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fyxntll ^nmx^ii^ Jibvatg 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 .?j^jB^JOa):»d^.. jN^..W.^a 
 
 .A:2.5l56,fc : iS/lj-U 
 
'*Mc^ 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 OLD NEW YORK 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 OLD NEW YORK 
 
 BY 
 
 ALICE MORSE EARLE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1896 
 
Copyright, 1S98, 
 By Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 SIntijttsitg ^ress: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF COLONIAL DAMES 
 
 OP THE 
 
 STATE OF NEW YORK 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED BY A LOYAL 
 AND LOVING MEMBER 
 
 THE AUTHOR 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This book should perhaps have beett " in- 
 tituled" Colonial Days in New Netherland, 
 for much of the life described herein was in 
 the days of Dutch rule. But it was New 
 Netherland for scarce half a century, and the 
 7iame is half forgotten, though it retnained, 
 both hi outer life and in heart, a Dutch colonic, 
 even when the province was New York and 
 an English governor had control. In New 
 Netherland, as in every place where the Dutch 
 plant a colony, as in South Africa to-day, 
 Dutch ways, Dutch notions, the Dutch t07tgue 
 lingered long. To this day, Dutch injluetice 
 and Dutch traits, as well as Dutch names, 
 are ever present and are a force in New York 
 life. 
 
 Fair and beautiful lay the broad harbor 
 centuries ago before the eyes of Hendrick Hud- 
 son and his sea-weary men; a "pleasant place " 
 was Manhattan ; "'t lange eylandt was the 
 
PREFACE 
 
 pear el of New Nederland ;'''' the noble river, 
 the fertile shores, all seemed to the discoverers 
 and to the early colonists to smile a welcome 
 and a promise of happy homes. Still to-day 
 the bay, the islands, the river, the shores wel- 
 come with the same promise. In grateful 
 thanks for that welcome and for the fulfilment 
 of that promise of old, — for more years of 
 life ifi New York than were spent in my birth- 
 place in New England, — and in warm affec- 
 tion for my many friends of Dutch descent, 
 have I — to use the words of Rabelais — 
 " adjoined these words and testimony for the 
 honour I bear to antiquity." 
 
 ALICE MORSE EARLE. 
 
 Brooklyn Heights, 
 
 September, 1896. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter " 
 
 Page 
 
 I. 
 
 The Life of a Day . 
 
 . . . . I 
 
 II. 
 
 Education and Child- Lif 
 
 E . . . 14 
 
 III. 
 
 Wooing and Wedding . 
 
 . . . . 45 
 
 IV. 
 
 Town Life .... 
 
 . . . . 70 
 
 V. 
 
 Dutch Town Homes . 
 
 . . . . 98 
 
 VI. 
 
 Dutch Farmhouses . . 
 
 ... IIS 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Dutch Larder 
 
 ... 128 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Dutch Vrouws . . 
 
 ... 154 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Colonial Wardrobe 
 
 ... 172 
 
 X. 
 
 Holidays 
 
 . . . i8s 
 
 XI. 
 
 Amusements and Sports . 
 
 . . . 204 
 
 XII. 
 
 Crimes and Punishments . 
 
 ... 227 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Church and Sunday in ( 
 
 Dld New 
 
 
 York 
 
 . . . 261 
 
 XIV. 
 
 "The End of his Days" 
 
 ... 293 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 OLD NEW YORK 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE LIFE OF A DAY 
 
 At the first break of day, every spring and 
 summer morn, the quiet Dutch sleepers in 
 the old colonial town of Albany were roused 
 by three loud blasts of a horn sounded far 
 and wide by a sturdy cow-herd ; and from 
 street and dooryard came in quick answer the 
 jingle-jangle, the klingle-klangle of scores of 
 loud-tongued brass and iron bells which hung 
 from the necks of steady-going hungry Dutch 
 cows who followed the town-herder forth each 
 day to pastures green. 
 
 On the broad town-commons or the fertile 
 river-meadows Uldrick Heyn and his " chosen 
 proper youngster,'' his legally appointed aid, 
 watched faithfully all day long their neigh- 
 bors' cattle ; and as honest herdsmen earned 
 I I 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 well their sea-want and their handsel of butter, 
 dallying not in tavern, and drinking not of 
 wine, as they were sternly forbidden by the 
 schepens, until when early dews were falling 
 they quit their meadow grasses mellow, for 
 "at a quarter of an hour before the sun goes 
 down the cattle shall be delivered at the 
 church." Thence the patient kine slowly 
 wandered or were driven each to her own 
 home-stall, her protecting cow-shed. 
 
 In New Amsterdam the town's cow-herd 
 was Gabriel Carpsey; and when his day's 
 work was done, he walked at sunset through 
 the narrow lanes and streets of the little settle- 
 ment, sounding at each dooryard Gabriel's 
 horn, a warning note of safe return and 
 milking-time. 
 
 Until mid-November did the morning cow- 
 horn waken the burghers and their vrouws at 
 sunrise ; and when with cold winter the horn 
 lay silent, they must have sorely missed their 
 unfailing eye-opener. 
 
 Scarce had the last cow departed in the 
 early morn from her master's dooryard, 
 before there rose in the gray light from each 
 vast-throated chimney throughout the little 
 town a faint line of pale, wavering smoke 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 blown up in increasing puffs with skilful 
 bellows from last night's brands upon the 
 hearth. And quickly the slender line of 
 smoke grew and grew to a great cloud over 
 each steep-roofed house, and soon with the 
 smell of the burning brush and light pine 
 that were coaxing into hot flames the sturdy- 
 oak back and fore logs, were borne forth 
 also appetizing odors of breakfast to greet 
 the early morn, telling of each thrifty hnys- 
 vrouw who within the walls of her cheerful 
 kitchen was cooking a good solid Dutch 
 breakfast for her mann. 
 
 Cans of buttermilk or good beer, brewed 
 perhaps by the patroon, washed down this 
 breakfast of suppawn and rye-bread and 
 grated cheese and sausage or head-cheese; 
 beer there was in plent)', in ankers, even in 
 tuns, in every household. Soon mynheer ^e.A 
 his long pipe with native tobacco, and de- 
 parted with much deliberation of movement ; 
 a sturdy, honest figure, of decent carriage, 
 neatly and soberly and warmly clad, with 
 thrift and prosperity and contentment show- 
 ing in every curve of his too-well-rounded 
 figure. Adown the narrow street he paused 
 to trade in peltries or lumber, if he were 
 3 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 middle-aged and well-to-do ; and were he 
 sturdy and young, he threshed grain on the 
 barn-floor, or ground corn at the windmill, 
 or felled wood on the hillside; or perchance, 
 were he old or young, he fished in the river 
 all day long, — a truly dignified day's work, 
 meet for any sober citizen, one requiring 
 much judgment and ski'l and reflection. 
 
 And as he fished, again he smoked, and 
 ever he smoked. " The Dutch are obstinate 
 and incessant smokers," chronicles the Eng- 
 lish clergyman Wolley, Chaplain of Fort 
 James, New York, in 1678, "whose diet, es- 
 pecially of the boorish sort, being sallets and 
 brawn and very often picked buttermilk, 
 require the use of that herb to keep their 
 phlegm from coagulating and curdling." 
 The word " boorish " was not a term of re- 
 proach, nor was the frequent appellation 
 " Dutch bore," over which some historians of 
 the colony have seen fit to make merry, both 
 boor and bore meaning simply bocr, or farmer. 
 " Knave meant once no more than lad ; villain 
 than peasant; a boor was only a farmer; a 
 varlet was but a serving-man; a churl but a 
 strong fellow." 
 
 What fishing was to the goodman of the 
 4 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 house, knitting was to the goodwife, — a sooth- 
 ing, monotonous occupation, ever at hand, 
 ever welcome, ever useful. Why, the family 
 could scarce be clothed in comfort without 
 these clicking needles ! A goodly supply of 
 well-knit, carefully dyed stockings was the 
 housekeeper's pride; and well they might 
 be, for little were they hidden. The full 
 knee-breeches of father and son displayed 
 above the buckled shoes a long expanse of 
 sturdy hosiery, and the short petticoats of 
 mother and daughter did not hide the scarlet 
 clocks of their own making. From the mo- 
 ment when the farmer gave the fleece of the 
 sheep into the hands of his women-kind, every 
 step of its transformation into stockings (ex- 
 cept the knitting) was so tiresome and tedious 
 that it is wearying even to read of it, — clean- 
 ing, washing, dyeing, carding, greasing, roll- 
 ing, spinning, winding, rinsing, knotting, — 
 truly might the light, tidy, easy knitting seem 
 a pastime. 
 
 The endless round of " domesticall kind of 
 drudgeries that women are put to," as Howell 
 says, would prove a very full list when made 
 out from the life of one of these colonial 
 housewives. It seems to us, of modern 
 5 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 labor-saved and drudgery-void days, a truly 
 overwhelming list; but the Dutch huys- 
 vrouiv did not stagger under the burden, nor 
 shrink from it, nor, indeed, did she deem any 
 of her daily work drudgery. The sense of 
 thrift, of plenty, of capability, of satisfaction, 
 was so strong as to overcome the distaste to 
 the labor of production. 
 
 She had as a recreation, a delight, the 
 care of 
 
 "A garden through whose latticed gates 
 The imprisoned pinks and tulips gazed," 
 
 a trim, stiff little garden, which often graced 
 the narrow front dooryard ; a garden per- 
 haps of a single flower-bed surrounded by 
 aromatic herbs for medicinal and culinary 
 use, but homelike and beloved as such gar- 
 dens ever are, and specially beloved as such 
 gardens are by the Dutch. Many were the 
 tulip bulbs and " coronation " pink roots that 
 had been brought or sent over from Holland, 
 and were affectionately cherished as remind- 
 ers of the far-away Fatherland. The enthu- 
 siastic traveller Van der Donck wrote that by 
 1653 Netherlanders had already blooming in 
 their American garden-borders "white and red 
 6 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 roses, stock roses, cornelian roses, eglantine, 
 jenoffelins, gillyflowers, dififerent varieties of 
 fine tulips, crown-imperials, white lilies, anem- 
 ones, bare-dames, violets, marigolds, summer- 
 sots, clove-trees." Garden-flowers of native 
 growth were " sunflowers, red and yellow 
 lilies, morning-stars, bell-flowers, red and 
 white and yellow maritoffles." I do not know 
 what all these " flower-gentles " were, but 
 surely it was no dull array of blossoms ; nor 
 were their glories dimmed because they 
 opened ever by the side of the homely cab- 
 bages and lettuce, the humble cucumbers and 
 beans, that were equally beloved and tended 
 by the garden-maker. 
 
 And the housewife had her beloved and 
 homelike poultry. Flocks of snowy geese 
 went waddling slowly down the town streets, 
 seeking the water-side ; giving rich promise of 
 fat holiday dinners and plumper and more 
 plentiful feather-beds ; comfortable and thriv- 
 ing looking as geese always are, and ever 
 indicative of prosperous, thrifty homes, 
 they comported well with the pipe-smoking 
 burgher and his knitting hiiys-vrouw and 
 their homelike dwelling. 
 
 There was one element of beauty and 
 7 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 picturesqueness which idealized the little 
 
 town and gave it an added element of life, — 
 
 " Over all and everywhere 
 The sails of windmills sink and soar 
 Like wings of sea-gulls on the shore." 
 
 The beauty of the windmills probably was 
 not so endearing to the settlers as their 
 homelikeness. They made the new strange 
 land and the new little towns seem like the 
 Fatherland. The Indians greatly feared 
 them ; as one chronicler states, " they durst 
 not come near their long arms and big teeth 
 biting the corn in pieces." Last, and not 
 least in the minds of the thrifty Dutch, the 
 windmills helped to turn to profit the rich 
 harvests of grain which were the true foun- 
 dation of the colony's prosperity, — not the 
 rich peltries of beaver, as was at first boast- 
 fully vaunted by the fur-traders. 
 
 As the day wore on, the day's work was 
 ended, and a neighborly consultation and 
 exchange of greetings formed the day's rec- 
 reation. The burgher went to the little 
 market-house, and with his neighbors and 
 a few chance travellers, such as the skippers 
 on the river-sloops, he smoked again his long 
 pipe and talked over the weighty affairs of 
 8 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the colonie. In the surnmer-time goodman 
 
 and goodwife both went from stoop to stoop 
 
 of the close-gathered houses, for a klappernye^ 
 
 or chat all together. This was a feature of 
 
 the colony, architectural and social, and noted 
 
 by all travellers, — " the benches at the door, 
 
 on which the old carls sit and smoke." Here 
 
 the goodwife recounted the simple events 
 
 of the day, — the number of skeins of yarn 
 
 she had spun; the yards of linen she had 
 
 woven ; the doings of the dye-pot ; the 
 
 crankiness of the churning, to which she 
 
 had sung her churning charm, — 
 
 " Buitterchee, buitterchee, comm 
 Alican laidlechee tubichee vail." 
 
 Perhaps she told her commeres, her gossips, 
 of a fresh suspicion of a betrothal, or perhaps 
 sad news of a sick neighbor or a funeral. 
 This was never scandal, for each one's affairs 
 were every one's affairs ; in the weal or woe 
 of one the whole community joined, and in 
 many of the influences or effects of that weal 
 or woe all had a part. It was noted by his- 
 torians that the Dutch were most open in 
 discussion of all the doings of the community, 
 and had no dread of publicity of every-day 
 
 hfe. 
 
 9 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Of this habit of colonial neighborliness, 
 Mrs. Anne Grant wrote in her " Memoir of 
 an American Lady " — Madam Schuyler — 
 from contemporary knowledge of early life in 
 Albany : — 
 
 " The life of new settlers in a situation like this, 
 when the very foundations of society were to be 
 laid, was a life of exigencies. Every individual 
 took an interest in the general welfare, and contrib- 
 uted their respective shares of intelligence and sa- 
 gacity to aid plans that embraced important objects 
 relative to the common good. This community 
 seemed to have a common stock, not only of suffer- 
 ings and enjoyments, but of information and ideas." 
 
 When the sun was setting and the cows 
 came home, the family gathered on stools 
 and forms around the well-supplied board, 
 and a plentiful supper of suppawn and milk 
 and a sallet filled the hungry mouths, and 
 was eaten from wooden trenchers and pewter 
 porringers with pewter or silver spoons. The 
 night had come; here were shelter and a 
 warm hearthstone, and, though in the new 
 wild world, it was in truth a home. 
 
 Sometimes, silently smoking with the man 
 of the house, there sat in the winter schemer- 
 licht, the shadow-light or gloaming, around 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the great glowing hearth, a group of dusky 
 picturesque forms, — friendly Mohawks, who, 
 when their furs were safely sold, could be 
 welcomed, and were ever tolerated and har- 
 bored by the kindly Swannekins; and as 
 the shadows gathered into the " fore-night," 
 and the fierce wind screamed down the great 
 chimney and drew out into the darkness long 
 tongues of orange and scarlet flames from 
 the oak and hickory fires (burning, says one 
 early traveller, half up the chimney), there 
 was homely comfort within, and peace in the 
 white man's wigwam. 
 
 " What matter how the North-wind raved, — 
 Blow high, blow low, not all its snow 
 Could quench that hearth-fire's ruddy glow." 
 
 And the blanketed squaw felt in her savage 
 breast the spirit of that home, and gently 
 nursed her swaddled pappoose; and the 
 silent Wilden, ever smoking, listened to the 
 Dutch huys-moeder, who, undressing little 
 Hybertje and Jan and Goosje for their long 
 night's sleep, sang to them the nursery song 
 of the Hollanders, of the Fatherland : — 
 
 " Trip a troup a tronjes, 
 De vaarken in de boonjes, 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 De koejes in de klaver, 
 
 De paarden in de haver, 
 
 De kalver in de lang gras, 
 
 De eenjes in de water plas, 
 
 So groot myn klein poppetje was." 
 
 Or if it were mid-December, the children 
 
 sang to Kriss-Kringle : — 
 
 " Saint Nicholaes, goed heilig man, 
 Trekt uw' besten tabbard aan, 
 En reist daamee naar Amsterdam, 
 Von Amsterdam naar Spange, 
 Waar Appellen von Orange 
 En Appellen von Granaten 
 RoUen door de straaten. 
 
 " Saint Nicholaes, myn goeden vriend, 
 Ik heb uwe altyd wel gediend, 
 Als gy my nu wat wilt geben 
 Zal ik un dienen als myn leben." 
 
 Then the warming-pan was filled with hot 
 coals, and thrust warily between the ice-cold 
 sheets of the children's beds, and perhaps 
 they were given a drink of mulled cider or 
 simmering beer; and scarcely were they sleep- 
 ing in their warm flannel cosyntjes, or night- 
 caps with long capes, when the curfew rang 
 out from the church belfry. It was eight 
 o'clock, — '/ Is tijdt te hedde te gaen. The 
 housewife carefully covered " the dull red 
 brands with ashes over" for the fire of the 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 morrow, and went to bed. The " tap-toes " 
 sounded from the fort, and every house was 
 silent. 
 
 And as the honest mynheer and his good 
 vronw slept warmly in their fireside alcove, 
 and softly between their great feather-beds, so 
 they also slept serenely ; for they were not left 
 unprotected from marauding Indian or Chris- 
 tian, nor unwatched by the ever-thoughtful 
 town authorities. Through the little town 
 marched boldly every night a sturdy klop- 
 permann, or rattle-watch, with strong staff 
 and brass-bound hourglass and lighted Ian- 
 thorn ; and, best of all, he bore a large klopper, 
 or rattle, which he shook loudly and re- 
 assuringly at each door all through the dark 
 hours of the night, " from nine o'clock to 
 break of the day," to warn both housekeepers 
 and thieves that he was near at hand ; and as 
 was bidden by the worshipful schepens, he 
 called out what o'clock, and what weather ; 
 — and thus guarded, let us leave them sleep- 
 ing, these honest Dutch home-folk, as they 
 have now slept for centuries in death, waiting 
 to hear called out to them with clear voice 
 " at break of the day " from another world, 
 " A fair morning, and all 's well," 
 13 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 EDUCATION AND CHILD-LIFE 
 
 As soon as the little American baby was 
 born in New Netherland, he was taken to the 
 church by his Dutch papa, and with due array 
 of sponsors was christened by the domine 
 from the doop-becken, or dipping-bowl, in the 
 Dutch Reformed Church. New Yorkers had 
 a beautiful silver doop-becken in 1695, and the 
 church on the corner of Thirty-Eighth Street 
 and Madison Avenue has it still. It was 
 made in Amsterdam from silver coin and 
 ornaments brought by the good folk of the 
 Garden Street Church as offerings. For it 
 Domine Henricus Selyns, "of nimble fac- 
 ulty," then minister of that church, and for- 
 merly of Breuckelen, and the first poet of 
 Brooklyn, wrote these pious and graceful 
 verses, which were inscribed on the bowl : 
 
 " Op't blote water stelt geen hoot 
 'T was beter noyt gebooren. 
 
 14 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Maer, ziet iets meerder in de Dorp 
 
 Zo' gaet nien noyt verlooren. 
 Hoe Christiis met syn dierbaer Bloedt 
 
 My reyniglt van myn Zonden. 
 En door syn Geest my leven doet 
 
 En wast myn Vuyle Wonden." 
 
 Which translated reads : — 
 
 " Do not put your hope in simple water alone, 't were 
 
 better never to be born. 
 But behold something more in baptism, for that will 
 
 prevent your getting lost. 
 How Christ's precious blood cleanses me of my sins, 
 And now I may live through His spirit and be 
 
 cleansed of my vile wounds." 
 
 This christening was the sole social or 
 marked event of the kindeken s infancy, and 
 little else do we know of his early life. He 
 ate and slept, as do all infants. In cradles 
 slept these children of the Dutch, — deep- 
 hooded cradles to protect from the chill 
 draughts of the poorly heated houses. In 
 cradles of birch bark the Albany babies slept; 
 and pretty it was to see the fat little Dutch- 
 men sleeping in those wildwood tributes of 
 the Indian mothers' skill to the children of 
 the men who had driven the children of the 
 redmen from their homes. 
 
 Children were respectful, almost cowed, 
 IS 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 in their bearing to their parents, and were 
 enjoined by ministers and magistrates to 
 filial obedience. When the government left 
 the Dutch control and became English, the 
 Calvinistic sternness of laws as to obedience 
 to parents in maturer years which was seen in 
 New England was also found in New York. 
 
 " If any Child or Children, above sixteen years of 
 age, and of Sufficient understanding, shall smite their 
 Natural Father or Mother, unless provoked and 
 forct for their selfe preservation from Death or 
 Mayming, at the Complaint of the said Father or 
 Mother, and not otherwise, they being Sufficient 
 witness thereof, that Child, or those Children so 
 offending shall be put to Death." 
 
 A few prim little letters of English chil- 
 dren have survived the wear and tear of 
 years, and still show us in their pretty word- 
 ing the formal and respectful language of the 
 times. Martha Bockee Flint, in that inter- 
 esting and valuable book, " Early Long 
 Island," gives this letter written to Major 
 Ephenetus Piatt " at Huntting-town " by a 
 little girl eleven years old : — 
 
 Ever Honored Grandfather ; 
 
 Sir : My long absence from you and my dear 
 Grandmother has been not a little tedious to me. 
 i6 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 But what renders me a Vast Deal of pleasure is 
 Being intensely happy with a Dear and Tender 
 Mother-in-Law and frequent oppertunities of hear- 
 ing of your Health and Welfair which I pray God 
 may long Continue. What I have more to add is 
 to acquaint you that I have already made a Con- 
 siderable Progress in Learning. I have already 
 gone through some Rules of Aritlimetic, and in a 
 little Time shall be able of giving you a Better acct 
 of my Learning, and in mean time I am Duty Bound 
 to subscribe myself 
 
 Your most obedient and 
 
 Duty full Granddaughter 
 
 Pegga Treadwell. 
 
 In the Lloyd Collections is a charming 
 little letter from another Long Island miss, 
 ten years of age. The penmanship is ele- 
 gant and finished, as was that of her elders 
 at that date. 
 
 We have, hovi^ever, scant sources from 
 which to learn of the life of children in colo- 
 nial New York. No diarist of Pepysian 
 minuteness tells of the children of New 
 Netherland as does the faithful Samuel Sewall 
 of those of New England; no collections of 
 letters such as the Winthrop Papers and 
 others recount the various items of domestic 
 life. There are none of the pious and gar- 
 
 2 17 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 rulous writings of ministers such as Cotton 
 Mather, who in diary and various literary 
 compositions give another side of their life. 
 We have no such messages from the colonial 
 Dutch. In whatever depended on the use 
 of "a flourit pen," posterity is neither richer 
 nor wiser for the Dutch settlers having lived. 
 Nor were their English successors much 
 fonder of literary composition. Nothing but 
 formal records of churches, of courts, of busi- 
 ness life, offer to us any pages for study and 
 drawing of inference. And from these records 
 the next hint of the life of these colonial 
 children, sad to relate, is to their discredit. 
 The pragmatic magistrates kept up a steady 
 prying and bullying over them. In New 
 Orange, in 1673, "if any children be caught 
 on the street playing, racing, and shouting- 
 previous to the termination of the last preach- 
 ing, the officers of justice may take their hat 
 or upper garment, which shall not be restored 
 to the parents until they have paid a fine of 
 two guilders," which, we may be sure, would 
 insure the miserable infants summary pun- 
 ishment on arriving home. 
 
 Matters were no better in New Amsterdam. 
 One amusing complaint was brought up 
 18 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 against "y° wretched boys" of that settle- 
 ment, and by one high in authority, Schout 
 De Sille. One of his duties was to patrol the 
 town of New Amsterdam at night to see that 
 all was peaceful as befitted a town which was 
 the daughter of the Dutch government. But 
 the poor sellout did not find his evening 
 stroll altogether a happy one. He com- 
 plained that the dogs set upon him, and that 
 tantalizing boys shouted out "The Indians ! " 
 at him from behind trees and fences, — which 
 must have startled him sorely, and have been 
 most unpleasantly suggestive in those days 
 of Indian horrors; and his chief complaint 
 was that there was "much cutting of 
 hoekies " by the boys, — which means, I 
 fancy, playing of tricks, of jokes, of hoaxes, 
 such as were played on Hock-day in England, 
 or perhaps "playing hookey," as American 
 boys of to-day have been known to do. 
 
 As years passed on, I fear some of these 
 young Dutch-Americans were sad rogues. 
 They sore roused the wrath of Albany legis- 
 lators, as is hereby proven : — 
 
 "Whereas y* children of y" s° city do very un- 
 orderly to y' shame and scandall of their parents 
 ryde down y" hills in y" streets of the s'' city with 
 
 19 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 small and great slees on the lord day and in the 
 week by which many accidents may come, now for 
 pventing y*" same it is hereby publishd and declard 
 y' it shall and may be lawful for any Constable in 
 this City or any other person or persons to take any 
 slee or slees from all and every such boys and girls 
 rydeing or offering to ryde down any hill within y'= 
 s"* city and breake any slee or slees in pieces. 
 Given under our bands and seals in Albany y' 22th 
 of December in 12th year of Her Maj's reign Anno 
 Domini i 713." 
 
 In 1728 Albany boys and girls still were 
 hectored, still were fined by the bullying 
 Albany constable for sliding down the 
 alluringly steep Albany streets on "sleds, 
 small boards, or otherwise." 
 
 Mrs. Grant, writing of about the year 
 1765, speaks of the custom of coasting, but 
 not of the legislation against it, and gives a 
 really delightful picture of coasting-joys, 
 which apparently were then partaken of only 
 by boys. The schepens and their succes- 
 sors the constables, joy-destroying Sivas, 
 had evidently succeeded in wresting this 
 pleasure from the girls. 
 
 " In town all the boys were extravagantly fond of 
 a diversion that to us would appear a very odd and 
 childish one. The great street of the town sloped 
 20 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 down from the liill on which the fort stood, towards 
 the river ; between the buildings was an unpaved 
 carriage-road, the foot-path beside the houses being 
 the only part of the street which was paved. In 
 winter the sloping descent, continued for more than 
 a quarter of a mile, acquired firmness from the frost, 
 and became very slippery. Then the amusement 
 commenced. Every boy and yoiith in town, from 
 eight to eighteen, had a little low sledge, made with 
 a rope like a bridle to the front, by which it could 
 be dragged after one by the hand. On this one or 
 two at most could sit, and this sloping descent be- 
 ing made as smooth as a looking-glass, by sliders' 
 sledges, etc., perhaps a hundred at once set out 
 from the top of this street, each seated in his little 
 sledge with the rope in his hand, which, drawn to 
 the right or left, served to guide him. He pushed 
 it off with a little stick, as one would launch a boat ; 
 and then, with the most astonishing velocity, pre- 
 cipitated by the weight of the owner, the little 
 machine glided past, and was at the lower end of 
 the street in an instant. What could be so delight- 
 ful in this rapid and smooth descent I could never 
 discover ; though in a more retired place, and on a 
 smaller scale, I have tried the amusement ; but to a 
 young Albanian, sleighing, as he called it, was one 
 of the first joys of life, though attended by the 
 drawback of walking to the top of the declivity, 
 dragging his sledge every time he renewed his 
 flight, for such it might well be called. In the 
 managing this little machine some dexterity was 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 necessary : an unskilful Phaeton was sure to fall. 
 The conveyance was so low that a fall was attended 
 with little danger, yet with much disgrace, for an 
 universal laugh from all sides assailed the fallen 
 charioteer. This laugh was from a very full chorus, 
 for the constant and rapid succession of this pro- 
 cession, where every one had a brother, lover, or 
 kinsman, brought all the young people in town to 
 the porticos, where they used to sit wrapt in furs till 
 ten or eleven at night, engrossed by this delectable 
 spectacle. I have known an Albanian, after resid- 
 ing some years in Britain, and becoming a polished 
 fine gentleman, join the sport and slide down with 
 the rest." 
 
 Mrs. Grant tells of another interesting and 
 unusual custom of the children of Albany: 
 
 "The children of the town were divided into 
 companies, as they called them, from five to six 
 years of age, until they became marriageable. How 
 those companies first originated, or what were their 
 exact regulations, I cannot say ; though I, belong- 
 ing to none, occasionally mixed with several, yet 
 always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke 
 their current language fluently. Every company 
 contained as many boys as girls. But I do not 
 know that there was any limited number ; only this 
 I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, 
 who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre- 
 eminence among the rest were called heads of the 
 company, and as such were obeyed by the others. 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 . . . Children of different ages in the same family 
 belonged to different companies. Each company 
 at a certain time of the year went in a body to 
 gather a particular kind of berries to the hill. It 
 was a sort of annual festival attended with religious 
 punctuality. Every company had a uniform for 
 tills purpose ; that is to say, very pretty light bas- 
 kets made by the Indians, with lids and handles, 
 which hung over one arm, and were adorned with 
 various colors. Every child was permitted to 
 entertain the whole company on its birthday, and 
 once besides, during winter and spring. The mas- 
 ter and mistress of the family always were bound to 
 go from home on these occasions, while some old 
 domestic was left to attend and watch over them, 
 with an ample provision of tea, chocolate, preserved 
 and dried fruits, nuts and cakes of various kinds, to 
 which was added cider or a syllabub ; for these 
 young friends met at four and amused themselves 
 with the utmost gayety and freedom in any way 
 their fancy dictated." 
 
 From all the hints and facts which I have 
 obtained, through letters, diaries, church 
 and court records, of child-life in any of the 
 colonies or provinces among English, Ger- 
 man, Swedish, or Dutch settlers, I am sure 
 these Albany young folk were the most 
 favored of their time. I find no signs of such 
 freedom in any other town. 
 23 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 It has been asserted that in every town in 
 New York which was settled under the 
 Dutch, a school was established which was 
 taught by a competent teacher who received a 
 small salary from the government, in addi- 
 tion to his other emoluments; and that after 
 the reign of the English, begun in 1664, this 
 public salary ceased, and many of the towns 
 were schoolless. 
 
 This statement is not confirmed by a letter 
 of Domine Megapolensis written from Albany 
 in 1657. He says plainly that only Manhat- 
 tan, Beverwyck, and Fort Casimirhad school- 
 masters, and he predicts, as a result, " igno- 
 rance, a ruined youth, and bewilderment of 
 men's minds." Other authorities, such as 
 Mr. Teunis G. Bergen, state that this liber- 
 ality where it existed should be accredited to 
 the Dutch church, not the Dutch state, or 
 Dutch West India Company. In truth, it 
 was all one matter. The church was an 
 essential power in the government of New 
 Netherland, as it was in Holland; hence the 
 West India Company and the Classis of 
 Amsterdam conjoined in sending domines 
 with the supply of burgomasters, and like- 
 wise furnished school-teachers. 
 24 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 When Wouter van Twiller arrived in 1633 
 with the first military garrison for New Am- 
 sterdam, he brought also envoys of religion 
 and learning, — Domine Everardus Bogardus 
 and the first pedagogue, Adam Roelandsen. 
 Master Roelandsen had a schoolroom assigned 
 to him, and he taught the youthful New Am- 
 sterdam ites for six years, when he resigned 
 his position, and was banished from the 
 town and went up the river to Renssellaer- 
 wyck. I fear he was not a very reputable 
 fellow, "people did not speak well of him; " 
 and he in turn was sued for slander; and 
 some really sad scandals were told about 
 him, both in and out of court. And some 
 folk have also made very merry over the fact 
 that he took in washing, which was really 
 one of the best things we know about him, 
 for it was not at all a disreputable nor un- 
 manly calling in those times. It doubtless 
 proved a very satisfactory source of augmen- 
 tation of the wavering school-salary, in those 
 days of vast quarterly or serai-annual wash- 
 ings and great bleeckeryen, or laundries, — 
 which his probably was, since his bills were 
 paid by the year. 
 
 A carpenter, Jan Cornelissen, tired of his 
 25 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 tools and trade, left Rensselaervvyck upon 
 hearing of the vacant teacher's chair in New 
 Amsterdam, went down the river to Manhat- 
 tan, and in turn taught the school for ten 
 years. Jan was scarcely more reputable than 
 Adam. He lay drunk for a month at a time, 
 and was incorrigibly lazy, — so aggravated 
 Albanians wrote of him. But any one was 
 good enough to teach school. Neither Jan 
 nor Adam was, however, a convicted and ban- 
 ished felon, as were many Virginian school- 
 masters. 
 
 This drunken schoolmaster was only the 
 first of many. Until this century, the bane 
 of pedagogy in New York was rum. A chorus 
 of colonial schoolmasters could sing, in the 
 words of Goldsmith, — 
 
 " Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains 
 
 With grammar and nonsense and learning; 
 Good liquor I stoutly maintain 
 Gives genius a better discerning." 
 
 Occasionally a certain schoolmaster would 
 be specified in a school-circular as a sober 
 man; proving by the mentioning the infre- 
 quency of the qualification. 
 
 As the colony grew, other teachers were 
 needed. Governor Stuyvesant sent to the 
 26 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Classis of Amsterdam for "a pious, well- 
 qualified, and diligent schoolmaster." Wil- 
 liam Vestens crossed the ocean in answer to 
 this appeal, and taught for five years in one 
 room in New York; while Jan de la Mon- 
 tagne, with an annual salary of two hundred 
 florins, taught at the Harberg — later the 
 Stadt-Huys — and occupied the position of 
 the first public-school teacher. 
 
 For years a project of building a school- 
 house was afloat. A spot had been fixed upon, 
 and some money subscribed. In 1649 '^he 
 Commonalty represented to the West India 
 Company that "the plate was a long time 
 passed around for a common school which 
 has been built with words, for as yet the first 
 stone is not laid." In response to this 
 appeal, a schoolhouse was at last erected. 
 Still another school was opened by Master 
 Hoboocken, who taught in the Governors' 
 bowery, where Dutch- American children were 
 already beginning to throng the green lanes 
 and by-ways. He was succeeded by Evert 
 Pietersen, who was' engaged as " Consoler of 
 the Sick, Chorister and Schoolmaster;" and 
 all persons without distinction were ordered 
 not to molest, disturb, or ridicule him in 
 27 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 either of these offices, but to "deliver him 
 from every painful sensation." Many of 
 the other schoolmasters had filled similar 
 offices in the church and community. 
 
 This public school, maintained with such 
 difficulty and so many rebuffs through these 
 early days, was successfully continued by the 
 Collegiate Dutch Church after the English 
 possession of New York; and it still exists 
 and flourishes, as does the church. This 
 should be a matter of civic pride to every 
 New Yorker. The histoiy of that school has 
 been carefully written, and is most interesting 
 to read. 
 
 Many other teachers were licensed to give 
 private lessons, but these public and private 
 schools did not satisfy ambitious New York- 
 ers. A strong longing was felt in New 
 Amsterdam for a Latin School. A charac- 
 teristic petition was sent by the burgomas- 
 ters and scliepeiis to the West India Company : 
 
 " It is represented that the youth of this place 
 and the neighborhood are increasing in number 
 gradually, and that most of them can read and 
 write, but that some of the citizens and inhabitants 
 would like to send their children to a school the 
 principal of which understands Latin, but are not 
 28 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 able to do so without sending them to New Eng- 
 land : furthermore, they have not the means to hire 
 a Latin schoolmaster expressly for themselves from 
 New England, and therefore they ask that the West 
 India Company will send out a fit person as Latin 
 schoolmaster, not doubting that the number of per- 
 sons who will send their children to such a teacher 
 will from year to year increase until an academy 
 shall be formed whereby this place to great splen- 
 dour will have attained, for which, next to God, the 
 Honorable Company which shall have sent such 
 teacher here shall have laud and praises. For our 
 own part we shall endeavor to find a fit place in 
 which the schoolmaster shall hold his school." 
 
 The desired "gerund-grinder" — to use 
 Tristram Shandy's word — was soon de- 
 spatched. The fit place was found, — a good 
 house with a garden. He was promised an 
 annual salary of five hundred guilders. Each 
 scholar also was to pay six guilders per quar- 
 ter. But Dr. Curtius's lines fell in difficult 
 places; he could keep no order among his 
 Latin-school pupils, those bad young New 
 Amsterdam ites, who " beat each other and tore 
 the clothes from each other's backs," and he 
 complained he was restrained by the orders 
 of parents from properly punishing them. 
 (I may say here that I have not found that 
 29 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 New York schoolmasters were ever as cruel 
 as were those of New England. ) A graver 
 matter to honest colonists was his charging a 
 whole beaver-skin too much per quarter to 
 some scholars, and soon he was packed back 
 to Holland. His successor, a young man of 
 twenty-two, who had been tutor to Stuyve- 
 sant's sons, had better luck, better control, 
 and a better academy; and New Amsterdam 
 to "great splendour was attained," having 
 pupils from other towns and colonies, even 
 from so far away as Virginia. 
 
 The relations between church, school, and 
 state were equally close throughout all New 
 Netherland. Thus, in 1661, Governor Stuy- 
 vesant recommended Charles De Bevoise as 
 schoolmaster for Brooklyn; and when Doraine 
 Henricus Selyns left the Brooklyn church, 
 Schoolmaster De Bevoise was ordered to 
 read prayers and sermons, "to read a pos- 
 tille " every Sabbath until another minister 
 was obtained. He was also a kratikcbesoecker, 
 or comforter of the sick. Even after the 
 establishment of English rule in the colony, 
 the connection of Dutch church and school 
 was equally close. When Johannis Van 
 Eckellen was engaged by the Consistory of 
 30 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the Dutch church in Flatbush in October, 
 1682, as a schoolmaster for the town, it was 
 under this extremely interesting and minute 
 contract, which, translated, reads thus : — 
 
 Articles of Agreement made with Johannis 
 Van Eckellen, schoolmaster and clerk of the church 
 at Flatbush. 
 
 I St. The school shall begin at eight o'clock in 
 the morning, and go out at eleven o'clock. It 
 shall begin again at one o'clock and end at four 
 o'clock. The bell shall be rung before the school 
 begins. 
 
 2nd. When the school opens, one of the chil- 
 dren shall read the morning prayer, as it stands in 
 the catechism, and close with the prayer before 
 dinner. In the afternoon it shall begin with the 
 prayer after dinner, and close with the evening 
 prayer. The evening school shall begin with the 
 Lord's Prayer, and close by singing a Psalm. 
 
 3rd. He shall instruct the children in the 
 common prayers and the questions and answers 
 of the catechism, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, 
 to enable them to say their catechism on Sunday 
 afternoons in the church before the afternoon ser- 
 vice, otherwise on the Monday following, at which 
 the schoolmaster shall be present. He shall de- 
 mean himself patient and friendly towards the 
 children in their instruction, and be active and 
 attentive to their improvement. 
 
 31 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 4th. He shall be bound to keep his school 
 nine months in succession, from September to 
 June, one year with another, or the like period of 
 time for a year, according to the agreement with 
 his predecessor, he shall, however, keep the school 
 nine months, and always be present himself. 
 
 CHURCH SERVICE. 
 
 Art. I St. He shall be chorister of the church, 
 ring the bell three times before service, and 
 read a chapter of the Bible in the church, between 
 the second and third ringing of the bell ; after the 
 third ringing he shall read the ten commandments 
 and the twelve articles of Faith, and then set the 
 Psalm. In the afternoon, after the third ringing 
 of the bell, he shall read a short chapter, or one of 
 the Psalms of David, as the congregation are 
 assembling. Afterwards he shall again set the 
 Psalm. 
 
 Art. 2nd. When the minister shall preach at 
 Brooklyn or New Utrecht, he shall be bound to 
 read twice before the congregation a sermon from 
 the book used for the purpose. The afternoon 
 sermon will be on the catechism of Dr. Vander 
 Hagen, and thus he shall follow the turns of the 
 minister. He shall hear the children recite the 
 questions and answers of the catechism, on that 
 Sunday, and he shall instruct them. When the 
 minister preaches at Flatlands, he shall perform 
 the like service. 
 
 32 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Art. 3rd. He shall provide a basin of water 
 for the baptisms, for which he shall receive tv/elve 
 stuyvers, in wampum, for every baptism, from the 
 parents or sponsors. He shall furnish bread and 
 wine for the communion, at the charge of the 
 church. He shall furnish the minister, in writing, 
 the names and ages of the children to be baptized, 
 together with the names of the parents and spon- 
 sors ; he shall also serve as a messenger for the 
 consistories. 
 
 Art. 4th. He shall give the funeral invitations, 
 and toll the bells, for which service he shall receive, 
 for persons of fifteen years of age and upwards, 
 twelve guilders ; and for persons under fifteen, eight 
 guilders. If he shall invite out of the town, he shall 
 receive three additional guilders for every town; 
 and if he shall cross the river to New York, he shall 
 have four guilders more. 
 
 SCHOOL MONEY. 
 
 He shall receive for a speller or reader in the 
 day school three guilders for a quarter, and for a 
 writer four guilders. 
 
 In the evening school, he shall receive for a 
 speller or reader four guilders for a quarter, and 
 for a writer five guilders. 
 
 SALARY. 
 
 The remainder of his salary shall be four hun- 
 dred guilders in wheat, of wampum value, deliver- 
 
 3 33 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 able at Brooklyn Ferry ; and for his service from 
 October to !May, two hundred and thirty-four 
 guilders in wheat, at the same place, with the 
 dwelling, pasturage, and meadow appertaining to 
 the school to begin the first day of October. 
 
 I agree to the above articles, and promise to 
 observe the same to the best of my ability. 
 
 JOHANNis Van Eckeixen. 
 
 Truly we have through this contract — to 
 any one with any powers of historic imagina- 
 tion — a complete picture of the duties of 
 the schoolmaster of that day. 
 
 When the English came in power in 1664, 
 some changes were made in matters of edu- 
 cation in New York, but few changes in 
 any of the conditions in Albany. Governor 
 Nicholls, on his first visit up the river, made 
 one significant appointment, — that of an 
 English schoolmaster. This was the Eng- 
 lishman's license to teach: — 
 
 " Whereas the teaching of the English Tongue is 
 necessary in this Government ; I have, therefore, 
 thought fitt to give License to John Shutte to bee 
 the English Schoolmaster at Albany : and upon 
 condition that the said John Shutte shall not de- 
 mand any more wages from each Scholar than is 
 given by the Dutch to their Dutch Schoolmasters. 
 I have further granted to the said John Shutte that 
 34 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 hee shall bee the only English Schoolmaster at 
 Albany." 
 
 The last clause of this license seems super- 
 fluous ; for it is very doubtful whether there 
 was for many years any other English teacher 
 who eagerly sought what was so far from be- 
 ing either an onerous or lucrative position. 
 Many generations of Albany children grew to 
 manhood ere the Dutch schoolmasters found 
 their positions supererogatory. 
 
 Women-teachers and girl-scholars were of 
 small account in New York in early days. 
 Girls did, however, attend the public schools. 
 We find Matthew Hillyer, in 1676, setting 
 forth in New York that he " hath kept school 
 for children of both sexes for two years 
 past to satisfaction. " Dame-schools existed, 
 especially on Long Island, where English 
 influences and Connecticut emigration ob- 
 tained. In Flushing Elizabeth Cowper- 
 thwait was reckoned with in 1681 for 
 "schooling and diet for children;" and in 
 1683 she received for thirty weeks' schooling, 
 of " Martha Johanna," a scarlet petticoat, — 
 truly a typical Dutch payment. A school 
 bill settled by John Bowne in Flushing in 
 1695 shows that sixpence a week was paid 
 35 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 to the teacher for each scholar who learned 
 reading, while writing and ciphering cost 
 one shilling twopence a week. This, con- 
 sidering the usual wages and prices of the 
 times, was fair pay enough. 
 
