The Dutch population
was sprinkled with a few English-speaking soldiers who chose to make it
their home. Its importance increased as a centre of trade, not only
with the Indians, but with those hardy pioneers, who, attracted by the
fertile lands, or the desire to join the friendly Indians in their
hunting expeditions, pushed farther up the valley. The traders at Albany
protested against this invasion of their monopoly, and also against the
exercise of milling, weaving and tanning privileges, but in a famous
law-suit in the Supreme Court of the province, the Albany monopolists
were beaten, and Schenectady’s full right to freedom of trade and
manufacture was established. Then came Queen Anne’s War with the French,
lasting from 1701 to 1713, and Schenectady was again in peril, and again
garrisoned, for the same reason and much in the same way as before; but,
the Iroquois having made a treaty of peace with Canada, the brunt of the
war fell upon New England and Schenectady passed safely through it.
From the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the “Old French War,” 1744-48,
peace prevailed. In the latter war many inhabitants of the village were
killed in skirmishes or cut down by skulking Indians in the service of
the French. In one skirmish, or rather massacre, at Beukendal, three
miles northwest of Schenectady, twenty men were killed and thirteen
captured and carried away. Then came the last French war, from 1753 to
1763. The English now had posts at Fort Hunter, Fort Schuyler, Fort
Johnson and Oswego on the west, at Fort Ann and Fort Edward on the north.
Sir William Johnson and others had established settlements up the Mohawk
Valley. Sir William was general superintendent of Indian affairs and a
Major-General in the English service. His influence over the Iroquois was
commanding; his early victory at Lake George was important; the English
carried the war into the French territory. Schenectady enjoyed immunity
from attack, and was enabled, besides maintaining a garrison in its fort,
to send its quotas of troops to distant service, one company assisting in
the English siege and capture of Havana in 1762.
The treaty of Paris in 1763, by which the French yielded the dominion of
North America to the English, seemed to promise a lasting peace. But the
War of the Revolution came on. Our Indian allies, the Iroquois, remained
faithful to their long allegiance to the English Crown, and became our
enemies under the leadership of Sir John Johnson, who, succeeding to
the estate and title of his father, Sir William, adhered to the Crown,
under which both became ennobled. Schenectady was again threatened, from
the side of Canada, but by its former friends and allies. Aside from its
contribution of six companies to the patriot cause, its position made it
the base from which those who adhered to the English cause sought to send
aid and comfort to the enemy. General Washington came here early in the
struggle, and made arrangements for the frontier defence.[19]
The Schenectady patriots appointed a committee of vigilance and safety,
who, as the one hundred and sixty-two written pages of their records
show, repressed with strong hand and scant ceremony the slightest
evasions of the orders of Congress and of the military authorities, and
all attempts at treasonable intercourse with the enemy. Finally American
independence was won, and Schenectady, after nearly a century of unrest,
enjoyed the blessing of permanent peace. The forts and stockade soon
disappeared.
[Illustration: UNION COLLEGE, 1795.]
Meantime the little village had steadily grown, becoming a
chartered borough in 1765, and advancing to the dignity of a city
in 1798. Schenectady received its first officially carried mail on
the 3d day of April, 1763,—Benjamin Franklin being the colonial
postmaster-general,—founded the Schenectady Academy in 1784, which became
Union College in 1795, and read its first newspaper, _The Schenectady
Gazette_, January 6, 1799.
[Illustration: STATUE, SITE OF “OLD FORT.”]
The military occupation and the increasing importance of the frontier
trade added largely to the English population. As early as 1710, the
Rev. Thomas Barclay, the English chaplain to the fort in Albany,
preached once a month at Schenectady, where, as he writes, “there is
a garrison of forty soldiers, besides about sixteen English and about
one hundred Dutch families.” At that time the Dutch had no pastor. Mr.
Barclay writes, “There is a convenient and well built church which they
freely give me the use of.” It was not, however, until 1759, when there
were three hundred houses in the village, that the English population
undertook the erection of a separate church. They “purchased a glebe
lot and by subscription chiefly among themselves erected a neat stone
church,” and called it St. George’s. This stone church, with its
subsequent additions, is the handsome St. George’s of to-day. Its site
had previously been covered by the English barracks. There is a tradition
that the Presbyterians assisted in the erection of St. George’s with the
understanding that the Anglicans were to go in at the west door and the
Presbyterians at the south door, but that the Anglicans managed to get
the church consecrated unknown to the Presbyterians. The latter, upon
finding it out, were so indignant that they set about building a church
for themselves. Be this as it may, the Presbyterians commenced building
their church in 1770, and finished it with bell and steeple, the latter
surmounted by a leaden ball gilded with “six books of gold leaf.”
In 1767 the Methodist movement began here under the lead of Captain
Thomas Webb, a local preacher bearing the license of John Wesley. The
movement was favored and advanced by the preaching of that great orator,
George Whitefield, then making his last American tour. The society,
however, waited until 1809 before building its first church edifice. In
the same year Schenectady County was carved out of Albany County.
All this while the English speech was gaining over the Dutch. Children
of Dutch parents, despite the teaching of the nursery, would acquire and
use the English idiom. Finally some of the members of the Dutch Church
ventured to suggest the propriety of having service now and then in
the English tongue. The staid burghers were shocked. But, the question
once raised, the younger generation grew bolder, and the elder began to
listen. Domine Romeyn, a graduate of Princeton College, a fluent master
of both languages, and eminent for his varied learning and as the founder
of Union College, was pastor of the Church from 1784 to 1804. He so far
yielded to the new demand as to preach in English upon occasions of which
he was careful to give previous notice. It was not until 1794 that the
leading members of the Church represented to its consistory the necessity
of increasing the services in English,[20] “to the end that the church
be not scattered.” Ten years later, at the close of Domine Romeyn’s long
ministry, the Dutch language ceased to be heard from the pulpit of the
church. But there are still surviving a few—very few—inhabitants to whom
the Dutch is their mother tongue. One of them informs the writer that
when he visited Holland he conversed with ease with the people, but that
he sometimes used words not familiar to them and afterwards learned that
these words were of Indian origin.
[Illustration: “THE BROOK THAT BOUNDS THRO’ UNION’S GROUNDS.”
UNION COLLEGE.]
As Schenectady is two hundred feet above tide-water at Albany, it early
became the headquarters of the western trade, goods being carried to and
from the West upon canoes, bateaux, and the “Schenectady Durham boats.”
The trade developed into large proportions, and during the hundred years
closing with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, many traders made
fortunes which were considered large in those days. Upon the completion
of the canal the commercial prosperity of the city declined. The decline
seemed to be confirmed by the era of railroads, notwithstanding the
“Mohawk and Hudson” was the first railroad built in the State, its first
passenger train arriving in Schenectady from Albany, September 12, 1831,
and on the second railroad, the “Saratoga and Schenectady,” the first
train left Schenectady for Saratoga, July 12, 1832.
[Illustration: ELIPHALET NOTT, PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE FOR SIXTY
YEARS.]
The business revival, however, came at last. For fifty years its
locomotive works have been renowned, finding customers even in England.
Now, that oldest of powers and newest of merchandise, electricity, has
its greatest plant here, from which its products seek the ends of the
habitable globe. These, with many other industries, disturb the city’s
ancient repose. It no longer comprises a people exclusively of Dutch,
English and Scotch ancestry, but embraces a polyglot assemblage. For more
than a century Union College, founded in an age less tolerant than our
own upon the basis of Christian unity, implied by its name, over which
the celebrated Doctor Nott presided for sixty years, and the accomplished
Doctor Raymond now presides, has been sending forth year by year its
graduates. Among them—as the College justly boasts—is a long list of
leaders in Church and in State, in the halls of learning, among the
votaries of science, where industrial and professional skill achieves the
worthiest triumphs, and where human needs require the wisest methods of
helpfulness; and every sign indicates that this long list will continue
to lengthen.
If there is any lesson, it is simple. The town was founded in the spirit
of liberty and justice; the people cherished and cultivated the spirit so
well that the Mohawk Indian for one hundred and twelve years respected
and reciprocated. May the spirit long prevail!
[Illustration: SEAL OF SCHENECTADY.]
[Illustration]
NEWBURGH
THE PALATINE PARISH BY QUASSAICK
BY ADELAIDE SKEEL
MR. SECRETARY BOYLE TO LORD LOVELACE
WHITEHALL, 10th Aug’st, 1708.
_My Lord:_—The Queen being graciously pleased to send fifty-two
German Protestants to New York and to settle ’em there at
Her own expenses, Her Majesty as a farther act of Charity
is willing to provide also for the subsistence of Joshua de
Kockerthal their Minister and it is Her Pleasure that you pass
a grant to him of a reasonable Portion of Land for a Glebe not
exceeding five hundred acres with liberty to sell a suitable
proportion thereof for his better Maintenance till he shall be
in a condition to live by the produce of the remainder.
I am, my Lord
Your L’dshp’s Most faithful humble servant
H. BOYLE.
LORD LOVELACE.
A bridge of sighs spans the distance between the coming of Newburgh’s
earliest settlers, the German Lutherans from the lower Palatinate on the
Rhine, to the later arrival of the English, Scotch, French and Irish. The
Lutherans were religious exiles, whose villages had been burnt, whose
homes had been destroyed and whose strong Protestant faith alone survived
the wreck of their fortunes. Of this poverty-stricken company, nine
with their wives and children were sent up Hudson’s River to occupy the
present site of Newburgh.
The first intention of Queen Anne of England to send these Germans to
Jamaica where white people were needed, was set aside “lest the climate
be not agreeable to their constitutions, being so much hotter than
that of Germany.” Apropos of the intelligent consideration of these
Commissioners of Emigration in 1709, one questions if the half-clad
travellers who are described in an old document as “very necessitous,”
found the climate of Hudson’s River agreeable to their constitutions in
winter-time.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT NEWBURGH.]
In winter time! Sailing up the river in summer-time past Sleepy Hollow
and Spuyten Duyvil, beyond the wide Tappan Zee, through the Gate of
the Highlands where the waters narrow and the mountains cross, where
the fairies dance on old Cro’s Nest, and Storm King dons and doffs his
weather cap, on into Newburgh Bay where the Beacons guard the Fishkill
shores, and the Queen City of the Hudson rises in green terraces on the
western bank, the tourist idly wonders if these Palatine pilgrims, worn
by the ravages of persecution, had eyes to see the beauty of the land
they were about to possess. It is possible, notwithstanding the ice-bound
waters and snow-covered country, that their homesick hearts may have been
warmed by the sight of a river not unlike their Rhine. As yet no Irving,
Paulding, Cooper, Drake or Willis had cast the magic witchery of his
tales over these scenes, yet a century before, the _Half-Moon_ had passed
this way and perhaps the stories Henry Hudson’s crew brought back of red
devils dancing in rocky chambers amused the children aboard the sloop of
the German Lutheran exiles.
[Illustration: JOEL T. HEADLEY.]
More pertinent in historical research than such imaginings is the
contrast between the temper of these voyagers and those others who sailed
in the _Mayflower_, and before landing covenanted with one another “to
submit only to such government and governors as should be chosen by
common consent.” The shores of the Hudson were no less fertile than those
of Massachusetts, yet the Palatines showed far less aggressiveness than
the Pilgrims, and far less courage to stand alone. The story of these
Lutherans here in Newburgh is a story of petitions first to one Right
Honorable Lord and then to another,—petitions which, alas! were too often
unheeded, although the petitioners sorely in need of help never failed to
sign themselves
Your Honours
Most Dutyfull
and most obedient Company
at Quassek Creek and Tanskamir.
In one letter to the Right Honourable Richard Ingoldsby Esq’ʳ, Lieutenant
Governor and Commander-in-Chief over Her Majesty’s Provinces in New York,
Nova Caesaria and Territories depending thereon in America &c. as also
to Her Majesty’s Honourable Council of this Province &c. they plead that
“they do not know where to address themselves to receive the remainder of
their allowance of provision at 9d per day.”
Again, in their search to find “a Gentleman who might be willing to
support said Germans with the Remainder of their allowance the entire
summ of which is not exceeding 195 lbs, 3sh,” they but succeed in finding
a gentleman whose offer of assistance they considered only as “fine talke
and discourse out of his own head”—by which one learns the supplicants
were left hungry and cold on their hilly farms, waiting for help which
came slowly and for crops which yielded but scantily.
[Illustration: THE LUTHERAN CHURCH.]
Whoever institutes a comparison between the Palatines and the Pilgrims
must remember the Pilgrims came to America, a compact society fortified
by friends at home soon to follow, while the Palatines, beggared by the
most terrible of religious persecutions, were sent, as individuals, by
Queen Anne to her colonies, as to-day dependent children of the State
are sent to the far West. They were absolute paupers, yet such was their
moral excellence that a writer on Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson
River indirectly commends these poor Germans.
“From the banks of the Rhine the germ of free local
institutions borne on the tide of western emigration found
along the Hudson a more fruitful soil than New England afforded
for the growth of those forms of municipal, state and national
government which have made the United States the leading
Republic among nations, and thus in a new and historically
important sense may the Hudson river be called the Rhine of
America.”
The patent granted the Lutherans known as the Palatine Parish by
Quassaick contained within its boundaries forty acres for highways
and five hundred for a Glebe. The Glebe is bounded by North Street on
the north and by South Street on the south. Across its western border
ran Liberty Street, then the King’s Highway, although no king save
Washington, who refused the title, ever trod its dust. The Glebe was “for
the use of the Lutheran minister and his successors forever,” but they
really possessed it only about forty years,—thus liberally was “forever”
interpreted two centuries ago.
“Here’s a church, and here’s a steeple,
Here’s the minister and all the people,”
says the nursery rhyme. Here the evolution of a parish has for its germ
the church and steeple, the minister and all the people being a later
development. The germ of this Lutheran parish was the minister, Joshua de
Kockerthal,[21] whose missionary labors on both sides of the river cannot
be overestimated. After the minister came not the church nor the steeple,
but the bell, a gift from no less a lady of quality than Queen Anne
herself. It was highly prized by these Lutherans and loaned to a church
in New York on condition that “should we be able to build a church at our
own expense at any time thereafter then the Lutheran Church of New York
shall restore to us the same bell such as it now is or another of equal
weight and value.”
[Illustration: ANDREW J. DOWNING.]
The church was built probably in 1730, and the Reverend Michael Christian
Knoll was appointed to minister in the parish, a part of his salary to
be paid in cheeples of wheat, sustenance certainly more nourishing than
the codfish received by the minister on Cape Cod in lieu of pew-rent in
gold coin of the realm. The church itself, which was standing in 1846
within the memory of a few of Newburgh’s citizens, was about twenty
feet square without floor or chimney. The roof ran up into a point from
its four walls, and on the peak a small cupola was placed in which hung
Queen Anne’s bell. This bell, evidently not cast in the mould of the
one unalterable Confession of Augsburg, but bewitched by its donor with
Episcopacy, presently rang out changes and ceased to “call the living,
mourn the dead and break the lightning” exclusively in behalf of the
German Lutherans.
The English were now buying farms from the discouraged Germans whose
complaint that their patent was all upland can hardly be denied by any
one who, aided by a rope, climbs Newburgh’s hilly streets to-day. The
story, however, that the United States Government located the city’s
post-office on a shelf-like site so that shy lovers in search of a
billet-doux need not call at the window but may look down the building’s
chimney from a street above is probably apocryphal.
The Palatines abandoned Newburgh for a more fertile soil in Pennsylvania
and elsewhere about 1747. The newcomers, who were mostly of English and
Scotch descent, took their places, so that nothing remains to tell of
the early settlers save the streets they laid out and the church in the
Old Town burying-ground whose site is now marked by Quassaick Chapter,
Daughters of the American Revolution.[22]
According to history, the few remaining Lutherans did not give up their
church without a struggle. On a certain bright July Sunday the two
congregations met, each with its minister at the head, accompanied by
many people from both sides of the river and the Justices of the Peace
who carried staves of office. Birgert Meynders, a burly blacksmith and
bold defender of the Lutheran faith, fell crushed by the falling door,
and then the jubilant English rushed in to hold the fort. It was after
this memorable riot that the Reverend Hezekiah Watkins,[23] a most
excellent clergyman, preached his first sermon in Newburgh, possibly from
a text in the psalter for the day, “Why do the heathen so furiously rage
together?”
[Illustration: HENRY KIRKE BROWN.]
Legend says some Lutheran boys on a moonless August night stole the
bell and buried it in a swamp where, punished for apostasy, it lay for
years tongue-tied in the black mud while hoarse frogs croaked their
pessimistic comments over it. The defeated Lutherans would doubtless have
been pleased could they have foreseen half a century later when all that
savored of England, were it book, bell or candle, was out of favor, the
Anglicans in their turn ejected, the building used as a schoolhouse, and
the rent of the Glebe lands pass entirely from the Church.
The swamp in which the bell was hidden has of late years been transformed
into one of Downing Park’s lakes, and from its smooth waters one may
hear on summer evenings the ghostly tolling of bells, as bells toll in
the buried cities beneath Swiss lakes. The tolling has a martial sound,
a call to arms, as if the little bell had forgotten the smaller church
squabble in the larger quarrel between King George and his Colonies. Some
authorities insist that the bell was dug up, and that it gladly used its
long silent tongue in Freedom’s cause as behooved a Liberty Bell. It hung
during the present century, old inhabitants tell us, in the cupola of the
Newburgh Academy, and was at length sold and melted for a new one by an
iconoclastic school Board.
At the breaking out of the war for American Independence there were
but a dozen or more houses on the Glebe, and a few to the south. Among
these was the stone residence of Colonel Jonathan Hasbrouck which had
been built in part by Birgert Meynders. Lieutenant Cadwallader Colden
had his home near and there were many among his satellites willing to
drink damnation to the Whigs when asked by the ever vigilant Committee of
Safety to sign the pledge.
It may be thought strange that Newburgh has been considered of great
Revolutionary importance when no battles were fought nearer its
vicinity than those of Stony Point and Forts Clinton and Montgomery,
but, although the place had an hereditary tendency to toryism, its
geographical environment filled it to overflowing with plucky patriots.
It is well known that it was the design of the British to get possession
of the Hudson, and by cutting off the New England States to weaken
the forces of the Continental Army. Appreciating this fact, Washington
came up the river in 1776 as far as Constitution Island and, at the
suggestion of Putnam, fortified West Point. Newburgh came under the same
military direction, so that one leading officer after another made his
headquarters in the vicinity.
At Vail’s Gate, four miles south of Newburgh, is the Thomas Ellison house
built by John Ellison, the headquarters of Generals Knox, Green and
Gates, and of Colonels Biddle and Wadsworth. Here too the pretty Lucy
Knox gave a dance at which General Washington tarried so late as to incur
the displeasure of his wife. The names of Maria Colden, Gitty Wyncoop,
and Sally Jensen, the belles of the ball, are scrawled on a window-pane
in the dining-room.
Following Silver Stream down to Moodna Creek, three or four miles south
of Newburgh, we find the Williams house, the residence of General
Lafayette, in the cellar of which the Dutch loan lies buried past
finding, while opposite are the remains of the forge at which were made
parts of the obstructions thrown across the river to prevent British
ships from sailing up.
[Illustration: HEADQUARTERS OF MAJOR-GENERAL KNOX AT VAIL’S GATE.]
[Illustration: CLINTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT LITTLE BRITAIN, NEAR NEWBURGH.]
Westward at Little Britain, six miles from Newburgh, is Mrs. Fall’s
house, the headquarters of George Clinton, and here on the floor is the
stain where the spy who swallowed the bullet took the emetic and revealed
the proposed treason. The old homestead of the Clinton family was in
Little Britain, and hither James Clinton, after the attack on Forts
Clinton and Montgomery, returned, his boots filled with blood. One of his
great-grandchildren relates that he entered the dining-room where the
family were eating breakfast, and requesting his mother and sisters to
retire lest they faint from the sight of his wounds, as was the habit
of gentlewomen of the last century, told the story of his escape to his
father. The statue of his distinguished brother, George,[24] stands in
Newburgh’s business centre on the Square which oddly enough bears the
name of Colden, the leading family of colonial days. The distinguished
Coldens, although not patriots, added a lustre to the town, and the
Clintons will not quarrel with their shades.
Mad Anthony Wayne, the Rough Rider of his day, had his headquarters on
the Glebe near the present corner of Liberty Street and Broad. Weigand’s
tavern, with the whipping-post in front of the door, a rendezvous of
soldiers, stood on Liberty Street not far from the Lutheran Church.
[Illustration: CLINTON STATUE IN COLDEN SQUARE, AT NEWBURGH.]
Revolutionary interest in Newburgh focuses on the coming of Washington to
the Hasbrouck house in March, 1782, although recent research discredits
the story pictured on the covers of our copybooks in school days of the
disbanding of the whole Continental army on these grounds. In 1779-80
Washington had lived in the Ellison house, no longer standing, in New
Windsor, a small village to the south on the river, separated from
Newburgh proper by the Quassaick Creek, but after the surrender of
Yorktown, he and his family with his staff became the guests of Colonel
Jonathan Hasbrouck in the stone house, on the corner of Washington and
Liberty Streets. Here Washington wrote his reply to the Nicola letter,
which in popular parlance offered him the crown. Here is the chair in
which he sat when he took his pen in hand and dipped it in ink to put on
paper words which after more than a hundred years glow with the fervor of
their author’s single-hearted purpose.
NEWBURGH, May 22d, 1782.
COLONEL LEWIS NICOLA,
SIR:—With a mixture of great surprise and astonishment, I have
read with attention the sentiments you have submitted to my
perusal. Be assured, sir, no occurrence in the course of the
War, has given me more painful sensations than your information
of there being such ideas existing in the army as you have
expressed, and I must view with abhorrence and reprehend with
severity. For the present the communication of them will rest
in my own bosom, unless some further agitation of the matter
shall make a disclosure necessary.
I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could
have given encouragement to an address, which to me seems big
with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am
not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have
found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. At
the same time, in justice to my own feelings, I must add that
no man possesses a more sincere wish to see ample justice done
to the army than I do, and so far as my powers and influence,
in a constitutional way, extend, they shall be employed to
the utmost of my abilities to effect it, should there be any
occasion. Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for
your country, concern for yourself, or posterity, or respect
for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never
communicate, as from yourself or anyone else, a sentiment of
the like nature. With esteem, I am sir,
Your most obedient servant,
G. WASHINGTON.
Leaving Washington’s Headquarters at Newburgh one turns southward and
crosses Quassaick Creek, at one time known as the Vale of Avoca, to hear
above the whirr of to-day’s many intersecting railroads the echoes of
Indian paddles. It is said the ghosts of Indians still linger here in
their canoes waiting to carry away Washington, for near is the site of
the Ettrick house whose host treacherously invited the Commander-in-Chief
to dinner with intent to kidnap him.
[Illustration: THE WILLIAMS HOUSE.]
“General, you are my prisoner,” said Mr. Ettrick, pushing aside his
wine-glass and rising from the table.
“Pardon me, sir, but you are mine,” was the quiet answer, and instantly
the life-guards appeared and poor Ettrick was put in chains, his pretty
daughter escaping on account of the timely warning she had given her
father’s guest.
[Illustration: MONUMENT ON TEMPLE HILL, NEAR NEWBURGH.]
[Illustration: THE VERPLANCK HOUSE.
BARON STEUBEN’S HEADQUARTERS, WHERE THE “NICOLA LETTER” WAS WRITTEN.]
Standing on the slopes of Snake Hill, to the west of Newburgh, where
was the last cantonment of the American Army on the site of the
Temple, a building used for Sunday services, for Masonic purposes and
as a gathering-place for social entertainment, a site now marked by a
monument, one hears again those words spoken by Washington when in March,
1783, the circulation of the Newburgh letters caused unrest among the
unpaid troops.
“You see, gentlemen,” he said as he arose to read his address,
putting on his spectacles as he spoke, “that I have not only
grown grey but blind in your service....
“Let me conjure you,” he continued, “by the name of our common
country, as you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the
rights of humanity, as you regard the military and national
character of America, to express your utmost horror and
detestation of the man who wishes under any specious pretense
to overturn the liberties of our country and who wickedly
attempts to open the flood-gates of civil discord....
“By thus determining and thus acting you will pursue the plain
and direct road to the attainment of your wishes ... you will
by the dignity of your conduct afford occasion to posterity to
say when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to
mankind, ‘Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen
the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable
of attaining.’”
Crossing the river by the ferry sloop to Fishkill one finds in this
Revolutionary centre of military supplies much of interest. Here were
Baron Steuben’s headquarters in the Verplanck house, where the Nicola
letter was written and the Society of Cincinnatus in part was formed;
here at Swartwoutville the headquarters of Washington; here on the
Wicopee, in the James Van Wyck house, the residence of John Jay, and at
Brinkerhoff, in the home of Matthew Brinkerhoff, the roof which sheltered
Lafayette when he lay ill of a fever. The Dutch Church in Fishkill has
been made famous by Cooper’s _Spy_. Trinity Church was a hospital, and
on the banks of the Hudson at Presqu’Ile one rests under the oak which
shaded Washington when he waited for his letters to be brought to him
from Newburgh.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT FISHKILL.]
“I cannot tell what you say, green leaves,
I cannot tell what you say;
But I know that in you a spirit doth live
And a message to me this day.”
Is it not a message of courage and patriotism which lives on in the
descendants of the Hasbroucks, the Belknaps, the Williamses, the Fowlers,
the Deyos, the Townsends, the Carpenters, the Weigands and others whose
records emblazon the pages of Newburgh’s history?
[Illustration: CHARLES DOWNING.]
In this last century not only material wealth has come to Newburgh,
but the richest treasures of the town have been brought hither by its
idealists, men to whom has been granted the gift of vision. Among
these are numbered preachers, poets, artists, historians, novelists,
physicians, lawyers and philanthropists, and on this roll of honor are
written the names of the Reverend John Forsythe, N. P. Willis, H. K.
Brown, A. J. Downing, S. W. Eager, E. M. Ruttenber, J. T. Headley, E. P.
Roe, Carroll Dunham, E. A. Brewster and Charles Downing.
[Illustration: SEAL OF NEWBURGH.]
[Illustration]
TARRYTOWN-ON-HUDSON
ITS HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS AND LEGENDARY LORE
BY HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE
Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson is interesting from many points of view. It is
beautiful in itself, with a touch of that ripe, old-world beauty which is
the rich deposit of a long association of man with nature; a beauty which
reveals its depth in the fulness of foliage, the girth of ancient trees,
the texture of the grass, and that atmosphere of ancient and familiar
use which, although invisible and impalpable, lends a peculiar charm to
settled towns and countries. For Tarrytown has a long history—as history
is reckoned in this new world—and an ancient date. It wears the air of
a locality which was in full life in Colonial times. The old houses are
few, but the modern village is embowered in a landscape which has known
human companionship and care these two centuries and more. A road may
show the latest skill in road-making, but if it was once a highway along
which coaches ran in the brave days of the old inns and the ancient whips
and hostlers, there is always the suggestion of long use about it. It has
been for so many decades a part of the landscape that nature seems to
have had a hand in its making. The grass grows down to it and the earth
slopes away from it as if these things had always been as they are. No
one can walk through Tarrytown along its chief thoroughfare, without
recognizing on every hand the signs of the old highway on which coach
horns were once heard, and later the bugles rang as redcoats flashed
through the trees or marched along the ancient way.
[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF TARRYTOWN.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]
The village rises from the water’s edge to the summit of the low hill
which runs parallel with the eastern shore of the Hudson for many miles;
it has one main thoroughfare, bisected by many cross streets of a later
date; it is, for the most part, carefully kept, as befits its age, its
intelligence, and its wealth; and, looked at from the river, it is
almost buried in a wealth of foliage. It has at all times an air of
repose, as if it had done long ago with the hard work of settlement and
organization, and had earned exemption from the rush and turmoil which
characterize new communities. In this country a town which has passed
its bicentennial has a right to conduct life with a certain dignity and
repose. It is doubtful if Tarrytown ever knew any great bustle or uproar;
from the beginning it is probable that its inhabitants did not suffer
themselves to be driven into undue energy of mood or habit. A placid
temper, a disposition to keep on easy terms with life and neither give
nor ask more than becomes a man of a quiet habit of mind, have left their
impress on the community. It is a place in which history is preserved
rather than made, although when it had occasion to make history, the work
was done with picturesque effectiveness.
When Hendrik Hudson broke the quiet waters of the Tappan Zee for the
first time, in September, 1609, with the keel of the _Half-Moon_, he
saw along the eastern shore of the noble river which was to bear his
name an unbroken forest. The region was singularly beautiful, with a
stillness which it has not wholly lost; for rivers carrying deep currents
always convey an impression of stillness. Mr. Curtis has spoken of the
lyrical beauty of the Rhine and the epical beauty of the Hudson; the
first passing, with rapid movement, through a long series of striking
and romantic localities, the second flowing sedately through a landscape
of larger compass, of more massive composition, of a beauty sustained
through a hundred and fifty miles of noble scenery. It is, of course, a
matter of pure fancy; but there seems to have been some kinship between
the men who settled the continent and the localities they chose for their
homes. The hardy French adventurers were peculiarly at home along the
St. Lawrence and the trails from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi; the
stern soil of New England would not have given its rare smile to men of a
temper less strenuous than that of the Puritan and Pilgrim; the waterways
of the James, the Potomac, and the Chesapeake lent themselves readily to
the habits and occupations of English gentlemen in the new world; Florida
and Louisiana seemed to find their elect explorers and settlers in the
Spanish adventurers and gold-seekers; while the quiet of the Hudson
was hardly broken when the Dutch settlers began to till the land north
of Manhattan Island and to build their substantial homes. They could be
voluble and noisy when occasion required, but they were of a phlegmatic
temper and leisurely by habit.
The reports sent abroad by Hudson’s men when they found themselves once
more in Holland in the late autumn of 1609, were repeated and passed from
town to town among merchants who were as eager for trade as they were
stolid in manner. Small ships were soon plying westward, bent upon trade
with the well disposed Indians whom Hudson found scattered from Manhattan
Island to the place where Albany now stands. The possibilities of profit
in the fur trade were quickly discovered by these shrewd merchants; the
nucleus of a settlement was made on the island, and rude huts hastily put
together were the beginnings of one of the greatest of modern cities.
The traders bought furs, tobacco, and corn in exchange for trinkets and
rum; they hunted, fished, and lived after the manner of their time and
kind, but for the most part on good terms with their Indian neighbors;
at long intervals tiny ships from the old world crept into the harbor,
and went back again laden with the skins of the beaver, the otter, and
the sable. In 1621 the West India Company received a charter from the
States-General of Holland, with the monopoly of the American trade, and
a grant of the vast territory discovered by Hudson, which was called
the New Netherlands. The great trading company, one of a small group of
commercial organizations of almost sovereign powers in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, drew its profits not only from barter with
Indians, but from the sacking of cities on the Spanish Main and the
capture of Spanish treasure-ships.
In 1624 families arrived on the island and community life began in New
Amsterdam; two years later the first governor of the Colony arrived
with a company who brought their wives, children, cattle, and household
goods of all kinds with them and, by giving these hostages to fortune,
committed themselves irrevocably to the new world and its destinies.
Manhattan Island was bought from the Indians for twenty-four dollars, and
the name of New Amsterdam reminded the settlers of their blood and their
history. It was not, however, until Peter Stuyvesant took up the reins
of government with a firm hand and in a somewhat choleric temper that the
little community ceased to be a trading-post and became a Dutch colonial
town. The first comers were largely penniless; the later comers were men
of position and substance. Many races were soon represented in the new
town, but the Dutch remained for many years the ruling class. In 1664 the
Colony passed into English hands and New Amsterdam became New York.
The territory north of the island early attracted attention, and
energetic and far-seeing men set about acquiring title and adding acre
to acre until great estates were created. In Westchester County, which
then bounded the city of New York on the north, six manors, including
the greater part of its territory, were granted; that of Fordham leading
the way in 1671. The largest of these manors were Phillipsburgh and
Cortlandt, and Tarrytown became the residence of a great landowner who
secured manorial rights in 1693. This territorial magnate, a true lord
of the manor so far as greatness of estate was concerned, was a man of
humble birth, and a carpenter by trade. He came to New Amsterdam in
1647, and being a man of sagacity and foresight, soon found his chance
in the opportunities of the new world, became a fur trader, married a
rich widow, and in course of time became probably the richest man in
the Colony. Vredryk Flypse, or Frederick Philips,[25] knew how to take
occasion by the hand when English rule was established in New York. He
foresaw the increased value of the lands along the Hudson, and in 1680,
by the first of a series of grants, pieced out by various purchases, he
became the owner of a noble domain, stretching from Spuyten Duyvil to the
old Kill of Kitchawong, or Croton, and from the Hudson to the Bronx.
The Dutch settlers in the new world were less adventurous than their
fellows of English and French blood, but they had early established
trading-posts as far north on the Hudson as the present site of Albany,
and they had crept quietly up the eastern shore of the river, and small
farms were beginning to break the long line of forest. The beginnings of
Tarrytown probably date back as far as 1645, but of its earliest history
no authentic records remain. In 1683, when Frederick Philips began the
building of a manor-house on the quiet Pocantico, he found a small
community of farmers, living in a quiet, frugal way, and carrying on
the business of life with thrift and industry but in a spirit of great
tranquillity. The broad waters of Tappan Zee could hardly have caught the
reflection of the primitive farm-houses hidden among the trees. These
houses were unpretentious in dimension and appearance, but they had a
substantial air. There was nothing provisional in the aspect of the
scattered settlement; it struck tenacious roots into the soil from the
very start.
