HET Jrlollandsch Gcnootschap van New York. MAALTIJD, Den 8sten van Lotiwmaand, 1886, ten 7 ure, 's avonds, in het Hotel Brnnszvick, Hoek ^de Laan en 2ystc Straat. Ex ICtbrtfi SEYMOUR DURST When you leave, please leave this book Because it has been said "Ever'thing comes I' him who waits Except a loaned book." AvFRY Architectural and Fine Arts Library GinoF Seymour E. Dursi ()i d York Library Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/firstannualdinneOOholl I «1 HET Hollandsch Genootschap van New York. MAALTIJD, Den 8s ten van Louwmaand, 1886, ten 7 lire, 's avonds, in het Hotel Brunswick, Hoek ^de Laan en 2'/ste Straat. THE DE VINNE PRESS. The First -minimal TDimier OF Eindelijk wordt een Spruit een Boom. Hotel ^runszvick, yamtary 8, 1886. SPIISKAART. OESTERS op de halve schaal. SAUTERNE. SOEP. Dikke Rivierkreeften Soep. Vleeschnat Van Dyke. VINO DE PAS TO. ZIJSCHOTELTJES. Verschillende Pasteitjes. Paukenvorm Morlot. Radijs. Selderij. Olijven. VISCH. Baars in mooten, op de vvijze van Durmont d'Urville. GEKRUIDE GERECHTEN. Ossenhaas in schijven, op den rooster gebraden, met artisjokken er op, stijl Ch6ron. BORDEAUX. IN TE BRENGEN. Kalkoen Vleugels, op de wijze van Dreux. Zwezerikken gehakt in kegelvorm. Gebraden Speenvarken. PERRIER JOUET. IRROY GRAND EXTRA SEC. GROENTEN. GEBRAAD. Aardappelen. Dunsel. Boontjes, Kasteleins stijl. HOLLANDSCHE PUNCH. Kanefasrug Eendvogels. Kwakkelen op geroosterd sneedje brood. Gekruide Selderij-Sla. BOURGONJE WIJN. ZOETE GERECHTEN. Podding. Cura?ao-Gelei. Ijs. Piramiden van Amandelgebak. Verschillende Koekjes. Rotterdamsche Janhagel. Weesper Moppen. Marsepijn. Utrechtsche Kopjes. NAGERECHT. Edammer kaas en Haagsche beschuitjes. Fransche kaas van Brie en Roquefort. Vruchten. Noten. Hartsterkingen. Fransche Brandewijn. Schiedammer. Koffie. Sigaren. Pijpen en Tabak. HEIL-DRONKEN. The Crystal Goblet used by the President is the Schenek Goblet, brought from Holland, A. D. 1640, and loaned by a descendant 0/ that family, Mrs. George M. Van A'ort. 1. The Holland Society of New -York. " Eindelijk wordt een Spruit een Boom." Judge Hooper C. Van Vorst. Music. " Wien NeSrlandsch Bloed." 2. The President of the United States. Music. " President's March." 3. Why Are We Here This Evening? fudge Augustus Van Wvck. Song. " Drinklied." The Society a.vd the Precentor. 4. The States- General of Holland, The prototype of the United States of America. U. S. Senator Daniel IV. Voorbees. Music. "Star-Spangled Banner." 5. The Virtues of our Dutch Ancestors. The %ev. "Dr. Van Dyke, Jr. Song. " Now Skall to the Vikings ! " The Precentor. 6. Fatherland. Hon. Chauncey iM. Depew. Song. "For Home and Fatherland." The Society and the Precentor. 7. The City of New-York. " Eindelijk wordt een Spruit een Boom." Hon. 1{pbert 'B. %oosevelt. THE RAPALJE-CUP will be passed around. This is the cup given to Sarah Rapalje, the first white child bom on Long Island, by her husband, Hans Hanse Bergen, at their piarriage, A. D. 1647, and is loaned by their lineal descendant, Mr. Jeremiah Johtison, Jr. SoxG. "This Silver Cup of Mine." The Precentor. 8. Dutch Liberty of Conscience [Vrijheid van Geweten], Which meant liberty of conscience to others as well as to themselves. Hon. William C. T>e IVitt. Music. " Wilhelmus van Nassauwen." Commissie tot regeling van den zMaaltijd. Robert B. Roosevelt. George M. Van Hoesen. George G. De Witt, Jr. George W. Van Siclen, Secretaris. FIRST ANNUAL DINNER -OF- TT^E f-JOLLAND QOCIETY ■ OF NEW-YORK- HOTEL BRUNSWICK. Friday, January 8, 1886. huItres— BLUE POINT Sauternes POTA6ES Bisque d'Ecrevlsses Consomm^ Van Dyck Sherry Varies HOES D'CEDVRE Varies Timbales Morl6t EELEVfiS Filets de Bass, Dumont d'Urvllle Bordeaux Escalopes de FUet, ch^ron ENTREES Perrier-Jouet AUes de Dtnde k la Dreux Ex. Dry Special Croquettes de Eis de Veau, Parisienne Cochon de Lait aux Canneberges LEGUMES Pommes Ducbesse Laitues brais^es Irroy Grand Sec Flageolets maitre d'HOtel eOti Bourgogne Canvas-Back Duck CaUles au cresson CWerl Mayonnaise ENTREMETS Ponding Neerlandais Gel^e Amsterdam Glaces de Fantaisies Gateaux assortis Dutch Koekjes Liqueurs PifiCES mont£es Fromages Fruits & Dessert Mottoes Caf6 Cigares et Tabac THE FIRST DINNEE OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF NEW-YORK. TlHE Spijskaart, or Bill-of-fare in Dutch, for this JL occasion, was translated from the French menu of the Hotel Brunswick by the Secretary of The Hol- land Society, there being now-a-days no such thing as a distinctively Dutch biU-of-fare ; the Secretary's labors were kindly revised as to the declensions, and as to a few of the expressions, by several patriotic Hollanders in New- York, but in other respects it is claimed as entirely original and unique. The Hotel's menu, as printed, varied somewhat from the copy fiu-nished for translation. The blessing of Grod was invoked by the Rev. Wm. H. Ten Eyck, D. D. When the toasts were reached, the President of the Society, Judge Hooper C. Van Vorst, responded to the first, to which the motto of the Society " At last a sprout win become a tree " was deemed especially appropriate, in view of the fact that, formed April 30th, 1885, it numbered, at the date of the dinner, over two hundred members. 2 9 THE HOLLAND SOCIETY. When The Holland Society was toasted, Judge Hooper C. Van Vokst, its President, spoke as follows : Gentlemen of The Holland Society: IT is a good thing to have faith, and to take part with earnestness, in the very beginning of a use- ful institution. Men who act thus, with respect to commercial or poUtical organizations, which in the end succeed, are regarded as sagacious. The Holland Society was formed within the year past; it holds out no promise of material gain, or political success, and yet we see, by the faces of the honorable men around this board, to what large pro- portions it has already reached, and how hopeful are its future prospects. The principles upon which this Society rests, and which form a part of its organic law, are, in them- selves, generous and life-giving. 10 ARTOTYPE E BIERSTADT N. Y 11 " The sprout," in the language of om* motto, " has ah'eady become a tree " ; and it is a tree which will produce more than leaves. In the proper season we may look for abundant fruit. You have done well to-night. What remains of the ample repast with which these tables an hour ago were bui'dened, shows that you are not behind your fore- fathers in all that indicates excellence at the social board. The Dutch always abound in social and hos- pitable qualities. The work of this Society is not, however, ended with the dispatch of an annual dinner. In the words of our charter and constitution, it is our work to collect and preserve information respect- ing the early history and settlements of the City and State of New-York by the Dutch, and to discover, coUect, and preserve all still existing documents and monuments relating to their genealogy and history. We are to perpetuate the memory and foster and promote the principles and virtues of the Dutch ancestors of the members of this Society, and to pro- mote social intercourse among ourselves. We are to cause "to be prepared and published, when the requisite materials have been discovered and pro- cured, collections for a memorial history of the Dutch in America, wherein shall be set forth the part belonging to that element in the growth and development of American character, iustitutions, and progress." Now, we must aU agree that these pm-poses, each and aU of them, are worthy of the highest commen- dation. The country from which om- forefathers came has an eventful, and yet a truly noble, history, and one which challenges om' supreme admu-ation. 12 We may well strive to perpetuate the virtues of those from whom we are descended — their courage, their inflexible integrity, their patriotism, theii" love of enlightened liberty, and the great sacrifices they made to secure it. In the category of the moral vir- tues are placed love of home, love of coimtry, love of the land of our forefathers, a tender regard for the memory of our ancestors, a veneration for their unsullied character and their great achievements. These sentiments are common to humanity, and are highly conservative in their influences over us. They are not mere matters of education ; they enter into the very life of true men everywhere. One who has no country has no patriotism ; and one who loves not the memory and deeds of a noble ancestry gives but little promise of an honorable or useful life, A descent from such men is a pledge of our own good conduct as men and citizens. Who so dastardly as to soil by evil deeds the clear escutcheon of his fathers ? Holland and her people, with whom we in the past are closely connected, and to whom we are now linked by strong ties, is worthy of our continued interest and love. It wiU be the work of this Society to preserve the records still existing among us of their deeds in this City and State, in their eaiiy days. This, I am sure, will be a grateful task. We, their descendants, owe trib- utes of duty to them, and we should do aU in our power to keep their memories fresh and green. It is to be greatly feared that life is much too real and earnest with us, and that in the daily conflicts which engage us we are apt to overlook or postpone the claims of the past. Now, every good undertaking which wiU take it from the immediate present to a 13 consideration of the past, or the future, must enlarge the mind. We are to see to it that the tide of new ideas coming over us and the engrossing care of daily- pursuits do not absolutely obliterate the memory of the past and render us indifferent to the manners, as well as the memory, of those wise, brave, honest, and prudent men, our forefathers, who did so much toward founding and fashioning the institutions under which we live. If it be a question of the sur- vival of the fittest, we now interpose our claim to the enduring life of the Dutch. 3 THE second toast, that to the President of the United States, was then drunk standing, and the band played " The President's March." Judge Van Vorst then read the following letter : " Executive Mansion, Washington, " January 4th, 1886. " Hon. Hooper C. Van Vorst, "'President, etc., New -York City. ^^My Dear Sir : — The President duly received your recent letter conveying the invitation of The HoUand Society to attend its first annual dinner to be held at the Hotel Brunswick on Friday evening, January 8th, and directs me to say that he regrets that his ofiicial duties, which make it impracticable for him to leave Washington at this time, will prevent its acceptance. "Expressing the President's thanks for the coui-tesy of the invitation, I am, " Very truly yours, " Daniel S. Lamont, "Private Secretary." u 15 President Van Vorst also read the following letter from our feUow-member, Hon. Thomas F. Bayard : " Depaktment of State, Washington, " December 5th, 1885. " Hon. HooPEB C. Van Vorst, ' ' President of the Holland Society of New - York. Bear Sir : — I beg to acknowledge, with many thanks, your invitation to address The Holland So- ciety at its first annual dinner on January 8th, and regret exceedingly that in view of my pubhc duties here I feel constrained to forego the pleasure. Asking you to make expression of my hearty good-wiU to our Society and the purposes it is designed to promote, I am, very respectfully, " Your obedient servant, " T. F. Bayaed." Also the following from the Minister Plenipo- tentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of the Nether- lands : " Legation of the Netherlands, " Washington, D. C, December 29th, 1885. " Sir : — I have the honor to acknowledge the re- ceipt of the kind invitation of The Holland Society of New- York to their annual dinner, on January 8th next, and regret exceedingly that the state of my health will not allow of my going to New- York to be present on this occasion. "It would have afforded me much pleasure to have met so distinguished a company of gentlemen who descend in direct line of Dutchmen, and show that they keep in remembrance the nationahty of their forefathers. 