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MEMOIR,
READ BEFORE
THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
OF THE
STATE OF NEW YORK,
DECEMBER 31, 1816.
BY EGBERT BENSON.
-----------Cui (musccB) nomen asilo
Romanumest, cestron Graii vertdre vocantes.—Virg.
[Re-printed from a copy, with the Author’s last corrections.]NOTE.
The author of the following Memoir was one of the founders of the New
York Historical Society, and its President during a period of eleven years. He
was a native of New York, bom June 21, 1746, and graduated at King’s (now
Columbia,) College in 1765—studied the profession of the law, and settled at
Red Hook, Dutchess county, in 1772. During the revolution, he took an active
and conspicuous part in favor of whig measures; was a member of the first
legislative assembly of the State, elected in 1777, and during the same year was
appointed attorney general, which office he held until 1787. He was one of the
six representatives from New York in the first Congress, remaining in office
until 1794. He was thence called to the bench of the Supreme Court of the
State, in which office, Chancellor Kent has said of him that “ he did more to
reform the practice of that court, than any member of it ever did before, or ever
did since.”* In 1801, he was appointed chief judge of the second circuit United
States Court for New York; but by a change of the judiciary system which fol-
lowed in 1802, he was deprived of the office. Not long afterwards, he removed
to Jamaica, Long Island, where he resided during the rest of his life. “ Here
(says Chancellor Kent,) he continued to be blessed with a protracted old age,
f exempt from scorn or crime/ and that * glided in modest innocence away/
His writings never received the attention which the good, contained under a
forbidding exterior, justly demanded ; for by his constant efforts to attain sen-
tentious brevity, he became oftentimes obscure. This great and good man sur-
vived all his contemporaries, and seems to have died almost unknown and for-
gotten by the profession, which he once so greatly adorned.” He died at
Jamaica, 24th August, 1833, at the age of 87 years.
* See Sketch of the Lite of Judge Benson* from the pen of Chancellor Hint, in Thomp-
son’s Long Island, ii. 487.	^MEMOIR.*
The subject of this Memoir, if so it may be termed, will
fee names ;f chiefly names of places, and further restricted
to places in that portion of our country, once held ai d
claimed by the Dutch by right of discovery, and by them
named New Netherland; to be described, generally, as
bounded on the east by the Connecticut, and on the west
by the Delaware, and a space in breadth, adjacent to the
farther bank of each, the extent of it not now to be ascer-
tained ; but, doubtless, as far as was judged needful to se-
cure the exclusive use of the rivers.
Held by right of discovery—a right gravely questioned
by some, and furnishing matter for wit and pleasantry to
others; because, with deference to both, not justly appre-
hended by either. An understood conventional law between
the maritime nations of Europe, to prevent interferences
otherwise to be apprehended, that the discovery of territory
should enure to the benefit of the sovereign by whose sub-
jects made. The benefit, where the territory inhabited, a
right, in exclusion of other sovereigns and their subjects, to
purchase, from the uncivilized occupants, the soil ; their
right to which recognised by the Dutch in the first instance,
and afterwards by the English on the surrender of the col-
ony to them, in 1664, and ever regarded by both, with the
best faith. No grant to their own people without a previ-
ous Indian purchase, as it was termed—no purchase with-
out a previous license for it—the sale under the superin-
tendence of an authorised magistracy, in quality as guar-
dians for the Indians ; and hence complaints from them of
injury, either from their own mistakes or from imposition
in the purchasers, rare, notwithstanding we meet with a
* See Note I.
t See Note II.80
benson’s memoir.
part of the consideration not more definitely expressed, than
as consisting of “ some handsful of powder”
If asked, whence the inducement in selecting the sub-
ject, a mere research, furnishing little to please, perhaps
less to instruct ? my answer will simply be, that nothing
relative to the history of country—the soil that gave birth
—“the place of our fathers’ sepulchres”—“the paternal
seats, our unceasing desire it may be granted us ourselves
to die there,”—was never with others, and I trust will never
be with us, wholly uninteresting. The English, when
speaking of their country, call it England; when speaking
of it with emphasis or emotion, at times, Old England;
still only its name on the map—the Dutch, when speaking
of their country, always by a name peculiar to themselves,
Het Vaderlandt, the Father Land.
The order to be observed, will be generally the primitive
Indian, and the subsequently successive Spanish, Dutch,
and English names.
As authorities,* among others, a reference will be un-
derstood to be to the Theatrum Terrarum Orbis, of Ortelius,
surnamed the Ptolemy of his time, published in 1572; the
Niewee Werldt, New World, of De Laet, published in
1625, and the same work in Latin, published in 1633 ; the
Beschryvinge van Nieuwe Nederlandt, Description of New
Netherlands by Van Der Donck, after a residence here of
some years, published in 1656; and the Brandende Veen,
a burning pile of turf a collection of sea-charts, with notes,
by Roggeveen, published in 1675; all of them, it must be
admitted, imperfect, and in very many instances erroneous,
but probably not more so than others, who, at the same pe-
riod, attempted the geography, and to borrow the appella-
tion just cited, of this, to them, New World; from necessity,
however, those named must serve as guides, aware, at the
same time, that while we follow, there must still be a reliance
on our own circumspection.
INDIAN NAMES.
-It may be a question, whether the Indians had general
names for large tracts of country? The Five Nations, or,
as heretofore, not unusually distinguished by us, our Indi-
ans, as residing within our jurisdiction, the Mohocks, the
Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Cayugas, and the Senecas, had
* See Note III.benson’s memoir.
81
no general name for their domain, or the parts of it, al-
though separated by duly definite limits, the distinct pro-
perty of each. The extensive, and, as relatively to them,
south and southwestern region, including at least a portion
of the Carolinas, they designated by referring to their gen-
eral name for its inhabitants, the country of the Flat-Heads.
They waged war with them, and it would seem implacably
bo. Returning home from one of their expeditions, they
brought off, to replace those lost from among themselves in
their fights, a whole people, the Tuscaroras, incorporating
them into their confederacy as the sixth nation, and assign-
ing them lands for residence, but withholding the power of
alienation.
On the other hand, there is abundant reason to believe,
that, inland, every distinct space, scarcely more extensive
than a neighborhood, and, on the coast, every river, bay, and
cape, and every island, its contents not more than to serve
as the abode of a single tribe, had a distinct name. Of the
places on the coast, Tybee, Ocracock, Hatteras, Roanoke,
Currituck, Chesapeake, Chingoteague, Squan, Nevesink,
Rockaway, Nantucket, with its secondary Muskegut, are
those only still known to our mariners by their Indian names.
Montock, it is true, is Indian, but the appropriation of it,
as a name for the extreme eastern point of Long Island, is
by the English, and probably since the reign of Queen
Anne, the point appearing on a chart of the coast, dedi-
cated to her son the Duke of Gloucester, without a name.
It is the name of the peninsula denoted in a petition to
the government in 1G80, for a license to purchase it from
the Indians, “ as a tract eastward of Easthampton, called
Montauckand we find it at the same period called Mon-
taukett, and its sachem formally claiming, before the gov-
ernor and council, a right, and as by conquest, to sell the
lands as far west as Mattinicock. The peninsula is within
the limits of the town of Easthampton ; the whites, the ap-
pellation generally in use with us, when intending to dis-
tinguish between ourselves and the Indians, exercising only
a modified right of property, the right of pasturage; the
remnant of Indians still there enjoying the exclusive right
of culture. The tribe was known as the Mattowas, or Mat-
towaks, or Mattouwax9 all of which, however differently
spelt or pronounced by the whites, doubtless purport the
same name; but whether the tribe took their name from
the place, or the place took its name from the tribe, is a
question-from which it behooves me to refrain. As of82
benson’s memoir.
Dutch descent, I ought ever to have before me the warning
from the “ mighty contests ,” in the parent country of my
family, on the question whether the hook catches the fish,
or the fish the hook ? and the parties accordingly distin-
guished as the Hoecks, and the Cabeljaus, the Hook and
the Cod.
The immediate neighbors to this tribe were the Shinni-
cocks, who, and also at an early period, presented a sa-
chem elect to the Governor for his approbation; a solitary
instance. At a treaty with the Oneidas, at Fort Schuyler,
in 1788, they presented to the commissioners a lad, made a
sachem the day before, and Skonondo, a respectable indi-
vidual among them, as the guardian during his minority.
The intent of the one ceremonial, the making a sachem,
as furnishing an occasion for the other, the announcing it,
being understood, the keg of rum, the expected compliment
in return, was not withheld.
From the mere suggestion by the Montauck Indians of a
claim, by conquest, to the whole of the territory between
their home and Mattinicock. we are led to suppose they
were numerous and powerful, the natural consequence a
pre-eminence, and thereby their name in time becoming the
general or national name for the Indians throughout the
whole island. It was usual with the Dutch to speak of the
Maquaas, and the English afterward by the name, as pro-
nounced by them, the Mohocks, intending at the same time
the whole confederacy. Our historian expresses himself, in
the text, “ all the Indians on Long Island were in subjection
to the Five Nations, and acknowledged it by the payment
of an annual tribute,” and concludes a note on the passage,
that the tribute still continued to be paid to the Mohocks.
Indeed it is well known, that Mohock was the standing bug-
bear with the matron-squaws on the island, to f righten their
unquiet children, when losing their patience with them.
Nayack—The name of a place at the Narrows on the
Long Island side: In the grant to Cortelyau, 1671, the land
is described “ as to begin at the point of Nayack, and to
stretch along the bay,” and hence Nicolls, who commanded
the armament sent against the Dutch here, dates his sum-
mons of surrender to the town, “ on board his Majesty’s
ship the Guyney, riding before Nayack.” The lands, the
western bank of the river for a few miles northward from
the Tappan meadows, known by the same name, Nayack.
The bay, between the geele, yellow, and the roode, red, Hook,
still retains its Indian name, Gawanus.benson’s memoir,
83
INDIAN NAMES OF PLACES—INLAND.
Our island of Manhattan, or as pronounced by the Dutch,
and spelt by the whites of New England, and both prefix-
ing the article the, Manhadoes ; * and the like observed by
Stuyvesant in his answer to the summons to surrender,66 the
Manhattans,” and, in the articles of capitulation, signed at
the governor’s Bouwerie, Farm, still in the family, the road
or lane leading to it, known as the Bouweriesche Laening,
corrupted to Bowery-Lane, now Bowery-Street, the town and
the inhabitants are mentioned as the “ town of Manhat-
tans,” “ the town of the Manhattoes,” “ the townsmen of the
Manhattans.”
A marsh or swamp extended across the island, from be-
tween where Canal street terminates at the North river
and the space of the shore of the East river, the portion of
Cherry-street between James and Catharine-streets. Cherry-
street, so called from being laid through a public garden,
with a bowling-green in it, called Cherry Garden, having a
front on the East river of 384 feet, and extending in the
rear to the meadow of Wolvert Webbers, the property of
Richard Sacket, Malster ; the western side of his malthouse
the line of the eastern side of Roosevelt-street there.
James-street, called after Jacobus, James, Roosevelt, and
Catharine-street, after Catharine, the wife of Hendrick Rut-
gers, proprietors, at the time, of the grounds, through which
they were laid. There was a large pond or Kolck in the
marsh about midway between Broadway and Chatham-street,
and a stream, or “ rivulet” from it, running eastward, and
crossing Chatham-street, between Pearl and Roosevelt-streets,
and there a bridge over it. The English pronounced the
word Kolck, as if consisting of two syllables, Kol-lick, and
the waters from the adjacent high grounds collecting in it,
an etymologist, not long since, chose to imagine the true
original name to have been an English one, Collect; and,
the pond having lately been filled up, thence the name of a
street passing over the space it occupied, Collect-street.
The pond, besides being referred to very generally as em-
phatically the Kolck, was distinguished by the appellation
of the Versche Water, Fresh Water, and which was also
at times applied to the stream. A part of the description
of a piece of land, in an ancient conveyance, is “ being be-
yond the Fresh Water” and then farther denoted by its
* See Note IV.84
benson’s memoir.
Indian name, Warpoes. Also a piece of land on the north
side of the island Manhattans, called by the Indians Mus-
coote. The Indian name for the grounds now known as
Greenwich, the name given to the place by Captain, after-
wards Sir Peter, Warren, when on the station here, and
purchasing them, was Sapokanikan, and, in like manner, as
Manhadoes, retained in use by the Dutch, and spoken of as
a distinct place, so that the skippers when, in coming down
the river, they had turned Sapokanikan Point, would express
themselves, “they were in sight of Manhadoes” The Indian
name for the extreme southern point of the island, to be
considered as the point on the shore dividing between the
waters of the two rivers, was Kap-se; and also in familiar
use with the skippers when intending to mention, with some
precision, the time at which they passed from the one river
into the other. From those of the above circumstances
having relation to Indian names, and perhaps the passage
from De Laet, to be instantly cited, also considered, may
not the conjecture be hazarded, that Manhattans, or Man-
hadoes, was the name of a tribe of Indians, and the penin-
sula, on the hither side of the Fresh Water, their exclusive
or separate place of abode ?
Our River—“The great river of New Netherlands says
De Laet, “is by some called Manhaties, after the nation of
Indians who dwell near, or at, the beginning or mouth of
it.” This is no otherwise giving the name of the river,
than by referring to the name of the tribe of Indians at its
mouth.
The*Sieur Des Monts led a colony from France, in 1604.
He entered the Bay of Fundy, thence thereafter at times
known as French Bay; visited a harbor which he called
Port Royal, now Annapolis; and afterwards making the
circuit of the bay, and returning along the western shore,
came to a river the 24th June, and it being the festival of
the Baptist, gave it the name of St- John. Sailing farther
westward, he entered the bay of Passamaquoddy, and
landed on an island, in a river emptying into the bay, to
which he gave the name of St. Croix. There will be a
reference in the sequel to the history of these colonists, as
furnished by L’Escarbot, who was there two years there-
after ; it will be here only further mentioned, that of the
whole number, seventy-nine persons, thirty-five died during
the winter, of the scurvy, spoken of as a disease not known
before, and, as it would seem, attributed to the extreme
coldness of the climate. " From April to the middle of De-benson’s memoir.
85
cember,” says Champlain, in De Laet, "the air of Canada
is healthy, but January, February, and March, are unhealthy,
and you are then severely afflicted with the scurvy.” He
came out with Des Monts as his geographer, and went aft
terwards to Canada, and probably the first who explored
the lake still bearing his name. In the account of the voy-
age, as taken from his own publication of it, speaking of
the river in the bay of Passamaquoddy, he calls it the river
of the Etchemins; in like manner with De Laet, designa-
ting it by referring to the name of the tribe of Indians in-
habiting its banks, it having, but of which he was not in-
formed at the time, an Indian name, the Scudiac. The In-
dian name of our river is Sha-te-muc. Here, however, not
having general tradition, or written document, to warrant
me, it is proper I should state, and so submit, my authority.
In 1785,1 met with a person of the name of Rouw ; his
parents were of the German families, who came over in
1710, under the protection and at the expense of Queen
Anne, and settled on a tract of six thousand acres, within
the limits of the Manor of Livingston, heretofore known as
the German Camp, now German Town, purchased for them,
it being intended they should raise hemp, and, the pine then
abounding in the vicinity, make tar, for the use of the
navy. In the conversation with him, he told me his father,
at a very early day, parted with his farm in the camp, and
took a lease for one, from the proprietor of the Manor, at a
place called by the Indians Stissinck, about twelve miles
from the river; that the family were, as it respected white
neighbors, for a long time almost solitary; that their chief
intercourse was with the Indians, who were still numerous
there ; that the Indian boys were his play-fellows, so that
as he grew up, the Indian became as familiar to him as the
German, the language of the family. Among other inquir-
ies, I asked him if he knew the Indian name of the river?
He replied he did, it was Sha-te-muc. With a view to as-
certain whether he was not repeating only individual hear-
say, I asked him how he came by the knowledge of the
name ? He replied, it was always called so by the Indians;
that when going to, or coming from the river, they would
say they were going to, or had come from, Sha-te-muc; in
short, that he had come to the knowledge of the Indian
name for it, in the same manner he had come to the
knowledge of the name by which it was known by the
whites, the North River. 1 then mentioned, that possibly
it was the name for a portion of it, a reach in it there; he86
benson’s memoir.
replied, it was usual with him, when a young man, and the
deer scarce in the Tackhanick mountains in the neighbor-
hood, to go and hunt with the Wiccapee Indians in the
Highlands, and the river was known to them by the same
name. I was a stranger to him personally; but when I re-
sided at Red-Hook, in Dutchess county, at a previous pe-
riod, I knew several of the family, and they were respect-
able ; his recollection and judgment were entire, his ap-
pearance decent, and his deportment proper. I might have
saved myself the necessity of the surmise to him, that pos-
sibly it was only the name of a portion of the river, had it
occurred to me, that the Indians, using the same language,
have the same name for a river throughout its whole length.
An Indian meeting a white man on the confines of Canada,
asked him where he came from ? He told him from Con-
necticut river; the Indian instantly extending his arms lat-
erally from him to the utmost stretch, as the expressive
gesture, repeated the name Connecticoota, adding its mean-
ing, Long River.
Croton River—supposed to be the mis-spelling of the
name of an Indian, probably the proprietor of the lands at
the mouth of it, as we find it, in very early documents, in
the genitive, Croton’s River. In an Indian deed, 1685, the
river is called Kitchawan, and the lands adjacent to it on
the south, Sincksinck.
Schenectady—A tract within the limits of the Colonie
or Jurisdictie of Rensselaerwyck, extending from the river
in a northwestern direction, a mile in breadth, was formed
by the Dutch Government into a separate Jurisdiction,
known as the Jurisdiction of Schenectady, the name of the
Five Nations for the site of the only settlement, at the
time, within it, the Dorp or village of Beverwyck, on the
bank of the river, and its meaning, on the further side of the
pine wood, denoting its situation relatively to them. The
license from Stuyvesant to Yan Curler and his associates,
to purchase the lands, described in it, as “ the well known
Flatt lying behind the Fort Orange, landward in,” is dated
in 1661. The term Flatt has obtained among us a translation
of the Dutch Vlachte, when used to denote lands on a river
by alluvion. This Flatt was, at the time, distinguished by
the Dutch as the Groote, or Great, Vlachte. The Indian
name for it, Oronowaragouhre. It was instantly settled by
the whites, and their village considered as within the Juris-
diction of Schenectady. Nicolls, very shortly after the sur-
render of the colony, erected the jurisdiction into a city,benson's memoir.
87
giving it the name of Albany, after the Scotch title of the
Duke of York, but restricting its western extent to sixteen
miles from the river; the residue, however, and especially
as it regarded the settlement at the Great Flatt, which
would otherwise, if it may be so expressed, have become
extra-parochial, was considered as still subsisting as a Ju-
risdiction, and no new one being assigned to it, the name of
Schenectady of course continued to be used, and the Schout
or Sheriff as still in office; and at the moment happening
to reside there, we accordingly find the following entry in
the minutes of the Council, 15th October, 1675, “Sanders
Leenderts Glen, and Ludovicus Cobez, Schout of Schenec-
tady, appeared with a request from their village for a pa-
tent. Ordered, that they have a patent for the land about
and above Schenectady. The Bowerys, or Farms, at Sche-
nectady, are to pay for each of them, containing twenty
morgan, and in proportion, four bushels of wheat, as a quit-
rent. The magistrates of Schenectady to have liberty to
impose a levyand thus the name was transferred from
the Schenectady of the Five Nations to their Oronowara-
gouhre.
Nachtenack—The Indian name for the point of land, the
site of the village of Waterford, and sold at an early day,
and the grantees denoted in the deed, by the names of Go-
zen Gerritse, and Philip Peterse, the last syllable, se, an
abbreviation of sen, varied from zoon, son, the Christian
name of the father of the one being Gerrit, and of the
other Peter, and their surnames Van Schaick and Van
Schuyler. Taking this species of Patronymic, and using it
as a surname, a practice our Dutch ancestors brought over
with them, and it has now in some families become the
permanent surname: Instances—the Myndbrtses, the de-
scendants of Myndert Van Everen; the Leffertses, of Lef-
fert Van Haagewout ; the Martenses, of Martin Schenck ;
the Rikertses, abbreviated to Riker, of Rikert Lent ; the
Remsens, of Rembrandt, abbreviated to Rem, Van Der Beek.
With some, the English son, as being of the same import,
has been substituted for the Dutch sen: Instances—the
Johnsons of Kings and Ulster counties; the Gerritsons;
the Evertsons; the Bensons. With a number of our Dutch
families, the preposition Van, of, as a part of the surname,
has gone into disuse: Instances—the Van Ten Broecks, the
Van Gansevoorts, the Van Varicks, the Van Kouwenhovens,
and in the family of Philip Peterse Van Schuyler, already
named, the use of it probably ceasing with him, as it does88
benson’s memoir.
not appear to have been used even by his son Major Peter
Schuyler, “ distinguished,” says our historian, “ for his sin-
gular bravery and activity in the defence of his country.
In the summer of 1691, he, with a party of Mohocks, passed
through the Lake Champlain, and made an irruption on the
French settlements at the north end of it. De Callieres,
the Governor of Montreal, to oppose him, collected a small
army of eight hundred men, and encamped at La Prairie.