“In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the
eastern shore of the Hudson,” writes Irving, in his vein of
quiet humor, “at that broad expansion of the river denominated
by the ancient Dutch navigators Tappan Zee, and where they
always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of
St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town
or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which
is more generally and properly known as Tarry Town. This name
was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives
of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of
their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market
days.”
This derivation of the name of the delightful town which Irving loved
so well, has probably as much authority behind it as many derivations
which have come to be unquestioned; but if Irving’s genial humor leaves
some sceptics dissatisfied, they may take refuge in an alternative
derivation, which traces the modern name to the more credible legend
that one Terry was the earliest settler, whose name became fastened upon
the little hamlet first as Terry’s town, which afterwards was naturally
metamorphosed into Tarrytown. Be this as it may, a spirit of peace
seems to have reigned in the region from the beginning, and the sturdy
Dutch farmers kept the peace with their Indian neighbors. There are
no traditions of midnight alarms in the early story of the community.
Indian canoes were seen for many a year on Tappan Zee, and it is said
that Indian hands assisted in raising the walls of the quaint and
venerable church which still keeps watch over its earliest worshippers
in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. These pioneer settlers had few wants, and
supplied them with home-made articles or hand-woven fabrics. Manhattan
Island was too distant in time to be accessible for daily supplies; shops
were still to come; and the peddler, with whose figure and habits Cooper
was subsequently to make the whole world acquainted, distributed finery
and small wares through the section.
[Illustration: THE POCANTICO RIVER.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.]
Under the royal grant and license which authorized Frederick Philips
to acquire certain tracts of land in Westchester County, says an old
chronicler, the grantee agreed “to let any one settle on said land free,
for certain stipulated years, in order that it should as soon as possible
be cultivated and settled.” These terms seem to have been accepted by
the few settlers already on the ground, and by others who were attracted
by the impulse which the lord of the manor (for such Philips was in
influence and authority) gave to local industry. The great estate was
not secured in a day; it was consolidated by a series of purchases
covering a period of years, and among these purchases was the site of the
present village of Tarrytown, which was paid for in rum, cloth, tobacco,
and hardware. The great proprietor laid the foundations of permanent
community life by building, within a comparatively short time, a mill,
a manor-house, and a church. The Pocantico flows into the Hudson just
beyond the northern boundary of the Tarrytown of to-day; and on the
shores of the quiet bay which puts in at that point, protected by a long
and heavily wooded promontory which extends well into the river, Philips
chose a sheltered and beautiful site for his home. His own ships brought
building materials from Holland and unloaded them on the wharf built on
the premises. The architecture of the manor-house was of the Dutch order
so familiar along the Hudson; the heavy walls were of stone; the roof was
spread on great hand-hewn rafters; the doors were divided into upper and
lower sections, and swung on ponderous hinges; from the end of the wide
hall, stairs ascended by easy rises to the upper floor. Through openings
in the foundation walls on the southwest side small howitzers commanded
the approach by land or water. A mill was quite as essential as a house,
and the substantial structure which still resists the assaults of time
in placid old age, bears witness to the thoroughness with which Philips
did whatever fell to his hand. Beside its ancient pond the venerable mill
still witnesses to a past which cannot be wholly lost while the little
group of buildings remains.
[Illustration: OLD MANOR-HOUSE (“FLYPSE’S CASTLE”) AND MILL, TARRYTOWN.
FROM A DRAWING BY EDGAR MAHEW BACON.]
[Illustration: THE OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW.
FROM A DRAWING BY W. J. WILSON.]
To complete this interesting group, which Tarrytown ought to preserve
with pious care, and at no great distance from the manor-house, stands
the old Dutch church, one of the most quaint and best preserved
monuments of early history on the continent. He would be a bold man
who would venture to state definitely the date at which the building
of this ancient edifice was begun; on that point a wide latitude must
be permitted and discreet silence preserved. It answers all purposes
of intelligent curiosity to be told that the foundations were probably
laid as early as 1684, and that the building was completed, probably,
not later than 1697. The bell which still hangs in the little steeple
and which may be heard on quiet Sunday afternoons in the late summer or
early autumn, when services are held in the ancient structure, was cast
in 1685, and bears the inscription, “Si Deus pro nobis quis contra nos.”
The church was built with characteristic solidity, the walls being more
than two feet thick; a great pulpit with a sounding-board projected from
the eastern end; the benches on which the congregation sat were without
backs; and the doctrine expounded from the sacred desk was of a kindred
soundness of fibre. Some concession to human weakness was shown to the
lord of the manor, in the comfortable and imposing arrangement of the
large pews on the right and left of the minister. The farmers filled
the body of the little church, while slaves, redemptioners, and other
obscure persons, with the choir, sat in the tiny gallery. In 1697, the
Rev. Guiliam Bertholf began a kind of visitorial ministry in the new
church, coming three or four times a year to preach and administer the
sacraments. He was a native of Sluis, in Holland, emigrated to the new
world in 1684, and became a preacher nine years later. His ability and
zeal gave him wide influence, and he was instrumental in organizing a
number of churches of the Reformed faith and order. From this initial
ministry until the present time, although the congregation has moved to a
larger and modern edifice, the succession of faithful preachers has never
been broken, and the historic pulpit of Tarrytown has never been more
thoroughly identified with generous devotion, high character, and unusual
gifts of nature and speech than during the last twenty-five years. During
the stormy years of the Revolution the church was frequently closed; and
at the close of the struggle the trappings which had distinguished the
pews of the lord of the manor were torn down, and elders and deacons
sitting in the seats once set apart for the local aristocracy emphasized
the triumph of the democratic idea in Church and State. Not long
afterwards another innovation was made by the substitution of English for
Dutch in the services.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW, PRIOR TO ITS
RESTORATION IN 1897.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]
In October, 1897, the two hundredth anniversary of the church was
celebrated with services which recalled, with unusual completeness, the
varied and instructive history of the old building and of the community.
The modern village lies to the south of the church, which is hidden
beneath ancient trees, and is still enveloped in an atmosphere of
old-time silence and repose. The Pocantico flows beside it, almost
unseen when the midsummer foliage is spread over it; while to the north,
climbing a gentle slope and sinking softly down to the brook, is the
ancient burying-ground, in which the first interments were made about
1645. The place is singularly peaceful and of a rare and gentle beauty;
the gradual slope dotted with ancient graves, protected on the east by
wooded heights, overhung with old trees, and commanding on the west
glimpses of the broad expanse of the Tappan Zee, and, from its higher
levels, the tree-embowered village, the long line of shining water, and
the distant front of the Palisades. There is probably no other locality
in America, taking into account history, tradition, the old church, the
manor-house, and the mill, which so entirely conserves the form and
spirit of Dutch civilization in the new world. This group of buildings
ranks in historic interest, if not in historic importance, with Faneuil
Hall, Independence Hall, the ruined church tower at Jamestown, the old
gateway at St. Augustine, and the Spanish cabildo on Jackson Square in
New Orleans; and the time will come when pilgrimages will be made to this
ancient and beautiful home of some of those ideals and habits of life
which have given form and structure to American civilization.
It was the misfortune of Tarrytown to lie in the path of both armies for
many dreary months during the Revolution; and no section of the country
felt the uncertainty and terrors of war more keenly. When Cooper looked
about for an American subject for his second novel, his interest in the
history of Westchester County, in the lower part of which he was for a
number of years a resident, led him to a fortunate choice, and _The
Spy_ remains not only one of the best of American novels of incident,
but a vivid report of the suspense and misery of the country between
the Highlands of the Hudson, held by the American forces, and the city
of New York in the hands of the British. That section was mercilessly
harried by friend and foe. The few families which made the little hamlet
of Tarrytown, never knew whether the Skinners or the Cowboys would appear
next; the only certainty in the situation seems to have been that, sooner
or later, whatever was portable and valuable would be carried off. There
was much quiet courage in the form of patient endurance in those years
when church and school were closed, crops gathered by hands that had not
sown, houses burned in the dead of night, and all normal community life
at an end. Caught in the centre of the storm of war, Tarrytown not only
suffered severely but bore her losses with conspicuous fortitude and
courage. In many sudden forays, as well as in the larger movements of the
American forces, the men of Tarrytown played their parts with notable
pluck and daring.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO THE CAPTORS OF ANDRÉ.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]
The devotion of a majority of the people of the place to the American
cause had its reward in the lasting association of the town with the most
romantic and tragic episode of the war; and the incorruptible patriotism
of three Westchester County men not only averted what might have been
a crushing calamity, but immortalized the scene of their resistance to
temptation. On the 24th day of September, 1780, Major André, bearing
dispatches of a treasonable nature from General Benedict Arnold, then
in command of the American forces at West Point, was captured on the
highway at a place now marked by a monument, by John Paulding, David
Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. These obscure militiamen, soon to become
famous, were watching the road, when a horseman appeared riding toward
the south. He was promptly challenged, ordered to dismount, and examined
as to his business and destination. His answers to the questions put to
him by his captors confirmed their suspicion that something of unusual
importance was in the air. The determination to search the unfortunate
young officer more thoroughly was met with offers of a large sum of
money; but the militiamen were not to be bribed, and to their fidelity is
due the discovery of the plot to place West Point in British hands. The
moral effect of Arnold’s fall was counteracted in large measure by the
incorruptibility of André’s captors, and the monument which marks this
historic site commemorates the integrity of the American militiamen quite
as much as the dramatic episode which ended the careers of Arnold and
André.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING.]
[Illustration: “SUNNYSIDE.”
THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING.]
Tarrytown has had the double good fortune to be the scene of the most
striking act of the drama of Arnold’s treason, and to be the custodian of
one of the few American legends. In his youth, Washington Irving knew the
region intimately. He was given to solitary walks, for he was a dreamer
by nature and habit. Wolfert’s Roost was even then an old farm-house,
built close to the water’s edge, where the glen broadens to the river.
It had colonial and revolutionary associations, and, above all, it had
the charm of a situation of singular beauty. Irving seems early to have
fallen under the spell of the shaded waterside and the romantic glen.
In 1835, after an absence of seventeen years in Europe and an extensive
journey through the South and West, which bore fruit in _A Tour on the
Prairies_, the recollections and affections of his youth drew him to
Sunnyside, now about a mile and a half south of the railway station of
Tarrytown, and he became the possessor of a home which will always be
associated with our early literary history. The house was enlarged, and
began to take on that air of ripe and reposeful beauty which made it an
ideal home for a man of letters. Under this roof his later books were
written, and here he was sought by the most interesting men of his time.
[Illustration: THE JACOB MOTT HOUSE WHERE KATRINA VAN TASSEL WAS MARRIED.
NOW OCCUPIED BY THE NEW WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL. FROM A DRAWING BY
EDGAR MAHEW BACON.]
Irving’s familiarity with the Hudson River and its historical
associations had already borne fruit in the _Sketch-Book_ in two original
and characteristic legends. Like his illustrious contemporary, Sir Walter
Scott, Irving was a born lover of traditions of all sorts; a man with
a genius for getting the poetry and romance out of the past. In _The
History of New York_, impersonated in Diedrich Knickerbocker, he created
a legend; in _Rip Van Winkle_ and _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ he gave
lasting fame to two stories full of the Dutch spirit. Sleepy Hollow lies
to the north and east of Tarrytown, within easy walking distance. It is
still secluded and quiet and the stir of modern times has not broken in
upon its ancient seclusion.
[Illustration: OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW MILL.]
“A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to
lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or
tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever
breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.... A drowsy, dreamy
influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very
atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high
German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others,
that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe,
held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered
by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still
continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a
spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk
in a continual dream.”
Since the days when these words were written the air of Sleepy Hollow has
not escaped the general stirring of a more hurried age; but on summer
afternoons the meditative visitor still finds the valley a place of
silence and peace. The master of the spell which has brought so many
pilgrims to Tarrytown sleeps in the ancient graveyard; the home which
he loved with a love deepened by years of exile, still stands, somewhat
enlarged, but not despoiled of its secluded and ivy-clad loveliness.
Great estates have been formed about Tarrytown and stately homes line
the shores of the river, but the place has kept something of its old
simplicity and repose. It has never lacked the presence of those to
whom its traditions of refined social habit and generous intellectual
life have been sacred; and its distinction is still to be found in
an atmosphere which is in no sense dependent on its later and larger
prosperity.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK CITY
THE COSMOPOLITAN CITY
BY JOSEPH B. GILDER
By comparison with London, New York is a city of the second size, lacking
some millions of the population of the modern Babylon. Even Paris, though
less populous, outranks the American metropolis in many of the elements
that go to the making of a great city. But in drawing these comparisons
it must be remembered that only three centuries ago, when the French
and English capitals had been places of importance for over a thousand
years, New York was a wooded island, criss-crossed by innumerable
streams, indented by morasses and infested by Indians and wild beasts.
European civilization was wrinkled with age long before a permanent roof
was erected on the island of Manhattan; and three lives such as that of
ex-Mayor Tiemann, who died here in his ninety-fifth year, in the summer
of 1899, would have spanned the entire history of the town from the Dutch
discovery to the reign of Richard Croker.
The first white man’s habitation in what is now New York was a grave; for
the crew of Hudson’s _Half-Moon_, after their fight with the aborigines
on the mainland above Spuyten Duyvil Creek, in September, 1609, buried
their dead before sailing homeward from their voyage of discovery up the
great river named for their commander.
[Illustration: FIRST SEAL OF CITY. 1623-1654.]
Four temporary dwellings, presumably little better than wigwams, housed
Skipper Block and the crew of the _Tiger_ near the lower end of the
island, while they rebuilt their burned vessel, during the winter of
1613-14. The site of the present city was bought from the Indians on
May 6, 1626, for trinkets worth sixty guilders, or four-and-twenty
dollars—less than one tenth of the rate paid a few years since for a
single square foot of land. Building was begun at once and pushed with
vigor. Fort Amsterdam—a blockhouse partly shielded by palisades—marked
the extreme southern limit of the island; and the first bark-roofed
cottages were clustered close together under its harmless, necessary
guns. A warehouse with stone walls and a thatched roof sprang up as soon
as a stronghold had been built; and a horse-mill, with a loft fitted up
for the simplest form of religious services.
[Illustration: MAP OF ORIGINAL GRANTS.]
Fort Amsterdam was a fortress in name only. Scarcely had it been
completed when it began to fall into disrepair; and the pigs were forever
rooting in its sodded earthworks, and threatening its very foundations.
Thus early was it that these four-footed scavengers made their appearance
in the history of New York, playing as picturesque, though not as
patriotic, a part therein as that of the legendary Roman geese. Not till
well forward in the present century did they disappear from the streets
and the annals of the city.
Peter Minuit, the first Director of New Netherlands to hold his place
for more than a year, and the first to organize a permanent provincial
government, sent home hopeful reports, and backed them with shipments of
fur and timber; but the expenses of administering the colony ultimately
exceeded its earnings, and the West India Company was disappointed of the
revenue it had counted upon receiving from the new settlement.
The little village grew but slowly. When it had spread so far northward
as the line of what is now Wall Street—which is so far down-town to-day
that many a New York woman, native-born, has yet to see it for the first
time—a stockade was set up across the island, narrower then than now, to
fence off the village from the farms (bouweries) of the more adventurous
pioneers, and the forest that bordered them. This defense, completed in
1653, consisted of palisades and posts, twelve feet high, with a sloping
breastwork of earth and a ditch on its southern side. In less than two
years its height was doubled to keep the Indians from leaping over it.
[Illustration: THE FORT IN KIEFT’S DAY.]
But neither the Fort with its stone guns, nor this high wooden wall, was
ever called upon to withstand a vigorous attack or resist a siege; for
whenever the place was seriously threatened, its flag came fluttering
down, and its keys were turned over to the enemy. This happened first in
August, 1664, when Col. Richard Nicolls appeared in the bay, as deputy
of the Duke of York, to whom Charles II. had granted all the territory
between the Connecticut River and Delaware Bay, and demanded the Fort’s
surrender. The claim of the English was nebulous to the last degree. As
Freneau neatly put it,
“The soil they demanded, or threatened their worst,
Insisting that _Cabot had looked at it first_.”
But the flimsiest pretension, if vigorously backed, outvalues the
strongest if less sturdily maintained; and Director Stuyvesant found his
people unwilling to support him in defying the intruder. So down dropped
the Dutch colors and up ran the British.
Precisely nine years later, however, what had formerly been called
New Amsterdam, but was now New York, yielded itself to a little Dutch
fleet without striking a defensive blow. Captain Colve’s victory was so
lightly won, indeed, that the English commander, Captain Manning, was
courtmartialled for his apparent inefficiency, cowardice or treason,
and the estates of the Governor, Colonel Lovelace, who, when the blow
fell, was absent on affairs of state, were confiscated by the Duke. The
triumph of the Hollanders was short-lived; for the year 1674 had not run
its course when Major Edmund Andros assumed the governorship, and by the
terms of a treaty of peace between England and the States-General, New
Orange, as the place had been christened by the Dutch, again and finally
became New York.
[Illustration: PETER STUYVESANT.]
New York has been in turn a Dutch village, an English town, and an
American city. In its infancy it was wholly Dutch; but in its early youth
the population was so leavened by English immigration that the transition
to English control was less violent than one might expect it to have
been. English influence was powerful even in Stuyvesant’s day; and
when Stuyvesant was supplanted by Nicolls, the Dutch element was still
powerful in the councils of the little town. The new ruler moved slowly
and cautiously in anglicizing the government, and almost all the changes
he made were for the better. The brief resumption of Dutch authority
in 1673 was reactionary and wholly detrimental to the interests of the
community; and, all things considered, the peaceful cession of the town
to England, a year later, was the happiest chance that could possibly
have befallen.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE CITY IN 1686.]
A more violent and radical change was effected in 1689, when Jacob
Leisler seized the occasion of the fall of the Stuart dynasty to grasp
the reins of government which Andros had been forced to drop. By the aid
of the militia and with the support of nearly all the less prosperous
townsfolk, he administered public affairs till that good Dutchman William
III. of England commissioned Governor Sloughter to hang the usurper
and reign in his stead. Leisler’s rule had been in many respects an
enlightened one, and years afterward his adherents succeeded in having
his dishonored bones dug up and honorably reinterred. It was in this
town, and at the instance of this earnest but ill-balanced and despotic
champion of the poor, that the American Colonies took their first step
toward concerted action, their objective being the overthrow of the
French at Montreal.
The most striking characteristic of New York has always been its
cosmopolitanism. As Governor Roosevelt points out in his capital review
of the city’s history, no less than eighteen different languages and
dialects were spoken in the streets so long ago as the middle of the
seventeenth century. The Dutch, the English and the Huguenot refugees
from France predominated, but there were many Walloons and Germans, and a
large body of black slaves. The riffraff of the Old World was to be found
here, as well as the nobly adventurous; and, in fact, at all times since,
the proportion of foreign-born residents has been very large.
[Illustration: JOHN JAY.]
In the period immediately preceding the Revolution, the desire for
independence was far less general in New York than in Massachusetts or
Virginia. The large land owners and leading merchants were mainly members
of the Church of England; and while there was no state church, so called
and admitted to be such, the Anglicans were first in wealth and fashion,
and their organization enjoyed exclusive privileges. Even King’s College
(now Columbia University) was placed officially under Church control.
The court party included not only the Anglican clergy and almost all the
laity, but even an influential section of the membership of the Dutch
Reformed Church. It included such families as the De Peysters, the De
Lanceys and the Philippses in the city and its suburbs; and the Johnsons,
who dominated central New York. There were Tories even on the Committee
of Fifty-one that first authoritatively proposed the assembling of a
Continental Congress. In no other colony was the Tory element so numerous
and powerful; in none other were the patriots opposed by so active a
spirit of loyalty to the Crown, and so vast a bulk of indifference on
the part of property-owners, solicitous for nothing but the security of
their possessions. At first the Schuylers, the Livingstons, and Hamilton,
Jay and Morris found their support almost wholly among the masses, who
rose not only against England, but also against the domination of the
classes, which was more oppressive in the aristocratic city of New York
than in the democratic town of Boston, or in Philadelphia. Thus, it was
the so-called Sons of Liberty that had led in the agitation which made
the Stamp Act a dead letter, so far as this colony was concerned, and a
decade later prevented the landing of taxed tea on New York wharves. And
their demonstrative radicalism found little response in the minds of some
of the ablest civil and military leaders contributed by this colony to
the work of liberation and reconstruction. But the violence of the mob
could not blind such men to the essential justice of the American cause,
and the actual beginning of the war found a large majority of the best
people of the colony definitely committed to a patriotic course. So when
Washington and his army were driven hither from Brooklyn and hence to New
Jersey, in 1776, New York was no longer the populous place it had been
before their sympathizers fled from the terrors of hostile military rule.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER HAMILTON.]
For the next seven years this remained the chief British stronghold in
America. If the eastern and southern colonies could be split apart by
English control of the Hudson, the backbone of the colonial federation
would be broken—as the backbone of the Confederacy was broken, nearly a
century later, by Sherman’s march to the sea. So every energy was bent
toward dislodging the Continentals from this dividing-line. This was
the immediate object of Arnold’s treachery, as well as of many an overt
movement from south and north. But Washington outgeneralled the enemy
and kept the federation intact, till the capture of Yorktown made New
York no longer tenable by the foe. The city was well-nigh ruined by its
experiences during these seven terrible years; and the outlying country
to the north—Westchester County—suffered no less severely, being exposed
to raids from the opposing bodies of regulars, and to constant marauding
at the hands of free-booters, who pretended affiliation with one side or
the other, sometimes in good faith, but often merely as a pretext for
lawless depredations.
[Illustration: FRAUNCES’S TAVERN.]
The most joyously celebrated event in the annals of Manhattan was the
city’s evacuation by the British at the close of the war. On the day
that this occurred, November 25, 1783, General Washington arrived in
town and dined at Fraunces’s Tavern; and hither he repaired again, ten
days later, on the eve of his departure for Annapolis, to bid farewell
to his officers. In this same building, and in the same Long Room, the
first meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce had been held, in 1768,
fifteen years before any similar association was organized in Great
Britain. This hostelry had, indeed, been the fashionable rendezvous of
New Yorkers since 1762, when the shop at the southeast corner of Broad
and Pearl Streets was converted to still more public uses by Samuel
Fraunces (“Black Tom”), who in later years was to become the first
President’s steward. At the beginning it was known as the Queen’s Head
Tavern, its sign bearing a portrait of Queen Charlotte. Enlarged, and
otherwise altered, but not improved, Fraunces’s Tavern is still, as it
has always been, a public-house, though fashion has long since deserted
it. It would be most deplorable if the march of improvement (in whose
name, as in Liberty’s, so many offences are committed) should ever be
allowed to obliterate this most aged and interesting relic of old New
York.
The war of 1812 was by no means popular with the representative merchants
of New York, despite the fact that the enforcement of England’s
pretended right of search had acted almost as a blockade of the port
for some years before the outbreak of hostilities. It had been a common
occurrence for merchantmen in the lower bay to be stopped by a shot
across their bows, and searched for possible British subjects among their
crews. But when war came the fighting spirit was aroused, and many a
privateer was fitted out to prey upon the enemy’s merchant marine. Rich
prizes were taken, and desperate engagements were fought between the
crews of brigs and schooners from New York and British men-of-war’s men
who interfered with their privateering practices. A few years earlier
(1807), Fulton had demonstrated on the Hudson the practicability of steam
navigation; and now he built in New York, under Congressional direction,
a steam frigate, iron-clad and heavily armed. This formidable craft might
have been depended upon to raise the British blockade, had it not been
raised still more effectually by a declaration of peace. The city did
not suffer in this second war with England as it had suffered in the
first. Instead of waiting for years, as before, to recuperate, it entered
at once upon a period of unprecedented growth. The return of peace
stimulated immigration, and local prosperity was vastly augmented by the
opening in 1825 of the Erie Canal.
Until 1822, the mayor was appointed by a State council, presided over
by the Governor; thereafter, until 1834, he was chosen by the municipal
council; since then he has been elected by the people. But democratic
rule was not always found to work satisfactorily, and in 1857 the
control of local affairs was largely delegated to the legislature. This
precaution proved of comparatively little value, however, and the Tweed
ring of local office-holders found little difficulty in running things
as they wished and robbing the tax-payers of millions upon millions. The
charter of the city recently created by the amalgamation of New York,
Brooklyn, etc., professed to restore home rule, in large measure; but
so much of the supposed boon as it confers may be withdrawn at any time
by State legislation, and bills withdrawing it piecemeal are, in fact,
introduced at every session of the legislature.
When secession threatened, in 1861, the Democratic city of New York was
the least friendly of Northern communities in its attitude toward the
federal government. The common council, indeed, rapturously applauded
the mayor’s formal suggestion that the city itself secede. But the first
overt act of hostility at the South showed that, beneath this surface
sympathy with the secessionists, the great mass of earnest citizens were
ardent in adherence to the Union. Life and treasure were poured out more
than abundantly. The Seventh Regiment—the “crack” militia organization
of the city, if not of the nation—hurried off to Washington to guard the
capital from surprise; and tens of thousands of volunteers followed to
the front. No one city contributed more to the national cause. In fact
the city’s contributions were too liberal for her own good; for the
consequent dearth of able-bodied honest men at home left the community
a prey to the enemies of society, and regiment after regiment had to be
called back to restore order. The worst outbreaks were the so-called
draft riots, caused by the enforced enlistment of troops; in these
uprisings, negroes were the special object of the mob’s hostility.
The first few huts in New Amsterdam were huddled together beneath the
sheltering walls of the Fort. There was but one general direction in
which the hamlet could extend; yet it was long before the northward
movement filled with shops and houses the space between the Fort and the
line of Wall Street, and for several years thereafter the great Wall
marked the boundary of the village. The Revolution found the border
pushed forward to the edge of the Common, where the post-office stands
to-day. The chief outlet from this point lay eastward, through what is
now Park Row to the Bowery, and thence through the outlying farms to
Westchester County, Connecticut and Boston.
On the west side there was another outlet, skirting the Hudson River and
extending to the little village of Greenwich; and the occasional outbreak
of yellow fever in New York made this a popular resort. The influx of
twenty thousand refugees during one of these scares, early in the present
century, completely changed the character of this village, and although
most of the newcomers returned to the lower end of the island, Greenwich
had practically become, by 1830, an integral part of the city. The
northward spread via Greenwich Street, the Bowery and Broadway continued,
till Yorkville and Harlem on the east and Manhattanville and Bloomingdale
on the west were absorbed by the growing city. In 1874 the Harlem was
crossed, and New York ceased to be an island; in 1895 still further
accessions were made in Westchester County. But the crowning event in
the expansion of the city was the legislation by which, on January 1,
1898, Brooklyn and the outlying towns and villages on Long Island, and
all of Staten Island, were brought within the limits of New York—an act
that raised the population at a stroke from less than 1,900,000 to near
3,400,000, and incidentally brought almost half the people of the State
under the immediate rule of Tammany Hall.
A word should be said as to the Society, named in honor of Tamanend,
an Indian chief who signed one of the treaties by which William Penn
acquired the site of the city of Philadelphia. One of many societies of
the same name, organized for social and political purposes toward the
close of the eighteenth century, it reflected, to a certain extent, a
spirit which had prevailed among the younger officers of the Revolution
who had felt the force of Rousseau’s idealization of primitive man.
Its first meeting was held on “St. Tammany’s day” (May 12), 1789. In
membership it was allied with the Sons of Liberty and the Sons of 1776,
and it has always professed “intense Americanism,” so far as that phrase
is synonymous with Anglophobia. At first its ranks were recruited from
among the small merchants, retailers and mechanics of the city; and by
coming into close touch with the mass of immigrants that form so large
a proportion of the population, giving the newcomers employment in some
cases, in others charitable aid, instructing the alien voter as to his
political rights and privileges, and directing him in their exercise,
it has built up an enormous voting machine, insufficient to defeat a
united opposition, but almost invariably so fortunate in local contests
as to find its opponents divided. While nominally Democratic in national
affairs, Tammany has never scrupled to oppose the Democratic party in
the pursuit of its own immediate end—the control of local offices and
revenues. This powerful machine has now for several years been dominated
by an illiterate immigrant.
[Illustration: THE STADT HUYS.]
Comparatively recent as were the beginnings of the city, hardly a trace
of the original village remains. Not a single building has come down to
us from the Dutch period. It was to have been expected that something
would survive the flight of less than three centuries. A happy chance
might easily have preserved the stone “temple” erected within the walls
of the Fort in 1652, or the slightly older warehouse, or some one of the
many curious little stone or brick houses in which the burly burghers
of the seventeenth century smoked their long pipes by the chimney-side,
while their wives plied the spinning-wheel, their daughters spread the
board, and their children, in padded breeches, played about the sanded
floor.
The Stadt Huys, originally built as an inn, to relieve Director Kieft of
the burden of overmuch entertaining, dated back to the same year as the
Dutch Reformed Church in the fortified enclosure. The organization of the
old church is still maintained, and the functions of the city government
have been performed in successive buildings to the present day; but the
picturesque old government house—fifty feet square, three stories high
in the walls and two in the attic, with windows in the gable of its
crow-stepped roof,—that should have been cherished as a most interesting
relic of the city’s earliest period, lasted but a little way into the
present century, having then been used for over a hundred years for
commercial purposes.
[Illustration: STAINED-GLASS WINDOW IN “BOWLING GREEN OFFICES.”
SHOWING GREEN ABOUT 1760.]
Chief among the few other survivals from the early days, and antedating
all of them, is Bowling Green. This oldest bit of park land in the city
dates from the Dutch occupation. It lay immediately in front of the
Fort, and no building has ever stood upon its diminutive, oblong site.
The relatively old row of buildings (Steamship Row) which overlooks it
from the south will ere long be replaced by a Custom House worthy of
the second port of entry in the world. This will occupy the site of the
old government house, which once served the purpose for which the new
building is designed. In 1771, it was found advisable to enclose the
Green with an iron fence. Bereft of the crowns that surmounted the posts,
the fence still surrounds it, though the equestrian statue of George
III., which it was put up to protect, vanished in 1776. In the excitement
that followed the reading of the Declaration of Independence, in that
year, the crowd marched down Broadway from the Common, and tumbled the
King from his pedestal. The leaden carcass was shipped to Connecticut,
where the wife and daughter of Governor Wolcott cannily converted it into
rebel bullets. An indignity similar in degree though different in kind
was offered to America’s eloquent Parliamentary advocate, William Pitt,
whose marble effigy at Wall and William Streets was decapitated during
the Revolution by the Tories, and left standing for years as a mere
“disturber of traffic.”
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE.]
The house at No. 1 Broadway, looking eastward over the lower end of
Bowling Green, built in 1760 by Colonel Kennedy, afterward Earl of
Cassilis, and occupied in turn by the American leaders, including
Washington, and by the English, including Cornwallis, Howe and Sir Henry
Clinton, was the scene of Major André’s last interview with the British
commander before his fatal journey to West Point. And in another house
in Broadway overlooking the Green, Benedict Arnold had his quarters
after his flight and the exposure of his infamous plot. Mention of the
gallant young British officer, André, naturally suggests the name and
fate of Nathan Hale, whose heroism is commemorated by a noble statue
by MacMonnies, which faces Broadway from the lower corner of City Hall
Park, not far from the spot where the American spy was hanged from an
apple-tree. The Beekman “Mansion,” overlooking the East River near what
is now Fifty-first Street, the scene of Hale’s trial and condemnation,
survived till 1874; the Kennedy House, identified with André’s memory,
lasted eight years longer.
[Illustration: FEDERAL HALL.]
A picturesque feature of the old town was the canal that ran from the
city wall to the bay, becoming first an artery of trade, and then a
centre of fashionable life, as Broad Street, which took its place, has
since been a centre of commercial activity. It was directly opposite
Broad Street, in Wall, that the foundations of the new City Hall were
laid in 1699, the sale of the Stadt Huys helping to defray the cost of
the more pretentious structure. The arms of the English Governor, Lord
Bellomont, were blazoned on its walls; but two years later the marshal
was called upon to remove and destroy them. When New York became the
seat of the national government, the ninety-year-old City Hall, partly
reconstructed and lavishly decorated, became the meeting-place of
Congress. The most memorable day in its history was the 30th of April,
1789, when, attended by Chancellor Livingston and the committees of
Senators and Representatives, standing upon its balcony in the presence
of a great concourse, not merely of New Yorkers, but of Americans from
all the colonies, gathered together from far and near, George Washington
took the oath of office as first President of the United States. Where
the Capitol then stood now stands the Sub-Treasury, with Ward’s bronze
Washington looking gravely down from its steps upon the feverish turmoil
of Wall Street.
The oldest existing municipal building in New York is the Hall of
Records, in City Hall Park, whose contents are erelong to be housed in a
spacious, fire-proof edifice. It dates from the middle of the eighteenth
century. Its site formed a part of the Common, and it stood appropriately
convenient to the gallows, for it was originally a jail—the first
building on the island ever designed exclusively for the detention of
law-breakers. In popular parlance, as in practical use, it soon became
the Debtors’ Prison. When the British occupied the town during the
Revolution, it was turned to account as their principal military prison,
being known as The Provost, in reference to the title of the brutal
Cunningham, who was charged with the custody of American prisoners of
war—amongst others, “that d—d rebel, Ethan Allen.” The building was a
debtors’ jail again from 1787 to 1830; on the completion of alterations
projected at the latter date, it became, in 1835, the Register’s office,
and as such will probably see the close of the nineteenth century.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH.]
[Illustration: CITY HALL.]