16 " I can now only convey to you my sincere sym- pathy with your organization, and tender my cordial thanks for the attention shown by you to the G-ov- ernment I represent. The relations of the Netherlands and the United States of America have always been harmonious, and I recognize in your letter a new mark of the friendship existing between the two coimtries. " Assuring you of my very high appreciation of the courtesy extended to me by your Society, " I have the honor to be respectfully, sir, " Your obedient servant, " Gr. DE Weckheklin. " The Hon. Hooper C. Van Voest, " President of The Holland Society, New -York City.'''' Also telegrams of regret at absence from Dr. Albert Vander Veer, our Vice-President for Albany, and from U. S. Senator Charles H, Van Wyck, of Nebraska, and a cablegram from the United States Commis- sioner for the Alabama claims : " London, 50 minutes past 4 p. m. " January 8th, 1886. " Van Siclen, HoUand Society, Hotel Bmnswick, New- York. Hearty greetings to assembled diners. " Van Wagner." Also letters of regret from Mr. "W. H. H. Bogart, of Aurora, N. Y., and the Rev. Dr. Edward P. Terhune, of Brooklyn. The President then announced the third toast, " Why are we here this evening ? " which was responded to by Judge Augustus Van Wyck, of Brooklyn. 4HI0IYPE, t. BI6KSIAU1. SPEECH OP JUDGE AUGUSTUS VAN WYCK. Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen : THE matchless Burke once stood speechless in the presence of the dumb walls of his "Alma Mater," appalled with sad memories, revived thereby, of schoolmates dead and departed. And one would think that this presence, so suggestive of a long line of worthy ancestors, dead and gone, would be suf- ficient to hush us into silence. Our officers have determined otherwise, perhaps wisely so, but be that as it may, like loyal soldiers enlisted in a good cause, we must their commands obey. The toasts present a most varied list of topics, but I venture to predict, at the very threshold of these proceedings, that the responses will disclose only the single text of Hol- land and our Dutch ancestors. And this is truly comprehensive, for if any one of you will trace your ancestry, doubling up each generation backward, 17 18 you will discover that they equal in number the population of this great commonwealth, a subject too broad and large to be dealt with in an after- dinner speech, save in the most casual and general way, passing over individuals and referring to classes only. The reputation of our progenitors must not suffer from too much modesty on our part, though our utterances should be free from the idle pride and extravagances evinced by the Mikado's Chief Secre- tary of State, Pooh Bah, in his boastful praise of his troglodyte, pre-adamite and protoplastic ancestors. It is a pleasure, of no ordinary nature, to meet here in this hall, hung with trophies of a rich tradition, around the social board, so many of the sons of our fathers, and their appearance reveals that they have been blest with some of the dollars and wampum of their thrifty daddies. " Why are we here this evening ? " Is it an acci- dent? Is it fondness for wine? though it is solemnly recorded on the cold printed pages of history that Cornelius Van Vorst, doubtless an ancestor of your most eminent chairman, when starting on a perilous journey from Pavonia to visit Grovernor Wouter Van TwUler, earned with him the best of wine. Is it love of frivolity that brings us here, or does some nobler and more philosophical cause prompt this gathering ? It is in response to a most creditable sentiment im- planted in the breast of man by the Creator, whether you style him a Divinity, first cause, or evolution; and, with no intention to flatter, the character of this company rather favors the last theory, which stamps you the sm'vival of the fittest of the 19 Dutch descendants. A sentiment which is the real basis of the physical, moral, intellectual, and social economy of man, the family, and human society. The ambition and instinctive deske to emulate the most commendable attributes of one's ancestors, hold- ing them up for examples to be followed by the hving and transmitting them to future generations for their guidance. To-night we meet to celebrate the best qualities of a race that averages high. A people that for eighty long and tedious years waged a bloody and wasting war, under the inspiration of Wnham "The Silent," not for territorial conquest, not for the purpose of humbling a sister nation, or securing the monopoly of the trade of India, East or West, but for the grand cause of civil and religious Uberty, and the establishment of a republic that should and did recognize the greatest liberty of action and thought in the individual, consistent with the exercise of equal liberty by his feUow-man. The iafluence of this contest was far-reaching, liberahzing Europe and changing the history of the world, and making a possibility, our American Re- pubUc. Who can estimate the value thereof? To it the world is largely indebted for a free press, free religion, and free schools, the logical outgrowth of republican government, and so extensively enjoyed by the present generation; and you might as well attempt to calculate the value of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the Earth we inhabit, as of these ; rob a people of them — you will blot out their glories, annihilate their progress, and extinguish their hopes. They were a most heroic people in peace as well as in war, and, by virtue of industry and directness of pmpose never surpassed, recovered 20 and reclaimed from the stormy and angiy billows of a turbulent sea the very land upon which they reared a nation that became the mistress of the water highways of the world and its commerce, and learned to love it with an ardor of no common in- tensity, which is so well evidenced by the motto, "Amor patriae vincit," on the "Beggar's Sack," the badge of the Hollanders, that decorated the soldiers of liberty, and now adorns the walls of this saloon. And history records no instance of greater moral courage and power than that of your grandsires, twenty thousand strong, confronted by an irresistible army of two hundred thousand under the direction of the wily Louis of France, when they, rather than see their country dishonored and overrun by hostile invaders, surrendered it, not to the French, but to the merciless waves of the mighty deep, with firm- ness and yet with anguishing pain. They were an intensely practical people, and mi- grated to America, possessed of no Quixotic idea of building in a day a Dutch empire in the West ; not as refugees from religious intolerance as did the Puritan and Huguenot from England and France; they came not to conquer and despoil the weak as did Cortez in his bloody march from the sea to the haUs of the Montezumas, and Pizarro in his perfidy to the unfortunate Incas of Peru; nor in search of the fountain of everlasting youth as did the visionary Ponce de Leon, but they came to challenge new opportunity to work and toil in fresh fields and reap the fruits thereof; in search of fertile lands to cultivate ; a good harbor for com- merce, so located as to foster trade with the natives ; and they found aU these, when they selected New- 21 York and New Jersey, rich lands, the finest harbor in the world at the mouth of the magnificent Hud- son, through which and the lakes the abundance of the mighty North and vast West have ever since been poured into the lap of this city. This imperial city, the metropolis of the conti- nent in commerce and eveiy other respect, attests the wisdom and foresight of your forefathers. The Dutch were a conservative, domestic, and contented people, who did not believe that the glory of power was in the possession thereof, but rather in the use thereof along the hne of moral purpose to the benefi- cent end of shedding the effulgence of the star of progress over the world; and they came from a country of free institutions, and brought with them to New- York the vital spirit of their nation: free communities, the comer-stone of American liberty ; the free exercise by all of their reUgious creeds; toleration, that most luscious fruit of the stately tree of broadened friendship and manly affection; no taxation without consent, the nightmare of the robber knights of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; and love of countiy, tempered with that high sense of honor, manifested by "WiUiam of Orange, when he was offered by Charles the hand of Mary, daughter of the Duke of York, and despotic rule over the Netherlands, if he would join the allies, and he replied, "My country trusts me, I will not sacrifice it for any personal interest, but if need be die with it in the last ditch," and then returned to his native land and afterward encouraged his coimtrymen, telling them that even if their soil, with all its marvels, was buried beneath the briny ocean, all was not lost. Mark you, all was so buried, but 4 22 the French were expelled and Holland was saved. "William, with honor, married Maiy, and became the much loved ruler of the Netherlands as well as the greatest of the monarchs of England itself. Honor certainly has its rewards. The early Knickerbockers made friends of the red man by fair dealing, exhibited friendship for their white neighbors, and devoted themselves to agri- culture, trade with the natives, and commerce on the sea, and buUt comfortable homes, churches, and schools. They were under the dominion of The West India Trading Company, the interest of which in them, like that of all soulless corporations, was measured solely by the question of profit; and while England, in furtherance of her fixed colonial policy, was supplying arms and ships of war, and urg- ing the Puritan to seize upon the possession of their Dutch neighbors, the home government became blind to the danger threatened, and England swal- lowed up the New Netherlands and donated her to the Duke of York; but the Dutch spuit survived, and to them the English governors accorded greater privileges than were conceded to the colonies peo- pled with the Britons themselves. The liberal com- mercial policy, great latitude of religious faith, and neighborly feeling of the New Netherlanders at- tracted to her borders many from the other colonies, and through these different races, living and work- ing under Divine guidance in harmony for the common benefit, each lifted to a higher plane by the aid and presence of the others, to the one ennobling and the other elevating, the seed of free government was sown broadcast over the continent. These subtle forces were sUently working out results never 23 di'eamt of by the statesman, philanthropist, or politi- cal economist. The law of compensation in nature, animate and inanimate, discloses that every race excels in some respect, and as the blood of Holland, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Sweden and other nations were mixed and commingled in the veins of the people, mental vigor increased, moral strength advanced, and national prejudices, habits, and cus- toms, that once in their conflict seemed to forbid forever the unification of the American Colonies, were amalgamated; the best traits of each survived and the pernicious ones were wiped out, and a new race was created, " The American," without which this nation, a marvel in the world's history, could never have existed. Innate difiidence, or some cause other than the want of Uterary capacity, seems to have deterred and prevented the Dutch of Holland and New Netherlands from writing the history of then- own great achievements