 We have access to a detailed school bill of 
 the Lloyd boys in 1693, but they were sent 
 away from their Long Island home at Lloyd's 
 Neck to New England; so the information 
 is of no value as a record of a New York 
 school; but one or two of these items are 
 curious enough to be recounted : — 
 
 I Quarter's board for boys 976 
 
 Pd knitting stockings for Joseph ... 14 
 
 Pd knitting i stocking for Henry ... 6 
 
 Joseph's Schooling, 7 mos 7 
 
 A bottle of wine for His Mistris ... 10 
 
 To shoo nails & cutting their har ... 7 
 
 Stockins & mittins 39 
 
 Pd a woman tailor mending their cloaths 3 3 
 
 Wormwood & rubab for them .... 6 
 To Joseph's Mistris for yearly feast and wine i 8 
 
 Pair gloves for boys 26 
 
 Brest deerskin for the boys' breeches . i 6 
 
 Wormwood and rhubarb for the boys and a 
 feast and wine for the schoolmistress, albeit 
 the wine was but tenpence a bottle, seems 
 somewhat unfair discrimination. 
 36 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 There is an excellent list of the cloth- 
 ing of a New York schoolboy of eleven 
 years given in a letter written by Fitz-John 
 Winthrop to Robert Livingstone in 1690. 
 This young lad, John Livingstone, had also 
 been in school in New England. The 
 "account of linen & clothes" shows him to 
 have been very well dressed. It reads 
 thus : — 
 
 Eleven new shirts 3 pr gold buttons 
 
 4 p' laced sieves 3 pr silver buttons 
 
 8 plane cravets 2 p^ fine blew stockings 
 
 4 cravets with lace ' pr fine red stockins 
 
 4 stripte wastecoats with 4 white handkerchiefs 
 
 black buttons 2 speckled handkerchiefs 
 
 I flowered wastecoat 3 pair gloves 
 
 4 new osinbrig britches i stuff coat with black 
 
 I gray hat with a black rib- buttons 
 
 bon I cloth coat 
 
 I gray hat with a blew rib- l pr blew plush britches 
 
 bon I pr serge britches 
 
 I dousin black buttons 2 combs 
 
 I dousin coloured buttons i pr new shoees 
 
 Silk & thred to mend his clothes. 
 
 In 1685 Goody Davis taught a dame-school 
 at Jamaica; and in 1687 Rachel Spencer died 
 in Hempstead, and her name was recorded 
 as that of a schoolmistress. In 1716, at the 
 Court of Sessions in Westchester, one of the 
 farm-wives, Dame Shaw, complained that "a 
 37 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 travelling woman who came out of y" Jerseys 
 who kept school at several places in Rye 
 parish, hath left with her a child eleven 
 months old, for which she desires relief from 
 the parish. " 
 
 It is easy to fancy a vague romance through 
 this short record of the life of this nameless 
 "travelling woman" who, babe in arms, 
 earned a scanty living by teaching, and who 
 at last abandoned the school and the child 
 whose birth may, perhaps, have sent her a 
 nameless wanderer in a strange country, — 
 for "the Jerseys " were far away from Rye 
 parish in those days. 
 
 There was a schoolmistress in Hempstead 
 at a later date. She was old in 1774. I 
 don't know her name, but I know of the end 
 of her days. The vestry allowed her forty 
 shillings, "to be dealt out to her a little at 
 a time, so as to last her all ivinter." She 
 lived through that luxurious winter, and died 
 in 1775. Her coffin cost twelve shillings, 
 and Widow Thurston was paid six shillings 
 for digging the grave for her old crony and 
 gossip. Schoolmistresses were not many on 
 Long Island, — can we wonder at it 1 Had 
 this dame been one of the penniless church- 
 38 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 poor in a Dutch community (which Hemp- 
 stead was not), she would probably have had 
 forty shillings a month instead of a winter, 
 and a funeral that would have been not only 
 decent in all the necessities of a funeral, but 
 a triumph of prodigality in all the comforts 
 and pleasures of the mortuary accompani- 
 ments of the day, such as wine, rum, beer, 
 cakes, tobacco, and pipes. 
 
 The " book-learning " afforded to colonial 
 girls in New York was certainly very 
 meagre. Mrs. Anne Grant wrote of the 
 first quarter of the eighteenth century: — 
 
 "It was at that time very difficult to procure 
 the means of instruction in those island districts ; 
 female education was, of consequence, conducted 
 on a very limited scale ; girls learned needlework 
 (in which they were indeed both skilful and inge- 
 nious) from their mothers and aunts ; they were 
 taught, too, at that period to read, in Dutch, the 
 Bible, and a few Calvinistic tracts of the devotional 
 kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few 
 girls read English ; when they did, they were 
 thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, 
 however imperfectly, and few were taught writing." 
 
 William Smith, the historian of New 
 York, writing during the year 1756 of his 
 39 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 fellow townswomen, and of education in 
 general in New York, gives what was doubt- 
 less a true picture of the inelegance of educa- 
 tion in New York : — 
 
 " There is nothing they [New York women] so 
 generally neglect as Reading, and indeed all the 
 Arts for the improvement of the Mind, in which I 
 confess we have set them the Example. Our 
 Schools are in the Lowest Order, the Instructors 
 want Instruction, and through a long, shameful neg- 
 lect of the Arts and Sciences our Common Speech 
 is very corrupt, and the Evidences of a Bad Taste 
 both as to thought and Language are visible in all 
 our Proceedings publick and private." 
 
 One obstacle to the establishment and 
 success of schools and education was the 
 hybridization of language. New Yorkers 
 spoke neither perfect Dutch nor good Eng- 
 lish. It was difficult in some townships to 
 gather an English-speaking jury; hence, 
 naturally, neither tongue could be taught 
 save in the early and simpler stages of educa- 
 tion. It was difficult for those little Dutch- 
 men who heard Holland-Dutch spoken con- 
 stantly at home to abandon it entirely and 
 speak English in the schools. The Flatbush 
 master (himself a Dutchman, but bound to 
 40 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 teach English) invented an ingenious plan 
 to crowd out the use of Dutch in school. 
 He carried a little metal token which he gave 
 each day to the first scholar whom he heard 
 use a Dutch word. That scholar could 
 promptly turn the token over to any other 
 scholar whom he likewise detected in using 
 Dutch, and he in turn could do the same. 
 Thus the token passed from hand to hand 
 through the day ; but the unlucky wight who 
 chanced to have possession of it when the 
 school day was over was soundly whipped. 
 
 In default of "spilling," as one master 
 wrote in his receipts, and in which he was 
 somewhat shaky himself, he and all other 
 colonial teachers took a firm stand on 
 "cyphering." "The Bible and figgers is all 
 I want my boys to know," said one old 
 farmer. When the school session opened 
 and closed, as we have seen in Flatbush, 
 with prayer and praise, with catechism every 
 day, and special catechising twice a week, 
 even "figgers" did not have much of a 
 chance. All the old Dutch primers that 
 I have seen, the Groot ABC boeks zeer 
 bekwaani voor de yongekindercn te leer£7i, 
 contain nothing (besides the alphabet) but 
 41 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 religious sentences, prayers, verses of the 
 Bible, pious rhymes, etc. ; and dingy little 
 books they are, not even up to the standard 
 of our well-known New England Primer. 
 
 Though the Dutch were great printers of 
 horn-books, I do not find that they were 
 universal users of those quaint little " engines 
 of learning." If used in Dutch-American 
 schools, none now survive the lapse of two 
 centuries ; and indeed only one can be found 
 in a Holland museum. Mr. Tuer, the his- 
 torian of the horn-book, states that there is 
 one in the museum at Antwerp, printed by 
 H. Walpot, of Dordrecht, Netherlands, in 
 1640; and a beautiful silver-backed Dutch 
 horn-book in the collection of an English 
 clergyman at Coombe Place, England ; and a 
 few others in public libraries that are prob- 
 ably Dutch. Dutch artists show, by their 
 frequent representations of horn-books in 
 paintings of children, that the little a-b- 
 boordje was well known. In the " Christ 
 blessing Little Children," by Rembrandt, 
 the presentment of a child has a horn-book 
 hanging at his side. In several pictures 
 by Jan Steen, 1626-79, horn-books may be 
 noted ; in one a child has hung his horn-book 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 on a parrot's perch while he plays. In 1753 
 English children used horn-books in New 
 York as in the other provinces, for they were 
 advertised with Bibles and primers in the 
 New York newspapers at that time. 
 
 Printed arithmetics were rarely used or 
 seen. Schoolmasters carried with them care- 
 fully executed "sum-books" in manuscript, 
 from which scholars copied the sums and 
 rules into small blank-books of their own. 
 One, of a Gravesend scholar in 1754, has 
 evidently served to prove the pupil's skill 
 both in arithmetic and penmanship. The 
 book is prefaced by instructive aphorisms, 
 such as "Carefully mind to mend in every 
 line ; " " Game not in school when you should 
 write." The wording of the rules is some- 
 what curious. One reads : — 
 
 " Rule of Bartar, which is for exchanging of ware. 
 One Commodity for another. This Rule shows 
 the Merchants how they may Proportion their 
 Goods so that neither of them may sustain loss. 
 Sum. Two Merchants A. and B. bartar. A. hath 
 320 Dozen of Candles @ 4/6 per Dozen; for 
 which B. giveth him £^0 in Cash and y" Rest in 
 Cotton @ 8d per lb. I demand : how much Cotton 
 B. must give A. more than the ^30 in Cash." 
 
 43 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 As commerce increased and many young 
 men sought a seafaring life, navigation was 
 taught, and advanced mathematics. In 1749 
 the notice of a Brooklyn " Philomath " on 
 Nassau Island shows that he could teach 
 " Arithmetick vulgar and decimal ; Geometry 
 plain and Spherical; Surveying, Navigation 
 in 3 kinds, viz: Plain Mercator and Great 
 Circle Sailing, Astronomy, and Dialling." 
 Thus did this Philomath meet the demand of 
 the day. In 1773 the Flatbush Grammar 
 School was taught by John Copp, who also 
 took scholar-boarders, who " have the advan- 
 tage of being taught geography in the winter 
 evenings, with many other useful particulars 
 that frequently occur to the teacher," which 
 seems to present a rather melancholy picture 
 when we reflect on the other particulars of 
 good coasting and skating that then were 
 around Flatbush, on the Steenbakkery for 
 instance, which, doubtless, would frequently 
 occur on winter evenings to the scholar- 
 boarder. 
 
 44 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 WOOING AND WEDDING 
 
 The domestic life of the Dutch settlers 
 flowed on in a smooth-running and rather dull 
 stream, varying little through either honor- 
 bearing or discreditable incident from day to 
 day. Any turbulence of dissension or divorce 
 between husband and wife was apparently 
 little known and certainly little noted. Occa- 
 sionally an entry which tells of temporary 
 division or infelicity can be unearthed from 
 the dingy pages of some old court-record, 
 thereby disclosing a scene and actors so 
 remote, so shadowy, so dimmed with the dust 
 of centuries, that the incident often bears no 
 semblance of having happened to real living 
 folk, but seems rather to pertain to a group 
 of inanimate puppets. One of these feature- 
 less, colorless, stiff Dutch marionettes is 
 Anneke, the daughter of boisterous old Dom- 
 ine Schaets, the first minister at Fort Orange. 
 45 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 A fleeting glimpse of her marital infelicity is 
 disclosed through the record of her pres- 
 ence in Albany under the shadow of some 
 unexplained and now forgotten scandal. To 
 satisfy her father's virtuous and severe con- 
 gregation, she refrained from contaminating 
 attendance at Communion. The domine 
 resented this condition of affairs, and refused 
 to appear before the Consistory though sum- 
 moned four times by the bode. He persisted 
 in irritatingly " ripping up new differences 
 and offences ; " and he disregarded with 
 equal scorn the summons of a magistrate to 
 appear before the Court ; and he was there- 
 fore suspended from his clerical office. All 
 was at last " arranged in love and friendship," 
 leaving out the dispute about " Universal 
 Grace," which I suppose could not be settled ; 
 but daughter Anneke was ordered off to New 
 York to her husband, " with a letter of recom- 
 mendation; and as she was so headstrong, 
 and would not depart without the Sheriff's 
 and Constable's interference, her disobedi- 
 ence was annexed to the letter." It is pleas- 
 ing to know, from the record of an " Extraor- 
 dinary Court holden in Albany" a month 
 later, — in July, 1681, — of a very satisfac- 
 46 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 tory result in the affairs of the young 
 couple. 
 
 " The : Davidtse premisses to conduct himself 
 well and honorably towards his wife Anneke Schaets, 
 to Love and never neglect her, but faithfully and 
 properly to maintain and support her with her chil- 
 dren according to his means, hereby making null 
 and void all questions that have occurred and 
 transpired between them both, never to repeat 
 them, but are entirely reconciled : and for better 
 assurance of his real Intention and good Resolu- 
 tion to observe the same, he requests that two good 
 men be named to oversee his conduct at New 
 York towards his said wife, being entirely disposed 
 and inclined to live honorably and well with her as 
 a Christian man ought, subjecting himself willingly 
 to the rule and censure of the said men. On the 
 other hand his wife Anneke Schaets, promisses also 
 to conduct herself quietly and well and to accom- 
 pany him to New York with her children and prop- 
 erty, not to leave him any more, but to serve and 
 help him and with him to share the sweets and the 
 sours as becomes a Christian spouse : Requesting 
 all differences which had ever existed between them 
 both may be hereby quashed and brought no more 
 to light or cast up, as she on her side is heartily 
 disposed to. Their Worship of the Court Recom- 
 mend parties on both Sides to observe strictly their 
 Reconcihation now made, and the gendeman at 
 New York will be informed that the matter is so 
 far arranged." 
 
 47 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 We can certainly add the profound hope, 
 after all this quarrelling and making up, after 
 all those good promises, that Anneke's home 
 was no longer " unregulated and poorly kept," 
 as was told of her by the Labadist travellers 
 during their visit to Albany at that time. 
 The appointing of " two good men '' as arbi- 
 trators or overseers of conduct was very usual 
 in such cases; thereby public adjustment in 
 open court of such quarrels was avoided. 
 
 Tender parents could not unduly shelter a 
 daughter who had left her husband's bed and 
 board. He could promptly apply to the 
 court for an order for her return to him, 
 and an injunction to her parents against har- 
 boring her. It has been plain to see in all 
 such cases which I have chanced upon in 
 colonial records that the Court had a strong 
 leaning towards the husband's side of the 
 case ; perhaps thinking, like Anneke Schaets, 
 that the wife should " share the sweets and 
 the sours like a Christian spouse." 
 
 In 1697 Daniel Vanolinda petitioned that 
 his wife be " ordyred to go and live with him 
 where he thinks convenient." The wife's 
 father was promptly notified by the Albany 
 magistrates that he was " discharged to shel- 
 40 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 ter her in his house or elsewhere, upon Pen- 
 alty as he will answer at his Perill ; " and 
 she returned to her husband. 
 
 In the year 1665 a New Amsterdammcr 
 named Lantsman and his wife, Beletje, were 
 sorely estranged, and went to the courts for 
 settlement of these differences. The Court 
 gave the matter into the hands of two of the 
 Dutch ministers, who were often assigned the 
 place of peacemakers. As usual, they ordered 
 the parents of Beletje to cease from harboring 
 or abetting her. The husband promised to 
 treat her well, but she answered that he always 
 broke his promises to her. He was deter- 
 mined and assiduous to retrieve her, and 
 finally was successful; thus they were not 
 made " an example to other evil housekeep- 
 ers." A curious feature of this marriage 
 quarrel is the fact that this Lantsman, who 
 Vvfas so determined to retain his wife, had 
 been more than recreant about marrying her. 
 The banns had been published, the wedding- 
 day set, but Bridegroom Lantsman did not 
 appear. Upon being hauled up and repri- 
 manded, his only proffered excuse was the 
 very simple one that his clothes were not 
 ready. 
 
 4 49 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 When Anniatje Fabritius requested an 
 order of court for her husband to vacate her 
 house with a view of final separation from 
 him, it was decided by the arbitrators that no 
 legal steps should be taken, but that " the 
 parties comport themselves as they ought, 
 in order that they win back each other's 
 affections, leaving each other in meanwhile 
 unmolested " — which was very sensible ad- 
 vice. Another married pair having " met with 
 great discouragement " (which is certainly a 
 most polite expression to employ on such a sub- 
 ject), agreed each to go his and her way, after 
 an exact halving of all their possessions. 
 
 Nicasius de Sille, magistrate of New 
 Utrecht and poet of New Netherland, sepa- 
 rated his life from that of his wife because — 
 so he said — she spent too much money. It 
 is very hard for me to think of a Dutch 
 woman as " expensefull," to use Pepys' word. 
 He also said she was too fond of schnapps, — 
 which her respected later life did not confirm. 
 Perhaps he spoke with poetic extravagance, 
 or the nervous irritability and exaggeration 
 of genius. Albert Andriese and his wife were 
 divorced in Albany in 1670, "because 
 strife and difference hath arisen between 
 50 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 them." Daniel Denton was divorced from his 
 wife in Jamaica, and she was permitted to 
 marry again, by the new provincial law of 
 divorce of 1672. These few examples break 
 the felicitous calm of colonial matrimony, 
 and have a few companions during the years 
 1670-72; but Chancellor Kent says "for 
 more than one hundred years preceding the 
 Revolution no divorce took place in the 
 colony of New York ; " and there was no way 
 of dissolving a marriage save by special act 
 of Legislature. 
 
 Occasionally breach-of-promise suits v/ere 
 brought. In 1654 Greetje Waemans pro- 
 duced a marriage ring and two letters, prom- 
 issory of marriage, and requested that on that 
 evidence Daniel de Silla be " condemned to 
 legally marry her." He vainly pleaded his 
 unfortunate habit of some days drinking too 
 much, and that on those days he did much 
 which he regretted ; among other things, his 
 bacchanalian love-making of Greetje. Fran- 
 cois Soleil, the New Amsterdam gunsmith, 
 another recreant lover, swore he would rather 
 go away and live with the Indians (a terrible 
 threat) than marry the fair Rose whom he 
 had left to droop neglected — and unmarried. 
 SI 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 One curious law-case is shown by the 
 injunction to Pieter Kock and Anna van 
 Voorst. They had entered into an agree- 
 ment of marriage, and then had been un- 
 willing to be wedded. The burgomasters 
 and schepens decided that the promise should 
 remain in force, and that neither should 
 marry any other person without the permis- 
 sion of the other and the Court; but Anna 
 did marry very calmly (when she got ready) 
 another more desirable and desired man 
 without asking any one's permission. 
 
 It certainly gives us a great sense of the 
 simplicity of living in those days to read the 
 account of the suit of the patroon of Staten 
 Island in 1642 against the parents of a fair 
 young Elsje for loss of services through her 
 marriage. She had been bound out to him as 
 a servant, and had married secretly before her 
 time of service had expired. The bride told 
 the worshipful magistrates that she did not 
 know the young man when her mother and 
 another fetched him to see her; that she 
 refused his suit several times, but finally 
 married him willingly enough, — in fact, eloped 
 with him in a sail-boat. She demurely of- 
 fered to return to the Court, as compensation 
 52 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 and mollification, the pocket-handkerchief 
 which was her husband's wedding-gift to her. 
 Two years later, Elsje (already a widow) 
 appeared as plaintiff in a breach-of-promise 
 suit; and offered, as proof of her troth- 
 plight, a shilling-piece which was her second 
 lover's not more magnificent gift. Though 
 not so stated in the chronicle, this handker- 
 chief was doubtless given in a " marriage- 
 knot," — a handkerchief in which was tied 
 a gift of money. If the girl to whom it was 
 given untied the knot, it was a sign of con- 
 sent to be speedily married. This fashion 
 of marriage-knots still exists in parts of 
 Holland. Sometimes the knot bears a motto; 
 one reads when translated, " Being in love 
 does no harm if love finds its recompense in 
 love; but if love has ceased, all labor is in 
 vain. Praise God." 
 
 Though second and third marriages were 
 common enough among the early settlers of 
 New Netherland, I find that usually attempts 
 at restraint of the wife were made through 
 wills ordering sequent loss of property if she 
 married again. Nearly all the wills are more 
 favorable to the children than to the wife. 
 Old Cornelius Van Catts, of Bushwick, who 
 53 
 
COLOxNTIAL DAYS 
 
 died in 1726, devised his estate to his wife 
 Annetje with this gruff condition : " If she 
 happen to marry again, then I geff her nothing 
 of my estate, real or personal. But my wife 
 can be master of all by bringing up to good 
 learning my two children. But if she comes 
 to marry again, then her husband can take 
 her away from the farm." John Burroughs, 
 of Newtown, Long Island, in his will dated 1678 
 expressed the general feeling of husbands 
 towards their prospective widows when he 
 said, " If my wife marry again, then her 
 husband must provide for her as I have." 
 
 Often joint-wills were made by husband 
 and wife, each with equal rights if survivor. 
 This was peculiarly a Dutch fashion. In 
 Fordham in 1670 and 1673, Claude de 
 Maistre and his wife Hester du Bois, Pierre 
 Cresson and his wife Rachel Cloos, Gabriel 
 Carboosie and Brieta Wolferts, all made 
 joint-wills. The last-named husband in his 
 half of the will enjoined loss of property if 
 Brieta married again. Perhaps he thought 
 there had been enough marrying and giving 
 in marriage already in that family, for Brieta 
 had had three husbands, — a Dane, a Fries- 
 lander, and a German, — and his first wife had 
 54 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 had four, and he — well, several, I guess ; and 
 there were a number of children; and you 
 could n't expect any poor Dutchman to find 
 it easy to make a will in all that confusion. 
 In Albany may be found several joint-wills, 
 among them two dated 1663 and 1676; 
 others in the Schuyler family. There is 
 something very touching in the thought of 
 those simple-minded husbands and wives, in 
 mutual confidence and affection, going, as we 
 find, before the notary together and signing 
 their will together, " out of love and special 
 nuptial affection, not thereto misled or sinis- 
 terly persuaded," she bequeathing her dower 
 or her father's legacy or perhaps her own 
 little earnings, and he his hard-won guilders. 
 It was an act significant and emblematic of 
 the ideal unison of interests and purposes 
 which existed as a rule in the married life of 
 these New York colonists. 
 
 Mrs. Grant adds abundant testimony to the 
 domestic happiness and the marital affection 
 of residents of Albany a century later. She 
 states : — 
 
 " Inconstancy or even indifference among mar- 
 ried couples was unheard of, even where there 
 happened to be a considerable disparity in point of 
 55 
 
COLONIAL DAYS, 
 t 
 
 intellect. The extreme affection they bore their 
 mutual offspring was a bond that forever endeared 
 them to each other. Marriage in this colony was 
 always early, very often happy, and very seldom in- 
 deed interested. When a man had no son, there 
 was nothing to be expected with a daughter but a 
 well brought-up female slave, and the furniture of 
 the best bed-chamber. At the death of her father 
 she obtained another division of his effects, such as 
 he thought she needed or deserved, for there was 
 no rule in these cases. 
 
 "Such was the manner in which those colonists 
 began life ; nor must it be thought that those 
 were mean or uninformed persons. Patriots, magis- 
 trates, generals, those who were afterwards wealthy, 
 powerful, and distinguished, all, except a few elder 
 brothers, occupied by their possessions at home, 
 set out in the same manner ; and in after life, even 
 in the most prosperous circumstances, they de- 
 lighted to recount the ' humble toils and destiny 
 obscure ' of their early years.'' 
 
 Weddings usually took place at the house 
 of the bride's parents. There are some 
 records of marriages in church in Albany in 
 the seventeenth century, one being celebrated 
 on Sunday. But certainly throughout the 
 eighteenth century few marriages were within 
 the church doors. Mrs. Vanderbilt says no 
 Flatbush marriages took place in the church 
 56 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 till within the past thirty or forty years. In 
 some towns written permission of the parents 
 of the groom, as well as the bride, was 
 required by the domine before he would 
 perform the marriage ceremony. In the 
 Guelderland the express consent of father 
 and mother must be obtained before the 
 marriage; and doubtless that custom of the 
 Fatherland caused its adoption here in some 
 localities. The minister also in some cases 
 gave a certificate of permission for mar- 
 riage ; here is one given by " ye minister at 
 Flatbush," — 
 
 Isaac Hasselburg and Elizabeth Baylis have had 
 their proclamation in our church as commonly our 
 manner and custom is, and no opposition or hin- 
 drance came against them, so as that they may be 
 confirmed in y° banns of Matrimony, whereto we 
 wish them blessing. Midwout y= March 1 7th, 
 1689. 
 
 Rudolph Varrick, Minister. 
 
 This was probably to permit and author- 
 ize the marriage in another parish. 
 
 Marriage fees were not very high in colo- 
 nial days, nor were they apparently always re- 
 tained by the minister; for in one of Domine 
 Selyns's accounts of the year 1662, we find 
 57 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 him paying over to the Consistory the sum 
 of seventy-eight guilders and ten stuyvers for 
 fourteen marriage fees received by him. The 
 expenses of being married were soon in- 
 creased by the issuing of marriage licenses. 
 During the century dating from the domi- 
 nation of the British to the Revolutionary 
 War nearly all the marriages of genteel folk 
 were performed by special permission, by 
 Governor's license, the payment for which 
 (a half-guinea each, so Kalm said) proved 
 through the large numbers a very welcome 
 addition to the magistrates' incomes. It was 
 in fact deemed most plebeian, almost vulgar, 
 to be married by publication of the banns 
 for three Sundays in church, or posting 
 them according to the law, as was the uni- 
 versal and fashionable custom in New Eng- 
 land. This notice from a New York news- 
 paper, dated December 13, 1765, will show 
 how widespread had been the aversion to the 
 publication of banns: — 
 
 " We are creditly informed that there was married 
 last Sunday evening, by the Rev. Mr. Auchmuty, a 
 very respectable couple that had published three 
 different times in Trinity Church. A laudable ex- 
 ample and worthy to be followed. If this decent 
 
 58 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 and for many reasons proper method of publication 
 was once generally to take place, we should have no 
 more of clandestine marriages ; and save the ex- 
 pense of licenses, no inconsiderable sum these hard 
 and depressing times." 
 
 Another reason for " crying the banns " 
 was given in Holt's " New York Gazette and 
 Postboy" for December 6, 1765. 
 
 " As no Licenses for Marriage could be obtained 
 since the first of November for Want of Stamped 
 Paper, we can assure the Publick several Genteel 
 Couple were publish'd in the different Churches of 
 this City last Week ; and we hear that the young 
 Ladies of this Place are determined to Join Hands 
 with none but such as will to the utmost endeavour 
 to abolish the Custom of marrying with License 
 which Amounts to many Hundred per annum 
 which might be saved." 
 
 Severe penalties were imposed upon clergy- 
 men who violated the law requiring license 
 or publication ere marriage. The Lutheran 
 minister performed such a marriage, and the 
 sellout's " conclusion " as to the matter was 
 that the offending minister be flogged and 
 banished. But as he was old, and of former 
 good services, he was at last only suspended 
 a year from power of preaching. 
 59 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Rev. Mr. Miller, an English clergyman writ- 
 ing in 1695, complains that many marriages 
 were by justices of the peace. This was 
 made lawful by the States-General of Holland 
 from the year 1590, and thus was a law in New 
 Netherland. By the Duke's Laws, 1664, it 
 was also made legal. This has never been 
 altered, and is to-day the law of the State. 
 
 Of highly colored romance in the life of the 
 Dutch colonists there was little. Sometimes 
 a lover was seized by the Indians, and his 
 fair betrothed mourned him through a long 
 life. In one case she died after a few years 
 of grief and waiting, and on the very day of 
 his return from his savage prison to his old 
 Long Island home he met the sad little 
 funeral procession bearing her to the grave. 
 Another humbler romance of Gravesend was 
 when a sorrowing widower fell in love with a 
 modest milkmaid at first sight as she milked 
 her father's cows ; ere the milking was finished 
 he told his love, rode to town on a fast horse 
 for a governor's license, and married and 
 carried off his fair Grietje. A century later 
 a fair Quakeress of Flushing won in like 
 manner, when milking, the attention and 
 affection of Walter Franklin of New York. 
 60 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Another and more strange meeting of lovers 
 was when young Livingstone, the first of the 
 name in New York, poor and unknown, came 
 to the bedside of a dying Van Rensselaer in 
 Albany to draw up a will. The dying man, 
 with a jealousy stronger than death, said to 
 his beautiful wife, Alida Schuyler, " Send 
 him away, he will be your second husband ;" 
 and he was, — perhaps the thought provoked 
 the deed. 
 
 Even if there were few startling or pic- 
 turesque romances or brilliant matches, there 
 was plenty of ever-pleasant wooing. New 
 Amsterdam was celebrated, just before its 
 cession to the English, for its young and 
 marriageable folk and its betrothals. This is 
 easily explained; nearly all the first emi- 
 grants were young married people, and the 
 years assigned to one generation had passed, 
 and their children had grown up and come to 
 mating-time. Shrewd travellers, who knew 
 where to get good capable wives, wooed and 
 won their brides among the Dutch-American 
 fair ones. Mr. Valentine says : " Several of the 
 daughters of wealthy burghers were mated to 
 young Englishmen whose first occasions were 
 of a temporary character." The beautiful sur- 
 6i 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 roundings of the little town tempted all to 
 love-making, and the unchaperoned simpli- 
 city of society aided early " matching." The 
 Locust-Trees, a charming grove on a bluff 
 elevation on the North River a little south of 
 the present Trinity Churchyard, was a famous 
 courting-place; or tender lovers could stroll 
 down the " Maiden's Path ; " or, for still longer 
 walks, to the beautiful and baleful " Kolck," 
 or " Collect," or " Fresh Water," as it was 
 sequentially called; and I cannot imagine 
 any young and susceptible hearts ever pass- 
 ing without some access of sentiment through 
 any green field so sweetly named as the 
 " Clover Waytie." 
 
 There were some curious marriage cus- 
 toms, — some Dutch, some English. One 
 very pretty piece of folk-lore, of bride-honor- 
 ing, was brought to my notice through the 
 records of a lawsuit in the infant town of New 
 Harlem in 1663, as well as an amusing local 
 pendant to the celebration of the custom. It 
 seems that a certain young Harlem couple 
 were honored in the pleasant fashion of the 
 Fatherland, by having a " May-tree " set up 
 in front of their dwelling-place. But certain 
 gay young sparks of the neighborhood, to 
 Cz 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 anger the groom and cast ridicule on his 
 marriage, came with unseemly noise of blow- 
 ing of horns, and hung the lovely May-tree 
 during the night with ragged stockings. We 
 never shall know precisely what special taunt 
 or insult was offered or signified by this over- 
 ripe crop of worn-out hosiery; but it evi- 
 dently answered its tantalizing purpose, for 
 on the morrow, at break of day, the bride- 
 groom properly resented the " mockery and 
 insult," cut down the hateful tree, and com- 
 mitted other acts of great wrath ; which, 
 being returned in kind (for thrice was the 
 stocking-full tree set up), developed a small 
 riot, and thus the whole affair was recorded. 
 Among the State Papers at Albany are 
 several letters relating to another insulting 
 " stocking-tree " set up in Albany at about 
 the same date, and also fiercely resented. 
 
 Collections for the church poor were 
 sometimes taken at weddings, as was the 
 universal custom for centuries in Holland. 
 When Stephanus Van Cortlandt and Ger- 
 trude Schuyler were married in Albany, in 
 1671, thirteen guilders six stuyvers were con- 
 tributed at the wedding, and fifteen guilders 
 at the reception the following day. At the 
 63 
 
 •f- 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 wedding of Martin Kreiger, the same year, 
 eleven guilders were collected ; at another 
 wedding the same amount. When the daugh- 
 ter of Domine Eogardus was married, it was 
 deemed a very favorable time and opportu- 
 nity to take up a subscription for building 
 the first stone church in New Amsterdam. 
 When the wedding-guests were all mellow 
 I with wedding-cheer, " after the fourth or fifth 
 round of drinking," says the chronicle, and, 
 hence generous, each vied with the other in 
 good-humored and pious liberality, they sub- 
 scribed " richly." A few days later, so the 
 chronicle records, some wished to reconsider 
 the expensive and expansive transaction at 
 the wedding-feast, and " well repented it." 
 But Director Kieft stiffly held them to their 
 contracts, and " nothing availed to excuse." 
 
 It is said that the English drink of posset 
 was served at weddings. From the " New 
 York Gazette" of February 13, 1744, I copy 
 this receipt for its manufacture : — 
 
 "A Receipt for all young Ladies that are going to 
 be Married. To Malce a 
 
 SACK-POSSET. 
 
 From famed Barbadoes on the Western Main 
 Fetch sugar half a pound ; fetch sack from Spain 
 64 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 A pint; and from the Eastern Indian Coast 
 
 Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast. 
 
 O'er framing coals together let them heat 
 
 Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet. 
 
 O'er such another fire set eggs, twice ten, 
 
 New born from crowing cock and speckled hen ; 
 
 Stir them with steady hand, and conscience pricking 
 
 To see the untimely fate of twenty chicken. 
 
 From shining shelf take down your brazen skillet, 
 
 A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it. 
 
 When boiled and cooked, put milk and sack to egg, 
 
 Unite them firmly like the triple League. 
 
 Then covered close, together let them dwell 
 
 Till Miss twice sings: Vou mtisi not kiss and tell. 
 
 Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon, 
 
 And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon." 
 
 Many frankly simple customs prevailed. I 
 do not know at how early a date the fashion 
 obtained of " coming out bride" on Sunday; 
 that is, the public appearance of bride and 
 groom, and sometimes entire bridal party in 
 wedding-array, at church the Sunday after 
 the marriage. It certainly was a common 
 custom long before Revolutionary times, in 
 New England as well as New York ; but it 
 always seems to me more an English than a 
 Dutch fashion. Mr. Gabriel Furman, in his 
 manuscript Commonplace Book, dated 1810, 
 now owned by the Long Island Historical 
 Society, tells of one groom whom he remem- 
 5 6s 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 bered who appeared on the first Sunday after 
 his marriage attired in white broadcloth ; on 
 the second, in brilHant blue and gold ; on the 
 third, in peach-bloom with pearl buttons. The 
 bride's dress, wholly shadowed by all this mag- 
 nificence, is not even named. Mrs. Vanderbilt 
 tells of a Flatbush bride of the last century, 
 who was married in a fawn-colored silk over 
 a light-blue damask petticoat. The wedding- 
 waistcoat of the groom was made of the 
 same light-blue damask, — a delicate and 
 deferential compliment. Often it was the 
 custom for the bridal pair to enter the 
 church after the service began, thus giving an 
 opportunity for the congregation to enjoy 
 thoroughly the wedding-finery. Whether 
 bride and groom were permitted to sit to- 
 gether within the church, I do not know. Of 
 course ordinarily the seats of husband and 
 wife were separate. It would seem but a 
 poor show, with the bride in a corner with a 
 lot of old ladies, and the groom up in the 
 gallery. 
 
 On Long Island the gayety at the home of 
 
 the bride's parents was often followed on the 
 
 succeeding day by "open house" at the 
 
 house of the groom's parents, when the wed- 
 
 66 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 ding-party, bridesmaids and all, helped to 
 keep up the life of the wedding-day. An 
 old letter says of weddings in the city of 
 New York : — 
 
 " The Gendemen's Parents keep Open house 
 just in the same manner as the Bride's Parents. 
 The Gentlemen go from the Bridegroom's house to 
 drink Punch with and give Joy to his Father. The 
 Bride's visitors go in the same manner from the 
 Bride's to her mother's to pay their compliments to 
 her. There is so much driving ahout at these 
 times that in our narrow streets there is some dan- 
 ger. The Wedding-house resembles a bee-hive. 
 Company perpetually flying in and out." 
 
 All this was in vogue by the middle of the 
 last century. There was no leaving home by 
 bride and groom just when every one wanted 
 them, — no tiresome, tedious wedding-journey; 
 all cheerfully enjoyed the presence of the 
 bride, and partook of the gayety the wedding 
 brought. In the country, up the Hudson 
 and on Long Island, it was lengthened out by 
 a bride-visiting, — an entertaining of the bridal 
 party from day to day by various hospitable 
 friends and relations for many miles around; 
 and this bride-visiting was usually made on 
 horseback. 
 
 67 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 I,et us picture a bride-visiting in spring- 
 time on Long Island, where, as Hendrick 
 Hudson said, "the land was pleasant with 
 grass and flowers and goodly trees as ever 
 seen, and very sweet smells came therefrom." 
 The fair bride, with her happy husband ; the 
 gayly dressed bridesmaids, in silken petti- 
 coats, and high-heeled scarlet shoes, with rolled 
 and powdered hair dressed with feathers and 
 gauze, riding a-pillion behind the groom's 
 young friends, in satin knee-breeches, and gay 
 coats and cocked hats, — all the accompanying 
 young folk in the picturesque and gallant dress 
 of the times, and gay with laughter and happy 
 voices, — a sight pretty to see in the vil- 
 lage streets, or, fairer still, in the country 
 lanes, where the woods were purely starred and 
 gleaming with the radiant dogwood ; or roads 
 where fence-lines were " white with blossom- 
 ing cherry-trees as if touched with lightest 
 snow; " or where pink apple-blossoms flushed 
 the fields and dooryards ; or, sweeter far, 
 where the flickering shadows fell through a 
 bridal arch of the pale green feathery foliage 
 of the abundant flowering locust-trees, whose 
 beautiful hanging racemes of exquisite pink- 
 flushed blossoms cast abroad a sensuous per- 
 68 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 fume like orange blossoms, which fitted the 
 warmth, the glowing sunlight, the fair bride, 
 the beginning of a new life; — let us picture 
 in our minds this June bride-visiting; we have 
 not its like to-day in quaintness, simplicity, 
 and beauty. 
 
 69 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 TOWN LIFE 
 
 The earlier towns in New Netherland 
 gathered usually closely around a fort, both 
 for protection and companionship. In New 
 Amsterdam, as in Albany, this fort was an 
 intended refuge against possible Indian 
 attacks, and also in New Amsterdam the 
 established quarters in the new world of the 
 Dutch West India Company. As the set- 
 tlement increased, roads were laid out in the 
 little settlement leading from the fort to any 
 other desired point on the lower part of the 
 island. Thus Heere Straat, the Breede 
 Weg, or Broadway, led from the fort of New 
 Amsterdam to the common pasture-lands. 
 Hoogh Straat, now Stone Street, was evolved 
 from part of the road which led down to the 
 much-used Ferry to Long Island, at what is 
 now Peck Slip. Whitehall Street was the 
 shortest way to the East River. In front of 
 70 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the fort was the Bowling Green. Other 
 streets were laid out, or rather grew, as 
 needs increased. They were irregular in 
 width and wandering in direction. They 
 were not paved nor kept in good order, and 
 at night were scarcely lighted. 
 
 In December, 1697, city lamps were or- 
 dered in New York " in the dark time of the 
 moon, for the ease of the inhabitants. " Every 
 seventh house was to cause a lanthorn and 
 candle to be hung out on a pole, the expense 
 to be equally shared by the seven neigh- 
 bors, and a penalty of ninepence was de- 
 creed for every default. And perhaps the 
 watch called out in New York, as did the 
 watch in Old York, in London and other 
 English cities, "Lanthorne, and a whole 
 candell-light ! Hang out your lights here." 
 An old chap-book has a watchman's rhyme 
 beginning, — 
 
 " A light here ! maids, hang out your light, 
 And see your horns be clear and bright 
 That so your candle clear may shine," etc. 
 
 Broad Street was in early days a canal or 
 
 inlet of the sea, and was called De Heere 
 
 Graft, and extended from the East River to 
 
 Wall Street. Its waters, as far as Exchange 
 
 71 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Place, rose and fell with the tide. It was 
 crossed by several foot-bridges and a broader 
 bridge at Hoogh Straat, or Stone Street, 
 which bridge became a general meeting- 
 place, a centre of trade. And when the bur- 
 ghers and merchants decided to meet regu- 
 larly at this bridge every Friday morning, 
 they thus and then and there established the 
 first Exchange in New York City. It is 
 pleasant to note, in spite of the many miles 
 of city growth, how closely the exchange 
 centres have remained near their first home. 
 In 1660 the walks on the banks of the Graft 
 were paved, and soon it was bordered by the 
 dwellings of good citizens ; much favored on 
 account of the homelikeness, so Mr. Janvier 
 suggests, of having a good, strong-smelling 
 canal constantly under one's nose, and ever- 
 present the pleasant familiar sight of squat 
 sailor-men and squat craft before one's eyes. 
 In 1676, when simple and primitive vvrays of 
 trade were vanishing and the watercourse 
 was no longer useful or needful, the Heere 
 Graft was filled in — reluctantly, we can be- 
 lieve — and became Broad Street. 
 
 The first mention of street-cleaning was in 
 1695, when Mr. Vanderspiegle undertook the 
 72 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 job for thirty pounds a year. By 1701 con- 
 siderable pains was taken to clean the city, 
 and to remove obstructions in the public 
 ways. Every Friday dirt was swept by each 
 citizen in a heap in front of his or her house, 
 and afterwards carted away by public cart- 
 men, who had threepence a load if the citizen 
 shovelled the dirt into the cart, sixpence if 
 the cartman loaded his cart himself. Broad 
 Street was cleaned by a public scavenger at 
 a salary of ^40 per annum paid by the city ; 
 for the dirt from other streets was constantly 
 washed into it by rains, and it was felt that 
 Broad Street residents should not be held 
 responsible for other people's dirt. Dump- 
 ing-places were established. Regard was paid 
 from an early date to preserving " the Com- 
 mons. " It was ordered that lime should not 
 be burnt thereon; that no hoopsticks or sap- 
 lings growing thereon should be cut ; no tim- 
 ber taken to make into charcoal ; no turfs or 
 sods carried away therefrom; no holes dug 
 therein ; no rubbish be deposited thereon. 
 
 Within the city walls all was orderly and 
 quiet. "All persons who enter y' gates of 
 y' citty with slees, carts and horses, horse- 
 back, not to ride faster than foot-tap." The 
 73 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 carters were forced to dismount and walk at 
 their horses' heads. All moved slowly in the 
 town streets. Living in a fortified town, 
 they still were not annoyed by discharge of 
 guns, for the idle "fyring of pistells and 
 gunns " was prohibited on account of " ill- 
 conveniants. " 
 
 The first houses were framed and clap- 
 boarded; the roofs were thatched with reeds; 
 the chimneys were catted, made of logs of 
 wood filled and covered with clay ; sometimes 
 even of reeds and mortar, — for there were, 
 of course, at first no bricks. Hayricks stood 
 in the public streets. Hence fires were fre- 
 quent in the town, breaking out in the wooden 
 catted chimneys ; and the destruction of the 
 inflammable chimneys was decreed by the 
 magistrates. In 1648 it was ordered in 
 New Amsterdam that no " wooden or platted 
 chimney " should be built south of the Fresh- 
 water Pond. Fire-wardens — brandt-meesters 
 — were appointed, who searched constantly 
 and pryingly for "foul chimney-harts," and 
 fined careless housekeepers therefor when 
 they found them. 
 
 It is really surprising as well as amusing 
 to see how the citizens resented this effort 
 74 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 for their safety, this espionage over their 
 hearthstones; and especially the wives 
 resented the snooping in their kitchens. 
 They abused the poor schout who inspected 
 the chimney-hearths, calling him "a little 
 cock, booted and spurred," and other demean- 
 ing names. In 1658 Maddaleen Dirck, as 
 she passed the door of the fire-warden, called 
 out tantalizingly to him, "There is the 
 chimney-sweep at his door, — his chimney is 
 always well-swept." She must have been 
 well scared and truly repentant at the enor- 
 mity of her offence when she was brought up 
 before the magistrates and accused of having 
 " insulted the worshipful fire-warden on the 
 highway, and incited a riot. " 
 
 In spite of vigilance and in spite of laws, 
 foul chimneys were constantly found. We 
 hear of the town authorities "reciting that 
 they have long since condemned flag-roofs, 
 and wooden and platted chimneys, but their 
 orders have been neglected, and several fires 
 have occurred; therefore they amplify their 
 former orders as follows: All flag-roofs, 
 wooden chimneys, hay-barracks, and hay- 
 stacks shall be taken down within four months, 
 in the penalty of twenty-five guilders. " 
 75 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The magistrates further equipped the town 
 against conflagration by demanding payment 
 of a beaver skin from each house, to purchase 
 with the collected sum two hundred and fifty 
 leather fire-buckets from the Fatherland. 
 But delays were frequent in ocean transporta- 
 tion, and the shoemakers in town finally made 
 the fire-buckets. They were placed in ten 
 groups in various houses throughout the town. 
 For their good order and renewal, each chim- 
 ney was thereafter taxed a guilder a year. 
 By 1738, two engines with small, solid 
 wooden wheels or rollers were imported from 
 England, and cared for with much pride. 
 