Vastly more attractive to the eye than this treasury of real-estate
records, and not wholly lacking in historic interest, is the adjacent
City Hall. This really handsome building, in the style of the Italian
Renaissance, was begun in 1803, and completed nine years later. The
likelihood of the city’s extending beyond it seemed too slight to
warrant lavishing upon its back the white marble which adds so much
to the dignity and grace of its façade; the rear wall was accordingly
constructed of a cheaper stone. In the “Governor’s room” on the
second floor, used for official receptions, are the desk on which
Washington wrote his first message to Congress, the chair in which he
was inaugurated as President, and the chairs used by the first federal
Congress.
In the same neighborhood, just beyond the lower extremity of the
old Common, now City Hall Park, stands St. Paul’s Chapel, Trinity
parish—an edifice much older than the parish church, which for the past
half-century, like its successive parent buildings, has stood farther
down Broadway, opposing its bulk to the westward progress of Wall Street.
Fenced off by iron palings, and bordered on each side by a strip of
graveyard, the chapel turns a picturesque and perhaps scornful back upon
the “topless towers” of Broadway—little dreamt of when its foundations
were laid in 1766, or three-and-twenty years later, when President
Washington attended service there on the day of his first inauguration.
These heaven-aspiring structures were only beginning to turn the street
into a canyon when the first President’s successor in office sat in the
same pew on the same day a century later (April 30, 1889).
Private houses of historic interest abounded not many years ago, notable
among them the country-seat called Richmond Hill, near the long since
absorbed village of Greenwich—a stately dwelling, identified with many
familiar names. John Adams lived there during a part of his first term
as Vice-President, and Aaron Burr started thence on that fateful July
morning in 1804 that saw the death of Hamilton at his hand, and the end
of his own political career. Of equal note was the house on Murray Hill,
where Mrs. Murray detained the British commander at lunch while the
American troops, under Putnam, made their escape from the island in 1776.
[Illustration: GRANT’S TOMB, RIVERSIDE DRIVE.]
The so-called Jumel Mansion, built for Washington’s whilom flame,
Miss Mary Philippse, by her successful suitor, Col. Roger Morris, and
afterwards occupied by Washington as his headquarters, became in turn the
property of the nation (Morris having been a royalist), of John Jacob
Astor, and of Stephen Jumel, whose erratic widow married Aaron Burr, but
soon tired of him, turned him out of doors and dropped his name. From
its coign of vantage on Harlem Heights at 169th Street, this dignified
colonial dwelling still looks down upon the Harlem River and across to
Long Island Sound. And at the foot of East 61st Street is yet to be
seen—vine-covered, and embowered in trees and shrubs—the substantial
stone residence of Col. William Smith, who married the daughter of
President Adams, and ruined himself by speculating in east-side real
estate. But the scarcity of such relics, and their glaring incongruity
with their surroundings, emphasize the divergence between the old New
York and that which is termed the Greater.
In the hall of Cooper Institute, Abraham Lincoln made that great speech
which first fully revealed him to the people of the Eastern States;
and hither he was brought, to lie in state in the City Hall, when a
martyr’s death had disclosed his greatness still more clearly to all his
countrymen.
Here have lived, for longer or shorter periods, sundry Presidents of
the United States, from Washington to Cleveland; the city has been the
permanent or occasional home of statesmen such as Jay and Livingston,
Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris; of political agitators such
as Aaron Burr and “Commonsense” Paine, and political leaders like
DeWitt Clinton and Samuel J. Tilden; of authors such as Washington
Irving, whose burlesque local history marked him out as the father of
American light literature, Fenimore Cooper, the most popular of American
romance-writers, and Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, most individual
of American poets. Here, for longer or shorter periods, have lived
and labored Curtis, and Bayard Taylor, and Stoddard, and Stedman, and
Aldrich, and Howells, and that greatest of poets among journalists
and journalists among poets, William Cullen Bryant, editor of _The
Evening Post_ and one of the founders of the Century Club; and Horace
Greeley, founder of _The Tribune_, and most famous of American editors
since Benjamin Franklin. As a resident of Brooklyn, and editor of a
metropolitan religious weekly, the best-known preacher of the century,
Henry Ward Beecher, was virtually a citizen of New York. In the annals of
invention, the names of four New Yorkers stand out conspicuously—Fulton
and Ericsson and Edison and Morse. And of all the free-booters that ever
terrorized the sea, none has left a more awful and enduring fame than a
once respectable resident of Liberty Street, renowned in song and story
for two centuries as Captain Kidd.
The hospitality of New York and her people is proverbial. Every
distinguished visitor to America for more than a century past has been
entertained here, officially or informally. Among the city’s guests
have been William IV. of England, while yet a sailor prince; Lafayette,
Louis Kossuth, the Prince of Wales, the Grand Duke Alexis, the Emperor
of Brazil, the Princess Eulalia, the Duke of Veragua, Li Hung Chang and
the Marquis Ito. Almost all the greatest preachers, orators, players,
singers, and instrumental performers of the nineteenth century have added
to their fame or wealth by facing New York audiences; and among the great
writers who have visited us have been Dickens, Thackeray, and Kipling.
While New York is easily first among the cities of the New World in
commercial importance, it is not on material bases only that her
supremacy rests. No community throughout the world responds more
generously to every appeal for sympathy or help, whether the call be
local, national or foreign. Her interest is keen in educational work of
every kind. Columbia University—one of the oldest of local institutions,
and more than local in its aims and fame and influence—has of late,
through the liberality of her sons and other citizens, been housed in a
manner commensurate with her requirements and aspirations; and so also
has the less venerable but justly honored New York University. And the
past few years have seen Barnard College for women and the Teachers
College (both allied with Columbia) emerge from the chrysalis state into
forms of beauty and power. The public-school system, moreover,—thanks
to a recent brief respite from Tammany control,—is in better condition
to-day than at any previous period of Tammany administration.
Of American literary activity, despite Boston’s ancient and deserved
prestige, it cannot be denied that New York is to-day the centre, as
it is the centre of the publishing trade, in books and periodicals.
Boston, with her splendid Public Library, has set an example which
the metropolis has been slow to follow; but the consolidation of the
Astor, Lenox and Tilden collections, and their prospective housing in a
magnificent and admirably situated building, has gone far to remove the
reproach incurred during long years of public indifference to popular
needs. The venerable Society Library, the modern and many-branched Free
Circulating Library and kindred institutions have helped to create and
in part to meet the demand which the Public Library in its new home may
reasonably be expected to satisfy. Equally important in their way are
those half-social, half-educational essays toward the solution of some
of the problems of the slums—the University Settlement of men and the
College Settlement of women. As a further indication that New York is not
wholly given over to the worship of Mammon, it may be mentioned that the
Greek Club, with its fortnightly meetings for the reading and discussion
of the classics, has been for more than three decades the only circle of
its kind in existence.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON ARCH.]
In art, the invaluable treasures of the Metropolitan Museum foster
the love of what is enduringly beautiful in sculpture, painting,
architecture, etc.; while the schools of this museum and of the National
Academy of Design and the Society of American Artists, to say nothing of
the more utilitarian classes of Cooper Institute and the School of Artist
Artisans, afford instruction in art of such a sort as to render foreign
study no longer indispensable, albeit no less attractive than of old.
Of music, vocal and instrumental, such feasts are spread before the local
amateur as can be matched for quality and abundance in no other city at
home or abroad, and while this is not true of the drama also, as the
Comédie Française has never come hither in a body, it is yet a fact that
nearly all that is best is seen, sooner or later, on the New York stage.
By what rapid strides the city is moving forward in some directions,
while halting lamentably in others, needs not to be pointed out. There
is expert testimony to the effect that in public morality it has at
least held its own during the past half-century; we trust it may some
day work out its salvation in things political, and cease to be the mild
milch cow of thirsty demagogues. It can never vie in picturesqueness and
historic interest with its European peers in population and importance,
nor atone by its singularly fortunate situation for its poverty in
little parks and its richness in rough-paved, right-angled and treeless
streets and avenues; yet it may some day rival even Paris in the absolute
beauty of its public and private buildings and historic monuments. A
brave beginning has been made, in the Washington Arch, the Madison
Square Garden, the Columbia and the New York University buildings, the
Washington, Hale and Farragut statues and certain churches, club-houses
and private dwellings. And in the Cathedral of St. John, the Public
Library, the Academy of Design and the Botanical and Zoölogical gardens,
a further stride will be made erelong in the only directions in which
æsthetic leadership seems possible.
[Illustration]
BROOKLYN
THE TOWN ON FREEDOM’S BATTLE-FIELD
BY HARRINGTON PUTNAM
The earliest Dutch settlements within the present borough limits are not
so old as the first hamlets on Manhattan. More than a score of years
after the houses and forts of New Amsterdam looked out across the East
River, the forest-crested heights of the west end of Long Island remained
in undisturbed Indian occupation.
The Dutch settlers were deterred, rather than attracted, by this
magnificent stretch of green woodlands extending along the high shore.
The Holland people were not accustomed to timber clearing and therefore
sought access to the island by the smoother meadow-lands of Gowanus,
and afterwards to the north where the sloping grasslands about the
Waalboght invited the settler to essay gardening without too much
preparation with the axe. The early Long Island farmers advanced on the
territory of Brooklyn by flank attacks, seeking to turn the wings of the
extended forest, rather than boldly to engage in the struggle with the
densely wooded heights in front. These pioneers were thrifty, energetic
Hollanders and Huguenots whose farms soon required regular communication
with Manhattan. In 1642 a public ferry was established between the
present foot of Fulton Street and a landing in Peck’s Slip. The houses
clustered about this Long Island landing constituted a little settlement
called The Ferry.
[Illustration: VIEW IN BROOKLYN IN THE OLDEN TIMES.]
As the Indians were dispossessed from their maize-fields, the colonists
found sites for a small village a mile or so inland. The modern visitor
who comes up Fulton Street should stop about the corner of Hoyt and
Smith Streets to locate this settlement and picture a primitive hamlet
of small one-story frame cottages, sometimes surrounded by palisades
for protection against attacks. The open lands were of small extent,
with forest to the east and west, and streams running south into a wide
morass, where is now Gowanus Canal. Undoubtedly the undrained land of
this settlement, receiving copious moisture from the surrounding forests,
contained many a marsh and fen like the homelands of Holland. So the
settlers called it the brookland, or Breuckelen, after an ancient village
of that name on the river Vecht in the Province of Utrecht. The records
of old Breuckelen are traced by local antiquarians of Utrecht to the time
of Tacitus. In its variant forms, Bracola, Broccke, Brocckede, Broicklede
and Brocklandia, it describes a moist meadow-land. Or, as a Dutch writer
declares, the town on the Vecht was called Breuckelen from the marshes
(_a paludibus_). Its beautiful gardens and quaint castles, as the
emigrants had beheld them when starting out from home, perhaps remained
in the imagination of the Long Island settlers as an ideal of what their
western home should some day become.
Just as Utrecht and Amersfoort are near-by towns to Breuckelen in
the Lowlands, so New Utrecht towards the south—near the present Fort
Hamilton—and Amersfoort (Flatlands) attested the determination of these
Netherlanders to preserve the associations of their origin between the
Rhine and the Zuyder Zee.
[Illustration: DENYSE’S FERRY.
THE FIRST PLACE AT WHICH THE BRITISH AND HESSIANS LANDED ON LONG ISLAND,
AUGUST 22, 1776. NOW FORT HAMILTON.]
The life of these hard-working settlers was not all hardship. Their
low houses with projecting roofs were strong and comfortable; the wide
spacious fireplaces gave warmth to a generous hospitality that laid on
the board wild turkeys and Gowanus oysters and other good eatables,
followed after the repast by the long clay pipes, which, when over, left
the weary toiler to be ushered to his night’s rest in a partitioned-off
bunk or _betste_. But these material comforts were not all the results
realized by the efforts of the first pioneers. These Dutch settlers were
zealous for religion, liberty, and good schools; and from the first were
not deficient in a commendable zeal for the public welfare.
Under the form of Colonial government the burghers were invited to
submit all difficulties to the Governor and council, who were fond of
the exercise of a strong, minute, and careful paternalism. The country
folk were not expected to intrude on the authorities their own ideas of
liberty, but merely to obey loyally what good, old, obstinate, arbitrary
Governor Stuyvesant should command. Yet even when he had spoken with the
official concurrence of his council, the eager spirits in Breuckelen
would often cavil, and boldly presume to come over to Manhattan to stir
up criticism and public remonstrance. So they were honored with a special
order. The folk of Breuckelen, Amersfoort and Midwout (Flatbush) in 1653
were directed to forbid their residents from attending political meetings
in New Amsterdam.
At this time the civic virtues were enforced in Breuckelen, and the good
of the village put before the preference of a private citizen to retire
from public office. The Governor would not allow any one to decline to
serve in an official capacity. The schepen-elect of Breuckelen proposed
not to continue in office for another term. He even said he would sooner
go back to Holland than remain burdened by the duties of schepen. The
Governor quickly took him at his word. The Sheriff was formally required
to notify him of this order of the Governor which stated with remarkable
clearness the obligation of good townsmen to the public and the penalty
for its neglect:
“If you will not accept to serve as schepen for the welfare of
the Village of Breuckelen, with others, your fellow residents,
then you must prepare yourself to sail in the ship _King
Solomon_ for Holland, agreeably to your utterance.”
No further refusals to hold office appear to have embarrassed the council.
The colonists of Breuckelen were specially solicitous for a meeting-house
and domine. They insisted that they should have good measure in
discourses and that if the services should be abbreviated by the
preacher, then on their side no tithes should be forthcoming. The
first meeting-house was begun in 1654 at Midwout (Flatbush). Soon they
worshipped in the partly roofed building. After much difficulty and
repeated applications to the Council it had been arranged that the Rev.
Mr. Polhemus should have his morning discourse at Flatbush, with his
evening service alternately at Midwout and in Breuckelen.
Governor Stuyvesant may have fancied that he had composed the difficulty.
Next winter, however, the Governor was presented with a further
remonstrance against the cutting-short of these alternating evening
devotions. They thus complained of this brief and scanty service:
“Every fortnight on Sundays he comes here, only in the
afternoon for a quarter of an hour, when he only gives us a
prayer in lieu of sermon, by which we can receive very little
instruction; while often, while one supposes the prayer or
sermon (whichever name might be preferred for it) is beginning,
then it is actually at an end, by which he contributes very
little to the edification of his congregation.”
To modern ears, this seems a strange grievance for legislation.
Governor Stuyvesant, however, admonished the Breuckelen folk to pay their
full tithes. Doubtless he privately reminded Mr. Polhemus of his duties
and obligations to give his people full service.
In three years they obtained a domine of their own. The Rev. Henricus
Selyns, a learned and devout young clergyman of a prominent Amsterdam
family came to Breuckelen in 1660. At first his parishioners worshipped
in a barn, but a meeting-house was soon erected. His spiritual labors
and influence were successful, and the four years of Mr. Selyns’s
ministrations were affectionately remembered. Compelled to return to
Holland by the last illness of his father, he came to America and settled
in New York eighteen years later. His warm admiration for Cotton Mather
is attested by a graceful Latin poem appended to the later editions of
the _Magnalia_.
Breuckelen was equally fortunate in a schoolmaster—Carel de Beauvois—a
cultured French Protestant from Leyden, who was appointed in Breuckelen
in 1661. Besides his duties, in the church, of precentor and Scripture
reader, it was stipulated that:
“He shall properly, diligently, and industriously attend to the
school, instill in the minds of the young the fear of the Lord,
and set them a good example; to open the school with prayer
and close with a Psalm, also to exercise the scholars in the
questions in the _groat regulen_ of the Rev. pious and learned
father Do. Johannes Megapolensis, Minister of the gospel in N.
Amsterdam.”
Here was a hamlet of but thirty-one families who were not satisfied until
they could listen to the ablest preaching of the day, and were also
favored with superior educational facilities.
Meanwhile the Dutch order was changing. The neighboring village of
Gravesend was being settled by the English. From Connecticut came
Quakers, who sowed the seeds of non-conformity and inculcated a new and
strange doctrine, that taxes should not be levied to maintain the clergy,
a principle especially attractive to those whose tithes were paid with a
grudging hand.
[Illustration: BUSHWICK TOWN-HOUSE AND CHURCH, 1800.]
At the end of the Dutch régime there were four or five little scattered
hamlets within the present borough. The Wallabout had the larger French
and Huguenot population. Eastward the English settlers were coming into
farming competition with their Dutch neighbors.
There was no great alarm or disappointment manifested on Long Island when
on a morning in August, 1664, a British fleet was found to have assembled
in the Narrows. Colonial militia under the British flag from New England
came through the Sound and encamped on the Breuckelen shore. On September
8, 1664, New Amsterdam yielded, and Governor Nicolls raised the flag
of Great Britain on the fort. Then New Amsterdam became New York; Long
Island and Staten Island, and probably part of Westchester County, were
made an English “shire,” and Breuckelen, after some changes of spelling,
was known as “Brooklyn in the West Riding of Yorkshire.”
This settlement of Dutch and Huguenots, maintained under the Colonial
government of New Amsterdam, in the score of years before the British
conquest had acquired a distinctive character. Contrary to a prevalent
opinion, these first Dutch settlements, in a sound and vigorous sense,
were essentially democratic. In the absence of class privileges—the
spirit to refer all questions to the supreme consideration of the general
welfare; to subordinate individual claims to the rights and advantage of
the public—Breuckelen and Vliessingen (Flushing) compared favorably in
civic life with contemporary villages in New England. As Holland had been
dyked against the sea by close, unremitting, and intimate co-operation—a
spirit further developed in the protracted struggle for independence—so
the smaller Dutch colonies in New York, while they kept their
agricultural character, retained a collective rather than an individual
ideal, which tended to exclude none from equal social opportunities. They
never had to struggle with the incubus of a modified feudalism, which,
though inevitably breaking up, was leaving its impress of regard for rank
and class privilege in the American colonies of British origin.
Colonial life under British rule was marked by more rigid laws as the
communities grew. The careful protection of common-lands was strictly
attended to, especially the town forests of Brooklyn against the
encroachment of those who would surreptitiously cut away the timber.
Trustees of the common woodlands were appointed; but in the year 1702
these lands were equitably divided and all allotted to each householder
in Brooklyn to insure their better protection.
Gradually the English language was spoken in the churches and upon
ceremonious occasions. A waggish tale of Domine Schoonmaker of Flatbush
relates his difficulties in a wedding service. Fluent and eloquent in
his mother tongue, he essayed the ceremony in English, with the manner,
gestures, and all the courteous dignity of the old school. His English
failed him at the very close of the service. Conscious of the literalness
of his extemporized translation of the formula, he finished with a bow,
adding with solemnity and modulated emphasis, “I pronounce you two to be
_one beef_.”
English customs gradually came in vogue. More aristocratic usages
superseded the democracy of the Dutch settlers. Slavery existed in
Brooklyn as in New York. Brick and stone buildings arose along Fulton
Street. Twice, in 1745 and 1752, the Colonial legislature of the Province
met in Brooklyn, on account of the prevalence of smallpox in New York.
The rural character of the town is well illustrated by an event in 1759.
A large bear then passed along the farms in South Brooklyn, and being
pursued took to the water near Red Hook, where he was shot from a boat.
The ethics of 1774 approved the aid of lotteries to build an orthodox
church in Brooklyn, which the public were assured should be of no
doubtful laxity, but a church conformable to the discipline of the Church
of England, and under the patronage of Trinity Church, New York.
In the matter of amusements in 1774, New Yorkers came to Brooklyn
for many of their sports. Here horse-races were run. In that year an
ambitious innkeeper on “Tower Hill”—a site along the present Columbia
Heights between Middagh and Cranberry Streets—announced that there would
be a _bull baited_ there every Thursday afternoon.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, Brooklyn numbered between three and
four thousand persons grouped in four neighborhoods. There were then
three ferries to New York. At the old (Fulton) ferry was a famous tavern
which figured often in the times of British occupation. The two principal
villages were then called Brooklyn-church and Brooklyn-ferry.
At the first movements of the Patriot party in New England the people of
Kings County were little stirred. Suffolk County, at the eastern end of
Long Island, more readily responded to the first news from Massachusetts.
After the battle of Lexington, Brooklynites assembled and passed
resolutions and elected delegates to the Provincial Congress.
The modern visitor to the Borough of Brooklyn has difficulty to realize
that what is now densely built up, and covered by grading and asphalt,
marks the battle-ground of one of the greatest engagements of the
Revolution. The houses of Charlestown cover the battle-ground of Bunker
Hill, but that was a struggle over a single redoubt, while Brooklyn is
built upon a line of battle nearly three miles in length. In the Civil
War, Northern people recall the great disaster of the first battle of
Bull Run, fought with modern armies and improved weapons. Yet in that
all-day conflict, with the disastrous rout and pursuit, the Union loss
in killed, wounded and prisoners probably was not as great numerically
as the loss suffered by the American forces in the half-day of fierce
fighting in Brooklyn. The Federal forces at Bull Run suffered in killed,
wounded, and missing 2896, while the patriot losses in this, the first
pitched battle of the Revolution, were estimated at 3300 by the British,
of whom 1097 were prisoners (three being generals); and late American
historians are inclined to accept this estimate as approximately correct.
In the summer of 1776, a formidable fleet assembled in the lower Bay
of New York. These vessels bore from Nova Scotia the armies that had
evacuated Boston, and another fleet of nine war vessels and thirty-five
transports brought in the forces under Clinton that had been repulsed in
the attack on Fort Moultrie at Charleston. At last, on the 12th of August
arrived the Hessian forces in eighty-two transport-ships guarded by six
war vessels. On board were 7800 Hessians and 1000 English guards.
The observer at the Narrows must have daily beheld a naval pageant such
as can no more be seen in modern warfare. From the first distant glimpse
of the line of sails standing in for Sandy Hook, until they finally
manœuvred to their crowded anchorage by Staten Island, the effect was
most picturesque. It was not a fleet of dark, sullen sea-dogs, with only
an inconspicuous hull built to carry a destructive armament. The coloring
of these vessels against the green background of Staten Island in the
olden days of oak and hemp would have delighted a painter. The upper
works outside were sometimes dark blue or canary yellow, surmounted by
waving lines of gilt. Below were black streaks running fore and aft near
the water-line; as the ships slowly lifted in a seaway, they disclosed
a white under-surface that must have made an admirable target for the
opposing gunner. The grand air of the frigates was further enhanced
by elaborate ornamentation with emblematic devices about the carved
figure-head, and heavy gilded scrollwork above the stern-lights, and high
stern-gallery. From the bluffs along the Narrows, the view down upon the
decks would show that all inboard surfaces, even the gun-carriages and
the inner side of portholes, were painted blood-red—so as not to have the
carnage of battle too much _en évidence_.
At one time over four hundred transports, guarded by thirty-seven
men-of-war, had gathered. Lord Howe on the land, and his brother, Admiral
Howe, on the sea were in joint command.
[Illustration: SECTION OF MAP OF BROOKLYN, 1776.]
The patriot forces had carefully entrenched a line of defensive works,
laid out by General Nathaniel Greene. The good judgment with which these
forts were placed was attested by the deliberate adoption of almost the
same line of redoubts and forts in the subsequent defences of Brooklyn by
the engineers in the campaign of 1814, when Brooklyn was again prepared
to resist British attack.
The fortifications of Brooklyn in 1776 extended in an irregular line
from Fort Defiance at Red Hook opposite Governor’s Island across to Fort
Box on Bergen’s Hill near the corner of Court Street and First Place. At
the junction of Clinton and Atlantic Streets, or a little easterly, was
a steep conical hill called the Ponkiesburgh, and on top, surmounting
a line of spiral trenches, a redoubt, called Corkscrew Fort. Between
Atlantic, Pacific, Nevins, and Bond Streets was a redoubt mounting five
guns called Fort Greene. Thence the line ran zigzag across the present
Fulton Street, to the west of the junction of Flatbush and Fulton
Avenues, along the hill slope to Fort Putnam, on the eminence now called
Fort Greene Park, a commanding height where were mounted five guns. The
number of guns mounted upon the works from Fort Putnam to Fort Defiance
was thirty-five—mainly eighteen-pounders—an armament in part captured
from Ticonderoga.
[Illustration: BROWER’S MILL, GOWANUS.
THE YELLOW MILL IS SEEN IN THE DISTANCE.]
From this fort the line extended northwesterly to a spring at the verge
of the Wallabout, near the corner of Flushing and Portland Avenues. This
interior line of defence was nearly two miles long. Between these forts
were lines of trenches further defended by trees and sharpened stakes,
forming an abatis, in the construction of which the Continental woodsmen
were always proficient. Within this line of defence was Fort Stirling,
which was back near Columbia Heights.
It is difficult after a century of grading and building to conceive
that an extensive morass then covered nearly all the lands south of the
present Hamilton Avenue, save about the small island height at Red Hook.
Gowanus, with several large ponds raised by Brower’s Mill-dam, flooded
and made impassable nearly all the area extending from Fourth Avenue
to Smith Street. This was crossed by a narrow causeway along Freeke’s
Mill-pond. On the higher lands beyond, extending from Greenwood along
Prospect Park towards East New York, were dense woodlands, that were only
practicable for an advancing army by certain passes or narrow wood-roads.
The principal route from the Narrows to Brooklyn was along the site of
Third Avenue by a good road then known as the Shore Road.
The battle of August 27, 1776, was fought almost entirely outside this
line of fortifications. Knowing that the British forces had been moving
towards Brooklyn from the Narrows, General Putnam had posted troops in
detachments in order to check the hostile columns as they should come
through the wood-roads and passes. It was natural to expect the principal
British advance by the Shore Road, as there they would be at all times
within supporting distance of the fleet.
On August 26th the Hessians under de Heister had occupied Flatbush, and
Lord Cornwallis had reached nearly to Flatlands.
In the forenoon of the 27th, Stirling commanded the patriot right,
extending from the shore near the foot of Twenty-third Street up
Greenwood Heights about to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street.
This position was to repel the expected attack by the route of the Shore
Road. Sullivan commanded the centre, which was an irregular congeries of
militia posted along the summits of hills in Prospect Park and across
the Flatbush Road. Colonel Miles with the 1st Pennsylvania regiment
occupied the hills near the Clove Road to the south of Bedford, with some
Connecticut levies continuing the line still further eastward. Instead
of a co-ordinated supporting line of battle, these dispositions were
intended as little more than a body of skirmishers, too widely strung-out
to be opposed to an actual attack.
The beginning of a movement of British troops at daylight on the Shore
Road, and the evident efforts of the fleet to sail up the Bay, which
the light wind and ebb tide prevented, indicated that the hardest
fighting would be by the right under Stirling. The entire patriot force
inside and without the entrenchments was 5500. The British force was
over 16,000 men. While the troops were facing each other along this
position, a strong flanking column under Sir Henry Clinton, with Lord
Howe the commander-in-chief, had stealthily marched from Flatbush to East
New York, during the night, and had followed a sunken road through the
present Cemetery of the Evergreens, called the Jamaica Pass. This was
about five miles to the east of Sullivan’s position. Before daylight,
at about a mile from the Pass, the column halted and sent forward a
force which captured the American patrol and officers, and soon after a
detachment secured the Pass. The light infantry advanced at the first
appearance of day, and occupied the heights of Bushwick, followed by the
guards with the field-pieces under Lord Percy, and the 49th regiment with
four guns and the baggage brought up the rear.
After breakfasting, the flanking column marched along the turnpike to
Bedford, where they arrived at half-past eight o’clock; thence they
advanced along the rear of Miles’s troops, who were unconscious that they
were being surrounded.
Fearfully outnumbered as they were, the Americans were now attacked in
front by the Hessians advancing from Flatbush under General de Heister,
and in the rear by this flanking column. The result was disastrous.
Sullivan’s command was cut to pieces and himself captured. Terrible
slaughter occurred in the woods and the slopes towards Fourth Avenue. The
only escape not closed by the British was across the mill-dam and marshes
of Gowanus.
Meanwhile Cornwallis was detached to attack Stirling’s line, which
had still held its position on the western side of Prospect Heights.
Desperate indeed was the plight of this devoted remnant of the army,
outnumbered on all sides. General Grant, the British commander in front,
had pressed forward (after having repeatedly been driven back) and
finally surrounded and captured Atlee’s riflemen. Stirling gallantly
determined to attack Cornwallis, and drive him back and so get an
opportunity to cross by Brower’s Mill-dam to the defences of Fort Box.
Here was the heroism of the day. Taking command of Smallwood’s gallant
Maryland regiment and forming in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue and Tenth
Street, Stirling led these brave young Marylanders three times in a
charge on Cornwallis’s lines. Closing their ranks as they were cut down
by grape and canister, the Maryland onset drove the British back behind
the stone Cortelyou house. Once they forced the gunners from their guns,
but at last, overwhelmed by numbers, the survivors fell back, leaving
256 killed out of 400. It was the sight of this brilliant charge and the
spirited but frightfully unequal contest that caused Washington to wring
his hands in anguish and say: “Good God! what brave fellows I must lose
this day!”
While these Marylanders gallantly sacrificed their lives to hold
Cornwallis in check, a large portion of Stirling’s command crossed the
Gowanus Creek and brought the tattered colors of Smallwood’s regiment
and over twenty prisoners within the lines. The battle was over at noon.
The bodies of the gallant Maryland heroes—the flower of the army—were
afterward buried on a small knoll or island. Third Avenue runs across it,
between Seventh and Eighth Streets, but its site is far below the present
street level.
In estimating the service of these Marylanders, it is to be recalled
that they were young, never before under fire, and were led without
their own colonel, who was detached the day before for a court-martial
in New York. When the charges were made, the troops had already been
several hours fighting, and had to re-form under fire, after it was
plain that the battle was lost. The attacks were up an ascent, against
superior numbers, strong artillery, and an overwhelming body of seasoned
veterans. Even the assault and death of Montgomery at Quebec were not
more gallant. Unlike that hopeless attack, the Marylanders accomplished
their purpose by their sacrifice, and stopped the advance of Cornwallis.
The brilliancy, dash, and steady persistence of this charge have not been
properly recognized.
After the repulse of the patriot army, the battle ceased. The prudence
of Lord Howe would not permit the English army to move upon the
entrenchments. Bunker Hill with its terrible memories was too recent.
The next day, the 28th, Washington reinforced the Brooklyn troops,
increasing their number to 9000. Among them were Colonel Glover’s
battalion of fishermen and sailors from Salem and Marblehead. On that
day heavy rain prevented an attack. In the afternoon the British began
regular siege approaches towards Fort Putnam by a trench starting from
the present Clinton Avenue near the corner of De Kalb Avenue.
A council of war decided on evacuation. Even in this extremity Washington
caused an elaborate statement of reasons to be drawn up as the grounds
of his action. That night, aided by the dense fog, the entire body
were rowed over by Colonel Glover’s Marblehead boatmen. The skill and
admirable mastery of detail in this retreat were Washington’s. For many
hours he sat on his horse at the ferry, patiently superintending the
embarkation. At least on one occasion he had to check a rush of impetuous
and alarmed men from crowding into the boats. Finally with the last
crew he embarked. The retreat of the entire force from Long Island was
safely effected. At four o’clock only empty trenches were revealed to the
invaders.
In Prospect Park is a monument to the heroism of this gallant Maryland
regiment. At different streets are memorial tablets to mark the lines of
defence. Perhaps some day a statue of Washington, near the old ferry,
will mark the spot where his prudence and skill saved the American Army.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO MARYLAND’S “400.”]
During the British occupation the noble forests of Brooklyn were
destroyed. One may search in vain for any oaks or elms about the City
that are really ancient.
The mention of the Wallabout and the present site of the Navy Yard recall
some of the most painful memories of our history—the horrors of the
prison-ships. Few indeed are the Revolutionary families that have not
had deep sorrows connected with the ships _Whitby_, _Good Hope_, _Old
Jersey_, _John_, _Falmouth_, and other hulks, where the martyrs ended
their severe captivity. The bodies of the victims—having been removed
from time to time—are now, it is hoped, in their final resting-place on
the westerly front of Fort Greene Park opposite the Plaza. As yet no
monument, not even an inscription, marks the spot where were reverently
laid the bones of 11,500 martyrs to American liberty.
[Illustration: NAVY YARD. IN FOREGROUND 5.5-INCH B.-L. GUN, WITH MOUNT
AND SHIELD, TAKEN FROM SPANISH CRUISER “VIZCAYA” AFTER DESTRUCTION OF
SPANISH FLEET JULY 3, 1898, ALSO SUBMARINE MINE FROM GUANTANAMO.]
The Navy Yard, starting in 1824, has become the foremost in the
country. Here are gathered trophies of the Nation’s battles on many
seas. In a little enclosure near the Commandant’s office, are grouped
captured ordnance, with a howitzer that did service under Hull on the
_Constitution_. Trophies from the Spanish war have lately been added to
this collection. Here are the guns taken from the burnt and shattered
_Almirante Oquendo_ and _Vizcaya_, and by them is mounted a submarine
contact mine from the defences of Guantanamo, which the _Texas_ broke
adrift without exploding the deadly contents. Not far away was built
the ill-fated battleship _Maine_. In these docks were outfitted many
of the fleet that fought the battle of Santiago. In the Spanish war,
the Brooklyn Navy Yard was where most of the yachts and merchant
steamers, purchased in emergency, were converted into cruisers. Under
Naval Constructor Bowles, the unparalleled record was made in 1898 of
thirty-four vessels thus converted and fitted out for service in the
auxiliary navy in ninety-three days!
At the southern shore of the enlarged Brooklyn are the forts and
batteries defending this part of Long Island. Under the modern defences
of Fort Hamilton, still is preserved Fort Lafayette, an island structure
of masonry, valueless for war, but ever to be kept for its associations.
