Yale University Library

39002002600659

° ILKIBI^^IElf »

Bought with the income
of the
Henry W. Scott, Jr. Fund
/9/3

THE GRAFTON HISTORICAL SERIES
Edited by HENRY R. STILES, A.M., M.D

The Grafton Historical Series
Edited by Henry R. Stiles, A.M., M.D.
12mo. Cloth, gilt top

In Olde Connecticut
By Charles Burr Todd
Frontispiece, $1.25 net (postage 10c.)
HKstoric Hadley
By Alice Morehouse Walker
niustrated. $1.00 net (postage 10c.)
King Philip's War
By George W. Ellis and
John E. Morris
Illustrated, $2.00 net (postage 15c.)

In Olde Massachusetts
By Charles Burr Todd
Illustrated, $1.50 net (postage 10c.)
Mattapoisett and Old Rochester,
Massachusetts
Prepared under the direction of a Committee
of the Town of Mattapoisett
Illustrated, $2.00 net (postage 15c.)

Old Steamboat Days on the
Hudson River
By David Lear Buckman
Illustrated $1 .25 net (postage 10c.)
In Olde New York State
By Charles Burr Todd
Illustrated, $1.50 net (postage 10c.)
The Cherokee Indians
By Thomas Valentine Parker, Ph.D.
Illustrated, $1.25 net (postage 10c.)
In Press
The Diary of Reverend Enos Hitchcock
A Chaplain in The Revolution
Historic Graveyards of Maryland and
their Inscriptions
By Helen W. Ridgely

THE GRAFTON PRESS
70 Fifth Avenue 6 Beacon Street
New York Boston

'¦ ^^^
^ j^^'
''lj^»K««sS5
j~'
^'^'^ '"diBi^
M
V JKL a
^
The Clipper Ship "Dreadnought"
Capt. S. Samuels as she appeared February 25, 1854, off Sandy Hook, 19 days from Liverpool. Her record
tnp was 13 days 11 hours between New York and Liverpool, December 1854. Built at Newburyport, Mass., 1853.
Reproduced from an old colored lithographic print
IN OLDE NEW YORK

SKETCHES OP OLD TIMES AND PLACES IN
BOTH THE STATE AND THE CITY

BY
CHARLES BURR TODD
Author of "In Olde Cionnecticut," "In Olde Massachusetts,'!
"The Story of the City of New York," "The
True Aaron Burr," etc.

THE GRAFTON PRESS
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
JOSEPH Mcdonough co.
ALBANY, N. Y.

Copyright, 1907
By the GRAFTON PRESS

Cj 3. ¥3

FOREWORD
T I ^HIS book is dedicated to the citizens of New
-*¦ York who love her history and traditions.
Many of its stories were written twenty years ago
and are repeated now with very little change simply
because they described types and conditions (espe
cially in the great city) that no longer exist. The
generation that read them in 1885 in the Evening Post
or Lippincott's Magazine will re-peruse them as one
reads the faces of old friends long forgotten. To
the generation which has come on the stage since
they were written they will have the novelty and in
terest of original tales. My publishers and some of
my critics have suggested that I adapt them to
changed conditions. I let them stand as written.
C. B. T.
OCTOBEB, 1907.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I

The Old City Dock

1

II

The French Admiral Pierre de

Landais ....

17

ra

Two Marble Cemeteries .

28

IV

Some Old Time Figures

36

V

New York City in 1827

45

VI

Some Old Booksellers .

54

VII

A New York Curiosity Shop

72

Vlll

The Old Jumel Mansion .

77

IX

Two American Shrines .

86

X

The Story of the Palatines

91

XI

A Decayed Stronghold

118

XII

The Oriskany Monument .

123

XIII

Johnson Hall

129

XIV

Thomas Paine's Last Home

140

XV

The American Barbison

149

XVI

Easthamfton Chukchyakd

167

XVII

The Wreck of the John Milton

I 177

xvm

King Pharaoh's Widow

184

XIX

An Island Manor

190

XX

The Whalemen of Sag Harbor

197

XXI

Tales of Southamfi'on

206

viii Contents PAGE
XXII The Shinnecocks . . .216
XXIII Port Jefferson and the Whaleboat
Privateersmen .... 225
XXIV Harvard's First Graduate .
XXV Fire Island 

ILLUSTRATIONS
The Clipper Ship Dreadnought  Frontispiece
FACXNO PAGE
The Old City Dock  4
St. Patrick's Cemetery  18
The New York Marble Cemetery  SO
The New York City Marble Cemetery  34
Broadway from City Hall Park  52
The Jumel Mansion in 1854  78
The Richmond Hill Mansion  80
Ruins of Fort Ticonderoga  118
The Oriskany Monument  124
The Johnson House  >  130
The Thomas Paine Memorial  142
Main Street, Easthampton  150
The Grardiner Mansion, Gardiner's Island  190
The Surf Hotel, Fire Island  236

IN OLDE NEW YORK

IN OLDE NEW YORK
CHAPTER I
the old city dock*
\ N old time friend of mine, a gentleman of leisure,
¦^^- whenever an attack of ennui threatens, flees
to the city docks, where he finds in their bustle and
infinite variety an unfailing specific. He stops to
inspect whole fleets of canal boats snugly housed
during winter from the terrors of the "raging canawl,"
is thrilled at sight of an ocean steamer just in from
a perilous voyage, storm-battered, with torn sails, and
decks and rigging sheathed with ice. The great rail
way docks hold him a long time. On the Southern
steamship wharves he draws odorous breaths of resin
and tar, trails his cane through little puddles of molasses,
and gets his hair full of cotton lint, whereat the steve
dores grin. The dock where the trim Uttle fruit
schooners from the West Indies unload is a favorite
haunt and so are the piers along South Street, below
Roosevelt, where the few battered veterans of the Cali
fornia and Canton trade still discharge their cargoes.
When his circuit is completed he has studied every
> Written in 1883.

2 In Olde New York
nationality, learned the cut of every civilized jib,
heard the music of every tongue, and inspected the
products of the known earth.
The region between the present Coenties Slip and
Whitehall Street my friend finds most prolific of fan
cies. It is the site of the old city dock, the first built
on Manhattan. This dock was the corner-stone of
the commerce of our metropolis, the progenitor of our
thirty miles or more of wharves. That famous mo
nopoly, the West India Company, built it, and its
quaint, round-bottomed, high-pooped Dutch ships were
the first vessels here. They gathered the grain, pelts,
lumber, potash, and medicinal herbs that then formed
New Netherland's exports, or landed the hardware,
groceries, household goods, brick, "cow calves" and
"ewe milk sheep," and other peculiar Dutch imports.
As late as 1702 this dock formed almost the sole wharf
age of the city, and seventy-four vessels, pinks, galleys,
snows, a few brigs and ships, were moored to it during
the year, two thirds of them from the West Indies and
Southern provinces. The town then contained 5250
inhabitants, living in 750 dwellings, so that the wharf
was ample for its needs. As much of the interest and
romance of the old dock gathers about this period
from 1690 to 1700, I may indicate its primitiveness
by the fact that the city streets were first Hghted in
1697, by hanging a lantern on a pole before every
seventh house "in the dark time of the moon," and

The Old City Dock 3
that the city police force consisted of four honest
citizens whose ofiice was to walk the streets at night
sounding a bell and proclaiming the hour and state of
the weather.
Along the rude dock at that time we should have
seen, here a galley from Fayal, there a " pink" from
Barbadoes, in its neighbor a "snow" from Boston or
the Virginias, with possibly a full-rigged bark or ship
from London unloading cargo, for England was as
determined then as later that her American colonies
should receive their European products through her
own bottoms and warehouses. It is likely, too, that
a trim, buoyant vessel, painted black, with long taper
ing masts and spars, would be lying at the wharf —
a slave trader lately in from the coast of Guinea, and
about to sail for a new cargo. As soon as the stout
burghers of Manhattan acquired a little wealth in
stock and lands they felt the need of servants, and
despatched ships to the coast of Africa after them.
Strange adventures and many dangers attended these
early traders; if they escaped the pirates which then
swarmed in all frequented seas, they ran into some httle
port along the Angola coast, bargained with the petty
king of the place for a contingent, and so creeping
along the shore made up their cargo from a score of
villages, provided, however, that some piratical craft
did not follow them into harbor and capture craft,
cargo and all. For these were the days of such free-

4 In Olde New York
booting in the colonies as seems incredible to modem
ears. In our character of dreamer we shall see a dim,
shadowy vessel far out in the oflSng that does not come
boldly up to the wharf like an honest craft, but tacks
and fills as if waiting an assurance that the coast is
clear before venturing in. While we are speculating
about her a long boat appears coming from her direc
tion, in whose bow stands a stout, swarthy, bearded
man, his sinister face tanned by Indian suns, a fine,
beautifully wrought gold chain from Arabian work
shops about his neck, rings set with gems on his fingers,
and under his coat a netted belt through whose meshes
we catch the gleam of gold. Once ashore he makes
his way to the Governor's mansion, whence he presently
returns smiling and rubbing his hands gleefully, and
then hurries away to the ship. Next morning we
gather with the crowd to see the latter berthed, and
when this is done and the hatches removed, bale after
bale of costly merchandise is hauled up and carried
away. One might fancy himself for the nonce trans
ported to the Orient. Tea and cassia, rich silks of
China, woven fabrics of Cashmere, Indian sandal
wood, perfumes, and gems, spices and gums of Ceylon.
African gold and ivory, with half the products of
European workshops, the vessel pours out, until half-
a-million dollars in value has passed from her hold.
There is no doubt as to the character of the craft; she

The Old City Dock
As it appeared in 1746. Reproduced from an old wood-cut

The Old City Dock 5
belonged to that powerful guild of pirates which at
this period, under the corrupt Governor Fletcher, had
become one of the wealthiest interests of the city.
These colonial pirates at this distance of time seem
the ideal freebooters. As a rule they were the most
enterprising shipmasters of their day, who were drawn
from the merchant service into privateering during
the French and Spanish wars, and on the return of
peace, impatient of restraint, became privateers on
general principles and turned their guns on vessels
of every flag. The whole waste of waters was their
cruising ground, but their special field was the Indian
Ocean. With characteristic ingenuity they reduced
the business to a system. The home merchants, who
in many cases had fitted them out and had a share in
the profits, established lines of swift vessels to Mada
gascar, the rendezvous of the pirates, which carried
out such supplies as they might need and brought
back the booty to be disposed of as lawful merchandise,
the pirates themselves returning home only at intervals.
What seductive pictures must have been painted for
the adventurous youth of Gotham in 1690-6 when
the pirate captains were beating up the town for re
cruits! Fighting and bloodshed were not mentioned;
the prizes were unarmed and would yield to a show
of strength. And in sober truth these calculations
were correct. East India piracy was not a bloody trade ;
captured crews and passengers were in most cases well

6 In Olde New York
treated and put ashore at the nearest point. At the
trial of Captain Kidd his prosecutors could not fix a
single murder upon him, except that of a mutinous
member of his crew. With such inducements scores
of vessels fitted out from the colonial ports, chiefly
from New York and Rhode Island. Had they been
content with plundering the Dutch and native traders,
they might have continued to flourish for years; but
when, grown bolder, they began taking the rich bottoms
of the East India Company, that powerful corporation
began taking steps to suppress them.
The era of the California and Canton clipper ships
was one of which America may justly be proud, and,
singularly enough, the trade which they created cen
tered in the neighborhood, if not on the site, of the old
city dock.
They had their origin in the advantages which our
shrewd merchants of 1845 saw lay ia quick passages
to the East, but they were brought to perfection by
the CaKfomia gold mining excitement of '49 and suc
ceeding years. During their existence, they gave us
the supremacy of the seas, excited the keenest rivalry
between American and English ship-builders, and be
came the theme of international comment. Yet one
looks in vain for any account of them in the published
histories of the city, while the opening of the Pacific
Railway and the development of steam navigation
so revolutionized the machinery of commerce that

The Old City Dock 7
merchants of to-day have almost forgotten their ex
istence. The two lines of clippers were of nearly
simultaneous origin, the one in part the complement
of the other.
In the winter of 1848-9 New York wore an air of
suppressed excitement: in counting-room and oflSce,
tavern and exchange, there was one common topic of
conversation — gold; until, at length, the spell of it
fell on half the energetic men of the city. The spring
before, a workman clearing out a mill-race on a branch
of the Sacramento had found particles of gold. The
discovery leaked out despite the efiForts made to keep
it secret; it floated over the mountains, came around
the Horn, and brought unrest and disquiet not only
to the Atlantic seaboard cities, but to the old world
centers of capital and population as well. Many yet
remember the scenes of bustle and excitement pro
duced by the news. Ordinary methods of money-
making seemed slow or superannuated compared with
the picking up of gold nuggets in the river beds. The
newspapers fanned the flame by publishing interviews
with returned Califomians, and every scrap of news
concerning the diggings that could be gathered. The
Herald published California specials, and tales of
twenty-five and twenty-eight pound nuggets picked
up by lucky miners. Associations were at once formed
for proceeding to the gold regions. Clothing men
turned their attention to providing mining outfits;

8 In Olde New York
patent medicine men evolved specifics against chills,
fevers, rheumatisms, and other diseases incident to
a new country; publishers advertised "choice reading,
suitable for voyagers to the Pacific," and inventors
placed in the field a bewildering and ludicrous array
of contrivances for camping and gold-washing. Patent
mess hampers, folding tables, and dressing cases,
gold detecting scales, portable India rubber beds that
could quickly be inflated for use, and houses of the
same material that could be put up or taken down in
a few hours, figure in the advertisements of the day.
"I first heard the news, I think, in February, 1849,"
said an old pioneer, " from the wife of Clerk Gallagher,
of Washington Market. She had a babe barely a
month old, and was in a pretty condition at her hus
band's leaving her and going to the mines. As we
were talking Gallagher came in, and I remarked that
I felt Uke laying my stick across his back for his cruelty
in leaving wife and baby. 'Ah,' said he, 'wait till you
hear it all,' and he sat down and told me such tales
of the mines that when he had finished I was ready
to leave my desk and family and set out for the diggings.
There was witchcraft in it, you see."
The first pioneers went around Cape Horn, usually
chartering their vessel and furnishing their own out
fits. The later and more favorite route was across
Mexico, and later still over the Isthmus. The first to
lead a party over the Mexican route was Col. J. C.

The Old City Dock 9
Battersby, of New York City, favorably known during
the war as commander of the First New York Lincoln
Cavalry, and for his war sketches in Harper's Weekly.
The Colonel's reminiscences of the event are enter
taining. "It was in March, 1849," he says, "that I
hired a room at No. 2 Dey Street and advertised to
lead a company of men across Mexico to California
in sixty days at $250 each. It was the first time, to
my knowledge, that the idea had been broached.
The usual method for gold-diggers then was to form
an association of perhaps fifty or a hundred members,
charter a vessel, procure outfits, and sail around the
Cape, a voyage of five or six months. As showing
that there were those incredulous as to the richness
of the new Eldorado, I may mention that soon after
my advertisement appeared, the owner of the building
came to me and said he would have no more men roped
in there and their money taken away. 'You tell
them,' said he, 'there's gold in California, and I don't
believe there's that gold in CaHfomia,' indicating a
section of his thumb nail as large as a pea. 'Very
well,' said I, and secured rooms of Richard French,
on or near the spot where the Belmont Hotel now
stands. "The plan was so novel, however, and untried,
that few presented themselves. I secured but one.
Dr. N. S. Murphy, an Irish physician of character
and attainments. I had chartered the bark Eugenia,

10 In Olde New York
owned by Peter Argus & Co., and, after holding her
three weeks for the desired number, put my horse, my
Newfoundland dog, Rubens, and my outfit on board,
and embarked with the doctor for Vera Cruz where
we arrived in thirty-one days. From that port we took
the National Road to the City of Mexico twelve days,
thence by easy stages through the valley of Guarmica,
later Maximilian's summer retreat, to Acapulco.
Here the doctor was taken ill with burning fever and
lay forty days in the Governor's palace, where we were
hospitably entertained. Just as he was well enough
to travel, the British steamer Unicorn came into port
eight months from New York with 600 passengers on
board bound for San Francisco. Cabins, decks, fore
castle, everything was full, except the upper compart
ment of a large coop on the main deck which had been
used for the storage of fowls: this we secured for $100
each, and in this queer cabin made the voyage to San
Francisco." The vast influx of gold-seekers into California
naturally induced a demand for all sorts of goods, and
to supply these and at the same time furnish quick
passenger service, the merchants of New York and
Boston provided the clipper lines. J. & N. Briggs,
40 South Street; E. B. Sutton, 119 Wall; James Smith,
116 Wall; E. Richards & Co., 52 South; Thomas
Wardle, 88 South; E. W. Kimball & Co., 84 Wall;
C. H. & W. Pierson, 61 South; and N. L. McCready

The Old City Dock 11
& Co., 36 South, figure in the advertisements of the
day as the principal ship owners in the California
trade, all of them, it will be noticed, in the vicinity of
the old city dock. This section of the water front
never had seen, and never will see again, such scenes
of bustle and animation as then enlivened it. Truck
after truck loaded with lumber, groceries, provisions,
clothing, mining implements, and miners' outfits
crowded it from morning till night. Groups of pioneers
roughly clad in suits of tough, ill-smelling, English
cloth, -mih pockets covering all available space, wives
and children bidding them tearful farewells, the de
parture of half-a-dozen vessels a day, were the scenes
there presented.
The trade with CaUfomia was a very unsatisfactory
one for the merchants engaged, owing to the fluctuating
character of the market. Many fortunes were lost
as well as made in the business, and many cargoes
shipped that did not pay the charges, the ship owners
being often obliged to sue for their freight money.
An instance of this uncertainty was narrated by Colonel
Battersby. On arriving at San Francisco he had
written a letter to a friend in New York, cashier of
the Chemical Bank, in which he mentioned casually
the abundance and cheapness of provisions in the city.
As the cashier was reading it a gentleman came in to
draw out $50,000, remarking as he did so that he was
about sending a cargo of provisions to California, as

12 In Olde New York
they were all starving out there. On hearing the
Colonel's letter, however, he decided to rehnquish the
venture. Perhaps it was this uncertainty of a market,
perhaps the competition of the steamers, that led the
more enterprising merchants to make San Francisco
only a port of call, and to send their clipper ships over
the Pacific to the rich ports of China and India; at
least about this time originated the Canton tea trade
as a distinctive business of the port.
Of course, there had been trade with China before,
but the California clippers were not in it. Salem,
fifty years earlier, had boldly announced herself a
competitor with Europe for the trade of the Orient,
and had demonstrated the superiority of small, swift
vessels in the transportation of teas and rich cargoes.
Boston and New York now began to put in commission
those magnificent clippers that for speed and seafaring
qualities have never been equaled, and wliich, but
for the development of the steam marine, would cer
tainly have wrested from England her boasted suprem
acy of the seas. Most of the shrewd, far-seeing
merchants and skilled sea captains who carried on this
enterprise have done with ledger and log-book, and
sleep in Greenwood or in the coral depths. A single
firm the writer succeeded in finding in Burling Slip,
and was kindly allowed to mouse among its scrap-
books and records at will.
The great object aimed at in these clippers was

The Old City Dock 13
speed, and their owhers had the English as well as the
American market in mind in their construction. If
the English merchant could secure his cargo of tea
or silks from Canton in an American bottom a month
earlier than in an English one, they argued, interest
would prompt him to charter the quicker craft. It
was found, too, the longer a cargo of tea was on the
water the more it deteriorated. "Speed" was there
fore the order given the American ship-builder. The
more famous clipper ship-yards were those of W. H.
Webb and Jacob Westervelt in Brooklyn, Charles
Mallory and Greenwood & Sons, Mystic, Ct., and
Donald McKay, East Boston. The clippers were
sharp, comparatively narrow for their length, and
models of trimness and grace. Some were of large
tonnage, the Eternal for instance registered 1800 tons,
the Staghound 1534, the Sovereign of the Seas, built
by Donald McKay, 2421. Later the Young America,
of New York, was turned out, registering eighty tons
more, whereupon Mr. McKay expressed his deter
mination to build a ship of 3500 tons to carry 4000
tons of merchandise to California. As a rule, how
ever, the true Canton clippers were vessels of from
500 to 1000 tons burden. Some of the quick passages
they made approached the incredible, and exceeded
the quickest steamer time of the day. In 1852 there
were in commission the clipper ships Surprise, Celestial,
Sea Witch, Samuel Russell, Staghound, George E.

14 In Olde New York
Webster, and barks Race Horse and Memnon, all of
which had made the passage from New York to San
Francisco in from ninety to one hundred and twenty
days, the average steamer time being one hundred
and fifty. The clipper ship Northern Light once sailed
from San Francisco to Boston in seventy-six days,
five hours; and in a trial of speed with the Contest
in 1853 made the passage to New York in seventy-
three days. The log-book of the ship Samuel Russell,
one of New York's finest vessels, in a voyage from
China home, showed a total of 6722 miles run in thirty
days, the greatest distance in one day being 318, or
13^ miles per hour. The same ship sailed from
Whampoa, China, February 5, 1848, passed Anglers
on the 15th, Cape of Good Hope March 18, the equator
April 6, and took the New York pilot April 27.
One gets no idea of the esprit and dash of the cHppers,
however, unless he stumbles on some idle tar of the
many on South Street, who formerly served in the
fleet. Mention a Canton clipper to such a one, and
his eyes glisten, and his tongue wags fast. "There
was nothin' like 'em for prettiness," he observes, "and
the way they jist did flog all other craft out of the
water. I remember once we was at Hong Kong in
the Sam'l Russell, and as there was a Britisher leaving
for New York, we sent home letters by him. 'Bout
a month later the Russell cleared on the same tack,
an' she did drive on that voyage like a race horse.

The Old City Dock 15
Sail after sail she overhauled and left behind : roundin
the Cape, I remember, the Jack Tars started the
sayin' that 'the old man couldn't hold his horses in.'
But flyin' up the coast of Brazil what did we do but
skip by that Britisher that had our letters on board
and make port a week ahead of him, delivering 'em
by word of mouth. Another voyage I was on that
racer, the Flyin' Cloud, comin' home from Hong
Kong. I tell you 'twas as bracin' as a glass of grog
to stand on her top hamper and feel her pull, comin'
down the trades. Once in a while a brother Yankee
would give us a tug before we could shake him oflF,
but as for anythin' foreign, English, Dutch, or French,
we handled 'em as though they was babies. There
was one thing the ship did on that v'yage that I've alius
blamed her owners or nearest relations fer not spin 'in'
a yam on. One day we took a pretty smart breeze
on the starboard quarter, and held it tolerably steady
for the space of ten days, in which time, sir, we made
upwards of forty-five degrees, hard on to 3200 miles,
328 miles one day, as the log will show. Ther's
another thing; bein' so long and narrer, you'd expect
the clippers would ship some water, but all that v'yage,
I didn't see a gallon o' water on the ship's deck, not
enough 'to wash her down with."
American ships continued to rule the wave, until
superseded by the more reliable steamers. But what
a turn in fortune's wheel! In 1853 American ships

16 In Olde New York
securing cargoes in English home ports amid the
fiercest competition; in 1883 almost every pound of
America's exports afloat in British bottoms, and
scarcely an American vessel in commission in the foreign
trade!

CHAPTER n
THE FRENCH ADMIRAL PIERRE DE LANDAIS
TN 1880, St. Patrick's churchyard was one of the
-*• few in the densely populated portion of the city
remaining intact, and had long been closed to in
terments except by special permit of the Board of
Health. A blank brick wall hid it from the three streets
Mulberry, Mott, and Prince that bounded it: the old
Cathedral of St. Patrick overshadowed it, while the
oflBce of the Calvary Cemetery Association formed
part of the northern boundary.
If one hunted up the old sexton and was admitted
he found little turf within, httle shade, a fitter of
twigs and leaves on the ground, some of the tomb
stones shattered, and others overthrown or leaning far
out of the perpendicular; while the voices of the few
birds that harbored there were drowned by the dis
cordant noises of a squaUd neighborhood.
In this ground a tombstone was long ago erected
with this inscription:

18 In Olde New York
A La Memoire de
Pierre de Landais,
Ancien Contre Admiral
an service
Des Etats Unis.
Qui disparut
June, 1818,
ae 87 ans.
For forty years prior to the above date Pierre Lan
dais had been one of the noted characters of the city.
He claimed the rank of "Admiral," and those who
would retain his favor were obliged to observe a punc
tilious regard for the title. His short, stout figure clad
in a faded Continental uniform — cocked hat, small
sword, knee breeches, and all — seated in the shade
of Printing-House Square or pacing slowly down
Broadway to the BowKng Green — his favorite prome
nade — was a familiar object to the New Yorkers of
one hundred years ago. In the coffee-houses and
inns, equal sharers of his attentions, he never failed
of a circle of admirers to whom he recounted stirring
tales of sea fights in which he had been an actor, and
generally concluded with an account of his capture of
the Serapis and Countess of Scarborough, and a hearty
denunciation of the man who had stolen the laurels of
that conflict from him. His persistency as a claimant

St. Patrick's Cemetery
In the centre of the foreground is the tombstone of Admiral de Landais.
From a photograph taken in 1907, especially for "In Olde New York"

The French Admiral Pierre de Landais 19
before Congress alone made him noteworthy. He
had claims for arrears of pay and for prize money,
and urged them for forty years until he became the
Nestor of American claimants. Every year, at the
sitting of Congress, he hurried to Washington in the
lumbering old coaches that then connected the cities,
and haunted the lobbies and galleries of the Capitol
like an unquiet spirit, deluging Congress with petitions
and memorials, watching its proceedings with feverish
interest, and button-holing members at every oppor
tunity in the interest of his claims. In the journals
of Congress no name appears more frequently among
the petitioners and memorialists than his; but although
his petitions were personally urged, and often accom
panied by letters offering cogent reasons why his claims
should be allowed, they were never granted, and the
old man, year by year, returned to his lodgings at
the close of the session as empty as he went, to renew
the conflict with poverty, and five in the hope of
better fortune another year.
His history has the elements of a romance. One
cannot but feel, too, on reviewing his career, that there
may have, been a grain of injustice in the treatment he
received from his adopted country. He was bom a
Count of France, and early rose to the command of a
French line-of-battle ship, but relinquished all in
1777 to join his fortunes with those of the young re
public across the sea, then engaged in her gallant

20 In Olde New York
stand for Kberty. Baron Steuben recommended him,
and Silas Deane, then American Commissioner to
France, gave him the command of the ship Heureux,
rechristened the Flammand, recently purchased to
convey military stores to America. His commission,
dated March 1, 1777, was accompanied by this interest
ing letter from the worthy Commissioner: "I give you
a commission to use in case of necessity or advantage
in making a prize, but you are not to go out of your
course for that purpose. You will keep an account
of your expenses, which will be paid you on your
arrival in America. I shall write to the Congress by
other conveyances, and assure them that you have
received nothing but your expenses, and your generous
confidence in them will not pass unnoticed." So good
an authority as the Marine Committee of Congress
testified to the skill and address with which Landais
executed this commission, in eluding the British
cruisers sent to intercept him, and bringing the Flam
mand safely into port. Congress also showed its
appreciation of him by commissioning him a captain
in the navy, and ordered 12,000 livres to be paid him
"as a pecuniary consideration equal to his services."
The Marine Committee also gave him the oversight
of the ships-of-war then building at Portsmouth and
Salisbury for the newly-created navy, in their report
to Congress styling him "an excellent sea officer, and
skilled in the construction of ships-of-war." The next

The French Admiral Pierre de Landais 21
summer he enjoyed a still more signal mark of its
favor. On the 29th of May, 1778, the Alliance, a fine
and uncommonly fast frigate of thirty-six guns, was
launched at SaHsbury, Mass., where she had been long
building. She went into commission June 19, and for
her maiden voyage was ordered to transport the Mar
quis de Lafayette and suite to France. Her com
mander, duly commissioned by Congress, was the
Admiral Pierre Landais. The memorable voyage of
the Alliance, the motley character of her crew — a
part of whom were English seamen from a vessel
wrecked on the Massachusetts coast — how these
mutinied as the vessel neared the British coast, and
how the mutiny was promptly quelled by Landais,
and the vessel safely brought into Brest, is told in
history. In France Landais met his evil genius in the person
of the famous Admiral John Paul Jones. Landais
had his faults, being haughty, imperious, punctilious,
quarrelsome, and a martinet. Jones was all this and
more, and the two were at enmity from the moment
of meeting. They met first in August, 1779, at Brest,
where a Kttle squadron composed of four French
vessels and the Alliance had rendezvoused in order to
make a swoop on the Baltic fleet then about due in
England. Jones, in command of the Bon Homme
Richard, was the senior officer, and there was trouble
before the fleet sailed as to who should command it,

22 In Olde New York
but the matter was amicably settled at last by each
of the five commanders signing an agreement to act
in concert under the commissions received from Con
gress. The squadron got under way August 14, and
on the 23d of September met the Baltic fleet, con
voyed by the Serapis and Countess of Scarborough.
The details of the engagement that followed are so
familiar that I need not repeat them. The charges
so frequently made against Captain Landais by Jones
in his report of the affair to Franklin, and corroborated
by the statements of other officers of the fleet, merit
attention. It was charged that the Alliance held aloof
at the opening of the engagement, and that when she
came to the aid of the Bon Homme Richard, then
engaged with the Serapis, she poured her broadsides
into the former, and repeated the maneuver again
and again, never once striking the Serapis except
over or through the decks of the Richard. The report
did more than this — it distinctly charged the com
mander of the Alliance, first with cowardice and then
with treachery — that he designed to sink the Richard
in order to win for himself the glory of capturing the
Serapis. These charges were generally accepted as
true by the American public of that day, and have
passed into history as truth. This paper makes no
attempt to disprove them. It is but due to Captain
Landais to say, however, that he met them with an
Indignant denial, and that he at once demanded a

The French Admiral Pierre de Landais 23
trial, where he might be confronted with his accusers,
which demand was not granted.
He showed himself to be no craven, however, by
calling out one of his defamers — Captain Cottineau,
of the Pallas — and running him through with his
smallsword. This exploit he followed up, by chal
lenging the commander of the Brni Homme Richard.
No meeting, however, took place. Franklin, obUged
to notice the charges, ordered Landais to Paris to
answer them; but although the latter promptly pre
sented himself at the capital, and used every effort to
that effect, he failed to secure a trial.
Finding his efforts there fruitless, Landais, early in
1780, applied to Franklin for leave to go to America
to answer the charges preferred against him there.
Frankhn, no doubt glad to have the affair off his hands,
consented, and ordered his expenses paid. A few
weeks later, March 17, Landais wrote again to Frank
lin asking to be reinstated in command of the Alliance,
which had by this time come into French waters and
was lying at L'Orient, and which, it was rumored,
was soon to sail with stores for America. A testi
monial from fourteen officers of the Alliance, declar
ing Captain Landais to be a brave and capable com
mander, and a letter from the crew, saying that unless
their prize-money was paid and their former captain
restored to them they would not sail in the Alliance,
accompanied the letter. Franklin deemed the send-

24 In Olde New York
iog of this letter an act of unparalleled effrontery,
and in his reply frankly told its author so. At this
juncture Arthur Lee, agent of the United States at
Paris, came to the aid of our hero with an opinion
that by the terms of his old commission from Congress,
which had never been revoked, he was still lawful
commander of the Alliance, and indeed responsible
for her until relieved by Congress; and, with this con
venient instrument in his pocket, Landais lost no time
in getting to L'Orient and regaining his old command.
Then the Alliance hastily completed taking in cargo
and put to sea. Arrived in Boston her captain found
the Court of Inquiry he had demanded awaiting him.
Its verdict, based solely, as its victim affirmed, on the
testimony of his enemies, was guilty of the charges
preferred by Jones, and its sentence a summary dis
missal from the service. Degraded in rank and stained
in reputation, the Admiral returned to France and
took service under the Republic. He was at once
given command of the seventy-four-gun frigate Patriot,
and did efficient service in the war which the young
General Bonaparte was then waging in Italy. In
1797 he quitted the French service and returned to
New York, which continued to be his residence until
his death in 1820. These years were spent solely
in pressing his claims upon the attention of Con
gress. These claims were for arrears of pay while in actual

The French Admiral Pierre de Landais 25
service in the Navy, and for arrears of prize money.
The Alliance, while under his command, had taken
three prizes, valued in the aggregate at $40,000, which
she sent into Bergen, Norway, but which the authori
ties there, overawed by British power, delivered to
their former owners. The commander's share of this
money Landais later made the basis of a heavy claim
against the Government, with what success has been
stated. His pugnaciousness even in old age seems
not to have deserted him. On one occasion while in
Washington, it is said, hearing that a Congressman
had spoken slightingly of him in debate, he mounted
his smallsword and proceeded to the gallery of the
House, where he despatched a page to the offending
member with an invitation to meet him on the field
of honor. Toward Admiral John Paul Jones, whom
he regarded as the author of his misfortunes, he en
tertained the deepest antipathy. The story goes —
set in motion by himself — that on one occasion he
met the Chevalier in Water Street and coolly spat in
his face — a story which was denied by Jones and his
friends as often as told. Toward the close of his
career the Count became miserably poor, eking out
an existence by the aid of an annuity purchased years
before by his arrears of prize money.
In a memorial addressed to Congress during this
period, and later published in a pamphlet now ex
tremely rare, he thus refers to his exploits and to the

26 In Olde New York
straits to which he is reduced. The words are en
tirely typical of the man. He says:
"I was born and brought up in affluence; was
admitted into the sea-service of the King of France
in 1762, in which service I was wounded in the year
1763, in a glorious sea-battle; circumnavigated the
globe under command of M. de Bougainville in the
years 1766-67-68; had command of a line-of-battle
ship in 1773; brought into Portsmouth, Hampshire,
in 1777, a ship loaded with brass guns, mortars, etc.,
for the United States. Being returned to France in
1791, I had command of the French 74-gun ship
Patriot, and had at different times under my orders
ten squadrons or divisions of the army. The Patriot
was the nearest ship to the batteries of the city of
Oneglia at the taking of it. With seven ships of the
line I took the Island of Antioch in 1792, which was
guarded by 2500 men."
He then goes on to state that, promoted to the rank
of Rear-Admiral, he had command of the ship
Ocean, of 122 guns, on board of which his allowance
for table expenses alone was forty Kvres per day; that
he had a fortune when he came to this country, all of
which had been spent in urging his claim; so that for
the last seven years he had been reduced to Kving on
a dollar a week and " when at home to do the meanest
drudgery of my lodging in order to keep my honor
and integrity unsoiled and to preserve my Ufe."

The French Admiral Pierre de Landais 27
The last few years of his Ufe were spent in Brooklyn,
in a house on Fulton Street. He frequented his
accustomed haunts, however, so long as strength per
mitted. His eccentricities increased with age. He
evinced much bitterness against Congress and the
Government, and his sense of honor became so nice
that he would not even allow a friend to pay his fer
riage over the river. In 1818 he ordered a tombstone,
caused to be engraved upon it the inscription given in
the beginning of this paper, and then placed it at the
head of his prospective grave in St. Patrick's Church
yard. When attacked by his last illness he was carried
at his own request, to Bellevue Hospital, and there
died September 17, 1820. After a long search I suc
ceeded in finding the record of his death and burial
in the books of the Cemetery Association, as follows:
"Admiral Peter Landais, died in Bellevue Hospital,
Sept. 17, 1820. Funeral expenses $20.62^^. Paid."

