THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WASHINGTON
A TOUR
AROUND NEW YORK
AND
MY SUMMER ACRE
BEING
THE RECREATIONS
OF
fIDr, ffeliy
BY JOHN FLAVEL MINES, LL.D.
\\
" Nothing is so really new as that which is old'^
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1893
Copyright, 1892, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
All rights reserved.
'
TO
MY DEAR SON
MASTER FELIX OLDBOY, JR.
WHO HAS BEEN THE PLEASANT COMPANION OF THESE ROADSIDE
RAMBLES AND DAYS OF SUNSHINE, AND TO WHOM I COMMIT
THE PLEASANT TASK OF WRITING UP FORTY YEARS
HENCE THE SCENES HIS EYES HAVE WITNESSED
IN OUR WALKS THROUGH THE CITY WHICH
WE BOTH HAVE LEARNED TO LOVE
THIS VOLUME
Is DcDicateO
282718
PREFATORY NOTE
THE sketches gathered in this volume were written by the
late Colonel John F. Mines for newspaper publication, and
appeared, first, the "Tour," in the New York Evening Post,
and afterwards the " Summer Acre," in the New York Com-
mercial Advertiser. From their beginning they had singular
good-fortune in engaging public attention and exciting in-
terest, and many requests for preservation of them in per-
manent form were received by their author and his editors.
After the death of Colonel Mines the sketches were found
among papers in possession of his family, and are here
presented in the order of arrangement which he had in-
dicated. The text remains after revision substantially as
it was written ; a few passages have been transferred to new
relations for the sake of congruity, a few have been reduced
to foot-notes ; duplications have been avoided, and some al-
lusions to mere news of the day have been removed. The
passage on Governor Morgan Lewis, in Chapfer XX., is
taken, by kind permission of the Rev. Dr. Dix, from a paper
by Colonel Mines in a late number of the Trinity Record.
Editorial notes are marked by the letter " L." The work has
been enriched by many pictures of scenes referred to by the
author, and further illustrations not directly called for by
his text have been introduced, that the volume may be made
Viii PREFATORY NOTE
more complete pictorially ; all of them, it is believed, will
be welcome to New Yorkers who find pleasure and pride
in the history of their city. The reader of these ingenious
and instructive papers may find it useful to identify the time
of their production as in the years 1886-90 inclusive.
JAMES E. LEARNED.
NEW YORK,
September, 1892.
CONTENTS
AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER I
Suggestions from an Anniversary Celebration New York near Half a
Century Ago A Reminiscence of the Days when Trinity Church was
New Preachers and Laymen of a Past Generation . . . Page i
CHAPTER II
An Obliterated Park Some Old Churches Departed Glories of Varick
and Laight Streets Mr. Greenough's School Riley's Museum Ho.
tel The " Troop A" of the " Forties" 10
CHAPTER III
Columbia College as It Was A Commencement Forty Years Ago
Riots that Cost Life Landmarks of Chelsea An Ecclesiastical
Romance 23
CHAPTER IV
To Albany by Sloop An Incident of Steamboat Competition The
Romance of a Convict Genesis of Fashionable Parks The " Pro-
fessorship of New York " 34
CHAPTER V
Echoes of the Streets Merchants of a Past Generation Solid Men
who Enjoyed Life Museum Days The Old Auctioneers The
Heroes of Commerce 43
CHAPTER VI
Broadway in Simpler Days Among the Old-time Theatres May Meet-
ings at the Tabernacle The First Sewing-machineBroadway Gar-
dens and Churches A Night with Christy's Minstrels The Ravels
at Niblo's . 55
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
The Poetry of Every-day Life A Protest Against the Goth My Grand-
mother's Home An Era Without Luxuries Stately Manners of the
Past Page 73
CHAPTER VIII
Ecclesiastical Raids by Night Bowery Village Methodists Charlotte
Temple's Home A Book-store of Lang Syne Old Lafayette Place
The Tragedy of Charlotte Canda A Reminder of Tweed . 86
CHAPTER IX
Eccentricities of Memory Queer Street Characters The Only Son of
a King Idioms of a Past Generation Old Volunteer Firemen A
Forgotten Statesman 98
CHAPTER X
Christmas in the Older Days A Flirtation Under the Mistletoe Six-
penny Sleigh-rides Literature of Our Boyhood Santa Claus in Our
Grandmothers' Homes Decorating the Churches ill
CHAPTER XI
A Metropolis of Strangers Some Old Mansion-houses on the East Side
Characteristics of Bowery Life Bull's Head and the Amphitheatre
The Stuyvesant Pear-tree A Haunted House 124
CHAPTER XII
Our City Burial-plots Illustrious Dust and Ashes A Woman's Fifty
Years of Waiting Three Hebrew Cemeteries The Burking Epi-
sodeSlaves of the Olden Time 135
CHAPTER XIII
Echoes of Sweet Singers Old Theatres on Broadway An Accidental
Thoroughfare Evolution of Union Square A Street that was Not
Opened History of a Church Bell 14?
CHAPTER XIV
Summer Breezes at the Battery A Soldier of the Last Century Knick-
erbockers and their Homes An Old-time Stroll up Broadway . 161
CONTENTS Xi
CHAPTER XV
Life at Eighty-seven Years Memories of Robert Fulton What the
First Steamboat Looked Like Sunday in Greenwich Village A
Primitive Congregation Flirting in the Galleries . . . Page 175
CHAPTER XVI
On the East Side The Old Shipping Merchants Jacob Leisler A
Paradise of Churches The Dominie's Garden Moral and Religious
Sanity of Old New York , 184
CHAPTER XVII
When Harlem was a Village Fishing for flounders The Canal Mania
An Ancient Toll-bridge Twenty Years After Mott's Canal and
His Haven 201
CHAPTER XVIII
The First Brass Band " The Light Guard Quickstep " General Train-
ing-day A Falstaffian Army Militiamen in their Glory Our Crack
Corps 213
CHAPTER XIX
Colonial Footprints Haunts of Washington and Howe- Country-seat
of Alexander Hamilton East Side Journeyings Old Days in York-
ville and Harlem The Beekman Mansion 225
CHAPTER XX
A Civic Pantheon First Blood of the Revolution Merchants who
were Statesmen The Disinherited Daughter In an Old Tavern . 242
CHAPTER XXI
Teakettles as Modes of Motion Two Leaves from an Old Merchant's
Itinerary Quaker Nooks and Covenanters' Haunts City Farm-
houses Up Breakneck Hill Harlem Lane in Its Glory Summer
Attractions of Manhattan Streets 259
CHAPTER XXII
The Ancient Mill at Kingsbridge Marching with Washington A Pa-
troon in the Hay-field Ghosts of Old Houses The Stryker and
Xll CONTENTS
Hopper Mansions Richmond Hill The Warren and Spencer
Homesteads Ancient Earthworks Page 272
CHAPTER XXIII
Politicians of the Olden Time Samuel Swartwout's Strange Career
Thurlow Weed and Horatio Seymour Statesmen of the New School
Harmony in Old Tammany Hall 287
CHAPTER XXIV
Public Opinion Opposed to Banks Birth and Growth of the System
The Yellow-fever Terror Personal Reminiscences Origin of
Some New York Banks Circumventing the Legislature Wild-cat
Banking 297
CHAPTER XXV
Pudding Rock An Ancient School-house A Temperance Hamlet
gone Wrong Landmarks and Memories of the New Parks Van
Cortlandt and Pelham Bay The Unknown Land of the Bronx
Rural Scenes in a City's Boundaries 309
CHAPTER XXVI
Manhattan Island Some Ancient Homesteads Work of the Wood-
man's Axe A Mystery of Dress and Architecture Block-houses
and Earthworks A Sacred Grove 322
CHAPTER XXVII
An Unexplored Region Traces of Cowboys and Hessians Lords of the
Manor Through a Glass Darkly Old Homes and Haunts . . 336
CONTENTS Xiii
MY SUMMER ACRE
CHAPTER I
Felix Oldboy's Hot Weather Home On the East River, Facing Hell
Gate A Stately Mansion of Seventy-five Years Ago Solitude in the
City Page 349
CHAPTER II
The Dark Phantom which Dogged a Postman's Feet A Garden Calen-
dar Notes of the Farm Acre 358
CHAPTER III
The New World Venice Panorama of East River Islands A Lovely
Water Journey An Old-time Sheriff in his Home .... 365
CHAPTER IV
Happiness in a Canal-boat Pulpit Criticisms The Story of Ward's
Island In the Days of the Redcoats 373
CHAPTER V
Manhattan Birds and Fishes Feathered Denizens of Hell Gate Pri-
meval Haunts on the City's Islands A Matter of Piscatorial Con-
science 381
CHAPTER VI
The Battle Story of the East River Monuments of Revolutionary
Days A Defeat at Randall's Island The Patriotism that Clustered
about Hell Gate Catching a Snook 390
CHAPTER VII
Panorama of Ancient East River Homes A Low Dutch Farm-house
At Turtle Bay Farm The Grove in the Woods Old Graves at
the Water-side 403
CHAPTER VIII
The Hell Gate Colony Glimpses of East River Homes St. James's
Church The Astor Country-house Where Irving wrote "Astoria"
The Home of Archibald Gracie New York and its Visitors 420
XIV CONTENTS
CHAPTER IX
Unsolved Problems of Life The Old Post -road and its Hell Gate
Branches Homes of Merchant Princes Manhattan's Biggest
Tree Page 435
CHAPTER X
A Glance at Harlem The Lesson of the Woodpecker A Great Mill-
pond that has Disappeared The Otter Track and Benson's Creek
Grist-mills on Third Avenue Old Dutch Homes and Names . 447
CHAPTER XI
Rambles Around Harlem In My School-boy Days Early Settlers and
Their Homes An Interior View The Stage-coach Era A Village
Alderman of the Olden Time 459
CHAPTER XII
Indian Raids and Massacres A Roll of Honor The Old Dutch
Church St. Andrew's Parish Days of Pestilence and Death . 477
CHAPTER XIII
Wrestling with Harlem Genealogies Changes in Old Dutch Names
The Village Patentees and Their Descendants Governor Nicolls
Changes the Name to Lancaster The Ancient Ferry-man and His
Fees 495
CHAPTER XIV
Criticised by a Crow Farewells to the Old House by the River Con-
vinced that One Acre is Enough An Old-time Harlem Letter Our
Family Dinner The Last Night of ' ' My Summer Acre " . . 508
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Inauguration of President Washington Frontispiece
Trinity Church 3
Trinity Church (second edifice) 5
St. John's Chapel and Park 13
The French Church in Pine Street 15
Riley's Fifth Ward Hotel 18
Statue of the Earl of Chatham 19
Fort foot of Hubert Street 20
The Jersey Prison Ship 22
The General Theological Seminary 23
Columbia College in 1850 25
The Moore House 32
Old Fire Bucket - . 33
King's Bridge 35
Map of New York, 1782 37
The State Prison 39
The Kennedy, Watts, Livingston, and Stevens Houses .... 45
View in New York, 1769 48
The Jail (now the Hall of Records) 51
Seal of New York City 54
St. Paul's Chapel 58
The Burning of Barnum's Museum 6r
Washington Hall 63
The Residence of Philip Hone, Broadway near Park Place ... 67
Lispenard Meadows 72
The Federal Hall in Wall Street 74
City Hall Park, 1822 81
St. George's Church, Beekman Street 89
Grave of Charlotte Temple 92
Grave of Alexander Hamilton 94
The Fire of 1835 99
"The Race" 107
XVI ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Illumination in New York on the Occasion of the Inaugura-
tion of President Washington 119
Copper Crown from Cupola of King's College 123
The Walton House in Later Years 125
Doorway in the Hall of the Walton House 127
An Old Goose-neck Engine 129
The Stuyvesant Pear-tree 134
Coenties Slip in the Dutch Times 136
Tomb of Albert Gallatin 138
Tomb of Captain Lawrence 140
Grave of George Frederick Cooke . . 142
\Vebb's Congress Hall, 142 Broadway 149
Masonic Hall 152
The Middle Dutch Church 160
The Fort at the Battery 163
The Old McComb Mansion 165
Trinity Church (first edifice) 168
Ruins of Trinity Church ..... 170
City Hotel, Broadway, 1812 172
Monument to General Montgomery 173
Sir Peter Warren's House, Greenwich Village 177
The Clermont 179
In Broad Street 185
No. 2 Broadway, 1798 188
Fraunce's Tavern, Broad and Pearl Streets 190
The Stadt Huys 191
North Dutch Church, Fulton Street 193
Presbyterian Church, Wall Street 194
Methodist Church, John Street 195
Lutheran Church, William and Frankfort Streets 196
The BricH Church, Park Row 197
View of New York from the North-east 202
View of New York from the South-west 203
Mill Rock Fort 207
Shakespeare Tavern 214
View of New York Bay from the Battery, 1822 221
Apthorpe Mansion, Bloomingdale 226
The Jumel Mansion 230
The Hamilton House 233
The Gates Weeping Willow, Twenty-second St. and Third Ave. . 235
1!
ILLUSTRATIONS xvii
PAGE
Van der Heuvel (afterwards " Burnham's " House) 237
Fort Clinton, at McGowan's Pass 239
The Beekman House 240
Fire in Olden Times, from a Fireman's Certificate 241
Fort George, from the Water Front of the Present Battery . . . 243
Plan of Fort George, Battery 245
The Royal Exchange, Broad Street 247
A Plan of the City of New York, from an Actual Survey, 1728 . 248
Foot of Wall Street and Ferry-house, 1629 252
Foot of Wall Street and Ferry-house, 1746 253
The Sugar-house, Liberty Street 255
Sugar-house in Liberty Street 258
Pearl Street House and Ohio Hotel 261
The Independent Battery, Bunker Hill 271
Phillipse Manor-house f 273
Washington House, foot of Broadway 276
The Stryker Homestead 278
Richmond Hill .... 280
Map of the Fortifications around New York, 1814 283
Tammany Hall, 1811 293
Tammany Hall in Later Times 295
Old Walton House in 1776 299
Tontine Coffee-house 301
Manhattan Water-works, Chambers Street 303
Van Cortlandt's Sugar-house 308
Van Cortlandt Manor-house 317
Distant View of the Palisades from Van Cortlandt Park . . . .319
Petersfield, Residence of Petrus Stuyvesant ........ 323
Claremont 327
House of Nicholas William Stuyvesant 331
Block-house Overlooking Harlem River, 1860 332
Flag-staff, Fort Washington 334
Plan of Fort Washington 335
Confluence of Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Hudson 337
The Lane in Van Cortlandt Park 341
Van Cortlandt Manor-house 343
New York from Brooklyn Heights, 1822 353
An Old-time Fire-cap 357
Dutch Houses , 363
Pulpit, St. Paul's 375
xviii ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Mill Rock 377
Reservoir 385
Kip's House 393
Plan of New York Island and Part of Long Island, showing the po-
sition of the American and British Armies, August 27th, 1776 . 395
Turtle Bay 396
Old Storehouse at Turtle Bay 397
Tower at Hallett's Point 397
Fort Stevens and Mill Rock 398
Fort Clinton and Harlem Creek 399
Fort Fish 401
Mechanics' Bell-tower 405
The Walter Franklin House 407
Jacob Harsen House 408
Jacob Arden House 411
The Beekman Greenhouse 414
Colonel Smith's House 415
Richard Riker's House 422
Atlantic Garden, No. 9 Broadway 427
The Gracie House 432
Hell Gate Ferry 437
Monument to Thomas Addis Emmet 441
I and 3 Broadway in 1828 443
A Dutch House 446
View from Mount Morris 451
Courtney's (Claremont) from Harlem Tower 455
Head over Window of the Walton House 458
The Rotunda, City Hall Park 461
McGowan's Pass in 1860 468
Works at McGowan's Pass, War of 1812 470
Bull's Head Tavern, on the Site of the Bowery Theatre .... 472
Rose Street Sugar-house 473
The Old Federal Hall before Alteration 481
King's College 485
The Federal Hall on Wall Street 491
An Old Advertisement 494
The Exchange, foot of Broad Street 499
Old Bridge and Dock at the Whitehall Slip 5<>5
Broad Street and Exchange Place, about 1680 513
Tomb of William Bradford, Trinity Church-yard 518
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER I
SUGGESTIONS FROM AN ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION NEW YORK NEAR
HALF A CENTURY AGO A REMINISCENCE OF THE DAYS WHEN
TRINITY CHURCH WAS NEW PREACHERS AND LAYMEN OF A PAST
GENERATION
I AM not a very old boy, but already the events
of years gone begin to stand out with a vividness
which does not belong to these later days, and I find
myself more than eager to recall them.
In passing Trinity Church on a soft June morning
of 1886, 1 found the services of Ascension Day in prog-
ress, and this brought back the recollection of the part
I had taken in the consecration services that were held
there forty years ago that day. I was then one of the
foundation scholars of Trinity School. This amply
endowed academy held its sessions in a large building
on Varick Street, near Canal, and numbered 150 pu-
pils. Its rector was the Rev. William Morris, LL.D.,
a stalwart graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and a
rigid disciplinarian. Solomon's rod in his hands meant
something. On that eventful day he marshalled his
pupils in the school, and then, placing himself at the
2 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
head in Oxford cap and resplendent silk gown, marched
them down Broadway to the Globe Hotel, where the
procession was formed.
The boys led the van in the stately march to the
church. Then followed theological students, vestry-
men, and a long line of clergymen, ending with the
Bishop of the diocese, Dr. Benjamin T. Onderdonk.
At the chancel rail we stopped, opened ranks, and the
rest of the procession passed up the broad centre aisle
between our lines, reciting the grand psalm of conse-
cration, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates!" Of the
long service that followed I remember only the read-
ing of the first lesson by Dr. Morris the consecration
prayer of Solomon's Temple and at this lapse of
time I can still hear his sonorous voice repeating its
magnificent petitions. Dr. Hodges presided at the
organ, and he had prepared for the occasion an ap-
parently interminable " Te Deum," which I had the
pleasure of learning when I became a member of the
choir.
The consecration of Trinity Church was a great
event in New York, and gave rise to no end of discus-
sion. It had been darkly whispered in private circles
that some of the parish clergy intended to " turn their
backs upon the people," as they all do now, and the
public were ready to protest against the innovation.
Up to that time the chancel arrangements that existed
in St. John's Chapel, where I usually attended church,
had been the prevailing ecclesiastical fashion. A cir-
cular chancel rail surrounded a wooden structure com-
posed of a reading-desk below and pulpit above, and
with a little square white wooden altar in front of the
desk in which prayers were read. Into this desk each
TRINITY CHURCH
afternoon two clergymen, one arrayed in a surplice
and the other in a black silk gown, would shut them-
selves, carefully closing the door, apparently from the
fear that one of them might fall asleep and tumble
out. At the proper time the black -robed minister
would go out and reappear in the pulpit, while his
companion apparently enjoyed a nap. But in the
4 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
new Trinity Church only the altar was to stand within
the railing. The pulpit was to be outside and oppo-
site to the prayer- desk. This was a change, indeed.
But when it was understood that a brazen eagle was
to support the Bible from which the lessons of the
day were to be read, criticism took up the cudgels and
went to work. Bishops and sectarian preachers, lay-
men and professors, sought the columns of the news-
papers to vent their opinions, and the liveliest kind of
a controversy was waged for a while. It ended in a
laugh, when a bogus letter from Bishop Chase of Illi-
nois was published, in which he was made to say that
he knew nothing of the merits of that particular eagle,
but if they would fill his pockets with good golden
American eagles for the benefit of Jubilee College, he
would be content to drop all controversy.
As the son of a clergyman it was my good- fortune
to know all the eminent clergymen of that day at
least, to know them as an observant boy does. Our
family were ardent supporters of Bishop Onderdonk
through all his troubles: he had a patriarchal way with
us children which seemed to leave a benediction be-
hind him. Dr. Berrian, rector of Trinity Parish, was
personally all kindness, but I thought him the poorest
preacher I was compelled to hear. It was said of the
good old man that when a country clergyman, half
starved on a salary of $500, came to him and asked
his influence to get him another charge, he remarked,
" I do not see why you young clergymen want to
change so often. Why, I have been in Trinity Church
forty years, and never have thought of leaving." A
poor preacher, he was a fine executive officer. His
assistants were courtly Dr. Wainwright, who had the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
5
famous newspaper con-
troversy with Presby-
terian Dr. Potts on the
text, "A Church with-
out a bishop, a State
without a king;" Dr.
Higbee, an eloquent
Southerner, scholarly
Dr.Ogilby,and Dr. Ho-
bart, son of a former
bishop of New York.
Dr. Higbee was the
favorite in the pulpit,
TRINITY CHURCH
[The second edifice, erected in 1788]
and divided his preaching laurels with Dr. Tyng, who
had recently come to old St. George's, in Beekman
Street, to succeed Dr. Milnor, and Dr. Whitehouse of
St. Thomas, afterwards called to be Bishop of Illinois.
6 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
These clergymen were all present at the consecra-
tion of Trinity Church ; and there were many other
famous divines there also, including Dr. Thomas House
Taylor, rector of the new Grace Church, at the head
of Broadway; Dr. Lyell, rector of Christ Church, in
Anthony (now Worth) Street ; Dr. Haight, the able
theologian who presided over All Saints', in Henry
Street, and who subsequently declined the mitre of
Massachusetts ; Dr. Creighton, of Tarrytown,who might
have succeeded Bishop Onderdonk, had he so desired ;
Drs. Potter, Vinton, Cutler, Duffie, etc. Chief among
the bishops who were present was Bishop Doane, of
New Jersey, who looked every inch the prelate in his
robes, and who, in my judgment, was the finest orator
in the Church.
Speaking of pulpit orators recalls an anecdote which
I caught as a boy from the lips of confidential clerical
critics. At one time Drs. Onderdonk, Wainwright,
and Schroeder were the three chief preachers in Trin-
ity Parish, and a witty layman undertook to give the
style of the dogmatic Onderdonk, flowery Schroeder,
and courtly Wainwright, as exemplified in brief ser-
mons on the text " Two beans and two beans make
four beans," somewhat as follows : Dr. Onderdonk
loquitur: " The Church in her wisdom has decreed
that if two beans be added unto two beans, the prod-
uct shall be four beans; and if any self-sufficient mor-
tal shall presume to question this conclusion of the
law and the prophets, together with the canons, let
him be anathema." Dr. Schroeder, after enunciating
his text, was supposed to wake at sunrise, wander into
the dewy fields, and pluck one pearly bean after an-
other, and finally go into ecstasies over the quartet of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 7
shining beauties which he held in his hand. But the
point of the satire was reached in Dr. Wainwright's
case, who was made to say : " It has generally been
conceded, and nowhere that I know of denied, that if
two beans be added unto two beans, their product
shall be four beans. But if there be in this intelligent
and enlightened audience any who may venture to
have conscientious doubts upon the subject, far be it
from me, my brethren, to interfere with such a per-
son's honest convictions."
Dr. Wainwright was a cold, didactic preacher in his
parish pulpit, but when elected bishop he astonished
everybody by warming up into an earnest evangelist,
and he died universally regretted. Bishop Onderdonk
passed away under a cloud which had hung over him
for many years, and whose gloom was never dissipated.
At one time Dr. Schroeder was the favorite preacher
of the city, and it was said of him that if you wanted
to know where Schroeder preached on a Sunday, you
had only to follow the crowd. But his fame was eva-
nescent, and when he resigned in a pet he was aston-
ished to find that his resignation was accepted by the
vestry of Trinity, and was still more astonished to find
himself a failure when he attempted to set up a church
of his own. The building he reared faces Lafayette
Place on Eighth Street ; afterwards it was for some
time occupied by St. Ann's (Roman Catholic) con-
gregation, and has recently proved a failure as a
theatre.
Forty years ago the vestrymen of Trinity Parish
were a famous race of men. Philip Hone, the most
courtly Mayor that New York ever had, was one of
them. Major-general Dix, Cyrus Curtiss, John J.
8 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Cisco, Major Jonathan Lawrence, of the Revolutionary
Army, and other men of note were of the number.
Our seat in St. John's Chapel was two pews behind
General Dix, and I used to see the present rector of
Trinity Parish there a slender, spectacled youth of
severely studious aspect, whom I never remember to
have seen smiling except when a strange minister in
the reading-desk fell sound asleep and failed to be
awakened by the retiring congregation. The families
of Gen. Alexander Hamilton and Gen. Philip Schuyler
were also attendants, as well as those of Dr. Hun-
ter, General Morton, Philip Lydig, Dr. Green, Rob-
ert Hyslop, Oscar Smedberg, Lewis Delafield, and
Elias G. Drake. They have beautified the chancel
end of St. John's Chapel since those days, but they
have not improved much on the contents of the
pews.
The ecclesiastical chronicle of Trinity Church in
1846 would be incomplete without mention of David
Lyon, the stalwart sexton, whose robust presence was
a standing terror to the small but mischievous boys of
the choir. David was an institution. Proud of the
church building committed to his care, he grudged the
hours he was compelled to spend away from it. His
management of the consecration procession was a
miracle of unostentatious energy. The clergy always
treated him as a friend, and he deserved their confi-
dence. In after-years I gratified a laudable ambition
by bestowing half a dollar on David for permitting me
with a friend to mount up the steeple.
The New York of forty years ago was a different
community from what it is now. When Dr. James
Milnor, rector of St. George's, in Beekman Street, died.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 9
the city newspapers turned their column rules and
went into mourning. The dead preacher had resigned
his seat in Congress to enter the ministry. The Cou-
rier and Enquirer published the controversial letters
between Dr. Potts and Dr. Wainwright, and made a
great sensation out of it. The reason for this neigh-
borly state of affairs was that the city had then devel-
oped only the rudiments of its present glory. People
of wealth still clustered about the Battery and Bowl-
ing Green, or built solid up-town homes of brick on
Bond, Bleecker, and Great Jones streets, or facing
Washington Square. The rector of Trinity kept open
house with his wife and three handsome daughters at
No. 50 Varick Street, opposite St. John's Park, which
was then the most aristocratic quarter of the city.
Dr. Wainwright lived in Hubert Street and Dr. Hig-
bee in Chambers Street. The residence of Bishop
Onderdonk was in Franklin Street, between Church
Street and West Broadway. Trinity, St. Paul's, and
St. John's had large and fashionable congregations,
who lived within walking distance of the churches,
and the Battery had a highly select circle of fre-
quenters, and was the starting-point of many a love-
match among Knickerbocker circles. Fourteenth
Street was far up-town. The site of the Fifth Avenue
Hotel was vacant lots roughly fenced in with boards.
Stages crept along leisurely every hour to the pleasant
rural hamlets of Yorkville, Harlem, Bloomingdale, and
Manhattanville ; and, strange as it may seem, honesty
was so much the rule that people who rode in Kipp
and Brown's stages were allowed to pay their fare at
the end of the ride, instead of being compelled to
stand and deliver at the start,
IO A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER II
AN OBLITERATED PARK SOME OLD CHURCHES DEPARTED GLORIES
OF VARICK AND LAIGHT STREETS MR. GREENOUGH's SCHOOL
RILEY'S MUSEUM HOTEL THE "TROOP A" OF THE "FORTIES"
AT the time when the present century was born a
wide sandy beach extended from the foot of Duane
Street to the mouth of the estuary by which the brook
that ran from the Collect Pond, at the present site of
the Tombs, through Canal Street, issued to the Hud-
son River. The adjacent land, sandy for the most part
and barren, was laid out in streets and dotted here and
there with the comfortable homes of solid burghers.
The infant city had just recovered from the untoward
effects of its long occupation by the British troops and
the removal of the seat of Government, and, mindful
of this progress, Trinity Church began, about ninety
years ago, the erection of the handsome and commodi-
ous church known as St. John's Chapel, located on
Varick Street so named after one of the early Mayors,
who was also an officer in the Revolutionary Army.
The chapel was so large and situated so far up-town
that the neighbors all wondered when the time would
come that a congregation would be found to fill its
pews.
In front of the chapel a wide beach of sand, unshaded
by a tree, stretched down to the river. In order to
attract settlers to the neighborhood, the vestry of
Trinity Parish, to which most of the adjacent land be-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK II
longed, determined to lay out a large square directly
in front of the chapel as a private park, for the benefit
of those who should build homes fronting upon it.
Trees were planted, broad gravelled walks laid out,
flower-beds and vases of shrubbery set at intervals, a
greensward was cultivated, and the wilderness was
made to blossom as the rose. Thus was St. John's
Park born. It was a thing of beauty in its day. " Old
Cisco," who had been a slave in the family of that
name, was made its keeper, and warned to keep a sharp
eye upon the boys of the period. The park became a
paradise for birds ; robins and wrens and bluebirds
abounded, and the Baltimore oriole hung its nest on
the branches of the sycamores.
The loveliness of St. John's Park soon attracted
many of the best citizens of the young metropolis to
its vicinity. They reared substantial houses of brick,
plain on the outside, but luxuriously furnished within,
and in the gardens they built cisterns and sank wells.
The city had no water-works, but at every convenient
corner they dug and found water, and erected wooden
pumps. There was wealth enough on the square to
pay for all these improvements, and most of the names
of the householders had been known in colonial days.
The families of Alexander Hamilton, General Schuyler,
and General Morton were among them, as were also
the Aymars, Drakes, Lydigs, Coits, Lords, Delafields.
Randolphs, and Hunters. They owned their houses,
and had their own keys to the massive gates of the
park, from which all outsiders were rigorously excluded.
The neighborhood formed an exclusive coterie, into
which parvenu wealth could find no passport of ad-
mission.
12 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
There was no trouble now to gather a congregation
that filled St. John's Chapel. Indeed, there arose a
demand for other churches in the neighborhood. The
Presbyterians erected a house of worship on Laight
Street, at the corner of Varick, facing the park, and
here for for a number of years the Rev. Dr. Samuel
H. Cox ministered. He was the inveterate foe of
slavery, and when the abolition troubles began and
developed into riots that threatened life and proper-
ty, the congregation took alarm, Dr. Cox resigned his
charge, and they called as their pastor the Rev. Flavel
S. Mines, a Virginian, who a few years subsequently
became an Episcopal clergyman, and was followed
into the church by so many of his congregation as
practically to end its existence. Both of Dr. Cox's
sons became Episcopal clergymen also, and one of
them is now Bishop of Buffalo. Roe Lockwood, the
publisher, Henry A. Coit, Daniel Lord, and Mr. Ay-
rnar, the great shipping merchant, were elders and
pillars of the flock ; but the one of all others whom
the children loved most was " Grandma " Bethune,
mother of the distinguished divine of that name. In
the closing years of her life she used to gather a class
of forty or fifty children at her home every Sunday,
and we were all eager to go and sit at the feet of the
dear old lady.
The late Charles F. Briggs, well known in journalism
years ago, and the " Harry Franco >v of the past genera-
tion of novelists, used to attend Laight Street Church
very often, and in the congregation were a bevy of his
pretty cousins, daughters of a famous ship-owner of
that day one of the Marshalls. It was long before
the dawn of aesthetic taste ; art was looked upon in
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 15
solid commercial circles as the luxury of idle hours,
and the profession of artist as a mere excuse for lazi-
ness. No merchant would have dreamed of allowing
his daughter to marry " a painter." Yet a young art-
ist had dared to avow his love to the prettiest of the
above-named bevy of young girls, and she had boldly
ventured to say that she loved him in return and in-
tended to marry him. Society was shocked. It mat-
tered not that the young man had talent (and, indeed,
eventually he made a name for himself that all de-
lighted to honor) ; society drew the line at artists, and
did not recognize them as eligible. One day, as Mr.
Briggs entered the house, the entire chorus of its
women threw themselves upon him and begged him
to remonstrate with Emily and save the family honor.
" The family honor," said Briggs, with the gruffness he
assumed on such occasions, and that was only relieved
by a telltale twinkle of the eye ;
" what has Emily been doing
now?" " Doing !" shrieked the
chorus, u she's going to disgrace
us all by marrying an artist."
" Pooh !" came the quick reply,
'* he isn't enough of an artist to
1 ., ,1 f J '. M'Hit frKKNLH CHUKC
make it anything of a disgrace. ' STREET
The women folk were indignant
at his apparent indifference, but when the sibylline
utterance of Briggs was carried to the father, he was
so amused by it that he withdrew his opposition to
the marriage.
Other churches were scattered about in the vicinity
of the park. There were Methodist houses of worship
in Duane and Vestry Streets; a Dutch Reformed
THE FRENCH CHURCH IN PINE
16 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
church in Franklin Street; a Presbyterian church in
Canal Street, and the portly white marble edifice of
the old Huguenot Congregation that had emigrated
from Pine Street to the corner of Church and Frank-
lin, and had united its destinies with the Episcopalians.
These churches have either disappeared or have fol-
lowed the exodus of the church-going population up-
town. They were practically put hors de combat when
St. John's Park was obliterated from the city map. It
was a cruel act. In my eyes it seemed an outrage
wholly unjustifiable. The only public execution I
ever witnessed was the slaying of those great trees
under which my sisters and I had played, and I would
as soon have seen so many men beheaded. A fatal
fascination drew me to the spot. I did not want to
go, but could not help going out of my way to pass it
by. The axes were busy with the hearts of the giants
I had loved, and the iron-handed carts went crashing
over the flower-beds, leaving a trail of death. The
trees lay prone over the ploughed gravel-walks, and a
few little birds were screaming over their tops, bewail-
ing the destruction of their nests. It was horrible.
As I looked upon the scene I knew how people must
feel when an army passed over their homes, leaving
desolation in its wake. It boots not to ask who was
at fault for blotting out this oasis. There are some
who do not want to know, because they do not want
to withhold forgiveness from the barbarians. If the
pretty little garden, fragrant with so many memories
of old loves and domestic joys, had given place to a
block of homes, it would not have been so bad ; but
to rear in its place a coarse pile of bricks for use as a
freight depot, to make it a centre of ceaseless noise
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK I/
and riot, was to create in an earthly paradise the
abomination of desolation.
Many years ago, previous to the outbreak of the
war with Mexico, Jeremiah J. Greenough had a small
select school at 82 Franklin Street, and when a very
small boy I attended it. Among the pupils were Col.
H. S. Olcott, the American apostle of Buddhism;
George De Forest Lord, Bowie Dash, and Dr. George
Suckley, who was chief surgeon of Gen. Benjamin F.
Butler's army corps. Mr. Greenough wielded the ruler
and rattan with considerable force and persistency, but
he was more than rivalled by Dr. Morris, of Trinity
School, and Mr. William Forrest, who had a large acad-
emy for boys on Franklin Street, west of Church. It
was always a point of dispute between the pupils of
these latter institutions as to whether " Billy " Forrest
or " old Morris" could whip the most boys in a day.
There are those who still lament the disappearance of
the good old race of school-masters. Who knew them
in the flesh fail to join in the lamentation.
On our way to and from Mr. Greenough's modest
temple of literature we used to pass a structure that
had far more interest for us than the halls of Congress,
or of the Montezumas either. It occupied the west
corner of West Broadway and Franklin Street, and
was widely known to fame as Riley's Fifth Ward
Museum Hotel. Its interior was the prototype of the
modern bric-a-brac " saloon," with its paintings from
the Paris Salon, except that there was nothing on the
walls or in the glass cases which stood on all sides of
the main room, which was reached by an ample flight
of stairs and were always open to inspection, that a
child might not look at and inquire about. That was
i8
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
a wonderful room indeed. It held original portraits
of great statesmen and warriors, and displayed their
swords and portions of their uniforms. Among its
RILEY S FIFTH WARD HOTEL
curiosities were a two-headed calf eloquently stuffed,
the pig that butted a man off the bridge, one of the
Hawaiian clubs that dashed out the brains of Captain
Cook, Tecumseh's rifle, a pipe that General Jackson
had smoked, and a large number of genuine relics of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
STATUE OF THE EARL OF
CHATHAM
the colonial days of New York.
Riley was a connoisseur in relics,
and had good reason to congratu-
late himself on his collection. He
liked to have appreciative visitors,
and his hotel was a model of re-
spectability.
Outside of the basement door
on Franklin Street, surrounded by
a little iron railing through which
some grasses struggled feebly for
existence, stood a relic of the past
which I could never bear to pass
without reading the inscription on
it once again. It had once been
a marble statue of William Pitt,
Earl of Chatham, placed by the
grateful people of New York on the steps of the Royal
Exchange ten years before the war for independence
broke out, and dashed down and mutilated by the
British soldiery in revenge for the destruction of the
statue of King George on the Bowling Green. The
head and one arm of the statue were broken off at the
time, and the torso was wheeled away to the corpora-
tion yard, where it lay for a quarter of a century
among the rubbish, until Mr. Riley disentombed it.
After his death the Historical Society got hold of the
statue, and retain it in their collection. It was an un-
fortunate coincidence for the Earl of Chatham that
he incurred the enmity of the British soldiers in New
York in 1776 and of the New York Aldermen of 1886.
The latter signalized their displeasure by exchanging
the name Chatham Street, which had an historical
20
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
and patriotic meaning, for Park Row, which is a mis-
nomer in its application to a street lying entirely be-
yond the City Hall Park. But in these busy days of
railroad franchises, it is too much to expect that an
alderman would devote any of his time to the study
of history.
In the early part of the century a round brick fort,
fashioned after the style of Fort Lafayette, was erected
at the foot of Hubert Street, out in the river, and it
stood there during the war of 1812 and for some years
afterwards as an alleged tower of defence against for-
eign foes. No enemy's foot, however, has pressed the
banks of the Hudson for a century, and this fort and
a similar one that
once stood at the
foot of Ganse-
voort Street gave
way before the
rapid march of
commerce. The
iJ-P. 1 -* lat ter was a des -
olate rum forty
years ago, and
FORT FOOT OF HUBERT STREET ^ school . boys
of the Fifth Ward
used to make Saturday pilgrimages there and play fa-
mous games of the period among its ruins. " How
many miles to Babylon ?" was the last cry heard there
before its walls were torn down and carted away.
But there was another demonstration in the way of
war which the boys always delighted to witness, of
which St. John's Park was a favorite centre. On
training days the citizen soldiery made their appear-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 21
ance in their Sunday clothes, clustering gloomily
around the official who drilled them with a small bam-
boo cane, and swore furiously when they marched, as
they usually did, all out of shape. They were an un-
tiring source of amusement to. the street urchins, who
guyed them unmercifully. But the militia of whom,
as quaint John Phoenix remarked, it might be truly
said that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these excited unbounded and genuine admira-
tion, whether attired in the uniform of Austria, France,
or Italy. The Highlanders, whom old Captain Man-
son, a hero of the late war, commanded, generally car-
ried most of the boys in their train. The plaids and
plumes took the eye, and the great shaggy hats carried
an impression of terror with them that made every
man look every inch a soldier. Yet of all the militia-
men of that time, "Dandy" Marx's hussars most
pleased my boyish eye. Young Marx Henry Carroll
was the Beau Brummel of his generation, and his
sisters set the fashions to the ladies. They were an
impressive sight as they walked down Broadway from
their up-town house on that thoroughfare, near Prince
Street, in the afternoons the handsome and elegantly
attired sisters leading their greyhounds by a blue rib-
bon, and escorted by their equally handsome brother
in a costume that was always faultless. The sisters
were devoted to their brother, and none of the three
ever married. Harry died years ago, and was buried
in Greenwood. The sisters lived many years, and be-
came religious devotees in their old age, bequeathing
their money in each case to a clergyman and a law-
suit. When the brother started his company of hus-
sars all the gilded youth of the city were eager to be
22 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
enrolled, and an enormous amount of wealth was cov-
ered by their brilliant jackets. They were a dashing
squad, but grew tired of the sport after a while and
disbanded. " Troop A" will find it difficult to outshine
u Dandy " Marx's men.
At the foot of Canal Street a little brook from the
Lispenard meadows joined the larger tributary from
the Collect Pond. A short distance above, at the foot
of Houston Street, once stretched a great swamp,
through which the Minetta brook (which has given its
name to a street, a " lane," and a " place ") made a tiny
thread of silver. The Minetta was a famous stream
for trout. The fishermen angling patiently for impos-
sible bass at the ends of our wharves would hardly be-
lieve the fact, but it is perfectly credible. The brooks
and ponds of the Island of Manhattan were always
famous for their fish.
THE JERSEY PRISON SHIP
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER III
COLUMBIA COLLEGE AS IT WAS A COMMENCEMENT FORTY YEARS
AGO RIOTS THAT COST LIFE LANDMARKS OF CHELSEA AN EC-
CLESIASTICAL ROMANCE
PAUSING for a moment under the trees of the old
Theological Seminary, in ancient Chelsea village, and
marking the march of improvement in the construc-
tion of the great
" quad," with its
noble Chapel of
the Good Shep-
herd, I am re-
minded that
there is one
green spot back
in my path to
which I have not
yet paid my re-
spects. From the
door of the old
Cushman home-
stead, opposite
the east end of the Seminary grounds, comes one
of my old school-mates of that name. A freak of
memory recalls him instantaneously in silken gown, in
the old chapel of Columbia College. He was slender
then and rosy ; now he is more or less gray and robust.
His student gown would be a miserable misfit to-day.
THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
24 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
In the old programmes of public processions the
Faculty and students of Columbia College were al-
ways awarded a place of honor. Omnibuses were as-
signed for their conveyance, and they were expected
to embark in these vehicles in their silken robes. As
a very small boy, I used to stand on the sidewalk and
look upon these superior beings with envy, wondering
if I ever should arrive at the dignity of being exalted
to an official omnibus. At this distance of time I have
a stray suspicion that the students who rode in the
processions were chiefly Freshmen. Later, it was my
delight to attend the commencements and semi-an-
nuals, and the speakers had always a deeply interested
audience of one at least.
Columbia College occupied an unbroken block be-
tween Barclay and Murray streets and Church Street
and College Place. Park Place went only to Church
Street, and the street from College Place to the river
was called Robinson Street. The buildings were not
imposing, but there was a scholastic air about the
quadrangle which did not fail to inspire awe. Two
Revolutionary cannon partly sunk in the ground
guarded the gate-way ; there was a legend to the ef-
fect that they had been captured from the British by
Alexander Hamilton, once a student of the college
King's College, as it was in his day. It had been my
ambition to be graduated at this institution, but fate
sent me to an Eastern college. However, I kept up
my acquaintance with " the boys," and visited them
on all possible occasions. Here it was that my first
silk hat met an untimely fate. I had just purchased
it, and with its added dignity entered the side gate
impressively, when a well-directed kick from the stout
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 25
boot of stout Cutler C. McAllister sent a foot-ball high
in air and it came down with a crash directly upon my
new tile. A second visit to the hatter was imperative,
and I tried to smile, but I never admired the game of
foot-ball afterwards.
In those days President King was the academical
COLUMBIA COLLEGE IN 1850
head of Columbia, but Professor Anthon, " Old Bull "
Anthon, as the students irreverently designated him,
was a bigger man than all the rest of the Faculty com-
bined. It used to be said of him that he ate a boy
for breakfast every morning, so severe was his disci-
pline in the grammar-school over which he also pre-
sided. In the college class-room his powers of sar-
casm made him the terror of the careless or lazy
student. His assistant, Mr. Drisler, had then won no
26 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
special laurels. Venerable Professor McVickar was a
favorite with everybody, a gentle, landly man, whose
erudition was proverbial, and of whose kindliness the
students were prone to take advantage, even though
it were with pangs of penitence. As a boy I had met
him often, and been drawn towards him, but the other
members of the Faculty inspired me with unspeak-
able awe.
I remember attending a commencement of Columbia
College that was held in the Episcopal Church of the
Crucifixion on Eighth Street, between Broadway and
Fourth Avenue. It was soon after the Mexican War
had closed that I attended the commencement at this
church, and General Scott, tall and soldierly, was a
conspicuous figure on the platform. One of the
speakers, a son of Dr. Schroeder, rector of the church,
turned and addressed the general, who bowed in a
dignified manner to the plaudits of the audience. But
the speaker who most challenged my admiration that
day was " Billy " Armitage, whose popularity with his
classmates seemed to be unbounded. He was sub-
sequently Bishop of Wisconsin, and died in 1873, be-
fore he had reached the prime of life.
The men of that epoch were my seniors. A few
years only intervened between us, but they made a
great gulf in those days. Later I knew all the boys.
Among these were John H. Anthon, afterwards the
eloquent leader of the Apollo Hall Democracy, " Jack "
Byron, Cutler C. McAllister, Dr. Thurston, Samuel F.
Barger, the railway financier, Col. H. S. Olcott, Gen.
Stewart L. Woodford, since Lieutenant-governor and
Congressman ; Bob Chisholm, afterwards a Confeder-
ate officer; a delegation from the neighborhood of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 27
St. John's Park, consisting of the Smedbergs, Hamil-
tons, Lycligs, Hyslops, and Drakes ; George C. Pen-
nell, who lived in Chambers Street, and was popularly
reputed to have weighed two hundred pounds when
he was born (he had a voice to match, and when he
spoke his great piece " Sampson " he almost literally
brought down the house) ; a lot of quiet students who
afterwards became parsons, J. S. B. Hodges, Brewer,
Dickinson, etc. Why lengthen out the roster? There
is another set of college buildings now, with new
brands of professors, and a thousand catalogued stu-
dents. We, who remember old Columbia College in
the days when a literary atmosphere still lingered
about Park Place, and a stray milliner employed a
half-dozen pretty apprentices in her fashionable estab-
lishment on that thoroughfare, are gray-headed and
have nearly finished our story. Morituri vos saluta-
mus !
The University of New York still keeps its location
on Washington Square. Its walls recall one of the
early riots of the city, caused by an uprising of work-
ing-men against the use of stone cut by State Prison
convicts in the construction of the building. The
military were called out, but there was no bloodshed.
In my undergraduate days there was a feeling of jeal-
ousy between the University and the Columbia Col-
lege boys (I believe they all spoke of themselves as
" men," by the way), and as the superiority of age was
on the side of old Columbia, the college took airs
upon itself accordingly. Theodore Frelinghuysen was
Chancellor of the University then, if I remember, and
his name, viewed socially and politically, was a tower
of strength. I never pass the University building of
28 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
late years but I associate it with the " Cecil Dreeme "
of Theodore Winthrop (poor fellow, the promise of
his brilliant young life was dashed to pieces in the
fight at Big Bethel), which has invested the structure
with a fascinating interest.
Remembrance of the working-men's riot at the Uni-
versity induces me to step aside and visit the scene of
the Astor Place riot. That was tragedy in dead ear-
nest. A school-boy at the time, I remember the ex-
citement that pervaded all classes as to the relative
claims of Forrest and Macready. As a full-blooded
American, I naturally stood up for home talent, and
helped make life unpleasant for a youthful Londoner
in my class at school. The sensation made by the
bloodshed in Astor Place was like the opening of war
at jur doors. With a school-boy's curiosity, I was at
tl e scene early the next morning, and sought out with
eager interest some little dingy spots of red that were
pointed out to sight-seers, and the places on the north-
ern wall of the big house at the corner of Lafayette
Place which had been chipped out by the bullets of
the soldiery. It was not thought safe for my sisters
to go to Mme. Okill's school at the corner of Clinton
Place and Mercer Street that day, and I had the glory
of having visited the seat of war all to myself. The
riot left one unanswered conundrum : Who gave the
order to fire? No one desired to claim the honor of
issuing the command, and the officers of the militia
finally settled down to the conviction that the bruised
and battered soldiery began the fire themselves. The
locality was then a fashionable centre ; the slums in-
vaded it, and left their mark upon it in blood.
But to return to Chelsea. London Terrace was a
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 29
charming place of residence forty years ago, and still
retains much of its old-time beauty. A few years later
the solid men of the lower wards on the west side
began building in the upper section of Chelsea, be-
tween Eighth and Ninth avenues and Twenty-seventh
and Thirtieth streets, and this locality to this day re-
tains an air of eminent respectability, and its ample
rear gardens are a ceaseless source of comfort to the
residents. West of this settlement the city is still
unattractive. It was a wild place when I was a boy,
and the maintenance of the old Hudson River Rail-
road depot there still retards public and private im-
provements. But the river front is picturesque, and
across the stream rise the heights of Hoboken, crowned
by the Passionist monastery and church. The heights
as they were, where nature left them covered with f-r-
est trees, were still prettier, but one can be gratef 1
that man cannot mar the landscape utterly.
Two landmarks of old Chelsea remain unchanged.
At the corner of Twenty-eighth Street and Ninth Ave-
nue stands the old Church of the Holy Apostles
that is, it is old comparatively, though the painters
have attired it in a new dress of red with brown
trimmings. A generation ago the Rev. Dr. R. S.
Howland was the rector, and the late Dr. George J.
Geer was his assistant. They were excellent men,
both of them, and Dr. Geer was always good com-
pany. One of my uncles was a vestryman of the
church, and he told me the story of its foundation. A
young man, son of a great ship-builder, determined to
study for the ministry of the Episcopal Church, though
his father was not of that faith. The son persisted,
and the father made his will, cutting off the disobe-
30 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
dient son with the proverbial shilling. Ordained and
in the ministry, but cut off from the wealth he should
have inherited, the son kept on his way unmoved
but not unwatched by the father. Touched by his
consistent conduct, the father made a new will, leaving
to the once disinherited boy his entire possessions.
Then the old man died. The son divided the prop-
erty equally among the heirs, and out of his own share
built the Church of the Holy Apostles as a thank-offer-
ing. A good lesson for a church-spire to teach.
Dr. Geer was always jolly, and dearly loved a good
joke. The last time. I saw him he told me how one
day, some years before, as his sexton helped him to
put on his surplice, he noticed that the man had on a
most doleful countenance, and he asked him what was
the matter. " Oh, Mr. Geer/' said the sexton, " I wish
we might have some Gospel preaching here. This
morning the Methodist preacher at the Chelsea Church
is going to improve the flood, and to-night he will im-
prove the hanging. Can't you do it, too?" There had
been an execution at the Tombs and a notable rise in
the Hudson that week hence the outburst of ecstasy.
The sturdy gray granite tower of old St. Peter's
Church also shows no mark of the flight of years. On
the contrary, I observe as I pass it with a tourist's eye
that it has set itself off with certain modern furbelows
in the shape of turreted wooden porticos at the door-
ways, as pardonable a vanity as the fresh violet rib-
bons with which my grandmother was wont to deco-
rate her best Sunday cap. " It doesn't signify, Felix,"
she would say, " but I do like to see old folks spruce
themselves up, and somehow I always want to look
my best, even to my grandson."
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 3!
There is a pathetic strain of association with the
old church, which goes back to a day when a young
student of divinity made more noise in the American
ecclesiastical world than the whole bench of bishops.
It was at the time when Puseyism, so called, was on
everybody's tongue, and old-fashioned high and dry
churchmen considered it a mortal sin for an officiating
clergyman to " turn his back upon the congregation."
On the day when Arthur Carey was to be ordained to
the ministry, Drs. Smith and Anthon, rectors of St.
Peter's and St. Mark's churches, respectively, stood
up to object to proceeding with the service. Thence
arose the wildest kind of<an ecclesiastical circus. It
was the beginning of a bitter persecution of the late
Bishop Onderdonk, who ordained Mr. Carey, and for
a while it divided clergy and people into warring fac-
tions, and made the diocesan conventions in old St.
John's Chapel a species of theological bear-garden.
Poor Carey! He had a short, sad life. A few months
afterwards he died at sea, and when a kindly Presby-
terian clergyman, who was somewhat suspicious of all
ritualists, and knew of Mr. Carey only through the
religious press, stood at his bedside and asked him if
he placed all his reliance on his Saviour in that hour,
the dying youth turned a reproachful look upon him
and replied, " Of course I do." The clergyman said
afterwards that he had never witnessed a more peace-
ful and edifying death, and bore high testimony to
Arthur Carey's faith. It was the echo of this terrific
ecclesiastical storm, with its wild warrings of good men
and its undercurrent of pathos, that seemed to sweep
around the turrets of old St. Peter's as I passed by.
Not far from the church, and occupying the entire
32 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
block between Twenty-second and Twenty-third streets
and Eighth and Ninth avenues, stood, a generation ago,
the picturesque home of Clement C. Moore. It had
been the country-seat of his father, the second Bishop
of New York, and the grading of the streets had left
the entire block elevated twelve or fifteen feet above
the sidewalk. The cosiest of suburban homes, it was
THE MOORE HOUSE
hidden by great oaks and elms, and outsiders had only
glimpses of the loveliness of its surroundings. Here
lived the kindliest of scholars, the most learned of col-
lege professors, the most assiduous of bookworms, a
writer whose published works were held in highest
reverence by the learned men of his day. But he is
known to posterity by none of these sound claims to
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 33
reputation. A little rhyme, dashed off under this
roof, when the trees were bare of leaves and the rob-
ins had departed, and written solely for the pleasure
of his grandchildren, has made the name of Clement
C. Moore a household word wherever the English
tongue is spoken. Here he wrote the nursery rhyme
that all childhood has since learned: " 'Twas the
Night Before Christmas ;" and by this unsuspected
little pathway he mounted up to fame.
It is a pity that green fields and bright gardens have
to give place to bricks and mortar and bluestone pave-
ments ; and old Chelsea, in its prime, was a very ham-
let of roses and romance. But, after all, as my grand-
mother would say, " It doesn't signify."
3
OLD FIRE BUCKET
34 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER IV
TO ALBANY BY SLOOP AN INCIDENT OF STEAMBOAT COMPETITION
THE ROMANCE OF A CONVICT GENESIS OF FASHIONABLE PARKS
THE "PROFESSORSHIP OF NEW YORK"
" THAT was a terrible week."
It is my grandmother who is speaking. The old
lady sits by the open window in a pleasant little cot-
tage in Chelsea. Her best cap adorns her white hair,
and the vanity of violet ribbons further sets it off. A
lithe and beautiful cat is curled up cosily at her feet ;
and on the sofa, curled up in much the same fashion,
is the hostess of my grandmother, the daughter of Dr.
Cuthbert, who for half a century had a drug-store on
Grand Street, half-way between Broadway and the
Bowery.
" It doesn't signify," says my grandmother, falling
gently into one of her favorite modes of expression,
" but I shall never forget that week on the Albany
schooner. We had a horrible storm in the Highlands,
and we were all sea-sick and nearly wrecked ; and then
we were becalmed above Poughkeepsie for two days,
and it took us just a week to make the voyage. I de-
clare, I never see a schooner but it gives me a touch of
sea-sickness. I wished afterwards," she added, inno-
cently, " that we had got out and walked. And just
to think that now the steamboats advertise to carry
you to Albany for a shilling!"
She has told me often of her voyage up the Hud-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 35
son, when the country was young. The sloop packet
started from a wharf near the Battery. It sailed past
the blooming gardens of Greenwich Village ; by the
frowning walls of the State prison at the foot of Amos
Street ; beyond the green fields that stretched out
until the pretty little hamlet of Chelsea was reached,
where the gray turrets of the Episcopal Seminary
were at that time going up ; and then swept by an
unbroken succession of rural villas and manors up to
the heights named in honor of Fort Washington, and
thence looked back upon historic King's Bridge, the
KING S BRIDGE
seething waters of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and the
ample possessions of the Phillipse family and the Van
Cortlandts.
That was a wonderfully exciting time when the rival
steamboats advertised to carry passengers to Albany
for a shilling, and an army of " runners " pervaded the
streets and thronged the wharves, pulling and hauling
at the persons and baggage of the unhappy victims.
Racing was rife on the river, and there was always a
tinge of excitement in the voyage, through the proba-
bility of a boiler explosion or a fire. The wreck of the
Swallow and the burning of the Henry Clay are among
36 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
the memories of a day in which the names of the steam
clippers of the Hudson (some of which still drag flo-
tillas of canal-boats through the waters on which they
once walked as queens) were as well known as the pres-
ent favorites of the race-tracks.