Schuyler had several conflicts with the enemy, and slew
about three hundred of them, which exceeded in number
his whole party: he succeeded to the influence and honors
of Van Curler. Whatever he recommended or disapproved,
had the force of a law with the Five Nations; and they
afterwards addressed the governor of the colony by the
title of Gorah Quider, instead of Peter, which they could
not pronounce, Governor Peter.” The nick-name formerly
much in use with the Dutch here : Instances—the residence
of Jan Roodhaer, a little freely translated Foxy-head John,
referred to in a grant, his name, though somewhat angli-
cised in spelling, Van Salisbury ; a grant to Jacob Flodder,
Jacob Rafter, his occupation on the river, his name Gardi-
nier. Vader Kees, Father Cornelius, the plaintiff in a suit,
his name Jansen. A few families, descended from clergy-
men, still using the surname as Latinised by their classical
progenitors:	Instances—Goetius, Polhemius, Curtenius,
Mancius, Borgardus.
Our names for the Five Nations, are not their names in
their own language ; they are the names by which the In-
dians inhabiting the banks of the river, the Mohegans, or,
as pronounced by the Dutch, Mahikanders, denote them,
and being those first communicated to the whites, they have
retained them in use : their names, in their own language,
are, the Mohocks, Te-ka-te-righ-te-go-ne, Council of two
Bands, alluding to the two clans or castles of them, the one
at Fort Hunter, so called after Governor Hunter, the other
at Fort Hendrick, so called after their distinguished chief,
usually known as King Hendrick, who fell in the battle at
Lake George, 1755; the Oneidas, Ni-ho-ron-ta-g-o-wa, a
great tree; the Onondagas, Ro-tigh-re-&-na,-gigh-tVi,ca?Tying
their houses on their backs; the Cayugas, Sho-ti-non-no-
wen-te icee-ne, the great pipe; and the Senecas, Ya-te-ho-
ni-non-hagh-^ora-te, the people at the end of the house. A
peculiarity to be noticed in these names, dwelling on the
penultimate syllable: A few farther instances—names of
places—Mo-non-ga-Ae-la, Wa-ma-na-pa-^&a-sick, Ca-nes-ti-benson’s memoir.
89
gi-w-ne. Names of persons—An-na-ta-foz^-les, a taker of
towns ; the name of the Five Nations for General Wash-
ington; Ta-ha-ne-ye-a-ta-foz&-ye, ancient his legs; their
name for General Schuyler— I have placed thee, my friend,
by the side of him who knew thee, thy intelligence to dis-
cern, thy zeal to promote, thy country’s good, and, knowing
thee, prized thee. Let this be thy eulogy. I add, and with
truth, peculiarly thine. Content, it should be mine to have
expressed it. There will be a farther occasional mention of
Indian names in the sequel.
SPANISH NAMES OP PLACES.
The Spaniards were the first Europeans who gave names
to places on our coast. There were upwards of thirty in
number, between Cape Florida and Cape Cod. Florida
itself, and St. Augustine, St. Lucia, Caneveral, St. Juan,
Matanzas, and Roman, or more properly Romana, only are
found on the charts of the present day. A few of the oth-
ers will be noticed. A Cape is laid down as in latitude 36,
with the name of Trafalgar, and was subsequently further
denoted by the Dutch as the southern point of Virginia on
the ocean. They named the Chesapeake, the Bay of the
Mother of God, the Delaware, the Bay of all Saints9 and the
Hudson, the River of the Mountains.
Who the Spanish voyagers were, and whether the same
who gave the name of Campo Bello to an island in the Bay
of Fundy, or of Tremont to the Peninsula of Boston, from
the three eminences in it, cannot now be ascertained, at least
not without more research than the success of it would
recompense* There is no trace of their having landed in
Our vicinity. Indeed, according to Van Der Donck, it is
scarcely to be believed their ships were even in sight from
the shore. ‘‘This country,” he says, “ was first found and
discovered by the Dutch, in 1609, when a ship, the Half
Moon, was fitted out by the East India Company, to seek
Westward fora passage through to China. Henry Hudson
was the master and supercargo; an Englishman by birth,
but who had long abode among the Netherlanders, and
then in the service and pay of the East India Company.
That it was first discovered by the Netherlanders is evident
from this, that the Indians, or 'Natives, of whom there are
many still living, and so old as to re nember it, declare, that
before the arrival of the ship HaT Moon, they did not
know there were any other people in the world so unlike
SECOND SERIES, VOX*. II.	790
benson’s memoir.
them as being more hairy, much less so far otherwise dif-
fering from them in kind and fashion, as our nation. There
are some who maintain that the Spaniards were in this
country many years before, but, finding it too cold, left it;
but I could never understand so from the Indians.”
Notwithstanding what Van Der Donck here relates, I
cannot forbear from the conjecture that they approached
so near as distinctly to discern the opening, the Nan'ows,
and concluding it to be the entrance into a river, and Neve-
sinck and Staten Island being the only land on the coast
apparently mountainous, thence the name the River of the
Mountains; for although I give the passage entire from
him, I am not therefore to be understood as giving it un-
qualified credit. He was a Dutchman, and doubtless penned
the passage, in asseveration of their title to the river as the
first discoverers of it; and it does not require an attendance
of a whole half century on courts of justice to learn, that
where interest, or wish, or not less ill than good-will, or
even only the vanity of narrating, to show we know some-
thing not known to others, or the absence of heed, or any
other of the varieties of human frailty, there how sparing
of belief
To a point now known as Sandy or Monemy Point, a
point on the hither shore of the peninsula of Cape Cod,
they gave the name of Cape Mallebarre. The Dutch called
it Ongelukige Haven, Unlucky Harbor, probably intended
as a translation of the Spanish name. The name Malle-
barre had ceased to be known until the hearing before the
commissioners in 1798, to determine the River St. Croix,
intended in the treaty of peace which closed the war of the
Revolution, when L’Escarbot being read in proof, and he
mentioning it, the knowledge of it was revived, and it has
since found its place on the charts of the coast of Massa-
chusetts.
It will he recollected, that we have spoken of the voyage
of Sieur des Monts in an attempt to plant a colony, of his
landing on the island of St. Croix, and the loss of a number
of his followers by death during the winter: the history of
the survivors is briefly related in the following extract from
L’Escarbot, and to which we have alluded. “ The season
being passed, the Sieur Des Monts, tired of his sorrowful
abode at St. Croix, determined to search for another port
in a country more warm and more to the south; and hav-
ing seen the coast of Mallebarre, and with much labor,
and not finding what he desired, he determined to go toBENSON'S MEMOIR.
91
Port Royal, to make his stay there, and wait until he should
have the means to4nake a more ample discovery.” The
French permitted to come as far as Mallebarre,* and then,
instead of landing to abide there, or pursuing their voyage
farther, they are to discern it as more eligible to return
to Port Royal. What a Providence! Continuing their
course westward a few leagues farther, would have dis-
covered to them the Bay of Nassau of the Dutch, with
the Garden Island, the Aquiday of the Indians, the Rhode
Island of the English, in its bosom, its western coast
the country of the Narragansetts, the Land of Pasturage,
the Land of Milk. What might not have been now the
condition of these our happy regions, “if we knew it,”
had they been peopled by French instead of English col-
onists! Our free forms of government; next to the reve-
lation of himself, the best gift from the Deity to man
during his stay here ! When the present Constitution! was
vouchsafed us, the Representatives of the nation, pecu-
liarly so denominated, in their Address, to the Most be-
loved Citizen. What an appellation ! With what hearts
bestowed! in answer to his speech to the Congress, at the
opening of the session, avowed “the responsibility on us for
the destiny of Republican Liberty.” We selected and re-
served on whom the ultimate hope for Man, whether capa-
ble of a free government, a government elective through-
out, a self-government, a government, the administrations
of it, for their rectitude, and otherwise for their wisdom,
depending on his own volitions, his own prudence, the lat-
ter taken as implying “the constant presence of Deity with
us,” is to rest 1 Should we succeed to fulfil it, and would it
were not possible we should not, what of national reproach
must we not in the course of the probation, have escaped,
what of national exaltation shall we not have obtained!
DUTCH NAMES OF PLACES.
The Dutch called the Delaware the South, and the Hud-
son the North, river, from their relative situation to each
other. They appear also to have been known by two other
names, to be considered perhaps as their legal names, Prince
Maurits’s, and Prince Hendrick’s, rivers, after two Princes
of the House of Orange. The name of Maurits has since
become appropriated to a small river issuing into Delaware
Bay on the eastern side. They used the word Kill in two
* See Note V. •
t See Note VI.92
benson’s memoir.
senses; in one, as the same with the English word Creek9
an arm of the sea or of a river ; the other as importing a
Stream. Mespat Kill, originally Indian, but retained in
use by the Dutch, Newtown creek ; Maouaas Kill, Mohock
river. The Schuylkill still retaining its Dutch name, the
translation hiding creek, perhaps more strictly sculking
creek; schuyl te houwden, when applied to debtor, the same
meaning with Latitat in the process. The Brandywine
river and banks retain their Dutch name. Boompties Hoeck,,
tree point, corrupted to Bombay Hook. Whore Kill and
Reedy Island, literal translations of their Dutch names.
The southern cape, Hinlopen, its Dutch name, a common
surname; a Francis Hinlopen laid the first stone of a pub-
lic weigh-house in Amsterdam, 1668. The northern cape
May, Mey, also known as Cape Cornelius, named after
Skipper Cornelius Jacobse Mey. The first inlet without
the cape on the New Jersey shore, the Beere Gat, the Bear
Gut. The word Gat, when used in a nautical sense, the
corresponding word in Dutch with Gut in English when
used in the same sense. The channel between the buoys
leading into the Texel,is called the Gat. The passage be-
tween the island of Goeree and the Main on their coast
the Gat of Goeree. The English speak of the Gut of Gib-
raltar, the Gut of Canso ; and every inlet from the sea*
through the beach into the bay on the southern shore of
Long Island, is spoken of as a Gut. Van Der Donck ex-
presses himself, “ besides fine bays and rivers, there are also
convenient Gaten to those who are acquainted with them,but
at present not navigated, especially the Beere Gat.” Great
and little Egg Harbors, translations of their Dutch names.
Barne Gat retaining its Dutch name, an abbreviation of
Brandende Gat, the Breaker Gut. The Dutch lexicogra-
phers have interpreted Brandende, when importing a break-
ing of the sea, into Latin, by fervor maids ; but Brandende
also importing burning, and Gat Hole, we find the inlet laid
down in the English chart heretofore referred to, by the
name of burning hole. Sandy Hook; the Dutch generally call-
ed it the Sandt Ptjnt, and it is also mentioned as the Sandt
Hoeck, and for some time called by the English Sandy Point.
The island under the Long Island shore, to be considered as
the northeastern chop of the entrance from the sea, Beeren
Island, Bear Island,but the soil being of the kind denominated
by us Beach, barren, hence corrupted to Barren Island. To
an island immediately westward of it they gave the name
of Conyn’s Island ; Coney Island ; Conyn, a Dutch surnamebenson’s memoir.
93
still remaining among us; from the name Coney, there are
already symptoms of the beginning of a tradition that it
once abounded in Rabbits. The Narrows they called the
Hoofden, their name for the forelands on the British coast,
literally head lands. The names of the towns in the vicinity,
Utretcht, Breuckelen, corrupted to Brookline, and Amers-
fort, changed to Flatlands, denote the district in the Father
Land, furnishing the first settlers. Gravesend settled, and
in Dutch time and under a Dutch grant, by some families
immediately from England—a Lady Deborah Moody, the
Dido, leading the colony. Flatbush; a corruption, and may
also serve as a translation, of its Dutch name, Vlachte-bos
—its primitive Dutch name, Midwout, Midwood—why- or
whence changed, does not appear. A conjecture is offered,
that Breuckelen and Amersfort were, from their proximity
to the waters, earliest settled, and a space intermediate
and about equidistant between them remained as Wout or
Bos, Wood, and denoted as the Midwout, and the Bos on
the Plain or Vlachte, the site of the present village of
Flatbush, as to be distinguished from Bos or Wood, on the
contiguous Geberghle, or Ridge, came to be designated as
the Vlachte-Bos. Rustdorp, the Dutch name for Jamaica,
say countrytown. Coe and his associates, in their applica-
tion, 1(556, to Stuyvesant, for the lands there, represent
themselves as “ living at a new plantation, near the Beaver
path, called Jemaico”—hence the subsequent Jamaica. We
find the Dutch Vlissengen, in the English Flushing; and
the Armen Bouerey, the Farm, purchased by the Deaconry
of New York for the use of the Poor, in an intended trans-
lation of it, the Poor Bowery. The Dutch called the Bay
bounded on the south by the ocean, on the east by Long
Island, on the north partly by the mouth of the Hudson and
partly by the shore of New Jersey, and on the west wholly
by the shore of New Jersey, and Staten Island considered
as lying within it, The Great Bay of New Netherland, and
so called, as Van Der Donck expresses it, “propter Excel-
lentiam,” eminently the Bay. Newark Bay, from its rela-
tive situation to the Great Bay, they called Het achter Cul,
literally the Back Bay; Cul, borrowed from the French Cul
de sac, and also in use with the Dutch to signify a bay.
Achter Cul, found in very early writi ngs, in English referring
toit, corrupted to Arthur CuVs Bay: the passage from it into
the Great Bay they called Het Kill van het Cull, the Kill
of the Cul, finally come to be expressed by the Kills. A
reef in the Bay, not far from the mouth of the Kills, Robyns94
benson’s memoir.
rift, seal reef; the seal heretofore frequent!^ taken in the
Bay, and Robyn, a name with the Dutch for it. The name
of the reef corrupted to Robbins Reef. The Strait between
the Bay and the Sound, the latter also occasionally distin-
guished by them as the Great Bay, they denoted from its
relative situation to the other two rivers, as the East river ;
the island at the entrance of it they called Nooten Island,
corrupted to Nut Island, corrupted to Nutten Island, the
name by which it was known till within the last fifty years,
when it began at times to be spoken of, or referred to, as
the Governor s Island, it having, from the beginning, been
reserved for the use of the Governor, and hence its present
name exclusively, Governor's Island. Long Island retains
its Dutch name translated ; and a legal name was assigned
to it by an act of Assembly, 1G93, the Island of Nassau.
Staaten Island retains its name with a slight variance in
the spelling, Staten Island; an island of the same name on
the coast of the district of Maine.
Among the first who came over, not improbable the very
first as husbandmen, were some families of Walloons. A
child born in 1625, named Sarah, the parents, Walloons, of
the name of D’Rapalje. The blessing of the relations of
Rebecca seems to have rested on her; the mother of thou-
sands, at least, in succession from her, in King’s county.
A tradition in the family that she was the first white bom
here, and that, induced by the circumstance, the Indians
gave to D’Rapalje and his brethren, like the other French
who followed them in the same century, forsaking their
country not to forsake the truth, the lands adjacent to the
bay, hence named Het Waale Boght, the Walloon Bay, cor-
rupted to the Wallabout Bay. Besides D’Rapalje, the names
of Le Escuyer, Duryee, La Sillier, Cershou, Conseiller, Mus^-
serol, and others, still to be found there, or in the vicinity.
Extract from the Journal of the Dutch Council, 1656:—
“ Sarah Jorison, the first born Christian daughter in New
Netherland, widow of Hans Hansen, burdened with seven
children, petitions for a grant of a piece of meadow, in
addition to the twenty morgen granted to her at the Waale
Boght.” The settlement also denoted, at times, as Mark-
vvyck, Market-wyck, and the adjacent Tract, then still a
wood, as Boswyck, tolerably translated by Bushwyck. The
Dutch Wyck is still to be traced in the English Greenwich,
Ipswich; when applied to a city, the Dutch used it as a
substitute for the English Ward.
To digress for a moment—benson’s memoir.
95
Winter wheat to be taken in payment at five shillings,
and summer wheat at four shillings and sixpence, per
bushel—1675.
Wampum—six white to pass for a stuiver, or penny, and
three black at the same rate—1672.
Bond for 1600 guilders in Wampum—1672.
Mexico plate to pass at the rate of six shillings, and Peru
at the rate of jive shillings, per eighteen penny-weight—
1675.
£110 in pieces of eight at six shillings, New England
money, each, the consideration for a lot—1668,
A grant for a tobacco plantation at the Waale Boght—
1643.
20 Guilders in Wampum equal only to 10 Guilders in
Holland money.
A ship arrived in Holland from New Netherland, laden
with tobacco and some peltry—1661.
A conveyance for a farm at Mespat Kill, with the habi-
tation and the tobacco house—1665.
750 guilders in tobacco, the consideration in a conveyance
for a lot; 932 pounds weight of tobacco raised on a farm ;
and an action for 400 pounds weight of tobacco and 2 Stui-
vers—1667.
2100 pounds weight of tobacco, the consideration for half
of a farm on the Delaware ; and a mortgage of half a crop
of tobacco on the ground; and, at the same period, more
acres of peas than of wheat returned in the inventories of
estates of* persons deceased, and hence the apparently high
price of grain ; Madeira wine one shilling and ten pence a
quart, and rum two shillings and four pence a gallon—
1675.
Total of the assessed value of estates in the city, 1668,
£78,231, and a tax of a penny half-penny in a pound to be
levied on it; the total of the value, 1815, $81,636,512.
To return to our subject—
The name of the point opposite to the Waale Boght, one
of the chops of our harbor, Curler’s Hook, and still retain-
ing it, and so called after Arent Van Curler, the same
already mentioned as the predecessor of Schuyler in influ-
ence and honor with the Five Nations. He purchased the
farm or plantation there in 1652, and as denoted by its In-
dian name, Nechtank, and afterwards removed to Albany,
and was drowned in Lake Champlain, and hence the Dutch
thereafter called it Curler’s Lake. “ It is in honor of this
man, who was a favorite of the Indians,” says our histo-96
benson’s memoir.
rian,66 that the governors of New York, in all their treaties,
were addressed by the name of Curler]' or, as generally
spelt, Corlear. His widow took out administration of his
estate by her name before marriage, Juffrouw, Madam,
Antonio Slaghboom, always the privilege* of the Dutch
wife to resume it at pleasure, to show her descent. Pride !
vanity ! granted, Sir 46 valor and contemplation,” and—what
then 1
A point, in the narrow part of the lake, they called the
Kruine Punt, corrupted to, and which may also pass for a
translation of it, Crown Point; the word crown understood
as intending the crown of the head; more properly how-
ever, Scalp, or Scalping Point The historian speaks of it
“ as the place whence the French sent out their scalping
parties. The French called it Fort Frederick. To Ticon-
deroga, the Indian Meeting of Waters, they gave a name
apparently singular, Carillon, a chime of bells. To Lake
George, a name importing, the Lake of the Holy Sacrament.
The Dutch name for a small bay or cove, on the East
river, about two miles above Curler’s Hook, Deutel Bay,
corrupted to Turtle Bay. When the head of the cask was
further secured with pegs, they would say the cask was
gedeutelt ; the pegs were short, but at the base broad ;
the bay narrow at its entrance, broad at the bottom ; the
supposed resemblance between the bay and the peg, the
supposed origin of the name. The Point, about the same
distance farther, they called Hoorn’s Hoeck, Horn's Point;
there is a point in the Thames of the same name, but pro-
nounced there in plainer English, “ the word unpleasing to
the married ear.”
THE ISLANDS IN THE RIVER.
The Dutch name of the first, Varken, Hog Island, its le-
gal English name Manning's Island, so called after the pro-
prietor of it once, the unfortunate Captain John Manning,
“whose sword was afterwards broken over his head in
public, before the City Hall, for treacherously delivering up
the garrison to the Dutch, 28th July, 1673.” The next two
islands, Groote, and Kleyne, Barent’s Islands, corrupted to
Great and Little Barn Islands. Barent, a Dutch Christian
name. Barent Janse, overseer of the island under the West
India Company. Little Barens' Island, granted to Delaval,
1669; a piece of meadow released to him on the north
side of Barents Isle ; a piece released to him on the south
* See Note VII.benson’s memoir.
97
side of little Barents Island. The tract between Harlem river
and the large stream next eastward, Bronck’s Land. Jonas
Bronck, the first proprietor of it:—the passage between it
and Little Barn Island, called Bronck’s river, and the stream
also, as the lands on its banks became settled, afterwards
denoted by, and still retaining, the same name. The Dutch
name for Westchester, Oostdorp, Eastern, and a district
adjacent to it, not now to be defined. Vreedlandt, Peace
Land. The islands, the Gesellen, their Dutch name trans-
lated, the Brothers. The passage between Long Island and
Great Barn Island, the Dutch called Het Helle Gat, cor-
rupted to Hell-Gate, and finally to Hurl-Gate.	I have
shown what Gat imports in Dutch, when used as in the
present instance, so that Hellegat may be interpreted either
Hellgut, or the Gu	e Laet, in his Latin work,
since, about to be established from Hoorn’s Hoeck to Long
Island, and a dock being necessary for a landing or stairs,
the persons employed to build it, having finished it, a duty
of humanity still remained, the traveller was to he directed in
the right way ; they accordingly put up a hand or guide
board, where the road turns off from the main road, with
the direction coarsely painted on it, no matter how coarsely,
it was plain enough for all to read it, u The road to Hurlgate
Ferry,” and this the origin of the name Hurlgate. That
they should be offended at the first syllable in the name
jETeZZgate, may perhaps be accounted for: they may have
considered the use of it, unless in open reprehension of
themselves, or in rebuke of others, as naughty, having been
so trained in their youth ; or they may have been apprehen-
sive, that being too familiar with the name, might tend to
render the place too familiar, and so take off from the dread
of it; but why they should adopt hurl as the substitute,
cannot be conceived, inasmuch as a gate, so far from hurl-
ing or hurrying us through, may, at times, perform to us
one of the best offices of a friend, to stay or check us in our
career of more haste than good speed. Perhaps the dock-
builders never thought so far ; and I am fearful, that how-
ever inclined we may be to find a motive for them, we shall,
after all, be obliged to say, that when they undertook to
amend the name, they went beyond their dock. But the per-
sons most to blame are the editors of our public papers.