CHAPTER III
TWO MARBLE CEMETERIES
npHERE are two interesting old cemeteries in the
-*¦ neighborhood of Second Avenue and Second
Street, one the New York Marble Cemetery, on Second
Avenue between Second and Third streets, the other
the New York City Marble Cemetery on Second Street,
between Second and First avenues. Although their
names are similiar, they are separate organizations.
Some of their features are peculiar. They are, we
believe, the only cemeteries in the city whose owner
ship and managements are entirely non-sectarian. They
are the only ones where the old-fashioned custom of
interring the dead in underground vaults has always
been followed. They contain the only receiving vaults
in the city limits open to the general public, and their
tombs hold more dust of "ancient families" than any
plots of equal proportions in the town.
When they were laid out they were in a waste of
pasture field; the city had then barely crept up to
Bleecker Street. Now they are surrounded by piles
of brick and mortar so high that the sun must be well

Two Marble Cemeteries 29
up before its rays touch their flowers and green
sward. The New York Marble Cemetery occupies nearly all
the inside, or the back yards, of the block and is entered
from Second Avenue through a narrow passageway.
From the iron gate on the avenue one would not
imagine there was a cemetery within, for there are no
monuments at all, and not even slabs to mark the
exact position of the stone-lined vaults which are
sunken beneath the surface. Set into the high wall
surrounding the grounds are tablets bearing the names
of the owners of the vaults, 156 in number. At one
end is a large index tablet with the names in alpha
betical order, and among them we read the well-known
New York names of Kernochan, Parrish, John Hone,
Seribner, Stokes, Riggs, Harvey, Van Zandt, Griswold
Lorillard, Hoyt, Anthony Dey, Haggerty, and New-
comb. The grounds are laid out with three broad
avenues, perhaps 200 feet long, and with cross-walks
about 85 feet long at either end, and in the far corner
is the receiving vault.
The New York City Marble Cemetery is in plain
view of the passer-by going through Second Street.
Here the vaults are 258 in number and are marked by
stone slabs let into the ground, while there are many
handsome monuments which have been erected by the
vault owners in the memory of their dead. Against
the rear wall, opposite the entrance, is a large receiving

30 In Olde New York
vault, which in its day has held representatives of every
nation and clime, both the noble and ignoble, the great
and wise of the cily, as well as the stranger who died
far from home and kin, within its walls. The principal
monuments and slabs bear the names of Gouvemeur,
Fish, Allen, BuUus, Holt, Gallatin, Griswold, Gross,
De Klyn, Quackenbos, Kevan, Howland, and Blood-
good, Anthony, Bancker, Bergh, Bogardus, Booraem,
Hoffman, Kip, Kneeland, Lenox, Low, Morton, Ogden,
Ockershausen, Ridabock, Roosevelt, Saltus, Storm,
Tappin, Tier, Tillotson, Van Alen^ Van Antwerp,
Vantine, Webb, Willett, Winans, Wynkoop, and
others. Much more of histoiy and romance lingers about
the old yard than the careless passer-by, or the curious
student even, at first sight would imagine. In itself
it has little claim to antiquity, having been laid out
barely seventy-six years ago. In its vaults, however,
reposes the dust of the stout old mynheers and burgo
masters who first settled Manhattan Island. This
apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that
it has been made a receptacle for the contents of church
vaults and family burial-places among the earliest on
the island. It was first purchased in 1831 by Perkins
Nichols and Ebert A. Bancker, who designed it as a
private cemetery for their own families, and for a
limited number of others who might purchase rights
of interment there. It then formed a part of the

The New York Marble Cemetery
From a photograph taken in 1907, especially for "In Olde New York"

Two Marble Cemeteries 31
Phillip Minthorn farm, and the region round about
was covered with farms and pastures. Bleecker
Street was then on the outskirts of the city. Second
Street and the adjoining avenues had been laid out,
but there were no buildings on them, and a series of
pastures and marshes, tenanted by geese and cattle,
swept to the East River. The purchase comprised
some fifteen cily lots, and the sum paid was $8643.
The next year, 1832, it was regularly incorpora;ted as
the New York City Marble Cemetery, the title being
vested in a board of five trustees. The construction
of vaults was at once begun, and 234 were completed
by 1838, at which time the cemetery may be said to
have been finished, although twenty-four vaults were
opened in 1843. Many vaults had been purchased
and many interments made before this, however, one
of the first having been that of the remains of ex-
President Monroe. Soon after the opening of the
ground several down-town churches and many private
families purchased the vaults and removed the remains
of their dead thither. One of the most notable in
stances of this was that of the Kip family, which pur
chased vault 241 and removed thither generations of
their dead from the old family burying-ground at Kip's
Bay. About the same time the old South Dutch
Church, on Garden Street, purchased vaults Nos. 191
and 192, and deposited the remains of the dead in its
vaults which had lain there so long as to be unknown

32 In Olde New York
or unclaimed by kindred. Some 5000 dead, the tmstees
estimate, are now enclosed in these vaults.
Old residents of the city, familiar with the cemetery,
tell of many striking scenes and incidents In its history.
Imposing ceremonies attended the interment here, on
the 7th of July, 1831, of the remains of James Monroe,
fifth President of the United States. A brigade of
militia, under General Jacob Morton, formed the mili
tary pageant. The chief men of the nation joined the
procession, and, as the coffin was lowered into the
vault, bells tolled, and the flags of vessels in the harbor
flew at haff-mast. These august ceremonies dedicated
the new cemetery, so to speak, and added much to its
later repute among the old, exclusive families of the
cily. At first thought it seems strange that Monroe, a
native of Virginia, should have been interred in this
little private Cemetery on the outskirts of New York.
The mystery becomes clear, however, when it is re
membered that his son-in-law, Samuel L. Gouvemeur,
at whose house he died, owned a vault in the cemetery,
and that it was natural for Mrs. Gouvemeur to desire
her father laid near her own last resting-place. After
reposing here for twenty-seven years the remains were
exhumed and conveyed to Virginia with rather less of
ceremony than had attended their original interment.
A simple incident led Virginia to take this action.
Early in 1857 a number of gentlemen, natives of that
State, but resident in New York, conceived the plan

Two Marble Cemeteries 33
of raising a monument to the ex-President over the
unrecognized vault that held his dust. The project
was hinted abroad, and in course of time reached
Virginia, where it seems to have touched State pride
and jealousy to the quick. That it should be left to
New York to commemorate a son of Virginia who had
filled the chair of the Chief Magistrate was deemed a
reflection on the Commonwealth, and steps were at
once taken to have the remains removed to the State
capital. To create public sentiment in favor of this,
exaggerated reports as to the condition of the Presi
dent's grave were spread broadcast through the State.
He was reported as lying in an old, unused burying-
ground, overgrown with weeds and vines, in the
outskirts of the city, his grave unmarked, and cattle
and hogs roaming at will above it. A committee of
two was appointed by Virginia to receive the remains
and attend them to their final resting-place in Holly
wood Cemetery, Richmond. At the yard the exhuma
tion was conducted with secrecy, the family being
desirous of avoiding a crowd.
At 4.30 o'clock on the 2d of July, 1858, a carriage
drove up to the cemetery gate. It contained Alderman
Adams, representing the Common Council, and was
soon joined by carriages containing the Virginia dele
gates, Messrs. Mumford and O. Jennings Wise, Col.
James Monroe and S. L. Gouvemeur representing
the family, a delegation of resident Virginians, and the

34 In Olde New York
undertaker. At five o'clock the coffin of the ex-Presi
dent was placed in the hearse, and, amid the tolling
of bells, with the flags of the shipping in the harbor at
half-mast, was conveyed to the Church of the Annun
ciation, in Fourteenth Street. Here and at the City
Hall it lay in state for several days, and was then con
veyed to Richmond by the steamer Jamestown, its
escort, the famous Seventh Regiment, proceeding by
the Ericsson. Old members of that gallant corps
still remember the service for its heat and discomforts.
The visitor, perhaps, will be apt to linger longest
about vaults 191 and 192. Here rest the unknown,
unclaimed remains of the early burghers of New
Amsterdam. What a stir you fancy there must have
been among the ghosts when the edict for clearing out
the vaults of the Old South went forth. A hundred
and more years they had rested undisturbed. Genera
tions had come and gone. A city had grown up around
them. Their descendants, like their property, had
been scattered over the earth, and now none remained
to care for their bones. The church authorities,
alarmed at the encroachments of the city on their
property, ordered a removal to the new cemetery up
town. Then came a day when the vaults were opened
and the old sexton descended with his box to gather
up the dust.
There are other vaults in the yard prolific of mem
ories. In the Morton vault lie the remains of General

The New York City Marble Cemetery
The slab in the foreground covers the vault where James Monroe was interred
From a photograph taken in 1907, especially for "In Olde New York"

Two Marble Cemeteries 35
Jacob Morton, who commanded the military at the
obsequies of ex-President Monroe. The receiving
vault held for some years the body of the Spanish-
American General Paez, who, after the usual stormy
career of generals in his country, fled to New York, to
find the death he had escaped in far more warlike
scenes awaiting him here. The body was in dispute
among the relatives, it is said, and when the question
was settled it was removed to South America for burial.
Commodore Eagle of the navy is buried at the west
end of the yard, and near him lies Commodore Bullus;
the latter, with his wife and three small children, was
on board the Chesapeake when the Leopard made her
murderous attack. They were on their way to a
Mediterranean Consulate at the time, and during the
action Mrs. Bullus and her children were removed
from the cabin to a place of safety, but the Commodore,
though a non-combatant, remained on deck and fought
gallantly through the whole affair.

CHAPTER IV

SOME OLD-TIME FIGURES '

" JOHN I. BROWERE was one of a class of men
*^ peculiar to the early days of American art. A
native of New York, he was in his youth a sign painter.
Showing promising talent, he was induced to take
lessons under Archibald Robertson, and after shght
instruction moved to Tarrytown and set up his easel
as a portrait painter, at the same time eking out his
resources by teaching school. A Kttle later a brother
offered him a free passage to Leghorn in the ship he
commanded, and the artist proceeded to Italy, spend
ing two years there, rambling from city to city and
diligently studying art, and more especially sculpture.
Returning to America about 1820, he built a studio
in the rear of his residence. No. 315 Broadway, adjoin
ing the old New York Hospital, and I suppose took
the bust of every gentleman of note then hving in the
city. Some 200 examples of his work are said to be
in existence in New York. His most ambitious
project was a national gallery of busts and statues of
distioguished Americans, a project encouraged by
' This was written in 1883.

Some Old Time Figures 37
Jefferson, Adams, Lafayette, and all the famous men
of the day. Browere was a poet and inventor as well
as artist; one occasionally comes upon his verses in
the albums of old ladies of the city; he also invented
a stove for burning anthracite coal, and a process for
manufacturing oiled silk, which gave several people
immense fortunes, although he, owing to his improvi
dence in money matters, never received a penny. He
died poor in 1834, of cholera, after only six hours'
illness, at his house by the old mile-stone in the Bowery,
leaving his gallery only half completed. His son, A.
D. O. Browere, the artist, has recently placed on ex
hibition a completed portion, which embraces busts
of Jefferson, Lafayette, the three Adamses, Madison,
Clay, DeWitt Chnton, the three captors of Andre,
Forrest, and others."
. These facts, suggested by the modest sign, " Browere 's
Busts of Distinguished Americans," on the front of
the building No. 788 Broadway, were told me some
twenty years ago by an old New Yorker. It proved
to be an interesting place to visit. Climbing two
flights of long winding stairs from an entrance on
Tenth Street, and passing through a long passage,
we entered the gallery, a well-lighted, neatly-carpeted
room. Twenty-three busts were ranged around the
sides, and there were others, with a collection of the
exhibitor's paintings in an ante-room. The busts were
interesting certainly, both as examples of the art of

38 In Olde New York
1820-25 and from their historic associations, but still
more interesting was the gossip and reminiscence they
inspired in the white-haired gentleman who exhibited
them. One might detect, however, running through
his monologue a little vein of resentment at the indif
ference of the pubhc to the merits of his collec
tion, and the efforts made in certain quarters to
discredit it.
"When my father was about taking the cast of
Charles Carroll, of Carrollton," said he, "he received
testimonials of his skill and ability from the first gentle
men in the city. I will read you this from Prof. Samuel
L. Mitchell, LL.D., which was endorsed by many
others equally competent to judge." From a little
morocco-covered book he read: "I approve your de
sign of executing a Ukeness in statuary of the Honor
able Charles Carroll, of Carrollton. When you shall
present yourself to him vsdthin a few days, I authorize
you to employ my testimony in favor of your skill.
Having submitted more than once to your plastic
operations, I know that you can perform it successfully
without pain and within a reasonable time. The Ulie-
nesses you have made are remarkably exact; so much
so that they may be called facsimile imitations of the
life. Your gallery contains so many specimens of
correct casts that not only committees, but critical
judges, bear witness to your industry, genius, and
talent."

Some Old Time Figures 39
"Jefferson writes here from Monticello, Adams
from Quincy, Madison from Montpelier, Clinton from
Albany, all bearing witness to the originality and life-
likeness of the casts made by my father; but when at
the late celebration at Tarrytown I wished to place
the busts of Van Wart, Williams, and Paulding on ex
hibition, it was objected to by a few young artists and
reporters, on the ground that it was not 'good art.'
They were there, though, and an old gentleman came
up who regarded them with great interest. 'Who
did them?' said he at length. 'My father, John I.
Browere, the sculptor,' I replied. 'I knew him and
them,' he rejoined, 'and they are fine examples.' I
afterward learned that the gentleman was Samuel J.
Tilden. "I want the Government to make bronze copies of
the casts," he continued, "and place them in the
Capitol or some museum of historical characters, but
Congressmen whom I have approached say they
cannot be worthy, because John I. Browere's name
does not appear in Dunlap's book of American ar
tists. I'll tell you why it does not appear. My
father, before he had ever met Dunlap, was asked
one day how he fiked his ' Death on the Pale Horse ' .?
'It's a strong work,' he repKed, 'but looks as if it
was painted by a man with but one eye.' The re
mark was reported to the painter, who had but one
eye, and he was mortally offended; he blackballed

40 In Olde New York
my father at the National Academy, and subse
quently ignored him in his biographical work."
"The greatest difficulty the sculptor had in secur
ing these," he remarked, turning to the casts, "was
with Lafayette's. Of course he was very desirous of
securing the distinguished friend of America for his
collection, and when Lafayette visited the city in 1825
a committee of the Common Council was appointed
to induce him to sit. He comphed after much per
suasion. The composition had set and my father
was about taking it off, when the clock struck and a
spectator inadvertently remarked that the hour for
the corporation dinner (which Lafayette was to attend)
had arrived. ' Sacre bleuV said he, starting up, 'take
it off, take it off,' causing a piece to fall from under
the eye. This accident, which necessitated a second
sitting, led to some interesting correspondence pre
served in my book here which you may fike to read.
First is a letter from the Committee of the Common
Council to Lafayette, dated 'New York, Saturday,
12 o'clock, July 12, 1825,' as follows:
"'Deak General: We have just been to see your
bust by Mr. Browere, and have pleasure in saying it
is vastly superior to any other likeness of General
Lafayette which as yet has fallen under our inspection.
Indeed it is a faithful resemblance of every part of
your features and form, from the head to the breast,
with the exception of a slight defect about the left eye.

Some Old Time Figures 41
caused by the loss of the material of which the mould
was made. This defect Mr. Browere assures us (and
we have confidence in his assurance) that he can cor
rect in a few moments and without giving you any
pain, provided you will again condescend to submit
to his operations for a limited time. We should much
regret that the slight blemish should not be corrected,
which if not done will cause to us and to the nation a
continual source of chagrin and disappointment.'
Two days later Alderman King wrote my father:
'Every exertion has been made to get General
Lafayette to spend half an hour to get the eye of his
portrait bust completed, but in vain. He has not had
more than four hours each night to sleep, but has
consented that you may take his mask in Philadelphia.
He left New York this morning at 8, and will be in
Philadelphia on Monday next, where he will remain
three days. If you can be present there on Monday,
or Tuesday at furthest, you can complete the matter.
He has pledged his word. This arrangement was all
that could be effected by your friend.' My father,
you see, adds this postscript:
'"The subscribing artist met General Lafayette on
Monday in the Hall of Independence, Philadelphia,
and Tuesday morning from 7 to 8 was busy in making
another likeness from the face and head of the General.
At 4 P.M. of that day he finished the bust under the
eye of the General and his attendants, and had the

42 In Olde New York
pleasure then of receiving from the General and his
son their assurances that it was the only good bust
ever made of him.'
"The masks of Jefferson, Madison, and Mrs. Madi
son were taken with several others during a visit to
Washington made by my father in 1825. It was his
custom to get a certificate of genuineness and likeness
from each sitter, and there are autograph letters in this
book from most of the subjects, to that effect. Jeffer
son, for instance, writes from Monticello, October 16,
1825 : ' At the request of the Hon. James Madison, and
of Mr. Browere, of the city of New York, I hereby
certify that Mr. Browere has this day made a mould
in plaster composition from my person for the purpose
of making a portrait bust and statue for his contem
plated National Gallery.' Here is a bust of Hamilton
modeled from a miniature by Archibald Robertson.
Jackson's bust he did not succeed in getting, as Powers
had preceded him by a few days, and had extorted a
promise not to sit to any other artist. He, however,
made a sketch. The finest head in the collection is
that of DeWitt Clinton. In appearance he was cer
tainly the noblest Roman of them all.
"I must repeat an impromptu that Samuel Wood-
worth, author of 'The Old Oaken Bucket,' made on
this bust. He had called to see that of Admiral Porter,
and as he stood in the door on departing, father said:
'Sammy, here's something you haven't seen,' at the

Some Old Time Figures 43
same time throwing off the cloth from the bust. Wood-
worth made a gesture as of restraint, and repeated:
'Stay! the bust that graces yonder shelf
claims our regard.
It is the front of Jove himself,
The majesty of Virtue not of Power!
Before which Guilt and Meanness only cower.
Who can behold that bust and not exclaim.
Let everlasting honor claim oiu* Clinton's name?'
made his bow, and departed.
"Van Wart's bust my father took at Tarrytown.
Paulding was brought to No. 315 by Alderman Percy
Van Wyck. Williams gave him the most trouble.
Twice he went by sloop and foot to Scoharie to take
his mask, and both times the veteran was away from
home. At length WilKams came to Peekskill on a
visit. General Delavan sent my father word, and he
went up there and took it. This was a short time be
fore Williams's death. J. W. Parkinson, a gentleman
of leisure in New York fifty years ago, reputed to be a
natural son of George IV., once offered my father
$3000 for the casts of the captors of Andre, his inten
tion being to destroy them, but my father refused the
offer. There is a story connected with this bust of
Forrest the tragedian. There is no hair on the head,
you see. When that was taken the actor was com
paratively unknown, having just made his appearance
in 'William Tell' at the Old Bowery Theatre. My
father declared that he would make an actor of note.

44 In Olde New York
and asked to take his mask for his gallery. On the
night the bust was taken, Forrest was to play William
Tell, and fearing the plaster mould might cling to his
hair, he donned a silk cap for the operation."
By and by, as no visitors appeared to interrupt, Mr.
Browere's recollections assumed a more personal cast.
He submitted to our inspection a time-stained certifi
cate of membership in the National Academy, dated
1838, and signed by Henry Inman, President, and also
a letter informing him that his picture of " Canonicus "
had drawn the first Academy prize of $100. We were
also shown several of his paintings, some California
landscapes, and three scenes from the life of Rip Van
Winkle.

CHAPTER V
new YORK CITY IN 1827
/^^NE conversant with the history of New York
^-^ knows how rapidly change has occurred in the
city, but he cannot realize it vividly until he has loitered
along its streets with some genial veteran who knew
the town in his youth, and loves nothing better than
to impart his reminiscences to the sympathetic Ustener.
Such a walk in such company we once had the
pleasure of taking, our route beiag down the Bowery
from Astor Place to Franklin Square, and thence to
the City Hall.
"All north of Astor Place, in 1825," said our com
panion, " was open country, a region of farms, thickets,
swamps, market gardens and fine old country seats
in extensive grounds. My early memories of the
region beyond St. Mark's Church yonder are grue
some enough. It was then known as Stuyvesant
Meadows, and gained unenviable notoriety by the
hanging there of one John Johnson, whose cast, taken
by Browere, may still be seen at Fowler & Wells's.
Johnson was the great criminal of his day. He kept
a sailor's boarding-house on Water Street, and one

46 In Olde New York
night murdered a farmer who had put up at his house,
having, as Johnson thought, some money about him.
The murderer put the remains in a sack, and was sur
prised, at night, carrying it through Schuyler's Alley
toward the river. Guilt made him a coward. He
dropped the sack and ran, its contents were thus dis
covered, and he was tried and sentenced by Judge
Edwards to be hanged. The procession, up Broad
way to Bleecker, across to the Bowery, then down
Ninth Street to the gallows, called out the greatest
crowd New York had ever seen, and led to the aboli
tion of such displays. Johnson was attired for the
occasion in white, with a white cap drawn over his
head. He rode in an open carriage escorted by
Stewart's troop of cavalry in advance, and a detach
ment of the National Guard in the rear, while an im
mense crowd of all ages and both sexes followed."
We had now progressed as far down the Bowery
as Bleecker Street. "Bleecker was my great black
berry preserve when I was a boy," observed our
cicerone, with a sigh. "What luscious berries grew
beside the walls on either side, and roses — no such
roses bloom nowadays." A few doors below Bleecker,
he stopped opposite a beer saloon. "Right here
Charlotte Temple lived after her retirement from the
stage, and died here. The house was one story high,
with two dormer-windows and a trelhs on both sides
covered with the luxuriant vines of the trumpet-flower.

New York in 1827 47
There was a little yard in front about twenty feet
deep filled with shrubs and flowers. The house was a
Mecca for the good and gifted of the city so long as its
mistress resided there, and few strangers of distinction
came to the city without paying a visit there. It was
known for some time after her death as the 'Temple
House,' and finally was turned into a drinking saloon
called the Gotham.
"The Bowery in those days resembled a country
road; it was unpaved and sandy above Spring Street,
and was studded pretty thickly with residences of the
gentry. These had high stoops fronting the road,
and were embowered in trees and shrubbery. Many
a summer night I have seen whole families on the stoops
enjoying the cool of the evening, and children trundling
hoops or playing marbles on the sidewalk. There
was one institution pecuKar to the Bowery in those days,
or at least it attained greater perfection there than in
other parts of the city. I refer to the hot-corn venders.
These were exclusively colored women, each dressed
as neatly as though she had come out of a bandbox,
with a flaming bandanna handkerchief on her head tied
in a peak. West India fashion, the ends hanging down,
and clean white or checked apron; They sat on
stools at the street comers and noted places, each with
a pail beside her, filled with hot com on the ear, and a
small cup on each side, one containing salt and the
other butter. When a patron approached she handed

48 In Olde New York
him a smoking ear, and the salt and butter; the latter
he gravely rubbed on the ear and ate as he stood.
Their cry was musical, and could be heard blocks
away. 'Hot com, hot com! here's your hly white
hot com,' they cried, but an old woman who sold on
the comer of Hester and Bond Streets, improved on
this. Her cry was :
'Hot com, hot com!
Some for a penny and some two cents.
Com cost money and fire expense.
Here's your lily-white hot corn!'
"There were almost as many venders on the streets
then as now, but more characteristic and picturesque.
Some bore trays containing baked pears swimming
in molasses, which the purchaser took between his
thumb and finger and ate. The 'sand man' was a
verity in those days. All the barrooms, restaurants,
and many of the kitchens in the city had sanded floors,
and men in long white frocks, with two-wheeled carts,
peddHng Rockaway sand, were familiar objects on
the streets. Then there were the darkeys who sold
bundles of straw for filling beds, and an old blind
man who sold door-mats made of picked tar rope.
One of the most genial and popular landlords in the
city I have seen peddling pails of pure spring water
in the Bowery at two cents a paiL He brought it from
what was then called Greenwich Village, above Aaron
Burr's Richmond Hill mansion.

New York in 1827 49
"This is the most distinctive landmark of old New
York I have seen," he remarked when another block
was passed, patting affectionately as he spoke a mossy
old mile-stone set in the sidewalk nearly opposite
Rivington Street, which bore this legend, "1 Mile
from City Hall." "Many a tired passenger in the
four-horse tally-ho six days on the road from Boston
has gleefully hailed this stone. The drivers of the
Harlem and Manhattanville stages always greeted it
with a merrier bugle peal. In those days we hadn't
thought of a railroad, and the Erie Canal was just
being opened. Spring Street marked the limits of the
paved streets in this direction when I was a boy and
young man. The walks were mostly of bricks laid
cat-a-comered, in those days.
" You see that third house on the side street. There
I found my wife. I was passing one morning and saw
her through the window looking down the street.
Suddenly she became aware that I was staring at her,
and slammed the blind to with energy. 'Sam,' said I
to my brother, 'that girl's going to be my wife.' Pass
ing that way a few days after, I saw a notice out that
boarders would be taken, and presented myself as a
candidate. Six months after we were married. That
is fifty years ago, and I have never had cause to regret
it; she has been a good wife.
" I never cross Grand Street " — we had reached
the roar and rush of that thoroughfare — " without

50 In Olde New York
thinking of a walk I had down it to the ferry in 1823.
There was to be a race that day on a course near
where the Union course was opened later, and all
New York interested in sport went out there to see it.
The race was between Eclipse and Sir Henry, and the
great interest taken in it arose from the fact that it had
been arranged between the horsemen of the North
and South to test the merits of the thoroughbreds of
the two sections. EcKpse represented the North and
Sir Henry the South. There was not a house on Grand
Street then between Essex Street and the ferry. I saw
on the south wild marshy pasture fields, with cattle
grazing among the black berry and wild-rose bushes,
and in the distance on the hills some old Dutch farm
houses. Colonel Willet's place, on the left, a fine old
country mansion, I remember, standing back from
the road amid its orchards. Grand Street Ferry was
then known as the 'Hook' ferry. You would laugh
at the ferry-boats of those days. They had open
decks with an awning stretched over and benches
around the sides, and were propelled by horse-power.
From four to sixteen horses were required, and they
walked around a shaft in the center of the boat, turn
ing it as sailors turn the capstan, and this shaft by
gearing turned the paddle wheels. On some boats
the horses worked a tread mill like the modem thresh
ing machines. The North triumphed that day —
Eclipse won. I doubt if he would, however, had it

New York in 1827 51
not been for Sam Purdy, a noted jockey of that time.
EcKpse lost the first heat, and Purdy saw from his
place on the judge's stand that his jockey was goring
him so terribly that he bled. So he leaped from the
stand, pulled the jockey off, and mounted in his place.
EcKpse felt the change at once, put his head up and
tail out and won the next two heads easily, putting
$20,000 in his master's pocket."
Chatham Square and FrankKn Square recalled many
reminiscences, but not of a nature to interest the
pubKc. In City Hall Park, however, our friend's
recollections became of more general interest. "The
City Hall had just been built then, between two prisons,
the Bridewell and jail. The jail, or debtor's prison,
was east of the hall and surrounded with a tight board
fence about eight feet high. On the Chambers Street
side of the Park were three buildings, all under one
roof. First (nearest Broadway) was the American
or Scudder's Museum, then the Academy of Fine
Arts, and the Almshouse, the artist and showman
being not far from the Almshouse at that day in more
senses than one. John Vanderlyn's Rotunda came
next on the east. Vanderlyn had been discovered by
Colonel Burr, in an interior town, covering his master's
blacksmith's shop with charcoal sketches, and had
been sent by him to Paris and Rome for education in
art. His 'Marius amid the ruins of Carthage' had
taken the prize at Paris under Napoleon, and he re-

52 In Olde New York
turned to New York comparatively famous. The city,
thinking to do something for American art, built the
Rotunda and gave Vanderlyn the lease of it for a
studio, and for the exhibition of his pictures. He
exhibited there his 'Marius,' 'Ariadne,' and the 'Gar
den of Versailles,' the latter a panorama taking up
two sides of the room. Speaking of pictures, Michael
Paff once made a lucky discovery. Paff was a picture
dealer, having a store on Broadway, near Vesey, and
the best art connoisseur in the city. A gentleman in
town had a large picture of Esther before King Ahas-
uerus, that he had secured at an auction sale, and
which his wife was desirous of exchanging for two
landscapes at Paff's. Paff good-naturedly made the
exchange, but in cleaning up his new purchase dis
covered it to be a genuine Van Dyck. After that he
spent about a week to the square inch cleaning and
bringing out the original color. Wealthy gentlemen,
art patrons, would drop in during the process, and
offer to purchase. Paff's first price was $1000, after
that he rose $1000 on every offer not accepted. Lyman
Reid, the patron of Cole, offered him $7000 for it,
which was quickly rejected, Paff's price having then
risen to $16,000. I was in the store one day with Alfred
Pell and Lyman Reid when Sir Robert Porter came in
and offered Paff $12,000 for the picture, saying he was
authorized to give that sum and no more by the National
Gallery, of London. Paff refused, and held on to the

Broadway, Looking Southward prom City Hall Park
This part of City Hall Park is now occupied by the Post Office building. From an old lithographic
print in the collection of John D. Crimmins of New York

New York in 1827 53
picture till his death. After that event, his widow
sold the picture to the National Gallery, it was said,
for $20,000. I could give you a volume of reminis
cences about the old American Museum. It had been
removed to the site of the later Herald Building,
and had ruined several owners, when P. T. Bamum
got hold of it and made a success of it.
"A fence surrounded the Park in those days, with
an entrance gate on the west. On the Chatham Street
side were a number of low one-story buildings —
cigar shops, beer saloons, and the pawn-shop of William
Stevenson, the first of the kind ever opened in New
York. Right opposite, on the comer of Frankfort
Street, stood Tammany Hall, the cradle of the present
famous organization; the modem sachems, you will
reflect, were but papooses then. The Hall was used
chiefly for public meetings of a poKtical cast. The
real council-room of the braves was a saloon a hundred
feet back on Frankfort Street, called the 'Pewter Mug.'
Here the chiefs held their pow-wows, and the plan
of their campaigns was mapped out. Several lawyers
of note had offices in the Hall. Aaron Burr's was on
the south side of the building. Many a time have I
seen him help Madame Jumel into her carriage stand
ing before the door, and he did it with incomparable
grace."

CHAPTER VI
SOME OLD BOOKSELLERS
OF the many obscure callings by which men gain
a KveKhood in New York none is more useful
than that of the antiquarian booksellers, of whom
there were in 1885 about twenty in the city. The
favorite home of this class was then the region trav
ersed by WilKam and Nassau streets, which may be
said to be bounded somewhat indefinitely, by Cliff
Street on the east and Broadway on the west.
These establishments displayed no gilded signs or
plate-glass windows to the pubKc gaze. They never
advertised in the public prints; they rather avoided than
sought pubKcity, being hidden away in musty, iU-
smelling apartments, up many flights of narrow stairs,
or at the end of long, dimly-Kghted passages. Their
customers in person were few, their chief patrons being
the coKectors and bibKophiles of the entire country,
and these were reached by catalogues issued quarterly.
These catalogues were often extensive and elaborate,
and displayed much wit and ingenuity in their con-
stmction. The first page of a catalogue of 1868, for
instance, reads as follows:

Some Old Booksellers 55
"Two thousand seven hundred personals, funeral
sermons, eulogies, biographical sketches, memorials,
&c., which may be bought — if any one wants them
— of  , who, on receipt of the trifling number of
cents hinted at just to the left of the place and date
of imprint will take pleasure in sending any one or
more of them, at his own expense, to any place where
Uncle Sam keeps a post-office."
The "Motto" is the following sentiment from
Horace Greeley:
"A man who does not care enough about his rela
tions to pay four shillings for a funeral sermon on his
grandfather, or even on his mother-in-law, is a bom
ingrate, and meaner than a goat thief."
Another is a "catalogue of about two bushels of
tidbits relating to that never-to-be-forgotten scrim
mage the American Revolution, for sale by  ,
book peddler." In his preface to the same the old
bookseller thus refers to some of the bores that infect
a bookseller's shop:
"At the instance of a considerable number of friendly
critics who have heretofore more than made up by
their willingness to give good advice for their reluc
tance to buy anything, but who without doubt are only
waiting for me to show a proper and becoming appre
ciation of their views, I have requested the printer to
put the A's at one end of this Kst and the W's at an
other, and call it a catalogue. As I am now for the

56 In Olde New York
first time trying to cater to a class of pundits who
know what's what, I have not ventured to apply the
terms rare and scarce, nor any one of the endless
changes which may be rung upon them by the hand
of a master. I trust, however, that I shall be par
doned (as I have a family to support) for mentioning
that a considerable number of my tidbits were con
sidered by Mr. Stevens worthy a place in his catalogue
of nuggets, and that not a few of them are so uncommon
that they have escaped the notice of the compiler of
that invaluable handbook, Sabin's Dictionary, and his
hundred-eyed corps of assistants. Perhaps — as is
constitutional with me — I have been modester than
I could afford, and that I ought to have made an un
sparing use of the adjectives and peppered my book
with them, hit or miss. The die is cast, however;
quite Kkely I may not sell a tidbit; but I am determined
this once to give my modesty the rein, and Kke Lord
Timothy Dexter, let critic or customer pepper or salt
this, my first catalogue, to suit himself.
" Having chosen my exemplar, I will be no less
attentive to the convenience of my critics and cus
tomers than was his Lord Timothyship to the wants
of his readers. I have therefore copied for their use,
from a recent auction catalogue, a few of the adjec
tives and persuasives appKed to such of the commoner
tidbits as the owner had been able to 'buy at a bar
gain.' 'Scarce,' 'Very scarce,' 'Rare,' 'Very Rare,'

Some Old BookseUers 57
"Tres Rare' (that's French). 'Unattainable except at
pubKc sale.' 'Not mentioned by Rich.' 'We have
never sold a copy.' 'We are unable to record any
other copy.'"
The immense private collections which are from
time to time unloaded upon the market hurt the trade
and are greatly dreaded by the old booksellers. Such
a collection was the Brinley Kbrary, sold at auction
in New York.
In his catalogue, issued soon after the sale, one of
the tradesmen thus labors with the deluded buyers who
will purchase at auction rather than of the trade:
"This sale footed up nearly $49,000. Mr. Brinley,
by his will, not less wisely than generously, gave to
five pubKc Kbraries $24,500, to be bought out or, as a
book-peddler would express it, in trade.
"The Kbraries of the favored institutions fought
nobly. So nobly that it is doubtful if the bequests
will make the estate a dollar the poorer. Of books so
rare that I know nothing about their value, I will say
as Kttle as I Icnow. Rare books that I had seen sold
before, sold high. The greater part of the catalogue
sold very high. Hundreds of common books — so
common that they may readily be found in bookstores,
and yet not unworthy a place in this splendid collec
tion — sold at prices far beyond what any bookseller
would dare to ask. Buyers of such, except ' on account, '
generally got their fingers burnt. I had myself just

58 In Olde New York
enough of that sort of experience to know how it feels.
Having by mistake bought lot 1785 for $15, I had it
resold on my account; it brought $7. At the reselling
the Kbrarians did not rally worth a cent. I would have
cheerfully given their institutions a dollar apiece all
round if they had stood by me.
"Lot 163, Chalmers Annals, found an appreciative
buyer at $18.50. I sold the young gentleman from
the country, who bid $18, a much better copy the next
morning for half the money. The same buyer secured
lot 176, Phillips's Paper Currency, at $7.50. I can
generally furnish it at five, ten off to pubKc libraries.
I may leave them nothing by will, but mean to do my
level best by them as long as I Kve.
"Lot 205, Trumbull's United States, somebody
must have been in a great hurry for. It brought $3.
The next bidder is my affinity, if I could only find him.
I should be happy to sell him a clean, uncut copy for a
dollar. "Lot 234, Knox's Journal, lacking a portrait and a
title-page, was snapped up at $16. I have a copy which
could be made as good as Mr. Brinley's by pulling
out a title-page — it already fills the biU in lacking
a portrait — which I am dying to sell for ten.
"No. 289, Drake's Address, sold for $2. If the
previous bidder will send a small boy with seventy-
five cents he will get a copy by return boy.
"No. 325, Lechford, $2.75. I have a few more

Some Old BookseUers 59
left of the same sort at $1.50. No. 374, Noah Web
ster's version of Winthrop's Journal, $10. I sold as
good a copy not long since at $4. Numbers 267 and
390, Commissionary Wilson's Orderly Book and
Easton's King Philip, as it is called for short, are num
bers I. and II. of Munsell's Historical Series, in 10
volumes, which during the large paper and limited
edition mania used to seU as high as $400 per set.
The two volumes brought $26.50. A complete set in
half morocco will be found in this catalogue at $35.
"No. 331, Papers Concerning the Attack on Hatfield
and Deerfield, wiped out sixteen of the ten thousand
dollars given to Yale College. It used to sell at a
much higher figure, but times have changed. I sold a
copy a short time ago for five.
"No. 412, News from New England, 2 copies, both
found purchasers at $2.25. I have a copy, see my
No. 274, at seventy-five cents.
"No. 767, James Fitch's Connecticut Election
Sermon, Cambridge, 1674, the first printed, sold for
$38. In a note to lot 2154 Dr. Trumbull, the cata
loguer, says: 'Five [Conn. Election] sermons were
printed in Cambridge and Boston before a press was
estabKshed in Connecticut. Of these five, four will
be found elsewhere in this catalogue.' That's so, and
the four, which were the first, third, fourth and fifth,
brought an average of $25.50 each. In the same note
Dr. Trumbull, whose notes are always interesting.