There was a queer genius in my regiment named
Bickford. His hair was red, and his stride was un-
gainly, but he would have been able to take care of
himself either at the Court of St. James's or on a desert
island. In search of his fortune, he drifted to New
York at the time when the rivalry between steamboats
was at its height. Bundle in hand, he suffered himself
to be dragged on one of the boats by a runner, where
he took his bearings and laid out his campaign. When
the supper-bell sounded he seated himself at the table
and laid in a square meal. When the steward came
for his money, Bickford said he had none and didn't
know any was wanted ; that one fellow had offered to
take him to Albany for a shilling, another for sixpence,
and a third for nothing at all. So he had come along,
and supposed he was to be taken care of for the pleas-
ure of his company. The captain was summoned," and
demanded to see the fool who was travelling free to
Albany. Bickford's stolid assumption of. ignorance
was too much for the captain. " Never travelled be-
fore ? Never saw a steamboat, eh ? Well, this is fun ;
come right along." Bickford told the story in Libby
Prison to a roomful of officers he was then acting as
my orderly somewhat as follows : " The captain took
me to the' engine-room, and I was horrified at the
sights and sounds there, of course. The engineer
turned the steam and water on me, and I shrieked and
they roared. I asked the curiousest questions I could
38 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
think of ; asked them to light a candle and take me
down-stairs into the kitchen, and up-stairs into the bed-
rooms ; and they laughed till they cried. Then the cap-
tain introduced me to a cabin full of passengers as the
biggest fool he had met yet. I never let on that I was
anything but a fool, and I got a good bed that night,
breakfast the next morning, and four or five dollars
from the passengers to help me on my way. Fool ! I
wasn't half as big a fool as the captain, and they could
squirt steam on me all night, as long as I was getting
pay for it."
Queer are the pranks that time plays with old build-
ings. The State prison that<once stood on Amos Street
(West Tenth Street now) has been transformed into a
brewery. Its white outside walls alone are unchanged,
and serve to mark the locality ; but even these, of late
years, have been allied to red brick wings and other im-
provements in such a way as to take off much of their
old-time bareness. The interior is all changed. The
prison yard used to reach down to the river, and outside
were sunny fields and a wide stretch of beach. Now,
streets have been extended west of the prison site and
far into the river, and buildings cover them, while be-
yond the new river line the great iron steamships of
modern commerce nestle against the wharves. It is
half a century since the inmates of the old prison were
transferred to Sing Sing ; and the city, excepting a few
old people born in Greenwich Village or Chelsea, have
forgotten all about the former home of the convict.
I never pass by the old prison walls but I think
of a little episode that had its scene there, which
developed a great deal of human nature. A young
man had committed forgery and had been sentenced to
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
39
death. The preparations were all made for the execu-
tion, which was to take place in Washington Square,
and a large crowd had gathered, when news came that
a reprieve had been granted at the last hour. There
were many bitter expressions of disappointment from
THE STATE PRISON
the sight-seers, among whom was a boy who subse-
quently told me the story. It appeared that some be r
nevolent and active members of the Society of Friends
had become interested in the criminal; and had secured
the commutation of his sentence to imprisonment for
life. Overjoyed at his escape from the gallows, the
young man made himself a model prisoner, and was
soon placed in charge of a shoe-shop, where he paraded
up and down, rattan in hand, between the benches, and
proved himself a terror to his fellow-convicts. Virtue
has its reward. The kindly Quakers left no stone un-
turned until they had secured his pardon, and then the
devout convert was set up in a shoe-shop of his own,
where he handled the " thee " and "thou" and the
cash to perfection. At last he had become a man of
consequence among the Quakers and a man of mark
in the business community, and then he saw his op-
40 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
portunity and seized it. One day he turned up miss-
ing. He had converted all his assets into cash, had
gathered in a golden harvest by forging the names of
all his business friends, and had crowned his iniquity
by eloping with the pretty Quaker daughter of the
generous benefactor who had secured his release from
the gallows. New York never saw him again.
His career had not been without its thorns in the
mean time. The shadow of a dangling noose sometimes
came athwart the sunshine. One day he had been in
a towering passion with one of his workmen because
he had not finished a pair of shoes at the time he had
promised. He told the man he had no right to break
his promise and disappoint him. " Master," said the
man, quietly, " you have disappointed me worse than
that." " How did I, you rascal? When?" " When
I waited a whole hour in the rain to see you hanged !"
In the old Dutch colonial days the executions of
criminals took place outside the Battery, on the beach.
Under the English the scene was transferred to the
Commons, the present City Hall Park. In the pres-
ent century executions took place in the vicinity of
Houston and Wooster streets, and then on the open
ground now known as Washington Square. Criminals
were buried under the gallows in all these places, and
it is a curious fact that most of our smaller parks were
not reserved as pleasure places, but for public use in
the interment of paupers. The upper portion of the
City Hall Park was originally a potter's field, and
adjoining it was a negro burial-ground that extended
across Chambers Street. Washington Square was used
not only as a burial-place for paupers, but also for yel-
low-fever patients, and the ashes of the dead lie thick
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 41
under its green patches of sward and stately elms.
Subsequently a potter's field was opened at Madison
Square, adjoining the public buildings that once stood
there the House of Refuge occupying the site of the
Worth Monument. Fashion enjoys the lovely little
park, but little recks that it owes its pleasant shade to
the tramps and the criminals whose bones lie mould-
ering beneath the grass and flowers.
It is a grateful incident in connection with this sum-
mer tour around New York begun originally with the
idea of showing to the modern race of Gothamites
how much there is within their local boundaries to
interest and inspire them that these papers have
brought to the writer a number of appreciative letters
of encouragement. One suggests that it. would be a
good thing to tell the story of the old merchants who
lived in Pearl and Broad streets, and ,on lower Broad-
way, and whose social habits would form a striking
contrast to the club -life of to-day. Another speaks
of Washington Square in its ancient glory, when the
Alsops, Rhinelanders, Robinsons, and other solid old
families had their homes facing its elms, and not far
away lived the Grinnells, Bogerts, Leroys, Minturns,
and Livingstons. This letter recalled in one of its
suggestions a man of mark who but recently passed
away in Italy, and who, in his prime, I thought to be
the handsomest man in the city. This was James E.
Cooley, of the firm of Cooley, Keese & Hill, auction-
eers, whose home was on Macdougal Street, near
Washington Square, and who was an accomplished
scholar as well as genial gentleman. A third letter
expresses the hope that, in some future article, the
writer will " indulge us in a more detailed account of
42 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
the old residents about St. John's Park, and what has
become of them and their descendants. Take Beach
Street, for instance. There were the Parets, Robert
B. Minturn, Wm. Whitlock, the Hyslops, John C. Ham-
ilton, the Smedbergs, Tracys, and George Griffin, with
his blue side-winged spectacles, and broad shoes con-
structed for comfort. And then on Laight Street, Dr.
Wilkes, Dr. Green, the Lydigs, and all of them. Let
us hear about them all."
A writer in the Evening Post once suggested the
propriety of founding a "Professorship of New York"
at Columbia College, with the idea of imparting to the
student of society accurate knowledge of the city in
which we move and have our being. That was an ad-
mirable idea. The modern writer of press letters or ar-
ticles about this city knows in society only the very re-
cent Mrs. PotipHar and her friends. For him the old
names of the past have no meaning. Yet the Knicker-
bocker race is not extinct. It sounds no trumpets and
creates no sensations. To its charmed circle the gold-
en eagle is no passport of admission. There was a youth
of tender years, born in Connecticut, and who had nev-
er strayed beyond its borders, who was asked at a school
examination which were the principal rivers of the
world. He promptly responded, " The Scantic, the
Podunck, and the Connecticut." On the same princi-
ple the average exotic who chronicles the social doings
of the metropolis runs over the gamut of a few mod-
ern millionaires and their kin, and does not dream that
he has not done full justice to his theme. As for the
historical points that could make every nook and cor-
ner of the city a romance, they are outside of his knowl-
edge. By all means we should have the professorship.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 43
CHAPTER V
ECHOES OF THE STREETS MERCHANTS OF A PAST GENERATION SOL1I
MEN WHO ENJOYED LIFE MUSEUM DAYS THE OLD AUCTIONEERS
THE HEROES OF COMMERCE
THURLOW WEED once said to me that he regarded
the description of the thronging footsteps that beset
the house of Dr. Manette, in A Tale of Two Cities, as
the most wonderful piece of descriptive writing that
Charles Dickens had penned. He quoted, in illustra-
tion, this passage : " The footsteps were incessant, and
the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The
corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet ;
some, as it seemed, under the windows ; some, as it
seemed, in the room ; some coming, some goyng, some
breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the dis-
tant streets, and no one in sight." When I walk along
lower Broadway in the quiet night, as sometimes hap-
pens, I hear the hurry of those footsteps on the de-
serted pavement. They bring back to me the faces of
the dead the white-haired patriarchs to whom I looked
up with reverence as a boy ; the stalwart men whose
sturdy strength seemed to defy all change ; the manly
youth who bore the names that commerce, professional
life, or literature had delighted to honor. They surely
are not dead who have left such pleasant memories
behind them.
Among the thronging footsteps of those whose
memories still haunt lower Broadway are scores of our
44 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
old merchants, whose names I recall as some familiar
circumstance or legend of old business days brings
them back. It would make a list too long to print if
all could be remembered and given the honor due
them. When I was a boy the familiar names of the
street were Aspinwall, Grade, Rowland, Coit, Minturn,
Aymar, Lenox, Bruce, Griswold, Hoyt, Kortright,
Haight, Storms, Morgan, Wilmerding, King, Ingoldsby,
Broome, Laight, Dash, Lorillard, Henriques, Wolfe,
Ogden, Crolius, and Eheu, jam satis! Looked at
from this point of time, they seem to me like men who
magnified their position and strove to make the name
of merchant great. They were not above taking their
share in politics and doing their best to keep politics
pure. The first alderman elected after the Revolu-
tionary War was a wealthy shipping merchant of this
city, John Broome, who was three times elected Lieu-
tenant-governor (and the last time without opposition),
and in whose honor one of the counties of this State
was named. Since his time another merchant and
alderman, E. D. Morgan, has been made Governor
and United States Senator; but he was not a native
of the city, and brought his ambition with him from
Connecticut.
The Hall of Records, the old sugar-house on Rose
Street, and " Sam Fraunce's tavern," on Broad Street,
still remain to recall the ante-Revolutionary buildings
of this' city ; but I have heard old men tell of the time
when the east side below Fulton Street was studded
with quaint, antique Dutch buildings that had served
at once as store and home to the old-time merchants.
The great fire of 1835 swept away nearly all of these
relics of the city's old life, the last that remained being
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 47
located on William Street, opposite Sloate Lane, and
bearing on its front, in sprawling letters, the date 1690.
Gabled roofs, wide chimneys, and small windows were
the characteristics of these dwellings. Their English
successors were more lofty and much more luxurious, in
many cases aspiring to marble mantel-pieces and huge
mirrors in heavy mahogany frames, but not infrequently
retaining the wide fireplace, with its setting of tiles
that illustrated usually the stories of the Bible. A fine,
specimen of these Scriptural tiles, in blue and white,
and most quaintly original, can be still seen in the old
Van Cortlandt House, above Kingsbridge, within the
area of Van Cortlandt Park. It is to be hoped that
the Park Commissioners will preserve this ancient
structure, erected in 1748, which vividly recalls the
days when it was an outpost in the Neutral Ground,
and was occupied alternately by Hessian videttes and
patriot scouts, from whose doors Washington sallied
forth in full uniform when he began his triumphal
march to New York on Evacuation Day, 1783.
Comparatively little business was done on the east
side of Broadway below the City Hall Park when I
first began to observe that locality as a boy. There
were many boarding-houses there, occupying what had
been the stately homes of the Lows, Hamiltons, Dela-
fields, Livingstons, Ludlows, Le Roys, Hoffmans, and
Coldens. There were several hotels there also, the
Howard, Tremont, and National. But that side of
the street was immortal among boys as containing
Barnum's American Museum, and close by was the
store of John N. Genin, the hatter, who made himself
fame and fortune by bidding off at a high premium
the first seat- sold for the first concert given by Jenny
VIEW IN NEW YORK, 1769.
Lind. My grandmother has told me of the great dry-
goods store which Jotham Smith, the A. T. Stewart of
his day, opened on the place occupied afterwards by
Barnum's Museum, and of its removal to a larger
building on the site of the Astor House, where all
the ladies in town went to do their shopping. But
what are dry goods in comparison with the perennial
pleasures of the museum, where I am certain that I
had carefully investigated every article on exhibition
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 49
many score of times, and had no more doubt of the
authenticity of the club that killed Captain Cook (de-
stroyed by fire when the museum was burned, but
risen again, like the Phoenix, from its own ashes and
still on exhibition) than I had of the doctrines con-
tained in the Church Catechism ? I liked also to visit
Peale's Museum, on Broadway, opposite the City Hall
Park, but not so well as the temple of curiosities at
the corner of Ann Street. The former was the suc-
cessor of Scudder's Museum, that occupied the old
Alms House in the park, and was the first of its kind
in the city.
In the days when I was on familiar terms of ac-
quaintance with the museum, not a few of my school-
mates lived in the vicinity, in Beekman and Barclay
streets, and on the streets adjacent to the Park, and'
upon lower Broadway. Their fathers had stores or
offices down-town, mostly east of Broadway, and they
liked to be near to their business, as their fathers had
been accustomed to live before them. Business men
who lived up-town that is, between Broome Street
and Union Square rarely rode to their offices. They
walked and enjoyed the exercise. One could take his
stand on Broadway on a pleasant afternoon and call
the roll among passers-by of all the remarkable men in
town. It came back to me the other afternoon that
busy Broadway panorama of forty years ago came back
when I saw John Jacob Astor striding sturdily down
the great thoroughfare towards Wall Street. The
" Astor boys" could then be seen daily walking from
their Prince Street office, a stalwart pair, pointed out
as heirs to wealth that was supposed to be limitless,
and marvelled at as miracles of industry amid the
4
5O A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
I
temptations of money. As for the Vanderbilts, they
lived quietly on East Broadway, and the Commodore
and his brother had offices at 62 Broadway, where they
were weaving the maritime web that was to bring
them in their millions. As a rule, wealth was not wor-
shipped then. The old Knickerbocker spirit still ruled,
and demanded blood and brains as the standard of
admission to society. Wealth was an honorable and
most comfortable addition thereto, but it was not a
sine qua non.
As I pause on this lower end of the City Hall Park,
where the footsteps seem to come thickest, I recall
some names among the old auctioneers of the city
whose associations, either through school or church or
society connections, bring back forms that have long
been dust. The names are those of Pell, Hoffman,
Lawrence, Haggerty, Draper, Minturn,and Hone, and,
earliest of all, the Bleeckers. Fifty or sixty years ago
the auctioneers were commissioned by the Governor
of the State, and for many a year no one but a Demo-
crat could obtain a commission at Albany. Smart
young Loco-focos thus managed to force themselves
into solid old firms and line their pockets. The auc-
tioneer was obliged to give a bond to the State for five
thousand dollars, with two good sureties, that he would
faithfully pay the duties accruing on his sales. These
auction duties formed one of the important items in
the canal fund, and amounted to several hundred
thousand dollars. As the lists were made public, it
became a matter of pride with each house to swell
their own duties to as large a sum as possible by way
of advertising themselves. The auction houses then
centred in Pearl, in the vicinity of Wall Street. I
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 51
recall in the personnel of those firms Lindley M. Hoff-
man, the pink of courtesy, and a most devoted church-
man ; ex-Mayor Cornelius W. Lawrence, a genial and
genuine Knickerbocker; handsome Philip Hone, An-
thony J. Bleecker, who afterwards headed the list of
auctioneers, and David Austen, who, as knights of the
hammer, held the field against all opponents.
It has seemed to me, as I linger on this old battle-
ground of business generations, that our city takes too
little pride in its merchants. More is known about
our soldiers and our politicians than about our com-
mercial champions, and more honor is paid them. Yet
THE JAIL (NOW THE HALL OF RECORDS)
if one could gather up the legends and traditions of
mercantile lives, it would be found more interesting
than the history of our wars, and far more instructive.
52 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Around their old homes lingers an aroma of quiet ro-
mance which history ought to preserve. A sturdy,
independent folk, they enjoyed life thoroughly in their
own way, and made the most of it. Nor were they a
solemn people far from it. They loved a joke, even
at their own expense.
When old John Broome kept store at No. 6 Hanover
Square he had his residence in the upper part of the
same house. On one occasion, after a customer had
called, he took him up-stairs for the customary glass
of wine. Pianos were rare in those days, and the
stranger had never seen one ; so Mr. Broome called
one of his daughters to play a tune. The visitor lis-
tened with delight, but kept fumbling uneasily in his
pocket, and when she had finished the tune he pulled
a half-dollar out and laid it before the daughter. She
blushed, laughed, and glanced at her father, who
chuckled, winked, and signed to her to keep it.
Odd stories used to be told of eccentric old Stephen
Storm, who was in business in Water Street, and with
one of whose boys I went to school. He was fond of
music, and used to start the tunes at Dr. Matthews's
church in Garden Street before it was moved up-town.
It occurred to Mr. Storm at one time to learn to play
upon the fiddle, and accordingly he inserted an adver-
tisement in the papers informing the public of his de-
sire to purchase a violin. The next day the whole
colored colony of the city was in attendance at his
store with violins under their arms, reinforced by a
large contingent of foreigners. One by one they were
solemnly marshalled in, and each was invited to play a
tune. The street grew distracted, and threatened mob
law. After a hundred or more instruments had been
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 53
tested, Mr. Storm dismissed the crowd, without his
benediction, however. In the years to come Mr. Storm
never again ventured to indulge his musical taste, at
least in the instrumental line.
The name recalls the old Storm's Hotel, which stood
on the site of the Staats Zeitung building, and was a
noted hostlery in its day. Major Noah used to tell,
with many a chuckle, a story that associated the elder
Astor with the hotel. One of the old fur merchant's
book-keepers had reached the age of sixty, and was to
be retired. Mr. Astor gave him the choice of a gift of
$1000 in cash or a promise to pay his board bill while
he lived. The superannuated clerk chose the promise
to pay instead of the cash, and lived for twenty years
at the Storm's Hotel at the expense of John Jacob
Astor, who failed to find anything amusing in his
longevity.
No man was better known in New York half a cen-
tury ago than this same Major Noah. He was a man
of wonderful wit, erudition, and social and political
power. The contemporary of James Watson Webb
and the older editors, whose down-town sanctums were
fully as dreary as the dens of the lawyers and business
men of their day, he wielded a pen as keen as his wit.
It was he who, when Minister to Algiers, persuaded
the Dey to make a most favorable treaty with the
United States, on the ground that it was not a Chris-
tian nation which he proceeded to prove by reference
to the Constitution. The Dey was delighted to get
ahead of France and England, to whom he had prom-
ised to sign no treaty with another Christian nation.
But the tourist cannot linger longer with the ghosts
of the past, and so he passes on, with the expression of
54
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
a hope that the time is not distant when the city will
build monuments to commemorate its commercial he-
roes, and rescue the names of Livingston and Lewis
and Broome and their business peers from oblivion.
Some day the ghostly cadence of their footsteps will
cease on our busy streets, when we, who are gray-haired
and learned about them when young, shall have fol-
lowed also to their rest.
SEAL OF NEW YORK CITY
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 55
CHAPTER VI
BROADWAY IN SIMPLER DAYS AMONG THE OLD-TIME THEATRES MAY
MEETINGS AT THE TABERNACLE THE FIRST SEWING-MACHINE
BROADWAY GARDENS AND CHURCHES A NIGHT WITH CHRISTY'S
MINSTRELS THE RAVELS AT NIBLO'S
" Do you know," I said to a friend, recently, as we
dived into a crowded train on the elevated railroad, " I
think we take less exercise than we did a generation
ago, and are degenerating? In the matter of legs I am
quite sure the decadence must be marked. The re-
vived fashion of knee-breeches, now impending, will
find us unable to cope with the traditionary anatomies
of stalwart George Washington, who was a prodigious
jumper, and sturdy John Adams, whose lower limbs
were solid as the granite hills that stood around his
home. The art of walking has gone out of fashion
with us, and it has operated to our physical loss."
" Do you know," calmly responded my friend, " I
think you are growing old, and, as is the way with all
who cultivate a sere and yellow acquaintance with old
Father Time, are learning to grumble at the present,
just because it is somewhat juvenile?"
Can this be true ? My old friend Bowie Dash re-
marked to a common acquaintance the other day that,
judging by my reminiscences, I must be somewhere in
the neighborhood of ninety -five. As to Mr. Dash's
suggestion of age, I quite scorn it. Did not the same
ruler warm us up, anatomically and intellectually,
56 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
when we two were neophytes in the temple of learn-
ing in Franklin Street, over which Mr. Jeremiah J.
Greenough presided ? Indeed, we are both young
comparatively. Yet a newer generation can behold in
our reminiscences, as in a mirror, the day when street-
cars were unknown, omnibuses a rarity, and when, in
the absence of furnaces, heaters, and self - feeding
stoves, the boy was solemnly admonished, as winter
drew nigh, that pedestrian exercise was the best thing
to keep his blood in circulation and help him defy
the blasts of December.
Everybody walked to and from business when I was
a boy. That is, everybody except those who lived in
the outskirts of Greenwich Village and in Chelsea,
who went by stages, and except a few invalids and
octogenarians. It told against a man to pamper him-
self with sixpenny rides in an omnibus. Besides, one
always counted on meeting acquaintances upon the
Broadway promenade at certain hours, and the hearty
greetings of one's elders were worth something, as we
juniors thought. It was a physical pleasure to throw
one's self into the tide of human life that swept up
the great central thoroughfare every afternoon, and to
strike out homeward with it. The white-haired crest
upon the human wave disappeared after a while as the
club-house, the down-town home, or the political head-
quarters drew it in, and then, rosy and radiant, a re-
flex tide of feminine loveliness swept in, and the walk
became more pleasant than ever. Yes, everybody
walked in those days, and, as I grew out of boyhood
towards manhood, I used to think that the rosebud
garden of Broadway on a crisp autumn afternoon was
lovely beyond compare. The tide of pedestrians be-
A TOUR AROUND -NEW YORK 57
gan noticeably to diverge to the left at Chambers
Street, and both to right and left above Canal Street,
making decided detours towards St. John's Park and
Washington Square in turn, and growing more and
more scattered as it approached the up - town neigh-
borhood above Great Jones Street and Astor Place.
I like still on brisk autumn days to turn my face to
Union Square, and take up my march from the neigh-
borhood of old St. Paul's. If some one is with me who
is interested in my gray -haired garrulity about other
days, it makes the way lighter. But I never lack com-
pany. Indeed, paradoxical as it may seem, it is when
I am alone that I have most companionship. As I
walk along, the ghosts of other days trip out to see
me. They are no noisome apparitions, but gentle,
sweet-voiced spirits, whose eyes are filled with tender
recollections, and whose garments bear the scent of
the roses and hyacinths of many years ago. From
unexpected spots they dart out to give me greeting
and to bring to my recollection little occurrences long
forgotten, but pleasant to recall. In this spot they
recall a rosy night at the theatre ; there they bring
back the tender recollection of a school friend who has
been dust and ashes these five and thirty years; here
they call up Sunday-school days, and the prolonged
and inevitable Sunday services beneath the stately
spire of St. John's Chapel; here again, just around
that corner, lived the incarnate inspiration of my first
valentine, whose clustering curls never lived to sleep
on any other breast than Mother Earth's ; and there,
too, opposite the St. Nicholas, were the mystic rooms
in which our college secret society met to initiate
white-faced neophytes into the mysteries of sworn fra-
ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL
ternity, while all around the pavement echoes to the
feet which are silent to the rest of the world, but to
my ears are instinct with a life that can never die.
Come with me, then, most patient reader, and as we
walk up Broadway this afternoon, close your eyes to
present surroundings, and let me picture the thorough-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 59
fare as it looked forty years ago, when I strolled up
from a school-mate's home below the City Hall Park,
a rosy-cheeked boy in old-fashioned roundabout and
cap.
St. Paul's Church has been growing smaller of late
years, or is it the effect of the great buildings that sur-
round it? It towered up above all the neighborhood
when I was a boy, and at one time I had an uncanny
dread of the marble figure of St. Paul above the por-
tico, which was said to come down and walk the street
"when it heard the clock strike twelve at midnight of
St. Paul's Day." The late William E. Dodge, who
was so earnest a man that he never appreciated a
joke, in the course of a familiar lecture to some east-
side youth said that his nurse once told him that that
same figure of St. Paul "came down and walked
around the streets at night," thus wickedly deceiving
him, and Mr. Dodge used the occasion to warn his
young friends against telling falsehoods.
Barnum's Museum, which faced St. Paul's Church
at the corner of Ann Street, has disappeared long
since, and I fear that I have never ceased to mourn
its loss. Wasn't it a wonderful place, though? The
oval pictures of impossible birds and beasts that stood
between the outside windows were a scientific specta-
cle in themselves. But the interior was one vast tem-
ple of wonder, and I never would have forgiven the
man who should prove to me that the club which
killed Captain Cook was not genuine ; that Joyce
Heth had not held baby George Washington in her
black arms ; and that the dark, dank little amphithe-
atre was not a dramatic paradise, in which perform-
ances were given upon a cramped and rather dirty
60 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
stage through so much of the day that Artemus Ward
said Barnum's actors could be seen towards 7 A.M.
walking down Broadway to work, with their tin din-
ner-pails in hand.
Broadway, between the Astor House and Chambers
Street, has changed less in forty years than almost
any other portion of the city. The park has under-
gone much more change. The Post-office has blotted
out an oasis of grass and trees, and with the old iron
fence a small army of hucksters in gingerbread and
candy have disappeared. On the Broadway side of
the park stood Peale's Museum. I remember only
one thing about it : The largest room contained the
skeleton of a mastodon, at whose feet stood the tiny
skeleton of a mouse. Opposite the museum, on Park
Row, the famous Park Theatre was located. I stood
in the City Hall Park one night and watched its roof-
tree fall into the flames that devoured the building.
An engine dashing along the sidewalk of Broadway
had nearly run over me as I came. We all ran to fires
in those days, and the engines took the sidewalk or
the street, just as suited their convenience. I never
was inside the Park Theatre, but how have I enjoyed
Aminidnb Sleek and Captain Cuttle at Burton's Thea-
tre in Chambers Street,
At one corner of (Chambers Street the Stewart
Building is a modern innovation. It displaced, among
other structures, famous Washington Hall, the polit-
ical foe of Tammany Hall, built by the Federalists,
and occupied as their fighting headquarters for many
years. The building on the opposite corner of Cham-
bers Street and Broadway was once the Irving House,
a fashionable hostlery, but it has an older memory for
WASHINGTON HALL
some of us graybeards. There at one time John C.
Colt had his office, and there he murdered Adams, the
printer who was getting out a work on book-keeping
for him. It was the first tragedy I had ever been able
to read about, and I remember vividly all the details
of the body that was packed and shipped to South
America; that by adverse winds was brought ashore,
and would have brought the murderer to the scaffold
had he not committed suicide on the morning of the
day set for his execution. Years and years after-
wards I met Col. Samuel Colt, who always favored the
rumor that his brother had escaped to France, and
that the body of a pauper convict had been substi-
64 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
tuted to deceive the authorities. " Is your brother
John living in France?" asked a curious Hartford man.
The answer was prompt and characteristic: "That is
something which only God Almighty and Sam Colt
know."
Somewhere near Duane Street, on Broadway, where
modern progress has as yet made little change in the
buildings, the first sewing-machine was exhibited. A
young girl used to sit in the window and work the
rather primitive machinery, and she actually seemed
to sew. Everybody watched the process with inter-
est, but all regarded it as a toy, and impracticable for
household use. The ladies set their faces resolutely
against it. They would have nothing but hand-made
goods. Philanthropy argued at all our tables, as I re-
member, that the machine would take the bread out
of the mouths of the working-women. So the pretty
girl kept the pedals going in the window, month in
and month out, and Wall Street was not sharp enough
to see that there was a fortune in the " toy." It might
be made to sew a ruffle yes, no doubt this had been
done but to argue that it could make a suit of
clothes or do the sewing for a household was non-
sense.
Just above stood the old New York Hospital, its
green campus, filled with stately trees, facing Pearl
Street. In the rear were the gray granite buildings
which had been erected before the Revolutionary War,
and which Lord Howe had surrounded with fortifica-
tions. It always seemed a pity to destroy this pretty
green spot, but perhaps it was inevitable. Its de-
struction followed the obliteration of the campus of
Columbia College at Park Place, and it was pitiable to
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 6$
watch the felling of the sturdy old trees that at both
these points had withstood the storms of a century,
and had looked down upon the camp-fires alike of the
redcoat of England and the buff and blue soldier of
the Continental Congress. Other obliterations were
more natural. Here, on the east side of Broadway,
between Pearl and Anthony, stood the Broadway-
Theatre, beloved of fashion in its day ; on the next
block was the Broadway Tabernacle, the camping-
ground of the May meetings, where I stole in often to
hear the abolitionists speak when I was a boy Wen-
dell Phillips, Gerrit Smith, and the lovely little white-
haired Quakeress, Lucretia Mott. I thought these
last a horrible crew of fanatics, for I had been bred in
the doctrine that slavery was no sin ; but there was a
wonderful fascination for me in those gatherings of
long-haired, wild -eyed agitators. Time works won-
ders, and yet the wildest prophet would not have vent-
ured to predict that the boy who looked upon an
abolitionist as a special ally of the Evil One would
one day command a regiment marching through this
city and through the border States to -the fields of the
South, to strike the shackles from the limbs of the
enslaved African.
Between Leonard Street and Catharine Lane stood
the Society Library building, a handsome structure in
its day, which afterwards gave place to the publishing
house of D. Appleton & Co. At Leonard Street there
was a hotel known as the Carleton House; and there
was another at Walker Street, known as Florence's
Hotel ; and below, on the other side, at the north cor-
ner of Franklin Street, was the famous Taylor's res-
taurant, frequented by all the society belles of the day.
5
66 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
More than one local romance has made Taylor's its
scene of fashionable dissipation. Fashion has moved
miles up-town since then, and would now vote Tay-
lor's a very commonplace affair. But a much more
attractive place in the early part of the forties was
Contoit's Garden, which for more than a generation
occupied a large share of the block between Franklin
and Leonard streets. Its plain wooden entrance, bear-
ing the legend, " New York Garden," was overshad-
owed with trees, and inside, were shady nooks, dimly
lit by colored lanterns, where the young woman of the
period found it pleasant to sip her cream and listen
to the compliments of the young man of the times.
Many a match was made in these old gardens, which
to-day would, seem to the eye but the acme of rural
simplicity, but to the older city offered all that was
enjoyable on a moonlight night in the Island of Man-
hattan.
Crossing Canal Street where changes are slow in
coming on account of the low-lying 'nature of the land
as soon as one begins to mount the grade beyond
Howard Street, the tokens of improvement lie thick
on every side. All the landmarks have disappeared
save one the artistic beauty of Grace Church in the
distance. That edifice is just as fresh and attractive
to the eye as when its Gothic walls were first reared
more than forty years ago. Other churches along the
line have disappeared. Old St. Thomas's, which for
many years stood gray and venerable at the corner of
Broadway and Houston Street, has long since given
place to stores, and few remember where, on the other
side of the way, Dr. Chapin ministered to large con-
gregations. The church was situated at 548 Broad-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 69
way. Opposite, at 563, the Anglo-American Church
of St. George the Martyr held forth, to which we boys
of Trinity choir had contributed by singing at a con-
cert, but which afterwards, I believe, died a lingering
death. The Church of the Messiah was at 724 Broad-
way. But the churches of that period for the most part
kept out of Broadway, and preferred the seclusion of
the more quiet side streets.
I have spoken of the old-time theatres, and as I pass
the site of Mechanics' Hall a whole host of memories
comes trooping out, and with them comes the echo of
old plantation songs, most of which were first heard
here. It was on this spot that Christy's Minstrels
used to entertain the older New York in a decorously
jovial manner. There was none of the pinchbeck
glare of modern dance-and-song minstrelsy, but there
was instead the song that wakened the tenderest chords
of the heart and the joke that was not yet worn thread-
bare. It happened that when I was twelve years old,
or perhaps a little older, I was deputed at home to
take six or eight children to Christy's. I was the old-
est boy in the crowd, and hence felt myself the man
of the deputation. But there was a thorn to my rose.
My very small brother, aged five, was to go, in charge
of a stately colored girl of eighteen, whom my father
had brought from the West Indies. I remember be-
ing just goose enough to be half ashamed to be seen
with Ancilla in the street, though she was straight and
handsome as an Indian princess in her bright turban,
and afterwards captivated and married a wealthy white
man in California. At the ticket-office they refused to
let us in because there was a " nigger " in the crowd of
juveniles. The cold sweat was standing at every pore
/O A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
in my body, when there chanced along a belated mem-
ber of the troupe, who took my money, led us through
the room in which the company were being " corked,"
and seated us in the little side orchestra gallery which
overlooked the long hall. There we were the observed
of all observers. The minstrels all cracked their jokes
at Ancilla, who leaned over the orchestra rail and
grinned back to a delighted audience, who applauded
her shrieks of laughter to the echo. To me it was an
evening of prolonged and undiluted misery, for which
I learned to despise myself afterwards. But it all comes
back to me this afternoon as I walk by the spot, re-
membering that Ancilla and I are the only survivors
of the little party that filled the Mechanics' Hall or-
chestra gallery that evening.
How I would like to go to Christy's again, and what
a treat it would be to enter the old Niblo's Garden and
see the Ravels in their wonderful pantomimes ! Sure-
ly, no place since then has held so much enjoyment
for youth who have outgrown the museum, and yet
have scarcely grown up to Shakespeare. And yet I
must not forget the Broadway Theatre, where, as a
boy in close jacket, I remember to have thoroughly
enjoyed Hackett's masterly representation of Falstaff.
He first opened to me the delights of Shakespeare a
debt which I shall ever owe him. Peace to his ashes !
But it seems to me that I can recall now every trick
of the Ravels, every oddity of their marvellous panto-
mime, every strange costume, from crowned king to
skeleton death. Were ever nights so enjoyable to us
old boys as those we passed in trying to detect the
legerdemain that cheated our eyes? And how quick-
ly they passed, and how rare were these treats in the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 71
rigid economy of a scholar's life of years ago ! Why,
it is a delight even to remember them a remark which
I think one Horace, of collegiate class-room memory,
has previously made in much the same connection.
I was at Niblo's Garden the night that the Ravels
opened there, as I recall by the incident that the scen-
ery refused to work in the last act, and left a massive
brick wall as a rear view of Hades. An uncle of mine,
a visitor to New York from the rural regions of Mis-
souri, had taken me there, and when the ballet ap-
peared I noticed that he cohered his eyes with his hat
and blushed. When I asked him what was the mat-
ter, he replied that " it beat the West all to pieces."
To a New York boy his Western innocence rather lent
flavor to the entertainment, which in fact was perfect-
ly respectable, and such as the modern theatre-goer
might have thought to be a trifle slow in its spectacu-
lar effects. I only wish that I could carry to the the-
atre of to-day the same zest that I brought to old
Niblo's, and that the world of amusement-goers were
as easily pleased.
But we have really not yet reached Niblo's Garden
in our walk, and the shades of evening begin to fall as
we stand just beyond the stream that once swept down
from the Collect Pond to the Hudson River and on
the edge of the Lispenard Meadows. Stream and
swamp have disappeared, and stately rows of houses
have taken their places, but the old student of New
York's history knows the ground on which he stands,
and it has wonderfully pleasant recollections for him.
To-morrow we will take up our march again.
To the Easy Chair of Harper s Magazine, of whom
the writer has pleasant personal memories in connec-
tion with the Constitutional Convention of 1867-68, Fe-
72 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
lix Oldboy desires to return thanks for a most appreci-
ative notice in a recent number of that periodical. It
is a double delight to receive such a compliment from
the author of The Potiphar Papers, to whom, in com-
mon with a generation of New Yorkers, the writer is
LISPENARD MEADOWS
indebted for the most suggestive and brilliant society
sketch to which New York's literary brain has given
birth. The pleasure of writing these reminiscences of
a day not yet so distant but that it seems like yester-
day is heightened by the interest manifested in many
different quarters, and encourages the writer to grasp
his pilgrim staff again and proceed upon his tour.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 73
CHAPTER VII
THE POETRY OF EVERY-DAY LIFE A PROTEST AGAINST THE GOTH
MY GRANDMOTHER'S HOME AN ERA WITHOUT LUXURIES STATE-
LY MANNERS OF THE PAST
I HAVE been visited by the Goths and Vandals, and
I want to stop right here in sight of Kalckhook Hill
and the Lispenard Swamp and enter my solemn pro-
test against them.
" Oldboy," said the chief of the invaders, with a
Vandal familiarity which I detest, for I am old-fash-
ioned enough to like to have the " Mr." prefixed to
my name, not so much for being a Magister Artium
in the past as for having been educated in the creed
which makes the finer courtesies of life the touchstone
of the gentleman " Oldboy, you can't make a silver
whistle out of a sow's ear you can't put any poetry
into prosaic, old, money-making New York."
To which I respond with proper mildness that the
proposition in regard to any creative act of mine is
perfectly true, since I am but a quiet chronicler in the
city's by-ways, but that the poetry is there none the
less. In the years in which my feet have trodden
these streets I have learned to love them, and out of
this love has grown an intimate acquaintance with the
dower this city acquired from nature and from his-
tory, as well as with the lives and fortunes of its peo-
ple. Truly, there is no need of any pen attempting
to make poetry of the wonderful epic that began with
THE FEDERAL HALL IN WALL STREET
the ripples that the Halve Maen carved in the still
waters of a bay crossed as yet only by the canoes of
the Manhadoes.
No poetry here ? Why, there is nothing but poetry
in the story of Wouter Van Twiller, the pioneer Gov-
ernor, and Petrus Stuyvesant, the exile of the Bouwe-
rie ; in Jacob Leisler, first martyr to popular liberties,
and Captain Kidd, the piratical protege" of an earl ; in
the rise of the Liberty Boys, and their battle of Gold-
en Hill, in which the first blood of the Revolution was
shed before the Boston massacre occurred and in
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 75
the overthrow of Rivington's royal printing-press ; in
Washington, at the head of his " old Continentals,"
listening to the reading of the Declaration of Inde-
pendence at the Commons, and in Putnam's dusty
flight from the Bowling Green to the heights of Spuy-
ten Duyvel ; in the defeat at Fort Washington and
the victory at Harlem Plains ; in the original Evacua-
tion Day and the inauguration of the first President ;
in the republican life of the city from her first hour of
freedom from a royal yoke up to the day in which she
rejected at the polls the monstrous system of social-
ism that foreign craft sought to impose upon her chil-
dren.
To me it is all a sweet and stately epic, and espe-
cially tender is the strain that tells of the day when I
was young. For was there no poetry in the life of the
old New Yorker of that day, who feared God and was
no brawler? No poetry in the clean, civic life that
made duty its goal, and left the clamor about rights
to cure itself; that gave peace to our borders for six
days of the week and a quiet Sabbath on the seventh?
When he went to church and took his wife and chil-
dren with him, at night knelt down to pray at his
fireside with his family around him, and by day was
honest and straightforward, as well as shrewd and in-
dustrious, was the citizen of New York less poetical
than if he had worn a cavalier's sword and made the
street a daily battle-field? Was there no poetry in
the soul of the smooth-faced youth who went down-
town in the early morning and swept out his employ,
er's store, in the fear of God, and even as he did it let
his thoughts wander to the unpretentious little house
under whose roof he had made his early decorous visit
76 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
last night to the maiden of his choice and his hopes?
No poetry in the modest damsel, who, prayer-book
and handkerchief in hand, walked so demurely to
church that only a pink flush of the cheek denoted
that she knew whose ringing step was coming near
her, and who was none, the less lovely that she had
never been to public ball and opera, and did not know
a dado from a frieze? Then there is none in the trees
that grow as the Everlasting Will appoints ; in the
birds who wing their viewless paths in ordained or-
bits ; in the flowers that blossom sweet and fair in
their generation ; in the lichens and mosses that cover
the decay of nature, and the green leaf put forth in
the spring like a dove from the great brown ark of the
earth to herald the coming resurrection.
Go to, O Vandal doubter ! It is all poetry as I look
back. I see the poetry of quiet and unpretentious but
happy homes, sheltered under long lines of waving
trees, now exterminated ; of green fields at Blooming-
dale, easily reached in a stroll, and of country villas
between Kip's Bay and Harlem River; of farms and
rustic bowers that dotted the upper part of the isl-
and, and gave pleasant contrast to the dusty streets of
the city below ; of the wild and rugged scenery of
McGowan's Pass and Breakneck Hill; of the mossy
sides of old earthworks which shelter now only the
daisy and the buttercup, but once encircled the men of
the Revolution; of the ancient wooden bridges that led
to the serenely rural regions of Westchester County,
and that served to recall in precept and example the
ancient Kissing Bridge of our Knickerbocker ancestry.
The life of the merchant of that day might seem
commonplace and dull, but it was not. If he lacked
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 77
the push and hurry of to-day, the aesthetic office, and
fashionable business hours, he had his compensations.
There was poetry in our lost and forgotten industries.
The stately ships that then carried our flag lay at ev-
ery wharf, and the offices were redolent with spices
from the East, and sugars from the Indies and teas
from Cathay ; and the bluff down-east captains came
back with wonderful offerings of coral and shells and
birds and fruit for the wives and children of the ships'
owners. The visitor to those plain, prosaic places of
business found himself swept thousands of miles away
by their sights and scents ; and when he came to talk
with the men who sent out the busy fleets, he found
that they knew the story of the ship and exulted in
its record. He rejoiced, too, in the swift clippers that
glided off the stocks in our ship-yards on the east side
and went out upon the ocean to distance the fleets of
the world ; in the ring and rattle of a thousand ham-
mers in yards that are now deserted and have forgot-
ten the step of the American mechanic ; in the rival
steamboats that raced up and down the Hudson in the
days before the railroads on that river were built, and
in the line of rapid but unfortunate steamships that
carried our flag from New York to Liverpool and did
their best to keep it afloat. But he had other loves,
too his' home, his church, his Shakespeare Club, and
his whist-party, the hospitable gathering of friends at
his home, without display and newspaper publication,
his children whom he brought up to look upon him
as their trusted adviser his cheery picnics at Elysian
Fields, and his piscatorial rambles in search of Harlem
River flounders yes, and he was even known to be not
ashamed of loving his wife. The invisible poet was
78 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
patriotic, too, and when the call came for troops to
march to distant Mexico, the dull coat of the man of
business flashed out splendid fires of patriotism.
It is for these reasons that I protest against the
atrocious sentiment of the Goth. I look back and see
the oriole swinging on the swaying branch of the syc-
amore in the old city streets, and the bluebird flying
athwart the white blossoms of the horse-chestnut, and
the robin building her nest in the willow ; under the
green trees of the forgotten old park my little sisters
(who began to walk in fields of imperishable green
thirty years ago) are playing ; and through the quiet
streets a plodding school-boy goes with his Virgil un-
der his arm, and with high hopes in his heart ; and for
that quiet, prosaic life, with its old-time duties and re-
strictions, its homely joys and patriotic impulses, I,
Felix Oldboy, am to-day profoundly grateful. There
is no sweeter poetry in existence than its retrospect.
It was this old home-life of New York that culmi-
nated so grandly here in the April days of 1861, when
the sons of the metropolis shouldered the musket them-
selves asking no substitutes and taking no bounty
and in the beauty of the spring-tide sunshine marched
down Broadway to the echo of a city's wild huzzas. No
cavaliers ever marched more proudly than they. None
fought better. In the white splendor of their youth
they lay dead on the field of honor, or returned brown,
bearded, and victorious. The story of our Theodore
Winthrop at Big Bethel was the record of all the boys
from our homes who gave their lives for their coun-
try.
But I have said enough, perhaps too much, about
this poetry business, and I relent. At some future
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 79
time, when I have completed my great work on The
Dialects of the Manhado Indians, with Parallel A nno-
t at io its on the Coincidences of the Iroquois Tongue, I may
print a book upon this theme, to the honor and glory
of the city which I love.
Meanwhile, instead of proceeding at once on our
tour up Broadway from Lispenard's Swamp, as I had
intended, I may as well digress again and answer the
question of a correspondent who wants to know some-
thing about my grandmother's home and mine where
it was, what it looked like, and whereof was its atmos-
phere.
The dear old lady's life was an incarnation of poetry,
and once in a while, too, she actually dropped into
versification. " Felix," she said to me on one memo-
rable occasion when she had come to pay me a visit at
the old college on the Delaware where I first was matric-
ulated " Felix, I composed some of the most beauti-
ful poetry that you ever heard while I was in the cars
on my way here." " Give it to me, granny," I replied,
as I put on the critical air of a highly literary Fresh-
man. She liked me to call her " granny " when we
were alone, because she knew it was simply affection-
ate, and there was something kittenish about her to
the last. On this occasion she took off her golden
spectacles, leaned over confidentially towards me, and
said with sorrowful earnestness, " For the life of me,
Felix, I can't remember a line of it, and I can't even
remember what it was about." She never did recall
it. Unfortunately, too, this is the only specimen of
my grandmother's poetry.
But, for all that, her life, in its long, patient widow-
hood, was a poem of wonderful sweetness. We two
80 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
she with her white hair and I with the glow of youth
understood each other perfectly, and our lives har-
monized marvellously, and I think it was from her that
I caught the affection I feel for some of the inanimate
localities of which she taught me the history and tra-
ditions. She was of the ancient colonial lineage of
New York, and with all her gentleness was a devout
believer that blood would tell in men as in horses. A
most womanly woman, when fourscore years had be-
gun to bow her form, I was fond of persuading her to
let me have a glimpse of the days of her puissant girl-
hood, just for the sake of seeing the flush of twenty
summers creep once more up her cheek, and lighten
the eyes that never seemed to grow old. It is well
for us all when we can carry something of this poetry
of life beyond the fifty years' mile-stone.
My grandmother lived in a three-story and basement
brick house that faced St. John's Park. The house
had a peaked roof and dormer-windows; in front a
brown-stone stoop, with iron railings ending in a lofty
extinguisher, whose use departed when link lights
went out of date, but whose pattern was still fashion-
able. In front two large sycamores gave ample shade,
and the wide porch in the rear was covered by grape-
vines, and the yard was shaded by a horse-chestnut
tree. The house was severely plain outside ; within, it
was a model of comfort for that time, though latter-
day luxury would think it stiff and uncomfortable.
The lofty walls of the large parlors were painted a
light drab. There were chandeliers of cut glass, for
candles, hung from the centre of each ceiling, and sim-
ilar clusters of glass pendants adorned the mantel-piece,
which was further set out with massive silver candle-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 83
sticks and huge rare shells. Rich carpets of a large
pattern were on the floor ; the furniture was of satin-
wood and ebony of severe pattern in the front parlor,
and of horse-hair, still more severe, in the back. Old-
fashioned tete-a-tetes were the only sign of yielding to
the weakness of the human frame in young couples,
while immense rocking-chairs and small and hard otto-
mans gave what comfort they could to the old and the
young. Heavy curtains hung at the deep windows,
which also contained antique courting appliances, in
the shape of cushioned seats .that filled the window
space, and that were cosey enough love-nooks when
the curtains were let down and used as a shield. Pict-
ures and books were there in profusion, and a cabinet
collection of shells that my father had brought back
with him from the Indies. Bric-a-brac was unknown
and portieres were not dreamed of heavy solid ma-
hogany doors everywhere but we had huge vases that
had come direct from China, and rugs that a ship cap-
tain had brought from the Mediterranean. So we were
not entirely barbarous.
It might puzzle the later generation to understand
how we kept warm all winter, with nothing but grate
fires of Liverpool coal to heat the parlors, but somehow
we managed to exist. Nor was there any gas in the
house. Astral lamps and candles did service down-
stairs, and we took our candlesticks or small camphene
lamps to light us up to bed. In the sleeping-rooms
we had stoves of sheet-iron, in which wood-fires were
lighted at night or in the morning " to take the chill
off." Up-stairs were great closets between the large
sleeping- rooms, that were storehouses in themselves,
and above was an attic with sloping walls, containing
84 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
chests, and boxes, and barrels of miscellaneous plun-
der, out of which I surreptitiously unearthed Peregrine
Pickle and other morsels of forbidden literature with
infinite delight, as I remember. My own room was
under the eaves, and when I was a boy I delighted to
climb out of the dormer-window and up the steep
roof at risk of my neck until I reached the ridge,
where I would sit astride and watch the swaying of the
trees in the park and the circling flight of thrush and
robin. Down-stairs was the basement room, in which
we dined, whose windows contained semi-transparent
panes of glass imported from Paris, which it was almost
a death penalty to break. Under the front porch was
a hydrant of Croton water, and all that was used had
to be carried from this point through the house for
we had not yet reached the luxury of Croton on every
floor. The water for the kitchen range and boiler was
brought from two cisterns built under the flagging of
the rear yard and filtered through charcoal ; and in the
yard was also a deep, unused well, which I delighted
to sound with a plummet. Here were also my treas-
ures a dog, parrot, doves, guinea-pigs, and a turtle.
There was nothing of gilt or gingerbread here, and
some ordinary comforts of to-day were missing, but
for all that, we had a good time of it. There was no
lounging at the feet of beauty, no aesthetic sprawling
in the drawing-room ; no liveried footman or buttoned
page, where my grandmother's colored man, Abraham,
son of an old slave of the family, did the honors of
attendance. But somehow there was a prevailing sense
of dignity which I failed to find in the " palatial man-
sion " of Mr. Nabob. The stately manners of my
grandmother's home were a study. There comes up
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 85
as I write the picture of Dr. Wainwright, the model of
clerical elegance in his day, taking his glass of Madeira
in a way which was positively sublime to witness, and
I really do not know where to turn to have the picture
duplicated in life. When some one expressed surprise,
in the days before the war, to see Bishop Doane of
New Jersey take off his hat in the streets to Benny
Jackson, a colored pastor and preacher at Burlington,
where they both lived, that distinguished prelate re-
marked that he could not submit to being outdone in
politeness by a negro. I heard the bishop once deliver
a commencement address to the students of Burlington
College, founded upon the motto of William of Wyke-
ham, " Manners Makyth Man." That was thirty years
ago, and it might not be a bad idea to have another
sermon preached from the same text for the benefit of
a new generation.
Poetry? But I must not digress again. As the
strident voice of the Goth who has stirred me up to
righteous wrath dies away, and his aggressive form
passes out of sight, I seem to hear my grandmother
say, with just a suspicion of sarcastic emphasis in her
voice, " Felix, tea is ready, and you should have invited
the gentleman in. A cup of tea is very good to take
the wind off the stomach."
86 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER VIII
ECCLESIASTICAL RAIDS BY NIGHT BOWERY VILLAGE METHODISTS
CHARLOTTE TEMPLE'S HOME A BOOK-STORE OF LANG SYNE OLD
LAFAYETTE PLACE THE TRAGEDY OF CHARLOTTE CANDA A RE-
MINDER OF TWEED
MY grandmother was a devout attendant upon the
services of St. John's Chapel, in Varick Street. I can
see her now, in coal-scuttle bonnet and ample Hudson's
Bay sables, leaning one arm upon the high top of our
pew, while she delivered the responses in as firm a
voice as if she were an ecclesiastical adjutant with a
copy of general orders from celestial headquarters.
Her prayer-book was an octavo of formidable dimen-
sions, for which I had a sincere and somewhat awful
respect in my very young days ; for, when it was
brought out from the bureau drawer, I knew that it
meant the recording of more sermons in my youthful
calendar. Twice a day to church and twice a day to
Sunday-school was the rule of the house, and it was
inflexible. Everybody went to church in those days,
and we all knew each other and duly catalogued the
absentees and inquired of their families after service
as to their welfare. Immediately in front of my grand-
mother sat Dr. Hunter and his family, behind us Lis-
penard Stewart ; to the right sat Gen. John A. Dix
and his household ; to the left, across the north aisle,
was the great square pew, upholstered in drab, in which
the Lydig family sat. I remember it particularly, be-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 87
cause of the fact that it appeared to offer unlimited
scope to the limbs of a naturally fidgety boy.
Once in a while my grandmother would delight me
by stealing away by night to a Methodist or Presby-
terian conventicle. Usually she despised heretics and
schismatics at least, she said that she did, and tried
to believe it. But the sermons at St. John's were in-
variably high and dry delivered high up in the old-
fashioned, three-decker pulpit, and as dry as the ink on
the manuscript and I think the dear old lady felt the
need occasionally of what some of her ancient heretical
cronies of other churches called " an awakening dis-
course." So I was always glad when she put on her
bonnet of a Sunday evening and locked up the drawer
that contained her formidable prayer-book, and said,
4 ' Come, Felix" for then I prepared for an awakener.
We always got it at the Vestry Street Methodist
Church. No ; you won't find it on the map now.
The church at present occupies a handsome brown-
stone building on Seventh Avenue, near Fourteenth
Street. Then it had a shabby, old brick structure for
its ecclesiastical home, but its membership numbered
nearly a thousand, and its congregation overflowed
the aisles and vestibules. I do not remember the
names of any preachers I heard there, but they were
earnest and energetic men, who had no manuscripts
before them, and who sometimes startled me by
their plain talk about a brimstone region which I
was accustomed to hear very delicately alluded to in
the pulpit. Some of the old hymns that I heard there
linger still in my memory. There was no poetry in
them, but somehow they had power to sway human-
ity in masses more than any modern anthem. Some-
88 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
times my grandmother would hear me singing at
home,
" It's the old-time religion,
And it's good enough for me ;"
or shouting explosively in the back yard,
" I am climbing Jacob's ladder;"
and if she saw me at the time she would turn and look
at me reproachfully, but she never said anything.
Occasionally my grandmother compromised with
her conscience by going to hear an eloquent young
Virginian who occupied the pulpit of Laight Street
congregation, and delighted a most fashionable audi-
ence. She would quietly remark to me on the way
that he was really more than half a churchman, be-
cause he wore gown, bands, and cassock when he
preached, and used the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in
the opening service. The diagnosis made by my
grandmother was correct. This young clergyman, the
Rev. Flavel S. Mines, was afterwards ordained deacon
and priest in old St. George's Church, in Beekman
Street, where he became assistant to the Rev. Dr. Mil-
nor. Some time ago I received a letter from Ben-
son J. Lossing, asking me if I could tell him what had
been the young assistant's fate. He wrote : " I think
he was the most eloquent man I ever heard in the
pulpit. I suppose he must have passed to his rest
long ago." Yes; for thirty- four years he has been
sleeping under the altar of Trinity Church, San Fran-
cisco, which he founded.
Now, what has caused this diversion from our tour
up Broadway, from the Lispenard Meadows? Im-
primis, it was the recollection that I had forgotten to
ST. GEORGE S CHURCH, BEEKMAN STREET
mention the famous book-store of Roe Lockwood, on
Broadway, below Lispenard Street, where all the boys
of forty years ago went to purchase their school-books.
Can I ever forget with what awe I looked up at the
shelves filled with tomes of tremendous learning, or
with what pride I went there alone, at the age of eleven,
and purchased a Cooper's Virgil? It was carefully
wrapped up in paper, but as soon as I got outside I
tore the paper off, placed the book nonchalantly un-
90 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
der my arm, and walked with head erect down to my
home on the Park the proudest boy in the city on
that day. Looking back, I know it must have been a
queer sight that I presented as I trudged along to
school with my big books under my arm, and I don't
wonder that the larger boys in Billy Forrest's school
stopped me sometimes to see if I could really read the
direful woes of fiLneas and Dido. Small for my years,
I wore roundabout and trousers, a cap with a visor,
and a brown linen apron with sleeves, tied behind and
reaching to my knees. This last was my grandmoth-
er's idea of a school uniform for small boys. A woollen
tippet around my neck and a pair of mittens knit by
home hands completed my winter equipment. Why,
I can smile myself as I see this queer little figure
trudging through the snow at the junction of Varick
and Franklin streets, and far too chilled to cast more
than an oblique glance at his favorite antiquity the
much admired and lamented statue of William Pitt,
which stood, wrecked and dismantled, outside Mr.