It will be acknowledged they have it in their power to give
currency, limit it for the moment to names; it ought, how-
ever, to occur to them, that all power implies trust for the
has it Inferi os.
was, within a few years98
benson’s memoir.
due exercise of it, and they speak as familiarly of going,
and coming, through Hurlgate, as they do of going out of,
and coming into, Sandy Hook. I pray, however, I may not
be considered as taking it upon me to be their censor—far
different from it; for notwithstanding the carpings of some,
who love to be ever finding fault, that, not unfrequently,
their facts are not the fact, their reasonings not logic, their
praise sickening, their dispraise, as to the manner of it, the
reverse of good manners, their wit, omitting to remember
“ that mediocrity in wit was never permitted in any,” their
best excuse ; and notwithstanding the sneers of others, that
at times they are so sententious, so sagacious, so profound, as
to be wonderful, I say, and say it with sincerity, may they
flourish; without newspapers numerous and free, we are without
Liberty; the growth even of weeds indicates soil and season ;
I, however, prefer another illustration more courteous and not
less apt—the richest harvest must have its straws to sustain
it. The English Hellgate has been so long peaceably in pos-
session, I am content it should remain so. I have no desire
to go back either to Dutch language or Dutch law ; not to
the one because not better than the English, nor to the
other because not so good. The Dutch took the civil law of
Rome; there they erred; they should have taken the common
law of England—the trial by jury!—How the law ? to be
declared by the judge, hence ever to be a man of the law.
How the fact ? to be found by the unanimous verdict of a
jury to be taken from the Laity of the place at large, to be
kept together in private until agreed; and, in the discretion
of the judge, in the meantime to permit sustenance to be
furnished them. How the inquiry ? in open court before
the judge, by the oral testimony of the witnesses, the jury
to notice their demeanor and appearance, and, if requisite,
they to be confronted. How the evidence? under the con-
trol of the judge as incident. How if the judge err ? an
exception to be taken to his opinion, and the error exam-
ined elsewhere. How if the jury mistake in their verdict ?
in the sound discretion of the judge to set it aside, and
award a new trial. How if a juror happen to be returned
not standing indifferent between the parties ? to be chal-
lenged, and the challenge to be instantly tried by triers, to
be elected by the judge, and, where life in jeopardy, the
accused privileged to challenge a due number peremptorily
and no cause of challenge required—all this of human con-
trivance !
“ In the year one thousand six hundred and fourteen,”benson’s memoir.
99
says De Laet, “ the ship of Skipper Adrian Block took fire
by accident, and he built here a Yacht of thirty-eight feet
keel, forty-four feet and a half on deck, and eleven feet and
a half beam, with which he sailed through the Hellegat
into the Great Bay, and visited all the places thereabout,
and went in it as far as Cape Codand I shall intend him
to have been the first who passed through the Gat, and that,
wherever they were given, he gave the Dutch names to
the places he visited.
If he went through at about two-thirds flood, and either
at the full or change, it must have appeared most terrific
to him, and the name, the exclamation, might have escaped
him. Still I think he is not wholly to be pardoned. As a
Dutchman, it is to be presumed, he was very early in-
structed in his catechism, and if he had attended to the
proofs in the margin under the proper Sunday Section, he
would have seen it was more to be likened to the way lead-
ing to the good place, narrow, scarcely admitting two
abreast, the Hog’s back and the Pot, the rock on the one
hand, and the whirlpool on the other, mind your helm, keep
in the true tide, his incessant caution to his Stierma#,
whereas the way leading to the other place, the bad place,
is laid d(*wn as being broadj as many at a time as choose,
and you have nothing to do but to down sail or lay upon
your oars, as the case may be, and leave yourself to the
current, and drive through.
The Sunday Section; the name by which sections are
distinguished in the Dutch Original; the name by which
the day was known to the first converts from among the
Gentiles, taught by the Apostles, they taught by the Divine
TEACHER himself, and the use of it continued by them
after their conversion, and from them to those who claimed,
and rightfully, to be their followers, the reformers, includ-
ing the Reverend Fathers, the Synod of Dort, all distinctly
understanding the terms or names they used, and hence dis-
tinctly understanding themselves—Satisfied the seventh, the
required, portion of time, a diurnal revolution of the sun,
was set apart, and the observance of the hitherto day
ceasing, as alike typical with priesthood and altar, and so
alike spent; and the next day taken as the most obvious
course, there being no reason for preferring another, they
appear to have occupied themselves otherwise than in sur-
mising and inquiring, whether it would not tend to a more
devout observance of it, to substitute the name by which
it was known by the Apostles among themselves, they be-100
benson’s memoir.
ing Jews, the first day; or the name by which it is men-
tioned by an Apostle, referring to an occasion rendering it,
in an eminent sense, the day of the Lord, “ when his great
voice was heard as of a trumpet, I am the first and the
last,” and the text accordingly to be viewed as preserved
to us to intimate doctrine, not formally to prescribe name ;
or the Jewish name for the last day of the week, the Sab-
bath, their day of rest from work from sunset to sunset. In
England they have schools on the day for the gratuitous
instruction of the poor; we have them now likewise;
there, having the merit to have led, they are called Sunday
Schools; with us, having the merit only, for although merit
still no more than secondary, to have followed, they are in
some places to be called Sabbath Schools. To impart sanc-
tity by force of a name! A singular conception! The more
singular, the intelligence of many, in whom apparently
found, considered. But if noticed as in some, in respect to
a day, must I not, if to stand equal with all, notice it as in
others in respect to a Building. The Church of the most
holy Trinitv—Christ Church—the Church of the Holy
Spirit—Saint George’s Church. By what Name did the
Apostles denote the Building, the place where they came
together to join in worship 1 The Temple, with it$ services,
had by the advent of the prototype, the Divine Intercessor
in Person, in the flesh, ceased. The Synagogue, however
remained, and, deducing from the volume of Scripture as
the authority, the preferable presumption, (I choose to ex-
press myself with diffidence,) would seem to be, that they
continued it, with its mode of rule, and of Oversight, or
charge, by an Eldership; and hence with its Name. Two
passages will be cited, and the last perhaps to be received
as decisive. “ Not forsaking the assembling ourselves to-
gether”—in the original,“ synagogueing.” “If there come
into your assembly a man”—in the original “ synagogue.”
The Puritans, doubtless, adopted the preferable translation,
or name, a Meeting House.
Another instance of the not improbable effect of mere
Name. The Dutch, in their version of the Scriptures, at
the Reformation, in translating the Greek Episcopos, rejected
the exotic Bischoff, and betook themselves to the indigenous
Opsiender; in the compound, preposition for preposition,
and verb for verb. The great Reformer did not in his Ver-
sion, take the kindred German indigenous Aufscher, Over-
seer, but adhered to the exotic Bischoff. He, however, was
consistent; for when he came to the passage, where thebenson’s memoik.
101
Greek Episcopous occurs, he translated it by the plural
Bischoffen, thereby making the whole College of Ephesian
Elders Bishops. Had the English been uniform in their
Version, and translated the Greek Episcopos throughout,
as they have done in the passage alluded to, by their alike
correspondent indigenous Overseer, there would perhaps
have been the like effect as with the Dutch, not even a
term, or name, in their language left for Episcopacy.
Before quitting the subject, chiefly occupying the last
four paragraphs, I would mention the fact, not only as au-
thority for the early, and doubtless universal, use of the
name Sunday, but also for another purpose, which will be
perceived without farther intimation; that it is the name
by which the Emperor Constantine denotes the day, in his
Edict, enjoining the religious observance of it. The first
instance of the interposition or agency of the secular sove-
reignty in aid of the kingdom of Christ. It is a maxim ;
and to repeat it in the Diction of the highly endowed Gen-
tile from whom I borrow it, “ Omnia mala exempla ex bonis
6rta sunt.” Not unfrequently vouched by Christian Doc~
tors ; but as it checks project and innovation, less frequently
heeded by them. It may be translated, “ that scarcely an
evil example or effect, not to be traced to good or sincere
beginning,” The names of the evil effects of the pious zeal
of the imperial convert, Hierarchy, or religious establish-
ment ; and the thing signified, found even at the present
day, throughout the whole of European Christendom.
I pray it may be noticed that I am still within my subject,
Names ; so that if all true, then all right.
Skipper Block named the Norwalk Islands, Archipelago *f
Stratford, or the Indian Housatenick, River, Royenbergh’s
River ; an Island in the Sound, Vaechen, Falcon or Hawk,
Island, not improbable from the resort of the Fish Hawk
there, corrupted by some to Fawkner s, by others, to Falk-
land, Island. The Connecticut he named the Versche, Fresh,
River, doubtless as to be distinguished from the south and
north rivers, in sooner meeting with fresh water on enter-
ing it from the sea.
The Dutch built a Fort on the Flat, the western bank of
it, now the city of Hartford, for the protection of their
trade with the Indians, and called the Fort, at times, the
Huys, the trading house, van goede hope, of good hope. Jo-
hannes De La Montagne, of the council of New Nether-
land, and Doctor of Medicine, was the Governor; Trum-
bull, the historiographer of Connecticut, calls him Monsieur102
benson's memoir*
Montague; the surname Montague, appertaining to an an-
cient and noble family in England ; he says, the Dutch
called the Fort the Hirse of Good Hope; if the word was
ever in their language, it has since become obsolete; he
also says, “ the Indians had no set meals, but, like other
wild creatures, ate when they were hungry, and could find
any thing to satisfy the cravings of nature, and dressed
their corn with a clam-shell, or with a stick made flat and
sharp at one end, and that the Dutch* were always intru-
ders, and had no right to any part of this country.” The
rule of the good nature of criticism is, “ that where much
splendor in the pages, not to suffer ourselves to be offended
at a few specks ; and it is to be hoped, the historian would
have* forborne from so angrily calling names, had he known
of the very friendly mention his brother of New Nether-
land makes of his countrymen. The indiscretion of at-
tempting the history of this country, not well read in the
Dutch ! Van Der Donck, speaking of the Pumpkin, expresses
himself, “ It grows here with little or no labor, and need
not yield to the apple for sweetness, so that the English,
who generally love whatever tastes sweet*, use it in their
Pies.”
I knew one of the same name with the Governor; John
De La Montagne, ordinarily pronounced Jan Montagne,
sexton of the old Dutch Church in Garden-street, “ the
street adjoining the garden of Alderman Johannes Kip,”
built in 1692; the grant for the ground from the Corpora-
tion of the city the preceding year, and “the Common
Council resolving itself into a grand committee to attend
to the surveying and laying it out;” taken down in 1810,
and the present one built on the same site. I saw him at
the house of my parents ; I, in my earliest youth ; he ap-
proaching to fourscore. He was on his round to collect
the Dominie’s Gelt, the minister's salary; for the Dutch al-
ways took care the stipend to the minister should be com-
petent, that so he never might be straitened “ to desire a
gift.” He told me his father and grandfather before him,
the latter probably the same as mentioned in the Records,
1649, “Jan da la Montagne, schoolmaster, with 250 guild-
ers salary,” had been the sexton of the congregation, so that,
as I have it from the relation of others, the successive in-
cumbents having been as well of the same Christian as
surname, the name had as it were become the name of the
* See Note VIII.bensok’s memoir.
103
office, like Den Keyser, the Ccesar, the Emperor, and ac-
cordingly when the English, having built a church, had
also a sexton, the Dutch children, and not impossible some
adults, called him de Engelshe Jan Montagne, the English
John Montague. He told me his grandfather was the sex-
ton when the church was within the fort, and which, from
the inscription in Dutch, on a marble, doubtless placed in
front of it, found buried in the earth, and then removed to
the belfry of the church in Garden-street, when the fort
was taken down, a few years since, appears to have been
built as early as 1642. The site of the first church, the
late church in Garden-street, considered as the third in suc-
cession, perhaps not to be now farther ascertained than as
a piece of ground referred to in 1699, “ as belonging to the
Dutch congregation” and in 1715, “ as once called the Oude
Kerck, old Church, and afterwards the house of Allard
Anthony, and lying between Custom-house-street” the por-
tion of Pearl-street between White-hall and Broad-street,
“ and Bridge-street, and fronting on Broad-street.” He
further told me that when, on the surrender of the town to
the English, they took the church for a part of the day, his
grandfather still officiated. An instance of singular libe-
rality ! He, a son of the church of Holland, “ still keeping
the door of the temple,” when the service within it accord-
ing to the ritual of the church of England! Perhaps he
thought, there being no difference between the confession-
als of the two churches, the ritual ought to make none;
nay, were it supposed, merely however for the sake of the
supposition, because, as applied to him personally, not to
be imagined possible, that both confessional and ritual
were to him matters of indifference ; still it may be a ques-
tion, whether his liberality would not be left the same ? it
being now ascertained, what has been long suspected, that
boasted liberality, in matters of religion, and utter indiffer-
ence about them, the one easily made to resolve itself into
the other.
On the death of my cotemporary, the consistory gave the
office to his son, who enjoyed it till the dispersion of the
congregation, on the invasion of the city in 1776 ;—an of-
fice—that it was in the church, sufficient, according to the
notion of the day, to make it respectable ; that the emolu-
ment, sparing as it was, came sensibly in aid to the sus-
tentation of the family, sufficient to make it lucrative ; both
sufficient to make it desirable, and consequently to invite
competition ; in the gift, and held at the pleasure, of a body,104
Benson’s memoir.
themselves fluctuating, one half going out yearly by rota-
tion; and we here see it passing, as an inheritance from
father to son, for four generations, and for a period, little
short, if any thing, of a century and a half. What an in-
ducement to the father to due demeanor in it, “ the hope of
the recompense,” that after him it would be bestowed on
his son ! What encouragement to the son, the hope of the
gift, to render himself deserving of it! What proof of char-
acter in those who have gone before us !# How stable !
how constant! “ how changed are we from them !” Scarce
an election, and a change, not at least meditated; and,
should we continue thus, variable and mutable,” it is to
be apprehended the time may come, when our beautiful
and spacious City Hall of marble, including the piers be-
tween the windows in the snug cupola of wood on the top
of it; nay, taking in the old Bridewell, left to stand as a
wing to it; further still, expand it, so as to cover the neat
grassplot in front of it, if it were not a pity to spoil it,f and
especially enclosed as it is with pales of a due height, like
the dense iron work in front of St. Paul’s, to hide the base
of the building, the whole will not furnish wall for the por-
traits of all and singular our successive governors and
n^ayors.
In addition to the probability from the circumstance just
mentioned, that the name of the person was conceived to
be the name of the office, my cotemporary having called
his eldest son John, I infer, it was also his father’s name,
and it being his own name, I in like manner infer it was
the name of his grandfather; so that the family appears to
have been, from as far back as we can trace it, constantly
and duly mindful of the duty of respect, and, as it would
seem, in the opinion of some, a respect allied to piety, in a
son to call his son after his own father. Lest, however, I
should be conceived as laying down this duty as of uni-
versal obligation, it has appeared to me proper to state a
few cases, and from which it may easily be reasoned to
others, where I think it may be dispensed with.
A father and a son—the son the first of the family ever
rich ; his coach at the door, and his plate on the sideboard,
and, as a thing of course, arms on both. His riches; en-
titled “ to call them his own, he made them himself;” his
coach and his plate, no one entitled to grudge him them ;
but the arms, the borrowed plume, always more than half
* See Note IX,
i See Note X.benson’s memoir.
105
spoils all; even granting the family deduced from the croi-
sades, and, with it, its gentility never interrupted, not an
instance of servile occupation in the whole line of descent,
and so the plumage not assumed, still, in a community with
our institutions—a feather. The father, a mechanic of the
humblest order, a son of St. Crispin, alike ready to serve a
customer, whether to mend or make, and so never above
his business, and so all sense; in morals all worth, and so, if
I may be permitted in a play on the word, and in an allu-
sion to his vocation, “no rest or residue of him leather”
Here an exemption arises by mere force of elevation of
condition; it has been given to the son to become rich; the
father is left poor.
A name, abstracted from the sole and simple use of it,
the surname to distinguish between families, the Christian
name between individuals of the same family or of the
same surname, “ is a sound, and no moreyet as the
sound may happen to be, so it may be decisive against
taking it as a name; and which furnishes another case of
exemption.
To illustrate by the case already stated. Let us suppose
the son disposed to honor his father, and to that end to
waive his exemption; but at the same time let the name of
the father, instead of Eugenio, or any other name of that
stamp* be supposed to be some old-fashion, or, which comes
to the same thing, some CHd-Testament, name; take one of
the lesser prophets, say Habakkuk, the name given to the fa-
ther, by his father, in his day somewhat inclined to Puritan-
ism ; now the trying question presents itself; can a father
ever be held to call a son after a grandfather with such a
name ? I answer this question by asking another which an-
swers itself; can a lady be held to call a daughter Bridget,
after her mother, the name given to her by her mother,
great grandmother to Miss to be named, she having been
at the time a cook-maid?
Where the brothers are numerous, another case.
Here the exemption arises from the necessity of the
thing itself, as will be perceived.
So in the habit of calling the first name the Christian
name, I cannot forbear from it, even when referring to a
Jew-case for illustration.
If every of the sons of the Patriarch had called a son
after their common father, a moiety of the Hebrew alpha-
bet must have been impressed into the service to distin-
SECOND SERIES, VOL. II.	8106
benson’s memoir.
guish between the twelve grandsons of the same Christian
name; and if the sons of these grandsons had also each
called a son after his father, and the like repeated toties
quoties as often as an every other generation came into esse,
into existence, it would require the powers of a Franklin
to calculate the number of Jacobs among the tribes at the
time of David’s census.
I have selected Franklin as the calculator for a reason
arising from the following fact.*
By his last will and testament, made in the year of our
Lord one thousand seven hundred eighty-eight, and in the
eighty-second of his own age, or rather by a codicil thereto,
showing it was on the more mature deliberation, and that
he was still not “ without counsel” in himself, and now ap-
pearing in the same volume with his life, written by him-
self, doubtless for the benefit of those who were to come
after him, he bequeaths to his country “ a political opinion,
that in a democratical state there ought to be no offices of
profit,” than which certainly nothing can be conceived more
salutary in theory, but, considering the weakness of our
frame, nothing perhaps less to be hoped for in practice.
He then, as it were to set the example in himself, proceeds
to give to the town of Boston, in return for having given
him birth, “ one thousand pounds sterling, part of an un-
drawn salary, as President of the State of Pennsylvania,
to be let upon interest, at five per cent, per annum, to such
young married artificers, under the age of twenty-five
years, as shall have served an apprenticeship in the town,
and faithfully fulfilled the duties required in their inden-
tures, so as to obtain a good moral character from at least
two respectable citizens, who are willing to become sure-
ties in the bond with the applicants for the repayment of
the money so lent, with interestbut it occurring to him,-
at least so it is to be presumed, that an apprentice serving
his apprenticeship thoroughly, faithfully ; studious and anx-
ious for his master’s interest as if his own ; his master not
wholly free from Debt, himself not wholly at Ease; would
probably come to think it the better course for persons entering
into life, instead of instantly betaking themselves to borrow-
ing for means in aid of their business, to wait for them till
acquired by their own efforts ; and it thence occurring to
him further, that the description in the bequest duly ad-
hered to, and at the same time depending on the town of
* See Note XI.benson’s memoir.
107
Boston alone, there would be a hazard of a failure of a
sufficiency of borrowers to employ the whole capital, and
with it a failure of his own calculation of the actual in-
crease of it, he had the precaution to provide, “ that should
there in time be more than the occasion in Boston may re-
quire, the other towns in the State to have it; and the prin-
cipal and interest paid, to be again let out to fresh borrow-
ers, and which he calculated would, in one hundred years,
be one hundred and thirty thousand pounds, of which the
town were, in their discretion, to lay out one hundred thou-
sand pounds in public works, the remaining thirty-one
thousand pounds to be continued to be laid out at interest
in the manner above directed, for one hundred years, when
he calculated the sum would be four millions and sixty-one
thousand pounds sterling; one million and sixty-one thou-
sand pounds to be disposed of by the town, and the remain-
ing three millions by the government of the State, not pre-
suming to carry his views farther,”—and no wonder^—to
have gone on with the accumulation for another cycle of
two hundred years, and all intermediate contingencies duly
guarded against, would certainly have been a most unrea-
sonable draft on human providency. It may be a question,
Whether a testamentary disposition of this kind would not
new with us be adjudged void, as within the prohibition
intended by our statute, generally known as the restrain-
ing act* making it unlawful for persons, without an incor-
poration, to the effect of a license, from the legislature, to
lend monies, the sum generally not large, so as to keep
themselves always in condition to accommodate others; the
lenders furnishing the borrowers with their own notes as
the currency, in the place of coin; a promissory note with
an endorser the security ; a day of payment expressed, and
in no instance exceeding ninety days, yet the note under-
stood to be renewed from time to time, the interest accrued
to be paid at each renewal, and the principal not to be
called for unless on a previous convenient notice; and to
receive monies as deposited for safe keeping; or in fewer
words, simply to follow the business of banking, as under-
stood among us; the good to arise to the public, to prevent
an undue multiplication of banks,, and a further benefit,
since discovered, a relief, as far as it goes, from the burden
of taxes, payment into the treasury of a sum, the price of
the license.