in the vast field of worldly ac- tivities, till the gracefid and pleasing pages of Wash- ington Irving's Eaiickerbocker, intended only to be a burlesque and good-natured satire, have been actually accepted by many for serious and ti'uthful history. And may this Society become the exciting cause of inspiring yet the facile, just, and truthful pen of some Motley, to illustrate the deeds of an ancestry that will never bring the blush of shame to your cheeks, but rather redden them with the flush of just pride. Gentlemen, as you appreciate the blessings of good government, the priceless heritage of civil and religious liberty, the esteem of mankind, and the 24 fate of our race for future ages, I implore you to reverence the memory of your fathers, and per- petuate their inflexible \di*tues and principles, the preserving charm of our glories as well as a most potential force in their creation. Then was sung the following Drinking-song, Pro- fessor Piet Hein Vanderweyde presiding at the piano; the Secretary, who was also the Precentor, sang the first verse in Dutch, and all came in on the chorus ; the remaining verses were sung jointly, in mixed Dutch and Enghsh, and with some slight disregard of the ensemble and of nuances of expression, but very successfully. DRINKLIED. ( harinclied) Not<'. Astlie siill Dutcli Herriiif^ provokes thirst, lln' Hf rrin^' song is often followed by a 1. My friends com lef us 1. Kom vrtcn • den neem een 2. M;ui is a jol . ly 2. Man is tot vro . lijk • i "•i n r, di'ink a • };aiii,This li . qu i«l f rum , hip, Hur. rah.' Hur-rah.' Utf . Je vroHw en kind. Hip, Hip, Hoe • ral Hoe ■ ral -* — ^ r [ r r 25 Judge Van Vorst then said that the next toast was to have been handled by an honored member of the Society, Senator Voorhees, but that he had been unable to leave his duties at Washington. The following telegram from the Senator was read : " Washington, D. C, Jan. 7, 1886. " GrEOKGE W. YaN SiCLEN, " Secretary Holland Society. " It is with deep and painful regret that I find it utterly impossible for me to leave my duties here. I had promised myself great pleasure in meeting The Holland Society, but I cannot honorably be absent from the Senate. " D. W. Voorhees." There is only one man, continued President Van Vorst, who is capable of successfully tackling two toasts at the same time, and that is Chauncey Depew. He has kindly consented to take this toast, to " The States General of HoUand," and the one to which he was regularly assigned, the " Fatherland." A gentleman waving an orange handkerchief pro- posed three cheers for the Huguenot annex, and they were given with a will, while Mr. Depew bowed profoundly. SPEECH OF CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW. aooD-EVENiNG, Van, said he, and a roar of laughter drowned the reply, if any was made. Don't all speak at once. (Eenewed laughter.) I never knew a Van who wasn't always on hand when there was anything to eat and drink, but this collec- tion beats any that I ever saw before. There is just one thing, by the way, which the PhUhamaonic Society will never regret ; and that is that the Dutch songs attempted here to-night are not the only musi- cal gems of which our city can boast. Gentlemen, one of the most curious psychological conundrums that a man was ever called upon to solve is : Why did Judge Van Wyck, when he asked if we came here to get a full drink, look straight at me ? What are we here for? it has been asked. We have the Saint Nicholas Society, a most estimable organization, that for an annual tax of ten dollars gives you four stated banquets, and two dinners at haK price. It has a 26 27 large and respectable membersMp, which, in keeping with the thrifty precepts of our ancestors, regularly attends the four free banquets, and is unavoidably detained from being present at the two dinners at half price. I am a lover of old things — old wine, for instance, and old women. Grentlemen, what heart here has not thrilled this evening at that beautiful painting by Mr, Turner, the "Old Dutch Woman Reading her Bible ! " How many a gray head here knelt years ago at such a knee ! The influence of Dutch women such as that has molded the fate of religious liberty in this whole world! And, gentlemen, I respect the Saint Nicholas Society, for it is a venerable and an ancient one. Why, then, should we form another? I will teU you. It is because you and I have felt our blood on fii'e when we were present at those dinners, and have heard it said : " This is not a Dutch Society. The pipes are Dutch; the menu is in alleged Dutch; but this is merely a society of old New- York, and includes men of all nationalities, and of no nationality." That is why The HoUand Society was founded. But still it is asked, What are we here for ? We know what we're here for. We've got it. Those fellows over in Delmonico's to-night, at the Merchants' Dinner to Governor HiU, don't know what they are there for, and they never will know until the prizes and offices are distributed. Then they wiU realize, as many better men have realized before them, that on a January day of a certain tempera- ture many are left, and but few are chosen. The famous question of the patriotic Mr. Flanigan of Texas, in the National Convention at Chicago, — What are we here for if we don't get the offices? — be- 28 comes reflectively both painful and significant when the gentlemen who are forgotten in the spoils remember that they paid for the dinner. I went down to the reporters' table before the speech-making commenced, — there were twelve of them there at the time; there isn't one left now, — and I said to them, "Boys, I suppose you have come to hear Senator Voorhees speak on the silver question and Secretary Bayard discuss our diplomatic relations with Austria. I am sorry that they didn't come; but there wiU be at least one good speech to-night. You had better stay." But with one accord they answered and spake unto me, saying : " Chauncey, we've reported that speech seventeen times!" But to come- back to the question, Why has not a distinctly Dutch Society been formed before? Because in the Dutch char- acter there are two principles — one, that it is wrong to do wrong, and everybody knows it; the other, that it is so natural to do right that it is expected of every one, and there is no use making a fuss about it. I tell you, gentlemen, it is to Holland that this country owes her common schools and her love of liberty; to Holland, that heroic little state whose noble Prince said, when offered the hand of King James's daughter, "I cannot sacrifice my honor and my country's honor for the sake of your alliance"; to that heroic little state that stood alone and unsupported among her enemies and listened to the voice of her Prince when he said, "Though our country disappear beneath the sea, if our independence be preserved, all is not lost." And, thank Grod, the sea did roll over her 29 fields! Her honor and her independence were preserved; and her Prince married the daughter of King James, without the exaction of an obliga- tion from him out of keeping with truth and right. We hear much of the Puritan and of Plymouth Eock. The true Puritan was a bigot and a sec- tary ; fighting to preserve his own religious liberty and to destroy that of every one else ; believing conscientiously in the political freedom of himself and the pohtical suppression of everybody else. The Puritans left England and went to Holland. There were four hundred of them, divided into three hundred sects. They went up to the Hague, and there in the Great Congregation they learned that one man's religion was as good as another's. And Grod in his mercy kept them thirteen years in a state of probation in Holland before he let them land on Plymouth Rock. And in their after lives they did credit to their preceptors, and to the lessons they had learned while in that state of probation. It was the teachings of Holland that rendered the Revolution and the Constitution possible. Those Pilgrim Fathers that journeyed to New England by way of Holland never burned witches or whipped Quakers or disgraced them- selves and their religion by other exhibitions of narrow intolerance. It was the Puritans who came after them, straight from England without the softening influence of HoUand, who smirched the pages of New England's history. This, gentlemen, was the country too modest to write her own history; the country that had to wait the coming of a Motley before her story could be fitly told. Her children, the Dutch 5 30 settlers of America and their descendants, have too long emulated the modesty of the mother country. We have quietly occupied the back pews while the Yankees and Scotchmen and Irish- men at their annual dinners have claimed every- thing that is worth claiming in our city and country. Why, gentlemen, there are people who actually believe that there was no demand ever made for civil and religious hberty until the Declaration of Independence; people who are ignorant of the fact that, two centuries before that document was signed, Holland had poured out her blood and treasure for those very principles, thundered them in the face of Europe from her cannons' mouth; flaunted them o'er sea and land upon the Beggars' Sack, and formally enunciated them in words which Jefferson only quoted. Many fondly believe that in America was first founded a Republic of Sovereign States ; but the plan in its letter and spirit was copied from the Dutch. By the compact of Utrecht, the seven provinces of the Netherlands formed a free government in 1579 with the sentiment " Unity makes Might," and in 1787 the United States of America were builded upon the same model, and adopted for their motto " E pluribus Unum." The principles of Dutch Lib- erty were education and toleration. The Puritans found in Holland a school system supported by the state, and the doors of her universities open to students of all creeds and nationalities, at a time when all other seats of learning were closed to those who denied their dogmas in religion or did not commune with their Church. Free thought, free speech, inquiry, discussion, and the open 31 Bible were unknown except in this little corner of Europe, which its indomitable people had rescued from the sea, and waged perpetual battle with the ocean to keep. The Pilgrims brought the common school from Holland and planted it on Plymouth Eock, and it has been for two hundred years the inspiration of Yankee growth, power, and con- quest, and the corner-stone of New England's eloquence, and the source of her boast, that she alone has furnished the brains for American liberty and expansion. But the Knickerbockers' school- master and dominie were already estabhshed insti- tutions on Manhattan Island, and their beneficent, civilizing, and humanitarian influences following the Indian trails, the highways of commerce, the Dutchman's own Erie Canal, and the Great Lakes, carried the elements and fructifying forces of free- dom into new territories and laid the foundations of sovereign states. The Jew, the Huguenot, the Puritan, and even per- secuted CathoUcs were welcomed in HoUand with hospitality and employment, and unharmed and unmolested could each worship God in his own way, and were only restrained from interfering with their neighbor worshiping God in his way. But in that critical period in the history of the race, when every hope of humanity was lost everywhere in the world, except HoUand; when she alone, relying in steadfast faith upon the God above and the waves about her, was sheltering the rights of man against the combined forces of despotism and bigotry, she was not content to simply save liberty ; but by the invention of types and the creation of a printing- press, she organized the new crusade against dark- 32 ness and superstition in church and state, which has ever since been triumphantly marching down the ages, emancipating the mind from the thralldom of ignorance and bigotry, and transferring power from the throne to the people. Mr, Depew's speech was followed by the Dutch national song, "Wien Neerlandsch Bloed," sung by the Society and the Precentor in a manner which in- duced the complimentary remarks with which the Eev. Dr. van Dyke, Jr., began his response to the fifth regular toast, " The Dutch Virtues." Published for THE HOLLAND SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. Dutch National Song* PIANO. FORTE. Andante. V T il J. f?J J l J J 1. Let him in whom old Dutch blood f lows, Un - taint - ed, free and ... 