Riley's Fifth Ward Museum Hotel. But here I am
digressing again. Mr. Roe Lockwood was an elder in
the Laight Street Presbyterian Church, as well as a
shrewd man of business, and this fact it is that has led
me astray in my tour.
Another reason for the digression is my chancing in
upon a quiet celebration in a forgotten neighborhood
a Sunday or two ago, which brought back to me some
vivid memories of my visits to the Vestry Street sanct-
uary. This was the centennial anniversary of the old
Bowery Village Methodist Church, known now as the
Seventh Street Church, which began very humbly in
the parlor of Gilbert Coutant's little frame house, near
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 91
the two-miles stone on the Bowery. From the modest
parlor that was carefully sanded every Saturday night
in preparation for the morrow, the church was moved
to a site on the ground npw occupied by the Cooper
Institute, and here young and zealous Peter Cooper
became the first superintendent of its Sunday-school.
It was moved successively to Nicholas William Street,
once parallel with Stuyvesant Street, but now blotted
out, and then to its present situation. I heard John
Stephenson, who has built street-cars for nearly every
civilized country, tell the story of his conversion in the
old church fifty- nine years ago, and he and others
praised the work of old " Father " Tiemann (father of
the Mayor of that name), and told the story of the
church in the days when it was in the prime of its
strength the days when I was a boy on the west side,
and Seventh Street was up-town, and the centre of the
homes of prosperous tradesmen and wealthy descend-
ants of the old colonial settlers, who had their bouweries
and villas on the other side of the Sand Hills. The
neighborhood about St. Mark's Church was known as
Bowery Village for the first quarter of the present
century, and even later.
On an old map of this neighborhood I find the con-
tinuation of Stuyvesant Street beyond the Bowery
(now Fourth Avenue) set down as Art Street, and I
wonder if this was identical with Astor Place as indi-
cated by some later maps. Upon Art Street, a little
east of the Bowery, stood the stone house which was
once the residence of Charlotte Temple. Her story
seems to have made an impression which ambitious
and gifted men have failed to create. Her grave in
Trinity church-yard excites more interest than those of
9 2
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Alexander Hamilton or gallant Captain Lawrence, of
the Chesapeake. The other day, as I was passing the
entrance of that church -yard, a quiet- voiced young
man, on whose arm a shy and pretty bride was leaning,
asked me if I could point out the grave of Charlotte
Temple, and they informed me confidentially that they
were on a tour from Philadelphia. As if a gray mus-
GRAVE OF CHARLOTTE TEMPLE
tache like Felix Oldboy could not tell at a glance
that the two blushing innocents were taking their
first week's journey in life together, all daisies and
whipped syllabub and sunshine, to which gold and
diamonds were but dross. A few moments after-
wards I passed and saw them forming part of a group
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 93
that were gazing sadly at the slab sunk in the turf
that told of a short life sadly ended, and, if I mistake
not, there was a tear hanging to the eyelids of the
gentle bride.
Not far from this neighborhood was another historic
church, which is fated to go the way of its predeces-
sors of the same creed in the down -town districts.
The old Reformed Dutch Church, which has so long
been a landmark in Lafayette Place, at Fourth Street,
is now razed to the ground. It has been somewhat
lonesome since the departure of St. Bartholomew's
Church, on the opposite side, and a block below, and
has found its continued existence a burden. The
young do not mind the moving, but rather enjoy it ;
but to us older ones the razing of a church hallowed
by associations with the past is a sore blow. I find
that we don't like to turn down the streets in which
an old association of our youth has been slain. We
go out of our way to avoid it. True, the people we
have known have moved away, but they cannot carry
with them the familiar look of their homes and haunts.
For some years past only the Willetts, out of all the
old stock, have remained to keep up the ancient con-
nection of Lafayette Place with the old-time settlers.
The new race do not even remember when Madame
Canda kept her famous school for young ladies next
door to the Dutch Church a very rose-bud garden of
girlish loveliness and have only dimly heard the tra-
dition of a winter's night tragedy that shocked a whole
city by its startling suddenness and left the Canda
household bereaved. The fair young girl who on her
eighteenth birthnight was dashed from her carriage
and killed, and at the moment she was to make her
GRAVE OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON
triumphant entrance into society entered into life
eternal, had a whole city for her mourners.
While upon the subject of churches, I recall a pict-
ure of desolation that I witnessed on one of the streets
east of Broadway, soon after the close of the war an
old-fashioned church, with stucco walls, whose roof
and windows had been dismantled, standing in the
midst of trees that had been felled and vaults that
had been rifled of their mouldering coffins. It was
the old home of St. Stephen's congregation, who had
moved up-town into a more fashionable neighborhood.
The old rector, Dr. Price, still lives, though approach-
ing ninety years of age. But the ruined church had
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 95
a special interest for me at the time as the place where
William M. Tweed attended public worship, or at
least had his family pew. It did not strike me then
as prophetic, but I seldom think of that fallen man,
who gave his occupation as " statesman " when enroll-
ed as a convict at Blackwell's Island, without that
picture of utter desolation in the dismantled church-
yard that had often echoed to his steps, coming up to
my mind. Before me lies, by chance, a list of the
wedding presents made to his daughter. It is a queer
record. There are names here which are still potent
in local politics, chiefly of Mr. Tweed's own political
following, but among them are sandwiched the names
of Jay Gould, Thurlow Weed, James Fisk, Jr., Isaac
Bell, Hugh J. Hastings, and other gentlemen of ap-
parently opposite views, and the value of the presents
mounts up to a small fortune.
As I trudge back to Broadway and prepare to take
up again my line of march from the vicinity of Canal
Street, near by the spot where a lovely lane once ran
from the Bayard mansion, a little to the east of this
thoroughfare, down through Lispenard Meadows to
the North River shore, I am composing mentally a
sermon upon shade trees. An old school-teacher of
mine once vowed in his wrath apropos of an adoles-
cent elm -tree that had been hacked to death by the
knives of his pupils that " the boy who would kill a
shade tree would kill a man," and I do not know but
that in the main he was correct. My uncle has told
me that when he was a boy, Broadway and all the
adjacent streets were lined with trees of every native
species. It is curious to read that in the time when
Broadway, from the arched bridge (Canal Street) to
96 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
its junction with the Bowery Lane (at Union Square)
was known as the Middle Road, Mr. Samuel Burling
offered to furnish poplar- trees to line the thorough-
fare from Leonard Street to Art Street, and that there
was poetry enough in the Common Council to agree
that the arrangement would be " an additional beauty
to Broadway, the pride of our city !" I try to fancy
it all as we stand here the modest dwellings close at
hand, which were the homes of the Pells, the Gris-
wolds, the Hoffmans, the Lawrences, the Ludlows,
Citizen Genet, and Dr. Livingston, and the stately
poplars that stood sentinel in front of them ; the cir-
cus that fronted unobtrusively on the main street and
hid itself in the fields beyond; the public-house at
Broadway and Grand Street, with Tattersall's below
it. But I cannot make it real. My uncle has told
me that the open ditch or stream at Canal Street was
eight or ten feet wide, and that its banks were lined
with beautiful wild flowers, and that upon the hills in
the rear of Broadway and below Spring Street the
boys of his day used to play in the remains of the
Revolutionary earthworks. I recall hereabouts the
old Olympic Theatre, the American Art Union (whose
annual drawings of pictures made one of the milder
sensations of the day), the Manhattan Club, and Tat-
tersall's.
Tattersall's, on the east side of Broadway, between
Howard and Grand streets, was one of the best known
institutions of the old city. Here one could buy any
sort of a horse or carriage at an hour's notice, and its
auctions were as amusing as a circus. Perhaps my
own memory of it is faint, but it had been freshened
up by my uncle. In youth a centaur, he used to
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 97
spend all his spare time around Tattersall's stables,
and more than once his mother had been properly
shocked at seeing him flying down the street on the
bare back of a horse which he had been permitted to
take out for exercise or to ride to water at the Arched
Bridge. A reckless boy, he rode like the wind, and
kept up his pace through life, but he always loved the
mother who adored this most daring of her offspring.
When in a reminiscent train of thought on this line,
my grandmother said, solemnly, " Felix, if I had that
boy's neck broken once, I had it broken a hundred
times, and then to think he died quietly in his bed,
after all !" If I had not known my grandmother in-
finitely well, I might have thought that she had been
actually disappointed at her favorite son's edifying
end. But I took up her great cat, Gustavus Adolphus,
a famous fellow of the tiger pattern, who was never far
away from the gentle old lady's little feet (which had
moved daintily in the minuet in the old Clinton Man-
sion on the Hudson River, close by Greenwich Village,
and had wrought immense havoc among the high-col-
lared and voluminously -cravated exquisites of the
period); and placed him in her lap. And as she stroked
his fur a tear fell on the ferocious whiskers of the
namesake of Sweden's hero, and he looked up and
plaintively purred as if he, too, had understood it all.
98 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER IX
ECCENTRICITIES OF MEMORY QUEER STREET CHARACTERS THE ONLY
SON OF A KING IDIOMS OF A PAST GENERATION OLD VOLUNTEER
FIREMEN A FORGOTTEN STATESMAN
A QUEER thing is this memory of ours. When we
have leisure to overhaul its storehouses, to brush away
the dust and restore the forgotten pictures of long ago,
it creates a new world of old friends for us veterans
who persist in lagging behind the majority. With an
implacable enemy sowing white hairs and deep wrin-
kles, I understand what my grandmother meant when
she told me that she was never lonesome; that all the
sweet visions and hallowed spectres of the past came
trooping around her as she sat by the fireside in the
winter nights, and they made her wondrously content.
The babies she had kissed in death half a century be-
fore, and that had never grown an hour older; the
stalwart young brother who went to sea in her girl-
hood, and never was heard of again ; the husband
taken from her side in early manhood ; the endless
line of friends who for two generations had been pass-
ing over Jordan into the land of promise ; her brides-
maids, the children she had played with, her own
pretty young mother all these came trooping around
the white-haired old lady and made her happy in her
loneliest hours. Surely one of the beatitudes was
omitted in making up the transcript, for, blessed are
the aged who understand how to grow old gracefully.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK IOI
" Did you ever hear me preach ?" asked the elder
Coleridge of Charles Lamb. " I never heard you do
anything else," was the sharp response. Perhaps some
of my readers will think my grandmother was right in
desiring to train me up for a minister, and that there
is a surplus of moralizing in these papers. The dear
old lady was so bent upon my making a career of the
pulpit that she objected to my taking dancing lessons
at Monsieur Charraud's Terpsichorean rookery on
White Street. Do any of the old boys remember
that musty old resort the dingy nests of boxes in
which hats and shoes were deposited, the well-waxed
floor lighted by candles in sconces, the dear old danc-
ing-master and his endless violin, and goblin wrath
with a pupil's awkwardness, the giggling of the girls
who carried on surreptitious flirtations through offer-
ings of taffy and peanuts, the wild delight of escorting
a chosen sweetheart home, and the sorrow of having
to leave her at the nearest corner to her home, for
fear her big sisters would make her life miserable by
teasing ? I do not think that this mild revelry would
have harmed even a student of divinity, much less a
boy who had no such aspirations.
These things are all written down in the book of
memory, and it is the privilege of age to open the vol-
ume and preach a sermon therefrom. Besides, I am
tempted into it. One friend writes and asks if I re-
member the queer personages who used to roam our
streets when the city was smaller and identities were
not so easily hidden. Another wants information in
regard to the idioms, and the political caricatures, and
the eccentricities of private and public life forty years
ago and then I open the volume of memory's photo-
102 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
graphs (though we had nothing but daguerrotypes
then, and Insley had the most famous gallery of the
day), and perforce I begin to preach.
Yes, there were some characters in the streets of
New York whom everybody knew by sight, but of the
mysteries of whose life as little was known then as
now. The Lime- kiln Man was a familiar figure to
the street arabs and a sphinx to the newspaper men.
Sturdy, with long beard, and large blue eyes, having
an appearance of education and of former refinement,
he had deliberately chosen to make himself an out-
cast. It was said that he slept in the lime-kilns that
then existed in the neighborhood of Gansevoort Street,
and his shabby clothes, and even his long beard, at
times bore witness to the whiteness of his rough-and-
ready bedding. He neither sought nor shunned human
society, and was fond of a stroll down Broadway. To
us boys he was a fascinating terror; and while we
watched him with intense interest, we would have run
away had he approached us. Tramps were a rarity in
that day, and the Lime-kiln Man was a hero in our
eyes, though he was made a Mumbo Jumbo in the
nursery, and all sorts of stories were prevalent as to
the crimes he might have committed, of which he was
doubtless entirely innocent. He made a picturesque
figure in the little city of quiet workers, and when he
died he received a longer obituary than many a good
citizen who had never gone crazy with love or losses.
The Blue Man was another character who was always
pointed out to strangers as a local celebrity. There
was nothing odd about him, except that he had taken
so much medicine that his face had assumed a livid
hue. Its deep indigo color made him appear a ghost
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 103
among the living, and I well remember how I was
startled when he was first pointed out to me on Broad-
way. At two different times there were demented
men who haunted the City Hall Park and attempted
to set up in business as the Angel Gabriel. One of
these preachers of a judgment to come carried a
trumpet under his arm as a badge of office; the other
wore a sort of uniform, with a star upon his breast.
Sometimes they would preach to a few auditors in the
Park, or at the street corners, and nobody molested
them. Indeed, one of this eccentric pair showed con-
siderable method in his madness, and managed to con-
vince some persons possessed of a little money that
his claims were divine. He went to the penitentiary.
The other Angel Gabriel brought up in a lunatic asy-
lum. Another man of mark had the proud distinction
of never wearing an overcoat. He wore a full-dress
suit of black (the dress- coat was commonly worn on
the streets then), and in the severest winter weather,
though he had reached the age of seventy, he buttoned
his coat up to the chin, and with no additional protec-
tion save a pair of warm gloves, he defied the elements.
This gentleman, who was an officer of a leading church
association, was our Hannibal Hamlin in civil life. But
he was not admired by the boys for he was continu-
ally held up to them as an example of what they ought
to do to harden their constitutions and keep down
tailors' bills.
Of all the strange characters whom I saw or met in
early years, the one who interested me most was the
Rev. Eleazer Williams, missionary to the St. Regis
Indians, in the northern part of the State. He was
not a claimant, and yet he believed himself to be the
104 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
son of Louis XVI. of France. As I saw him in the
chancel of St. John's Chapel, in his surplice, with a
black velvet cap on his head, he looked all that he
claimed to be; as he wrote his autograph for me after-
wards, he looked " every inch a king." I had hoped
he would write his royal autograph. " No, my son,"
he replied, " I am only a missionary now, though a
king's son." He had no doubts as to his royal birth;
I have never had any concerning him. Prince de Join-
ville and other dignitaries of the French kingdom had
gone to him to get him to sign off claims that he had
never made, and he refused. He would not sell his
birthright, and he did not want to wear a crown.
That was kingliness. Mr. Williams was present at a
reception at Dr. Wainwright's residence in Hubert
Street, and a young student of divinity who had never
heard of him had been looking at some rare portraits
of the royal family of France which happened to be
on the walls. Suddenly he turned to a fellow-student
and said, " See, one of those old Bourbons has stepped
out of his frame and is walking around here." The
living portrait was a perfect fac- simile. Both young
men were greatly astonished when, later in the even-
ing, they learned the strange story of the kingly guest.
For a brief while Mr. Williams was lionized in New
York, and was made the subject of a wide -spread
inquiry, "Have we a Bourbon among us?" He re-
turned quietly to his work, and died a few years after-
wards among the people to whom he had given his
life. That the son of a king of France should become
a Protestant missionary in the American Republic is a
flight beyond the ordinary ether of fiction. Yet he
believed it, and so do I.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 10$
Idioms? Yes, slang is of no nation or period. It
was a characteristic of a past generation, as it is to-day,
though I am quite certain that neither the clergy in
their pulpits nor the ladies in their homes indulged in
it. Queerly enough, one can trace the story of any
given period in its idioms, or, if you please, in its slang.
The idioms stand for living people, real scenes, and
actual life. Twelve or fifteen years before the war
for the Union broke out, a New York boy of good
family ran away to sea and made a whaling voyage.
Out in the South Pacific Ocean one day his ship anch-
ored off a small island, little more than a coral reef
in the wide waste of waters, in the hope of getting
fresh supplies. Presently a great canoe, paddled by a
score of dusky spearmen, shot out from the shore,
and a huge islander, who turned out to be the king of
the reef, clambered up the side of the ship. When he
reached the deck the monarch smiled so as to show
every one of his milk-white teeth, and laughed assur-
ingly. " Do you speak English ?" asked the captain.
The giant opened his capacious mouth and roared out,
"I kills for Keyser!" The mystified captain, who
was a New Englander, inquired " what in the name of
iniquity" he meant. " I kills for Keyser!" roared the
giant again. And then the young New Yorker stepped
forward and explained that this was a New York idiom
not to say a bit of slang in general use at one time
in the Bowery. Keyser was a famous cattle man, and
the butchers who " killed " for him were proud of as-
serting the fact, and it had passed into the slang of
the period. A shipwrecked sailor or some delayed
ship had taught the King this one sentence in English,
and he was as proud of it as if he had acquired the
106 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
whole language. To him it meant a royal salutation,
and he followed it up with royal gifts to the ship. But
to the New Yorker who heard it there, five thousand
miles from home, it came like a cry of mockery from
the grave.
Was it the fireman in real life or the fire laddie of
the stage who gave rise to the slang that centred
around the life of the volunteer fireman ? For a long
time, in my school-days, " Mose," " Lize," and " Syk-
sey " were familiar names upon our play-grounds, and
we shouted to " wash her out " or " take de butt " as
if we were veritable Chanfraus. The caricatures of
the period found inexhaustible fun in " Mose," with
his red shirt, black broadcloth pantaloons tucked into
his boot-tops, his elfin " soap-locks " hanging over each
ear and down his close-shaven cheeks, his tall silk hat
perched on one side of his head, and his broadcloth
coat hung over his left arm. For his " Lize " he or-
dered pork and beans in the restaurant, and bade the
waiter, " Don't yer stop ter count a bean," and to
" Lize" he remarked, as he drove out on the road, " It
isn't a graveyard we're passin'; it's mile-stones." Pos-
sibly a new generation does not see anything laugh-
able in these traditional jokes, but to the men of that
period they stood for living actualities, the dashing
heroes of many a fierce battle with the dread forces of
fire.
I honor the old volunteer firemen. When one of
the battered " machines " of former days passes by in
a public procession I feel like taking off my hat to it,
as I always do to the tattered colors that I have fol-
lowed on many a fierce field of fight. Ah, what
nights of noise and struggle were those in which the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 109
engines rattled down pavement or sidewalk, drawn by
scores of willing hands and ushered into action by the
hoarse cries of hundreds of cheering voices. There
was no boy's play around the engine when once it be-
gan to battle with the flames. Men left their pleasant
firesides to risk their lives for the preservation of the
lives and property of others, and they did it without
bravado, as if it were but one of the ordinary duties
of their lot. They had their jealousies and their preju-
dices, their feuds and their fights of rival organizations,
but all met alike on the common ground of self-sac-
rifice for the common good. All classes of society
were represented in the ranks of the firemen. The me-
chanic and the son of the wealthy merchant were in-
distinguishable under the volunteer's heavy hat, and
emulated each other in labors and daring. College
graduates drew the silver-mounted carriage of Amity
Hose to the scene of peril, and then the boys of "Old
Columbia " did as good work amid the flames as the
gilt-edged boys of the Seventh Regiment did after-
wards through the long years of war. And then the
firemen's processions were they not superb ? What
a magnificent polish the engines took, and how exu-
berantly they were garlanded with flowers, and how
full were the long lines of red-shirted laddies who
manned the ropes and were the cynosure of the ad-
miring eyes of all feminine Gotham ! The men who
carried the trumpets were the conquering heroes of
the day and the envy of every boyish beholder. It
seems a pity that their glory should have departed.
Has it departed ? I open the book of memory again,
and they are all there, and the glory of their record is
undimmed :
HO A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
"Those ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes
No less to me than the gods of the antique wars."
Speaking of the caricatures of that day, I am re-
minded that the first political caricature which I re-
member to have seen was entitled " The Fox of Kin-
derhook." It was a large lithograph of a fox curled
up at the entrance of his den in the rocks, and in
place of his head was substituted the shrewd, sagacious
face of Martin Van Buren. At that time^ though
John Tyler was President, Mr. Van Buren was still a
political power, not merely in the State of New York,
but in the country at large. Yet to-day he is nothing
more than a memory. Senator of the United States,
Minister at the Court of St. James's, Secretary of State,
and finally President of the United States, his was a
most illustrious record, yet how many are able to re-
call the story of his statesmanship ? Stat nominis um-
bra. We speak without thought when we say of this
or that man who has managed to achieve distinction
that his name and achievements will never be forgot-
ten. A caricature is as apt to fix fame as a library of
biographies.
But the fire has almost gone out, the chair on the
other side of my old-fashioned grate in which my
grandmother used to sit is empty, the familiar spirits
of the past have vanished in anticipation of cock-crow-
ing, and I very much fear that some gentle Charles
Lamb of the present generation will whisper in my
ear: " I never heard you do anything else but preach."
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK III
CHAPTER X
CHRISTMAS IN THE OLDER DAYS A FLIRTATION UNDER THE MIS-
TLETOE SIXPENNY SLEIGH-RIDES LITERATURE OF OUR BOYHOOD
SANTA GLAUS IN OUR GRANDMOTHERS* HOMES DECORATING
THE CHURCHES
THERE is one modern improvement which would
have delighted my grandmother's heart the more
general observance of Christmas Day. Forty years
ago the Episcopalians were the only religious body
that decorated and opened their churches on that day,
and made it, as it should be, the one day of all the
year sacredly set apart for home and the little ones.
The Roman Catholics confined their celebration to an
early mass, and the members of Protestant denomina-
tions in many cases held it to be safer to make their
presents on New-year's Day, and thus to avoid even
the appearance of a ritualistic tendency. This was a
fading relic of ancient Puritanism, but was still so
marked that certain of my adult friends would think
it necessary to remark that they " did not believe in
Christmas," when putting a gift into my little hands
on the first day of the year. Somehow it gave me a
chill, then, to hear this formal declaration of inde-
pendence of the tenderest episode in humanity's story.
I am glad to see our whole busy city gathering at the
cradle of the Babe of Bethlehem, and in spite of its
creed of indifferentism, paying homage to the divine
spirit of the time. In the Christmas atmosphere of
112 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
our streets and homes, the Christmas bustle of our
shops and markets, the Christmas sunshine in all
faces, the Christmas neighborliness of all hearts, and
the Christmas services and sermons in all churches, I
see signs of a recognition of humanity's oneness of
feelings and aims such as are vouchsafed through no
other channel.
"And he took a little child and set it in the midst
of them." There comes back to me now the memory
of a Christmas season passed in the military prison of
the Confederates in Richmond. An officer of the
Confederate guard came into the room where the
Federal officers were quartered, bringing his little girl,
a child of three or four years of age, with him. The
sunny-haired babe was a revelation to us. Thought
flashed back to desolate homes in the North, and fire-
sides that waited in vain for us. There was not a dry
eye in the room, I think, and yet those ragged, un-
kempt men had nothing but smiles for the little one,
and crowded around her with gifts of trinkets they
had carved during their long hours of leisure. The
babe did not know that she was a preacher, and her
congregation did not realize, then at least, the fulfil-
ment of a prophecy that a little child should lead
them. Set in the midst of them, she did lead them a
step nearer heaven. " Yes," said my grandmother,
when I told her of this, and the tears were flowing
freely as she tried to fix a grim smile upon her
gentle face " yes, Felix, and I suppose you stood
there and stared, too, and made a gumpey of your-
self." Precisely what kind of animal or apparition
a " gumpey " was I have never been able to deter-
mine, but it was rather a favorite synonyme with our
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 113
elders for something horrible and awkward in the
extreme.
Let us have no mistakes to start with. We children
had a good time on Christmas Day. That was our
contract, and we carried it out. Let me look back as
far as I can, and see how a school-boy prospered at
the hands of St. Nicholas. And right here let me say
that even as late as the year of which I speak, some
of the stanch old Dutch families celebrated the feast
of St. Nicholas on his natal day and gave their Santa-
Claus gifts nearly three weeks before Christmas even
at the last yielding reluctantly to the English innova-
tion that transferred the traditions of the old city's
patron saint to the holiday which England's Church
most honored.
A light snow was falling when I ran out of our
house in St. John's Park, upon Christmas Eve, on my
way to an early celebration of the holiday at Mr.
Greenough's school in Franklin Street. The sedate
New England pedagogue was a rigid Presbyterian,
but it was understood that he relaxed for this once
on account of his Episcopalian scholars. We had
recitations and dialogues, followed by lemonade and
cake, and were home before nine o'clock. Master
Felix Oldboy distinguished himself on this occasion
by reciting "The Night Before Christmas," which at
that time was newly written. I remember nothing
more vividly than my lonesome walk home on this
Christmas Eve. It was only nine o'clock, but nobody
was abroad. I crept through the drifting snow, past
the old French Church on Franklin Street, past the
great Dutch Church, past the tall flag-staff at Franklin
Street and West Broadway ah, what a long way it
114 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
seemed then to my little feet, and how short a dis-
tance now ! and up through Varick, by quiet houses
that showed glimpses of light within, but whose blinds
were decorously closed. It seemed to me, I remem-
ber, as if everybody had gone to bed, until I came to
the Park, and there, through the long, thin swirls of
snow, through the swaying, feathered crests of the
trees, I saw the flashes of light from many a window,
showing that our near neighbors at any rate were ob-
livious of all ancient edicts against the royal claims of
mince-pie, egg-nogg, and Santa Claus.
At our house we always made much of Christmas
Eve. When I had entered and removed my cap and
woollen comforter (the boy of that day never wore an
overcoat), I found the parlors radiant with festoons of
evergreens and innumerable candles, and filled with
visitors. To my horror, I was almost immediately
stood up before them and made to recite my " piece "
for there was then no Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, or to their audiences. But there
was fun enough afterwards to make up for this two
long hours of wild dissipation followed. The elder
people played whist (and they did it savagely, too, at
intervals), and we children had our games of u pillows
and keys," "stage-coach," and "going to Jerusalem,"
with plenty of forfeits and exquisite schemes for their
redemption. The big people had cake and punch be-
tween whiles; we juniors had cake and mild egg-nogg.
Shall I ever forget that night ? It was then that for
the first time I discovered that I was the possessor of
a heart, only to find that I had made it over indis-
solubly to a lovely being of seven summers, who wore
pigtails and pantalets, and whose father got awfully
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 115
cross over whist, and lived in Pike Street. Indeed, she
was bewitching, and a most arrant little flirt withal.
It was at her knees I threw the pillow every time it
came to me, and I kissed hef in a mad whirl of de-
light, while she would coolly cross over to a squint-
eyed rival of mine and smile sweetly as he bent down
to kiss her. But I had the advantage of knowing the
locality. So I led her artfully away, and in the back
entry I had the satisfaction of exchanging with her a
vow of eternal fidelity. The other children shouted
at us in chorus, but we did not mind it. We were
prepared for persecution. It was all that I could do
to tear myself away from her at last. Her father
must have guessed my anguish, for he roared out to
me at the door: " Kiss her, Felix, my boy; kiss Anna
for her Christmas." Blushing, I obeyed. The tender
Anna pressed a moist and sticky sugar-plum into my
hand at parting. I kept it for a whole week in my
pocket. It was black when my grandmother, on a
weekly voyage of investigation of my pockets, found
it and threw it away.
Do you suppose these people walked home through
the storm ? Not a bit of it. One of the old stage
sleighs, with four horses, was provided for them, and
when it drove away from the door thirty human souls
with their accompanying bodies were packed into it
for freight. They sang a lusty Christmas carol as they
went ; and the watchman of the period, yclept a leath-
er-head, only smiled as they swept by, and remarked
to himself that they were having a good time. They
did have a good time. It took little to amuse them,
and their enjoyment was thorough. To them the dis-
ease ennui was unknown. They even found it fun at
Il6 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
odd times to embark in a Kipp & Brown sleigh and ride
up to Chelsea and back. As for the boy part of that
generation, we could have ridden forever in those great
schooners of the streets. Six, eight, or ten horses
drew the sleighs, and sometimes they were so crowd-
ed inside and out that not a fly could have found rest-
ing-place there. How they whirled through the drifts,
flew over ice, careened on the hillocks where the side-
walks had emptied their burdens of snow, and with
shriek and song and shout from the inmates dashed by
the smiling and amused lines of pedestrians. But they
never escaped delicate attentions from the boys who
had no sixpences with which to purchase a ride. These
would gather at the corners, collect heaps of snow-balls,
and then open fire upon the excursionists. It was of no
avail to expostulate. The police never interfered with
any legitimate fun. All that could be done was liter-
ally to bow before the onset, and run the gantlet as
resignedly as possible. Ah me ! it is a delight to re-
call these wild excursions through Canal Street, up
Hudson, beyond the rural homes of old Greenwich
Village, out among the open streets and surviving
farm-houses of the hamlet of Chelsea. It was only a
sixpenny ride, this moonlight dash beside the Hudson,
but it had an element of romance in it which sets my
blood tingling as I think of it. I wonder if the girl
who sat beside me is still living? Many and many an
old boy (it would be irreverent to speak of old girls,
wouldn't it ?) will feel the sluggish heart-beat quicken
as he reads this paragraph, and will drop the paper,
close his eyes, lean back, and think. And those who
watch his smile will see again the likeness of the ur-
chin of fifty years ago.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 117
It was a religious observance with my sisters and
me to select carefully the largest stockings owned in
the family and to tack them securely, at an early hour
in the evening, to the old-fashioned wooden mantel-
piece in the basement. This was a ceremony we in-
trusted to no hands but our own. My little sisters
I can scarcely see them now as I look back through
the mist of tears our little sisters, I should say, for
this night I carry with me, I am sure, the tender mem-
ories of many an old boy other than he who writes
this passage they cannot be forgotten. It was only
yesterday that in the quaint attire of their girlhood
they trundled their hoops around the park and flung
back their curls to the autumn winds only yesterday
we drew them to school on our sleds, and defended
them chivalrously against the cannonade of snow-balls
only yesterday, it seems, and yet they have been
dust and ashes for more than thirty years. To-night
they come back to revisit us your sisters and mine,
of whom the world says, " Let me see ; they died
young, did they not?" But we know better ; we know
they never died at all, for our heart in its love keeps
them immortal.
At early daybreak we three, my sisters and I, darted
down the stairs in swift silence to the basement. We
did not find enough in the stockings to content a child
of to-day, but we were, nevertheless, as happy as the
children of a king. The fact is that the child of to-
day has ceased to be appreciative. Toys have become
so many and expensive, juvenile literature has grown
so extensive and luxurious, and all the appliances for
the coddling of the young have so multiplied, that
everything is taken as a matter of course by the youth-
Il8 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
ful constituent. But the fathers and grandsires of the
existing race of small Sybarites were much more cir-
cumscribed. Most of the toys of their day were rude
and cheap* and many of them, I am bound to admit,
undeniably homely. These primitive animals, dolls,
soldiers, and arks were voted " plenty good enough to
be all broken to pieces in a day or two." But we were
happy in their possession. No one thought of finding
fault with the want of expression or natural hair in a
doll, or the fact that an animal's legs were cut bias, or
a soldier had no eyes. I verily believe that if I had
been dropped suddenly into one of the huge toy marts
of to-day, I should have said to myself that dear old
Aladdin had lent me his lamp, and I had unconscious-
ly been rubbing it. As for candies, our parents went
down to the candy-store of R. L. & A. Stuart, at the
corner of Chambers and Hudson streets (where I have
stood on the sidewalk by the hour and watched the
progress of candy manufacture in the basement),
bought us each a horn of sugar-plums, with an old-
fashioned picture on it, and broken candy to an amount
limited only by the size of our stockings. This was
wholesome and healthful, as were the apples and or-
anges that were used as makeweights to fill heel and
toe of the stocking, and give it the proper bulge.
I am sure the children of to-day do not appreciate
all that has been done for them in literature during
the past thirty years. There was but one weekly pa-
per published then for the little ones the Youths
Companion, printed at Boston, and one magazine, pub-
lished by old Tommy Stanford, on lower Broadway
both of them about as dreary in point of interest as
could well be imagined. Now every book-firm in our
THE ILLUMINATION IN NEW YORK ON THE OCCASION OF THE
INAUGURATION OF PRESIDENT WASHINGTON
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 121
leading cities is putting its best work into books and
periodicals for children, and our most brilliant writers
are catering to their tastes. Do the boys who were
my contemporaries remember the literary chaff that
was fed to us? There were the soul -thrilling and
mirth-provoking adventures of Sandford and Merton,
with that irredeemable prig, Mr. Tutor Barlow, and his
endless object-lessons. It was a highly moral book,
also insufferably dull, and every mischievous boy had
at least six copies of it presented to him in a lifetime.
From the Sunday-school library of St. John's Chapel
I once drew the blood-curdling account of the great
plague in London, which Mr. Daniel Defoe wrote en-
tirely from his own imagination, but which I devoutly
believed to be true. It was so unspeakably horrible
that it gave me a succession of nightmares for a week.
A history of Trinity Church, the life of an early bish-
op, a record of frontier missionary work in Ontario
County, the exhilarating hymns of Dr. Watts, a life of
Daniel, and a Boys' Own Book were gifts made to me
from time to time, with others so dreary that I have
been glad to forgetf* their titles. But I made it up in
other ways. Surreptitiously I formed acquaintance
with Master Humphrey and Little Nell; enjoyed a
rainy afternoon with Quilp in his summer-house, lis-
tened to Dick Swiveller as he played upon his flute,
and laughed at the antics of Sam Weller; felt my
heart beat high when Ivanhoe rode into the lists, and
chuckled, as an incipient Latinist had a right to do, at
the scholastic conceits of that prince of adventurers,
Major Dugald Dalgetty. These books I would read
late at night by the fire in the back parlor, and when
detected, and the craving for stronger mental food ad-
122 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
mitted, I was introduced at the^age of twelve to the
fellowship of Robinson Crusoe, the delights of the
"Arabian Nights," and the secrets of Charles Dickens's
" Christmas Carol." Dear old Robinson Crusoe ! I
was sorry when I learned that he was but a creation
of Defoe's brain for I had read his story when lying
hidden under the bushes of St. John's Park, and had
crept out to search there for the strange footprint in
the sand.
There is one feature of the Christmas season which
I shall never cease to miss, and whose loss I shall al-
ways deplore. In the younger and more primitive
days of the city the ladies of the various parishes took
upon them the task of preparing the decorations for
the churches. There were no wreaths or stars or cross-
es to be had in the markets, but the evergreens were
ordered in bulk from the country. Huge hemlock-
trees, great bushes of laurel, masses of ground-pine,
cedar and pine branches all were dumped in one het-
erogeneous heap in the Sunday-school rooms, and the
deft fingers of the ladies were torn and blackened in
moulding the pile into shapes of beauty. But there
were three weeks of solid enjoyment in it. We chil-
dren put the greens into bunches and handed them to
our elders. Sometimes it was a quiet young gentle-
man whose heart was woven into the wreath the maid-
en was weaving. Sometimes it was a buxom widow
who kept half a dozen gentlemen and twenty children
at work. I remember that, small as we were, we had
our favorite taskmasters, and carefully avoided sundry
dictatorial old maids. As I grew older, I discovered
that it was almost as pleasant working among the
Christmas greens as battling for favors under the mis-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 123
tletoe. Besides, there was a sublime satisfaction in,
looking up from the family pew, during a prosy ser-
mon, and watching a wreath certain fair fingers had
woven. What, in comparison with such a treasure,
does the purchased decoration signify? Indeed, the
dressing of a church for Christmas has become a lost
art. The sexton attends to it now. He buys a few
trees, crosses, and wreaths, and sticks them here or
there as his fancy dictates. But in the dear old days
of lang syne we elaborated a plan months beforehand,
and made the sanctuary a bower of Christmas life and
glory creating in those plain, old-fashioned interiors
a " beauty of holiness."
COPPER CROWN FROM CUPOLA OF KING'S COLLEGE
124 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER XI
A METROPOLIS OF STRANGERS SOME OLD MANSION-HOUSES ON THE
EAST SIDE CHARACTERISTICS OF BOWERY LIFE BULL'S HEAD AND
THE AMPHITHEATRE THE STUYVESANT PEAR-TREE A HAUNTED
HOUSE
No historian of New York gives half so graphic a
picture of the embryo metropolis of fifty years ago as
my correspondent, who writes : " I do not think that
people can understand the size of our city in these
days. We all knew ' who was who.' Old Mrs. Stuart,
in black brocade, selling candy by the penny's worth
at Chambers and Greenwich streets ; Katy Ferguson,
on Hudson Street, making all the jelly and sweet-
meats, and Mrs. Isaat Sayres, in Harrison Street, pre-
paring all the wedding-cake, were types of the time.
Everybody knew them, as all knew the ministers and
our few rich men."
The city is changed, indeed, since then. Not many
months ago I stood at my window on Washington
Square, looking out upon a desolate fall day, and hesi-
tating whether to venture into the power of the storm.
A drearier morning I had never seen, and there at my
feet was a little funeral procession ready to start from
the apartment-house next door. One becomes used
to such sights in a great city, but my heart ached that
morning for the people who had to carry their dead
to the grave amid such utterly desolate surroundings.
They were strangers, as I supposed, and I had no cu-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
125
riosity to watch them, but a day or two afterwards I.
learned that this had been the funeral of an old and
dear friend. He had gone away from his Long Island
home a year before in search of health, and had re-
cently returned to the city to die. It is infinitely easy
in this cosmopolitan community to drop out of the cur-
rent, and tears for the dead are a luxury which a busy
age is apt to grudge.
From the top of Chatham Square one could once
look upon two celebrated mansions the Walton
THE WALTON HOUSE IN LATER YEARS
126 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
House and the home of Col. Henry Rutgers. When
Pearl Street was known as Queen Street, and was an
aristocratic quarter, when its gardens reached down to
the East River, and its neighborhood was free from
the contaminations of shops, the Walton House was
in its glory. The richness of its furnishings, its gold
plate, and its magnificent entertainments, were quoted
in Parliament as an excuse for taxing the American
colonies. As a boy I read of this, and I used to go out
of my way, as opportunity offered, to look at it, and
try to recall in my mind its vanished splendors. Its
gentility then had grown very shabby. The high ceil-
ings were there, and the door-ways through which
Howe and Clinton and Andre had passed, and the
floor on which a future King of England had danced
a minuet with the fairest of New York's rebel daugh-
ters ; but it was inexpressibly sad to witness the ad-
vance of squalor, and I was not sorry when the build-
ing was torn down. The Rutgers homestead occupied,
when I was a boy, the block bounded by Clinton, Rut-
gers, Madison, and Cherry streets, a relic of the great
Rutgers farm. Colonel Rutgers was a model citizen.
They had no coal strikes in his day, for they used no
coal then, but once in a while they had a fuel famine.
Once, during the '205, the city was ice-bound, and no
wood could be brought in across the rivers, and the
suffering of the poor was terrible for a while. Colonel
Rutgers distributed his supply among his poor neigh-
bors ; and when this was exhausted, even tore down
his fences and cut down his trees for their use. It was
from the limb of a tree in his orchard that Capt. Na-
than Hale, the martyr spy of the Revolution, is be-
lieved to have been hanged. But even here tradition
is at fault ; for one
authority stoutly
maintains that he
was hanged on Beek-
man Hill, near the
Beekman mansion,
and another insists
that the place of his
execution was the
Commons, the pres-
ent City Hall Park.
The weight of testi-
mony favors the Rut-
gers orchard. At any
rate, he was sacrificed
on our city's soil, and
we seem to have for-
gotten it. Andre has his monument ; Hale has none.
As I turn into the Bowery from Chatham Square I
am once more reminded of the sad story of Charlotte
DOORWAY IN THE HALL OF THE
WALTON HOUSE
128 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Temple. On the north side of Pell Street, just west
of the Bowery, are two frame houses painted yellow.
In one of these the unfortunate girl, whose sorrows
set a whole generation weeping, ended her life mur-
dered by a British officer to whom she had trustingly
given her heart. The stone house in Art Street in
which she had lived was torn down long ago. The
frame house that screened her last agonies from the
sight of those who loved her and would have rescued
her still survives, though few are aware that there is
any romance connected with such an apparently com-
monplace building.
But the Bowery has never been a place of sentiment
or romance. Its life was largely passed out-doors; its
people loved the street and its excitements. Those
who are living and remember all about it, have told
me of the crowd that daily gathered around No. 17
Bowery to see the Boston stage, carrying the United
States mail, depart and arrive. It was a great event
in that day. Those who travelled by coach down
into the wilds of Massachusetts Bay were regarded
as a species of Argonauts, and indeed the journey
by such mode would be a formidable one to-day.
Beyond the Bowery Village the line of travel that is
now known as Third Avenue was called the Boston
Road, a title that is still maintained on the other side
of Harlem River, in spite of changes caused by an-
nexation. To my young mind the Bowery was al-
ways associated with the excitement of the venerable
but lively institution known as Bull's Head. I can
recall that institution as it existed on Third Avenue,
where a bank stands as a monument to its name, and
the legends that I have heard in connection with the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 129
old Bull's Head Tavern are legion. From the time of
our Dutch ancestors until modern monopoly swept
the business into the New Jersey abattoir, New York
did not know how to exist without its cattle market,
and when it disappeared one of the liveliest features
of the city's trade was blotted out.
The Bowery Theatre was erected on the site of the
Bull's Head Tavern in 1826, the Mayor laying the cor-
ner-stone. One of my correspondents writes of this
theatre that " it was burned to the ground in the sum-
mer of 1828, at an early hour of the evening. When
its huge columns fell it shook the whole city from
centre to circumference, as I well remember." Alarms
AN OLD GOOSE-NECK ENGINE
of fire were frequent even then, sometimes reaching
five hundred in a year. The firemen worked well
(and, it must be admitted, they fought well, too), but
their methods were not sufficient to check such fires
as the burning of the Park Theatre and the Bowery
made. When the Park Theatre burned, the site was
abandoned as a place of amusement, but the Bowery
Theatre rose again from its ashes, and kept its old
features unchanged for half a century.
130 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
The street itself has always been a great place for
" shows." One of my earliest memories of the Bowery
is standing in front of a brilliantly painted canvas on
that thoroughfare, not far from Chatham Square, star-
ing in open-eyed wonder at the pictures of a calf with
two heads, warranted to move two ways at the same
time, and a pig of enormous proportions. This is a
characteristic of the street to this day. Then, too,
there was the New York Circus Amphitheatre, an
earthly paradise to the small boy of the period. Ah,
what a lovely place it was ! That is, it was not beau-
tiful to the eye, but, on the contrary, coarse and com-
mon. The canvas overhead was unclean, the seats were
dirty, the sawdust smelled abominable, and the sur-
roundings were cheap and tawdry. But when the oil
lamps were turned up, and began to glare and smoke,
when the band played, when the solemn procession of
equestrians entered, when the vividly painted goddesses
of the arena followed them on prancing steeds, we
boys began to climb up to the seventh heaven. We
reached it when the burly clown threw himself at a
jump into the sawdust and uttered the welcome, " Here
we are again !" I hardly expect to enjoy anything
sublunary as I enjoyed those afternoons at the Amphi-
theatre. The smell of sawdust brings it all back to me
at times, and then phantom horses and riders paw the
air, and a ghostly clown compels my very soul to
chuckle over a joke that tickled the children of Py-
thagoras.
Along the old Boston Road once stood a series of
mile -stones that extended from New York to and
through the land of the Puritans. One of these still
stands on the Bowery, near Prince Street, bearing the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 13!
legend, " One mile from the City Hall." Another
mile- stone was in the Bowery Village, which half a
century ago clustered around the site of the present
Cooper Institute and old St. Mark's Church. Beyond
this point the Bowery stretched, always a noble ave-
nue, but never an aristocratic one, in spite of the fact
that it owed its existence to the country-seats of gen-
tlemen the " bouweries " of the solid. Dutch burghers
of two centuries ago.
As I remember this noted thoroughfare, it was a
land of many rival carpet-stores, from which long lines
of carpeting swayed to the breeze for blocks, festooned
even from the roof; a land of dry-goods and notion
stores that have since emigrated to Grand Street ; a
land, even from " way back," of the pawnbroker and
dealer in musical instruments and jewelry ; a land of
the " original Jacobs " and " the real original Jacobs ;"
a land of oyster-saloons, in which one used to sit in a
curtained stall, and need not be at table with disagree-
able neighbors : a land in which the signs of the oyster-
houses were as primitive as economy could suggest,
consisting only of a round red ball of canvas, into
which a candle was thrust for illumination at night ; a
land of daguerrotypes and ambrotypes, in the day in
which the invention of Daguerre (which our own Dr.
Draper had just anticipated while Professor of Chem-
istry at Hampden-Sydney College, Virginia) was still
spoken of as wonderful ; a land of flannel shirts and
" dickeys" the latter being false shirt-fronts tied with
strings over the masculine breast to conceal the flannel
on dress occasions ; a land in which the church build-
ing did not flourish, but where the tavern and bar were
frequent ; a land with few foreigners, but where stal-
132 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
wart American artisans were indigenous ; a land in
which one could get shaved for sixpence or have the
hair cut for a shilling, in a shop whose floor was sanded
and whose gentlemanly proprietor handed you a small
glass at the close to see whether the operation was suc-
cessful ; a land in which life could be made comfortable
at a dollar a day, and board could be had at its hotels for
four or five dollars a week, though horse-cars were un-
known, the telegraph an infant industry patronized only
by the rich, and lager beer a vulgar innovation which
even Bowery society was trying to frown out of sight.
It was over two hundred years ago that the Govern-
or and Council of New Amsterdam gave permission
to establish a hamlet near the " bouwerie " of Governor
Stuyvesant. A tavern, a blacksmith -shop, and half
a dozen other buildings were the result. Old Peter
Stuyvesant contributed a chapel, in which Hermanus
Van Hoboken (from whom the city of Hoboken is
named), school-master in the city, read service every
Sunday. His widow devised the edifice to the Re-
formed Dutch Church ; not many years afterwards it
passed into the control of the Episcopal congregation
of " St. Mark's Church in the Bowery." Under its con-
secrated walls rest the remains of the stout old Dutch
soldier and statesman, and I wonder how many who
pass by care to read the inscription on the tablet set
into the wall that records the life and death of one of
New York's great men of old time ? The old Govern-
or's mansion, a large, square, imposing edifice, built
of small yellow brick imported from Holland, stood
upon a site close by, and was destroyed by fire in the
Revolution. His well was still in existence in a vacant
lot between Eleventh and Twelfth streets when I was
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 133
a boy. Two other mansion-houses were erected by
his descendants, one near the East River shore, close
by the present Avenue A and Sixteenth Street. There
are many who still remember the winding lane that
led to it from the old Stuyvesant pear-tree at Third
Avenue and Thirteenth Street. The other mansion,
known as the " Bowery House," stood at Second Ave-
nue and Ninth Street. There is a host of us who can
recall the famous pear-tree, said to have been .planted
by the hands of doughty Peter Stuyvesant himself,
which had become a landmark early in this century,
and which patriotic care had protected with an iron
railing. The whole city mourned when the patriarch
of more than two centuries at length fell. An effort
was made to plant a tree of the same stock on the old
site, but it did not prove a success.
At the upper end of the Bowery, Vauxhall Garden
maintained its reputation as a fashionable place of re-
freshment and amusement until the middle of the
present century. A handsome saloon, in which per-
formances were held, and trees and groves under which
tables were set, were the features of this once famous
resort. Admission to the garden was free ; to the
"saloon," two shillings. Here Russell sang, classic
tableaus were exhibited, and the ballet was danced in
properly lengthened skirts.
An old friend writes to me that a two-story, peaked-
roof brick house, on the east side of the Bowery (now
Fourth Avenue), and upon the site of the present
Cooper Institute, was known as the haunted house.
" It never had a permanent tenant," writes my friend,
the lawyer, " from the time I first recollect it, nearly
sixty years ago, until the time of its demolition, some
THE STUYVESANT PEAR-TREE
thirty years since. The ghosts, it was said, uncere-
moniously flung the rash occupants into the streets as
soon as the shades of evening had descended upon
their first day of attempted occupation."
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 135
CHAPTER XII
OUR CITY BURIAL-PLOTS ILLUSTRIOUS DUST AND ASHES A WOMAN'S
FIFTY YEARS OF WAITING THREE HEBREW CEMETERIES THE
BURKING EPISODE SLAVES OF THE OLDEN TIME
" FELIX," said my grandmother, with an altogether
unaccustomed solemnity, which was emphasized by
the silence of her knitting-needles, "do you believe
that the angels are in any way like the cherubim
carved on the tombstones in old Trinity Church-yard,
all head and wings, and nothing else? I hope not,"
continued the dear old lady, presently, " for it would
be awful to live with such creatures for even a thou-
sand years. Well, well, it doesn't signify. I suppose
we could get used to that, too. But, Felix, just im-
agine your poor old grandmother parading a street in
the New Jerusalem in such company. I really think
I'd have to ask him to go back and fasten on his body.
I'm afraid that I should, even if I had to offend him."
Quaint, and in some respects horribly suggestive, as
are the winged heads that adorn many of the burial-
stones in the church-yard of old Trinity and St. Paul's,
I do not believe that any one would want them changed.
They belong to an era in which the imagination and
art were alike crude, but an era of sterling virtues.
There was no poetry in the psalms in metre that were
sung in the congregations, but the poetry of an honest
.and patriotic life irradiated church and home. It is a
long and beautiful record that is unfolded in what was
136
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
once the new burying-ground of New Amsterdam, far
away from the little dorp, or village, that clustered
around Old Slip, Coenties Slip, the great dock, and
the fort, but is now known as Trinity Church-yard.
Its earliest tomb-stone
embalmed the memory
of a young Holland
maiden who was buried
here, in sight of the
broad river, and with
fields and woods on all
COENTIES SLIP IN THE DUTCH TIMES sides, in 1639 mOTQ
than half a century be-
fore the first Trinity Church was erected. Its latest
graves hold the ashes of men who fought for the union
of the States five and twenty years ago. I have always
honored the parish of old Trinity for preserving intact
these down-town resting-places of the dead. They are
not merely pleasant breathing-spots amid the din of
business warfare, but they are unresting preachers of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 137
shadow and reality. Millions of dollars have been of-
fered for the land ; projects have been mooted to drive
thoroughfares through the plots which our Saxon an-
cestors delighted to call God's acre ; but the vestry
of Trinity parish have stood guard sturdily over the
dust committed to their care, and waved off the dese-
crating touch of speculation. So may it always be.
There are few cities richer in graves than our own.
Within the boundaries of New York rest the ashes of
a long line of distinguished men. In the vaults of old
Trinity and St. Paul's, in the Marble Cemetery, in
Trinity Cemetery, in the old church-yards beyond
Central Park and above Harlem River, sleep the an-
cestors of the city's representative families men emi-
nent in professional and business life a line too long
to enumerate. A volume could be written (and one
was planned years ago) in giving the brief but honor-
able record of their lives. But there are a large num-
ber of graves fitted to become shrines of patriotism,
and I fear sometimes that we do not realize all that
this means, or we would do them still more honor.
The man who stood next to Washington in making
the union of these States possible sleeps at one end of
the Island of Manhattan, and at the other rests on his
laurels the soldier whose skill and patriotism kept the
Union indissoluble. Alexander Hamilton's grave is
in Trinity Church-yard ; General Grant's tomb is at
Riverside Park; and between, under the walls of an
old church which he founded, moulders the dust of
brave, hot-headed Petrus Stuyvesant, last and most
gallant of the old Dutch Governors of the colony.
The city which can boast such dust in its soil has a
right to plume itself on its past.
138
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Illustrious men lie buried in every corner of the
church-yard of old Trinity. Francis Lewis, a signer
of the Declaration of Independence and a typical New
York merchant, is interred there ; and his son, Gen.
Morgan Lewis, a soldier of 1812, sleeps at his side.
Albert Gallatin, the distinguished Secretary of the
Treasury ; Col. Marinus Willett, of Revolutionary
memory ; William Bradford, colonial printer and ed-
TOMB OF ALBERT GALLATIN
itor ; Robert Fulton, who launched the first steamboat
on the Hudson ; Captain Lawrence, who lost the Ches-
apeake, but sent his last battle-cry, " Don't give up the
ship!" ringing down the centuries; Bishop Hobart,
grand pioneer of the cross ; Gen. Phil Kearney, the
Murat of the latest struggle for liberty these are but
a few of the mighty men who rest in peace under the
shadow of Trinity's spire. And the women? Ah,
who shall fitly hymn their praise and tell the story of
the mingled sweetness and strength of the lives they
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 139
quietly lived and that yet " smell sweet and blossom
in the dust," and of the other lives that they nurtured
up into honor and renown, content to shine by their
reflected light? Of all the inscriptions on stone in the
old burial-ground at the head of Wall Street, the most
touching to me is that which measures the span of life
of Captain Lawrence's widow. It is pathetic in its
perfect simplicity, recording only the name and the
date of birth and burial. The young wife was but
twenty-five years of age when her husband climbed
up into immortal glory from the bloody deck of the
Chesapeake, and she lived for more than half a century
in her widowhood. Fifty-two years afterwards, in the
autumn of 1865, she entered into rest, but not until
she had witnessed a conflict that shook the land well-
nigh to its destruction, and had seen the sword finally
sheathed and the ploughshare again at work.
Other heroes lie buried elsewhere on our city's soil
General Montgomery under the chancel of St. Paul's
Church, and Admiral Farragut at Woodlawn Ceme-
tery. Gouverneur Morris, diplomatist, statesman, and
friend of Washington, sleeps in his family vault be-
yond Harlem River, under the shadow of St. Ann's
Church, and for years the body of President Monroe
rested in the Marble Cemetery on Second Street, un-
til, in 1859, Virginia asked for the guardianship of his
ashes, and New York courteously yielded it. There
is one other grave that should not be forgotten. A
plain white slab, which stands in the church-yard of
St. Patrick's Cathedral, bears this inscription: "A la
me"moire de Pierre Landais, ancien Contre-Amiral au
service des Etats-Unis, Qui Disparut Juin, 1818, age
87 ans." There is a whole romance, and a bitter one,
140
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
in this brief record. A lieutenant in the French Navy,
Landais entered the service of the United States, dis-
tinguished himself, and was given command of a frig-
ate. In the battle between the Serapis and the Bon
Homme Richard, poor Landais, who executed his ma-
noeuvres by his text-books, won the name of coward,
and Paul Jones, in his disregard of all rules, became a
hero. Cited before the Naval Committee of Congress,
none of whom understood French or navigation, Lan-
dais was heard and then discharged from the service
in disgrace. Again and again he sought another hear-
ing, but in vain, and for forty years he walked the
TOMB OF CAPTAIN LAWRENCE
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 141
streets in proud and solitary poverty, donning his old
Continental uniform on great occasions, and at last,
forgotten and unnoticed, as his epitaph says, he " dis-
appeared" from life.
Although Trinity Cemetery is comparatively mod-
ern, it is the burial-place of many old citizens of New
York who were eminent in their various walks of life,
and of many of our older families. Among the nota-
ble graves which dot that beautiful sleeping-ground of
the dead are those of Gen. John A. Dix, a hero of the
wars of 1812 and 1861 ; Bishop Wainwright, William
B. Astor, Samuel B. Ruggles, Don Alonzo Cushman,
John H. Contoit, Baker, the artist; Alexander B. Mc-
Donald, Peter and Henry Erben, organ-builders of an-
cient renown, and the Rev. Drs. Higbee and Ogilby.