♦ See Note XII,108
benson’s memoir.
I might here enlarge on several particulars. I will, how-
ever only, and briefly, mention a few of them.
Calling a child after a friend not yet deceased—the in-
convenience, as it sometimes happens the best friends part
before death parts them.
To show our zeal for the party, calling a son after a dis-
tinguished leader in it; a similarinconvenience, should the
father or godfather find it more convenient to change his
party; in either case, the name always a thing in the way.
“ Following great names,” in naming a son—the greater
the name, the more sad, should he prove “ the heaviness of
his mother .” The man of wisdom has selected the mother
as the depository of the pride, and so, in great measure, of
the principle, wholly of the sensibility, of the family.
Double, treble, quadruple names, and so on, for I find no
limit prescribed by fashion, law laid out of the question, as
“ of no avail if unfashionable to observe it,” to the number
of names ; it must doubtless be still understood, they are
not to be more numerous than can conveniently be retained
in the recollection, nor too much time lost in repeating
them all; for if some are never to be repeated, but ever to
be left mute, then, for aught appearing, they might as well
have been left out at first; at the same time, where several
expecting the compliment, and we wishing always to please
all, and of course very careful never to offend any ; a dispo-
sition, if we find it in us, certainly to be cherished ; there,
to be safe against the disappointment, a failure of the re-
quisite successive christenings, to take a number of the
names at once, ought perhaps to be considered only as a
branch of that economy of opportunity usually intended by
killing two birds with one stone.
Making surnames do duty also as Christian names, and
enough of the latter on the ground, and, so far from asking
the relief, entitled to complain of being injured in rank or
precedence; and none being discernible for it, either as
founded in taste or utility, or in any thing else, it is to be
viewed as among the numberless instances of arbitrary
exercise of power, where “ the will is to suffice for the rea-
son ;” and it were to be wished that some, chargeable with
it, would make the case their own ; they know how they
have felt at times at seeing others raised to a level with them-
selves.
Naming counties, towns, villages, streets, forts, and so
forth, after the heroes and other worthies of our land, by
formal public authority, a sort of legislative monument*benson’s memoir.
109
which has this to recommend it to republican economy, that
it comes cheap, so that if on a just estimate of the name and
fame, at a future day, it should be found not to have been
worth preserving, there will be little, if any thing, to be re-
gretted as having been thrown away ; and the late fate of
the name of a street, and where the worth great and un-
questionable, shows it even at best precarious. The vestry
of Trinity church, however, need not want a name for their
venerable churchwarden, Colonel Joseph Robinson, and
Park Place, at the same time, left undisturbed; they have
only to petition the Common Council for leave to resume
their original name for Rector-Street, before laying out their
grounds on Broadway, Robinson-Street. A monument* to
come cheap ! as cheap as where the money for one of mar-
ble or bronze, whether furnished from the public treasury,
or contributed from the private purses of individuals, being
grudged as an improvident expenditure, is raised by way of
lottery, it costs nothing.	“There, my lord,” said the pious
and loyal Jebusite to his prince, * is the threshing floor to
build an altar, there the oxen for burnt sacrifice and the
threshing instruments for wood, and wheat for the meat
offering, take them to thee and offer, I give them all—
“Nay,” replied the man who slew a giant, "I will not take
for the Lord that which is thine; I will buy them of thee
at the full price ; I will not offer of that which doth cost me
nothing”
Let this suffice under this head of discourse, since the
whole may be considered as resolving itself into this as a
general conclusion, that inasmuch as in the most simple
preparation of one of the most simple articles of our food,
roasting an egg, it is true to a proverb, there is to be reason,
much more ought there to be reason in giving a name,
Now to attend again to Skipper Block, in his cruise of
discovery.
He called an island in the sound Visscher’s Island, Fish-
er's Island, and the eastern point of Long Island, Visscher’s
Hoeck, Fisher's Point, A map of New Netherland, scarcely
more than a tolerable diagram of it, but being as early as
1642, probably the first, was by a person of the name of
Visscher. Plum Islands, the name he gave them, translated.
Block Island, the skipper’s own name. I trust it did not
proceed from himself: it would give me regret he should
be found among those, “ who thinking their dwelling places
♦.See Note XIII.110
benson’s memoir.
are to continue to all generations, call their lands after their
own names'' The next island eastward, he called Martin
Wyngaard’s Island, MartinVineyard's Island, corrupted to
Martha!s Vineyard. An island in Penobscot Bay, and
Cape Ann, called by the same name, the latter Wyn-
gaard’s Hoeck, Vineyard's Point. The island in the sound
is,	in the grant from King Charles to the Duke of York,
and in the confirmations for it, and in those for the adjacent
islands, where referred to, called the island of Martin's
Vineyard. Whoever the person intended was, he must have
been distinguished for his station, or skill, or enterprise.
Stith, of Virginia, says that “'Gosnold, in the summer of
1602, among other places on the coast, visited Martha's
Vineyard, and finding plenty of strawberries, raspberries,
and divers other fruit, in bloom, he therefore called it Mar-
tha’s Vineyard.”* Had the historian himself visited the
island, he would have been satisfied fruitfulness could never
have suggested the name for it. We have already* noticed
specimens of this kind of etymological dialectic; the name
of the island Barren Island, the soil barren, hence the name;
Coney, the same with Rabbit, the name of the island Coney
Island ; it must have taken its name from the animal, and
hence once in numbers on it; because the island called
Vineyard, it abounded in fruit. It is only requested to bear
in mind for the present, Martler's Rock, and the Fly-Market.
A family in Albany, and from the earliest time, of the
name of Wyngaard. The last, in the male line, Lucas
Wyngaard, died about sixty years ago, never married, and
leaving estate—the invitation to his funeral very general—
those who attended returned after the interment, as was
the usage, to the house of the deceased at the close of the
one day, and a number never left it until the dawn of the
next. In the course of the night a pipe of wine, stored in
the cellar for some years before for the occasion, drank;
dozens of papers of tobacco consumed; grosses of pipes
broken; scarce a whole decanter or glass left; and, to crown
it,	the pall-bearers made a bonfire of their scarves on the
hearth—bordering on barbarism! not to be denied. We
are more temperate, wholly free from excess and riot—ad-
mitted. The causes of this improvement in manners ?—one
will be intimated. Let not the severe among us rail too
severely at the young lady's tea party, and the cotillion on
[* See Archer’s Account of Gosnold’s Voyage, re-printed from Purchas, IIL
Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 75.]benson’s memoir.
Ill
the carpet to her piano. We are improved in manners-
true, and so far to our credit; but is there more of order
among us, each one knowing his place 1 more of deference
to superiors: and superiors more regardful of station ? more
of love of country, and less of profession of it ? more of
courage, and less vaunt of it ? more of the spirit of freemen,
and so more of disdain of unworthy submission to the will
of another ? more solicitous for estimation, and so more so-
licitous to merit it ? more of truth, its modes, candor, sin-
cerity, fidelity? Inquire of the Nestors who have lived both
ages.
To the largest of the Elizabeth Islands, Block gave the
name of the Texel, to Nantucket, the name of Vlielandt.
Extract from the voyage of Hudson as found in De Laet.
* They made the land again in 41 deg. 43 minutes of north
latitude, and supposed it to be an island, and gave it the
name of Nieuwe Hollandt, New Holland, but afterwards
found it was Cape Cod .” The Dutch notwithstanding af-
terwards distinguished it as Staaten Hoeck, State’s Point;
and also by its French name, Cape Blanc, translated Witte
Hoeck, White Point.
The Dutch name for our city was Nieuwe Amsterdam ;
to the tract, the plantations on the North river for about
four miles, they gave the name of Bloemen’d Dal, syllable
for syllable, Blooming Dale. There were two other seats
on the island, probably not far distant from the town, and
distinguished as Dats Dales—Vreden-dal, Peace-dale, the
property of Dr. De La Montagne, and Zegen-dal, Blessing-
dale, the proprietor not mentioned; hence the conjecture
not remote, that Bloemen’d Dal, however at first the name
of an individual seat, soon served to denote the whole
neighborhood of farms there, collectively.
The creek, the water between the north end of the island
and the West-Chester shore, they called Spyt den Duyvel
Kill, literally, in spite of the Devil Creek; a ford there be-
fore Kingsbridge built, and the spot distinguished as the
Fonteyn, the Springs.
The northern chop of the entrance from the Bay into
the Kills, retains its Dutch name Konstabel’s Hoeck, Con-
stable’s Hook; its Indian, Nipnichsen. Communipa, is In-
dian; Paulus Hoeck, a person by the name of Paulus
Schrick, and of note in the colony, described in a very
early grant for lands in this city, as of the “Town of Bergen,
in New JerseyPavonia, a name given by the Dutch to
the ground, the front or shore of it on the river still passing112
benson’s memoir.
by its Indian name Ahasimus; it was reserved by the
Dutch West India Company as a peculiar demesne, the
purpose not known; Hoboken, a Dutch name, Harme Van
Hoboken, clerk of the church, 1650 ; Weehawk, is Indian;
Joncker’s Kill, Yonker’s Creek ; Joncker from Jonge Herr,
the young Lord, the appellation once for the heir of the
family after come to the age of maturity; none perhaps
nearer to it than Bachelor, and in instances, the person,
although afterwards married, continued to be known by it
during his life ; the historian himself, the grantee in a grant,
1648, by the name of Joncker Van Der Donck ; Balthazer
De Vosch, a party in a suit by the name of Joncker De
Yosch: the name of the Joncker, the proprietor of the
creek, now Saw Mill creek, Van Der Kee ; and it is still to
be collected from documents, as not being improbable, that
the lands granted to Van Der Donck, and perhaps includ-
ing the island of the Indian name of Papuriminon, the
northern shore at Kingsbridge, were the neighborhood call-
ed the lower Yonckers as to be distinguished from the other
Yonckers, the lands of Van Der Kee on the Saw-mill
Creek ; Tappaanse Zee, from the name of the tribe of In-
dians inhabiting the western shore; the country there, and to
some extent, denoted, in Visscher’s map as the colonie of a
person of the name of Nederhorst ; of not equal enterprise,
as has appeared, with Killian Van Rensselaer, “ a most
zealous promoter,” says Van Der Donck, “ and hearty
friend, of New Netherland, always to his death.” Pow-
nall, in a journal of a passage from Albany to New York,
in 1755, calls it Topang Sea, not unlike a Chinese name ;
the point or peninsula, the northern chop of the bay, or en-
trance into Croton river, the Skippers called Sarah’s Point;
the Indians gave it to William and Sarah Teller, husband
and wife, and she survived him; the promontory on the west-
ern shore, opposite to it, Verdreitige Hoeck, Tedious Point;
it occupies such a space on the shore, that in a calm or the
wind foul, long in passing it; Haverstroo, literally oat
straw, the name of the tract of arable land immediately
above it; its Indian name Kumochenack. Stony Point re-
tains its Dutch name translated; the British took possession
of it, and fortified it, in the war of the Revolution ; the as-
sault and capture of it by Wayne, an exploit, for gallantry
and success, in our offensive warfare on the land, remain-
ing to be equalled. The Donder Bergh, and on the east side
of the river the Kill of Jan Peek, retaining their Dutch
names; the promontory just above Peek’s Kill, presentingbenson’s memoir.	US
itself on turning the point of the DonderBergh, they called
Antonie’s Neus, corrupted to Saint Anthony’s Nose.
At the period when the opinion began to prevail that the
calendar ought to be revised and reformed, the Dutch
judged it preferable, at least for themselves, to make one
anew, and to take their own time for it; even the cases of
Saint Peter and Saint Paul, favored suitors as they are,
and unquestionably entitled to be, are still suffered to lay
over, and, to preserve the question entire, they are guarded
to this day to speak of them only as plain Peter and plain
Paul. In every instance where the court of claims have
proceeded to a definite sentence, they have uniformly dis-
missed the petition. Briefly to report a few cases as speci-
mens, the decision however only and the principle of it,
omitting, as not called for by the occasion, the arguments
of counsel.
Patrick of Kirkpatrick in Scotland—he emigrated to
Ireland ; the reason why not known, and the era not hav-
ing come down to us as one peculiarly of reform or revo-
lution in government, none can be imagined; that it was
with the hope a consistory could be found there to pass him
with less scrutiny, evidently a fling by the native at the
adopted country. If objected, that the word not allowed
in grave discourse, the answrer, that there is no synonyme
for it in the language, and no periphrasis without employ-
ing, at least, half a score of others, and then perhaps, as
not unusual, falling short of the exact sense.
Man, from !his very condition, can have only one native
country ; it can never be said of him, he was born in two
countries; if Patrick had expressed himself, he was an
Irishman born in Scotland, it would have been obviously a
blunder; but while this is admitted on the one hand, it
ought to be so on the other, that the objection to having an
adopted country, that if you may have one, you may have
more, and as many more, one after another, as may suit;
as many wedlocks as ports in a voyage in succession to
touch at, is as obviously futile.
The Dutch readily acknowledged the merit of ridding a
community of reptiles, and so far the petitioner had no reason
to complain that justice was not done him ; still there was
a reason, and it was sufficient, which must forever forbid
them from having a good-liking to him, they were republi-
cans, and his very name, Patrick, a direct derivative from
the Latin Patricius, signifying noble man or Aristocrat.
George of Cappadocia, the champion Saint of the English;114
BENSONS MEMOIR.
although the Dutch had never read Gibbon, nor, another
great historian who had just preceded him, and if they had,
it would not have escaped their sagacity that both were to
be watched when writing about the Saints ; they however
had the fact from another quarter, and it was sufficient,
that George expelled their favorite Athanasius from his
episcopal throne of Alexandria, and usurped it himself; for
although liberal in a toleration to strangers, for the sake of
trade, still, as among themselves, strenuous for the necessity
of a quicunque vultf in order, as they would express them-
selves, to know where to find a man; for be it known, that
to profess one way and believe another, was never known
among the Dutch.
Anthony of Egypt; the first monk, and hence to be sup-
posed foremost in the heresy of “ forbidding to marry
nothing ever to be called after him.
Nicholas of Patara, in Lysia. Here something like an
interlocutory was entered. From the legend, as preserved
by the learned Egnatius of Venice, it appeared he had se-
cretly put in at the window of a father, so “ distressed in
estate,” as to have become “afflicted in mind” to despera-
tion, a sum expressed to be “of no small weight in gold,”
and thereby saved him.from bartering his three daughters to
ruin; it was further offered in evidence, “ that he was de-
scended from rich parents,” to show how his heart had been
preserved to him “ in all the time of his wealth;” the fact
being well known, the counsel against the petition, to save
the necessity of proof, admitted it, and its pertinency to the
inquiry ; the cause was ordered to be retained for further
advisement, and in the meantime the petitioner to have
leave to take and use the name of Sanctus Klaas ; that he
be deemed so far tutelar, as that his anniversary, it being
referred to the proper officer of the court to ascertain it, be
kept; and that the children, in their little hymn of thanks,
for the good things, the reward for going to bed early, found
in the stocking, hung up in the corner on the eve of it, and
put in by him during the night as he rides in his waggon,
filled with them over the roofs of the houses, and down and
up the chimneys, might address him as Goedt Heyligh Man,
good holy man.
A peculiarity, as to be collected from these reports, mak-
ing the likings and dislikes rest on a single reason, and, of
course, the sufficiency and sincerity of them brought to a
* See Note XIV.benson’s memoir.	115
single test, and which the Dutch, “ their minds ever con-
scious of rectitude,” never shunned.
There was a day always kept here by the Dutch, and
the keeping of it delegated by the mothers to their daugh-
ters still at a school, vrouwen dagh, woman!s day; the same
day with the Valentine’s day of the English, and although
differently, still, perhaps, not less salutarily, kept. Every
mother’s daughter furnished with a piece of cord, the size
neither too large nor too small; the twist neither too hard
nor too loose ; a turn round the hand and then a due length
left to serve as a lash ; not fair to have a knot at the end
of it, but fair to practise for a few days to acquire the
slight; the law held otherwise in duelling. On the morn-
ing of the day, the youngster never venturing to turn a
corner without first listening whether no warblers behind
it. No golden apples to divert from the direct course in
this race. Schoolboy Hippomenes, espied and pursued by
charmer Atalanta; he encumbered with his satchel, still
striving to outrun, and, to add to his speed, bending for-
ward, thereby giving the requisite roundness to the space
between the shoulders; she too swift afoot for him, and
overtaking him, and three or four strokes briskly and
smartly laid on; he, to avoid a further repetition, stopping
and turning; she looking him steadfast in the eye, and per-
ceiving it required all the man in him to keep back the tear;
not all the fruit in all the orchards of the Hesperides, and
in their best bearing year, to compensate for the exultation
of the little heart for the moment. The boys insisted the
next day should be theirs, and be called mannen dagh, man’s
day ; but my masters were told, the law would thereby de-
feat its own very purpose, which was that they should, at
an age, and in a way, most likely never to forget it, receive
the lesson of manliness, he is never to strike.
This privilege has been neglected for such a length of
time, that, perhaps, it is never again to be recovered ; I do
not however think it lays in our mouth to charge the other
sex, that rather than be at the trouble, and especially if at-
tended with expense, to preserve rights, let them he lost.
I have now to do with my own party, and, therefore, the
other party not entitled to take offence at any thing I may
say.
My own party, the Federal party, by their primitive perfect
name without the subsequently invented addition of Repub-
lican. Is it not in the Constitution itself, that those who
formed it were Republicans ? Suppose, yes—then “ the ex-116
benson’s memoir.
pression of it wholly inoperative .” Suppose, no—will call-
ing themselves so make them so ? There will be parties
where the government is free; still, “wo unto them through
whom they come.” A neutral among freemen, a solecism in
character; perhaps, nearer the truth, no character; hence,
every one sees the necessity of a party name, if only to live
hy in the community; for there is the formalist in politics
as well as in religion; regular in giving his vote, never
failing to observe the day of the election, but as for money for
the expense of it, not a thousandth part of a tithe; the vote
fulfils all patriotism with him—he wants no public office—
certainly not—you only leave him to earn and to save, and
he will leave it to you to sustain the government to protect
him in the enjoyment of his earnings and his savings—he
wants no public office—wonderful self-denial! We were
once the subjects of a prince, the supreme magistracy in
him as an inheritance, the people privileged to choose
only a portion, a third branch, of the legislature ; by the
revolution, all power in them; all office of their gift; they
the “ fountain of all honorwhence is it, that the same
thing which was then so sought, should now, and by the
same class, those desirous to be distinguished for their
wealth, and otherwise for their condition, be so slighted?
I leave this question to the learned scribe, and wise dis-
puter, among us, never at a loss concerning any thing, “the *
subject of knowledge or the subject of being;” but it being
of some moment, if we are to hope to come out right, to
see to it a little that we set out right, I would recommend
to them—they will pardon it should it appear too didactic
—to begin with the first of the alphabetical rhymes in their
Primer,* to serve as the ground-work of all explanation of
a moral phenomenon.
The promontory in the Highlands called Antonie’s Nose,
after Antonie De Hooge, secretary of the colony of Rens-
selaerwyck. Herman Rutgers, the ancestor of the respect-
able family of the name among us, married his daughter
and only child.
The JDutch divided the whole river into Racks, Reaches;
there were thirteen in number; three of them, being those
only where the portion of the river, or distance in it, deno-
ted by each, can now be ascertained, will be particularly
noticed. The following are the names of others, translated
from the Dutch, and the probable order of them from south
* See Note XV.BlNSOtf’s MEMOlS*
m
to north, the Horse reach, the Sail Maker’s reach, the Cook’s
reach, the High reach, the Fox reach, the Baker’s reach*
John Pleasure’s reach, the Hart’s reach, the Sturgeon reach,
Fisher’s reach, and the Fast reach, as importing firm, not
swift.
The Martelaer’s Rack, the Martyr’s reach, the short
reach instantly on passing West Point. It has been said
that Martelaer was in use among the Dutch, figuratively*
to signify contending or struggling, as well as suffering.
The reach is more at a right angle with the general course
of the river than any other in it, and you may have the
wind from the westward, and still so fair as to lay your
course the whole of the distance from New York to Albany,
till you come to turn West Point, and then right ahead, so
that you have to heat, and to contend, and struggle with it*
to weather the high rocky point on the opposite side of the
river.