60 In Olde New York
says further: 'Mr. Brinley began this collection nearly
forty years ago, and aUowed no opportunity of com
pleting and perfecting it to escape.' I sold a beautiful
copy of the one which Mr. Brinley did not have a short
time ago for $15. I always sent my catalogue to the
gentlemen who bought the other four, but buyers at
auction of course save the book-peddlers' profit.
"Of numbers 975, 1029, 50, 81, 96 and 1117,
'Mathers,' good copies will be found in this catalogue
at peddlers' prices. Numbers 1356, 7, Drake's
Witchcraft Delusion, small and large paper, sold for
$9.00 and $10.50 in paper. I sell them at five and
six. No. 1359, Drake's Annals of Witchcraft, sold
for $8.75 in cloth. I sell it for $2.50 in paper. An
other half dollar would buy a cloth jacket for it, leav
ing nearly two-thirds of the money toward buying the
buyer a jacket.
"No. 1377 was bought by the author for $2.25.
For the money I would have given him three copies.
I catalogue it at seventy-five cents and always send
him my catalogues.
"I have an indistinct recollection of having in my
early youth read a short Kst of conundrums, each one
of which was too much for an eastern king whose
reputation for wisdom stood high. Had Solomon —
I think that was the king's name — attended the
Brinley sale I am convinced that in his list of things
which no fellow can find out would be ranked as the

Some Old Booksellers 61
knottiest the question why book-buyers in bookshops
are so stingy and in book auctions so lavish."
There are speciaKsts, even among the dealers in
dead books, one being known to his fellows as deaKng
largely in genealogies and kindred works; another
makes a specialty of rare foreign books and prints;
another confines himself to rare Americana; while a
fourth devotes his energies exclusively to the collection
and sale of American pamphlets. A chance service
rendered one of the guild, in the discovery of a rare
volume, gained me his good will, a seat at his fireside,
and a share in the racy anecdotes with which he en-
Kvened it; these anecdotes covered a wide range of
subjects, and included reminiscences of the famous
Kterary men of two generations who had frequented
his shop. Some of these reminiscences I am sure will
interest the reader.
Of Poe he said: "The character drawn of Poe by
his various biographers and critics may with safety
be pronounced an excess of exaggeration, but this is
not to be much wondered at when it is considered that
these men were his rivals, either as poets or prose-
writers, and it is well known that such are generally as
jealous of each other as are the ladies who are hand
some of those who desire to be considered so. It is an
old truism, and as true as it is old, that in the multitude
of counsellors there is safety. I therefore will show
you my opinion of this gifted but unfortunate genius: it

62 In Olde New York
may be estimated as worth Kttle, but it has this merit:
It comes from an eye- and ear-witness, and this, it
must be remembered, is the very highest of legal evi
dence. For eight months or more, 'one house con
tained us, us one table fed.' During that time I saw
much of him, and had an opportunity of conversing
with him often; and I must say I never saw him the
least affected with liquor, nor ever descend to any
known vice, while he was one of the most courteous,
gentlemanly and intelKgent companions I have ever
met. Besides, he had an extra inducement to be a
good man, for he had a wife of matchless beauty and
loveliness; her eye could match that of any houri,
and her face defy the genius of a Canova to imitate;
her temper and disposition were of surpassing sweet
ness; in addition, she seemed as much devoted to him
and his every interest as a young mother is to her
first-bom. During this time he wrote his longest
prose romance, entitled the Adventures of Arthur
Gordon Pym. Poe had a remarkably pleasing and
prepossessing countenance — what the ladies would
call decidedly handsome. He died after a brief and
fitful career at Baltimore, October, 1849, where his
remains lie interred in an obscure burying-ground."
Of Simms he showed this entry in his diary, under
date of October 15, 1868: "To-day I had the pleasure of
a call from WiKiam Gilmore Simms, the noveKst.
He is quite affable in conversation, and apparently

Some Old Booksellers 63
well stocked with general information, which he can
impart with fluency. He appears somewhat down
cast, or rather, I should say, has a melancholy cast of
countenance: he is advanced in years, with a profusion
of hair around his face, chin and throat — is apparently
between sixty and seventy years of age. I requested
him to enroll his name in my autograph-book, which
he did with readiness. He remarked that he was
often requested to do so, especiaUy by the ladies. I
repKed that this was a debt which every man incurred
when he became pubKc property either by his words,
actions, or writings. He acquiesced in the justice of
the remark. Mr. Simms was in search of a copy of
Johnson's History of the Seminoles, to aid him in
making a new book. He was accompanied by Mr.
Duykinck." Halleck he thus introduced: "On a certain occasion
I was passing a Roman CathoKc church in New York:
seeing the doors open and throngs of people pressing
in, I stepped inside to see what I could see. I had not
well got inside when I beheld Fitzgreene Halleck
standing uncovered, with reverential attitude, among
the crowd of unshom and unwashed worshipers. I
remained till I saw him leave. In doing so he made a
courteous bow, as is the polite custom of the humblest
of these people on taking their departure.
" On the subject of compliments paid him for poeti
cal talents, Mr. Halleck once said to me, 'They are

64 In Olde New York
generally made by those who are ignorant or who
have a desire to please or flatter, or perhaps a com
bination of all. As a general thing, they are devoid
of sincerity, and rather offensive than pleasing. There
is no general rule without its exception, however, and
in my bagful of compliments I cherish one which comes
under that rule, and reflecting upon it affords me real
pleasure as it did then. On a warm day in summer
a young man came into the office with a countenance
glowing with ardor, innocence, and honesty, and his
eyes beaming with enthusiasm. Said he, "Is Mr.
Halleck to be found here ? " I answered in the affirma
tive. Continued he, with evidently increased emotion,
" Could I see him ? " — " You see him now," I repKed.
He grasped me by the hand with a hearty vigorousness
that added to my conviction of his sincerity. Said he,
"I am happy, most happy, in having had the pleasure
at last of seeing one whose poems have afforded me no
ordinary gratification and delight. I have longed to
see you, and I have dreamt that I have seen you, but
now I behold you with mine own eyes. God bless
you for ever and ever! I have come eleven hundred
miles, from the banks of the Miami in Ohio, mainly
for that purpose, and I have been compensated for
my pains."'
"Mr. Halleck told me that he had been soKcited to
write a Kfe of his early and beloved friend Drake.
'But,' said he, 'I did not weU see how I could grant

Some Old Booksellers 65
such a request: I had no lever for my fulcrum. What
could I say about one who had studied pharmacy,
dissection, written a few poems, and then left the scene
of action ? I had no material, and a mere meaningless
eulogy would have been out of the question.'
"In personal appearance Halleck was rather below
the medium height and well built: in walking he had
a rather slow and shuffling gait, as if something afflicted
his feet; a florid, bland, and pleasant countenance;
a bright gray eye ; was remarkably pleasant and courte
ous in conversation, and, as a natural consequence,
much beloved by all who had the pleasure of his ac
quaintance. But to that brilKancy in conversation
which some of his admirers have been pleased to attrib
ute to him, in my opinion he could lay no claim. His
Kbrary was sold at auction in New York on the evening
of October 12, 1868. If the collection disposed of on
that occasion was really Ms library in full, it must be
confessed it was a sorry affair and meager in the
extreme. In surveying the collection a judge of the
value of such property would perhaps pronounce it
worth from one hundred and twenty-five to one hun
dred and fifty dollars. The books brought fabulous
prices — at least ten times their value. The company
was large, good-humored, and just in the frame of mind
to be a Kttle more than liberal, doubtless stimulated
to be so from a desire to possess a relic of the departed
poet who had added fame to the Kterature of his

66 In Olde New York
country. The following are the names of a few of
the books and the prices they brought: Nicholas
Nickleby, with the author's autograph, $18; Bryant's
Kttle volume of poems entitled Thirty Poems, with
the author's autograph, $11; Campbell's Poems, with
Halleck's autograph, $8.50; Catalogue of the Straw
berry Hill Collection, $16; Barnaby Rudge, presenta
tion copy by the author to Halleck, $15; Coleridge's
Poems, with a few notes by Halleck, $10; Fanny, a
poem by Mr. Halleck, $10.- The sum-total reaKzed
for liis library was twelve hundred and fifty doUars."
Aaron Burr was the subject of some interesting
reminiscences: "Shortly after I came to New York,
Aaron Burr was pointed out to me as he was slowly
wending his way up Broadway, between Chambers
Street and the old theater, on the City Hall side. I
frequently afterward met lum in this and other streets.
He was always an object of interest, inasmuch as he
had become an historical character, somewhat notori
ously so. I wiU attempt to describe his appearance,
or rather how he appeared to me: He was small, thin
and attenuated in form, perhaps a little over five feet
in height, weight not much over a hundred pounds.
He walked with a slow, measured and feeble step,
stooping considerably, occasionally with both hands
behind his back. He had a keen face and deep-set,
dark eye, Ms hat set deep on Ms head, the back part
sunk down to the collar of the coat and the back

Some Old Booksellers 67
brim somewhat turned upward. He was dressed in
threadbare black cloth, having the appearance of what
is known as shabby genteel. His countenance wore
a melancholy aspect, and Ms whole appearance be
tokened one dejected, forsaken, forgotten or cast
aside, and conscious of Ms position. He was invari
ably alone when I saw Mm, except on a single occa
sion: that was on the sidewalk in Broadway fronting
what is now the Astor House, where he was standing
talking very familiarly with a young woman whom
he held by one hand. His countenance on that
occasion was cheerful, Kghted up and bland — alto
gether different from what it appeared to me when I
saw him alone and in conversation with Mmself.
Burr must have been a very exact man in Ms business-
affairs. His receipt-book came into my possession.
I found there receipts for a load of wood, a carpenter's
work for one day, a pair of boots, milk for a certain
number of weeks, suit of clothes, besides numerous
other small transactions that but few would think of
taking a receipt for. The book was but a sorry,
cheap affair, and could not have cost when new more
than fifty cents."
Edwin Forrest he thus mentioned: "At the time
when Forrest was earning Ms reputation on the board
of the Bowery Theatre I was connected with that
institution, and of course had an opportunity of seeing
Mm every night he performed. Mr. Forrest appeared

68 In Olde New York
to be possessed of the perfection of physical form,
more especially conspicuous when arrayed in some
pecuKar costumes wMch tended to display it to the
best advantage. He had a stentorian voice, and must
have had lungs not less invulnerable than one of
Homer's heroes. He had a fine mascuKne face and
prepossessing countenance, much resembKng many
of the notable Greeks and Romans whose portraits
have come down to our time, and a keen inteKectual
eye. His countenance at times assumed an air of
hauteur wMch doubtless had become a habit, either
from personating characters of tMs stamp or from a
consciousness of Ms merited popularity. He left the
impression on the beholder of one intoxicated with
success and the repletion of human applause. He
kept aloof from all around Mm, and condescended to
no social intercourse with any one on the stage, and
appeared to entertain a contempt for Ms audience.
. . . He has now lost that mercurial, youtMul appear
ance wMch was then so conspicuous, and wMch doubt
less aided in laying the foundation of Ms widespread
reputation. He was then straight as an arrow and
elastic as a circus-rider, the very beau-ideal of physical
perfection : now he bears the marks of decay, or rather,
as is said of grain just before harvest, he has a ripe
appearance. If he would consult Ms renown he
would retire from the stage, and never set foot upon
it again."

Some Old Booksellers 69
The reminiscences also touched on Bryant, Parton,
Mrs. Siddons and several eminent divines and jour
nalists. Of the latter class the fullest related to James
Gordon Bennett, founder of the Herald, and Ms
coadjutor, WilKam H. Attree. "I remember enter
ing the subterranean office of Mr. Bennett early in the
career of the Herald and purchasing a single copy of
the paper, for wMch I paid the sum of one cent only.
On tMs occasion the proprietor, editor, and vendor
was seated at Ms desk busily engaged in writing, and
appeared to pay Kttle or no attention to me as I entered.
On making known my object in coming in, he requested
me to put my money down on the counter and help
myself to a paper: all the time he continued Ms writiag
operations. The office was a single, oblong, under
ground room. Its furniture consisted of a counter,
wMch also served as a desk, constructed from two
flour-barrels, perhaps empty, standing apart from
each other about four feet, with a single plank cover
ing both; a chair, placed in the center, upon wMch
sat the editor busy at Ms vocation, with an inkstand
by Ms right hand; on the end nearest the door were
placed the papers for. sale. I attribute the success
of the Herald to a combination of circumstances —
to the peculiar fitness of its editor for his position, to
its cheapness, and its advertising patronage, wMch
was considerable. In the fourth place, it early secured
the assistance of WilKam H. Attree, a man of uncom-

70 In Olde New York
mon abilities as a reporter and a concocter of pithy
as weU as ludicrous chapters greatly calculated to
captivate many readers. In fact, tMs clever and
talented assistant in some respects never had Ms match.
He did not, as other reporters do, take down in short
hand what the speaker or reader said, but sat and
heard the passing discourse like any other casual
spectator: when over he would go home to his room,
write out in full all that had been said on the occasion,
and that entirely from memory. On a certain occa
sion I Muted to Mm my increduKty about Ms ability
to report as he had frequently informed me. To put
the matter beyond doubt, he requested me to accom
pany Mm to CKnton Hall to hear some Kterary mag
nate let off Ms inteKectual steam. I accordingly
accompanied Mm as per arrangement. We were
seated together in the same pew. He placed Ms hands
in Ms pockets and continued in that position during
the deKvery of the discourse, and when it was finished
he remarked to me that I would not only find the sub
stance of tMs harangue in the Herald the next day,
but that I would find it word for word. On the foUow-
ing morning I procured the paper, and read the report
of what I had heard the previous evening; and I must
say I was struck with astonishment at its perfect
accuracy. Before Mr. Attree's time reporting for the
press in New York was a mere outKne or sketch of
what had been said or done, but he infused life and

Some Old Booksellers 71
soul into Ms department of journalism. His reports
were full, accurate, grapMc; and, what is more, he
frequently flattered the vanity of the speaker by mak
ing a much better speech for Mm than he possibly
could, for Mmself. Poor Attree died in 1849, and is
entombed at Greenwood."

CHAPTER VII
a new YORK CURIOSITY SHOP
TT was kept by a descendant of one of the old island
¦¦¦ families, and Ms stock was confined almost entirely
to reKcs, coats of arms, pedigrees, and other souvenirs
of the early Dutch famiKes of Manhattan. The most
striking feature observed on entering was the array of
tall eight-day clocks extending around the four sides
of the room, in some places two ranks deep. The
cases were mostly of oak, beautifully inlaid, and
wMch bore on the base the coat of arms, and in some
instances the name, of the family for whom they were
made. Beekman, Kouwenhovenv Leiter, Van Wester
velt, Brower, Van Hardenburgh, Weber, De Groot,
Prevoorst, Schermerhom, and Van Wyck, were the
most prominent names noticed. There were thirty
of these clocks — two of great Mstorical iaterest. AU
were of heavy and elaborate workmansMp, and, be
sides the carving and inlaid work on the cases, were
prettily decorated on the arch above the face with vines
and flowers. Most had eight astronomical movements,
giving, in addition to the hour, minute, and second,
the day of the month and week, the phases of sun and

A New York Curiosity Shop 73
moon, and the sign of the zodiac. Some also gave the
evening and morning star, and nearly all had the
alarm movement.
The Moll or Maule clock by the door was the most
valuable of all the stock, Mstorically considered. On
the 10th of July, 1680, John Moll, a Swede, received
from the Indians of Delaware a deed for much of the
land now comprising Delaware and Eastern Pennsyl
vania. TMs he subsequently conveyed to William
Penn. From timber cut on tMs tract he made, or had
made, the case of tMs old clock, now standing so
modestly in the corner, and sent it to Ms relatives, the
Maule family in Holland, as a present from the New
World to the Old. They valued it so MgMy that they
had the family arms inlaid in the solid oak, and deco
rated it very prettily with vines, leaves, and birds of
plumage; furthermore, to show its American origin,
they had impaled in the arms the 'names of the six
Indian cMefs from whom John Moll had made Ms
purchase. The shop-keeper who goes every year to
the cities of Holland and Germany to replenish Ms
stock chanced to catch sight of the arms on the clock
as he was mousing about a second-hand store in
Amsterdam and purchased it.
Another very notable clock was that on wMch
Christopher Huggins experimented in the invention
of the pendulum. Huggins, as the legend is, was an
ingenious clock-maker of Amsterdam in 1689, who

74 In Olde New York
gave so much time to evolving Ms idea of the pendulum
that he got into financial straits, and borrowed 600
guilders of Jacobus Van Wyck, a wealthy manufac
turer of clocks and watches in that city. The inventor,
however, was never able to pay the debt, and so turned
the clock over to Ms creditor. To prove that tMs is
the identical clock the owner points to the letters "C.
H. to J. V. W." engraved on the metal frame. The
mechanism has but one hand, and is a quaint array
of wheels and chains.
There was much other furniture of rare and curious
interest — carved, stiff -backed chairs with figured
cusMons, square and half-round tables, sideboards,
secretaries, all of soKd oak, quaintly carved and ricMy
inlaid. A wardrobe, the largest piece of furniture in
the room, seven feet Mgh and as many wide, has a
curious history. Without and within it contains no
less than ten thousand pieces of inlaid work, and was
made by the Guild of Cabinet Workers of Amsterdam
and presented to Nicholas Oppermier, Burgomaster of
that city from 1681 to 1684. A writing-desk and bureau
combined was of interest from having once belonged
to the Coxe family, who came over with WilKam Penn.
The family arms — a sheaf of wheat or, on a green
field — is inlaid on the Kd. There was an ancient
looking-glass, too, with a carved frame and long arms
on either side, furnished at their extremities with candle
sticks in order that the glass might be serviceable by

A New York Curiosity Shop 75
night as well as by day. Two groups of rare old cMna
on a shelf would attract the attention of collectors.
The first group is the identical teapot, milk pitcher,
and cup — plain, rather coarse ware — used by the
first Napoleon in Ms campaigns — at least the merchant
who owns it was so assured by the old servant of
Joseph Bonaparte, King of Holland and brother of
Napoleon, of whom he bought them. The only
ornament is the initial N. on a blue ground surrounded
by a coronet. The companion group wMch belonged
to Joseph Bonaparte is much prettier; the ware is
finer, more delicate, and the wMte ground is reKeved
by blue figures.
There were several notable portraits in the collection.
One of these was a very ancient portrait of Calvin,
picked up for a trifle in an old picture store, but wMch
the merchant, by comparison with several authentic
portraits in Europe, had estabKshed to be genuine.
Another was the only portrait in existence of Jan Jans,
father of the celebrated Aneke Jans, and the last sur
vivor of the famous siege of Haarlem. There was
the picture too of a modest round-faced comely Quaker
lady, in a plain brown dress, with a wMte handkercMef
thrown carelessly over her head, the wife of William
Penn. "Penn was partly of Dutch extraction," the
merchant remarked, referring to the portrait, "Ms
father. Admiral Penn, having married a member of
the old Dutch family of CallowMU. CallowMU Street,

76 In Olde New York
in PMladelpMa, is named after her." There was also
a portrait of De Groot, and a strong picture of an old
nude man by Bameveldt. The merchant showed
also the genealogical records of eighty-six thousand
Dutch and Belgian families, a part of Ms business
being the construction of family records.

CHAPTER Vin

the OLD JUMEL MANSION'

'^T'lSITORS to High Bridge — the pretty Kttle
' village wMch stands at the northern Kmit of
Manhattan Island — cannot have failed to observe
the stately, somewhat antiquated mansion standing
in the midst of a pretty park of some fifty acres, and
overlooking city and river and the varied Westchester
plains. It is the cMef in point of interest as it is the
sole survivor of the many Mstoric houses that once
graced the island, but is so environed with city en
croachments and improvements that its destruction
seems likely to be but a question of time. Even now
the shrill wMstle of the metropolitan locomotives is
heard beneath its eaves. Tenth Avenue passes but a
block away, and eager speculators have staked out city
lots at its very gates, so hardly is it pressed by the
great city in its eager outreacMng for new territory.
Few persons who pass the place know, perhaps,
the many points of Mstoric and romantic interest that
it has: how it occupies Mstoric ground, being built on
'Written about 1880. The old mansion is now owned by the
Daughters of the Revolution and maintained as a Museum.

78 In Olde New York
the far-famed Harlem Heights, witMn a mile of the
site of old Fort Washington; that it was built for the
dower of a lady of such beauty and grace that she was
able to win the heart of the Father of Ms Country
Mmself; that witMn its walls WasMngton estabKshed
Ms headquarters wMle the mastery of the island was
in dispute with the British, and that tMther WasMng
ton came again in 1790 with all Ms Cabinet, on Ms
return from a visit to the battlefield of Fort Washing
ton; or that afterward, a once famous Vice-President
of the United States was married in its parlors. Yet
these and many other noteworthy incidents in its Ms-
tory are quite within the line of research of the indus
trious investigator. It will not be time misspent, per
haps, if we devote an idle hour to a more particular
narration of some of these events ui its Mstory.
In 1756 no belle in New York society was more
courted and caressed than Miss Mary PMlKpse. She
was the daughter of Frederick PMlKpse, lord of the
manor of PMllipsburg (now Yonkers), and is admitted
to have been one of the most beautiful and charming
women of colonial times.
WasMngton, during one of Ms frequent visits to the
city, met her at the house of Ms friend Beverly Robin
son, and was so deeply smitten with her charms that,
if the old traditions are correct, he became a suitor for
her hand.
A rival claimant for the hand of Miss PMlKpse was

The Jumel Mansion in 1854
Washington's Headquarters in 1776, and the home of Colonel Roger Morris. From a Valentine's
Manual (1854) print in the collection of John D. Crimmins of New York

The Old Jumel Mansion 79
Roger Morris, a gallant captain in the British army
then garrisoning New York. The reader's sympa-
tMes are with the young Virginian no doubt, but it was
remarked by the gossips of the day that he was a slow
wooer, and that the odds seemed in favor of Ms more
ardent rival, when, unfortunately, the exigencies of
Indian warfare called Mm to the frontier, and he was
forced to depart, leaving the gaUant captain in undis
puted possession of the field. When he had been
absent some months a friend in New York (whether
in the confidence of the lady or not is not known)
wrote to Mm that "Morris was laying close siege to
Miss PMlKpse," and that if he had any interests in that
quarter he could best serve them by a visit to the city
— a bit of friendly advice wMch was not accepted,
possibly because the recipient was too much occupied
with measures for the protection of the frontier, but
probably because Ms chances of success seemed too
small to warrant the venture.
In the meantime, Ms rival out of the field. Captain
Morris, pressed Ms suit with miUtary ardor, and so
successfully that in 1756 the polite society of the town
was pleasantly electrified by the news of the betrothal
of Captain Roger Morris to Mary PMlKpse. The
match was evidently approved by the lady's father,
for he proceeded to bestow on her as a dowry five
hundred acres of land on Manhattan Island, wMch
included the site of the present dwelling.

80 In Olde New York
The year 1776 found the colonists in arms against
the mother country, Roger Morris a colonel in the
British army, and George Washington commander-
in-cMef of the forces of the colonies. Mrs. Morris
occupied her home until the attack of the British on
the city in August, 1776, when, finding that it was
likely to become the theater of war, she left it hastily
and found a refuge with the Tory people among the
HigMands. A few days later General Washington
arrived and made the house Ms headquarters dur
ing Ms operations on the island, holding stem councils
of war in the drawing-room. of the former mistress of
Ms heart, and devoting to the repose of martial thews
and sinews the downy beds and silken canopies that
had been intended for far daintier uses. But tMs
miKtary occupation lasted only a short time, although
the mistress of the mansion never returned to her
charming retreat. At the close of the war her estates
were confiscated, and she went with her husband to
England, where she Kved to a good old age.
Fourteen years later, in 1790, WasMngton, with a
goodly number of dames and cavaliers, paid a second
visit to the old dwelling. In Ms journal he has given
us a detailed account of the event. He says, under
date of July 10, 1790:
"Having formed a party consisting of the Vice-
President, Ms lady, son and Miss Smith; the Secre
taries of State, Treasury and War and the ladies of

The Richmond Hill Mansion
Washington's Headquarters in 1776, and later the residence of John Adams and of Aaron Burr.
Reproduced from a Valentine's Manual (1854) print in the collection of John D. Crimmins
of New York

The Old Jumel Mansion 81
the two latter, with all the gentlemen of my family,
Mrs. Lear and the twocMldren, we visited the old
position of Fort Wasliington, and afterward dined on a
dinner provided by Mr. Mariner, at the house lately
Colonel Roger Morris's, but confiscated and now in
the possession of a common farmer."
TMs Captain Mariner was a noted character in the
Revolution, and was engaged with Captain Hyler in
the somewhat celebrated "whaleboat warfare," wMch
consisted cMefly in making night descents on the
enemy's coasts, and making prisoners of such promi
nent persons as came in their way. After the war he
kept a tavern at Ward's Island and at Harlem, and
became a noted caterer; it was in tMs capacity that he
was employed to prepare the dinner for as imposing
a company of guests as the mansion ever entertained.
In 1803 Morris's was again in the market, and for
a time it seemed probable that Colonel Aaron Burr,
who was then Kving in splendor at Richmond Hill
would become its purchaser. In November of tMs
year he wrote to Ms daughter Theodosia in regard
to the exchange; her letter in reply, dated CKfton,
S. C, December 10, 1803, is interesting as showing
what one of the most charming and accomplished
women of her day thought of the house. She says :
"The exchange has employed my thoughts ever
since. Richmond Hill will, for a few years to come,
be more valuable than Morris's, and to you, who are

82 In Olde New York
so fond of town, a place so far from it would be use
less; so much for my reasoning on one side; now for
the other. Richmond Hill has lost many of its beauties
and is daily losing more. If you mean it for a resi
dence, what avails its intrinsic value ? If you seU part
you deprive it of every beauty save the mere view.
Morris's has the most commanding view on the island;
it is reported to be indescribably beautiful. The
grounds, too, are pretty; how many delightful walks
can be made on one hundred and tMrty acres; how
much of your taste displayed! In ten or twenty years
hence one hundred and tMrty acres on New York
Island will be a principality; and there is to me some-
tMng stylish, elegant, respectable and suitable to you
in having a handsome country seat. So that, on the
whole, I vote for Morris's."
But Colonel Burr did not purchase the property at
tMs time, though tMrty years later he married its
mistress, and resided there for some time, and met a
class of law students in the room formerly occupied
by WasMngton as Ms sleeping apartment. The later
Mstory of the mansion is both varied and interesting,
but is so near our own times that it is scarcely neces
sary to repeat it here.
An account of a visit wMch the writer made to it
recently, in company with a gentleman familiar not
only with the place but with its Mstory as well, wiU
no doubt prove more acceptable. The main haU,

The Old Jumel Mansion 83
wMch one enters from the pillared porch, is, with
its ancient portraits, its poKshed oaken floor and
great depth and roominess, the nearest approach
we have; perhaps, to that of an ancient baronial
castle. TMs hall opens by folding doors into the
drawing-room — the same that was used by Wash
ington as a reception-room during Ms military
occupancy. Here he received Ms visitors, listened to
Ms orderlies' reports and dictated Ms answers, and
here at the last was held the council of war wMch
decided that Manhattan Island should be relinquished.
The floor of tMs room, and indeed of every apartment
in the house, is of oak, and so Mghly polished that it
affords an insecure footing to one used to carpeted
rooms. The wall paper has a groundwork of green,
with raised figures of vine and leaf having the appear
ance and texture of velvet, and its coloring is as fresh
and vivid as though nearly a century and a half had not
passed since it left the hand of the artisan. In tMs
room also hangs a beautiful chandelier, wMch was
formerly the property of the unfortunate French
General Moreau. A winding stairway at the right of
the hall leads the visitor to the suite of apartments
above, and ushers Mm first into a hall directly over the
one below, and of about the same dimensions. From
tMs hall one may step out upon a balcony wMch com
mands a magnificent view of city, river, and Sound.
WasMngton 's bed-chamber was on tMs floor, at the

84 In Olde New York
rear of the hall and directly over the drawing-room;
there is nothing noteworthy about it except that it con
tains a number of secret doors and closets not all of
wMch are known to the present residents. Two small
ante-chambers, one on each side, were occupied by
Ms aids, one of whom was Alexander Hamilton. The
old oak bedstead on wMch Washington slept is stiU
preserved with other treasured reKcs in the attic of the
house. Having seen all the objects of interest that the old
house contained (although but a very few of them
are included in tMs description) we were invited to a
walk in the grounds, wMch are extensive, comprising
about one hundred and tMrty acres. Even here the
antiquity of the place is apparent. The great locusts
that line the main approach to the mansion are dead
at the top and hoary with age. A great Madeira-nut
tree, with gnarled trunk and wide-spreading branches,
and a huge cedar of Lebanon, wMch was brought
a tiny rootlet from its native mountain, could have
been nourished to their present proportions only by
a century of sun and showers ; a hedge of slow-growing
trees brought from Andalusia in Spain, wMch surrounds
an ancient fountain's bed on the estate, also gives
evidence of extreme age. After passing some time in
the grounds and making pilgrimage to several points
where charming views may be obtained, we took our
leave, remarking on the striking contrast presented by

The Old Jumel Mansion 85
the old dweUing to the great city so near it, and specu
lating as to how long it can be protected from the
grasp of the giant wMch each day is bringing nearer
its gates.

CHAPTER IX

TWO AMERICAN SHRINES

WE have a habit of observing each anniversary
of the death of Washington Irving by a pil
grimage to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Ms last resting-
place. It is but an hour to Tarrytown by rail from
New York, and then a walk of a mile up the barrier
Mils to the sunny " Hollow, " the bridge, and the church
yard. The conservatism of wealth and of tradition
have united to preserve them as they were. Through
the dell flows the silvery Pocantico issuing out of a
deep glen to the eastward, and passing on imder the
arch of the old bridge forever famous as the scene of
Ichabod Crane's nocturnal adventures. Near by is
the Kttle old Dutch church built of stone by the
mighty patroon of PMlKpburg half smothered in
vines, with wooden belfry, and making weather
cock and farm as uncanny as AUoway's Auld Haunted
Kirk. In the shadow of its tower are the quaint,
brown-stone tombs of the Van Warts, Van Tassels,
and other famous families. The churchyard is as
beautiful for situation as it is noteworthy in letters,
being laid out on the western and southern slope of

Two American Shrines 87
the MU that rises steeply up from the Pocantico. At
intervals on the MUside rocky crags protrude, veiled
by oak and hemlock, and in and out among these
curve the walks and drives. The summit is occupied
by more modem memorials in marble and granite,
some quite tasteful and elaborate in design. West of
these, perhaps half-way down the declivity, is the
Irving plot, characterized by a severe simpKcity; it is
marked only by a low hedge of evergreens. Its ten
or twelve tombstones are equally classic in their sim
pKcity. That of the author is on the south side of the
enclosure, and is a small, plain slab of marble, bearing
only Ms name, and the date of birth and death. TMs
severe simpKcity did not seem to us to be in good
taste; it was so incommensurate with the greatness of
the man, and the space he occupied in the Kterature
of Ms country, that it seemed incongruous. It is, how
ever, according to the sleeper's own request. The
tomb is distinguished by one mark of pubKc interest,
indicating that more than common dust sleeps be
neath. Each of its three faces has been cMpped and
cut away by relic hunters, who have carried away the
fragments as souvenirs of their pilgrimage.
We could but contrast it with another American
shrine we had visited a few months previous ' — the
tomb of Cooper in Cooperstown, just where the Susque
hanna breakes from Otsego, its parent lake. One can
•This article was written in 1885.

88 In Olde New York
reach it from Richfield Springs by coach to the head
of the lake, and thence by steamer down its winding
shores, or he can drive over by private veMcle and not
consume a summer day. The village Kes quiet and
peaceful in its deep cleft among the MUs at the foot of
the lake. One easily finds the grave of the author in
the Kttle Episcopal churchyard. It is almost in the
shadow of the sacred edifice, brooded over by somber
firs and pines, with the Susquehanna close by mur
muring unceasing requiem! So strong a churchman
was Cooper, and attached to tMs Kttle home church,
that I doubt if he could have rested quietly in stranger
ground. The novelist's grave is nearly in the center
of the plot, and that of the wife is beside her husband's;
both are marked by marble tablets resting on granite
pillars, and are without ornament save a simple cross
cut in the center of the stone. I had interest enough
to transcribe the inscription, as follows:
James Fenimore Cooper
bom September 15th, 1789,
died September 14th, 1851.
Susan Augusta, wife of James Fenimore Cooper
and daughter of John Peter De Lancy
bom January 28, 1792,
died January 20.
There is less popular appreciation of Cooper's tomb,
or is it that it is less accessible ? it bears no marks of

Two American Shrines 89
the reKc hunter's hammer, and the grass about it is
untrodden by pilgrim feet. Leaving the graves, we
strolled down the pleasant village street, in search of
the old Cooper Mansion, where the novelist Kved
and in wMch much of Ms later work was done, but
learned that it had been burned to the ground some
tMrty years before and its site made a waste. Some
strange fataKty seems to attend American houses with
a Mstory. The Hancock house in Boston, the tavern of
Israel Putnam in Brooklyn, Conn., the Franklin House
in PMladelpMa, Webster's house at Green Harbor,
with scores of others that might be named have been
destroyed or so transformed that their interest and
identity are lost. Sunnyside, the home of Irving,
almost alone remaius intact. The pilgrim to Sleepy
HoUow cannot better conclude Ms day than by a visit
tMther. Leaving the churchyard one passes down the
main street of Tarrytown, lined with gray-stone castles
and elegant country-seats, quaint Dutch cottages and
modem villas, for two miles, and then enters a road
turning from it at right angles and leading down to
the Hudson. Soon one is lost in a maze of wild wood
greenery planted in a Kttle gorge worn by a hillside
stream. Fine dwellings, with lawn and copse and
hedge, rustic bridges and parks of forest trees, are on
either side, and continue until one reaches a plateau
separated from the river only by the railroad tracks.
On tMs plateau, sheltered by fine old forest trees, stands

90 In Olde New York
Sunnyside cottage. One realizes the feKcity of its
builder's description — "a quaint picturesque little
pile." It is built of stone in ancient Dutch style, with
crow-step gables and an L, and a multitude of nooks,
crannies, and angles. The famous Melrose Abbey ivy,
honeysuckle, rose vines and eglantines cover it in wilder-
ing mass. The main entrance is on the south, but there
is a piazza on the west facing the river wMch, with its
view of the broad Tappan Zee, the farther meadows
of Tappan, and grim Palisades on the south, was the
favorite resort of the author and Ms family in the long
summer evenings. Though its clinging vines and
antique style convey the impression of age, the cottage
is comparatively modern, having been almost entirely
remodeled in 1835. The old Dutch farmhouse wMch
it originally was, is said to have been the Wolferts
Roost, from wMch the partisan armed with Ms great
goose gun stole out for Ms adventure with the ma
rauders of the Tappan Zee. Later it came into the
hands of the Van Tassels, and within its walls is said to
have been held the merry-making from wMch Ichabod
Crane departed for Ms terrible encounter with the
Headless Horseman on the bridge by Sleepy Hollow
Church. Needless to add that the old house was the birth
place of those charming tales and sketches wMch have
made the locaKty classic.

CHAPTER X
THE STORY OF THE PALATINES
rr^HE period of American colonization was pro-
-^ ductive of many tragedies and romantic incidents,
few of wMch have been adequately sketched.
One of the most striking and least known of these
was the settlement in New York, in 1709, by the bounty
of Queen Anne of England, of a large body of Germans,
victims of religious persecution. The original home
of these interesting people was in what is known in
Mstory as the Lower Palatinate of the RMne, compris
ing two small states, wMch had been united previous
to 1620. It was a beautiful country of vineyards and
gardens, with a soft cKmate, under the mild govern
ment of an herediary ruler styled the Palatine. Prior
to the Reformation its people Kved in the utmost
plenty and content. But their ruler early espoused
the cause of Luther, and, in the fierce reKgious wars
that followed, the Palatinate was in many instances
the battle-ground of the contending parties. Yet the
people recovered quickly from every blow, and stiU
clung to their land and faith. At length, in 1689, the
armies of Louis XIV of France marched into the

92 In Olde New York
country and ravaged it utterly, the pretext being that
it was used as a haven of refuge for the king's Huguenot
subjects, whom he was then engaged in extirpating.
EverytMng was utterly destroyed except the bare soil,
— churches, houses, pubKc buildings, cattle, fair fields,
pleasant vineyards. In that time of terror the Elector
from Ms castle at Mannheim beheld two cities and
twenty-five towns in flames. Lust and cruelty were
satiated. The people pleading for mercy on bended
knees were thrust forth into the fields. Three thou
sand one hundred and fifty square miles of territory
were left a blackened waste, and the wretched in
habitants driven into exile. Wandering homeless and
friendless through Europe for several years, the thoughts
of the more intelligent among them turned at length
to England as a possible haven. Good Queen Anne
had succeeded to the EngKsh throne : ties of blood con
nected her vwth the hapless Count Palatine, she being
a cousin of the first degree: besides, she was known to
sympatMze deeply with the persecuted Protestants of
Europe, of every nationality. And so it happened
that in the spring of 1708 a Kttle band of Palatine
exiles landed at WMtehall and filed through the Lon
don streets in search of friends among their co-religion
ists. There were forty-one of them, — men, women,
and cMldren, — natives of Neuberg on the RMne, and
all bore certificates of good character and that they
had been stripped of everytMng by the army of France,

The Story of the Palatmes 93
signed by the bailiffs of their native town. Their
leader was a grave, thoughtful man of mature years, —
their pastor, Joshua Kockerthal, "EvangeKcal minis
ter," as he is called in the Lords of Trade Documents,
— a Great-heart who had led the Kttle band in aU
their wanderings and had now safely conducted them
to England. Pastor Kockerthal lost no time in pre
senting to Queen Anne a petition, in wMch he asked
to be sent with Ms own company, and others of Ms
countrymen that might follow, to her majesty's colonies
in America.
Never did petition receive from authority a more
favorable hearing. Queen Anne's womanly heart was
moved to pity by the woes of the exiles. To her
ministers the petition seemed to open the way to a
master-stroke of poKcy in the settlement of the colonies.
The aggressions of the French in Canada were then
beginning to be felt along the whole northern frontiers
of New England and New York, and the planting of a
large body of Germans, natural enemies of France,
on the frontier was a poKcy to be pursued with spirit.
They heartily seconded, therefore, the queen's design
of sending the petitioners to her colony of New York.
The queen defrayed the cost of their transit, it is said,
from her own private purse. Sending for Pastor
Kockerthal, she questioned Mm concerning Ms Mstory
and that of Ms people, promised Mm free transporta
tion with Ms company to their new homes, and agreed

94 In Olde New York
further to furnish them with seed, agricultural tools,
and furniture, lands free of tax and quit-rent, and to
support them for one year, or until their first harvest
could be reaped. To Pastor Kockerthal Queen Anne
was even more generous, granting Mm five hundred
acres as a glebe for the support of Ms wife and children
besides a douceur of twenty pounds for the purchase
of books and clothing. The males were also nat
uralized by the Crown before leaving. The sMp
Lyon was got ready, and sailed early in August, 1708,
in company with Lord Lovelace, who had been ap
pointed governor of New York. There were fifty-two
Palatines on board, — one a babe of two weeks, and
several others of tender age.
The majority of the adults were vinedressers and
husbandmen; but there were also a smith, a carpenter,
a weaver, and a stocking-maker among them. Few
particulars of the voyage have been preserved. They
had a long and stormy passage of more than four
months, reacMng New York late in December, 1708.
Several of the passengers had died on the voyage,
nearly all were sick, and the whole company was
quarantined for some weeks on Staten Island before
being admitted to the city. As soon as possible. Lord
Lovelace set about selecting a site for their settlement.
On the west bank of the Hudson, just above the High
lands, famiKar now to travelers as the site of the city
of Newburgh, there was a tract of country that in soil

The Story of the Palatines 95
and natural scenery was thought as near an approach
to that of the RMne as could be found in the New
World; and here the little band of storm-tossed voyagers
was established.
The tract granted them comprised two thousand
one hundred and ninety acres, and was laid out in nine
lots leading back from the river, including a glebe of
five hundred acres for the minister. Here the wan
derers made a clearing, erected houses, built roads and
bridges, and, in due time, added a church and school-
house, wMch Queen Anne furnished with a bell,^ and
thus laid the foundations of an enterprising and flourish
ing town.
Pastor Kockerthal remained only long enough to
establish Ms flock in their fold. The country pleased
Mm. The government had fulfilled its promises to
1 This bell is still preserved in the city of Newburgh as a precious
relic. It is a small bell, of about twenty-five pounds' weight, very
sweet in tone, and bears the inscription "Una fecit Amsterdammi,
17 — ." Its vicissitudes have been many. When first given to the
Palatines, their church was not ready, and it was loaned for a season
to the Lutheran church in New York. On the abdication of their
grant by the Palatines, it became the property of the Church of Eng
land, which succeeded to the glebe, and on the outbreak of the
Revolution was buried in a swamp to prevent its falling into the
hands of the Whigs. Later it called the village children to school
and then, in a few years superseded in this high office by a new bell,
it was hung in the stables of the village hotel to give the hour to the
workmen. When the writer first saw it, in the spring of 1882, it
hung in a grocery-store; and he understands that it has since been
removed to the Washington Head quarters for preservation.