The list of old families embraces the names of Aymar,
Ward, Storm, Cisco, Palmer, Lewis, Mount, Dash,
Voorhis, Guion, Freeman, Dresser, Cotheal, Innes,
Egleston, Gilbert, and Hoffman. It should not be
forgotten, also, that in the shadow of the spire of old
St. Paul's lie buried the Sieur de Rochefontaine, one
of Count Rochambeau's officers ; George Frederick
Cooke, the actor, whose monument was erected by the
elder Kean ; and two distinguished sons of Ireland-
Thomas Addis Emmet and Dr. Macneven.
In noticing the burial-plots in this city that have
been obliterated within my memory and I can recall
more than a score between the rifled vaults of the old
Dutch Church on Nassau Street and Harlem River
it seems to me that none pay more regard to the dust
of the dead than do the Jews. There is no synagogue
to overshadow the old cemetery on New Bowery, yet
the dead who were inearthed there nearly two centu-
142
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
ries ago remain undisturbed, and on the old tomb-
stones the graven hands out-stretched in benediction
still remain distinct to the passer-by, to mark the rest-
ing-place of one
belonging to the
house and lineage
of Aaron. Anoth-
er of these burial-
places is on Elev-
enth Street, near
Sixth Avenue, so
hidden by a high
brick wall that one
can easily pass it
by without no-
tice. It is part of
a large cemetery
that in the ear-
ly years of the
present century
stretched along
the upper bank
of Minetta Brook,
and was the prop-
erty of the con-
gregation Shear-
ith Israel, to whom
also the burial-
plot on the New
GRAVE OF GEORGE FREDERICK COOKE BoWCry belongs.
During the yel-
low-fever visitations graves multiplied here, and when it
became necessary to lay out Eleventh Street a new plot
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 143
was purchased on West Twenty -first Street, near Sixth
Avenue, and all the bodies were removed from the
lower to the upper cemetery, except the few that still
slumber in the little summer-garden by the way-side.
Long since the upper cemetery, which is still pre-
served intact, and is now hidden by a high brick wall
on Twenty- first Street, became " old," though there
are people yet living who remember it as part of a
pleasant vista of field and wood, and not far from a
little brook that babbled its way down to the Hudson
at Twenty-sixth Street.
An old New Yorker and valued correspondent, Mr.
George A. Halsey, in a letter refers to the burking
excitement which prevailed in this city in 1829-30,
occasioned by alleged mysterious disappearances of
many persons during that period, and intensified by
the horror of the Burke kidnappings, which had just
electrified Edinburgh and the United Kingdom. In
former years there had been a terrible riot, arising
from a rumor that the doctors, not content with ex-
huming bodies from the potter's field and the negroes'
burial-ground, then considered lawful prey, had been
rifling graves in city cemeteries. But in this case the
work of the grave was anticipated. Mr. Halsey says :
" I recollect one of the stories then prevalent, and
universally believed, that missing children had been
found in the haunts of the burkers in our city fastened
in a sitting position in a chair with their feet immersed
in warm water, an important artery cut, and slowly
bleeding to .,death. All that winter the community
was in a state bordering on panic ; in the evening la-
dies and children never left their homes alone unless
accompanied by one or more able-bodied male attend-
144 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
ants, though but going a block or less away to church
or to a neighbor's, and their protectors were always
provided with stout bludgeons or other means of de-
fence. I recollect going out in the evening during
that exciting period with my father occasionally to
church on the next corner, and his carrying a stout
club of hickory cord-wood at such times, taken from
the convenient pile in our cellar (there was no coal
used in those days), and when the congregation filed
out into the street at the conclusion of the services
I observed others of the male attendants similarly
equipped. I recollect that the colored population
were even more excited, none of them then being so
bold as to leave home after dusk. The other day I
asked a venerable old Ethiopian, whom I have known
from boyhood, when his aunt was a domestic in my
parents' house in Liberty Street, whether he recollect-
ed the 'burking' affair; he answered, almost to the
verge, apparently, of trembling, that he did fully re-
member, and that the reminiscence was painful."
He adds:
" This reminds me that our old colored people, those
who first beheld the light of day in the closing years
of the last century, have nearly all gone to their final
resting-place ; I know of but one or two of them left.
A few weeks ago an old ' uncle ' of that race, well up
in the nineties, respected by all who knew him, and a
resident of the city from his birth, died in Cedar Street,
around the corner from my office, and an old ' aunty/
who had lived here from birth, died only last week
near by in Nassau Street, equally respected and but a
year or two younger. I observe also now and then in
this vicinity one venerable ' aunty ' tottering along
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 145
through her old haunts, who has nearly approached
the century of her existence. I receive visits quarter-
yearly or oftener from an aged ' uncle ' who resides in
our suburbs, and was a slave of my great-grandfather
and afterwards of my grandfather. He was manumit-
ted under the State law in 1827, and is now in his
ninety-ninth year; sight, memory, and hearing seem-
ingly unimpaired, he has a walk and general vigor
equal to most men of sixty ! I know of none of our
race now living who have attained so great an age by
a decade of years, and think their longevity must be
the greater of the two."
The question of longevity is a difficult one to settle
in the absence of reliable data as to the colored race,
but I am inclined to think that the average is in favor
of the white people. It is not many days since a hale
old gentleman of ninety -four, representative of one
of our oldest Knickerbocker families, came from his
home, four miles beyond the Post-office, to have a talk
with Felix Oldboy, and I am in search of another non-
agenarian on the west side who has been reported
to me as having a much livelier interest in the proper
training of his whiskers and his general appearance
than in any antiquities, local or otherwise. I have
known many of the old slaves in my boyhood, but do
not know of any burial of blacks in our cemeteries, or
of any negro graves in our city limits. In many parts
of New Jersey, and out on Long Island, there are old
" slave " burying-grounds for the most part pictures
of desolation and neglect but the old negro burying-
grounds set apart by the city seem to have been largely
succeeded by the potter's field. In a crowded, growing
city the living push aside the dead, sometimes almost
146 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
rudely, and therefore I am always glad to see a city
graveyard and to acknowledge its humanizing effect.
I have been led into this chapter on our city's dead
because only yesterday I heard a dispute between offi-
cials and members of an old city church in reference
to a proposition to build houses upon the burial-plot
at the side of the edifice. The plot is a small one, cov-
ering only three or four building-lots, but it is all fur-
rowed with graves and gray with granite headstones,
and the inscriptions on the stones tell the history of
the first half-century of a pioneer church. Some one
asked me what I thought of the proposition, and I
said: " Restore God's-acre; make it beautiful with
green turf, fragrant shrubs, and sweet flowers ; invite
the sunshine to touch its graves and the birds of the
air to come and sing among its trees, and then let it
preach its own sermon. No orator in the pulpit will
be so eloquent as that little church-yard. It will tell
to all who pass by that the sleepers fought a good fight
and died in the faith."
A little uncle of mine, who was only five years of
age when God called him, sleeps somewhere in the
church-yard of old Trinity. The first-born of the flock,
his little feet crossed over Jordan all alone, and went
pattering up the hills on the other side and into the
Promised Land, while his father and mother tarried
behind in tears in the wilderness. So often I think of
him as I pass by, and wonder what he looked like on
earth, and how he will look by-and-by. Perhaps I am
the only one now, in all the world of life, who remem-
bers. In the same way, to all of us, the rows of graves,
hemmed in by busy haunts of life, are so many silent
but effective preachers.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 147
CHAPTER XIII
ECHOES OF SWEET SINGERS OLD THEATRES ON BROADWAY AN AC-
CIDENTAL THOROUGHFARE EVOLUTION OF UNION SQUARE A
STREET THAT WAS NOT OPENED HISTORY OF A CHURCH BELL
AN unknown correspondent writes gently to chide
Mr. Oldboy for not mentioning " Palmo's Opera-
house, which preceded Burton's in Chambers Street,
and Thompson's famous restaurant, which was quite
as popular as Taylor's," and situated near it. He
adds: "When Mr. O. gets above Howard Street, he
forgets to mention the original Olympic Theatre
(Mitchell's), which was a very popular little box ; also
Wood's Minstrels, which, though later, were quite as
much liked as Christy's. He also fails to mention
Wallack's Theatre, near Broome Street, where they
had a splendid company."
Peccaviy especially in forgetting Thompson's, where
many a time and oft the inner boy and man was
sweetly refreshed. As a matter of fact, I do not re-
call Palmo's Opera-house, but I have the liveliest kind
of remembrance of Burton's Theatre, and " Aminidab
Sleek " is as vivid a portraiture in memory as it was
in life the first time that I beheld it. Fancy going
down to Chambers Street to meet the beauty and
fashion of the metropolis at its most select theatre ;
and yet it was only yesterday, or not longer ago than
the day before ! As to opera, I first fell in love with it
148 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
at Castle Garden, when a youth, and certainly I never
got as much delight out of a dollar as came to me
from that amount of money expended in the purchase
of a ticket which admitted me to both a matine"e and
evening performance. The artists were Alboni, Son-
tag, etc., and the opera for the evening was " Lucrezia
Borgia/' Since then I have never entered Castle Gar-
den without recalling the wonderful effect of " II se-
greto " as sung by Alboni, which roused the vast
audience that filled the great floor and galleries to
wild enthusiasm. Women as well as men rose to
their feet, and the encores were like an echo of Niag-
ara. Somehow I cannot get as much value out of 5
invested to-day in opera, and I really do not think the
fault is wholly my own.
It is over sixty years since the Garcia troupe gave
New York its first taste of Italian opera. They made
their appearance at the Park Theatre in " II Barbiere
di Seviglia," and carried the town by storm. No won-
der, for Mile. Garcia, afterwards known the world over
as the great Malibran, made her debut here at the
time, though but seventeen years of age. New York
recognized her genius, and laid its tribute of praise
at her feet, crowding the old Park Theatre to listen
delightedly to the same opera for thirty successive
nights. The queer part of Malibran's experience here
was her subsequent appearance at the Bowery Theatre
in English opera. One can hardly fancy the opera
flourishing at the new theatre opened in 1826 on the
site of the old Bull's Head, and it did not succeed.
The queen of song drew large audiences, and was paid
at the rate of $600 a night, but after three weeks the
attempt was abandoned, and the Bowery was turned
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 151
over to the legitimate drama. It was after this failure
that Palmo opened his tasteful little opera-house with a
choice troupe of artists, and for a time achieved the suc-
cess that he deserved. But at last he was compelled to
abandon the enterprise. The Astor Place Opera-house
was an operatic failure from the time of its completion
in 1846, and four years later had been converted into
a menagerie which the boys delighted to visit, and
into which I stole surreptitiously to save my dignity
as a college student. The Academy of Music opened
in 1855 with a blare of trumpets, and on that site have
since been witnessed an infinite variety of entertain-
ments and performances, many of which were not
contemplated in the original projection of the institu-
tion.
My correspondent halts me again at Canal Street,
and as we stand here I recall having read that Trinity
Parish once offered to the congregation of another
creed Lutheran, I believe a plot of several acres just
where we stand, and that it was refused by the church
authorities on the ground that they did not think it
worth fencing in. It was all low, swampy ground here-
abouts at the opening of the present century, tenanted
by frogs and water -snakes, and covered by brambles.
The boys and girls skated on the brook that flowed
from the Collect Pond to the North River, eighty years
ago, and went across it into the marshes to gather wild-
flowers and berries. The people who were gray-head-
ed when I was a boy have told me many an exciting
adventure they had in the marshes when the century
was young, and they usually wound up with a reflec-
tion that I caught myself making the other day that
if they had only known how rapidly the city was to
152
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
grow, they could have made themselves millionaires
by investing a "mere song" in real estate.
There was one building on Broadway, below Canal
Street, which I well remember, and which I should
not have forgotten to mention Masonic Hall, cov-
ering the site of the stores now known as 314 and 316
Broadway. The
building was erected
in 1826 by the Ma-
sonic fraternity, and
was, for its time, an
imposing affair. The
saloon on the second
floor, 100 feet long,
50 feet wide, and 25
feet in height, finish-
ed in the richest style
of Gothic architec-
ture, and intended to
imitate the Chapel
of Henry VIII. in
London, was consid-
MASONIC HALL ered the most ele-
gant apartment of
the kind in the United States. It was used for public
meetings, concerts, and balls, and as such I remember
it. The building was then known as Gothic Hall, hav-
ing passed out of the hands of the Masonic fraternity,
in consequence of the serious and prolonged troubles
growing out of the "Morgan" excitement. Gothic
Hall stood between Pearl and Duane streets, and
towered high above the small frame buildings on
either side. These streets did not always bear their
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 153
present names. Duane Street was formerly known as
Barley Street, because of a famous brewery situated
just west of Broadway, and Pearl Street was known
as Magazine Street, because it led up from the maga-
zine on an island in the Collect Pond. Worth Street
was known as Anthony Street a generation ago, and
its first name, Catharine Street, is still perpetuated in
Catharine Lane. Franklin Street was formerly known
as Sugarloaf Street. Even Broadway at this point
has not always been thus designated. The lower por-
tion of our great thoroughfare has been known from
time immemorial as "The Broadway" and " Broadway
Street," but from the City Hall Park to Astor Place it
was called " St. George" or " Great George" Street
up to the close of the last century, and still later it
was commonly spoken of as the " Middle Road."
The original Olympic Theatre was at 442 Broad-
way, and later was known as the old Circus. It stood
next door to Tattersall's. The later Olympic Theatre,
which was first known as Laura Keene's, was situated
between Houston and Bleecker streets. Wallack's
Theatre, in 1853, was located at 48$ Broadway. It
had been known previously as Brougham's Lyceum.
The Winter Garden Theatre succeeded Tripler Hall
at 677 Broadway, and for a good while was a favorite
place of amusement. A number of hotels, in addition
to the Metropolitan and St. Nicholas, congregated in
this neighborhood. On the east side were the Ameri-
can, the Union Hotel, the Collamore, and the Carroll
House; and on the west side the new City Hotel, be-
tween Canal and Howard streets, the Prescott House,
New York Hotel, and Astor Place Hotel. These
were the hotels that marked the transition period be-
154 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
tween the down -town houses, which sought still to
make the City Hall Park the hotel centre, and the
erection of vast marble caravansaries beyond the Bow-
ery cross-roads. For it is not much more than the
flight of a generation since Franconi erected his Hip-
podrome tents upon the vacant lots in the rear of
what is now the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and we boys
went "out of town," as we thought it then, to see his
imported curiosities. And no hotel-keeper of the day
had summoned up sufficient courage to charge more
than one dollar and a half for a day's board and lodg-
ing. One dollar a day had been the tariff at the
Astor House, and an advance of 50 per cent, was all
that conscience would allow. The old-fashioned hos-
tlery at Broadway and Twenty -second Street, with
broad verandas, shaded by great oaks and elms, which
was the stopping- place of all the fast trotters of the
day, would have blushed crimson over its clean white
front had it ventured to present such a bill as the
modern Boniface presents with a smile.
A man whom I often heard spoken of when a boy
was Stephen B. Munn, a large property -holder in the
vicinity of Broadway, Grand, and Broome streets,
whose office was at the corner of Grand Street, and
who had built, on Broadway above Broome, the two
best houses standing in the neighborhood, which were
very superior buildings for the times. In one of these
he lived for a number of years, and he had for neigh-
bors many of the sons of old settlers. On the block
above were the houses of Dr. Livingston, and of Dr.
Henry Mott, father of Dr. Valentine Mott. Robert
Halliday and a branch of the Beekman family were
also neighbors, and above Prince Street stood a hand-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 155
some residence which had been erected by John Jacob
Astor, and was occupied by his son-in-law, Walter
Langdon. Opposite, in a modest brick house, lived
at one time James Fenimore Cooper, the novelist. I
remember his personal appearance, for in literature he
was one of my chief heroes ; the other was Washing-
ton Irving. Personally there was a marked contrast
between the two, Mr. Cooper being as robust and ath-
letic as Mr. Irving appeared delicate and of artistic
fibre, but each somehow came up to my boyish ideal.
They were devout Episcopalians, and always attended
the diocesan conventions as delegates, and it was my
delight to sit up in the gallery and watch their move-
ments, and wonder how it must seem to be able to en-
tertain the world with Rip Van Winkle, and Harvey
Birch, the spy.
There was not much of Broadway above Union
Square at that time. In fact, this great highway, des-
tined to be trodden, as Horatio Seymour once told
me, by more people than ever migrated through any
other avenue of travel on the globe, was in reality an
accident. Originally it was supposed that the city's
main artery of travel would turn to the east of the
commons and follow the old Boston Road. In point
of fact, provision was made to that end. Park Row
and Chatham Street, in connection with the lower
part of Broadway and the Bowery, formed the original
highway leading from the city into the interior, long
known as the High Road to Boston. Business for a
long time insisted upon turning to the east of* Broad-
way at the City Hall Park, and owners of property
were determined to keep the west side sacred to resi-
dences. But it was not so to be. Pearl Street ceased
I$6 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
to absorb the dry-goods trade half a century ago, and
when A. T. Stewart spread his dry -goods nets on the
" shilling side " of Broadway, that settled it.
But no one dreamed, a generation ago, that Union
Square would be invaded by traffic, either in this cen-
tury or in the next. It was a veritable paradise of ex-
clusives. Its solid brown-stone and brick mansions
frowned forbiddingly upon the frowzy little park in
front, which they had found an unfenced triangle of
waste land at the junction of Bowery Lane and the Mid-
dle or Bloomingdale Road, but which they had fenced
in and planted with trees for their exclusive use. Here
dwelt a solid race of men, and they meant to remain
so. A single church stood on the west side, the
Church of the Puritans, of which Dr. Cheever was
pastor. It was a headquarters of abolitionism, and
more than once I stole in there at night, when a col-
lege student, prepared to hear something "perfectly
awful," which, as a matter of course, I did not hear!
The late Frederic de Peyster told me that when he
came to live in the house in which he died, in Univer-
sity Place, near Thirteenth Street, there was but one
house which obstructed his view of the East River,
and none that rose between him and the Hudson.
That was only fifty years ago, and yet within that
time a city of quiet homes rose about him and gave
place to a dusty, noisy city of business. At the time
of his death his was the only house in the block that
had not been converted to business purposes, and
from the outside it appeared lonesome enough.
The country-seats which had adorned " Sandy Hill,
at the upper end of Broadway," and the " Minetta
water " beyond, rapidly disappeared before the level-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 157
ling hand of improvement, as soon as Union Square
became fashionable. The Elliot estate passed into
the hands of Captain Robert R. Randall, who in turn
deeded it to the Sailors' Snug Harbor. It is on a
portion of this land that Stewart built his up -town
store. Adjoining was the farm of stout old Hendrick
Brevoort, through whose homestead, between Broad-
way and the Bowery, the new Eleventh Street was
planned to run. When the opening of this street be-
came desirable, Mr. Brevoort resisted with so much of
ancient Dutch stubbornness that the improvement
was abandoned. An ordinance for the removal of the
house was passed as late as 1849, but the venerable
occupant refused to remove, and it was rescinded.
In his palmy days, Mr. Tweed, the head of the De-
partment of Public Works, was represented as sitting
at his desk with a map of the city's most desirable
street openings spread before him. In settling dis-
putes as to candidates and offices, it was said that this
renowned statesman would compromise matters beau-
tifully by means of his map. As a sop to disappointed
ambition he would remark : " No, I cannot let you go
to Albany this winter, but here is something which is
almost as good. You can have this street opening
and make a good thing out of it." At one time
Tweed determined to cut Eleventh Street through
from Broadway to Fourth Avenue, or make Grace
Church pay handsomely. The vestry thereupon met
and challenged Tweed to go ahead. He never did.
Trinity Parish, by the way, presented a silent ar-
gument against the proposition to cut Pine Street
through the old church-yard. It built a monument to
the unknown dead of the Continental Army who per-
158 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
ished in British prison pens in this city. The pedestal
is all right, but the public have waited a long while for
the " old Continental" in white marble, who was to
stand under the brown-stone canopy and complete the
picture.
The old farm-house of Henry Spingler built orig-
inally by Elias Brevoort stood within the limits of
the present Union Square, and the twenty -two acres
of the estate lay west of the Bowery Road. The lat-
ter road, then known as Bowery Lane, curved some-
what in passing the Square, and at Sixteenth Street
turned and pursued a straight course to Bloomingdale.
In order to join this course, the direction of Broadway
was changed at Tenth Street, and a junction effected
on the other side of the Square. One of the persons
most actively engaged in the improvements connected
with Union Square and its neighborhood was the late
Samuel B. Ruggles, a resident and large property-
holder in the vicinity. It was from this court- end of
the city that Grace Church drew its large and wealthy
congregation. For forty years that beautiful edifice
has been the pride of all who loved Broadway, for it
crowned magnificently its upper end, and stood senti-
nel above its Sunday stillness at a time when hand-
some church buildings were the exceptions to the rule.
Its roll of membership was at one time, and no distant
one, a roll of the most select society of which New
York could boast. Its rector, Dr. Taylor, was not
much of a pulpit orator, but he was a great social
power, and its sexton, the immensely impressive Brown,
was society's chief oracle. One by one the neighbor-
ing churches have migrated, and now Grace Church
stands her ground almost alone, and yet with a full
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 159
congregation. The sons of the fathers follow in the
path of their sires, and it is a good sign that it is so.
To me, as the city grows larger, busier, and more
cosmopolitan, one of the things I most miss is the
sound of the old familiar church bell. The city was
drenched with silence on Sundays when I was a boy,
and there was no sound to break the stillness except
the clangor of the bells. At nine and at two they
summoned us to Sunday-school ; at half-past ten and
at three they called the people to church. I suppose
they ring as usual now, but the rumble of street-cars,
the continual rush of other vehicles, the rattle and
roar of the elevated lines, and all the modern combina-
tion of noises comes between their music and my ear,
and sometimes the Sunday of my boyhood seems alto-
gether lost. And this reminds me that New York, as
well as Philadelphia, is owner of an historic bell. It
was cast in Amsterdam in 1731, and it is said that
many citizens cast in quantities of silver coin at the
fusing of the metals. The bell was a legacy of Col.
Abraham de Peyster, who died while the Middle
Dutch Church, on Nassau Street, was building, and di-
rected in his will that the bell should be procured from
Holland at his expense. When the city was captured
by the British, and the church was turned into a riding-
school for the dragoons (Johnny Battin has told me
often how he used to practise his troop there), the bell
was taken down by the De Peyster family and secreted
until shortly after the evacuation of the city, when it
was restored to its original position. It never rang in
honor of British oppression, but was patriotic to the
core. When the church was sold to the Government
for a post-office, the bell was removed to the church
THE MIDDLE DUTCH CHURCH
on Ninth Street, near Broadway, and thirty years ago,
when the building changed hands, it found another
resting-place in the church on Lafayette Place. Now
it has made some other migration. But, of right, it
should pass to a place of honor in the rooms of the
Historical Society. A bell with such ancestry and
history (and he who reads ancient Dutch may read its
story in the inscription) deserves to be tenderly cher-
ished by a city that has preserved too few of the me-
mentos of its eventful story.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK l6l
'
CHAPTER XIV
SUMMER BREEZES AT THE BATTERY A SOLDIER OF THE LAST CENTURY
KNICKERBOCKERS AND THEIR HOMES AN OLD-TIME STROLL UP
BROADWAY
THE coolest spot in New York in the dog-days is the
Battery Park. From some point in the compass a
breeze is always blowing among its elms, and the elec-
tric lights bathe it in perpetual moonshine. Even on
the most quiet of nights the swell of passing steamers
makes a ripple of tinkling waters against its granite
front, and there is no lack of pleasant companionship
to those who recall the feet that in old times pressed
its gravelled walks. Men whose hair is beginning to
grow white recall the day when they looked up with
pride, not unmingled with awe, to the old Knicker-
bockers who loved to walk here in the cool of the
afternoon, and who showed the gentleness of their
blood by always having a kindly word and the bene-
diction of a touch of the hand upon the head for us
who were children then. " ' Who were the Knicker-
bockers,' you ask, Mrs. Fribble? No one, my dear
madam, in whom you have the slightest interest."
Let us pass on.
I remember a dear old lady who loved to talk about
this park, and tell of the people she had met here and
the scenes she had witnessed ; and of these, one man
and one morning's adventure stood out most promi-
l62 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
nent. A little thing in white, her nurse had brought
her to the park to witness a civic anniversary, and the
crowd prevented her from obtaining a good view of
the pageant. As, with a child's impatience, she tried
to press through the throng, a tall and handsome el-
derly gentleman, clad in a suit of black velvet and with
a dress sword at his side, stooped down to her, inquired
pleasantly about her trouble, and then lifted her upon
his shoulder and held her there until the procession
had passed. Delighted with what she saw, the child
thought little about the gentleman who had brushed
away her trouble, but thanked him when he released
her with a kiss and set her down upon the ground.
As he moved away, the nurse, in an awe-struck voice,
asked the child if she knew whose arms had held her,
and then told her that it was President Washington.
The little eyes watched him as he walked quietly away,
and never forgot his stately appearance. I think that
dear old Mrs. Atterbury was more proud of having
been the heroine of this incident than of all the social
honors that afterwards fell to her lot.
At the Battery the ancient Dutch progenitors of
the city of New Amsterdam laid the first foundations
of a metropolis for the New World. But the pioneers
from Holland were not unanimously of the opinion
that it was wise to build their city at this point.
A large number of them thought it would be more
prudent to pitch their tents at Spuyten Duyvil ; there
they had found lovely meadow lands with running
water, affording an excellent opportunity to dig and
equip canals, and the sight was so shut in by adjacent
hills as to be hidden from the eyes of foreign advent-
urers who might find entrance in the harbor below.
THE FORT AT THE BATTERY.
It was not the Indians whom the Dutch feared, but
the English. These latter rapacious adventurers were
then pushing their expeditions in all directions, and
while it was feared that they might turn their guns
upon the colony of the Dutch East India Company if
it was located at the southern end of the island of the
Manhadoes, it was believed that they would sail quietly
away again if they found the place bearing the appear-
ance of being uninhabited. These ideas nearly pre-
vailed with the first settlers, but after an appeal to
national pride, wiser counsels had their way, and it was
resolved to begin operations at the point which is now
164 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
the Battery. All opposition was silenced as soon as
it was demonstrated that a canal could be dug there
at once, running through what is now Broad Street,
and ending at the city wall, the present Wall Street.
This at once lent the charm of home to the chosen
site, and all was peace.
Sitting here, with every little wave of the harbor
dancing in the sunlight just as it did forty years ago
when I played under the elms, with no signs warning
one to keep off the grass, I recall the Battery as I first
knew it. The park was not then one-half its present
size. There was no sea-wall. The tide rippled un-
checked along the rocks and sand that made the beach.
The walks were unkempt, and the benches were only
rough wooden affairs. But the breeze, the fresh sea air,
the whispering leaves, the orioles and bluebirds, and
the shade were there, and to the boys of the period its
attractions were Elysian. Castle Garden, then a frown-
ing fortress still thought capable of service, was reach-
ed by a wooden bridge, and the salt-water lapped its
massive foundations on all sides. The American In-
stitute Fair was then held within its walls, and on
these occasions the boys explored it from the flag-staff
to the magazine, and held high carnival there.
A number of the Knickerbocker merchants and law-
yers lived in the neighborhood of the Bowling Green
and the Battery a generation ago. Stephen Whitney
had his home on Bowling Green Place. Robert Goelet
lived on State Street, and his brother Peter at No. 32
Broadway. The Rhinelanders had recently removed
up-town to Washington Square, the Schermerhorns to
Great Jones Street, and the Leroys to Lafayette Place,
but a large number of the old families of the city still
THE OLD MCCOMB MANSION
lingered around lower Broadway and the adjacent
streets, and the Battery was always the terminus of
their afternoon walk, whether they lived in its vicinity
or as far up-town as the centre of fashion, at Bleecker
and Bond streets. The day's parade of belles and
beaux led past Trinity and to the old trysting-place,
under the trees by the water-side.
Stephen Whitney, who was one of New York's few
millionaires in his day, was a well-known character in
the young metropolis. Had he lived a generation
later, " Uncle Stephen," as all the young men called
him, would have been a power in " the Street." As
166 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
it was, he knew enough to hold the money he had
made, and his shrewdness was proverbial. When Ste-
phen Whitney was buried from old Trinity, his was
the last Knickerbocker house below Broadway. His
house was closed, and the current of business buried
it under the waves. The old man had dreamed that
some day commerce would find it more convenient to
occupy the upper end of the island, with Harlem River
for a ship-canal and Long Island Sound for the en-
trance and exit of its fleet, and so the Battery would
again be surrounded by comfortable homes and echo
to the feet of the descendants of the people he had
known. If his ghost ever walks in that direction, it
must shiver while it anathematizes with voiceless fury
the elevated railroad structure that defaces the park.
Was it yesterday that I sat on one of the benches
in the old Battery Park and listened with rapt atten-
tion to Johnny Battin, as he told me of the scenes lie-
had witnessed from that point when he was a young
man and wore the red coat of King George. For
" Johnny," as everybody called him, had been a cornet
of horse in the British Army, and had served Lord
Howe as bearer of despatches both to England and
many a point in the colonies. He had known An-
dre, Burgoyne, Clinton, and all the British generals,
had fought in the battles of Long Island and Fort
Washington, and was the last survivor of those desper-
ate encounters. A man of warm heart, his sympathies
at last went over to the side of the colonists, and when
peace was declared he made his home here, sought out
a pretty Jersey girl for a wife, and made her a happy
woman for five-and-sixty years. " Johnny " Battin was
ninety-four years old when I was ten, and he lived to
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 167
be over one hundred years of age, and then went
quietly to sleep like a little child. Until heyhad passed
the century mile-post he never passed a day when he
did not walk from his hosiery shop (he lived in the
same building) in Greenwich Street, near Warren, to
the Battery. I can see him now in the old-fashioned
cut-away coat of drab, with knee-breeches and gray
worsted stockings and low shoes with silver buckles,
which he always wore. His hair was white and long,
and gathered in a knot behind. There was a snow-
white frill in his shirt, and his neckerchief was white
also, and ample. In his hand he carried a substantial
cane, which he scarcely needed even when he had long
passed ninety, so erect was he and soldierly.
" Felix," said Johnny Battin, " I like to come here
to the Battery, and think of all the changes I have
seen hereabouts in the last seventy years. Yes, it
was seventy years ago since I saw the British flag
hoisted on the battery that stood back there by the
Bowling Green. We camped up in East Broadway
the night General Putnam evacuated these barracks
and stole up along the Hudson to Fort Washington.
That night a terrible fire broke out by the river-side
here, and swept up Broadway, carrying away Trinity
Church and nearly every other building as far as St.
Paul's. It was a terrible conflagration, and lit up
everything almost as clear as day. The houses were
nearly all of wood, and by daybreak more than a third
of the city was in ashes. The brick houses on Broad-
way, opposite the Bowling Green, were all that were
left standing, and there Lord Howe made his head-
quarters. They are fine houses still, with marble
mantel-pieces, and huge mirrors, and great mahogany
l68 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
doors. If you go into the second one some time they
will show you the room that Andre occupied for his
office when he was adjutant-general, and you will see
a slit in the door into which I used to slip his de-
spatches. I was sorry for Andre, but he knew what he
was about, and took his chances. In the first house
they used to have grand balls, and Lord Howe and
TRINITY CHURCH
The first edifice. Destroyed in the fire of 1776
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 169
Lord Percy and the rest of the noblemen/who were
fighting against your forefathers, my boy, held a sort
of colonial court there which seemed to bewitch the
royalist belles. Yes, and they were beautiful, very
beautiful but all dust and ashes now, my boy.
" After the war was ended they swept away the
batteries for there was more than one and the bar-
racks. Then they built a fine large mansion of brick
where they had stood. It faced the Bowling Green,
and looked up Broadway. The view from the windows
was superb, for the ground was rising, and a long, low
flight of steps led up to the main entrance. Washing-
ton was here then as President, and this was called the
Government House, and was intended as his residence.
But the Capitol was removed to Philadelphia, and then
to Washington, and Washington never occupied our
White House. For a few years it was used as a hos-
pital, and then it was sold, and the block of brick
houses was erected there, in one of which Mr. Whitney
lives.
" It looks like a long way over to Staten Island, but
I remember when the bay was frozen over solid from
the Battery to what is now the Quarantine grounds.
Our troops crossed over on the ice from Staten Island,
and dragged their cannon with them. I carried the
orders from Lord Howe, and it startled them, I can
tell you ; but they came through all right. Did your
grandmother never tell you that she had crossed on
the ice, too ? Let me see ; it was in the hard winter of
1780 when the troops marched over a terrible winter,
when many poor people starved or froze to death here,
and it was thirty years later that the bay was frozen
over solidly the second time. My wife went in a
i ;o
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
sleigh to the Quarantine station, and she took your
grandmother with her. When they reached Staten
Island they found the snow was so deep that the peo-
ple had carved a road out under an arch of snow. So
many sleighs crossed that a man built a half-way house
just a shanty, you know on the ice, and made quite
a little sum by selling refreshments to the travellers.
RUINS OF TRINITY CHURCH
" I have seen a great many changes, my boy, in sev-
enty long years, and I am more than ninety-four. But
it has been a pleasant and a happy life, and its happi-
est part has been lived in my little home on Greenwich
Street. It won't be long now before I am called to
meet the King of kings, but you will live to see
greater changes than any I have known. Love your
country, boy, and love your home. It's an old man's
advice and the secret of happiness."
I take Johnny Battin's hand as he rises, and we pass
out of the wooden gate and up Broadway. He knows
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK i;i
everybody that we meet, and all have a courteous word
for him. Some of the great men of the day are on the
promenade. Michael Hoffman, the Naval Officer, and
Surveyor Elijah F. Purdy pass arm in arm, and I look
up to them with awe as mighty politicians. Of " Cor-
neel " and " Jake " Vanderbilt, who have a steamboat
office at 34 Broadway, I have far less fear, for they
live on Staten Island, and seem to be but ordinary
men. Mayor Havemeyer is a fine-looking man, and
walks briskly up to his residence on Vandam Street.
Near the City Hotel, a great hostlery then, we pass
" Tommy '.' Stanford, of the book- publishing firm of
Stanford & Swords, on Broadway, near Cedar Street,
and he stops to have a chat. A decidedly homely man,
he has pleasant manners and a shrewd business look.
He knows my father, and pats my head. As we leave
him, Johnny Battin points to the old Dutch Church on
Nassau Street, and tells me that he used it as a riding-
school seventy years ago. It is a wonderful place to
me, open from 8 A.M. to 7 P.M., and sending out its
great Northern mail every afternoon at three, its great
Eastern mail at the same hour, except on Sunday, and
its Southern mail every night, and opening its doors
on Sundays for an hour in the morning and afternoon.
When we pass St. Paul's Church the old British sol-
dier takes off his three-cornered hat before the monu-
ment to Major-general Montgomery, and tells me of
the pageant that marked the bringing back of the dead
hero's body. " I have often seen President Washing-
ton come here to church," he says, " and he walked in
very quietly, without any display, and when he was
once in his pew he paid no attention to anything but
his prayer-book and the clergyman." And then the
CITY HOTEL, BROADWAY. 1812
old man tells me of the church, as he saw it first in
summer, surrounded by pleasant fields, and with noth-
ing between its front porch and the river but a stretch
of greensward ; for, though St. Paul looks out upon
Broadway from his lofty niche, the church itself turns
its back upon that bustling thoroughfare. But I am
more interested in his story of the suicide's grave that
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
173
lies directly under our feet. A son of a forrrfer rector
of Trinity took his own life, and they would not bury
him in the church-yard, but laid his poor, mutilated
body at rest be-
neath the sidewalk,
just outside of the
church's gate. I
will never forget
this as I pass the
spot, though ten
thousand other feet,
pass lightly over the
dead man's uncon-
secrated ashes.
A group of men
stand on the front
steps of the Astor
House, and I look
at them with a vast
deal of reverence.
It is currently re-
ported among my
school-mates that
the guests at their
granite hostelry,
which rises high
above all surround-
ing buildings with
the sole exception
MONUMENT TO GENERAL MONTGOMERY Q f g^ Paul's haVC
to pay one dollar a
day for their entertainment. It is an enormous sum
to expend for board and lodging, and my boyish mind
174 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
is lost in contemplation of the amount of luxurious
ease which it is possible to purchase with such a price.
My little feet trot along in syncopated rhythm with
the nonagenarian's slow pace as we leave Broadway and
turn down Warren Street, and it seems almost a long
enough journey to have afforded us a pretext for taking
a Kipp & Brown stage. But Johnny is an old soldier,
and it is a matter of daily duty with him to take his
" constitutional." At last, however, we have reached
Greenwich Street. There, in front of the modest little
store, hangs a gigantic wooden stocking in glaring
plaid coloring, and in the doorway stands Johnny Bat-
tin's son Joseph, who was the first of the city militia-
men to grasp the hand of Lafayette when he landed at
the Battery on his second visit to this country, and
" Papa, what's the matter are you dreaming?" It
is my little twelve-year-old son who is tugging at my
hand and calling to me, and we are standing at the
foot of the stairs that lead up to the Warren Street
station of the elevated railroad.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 175
CHAPTER XV
LIFE AT EIGHTY -SEVEN YEARS MEMORIES OF ROBERT FULTON
WHAT THE FIRST STEAMBOAT LOOKED LIKE SUNDAY IN GREEN-
WICH VILLAGE A PRIMITIVE CONGREGATION FLIRTING IN THE
GALLERIES
MY friend the school trustee is eighty-seven years
old in March. His hair is white and his frame is a
little bent, but his cheek is still " like a rose in the
snow," and his heart is as that of a little child. My
little boy said to me once: " Papa, when grandpa gets
to be real old, he will grow down and be as small as
me, and then we can play together, can't we ?" I do
not know from what source the little child, who had
not yet been graduated into trousers, had drawn the
strange idea that as men grew older they grew down
into childhood physically ; but I have thought there
was not a little of good philosophy in it, and the inci-
dent came back to me as I marked the bowed shoul-
ders of my old friend, and noted how he was growing
into a beautiful childhood spiritually. The late Ho-
ratio Seymour said to me, at the age of seventy, when
his friends were urging him to allow his name to be
used once again as a Presidential candidate, " I have
only one thing to ask of the world now to be allowed
to grow old as gracefully as I can." Then he went on
to speak of the reluctance that many showed to admit
the march of time, and of his own eagerness to be
I?6 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
relegated to the rank of adviser, and be relieved from
active duty.
As I write, there come back to me memories of
that hospitable home on the Deerfield Hills, in which
stood the clock that had ticked off the hours to Bur-
goyne when he was a captive in the Schuyler mansion,
the favorite chair of Bishop White, and a hundred
other historical relics, of colonial and Revolutionary
days ; and I wonder if it will be amiss /or me to say,
apart from partisanship, and after close knowledge of
many public men, that Horatio Seymour was the most
complete Christian gentleman I ever knew? The pen
that once pursued him bitterly in political life should
be allowed to scratch this laurel on the rough bowlder
that marks his grave.
My friend the school trustee was born in this city,
on the eastern edge of what was then known as Green-
wich Village. The house in which he was born stood
on a hill not far from the lower end of Sixth Avenue,
and it had no neighbors in sight except on the road
that led up to the little hamlet on the banks of the
Hudson, for which Admiral Sir Peter Warren had
borrowed a name from England's home for veteran
sailors when he set up his baronial mansion here.
The family had just moved from their old homestead
on Duane Street, near Chatham, and their friends
deemed them crazy for going out into the wilderness
to live. This house disappeared long since, but the
frame dwelling to which my old friend brought his
bride sixty years ago, and which he had erected, still
stands in Jones Street, the oldest residence in the
Ninth Ward. The house cannot tell its story, but it
is like a revelation to talk with the white-haired pa-
SIR PETER WARREN'S HOUSE, GREENWICH VILLAGE
triarch who built it. He has seen Fulton and Aaron
Burr, and talked with them ; he remembers when the
friction match, anthracite coal, and gas were intro-
duced in this city ; when the first stage began to run,
and the first steamboat ploughed its slow way up the
Hudson. He was a man of mature years at the time
when the first locomotive ran out of New York, and
the telegraph and the sewing-machine were invented
and turned to practical use.
When first he began to go to school he walked with
his sisters from their home in Greenwich Village to
the old Dutch Reformed school, then situated in Nas-
sau Street, opposite to the old Middle Dutch Church,
the site of the present Mutual Life Insurance Compa-
ny's building. Their long walk led them across Mi-
netta Brook and down by Burr's Pond (on his Rich-
mond Hill estate), into which the brook flowed, through
the thick woods that extended from Macdougal and
178 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Downing streets, and thence out into the cornfields
and meadows that stretched down to Canal Street. It
was only when they had crossed the bridge there that
they had reached the suburbs of the city. In all their
long walk they had to make but one turn, out of Broad-
way into Liberty Street. It was a journey that would
have appalled the school-child of to-day. But there
were no conveniences of suburban travel at that time.
A stage made a daily trip from Greenwich Village to
John Street and back every week-day, to accommodate
business men who lived out of town, but the fare was
two shillings each way, and that was entirely too great
a price to pay for education.
When a boy of eight, my patriarchal friend saw Ful-
ton's steamboat, the Clermont, pass Greenwich Village
in making her first trip up the Hudson. Everybody
had heard of this apparently foolhardy undertaking,
and all were on the watch for a glimpse of " Fulton's
folly." The school -children were wild with excite-
ment, and when news came that the boat was in sight,
they ran down to a high bluff that stood at the foot
of Morton Street and cheered it as it passed. " What
did it look like?" I asked. The old man chuckled. " I
told people afterwards," he said, " that it was as big
as a barn and a block long, and horrible to behold ;
and they believed it, too. But in reality it looked like
a big scow, with unprotected paddles in the centre,
and a walking-beam and other machinery half exposed
to view. It was a very primitive affair, and did not
move very fast ; but to us it was a wonder then, as it
went without sails." Then he went on to tell me that
he had often seen Robert Fulton afterwards in the
shop in which he had learned his trade, and where the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 179
great inventor was overseeing the manufacture of ma-
chinery for the steam-frigate which he had planned for
the defence of New York. The frigate was a species
of floating battery, which proved to be impracticable,
yet it was the seed idea of monitors and turreted ships,
and did not ripen because its growth was premature.
Fulton heard nothing while in the shop, and saw noth-
ing. With eye and mind intent on the machinery or
plans before him, he would not break away unless some
one put a hand on his shoulder and called him back by
a touch.
Two of the company on Fulton's first steamboat
voyage down the Hudson have but lately passed to
the other side of the sea of time. Dr.-William Perry,
THE CLERMONT
who lived at Exeter, New Hampshire, and who sur-
vived his ninety-eighth birthday, rode from Albany to
Kingston on the return trip of the steamboat, and had
a vivid remembrance of the incidents of that eventful
voyage. He declared that the name of the boat was
not the Clermont, as has been generally accepted, but
Katharine of Claremont, so called in honor of Fulton's
wife, who was a daughter of Chancellor Livingston,
and her family, to whose liberality he owed the money
l8o A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
to carry out his idea of a vessel propelled by steam.
The last surviving passenger on this famous voyage
was Col. George L. Perkins, of Norwich, Conn., who,
until his century-mark, continued in service as active
treasurer of the Norwich and Worcester Railroad
Company.
There is an old-fashioned Methodist Episcopal
church at the corner of Bedford and Morton streets,
at whose side I remember that long ago a quiet little
burying -ground stretched. These serene and silent
settlements of the dead have always had a strange fas-
cination for me. Especially is this true of the half-
forgotten nooks in old city by-ways where the men
and women of a former generation sleep those about
whose lives hang the romance of the days before I was
born. I never pass the greensward that softly roofs
them in from our eyes but I wish that I could ques-
tion them concerning the days in which they lived.
Some one had told me that a half-century ago, when
a smaller church building occupied the site at Morton
and Bedford streets, the burial-ground was more ex-
tensive, and I remembered that at one time it was
more conspicuous, so I went to my old friend, whose
memory I knew to be wonderfully bright, and asked
him how far back he could recall this old-time sanctu-
ary of the disciples of John Wesley. His eyes twin-
kled triumphantly as he replied : " Why, I remember
when it was built. I attended with my mother the
first Methodist meetings held here. We belonged to
the Dutch Reformed Church at the corner of Bleecker
and West Tenth streets it was Herring and Amos
streets then but we got drawn into the carpenter-
shop that was the cradle of Methodism here, and,
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK l8l
praise the Lord, I have been in the way ever since."
It was the story of a city church that he told me then,
and this was also a story of the city's growth, though
with this difference, that, unlike many another congre-
gation, the people of old Bedford Street Church still
hold the fort, and are as strong as they were half a
century ago. I saw the church filled in the storm of
a late Sunday night, and the altar railing occupied by
nearly a score of penitents. And up from all corners
of the church rang the triumphant notes of the old
hymns with which Charles Wesley sang into the King-
dom of his Master and theirs a multitude whom no
man can number.
The first meetings of the Methodists of Greenwich
Village were held at the house of Samuel Walgrove,
on the north side of Morton Street, not far from
Bleecker. Thence they were transferred to his car-
penter-shop, whose first floor was carefully swept on
Saturday afternoons, and arranged with benches of
rough lumber, so as to accommodate from fifty to
sixty persons. This was in 1808. It did not take
long for this zealous little congregation to outgrow its
limits and demand more room. Five lots were pur-
chased at the corner of Bedford and Morton streets
for $250 each, and there a church was built in 1810.
It was a plain edifice, without steeple, blinds, or orna-
ment ; its sides were shingled, and it was painted the
color of cream. Two separate entrances led into the
two aisles one for males and the other for females.
The sexes were kept rigidly apart for years. " Yes,"
said my aged informant, " we had a hard time keeping
the boys and girls apart after the galleries were built,
but we did it for a while. They could only sit and
l82 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
wink and blush at each other." And then he laughed
softly to himself, as if memory had brought back sum-
mer days when the corn could be seen waving outside
of the windows of the old shingled church, and the
bluebirds and robins were twittering in the willows,
and the eye would wander, in spite of the conscience,
to the opposite row of benches, where, demure and
sweet, with dimples struggling up to the corners of
the mouth and flushes of pink lighting up the severely
simple Sunday bonnet, sat the dearest girl in all the
world. An old story ? Yes, it was an old story even
then. But ask your grandson if it is not new.
The pulpit was a lofty, pepper-box structure, that
subsequently went with the high -backed pews and
other furniture to decorate the interior of a church
for colored people on West Fifteenth Street, when, in
1830, the old building was enlarged by an addition of
six feet on the front and fourteen feet on one of the
sides, which made a singular exterior and decidedly
queer interior. Outside, Nature made some amends,
through a row of poplars on the Morton Street side
and two comely willows on Bedford Street. But in-
side all was bare and hard except around the altar
space, which was carpeted. This, together with the
placing of blinds at the pulpit windows, was an inno-
vation that was stoutly resisted. It was inveighed
against by the elders of the congregation as yielding
to the pomps and vanities of the world. But the
church prospered. John Newland Maffit, the famous
revivalist, held wonderful gatherings in the old meet-
ing-house (no one called it a church then), and in 1840
its membership of nine hundred had outgrown its for-
mer accommodations, and the present comfortable and
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 183
commodious edifice was built, which still holds its own
in the old Ninth Ward. Under the old church had
been a cellar in which cider was stored ; under the
new the space was turned to better account in class-
rooms and an ample lecture-room, where the old rail-
ing, at which so many thousands of converts had knelt
in the days of Maffit and Rice, stands as a monument
to past simplicity and power ; for there was power
there from the first, and " the shout of a king was
among them." An old gentleman of eighty-one, who
used sometimes to walk up to this church from his
home in Vesey Street through the swamps and mead-
ows above Canal Street, that then were filled with snipe
and woodcock from the Jersey shore, and who liked to
stop and drink at a beautiful spring under some chest-
nut-trees in the fields south of Morton Street, said to
me : " They used to call this the shouting church, and
I often saw the men sitting in the pews in their shirt-
sleeves and shouting as if they were wild."
It was in 1841 that the steamship President sailed
from New York, never to return. Among her passen-
gers was the Rev. Mr. Cookman, father of the late Rev.
John E. Cookman, D.D., pastor of the Bedford Street
Church, and of the Rev. Alfred Cookman, famed in
Methodist annals as a leader in the spiritual Israel.
Pastor and people in the old Greenwich Village con-
gregation are suited to each other, and work in won-
derful unison. The church that has seen eighty win-
ters pass over its head, and that has kept on growing
all that time, is likely to breast successfully the storms
of centuries to come. So may it be.
184 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER XVI
ON THE EAST SIDE THE OLD SHIPPING MERCHANTS JACOB LEISLER
A PARADISE OF CHURCHES THE DOMINIE'S GARDEN MORAL AND
RELIGIOUS SANITY OF OLD NEW YORK
" WHAT is the matter with the east side?" writes a
friend, whose family homestead was once on Pearl
Street.
To which I make answer by turning the steps of
the tourist to a quarter of the city that was the earli-
est business centre, and that held the homes of the
wealthier colonists, at a time when the splendors of
the old Walton House were quoted in the British Par-
liament as an incentive to the tax-gatherer. Yet there
are some recollections which sadden me as I take my
way up the water-front of the East River. In my
boyhood the wharves were filled with clipper ships
and packets that bore the flag of the Union, and fur-
ther up were great ship-yards where we school-boys
went to see the great vessels launched. I am enough
of a free-trader to be at war with the dog-in-the-manger
policy of our Government which forbids our merchants
on the one hand to go into the open market and pur-
chase ships built in other lands, and on the other
hand retains the heavy war taxes on material which
prevents them from entering into competition with
foreign shipwrights. My uncles were shipping mer-
chants in South Street, near Wall (above the door I
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 187
can still read the faded lettering of the sign), who were
compelled to sell their ships when Confederate cruis-
ers began their depredations. The ghost of our lost
commercial marine haunts my steps as I pass by.
The east side from the earliest time was the cradle
of mercantile life. The old Dutch founders of the
city settled it by locating their canal on Broad Street
and anchoring their vessels in the East River, on
whose banks their primitive wharves and storehouses
were built. There is not a street between the Battery
and the City Hall Park which is not redolent with
the romance of the old merchants of the metropolis.
They were a social power in colonial days, a political
power in the years that saw the struggle for independ-
ence, a progressive power in the building up of the
young republic. To write their story would be to
give the history of the rise and prosperity of the city.
Yet their social, business, and domestic life in the ear-
lier part of this century is a theme to tempt sorely
the saunterer's pen.
I remember when a boy frequently visiting the
store of Valentine & Bartholomew, on Front .Street,
in which one of my uncles was the youngest clerk.
It was a dingy place. The front was filled with coffee
and sugar in bags and barrels, and in the rear was a
bare, bleak office, containing high desks with spindle
legs, wooden stools and chairs, and neither carpet nor
anything else approaching luxury. In winter a small
fire of Liverpool coal- made a dismal attempt to heat
the atmosphere. It was a fair type of the offices of
the period. As for the clerks, they were expected to
work early and late. The junior clerk had to be on
hand by seven o'clock to admit the porter, and help
NO. 2 BROADWAY, 1798
him sweep and set things to rights. The modern
clerk would think himself insulted if set to such tasks.
Yet out of just such work our great merchants were
moulded. In the case above quoted the junior clerk
was president of a bank in Wall Street at thirty years
of age.
It would not do, in those days, to judge of the
prosperity of a firm by its surroundings. A story
told me by Jehiel Post, many years ago, illustrates
this aptly. His father and uncle were in business in
William Street, and their office and store (in which
they kept only samples) were as bare and comfortless
as an empty barn. It happened that a country mer-
chant had received a note of theirs in course of trade,
and as he was in the city he thought it would do
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 189
no harm to look them up and find how they stood.
On entering the store he was astonished to find their
stock apparently very low, and everything bearing the
appearance of a lack of trade. Beginning to grow
alarmed, he entered the back office, and was still more
disheartened by its appearance of poverty. At last
he mustered courage to remark that he held a note of
the firm. " Very well," answered the senior Jehiel,
" it will be paid when due." But this did not satisfy
the countryman, and he ventured to inquire if the
firm would not discount the note. " We don't do
business that way," was the cold reply. "But, gen-
tlemen," stammered the man, " I'll take off 10 per
cent, for cash yes," with a burst of terror, " I'll take
off twenty." " Brother Jehiel, do you hear that?"
whispered the other partner ; " let's take him up."
The bargain was made and the money paid down.
" Now," said one of the brothers, " if you please, tell
us the meaning of this strange transaction." The
countryman made his confession, and the brothers
roared. They were vastly more tickled by the joke
than by the profit. Calling one of their clerks, they
sent him around with the visitor to the bank where
the note was to be paid, and there the latter was in-
formed by the cashier that he would cash the check
of the firm any day for $50,000.
To men who take a pride in New York as their
own city there is a historic charm about this old mer-
cantile camping -ground on the east side. There is
scarcely a street which has not its patriotic legend.
The old tavern of Sam Fraunce, in which Washing-
ton took leave of his officers at the close of the war, is
still standing at Broad and Pearl streets. At the De
190
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Peyster House, on Pearl Street, opposite Cedar, the
general had his headquarters. On Wall Street he
was inaugurated President. Through these streets
the Liberty Boys paraded. Here they seized a load
of muskets from their red - coated guardians ; there
they threw into the street the types of the loyalist
printer, Rivington. Francis Lewis, a merchant doing
business on Dock Street, and Philip Livingston, whose
store was at the corner of Water Street and Maiden
Lane, were signers of the Declaration of Independ-
ence.
It is a good many years since I noticed on the wall
of the Senate Chamber in the old Capitol at Albany a
FRAUNCE'S TAVERN, BROAD AND PEARL STREETS
portrait of Jacob Leisler. A wealthy shipping mer-
chant of New York, he was the city's first martyr to
constitutional liberty. Called by the Committee of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 19!
Safety and the people to fill the interregnum occa-
sioned by the accession of William and Mary, his
short term of office, from 1689 to 1691, was the heroic
age of the young colony. At his summons, in May,
1690, the first Continental Congress assembled in the
old Stadt Huys, on Coenties Slip, where the colonies
-
THE STADT HUYS
of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth,
and Maryland were represented. New Jersey sent
her sympathies, and the Philadelphia Quakers wrote
that it was " ag't their princ'ls " to fight. But this
sturdy little Congress was full of martial zeal, and
voted to raise a grand army of 850 men to invade
Canada and wipe out the French. The people stood
by Leisler; the aristocrats, led by Col. Nicholas Bay-
ard, opposed him. Finally a new Governor came
from England, Colonel Sloughter, and Leisler was de-
192 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
posed, tried, and condemned to hang for treason. It
was a travesty of justice, and Sloughter could be in-
duced to sign the death-warrant only after a wine
supper at the fort. The next morning, in a drenching
rain, Leisler was led forth to execution. , The place
selected was on his own grounds, on Park Row, east
of the Post-office, in full view of his home. The peo-
ple shouted and groaned, but the law prevailed, and
they had to content themselves with tenderly convey-
ing the corpse of the martyr to a quiet grave in his
own garden, near at hand. Two months later Colonel
Sloughter died suddenly, and was buried in the Stuy-
vesant vault, near the chapel which is now St. Mark's
Church ; four years afterwards the taint of treason
was by royal proclamation removed from the name
and fame of Jacob Leisler.