Built in 1812 to defend the Narrows, its name was changed at the time of
Lafayette’s return in 1824. In 1861, it was used to imprison those from
Maryland and the border States, whose loyalty the Federal Administration
distrusted. When the Judges of Brooklyn issued writs of _habeas corpus_
to bring up these political suspects, and inquire into the justice of
their captivity, the remedy was to hurry the prisoners to Fort Warren in
Boston Harbor, beyond the reach of the process of New York courts.
[Illustration: FORT LAFAYETTE, N. Y. NARROWS.]
Here also, in 1862, a division commander of McClellan’s army was held
prisoner. General Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point, was blamed
for the disaster at Ball’s Bluff. By secret orders of Secretary Stanton,
he was arrested at midnight, hurried to New York, and kept forty-nine
days in solitary confinement in Fort Lafayette, without trial, charges,
or answer to his appeals for a hearing! Congress finally vindicated him
and set him free, after one hundred and eighty-nine days’ imprisonment.
[Illustration: BROOKLYN INSTITUTE MUSEUM.]
The interior of the Fort was burned out in the winter of 1869. Its
armament has never been replaced. The dark red circular walls stand at
the opposite end of the Bay from the Statue of Liberty, and furnish an
impressive contrast, in their memories of an American Bastille.
[Illustration: HENRY WARD BEECHER.]
On the completion of the new Shore Road, following the contour of the
Narrows, an admirable approach upon the bluff overlooking the Bay will
lead the visitor to this Golden Gate of the commerce of New York.
The traditions of home rule, local self-government, and civic conscience
have come down from the early Brooklyn agitations against the government
of Peter Stuyvesant. Brooklynites before consolidation with the greater
city had a liberal home-rule charter that was first administered under
Mayor Seth Low. Through his government, the “Brooklyn plan” became the
ideal of other municipalities.
The ancient zeal for education and schools has not declined. Besides
the college, academy, and public schools, two Brooklyn institutions
distinctively illustrate the modern trend of popular municipal education.
The Pratt Institute, with its wide and helpful teaching in the industrial
arts, is perhaps the most famous of all Brooklyn benevolences. But
the enlarged and expanding Brooklyn Institute, with its multiform
departments, its generous field of lectureships, and its museum, is
destined to become the model for organizations planned to diffuse popular
culture in cities.
The regard of Brooklyn for the Church and the influence of the clergy on
the life of Brooklyn are proverbial. To recall the names of Brooklyn’s
clergy is to mention many leaders of the American pulpit. Not a little
of their inspiration has come from the influence and history of Brooklyn
itself. In its growth from village to city, and then to borough, it has
developed along the lines of equality of social opportunity, and thus
unconsciously has been reaping the fruits of the lives and examples of
its Dutch founders.
[Illustration: SEAL OF BROOKLYN.]
[Illustration]
PRINCETON
PLANTING AND TILLING
BY WILLIAM M. SLOANE
Princeton is by no means one of the oldest settlements in the State of
New Jersey, and yet it has a history of more than two centuries, the
first homestead having been established there in 1682. Although situated
midway, or nearly so, between two of the largest Colonial towns, and
nearly equidistant from the head of navigation on two important streams,
the Raritan and the Delaware, it remained a quiet and unimportant
hamlet for over half a century. Most of the travel between New York and
Philadelphia went by way of Perth Amboy and Camden; there was little to
interrupt the humble labors of the settlers in clearing the forest and
tilling the soil.
Yet the roll-call of Princeton’s pioneers reveals names which are now
synonymous with patriotism and famous wherever American history is
studied: Stockton, Paterson, Boudinot, Randolph, and others almost as
renowned. Their instinctive Americanism is first recorded in a successful
protest to the provincial authorities against the quartering of British
troops in their humble homes during the French and Indian War.
October 22, 1746, the College of New Jersey was chartered by Governor
Hamilton, an act notable in American history because the first of its
kind performed without authorization from England or the consent even of
the provincial legislature. The institution was opened under President
Dickinson in May, 1747, at Elizabethtown. After his death, which
occurred in October of the same year, the few students were transferred
to Newark and put under the care of the Rev. Aaron Burr, one of the
twelve trustees. On the fourteenth of the following September, Jonathan
Belcher, just appointed governor, granted a new charter fuller and more
formal than the first. His interest in the college was from the outset
very great, and his opinion, already formed, that Princeton was the
most desirable spot for its permanent site ultimately prevailed, the
citizens of the hamlet proving more active and liberal than those of
New Brunswick, already a good-sized town, to which likewise terms were
proposed “for fixing the college in that place.”
[Illustration: “THE LINE OF HISTORIC CATALPAS.”]
Thereafter the little settlement grew rapidly and soon became a
considerable village. In 1756 the new buildings were virtually completed
and the college was transferred to its future home. Notable men from
throughout the State and from the cities of New York and Philadelphia
became interested in the new seat of learning. More noteworthy still
were those who taught and those who studied in it. Within a decade after
the completion of Nassau Hall the names of Burr, Edwards, Witherspoon,
of Livingston, Rush and Ellsworth, of James Manning, Luther Martin
and Nathaniel Niles became Princeton names. The stream of influential
patronage once started continued to flow until long after the Revolution.
It included men from New England on the one hand, and from the South on
the other, with, of course, a powerful element from the Middle States.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THE FRONT CAMPUS.]
Princeton College is the child of Yale. But the parting was not
entirely amicable. Theological controversy grew very fierce, even for
the Connecticut Valley, in the days of Whitefield’s preaching. The
conservatives or Old Lights held the reins and were not kindly disposed
toward the innovators or New Lights. The trouble culminated in the
expulsion from Yale of David Brainerd because, defying the Faculty’s
express command, he attended New Light meetings and would not profess
penitence for his fault. This occurred in 1739; thereafter an even
stronger feeling of discontent smouldered among the liberal Calvinists
until finally the way was clear for founding a new training-school for
the ministry and the learned professions on broad and generous lines.
Brainerd became a most successful and famous missionary. He was betrothed
to the daughter of Jonathan Edwards and died at her father’s house,
a victim of his own laborious and devoted life. This was less than a
year after the College of New Jersey had been founded by a body of
liberal-minded men of all orthodox denominations, under the influence
of a few leaders who sympathized with both Brainerd and the Edwards
theology. The first charter was granted by an Episcopalian governor to
four Presbyterian clergymen, and one of the original trustees was a
Quaker. Governor Belcher, who enlarged the charter and made the College
“his adopted daughter,” was a man of the most catholic feeling. Fourteen
of the trustees under the permanent constitution were Presbyterian
clergymen, an arrangement corresponding to the similar one whereby the
majority of the governing body of Yale was composed of Congregational
ministers. This wise guardianship has kept the two universities true to
their traditions, and the flourishing condition of both is the strongest
proof anywhere afforded that temporal affairs do not necessarily suffer
when committed to the charge of spiritual advisers. Considerable sums
of money were raised in England by the personal solicitation of Tennent
and Davies, two clergymen sent out for the purpose by the Trustees. The
ten laymen of the first Princeton board represented various orthodox
denominations, including Episcopalians and Quakers. There is not a
syllable in the charter concerning creeds, confessions, or religious
tests. It is very significant of the vast improvement in public morality
that a college founded under such auspices a hundred and fifty years ago
was partly endowed and supported by lotteries authorized and drawn both
in Connecticut and New Jersey.
From the day when the College was installed in its grand new home,
history-making went on apace in Princeton. Nassau Hall was a majestic
building for those days; distinguished foreign visitors to America all
noted its dimensions and architecture in their written accounts of
travel. Indeed, even now, with the tasteless alterations of chimneys,
roofs and towers made necessary by fire and carried through with ruthless
economy, it may be considered one of the great monumental college
buildings in America. It is, however, far more than this; we assert
without fear of contradiction that it has no peer as the most historic
university pile in the world. This contention rests on the fact that
it saw the discomfiture of the British at the ebb-tide of the American
rebellion, harbored the Government of the United States in its critical
moments and cradled the Constitution-makers of the greatest existing
republic. No other university hall has been by turns fortress and
barrack, legislative chamber and political nursery in the birththroes of
any land comparable to our land.
The building was designed to be complete in itself; it contained lodgings
for a hundred and forty-seven students, with a refectory, library and
chapel. The class which entered under Dickinson, the first president,
had six members, of whom five became clergymen. His untimely death a
year after his election made his administration the shortest but one in
the College history. During the ten years of Burr’s tenure of office
(1747-1757) the total number of students was a hundred and fourteen;
half of them entered the ministry. The short presidency of Jonathan
Edwards lasted but a few months. It gave the glory of his name, that of
America’s greatest metaphysician, to the College, the sacred memories
of his residence to the venerable mansion now occupied by the Dean, and
the hallowed custody of his mortal remains to the Princeton graveyard, a
spot to which thousands have made their pilgrimage for the sake of his
great renown. In this enclosure he lies beside his son-in-law, the Rev.
Aaron Burr, who was his predecessor. At his feet are the ashes of the
brilliant and erratic grandson, the Aaron Burr so well known to students
of American history. President Davies, who followed Edwards, held his
office for only two years, and was succeeded by Finley who presided for
five. Under the latter the number of students present at one time rose
to one hundred and twenty. All told, a hundred and thirty sat under his
instruction, and of these less than half, fifty-nine, became clergymen.
[Illustration: JOHN WITHERSPOON.]
This tendency to send fewer and fewer men into the ministry is highly
significant. It reached its climax under the next president—the great
Scotchman whose name is among the most honored in the history of his
adopted country—John Witherspoon. His incumbency was coincident with
the Revolutionary epoch, lasting from 1768 to 1794. In those twenty-six
years four hundred and sixty-nine young men graduated from the College;
of these, only a hundred and fourteen, less than a quarter, became
clergymen, an average of between four and five a year. This phenomenon
was due to the fact that Witherspoon, though lecturing on Divinity
like his predecessors, was vastly more interested in political than in
religious philosophy. So notorious was this fact that many a pious youth
bent on entering the ministry passed the very doors of liberal Princeton
to seek the intense atmosphere of Yale orthodoxy, while many a boy
patriot from New England came hither to seek the distinction of being
taught by Dr. Witherspoon.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT ROCKY HILL, N. J. (NEAR
PRINCETON.)]
The first eight years of Witherspoon’s presidency embraced the period
of political ferment in the Colonies which ushered in the War of the
Revolution. From the very beginning of his residence in America, the
new president espoused the Colonial cause in every conflict with Great
Britain; he was soon accounted “as high a son of liberty as any man in
America.” Not content with enlarging and improving the College course,
he collected funds throughout the Colonies from Boston to Charleston,
and even laid Jamaica under contribution to fill the depleted College
chest. From the pulpit of the old First Church his voice rang out in
denunciation of the English administration, until in his native land
he was branded as a rebel and a traitor. The spread of the Reformation
was more largely due to the fact that Luther was a professor in the
University of Wittenberg than to any other single cause; the adherence
to the Revolution of the powerful Scotch and Scotch-Irish element in the
Colonies was chiefly if not entirely secured by the teachings of John
Witherspoon from his professor’s chair in Nassau Hall. To him and John
Dickinson, author of the _Farmer’s Letters_, belongs the credit of having
convinced the sober middle classes of the great middle Colonies that the
breach with England was not merely inevitable, but just and to their
interest.
[Illustration: MORVEN.]
But Witherspoon was more than a teacher, he was a practical statesman.
His country-seat was a farm on the southern slope of Rocky Hill, about
a mile due north of Nassau Hall. Its solid stone walls still bear the
classic name which he gave it, of Tusculum. In his hours of retirement
at that beloved home he seems to have brooded more on the rights of man
than on human depravity, more on law than on theology, more on Providence
in His present dealings with men than on the remoter meanings of God’s
Word. In the convention which framed the constitution of New Jersey, he
amazed the other delegates by his technical knowledge of administration
and led in their constructive labors; he assisted in the overthrow of
William Franklin, the royal governor; was elected to the Continental
Congress, and in the critical hour spurred on the lagging members who
hesitated to take the fatal step of authorizing their president and
secretary to sign and issue the Declaration of Independence. With solemn
emphasis he declared:
“For my own part, of property I have some, of reputation more.
That reputation is staked, that property is pledged on the
issue of this contest; and although these gray hairs must soon
descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they
descend thither by the hand of the executioner, than desert at
this crisis the sacred cause of my country.”
The word “God” occurs but once in that famous document. Jefferson wrote
it with a small “g.” Witherspoon was the solitary clergyman among the
signers; neither he nor his neighbor, friend, and supporter, Richard
Stockton, of Morven, who was a member of his church, set their hands the
less firmly to sign the paper. Finally, Witherspoon was a member of the
secret committee of Congress which really found the means of moral and
material support for the war down to its close. He was chosen in the
dark hours of November, 1776, to confer with Washington on the military
crisis; he was a member, with Richard Henry Lee and John Adams, of the
committee appointed that same winter to fire the drooping spirits of the
rebels when Congress was driven from Philadelphia to Baltimore. He was
a member, too, of the boards of war and finance, wrote state papers on
the currency, and framed many of the most important bills passed by the
Continental Congress. It was not unnatural that when, at the close of the
war, Congress was terrified by unpaid and unruly Continentals battering
at its doors in Philadelphia, it should seek refuge and council, as it
did, in John Witherspoon’s college.
Thus it happened that Nassau Hall became one of the hearthstones on
which the fires of patriotism burned brightest. From 1766 to 1776 there
were graduated two hundred and thirty young Americans. What their temper
and feeling must have been may be judged from the names of those among
them who afterwards became eminent in public life. Ephraim Brevard,
Pierrepont Edwards, Churchill Houston, John Henry, John Beatty, James
Linn, Frederick Frelinghuysen, Gunning Bedford, Hugh Brackinridge, Philip
Freneau, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Henry Lee, Aaron Ogden, Brockholst
Livingston, and Wm. Richardson Davie. Those ten years produced twelve
Princetonians who sat in the Continental Congress, six who sat in the
Constitutional Convention, one President of the United States, one
Vice-President, twenty-four members of Congress, three Judges of the
Supreme Court, one Secretary of State, one Postmaster-General, three
Attorneys-General, and two foreign ministers. It may well be supposed
that the clergymen who were their comrades in those days of ferment
were, like their great teacher, no opponents of political preaching. The
influence of such a body of young men, when young men seized and held the
reins, was incalculable.
“We have no public news,” writes James Madison from Princeton on July 23,
1770, to his friend, Thomas Martin,
“but the base conduct of the merchants in New York in breaking
through their spirited resolutions not to import; a distinct
account of which, I suppose, will be in the Virginia
_Gazette_ before this arrives. The letter to the merchants in
Philadelphia, requesting their concurrence, was lately burned
by the students of this place in the college yard, all of them
appearing in their black gowns and the bell tolling.... There
are about 115 in the College and in the Grammar School, all of
them in American cloth.”
“Last week, to show our patriotism,” wrote in 1774 another Princeton
student, Charles Beatty,
“we gathered all the steward’s winter store of tea, and having
made a fire in the campus we there burnt near a dozen pounds,
tolled the bell, and made many spirited resolves. But this was
not all. Poor Mr. Hutchinson’s effigy shared the same fate with
the tea, having a tea-canister tied about his neck.”
[Illustration: RICHARD STOCKTON
“THE SIGNER”.]
With such a nursery of patriotism at its very hub, the temper of the
surrounding community can easily be pictured. The proposition for a
provincial congress came from Princeton. John Hart, a farmer from
the neighboring township of Hopewell, and Abraham Clark, a farmer’s
son from the neighboring county, were associated with graduates from
Princeton College and delegates from Princeton town in conducting its
deliberations. Both were made delegates to the Continental Congress
and both, along with Witherspoon and Stockton, were signers of the
Declaration of Independence. Even Francis Hopkinson, the fifth signer for
this State, a Philadelphian in reality, though a temporary resident of
Bordentown, was, as the friend and co-worker of Freneau and Brackinridge,
intimately associated with Princeton influence. When rebellion was
finally in full swing, the Committee of Safety for New Jersey held its
sessions here, probably in Nassau Hall, possibly in the famous tavern. It
is well known that neither the Continental Army nor the people of the
United States at large were profoundly impressed by the Declaration of
Independence. This was not the case in Princeton, for the correspondent
of a Philadelphia paper wrote that on July 9, 1776, “Nassau Hall was
grandly illuminated and independency proclaimed under a triple volley
of musketry, and universal acclamation for the prosperity of the United
States, with the greatest decorum.”
Seven days previous to this demonstration, the Provincial Congress,
sitting at Trenton, had adopted a new State constitution; nine days later
the first Legislature of the State assembled in Nassau Hall—the College
library room—and chose Livingston governor. They continued more or less
intermittently in session until the following October after the invasion
of the State by British forces. Before the invaders they fled to Trenton,
then to Burlington, to Pittstown, and finally to Haddonfield. After the
battles of Princeton and Trenton they promptly returned to their first
seat and resumed their sessions.
* * * * *
The storm of war broke upon Princeton early in December of the same year,
1776. The British Army, landed from Howe’s fleet in New York Bay, had
entirely worsted the American forces. Brooklyn, New York, Fort Washington
with Fort Lee had been successively abandoned, and Washington in his
memorable retreat across this State reached Princeton on the first of
December. Stirling, with one thousand two hundred Continentals, was
left as a rear-guard, while the Commander-in-Chief with the rest, one
thousand eight hundred, and his stores, pushed on to Trenton, whence he
crossed in safety to the right bank of the Delaware. On the seventh,
Cornwallis entered Princeton at the head of six thousand Anglo-Hessian
veterans, driving Stirling before him. The invaders were quartered in
the College and in the church. Both Tusculum and Morven, the estates of
the arch-rebels Witherspoon and Stockton, were pillaged, and the new
house of Sergeant was burnt. All the neighboring farms were laid under
contribution for forage.
Popular disaffection followed in the course of Washington’s retreat.
Large numbers of the people and many of the State officials accepted
the English offers of amnesty. The patriots were compelled to abandon
their homes and flee across the Delaware. Two regiments were left by
Cornwallis in Princeton as a garrison. The rest of his troops were
established in winter quarters at New Brunswick, Trenton and Bordentown.
Washington’s thin and starving line stretched along the Delaware from
Coryell’s Ferry to Bristol. Congress fled to Baltimore. Putnam, with no
confidence in Washington’s ability even to hold his ground, was making
ready for a desperate defence of Philadelphia.
There was as yet no French alliance, no adequate supply of money raised
either at home or abroad, no regular or even semi-regular army,—nothing,
apparently, but a disorderly little rebellion; for the first promise of
constancy in New England and of regular support for a considerable force
of volunteers had had as yet no fulfilment. The English felt that the
early ardor of radical and noisy rebels would fade like a mist before
Howe’s success; Canada was lost; New York as far as the Highlands was
in British hands; so also were New Jersey and Long Island, which latter
virtually controlled Connecticut. Howe believed the rebellion was broken;
Cornwallis had engaged passage to return home.
[Illustration: HALL IN THE MORVEN HOUSE.]
While the British were lulled into security, Washington and the patriots,
though desperate, were undaunted. A well considered and daring plan for
a decisive sally from their lines was formed and carried to a successful
issue. On Christmas night two thousand four hundred men were ferried over
the Delaware nine miles above Trenton; the crossing was most dangerous,
owing to the swollen waters and the floating ice; the ensuing march was
made in the teeth of a dreadful storm. The affair at Trenton was scarcely
a battle, it was rather a surprise; the one thousand two hundred Hessians
were taken unawares and only a hundred and sixty-two escaped; nearly a
thousand were captured. What made it a great event was its electrical
effect in restoring courage to patriots everywhere, together with the
inestimable value to Washington’s troops of the captured stores and arms.
He did not occupy the place at all, but returned immediately to his
encampment on the other shore to refit.
The ensuing week was certainly the most remarkable of the Revolution.
The English in New York were thrown into consternation. Cornwallis
hastened back to Princeton, where he collected between seven and eight
thousand men, the flower of the British army. Washington’s force, on
the other hand, was reinforced with a speed and zeal bordering on the
miraculous. Three thousand volunteers came in from the neighborhood and
from Philadelphia. The term of service for nine hundred of his men would
expire on New Year’s day; these were easily induced, in the new turn
of affairs, to remain six weeks longer. Washington and John Stark both
pledged their private fortunes and Robert Morris raised fifty thousand
dollars in Philadelphia. The mourning of the patriots throughout the
Middle States was changed into rejoicing.
On the thirtieth of December the American army began to recross the
Delaware; the movement was slow and difficult owing to the ice, but was
completed the following day. On January 1, 1777, Washington wrote from
Trenton that he had about two thousand two hundred men with him, that
Mifflin had about one thousand eight hundred men at Bordentown on the
right wing and that Cadwalader had about as many more at Crosswicks,
some miles to the east. He thought that no more than one thousand eight
hundred of those who passed the river with himself were available for
fighting, but he intended to “pursue the enemy and break up their
quarters.”
Next day Cornwallis, leaving three regiments and a company of cavalry
at Princeton, set out by the old “King’s Highway” for Trenton. At
Maidenhead, now Lawrenceville, there was a skirmish between his van and
the American outposts; thence for over five miles his march was harassed
by irregular bodies of his foe, General Hand being stationed in command
of a detachment at Shabbakong creek, and General Greene about a mile this
side of Trenton. It was four o’clock, and therefore late in the short
winter day when the English General reached the outskirts of the city.
There stood Washington himself with a few more detachments, ready still
further to delay the British march through the town. Withdrawing slowly,
the last Continental crossed the bridge over the Assanpink in safety,
to fall behind earthworks, which in anticipation of the event had been
thrown up and fortified with batteries on the high banks behind.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF PRINCETON—DEATH OF MERCER.
FROM A PAINTING BY COL. J. TRUMBULL.]
The British attacked at once, but were repulsed; undismayed they pressed
on again, and again they were driven back across the narrow stream.
The spirited conflict continued until nightfall, when the assailants
finally gave up and withdrew to bivouac, hoping to renew the fight next
morning. In this affair on the Assanpink about a hundred and fifty,
mostly British, were killed. Cornwallis dispatched messengers to summon
the men he had left at Maidenhead and Princeton, determined if possible
to surround, overwhelm and annihilate Washington next day. But the battle
on the Assanpink was destined to be the only real fighting in Trenton.
Washington had in mind the strategic move which rendered this campaign
one of his greatest, if not his very greatest. He determined to outflank
his foe by a circuitous march to Princeton over the unguarded road on the
south side of the Assanpink.
The night was dark and cold; the camp-fires of both lines burned strong
and bright. Behind those of Cornwallis there was a bustle of preparation
for the next day’s battle; behind those of Washington there was a
stealthy making ready for retreat. The baggage was packed and dispatched
to Burlington; a few men were detached to keep the fires well fed and
clear; the rest silently stole away about midnight. Their march was
long, between sixteen and eighteen miles, and difficult because the
frost had turned the mud on the roads into hummocks. But at sunrise on
the third of January the head of the column had crossed Stony Brook by
the bridge on the Quaker road, and stood about a mile and three-quarters
from Princeton, awaiting the result of a council of war. They were
masked by the piece of woods which is still standing behind the Quaker
meeting-house. It was determined that Washington with the main column
should march across the fields, through a kind of depression in the
rolling land intervening between the meeting-house and Princeton, in
order to reach the town as quickly as possible. Mercer, with three
hundred and fifty men and two field-pieces, was to follow the road half a
mile farther to its junction with the King’s Highway, and there blow up
the upper bridge over Stony Brook, that by which Cornwallis’s reserve,
marching to Trenton, must cross the stream. This would likewise detain
Cornwallis himself on his return in pursuit.
* * * * *
There were three actions in the battle of Princeton. Two of the three
English regiments left in reserve at Princeton were under way betimes
to join Cornwallis at Trenton. One of these under Colonel Mawhood, with
three companies of horse, had already crossed Stony Brook and had climbed
the hill beyond, before they descried Mercer following the road in the
valley below; the other was half a mile behind, north of the stream.
Mawhood quickly turned back and, uniting the two, engaged Mercer. The
Americans were armed with rifles which had no bayonets, and although
nearly equal in number to the enemy they were first slowly then rapidly
driven up the hill to the ridge south of the King’s Highway and east of
the Quaker road. They stood firm before the firing of the English, but
yielded when the enemy charged bayonets. In this encounter Mercer was
severely wounded and left for dead. Many other officers were likewise
wounded as they hung back, striving to rally the flying troops.
Washington, hearing the firing, stopped immediately and, leaving the
rest of his column to follow their line of march, put himself at the
head of the Pennsylvania volunteers and wheeled. Summoning two pieces of
artillery he turned to join the retreating forces of Mercer. The British
reached the crest of the hill in pursuit before they saw Washington’s
column. The sight brought them to a halt, and while they formed their
artillery came up. It seemed to Washington a most critical moment. In an
instant Mercer’s command was fused with his own men, and placing himself
well out before the line he gave the order to advance. There was no
halt until the Commander himself was within thirty yards of the foe; at
that instant both lines volleyed simultaneously. The fire was hasty and
ineffective. Washington, as if by a miracle, was unscathed. As the smoke
blew away, an American brigade came in under Hitchcock, while Hand with
his riflemen attacked the British flank. In a few moments Mawhood gave
up the fight; his troops, after a few brave efforts, broke and retreated
over the hill up the valley of Stony Brook. The bridge was then destroyed.
Meantime the head of the American column had reached the outskirts of
Princeton. There, on the edge of the ravine now known as Springdale, was
posted still a third British force composed of soldiers from the 40th
and 55th Line. The Americans, with Stark at their head, attacked and
drove them back as far as Nassau Hall, into which the fugitives hastily
threw themselves. From the windows scattered remnants of their regiments
could be seen fleeing through fields and byways toward New Brunswick. The
American artillery began to play on the walls of the building; one ball,
it is said, crashed through the roof and tore from its frame the portrait
of George II., hanging in the Prayer Hall; another is still imbedded in
the venerable walls. A Princeton militiaman, with the assistance of his
neighbors, finally burst the door and the little garrison surrendered.
When Donop retreated from Bordentown to Princeton after the battle of
Trenton, he threw up an arrow-head breastwork at the point not far from
where Mercer and Stockton Streets now join; on this still lay a cannon
of the size known as a thirty-two pounder, the carriage of which was
dismantled. It was early morning when Cornwallis became aware that his
expected battle would not be fought at Trenton; the roar of artillery
gave him the terrible assurance that the blow had been struck on his
weakened flank,—that his precious stores at New Brunswick were in
danger. Swiftly he issued the necessary orders and appeared at the west
end of the town on the King’s Highway, just as Washington was leaving
Princeton, his van having been delayed in crossing Stony Brook. The
citizens had loaded the gun in the breastwork and on the approach of the
intruders they fired it. This utterly deceived the English generals, for
they thought themselves facing a well-manned battery. It was some time,
tradition says an hour, before they were undeceived and in that precious
interval Washington collected his army and marched away. His forces were
too weak to risk the venture of seizing New Brunswick, even temporarily;
accordingly he turned northwestward and reached Morristown in safety.
There and at Middlebrook his headquarters practically remained for the
rest of the war. The English were content to secure New Brunswick.
In the battle of Princeton there were engaged somewhat under two
thousand men on each side. The actual fighting lasted less than half an
hour. We lost very few men—so few that the number cannot be accurately
reckoned—possibly thirty; but we lost a brave general, Hugh Mercer, a
colonel, a major, and three captains. The English soldiers fought with
unsurpassed gallantry. They lost two hundred killed and two hundred and
fifty captured, but no officers of distinction. It was not, therefore,
a big fight, but it was none the less a great and decisive battle.
How important Washington felt it to be, is attested by his personal
exposure of himself. How decisive the great military critics have
considered it, is shown by the fact that the campaign of which it was the
finishing stroke is held by them to have been typical of his genius as
a strategist. The two affairs of Trenton and Princeton are in the short
histories of the Revolution generally reckoned together. And naturally
so, since they occurred so near to one another in time and place. But,
strategically and tactically examined, the battle of Trenton made good
Washington’s position behind the Delaware; the battle of Princeton
secured New Jersey and the Middle States.
After the preliminary actions which took place in New England the
remainder of the Revolution falls into three portions—the struggle for
the Hudson, to secure communication between New England and the Middle
States; the struggle for the Delaware, to secure communication between
the Middle States and the South; and thirdly, the effort to regain the
South. After the battle of Princeton, Washington was able to establish a
line from Amboy around by the west and south to Morristown; New England,
the Middle and Southern States were in communication with each other and
free. As a result of the first campaign by a numerous and well-equipped
Anglo-German army the English held nothing but Newport in Rhode Island
and New York City, with posts at King’s Bridge on the north and at New
Brunswick on the south. The proof was finally secured that Washington
with a permanent army such as the Colonies might, unassisted, have
furnished him, would have been a match for any land force the English
could have transported to America.
For the remaining years of the war Princeton was held by the Americans.
Both the Legislature of the State and the Council of Safety held their
meetings within its precincts; for a time Putnam was in command of the
little garrison, for a time Sullivan. Early in 1781 thirteen hundred
mutinous Pennsylvanians of Washington’s army marched away from Morristown
and came in a body to Princeton. They were met by emissaries from Clinton
who strove to entice them from their allegiance. But, though mutinous,
they were not traitors, for they seized the British emissaries and
handed them over to General Wayne to be treated as spies. A committee
of Congress appeared and made such arrangements as pacified them. In
the autumn of the same year the victory of Yorktown was celebrated with
illuminations and general rejoicings. The College was again in session
with forty students and local prosperity was restored. In 1782 there was
held a meeting to support a continuance of the war.
[Illustration: NASSAU HALL.]
The Revolutionary epoch was fitly brought to a close by a meeting of
Congress in Nassau Hall. On June 20, 1783, three hundred Pennsylvania
soldiers who were discontented with the terms of their discharge marched
from Lancaster to Philadelphia and beset the doors of Congress, holding
that assembly imprisoned for three hours under threat of violence if
their wrongs were not redressed. The legislators resolved to adjourn
to Princeton. They were made heartily welcome, the college halls were
put at their disposal, and the houses of the citizens were hospitably
opened for their entertainment. Their sessions were held regularly in the
College library for over four months, until the fourth of November, when
they adjourned to meet at Annapolis three weeks later. Washington was
in Princeton twice during this time: once at commencement in September,
when he made a present of fifty guineas to the trustees—a sum they spent
for the portrait by Peale which now hangs in Nassau Hall, filling, it
is said, the very frame from which that of George II. was shot away
during the battle. The second time he came in October, at the request of
Boudinot, President of Congress, and a trustee of the College, to give
advice concerning such weighty matters as the organization of a standing
army to defend the frontiers, of a militia to maintain internal order,
and of the military school. The Commander-in-Chief was received in solemn
session and congratulated by the President on the success of the war. He
replied in fitting terms. According to tradition he occupied while in
attendance on Congress a room in a house now replaced by the handsome
Pyne dormitory on the corner of Witherspoon and Nassau Streets, but his
residence was the colonial mansion three miles away on the hill above the
town of Rocky Hill which has been preserved as a historical monument and
revolutionary museum by the liberality of Mrs. Josephine Swann. It was
from this place that he issued his famous farewell address to the army.
But the greatest occasion in Princeton’s history was on the thirty-first
of the same month. Congress had assembled in the Prayer Hall to receive
in solemn audience the minister plenipotentiary from the Netherlands.
There were present, besides the members, Washington, Morris, the
superintendent of finance, Luzerne, the French envoy, and many other
men of eminence. The company had just assembled when news came that
the Treaty of Peace had been signed at Versailles. Many brilliant and
beautiful women were present, and their unchecked delight doubled the
enthusiasm of all. The reception was the most splendid public function
thus far held by the now independent republic. On the twenty-fifth of
November the British evacuated New York. Washington left Princeton to
attend the ceremony, and afterward journeyed by Annapolis to his home at
Mt. Vernon. He believed that, his military career being concluded, he was
to spend the rest of his days as a private gentleman.
Providence had ordained otherwise. He had carried the difficult, strange
and desultory War of the Revolution to a successful end; he had, by
wise counsel and firmness, averted the dangers of a civil war which
seemed imminent, so far as he could judge from the temper of those about
his headquarters at Newburgh. Once more he was to enter the arena of
embittered strife, but in a conflict political and not military. Three
of the five great actions in which he was personally present during
the Revolution were fought on Jersey soil; his next leadership was
displayed in a contest waged in Philadelphia, but largely by Jerseymen
or Princetonians. Princeton’s place in American history can not be
understood without consideration of the Constitutional Convention, where
the passions of localism, separatism and sectional prejudice broke
forth afresh. The assembly contained many wise and far-seeing men.
Of its fifty-five members, thirty-two were men of academic training.
There were one each from London, Oxford, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and
five had been connected with the checkered fortunes of William and
Mary. The University of Pennsylvania sent one, Columbia two, Harvard
three, Yale four and Princeton nine. The most serious dissension, as is
well known, was concerning the relative importance of large and small
States in legislation. The Virginia, or large-States plan, was for two
houses, basing representation in both on population. It was essentially
the work of James Madison, a pupil of Witherspoon. The Jersey, or
small-State, plan was for one house, wherein each State should have
equal representation. It was the cherished idea of Paterson, another
Princetonian. Over these two schemes the battle waged fiercely until it
seemed that even Washington, the presiding officer, could not command
peace or force a compromise, and that the convention was on the verge
of dissolution. Connecticut had ever been accustomed to two houses—one
representing the people, one the towns. It was the compromise suggested
on this analogy by Sherman and Ellsworth, and urged by them, with the
assistance of Davie from Georgia, which finally prevailed. Ellsworth and
Davie were both Princetonians. Madison joined hands with Washington in
the successful struggle for the acceptance of the new Constitution in
Virginia—both Ellsworth and Paterson, their end attained, became the most
ardent Federalists.