2. We broth-ers.true un - to a man, Will sing the old song An«lante. ' i i I ' F- t ^ r f J. r:irT'^ r: strong; Whose heart for Home and coun-try glows, Now join us in our song; Let yet; A - way with him who ev - er can His Home or land for - get! A him with us lift up his voice, And sing in pa-triot hand, The hu - man heart glow'd im him n^er, W'e turn from him our hand, Who ^^ll 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 II - -) p j j 1 J mf ■ J 1 ' » M ' J i song at which all hearts re-joice, For Home and Fa-ther - land. For cal-lous hears the song and pray'r. For Home and Fa-ther - land, For Home — and Fa-ther - land! 3. Pre - serve, oh God, t he dear old ground Thou ^ Home and Fa-ther - land! 4. Loud ring thro'' all re - joic- ings here. Our i i m i f —f 0 • V land whei toj our fa - thers gave; The land where they a era - die found, And our friends so dear. Our , pray'r oh LiOrd, to Thee! i I're - serve our Home, oui ^ where they found a grave! We call, oh God, to Thee on high, As Hoi - land, great and free! From youth thro'' life be this our song, Till It i i J 7y ^ near death's door we stand, near to death we stand: Oh! safe - ty, bless -ing, is our cry, For 1 — ^ — — 1 '-'1 .I.J m — r i — 0 0 • 1 » 1 " 1 1 i si |3R0 verse. I 4TH VERSE. onie ^ Home and Fa - ther - land, For Home and Fa - ther - land. Our Home and Fa-ther- land. Home and Fa-ther - Home and Fa - ther - land, Our Home and Fa-ther - - - - land. ' \ n.Mt ii iiiUiJ J . — : ^ y i SPEECH OP THE EEV. DR. HENEY J. VA^ DYKE, JR. Mr. President and Gentlemen : ONE feature of this dinner reminds me of the sign which I am told is posted in a saloon in Leadville, " Please don't shoot at the musician ; he is doing his level best." I congratulate you, and every son of a Dutchman, and all sober, conservative, Grod-fearing, liberty- loving people everywhere, on the fact that the Dutchman is not dead. He has not joined the company of old Grrimes and Praise-Grod-Barebones. The descendants of other stocks may have to meet, from time to time, to mourn with unseemly hilarity the disappearance of theii* ancestor, and to fire off sky-rockets over his grave. They may have to say to each other, with smiling faces, " The old man is dead ; he was a grand old man. Now let us have a 33 34 jolly funeral." But no such melancholy duty falls to our lot to-night. This is no funeral; not even a wake. " We come to praise the Dutchman, not to bury him." For he is still alive, and, judging from all appear- ances, able to sit up and take his gruel. And if any one shall ask why this is so, why Time and the Mikado and all the rest of it have not been able to obUterate him, and annihilate him, and put him out like a brief candle in an unwholesome at- mosphere, I answer it is because of his broad, solid, generous, weU-balanced, and decently regulated vir- tues. Virtue is the only thing that lives long in this world ; and virtue itself cannot live very long unless it carries ballast enough to keep it on a level keel, and self-restraint enough to avoid those furies of righteousness which transform it into vice. I am well aware that in speaking of the Dutch virtues I am departing from the ordinary routine of oratory. The subject has been much neglected. It must be confessed that our ancestors have fared but poorly in the post-prandial and monumental distri- bution of honors. The Sons of St. Patrick have claimed the wit, and Fame has laughed and allowed the claim. The Sons of St. Andrew have claimed the shrewdness, and no one was sharp enough to dispute with them. The Sons of St. Denis have claimed the graces, and with such pohteness that they could not be refused. The Pm-itan has claimed the virtues so solemnly and grimly that it would need a more than mortal courage to deny him. And what is left for the Dutchman ! Nothing, but a good digestion, a large bump of philoprogenitiveness, and 35 modesty. He is requested to take these and be thankful. But on an occasion like the present, when the first of these qualities has been proved by the consump- tion of this dinner, and the second is demonsti-ated by the presence of so many sons of Holland in the male line, it will be no violation of the third quality to claim in a simple, serene, and moderate way, that in the possession of those virtues which are most agreeable to live with, the vii'tues which wash best, and wear longest, om- Dutch ancestors are unex- celled, um'ivaUed. How else shall we account for their history? "Nature," says one of then* own poets, "has done nothing for Holland, and so the Hollanders had to do everything for themselves." Their country is the mere fag-end of Europe, an alluvium of French rivers, as Napoleon called it, an original collection of sand-banks and mud-flats, less than haK as large as New Jersey, fluctuating in size with the ebbing and flowing of the sea, like that old lady down on Long Island who had eaten so many clams that her waist rose and fell with the tide. Their most celebrated mountain is no higher than Trinity steeple, perhaps not quite so high. Their climate is composed of three-parts fog, and three-parts frost, and foui'-parts odor of Limburger cheese. And yet the Dutch have written their name and their princi- ples large on the page of universal history; have swept the seas with their fleets and planted vast colonies in every part of the habitable globe ; have enlightened Europe with their imiversities, and founded the system of free schools ; have kept alive the sacred flame of religious liberty, when every other ci\'ilized nation was p uffin g at it to blow it 36 out. They have enriched literature with the name of Erasmus, the most illustrious man of his age ; and science with the name of Leeuwenhoek, the first of biologists, the discoverer of the capillary circulation of the blood ; and law with the name of Grotius, the greatest of jurists; and the art of war with the names of William of Orange, and that old trump van Tromp, unconquerable and irresistible by land and sea. They have discovered, or at least perfected, the art of printing, and adorned the art of painting with the productions of Cuyp and Euysdael, Paul Potter and Rembrandt. They have solved the prob- lems of commerce, and settled the laws of trade. And finally, within the last year it has been dis- covered that a Dutchman wrote a good part of " Paradise Lost," and that " Yankee Doodle " is an original Dutch song. Who can deny the truth of those majestic lines which should have been written by one of our greatest poets : Survey the race of man with all-embracing view, From England to Japan, from China to Peru; With comprehensive eye aU fields of progress scan, And everywhere you'U find a Dutchman in the van. Verily these be great deeds for a little people, and they have only been accomplished by the solid strength of the Dutch virtues. 1. The first of these is courage. Dutch courage has been often laughed at. But Philip II. did not laugh at it. He swore. And Louis XIV. did not laugh. He wept and fled. Courage runs in the blood of the descendants of those ancient Frisians who for centuries defied the power of imperial Eome to crush their indomitable spirit. They don't say 37 much, but they fight like the fiend. They have no lust of conquest, but whoever has tried to conquer them has come back with wet feet and a sore head. For ages they have lived " on a war-footing " with theu* great enemy the sea, shut up within theu" hollow land as in a fortress at whose doors the biUows are forever bellowing in vain, looking forth from their narrow river-gates upon the cruel and ti'eacherous hosts of the ocean, as the Spartans looked from the Pass of Thermopylae upon the Persian phalanxes, and defying them with calm and patient heroism. This long, persistent, successful struggle with the most relentless of foes developed and confirmed a spirit of quiet and imconquerable bravery. So that when Spain, in the insatiable gi'eed of her sullen pride, stretched out her dark wings to cover Europe with the shadow of her tyranny and the shame of her Inquisition, HoUand alone, — a mere fly-speck in her vast dominions, a mere mud-puddle at the ex- tremity of the continent, — little Holland alone dared to resist her, in a desperate eighty-years' fight for Uberty, the like of which the world has never seen before or since. Alva, Eequesens, Don John of Austria, Alexander Farnese, aU the great captains of oppression, march against her in vain. She re- sists, she conquers, she is free. Courage ! Witness, ye living walls of Leyden, standing inflexible against the world's assaults and crowned with the glory of a heroism which could neither be beaten, nor starved, nor drowned into a base submission. Witness brave Barendz pushing out into the Arctic Seas, and daring the horrors of black midnight and the frozen death, for love of his country. Witness brave Van Speyk, who in 1831 6 38 blew up his ship into glory rather than surrender to his enemy. Witness the very storks of Delft, who were consumed in the burning of the city rather than abandon their helpless fledglings. Witness a thousand splendid pages of history to the quiet, steadfast, indomitable courage of our Dutch an- cestors. 2. The second of their virtues is conservatism. This may be briefly defined as the wisdom to know when you've got a good thing and the grit to hold on to it. Its physical counterpart is a talent for sitting down. And who that remembers Irving's description of the ship and the wife of the captain of the Goede Vrouw — a hundred feet long, a hundred feet wide, and copper-bottomed — can doubt that sit- ting down is an exercise for which the Dutch are naturally adapted? They came to this island and saw that it was good and sat down upon it and waited, until now their trading-post is the second commercial capital of the world, and their farms are worth a million dollars an acre. All things come to him who knows how to wait, provided he has some- thing good to wait on. It is a grand thing to be able to make your mind sit down. A restless curiosity is the bane of progress. An itch for novelty is the curse of theology. It is better to be true than it is to be original. A httle genuine old-fashioned Chris- tianity would do us more good than a thousand new isms. The world needs not so much a crop of daring and original seekers after truth as it needs plenty of men who will hold fast to the truths aheady known and the principles already established, and do their duty honestly and quietly in the sphere of life where Grod has placed them. And for this, in religion, in 39 politics, and in social morality, our Dutch ancestors were ever famous. When the Dutchman gets relig- ion, you know where to find him. 3. One more virtue belongs peculiarly to our an- cestors, and that is liberahty. This does not mean indifference, which is the lack of convictions; nor toleration, which is a mere condescension to weak- ness. Liberality means a broad and healthy spirit, in which the love of tmth mingles with the love of freedom, and the fear of the Lord coexists with charity toward men. "Eemember," said Charles Sumner, "that with the highest morahty is the highest liberty." I shall not dwell upon this virtue of the love of