Pownall, in the journal already referred to, says, * on
having entered this pass,” the pass at the Boter Bergh*
Butter Hill, from its supposed resemblance to a roll of but*
ter, “ a very peculiar rock, called Martler’s Rock, projects
from the east into the river, and at the foot of these im-
mense high mountains, although it is as high as a sloop’s
mast, looks like a dwarf or mole.” The journalist was af-
terwards governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay;
and if, judging from Martler’s Rock and Topang Sea, it
should be insinuated, that seemingly the ministry at home,
the mode of expression generally used when speaking of the
administration in the parent country, did not always exer-
cise the best care and judgment in choosing governors for
the colonies, it may be conceded, and not to be wondered
at; had they been, as we have since become, privileged to
choose for themselves in their own case, it must be pre-
sumed, and to borrow the phraseology of that part of the
ancient writ of election for members of Parliament* doubt-
less intended as admonition to the electors from the Lord
Chancellor, the keeper of the sovereign’s conscience, it be-
ing of his functions to issue it, “ the best, most able, and dis-
creet men for business? * would have been sought for and
preferred. We however must do them the justice, that*
as it regarded us, they were so far mindful of the respect
due to us, as never lo disparage us by placing over us a
person of mean condition. Indeed, it was something we
used to boast of above our neighbors, that of our governors
in chief, the greater part of them were either noblemen, or118
Benson’s memoir.
of noble descent, or of the. order of knighthood. The In-
dian name of only one of the whole number has come
down to us, the name given to Fletcher. The occasion is
thus related by our historian, among the transactions of the
winter of 1693: “ The governor was a soldier by profession
—his extraordinary despatch up to Albany, on the first
news of the descent of the French and Indians on the coun-
try of the Mohocks, gained him the esteem, both of the
public and our Indian allies. The express reached New
York on the 12th of February, at ten o’clock in the night,
and in less than three days he embarked with, three hun-
dred volunteers. The river, which was heretofore very un-
common at that season, was open, and he landed at Albany,
and arrived at Schenectady on the 17th of the month ;
but still too late to be of any other use than to strengthen
the ancient alliance. The Indians, in commendation of his
activity on the occasion, gave him the name of Cayengui-
rago, or the great swift arrow .” A name expressive of the
speed with which he flew to the relief and succor of his
friends and allies; what an honorable memorial! The cor-
poration of our city, in July thereafter, presented “ an ad-
dress of thanks to him for the great care he had taken for
the security of the province ; and also a cup of gold, as a
token of their gratitude to their majesties, for appointing a
person of so great vigilance, prowess, and conduct, to rule
over us.”
We must admit him to have been stout of heart, and if
correct in judgment, correct to perceive the extent of it,
and, of course, further correct, free from pretensions be-
yond it, and then, rarely otherwise than correct to discern
what is fit and commendable, and so, ultimately correct
both in opinion and conduct throughout, another compli-
ment awaited him far more grateful. On a subsequent
occasion, they attribute “ to his prudence, that all their late
heats and animosities are healed.” The governor, the
guide, the guardian, the father of the people, healing their
heats and. animosities! how suitably, how worthily, occu-
pied ! the “ civil discord,” known as the troubles in Leister9 s
time, “ the heats and animosities” intended—unhappy Leis-
ler! made to suffer for treason, and his heart at the time
filled with affectionate loyalty to his prince, William of
Orange, emphatically of glorious memory, a deliverer of
Europe at the period from the ambition of a ruler of the
French, Lewis of Bourbon, the fourteenth of the name, as-
piring at the empire of it universally, and for which hissenson's memoir.	1 IS?
people* in their own vanity, and to gratify his, surnamed
him Great.
The Lange Rack, the Long Reach, the reach from Polle-
pel Island to the short turn in the river, the Krom Elleboog $
the first syllable retained, and the last translated, its pre-
sent name, the Crom Elbow. Lepel Is a spoon—aPoLLEPEL
a ladle, and particularly the one with a short handle for
beating the batter for the wafel ; the resemblance of the
island to the convex side of the bowl of the ladle, the ori-
gin of the name : a point in the long reach Danse Kamer,
dancing chamber, still retaining its name.
Wiltwyck, the Dutch name for the town of Kingston—*
literally Wildwich, or Indianwich< The Dutch built a re-
doubt on the bank of the creek, at the landing, and thence
the creek known as Redout Kill, corrupted to Rundout
Kill. A second company of Walloons, consisting of twelve
families, came over very early, and settled on the southern
branch of the Redout Kill, and from them called the
Waale Kill, corrupted to Wallkill; their settlement is re-
ferred to in an ancient grant as the Frenchmen’s Land—
they gave it the name of the Paltz, the Palatinate, having
probably taken refuge there in the first instance : the two
islands in the river, Magdalen Island, and Slyfsteen, Grind-
stone, Island, retain their Dutch names; the point project-
ing from the east shore towards the last, its Dutch name
Roode Hoeck, translated, Redhook—the creek, Roelof Jan-
sen's Kill, retaining its Dutch name ; as does also the creek
on the opposite side of the river, the Cat's Kill. The fol-
lowing circumstances, may perhaps serve fora probable
conjecture whence the name of the first of these two creeks
—Jan, John, and Roelof, some have supposed Ralph, very
common Christian names; and accordingly, not unusual for
a number to pass by the combination of the latter, with the
patronymic from the former, Roelof Janse, and the true
surname never noticed—among those the subjects of the
usage, was a Roelof Jansen, overseer of the Orphan Cham-
ber, and so named in the public records, even when men-
tioned of him in reference to his trust. His widow, in
1638, married to Domine Everardus Bogardus, the first
minister who came over from Holland, and sent by the
West India Company, they claiming to be the Patrons of
the Churches in the Colony ; the term used in the English
law sense, entitled to present the preacher. The Dutch
called our Catamount, or Panther, at times, Het Catlos, but
more generally Het Cat, emphatically the Cat; it is also*120
BfcNSON*S MEMOIR*
their name for the domestic cat, except when to distinguish
the male, and which is then called the eater ; and hence*
mistaking the origin of the name, a branch of it has re-
ceived the name of the Kater’s Kill. The island between
Cats Kill and Hudson, under the east shore of Vastrick’s
Island, so called after Garret Vastrick.
Het Klauver Rack, the Clover Reach—the Reach at
Hudson—the Bluffs, or terminations of the hills there, on
the east side of the river, called, by the Dutch the Klauvers,
the Clovers, from their resemblance, it is said, to the clover,
but whether to the leaf or the flower, different opinions*
Beeren Island and the Overslagh, still retaining their Dutch
names. The Dutch navigators speak of the river Gambia,
on the coast of Africa, as having an Overslagh, a bar, at
its mouth.
A few were selected from the crews of the Dutch ships
which sailed up the river the following year after the dis-
covery of it, to remain here a winter over. They erected
an habitation on the point of the island, the southern limit
of the city of Albany, and enclosed it with pallisadoes as a
defence against the Indians, and it was known as the Kas-
teel, the Castle. Stuy vesant, in his correspondence with the
government of the Massachusetts Bay, mentions the island
as still known by the name of Kasteel Island*
Albany was known by the several Dutch names of Be-
verwyck, Willemstadt, and Fort Orange, chiefly by the last.
It was also known as the Fuyck, or Hoop-net; and a kill is
mentioned as there, and known as the Fuyck Kill, changed
to Rutten Kill, an abbreviation of Rutgert’s Kill, Rutgert
Bleecker, a proprietor of the ground adjacent to it, the
third creek from the Norman’s Kill inclusive; the creek,
known as the Vyde Kill, the fifth creek, the creek at water
vleit, literally, at the time, waterflood, the word vleit since
rarely in use, the seat of the family of Van Rensselaer*
The lands immediately opposite to Albany, and for a dis-
tance along, and from the rivers the Dutch denoted as HeT
Greene Bosch, the pine woods, corrupted to Greenbush. The
mouths of the Mohock they distinguished as the Spruyten,
corrupted to, and which may also possibly pass for a trans-
lation, the Sprouts. The larger island formed bjr the Sprouts,
they called Walvisch Island, Whale Island. “ I canno^for-
bear,” says Van Der Donck, “ to mention, that in the year
1647, in the month of March, when, by a great freshet, the
water was fresh almost to the great bay, there were two
whales, of tolerable size, up the river, the one turned back,Benson’s memoir.
121
but the other stranded, and stuck not far from the great fall
of the Cohoes.” The arable land immediately above, they
denoted as the Halve Maan, the half moon, from its crescent-
like form along the hills on the western side. The river
from the rapids upwards, and for the distance of about
twelve miles, the Indians denominated a lake, the Dutch
Het Stille Water, the still water. The name of the Island
of St. Bartholomew, in the West Indies, now generally ab-
breviated to St. Barts, so the Dutch Bartholomews, abbre-
viated to the first syllable, pronounced Bat, and sometimes
to the two last syllables, pronounced as if one, Mees.—
Bartholomews Van Hoogeboom, the first who settled on the
river above the Still Water; from his name, the two names
of Batten Kill and Meesen Kill.
ENGLISH NAMES OF PLACES.
Few of them ancient. The island in the bay, Love Island,
now Bedlow’s Island. Nicolls granted it to Needham, and
he within a few days thereafter parted with it to Alderman
Isaac Bedlow. Halletfs Cove on the East river—the first
of the family must have possessed lands there to some ex-
tent, as we find the island beyond Hellgate, now Riker’s
Island, called Halletfs Island. The two islands near it, the
Brothers, their Dutch name the Gesellen, translated. The
large rocks at the entrance of Hellgate, the larger one the
Mill Rock, the other the Hancock Rock. Frog’s Neck—
Throgmorton, an Englishman, took a grant for it under the
Dutch, 1643; the name abbreviated from Throgmorton’s to
Throg’s, and finally corrupted to Frog’s, Neck. The Step-
ping Stones, rocks projecting in aline from the Long-Island
shore into the Sound, and their tops bare at low water.
An Indian origin is asserted for this name, and a tradition
vouched as the authority, heretofore repeated by our Suf-
folk county men, to their neighbors of Connecticut over the
way, in retort for the jeer from them, that the oil of the
eastern part of the island is so poor as to be made to pro-
duce only meagre hills of Indian corn, and it constituting
the chief food of the inhabitants, not uncommon, in a calm
time, to hear the samp mortars a-going, quite across the
Sound.
It is said that at a certain time,* doubtless some ages
ago, the evil spirit set up a claim against the Indians, to
* See Note XVI.
SECOND SERIES, VOL. II.122
'benson’s memoir.
Connecticut, as his peculiar domain; but they, being in
possession, determined, of course, to try to hold it. By Con-
necticut, the premises in question, is to be understood the
original Connecticut proper, the territory between the oblong9
our eastern boundary in that quarter, and the Sound; for
had it been known to the parties, but which indeed was not
found out by the whites themselves for the first hundred
years after they succeeded to the occupancy, that Connec-
ticut was capable of being rolled or stretched out the whole
breadth of the continent, there would have been no need of
strife between them; there would have been land amply to
satisfy both, and scores of millions of acres to spare. The
surfaces of Connecticut and Long-Island wTere then the re-
verse of what they are now. Long-Island was covered
with rocks; Connecticut was free from them. The Indians
were fully sensible of w7hat they had to dread from such
an adversary, and accordingly betook themselves to a course,
not unusual on occasions of great difficulty and danger,
they referred the case to the squaws, the mothers of the
tribes, who, it is said, recommended an offer to quit on be-
ing allowed for their betterments—a Novanglican law term,
devised to signify the dwelling, and other erections, and
comprehending girdling the trees to disencumber the land
of the wood, by a person entering without title on land
never before cultivated, known as new, or wild, land, and
for which he considers the rightful owner, whenever he
shall appear, bound to allow him according to their value,
to be assessed by a jury of the same place, before he him-
self bound to quit; on a principle, a kind of corollary from
the rule, that it is oppressive and unjust that one should
reap and another have sown, and so it is unjust and
oppressive that one should inhabit, and another have built.
No answer, as was to be expected, was given to this of-
fer ; and the parties, claiming to be entitled to the rights
of sovereign States, and there being no federal court to in-
terpose between them, had recourse to the “ ultimate means
of discussion between princes,” to arms. Indeed, had there
been a court, it is to be doubted whether they could have
been brought to be amenable to it.
As to the party defendant, the Indian—the man of the
Wood; a wigwam of bark his habitation, and the skins of
the beasts, he tracks or entraps, furnishing his coat and his
couch; and, to repeat it as expressed by himself, “to divide
the land, each to have a separate and permanent property in
his plantation, would be to make him as bad as a white man”benson’s memoir.
123
His subsistence—in seasons the return of the inhabitants
of the pool from the torpor of winter, to furnish his mess, an
annunciation to him of a respite from starving. His hos-
pitality—the mere effect of all things in common ; and the
aged Sachem, when unable to crawl and partake in the
wigwam of another, left to starve in his own. His fight-
ing, cowardly; rarely, at the same moment, exposing him-
self erect in posture and uncovered by a tree, and roasting
a prisoner alive, festivity; hence, whence urged to war.
With him blood for blood, and the tomahawk has been put
into the hand of the widow to avenge the blood of the
slain husband. “ The native force of his mind unaided, his
manners unsoftened, and consequently left fierce;” in a
word, a savage. The notices on his mind of the duty of
rendering to another his own, very faint, if any ; of an au-
thorized means to enforce it, none.#
I am aware that I am here differing from one among us
of celebrity for literature and science, and of whom I have
presumed to be a follower, with however unequal pace, in
the humble task I have assigned myself, to prepare notes,
or collect materials, for the history of the State, the place
of my birth and residence, for the benefit of whoever will
undertake the principal work, the history itself. The pas-
sage alluded to, in the volume he has favored us with, reads
thus: “ If it were made a question, whether no law as
among the savage Americans, or too much, as among
the civilized Europeans, submits man to the greatest
evil? one, who hath seen both conditions of existence,
would pronounce it to be the last, and that the sheep are
happier of themselves, than under the care of the wolves.”
Now I am quite willing to allow him his premises, and in
the utmost latitude he may wish, that the people are sheep,
the leader breaking into mischief, the rest follow, and, it
is said, to precipitating down a well; and, in reference to
the particular immediately before us, wholly incapable to
take care of themselves, and that the administrators of the
government are wolves. Will it not then be happier for the
sheep to employ dogs to take care of them? No; for in the
same pages where we read of ravening wolves, we read of
greedy dogs. Will it not be the least evil, on the whole,
for the social flock to leave the “sweet tender grazings of
the field,” betake themselves to the dank wilderness, and
there separate each one to become solitary ? More stren-
* See Note XVII.124
benson’s memoir.
uously, no; for whether for no law, and so for less evil and
more happiness, or for less or more any thing else, what-
ever it may be I do not care, I utterly deny man has a right
tO turn HEATHEN.
As to the other high litigant party; his hostility to courts
of justice is notorious, especially where the judges are
learned, distinguishing, upright, undaunted, revered; they
frequently thwart him in some of his best projects ; where
they are of a different character, illiterate, and ignorant,
and so in proportion, either conceited or stupid, or without
probity, but with its usual concomitant, a consciousness of
without reputation for it, and so either showing assurance
or betraying cowardice, there he not only tolerates the court,
he gives it all his countenance and help, because their un-
principled advocates, not to be reckoned among the least
profitable of his servants, can, unoverruled, by confounding
truth and error, right and wrong, play his part as effectu-
ally to subserve his purposes, as if played immediately by
himself.
The parties foreseeing there would be war, were, as be-
hooved them, prepared for it.
The renowned arch-leader, an host in himself, took tbe
field alone ; and, being an overmatch for the Indians in skill
and spirit, he at first advanced on them; but they having
provided there should be constantly reinforcements on their
march, thereby preserving their corps entire, and harassing
him incessantly, giving him no rest night or day, he was
obliged finally to yield to vigilance and perseverance, and
fall back : he retired collected, and, as usual, giving up the
ground only inch by inch, and, though retiring, still pre-
senting a front wherever attack threatened ; he kept close
to the Sound to secure his flank on that side ; and having
reached Frog’s Point, and the waters becoming narrow, to
be crossed by the Indians in bark canoes, easily to be made
in a night, and the tide being out, and the rocks show-
ing their heads, he availed himself of them, and, steppiug
from one to another, effected his retreat to Long Island.
He at first betook himself, sullen and silent, to Coram, in the
middle of the island ; but it being in his nature not to remain
idle long, and “ rage superadded, soon roused him and minis-
tered to him the means of revenge.” He collected all the rocks
on the island in heaps at Cold Spring, and, throwing them
in different directions to different distances across the Sound
on Connecticut, covered the surface of it with them, as we
now see it; and it has been repeated from the whites, theBENSON S MEMOIR.
125
first settlers of the lands at Cold Spring, that the Indians,
to the last who remained, not only undertook to show the
spot where he stood, but insisted they could still discern the
print of his feet. Whether he has ever visited Connecticut
since, not known if so, it must have been in some bor-
rowed form, and his stay short, for we must certainly ac-
knowledge that no State in the Union can compare with
her for a steady habitual effort, to keep the demon out.
If this tradition be believed by the Indians, it serves to
give us some notion of their geology. Are these rocks al-
luvial ? Whoever has seen them w7ill pronounce them re-
sembling every thing more than “ the smooth stone of the
stream.” Are they primitive ? No : they come from Long
Island. What are they ? Here a defect in the nomencla-
ture ; happily the “ Greek and Latin fonts” are at hand to
supply it. Well for our science wre have some literature
among us to draw on for names.
The English gave to the river the name of Hudson's
river, by- w^ay of continual claim, he being of English birth.
The Dutch insisted that being in their employ, and ex-
pressly to explore, he was, as a discoverer, to be considered
as their subject, and the case of Columbus a precedent; he
a native of Genoa, and the king of Spain taking to himself
the benefit of his discoveries, and none of the European
powers gainsaying it. Nay, they seem wholly to have
overlooked their own case ; their sovereign, James I. having
prior to the voyage oLHudson, 44 granted all the lands along
the coast of North America between ’the 84th and 45th
degrees of latitude, and one hundred miles into the country,
to his subjects the patentees of the North and South Vir-
ginia Patents;” he claiming it by the discoveries of the
Venetian Cabots.
The colony and its metropolis, called after the Duke’s
English title, New York; Ulster county, called after his
Irish title; King's and Queen's counties, and Duke and
Dutchess counties, so called in compliment to Charles and
his Queen, and to the Duke and his Dutchess ; Duke’s
county has passed to Massachusetts; Richmond county, the
title of a son of Charles; Orange county ; then already a
relationship between the royal family of England and the
house of Orange in Holland. The town of Hurley, in Ul-
ster county; the name given to it by Governor Colonel
Lovelace, his family Barons of Hurley in Ireland. Ver-
*See Note XVIII.126
benson’s memoir.
mont, Green Mountain, and the town of Amenia, in Dutch-
ess county, Pleasant, ii you please, owe their names to the
fancy of Young, the poet, I mean the American, not the
English Young ; he had a peculiar facility in making Eng-
lish words from Latin ones. In his Poem, the Conquest of
Quebec, in describing the portents which he feigned to have
preceded the battle of the Plains of Abraham, and which,
according to his fiction, appalled the stout heart of Wolfe
not a little, the first line of one of the couplets, “ vulpine
ululations, ursine growls,” and the two concluding words of
the next, “predicting owls,” those which preceded have es-
caped my memory, and it is not now in my power to recover
them; sad fate for an epic ! “ scarce twice five lustres past
and out of print.” Williams, who has written a book,
“ The Natural and Civil History of Vermont,” makes hon-
orable mention of him, ranking him among the fathers and
founders of the State, giving due precedence, however, to
Ethan Allen.
ANCIENT NAMES OF STREETS IN THE CITY.
Pearl street, its Dutch name translated; certainly the
most ancient, and originally extending only to Whitehall
street—the name of the latter from the Whitehall Inn, on
the west side below Pearl street, the private property of
Governor Dongan, destroyed by fire, and its ruins referred
to in a conveyance, 1724. On the east side from Pearl
street upwards, to fit least as far as Stone street, Het Steen
Straat, perhaps so distinguished as for a time the only one
paved; the Dutch West India Company had their Pack-
huysen, warehouses, and that portion of it was known as the
WiNCKEL-straet, shopping-street of the day; the ground on
the west side open, and a market being there, was known
as the Marktvelt, the Market Field, and hence a passage
to it from Broad street, the Marktvelt Steegje, Market-
Field Lane. The Breeds Weg, the Broad Way, at times
known by a feodal appellation, the Heere Weg, the Lord's
Way—a branch of it to the North river, Beaver Lane—an
order, 1656—“ that the ordinary place for casting anchor in
the North river, be before or near the Beaver Path.” Broad
street, originally a graft, a term signifying a ditch in forti-
fication, but, when applied to a street, signifying one with
a canal in it. While a graft, it was also usually known
by the feodal appellation, the Heere Graft, Lord's Graft,
and at times also as the Breede, Broad, Graft; the canalBENSONS MEMOIR.