The history of Princeton during this century has of course not been
so dramatic as it was in the last, but the town and neighborhood have
secured the permanent influence foreshadowed by its Revolutionary
record. They shared in the control of State and nation, they gave their
sons freely to the service of the country in each of the three wars
since fought. But of course the story of Princeton is, in the main, the
story of the University. Reopening its doors under Witherspoon with
about forty students, its graduating class as early as 1806 numbered
fifty-four, and thence to the outbreak of the Civil War it enjoyed
almost unbroken prosperity under four presidents, Samuel Stanhope Smith,
Ashbel Green, James Carnahan and John Maclean. The first care of its
friends was to provide for thorough training in science, so that it has
the honor of having had the first American professor of chemistry. For
a time it likewise had a professor of theology; but the founding of the
Theological Seminary in 1812 and its permanent location in Princeton
the following year committed that branch of learning to an institution
which has since become one of the most important in the country. From
time to time new buildings were added to both College and Seminary as
necessity required. How stern the college discipline was is shown by the
fact that at intervals, fortunately rare, students were sent to their
homes in numbers scarcely credible in this quieter age; on one occasion
a hundred and twenty-five out of something over two hundred. In 1824
Lafayette graciously accepted the degree of Bachelor of Laws from the
authorities while passing from New York to Washington. In 1832 Joseph
Henry was made professor of natural philosophy, a chair he held with the
highest distinction, for it was in his Princeton laboratory that he made
his epochal discoveries in electricity, stepping-stones to the revolution
of the world by its use; in 1848 he was made director of the Smithsonian
Institute. In 1846 was organized a Law School; its three professors were
men of the highest distinction, but the project was premature. In 1855
flames destroyed all but the walls of Nassau Hall, whereupon it was
speedily remodelled as it still stands; the variation, slight as it was
from the original, appears to have been in the interest of economy rather
than beauty.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT JAMES McCOSH.]
The only serious check in Princeton’s prosperity was caused by the
Civil War. Though a large proportion of the students had always come
from the Southern States, the rest were enthusiastic in their Northern
sympathies, and the national flag was hoisted by them over Nassau Hall
in April, 1861. The minority tore it down, but it was promptly restored
to its place by a gallant citizen of the town, who in climbing to the
apex of the cupola twisted the shaft of the weather-vane and fixed the
arrow with its head to the north. Thus it remained until conciliation
was complete a few years since (1896), when the pivot was repaired
so that the historic index may point in all directions at the will of
the winds. The withdrawal of the Southern students left the numbers of
the ever-loyal University at a low ebb, and it was not until after the
accession of James McCosh to the presidency that the new clientage which
has so munificently supported him and his successor was secured. It is
also gratifying to note that the sons of the old Princeton Confederates
are returning in ever greater numbers. The presidencies of Dr. McCosh
and Dr. Patton are too near to belong to history. The evidences of the
enormous strides made in material equipment are on every hand: splendid
and beautiful buildings, professors of distinction in great numbers, and
a body of students numbering, along with those of the Seminary, about
fifteen hundred. Near by is the famous Lawrenceville School, itself an
epochal institution in the history of our secondary training. Wherever
men converse of science, literature or art, the names of Princeton’s
sons must be considered; but her chiefest glory thus far has been in her
contributions to political and educational life. Representative of a
definite theory and practice in her sphere, she breeds men in abundance
to uphold her banner in the face of all assaults.
Time, place and the men—these are the factors of history; the first
and the last vanish, the scenes alone remain. If history is to be made
real, if we are to know in the concrete, from the experience of the men
and women who have left the stage, what alone is possible for ourselves
and our race, we do well to see and ponder the places which knew those
who have gone before. Princeton possesses, in Nassau Hall, a focus of
patriotism—a cradle of liberty. In her battle-field, the spot where
culminated one of the greatest campaigns of one of the greatest of
generals; and in her sons one sees the triumph of the moral forces which
combine in true greatness. The lesson to be learned from Princeton’s
historic scenes should be that intellect and not numbers controls the
world; that ideas and not force overmaster bigness; that truth and right,
supported by strong purpose and high principle, prevail in the end.
[Illustration: SEAL OF PRINCETON.]
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA
THE CITY PENN FOUNDED AND TO WHICH FRANKLIN GAVE DISTINCTION
BY TALCOTT WILLIAMS
Cities are of nature. Their long life flows in ways she has made longer
than the changing rule of which they are part. Nations and boundaries are
of man and his laws. Artificial creations all. Cities and their sites are
of the same forces as form the rivers and ports, the passes and pathways
on which they stand and last as long. Rome outlives its empire, and
Damascus the shock of massacre from Chedorlaomer to Timur. The cities
of Europe are still where they were twenty centuries ago. The civil
structure into which they fit has changed until nothing is left of what
once was. These things are missed in the general. They come to be seen in
the particular.
Philadelphia stands, and necessarily stands on the straight, ruler-like
“Falls line” which passes through every city site from New York to
Montgomery, because this prodigious slip changes river navigation
wherever it crosses a river valley. Where marine navigation stopped
to-day and then, Penn put his city, its site a peninsula about which
two rivers joined, a rich alluvial plain, covered with glacial clay,
with schistose rocks cropping out across it, the palæozoic marble of
the Atlantic coast hard by, and a strip of green serpentine crossing
the country from the highest points in the future limits of the city to
Chester County, its first granary and feeding ground. These things—the
half-sunken Lower Delaware River spreading into Delaware Bay, the term of
navigation at the junction of two rivers, and the abrupt approach to the
sea of a formation elsewhere miles from the ocean—make Philadelphia all
it is in outer look, a flat city built of its own clay, garnished with
its own marble, a seaport knowing the sea only in its rivers.
[Illustration: READING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
FROM AN OLD FRENCH PRINT.]
In this inland port, as you float in either river, seafaring masts and
main rigging, black and tarred, silhouette against the tender green of
growing fields. The early houses were brick of the glacier’s leaving,
matching London in color; for both are ground out of the same earth mill.
Its early stone houses were of the narrow contorted gray schists, and
marble quarries had been opened, exhausted and closed to trim the brick
before the Revolution. Later these were varied by the green serpentine, a
hideous, dull color, the red sandstone of the fertile inland plains, and
at last, as railroads made it easy to seek a door-step 1,000 miles away,
the marble of Vermont built the City Hall, the granites of Cape Ann the
Post Office, and Ohio ashlar a growing number of private homes, matching
London once more as a close congener of the Portland stone Penn saw
builded into St. Paul’s. The outer resemblance to London noted by Matthew
Arnold and many an one besides, rests, as such things do, on concrete
fact.
William Penn in 1682 came into no empty Western world. The Dutch and
Swede had been entering these waters for near a century. They were
charted, tracked and known. Uneasy frontier alarms were over. Farms
dotted all the region. For the first time, in _Fox’s Journal_, a
decade before Penn, we catch the accent and atmosphere of the American
settler living lonely and safe. He was as yet neither of these in New
England, New York or the Southern States. The Swedes had left their
work in Swedes’ Church, with its timber, roof and tower recalling North
Europe, as its carved angels do the wood sculpture of the pine forest.
There was a tavern, the Blue Anchor, possibly (not probably) still
standing, waiting for Penn at the little boat harbor, now Dock Street.
A thriving commerce of a ship a week was already busying the river with
its boats. On the crest of the low hill that rose from this boat-haven,
Penn planted the house which now stands in the Park. On this crest ran
Market, and where the land began to dip to the Schuylkill, Broad Street
crossed, the first streets to be run by the prospector and real-estate
speculator, on a plan by whose geometrical extensions both are still
guided, in these days of new boulevards in old cities the oldest and
least changed of any city plan in civilized lands. On this background of
growing farms and frequent vessels, Penn sketched the Commonwealth. He
and his were fortunate in his bringings. He came from Central England,
that central mark and beach line from which so large a portion of the
worthier of the race spring. He drew his settlers in the north of the
kingdom from the line of Fox’s trips, whose Cumberland and Lancashire
converts dotted the region about Philadelphia with names familiar in
his _Journal_, Lancaster, Swarthmore, Merion, and Haverford. All South
England had been stirred by Monmouth’s Rebellion and the Revolution,
the work of the South as the Commonwealth had its leader in the North.
Philadelphia, therefore, drew chiefly from Saxon, and less from Danish or
Celtic England, than had New England. Its leaders came from the thrifty
business classes of London, “city” people, instead of from the gentry
as had Virginia’s. Ten years later, Louis was harrying the Palatinate,
and a German population, skilled in the mechanic arts, came and gave
Philadelphia its manufacturing foundation. Penn was pietistic, his mother
was from Holland, and this gave him continental acquaintance and sympathy
with continental dissent, which later brought the Moravians and gave the
colony relations with Central Europe, an early and prolific press, and
patience with political oppression, a dubious virtue still surviving.
[Illustration: THOMAS PENN.
FROM A PAINTING OWNED BY THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, AND
COPIED BY M. I. NAYLOR FROM THE PORTRAIT IN POSSESSION OF MAJOR DUGALD
STUART.]
[Illustration: SECOND STREET, PHILADELPHIA, SHOWING THE OLD COURTHOUSE ON
THE LEFT.
FROM AN ENGRAVING MADE BY BIRCH & SON.]
The town grew like a weed and as rank. Grain was cheap, thanks to the
limestone plain just beyond the low primitive rocks. Trade flowed in from
the West Indies and Europe. In thirty years the place was bigger than
any in the provinces. The Proprietor’s square house set the fashion,
built from imported brick. Farmsteads on the road out to the German town
of the new immigrants were built of the gray schists of the region.
Ship-building began. Pirates lurked in the river below. The Proprietor’s
official residence, now gone, fronted on the fouling pool where boats
came, and matched the English country-house of South England. A little
State House, which closely resembled in outer look the market-house
of the same period on Second Street to the south, was built on Market
Street, near the open rising ground on which Letitia Penn’s dwelling
stood. Merchants’ homes were on its low hill; some of those still there
are probably of this period when of imported brick. There is a row of
houses on Swanson Street recalling the mechanics’ homes. In green quiet
still held, the Friends’ meeting-house was erected—the present building
far later. Low houses and warehouses clustered about what is now Dock
Street—probably not one left. The swarm of some two thousand houses
stretched along the river for what is now a square or two. Beyond were a
few fields. Dense forests stood to the Schuylkill, and crowned all the
little hills about, save that Fairmount stood bare, as is indeed the
fashion of the sterile, rocky height. Schools were opened, of which one
survives in the “Penn charter” school on Twelfth and Market. The city
began its chartered existence, and the portraits of its first mayors,
whose descendants are still part of the active life of the city, recall
those of Guildhall, not as with like New England iconography, the
Puritan remonstrants of James and Charles. An almanac was issued from
the press of Bradford, whose solitary copy in the Historical Society
begins printing for the State. A polyglot literature was in progress,
apparent in more than one collection. The long, low, brick-built town
left its image in 1720 in the picture in the entrance of the Philadelphia
Library. Market stalls filled the river end of the street to which they
gave a name, and these the civic organization, the peak-towered State
House, the courts, the brick houses, the Proprietor’s residence, the
city ordinances, the entire machinery of life, followed and imitated as
closely as might be, on the edge of the wilderness, the market borough
of an English shire. The town had had its first big boom and was near
wallowing in its first reaction,—houses empty, more money in demand,
debts oppressive, and all hope gone, when (1723) the great genius,
Benjamin Franklin, who was to be its second founder and save it from
Friend and Precisian, Palatinate Dutch, German, and Pietist, walked up
Market Street and turned down Fourth in early morning. He was to give
Philadelphia its better civilization. For near seventy years, he was to
be, so far as the civilized world was concerned, the city and all in it
worth knowing. By supreme good fortune all his past, or at least as much
as it is desirable to know, is laid bare to the visitor. The houses in
which he is said to have had his lodging as apprentice—old enough for
this, at least—look down from Lodge Street on Dock Square. His old home
on Market, between Third and Fourth, is long since gone, but it stood
back from the street and was doubtless of the type of the roomy old
houses now on Third south of Walnut, or the house of Hamilton in Woodlawn
Cemetery. The letter-books of Franklin, with his correspondence for over
twenty years, are at the American Philosophical Society which he founded,
which first commemorated his death, and, a century later, the centenary
of his obsequies. The best of his portraits is there, Houdon’s bust of
the old man, and the roomy-seated chair of “Dr. Heavysides.” His dress
buckles are in the Historical Society, and the teacups over which he
bowed his compliments, and some speeches which Madame Helvetius rightly
held more dearer than compliments, frowsy as Mrs. Adams found her. There,
too, is the dubious portrait, which, whether it is Franklin in his youth
or no, looks the youth of his male descendants. Part of his electric
machine, and his printing-press, are in the Franklin Institute, part
in the Philadelphia Library, which he also founded, and a Leyden jar,
perhaps of the great experiment, at the American Philosophical Society.
The fire-bucket of his company, and the sword he wore in his brief but
not inglorious military service, are in the Historical Society. One
probable site of the field in which he flew his kite is filled by the
present Record building. His statue is on the front of the library at
Juniper and Locust; another—worthy—is to the right on Chestnut Street,
looking on the flow of men and women in the city life he loved, for in
the country he never willingly spent a day. Not a stage of his life but
can still be followed by the historical pilgrim in Philadelphia. He
can follow in Franklin’s steps,—the steep slope up which he walked to
enter—with old landing-stairs still in place south of Market—the Fourth
Street corner, the site of his job office, the purlieus of Dock Street,
from whence came the mire that never quite left his garments, the lots
of the Market Street home where his better years were passed, his pew
at Christ’s Church, the State House he entered for a half-century in
so many capacities—King’s officer, contractor, colonial legislator,
rebellious congressman, signer of the Declaration and Constitution,—his
eye through all the years on the gilded sun one can yet trace on the
back of the President’s chair—and last, when his own sun was at its
setting, as member of the Constitutional Convention of his own State,
and his modest grave at Fifth and Arch, where one may still uncover at
the last memory of the most human of all Americans. Most of us, least
of other lands, prefiguring in life, work, and character our invincible
patience, our good humor, our quenchless curiosity, our careless disorder
in trifles, our easy success in serious affairs, our sluttish phrase, our
high spirit, the even equality of our manners, our perpetual relish for
the simple environment and the homelier joys of our life, our neglect
of means and detail, our perseverance and achievement in the final end,
our self-consciousness and our easy conviction that neither fate itself,
nor our own careless disregard of a less wise past, can rob us of our
appointed place in the advancing files of time.
[Illustration: FRANKLIN IN 1777.
AFTER THE PRINT REPRODUCED FROM THE DRAWING OF COHIN.]
[Illustration: THE PHILADELPHIA LIBRARY.
THE OLD BUILDING ON FIFTH STREET, NOW DEMOLISHED. FROM THE ENGRAVING BY
W. BIRCH & SON.]
Franklin’s busy march through these streets bridged two great periods.
His half-century before the Revolution, fifty-two years from his landing
to Lexington, was a season of prodigious material expansion whose signs
are all about the city. Then were built those pleasant places in the
Park, and homes like that of John Penn’s in the Zoölogical Garden, ending
in the privateer’s house which was later to be Arnold’s headquarters,
to-day Mt. Pleasant. John Bartram built his stone house, set up its
pillars and laid out his Botanical Garden, both happily standing and
city property, his cypress alone dead,—slow failing through the years in
which one lover has each spring sought it,—but much of his sylvan wealth
remains, still a record of his science and of the economic conditions
which gave him means for his long and costly trips. For when there were
neither roads nor railroads the “distance-rent” of farm land near a city
was enormous. The farm hard by swept in all the profit of days of teaming
of which the railroad has long since robbed it and diffused it over a
wide area, levelling up, as is our American way. The home, the life, the
leisure, the acquaintance and the society possible 150 years ago to a man
who farmed suburban acres are all attested when you stand in Bartram’s
garden by the river on the gray rock of the only rock wine-press this
side of the Atlantic, and remember that on this curving path Washington,
Franklin, Hancock, Rittenhouse, Morris, and Kalm, and a score more of the
century’s great, supped in the cool, open evening with a host whom the
first two found at a sudden coming bare-headed, barefooted and plowing.
The Revolutionary houses of the environs tell of the farm-profits of this
period; so do the “clasped hands” and the “green tree” on the fronts of
the olden homes—few or none dating back of the Revolution—which record
the organization of rival insurance companies; the earliest building
of the Pennsylvania Hospital on Pine with quaint old-world aspect, the
little strip of wall at Tenth and Spruce, once part of the almshouse
which Longfellow blended with the hospital in _Evangeline_; Carpenters’
Hall, the only Guild house in the colonies; the bit of wall still
standing of the brewery at Fifth and Wharton; of the first play-house in
the city and, most important of all, the two chief colonial monuments of
the city, Christ Church and Independence Hall.
[Illustration: CARPENTERS’ HALL, PHILADELPHIA.
WHEREIN MET THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, 1774.]
[Illustration: THE PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL.
FROM AN OLD ENGRAVING BY W. BIRCH & SON.]
These buildings mark much. The city from a mere “Front” Street on the
river, and two behind it, had grown up to Seventh and Eighth in a half
ellipse which ran in thriving homes from Kensington, grew thronged
about Chestnut, now passing Market in the race,—so that Market and
Arch have the oldest house-fronts to-day,—and then thinned out again
towards the scene of the Mischienza. In this area are scattered the
mansions of the Colonial and immediate post-Revolutionary period, with
Mrs. Ross’s house on Arch Street as type of the mechanic’s dwelling of
the day, happily preserved and now bought as a memorial of the flag
first made there. Beyond them begins the modern city of this century,
of machine-made brick, of lumber sawed by steam, and house plans fitted
to the growing value of the city lot. The growth which thus expanded
the city of Penn into the city of Franklin was no mere accretion of
population. It came of a profitable trade, of a share in adventures by
sea and land, not always legal, and always dangerous, and of a close
connection between the merchants of this city and those of London, from
which the ancestors of more than one Philadelphia Friend were drawn,
for Penn had borne his testimony in the Grace Church and Wheeler Street
meeting-houses in London. When the richer men of the city came to erect
its chief church, it was Gibbs’s St. Martin in the Fields which suggested
the interior of the building on Second Street, and it was London brick
architecture which was followed in Independence Hall and its open
arches,—now restored,—despoiling the record of recent history to decorate
and sometimes disfigure an earlier period, as is the manner and method
of restoration the world over. These buildings in their size, their
grace, their Georgian flavor, their cost,—for both were extravagant as
times then went,—stood for an opulent mercantile connection between the
metropolis of colonial and of royal England, a connection never quite
lost, as the resemblance of the younger city to the older has never quite
vanished. New York suggests Paris in spots, but no Philadelphian in his
wildest flight ever thought that Philadelphia did.
When the Revolution came, Philadelphia sacrificed its English trade
as promptly as ninety years later the city, loyal to its principles,
sacrificed its Southern trade, and in both times and both sacrifices New
York lagged to the rear in action and came to the front in assertion.
Independence Hall still looked out on green fields to the west, and
Rittenhouse’s little observatory—earliest of American star-gazing spots,
whose telescope, earliest of our astronomical instruments, is in the
American Philosophical Society—still stood in the square where Howe’s
artillery was to be parked. The jail of “Hugh Wynne” was on the southeast
corner of Sixth and Chestnut, on whose site Binney’s home was to stand
later, the hero of another struggle for freedom. In the northeast corner
of Washington Square was the potter’s field, last opened a century
ago for yellow-fever victims. The house, Dutch built, and hence close
to the street edge, in which Jefferson was to write the draft of the
Declaration, preserved by the American Philosophical Society, was on
Seventh and Market, its commemoration tablet on the wrong lot. A tavern
fronted the Hall, and its stables ran opposite to the main door, its
flies worrying the Continental Congress on a hot historic afternoon.
The sharp rise which still ascends between Callowhill and Spring Garden
was crested by the British works, of which the first was at Second and
Poplar. From the Market Street Bridge it is still possible to make out
the hill on which Hamilton planted his field-pieces to engage the British
_tête-du-pont_, held by the 72d Highlanders. The Hessians camped in the
open space at Gray’s Ferry, as the bridge of many years is still called.
The stately house which held the Mischienza has disappeared only within
a few years. The houses on the main street of Germantown still bear the
mark of the battle, and look unchanged on the street whose fogs still
veil it as on the day of conflict. The city now had from the river the
sky-line which it substantially retained up to twenty years ago, when the
steeples and the towers the Revolutionary period knew were dwarfed by the
many-storied steel frames of to-day.
[Illustration: INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA, BEFORE 1876.]
[Illustration: THE MORRIS HOUSE, GERMANTOWN, PHILADELPHIA.]
The returning tide of prosperity after the Revolution has left one mark
in the Morris dwelling on the south side of Eighth, between Locust and
Walnut, type of the wealthy home of the day. The biggest of the period
was Robert Morris’s, on the site of the Press Building, left as his
“folly.” The peak-roofed house in roomy squares now gave way for thirty
years to the house built flush to the street, which in the generation
between 1790 and 1820 spread the growing city up to Tenth Street or so,
and of which many are left. With this growth dwellings pushed beyond
South on one side and beyond Vine on the other, the fringe of the city
limits becoming an Alsatia still apparent, mechanics’ homes crowding
just beyond as they still do, until met north and even south by more
pretentious dwellings. In this thirty years the city grew from 42,000 to
108,000, and it faced first the problem to which only the American and
Australian city has proved fully equal in all the round of semitropical
summers north or south of the equator. The city, as it inherited from
England its city government, had also inherited from there its well-water
supply, its surface drainage, its slovenly streets, its practice of
crowding the homes of the poor on back lots, so as to fill the area
on which they stood with unsavory wynds, and its habit of intramural
interment and intramural slaughter-houses, all which, even the Latin
cities of two thousand years ago, taught by hotter summers, had outgrown.
In the tepid temperature and light but even rain-fall in England these
worked few ills until the middle of this century. Under our torrid
summer, our tropical rain-fall, and our swift changes, all these things
meant disease and death, and the unconscious problem which faced the city
a century ago and left its mark on the map was recorded in yellow fever,
born of water-supply and filth together with overcrowding, and all the
evils of bad water and overcrowding.
Water-works were at last built, the most considerable then known, their
site where the Public Buildings stand and their picture in the Historical
Society; a systematic street scavenging began, building on the back of
lots was prohibited, years before New York, and two generations before
the European city; a fixed yardage, small, but sufficient to transform
the city map, was required of each dwelling; paving and sewerage
commenced, the almshouse was moved, a city hospital was established,
and a most important legal decision made easy the purchase of house
lots by the poor and frugal. The solution was not complete. Typhoid
lurks where yellow fever once raged, but crowding was prevented and
the city has no slums in the region outside of the area which has been
built over since the ordinances of the first twenty to thirty years of
this century stopped overcrowding and saved its poorer citizens from
the awful fate inflicted by the titled avarice and civic mislegislation
of London and Glasgow. Nor ought any one to look across the Schuylkill
from the Zoölogical Garden at the lovely and related group which houses
the Fairmount Water-works without a thrill of pride that this was the
beginning of the problem of preserving health in heat and rain, which
since the world began had meant pestilence to the city in like climes.
As is the American habit, the supply looked first to quantity, and later
to quality; and as is also the American habit, both will be secured in
the end. So the large provision for the almshouse of seventy years ago
has given the space for the University and its buildings, its cognate
institutions, hospitals and museums, taken collectively, one of the most
liberal grants made by any modern city to the work of higher education
not under its own control, a grant which owed its initiative and early
success to Dr. William Pepper, whose statue overlooks the site he secured
to learning and to science. There the University has grown, covered its
site with a score of buildings, added department to department, doubled
its students in a decade, received more in gifts under its present
Provost, Mr. Charles C. Harrison, than had come to it in all the
century and a half of its history, knit the community to it and given it
intellectual leadership by a group of affiliated societies, linked itself
to the public schools by municipal scholarships supported by the city,
opened courses for teachers, spread its lectures over the State and in
all ways made itself not only an institution of learning for students,
but of teaching for the community.
[Illustration: DR. WILLIAM PEPPER.]
[Illustration: FRANK THOMSON.]
The development of civic institutions in the first quarter of the century
was accompanied by the founding, each to-day housed in conspicuous
recent edifices of the past decade, of State-aided institutions for
the Deaf and Dumb, 1820, for the Blind, 1833, and the House of Refuge,
1828. This philanthropic impulse came, as such generally does, as part
of a rapid material development which, in a score of years ending
with the commercial crash of 1837-39, had laid the foundations of the
manufacturing activity and the internal commerce of Philadelphia. It was
in this period that the Music Fund Hall (1824), Eighth above South, was
built. The Exchange, 1832, the most pretentious building of its day, was
erected near the close of the period, and the pillared row, following a
London model, was built on Spruce between Ninth and Tenth, the largest
and most costly private dwellings of its day. The next Colonnade row,
nearly twenty years later, occupied the site, and gave the name to the
Colonnade Hotel, Fifteenth and Chestnut. St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s
stood for opposite extremes of the church edifices of the forties. The
taste of the Federalists and Whigs of the day filled the city with the
pseudo-classic, from which Europe was just departing—the United States
bank, now the Custom-house, the Mint, the building in which Girard had
his bank, back of the Exchange, and lastly Girard College, not easily
forgot, however unfit for its purpose, if once seen from St. George’s
hill on its airy height. The ship-building firm of Cramps was established
1830, and Baldwin’s Locomotive Works 1837, both products of the same
period of activity. Ten years later began the Pennsylvania railroad
comparable to a kingdom in revenue power and the ability of chiefs like
Frank Thomson. The city flowed across Broad Street, and solid blocks
pushed their way in brick and white marble, turning later to New York’s
brown-stone, up each flank of the city on Pine and on Arch, spreading
out in an area beyond Broad Street, which the crash of credit, and the
failure of the State for a season to pay the interest on its bonds, left
tenantless, often roofless, covered with mortgages and the prediction,
heard first under Governor Keith, 1725, repeated within this decade, that
the city would never need the houses which a boom had erected.
The city of the period before the war had now been built and the suburbs
had grown close to the consolidation of 1854. Railroad access had
created, across the Schuylkill, the village of Mantua, which was to
become West Philadelphia as it extended southward and was reached by new
bridges and street-car lines. To the north, just beyond the old British
redoubts, factory owners, managers and foremen, mechanics and operatives,
with the retailers they required, had built their homes on the higher
ground, north of the great industries growing on the low and lightly
taxed land, easily accessible by railroads from the coal-fields, beyond
the old city limits at Vine, and extending to Callowhill and beyond. This
created the city of Spring Garden. The river settlements, the Northern
Liberties, Kensington, Richmond, grew under the triple influence of
manufacturers and cheap coal, out of the villages whose farm-houses,
taverns and mechanics’ dwellings of the early years of the century still
dot the raw newer dwellings of the past forty years. Like settlements had
grown in Southwark and Manayunk. The gaps and sutures still remain to
mark the old divisions. The squalid stretches of South Street from river
to river, for nearly a century the resort of cheap stores which sought
city trade, and avoided city taxes. The like ragged selvedge along Vine,
influenced, too, along much of the line by low, open ground. The gap
fringing both banks of the Schuylkill, marking days when the railroad and
the Market Street bridge made the more distant uprise of Fortieth Street
more accessible than the lower region nearer. The bare and vacant patches
about Germantown Junction, over which the old village has never quite
grown down to meet the approaching city, where for various reasons of
grade, access was not easy, and where institutions like Girard College
and the Penitentiary, with a cemetery or two, like rocks in a moving
stream, have stopped and divided the glacier-like spread of the city.
These things have made Philadelphia, like London, a city of accretions
from divers centres, and not, like Paris or New York, a steady,
symmetrical and continuous growth from one organic centre.
The war found a city which, united, had more than the area of London
(Philadelphia, 82,807 acres; London, 74,692), and at almost every stage
of the growth of the two a quarter of the population of the vaster
metropolis. Since room is the chief factor in civic comfort, there has
never been a year in which the average man has not been just about four
times as comfortable in Philadelphia as in London, and he has always had
higher wages by a quarter to a half, paid less for food and lodgings,
and paid more for clothing, light and coal. He has lived here, a family
to a house, where a quarter of London has been a family to two rooms.
Most of all, for twenty years past has this growth of the small houses
of labor gone on, their number swelling faster than the tale of families
seeking them. These conditions, secured by a wise civic policy early
in the century, had reached the full development, which they have since
maintained, at the opening of the war. Inexpressibly dull was the
extension the city now made, the dreary reaches of homes, which oppress
the stranger west of Eleventh Street, and appear in unvarying blocks on
the North and South Streets, the building operations of the ’40s and
’50s, in whose even rows were the last, worst expression of the dull,
utilitarian spirit of the pre-war, pre-centennial period. Napoleon LeBrun
built the Cathedral and the Academy of Music, a brick shell holding a
shapely and grandiose interior, and Walton and McArthur added to the
pseudo-classic. When the Jayne Block went up on Chestnut, east of Third,
it was believed to be the largest single business building yet erected
on the continent. The Girard, 1852, was one of its largest hotels, and
echoed the Italian palace front which Barry had taught London in his
Reform Club.
[Illustration: THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
STATE HOUSE, PHILADELPHIA.]
The development in manufactures after the war, railroad expansion and
the somewhat deceptive prosperity of the Centennial gave the city the
same sudden burst which Chicago had in 1893, and Philadelphia took on
the aspect in the next twenty years, 1876 to 1896, which the great city
will always hold. Cheap freights poured in new building-stones, and the
easily worked green serpentine was used in the University buildings and
the Academy of Natural Science on Logan Square. It was employed in the
Academy of Fine Arts, less agreeable than the earlier front of the same
institution, now a theatre on Chestnut. The architectural impulse first
felt at the Centennial broke up the traditions of a century, and building
of the last twenty-five years, often _bizarre_, always shows, even in the
humblest row, intent, design and recognition, however uncouth, of the
just claim of decoration.
The seeing eye and loving can still trace all these changes of a century.
The very kernel of the city, and its warehouses about Dock Square,
and the river front, the expansion before the Revolution, the pause
just after, the growth in the period after 1787, the addition early
in the century and the great growth before and after the war and for
twenty years past. Each has its character and quality, its message and
purport, and these as they extended have met a growth as distinct and
recognizable, north, west and south. The marks of these things and their
metes and bounds, the current and course of population, the monuments
of the past, the changing fashion of each decade and the desire of the
present, these are all written in this moving tide of houses which has
flooded all the wood-grown fields of two centuries ago. Generation by
generation has seen a wider comfort, a higher level of life, an improving
education and more abundant resource for the Many for whom this city
has always existed. Dull, sordid, narrow, much of this life has been.
From its dawn, it has had its seasons of stagnant corruption, and Penn
but wrote the despair of all who have served it since, yet no man has
labored and lived in it but has come to know its charm, to feel its life,
to trust to the sure tides of its being, welling always towards a more
complete comfort, and to love this vast amorphous city which broods over
its children with a perpetual home nurture.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA.]
[Illustration]
WILMINGTON
“Her mingled streams of Swedish, Dutch and English blood.”
BY E. N. VALLANDIGHAM
When the adventurous William Usselinx, native of Antwerp and merchant of
Stockholm, was growing old, he proposed to King Gustavus Adolphus that
Sweden organize a trading company to operate in Asia, Africa, America,
and Terra Magellanica. The King lent ear to Usselinx, and Usselinx
was able to picture to the Swedish people the beauty and fertility
of the region bordering on the Delaware, “a fine land, in which all
the necessaries and comforts of life are to be enjoyed in overflowing
abundance.” The proposed plans sped well for a time; the King pledged
a great sum from the royal treasury in aid of the new company, and the
Swedish people, nobles and commons, subscribed to the stock. But the
King was shortly to be busied in the wars of Germany, and when he died at
his great victory of Lützen, the plans of Usselinx were yet unexecuted.
One biographer of Gustavus, indeed, says that the little fleet intended
for America was seized by the Spaniards, but it is by no means certain
that such a fleet ever set sail.
Queen Christina, the daughter of Gustavus, permitted her able chancellor,
Oxenstiern, to revive the charter of Usselinx, and Oxenstiern employed
to take out a Swedish colony to the Delaware probably the fittest man
in all the world for that task, Peter Minuet, sometime Governor of New
Netherlands, driven from his post by the jealous factors that they
might put in his place the more pliant Walter Van Twiller, surnamed the
Doubter. The exact date of Minuet’s expedition is unknown, but Kieft,
who succeeded Van Twiller in the Governorship of New Netherlands, made
protest in May, 1638, against the presence upon the Delaware of Peter
Minuet, “who stylest thyself commander in the service of her Majesty the
Queen of Sweden.” Kieft warned Peter “that the whole South River [the
Delaware] of the New Netherlands, both the upper and the lower, has been
our property for many years, occupied by our forts, and sealed by our
blood.”
When Kieft’s protest reached the newly arrived Swedes, they were already
in snug quarters on the edge of the River Minquas, as the Indians called
it, or Christina, as the newcomers named it (set down on modern maps as
Christiana, but in the mouths of those that navigate its waters, called
Christeen); for they had sailed up the Delaware in the _Bird Grip_, or
_Griffin_, and the _Key of Calmar_, and entering the Minquas, had come to
anchor in deep water close against a natural wharf of rock, well within
the present limits of Wilmington. Thus was made the true beginning of
the city, though no part of the region it now occupies bore the name of
Wilmington until a full century later.