96 In Olde New York
the letter, and he felt that he could not remain at ease
until Ms bruised and smitten countrymen in Germany
had been brought to tMs land of plenty and Kberty.
In a few months he embarked, again made the tem
pestuous voyage, appeared before the queen, and,
having gained her countenance for Ms project, set out
for Germany to collect Ms co-reKgionists and lead
them, a second Joshua, to the promised land. By the
fall of 1709 he had assembled three thousand exiles
at different points on the RMne, eager for the enter
prise, and late in the year they came to England,
toucMng on the way at Leyden.
The English government had encouraged Pastor
Kockerthal's mission, if it had not directly authorized
it: still, with a lynx-eyed opposition scanning its every
move, it hesitated at incurring the expense of trans
porting tMs large body of emigrants to America and
subsisting them there for a twelvemonth, as it had
done their predecessors. There happened to be in
London at this juncture a gentleman — Colonel
Robert Hunter — who, having been recently appointed
governor of New York, took a great interest in the
affairs of the province, and who suggested a plan for
relieving the ministry of its difficulty. TMs plan was
to employ the Palatines after their arrival in the pro
duction of naval stores until the expenses of their
transit had been fully met. In 1698 a commission had
been appointed to inquire into the capacity of the

The Story of the Palatines 97
American colonies for the production of naval stores,
and to survey the woods and forests for masts, oak
timber, pitch-pine, and land suitable for the produc
tion of hemp, the sanguine ministers evidently believ
ing that American oak in EngKsh sMpyards was some
thing to be desired. A bounty had also been offered
for every barrel of tar or turpentine imported from
America. Colonel Hunter's reasonings on the sub
ject, as subsequently adopted and reported by the
Lords of Trade to the queen, were novel and inter
esting. "Your majesty," it was argued, "imports
four thousand seven hundred barrels of tar yearly
from the Baltic States. It has been found in America
that one man can make six tons of stores per year;
and several working together could make double that
in proportion. We suppose that six hundred men
employed in it will produce seven thousand tons a
year, wMch, if more than your majesty needs, could be
profitably employed in trade with Spain and Portugal."
The cost of production was estimated at five pounds
a ton, and that of transportation at four pounds, at
wMch figures it could be sold as low as Norway tar;
and calculations were made to show how easy it would
be in tMs way for the Palatines to refund the money
advanced them, wMle at the same time they could be
making their homes in the wilderness. The recom
mendations of the Lords of Trade were adopted.
The Palatines signed a contract agreeing to settle

98 In Olde New York
on such lands as should be allotted them, not to leave
them without the governor's permission, not to en
gage in woolen-manufacture, and to suffer the naval
stores produced to be devoted to the payment of the
money advanced. The queen, on her part, agreed
to transport them to New York, to subsist them for
one year after their arrival, to furnish them with seed
and implements, and to grant them, as soon as the
debt was paid, forty acres of land each, to be free of
tax or quit-rent for seven years. There was at tMs
time in the beautiful Mohawk Valley, on the site of
the present towns of Herkimer and German Flats,
a tract of ungranted land to wMch the Indians held
a quasi claim, although it was not occupied by them;
and tMs was selected as the site of the Palatine settle
ment. To Colonel Hunter was assigned the duty of plant
ing the exiles in their new home. The instructions
given to tMs gentleman show that much machinery
was set in motion by the enterprise. Mr. Bridger, her
majesty's Surveyor-General of America, was ordered
down from New England to instruct the people in the
art of making tar. Overseers were appointed to keep
them at work, at a salary of one hundred pounds per
annum, a commissary to receive the stores, at two
hundred pounds for Mmself and clerk, and a factor
in England to place the stores on the market there,
at the usual rate of commission. Ten vessels were

The Story of the Palatines 99
got ready to transport the colony. They rendezvoused
at Plymouth, the point of departure of so many pilgrim
companies, and here, early in the spring of 1710, the
company embarked. The scene must have been one
of unusual and pathetic iaterest, though no account
of it has come down to us. The voyage was to be the
complement of twenty years' wanderings, and its end
rest, competency, home. So large an hegira had never
been known before, at least in modern times, and was
not subsequently equaled. Three thousand people,
— men, women, cMldren, babes in arms, — repre
senting nearly all crafts, professions, and conditions,
gathered on the pier, all placed on a level by one hard
condition, — biting poverty. There were hand-shak
ings and mutual farewells, then the heave-ho of the
sailors, the filling of sails, and the fleet moved slowly
out of the harbor. Tradition says that an event of
evil moment attended the departure: a boat passing
from one sMp to another was capsized and all its pas
sengers drowned; and almost before the land had sunk
from view a storm arose and scattered the fleet, one
vessel — the Berkeley Castle — being so disabled that
she was obUged to put into Portsmouth for repairs,
and reached New York several days behind the other
vessels. The voyage was long and disastrous. Crowded
into small vessels, suppKed probably with insufficient
food, tossed by the sea, and worn out by their pre
vious sufferings, sickness broke out among the poor

100 In Olde New York
people, and death reaped a fearful harvest. Almost
the only details of the passage are given in two letters
from Governor Hunter to the Lords of Trade, dated
at New York, — the first, June 16, 1710, in wMch he
says that he had arrived there two days before, and
adds, " We want three of the Palatine sMps, and those
arrived are in a desperately sickly condition." He
writes again July 24, " The Palatine sMps are all safe,
except the Herbert frigate, with tents and arms, cast
away on the east end of Long Island, July 7. The
men are safe, the goods damaged. The Berkeley
Castle, left at Portsmouth, not in. The poor people
have been mighty sickly, but recover apace. We have
lost about four hundred and seventy of our number."
Four hundred and seventy out of a total of three
thousand !
The exiles once landed, Mr. Bridger was sent off
to the Mohawk lands to see if they were suited for the
purpose in view, and returned in due time with an un
favorable report. The lands were undoubtedly good,
he admitted, but the entire absence of pines precluded
the idea of using them for the production of naval
stores; and even if pines were to be had, their remote
ness from market was an insuperable objection: besides,
if the people were settled on these extreme frontiers
they could not be protected from the inroads of the
French and Indians, — as if the government had not
designed planting them there as a check to those in-

The Story of the Palatines 101
roads. To get a correct idea of the animus of tMs
report, we must glance briefly at the state of the colony
of New York. After the conquest of India, it came to
be regarded as an asylum for bankmpt poKticians and
impecunious younger sons of the EngKsh nobiKty,
who went out poor, and in a few years, by the simple
process of peculation in office, returned rich. New
York at tMs time sustained much such a relation to
the mother country, though of course in lesser degree.
Pirates and smugglers in the ports, land-grabbers, tax-
collectors, and commissaries in the interior, offered
rare opportunities to officials with itcMng palms.
Most of the land then taken up was held in great
estates by certain patroons and lords of manors, who
held the rights of the commonalty in utter contempt.
These men had great influence with the colonial govern
ment. There was what would be called now a "ring"
at Albany, that had already cast covetous eyes on the
beautiful Mohawk VaUey and were not willing that it
should be given to a band of needy German emigrants.
WMle Mr. Bridger was making Ms survey. Gover
nor Hunter had been approached on the subject by
one of these gentlemen, Robert Livingston. Mr.
Livingston was a native of Scotland, a man of abiKty
and great force of character, who, in several offices
had done the colony good service, but who was tainted
with the leprosy of covetousness. By means of these
offices and Ms interest with the royal governors he had

102 In Olde New York
become very wealthy, and was now the owner of a
manor of one hundred and sixty thousand acres. His
manor-house stood some six miles back from the
Hudson, on a knoll overlooking one of the intervales
of the river, and has been described as "a long, low,
rambKng dwelling of stone, with heavy roofs, stout
oaken doors, and windows so deeply set in the walls
that they looked Kke embrasures." Within it was fur
nished vsdth some approach to European elegance.
Over Ms wide domain Livingston ruled as an autocrat.
He had been endowed with aU the rights enjoyed by
EngKsh lords of the manor, had many retainers in Ms
hall, many horses in Ms stalls, and the command of a
miKtia company formed of Ms followers, all of wMch
combined with Ms free hospitaKty to make Mm popular
at home and potent in affairs of state.
Mr. Livingston advanced the objections to the
Mohawk lands wMch have been stated, and proposed
instead a tract of six thousand acres on Ms own manor,
heavily timbered, contiguous to the river, and in every
way suited to the object. He would dispose of it for
such a purpose at a sacrifice, — four hundred pounds
sterKng. Without entering into details, we may say
that the offer was accepted. In October, 1710, the
poor Palatines, robbed of the Canaan wMch had been
promised them, were planted in the gloomy pine
forest on the Livingston estate. Some refused the
hard conditions and remained in New York, founding

The Story of the Palatmes 103
there the first Lutheran church in tMs country; others
joined their countrymen in Pennsylvania. Those that
went were settled in five villages, or "dorfs," — three
on the east bank, known as the East Camp, and two
on the west bank, directly opposite, on a tract of un
granted land, called West Camp. Two thousand two
hundred and twenty-seven Palatines were settled here,
the remainder having died or been left at New York
and other points.
Queen Anne, it wiU be remembered, had agreed to
maintain the colonists for a year after their arrival.
The stated daily stipend had been fixed at sixpence
for adults and fourpence for cMldren before leaving
England. The contract for supplying them was given
to Li^ngston. The rations furnished, according to
the terms of Ms contract, wMch is still in existence,
were a tMrd of a loaf of bread a day, the loaves of such
size and sort as were sold in New York for fourpence
halfpenny, and a quart of beer from Ms brew-house.
The first act of the settlers was to build rude log houses
for shelter; their next, to clear the ground. The homes
so long and ardently looked forward to were at last
theirs. How depressingly must they have compared
with the homes they had left! Instead of the smiling
fields and vineyards of the Fatherland, a gloomy pine
forest, extending far as the eye could reach; instead
of the RMne, a sullen, forest-fringed river; in place of
busy city and romantically-perched castle, the log hut

104 In Olde New York
of the settler and the wigwam of the savage. Quite
different, too, from what they had been accustomed to
were the duties that awaited them here. Instead of
the reaping and sowing, dressing of the vine and
treading of the purple vintage, the hard, thankless
task of the pioneer, — forests to hew, houses to build,
lands to clear, roads to open, a dock to construct;
and to these was added the drudgery of a distasteful
occupation. The first winter they were employed in
building houses and making clearings. In the spring,
under harsh taskmasters, they began discharging their
obligations to the queen, and continued it, many of
them, for twelve long years of servitude.
Their first act was to prepare the trees for tar-
making. In the spring, when the sap was up, they
barked the north side of the tree; in the fall, before
the sap was down, the south side; in the succeeding
spring, the east side, and in the fall again, the west side,
— the object being to retain the sap in the wood.
Two years were required by tMs process to prepare
the tree. Then, when it was fuUy dead, it was cut
into convenient lengths, and the tar extracted from it
by slow combustion in a rude kiM. Turpentine was
extracted by bleeding the trees, as is now practised.
So earnest were the overseers that the boys and girls
were set to gathering pine knots, from wMch alone.
Governor Hunter reported, sixty barrels of tar were
made during the first season.

The Story of the Palatines 105
It was not long before the poor Palatines discovered
that they had sold themselves into a virtual slavery.
The clause in their contract wMch granted them their
lands only when they should have repaid the cost of
their transportation was fatal to their liberty; for it
soon became apparent that naval stores could not be
produced on the Hudson so cheaply and of such
quality as the British ministry had predicted, that
when sold in open market they could not com
pete with the Swedish article, and that after the
salaries of iastructors, commissaries, overseers, agents,
and clerks were paid, very little was left to the
credit of the Palatines. The prospect of discharg
ing their debt by these means in that century
seemed hopeless. The condition of the emigrants
soon became pitiable: they were looked upon as
paupers subsisting on the bounty of government, and
treated accordingly. The neighboring wMte settlers
regarded them as interlopers, and had Kttle inter
course with them, and then only to fan their discon
tent. Nearly all the officials made a spoil of them;
but none aroused so many bitter complaints as did the
cMef commissary, Robert Livingston. It was alleged
that the bread he furnished them was moldy and
lacked the stipulated weight, and that the beer was so
bad as to be undrinkable; furthermore, that by Ms
interest with the overseers they were oftener employed
in clearing the manor lands than on their own reser-

106 In Olde New York
vation.* More than once these complaints became so
bitter that Governor Hunter came in person to in
vestigate them. He was accompained by Ms staff,
and was received with every mark of consideration
and respect at the manor-house. Samples of the
bread and beer furnished were shown Mm; he heard
the statements of the contractor; and the conclusion
of the matter was a speech to the disaffected, in wMch
he recounted the goodness of the queen and upbraided
them for a set of sturdy rogues who were making but
a poor return for the favors shown them.
They had, however, other grounds of complaint.
Sickness was rife among them, and they were without
medicines or physicians. Their cMldren were bound
' A caustic letter from the Earl of Clarendon to Lord Dartmouth,
Secretary of State, gives color to these charges. He says: "I think
it unhappy that Colonel Hunter at his first arrival in his government
has fallen into such ill hands, for this Livingston has been known
many years in that province for a very ill man. He formerly vict
ualled the forces at Albany, in which he was guilty of most notorious
frauds by which he greatly improved his estate. He has a mill and
brew-house upon his land, and if he can get the victualling of the
Palatines, who are so coiiveniently posted for his purpose, he will make
a good addition to his estate. ... I am of opinion, if subsistence
be all, the conclusion will be that Livingston and some others will
get large estates, the Palatines will be none the richer, but will be
confirmed in that laziness they are already prone to." The earl,
however, was opposed to the emigration of the Palatines. It is just
to Livingston to say that a commissioner appointed to inquire into
his accounts while quartermaster exonerated him from charges
of fraud.

The Story of the Palatmes 107
out without their consent, and, under colonial law,
became the property of their masters as absolutely
as the cattle in their stalls. In 1711, in the war against
Canada, a requisition for soldiers had been served
upon them, and three hundred of their best men had
accompanied Colonel Nicholson in the campaign
against Montreal, — not all of whom returned. Their
cMef grievance, however, lay in the fact that the beauti
ful country wMch had been proimsed them, and wMch
was to furnish homes for themselves and their cMldren,
was withheld, — that by a clause in the contract wMch
they had misunderstood they were held in bondage.
There was much discontent among them on these
grounds during the first winter, not allayed when
some bold spirits who had penetrated the wilderness
to the promised land returned with glowing accounts
of its beauty and fertiUty.
Good Pastor Kockerthal spent most of Ms time
with Ms afflicted brethren, leaving the Kttle flock at
Newburgh to the care of local elders. He attended
the sick, and knelt at the bedside of the dying with
prayers and words of consolation. He counseled
patience and moderation, cheered them with the
hymns of the Fatherland, and was until death the
guide and comforter of the people.*
> This unsung apostle died in 1719, and was buried in the midst
of the people he had loved so well. His grave is still to be seen in
West Camp, in the present town of Saugerties, — a sort of vault

108 In Olde New York
The pastor was powerless to allay aU feeling of dis
content, however, and in May, 1711, Governor Hunter
was hastily summoned to the manor to quell a mutiny
wMch had broken out among the Palatines. They
had risen against their overseers, he was told, declaring
that they would go to the lands at Schoharie wMch
the queen had given them. Hunter, with sixty soldiers
whom he had ordered down from the garrison at
Albany, marched into the midst of the villages and
summoned the cMefs to an account. They stated
their grievances, wMch have been enumerated.
The governor, in reply, reminded them of their
solemn contract, and of their obKgations to the queen,
assured them that the Scoharie country was stiU
in a field near the Hudson, covered with a large flat stone, on which
is inscribed, in German, this mystical epitaph:
Wise Wanderer
Under this stone rests near his
Sybilla Charlotte
A True Wanderer
The Joshua
of the High Dutch in North America and the
same in the East and West
Hudson's River
Poor Lutheran Preacher
His first arrival was with Lord Lovelace 1707-8
January the 1st
His second was vrith Col. Hunter 1710
June the 14th
His voyage to England brought forth his heavenly
voyage on St. John's Day 1719.

The Story of the Palatines 109
occupied by Indians, and that if they were settled
there they could not be protected from the French.
They still continued rebellious, however, and he ended
the matter summarily by disarming them and putting
them under the care of captains or directors, as the
queen's Mred servants. After tMs exploit he returned
to New York. For a year the Palatines, deprived of
their arms and under the eye of the miKtary, remained
passive. Pastor Kockerthal, writing of them at tMs period,
says: "All are at work and busy, but manifestly with
repugnance and only temporarily. They tMnk the
tract intended for them a Canaan, but dangerous to
settle now, so they have patience. But they wiU not
listen to tar-making." In the faU of 1712 the governor
informed them that they must depend upon themselves
for subsistence thereafter, as Ms funds were exhausted.
The winteri passed in not very successful efforts to keep
the wolf from the door, and in laying plans for a re
moval to Scoharie as soon as spring should open.
TMs region seems to have been the Canaan of the
wanderers. Roseate visions of it had been flitting
through their minds since their departure from Eng
land. Hunters and trappers with whom they came in
contact gave glowing accounts of its beauty and fer
tility. It lay in the valley of the Scoharie, near its
junction with the Mohawk, some tMrty miles west of
Albany. It was a natural prairie of rich, deep soil.

110 In Olde New York
once used by the Indians for corn-lands, but wMch
in their retreat westward had been abandoned.
Early in May, 1713, a large body of the people,
some five hundred in number, proceeded by water to
Albany, with the purpose of entering the vaUey from
thence. Conrad Weiser, one of the seven captains,
was the leader, — Pastor Kockerthal remaining at the
Camps. There is no more beautiful drive to-day
than the old road -from Albany to Scoharie, wMch
follows the Kne of the Indian trail that led the emigrants
to their happy valley. The company journeyed on
foot: they had neither veMcle nor draft-animal of
any sort. The men carried their arms, seeds, im
plements, and household effects on their backs; each
matron had a babe in arms, a group of Kttle toddlers
beside her, and perhaps a sack of provisions or bundle
of clothing on her back. An Indian, in paint and
feathers, led the way. Thus accoutered, they were
three days making the journey. At night they camped
in the open air, building fires to keep away the wolves.
Up the heights of the Helderberg, one of the northern
most spurs of the Catskills, they toiled, and on over
ridge and valley, until, on the tMrd day, from the
foot-MUs of Fox Creek they caught sight of the Scho
harie intervale. It is dotted now with villages and
rich with broad, green fields surrounding farmhouses
where content and abundance reside, — one of the
garden-spots of the Empire State, — a valley so lovely

The Story of the Palatines 111
that when viewed on a June day from its encircling
MUs the eye is loath to turn from the entrancing
sight. It was beautiful then, though art had done
nothing for it; and eagerly the wanderers thronged into
it and began the erection of their homes. They
estabKshed themselves in seven villages, each named
after its head man, and to each householder was
allotted forty acres of land to clear, fence, and till
as Ms own. The settlement soon grew into a thrifty
and prosperous community, and for sixty years nothing
occurred to disturb its serenity except the recurrence
of one question, that of the title to the lands.
At an early period, Nicholas Bayard, an agent of
the Crown, arrived, and sent word to the householders
that if they would describe to Mm the boundaries of
their land he would give them a free deed in the name
of the queen. But the people had grown suspicious
of government officials, and, looking on tMs as some
new device to deprive them of their lands, treated the
agent so rougMy that he fled to Schenectady. From
that place he again offered to give to whoever would
appear there with a single ear of com and describe Ms
boundaries a free deed and title in perpetuity. The
people, however, still suspicious, refused tMs offer;
and Bayard then repaired to Albany, where he sold
the title to the Scoharie lands to flve landholders, —
one of them being Robert Livingston, Jr. These
gentlemen soon called on the settlers, either to pur-

112 In Olde New York
chase the lands they had cleared, take out loans, or be
evicted, and, no notice being taken of the summons,
sent the sheriff of Albany to dispossess them. It was a
general notion that the Palatines were a mild, inoffen
sive, pusillanimous people, who would submit to any
injustice rather than break the peace: so the sheriff
proceeded on Ms mission unaccompanied by even a
deputy, and, putting up at the pubKc house in Weiser's
dorf, made known Ms conditions to the villagers. It
is not recorded that the men made any objection to
these harsh terms; but the mob of women that soon
gathered at the door convinced Mm that he had made
a mistake. They were Amazons, these women, strong
daughters of the hoe and plough, bare-armed, scant
of skirt,. strong-Kmbed from frequent journeys to
Schenectady bearing the bag of grain to be floured;
and it was but the work of a moment for two of them
to hustle the Kttle sheriff from Ms retreat into their
midst. There he was knocked down, rolled in the
mire where the hogs wallowed, and then placed on a
rail and ridden " skimmington " through four villages,
— Hartman's, Bruna's, Smith's, and Fox's dorfs, —
in all, Mssed and hooted at and pelted with mud as the
rogue who had come to deprive the people of their
homes. At length the poor wretch, more dead than
aKve, was set down on the Mill bridge, seven miles
from Ms starting-point, and bidden to betake Mmself
to Ms masters, lest worse evils should befall Mm. Our

The Story of the Palatines 113
heroines, however, paid dearly for their sport on tMs
occasion. For a long time their Kege-lords refused to
go to Albany to trade, sending their wives instead, well
knowing that they would be held responsible for the
sheriff's discomfiture. After a wMle, however, tMnking
the storm had blown over, several of them ventured,
and were summarily seized by the proprietors and kept
in prison until they agreed to pay the price demanded
for their lands.
It is time, however, that we should return to glance
briefly at the Mstory of their fellow-pioneers whom
we left on the Hudson. These as a body remained
where Governor Hunter had placed them until after
the death of the good pastor Kockerthal in 1719. In
1721 some of the more enterprising began agitating a
removal to the rich bottomlands of the Mohawk
promised by Queen Anne. Their agents were sent
out, and selected a tract of land at the confluence of
Canada Creek with the Mohawk, on wMch the pros
perous towns of Herkimer and German Flats now
stand. Governor Burnett confirmed tMs tract to them
by a patent dated January 17, 1722, and a detachment
of ninety-two persons made a settlement here, proba
bly in the spring of that year. To each head of a
family was allotted forty acres of land, and the indus
try of the owners soon made every acre as productive
as a garden.
The long-coveted material for homes was at last

114 In Olde New York
secured to them, and hope made every muscle active
and enduring. For tMrty-five years the settlers lived
a sort of Acadian life. Their Indian neighbors, the
Six Nations, through the influence of Sir WilKam
Johnson, continued at peace with the EngKsh. Ques
tions of title and boundaries wMch disturbed their
compatriots at Scoharie were never raised here.
Their lands were perhaps the richest ever tilled, and,
with their simple and economical habits, a generation
was sufficient to make them thrifty and comfortable
land-holders, with large framed dwelKngs, capacious
bams, schools, churches, and mills. TMs fair dream
of peace was rudely dispelled, however, in the autumn
of 1757, when a body of three hundred French and
Indians, under M. De Beletre, suddenly appeared
before the settlements on the north side of the Mohawk.
Part of the inhabitants fled to rude forts, or, rather,
block-houses, wMch had been constructed for such an
emergency, and from tMs retreat beheld the torch
appKed to their houses, bams, and ricks, their Kve-
stock herded for driving away, and such of their rela
tives as had not been able to reach the fort captured
or inhumanly butchered. Next the enemy appeared
before the block-house and summoned the people to
surrender, threatening to show no mercy if compelled
to take it, and the captains, deeming discretion the
better part of valor, opened the gates. The command
ing officer then massed the prisoners, as he had the

The Story of the Palatines 115
plunder, and the long, weary march to Canada was
begun. The settlement was utterly laid waste. Sixty
buildings were burned, forty dead were left on the
ground unburied, and one hundred and fifty men,
women, and cMldren were borne away into the wilder
ness to suffer the horrors of Indian captivity.
The settlements on the south side, directly opposite,
were untouched, the ravagers fearing to remain long
in the neighborhood, lest news of their exploits should
bring Sir WiUaim and Ms Iroquois upon them. With
tMs single exception, however, the three principal
Palatine settlements — on the Mohawk, the Sco
harie, and the Hudson — enjoyed, during the colonial
era, the blessings of peace. Sir WUUam died early in
1774, some said by Ms own hand to avoid acting against
his friends in the struggle wMch he saw to be inevitable.
The struggle quickly followed Ms death, and it found
the unhappy Palatines on the border between the two
contending factions. Fate to tMs people must have
seemed inexorable. Considering the persecutions and
miseries they had suffered in the Old World, the oppres
sions and extortions that met them in the New, and
the horrors visited upon them in the Revolutionary
struggle, we must admit that there never Kved a people
more hardly used. At the beginning of hostiKties, it
will be remembered, the Six Nations renewed their
aUegiance to the British cause, and the Crown at once
let them loose on the American settlements, stimulating

116 In Olde New York
their native ferocity by the offer of a bounty of eight
dollars for every scalp brought in.
The Palatine settlements, from their defenseless
condition, and the fact that the people were less skilful
in the use of arms than their Yankee neighbors, became
early a favorite hunting-ground for the red rangers.
The murders, burnings, torturings, and other atrocities
committed here duriog the war would be deemed in
credible were they not so well authenticated. Wives
saw their husbands murdered, scalped, and impaled
on the pickets that fenced their gardens. Wives were
brained and scalped before the eyes of their husbands,
cMldren in the presence of their parents; babes were
torn from their mothers' breasts to be dashed upon the
stones; and the hellish carnival generally ended with
the burning of all that the settler had gathered by
years of toil, and the carrying away into captivity of
such as savage fancy had spared.
These outrages were committed, not by large bodies
of men whose coming could be discovered and guarded
against, but by detached bands, whose approach was
as stealthy as the panther's and who sprang upon the
settlements in the secure hour when no danger was
apprehended. Their effect was to almost depopulate
the Mohawk Valley. In 1781 it was estimated that
fully one tMrd of the inhabitants had been kiUed or
captured; and most of the remainder had fled within
the American lines for safety.

The Story of the Palatines 117
It is pleasant to know, however, that tMs was the last
severe afiiiction visited upon tMs long-suffering people.
After the war the survivors returned to their ruined
homes; the soil was left them, and returned generous
harvests, as if in pity for their misfortunes, and a gen
eration later the visitor to the beautiful vaUey could
discover scarcely a trace of the rutMess hand of war.

CHAPTER XI

A DECAYED STRONGHOLD

T OITERING at Ticonderoga, through bright
-*— ^ autumn days, long after the stream of tourists
had run away, we made many voyages of discovery,
each so interesting that it might ivith profit occupy
a week of a summer sojourn. One should establish
Mmself at the pretty village of Ticonderoga, up the
outlet of Lake George, where one finds good hotels
and all the amenities. Lake George is three miles
away on the south, and Lake Champlain two miles
on the east, wMle at the door in the falls of the outlet is
almost every variety of form that faUing water can
assume. TMs outlet, as it leaves Lake George, is a
considerable miU stream of clear cold water, sparkKng
and murmuring among meadows until reaching the
village it falls nearly 250 feet in as many yards, cover
ing almost at a leap the difference in level between the
two lakes. In its natural state the cataract must have
been a romantic picture, but its waters are now * so
obstructed by dams and vexed by mill-wheels that
much of their beauty has vanished. Pulp mills en-
* This was written in 1886.

-¦-e

1,..' ¦¦<*.»».»..» „ , .If ¦ , 'i J.''

"Htei.

Ruins of Foht Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain
Reproduced from an old print. The ruins are on the lower hill at the right

A Decayed Stronghold 119
gaged in making paper from the poplar wMch grows
along the lake shore, a woolen miU, and long, low
workshops, in wMch the grapMte found in the neigh
boring MUs is prepared for market, are now clustered
beside the cataract, and about them Kes the village
comprising some 1900 inhabitants. Below, the out
let flows through a woody glen to Lake Champlain,
so deep and quiet that it is easily navigable by small
steamers ; and then comes the lake, — so narrow and
shallow here that the Vermont Central has thrown a
draw-bridge across it to connect its system with that
of the Delaware and Hudson, but lengthening itself
out Kke a ribbon to WMtehall, twenty-two miles south.
One might spend days rounding the fir-clad promon
tories or skirting the gently-circling bay shores with
out discovering one half its beauties.
The great feature of interest, however, is old Fort
Ticonderoga. As one glides from the outlet into the
lake he sees over a marsh on the left a gaunt, craggy
promontory rising abruptly out of the water and
stretching back into the forest a well-defined wall of
trap a hundred feet above the level of the lake. The
railway coming up from WMtehall pierces the barrier
by a tunnel. On the right, in the curve of the bay
formed partly by tMs promontory, is the dock where
the large lake steamers land their passengers for Lake
George. TMs promontory is Ticonderoga, one of the
most Mstoric spots in America. Clambering up its

120 In Olde New York
ledges to the summit, one finds a green, sKghtly roUing
plateau, with black rocks outcropping here and there
among the grass, and in its center gaunt and ragged
walls of masonry. In some of them embrasures still
gape, and beside them moat and sally-port, north and
west bastions, parade, and barracks are still traceable.
A Kttle further east, where the cliff projects over the
water, may be defined the outKnes of a redoubt.
Sheep are feeding now among the grim ruins, and one
may linger all day without being disturbed by any
chance passer. It is a strange, eventful Mstory that
of tMs rock. When the French engineers of Baron
Dieskau first selected it, and raised here the walls of
their Fort Carillon, they did it to command the great
Mghway between the English colonies on the south
and their own Dominion of Canada, a Mghway wMch,
making use of the Hudson and the two lakes — George
and Champlain — gave almost uninterrupted water
communication between the St. Lawrence and the
Atlantic at New York. And so it came about that all
the wars between these French and EngKsh colonies
resolved themselves into a struggle for the possession
of tMs commanding rock. In Kke manner it became
the first point aimed at and won by the American
colonies in their later struggle against England for
independence. Strange memories cluster about the
gray old ruin, wMch a dreamy October day is apt to
revivify. First a thousand gay Frenchmen in blue

A Decayed Stronghold 121
coats, and half as many Iroquois in war paint and
feathers, march away up the outlet toward Lake George,
bound on the congenial errand of a midnight assault
on some unguarded fortress or sleeping settlement.
But in a few days they come streaming back broken,
defeated. They have met Johnson and Ms provin
cials at Fort WilKam Henry, at the head of the lake.
Next, Vaudreuil comes on the same errand, wading
through the March snows, but is broken on the same
sturdy barrier. But the Frenchmen still persist, and
five months iMer Montcalm, with pennons . waving
over 8000 men in arms, comes up the lake bound to
sweep the English from Lake George. He does it,
but the year is hardly out ere Abercrombie, with 15,000
EngKshmen, sits down before the fort and demands
its surrender. There is a heady fight, and the fort
holds out, but the EngKsh retreat only to reappear
the next year under an abler general, and overthrow
the French power in America.
Under EngKsh rule the old fort saw peaceful days.
The quiet lakes were no more the field of contending
nations. Iroquois and Mohawks went no more on
the warpath. A corporal's guard of forty men lounged
about the crumbling ramparts, watched the Kzard
basking in the sally-port, drank King George's health,
and shuffled cards on unused drumheads. Then came
the morning of the 10th of May, 1775, when in the
gray dawn a motley band of frontiersmen in backwoods

122 In Olde New York
garb, headed by one Ethan AUen, of Bennington,
swarmed over the parapets and drew up on the parade.
We should Kke to have seen the expression of the old
red-faced martinet who commanded when confronted
by tMs band of farmers and ordered to surrender
¦"in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental
Congress."

CHAPTER XII

THE ORISKANY MONUMENT

/Gliding swiftly eastward on the New York
^^ Central Railroad and nearing the Kttle village
of Oriskany, in Oneida County, a tall shaft on a
neighboring MUtop to the right fiashed by. The
monument is to General Herkimer and the brave
patriots of 1777, and it marks the Oriskany battle-field
as well. The whole region is storied ground. We
left the train at the Kttle station of Oriskany, and
walked back along the tow-path of the canal for the
first mile, thence across the latter by a bridge and
along a rural lane to the Mghway wMch sldrts the
brow of the MU on wMch the monument stands. In
Ms cottage overlooking the battle-field, we found Mr.
Rolin M. Lewis, the custodian of the grounds, who
added much to the interest of our visit by personally
guiding us to the scenes of greatest interest, and
wMch, being unmarked, we would have found by our
selves difficult to determine.
The monument stands where the battle was fought,
on the edge of a sharp bluff rearing itself above the
Mohawk VaUey, on a plot of five acres of meadow

124 In Olde New York
purchased by the Association for the purpose. It is
of Maine granite, eighty-five feet Mgh above the base,
wMch is of the valley limestone. On each side of the
die of the pedestal is a tablet of bronze six feet wide
and four and a haff Mgh. Two of the bronzes are
pictorial, and represent one. General Herkimer direct
ing the fight after receiving Ms mortal wound, the
other a pioneer and Indian engaged in deadly struggle.
On one of the remaining tablets is the dedication, and
on the other a roster containing the names of those
patriots engaged in the fight, as far as they could be
learned — but 250 out of 800. . The dedication was
written by Professor Edward North, of Hamilton
CoUege, and is in excellent taste. It is as fol
lows: "Here was fought the battle of Oriskany on the
6th day of August, 1777. Here British invasion was
checked and thwarted. Here Gen. Nicholas Herkimer,
intrepid leader of the American forces, though mor
tally wounded, kept command of the fight, tiU the
enemy had fled. The Kfe blood of more than 200
patriot heroes made tMs battle-ground sacred for
ever. "TMs Monument was built a.d. 1883 in the year
of Independence 107, by grateful dwellers in the
Mohawk Valley, under the direction of the Oneida
Historical Society, aided by the National Government
and the State of New York."

The Oriskany Monument

The Oriskany Monument 125
The first mover in the matter of erecting tMs monu
ment was the Continental Congress of 1777, wMch
passed the following resolution :
"That the Governor and Council of New York be
desired to erect a monument at Continental expense
of the value of $500 to the memory of the late Briga
dier-General Herkimer, who commanded the militia
of Tryon County, in the State of New York, and was
killed fighting gallantly in defence of the Kberties of
these States."
But the people were too poor to give effect to tMs
praiseworthy resolution, and it slumbered until in
1876 the Oneida Historical Society was formed at
Utica, when it actively began the work so long delayed.
PubKc meetings were held, the press enKsted, Con
gress was appealed to, and at length induced to vote
the original sum of $500, with interest amounting to
$4100, to wMch the Legislature of New York added
$3000 conditional to a Kke sum being raised by private
subscription. The monument was erected in 1883,
and dedicated with appropriate ceremonies, in the
presence of a large audience, on the 6th of August,
1884, the 107th anniversary of the battle.
The visitor can but be charmed with the outlook
from the spot. At Ms feet is the winding, gently un
dulating valley of the Upper Mohawk, covered with
tilth and grange, the new-bom river sparkling in its
midst. The Erie Canal mns at the foot of the bluff, and

126 In Olde New York
beside it the great national Mghway, the New York
Central, with its four roadways over wMch ten trains
every hour pass. Half-a-dozen boats are in sight on
the canal, moving sedately in such striking contrast
to the roar and rush of the train. Rome is but six
miles away on the west, Utica nine miles on the east.
Across the valley the MUs rise gently in alternate farm
and forest, with the spire of more than one village
church pricking above the greenery.
"TMs battle of Oriskany," said our friend musingly,
"would be considered a mere skirmish in our day, but
it wrought ulterior results of the greatest importance.
Down there in the Mohawk Valley at Herkimer,
twenty-four miles distant, in 1725 a colony of German
Palatines from the Rhenish Palatinate had been settled.
As has been well said, because they were so well used
to fire, and sword, battle, siege, and massacre at home,
they could better stand the savage incursions to wMch
that frontier fort was then exposed.
"Among these Palatines was a certain John Jost
Herkimer, or properly Hercheimer, who had a son
Nicholas, who in 1776 had risen to be a leader among
Ms people, and for that reason had been appointed
Brigadier-General of the miKtia of Tryon County.
The British plan of battle directed Burgoyne to march
down Lake Champlain, and Colonel St. Leger with
an auxiliary force to enter the Mohawk Valley at its
head and move down it, swelling Ms column with the

The Oriskany Monument 127
Tories and Indians who were numerous then, and
gathering from its rich fields suppKes for the main
column, wMch he was to join at Albany. On the 16th
of July Herkimer heard that St. Leger had appeared
at Oswego with a large force bent on tMs expedition,
and he at once issued Ms proclamation calling for
volunteers to repel the invader. On the 4th of August
he set out with 800 men to meet the foe who had in
vested Fort Stanwix, wMch stood yonder in the valley
near the present site of Rome. St. Leger, apprised of
Ms coming, sent forward Ms Tories and Indians to
form an ambush in yonder ravine, and in the heavy
timber wMch then covered tMs Mil. Herkimer's van
guard came marcMng along the road yonder, Kttle
suspecting danger, when suddenly they were saluted
with a volley and the deafening yells of the savages.
Fortunately the German farmers were untrammeled
by discipKne. They broke ranks at once, and fought
as their enemies fought, from tree to tree and from
rock to rock. For five long hours the battle continued.
Herkimer's wMte horse was early killed under Mm,
and he was mortally wounded; he directed Ms saddle
to be placed on a fallen tree and calmly sat on it, smok
ing Ms pipe and commanding the battle. Two hun
dred of the patriots lay dead, when suddenly the
savages lost heart and fled, giving the day to the brave
Herkimer and Ms followers. St. Leger's march was
stayed. Burgoyne, deprived of Ms ally, and of the

128 In Olde New York
expected provisions, surrendered, and Continental
affairs assumed an entirely new phase."
Mr. Lewis took us to a spot on the MUside near the
ravine and pointed out the site of the tree on wMch
Herkimer sat to direct the battle, and then into the
ravine to see a corduroy road hastily laid by General
Herkimer on the day of the battle for Ms troops to cross.
A ditch had recently been dug across it, cutting through
some of the logs wMch were seen to be still in good
heart. Several of them since the erection of the monu
ment had been carried to the sawmill and sawn into
canes, wMch had been quickly disposed of as reKcs of
the fight.*
* This article was written in 1883.

CHAPTER Xin
JOHNSON HALL*
A S I sit at my window in the village hotel of Johns-
¦*^*- town, I see across green meadows a fine old
country seat set on a little elevation in a pretty park
of native trees. The villagers know it as Johnson
Hall, the former seat of Sir William Johnson, Baronet.
Perhaps no house in the land has seen stranger vicissi
tudes. Council after council of red men has been
held witMn its walls; throngs of painted savages have
surrounded it, sometimes bent on merry-making,
sometimes on war. Settlers have fled to it for refuge.
In its old Kbrary for twelve long years centered all the
vrires that directed the Indian affairs of the northern
colonies. Then spies were continually going out from
it into all the Indian country, and swift runners bear
ing belts or messages from the Canada tribes, from
the Ottawas, Wyandots, Senecas, and Shawnees, and
from the outposts of Detroit and along the lakes, were
continually arriving. It has been the scene too of a
generous hospitaKty. An Indian princess once pre
sided there as its mistress, and entertained at her
• First appeared in the New York Evening Post in 1883.