The lower east side early became the paradise of
churches. The Dutch Reformed had the South
Church, on Exchange Place ; Middle Church, on Nas-
sau Street, where the Mutual Life Building now
stands; and North Church, at Fulton and William
streets, where the noon-day prayer-meeting still com-
memorates its site. These were large, substantial
structures, each with its graveyard at the side, dotted
with ancient tombstones. The Presbyterians built
their first church on Wall Street, where it stood for
more than a century. Jonathan Edwards was once
its pastor. Their second congregation erected the old
" Brick Church " upon the triangular lot bounded by
Park Row, Beekman, and Nassau streets, and known
as " The Vineyard." I remember the edifice well.
It was an architectural horror. But no man was more
revered than its pastor, Dr. Gardner Spring, though
NORTH DUTCH CHURCH, FULTON STREET
he was not a particularly attractive preacher. Anoth-
er Presbyterian church stood on Cedar Street, and a
fourth on Rutgers Street. Theologically the denomi-
nation was a power. Drs. Rogers, McKnight, Mille-
dollar, Romeyn, and Samuel Miller were men of won-
derful strength in the pulpit, as were also Dr. Mason,
13
194
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
of the Scotch Presbyterian Church in Cedar Street,
and Dr. McLeod, of the Covenanters' Church, in Cham-
bers Street. Drs. Miller and Mason were the intellect-
ual leaders of the New York pulpit in their day, their
only rival being Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Hobart. It
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, WALL STREET
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
195
used to be said of Dr. Livingstone, of the Dutch
Church, and Bishop Provoost, of the Episcopal, that
"when they met on Sunday and exchanged saluta-
tions, they took up
the entire street,
and reminded be-
holders of two frig-
ates under full
sail, exchanging
salutes with each
other."
In the Methodist
chapel, on John
Street, still occu-
pied for worship,
Whitefield used to
"preach like a
lion." The Meth-
odists had other
churches on Forsyth and Duane streets. Baptist
"meeting-houses" were erected on Gold, Oliver, and
Rose streets before this century had opened, and
were flourishing. The Lutherans built their first
church at the corner of William and Frankfort streets,
and the German Reformed people were housed on Nas-
sau, near John Street. The pastors of these churches,
Drs. Kunze and Grose, were among the group that
stood back of President Washington when he took the
oath of office. The Moravians had a church on Ful-
ton Street, near William. The Quakers had a meeting-
house and burying-ground on Little Queen Street, be-
tween Maiden Lane and Liberty Street, and the Jews
built their first synagogue on Mill Street a thorough-
METHODIST CHURCH, JOHN STREET
196 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
fare now blotted out by the march of improvement.
Their old burial- plot remains, however. When they
purchased it their idea was to seek a sepulchre far
away from the living and their haunts, so in 1729 they
purchased ground east of what is now Chatham
Square, between James and Oliver streets. Part of
the greensward and some of the headstones carved
with Hebrew characters still remain, walled in on all
sides but one by the high walls of tenement-houses.
There were two Episcopal churches east of Broad-
way when the century was in its teens. One was
Christ Church, on Ann Street, afterwards transferred
to Anthony, now Worth Street ; the other was St.
George's Church, on Beekman Street. The latter was
a stately stone edifice, in which I have often heard
Dr. Milnor, the rector, preach. Once a Congressman
from Pennsylvania, the doctor was as successful in the
ministry as he had been in politics. In Zion Church,
on Mott Street (now the Ro-
man Catholic Church of the
Transfiguration), I have also
attended services when Dr. Rich-
ard Cox was rector. He had
been a Wall Street broker, and,
LUTHERAN CHURCH Hke G^ ButlCT, WES " CrOSS-
William and Frankfort Streets eyed " as Well aS eloquent. Zion
Church had been a Lutheran
conventicle until 1804, when it transferred its alle-
giance to the Episcopal ordo. About the same time,
also, the old French Huguenot congregation on Pine
Street conformed to the apostolic succession. W r ith
a minister and a church on Marketfield Street as early
as 1687, they started a burying-ground ten years later,
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 199
" far out of town," bounded by Pine, Cedar, and Nas-
sau streets. Here in 1704 they built a quaint stone
church, fronting on Pine Street, which stood until
about sixty years ago. Its last Huguenot preacher
was a queer little man, of unimpeachable learning and
dulness, who modelled his sermons exactly after the
pattern laid down in Claude s Essay on Preaching.
Usually he preached in French, but when he resorted
to English the effect was irresistible. He always an-
nounced in turn each division of his sermon, saying
gravely : " Now we have de oration," or, " Now we
have de peroration." But his masterpiece of effect-
iveness was exhibited when, with a befittingly solemn
face, he gave out the thrilling announcement, " And
now, my friends, we come to de pa-tet-ic."
It is creditable to the religious spirit of the Knicker-
bocker founders of New York that, without making
any proclamation of their piety, they tolerated all
sects, and established^ here, what the Puritans did not
leave " unstained " in Plymouth colony, "freedom to
worship God." Roger Williams and Mrs. Anne Hutch-
inson found a refuge here from persecution. Gov-
ernor Keift ransomed the Jesuit Fathers Jogues and
Bressani from the Indians, and gave them free trans-
port to Europe. Jews were admitted to citizenship
on their petition in 1657. When the witchcraft delu-
sion was at its height in New England, the New York
clergy met and resolved that " a good name obtained
by a good life should not be lost by mere spectral ac-
cusation." At a time when the religious people oi
Wethersfield, Conn., were bent upon praising God by
hanging a poor widow, the latter found hospitable
refuge in Westchester, and when some of the timid
200 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
politicians of that day demanded her banishment, the
Court of Assizes held in this city ordered that she
" remaine in the Town of Westchester, or elsewhere
in the Government during her pleasure." Thus, with
even balance, did the men who built this city dis-
charge their duty to God and man. And when
churches had multiplied on the east side, and denomi-
nations had grown rich and powerful, there was still
no clashing of theological strife. An upright, liberal
people, invincible in honesty and enterprise, the old
New Yorkers were unconsciously a model for their
times.
But did I not begin to say something about the old
merchants of the city, and then branch off into the
churches ? What with finding a brand-new park down
by the water-side, in the busiest and oldest haunts of
commerce, and being greeted at every turn by the
ghosts of departed churches and rifled burying-grounds,
to say nothing of the spectre of our slaughtered ship-
ping, I have let the old men of business renown slip
by. Let us call the roll of the great merchants of
forty years ago, and how many will answer? It is a
roster of the dead. As to their ways of dealing, their
social pleasures, their habits, and their homes, we have
changed all that, as Moliere's quack doctor remarks
but is it for the better?
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 2OI
CHAPTER XVII
WHEN HARLEM WAS A VILLAGE FISHING . FOR FLOUNDERS THE
CANAL MANIA AN ANCIENT TOLL-BRIDGE TWENTY YEARS AFTER
MOTT'S CANAL AND HIS HAVEN
A FRIEND, who is twenty years my senior, and whose
life has been crowned with high civic honors, delights
to tell of a stolen day spent on the forbidden banks of
Stuyvesant's Creek, near the foot of Fourth Street
and the East River, and of the parental vengeance
that overtook him the next day, when his mother dis-
covered under his pillow a huge eel, which, with a fish-
erman's pride, he could not bear to part with, and yet,
as a trespasser in forbidden paths, he had not dared
to exhibit. He recalls with a sigh the pleasure which
that nibble afforded him on a summer day sixty years
ago, and in the same way I look back with envy on a
long day in June that has impressed on my memory a
vivid picture of the quiet village of Harlem as I first
saw it a placid hamlet embowered in trees, set off
on either side by the thick woods that crowned the
heights beyond McGowan's Pass and the elevation on
the Westchester side known as Buena Ridge, and by
the silver line of Harlem River and the East River
waters, dotted with islands, that were broadening into
the Sound. The old Dutch settlement, almost coeval
with the metropolis, was a synonyme of repose. Phy-
sicians commended it as a place inaccessible to care.
204 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
There, it was rumored, natives and aliens alike slept
twenty hours out of the twenty-four ; but this may
have been slander.
But let me begin at the beginning. A chum of
mine, whose final name was Smith (this was his name,
in fact, and I stand ready to prove that the Smith
family has ancient and honorable lineage, and that
one of the high and mighty Schepens of New Am-
sterdam bore the name of Smith in the Holland ver-
nacular), entered into a conspiracy with me to play
hookey. We longed for the country ; we wanted to
catch some flounders; we had saved up sundry shil-
lings which were burning holes in our pockets, and we
were perfectly agreed that we could enjoy ourselves
in no way so well as in stealing a day from school.
Our plans were laid in secrecy, and it nearly killed us,
I remember, to keep the conspiracy to ourselves, so
proud did we feel of our boyish boldness. The day
we had fixed upon came slowly, but it dawned glori-
ously, and at the hour when Trinity School was open-
ing with prayer, two of its promising pupils were rac-
ing towards the Bowery to catch the stage which left
the City Hall at nine o'clock for Harlem. What a
ride that was! Up beyond the junction of the Bow-
ery with Fourth Avenue all traces of business were
left behind. The houses began to stand apart, gar-
dens sprang up and blossomed between, with odor of
roses and honeysuckles, clusters of trees became fre-
quent as we emerged into the old Boston Road, and
when we had passed Twenty-third Street we were fair-
ly in the country. At the left rose the gray walls of
the great reservoir at Forty-second Street, conspicu-
ous among scattered villas; at the right the East River
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 20$
kept flashing into view between patches of forest trees
and beyond rolling meadows.
Yorkville was a somewhat scattered hamlet, possess-
ing several churches, a number of small stores, and a
large and varied assortment of residences. It was
never very attractive to the eye. But the view tow-
ards the East River was superb. The handsome res-
idences on the Long Island shore were conspicuous
then, as were also many fine old-fashioned houses on
this side, which had been in possession of old New
York families for generations. As a boy I had a spe-
cial interest in the fortifications of 1812, which had
once stretched transversely across the island from the
vicinity of Hell Gate, and of which the remains were
then visible at many points. Between Yorkville and
Harlem Village, on the line of the Boston Road, there
were very few houses, and none of special importance
except an ancient hostlery, at which we did not stop.
It seems incredible that time should have made such
changes in little more than a generation, and built up
a city in solid strength through five miles of what was
then only rural scenery; but ecce signum! the city
is there. The fields have been swallowed up. Villas
have disappeared as did Aladdin's palace.
When \ve got to the canal at One Hundred and
Tenth Street, we two truants, simultaneously animat-
ed by a desire to explore this marvel, pulled the strap
of the stage, paid the driver a shilling each, and de-
scended, glad of the chance to stretch our weary
limbs again. The canal was filled up some years ago,
and its site is covered by houses, which must neces-
sarily be rather damp in the cellar. At that time it
extended from the East River nearly to the Fifth
206 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Avenue line. In part it followed the line of Harlem
Creek, a tributary to the river of that name at its
mouth, and was solidly built of stone, with handsome-
ly constructed locks. But it was a failure. Every
once in a while the canal mania seems to have seized
upon New York. It came naturally to the Dutch
founders of New Amsterdam. They would have
been unhappy without a canal. At one time they
contemplated building a whole net-work of water high-
ways in the sweetly swampy region of Spuyten Duy-
vil Creek and Mosholu Brook, a locality which always
reminded them tenderly of the fatherland. But they
contented themselves with the construction of the
canal to which Broad Street owes its width, and
which enabled the market-men from the Long Island
shores to run their craft up as far as Wall Street.
There, on the bridges that crossed that municipal
ditch, the Dutch burgher smoked his pipe in the early
twilight, leaning on the railing and thinking half re-
gretfully of his old home. There, a little later, Ka-
trina looked down into the placid water that reflected
nothing prettier than her face, which glowed with ten-
derness at her ardent swain's repetition of the old, old
story, which every strong man's heart thinks to be his
own special discovery.
At a later day capital had an idea of traversing the
young city with a canal which should extend from
Beekman Swamp to the Collect Pond, and thence, by
the western outlet of that body of water, through Ca-
nal Street to the North River. It proved to be too
large a scheme to handle, however, and, after being
discussed for years, was dropped. But the movement
which led to the construction of the Harlem Canal was
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
207
really formidable.
A company was
formed in 1827, en-
titled the Harlem
Canal Company,
which placed on the
market 1 1,000 shares
of stock at $50 each,
to build a grand wa-
ter highway " across
the island, through
Manhattanville, and
along the valley in
MILL ROCK FORT
208 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
the vicinity of the North and East rivers." The ca-
nal was to be sixty feet in width, walled with stone on
each side, with a street fifty feet wide on each side,
and three miles in length. I have been curious enough
to look up the dazzling prospectus of this company,
from which I quote ; and in reading it I am afraid it
was slightly suggestive of speculation. Professor Ren-
wick, of Columbia College (with what respect the gen-
eration of Oldboys remember him !), was quoted as
computing that the canal would furnish one hundred
and seventy horse-power to those who desired to avail
themselves of it. The company's representatives in
1827 went into a prophecy of population, which was
not fulfilled as they expected. The population of the
city having been 33,131 in 1790, and 166,085 in 1825,
and being estimated at 200,000 in 1827, they predicted
that it would be doubled every fifteen years, and
would reach 800,000 in 1857, at which time a " dense
population " would cover Harlem plains. A curious
feature of the programme was the offer of forty build-
ings and lots to be drawn in a lottery by the subscrib-
ers. Dazzling as was the prospectus, the project fail-
ed. Now, at a later day, with the population on the
ground, the Federal Government comes to the front
to carry out in the proposed ship-canal through Har-
lem River and Spuyten Duyvil Creek the old idea
which started at the Collect Pond, and afterwards
laid foundations in Harlem Creek. When the great
ship -canal is finally ready for dedication, the spirits
of the Dutch founders of New York, who, when
they were safely landed on Manhattan, first gave
thanks to God, and then went to hunt for a place to
dig a canal, may confidently be invoked to be present.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 209
But it is time the two runaways left the canal,
where they threw in their lines, but got no bite, and
turned their faces towards Harlem. Forty years ago
the village was compact, clustered down close to the
river, well shaded with trees, most charmingly rural,
and apparently impervious to change. Cows were
grazing in St. Andrew's church-yard, and there was
more of the same style of four-footed worshippers in
the yard around the old Dutch Church. Yet it all
looked natural ; and the pigs in the street were taken
as a matter of course, for even New York had not
then entirely triumphed in her crusade against peri-
patetic porkers. Altogether, it is a pleasant remem-
brance which I have of ancient Harlem, even down
to the remarkable old hotel at the river's edge, just
west of the bridge, where we went to hire a boat for
fishing, and rented one for half a day for a shilling.
We didn't cross the bridge ; it had no charms for us.
I don't believe it had charms for any one. It was a
toll-bridge ; but I never felt entirely safe in trusting
my life to it. I never remember it to have been any-
thing but a ruin, moss-grown and shaky, yet it is not
twenty years since it was removed. At the time of
which I write it was in keeping with the landscape.
Beyond the river few houses were visible. The land
belonged to the Morris family. The old homestead
of Gouverneur Morris, builder of the Constitution,
friend of Washington, diplomatist and Senator, stood
near the mouth of Harlem River, with its chimneys
just visible above the trees. Not far away was the
rural residence of Lewis Morris, signer of the Declara-
tion of Independence, and just beyond rose the spire
of the church the family had erected, and beneath
14
210 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
which their dead repose St. Ann's Church, Morris-
ania. And up from the bridge stretched the old Bos-
ton Road, rich in historic associations.
It was in the autumn of 1865 that I next fished
for flounders at the mouth of the Harlem River, and
through all the intervening time I do not think that I
had set foot in the old Dutch village. I found that
Harlem had grown in size with the advent of the
horse-cars, and had put on some fresh architectural
frills, but the old toll-bridge was there, more rickety
than ever, and the old inn by the river- side, more
shabby and shambling than in former years. The
flounders were there, but the new generation of boat-
men charged two shillings an hour for their skiffs, and
bait was an extra item. Across the river a scientific
descendant of Tubal Cain had purchased a large plot
of ground from the Morris heirs and called it after his
own name. The old possessors of the soil rebelled
at the name, but the new settler, whose foundery had
put life into a sleeping locality, set up a painted sign,
" Mott Haven," and clinched the business by obtain-
ing from Uncle Sam the appointment of a postmas-
ter.* Like the pioneer patriarchs from Holland, after
* A Westchester correspondent writes that he has heard that when
the elder Jordan L. Mott had received from the hands of Gouverneur
Morris, "The Patroon," the title-deeds of his purchase on Harlem
River, he inquired whether he might be permitted to call his newly
acquired territory Mott Haven. "Yes," was the answer, "and for
all that I care you may change the name of the Harlem River to the
Jordan, and dip into it as often as you want to." Thus contempora-
neous history differs, and the reader is left at liberty to make his choice
between the new version and the old. The Patroon in question was
rough and ready, not unlike old Zachary Taylor, whom he resembled
in personal appearance, though he was taller than the general. He
A. TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 211
Mr. Mott had fairly got his tent pitched in the plains
of Westchester, he looked around for a good place to
build a canal, and forthwith dug one in the rear of his
foundery, extending north from Harlem River to a
distance of about a quarter of a mile. Then he waited
for developments, which do not yet seem to have
developed themselves, but may do so in the future.
Meanwhile the village of Morrisania had sprung up
into vigorous life, and following in its wake came
other smaller settlements, such as Melrose, Wilton,
and North New York, now become part of the old
city by annexation, with scarce a trace left of their
rural existence. From the bridge out to Fordham,
at that time, meandered at uncertain intervals the
cars of the famous "huckleberry road," which gener-
ously accommodated all except those who were in a
hurry, and whose stockholders then walked by faith in
the future, and not by sight of the present. There
was a foundery at Port Morris, amid the samphire
beds that cluster around that magnificent roadstead.
At Wilton were the homes of a score of actors whom
Eddy, the dramatic successor of Edwin Forrest, had
gathered about himself, and whose festival day was
Sunday. Old St. Ann's Church still harbored the
aristocracy of the peninsula, but streets had been laid
out in its vicinity, and there was talk of rearing blocks
of brick and mortar thereabouts and introducing new
social elements. On Buena Ridge some ambitious
villas had already made their appearance, and thriv-
ing mechanics had reared some score of comfortable
always led his workmen in the field, scythe or sickle in hand, and few
could keep up with him in harvesting. Some of his aristocratic neigh-
bors criticised him, but he cared nothing about it.
212 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
houses in Mott Haven. Already the famous old hos-
tlery of Horace Ward, near the railroad bridge, where
for a dozen years the belles and beaus of Morrisania
and parts adjacent had gathered for the winter dance,
was beginning to look shabby, and 'more ambitious
rivals in the hotel line were talked of for the upper
settlements.
It was in this transition state soon after the close
of the war. I had last looked upon the place in its
rustic freshness when I was a boy ; I came back to it
a bronzed veteran of camp and field, and found it
changed, like myself. Yet it had its charm for me
still. The name of the old Revolutionary family still
lent a distinct historic flavor to the land. Off Port
Morris the British frigate Hussar had gone down,
with great treasures of gold on board, and carrying, it
was said, some shackled and helpless American pris-
oners with her. By day a crew of divers were at work
over the place where the treasure was supposed to be
entombed in the sands, and at night (so it was stated
at quiet firesides and in awe -struck whispers) the
ghosts of the hapless followers of the Continental Con-
gress were seen to wander about the shore and clink
their chains to warn away the treasure -seekers. Be-
sides, was it not even told that, on the wooded point
just above, wicked Captain Kidd had buried a portion
of his treasures, and placed a perpetual guard above
it by shooting one of his sailors and burying him in
the same trench with the chest of gold, silver, precious
stones, and the spoils of foreign cathedrals?
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 213
CHAPTER XVIII
THE FIRST BRASS BAND "THE LIGHT GUARD QUICKSTEP" GEN-
ERAL TRAINING -DAY A FALSTAFFIAN ARMY MILITIAMEN IN
THEIR GLORY OUR CRACK CORPS
BEFORE me lies a worn and faded piece 1 of music,
"The Light Guard Quickstep," composed and dedi-
cated to Captain Vincent byT. J. Dodworth. It was
played in front of the Astor House on days of anni-
versary parade, out of compliment to Mr. Stetson, the
proprietor, who was a lieutenant in this crack corps,
and who afterwards did good service as a soldier of
the Union. To the Light Guards and to the Dod-
worths belong the credit of organizing our first mili-
tary bands, and they did it handsomely. When Jul-
lien, the conductor, returned to England from his trip
through this country, he told the London musicians
that it would not pay them to come here, as there
was a musician in New York with a whole houseful
of sons who had a band equal to anything the Old
World could produce.
The organized bands of music in this city are the
growth of the last half century. Before that time the
drum and fife did duty for the militia when on pa-
rade. I suppose that it would be a slur upon the av-
erage intellect of the Legislature to give credence to
the story told of an honest member from the lake re-
gion, who had fought as a soldier at Chippewa, and
SHAKESPEARE TAVERN
who made his maiden speech upon a bill which pro-
posed to organize the militia of the State. " Mr.
Speaker," said ex-Leftenant Hayseed, with the con-
scious pride of a veteran whose feet are lighted by
the lamp of experience, " I am opposed to organs.
Our fathers fit with fife and drum at Saratoga, and so
did we at Chippewa, and we made the redcoats skip
every time. And besides, Mr. Speaker, them organs
would be mighty onhandy things to have around in
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 215
time of battle." Whether owing to this patriotic and
enlightened stand or not, the martial music of Bunker
Hill and of White Plains, of Lundy's Lane and Platts-
burg, continued to inspire the militia of this city for
many a long year after peace had been declared be-
tween Great Britain and the United States. Some
boys, who are still more venerable than myself, have
told me that the first fragmentary attempts at mili-
tary bands in this city were made by negro musicians;
and this is entirely credible, because the African has
in his nature the rhythm and soul of melody, and
turns to music as a thrush warbles in the hedge.
Be that as it may, the original Tom Dodworth (who
at this time kept a small music and fruit store on
Broadway), was the father of all our great military
bands. His own organization, which was first known
as the National Brass Band, but afterwards was very
naturally popularized into Dodworth's Band, made
their first parade in uniform of buff and blue at
the head of the regiment known as the Governor's
Guard, then commanded by Colonel Pears, a worthy
warrior who had a confectionery store on Broadway
opposite the park. Soon other competitors came into
the field. Wallace, whose orchestra made music at
Peale's Museum, on Broadway, between Murray and
Warren streets, and who had almost as many sons as
Dodworth, organized the New York Brass Band, and
he was followed by Lothian and others. The war
with Mexico lent a fresh impetus to martial music.
Then came the war for the Union, with its demand
for military bands that should keep the pulse of sol-
dier and people at battle heat, and out of this has
been finally evolved the magnificent martial music
2l6 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
that now puts the soul of the soldier into the militia
that march through our streets.
I have spoken of the Light Guard as a crack corps.
Its rival was the City Guard, under command of Cap-
tain McArdle. The drill of these two companies was
superb ; their social composition was most exclusive.
In the little city of their day not only were the offi-
cers men of mark, but every private in the rear ranks
was necessarily somebody. The militia idea ran to
what might be called small cliques. In point of fact,
they were the clubs of the period. The regimental
bond, in all cases loose, was for the most part nom-
inal. The Cadets and the Hussars, the Light Guard
and the City Guard, the Kosciuskos and the La-
fayettes, the Tompkins Blues and the Washington
Greys, were the distinguishing social as well as mili-
tary marks of the men about town. Money was pro-
fusely expended on equipments and entertainments,
and uniforms were selected without the slightest ref-
erence to their compatibility with republican insti-
tutions. The City Guard adopted the magnificent
dress of the Coldstream Guards, and the Light Guard
donned the showy Austrian uniform ; and so it hap-
pened that when Louis Kossuth landed in our city
he started back with an involuntary shudder at find-
ing himself surrounded by the hated uniform of the
House of Hapsburg, the Light Guard having been
appointed a guard of honor as escort of the Hunga-
rian patriot.
The present generation has much to boast of in its
advance upon the traditions and inventions of the
fathers, but it has forever missed some delights whose
memories are still redolent of pleasure to us who are
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 217
tottering down the western slope of the hill. To the
boy of to-day the once magic words " general training-
day" have no meaning. To the Oldboys they still
convey through memory's kaleidoscope rare pictures
of the past. The "June training " was a holiday wheth-
er the school -house kept its doors open or not. At
one time it covered the space of three days ; later
on a single day was devoted to the public instruction
in the manual of arms. And a blithesome day it was.
It never rained during those twenty-four hours. Very
early in the sweet summer morning the victims and
votaries of Mars used to assemble on the gravelled
sidewalk of St. John's Park and in other convenient
places, and go through the manual in awkward array.
Short and tall, old and young, shabby and well dress-
ed, the motley crew were ranged in line, while the in-
structor in tactics, sword at side and with rattan in
hand, endeavored to switch them into order and swear
into their dull heads some idea of military discipline.
It was a spectacle for which all New York prepared
itself for weeks in advance with a broad grin. A virtual
holiday, it always culminated in a carnival. When
the hour arrived for the display of this motley crew
in parade, all New York poured forth into the streets
through which its awkward army marched, and laughed
until its sides ached.
In later days our local militia were attired in a
magnificence of style unequalled by Solomon in all
his glory. But in this somewhat primitive era, when,
in view of the late war with Great Britain, every citi-
zen was to be deemed a possible soldier, uniforms
were a rarity. Each future hero of the battle-field
attired and armed himself as seemed good in his own
2l8 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
eyes, and could Falstaff have reviewed one of those
June trainings, he would have evolved new turnings
to his description of his own scarecrow regiment.
None of the militia of the general training-day epoch
were uniformed except the Light Guard, the City
Guard, and the Washington Greys, of the infantry
line, a battery of flying artillery, and the Washington
Horse Troop. These uniformed corps constituted
the flank companies of the main body of military in
citizens' clothes. Description is beggared as the
mind tries to recall them. Some wore the old-time
furred high hats, many wore caps, occasionally one
was bareheaded, and at intervals the "beaver" of an
enthusiastic trainer was decorated at the side with a
large black feather and cockade. The taste in dress
was equally bizarre. The swallow-tail coat of the
period was the rule, but it was found in company
with the frock-coat, roundabout, pea-jacket, blouse of
every color, and the red shirt from the Bowery pre-
cincts. The exhibit of trousers was as miscellaneous
in shape and color. Some of the gallant crew had
the lower garment tucked in the boot-leg, and occa-
sionally one wore knee-breeches, then not wholly dis-
carded, and a few were arrayed as Indians, or in the
costume of Christmas fantasticals. At rare intervals
a company appeared in regulation broadcloth crossed
with white belts, high hats, and cockades, and, being
armed uniformly, presented for the moment quite a
martial appearance, which, however, served only to
bring the rest of the Falstaffian army into ridicule.
The armament of the gallant militia was so varied as
te> be sublime, and could not have failed to strike ter-
ror into the soul of any foreign spectator. Some of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 219
the heroes of the parade carried an old " King's arm "
that had done service in 1812, or in the Revolutionary
and French wars, in the hands of their fathers and
grandfathers ; others had a more modern flintlock or
a fowling-piece. A few had bayonets, and a few more
possessed belts and cartridge-boxes. Those who had
no other weapon of offence armed themselves with
cord-wood saplings, canes, umbrellas, and broomsticks,
carried proudly at shoulder arms. Viewed as an
army, this host of patriots was fearfully and wonder-
fully made ; viewed as a pageant it was sublime.
" Sare," said a polite French visitor, who had been
under fire at Marengo and at Waterloo, and had been
invited to assist in reviewing our gallant militia, " I
have seen ze troops of ze grand Napoleon, and ze sol-
diers of ze terrible Russe, and ze John Bull zat you
make run, sare, but I nevare see such troops as zese,
sare nevare !"
The fun of training-day was phenomenal, but it had
to be paid for. After the glory of the review came
the terrors of the court-martial. In a few weeks those
who had failed to turn out for inspection, as by law
directed, and those who had not equipped themselves
in such martial array as the statute required, found
themselves standing in the impressive presence of a
circle of epauletted officers, whose sternness was equal-
led only by the amount of gold -lace that bedizened
them. Then woe befell the unlucky wight who had
hoped to escape detection as an artful dodger of his
duty, or the careless trainer, whose bayonet, cartridge-
box, or musket had not materialized itself to the in-
spector's eye. All delinquents were incontinently
fined in sums varying from 25 cents to $5, and those
220 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
who had not the money to pay were promptly filed off
under guard and consigned to the iron grasp of Mar-
shal Davids. The unhappy defender of his country's
honor had no alternative but to furnish the hard cash,
or to rest his martial bones in Eldridge Street Jail
until such time as his fine had been liquidated, at the
rate of one dollar for each day of imprisonment. 'Twas
ever thus, that those who would dance must pay the
piper.
The military system of the city and State was a far-
reaching one in the days when I first took delight in
stealing out to follow a parade through the streets. It
will surprise the miltiaman of to-day to learn that Colo-
nel Tappan commanded the Two Hundred and Thir-
ty-sixth Regiment of Infantry, and that the late Colonel
Devoe was commandant of the Two Hundred and
Sixty-ninth Regiment. One reads the history of gen-
eral training -day in the record of Maj.-gen. James I.
Jones, who commanded the Thirteenth Division of the
State militia, composed of the Fifty-ninth and Sixty-
third Brigades of Infantry. In the latter command
were the Seventy-fifth Regiment, under command of
Col. Frederick S. Boyd; Two Hundred and Forty-
ninth Regiment, Col. George Dixey ; Two Hundred
and Fifty- eighth Regiment, Col. John P. Wake; and
Two Hundred and Sixty-ninth, Colonel Devoe. Brig-
adier-general Hunt was in command of the New York
State artillery, and the First Brigade, located here,
was composed of the Second Regiment, Governor's
Guards, Colonel Pears; Ninth Regiment, National
Cadets, Colonel Slipper; Twenty -seventh Regiment,
National Guard (present Seventh Regiment), Colonel
Jones. This formidable list of our local defenders
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 223
gives one the idea of an army as great as that which
the war for the Union called into existence. But it
was a host on paper, for the most part, and experience
demonstrated the advisability of adopting a policy of
enlistment in later years.
When Major-general Macomb rode at the head of
New York's martial array, the brigadiers were Lloyd,
Kiersted, Sandford, and Morris. But my eyes did not
take in the personality of the warriors until such time
as Brigadier-general Sandford had been promoted to
the dignity of a major-general, and the brigadiers
whom I can personally recall are Generals Storms,
Hall, and Morris the saddle-maker, the music-deal-
er, and the poet. This quartet of soldiers were men
whom I envied in my youth. Their cocked hats
and glittering epaulets, their prancing steeds and
clanking sabres, filled my soul with yearnings after the
battle-field. As for the major-general, he was the god
Mars incarnate. How eagerly I always waited for his
wild dash down the street at the head of a blazing
constellation of gold-laced aides and outriders. When,
towards mid-day, the command to march was given, it
was a great day in New York. No such martial sight
is vouchsafed in these degenerate days. In the ranks
of the soldiers of that period marched the warriors of
every nation under the sun. Throughout many regi-
ments the uniforms of no two companies were the
same, and the effect was dazzling. Looking from an
upper balcony, one caught a bird's-eye view of the
crimson coats of England, the green of Italy, the
plaids of Scotland, the buff and blue of the old Con-
tinentals, the blue and red of France, the white coats
of Austria, the bizarre uniforms of Poland and Hun-
224 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
gary, and martial costumes of all colors, that seemed
to be composed for the occasion. Verily, and in un-
exaggerated fact, the magnificent monarch who daz-
zled the eyes of the maiden Queen of Sheba was not
arrayed like one of these !
As I write of these glories of the militiamen of
other days, I am reminded of the day when my own
regiment marched down Broadway en route to the
front, amid the clapping of hands, and waving of hand-
kerchiefs, and cheers of assembled multitudes, and
under escort of one of the commands of which men-
tion has been made the old Second Regiment. The
three months' term for which we had enlisted was
prolonged to two years, and to many of my comrades
this meant death on the field of battle, to others
wounds and imprisonment, and to all long months in
camp and field that aged us as years age men else-
where. We marched away to the burst of martial
music, and with our full military band. When we
came back it was with tattered remnants of flags, and
with not more than 100 of the 800 who had marched
away. To the sound of fife and drum the bronzed
and bearded men who had gone out as rosy-cheeked
youth marched up Broadway, dusty, weary, but crowned
with the unseen laurels of patriotism. So had my fa-
thers marched back from Lundy's Lane and Niagara,
from Monmouth and Stillwater. I thought of it then
with pride. I write it now with glad and thankful
pen.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 225
CHAPTER XIX
COLONIAL FOOTPRINTS HAUNTS OF WASHINGTON AND HOWE COUN-
TRY-SEAT OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON EAST SIDE JOURNEYINGS
OLD DAYS IN YORKVILLE AND HARLEM THE BEEKMAN MANSION
GOING! Going! Gone!
This has been the croak of the raven of specula-
tion over many an old colonial mansion that was
stately even in its decay, but lives now only in mem-
ory. The homes of a former century that bore the
names of Lispenard, Warren, Kip, De Lancey, Beek-
man, Murray, and many another citizen of high re-
pute in ancient annals can be found now only on
maps that are yellow with age. The prim hedges of
box, the groves of locust-trees that were so fragrant
in the spring-time, the gardens filled with hollyhocks
and poppies and white roses, with feverfew and sage
and all warrantable herbs, the summer beauty of beech
and elm and tulip tree, have vanished with the people
who moved amid them and loved them. Into the
velvet of the lawn the iron tire of the contractor's
chariot, synonyme of the material progress of the
age, has carved its cruel way, and a row of tenement-
houses follows the line of broad piazzas. It seems a
pity that the quaint old mantel-piece, whose tiles told
to the young aristocrats of a hundred years ago the
story of Elijah, the Prodigal Son, or Jonah, with such
serene violation of the laws of perspective ; the shab-
226
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
by old mirrors that reached from ceiling to floor, and
that still told the glory of the brave men and fair
women whose forms once flashed before them ; the
broad stair-
cases guard-
ed by tall ma-
hogany bal-
ustrades, all
black with
age, up which
swept the
belles of co-
lonial New
York, passing
fair, in gowns
of India-silk, satin
petticoats, high-
heeled shoes, patch-
es and powder,
under escort of gen-
tlemen who were
elegant in velvet of
APTHORPE MANSION, BLooMiNGDALE all colors, brocaded
waistcoats, lace
neck-cloths, silken stockings, and diamond buckles, but
who were ever ready to draw the rapier in defence of
honor it seems a pity, I say, that these should van-
ish under the touch of the auctioneer's hammer. Yet,
perhaps, it is better so; better that the old home-
stead should be torn down by an unknown vandal
than it should linger to its decay in stage after stage
of helpless, hopeless ruin. Certainly if the old man-
sion on the Battery that was consecrated in history
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 22J
by Washington's presence is razed by the same hand
that rears a monument to the most despicable of
English spies, it might be well to prevent a repetition
of the sacrilege by levelling all our existing colonial
monuments to the ground. Welcome the hammer of
the auctioneer sooner than the touch of the speculat-
or in patriotism, or the slow lapse into architectural
senility which would turn the banqueting-hall of Ear)
Cornwallis into a hen-roost.
One Sunday afternoon I visited the old Apthorpe
Mansion that used to face the Hudson River and the
Bloomingdale Road, but now is hemmed in by Ninth
and Tenth avenues at Ninety- first Street, and is
threatened on all sides by the bewildering touch of
improvement. The full glory of the warm April sun
lay upon the old place. Yet, though it was a centre
of desolation, there was a remnant of individual maj-
esty in the dwelling and its surroundings. No one
could mistake its birth for other than colonial. The
great pillars from roof to porch, the stately gables
over door and window, the broad reception -hall ex-
tending from front to rear, the height of ceilings
above and below, were all proof of antiquity clear
as print to the eye. If more evidence was needed, in-
side were the antique dining-room, with walls and
mantel-piece and ceiling of oak, now blackened by
age, whose great panels and joists were imported from
England in the days of colonial splendor that pre-
ceded the Revolution. Outside was the ample lawn
stretching down towards the river, dotted with groves
of elms, locusts, button -wood, and ancient cherry
great trees that required more than one man to
span their girth, beneath whose shade half a dozen
228 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
generations of youth and beauty had disported them-
selves.
As I stood alone upon the porch in the afternoon
sun, and looked up the river towards the Palisades
and down towards Castle Point, the air was thick
with the shadows that trooped up from the past.
There had been nothing romantic in the ride on the
elevated train ; there was no sentiment in the dilapi-
dated surroundings; and the sunshine was the deadly
foe of anything like an apparition. Yet it seemed to
me as I stood there as if I had lived another life, in
which the old mansion, not then weather-beaten as
now, but stately and untarnished, and set in a brill-
iant garland of shrubs and flowers, had played a prom-
inent part. I could hear close at hand the rustle of
silken dresses and the clank of swords the merry
peal of laughter and the jingle of the wine-glass and
not far distant I could hear the note of hurried prep-
aration and the tramp of departing columns. Some
one in buff and blue a stalwart young officer in
whose soul I lived bade silent and sad adieu to a
fair young girl whose sun-brown curls rippled down
her neck and coquetted with her dimpled shoulders;
and I could swear that I had looked into her eyes in
some state of my existence and madly loved her. Yet
I no, he rode away with the rear-guard, catching
sight, last of all, of a fluttering handkerchief between
the locust branches, and of a little, little hand.
It was an eerie experience, and yet perfectly real
throughout. I do not know but that it may have been
I who really carried on that desperate flirtation. Per-
haps I was married afterwards without my own knowl-
edge. It may be that I was my own great-grandfa-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 229
ther, who rode away among the Continental soldiers
on that day. But I fear that I may be getting out
of my own depth in thus attempting to philosophize
and my grandmother would have told me that it
served me right for travelling into the country on
Sunday. One thing I do know that I shall not
cavil again at the theory of a state of pre-existence,
for I solemnly aver that it seemed perfectly natural
to see a line of scarlet soldiery stretching across the
Bloomingdale road, and to prepare to hold them in
check. For it was at this old mansion that Lord
Howe had his headquarters when the Connecticut
Rangers and the Virginia Riflemen, under Leitch and
Knowlton (both of whom were slain), sent the British
column, headed by the indomitable Highlanders, fly-
ing across Harlem Plain down towards this point and
through McGowan's Pass. Here Lord Howe re-
mained for some days and nursed his wounded honor,
and Clinton and Carleton and Andre also led the
minuet in these rooms and gave royalist belles a taste
of the court splendors of King George. Whether
this historic house is to be destroyed or to linger yet
a little longer will be determined by the market value
of the lots on which it stands.*
The mansion which Washington occupied as his
headquarters on the day of the victory at Harlem
Plains the Roger Morris house stands on the
heights that overlook Harlem River, a little below
* The Apthorpe mansion, long degraded to a beer-garden, has dis-
appeared (1892). Its site will soon be covered by "flats." The fine
cluster of buildings for the new St. Agnes' Chapel of Trinity Parish
church, clergy-house, choir and schoolrooms, etc. stands upon a portion
of the old Apthorpe ground.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
the High Bridge. It always seemed to me a strange
chance that led the American general to this roof.
The loyalist owner of
the property had been
Washington's old com-
panion-in-arms, and his
wife was the beautiful
Mary Phillipse, whom
THE JUMEL MANSION
the provincial Colonel Washington, visiting New York
after the defeat of Braddock and his own brilliant
achievements on the unfortunate field of Fort Du
Quesne, had wooed in vain. It will be a pity if no
one comes forward to purchase and preserve the house
for its historical association, for as from no point on
the Island of Manhattan can so commanding a view
be obtained, so none of the old colonial homesteads
has so many and varied historical associations. Built
of bricks brought from Holland, the house has been a
landmark from the day of its completion. General
Washington planned his battles in its library, and here
also he held consultations with the chiefs of the Indian
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 231
tribes, and gave his secret instructions to the " spy of
the neutral ground." The estate was confiscated after
the Revolution, and then it was purchased by John
Jacob Astor, who made half a million dollars by his
speculation. He sold the house to Stephen Jumel,
who filled the rooms with costly furniture that was
part of the spoils of French palaces, and embellished
the grounds with rare trees and shrubs. Madame
Jumel in her widowhood married Aaron Burr, but
this alliance with the rude, unlettered woman was of
short duration, and he left her in disgust and sought
seclusion on Staten Island. Then for years the old
woman lived alone, a terror to her servants and
shunned by her neighbors, and left the legacy of a
long lawsuit to her relatives. The estate has been
shorn of its original dimensions and much of its old
beauty, but the old house remains, as solid and sub-
stantial as when first built, and, standing on its piazza,
one sees not only the lower city and Brooklyn Bridge,
but seven counties in two different States, three rivers.
Long Island Sound, the bay, and, in a clear atmos-
phere, a glimpse of the distant ocean.* It was while
Washington made this brief sojourn at the Morris
mansion that he had his attention called to Alexan-
der Hamilton. During his inspection of the works
thrown up at Harlem for the protection of his army,
* The Jumel mansion is in sympathetic ownership and occupancy
(1892), and there is design of purchasing it for perpetual preservation
by an association. The ground-plan of this stately old house (which
bears the date 1758 upon the keystone of an arch in the main hall) is a
square, connected by a narrower parallelogram with an octagon containing
the room of state. The owners say that from its roof thirteen counties
are to be seen. L.
232 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
the American commander was struck by the skill dis-
played in the arrangement and disposition of a cer-
tain fort which was in charge of a young captain of
artillery. On making inquiry it turned out that the
name of the officer in question was Alexander Ham-
ilton (then a youth of twenty), of whom General
Greene had previously spoken to his superior in terms
of high praise. Washington at once sought the ac-
quaintance of the youth, and there and then the
friendship began which linked their lives and their
fame together.
Within sight of the fort he had built, and the field
upon which he had fought, and within a little more
than a mile from the Morris mansion, General Hamil-
ton afterwards selected the site for his suburban home
the Grange. This beautiful structure, one of the
finest remaining specimens of the classic style of archi-
tecture that our fathers fancied, is situated north of
One Hundred and Fortieth Street and east of Tenth
Avenue. Its site, selected by Hamilton, cannot be
excelled for picturesqueness. Magnificent forest trees
shade the ample grounds, and near the house is a
cluster of thirteen trees that Hamilton planted with
his own hand to symbolize the original thirteen States
of the Union. They were in serious danger of being
uprooted by the new aqueduct, which passes through
the grounds, but have happily escaped. How long
they will continue to stand is problematical. Even
now it is feared that the house is doomed to destruc-
tion. The land is in the market, and unless a special
effort is made to secure its preservation, it will proba-
bly be taken down and an ambitious modern villa will
occupy its site. Perhaps Hamilton Terrace, with its
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 233
proposed beautiful park, its lawns and tasteful dwell-
ings, will be an improvement upon the dignified old
homestead, the natural glory of the old forest land-
scape, and the grove of thirteen trees which emblazon
history in their tints ; but we who are conservatives
from a former generation will hardly think so.*
Speaking of old buildings reminds me that I have
received a friendly criticism, by post, for not giving
more details of the Third Avenue, through which I
passed on my stolen fishing excursion of forty years
ago. At that time, after leaving Astor Place, there
was nothing compact in the way of buildings until
we reached Bull's Head Village, which extended from
Second to Fourth avenues and from Twenty-third to
THE HAMILTON HOUSE
Twenty- seventh streets. Here was the great cattle
mart of the city, and here it had been for twenty
years. But soon after it was removed to Forty-second
* See note in Chapter xxvi., p. 330. L.
234 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Street, and thence to Ninety-fourth Street, from which
point it was transferred to the Jersey shore a few
years since. The people of old Bull's Head Village
worshipped in the Presbyterian Church, now standing
in Twenty-second Street west of Third Avenue ; at
the Twenty-seventh Street Methodist Church, and at
the little Episcopal Chapel of St. John the Baptist,
on the east side of Fourth Avenue, near Twenty-third
Street, which was demolished thirty years ago on the
completion of the fine church of the same name at
Lexington Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street.
After leaving Twenty -seventh Street and Third,
Avenue the traveller was in the country. There was
no other settlement until Yorkville was reached, nearly
two miles beyond. Scattered farm-houses, distant vil-
las, green fields, and bits of woodland made up the
landscape. The commodious country-seat of Anson
G. Phelps on the East River was reached from Twenty-
seventh Street. In the vicinity of Thirty -second
Street the inhabitants imported from the river the
name of Kip's Bay, and lent it to the Thompson and
Henderson homesteads thereabout, and to the grocery
store that was for many years owned and conducted
by a brother of Peter Cooper, a very worthy gentle-
man, who died not long ago, having passed his nine-
tieth birthday. Sunfish Pond, famous for its eels, as
well as sunfish and flounders, occupied the site of the
Fourth Avenue stables at Thirty -second Street, and
extended westward to Madison Avenue. From this
pond a brook ran to the East River, following very
nearly the line of Thirty-second Street. The brook
was almost dry in summer, but, in times of freshets, it
overflowed its banks and spread from the foot of
THE GATES WEEPING WILLOW, 22D STREET AND 3D AVENUE
Rose Hill at the South to Murray Hill on the north.
When it was in a desperately angry mood, the resi-
dents of houses that are still standing could reach the
avenue only in boats.
The residence of Peter Cooper of rare and blessed
memory always in this city of ours stood then and
still stands at the south-west corner of Fourth Avenue
and Twenty- eighth Street. It was a plain and un-
pretending structure, and yet substantial withal, as
236 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
befitted its builder. In front of his residence the
Eastern Post Road passed to nearly the present line
of Lexington Avenue, which it continued to follow
until near Forty-second Street, when it joined Third
Avenue. On its western side stood several large and
fine residences owned by opulent Knickerbockers, em-
bowered in gardens, half hidden by trees, and buried
in deep lawns the realization to weary travellers of
an earthly paradise. On Third Avenue there were
no dwellings until we reached the point at which the
old " Cato " Road stretched out towards Second Avenue
from Forty-third Street to Fifty-first, and thence cir-
cled around to the " Turtle Bay " region and the fa-
mous hostlery kept by Cato. Tradition does not tell
whether he had any other name besides Cato. A
great cloud of witnesses, principally gray-haired, still
survive to testify that his dinners and suppers were
simply incomparable. Everybody who owned or could
hire a " rig " drove out there at least once a week and
feasted himself. Burnham, on the Bloomingdale Road
at Seventy-fourth Street, was Cato's only rival, but a
formidable one.
At Forty-ninth Street and Third Avenue was a tiny
hamlet known as Odellville, which owed its patronymic
to Mr. Odell, who kept a country tavern at the corner
first named, and with whom life agreed so well that
he nearly lived out a century. Just across Third
Avenue and above Fiftieth Street was the old potter's
field, which next followed those of Washington and
Madison squares ; and, strange to say, not far from
its northern borders was a spring of soft, pure water
which was extensively carried away in carts to supply
the distant city. This water readily commanded two
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
237
cents a pail, and its sale was not discontinued until
some time after the introduction of Croton water
many old people having a preference for it as well as
a decided distaste for new-fangled aqueducts and
water brought in pipes. Between Odellville and the
Five -mile public -house at Seventy -second Street
there were a few scattered country-houses, many
fields, some considerable forest tracts, and then came
the village of Yorkville. Half a century ago this was
quite an extensive settlement, reaching from Eighty-
third to Eighty-eighth streets, compactly built on both
sides of Third Avenue and to Second and Fourth
avenues on the intersecting streets. The village must
VAN DEN HEUVEL (AFTERWARDS " BURNHAM'S") HOUSE.
238 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
have numbered more than a hundred houses, with
three or four churches and a dozen stores. It never
was a pretty place, but down towards the East River,
and facing that picturesque stream, were some superb
country residences in those days such as the Scher-
merhorn mansion at the foot of Seventy-third Street,
and the Riker homestead at the foot of Seventy-fifth
Street. Elegant lawns stretched down to the river-
front, and from the ample piazzas the scene was a
panorama of beauty.
The Six-mile Tavern awaited the thirsty pilgrim at
the corner of Ninety-seventh Street and Third Avenue.
Our excellent forefathers always placed a mile-stone
and a tavern together, by a gracious instinct which
held that the dust of which our mortality is composed
needed moistening at the end of a mile's march. It
was a good doctrine to stick to. The newest im-
ported idea allows three saloons upon a single block
on our busiest avenues. But our progenitors were be-
hind the times good men, but they did not under-
stand human nature. They believed in a man owning
as much land as he could manage comfortably, and
only taking as much drink as was good for him. The
new doctrinaires deny man's right to own any land,
and insist that he shall impose no restriction on his
own or his neighbor's right to drink all that he wishes.
Thus we live and learn. But this is a digression.
From the Six-mile Tavern we begin to descend the
valley towards Harlem. It is a rough road. To the
left is an abrupt stone ledge that runs up into Mc-
Gowan's Pass ; to the right are the marshes of Harlem
Commons, through which the East River extends up
to the avenue for the distance of a mile. There was
^
FORT CLINTON, AT M'GOWAN's PASS
not a house to be seen until One Hundred and Second
Street was reached, at which point a lane turned down
to the celebrated Red House at First Avenue and
One Hundred and Sixth Street, where a trotting
course called together the owners of fast horses, es-
pecially on Sunday afternoons.
At One Hundred and Sixth Street the canal
crossed the road, and beyond this point and up to
One Hundred and Twentieth Street there were a few
scattered houses, mostly detached, but here was again
quite a settlement. Many of the houses still stand,
transformed into places of business. At One Hun-
dred and Twenty-fifth Street was a tavern which now
figures as a drug-store, and from this point the village
of Harlem began. Up to the time of the advent of
the horse -cars, Harlem contained some two hundred
houses, scattered over nearly a mile square, from Fifth
240
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Avenue to the East River. Among the more notable
residences were those of Dr. Quackenbush, Judge In-
graham, Isaac Adriance, Charles Henry Hall, Andrew
McGowan, and John Van Voorhis. At this time One
Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street was the only paved
thoroughfare north of Astor Place. Mr. Hall was a
city Alderman in 1832, and was one of a committee
appointed during the prevalence of the cholera to
visit Quarantine and report. Within a fortnight all
of his colleagues had died, and Alderman Hall at-
tributed his escape to the salubrity of his country
residence at Harlem. His house still stands on a
knoll just west of Fifth Avenue, a spacious edifice,
but much dilapidated.
That is the minor key running through most of the
descriptions of old haunts of history in our city-
stately, spacious, but dilapidated ! I used to think of
this years ago when I looked at the shabby ruin of
the superb old Beekman mansion which used to stand
just west of First Avenue, between Fifty- first and
Fifty-second streets.
Its windows looked
out on Turtle Bay ;
its garden, green-
house, and lawns
were models of per-
fection in their prime;
its interior was ele-
gant and left nothing
to be desired. Here
Baroness Riedesel
had her home after her husband was captured at Sara-
toga. In one of its rooms Andre", the spy, spent his
THE BEEKMAN HOUSE
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
241
last night in New York before going out to meet dis-
honor. Here Lord Howe passed sentence of death
on Nathan Hale, the martyr spy of the Revolution,
in whose honor New York has not erected the monu-
ment he deserves. Yet with all these associations
I was not sorry to find thq Beekman house torn
down, for I had felt that the ghosts of its former oc-
cupants, if they were permitted to return to earth,
would annihilate themselves with grief over its decay.
FIRE IN OLDEN TIMES
242 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER XX
A CIVIC PANTHEON FIRST BLOOD OF THE REVOLUTION MERCHANTS
WHO WERE STATESMEN THE DISINHERITED DAUGHTER IN AN
OLD TAVERN
IT has always appeared strange to me that New
York merchants seem to know or care so little about
the great names that have adorned the commerce of
this city. There is no harm in erecting statues to
Lafayette, Seward, and Franklin, or in placing Wash-
ington on his feet in Wall Street, and on horseback in
Union Square ; but it would look better for the local
pride of the great metropolis if her citizens reared on
the old historic Commons on which the Declaration
of Independence was read to the troops in the pres-
ence of Washington the present City Hall Park-
heroic statues to the two great merchants of this city,
Francis Lewis and Philip Livingston, who signed the
Declaration. It would tell the story of the time when
there was a political genius as well as a commercial
power among the merchants of our city, and the aris-
tocracy of business was as much recognized as that of
birth, and far more highly honored. If the Chamber
of Commerce magnified its office as the old-time mer-
chants magnified their position, the monuments to
the commercial giants of the past would almost rear
themselves.
As I look back to the days of Lewis and Living-
ston and their compeers, I am surprised at the part
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
245
they played in public. New York was a little city,
but it felt its importance and exacted its full meed of
respect. A century and a half ago it struck its first
decisive blow for the liberty of the Press. It sent a
committee on board the ship London, and they threw
the. cargo of tea overboard in the bay, on April 22,
1774, in broad daylight and without any attempt at
disguise. Before this it had organized the Sons of
Liberty, "to- transmit to our posterity the blessings
of freedom which our ancestors have handed down to
us," and they met the British soldiery in open battle
on Golden Hill two months before the Boston massa-
cre and five years before the fight
at Lexington. Indeed, New York
has every right to claim that the
blood of her citizens was the first
that was shed in the cause for free-
dom. It was her merchants that
seized the battery and the fort,
and turned the guns on his Maj-
esty's frigate A sia ; that captured
the wagons loaded with arms un-
der escort of the Royal Irish
Regiment ; that carried off all the type from the office
of the Royal Gazetteer and melted it into bullets ; that
pulled down the equestrian statue of King George on
the Bowling Green, and had it speedily transmuted
into cartridges, fulfilling the threat of one of their
number that the British troops should have " melted
majesty fired at them." That was a magnificent ros-
ter of patriotism which included the names of Peter
and Philip Livingston, John Alsop, Isaac Low, John
Wiley, Isaac Sears, Marinus Willett, Alexander Mc-
16*
PLAN OF FORT GEORGE,
BATTERY
246 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Dougall, John Broome, Leonard Lispenard, Henry
Rutgers, Isaac Roosevelt, Duane, Jay, Cruger, Bay-
ard, Clinton, etc. The list is too long to print even as
a roll of honor, and the grand little city was as proud
of her sons as they were jealous of her honor.
But I must try to come to the present century, even
if I have to run back and make a fresh start. When
Francis Lewis, son of the Dean of St. Paul's Cathe-
dral in London, a sturdy, brainy young Welshman,
landed in this city, with a cargo of which he was part
owner, in 1735, he found it alive with excitement. Pe-
ter Zenger, publisher of the New York Gazette, was
on trial for seditious libel. It had been ordered that
his paper should be burned on the Commons " by the
pillory," at the hands of the common hangman, in the
presence of the Mayor and Recorder, and he had been
cast into prison and denied pen, ink, and paper. The
liberty of the Press was endangered, and New York
burned to vindicate the majesty of the fourth estate.
The services of Andrew Hamilton, the silver-tongued
leader of the bar in Philadelphia, then the largest city
in the colonies, were secretly engaged in behalf of
Zenger. It was a trial that shook the New World.
Hamilton's eloquence swept everything before it, and
the jury promptly returned a verdict of not guilty.
A public dinner was tendered the great barrister by
the corporation, and on this occasion the Mayor pre-
sented him with the freedom of the city in a magnifi-
cent gold snuffbox purchased by private subscription.
The whole city escorted him to the barge that was to
convey him to Philadelphia, amid the booming of can-
non and the waving of banners.
Into this seething little volcano of popular struggles
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 247
after the rights of citizenship young Lewis was pre-
cipitated. It was the moulding of his manhood. Nev-
er hesitating for an instant, he ranged himself on the
side of the people as against the Crown, and when the
time came for this grand old merchant of New York
to prove his sincerity by sacrifice, he laid all that he
had upon the altar of his country. It was but the
embryo of a city to which the youth of twenty-one
came in 1735. Its population was then less than nine
thousand, and it lay entirely below the Commons.
Young Lewis went at once into partnership with Mr.