Uberty, because I see it has been com- mitted to more eloquent lips. I only desire to say that I beheve intolerance is no mark of depth of conviction, but merely a symptom of spiritual dys- pepsia. When you see a man ready to persecute in flesh or spirit those who do not believe as he does, you may be sure that his own creed has soured on his stomach. Our ancestors were not much afOicted in that way. And so it came to pass that when all the nations of Europe were divided into hostile camps, Holland was the one sanctuary of a free conscience. And when the New Englanders were smoking and hanging witches, the Dutchman smoked his pipe in peace and hung his hams in the chimney. And when the constitutions of the thirteen original States were framed, the only one in which absolute religious liberty and equality were clearly, distinctly, and forever proclaimed and estabUshed was the State of New- York. Mr. President, it has been said that there are two classes of men in the world; and, by infer- 40 ence, two classes among the settlers of this coun- try: The Cavalier and the Puritan, the worldling and the other-worldling, the fop and the fanatic, the man of pleasure and the man of prejudice, Adonis and Corporal Pride. If this were true we should be in as sorry a plight as the congregation of that colored preacher who was explaining the journey of life : " My bredren," said he, " dar am ony two roads froo dis wuld. De one am de broad and narrer way dat leadeff to ebberlastin distraction. De Oder am de narrer and broad way dat leadeff to eternal damnashun." " If dat am de case," cried one of his hearers, ^^dis darky takes to de woods P But we are not in such sore straits, for there is another class of men in the world, another class among the settlers of this country, that great class in which I believe, in spite of complainings from one side and sneers from the other, the solid body of our sub- stantial and law-abiding people is still contained, that class which is represented to our minds to-night by the Dutchman. Believing in a religion which is good for two worlds ; fearing Grod and honoring the king without a desire to put his foot on any- body's neck ; cultivating the hopes of heaven side by side with the sweet charities and graces of human intercourse ; going back, not to the Old Testa- ment and Mount Sinai, but to the New Testament and Christ for the principles of his piety, he abides like a pillar of strength, standing four-square to every wind that blows. The Puritan, says one who ought to know, is dead. God rest his soul. He never found peace in this world. May he fare better in the next. The Cavalier is vanishing since doublets and rib- 41 bands went out of fashion. His legs are grow- ing so thin and his head so small that he cannot long endure. But the Dutchman, the broad, solid Dutchman survives, — survives in the spirit of our Constitution, — sui-vives in the liberality which is binding all denominations of Christians into unity, and combining them in those works of practical charity in which Holland and the United States of America stand foremost among modern nations, — survives in a free church, a free press, free thought, and free schools, — the Dutchman survives. And though I do not need to seek any strange oath to affirm it, it is my solid conviction that this is a case of the survival of the fittest. Hon. Eobert B. Eoosevelt responded to the seventh regular toast. SPEECH OF HON. EGBERT B. EOOSEVELT. IT is difficult for any resident of New- York of the present day to realize that it is only two hundred and fifty years since this city and island were a howling wilderness, the particular spot on which we are now regaling ourselves being an especially nasty brier patch beneath a dense wood and sur- rounded by an unhealthy swamp. Although the Half Moon entered the bay in the year 1609, and discovered some of the attractions of the Island of Manhattan, and the Indians, appreciating the weak- ness of our respected ancestors, brought to Hendrick Hudson and his associates offerings of tobacco, noth- ing toward the practical settlement of the island was accomplished till many years later. Even the first ship. New Netherland, in which we fondly suppose that aU of our first families, the actual progenitors of The Holland Society, came over, as matter of fact carried its human freight up the river to Fort 42 ARTOTTPE, E BIERbTADT I ] 43 Orange. New- York was not founded till May 6, 1626, when Manhattan Island was purchased from the Indians, for the Dutch colonists brought over with them one quality which the other invaders of the Xew World might have imitated with advantage, the great gift of common honesty. They bought their land and did not steal it. The sprout then planted has become the magnificent and umbrageous tree, with its far-spreading branches, under the shadow of which we pass oui- daily lives. The sprout long remained a feeble one ; the Dutch West India Society had more important matters to attend to than a httle plantation amid a savage forest and forest of savages. HoUand was then the most enter- prising and adventurous nation of the world, and was reaching out its sti'ong arms everywhere that there was an ounce of gold to be dug, an acre of land to be won, or a beaver skin to be purchased. So gi'eat was this neglect that the colonists were on the point of returning to their native land under the discom'agement of a useless Indian war. With true American independence, by anticipation, they boldly threatened their superiors that if certain reforms were not made they would take themselves, their wives, families, bag and baggage, back to HoUand, and let the plantation go to the dogs or the Indians. The meetiug which determined on this course of operations was the first Citizens' Association, and is the prototype of aU the numerous reform organiza- tions which have since followed. When we review aU that reform has since brought upon us we almost wish that the colonists had canied out their threats and left the island to peace and savagery. But the members of the first Committee of Seventy were 44 promptly given the offices, the country was saved, and all was well. In 1638, when that admirable politician, prototype of so much that is great if not good which has followed him in New- York's public life, Grovernor William Kieft, came over, he found the public buildings in woful decay and more signs of retrogression than prosperity. In his time fashion lived and moved and had its being on Pearl Street, but in my early memory it had receded to Bowling Grreen and Grreenwich Street. In relating my per- sonal experiences of New- York it is incumbent on me to give the date lest hearers should think I was a hundred or more, so we will say fifty years ago. Then Cortlandt Street, where my famUy resided, was the outlying confines of respectability ; indeed, I have often to remember the names of our neigh- bors to be quite sure that the early residents of Cortlandt Street were entirely respectable. There were the Strongs and the Remsens, the Carows and the Kermits; who lived on the same block, so while we were on the very rim of the pail we had not quite slopped over. The Bowling Grreen was the Fifth Avenue of the period. And in self-defense I must say that my grandfather lived in that section. Then we moved to the corner of Fourteenth Street and Broadway, and buUt the first house on the block. At that time the Broadway stages ran no farther than the corner of Thirteenth Street, stopping at the Corporal's, as it was called. Now that stage line after extending its route, if not its phylacteries, has passed away under the benign influence of a public- spirited Common Council and a sharp and enter- prising common carrier, "When I was a lawyer in active practice, though one of the younger brethren 45 of the bar, the real estate agent, James E. Shaw, applied to me for a loan of $5,000 on a Fifth Avenue corner lot, and I dismissed him summarily from the office for asking such an extravagant amount on so slight a secuiity, although he insisted that the prop- erty would biing $7,500 under the hammer. Till quite modem days none of the boys used to think of going farther than the neighborhood of what is now Central Park to skate. Many of you are now hap- pily dwelling over the ponds of but a few years ago. And there was excellent shooting along the upper part of Madison Avenue. What a ti-ee our sprout has grown to be ! From a little plant of Indian trade, hai'dly worth the attention of the West India Society, it has become the Banyan of national commerce, on whose branches are supported the mercantile activity and monetaiy transactions of a continent of business men ; and whose far-reaching roots are watered and fertilized by the sm-ging rivers of American industry which pour their Pactolian streams to Em'ope. Our tree equals most of the municipal trees of the world, and ranks little below the highest and oldest. From nothing it has grown in two centuries and a half to a million and a half of inhabitants. The modest and curiously gabled homes of our ancestors have been replaced by the rows of Fifth Avenue palaces, the strings of wampum have been converted into the hundred-million fortunes of which we now read, and the Company's old stone tavern on the comer of Pearl and Coenties slip has become the Brimswick of to-day. Our sprout has blossomed equally into the flowers of art and refinement, and aU the Hberalities of modem wealth. We have the Academy of Design 7 46 and the Academy of Music, the MetropoUtan Opera House and the Metropolitan Museums of Art and of Natural History, the Astor and Mercantile Libra- ries, the Cooper Institute, innumerable institutions for the sick and sulfering. The little public sheet, the New- York Gazette, issued by William Bradford on October 16, 1725, and printed on a half-sheet of foolscap paper, has expanded into the deadly quintuple which every Sunday brings terror into the New-Yorker's household, and supplies the re- spectable head of the family, his sons and daughters, with a variety of light reading in the matter of murder and divorce for the ensuing week. We have wrenched from the brow of Boston its unfounded claim to be the literary center of the New World; for not only do our own writers receive at last proper consideration, but where there is anything superior in New England it gi-avitates to New- York as naturally as a Southern black to a hen-roost. We have even expanded in jocosity. The earliest joke on record is that of Wouter Van Twiller. It was of so intricate a character that many historians have failed to appreciate it. A vagrant English vessel, manned and commanded by evil-minded officers and crew, with the wicked purpose of trespassing upon the inherent Dutch prerogative of trading glass beads for beaver-skins with the Indians, came into the harbor of New Amsterdam. Instead of making a disturbance and unpleasantness, the humorous governor tried what wit would do. He invited the commander ashore, and in his presence fired off three cannons to the honor and glory of the Prince of Orange. The befogged Englishman, with that want of appreciation of the refinements of American 47 Trior which exists in the tight Httle island to the present time, brazenly responded by ordering his gunner to fiLre off three cannons to the honor of the English king. Thereupon the amiable governor, with a twinkle of merriment in his wise little eye, called for a barrel of wine, and requested all to par- take and defiantly drink success to the States Gen- eral and confusion to their enemies. Still failing to catch the point of the joke, the fat-witted English- man went on his way up the river and established a trading-post ; but he got a better appreciation of the force of Dutch humor when the governor sent a vessel after him, arrested the entire party, and brought them back to the merry