 In Albany similar wooden chimneys at 
 first were built ; we find contractors deliver- 
 ing reeds for roofs and chimneys. " Fire- 
 leathes " and buckets were ordered. Buckets 
 were owned by individuals and the town; 
 were marked with initials for identification. 
 Many stood a century of use, and still exist 
 as cherished relics. The manner of bucket- 
 service was this : As soon as an alarm of fire 
 was given by shouts or bell-ringing, all citi- 
 zens of all classes at once ran to the scene of 
 the conflagration. All who owned buckets 
 carried them, and from open windows other 
 76 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 fire-buckets were flung out on the streets by 
 persons who were delayed for a few moments 
 by any cause. The running crowd seized the 
 buckets, and on reaching the fire a double 
 line was made from the fire to the river. 
 The buckets filled with water were passed 
 up the line to the fire, the empty buckets 
 down. Any one who attempted to break the 
 line was promptly soused with a bucket of 
 water. When all was over, the fire-warden 
 took charge of the buckets, and as soon as 
 possible the owners appeared, and each 
 claimed and carried home his own buckets. 
 
 There was a police department in New 
 Amsterdam as well as a fire department. In 
 1658 the burgomasters and schepens ap- 
 pointed a ratel-wacht, or rattle-watch, of ten 
 watchmen, of whom Lodewyck Pos was Cap- 
 tain. Their wages were high, — twenty -four 
 stuyvers (about fifty cents) each a night, and 
 plenty of firewood. The Captain collected 
 fifty stuyvers a month from each house, — not 
 as has since been collected in like manner 
 for the private bribing of the police, but as a 
 legalized method of paying expenses. The 
 rules for the watch are amusing, but cannot 
 be given in full. They sometimes slept on 
 77 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 duty, as they do now, and paid a fine of ten 
 stuyvers for each offence. They could not 
 swear, nor fight, nor be " unreasonable ; " and 
 " when they receive their quarter-money, they 
 shall not hold any gathering for drink nor 
 any club meeting." 
 
 Attention is called to one rule then in 
 force: "If a watchman receive any sum of 
 money as a fee, he shall give the same to the 
 Captain ; and this fee so brought in shall be 
 paid to the City Treasurer" — oh the good 
 old times! 
 
 The presence of a considerable force of 
 troops was a feature of life in some towns. 
 The soldiers were well cared for when quar- 
 tered within the fort, sleeping on good, soft, 
 goose-feather beds, with warm homespun 
 blankets and even with linen sheets, all hired 
 from the Dutch vrouws; and supplied during 
 the winter with plentiful loads of firewood, 
 several hundred, through levy on the inhab- 
 itants; good hard wood, too, — "no watte 
 Pyn wood, willige, oly noote, nor Linde- 
 wood " (which was intended for English, but 
 needs translation into "white pine, willow, 
 butternut, nor linden " ). 
 
 No doubt the soldiers came to be felt a 
 78 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 great burden, for often they were billeted in 
 private houses. We find one citizen writing 
 seriously what reads amusingly like modern 
 slang, — that "they made him weary." An- 
 other would furnish bedding, provisions, any- 
 thing, if he need not have any soldier- 
 boarders assigned to him. One of the 
 twenty-three clauses of the "Articles of 
 Surrender" of the Dutch was that the 
 "townsmen of Manhattans shall not have any 
 soldiers quartered upon them without being 
 satisfied and paid for them by their officers." 
 In Governor Nicholl's written instructions 
 to the commander at Fort Albany, he urges 
 him not to lend "too easey an eare " to 
 the soldiers' complaints against their land- 
 lords. 
 
 Since in the year 1658 the soldiers of 
 New Amsterdam paid but twenty cents a 
 week for quarters when lodged with a citi- 
 zen, it is not surprising that their presence 
 was not desired. A soldier's pay was four 
 dollars a month. 
 
 They were lawless fellows, too lazy to chop 
 
 wood for their fires; they had to be punished 
 
 for burning up for firewood the stockades 
 
 they were enlisted to protect. Their duties 
 
 79 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 were slight, — a drill in the morning, no 
 sentry work during the day, a watch over the 
 city gates at night, and cutting wood. The 
 military code of the day reveals a very 
 lax condition of discipline; it wasn't really 
 much of an army in Dutch days. And as 
 for the Fort and the Battery in the town of 
 New Amsterdam, read Mr. Janvier's papers 
 thereon to learn fully their innocuous pre- 
 tence of warlikeness. 
 
 There was very irregular foreign and in- 
 land mail service. It is with a retrospec- 
 tively pitying shiver that we read a notice, as 
 late as 1730, that "whoever inclines to per- 
 form the foot -post to Albany this winter may 
 make application to the Post-Master." Later 
 we find the postmaster leisurely collecting 
 the mail during several weeks for "the first 
 post to Albany this winter." Of course this 
 foot-post was only made when the river was 
 frozen over; swift sloops carried the summer 
 mail up the river in two or three weeks, — 
 sometimes in only ten days from New York 
 to Albany. I can fancy the lonesome post 
 journeying alone up the solemn river, under 
 the awe-full shadow of old Cro'nest, some- 
 times climbing the icy Indian paths with 
 80 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 ys-sporeji, oftener, I hope, skating swiftly 
 along, as a good son of a Hollander should, 
 and longing every inch of the way for spring 
 and the " breaking-up " of the river. 
 
 In 1672, " Indian posts " carried the Albany 
 winter mail; trustworthy redmen, whose 
 endurance and honesty were at the service 
 of their v,^hite friends. 
 
 The first regular mail started by mounted 
 post from New York for Boston on January 
 I, 1673. His "portmantles " were crammed 
 with letters and "small portable goods" and 
 "divers bags." He was "active, stout, 
 indefatigable, and honest." He could not 
 change horses till he reached Hartford. He 
 was ordered to keep an eye out for the best 
 ways through forests, and accommodations at 
 fords, ferries, etc., and to watch for all 
 fugitive soldiers and servants, and to be 
 kind to all persons journeying in his com- 
 pany. While he was gone eastward a locked 
 box stood in the office of the Colonial Secre- 
 tary at New York to collect the month's 
 mail. The mail the post brought in return, 
 being prepaid, was carried to the "coffee- 
 house," put on a table, well thumbed over by 
 all who cared to examine it, and gradually 
 6 81 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 distributed, two or three weeks' delay not 
 making much difference any way. 
 
 As in all plantations in a new land, there 
 was for a time in New Netherland a lack of 
 servants. Complaints were sent in 1649 to 
 the States-General of " the fewness of boors 
 and farm-servants. " Domestic servants were 
 not found in many households; the capable 
 wife and daughters performed the housework 
 and dairy work. As soon as servants were 
 desired they were speedily procured from 
 Africa. The Dutch brought the first negro 
 slaves to America. In the beginning these 
 slaves in New Netherland were the property 
 of the Dutch West India Company, which 
 rented their services. The company owned 
 slaves from the year 1625. when it first 
 established its authority, and promised to 
 each patroon twelve black men and women 
 from ships taken as prizes. In 1644 it 
 manumitted twelve of the negroes who had 
 worked faithfully nearly a score of years in 
 servitude. In 1652 the Government in 
 Holland consented to the exportation of 
 slaves to the colony for sale. In 1664 Gov- 
 ernor Stuyvesant writes of an auction of 
 negroes that they brought good prices, and 
 82 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 were a great relief to the garrison in supply- 
 ing funds to purchase food. Thus did the 
 colony taste the ease of ill-gotten wealth. 
 Though the Duke of York and his governors 
 attempted to check the slave-trade, by the 
 end of the century the negroes had increased 
 much in numbers in the colony. In the Kip 
 family were twelve negro house-servants. 
 Rip van Dam had five ; Colonel de Peyster 
 and the Widow Van Courtlandt had each 
 seven adult servants. Colonel Bayard, Wil- 
 liam Beeckman, David Provoost, and Madam 
 Van Schaick each had three. 
 
 On Long Island slaves abounded. It is 
 the universal testimony that they were 
 kindly treated by the Dutch, — too kindly, 
 our English lady thought, who rented out her 
 slaves. Masters were under some bonds to 
 the public. They could not, under Dutch 
 rule, whip their slaves without authori- 
 zation from the government. The letters in 
 the Lloyd Collection in regard to the slave 
 Obium are striking examples of kindly con- 
 sideration, and of constant care and thought 
 for his comfort and happiness. 
 
 The wages of a hired servant-girl in New 
 York in 1655 were three dollars and a half 
 8j 
 
COLON lAI- DAYS 
 
 a month, which was very good pay when we 
 consider the purchasing power of money at 
 that time. It is not till the eighteenth cen- 
 tury that we read of the beginning of our vast 
 servant-supply of Irish servants. 
 
 There was much binding out of children 
 and young folk for terms of service. In 
 Stuyvesant's time several invoices of Dutch 
 children from the almshouses were sent to 
 America to be put to service, and the official 
 letters concerning them show much kindli- 
 ness of thought and intent towards these 
 little waifs and strays. Early in the next 
 century a sad little band of Palatines was 
 bound out in New York families. It may 
 prove of interest to give one of the bonds 
 of indenture of a house-servant in Albany. 
 
 "This Indenture witnesseth that Aulkey Hu- 
 bertse, Daughter of John Hubertse, of the Colony 
 of Rensselaerwyck deceased hath bound herself 
 as a Meniall Servant, and by these presents doth 
 voluntary and of her own free will and accord bind 
 herself as a Meniall Servant unto John Delemont 
 of the City of Albany, weaver, by and with the 
 consent of the Deacons of the Reformed Dutch 
 Church in the Citty of Albany, who are as over- 
 seers in the disposal of the said Aulkey Hubertse 
 to serve from the date of these present Indentures 
 84 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 unto the full end and term of time that the said 
 Aulkey Hubertse shall come to Age, all which time 
 fully to be Compleat and ended, during all which 
 term the said servant her said Master faithfully 
 shall serve, his secrets keep, his lawful commands 
 gladly everywhere obey, she shall do no Damage 
 to her said Master nor see it to be done by others 
 without letting or giving notice thereof to her said 
 Master : she shall not waste her Master's goods or 
 lend them unlawfully to any. At Cards, Dice, or 
 any unlawful Game she shall not play whereby her 
 said Master may have Damage : with her own 
 goods or the goods of others during the said Term, 
 without License from her said Master she shall 
 neither buy or sell : she shall not absent herself 
 day or night from her Master's service without 
 his Leave, nor haunt Ale-houses, Taverns, or Play- 
 houses, but in all things as a faithful servant, she 
 shall behave herself towards her said Master and 
 all his during the said Term. And the said Master 
 during the said Term, shall find and provide suffi- 
 cient Wholesome and compleat meat and drink, 
 washing, lodging, and apparell and all other Neces- 
 sarys fit for such a servant : and it is further agreed 
 between the said Master and Servant in case tlie 
 said Aulkey Hubertse should contract Matrimony 
 before she shall come to Age then the said Servant 
 is to be free from her said Master's service by virtue 
 thereof : and at the expiration of her said servitude, 
 her said Master John Delemont shall find provide 
 for and deliver unto his said servant double appar- 
 
 85 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ell, that is to say, apparell fit for to have and to 
 wear as well on the Lords Day as working days, 
 both linning and woolen stockings and shoes and 
 other Necessarys meet for such a servant to have 
 and to wear, and for the true performance of all 
 and every of said Covenant and Agreements the 
 said parties bind themselves unto each other by 
 these presents." 
 
 This indenture was signed and sealed in 
 the year 1710, and varied little from those of 
 previous years. Sometimes the apparel was 
 fully described, and was always good and 
 substantial — and Sunday attire was usually 
 furnished. Sarah Davis, bound out in 
 Albany in 1684, was to be taught to read and 
 knit stockings ; was to have silk hoods and a 
 silk scarf for church wear, and substantial 
 petticoats and waistcoats, some of home- 
 spun, some of "jersey-spun," others of "car- 
 soway," which was kersey. 
 
 " Redemptioners," bound for a term of 
 service as domestic and fann servants, also 
 came from the various European States ; and 
 good servants often did they prove, and good 
 citizens, too, when their terms of service 
 expired. There also opened in this emigra- 
 tion of redemptioners a vast opportunity for 
 86 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 adventure. In the " New York Gazette " of 
 March 15, 1736, we read of one servant -girl 
 adventurer: — 
 
 " We hear that about two years ago a certain •*'' 
 Irish gentlewoman was brought into this province 
 a servant, but she pretended to be a great fortune 
 worth some thousands (was called the Irish Beauty). 
 Her master confirming the same a certain young 
 man (Mr. S***ds), courted her; and she seem- 
 ingly shy, her master for a certain sum of money 
 makes up the match, and they were married and 
 go to their country-seat ; but she not pleased with 
 that pursuades her husband to remove to the city 
 of New York and set up a great tavern. They did 
 so. Next she pursuades her husband to embark 
 for Ireland to get her great portion. When he 
 comes there he finds her mother a weeder of gar- 
 dens to get bread. In his absence Madam be- 
 comes acquainted with one Davis, and they sell 
 and pack up her husband's effects, which were 
 considerable, and embark for North Carolina. 
 When they come there they pass for man and 
 wife, and he first sells the negroes and other effects, 
 then sells her clothes and at last he sells her for a 
 servant, and with the produce returns to his wife 
 in Rhode Island, he having made a very good 
 voyage." 
 
 They were constantly eloping with their 
 masters' or mistresses' wardrobes, some- 
 87 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 times with portions of both, and setting up 
 as gentlefolk on their own account. We 
 find one Jersey girl running a fine rig: 
 dressed in a velvet coat and scarlet knee- 
 breeches, with a sword, cocked hat, periwig, 
 and silken hose, she had a gay carouse in 
 New York tap-houses and tea-gardens, as 
 long as her stolen twenty pounds lasted ; but 
 with an empty stomach, she ceased to play 
 the lad, and went sadly to the stone ketch. 
 I turn regretfully from the redemptioners; 
 they were the most picturesque and romance- 
 bearing element of the community. 
 
 But little is known of the early practice of 
 medicine in New Netherland, less than of the 
 other American colonies, and that little is 
 not of much importance. It must be remem- 
 bered that the times were what Lowell has 
 felicitously termed the twilight through 
 which alchemy was passing into chemistry, 
 and the science of medicine partook of mys- 
 ticism. Astrology and alchemy were not yet 
 things of the past. From the beginning of 
 the settlement the West India Company 
 paid a surgeon (Jacob Varravanger was the 
 name of one) to live in New Amsterdam and 
 care for the health of the Company's "ser- 
 88 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 vants. " But soon so many "freemen" came 
 — that is, not in the pay of the Company — 
 that some doubts arose in the minds of the 
 Council whether it would not be better to 
 save the salary, by trusting to independent 
 practitioners. There were three such in 
 New Amsterdam in 1652. They made pills 
 and a terrible dose of rhubarb, senna, and 
 port-wine, called " Vienna Drink. " But folk 
 were discouragingly healthy in the little town 
 in spite of poor water, and lack of drainage, 
 and filth in the streets, and the Graft. Van 
 der Donck said, " Galens have meagre soup 
 in that country; " and soon the poor doctors, 
 to add to their income, petitioned the Direc- 
 tor that none but surgeons should be allowed 
 to shave people. This was a weighty matter, 
 and after profound consideration, the Coun- 
 cil gave the following answer : — 
 
 " That shaving doth not appertain exclusively to 
 chinigery, but is only an appanage thereof. That 
 no man can be prevented from operating herein 
 upon himself, or doing another this friendly act, 
 provided that it be through courtesy, and that he 
 do not receive any money for it, and do not keep 
 an open-shop of that sort, which is hereby forbid- 
 den, declaring in regard to the last request, this 
 act to belong to chirugery and the health of man." 
 89 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 And the surgeons on shore were protected 
 against the ship barbers, who landed and who 
 made some pretty grave mistakes when 
 attempting to doctor in the town. In 1658 
 Dr. Varravanger, somewhat disgusted at the 
 treatment of the sick, who, if they had no 
 families, had to trust to the care of stran- 
 gers, established the first New York Hospi- 
 tal, which was, after all, only a clean and 
 suitable house with fire and wood and one 
 good woman to act as matron. 
 
 There was no lack of physicians, — half a 
 dozen by 1650. A century later, the histo- 
 rian of the province pronounced the towns to 
 be swarming with quacks. 
 
 One tribute to old-time medicine and New 
 York medical men we owe still. The well- 
 known Kiersted Ointment manufactured and 
 sold in New York to-day is made from a 
 receipt of old Dr. Hans Kiersted' s, the best 
 colonial physician of his day, who came to 
 New York in 1638. The manufacture of this 
 ointment is a closely guarded family secret. 
 He married the daughter of the famous 
 Anneke Jans; and, in the centuries that 
 have passed, the descendants have had more 
 profit from the ointment than from the real 
 90 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 estate. There were plenty of " wise women " 
 to care for the increase of the populace ; the 
 New Amsterdam midwife had a house built 
 for her by the government. It was a much 
 respected calling. The mother of Anneke 
 Jans was a midwife. They were licensed to 
 practise. Here is an appointment by the 
 Governor in 1670: — 
 
 " Whereas I am given to understand that Tryntje 
 Meljers ye wife of Wynant Vander pool a sworn 
 and approved midwife at Albany in which Imploy- 
 ment she hath Continued for y" span of fourteen 
 years past in good reputation not refusing her as- 
 sistance but on y^ contrary affording her best help 
 to y' poorer sorte of people out of Christian Charity, 
 as well as to ye richer sorte for reward, and there 
 being severall other less skilful! women who upon 
 occasion will pretend to be midwives where they 
 can gain by it but refuse their helpe to y= poore. 
 These presents Certifye That I doe allow of y' said 
 Tryntje Meljers to be one of y" profest sworne 
 midwives at Albany, and that she and one more 
 skilfull woman be only admitted to Undertake 
 ye same there except upon Extraordinary occa- 
 sions. They continuing their Charitable assist- 
 ance to y" poore & a diligent attendance on their 
 calling." 
 
 The small number of settlers, the exigen- 
 cies and hardships of a planter's life, the 
 91 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 absence of luxuries, as well as the simplicity 
 of social manners among the Dutch, prohib- 
 ited anything during the rule of the Dutch 
 in New Netherland which might, by a long 
 and liberal stretch of phraseology or ideali- 
 zation of a revered ancestry, be termed fash- 
 ionable life. 
 
 They occasionally had a merry dinner. 
 Captain Beaulieu, a gay Frenchman who 
 brought a prize into port, gave a costly one 
 for fourteen persons ; and as he did not pay 
 for it, it has passed into history. Governor 
 Stuyvesant had a fine dinner given to him 
 on the eve of one of his "gallant departures." 
 De Vries has left us an amusing account 
 of a quarrelsome feast given by the gunner 
 of the Fort. Eating and drinking were ever 
 the Dutchman's pleasures. 
 
 With the establishment of English rule 
 there came to the town of the Governor's 
 residence, in the Province of New York as in 
 the other provinces, a little stilted attempt 
 at the semblance of a court. 
 
 Formal endeavors to have something of 
 the nature of a club were made under the 
 English governors, to promote a social feel- 
 ing in the town. A letter of the day says, 
 9? 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 "Good correspondence is kept between the 
 English and Dutch ; to keep it closer sixteen 
 families (ten Dutch and six English) have 
 had a constant meetting at each other's houses 
 in Turnes twice every week in winter and 
 now in summer once. They meet at six at 
 night, and part at about eight or nine. " The 
 exceedingly early hours of these social func- 
 tions seem to accent the simplicity of the life 
 of the times even more than the absence of 
 any such meetings would have done. The 
 arrival of a new Governor was naturally an 
 important and fashionable event. When the 
 Earl and Countess of Bellomont landed in 
 New York in 1698 they were, of course, 
 greeted first with military salutes; four bar- 
 rels of gunpowder made sufficient noise of 
 welcome. Then a great dinner to a hundred 
 and fifty people was given. It was presided 
 over by the handsomest man in town, Mayor 
 de Peyster, and the fare consisted of "veni- 
 son, turkey, chicken, goose, pigeon, duck 
 and other game; mutton, beef, lamb, veal, 
 pork, sausages ; with puddings, pastry, cakes 
 and choicest of wines." It was a fine 
 welcome, but such dinners did not come 
 every day to the Governor; he had other 
 93 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 and sorrier gatherings in store. Soon we 
 hear of him shut up eight days in succession 
 in Albany (as he said in his exceedingly 
 plain English) " in a close chamber with 
 fifty sachems, who besides the stink of 
 bear's grease with which they were plenti- 
 fully bedaubed, were continually smoking 
 and drinking of rum," and coming back to 
 town in a "nasty slow little sloop." No 
 wonder he fell dangerously sick with the 
 gout. 
 
 Mrs. Grant, writing of New York society 
 in the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 said: — 
 
 " At New York there was always a governor, a 
 few troops, and a kind of little court kept ; there 
 was a mixed, and in some degree polished society. 
 To this the accession of many families of French 
 Huguenots rather above the middling rank, con- 
 tributed not a little." 
 
 This little important circle had some fine 
 balls. On January 22, 1734, one was given 
 at the Fort on the birthday of the Prince of 
 Wales, which lasted till four in the morning. 
 Another was given in honor of the King's 
 birthday. " The ladies made a splendant 
 94 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 appearance. Sometimes as many as a hun- 
 dred persons were present and took part." 
 
 Occasional!}' a little flash of gossiping 
 brightness shows us a picture of the every- 
 day life of the times in the capital town. 
 Such a bit of eighteenth-century scandal is 
 the amusing account, from Mrs. Janet Mont- 
 gomery's unpublished Memoirs, of Lady 
 Cornbury, wife of the Governor, Lord Corn- 
 bury. She died in New York in 1706, much 
 eulogized, and most ostentatiously mourned 
 for by her husband. Mrs. Montgomery's 
 account of her is this: — 
 
 " The lady of this very just nobleman was equally 
 a character. He had fallen in love with her ear, 
 which was very beautiful. The ear ceased to please 
 and he treated her with neglect. Her pin-money 
 was withheld and she had no resource but begging 
 and stealing. She borrowed gowns and coats and 
 never returned them. As hers was the only car- 
 riage in the city, the rolling of the wheels was easily 
 distinguished, and then the cry in the house was 
 ' There comes my lady ; hide this, hide that, take 
 that away.' VVhatever she admired in her visit she 
 was sure to send for next day. She had a fancy to 
 have with her eight or ten young ladies, and make 
 them do her sewing work, for who could refuse 
 their daughters to my lady." 
 95 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 What a picture of the times ! the fashion- 
 able though impecunious Englishwoman 
 and the score of industrious young Dutch- 
 American seamstresses sitting daily and 
 most unwillingly in the Governor's parlor. 
 
 One of the most grotesque episodes in New 
 York political history, or indeed in the life 
 of any public official, was the extraordinary 
 notion of this same Governor, Lord Corn- 
 bury, to dress in women's clothes. Lord 
 Stanhope and Agnes Strickland both assert 
 that when Cornbury was appointed Governor 
 and told he was to represent her Majesty 
 Queen Anne, he fancied he must dress as a 
 woman. Other authorities attribute his 
 absurd masquerade to his fond belief that 
 in that garb he resembled the Queen, who 
 was his cousin. Mrs. Montgomery said it 
 was in consequence of a vow, and that in a 
 hoop and head-dress "".nd with fan in hand 
 he was frequently seen in the evening on the 
 ramparts. A portrait of him owned by Lord 
 Hampton shows him in the woman's dress of 
 the period, fan in hand. Truly it was, as 
 Lewis Morris wrote of him to the Secretary 
 of State, "a peculiar and detestable magot," 
 and one which must have been most odious 
 96 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 and trying to honest, manly New Yorkers, 
 and especially demoralizing to the soldiers 
 before whom he paraded in petticoats. When 
 summarily deposed by his cousin from his 
 governorship, he was promptly thrust into a 
 New York debtor's prison, where he lan- 
 guished till the death of his father made him 
 third Earl of Clarendon. 
 
 97 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 DUTCH TOWN HOMES 
 
 The first log houses of the settlers, with 
 their "reeden roofs," were soon supplanted 
 by a more substantial form of edifice, Dutch, 
 naturally, in outline. They were set with 
 the gable-end to the street and were often 
 built of Dutch brick, or, at any rate, the 
 gable-ends were of brick. 
 
 Madam Knights' description of the city of 
 New York and the houses is wonderfully 
 clear, as is every account from her graphic 
 pen, but very short : — 
 
 " The Buildings are Brick Generaly, very stately 
 and high though not altogether like ours in Boston. 
 The Bricks in some of the Houses are of divers 
 CouUers and laid in Checkers, being glazed, look 
 very agreable. The inside of them is neat to 
 admiration ; the wooden work, for only the walls 
 are plaster'd, and the Sumers and Gist are planed 
 and kept very white scour'd as so is all the parti- 
 tions if made of Bords." 
 98 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Albany long preserved its Dutch appearance 
 and Dutch houses. Peter Kalm's description 
 of the city of Albany is a good one, and would 
 well answer for other New York towns : — 
 
 " The houses in this town are very neat, and 
 partly built with stones covered with shingles of the 
 White Pine. Some are slated with tiles from Hol- 
 land, because the clay of this neighborhood is not 
 reckoned fit for tiles. Most of the houses are 
 built in the old way, with the gable-end towards 
 the street ; the gable-end of brick and all the other 
 walls of planks. The gutters on the roofs reach 
 almost to the middle of the street. This preserves 
 the walls from being damaged by the rain, but it 
 is extremely disagreeable in rainy weather for the 
 people in the streets, there being hardly any means 
 of avoiding the water from the gutters. 
 
 "The street doors are generally in the middle of 
 the houses and on both sides are seats, on which, 
 during fair weather the people spend almost the 
 whole day; especially on those wiiich are in the 
 shadow of the houses. In the evening these seats 
 are covered with people of both sexes, but this is 
 rather troublesome, as those who pass by are obliged 
 to greet everybody unless they will shock the polite- 
 ness of the inhabitants of this town. The streets 
 are broad and some of them are paved ; in some 
 parts they are hned with trees. The long streets 
 are almost parallel to the river, and the others 
 intersect them at right angles." 
 
 99 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Rev. Samuel Chandler, chaplain of one of 
 the Massachusetts regiments, stopped sev- 
 eral days in Albany in the year 1755. He 
 tells of the streets with rows of small button- 
 trees, of the brick houses curiously flowered 
 with black brick and dated with the same, 
 the Governor's house having "two black 
 brick-hearts." The houses one story high 
 with their gable-ends "notched like steps" 
 (he might have said with corbel-steps), were 
 surmounted with vanes, the figures of horses, 
 lions, geese, and sloops. There were window 
 shutters with loop-holes outside the cellars. 
 Smith, the historian of New York, writing at 
 the same time, calls the houses of all the 
 towns, "built of brick in Dutch taste." 
 Daniel Denton, writing as early as 1670, 
 tells of the "red and black tile (of New 
 York) giving at a distance a pleasing aspect 
 to the Spectators." All the old sketches of 
 the town which exist, crude as they are, cer- 
 tainly do present a pleasing aspect. 
 
 The chief peculiarity of these houses were 
 the high roofs; some were extraordinarily 
 steep and thus afforded a garret, a loft, and 
 a cock-loft. There was reason and economy 
 in this form of roof. The shingle covering 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 was less costly than the walls, and the con- 
 traction in size of second-story rooms was 
 not great. 
 
 Very few of the steep roofs in the earliest 
 days had eave-troughs, hence the occasional 
 use in early deeds and conveyances of the 
 descriptive term "free-drip." At a later 
 date troughs were made of sections of the 
 bark of some tree (said to be birch) which 
 the Indians brought into town and sold to 
 house builders. Then came metal spouts 
 projecting several feet, as noted by Kalm. 
 In 1789, when Morse's Geography was issued, 
 he speaks of the still projecting water-spouts 
 or gutters of Albany, " rendering it almost 
 dangerous to walk the streets on a rainy day ; " 
 but in New York more modified fashions 
 obtained long before that time. 
 
 The windows were small ; some had two 
 panes. When we learn that the ordinary 
 panes of glass imported at that time were 
 in size only six inches by eight inches, we 
 can see that the windows were only loop- 
 holes. 
 
 The front doors were usually divided as in 
 Holland, into an upper and lower half. 
 They were in early days hung on strap- 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 hinges, afterwards on heavy iron hinges. In 
 the upper half of the door, or in a sort of 
 transom over the door, were set two round 
 bull's-eyes of heavy greenish glass, just as 
 are seen in Holland. Often the door held 
 a knocker of brass or of iron. The door 
 usually opened with a latch. 
 
 The inventories of the household effects of 
 many of the early citizens of New York 
 might be given, to show the furnishings of 
 these homes. I choose the belongings of 
 Captain Kidd to show that "as he sailed, as 
 he sailed " he left a very comfortable home 
 behind him. He was, when he set up house- 
 keeping with his wife Sarah in 1692, not at 
 all a bad fellow, and certainly lived well. 
 He possessed these handsome and abundant 
 house furnishings: — 
 
 One dozen Turkey work 
 
 Three suits of curtains and 
 
 chairs. 
 
 valances. 
 
 One dozen double-nailed 
 
 Four bedsteads. 
 
 leather chairs. 
 
 Ten blankets. 
 
 Two dozen single-nailed 
 
 One glass case. 
 
 leather chairs. 
 
 One dozen drinking-glasses. 
 
 One Turkey worked carpet. 
 
 Four tables. 
 
 One oval table. 
 
 Five carpets or rugs. 
 
 Three chests of drawers. 
 
 One screen frame. 
 
 Four looking-glasses. 
 
 
 Four feather beds, bolsters, 
 
 Two stands. 
 
 and pillows. 
 
 One desk. 
 
 
 102 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Two dressing boxes. 
 
 One close stool 
 
 One warming pan. 
 
 Two bed pans. 
 
 Three pewter tankards. 
 
 Four kettles. 
 
 Two iron pots. 
 
 One skillet. 
 
 Three pairs of fire irons. 
 
 One pair of andirons. 
 
 Three chafing dishes. 
 
 One gridiron. 
 
 One flesh fork. 
 
 One brass skimmer. 
 
 Four brass candlesticks. 
 
 Two pewter candlesticks. 
 
 Four tin candlesticks. 
 
 One brass pestle. 
 
 One iron mortar. 
 
 zyi dozen pewter plates. 
 
 Five pewter basins. 
 
 Thirteen pewter dishes. 
 
 Five leather buckets. 
 
 One pipe Madeira wine. 
 
 One half-pipe " " 
 
 Three barrels pricked cider. 
 
 Two pewter salt-cellars. 
 
 Three boxes smoothing irons. 
 
 Six heaters. 
 
 One pair small andirons. 
 
 Three pairs tongs. 
 
 Two fire shovels. 
 
 Two fenders. 
 
 One spit. 
 
 One jack. 
 
 One clock. 
 
 One coat of arms. 
 
 Three quilts. 
 
 Parcel linen sheets, table cloths, napkins, value thirty 
 dollars. 
 
 One hundred and four ounces silver plate, value three hun- 
 dred dollars. 
 
 The early New Englanders sat in their 
 homes on stools and forms, and very rarely 
 on chairs. It is not so easy to know of 
 Dutch furnishings, for the words stoel and setel 
 and banck, which are found in early invento- 
 ries, all mean a chair, but also may not have 
 meant in colonial days what we now desig- 
 nate as a chair. A stoel was really a seat of 
 any kind; and stoels there were in plenty 
 among the first settlers. As Cowper says: 
 103 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Necessity invented stools, 
 Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, 
 And Luxury the accomplished Sofa last." 
 
 In this natural succession came the seats 
 of the colonists. The leather chairs with 
 double rows of nails — in Captain Kidd's 
 list — were a very substantial and handsome 
 piece of furniture. 
 
 Tables there were in all houses, and look- 
 ing-glasses in all well-to-do homes. The 
 stands of Captain Kidd were small tables. 
 The carpets named after the tables were 
 doubtless table-covers. The early use of the 
 word was always a cover for a table. 
 
 A truly elegant piece of furniture — one in 
 use by well-to-do folk in all the colonies — 
 was a cupboard. Originally simply a table 
 for the display of cups and other vessels, it 
 came to have shelves and approach in form 
 our sideboard. An inventory of a New York 
 citizen of the year 1690 names a "Holland 
 cupboard furnished with earthenware and 
 purslin" worth fifteen pounds. Another 
 owned a French nut-wood cupboard of about 
 the same value. Cupboard-cloths usually 
 accompanied them. A few of these cup- 
 boards still exist, usually their exact history 
 104 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 forgotten, but still known as " Holland cup- 
 boards. " As long as the inventories of 
 estates of deceased persons were made out 
 and registered with much minuteness of de- 
 tail, a single piece of furniture could be 
 traced readily from heir to heir, but unfor- 
 tunately only the older inventories display 
 this minuteness. 
 
 One unusual word may be noted, which is 
 found in New York inventories, boilsted, 
 bilsted, or billsted — as "a boilsted bed," "a 
 boilsted bureau." The "Century Diction- 
 ary " gives bilsted as the native name of the 
 American sweet-gum tree, the liquidambar, 
 but Mr. Watson says boilsted or bilsted meant 
 maple, — hence these articles meant a bureau 
 of maplewood, etc. 
 
 A very common form of bedstead in early 
 days, both in town and farm houses, was the 
 one built into the house, scarcely more than 
 a bench to hold the bedding, usually set into 
 an alcove or recess. In a contract for the 
 "Ferry House," built in Brooklyn in 1665 
 (the house in which the ferry-master lived), 
 we read one clause thus : " to wainscot the 
 east side the whole length of the house, and 
 in the recess two bedsteads (betste) one in 
 I OS 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 the front room and one in the inside room, 
 with a pantry at the end of the bedstead. " 
 
 This alcove betste was much like a cup- 
 board; it had doors which closed over it 
 when unoccupied and shut it from view. 
 This does not seem very tidy from our 
 modern point of view, but the heavily 
 curtained and upholstered beds of other 
 countries gave but little more opportunity of 
 airing. Adam Roelandsen, the first New 
 York schoolmaster, had these betste built in 
 his house; and Jan Peeck, the founder of 
 Peekskill, had four betste in his country- 
 home, as certainly were needed by a man 
 who had — so he said — "a house full of chil- 
 dren and more besides." 
 
 The sloep-banck, or slaw-bunk, was another 
 form, a folding-bed. This was also set 
 within closet doors or hanging curtains. It 
 was an oblong frame filled in with a network 
 of rope or strips of wood, set apart like the 
 slats of a bed. This frame v/as fastened to 
 the wall at one end, the bed's head, with 
 heavy hinges; and at night it was placed in 
 a horizontal position, and the unhinged end, 
 or foot of the bed, was supported on heavy 
 turned legs which fitted into sockets in the 
 io6 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 frame. When not in use, the frame was 
 hooked up against the wall and covered with 
 the curtains or doors. 
 
 Other sloep-bancks were stationary. One 
 sold in Albany in 1667 to William Brouwer 
 was worth ten guilders. Parson Chandler as 
 late as 1755 said the beds in Albany were 
 simply wooden boxes, each with feather-bed, 
 undersheet, and blanket cover. The kermis 
 bed, on which the Labadist fathers slept in 
 Brooklyn, was a pallet bed. Another bed- 
 stead often named was the trecke-bedde, or the 
 sloep-banck ap rollen, which, as its name 
 implies, was on rollers. It was a trundle- 
 bed, and in the daytime was rolled under a 
 high-post bedstead, if there were one in the 
 room, and concealed by the valance of calico 
 or chiney. 
 
 The beds were deep and soft, of prime 
 geese feathers. For many years the custom 
 obtained of sleeping on one feather-bed and 
 under another of somewhat lighter weight. 
 The pillow-cases, called "pillow-bears," or 
 pillow-clothes, were often of checked linen. 
 The hangings of the bed when it was cur- 
 tained were also, in families of moderate 
 means, of checked and striped linen, in 
 107 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 wealthier houses of kidderminster, camlet, 
 and harrateen. With English modes of living 
 came English furniture; among other inno- 
 vations the great carved four-poster, which, 
 richly hung with valances and tester, was, 
 as Mrs. Grant said, "the state-bed, the 
 family Teraphim, secretly worshipped and 
 only exhibited on rare occasions." The 
 bedsteads of Captain Kidd with valances and 
 curtains were doubtless four-posters. 
 
 A notable feature in the house-furnishing 
 of early colonial days was the abundance and 
 good quality of household linen. The infre- 
 quency of regular washing seasons and times 
 (often domestic washing took place but once 
 in three or four months) made a large amount 
 of bed, table, and personal linen a matter of 
 necessity in all thrifty, tidy households. 
 One family, in 1704 (not a very wealthy 
 one), had linen to the amount of five hundred 
 dollars. Francis Rombout, one of the early 
 mayors of New York, had, at the time of his 
 death, in the year 1690, fifty-six diaper nap- 
 kins, forty-two coarse napkins and towels, 
 thirteen table-cloths of linen and diaper, 
 fifty-one "pillow-bears," thirty sheets, four 
 bolster-covers, ten checked "pillow-bears," 
 108 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 two calico cupboard-cloths, six table-cloths, 
 four check chimney-cloths, two of linen; 
 worth in all, twenty-one pounds eleven 
 shillings. 
 
 Mynheer Marius, who was worth about 
 fifteen thousand dollars, — a rich man, — had 
 eight muslin sheets, twenty-three linen 
 sheets, thirty-two pillow-cases, two linen 
 table-cloths, seven diaper table-cloths, sixty- 
 one diaper napkins, three " ozenbergs " nap- 
 kins, sixteen small linen cupboard-cloths. 
 Colonel William Smith of Long Island was 
 not so rich as the last-named Dutch mer- 
 chant, but he had six hundred dollars' worth 
 of linen. John Bowne, the old Quaker of 
 Flushing, Long Island, recorded in his 
 diary, in 1691, an account of his household 
 linen. He had four table-cloths, a dozen 
 napkins, a dozen towels, six fine sheets, two 
 cotton sheets, four coarse linen sheets, two 
 fine tow sheets, two bolster cases, nine fine 
 pillow-biers, four coarse pillow-biers. 
 
 In 1776, the house furnishings of a house 
 in Westchester County in the "Neutral 
 Ground," were removed on account of the 
 war. The linen consisted of fifty-one linen 
 sheets, eleven damask table-cloths, one linen 
 109 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 table-cloth, twenty-one homespun cloths, 
 four breakfast cloths, twelve damask nap- 
 kins, fifty-six homespun napkins, fifteen 
 towels, twenty-nine pillow-cases. 
 
 This linen was usually kept in a great 
 linen chest often brought from Holland. 
 Made of panelled oak or of cedar, these 
 chests were not only useful, but ornamental. 
 They were substantial enough to have lasted 
 till our own day, unless wantonly destroyed 
 as clumsy and cumbersome, and a few have 
 survived. 
 
 There was one display of wealth which was 
 not wholly for the purpose of exhibiting the 
 luxury and refinement of the housekeeper, 
 but also served as a safe investment of sur- 
 plus funds, — household silver. From early 
 days silver tankards, spoons, dram-cups, and 
 porringers appear in inventories. Salt-cel- 
 lars and beakers are somewhat rare; but as 
 years crept on, candlesticks, salvers, coffee- 
 pots, teakettles, snuffers, bread-baskets, and 
 punch-bowls are on the list. When Captain 
 Kidd, the pirate, was a happy bridegroom in 
 1692, as a citizen of respectability and social 
 standing, he started housekeeping with three 
 hundred dollars' worth of silver. Magis- 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 trate Marius had at the same time a silver 
 tankard, three salt-cellars, two beakers, a 
 mustard pot and spoon, twenty-seven sweet- 
 meat spoons, four tumblers, nine cups each 
 with two ears, a salver, a mug and cover, a 
 baby's chafing-dish, a fork and cup. Gov- 
 ernor Rip van Dam had in silver three 
 tankards, a chafing-dish, three castors, two 
 candlesticks, snuffers and tray, two salvers, 
 a mug, salt-cellar and pepper-pot, and a 
 large number of spoons. Abraham de Peys- 
 ter had a splendid array: four tankards, two 
 decanters, two dishes, three plates, eleven 
 salvers, two cups and covers, two chafing- 
 dishes, six porringers, four sauce-boats, two 
 punch-bowls, three mugs, four sugar-dishes, 
 a coffee-pot and tea-pot, seven salts and 
 shovels, a saucepan, four pairs snuffers and 
 stand, a mustard-pot, a bread-basket, a 
 dram-bottle, tobacco-dish, nine castors, six 
 candlesticks, one waiter, twenty-three forks, 
 three soup-spoons, two punch ladles, ten 
 table-spoons, ten teaspoons, two sugar- 
 tongs; truly a display fit for a fine English 
 hall. We may note in this, as in many 
 other inventories, that the number of small 
 pieces seems very small and inadequate; ten 
 III 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 teaspoons and twenty-three forks appear 
 vastly disproportioned to the great pieces 
 of plate. 
 
 These outfits of silver were, of course, 
 unusual, but nearly all families had some 
 pieces; and even on farms there would be 
 seen fine pieces of silver. 
 
 Curious forms of Dutch silver were the 
 " bite and stir " sugar boxes, often shell- 
 shaped, with a partition in the middle. On 
 one side was placed the loaf sugar, which 
 could be nibbled with the tea; on the other, 
 the powdered or granulated sugar, which 
 could be stirred into the teacup with a tea- 
 spoon. Another graceful piece was the ooma, 
 or sifter, for the mixed cinnamon and sugar 
 with which many sprinkled their hot waffles. 
 An ooma resembled a muffineer. The name 
 was derived from the Dutch oom, an uncle, 
 and the article was a favorite gift of an uncle 
 on the wedding day of niece or nephew. We 
 find Dutch dames leaving by will " milk-pots 
 shaped like a cow," a familiar form of Dutch 
 silver, and can readily believe that much 
 silver owned in New York was made in 
 Holland. 
 
 Coming from a country where the manufac- 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 ture of porcelain and stone-ware was already 
 of much importance, and the importation of 
 Oriental china was considerable, it is not 
 strange that we find more frequent mention 
 of articles of china than in the English col- 
 onies. For instance. Mayor Francis Rom- 
 bouts came to this country as clerk for a 
 Dutch commercial house and died in 1690. 
 He had a cupboard furnished with earthen- 
 ware and "purslin:" twenty-six earthen 
 dishes, earthen pots, twelve earthen " cupps, " 
 six "purslin cupps, " six earthen "juggs, "six 
 pitchers, which was really a very pretty 
 showing. Doubtless the "purslin" was 
 Delft. In the list of early sales at Fort 
 Orange, earthen-ware appears. In New 
 England, in similar sales, its name would 
 never be seen. 
 
 Trim and orderly pieces of furniture, as 
 well as pretty ones, were the various hang- 
 ing wall-racks for plates, knives, and spoons. 
 I presume they were shaped like the ones 
 still in use in Holland. We find in inven- 
 tories lepel-borties (which were spoon-racks) 
 as early as 1664. When an oaken plate- 
 rack was filled with shining pewter plates, 
 Delft dishes, or even red earthen "Por- 
 
 8 113 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 tugese ware," it made a thoroughly artis- 
 tic decoration for the walls of the old 
 Dutch kitchen. There were also stands or 
 boxes with divisions for holding knives and 
 forks. 
 
 114 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 DUTCH FARMHOUSES 
 
 The old Dutch homestead of colonial times 
 fitted the place and the race for which it was 
 built. There was plenty of solid level earth 
 for it to stand on, — so it spread out, sunny 
 and long. The men who built it had never 
 climbed hills or lived on mountain-tops, nor 
 did they mean to climb many stairs in their 
 houses. The ceilings were low, the stairs 
 short and steep, and the stories few ; a story 
 and a half were enough for nearly every one. 
 The heavy roof, curving slightly inward, often 
 stretched out in front at the eaves to form a 
 shelter for the front stoop. Sometimes in the 
 rear it ran out and down over a lean-to to 
 within six or eight feet from the ground. 
 Sometimes dormer windows broke the long 
 roof-slope and gave light to the bedrooms or 
 garret within. This long roof contracted the 
 walls of the second-story bedrooms^ but it 
 8 "S 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 afforded a generous, useful garret, which to 
 the Dutch housekeeper was one of the best 
 rooms in the house. 
 