Edward Annesley in the foreign trade ; their store
was in Dock Street, near the Merchants' Exchange,
that then stood in Broad Street, between what are
now Pearl and Water streets. And here comes in a
sweet touch of romance, in the story of how the young
stranger wooed and won for his wife fair Mary Annes-
ley, sister of his partner, and the acknowledged belle
THE ROYAL EXCHANGE, BROAD STREET
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 249
of the city. A man of wonderful enterprise, Mr. Lewis
visited Russia to make business connections, was ship-
wrecked off the coast of Ireland, traversed the West
Indies, and was the sole survivor of the massacre of
Oswego when Montcalm and his Indian allies capt-
ured that city. The red men spared his life because
of their superstition. Owing to the resemblance be-
tween the Welsh language and the Indian dialects,
Mr. Lewis was able to converse with them and make
himself understood, and their traditions of the Mes-
siah from beyond the great seas led them to look upon
the speaker of this strange tongue the ghost of the
tongue they spoke among themselves with an awe
that stayed their hands from slaughter.
So the years went by, filled with commercial tri-
umphs, and when the battle of Lexington was fought
the news that upheaved the continent found Francis
Lewis retired from business and enjoying the vaca-
tion of life in his pleasant country-seat at Whitestone.
Then his country called him, and he obeyed. As early
as 1765 he had been a member of the Provisional Con-
gress that opposed the Stamp Act, and in 1775 he was
elected to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia,
where he achieved immortality as quietly as he had
won the business triumphs of his life by affixing his
signature to the Declaration of Independence. Later
in the same year his Long Island dwelling was plun-
dered by British soldiers, his valuable library was de-
stroyed, and his wife made prisoner and retained for
several months in confinement, under such circum-
stances of cruelty as broke down her health and
brought her quickly to the grave. Yet the old mer-
chant kept right onward. One of the wealthiest men
250 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
of the city and the time, he perilled everything for
the good cause, and he lost everything. It was enough
for him that the cause of justice and a people's liber-
ties won. Yet it came to pass that the sunset of his
life was peace and pleasantness. In his home on Cort-
landt Street he saw the century close. At seventy he
was chosen vestryman of Trinity Church. Twenty
years later, on December 30, 1803, he died, when his
years had reached fourscore and ten, and was rever-
ently interred in Trinity church-yard.
Francis Lewis, eldest son of the old signer, was a
man of influence in his day, marrying Elizabeth,
daughter of Daniel Ludlow, an eminent merchant,
and leaving many descendants. One of his daughters
married Samuel G. Ogden, who was a distinguished
merchant of New York at the opening of the present
century. The second son, Morgan Lewis, was a much
more famous man. Taking up arms at the beginning
of the Revolutionary struggle, he distinguished him-
self at Stillwater, where he was the officer who received
the surrender of Burgoyne's troops, and rose to the
command of a regiment. In the war of 1812 he was
a major-general, did good service at the Niagara fron-
tier, and had charge of the defences of New York. In
looking up his military record I was surprised to find
that in November, 1775, Morgan Lewis was appointed
first major of the Second Regiment, of which John Jay
was colonel. I had never heard of the distinguished
jurist as a soldier, and I find that other important du-
ties intervened, and that he did not accept the com-
mand. Equally competent in the forum and the field,
Morgan Lewis served as Attorney-general and Chief-
justice of the Supreme Court of this State, and was
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 251
elected Governor and afterwards United States Sena-
tor. In 1779 he married Gertrude, daughter of Chan-
cellor Livingston. Their only child, a daughter, be-
came the wife of Maturin Livingston. For forty years
or more the Governor occupied a spacious double man-
sion at the corner of Church and Leonard streets,
where he dispensed a patriarchal hospitality. From
this house he was buried on April n, 1844. I recall
the occasion. As Governor Lewis was President-gen-
eral of the Society of the Cincinnati and Grand Mas-
ter of Masons, there was to be a great display, and
every school-boy in town of whom I was one was
anxious to see it, and I think we were all there. The
military, the veterans of the Cincinnati, the martial
music, and the paraphernalia of the Freemasons made
an imposing and stately procession. The streets were
thronged with people on the whole line of march, from
the house on Leonard Street to St. Paul's Church,
where the funeral services were held Trinity Church
being then in process of rebuilding. I remember that
I had eyes only for one man, the venerable Major
Popham, last survivor of the original members of the
Cincinnati, whom George Washington had commis-
sioned, who was hale and hearty at ninety-two, and
looked as if he might round the century. There had
been talk of this veteran at my home, and with the
old Revolutionary colonel lying in his coffin, the ma-
jor who survived him became to my eyes almost co-
eval with 'the Pharaohs, and I watched him and won-
dered what thoughts were throbbing under his white
hairs, and what memories of other days were tugging
at his heart.
But there was a daughter whom old Francis Lewis
252
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
dearly loved, and she nearly broke his heart by mar-
rying a British officer, Captain Robertson. Her father
threatened to disinherit her ; but when did love ever
pay heed to either threats or bribes ? The lovers
sought the aid of Dr. Inglis, rector of Trinity Church,
and afterwards Bishop of Nova Scotia, a devoted loy-
alist, and he secretly married them. Then they sailed
for England, and the old man forbade mention of his
daughter Ann in his presence, and crossed her name
out of his will. Captain Robertson and his wife had
six children, and two of their daughters married Eng-
lish bishops. The second daughter became the wife
of the Rt. Rev. Dr. John Bird Sumner, Bishop of
Chester, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury.
Another wedded Bishop Wilson, of Calcutta.
Philip Livingston, born in the days when it was
quaintly provided that " upon the Feast Day of St.
Michael the Archangel yearly" the Lieutenant-gov-
ernor and council should appoint the mayor, became
a graduate of Yale College, but turned his attention
FOOT OF WALL STREET AND FERRY-HOUSE, 1629
FOOT OF WALL STREET AND FERRY-HOUSE, 1746
to business at once, and was elected alderman before
he was thirty. Possessed of the mercantile instinct,
he made money. It could not be otherwise, for he
knew the value of advertising, and whatever he had
for sale will be found in the newspaper columns of his
day. Here, for instance, is a notice that there is " to
be sold by Philip Livingston, at his store in the New
Dock, near the Ferry stairs," Irish linens, black and
blue peelong, needles and teakettles, breeches and sper-
maceti candles, pork and knee-buckles, combs and Bo-
hea tea, brass thimbles and a cargo of choice Teneriffe
wine just imported ! Fancy a signer of the Declara-
tion of Independence dealing out tape and snuff, ivory
254 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
combs, and split-horn knives and forks ; and yet this
was what Philip Livingston was doing when, in 1774,
he was sent to the first colonial Congress at Philadel-
phia. Elected to each successive Congress, he died in
the harness, at York, Pa., in the darkest hour of the
country's need, but with a sublime, faith in her future.
Like Francis Lewis, he proved his faith by his works.
As soon as his signature had been affixed to his coun-
try's magna charta, he sold a large part of his prop-
erty to sustain the public credit. That was the way
in which a New York merchant did business a century
ago.
There was a noted place of resort for the patriots
and politicians in those days. It was the King's
Arms' Tavern, on the west side of Broadway, between
what were then Crown Street and Little Prince, or
Cedar and Liberty streets of the present day. Old
Johnny Battin has often told me of its glories and
pointed out its locality, for he, like the rest of the
British officers of his day, knew all about the myste-
ries of its tap -room, and was full of traditions that
connected Howe and Clinton and Cornwallis with its
junketings. An antiquated gray-stone building whose
lower windows reached down to the broad piazza, in
front, it had no buildings intervening between it and
the Hudson, which then came nearly up to Green-
wich Street. Flower-gardens filled the rear, while the
front was shaded by a row of magnificent catalpas.
On top was a spacious cupola, which gave a fine view
from Lady Warren's country-seat at Greenwich to
Staten Island, and from Paulus Hook to the Breuck-
elen Heights. It was up the spacious entrance to
the King's Arms that Lord Cornbury rode upon his
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 257
well-trained horse, and astonished the landlord by de-
manding a stirrup-cup in the saddle. A spacious bar-
room furnished with little boxes screened by silken
curtains, a still more spacious dining-room furnished
with that greater rarity of a century ago, a carpet, a
spacious piazza on which the beaux of the period
lounged and ogled the pretty women that passed
this was the spot that cradled early meetings of the
Committee of Fifty, which set the ball of the Revolu-
tion rolling in New York and began the successful re-
bellion against crown and king.
These pictures of the past came back to me one
afternoon as the cars of the elevated railway whirled
me past our one statue of a modern merchant of New
York, and set me thinking of King George's broken
crown, and two staid old business men of Gotham
who had so far forgotten dollars and cents as to place
their necks voluntarily in a halter, risking the forfeit-
ure of all that they had of worldly goods in addition
to their lives. What manner of men were they, I
wondered, who could do and dare so much, and what
manner of men were they, their successors, who could
forget it? How many business men how many of
New York's rich men know where sleep the ashes of
Francis Lewis and Philip Livingston ? Happily they
made not their sacrifices to be seen of men or re-
warded by them. Sweet is their sleep beneath the
grasses wet by God's dews as if a nation had reared
a marble pile above to pierce the skies and commem-
orate their patriotism. The sunshine falls upon the
trees in the church-yard and dances over their resting-
places, and the rain visits them with gentle touch, and
they shall break from the loving arms of dear Mother
2 5 8
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Earth just as gladly, when the trump of the last Easter
sends forth its call, as though their graves had been
made a point of pilgrimage for a thousand centuries.
And yet and yet it would not be a bad thing for
New York to remember the children of whom she has
all reason to be proud, and whose honor is her glory.
SUGAR-HOUSE IN LIBERTY STREET
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 259
CHAPTER XXI
TEAKETTLES AS MODES OF MOTION TWO LEAVES FROM AN OLD MER-
CHANT'S ITINERARY QUAKER NOOKS AND COVENANTERS* HAUNTS
CITY FARM-HOUSESUP BREAKNECK HILL HARLEM LANE IN ITS
GLORY SUMMER ATTRACTIONS OF MANHATTAN STREETS
" DON'T talk to me," said my grandmother and
when that revered woman made use of this emphatic
preface, I knew that something as infallible as the acts
passed by the Senate and Assembly of the Medes and
Persians was to follow " don't talk to me, Felix, for
I always felt that it was flying in the face of Provi-
dence to use a teakettle to travel with. Wasn't I on
board the Samson one Fourth of July when the upper
deck fell through and crushed some of my friends to
death, and didn't we run over a cow and skin it when
we were going to Rahway ? I am out of all patience
with steamboats and locomotives. No, I am not go-
ing one step out of town this summer. When I want
to go into the country, I'll take the Bloomingdale om-
nibus and visit my friends. There's all the country I
want on this side of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and I can
get there without a sputtering teakettle to drag me."
I confess to have grown up in these late years into
my grandmother's state of mind believing that there
is no spot on earth so beautiful as this city, and hav-
ing every year less inclination to leave it. I crave .no
distant journeyings; my heart turns to no other peo-
ple. At home among the swarming streets, I would
260 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
not exchange their summer sights and sounds for
Newport sands or Adirondack woods.
Speaking of journeys, here is the itinerary of two
journeys made by an old merchant of this city, written
by a nonagenarian hand that is lifeless now, but that
had a vigorous clasp for a friend only a few short
weeks ago. It is the record of his first and last jour-
neys between New York and Philadelphia, and pre-
sents an extremely suggestive contrast. The old
merchant writes :
"Previous to the year 1817 the mail service be-
tween the two cities, as almost everywhere else in the
United States, was in a most unsatisfactory condition.
About that time Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins set him-
self to establish a shorter mail route, and with this
view opened the Richmond County turnpike across
Staten Island, where he already owned nearly the
whole of the North Shore, with the land under water
and the Quarantine Ferry. About February 20, 1820,
there was a severe thunder-storm, which apparently
broke up the winter, as there was none to speak of
afterwards, though there was plenty of disagreeably
cold weather. Towards the middle of March business
called me to Philadelphia, and I availed myself of
Governor Tompkins's shortened route for the trip, of
which here is the history : I was boarding at No. 40
Broadway, and it was a very cold, raw March morning,
when, at five o'clock, I was summoned to the carriage
at the door which carriage turned out to be a great,
heavy, lumbering stage-coach, in which, on entering, I
found five other half- frozen passengers. We were
driven down to Pier No. I, North River, and there
transferred to the steamboat Hercules, a veritable tub.
a
S JB
II
o
p.
' O
sr a
3 "i
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 263
with no saloon nor protection on deck, and only a
small unventilated cubby-hole down-stairs, called by
courtesy the cabin. After a most uncomfortable pas-
sage we landed at Quarantine, Staten Island, and
were placed in large four-horse stages, in which we at
once started on our journey, passing over the Rich-
mond County Turnpike, the hardest, roughest road I
had ever travelled, crossing the Kill von Kull to Perth
Amboy, and thence to Trenton, where we arrived after
dark. The road from Perth Amboy to Trenton re-
deemed the Richmond Turnpike by contrast, it was so
much worse. We remained at Trenton all night, for
we were thoroughly exhausted and needed rest, and
next morning took steamboat to Philadelphia, which
we reached a little after ten o'clock, being thus en-
abled to deliver the mail from the New York Post-
office to the office in Philadelphia in the almost in-
credibly short time of thirty hours. So much for the
fast mail delivery in 1820. Sixty-five years afterwards,
on Tuesday, May 26, 1885, at 5 p - M -> I left Victoria,
Vancouver's Island, British Columbia, by the Northern
Pacific Railroad for New York. After a most pleas-
ant journey I arrived at the Pavilion Hotel, New
Brighton, Staten Island, on that day week, having
travelled 3500 miles in seven days without the slight-
est feeling of fatigue. I timed the distance from Phila-
delphia to New York or, rather, to the terminus at
Jersey City a few minutes less than two hours. So
I have seen the time between the two cities shortened
from thirty hours to two, with luxury of travel sub-
stituted for discomfort."
The old merchant has gone a longer journey since
he wrote this record, and on still swifter wings than
264 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
those of steam. He loved New York, as well he
might, for he had been in business here for more than
sixty years, and it was a comfort to him, as the silver
cord of life was loosened, to remember that his dust
would rest within the city's confines, and in hearing of
the tramp of its myriad feet and the roar of its sleep-
less traffic. In the last lines his hand penned he
wrote: "I hope that in your tour you will not omit
that gem of country churches, the church of my affec-
tions, where I was married in 1825, in which my chil-
dren were baptized, and where wife and children,
brothers and sisters, are entombed namely, St. Mark's
Church, in the Bowery. It was situated in a true
bowery in those days, constituted by a succession of
leafy bowers. There are no ties more binding to a
feeling heart than attachment to the graves of our
kindred, and I have cherished with wonderful love for
more than half a century the little green church-yard
that surrounds the old Bowery ' chapel ' which Peter
Stuyvesant built and endowed, and which his heredi-
tary enemies afterwards consecrated to their own
form of worship."
I have already spoken of this ancient and once re-
nowned edifice, which, like old Trinity, is a landmark
among a strange people who have to be taught its
history a landmark which, I trust, will never be re-
moved. Its story is part of the city's history, and if
its foundations were removed away from the region
of the ancient " bouweries " of New Amsterdam, its
record would be meaningless. What is needed to
accentuate the good it has accomplished and is still
doing is a shaft to the memory of hard-headed Peter
Stuyvesant, last and most valiant of the old Dutch
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 265
Governors of the ancient Holland colony. Shaft and
church together would mark the complete blending
of religion and patriotism which produces the most
perfect of citizens.
No, I do not go into the country for the summer.
The newspapers are filled with advertisements of
fresh country air, delightful sea-breezes, the joys of
lake and mountain and ocean during the dog-days,
but they have no attraction for me. I am content
with the city, even in the heated term, for I have
learned all its secrets, and know just where to turn for
shelter from the torrid skies, just how to enjoy a
day's outing, just when to look for the refreshing
evening breeze to lift the curtain at my window. Be-
sides, I cannot part with the streets filled with people
"as trees walking," as changeful as the leaves of the
forest. The country road, half-hidden by trees through
which the stars shine dimly, has a charm of its own,
but it cannot compare with the broad avenue in which
electricity creates a second daylight, which is terraced
by long lines of shop -windows glittering with the
wares of all nations, and whose sidewalks present a
bewildering array of the fair faces of young girls and
the gentle graces of matronhood. As if there were
perpetual moonlight in our parks, the shadows of the
trees make a wonderful lace -work on the pathways,
and long processions of lovers, seeking the ark of mat-
rimony in pairs, as all animated creation swept into
Noah's ship of fate, forever wander there, and forever
reveal in their happy faces the story of our first fa-
ther's love. If I could take these with me the
churches and shops, the libraries and picture-galleries,
the theatres and hotels, the beehive homes, the pave-
266 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
ments, and their occupants I might be persuaded to
desert the city of my love ; but until this is possible I
am content to remain here in town.
What is there that I need which the city will not
supply? There is no sea-breeze that blows on distant
coasts that is half so sweet as that which sweeps over
the Battery, and comes freighted with memory as well
as health. There are no stretches of rural landscape
more beautiful than those which sweep down to Kings-
bridge, along the Harlem, or up beyond Manhattan-
ville and around Fort George. I know where to find
traces of village life in those ancient parts of the city
that were once known as Greenwich Village and Chel-
sea, Bowery Village and Yorkville, but which to this
generation are only handed down as a tradition. I
know where to go to find the fragments of the once
powerful old Scotch Presbyterian colony (who opened
in this city nearly a century ago the first theological
seminary which New York could boast, and in which
the famous Rev. James M. Mathews, D.D., was a pro-
fessor eighty years ago), and to hear droned out in
the summer afternoons and evenings from old-fash-
ioned homes, without the intervention of a " kist o'
pipes," the ancient psalms in which the soul of the
Covenanter delighted, and which told how
" Moab my wash-pot is, my shoe
I'll over Edom cast,"
and which provoked piety by putting into rhyme ev-
ery verse of the Psalms, and found religious exaltation
in chanting David's curious criticism of his foes :
" They through the city like a dog
Will grin and go about."
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 267
I know where to go to find a quiet Quaker street,
whose houses have that unaffected air of repose which
other homes cannot copy. Whenever I turn the cor-
ner into this haven of social rest the atmosphere
seems to change, and care is left behind, and the mind
grows serenely contemplative. The blinds of the
houses are carefully closed this is a peculiarity of
the neighborhood ; but from the doors of these homes
come forth such peaceful faces, delicate types of fair
maidenhood, with downcast eyes, and of happy moth-
erhood only a shade less beautiful in its maturity of
charms, as are found nowhere else.
There are old frame-houses in Orchard and Mar-
ket streets which recall the time'when that neighbor-
hood was a Quaker settlement, full of gardens and or-
chards, with comfortable homes set in with trees and
shrubbery. Old people still live who remember it
as the garden spot of the city, in whose vicinity young
couples of a past generation were glad to set up their
household gods. Market Street, in the days of its
roistering youth, was known as George Street, and
had an exceedingly evil repute. A perpetual sound
of revelry pervaded it, and its inhabitants were of the
spider family and spared no victims whom their nets
had enmeshed. The place was an eyesore to the
Quakers, who, finding that the authorities would do
nothing to mend matters, adopted their own measures
of reform. Their plan was radical. They bought up
the entire property, rebuilt some of the houses, and
purified all of them, changed the name of the street
to Market, and then settled down and made their
homes there. It was a wonderful transformation scene,
and a very suggestive one to the reformer of a later day.
268 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
If the summer sojourner in the city wishes for
change of scene from bricks and mortar, I can take
him to thick woods that fringe the Hudson, and that
recall the time when a large portion of the island was
covered by dense forests. There the primeval oak
still flourishes, and the lichens yet cling to the rocks
as in the days when the foot of the Weekquaesgeek
warrior pressed the mosses so lightly that it failed to
crush them. Between the rocks and over the fallen
leaves trickles the ghost of a brook in which trout
once leaped and played, and which, so tradition says,
was once powerful enough to turn the wheel of a
mill where it sprang into the embrace of the Hudson.
Here is rest from the city's roar, and here is a solitude
of nature as complete as one can find in the heart of
the Adirondacks. Come with me for a walk to Tubby
Hook, and before we have turned homeward you shall
confess that by land or sea there is no more beautiful
spot on which the sun shines. Or if you tire of the
land, let us embark on the waters of the Spuyten
Duyvil, and up in the creeks which are its tributaries
we shall find a wilderness of marsh and shrubbery
which will make us fancy that a hundred miles inter-
vene between our boat and the guardian statue of
"Justice "on the City Hall. The old King's Bridge is
unchanged since the day when the Hessian allies of
Great Britain under command of Knyphausen marched
across it to make a raid upon the " neutral ground "
of Westchester County, and the ancient hostlery of
the Blue Bell presents the same appearance that it
did to Lord Howe and his staff when they halted
there and ordered one of his famous dinners. Tow-
ards the Hudson is the spot where the Half Moon
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 269
anchored and had its first battle with the Indians, and
where its crew dug the first grave on the Island of
Manhattan. If we turn the other way and sail be-
yond the steep and wooded headlands known as
Washington Heights, the river brings us to a battle-
field of a later day and a different kind. For at the
bridge which bears his name, General Macomb dammed
the Harlem River, to the great and general indigna-
tion of his neighbors. The men of lower Westchester
reached such a pitch of wrath that they determined
to take the war into their own hands, and marching
down to the dam in a body, they removed the obstruc-
tion and let the river have free passage. Twice this
was done, and then the dam ceased to exist except in
name. The authorities have tried in vain to make the
public patronize their title of Central Bridge; the old
name, Macomb's Dam Bridge, still lingers gratefully
among the natives. I remember some twenty years
ago to have attended church at Mott Haven, and to
have been horrified to hear the minister announce that
the annual picnic of the Sunday-school would be held
during the week " at the Dam Bridge."
There are bits of farm scenery on the upper part of
the island which seem to have remained unchanged
for a century little oases of garden and field, with a
brief stretch of country lane shaded by locust and
cherry trees. It is noticeable that the houses, like
the old Bussing farm-house, between One Hundred
and Forty-sixth and One Hundred and Forty-seventh
streets, and east of Eighth Avenue, exactly face the
south, as accurately as if set by compass. The build-
ers had the correct sanitary idea as well as a proper
knowledge of comfort. These homes of a dead an-
270 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
cestry will soon be blotted out. The hand of im-
provement, a rough and unsentimental fist in its way,
has already cut a street through Breakneck Hill, and
the perils of the precipitous road over its crest have
wellnigh vanished. The highest point of the hill was
near the intersection of One Hundred and Forty-
seventh Street with the south side of St. Nicholas
Avenue, which was opened in 1871 as a prolongation
of the once celebrated Harlem Lane, which ran from
the intersection of Eighth Avenue with One Hun-
dred and Twenty -third Street, diagonally to Sixth
Avenue, at One Hundred and Tenth Street, on the
northern end of Central Park. Harlem Lane, now
St. Nicholas Avenue, was a dead level for the distance
of three-quarters of a mile, and here the owners of
fast horses tested their speed on pleasant afternoons,
while all the sporting world looked on and wondered.
The prolongation of the lane, before St. Nicholas
Avenue was projected, was Eighth Avenue, then a
level earth road to Macomb's Dam, where stood, a
half century ago, two famous road-houses from which
the glory has departed, though they still exist. An-
other road led out of Eighth Avenue to the left, at
about One Hundred and Forty- first Street, called
Breakneck Road, it ran up Breakneck Hill, and con-
tinued along until it intersected Tenth Avenue at
One Hundred and Sixty-second Street, opposite the
Jumel mansion, and crossing into the present Kings-
bridge Road, opposite the Deaf and Dumb Asylum,
kept on to Kingsbridge, two miles or more beyond.
This was the steepest, most difficult and dangerous
road on Manhattan Island, even more wild and pre-
cipitous than the McGowan's Pass Road at the north
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 271
end of Central Park. Several fatal accidents occurred
there and almost innumerable severe ones.
Why should I go to the country for change -of air,
for recreation, or for comfort, so long as I have all
these delights at my door, made ready for my enjoy-
ment? No. For me the breezes shall blow from
river to harbor ; for me the streets shall every night
put on their holiday attire ; for me the green spots
on this island shall shine in summer garb, and the
waters that gird them in shall twinkle in the sun-
shine by day and dance with silver gleams by night/
" Don't talk to me, Felix," said my grandmother, and
I emphasize her dictum out of my own experience ;
" there is no spot on earth half so lovely as this city
of New York."
THE INDEPENDENT BATTERY, BUNKER HILL
272 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER XXII
THE ANCIENT MILL AT KINGSBRIDGE MARCHING WITH WASHINGTON
A PATROON IN THE HAY-FIELD GHOSTS OF OLD HOUSES THE
STRYKER AND HOPPER MANSIONS RICHMOND HILL THE WARREN
AND SPENCER HOMESTEADS ANCIENT EARTHWORKS
ONE of the pleasantest experiences in the life of
Felix Oldboy has been the receipt of scores of letters
in regard to his " Tour." Some of them contain mat-
ter which seems to be appropriate for incorporation
in these papers, and which convey interesting points
in local history or queer bits of mosaic that reveal
traits of city life which are well worth preserving.
One of recent date, signed only with initials, relates to
the historic territory of Kingsbridge. The writer says:
In touching upon Inwood and the waters of the Harlem and
Spuyt-den-Duyvil Creek, I hoped you would mention the eld
mill that once stood just to the west of Kingsbridge, and to
which there was passage over the water, either from the bridge
or from the New York side of the creek. I remember see-
ing this old mill as late as the year 1857, and I think that
shortly after that date it blew down or was carried away by
the waters of the Spuyt-den-Duyvil after a freshet. This mill
stood on piles in the middle of the stream on lands under
water granted by the Mayor and Commonalty of New York
to Alexander McComb in the year 1800 at a rental of $12.50
per annum. About the year 1856 my father bought the mill
and water grant at a foreclosure sale for $1650, and from that
year to the present the tax has been regularly paid, though the
mill has gone and all else that belonged to it except the bot-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 273
torn of the stream, which presumably is still there. The lease
from the city provides that a passageway fifteen feet wide
shall be kept open, so that small boats may freely pass and re-
pass through the bridge, and the width of the stream seems to
be thus guaranteed for the future. Can you tell me who built
the mill that was destroyed thirty years ago, and for what pur-
poses was it ever used ?
Whether the mill thus destroyed was the same that
was built by Frederick Phillipse, Lord of the Manor,
I do not know, but there was a mill there in 1759,
which, with house, farm, and bridge, was " to be let,
and entered upon immediately," in April of that year,
on application to " the
Manor of Phillipsburg,
in the county of West-
chester," now the city
of Yonkers. Presuma-
bly the mill ground
wheat and corn for the PHILLIPSE MANOR-HOUSE
farmers of that county
and of the upper part of the Island of Manhattan.
My correspondent writes the name of the famous
stream at Kingsbridge Spuyt-den-Duyvil, and it is
curious to note the variety of spelling to which this
Rubicon of Anthony the trumpeter has been subject-
ed. Prior to 1693 there was no bridge across the
stream, but in January of that year the Colonial
Council met to consider the offer of Frederick Phil-
lipse the elder to build a bridge at " Spikendevil "
for the convenience of " cattell " and " waggons," as
well as the general public. This was the only bridge
connecting the Island of Manhattan with the main-
land for sixty years. Madam Knight, in her journal
18
274 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
of 1704, recounting her journey from New York to
New Haven in December of that year, says that about
three o'clock in the afternoon " we came to the Half-
way House, about ten miles out of town, where we
baited and went forward, and about five came to Spit-
ing Devil, else Kingsbridge, where they pay three-
pence for passing over with a horse, which the man
that keeps the gate set up at the end of the bridge
receives." This Half-way House stood at the bot-
tom of the hill on the old Middle Road, about One
Hundred and Seventh Street, between the line of
Fifth and Sixth avenues. The only road to Boston
then, and a rough one it was, led across the island to
Kingsbridge, and here the gates were locked and barred
at night, and people stood and knocked until a servant
came from the farm-house fifteen rods distant. It
was a monopoly, and a grievous one. So oppressive
did it become that in 1759 Benjamin Palmer built a
free bridge across the creek just above the old bridge,
from Thomas Vermilia's land to the farm of Jacob
Dyckman, and all New York celebrated the event by
eating " a stately ox roasted whole " on the Bowling
Green. This took place during the French and Ind-
ian War, and Palmer made a charge that Colonel Phil-
lipse had him twice drafted as a soldier in order to kill
the project, and compelled him to pay $ for a sub-
stitute on the first occasion and 20 on the second.
During the war for independence the British burned
the free bridge in order to prevent the passage of the
American army across the river, the original bridge at
this point being defended by a redoubt.
It is difficult to realize that but a single generation
can span all the years between the days of George
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 275
Washington and to-day, and that the sons of men
who fought in the Revolution are moving among us
in hale and hearty old age. Somehow, although in
boyhood I have talked of those days with a score who
had wielded the sword or borne the flintlock in the
war for independence, the scenes and men who made
our country's history in the last quarter of the last
century seem to have been immeasurably removed
from us by the mighty tragedy of our war between
the States. But these modern memories were all
swept away by a letter which has come to me from
the son of an officer in the Revolutionary Army, who
was a conspicuous figure in the procession that en-
tered New York in triumph on November 25, 1783,
the day of the city's evacuation by the British troops.
Col. Christian S. Delavan writes me :
We myself and my brothers commenced keeping a hard-
ware and furnishing store in the year 1826, and continued so
from that year until 1849. ' During many of those years Peter
Cooper often drove from his glue factory, in the rear of his
house, north-east corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty eighth
Street, and came to have a chat with us. In your ramblings
on Washington Heights you spoke of General Washington
and his staff entering New York from that point, and the
British withdrawing their lines as he advanced and finally em-
barking at the Battery. It was my father, Captain Delavan,
who, with his light -horse company, led the advance of the
patriot column into the city. He, with the other officers, par-
took of a grand dinner at the old tavern (still standing) at the
corner of Pearl and Broad streets. My brother Charles and
myself, fast approaching the eighties, are the only two living
representatives of those who participated in that glorious event
that gave us a country free from a foreign foe.
A correspondent sends the following incident, which
WASHINGTON HOUSE, FOOT OF BROADWAY
dates back half a century, as illustrative of Gouverneur
Morris and his times :
During harvest time, a few years only before your first visit
to Harlem, an English nobleman whose ancestral patent of no-
bility dated back to the Norman Conquest, visited this coun-
try and became the guest of Judge William Jay, of Bedford,
Westchester County, who entertained him most royally, also
making calls with him upon the surrounding lords of the
manor, such as the Livingstons, Van Rensselaers, and Schuy-
lers to the north, and the Van Cortlandts, Morrises, and Stuy-
vesants to the south. One bright morning in July the patroon,
Jay, with his English guest, left Bedford in the judge's travel-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 277
ling carriage to introduce the nobleman to his brother patroon,
Gouverneur Morris. They reached the Manor-house just be-
fore noon, and as they drove to the door met the patroon him-
self, in his shirt-sleeves, minus coat and vest, with trousers
tucked into his boots and a scythe over his shoulder, rills of
perspiration running down his manly face, and his lordly
brow crowned with an old straw-hat with a hole in the top,
through which protruded the end of a red bandanna handker-
chief. At his heels were a little army of laborers, bearing their
scythes, and also fresh from the meadows where they had been
mowing. The welcome dinner-bell had summoned them. It
was a revelation to the English nobleman, but when he had
seated himself at the hospitable table of his host he forgot all
about it. For Mr. Morris was a lover of the classics as well
as of nature, and could not only lead the field with his scythe,
but could recite whole books of Virgil by heart.
It has been a pleasure to sit down and converse
on paper with these unknown correspondents, whose
name is almost legion, and whose letters have been a
constant source of encouragement, and also a revela-
tion of patriotism and local pride that was totally un-
suspected. Instead of being given up to money, fash-
ion, and pleasure, the genuine New Yorker possesses
underneath his quiet exterior a heart that pulsates to
the history, the growth, and the grandeur of his city.
He may not wear it on his sleeve, yet it is there. His
patriotism, indeed, is a good deal like old Bishop Gris-
wold's religion. When that saintly man of God was
bishop of the Eastern Diocese Massachusetts and
Maine an ardent young preacher made up his mind
that as an Episcopalian the bishop must be destitute
of " vital godliness," and he concluded that he would
go and convert him. The bishop received him kindly,
and, on making known his mission, invited him to his
278
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
study, asked him to be seated, and told him that he
was ready to listen. " Bishop, have you got religion?"
the young man asked, with great solemnity. " None
to speak of," responded the bishop, quietly, as he sat
twiddling his thumbs, as was his custom. The ardent
evangelist paused, pondered, struck his colors, apolo-
gized, and left the house convinced that true religion
did not consist mainly in talk.
Yesterday I stood in front of the old Stryker man-
sion, at the foot of Fifty-second Street and the North
THE STRYKER HOMESTEAD
River, and marked the changes and ravages that time
had wrought. I had known the house when it was
the seat of an extensive and always hearty hospitali-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 279
ty, and when it was one of the conspicuous country,
seats on the lower outskirts of Bloomingdale, having
a pedigree and history of its own. The old Stryker
homestead still stands, but it is shorn of its former
glory. Tenements and stables hedge it in on either
side, and docks and lumber-yards occupy the place
where its green lawn used to stretch down to the river-
edge. Near by the Stryker mansion was the Hopper
house. The two farms were adjoining, and the fami-
lies naturally became allied by marriage. It is not ten
years since the burial-ground of the Hopper family
stood twenty feet above the level of the street, at the
corner of Ninth Avenue and Fiftieth Street, an open,
desolate, unshaded piece of ground, sown with gray
tombstones, on the nearest of which the passenger
could read that it was " sacred to the memory of An-
drew Hopper." The stout old farmer, who had never
dreamed that the little city at the lower end of the
island would ever come knocking at his doors and bid-
ding him move on, had gone comfortably to sleep in
the belief that his worn-out body would rest undis-
turbed in the sight of the fields he had tilled and the
river in which he had sported in his boyhood.
I think there is nothing sadder in the story of our
famous houses than the history of Richmond Hill. Of
its ancient glories I have heard from my grandmother,
who had been a guest within its walls when it was the
seat of culture and refinement. I remember the mansion
as a ruin, when, after it had been opened for a first-class
theatre, it had passed through the gradations of circus
and menagerie, and finally had been abandoned. It
then stood on the line of Charlton Street, some twenty
feet from Varick, still wearing the adornment of por-
RICHMOND HILL
tico and columns, having been removed there from its
old foundations at the intersection of those two streets.
Built by Major Mortier, an English officer, ten years
anterior to the Revolution, Washington with his fam-
ily occupied the house in 1776, whence he removed
his headquarters to the Roger Morris house, near what
was then known as the Point of Rocks. Then British
officers came into possession. During the first year of
the Government under the Constitution, while Wash-
ington held his Republican Court in Franklin Square,
Vice-president Adams occupied the Richmond Hill
house and estate, of which Mrs. Adams wrote tp her
sister that " Nature had so lavishly displayed her beau-
ties that she has left scarcely anything for her hand-
maid, Art, to perform."
It was a beautiful spot then. In front there was
nothing to obstruct the view of the Hudson. To the
right fertile meadows stretched up towards the little
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 281
hamlet of Greenwich Village, and on the left the view
of the little city in the distance was half hidden by
clumps of trees and rising hills. There was a broad en-
trance to the house, under a porch of imposing height,
supported by high columns, with balconies fronting
the rooms of the second story. The premises were en-
tered by a spacious gateway, flanked by ornamental
columns, at what is now the termination of Macdougal
Street. Within the gate and to the north was a beau-
tiful sheet of water, known to men who are still living
and who skated on its frozen surface when they were
urchins 1 of tender years, as Burr's Pond. For, after all,
the chief renown of Richmond Hill is that it was for
ten years the home of Aaron Burr, and that here the
lovely and ill-fated Theodosia, his daughter, on whom
her father lavished the love of his life, dispensed a
charming hospitality. The guests were the most emi-
nent men and women of the Old World and the New.
Talleyrand, Volney, Louis Philippe, Brant, the Indian
chieftain; senators, ambassadors, authors all were
alike charmed with the graceful manners of Theodo-
sia Burr and the stately hospitality of the home over
which she presided. No man in all the land was then
more highly honored than Aaron Burr, Senator and
Vice-president, whose military record had been brill-
iant beyond comparison, and to whom the country,
for which he had perilled his life, delighted to point
as one of its chief civic ornaments. With his fall,
crushed with his daughter's loss, the glory of Rich-
mond Hill departed forever.
Another old mansion whose features remain im-
pressed on my memory was the house built by Ad-
miral Sir Peter Warren in 1740 on the banks of the
282 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Hudson, several miles away from the city. It stood
near the intersection of Charles and Bleecker streets,
and when it was erected and the grounds laid out, its
beautiful lawns reached down to the river, and there
was no other house within the radius of a mile to in-
tercept the view. Here, when the smallpox was raging
in the little city, whose outer boundary was just above
Wall Street, Sir Peter Warren invited the Colonial
Assembly to meet and escape the plague by adjourn-
ing to the country. The admiral, forgotten in the
present day, was a great man in the colony, and quite
as influential during the administration of Clinton as
the Governor himself. Time could not spare the hero
of Louisbourg, but it is a pity that man could not have
spared the splendid avenues of locusts which Sir Peter
had planted with his own hand, and which were cut
down in the summer of 1865, when the old house was
demolished.
In the near neighborhood of the Warren mansion
was the old Spencer homestead, at the corner of
Fourth and West Tenth streets. It was erected at the
beginning of the century by Garrett Gilbert, a well-
known character of that day, who soon ran through
his fortune and put his homestead up for sale. If a
spendthrift, however, he was possessed of taste, and
his cottage, with its peaked roof and veranda front,
was considered at the time the most beautiful of the
city's suburban residences. The grounds were laid out
with great taste, abounding in flowers and fruit-trees ;
and the fish-ponds in them, fed from a number of cis-
terns, were the marvel of the day. When the estate
was sold, Senator Marcus Spencer became its pur-
chaser, and the house went by his name afterwards,
1. Battery 2. Castle Williams 5. Governor's Island U. 3-Gun Battery
FORTIFICATIONS AROUND NEW YORK 1814
284 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
and is commemorated by the present Spencer Place.
During the prevalence of the yellow-fever in 1822 the
city Post-office was temporarily established at this
building, but was subsequently removed to the corner
of Asylum (now Fourth) and Bank streets. A few
representatives of the magnificent trees which once
surrounded the house are still standing in West Tenth
Street ; and after the Spencer mansion was torn down,
in 1872, Dr. Hall, the Senator's son-in-law, enclosed a
large portion of the old garden, which lay in the inte-
rior of the block, as a garden for his residence in West
Tenth Street, and there it still lies hidden from the
public eye, bright with flowers and shaded by ancient
trees, a mute memorial of the last of the old home-
steads below the homes of the Strykers and Hoppers.
' If the old historic houses of New York cannot be
preserved, and all seem doomed to pass under the
hammer of the auctioneer, it would appear that meas-
ures ought to be taken to preserve the relics of old
Revolutionary fortifications. A generation ago the
upper part of the island was fairly covered with the
remains of earthworks and redoubts, most of them
outlined with much distinctness ; and there are octo-
genarian citizens still living who as boys played in the
ditches and on the embankments of the fort erected
on the hill just west of Broadway, between Spring and
Prince streets. The hand of the builder has levelled
most of these remains. Tenth Avenue, at Two Hun-
dred and Twenty-sixth Street, runs through the site of
Fort Prince, which guarded the approaches to Kings'
Bridge. The redoubts that crossed Eleventh and
Twelfth avenues at One Hundred and Sixtieth street
have disappeared, as has also Cock Hill Fort, that
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 285
overlooked Spuyten Duyvil Creek at Two Hundred
and Seventeenth Street. On Washington Heights are
still to be seen the grassy embankments that marked
the Citadel of Fort Washington, captured by the Brit-
ish, and rechristened Fort Knyphausen in honor of
the Hessian general whose mercenaries had led the
storming party, and the outlines of Fort Tryon, half
a mile above, can also be traced. It will be a pity if
those who have charge of what they are pleased to
style street improvements are permitted to obliterate
these monuments of our past glory, and the home of
the parvenu shall cover the spot where bayonets were
crossed in deadly conflict, and the men of '76 fell in
slaughtered heaps in defence of the liberties of the
colonies.
The Revolutionary fortifications that stretched from
the mouth of Turtle Creek up through McGowan's
Pass disappeared long ago, and the later earthworks
thrown up there in 1812, and which I remember to
have seen in my boyhood, have also gone the way of
the past. There are men still living who helped to
erect these fortifications, and who have lived to see
their demolition. Not many of these veterans are
left, but we old boys can remember when they were
of little account, and the survivors of the war of the
Revolution were looked upon as the country's real
heroes. One of these soldiers of three-quarters of a
century ago, Col. Charles B. Tappan, belonged to the
volunteer company commanded by Capt. (afterwards
Judge) Robert Emmett. He has a very vivid recol-
lection of the march to Yorkville Heights, where they
were ordered to report at sunrise, and of digging in-
trenchments by day in the hot sun and mounting
286 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
guard on dark and rainy nights. Every able-bodied
man from the age of eighteen to forty-five was re-
quired to attend daily drill, and 28,000 men were con-
stantly under arms to repel an invasion of the enemy.
Another old friend, who was a butcher's apprentice in
those stirring days, pointed out to me in after-years
the remains of a redoubt which he had helped to build
on the right of McGowan's Pass. It seems that the
boys became inoculated with the martial fever, and
they held a meeting in Bayard Street, where fiery
speeches were made and resolutions were passed offer-
ing the services of one hundred boys, ready to march
at the beat of the drum. Their proffer was accepted,
and at six o'clock in the morning, with colors flying,
a band of music playing, and citizens shouting, the
bold soldier boys set out for the front at Yorkville.
They had not forgotten creature comforts, for a huge
wagon followed them laden with the best that the
market afforded. Breakfast was first in order, and
then the boys set to work in earnest, and at sunset
had thrown up a breastwork one hundred feet in
length, twenty in breadth, and four feet high, sodded
completely. In the centre of the ramparts the boys
set their flag, which bore on its white ground the in-
scription :
" Free trade and butchers' rights,
From Brooklyn's Fields to Harlem Heights."
Then, having hailed it with nine hearty cheers, they
marched back to the Bowery, with drums beating and
colors flying, and ate and slept as only boys can.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 287
CHAPTER XXIII
POLITICIANS OF THE OLDEN TIME SAMUEL SWARTWOUT'S STRANGE
CAREER THURLOW WEED AND HORATIO SEYMOUR STATESMEN
OF THE NEW SCHOOL HARMONY IN OLD TAMMANY HALL
A BIT of wisdom which fell from the lips of Mr.
Pickwick, and which Count Smorltork eagerly caught
up and transferred to his tablets as " ver good fine
words to begin a chapter," read in its transferred con-
dition as follows : " The word poltic surprises by him-
self ' a difficult study of no inconsiderable magni-
tude.' " While this is true, no reminiscence of the
city of half a century ago would be complete that did
not revive the memories of the politicians of that day.
They are worth remembering, too. " There were gi-
ants in the earth in those days," and zealous partisans
though they were, their patriotism no less than their
abilities made them men of mark in the land. De
Witt Clinton thought it an honor to be an alderman
of New York, and when the Golden Age returns, in
which such men as he shall again be willing to take
up the burdens of office, the era of political rings and
jobs will pass away.
" Old Hickory," " the Fox of Kinderhook," " Tip-
pecanoe and Tyler too," and "the Mill Boy of the
Slashes " are among my early recollections of political
badges and war cries. I remember often to have seen
famous Sam Swartwout, whom Andrew Jackson be-
288 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
queathed as a legacy to his successor, extracting a
promise from Mr. Van Buren that he should not be
disturbed in his office of Collector of the Port until
his term had expired. Of colossal build, erect, and
straight as an arrow until age had bent his stalwart
form a little in ripening it for death's harvest Sam
Swartwout was a man of mark when he passed along
the street. He came of Revolutionary stock, and with
his two brothers served in the War of 1812. They
dealt extensively in paints and dyewoods, and almost
as largely in politics. John, the oldest brother, was
appointed United States Marshal for this district by
President Jefferson, but was removed by the latter at
the beginning of his second term, when he made a
clean sweep of all the friends of Aaron Burr, to whom,
when he was Vice-president, he had assigned the New
York appointments. This made trouble at once.
John Swartwout challenged De Witt Clinton to mor-
tal combat, and they met on the old duelling-ground
at Hoboken. The challenger was brought home with
a bullet in his thigh. Richard Riker, afterwards Re-
corder of the city, and known in political and social
tradition as " Dickey " Riker, made some unpalatable
criticism upon the matter, and was promptly chal-
lenged by Robert Swartwout. They met on the field
of honor across the Hudson, and Mr. Riker was wound-
ed so severely that he limped to the close of his life.
It was an era of personal responsibility. Men were
held to strict account for their criticism of contempo-
raries, and such an exchange of epithets as in these
later days at times distinguishes our deliberative bod-
ies would then have led to a fusillade that would have
made a battle-field of City Hall or State Capitol. The
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 289
invitation to step over to Hoboken and adjust matters
with a pair of pistols was, of course, a barbarity, but
it led to a remarkable politeness and a discriminating
choice of words in public speech or written document.
Even then a challenge was liable to be sent on gen-
eral principles, and it could not be refused. Bernard,
the actor, in his autobiographical account of a visit
paid to New York in the early part of the century,
speaks of a call made upon him at his hotel by Mr.
Coleman, editor of The Evening Post. After an hour's
pleasant chat, the editor excused himself on the score
of an engagement, and it was not until the next day
that Mr. Bernard learned that the engagement in ques-
tion was an invitation to fight a duel at Hoboken. It
was a matter of course, the custom of the day ; and
politicians, journalists, and even men of business (like
Robert Swartwout, who was a merchant, and was wed-
ded to Miss Dunscombe at the house of his brother-
in-law, Philip Hone), were ready to maintain their
opinions with powder and ball.
At this time Samuel Swartwout, the youngest of
the brothers, was in the South with Aaron Burr. De-
voted to the fortunes of that adventurous pioneer of
a new empire, he had gone with him to the South-
west to assist in setting up a new field of rule and
conquest on the Mexican border. When Burr was
on trial at Richmond, Samuel Swartwout was there as
his private secretary and friend, and became the sharer
of his prison. As ready as his brothers for the trial
by combat, he sent a challenge to General Wilkinson,
and when the latter declined to receive it, on the
ground that he would not hold correspondence with
traitors and conspirators, the ardent challenger prompt-
290 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
ly posted him as a coward and poltroon. Released
and returning to this city, he served in 1812 as ad-
jutant of the celebrated Irish Greens, and afterwards
did duty on the staff of General Jackson at the battle
of New Orleans. It was the friendship which Jack-
son conceived for stalwart Sam Swartwout that made
the latter Collector of the Port, and kept him in office
eight years in spite of the protests of Tammany Hall.
When it came to the case of his personal friends,
" Old Hickory " was immovable.
I never cross the meadows beyond Bergen Hill but
the memory of the Swartwouts comes back to me.
They dreamed, seventy years ago, that these meadows
might be reclaimed and made a vast market -garden
to supply the metropolis. With them to think was to
act. They purchased 4200 acres of the salt-marsh in
1815. It was subject to overflow by the tides and
was mostly under water. Business men regarded the
scheme as visionary and would have nothing to do
with it. But the brothers were rich men for that
day, and John Swartwout did not hesitate to embark
every penny of his $200,000 in the speculation. They
went sturdily to work, built ten miles of embankment,
dug 100 miles of ditch, reclaimed 1500 acres of solid
ground, and announced that they would raise upon
these resurrected fields all the vegetables that would
ever be needed in New York. Three years of this
work absorbed their money and broke up their regu-
lar business. But Robert secured the appointment
of Naval Agent, and the brothers went ahead with
unwavering faith. At the close of another year they
applied to the city corporation for aid, but it was re-
fused. Then, still believing that there were " millions
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 291
in it," they mortgaged everything and kept on. As
a last resort, they sent their maps and plans to Hol-
land, in the hope that they would interest the Dutch
devotees of canals, but this proved a failure also.
The brothers were impoverished, and the swamp ex-
cept the district they reclaimed is still a prey to the
sea. When in summer the train dashes across the
miles of swamp land beyond Hoboken, and the long,
salt grass, jewelled with wild flowers of brilliant hue,
sways and tosses to the breath of the wind, it seems
to me as I look out from the car window as if the
wild roses and the meadow-grasses were growing over
the graves of those buried hopes of seventy years
ago. Perhaps, though, like all such failures, it is but
the seed of future success. The pioneer never reaps
the harvest.
Another old-time politician whom I remember was
Churchill C. Cambreling. One of the most distin-
guished of the commercial representatives of the city
in his day, he has been forgotten this many a year.
Courteous, refined, and accomplished, few men of his
day exerted a more powerful influence here or at
Washington. Nine times he was elected to Congress,
where he served on the most important committees,
and Monroe, Jackson, and Van Buren eagerly sought
his aid and counsel. President Van Buren appointed
him Minister to Russia, and this was the close of his po-
litical career. I have instanced the case of Mr. Cam-
breling to show how fleeting is political fame. The
man whom the whole city delighted to honor has
now no place in the city's memory. His successor in
Congress, Mike Walsh, has been better remembered,
and traditions of his political powers are still told
292 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
around the watch-fires of the clans. It was he who
said that " Any dead fish can swim with the current,
but it takes a live fish to swim against it," and that
" It requires more statesmanship to cross Broadway
at Fulton Street than to be a Representative in Con-
gress from a rural district."
Forty years ago I met Thurlow Weed for the first
time, in the island of Santa Cruz, where he was win-
tering for his health, and had interested himself in the
emancipation of the slaves in that island. Outside of
politics, I knew him well afterwards. On the subject
of politics he was inscrutable. He counselled with
no one, but made his own plans and had them exe-
cuted. Whether his influence was for good or evil is
not a matter for discussion here. In his peculiar role
of Warwick the king-maker he has had no successor.
I found him at his best in his talks about literature.
When wise King Solomon remarked that there was
nothing new under the sun, he might have included
politics, though politics was not much of a business
in his day. Thrones sometimes went the way of a
Broadway railroad franchise, and were privately sold
to the highest bidder, but the sword usually settled
all disputes. This latter method had the advantage
of largely reducing the number of political aspirants
and of occasionally exterminating the entire opposi-
tion, root and branch, or, speaking politically, primary
and convention thus leaving quiet folk a better
chance of fireside peace and comfort. In our day
history continually repeats itself in politics as in other
phases of public life. Prophets have arisen who pro-
claim the wonderful discovery of a new and original
panacea for the ills of mankind. They promise to
TAMMANY HALL, 1811
abolish poverty, to banish thorns and thistles, and
make the land bring forth nothing but grapes and
olives, and to create a millennium through the ballot.
They feed on ashes. Their pretended patent is but
the antiquated prescription of dead and buried quacks
moth-eaten and ghostly in its flimsiness. Sixty
years ago, in 1827, Fanny Wright, the famous free-
19*
294 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK *
thinker and land-reformer, and William Cobbett, the
radical writer and member of the British Parliament,
came to New York and ventilated their peculiar views
to large audiences that were chiefly composed of arti-
sans and laborers. Their promise of a restored Eden,
in which land and wealth should be held in common,
was so captivating that they were able to organize
an enthusiastic Labor Party in this city, which was so
successful that it sent Ely Moore to Congress as its
standard-bearer. But in two or three years it ceased
to exist as an organization, having become merged
into the old Jacksonian Democratic Party, upon whose
policy it ingrafted in some measure its peculiar politi-
cal views. A similar fate is likely to befall the pres-
ent labor movement or at least that part of it which
proposes to undertake the job of reforming that por-
tion of creation which President Zachary Taylor des-
ignated as "all the world and the rest of mankind."
What the genius of Fanny Wright and the brain of
William Cobbett could not compass cannot be accom-
plished by the words of Powderly and McGlynn, of
Henry George and Lucy Parsons.
Horatio Seymour used to say that the City of New
York was a State by itself, entirely distinct in its in-
terests and customs from the rural districts of the
interior. " I have always advised candidates for State
or Federal offices who do not belong in the city," he
said to me, " to keep away from New York while their
campaign was in progress a piece of advice which I
always followed in my own case." Yet he had a great
admiration for the metropolis, and the number of his
friends here was legion. I recall a summer afternoon
when I sat with him on the porch of his home upon
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
295
the slope of the Deerfield Hills, looking up and down
the lovely panorama of the Mohawk Valley the
grandest highway of nations in the world when he
gave me a characteristic chapter of his experience at
the hands of Tammany Hall. " I had opposed Tam-
many," he said, " in the domination of a Judge of the
Court of Appeals, and they had been defeated. The
leaders left the Convention vowing vengeance. Later
in the campaign I accepted an invitation to speak in
Tammany Hall, and though anticipating a disturbance,
there was nothing else to be done but to go. When
the night came the hall was crowded. I remarked to
Captain Rynders that possibly there would be trouble
when I spoke, but he replied that there was no dan-
TAMMANY HALL IN LATER TIMES
296 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
ger, that unity was the rule and harmony must be
preserved. As I rose to speak there was considerable
disturbance in the rear of the hall. At the same time
I noticed a line of men extending from each farther
corner of the room to a point in the centre. Each
man held his silk hat in oneliand above the heads of
the crowd, and as the wedge-shaped line gradually fell
back there was more room and better order. After it
was over I asked Captain Rynders what was the
meaning of the movement. It appears that the line
of men with silk hats held aloft was a phalanx of se-
lect shoulder-hitters, who preserved the unities of their
hats with the left hand and hit out with the right.
They had forced the malcontents to the rear, then
closed their lines upon them, pushed them back to the
door, and threw them down -stairs. It was accom-
plished so quietly and effectively that the disturbing
element found itself in the middle of the street before
it had a chance to make a demonstration. ' No/ said
Captain Rynders to me, reflectively, ' we never have
any trouble unity is the rule and harmony must be
preserved.' * But don't you have a feud afterwards?'
1 Bless your heart, no, Governor ; those same men
crept up-stairs afterwards like so many little lambs
and listened to you quietly to the end. Harmony
was preserved, you see.' "
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 297
CHAPTER XXIV
PUBLIC OPINION OPPOSED TO BANKS BIRTH AND GROWTH OF THE
SYSTEM THE YELLOW-FEVER TERROR PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
ORIGIN OF SOME NEW YORK BANKS CIRCUMVENTING THE LEG-
ISLATURE WILD-CAT BANKING
BETWEEN the first establishment of a banking insti-
tution in this country and the national banking system
lies an experience in finance that is as wonderful as
anything else in our history. In hunting it out, the
chief miracle seems to be that the land was able to
achieve even the least prosperity. At the beginning
of this century there was an almost unanimous oppo-
sition to banks ; now it seems to be a prevailing
opinion that the more we have the merrier.
It was Philadelphia that set New York the example
of creating a bank of discount and deposit. The
Bank of North America, originated by Robert Morris,
Superintendent of Finance for the United States, was
incorporated by Congress in 1781 and by the State of
Pennsylvania a few months later in the same year.
But nothing could be done in New York while the
British held possession of the city, and it was not un-
til November 25, 1783, that the English soldiers final-
ly disembarked, taking with them thousands of Tory
refugees. Philadelphia had a population of forty
thousand at that time, and was regarded as the future
capital of the colonies, since Congress always held its
298 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
sessions there. New York was but the shadow of
the flourishing city of 1776. Its patriotic citizens re-
turned to find its homes dismantled or destroyed by
fire, its churches turned into riding-schools or hospi-
tals, and its commerce gone. But the spirit of its
people was indomitable. Though the population of
the city numbered but twenty thousand, and the
business men had been largely impoverished by the
war, a movement was started at once . looking to the
creation of a bank. Money was scarce, and it was at
first proposed that subscriptions should be made with
one-third money and two-thirds mortgages or* deeds
of trust on land in New York and New Jersey. Hap-
pily wiser counsels prevailed, and at a meeting held in
the Merchants' Coffee House on February 26, 1784,
the Bank of New York was organized, with a capital
stock of $500,000 in gold and silver. Major-general
Alexander McDougall, a gallant soldier of the Revolu-
tion, and President of the Society of the Cincinnati,
was elected President, and William Seton, a shipping
merchant whose sympathies were with the royal side,
and who had remained in New York throughout the
war, was made cashier. In the first list of directors
are the names of Alexander Hamilton, Comfort Sands,
Thomas Randall, Nicholas Law, Isaac Roosevelt, and
others almost equally well known in the early finan-
cial and commercial history of the city. Alexander
Hamilton drew up the constitution and gave Mr.