sound of the triumphant trumpet, accompanied with much hilari- ous drinking of strong waters, deprived them of aU the peltries they had surreptitiously traded from the Indians, and sent them back to England wiser in the ways and wit of Dutchmen. That was perhaps but a little sprout in the matter of jocosity; but it has expanded into the Puck and Judge of 1886, whose colored extravagances compel from the most sedate a tribute of laughter ; into the last pages of Harper^ s Weekly and TJie Graphic; into the magnificent car- toons of Nast and Keppler ; and into those innumer- able funny papers which force the most hilarious to shed tears. Although our goodly tree has borne all this goodly fruit, in some points it has dried up or turned to rot. Such failures are probably due to the unhappy influx of strangers ; for I take it to be a self-evident propo- sition that all that is bad in New-York has been brought there by others. Especially did our good burghers suffer by invasions from the East of 48 rapacious hordes, who married their daughters and appropriated their possessions. The inventors of the wooden clock and the wooden nutmeg, having first deprived our ancestors of their rightful lands on the banks of the Connecticut Eiver, and thus brought themselves into undesired proximity, could not leave them in the free enjoyment of their virtues and to the natural growth of their principles, but forced all manner of what they called improvements upon them. They crowded themselves forward on every side, till in social life, in public prominence, and, above aU, in politics, the old residents of New- York have been pushed into the background and out of sight. The inevitable consequence is that social life, public happiness, and politics have degenerated. In the matter of simple honesty, it may be doubted whether the position is better, and when we think of the late exploits of the American colony of bankers in Canada, the skillful watering of stocks and shearing of lambs in Wall Street, the reputa- tions of our public officials, the curious methods of purveying railroads, and the brilliant operations of the Grrants and Wards of finance, it would seem that if our sprout has grown into a tree at aU, the tree belongs to the deadly family of the Upas. A care- ful count of the bu'thplace of city officials, made some years ago, showed that there was not two per cent, of native New-Yorkers in office. I have said that Grovernor William Kieft was our first politician, but his method has been improved upon by those who came after him, and he is the one case of Dutch example which ought to have been avoided. Being required by the law to have a coun- cil, he appointed a council of one, and as it was 49 apparent that this might lead to deadlock if there was a tie vote, and that injury might result to the pubHc service, he reserved two votes to himself, while he allowed only one to his council. He was the fii'st of the bosses who have followed with such remarkable regularity, the only difference beiug that they reserved aU the votes to themselves. The city of New- York has gi'own in wealth, in power, in size, in art, in literature, ia population, but it has not increased in pubhc spirit. We have become a con- glomerate or mosaic of bits from aU portions of the habitable globe. We have invited all those who are weary and heavy-laden to come unto us, and they have not only come unto us, but they have ruled over us, tiU there is little of the original Holland left in our pubhc composition. We have the G-entile and the Jew, the heathen and the Christian, exiles from the central Flowery Kingdom, from the shores of Africa, from the wilds of Eussia, from the confines of Austria, from France and Germany, and occasion- ally a few from Ireland ; the oppressed of the world have sought our shores, and have concentrated in this cosmopohtan city. It is the one pressing duty of our native-bom to take an interest in molding events, to claim a moderate share, at least, in the government of the great city which fortune has given to them, in improving public sentiment and arousiag pubhc spirit. The formation of this So- ciety is a favorable augury that as the Dutch are said to have once conquered Holland of old, so the New-Yorkers have at last resolved to reconquer New Amsterdam. 50 The Rapalje cup was then passed around. The first European settler on Long Island was Greorge Janse de Rapelje, who settled at the Waal- hocht (curve of the basin or bay), on what are now known as the United States Naval Hospital G-rounds. The first white child born in the New Netherlands was his daughter, Sarah, on June 9, 1625 ; in June, 1642, she was married to Hans Hanse Bergen, by whom she had six children. Her first husband died, and she afterward married Tunis Guisbertse Bogart ; by him she also had six children. The following inscriptions are engraved on the silver tankard, which was presented to her by her first husband on their marriage. This tankard is now in possession of the Johnson family in Brooklyn. ON THE OUTEK SIDE. "Hout daer,jouck vrouw die ick bemin, en anders geen, Baer myn trouw, my hart, en sin, naest Godt alleen.^^ ON THE INSIDE. X " Siet mi jre Schepper, vijt vlees en been, Schept two tot eenP Translation by Hon. Martin Kalbfleisch, of Brook- lyn. OUTSIDE. " Young woman, the only one I love, next to God, receive my confidence and heart." INSIDE. "Behold the Creator of flesh and blood created two out of one." The eighth toast was responded to as follows : SPEECH OF MR. WILLIAM C. DE WITT, OF BROOKLYN. [At the point of the dais where Mr. De Witt was seated a large engraving of the Grand Pensionary John De Witt hung upon the wall, and a long shot-g^in and other arms and accoutrements carried by members of the family during the French war and in the battles of the Revolution were suspended in front of a mirror.] Mr. Be Witt said : I AM imbued with a sentiment too delicate for expression by the thoughtful courtesy of the committee in decorating the walls at this end of the hall with the portrait of an illustrious Hollander and the arms and trophies of his kindred, and thus filling me with the pleasantest recollections of the dead, toward whom, however far-stretched the tie of consanguinity, I shall ever strive to bear, without reproach, the love and devotion of a son. 61 52 Very much needed, Mr. President, is the Society which you have formed. The Dutch, although the founders and builders of this State, are gi-adually being swallowed up and lost in the gi-eat tides of population which have poured in upon them from other lands. Among the several millions in the State of New- York, we have fallen into a small minority. We are getting few and far between. We are being jostled from the stools of precedence and power in the old households. We are rapidly becoming as strangers in the land of our fathers. It is necessary, therefore, that we should unite in societies such as you have formed, in order that we may maintain om- identity, uphold our rights, and preserve the memory of our ancestors. Nor will the task of forming and supporting such a Society in such a cause be easy. The Dutch are an unostentatious people. They are averse by natm-e to celebrating themselves. Deeds and not words are the chief objects of their respect and exertion. So prevalent is this characteristic that we ascribe to our fatherland, more than to any other country, the quality of silence in contrast with boastfulness and self-assertion. Silent is the figm"e of Holland in history; silent her emergence from the sea; silent the growth of her free institutions, embracing, as we have been told, the model of our Declaration of Independence and of our confederated system; silent her acquisition of trade with India and her long commercial supremacy upon the ocean, except when her hostile guns were heard in the streets of London ; silent her discovery and settlement of this State, with the Half Moon moving up the noiseless waters of the Hudson, amid scenery rivaling in 53 primal nature the castellated banks of the Rhine ; and sUent, too, the early Knickerbockers modestly laying the foundations in virtue and sound law of this magnificent triple city, which, crowning the shores of our great bay, will, without the aid of boastful oratory, remain forever the monumental Plymouth Rock of the Dutch. A Dutchman looks upon his virtues as upon his roses, — safe when held within their natural envu'on- ments, half lost when blown and given to the winds. To him there is a world of suggestive truth in the lines, " The shallows munnur, But the deeps are dumb." But when a race is being outnumbered and overrun in its own land ; when its rightful patrimony is being taken away ; when its ancestral records are fading, — this sentiment of modesty and silence ceases to be a vii"tue, and the times demand that the men of the Netherlands should assert and support themselves. Every devoted son of Holland will therefore lend his sympathy and assistance to the needed and appro- priate enterprise in behalf of which this Society has been formed ; and may success attend you at every step. Respecting the liberty of conscience, to which sentiment I am assigned to speak, it is no longer necessaiy to discuss its theological relations. No- body but a bigot or a fool, in this latter part of the nineteenth century, disputes the right of every man to worship God according to his own convictions; and whatever trials this principle may have under- gone in the past, it is now so deeply ingrafted in oui- 8 54 constitutional law and upon the minds and hearts of our people that it is beyond the reach of danger- ous assault. But the subject has an infinitely wider range. We have that within us by which we discern the spiritual laws of the moral and material universe, and this I call conscience. Conscience is the eye of the soul, through which we behold the attributes of the Creator. Conscience is the inner light unfolding the moral law to our understanding. Not an act in our daily lives, not a prompting of our hearts, not a thought in our minds, escapes, in the first instance, the inspection and judgment of this divinity. It distinguishes for us truth from falsehood, virtue from vice, beauty from ugliness, hoUness from sia, nobility from meanness, charity from malice, and love from hatred. And Groethe has weU said, if some day this inner light shall come out from within us, we shall no longer require any other. It is the lamp of reason, by which human laws are observed and tested. It teaches what is right and what is wrong, upholds justice and abhors oppression, maintains the rights of person, of property, and of reputation ; and as it gathers enlightenment it becomes the re- vivifying source of progi-essive civilization. Nor am I able to distinguish the power by which we perceive and comprehend the moral law from the power by which we detect and understand the physical laws of the universe. It is the same faculty and may bear the same name. Conscience, therefore, is that intel- lectual perception by which the wide-ranging achieve- ments of science are made and appreciated. The same inner light which reveals to us the beauties of Christianity discloses to our understandiag the mys- 55 teries of the universe. What a wonderful faculty is this of man! It apprehends divinity, it perceives all the truths of the moral and civil law, it analyzes the globe, weighs and measures the sun, defines the orbits of the planets, intelligently outlines the locality and motion of the stars, and "drags up drowned honors" from the far-off deeps of the sidereal heavens. Indeed, such is now the scope and potentiahty of the human conscience that it well-nigh demonstrates by itseK an affinity and kindredship between man and the Maker of aU things. If I find a parchment of Sanscrit in the desert, which at first sight is as unintelligible