 The long side of the house was usually set 
 to receive the southern sunshine; if conven- 
 ient, the gable-end was turned to the street or 
 lane ; for, being built when there were poor 
 roads and comparatively little travel, and 
 when the settlers were few in number, each 
 house was not isolated in lonesome woods or 
 in the middle of each farm, but was set cosily 
 and neighborly just as close to those of the 
 other settlers as the extent of each farm 
 would allow, and thus formed a little village 
 street. 
 
 The windows of these houses were small 
 and had solid wooden shutters, heavily hinged 
 with black-painted iron hinges. Sometimes 
 a small crescent-shaped opening cut in the 
 upper portion of the shutter let in a little 
 dancing ray of light at early dawn into the 
 darkened room. In the village as in the city 
 the stoop was an important feature of the 
 house and of home life. Through the sum- 
 mer months the family gathered on this out- 
 door sitting-room at the close of day. 
 The neighbors talked politics as they 
 ii6 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 smoked their evening pipes, and the young 
 folk did some mild visiting and courting. 
 As the evening and pipes waned, little negro 
 slaves brought comfortiers, or open metal 
 dishes of living coals, to start the smoulder- 
 ing tobacco afresh in the long Dutch 
 pipes. 
 
 The cellar of these old farmhouses was a 
 carefully built apartment, for it played a most 
 important part in the orderly round, in the 
 machinery of household affairs. It was built 
 with thought, for it had to be cool in summer 
 and warm in winter. To accomplish the 
 latter result, its few small windows and 
 gratings were carefully closed and packed 
 with salt hay in the autumn, and a single 
 trap-door opening outside the house fur- 
 nished winter entrance. Within this dark- 
 ened cellar were vast food-stores which put 
 to shame our modern petty purchases of 
 weekly supplies. There were always found 
 great bins of apples, potatoes, turnips, and 
 parsnips. These vegetables always rotted a 
 little toward spring and sprouted, and though 
 carefully sorted out and picked over sent up 
 to the kamer above a semi-musty, damp- 
 earthy, rotten-appley, mouldy-potatoey smell 
 117 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 which, all who have encountered will agree, 
 is unique and indescribable. Strongly bound 
 barrels of vinegar and cider and often of rum 
 lay in firm racks in this cellar; and some- 
 times they leaked a little at the spigot, and 
 added their sharply alcoholic fumes to the 
 other cellar-smells. Great hogsheads of 
 corned beef, barrels of salt pork, hams 
 seething in brine ere being smoked, tonne- 
 kens of salted shad and mackerel, firkins of 
 butter, kilderkins of home-made lard, jars 
 of pickles, kegs of pigs' feet, or souse, 
 tumblers of spiced fruits, graced this noble 
 cellar. On a swing-shelf were rolliches and 
 head-cheese and festoons of sausages. On 
 such a solid foundation, over such a storage- 
 room of plenty, thrift, and prudence, stood 
 that sturdy edifice, — the home-comfort of the 
 New York farmer. 
 
 On the ground-floor above were low- 
 studded rooms, one called the kamer, which 
 was the parlor and spare bedroom as well; 
 for on its clean sanded floor often stood the 
 best bedstead, of handsome carved mahogany 
 posts, with splendid high-piled feather-beds, 
 heavy hangings, and homespun linen sheets 
 and pillow-cases. Back of this kamer, in the 
 iiS 
 
LNT OLD NEW YORK 
 
 linter, was the milk-room. The spinning- 
 room with its spinning-wheels was the sitting- 
 room, or occasionally the kitchen, and the 
 bedroom adjoining was called the spinning- 
 room kametje. There were often four or five 
 spinning-wheels in a family, and their merry 
 lium meant lively work. The furniture of 
 these rooms was in character much like 
 that of townhouses, and all had sanded 
 floors. Above these rooms were comfortable 
 chambers; and above the chambers the 
 garret. 
 
 A more loving pen than mine has drawn 
 the old garrets of the Flatbush farmhouses, 
 with their cast-off furniture, old trunks, and 
 bandboxes; the unused cradle and crib; 
 the little end window with its spider-webs and 
 yellow wasps buzzing angrily, and beating 
 with extended wings against the dingy panes, 
 or sitting in dull clusters, motionless and 
 silent, along the moulding; the rough chim- 
 neys; the spinning-wheels and looms, the 
 wooden pegs with discarded clothing. Mrs. 
 Vanderbilt says : — 
 
 " The shingled roof which overarched the garret 
 in all its length and breadth was discolored by 
 time, and streaked and stained with the leakage 
 119 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 caused by hard northeast storms ; there were tin- 
 pans and sea-shells apparently placed at random 
 over the floor in a purposeless way, but which 
 were intended to catch the drip when the warped 
 shingles admitted the rain. In winter there were 
 little drifts of snow here and there which had 
 sifted through the nail-holes and cracks." 
 
 The garret was a famous drying-place in 
 winter-time for the vast washings. Often long 
 adjustable poles were fitted from rafter to 
 rafter to hold the hanging garments. 
 
 In the garret, beside the chimney and 
 opening into it, was the smokehouse, some- 
 times shaped like a cask. Too heavy and 
 big to have been brought in and up to the 
 garret, it was probably built in it. Around 
 this smokehouse were hung hams and 
 sausages, and sides of bacon and dried beef. 
 These usually were not cured in this garret 
 smokehouse; that was simply a storage- 
 place, in which they could be kept properly 
 dry and a little smoked. 
 
 Of the kamer, or parlor, of New Amsterdam 
 Irving wrote, with but slight exaggeration 
 of its sanctity and cherished condition : — 
 
 " The grand parlor was the sanctum sanctorum, 
 where the passion for cleaning was indulged with- 
 
IjM old new YORK 
 
 out control. In this sacred apartment no one 
 was permitted to enter excepting the mistress and 
 her confidential maid, who visited it once a week, 
 for the purpose of giving it a thorough cleaning — 
 always taking the precaution of leaving their shoes 
 at the door, and entering devoutly on their stock- 
 ing-feet. After scrubbing the floor, sprinkling it 
 with fine white sand, which was curiously stroked 
 into angles, and curves, and rhomboids, with a 
 broom — after washing the windows, rubbing and 
 polishing the furniture, and putting a new bunch 
 of evergreens in the fireplace — the window 
 shutters were again closed to keep out the flies, and 
 the room carefully locked up till the revolution of 
 time brought round the weekly cleaning-day." 
 
 Mrs. Grant fully confirms and emphasizes 
 this account as applicable to the parlors of 
 country-houses as well. 
 
 The kitchen was usually in a long rambling 
 ell at one gable-end of the house, rarely in an 
 ell at right angles to the main house; in it 
 centred the picturesqueness of the farm- 
 house. It was a delightful apartment, bustling 
 with activity, cheerful of aspect. On one side 
 always stood a dresser. 
 
 " Every room was bright 
 With glimpses of reflected light 
 
 From plates that on the dresser shone." 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The shining pewter plates, polished like 
 silver, were part of every thrifty housewife's 
 store ; a garnish of pewter, which was a set 
 of different-sized plates, was often her wedding- 
 gift. Their use lingered till this century, and 
 many pieces now are cherished heirlooms. 
 
 Methods of cooking and cooking utensils 
 varied much from those of the present day. 
 The great brick oven was built beside the 
 fireplace ; sometimes it projected beyond the 
 exterior of the building. It had a smoke- 
 uptake in the upper part, from which a flue 
 connected with the fireplace chimney. It 
 was heated by being filled with burning dry- 
 wood called oven-wood. When the wood 
 was entirely consumed, the ashes were swept 
 out with an oven-broom called a boender. 
 A Dutch oven, or Dutch kitchen, was an 
 entirely different affair. This was made of 
 metal, usually tin, cylindrical in form, and 
 open on one side, which was placed next the 
 fire. Through this ran a spit by which meat 
 could be turned when roasting. A bake- 
 kettle, or bake-pan, was a metal pan which 
 stood up on stumpy legs and was fitted with 
 a tightly fitting, slightly convex cover on 
 which hot coals were placed. Within this 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 bake-pan hot biscuit or a single loaf of 
 bread or cake could be baked to perfection. 
 
 Across the chimney was a back-bar, some- 
 times of green wood, preferably of iron ; on 
 it hung pot-hooks and trammels, which under 
 the various titles of pot-hangers, pot-claws, 
 pot-clips, pot-brakes, and crooks, appear in 
 every home-inventory. On those pot-hooks 
 of various lengths, pots and kettles could be 
 hung at varying heights above the fire. 
 Often a large plate of iron, called the fire- 
 plate, or fire-back, was set at the back-base of 
 the kitchen chimney, where raged so constant 
 and so fierce a fire that brick and mortar 
 crumbled before it. These fire-backs were 
 often cast in a handsome design, sometimes a 
 Scriptural subject. These chimneys were 
 vast in size ; Kalm said you could drive a 
 horse and cart through them. Irving says 
 they were " of patriarchal magnitude, where 
 the whole family enjoyed a community of 
 privileges and had each a right to a corner." 
 Often they were built without jambs. 
 Madam Knights wrote in 1704 of New York 
 townhouses : — 
 
 "The fireplaces have no jarabs (as ours have), 
 but the backs run flush with the walls, and the 
 123 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 hearth is of tiles and is as far out into the room at 
 the ends as before the fire, which is generally five 
 foot in the lower rooms, and the piece over where 
 the mantle-tree should be is made as ours with 
 joiners' work and as I suppose is fastened to iron 
 rods inside." 
 
 The kitchen fireplace was high as well as 
 wide, and disclosed a vast smoky throat. 
 When the week's cooking was ended and the 
 Sabbath was approaching, this great fire- 
 place was dressed up, put on its best clothes 
 for Sunday, as did all the rest of the family ; 
 across the top was hung a short petticoat, or 
 valance, or little curtain gathered full on a 
 string. This was called a schouwe-kleedt, a 
 schoorsteen valletje, or sometimes a dobbelstee- 
 tiens valletje, this latter in allusion to the stuff 
 of which the valance was usually made, — a 
 strong close homespun linen checked ofT with 
 blue or red. This clean, sweet linen frill was 
 placed, freshly washed and ironed, every Sat- 
 urday afternoon on the faithful, work-worn 
 chimney while it took its Sunday rest. In 
 some houses there hung throughout the week 
 a schoorsteen valletje ; in others it was only 
 Sunday gear. This was a fashion from early 
 colonial days for both town and country. In 
 124 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the house of Mayor Rombouts in 1690 were 
 fine chimney-cloths trimmed with fringe and 
 lace, and worth half a pound each, and 
 humbler checked chimney-cloths. Cornelius 
 Steenwyck a few years earlier had in his 
 "great chamber" a still gayer valletje of 
 flowered tabby to match the tabby window- 
 curtains. Peter Marius had calico valances 
 for his chimneys. 
 
 A description given by a Scotchwoman of 
 fireplaces in Holland at about this date shows 
 very plainly from whence this form of hearth- 
 dressing and chimney were derived : — 
 
 " The chimney-places are very droll-like ; they 
 have no jams nor lintell, as we have, but a flat 
 gratCj and there projects over it a lum in a form of 
 the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or 
 ruffled pawn around it." 
 
 When tiles were used for facing the fire- 
 place and even for hearths, as they often 
 were in the kamer, or parlor, they were usu- 
 ally of Delft manufacture, printed in dull blue 
 with coarsely executed outline drawings of 
 Scriptural scenes. In the Van Cortlandt 
 manor-house, the tiles were pure white. I 
 have some of the tiles taken from the old 
 125 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Schermerhorn house in Brooklyn, built in the 
 middle of the seventeenth century and demol- 
 ished in 1895. There were nearly two hun- 
 dred in each fireplace in the house. The 
 scenes were from the Old Testament, and 
 several, if I interpret their significance aright, 
 from the Apocrypha. The figures are dis- 
 creetly attired in Dutch costumes. Irving 
 says of these Scripture-tiles : " Tobit and his 
 dog figured to great advantage; Haman 
 swung conspicuously on his gibbet; Jonah 
 appeared most manfully bursting out of the 
 whale, like Harlequin through a barrel of 
 fire." To these let me add the very amusing 
 one of Lazarus leaving his tomb, triumphantly 
 waving the flag of the Netherlands. 
 
 Sometimes the space between the open 
 fireplace and the ceiling of the kamer was 
 panelled, and it had a narrow ledge of a man- 
 telpiece upon which usually were placed a 
 pair of silver, brass, or pewter candlesticks 
 and a snuffers with tray. Occasionally a 
 blekker, or hanging candlestick, hung over the 
 mantel. In some handsome houses the sur- 
 base was of tiles and also the staircase ; but 
 such luxuries were unusual. 
 
 Domestic comfort and kindly charity sat 
 126 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 enthroned in every room of these Dutch 
 homes. Daniel Denton wrote of them as 
 early as 1670: — 
 
 " Though their low-roofed houses may seem to 
 shut their doors against pride and luxury, yet how 
 do they stand wide open to let charity in and out, 
 either to assist each other, or relieve a stranger." 
 
 In these neighborly homes thrift and sim- 
 ple plenty and sober satisfaction in life had 
 full sway; and these true and honorable 
 modes of living lingered long, even to our 
 own day. On the outskirts of a great city, 
 within a few miles of the centre of our great- 
 est city, still stand some of the farmhouses of 
 Flatbush, whose story has been told con amore 
 by one to the manner born. These old 
 homesteads form an object-lesson which we 
 may heed with profit to-day, of the dignity, 
 the happiness, the beauty that comes from 
 simplicity in every-day life. 
 
 127 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 J 
 
 THE DUTCH LARDER 
 
 There is no doubt that the Dutch colo- 
 nists were very valiant trenchermen ; more 
 avid, perhaps, of quantity and frequency in 
 their food than exacting of variety. Cardinal 
 Bentivoglio (the diplomatist and historian) 
 writing at the time of the first emigration to 
 New Netherland, says that the greatest pleas- 
 ures of the Hollanders were those of the 
 table. This love of eating made them provi- 
 dent and lavish of food-stores in emigration ; 
 and the accounts of scant supplies, poor fare, 
 and dire starvation which are recorded of 
 other colonies, never have been told of the 
 vol-gevoedt Dutch. Then, too, they landed 
 on a generous shore, — no rock-bound coast, 
 — Hendrick Hudson said the finest soil for 
 cultivation that he ever set foot on. The 
 welcoming fields richly nourished and multi- 
 128 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 plied the Hollanders' store of seeds and roots 
 and grafts. The rye quickly grew so tall that 
 a man could bind the ears together above 
 his head. Van der Donck saw a field of 
 barley in New Netherland in which the barley 
 stems were seven feet high. Domine Mega- 
 polensis stated that a Rensselaerwyck sclicpen 
 raised fine crops of wheat on the same field 
 eleven years in succession. Two ripe crops 
 of peas or of buckwheat could be raised on 
 the same land in one season. The soil seemed 
 inexhaustible ; and fields and woods also 
 offered to the settlers a rich native larder. 
 Among these American food supplies came 
 first and ever the native Indian corn, or 
 " Turkie-wheat." The Dutch (fond of all 
 cereal foods) took to their liking and their 
 kitchens with speed the various forms of 
 corn-food. 
 
 Samp and samp porridge were soon their 
 favorite dishes. Samp is Indian corn pounded 
 to a coarsely ground powder in a mortar. 
 Like nearly all the foods made of the various 
 forms of Indian corn, its name is of Indian 
 derivation, and usually its method of prepa- 
 ration and cooking. Roger Williams wrote 
 of it: — 
 
 9 129 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 " Nawsamp is a kind of meal pottage unpaiched. 
 From this the English call their samp ; which is 
 the Indian corn beaten and boiled." 
 
 Samp porridge was a derivative of Indian 
 and Dutch parentage. It was samp cooked 
 in Dutch fashion, like a hutespot, or hodgepot, 
 with salt beef or pork and potatoes and other 
 roots, such as carrots and turnips. These 
 were boiled together in a vast kettle, usually 
 in large quantity, as the porridge was better 
 liked after several days' cooking. A week's 
 supply for a family was often cooked at one 
 time. After much boiling a strong crust was 
 formed next the pot, and sometimes toward 
 the end of the boiling the porridge was 
 lifted out of the pot bodily — so to speak 
 — by the crust and served crust and all. 
 Samp was pounded in a primitive and pic- 
 turesque Indian mortar made of a hollowed 
 block of wood, or the stump of a tree. The 
 pestle was a heavy block of wood shaped 
 like the interior of the mortar and fitted with 
 a handle attached to one side. This block 
 was fastened to the top of a growing sapling 
 which gave it the required spring back after 
 being pounded down on the corn. Pounding 
 samp was slow work, often done in later years 
 130 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 by unskilled negroes and hence disparagingly 
 termed " niggering " corn. After those sim- 
 ple mortars were abandoned elsewhere they 
 were used on Long Island ; and it was jest- 
 ingly told that skippers in a fog could always 
 get their bearings off the Long Island coast 
 because they could hear the pounding of the 
 samp-mortars. 
 
 Suppawn, another favorite of the settlers 
 in New York, was an Indian dish made from 
 Indian corn; it was a thick corn-meal and 
 milk porridge. It soon was seen on every 
 Dutch table, and is spoken of by all travel- 
 lers in early New York. 
 
 From the gossiping pages of the Labadist 
 preachers we find hints of good fare in Brook- 
 lyn in 1679: — 
 
 " Then was thrown upon the fire, to be roasted, a 
 pail full of Go wanes oysters which are the best in 
 the country. They are fully as good as those of 
 England, better than those we eat at Falmouth. I 
 had to try some of them raw. They are large and 
 full, some of them not less than a foot long. Others 
 are young and small. In consequence of the great 
 quantities of them everybody keeps the shells for 
 the burning of lime. They pickle the oysters in 
 small casks and send them to Barbados. We had 
 for supper a roasted haunch of venison which he 
 131 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 had bought of the Indians for three guilders and a 
 half of sea-want, that is fifteen stivers of Dutch 
 money (fifteen cents), and which weighed thirty 
 pounds. The meat was exceedingly tender and 
 good and also quite fat. It had a slight aromatic 
 flavor. We were also served with wild turkey, 
 which was also fat and of a good flavor, and a wild 
 goose, but that was rather dry. We saw here 
 lying in a heap a whole hill of watermelons which 
 were as large as pumpkins." 
 
 De Vries tells of an abundant supply of 
 game in the colony ; deer (as fat as any 
 Holland deer can be) ; great wild turkeys, 
 beautiful birds of golden bronze (one that 
 he shot weighed thirty pounds) ; partridges 
 and pigeons (in such great flocks that the 
 sky was darkened). Domine Megapolensis 
 says the plentiful wild turkeys and deer 
 came to the hogpens of the Albany colo- 
 nists to feed ; fat Dutch swine and graceful 
 red deer must have seemed strange trough 
 companions. A stag was sold readily by an 
 Indian for a jack-knife. In 1695 Rev. Mr. 
 Miller said a quarter of venison could be 
 bought " at your door " for ninepence. Wild 
 swan came in plenty, " so that the bays and 
 shores where they resort appear as if they 
 132 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 were dressed in white drapery." Down the 
 river swam hundreds of gray and white- 
 headed geese nearly as stately as the swan ; 
 Van der Donck knew a gunner (and gives his 
 name, Henry de Backer) who killed eleven 
 gray geese with one shot from his gun. Gray 
 ducks and pelicans were plentiful and cheap. 
 Gone forever from the waters of New York 
 are the beautiful gray ducks, white swan, 
 gray geese, and pehcan ; anent these can we 
 sigh for the good old times. The Earl of 
 Strafford's letters and despatches, telling of 
 the " Commodities of the Island called 
 Maniti ore I-ong He wch is in the Conti- 
 nent of Virgenea," confirms all these 
 reports and even tells of " fayre Turkees 
 far greater than here, five hundred in a 
 flocke," — which must have proved a noble 
 sight. 
 
 The river was full of fish, and the bay; 
 their plenty inspired the first poet of New 
 Netherland to rhyming enumeration ; among 
 them were sturgeon — despised of Christians ; 
 and terrapin — not despised. "Some per- 
 sons," wrote Van der Donck in 1656, "pre- 
 pare delicious dishes from the water terrapin, 
 which is luscious food." Two centuries and 
 133 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 a half of appreciation pay equally warm trib- 
 ute to the terrapin's reputation. 
 
 Patriarchal lobsters five and six feet long 
 were in the bay. Van der Donck says " those 
 a foot long are better for serving at table." 
 Truly a lobster si.x feet long would seem a 
 little awkward to serve. W. Eddis, in his 
 "Letters from America" written in 1792, 
 says these vast lobsters were caught in New 
 York waters until Revolutionary days when 
 "since the late incessant cannonading, they 
 have entirely forsaken the coast; not one 
 having been taken or seen since the com- 
 mencement of hostilities." Crabs, too, were 
 large, and some were " altogether soft." Van 
 der Donck corroborates the foot-long oysters 
 seen by the Labadists. He says the " large 
 oysters roasted or stewed make a good bite," 
 — a very good bite, it would seem. 
 
 Salted fish was as carefully prepared and 
 amiably regarded in New York as in England 
 and Holland at the same date. The ling 
 and herring of the old country gave place in 
 New York to shad. The greatest pains was 
 taken in preparing, drying, and salting the 
 plentiful shad. It is said that in towns, as in 
 New York and Brooklyn, great heaps of shad 
 134 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 were left when purchased at each door, and 
 that the necessary cleaning and preparation 
 was done on the street. As all housewives 
 purchased shad and salted and packed at 
 about the same time, those public scavengers, 
 the domestic hogs, who roamed the town- 
 streets unchecked (and ever welcomed), must 
 have been specially useful at shad-time. 
 
 At a very early date apple-trees were set 
 out and cultivated with much care and much 
 success. Nowhere else, says Bankers, had 
 he seen such fine apples. He notes the 
 Double Paradise. The Newtown pippin, the 
 Kingston spitzenburgh, the Poughkeepsie 
 swaar-apple, the red-streak, guelderleng, and 
 others of well-known name, show New York's 
 attention to apple-raising. Kalm, the Swed- 
 ish naturalist, spoke of the splendid apple- 
 orchards throughout New York in 1749, and 
 told of the horse-press for making cider. 
 Cider soon rivalled in domestic use the beer 
 of the Fatherland. It was constantly used 
 during the winter season, and, diluted with 
 water, sweetened, and flavored with nutmeg, 
 made a grateful summer drink. 
 
 Peaches were in such lavish abundance as 
 to become uncared for. The roads were 
 135 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 covered with fallen peaches which even the 
 ever-filled hogs would not eat. Plums were 
 equally plentiful. Cherry-trees were planted 
 in good numbers and produced in great quan- 
 tities. " All travellers and passers-by could 
 pick and eat at will," says Kalm. Compara- 
 tively scanty and poor are peaches, plums, 
 and cherries in New York State to-day. 
 
 There were also plenty of vegetables: 
 cibollen (chibbals), peasen (pease), chicorcye 
 (chiccory), karoten (carrots), artichock (ar- 
 tichoke), lattoiiwe (lettuce), beeten (beets), 
 pastinaken (parsnips), radys (radish), and 
 many others. Pumpkins and squashes 
 abounded, but do not appear to have been in 
 as universal use as in New England. Quaa- 
 siens were so easily cooked " they were a 
 favorite with the young women," says one 
 authority; they "grew rapidly and digested 
 well," also were qualities accorded in their 
 favor. Under the name of asktitasquash, or 
 vine-apples, Roger Williams sungtheirpraises. 
 Musk-melons, water-melons, and cucumbers 
 were grown in large number and excellent 
 quality. Whether they cooked the DuyveFs 
 broodt, the picturesque Dutch name for mush- 
 rooms, I know not, but the teeming woods of 
 136 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the Hudson valley offered them rich and 
 abundant store of this dainty food. 
 
 The Swedish naturalist, Kalm, visited Al- 
 bany in 1749. He has left to us a very full 
 account of Albany food and fashions of serv- 
 ing at that time. He found the Albanians 
 faring as did their great grandfathers in the 
 Netherlands, who were sneeringly called 
 " milk and cheese men," and he found them 
 rasping their cheese as had their far-away 
 forbears in Holland, and as do their descend- 
 ants in Holland to this day. He writes 
 thus : — 
 
 " The inhabitants of Albany are much more 
 sparing than the English. The meat which is 
 served up is often insufficient to satisfy the stom- 
 ach, and the bowl does not circulate so freely as 
 among the English. . . . Their meat and man- 
 ner of dressing it is very different from that of 
 the English. Their Breakfast is tea, commonly 
 without milk. About thirty or forty years ago, tea 
 was unknown to them, and they breakfasted either 
 upon bread and butter or bread and milk. They 
 never put sugar into the cup but put a small bit of it 
 into their mouths while they drink. Along with the 
 tea they eat bread and butter with slices of hung 
 beef. Coffee is not usual here : they breakfast 
 generally about seven. Their dinner is buttermilk 
 
 137 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 and bread to which they sometimes add sugar, and 
 then it is a deUcious dish to them : or fresh milk 
 and bread : or boiled or roasted flesh. They 
 sometimes make use of buttermilk instead of fresh 
 milk to boil a thin kind of porridge with, which 
 tastes very sour but not disagreeable in hot weather. 
 To each dinner they have a great salad prepared 
 with abundance of vinegar and little or no oil. 
 They frequently eat buttermilk, bread and salad, 
 one mouthful after another. Their supper is gen- 
 erally bread and butter, or milk and bread. They 
 sometimes eat cheese at breakfast and at dinner : 
 it is not in slices but scraped or rasped so as to 
 resemble coarse flour, which they pretend adds to 
 the good taste of cheese. They commonly drink 
 very small beer or pure water." 
 
 The " great salad dressed with vinegar " 
 was doubtless " koolslaa," shredded cabbage, 
 which we to-day call coleslaw. It was a uni- 
 versal dish also at that time in Holland. A 
 woman-traveller there in 1756 wrote: — 
 
 " Everything of vivers is dear in Holland ex- 
 cept vegetables, upon which the commons live all 
 summer, and the better sort a great deall. Every 
 body, great and small, sups on sallad with oil and 
 vinegar." 
 
 The Dutch were famously fond of" bakers- 
 meats," — all cakes and breads, — and ex- 
 138 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 celled in making them, and made them in 
 great variety. There was early legislation 
 with regard to bakers, that they use just 
 weights and good materials. In 1656 they 
 were ordered to bake twice a week " both 
 coarse and white loaves, both for Christians 
 and Indians," at these prices : Fourteen stuy- 
 vers for a double coarse loaf of eight pounds, 
 with smaller loaves at proportionate prices; 
 and eight stuyvers for a white loaf of two 
 pounds. Two years later the coarse wheat 
 loaf of eight pounds was definitely priced at 
 fourteen stuyvers in sea-want, ten in beavers, 
 and seven in silver. The bakers complained, 
 and a new assize of bread was established 
 at a slightly higher rate. Under Dongan's 
 charter bread-viewers were appointed; then 
 the bread had to be marked with the baker's 
 initials. I have puzzled over a prohibition of 
 any bakers selling koeckjes, jumbles, and sweet 
 cakes, unless he also had coarse bread for 
 sale ; and fancy it was that the extravagant 
 and careless purchaser might not be tempted 
 or forced to buy too costly food. One baker 
 was prosecuted for having gingerbread in his 
 window when he had no coarse bread. There 
 were also " pye-women " as well as bakers. 
 139 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Favorite articles of food were three kinds 
 of fried cakes of close kinship, thus described 
 by Irving, — "the doughty doughnut, the 
 tender olykoek, the crisp and crumbling 
 cruller." The doughnut was an equal favor- 
 ite in New England, and was in some local- 
 ities called a simball, or simblin ; which was a 
 New England variant, a Puritan degradent of 
 the simbling-cake, or simnel, of the English 
 Mid-Lent Sunday. In New England country- 
 houses doughnuts were eaten, indeed, are 
 eaten, all the year around three meals a day ; 
 but Mrs. Vanderbilt says the Dutch in Flat- 
 bush only made them from November 
 through January, because at that period the 
 lard in which they were cooked was still 
 fresh. She also says they were limited in 
 their public appearance to the tea-table or for 
 children to eat " between-meals." I don't 
 know that I am willing to acquiesce in her 
 assumption that when the Pilgrims were in 
 Holland the English goodwives learned to 
 make doughnuts from the Dutch vrouws, 
 and thus be forced to yield doughnuts to 
 the other triumphs of " Dutch colonial 
 influence." 
 
 The famous olykoeks, or olijkoecks, were 
 140 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 thus concocted, as given by an old Dutch 
 receipt of the year 1740 belonging to Mrs. 
 Morris Patterson Ferris: — 
 
 " About twelve o'clock set a little yeast to rise, 
 so as to be ready at five p. m. to mix with the 
 following ingredients : 3f pounds of flour, i pound 
 of sugar, I pound of butter and lard mixed, i^ 
 pints of milk, 6 eggs, i pint raised yeast. Warm 
 the butter, sugar and milk together, grate a nut- 
 meg in the flour, add eggs last. Place in a warm 
 place to rise. If quite light at bedtime, work 
 them down by pressing with the hand. At nine 
 next morning make into small balls with the 
 hand, and place in the centre of each a bit of 
 raisin, citron, and apple chopped fine. Lay on 
 a well-floured pie-board and allow them to rise 
 again. They are frequently ready to boil at two 
 o'clock. In removing them from the board use 
 a knife, well-floured, and just give them a little 
 roll with the hand to make them round. Have 
 the fat boiling, and boil each one five minutes. 
 When cool roll in sifted sugar." 
 
 The name means literally oil-cakes, and 
 they were originally boiled or fried in oil. 
 They were called " melting," and I am sure 
 from this description of the process of manu- 
 facture they were delicate enough to deserve 
 the appellation. The Hessian officers in 
 141 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Revolutionary times give eloquent approval 
 of these " rich batter-cakes." 
 
 Tea-cakes which were made both in New 
 England and New York were what Mrs. Van- 
 derbilt calls " izer-cookies." They were so 
 termed from the Dutch word iser, or yser, 
 meaning iron ; for they were baked in long- 
 handled irons called wafer-irons, which often 
 had the initials of the owners impressed in 
 the metal, which impression of course ren- 
 dered the letters in relief on the cakes. 
 Often a date was also stamped on the irons. 
 These wafer-irons sometimes formed part of a 
 wedding outfit, having the initials of the bride 
 and groom intertwined. The cakes were also 
 called split-cakes because, thin as they were, 
 often they were split and buttered before be- 
 ing eaten. Other wafer-cakes were called 
 oblyen. Cinnamon-cakes resembled a deli- 
 cate jumble with powdered cinnamon sprin- 
 kled on top. Pufifards, or puffertjes, were 
 eaten hot with powdered cinnamon and sugar, 
 and were baked in a special pan, termed a 
 pufifet-pan. Wonders were flavored with 
 orange peel and boiled in lard. Pork-cakes, 
 made of chopped pork with spices, almonds, 
 currants, raisins, and flavored with brandy, 
 142 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 were a rich cake. The famous Schuyler 
 wedding cake had among other ingredients, 
 twelve dozen eggs, forty-eight pounds of 
 raisins, twenty-four pounds of currants, four 
 quarts of brandy, a quart of rum. This was 
 mixed in a wash-tub. 
 
 Many of these cakes are now obsolete. In 
 one of the old inventories of the Van Cort- 
 landt family, in a list of kitchen utensils is 
 the item, " i Bolly-byssha Pan." This is the 
 Anglicized spelling of bollo-bacia, — bolle the 
 old Dutch and Spanish word for a bun, or 
 small loaf of flour and sugar; bacia the 
 Spanish for a metal pan. In old receipts in 
 the same family the word is called bolla- 
 houche and boUa-buysies. The receipt runs 
 thus : — 
 
 " To a pound of flower a quarter of a pound of 
 sugar, the same of butter, 4 egs, sum Nut-Meg 
 and Senamond, milk & yeast, A pint of milk to 
 2 pound of flower." 
 
 Domestic swine afforded the Dutch many 
 varied and appetizing foods. Two purely 
 Dutch dishes were rolliches and head cheese. 
 Rolliches were made of lean beef and fat cut 
 in pieces about as large as dice, then highly 
 
 143 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 seasoned with herbs and spices, sewed in tripe 
 and boiled for several hours. This roll was 
 then pressed into an oblong loaf, which made 
 pretty slices when cut and served cold. Head 
 cheese, or hoofd-kaas, was similar in appear- 
 ance, but was made of pigs'-feet and portions 
 of the head chopped fine, boiled in a bag, and 
 pressed into the shape of a cheese. This also 
 was served in cold slices. 
 
 Speck ende kool, pork and cabbage, was 
 another domestic stand-by; fried pork and 
 apples were made into an appetizing dinner 
 dish. Roast ducks were served with pork- 
 dumplings, — of which the mystery of manu- 
 facture is unknown to me. 
 
 A great favorite of the Dutch is shown 
 through this advertisement in the "New York 
 Gazette" of December 17, 1750: — 
 
 " The Printer hereof, ever mindful to please and 
 gratify his Customers, finding but little Entertain- 
 ment at present suitable to the Genius of many ; 
 has been obliged to provide for the Winter Evening 
 Diversion of such of his Friends as are that way 
 inclined, A Parcel of the Nuts commonly called 
 KESKATOMAS NUTS which he sells at One 
 Shilling per Half a Peck. N. B. They are all 
 right ' Sopus and of the right sort.' " 
 144 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 A writer in the "Literary World " in 1850 
 thus defines and eulogizes these nuts : — 
 
 " Hickory, shell-bark, kiskitomas nut ! 
 Or whatsoever thou art called, thy praise 
 Has ne'er been sounded yet in poet's lays." 
 
 Michaux, in his "North American Sylva," 
 says that many descendants of the Dutch in 
 New Jersey and New York still call the 
 hickory-nut Kisky- Thomas-nuts. The name is 
 derived from an Indian word, not from the 
 Dutch. These nuts were served at every 
 winter evening company, great or small. 
 Mrs. Grant tells of their appearance on the 
 tea-table. 
 
 Of the drinking habits of the Dutch colo- 
 nists I can say that they were those of all 
 the colonies, — excessive. Tempered in their 
 tastes somewhat by the universal brewing 
 and drinking of beer, they did not use as 
 much rum as the Puritans of New England, 
 nor drink as deeply as the Virginia planters; 
 but the use of liquor was universal. A liba- 
 tion was poured on every transaction, every 
 action, at every happening in the community, 
 in public life as well as in private. John 
 Barleycorn was ever a witness at the drawing 
 10 145 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 up of a contract, the signing of a deed, the 
 selling of a farm, the purchase of goods, 
 the arbitration of a suit. If either party to a 
 contract "backed out" before signing, he 
 did not back away from the " treat," but had 
 to furnish half a barrel of beer or a gallon of 
 rum to assuage the pangs of disappointment. 
 Liquor was served at auctions or " vendues " 
 free, so Madam Knight says, — buyers be- 
 coming expansive in bidding when well 
 primed. It appeared at weddings, funer- 
 als, church-openings, deacon-ordainings, and 
 house-raisings. No farm hand in haying- 
 field, no sailor on a vessel, no workman in a 
 mill, no cobbler, tailor, carpenter, mason, or 
 tinker would work without some strong drink, 
 some treat. The bill for liquor where many 
 workmen were employed, as in a house-rais- 
 ing, was often a heavy one. 
 
 A detailed example of the imperative fur- 
 nishing of liquor to workmen is found in the 
 contracts and bills for building in 1656 the 
 first stone house erected at Albany, a govern- 
 ment house or fort. It cost 12,213 guilders 
 in wampum, or about ;?3,500, and was built 
 under the charge of Jan de la Montagne, the 
 Vice-Director of the Fort. Every step in the 
 146 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 erection of this building was taken knee-deep 
 in liquor. The dispensing of drink began 
 when the old wooden fort was levelled ; a tun 
 of strong beer was furnished to the pullers- 
 down. At the laying of the first stones of 
 the wall a case of brandy, an anker (thirty- 
 three quarts) of brandy, and thirty-two guil- 
 ders' worth of other liquor wet the thirsty 
 whistles of the masons. When the cellar 
 beams were laid, the carpenters had their 
 turn. Two barrels of strong beer, three cases 
 of brandy, and seventy-two florins' worth of 
 small beer rested them temporarily from their 
 labors. When the second tier of beams was 
 successfully in place, the carpenters had two 
 more cases of brandy and a barrel of beer. 
 
 The beams had already received a previous 
 " wetting; " for when brought to the building 
 they had been left without the wall, and had 
 been carried within, one at a time, by eight 
 men who had half a barrel of beer for each 
 beam. There were thirty-three beams in all. 
 
 All the wood-carriers, teamsters, carpenters, 
 stone-cutters, and masons had, besides these 
 special treats, a daily dram of a gill of brandy 
 apiece, and three pints of beer at dinner. 
 They were dissatisfied, and " solicited " another 
 147 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 pint of beer. Even the carters who brought 
 wood and the boatmen who floated down 
 spars were served with liquor. When the 
 carpenters placed the roof-tree, a half-barrel 
 of liquor was given them. Another half-bar- 
 rel under the name of tiles-beer went to the 
 tile-setters. The special completion of the 
 winding staircase demanded five guilders' 
 worth of liquor. When the house was fin- 
 ished, a kraeg, or housewarming, of both food 
 and drink to all the workmen and their wives 
 was demanded and refused. Well it might 
 be refused, when the liquor bill without it 
 amounted to seven hundred and sixteen 
 guilders. 
 
 The amount of liquor required to help in 
 conducting an election was very great. In 
 1738 James Alexander and Eventhus Van 
 Home paid over seventy-two pounds for one 
 election bill. Liquor then was cheap. This 
 sum purchased sixty-two gallons of Jamaica 
 rum, several gallons of brandy, eight gallons 
 of lime-juice, a "pyd " of wine which cost' six- 
 teen pounds (I don't know what a " pyd " 
 could have been), a large amount of shrub, and 
 mugs and " gugs" and " bottels." There were 
 also two bagpipes and a fiddler. 
 148 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Let me give, as a feeble excuse for the 
 large consumption of beer, cider, etc., that 
 the water was poor in many of the towns. 
 Kalm wrote of the Albany water: — 
 
 " The water of several of the wells was very cool 
 about this time, but had a kind of acid taste which 
 was not very agreeable. I think this water is not 
 very wholesome for people who are not used to it. 
 Nearly every house in Albany has its well, the water 
 of which is applied to common use ; but for tea, 
 brewing, and washing they commonly take the water 
 of the river." 
 
 What can be the other " common use " to 
 which well-water was applied, except putting 
 out fires, — which is an infrequent use? 
 
 In New York City the water was equally 
 poor. The famous Tea-water Pump supplied 
 in barrels for many years the more fastidious 
 portion of the community. Perhaps we could 
 scarcely expect them to drink much water 
 when they had to buy it. 
 
 Our notions of life in New Netherland 
 have been so thoroughly shaped by Die- 
 drich Knickerbocker's tergiversating account 
 thereof, that it would be difficult for us to 
 make any marked change in the picture he 
 has painted. Nor do we need to do so. For 
 149 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 though the details of public and official life 
 and characters in that day have been wilfully 
 distorted by Irving's keen humor, still the 
 atmosphere of his picture is undeniably cor- 
 rect, and the domestic life he has shown us 
 was the life of that colony. I find nothing, 
 after much illumination through careful exami- 
 nation of old records and the contemporary 
 accounts given by early travellers, to change 
 in any considerable degree the estimate of 
 every-day life in New Netherland which I 
 gained from Irving, save in one respect, — the 
 account of Dutch table manners, and the at- 
 tributing to the Dutch burghers of lax hospi- 
 tality at dinner-time, which I cannot believe. 
 Madam Knight wrote of her New York hosts 
 in 1 704 : — 
 
 "They are sociable to one another, and Cur- 
 teos and Civill to Strangers, and fare well in their 
 houses. . . . They are sociable to a degree, their 
 tables being as free to their Naybours as them- 
 selves." 
 
 Mrs. Grant, writing of Albanians half a cen- 
 tury later, gives a detailed description of their 
 manners as hosts, which might serve as an 
 explanation of apparent inhospitality in the 
 time of Walter the Doubter: — 
 150 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 " They were exceedingly social, and visited each 
 other very frequently, beside the regular assembling 
 together in porches every fine evening. Of the 
 more substantial luxuries of the table they knew 
 little, and of the formal and ceremonious parts of 
 good breeding still less. 
 
 " If you went to spend a day anywhere, you were 
 received in a manner we should think very cold. No 
 one rose to welcome you ; no one wondered you 
 had not come sooner, or apologized for any de- 
 ficiency m your entertainment. Dinner, which was 
 very early, was served exactly in the same manner 
 as if there were only the family. The house, in- 
 deed, was so exquisitely neat and well regulated, 
 that you could not surprise them ; and they saw 
 each other so often and so easily that intimates 
 made no difference. Of strangers they were shy ; 
 not by any means from want of hospitality, but 
 from a consciousness that people who had little 
 to value themselves on but their knowledge of the 
 modes and ceremonies of polished life disliked 
 their sincerity and despised their simplicity. If 
 you showed no insolent wonder, but easily and 
 quietly adopted their manners, you would receive 
 from them not only very great civility, but much 
 essential kindness. . . . After sharing this plain 
 and unceremonious dinner, which might, by the 
 bye, chance to be a very good one, but was in- 
 variably that which was meant for the family, tea 
 was served in at a very early hour. And here it 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 was that the distinction shown to strangers com- 
 menced. Tea here was a perfect ' regale,' accom- 
 panied by various sorts of cake unknown to us, 
 cold pastry, and great quantities of sweetmeats and 
 preserved fruits of various kinds, and plates of hick- 
 ory and other nuts ready cracked. In all manner 
 of confectionery and pastry these people excelled ; 
 and having fruit in great abundance, which cost 
 them nothing, and getting sugar home at an easy 
 rate, in return for their exports to the West Indies, 
 the quantity of these articles used in. families, other- 
 wise plain and frugal, was astonishing. Tea was 
 never unaccompanied with some of these petty 
 articles ; but for strangers a great display was 
 made. If you stayed supper, you were sure of a 
 most substantial though plain one. In this meal 
 they departed, out of compliment to the strangers, 
 from their usual simplicity. Having dined between 
 twelve and one, you were quite prepared for it. 
 You had either game or poultry roasted, and al- 
 ways shell-fish in the season ; you had also fruit in 
 abundance. All this with much neatness, but no 
 form. The seeming coldness with which you were 
 first received wore off by degrees." 
 
 It may be noted that Mrs. Grant gives a 
 very different notion of Albany fare than does 
 Kalm, already quoted; and she wrote scarce 
 a score of years after his account. She tells 
 — in this extract — not of wealthy folk, 
 152 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 though they were truly gentle-folk, if sim- 
 plicity of living, kindliness, and good sense 
 added in many cases to good birth could 
 make these plain Albanians gentle-folk. And 
 in truth it seems to me a cheerful picture, — 
 one of true though shy hospitality ; pleasant 
 of contemplation in our days of formality and 
 extravagance of entertaining, of scant knowl- 
 edge of the true home life even of those we 
 call our friends. 
 