The newcomers built close to their original place of anchorage a little
fort, and behind it a little village. Hudde, the Dutch commander at
Fort Nassau, thirty miles up the Delaware, describing the Swedish
fortification seven years later, says that it was “nearly encircled
by a marsh, except on the northwest side, where it can be approached
by land.” The fort was then and for years afterward, the only place
of worship in the immediate region, and here from the founding of the
colony the Rev. Reorus Torkillius, a Swedish clergyman of Latinized name,
conducted the Lutheran service in the Swedish language. Thus church and
state were planted together. Pastor Campanius, who came five years after
Torkillius, found that beside Fort Christina had sprung up the village of
Christina Harbor, or Christinaham, and Engineer Lindstrom, who came when
the settlement was not yet twenty years old, has left us a map of this
earliest Wilmington.
[Illustration: PLAN OF CHRISTINA FORT, 1655.]
Before the Dutch had time to call the Swedish intruders to a reckoning
Minuet died, and John Prinz was sent out as Governor. There had been the
short intervening reign of Peter Hollendare. Prinz came under a cloud,
having lost his rank as First Lieutenant by his over-hasty surrender
of Chemnitz. Probably this fact may account for his restless energy as
Governor of New Sweden. He sought to regain in the new world repute lost
in the old. Prinz came with two ships, an armed transport, munitions of
war, troops, and many immigrants, and with instructions to maintain and
promote piety and education, to develop the resources of the colony,
agricultural and mineral, to make friends with the Indians, and to live
at peace with all neighboring Europeans. But he was to resent by force
of arms, if need be, the pretensions of the Dutch to any territorial or
other rights upon the west side of the Delaware.
Prinz built at Tinicum, or Tenacong as the Indians called it, near the
present city of Chester, Pennsylvania, a fort to threaten the Dutch
Fort Nassau, above; and likewise at the mouth of Salem Creek, on the
Jersey shore, where the English had a small settlement, he built Fort
Elfsborg, or Elsinborough. Both were promptly armed and garrisoned. He
built still another fort, this time on the Schuylkill, within gunshot
of its mouth, and in 1646 he ordered a Dutch trading-vessel from that
river. Furthermore, he caused to be torn down with despiteful words the
arms of the Dutch, set up in sign of possession upon the present site
of Philadelphia, and when reminded of the Dutch West India Company’s
prior claim, he profanely answered that although Satan was the earliest
possessor of hell, doubtless he sometimes welcomed new comers.
But a day of reckoning was speedily to come, for Peter Stuyvesant,
Governor of the New Netherlands, moved by the amazing activity of Prinz,
bought from the Indians all the west side of the Delaware from Minquas
Creek to Bompties (or Bombay) Hook, and in 1651, as some say,—before the
building of Elfsborg as others say,—built Fort Casimir at Sand Huken, now
Newcastle, on the Delaware, five miles below Fort Christina, and within
sight of Elfsborg. Whichever fort was built first, it is pretty certain
that the Swedes soon deserted Elfsborg, after naming it in disgust
Myggenborg, which means Fort Mosquito. The excuse for the desertion was
the insupportable insect pests of the region; so early did the New Jersey
mosquito earn the reputation that clings to him even to this day. As for
Prinz, alarmed at the activity of the Dutch, he vainly petitioned the
home government for aid, and at length went off to Europe, leaving as
deputy his son-in-law, John Pappegoja.
And now the comedy of outflanking was to be followed by the comedy of
bloodless capture and recapture, for Prinz had not been long gone when
there arrived in the Delaware from Sweden, in the man-of-war _Eagle_,
John Claudius Rising, as commissary and counsellor to the Governor, and
Peter Lindstrom, military engineer, together with arms and soldiers. The
Dutch at Fort Casimir were living in unsuspicious peace when the _Eagle_
suddenly appeared before the fort and demanded that the place surrender,
as occupying Swedish ground. Rising enforced his demand by landing thirty
soldiers, and the Dutch yielded upon favorable terms which secured to
them all their property, public and private, and granted as well the
honors of war. As the capture was made on Trinity Sunday, the name of the
place was changed by the Swedes to Trefalldigheet, or Fort Trinity. This
incident, which befell in the year 1655, is notable as the first passage
at arms, if such it may be called, between rival European claimants to
the western shore of the Delaware.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF THE LATE THOMAS F. BAYARD.]
But Rising’s prompt policy of aggression was a mistake, for it left
the Dutch no alternative but counter-aggression; and accordingly Peter
Stuyvesant, with seven ships and six hundred or seven hundred men,
appeared before the deserted Elfsborg late in August, 1655, captured a
few straggling Swedes ashore, endured the mosquitoes for one night only,
and next day, having landed a force north of Fort Trinity to cut it off
from Fort Christina, demanded that the garrison surrender. Swen Schute,
the Swedish commander, despite a name that ought to have been formidable
in war, was as obligingly prompt in compliance as the Dutch commander had
been a few months earlier. There was, as before, a friendly arrangement
as to the guaranty of property, public and private, but Swen Schute never
dared return to Sweden lest he be brought to book for his alacrity in
surrendering.
Now came the taking of Fort Christina, immortalized by Washington
Irving’s genius of burlesque. Rising, aware of his weakness, professed
to believe that the Dutch had no further hostile intent, but when
they invested Fort Christina on three sides, planted cannon, and
called for the surrender of the place in forty-eight hours, he first
temporized, then put on a bold face, and finally, without striking a
blow, surrendered. So ended Swedish rule in Delaware, and so began the
short-lived Dutch supremacy.
The Dutch guaranteed to the vanquished religious liberty and all other
reasonable privileges, so that few Swedes took the chance afforded
of selling their property and removing out of the jurisdiction. The
Swedes, indeed, were soon reconciled to Dutch rule, and in fact the
colony remained, in all save politics, as truly Swedish as it had been
before. The Dutch children learned the Swedish tongue, and as the Swedes
far outnumbered the Dutch, the latter were soon lost in the mass of
the former. When a nephew of Prinz visited the country, late in the
seventeenth century, he found that the people “used the old Swedish way
in all things.” Pastor Rudman wrote home to Sweden that the mother tongue
was still spoken in all its purity by the colonists at Christinaham, and
as a matter of fact it did not entirely cease to be used in the services
of the Swedish church until more than a century and a quarter had elapsed.
[Illustration: OLD SWEDES CHURCH.]
Luckily for the Swedes they were too busy to trouble themselves about a
change of masters, and when the agents of James, Duke of York, having
possessed themselves of New Amsterdam in 1664, after Charles I. had
magnificently given to James all the country between the Connecticut and
the east bank of the Delaware, also seized New Sweden as a dependency of
New Netherlands, the good folk at Christinaham accepted the new situation
and went about their business. The attempted rebellion of Königsmark,
“the Long Finn,” who called himself a son of General Count William Von
Königsmark, and the historical interlude of the Dutch occupation in 1673
and 1674, when the forts changed hands, in the usual bloodless fashion,
twice in a few months, did not profoundly shake the community on the
Minquas. The second surrender left the English in secure possession.
In the midst of this apparent indifference to governmental changes, one
thing did move the Swedes, and was doubtless in part responsible for the
welcome they gave the return of the Dutch: this was a tariff imposed by
the English rulers upon all inward-bound merchandise passing the capes of
the Delaware. At this juncture there came to the rescue the best friend
the Swedes had yet found in the new world, a man so wise and just in
his dealing with civilized man and savage on this side the Atlantic, so
generous, tolerant, large-minded and large-hearted in all that concerned
the great powers entrusted to him, that one can hardly understand how
even so audacious an iconoclast as Macaulay had the hardihood to assail
his memory. This man was William Penn, who, having recently become
trustee for Quaker estates in West Jersey, made prompt protest against
the tariff and had it revoked—an early triumph for the principle of no
taxation without representation.
When, soon after, he became proprietor of the “Three Counties on the
Delaware,” the Swedes of Christinaham and the region round about knew him
and were glad. Penn had an equally good opinion of the Swedes, for he
says:
“As they are a proper people, and strong of body, so they have
fine children, and almost every house full. It is rare to find
one of them without three or four boys and as many girls, some
six, seven and eight sons. And I must do them that right to say
I see few young men more sober and laborious.”
A Swedish writer of about the same period notes that the Swedish farmers
are as well clad as the residents of cities. Penn describes the houses
in his new possessions as of a single story and divided into three
apartments. A house and a barn suitable to a colonist might be built for
seventy-five dollars.
[Illustration: REV. ERIC BJORK.]
[Illustration: BISHOP LEE.]
Penn noted, however, that the Swedes were not so well educated as
they should have been, and a few years later they were in such need
of religious instruction, although they had but recently lost their
pastor, that, partly through the representations of the proprietor and
partly through the importunities of the Swedes themselves, the King of
Sweden was induced to send out to Delaware the Rev. Eric Bjork. This
good and energetic man, finding inconveniently situated the Swedish
Lutheran church erected in 1667 at Crane Hook, or Tran Hook, near the
mouth of the Christiana, conceived and executed the plan of building a
new church near the scene of the original Swedish landing at the Rocks.
The new edifice was the Old Swedes of to-day, which celebrated the two
hundredth anniversary of its dedication on the 28th of last May. This
venerable church, now Holy Trinity of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of
Delaware, is revered and cherished as the one visible link which joins
the city of Wilmington to her earliest past. In the churchyard lie the
dead of many generations, and of almost all denominations. Here, side by
side with the Swedish colonists of the early eighteenth century, lies the
late Bishop Alfred Lee of the Episcopal Church, who in life, as learned
as he was modest, was one of the American Committee for the Revision of
the King James Bible. Here, too, was recently laid to rest, amid many of
his kinsfolk, the late Ambassador Thomas F. Bayard, worn with long and
honorable public service.
Thanks to the late Dr. Horace Burr we have an English translation of the
earliest records of Old Swedes. In these records is contained a curious
account of the difficulties attendant upon the building of the new
church. There were quarrels over the glebe, the usual troubles with the
contractor, and the inevitable changes of plan after the work was under
way. Hired sawyers were paid so much per foot, and “drink.” In order to
save wages the men of the parish came as they found leisure and hewed the
timbers. Masons and other skilled mechanics came from Philadelphia, then
“a clever little town,” and with them came Dick, a negro mortar-mixer.
[Illustration: THOMAS F. BAYARD.]
Notwithstanding the erection of the new church, the community seems to
have grown away from the scene of the original landing, until in 1731
Thomas Willing, son-in-law of Andrew Justison, of Swedish blood, laid
out upon the Christiana front, half a mile from the Rocks, a new town
modelled upon the rectangular plan of Philadelphia. The first house in
Willingstown, built at the corner of Front and Market streets, bore
in its brick gable a stone with the inscription, “J. W. S., 1732.”
Three years later the place was only a small hamlet, but in that year
Willingstown had a new birth, for then William Shipley, a wealthy, well
educated and energetic English Friend of Ridley in Pennsylvania, came
to the place and made himself, so to speak, its second founder. He came
through the influence of his second wife, Elizabeth Lewis, a preacher
of his own sect, who saw in a vision a goodly land lying at the foot
of a hill and traversed by two rivers, one wild and dashing, the other
sluggish and serpentine, and visiting by accident the region of the
Swedish settlement on the Christiana, recognized the landscape of her
vision.
William Shipley built his house—an admirable example of
eighteenth-century brickwork—at the corner of Fourth and Shipley streets,
where it recently gave place to a modern business building. He built,
also, a market-house for the town at the corner of Fourth and Market
streets, and in doing so, paved the way for a quarrel with the partisans
of the Second Street market-house, a body of citizens including many
Swedes.
So potent was the magic of William Shipley’s presence that in four years
the town had reached six hundred inhabitants. Next year it received a
borough charter from Penn, and its name was changed to Wilmington, in
honor of Lord Wilmington, says Ebeling, the German historian. It was
a tight little borough, the Wilmington of that day and of fifteen or
twenty years later. The burgesses, who at first met about in taverns,
at length were comfortably housed in a neat little Town Hall built upon
arches over one end of the Second Street market. There were fairs
during most of the eighteenth century; fairs to which hundreds came in
holiday attire and dancing shoes to make merry to the sound of bagpipe,
flute, fiddle and trombone. It is significant of grave Quaker austerity,
perhaps, that the fairs were suppressed by act of Legislature in 1785, as
nurseries of vice, a scandal to religion, and an offence to well ordered
persons. There may have been some excuse for this severity, for indeed
with the coming of the English had come something of the brutality of
eighteenth-century English manners. Bullies fought naked to the waist
in the market-place, and hired ruffians nearly cut down the posts that
supported William Shipley’s market-house. The most picturesque modern
survival of Wilmington in the eighteenth century is the King Street
open-air market, and with it remains the statute against forestalling,
made to meet the case of some early monopolist.
[Illustration: SHIPLEY BUILDING.]
Wilmington’s Quaker peace was little disturbed by echoes of European wars
in the eighteenth century, though in 1741 the Christiana was fortified
against possible Spanish pirates; but when the war of the Revolution
came, Wilmington was loyal and ready. Old folk still preserve the
tradition of Washington’s presence in the city just before the battle of
the Brandywine, of his gay French officers in the sober house of a Quaker
citizen, of President John McKinly’s capture at midnight by a detachment
of British sent in after the battle, of the British wounded crowding the
houses of citizens and probably saving the town from bombardment by
British ships of war in the Delaware. Tradition recalls, too, the visit
of Washington in his hour of victory, when he journeyed homeward to Mount
Vernon, of his other visit on his journey northward to be inaugurated
as President at New York, and of still another visit in 1791, when he
made his famous progress through the country. On that last visit, riding
in his chariot of state through little Brandywine village, opposite
Wilmington, on the left bank of the Brandywine, he stopped at the house
of miller Joseph Tatnall, to learn that he was at the mill, and then,
with those great strides of his, walked through the village street to
the edge of the stream, entered the mill, and talked with the courageous
patriot Quaker of his services to the army during the war.
[Illustration: OLD FRIENDS’ MEETING-HOUSE.]
By this time the borough had travelled far from the crudity of Swedish
days and had even departed somewhat from the severity of Quaker
tradition. There were French emigrants from the black terror in Santo
Domingo, and from the red terror in France. There were soon to be other
French immigrants,—Du Ponts, bringing a mingled flavor of aristocracy,
learning and benevolence, destined to found great factories and to give
patriot soldiers and sailors to the land of their adoption, and yet to
retain even to the fifth generation the Gallic face, and air, and manner.
Wealth and elegance were come to the little community on the Minquas.
Had not Robert Montgomery made the tour of Europe, and did he not for
four months during the plague of yellow fever at Philadelphia entertain
Governor McKean of Pennsylvania? Did not another wealthy citizen
entertain one hundred refugees of the same period? And there was Gunning
Bedford, Jr., _aide-de-camp_ and friend to Washington, inheritor of
his crimson satin Masonic sash, his appointee as first Federal Judge
for the District of Delaware. He and his wife, a Read of distinguished
colonial stock, entertained friend and stranger with splendid hospitality
in the very house in Market Street that had been the headquarters of
Washington’s French officers. The Bedfords were Presbyterians. Gunning
Bedford, Jr., worshipped in the quaint little First Presbyterian Church
in Market Street near Tenth, now reverently preserved and occupied by
the Delaware Historical Society. Hard by in the churchyard you may see
Judge Bedford’s tomb, a low but graceful domed shaft facing the public
street, so that all may read the lesson of civic virtue, and bearing an
inscription that closes thus:
“His form was goodly, his temper amiable,
His manners winning, and his discharge
Of private duties exemplary.
“Reader, may his example stimulate you to improve the
talents—be they five, or two, or one—with which God has
entrusted you.”
Wilmington built her new Town Hall just a century ago last year, and
Friend Joseph Tatnall gave the clock that shone in its tower and told
the hours. The clock went out of use more than thirty years ago, but the
building remains, not altogether spoiled by modern additions, sacred
because of its associations, and testifying to the solidity with which
the city fathers built in the last century.
[Illustration: HOUSE OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY.]
When the City Hall was built Penn’s charter, unamended, still served the
community, and continued to serve until 1809, when it was amended and
the borough limits were enlarged. The town was yet merely a borough when
the War of 1812 came on, and Senator James A. Bayard, the first of four
Bayards to represent Delaware in the United States Senate, helped with
his own hands to build a fort almost upon the site of Fort Christina. A
city charter came in 1832. The mayor was elected for three years by the
city council, and the first mayor chosen was Richard H. Bayard.
Wilmington as the intellectual centre of the State was naturally also
the home of radical thought. Quaker sentiment had sunk deep into the
community. An anti-slavery society was organized early. A great meeting
at the Town Hall in 1820 adopted resolutions against the extension
of slavery into the territories. Sam Townsend, a picturesque and
characteristic figure in the mid-century politics of the State, was
amazed and horrified to find that his brother, home after a week’s visit
to Wilmington, had returned with a tincture of abolitionism. Sam and his
neighbors labored with the erring one, but could not meet his arguments
against holding one’s fellow-men in bondage until Sam bethought him to
deny the humanity of the negro, and thus snatched the brother as a brand
from the burning.
[Illustration: CITY HALL.]
Wilmington was a station on the “underground railroad,” and Thomas
Garrett, a Quaker of Pennsylvanian birth, was the station-master—a man
of prudence but of dauntless courage, who, left penniless at sixty by
reason of a fine imposed upon him for violation of the Fugitive Slave
Law, declared upon the court-house steps in his peculiar lisp: “I did it;
I’m glad I did it; and I’d do it again.” The Civil War came too soon for
him, he said, for he had hoped to help away three thousand slaves, and
had stopped at two thousand seven hundred.
[Illustration: NEWCASTLE COUNTY COURT HOUSE.]
The conflict found Wilmington a little city of rough-cobbled streets, the
metropolis of a small surrounding territory, visited daily by country
folk, who drove twelve or fifteen miles,—came “to town,” as the phrase
went,—and having made their purchases, drove home, whipping in dread past
“Folly Woods,” since the days of Sandy Flash a place of evil reputation.
The firing upon Fort Sumter stirred the community to its depths, and
the city lost no time in sending to the front more than her quota of
volunteers. Flags fluttered out all over the city. Barbers made haste
to add to their poles a third stripe, a blue one, in token of loyalty.
Amid all the enthusiasm it was a time of acrid bitterness, for Delaware
was a border State with citizens holding openly or secretly opinions of
many shades other than that recognized as true blue. There were reported
sullen threats of incendiarism on the part of the disaffected; there were
many arrests of the disloyal, and stubborn but entirely conscientious
men, who would not take the oath of allegiance and were imprisoned or
publicly shamed. It was no time for a nice weighing of motives, and
the fires of the war-time hatreds were nearly a generation in cooling.
The city came out of the war chastened by sorrow and pained by bitter
contention, but ready for a newer and broader life. She has since grown
to 70,000 people. Her boundaries have been extended to the Delaware; her
factories have vastly increased in volume and variety. Miles of territory
have been covered with new homes. Water-works, sewers and parks have been
created. New Castle, the old Dutch capital of New Amstel, has yielded up
the court-house to Wilmington, but has held on to the whipping-post,
as perhaps not quite in keeping with the modern mood of the city. But
in spite of growth and change the old Quaker spirit, the ineradicable
instinct of sobriety and decency, remains along with the Swedish and
Dutch names two and a half centuries ago. When the hush of evening falls
upon the city and the crowds have melted from the sidewalks, then in the
dusk of the deserted streets one may easily imagine the distinguished
William Shipley and the gracious Elizabeth, the grin of broad-faced
Dutchmen fresh from the harrowing of Swen Schute, the spectral figures
of tow-haired Swedish farmers, or the grave, black-clad form of Pastor
Torkillius with solemn eyes bent upon wondering peasant lads and lasses.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE CITY OF WILMINGTON.]
[Illustration]
BUFFALO
“THE QUEEN CITY OF THE LAKES”
BY ROWLAND B. MAHANY
Few cities of the United States have a history more picturesque than
Buffalo, or more typical of the forces that have made the Republic
great. At the time of the adoption of the Federal constitution, in
1787, not a single white settler dwelt on the site of what is now the
Queen of the Lakes; and it was not until after the second presidency of
Washington, that Joseph Ellicott, the founder of Buffalo, laid out the
plan of the town, which he called New Amsterdam. Ellicott was a man of
great ability, force and foresight, and with prophetic vision he saw
the future importance of the city, which is now the fourth commercial
entrepôt of the world. He had been the assistant of his brother, Andrew
Ellicott, the first Surveyor General of the United States; and the
two brothers, together with General Washington,—himself an engineer by
profession,—had collaborated with Captain Pierre Charles L’Enfant the
plan of the National Capital. With the beautiful design of Washington
City fresh in his mind, Joseph Ellicott gave to the village of New
Amsterdam a similar system of radiating broad avenues, embracing in the
territory they enclosed rectangular systems of streets. The avenues were
99 feet in width and the streets 66 feet. The surveys were begun in 1798
and completed in 1805. Indirectly, therefore, Buffalo is indebted to
President Washington for some of its topographical features.
[Illustration: JOSEPH ELLICOTT.
FOUNDER OF BUFFALO.]
The early history of the village is not unlike that of most of our
inland cities which have grown from conditions common to the Canadian and
to the western frontier; and differs, perhaps, chiefly in this regard,
that owing to the natural advantages of the town’s situation and its
proximity to the great cataract of Niagara Falls, its annals are rich
with instances of exploration, of war and of romance; for adventure and
enterprise met here at the beginning of the century.
The period when the Mohawks, the Eries, the Hurons, the Tuscaroras, the
Neuters (so called because they were a peaceful tribe) and the Senecas
were the sole possessors of this region was succeeded by the epoch of
the French traders, whose business was in turn absorbed by their Dutch
competitors. These gave way to the alert descendants of New England,
who yielded back again the supremacy to a group of Dutch capitalists,
composing the Holland Land Company, whose first agent was Joseph Ellicott.
The primitive scenery of Buffalo must have been almost incomparable in
its beauty. The wooded hills, the fertile plains, the superb river and
the mighty lake enchanted alike the savage and the civilized beholder.
Even now, when commerce has invaded the loveliness of the prospect by
investing one of the greatest harbors in the world with a fortress of
elevators and crowding it with a forest of masts, artists and tourists
unite in saying that the Buffalo sunsets are not rivalled anywhere save
by those on the Bay of Naples.
In 1806, the first schoolhouse was built on the corner of Swan and
Pearl streets,—the humble pioneer of an educational system that now
embraces sixty modern grammar schools, three collegiate High Schools,
and innumerable independent and private institutions of learning.
Notable among these latter is the Le Couteulx Asylum for the instruction
of the deaf and dumb. This beneficent institution owes its origin to
the liberality of the Le Couteulx family. Louis Stephen Le Couteulx
de Caumont, a Norman-French gentleman of station and culture, was the
founder of the family in Buffalo. He came to New Amsterdam in 1804.
On February 10, 1810, the “Town of Buffaloe” was created by an act of the
legislature. This was the name originally given to the settlement by the
Senecas, and there is little doubt that it was derived from the visits of
the bison to the neighboring salt-licks. However that may be, the village
of New Amsterdam was merged in 1810 into the town of Buffalo.
[Illustration: LAFAYETTE SQUARE.]
With the disappearance of the Dutch appellation of the town, vanished
also the Dutch nomenclature of the streets. Van Staphorst and Willink
Avenues were connected and called Main Street; Stadinzky Avenue, a
name suggestive of the Polish element that later was to swell in such
numbers the population of the city, became Church Street; Niagara Street
succeeded Schimmelpennick Avenue; and Vollenhoven Avenue was changed into
Erie Street.
The origin of some of Buffalo’s thoroughfares is interesting and amusing.
Utica Street was formerly a lane on the old Hodge farm, and led from
the Cold Spring region to the Elmwood Avenue district. The people using
it, however, were very careless about closing the gates, and this so
irritated Mr. Hodge that he locked the gates and closed the lane. An
indignation meeting was called in the little schoolhouse at Cold Spring.
The schoolmaster was the chief speaker, and unless tradition does
violence to his grammar, the principal part of his speech consisted of
the declaration that “them Hodges is maintainin’ a ‘pent-up Uticky.’”
When Mr. Hodge heard of the meeting, he relented and offered to give the
people the lane on condition that the town government would lay out a
street. The offer was accepted and the new thoroughfare was called Utica
Street in commemoration of the schoolmaster’s speech.
The inevitable newspaper appeared on the 3d of October, 1811, when
the Buffalo _Gazette_ issued its first number. The _Gazette_ was the
forerunner of journals which to-day recognize as their only competitors
the Metropolitan press.
On the 26th of June, 1812, the tidings of war with Great Britain reached
Buffalo, and on August 13th the first gun of the struggle is said to
have been fired by the battery at Black Rock, then a rival, now a
suburb, of Buffalo. The excitement was intense; for all recognized that
the growing town, because of its frontier situation, was sure to be
one of the theatres of hostilities. Nor was this a mistaken idea, as
subsequent events proved. Immediately after the declaration of war, the
British soldiers from the Canadian garrison at Fort Erie, directly across
the river from Buffalo, made an incursion, and captured the schooner
_Connecticut_, at anchor in the Buffalo Creek. This humiliation, however,
was more than wiped out by the daring exploit of Lieutenant Jesse D.
Elliott, U. S. N., who, on October 9, 1812, crossed the river, and boldly
attacked two vessels lying under the guns of Fort Erie. One of these, the
_Detroit_, of six guns, had been captured by the British at the surrender
of that town; the other was the _Caledonia_, of two guns. With a loss
of two killed and five wounded, Elliott’s force captured both vessels
and took prisoners, officers and men, to the number of seventy-one.
Forty-seven American prisoners taken by the British at the River Raisin,
were released by Elliott. The _Detroit_ was carried down the stream when
the cables were cut, and ran aground on Squaw Island. The British opened
a lively cannonading from the Canadian shore and attempted to recapture
the vessel, but were driven off by the Americans, who, unable to float
it, burned it to the water’s edge. For his brilliant coup, Lieutenant
Elliott was voted a sword of honor by Congress.
[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF BUFFALO HARBOR.]
One great advantage the British possessed early in the war was their
superiority on the Lakes. The _Queen Charlotte_, of twenty-two guns, the
_Hunter_, of twelve guns, and a small armed schooner patrolled the Erie
coast-line in the neighborhood of Buffalo, and kept the inhabitants of
the region in a constant state of fear and excitement. To remedy this
disadvantage, the Government, in the spring of 1813, sent Captain Oliver
Hazard Perry to fit out a war fleet at Erie, Pennsylvania. He arrived in
Buffalo in March, and thence proceeded to his destination. The Government
had purchased a number of merchant craft, and these he immediately began
converting into men-of-war. Some new vessels also were built. Five
gunboats were fitted out at Buffalo on Scajaquada Creek. On September 10,
1813, Perry, with an inferior force, both in the number of men and guns,
gave battle to the British and captured or destroyed their entire fleet.
This victory was not only the most notable of the war, but is one of the
most conspicuous in our naval history. In the midst of the battle Perry’s
ship was sunk, and he left it in an open boat, and, under the fire of
the enemy, went to another vessel of his fleet, whence he directed the
operations that rendered the battle of Lake Erie an illustrious triumph
for American arms.
In a few months, however, the exultation of Buffalo’s citizens was turned
into mourning through the burning of the town by the British. On the 29th
of December, General Riall, with twelve hundred men, regulars, militia
and Indians, landed below Scajaquada Creek, and owing to the confusion
which prevailed in the councils of the local military commanders,
captured the town with little difficulty. The inhabitants had fled,
and every dwelling, with one or two exceptions, was given over to the
flames. Mrs. St. John and two of her daughters remained to protect their
house, and owing to the chivalry of Colonel Elliott, the commander of
the Indians, neither the ladies nor their household possessions were
molested. Mrs. Joshua Lovejoy, who also remained in her home, where the
Tifft House now stands, was imprudent enough to have an altercation with
the Indians, and was slain by one of them. Her house was burned, and her
dead body with it.
On the withdrawal of the British, the citizens returned from their
flight, bringing back with them such household goods as they had gathered
together on their hasty departure, and forthwith the rebuilding of
Buffalo commenced. The American loss in the engagement preceding the
capture of the town was heavy. Between forty and fifty of our troops were
killed, as many more wounded, and about ninety prisoners were carried
off by the victors. From all these reverses the people of the little
town measurably recovered in the succeeding five or six months. On April
10, 1814, Brigadier-General Winfield Scott came to Buffalo, and shortly
after, Major-General Brown arrived. The preparations for an advance on
the Canadian position were pushed forward as rapidly as possible, and
on July 3d the movement began. Three brigades,—two of regulars, one of
volunteers,—accompanied by a few Indians, crossed the river, and captured
Fort Erie. Thence proceeding down the Canadian bank, they engaged the
enemy at Chippewa on July 5th, and won a decisive victory.
The Americans wore temporary uniforms of gray, and it was in honor of the
conspicuous gallantry displayed by our troops in this conflict that gray
was adopted as the uniform for the West Point cadets.
[Illustration: ST. PAUL’S CHURCH.]
The volunteer brigade was commanded by General Peter B. Porter, for many
years a member of Congress from Erie County, and afterwards Secretary
of War for a brief period under John Quincy Adams. General Porter
distinguished himself also in the battle of Lundy’s Lane, and throughout
the war gained such reputation for valor, skill and eloquence, that to
him has been assigned the credit of being the pioneer in organizing the
volunteer system of the American Army.
During all this war the famous Seneca chief, Red Jacket, took an active
part in behalf of the Americans, and though he had little love for the
white men on either side of the controversy, still his influence was
cast in favor of those who were the neighbors and friends of his people.
Innumerable anecdotes are told of the wisdom, oratory and dignity of the
great sachem, and a later generation has raised in Forest Lawn Cemetery
an imposing statue to his memory.
After the battle of Chippewa, General Riall, the British commander,
retreated to Queenstown, and thence to Fort George, the Americans in
pursuit. The British, however, were reinforced and General Brown decided
to return to Fort Erie. Riall, in turn, pursued. On July 25th the
contending forces met near Lundy’s Lane, and one of the most fiercely
fought battles of the war followed. The conflict began a little before
nightfall, and raged until nearly ten o’clock, when the Americans held
undisputed possession of the field. General Riall and one hundred and
sixty-eight prisoners were captured. Both General Brown and General Scott
were wounded, as was also Captain Worth, afterwards famous in the Mexican
War.
The command of the American forces then devolved upon General Ripley,
who took up his position at Fort Erie and was there besieged by
Lieutenant-General Drummond. On August 3d, the British directed a
savage onslaught against the Fort, but were driven back with loss. They
continued, however, to invest the American position. On September 17th,
General Porter headed an attack on the besieging force, and such was
the gallantry of the American volunteers that the British veterans were
dispersed. General Napier, the English military historian, cites this
sortie as one of the few in all history that at a single stroke compelled
the raising of a siege. The Governor brevetted Porter a major-general,
and Congress voted him a gold medal.
With this exploit at Fort Erie, the War of 1812 was practically over, so
far as the interests of Buffalo were concerned. When the American troops
retired from Fort Erie, they blew it up, and its ruins are one of the
picturesque features of the region about Buffalo.
The commercial greatness of the city is indissolubly associated with the
Erie Canal. In 1807-8 Jesse Hawley of Geneva wrote a series of articles
in the _Ontario Messenger_. In these he advocated the construction of
a grand canal connecting Lake Erie with the Atlantic Ocean. This idea
found favor with Joseph Ellicott, DeWitt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and
Peter B. Porter, and so strong did the sentiment for the project become,
that in 1816 a bill passed the Assembly, directing that the work of
construction be commenced. The Senate, however, decided that additional
surveys should be made. The work of preparation was inaugurated July 14,
1817; and on the 9th of August, 1823, the work of actual construction
began in Erie County by the breaking of ground for the canal, near the
place where is now the Commercial Street bridge in Buffalo. The great
waterway was completed on October 25, 1825, and the first boat, _Seneca
Chief_, started on its voyage from Buffalo to the Hudson. DeWitt
Clinton, then the Governor of the State and chief promoter of the canal,
graced the ceremonies with his presence.
[Illustration: MILLARD FILLMORE.]
In this connection, it is interesting to observe that, in 1819, the
question whether Buffalo or Black Rock should be the western terminus of
the canal was settled in favor of the former through the public spirit
and enterprise of Charles Townsend, Samuel Wilkeson, Oliver Forward
and George Coit. These men gave each a bond of $8,000 for the purpose
of securing a loan of $12,000 from the State to construct a harbor,
the State reserving the right to accept or reject, as it pleased, the
completed work. From this time on, Judge Wilkeson devoted his immense
energies and great executive ability to the interests of Buffalo in
connection with the canal, and to him may justly be ascribed the credit
of being the founder of her lake commerce. It was altogether appropriate,
therefore, that, on the opening of the canal, he should have been given
the honor of pouring into the lake the water brought from the ocean, an
event described as the Wedding of the Atlantic and Lake Erie. It recalled
the marriage in old time of Venice and the Adriatic.
Near where LaSalle, in 1679, built his little sailing vessel, the
_Griffin_, three New York capitalists completed on May 28, 1818, the
first steamboat that plied the waters of Lake Erie. This was fittingly
named, after the Wyandot chieftain, _Walk-in-the-Water_. The little
vessel was lost three years later, but it marked the beginning of steam
navigation on the Lakes—since grown to such perfection as to rival the
navigation of the sea.
The influence of the Erie Canal has been incomparably great, not merely
in the rise of one city, but, in a larger sense, in the development of
the State and the nation. The commercial forces which it generated have
aided in building up the wealth of the Middle West, and the impetus
of the resultant enterprise has finally reached every industry of
the continent. To the canal, more than to any other factor, Buffalo
owes its growth and importance. The little hamlet founded by Joseph
Ellicott now has a population of 390,000. The city’s coal receipts in
1898 were 2,455,191 tons; its lumber receipts, 189,075,938 feet; its
grain receipts, 267,395,434 bushels. It has a harbor enclosed by a new
breakwater nearly four miles in length, and costing over $2,000,000.