to me as the hieroglyphics on a tea- chest, and by inspection at length catch the clew, and, making the interpretation, find a communication clear and plain to my mind, I know at once that I am kindred to its author. And so this quality of conscience, this capacity to discover, perceive, and appreciate all the laws, works, and mysteries of the Creator, moral and physical, and to find in them a perfect harmony and perpetual fountains of knowl- edge, inherently presents the fatherhood of the Supreme Being, or at least estabUshes direct con- nections, fraught with something like kindredship, between the finite being and the inscrutable Master of all life and law. With this fuU conception of the conscience of the mind, who will deny it hberty? Man's actions, not his thoughts, are amenable to human laws. To reason, to think, to conceive, ac- cording to our capacity, are processes with which government ought not and cannot interfere. And, further still, so long as a man acts according to the dictates of his conscience without interfering with 56 any right of his fellow-man, he should not be called in question. This is a distinguished principle with the Dutch. They have left its impress upon this community, and to it we owe the cosmopolitan char- acter of the city of New- York. The hospitality which welcomes the stranger from every land ; the charity to which a worthy object never appeals in vain ; the hatred of the intermeddler and the absence of intrusion upon the sanctity of domestic life; in a word, the freedom and happiness of the people of this city are due in great measure to that wide hb- erty of conscience inherited from its Dutch founders. ' And as we turn our eyes toward the fatherland there arises before us, over the sea of time, as over the broad Atlantic, a country which for hundreds of years has been the home of the exile of whatsoever faith, religious or political ; where intense piety goes hand in hand with liberty of thought; where Jew and G-entile, Catholic and Protestant, may enjoy equally their respective religions, and where true freedom is so obvious that we hail our mother coun- try at sight as a land of refuge and of benediction for all mankind. Not vast is the empire of our dear old fatherland, nor marked by many rivers, lofty mountains, and wide expanding plains. But the foimtains of her social and political philosophy have sent forth mighty currents, which, overleaping her physical confines, have poured refreshing streams of Ught and life into every quarter of the civilized globe. ARroiypr. e oiERsrAOT DECORATIONS. HE walls of the dining-room were decorated by J- Mr. Charles A. Vanderhoof, who is a member of the Society, and contained gi'oupings of some fifty sketches of Holland scenes, by the eminent artist KiTiseman Van Elten, who also sent several charm- ing oil-paintings. Among them " Holland Sand Dunes," "Winter Landscape in Holland," "Dutch Windmnis," "VOlage of Vaassen, Celderland," and " Huts in the Heather " ; also some delicate etchings by Mr. Vanderhoof himself. An especially curious and beautiful pictui'e, kindly lent, among others, by Professor P. H. Vanderweyde, was " The Vegetable Market in Amsterdam, by Candle and Moonlight," by Van Schendel. A large oil-painting, "A Dutch "Woman reading the Bible," by Mr. C. Y. Turner, was greatly ad- mired; it was apostrophized extemporaneously by Mr. Depew, and a reproduction of it appears facing his speech ; it was painted in Holland ia 1880 ; the Bible represented in the picture, was also loaned by Mr. Turner ; it was printed ia Amsterdam ia 1643. 67 58 Mr. Turner contributed a copy of a "Head, by- Rembrandt." The flags of the Netherlands and of the United States of America were draped together over Presi- dent Van Vorst's chair, with a fac-simile of the famous emblem, " The Beggars' Sack," bearing on its face the historical dates 1566 (when it was adopted as a badge by the Hollanders who rebelled against the Spanish misrule), 1609 (when the Dutch settled this country), and 1885 (the date of the formation of this Holland Society) ; also the ancient motto, ^^Amor patrice vincitP This, in the form of the face of the medal which was adopted by the Dutch rebels, was worn by William the Silent at the time of his assas- sination. Motley says that the oath taken by the so-called " Beggars " read to the effect : " By this salt, By this bread, By this wallet, we swear These beggars ne'er will change Tho' all the world stare." 59 The following poem, never before published, writ- ten by Mrs. Amelia E. Barr, author of "Jan Vedder's "Wife," is kindly contributed to this volume by that lady. "THE BEGGAES OF THE SEA." We are the "Beggars of the Sea," Strong, gray Beggars from Zealand we; "We are fighting for Liberty! Heave ho! Rip the brown saUs free! Hardy sons of old Zierikzee, Fed on the breath of the fresh North Sea, Beggars are kings, if free they be: Heave ho! Rip the brown sails free! " True to the wallet ! " whatever betide ; " Long live the Grueux ! " the sea will provide Graves for the enemy, deep and wide : Heave ho ! Rip the brown sails free ! " Beggars," but not from the Spaniard's hand ; " Beggars under the Cross " we stand ; "Beggars" for love of the Fatherland! Heave ho ! Rip the brown sails free ! Now, if the Spaniard comes our way, "What shall we give him. Beggars gray! Grive him a moment to kneel and pray ! Heave ho ! Rip the brown sails free ! 60 A picture of the old Onderdonk homestead at Flower Hill, Manhasset, L. I,, built in 1706 by An- drew Onderdonk, together with an ancient small hair trunk brought from Holland and grown bald in the service of holding papers, were contributed by W. M. Onderdonk, Esq., his great-great-grandson, who now occupies the same house. Mr. Adrian Van Sinderen, Vice-President of the Society for Brooklyn, drank from a silver tankard having a Luther medal, date, 1717, set in the lid, and brought here by his ancestor, Rev. Ulpianus Van Sinderen. Dr. Gerardus H. Wynkoop sent the Wynkoop Wapen, or coat of arms, on porcelain. Mr. Bartow W. Van Voorhis showed an ancient corkscrew with engraved sUver case and handle, probably three hundred years old, and that must have opened countless bottles. A very interesting exhibit fi'om Mr. Henry S. Van Beuren was a Bible printed in Spanish in Amster- dam, anno 5486 (Hebrew calendar), to aid in con- verting the Spaniards to Protestantism. Eight quaint old blue Holland tiles from the col- lection of Mr. Wm. M. Hoes, hung on the wall. Mr. Hoes also contributed a portrait of his kinsman, Martin Van Bui-en, painted by Henry Inman. A portrait of Oliver Van Noort, the first Dutch navigator who sailed around the world, was con- tributed by his hneal descendant, Hon. Greo. M. Van 4 61 Nort, in a cm-ious old engi'aving with tlie portraits of Magelhans, Schouten, Francis Drake, famous circum- navigators, A reproduction of it is inserted here. Also the Van Noort coat of arms, which ornamented the dining-hall that evening, and which is described as follows (with the coats of arms of Columbus and of de Gamma), ia the '■^ Jurisprudentia Heroica de Jure Belgarum circa Nohilitatem et Insignia cum Crratia et privilegio ad novennium Alherti et Isabella. JEmiilgatmi 14 De- cemhri, 1616." [At page 113.] " Van Nooet : d'azur a une f asse ondee flottee d'argent en forme de riviere, accostee de deux estoiles d'or ; le globe ten'aquee en cimier avee un vaisseau sur ce globe, I'ecu enveloppe d'un gi'and manteau d'azur seme d'estoiles d'or." With the following relation at page 106 : "Eundem honorem promivitus fuit, & globum terrestrem cimmem loco-habuit Ohverius van Noort, quondam classis Batavica Prgefectus generalis, qui tractum Magellanicum primus trajecit, totimique orbem circumnavigavit ut videre est ia eju Sepultura in Ecclesia de Schoonhoven in Hollandia cum Epi- taphio, quod sic sonat : " ' EQer met den edelen Herre Olivier Van Noort in syn leven Admirael ende Capiteyn generael over de urste vlote, die nyt dese Nederlanden door de Straete Magellanes de gheheele wereldt heest omseylt, Sterst den 22 Februarii, 1627. " 'Hie iUe est totum velis qui circuit orbem h Magellam Quartus Oliverius.' " Mr. Geo. G. De Witt, Jr., exhibited a very fine old engraviug, by Visscher, of John De Witt, the Grand 9 62 Pensionary of Holland from 1652 to 1672, which is here reproduced. Also a Dutch musket about eight feet long, made at Amsterdam in the XVIth century, together with an old powder-horn, bullet^pouch, and canteen, the latter made of rawhide. These relics were once the property of Capt. Peter De Witt, who was bom at Kingston, N. Y., in 1722. He was the captain of a militia company in Kingston, and served in the French war. Upon the powder-horn is cut the following quaint inscription : " Capt. Peter De Witt, His horn, Oct. 27, 1758. At Ticonderoga July ye 8th there we did quit the field. But at Cateroqua Sept. 8th we made the French dogs yield." Mr. Lambert Suydam loaned several old deeds in fine preservation. One, a deed in Dutch, for land in Brooklyn, L. I., dated May 11, 1703 ; also several deeds for slaves, a copy of one of which, dated July 31, 1735, from Gertruyda Winkler to his ancestor Lambert Suydam, is here given: " ItnobJ all St^m by thefe prefents, That I, Gertruida Winkler of City of New York, For and in Confideration of the Sum of fourty and five Pounds current money of the Province of Nezv York to me in Hand paid, at and before the Enfealing and Delivery of thefe Prefents, by Lambert Suydam of the Ifia7id of Naffau, in Kings County, Yoman, the Receipt whereof I do hereby acknowledge, and my Self to be there-with fully Satiffied & Paid, and thereof, and every Part thereof do hereby Acquit and Difcharge the faid Lambert Suydam, his Executors, Ad- 63 miniftrators and Afligns, have Granted, Bargained and Sold, and by thefe Prefents do fully, clearly and abfo- lutely Grant, Bargain, Sell and Releafe unto the faid Lambert Suydam one negro Boy Jlave named George, aged about fifteen years. "To Have and to Hold the faid Negro Slave unto him the faid Lambert Suydam, his Executors, Adminiftrators and AlTigns for ever. And I the faid Gertruyda Winkler for my Self, my Executors, Adminiftrators and Affigns do Covenant, Promife and Grant to and with the faid Lambert Suydam, Executors, Adminiftrators and Affigns, to Warrant and Defend the Sale of the above-named Negro George againft all Perfons whatfoever. In Witnefs whereof I have hereunto fet my Hand and Seal this thirty -firjl Day of July, Anno Dfftnini One Thoufand Seven Hundred and thirty -five. " Sealed and Delivered in the Prefence of " Charles Le Roux. " Gertruyda van Kin/wilder, " Weduwe van Hexman Winkler." Mr. Lawrence Vander Veer, of Rocky Hill, N. J., exhibited a New Testament and Psalms, together with Catechism, published at Dordrecht in 1778, bound in leather, with silver clasps and handles ; also a Psalm-book published at Amsterdam in 1752. These volumes have been in his family ever since. Mr. Robert "W. Van Boskerck contributed two paintings of scenes in Holland, and a sketch. The larger of the paintings, a late afternoon effect, repre- senting a windmill and a narrow canal, bordered by trees ; this picture is fine in sentiment and pure in 64 color. The smaller picture, representing a stretch of meadow with sheep near the edge of a wood, was a characteristic bit of Holland, well painted. Mr. William L. Brower contributed a framed metal plate, a relic of the North Dutch Church. When the church at the comer of William and Fulton Streets, N. Y., was taken down in the summer of 1875, this interesting relic was brought to light. Under the pillar which supported the gallery, and nearest the pulpit, was found a metallic plate, twelve inches square, a fac-simile of which is given below : xais Church •wassuhts-^ thb ^ommEOAasas OF THE fLEFDHMED^rROTESIAHTSTTTCH IN" Elders jdeacons ^TEbMaSSCBAIX I^AAn^EOSEtCEXT. casas * BacEin AiuiaEw Kab.s cHaiS ^- iniESTED IlJ l^SPENTEaAHn^aimoiDB. TOE EIHST StDIJEWAJIATO IUI.T2 J/6y ST fflS MCDBirS. R OSEUEiT SES £ IDE S . )'I7TCH t^NQHEOA.TI0W THE BETT"jfiJlCHIBA,U)^AiriIE \J^4 |EACB'BB-WITKEBriTHT3 SACKED I^XACH 5ho HOiy JaiFlS ATO HBAUEHI/rGRAaB F. Hopkinson Smith kindly loaned foui- water- color sketches, his own work: "A Hazy Morning, Dordrecht," "Waiting for the Ferry," "Dordi'echt, Vdrian Hf.geman was l>om, New-York City, September 15, 1773; died, July 21, 1826. AUliniiaii i.l ,Ncw-Yorli City, 1805-1808; Member»f AITembly from New-York City, 1810; appointed Judge of Marine Court of New-York, rcbriiary 13, 1821 ; appointed Chief Juftice, April 10. 