127
extending as far as Beaver-street, and there divided into
two branches, one to the west, the Beever, Beaver Graft,
now Beaver street, the other to the east, the Prinsen, Prince’s,
Graft, afterwards Prince’s street, now the eastern portion
of Beaver-street. The Prince’s Graft terminated in a
Sloot, narrow ditch, and there a landing place for the coun-
try people coming to market in their canoes, now Bloat-
Lane—the whole, the Graft and Sloot, ordered to be filled
up in 1087, and the street to be levelled and paved. „ The
street communicating between the WiNCKEL-straet and the
bridge across the graft, Brugge, Bridge, street. The por-
tion of Pearl street, from Broad street, or the termination
of Custom-House street, to at least as far as the first lane
or alley, known as the Hooge, High, street—the Stadhuys,
City Hall, in it fronting the slip, and the sheriff, 1691, or-
dered to prepare a ducking-stool, intended to deter from
scolding, a species of excess of freedom of speech, and
however it might have suited at the time, certainly now,
according to some late and highly respectable opinions on
the subject of crime and punishment, a means of restraint
too rigorous to comport with the mild and free spirit of our
republican government. The dwelling-house of Coenradt
Ten Eyck also there, and so the name of the slip Coenties,
or Coenradt’s, Slip—his tannery extending to a lane in the
rear, and the bark mill being immediately on the lane, the
English Mill-street, soon supplanted the Dutch Slyk Steeg,
Mud-lane. The next portion of Pearl street, to Wall street,
being open to the river, was, like a street in Amsterdam,
corresponding in situation, called the Cingel ; the term will
lead to its derivation, and its derivation to its meaning, the
exterior, or encircling, street—it followed the curvatures of
the shore, so that when Wall street was laid out from
Broadway, and, where it approached the river, widened,
some of the lots, in that part now became bounded by it,
and hence the name Cingel at times applied to both streets,
and accordingly lots expressed as situate in the Cingel or
Wall-street. A line of pallisadoes, and sometimes men-
tioned as the city-walls, from the one river to the other ; at
its point on the East river, a work of stone, known as the
Half-Moon, and “ fires for the pitch-pots for vessels per-
mitted to be made against itits situation in the present
Water-street somewhere between Wall street and Pine
street; the line crossed Broadway, so that, continued, it
passed not many feet north of the northwestern corner of
Trinity Church; there were two gates in it—one in Broad-128
benson’s memoir.
way, distinguished as the Landt Poort, Land-Gate or Port,
the other at the Half-Moon, on the East river, distinguished
as the Water Poort, the Water-Gate or Port, and at times,
and even in grants and other documents in English, men-
tioned as the Strand, or East, Port. An order, as late as
1679, “ that the gates be locked before 9 o’clock, and opened
at daylight.” Adjacent to the Half-Moon was “the Waal,
or the place where the ships rode at anchor in the East
river”—doubtless, the place where goods were landed or
shipped off, and hence the name of the WAAL-straet, very
early corrupted to Wall-street.
A marsh, described, sufficiently for our present purpose,
as extending from the river to the high grounds, the line of
the rear of the lots on the northern side of Pearl street, be-
tween Pine and Fulton streets, called Smee’s Vly, or De
Smee’s Vly, and therefore uncertain whether the name, or
occupation, of the person intended, Smith’s, or the Smith’s
Vly—Vly, an abbreviation of Valey, Valley, and in usewith
the Dutch here to denote a marsh, our salt meadow; when
the Maagde Padtje, Maidenlane, was continued through to
the river, and widened below Pearl street for the slip called
Countess’s-slip, in compliment to the lady of the Governor ,
Lord Bellomont, a market was built there, known as the
Vly Market, the market in the marshy corrupted to the Fly
Market; hence, when in the sharp contest heretofore, be-
tween a New Yorker and a Philadelphian, on the all-im-
portant question, in which of their respective cities the best
fare? and the New Yorker would boast of his fish, their
variety, scores of kinds, their freshness, some even alive
and gasping in the market, and the fact not to be denied,
but to avoid the effect of it as triumph, the Philadelphian
would only, but significantly, remind him, that however
fresh his fish might be, the flesh he ate during the summer
months not quite free from taint, for that from the swarms
of the insect in the principal market it was called emphati-
cally the jFYy-Market; the poor New Yorker, ignorant of the
Dutch language and of the etymologies from it, and hence
knowing no better than that it was the true name of the
market, left without a reply, left to experience what no one
can know who has not experienced it, to be obliged in a dis-
putation to give up the point.
Crown-street, laid out in 1694; fora number of years
the only street leading from the Broadway to the North
river—lately changed to Liberty street. American Liberty,benson’s memoir.
129
the liberty of the revolution,* an original liberty; English
liberty ; “ not to be bound by any laws to which we do not, by
our representatives, consent, and the representatives privileged
to originate whatever laws they please;'* all beyond it, growth,
natural it will be admitted, from the independence on our
indigenous stock of equality of condition. The Roman Pi-
leus, the cap, the emblem of a derived liberty, a liberty the
gift from one to another legally in servitude to him; if, how-
ever, with a half disgraceful unacquaintance with our own
liberty, its origin and its nature, we will still have the Cap
the emblem of it, then it was not unwittingly observed at the
time, that, instead of Liberty-street, the change would have
been more apt from Crown, to Cap, street.
Gold-street—the Dutch called the hill there, the Gouden
Eergh, Golden Hill; Cliff street, called after Dirk Van Der
Cliff; Beekman, and William, streets, after Alderman Wil-
liam Beekman; John-street, after John Harpendingh, the
donor to the Dutch congregation of their grounds in the
neighborhood; his escutcheon in their church in William
street, Dey-street, after Dirk Dey; Warren-street, so called
in compliment to the lady of Sir Peter Warren, a native of
the city.
We have seen Coenradt Ten Eyck, from his residence
there, giving name to a slip; in like manner. Friend Edward
Burling, gave name to Burling*s-slip, and Benjamin Peck, to
Pec&’s-slip, and Pieter Roos to the Fly-market, Pieter Roos’s
Markt, Peter Rose’s Market, being the name by which it
was at first, and continued for some time, to be known.—
He was my father’s mother’s father; his father Gerrit
Janse Roos— there are circumstances from which it may be
inferred the father of Gerrit came over, and, if so, I now
see in my family the ninth generation from the first Dutch
colonist ancestor, females of a mature age, and probably
the intervening period not exceeding a century and an half
—nine generations in a century and a half, not common.
The motive with me for mentioning this fact, and I per-
suade myself others will be persuaded I have none other,
is, that it may be received as doctrinal, and the improvement
of it by our Ccelebses,f to show the advantage of the ear-
liest search for a wife. If the name Peter Rose’s Market
had been continued hitherto, so as to have become suffi-
cient for the intendment he was the founder of it, I think I
might then have ventured to challenge any “American
* See Note XIX.
t See Note XX.130
Benson’s memoir.
Bourbon or Nassau to go higher.” I should at least be on
a par with old Witham Marsh, clerk of the city and county
of Albany, who died here about fifty years ago, his grave-
stone to be still seen in Trinity church-yard, his name on it
in law Latin, Withamus De Marisco, the rest of the inscrip-
tion in other Latin, and purporting “ that by his father’s
mother’s side he was most nobly born the whole by the
direction of his will; also among the ways by which a man
may bequeath something to himself, something to save his
namefrorn being forgotten.
DUTCH NAMES FOR THE FISH IN OUR RIVER.
A few only will be noticed—some denoted by numbers as
their names—the Twaalf, the twelve, the Streaked Bass, and
the Elf, the Shad—the name of the Shad in Dutch is Elft,
in German Aloft, and in French Alose, all perhaps from
the same root; but being pronounced here Elf, the number
eleven, the number itself possibly came to be considered as
its name, and so led to denote others in the same manner
—the Drum is said to have been the Dertien, the thirteen.
Van Der Donck, speaking of the North river, expresses
himself, it is “ seer visryck,” literally very fish-rich—here
the Dutch language would seem to have the advantage
over the English, its capability of composition—het gelt-
zucht, the money-lust; het heersch-zcjcht, the sway-lust; for
a word for the first the English are indebted to the French,
covetousness ; for a word for the other to the Latin, ambi-
tion; Myn Eer-naam, my honor-name, the name, or rather
appellation, by which it is peculiarly my honor to be called
—no word for it in either of the three languages—an in-
stance illustrating it—“ The disciples wrere called Chris-
tians.” Speaking of the fish in New Netherland at large,
and consequently comprehending the Connecticut, he ex-
presses himself, “ there is also in some places salmon.”—
Extract from the voyage of Hudson, as found in Purchas;
“ they saw many salmons, and mullets, and rays, very great”
—the third of September, not the salmon season. De Laet
expresses himself, “ Hudson also testifies, that with their
seines they took every kind of river-fish in the river, also
young salmon and sturgeon.” The Dutch, whatever may
be the true name of the fish in their language, always, at
least in this country, call the trout, Salmties, little salmon ;
and they were doubtless in abundance at the mouths of the
large streams issuing into the river. Belknap, and as a factbenson’s memoir.
131
appertaining to the life of Hudson, mentions, “ that, in sail-
ing up the river, he found it abounding with fish, and among
which were great store of salmon ;” this instance of a little
wandering however excepted, we must do the reverend bi-
ographer the justice, that in the main he sticks duly close to
his text; and farther, that he is concise, both in his narra-
tive and in his reflections; and if he possessed the same
quality as a preacher, perhaps not the least commendable
in him, for we all know there is nothing so soon apt to tire
us as a long sermon—I preaching against long preaching !
Am I aware my practice counter to my precept, and that
the latter of little effect without the former ? I yield to my
own admonition—I close. If I have been too verbose, our
historian has provided the apology for me, “ the indefeasi-
ble right of my profession, founded on immemorial usage.”
If I have said much, not much to the purpose, I prescribe for
the same privilege here also. My object, as already de-
clared, was to save the names of some places in our coun-
try from the tooth of mmc-eating time—that the memory
of them will now be perpetual, I am not entitled even to
hope—let it cease ; still “ may our country itself be per-
petual.” May this be with me, as it was with the “ illustri-
ous and excellent person” whom I cite, “ among my expiring
wishes.”
END OF THE MEMOIR.NOTES
The Notes were chiefly, soon after the publication of the Memoir, in 1817, as
will be perceived from No. I., and others, have since been, and those denoted
suppletory, recently interleaved, in manuscript, facing the pages containing the
passages to which they refer. No. T. itself, however, and No. II., having a gen-
eral reference to the Memoir, were inserted between the blank leaves preceding
the title-page.—Adv. to second edition, printed in 1825.
No. I.
■----------------“ mea nemo
Scripta legat,---------ob hanc rem,
Quod sunt, quos genus hoc minime juvat, utpote plures]
Culpari dignos.”
When the Memoir was read, a vote of thanks, and an appointment of a com-
mittee to obtain a copy for publication, followed, as matters of course. In conse-
quence of my absence in Albany the remainder of the winter, the copy was not
furnished until in the spring; and, from intervening occurrences, the publication
was further delayed. On the 12th of August, the publication still remain-
ing to be commenced, the Society passed a resolution recalling the vote of
thanks, unless I would * submit the Memoir to a committee, to expunge
from it in their discretion. I cannot bring myself to think so meanly of their
understandings, as to suppose they were not sensible, at the time, that so far
from acceding to the proffer, I should forbear from noticing it, further than in-
stantly to withdraw myself from them. I mention, in the Memoir, “ that the
subject furnishes little to please, perhaps less to instruct .” The obnoxious pas-
sages have never been specified; circumstances, however, if the case merited it,
could be mentioned, from which it might, with tolerable certainty, be guessed
they were among those designed for instruction. It obviously ought not to be
unflattering to me ; they have been, and from only being once heard, when read,
remembered and pondered for a full half year. I have understood it is held
among physicians, that the longer the draught, pill, or bolus (and my Memoir,
perhaps, something not unlike a compound of all three,) is retained, the better,
if effect is finally produced, and the more violent the effect, the more they con-
clude the drug to have been genuine.
The intent of the above, is to explain whence the publication of the Memoir,
and not the vote of thanks, or even denoting myself a member of the Society.
I interleaved a few copies of the first impression of it, designed for particular
distribution, with notes, in manuscript; none of them, however, as will be per-
ceived, tending to vary the import of a single sentence in the text, which, as it
is to be my Memorial, must ever remain the same as read.benson’s memoir.—notes.
133
No. II.
The Memoir is to be considered as a piece in the loom; and the subject, as
professed, Names, to serve only “ as the warp for the interwoven woofand, to
compare small things with great, in the famous weaving-match of old, the fair
websters had, probably, the like warp :—“ The skill of the goddess-one appeared
in the woof; and the four lessons, the finish of the work, decided her victorious ”
I trust there will not be found in my piece a lesson, whether as sentiment, and
not just; or, as hint or hit, and not fair.
There is always an understood limit to the time allowed for discourses, how-
ever variously denominated, to be read before a society, or other assemblage of
persons convened for the occasion ; hence, as to sundry subjects, comprised in
the general one, I was restricted to mere instances, or examples, to aid as inti-
mations to others disposed to a further or more particular inquiry ; in short, but
with a saving from the imputations of a vanity in the first expression in the
sentence, I had to make it a multum in parvo.
No. III.—Page 80.
From the passages cited from De Laet and Van Der Donck, and from others,
relative to it, briefly interspersed through the pages, and although some are not
citations, still none wholly without warrant, may be collected the history of the
discovery of the country by the Dutch, and the occupancy and settlement of it
by them, at least as much of it, very probably, as is worth research.
No. IV.—Page 83.
Petrus Stuyvesant was the last of the Governors of the Colony, under the
Putch. He arrived in lfl47, and the records of his administration are duly
entire to serve as proof of character. He was of the profession of arms, and had
lost a limb in the service; and hence the Indians, at times, in contumely, called
him Wooden-leg,—he being their dread, not unlike them. His skill or expe-
rience, and peculiarly his military habits, must have stood him in very benefi-
cial stead in his command here ; being incessantly vexed with the marauding
clans of the Mohegan family—their homes then still adjacent to the Hudson and
Raritan, and intermediate waters. Let a few instances suffice:—At one time,
and within a few weeks after a treaty of amity with them, seven hundred landed
at the town, early in the morning, without notice, armed with bows and arrows ;
toward the close of the day, they became disorderly ; and on the cry of murder,
the inhabitants immediately betook themselves to their arms, and compelled
them to re-embark and retire, with the loss of three of their number killed ; two
of the whites were killed. At another time, they made an irruption into the
settlement, the site of the present town of Bergen, burnt the houses, killed a
number of the inhabitants, and carried off one hundred of them prisoners.
Again, while he was absent, occupied in reducing the Swedish fortress on the.
Delaware, nine hundred crossed the river, landed at Spuytenduyvel Creek,
took post there, and remained until they were apprised that he had returned.
Again, nine hundred intruded into the town, but, perceiving the inhabitants pre-
pared to receive them, they, after a stay of a few hours, went off. Orders of the
government, during the period, “ forbidding the skippers to sail on the river,
unless in companies of three, or at least two, yachts well armed ; and the in-
habitants to be on their guard against the Indians, and patrole during divine
service, per vices” The claims of his neighbors on the east, the whites of New
England, were a source of disquietude and perplexity to him. In one of his
letters to his principals, the West India Company, cited by our historian, he ex-
presses himself: “ You imagine the troubles in England will prevent any attempt
on these parts ; alas ! they are ten to one in number to us ; and are able, with-
out any assistance, -to deprive us of the country when they please; and their134
Benson’s memoir.—notes.
demands, encroachments, and usurpations, give the people great concern,—the
right to both rivers, by purchase and possession, being our own, without dispute/’
This indicates not only his suspicions, but a settled apprehension in him, that
they meditated, ultimately, to wrest from the Dutch the whole of their posses-
sions here ; and the difficulty of his situation was increased by the reflection,
that] the case apparently admitted of no rule of compromise or concessions.
Indeed, if there were, he had little to hope from good disposition in them; on
the contrary, in the correspondence between him and them, they coarsely, and
as if with design to anger, apply the appellation of intruders to the Dutch ; he,
however, hesitated not a moment to retort it on them in terms. The Connecti-
cut men at one time charged him, not only with instigating the Indians to it,
but even with an intended personal agency as an accomplice with them, in a
plot to massacre all the whites in their colony, and the writer of their history
gives the outrageous calumny as a fact in his narrative. They certainly ought,
at least, to have supposed for him that he had read his Bible, and heeded its con-
tents ; so that “before going to make war against them, he would have sat
down and consulted, whether he were able, with his One, to meet them coming
against him with their Ten ” The Director, or Governor, and his Council,
were a court of justice in the last resort; and in criminal cases, highly penal, they
had both original and exclusive jurisdiction. It was not unusual with them,
when differing, to give their opinions seriatim, and in writing, and which were
entered at large ill their journal. Those by Stuyvesant, show him to have been
deliberate and impartial in his inquiries, distinct in his perceptions, and by no
means uninformed respecting the principles of criminal jurisprudence. Undaunt-
ed-firm ; never abating of steadfastness in his purposes; vigilant, not a’
moment without heed : and unceasing in his care for the protection, and other-
wise for the welfare of those in charge to him. His administration, perhaps his
life throughout, at no time at variance with just principle and sound sense. In
fine, the whole of the duties of the trust, and the whole of his character consider-
ed, it may be questioned whether the chief magistracy, among us, has ever been
confided to an individual more adequate to it, or of more worth.
No. V.—Page 91.
That the French, instead of landing at Mallebarre, to abide there, or pursuing
their voyage farther, did discern it more eligible to return to Port Royal, and, so
discerning, did return, to be ascribed to Providence, to the Deity ; such His
purpose, and the mind and-toill of man subservient to it. What this doctrine ?
May it not challenge denial ? If admitted, what not the conclusion ?
No. VI.-^-Page 91.
The present Constitution—for the thitherto received jUst federal exposition of
it, as to the sovereignty of the State Governments in their relation to the sove-
reignty of the General Government; the following extract from a note from the
Commissioners on the part of New York to those on the part of New Jersey, in
the conferences between them, 1807, relative to the jurisdiction of the Hudson,
where it flows between the two States. New Jersey, insisting as one ground of
claim to it, to the middle of the channel; New York, having always exercised it to
the shore on the New Jersey side—uhat she was an independent sovereign State*
The extract:—“New Jersey was always an independent sovereign State, as
against New York, both de facto and de jure ; and, on the principle of the
American Revolution, she was always bo de jure, as against Great Britain, with
this exception, that the Prince possessing the British crown for the time being,
was her sovereign, entitled to, and exercising, the like powers and prerogatives
as in Great Britain ; and of consequence, in whom the supreme executive power
was vested, and to whom, as possessing especially the fecial powers, as they are
sometimes termed, the powers of peace and war, the duty of allegiance wasBenson’s memoir.—notes.
135
due * with whose concurrent agency in her legislature, she could “ raise armies#
maintain navies, regulate commerce and navigation, lay artd collect duties on
imports and exports, and tonnage on vessels, naturalise foreigners, coin monies,”
and assert and vindicate her rights as to her boundaries, and which she actually
did, as to her northern boundaries! Except the last, however, all the rights of
powers here enumerated, the indicia of sovereignty, she has, equally with the
State of New York and every other State in the Union, delegated or ceded to
the general sovereignty of the United States, and is now perhaps more to be
likened to a corporation with certain powers, none more plenary than that of
life and death for breaches of her own internal peace ; and is no otherwise in-
dependent, than as she holds such powers independent of the general sovereignty#
but still, in a sense, at the will of the legislatures or conventions of three-fourths
of the States.”
Note—^Suppleioty to the above.
The legislature of Virginia, February, 1786, proposed to the States a Conven-
tion of Commissioners, to meet at Annapolis, in Maryland, in September, “ to
consider how far an uniform system, in their commercial intercourse and regula-
tions, might be necessary to their common interest and permanent harmony*
and to report an act relative to this great object, which, when ratified, would
enable the United States in Congress assembled, effectually to provide for the
same.” The measure being approved, the legislature of this State appointed their
Commissioners, Messrs. Duane# Gansevoort, R. C. Livingston, Hamilton, and me.
Mr. Gansevoort wholly declined the appointment; and, when the time for the
Convention to assemble approached, Mr. Duane gave notice to his colleagues of
indisposition, and Mr. Livingston of a probable detention by business for some
days, at least. I was attorney-general, and, at the time, in Albany, attending
the Supreme Court, and it became doubtful whether the public business would
not detain me. A casual conversation between the late Mr. Justice Hobart and
me, the intended Convention the subject, terminated in a conclusion that the
present opportunity for obtaining a Convention to revise the whole of our mode
or system of general government, by confederation or league, ought not to be
suffered to pass ; that I should consign over the business of the court to some
friend to conduct it for me * proceed to New York, and communicate to Mr.
Hamilton what had passed between us; which I did, and he instantly concur-
ring, we set out for Annapolis, where we found Commissioners from New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia. Here the same being substantially re-
peated, and there being the like instantaneous concurrence# a committee was
appointed to prepare an address to the States, which was reported and agreed
to ; the whole in the course of not exceeding three or four days, and we separat-
ed. The draft was by Mr. Hamilton, although not formally one of the commit-
tee. It is to be found printed in Carey’s American Museum for April, 1787 ;
and concludes “ with a suggestion by the Commissioners, with the most respect-
ful deference, of their sincere conviction# that it might essentially tend to ad-
vance the interest of the Union, if the States, by whom they had been respec-
tively delegated, would concur themselves, and use endeavors to procure the
concurrence of the other States, in the appointment of Commissioners to meet
at Philadelphia# on the second Monday in May, to take into consideration the
situation of the United States# and to devise such farther provisions as should
appear to them necessary to render the Constitution of the Federal Government
adequate to the exigencies of the Union/* Is this entitled to be viewed as the
origin of the present Constitution 1
No. VII.—Page 96.