 153 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE DUTCH VROUWS 
 
 There is much evidence to show that the 
 women of Dutch descent of the early years 
 of New Netherland and New York had other 
 traits than those of domestic housewifery; 
 they partook frequently of the shrewdness 
 and business sagacity and capacity of their 
 Dutch husbands. Widows felt no hesitation 
 and experienced no difficulty in carrying on 
 the business affairs of their dead partners; 
 wives having capable, active husbands boldly 
 engaged in independent business operations 
 of their own ; their ventures were as extended 
 and fearless as those of the men. They 
 traded for peltries with the Indians with 
 marked success. I suspect part of the profit 
 may have come through the Indian braves' 
 serene confidence in their own superior 
 sagacity in bargaining and trafficking with 
 the "white squaws." The Labadist travel- 
 154 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 lers wrote thus despitefully of a "female- 
 trader" in Albany in 1679: — 
 
 " This woman, although not of openly godless 
 life, is more wise than devout, although her knowl- 
 edge is not very extensive, and does not surpass 
 that of the women of New Netherland. She is a 
 truly worldly woman, proud and conceited, and 
 sharp in trading with wild people as well as tame 
 ones, or what shall I call them not to give them the 
 name of Christians, or if I do, it is only to distin- 
 guish them from the others. She has a husband, 
 who is her second one. He remains at home 
 quietly while she travels over the country to carry 
 on the trading. In fine, she is one of the Dutch 
 female-traders who understand the business so well. 
 If these be the persons who are to make Christians 
 of the heathen, what will the latter be? " 
 
 Certain traits of a still more influential 
 and widely known female-trader in New 
 Netherland are shown to us in Bankers' 
 pages through slight but extremely vivid 
 side-lights, but which (having been written 
 on shipboard) may perhaps be taken with 
 the grain of palliative salt which should fre- 
 quently be cast upon the condemnatory utter- 
 ances of sea-weary, if not sea-sick, passen- 
 gers on the raging deep when they regard 
 everything connected with the odious ship 
 155 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 which confines them. We are introduced to 
 this colonial woman of affairs in the sub-title 
 of the journal, which states that the journey 
 to New Netherland was made " in a small 
 Flute-ship called the Charles, of which 
 Thomas Singleton was Master; but the 
 superior Authority over both Ship and Cargo 
 was in Margaret Filipse, who was the Owner 
 of both, and with whom we agreed for our 
 Passage from Amsterdam to New York, in 
 New Netherland, at seventy-five Guilders for 
 each Person, payable in Holland." 
 
 This " Margaret Filipse " was the daughter 
 of Adolph Hardenbrook who settled in Ber- 
 gen, opposite New Amsterdam. She was 
 the widow of the merchant trader Peter 
 Rudolphus De Vries when she married 
 Frederick Philipse. Her second husband 
 was a carpenter by trade, who worked for 
 Governor Stuyvesant; but on his marriage 
 with the wealthy Widow De Vries, he be- 
 came her capable business partner, and finally 
 was counted the richest man in the colony. 
 She owned ships running to many ports, and 
 went repeatedly to Holland in her own ships 
 as supercargo. She was visited by Bankers 
 in Amsterdam in June, 1679. According 
 156 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 to the custom of his religious sect, he al- 
 ways called her by her Christian name, and 
 wrote of her as Margaret. He says : — 
 
 " We spoke to Margaret, inquiring of her when 
 the ship would leave. She answered she had given 
 orders to have everything in readiness to sail to-day, 
 but she herself was of opinion it would not be 
 before Monday. We offered her the money to 
 pay for our passage, but she refused to receive it 
 at that time, saying she was tired and could not be 
 troubled with it that day." 
 
 They waited patiently on shipboard for 
 several days for Madam Philipse to embark, 
 and at last he writes : — 
 
 " We were all very anxious for Margaret to 
 arrive, so that we might not miss a good wind. 
 Jan and some of the other passengers were much 
 dissatisfied. Jan declared, ' If this wind blows over 
 I will write her a letter that will make her ears 
 tingle.'" 
 
 Landing at an English port, the travellers 
 bought wine and vinegar, "for we began to 
 see it would go slim with us on the voyage," 
 and Margaret bought a ship which was made 
 ready to go to the Isle of May and then to 
 the Barbadoes. Over the purchase and 
 equipment of this ship arose a great quarrel, 
 157 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 for "those miserable, covetous people Mar- 
 garet and her husband " tried to take away 
 the Charles' long-boat because timber for a 
 new one was cheaper in Nev/ York than in 
 Falmouth, England. Naturally, the passen- 
 gers objected to crossing the Atlantic without 
 a ship's-boat. Bankers complained further 
 of Margaret's "miserable covetousness," — 
 that she made the ship lay to for an hour and 
 a half and sent out the jolly-boat to pick up 
 a ship's mop or swab worth six cents; and 
 the carpenter swore because she had not fur- 
 nished new leather and spouts for the 
 pumps. Bankers explained at length the 
 enhancement of the Philipse profits through 
 some business arrangement and preferment 
 with the Governor, by which Frederick 
 Philipse became the largest trader with the 
 Five Nations at Albany, had a profitable 
 slave-trade with Africa, and, it is asserted, 
 was in close bonds with the Madagascar 
 pirates. Whether " Margaret " favored this 
 trade with the pirates is not known; but it 
 could probably be said of her trade, as of 
 many others in the colony, that it was hard 
 to draw the dividing line between privateer- 
 ing and piracy. 
 
 158 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Her calling was not singular in New 
 Amsterdam. The little town abounded in 
 women-traders. 
 
 Elizabeth Van Es was the daughter of one 
 of the early Albany magistrates. She mar- 
 ried Gerrit Bancker, and on becoming a 
 widow removed to New York, where she 
 promptly opened a store on her own account, 
 and conducted it with success till her death, 
 in 1694. In the inventory of her effects were 
 a share in a brigantine, a large quantity of 
 goods and peltries, as well as various silver- 
 clasped Bibles, gold and stone rings, and 
 silver tankards and beakers, showing her 
 success in her business career. The wife of 
 the great Jacob Leisler, a Widow Vander- 
 veen when he married her, was a trader. 
 Lysbet, the widow of Merchant Reinier, be- 
 came the wife of Domine Drisius, of New 
 York. She carried on for many years a 
 thriving trade on what is now Pearl Street, 
 near Whitehall Street, and was known to 
 every one as Mother Drisius. The wife of 
 Domine Van Varick also kept a small store, 
 and thus helped out her husband's salary. 
 
 Heilke Pieterse was the wife of the fore- 
 most blacksmith of New Amsterdam; and as 
 159 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 he monopolized the whole business of Long 
 Island, he died very rich, — worth at least 
 ten thousand dollars. Not overwhelmed or 
 puffed up with the inheritance of such opu- 
 lence, Heilke carried on her husband's busi- 
 ness for many years with success. 
 
 Margaret Backer was another successful 
 business woman. For years she acted as 
 attorney for her husband while he was in 
 foreign countries attending to that end of his 
 great foreign trade. Rachel Vinje, involved 
 in heavy lawsuits over the settlement of an 
 estate, pleaded her own case in court, and 
 was successful. Women were constant in 
 their appearance in court as parties in con- 
 tracts and agreements. 
 
 The Schuyler family did not lack ex- 
 amples of stirring women-kind. Margaret 
 van Schlictenhorst, wife of the first Peter 
 Schuyler, being left a widow, managed her 
 husband's estate in varied business lines with 
 such thrift and prudence that in her will, 
 made at eighty years of age, she could assert 
 that the property had vastly increased. She 
 was not out of public affairs, for during the 
 Leisler troubles she was the second largest 
 subscriber to the fund in support of the gov- 
 i6o 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 ernment ; and she also lent money to pay the 
 borrowed soldiers. Her niece, Heligonda 
 van Schlictenhorst, a shrewd spinster, was 
 a merchant, and furnished public supplies. 
 The daughter of Peter Schuyler married 
 John Collins. A letter of his, dated 1722, 
 shows her capacity. I quote a clause from 
 it: — 
 
 " Since you left us my wife has been in the 
 Indian country, and Van Slyck had purchased 
 what he could at the upper end of the land ; she 
 purchased the rest from Ignosedah to his purchase. 
 She has gone through a great deal of hardship and 
 trouble about it, being from home almost ever 
 since you left us ; and prevailed with the Indians 
 whilst there with trouble and expense to mark out 
 the land where the mine is into the woods. Mrs. 
 Feathers has been slaving with her all this while, 
 and hard enough to do with that perverse genera- 
 tion, to bring them to terms." 
 
 The picture of these two women in the 
 wilds, treating and bargaining and trading 
 with the savages, seems curious enough to 
 us to-day. Women seem to have excelled in 
 learning the Indian languages. The daugh- 
 ter of Anneke Jans was the best interpreter 
 in the colony, and served as interpreter to 
 II 161 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Stuyvesant during his famous treaty with the 
 Six Nations. 
 
 Many of the leading taverns or hostelries 
 were kept by women, — a natural calling, cer- 
 tainly, for good housewives. Madam Van 
 Borsum was mistress of the Ferry Tavern in 
 Breucklen. Annetje Litschar kept the tavern 
 which stood near the present site of Hanover 
 Square. Metje Wessell's hostelry stood on 
 the north side of Pearl Street, near White- 
 hall Street. 
 
 More successful still and bold in trade was 
 Widow Maria Provoost. Scarce a ship came 
 into port from Holland, England, the Med- 
 iterranean, West Indies, or the Spanish Main, 
 but brought to her large consignments of 
 goods. Her Dutch business correspondence 
 was a large one. She, too, married a second 
 time, and, as Madam James Alexander, filled 
 a most dignified position, and became the 
 mother of Lord Stirling. 
 
 In a letter written by her husband, James 
 Alexander, to his brother William, and dated 
 October 21, 1721, there is found a passage 
 which gives extraordinary tribute to her 
 business capacity and her powers of endurance 
 alike. It reads thus : — 
 162 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 "Two nights agoe at eleven o'clock, my wife 
 was Brought to bed of a Daughter and is in as 
 good health as can be Expected, and does more 
 than can be Expected of any woman, for till 
 within a few hours of her being brought to bed 
 She was in her Shop, and ever Since has given the 
 price of Goods to her prentice, who comes to her 
 and asks it when Customers come in. The very 
 next day after She was brought to bed she Sold 
 goods to above thirty pounds value. And here 
 the business matters of her Shop which is Gener- 
 ally Esteemed the best in New York, she with a 
 prentice of about i6 years of age perfectly well 
 manages without the Least help from me, you may 
 guess a little of her success." 
 
 He closes his letter with a eulogy which 
 can be cordially endorsed by every reader: 
 
 " I must say my fortune in America is above my 
 Expectation, and I think even my Deserts, and 
 the greatest of my good fortune is in getting so 
 Good a Wife as I have, who alone would make ae 
 man easy and happy had he nothing else to de- 
 pend on." 
 
 Madam Alexander accumulated great 
 wealth, and spent it handsomely. She was 
 the only person in town, besides the Gov- 
 ernor, who kept a coach. Her will is an 
 interesting document, and shows a fine style 
 163 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 of housekeeping. The enumeration of great 
 and lesser drawing-rooms, front and back par- 
 lors, blue and gold leather room, green and 
 gold leather room, tapestry room, chintz 
 room, etc., show its pretension and extent. 
 She lived on Broad Street, had a fine garden 
 laid out in the Dutch taste, a house full of 
 servants, and spent her money freely as she 
 made it thriftily. A very good portrait of 
 her exists. It shows an interesting counte- 
 nance, with fine features, a keen eye, and 
 indicating robust health. She is not dressed 
 with great elegance, wearing the costume of 
 the day, — a commonplace frilled cap, folded 
 kerchief, close sleeves, such as we are familiar 
 with in portraits of English women of her 
 time. 
 
 Jane Colden, the daughter of Governor 
 Cadwallader Colden, was of signal service, 
 not in trade, but in science. A letter written 
 by her father explains her interest and use- 
 fulness : — 
 
 " Botany is an amusement which may be made 
 agreeable to the ladies who are often at a loss to 
 fill up their time. Their natural curiosity and the 
 pleasure they take in the beauty and variety of 
 dress seem to fit them for it. 
 164 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 " I have a daughter who has an incHnation to 
 reading, and a curiosity for Natural Philosophy or 
 Natural History, and a sufficient curiosity for at- 
 taining a competent knowledge. I took the pains 
 to explain Linnaeus' system, and to put it into an 
 English form for her use by freeing it from techni- 
 cal terms, which was easily done, by using two or 
 three words in the place of one. She is now 
 grown very fond of the study, and has made such 
 a progress in it as, I believe, would please you, if 
 you saw her performance. Though she could not 
 have been persuaded to learn the terms at first, 
 she now understands to some degree Linnseus' 
 characters, — notwithstanding she does not under- 
 stand Latin. She has already a pretty large vol- 
 ume in writing of the description of plants. She 
 has shewn a method of taking the impression of 
 the leaves on paper with printers' ink, by a simple 
 kind of rolling press which is of use in distinguish- 
 ing the species. No description in words alone, 
 can give so clear an idea, as when assisted with a 
 picture. She has the impression of three hundred 
 plants in the manner you '11 see by the samples. 
 That you may have some conception of her per- 
 formance, and her manner of describing, I propose 
 to enclose some samples in her own writing, some 
 of which I think are new genera." 
 
 Peter Collinson said she was the first lady 
 to study the Linnaean system, and deserved 
 165 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 to have her name celebrated; and John Ellis, 
 writing of her to Linnaeus in 1758, asks that 
 a genus be named, for her, Coldenella. She 
 was also a correspondent of Dr. Whyte of 
 Edinburgh, and many learned societies in 
 Europe. Walter Rutherfurd enumerates her 
 talents, and caps them with a glowing tribute 
 to her cheese-making. 
 
 We find the women of the times full of 
 interest in public affairs and active in good 
 works. In the later days of the province, we 
 learn of the gifts to the army at Crown Point 
 in 1755. In those days the generous far- 
 mers of Queens County, Long Island, col- 
 lected one thousand and fifteen sheep, and 
 these were "cheerfully given." 
 
 "While their husbands at Great Neck 
 were employed in getting sheep, the good 
 mothers in that neighborhood in a few hours 
 collected nearly seventy good large cheeses, 
 and sent them to New York to be forwarded 
 with the sheep to the army." Kings County 
 defrayed the expense of conveying these 
 sheep and cheeses to the army ; and a letter 
 of gratitude was promptly returned by the 
 commander-in-chief, Sir William Johnson, 
 who said, — 
 
 166 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 " This generous humanity is unanimously and 
 gratefully applauded here by all. We pray that 
 your benevolence may be returned to you by the 
 great Shepherd of the human kind a thousand fold. 
 And may those amiable housewives to whose skill 
 we owe the refreshing cheeses long continue to 
 shine in their useful and endearing stations." 
 
 Kings County and Suffolk also sent 
 cheeses, and we learn also : — 
 
 " The Women of County Suffolk ever good in 
 such Occasions are knitting several large bags of 
 stockings and mittens to be sent to the poorer sol- 
 diers at Forts William Henry and Edward." 
 
 In studying the history of the province, I 
 am impressed with the debt New Yorkers of 
 Dutch descent owe, not to their forefathers, 
 but to their foremothers; the conspicuous 
 decorum of life of these women and their 
 great purity of morals were equalled by their 
 good sense and their wonderful capacity in 
 both domestic and public affairs. They were 
 as good patriots as they were good business 
 women ; and though they were none of them 
 what Carlyle calls "writing- women," it was 
 not from poverty of good sense or natural 
 intelligence, but simply from the imper- 
 167 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 fection of their education through lack 
 of good and plentiful schools, and also want 
 of stimulus owing to absence of literary 
 atmosphere. 
 
 A very shrewd woman-observer, writing in 
 the middle of the eighteenth century of the 
 Dutch, gives what seems to me a very just 
 estimate and good description of one of their 
 traits. She says : " Though they have no 
 vivacity, they are smarter, a great deal 
 smarter, than the English, that is, more 
 jiptaking." Those who know the exact 
 Scotch meaning of "uptaking," which is 
 somewhat equivalent to Anthony Trollope's 
 "observation and reception," will understand 
 the closeness of the application of the term 
 to the Dutch. 
 
 The Dutch women especially were "up- 
 taking;" adaptive of all comfort -bringing 
 methods of housekeeping. This was noted 
 by Guicciardini in Holland as early as 1563. 
 They were far advanced in knowledge and 
 execution of healthful household conditions, 
 through their beautiful cleanliness. Irving 
 says very truthfully of them : " In those 
 good days of simplicity and sunshine a pas- 
 sion for cleanliness was the leading principle 
 168 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 in domestic economy, and the universal test 
 of a good housewife. " Kalra says : " They 
 are almost over nice and cleanly in regard to 
 the floor, which is frequently scoured twice 
 a week." They found conditions of house- 
 keeping entirely changed in America, but 
 the passionate love of cleanliness fostered in 
 the Fatherland clung long in their hearts. 
 Their "CEconomy" and thrift were also 
 beautiful. 
 
 An advertisement in the "New York 
 Gazette" of April i, 1751, shows that the 
 thrift of the community lingered until Revo- 
 lutionary times : — 
 
 " Elizabeth Boyd gives notice that she will as 
 usual graft Pieces in knit Jackets and Breeches 
 not to be discern'd, also to graft and foot Stock- 
 ings, and Gentlemens Gloves, mittens or Muffatees 
 made out of old Stockings, or runs them in the 
 Heels. She hkewise makes Childrens Stockings 
 out of Old Ones." 
 
 Other dames taught more elegant accom- 
 plishments: — 
 
 " Martha Gazley, now in the city of New York, 
 Makes and Teacheth the following curious Works, 
 viz. : Artificial Fruit and Flowers and other Wax- 
 Work, Nun's Work, Philligree and Pencil-work 
 169 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 upon Muslin, all sorts of Needlework, and Rais- 
 ing of Paste, as also to Paint upon Glass, and 
 Transparent for Sconces with other Works. If any 
 young Gentlewomen, or others, are inclined to 
 leam any or all of the above-mentioned curious 
 Works, they may be carefully taught and instructed 
 in the same by said Martha Gazley." 
 
 Mrs. Van Cortlandt, in her delightful 
 account of home-life in Westchester County, 
 says of the industrious Dutch women and 
 their accomplishments and occupations : — 
 
 " Knitting was an art much cultivated, the Dutch 
 women excelling in the variety and intricacy of 
 the stitches. A knitting sheath, which might be 
 of silver or of a homely goose-quill, was an indis- 
 pensable utensil, and beside it hung the ball-pin- 
 cushion. Crewel-work and silk embroidery were 
 fashionable, and surprisingly pretty effects were 
 produced. Every little maiden had her sampler, 
 which she began with the alphabet and numerals 
 following them with a Scriptural text or verse of a 
 metrical psalm. Then fancy was let loose on 
 birds, beasts, and trees. Most of the old famihes 
 possessed framed pieces of embroidery, the handi- 
 work of female ancestors. Flounces and trim- 
 mings for aprons worked with delicately tinted 
 silks on muslin were common. I have several 
 yards of fine muslin painted in the early days 
 with full-blown thistles in the appropriate colors. 
 170 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Fringe looms were in use, and cotton and silk 
 fringes were woven." 
 
 Tape-looms were also found in many 
 households; and the weaving of tapes and 
 " none-so-prettys " was deemed very light 
 and elegant work. 
 
 Though to the Dutch is ascribed the 
 invention of the thimble, I never think of the 
 Dutch women as excelling in fine needlework ; 
 and I note that the teachers of intricate and 
 novel embroidery-stitches are always Eng- 
 lishwomen ; but in turn the English good- 
 wives must yield to the Dutch the palm of 
 comfortable, attractive housewifery, as well 
 as shrewd, untiring business capacity. 
 
 171 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE COLONIAL WARDROBE 
 
 The Dutch goodwife worked hard from 
 early morn till sunset. She worked in re- 
 stricted ways, she had few recreations and 
 pleasures and altogether little variety in her 
 life; but she possessed what doubtless proved 
 to her in that day, as it would to any woman 
 in this day, a source of just satisfaction, a 
 soothing to the spirit, a staying of melan- 
 choly, a moral support second only to the 
 solace of religion, — namely, a large quantity 
 of very good clothes, which were substantial, 
 cheerful, and suitable, if not elegant. 
 
 The Dutch never dressed "in a plaine 
 babbit according to the maner of a poore 
 wildernesse people," as the Connecticut col- 
 onists wrote of themselves to Charles IL ; 
 nor were they weary wanderers in a wilder- 
 ness as were Connecticut folk. 
 172 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 I have not found among the statutes of 
 New Netherland any sumptuary laws such as 
 were passed in Connecticut, Massachusetts, 
 and Virginia, to restrain and attempt to pro- 
 hibit luxury and extravagance in dress. Nor 
 have I discovered in the court-records any 
 evidences of magisterial reproof of finery; 
 there is, on the contrary, much indirect 
 proof of encouragement to "dress orderly 
 and well according to the fashion and the 
 time." Of course the Dutch had no Puri- 
 tanical dread of over-rich garments; and we 
 must also never forget New Netherland was 
 not under the control of a government nor of 
 a religious band, but of a trading-company. 
 
 The ordinary dress of the fair dames and 
 damsels of New Amsterdam has been vividly 
 described by Diedrich Knickerbocker; and 
 even with the additional light upon their 
 wardrobe thrown by the lists contained in 
 colonial inventories, I still think his descrip- 
 tion of their every-day dress exceedingly 
 good for one given by a man. He writes : 
 
 " Their hair, untortiired by the abominations of 
 
 art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their 
 
 foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little 
 
 cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their 
 
 173 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were 
 striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes, though I 
 must confess those gallant garments were rather 
 short, scarce reaching below the knee ; but then they 
 made up in the number, which generally equalled 
 that of the gentlemen's small-clothes ; and what is 
 still more praiseworthy, they were all of their own 
 manufacture, — of which circumstance, as may well 
 be supposed, they were not a little vain. 
 
 "Those were the honest days, in which every 
 woman stayed at home, read the Bible, and wore 
 pockets, — ay, and that, too, of a goodly size, fash- 
 ioned with patchwork into many curious devices, 
 and ostentatiously worn on the outside. These, in 
 fact, were convenient receptacles where all good 
 housewives carefully stored away such things as 
 they wished to have at hand ; by which means 
 they often came to be incredibly crammed. 
 
 " Besides these notable pockets, they likewise 
 wore scissors and pincushions suspended from their 
 girdles by red ribbons, or, among the more opu- 
 lent and showy classes, by a brass and even silver 
 chains, indubitable tokens of thrifty housewives 
 and industrious spinsters. I cannot say much in 
 vindication of the shortness of the petticoats ; it 
 doubtless was introduced for the purpose of giving 
 the stockings a chance to be seen, which were gen- 
 erally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks ; 
 or perhaps to display a well-turned ankle and a 
 neat though serviceable foot, set off by a high- 
 
 174 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 heeled leathern shoe, with a large and splendid 
 silver buckle. 
 
 " There was a secret charm in those petticoats, 
 which no doubt entered into the consideration of 
 the prudent gallants. The wardrobe of a lady 
 was in those days her only fortune ; and she who 
 had a good stock of petticoats and stockings was 
 as absolutely an heiress as is a Kamtschatka damsel 
 with a store of bear- skins, or a Lapland belle with 
 plenty of reindeer.'' 
 
 A Boston lady. Madam Knights, visiting 
 New York in 1704, wrote: — 
 
 " The English go very fashionable in their dress. 
 But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ 
 from our women, in their habitt go loose, wear 
 French muches wch are like a Capp and head- 
 band in one, leaving their ears bare, which are 
 sett out with Jewells of a large size and many in 
 number ; and their fingers hoop't with rings, some 
 with large stones in them of many Coullers, as 
 were their pendants in their ears, which you should 
 see very old women wear as well as Young." 
 
 This really gives a very good picture of 
 the vrouws ; "loose in their habit," wearing 
 sacques and loose gowns, not laced in with 
 pointed waists as were the English and 
 Boston women; with the ornamental head- 
 175 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 dress, and the gay display of stoned earrings 
 and rings, which was also not the usual wear 
 of New England women, who generally 
 owned only a few funeral rings. 
 
 In the inventories of personal estates con- 
 tained in the Surrogate's Court we find details 
 of the wardrobe; but as I have enumerated 
 and defined all the different articles at some 
 length in my book, " Costume of Colonial 
 Times," I will not repeat the definitions 
 here; but it should be remembered that in 
 the enumeration of the articles of clothing, 
 many stuffs and materials of simple names 
 were often of exceedingly good and even rich 
 quality. From those inventories we have 
 proof that all Dutch women had plenty of 
 clothes; while the wives of the burgomas- 
 ters, the opulent merchants, and those in 
 authority, had rich clothes. I have given 
 in full in my book a list of the clothing of a 
 wealthy New York dame. Madam De Lange ; 
 but I wish to refer to it again as an example 
 of a really beautiful wardrobe. In it were 
 twelve petticoats of varying elegance, some 
 worth two pounds fifteen shillings each, 
 which would be more than fifty dollars to- 
 day. They were of silk lined with silk, 
 176 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 striped stuff, scarlet cloth, and ash-gray cloth. 
 Some were trimmed with gold lace. With 
 those petticoats were worn samares and 
 samares-a-potoso, six in number, which were 
 evidently jackets or fancy bodies; these 
 were of calico, crape, "tartanel," and silk. 
 One trimmed with lace was worth three 
 pounds. Waistcoats and bodies also appear; 
 also fancy sleeves. Love-hoods of silk and 
 cornet-caps with lace make a pretty head- 
 gear to complete this costume, with which 
 was worn the reim or silver girdle with 
 hanging purse, and also with a handsome 
 number of diamond, amber, and white coral 
 jewels. 
 
 The colors in the Dutch gowns were 
 almost uniformly gay, — in keen contrast to 
 the sad-colored garments of New England. 
 Madam Cornelia de Vos in a green cloth 
 petticoat, a red and blue " Haarlamer " waist- 
 coat, a pair of red and yellow sleeves, and 
 a purple " Pooyse " apron was a blooming 
 flower-bed of color. 
 
 The dress of Vrouentje Ides Stoffelsen, a 
 
 very capable Dutchwoman who went to 
 
 Bergen Point to live, varied a little from 
 
 that of these town dames. Petticoats she 
 
 12 177 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 had, and waistcoats, bodies and sleeves ; but 
 there was also homelier attire, — purple and 
 blue aprons, four pairs of pattens, a fur cap 
 instead of love-hoods, and twenty-three caps. 
 She wore the simpler and more universal 
 head-gear, — a close linen or calico cap. 
 
 The head covering was of considerable 
 importance in New Amsterdam, as it was in 
 Holland as well as in England at that date. 
 We find that it was also costly. In 1665 
 Mistress Piertje Jans sold a fine " little orna- 
 mental headdress " for fifty-five guilders to 
 the young daughter of Evert Duyckinck. 
 But it seems that Missy bought this "gen- 
 teel head-clothes " without the knowledge or 
 permission of her parents, and on its arrival 
 at the Duyckinck home Vrouw Duyckinck 
 promptly sent back the emblem of extrava- 
 gance and disobedience. Summoned to 
 court by the incensed milliner who wished 
 no rejected head-dresses on her hands, and 
 who claimed that the transaction was from 
 the beginning with full cognizance of the 
 parents, Father Duyckinck pronounced the 
 milliner's bill extortionate; and furthermore 
 said gloomily, with a familiar nineteenth- 
 century phraseology of New York fathers, 
 178 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 that "this was no time to be buying and 
 wearing costly head-dresses. " But the court 
 decided in the milliner's favor. 
 
 It is to be deplored that we have no fashion- 
 plates of past centuries to show to us in 
 exact presentment the varying modes worn 
 by New York dames from year to year ; that 
 method of fashion-conveying has been adopted 
 but a century. The modes in olden days 
 travelled from country to country, from town 
 to town, in the form of dolls or "babies," as 
 they were called, wearing miniature model 
 costumes. These dolls were dressed by 
 cutters and tailors in Paris or London, and 
 with various tiny modish garments were sent 
 out on their important mission across the 
 water. In Venice a doll attired in the last 
 fashions — the toilette of the year — was for 
 centuries exhibited on each Ascension Day 
 at the " Merceria " for the edification of noble 
 Venetian dames, who eagerly flocked to the 
 attractive sight. Not less eagerly did Amer- 
 ican dames flock to provincial mantua-makers 
 and milliners to see the London-dressed 
 babies with their miniature garments. Even 
 in this century, fashions were brought to 
 New York and Philadelphia and Albany 
 179 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 through " milliners' boxes " containing 
 dressed dolls. Mrs. Vanderbilt tells of 
 one much admired fashion-doll of her youth 
 who had a treasured old age as a juvenile 
 goddess. 
 
 A leading man of New Amsterdam, a bur- 
 gomaster, had at the time of his death, near 
 the end of Dutch rule, this plentiful number 
 of substantial garments : a cloth coat with 
 silver buttons, a stuff coat, cloth breeches, 
 a cloth coat with gimp buttons, a black cloth 
 coat, a silk coat, breeches and doublet, a 
 silver cloth breeches and doublet, a velvet 
 waistcoat with silver lace, a buff coat with 
 silk sleeves, three "gross-green" cloaks, 
 several old suits of clothes, linen, hosiery, 
 silver-buckled shoes, an ivory-headed cane, 
 and a hat. One hat may seem very little 
 with so many other garments ; but the real 
 beaver hats of those days were so substantial, 
 so well-made, so truly worthy an article of 
 attire, that they could be constantly worn and 
 yet last for years. They were costly; some 
 were worth several pounds apiece. 
 
 Gayer masculine garments are told of in 
 other inventories : green silk breeches flow- 
 ered with silver and gold, silver gauze 
 1 80 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 breeches, yellow fringed gloves, lacquered 
 hats, laced shirts and neck-cloths, and 
 (towards the end of the century, and nearly 
 through the eighteenth century) a vast variety 
 of wigs. For over a hundred years these 
 unnatural abominations, which bore no pre- 
 tence of resembling the human hair, often 
 in grotesque, clumsy, cumbersome shapes, 
 bearing equally fantastic names, and made 
 of various indifferent and coarse materials, 
 loaded the heads and lightened the pockets 
 of our ancestors. I am glad to note that 
 they were taxed by the government of the 
 province of New York. The barber and 
 wig-maker soon became a very important 
 personage in a community so given over to 
 costly modes of dressing the head. Adver- 
 tisements in the newspapers show the various 
 kinds of wigs worn in the middle of the 
 eighteenth century. From the " New York 
 Gazette " of May 9, i T^J, we learn of a thief's 
 stealing "one gray Hair Wig, one Horse 
 hair wig not the worse for wearing, one Pale 
 Hair Wig, not worn five times, marked V. 
 S. E., one brown Natural wig. One old wig 
 of goat's hair put in buckle." Buckle 
 meant to curl; and derivatively a wig was in 
 181 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 buckle when it was rolled on papers for curl- 
 ing. Other advertisements tell of "Perukes, 
 Tets, and Fox-tails after the Genteelest 
 Fashion. Ladies' Tets and wigs in perfect 
 imitation of their own hair." Other curious 
 notices are of "Orange Butter" for "Gentle- 
 women to comb up their hair with." 
 
 This use of orange butter as a pomatum 
 was certainly unique; it was really a Dutch 
 marmalade. I read in my " Closet of Rari- 
 ties," dated 1706: — 
 
 " The Dutch Way to make Orange-butter. 
 Take new cream two gallons, beat it up to a 
 thicknesse, then add half a pint of orange-flower- 
 water, and as much red wine, and so being become 
 the thicknesse of butter it has both the colour 
 and smell of an orange." 
 
 A very characteristic and eye-catching 
 advertisement was this from the "New York 
 Gazette'' of May 21, 1750: — 
 
 "This is to acquaint the Public, that there is 
 lately arrived from London the Wonder of the 
 World, an Honest Barber and Peruke Maker, who 
 might have worked for the King, if his Majesty 
 would have employed him : It was not for the 
 want of Money he came here, for he had enough 
 of that at Home, nor for the want of Business, 
 182 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 that he advertises hinself, BUT to acquaint the 
 Gentlemen and Ladies, That Such a Person is 
 now in Town, hving near Rosemary Lane where 
 Gentlemen and Ladies may be supplied with 
 Goods as follows, viz. : Tyes, Full-Bottoms, Ma- 
 jors, Spencers, Fox-Tails, Ramalies, Tacks, cut 
 and bob Perukes : Also Ladies Tatematongues 
 and Towers after the Manner that is now wore 
 at Court. By their Humble and Obedient Servant, 
 
 "John Still." 
 
 With the change from simple Dutch ways 
 of hairdressing came in other details more 
 constrained modes of dressing. With the 
 wig-maker came the stay-maker, whose 
 curious advertisements may be read in scores 
 in the provincial newspapers; and his arbi- 
 trary fashions bring us to modern times. 
 
 From the deacons' records of the Dutch 
 Reformed Church at Albany we catch occa- 
 sional hints of the dress of the children of 
 the Dutch colonists. There was no poor- 
 house, and few poor; but since the church 
 occasionally helped worthy folk who were not 
 rich, we find the deacons in 1665 and 1666 
 paying for blue linen for schorteldoecykers, 
 or aprons, for Albany kindeken ; also for 
 haaken en oogen, or hooks and eyes, for warm 
 183 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 under-waists called borsrockyen. They bought 
 linen for luyers, which were neither pinning- 
 blankets nor diapers, but a sort of swaddling 
 clothes, which evidently were worn then by 
 Dutch babies. Voor-schooten, which were 
 white bibs; neerstucken, which were tuckers, 
 also were worn by little children. Some 
 little Hans of Pieter had given to him by 
 the deacons a fine little scarlet aperock, or 
 monkey-jacket; and other children were 
 furnished linen cosynties, or night-caps with 
 capes. Yellow stockings were sold at the 
 same time for children, and a gay little yel- 
 low turkey-legged Dutchman in a scarlet 
 monkey-jacket and fat little breeches must 
 have been a jolly sight. 
 
 184 
 
IN ©LD NEW YORK 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 HOLIDAYS 
 
 The most important holidays of the early- 
 years of the colony were, apparently, New 
 Year's Day and May Day, for we find them 
 named through frequent legislation about 
 rioting on these days, repairing of damages, 
 etc. It has been said that New Yorkers owe 
 to the Dutch an everlasting gratitude for our 
 high-stoop houses and the delights of over 
 two centuries of New Year's calling. The 
 latter custom lived long and happily in our 
 midst, died a lingering and lamented death, is 
 still much honored in our memory, and its 
 extinction deeply deplored and unwillingly 
 accepted. 
 
 The observance of New Year's Day was, 
 without doubt, followed by both Dutch and 
 English from the earliest settlement We 
 know that Governor Stuyvesant received 
 New Year's calls, and we also know that he 
 i8s 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 prohibited excessive " drunken drinking," 
 unnecessary firing of guns, and all disorderly 
 behavior on that day. The reign of the 
 English did not abolish New Year's visits ; 
 and we find Charles Wolley, an English 
 chaplain, writing in his journal in New York 
 in 1 701, of the addition of the English custom 
 of exchange of gifts : — 
 
 "The English in New York observed one 
 anniversary custom and that without superstition, 
 I mean the strenarum commercium, as Suetonius 
 calls them, a neighborly commerce of presents 
 every New Year's Day. Some would send me a 
 sugar-loaf, some a pair of gloves, some a bottle 
 or two of wine." 
 
 A further celebration of the day by men 
 in New York was by going in parties to 
 Beekman's Swamp to shoot at turkeys. 
 
 New Year's calling was a new fashion to 
 General Washington when he came to 
 New York to live for a short time, but he 
 adopted it with approval; and his New 
 Year's Receptions were imposing functions. 
 
 For a long time the New Year was ushered 
 
 in, in country towns, with great noise as well 
 
 as rejoicing. All through the day groups of 
 
 men would go from house to house firing 
 
 186 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 salutes, and gathering gradually into large 
 parties by recruits from each house until the 
 end of the day was spent in firing at a mark. 
 The Legislature in March, 1773, attempted to 
 stop the gun-firing, asserting that " great 
 damages are frequently done on the eve of 
 the last day of December and on the first and 
 second days of January by persons going 
 from house to house with guns and other 
 firearms." In 1785 a similar enactment was 
 passed by the State Legislature. 
 
 In the palmiest days of New Year's calling, 
 New York City appeared one great family 
 reunion. Every wheeled vehicle in the town 
 seemed to be loaded with visitors going from 
 house to house. Great four and six horse 
 stages packed with hilarious mobs of men 
 went to the house of every acquaintance of 
 every one in the stage. Target companies 
 had processions; political bodies called on 
 families whose head was well known in politi- 
 cal life. The newspaper-carriers brought out 
 addresses yards long with rhymes : — 
 
 " The day devoted is to mirth, 
 And now around the social hearth 
 Friendship unlocks her genial springs, 
 And Harmony her lyre now strings. 
 
 187 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 While plenty spreads her copious hoard, 
 And piles and crowns the festive board," 
 
 etc., etc., for hundreds of lines. 
 
 The " copious hoard " of substantial food, 
 with decanters of wine, bowls of milk punch, 
 and pitchers of egg-nog, no longer " crown the 
 festive board " on New Year's Day; but we still 
 have New Year's Cakes, though not delivered 
 by singing bakers' 'prentices as of yore. 
 
 May Day was observed in similar fashion, 
 
 — by firing of guns, gay visiting, and also by 
 the rearing of maypoles. 
 
 A very early mention of a maypole is in 
 June, 1645, when one William Garritse had 
 " sung a libellous song " against Rev. Francis 
 Doughty, the preacher at Flushing, Long 
 Island, and was sentenced in punishment 
 therefor to be tied to the maypole, which in 
 June was still standing. Stuyvesant again for- 
 bade "drunken drinking," and firing of guns 
 and planting of maypoles, as productive of 
 bad practices. I don't know whether the de- 
 light of my childhood, and of generations of 
 children in Old and New England up to this 
 present May Day on which I am now writing, 
 
 — the hanging of May baskets, — ever made 
 happy children in New York. 
 
 188 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 There was some observance in New York 
 of Shrovetide as a holiday-time. As early as 
 1657 we find the sober Beverwyck burghers 
 deliberating on " some improprieties com- 
 mitted at the house of Albert de Timmerman 
 on Shrovetide last." As was the inevitable 
 custom followed by the extremely uninven- 
 tive brain of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 century rioter, were he Dutch or English, 
 these " improprieties" took the form of the 
 men's parading in women's clothes ; Pieter 
 Semiensen was one of the masqueraders. 
 Two years later the magistrates were again 
 investigating the "unseemly and scandalous" 
 celebration of Shrovetide; and as ever before, 
 the youth of early Albany donned women's 
 clothes and " marched as mountebanks," as 
 the record says, just as they did in Philadel- 
 phia and Baltimore and even in sober Boston. 
 We find also for sale in Beverwyck at this 
 time, noisy Shrovetide toys — rommelerytieus, 
 little " rumbling-pots," which the youth and 
 children doubtless keenly enjoyed. 
 
 At an early date Shrovetide observances, 
 
 such as " pulling the goose," were prohibited 
 
 by Governor Stuyvesant in New York. A 
 
 mild protest on the part of some of the 
 
 189 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 burgomasters against this order of the Gov- 
 ernor brought forth one of Stuyvesant's char- 
 acteristically choleric edicts in answer, in 
 which he speaks of having " interdicted and 
 forbidden certain farmers' servants to ride 
 the goose at the feast of Backus and Shrove- 
 tide . . . because it is altogether unprofita- 
 ble, unnecessary, and criminal for subjects 
 and neighbors to celebrate such pagan and 
 popish feasts and to practise such customs, 
 notwithstanding the same may in some 
 places of Fatherland be tolerated and looked 
 at through the fingers." Domine Blom, of 
 Kingston or Wyltwyck, joined in the gov- 
 ernor's dislike of the game. But there were 
 some of the magistrates who liked very well 
 to "pull the goose" themselves, so it is said. 
 It was a cruel amusement. The thoroughly 
 greased goose was hung between two poles, 
 and the effort of the sport was to catch, 
 snatch away, and hold fast the poor creature 
 while passing at great speed. In Albany in 
 1677 all "Shrovetide misdemeanors were 
 prohibited, viz. : riding at a goose, cat, hare, 
 and ale." The fine was twenty-five guilders 
 in sea-want. What the cat, hare, and ale part 
 of the sport was, I do not know. 
 190 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 In New York by the middle of the eigh- 
 teenth century Shrove Tuesday was firmly 
 assigned to cocking-mains. The De Lanceys 
 were patrons of this choice old English sport. 
 Cock-gaffs of silver and steel were freely 
 offered for sale in New York and Maryland 
 newspapers, and on Shrove Tuesday in 1770 
 Jacob Hiltzeheimer attended a famous cock- 
 fight on the Germantown road. We cannot 
 blame honest New Yorkers if they did 
 not rise above such rude sports, when 
 cock-fighting and cock-throwing and cock- 
 squoiling and cock-steling obtained every- 
 where in Old England at Shrovetide; when 
 school-boys had cock-fights in their school- 
 rooms ; and in earlier days good and learned 
 old Roger Ascham ruined himself by betting 
 on cock-fights, and Sir Thomas More boasted 
 proudly of his skill in " casting a cock-stele." 
 
 Mr. Gabriel Furman, writing in 1846, told of 
 an extraordinary observance of Saint Valen- 
 tine's Day by the Dutch — one I think un- 
 known in folk-lore — which obtained on Long 
 Island among the early settlers. It was called 
 Vrouwen dagh, or Women's day, and was thus 
 celebrated : Every young girl sallied forth in 
 the morning armed with a heavy cord with 
 191 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 knotted end. She gave to every young man 
 whom she met several smart lashes with the 
 knotted cord. Perhaps these were " love- 
 taps," and were given with no intent of sting- 
 ing. Judge Egbert Benson wrote, in 1816, 
 that in New York this custom dwindled to a 
 similar Valentine observance by New York 
 children, when the girls chased the boys with 
 many blows. In one school the boys asked 
 for a Manneii dagh in which to repay the 
 girls' stinging lashes. I hazard a " wide solu- 
 tion," as Sir Thomas Browne says, that this 
 custom is a commemorative survival of an 
 event in the life of Saint Valentine, one of the 
 two traditions which are all we know of his life, 
 that about the year 270 he was " first beaten 
 with heavy clubs and then beheaded." 
 
 The English brought a political holiday to 
 New York. In the code of laws given to the 
 province in 1665, and known as "The Duke's 
 Laws," each minister throughout the province 
 was ordered to preach a sermon on Novem- 
 ber 5, to commemorate the English deliver- 
 ance from Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder 
 Plot in 1605. 
 
 From an early entry in the " New York 
 Gazette" of November 7, 1737, we learn how 
 192 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 it was celebrated that year, and find that 
 illuminations, as in England, formed part of 
 the day's remembrance. Bonfires, fantastic 
 processions, and "burning a Guy" formed, in 
 fact, the chief English modes of celebration. 
 
 " Saturday last, being the fifth of November, it 
 was observed here in Memory of that horrid and 
 Treasonable Popish Gun- Powder Plot to blow up 
 and destroy King, Lords and Commons, and the 
 Gentlemen of his Majesty's Council ; the Assembly 
 and Corporation and other the principal Gentle- 
 men and Merchants of this City waited upon his 
 Honor the Lieutenant-Governor at Fort George, 
 where the Royal Healths were drunk, as usual, 
 under the discharge of the Cannon, and at the 
 Night the city was illuminated." 
 
 All through the English provinces bon- 
 fires were burned, effigies were carried in 
 procession, mummers and masqueraders 
 thronged the streets and invaded the houses 
 singing Pope Day rhymes, and volleys of 
 guns were fired. In some New England 
 towns the boys still have bonfires on 
 November 5th. 
 
 In the year 1765 the growing feeling 
 with regard to the Stamp Act chancing to 
 come to a climax in the late autumn, pro- 
 '3 193 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 duced in New York a very riotous observance 
 of Pope's Day. The demonstrations really 
 began on November ist, which was termed 
 " The Last Day of Liberty. " In the evening 
 a mob gathered, " designing to execute some 
 foolish ceremony of burying Liberty," but it 
 dispersed with noise and a few broken win- 
 dows. The next night a formidable mob 
 gathered, "carrying candles and torches in 
 their hands, and now and then firing a pistol 
 at the Effigy which was carried in a Chair." 
 Then the effigy was set in the Governor's 
 chariot, which was taken out of the Fort. 
 They made a gallows and hung on it an effigy 
 of the Governor and one of the Devil, and 
 carried it to the Fort, over which insult sol- 
 diers and officers were wonderfully patient. 
 Finally, gallows, chariot and effigies were 
 all burnt in the Bowling Green. The mob 
 then ransacked Major James's house, eating, 
 drinking, destroying, till £1^00 of damage 
 was done. The next day it was announced 
 that the delivery and destruction of the 
 stamps would be demanded. In the evening 
 the mob started out again, with candles and 
 a barber's block dressed in rags. The 
 rioters finally dispersed at the entreaties of 
 194 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 many good citizens, — among them Robert R. 
 Livingstone, who wrote the letter from which 
 this account is taken. In 1774, November 
 5th was still a legal holiday. 
 