The coal interests have constructed the greatest trestles in the world.
Forty-one elevators, with a capacity of 20,920,000 bushels, line the
harbor. There are 3500 manufactories. The park system comprises thousands
of acres, with seventeen miles of park driveways. Twenty-six railroads
enter the city, with 250 passenger trains daily, and have nearly 700
miles of trackage within the city limits. The electric power from Niagara
Falls is delivered at Buffalo in practically unlimited quantities. There
are 24 banks, and 184 churches. The city has 116 miles of street paved
with stone, 6 miles paved with brick, and 225 miles with asphalt, or
more asphalt than any other city in the world, not excepting Paris,
Washington, or London. Two public libraries contain more than 180,000
volumes. In handling flour and wheat, Buffalo is the first city in the
world. Its fresh-fish industry aggregates an annual distribution of
15,000,000 pounds. Buffalo’s horse market is the most important in the
country; and in cattle and hogs, the trade of the city is second only to
that of Chicago. The sheep market is the largest in the United States.
[Illustration: BEACON ON OLD BREAKWATER.]
The climate of Buffalo, with the exception of high winds during certain
portions of the winter, is probably as delightful as that enjoyed by any
city on the globe. In summer, the temperature is nearly always moderate,
and when other cities suffer from extreme heat, the people of Buffalo are
blessed with the conditions common to late summer in other regions.
The residence portion of the city is celebrated for its beauty. The
avenues are wide, the dwellings elegant and commodious, the lawn effects
charming, and the trees superb.
[Illustration: DELAWARE AVENUE, SHOWING BISHOP QUIGLEY’S HOUSE.]
Buffalo is entering upon what might be termed its metropolitan period.
New forces, new ideas, are building splendid superstructures on the
foundations established by the generation now passing away. From the time
of the city’s incorporation, in 1832, the bench and the bar, the medical
and the clerical professions, have been especially rich with the names
of those who have left a lasting impress upon the thought of the city,
the state and the nation. The political life and the business progress
have been dignified by men of intellect and character. Such names as
the Right Reverend Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Protestant Episcopal Bishop
of Western New York; the Right Reverend Stephen Vincent Ryan, Roman
Catholic Bishop of Buffalo; John Ganson, one of the giants of the legal
profession; Millard Fillmore, a former President of the United States;
Doctors George N. Burwell and John Cronyn, cultured physicians of the
old school; William I. Williams, the pioneer of Buffalo’s unrivalled
paved streets; the Reverend Doctor William Shelton, rector of St. Paul’s
Church; the Reverend Doctor John Lord, perhaps the most famous of
Buffalo’s Presbyterian divines; James M. Smith, Justice of the Supreme
Court, recall types of men whose ability, integrity and civic worth would
contribute to advance civilization in any community.
[Illustration: DR. JOHN CRONYN.]
[Illustration: WILLIAM I. WILLIAMS.]
During the Civil War, Buffalo did its patriotic share towards the
preservation of the Union. The names of William F. Rogers, Michael
Wiedrich, James P. McMahon, Daniel D. Bidwell, Edward P. Chapin, John
Wilkeson and William Richardson are cherished by the people of Buffalo
and Erie County as typical of the soldiers who, in regiment after
regiment, enlisted there for the war.
In legislation, also, the city contributed its part to the successful
prosecution of the struggle. On December 30, 1861, Mr. E. G. Spaulding,
member of Congress from Buffalo, introduced the bill which afterwards
became famous as the Legal-Tender Act, whereby the Secretary of the
Treasury was authorized to issue $50,000,000 in Treasury notes, payable
on demand, in denominations of not less than $5, these to be the legal
tender for all debts, public and private, and exchangeable for the bonds
of the Government at par.
Nearly every element of American progress has entered into the growth of
this beautiful city. Its development has been brilliant in enterprise,
luminous in education, rich in romance, splendid in achievement, and
noble in patriotism. In a word, Buffalo has kept pace with the Great
Republic.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE CITY OF BUFFALO.]
[Illustration]
PITTSBURGH
THE INDUSTRIAL CITY
BY SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH
George Washington, the Father of his Country, is equally the Father
of Pittsburgh, for he came thither in November, 1753, and established
the location of the now imperial city by choosing it as the best place
for a fort. Washington was then twenty-one years old. He had by that
time written his precocious one hundred and ten maxims of civility and
good behavior; had declined to be a midshipman in the British Navy; had
made his only sea-voyage to Barbadoes; had surveyed the estates of Lord
Fairfax, going for months into the forest without fear of savage Indians
or wild beasts, and was now a major of Virginia militia. In pursuance
of the claim of Virginia that she owned that part of Pennsylvania in
which Pittsburgh is situated, Washington came there as the agent of
Governor Dinwiddie to treat with the Indians. With an eye alert for the
dangers of the wilderness, and with Christopher Gist beside him, the
young Virginian pushed his cautious way to “The Point” of land where the
confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers forms the Ohio. That,
he declared, with clear military instinct, was the best site for a fort;
and he rejected the promontory two miles below, which the Indians had
recommended for that purpose.
[Illustration: AN EARLY RESIDENT OF PITTSBURGH.
(FROM A STATUE BY T. A. MILLS IN THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM.)]
As early as 1728 a daring hunter or trader found the Indians at the head
waters of the Ohio,—among them the Delawares, Shawanese, Mohicans and
Iroquois,—whither they tracked the bear from their village of Logstown,
seventeen miles down the river. They also employed the country roundabout
as a highway for their march to battle against other tribes, and against
each other. At that time France and England were disputing for the new
continent. France, by right of her discovery of the Mississippi, claimed
all the lands drained by that river and its tributaries,—a contention
which would naturally plant her banner upon the summit of the Alleghany
Mountains.[26] England, on the other hand, claimed everything from
ocean-shore to ocean-shore. This situation produced war, and Pittsburgh
became the strategic key of the great Middle West. The French made early
endeavors to win the allegiance of the Indians, and they felt encouraged
to press their friendly overtures because they usually came among the
red men for trading or exploration, while the English invariably seized
and occupied their lands. In 1731 some French settlers did attempt to
build a group of houses at Pittsburgh, but the Indians compelled them to
go away. The next year the Governor of Pennsylvania summoned two Indian
chiefs from Pittsburgh to say why they had been going to see the French
Governor at Montreal; and they gave answer that he had sent for them
only to express the hope that both English and French traders might meet
at Pittsburgh and carry on trade amicably. The Governor of Pennsylvania
sought to induce the tribes to draw themselves farther east, where they
might be made to feel the hand of authority, but Sassoonan, their chief,
forbade them to stir. An Iroquois chief who joined his entreaties to
those of the Governor was soon afterward killed by some Shawanese braves,
but they were forced to flee into Virginia to escape the vengeance of his
tribe.
Louis Celeron, a French officer, made an exploration of the country
contiguous to Pittsburgh in 1747, and formally enjoined the Governor of
Pennsylvania not to occupy the ground, as France claimed its sovereignty.
A year later the Ohio Company was formed, with a charter ceding an
immense tract of land for sale and development, including Pittsburgh.
This corporation built some storehouses at Logstown to facilitate their
trade with the Indians, which were captured by the French, together with
skins and commodities valued at £20,000; and the purposes of the Company
were never accomplished.
[Illustration: SUN-DIAL USED AT FORT DUQUESNE.]
As soon as Washington’s advice as to the location of the fort was
received, Captain William Trent was dispatched to Pittsburgh with a force
of soldiers and workmen, packhorses and materials, and he began in all
haste to erect a stronghold. The French had already built forts on the
northern lakes, and they now sent Captain Contrecœur down the Allegheny
with one thousand French, Canadians and Indians, and eighteen pieces of
cannon, in a flotilla of sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes. Trent
had planted himself in Pittsburgh on February 17, 1754,—a date important
because it marks the first permanent white settlement there. But his
work had been retarded alike by the small number of his men and the
severity of the winter; and when Contrecœur arrived in April, the young
subaltern who commanded in Trent’s absence surrendered the unfinished
works, and was permitted to march away with his thirty-three men. The
French completed the fort and named it Duquesne, in honor of the Governor
of Canada; and they held possession of it for four years.
Immediately on the loss of this fort, Virginia sent a force under
Washington to retake it. Washington surprised a French detachment near
Great Meadows, and killed their commander, Jumonville. When a larger
expedition came against him, he put up a stockade near the site of
Uniontown, naming it Fort Necessity, which he was compelled to yield on
terms of marching away with the honors of war.
The next year (1755) General Edward Braddock came over with two regiments
of British soldiers, and, after augmenting his force with Colonial troops
and a few Indians, began his fatal march upon Fort Duquesne. Braddock’s
testy disposition, his consuming egotism, his contempt for the Colonial
soldiers and his stubborn adherence to military maxims that were
inapplicable to the warfare of the wilderness alienated the respect and
confidence of the American contingent, robbed him of an easy victory and
cost him his life. Benjamin Franklin had warned him against the imminent
risk of Indian ambuscades, but he had contemptuously replied: “These
savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia;
but upon the King’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible
they should make any impression.” Some of his English staff-officers
urged him to send the rangers in advance and to deploy his Indians as
scouts, but he rejected their prudent suggestions with a sneer. On July
9th his army, comprising twenty-two hundred soldiers and one hundred and
fifty Indians, was marching down the south bank of the Monongahela. The
variant color and fashion of the expedition,—the red-coated regulars,
the blue-coated Americans, the naval detachment, the rangers in
deerskin shirts and leggings, the savages half-naked and befeathered,
the glint of sword and gun in the hot daylight, the long wagon train,
the lumbering cannon, the drove of bullocks, the royal banner and the
Colonial gonfalon,—the pomp and puissance of it all composed a spectacle
of martial splendor unseen in that country before. On the right was the
tranquil river, and on the left the trackless wilderness whence the
startled deer sprang away into a deeper solitude. At noon the expedition
crossed the river and pressed on toward Fort Duquesne, ten miles below,
expectant of victory. What need to send out scouts when the King’s troops
are here? Let young George Washington and the rest urge it all they may;
the thing is beneath the dignity of his Majesty’s General.
But here, when they have crossed, is a level plain, elevated but a
few feet above the surface of the river, extending nearly half a mile
landwards, and then gradually ascending into thickly wooded hills,
with Fort Duquesne beyond. The troops in front had crossed the plain
and plunged into the road through the forest for a hundred feet, when
a heavy discharge of musketry and arrows was poured upon them, which
wrought in them a consternation all the greater because they could
see no foe anywhere. They shot at random, but without effect, while
the hidden enemy kept up an incessant and destructive fire. In this
distressing situation their courage forsook them, and they fell back
into the plain. Braddock rode in among them, and he and his officers
persistently endeavored to rally them, but without success. The Colonial
troops adopted the Indian method, and each man fought for himself behind
a tree. This was forbidden by Braddock, who attempted to form his men
in platoons and columns, making their slaughter inevitable. The French
and Indians, concealed in the ravines and behind trees, kept up a cruel
and deadly fire, until the British soldiers lost all presence of mind
and began to shoot each other and their own officers, and hundreds were
thus slain. The Virginia companies charged gallantly up a hill with a
loss of but three men, but when they reached the summit the British
soldiery, mistaking them for the enemy, fired upon them, killing fifty
out of eighty men. The Colonial troops then resumed the Indian fashion
of fighting from behind trees, which provoked Braddock, who had had five
horses killed under him in three hours, to storm at them and strike
them with his sword. At this moment he was fatally wounded, and many of
his men now fled away from the hopeless action. Washington had had two
horses killed and received three bullets through his coat. Being the only
mounted officer who was not disabled, he drew up the troops still on the
field, directed their retreat, maintaining himself at the rear with great
coolness and courage, and brought away his wounded general. Sixty-four
British and American officers, and nearly one thousand privates, were
killed or wounded in this battle, while the total French and Indian loss
was not over sixty. A few prisoners captured by the Indians were brought
to Pittsburgh and burnt at the stake. Four days after the fight Braddock
died, exclaiming to the last, “Who would have thought it!”
[Illustration: THE EARL OF CHATHAM.
FROM AN OIL PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF
PENNSYLVANIA.]
Despondency seized the English settlers after Braddock’s defeat. But
two years afterward William Pitt became Prime Minister, and he thrilled
the nation with his appeal to protect the Colonies against France and
the savages. His letters inspired the Americans with new hope, and he
promised to send them British troops and to supply their own militia with
arms, ammunition, tents and provisions at the King’s charge. He sent
twelve thousand soldiers from England, which were joined to a Colonial
force aggregating fifty thousand men,—the most formidable army yet seen
in the new world. The plan of campaign embraced three expeditions:
the first against Louisburg, in the island of Cape Breton, which was
successful; the second against Ticonderoga, which succeeded after a
defeat; and the third against Fort Duquesne. General Forbes commanded
this expedition, comprising about seven thousand men. The militia from
Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland was led by Washington. On September
12, 1758, Major Grant, a Highlander, led an advance-guard of 850 men to a
point two miles from the fort, which is still called Grant’s Hill, where
he rashly permitted himself to be surrounded and attacked by the French
and Indians, half his force being killed or wounded, and himself slain.
Washington followed soon after, and opened a road for the advance of the
main body under Forbes. Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, had just been
taken by General Amherst, with the result that supplies for Fort Duquesne
were cut off. When, therefore, the French commandant learned of the
advance of a superior force, having no hope of reinforcements, he blew
up the fort, set fire to the adjacent buildings and drew his garrison
away.
[Illustration: BLOCKHOUSE OF FORT PITT. BUILT IN 1764.]
On Saturday, November 25, 1758, the English took possession of the
place, and on the next day General Forbes wrote to Governor Denny from
“Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburgh, the 26th of November, 1758,” and this
was the first use of that name. On this same Sunday the Rev. Mr. Beatty,
a Presbyterian chaplain, preached a sermon in thanksgiving for the
superiority of British arms,—the first Protestant service in Pittsburgh.
The French had had a Roman Catholic chaplain, Father Baron, during their
occupancy.
The English proceeded to build a new fort about two hundred yards from
the site of Fort Duquesne, which they called Fort Pitt. This stronghold
at Pittsburgh cut off French transportation to the Mississippi by way
of the Ohio River, and the only remaining route, by way of the Great
Lakes, was soon afterward closed by the fall of Fort Niagara. The fall of
Quebec, with the death of the two opposing Generals, Montcalm and Wolfe,
and the capture of Montreal, ended the claims of France to sovereignty in
the new world.
The new fort being found too small, General Stanwix built a second Fort
Pitt, much larger and stronger, designed for a garrison of one thousand
men. The Indians viewed the newcomers with suspicion, but Colonel Henry
Bouquet assured them, with diplomatic tergiversation, that, “We have not
come here to take possession of your country in a hostile manner, as the
French did when they came among you, but to open a large and extensive
trade with you and all other nations of Indians to the westward.” A
redoubt (the “Block-House”) built by Colonel Bouquet in 1764 still
stands, in a very good state of preservation, being cared for by the
Daughters of the American Revolution. The protection of the garrison
naturally attracted a few traders, merchants and pioneers to Pittsburgh,
and a permanent population began to grow.
But the indigenous race continued to resent the extension of white
encroachment; and they formed a secret confederacy under Pontiac, the
renowned Ottawa chief, who planned a simultaneous attack on all the white
frontier posts. This uprising was attended by atrocious cruelties at many
of the points attacked, but we may take note here of the movement only as
it affected Pittsburgh. At the grand council held by the tribes, a bundle
of sticks had been given to every tribe, each bundle containing as many
sticks as there were days intervening before the deadly assault should
begin. One stick was to be drawn from the bundle every day until but one
remained, which was to signal the outbreak for that day. This was the
best calendar the barbarian could devise. At Pittsburgh, a Delaware squaw
who was friendly to the whites had stealthily taken out three of the
sticks, thus precipitating the attack on Fort Pitt three days in advance
of the time appointed.
[Illustration: PLAN OF FORT PITT.]
The last stick was reached on June 22, 1763, and the Delawares and
Shawanese began the assault in the afternoon, under Simon Ecuyer. The
people of Pittsburgh took shelter in the fort, and held out while waiting
for reinforcements. Colonel Bouquet hurried forward a force of five
hundred men, but they were intercepted at Bushy Run, where a bloody
battle was fought. Bouquet had fifty men killed and sixty wounded, but
inflicted a much greater loss on his savage foes, and gained the fort,
relieving the siege. As soon as Bouquet could recruit his command, he
moved down the Ohio, attacked the Indians, liberated some of their
prisoners and taught the red men to respect the power that controlled at
Pittsburgh.
In 1768 the Indians ceded their lands about Pittsburgh to the Colonies,
and civilization was then free to spread over them. In 1774 a land office
was opened in Pittsburgh by Governor Dunmore, and land-warrants were
granted on payment of two shillings and sixpence purchase money, at the
rate of ten pounds per one hundred acres.
With the French out of the country, the Colonies began to feel the
oppression of a British policy which British statesmen and historians
to-day most bitterly denounce. Their opposition to tyranny found its
natural expression in the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775. The fires
of patriotism leapt through the continent, and the little settlement at
Pittsburgh was quickly aflame with the national spirit. On May 16th a
convention was held at Pittsburgh, which resolved that
“This committee have the highest sense of the spirited behavior
of their brethren in New England, and do most cordially
approve of their opposing the invaders of American rights and
privileges to the utmost extreme, and that each member of this
committee, respectively, will animate and encourage their
neighborhood to follow the brave example.”
No foreign soldiers were sent over the mountains to Pittsburgh, but a
more merciless foe, who would attack and harass with remorseless cruelty,
was impressed into the English service, despite the horrified protests
of some of her wisest statesmen. American treaties with the Indians had
no force against the allurements of foreign gold, and under this unholy
alliance men were burnt at the stake, women were carried away, and cabins
were destroyed.
With the aim of regaining the friendship of the Indians, Congress
appointed commissioners who met the tribes at Pittsburgh; and Colonel
George Morgan, Indian agent, writes to John Hancock, November 8, 1776:
“I have the happiness to inform you that the cloud that
threatened to break over us is likely to disperse. The Six
Nations, with the Muncies, Delawares, Shawanese and Mohicans,
who have been assembled here with their principal chiefs
and warriors to the number of 644, have given the strongest
assurance of their determination to preserve inviolate the
peace and neutrality with the United States.”
These amicable expectations were not realized, and General Edward Hand
came to Pittsburgh the next year and planned an expedition against the
Indians. Colonel Broadhead took out Hand’s expedition in the summer and
burnt the Indian towns.
The depreciation of paper currency, or Continental money, had by this
time brought the serious burden of high prices upon the people. The
traders, who demanded apparently exorbitant rates for their goods, were
denounced in public meetings at Pittsburgh as being “now commonly known
by the disgraceful epithet of speculators, of more malignant natures than
the savage Mingoes in the wilderness.” This hardship grew in severity
until the finances were put upon a more stable basis.
By 1781, there were demoralization and mutiny at Fort Pitt, and General
William Irvine was put in command. His firm hand soon restored the
garrison to obedience. The close of the war with Great Britain was
celebrated by the issue of a general order at the fort, November 6, 1781,
requiring all, as a sailor would say, “to splice the main-brace.”[27]
Up to this time the Penn family had held the charter to Pennsylvania; but
as they had maintained a steadfast allegiance to the mother country, the
General Assembly annulled their title, except to allow them to retain
the ownership of various manors throughout the State, embracing half a
million acres.
In order to relieve the people of Pittsburgh from going to Greensburg
to the court-house in their sacred right of suing and being sued, the
General Assembly erected Allegheny County out of parts of Westmoreland
and Washington counties, September 24, 1788. This county originally
comprised, in addition to its present limits, what are now Armstrong,
Beaver, Butler, Crawford, Erie, Mercer, Venango and Warren counties.
The act required that the court-house and jail should be located in
Allegheny (just across the river from Pittsburgh), but as there was no
protection against Indians there, an amendment established Pittsburgh as
the county-seat. The first court was held at Fort Pitt; and the next day
a ducking-stool was erected for the district, at “The Point” in the three
rivers.
In 1785, the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania for the possession
of Pittsburgh was settled by the award of a joint commission in favor of
Pennsylvania.
A writer says that in 1786 Pittsburgh contained thirty-six log houses,
one stone and one frame house and five small stores. Another records
that the population “is almost entirely Scots and Irish, who live in log
houses.” A third says of these log houses, “Now and then one had assumed
the appearance of neatness and comfort.”
[Illustration: PHIPPS CONSERVATORY.]
The first newspaper, the Pittsburgh _Gazette_, was established July 29,
1786. A mail route to Philadelphia, by horseback, was adopted in the same
year. On September 29, 1787, the Legislature granted a charter to the
Pittsburgh Academy, a school that has grown steadily in usefulness and
power, and is now the Western University of Pennsylvania.
In 1791, the Indians became vindictive and dangerous, and General Arthur
St. Clair, with a force of twenty-three hundred men, was sent down the
river to punish them. Neglecting President Washington’s imperative
injunction to avoid a surprise, he led his command into an ambush and
lost half of it in the most disastrous battle with the redskins since
the time of Braddock. In the general alarm that ensued, Fort Pitt being
in a state of decay a new fort was built in Pittsburgh at Ninth and
Tenth streets and Penn Avenue,—a stronghold that included bastions,
blockhouses, barracks, etc., and was named Fort Lafayette. General
Anthony Wayne was then selected to command another expedition against
the savages, and he arrived in Pittsburgh in June, 1792. After drilling
his troops and making preparations for two years, in the course of which
he erected several forts in the West, including Fort Defiance and Fort
Wayne, he fought the Indians and crushed their strength and spirit. On
his return a lasting peace was made with them, and there were no further
raids about Pittsburgh.
The Whiskey Insurrection demands a brief reference. Whiskey is a steady
concomitant of civilization. As soon as the white settlers had planted
themselves securely at Pittsburgh, they made requisition on Philadelphia
for six thousand kegs of flour and three thousand kegs of whiskey—a
disproportion as startling as Falstaff’s intolerable deal of sack to one
half-pennyworth of bread. Congress, in 1791, passed an excise law to
assist in paying the war debt. The measure was very unpopular, and its
operation was forcibly resisted, particularly in Pittsburgh, which was
noted then, as now, for the quantity and quality of its whiskey. There
were distilleries on nearly every stream emptying into the Monongahela.
The time and circumstances made the tax odious. The Revolutionary War had
just closed, the pioneers were in the midst of great Indian troubles,
and money was scarce, of low value and very hard to obtain. The people
of the new country were unused to the exercise of stringent laws. The
progress of the French Revolution encouraged the settlers to account
themselves oppressed by similar tyrannies, against which some of them
persuaded themselves similar resistance should be made. Genêt, the French
demagogue, was sowing sedition everywhere. Lafayette’s participation
in the French Revolution gave it in America, where he was deservedly
beloved, a prestige which it could never have gained for itself.
Distillers who paid the tax were assaulted; some of them were tarred
and feathered; others were taken into the forest and tied to trees;
their houses and barns were burned; their property was carried away or
destroyed. Several thousand insurgents assembled at Braddock’s Field, and
marched on Pittsburgh, where the citizens gave them food and submitted
to a reign of terror. Then President Washington sent an army of fifteen
thousand troops against them, and they melted away, as a mob will ever do
when the strong arm of Government smites it without fear or respect.
[Illustration: THE COAL FLEET.]
Pittsburgh was incorporated a borough in 1794. Her first glassworks was
built in 1797; and both her population and her industries multiplied
until she was made a city in 1816. In 1845 (April 10th), a great fire
destroyed about one third of the total area of the city, including
most of the large business houses and factories, the bridge over the
Monongahela, the large hotel known as the Monongahela House and several
churches;—in all about eleven hundred buildings. The Legislature
appropriated $50,000 for the relief of the sufferers.
In 1877, the municipal government, being, in its personnel, at the moment
incompetent to preserve the fundamental principles on which it was
established, permitted a strike of railroad employees to grow without
restriction as to the observance of law and order until it became an
insurrection. Three million dollars’ worth of property was destroyed by
riot and incendiarism in a few hours. When at last outraged authority
was properly shifted from the supine city chieftains to the indomitable
State itself, it became necessary, before order could be restored, for
troops to fire, with a sacrifice of human life. The lesson was worth all
it cost, and anarchy has never dared to raise its head in the corporation
limits since that time.
[Illustration: CARNEGIE INSTITUTE.]
In 1889, the great flood at Johnstown, accompanied by a frightful
loss of life and destruction of property, touched the common heart of
humanity all over the world. The closeness of Johnstown geographically
made the sorrow at Pittsburgh most poignant and profound. In a few hours
almost the whole population had brought its offerings for the stricken
community, and besides clothing, provisions and every conceivable thing
necessary for relief and comfort, the people of Pittsburgh contributed
$250,000 to restore so far as possible the material portion of the loss.
Pittsburgh has thus passed through many battles, trials, afflictions
and adversities, and has grown in the strength of giants until it now
embraces in the limits of the county a population of over one million.
The tax valuation of her property is $554,000,000. Her share is more than
one half of the whole production in the United States of steel, steel
rails, coke, oil, plate glass, glassware, harness-leather and iron pipe.
She mines one quarter of the bituminous coal of the United States. She
has 2500 mills and factories, with an annual product worth $250,000,000,
and a pay-roll of $75,000,000. Her electric street-railway system
multiplies itself through her streets for 250 miles. Natural-gas fuel
is conveyed into her mills and houses through 1000 miles of iron pipe.
Her output of coke makes one train ten miles long every day throughout
the year. Her tonnage by river and rail exceeds the tonnage by river
and rail of any other city in the world; it is equal to one half the
combined tonnage of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Her rail tonnage
is three times as large as that of New York or Chicago, double that of
London, four times that of Paris, and greater than the combined tonnage
of New York, Boston and Chicago. Two hundred and fifty passenger trains
and six thousand loaded freight-cars run to and from her terminals every
day. Nowhere else in the world is there so large a Bessemer-steel plant,
crucible-steel plant, plate-glass plant, chimney-glass plant, table-glass
plant, air-brake plant, steel-rail plant, cork works, tube works or steel
freight-car works. Her armor sheathes our battleships, as well as those
of Russia and Japan. She equips the navies of the world with projectiles
and range-finders. Her bridges span the rivers of India, China, Egypt
and the Argentine Republic; and her locomotives, rails and bridges are
used on the Siberian railroad. She builds electric railways for Great
Britain and Brazil, and telescopes for Germany and Denmark. Indeed, she
distributes her varied manufactures into the channels of trade all over
the earth.
[Illustration: COURT HOUSE.]
But while these surpassing industries have given Pittsburgh her wealth,
population, supremacy and power, commercial materialism is not the
_ultima thule_ of her people. She has the largest and handsomest
court-house in the world, the crowning architectural triumph of H. H.
Richardson. Her churches and schoolhouses are found in nearly every
block. She spends a quarter of a million annually on her parks,—Schenley
and Highland. She maintains by popular support one of the three symphony
orchestras in America. She has given many famous names to Science,
Literature and Art. Her astronomical observatory is known throughout the
world. Her rich men are often liberal beyond their own needs—particularly
so William Thaw, who spent millions for education and benevolence;
Mrs. Mary Schenley, who has given the city a great park, four hundred
picturesque acres in the very heart of its boundaries; and Henry Phipps,
who erected the largest conservatory for plants and flowers in our
country. There is one other, Andrew Carnegie, whose wise and continuous
use of vast wealth for the public good is nearly beyond human precedent.
Mr. Carnegie has spent many millions on libraries, art galleries and
scientific museums in Pittsburgh alone, and millions more for similar
institutions in other parts of the world. The Carnegie Institute at
Pittsburgh, comprising Art Galleries, Library, Museum and Music Hall, now
in its fourth year, is the rallying-ground of the whole people in their
growing love of æsthetic and spiritual life. Its doors are open all day,
from nine in the morning until ten at night, free to the people. And
the people use it with delight, more than five hundred thousand of them
having thronged its halls in this past year.
Pittsburgh is truly an imperial city.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE CITY.]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Reproduced by permission of Augustus Pruyn, Albany, N. Y.
[2] Reproduced by permission of Dr. Samuel B. Ward, Albany, N. Y.
[3] Reproduced by permission from _King Washington_, by Adelaide Skeel
and William H. Brearley.
[4] From _Book of Newburgh_.
[5] _From Spirit of ’76_.
[6] From _American Patriots_.
[7] Reproduced by permission from _Bowling Green_, by Spencer Trask.
[8] Reproduced by permission from _Bowling Green_, by Spencer Trask.
[9] Reproduced by permission from _The Outlook_.
[10] Reproduced by permission of Lewis C. Vandegrift, Wilmington, Del.
[11] Reproduced by permission of Henry C. Conrad, Wilmington, Del.
[12] Reproduced by permission of Buffalo Historical Society.
[13] Subsequently the river bore the name of North River, to distinguish
it from the Delaware, the South River of Nieu Nederlandt. In fact the
fair stream has been renamed as often as a Parisian street. Albany has
shared the fate of the river.
[14] The Chart illustrating this article is one of a later date.
[15] See page 93, Bradford’s _History of Plimoth Plantation. From the
original manuscript_. Boston, 1898. This original MS. in the above year
was transferred with appropriate ceremonies from the library of the
Archiepiscopal Palace at Fulham to the archives of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts.
[16] The writer is indebted to As-que-sent-wah, a member of the Onondaga
tribe, an authority upon Indian local lore, and well known among white
men as Edward Winslow Paige, for an account of the tradition which fixes
the residence of Hiawatha at Schonowe. Mr. Paige owns the lot at the west
end of Union Street on the bank of the Binnekill, upon which the castle
and residence stood. He points out to the visitor existing traces of the
Indian occupation.
[17] He was drowned in October, 1667, in Lake Champlain, while journeying
to Canada in response to the pressing invitation of the Governor General
to visit him.
[18] Governor Leisler was afterwards unjustly condemned and executed for
high treason; the destruction of Schenectady being one of the charges
against him.
[19] He came again in 1782, when the struggle was practically over.
The authorities and the people did their utmost in his honor. This he
suitably acknowledged in a letter addressed “To the magistrates and
military authorities of the township of Schenectady,” closing in these
words: “May the complete blessings of peace soon reward your arduous
struggle for the freedom and independence of our common country.”
[20] “Ten eynde de Gemeente niet verstroyt werde.”
[21] EPITAPH OF JOSHUA DE KOCKERTHAL, IN BURYING-GROUND AT SAUGERTIES, N.
Y.
Wisse Wandersman Unter diesem Steine Rusht nebst Seiner Sibylla Charlotte
Ein Rechter Wandersman Per Hoch Jeutsehen in Nord America ihr Josua und
der selben an Der Ost and West seite Der Hudson’s River rein Lutherischer
Prediger. Seine erste an Kunft war mit Lrd Lovelace, 1707-8, den 1
Januar. Seine sweite mit Col. Hunter 1710 d. 14 Juny. Seine Englandische
ruc reise unterbrach Seine Seelen Himmelische reise an St. Johannis sage
1719. Regherstu mehr Ku wissen So untersuche in Welaneh thons vaterland,
Wer war de Kockerthal, Wer Harschias, Wer Winchenbuch, B. Berkenmayer, S.
Heurtin, L. Brevort.
MDCCXLII.
Know, Wanderer, under this stone rests beside his Sybilla Charlotte a
right wanderer, the Joshua of the High Dutch in N. America, the pure
Lutheran Preacher of them on the East and West side of the Hudson River.
His first arrival was with Lord Lovelace in 1707, the first of January.
His second with Colonel Hunter, 1710, the fourteenth of June. His voyage
back to England was prevented (literally interrupted) by the voyage of
his soul to Heaven, on St. John’s Day, 1719. Do you wish to know more?
Seek in Melancthon’s fatherland who was Kockerthal, who was Harschias,
who Winchenbuch, B. Berkenmayer, S. Heurtin, L. Brevort.
1742.
[22] On this Glebe site was erected about 1730 the Lutheran Church of the
Palatine Parish by Quassaick. Reverend Michael Christian Knoll, Pastor.
From July 19, 1747, the Reverend Hezekiah Watkins of the Church of
England held services for about twenty-five years.
Erected by Quassaick Chapter, DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
[23]
IN MEMORY OF
REVEREND HEZEKIAH WATKINS
YALE 1737 ORDAINED 1754 IN ENGLAND
SENT HERE BY VEN. SOC. P. G. IN F. P.
FOUNDED THE PARISHES OF
S. DAVID’S, S. ANDREW’S AND S. GEORGE’S
RESIDENT MINISTER AT NEWBURGH
FROM 1752 UNTIL HIS DEATH.
APRIL 10, 1765. AET. 57.
_Tablet in S. George’s Church, Newburgh._
[24]
GEORGE CLINTON
MEMBER OF CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
1775-1777
BRIGADIER-GENERAL CONTINENTAL ARMY
1777
GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
1777-85—1801-4
VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
1804-1812
_Cara Patria Carior Libertas._
Inscription on Clinton Statue in Colden Square, Newburgh. Statue by
Henry Kirke Brown. Presented to the city by the Historical Society of
Newburgh Bay and the Highlands and other citizens. Unveiled on the
119th anniversary of the battles of Forts Clinton and Montgomery in the
Highlands.
[25] The change from Vredryk Flypse to Frederick Philips was
synchronously made—both names being changed at the same time.
[26] The word is commonly spelt thus for the mountains, but
thus—_Allegheny_—for the river, county and city.
[27] “The commissaries will issue a gill of whiskey, extraordinary,
to the non-commissioned officers and privates, upon this joyful
occasion.”—General Irvine’s Order.