130 In Olde New York
board with equal courtesy titled visitors from foreign
lands, grave colonial gentlemen in wigs and ruffles,
and the blanketed cMeftains of her own nation.
Groups of merry cMldren, showing the lineaments of
the Caucasian father and Indian mother, have played
about its doors. It has been the scene of bridals,
births, and deaths, of stirring incidents, romantic
episodes, and diplomatic triumphs without number,
and now in more peaceful days preserves the stateK-
ness and dignity befitting a mansion with a Mstory.
The old house stands on a sKght elevation, about a
mile from the village, in a park of some ten acres, with
meadows and green fields sloping from it in every
direction. The approach is by a private road set with
shade trees. The park is well kept and fragrant with
flowers and shrubbery. Four great, gaunt poplars
stand witMn it wMch are pointed out as having been
planted by the Baronet Mmself, a year after the house
was built. A row of gnarled old Klac trees set in the
form of an ellipse, and still blooming in their season,
were set out by the same hand.
The HaU itself is a square-roofed two-story and
attic structure, built of wood clapboarded in the form
of blocks of stone, and at its best estate had two wings
built of soKd stone and pierced for musketry; but one
of these, however, is now standing. On entering the
house its soKdity and wide proportions at once mark
it as a product of the colonial era. Its timbers are

The Johnson House
Reproduced from an old-time French print

Johnson Hall 131
massive. The hall running through the building is
forty feet long by fifteen wide, with a broad staircase
leading to a similar hall above. The rooms are high
and spacious and the sides are wainscoted with heavy
panels and carved work. On the roof is an observa
tory from wMch one may look into four counties.
TMs, however, did not form a part of the original
structure. Bow-windows in parlor and dining-room
have also been added by the present owner. In other
respects it stands precisely as it was left by its titled
builder. It was built in 1763, and was then considered
one of the finest mansions in the colony outside of New
York. Sir WUliam Johnson came of a good family in Ireland
and arrived in America in 1738, at the age of twenty-
three, to take charge of a large estate in the Mohawk
Valley wMch Ms uncle. Captain Peter Warren, had
purchased some years before. Either through Ms
own address or the influence of Ms family the young
Irishman "got on" famously in the new world. He
cleared lands, invited settlers, opened a country store,
built a flouring mill, and drove a profitable trade with
the Indians, and in a few years became favorably
known not only in Ms own section but at Albany and
New York. In a few years we find Mm receiving
offices from the Crown, but that wMch secured Mm
the favor of Ms Government and brought Mm wealth
and honors was the unbounded influence wMch he

132 In Olde New York
soon acquired over Ms savage neighbors, the Six
Nations. Perhaps no other man ever studied the
Indian character, habits, and sympatMes so thorougMy,
or possessed such tact and skill in making use of his
knowledge. Tp secure their friendsMp, he visited
them in their villages, dressed in their garb, sat in
their councils, seated them as guests at Ms own table,
took part in their ceremonies, and alKed Mmself
domestically with one of their most powerful clans.
He early saw the importance to the colony and to Eng
land of winning and holding tMs strong confederacy
to the EngKsh cause, and that the man who could do
tMs was sure of advancement and favor. He Kved
during the stirring period of the French and Indian
wars. Wily emissaries of the French were continuaUy
appearing among the Six Nations, bribing them and
striving to arouse their prejudices against their neigh
bors, the EngKsh; but during tMs entire period the
influence of tMs one man held the Indians to their
fealty and saved the colony from destruction. It was
natural that he should be rewarded for tMs. As early
as 1746 the cMef management of Indian affairs was
entrusted to Mm and he was given the command of
several Indian expeditions against the French. In 1755
he was made a Major-General and given command
of one of the four armies raised that year for service
against the French, and after meeting and defeating
Baron Dieskau on Lake George the Crown created

Johnson HaU 133
Mm a Baronet, wMle Parliament voted Mm five thou
sand pounds to support the honor. In addition he
had received at various times immense tracts of land.
In 1762 he was the owner, either by purchase or grant,
of nearly all the fertile region now included in the
county of Fulton, and about tMs time settled one
hundred famiKes on the site of the present village of
Johnstown, and partly for their protection and partly
to maintain a better espionage over the Indians built
the old mansion wMch I have described. The scene
then was far different from that presented now. A
heavy forest covered the country, broken only by the
clearing about the Kttle settlement, and bear and
panther, Mohawk, Delaware, and Seneca prowled in it.
The Hall was scarcely completed when it became
the scene of a notable Indian council. In the summer
of 1762 Pontiac, King of the great Ottawa Confederacy,
had formed a design of. driving the EngKsh from the
country and had invited all the great interior tribes,
among them the Six Nations, to join with Mm in the
enterprise. The Senecas alone were seduced from
their allegiance, many of their braves being engaged
with Pontiac in the attacks wMch were made that year
on the EngKsh outposts in the West. The cMefs of
the five nations, unsoKcited by Johnson, went to re
monstrate with the offending tribe, but they found its
young men averse to remaining at peace with the Eng
Ksh. A fe,w of their clans, however, had not gone on

134 In Olde New York
the war path, and these desired the intercession of the
ambassadors that they might be spared in the chastise
ment wMch they were sure the EngKsh would inflict
on their nation, and it was arranged that six of the
friendly Senecas should return with the embassy to
Johnson Hall and present their claims in person.
The conference was held on the 7th of September.
Three hundred and twenty delegates from the five
nations with the six friendly Senecas in aU the bravery
of paint and feathers attended it. Johnson, attired
in the full uniform of Major-General, gave the head
cMefs an audience in the drawing-room of the old
mansion. The Onondaga cMef opened the council
with a speech in wMch he grapMcally depicted the
whole course of the mission and the present hostile
attitude of the Senecas, introduced in fitting terms
the envoys of the peaceful clans, and dwelt eloquently
on the loyalty of the five nations to the EngKsh despite
the specious promises of Pontiac. Johnson's reply
showed the finesse of the accompKshed diplomat. He
commended the loyalty of the five nations in their
efforts to bring the Senecas to reason, and reminded
them that the latter were not only enemies to the EngKsh
but traitors to the Confederacy, since they interrupted
its trade and disturbed its friendly relations with the
English. He might justly ask them to take up the
hatchet against the delinquents, but only desired them
to remain quiet and observe how the EngKsh punished

Johnson Hall 135
their enemies. Turning to the friendly Senecas, he
commended their individual loyalty, but gave them to
understand that, as their nation was in open rebeUion,
any clemency that might be shown them would be due
to the intercession of their confederates. The council
broke up with the fealty of the five great nations during
Pontiac's war secured.
Close on the heels of tMs council came an embassy
from the Ganniagwaris, a people of the same stock as
the Mohawks, but now residing on the Saint Lawrence,
praying for redress from the Jesuits, who had seized
some of their richest lands by virtue of a patent from
Louis XIV. The Baronet promised to lay their
grievance before the King, and then began the task
of enKsting them on the EngKsh side in a war against
Pontiac. They repKed figuratively, referring to their
disarmament by the EngKsh in the last French War.
"When you took the war axe from us you directed us
to pursue our hunting, so that we must now be still,
having no axe." In reply Sir WilKam presented them
with an axe of the best EngKsh steel and directed them
to pass it around among their warriors with instruc
tions to use it in cutting off all the bad links wMch had
sulKed the chain of friendsMp. The embassy returned,
and in a few days their tMee hundred braves were on
the war path against Pontiac.
But the most notable council ever held here was that
of 1768, between the Six Nations and their ancient

136 In Olde New York
enemies, the Cherokees. In December, 1767, three
Cherokee cMefs arrived at Albany by sloop from New
York, and, accompanied by Colonel PMKp Schuyler,
proceeded on horseback to Johnson Hall, their object
being to arrange a treaty of peace between their nation
and the Confederacy. The Baronet entertained them
in state, and at once despatched the belt by runners
to call a grand council of the tribes. On the tMrd of
March a large body of the confederates and their alKes
had been gathered at the Hall. They came out of the
dense forest singly and by twos and threes, Delawares,
Shawnees, Senecas, and Mohawks, with laggard steps
and loweriag brows, and gathered about the HaU,
until seven hundred and sixty warriors had surrounded
it. No man ever had a more formidable task appointed
Mm than had the Baronet in moving this large assembly
to Ms will. The entire Confederacy was in a ferment
tMs time over the outrages committed upon it by the
EngKsh. Its lands had been seized, its members
jeered and insulted, and many of them murdered by
settlers. No notice had been taken of their offer to
cede all their lands east of the OMo for a small con
sideration, and the colonies were on the verge of another
terrible Indian war. The Baronet, however, held
several private interviews with the principal cMefs
before the grand council took place, at wMch he told
them among other tMngs that he had received certain
intelKgence that the King had decided to accept their

Johnson HaU 137
offer to sell the lands east of the OMo, and so far won
them to good humor that at the council the treaty with
the Cherokees was concluded.
These were a few of the many councils and private
meetings of cMefs of wMch the old Hall has been the
scene. Disputes and questions of various kinds, such
as were continuaUy arising on the border, were also
brought here for settlement. Petty differences between
Indian and wMte man, land claims involving thousands
of acres, were here decided, and criminal actions con
ducted. Despite Ms pubKc duties the Baronet found time
for a genial and generous hospitaKty. Few gentlemen
of the colony or foreign visitors of rank or note came
into the Mohawk Valley without being entertained
under Ms roof. Among the latter was Lord Adam
Gordon, who afterward became Commander-in-CMef
of the army in Scotland, and between whom and Ms
host a firm friendsMp was established. Another titled
visitor was Lady Susan O 'Brian, eldest daughter of
Stephen Fox, first Earl of Ilchester, and sister of Lady
Harriet Ackland.
The mistress of the mansion during these years was
an Indian princess, a sister of the celebrated. Mohawk
cMef Thayendanega. She first attracted the Baronet's
attention at a miKtia training, where, a beautiful,
sprightly girl of sixteen, she won the plaudits of the
multitude by leaping at the invitation of an officer to

138 In Olde New York
the crupper of Ms horse and riding with Mm in a mad
gallop about the parade ground. About 1750 the
Baronet and she were married according to the Indian
custom, although it is not probable that the EngKsh
ceremony was ever performed. The lady is de
scribed as being agreeable in person and as possess
ing sound understanding. Lady O'Brian speaks
of her in her letters as a well-bred and agreeable
lady, who in many rambles about the forests proved
herself a pleasant companion. Sir William's cMef
object in the alliance, no doubt, was to secure
greater influence with the Indian cMefs, but the lady
seems to have made Mm a faitMul wife, and the pair
Kved together in the greatest harmony until the hus
band's death.
TMs event occurred suddenly in the Kbrary of the
old house on the 9th of July, 1774. During the day
the Baronet had stood two hours in the burning July
sun, deKvering a speech to several hundred Indians
who had assembled to ask Ms aid in seeking redress
for encroachments on their lands. At the conclusion
of the address he was seized with a violent attack of
dysentery and conveyed to Ms Kbrary, where he died
in the arms of a faithful attendant almost before Ms
family could reach the scene. TMs was the last event
worthy of note in the Mstory of the old mansion. In
the troubles wMch quickly followed, the Baronet's
family espoused the royal cause and the Hall became

Johnson HaU 139
an object of suspicion and dislike to the patriot leaders.
It, however, happily escaped the torch during the war,
and remains one of the few colonial houses with a
Mstory saved to the student of to-day.

CHAPTER XIV
THOMAS paine's LAST HOME*
THE thousands that daily whirl by New RocheUe
on the trains of the Consolidated Railroad see
little more than the earth and stone walls of a deep
cut, and up on the bank to the right a stone church
surrounded by an ancient churchyard. If one leaves
the train for a day's ramble, he finds beyond the stone
walls and the church a large town, with many fine old
country-seats, and as many modem viUas, wide busi
ness and residence streets, and as many narrow ones
lined with humbler dweUings.
A road stretches north away from the town eight
miles to the village of White Plains and its ancient
battle-ground — a highway made smooth and hard by
its covering of broken stone, winding between ranks
of tall, ragged locusts, their tops dead and broken
off, through a beautiful and higMy cultivated
region. One passes here a country seat, there a new villa smart
with a coat of parti-colored paint; just beyond a little
cottage with stone waUs and gables, low, antiquated
» Written in 1885.

Thomas Paine's Last Home 141
porch, green wooden shutters, and huge chimney
that must have been built for one of the Huguenot
yeomen who settled New RocheUe over two centuries
ago. At one place, on a bluff in thick woods, is an old,
deserted house that has been without human habitant
to care for it for generations, and where, in Revolu
tionary days, when the cowboys and skinners harried
aU this region, an old man and his daughter were tor
tured and left for dead in the effort to make them re
veal the depository of their secret hoards.
By all the rules of apparitions this house should be
haunted, but on inquiry the pilgrim could find no record
of so much as a ghostly light or footfaU ever being seen
or heard there.
A mile of this road, and then the tourist pauses on
the side of a hill whose summit is crowned with hand
some dwellings and fine farms, before a marble shaft
set in a space some twelve feet square, with an iron
fence in front and a solid wall of stone enclosing it
from the meadow behind, and from a lane that turns
in on the north side, and after dipping down to cross
a brook, ascends the hill to a modest, low-walled
farmhouse that with its outbuildings occupies the
summit. On the western face of the monument, next the
road, is a medallion likeness of Thomas Paine, with
the inscription:

142 In Olde New York
"Thomas Paine,
Author of ' Common Sense.'
Bom in England, January 29, 1737,
Died in New York city, June 8, 1809.
'The palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the
bowers of Paradise.' — Common Sense."
Above the medalKon is Paine's motto:
" The world is my country.
To do good my religion."
The south side bears quotations from the Crisis
No. I. and from Crisis No. XV. The inscriptions on
the east and north sides are taken from the "Age of
Reason." Fertile meadows sweep away to the east
ward, cut in twain by the farm-road mentioned. They
form part of the estate given to Paine in 1783 by the
State of New York for Ms services in the Revolution.
The Mstory of both monument and farm is interest
ing. Paine, as he lay on Ms dying bed, evinced con
siderable anxiety as to the disposal of Ms body after
death, fearing, perhaps, that it would not meet with
proper respect. His father was a Quaker, and he
desired to be laid to rest in the burying-ground of that
people. He sent to Mr. Willet Hicks, a respectable
Quaker Kving near, and said that, as he was going to
leave one place, it was necessary to provide another,
and wished to be interred in the Quaker burying-
ground, adding that he might be interred in the Epis-

»»

The Thomas Paine Memorial

Thomas Paine's Last Home 143
copal churchyard, but they were so arrogant, or in the
Presbyterian, but they were so hypocritical. The
Quakers, however, refused the desired permission.
In Ms last will and testament, dated January 18,
1809, Paine expressed a wish to be buried in the
Quaker burying-ground if they permitted it, but if
they would not allow it he wished to be buried on Ms
farm, "the place where I am to be buried to be a
square of twelve feet, to be enclosed with rows of trees
and a stone or post and rail fence, with a headstone
with my name and age engraved upon it, 'Author of
Common Sense.'" He was so buried in a plot in the
field a few yards south of the present monument. In
1819, however, WilKam Cobbett, the great EngKsh
Liberal, wMle in tMs country dug up Ms bones and
carried them to England, but what disposition was
made of them is not known. In 1838-9 funds for the
, present monument were raised by pubKc subscription,
and the marble was cut at Tuckahoe. When those
having the matter in charge came to erect it, they were
forbidden by the owner to cross Ms land to the grave,
the farm now having passed into strange lands, and
after some delay the present site was purchased and
the stone was erected there.
After a time the monument fell into neglect. Those
who had known Paine, or who remembered the facts
attending its erection, had died or removed. A few
years ago the stone was used as a bill-board, and was

144 In Olde New York
literally covered with handbills and posters. At
length a movement was set on foot in New York
and New RocheUe, funds were coUected sufficient to
restore it, and in 1881 it was rededicated with appro
priate ceremonies and the present inscriptions.
The farm in the days preceding the Revolution was
known as the "Devoe Farm," and was owned by
Frederick Devoe. "Yeoman," he is styled in the early
records. Frederick Devoe was a Tory, and according
to tradition piloted the British troops over the country
roads to WMte Plains in 1776, where they intrenched.
For tMs offense he was indicted for treason Novem
ber 10, 1780, and judgment was declared against him
July 5, 1783, whereupon his farm was confiscated
under the Confiscation Act, and given by the State
of New York to Thomas Paine. Cheatham, in Ms
'Life of Paine,' says: "The farm contained more than
300 acres of land, and an elegant stone house 120 x
28 feet." In point of fact the farm lacked some
twenty acres of 300, and the house was far from
"elegant," being a small stone farmhouse of a story
and a half, such as sheltered the yeomen of that day.
The original structure, considerably modified and im
proved, may be studied in the farmhouse wMch we
have mentioned as standing on the summit of the MU
to the eastward of the monument.
Calling on Mr. Wesley Lee, the then proprietor,
we were shown the parlor wMch Paine occupied, and

Thomas Paine's Last Home 145
the Kbrary opening out of it in wMch he wrote. These
have been little changed from the time of the author's
occupancy. "When I bought it," said Mr. Lee, "the
only reKcs of Paine remaining were the old Franklin
stove and andirons he used; the stove still set in the
brickwork in the Kbrary. These I let Mr. Walter BeU,
the stove-dealer in New RocheUe, have in exchange
for a modem stove and appurtenances. I presume
he still has them."
Returning to New RocheUe, we called on Mr. BeU,
and were shown the stove, wMch, if it had never be
longed to Paine, would still possess interest as being
the first form that took shape in the inventor's mind.
It is composed of heavy upright and horizontal plates
of iron held in place by grooves, there not being a bolt
or rod in the whole fabric — a sort of iron box, in wMch,
on andirons, the fire was built. Mr. Bell has two
affidavits to prove that the stove was reaUy Paine's.
One is from Mr. Lee, stating that at the time he pur
chased the property there was a Franklin stove set in
the brickwork of the room on the northeast comer of
the house, and a pair of andirons, and that he made
inquiry of the former owners, and also of old residents,
and from information thus obtained he beKeved them
to be the same as those formerly used by Thomas
Paine. The other is from Augustus Van Cortlandt,
M.D., a former resident of New RocheUe, who says
that "in the year 1841 he was taken by Ms father to

146 In Olde New York
the house formerly occupied by Thomas Paine,
author of the 'Age of Reason,' 'Common Sense,'
and the 'Rights of Man'; that wMle there he
was shown the old Franklin stove and andirons,
wMch Ms father stated were seen by Mm in the
year 1808, when he presented a letter to Thomas
Paine personally in the same room where said Frank
Kn stove and andirons were, and that from the
design and certain marks thereon he knows them
to be the articles shown Mm as aforesaid, and that
the same are now in possession of Messrs. BeU and
Harmer." "My object in getting these affidavits," continued
Mr. Bell, "was to prove the authenticity of the reKcs,
and it was suggested to me by the fact that on my
way home with the stove I met a man, a citizen of New
RocheUe, who laughed at the very idea that I had
Paine's stove in the wagon. Dr. Van Cortlandt was
a member of the old Van Cortlandt family, a learned
and respectable gentleman, who told me a great many
things about Paine. He said that when Ms father
caUed on the latter he was clad in a dressing-gown
that had evidently been made of a blanket, and with a
beard of three days' growth on Ms face. A deal table
stood in the room, without a cover, on wMch was a
part of a loaf of bread, a pitcher of milk, and a bowl
of molasses, from wMch Ms breakfast had evidently
been furnished. He said that there was valuable

Thomas Paine's Last Home 147
furniture and bric-a-brac in the room, including a
fine French clock, medals given to Paine by various
societies, with bronzes and medalKons. He said Paine
once made a model of an iron bridge to cross the
Harlem River at a single span, wMch was thought a
wonderful tMng in those days. The only other reKc
of Paine now in New RocheUe, so far as I know, is an
old armchair in wMch he sat during Ms frequent calls
on Ms neighbors, the Badeaus, who Kved nearly oppo
site the monument. Mrs. Badeau, who Kved to be
quite aged, always spoke of Paine with the greatest
esteem and respect, though she did not share in Ms
reKgious views. He had a love for Kttle cMldren, she
said, that almost amounted to a passion, and was in
turn a great favorite with them. She described Mm
as pleasant and social in familiar intercourse, with a
fund of anecdote and information, on wMch he was
always wiMng to draw for the entertainment of Ms
friends. The last years of tMs good old lady were
spent in protecting the grave and tombstone of her
friend from the attacks of curiosity and reKc-hunters.
Often has she raised her window and frightened off
men who were breaking cMps from edges of the stone,
to be preserved as relics. She saw Cobbett's men when
they rifled the grave in 1819, and warned them away,
but they refused to go, saying they were acting under
Cobbett's orders.
"I know of but one person now Kving in the town

148 In Olde New York
who remembers Paine. That person is Mrs. Daven
port, a very aged lady Kving on Davenport's Neck.
She says that Paine often patted her on the head when
she was a Kttle girl."

CHAPTER XV

THE AMERICAN BARBISON

T> ARBISON, the well-known resort of so many
¦*-' French artists and art-students, where Millet and
a whole colony of painters have found inspiration and
subjects worthy of their pencils, Kes in the heart of the
ancient forest of Fontainebleau, at an easy distance
from the great capital. Easthampton,* wMch we
have ventured to call the American Barbison, is a
village of Puritan origin, situated at the southeastern
extremity of Long Island, in a Kttle oasis of meadows
and wheat-fields, that owes some portion of its attract
iveness to its surroundings of sand and scrub. Its
one wide main street is so prodigal of land that it
could only have been laid out by men with a continent
at their disposal. Great elms and willows overarch
it, and beyond their vistas the eye rests on the broad
bosom of the Atlantic, flecked by summer sails. North
ward one looks on orchards and green fields. The
dwellings that line it for a mile please by their endless
variety. There is the quaint old Puritan cottage, with
* Written in 1883. Easthampton is now a fashionable and ex
clusive resort and the conditions here pictured no longer exist.

150 In Olde New York
its gables facing the street, and flanked by the wood
shed and mossy well-sweep and bucket. There are
square, roomy, old-fashioned farmhouses, some newly
painted, some dingy and moss-covered, with low stoops
opening directly upon the street. There is a quaint
old village academy, the first opened in the State.
There are little shops that nobody knows the use of,
an inn, a few summer viUas, a fine old country-seat
standing remote and grand beMnd a copse of maples
and cedars, and at either end of the viUage street a
windmill, — gaunt, weather-beaten structures, that at
the merest suspicion of a breeze throw their long arms
as wildly and creak and clatter as noisily as those that
Don Quixote attacked. The old church, built in 1717,
in whose turret hung a bell presented by Queen Anne,
— one of the Mstorical churches of the land, — was
pulled down in 1872, its demolition marking an epoch
in the town's existence. The churchyard, once under
the wing of the church, is now set lonesomely in the
midst of the main street, its wMte tombstones looked
down upon by aU the neighboring dwelKngs and con
stantly reminding the villagers of the virtues of their
ancestors. Still, it is an interesting spot, vidth its fence
of palings, its quaint old-fasMoned stiles, and mossy
stones, whose legends tell of wrecks upon the coast,
and of brave young spirits drowned at sea, killed by
falling from the masthead, crushed in the whale's
jaws, or fever-stricken and buried in some tropical

Main Street, Easthampton
Looking southward. From a photograph by E. B. Muchmore

The American Barbison 151
island. In a place so remote, it is natural that the
quaintness and pastoral simplicity of country life a
hundred years ago should still prevail. At sunset and
sunrise herds of sleek, matronly cows, with barefoot
boys in attendance, wind through the street; scythes
and sickles hang in the willows by the wayside; and
every morning the mail-coach rattles into the village
with a musical flourish of the driver's horn, stops at
the post-office for the mail-bag, calls all along the
street for bags, baskets, and parcels, and at last rumbles
away toward the railway station, seven miles distant.
Most truly rural are the orchard farmyards, wMch
abut upon the street without concealment, in front
perhaps set tMckly with apple- and pear-trees, and
behind these showing open spaces covered with a deep
greensward, with cart, plow, stack, wood-pile, sheep,
and poultry disposed in picturesque confusion.
Our viUage, in its two hundred years of existence,
has gathered about it an atmosphere of legend and
romance, and one may stiU see with the mmd's eye
some of the quaint figures and striking scenes of its
early Mstory. One can easily call up Parson James, the
first minister ("Gent." he is styled in the old records),
walking to church in wig and gown, — or Mistress
AbigaU Hedges riding down on her wedding-day to
Sagg, four miles distant, and on the way counting
tMrteen whales sporting in the surf. An excited
throng in the streets, and Parson James led away

152 In Olde New York
under arrest to New York for denouncing in the
pulpit the exorbitant tax levied on "whale's oyle and
fins" by the governor of the colony; a detachment of
British troops in possession of the town, and Sir William
Erskine, Governor Tryon, Lord Percy, Lord Cathcart,
Major Andre, in brilliant uniforms, pacing under the
village elms; the old Hunting tavern, in wMch the
young officers made merry with the wits and roysterers
of the viUage, even old "Sharper" the slave being
admitted to add Ms shrewd pleasantries and unequaled
powers of mimicry to the general Mlarity; a drawing-
room in the old Gardiner mansion, with Sir Henry
CKnton present, and Andre at Ms request entertaining
the company with a recital of Ms sparkKng baUad of
"Chevy Chase"; Parson Beecher on a Friday Meing
away to the beaches for a day's shooting, forgetting
the preparatory lecture, and, when remioded by the
bell, hurrying to the church, setting down Ms gun in
the porch, and preaching in Ms hunting-suit with an
unction that never attended Ms written sermons; the
old parsonage, and the parson in Ms study drawing
strains from Ms beloved violin; Madam Beecher's
pretty girl-pupils in the schoolroom above tapping
their little feet in unison with the music, and at last
breaking into the forbidden dancing step, causing the
violin to cease with a doleful screech; a low-ceiled
kitchen, with deep fireplace and smoky walls, in wMch
John Howard Payne composed the song that has

The American Barbison 153
excelled all others in popularity, and wrote love-letters
to one of the village maidens, — letters still preserved
in rose and lavender; President Tyler riding in a grand
sort of way up the street to woo and win a maiden in
one of the village mansions : — these are but a few
of the old-time scenes that pass in review before the
eyes of the dreamer under the village elms. This
charm of old associations combined with pastoral sim
plicity is evanescent, and will soon be gone. Already
the railroad, rude iconoclast, is approaching, to destroy
the relics of the past and change the whole aspect
of the place. The limner, therefore, who succeeds in
depicting such features as are best worth preserving
will not have performed an unappreciated task.
The summer phase of the village is almost entirely
artistic. What painter first discovered it is a subject
for speculation; but when discovered its possibilities
in the way of art rapidly became known, and it has
been for several years the summer home of many
favorites of the public. Last season the little colony
of artists had become fairly domiciled by the 1st of
July: T  in a cottage on the main street, whose
interior and antique furniture were to yield inspiration
for several studies of the olden time; "Dante" and his
young wife in the old village academy, wMch had long
ceased to be an academic haunt; "the Count" and
"the Doctor" in sweet proximity to a confectioner's
shop; "Mozart" at the inn; and the others scattered

154 In Olde New York
about in the boarding-houses of the village. Two
sketching-classes added a progressive feature, — one
comprising several ladies of the Art Students' League
of New York, who were domiciled at first in a cottage
by the sea, and, later, in the village inn; wMle the
other, also composed of ladies, met three times weekly
in the former schoolroom of the academy. Dante
alone acMeved a studio. It was on the upper floor
of the academy, and presented a medley of "studies,"
nets, rusty anchors, spoils of the sea, flowers, birds'
nests, and tropMes won from the village houses, —
poke bonnets, stocks, perukes, faded gowns, arm
chairs, spinning-wheels, and other ancient furniture.
TMs became a favorite gatheriog-place with members
of the craft, and, during the summer, witnessed the
reunions of many long-sundered friends. Besides the
artists, a score or so of quiet families made the place
their summer quarters; but its characteristic features
remained the same, — in every quiet nook and coigne
of vantage an artist with Ms easel, fair maidens trudg
ing afield with the attendant small boy bearing easel,
color-box, and other impedimenta, sketching-classes
setting out in great farm-wagons carpeted with straw,
wMte-aproned nurse-maids, rosy babies, and pleasure-
veMcles in the streets.
The routine for the summer was tolerably uniform.
Out-door work was usually done in the soft light and
shade of early morning or evening. In-door work

The American Barbison 155
occupied a part of the intervening hours if the artist
was industrious. At eleven there was a gathering on
the batMng-beach, and an hour's wild sporting with
the surges of the Atlantic. There was tennis for those
who cared for it, straw-parties and sailing-parties,
moonlight rides to the beach, excursions to Sagg,
Hardscrabble, Pantago, and Amagansett. The students
of the sketching-classes were the most industrious,
wandering about the viUage, selecting their sub
jects, sketching, painting, and returning to the inn at
night with their spoils. Sometimes the great carryaU
carried them out to Tyler's for a day's sketching.
Arrived there, one drew the quaint old dilapidated
bam, another the farmyard, a third the mossy well-
sweep, a fourth the crooked-necked duck leading her
brood to water, a fifth the grain-fields, and so on, till
aU were suppKed with subjects. At intervals the
grave professor came to the inn and passed on the
students' work with Ms pungent criticisms. There
was a large wheat-field on the southern rim of the town,
near the sea, that attracted many visitors and gave
rise to more day-dreams than any palace of the genii.
Its black mold closed on the wMte sand of the beach,
and there was Kttle interval between the bearded
wheat and the coarse bunchgrass of the dunes. It
seemed a novel sight, tMs strong young daughter of
the West drawing Kfe and nourishment from the
grizzled ocean. Such points of similarity as should

156 In Olde New York
exist between sire and daughter were often noted by
imaginative visitors. When the wind blew, there were
waves in the wheat as weU as in the sea; argosies of
cloud-shadows sailed over it, and it never lost a low,
soft murmur, that seemed a faint refrain of the vast
monotone of the Sea. What weird imaginations and
startling effects, to be elaborated in the studio on the
return to the city, were suggested by it, cannot be told.
The beach, with its broad reaches of sand and foaming
surges, its wrecks, sand-storms, mirages, soft colors,
and long line of sand dunes cut into every variety of
fantastic shape by the winds, was equally prolific of
wild fancies.
If tMs routine became at all prosaic or commonplace,
it was soon broken by some ludicrous incident wMle
at the easel, — the uneartMng of a new character, or
subjugation of a refractory model: aU of wMch was
sure to be related with gusto at the post-prandial
re-unions in the "bird's-nest."
Wonderfully numerous and varied are the "charac
ters" of the village; and tMs adds largely to its artistic
value. Old farmers with their homely saws, grizzled
whalemen, fishermen, and wreckers and Kfe-saving
men, may aU be met here. There are "originals,"
indigenous to the soil. No one who has ever sum
mered in Barbison will forget the RemusKke face of
Uncle Pete, the cMldlike and bland countenance of
"Old Zeb," the sly twinkle in the eye of Sam Green,

The American Barbison 157
the village joker, or the grim smile that rests on the
face of "Old Hominy" in the midst of Ms cutest trick.
To give a perfect idea of the artistic features of our
village, one must speak somewhat in detail of the
relations of the artists with these characters. Uncle
Pete, the village octogenarian, is the favorite and
most troublesome model. The old man lives alone,
in a little bunk of a cottage, on the outskirts of Free
town, — a settlement of colored people about a mUe
north of the village. Having made five whaling-
voyages in Ms youth, Uncle Pete has acquired & store
of reminiscences, which he has a Remuslike fondness
for retailiug to his numerous callers. His tall, almost
majestic figure, and black, shrewd, quizzical face
looking out from a mass of snow-wMte wool, tickle the
artistic fancy, and Ms lineaments have been preserved
on more canvases than those of the most popular
model in the Latin quarter. TMs popularity has made
Mm extremely coy and uncertain; and the artist who
would engage Mm, in addition to the offer of golden
shekels, must often have recourse to personal blandish
ments. The old man generally prefers to pose in the
doorway of his little cottage: for ten minutes he sits
quietly, and Ms outlines begin to appear under the
pencil; then he grows restless, and begins to fidget,
whereupon his employer, scenting trouble, blandly
asks for a story: Uncle Pete readily complies, enter
taining his auditor with a graphic account of Ms

158 In Olde New York
descent into the whale's jaws once upon a time in
Delagoa Bay, Ms countenance meanwMle assuming
an animated and expressive cast. The tale concluded
the sitter again becomes restless, and is asked for
another story, which he readily narrates. A tMrd or
fourth perhaps will be required before the sitting is
finished. Old Zeb, another model, is what the villagers
call a "natural,'' although he has wit enough to gain a
Kving without much labor. He is a great favorite with
the ladies, and, being quite susceptible, has made
several propositions of a matrimonial nature to engag
ing damsels visiting the village, wMch are understood
to be under consideration. At sunset on pleasant
evenings, when Ms fair friends are sure to be found
on the front porches, Zeb is seen wending his way
through the street with a rose in Ms button-hole, roses
in Ms hand, and a basket on Ms arm. The ladies
greet Mm graciously, and in their sweetest tones beg
for a song. Zeb complies, seated on the ground,
nursing Ms knees with Ms hands, and chanting in a
weird monotone some hymn or ballad of the olden time.
The song ended, Ms fair patrons bestow small coins,
and, murmuring Ms thanks in a fine feminine voice,
he moves on to another coterie. It generally happens,
however, that, wMle the song is in progress, some
deft knight of the brush has transferred Ms lineaments
to the sketch-book for future use. Often a party goes
down to Zeb's cottage at the "Harbor" to sketch Mm

The American Barbison 159
at Ms weekly "shave." The old fellow is very proud
of Ms smootMy-shaven face, and takes great pride in
its preservation. His Saturaday "shave" is a marvel
of the tonsorial art. WMle it is in progress he is seated
in the doorway of Ms cottage, with a little hand look
ing-glass before Mm, and a great Mambrino's helmet
of a wash-hand-basin filled with hot water by Ms side.
His razor, " borrerd " for the occasion, has been through
several whaling- voyages. Having honed it on the door-
sill, he assaults his stubby beard vigorously, grubbing
and grubbing with an expression on Ms face that con
vulses the spectators. He explains "that it don't
take hold well, somehow," and stops to sharpen Ms
instrument on the grindstone. The entire operation
is enlivened by a running fire of comments and queries
from the spectators, to wMch Zeb returns the most
amusing and innocent replies. Pat's "cMlders" are
desirable but most refractory models. There are
several of them running wild about the street, little
Patseys and Bridgets, red-haired, freckled, snub-
nosed, barefooted, so humorously and grimly defiant that
they tickle the artistic fancy and are much coveted as
models. Mrs. Pat, however, when approached on the
subject, discovers a feminine quaKty which has time
and again brought the artist into difficulties. "Be-
gorra," she declares, " ef yez artises are after the cMlder,
it's not in thim dirty clothes they'll be tooken. If the'r
picters are tooken at all, it must be in the'r Sundays

160 In Olde New York
best." TMs is entirely inadmissible, and the painter
is obKged to waylay Ms models as they run, and induce
them to sit by a Kberal supply of taffy and pop-corn.
An old weather-beaten dwelling at the upper end
of the village street has been so often sketched and
painted that it is a witticism of the guild when a new
artist comes to town that Dominy's is going onto the
canvas. Its clapboards are warped by over a century's
exposure, a few bricks are missing from the cMmney,
some of the window-panes are gone, but all such dis
figurements are Mdden by a luxuriant growth of climb
ing plants. Two workshops, one flanking each side
of the cottage, present curious interiors, — low ceilings,
dusty, cobwebbed windows, tools of various caUings
disposed on the walls or in cribs in the ceiling, and a
medley of articles scattered about, — old-fasMoned
clocks in long cases, a photographer's camera, a Da
mascus blade, with gold-inlaid Mlt, fasMoned into a
cMsel, nets, spears, lances, harpoons, and similar
paraphernalia. In tMs dwelling Kves one of the
marked characters of the viUage, a universal genius,
a master of all trades. He is the village miller, a farmer,
a carpenter, a sMpwright, a clock-maker, a tooth-
puller, a photographer, a whaleman, a fisherman, and
an office-holder. With the artists he is a prime favorite,
and generally accompanies them as courier and guide
in their sketching-excursions, whether by land or
water. His shop is a favorite lounging-place of the

The American Barbison 161
guild. The old man receives Ms visitors with a queer
mixture of fatherly kindness, assumed carelessness,
and "chaff." "You fellers," he observes, "git a thou
sand dollars in York for a picter of my back door, and
I git nothin'." To the modest request for leave to
paint Ms shop he replies that "there's been paint
enough wasted on it a'ready to ha' painted it inside
and out," but gives a grudging permission. Some
times he "fixes it up" for the artist. Sometimes he
poses; again it is Ms dog Jack, the ugliest of canines,
or Ms boy Zi, that is in request. A thousand tales of
our hero's adventures and eccentricities are current in
the studios, in not a few of wMch the narrators were
the actors, and in some the victims. To turn the
laugh on Ms proteges is the height of the old man's
ambition: not infrequently the artist, sketching Ms
shop, on returning from dinner finds every article in
it removed to a different position, and some even hung
outside. His fishing-trip to Napeague last summer
with a party of artists is embalmed among the traditions
of the colony. Question the old man on the subject,
and his only reply is a chuckle. The victims when
approached manifest extreme reticence: it is known,
however, that they caught no fish, that they rowed
instead of sailing, owing to a dead cahn, and that re
turning they reached the inn at one in the morn
ing and forced a surreptitious entry through one
of its windows, the grand finale discovering the

162 In Olde New York
hungry tramps in a fierce attack on the pies of the
pantry. A town meeting is sure to bring a rich harvest of
"studies" into the village, especiaUy if the questions
to be discussed are of a broad pubKc interest, such,
for instance, as the pasturage of cattle in the village
streets, or the extension of farmlands into the wide
Mghway; these questions concern the commonalty,
and there is a general hegira of the male portion of the
outlying districts to the viUage. They come on foot,
on horseback and muleback, in buckboards and in
great farm-wagons with a capacity of ten or more.
Some are barefoot, some attired only in check shirt
and corduroys, with heavy sombreros for head-gear.
At these gatherings, as in aU popular assembhes, the
two great orders — patrician and plebeian — are repre
sented; and wMle the leaders gather in the old town-
hall to discuss the matter, the rank and file are deposed
about on the church steps, under the ehns, in the stores,
smoking, spitting, lounging in a thousand picturesque
attitudes. From tMs repose they are routed by their
respective leaders and hurried into the haU whenever
a vote is to be taken.
The annual spring meet on Montauk was the occa
sion of another influx of strangers into the town.
TMs "meet" was held usually on the 20th of June,
to enable the owners to select from the herds the cattle
intended for fattening, wMch were then turned into

The American Barbison 163
the fattening-fields. Barbison was the rendezvous for
the "proprietors" of all the districts to the westward,
and, as they came riding in in detachments, but for
the diverse regimentals one might have fancied that
Andre's regulars had reappeared to storm the town.
No features of Barbison the past season were more
pleasant than the impromptu receptions — artistic
stances in the best sense of the word — held in Dante's
studio. Artists, scholars, and joumaKsts met here on
common ground. The discussions, however, were
brilKant rather than profound, and the reminiscences
generally of a light and humorous character. Many
of them detailed the ludicrous incidents and adventures
met with on sketcMng-excursions. H  had a truly
bucolic experience. He was in a wide field, putting
in the sheep, daisies, and a particularly fine clump of
maples, when, as he had nearly finished Ms work, he
was suddenly prostrated by the old ram of the flock,
who had evidently tired of the artist's presence in Ms
demesnes. H  picked Mmself up, and, seeing the
ram stiU warlike, made a quick retreat to the fence,
wMch he succeeded in reaching only to witness Aries
march back to the easel and trample painting, brushes,
and etceteras into the dust. C  , wMle walking
along a country lane with Ms color-box in hand, had
met a native who took Mm for a spectacle-vender and
inquired the price of Ms wares. "I am out of spec
tacles," replied the artist, and went Ms way. Next

164 In Olde New York
day, returning to finish Ms sketch, he met the same
man, and was again asked the price of "glasses."
"The fact is, friend," said he, "I don't sell spectacles."
— " What dew yeou sell, then ? " queried the rustic.
By way of reply, the artist opened Ms box and showed
the neatly-ranged vials of color. The querist gave
but a look, and exclaimed, in inimitable tones of dis
gust, "Homepathy doctor, by thunder!" D 
called at a farmhouse one moming and asked per
mission to make a picture in the yard. "Yes, sir,"
replied the farmer; "go in. The's fifteen in there
a'ready; but I tell 'em all I keer for is a drift- way."
G  claimed the honor of having sketched a queen.
She was scrubbing the floor of the vUlage grocery at
the time, and as the sketch was completed a negro
lounged in with the news that King Pharaoh of the
Montauk tribe was dead. "That makes me queen!"
exclaimed the woman, who proved to be the old king's
widow; and, straightening up, she discarded mop and
brush and at once set out for her new kingdom amid
the wastes of Montauk.
Such is Barbison in summer. As the season ad
vances, however, its aspect rapidly changes. Visitors
depart with the first cMU winds of autumn. The
forests of scrub take on their autumnal tints, the grass
withers, loads of golden corn and rich-yellow pumpkins
rattle up to the farmhouse doors. The Kfe-saving
men leave their snug homes in the village and take

The American Barbison 165
their places in the stations, wMch are opened, warmed,
and furnished in readiness for the possible sMpwrecked
mariner. Every night the patrols keep their lonely
vigils along shore. By and by it is seen that a storm
is imminent: the sun sets beMnd a mass of gray, watery
vapor, the ocean chafes, a strong wind, damp and
rheumy, comes murmuring up from the southeast.
At midnight, perhaps, the tempest breaks, howling
down the cMmneys, rattling the panes, swaying the
little willows till they snap like a farmer's whip, and
sending great waves up the beach to the base of the
sand-dunes. Not infrequently on such nights the
villagers are startled by the booming of a gun, telKng
that a wreck is on the bar.
In old times this was a signal for the most active
preparations. The church bell was rung and a great
horn blown to rally the surfmen to the beach. The
housewives built fires, made coffee, and prepared
stores of lint, comfortables, and flannels. If the surf
permitted, the men rowed out to the sMp and rescued
the sMpwrecked seamen, who were brought half dead
to the village homes and tenderly cared for; but too
often tMs was impossible, and windrows of dead bodies
were gathered on the beach in the moming and laid
stark and stiff in the coroner's office to be prepared for
burial. As might be expected, some grewsome tales
of the sea are to be heard in the village. A storm or
wreck brings out a flood of such reminiscences. There

166 In Olde New York
are stories of similar incidents, of pirates and Mdden
treasures, of false lights set on the headlands; but quite
as often the tales turn on wreckage and the flotsam
and jetsam of the sea, — how a stately East-Indiaman
would lay her ribs on the beach and spill her precious
cargo of silks, cashmeres, pearls, teas, spices, and
sandal-wood in the surf, a part of it, at least, to be
gathered up by the daring wreckers. When a full-
freighted whaleman came ashore, great cakes of pure
wMte spermaceti were thrown far up the strand, and
the whole country-side hurried to the scene with carts,
wagons, sledges, and hand-barrows, to remove the
precious product before it should melt. Sometimes
it was coals from a lumbering colKer that the men
gathered up, sometimes lumber from a Maine bark,
and again the ivory and gold-dust of Africa.