We have Milton for it, that Sir He was expressly “ formed for contemplation
and valour:” has not Lady She, as often as she has chosen it# shown herself*
with her softness and grace#” as potently endowed ]136
benson s Memoir.—notes.
No. VIII.—Page 102.
“ Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.”
I am a Dutchman, and so think nothing which concerns the Dutch, of uncon-
tern to me.
Note to a sermon, in commemoration of the landing of the New England
Pilgrims, delivered 22d December, 1820, by John Chester, pastor of the second
Presbyterian church, in Albany :—
“ It seems to be admitted, that the captain of the ship had been bribed, by
some interested persons, to land them far north of the place they intended.
After they had found Cape Cod, they would have gone to the Hudson, but the
captain would not proceed, and, in a short time, the severity of the season made
it impossible.”
I presume it will be conceded to me, that the passages in the Memoir, from
the historiographer of Connecticut, were utterly unentitled to be otherwise
noticed than they were ; but the Discourse to which the note, the subject of the
present notes to the Memoir, is attached, bespeaking the preacher as possessing,
w ith ingenuousness of disposition, and courtesy of manners, a correct, cultivated
mind, a charge from him is not to pass as unraeriting to be regarded. The
answer, however, will not be labored, It will consist wholly of extracts from
Neal’s History of New England, 1722, and Hutchinson’s History of the Colony
of the Massachusetts Bay, 1760, which, with the inferences they will themselves
suggest, and a few I may, for the greater certainty, intimate, will, I confide,
suffice to undeceive him.
Extracts from Neal:—“ On the 5th August, 1620, both ships, the Speedwell,
of 60 tons, and the May Flower, of 180 tons, sailed in company from Southamp-
ton for New England, but before they got to the Land’s End, captain Reynolds,
master of the Speedwell, complained that his ship was so leaky that he durst
not venture out to sea in her. Upon which, they put into Dartmouth to have
her caulked. They then put to sea a second time, but when they had sailed
about 100 leagues, Mr. Reynolds alarmed the passengers again, telling them he
Bhould certainly founder at sea if he held on the voyage. So both ships put
back again into Plymouth, and the Speedwell was dismissed, as unfit for the
voyage. The whole company, being about 120, were now stowed in one ship,
which sailed out of Plymouth on the 6th of September, and after a long and
dangerous voyage, they fell in with the land at Cape Cod, on the 9th of Novem -
ber following. Here they refreshed themselves about half a day ; then tacked to
the southward for Hudson’s river ; but Mr. Jones, the master, had, it seems, been
bribed by the Hollanders to carry them more to the north, the Dutch intending
themselves to take possession of these parts, as they did some time after. Instead,
therefore, of putting out to sea, he entangled among dangerous shoals and break-
ers, where, meeting with a storm, the ship was driven back again to the Cape j
upon which they put into the harbor, and resolved, considering the season of the
year, to attempt a settlement there, and not proceed forward to the river.”
After speaking of the attempt, by Sir Richard Grenville, to plant a colony at
Roanoke Island, in 1585, and which finally failed, he concludes the passage, that
“ several other attempts were made in the Queen’s time toward a settlement in
these parts, but they all miscarried.”
Extracts from Hutchinson :—“ Gosnold, an Englishman, made a voyage, in
1602, to that part of North America since called New England, and landed on
the eastern coast, in about 43 degrees north latitude, and it is not certain any
European had been there before him. “ He landed on one of the Elizabeth
Islands, and gave them that name, in honor of Queen Elizabeth, and built a fort,
and intended a settlement on the island or on the continent near it, but could
not persuade his people to remain there, and they all returned to England before
winter.” “ King James, in 1606, claiming the territory, by the discovery of the
Cabots, granted all the continent of North America, from 34 to 45 degrees,
which he divided into two colonies, viz: the southern, or Virginia, to certain
merchants of London j and the northern, or New England, to begin at the 40th137
benson’s memoir.—notes.
degree.” “ Popham and others, patentees of the northern colony, began a set-
tlement at Sagadoc: and the next year those whioh survived the winter, return-
ed to England, their design of a plantation, beiiig at an end.” “ Whether Britain
would have had any colonies in America at this day,, if religion had ndt been
the grand inducement, is doubtful. One hundred and twenty years had passed
from the discovery of the northern continent by the Cabots, without successful
attempts; and after repeated attempts had failed, it seemed less probable that
any should undertake such an affair, than it would have been if no such attempt
had ever been made.”
“ Persecution drove one Mr. Robinson and his Church from England to Hol-
land.” “ In 1617, they began to think of removing to America.” “ The Dutch
labored to persuade them to go to Hudson's river, and settle under their West
India Company, but they had not lost their affections for the English, and
chose to be under their government and protection” “ Some of the chiefs of
them addressed the King, to grant them liberty in religion, under the great seal,
which he refused ” “ 'They laid aside the design for that year.”	•	'
“ In 1619, they renewed their application, and resolved to venture, though they
could not have a special grant from the Kinsr, of liberty of conscience.” “ In July,
1620, the principal of them went over to South Hampton, where the ships were
ready to take them on board.” “ They sailed the beginning of August, but were
obliged repeatedly to put back, and leave one of their ships behind, with part of
their company, at last.”
“ They intended for Hudson’s river, or the coast near it, but the Dutch had
bribed their pilot, and he carried them farther northward, so that they fell in
about Cape Cod, and arrived in that harbor the 11th November.” “ The harbor
is good, but the country is sandy and barren. This was discouraging, but it was
too late to put to sea again.” Extracts from Hutchinson, in continuation:—I
think I may, with singular propriety, call their lives a pilgrimage,‘ tantum religio
potuit suadere.’” “ It was-about the 8th or 9th November, before they made the
coast of America, and, falling more to the northward than they intended, they
made another attempt to sail farther southward, but meeting with contrary
Winds and hazardous shoals, they were glad to put into the harbor of Cape Cod,
determined to Winter in the most convenient place they could find. This disap-
pointment Was grievous to .them ; but, before the spring, they considered it as a
favorable providence ; they were so reduced in the winter by sickness and death,
they supposed they must; hate fallen a prey to the Indians on Hudson’s river,
where they proposed to begin a colony.” .
“ The master, or pilot, it is said, bribed by the Dutch West India Company,
had engaged, at all events, not to land them at Hudson’s River, but they were
determined on it, and earlier in the year he Would have found it difficult to have
diverted them.” “ The whole number, exclusive of mariners, amounted to 101 ;
about one fourth heads of families, and the rest, wives, children, and servants.”
" They came out to seek a vacuum domicilium, (a favourite expression,) in some
part of the globe where they would, according to their own apprehension, be free
from the control of European power.” .
I assume it, that, from these extracts, there is sufficient, as between the English
and the other European powers, for the intendment of a dereliction by them,
previous to the voyage of Hudson, of whatever right had accrued by the disco-
very of the Cabots, at least as it respects the territory westward from Elizabeth
Islands to the Delaware, and the present purpose requires no more, and conse-
quently the occupancy of the Dutch, rightful.
The historians furnish no authority for the charge of the bribe, nor even an in-
timation how this “ thing of darkness was brought to light.” The two captains,
doubtless, before their departure from Southampton, agreed on a rendezvous on
the coast, in the event of separating on the passage ; hence they must alike have
been w participants in the crime.” One of:them finally staid behind. Did he, to
disburthen his conscience, disclose it, and to show the sincerity of his contrition,
disburden himself of his share of the recompense for it ? The voyage laid aside,
always a return of premium,—indeed, may it not be asked, whether the narra-
SECOND SERIES, VOJ,. II.	10138
BENSON S MEMOIR.--NOTES.
tive, in reference to the fact, the alleged corruption is reconcileable with itself
throughout. The passage expressed, “ that they came out to seek a vacuum
domicilium in some part of the globe where they would, according to their own
apprehensions, be free from the control of European power,” certainly merits
peculiar notice, and in my view of it, may serve satisfactorily for *He inference
that these justly styled pilgrims, meritorious beyond commendation, forsook their
homes without reflecting, and not unnatural, “ distressed Jnd perplexed as they
were on every side,” there was no such refuge, as they sought to be found here,
a space unclaimed, unoccupied and exempt from metropolitan control and intol-
erance, for that their sovereign had already granted the whole of the coast, with
extensive adjacent territory, to their fellow subjects, the patentees, the merchants
of London, or the merchants of Plymot A, mentioned by Hutchinson, so that
when they parted from the shores of the one continent, it was with no other than
a general destination to reach those of the other by the most direct course the
winds should permit; and assuredly we must presume for them, they were whol-
ly unaware that the instant they landed, with intent to possess, they were, by
the law which necessarily followed them, to be declared trespassers on the pro-
perty of others.
No. IX.—Page 104.
Perhaps what is already found in the text of the Memoir, on the subject to
which this note relates, might be deemed sufficient whence to collect the whole
of the character of the Dutch Colonists; for, if not too far fetched, may not stabil-
ity, and especially as it regards communities, be considered so the greater, as
necessarily to contain or imply, every other quality, however estimable, as the
less. But it having been intimated that, although there is sufficient, and possi-
bly some may think even to spare, as to the “ cities,” the abodes of the “ men,”
the inhabitants ; still that a modicum more as to their “ manners,” would not
come amiss ; hence the few following paragraphs. The distinction between the
two classes, under the degree of knighthood, and to borrow the English terms
whereby to denote them gentlemen, or those entitled to bear arms, to show de-
scent, and yeomen, prevailed in Holland, not less than elsewhere throughout
Europe, at the period of the settlement of the country by the Dutch ; with an
exception, therefore, of those who came over in public trust, and a few more,
still capable to trace their family to a colony original of note or condition, the
others, generally, husbandmen, mechanics, or traders; and therefore, probably
not more than one, in some scores, a gentleman, in its sense as defined, and so
no other ancestry to boast, than honest parentage. It may be perceived from
the text of the Memoir, that I have not an opinion widely different as to the
English colonists—“ that however faultless their lives and fidelity, still as to
race and revenue, both alike plebeian, and not more of nobility in the one than
the other.”
Negro slavery, common at the time, to all the Colonies on our continent,
whichsoever of the European States the metropolitan—so far, perhaps, in exten-
uation. A milder form of it than among the Dutch of New Netherlands, scarcely
to be imagined. The power of the master to punish, understood not to exceed
moderate correction by stripes. Where a handicraft, there in the same workshop ;
where a husbandman, there in the same field—the slave merely a fellow laborer
with the master, “ fulfilling only the like task,”—always partaking, and alike with-
out stint, of the same fare, the fruit of their joint earnings. Still he was a slave,
subject to the will of another, his fellow man ; and assignable as the “ beast,
born to bear laborand surely not among the least of the mercies calling for
praise ; it has been given to us in these latter days to see the injustice of the bon-
dage. It can hardly be said of the Dutch, they were laborious—a more qualified
term will suit better—they were diligent; at no time wholly idle ; on the con-
trary, constant and persevering; whatever begun always sure to finish it, and
nothing ever slighted—always to finish and never to slight; not a little of con-
comitant character implied in it, and certainly the discretion “ when intending to
build, of setting down first and counting the cost.”benson’s memoir.—notes.
139
Their women, truly assiduous in what appertained to them; witness the well
kneaded loaf, than which, a not more certain sign of housewifery: and adepts in
cleansing, therefore excelling peculiarly in the dairy; hence the well wrought
rolls, the companion of the loaf; bread and butter, the boter-ham of Holland,
constituting, accordingly, the greater proportion of the solid food of the family.
The Dutch were upright and undisguised in all their intercourse, and hence,
the confidence among them with each other, entire. They were frugal. Here,
possibly, we may hesitate to commend unqualifiedly. Labor is life, the absence
olit, the absence of life ; no limit, therefore, to acquisition.
The more knowledge, the more the means of happiness; the more wealth, the
more the means of knowledge. This is earning, but the lesson to save, is to be
practised with great caution, from its almost inevitable tendency to the excess
of it, the habit to hoard. The prodigal may be reclaimed from “ waste? but
we have no instance warranting hope of the miser. That the Dutch Colonists
should be distant and reserved to strangers, and more so it differing from them
in language, would scarcely be to be censured in them ; they were, however,
wholly free from incivility or rudeness ; and certainly not wanting in hospitality.
The poor, and “ especially those of the household of faith,” indigent communi-
cants, maintained by the congregation; and duly mindful of the apostolic injunc-
tion, the Sunday gatherings for them continued to the present day. A remiss-
ness, it must be acknowledged, in them ; no provision for the education of their
youth. The prevalence of their language, for a great length of time, even after
the surrender of the Colony to the English, and their blameworthy attachment
to it, were impediments to be left to time to remove; and to which may be
added, that, prior to the close of the war, in 1763, comparatively few strangers
of British birth came to reside here. It was from a necessity, imposed on the
New England Colonists, but assuredly not detracting from the merit of it, to
train and rear, from among themselves, those who should be qualified to contend
for the faith, held, by them, the same “ once delivered to the saints.” Not so
with the Dutch. Their removal hither, wholly spontaneous; the sole induce-
ment, gain either as traders or cultivators. Their clergy, accordingly, during the
period alluded to, natives of Holland, and there educated. At the same time it
ought to be mentioned to their credit, that their first care, after providing for
their own immediate safety and subsistence, was to form themselves into con-
gregations, build churches, and call ministers.
The call always addressed to the Classis of Amsterdam, the churches in the
colonies being considered as confided to their rule and care. The Dutch clergy
being diligent as catechists, the doctrines of the mother Church have through the
successive generations, continued to be taught with undeviating fidelity and pu-
rity ; and on a marriage, and as an article of indispensable garnishment in the
house, the folio Bible was procured, literally in boards, and with clasps of brass
correspondently stout; and reading it in the family, the usual Sunday evening
employment, and, with the text, always the marginal notes, occupying the greater
portion of the pages; and still to be resorted to as a just comment. They were
temperate. Indeed, and in a word, it may safely be said of them, they were
without vice; and perhaps, peculiarly possessing a wisdom doubtless unspeaka-
bly beneath that which is from above, and, although negative, still having its
value, the “ first” or highest “ wisdom” of Gentilism, they were without folly ;
it being certain that conceit, vanity, affectation, caprice, or nonsense, in any of its
endless modifications, if ever found among the Dutch, rarely so.
Such were our grandsires, the Dutch Colonists ; their grandsires, the first in
the history of nations, who resisted intolerance and oppression, and succeeded.
No other boast here than that, it is yet to happen that their sons have failed to
prove themselves worthy of their lineage.
No. X.—Page 104.
The pales, enclosing the City Hall, have, since the memoir, been removed, and
their place supplied by a railing of iron; and, in addition, it is now farther to be140
benson's memoir.—notes.
hid within rows of trees; a proper precaution ; because should we apprehend the
effect of a view of it, all at once, might be more than we could well bear, we
may then take it piece-meal, by peeping from different points, over the railing,
through the openings ; and which will be quite enough to satisfy us* if curious to
know it, whether it actually rests on a base, or like the mausoleum, the wonder, it
is borne in the air.
I believe we are alone in the practice of embowering our public structures of
style—perhaps entitled to the very merit of having introduced it. The Dutch
Church in William street, a rare specimen of correct architecture—-rare, as posses-
sing simplicity and unity, and peculiarly appropriate for a Christian Church ;
where it is not only permitted to the votaries, but enjoined on them to assemble
within the temple ; hence the Portico of the Pagan, for the accommodation of any
to remain without, not there. This building, so creditable to us, is to be sought for
in a grove of button-wood. “ Abraham planted a grove, and there called on the
name of the Lord.” Afterward expressly forbidden to his posterity ; “ thou shalt
not plant there a grove near unto the altar of the Lord from its tendency a rule
for estimating whether we are to do or to forbear the worth of it seldom estima-
ted ; to repeat it, ** from its tendency to fallacious, hence hurtful associations—
the gloom of the shade—the gloom of the gothic cloister—-their effect on the im-
agination to pass for real solemnity of mind—the “ contemplation” of the in-
mates of the last declared “ Heavenly !” “ All the land which thou seest, to
thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever; and I will make nations of thee ;
and kings shall come out of thee ; and I will establish my covenant to be a God
unto thee and thy seed after thee.”
These promises, and the command, “ thou shalt not,” notwithstanding, the
heirs of the promises would have their groves for their false worship, untiL “ they
were smitten for it, and scattered beyond the River.” “ There have been converts
from atheism ; from superstition none, or very rare.” More of truth and force
in this sentiment, more cases where applicable, than perhaps we are aware.
No. XI.—Page 106.
" I bequeath my political opinion.” Is not this, I bequeath my political wis-
dom ? I bequeath it to my “ country.” Except writing one's own Life, can a
weakness, or vanity, beyond it, be conceived ‘l Does not the opinion resolve it-
self into this—that, to preserve the government free, you must contrive it to go
without the impulse of hire for labor. Another sage in mind, morals and relig-
ion, about of the same mould ; in science about of the same attainment; knowing
something of almost all things, master thoroughly so, of none, referred to in the
sequel, as will be perceived, and also in reference to the subject of government,
and especially as discoursing gravely about the happiness of a flock of sheep, and
their being under the care of the wolf, and their option to withdraw from it, and
take care of themselves, pronounced “ our Franklin, at fourscore, the ornament
of human nature.”
Note—suppletory to the above.
We have Franklin Counties; Franklin Towns ; Franklin Streets, Franklin
Banks ; Franklin Markets ; Franklin Hearths; Franklin Gridirons; in short,
Churches hitherto excepted, we have scarcely a genus of entity among us, with-
out a species, or at least an individual of it, and the Doctor’s name not adjectively
prefixed in memorial of his own excellence, and thereby to “ signify it as a pro-
perty or quality in the thing named;” and finally, as if to crown it, one of the first
rates in our navy, named after him ; although not bred to the sea, or ever in bat-
tle ; on the contrary, his general deportment indicated a preference for upacivity
so that it would not have been more out of the way for the administration, had
they been of a religioso sect, to have called the ship after Job, as the most patient,
or after Moses, as the most meek of men. Congress, by declaring the subjects to
furnish the names, all of them importingplace, in exclusion of person, have wisely
guarded against sectarian predilection in future.benson’s memoir.—notes.	141
Extract from Mr. Webster’s Discourse, delivered at Plymouth, 22 December,
1820, in commemoration of the first settlement of New England:
“ When the first century closed—the crepuscular light had begun to flash along
the east of a luminary ; and which was to mark the Age, with it own name, as the
age of Franklin .” The Doctor, somewhere, but as I do not, on search, find it in
either of his two Lives; the one, the little lesson-manual by himself, mentioned
in the text of the Memoir ; the other, his Biography, by his grandson, since his
decease; a compilation of correspondence and pieces, six volumes octavo ; I pre-
sume I must have met with it in some fugitive letter among those we have seen
occasionally, within the few last years, reprinted in our public papers ; “ one, and
from which to learn the others,” will, with a few brief remarks, be subjoined to
this Note.
The passage alluded to, was to the purport, that his mother told him, if he were
diligent to improve himself in learning and knowledge, he might come to be the
companion of princes; and which he conceived to have actually taken place,
when in England, the beginning of the last reign, as agent for Pennsylvania, he
was invited to the dinner given by the city of London to the King of Denmark.
Little did he dream of the more ample accomplishment of the maternal promise
or prediction, in reserve for him. Hitherto he had, and on a mere formal, or of-
ficial “ bidding” as a Colony Agent, his light borrowed, been a guest at the same
feast made for royalty; he is now, and for attributed personal pre-eminence, his
lustre his own, to be raised to the very peerage itself of Emperors and Kings. We
have heard of an Age called after Augustus of Rome; of one, called after a Lewis
of France; hereafter, we are to hear of one called after Franklin of America;
and a descendant of the heretic-banishing, infidel-anathematizing, puritan forefa-
thers of New England, who, on landing at Plymouth, as has been carefully handed
down to us for the last fifty of the two hundred years from the event, all stepped on
the same rock, presenting himself as the God-father, giving the name. The rock
has lately been weighed from the ooze, and brought high and dry ashore ; hence,
the yearly visit to it since. In European Christendom, pilgrimages may be said
to have gone into disuse for ages. But, may it not be asked, whether there is not
an objection to our taking on ourselves to have an age, and to be suspected as not
having occurred, or, if so, not fully considered ? To illustrate, by the Augustan
or Roman age, there not having been a due “ series of years, or flight of time,”
to pronounce on the immortality of the French age ; and so, at present, not com-
petent to serve as a precedent. The Augustan Age has become famous, from the
writers who flourished in it; and the name, complimental to Augustus, whose
reign the era, and to whose patronage it is intended to be ascribed, that they
were so numerous, and every of them so excelling; we however select the pa-
tron from the very ranks of the writers themselves ; and, I should not be surprised
if we were to have the whole European monarchy of letters on our backs for the
innovation, not less unclassical than incongruous. For granting we have the re-
quisite complement of them, even with the Doctor himself to spare, and of due
celebrity to pass as, and for the American Classics ; still, the specified correlative,
Regalia, prince, reign, and patron wanting, the objection remains, and we, of
course, as yet, not susceptible of an Age.
The letter, above referred to:
“ The following is a letter from Dr. Franklin to the celebrated Mr. Whitefield.