1823. Lineal defcendant of Adriaen Heceman, born in Amfterd.im, Holland, February, 1 599, who came to Nieue Amfterdam, 1640; wasSchout of Breucklen, 1661 ; Schoutof the "Five Dutch Towns.' 1661-1663; Delegate to Convention, 1664; died April, 1672. at Flatbufh on his farm of 1 18 Acres, bought April 15, 1661. 65 Holland," " Amsterdam." Picturesque and effective ; quiet and gray in tone. Also a pastel of a Dutch Bui-gomaster's wife, by Kammerer, 1789. An admirable portrait of a lady of refined appearance and artistic attii'e. Also an old brass milk-can, that was probably used to send around milk in the Ark, or else to hold wine for Noah. Such milk-cans are earned, one on each side, chained to a yoke over the shoulders, and are to be seen about Dordrecht and vicinity; this one was used as a flower- vase at our dinner. Mr. W. A. Ogden Hegeman contributed two frames of ancient law-papers, framed so as to show both sides of the documents. And Mr. E. W. Van Voorhis exhibited two copies in Dutch of the New Testament, bound with the Psalms of David set to music, and the Catechism, bound in leather, with silver clasps. One, dated Amsterdam, 1728, was the property of Altje Eyder, wife of Samuel Grerritson, of Gravesend, L. I., and afterward the property of her daughter, Jane Grerrit- son, who married Lom*ens Voorhees, of Flatbush, L. I., and contains on its fly-leaves records of births and marriages of the Gerritson and Voorhees fam- ilies. The other, similarly bound and clasped, and of the same size, belonged to Joris Rapalje, and states in Dutch on a fly-leaf that it was given to him by his grandmother Rapalje in 1752 ; the title-page is dated Dordrecht, 1746, and the fly-leaves contain records of bu"ths and deaths of members of the Rapalje family. Upon all of which memorable dinner, speeches, and exhibits The HoUand Society puts its seal. I GENTLEMEN OTHER THAN MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY PRESENT AT DINNER. James Muhlexbekg Bailey. Cornelius V. Banta. C. A. Benton. Judge Heney "W, BooKSTA^^EE, Ira D. Bursley. Herman Cazaux. E. Beach Crowell. Jajmes R. Ctjming. Ex-Chief Justice Charles P. Daly, Charles W. Darling. John W. Davis. Henry Spingler Davis. M. C. V. B. Davis. John W. A. Davis. Theodore De Witt. William C. De Witt. Elijah Du Bois. Bryce Gray, Jr. Charles Isaac Hldson. Richard P. Lounsbery. David E. Meeker. Edward B. Merrill. Joaquin Miller. Colonel T. Bailey Myers. Mark William B. Palen. John R. Planten, Consul-General of the Netherlands. Captain Wheeler Powell. F. E. F. Randolph. Dr. E. Guernsey Rankin. Charles L. Rickerson. Rear-Admiral A. C. Rhind, U. S. N. E. A. Schultze. Frank Hopktnson Smith. Milford B. Streeter. W. H. H. Stryker. William J. Van Arsdale. George G. Van Blarcom. William L, Vandervoort. P. H. Vander Weyde. Samuel Clinton Van Dusen. Kruseman Van Elten. William C. Van Elten. William C. Van Lennep. Colonel Nicholas Van Slyck. William W. Van Valzah,M.D. J. A. Van Winkle. Wn.LTAM Hull Wickham. Williams. ROELKER. 67 THE HOLLAND SOCIETY. OFFICERS. 1885-1886. President Hooper C. Van Vorst. Vice-Presidents. ALBANY. Albert Vander Veer, M. D. brookltn. Adrian Van Sestderen. eindsesook. August W. Wynkoop. KINGSTON. Alphonso Trotipbour Clearwater. NEW-YORK CITY. Robert Barnwell Roosevelt. Secretary and Treasurer. George West Van Siclen. Secretary's address, 146 Broadway, New- York. COMMITTEES. 1885. Committee on Finance. George G. De Witt, Jr. George W. Van Slyck. Abraham Van Santvoord. Committee on Genealogy. George M. Van Hoesen. Aaron J. Vanderpoel. David Van Nostrand. Committee on History and Tradition, The Rev. Dr. van Dyke, Jr. Robert B. Roosevelt. Lucas L. Van Allen. TRUSTEES. 1885. George G. De Witt, Jr. W. A. Ogden Hegeman. WiLUAii M. Hoes. Wilhelmus Mynderse. Robert B. Roosevelt. Lucas L. Van Allen. Aaron J. Vanderpoel. Hersl^n W. Vanderpoel. Henry S. Vanduzer. The Rev. Dr. van Dyke, Jr. George M. Van Hoesen. David Van Nostrand. Abraham Van Santvookd. George W. Van Siclen. George W. Van Slyck. Philip Van Volkenburgh, Jr. Hooper C. Van Vorst. Edgar B. Van Winkle. Benjamin F. Vosburgh, M. D. Jacob Wendell. 10 69 MEMBERS OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY, January 8, 1886. The Holland Society is composed of gentlemen who are descended in the male line from Dutchmen who settled in America before the Eevolution. This includes descendants of other former nationalities whose ancestors had found refuge and a home in Holland and who came here speaking Dutch as their native tongue. Thomas F. Bayard Washington, D. C. Gerard Beekman New- York City. Henry Rutgers Beekman " " J. William Beekman . " " James Bleecker " " Tunis Gr. Bergen Brooklyn, N. Y. John Bogart New- York City. Abraham Bogardus " " Louis Vacher Booraem Jersey City, N. J. Rev. Sylvester Daley Boorom . . . Chaplain U. S. N. WiLLLUH L. Brower New- York City. Alphonso Trumpbour Clearwater . . Kingston, N. Y. Rev. Charles Knapp Clearwater . Mt. Vernon, N. Y. Rev. Theodore Ledyard Cuyler, D. D., Brooklyn, N. Y. Henry P. De Graaf New- York City. Alfred de Groot Port Richmond, S. I. William de Groot New- York City. Chauncey Mitchell Depew " " Edgar de Peyster " " 70 71 Frederick J. de Peyster New- York City. Alfred De Witt " " George G. De Witt, Jr " " Henry Clinton De Witt " " Jerome De Witt Binghamton, N. Y. Peter De Witt New- York City. Thomas Dunkin De Witt .... PeLham Manor, N. Y. William G. De Witt New- York City. Morris H. Dillenbeck " " Rev. Joseph Rankin Duryee, D. D. . . " " Peter Q.' Eckerson " " Joseph Perot Hegeman Pittsburgh, Pa. W. A. Ogden Hegeman New- York City. Pierre Clute Hoag, M. D " " William M. Hoes " " Jacob Warren Hoysradt Hudson, N. Y. Arthur Middleton Jacobus, M. D. . . New- York City. Richard Mentor Jacobus " " Jeremiah Johnson, Jr " " Clarence Van Steenburgh Kip ... " " George G, Kip " " Abraham Lott Brooklyn, N. Y. Wilhelmus Mynderse New- York City. Andrew Joseph Onderdonk " " William M. Onderdonk " " Stephen Melancthon Ostrander* . . " " John Paul Paulison " " John Van Schaick Lansing Pruyn . . . Albany, N. Y. Abraham C. Quackenbush New- York City. James Westervelt Quackenbush * . . Hackensack, N. J. Stewart Rapelje Leonia, N. J. Augustus Rapelye New- York City. Daniel Bennett St. John Roosa, M. D. " " Charles H. Roosevelt New Rochelle, N. Y. Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, South Orange, N. J. Frederick Roosevelt New- York City. Henry E. Roosevelt New RocheUe, N. Y. 72 Nicholas Latrobe Roosevelt .... New- York City. Robert Barnwell Roosevelt .... " " Theodore Roosevelt " " Henry J. Schenck " " George Frederick Schermerhorn . Rutherford, N. J. Augustus Schoonmaker Kingston, N. Y. Frederick W. Schoonmaker New- York City. Garret L. Schuyler " " M. Roosevelt Schuyler " " Allen Lee Smidt " " John William Somarindyck Glen Cove, L. I. Henry Stuyvesant New- York City. Peter J. Stuyvesant " " Charles Crooke Suydam Elizabeth, N. J. James Suydam New- York City. Rev. J. Howard Suydam, D. D Jersey City, N. J. John R. Suydam SayviUe, L. I. John T. Sxtydam • New- York City. Lambert Suydam " " Frederick D. Tappen " " Sandpord R. Ten Eyck " " Stephen Vedder Ten Eyck, M. D. . . . " " ^ ^ ^ ( New Bruns- Rev. William Hoffman Ten Eyck, D. D., ^ . , t < wick, N. J. Lucas L. Van Allen New- York City. Andrew Van Alstyne " " WiLLLUd Van Alstyne " " Edwin E. Van Auken " " Eugene Van Benschoten " " Samuel Van Benschoten " " Clarence R. Van Benthuysen .... " " Frederick T. Van Beuren " " Henry S. Van Beuren " " Robert W. Van Boskerck " " Arthur Hoffman Van Brunt .... " " Cornelius Van Brunt " " J. Holmes Van Brunt Bay Ridge, N. Y. 73 John D. Van Buren * Newburgh, N. Y. John Richard Van Buskirk New- York City. John CotrwENHOVEN Van Cleaf ... " " Augustus Van Cleef " " Rev. Paul Duryea Van Cleef, D. D., Jersey City, N. J. Alexander H. Van Cott New- York City. Joshua M. Van Cott " " Walter L. Van Denbergh . .... Amsterdam, N. Y. Charles Albert Vanderhoof .... New- York City. Elisha O. Vanderhoof " " Aaron J. Vanderpoel " " Augustus H. Vanderpoel " " Herman Wendell Vaitoer Poel ... " " Waldron Burritt Vanderpoel, M. D. . " " Albert Vander Veer, M. D Albany, N. Y. Benjamin Beekman Van Derveer . . New- York City. Rev. David Newlands Vanderveer, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y. Frank F. Van Derveer New- York City. John R. Van Derveer " " Lawrence Van Derveer Rocky Hill, N. J. William L. Vanderzee New- York City. Charles H. Van Deventer " " Abram Bovee Van Dusen " " Henry S. Van Duzer " " Selah Van Duzer " " Selah R. Van Duzer Newburgh, N. Y. Henry H. Van Dyck New- York City. Tbe Rev. Dr. Henry J. van Dyke, Sr. . Brooklyn, N. Y. The Rev. Dr. Henry J. van Dyke, Jr. . New-York City. GrBORGE M. VaN HOESEN " " John William Van Hoesen " " Eugene Van Loan Philadelphia, Pa. Edward Van Ness New- York City. Russell Van Ness " " Alexander T. Van Nest " " G. Willett Van Nest " " Warner Van Norden " " 74 George M. Van Nort New- York City. Davxd Van Nostrand " " John E. Van Nostrand " " Edwakd Van Orden " " Henry D. Van Orden " " Gilbert S. Van Pelt " " KiLiAEN Van Rensselaer " " Abraham Van Santvoord " " Richard Van Santvoord, M. D New- York City. Henry Van Schaick " " Jenkins Van Schaick " " John Van Schaick Cobleskill, N. Y. Ferdinand Van Siclen Brooklyn, N. Y. George West Van Siclen New- York City. Adrian Van Sinderen Brooklyn, N. Y. Adrian H. Van Sinderen " " W. L, Van Sinderen New- York City. George W. Van Slyck " " William H. Van Slyck " " Rev. John Garnsey Van Slyke, D. D. . Kingston, N. Y. B. Miller Van Syckel, M. D New- York City. Bennett Van Syckel Trenton, N. J. Francis Helme Van Vechten .... New- York City. Henry Clay Van Vechten " " Abraham K. Van Vleck " " Robert B. Van Vleck " " Deuse M. Van Vliet " " Brevet Major-General Stewart Van Vliet, U. S. A James Albert Van Voast .... Schenectady, N. Y. Philip Van Volkenburgh, Jr New- York City. Thomas S. Van Volkenburgh .... " " Bartow W. Van Voorhis " " Bartow W. Van Voorhis, Jr " " Elias W. Van Voorhis " " John Van Voorhis Rochester, N. Y. Menzo Van Voorhis " " I Washington, D. C. 75 "William W. Vam Voorhis New- York City. Frederick Boyd Van Vorst " " Hooper Coiming Van Vorst " " John Van Vorst, M. D Jersey City, N. J. George Van Wagent:n New- York City. Albert Van Wagneb London, England. Edgar B. Van Winkle New- York City. Rev. Isaac Van WdvKLE, A. M. ... Coldsprtng, N. Y. James B. Van Woert New- York City. John V. Van Woert " " John V. Van Woert, Jr " " John R. Van Wormer " " Augustus Van Wyck Brooklyn, N. Y. Benjamin Stevens Van Wyck .... New- York City. Jacob Theodorus Van Wyck " " John Thurjlan Van Wyck " " John H. Van Wyck " " WiLLLAM Van Wyck " " WiLLLAM Edward Van Wyck " " William H. Van Wyck, M. D " " J. Leonard Varick " " Theodore Romeyn Varick, Jr " " Maus R. Vedder, M. D " " John D. Verjieule " " Jacob Dyckman Vermtlye " " William G. Verplanck " " Dantel W. Voorhees Terre Haute, Ind. Benjamin F. Vosbuegh, M. D New- York City. Evert Jansen Wendell " " Jacob Wendell " " Theodoric Romeyn Westbrook * . . . Kingston, N. Y. John C. Westervelt New- York City. Peter Wyckoff Brooklyn, N. Y. Augustus W. Wynkoop Kinderhook, N, Y. Gerardus Hilles Wynkoop New- York City. James D. Wynkoop " " * Deceased. i \ i I I