CHAPTER XVI
an easthampton churchyard IN THE EIGHTIES
/'^NE who has had occasion to visit many rural
^^ churchyards must surely have been impressed
by the great number of eminent Americans entombed
in them. In the old world one seeks the tombs of the
great beneath the most magnificent fanes, but our
great men seem to have preferred rural solitudes for
their last long sleep. There is an old unpretentious
burial-ground in Litchfield, Connecticut, filled with
quaiat tombstsones of slate or sandstone so mossy and
old that one with difficulty deciphers the names in
scribed upon them; yet to write the biograpMes of the
sleepers beneath them would be to write the Mstory of
the American nation itself. There is another at Leba
non, Connecticut, one at Quincy, Massachusetts, a
fourth at Northampton, Massachusetts.
TMs old churchyard at Easthampton may be cited
in support of the argument. It lies at the foot of the
broad village main street, an arm of wMch encompasses
either side. Its older stones date back to 1696 or
earKer, and were imported from England, as the flying

168 In Olde New York
cherub, or death's head and scroU sculptured at the
head attest.
Without doubt the oldest grave here is that of Lyon
Gardiner, first lord of the manor of Gardiner's Island.
His tomb, however, is new, having been erected a few
years ago by Ms descendants. It is of pleasing and
impressive design, a knight in complete armor laid
upon a sarcophagus that rests in a Kttle gotMc temple
of wMte marble. The inscription, covering aU four
sides of the tomb, wiU serve to show the flavor of an
tiquity possessed by our churchyard:
"In memory of Lion Gardiner, an officer of the
English army, and an engineer and master of Works
of Fortification in ye Leaguers of ye Prince of Orange
in ye Low Countries in 1635. He came to New Eng
land in ye service of ye Company of Lords and Gentle
men. He builded and commanded ye Saybrook Forte.
After accomplishing Ms term of service he removed in
1663, to Ms island of wMch he was sole owner and
ruler. Bom in 1599 he died in tMs town in 1663
venerated and honored."
A Kttle south of the Gardiner tomb, and near the
center of the churchyard, is a stone facing a different
way from its neighbors and bearing tMs inscription:
"Mr. Thomas James dyed ye 6th day of June in
ye yeare 1696. He was Minister of the Gospel and
Pastore of the Church of CMist."
Parson James was the first pastor of the church at

Easthampton Churchyard 169
Easthampton and served in that capacity over fifty
years. Tradition represents Mm as having been small
in stature, sprightly and undaunted in step and bear
ing, and very conscientious in the discharge of Ms
pastoral duties. That he might the better convert
the Indians who formed part of Ms parish, it is said
that he learned their language.
The fiber of the man is shown by Ms dying injunc
tion, wMch was that he should be buried in a different
direction from Ms congregation, that on the resurrec
tion mom he might arise facing Ms accusers (should
any impeach Mm as a pastor), as well as those who
had laughed to scorn Ms warnings and entreaties.
His last wish was complied with, as is seen by the
position of the grave.
His neighbor is the Rev. Samuel Buell, D.D., also
pastor of the Easthampton church for over half a cen
tury. The inscription on the heavy, brown-stone slab
above Ms grave is so similar in style to that written
by President Dwight for the tomb of General Israel
Putnam that I hazard the conjecture that they were
written by the same hand. Perhaps some of your
readers can speak definitely on the subject. It is as
follows: "Reader, behold tMs tomb with reverence and
regret. Here lie the remains of that eminent servant
of Christ, the Rev. Samuel Buell, D.D., fifty-three
years pastor of the church in tMs place. He was a
faitMul and successful minister of the gospel, a kind

170 In Olde New York
relative, a true friend, a good patriot, an honest man
and an exemplary Christian, was bom Sept. 1, 1716,
died in peace July 19, 1798, aged eighty-two years.
"They that turn many to righteousness shall sMne
as the brightness of the firmament and the stars for
ever and ever.
"Remember them who have spoken unto you the
word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end
of their conversation."
Dr. Buell's term covered the perilous times of the
revolution, and not a Kttle of the immunity Ms parish
ioners enjoyed during the British occupancy of the
island they owed to the doctor's influence over the
EngKsh commander. Sir William Erskine, with whom
he was a great favorite. Tradition says that on one
occasion Sir William ordered a number of the farmers
of Easthampton to go to Southampton to perform a
certain work on the Sabbath.
In the interim he met the divine and told Mm that
he had ordered out Ms parisMoners on Sunday.
"I am aware of it," said the doctor, "but am myself
commander-in-cMef on that day, and have counter
manded the order." It is said that Erskine, with a
good-humored laugh, yielded the point.
Another anecdote is thus related: The young officers
of Erskine's staff were fond of the chase, and Dr.
Buell, who was something of a Nimrod, not infre
quently joined them. On one occasion he was late.

Easthampton Churchyard 171
and the party had mounted when he arrived, but Sir
William asked them to dismount and receive Ms
guest. Lord Percy, Erskine's aide, later Duke of
Northumberland, was impatiently pacing the floor
when he was introduced to the doctor, who asked Mm
civilly what part of his majesty's forces he had the
honor to command.
"A legion of devils fresh from hell," replied Percy,
who was nettled at the delay. "Then," said the
doctor with Ms most stately bow, "I suppose I have
the honor of addressing Beelzebub, prince of devils."
Percy laid Ms hand on Ms sword but was checked
by Erskine, and during the ride that followed the divine
paid such marked attention to the young officer and
was so witty and agreeable that he won Ms regard and
admiration. The Mulford family gravestone reminds us that
Easthampton was a pure repubUc for some years
after its settlement, perhaps the purest ever known.
We may be pardoned for dwelKng on the fact since,
unless we are greatly mistaken, it has wholly escaped
the notice of political students.
Government was by town meeting — the general
court — and by an inferior court called the " court of
the three men." The town meeting was the supreme
body: it constituted courts, tried important causes,
heard appeals, chose the minister and schoolmaster,
fixed their salaries, made poKce regulations, admitted

172 In Olde New York
or excluded settlers, licensed taverns, opened Mgh-
ways, chose miKtary officers and the whale watch, and
did what our lawmakers ought at once to do, fined all
freemen who refused or neglected to vote, to attend
town meeting, or to hold office when elected.
The court of the tMee men heard minor cases and
executed the laws; and in general carried on the affairs
of the town when the general court was not in session.
The executive officer was the constable who presided
at the town meetings and executed the commands of
both courts. The inferior court met at 8 a.m., on the
second day of the first week of every month for the
trial of cases.
Easthampton maintained tMs independent condition
for seven years, or until 1657, when she united with
the Connecticut colony.
One of the first justices of the inferior court was John
Mulford, who Kes buried in the old churchyard. His
eldest son, Samuel Mulford, also rests here, a man
well worthy to rank with those whose iron wills and
stem courage gained their country's liberties. He was
the leader of the people's party in the Ninth Assembly
of New York during Governor Burnet's contest with
that body from 1715 to 1722.
For one of Ms speeches Burnet had him indicted
and prosecuted for sedition. Mulford, however, was
nowise daunted by tMs experience. Burnet had laid
a tax of one tenth on all the oil taken by the whaling

Easthampton Churchyard 173
crews of Easthampton and Southampton — Mulford's
constituents — wMch he claimed as a perquisite.
Mulford determined to go to England and memo
rialize Parliament for the removal of tMs tax. He
sailed to Newport secretly, walked to Boston and
took sMp for England, and read Ms memorial before
the House of Commons, which ordered the tax dis-
contmued. Returning in triumph, he was greeted with songs
and rejoicings by his constituents, and was promptly
returned by them to the Assembly. Expelled by that
body, wMch was wholly subservient to the Governor,
he was reelected and in the autumn of 1717 took Ms
seat in the House, being then seventy-three years of
age. In 1720 he refused to act with the House of that
year, wMch he claimed had been illegally elected and
organized, and was again expelled. TMs ended his
public service. He died at Easthampton, August 21,
1725, aged nearly eighty-one years.
Another stone commemorates Reuben Bromley, a
successful sea captain who retired from the sea in
middle life to " actively engage in Christian and benevo
lent effort for promotmg the welfare of seamen." He
was an officer of the Seamen's Bank for Savings from
its founding in 1829 to Ms death, and was also, it is
said, one of the founders of the Sailor's Snug Harbor
on Staten Island.

174 In Olde New York
A plain dark monument in the Gardiner plot tells
its own story m these words:
"David Gardiner, bom May 29, 1784.
Died Febmary 28, 1844."
"In the vigor of Kfe, adorned by eminent virtues,
solid abiKties and rare accompKshments, beloved and
venerated, he was stricken with mstant death by the
burstmg of the great gun on board of the steam frigate
Princeton m the River Potomac. A national calamity
wMch wrung men's hearts and deprived the country
of some of its most distinguished and valuable citizens."
His daughter, JuKa, afterward married President
John Tyler, and became the mother of several children,
one of whom sleeps near Ms grandfather after crowdmg
mto Ms brief span of forty years such perils, hardsMps,
vicissitudes, and misfortunes as few are caUed upon to
undergo. His epitaph reads:
"Here lyeth John Alexander Tyler, son of John
Tyler, President of the United States, and of Julia
Gardiner, Ms vrife, bom at Sherwood Forest, James
River, Virginia, April 7, 1848, died at Santa Fe, New
Mexico, September 1, 1888."
"Alexander Tyler while a mere youth joined the
fortunes of Ms native State, and became a member of
the First Virginia BattaKon of ArtiUery under General
Robert Lee. Although enduring great privation and
hardsMp, wMch he bore with uncomplaining fortitude.

Easthampton Churchyard 175
he served until the close of the Civil War, and was then
paroled at Appomattox Court House m 1865. He
went to Europe where he remamed for eight years,
first as a student at Carlsruhe, Baden, afterwards at
Freiburg, Saxony, where he graduated as a mining
and civil engineer. WMle at the latter place he entered
the German army by special permit as a volunteer in
the First UMan regiment under the command of
Prince John of Saxony, and was actively engaged
during the French and Prussian wars of 1870-71, re
ceiving at the close a decoration from the hands of the
Emperor WilKam I, for gallant and distinguished
services." TMs gentleman, after servmg with honor tMough
two sanguinary wars, returned to Ms native country
only to die suddenly of a fever contracted m New
Mexico while performing the duties of Ms profession
as a mmmg and civil engineer.
A mild Kterary interest attaches to a row of six or
eight mossy headstones near the center of the yard,
those of the Isaacs family, father, mother, brothers
and sisters of John Howard Payne.
What might be called the wreck annals of the church
yard are interestmg. Here lie the remains of those
who perished m the off-shore whale fishery, wMch was
prosecuted with vigor by the townsmen for years.
"On February 24, 1719," we read, "a whaleboat being
alone the men struck a whale, and she coming under

176 In Olde New York
the boat in passing, stoved it, and though ye men were
not hurt with ye whale, yet before any help came to
them four men tired and cMUed and feU off ye boat
and oars to wMch they hung and were drowned."
Here also repose the hundreds who have been
wrecked upon tMs dangerous coast smce commerce
began in these waters nearly tMee hundred years ago.

CHAPTER XVII
THE WRECK OF THE JOHN MILTON
A LTHOUGH the Milton stmck on Montauk,
¦*¦ ^ data of the tragedy can only be gained in the old
churchyard of Easthampton, and in the village itseff.*
Entering the yard from the north, the first memorial
introduces one of its peculiar offif ;s — that of custodian
of the ocean's trophies. TMs m, a shaft of marble in
the center of a large square mound, bearing tMs in
scription :
"TMs stone was erected by individual subscriptions
from various places to mark the spot where, with pecul
iar solemnity, were deposited the mortal remains of
the three mates and eighteen of the crew of the sMp,
John Milton, of New Bedford, wrecked on the coast
of Montauk, wMle returning from the CMncha Islands,
on the 20th February, 1858, where, together with those
who rest beneath, Ephraim Harding, the captain, and
four others of the mariners, being the whole sMp's
company, were drowned in the waves. 'Thy way,
O God, is in the sea.'"
After searching during tMee summers up and
* Prom New York Evening Post, 1890.

178 In Olde New York
down the town, I succeeded in finding an old wrecker
who had been first at the wreck of the Milton, who
gave me a vivid account of it, and of the pathetic scenes
attendmg the burial of the drowned seamen. "That
was the worst wreck on the coast m later years," he
began, "that of the Milton. She struck on a rock at
Montauk, a quarter of a mile from shore, in a heavy
snow storm. She was flying before a gale at the time
and the shock was terrible. The vessel melted under
it like a lump of sugar. I was one of the first on the
spot. The shore looked like a wrecked shipyard.
But for the breakers you could have walked for rods
on the broken masts, spars, and timbers. There was
the mainmast, four foot through, snapped off like a
pipestem, every plank made into kindling wood, and
every timber torn out of her. Only a part of the bow
was left tossin' and crunchin' on the rock where she
struck. The shock, you see, threw the anchors over
board and they held tMs fragment in place. But the
sight of aU was the dead bodies of the crew stretched
out on the beach all frozen stiff, some covered with
snow, or tMusting up a hand or arm above the drifts.
Not a man was saved. One negro must have come
ashore alive, for he had dragged himself some distance
up the sands, but he had soon frozen. The sMp's
log-book came ashore, some trinkets and furniture,
and that was all."
I did not need the words of my informant to picture

The Wreck of the Jolm Milton 179
the excitement caused by tMs disaster through all the
eastern hamlets of the island. It was then much more
than now a maiitime community. The lai^ whaling
marme of Sag Harbor had been largely laid aside,
but the captains and crews who had manned it were
still living. Scores of wagons streamed out over
Montauk to the scene of the wreck, returniog by twos
and threes, with the ghastly burdens wMch the sea had
relinquished. Then came the funeral. It is evident
from the impression made that no more solemn event
ever occurred in the viUage. The genei-ous tars gathered
from fai- and near to perform the last sad rites to their
comrades. Bluff, hearty old sea captains, heroes of a
score of voyages, old salts tanned by the suns of every
clime, youngsters home from the first voyage, farmers,
merchants, sympathetic women, came from aU the
Hamptons and all the Harbors — from Sagg and
Jericho, from Egypt, Pantago, the Springs, the Fire
place — as far west as to Quogue and the Manor,
quite filling the old church, about whose altar the
coffins had been disposed. They preserve old things
m Easthampton, and so I succeeded in finding the
sermon wMch the Rev. Stephen L. Mershon preached
on the occasion. His text was Job xxvu. 20, 21.
Then in the presence of the dead and the awestruck
Kving he enunciated these sentences:
"It is a solemn providence that has caUed us together.
We have come to pay our last tribute of respect to the

180 In Olde New York
dead. But how unlike our usual assembling to cele
brate these sad rites. It is not the member of our
community whose name has often sounded in our
ears; it is not the long-known friend, it is not the
relative, not the dear member of our domestic circle
that we have come to bury. No, we have come to bury
the stranger. No father, no mother, no wife, no sister
attends tMs burial to moisten the grave's cold earth
with their tears. ... But strange as it may appear,
singular as are the circumstances that now surround
us, it must be admitted that truly does a pecuKar
solemnity become tMs hour. Each one must feel that
God is speaking the language that tells of our mortaUty
in terms not to be mistaken. For it is not only one,
it is a congregation of the dead whom we now carry
to the grave. . . .
"In advertmg to the circumstances that have called
us together let us not anticipate. On the moming of
December 6, 1856, we learn that the John Milton was
lymg, a noble vessel of 1445 tons, in the harbor of New
York. That day was her broad canvas spread, that
like a wiaged bird of the ocean she might speed her
course to distant seas. . . . Five months from that
day her anchor was cast in the harbor of San Francisco.
Here, because of mutiny, tMrteen of her crew were put
ashore, and as many more were sMpped. But soon
agam was the noble clipper released, and the day dawn
of August 10, 1857, brought them into the port of

The Wreck of the John Milton 181
Callao. Not long did she rest, for in about two weeks
we find her moored at the CMncha Islands. From
thence her course was homeward. On the 14th of the
present month (February) she anchored in Hampton
Roads, waiting orders from her owners. On the 16th,
but twelve short days since, the crew again spread the
canvas of their gallant vessel. With light and favor
able breezes they put to sea, hopmg soon to be in the
harbor of their home. Bright visions of home, of hap-
pmess, of friends, were doubtless flitting across the
brain and playmg sportively with them in their dreams.
Homeward they were bound. But no; a hand that
now Kes powerless soon recorded, on the 17th, on
Wednesday moming, 'strong winds, double reef top
sails, latter part strong wmds and tMck snow storm.'
From that hour they rode upon the sea where the storm-
king was in the ascendant. Dark and gloomy must
have been the nights that followed. All clouded was
the sky. They knew not where they were. No eye,
no glass could pierce the atmosphere; for on the mom
ing of the 18th, on Thursday, the last entry but one in
the log-book tells us that strong gales are still prevail
ing and thick snow. The last entry is on that same
day: 'Latter part more moderate, and turned reefs
out'; when by observation they found themselves in
the latitude of 36 deg. 56 min. — m the exact latitude
of Cape May, at the sputhem extremity of the State
of New Jersey. ...

182 In Olde New York
" No longer have we any witness to tell their course,
other than the gale that came with them upon the
land. From Wednesday afternoon till Saturday we
know that they rode upon the waves of the storm
enveloped with fallmg snow. . . Friday was a day of
terror. Such fear and terror were in the crew that the
log-book was forgotten. The night that followed was
the night of the landward tempest that burst upon our
shore at the opening of day from the sea. Our sMp
was flymg before its first and heaviest gale. The wind
of that tempest was the east wmd. By it they were
carried away, by it they had departed from those deep
channels of the ocean where the strong oak-timbered
vessel could long have safely defied the fury of the
gale. As the mornmg of Saturday opened upon them,
and as all eyes were straining to catch some gKmpses
of the sun, the hand that moved in the storm hurled
them upon the rocks of our shore. The work was
done. It was but the deed of a moment. Masts,
spars, sails, officers, and crew were aU m one confused
mass. The John Milton was no longer a monarch
upon the sea. The ruins of her crown lay m wild
confusion at the feet of her throne."
The bodies of the drowned were deposited in a com
mon grave m the old churchyard here, and the people
of the various towns contributed funds for the erection
of this monument to their memory.
The above is only one of the many like tragedies

The Wreck of the John Milton 183
that the old churchyard covers. At the foot of the
shaft to the Milton's crew, on the west, are thirteen
grassy graves, aU, save one, marked by wooden head
boards. They cover the victims of the wreck of the
Circassian in 1877, not members of the sMp's com
pany, but of the wrecking crew who were engaged at
the time upon her, and who were overwhelmed with
the vessel by a sudden storm. There is a possible
romance in tMs group of graves. One of them is
distinguished from its companions by a fine marble
headstone wMch bears tMs description: "In loving
remembrance of Andrew Allan Nodder, se. seventeen
years, son of Richard and Mary Nodder, of Wanstree,
near Liverpool, England. His young life was lost at
the wreck of the Circassian, December 29, 1877."
The dreamer among the graves is apt to query why
tMs son of wealthy well-bom parents came to end Ms
life as a member of a coast-wrecking crew.*
' Nodder, we have since been informed, was an apprentice belong
ing to the ship's crew.

CHAPTER XVIII

KING PHARAOH S WIDOW

|i"^ROM the green MUtop where I write, July 25,
¦*¦ 1882, can be seen across the downs two brown
weather-beaten cottages, nestled at the base of a range
of MUs wMch skirt the blue line of the Sound. These
cottages shelter eleven souls, the last remnants of the
once proud tribe of Montaukett. In one dwells Queen
Maria, widow of the last Kmg, David Pharaoh, vrith
her seven cMldren, and m the other Charles Fowler,
with Ms wife and cMld. Enter these dwelKngs and
you find them bare and cheerless, with no carpets on
the floor and only the rudest articles m the way of fumi-
ture. The inmates are idle, ignorant, dissipated, none
of them pure Indian, there being a Kberal intermixture
of negro blood. They Kve from hand to mouth by
huntmg, fisMng, doing odd jobs for the proprietor,
and on the proceeds of a small mterest in the land of
the nature of a usufruct. Between Wyandanch, the
first Kmg of Montauk known to Europeans, and David
Pharaoh, the last, a period of two hundred and fifty
years intervened. The early Mstory of the Montauketts
has been told in the books and need not be dwelt on at

King Pharaoh's Widow 185
length here. They were the ruling tribe of Long
Island and dwelt in a fortified village on Montauk.
Wyandanch, their king, espoused the cause of the
English, and was for this reason hated by Nmicraft,
the powerful sachem of the Narragansetts, who de
clared war agamst Mm. About 1656 Ninicraft made
a descent on the Montauketts wMle they were cele
brating the nuptials of the chief's daughter, burned
their villages, slew many of their people, and took
others captive. Two years later, in 1658, a great
pestilence carried off many of the remainder, and
Wyandanch was Mmself slam by poison admmistered
by a follower. TMs is no doubt familiar to the reader.
A subject little touched upon, however, is their later
Mstory and the various efforts that were made, under
authority of the London Society for the Propagation
of the Christian Religion in New England, to educate
and Christianize them. The spiritual care of these
Indians was at first entrusted to the ministers of the
church at Easthampton, who met with Kttle success
in their efforts. In 1741 the Society appomted the
Rev. Azariah Horton as a missionary to the Montauketts.
TMs devoted clergyman resided among them for several
years, learned their language to some extent, opened
schools, and was so successful that he led them to re
nounce their idolatry and adopt the Christian religion.
After Mr. Horton's departure the Society pursued the
plan of sending teachers and preachers of their own

186 In Olde New York
race among them. Several are mentioned in the
records as havmg labored here with more or less suc
cess. By far the most distmguished was Sampson
Occum, a member of the Mohegan tribe of Connecti
cut. Occum was born m 1723, and in Ms youth
attracted the attention of Dr. Eleazer Wheelock, of
Lebanon, who placed him at " Moor's Indian Charity-
School" at Lebanon, an institution under the patron
age of the Earl of Dartmouth, and wMch was later
removed to Hanover and incorporated as Dartmouth
CoUege, where he received a good education and be
came a Christian. In 1755 Occum opened a school
on Montauk, and preached and taught there until
1761. At tMs time the tribe numbered 182 souls.
After Mm came several Indian teachers and preachers,
the last, Paul Cuffee, a Shinnecock half-breed, actmg
as their spiritual teacher until a comparatively recent
period. They also were cared for by the church at
Easthampton durmg this period. Dr. Lyman Beecher,
wMle pastor there, frequently ridmg across the wastes
to preach to the Indians at Montauk. The result of
these efforts was discouraging. A competent observer,
the late Mr. David Gardiner, of East Hampton, thus
epitomizes it: "Some of thern learned to read and write,
but their progress m knowledge neither ameliorated
their condition, nor divested them of their natural
improvidence. Their thirst for the Kquid fire of the
wMte man continued, with scarcely an exception, as

King Pharaoh's Widow 187
ardent as when they first became acquainted with
civilized life, and the domestic comforts of the hearth
were Kttle enhanced beyond the savage state, not
withstanding all the advantages of mtercourse with a
moral and reKgious people, disposed to treat them with
sobriety and friendsMp. The efforts m this case for
regenerating the Indian character were certainly a
decided failure, and may be added to the thousand
others wMch have disappointed the hopes of the
pMlanthropist. "
Not the least mterestmg feature of Montauk are the
relics of tMs unfortunate people that still exist. On a
high MU on the east side of Fort Pond Bay are the
well-defined lines of a fort built by Wyandanch after
the descent of the Narragansetts. It was about 100
feet square, with rampart and parapet of earth, a ditch
at the foot of the glacis, and, tradition says, was pali
saded — in all, a quite creditable piece of military
engmeermg. About half a mile southeast there is an
ancient Indian burial-ground, and near tMs the most
celebrated of the relics of Montauk — a granite stone
on whose smooth surface is the deep imprint of a hu
man foot. Had some wandering Indian stepped upon
the granite in a plastic state, the impression could not
have been more perfect and distinct. Two other
similar prints have been found on the plateau, and
one has been removed, my informant thought, by
some Mstorical society. In all the heel of the foot is

188 In Olde New York
toward the east and the toes to the west — prophetic,
perhaps, of the westward march of the poor Indian.
There is no legend current as to their origin except
the one mentioned below, that they were made by the
foot of the evil spirit in Ms flight. The Indians held
them in superstitious awe, and frequent pow-wows
were held in their vicinity. Another curious stone is
encountered as one enters upon Montauk — a granite
rock, smooth and flat, upon wMch are several red
marks as of blood. The Indian legend says that they
were made by the blood of a chief who was kUled there
by an enemy's arrow. One frequently meets little
cavities in the ground m his rambles, wMch were
once deep pits where Indian com was stored. In the
old records these are called "Indian bams." In Mgh
places on the north shore, where the wind has re
moved the sand, chippings of wMte flint mark the site
of Indian workshops where arrows, spears, and toma
hawks were cMpped into form. Heaps of shells still
mark their ancient feasting places, and their weapons
and domestic utensils are quite frequently picked up
on the shores of Fort Pond and Great Pond. Per
haps the most thrillmg legend that haunts Montauk
is that of the raising of Mutcheshesumetook, the Evil
One. The great event of the Indian year was the
strandmg of a whale on the beach. Its flesh furnished
food, its oil light, its Mde thongs, its bones points for
weapons, and its tail or fin, roasted m the fire, was the

Kmg Pharaoh's Widow 189
most acceptable offering that could be made to Saw-
wonnuntoh, their deity. The sacrifice was offered
amid the whole concourse of the people, with feasts,
dances, yells, and incantations on the part of the
medicme-men to drive off the Evil One, who was also
known to regard it as a choice tid-bit. Now, it so
happened that at one of these pow-wows the incanta
tions were so powerful that Mutcheshesumetook
appeared in visible form and was pursued westward
by the whole body of people. In Ms flight he stepped
on the granite rock of wMch I have spoken, and left
the impress of Ms foot, wMch time cannot efface.

CHAPTER XIX
AN ISLAND MANOR
XT EARLY opposite Easthampton at the entrance
¦^ ^ to the Sound Kes a small island as pecuKar m its
social and political Mstory as in its physical conforma
tion. It is known as Gardiner's Island. Once it was
a long tongue of land juttmg out from the mam body
of the island, but the strong currents of the Atlantic
have eaten away the connecting portion, leavmg an
oval-shaped mass of graveUy MUs and dales, some
seven miles in circumference and contammg some
tMrty-tMee hundred acres. Its Mstory is curious.
Lion Gardiner, a soldier of fortune from the Low
Countries, bought it of the Indian owners m 1639.
Shortly afterward he received a patent of it from Lord
Stirlmg, for wMch he paid " a Kttle more," and agreed
to give a yearly annuity of five pounds, if demanded.
In 1640 he removed to the island with Ms young wife
and cMld, and, dying in 1663, bequeathed it to Ms
eldest son, and tMs example bemg followed by those
who succeeded Mm, the estate has remained in the
family name unbroken for ten generations.*
* 1885.

The Gardiner Mansion, Gardiner's Island

An Island Manor 191
The social order on the island is quite patriarchal.
The proprietor is the social and poKtical head of the
domam. Though grazing is the cMef busmess of the
estate, large quantities of hay, grain, and roots are
raised, and tMs necessitates the employment of some
tMrty farm hands, nearly all of whom were bom on
the island. Some have grown gray m the service
without ever having left the island except for brief
visits to the mamland. Many have married there,
and have families of their own, so that there is a little
community of between fifty and sixty souls for whom
the proprietor must provide food, clothing, shelter,
school, and chapel.
A personal visit to the island is attended with some
difficulty. The nearest point on the Long Island
shore is a sand pit, known as "The Fireplace," some
four miles distant. The nearest settlement is "The
Springs," a little hamlet of two stores, a post-office,
and several weather-beaten houses. Boats from the
island generally come to tMs place every Saturday for
suppKes, and if one has the proper credentials he may
secure a passage on their return trip and will be sure
of a welcome at his journey's end. There is no harbor
on the island, the boats landing on the western shore
at a little boathouse built Mgh up on the open beach
for their protection. From tMs point a gravelly path
wmds through open grounds to the mansion house
of the estate, perhaps an eighth of a mile inland. TMs

192 In Olde New York
is a long, roomy country seat, painted wMte, with wide
gables and dormer windows, a deep porch m front
extending the whole length of the building, and is
shaded by fine old forest trees. The present structure
only dates back to a few years before the Revolution,
but in its treasures of relics and priceless heirlooms it
is surpassed by none. In the Kbrary are more huntmg
tropMes, some rare old books and documents, land
grants, patents, commissions, and the like, on paper
and parchment discolored with age. One of the rare
books is the family Bible of Lion Gardiner, m wMch
is inscribed in his own hand tMs quaint bit of Mstory:
"In the year of our Lord 1635, July 10, came I,
Lion Gardiner, and Mary, my wife, from Woredon,
a town m Holland, where my wife was bom, bemg
daughter of one Dirike Wilamson. . . . We came
from Woredon to London and thence to New England,
and dwelt at Saybrook fort four years, of which I was
Commander, and there was bom unto me a son named
David m 1636, April the 29th, the first bom m that
place, and in 1638 a daughter was born caUed Mary,
August the 30th, and then I went to an island of mme
own which I bought of the Indians, called by them
Manchonoke and by me Isle of Wight, and there was
bom another daughter named Elizabeth, Sept. 14,
1641, she bemg the first cMld bom there of English
parents." Rare old china and bric-a-brac, glossy perukes.

An Island Manor _ 193
wonderful frills, and damty sUken robes odorous of
camphor and lavender, are only a few of the treasured
relics wMch the old mansion boasts. Among them
was untU recently a diamond from Captain Kidd's
stores, and a cradle quilt of cloth of gold presented by
that freebooter to the wife of the tMrd proprietor in
return for a dmner of roast pig at wMch he was a self-
invited guest. Contiguous to the house is a fine
garden, and beyond it a dairy house, an old-fasMoned
wmdmiU propelled by sails for grinding gram, several
bams, cottages for the workmen, and a race-course
for trainmg blooded colts, the raising of wMch has
become of late a leading mdustry on the farm.
One September mornmg, mounted on a spirited
steed, I set out for an unrestricted gallop over the island.
Turning mto a rough wagon road leading southward,
I cantered along past the race-course, green meadows,
and yellow cornfields, and fields where the brood
mares and their foals were quietly feedmg, tMough
several bars and gates, and at last emerged on the
wide sheep pastures that occupy the entire southern
portion of the island. Nearly a thousand acres m
area, these pastures present every variety of landscape
— steep bluffs, scarred Mils, wide downs gay with
golden-rod, little green hoUows, patches of deep wood,
marshes, and sea beaches. Some twenty-five hundred
wMte, fleecy mnocents were croppmg the tender grass
here, and at sight of the horseman scampered toward

194 In Olde New York
him with a chorus of "baas," so that he was soon
surrounded by hundreds of the pretty creatures aU
eager for the salt that is liberally showered upon them
by the herdsman m Ms visits. He had none, to Ms
sorrow, and, unable to withstand their appealmg
glances, spurred Ms horse to the top of the Mghest
bluff on the eastern shore for a glance at Ms surround-
mgs. From tMs pomt one looks out over the entire
island upon a weird, strange scene — a mass of tumbled
Mils, gray downs, and deKghtful Kttle hollows, much
resembKng m some features the neighbormg penmsula
of Montauk, although, unlike that, it supports here
and there patches of deep forest. At our feet the
Atlantic thundered. Northward we could see the gray
coastline of Connecticut; westward the MUs sloped
gently down to the mansion house two miles away,
and on the south, stretcMng far out to sea, was the
long tongue of land known as Montauk, with the wMte
tower of the lighthouse markmg its eastern extremity.
The cattle pastures, equal in extent to the sheep range,
occupy the northern side of the island, and are sepa
rated from the latter by fences of rail or stones. They
are capable of carrying a herd of four hundred head.
Leavmg the shore, I went for a gallop mland tMough
these wastes. My horse leaped the watercourses and
tussocks, curved round the little circular pond holes
that dot the island, and tMeaded the patches of
forest with the skill of an old campaigner. Occasion-

An Island Manor 195
ally we were met by a wild steer, in the wood we startled
whole colonies of crows, that circled above us with
vociferous cawings, and on every dry tree of any size
was perched an immense fishhawk's nest, seemmgly
placed with an eye to the picturesque. An unwritten
law severe as Draco's protects these birds on the island,
and they are comparatively tame. No more favorable
place for a study of their habits could be found. I
learned from an old gray-haired workman, evidently
a keen observer of nature, that they mvariably leave
the island on the same day m autumn — the 20th of
October — and return as regularly on the 20th of
May. Their nests are great conglomerations of sticks,
straw, mud, and fish bones, fully six feet m diameter,
and ludicrously large compared with the size of the
bird. Their dexterity m taking their prey is some-
thmg wonderful. My friend the laborer assured me
that he had often seen them strike flatfish, proverbially
quick of movement, eleven feet beneath the surface,
and bear them m triumph to their nests. On my
return after completing the circuit of the island I
passed the cemetery of the estate, a lonely Kttle place of
graves, separated from the waste by a fence of wMte
paKngs, and with a great boulder in the center covered
with a tMck growth of vmes. Here the several pro
prietors of the island are laid, except one, who died
and was buried at Hartford.
One might make a chapter of the wild tales and

196 In Olde New York
traditions of Kidd and his doings that haunt the island.
Gardiner's Bay and its shores are said to have been a
favorite resort of the pirate and others of Ms ilk. I
saw the identical spot — on the border of a dense
swamp in what was then a tMck wood — where he
buried the famous chest of treasure referred to by our
friend, and heard many tales of pirate darmg and
enormities. Kidd often came to the mansion house
in the days of the tMrd proprietor, was a self-mvited
guest at Ms table, and took forcibly such provisions
as Ms sMps needed, although he always paid prodigaUy
for them. The reputation of the island as a depository
of Mdden treasure was for a long time a source of
annoyance to the owners from the hordes of treasure-
seekers that it attracted tMther, but the guild has now
become nearly extinct.