Seton, who was not familiar with the forms of bank-
ing business, a letter to the cashier of the bank in
Philadelphia where he had gone to procure " materials
and information."
The bank began business at the old Walton House
OLD WALTON HOUSE IN 1776
on St. George's Square, now known as Franklin Square,
but in 1798 it was removed to the corner of Wall and
William streets, the same site which it now occupies.
Wall Street was then largely a street of private resi-
dences. Alexander Hamilton had his modest house
upon part of the present site of the Mechanics' Bank,
and near by lived the Verplancks, Ludlows, Marstons,
and other families of social prominence. The dry-
goods and millinery stores were in William Street,
where the ladies did their shopping. There was con-
siderable opposition in the Legislature to the incor-
poration of banking institutions, and the petition
which the Bank of New York presented in 1789 was
unheeded, and while the Assembly of 1790 (in which
my grandfather's grandfather was member from the
great county of Ontario, which then embraced the
western half of the State) passed an act of incorpora-
tion for the bank, it was defeated in the Senate by
the casting vote of the Chairman. A year later the
300 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
bank was successful, and under these new auspices it
took a fresh lease of life, with a capital of $900,000
and with Washington's Secretary of the Treasury as
its friend and adviser. But even great men are short-
sighted, and on January 18, 1791, I find Alexander
Hamilton writing to Cashier Seton that he has "learned
with infinite pain the circumstance of a new bank
having started up in your city. Its effects cannot but
be in every way pernicious. These extravagant sal-
lies of speculation do injury to the Government and
to the whole system of public credit, by disgusting all
sober citizens and giving a wild air to everything."
But the proposed Million Bank, which Hamilton else-
where designates as a " newly engendered monster,"
failed to obtain a charter, and was never organized for
business.
The whole city appears to have subscribed for the
five-hundred-dollar shares of the Bank of New York
when they were placed on the market. Among the
stockholders in 1784 I find the names of Herman Le
Roy, Thomas Ludlow, Robert Lenox, Peter Keteltas,
John Delafield, Gulian Verplanck, Anthony S. Bleeck-
er, Peter Schermerhorn, Richard Varick, Gouverneur
Kemble, John Alsop, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, Gilbert
Aspinwall, John Suydam, and Anthony A. Rutgers
a brave showing of old colonial blood. The extremes
of subscriptions were those of Temperance Green, who
took twenty-five shares, and the Black Friars' Society,
which was enrolled for a one-half share. The second
name on the list was that of Alexander Hamilton, a
subscriber for one share and a half, and the third is
that of Aaron Burr, who took three shares. It was a
natural sequence of names in that day; in these later
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
301
times it looks familiar and significant. On the same
roll I find the name of Abraham Bradley, a near rela-
tive of my ancestral member from Ontario, who was
appointed Assistant Postmaster-general by President
Washington, and held the office for forty years. And
there is one name there of a white-haired soldier of
the Revolution who used to take me on his knee, and
tell me of the wild charge upon the Hessians at Tren-
ton, and the glorious surrender at Yorktown Major
Jonathan Lawrence. So, when I have told my little
boy the Benjamin of our quiet household of the
carnage I witnessed at Malvern Hill and Spottsyl-
vania, I can also give him, as I heard it from living
lips, the story of the long, dark years that stretched
TONTINE COFFEE-HOUSE
302 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
between the fight at Lexington and the evacuation of
New York.
Notwithstanding the financial success of the Bank
of New York and its acknowledged convenience to
the public, there was wide -spread popular prejudice
against the establishment of more banks. The farm-
ers were an important and growing element in the
State, and they were possessed with the idea that the
money placed in banks was just so much withdrawn
from circulation in the community. A branch of the
United States Bank had been established in New
York City, and these two institutions were judged to
be sufficient for business purposes for many years to
come. But as it is the unexpected which always
happens, so an unforeseen occurrence paved the way
to the incorporation of other banks. The yellow-
fever visited New York in 1798, and one of its earliest
victims was a book-keeper in the Bank of New York.
Fearing another visitation of the pestilence, the bank
made arrangements with the branch Bank of the
United States to purchase two plots of eight city lots
each, in Greenwich Village, far away from the city
proper, to which they could remove in case of being
placed in. danger of quarantine. Here two houses
were erected in the spring of 1799, and here the
banks were removed in September of that year, giv-
ing their name, Bank Street, to the little village lane
that had been nameless before. The last removal
was made in 1822, when the yellow-fever raged with
unusual virulence, and the plot, which had been pur-
chased for $500, was sold in 1843 f r $30,000.
It would be scarcely possible to exaggerate the ter-
ror which pervaded the city during the prevalence of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 305
the yellow-fever. Colonel Tappan, whose home was
then in Orchard Street, tells me that an iron chain
was stretched across the streets at the Brick Church,
which marked the boundaries of the quarantine, and
he has a vivid recollection of the sudden and ap-
palling inroads of the pestilence upon the ranks of
his stalwart young contemporaries. An old New
Yorker, who was born in Greenwich Village in the
first year of the century, and who, as I write, in the
same spot is passing peacefully down to the grave,
remembers that during one fever summer a hotel of
rough boards, capable of holding 500 guests, had gone
up between Saturday and Monday in a field where
the ripe wheat was waving on Saturday. The city was
without sewerage. Great gutters, that ran through
the centre of the streets, collected the refuse instead
of carrying it off, and left it festering in the sun. Pigs
roamed at large, and cattle were driven home to the
stables from the pasture lots near Canal Street. Pes-
tilence was the natural result of the city's accumulated
filth, and it was equally natural that a desire for sani-
tary reform should follow in its turn. In this sanitary
revolution Aaron Burr saw his financial opportunity,
and whispered it to some of the leading merchants of
the city. The result was that a bill was presented to
the Legislature in 1799 chartering a company with a
capital of $2,000,000 for the purpose of introducing
pure water into the City of New York. This was all
well enough so far, but the true intent of the scheme
lay in a clause providing that the surplus capital
might be employed in " moneyed transactions or
operations not inconsistent with the laws and Con-
stitution of the State of New York." The scheme
306 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
worked well, owing to Burr's sagacious leadership, and
the Legislature passed the bill, with real or pretended
ignorance of the effect of the measure. That effect
was speedily seen, for soon after its charter was se-
cured notice was given that the Manhattan Company
would begin banking operations in September of that
year with a capital of $500,000.
This was the only way to flank a bitter and un-
reasoning popular prejudice. Legislatures were as
flexible in that era as now, and the lobby was as po-
tent if less numerous. Chemical works, ship-building
yards, and other pretexts were used to charter addi-
tional banks. The great bank buildings which now
make Wall Street magnificent are a glory to this city
and a testimony of what may be accomplished by
financial genius and integrity. One of these has been
erected by the Gallatin Bank, which honored itself in
exchanging its old name of National Bank to one
which keeps green the memory of the greatest Secre-
tary of the Treasury of this century. In the sixty
years of its existence this bank has had but three
presidents, Albert Gallatin, his son, "James Gallatin,
and the present occupant of the chair, Frederick D.
Tappan. A portrait of the first president is worth a
visit to see, so nobly does it typify the great men who
built up the young republic into stalwart manhood.
These banks of an older day have had their defeats
"as well as their victories. There lies before me a lit-
tle newspaper, yellowed by age, that was issued May
10, 1837, at the crisis of the great panic. The day be-
fore, the Chemical Bank, the " pet " of the editor, had
suspended specie payments, and twenty -two others
had kept it company. The community had lost its
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 307
head in some respects. The worthy Mayor had
camped a regiment of infantry in the City Hall Park,
and by way of a further precaution against outbreak
he absurdly sent several men into Wall Street, bear-
ing aloft plaster busts of the immortal Washington.
The National Theatre advertised to take notes of all
State banks at par, and to give season tickets in ex-
change. " By gar," said a Frenchman who read the
notice ; " dat is good. I have forty dollar ah, ah
I shall no lose my moneys now." " Keep cool," is
the editor's advice. " The banks will resume pay-
ment ; Martin Van Buren will be turned out of office,
and all will be well." How splendidly our city banks
weathered this financial hurricane is now a matter of
history.
One of the first newspaper pictures that I remem-
ber to have seen represented the interior of a wildcat
bank in Indiana. Leaning across the counter, the
cashier was handing a $i bill to a small boy with the
impressive exhortation, " Here, boy, run to the corner
and get me a dollar's worth of silver change. I ex-
pect the bank examiner to-day, and we must have
some silver to show him." Endless was the bother
in my boyhood days about uncurrent money, coun-
terfeit detectors, and bills of doubtful value. Each
State was so jealous of its own currency that even
the great State of Pennsylvania passed a law placing
a fine of $5 on any person who attempted to put in
circulation the bank-bills of another State. I remem-
ber that once when I was a lad at school in Burling-
ton, N. J., I went to Philadelphia to have a tooth
extracted. An exceedingly benevolent-looking gen-
tleman in clerical black nearly murdered me in ac-
308 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
complishing the feat of extracting the molar, and I
felt that he amply deserved his fee of fifty cents. In
the confiding innocence of early youth, I handed him
a $2 bill upon one of the oldest and safest banks in
the City of New York. The good man looked at it
sternly, glanced at me sadly, and then remarked :
" Did you know that there is a fine of $5 for attempt-
ing to pass New York currency in this State?" " No,"
replied I, with a blush and a shudder. And what said
the good man ? With a brand-new glow of benevo-
lence on his serene countenance, he remarked, gener-
ously and gushingly : " Well, my boy, I will protect
you. I will keep the bill myself. Good-bye !" Often
since that time I have been led to apply to the two
cities a remark which a friend was accustomed to ap-
ply to Hartford and Providence. " They're a little
more pious in Philadelphia, but they're a little more
honest in New York."
VAN CORTLANDT'S SUGAR HOUSE
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 309
CHAPTER XXV
PUDDING ROCK AN ANCIENT SCHOOL- HOUSE A TEMPERANCE HAM-
LET GONE WRONG LANDMARKS AND MEMORIES OF THE NEW
PARKS VAN CORTLANDT AND PELHAM BAY THE UNKNOWN
LAND OF THE BRONX RURAL SCENES IN A CITY'S BOUNDARIES
SWEET are the uses of advertising. So the poet
did not sing; but this is the theme of the brush as
the peripatetic artist wields it on rock and cliff, whose
bare, bold beauty even the mosses and lichens have
spared. It is bad enough to become interested in a
newspaper paragraph only to find it a snare to lead
the unwary on in the direction of a plaster or pill, but
to settle one's self back in a luxurious palace-car chair
and prepare for the enjoyment of a delicious bit of
rocky scenery, and then to find the foreground ruined
by sprawling displays of the advertiser's art scattered
over every available surface of smooth stone, implies
one of the impertinences of humanity which are not
to be forgiven in this world or in the next. An old
preceptor of mine used to say, " The boy who would
injure a shade tree would kill a man," and I am in-
clined to supplement this axiom by adding that the
man who would wantonly deface a pretty touch of
nature's handiwork was originally framed for a pirate.
The paint-pot of this pernicious buccaneer is an un-
mitigated evil.
The fact that the advertising artist had exercised
his diabolical ingenuity upon Pudding Rock has rec-
310 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
onciled to its departure the people of Morrisania, in
whose eyes it was an historic landmark. Two months
ago it stood where the glacier had deposited it, a
stranger from a distant shore " centuries ago." Now
it has been shattered into a thousand fragments, and
it will return again to earth, to pass an existence of
humble usefulness as the foundation of quiet homes.
In the days of its glory it stood out in shape not un-
like a pudding in a bag, and as if gathered in at the
top, where a cluster of half a dozen cedars rose from
its centre. Rising twenty-five feet from the ground
and extending thirty feet in diameter, it was always
a conspicuous object from the old Boston Post- road.
Its site was between what will be One Hundred and
Sixty-fifth and One Hundred and Sixty-sixth streets,
at the end of Cauldwell Avenue and directly south of
the handsome and hospitable residence of Mr. Will-
iam Cauldwell, whose father, in 1848, built the first
house erected in the new village of Morrisania. Pud-
ding Rock had its history and traditions. In the rear
was a natural fireplace, whose use the Indians had
long ago discovered. Here they came to have their
corn-feasts, and presumably to discuss Saddle Rock
oysters and Little Neck clams, with other seasonable
delicacies. For it must always be said in favor of the
Indian women that they were good house-keepers and
cooks, and the men had excellent appetites. When
the Huguenot colonists, driven by religious persecu-
tion from beautiful France, took up their line of march
along the East River and by the shores of Long Isl-
and Sound in search of a warm spot where vines would
grow, and a quiet place where they might sing the
Lord's songs in a strange land, they camped around
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 31 1
Pudding Rock and made their headquarters here for
some months before they finally decided to build their
New Rochelle. To them it was literally the shadow
of a gre^t rock in a weary land. Afterwards it became
to the settler and voyager a landmark by which dis-
tances were measured, and to travellers in the stage-
coaches on the old Boston Road it was pointed out as
a natural curiosity. Last of all came the geologist,
with his little hammer and his big brain, and, after
tapping in succession the stone and his own head, he
announced that the rock was a pilgrim and a stranger,
left stranded on a foreign shore by a huge glacier that
had swept down from the Polar regions and then crept
slowly backward to Greenland, leaving the valley of
the Hudson open to the tread of the mastodon, and
slowly raising the price of ice as it retired.
There are traces of a great glacial deposit extending
from the line of the Harlem River up thrdugh Con-
necticut and beyond ; and Pudding Rock, whose for-
mation was foreign to the rocky growth of its vicinity,
was not .the least curious of them. Some of these
deposits took the shape of " rocking -stones," and
these were a source of superstitious veneration to the
simple red men of other days, who were wont at
intervals to gather about them and go through the
mysteries of a medicine-dance. One of the most re-
markable of the chain of rocking-stones is found on
the old Lydig place, near West Farms. It is an im-
mense bowlder, so nicely balanced on a rocky drift
that the pressure of a strong finger will readily move
it, and yet so firmly set that steam-power would be
needed to drag it from its moorings. I remember
that when I saw it first, years ago, the farmer in charge
312 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
of the place told me that once he had harnessed up
a dozen yoke of oxen to see if he could draw it away
from its position, but he found that they could not
move it, and yet I put forth two ringers and easily
set it rocking. The structure of the huge stone was
entirely different from the trap rock on which it
rested, and it was a stranger amid the geological for-
mation of Westchester County. It had found a pleas-
ant abiding-place on the historic old grounds through
which the Bronx found its way under overhanging
trees, making a scene of rural loveliness which it
would be difficult to surpass. The Lydig place was
once the country residence of the De Lanceys. The
quaint and picturesque old homestead, built in the
early part of the last century, was destroyed by fire
shortly before the outbreaking of the late war; but
the flames could not sweep away the ancient garden
laid out in the fashion of half a century ago, the
summer-houses and rustic seats, and the gracious
beauty of the stately trees. Even when the brick
and stone phalanxes of city blocks begin to crowd
into the quiet hamlet of West Farms, they will not,
as I hope and believe, be able to destroy the incom-
parable beauty of the Bronx River scenery, of which
the denizen of New York knows all too little.
As the city sweeps up to the north and east, it is
blotting out the boundary lines of the score of scat-
tered hamlets and country cross-roads which once
dotted that part of Westchester County. North New
York, Wilton, and Eltona have virtually disappeared,
Mott Haven has melted into Melrose, and the names
of streets from the city south of the Harlem have
crossed that stream and usurped the homely titles of
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 313
the old country roads of thirty and forty years ago.
The story of Morrisania is the history of that active
section of the city, once a portion of the " neutral ter-
ritory," but now bristling with business at every street
corner. It was in 1848 that the village of Morrisania
was laid out. The plot was destined to be a suburban
Eden. Every man was to have his acre of ground,
and only eligible citizens were to be permitted to
plant their domestic standards here. The village was
to be strictly a temperance settlement, and neither
ale nor strong drink was to be sold within its limits.
Alas for the mutability of human devices ! To-day it
looks as if nothing but fluids were sold in Morrisania,
and great breweries, which cease not to puff and labor
night and day, dot its hill-sides, and move its reminis-
cent old settlers to wrath. Standing in their shadow,
it is difficult to realize that forty years ago only fields
of wheat and corn and stretches of forest trees were
in sight, and that the only other signs of civilization
within the horizon were a little old school-house and
a winding stage road. Yet in 1848 Mr. Andrew Cauld-
well built the first house in the village plot, and in the
next year the colonists opened and dedicated a little
union church, in which the inhabitants of this charm-
ing new paradise were to worship forever in harmony ;
and when the anniversary day of the settlement came
around a brass band and an oration made a prodigious
celebration of the event, which was rounded up by a
dance at Horace Ward's old tavern at the base of Buena
Ridge. The men and women who danced at the an-
cient hostlery that night are by no means old to-day,
but it makes them feel like relics of the past when they
stand in the streets of Morrisania and look about them.
3 H A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Only one landmark of the past remains, now that
Pudding Rock is gone. A little to the east of the old
Boston Post -road, and just north of One Hundred
and Fifty -sixth Street, stands a decrepit wooden
building a story and a half in height, with a long,
steep roof, and a porch that runs the entire length of
its front. The mosses of a century seem to have gath-
ered on the long slope of the roof, and it appears in
every part to be slowly withering to ' decay, like a
dried leaf on a November oak. Near by, at one time,
Mill Creek prattled along towards the East River,
over a pebbly bed and under a double line of willows,
but a sewer has swallowed up the pretty brook, and
the new grade of adjacent streets threatens the exist-
ence of the school-house. It was beneath this roof
that the gentry of the neighborhood, including the
various branches of the Morris family, whose ancient
homesteads still linger in its neighborhood, received
their early education. Most of the little ones, who,
in the early part of the century, crept and danced
along by country paths to the presence of the peda-
gogue who flourished a good birchen rod here, have
grown old and tottered back to Mother Earth's em-
brace, but the frail little clap-boarded temple of learn-
ing has survived them, and still shelters life and love
under its mosses. It was a desolate sort of blot on a
new and dressy city landscape when I last saw it in
the chill light of a November sun on a Sunday after-
noon, but its desolation was far more eloquent than
the sermon of a famous preacher which I heard that
day.
Did I not say something about the beauty of that
portion of Westchester which was annexed to this
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 315
city a few years ago ? I have frequently advised trav-
ellers who were wearied alike of Mont Blanc and the
Yosemite Valley to betake themselves to a carriage
and explore the City of New York, not hastily and su-
perficially, but with slow delight, and with the pains- t
taking care that marks the botanist. In the ancient
era of Peter the Headstrong, it was the talk and prep-
aration of an entire winter to take a trip from the
Bowling Green to the distant plantations of Harlem
Village, or to voyage by schooner to Communipaw or
through the horrible whirlpools of Hell Gate. Per-
haps it might require as much determination to start
on an expedition to the way-side settlement known as
" Moshulu," which snuggles down in a convenient val-
ley half a mile from Fordham ; to the sleepy old farm-
ing hamlet of Bronx, over whose cluster of rustic hab-
itations an ancient windmill, long disused and ghostly
in appearance, still broods ; or the little village on a
knoll which is now known as Belmont, but once drew
its forgotten designation from the homestead of Colo-
nel Tompkins, the commander of the famous Tomp-
kins Blues of lang syne. There is scarcely a thing
about these places to indicate that they are a part of
a great city, and, indeed, I am told that there are old
people living in sight of the Bronx River, and within
the corporate limits of the metropolis, who have never
seen the City Hall. The horse-cars have found their
way to " the village " of West Farms, as its older in-
habitants love to call it, but the railway is still the
only modern touch to the antiquated surroundings.
The houses are old-fashioned, and have a look as if
they would prove obstinately impenetrable to change.
One of the most venerable of the buildings which ap-
316 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
parently date back to the last century is a two-storied
frame structure, with gambrel roof and a long porch
in front, which is said to have been a headquarters for
Washington and his staff in the early part of the Rev-
olutionary War. Whether this were true or not, this
sleepy old village was the scene of one of the most
daring exploits of Aaron Burr, who, at two o'clock in
the morning of a sharp winter day, attacked a block-
house erected, on the present site of the principal ho-
tel, by Gen. Oliver de Lancey, and by the free use of
hand-grenades and scaling-ladders persuaded the as-
tonished garrison to surrender without firing a shot.
At the old De Lancey mansion, too, the British offi-
cers were freely entertained, and this hospitality to a
foreign foe was avenged by the burning of the coun-
try-seat of the De Lanceys in Bloomingdale during
the prevalence of hostilities. These events belong to
the long ago in the history of this land, but, standing
in the rustic streets of West Farms, in sight of gables
and shingles and mosses, one naturally reverts to the
days when the hand of every man was against his
neighbor in Westchester County. But athwart this
blood-red landscape of the " neutral ground " there is
also a glint of love and wooing, as when impetuous
Aaron Burr was wafted by muffled oars across the
Hudson in the darkness of the night, and dashed
across country and through the pickets of the enemy
to the home of the dainty widow whose heart his
daring won. Even into these somnolent haunts, whose
natural beauties have inspired in olden time the pens
of Halleck and Drake, the brush of the advertising
artist has penetrated and left a trail of disfigurement.
Many historic landmarks and legends will belong
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
317
to the nearly four thousand acres which constitute the
new parks of the metropolis. Beyond, but in sight
of, Kingsbridge stands a commanding eminence known
as Vault Hill, where was the ancient burial-ground
of the Van Cort
landts, and here, in
1776, Augustus
Van Cortlandt,
who held the office
of Clerk of New
York, concealed
the public records
of the city. Five
years later Wash- V AN CORTLANDT MANOR-HOUSE
ington lighted ex-
tensive camp-fires on this hill and its slopes, and suc-
cessfully deceived the British enemy encamped on the
southern side of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, while the
great body of his army was on the march to join La-
fayette at Yorktown.
At the southern extremity of the lake which bears
the family name of the Van Cortlandts, an ancient
mill, which has ground corn for both the friends and
foes of American independence, nestles among over-
hanging chestnuts and elms, and looks out upon a
miniature cascade and rapids, which babble to the
great trees on the banks the same song they sang
more than a century ago. To the north-east is an
opening in the woods, where the dust of eighteen of
the forty Stockbridge Indians who fell beneath British
bullets while fighting on the side of the Colonists lie
in one grave, still unmarked by a stone. All through
this region the ploughshare and the spade of the
3l8 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
builder turn up cannon-balls, rusty fragments of bay-
onets, and other reminders of the deadly struggle
which raged here for eight long years. From Kings-
bridge to White Plains and from the Hudson to the
Sound was one great battle-field, and the most illus-
trious leaders of both armies have ridden along these
country roads in the times that tried the faith of our
fathers.
The scenery on the banks of the Bronx River, which
is the main feature of the new Bronx Park, has long
been the admiration of our painters and poets, and the
only circumstance which has closed the eyes of New
Yorkers to its wealth of natural beauty is the fact that
its loveliness lay right at their doors. These rocky
ravines, wooded slopes, glades tangled with wild vines,
and placid pools, should have been hidden in the
Rocky Mountains or in the Adirondack region, in order
to have been appreciated by those who think that a
long journey is necessary in order to discover the beau-
tiful in nature. There hangs upon the walls of my
library a painting which always exacts an inquiry as
to the spot it has reproduced, and rarely does the in-
quirer fail to express his surprise that such a scene of
picturesque loveliness actually exists within the cor-
porate bounds of New York.
There is less of historic interest attached to this im-
mediate locality than to other portions of the neigh-
borhood. The reason for this is akin to the tragedy
of the " Three Wise Men of Gotham," who went to
sea in a bowl, of whom legends make this record :
" If the bowl had been stronger
My story had been longer."
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
319
The quiet waters of the Bronx would have been the
scene of a sanguinary naval battle had they been a
little deeper. For, during the British occupancy of
New York, Sir William Howe ordered the commander
of the British fleet to sail up the Bronx with his fleet
and guns, and annihilate certain Yankee gunboats of
light draught that were making things unpleasantly
warm for the Tory inhabitants thereabouts. After a
DISTANT VIEW OF THE PALISADES FROM VAN CORTLANDT PARK
brief, inglorious cruise to the mouth of the little river,
the disgusted British admiral was compelled by the
shallowness of the water to retire as he came, without
having harvested his expected laurels. But there still
stands, solitary and alone, towering to the height of 150
feet, a magnificent evergreen known as the De Lancey
Pine, to recall the time when stout old Oliver De Lan-
cey led his regiment of loyalists out to battle for the
320 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
rights of king and crown. Peace to the ashes of
those brave men ! The same fidelity to existing au-
thority which made them defenders of the rights of
royalty impelled their descendants nearly a century
later to take up arms in support of the Union as it
was.
A novelty in the way of a free sea-side resort for the
weary multitudes of a great city is Pelham Bay, with
a coast-line nine miles in extent, green uplands, pictu-
resque inlets, rolling meadows, and ever-changing pan-
orama of marine life on the Sound. Out in front lies
City Island, on which the first proprietor hoped to
build a great commercial city. The original lord of
the manor, Thomas Pell, purchased 10,000 acres here-
abouts in 1654 for a few trinkets from the Siwanoy
Indians, who were a branch of the Mohicans. The
red men w r ere blotted out a century ago, and the bur-
ial mounds of the last of their sachems, Nimhan and
Annhook, are still to be found on the Rapelyea estate,
close to the water. They gave their name to the
great rock Miskow, on Hunter's Island (a spot of rare
attractiveness within the Park boundaries), and, re-
garding it with special veneration as a gift of Manito
to his children, held annual feasts under its shadow.
Pelham Neck, in another part of the Park, was the
scene of a spirited battle between 4000 British troops
under Lord Howe and 800 of the American militia
under Colonel Glover. The latter laid an ambuscade
for the redcoats, and, with a loss of only twelve men,
killed or wounded 1000 of the enemy. A generation
later, in 1814, two British men-of-war bombarded the
Neck, and the Americans returned the compliment
from their batteries. It was the last time that the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 32!
thunder of British guns was heard within the precincts
of New York.
Most interesting to me of all the romance that lin-
gers about the spot, whose very atmosphere is tradi-
tional, is the story of Anne Hutchinson's adventurous
life and tragic death. Puritan intolerance had driven
her from New England, and the heroic woman made
her home in the wilderness that then fronted on Pel-
ham Bay. But she was not to end her troubled days
in peace. An Indian outbreak came, and she fell a
victim to the tomahawk of the savages whom she had
always befriended, finding toleration only in the grave.
The brave, stately woman left the baptism of her
name to Hutchinson River, which forms the western
boundary of the Park, and its Indian designation, Ac-
queanoncke, has been obliterated from modern rec-
ords. When Boston heard of her death, it gave de-
vout thanks in the churches, because, in its judgment,
God had made " a heavy example " of " a woful wom-
an," but we can afford to keep her memory green.
The life of brave Mistress Anne Hutchinson was pure
if not gentle, and she was a pioneer of that sweet gos-
pel of tolerance which has ever been a marked feature
of the city of the Knickerbockers.
322 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER XXVI
MANHATTAN ISLAND SOME ANCIENT HOMESTEADS WORK OF THE
WOODMAN'S AXE A MYSTERY OF DRESS AND ARCHITECTURE
BLOCK-HOUSES AND EARTHWORKS A SACRED GROVE
IN a foot-note to The Spy, Fenimore Cooper writes :
" Every Manhattanese knows the difference between
4 Manhattan Island' and 'the Island of Manhattan.'
The first is applied to a small district in the vicinity
of Corlaer's Hook, while the last embraces the whole
island ; or the city and county of New York, as it is
termed in the laws.'' The Manhattanese of sixty
years ago were well acquainted with the distinction
between the titles, but to most New Yorkers of to-
day the words convey no shade of difference. Indeed,
I had wrongly written " Manhattan Island " on a re-
cent occasion, when the keen eye of my editorial critic
detected the lapse of memory, and I was admonished
of the outbreak of wrath that might be expected from
the shade of the painstaking master of fiction who in
life liked no name so well as that which his personal
friends frequently bestowed upon him, " The Path-
finder."
" Manhattan Island " was the name given to a high
knoll of ground on the East River, above the foot of
Rivington Street, containing about an acre of land,
surrounded by creeks and salt-marsh, and at high tide
partly covered with sea-water. Lewis Street ran about
PETERSFIELD, THE RESIDENCE OF PETRUS STUYVESANT
through the centre of it. Here were located the ship-
yards of Henry Eckford and other great marine archi-
tects of his day when American enterprise, American
mechanics, and American patriotism were bent on dis-
placing the colors of other countries in the world's
commercial arena with the American flag. Just north
of Manhattan Island a natural creek ran up through
the centre of the present Tompkins Square to the
vicinity of First Avenue. The mouth of the creek
lay between Manhattan Island and Burnt Mill Point,
or " Branda Munah Point," as the septuagenarians of
to-day used to call it when they were boys. One of
these late leaves of Time's autumn tells me that the
Point used to be a great swimming and fishing place,
and in the hot summer days a perpetual temptation
to play truant. As he first remembers the island,
several creeks were crossed on small wooden bridges
324 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
to reach it, and the bridges were attainable only after
a decidedly moist tramp through soggy meadows and
salt-marshes.
The story of the old houses on the Island of Man-
hattan (few now, and growing farther between with
each passing decade) can only be written by piece-
meal. Families have disappeared, and their house-
hold traditions with them. Their lands have passed
into the hands of strangers and speculators. Only
dim legends or dusty legal conveyances remain to
connect them with the past. In one case I have
found it impossible to tell with certainty which of
two adjacent homesteads that were of eminent repute
one hundred years ago rightly represents the family
which was known to have made it a centre of brilliant
hospitality.
The world of to-day seems to have forgotten en-
tirely a baronial mansion and estate that was once a
feature in the rugged landscape above Harlem Plains
and along the wooded heights that overlooked the
river. About three-quarters of a century ago Archi-
bald Watts erected at the eastern foot of Laurel Hill,
on what is now the line of One Hundred and Forty-
second Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, a
massive stone mansion surmounted by a cupola. It
was almost hidden by hill and woods from the Bloom-
ingdale and Kingsbridge roads, and wholly shut out
from the sight of travellers on Harlem Lane. The
only exit was to Eighth Avenue, then a country road.
Mr. Watts laid out an avenue fifty feet wide diagonal-
ly from the vicinity of One Hundred and Thirty-fifth
Street to One Hundred and Thirty- ninth Street at
Seventh Avenue, and at its sides set out a double row
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 325
of trees which have had a stately and inviting appear-
ance for the last forty years, for their foliage was so
thick that the noonday sun could not penetrate it. It
was a veritable grove of Arcadia, bespeaking in the
dog-days the slumber of Sybaris under its shade. For
many years this sylvan retreat has been the resort of
those who loved a tranquil walk.
At either end of the road stood, until a year or two
ago, two iron gates of English ducal pattern, such as
I have never seen elsewhere on the Island of Man-
hattan, that lent to the surroundings the air of an
old-country park, and brought to mind past pilgrim-
ages across the sea.* The old stone mansion is still
standing, a swell as a spacious frame-house, erected
by Mr. Watts for his son about half a century ago,
and which, as it stands on higher ground, has always
been observable from the west. But the old houses
have begun to put on something of a skeleton air.
Their luxuriant crowns of foliage have been shorn and
thinned by the steel of the woodsman, and they seem
to be rapidly growing to the age of those who have
outlived their strength, and are waiting for the crum-
bling touch of the destroyer. Within the last few days
the axe has levelled nearly all those ancient sons of
* This leafy lane, a pleasant sight from the cars of the Manhattan
Railway, remained almost unspoiled until 1890, since which time it has
been obliterated, chiefly by the great blocks of houses with cross-alleys
extending from Seventh to Eighth avenue. Into the foundations of
these houses have been built the stones of the walls bounding the old
Watts Lane. In 1891, One Hundred and Forty-first, One Hundred
and Forty - second, and One Hundred and Forty -third streets were
"filled in," ten feet deep, across the meadows of the Watts farm, the
former shearing away the porch of the "massive stone mansion," and
the whole invasion destroying almost entirely the retirement and privacy
of the place. L.
326 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
the forest that kept guard around the old homestead,
and the glare of the September sun now lights up a
scene of dusty desolation where they for so long time
had stood in their glory. I am not going to preach
the funeral sermon over these fallen giants. It is
better to tighten up my shoestrings, grasp my cane
a little more firmly, pucker my lips into the ghost of
a whistle, and trudge over the old Macomb's Dam
bridge or the more ancient Kingsbridge planks, to
seek shade and retirement in the woods that overlook
Mosholu Creek, or line the historic banks of the Bronx.
Our Dutch ancestors patterned their houses largely
after the fashion of their clothes, in a day when out-
ward attire was as distinct an indication that they wor-
shipped according to the rites of the Reformed Church
of Holland as the Quaker's stiff garments bespoke the
disciple of George Fox, and the severe and sombre
dress of the New England Puritan marked the disciple
of Cotton Mather. The home of Dirck Van Amster-
dam looked like himself short of stature, ample of
girth, broad and deep of pocket, and unpretentious in
his homely attire, and as he sat out on his stoop
in the summer evening, drawing a cloud of comfort
from his long pipe, his leathern breeches, huge brown
waistcoat, and capacious shoes corresponded accu-
rately with his comfortable home. With the Eng-
lish conquest there came an invasion of more cere-
monious dress and statelier dwellings. Powdered wigs
and cocked hats, velvet coats and breeches, silk stock-
ings and massive canes marked the gentleman of the
period, and he dwelt in a massive residence of brick
or stone, such as within the memory of those still
living were the city homes of the Waltons, De Pey-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
327
sters, and other colonial families. In my youth the
fashion of homes was one of quiet, unpretending dig-
nity, without display such homes as one still finds
on the north side of Washington Square and facing
it, which for elegance of comfort cannot be surpassed ;
or, at least, I think so. Recalling the civic dress
of the period, I can see that the fashioning of house
and attire was on the same plan of easy, dignified en-
joyment. It was a decorous entity in red brick, with
a mere shirt -frill of white marble stoop. As to the
present day it is difficult to philosophize. As I am
whirled up -town on an elevated road past the old
houses on the Bloomingdale Road in which I " went
to the country " for weeks at a time in my boyhood,
CLAREMONT
I behold a collection of symptoms that I find it im-
possible to diagnose.
There was certainly a dignity about the masculine
dress of half a century or more ago which seems
328 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
to have been lost or forgotten. At that time a man's
occupation could be told by " the cut of his jib," and
professional characteristics were very noticeable. The
clergyman wore a dress-coat of black, and folded a vol-
uminous white handkerchief many times around his
neck. In society one could not distinguish any eccle-
siastical difference of dress between Dr. Berrian, the rec-
tor of Trinity Church, and Dr. Gardiner Spring, pastor
of the Brick Church at Beekman Street and the Park, or
between churchly Dr. Wainwright and his Calvinist an-
tagonist who tilted at him with a sharp pen, Dr. Potts.
The successful lawyer was wont to dress after the style
of Daniel Webster, in blue coat with brass buttons,
nankeen waistcoat and trousers, and ample shirt-frill.
It was the portentous air of the physician that mainly
distinguished him, for his clothes were plain, invariably
black, and the older members of the fraternity clung
to the gold-headed cane as if there were something of
magic in it. The sober dress of the banker, the mer-
chant, and the man of money was always the perfec-
tion of quiet taste, whether it were brown, blue, or
black, and there was a quiet dignity about these men
of business, whether in the counting-room or at home,
that always challenged my admiration. One fashion
all men had in common. None wore a mustache
only. Shaven faces were the rule and a beard the ex-
ception ; but the mustache was held to be the mark
of the gambler or adventurer from abroad. I think it
was in 1853 that Bishop Chase of New Hampshire
came to New York to ordain the graduating class of
the General Theological Seminary, and he positively
refused to lay his consecrated hands upon one of its
members, the Rev. John Frederick Schroeder, Jr., until
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 329
he had shaved his upper lip. The young man pro-
tested that a razor had never touched his face, and
that he had thus intended to keep the unspoken vow
of a Nazarene. His protest was in vain ; the mus-
tache had to go. So in later years, when the mustache
was tolerated here, a young business man from this
city who went to Milwaukee to be cashier in a bank
was compelled to resort to the razor to satisfy preju-
dice. It was a day when no gentleman wore other
than a " beaver " hat ; when soft and round hats were
alike unknown, and the cap was the next and final
step in the descent ; when fob ribbons and seals, and
perhaps a solitary seal ring, were the rule for jewelry,
when striped stockings were unknown, because the
boot covered the socks that the hands of wife or
mother had knitted.
Thinking of this similitude between the man and
his home, I find fresh cause of regret that the houses
built in this city by the men of other days are so rap-
idly going to destruction. Only yesterday I passed the
country home of Alexander Hamilton at One Hun-
dred and Forty -third Street and Tenth Avenue,
"The Grange." The estate was purchased some time
ago and divided into villa lots, with the intention
of making the homestead one of the " desirable resi-
dences for gentlemen of means," as advertised. But
the demand for villas was not great, and the land was
valuable, and already the home of Hamilton is en-
closed on two sides by great ramparts of red - brick
blocks. An abomination of desolation ranges around
the house which but a year ago presented a scene of
rural beauty, and a pile of new boards is laid up against
the fence that surrounds the group of thirteen trees
330 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
planted by the hand of the great New Yorker who
was the intimate friend as well as comrade in the field
of George Washington, and the first Secretary of the
Treasury. I think that if my father's hand had
planted those trees, I would stand under the shadow
of Washington's statue on Wall Street, and hold out
my hat for pennies until the thirteen were redeemed
and saved from the iconoclast, or the hat was worn
out.* I remember what a fuss was made when the
boyish Prince of Wales planted a tree in Central
Park. A scrubby little Dutchman of an oak it is, and
it exists but in a sickly manner, yet a thousand visit-
ors ask for its whereabouts where one pilgrim to our
local shrines inquires as to the fate of Alexander
Hamilton's trees, and fair damsels have begged the
powers that be for a leaf or an acorn from the prince's
oak, and have offered gold in exchange for a twig
from its branches. The spreading elm under which
Washington sat upon his horse on " the Common " in
front of our present City Hall, and listened to the
reading of the Declaration of Independence to his
troops at sunset of July 9, 1776, has disappeared, and
the old pear-tree of Peter Stuyvesant, which stood
* " The Grange" has been removed a short distance, to the east
side of Convent Avenue, where its preservation seems assured, since it
is now the property of St. Luke's parish and in use as a rectory. By
its side the handsome new Church of St. Luke's is going up (189$) on
the corner of One Hundred and Forty-first Street. The Hamilton trees
still remain, across the avenue, near One Hundred and Forty -third
Street. They are strongly fenced in from casual injury. At a recent
sale Mr. O. B. Potter bought the ground upon which the trees stand,
avowedly to prevent their destruction. Some correspondence thereupon
ensuing in the Times newspaper cast a doubt upon the belief that they
were planted by Hamilton, but the weight of evidence seems to support
the statement of the text.
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
33*
at Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street, a patriarch
whose years numbered ten score, has gone the way of
all good fruit-trees, but the grove that Alexander Ham-
ilton planted to commemorate these United States
yet stands in its strength. What shall we do with it ?
I like to make a patriotic pilgrimage on all of our
public holidays, and I have a companion who is al-
ways ready to join me my little son, who, fifty years
hence, I hope, will take up these chronicles again, and
^^rr^. > "..!
HOUSE OF NICHOLAS WILLIAM STUYVESANT
write the story of the city as he sees it to-day. Re-
cently we laid out our tour to the defences that
guarded Manhattanville in the two wars with Great
332
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Britain, in which the spades of the old Continentals
were supplemented by British sappers and miners,
and the men of 1812 came in after-years to complete
the line of protection for the growing city. We stood
within the crumbling stone walls of Block- house No.
3, as it was known in the last war with Great Britain,
on One Hundred and Twenty-third Street, between
Ninth and Tenth avenues, and looked eastward to the
busy city that covers the rough plain of a generation
BLOCK-HOUSE OVERLOOKING HARLEM RIVER, 1860
ago. At our feet a street had been cut through forty
feet of solid rock, and broad avenues and boulevards
stretched across the erstwhile village of Manhattan-
ville and up the steep and wooded heights beyond.
The walls of the block -house have crumbled at the
sides, but the ruins are picturesque, and it ought to
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 333
be that the landscape-gardener who is to "improve"
Morningside Park (within whose extreme upper boun-
dary these ruins lie) will suffer them to remain un-
touched.*
But more interesting than these mossy walls are the
earthworks that lie beyond, and that were part of the
line of defences which in 1812 stretched diagonally
across the island from Turtle Bay to Harlem Cove.
In the hot sun we clambered up a steep ascent of
rocks abutting on One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
Street, between Tenth Avenue and the Boulevard, and
reached the remains of an earthwork, whose ram-
parts were breast-high twenty-five years ago, but are
now not higher than the knee. A little to the west
and south is a second redoubt, on another eminence,
whose lines are more distinct. f These earthworks
were originally thrown up by General Washington's
troops during the war of the Revolution, and under
* It was not so much crumbling as depredation that reduced these
walls. The neighbors found them an easy quarry of ready-cut stone.
This has been stopped since the Park lines have been thrown around the
old block-house, which is now under careful guardianship of the Park
Commissioners. L.
f These lines are most distinct on the north face ; the best point of
view is from the east side of the Boulevard at One Hundred and
Twenty-fourth Street and beyond. The visitor to the site of this forti-
fication, ascending the bank at the north-east corner of One Hundred
and Twenty-second Street and the Boulevard, will observe many signs
of outlying works ; a shallow trench is all that remains of the old cov-
ered way into the redoubt. Between this and the redoubt intervenes
the chasm caused by the costly and unnecessary extension of One Hun-
dred and Twenty-third Street through the high, rocky ledge. Just south
of Fort Laight the still more costly extension of One Hundred and
Twenty-fourth Street cuts the ridge. Happily these street-openings
(artificial canons) destroy neither of the main earthworks. L.
334
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
cover of their guns the troops swept down
from Harlem Cove and drove the English
vanguard, with great loss, from Harlem Plains
and within their upper lines of fortification.
The first of these works was known during
the War of 1812 as Fort Laight, and was re-
built and occupied by our city militia. In a
few years, no doubt, they will be swept away,
for the land is private property and is beau-
tiful for situation. A soldier who had fought
in Hancock's brigade, and whose modest lit-
tle home is just in the rear, told me the story
of the grassy mounds, and we exchanged the
greetings of comrades-in-arms, while Master
Felix Oldboy, Jr., who in his school uniform
of cadet gray looked the most soldierly of
the trio, listened with widely- opened eyes,
and then sought the shade of a rock to
sketch the redoubt. The place and its sur-
roundings were well worth the work of the
pencil.
Our pilgrimage ended at Fort George.
The remains of this extensive fortification
stand on high ground west of the Harlem
River, at the end of Tenth Avenue, and ex-
tend from about One Hundred and Ninety-
second Street to One Hundred and Ninety-
sixth Street. The soldiers
of Washington first discov-
ered the strategic import-
ance of the place and occu-
pied it with breastworks,
FLAG-STAFF, FORT WASHINGTON but the British commander
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 335
erected an extensive and strong fortification here and
named it Fort George, in honor of the heir of Eng-
land's crown. Its green ramparts
are still sharply defined, and afford
a broad walk on their tops, and
the outlying redoubts can be
traced very distinctly. The spot
was full of holiday pilgrims when
we reached it, but whether they
. PLAN OF FORT WASH-
knew the story or only went INGTON
there for recreation I could not
tell. It is very safe to say that no other such view,
and none equal to it in beauty, can be found on the
Island of Manhattan. To the extreme west the Pal-
isades lifted their wooded heads, and between the
green heights of Inwood and Fort Washington the
Hudson lay glittering in the afternoon sun. In front
lay the long stretch of low ground through which the
Kingsbridge Road winds its rustic way. Spuyten Duy-
vil Creek and Harlem River, with the uplands be-
yond, formed the north and east of the landscape, and
the eye could catch a glimpse of the High Bridge. I
stood on the ramparts that Washington had built
and Howe had finished, and worshipped with my eye
these beauties of the city of my love. As the little
lad who had been sketching at the foot of the glacis
ran forward, I wondered what the landscape would
look like when he comes to write another " Tour "
fifty years hence. He will show his sketches to his
grandchildren, and speak of his pilgrimage to Fort
George on a sunshiny afternoon in a September of
long ago. And I ? Well, I shall then be telling my
grandmother all about it, too.
336 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
CHAPTER XXVII
AN UNEXPLORED REGION TRACES OF COWBOYS AND HESSIANS
LORDS OF THE MANOR THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY OLD HOMES
AND HAUNTS
ONE Sunday I was whirled in the railway cars along
the banks of Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the vicinity of
the spot where Anthony the Trumpeter had come to
grief. It was an extra day in the " Tour," for, with
the advent of a red tinge to the maple leaves, and the
purpling of the oak tops, and with the opening of the
reign of golden-rod and gentian and aster, there had
come an irresistible desire to explore the terra incog-
nita of New York, the land lying north of Kingsbridge,
known little to the denizens of this big city, except-
ing real estate speculators and antiquaries. It is a
land of stately old homes and luxurious modern resi-
dences ; of the forest primeval and the landscape-gar-
dener's effects ; of modern avenues and ancient creeks
and swamps ; of aesthetic interiors and of old-fashioned
window-seats, in which Continental soldier and Hes-
sian hireling alternately lounged ; of lake and creek,
and highland and meadow ; of mounted policemen
and letter-boxes and steam fire-engines ; of fields and
hills that have not changed their contour since Peter
Stuyvesant's solid men-at-arms marched over them,
and King George allotted their fertile acres to his
liege subjects. It is a land, too, that lies within the
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
337
city limits, and I, Felix Oldboy, wearied of beholding
only that which modern hands had improved out of
all recollection, yearned for a leisure Sunday under
oaks and chestnuts in city woods, which should recall
the days of fishing in " Sunfish Pond " on Beekman
Hill, and of gathering autumn leaves on the Bloom-
ingdale Road, that used to stretch from Union Square
to Kingsbridge in an unbroken panorama of rural
loveliness.
There is nothing more beautiful in the way of land-
scape than that which greets the eye where Spuyten
CONFLUENCE OF SPUYTEN DUYVIL CREEK AND THE HUDSON
338 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
Duyvil Creek joins its waters to the Hudson the
lake-like rivers overlooked by wooded heights on ei-
ther side, while beyond the Palisades rise abruptly in
their grandeur, and distant hills to the east complete
a picture worthy of the pencil of Claude. At Kings-
bridge, too, there is much pastoral loveliness. The
silver thread of Tibbett's Brook (Mosholu, in the Ind-
ian tongue) wanders up through the vale of Yonkers,
with frowning ridges on one side, and on the other
meadows and orchards, over which hills crowned with
the green of ancient forest trees stand sentinel. One
can walk in almost any direction and soon be able to
fancy himself living in the times of long ago, or any-
where else save within the municipal boundaries of
the chief city of the New World. It is fortunate for
future generations that much of this landscape loveli-
ness is to be preserved in the new Van Cortlandt Park,
which will be about two miles in length and one mile
broad. The land affords every variety of landscape,
and its natural features render it a far more desirable
acquisition than Central Park. Originally part of the
great Phillipse fief, it passed into the hands of the Van
Cortlandts in 1699, when the head of that house mar-
ried Eva Phillipse, daughter of the patroon. Time
has brought few changes to these lands since the days
of the Revolution.
It is to be hoped that the city authorities will pre-
serve from destruction the old Van Cortlandt man-
sion-house. It is a large edifice of stone, unpreten-
tious in its way, and yet possessing a stateliness of its
own that grows upon the visitor. Erected in 1748
the date is on its front it preserves within and with-
out many of the peculiarities of the last century. One
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 339
of the rooms in especial is unchanged since the time
when the Hessian commandant of the Green Yagers
occupied it, and General Washington made it .his
headquarters just before his triumphal entry into New
York on Evacuation Day, 1783. Around the fireplace
are old-fashioned blue tiles, that tell Scriptural stories
in the quaint method of illustration then prevailing,
where saint and sinner were alike, as my grandmother
would say, " a sight to behold." The deep window-
seats are admirably suggestive of a quiet smoke for
the elders and cosey flirtations for the younger people.
Andirons, which have a history of their own, speak
comfortable words of the day of back-logs and plente-
ous brushwood. As for the furniture, it is again in
fashion and most valuable, for it is genuine in its an-
tiquity. Jarvis, Copley, Stewart, and Chapman have
furnished the family portraits, one of which is that of
a knighted vice-admiral of the British Navy.
But thereby hangs a tale. Outside, above the old-
fashioned windows, are some exceedingly grim visages
carved in stone in the shape of corbels, whose serious,
not to say morose, aspect would be calculated to drive
away any sensitive tramp in affright. Pointing up to
them, my quondam school-mate, Bowie Dash, who
occupies an ideal cottage embowered by the trees
that fringe the ridge through which Riverdale Ave-
nue sweeps, remarked, " Those are the portraits of
the Van Cortlandt ancestors family portraits, all of
them." " Yes," said Mr. Van Cortlandt, with all seri-
ousness, " and that particularly solemn one yonder
was carved after he had been out all night with the
boys."
The windows themselves present an interesting sci-
340 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
entific problem. Upon two sides of the house the
glass has all the appearance of ground glass, though
it was perfectly transparent when first placed there.
Closer examination reveals a process of disintegra-
tion, spiculae of glass falling off when scraped by the
finger-nails. Amateur scientists have been unable to
account for it. Exposure to the salt-water of Mosho-
lu Creek would be a plausible theory if all the glass
fared alike. But some years ago the rows of stately
box, venerable for their height and antiquity, which
stood in the old garden and faced the windows that
exhibit this phenomenon, were cut down, and the
glass that has been inserted since that time shows no
sign of change or decay. Whether the combination
of box scents and salt air will account for the problem
is a matter which only experimental science can de-
termine, and Mr. Van Cortlandt would be very glad
to have the puzzle solved.
There is scarcely a foot of ground about Kings-
bridge that is not historical. Here the British had
their outposts in the Revolution. Both sides erected
earthworks on the adjacent hills. Skirmishes were
frequent in these meadows, and many lives were sac-
rificed. Relics of the war cannon-balls, bayonets,
skeletons in full uniform have been turned up by
spade and plough, and many more are awaiting their
resurrection at the hands of public improvements.
The old tavern at Kingsbridge saw lively times in
peace as well as war. The Albany post-road passed
its door, and teams and passengers baited here. Dain-
ty dames in lofty headgear and ample hoops have
danced with the sons of the patroons on its floors, and
smugglers have made it their headquarters for lawless
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
341
forays. Going, going, gone. The public surveyor
and the modern apartment-house are in hot pursuit of
these romantic old localities. One has only to turn
into Riverdale Avenue to be aware that the luxurious
civilization of the period is learning to appreciate the
beauties of this neighborhood, which, when I was a
boy, was associated with the names of Lispenard
Stewart, Abraham
Schermerhorn, Ack-
erman, Delafield,
Wetmore,and Whit-
ing.
It will be a pity to
blot out the natural
beauties of the spot
for the sake of a lit-
tle more brick and
mortar at least, I
thought so last Sun-
day as I climbed up
Riverdale Avenue
and fancied myself
temporarily in Ely-
sium. Riding is too
rapid a gait to al-
low of realizing the
beauty of forest, ra-
vine, meadow, hill-
side, brook, and
homes enshrined in
landscape loveliness which is presented to the pedes-
trian on either side of the road. Tired ? Not a bit of
it, even if I am growing stout, and this is considerable
THE LANE IN VAN CORTLANDT PARK.
342 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
of a hill to climb. I am looking at that maple. Did
you ever see such a splendor of crimson and gold as
lights up its top and sides? That fringed gentian-
are not its purple spikes a delectable contrast to the
sunny clusters of its taller neighbor, the golden-rod ?
The oak leaves are turning ruddy, too, as if they had
been imbibing freely of the autumn's product. These
old fellows have a right to be jolly, too, for they were
children at the time when Hendrik Hudson anchored
in Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and shot a falcon at two
hundred Indians who had gathered on shore to dis-
pute the right of way, and dispersed them with the
noise and execution of this terrible weapon.
There is one oak still standing in a little wood that
has known no change for a century, which has a his-
tory of its own. It is a sturdy tree with ample brown
arms, clad to-day in a royal robe of purple, and defi-
ant seemingly of all changes except such as the icon-
oclastic axe of the woodman may bring. You can
see it from the road. Under its branches, so my in-
formant tells me, a horse that bore a good soldier of
the Union all through the late war, and whose gray
coat is still presentable, is grazing peacefully. But in
other days these great gnarled limbs bore other fruit.
Tradition affirms that during the war of the Revolu-
tion more than thirty cowboys were hanged from this
oak, and the annals of those days bear out the popu-
lar legend. This was part of the " neutral ground "
of '76 a territory extending from Harlem River to
the Croton, which was ravaged with engaging impar-
tiality by the camp-followers of both armies. The
British called themselves irregulars, but the name
" cowboys " could not be wiped out, and their punish-
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
343
ment was never irregular when they were caught.
The gentlemen who did the same favor to the Conti-
nental flag were called " skinners," and their shrift
was an equally short one when caught. Usually the
latter had the best of the game, because the sympa-
thies of all except the large landed proprietors were
with the colonies.
Beyond the wild primeval wood that holds this his-
toric oak stands what seems to me, for situation and
surroundings, the most
beautiful home in the city.
A stately stone mansion,
half covered with vines and
VAN CORTLANDT MANOR-HOUSE
[See also p. 317]
encircled by thirteen majestic elms, stands on a
knoll which overlooks the Mosholu Valley and gives
glimpses of twenty miles away. Nature did nearly
all that was possible for its seventeen acres, and the
landscape-gardener has finished it. At one side all is
344 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
wildly picturesque, with ravine and brook and masses
of rock ; on the other civilization has done its best,
and equally admirably. On an apple-tree, still stand-
ing, Jacobus Van Cortlandt carved his name nearly
two centuries ago, and the stout stone farm-house
that another Van Cortlandt built in 1766 shelters the
coachman's family. The place is now owned by Mr.
Waldo Hutchins, who has been living there for the
past twenty years.
Broad piazzas, a hall of ample width that shows no
sign of a stairway, great rooms with high ceilings,
thick walls, and large windows recall the old baronial
homes of Virginia. But there the resemblance ceases,
save in the matter of baronial hospitality, for modern
luxury clothes the interior more royally than our an-
cestors dreamed of and, it must be confessed, more
comfortably. Of the family heirlooms within, two
portraits taken from life interested me most. One is
of Noah Webster the maternal grandfather of Mrs.
Hutchins the patient, industrious builder of the dic-
tionary, who wrought at his work for twenty years,
until his fingers became stiff from using the pen, and
he fainted away when he had written the word " Fi-
nis." No wonder. I held some of his manuscript in
my hand, and it made me tired to look at its intrica-
cies, it was so suggestive of hard work. The other
portrait presents Oliver Ellsworth, the paternal grand-
father of Mrs. Hutchins, in his robe of Chief-justice
of the United States, only with the addition of a red
velvet collar to set off the sombreness of the heavy
folds of black silk. His is a typical New England
face, intellectual, determined, and strong. A later
generation has forgotten that after the "Virginia
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 345
plan " had been adopted by the Constitutional Con-
vention of 1787, on the basis of a "national Govern-
ment," or a single republic, in contradistinction to a
Federal Union of separate States, on motion of Mr.