 There still exists in New York a feeble 
 and divided survival of the processions and 
 bonfires of Guy Fawkes Day. The police- 
 prohibited bonfires of barrels on election 
 night, and the bedraggled parade of begging 
 boys on Thanksgiving Day are our reminders 
 to-day of this old English holiday. 
 
 There was one old-time holiday beloved 
 of New Yorkers whose name is now almost 
 forgotten, — Pinkster Day. This name was 
 derived from the Dutch word for Pentecost, 
 and must have been used at a very early 
 date ; for in a Dutch book of sermons, writ- 
 ten by Adrian Fischer, and printed in 1667, 
 the title of one sermon reads : Het Eersts 
 Tractact; Van de Vystortnge des Yeyligen 
 Geests over de Apostelen op ben Pinckster 
 Dagh, — a sermon upon the story of the 
 Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles 
 on Pinkster Day. 
 
 The Jewish feast of Pentecost was observed 
 on the fiftieth day after the celebration of the 
 Passover, and is the same as the Christian 
 195 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 holy-day Whitsunday, which is connected 
 with its Jewish predecessor historically (as 
 is so beautifully told in the second chapter 
 of Acts), and intrinsically through its re- 
 ligious signification. The week following 
 Whitsunday has been observed with great 
 honor and rejoicing in many lands, but in 
 none more curiously, more riotously, than 
 in old New York, and to some extent in 
 Pennsylvania and Maryland; and, more 
 strangely still, that observance was chiefly 
 by an alien, a heathen race, — the negroes. 
 It was one of our few distinctively Ameri- 
 can folk-customs, and its story has been told 
 by many writers of that day, and should not 
 now be forgotten. Nowhere was it a more 
 glorious festival than at Albany, among the 
 sheltered, the cherished slave population in 
 that town and its vicinity. The celebration 
 was held on Capitol Hill, then universally 
 known as Pinkster Hill. Munsell gives 
 this account of the day : — 
 
 " Pinkster was a great day, a gala day, or rather 
 week, for they used to keep it up a week among 
 the darkies. The dances were the original Congo 
 dances as danced in their native Africa. They had 
 a chief, — Old King Charley. The old settlers 
 196 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 said Charley was a prince in his own country, and 
 was supposed to have been one hundred and 
 twenty-five years old at the time of his death. On 
 these festivals old Charley was dressed in a strange 
 and fantastical costume ; he was nearly barelegged, 
 wore a red military coat trimmed profusely with 
 variegated ribbons, and a small black hat with a 
 pompon stuck on one side. The dances and antics 
 of the darkies must have afforded great amusement 
 for the ancient burghers. As a general thing, the 
 music consisted of a sort of drum, or instrument 
 constructed out of a box with sheepskin heads, 
 upon which old Charley did most of the beating, 
 accompanied by singing some queer African air. 
 Charley generally led off the dance, when the 
 Sambos and Phillises, juvenile and antiquated, 
 would put in the double-shuffle heel-and-toe break- 
 down. These festivals seldom failed to attract large 
 crowds from the city, as well as from the rural 
 districts." 
 
 Dr. Eights, of Albany, wrote still further 
 reminiscences of the day. He said that, 
 strangely enough, though all the booths and 
 sports opened on Monday, white curiosity- 
 seekers were, on that first day, the chief 
 visitors to Pinkster Hill. On Tuesday the 
 blacks all appeared, and the consumption of 
 gingerbread, cider, and applejack began. 
 197 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Adam Blake, a truly elegant creature, the 
 body-servant of the old patroon Van Rens- 
 selaer, was master of the ceremonies. Char- 
 ley, the King, was a "Guinea man" from 
 Angola, — and I have noted the fact that 
 nearly all African -born negroes who became 
 leaders in this country, or men of marked 
 note in any way, have been Guinea men. 
 He wore portions of the costume of a British 
 general, and had the power of an autocrat, 
 — his will was law. Dr. Eights says the 
 Pinkster musical instruments were eel-pots 
 covered with dressed sheepskin, on which 
 the negroes pounded with their bare hands, 
 as do all savage nations on their tom-toms. 
 Their song had an African refrain, "Hi-a- 
 bomba-bomba-bomba. " Other authorities 
 state that the dance was called the "Toto 
 Dance," and partook so largely of savage 
 license that at last the white visitors shunned 
 being present during its performance. 
 
 These Pinkster holidays became such bac- 
 chanalian revels in other ways that in i8il 
 the Common Council of Albany prohibited 
 the erection of booths and all dancing, gam- 
 ing, and drinking at that time; and when the 
 negroes could not dance nor drink, it was 
 198 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 but a sorry holiday, and quickly fell into 
 desuetude. 
 
 Executions were held on Pinkster Hill, 
 and other public punishments took place 
 there. 
 
 In the realm of fiction we find evidence of 
 the glories of Pinkster Day in New York. 
 Cooper, in his "Satanstoe," tells of its 
 observance in New York City. He calls it 
 the saturnalia of the blacks, and says that 
 they met on what we now know as City 
 Hall Park, and that the negroes came for 
 thirty or forty miles around to join in the 
 festivities. 
 
 On Long Island Pinkster Day was widely 
 observed. The blacks went, on the week 
 previous to the celebration, to Brooklyn and 
 New York to sell sassafras and swingling- 
 tow, to earn their scanty spend ing-money for 
 Pinkster. They were everywhere freely 
 given their time for rioting, and domestic 
 labor was performed by the masters and 
 mistresses; but they had to provide their 
 own spending-money for gingerbread and 
 rum. They gathered around the old market 
 in Brooklyn near the ferry, dancing for eels, 
 blowing fish-horns, eating and drinking. 
 199 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The following morning the judge's office was 
 full of sorry blacks, hauled up for "disor- 
 derly conduct." 
 
 On Long Island the Dutch residents also 
 made the day a festival, "going to pinkster 
 fields for pinkster frolics," exchanging visits, 
 and drinking schnapps, and eating "soft- 
 wafels " together. About twelve years ago, 
 while driving through Flatlands and New 
 Lots one beautiful day in May, I met a 
 group of young men driving from door to 
 door of the farm-houses, in wagons gayly 
 dressed with branches of dogwood blossoms, 
 and entering each house for a short visit. I 
 asked whether a wedding or a festival were 
 being held in the town, and was answered 
 that it was an old Dutch custom to make 
 visits that week. I tried to learn whence 
 this observance came, but no one knew its 
 reason for being, or what holiday was ob- 
 served. Poor Pinkster ! still vaguely honored 
 as a shadow, a ghost of the past, but with 
 your very name forgotten, even among the 
 children of those who gave to you in this 
 land a name and happy celebration ! 
 
 Various wild flowers were known as Pink- 
 ster flowers. The beautiful azalea that once 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 bloomed — indeed does still bloom — so 
 plentifully throughout New York in May, 
 was universally known as "pinkster flower" 
 or "pinkster bloom," and along the banks 
 of the Hudson till our own day was called 
 "pinkster blummachee." The traveller 
 Kalm noted it in 1740, and called it by that 
 name. Mrs. Vanderbilt calls it "pinkster 
 bloomitze." I was somewhat surprised to 
 hear a Rhode Island farmer, in the summer 
 of 1893, ask me whether he should not pick 
 me "some pinkster blossoms," pointing at 
 the same time to the beautiful swamp pink 
 that flushed with rosy glow the tangles of 
 vines and bushes on the edge of the Narra- 
 gansett woods. It is interesting to know that 
 by many authorities the name "pink," of our 
 common garden flower, is held to be derived 
 from the Dutch Pinkster, German Pfittgsteti, 
 and owes its name, not to its pink color, but 
 to the season of its blooming. In other 
 localities in New York and New Jersey the 
 blue flag or iris was known as "pinkster 
 bloom." 
 
 Throughout New England the black resi- 
 dents, free and in bondage, held high hol- 
 iday one day in May, or in some localities 
 201 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 during the first week in June; but the day 
 of revelry was everywhere called "Nigger 
 'Lection." In Puritandom the observance 
 of Whitsunday was believed to have "super- 
 stition writ on its forehead;" but Election 
 Day was a popular and properly Puritanical 
 May holiday; therefore the negro holiday 
 took a similar name, and the "Black Gov- 
 ernor " was elected on the week following the 
 election of the white Governor, usually on 
 Saturday. 
 
 There was some celebration of days of 
 thanksgiving in New Netherland as in Hol- 
 land ; they were known by a peculiar double 
 name, fast-prayer and thank-day. These days 
 did not develop among the Dutch in the 
 new world into the position of importance 
 they held among English colonists. In 1644 
 the first public Thanksgiving Day whose 
 record has come down to us was proclaimed 
 in gratitude for the safe return of the Dutch 
 warriors after a battle with the Connecticut 
 Indians on Strickland's Plains near Stamford. 
 A second Thanksgiving service was announced 
 for the 6th of September, 1645, whereon God 
 was to be "specially thanked, praised, and 
 blessed for suffering" the long-wished -for 
 202 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 peace with the Indians. This service was 
 held on Wednesday, which was usually the 
 chosen day of the week. In 1654, at a 
 Thanksgiving ordered on account of the 
 peace established between England and the 
 Netherlands, services were to be held in 
 the morning; the citizens were to be per- 
 mitted "to indulge in all moderate festiv- 
 ities and rejoicings as the event recommends 
 and their Situation Shall permit." That 
 these festivities were not always decorous 
 is shown by the fining and punishment of 
 some young lads for drunkenness on one 
 Thanksgiving Day. 
 
 Various were the causes of the commemo- 
 rative services : peace between Spain and 
 the Fatherland; the prosperity of the prov- 
 ince, its peace, increased people, and trade ; 
 a harvest of self-sown grain (the fields having 
 been deserted for fear of Indians). In 1664 
 Domine Brown, of Wyltwyck, asked for an 
 established annual Thanksgiving ; but there 
 are no records to show that this desire was 
 carried out, though from 1690 to 17 10 they 
 were held almost every year. 
 
 203 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 AMUSEMENTS AND SPORTS 
 
 Daniel Denton, one of the original set- 
 tlers of Jamaica, Long Island, wrote " A 
 briefe Description of New York " in 1670. 
 When he speaks of the " fruits natural to the 
 island " of Long Island, he ends his account 
 thus : — 
 
 " Such abundance of strawberries is in June that 
 the fields and woods are dyed red ; which the 
 country people perceiving, instantly arm themselves 
 with botties of wine, cream, and sugar, and instead 
 of a coat of Mail every one takes a Female upon 
 his Horse behind him, and so rushing violently 
 into the fields, never leave till they have disrobed 
 them of their red colors and turned them into the 
 old habit." 
 
 " Rushing violently into the fields " seems 
 
 to have been the normal condition of all the 
 
 colonists as soon as the tardy American 
 
 " spring came slowly up the way." On every 
 
 204 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 hand they turned eagerly to open-air outings. 
 Houses chafed them; gipsy-like were they 
 in their love of fresh air and the country 
 wilds. 
 
 In New York were the bouweries close at 
 hand ; and Nutten Island (now Governor's 
 Island), " by y° making of a garden and plant- 
 ing severall walks of fruit trees in it," made 
 a pretty outing-spot. Mrs. Grant wrote at 
 length of the Albany youth and their love 
 of out-of-door excursions : — 
 
 " In spring, eight or ten of the young people of 
 one company, or related to each other, young 
 men and maidens, would set out together in a 
 canoe on a kind of rural excursion, of which amuse- 
 ment was the object. Yet so fixed were their 
 habits of industry that they never failed to carry 
 their work-baskets with them, not as a form, but 
 as an ingredient necessarily mixed with their pleas- 
 ures. They had no attendants, and steered a de- 
 vious course of four, five, or perhaps more miles, 
 till they arrived at some of the beautiful islands 
 with which this fine river abounded, or at some 
 sequestered spot on its banks, where delicious 
 wild fruits, or particular conveniences for fishing, 
 afforded some attraction. There they generally 
 arrived by nine or ten o'clock, having set out in 
 the cool and early hour of sunrise. ... A basket 
 205 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 with tea, sugar, and the other usual provisions for 
 breakfast, with the apparatus for cooking it ; a 
 Uttle rum and fruit for making cool weak punch, 
 the usual beverage in the middle of the day, and 
 now and then some cold pastry, was the sole pro- 
 vision ; for the great affair was to depend on the 
 sole exertions of the boys in procuring fish, wild 
 ducks, &c., for their dinner. They were all, like 
 Indians, ready and dexterous with the axe, gun, 
 &c. Whenever they arrived at their destination, 
 they sought out a dry and beautiful spot opposite 
 to the river, and in an instant with their axes 
 cleared so much superfluous shade or shrubbery as 
 left a semicircular opening, above which they bent 
 and twined the boughs, so as to form a pleasant 
 bower, while the girls gathered dried branches, to 
 which one of the youths soon set fire with gun- 
 powder, and the breakfast, a very regular and 
 cheerful one, occupied an hour or two. The young 
 men then set out to fish, or perhaps to shoot birds, 
 and the maidens sat busily down to their work. 
 After the sultry hours had been thus employed, the 
 boys brought their tribute from the river or the 
 wood, and found a rural meal prepared by their 
 fair companions, among whom were generally their 
 sisters and the chosen of their hearts. After din- 
 ner they all set out together to gather wild straw- 
 berries, or whatever other fruit was in season ; for 
 it was accounted a reflection to come home empty- 
 handed. When wearied of this amusement, they 
 206 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 either drank tea in their bower, or, returning, 
 landed at some friend's on the way, to partake of 
 that refreshment." 
 
 Suburban taverns were much resorted to at 
 a little later date by all town-folk, and " ladies 
 and gentlemen were entertained in the gen- 
 teelest manner." New Yorkers specially liked 
 the fish-dinners furnished at an inn perched 
 on Brooklyn Heights ; and twice a week they 
 could drive to a turtle-feast at a beloved 
 retreat on the East River, always taking much 
 care to return over the Kissing Bridge, where, 
 says with approval a reverend gentleman, a 
 traveller of ante-Revolutionary days, " it is 
 part of the etiquette to salute the lady who 
 has put herself under your protection." 
 More idyllic still was the rowing across the 
 river to Brooklyn, to the noble tulip-tree near 
 the ferry, with its great spreading shadowy 
 branches, so cool in summer suns, and glori- 
 ous with tropical blooms, and hospitable with 
 a vast shining hollow trunk which would hold 
 six or eight happy summer revellers within 
 the sheltering walls. Would I could sing The 
 Tulip-Tree as Cowper did The Sofa ; with its 
 happy summer groups, its beauty, its pathetic 
 end, and the simple joys it sheltered, — as 
 207 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 extinct as the species to which the tree itself 
 belongs ! 
 
 Occasional glimpses of pretty country- 
 hospitality in country homes are afforded 
 through old-time letters. One of the Ruther- 
 furd letters reads: — 
 
 "We were very elegantly entertained at the 
 Claries', and everything of their own production. 
 By way of amusement after dinner we all went 
 into the garden to pick roses. We gathered a 
 large basket full, and prepared them for distilling. 
 As I had never seen Rose-water made, Mrs. Clark 
 got her still and set it going, and made several 
 bottles while we were there. They were extremely 
 civil, and begged us whenever we rode that way in 
 the evening to stop and take a syllabub with 
 them." 
 
 This certainly presents a very dainty scene ; 
 the sweet June rose-garden, the delicate 
 housewifery, the drinking of syllabubs make 
 it seem more French than plain New York 
 Dutch in tone and color. 
 
 The Dutch were no haters of games as 
 were the Puritans; games were known and 
 played even in the time of the first settlers. 
 Steven Janse had a tick-tack hort at Fort 
 Orange. Tick-tack was a complicated kind 
 208 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 of backgammon, played with both men and 
 pegs. " The Compleat Gamester " says tick- 
 tack is so called from touch and take, for if 
 you touch a man you must play him though 
 to your loss. " Tick-tacking " was prohibited 
 during time of divine service in New Amster- 
 dam in 1656. Another Dutch tapster had a 
 trock-table, which Florio says was " a kind of 
 game used in England with casting little 
 bowles at a boord with thirteen holes in it." 
 A trock-table was a table much like a 
 pool table, on which an ivory ball was struck 
 under a wire wicket by a cue. Trock was 
 also played on the grass, — a seventeenth- 
 century modification of croquet. Of bowling 
 we hear plenty of talk; it was universally 
 played, from clergy down to negro slaves, 
 and a famous street in New York, the Bowl- 
 ing Green, perpetuates its popularity. The 
 English brought card-playing and gaming, to 
 which the Dutch never abandoned themselves. 
 By the middle of the eighteenth century 
 we find more amusements and a gayer life. 
 The first regularly banded company of come- 
 dians which played in New York strayed 
 thence from Philadelphia in March, 1750, 
 where they had been bound over to good 
 14 209 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 behavior, and where their departure had 
 given much joy to a disgusted Quaker com- 
 munity. It was called Murray and Kean's 
 company, and sprung up in Philadelphia like 
 a toadstool in a night, from whence or how 
 no one knows. The comedians announced 
 their " sitting down " in New York for the 
 season. They opened with King Richard 
 in., " written by Shakespeare and improved 
 by Colley Gibber." They also played " The 
 Beau in the Sudds," " The Spanish Fryer," 
 " The Orphan," " The Beau's Stratagem," 
 "The Constant Couple," "The Lying Valet," 
 "The Twin Rivals," "Colin and Phoebe," 
 " Love for Love," " The Stagecoach," 
 "The Recruiting Officer," " Cato," "Am- 
 phitryon," " Sir Harry Wildair," " George 
 Barnwell," " Bold Stroke for a Wife," 
 "Beggar's Opera," "The Mock Doctor," 
 " The Devil to Pay," " The Fair Penitent," 
 "The Virgin Unmasked," "Miss in her 
 Teens," and a variety of pantomimes and 
 farces. This was really a very good series of 
 bills, but the actors were a sorry lot. One 
 was a redemptioner, Mrs. Davis, and she had 
 a benefit to help to buy her freedom ; an- 
 other desired a benefit, as he was "just out of 
 
 2IO 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 prison." They were in town ten months, and 
 seem to have been on very friendly terms 
 with the pubhc, borrowing single copies of 
 plays to study from, having constant benefits, 
 ending with one for Mr. Kean, in which one 
 Mrs. Taylor was " out so much in her part " 
 that she had to be apologized for afterwards 
 in the newspapers. She had a benefit shortly 
 after, at which, naturally and properly, there 
 " was n't much company." Miss George at 
 her benefit had bad weather and other dis- 
 appointments, and tried it over again. At 
 last Mr. Kean, " by the advice of several 
 Gentlemen having resolv'd to quit the stage 
 and follow his Employment of writing and 
 hopes for Encouragement," sold his half of 
 " his cloaths " and the stage effects for a 
 benefit, at which if the house had been full to 
 overflowing the whole receipts would not 
 have been more than two hundred and fifty 
 dollars. John Tremain also "declined the 
 stage " and went to cabinet-making, — " plain 
 and scallopt tea-tables, etc.," — which was very 
 sensible, since tea was more desired than the 
 drama. A new company sprung up, but 
 " mett with small encouragement," though 
 the company " assured the Publick they are 
 
 211 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Perfect and hope to Perform to Satisfaction." 
 Perhaps the expression " the Part of Lavinia 
 will be Attempted by Mrs. Tremain " was a 
 wise one. All this was at a time when a 
 good theatrical company could easily have 
 been obtained in England, where the art of 
 the actor was at a high standard. 
 
 We gain a notion of some rather trying 
 manners at these theatres. The English cus- 
 tom of gentlemen's crowding on the stage 
 increased to such an extent, and proved so 
 deleterious to any good representation of the 
 play, that the manager advertised in " Gaines' 
 Mercury," in 1762, that no spectators would 
 be permitted to stand or sit on the stage 
 during the performance. And also a reproof 
 was printed to " the person so very rude as 
 to throw Eggs from the Gallery upon the 
 stage, to the injury of Cloaths." 
 
 For some years a Mr. Bonnin, a New York 
 fishmonger, entertained his fellow-citizens 
 and those of neighboring towns with various 
 scientific exhibits, lectures, camera obscuras, 
 " prospects " and " perspectives," curious ani- 
 mals, " Philosophical-Optical machines '' and 
 wax-works, and manifold other performances, 
 which he ingeniously altered and renamed. 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 He was a splendid advertiser. The news- 
 papers of the times contain many of his 
 attempts to catch the public attention. I give 
 two as an example : — 
 
 " We hear that Mr. Bonnin is so crouded with 
 company to view his Perspectives, that he can 
 scarce get even so much time as to eat, drink or 
 say his Prayers, from the time he gets out of bed 
 till He repairs to it again : and it is the Opinion 
 of some able Physicians that if he makes rich, it 
 must be at the Expense of the Health of his Body, 
 and of some Learned Divines it must be at the 
 Expense of the Welfare of His Soul." 
 
 " The common topics of discourse here since 
 the coming of Mr. Bonnin are entirely changed. 
 Instead of the common chat nothing is scarce 
 mentioned now but the most entertaining parts of 
 Europe which are represented so lively in Mr. 
 Bonnin's curious Prospects." 
 
 Mr. Bonnin is now but a shadow of the 
 past, vanished like his puppets into nowhere ; 
 in his own far "perspective" of a century 
 and a half, he seems to me amusing; at any 
 rate, he was all that New Yorkers had many 
 times to amuse them ; and I think he must 
 have been a jolly lecturer, when he was such 
 a jolly advertiser. 
 
 213 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Also in evidence before the public was one 
 Pachebell, a musician. The following is one 
 of his advertisements in the year 1734: — 
 
 "On Wednesday the 21st of January instant 
 there will be a Consort of music, vocal and instru- 
 mental for the benefit of Mr. Pachebell, the harp- 
 sicord parts performed by himself. The songs, 
 violins and German flutes by private hands. The 
 Consort will begin precisely at six o'clock in the 
 house of Robert Todd vintner. Tickets to be had 
 at the Coffee House at 4 shillings." 
 
 Amateurs often performed for his benefit, 
 and even portions of oratorios were " at- 
 tempted." His " consorts " were said to be 
 ravishing, and inspired the listeners to rhap- 
 sodic poesy, which is more than can be said 
 of many concerts nowadays. Those who 
 know the " thin metallic thrills " of a harpsi- 
 chord — an instrument with no resonance, mel- 
 lowness, or singing quality — can reflect upon 
 the susceptibility of our ancestors, who could 
 melt into sentiment and rhyme over those 
 wiry vibrations. 
 
 The favorite winter amusement in New 
 York, as in Philadelphia, was riding in sleighs, 
 a fashion which the Dutch brought from Hol- 
 land. The English colonists in New England 
 214 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 were slower to adopt sleighs for carriages, 
 and never in early days found sleighing a 
 sport. The bitter New England weather did 
 not attract sleighers. 
 
 Madam Knights, a Boston visitor to New 
 York, wrote in 1704: — 
 
 " Their diversion in winter is riding in sleighs 
 about three miles out of town, where they have 
 houses of entertainment at a place called the 
 Bowery; and some go to friends' houses, who 
 handsomely treat them. I beheve we mett fifty or 
 sixty sleighs one day; they fly with great swift- 
 ness, and some are so furious that they turn out 
 for none except a loaded cart." 
 
 An English parson, one Burnaby, visiting 
 New York in 1759, wrote of their delightful 
 sleighing-parties ; and Mrs. Anne Grant thus 
 adds her testimony of similar pleasures in 
 Albany : — 
 
 " In winter the river, frozen to a great depth, 
 formed the principal road through the country, 
 and was the scene of all those amusements of 
 skating and sledge races, common to the north 
 of Europe. They used in great parties to visit 
 their friends at a distance, and having an excellent 
 and hardy breed of horses, flew from place to 
 place over the snow or ice in these sledges with 
 incredible rapidity, stopping a little while at every 
 215 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 house they came to, and ahvays well received 
 whether acquainted with the owners or not. The 
 night never impeded these travellers, for the at- 
 mosphere was so pure and serene, and the snow 
 so reflected the moon and star-light, that the 
 nights exceeded the days in beauty." 
 
 William Livingstone, when he was twenty- 
 one years old, wrote in 1744 of a "waffle- 
 frolic," which was an amusement then in 
 vogue : — 
 
 "We had the wafel-frolic at Miss Walton's 
 talked of before your departure. The feast as 
 usual was preceded by cards, and the company so 
 numerous that they filled two tables ; after a few 
 games, a magnificent supper appeared in grand 
 order and decorum, but for my own part I was 
 not a little grieved that so luxurious a feast should 
 come under the name of a wafel-frolic, because if 
 this be the case I must expect but a few wafel- 
 frolics for the future ; the frolic was closed up 
 with ten sunburnt virgins lately come from Colum- 
 bus's Newfoundland, besides a play of my own 
 invention which I have not room enough to de- 
 scribe at present. However, kissing constitutes a 
 great part of its entertainment." 
 
 Kissing seemed to constitute a great part 
 of the entertainment at evening parties every- 
 where at that time. 
 
 216 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 As soon as the English obtained control of 
 New York, they established English sports and 
 pastimes, among them fox-hunting. Long 
 Island afforded good sport. During the 
 autumn three days' hunting was permitted 
 at Flatbush ; in other towns the chase was 
 stolen fun. A woman-satirist, with a spirited 
 pen, had her fling in rhyme at fox-hunting. 
 Here are a few of her lines : — 
 
 " A fox is killed by twenty men, 
 That fox perhaps had killed a hen. 
 A gallant art no doubt is here, 
 All wicked foxes ought to fear, 
 When twenty dogs and twenty men 
 Can kill a fox that killed a hen." 
 
 Fox-hunting was never very congenial, 
 apparently, to those of Dutch descent and 
 Dutch characteristics; nor was cock-fighting, 
 the prevalence of which I have noted in the 
 preceding chapter. Occasionally we hear of 
 the cruel sport of bull-baiting, though not till 
 the latter half of the eighteenth century. In 
 1763 the keeper of the DeLancey Arms on 
 the Bowery Lane gave a bull-baiting. Brook- 
 lyn was specially favored in that respect dur- 
 ing the Revolution, when the British officers 
 took charge of and enjoyed the barbarism, 
 217 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 and Landlord Loosely of the King's Head 
 Tavern helped in the arrangements and ad- 
 vertising. Good active bulls and strong 
 dogs were in much demand. The news- 
 papers of the times contain many advertise- 
 ments of the sport. One in poor rhyme 
 begins: — 
 
 " This notice gives to all who covet 
 Baiting the bull and dearly love it." etc. 
 
 I frequently recall, as I pass through a quiet 
 street near my home, that in the year 1/74 ^ 
 bull-baiting was held there every afternoon 
 for many months, and I resolutely demolish 
 that hollow idol — the good old times — and 
 rejoice in humane to-day. 
 
 As early as 1665 Governor Nicholls an- 
 nounced that a horse-race would take place 
 at Hempstead, " not so much for the diver- 
 tissement of youth as for encouraging the bet- 
 tering of the breed of horses which through 
 great neglect has been impaired." In 1669 
 Governor Lovelace gave orders that a race 
 should be run in May each year, and that 
 subscriptions should be sent to Captain Salis- 
 bury, " of all such as are disposed to run for 
 a crown in silver or the value thereof in 
 wheat." This first course was a naturally 
 218 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 level plain called Salisbury Plains, and was 
 so named after this very Captain Silvester 
 Salisbury, Commander of Royal Troops in 
 the province, and an enthusiastic sportsman. 
 Its location was near the present Hyde Park 
 station of Long Island. 
 
 Daniel Denton, one of the early settlers 
 of Jamaica, Long Island, wrote in 1670 
 thus: — 
 
 "Towards the middle of Long Island lieth a 
 plain sixteen miles long and four broad, upon 
 which plain grows very fine grass that makes ex- 
 ceeding good hay; where you shall find neither 
 stick nor stone to hinder the horse-heels, or en- 
 danger them in their races, and once a year the 
 best horses in the island are brought hither to 
 try their Swiftness and the swiftest rewarded with 
 a silver Cup, two being Annually procured for 
 the Purpose." 
 
 The " fine grass " was what was known as 
 secretary grass, and, curiously enough, this 
 great plain was abandoned to this growth of 
 secretary grass for more than a century after 
 the settlement and cultivation of surrounding 
 farms; this was through a notion that the 
 soil was too porous to be worth ploughing. 
 Even a clergyman sent out by the Society for 
 219 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
 Parts testified to the beauty of Salisbury 
 Plain, calling it " an even delightsome plain, 
 most sweet and pleasant." Delightsome it 
 certainly proved to lovers of horse-racing. 
 
 On February 24, 1721, a race was held on 
 this plain which attracted much attention. 
 The winning horse was owned by Samuel 
 Bayard. The race was given by "the inhabi- 
 tants of Queens County on Nassau Island." 
 The name of the course had by this time 
 been changed to Newmarket. In 1764 a 
 new course was laid out; and in 1804 the 
 racing moved to a field east of the Old Court 
 House, and in 1821 it was transferred to the 
 Union Course on the western border of 
 Jamaica. The story of this course is familiar 
 to sportsmen. 
 
 Frequent newspaper notices call attention 
 to the races held at this Hempstead New- 
 market. From the " New York Postboy " of 
 June 4, 1750, I quote : — 
 
 " On Friday last there was a great horse race 
 on Hempstead Plains which engaged the attention 
 of so many of the city of New York that upwards 
 of seventy chairs and chaises were carried over 
 Brooklyn Ferry the day before, besides a far 
 220 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 greater number of horses. The number of horses 
 on the plains exceeded, it is thought, one 
 thousand." 
 
 In 1764 we find the Macaroni Club offer- 
 ing prizes of ;£^ioo and ^^^50. At those races 
 Mr. James De Lancey's bay horse Lath won. 
 On September 28, 1769, the same horse Lath 
 won a ;£'ioo race in Philadelphia. 
 
 In October, 1770, Jacob Hiltzheimer, a well- 
 known lover and breeder of horses in Phila- 
 delphia, went to the races on Hempstead 
 Plains, and lodged at a " public house " in 
 Jamaica, with various other gentlemen, — 
 lovers of races. Two purses of £s'^ were 
 given, but Mr. Hiltzheimer's chestnut horse 
 Regulus did not win. 
 
 A London racing-book of 1776 says of 
 this Hempstead course : — 
 
 " These plains were celebrated for their races 
 throughout all the Colonies and even in England. 
 They were held twice a year for a silver cup, to 
 which the gentry of New England and New York 
 resorted." 
 
 Another famous race-course of colonial 
 days was the one-mile course around Beaver 
 Pond in Jamaica. This was laid out before 
 221 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 the year 1757, for on June 13 of that year 
 a subscription plate was won by Lewis Mor- 
 ris, Jr., with his horse American Childers. 
 Another course was at Newtown in 1758, and 
 another at New Lots in 1778. 
 
 I find frequent allusions in the colonial press 
 to the Beaver Pond course. The " New York 
 Mercury" of 1763 tells of a" Free Masons' 
 Purse" — for best two in three heats, each 
 heat three times round Beaver Pond — free- 
 masons were to be " inspectors " of this 
 race. 
 
 At the time of the possession of Brooklyn 
 and western Long Island by the British 
 during the Revolutionary War, there con- 
 stantly went on a succession of sporting 
 events of all kinds under the direction of the 
 English officers and a notorious tavern- 
 keeper Loosely, already named, who seemed 
 to devote every energy to the amusement of 
 the English invaders. An advertisement in 
 " Rivington's Gazette" November 4, 1780, 
 reads thus : — 
 
 " By Permission Three Days' Sport on Ascot 
 
 Heath formerly Flatlands Plain on Monday. 
 
 I. The Noblemen's and Gentlemen's Purse of 
 
 ;^6o free for any horse except Mr. Wortman's 
 
 222 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 and Mr. Allen's Dulcimore who won the plate at 
 Beaver Pond last season. 2. A Saddle, bridle, 
 and whip, worth _;^i5 for ponies not exceeding 
 13I hands. Tuesday, i. Ladies' Subscription 
 Purse of ^50. 2. To be run for by women, a 
 Holland smock and Chintz Gown full-trimmed ; 
 to run the two in three quarter-miles ; first to 
 have the smock and gown of four guineas value ; 
 second, a guinea ; third half a guinea. Wed- 
 nesday. Country Subscription Purse of ;^50. No 
 person will erect a booth or sell liquor without 
 subscribing 2 guineas to expenses of races. Gen- 
 tlemen fond of fox-hunting will meet at Loosely's 
 Kings Head Tavern at day break during the 
 races. God Save the King played every hour." 
 
 It will be seen by this advertisement that 
 the rough and rollicking ways of English 
 holidays were introduced in this woman's- 
 race. The women who ran those quarter- 
 miles must have been some camp-followers, 
 for I am sure no honest Long Island country- 
 girls would have taken part. At other races 
 on this freshly named "Ascot Heath" hurl- 
 ing-matches and bull-baitings and lotteries 
 added their zest, and on April 27, 1782, 
 there was a three hundred guineas sweep- 
 stakes race. These races were held at short 
 intervals until October, 1783, when English 
 223 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 sports and English cruelties no longer held . 
 sway on Long Island. 
 
 At these races, given under martial rule, 
 some rather crooked proceedings were taken 
 to recruit the field and keep up the interest ; 
 and good horses for many miles around were 
 watched carefully by their owners ; and when 
 a gentleman attending the races viewed with 
 surprised and indignant recognition his own 
 horse which had been stolen from him, he 
 promptly applied for restitution to Mr. Cor- 
 nell, of Brooklyn, who had entered the horse ; 
 and when the race was finished, the horse was 
 returned to its rightful owner. 
 
 Other localities developed race-courses. 
 "At Captain Tim Cornell's Poles, on Hemp- 
 stead Plains," Eclipse and Sturdy Beggar 
 ran for "Fifty Joes " on March 14, 1781. In 
 1783 Eclipse and Young Slow and Easy ran 
 for a purse of two hundred guineas. At Far 
 Rockaway, in 1786, Jacob Hicks, "from a 
 wish to gratify sportsmen," laid out a mile 
 course and offered prizes where no " trussing, 
 jostling, or foul play were countenanced; if 
 detected, the rider will be pronounced 
 distanced." 
 
 On Manhattan Island were several other 
 224 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 race-courses. In 1742, a race was run on 
 the Church Farm, just a stone's throw north- 
 west of where the Astor House now stands. 
 I have seen many notices of races on this 
 Church Farm which was the valuable Trinity- 
 Church property. In October, 1726, a Sub- 
 scription Plate of twenty pounds was run for 
 "on the Course at New York." The horses 
 were entered with Francis Child on Fresh 
 Water Hill. Entrance fee was half a pis- 
 tole. Admission to the public, sixpence each. 
 In the 1750 October runs, Mr. Lewis Morris, 
 Jr.'s horse won on the Church Farm course. 
 The chief racing stables in the province of 
 New York were those of Mr. Morris and of 
 Mr. James De Lancey. The former won a 
 reputation with American Childers; the 
 latter with his imported horse Lath. The 
 De Lancey stables were the most costly ones 
 in the north ; their colors were seen on every 
 course for ten years previous to the Revolu- 
 tion, and they were patrons of all English 
 sports. A famous horse of James De Lan- 
 cey' s was True Briton. It is told of this 
 horse that Oliver De Lancey would jump 
 him back and forth from a standstill over 
 a five-barred gate. There was a course at 
 IS 225 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Greenwich Village on the estate of Sir 
 Peter Warren, and one at Harlem, another 
 at Newburgh. 
 
 Many advertisements of other races with 
 names of horses and owners might be added 
 to this list; but I think I have given a suffi- 
 cient number to disprove the vague assertions 
 of Frank Forester and other writers of the 
 history of the horse in America, that little 
 attention was paid to horse-raising in the 
 northern provinces, and that there were a few 
 races on Long Island previous to the Revo- 
 lution, but it is not known whether taking 
 place regularly, or for given prizes. There 
 was no racing-calendar in America till 1829, 
 but there are other ways of learning of 
 races. 
 
 226 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS 
 
 The court records of any period in our 
 American history are an unfailing source of 
 profit and delight to the historian. In the 
 town or state whose colonial records still 
 exist there can ever be drawn a picture not 
 only of the crimes and punishments, but of 
 the manners, occupations, and ways of our 
 ancestors and a knowledge can be gained of 
 the social ethics, the morality, the modes of 
 thought, the intelligence of dead-and-gone 
 citizens. We learn that they had daily 
 hopes and plans and interests and harass- 
 ments just such as our own, as well as vices 
 and wickedness. 
 
 In spite of Chancellor Kent's assertion of 
 their dulness and lack of interest, the court 
 records of Dutch colonial times are not to 
 me dull reading: quaint humor and curious 
 terms abound; the criminal records always 
 227 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 are interesting; even the old reken-boeks 
 (the account-books) are of value. These 
 first sources give an unbiassed and well- 
 outlined picture, sometimes a surprising and 
 almost irreconcilable one; for instance, I 
 had always a fixed notion that the early 
 women-colonists of Dutch birth were wholly 
 a quiet, reserved, even timid group; not 
 talkative and never aggressive. It was there- 
 fore a great thrust at my established ideas to 
 discover, when poring over an old "Road 
 Book " at the Hall of Records in Brooklyn, 
 containing some entries of an early Court of 
 Sessions, an account of the trial of two dames 
 of Bushwyck, Mistress Jonica Schampf and 
 Widow Rachel Luquer, for assaulting the 
 captain of the Train-Band, Captain Peter 
 Praa, on training-day in October, 1690, 
 while he was at the head of his company. 
 These two vixens most despitefully used him ; 
 they beat him, pulled his hair, assaulted and 
 wounded him, and committed "other Ivill 
 Inormities, so that his life was despaired of. " 
 And there was no evidence to show that any 
 of his soldiers, or any of the spectators pres- 
 ent, interfered to save either Peter's life or 
 his honor. The offence which provoked this 
 22S 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 assault is not even hinted at, though it may 
 have arisen from the troubled state of public 
 affairs. Captain Praa was a man of influence 
 and dignity in the community, an exiled 
 Huguenot, of remarkable skill in horseman- 
 ship and arms. In spite of all this, it appears 
 probable that the sentiment of the community 
 was in sympathy with the two turbulent 
 assaulters and batterers, for they were fined 
 only six shillings and three pounds respec- 
 tively. They threw themselves on the mercy 
 of the Court, and certainly were treated with 
 mercy. 
 
 There are, however, few women-criminals 
 named in the old Dutch and early English 
 records, and these few were not prosecuted 
 for any very great crimes or viciousness ; the 
 chief number were brought up for defama- 
 tion of character and slander, though men- 
 slanderers were more plentiful than women. 
 The close intimacy, the ideal neighborliness 
 of the Dutch communities of New York made 
 the settlers deeply abhor all violations of 
 the law of social kindness. To preserve this 
 state of amity, they believed with Chaucer 
 "the first vertue is to restraine and kepen 
 wel thine tonga." 
 
 229 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 The magistrates knew how vast a flame 
 might be kindled by a petty spark; and there- 
 fore promptly quenched the odious slander in 
 its beginning ; petty quarrels were adjusted by 
 arbitration ere they grew to great breaches. 
 As sung the chorus of Batavian women in 
 Van der Vondel's great poem : — 
 
 " If e'er dispute or discord dared intrude, 
 'T was soon by wisdom's voice subdued." 
 
 In spite, however, of all wariness and 
 watchfulness and patience, the inevitable 
 fretfulness engendered in petty natures by 
 a narrow and confined life showed in neigh- 
 borhood disputes and suits for defamation 
 of character, few of them of great seriousness 
 and most of them easily adjusted by the 
 phlegmatic and somewhat dictatorial Dutch 
 magistrates. In a community so given to 
 nicknaming it seems strange to find such 
 extreme touchiness about being called names. 
 Suits for defamation were frequent, through 
 opprobrious name-calling, and on very slight 
 though irritating grounds. It would cer- 
 tainly seem a rather disproportionate amount 
 of trouble to bring a lawsuit simply because 
 you were called a "black pudding," or a 
 230 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 verklickker, or tale-bearer, or even a "Turk;" 
 though, of course, no one would stand being 
 called a "horned beast" or a "hay thief." 
 Nor was " Thou swine " an offensive term 
 too petty to be passed over in silence. The 
 terrible epithets, spitter-baard and "Dutch 
 dough-face," seem to make a climax of oppro- 
 briousness; but the word moff was worse, 
 for it was the despised term applied in Hol- 
 land to the Germans, and it led to a quarrel 
 with knives. 
 
 I wish to note in passing that though the 
 Dutch called each other these disagreeable 
 and even degrading names, they did not 
 swear at each other. Profanity was seldom 
 punished in New Amsterdam, for practically 
 it did not exist, as was remarked by travel- 
 lers. Chaplain Wolley told of " the usual 
 oath " of one Dutch colonist, — the word 
 " sacrament. " 
 
 The colonists were impatient of insulting 
 actions as well as words. Sampson said in 
 "Romeo and Juliet," "I will bite my thumb 
 at them, which is a disgrace to them if tliey 
 bear it; " so " finger-sticking " was a disgrace 
 in colonial times i/ unresented, and it was 
 actionable in the courts. The man or woman 
 231 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 who pointed the finger of scorn at a neighbor 
 was pretty sure to have the finger of the law 
 pointed at him. 
 
 The curious practice of the Dutch settlers 
 alluded to — the giving of nicknames — may 
 be partly explained by the fact that in some 
 cases the persons named had no surname, and 
 the nickname was really a distinguishing 
 name. These nicknames appear not only in 
 the records of criminal cases, but in official 
 documents such as the patents for towns, 
 transfers of estates, civil contracts, etc. In 
 Albany, in 1655 and 1657, we find Jan the 
 Jester, Huybert the Rogue, Jacobus or Cobus 
 the Looper, squint-eyed Harmen, the wicked 
 Domine. On Long Island were John the 
 Swede, Hans the Boor, Tunis the Fisher. 
 In Harlem was Jan Archer the Koop-all (or 
 buy-all). In New York, in English days, in 
 1691, we find Long Mary, Old Bush, Top- 
 knot Betty, Scarebouch. These names con- 
 ve3red no offence, and seem to have been uni- 
 versally adopted and responded to. 
 
 It would appear to a casual observer glan- 
 cing over the court-records of those early 
 years of New York life under Dutch suprem- 
 acy, that the greater number of the cases 
 232 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 brought before the magistrates were these 
 slander and libel cases. We could believe 
 that no other court-room ever rang with such 
 petty personal suits; to use Tennyson's 
 words, "it bubbled o'er with gossip and 
 scandal and spite." But in truth slander was 
 severely punished in all the colonies, in New 
 England, Virginia, Pennsylvania; and it is 
 not to the detriment of the citizens of New 
 Netherland that they were more sharp in the 
 punishment of such offences, for it is well 
 known, as Swift says, that the worthiest 
 people are those most injured by slander. 
 
 The slander cases of colonial times seem 
 most trivial and even absurd when seen 
 through the mist of years. They could scarce 
 reach the dignity of Piers Plowman's defini- 
 tion of slanders: — 
 
 " To bakbyten, and to bosten, and to here fals wit- 
 nesse 
 To scornte and to scolde, sclaundres to make." 
 