[Illustration]
INDEX
A
Abercrombie, General, 30, 51
Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, 332
Ackland, Lady, 64
Adams, John, 266
Adams, Mrs. John, 310
Adams, John Quincy, 380
Albany, W. W. Battershall on, 1-37;
settled by Dutch, 1-9;
captured by English, 9;
incorporated, 10;
English church built, 14;
its frontier position, 15-18;
during the French wars, 18;
convention of 1754, 20;
in the Revolution, 20-23;
becomes the State Capital, 24;
historic survivals in, 24-37;
architecture of, 30-32;
the Capitol described, 32-34
Aldrich, T. B., 205
Allegheny, 414
_Almirante Oquendo_, 244
American Philosophical Society, 310, 318
Amersfoort, 216, 219
Amherst, Lord, 52
Amsterdam, 3, 6
André, John, in New York, 194;
capture of, 158-161
Andros, Edmund, 176
Army, American, volunteer system organized, 380
Arnold, B., at Saratoga, 62;
in Philadelphia, 312;
treason of, 160, 161, 182, 195
Arnold, Matthew, cited, 300
As-que-sent-wah, _see_ E. W. Paige
B
Baldwin’s Locomotive Works, 326
Baltimore, Congress flees to, 272
Barbadoes, Washington’s voyage to, 393
Barclay, Rev. T., quoted, 100
Barnard College, 207
Baron, Father, 407
Bartram, John, and his garden, 312, 314
Battershall, W. W., on Albany, 1-37
Bayard, James A., 360
Bayard, Richard A., 360
Bayard, Thomas F., 350, 351
Beatty, Charles, quoted, 268
Beatty, Rev., preaches first Protestant sermon at Pittsburgh, 407
Bedford, Gunning, 267
Bedford, Gunning, Jr., 358
Beecher, H. W., 247
Beekman Mansion, 195-197
Belcher, Governor J., 252, 257
Bemis Heights, 23, 41, 64
Bennington, battle of, 58
Bertholf, Rev. G., at Tarrytown, 154
Beverwyck, 73, 81
Biddle, Colonel, 122
Bidwell, D. D., 390
Binney, Horace, house of, 318
_Bird Grip_, Swedish vessel, 337
Bjork, Rev. Eric, builds Old Swedes’ Church, 349
Black Rock, battery at, 373, 384
“Block House,” the Pittsburgh, 408
Bloomingdale, absorbed by New York, 188
Blue Anchor, the Swedish tavern, 301
Bordentown, 269
Boston, 181, 188
Boudinot, President, of Princeton, 288
Bouquet, Col. Henry, builds the “Block House,” 407;
defeats Indians, 407-410
Bowles, naval constructor, 244
Bowling Green, 193
Boyle, H., 107
Brackinridge, 269
Bracola, _see_ Brooklyn
Braddock, defeat and death of, 51, 399-404, 416
Braddock’s Field, 418
Bradford, Governor, quoted, 4, 6
Bradford, press of, 306
Brainerd, David, expelled from Yale, 256
Brandt, 56
Brazil, Emperor of, 206
Breuckelen, _see_ Brooklyn
Brewster, E. A., 135
Brinkerhoff, M., 132
Broadhead, Colonel, attacks Indians, 412
Brocklandia, _see_ Brooklyn
Broecke, _see_ Brooklyn
Broeckede, _see_ Brooklyn
Broicklede, _see_ Brooklyn
Bronck, Jonas, 77, 80
Brooklyn, 181, 186, 271;
Harrington Putnam on, 213-249;
Dutch settlement, 213;
Dutch settlers described, 216-220;
first church, 220-222;
British rule, 224-227;
battle of Long Island, 228-240;
the Navy Yard, 242;
Fort Lafayette, 244-248;
modern Brooklyn, 248
Brooklyn Institute, 249
Brown, General, in War of 1812, 378, 380, 381
Brown, H. K., 119, 125, 135
Bryant, Wm. Cullen, 215
Buffalo, Rowland B. Mahany on, 367-391;
founding of, 367;
early history, 368;
incorporated, 370;
strategic position in the War of 1812, 373;
Perry’s victory, 376;
burning of, 377;
battle of Chippewa, 378;
Lundy’s Lane, 380;
unsuccessful siege by the British of Fort Erie, 381;
the Erie Canal, 382-384;
the modern city, 385-391
Burgoyne, surrender at Saratoga, 22, 23, 58-68;
imprisoned at Albany, 28
Burns, Robert, statue of, 36
Burr, Aaron, 28, 204, 205, 254, 259, 267
Burr, Rev. Aaron, 252, 259
Burr, Dr. Horace, 350
Burwell, Dr. G. N., 389
Bushy Run, battle at, 410
C
Cadwalader, in battle of Princeton, 275
_Caledonia_, captured in War of 1812, 374
Campanius, at Fort Christina, 339
Campbell, Douglas, cited, 6
Canada acquired by England, 19
Carnahan, James, 292
Carnegie, Andrew, 424
Carnegie Institute, 424
Carpenters’ Hall, 314
Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 28
Caverley’s statue of Burns, 36
Celeron, Louis, 397
Centennial Exhibition of 1876, 332
Champlain, Samuel, 45
Chapin, E. P., 390
Charles I., 13, 346
Charles II., 175
Chemnitz, surrender of, 339
Cherry Valley, 49
Chippewa, battle of, 378, 380
Christiana, Swedes settle on the, 337;
fortified, 355
Christina, Queen, 336
Christina Harbor, village of, 339
Christinaham, 346, 347
Church, S. H., on Pittsburgh, 393-426
Cincinnatus, Society of, 132
Clark, Abraham, signer, 268
Clinton, DeWitt, 205;
favors Erie Canal, 382, 383
Clinton, General George, at Saratoga, 69;
at Newburgh, 124-126
Clinton, Sir Henry, 194, 229, 236
Clinton, James, 124
Coit, George, 384
Colden, C., 121
Colden, Maria, 122
College Settlement, New York, 208
Colonnade Hotel, Philadelphia, 326
Columbia University, 207, 211
Colve, Captain, 175
Congress, first general American, 94
Congress, Continental, Witherspoon elected to, 265;
flees to Baltimore, 272;
meets in Nassau Hall, 286, 288;
Declaration of Independence, 318;
and the Indians, 412
Congress, U. S., and Whiskey Insurrection, 417
Congress Spring, _see_ Saratoga
_Connecticut_, the, captured in War of 1812, 374
_Constitution_, the, 242
Constitution, U. S., adoption of, 367
Contrecœur, Captain, 399
Convention of 1787, 290
Cooper, J. Fenimore, 29, 110, 157, 205
Cooper Institute, 204
Cornwallis, Lord, 194;
at Brooklyn, 234-237;
at Trenton and Princeton, 271-283
Courcelle, 46
Coxe, Right Reverend A. C., 389
Cramps, shipbuilders, 326
Crane Hook, 349
Cronyn, Dr. John, 389
Crown Point, 40, 54
Curtis, G. W., 141, 205
D
“Daughters of the American Revolution,” 408
Davies, President, of Princeton, 259
de Beauvois, Carel, 222
Declaration of Independence, 265, 270, 318
de Kockerthal, Joshua, 107, 115
Delaware, Washington crossing the, 274
Delaware Historical Society, 358
Denny, Governor, 406
de Rochambeau, Count, 28
de Tracy, Lieutenant-General, 46
_Detroit_, the, captured in War of 1812, 374
Dickens, Charles, 206
Dickinson, John, 264
Dickinson, President, of Princeton, 252, 259
Dinwiddie, Governor, 394
Dongan, Governor, 10
Donop at Princeton, 282
Dordrecht, Synod of, 89
Dort, Synod of, 13
Downing, A. J., 116, 135
Downing, Charles, 135
Drummond, Lieutenant-General, besieges Fort Erie, 381
Duke Alexis, the Grand, 206
Duke of Veragua, 206
Duke of York, 9
Dunham, Carroll, 135
Dunlap, Wm., quoted, 17
Dunmore, Governor, at Pittsburgh, 410
Du Ponts, the, 357
Dutch church, Tarrytown, 152-156
Dutch East India Company, 3
Dutch West India Company, 7, 71, 75, 87, 335, 340
E
Eager, S. W., 135
_Eagle_, the, 341
Ebeling cited, 353
Ecuyer, Simon, 410
Edison, Thomas, 206
Edwards, Jonathan, at Princeton, 254, 256, 259
Elfsborg, 343
Elizabethtown, 252
Ellicott, Andrew, 367
Ellicott, Joseph, founds Buffalo, 367-369, 385;
favors Erie Canal, 382
Elliott, Lieut. J. D., in War of 1812, 374
Ellison house, Newburgh, 122, 126
Ellsworth, Oliver, 254, 291
Elsinborough, 343
Emperor of Brazil, 206
Erie Canal, history of, 104, 186, 382-385
Ettrick house, Newburgh, 128
F
Fairfax, Lord, estates of, 393
Fairmount Water-works, 324
Fall’s house, at Newburgh, 124
Faneuil Hall, 157
Fillmore, Millard, 383, 389
Finley, President, of Princeton, 260
Five Nations, _see_ Indians
Flash, Sandy, 362
Fletcher, Governor, 46
Flypse, Vredryk, _see_ Philips
Forbes, General, 405, 406
Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, 380
Forsythe, Rev. John, 135
Forts: Albany, 9;
Amsterdam, 172;
Ann, 97;
Box, 232;
Carillon, 40;
Casimir, 341;
Christina, 339, 341, 343, 360;
Clinton, 121, 124, 125;
Corkscrew, 232;
Crailo, 30;
Defiance, 232, 233, 417;
Duquesne, 51, 401, 405, 406;
Edward, 41, 58, 97;
Elfsborg, 340, 341;
Erie, 373, 378, 380, 381;
Frederick, 40, 48;
Frontenac, 405;
George, 380;
Greene, 232;
Hamilton, 216, 244;
Hardy, 66;
Hunter, 97;
Johnson, 97;
Lafayette, 244-248, 416;
Lee, 271;
Montgomery, 121, 124, 125;
Nassau, 337, 340;
Necessity, 399;
Niagara, 407;
Orange, 7-9, 12, 73, 75, 80, 83;
Pitt, 407-410, 413, 414, 416;
Putnam, 232, 233, 239;
Schuyler, 97;
Stanwix, 58;
Sterling, 233;
Sumter, 362;
Ticonderoga, 19;
Washington, 271;
Wayne, 417;
William Henry, 18
Fort Stanwix Conference, 53
Forward, Oliver, 384
_Fox’s Journal_, 300, 302
Francis I., 2
Franklin, Benjamin, 20, 28, 99, 205, 307, 400
Franklin Institute, 310
Franklin, William, 265
Fraser at Saratoga, 60-64
Fraunces, Samuel, 184
Fraunces’s Tavern, 184
Frederick, Harold, 29
Freeman’s Farm, 59, 61
Freerman, Rev. B., 95
French and Indian Wars, 16, 46, 50, 91-93
Freneau, 269;
quoted, 175
Frontenac, 46;
and the Schenectady Massacre, 92
Fugitive Slave Law, 362
Fulton, Robert, 185, 206
G
Ganson, John, 389
Garrett, Thomas, 362
Gates, General, displaces Schuyler, 22;
at Saratoga, 57-68, 122
_Gazette, The_, of Buffalo, 373;
of Pittsburgh, 416
Genêt, 418
George II., 17;
portrait of, 282, 287
George III., statue of, in Bowling Green, 194
Germantown in the Revolution, 320
Gibbs’s St. Martin in the Fields, 317
Gilder, J. B., on New York City, 169-211
Gilman, Governor, 69
Girard College, 326
Gist, Christopher, 394
Gowanus, 213, 218, 233;
Canal, 214
Grant, Major, defeat of, 405
Grant, Mrs., of Laggan, 18
Grant’s Hill, fight at, 405
Gravesend settled by English, 222
Gray’s Ferry, Hessians at, 320
Great Britain, wars with, 373-382, 411, 413
Great Meadows, battle at, 399
Greeley, Horace, 205
Green, Ashbel, 292
Greene, Gen. Nathaniel, 122;
plans defensive works for Brooklyn, 232;
in battle of Princeton, 276
Greenwich, New Yorkers at, 188
_Griffin_, La Salle’s vessel, 384
Gustavus Adolphus and Usselinx, 335
H
Hale, Nathan, statue of, 195
_Half Moon_, Hudson’s, 2, 3, 110, 170
Hall, James, 35
Hamilton, Alexander, 205;
marriage of, 28;
political principles of, 180;
in Philadelphia, 320
Hamilton, Governor, 252
Hancock, John, 314, 412
Hand, General, 276, 281, 412
Harlem absorbed by New York, 188
Harrison, Provost C. C., of University of Pennsylvania, 324
Hart, John, Signer, 268
Hasbrouck, Col. J., 121, 127
Hasbrouck House, 126
Hawley, Jesse, and the Erie Canal, 382
Headley, J. T., 111, 135
Helvetius, Madame, 310
Henry, Joseph, 35, 292
Hessians, at Trenton, 270-274;
at Gray’s Ferry, 320
Hiawatha, real story of, 81-83
Hitchcock at battle of Princeton, 281
Hodge, Mr., at Buffalo, 373
Holland Land Company, 369
Holland, laws of, 85;
States-General of, 3, 71, 143
Hollendare, Peter, 339
Holy Trinity church, Wilmington, 350
Hopkins, Stephen, 20
Hopkinson, Francis, Signer, 269
Houdon’s bust of Franklin, 308
Howe, Admiral, 230, 271, 272
Howe, Lord, 194;
at New York, 230, 236;
at Brooklyn, 239
Howe, Lord Viscount, death of, 19, 22, 51
Howells, W. D., 205
Hudde at Fort Nassau, 337
Hudson, Henry, 2, 3, 45, 110, 140, 142, 143, 164
“Hugh Wynne,” 318
Hunter, Governor, 14
I
Independence Hall, 157, 317
Indians in history of Saratoga, 16 _ff._;
of Schenectady, 75-84, 91-93;
of Buffalo, 369;
of Pittsburgh, 394-411, 416
Ingoldsby, Major, 48
Ingoldsby, Richard, 112
Iroquois, _see_ Indians
Irvine, Gen. Wm., 413
Irving, Washington, 9, 30, 81, 110, 161-166, 205, 344;
quoted, 146, 147
J
James, Duke of York, 175, 346
James, Henry, 29
James II., 91
Jamestown, Va., 157
Jay, John, 132, 180, 205
Jefferson, Thomas, writes Declaration of Independence, 265, 318
Jensen, Sally, 122
Jogues, Father, 9, 76
Johnson, Sir John, 97
Johnson, Sir William, 17, 51, 52, 97
Johnstown Flood, 421
Jumel Mansion, 202-204
Jumonville, death of, 399
K
Kalm, 314
Kayadrossera patent, the, 45, 53, 55
Keith, Governor, 327
Kennedy, Colonel, 194
Kennedy House, the, 197
Kidd, Captain, 206
Kieft, Governor, 336, 337
King George’s War, 48
King’s College, 179;
_see_ Columbia College
Kip, Leonard, 29
Kipling, Rudyard, 206
Knickerbocker, Diedrich, 164
Knoll, Rev. M. C., 116
Knox, General, 122
Knox, Lucy, 122
Königsmark, rebellion of, 346
Kosciuszko at Saratoga, 58
Kossuth, Louis, 206
L
_La Dauphine_, Verrazzano’s ship, 2
Lafayette, 28, 206;
at Newburgh, 122, 132;
at Princeton, 292;
in the French Revolution, 418
Lake Erie, battle of, 376
Landon, J. S., on Schenectady, 71-106
Larned at Saratoga, 62
La Salle, 384
Lawrenceville School, 295
Le Brun, Napoleon, 330
Le Couteulx, L. S., founds asylum, 370
Lee, Bishop Alfred, 349, 350
Lee, R. H., 266
Leisler, Jacob, 91, 95, 177, 178
L’Enfant, Capt. P. C., and plan for the National Capital, 368
Lewis, Elizabeth, 352, 365
Lexington, battle of, 20, 228, 411
Li Hung Chang at New York, 206
Lincoln, A., his body brought to New York, 204
Lindstrom, P., Swedish engineer, 339, 341
Livingston, Catherine, 25
Livingston, Chancellor, 197, 205
Livingston, Philip, 25, 30, 36
Logstown and the Ohio Company, 394, 397
London, Philadelphia compared with, 300
Longfellow cited, 29, 83, 314
Long Island, battle of, 229-240
Lord, Rev. Dr. John, 389
Louisburg, expedition against, 405
Lovejoy, Mrs. Joshua, 377
Lovelace, Lord, 107, 175, 176
Low, Seth, Mayor of Brooklyn, 248
Lundy’s Lane, battle of, 380
Luther, Martin, 264
Lutherans, German, at Newburgh, 108-117
Lützen, battle of, 336
Luzerne, French envoy, 288
M
Mabie, H. W., on Tarrytown, 137-167
Maclean, John, 292
Madison, James, 290, 291;
quoted, 267
Mahany, R. B., on Buffalo, 367-391
Maidenhead, skirmish at, 276
_Maine_, the, 244
Manhattan, island of, 75, 80, 142, 169, 213, 214, 219
Manhattanville absorbed by New York, 188
Manning, Captain, 175
Manning, James, 254
Mantua, village of, 327
Marquis Ito, 206
Martin, Luther, 254
Martin, Thomas, Madison to, 267
Mather, Cotton, 221
Mauritius, 3, 7
Mawhood, Colonel, at Princeton, 280
_Mayflower_, the, 4, 5, 110
McCosh, President James, 295
McKean, Governor, 358
McKinly, President John, 355
McMahon, James P., 390
Megapolensis, Domine, 9
Mercer at battle of Princeton, 279-283
_Messenger, The_, of Ontario, 382
Metropolitan Museum, N. Y., 208
Meynders, Birgert, 118, 121
Midwout, 219, 220
Mifflin in battle of Princeton, 275
Miles, Colonel, at Brooklyn, 235
Miller, Rev. John, 10
Minquas River, 337, 357
Minuit, Peter, in New Netherlands, 172, 173, 336
Mischienza, the, 316, 320
Mohawks, _see_ Indians
Monmouth’s Rebellion, 302
Montcalm, death of, 407
Montgomery, Robert, 357
Montreal, 178;
massacre of, 46;
capture of, 407
Moravians come to Philadelphia, 302
Morgan, Gen. Daniel, at Saratoga, 58-62
Morgan, Col. George, to John Hancock, 412
Morris, Gouverneur, 180, 205;
favors Erie Canal, 382
Morris, Robert, 288, 314;
in the Trenton campaign, 275;
house, 320
Morristown, 285;
Washington marches to, 283
Morse, S. F. B., 35, 206
Morven, 265, 271, 273
Moses, Rhind’s statue of, 36
Mount McGregor, 46, 48
Music Fund Hall, Philadelphia, 325
Myggenborg, _see_ Elfsborg
N
Napier, General, cited, 381
Nassau Hall, 254, 258, 264, 269, 270, 281, 294, 296
Navy Yard, Brooklyn, 242-244
New Amsterdam, 143, 144, 346;
taken by the English, 175, 224;
name changed to New York, 175, 187, 224;
Buffalo first named, 367, 372
Newburgh, Adelaide Skeel on, 107-135;
the Palatine settlement, 107-117;
the coming of the Scotch and English, 117-121;
in the Revolution, 121-126;
Washington’s stay in, 126;
the Nicola letter, 127;
capture of Ettrick, 128-130;
Washington’s address to the unpaid troops, 131;
recent history, 132-135
New Castle, Del., 364
New Netherlands, fur trade in, 71
New Utrecht, 216
New York, 271, 317;
J. B. Gilder on, 169-211;
Dutch settlement, 169-175;
captured by the English, 175;
recaptured by the Dutch, 175;
governorship of Andros, 176;
resumption of Dutch authority, 177;
Leisler’s rule, 177;
in the Revolution, 178-184;
in the War of 1812, 184-186;
in the Civil War, 186;
expansion of, 187-189;
the Tammany Society, 189;
historic survivals in, 190-204;
characteristics of, 204-211
New York Central Railroad, 78
New York University, 207, 211
Niagara, Shirley’s expedition against, 51
Niagara Falls, 369, 386
Nicola, Colonel, letter to Washington, 127, 132
Nicolls, Colonel, at New Amsterdam, 175, 177, 224
Nieu Nederlandt, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9
Niles, Nathaniel, 254
Nott, President E., 105, 106
O
Ohio Company formed, 397
“Old French War,” 96
_Old Jersey_, the ship, 242
Old Swedes’ Church, Wilmington, 350-352
Oxenstiern revives the Usselinx charter, 336
P
Paige, E. W., cited, 83
Paine, Thomas, 205
Palatines, at Newburgh, 108-117;
at Philadelphia, 302
Palmer, the sculptor, 36
Paris, treaty of, 97;
New York compared with, 317
Parker, Judge, 36
Paterson, William, 252, 290
Patton, President, of Princeton, 295
Paulding, J., 160
Paulding, J. K., 110
Penn, John, house of, 312
Penn, Letitia, house of, 304
Penn, William, 333;
founds Philadelphia, 298-307, 316;
grants charter to Wilmington, 353
Penn family’s charter to Pennsylvania annulled, 413
Pennsylvania, charter to, 413;
dispute with Va., 414
Pennsylvania Historical Society, 323
Pennsylvania Hospital, 314
Pepper, Dr. William, services to the University of Pennsylvania, 324
Percy, Lord, at Brooklyn, 236
Perry, Commodore, 376
Philadelphia, Talcott Williams on, 297-334;
geographical site, 297;
early houses, 298;
coming of William Penn, 300-302;
rapid growth of city, 302-317;
in the Revolution, 317-320;
between 1790 and 1820, 320-323;
history of water supply, 323;
the University of Pennsylvania, 324;
the city before the Civil War, 325-329;
modern Philadelphia, 329-334
Philadelphia Library, 306
Philips, Frederick, and his Manor, 145-151
Phipps, Henry, conservatory of, 424
Pilgrims compared with Palatines, 113
Pitt, William, statue of, 194;
befriends colonies, 404
Pittsburgh, S. H. Church on, 393-426;
site determined by Washington, 393;
first permanent settlement, 397;
taken by French, 399;
the Braddock expedition, 399-404;
English take Fort Duquesne and name it Pittsburgh, 406;
Indians attack, 409;
in the Revolution, 411-413;
becomes the county seat, 414;
in the Indian war of 1791, 416;
the Whiskey Insurrection, 417;
incorporated, 418;
the strike of 1877, 420;
industrial importance, 422;
higher life of, 423-426
Plymouth Rock, 6
Poe, Edgar Allan, 205
Polhemus, Rev. Mr., at Brooklyn, 220, 221
Pontiac, confederacy of, 408
Poor at Saratoga, 62
Porter, General P. B., in War of 1812, 378, 381;
favors Erie Canal, 382
Pratt Institute, 248
Prince of Wales, 206
Princess Eulalia, 206
Princeton, W. M. Sloane on, 251-296;
first settlement, 251;
College of New Jersey established at Elizabethtown, 252;
removed to Princeton, 254;
parting from Yale, 254;
early character, 256-260;
Witherspoon and his administration, 260-266;
Revolutionary spirit in, 266-270;
the Trenton campaign, 272;
battle of Princeton, 274-284;
mutinous Continentals at, 285;
Congress meets at, 286;
Washington’s visits to, 287;
contributions to the Convention of 1787, 289-291;
modern Princeton, 291-296
Prinz, John, in New Sweden, 339-342
Pruyn, John V. L., 35, 36
Putnam, at Brooklyn, 234;
at Philadelphia, 272;
at Princeton, 285
Putnam, Gideon, at Saratoga, 69
Putnam, Harrington, on Brooklyn, 213-249
Q
Quassaick, 107, 114, 118, 127, 128
Quebec, capture of, 407
Queen Anne, 108;
gives bell to Lutherans at Newburgh, 115, 117
Queen Anne’s War, 48, 96
_Queen Charlotte_, British war vessel, 375
Queen Charlotte, portrait of, 184
Queen’s Head Tavern, 184
Queenstown in War of 1812, 380
R
Raymond, President, of Union College, 106
Red Jacket in War of 1812, 380
Rensselaerswyck, 8, 28, 73, 80, 81, 87
Revolution, Philadelphia in the, 318
Reynolds, Marcus, quoted, 28
Rhind’s statue of Moses, 36
Riall, General, burns Buffalo, 377;
retreats, 380, 381
Richardson, H. H., 31, 424
Richardson, William, 390
Richmond Hill, 202
Riedesel, Madame, 64, 65
Ripley, General, at Fort Erie, 381
Rising, John Claudius, 341
Rittenhouse, 314;
his observatory, 318
Roe, E. P., 135
Rogers, Wm. F., 390
Romeyn, Domine, 102, 103
Roosevelt, Governor, cited, 178
Ross house, the Betsy, 316
Rudman, Pastor, cited, 345
Ruttenber, E. M., 135
Ryan, Bishop S. V., 389
Ryswyck, peace of, 95
S
St. Augustine, 157
St. Clair, defeat of, 416
St. Francis de Sales, Order of, 28
St. George’s church, Schenectady, 101
St. John, Mrs., 377
St. Luke’s church, Philadelphia, 326
St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia, 326
St. Martin in the Fields, Gibbs’s, 317
St. Paul’s chapel, New York, 201, 202
St. Peter’s church, Albany, 19, 32
Santo Domingo, 357
Saratoga, E. H. Walworth on, 39-69;
site of, 39-42;
the name, 42-44;
French and Indian struggles for site, 45-48;
massacre of old Saratoga, 49;
Seven Years’ War, 50-52;
medicinal value of Saratoga waters discovered, 52;
the Fort Stanwix Conference, 53;
preliminary warfare of the American Revolution, 54-56;
Burgoyne’s defeat and surrender, 56-68;
General Schuyler makes old Saratoga his summer resort, 68;
Gideon Putnam founds the present Saratoga, 69
Sassoonan, 397
Schaets, Rev. Gideon, 89
Schenectady, 16, 29, 46;
J. S. Landon on, 71-106;
settled, 71;
subject to the Dutch West India Company, 71-73;
Arendt Van Curler’s directorship, 75-83;
land purchased from the Indians, 83;
character of the early settlement, 83-87;
under English rule, 87-90;
the first legislative assembly, 90;
government seized by Leisler, 91;
Indian wars, 92-96;
Schenectady in the Revolution, 97-99;
religious history, 100-103;
modern history, 104-106
Schenley, Mary, 424
Schermerhoorn, Symon, 16
Schonowe, 79, 81
Schoonmaker, Domine, 226
Schute, Swen, 343, 365
Schuyler, Elizabeth, marriage of, 28
Schuyler, Margaret, 29
Schuyler, Peter, 12, 46
Schuyler, Philip, shot by Indians, 49
Schuyler, Gen. Philip, 19, 22, 23, 27, 28;
in battle of Saratoga, 58-68;
visits Saratoga Springs, 68
Schuyler, Mrs. Philip, 18
Schuyler Mansion, 27
Schuylerville, 22, 41
Scott, Walter, 162
Scott, Gen. Winfield, in War of 1812, 378, 381
Selyns, Rev. H., at Brooklyn, 221
_Seneca Chief_, first boat on Erie Canal, 382
Seven Years’ War, 50
Seymour, Governor, quoted, 22
Shelton, Rev. Dr. Wm., 389
Sherman, Roger, 291
Shipley, Elizabeth, 365
Shipley, William, at Wilmington, 352, 365
Shirley, expedition of, 51
Six Nations, _see_ Indians
Skeel, Adelaide, on Newburgh, 107-135
Skipper Block, 170
Sleepy Hollow, 147, 164, 167
Sloane, W. M., on Princeton, 251-296
Sloughter, Governor, replaces Leisler, 177
Smith, James M., 390
Smithsonian Institution, 294
Spaulding, E. G., introduces Legal-Tender Act, 391
Spuyten Duyvil Creek, fight at, 170
Squaw Island, the _Detroit_ aground on, 374
Stackpole, Dr., composes Yankee Doodle, 30
Stanhope, Samuel, 292
Stanwix, General, builds second Fort Pitt, 407
Stark, General, 275;
at Fort Edward, 66;
at Princeton, 281
Stedman, E. C., 205
Steuben, 28;
at Newburgh, 132
Stirling, in battle of Long Island, 234-239;
in Trenton campaign, 271
Stockton, Richard, 252, 265, 269
Stoddard, R. H., 205
Stone, Gen. C. P., imprisoned at Fort Lafayette, 245, 246
Strasburg Cathedral, 34
Stuyvesant, Peter, at New Amsterdam, 9, 81, 144, 175-177, 218-221,
248;
buys land west of the Delaware, 340;
captures forts on the Delaware, 343
Suffolk County in the Revolution, 228
Sullivan, General, at Brooklyn, 235-237;
at Princeton, 285
Sunnyside, Washington Irving at, 162, 163
Swedes, on the Delaware, 335-344;
their church at Philadelphia, 301
T
Tammany Hall, history of, 189, 190
Tarrytown, H. W. Mabie on, 137-167;
described, 137-140;
early Dutch settlements, 140-145;
derivation of name, 146;
the Philips Manor-House, 148-150;
the old Dutch church, 150-156;
Tarrytown in the Revolution, 157-160;
capture of John André, 158-161;
Washington Irving, 161-164
Tatnall, Joseph, Washington visits, 357;
gives clock to Wilmington, 359
Tawasentha, Vale of, 29
Taylor, Bayard, 205
Tenacong, _see_ Tinicum
Thackeray, W. M., 206
Thaw, Wm., generosity to Pittsburgh, 424
Thesschenmaecher, Rev. Petrus, 88
Ticonderoga, 19, 40, 51, 54, 233, 405
Tiemann, Mayor, death of, 170
Tifft house, the, 377
Tilden, Samuel J., 205
Tinicum, Prinz’s fort at, 340
Torkillius, Rev. R., at Fort Christina, 338, 365
Townsend, Charles, 384
Townsend, Sam, 361
Tran Hook, _see_ Crane Hook
Treaty of 1783, 289
Trefalldigheet, 343
Trent, Captain Wm., establishes first settlement at Pittsburgh,
397-399
Trenton, battle of, 270-274
Trinity Church, New York, 227
Tryon, Governor, quoted, 56
Tusculum, 271
U
Union College, 102-106
University of Pennsylvania, 324
University Settlement, New York, 208
Usselinx, Wm., and his trading company, 335
Utrecht, 216;
treaty of, 96
V
Vallandigham, E. N., on Wilmington, 335-365
Van Curler, Arendt, at Schenectady, 75-84, 92
Vanderheyden Palace, 30
Van Rensselaer, Killiaen, 8, 75
Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 25
Van Rensselaer Island, 4
Van Rensselaer Manor-House, 25, 26
Van Slechtenhorst, Brandt, 9
Van Twiller, Walter, 336
Van Wart, Isaac, 160
Van Wyck house, 132
Van Wyck, James, 132
Verplanck house, 131
Verrazzano, 2
Versailles, peace of, 289
Virginia, dispute with Pennsylvania, 414
Vliessingen, _see_ Flushing
Von Königsmark, 346
Von Steuben, _see_ Steuben
W
Waalboght, 213
Wadsworth, Colonel, 122
Wallabout, village of, 224, 233, 242
_Walk-in-the-Water_, first steamboat on Lake Erie, 384
Walworth, E. H., on Saratoga, 39-70
War of 1812, _see_ various chapters
Washington, plan of city, 187, 368
Washington, George, and the site of Pittsburgh, 393;
at Great Meadows, 399;
with Braddock, 404;
opens road to Fort Duquesne, 405;
at Schenectady, 98;
in battle of Long Island, 238-240;
at Trenton and Princeton, 270-290;
at Saratoga, 69;
in New York, 181, 182, 194, 197-202;
at Newburgh, 114, 122, 126-131;
visits Wilmington, 355-358;
instructions to St. Clair, 416;
plan for the National Capital, 367;
quoted, 1, 23, 238
Watkins, Rev. H., 118
Wayne, Anthony, 125, 286, 416
Webb, Captain Thomas, 101
Weigand’s Tavern, Newburgh, 126
Wesley, John, 101
Western University of Pennsylvania, 416
West India Company, 143, 173
West Point, 122, 160, 378
Whiskey Insurrection, 417
Whitefield, George, 256
Whitman, Walt, 205
William and Mary, 91
William III., 177
William IV., 206
Williams, David, 160
Williams, Talcott, on Philadelphia, 297-334
Williams College, 26
Williams house, Newburgh, 122
Williams, William I., 389
Willing, Thomas, founds Wilmington, 352
Willingstown, 352
Willis, N. P., 110, 135
Wilmington, E. N. Vallandigham on, 335-365;
plans of Usselinx, 335;
expedition of Minuit, 336;
settlement on the Christina, 337;
governorship of Prinz, 339;
struggles of the Swedes and Dutch for the Delaware, 341-344;
Dutch rule, 344-346;
English supremacy, 346;
friendly services of Wm. Penn, 346-349;
Old Swedes’ church, 349;
Wilmington laid out, 352;
services of William Shipley, 352;
the earlier city, 353-360;
before and in the Civil War, 360-364;
modern changes, 364
Winthrop, Fitz John, 46
Witherspoon, John, 254, 260-271, 290, 291
Wiedrich, Michael, 390
Wilkeson, Samuel, 384
Wilkeson, John, 390
Worth, Captain, in War of 1812, 381
Wolfe, death of, 19, 52, 407
Wolfert’s Roost, 161
Wyncoop, Gitty, 122
Wyoming Valley, 49
Y
Yale relations with Princeton, 254
Yorktown, 127, 182
Yorkville absorbed by New York, 188
Z
Zoölogical Garden, Philadelphia, 323
Historic Towns of New England
Edited by LYMAN P. POWELL. With introduction by GEORGE P. MORRIS. With
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