CHAPTER XX
THE WHALEMEN OF SAG HARBOR
TN 1845 Sag Harbor had a population of 2700 souls;
^ the last census gives it but 1996.* The grand Kst
of the town shows a more startling decrease, all attrib
utable to the loss of the whaKng interest, wMch forty
years ago lined its docks with sMps and made the town
a familiar name in every Old World port, and in the
islands of the sea as well. TMs decadence is made
more manifest by a stroll tMough the village. You
walk tMough streets where a slumberous quiet prevails,
and whose dust rests undisturbed by traffic. You
pass fine old country seats gained by adventurous
voyages in the Atlantic and Pacific, from the Arctic
to the Antarctic, but whose occupants are rarely to be
tempted now from their snug harborage. Along the
water front are ruins of oil-cellar, warehouse, cooper-
shop and sail-loft, covering acres; two or three old
hulks, foundered and rotting on the shallows, and a
long dock, untenanted save by fisMng smacks, with
perhaps two or three old whalemen lounging Kstlessly
* This figure has increased considerably since 1882, the time
this was written.

198 In Olde New York
upon it, and a single cart loading with cord wood, sole
representative of the hurry and bustle that once charac
terized it. To gain a vivid idea of the town at its best
estate, however, one must win the confidence of one of
the old ship captains who still remain snugly moored
in the port, or, better still, get an interview with some
member of the old sMpping firms, who once had their
score of vessels out m as many seas, and handled
products to the value of millions annually. In Ms
former sMpping-office, I met recently a gentleman of
the latter class, who favored me not only with many
interesting facts concerning the prosecution of the
business in former days, but with much agreeable
reminiscence besides. The sMpping-office was in itself
a study; a small room, with bare floors, fitted with a
stove, desk, armchairs, and a quaint old secretary,
in wMch was stored a variety of books and documents
— ledgers filled with long columns of figures, musty
log-books, records of long-forgotten voyages, invoices,
manifests, clearances, contracts, advances, outfits,
leases of vessels, and the like, with samples of oil,
whalmg relics, and curiosities from foreign cKmes.
Quite frequently during the conversation my informant
refreshed Ms memory by a reference to this store of
documents. It is a fact not generally known, perhaps, that the
first vessel to make a long-distance whalmg voyage
sailed from Sag Harbor. She was gone but a few

The Whalemen of Sag Harbor 199
months, runnmg down into the South Atlantic, and
returned unsuccessful. NotMng daunted, her owners
fitted out other vessels, wMch returned with full holds,
netting them a handsome profit. New London,
Stonmgton, New Bedford, and Nantucket — all nearly
opposite — were quick to perceive the possibiKties of
the whale fishery assured by tMs successful voyage,
and engaged in the busmess with ardor. The palmy
days of the town and of the whaling mdustry cul
minated m 1845. At this time the village had sixty-
four sMps scattered over the globe in pursuit of whales;
and my informant had counted as many as fourteen
sMps lying m the harbor at one time waiting to unload
cargo. He gave a vivid picture of the "high days"
witnessed m the village then. SMps lay three abreast
at the long dock. Eight hundred riggers, coopers,
sailmakers, and stevedores went on and off the wharves
daily. Thousands of barrels of oil lay in the oil
cellars, piled tier above tier and covered with seaweed.
Great warehouses, three stories Mgh, the upper stories
filled with whalebone and spermaceti, the lower used
as sail and riggmg lofts, alternated along the water
front with rows of long cooper shops. Lighters were
commg and gomg from the shjps m the bay, hundreds
of carts moving oil and bone from the docks, the adze
of the cooper and hammer of blacksmith and outfitter
rang aU day long, and the streets were filled with
crews of outgoing or incoming vessels, attended by

200 In Olde New York
their wives, daughters, and sweethearts, minglmg wel
comes and farewells, weeping and laughter. Four
firms in the village at tMs time were among the heaviest
owners m the trade — Howell Brothers & Hunting,
Mulford & Slate, Charles T. Deering, and H. & S.
French. The majority of the sMps, however, were
owned by a number of stockholders who formed
regularly organized companies.
The vessels employed were rarely new, more often
packet sMps whose defective sailing qualities unfitted
them for passenger traffic, or old craft that had out
lived their usefulness. Of the latter class some notable
vessels came into the hands of the sMpmasters, among
them the Thames, famous in missionary annals, and
the Cadmus, the sMp that brought Lafayette to tMs
country in 1824. These were purchased or leased by
the sMpping firms, refitted, and sent out on voyages of
from one to three years' duration. WhaKng cruises
were at first limited to the North and South Atlantic,
but as the whales became less and less plentiful there,
they were extended until they embraced the entire
circuit of the globe. A favorite three years' voyage
m 1845 was to the Azores, thence to St. Helena, and
down the West Coast, around the Cape of Good Hope,
through the Indian Ocean to AustraKa, thence to the
North Pacific, thence south through the Polynesian
Islands, around Cape Horn and home.
It was no light matter to fit out a vessel for one of

The Whalemen of Sag Harbor 201
these voyages. The sails, runnmg rigging, cables,
and boats were inspected with the utmost care. From
a paper containing instructions to the outfitter of the
bark Pacific, bound on a three years' voyage, I find
he was to "have yards all up to topmast heads, spare
spars, if any, on deck, jib-boom rigged in, anchors on
bows, both chains on deck and forward to windlass,
or between windlass and bow; riggmg all overhauled,
mizzen rigging all new, includmg backstays; all head
riggmg new, also fore topmast and topgallant stays."
TMs done, a crew of twenty-two picked men was to
be provided, with three boats and their complement of
harpoons, lances, Imes, and hatchets, together with
2000 or 3000 well-seasoned barrels and a great variety
of provisions and miscellaneous stores. A Kttle book
containing the list of articles furnished the bark Pacific
above mentioned m 1852 lies before me, and to satisfy
the reader's curiosity I subjoin a list of the most im
portant. Under the head of provisions and cabin
stores were: 1 barrel kiM-dried meal, 500 pounds pork
hams, 100 gallons vinegar, 2 qumtals codfish, 500
pounds sugar, 400 pounds coffee, 400 pounds dried
apples, 2 boxes raisins, 30 barrels beans, 20 bushels
corn, 100 bushels potatoes, 200 gallons lamp oil, 1 box
sperm candles, 3 boxes hard soap, 1^ chests of tea,
50 pounds crushed sugar, 6 pounds mustard, 25 pounds
black pepper, 20 pounds ginger, 28 pounds spices, 30
pounds saleratus, 1 box pepper sauce, 3 bags table salt.

202 In Olde New York
6 packages preserved meats. In her medicme chest
she carried 1 case Holland gin, 1 gallon brandy, 1 of
port wine, and 10 of wMskey. Under the head of
" miscellaneous " articles were tar, 20 cords of oak wood,
chains, head straps, old junk, white oak butts, boat
knees, stems and timbers, 15 pounds sand, 1 cask
sawdust, 1 cask Kme, 3 whalmg guns, 50 bomb lances,
lance powder, 1 spun yam winch, and 1 mincing
macMne. As "sMp chandlery" she carried scrubbmg
brushes, chopping knives, lamp wicks, coffee mills,
Bristol brick, sieves, 4 sets knives, beeswax, tacks,
brass and iron screws, shovels, hoes, rigging leather,
pump leather, matches, and ensigns, 29 varieties of
cooper's tools, and quite an assortment of crockery and
tinware. Under the head of "cordage" there were
20 manila Imes, 2 tarred, 1 coil lance liue, 1 coil mar
line, 4 coils spun yam, 12 coils ratlines, ropes for jib-
stay, and 8 coils manilla rope. Under head of " slops,"
tobacco, reefing jackets, duck trousers, and denims,
Guernsey frocks, twilled kersey sMrts, tarpaulm hats,
southwesters, mounted palms, shoes, and brogans are
enumerated. Captain, mates, and seamen all sailed on the "lay,"
that is, for a certain percentage of the cargo secured.
This percentage varied with the different owners and
captains. Usually a captain received one sixteenth,
a mate one twenty-fourth, a boat-steerer one ninetieth,
and ordinary seamen one one-hundred-and-tenth of the

The Whalemen of Sag Harbor 203
catch. The remamder fell to the owners, who bore
all the expenses of the voyage. TMs system gave
every man an interest in securmg a "big lay," and
worked admirably. An outcome of tMs plan, wMch
entailed no end of loss and vexation on the owners, was
the system of "advances," by wMch they advanced
to the men tobacco, clothes, and money, often
to the fuU value of their share m the prospective
cargo. The return of a vessel from a three years' voyage
was an event in the village. Keen eyes were generally
on the watch, and as soon as she was sighted a pilot-
boat, fiUed with the owners and friends of the sMp's
officers, sailed down the harbor to welcome her. Mean
while news of the arrival spread tMough the village,
and with marvelous rapidity to the outlymg hamlets,
Bridgehampton, Easthampton, etc., whence the crews
were largely recruited, and as the vessel drew up to the
dock a throng of friends and relatives of the crew
were gathered to greet them. The scene that ensued
may be imagined; it was not without its more somber
aspects, however, for often it could only be said of
some one that he had been crushed m the whale's
jaws, or by a fall from the masthead, or had perished
of fever and been buried on some island of the sea.
The men ashore, the owners and skipper made an
inspection of the cargo; vials were fiUed with samples
of oil to be forwarded to the commission houses in New

204 In Olde New York
York tMough whom the cargo was sold, and the
vessel was ordered unloaded.
Traditions of wonderfully lucrative voyages made
by some of these vessels still linger in the port. The
Thomas Jefferson, after a year's voyage, returned with
$132,000 worth of oil and bone. She cost her owners
$17,000, and netted them that year $40,000. The sMp
Hudson, absent from her dock just seven months,
tMrteen and one-half days, without sighting land in
the interim, brought back 2400 barrels of oil. The
sMp Cadmus made as good a voyage. The bark
Pacific was most unfortunate at first. At Pemambuco,
on her first voyage, she lost her captam, and was
obKged to return. On a second venture to the Pacific
she was dismasted by a typhoon, and agam returned
empty. On her tMrd voyage she netted her owners
$7000. Loss and risk were incident to the busmess,
however, as m the case of the ship Flying Cloud,
owned in Sag Harbor, but sent to New Bedford with a
full cargo for a market. There her owners were
offered seventy-two cents per gallon for their oil, but
preferred to sMp it to England, where they secured,
after nearly a year's delay, twenty-six cents per gallon.
I was curious to learn the cause for the decKne of
tMs once lucrative business, and was surprised to find
it attributed almost solely to the CaKfomia excitement
of 1849. Whalemen, from their life of adventure, were
at once attracted by tales of the richness of the new

The Whalemen of Sag Harbor 205
El Dorado, and removed tMther by hundreds. Whole
crews deserted from whale sMps lying in San Francisco,
and made for the diggings, so that, with none to man
them, the vessels were laid up at the wharfs. A great
fire in 1845, wMch destroyed docks, warehouses, and
other appKances, also Contributed to tMs end.

CHAPTER XXI
TALES OF SOUTHAMPTON
fT^HE best story-teller at Southampton one season
*¦ years ago was a Kttle old man m saffron-colored
nankeens such as the beaux of fifty years ago were
wont to wear. He rarely lacked an audience, and many
a strange yam he spun with quaint earnestness that
seemed to bolster up the weak pomts in the story with
strange effect.
"TMs beach is the real treasure island, don't you
know," he said, one day as he sat on the shore and
waved Ms hand out to the sMnmg stretch of sand.
" Not only has it received the wrecks of the great fleets,
entering the bay of the Western metropoKs for nearly
tMee hundred years, but it was Captain Kidd's great
bank of deposit, as well as that of Ms iUustrious com
peers. Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearls,
inestimable stones and pretty much everything else
poor Clarence saw are here if only one knew where
to look. If I have not dug and handled some of
Kidd's treasure myself I have seen and handled the
gross mtegument which once mcased it; and as my
previous tales have been legendary — although havmg

Tales of Southampton 207
the stamp of truth — in this case I can produce the
ancient record itself. I was rummagmg m a south side
garret recently and there found an iron pot of peculiar
shape, more 'pot bellied,' if you wiU excuse the term,
and much heavier than those now in use, covered with
a deep coat of rust.
"'Ah,' said my hostess, when I reported the find,
'that is the Captam Kidd pot. It was dug up yonder
by my grandfather over a hundred years ago. Here
is a paper,' she added, 'that will tell you all about it.'
"It was a very old paper, mdeed, yellow with time,
and almost ready to fall to pieces, dated ' New London,
Connecticut, June 28, 1790,' but the name had been
torn or had fallen off, to my vexation. However, she
pomted to a letter from a correspondent m Southamp
ton wMch read as follows: 'Yesterday a young man m
tMs place dug up a stone and a pot under it full of
dollars. He called m Ms neighbors and digging deeper
they found another and much larger pot. The stone
and mscription I have seen. It appears to be a ballast
stone. The engravmg on it is much blurred. We
think it was buried by Kidd. It was dug up witMn a
quarter of a mile of our south shore, on a flat piece of
land. The engraver must have been iUiterate and the
inscription cannot be imitated by printed types.'
"My hostess did not remember how many dollars
were m the pot, but thought the sum a comfortable
one. Not long afterward, in a garret m Easthampton,

208 In Olde New York
I discovered Captain Kidd's old treasure chest, a heavy
oaken box with great brass clasps and locks, that bore
great store of precious stones, silver bars and cloth of
gold when it was dug up on Gardiner's Island by order
of the commissioners sent there by the royal governor
for tMs special purpose. Kidd was on trial in Boston
at the time for Ms crimes and told where he had buried
several chests of treasure on Gardiner's Island m the
hope of purchasing pardon. He was sent to England,
however, tried and hanged in chains at Newgate.
The woman who owned the chest was a descendant
of the Gardiners of Gardiner's Island, and vouched
for its genuineness as the treasure chest of Captain
Kidd. "But really, the greatest find ever made on tMs
beach was that of my young friend and relative. Jack
Belyea. Jack didn't say much about it for obvious
reasons. He was here five summers ago. A shy,
sensitive fellow naturally, but his great trouble that
summer rendered Mm more so. You see, he wanted
to marry Bertha, and Bertha confided to me that she
was awfully in love with Jack, but unfortunately Ms
bank account wasn't at all satisfactory to her parents
and they forbade the union. So Jack had but a sorry
summer of it, paced the sands revolving plans for in-
creasmg his worldly gear, and was often tempted to
end it all by one plunge into the breakers. In one of
these evil moments Ms foot struck a little ball of yam,

Tales of Southampton 209
as he thought, and sent it spinning along the beach
before Mm. Then, because he felt a spite against
everything animate and manimate, I suppose, he
began kicking it on before Mm like a football. Pres
ently he saw something strange about it and picked it
up to examine it more closely. It was woven instead
of wound, in a very curious and intricate way. Jack
said tMs aroused Ms curiosity and, takmg out Ms
knife, he cut one by one the strands of strong Indian
hemp of which it was composed. The last layer dis
closed one of those horribly ugly and grotesque Indian
idols, with wMch travelers to the Orient are familiar.
One feature of it stmck Jack as very unusual — its
stomach was very large and protruded m an unnatural
way. A few strokes of Ms knife opened it when, lo,
out fell six of the largest and most beautiful diamonds
ever seen outside of kmgs' regalia.
"How they rolled and sparkled on the hard sand!
Jack stood dazed for a moment, then scrambled to
pick them up and Mde them in Ms pocket. After this
he peered farther mto the cavity whence they came
and found there a coiled ribbon of rice paper on wMch
was written m Hindustan:
'"The gems have been my curse, therefore commit
I them to the sea. Whosoever thou be that findest,
keep not, but seU; if rich, give to the poor: if poor, enjoy
thy wealth and give Allah thanks.'
"When Jack took Ms bank book to Bertha's father

210 In Olde New York
a month later, the old gentleman was vastly surprised
but could not gainsay the figures. He could only
murmur a blessing. So Jack and Bertha were
married." Another day when we had gathered round the Kttle
old man at the base of Sand Hill Crane dune, he told
tMs strange story of Captain Topping:
" I stood here last Michaelmas toward sunset watch
ing the top hamper of a big East Indiaman sink beneath
the waves, when suddenly a shadow enveloped me, cool,
like a cloud, and looking up I beheld an odd figure
a few yards off — a man of giant frame, leanmg on an
eel spear and regarding me not unkindly. His cos
tume, sou'wester, pea jacket and heavy sea boots, be
spoke the seafarmg man of an earlier day, and Ms
skm was so tanned and wrinkled by time and exposure
that it hung in folds about Ms sMewd face and twmk-
Kng black eyes.
"As I looked up he turned Ms head in a listening
attitude and then cried with startlmg energy: 'Fourth
squadron, ahoy! ahoy!' There was no response, how
ever, and after peering up and down the sands he
turned to me.
"'Methought I heard our old cry — the weft! the
weft! But I see it not. Old eyes are dim and old
ears dull I find.'
"The weft; ah, yes, I remembered; the fisher's coat
waved from a staff on the dunes, the signal to the

Tales of Southampton 211
whaling crews two hundred years ago that a whale
was off shore — and then looking more closely I per
ceived that it was not an eel spear but a harpoon, that
my strange visitor leaned upon.
"'And tMs is  ?' I queried.
'"Cap'n Thomas Topping at your service,' he
replied with dignity.
" The name startled me. I had been nosmg tMough
the old records m the town clerk's office and recognized
the name as that of one of the leading spirits in the
settlement of the town, a famous Indian fighter and
captain of the whalmg crew, withal an ancestor of
mine several generations back. I could only stare at
him in wide mouthed wonder.
" ' I've come back,' he contmued in a tMn, cracked,
quavering voice, 'to see what these moderns are a
dom', an' I confess I don't altogether admire the
gom's on, I vow I can't fathom 'em. The place is far
prettier than m my day. Oceans o' money must have
been spent on the houses, lawns an* gardens, to say
nothm' of the houses, kerridges and sich, but, fer aU
that, life ain't as well worth Kvin' here as it was m
my day leastways not ter me.
'"Fust place I visited was my old windmill on
Fortune Hill that Cap'n Eben Parsons leased of me an'
run for nigh fifty year. Ef you had aU the grain
Cap'n Eben has seen run tMough them hoppers o'
Ms, you'd be richer than you are, or like to be. Well,

212 In Olde New York
the old mill was there just the same outwardly to
appearance, but inside — why, I found on openm'
the door and waUdn' in that two Kkely lookm' wimmen
from Boston, or up that way, had bought it an' turned
it mto a dwellm' hus. TMnk of Kvin' in a vrindmiU;
an' they had fitted it up mside with all sort o' city
knicknacks an' fumishens, an' I must say had every-
tMn' as snug an' cozy as could be.
"'I mtroduced myself as Cap'n Eben, who was
runnin' the mill when their fathers and mothers was
cMldren, an' they appeared real glad to see me, asked
me to stay to tea. Naturally we fell to talkm' 'bout
their takm' up with an old mill fer a house. I tole 'em
that when Cap'n Eben an' SabeUa Hand that was
a sparkin', arter they was promised, Cap'n Eben
wanted to be jined to onct, an' go to housekeepin' on
the ground floor o' Ms old mill, not bein' forehanded
enough to provide a house; but SabeUa turned up her
nose at the idee; she said she guessed she wan't gom'
to be married to Kve in a mill; an' she waited six years
afore Cap'n Eben could provide a house to her notion.
The women marveled at SabeUa's conduct, said they
didn't admire it a bit; for their part they delighted to
Kve in the old miU; and they asked me a heap o' ques
tions — how I ground com and wheat, and if the rats
and mice was so bold an' numerous then, and if the
wind moaned so ghost like through the vans o' nights
when a storm was brewm'.

Tales of Southampton 213
'"I next went a lookm' fer the old meetin' house
where Parson Hunting preached the pure gospel for
goin' on fifty years; but dear me, there was a bilKard
room and bowling alley on the site; an' out where the
horse sheds stood there was a space rolled smooth
and young men and women m parti-colored raiment
was a batting balls agin a net m the center. There
was a woman on the stoop of a fine new house across
the way watcMn' em, an' I made bold to ask her where
the meetm' 'us was moved to.
"'Law,' says she, 'you're a stranger here I guess.
They moved it down agin the sand MUs yonder, an'
made a bran new buildin' of it, an' brought up a sex
tant from New York to take care of it.'
"'I was meandering peacefully down the street m
search of the meetm' 'us, when of a suddint some-
tMn' shot by me with a swish, a cretur like a man
balanced on a frame hung between two wheels placed
tandem — but what kept the tMng up I couldn't see
unless it was the power of the evil one. I thought it
was one of them winged creturs, or wheels witMn
wheels foretold by the prophet EKjah for the last days,
an' I asked a boy if it was, and he said, "It's a bysickle,
you old fool."
'"In my day cMldren were taught to respect their
elders. "'The sextant took great pride m Ms meetmg 'us
an' showed me aU over it. It was a queer, low, mouse-

214 In Olde New York
like building, with a many towers and eUs and angles
and no steeple, and was built mostly of wreck timber
gathered on the beach — so different from the stately
churches of my day with lofty steeples and pillared
porticos. I asked the sexton why they changed.
"Well," sez he, "they wanted sometMn' different.
Them old-fasMoned meetm' houses with taU steeples
an' four pillars m front was so famiKar an' common
place, they got to be an eyesore, so our trustees told
the arcMtect to git 'em up sometMn' novel an' un
heard of. An' he done it."
"'The fact is,' said the old warrior, sKghtly chang
ing Ms position, 'I don't understand these mod
ems. They cum here an' build houses, costm' fifty
thousan' dollars apiece — that would a bought the
huU townsMp m my day, mcludm' the whalin' out
fit — an' only occupy 'em tew or three months m
the year, or not at all. An' then the trumpery! they
fiU 'em up with spmnm' wheels, hatchets, and old
irons, trammels, arm cheers, pots and kittles; what
we used they keep for ornaments. I hed ter laugh
when I see at one place Deacon 'Siah HoweU's ole
arm cheer of EngKsh oak he bro't with Mm from
Suffolk a standin' on the front stoop, tied aU over
with blue ribbons.'
"WMle speakmg, my strange visitor had kept Ms
weather eye to seaward and Ms huge fingers gripped
the harpoon staff.

Tales of Southampton 215
"Suddenly there came a distant cry: 'The weft!
The weft! Weft! Weft!'
"'There she blows! There she blows!' and with a
shout of glee my venerable ancestor made off amid
the sand Mils and I never saw Mm again."

CHAPTER XXII

THE SHINNECOCKS'

\ MILE and a half from Southampton Ke the
¦**¦ wide reservation and rude dweUmgs of the SMnne-
cock Indians — with the possible exception of the
Mashpees on Cape Cod, the most numerous and re
spectable of existing Eastern tribes. One finds their
history and the story of their connection with the
wMtes, as contamed in the quamt old Southampton
records, exceedmgly mterestmg. When the first
settlers of Southampton came here from Massachusetts
in 1640, they were, next to the Montaukets, the domi
nant tribe on the island, with a territory extending from
Canoe Place on the west to Easthampton on the east,
including the whole south shore of Peconic Bay, and
their warriors, according to tradition, reacMng when
arranged m Indian file from "Shinnecock gate to the
town " — about two miles — and numbering 2000 men.
Southampton was purchased of the SMnnecocks.
* Written for the Evening Post in 1886. The Shmnecocks still
retain their tribal autonomy and reservation and have about held
their own in numbers, but it is said there is scarcely a full-blood
Shinnecock among them.

The SMnnecocks 217
The deed is still preserved in the town records, an in
strument datmg back to 1640, and settmg forth, in the
old termmology, that Pomatuck, Manduck, 3,nd seven
others, " native Indians and true owners of the eastern
part of Long Island, for the consideration of sixteen
coats and tMeescore bushels of com, and m further
consideration that the English should defend the said
Indians from the unjust violence of whatever Indians
should illegally assail them," conveyed to the wMtes
" the lands commonly known by the name of the place
where the Indians bayle over their canoes out of the
North Bay (Peconic) to the south side of the island,
all the lands lymg eastward of that point." The pur
chase also included all the planted land "eastward
from the first creek at the westermore end of SMnne-
cock plain." For more than sixty years Indian and
wMte continued to dwell m the greatest harmony —
the energies of the former, as their huntmg privileges
grew less, being absorbed m the off-shore whale fishery.
Some curious entries in the town records pertainmg
to this matter are interestmg as showing the relations
existmg between the parties. In 1670 Paquanang and
other Indians agreed with a Southampton company
"to whale for the next three years the same way as the
last three years, and in addition a pot such as John
Cooper gives Ms Indians." By an instrument of 1671
Atmgquom agreed to whale for the next season "for
one coat before it commenced, one when the season

218 In Olde New York
was half over, and a tMrd when it ended," or "for a
pot, a pair of shoes and stockings, one-half of a pound
of powder, and tMee pounds of shot." In other cases
they were employed in trymg out the blubber, for a
certam share m the oU. By 1703, however, their hunt
ing lands had nearly aU slipped away, and they became
restless and dissatisfied, whereupon a grand convention
of wMtes and Indians was held at Southampton and the
matter amicably settled, the town giving the Indians a
lease of SMnnecock Hills at a nominal rental of one ear
of com, paid annually — the meadows, marshes, grass,
herbage, feeding, pasturage, timber, stone, and con
venient highways excepted; the Indians, however, to
have the privilege of plougMng and plantmg certam
portions of it. They were also given Kberty to cut
flags, bulrushes, and such grass as they made their
baskets of, and to dig ground-nuts, "mowing lands
excepted." SMnnecock Hills is the beautiful tract of roUmg
country, comprismg pastures only, occupymg the
narrow neck between Peconic and SMnnecock Bays.
It was held by the Indians under the lease of 1703 until
1859, when, by special act of the Legislature, they
conveyed their right in it to the proprietors of Southamp-
ampton, receiving in return the fee of their present
reservation on SMnnecock Neck. The proprietors con
tmued to hold the MUs in common until 1861, when
they were sold at public auction for $6250, the pur-

The SMnnecocks 219
chasers being a company of Southampton farmers,
who proposed to hold it for grazing purposes, as had
been done for centuries by their ancestors. The tract
has recently been purchased by a company of Brooklyn
capitalists, who propose, it is said, convertmg it into a
summer resort. Since the exchange the Indians have
continued to reside quietly on their reservation of
some 600 acres on Shmnecock Neck. The writer's
visit to them was in company with Mr. Edward Foster,
of Southampton, one of the editors of its records, and a
gentleman well versed m the affairs of the Indians.
We drove into the country perhaps a mile beyond the
last of the straggling village houses, and at the foot of
a Kttle depression in the plain crossed a brook just
where it fell into an arm of Shinnecock Bay. On the
left, curvmg around the shore of the bay, and bounded
on the west by a similar arm, with SMnnecock Hills
beyond, lay a wide plain, burdened near us with grow
ing corn and wheat, but showing further in the rear
untilled fields covered with weeds and brush, groves
of forest trees, and, scattered here and there, a score
of brown, mossy, one-story cottages. This was the
reservation. We drove tMough the corn-fields, past
the cottages to the south end, and returned along the
western shore, making the circuit of the tract.
"Very few of the Indians till their lands," remarked
my companion; "they are let out by the trustees to
outside parties. The government of the reservation is

220 In Olde New York
a little pecuKar. It is vested entirely m tMee trustees,
members of the community, who are elected annually
by the tribe in the room where our town meetmgs are
held. These men, with the consent of tMee of our
justices of the peace, have full power over the land on
the reservation. They cannot sell it, for it is held only
in fee; but they can lease it for a limited period, not
exceeding tMee years, and then perform the ordmary
duties of overseers. The land is exceUent, givmg good
crops of wheat and com, as good as any m tMs vicmity,
but two tMrds of it is gone to waste tMough the m-
dolence of the Indians in not cultivatmg it. There
are some twenty-five houses on the reservation, wMch,
allowing five persons to each house, would give a total
of 125 inhabitants; but probably not two tMrds of the
tribe remain at home, the others leadmg a rovmg ex
istence — whaling, fisMng, wreckmg, and as farm
laborers. They have a good school, kept by a colored
master, two churches — Congregational and MiUerite
— but no resident pastor, the office bemg filled some
times by the Presbyterian minister at Southampton,
sometimes by itmerant clergy, and again by members
of the Young Men's Christian Association."*
By tMs time we had passed several cottages, and
* What was the Congregational Church or body has now been
taken under the care of the Long Island Presbytery and a resident
minister is supplied by the Presbyterian Church and its friends.
The MiUerite Church still lacks a resident pastor.

The Shinnecocks 221
had arrived at one wMch bore a neater, more inviting
appearance than its neighbors.
" This was the former home of Priest Lee," remarked
my friend, "father of a somewhat remarkable family,
and a characteristic one. He is dead, but Mrs. Lee
is Kvmg. Suppose we caU."
As we drew up before the open doorway an elderly
woman, tall, straight, showing strong traces of Indian
blood, came and framed herself in the doorway.
"We wished to ask about your husband," said my
companion. " He was a colored man, I tMnk, a native
of Maryland?"
"Yes," she replied.
"And you have had five sons, every one a seaman,
and several rismg to be masters ? "
"Yes, sir."
" My friend would like to hear about the boys, some
of their exploits, the sMps they sailed in, and the like."
Here the old lady hesitated. Her memory was
too poor, she said : " But there is Garrison in the truck
patch," she continued, brightening; "he could tell you
all about it." Garrison was the youngest son, a stal
wart fellow of over six feet, showing the Indian charac
teristics as plamly as Ms mother; and leaning on his
plough handles, he gave us his family annals modestly,
but without hesitation.
"There, were five brothers of us," he began —
"Milton, Ferdinand, Notely, Robert, and myself.

222 In Olde New York
William Garrison. Milton went to sea young, followed
whalmg sixteen or seventeen years, and died. Ferdi
nand rose to be mate, and then captain of the ship
Callao, and made a good voyage of four years in her
to the South Pacffic about 1871. Notely sMpped in
the Phillip the First, of Sag Harbor, and we have not
heard from Mm in ten years. Report says that he
deserted Ms sMp, reached the Kmgsmill group of
islands m the Pacific, married the cMef's daughter,
and is now kmg there. Robert followed the sea eight
years, then took to wrecking, and was drowned m the
Circassian disaster. As for myself, I sMpped at six
teen in the Pioneer, of New London, and made my
first voyage of seventeen months to Greenland, being
frozen m ten months. My next voyage of eighteen
months was to the Arctic, in returning from wMch
we were captured and burned by the pirate Shenan
doah. In 1870 I sMpped as mate of the sMp Florida,
of San Francisco, for the Arctic, and next voyage as
mate of the Abbie Bradford, of New Bedford. We left
that port in 1880 for Greenland. Eight months out
the captain died of consumption, and I took command
of the sMp, and after completing the voyage brought
the vessel mto port."
These brothers, I further learned, became accom
plished navigators, with no other education than that
afforded by the tribal school. The pretty Congrega
tional chapel Mr. Foster made the basis of some in-

The SMnnecocks 223
terestmg remarks on the moral and reKgious status of
the tribe.
"Some among them have Kved and died m the
odor of sanctity," he remarked; "but their general
spiritual condition is not encouraging, considering the
efforts made for their conversion and enlightenment.
Love of firewater, as with their fathers, is stiU their
greatest failmg. They are not mdustrious, despismg
the tilling of the soil, aUowing their fine lands here
to go to waste, as you see, but no better surfmen or
sailors, especiaUy whalemen, can be found. They are
wandering and erratic in their habits, usuaUy not more
than half the tribe bemg on the reservation at any one
time. Little attention is paid to preservmg the purity
of the family, negro and wMte blood bemg so inter
mixed that there is not a pure-blood Indian m the
tribe." As before remarked, there are two churches, each
with quite a membersMp, and a school numbering
some fifty scholars, the latter bemg supported by and
under the direct control of the State. From the church
we drove down to the southern end of the reservation
near the sea to a Kttle graveyard, entirely covered with
weeds and bushes, where the ten Shmnecocks who
perished in the wreck of the Circassian were mterred,
and regained the highway by a series of paths on the
west, seemg there several pretty groves with mossy
cottages embowered m them — the former often util-

224 In Olde New York
ized by the young people of Southampton for picnics.
The future of the reservation is an interesting question.
Its lands are now quite valuable, adjoinmg plots sell
ing as Mgh as $200 or $300 per acre, and are each year
increasing in value. If the Indians could sell, the land
would probably long ago have been sold. They, how
ever, only hold it for themselves and their cMldren,
the title being vested in the state for the tribe; if par
titioned the proceeds would be divided among the
Indians, as their individual interests might appear;
and so long as a SMnnecock remains it would be
difficult for a purchaser to secure a good title.

CHAPTER XXIII
PORT JEFFERSON AND THE WHALEBOAT
PRIVATEERSMEN *
¦pORT JEFFERSON lies at the head of Setauket
-*¦ Harbor, and, although containing (in 1880) nearly
2000 inhabitants, is so embowered in trees that one
commg in from sea would scarcely suspect its existence.
Its streets follow primitive cart-paths windmg up the
MUsides from the hollow m which the business portion
of the town lies. Ship-buildmg is the cMef, almost the
sole industry. As our sMp drew up to the dock
we heard the clamor of a hundred saws, planes,
and hammers, and counted four large brigs on the
stocks m process of construction. More than one
hundred years ago, we learned, Captam John Wilsie
built the first ship here, and the business, although not
as good as before the war, is still in a flourishing con
dition. There are three yards in operation, and a vet
eran sMpwright of eighty told us that he had known ten
vessels on the stocks at once. When asked how they
could afford to build ships so remote from market, he
replied that they put in better material, worked on a
* Written in 1887.

In Olde New York
better model, and did better work at Port Jefferson
than in other places; hence secured better prices.
"Besides," he continued, "many of the ships built
here are owned by the townspeople. We are thrifty,
build our own sMps, furnish the men to man them,
and charter them for cargoes; our vessels are cMefly
engaged in the Southern trade, plymg between New
York and Charleston or Savannah." Two steamers,
I learned, besides sailmg vessels, were buUt here one
year, and some eighty yachts are laid up each wmter,
their furbishing and refitting in the spring givmg
additional animation to the yards. The tourist finds
Kttle to attract m the village aside from its quamtness,
but unless very difficult to please will be charmed by
a sail through its harbor and the waters adjacent.
Setauket Harbor and its tributary. Old Field Bay,
have a common inlet from the Sound and extend west
several miles, forming a labyrmth of straits and bays
lymg between wooded points and islands.
To the student of old men and days the whole region
is storied, having been the scene of some of the most
gallant deeds of the whale-boat privateersmen of the
Revolution. It is singular that no more of these men
has been told in Mstory. Many readers are unaware
of their existence; yet they formed an efficient arm of
the Contmental service, especiaUy m the transmission
of intelKgence, and may be regarded as the germ of
the American navy. Long before Connecticut's war

Port Jefferson 227
governor had placed on the Sound the Spy, the Crom
well, the Trumbull, and other audacious privateers to
capture the British storesMps, the whaleboat crews
were abroad, anticipating them in the matter of takmg
stores, and making reprisals on the Tories who swarmed
on the Sound shore of Long Island. The war found
them already organized for the capture of the whale
and, leaving leviathan, they turned their attention to
nobler game. Companies seem to have existed at tMs
time at Stamford, Norwalk, Fairfield, Stratford, Derby,
and New Haven, although Fairfield, a leader in the
WMg movement, was the center of operations.
Their whale-boats were well adapted to a predatory
warfare. They were about tMrty-five feet long and
were propeUed by eight rowers. Each boat carried a
large swivel as armament. Their operations were con
ducted swiftly and silently, usually at night. Some
times a British fort or magazine on the island was the
objective point; sometimes a Tory murder or outrage
was to be avenged, or a promment leader captured in
reprisal; agam, a supply-sMp or armed vessel was the
object — two of the latter having been captured and
towed into Fairfield during the war. In all cases the
leader mustered his men secretly, the boats pushed off
at nightfall, rowed swiftly and silently across the
Sound, struck their blow, and were out of reach
of pursuit when moming broke. Setauket Harbor,
directly opposite Fairfield, and but sixteen miles

In Olde New York
distant, was the landmg point of most of these ex
peditions. Some of the exploits were not equaled in daring and
romance by any feats of the border. In 1777 a large
body of the British and Tories had seized the Presby
terian Church at Setauket and converted it into a
fortress, usmg it as a stronghold from wMch to send
out maraudmg parties. On the 14th of August of that
year Colonel Parsons with 150 men embarked at Fair
field m whale-boats, crossed the Sound, and about day
break made an attack on the fort. The firing had
scarcely begun, however, when a messenger came from
the boats with the news that several British men-of-war
were coming down the Sound, and, fearing that their
return might be cut off, the gallant band was forced
to retreat.
A second expedition, organized three years later
with another object in view, was much more successful.
At Mastic, on a point projecting mto Great South Bay,
the British had erected a formidable fort, encircled by
a deep ditch and wall, the whole surrounded by an
abattis of sharpened pickets. Several supply vessels
and 300 tons of forage were protected by the fort.
Hearmg through Ms spies that the fort was garrisoned
by but fifty-four men, Colonel Tallmadge determmed
to capture it, and left Fairfield on the 21st of November,
1780, vdth eight whale-boats, carrymg m all but eighty
men. They reached Old Mans — a harbor tMee miles

Port Jefferson
east of Port Jefferson, at nine o'clock m the evening,
and disembarked; but a heavy rain settmg in, they were
forced to lie all that night and the next day concealed
in the bushes. On the second night the rain ceased,
and the troops marched across the island — here
some twenty miles wide — captured the fort by sur
prise, dismantled it, burned the vessels, stores, and
forage, marched back to their boats with their prisoners,
and were m Fairfield by eleven o'clock the next mom
ing, without the loss of a man. Congress passed a
resolution highly compKmenting the officers and men
engaged, and WasMngton wrote to the commander from
Morristown to thank him for his "judicious planning
and spirited execution of tMs business."
A still bolder feat of the whale-boatmen had been
executed the year previous. In 1779 the house of
General Silliman, in Fairfield, had been surrounded
by a body of Tories from Long Island, and the General
and Ms young son were borne away captives. The
Americans had no prisoner of equal rank to offer in
exchange and decided to procure one. The Hon.
Thomas Jones, of Fort Neck, a Justice of the Supreme
Court of New York, was selected, and a volunteer
company of twenty-five men, commanded by Captain
Hawley, set out from Newfield Harbor (now Bridge
port) to capture Mm. They landed at Stony Brook
on the moming of the 4th of November, and began
their march to the Judge's residence, more than tMrty

230 In Olde New York
miles distant, arrivmg there at 9 o'clock on the evenmg
of the 6th. No man could have been more unsuspicious
of danger than he. There was a gay party of young
people in the house, and the dance was proceedmg
merrily, when Captam Hawley and Ms body of grim
retainers appeared at the door. The Judge was found
m the hall, and was taken with scant ceremony, a
young gentleman named Hewlett being forced to
accompany Mm as a makeweight for the General's
son. The party met with many adventures before
reacMng their boats, being forced to Mde in the forest
by day, and narrowly escapmg capture on two occa
sions by the light horse, wMch were soon scourmg the
country in pursuit. Sis laggards were taken, but the
others succeeded in regaining their boats, and reached
Fairfield on the 8th with their prisoners. It was not,
however, until the succeedmg May that their exchange
was effected.
Quite equal to these m dash and courage were the
exploits of Capt. Caleb Brewster, one of the most noted
leaders of the service. He was a native of Setauket,
but a resident of Fairfield durmg the war, and accom
panied both the expeditions of Colonel Parsons and
Major Tallmadge as a volunteer. In 1781 with Ms
whale-boats he boldly attacked a British armed vessel
m the Sound, and after a sharp action brought her a
prize into Fairfield. Again, on the 7th of December,
1782, from Ms post at Fairfield he discovered a number

Port Jefferson 231
of armed boats m the Sound, evidently bent on some
predatory excursion, and gave chase. The forces were
about equal, and a desperate encounter ensued, nearly
every man on both sides bemg killed or wounded;
but the enemy at last escaped with the loss of two of Ms
boats, wMch were borne mto Fairfield m triumph.
Brewster Mmself was shot tMough the body m tMs
action, but recovered from the wound. The next year,
on the 9th of March, 1783, he took the British armed
vessel Fox m an action lasting but two mmutes, and
without the loss of a man. In addition to these duties,
from the beginnmg to the end of the struggle he was
the confidential agent of WasMngton m securmg m-
formation of the enemy's movements.

o

CHAPTER XXIV
harvard's first gradttate
the rev. nathaniel brewster of setauket
N a gentle elevation that slopes down to Setauket

Harbor on the east, its steeple facmg the west,
with the village schoolhouse on the right and the Clark
Memorial Library on the left, stands the Presbyterian
Church of Setauket, a church wMch has as much
Mstory connected with it and of as mteresting a charac
ter as any of the famous churches of New England.
Its early records have been lost, but we know that it
was founded in 1660, five years after the Independents
of Connecticut had come over and settled Setauket.
What is of more general interest is the fact that its first
pastor, the Rev. Nathaniel Brewster, a grandson of
the famous Elder Brewster of the Mayflower, was
the first native graduate of Harvard College. Mr.
Brewster died durmg Ms pastorate here and was buried,
according to the present pastor, the Rev. WilKam
Littell, who has held Ms post for tMrty years and is
a careful student of Ms church's Mstory, near a comer
of the church, though nothmg to-day marks the spot.
It would be a graceful tribute for the alumni of Har-

Harvard's First Graduate 233
vard to erect a simple shaft above Ms grave m memory
of the first of the long line of able and brilliant men
who have reflected luster on their alma mater.
The second mmister, the Rev. George PMUip, also
a graduate of Harvard, was sleepmg quietly m the
churchyard wMch surrounds the sacred edifice, when
the differences of opinion between Britain and her
American colonies culminated m the Revolution. The
British soon overran Long Island and mamtamed a
strong garrison here at Setauket, no doubt to overawe
the Independents at New Haven, Fairfield, and other
pomts on the " CMistian shore," as the patriots caUed
Connecticut. They seized the Presbyterian church
and turned it mto a barracks for their soldiers, as they
did m many other towns of the island, m some cases
usmg them for stables.
"They built a fort around the church," wrote a
quamt chronicler of the day, "and cast up the bones
of many of the dead. They destroyed the pulpit and
the whole mside work of the church, and the tomb
stone of Parson PMUips was among those destroyed.
The mmister m charge through aU the troublous days
of the Revolution was the Rev. Benjamm Tallmadge,
whose pastorate lasted from 1754 to 1786. It did not
endear Mm to the British that Ms son, Benjamm Tall
madge, Jr., who had settled m Litchfield, Conn., was
one of the boldest, most dasMng and most successful
partisan colonels in the Contmental service.