 To show their character, let me give those 
 recorded in which Thomas Applegate of 
 Gravesend, Long Island, took an accused 
 part. In 1650, he was brought up before the 
 Gravesend court for saying of a fellow-towns- 
 man that " he thought if his debts were paid 
 233 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 he would have little left." For this incau- 
 tious but not very heinous speech he paid a 
 fine of forty guilders. The next year we find 
 him prosecuted for saying of a neighbor 
 that " he had not half a wife. " Though he at 
 first denied this speech, he was ordered " to 
 make publick acknowledgement of error; to 
 stand at the publick post with a paper on his 
 breast mentioning the reason, that he is a 
 notorious, scandalous person. " This brought 
 him to his senses, and he confessed his guilt, 
 desired the slandered "half a wife" to "pass 
 it by and remit it, which she freely did and 
 he gave her thanks." Next Mistress Apple- 
 gate was brought up for saying that a neigh- 
 bor's wife milked the Applegate cows. She 
 escaped punishment by proving that Penelope 
 Prince told her so. As a climax, Thomas 
 Applegate said to a friend that he believed 
 that the Governor took bribes. The schout 
 in his decision on this grave offence said 
 Applegate "did deserve to have his tongue 
 bored through with a hot iron ; " but this 
 fierce punishment was not awarded him, nor 
 was he banished. 
 
 When the tailor of New Amsterdam said 
 disrespectful words of the Governor, his sen- 
 234 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 tence was that he "stand before the Gov- 
 ernor's door with uncovered head, after the 
 ringing of the bell, and to declare that he 
 falsely and scandalously issued such words 
 and then to ask God's pardon." 
 
 The magistrates were very touchy of their 
 dignity. Poor Widow Piertje Jans had her 
 house sold on an execution ; and, exasperated 
 by the proceeding, and apparently also at the 
 price obtained, she said bitterly to the 
 officers, " Ye despoilers, ye bloodsuckers, ye 
 have not sold but given away my house." 
 Instead of treating these as the heated words 
 of a disappointed and unhappy woman, the 
 officers promptly ran tattling to the Stadt 
 Huys and whiningly complained to the Court 
 that her words were " a sting which could not 
 be endured." Piertje was in turn called 
 shameful; her words were termed "foul, 
 villanous, injurious, nay, infamous words," 
 and also called a blasphemy, insult, affront, 
 and reproach. She was accused of insulting, 
 defaming, affronting, and reproaching the 
 Court, and that she was in the highest degree 
 reprimanded, particularly corrected, and 
 severely punished; and after being forbidden 
 to indulge in any more such blasphemies, 
 235 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 she was released, — " bethumped with words," 
 as Shakespeare said, — doubtless well scared at 
 the enormity of her offence, as well as at the 
 enormity of the magistrate's phraseology. 
 
 The notary Walewyn van der Veen was 
 frequently in trouble, usually for contempt 
 of court. And I doubt not " the little bench 
 of justices " was sometimes rather trying in 
 its ways to a notary who knew anything about 
 law. On one occasion, when a case relating 
 to a bill of exchange had been decided against 
 him, Van der Veen spoke of their High 
 Mightinesses the magistrates as " simpletons 
 and blockheads." This was the scathing 
 sentence of his punishment: — 
 
 "That Walewyn Van der Veen, for his com- 
 mitted insult, shall here beg forgiveness, with un- 
 covered head, of God, Justice, and the Worshipful 
 Court, and moreover pay as a fine 190 guilders." 
 
 This fine must have consumed all his fees for 
 many a weary month thereafter, if we can 
 judge by the meagre lawyers' bills which 
 have come down to us. 
 
 Another time the contumacious Van der 
 Veen called the Secretary a rascal. Thereat, 
 the latter, much aggrieved, demanded " hon- 
 236 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 orable and profitable reparation " for the in- 
 sult. The sellout judged this epithet to be 
 a slander and an affront to the Secretary, 
 which "affected his honor, being tender," 
 and the honor of the Court as well, since it 
 v/as to a member of the Court, and he de- 
 manded that the notary should pay a fine of 
 fifty guilders as an example to other slan- 
 derers, "who for trifles have constantly in 
 their mouths curses and abuses of other hon- 
 orable people." 
 
 Another well-known notary and practi- 
 tioner and pleader in the busy little Court 
 held in the Stadt Huys was Solomon La 
 Chair. His manuscript volume of nearly 
 three hundred pages, containing detailed ac- 
 counts of all the business he transacted in 
 Manhattan, is now in the County Clerk's 
 Office in New York, and proves valuable 
 material for the historiographer. He had 
 much business, for he could speak and write 
 both English and Dutch; and he was a faith- 
 ful, painstaking, intelligent worker. He not 
 only conducted lawsuits for others, but he 
 seems to have been in constant legal hot 
 water himself on his own account. He was 
 sued for drinking and not paying for a can 
 237 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 of sugared wine; and also for a half-aam of 
 costly French wine ; and he was sued for the 
 balance of payment for a house he had pur- 
 chased ; he pleaded for more time, and with 
 the ingenuous guilelessness peculiar to the 
 law said in explanation that he had had the 
 money gathered at one time for payment, 
 but it had somehow dropped through his 
 fingers. " The Court condemned to pay at 
 once," — not being taken in by any such 
 simplicity as that. He had to pay a fine of 
 twelve guilders for affronting both fire in- 
 spector and court messenger. He first in- 
 sulted the braiidt-meesier who came to inspect 
 his chimney, and was fined, then he called 
 the bode who came to collect the fine " a little 
 cock booted and spurred." The Court in 
 sentence said with dignity, " It is not meet 
 that men should mock and scoff at persons 
 appointed to any olfice, yea a necessary 
 office." 
 
 He won one important suit for the town of 
 Gravesend, by which the right of that town to 
 the entire region of Coney Island was estab- 
 lished ; and he received in payment for his 
 legal services therein, the munificent sum of 
 twenty-four florins (ten dollars) paid in gray 
 238 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 pease. He kept a tavern and was complained 
 of for tapping after nine o'clock; and he was 
 sued by his landlord for rent ; and he had a 
 yacht, " The Pear Tree," which ran on trading 
 trips to Albany, and there were two or three 
 lawsuits in regard to that. He was also a 
 farmer of the excise on slaughtered cattle ;- 
 but, in spite of all his energy and variety of 
 employment, he died insolvent in 1664. The 
 last lawsuit in which Lawyer Solomon had 
 any share was through a posthumous connec- 
 tion, — the burgher who furnished an anker 
 of French wine for the notary's funeral 
 claimed a position as preferred creditor to 
 the estate. 
 
 A very aggravated case of scorn and re- 
 sistance of authority was that of Abel Har- 
 denbrock against the schout de Mill. And 
 this case shows equally the popular horror 
 of violations of the law and the confiding 
 trust of the justices that the word of the law 
 was enough without any visible restraining 
 force. Hardenbrock, who was a troublesome 
 fellow, had behaved most vilely, shoving the 
 schout on the breast, and wickedly " wishing 
 the devil might break his neck," simply be- 
 cause the schout went to Hardenbrock's 
 239 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 house to warn his wife not to annoy further 
 Burgomaster De Peyster by unwelcome visits. 
 Hardenbrock was accordingly seized and 
 made a prisoner at the Stadt Huys " in the 
 chamber of Pieter Schaefbanck, where he 
 carried on and made a racket like one pos- 
 sessed and mad, notwithstanding the efforts 
 of Heer Burgomaster Van Brught, running 
 up to the Court room and going away next 
 morning as if he had not been imprisoned." 
 It was said with amusing simplicity that this 
 cool walking out of prison was " contrary to 
 the customs of the law," and a fine of twenty- 
 five florins was imposed. 
 
 For serious words against the government, 
 which could be regarded as treasonable, the 
 decreed punishment was death. One Claer- 
 bout van ter Goes used such words (unfor- 
 tunately they are not given in the indict- 
 ment), and a judgment was recorded from 
 each burgomaster and schepen as to what 
 punishment would be proper. He was 
 branded, whipped on a half-gallows, and 
 banished, and escaped hanging only by one 
 vote. 
 
 All classes in the community were parties 
 in these petty slander suits; schoolmasters 
 240 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 and parsons appear to have been specially 
 active. Domine Bogardus and Domine 
 Schaets had many a slander suit. The most 
 famous and amusing of all these clerical suits 
 is the one brought by Domine Bogardus and 
 his wife, the posthumously famous Anneke 
 Jans, against Grietje von Salee, a woman of 
 very dingy reputation, who told in New Am- 
 sterdam that the domine's wife, Mistress 
 Anneke, had lifted her petticoats in unseemly 
 and extreme fashion when crossing a muddy 
 street. This was proved to be false, and the 
 evidence adduced was so destructive of 
 Grietje's character that she stands disgraced 
 forever in history as the worst woman in 
 New Netherland. 
 
 Not only were slanderers punished, but 
 they were disgraced with terrible names. Wil- 
 liam Bakker was called " a blasphemer, a 
 street schold, a murderer as far as his inten- 
 tions are concerned, a defamer, a disturber 
 of public peace," — the concentration of 
 which must have made William Bakker hang 
 his head in the place of his banishment. 
 They were also rebuked from the pulpit, and 
 admonished in private. 
 
 Perhaps the best rebuke given, as well as a 
 i6 241 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 unique one, was the one adopted by Domine 
 Frelinghuysen, who had suffered somewhat 
 from slander himself. He had this rhyme 
 painted in large letters on the back of his 
 sleigh, that he who followed might read : — 
 
 " Niemands long ; nog neimands pen, 
 Maakt my anders dan ik ben. 
 Spreek quaad-spreekers : spreek vender end, 
 Niemand en word van u geschend." 
 
 Which, translated into English, reads : — 
 
 " No one's tongue, and no one's pen 
 Makes me other than I am. 
 Speak, evil-speakers, speak without end, 
 No one heeds a word you say." 
 
 The original Court of the colony was com- 
 posed of a Director and his Council. In 
 1656, in answer to complaints from the colo- 
 nists, the States-General ordered the election 
 of a board of magistrates, in name and func- 
 tion like those of the Fatherland ; namely, 
 a sellout, two burgomasters, and five schepeiis. 
 The duties of the burgomasters and sckepens 
 were twofold: they regulated municipal affairs 
 like a board of aldermen, and they sat as 
 a court of justice both in civil and crimi- 
 nal cases. The annual salary of a burgo- 
 master was fixed at one hundred and forty 
 242 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 dollars, and of a schepen at one hundred 
 dollars ; but as these salaries were to come 
 out of the municipal chest, which was chron- 
 ically empty, they never were paid. When 
 funds did come in from the excise on taverns, 
 on slaughtered cattle, the tax on land, the 
 fees on transfers, etc., it always had to be 
 paid out in other ways, — for repairs for the 
 school-room, the Graft, the watch-room, the 
 Stadt Huys. It never entered the minds of 
 those guileless civic rulers, two centuries ago, 
 to pay themselves and let the other creditors 
 go without The early city schout was also 
 scho2it-fiskaal till 1660; but the proper 
 duties of this functionary were really a com- 
 bination of those pertaining now to the 
 mayor, sheriff, and district-attorney. In the 
 little town one man could readily perform all 
 these duties. He also presided in Court. An 
 offender could thus be arrested, prosecuted, 
 and judged, by one and the same person, 
 which seems to us scarcely judicious; but 
 the bench of magistrates had one useful 
 power, that of mitigating and altering the 
 sentence demanded by the schout. Often a 
 fine of one hundred guilders would be re- 
 duced to twenty-five; often the order for 
 243 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 whipping would be set aside, and the com- 
 mand of branding as well. 
 
 Sometimes justice in New York was tem- 
 pered with mercy, and sorely it needed it 
 when fierce English rule and law came in 
 force. Felons were few, but these few were 
 severely punished. A record of a trial in 
 1676 reveals a curious scene in Court, as well 
 as an astonishing celerity in the execution of 
 the law under English rule and in the English 
 army. Three soldiers stole a couple of iron 
 pots, two hoes, a pair of shears, and half a 
 firkin of soap. They were tried in the morn- 
 ing, confessed, cast into " the Hole " in the 
 afternoon, and in the evening " the Governor 
 ordered some persons to go to the prisoners 
 and advise them to prepare for another world, 
 for that one of them should dye the next 
 day." On the gloomy morrow, on Saturday, 
 the three terror-stricken souls drew lots, and 
 the fatal lot fell to one Thomas Weale. The 
 court of aldermen interceded for him and 
 finally secured his reprieve till Monday. The 
 peaceful Dutch Sunday, darkened and shocked 
 by this impending death, saw a strange and 
 touching sight. 
 
 244 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 " In the evening a company of the chiefe women 
 of the City, both Enghsh and Dutch, made earnest 
 suite to the Governor for the Condemned man's 
 life. Monday in the morning the same women 
 who came the last night with many others of the 
 better sort, and a greater number of the ordinary 
 Dutch women, did again very much importune the 
 Governor to spare him." 
 
 These tender-hearted colonists were in- 
 dorsed and supplemented by the petition of 
 Weale's fellow-soldiers in the garrison, who 
 pleaded the prisoner's youth and his past 
 usefulness, and who promised if he were 
 pardoned never to steal nor to conceal theft. 
 As a result of all this intercession, the Gov- 
 ernor " graciously '' granted pardon. 
 
 This promise and pardon seem to have 
 accomplished much in army discipline, for 
 thereafter arrests for crime among the soldiery 
 were rare. Five years later a soldier was 
 accused of pilfering. 
 
 " The Court Marshall doth adjudge that the said 
 Melchoir Classen shall run the Gantlope once, the 
 length of the fort : where according to the cus- 
 tome of that punishment, the souldiers shall have 
 switches delivered to them, with which they shall 
 strike him as he passes between them stript to the 
 
 245 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 waist, and at the Fort-gate the Marshall is to re- 
 ceive him, and there to kick him out of the Garri- 
 son as a cashiered person, when he is no more to 
 returne, and if any pay is due him it is to be 
 forfeited." 
 
 And that was the end of Melchoir Classen. 
 
 Gantlope was the earlier and more correct 
 form of the word now commonly called gant- 
 let. Running the gantlope was a military 
 punishment in universal use. 
 
 Another common punishment for soldiers 
 (usually for rioting or drinking) was riding 
 the wooden horse. In New Amsterdam the 
 wooden horse stood between Paerel Street 
 and the Fort, and was twelve feet high. Gar- 
 ret Segersen, for stealing chickens, rode the 
 wooden horse for three days from two o'clock 
 to close of parade with a fifty-pound weight 
 tied to each foot. At other times a musket 
 was tied to each foot of the disgraced man. 
 One culprit rode with an empty scabbard in 
 one hand and a pitcher in the other to show 
 his inordinate love for John Barleycorn. Jan 
 Alleman, a Dutch officer, challenged Jan de 
 Fries, who was bedridden ; for this cruel and 
 meaningless insult he too rode the wooden 
 horse. In Revolutionary days we still find 
 246 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the soldiers of the Continental Army pun- 
 ished by riding the wooden horse, or, as it 
 was sometimes called, "the timber mare;" 
 but it was probably a modification of the cruel 
 punishment of the seventeenth century. 
 
 A sailor, for drawing a knife on a com- 
 panion, was dropped three times from the 
 yard-arm and received a kick from every 
 sailor on the ship, — a form of running the 
 gantlope. And we read of a woman who 
 enlisted as a seaman, and whose sex was 
 detected, being dropped three times from 
 the yard-arm and tarred and feathered. 
 
 These women petitioners for Soldier Weale 
 of whom I have told, were not the only 
 tender-hearted New Yorkers to petition for 
 " mercy, that herb of grace, to flower." 
 During Stuyvesant's rule his sister. Madam 
 Bayard, successfully interceded for the re- 
 lease, and thereby saved the life, of an impris- 
 oned Quaker; and in September, 171 3, two 
 counterfeiters were saved from the death pen- 
 alty by the intervention of New York dames. 
 We read " Most of the gentlewomen of the 
 city waited on the Governor, and addressed 
 him earnestly with prayers and tears for the 
 lives of the culprits, who were accordingly 
 247 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 pardoned." When two sailors rioted through 
 the town demanding food and drink, and used 
 Carel Van Brugh so roughly that his face was 
 cut, they were sentenced to be fastened to 
 the whipping-post, and scourged, and have 
 gashes cut in their faces ; the wife of Van 
 Brugh and her friends petitioned that the 
 sentence should not be carried out, or at any 
 rate executed within a room. Doubtless other 
 examples could be found. 
 
 The laws of New Netherland were natu- 
 rally based upon the laws and customs of 
 the Fatherland, which in turn were formed 
 by the rules of the College of XIX. from 
 the Imperial Statutes of Charles V. and the 
 Roman civil law. 
 
 The punishments were the ordinary ones 
 of the times, neither more nor less severe than 
 those of the Fatherland or the other colo- 
 nies. In 169 1 it was ordered that a ducking- 
 stool be erected in New York on the wharf 
 in front of the City Hall. The following 
 year an order was passed that a pillory, cage, 
 and ducking-stool be built. Though scolds 
 were punished, I have never seen any sen- 
 tence to show that this ducking-stool was 
 ever built, or that one was ever used in New 
 248 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 York; while instances of the use of a duck- 
 ing-stool are comparatively plentiful in the 
 Southern colonies. The ducking-stool was 
 an English " engine " of punishment, not a 
 Dutch. 
 
 The colonists were astonishingly honest. 
 Thieves were surprisingly few; they were 
 punished under Dutch rule by scourging with 
 rods, and usually by banishment, — a very 
 convenient way of shifting responsibility. 
 Assaults were punished by imprisonment and 
 subjection to prison fare, consisting only of 
 bread and water or small beer; and some- 
 times temporary banishment There was at 
 first no prison, so men were often imprisoned 
 in their own houses, which does not seem 
 very disgraceful. In the case of Frangois de 
 Bruyn, tried for insulting and striking the 
 court messenger, he was fined two hundred 
 guilders, and answered that he would rot in 
 prison before he would pay. He was then 
 ordered to be imprisoned in a respectable 
 tavern, which sentence seems to have some 
 possibility of mitigating accompaniments. 
 
 In 1692 it was ordered in Kings County 
 that a good pair of stocks and a pound be 
 made in every bound within Kings County, 
 249 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 and kept in sufficient repair. In repair and 
 in use were they kept till this century. Pil- 
 lories too were employed in punishment till 
 within the memory of persons now living. 
 The whipping-post was really a public bless- 
 ing, — in constant use, and apparently of con- 
 stant benefit, though the publicity of its em- 
 ployment seems shocking to us to-day. The 
 public whipper received a large salary. In 
 175 1, we learn from an advertisement, it was 
 twenty pounds annually. 
 
 Some of the punishments were really 
 almost picturesque in their ingenious inven- 
 tions of mortification and degradation. Truly 
 it was a striking sight when "Jan of Leyden " 
 — a foul-mouthed rogue, a true blather- 
 schiiyten — was fastened to a stake in front of 
 the townhouse, with a bridle in his mouth 
 and a bundle of rods tied under each arm, 
 and a placard on his breast bearing the 
 inscription, " Lampoon-riter, false accuser, 
 defamer of magistrates." Though he was 
 banished, I am sure he never was forgotten 
 by the children who saw him standing thus 
 garnished and branded on that spring day 
 in 1664. In the same place a thief was pun- 
 ished by being forced to stand all day under 
 250 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 a gallows, a gallows-rope around his neck and 
 empty sword-scabbard in his hand, a memo- 
 rable figure. 
 
 And could any who saw it ever forget the 
 punishment of Mesaack Martens, who stole 
 six cabbages from his neighbor, and con- 
 fessed and stood for days in the pillory with 
 cabbages on his head, that " the punishment 
 might fit the crime;" to us also memorable 
 because the prisoner was bootlessly examined 
 by torture to force confession of stealing fowls, 
 butter, turkeys, etc. 
 
 He was not the only poor creature who 
 suffered torture in New Amsterdam. It was 
 frequently threatened and several times exe- 
 cuted. The mate of a ship was accused of 
 assaulting a sheriff's officer, who could not 
 identify positively his assailant. The poor 
 mate was put to torture, and he was innocent 
 of the offence. The assailant was proved to 
 be another man from whom the officer had 
 seized a keg of brandy. Still none in New 
 Amsterdam were tortured or pressed to 
 death. The blood of no Giles Corey stains 
 the honor of New Netherland. 
 
 Sometimes the execution of justice seemed 
 to " set a thief to catch a thief" A letter 
 251 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 v/ritten by an English officer from Fort James 
 on Manhattan Island to Captain Silvester 
 Salisbury in Fort Albany in 1672 contains 
 this sentence : — 
 
 " We had like to have lost our Hang-man Ben 
 Johnson, for he being taken in Divers Thefts and 
 Robbings convicted and found guilty, escaped his 
 neck through want of another Hangman to truss 
 him up, soe that all the punishment that he received 
 for his Three Years' Roguery in thieving and steal- 
 ing (which was never found out till now) was only 
 39 stripes at the Whipping Post, loss of an Ear and 
 Banishment." 
 
 We have the records of an attempt at capital 
 punishment in 1641 ; and Mr. Gerard's account 
 of it in his paper " The Old Stadt-Huys " is 
 so graphic, I wish to give it in full : — 
 
 " The court proceedings before the Council, 
 urged by the Fiscal, were against Jan of Fort 
 Orange, Manuel Gerrit the Giant, Anthony Portu- 
 gese, Simon Congo, and five others, all negroes 
 belonging to the Company, for killing Jan Premero, 
 another negro. The prisoners having pleaded 
 guilty, and it being rather a costly operation to 
 hang nine able-bodied negroes belonging to the 
 Company, the sentence was that they were to draw 
 lots to determine 'who should be punished with 
 the cord until death, praying the Almighty God, 
 252 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 the Creator of Heaven and Earth, to direct that the 
 lot may fall on the guiltiest, whereupon ' the record 
 reads, ' the lot fell by God's Providence on Manuel 
 Gerrit, the Giant, who was accordingly sentenced 
 to be hanged by the neck until dead as an example 
 to all such malefactors.' Four days after the trial, 
 and on the day of the sentence, all Nieuw A?nsier- 
 dam left its accustomed work to gaze on the un- 
 wonted spectacle. Various Indians also gathered, 
 wondering, to the scene. The giant negro is 
 brought out by the black hangman, and placed 
 on the ladder against the fort with two strong hal- 
 ters around his neck. After an exhortation from 
 Domine Bogardus during which the negro chaimts 
 barbaric invocations to his favorite Fetich, he is 
 duly turned off the ladder into the air. Under the 
 violent struggles and weight of the giant, however, 
 both halters break. He falls to the ground. He 
 utters piteous cries. Now on his knees, now twist- 
 ing and groveling on the earth. The women shriek. 
 The men join in his prayers for mercy to the stern 
 Director. He is no trifler and the law must have 
 its course. The hangman prepares a stronger rope. 
 Finally the cry for mercy is so general that the Di- 
 rector relents, and the fortunate giant is led off the 
 ground by his swarthy friends, somewhat disturbed 
 in his intellect by his near view of the grim King of 
 Terrors." 
 
 Up to February 21, 1788, benefit of clergy 
 existed ; that is, the plea in capital felonies of 
 253 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 being able to read. This was a monkish 
 privilege first extended only to priestly per- 
 sons. In England it was not abolished till 
 1827. The minutes of the Court of General 
 Quarter Sessions in New York bear records 
 of criminals who pleaded " the benefit " and 
 were branded on the brawn of the left 
 thumb with " T " in open court and then 
 discharged. 
 
 As the punishments accorded for crimes 
 were not severe for the notions of the times, 
 it is almost amusing to read some fierce 
 ordinances, — though there is no record of 
 any executions in accordance with them. 
 For instance, in January, 1659, by the 
 Director-General and Council with the advice 
 of the burgomasters and schepens it was 
 enacted that " No person shall strip the 
 fences of posts or rails under penalty for the 
 first offence of being whipped and branded, 
 and for the second, of punishment with the 
 cord until death ensues." It is really as- 
 tonishing to think of these kindly Dutch 
 gentlemen calmly ordering hanging for steal- 
 ing fence-rails, though of course the matter 
 reached further than at first appeared : there 
 was danger of a scarcity of grain ; and if the 
 254 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 fences were stolen, the cattle would trample 
 down and destroy the grain. Later orders as 
 to fences were given which appear eminently- 
 calculated to be mischief-making. " Persons 
 thinking their neighbors' fences not good, 
 first to request them to repair ; failing which 
 to report to the overseers." In 1674 all 
 persons were forbidden to leave the city 
 except by city-gate, under penalty of death ; 
 this was of course when war threatened. 
 
 The crime of suicide was not without 
 punishment. Suicides were denied ordinary 
 burial rites. In Dutch days when one Smitt 
 of New York committed suicide, the sellout 
 asked that his body be drawn on a hurdle 
 and buried with a stake in his heart. This 
 order was not executed; he was buried at 
 night and his estates confiscated. When Sir 
 Danvers Osborne — the Governor for a day — 
 was found dead by his own act, he was 
 " decently interred in Trinity churchyard." 
 
 Women in New York sometimes made 
 their appearance in New York courts, as in 
 those of other colonies, in another role than 
 that of witness or criminal; they sometimes 
 sat on juries. In the year 1701, six good 
 Albany wives served on a jury: Tryntje 
 255 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Roseboom, Catheren Gysbertse, Angeneutt 
 Jacobse, Marritje Dirkse, Elsje Lansing, and 
 Susanna Bratt. They were, of course, em- 
 panelled for a special duty, not to serve on 
 the entire evidence of the case for which they 
 were engaged. 
 
 Many old records are found which employ 
 quaint metaphors or legal expressions ; I 
 give one which refers to a custom which 
 seems at one time to have been literally 
 performed. It occurs in a commission 
 granted to the trustees of an estate of which 
 the debts exceeded the assets. Any widow 
 in Holland or New Netherland could be re- 
 lieved of all demands or claims of her hus- 
 band's creditors by relinquishing all right 
 of inheritance. This widow took this privi- 
 lege; it is recorded thus: — 
 
 " Whereas, Harman Jacobsen Bamboes has been 
 lately shot dead, murdered by the Indians, and 
 whereas the estate left by him has been kicked 
 away with the foot by his wife who has laid the 
 key on the coffin, it is therefore necessary to au- 
 thorize and qualify some persons to regulate the 
 same." 
 
 There was a well-known Dutch saying 
 which referred to this privilege, D£7i Sleutel 
 256 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 op het graf leggen, and simply meant not to 
 pay the debts of the deceased. 
 
 This legal term and custom is of ancient 
 origin. In Davies' " History of Holland " we 
 read of a similar form being gone through 
 with in Holland in 1404, according to the 
 law of Rhynland. The widow of a great 
 nobleman immediately after his death de- 
 sired to renounce all claim on his estate and 
 responsibility for his debts. She chose a 
 guardian, and, advancing with him to the 
 door of the Court (where the body of the 
 dead Count had been placed on a bier), an- 
 nounced that she was dressed wholly in 
 borrowed clothing; she then formally gave 
 a straw to her guardian, who threw it on the 
 dead body, saying he renounced for her all 
 right of dower, and abjured all debts. This 
 was derived from a still more ancient custom of 
 the Franks, who renounced all alliances by the 
 symbolic breaking and throwing away a straw. 
 
 In other states of the Netherlands the 
 widow gave up dower and debts by laying a 
 key and purse on the coffin. This immunity 
 was claimed by persons in high rank, one be- 
 ing the widow of the Count of Flanders. 
 
 In New England (as I have told at length 
 
 •7 257 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 in my book, " Customs and Fashions in Old 
 New England," the widow who wished to 
 renounce her hus.band's debts was married 
 in her shift, often at the cross-roads, at mid- 
 night. These shift-marriages took place in 
 Massachusetts as late as 1836; I have a copy 
 of a court record of that date. 
 
 I know of but one instance of the odious 
 and degrading English custom of wife-trading 
 taking place in New York. Laurens Duyts, 
 an agent for Anneke Jans in some of her 
 business transactions, was in the year 1663 
 sentenced to be flogged and have his right 
 ear cut off for selling his wife, Mistress Duyts, 
 to one Jansen. Possibly the severity of the 
 punishment may have prevented the recur- 
 rence of the crime. 
 
 After a somewhat extended study and com- 
 parison of the early court and church records 
 of New England with those of New York, I 
 cannot fail to draw the conclusion — if it is 
 just to judge from such comparisons — that 
 the state of social morals was higher in the 
 Dutch colonies than in the English. Perhaps 
 the settlers of Boston and Plymouth were 
 more severe towards suspicion of immorality, 
 as they were infinitely more severe towards 
 258 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 suspicion of irreligion, than were their Dutch 
 neighbors. And they may have given more 
 publicity and punishment to deviations from 
 the path of rectitude and uprightness; but 
 certainly from their own records no fair- 
 minded person can fail to deem them more 
 frail, more erring, more wicked, than the 
 Dutch. The circumstances of immigration 
 and the tendencies of temperament were di- 
 verse, and perhaps it was natural that a reac- 
 tion tending to sin and vice should come 
 to the intense and overwrought religionist 
 rather than to the phlegmatic and prosper- 
 ous trader. In Virginia and Maryland the 
 presence of many convict-emigrants would 
 form a reasonable basis for the existence of 
 the crime and law-breaking which certainly 
 was in those colonies far in excess of the 
 crime in New Netherland and New York. 
 
 I know that Rev. Mr. Miller, the English 
 clergyman, did not give the settlement a very 
 good name at the last of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury; but even his strictures cannot force me 
 to believe the colonists so unbearably wicked. 
 
 It should also be emphasized that New 
 Netherland was far more tolerant, more gen- 
 erous than New England to all of differing 
 259 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 religious faiths. Under Stuyvesant, however, 
 Quakers were interdicted from preaching, 
 were banished, and one Friend was treated 
 with great cruelty. The Dutch clergymen 
 opposed the establishment of a Lutheran 
 church, and were rebuked by the Directors 
 in Holland, who said that in the future they 
 would send out clergymen " not tainted with 
 any needless preciseness ; " and Stuyvesant 
 was also rebuked for issuing an ordinance 
 imposing a penalty for holding conventicles 
 not in accordance with the Synod of Dort. 
 Many Christians not in accordance in belief 
 with that synod settled in New Netherland. 
 Quakers, Lutherans, Church of England folk. 
 Anabaptists, Huguenots, Waldenses, Wal- 
 loons. The Jews were protected and ad- 
 mitted to the rights of citizenship. Director 
 Kieft, with heavy ransoms, rescued the cap- 
 tive Jesuits, Father Jogues and Father Bres- 
 sani, from the Indians and tenderly cared for 
 them. No witches suffered death in New 
 York, and no statute law existed against 
 witchcraft. There is record of but one 
 witchcraft trial under the English governor, 
 Nicholls, who speedily joined with the Dutch 
 in setting aside all that nonsense. 
 260 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CHURCH AND SUNDAY IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Sunday was not observed in New Nether- 
 land with any such rigidity as in New Eng- 
 land. The followers of Cocceius would not 
 willingly include Saturday night, and not 
 even all of the Sabbath day, in their holy 
 time. Madam Knight, writing in 1704 of a 
 visit to New York, noted : "The Dutch are n't 
 strict in keeping the Sabbath as in Boston 
 and other places where I have been." This 
 was, of course, in times of English rule in 
 New York. Still, much respect to the day 
 was required, especially under the governing 
 hand of the rigid Calvinist Stuyvesant. He 
 specially enjoined and enforced strict regard 
 for seemly quiet during service time. The 
 records of Stuyvesant's government are full 
 of injunctions and laws prohibiting " tavern- 
 tapping " during the hours of church service. 
 He would not tolerate fishing, gathering of 
 261 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 berries or nuts, playing in the street, nor 
 gaming at ball or bowls during church time. 
 At a little later date the time of prohibition 
 of noise and tapping and gaming was ex- 
 tended to include the entire Sabbath day, 
 and the schout, was ordered to be active in 
 searching out and punishing such offenders. 
 
 Occasionally his vigilance did discover 
 some Sabbath disorders. He found the 
 first Jew trader who came to the island of 
 Manhattan serenely keeping open shop on 
 Sunday, and selling during sermon time, 
 knowing naught of any Sunday laws of New 
 Amsterdam. 
 
 And Albert the Trumpeter was seen on the 
 Sabbath in suspicious guise, with an axe on 
 his shoulder, — but he was only going to cut 
 a bat for his little son ; and as for his neigh- 
 bor who did cut wood, it was only kindling, 
 since his children were cold. 
 
 And one Sunday evening in 1660 the schout 
 triumphantly found three sailors round a tap- 
 house table with a lighted candle and a 
 backgammon-board thereon; and he surely 
 had a right to draw an inference of gaming 
 therefrom. 
 
 And in another public-house ninepins were 
 2C2 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 visible, and a can and glass, during preaching- 
 time. The landlady had her excuse, — some 
 came to her house and said church was out, 
 and one chanced to have a bowl in his hand 
 and another a pin, but there was no playing 
 at bowls. 
 
 Still, though he snooped and fined, in 1656 
 the burgomasters learned " by daily and pain- 
 ful experience " that the profanation of " the 
 Lord's day of Rest by the dangerous, Yes, 
 damnable Sale or Dealing out of Wines Beers 
 and Brandy-Waters " still went on ; and fresh 
 Sunday Laws were issued forbidding " the 
 ordinary and customary Labors of callings, 
 such as Sowing, Mowing, Building, Sawing 
 wood. Smithing, Bleeching, Hunting, Fish- 
 ing." All idle sports were banned and 
 named : " Dancing, Card-playing, Tick-tack- 
 ing, Playing at ball, at bowls, at ninepins; 
 taking Jaunts in Boats, Wagons, or Car- 
 riages." 
 
 In 1673, again, the magistrates "experi- 
 enced to our great grief" that rolling nine- 
 pins was more in vogue on Sunday than on 
 any other day. And we learn that there were 
 social clubs that " Set on the Sabbath," 
 which must speedily be put an end to. 
 263 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Thirty men were found by the schout in one 
 tap-hiiys ; but as they were playing nine- 
 pins and backgammon two hours after the 
 church-doors had closed, prosecution was 
 most reluctantly abandoned. 
 
 Of course scores of " tappers " were prose- 
 cuted, both in taverns and private houses. 
 Piety and regard for an orderly Sabbath were 
 not the only guiding thoughts in the bur- 
 gomasters' minds in framing these Sunday 
 liquor laws and enforcing them ; for some 
 tapsters had " tapped beer during divine ser- 
 vice and used a small kind of measure which 
 is in contempt of our religion and must ruin 
 our state," — and the state was sacred. In 
 the country, as for instance on Long Island, 
 the carting of grain, travelling for pleasure, 
 and shooting of wild-fowl on Sunday were 
 duly punished in the local courts. 
 
 I do not think that children were as rigid 
 church attendants in New York as in New 
 England. In 1696, in Albany, we find this 
 injunction : " y* Constables in cache warde 
 to take thought in attending at y* church to 
 hender such children as Profane y' Sabbath ; " 
 and we know that Albany boys and girls 
 were complained of for coasting down hill on 
 264 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Sunday, — which enormity would have been 
 simply impossible in New England, except 
 in an isolated outburst of Adamic depravity. 
 In another New York town the " Athoatys " 
 complained of the violation of the Sabbath 
 by " the Younger Sort of people in Discours- 
 sing of Vane things and Running of Raesses." 
 As for the city of New York, even at Revo- 
 lutionary times a cage was set up on City 
 Hall Park in which to confine wicked New 
 York boys who profaned the Sabbath. I do 
 not find so full provisions made for seating 
 children in Dutch Reformed churches as in 
 Puritan meeting-houses. A wise saying of 
 Martin Luther's was " Public sermons do 
 very little edify children " — perhaps the 
 Dutch agreed with him. As the children 
 were taught the Bible and the catechism 
 every day in the week, their spiritual and 
 religious schooling was sufficient without 
 the Sunday sermon, — but, of course, if they 
 were not in the church during services, they 
 would " talk of vane Things and run Raesses." 
 Before the arrival of any Dutch preacher in 
 the new settlement in the new world, the spirit- 
 ual care of the little company was provided 
 for by men appointed to a benign and beauti- 
 265 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ful old Dutch office, and called krankebesoeck- 
 ers or zeikentroosters, — " comforters of the 
 Sick," — who not only tenderly comforted 
 the sick and weary of heart, but " read to the 
 Commonalty on Sundays from texts of Scrip- 
 ture with the Comments." These pious men 
 were assigned to this godly work in Fort 
 Orange and in New Amsterdam and Breucke- 
 len. In Esopus they had meetings every 
 Sunday, " and one among us read something 
 for a postille." Often special books of 
 sermons were read to the congregations. 
 
 In Fort Orange they had a domine before 
 they had a church. The patroon instructed 
 Van Curler to build a church in 1642 ; but it 
 was not until 1646 that the little wooden 
 edifice was really put up. It was furnished 
 at a cost of about thirty-two dollars by car- 
 penter Fredricksen, with a predickstoel, or 
 pulpit, a seat for the magistrates, — de Heere- 
 banke, — one for the deacons, nine benches 
 and several corner-seats. 
 
 The first church at Albany, built in 1657, 
 was simply a block house with loop-holes for 
 the convenient use of guns in defence against 
 the Indians, — if defence were needed. On 
 the roof were placed three small cannon com- 
 266 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 manding the three roads which led to it. 
 This edifice was called " a handsome preach- 
 ing-house," and its congregation boasted that 
 it was almost as large as the fine new one 
 in New Amsterdam. Its corner-stone was 
 laid with much ceremony. In its belfry hung 
 a bell presented to the little congregation by 
 the Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of 
 the West India Company. The predickstoel 
 was the gift of the same board of West India 
 Directors, since the twenty-five beavers' skins 
 sent for its purchase proved greatly damaged, 
 and hence inadequate as payment. 
 
 This pulpit still exists, — a pedestal with a 
 flight of narrow steps and curved balustrade. 
 It is about four feet in height to its floor, and 
 only three in diameter. It is octagonal; one 
 of the sides is hinged, and forms the entrance 
 door or gate. All the small trimmings and 
 mouldings are of oak, and it has a small 
 bracket or frame to hold the hour-glass. It 
 stood in a space at the end of the centre 
 aisle. 
 
 " I see the pulpit high — an octagon, 
 
 Its pedestal, doophuysje, winding stair, 
 And room within for one, and one alone, 
 A canopy above, suspended there." 
 
 267 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 From the ceiling hung a chandelier, and 
 candle-sconces projected from the walls. 
 There were originally two low-set galleries; 
 a third was added in 1682. The men sat in 
 the galleries, and as they carried their arms 
 to meeting, were thus conveniently placed to 
 fire through the loop-holes if necessity arose. 
 The bell-rope from the belfry hung down in 
 the middle of the church, and when not in 
 use was twisted round a post set for the 
 purpose. 
 
 This church was plain enough, but it was 
 certainly kept in true Dutch cleanliness, for 
 house-cleaners frequently invaded it with pails 
 and scrubbing-brushes, brooms, lime, and 
 sand. Even the chandelier was scoured, and a 
 ragebol, or cobweb-brush, was purchased by 
 the deacon for the use of the scrubbers. The 
 floor was sanded with fine beach-sand, as were 
 the floors of dwelling-houses. I find in the 
 records of the Long Island churches frequent 
 entries of payments for church brooms and 
 church sand, — in Jamaica as late a date as 
 1836. In 1 841 the deacons bought a carpet. 
 
 In 17 15 the second Albany church was 
 built, on the site of the old one. As Pepys 
 tells of St. Paul's of London, so tradition says 
 268 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 this Albany church was built around the first 
 one, that the congregation were only three 
 weeks deprived of the use of the church, and 
 the old one was carried out " by piece meal." 
 At any rate, it was precisely similar in shape, 
 but was a substantial edifice of stone. This 
 building was not demolished until 1806. 
 
 The sittings in this church sold for thirty 
 shillings each, and were, as it was termed, 
 " booked to next of kin." When the first 
 owner of a seat died (were he a man), the 
 seat descended to his son or the eldest of his 
 grandsons ; if there was no son nor grandson, 
 to his son-in-law ; this heir being in default, 
 the sitting fell to a brother, and so on. 
 When the transfer was made, the successor 
 paid fifteen shillings to the church. A 
 woman's seat descended to her daughter, 
 daughter-in-law, or sister. Sittings were sold 
 only to persons residing in Albany County. 
 When a seat was not claimed by any heir of 
 a former owner, it reverted to the church. 
 
 This church had some pretence to ornamen- 
 tation. The windows were of stained glass 
 decorated with the coat-of-arms of various 
 Albany families. The panes with the Van 
 Renssellaer and Dudley arms are still in ex- 
 269 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 istence. Painted escutcheons also hung on 
 the walls, as they did in the church in Garden 
 Street, New York. This was a custom of 
 the Fatherland. A writer of that day said 
 of the church in Harlem, " It is battered as 
 full of scutcheons as the walls can hold." 
 
 The meeting-house sometimes bore other 
 decorations, — often "Billets of sales," and 
 notices of vendues or " outcrys." Lost 
 swine and empounded swine were signified 
 by placards; town meetings and laws were 
 posted. In the Albany church, when there 
 was rumor of an approaching war with 
 France, " powder, bales," and guns to the 
 number of fifty were ordered to be " hung up 
 in y church," — a stern reminder of possible 
 sudden bloodshed. " Y' fyre-masters " were 
 also ordered to see that " y' fyre-ladders and 
 fyre-hooks were hung at y" church." 
 
 In 1698 a stone church was built in Flat- 
 bush. It cost nearly sixteen thousand guil- 
 ders. It had a steep four-sided roof, ending 
 in the centre in a small steeple. This roof 
 was badly constructed, for it pressed out the 
 upper part of one wall more than a foot over 
 the foundation, and sorely bent the braces. 
 The pulpit faced the door, and was flanked 
 270 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 by the deacons' bench on one side and the 
 elders' bench on the other. 
 
 Of the seating arrangement of this Flat- 
 bush church Dr. Strong says : — 
 
 " The male part of the congregation were seated 
 in a continuous pew all along the wall, divided into 
 twenty apartments, with a sufficient number of doors 
 for entrance, each person having one or more seats. 
 The residue of tlie interior of the building was for 
 the accommodation of the female part of the con- 
 gregation, who were seated on chairs. These were 
 arranged into seven rows or blocks, and every 
 family had one or more chairs in some one of 
 these blocks. This arrangement of seats was called 
 ' De Gestoeltens.' Each chair was marked on the 
 back by a number or by the name of the person to 
 whom it belonged." 
 
 When the church was remodelled, in 
 1774, there were two galleries, one for white 
 folk, one for black; the benches directly 
 under the galleries were free. In the cen- 
 tre of the main floor were two benches 
 with backs, one called the Yefrows Bench, 
 the other the Blue Bench. The former was 
 for the minister's wife and family; the other 
 was let out to individuals, and was a seat of 
 considerable dignity. 
 
 271 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Many of the old Dutch churches, especially 
 those on Long Island, were six-sided or 
 eight-sided ; these had always a high, steep, 
 pyramidal roof terminating in a belfry, which 
 was often topped by a gilded weerhaen, or 
 weathercock. The churches at Jamaica and 
 New Utrecht were octagonal. The Bush- 
 wick church was hexagonal. It stood till 
 1827, — -a little, dingy, rustic edifice. This 
 form of architecture was not peculiar to the 
 Dutch nor to the Dutch Reformed Church. 
 Episcopal churches and the Quaker meeting- 
 house at Flushing were similar in shape. 
 
 When the bold sea-captain De Vries, that 
 interesting figure in the early history of New 
 Netherland, arrived in churchless New Am- 
 sterdam, he promptly rallied Director Kieft 
 on his dilatoriness and ungodliness, saying it 
 was a shame to let Englishmen see the mean 
 barn which served Manhattan as a church; 
 and he drew odious comparisons, — that "the 
 first thing they build in New England after 
 their dwelling-houses is a fine church." He 
 pointed out the abundant materials for build- 
 ing creditably and cheaply, — fine oak wood, 
 good mountain stone, excellent lime; and he 
 did more, — he supported his advice by a sub- 
 272 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 scription of a hundred guilders. Director 
 Kieft promised a thousand guilders from the 
 West India Company; and Fortune favored 
 the scheme, for the daughter of Domine 
 Bogardus was married opportunely just at that 
 time; and as has been told in Chapter III., 
 according to the wise custom of the day 
 in Holland, and consequently in America, a 
 collection was taken up at the wedding. 
 Kieft asked that it be employed for the build- 
 ing of a church ; and soon a stone church 
 seventy-two feet long and fifty-five feet wide 
 was erected within the Fort. It was the 
 finest building in New Netherland, and bore 
 on its face a stone inscribed with these words : 
 "Anno Domini 1641, William Kieft, Direc- 
 tor-General, hath the Commonalty built this 
 Temple. " It was used by the congregation 
 as a church for fifty years, and for half a cen- 
 tury longer by the military as a post -building, 
 when it was burned. 
 