His ideas of religion- are given in a more favorable light than some have been
willing to place them. His tenets were at variance with the established faith.
No person, however, can doubt that he possessed the essentials. If charity is a
Christian virtue, then Franklin’s life illustrated it.” Thus far the editor. Now
the letter:—
“ For my own part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon
myself as conferring favors, but as paying debts. In my travels, and since my
settlement, I have received much kindness from men to whom I shall never
have any opportunity of making the least direct return ; and numberless mercies
from God, who is infinitely above being benefitted by our services. Those kind-142
benson’s memoir,—notes*
nesses from men I can, therefore, only return on their fellow men ; and I ean
only show my gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his
other children and my brethren. For I do not think that thanks and compliments,
though repeated weekly, can discharge our real obligations to each other, and
much less those to our Creator. You will see, in this, my notion of good works;
that I am far from expecting to merit heaven by them. By heaven, we under-
stand a state of happiness, infinite in degree, and eternal in duration. I can do
nothing to deserve such rewards. He that, for giving a draught of water to a
thirsty person, should expect to be paid with a good plantation, is modest in his
demands compared with those who think they deserve Heaven for the little good
they do on earth. Even the mixed, imperfect pleasures we enjoy in this world,
are rather from God’s goodness, than our merit; how much more such happiness
of heaven !
“ For my own part, I have not the vanity to think I deserve, the folly to expect,
nor the ambition to desire it; but content myself in submitting to the will and dis-
posal of that God who made me, who has hitherto preserved and blessed me, and
in whose fatherly goodness I may well confide, that he will never make me misera-
ble ; and that even the afflictions I may at any time suffer, shall tend to my benefit.
The faith you mention, has certainly its use in the world ; I do not desire to see it
diminished, nor would I endeavor to lessen it in any man. But I wish it were
more productive of good works, than I have generally seen it. I mean real good
works: works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit; not holiday keeping,
sermon reading, or hearing; performing church ceremonies, or making long
prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised by wise men, and much
less capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is a duty; the hearing
and reading of sermons may be useful, but if men rest in hearing and praying, as
many do, it is as if a tree should value itself on being watered and putting
forth leaves, though it never produced any fruit. Your great master thought much
less of these outward appearances and professions than many of his modern disci-
ples. He preferred the doers of the word to the mere hearers—the son that seem-
ingly refused to obey his father, and yet performed his commands, to him that
professed his readiness, but neglected the work ; the heretical, but charitable Sa-
maritan, to the uncharitable, though orthodox Priest and sanctified Levite ; and
those who gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, raiment to the naked,
entertainment to the stranger, and relief to the sick, though they never heard of
his name, he declares shall at the last day, be accepted, when those who cry
Lord! Lord ! who value themselves upon their faith, though great enough to
perform miracles, but have neglected good works, shall be rejected. He pro-
fessed that he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance ; which
implied his modest opinion that there were some, in his time, who thought them-
selves so good that they need not hear even him for improvement; but now-
adays, we have scarce a little parson tljat does not think it the duty of every
man, within his reach, to sit under his petty ministrations, and that whoever
omits them, offends God. I wish to such,more humility, and to you,health and
happiness, being your friend and servant.”
I give the above, as I found it in a Cazenovia paper, 1818. Another
copy appeared in an Albany paper, 1820, with the Doctor’s name sub-
scribed, and a date, as to time, 1752 ; but without a direction. A short intro-
ductory paragraph, wanted in the copy here presented, mentions it as having
been written on the fourth day from the date of the one to which it purports to
be an answer. Rather off hand. It is obviously studied. The Doctor’s art has
here failed him “ to conceal his art.” In 1752, the Doctor was in America, and
Whitefield in England, so that the suggestion of the Cazenovia editor, that the
latter was the correspondent, not possible to be true.* These two copies must
r*ln Sparks’ edition of the works of Franklin, vii. 74. may he found the letter to White-
field, referred to by our author. It bears date, Philadelphia, 6th June, 1753. In a note Mr.
Sparks says,—“ the above letter has often been printed, and always, I believe, as hav-
ing been written to Whitefield ; but among the author’s manuscripts, I find the first draft,
with the following endorsement, in Franklin’s hand-writing: “Letter to Joseph HueyJ*
—Editor.]BENSON S MEMOIR.--NOTES.
143
have been reprinted from distinct papers, serving as originals to the respective
editions. The Doctor himself, doubtless, furnished the copy in the first instance,
for publication ; abundant proof being to be found, in almanacs and newspapers,
of his readiness to comply with the rule, “ for you to know is nothing, unless you
give it to another, that he also know what you know indeed I presume there
never was a previous letter, and so the whole a fable, to be denominated the
apologue of the Doctor and his feigned correspondent—wholly new; a species of
the forensick; and the question the Doctor makes his correspondent propound
by way of challenge, is whether faith, without works, not preferable to works
without faith ? The Doctor negatur. Now, as faith without works is dead,
and so no faith ; and as works, not done in faith, are not acceptable, and so no
works, the terms explained, the question vanishes. There is, in one view of
them, a difference, material in the question, of more or less merit—if such a
question there can be ; martyrshave suffered for the faith which “ came to them
by hearing,” such the appointed means ; works, and peculiarly those specified
by the Doctor, and distinguished by him as real good works, have, as they ought
to have, the praise, and so the reward of men ; but hence, not possible the doers
should ever be called to suffer for them. The Doctor vouches the great teacher,
that the doers are to be preferred to the hearers of the word.” True, but why
not vouch him, when replying to the inquiry of his followers, “ what they were
to do to work the works of God.” The reply—“ the work of God is to believe
on him whom he hath sent.” To have cited this teaching, as it would have
been an acknowledgment of faith in the messenger, and of course, in the mes-
sage, “ that he came to save that which was lost,” would have been in the phrase-
ology of disputants, and now,from use legitimately English, a felo de se; the very
pith of the moral, or rather interpretation, of the Doctor’s fable being, man never
lost; never a lapse of him. Peculiar praise of good works, when in contrast
with faith, and especially, as in the present instance, if an entire silence, at the
same time, as to those which are evil, ever to excite suspicion, there is something
wilihy intended, and you would never have persuaded the jealous, shrewd,
earnest puritan, the pilgrim, otherwise than that, in the Doctor’s preachment
about them, he saw the very cleft track, throughout. There is a rule, “ that
what you dare not do directly, you shall not betake yourself to do it obliquely.”
Rather strict for constant observance—an avowed, or direct attack on Christianity,
not always safe. These parsons, with their lank heads, and their long prayers,
“filled with flatteries and compliments to the Deity flatteries and compliments
to the most high and all-perfect ! When the pen indited this sentence, ought
we not, in charity, to suppose an entire suspension of thought for the moment 1
These parsons, to repeat it,“ little ” and big, like their predecessors of old, at times
thwarting and troubling the philosophic Israel, a host, and not a few of them,
masters in the science of argument, the Doctor, therefore, aware, not discreet
to measure weapons with them ; the more so, as skill in eclectics to discern the
relation between premises and consequence, not his best skill. Take a sample from
his reasonings before us. “ I have not the vanity to think I deserve heaven as
reward, nor the folly to expect it as of merit, but content myself in submitting to
the disposal of that God who made me, and who has hitherto preserved and
blessed me, and in whose fatherly goodness I will confide, that he never will
make me miserable so that, because his Maker has blessed him in a state of
probation here, therefore he will bless him in a state of retribution hereafter—
how logically just the deduction ! To notice, and merely to notice, a single
expression more, and to finish. “ God will never make me miserable.” Whence
has Doctor Franklin it, that the Creator ever makes his creatures miserable I
Is not the misery of man, wholly chargeable on himself, no faith in the revela-
tion his Creator has vouchsafed him of the means to be saved from it 1
No. XII.—Page 107.
The Bank of New York was not incorporated by the legislature until 1791, a
period of six years from its establishment, during which it was a partnership, the144
BENSON S MEMOIR.--NOTES.
stockholders as partners, liable in their several persons and estates, on the notes
or bills; still doing business with like credit and like profit to themselves and ac-
commodation to the public, as afterwards. The restraining act was passed in
1804, and in the intermediate time five other banks were incorporated, and the}7
have multiplied since, to the session of 1816, inclusive, to twenty more ; and of
them a number, I leave it to every one to enquire and ascertain it for himself
where, it is believed, in the community, the incorporation proceeded not from
worthy motives, in those who granted it, or was obtained by lamentably unworthy
means, by those who applied for it—such among the effects of a law, in unnatu-
ral or arbitrary restraint of individual faculty and volition-^-that the banks have
refused to redeem their notes, among the effects of incorporation—one proof
among others, and not to be numbered, that abuse and corruption must be the
effect, whenever the government, and the more free the form, the danger of the
evil not less to be shunned, the evil itself being surely more to be dreaded, will
not be regardful to limit itself in the exercise of the powers entrusted to it, to their
simple, sole, legitimate object, Protection ; to defend me against hostility from
without, against violence and fraud fiom within, and to provide the requisite
means for me to compel others “ to render to me my own a due administration
of justice, and then only to be superadded those regulations, no term more apt
occurring, which utility, restricted in its sense, to scarcely more than the opposite
of inconvenience, and all partaking of rule, may suggest—this the whole neces-
sary ; the whole I am entitled to require from the government, and consequently
the whole it is held to afford me—this the measure between us of my rights and
its duties, and “ the law of these duties fulfilled,” the government will find it has
nothing to spare for supererogation.
Note—Suppletory to the above.
Protection against violence and fraud, and none against slander ? Nonet
Each one to be the keeper, and so the protector, of his own character. Eet him
be what he ought to be ; diligent, temperate, upright, heedful; his life u the shield
to quench the dart.” Was it ever known, that a person of character, truly so,
went to law for it ? A solecism in conduct. “ Actions on the case for words,”
still a title in our code. Protection, the sole duty of the government ? Most
assuredly—for what is government ? May it not be defined in a sentence ? The
best practical combination of private or separate rights with public or aggregate
force. Why the entire surrender of private or separate property to the govern-
ment 1 For the sake of aggregate force. Why aggregate force ? For the
sake of mutual safety. If so, then, when the government requires from me a
portion of my property, or “ substance” for any other purpose, doth it not usurp
on my private or separate volition or option, whether I will, or will not con-
tribute, and especially if the purpose partake of eleemosynary ! surely, alms,
falsely so called, if by coercion. A surrender of my life to the government; en-
titled to require from me to expose it to the forlorn hazard. The same question
occurs here, and the same answer. For what purpose ? General or mutual
safety. In a word; why the public purse at the disposal of the government; or
to make the illustration more apt, to substitute the term “ ruler ?” Because the
trust in him to bear the public sword, and not in vain, but as the means to enable
him to bear it “ as a revenger to execute wrath on those that do evil.” It has been
stated, that one branch of protection is “ to provide the means to compel others to
render to me my own.” Are not courts of justice emphatically the means?
What is a government, and however to be preferred as more free, not having an-
eniightened, impartial, efficient administration of justice? He, who, though he
have the utterance of an angel, a knowledge to understand all mysteries, a faith to
remove mountains, a beneficence toothers to the impoverishment of himself, and
the zeal of a martyr, what is he if he have not love ? h ound; noise ; nay, nothing.benson’s memoir.—notes,
145
No. XIII.—Page 109.
“In Congress—7 th August, 1783.
“ Resolved, unanimously, (ten States being present,) that an Equestrian Statue
of General Washington be erected at the place where the residence of Congress
shall be established—that it be of bronze—that the General be represented in
a Roman dress, holdings truncheon in his right hand, and his head encircled with
a laurel wreath—that it be supported by a marble pedestal, on which are' to be
represented, in basso relievo the following principal events of the war, in which
the General commanded in person, viz: the evacuation of Boston—the capture of
the Hessians at Trenton—the battle of Princeton—the action of Monmouth, and
the surrender of York. On the upper part of the pedestal to be engraved as fol-
lows : The United States, in Congress assembled, ordered this Statue to be erec-
ted in the year of our Lord, 1783, in honor of George Washington, the illustri-
ous Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the United States of America, during
the war which vindicated and secured their Liberty, Sovereignty and Indepen-
dence.” The inquiry.—Whence this Vote, or Vow, still unfulfilled % The an-
swer—according to the Memoir, the money grudged.
No. XIV.—Page 114.
Quicunque vult—the name, in churches having rituals, for the Athanasian
Creed, being the initial words of the Latin version of it. The Episcopal Con-
vention in this country, on a revision of the Articles of Religion, established by
them, omitted it; hence it no longer serves as one of their confessionals, or tests.
No. XV.—Page 116.
The Rhyme—
“ In Adam’s fall,
We sinned all.”
Qu.—Can you ever convince the scribe and disputer, that such the “ origin of
evil,” as long as their learning and wisdom fail to serve their chief purpose, to
them, to convince them how much they lack both 1
No. XVI.—Page 121.
The fact of a tradition among the Indians of Long Island, of a war between
the Evil Spirit and those of Connecticut, about the territory, and of his being
worsted, and retreating to the Island, crossing the Sound at Frog’s Point, by
stepping from rock to rock, it happening to be low water, and collecting the rocks
on the Island in heaps at Cold Spring, and, out of revenge, throwing them across
the Sound, defacing Connecticut with them, as we now see it; and then a tra-
dition among the whites, that the Indian tradition of the jpassage of the Sound
suggested to the first settlers the name for the line of rocks, the Stepping Stones,
and that the Indians whom the whites found there insisted they could see the print
of the feet on the shore, I had from the late Mr. L’Hommedieu, a native of the
Island ; and that not uncommon, even in his time, whenever a Connecticut man a
Long Islander met, and a mug or two of cider between them, to hear the jeer
from the one, and the retort from the other; so that possibly, I have, in proportion
as much fact for my episode, as Virgil, my precedent, as will have been perceived
from my motto, for the choice of the subject, Names, had for most of his—like
him, too, I have my hero, the Dutch, and have had also to distinguish, at times,
between the pius JSneas and the dux Trojanno ; witness their religious tolera-
tion for the sake of trade, and Skipper Block’s Helle-gat.
On conversing* with some who have perused the Memoir, it would seem that
an object for which the war, between the Indians and the Evil Spirit, has a place146
benson’s memoir.—notes.
in it, the lesson, the allegory, of the warfare between man and the adversary,
the enemy of his peace and bliss, and what, and whence the recruits to “ keep
his heart and mind” entire for the watching and enduring, if to hope to prevail,
had escaped heed.
No. XVII.—Page 123.
This sketch of the Indian, is from personal observation or knowledge, having
been repeatedly in the commission to hold treaties with them ; not that I have
witnessed their torments to their prisoners, or a woman the avenger of blood, or
the frog to serve for food,—the first is of universal notoriety, the second I had
from the late Mr. Staats,of the Hooge-bergh, about four miles below Albany, ad-
jacent to the river, where the scene was transacted, my informant, at the time
a lad in the family of his father there. The victim sat on a log at the shore
his hands covering his face, and his elbows resting on his knees—the woman re-
coiled twice, but urged on by the men, and with sternness, she advanced a third
time, and at the first stroke, sunk the tomahawk into his skull. She shrieked
and fainted. For the third, I might also rely on notoriety; I still vouch the
late General Schuyler and Judge Duane; the latter had it from the late Sir
William Johnson, with this addition, that not unfrequent with them to enrich
the mess with the lice, the product of their own laziness and filth. Should the
whole be conceived a little colored, perhaps venial, it being only thereby to ex-
pose, to a little more effect, the affected admiration of the philosophic among us,
of the man of nature.
No. XVIII,—Page 125.
It appears I read my memoir at the very moment; the demon having since,
not only visited Connecticut, but it is feared, taken up his abode there ; those in
opposition to the federal party, have, under a new name he has instigated them to
assume, Tolerationists, prevailed at last in the elections throughout—the salutary
habits of this people—coeval with them as a community—steady in them from
the beginning—thanks to the Puritanism of their Pilgrim forefathers, as they at
times denote them, for both the habits and their steadiness in them—hitherto
their pride—all, all, extinct!
No. XIX.—Page 129.
In addition to the passage in the text, in italics, as to the principle of the Re-
volution, the point between the Colonists and the mother country, the following
further extracts from the Note mentioned in Note No. 6 ; New Jersey, as a
distinct ground of claim, insisting on a sovereignty as derived from the Revolu-
tion—the extract:
“ Neither will any supposed change in the condition of New Jersey by
the Revolution affect the case. The Parliament, or Legislature, of the
mother country, claimed a right to pass laws binding on the Colonies. The
Colonies claimed to be entitled to like rights with their fellow subjects in Britain,
and so not bound by any law to which they did not assent, or in effect, to be
sovereign, or independent of the parliament. Attempts were made to define
the nature or extent of the sovereignty to be retained or enjoyed by the Colo-
nies, or to establish a fundamental between the Parliament and them, and they
to remain members of the empire, thereby to preserve the unity of it; all of
which failed, inasmuch as they would only have terminated in the incongruous
and futile mode of government, an imperium in imperio ; and there being no
alternative between an absolute submission to the will of the Parliament, and the
empire remain entire, and an absolute independence of such will, and of course,
or severance of the empire, the Colonists resolved on the latter. Such is the
simple principle of the American Revolution. The question was limited as toBENSON* S MEMOIR.---NOTES.
147
parties, it being between the Parliament and the Colonists, and not between the
Colonists themselves; and also as to its subject, it being a mere legal question
arising in the British Constitution.”
Note—Suppletory to the above.
Perhaps the question may more precisely be stated ; how the principle in the
British Constitution, in regard to the people, they viewed as represented in the
House of Commons, a branch of the Legislature, and so denominated when to be
distinguished from the King and the Lords, the other two branches, legislation
and representation inseparable, is to be applied to the people of the col-
onies, in their relation to the people of the metropolitan community, it not
being practicable for them to participate in the representation. Wholly
inapplicable, say the parliament; and therefore, from necessity, we must
legislate for them. Such our claim. No, reply the Colonists; there is
an alternative in the case, and rightful for us to avail ourselves of it, to separate
from you, and form representative governments of our own. Such our counter
claim. This statement of the question results in a distinct and complete issue
in law between the parties; and if so, does it not follow, that the instrument,
the formal annunciation of the independence, usually known as the declaration
of it, is misconceived 1 Instead of leaving the controversy as resting on the
merits of the claim and counter claim of right, abstracted from fact, there being
none in question between the parties, it enumerates a series of acts on the part
ot the government of the parent State, some by the King, separately, as in the
exercise of his prerogative, others as conjunctly with the other two branches of
the legislature, the whole charged as oppression, and the King thereupon de-
nounced a tyrant. Admitting them, for the sake of the argument, still they being
with intent to enforce the claim, or overt-acts of it, they ought alike to have
been resisted, even if as undetrimental, as an entry on lands to preserve a right.
As proof they would have been resisted, to take the following, from the address
of the first Congress, to the people of Great Britain. “ Know then, that we con-
sider ourselves, and do insist that we are, and ought to be, as free as our fel-
low subjects in Britain, and that no power on earth has a right to take our
property from us without our consent ”—“ that we will never submit to be
hewers of wood or drawers of water for any ministry or nation in the world
and, to add to the solemnity of the asseveration of claim, the language of the
Volume of the Book selected to express it. The whole peculiarly bespeaking
the character of the individual who proposed it, John Jay. It was not possible
for us to recede, and no calculation our adversaries would not persist. Such the
spirit of 1774, to correct the anachronism of 1776. According to the general
tenor, however, of the declaration, the actual oppressions charged in it, are
made the cause, and to adopt its diction, for declaring ourselves absolved from
all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between us
and the State of Great Britain, is, and ought to be dissolved, or in a word, the
cause of the Revolution; thereby not only placing it on other than its simple
true grounds, but also obviously detracting from the merit of it. Abject those
not resisting oppressions ; degrees more so, if the oppressor an individual tyrant.
The reptile will turn when trodden on. In short, if the statement here, of the
precise principle, or the point of the Revolution, correct, then how much of the
preamble to the declaration might not have been spared. Publicly reading it
has become a part of the ceremonial when assembled to celebrate the anniver-
sary of it. Introduced by the Tammany Society or Columbian Order, when in-
stituted in 1787. The Memoir asserts the liberty of the Revolution an " origi-
nal ” liberty. What would we think of one, entitled to hold by prescription,
still insisting to hold by grant, and have it annually publicly proclaimed as his
origin of right ? But is there not a farther, and more serious question here ;
and to be hoped hitherto not perceived ? This formula not known during the
war for the Independence. The treaty of peace put an end to the struggle.148
benson’s memoir.—notes.
Now the question: Did it not also, as from its very nature, impose it on the
parties as a mutual duty between them, an oblivion of aggression ; or, in the
diction of the divine pacificator, “ a forgiveness of trespasses V*
No. XX.—Page 129.
A Coblebs myself, and recommending the earliest search for a wife ! Is the
handy the pointer, less to be heeded, when showing the right road to others, be-
cause itself not going it 1 Neither will I suppose the adage absolete ; “ Nihil
dulcius amico monitore.”
Epitaph of Prior, the poet, by himself in the reign of William the third:
“ Nobles and Heralds, by your leave,
Here lies what once was Matthew Prior ;
The son of Adam and Eve,
Let Bourbon or Nassau go higher.”