234 In Olde New York
In 1797 there came here as pastor the Rev. Zachariah
Greene, a man of marked individuality, of whom
many good stories are told. When the war broke out,
Greene, then a lad of sixteen threw aside his books and
entered the patriotic army, doing good service, it is
said, m more than one pitched battle; but at last a
wound m the shoulder and another m the back dis
abled him for further military service, and he returned
to Ms books. He was one of Parson's men in the
attack on the church at Setauket m 1777, and on
assummg the pastorate here made a note of the fact
that where formerly he had fought the forces of evil
with carnal weapons, he had now come to combat them
with spiritual. For fifty years he was acting pastor
here, and then for ten years longer pastor emeritus,
residing with friends at Hempstead. The older men
m the church remember Mm to tMs day. Old Father
Greene they call Mm, m speaking of Mm. He had
five fingers on Ms left hand, and the Presbytery m
callmg Mm stipulated that he should keep that hand
gloved. He was a good preacher and faitMul pastor,
the cMef founder of the Long Island Bible Society.
Durmg the last years of Ms pastorate he was assisted
by the Rev. John Gile, a young man of much promise.
On the very same day that Father Greene started to
go to Ms friends in Hempstead, leavmg Mr. Gile m
charge of the church, the latter went to Stony Brook
Harbor, three miles west, to bring home a sailboat

Harvard's First Graduate 235
that had been given Mm. He sailed out of that har
bor into the Sound to bring her around into Setauket
Bay, and neither man nor boat was ever again heard of.
The present church succeeded in 1812 the one
riddled in the Revolution, and is not, therefore, of
hoary antiquity.
There are some very old and quaint tombstones m
the churchyard. Two very heavy tables of sandstones
resting horizontally on piers have a square stone of
different color let mto the center, on wMch the in
scription is cut. That on the north reads:
" Richard Floyd, Esq., late Colonel of tMs
County and a Judge of the Court of Common
Pleas, who deceased February 23, 1737, in ye
73d yr. of Ms age."
The other stone, without doubt from its position
that of Ms wife, once bore an inscription, but it has
been effaced. Why was tMs done?

CHAPTER XXV
FIRE ISLAND
OFFSPRING of ocean and air, fmitful of nothing
but beach grass, hop-toads, snakes, and mos
quitoes. Fire Island Beach when I visited it in 1885,
still attracted the summer visitor, and held its own
bravely with newer and more widely advertised resorts.
A strange bit of earth tMs beach is, to be sure — a
barren, wmd-swept, desolate sand-bar, mterposed
between the A.tlantic and the quiet waters of Great
South Bay, pushed out nine miles into the ocean, so
low and flat that it would seem the first winter storm
must blot it out, yet increasing year by year rather
than dimmisMng. It is easy to read its genesis.
Ages ago a sand-bar rose out of the waves nine miles
off the mainland of Long Island; built up by waves
and winds, it grew and lengthened eastward and west
ward, and in process of time formed a wide smooth
beach from Coney Island to Southampton, eighty-one
miles, broken at intervals by inlets tMough wMch the
tides rushed to fill the bays formed by the barrier
witMn. The first glance of the beach shows that man
has come over and captured it. Here is the brick

The Surf Hotel, Fire Island
Reproduced from an old print

Fire Island 237
tower of the lighthouse 185 feet Mgh, the quaint cottage
of Life-Savmg Station No. 25, and the square signal
tower of the Western Union Company. There is also
a great hotel,* unique in its way, and a model for all
seaside hotels, with rows of cottages attached to it,
and a mile or more of covered board walks leadmg to
the ocean strand on the south, and to the bayside and
steamboat wharf on the north.
As you approach from Babylon across the bay, the
hotel looms up like the line of barracks at some great
army post, for it is long and low, with tMee rows of
wmdows like the portholes m a three-decker. The
host, Mr. Sammis, is a landlord of the old-fasMoned
sort, said to be the tMrd oldest inn-keeper on Long
Island. After a business career m town as druggist
and hotel-keeper, Mr. Sammis came to Fire Island
and opened a hotel on the sands. That was in 1855.
The first year Ms hotel was a chowder-house — a sort
of day resort for parties from the mainland. It was
very successful, and the next year he added 100 feet,
and opened the present Surf Hotel. It has grown
modestly and safely smce then, and is now 625 feet
long, with accommodations for 400 guests.
In its old registers may be found the names of
some of the best known people of New York* and the
country. The attractions are mostly such as nature
*The Surf Hotel was burned some years ago, and conditions
on Fire Island have materially changed since this was written.

238 In Olde New York
offers. A dip m the surf before the eight o'clock
breakfast begins your day. After breakfast you will
find half-a-dozen bronzed bay skippers waitmg to
take -you to the fisMng-grounds. Fine sport has
been had tMs year in the waters of both bay and
mlet, the gamy bluefish being the special quarry just
now. Trolling is the favorite form of sport with the
guests, but "chummmg" is practised. I can see
from my windows now a long line of boats anchored
in the bay, with their Knes down in the water, taking
bluefish that have been attracted there by tMowmg
out bait for days beforehand. The fishermen are
back in time for a plunge m the surf or bay before
dinner. After dinner sailing parties are m order, or
excursions to explore the island — an interesting diver
sion. The Kghthouse and the Kfe-savmg station Ke
southeast of the hotel, not ten minutes' walk, and
have many visitors.
The old keeper, who has the true nautical flavor
about Mm, leads the way up the one hundred and
ninety-five steps of the tower to the platform that
runs around the outside just below the huge Fresnel
lens. He is very proud of Ms light, wMch is the first
that the great ocean Kners sight in approacMng
New Yofk from sea, and therefore one of the most
important on the coast. It is a first-order Kght, with
a lamp of 500-candle power, wMch pilots have
seen m good weather at a distance of tMrty miles.

Fire Island 239
but whose usual range is twenty-five miles. To feed
the flame of tMs lamp requires two quarts of the best
kerosene oil every hour. We very much desire to
visit the light after dark, but the keeper is proof agamst
aU blandishments — he points to the regulations of
the Lighthouse Board forbidding visitors to the tower
after sunset, and says the mspector assured Mm that
it would be as much as Ms place was worth to disobey
the order. It must be an eerie place up here in a
nor'easter on a wmter night, when the tower rocks
under the fury of the gale, and sand, and spray, and
snow clouds the wmdows. On such nights the keeper
often hears the crash of some heavy objects strUdng
the glass, and finds next mornmg beneath Ms wmdows
the dead bodies of wild geese and duck wMch have
struck the tower m the night.
Life-Saving Station No. 25, as before remarked, lies
a Kttle to the southwest, almost witMn hailing distance.
Its doors have been closed whenever the writer has
passed that way, but a flock of contented cMckens gave
evidence that it was mhabited, as is the fact, the keeper
being sole custodian during the summer months, but
with power to summon assistance if it should be re
quired. The Signal Station, or more properly the
reporting station of the Western Union Company,
is the tMrd of the structures wMch go to make tMs
barren strip of sand an important commercial center
— although mnocent of sMps, except those unfortu-

240 In Olde New York
nates whose barnacled ribs may be seen protruding
above the sands or swaying m the surf. The Signal
Station is a large square tower on the sands, midway
between the Surf Hotel and the ocean strand. Fire
Island, as before remarked, is the first point of land
sighted by the great ocean racers westward bound, and
so the Western Union Company maintains here one
of its most expert operators, who reports the arrival
of steamers not only to their owners, but to those who
may have friends on board, several hours before they
are due at their docks in New York. The operator is
Mr. Peter Keegan, a speciaKst in Ms calKng and a
most interesting man to talk with. If to learn the
names of passing sMps by reading the signals displayed
by them were all he had to do, Ms work would be mere
routine, but to distinguish scores of passing vessels
daily by the cut of their jibs or the color of their smoke
stacks, some of them perhaps when only four or five
feet of their topmasts are visible, a keenness of vision
and wide knowledge of sMps and sMpping is required.
He is a man whose place cannot be filled. Summer
and winter since the service was organized m 1878, he
has been at Ms post, with only one day m the year that
he can call Ms own. The room in wMch he spends
most of Ms time is m the extreme top of the building,
and by means of windows and portholes commands
a view of the ocean, the inlet, the bay, and the long line
of beach. In one corner is a well-selected library, in

Fire Island 241
another the electric key wMch keeps the vigilant
watcher in communication with the outside world, a
reclming chair, a cozy rocker, and inviting seats
scattered around to complete the furniture. In a tMrd
corner is a package of books, tied with a string, that
were recovered from the wreck of the Oregon, wMch
foundered a few miles off the station. There are two
portholes in the southeast comer of the room, and
through one a long and powerful telescope is thrust.
The little mstrument in the corner keeps up a merry
clickmg — in winter when the hotel is closed, and all
the summer visitors departed, the only sound from
the outer world that reaches the lonely watcher. "So
long as the instrument is in order," says Mr. Keegan,
"I don't feel so isolated, for I know that by a few
touches I can talk with my most distant friends, or
summon aid if needed; but when the cable breaks and
the clicking stops, the silence becomes almost un
bearable." It is no uncommon tMng for the wires to
get out of order m the terrible wmter storms.
The unmitiated reader no doubt supposes that sMps
are reported by their signals; if tMs were the case, the
operator's duties would be much simpKfied, as he
would only need to be master of the signal code; but
in these days of fierce competition and record-break
ing trips, very few of the great ocean-racers run in
sufficiently near to display signals — to do so would de
lay them an hour or more — but keep a straight course

242 In Olde New York
for Sandy Hook Light, thus passmg from fifteen to
twenty-five miles out to sea. To the visitor it is a
standmg wonder how steamers can be distinguished
and accurately reported at that distance. Mr. Keegan
explams it. "In the first place I know just when to
expect the steamers. The name and hour of sailmg
from the other side of each vessel is reported to me,
and I am so famiKar with their runs that I know the
very hour that they should pass my station. For
mstance, the new French steamer Bretagne, one of
four new steamers built for the Havre Lme witMn the
last three years, left Havre on the 20th, and is due here
to-day — the 29th, at tMs hour — and there are her
topmasts already rismg above the horizon. Wednes
day I shall look for the fast steamer City of Paris,
wMch left Queenstown at 1.30 p.m. on Thursday, and
will be due here at 8 a.m. on Wednesday. Then,
with my glass, I can see a vessel very distinctly twenty
miles distant, and am enabled to distinguish them by
my special knowledge of their characteristic marks.
Masts and smoke-stacks are the cMef distinguisMng
features. I have reported vessels when but four or
five feet of their masts were visible."
" Do you never make mistakes ? " is asked.
" But one in four years," he replied, " and tMs is how
it happened: I was expecting a certain steamer, a slow
boat, due to pass some time m the night. Steamers
passmg at night display no signals by wMch I can tell

Fire Island 243
their names, but simply bum a signal indicating the
line to wMch they belong. At midnight a steamer
passed and showed the signal of the line to wMch the
expected boat belonged, and I naturally inferred it
was she, and so reported, but as it turned out the com
pany had sent a second boat immediately after the
first, and she was the one that displayed the signal."
"Are mistakes attended with serious results?"
"They would cause great confusion and expense,"
is the reply. "For mstance. La Bretagne, wMch you
see just commg into view out there, and wMch I have
just reported, has, say, 300 cabin passengers on board
That means that 200 messages announcing her arrival
are now bemg sent out to friends of persons on board,
and of course if the wrong vessel is reported, no end
of annoyance and loss would be caused."
"You must have had some thrillmg and exciting
experiences while keepmg your lonely vigils."
"In the matter of sMpwrecks and loss of life," he
replied, "yes; I suppose I saw the last signal of the
gallant fellows on the pilot boat Columbia, wMch dis
appeared so mysteriously off Fire Island one dark
night, leaving not a trace. That night I sighted the
Alaska and reported her; a few minutes later I saw a
pilot boat setting her signal; then suddenly the latter's
lights went out, and I saw the steamer lying to and
cruising about as if searcMng for somethmg. She did
not leave until daylight, and reported being m colKsion

244 In Olde New York
with some vessel. The most singular part of it was
that not a trace of the Columbia or of her crew was ever
discovered. That famous disaster, the sinking of the
Oregon, was first reported by me. It was the moming
of March 14, 1887 — Sunday; I had scheduled her to
pass about sunrise, and at 5.30, sweeping the horizon
with my glass, I saw a trail of smoke rising above
the sea. 'It is the Oregon coming up,' I said, and
waited for her to come nearer. As her smoke-stacks
came into view I saw that somethmg was wrong, but
what, I could not make out, as she showed no signals
of distress. At once I sent the main office tMs tele
gram: "'Steamer Oregon, southeast bound m, apparently
in trouble. Keegan.'
"An hour later she changed her course and headed
for the beach, flying the British ensign union down at
masthead — a signal showing great extremity, and I
knew she needed assistance at once. Looking about
for some one to go to her aid, I saw pilot boat No. 11
and the schooner Fanny Gorham in the oflMg and
signaled both. The sea was quite smooth, and both
at once headed for the disabled Oregon. All were so
far down the horizon that I could not see the boats
wMch transferred the steamer's passengers to the
schooner, but all were got safely on board. The
Oregon kept dropping below the sea Kne all the morn
ing, but whether she was sinkmg or only driftmg I

Fire Island 245
could not tell. Later I saw the steamer Fulda come
up and take off the rescued passengers from the
schooner. As she passed me she signaled, 'Oregon
sunk; passengers all saved and on board,' which I at
once reported to the office at New York — the first
announcement of the disaster given the public. Pilot
boat No. 11 — the Phantom — foundered at sea m the
blizzard just a year later, and all on board were lost.
I also sent her owners the first news of the strandmg
of the Scotia, which struck on a shelving bar fifteen
miles east of here while nearly at full speed. I first
saw her headed for the beach about five o'clock m the
morning, with both masts gone. Later I made out
her name from her signal flag, which was suspended
from between her smoke-stacks, and at once reported
her plight to her owners, who sent tugs of the Merritt
Wreckmg Company to pull her off."
" The Hilton Castle foundered off here, did she not ? "
"Yes. I saw her the night before, but being only a
freight boat I paid no attention to her. She went
down durmg the night. I saw our Kfe-savmg crew
go out next moming through the surf and brmg in one
of her boats with eight men in it, and a little later saw
a schooner pick up the other boat. These facts I also
reported." Sometimes the operator's duties are of a more grisly
character, as when he jots down and flashes over the
wires descriptions of dead bodies tMown upon the

246 In Olde New York
beach by the sea. The other Sunday Capt. John
Wicks of the Life-Savmg Station came in and reported
finding the body of a man on the beach about a mile
east of the station, clad m only a sMrt and trousers,
wMch had been in the water some eight days. "A
clerk, evidently," said the operator, "for he had m Ms
pockets two elastic bands and an eraser such as are
used in offices — a well-dressed man, stout, with fea
tures unrecognizable. We cannot teU where he came
from, unless from a passmg sMp — not from New
York, certamly, for the prevaiKng vsdnds of late have
been from eastward. There was nothing else m Ms
pockets except part of a copy of the New York World
of July 20. We at first thought the body might be
that of Hogan, the missmg aeronaut, but as the latter
made Ms ascent on the 16th, the paper of the 20th
proved that it was not he."

INDEX

INDEX

PAGE

Bromley, Capt. Reuben

173

A

Brower

72

A. D. O. (artist)
37
Adams, Alderman
,33
John I. (artist) 36 ei
seq.
John, Bust of
33
Buell, Rev. Samuel, Sketch
John Q., Bust of
37
of
169
Allen
29
Bullus
29
Ethan
122
Commodore
35
America, Young (clipper)
13
Burr, Col. Aaron 61, 53, 66, 81
Anthony
29
82
Attree, Wm. H.
69
Theodosia
81
B
Bancker
29
C
Cadmus^ (ship)
200
Ebert A.
30
California Gold excitement
7
Bamum, P. T.
53
Callowhill, Family of
75
Battersby, Col. J. C. !
J, 11
Calvin, Portrait of
75
Bayard, Nicholas
111
Carroll, Chas., Bust of
38
Beecher, Dr. Lyman 152,
,186
Celestial (clipper)
13
Beekman
72
Christian shore (Conn.)
233
Bennett, Jas. Gordon
69
Church
29
Bergh
29
Circassian, Wreck of
183
Bloodgood
29
Clay, Henry, Bust of
37
Bogardus
29
Chnton, De Witt, Bust of
37
Bonaparte, Joseph
75
Clipper ships
Cobbett, Wm.
6
Napoleon
Booksellers, Old
75
143
54
Columbia, Wreck of
243
Booraem,
29
Contest (clipper)
Cooper, Jas. Fenimore,
14
Brewster, Capt. Caleb
230
Rev. Nathaniel
232
Tomb of
88
Bridgeport
229
Cooparstown (a visit to)
87
Briggs, J. I. N. (merchant)
10
Coxe Family
74
250

Index

PAGE

PAGE

Cuffee, Rev. Paul

186

Gordon, Lord Adam

137

Curiosity Shop, A New York 72

Gouvemeur Family

29

Gouvemeur, Sam'l L. 3S

!, 33

Greeley, Horace (quoted)
55
D
Greene, Rev. Zachariah
Greenwood & Sons (ship
234
De Groot
72
builders)
13
Portrait of
76
Griswold
29
Deering, Chas. T.
200
Gross
29
Devoe, Fred
144
Dock, Old City
1
H
Dunlap (artist)
39
Halleck, Fitzgreene
63
Hamilton, Alex., Bust of
42
E
Harding, Ephraim, Capt.
127
Henry, Sir (race horse)
50
Eagle, Commodore
34
Herald, N. Y., founded
69
Easthampton, L. I., Sketch
Herkimer
98
of 149 et
seq.
Herkimer, John Jost
126
Easthampton Churchyard
167
Gen. Nicholas 123, 124,127
Echpse (race horse)
50
Hicks, Willet
142
Erskine, Sir Wm.
170
Hilton Castle, Wreck of
245
Eternal (clipper)
13
Hoffman
29
Hollywood Cemetery
33
Holt
29
F
"Hook" Ferry
50
Hot Com Venders
47
Fire Island
236
Howell Bros. & Hunting
200
Fish Family
29
Howland
29
Floyd, Col. Richard
235
Huggins, Christopher (clock-
Flying Cloud (clipper)
15
maker)
73
Forrest, Edwin, Bust of 37, 43, 67
Hunter, Col. Robert
96
Franklm, Benjamin 22, 23
Hyler Capt.
81
French, H. & S. (merchants]
1200
I
Inman, Henry
G
44
GallatinGardiner, David, Sketch of 174
Lion, Bible of 192
Grave of 168, 190
Gardiner's Island, Sketch of 190
Gile, Rev. John 234
James, Rev. Thomas, Sketch
of 168
Index

251

PAGE
Jans, Aneke _ 75
Jan (portrait) 75
Jefferson, Thos., Bust of 37, 42
Johnson HaU 129 et seq.
Johnson, John, hanged 45, 46
Sir William, Death of 115
His wife 137
House of 129
Sketch of 131
Jones, John Paul 21 et seq.
Thos., captured 229
Jumel Mansion 77 et seq.

PAGE

M

K

240 29

Keegan, Peter
Kevan Kidd, Capt. 208
Kidd, Capt., Relics of 193
Kimball, E. W. & Co. (mer
chants) 10
King, Alderman 41
Kip 29
Klyn, De 29
Kneeland 29
Kockerthal, Joshua 93
Tomb and epitaph 108
Kouwenhoven 72

Madison, Jas., Bust of 37
Mallory, Chas. (ship-builder) 13
Marble Cemetery, The 29
Mariner, Capt. 81
Mastic, Fight at 228
McCready, N. L. & Co.
(merchants) 10
McKay, Donald (ship-buil
der) 13
Mershon, Rev. Stephen L.,
Sermon of 179
Milton, John, Wreck of 177 et seq.
Minthorn, Philhp, Farm 30
Mitchell, Prof. Sam'l L. 38
Moll, John 73
Monroe, Col. Jas. 33
Pres., James, Burial of 31
Montauketts, The 185
Moor's Indian Charity School 186
Morris, Capt. Roger 79
Morton 29
Gen. Jacob 31, 34
Mulford, John, Justice 172
& Slate 200
Sam'l, Sketch of 172
Mumford 33
Murphy, Dr. N. S. 9
Museum, American 61

Lafayette, Marquis de 21
Bust of 37 to 41
Landais, Pierre de 18, 21, 23
et seq.
Lee, Arthur 24
Priest 221
Wesley 144
Leiter 72
Lenox 29
LitteU, Rev. William 233
Livingston, Robert 101
Low 29

N
New RocheUe 141
New York City (in 1827) 45
Nichols, Percy 30
Nodder, Andrew A. 183,
North, Prof. Edward 124
Northern Light (clipper) 14

O
O'Brian, Lady Susan

137

252

Index

PAGE
Ockershausen 29
Occum, Rev. Sampson 186
Ogden 29
Old Field Bay 226
Old Man's Harbor 228
Oneida Historical Society 124
Oppermier, i>Iicholas 74
Oregon, Wreck of 241
Oriskany Monument 123
Battle of 127

Palatines, Story of 91 et seq.
Made prisoners by
French 114
Settle in Mohawk Val
ley 113
Pacific (bark). Outfit of 201
Paez, Gen. 34
Paff, Michael 52
Paine, Thomas, Last home 141 et seq.
Parkinson, J. W. 43
Paulding, Bust of 39
Payne, John Howard 152, 174
Pell, Alfred 52
Penn, Admiral 75
Mrs. Wm. 75
Percy, Lord 171
Pharaoh's, King, Widow 184
Phillip, Rev. George 133
Phillipse, Mary 78
Pierson, C. H. & W. (mer
chants) 10
Pirates 4
Poe, Edgar A. 60
Port Jefferson 225
Porter, Sir Robert 52
Prevoorst 72
Privateersmen, Whaleboat 225

PAGE

Quackenbos

Q

R

Rojce Horse (clipper) 14
Reid, Lyman 62
Ridabock 29
Richards, E. & Co. (mer
chants) 10
Richmond Hill 81
Robertson, Archibald (ar
tist) 36
Robinson, Beverly 78
Roosevelt 29
Russell, Samuel (clipper) 13

Sag Harbor, Whalemen of 197
Sailor's Snug Harbor
founded 173
Salters 29
Sandman, The 48
Schermerhom 72
Schuyler, Col. Philip 136
Scoharie, Valley of 109
Scotia, Wreck of 245
Setauket 232
Setauket Harbor 227
Seventh Remment 33
Shinnecock Hills 218
Shinnecock Indians QIG et seq.
Simms, Wm. Gilmore 62
Six Nations, Council of 136
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a
visit to 86
Smith, Jas. (merchant) 10
Southampton, L, I., Tales of
206 etseq.
Sovereign of the Seas (clipper) 13

Index

253

PAGE 13
127
229 126 45 17

Staghound (clipper)
Stanwix, Fort
Stony Brook
St. Leger, Col.
St. Mark's Church
St. Patrick's Churchyard
Storm 29
Sunnyside (home of Irving)
visited 89
Surf Hotel 237
Surprise (clipper) 13
Sutton, E. B. (merchant) 10

Tallmadge, Col. Benj. 228, 233
Rev. Benj. 233
Tammany Hall 53
Tappan 29
Temple, Charlotte 46
Thames (ship) 200
Ticonderoga, Fort at 118
Tier 29
Tilden, Sam'l J. 39
Tillotson 29
Topping, Capt. Thomas 211
Tyler, President John 163, 174
John A., Sketch of 174

PAGE
Van Antwerp 29
Van Cortlandt, Dr. Augus
tus 146
Vanderlyn, John (artist) 51
Van Hardenburgh 72
Van Time 30
Van Wart, Bust of- 39
Van Westervelt 72
Van Wyck 72, 74

W
Wardle, Thomas (merchant) 10
Warren, Capt. Peter 131
Washington, George 78
Webb 30
W. H. (ship-builder) 13
Weber 72
Webster, Geo. E. (clipper) 14
Weiser, Capt. Conrad 110
Westervelt Jacob (ship-buil
der) 13
Willett 30
Wilsie, Capt. John 225
William Henry, Fort 121
Williams, Bust of 89
Wimans 30
Wise, O. Jennings 33
Woodworth, Samuel 42
Wynkoop 30

Van Alen

29

The Building of a Book
With an introduction by
THEODORE L. DEVESfNE
Edited by FREDERICK H. HITCHCOCK

A BOOK EVERY WRITER SHOULD READ

Contains articles by experts in each of the following subjects :

The Author
The Literary Agent
The Literary Adviser
The Manufacturing De
partment
Hand Composition and
Electrotyping
Composition by the
Linotype Machine
Composition by the
Monotype Machine
Proof Reading
The Making of Type
Paper Making
PressworkPrinting Presses
Printing Ink
Printer's Rollers
The Illustrator
The Wax Process
Half-tone, Line and
Color Plates

Making Intaglio Plates
Printing Intaglio Plates
The Gelatine Process
Lithography Cover Designing
The Cover Stamps
Book Cloths
Book Leathers
The Binding
Special Bindrags
Copyrighting
Publicity Reviewing and Criticising
The Traveling Salesman
Selling at Wholesale
Selling at Retail
Selling by Subscription
Selling at Auction
Selecting for a Public
Library
Rare and Second-Hand
Books

12mo, cloth, illustrated, $2.00 net — postage 15 cents
The Ghapton Press, Publishers
70 PiFra AvKNUE, New York Citt

Grafton Genealogies and Histories
King PhiUp's War. 12mo, cloth, illustrated. Price $2.00
net. Life of Col. Richard Lathers. Price $2.50 net.
Middletown Upper Houses. 8vo, cloth. Price before
publication, $7.00 net.
List of Emigrant Ministers to America. 8vo, doth.
Price $3.00 net.
History of the Ohio Society of New York. Octavo,
cloth. _ Price $5.00 net.
Benjamin Franklin Newcomer, A Memorial.
The Norris Genealogy. Octavo, cloth, 64 pages, frontis
piece. Price $3.00 net.
The Plantagenet Roll. Folio, cloth, about 550 pages.
Price $45.00 net.
The History of Redding, Connecticut. New edition.
8vo, cloth, illustrated. Price $5.00 net.
The Right to Bear Arms. 12mo, doth. Price $3.00
net. The Prindle Genealogy. Octavo, cloth, illustrated. Price
$5.00 net.
The Rix Family in America. Octavo, cloth, illustrated,
260 pages. Price $5.00 net.
Register of Christ Church, Middlesex, Virginia. Folio,
341 pa^s, doth. Price $5.00 net.
Register of the Colonial Dames of New York.
Register of Saint Peter's Parish, New Kent County,
Virginia. 8vo, 187 pages, cloth. Price $5.00 net.
The Sension — St. John Genealogy. Octavo, doth,
illustrated. Price $9.00 net.
Arms and Pedi^ee of Seymour of Payson, Illinois.
Quarto, boards. Price $10.00 net. Full levant, $25.00
net. The Smith Family. 8vo, cloth. Price $3.20 net.
Shakespeare's Family. 8vo, doth. Price $4.00 net.
The Tyler Genealogy. Compiled from the Manuscripts
of the late W. I. T^'ler Brigham, by The Grafton Press
Genealogical Department. 2 vols., 8vo., cloth, illustrated.
Price $20.00.
The History of Ancient Wethersfield, Connecticut. Z
vols., folio, cloth, git top, uncut. Price $25.00 net.
Tryphena Ely White's Journal. 12mo, doth, illustrated,
250 copies. Pnce $1.00 net.
Vestry Book of Saint Peter's Parish, New Kent County,
Virginia. 8vo, 242 pages, doth. Price 5.00 net.
Note : The cost of delivering all net books is payable by the purchaser.
The Grafton Press, Genealogical Editors and
, PcBUSHEHS, 70 Fifth Avenue, New Yobs.

Grafton Genealogies and Histories
A History of Amherst College. Regular edition, 12md,
doth, illustrated. Price $1.50 (postage 15 cents). Special
edition, only 100 printed. 8vo, cloth, hand-made paper and
signed by the author. Price 810.00 net.
Armorial Families. One volume, foho, bound in buck
ram, with gilt top. Price, fourth edition, $40.00 net. Fifth
edition, $50.00 net.
The Blood Royal of Britain. In one volume, folio, 650
pages. Japanese Vellum, $50.00 net.
The Brewster Genealogy. Two volumes, 8vo, cloth, 600
pages each, illustrated. Price, before publication, $10.00 net,
per set.
British Family names: Their Origin and Meaning.
8vo, cloth, $4.00 net.
WilUam Cecil, Lord Burghley, Illustrated. 100 copies
for America. Price $10.00 net.
The Chaffee Genealogy. 8vo, cloth, illustrated. Price
$10.00 net.
Biographical Memorial of Daniel Butterfield.
Colonial Families of the United States. 8vo, cloth, only
500 copies, $15.00 net.
In Olde Connecticut. 12mo, cloth, gilt top. Price $1.25 net.
The Ancestry of Leander Howard Crall. Quarto, cloth,
with numerous illustrations. Price $60.00 net.
Derby Genealogy. Octavo, doth. Price $4.00.
Grafton Chart mdex. The Chart Index alone, 60 cents
net; 12 copies for $5.50. The Chart Index, Cover, and
Notebook, $1.50; 12 copies for $13.00. Additional sections
of the notebook, 25 cents net; 12 copies for $2.50.
History of the Brigham Family. 8vo, cloth, gilt top,
$10.00 net.
Historic Hadley, Massachusetts. 12mo, cloth, illus
trated. Price $1.00 net.
Chronicle of Henry Vlllth. Two volumes, large octavo,
with photogravure frontispieces, buckram, gilt top. 100 sets
for sale in America. Price $12.00 net.
The Hills Family in America. 8vo, cloth, gilt top. Price
$8.00 net.
Arms and Pedigree of Kingdon-Gould of New York.
Quarto, boards. Price $10.00 net. Full levant, $25.00 net.
How to Decipher and Study Old Manuscripts. 12mo,
cloth. Price $2.25 net.
The Jacobite Peerage. Small folio, canvas, gilt top,
thirty copies for America. Price $15.00 net.
Note : The cost of delivering all net books is payable by the purchaser.
The Grafton Press, Genealogical Editors and
Pubushehs, 70 Rpth Avenue, New York

Colonial Families
OF THE
United States of America
In which is given the History, Genealogy and Armorial
Bearings of Colonial Families who settled in the
American Colonies between the Periods
from the Time of the Settlement of
Jamestown, 13th May, 1607
to the Battle of Lexington, 19th April, 1775
EDITED BY
GEORGE NORBURY MACKENZIE, LL.B.
Member of the American Historical Association, National Genealogical
Society, Old North-West Genealogical and Historical Society,
Member of the Committee on Heraldry and Genealogy
of Maryland Historical Society

THE plan of the work is to give a sketch of the Ufe of the
immigrant ancestor, the family from which he sprung, and
the direct line of descent of the present living representative
of the family, together with armorial bearings, and such other
matters as may be of interest not only to the present but
future generations. There will be about one hundred and
fifty pedigrees in each volume and over 20,000 names in the
index. Large octavo, 750 pages, gilt top, printed on all rag paper.
Edition Limited, $15.00 net (carriage extra)
The Grafton Press
70 FiBTH Avenue, New York

New Publications
Autobiography and Essays of Herman Kriisi. A.M.
Edited by F. Elizabeth Sheldon Ailing. Olus. Large 12mo,
cloth. Net, $2.50.
Barnes Family Year Book, 1907. By T. C. Barnes,
secretary of the Family Assodation. 8vo, cloth; $1.00 net.
Cherokee Indians. By Thomas V. Parker, Ph.D. HIus.,
12mo, cloth, gilt top. Net, $1.26 (ixjstage 10 cents).
Cole Genealogy. By Ernest B. Cole. Blus. 8vo, cloth.
Net, $6.00.
Farmar: A History of Thomas and Ann Billopp Far-
mar and Some of Their Descendants. By Charles Farmar
Billopp. Illus. 8vo, cloth. $5.00.
Genealogical Records of the  Family. For
keeping the records of any family. Designed by W. G. De
Witt. 12mo, cloth. $1.25 net.
In Olde Massachusetts. By Charles Burr Todd. Rlus.
12mo, cloth, gilt top. Net, $1.50.
In Olde Hew York. By Charles Burr Todd. 12mo,
doth. Illus. Gilt top. $1.50 net.
Mattapoisett and Old Rochester, Mass. By Mary
Leonard, Lemuel LeB. Dexter, Lemuel LeB. Holmes, James
S. Burbank, Lester W. Jenney and Maty F. Briggs. Illus.
12mo, cloth, gilt top. $2.00 net.
Old Steamboat Days on the Hudson River. By David
Lear Buckman. 12mo, cloth, gilt top. Illus. $1.26 net.
Strattons, A Book of. By Harriet RusseU Stratton. 8vo,
cloth. Net, before pubUcation, $6.00; after pubUcation price
will be advanced to $8.00 net.
Note : AU delivery charges are payable by the purchaser.
The Grafton Press, Genealogical Editors and
Publishers, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York

Printing and Publishing Genealogies
is a specialty of The Grafton Press, which invites correspond
ence from those having a genealogy, smaU or pretentious, in
manuscript or in preparation.
Genealogical printing requires much special knowledge.
Not every one has the equipment necessary to handle, and to
put into proper typographical form, the difficult and deUcate
md.tter, with its complicated genealogical tables, multitude
of dates and proper names, all requiring the greatest care and
precision in execution and proof-reading. Inaccuracies in
such works are especiaUy unfortunate and long persisting,
propagating further errors after they have once appeared in
the pages of an apparently authoritative volume.
It is the constant effort of The Grafton Press to produce
books of the highest standard, and to watch with the greatest
care aU of the small but important details which mark the
difference between a poor and a good book.
We supply both artist's work and plates for illustrations of
any character desired. Photographs, paintings, silhouettes,
daguerreotypes, drawings, maps, autographs, and old docu
ments afford interesting material for reproduction. Originals
which are faded or otherwise damaged can be redrawn.
We call special attention to the special faciUties offered by
our publishing department in giving a wide pubUcity to the
genealogies printed by us without octra charge to the author.
The sales are largely increased by proper methods in bring
ing the books to the attention of reviewers, the book trade,
Ubraries and societies, special coUectors, and other buyers in
America and abroad known to us.
It is a great pleasure to us to offer genealogists the fuU
benefit of these advantages.
The Grafton Press, Genealogical Editors and
Publishers, 70 Fifth Avenue, New York

YALE UNIVERSITY

a39002 002600659b

SRjy-

^J

sk;-?!!:"

i:;!;ji
^t:
EiiiHiitSj}!;!
S^hr -r: w— Mi:SM=JC=ilJ=riS
s"^s:^ " *- •-»¦— »-w««=
ngs-sr.: .r.
siia
K®"5&:-
.(•fl 
'¦iStf.gll tllslSl!
IE