 There was no church in Breuckelen in 
 1660. Domine Selyns wrote, "We preach 
 in a barn." The church was built six years 
 later, and is described as square, with thick 
 stone walls and steep peaked roof surmounted 
 by a small open belfry, in which hung the 
 18 273 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 small, sharp-toned bell which had been sent 
 over as a gift by the West India Company. 
 The walls were so panelled with dark wood, 
 the windows were so high and narrow, that 
 it was always dark and gloomy within; even 
 in summer-time it was impossible to see to 
 read in it after four o'clock in the afternoon. 
 Services were held in summer at 9 a. m. and 
 2 p. M., and in the winter in the morning 
 only. The windows were eight feet from the 
 floor, and were darkened with stained glass 
 sent from Holland, representing flower-pots 
 with vines covered with vari-colored flowers. 
 This church stood in the middle of the road 
 on v/hat is now Fulton Street, a mile from 
 the ferry, and was used until 1810. 
 
 These early churches were unhealed, and 
 it is told that the half-frozen domines 
 preached with heavy knit or fur caps pulled 
 over their ears, and wearing mittens, or woUen 
 handt-scJwenejt ; and that myn heer as well 
 as myn vroiiw carried muffs. It is easy to 
 fancy some men carr3'ing muffs, — some love- 
 locked Cavalier or mincing Horace Walpole; 
 but such feminine gear seems to consort ill 
 with an Albany Dutchman. That he should 
 light his long pipe in meeting was natural 
 274 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 enough, — to keep warm ; though folk do say 
 that he smoked in meeting in summer too, — 
 to keep cool. By the middle of the eigh- 
 teenth century the Albany and Schenectady 
 churches had stoves perched up on pillars on 
 a level with the gallery, — in high disregard 
 or ignorance of the laws of calorics; hence, 
 of course, the galleries, in which sat the men, 
 were fairly heated, while the ground floor 
 and the vrouws remained below in icy frigid- 
 ity. It is told of more than one old-time 
 sexton, that he loudly asserted his office 
 and his importance by noisy rattling-down 
 and replenishing of the gallery stoves and 
 slamming of the iron doors at the most criti- 
 cal point in the domine's sermon. Cornelius 
 Van Schaick, the Albany sexton, made his 
 triumphant way to the stoves, slashing with 
 his switch (perhaps his dog-whip) all the 
 boys who chanced to be in his way. 
 
 The women of the congregation carried 
 foot-stoves of perforated metal or wood, which 
 were filled with a box of living coals, to 
 afford a little warmth to the feet. Many now 
 living remember the scratching sound of 
 these stoves on the boards or the sanded floor 
 as they were passed from warm feet to cold 
 275 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 feet near at hand. Kerck-stooven appear on 
 the earliest inventories, were used in Amer- 
 ica until our own day, and still are used in 
 the churches in Holland. In an anteroom in 
 a Leyden church may be seen several hun- 
 dred stooven for use in the winter. 
 
 It is stated of the churches in New York 
 City that until 1802 services were held, even 
 in the winter-time, with wide-open doors, 
 and that often the snow lay in little drifts 
 up the aisles, — which may have been one 
 reason why young folk flocked to Trinity 
 Church. 
 
 One very handsome church-equipment of 
 the women attendants of the Dutch Reformed 
 church was the Psalm-book. This was usu- 
 ally bound with the New Testament ; and both 
 were often mounted and clasped with silver. 
 Sometimes they had two silver rings at the 
 back through which ribbons could be passed, 
 to hang thereby the books on the back of a 
 chair if desired. Sometimes the books had 
 silver chains. Rarely they were mounted in 
 gold. The inventory of the estate of nearly 
 every well-to-do Dutch woman, resident of 
 New York, Albany, or the larger towns, 
 shows one, and sometimes half-a-dozen of 
 276 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 these silver-mounted Psalm-books. Eliza- 
 beth Van Es had two Bibles with silver 
 clasps, two Psalm-books, and two Catechisms. 
 These books were somewhat dingily printed, 
 in old Dutch, on coarse but durable paper; 
 the music was on every page beside the words. 
 The notes of music were square, heavily 
 printed, rough-hewn, angular notes, — "like 
 stones in the walls of a churchyard," says 
 Longfellow of the Psalm-book of the Pil- 
 grims. The metrical version of the Psalms 
 was simple and impressive, and is certainly 
 better literary work in Dutch than is the Bay 
 Psalm-book in English. 
 
 The services in these churches were long. 
 They were opened by reading and singing 
 conducted by the voorleezer or voorzanger, — 
 that general-utility man who was usually pre- 
 centor, schoolmaster, bell-ringer, sexton, 
 grave-digger, and often town-clerk. As 
 ordered by the Assembly of XIX., in 1645, 
 he " tuned the psalm ; " and during the first 
 singing the domine entered, and, pausing for 
 a few moments, sometimes kneeling at the 
 foot of the pulpit-stairs, in silent prayer, he 
 soon ascended to his platform of state. The 
 psalms were given out to the congregation 
 277 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 through the medium of a large hanging-board 
 with movable printed slips, and this was in 
 the charge of the voorleezer. Of course the 
 powers of this church functionary varied in 
 different towns. In all he seems to have had 
 charge of the turning of the hour-glass which 
 stood near the pulpit in sight of the domine. 
 In Kingston, where the pulpit was high, he 
 thrust up to the preacher the notices stuck in 
 the end of a cleft stick. In this town, at the 
 time of the Revolution, he was also paid two 
 shillings per annum by each family to go 
 around and knock loudly on the door each 
 Sunday morning to warn that it was service- 
 time. In some towns he was permitted to 
 give three sharp raps of warning with his staff 
 on the pulpit when the hour-glass had run out 
 a second time, — thus shutting off the sermon. 
 The voorleezer is scarcely an obsolete church- 
 officer to-day. In 1865 died the last Albany 
 voorleezer, and the Flatbush voorleezer is well 
 remembered and beloved. 
 
 The clerk in New Amsterdam was a 
 marked personage on Sunday. After he had 
 summoned the congregation by the sound 
 of drum or bell, he ceremoniously formed 
 a pompous little procession of his under- 
 278 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 lings, and, heading the line, he carried 
 with their assistance the cushions from the 
 City Hall to the church, to furnish comfort- 
 ably the "Magistrate's Pew," in which the 
 burgomasters and schepens sat. 
 
 The deacons had full control of all the 
 funds of the church ; they collected the con- 
 tributions of the congregation by walking up 
 and down the aisles and thrusting in front of 
 each "range" of seats in the face of the 
 seated people small cloth contribution-bags, 
 or sacjes, hung on a hoop at the end of a 
 slender pole six or eight feet in length, — 
 fashioned, in fact, somewhat after the model 
 of scoop-nets. This custom — the use of so 
 unfamiliar a medium for church-collecting 
 — gave rise to the amusing notion of one 
 observant English traveller that Dutch dea- 
 cons passed round their old hats on the end 
 of a walking-stick to gather church-contri- 
 butions. 
 
 Often a little bell hung at the bottom of 
 the contribution-bag, or was concealed in an 
 ornamenting tassel, and by its suggestive 
 tinkle-tinkle warned all church-attendants 
 of the approach of the deacon, and perhaps 
 aroused the peaceful church -sleepers from too 
 279 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 selfish dreams of profitable barter in peltries, 
 In New Utrecht the church sacje had an 
 alarm-bell which sounded only when a contri- 
 bution was made. A loud-speaking silence 
 betrayed the stingy church-goer. The col- 
 lection was usually taken up in the middle 
 of a sermon. The sacjes stood or hung con- 
 veniently in the deacon's seat. In Flatbush 
 and other towns the deacons paused for a 
 time in front of the pulpit — sacje in hand — 
 while the domine enjoined generosity to the 
 church and kindly Christian thought of the 
 poor. The collection-bags in Flatbush were 
 of velvet. 
 
 It is said that stray Indians who chanced 
 to v^ander or were piously persuaded to enter 
 into the Fort Orange or Albany church dur- 
 ing service-time, and who did not well under- 
 stand the pulpit eloquence of the Dutch 
 tongue, regarded with suspicious and disap- 
 proving eyes the unfailing and unreason- 
 able appearance of the karck-sacje ; for they 
 plainly perceived that there was some occult 
 law of cause and effect which could be de- 
 duced from these two facts, — the traders who 
 gave freely into the church-bags on Sunday al- 
 ways beat down the price of beaver on Monday. 
 280 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 The bill for one of these karck-sacjes was 
 paid by the deacons of the Albany church in 
 1682. Seven guilders were given for the 
 black stuff and two skeins of silk, and two 
 guilders for the making. When a ring was 
 bought for the sack (I suppose to hold it 
 open at the top), it cost four guilders. This 
 instrument of church-collection lingered long 
 in isolated localities. It is vaguely related 
 that some karck-sacjes are still in existence 
 and still used. The church at New Utrecht 
 possessed and exhibited theirs at their bicen- 
 tennial celebration a few years ago. The 
 fate of the sacje was decreed when the honest 
 deacons were forced to conclude that it could, 
 if artfully manipulated by designing moderns, 
 conceal far too well the amount given by 
 each contributor, and equally well concealed 
 the many and heavy stones deposited therein 
 by vain youth of Dutch descent but American 
 ungodliness. So an open-faced full-in-view 
 pewter or silver plate was substituted and 
 passed in its place. In 1813 the church at 
 Success, Long Island, bought contribution 
 plates and abandoned the sacje. Some lovers 
 of the good old times resented this inevitable 
 exposure of the amount of each gift, and 
 281 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 turned away from the deacon and his inno- 
 vating fashion and refused to give at aU. 
 
 I ought to add, in defence of the karck- 
 sacjes, and in praise of the early congrega- 
 tions, that the amount gathered each week 
 was most generous, and in proportion far in 
 advance of our modern church-contributions. 
 The poor were not taken charge of by state 
 or town, but were liberally cared for in each 
 community by its church; occasionally, how- 
 ever, assistance was given through the assign- 
 ment to the church by the courts of a portion 
 of the money paid as fines in civil and crim- 
 inal cases. In New York a deacon's house 
 with nurses resident, took the place of an 
 almshouse. 
 
 Often during the year much more money 
 was collected than was needful for the cur- 
 rent expenses of the church. In Albany 
 the extra collections were lent out at eight 
 per cent interest; at one time four thousand 
 guilders were lent to one man. The deacons 
 who took charge of the treasury chest in 
 Albany each year rendered an account of its 
 contents. In 1665 there were in this chest 
 seclver-gelt, sea-ivant, and obligasse, or obli- 
 gations, to the amount of 2829 guilders. 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 In 1667 there were 3299 guilders; also good 
 Friesland stockings and many ells of linen 
 to be given to the poor. 
 
 In some churches poor-boxes were placed at 
 the door. The Garden Street Church in New 
 York had two strong boxes bound with iron, 
 with a small hole in the padlocked lid, and 
 painted with the figure of a beggar leaning 
 on a staff, — which, according to the testi- 
 mony of travellers, was a sight unknown in 
 reality in New York at that time. 
 
 The "church-poor," as they were called, 
 fared well in New Netherland. Of degraded 
 poor of Dutch birth or descent there were 
 none. Some poor folk, and old or sickly, 
 having a little property, transferred it to the 
 Consistory, who paid it out as long as it 
 lasted, and cheerfully added to the amount 
 by gifts from the church-treasury as long 
 as was necessary for the support of those 
 "of the poorer sort." To show that these 
 church-poor were neither neglected nor de- 
 spised, let me give one example of a case — 
 an ordinary one — from the deacons' records 
 of the Albany church in 1695. Claes 
 Janse was assigned at that time to live 
 with Hans Kros and his wife Antje. They 
 283 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 were to provide him with logement, kost, 
 drafik, wasseji (lodging, food, drink, and wash- 
 ing), and for this were paid forty guilders a 
 month by the church. When Claes died, 
 the church paid for his funeral, which appar- 
 ently left nothing undone in the way of re- 
 spectability. The bill reads thus : — 
 
 Dead shirt and cap . . 
 
 i6! 
 
 guilders. 
 
 
 Winding sheet . . . 
 
 14 
 
 (t 
 
 
 Making coffin . . . 
 
 24 
 
 it 
 
 
 I lb. nails, cartage coffin 
 
 3 
 
 It 
 
 10 stuyvers, 
 
 2 Half Vats good beer . 
 
 30 
 
 tt 
 
 
 6 bottles Rum . . . 
 
 22 
 
 it 
 
 
 5 gallons Madeira Wine 
 
 42 
 
 It 
 
 
 Tobacco, pipes, and sugar 
 
 4 
 
 tt 
 
 10 " 
 
 3 cartloads sand for grave 
 
 I 
 
 tt 
 
 ID " 
 
 Gravedigging .... 
 
 3 
 
 tt 
 
 
 Deacons give three dry boards for coffin and use of 
 pall. 
 
 With a good dry coffin, a good dry grave, 
 and a far from dry funeral, Hans Claes' 
 days, though he were of the church-poor, 
 ended in honor. 
 
 The earlier Dutch ministers were some 
 
 of them rather rough characters. Domine 
 
 Bogardus, in New Amsterdam, and Domine 
 
 Schaets, in Fort Orange, were most uncler- 
 
 284 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 ical in demeanor, both in and out of the 
 pulpit. Both were engaged in slander suits, 
 the former as libeller and defendant; both 
 were abusive and personal in the pulpit, 
 "dishonoring the church by passion." The 
 former was alleged by his enemies to be fre- 
 quently drunk, in church and abroad; and, 
 fearless of authority, he seized the pulpit as 
 a convenient and prominent platform from 
 which he could denounce his opposers. From 
 his high post he scolded the magistrates, 
 called opprobrious names (a hateful offence 
 in New Amsterdam), threatened Wouter 
 Van Twiller that he would give "from the 
 pulpit such a shake as would make him 
 shudder." He even arbitrarily refused the 
 Communion, thereby causing constant scan- 
 dal and dissension. The magistrates doubt- 
 less deserved all his rebukes, but in their 
 written admonition to him they appear with 
 some dignity, expressing themselves forcibly 
 and concisely thus: "Your bad tongue is the 
 cause of these divisions, and your obstinacy 
 the cause of their continuance;" and it is 
 difficult now to assign the blame and odium 
 of this quarrel very decidedly to either party. 
 The domine did not have everything his 
 285 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 own way on Sundays, for the Director drowned 
 his vociferations by ordering the beating of 
 drums and firing of cannon outside the church 
 during services ; and denounced the sermons 
 in picturesque language as "the rattling of 
 old wives' stories drawn out from a distaff." 
 The Labadist travellers thus described the 
 Albany domine : — 
 
 "We went to church in the morning [April 28, 
 1680], and heard Domine Schaets preach, who, 
 although he is a poor old ignorant person, and be- 
 sides is not of good life, yet had to give utterance 
 to his passion, having for his text ' Whatever is 
 taken upon us,' etc., at which many of his auditors, 
 who knew us better, were not well pleased, and in 
 order to show their condemnation of it, laughed 
 and derided him, which we corrected." 
 
 In turn the Lutheran minister was dubbed 
 by the Dutch domines "a rolling, rollicking, 
 unseemly carl, more inclined to pore over 
 the wine-kan than to look into the Bible." 
 And we all know what both Lutherans and 
 Dutch thought of the Quaker preachers; so 
 all denominations appear equally rude. 
 
 The salaries of the ministers were liberal 
 even in early days; that of Domine Megapo- 
 lensis (the second minister sent to New 
 286 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Netherland) was, I think, a very fair one. 
 He agreed to remain in the colony six years, 
 and was given free passage for himself and 
 family to the new world; an outfit of three 
 hundred guilders; a salary of three hundred 
 guilders a year for three years, and five hun- 
 dred annually during the three remaining 
 years ; and an annual tithe of thirty schepels 
 of wheat and two firkins of butter. If he 
 died before the term expired, his wife was to 
 have a pension of a hundred guilders a year 
 for the unexpired term. The first revenue 
 relinquished by the West India Company to 
 the town of New Amsterdam was the "tap- 
 ster's excise," — the excise on wine, beer, and 
 spirits, — and the sole condition made by 
 Stuyvesant on its surrender, as to its applica- 
 tion, was that the salaries of the two domines 
 should be paid from it. 
 
 As time passed on, firewood became one 
 of the minister's perquisites, in addition to 
 his salary, sixty or seventy loads a season. 
 We find the Schenectady congregation hav- 
 ing a " bee " to gather in the domine's wood ; 
 and the Consistory supplied plentiful wine, 
 rum, and beer as a treat for the "bee." 
 
 What Cotton Mather called the "angelical 
 287 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 conjunction " of piety and physic sometimes 
 was found in the person of the ministers of 
 the Dutch Reformed church, but not so 
 constantly as among the Puritan ministers. 
 Domine Rubel, sent out by the Classis of 
 Amsterdam, was settled over the churches 
 in Kings County. He was more devoted to 
 the preparation of quack medicines than to 
 the saving of souls. One of his advertise- 
 ments of March 28, 1778, reads thus: — 
 
 " It has pleased Almighty God to give me the 
 wisdom to find out the Golden Mother Tincture 
 and such a Universal Pill as will cure most dis- 
 eases. I have studied European physicians in four 
 different languages. I don't take much money as 
 I want no more than a small living whereto God 
 will give his blessing. 
 
 Johannes Casparus Rubel, Minister of the 
 Gospel and Chymicus." 
 
 This does not let us wonder that after a 
 while his parish became dissatisfied with 
 his ministrations, and that he ended his 
 days in dishonor. 
 
 The employment of the Dutch language 
 
 in the pulpit in New York churches lasted 
 
 until into this century. Naturally, Dutch 
 
 was used as long as the Classis at Amsterdam 
 
 288 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 supplied the churches in America with 
 preachers. In 1744 Domine Rubel and 
 Domine Van Sinderin were sent to Flat- 
 bush, the last ministers sent from the Classis 
 of Amsterdam to any American church; 
 but at their death the Dutch tongue was not 
 silent in the Flatbush church; for their 
 successor, Domine Schoonmaker, lived to 
 , be ninety years old, and never preached but 
 one sermon in English. With his death, in 
 1824, ceased the public use of the Dutch 
 language in the Flatbush pulpit. Until the 
 year 1792 the entire service in his church 
 was " the gospel undefiled, in Holland Dutch." 
 Until the year 1830 services in the seques- 
 tered churches in the Catskills were held 
 alternately in Dutch and English. Until 
 1777 all the records of the Sleepy Hollow 
 church were kept in Dutch; and in 1785 all 
 its services were in Dutch. In September 
 of that year, a little child, Lovine Hauws, 
 was baptized in English by the new minister. 
 Rev. Stephen Van Voorhees. This raised a 
 small Dutch tempest, and the new domine 
 soon left that parish. 
 
 In New York City the large English im- 
 migration, the constant requirements and 
 19 289 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 influences of commerce, and the frequent 
 intermarriages of the English and Dutch 
 robbed the Dutch language of its predomi- 
 nance by the middle of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. Rev. Dr. Laidlie preached in 1764 
 the first English sermon to a Dutch Reformed 
 congregation. By 1773 English was used 
 in the Dutch school, and young people be- 
 gan to shun the Dutch services. 
 
 The growth of the Dutch Reformed church 
 in New York was slow; this was owing to 
 three marked and direct causes : — 
 
 First, from 1693 until Revolutionary times 
 Episcopacy was virtually established by law 
 in a large part of the province, — in the city 
 ^nd county of New York, and in the counties 
 of Westchester, Richmond, and Queens; and 
 though the Dutch Reformed church was 
 protected and respected, people of all de- 
 nominations were obliged to contribute to 
 the support of the Episcopal church. 
 
 Second, the English language had become 
 the current language of the province; in the 
 schools, the courts, in all public business it 
 was the prevailing tongue, while the services 
 of the Dutch Reformed church were by pref- 
 erence held in Dutch. 
 
 290 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Third, all candidates for ministry in the 
 Dutch Reformed church were obliged to so 
 to Holland for ordination ; this was a great 
 expense, and often kept congregations with- 
 out a minister for a long time. The entire 
 discipline of the church — all the Courts of 
 Appeal — was also in the Fatherland. 
 
 In order to obtain relief from the last- 
 named hampering condition, a few ministers 
 in America devised a plan, in 1737, to secure 
 church-organization in New York. It took 
 the slow-moving Classis of Amsterdam ten 
 years to signify approval of this plan, and a 
 body was formed, named the Coetus. But 
 this had merely advisory powers, and in less 
 than ten years it asked to be constituted a 
 Classis with full ecclesiastical powers. From 
 this step arose a violent and bitter quarrel, 
 which lasted fifteen years, — until 1771, — be- 
 tween the Coetus party, the Reformers, and 
 the Conferentie party, the Conservatives. 
 The permission of the Classis of Amsterdam 
 for American church independence was finally 
 given on condition of establishing a college 
 for the proper training of the ministry of the 
 Dutch Reformed church. The Coetus party 
 obtained a charter from George III. for a 
 291 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 college, which, called Queens College, was 
 blighted in its birth by the Revolution, but 
 lived with varying prosperity until its suc- 
 cessful revival, under the name of Rutgers 
 College, in 1825. 
 
 292 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 "THE END OF HIS DAYS" 
 
 As soon as a death had been announced to 
 the dwellers in any little town in colonial 
 New York, by the slow ringing or tolling of 
 the church-bell, there went forth solemnly 
 from his home the aanspreecker, or funeral- 
 inviter (who might be grave-digger, bell- 
 ringer, schoolmaster, or chorister, and who 
 was usually all four), attired in gloomy black, 
 with hat fluttering long streamers of crape; 
 and with much punctilio he visited all the 
 relatives and friends of the deceased person, 
 notified them of the death, advised them of 
 the day and hour of the funeral, and requested 
 their honorable presence. This inviting was 
 a matter of most rigid etiquette ; no one in 
 these Dutch-American communities of slight- 
 est dignity or regard for social proprieties 
 would attend a funeral unbidden. The aan- 
 spreecker was paid at regular rates for his 
 service as living perambulating obituary no- 
 293 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 tice, according to the distance travelled and 
 the time spent, if he lived in a country town 
 where distances between houses were great. 
 
 In 1691 the " inviters to the buryiall of de- 
 ceased persons" in New York were public 
 officers, appointed and licensed by the Mayor. 
 Their names were Conradus Vanderbeck and 
 Richard Chapman, and they were bidden to 
 give their attendance gratis to the poor. A 
 law was passed in New York in 1731, setting 
 the fees of " inviters to funerals " at eighteen 
 shillings for the funeral of any one over 
 twenty years of age ; for a person between 
 twelve and twenty years, twelve shillings; for 
 one under twelve years, eight shillings. For 
 a large circle of friends these sums seem 
 small. The Flatbush inviter in 1682 had 
 twelve guilders for inviting to the funeral of 
 a grown person, and only four guilders in 
 addition if he invited in New York, — which 
 was poor pay enough, when we think of the 
 long ride and the row across. In 1760 we 
 find the New York inviter. Evert Fels, adver- 
 tising his change of residence, and that he 
 can be found if needed next King's Stores. 
 It is easy to imagine that the aanspreecker 
 must have been a somewhat self-important 
 294 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 personage, who doubtless soberly enjoyed 
 his profession of mortuary news-purveyor, 
 and who must have been greeted wherever 
 he went with that grewsome interest which 
 in colonial days attached to everything per- 
 taining to death. 
 
 This public officer and custom was prob- 
 ably derived from the Romans, who used to 
 send a public crier about, inviting the people 
 to the solemnization of a funeral. In the 
 northern counties of England each village 
 had its regular " bidder," who announced his 
 " funeral-bidding" by knocking on each door 
 with a great key. Sometimes he "' cried " the 
 funeral through the town with a hand-bell. 
 In New York the fashion was purely of Dutch 
 derivation. In Holland the aanspreecker was 
 an official appointed by government, and au- 
 thorized to invite for the funerals of persons 
 of all faiths and denominations who chanced 
 to die in his parish. 
 
 In New York, ever bent on fashions new, 
 the aanspreecker, on mournful mission intent, 
 no longer walks our city avenues nor even 
 our country lanes or village streets ; but in 
 Holland he still is a familiar form. Not, as of 
 old, the honored schoolmaster, but simply a 
 295 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 hired servant of the undertaker, he rushes 
 with haste through the streets of Dutch 
 towns. Still clad in dingy black of ancient 
 fashion, kneebreeches, buckled shoes, long 
 cloak, cocked hat with long streamers of 
 crape, he seems the sombre ghost of old- 
 time manners. Sometimes he bears written 
 invitations deep bordered with black; some- 
 times he calls the death and time of funeral, 
 as did the Roman prcBco; and sometimes, with 
 streamers of white, and v/hite cockade on his 
 hat, he goes on a kindred duty, — he bears to 
 a circle of friends or relatives the news of a 
 birth. 
 
 Before the burial took place, in olden times, 
 a number of persons, usually intimate friends 
 of the dead, watched the body throughout 
 the night. Liberally supplied with various 
 bodily comforts, such as abundant strong 
 drink, plentiful tobacco and pipes, and newly 
 baked cakes, these watchers were not wholly 
 gloomy, nor did the midnight hours lag un- 
 solaced. The great kamer in which the body 
 lay, the state-room of the house, was an 
 apartment so rarely used on other occasions 
 than a funeral that in many households it was 
 known as the doed-kamer, or dead-room. 
 296 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 Sometimes it had a separate front door by 
 which it was entered, thus giving two front 
 doors to the house. Diedrich Knickerbocker 
 says the front door of New York houses was 
 never opened save for funerals, New Years, and 
 such holidays. The kitchen door certainly 
 offered a more cheerful welcome. In North 
 Holland the custom still exists of reserving 
 a room with separate outside entrance, for 
 use for weddings and funerals. Hence the 
 common saying in Holland that doors are not 
 made for going in and out of the house. 
 
 Men and women both served as watchers, 
 and sometimes both were at the funeral ser- 
 vices within the doed-kamer; but when the 
 body was borne to the grave on the wooden 
 bier resting on the shoulders of the chosen 
 bearers, it was followed by men only. The 
 women remained for a time in the house 
 where the funeral had taken place, and ate 
 doed-koecks and sipped Madeira wine. 
 
 The coffin, made of well-seasoned boards, 
 was often covered with black cloth. Over it 
 was spread the doed-kleed, a pall of fringed 
 black cloth. This doed-kleed was the property 
 of the church, as was the pall in New Eng- 
 land churches, and was usually stored with 
 297 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 the bier in the church-vestibule, or doop-huys. 
 In case of a death in childbirth, a heavy 
 white sheet took the place of the black pall. 
 This practice also obtained in Yorkshire, 
 England. 
 
 Among the Dutch a funeral was a most 
 costly function. The expenditure upon funeral 
 gloves, scarfs, and rings, which was univer- 
 sal in New England, was augmented in New 
 York by the gift of a bottle of wine and a 
 linen scarf 
 
 When Philip Livingstone died, in 1749, his 
 funeral was held both in New York and at 
 the Manor. He had lived in Broad Street, 
 and the lower rooms of his house and those 
 of his neighbors were thrown open to receive 
 the assemblage. A pipe of wine was spiced 
 for the guests, and the eight bearers were 
 each given a pair of gloves, a mourning-ring, 
 a scarf, handkerchief, and a monkey-spoon. 
 At the Manor a similar ceremony took place, 
 and a pair of gloves and handkerchief were 
 given to each tenant. The whole expense 
 was five hundred pounds. When Madam 
 Livingstone died, we find her son writing to 
 New York from the Manor for a piece of 
 black Strouds to cover the four hearse-horses ; 
 29S 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 for a " Barrell of Cutt Tobacco and Long 
 Pipes of which I am out; " for six silver 
 tankards and cinnamon for the burnt wine; 
 he said he had bottles, decanters, and glasses 
 enough. The expense of these funerals 
 may have been the inspiration for William 
 Livingstone's paper on extravagance in 
 funerals. 
 
 A monkey-spoon was a handsome piece of 
 silver bearing the figure or head of an ape on 
 the handle. Mannetiens spoons, also used in 
 New Netherland, were similar in design. At 
 the funeral of Henry De Forest, an early 
 resident of New Harlem in 1637, his bearers 
 were given spoons. 
 
 A familiar and extreme example of excess 
 at funerals as told by Judge Egbert Benson 
 was at the obsequies of Lucas Wyngaard, an 
 old bachelor who died in Albany in 1756. 
 The attendance was very large, and after the 
 burial a large number of the friends of the 
 dead man returned to the house, and literally 
 made a night of it. These sober Albany cit- 
 izens drank up a pipe of v/ine, and smoked 
 many pounds of tobacco. They broke hun- 
 dreds of pipes and all the decanters and 
 glasses in the house, and wound up by burn- 
 299 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 ing all their funeral scarfs in a heap in the 
 fireplace. 
 
 In Albany the expense, as well as the riot- 
 ing, of funerals seems to have reached a cli- 
 max. It is said that the obsequies of the 
 first wife of Hon. Stephen Van Rensselaer 
 cost twenty thousand dollars. Two thousand 
 linen scarfs were given, and all the tenants 
 were entertained for several days. 
 
 On Long Island every young man of good 
 family began in his youth to lay aside money 
 in gold coin to pay for his funeral ; and a 
 superior stock of wine was also saved for the 
 same occasion. In Albany the cask of choice 
 Madeira which was bought for a wedding and 
 used in part, was saved in remainder for the 
 funeral of the bridegroom. 
 
 The honor of a lavish funeral was not given 
 to the wealthy and great and distinguished 
 only. The close of every life, no matter how 
 humble, how unsuccessful, was through the 
 dignity conferred by death afforded a tri- 
 umphal exit by the medium of " a fine 
 burying." 
 
 In the preceding chapter the funeral of a 
 penniless Albanian is noted; in 1696 Ryseck 
 Swart also became one of the church-poor 
 300 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 of Albany. She was not wholly penniless; 
 she had a little silver and a few petty jewels, 
 and a little strip of pasture land, worth in all 
 about three hundred guilders. These she 
 transferred to the church, for the Consistory 
 to take charge of and dole out to her. A 
 good soul, Marritje Lievertse, was from 
 that time paid by the church thirty-six 
 guilders a month for caring for Ryseck. I 
 do not doubt she had tender care, for she 
 was the last of the real church-poor (soon 
 they had paupers and an almshouse), and 
 she lived four years, and cost the parish two 
 thousand two hundred and twenty-nine guil- 
 ders. She died on February 15, 1700, and, 
 though a pauper, she departed this life 
 neither unwept, unhonored, nor unsung. 
 Had she been the cherished wife of a 
 burgomaster or sckepen, she could scarce 
 have had a more fully rounded or more 
 proper funeral. The bill, which was paid 
 by the church, was as follows : — 
 
 g. s. 
 
 3 dry boards for a coffin ... 7 10 
 
 f lb. nails i 10 
 
 Making coffin 24 
 
 Cartage 10 
 
 301 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Half a vat and an anker of good S- 
 
 beer 27 
 
 I gallon Rum 21 
 
 6 gallons Madeira for women and 
 
 men 84 
 
 Sugar and cruyery 5 
 
 150 Sugar cakes 15 
 
 Tobacco and pipes 5 
 
 Grave digger 30 
 
 Use of pall 10 
 
 Wife Jans Lockermans .... 36 
 
 232 guilders. 
 
 Rosenboom, for many years the voor-leeser 
 
 and dood'graver and aanspreecker in Albany, 
 
 sent in a bill of twelve guilders for delivering 
 
 invitations to the funeral, — which bill was 
 
 rejected by the deacons as exorbitant. But 
 
 the invitations were delivered just the same, 
 
 for even colonial paupers had friends, and her 
 
 coffin was not made of green wood held 
 
 together with wooden pegs, which some poor 
 
 bodies had to endure; and the one hundred 
 
 and fifty doed-koecks and Madeira for the 
 
 women very evenly balanced the plentiful 
 
 beer and wine and tobacco for the men. 
 
 Truly, to quote one of Dyckman's letters 
 
 from Albany, " the poor's purse here was 
 
 richly garnisht" 
 
 302 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 An account of Albany, written by a traveller 
 thereto in 1789, showed the continued exist- 
 ence of these funeral customs. It runs 
 thus : — 
 
 " Their funeral customs are equally singular. 
 None attend them without a previous invitation. 
 At the appointed hour they meet at the neighboring 
 houses or stoops until the corpse is brought out. 
 Ten or twelve persons are appointed to take the 
 bier altogether, and are not relieved. The clerk 
 then desires the gentlemen (for ladies never walk 
 to the grave, nor even attend the funeral unless a 
 near relation) to fall into the procession. They go 
 to the grave and return to the house of mourning 
 in the same order. Here the tables are handsomely 
 set and furnished with cold and spiced wine, tobacco 
 and pipes, and candles, paper, etc., to light them. 
 The house of mourning is soon converted into a 
 house of feasting." 
 
 In New York we find old citizens leaving 
 directions in their wills that their funeral shall 
 be conducted in " the old Dutch fashion," 
 not liking the comparatively simpler modern 
 modes. 
 
 The customs were nearly the same in 
 
 English families. At the funeral of Hon. 
 
 Rufus King at Jamaica, Long Island, in 1827, 
 
 which was held upon an exceptionally hot 
 
 303 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 day in April, silver salvers holding decanters 
 of wine and spirits, glasses and cigars, were 
 constantly passed, both indoors and out, 
 where many stood waiting the bearing of 
 the coffin to the grave. 
 
 The transition of the funeral customs of 
 ante-Revolutionary days into those of our 
 own may partially be learned from this 
 account written in 1858 by Rev. Peter Van 
 Pelt, telling Domine Schoonmaker's method 
 of conducting a funeral in the year 18 19: 
 
 "The deceased had, many years before, pro- 
 vided and laid away the materials for his own 
 coffin. This one was of the best seasoned and 
 smoothest boards and beautifully grained. As I 
 entered the room I observed the coffin elevated 
 on a table in one comer. The Domine, abstracted 
 and grave, was seated at the upper end ; and 
 around in solemn silence, the venerable and hoary- 
 headed friends of the deceased. A simple recog- 
 nition or a half-audible inquiry as one after another 
 arrived was all that passed. Directly the sexton, 
 followed by a servant, made his appearance with 
 glasses and decanters. Wine was handed to each. 
 Some declined; others drank a solitary glass. 
 This ended, again the sexton presented himself 
 with pipes and tobacco. The Domine smoked 
 his pipe and a few followed his example. The 
 
 304 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 custom has become obsolete, and it is well that 
 it has. When the whiffs of smoke had ceased 
 to curl around the head of the Domine, he arose 
 with evident feeling, and in a quiet subdued tone, 
 made a short but apparently impressive address. 
 I judged solely by his appearance and manner ; 
 for although boasting a Holland descent, it was 
 to me an unknown tongue. A short prayer con- 
 cluded the service ; and then the sexton taking 
 the lead, followed the Domine, doctor, and pall- 
 bearers with white scarfs and black gloves. The 
 corpse and long procession of friends and neigh- 
 bors proceeded to the churchyard." 
 
 Not only were materials for the coffin se- 
 cured and made ready during the lifetime, 
 but often a shroud was made and kept for 
 use. Instances have been known where a 
 shroud was laid by unused for so many years 
 that it became too yellow and discolored to 
 use at all, and was replaced by another. 
 Sometimes a new unlaundered shirt was laid 
 aside for years to use as a doed-hemde. Two 
 curious superstitions were rife in some locali- 
 ties, especially on Long Island; one was the 
 careful covering of all the mirrors in the 
 house, from the time of the death till after 
 the funeral; the other the pathetically pictu- 
 resque " telling the bees." Whittier's gentle 
 
 20 305 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 rhyme on the subject has made familiar to 
 modern readers the custom of " telling the 
 bees of one, gone on the journey we all must 
 go." 
 
 Both an English and Dutch funeral fashion 
 was the serving to the attendants of the 
 funeral of funeral-cakes. In New York and 
 New Netherland these were a distinctive 
 kind of koeckje known as doed-koecks, literally 
 dead-cakes. An old receipt for their manu- 
 facture is thus given by Mrs. Ferris : " Four- 
 teen pounds of flour, six pounds of sugar, 
 five pounds of butter, one quart of water, 
 two teaspoonfuls of pearlash, two teaspoon- 
 fuls of salt, one ounce of Caraway seed. Cut 
 in thick dishes four inches in diameter." 
 They were, therefore, in substance much like 
 our New Year's cakes. Sometimes they were 
 marked with the initials of the deceased 
 person; and often they were carried home 
 and kept for years as a memento of the dead, 
 — perhaps of the pleasures of the funeral. 
 One baker in Albany made a specialty of 
 these cakes, but often they were baked at 
 home. Sometimes two of these doed-koecks 
 were sent with a bottle of wine and a pair of 
 gloves as a summons to the funeral. 
 306 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 In Whitby, England, a similar cake is still 
 made by bakers and served at funerals; but 
 it is sprinkled with white sugar. In Lincoln- 
 shire and Cumberland like customs still exist. 
 " Burial-cakes " were advertised by a baker 
 in 1748 in the Philadelphia newspapers. 
 
 It is frequently asserted that funeral rings 
 were commonly given among the Dutch. 
 It seems fair to infer that more of them 
 would have been in existence to-day if the 
 custom had been universal. Scores of them 
 can be found in New England. There is an 
 enamelled ring marked " K. V. R., obit Sept. 
 16, 1719. " which was given at the funeral of 
 Kileaen Van Renssalaer. One of the Earl 
 of Bellomont is also known, and two in the 
 Lefferts family, dating towards the close of 
 the past century. I have heard of a few others 
 in Hudson Valley towns. Perhaps with gifts 
 of gloves, spoons, bottles of wine, doed-koccks, 
 scarfs, or handkerchiefs, rings would have 
 been superfluous. 
 
 It will be noted in all these references to 
 funerals herein given that the services were 
 held in private houses; it was not until al- 
 most our own day that the funerals of those 
 of Dutch descent were held in the churches. 
 307 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 Interments were made under the churches ; 
 and, by special payment, a church-attendant 
 could be buried under the seat in which he 
 was wont to sit during his lifetime. The cost 
 of interment in the Flatbush church was two 
 pounds for the body of a child under six 
 years ; three pounds for a person from six 
 to sixteen years of age ; four pounds for an 
 adult ; and in addition " those who are in- 
 clined to be permitted to be interred in the 
 church are required to pay the expense of 
 every person." I don't know exactly what 
 this ambiguous sentence can mean, but it 
 was at any rate an extra charge " for the 
 profit of the schoolmaster," who dug the 
 grave and carried the dirt out of the church, 
 and was paid twenty-seven guilders for this 
 sexton's work for an adult, and less for a 
 younger person and hence a smaller grave. 
 Usually the domines were buried in front of 
 the pulpit where they had stood so often in life. 
 
 After newspaper-days arrived in the colony, 
 there blossomed in print scores of long death- 
 notices, thoroughly in the taste of the day, 
 but not to our taste. In the "New York 
 Gazette" of December 24, 1750, we find a 
 characteristic one : — 
 308 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 " Last Friday Morning departed this Life after a 
 lingering Illness the Honorable Mrs. Roddam, wife 
 to Robert Roddam, Esq. Commander of his Ma- 
 jesty's Ship Greyhound, now on this Station, and 
 eldest Daughter of his Excellency our Governor. 
 We hear she is to be Interred this Evening. 
 
 " Good Mr. Parker — Dont let the Character of 
 our Deceased Friend, Mrs. Roddam, slip through 
 your Fingers, as that of her Person through those 
 of the Doctors. That she was a most affable and 
 perfectly Good-Natured young Lady, with Good 
 Sense and Politeness is well known to all her 
 Acquaintances, and became one of the most affec- 
 tionate Wives. 
 
 " Immatura peri, sed tu feiicior, Annos 
 Vivi mens, Conjux optime, vive tuos 
 
 were the Sentiments of her Later Moments when I 
 had the Honour to attend her. As this is intended 
 as a small Tribute to the Manes of my dear departed 
 Friend, your inserting of it will oblige one of your 
 constant Female Readers and Humble Servant." 
 
 Another, of a well-known colonial dame, 
 reads thus : — 
 
 " Last Monday died in the 8oth year of her 
 Age, and on Thursday was decently interred in 
 the Family Vault at Morrisania : Isabella IMorris, 
 Widow and Relict of his Excellency Lewis Morris, 
 Esq., Late Governor of the Province of New Jer- 
 309 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 sey : A Lady endowed with every Qualification 
 Requisite to render the Sex agreeable and enter- 
 taining, through all the Various scenes of Life. 
 She was a pattern of Conjugal Affection, a ten- 
 der Parent, a sincere Friend, and an excellent 
 Oeconomist. 
 
 She was 
 
 Liberal, without Prodigality 
 
 Frugal, without Parsimony 
 
 Chearful, without Levity 
 
 Exalted, without Pride. 
 
 In person. Amiable 
 
 In conversation. Affable 
 
 In friendship. Faithful 
 
 Of Envy, void. 
 
 She passed through Life endow'd with every Grace 
 Her virtues ! Black Detraction can't deface ; 
 Or Cruel Envy e'er eclipse her Fame; 
 Nor Mouldering Time obliterate her Name.'' 
 
 The tiresome, pompous, verbose produc- 
 tions, Johnsonian in phrase and fulsome in 
 sentiment, which effloresced on the death of 
 any man in public life or of great wealth, 
 need not be repeated here. They were mo- 
 notonously devoid of imagination and origi- 
 nality, being full of idle repetitions from each 
 other, and whoever has labored through one 
 can judge of them all. 
 
 310 
 
IN OLD NEW YORK 
 
 It does not give us a very exalted notion 
 of the sincerity or value of these funeral 
 testimonials, or the mental capacity of our 
 ancestors, to read in the newspapers adver- 
 tisements of printed circulars of praise for 
 the dead, eulogistic in every aspect of the 
 life of the departed, and suitable for various 
 ages and either sex, to be filled in with the 
 name of the deceased, his late residence, and 
 date of death. 
 
 Puttenham in the " Arte of English Poesie," 
 says : " An Epitaph is an inscription such as 
 a man may commodiously write or engrave 
 vpon a tombe in few verses, pithie, quicke, 
 and sententious, for the passer-by to peruse 
 and judge vpon without any long tariaunce." 
 
 There need be no " long tariaunce " for 
 either inquisitive or irreverent search over 
 the tombstones of the Dutch, for the digni- 
 fied and simple inscriptions are in marked 
 contrast to the stilted affectations, the ver- 
 bose enumerations, the pompous eulogies, 
 which make many English "graveyard lines" 
 a source of ridicule and a gratification of 
 curiosity. Indeed, the Dutch inscriptions 
 can scarcely be called epitaphs; the name, 
 date of birth and death, are simply prefaced 
 3" 
 
COLONIAL DAYS 
 
 with the ever-recurring Hier rust het lighaam. 
 Here rests the body ; Hier leydt het stoffelyk 
 deel, Here lie the earthly remains ; or simpler 
 still, Hier leyt begraven. Here lies buried. 
 Sometimes is found the touching Gedach- 
 tenis. In remembrance. More impressive 
 still, from its calm repetition on stone after 
 stone, of an undying faith in a future life, 
 are the ever-present words, In den Heere 
 ontslapen. Sleeping in the Lord. 
 
 Not only in memory of those dead-and- 
 gone colonists stand these simple Dutch 
 tombstones, but in suggestive remembrance 
 also of a language forever passed away from 
 daily life in this land. The lichened lettering 
 of those unfamiliar words seems in sombre 
 truth the very voice of those honored dead 
 who, in those green Dutch graveyards, in 
 the shadow of the old Dutch churches, in 
 den Heere out slap en. 
 
 312