Ellsworth the word " national " was stricken out and
the words "Government of the United States" sub-
stituted in its place.
Riverdale Avenue forms a beautiful drive. Its
roadway is as smooth as any drive in Central Park,
and it has every advantage in the way of scenery.
But this holds good only up to the city line, beyond
which point the Yonkers authorities seem to look
upon it as a country road, and treat it accordingly.
The castellated mansion which Edwin Forrest built,
and which he named Font Hill, marks the end of the
city limits. It long ago passed into the hands of a
religious sisterhood, who use it for school purposes.
Poor Forrest ! He had no taste for domestic life, and
his happiest hours were passed upon the stage. Chance
brought me frequently, when a boy, into the company
of his wife and her sisters, Mrs. Voorhees and Miss
Virginia Sinclair, and all my boyish sympathies were
enlisted in their behalf and against the man who had
slandered the woman who bore his name. I never
pass the neighborhood of the old city residence of
Forrest, on Twenty-second Street, near Eighth Ave-
nue, but I think of this unhappy episode. Font Hill
is the monument of his blasted hopes.
One would think it would be a pleasure to live in
sight of the Palisades of the Hudson, but a gentleman
who occupied a house on the banks of the Hudson for
several years assures me that his experience was dis-
enchanting. The sight of that tall barrier of rock and
346 A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK
woods beyond the silver waves of the Hudson grew
terribly monotonous. He wanted to throw it down
and get a glimpse of the lovelier landscape that he
knew lay beyond it. A sense of imprisonment crept
over him, and he was glad at last to move away. His
paradise of the Palisades had its apple-tree and ser-
pent. Viewed in this light, there was an element of
reality in the joke of that wild wag, Fred Cozzens,
who astonished the people of Kingsbridge and Yonk-
ers by deliberately proposing to whitewash the Pali-
sades. He argued that the effect would be wholesome
to the eye and refreshing to the public taste, while it
would break the monotony of the landscape, and give
them something bright and clean to look at instead of
venerable and dusty rocks. Such was his apparent
sincerity and earnestness that he found many sympa-
thizers, and for a while the contest over the proposi-
tion raged hotly.
As I steal back to the lower city, and the thousands
of lights that dot Harlem Plains break into sight, like
the sudden rush and twinkle of a myriad of huge fire-
flies, I got to wondering at a letter which came to me
a few days before. Was it a joke? The writer more
than hints that Felix Oldboy knows nothing of " the
elite of the city in former years." Perhaps not. But
how the men and women of those days would have
smiled at the word " e"lite." Most of them never
heard it, probably, and none of them would have suf-
fered their names to be printed in an " Elite Direc-
tory." Fancy one of the sons of the Knickerbockers
being asked if he belonged to the " e"lite !" One rea-
son, I think, why Felix Oldboy loves the New York
of former times, and seldom passes one of its historic
A TOUR AROUND NEW YORK 347
points without some such quickening of the pulse as
he feels when some one speaks of fields in the late
war upon which he drew a sword, is that he has an
ancestral interest in them. When Congress called for
troops in 1775, Colonel Oldboy, my ancestor, led a
battalion into the field, and his oldest son, also an an-
cestor of mine, commanded a company in it. On his
manorial estate, which his father had held before him,
his wife held high state, and those who wished to
stand well in her eyes always addressed her as Lady
Oldboy. It is said to have been an -awesome sight
when Lady Washington and Lady Oldboy met and
exchanged stately courtesies. Lafayette, who was
an ardent personal friend of Colonel Oldboy, and pre-
sented him at one time with an elegant suit that had
just arrived from Paris, whose most striking ingredi-
ent was a bright green silk waistcoat that is still pre-
served in the family, was a conspicuous figure at Lady
Oldboy's manorial receptions. Were these stately
old souls the " elite?" If they were, they did not
know it, and I, for one, would not have liked to call
them, to their face, by such a name.
As for the rest, these papers were not intended as a
topical or social history. They are simply the record
of a random tour through places whose acquaintance
I made as a boy, that recall the people of other days
whom I have known.
" Felix," said my grandmother, " always cut your
cloth by your pattern."
MY SUMMER ACRE
CHAPTER I
FELIX OLDBOY'S HOT WEATHER HOME ON THE EAST RIVER, FACING
HELL GATE A STATELY MANSION OF SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO
SOLITUDE IN THE CITY
I DISCOVERED it. A new De Soto, in panta-
loons, coat of broadcloth and silk hat most degen-
erate successors of the velvets and lace and plumes of
three centuries ago. I was making a pedestrian voyage
through the old haunts of my boyhood when I sight-
ed a lonely acre of ground in which stood an ancient
house and some still more venerable trees. To the
eye of the casual voyager it was a wreck amid the
spick and span newness of the busy town that had
grown up around it and overshadowed its age with
noise and bustle, but I knew better. To me it was an
oasis amid a desert of strange faces and crowding
streets. Not Robinson Crusoe was more delighted
with the treasures of his island home in the Pacific
than I with this acre of sunshine and grasses and
green leaves, lapped by the tides of a swift river on
one side and by the waves of sound from a great city
all about it. The hand of improvement had claimed
35O MY SUMMER ACRE
the house for its own, and the progress of prosperity
had decreed its destruction. But I pleaded for yet
another year of its life, and my prayer was heard.
Some of my friends smiled at the madness of the
project, and others prophesied that I would soon
weary of my exile, and others yet again drew enticing
pictures of the pleasures to be found at the sea-side
and in the mountains; but these things were as little
to the purpose as warnings that the heat of the dog-
days would beat pitilessly upon the house, and the
dust of droughts encompass it. I persisted in my
plan and in the early spring moved with a strange de-
light, that somehow felt like the quickening pulse of
boyhood, into what my daughter Nellie was pleased
to call the ark.
My summer acre fronts upon the East River, near
the spot where the waters of Hell Gate begin to
seethe and swirl. Standing on the little bluff in
which its garden ends, and towards which its velvety
lawn descends from the back porch, one can see the
rarest and loveliest of pictures. Across and up the
river where Pot Rock once made the waters boil and
the Frying Pan was a terror to navigators ; where
Flood Rock is alternately submerged and exposed by
the tides ; where the Hog's Back and Nigger's Head
yet wreck an occasional vessel ; where the shaded
river road of Astoria allows rare glimpses of stately
mansions between the trees, and the green ramparts
of Ward's Island are wondrous pleasant to the eye
and hide other lovely islands beyond that are fruitful
of legends as of lobsters are stretches of scenery than
which there is nothing more beautiful on the Atlantic
coast line. Back of me and on either hand may be
MY SUMMER ACRE 351
heard the coarse melody of the hand-organ, the stri-
dent shriek of steam, the shouts of children at play in
the streets, the ceaseless undertone of wagon and in-
cessant hum of labor, and the puff of steamboat and
clatter of tug may be heard upon the waters; but the
sunshine turns the silver of the breakers upon the rocks
to gold, the shadows of overhanging trees mirror them-
selves in the quiet waters of tiny bays, the little hills
are clothed with beauty as with a garment, and I have
enough of imagination left to fancy myself in Arcadia.
The house is as old as our second war with Great
Britain. It was built for the summer residence of a
family whose city mansion was then in the neighbor-
hood of the Bowling Green. Built in a most substan-
tial manner of wood, it is two stories in height, sur-
mounted by a " gallery " a flattened top to its slightly
sloping roof that is fenced in by a light and graceful
railing. Here, at the close of the summer day, the
family would gather to enjoy the sunset hour, and
here, not infrequently, tea was handed around, to be
followed by supper at a later hour. Seen from the
street, the building is long and low, painted white,
with a wide porch upheld by plain white columns,
smooth and round, extending along the entire front
as well as the rear. The windows have small panes,
and the shutters are of solid wood with round holes
cut through the tops. The north side is shaded by
an immense elm that must have been mature when
the house was born, and at the south side are a cluster
of ancient cherry-trees, whose scant blossoms in April
were like the white locks on the head of fourscore
years. Honeysuckle vines almost cover the porch ;
lilac bushes rise up to hide the view of garden and
352 MY SUMMER ACRE
lawn, and a gigantic pine, that tradition declares to be
older than the Union, stands sentinel at the front
gate. It is small wonder that I loved the place when
I saw it.
Within the house there was an air of by-gone state-
liness in the wide central hall and large, empty rooms
on either side, which my daughter Nellie (her name
by baptism is Eleanor) has toned down into an at-
mosphere of enticing comfort by the deft witchery of
a woman's touch. The solid mahogany doors and
oaken wainscoting are still there, but portieres and
rugs, sleepy hollows of chairs and lounges that irre-
sistibly invite to forty winks of sleep, have lessened
their imposing effect, and I have only partly revived
the antique by insisting upon dining at my grand-
mother's massive mahogany table, having my ancient
mahogany chairs with tall backs placed on guard in
hall and parlor, and having time dealt out to us by a
clock above whose face the moon rolls out its changes
and whose case reaches quite up to the ceiling. Thus
the old keeps its ground, even if the new challenges
it at every turn.
" Snug," said my friend, the old colonel, as he stood
in the hall and looked about him, taking in, with a
twitch of satisfaction at his mouth, the wood fire that
blazed on the parlor hearth in the chill May morn-
ing. " Upon my word, Felix, it is not half as bad as
it might be. For a dreamer like you, it's snug." That
was praise indeed. For be it known that the colonel,
who prides himself upon being a man of action, labors
under the conceit that, because I love the past and am
apt to be happy in the company of ghosts, and, in-
deed, at times to seek their fellowship, I am a dreamer.
MY SUMMER ACRE 355
He is young, intensely young. His family Bible de-
clares that he has passed the earthly limit of four-
score years, and this one fact has almost led me to
doubt the testimony of that book and to declare my-
self an agnostic. Though I am much his junior, he
persists in declaring that I am the elder of the two,
and to look at him one might believe him my con-
temporary in years. When he enters and calls for me
to come out and take a constitutional, I drop pen or
book and surrender at discretion. If on these occa-
sions I can get off with a march of five miles, I count
myself fortunate. I verily believe he will be able to
do his ten miles a day when he rounds the century
point.
If the old colonel has an aggressive quality it is his
intensity. He does nothing by halves. Upright in
every thought and act, he would never be content to
go to a half-way heaven, or send his enemies to a half-
way hell. Yet he has the heart of a little child. To
hear him after a ferocious fashion pitch into radicalism
for he imagines himself the most consistent of con-
servatives with an emphasis that might lead the
black cook in the kitchen to imagine that the house
is on fire, while all the time he is caressing a purring
kitten on his ample knee and its mother sits blinking
confidingly at him, is to inspire the spectator with a
doubt whether he, the spectator, has as yet really ac-
quired a knowledge of human nature. On these oc-
casions I am as speechless as the cats. Like them, I
blink ; superior to them, I smoke, and hide myself be-
hind a cloud. But Nellie has only to raise a finger,
and the voice of the old warrior, who is her devoted
slave, sinks almost to a whisper. Mistress Nell knows
356 MY SUMMER ACRE
her power, and does not hesitate to exercise it. In
fact, as between her little ladyship in the parlor and
massive Diana in the kitchen, I am always ready to
own the inferiority of my sex inside the house, of
course. But to see the old colonel meet and exchange
compliments with his enslaver, after the stately meth-
ods of sixty years ago, is a lesson in manners which I
cannot help wishing were taught in our clubs of to-
day.
Our cats are three in number. Nebuchadnezzar, an
immense feline symphony in yellow and white, is my
special property, and usually answers to the name of
" Neb." Martha Washington, whose attire is an un-
broken black, is more generally known as " Pat." I
have my doubts whether the Father of his Country
ever called Mrs. Washington " Pat," or would have
dared to do so, but he speaks frequently in his letters
and diary of his favorite niece, his " dearest Patsey."
Satan, the small black son of Martha Washington,
completes the group. Very important are these three
to my life in my summer acre. I cannot make the
round of my domains in comfort unless Nebuchad-
nezzar is trotting at my heels, and Mrs. W. is the
faithful attendant and beloved confidant of Master
Felix Oldboy, Jr., aged fourteen. As for Satan, he
shall speak for himself.
Nellie laughs at my idea of contentment in an acre.
Even so did I laugh in my youth. Bless her heart,
and keep it childlike ! I know that by-and-by will
come a time when she will understand how it is that
an acre is a world to a child of threescore, and will
realize that my sunshine is as full of warmth and
splendor as if I were possessor of an estate as big as a
MY SUMMER ACRE
357
township. I sit watching the moon rise over the bub-
bling waters of Hell Gate, and hold in my hand the
slender palm of my little boy the Benjamin of my
riper years whose love I would not exchange for the
crown of the czars. The boy turns and smiles as if
he had read my thoughts, and Nebuchadnezzar sol-
emnly rises, rubs himself against us, and purs a whole
hymn of happiness.
AN OLD-TIME FIRE-CAP
358 MY SUMMER ACRE
CHAPTER II
THE DARK PHANTOM WHICH DOGGED A POSTMAN'S FEET A GAR-
DEN CALENDAR NOTES OF THE FARM ACRE
THE steps of the letter-carrier, who had just brought
the mail, rattled away briskly around the corner.
The blithe little man in gray, who, with a bundle of
letters and newspapers in hand, has walked the dis-
tance of five times around the globe in the last twenty-
three years, had set me to thinking. If letter-carriers
ever die and I have a sort of hazy belief that they
gradually cremate, themselves, and so vanish into thin
air as they walk this cheery man of letters, whom
the street knows and smiles upon as Bob, will be found
on the threshold of that particular one of the many
mansions which is devoted to the post-office depart-
ment, with a package in his hand and a smile on his
face. Yet he has a dark phantom of care that some-
times falls into step behind him and dogs his feet.
He believes that had his childhood been happier he
might have made a success in life, and success in his
vocabulary for Bob is not wiser than his generation
means wealth and position. It is too bad, though I
did not tell him so. There is no man so poor and
powerless but that he can give his son or daughter a
happy childhood. Then, however bitter the battle
may be afterwards, there will be years of sunshine to
MY SUMMER ACRE 359
look back upon, and no cloud can dim them, no burg-
lar steal their remembrance.
But Bob told the story a great deal more to the
point than I am doing. Let him speak. And bear
in mind that he told it with no attempt at sympathy
and no thought of sentiment. It was my boy's new
jacket, of which he had caught a glimpse, and which
he evidently admired on aesthetic principles, because
it was a change, which started the stream of reminis-
cence.
" A jacket was the turning-point in my life," so the
man of mails began. " When I was a boy of fourteen
years I wanted a velvet jacket, such as were then the
fashion with people who were richer than ourselves.
The price was seven dollars ; and as I knew there was
no use in asking for it, I determined to earn the
money and save it up. It was a tight pull, I can tell
you, but at last I pulled through all right. Wasn't I
proud when I counted up the seven dollars ! and I
was happy, too, in anticipation of wearing the jacket
the next Sunday. I went to my father, put the mon-
ey in his hand, and told him what I wanted. Of
course, I would not think of getting it myself; boys
did not do business in that way when I was young.
At night my father came home with a bundle, and I
ran to see it opened. He pulled out a dark satinet
jacket that I was sure did not cost half the money,
threw it down before me, and, with the remark that it
was plenty good enough for me to wear, turned to go
out of the room. My heart and my courage were
broken, but I managed to speak. ' Father,' I said,
1 1 will never save another penny as long as I live.'
I have kept my promise. It was the turning-point of
360 MY SUMMER ACRE
my life, and I think it took all ambition out of me.
So you see me a letter-carrier at fifty a mere machine
to plod the streets. It all came of that jacket. I re-
member it as if it were yesterday." " Did your father
give you back the rest of the money?" I asked.
"Never!" That is all. It was not much of a trag-
edy, yet it marred a life.
The garden is a daily delight to me. The only
drawback is the fear that some neighbor may chance
to criticise it in a friendly way as small. Yet, in the
spirit of the contented African who anticipated criti-
cism by saying in praise of the turkey he had won at
a raffle, " De breed am small, but de flavor am deli-
cious," I am prepared to take up a similar line of eu-
logy on my garden. Take it as you please, on either
the ornamental or the useful side. There never were
such battlements of box as hedge in the gravel-walks ;
no such velvet covers a drawing-room floor as that bit
of lawn that stretches down to the little bluff above
the river ; those roses that weight the bushes are
peerless, and the fragrance of the syringa buds is the
very refinement of orange blossoms, and redolent with
every breath of the youth and beauty that plucked
their ancestral twigs in evenings of long ago. The
lilacs have had their day, but wait until the lady's-
slippers and marigolds and hollyhocks take up their
march in battalions, and the sweet-peas, four-o'clocks,
and morning-glories show their colors ! On the wis-
tarias thick green leaves have succeeded the purple
clusters of flowers that greeted May, but the leaves
of the honeysuckle-vine are not so many as its tendril-
like blossoms of buff and pink and white, and the
odor is at times a revelation in the way of teaching
MY SUMMER ACRE 361
humanity the right use of the nose. For, at times, as
I sit under the shadow of the honeysuckle, the ca-
dences of odor strike a succession of keys in what is
literally my organ of smell, and recall so many forgot-
ten episodes that had the fragrance of a spray of hon-
eysuckle or the scent of a June rose for their connect-
ing link, that I feel like having the rector return
special thanks in the church next Sunday for the gift
of noses to men.
On the March day in which I first walked the
bounds of my territory, I noticed, not far from the
river-side, in a depression of the ground that seemed
to have once been the bed of a brook, a bunch of
pussy willows, which had already put forth its buds.
Some of these buds were silver gray and others were
brown in color, but all were soft and fleecy as the
skins of little mice. A willow-tree that stood near
by had but cut its leaves on April 2Oth ; a week later
the maples had caught up with them, and the next
week saw the poplars and elms slowly spreading out
their verdure. Meantime the lilac bushes had forged
ahead, and at the finish were most luxuriant of all in
the full, free spread of their dark green foliage. The
cherry-trees, I noticed, were first of the fruits to put
out their blossoms, and were in full bloom on April
28th. It was ten days later that the pink loveliness
of the peach-tree dawned, with spikes of green leaves
yet unfolded showing between the flowers, and it was
not until the middle of May that an apple-tree, which
shades the kitchen, and which the builder of the
house planted at his wife's request to shade the maid
when she churned, was in the full bloom of its beau-
ty an animated milky way. Early in Easter week
362 MY SUMMER ACRE
the dandelion had spread its modest oriflamme to the
air, and on Easter Sunday, April 2ist, a bush of gold-
en-bells gave notice that the season of flowers had
fairly dawned. Already, too, the red and saffron
shoots of peonies had thrust their heads well above-
ground, and thick bunches of hollyhock leaves had
raised their protest against further slumber in the life
of plants. On the day that May came in, the pink
profusion of the flowering almond had entered on its
brief career ; then came the lilacs, heavy with sweet
scent ; the blossoms of the hawthorn hedge, laden
with honey; the clover, red and white, and, before the
month had closed, roses, honeysuckle, bluebells, sy-
ringa, and pink balls of peony bloom had blended a
marvellous kaleidoscope of colors in the garden.
Not being entirely confident of results, I have laid
out my vegetable garden in the north-east corner of
my acre, where it does not obtrude upon criticism.
My farm in the rear of the house is divided in twain
by a broad, box-bordered gravel-walk. The southern
half is lawn. Next to the walk, in the northern half,
is the flower-garden a plot of some sixty feet by
thirty and, beyond, a plot of similar size is devoted
to vegetables. It is a miracle of thrifty promise now.
The peas have clambered up into the brush and put
forth their milk-white blossoms; the heart-shaped
leaves on the bean-stalks have broadened out to full
size ; the tomato plants, looking like young elms, have
learned to stand alone ; three rows of silky, shining
spears are rising to conceal the fence and sentinel the
patch, and at their feet are the beginnings of squash
vines.
The modern statesman declares that the Indian
MY SUMMER ACRE
363
cannot be made a
farmer, but I
have an idea that
the statesman is
a mere Dogberry
in agriculture.
When Hendrik
Hudson visited
the village of Sa-
pohanikan a set-
tlement of forty
men and seven-
teen women who
cultivated a por-
tion of what is
now the Ninth
Ward he found
a circular barn
built of oak bark
and having an
arched roof,
which " contain-
ed a great quan-
tity of maize or Indian corn, and beans of last year's
growth ; and there lay near the house, for the purpose
of drying, enough to load three ships, besides what
was growing in the fields." And that veracious histo-
rian, Van der Donck, speaks of " a vegetable pecul-
iar to the natives, called by our people quaasiens
(squashes), a name derived from the aborigines, as the
plant was not known to us before our intercourse
with them. It is a delightful fruit, as well to the eye
for its colors as to the mouth for its agreeable taste,"
DUTCH HOUSES
364 MY SUMMER ACRE
Well might the poet, Evert Nieuwenhof, write of Man-
hattan :
" Why mourn about Brazil, full of base Portuguese,
When Van der Donck shows so much better fare ?"
That was a mosquito which interrupted me and
shortened the quotation, but I have killed him. He
came across the river from Long Island. Van der
Donck makes no mention of mosquitoes as native to
the Island of Manhattan, and I know that ours are
imported. I may be proud enough of my country to
cease to plead the baby act and to take my chances
as a free-trader, but I believe in protection against
the ferocious domestic dragons of Long Island the
carnivorous winged monster which goes by the harm-
less name of mosquito. The infant gnats of New
York can never compete with them.
I said that I had killed him, but I was mistaken.
He is back again, and as numerous as FalstafTs men
in buckram. The pen is feebler than his spear, and I
lay it down.
MY SUMMER ACRE 365
CHAPTER III
THE NEW WORLD VENICE PANORAMA OF EAST RIVER ISLANDS A
LOVELY WATER JOURNEY AN OLD-TIME SHERIFF IN HIS HOME
IT has always seemed a pity to be compelled to
bid good-bye to the Maelstrom, Nero's Fiddle, the
Mountains of the Moon, the pot of gold that lies
buried at the foot of the rainbow, and other delusions
of my youth, and to have to exchange the poetry of
fancy for the prose of fact. It has been a disappoint-
ment to me not to find Hell Gate the terror that the
early Dutch navigator described it, and yet I must
confess that this loss is in great measure made up by
its ineffaceable beauty. The Rev. Master Woolley,
who published a journal of his visit to America in
1678, speaks of Hell Gate as being "as dangerous as
the Norway maelstrom," and says : " In this Hell
Gate, which is a narrow passage, runneth a rapid, vio-
lent stream, both upon flood and ebb ; and in the
middle lieth some islands of rocks, upon which the
current sets so violently that it threatens present
shipwrack; and upon the flood is a large whirlpool,
which sends forth a continual, hideous roaring." Into
this wild whirl of waters no early navigator ventured
to embark except of necessity, and the superstition
of sailors expressed itself in giving the names of " Dev-
il's Frying Pan " and " Devil's Gridiron " to two of its
reefs. To-night, as we sit upon the back porch, smok-
366 MY SUMMER ACRE
ing our pipes in enjoyment that needs few words for
its expression, I am entirely disposed to go out of the
past into the present. Seldom has a more lovely
picture been spread before the eye. The waters are
silvered everywhere by moonlight, and the ripples on
rock and reef are burnished to unearthly brightness.
The city lies hidden by the vines that overshadow us.
Across the swift stream the horizon is bounded by
clustering trees that more than half conceal the homes
on the Long Island. shore, and on the islands below
and above us the moon tips turreted buildings that
have almost buried themselves in foliage, and that
lend the landscape an old-time appearance. Across
the bosom of the rapid river flash craft of every build,
from the great steamship on her trip to Maine to the
dancing row-boat on pleasure or lobstering intent.
We smoke in silence, we two who have had our day
and yet are younger in heart than many who are our
juniors by a score or two of years ; indeed, the youth-
fulness of my comrade sometimes appalls me, as to-
night when he proposed that we should hire a launch
and explore the East River.
It would be no bad thing if every New Yorker who
has the time to spare could make a voyage of discov-
ery between Governor's Island and Throgg's Neck.
To travel swiftly through on a steamboat would not
answer the purpose. A sail-boat that would skirt the
islands and penetrate the bays, or a naphtha launch
which would make its way in spite of currents, is
what the Columbus of the East River needs. That
part of New York which flies to Bar Harbor or New-
port for scenery or the sea does not know that the
sea and its estuaries, its rocks, and its tides, are at
MY SUMMER ACRE 367
their doors. The Palisades and Highlands of the
Hudson have had their eulogists for half a century,
and the Tappan Zee and Catskill Mountains have
been immortalized in romance, but poetry has yet
to discover the rare beauties of the East River,
whose water-front is not surpassed in attractiveness
in any country. Gemmed with islands, garlanded
with woods, beset by rocks which are rich in legend-
ary lore, and headlands that are redolent of history ;
in many spots as unchanged as in the days when Har-
lem was a tiny, sleepy settlement, remote from the
busy City of New Amsterdam ; this arm of the sea is
one of the loveliest, if least regarded, features of the
grandest of American cities.
When New York was created to be a great mari-
time city, care was taken to supply it with all that it
should need in the way of islands, and they were
strewn about its main island foundation with proper
picturesqueness. Those who remember the islands in
their primeval loveliness, when they were the homes
of some of our ancient families, and were clad in verd-
ure in summer, and in impressive dreariness in win-
ter, may regret that the city has been compelled to
use some of them as homes for the sick and the sin-
ner, but even the stern majesty of the law cannot
make them other than beautiful. It is a matter of
congratulation with those who believe that the useful
need not be ugly that there are some things which
the hands of men who fancy that they can always im-
prove upon nature cannot mar. The islands in the
East River will always remain an enchanting feature
in the topography of this maritime metropolis, and
New Yorkers, who are somewhat prone to overlook
368 MY SUMMER ACRE
advantages which lie directly at their doors, will some
day open their eyes to appreciate them just as the
old colonel and I feast our eyes upon stray bits of
their loveliness to-night.
The little island at the mouth of the East River,
which is owned by the United States, but will revert
to the city if its bristling cannon and other parapher-
nalia of war are abandoned and its flag is drawn down,
was historically and municipally connected with other
islands in the river from the early days of the Dutch
Governors of New Netherlands. Its Indian name was
Pagganck, or Nut Island, lengthened by the Dutch
into Noton, or Nutten Island, and from the first set-
tlement was made a perquisite of the director-general
for the time being. Hither the small boy, who could
then wade across from Red Hook or paddle himself
from New Amsterdam, went to gather the plentiful
crop of chestnuts until such time as an English Gov-
ernor erected a summer-house on one of its knolls.
The renowned Wouter Van Twiller, the Doubter,
whose only certainty in life was that public office was
a private trust, and who was the official ancestor of a
long line of land-grabbers, was the original purchaser
of Pagganck from Cacapetegno and Pewihas, the abo-
riginal owners, and while he bought this realm of the
bluebird and bobolink in his capacity of director-
general of the New Netherlands, he proceeded to use
it as private property, as he did also Great Barn and
Little Barn Islands the latter now known as Ward's
and Randall's islands, and stocked and cultivated
them for the benefit of his own purse. Their " high
mightinesses, the lords of the honorable West India
Company," did not relish these proceedings, and sub-
MY SUMMER ACRE 369
sequently ordered Governor Stuyvesant to take steps
to secure " Nut Island and Hell Gate " as public
property, and this was done. One of the English suc-
cessors of Walter, the Doubter, was a man after his
own heart. For, when the Colonial Assembly placed
1000 at the disposal of Lord Cornbury to fortify the
island, that luxurious gentleman proceeded to expend
the money in erecting for himself a handsome coun-
try residence there, and it was not until the war of
the Revolution broke out that fortifications were
erected there alternately by the patriot and British
forces. After peace was declared, and Governor Clin-
ton, as executive of the sovereign and independent
State of New York, came into possession of the island,
he leased it for the purposes of a race-course and ho-
tel, and all New York went pleasuring there. But when,
in the last term of President Washington, dark clouds
of war threatened the young republic, the island was
thoroughly fortified by volunteers from the city, under
the inspiring watchwords of " Free trade and sailors'
rights," and since that time it has ceased to exist as a
gubernatorial perquisite or a haunt of sylvan peace.
Apparently there must have been always something
official about the long, narrow strip of Blackwell's Isl-
and in the East River, for it belonged to one of the
Dutch Governors, and was known as The Long Island
(the Indians called it Minnahannonck) at the time
when the island which now passes by the latter name
was known as Nassau Island. John Manning, who
had been captain of a trading vessel between New
York and New Haven, and had abandoned business
for a commission in the colonial forces, was appointed
sheriff of New York after its first conquest by the
370 MY SUMMER ACRE
British, and from the emoluments of the office made
purchase of The Long Island. The bargain turned
out to be a prudent one for him, and, moreover, dur-
ing his incumbency the Duke of York, stirred to the
very pocket by having the city named after his royal
worthlessness, sent over a silver mace to be carried at
the head of the procession of city magistrates, silken
gowns faced with fur for the seven aldermen, liveries
of blue and orange for the beadles and constables, and
a crimson robe, cocked hat, and sword for the use of
the sheriff. Nothing so magnificent as these civic
dignitaries on parade had been seen in the little city.
Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
the sheriff or the town constable. But this gorgeous
state of affairs was short-lived. The Dutch were slow
to anger, yet at the end of five years news came that
a Dutch fleet was on its way to the harbor, prepared
and competent to blow the English fort and its de-
fenders to atoms. Governor Lovelace went to Bos-
ton to seek help and Manning was left in command
of the soldiers, when Admiral Evertsen poured a
broadside into the city, and proved his ability to bring
down its houses and fortifications over their ears.
Manning surrendered, and after the city had been re-
stored to the English by treaty, he was tried by court-
martial, and sentenced to have his sword broken over
his own head and to be forever barred from holding
any public position. On a chill November day in
1674 the former part of the sentence was carried out
in front of the City Hall the old Stadt Huys on the
Strand, at Coenties Slip. Disgraced as he was, Man-
ning was by no means in despair, for his confidence
in himself was unbounded, and his pockets were full
MY SUMMER ACRE 371
of money. With serene philosophy he retired to his
East River island and the luxurious home he had con-
structed there, resolved to get as much enjoyment
out of his physical life as was possible. Having mon-
ey, he had friends, of course, and besides, the fame of
his dinners went throughout the colony and pleaded
his cause through the tender masculine stomach.
His house became a synonyme of hospitality ; his wit
was a proverb, and he was pronounced the most ele-
gant and agreeable of hosts. If he had been poor
and penitent he would never have become popu-
lar. u So long as thou doest well unto thyself," said
wise old King David, " men will speak good of thee."
Even in an earthly paradise the genial and unre-
pentant old adventurer could not live forever, and
when he died the island was bequeathed to his daugh-
ter, who had married Robert Blackwell, to whom it
owes the name it has borne for 200 years. The city
became the purchaser of its 120 acres in 1828, paying
for the island what would now be called the modest
sum of $50,000, which was its full value then. It is
a small municipality in itself, with a population of
more than ten thousand persons. A glance and a
thought suffice for Blackwell's, but the scene that
breaks upon the eye beyond, where the river makes a
sudden bend and reveals its swift waters rushing be-
tween promontories clad in living green and crowned
with luxuriant foliage, where the eyes cannot decide
whether to most admire the charms of the land or
the wave, and only knows that the beauty of one sets
off the loveliness of the other, calls for the brush of
the great American painter that is to be. In the full
glory of the moonlight it is superb.
372 MY SUMMER ACRE
As the old colonel rose to go home, we two gray-
beards started on a pilgrimage to the bedside of Mas-
ter Felix Oldboy, Jr. My little boy loves every-
thing that breathes and has legs, and after capturing
two tiny mice had laboriously constructed a home
for them for their protection from Neb. and Martha
Washington, with a bay-window attachment in the
shape of a revolving-wheel for their use. The old
colonel had heard of it and came to me with a mutter
of subterranean thunder: "Mice, indeed! Make a
man of him and get him a gun !" and then trotted off
and secretly gave the boy a quarter to buy wire with.
We found him in his bed, rosy, placid, and sweet with
sleep. On a chair close to his pillow was the house
he had built for his mice, and from the wheel two
pairs of eyes that seemed to be brilliant black beads
were keeping watch upon their master. So he had
always 'gone to bed with his newest treasures before
his closing eyes or hugged to his heart. It was a
pictur^ I had never looked upon without being aware
of the footsteps of approaching tears. I bent and
kissed the child in his sleep, and the old colonel said
that the light hurt his eyes, and, with a sudden "Good-
night !" marched home.
The mice awoke and preached a sermon to me as
their pink toes twirled the wheel of wire. It is just
so, I said, with man and his toys of the hour. If
sleep be the brother of death, when we stretch our-
selves out for a long night's rest under a coverlet of
grasses, how pityingly will the dear Father look down
upon the wreckage of hopes and plans strewed around
our couch, glad in His "oving heart that He can wake
us to better things to-morrow !
MY SUMMER ACRE 373
CHAPTER IV
HAPPINESS IN A CANAL -BOAT PULPIT CRITICISMS THE STORY OF
WARD'S ISLAND IN THE DAYS OF THE REDCOATS
MY pet theory of acreage and happiness has re-
ceived unexpected confirmation from a canal -boat.
Ready as I am to maintain that one acre is enough
for a home, and that its little circle of animal and
vegetable life, its dreams and its realities, will suffice
for a man's kingdom, I have been amazed to find that
the horizon may be narrowed still further without fa-
tal results. It is the revelation of a circus of tadpoles
in a drop of water, and it came about as Master Felix
and I were exploring the water-front towards Dead
Man's Rock and wondering under what ledge bold
Captain Kidd may have hidden his treasures, and
whether the spook of the buccaneer, who was slain
with a silver bullet and was said to haunt the Hen
and Chickens, disappeared when that redoubtable ar-
ray of rocks was blown into oblivion. At a dilapidated
wharf just below Horn's Hook, still a grassy spot well
grown with trees, was moored a weather-beaten canal-
boat, laden with coal and vociferous with animated
life. The venerable craft was the home of a wedded
couple and their five children, and the seven inhabit-
ants of the very small cabin and narrow ledges of
deck seemed to be as happy a family as had come
under my eyes for many a year. I watched the glee
374 MY SUMMER ACRE
with which the father and his three elder children
the eldest was a girl of twelve fished a breakfast of
tomcods and eels from the waters, while the mother
was rocking the two younger ones to sleep down in
the little cabin, and afterwards played softly to her-
self on an old accordion. They had but $9 a week
to be happy on, yet somehow they seemed to man-
age it, and on Sunday they were bright and fresh in
clean attire, and even the baby had new shoes. As I
looked out at them from the rampart of my summer
acre on the Sunday in which they had been paraded
for inspection, I wondered whether the uncouth cap-
tain of the canal-boat would not by-and-by sail up the
River of Life in better trim than many a fleet yacht
that he envies as it sweeps by. Perhaps, however, it
is an electric sympathy between a dilapidated canal-
boat and a venerable mansion which has seen bet-
ter days and what marvellous yarns of land and sea
they could exchange if acquainted and on speaking
terms ! which has set me to moralizing in this
vein.
The mention of Sunday reminds me to put it on
record that we go to church in the morning of that
day to old St. Paul's. I like it better than any of the
modern Gothic temples. People speak of old Trinity,
but it is a child in comparison with St. Paul's, which
has fourscore years precedence in age. I have a
friend living at the Astor House, the last scion of his
family tree, who always marches solemnly out of
church before the sermon. He says that he can
stand the modern " Ja-fiddle-de-de-cob " style of sing-
ing, which, like all old-fashioned admirers of Corona-
tion, Brattle Street, and Mear, I abominate, but he
MY SUMMER ACRE
375
does not think that
more than one
preacher in a gen-
eration is qualified
to go up into the
pulpit.
Yet no modern
critic of the Man-
hattan pulpit can
flatter himself that
he is original. In
1679 two members
of the mystic sect,
known as Laba-
dists in Holland,
made a voyage to
the New Nether-
lands to see what
could be done in
the way of securing
proselytes. The
men were no doubt
sufficiently relig-
ious, but like many
other good people
they have left it on
record that they
were cranks of the
first water. One
Sunday they attended the old South Dutch Church in
Garden Street, near Exchange Place, where they heard
a sermon by Dominie Schaats, from Fort Orange, now
Albany, and they wrote a criticism that was savage
PULPIT, ST. PAtJL's
376 MY SUMMER ACRE
enough for the most godless of newspapers. " He
had a defect in the left eye," said the gentle Labadist,
" and used such strange gestures and language that
I never in all my life heard anything more misera-
ble ; we could imagine nothing but that he had been
drinking a little this morning." The next Sunday
these wandering evangelists went to hear the English
minister, whose services took place after the Dutch
church was out, and whom they scored unmercifully.
"A young man went into the pulpit and commenced
preaching," the keeper of the journal wrote, "who
thought he was performing wonders ; but he had a
little book in his hand out of which he read his ser-
mon at which we could not be sufficiently aston-
ished." I have heard remarks very much like the
foregoing as a modern congregation has dispersed at
the church door.
In the journal of their voyagings these wandering
evangelists set forth that the Haarlem Creek, at its
juncture with the East River, forms the two Barents
Islands (Ward's and Randall's islands), and that Great
and Little Hell Gate are renowned for their exceed-
ing frightfulness. To these designations succeeded
the names of Great and Little Barn islands, which
seems to have been imposed on them at the time
when Wouter Van Twiller saw that the land was
good and that his flocks and herds could multiply at
leisure upon its luxuriant soil. Van Twiller was one
of that class of mortals who believe themselves men
of destiny. As Governor of the province he laid his
taxes right and left, and claimed his prerogatives in
all quarters. He paid no public or private debts, and
when the sheriff ventured mildly to insist that his
MY SUMMER ACRE
377
salary, then three years past due, should be paid, he
had him arrested and clapped into jail. This gentle-
man farmed the Barn Islands, and the province had
no little difficulty in wresting them from his hands.
There is a little island in the East River, off the
foot of Ninty-third Street, where the boys who were
my contemporaries used to go in swimming and find
delight in the sandy beach, which was known in an-
cient times as Mill Rock, and on later maps was put
down as Leland Island, but which the late generation
greeted joyfully as Sandy Gibson's Island. Who is
there of us whom the great leveller has spared at
threescore who has not enjoyed a chowder at Sandy
Gibson's homely house of refreshment, and often done
execution among the striped bass for which those
waters used to be famous ? Ah ! the fishing was fa-
mous then. Bass of mammoth size and lobsters of in-
MILL ROCK
378 MY SUMMER ACRE
credible weight yearned to be caught, and the Harlem
River flounders were a dainty for an epicure. The
glory of the bass has departed, the flounder is almost
a hermit, and the lobster coyly hides his green back
from the sportsman, though by night the lights of the
boats launched by hungry souls who bob for eels are
seen rising and falling between the Hog's Back and
Nigger Head.
Of all the islands that lie scattered through the
East River, Ward's Island is by far the most pictu-
resque. Forty years ago it was a paradise ; to-day it
is so beautiful as to attract the praise of all visitors.
With its undulating surface, originally covered with
dense woodlands, it was designed by nature for a park,
and in the growth of the city it ought to have been
reserved for that purpose. Van Twiller knew what
he was about when he converted its two hundred and
forty acres into a pasturage for his cattle, and the
British knew what they were about when they occu-
pied it in September, 1776, and made use of it to keep
the patriots at Harlem in check. In maps of the last
century it was known as Buchanan's Island, and Lord
Howe's topographical engineers placed a house at the
north-east corner and a still at the south. It speaks
volumes for the careful delineator of the map that
every still-house in or near New York is faithfully put
down, and a bayonet dug up this week in the vicinity
of the old distillery on this island is significant of the
tastes of the British soldier. At one time 5000 Eng-
lish and Hessian troops were camped on Ward's Isl-
and, but there is no record that an American soldier
ever set foot upon its soil. In the south-west corner
of the island, under the shade of ten or twelve majes-
MY SUMMER ACRE 379
tic oaks still standing, there were visible once, and not
many years ago, half a dozen graves. The mounds
were distinctly marked, and a bowlder stood at the
head of each. One stone was of such size and shape
as seemingly to designate superior rank on the part of
the sleeper. The inhabitants spoke of them as Ind-
ian mounds, but it is more probable that the stones
mark the graves of British soldiers, and that one of
the number was an officer. The Indians never trou-
bled themselves about headstones, and seldom sought
the shade of trees for a grave, while instinct seemed
to lead the white soldier to place his dead under the
protecting arms of the oak or the elm.
After the War of the Revolution the island was
divided up into farm lands, and its uplands became
famous for their crop of cherries and apples. But
presently the rage of speculation seized upon the
owners of the western shore, and in 1812 a cotton-mill
of solid stone, 300 feet in length. and three stories in
height, was erected on the grounds now occupied by
the commissioners of emigration, and everybody con-
nected with the enterprise was warranted to become
wealthy. A wooden bridge, wide enough to accom-
modate a wagon, was thrown across the East River
between One Hundred and Fourteenth Street and
the north-western end of Ward's Island, on stone abut-
ments, and a new era of prosperity was expected to
begin for the old pasture grounds of Walter the
Doubter. It was only a dream. The War of 1812
came with its terrible embargo ; the mill could not
get cotton from the South, and the enterprise failed.
When the Emigration Board entered on its mission,
forty years ago, it found use for the old mill, now de-
380 MY SUMMER ACRE
stroyed, but the bridge long before had gone to decay.
Its stone abutments were removed after the steamer
King Philip had been wrecked upon them. Our grand-
fathers were a queer people. They did not make
much of a fuss about bridging the East River, and
left posterity to imagine that it had been the first to
accomplish the feat.
As I first remember Ward's Island it was clad with
forests. Local historians speak of it as circular in
shape, but it is really a rough square. Less than forty
years ago it had great wood-clad bluffs on its eastern
and western sides, and its dense woodlands were the
haunt of rabbit and quail. The island is a picture to-
night as I watch it from my eyrie below Horn's Hook.
Amid its elms and wild-cherry-trees rise the minarets
and towers of public buildings, and it were not diffi-
cult to fancy it a ducal preserve. In its atmosphere
are the more or less fragrant memories of many dy-
nasties of the past, and pleasant recollections of picnics
and parties of pleasure on the bluff that commanded
the East River passage, and that have long since min-
gled with the common dust.
MY SUMMER ACRE 381
CHAPTER V
MANHATTAN BIRDS AND FISHES FEATHERED DENIZENS OF HELL
GATE PRIMEVAL HAUNTS ON THE CITY'S ISLANDS A MATTER OF
PISCATORIAIy CONSCIENCE
IT has been an unending amusement to watch the
birds this summer. If I had been able to keep ac-
count of their number and variety, the catalogue
would have surprised the unnoticing citizen who takes
it for granted that the Island of Manhattan produces
nothing but an interminable chorus of chattering
sparrows. In the early spring the gulls were busy
fishing in the waters of Hell Gate, and those brief
strips of white cloud circling above the waves seemed
at times to keep the whole air in motion. At the
same time the crows were holding town meetings in
the woods on Ward's and Randall's islands, finding
their supper and breakfast on the marshes and sunken
meadows, and in the forenoon flying in a great black
cloud across the uplands of Astoria, to spend the day
and take dinner somewhere on the shores of Long
Island. When the gulls had disappeared, the blue-
bird, whom Thoreau paints with a touch as having " a
bit of sky on its back," appeared one day on a syringa
bush in the garden, and the same week I heard the
piping of a robin in the big cherry-tree. Then I lost
the record of the procession. In my journeyings up
and down the river I have seen the sleek maltese coat
32 MY SUMMER ACRE
of the cat-bird, and frequently caught his song ; have
heard the bobolink and thrush tune their throats for
a dash of melody, and kept still and watched until I
could see the little chorister swaying on a bending
mullein-stalk or a spear v of sumach; have listened to
the blackbird's liquid notes as he darted through the
golden haze of sunset and flashed back to my eye the
splash of crimson that lights up his sable wing, and
once in a while I have detected the black and orange
bearings of the oriole, the brilliant uniform of a scar-
let tanager, or the blue and white of the swift-darting
kingfisher. In these late August evenings, as the sun
sinks down to rest, I like to sit and watch the west-
ward flight across the Gate of myriads of swallows.
They skim across the waters by twos, by tens, by
hundreds, dipping with a swift, seemingly uncertain
flight, yet moving in a concert of regularity which is
a marvel to the dull wits of man. The other evening,
as I was returning from my rounds and passed a bit
of open land by the river, I saw that the electric wires
which traversed it were occupied by legions of swal-
lows, as closely clustered together as soldiers on pa-
rade, and as attentive, apparently, to the orders of a
busy score of leaders. Presently the cries of the lead-
ers ceased for a second, and the army took to the
wing in battalions and brigades, and went through a
series of manoeuvres that may have been intended, so
far as I know, as a drill for the awkward squad of
youngsters who were to take part for the first time
in the annual autumn movements of the New York
brigade of swallows. Every night there is the same
flight across the waters and over the islands, probably
to an eyrie in the Palisades of the Hudson, and every
MY SUMMER ACRE 383
night the same evolutions, as necessary to swallows,
no doubt, as to the geese whose migrations in serried
phalanx I used to admire last spring, attracted by the
shrill cry of the leader, who rang his defiant trumpet
high up in air, as if in recognition of the Manhattan
he knew in his childhood and was compelled to pass
by without pause in his age, and whom we shall see
again presently on the return march from northern
conquests.
Of great fish-hawks I have seen half a dozen in these
waters, and once, I am sure, it was an eagle that
soared above the troubled tide to which he had long
been a stranger. I could only wish him a safe and
prosperous voyage, and immunity from the hands of
those who are pleased to style themselves sportsmen.
It was only yesterday that my breakfast was spoiled
by reading a paragraph which stated that a rich man,
who had once. been to Congress, and aspired to be a
politician, had shot an eagle, and intended to have
him stuffed and presented to the Thingamy Associa-
tion. Shot an eagle, indeed ! Why, after that eagle
had lived for a century or two, and died of old age, he
ought to have had a public funeral, and half a dozen
aldermen for pall-bearers. Shot an eagle, indeed !
I have been making an antiquarian tour of Ward's
Island in company with Master Felix, and as I cared
nothing for hospitals, asylums, and other such crea-
tions of the hand of improvement, I naturally inquired
for the oldest inhabitant. He is an individual for
whom I have always and everywhere a profound re-
spect. His garrulity may become a bore sometimes^
and I may not feel bound to believe half of what he
tells me, but my own years are increasing, and there
384 MY SUMMER ACRE
is a possibility that at no remote period I may be
called to step into his shoes. When I asked who was
the oldest inhabitant of Ward's Island, the answer
was, " Captain Bill," but it was less easy to discover
that his last name was Millner. I found him a man
of ruddy complexion, smiling eyes, and ready speech,
but, to my surprise, only thirty years of age. His fa-
ther, " old Captain Bill," had run the first ferry to the
island, half a century ago, and his son, who was born
in the old cotton-mill, had succeeded to his father's
business, and had learned from him the legends of the
island and its inhabitants the people who gave up
their homes and disappeared when State and city took
their lands for public purposes. Only two or three
houses remain of those that were standing fifty years
since, and these are so dilapidated that they must soon
follow in the steps of their builders. Projected im-
provements will wipe out the wild features of the
landscape that yet remain, and there will be nothing
for the antiquary to seize upon for a text here after
the next century shall have begun its round.
" Yes, I've seen lots of changes since I was a boy,"
said Captain Bill, as he came up from the State barge
which he commands, and stood at the head of the
emigration dock, under corpulent willows that were
set out forty years ago, and are already giving signs
of decay. " I remember when a bluff fifty feet high
rose at the end of the island, down there opposite
Mill Rock, and this side of it stood the Gibson home-
stead. Both have gone, but you can see the cellar
walls of the old house under the trees there, and so
there have been changes all along the river-side, and
if the old people were to come back they would not
MY SUMMER ACRE
385
know the place." He could not spare the time to
guide me, but directed me where to go in the search
for antiquities, and left us to ramble at our leisure
the boy and I on the site of a buried Troy. Yet it
was not a buried city we desired to find least of all,
such as lay at our feet. For, half a century ago, the
City of New York purchased seventy acres here fair-
er and more picturesque than Greenwood for a pot-
ter's field. Its last place of pauper interment had
been on the site of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and
RESERVOIR
Forty-second Street, and of Bryant Square, a site des-
tined to become as aristocratic and exclusive for the
living as had been the earlier potter's fields at Madi-
son and Washington squares. The records say that
100,000 bodies were removed to this island, and as
many more were brought here afterwards, and still
rest in their unmarked graves, giving signs of their
presence only now and again when the spade and
pickaxe are busy ampng them. They have a pleasant
resting-place, and, on the whole, they sleep well. A
25
386 MY SUMMER ACRE
millionaire could not find a more picturesque outlook
than this slope that fronts on Hell Gate, if the trum-
pet woke him to-morrow to do his final sum in arith-
metic in figuring up the profit and loss of a lifetime.
Our pilgrimage began at the south of the island,
on a slope rising twenty feet above the swift tide, un-
der a group of wild-cherry-trees, maple, and ailantus,
amid an ancient garden overgrown with blackberry
vines, and studded with juniper bushes, marked and
guarded by an old apple-tree, near the ruined founda-
tions of a house. It had been a handsome summer
residence eighty years before, and when the great,
bare slope to the eastward became the city's potter's
field, this was the house of the keeper. Its ruins have
forgotten the names of its former occupants. Ic does
not take long in a city's lifetime to be forgotten. Not
a hundred yards away a ploughshare turned up a huge
slab of slate one morning in spring some eighteen
years ago. The hind who held the plough was aston-
ished to see a cavern yawning at his feet under the
broken slab. He called his fellows, and they began
to investigate. There was a flight of stone steps be-
neath, and an arch of brick above them. Slowly, and
in doubt and fear, they descended. It was a burial-
vault, carefully built to hold ashes that were to be
tenderly kept. Within were fragments of broken
wood, a few bones, a rusty coffin -plate or two, the
mute memorials of those who had lived happily in
the sunshine above. But the lettering on the plates
was indecipherable, and no one has been able to tell
the name and story of those they were intended to
keep in remembrance.
Beyond the slope to the east lies a swamp, now
MY SUMMER ACRE 387
partly filled in, from which the last of half a dozen
great cedars had just been cut. In the middle of this
dreary stretch of forty acres is a swamp filled with
reeds and cat-tails the home of a vast colony of
blackbirds. A quarter of a century since, this tract
was known as " The Cedars," was covered with ever-
greens and brambles, and in its by-ways the pedestrian
could easily lose himself. It was the home of rabbits
and quail, and the local sportsmen here found game
to their heart's desire in November days. It seems
incredible as I look out on the swampy waste, but it
will seem still more like a distant tradition when the
tract is covered with stately buildings, as another gen-
eration will see it. At the foot of this part of the
island the river current rages and swells over the reef
known as Hog's Back, and around the dangerous
promontory of bowlders called Nigger's Head.
We took no interest in the city buildings and pub-
lic institutions, but going by the banks of the East
River, and past its rocky ramparts that repeat on a
miniature scale the wildness of the New England
shore, we came to an old house by the shore that
faces Astoria, and is occupied by employes of the
city. It was the home of the Halliker family, and a
generation ago was kept as a public-house by the head
of the family, who was known then to the world of
fishermen as " Uncle John." In that day the East
River at his door was famous for its striped bass.
That huge, shy, beautiful, game fish, born and reared
where the water is wildest, seeking his food in sunken
meadows, and taking his ease on the bottoms of rocky
channels, where the current races like a young giant,
found in the guests of " Uncle John " the foemen he
388 MY SUMMER ACRE
delighted to meet and fight. Gamest of fish in the
water, and most delicious of all fish on the table, Lit-
tle and Great Hell Gate bred him to perfection, and
the stones that veteran fishermen tell of monsters
that were drawn out and tipped the scales at forty
pounds would excite the derision of all who do not
know that the oil-works at Hunter's Point, and the
presence of countless fleets on the waters, have driven
him almost out of existence. Fishermen still seek
and find him here, and they tell me of fish weighing
ten to fifteen pounds being caught this season, and
that one of twice the latter weight was caught in Hell
Gate last year. I can only say that I wish I had
been the one to catch him.
Beyond the Halliker house the massive stone foun-
dations of another and larger house can be traced,
and a stone wharf, overgrown with grass and shaded
by willows, stretches out in front of it and is slowly
falling to ruin. This was the locality of the old Red
House, built long before the Revolution, and inhabited
by the Lynes family. Beyond .it, all the way to Lit-
tle Hell Gate, and back to the Harlem River, used to
stretch great orchards of apple, pear, and cherry trees.
Most of the land is a waste meadow now, overgrown
with wild strawberries and daisies in summer, and we
find it just blossoming out in the rare brightness of
thirty acres of golden -rod. But, passing this waste
tract, we came to a place that was a delight to our
hearts and a perplexity to our feet. It was thirty
acres of alders, wild-cherries, and elms, ending to the
west in a huge grove of wild-cherry-trees that seemed
to have been set out by the hands of Druids in sym-
metrical rings around bowlders of trap and little pools
MY SUMMER ACRE 389
of water. Moss-grown and gnarled, those venerable
trees could have told stories if they would but they
were impenetrably silent.
Master Felix and I entered the little wood boldly,,
and found ourselves in the land of enchantment. The
city was a thousand miles away; civilization had been
left far out of sight. Under the alders we tramped,
up to our knees in strange grasses and forest flowers,
finding here a hedge of blackberry-vines laden with
fruit, and there a little stream whose banks were
hedged with elders and reeds ; seeing all about us
beautiful bunches of ferns, and hearing everywhere
above us the flitting of cat-birds, thrushes, and yellow-
hammers. It was the little lad who suggested that
we were Stanley's party, bound on exploration in the
heart of Africa, and we could almost believe it, even
with our eyes open. And when we emerged and tore
our way to the water-side, through acres of bramble,
it was still wild and uncanny to come upon the rush-
ing tide careering over black rocks and sending up
dashes of spray that recalled the sport of ocean. It
is a pleasure to have seen, amid the woodlands of
Ward's Island, and along its rocky, surf-swept shores,
a last glimpse of primeval Manhattan.
390 MY SUMMER ACRE
CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE STORY OF THE EAST RIVER MONUMENTS OF REVOLU-
TIONARY DAYS A DEFEAT AT RANDALL'S ISLAND THE PATRIOT-
ISM THAT CLUSTERED ABOUT HELL GATE CATCHING A SNOOK
PERHAPS it may be a weak ambition, but I should
like to catch a snook before the season closes. I have
not the least idea what sort of a fish the snook is, but
the historian Van der Donck says that the waters of
the East River abound in " snook, forrels, palings,
dunns, and scrolls," and I have fixed upon the most
picturesque of the names, but have in vain questioned
the lobster fishermen about his identity. The hon-
est toilers of the wave look upon me, I find, with an
eye of suspicion, not alone because of the unattain-
able snook, but because I repeated to them Van der
Donck's story about catching lobsters in these waters
that were from five to six feet in length. They smile,
shake their heads with an air of gentle incredulity, and
say nothing.
To whom are we to pin our faith, however, if not to
the historian ? Here is Peter Kalm, writing about
New York a century after Van der Donck had gone
to reap the reward of his veracity, who tells us that
originally the honest Dutch fishermen sought for lob-
sters in vain, and they were brought in great well-
boats from New England. " But," he explains, " it
happened that one of these boats broke in pieces near
MY SUMMER ACRE 39!
Hell Gate, about ten English miles from New York,
and all the lobsters in it got off. Since that time they
have so multiplied that they are now caught in the
greatest abundance." It is mournful to think that the
New Yorker of 1748 could play tricks upon travel-
lers, but I am afraid that Mr. Kalm had fallen into
the company of some amateur fishermen of that day.
Yet it is delicious to read these musty volumes of
travel, and to look through their eyes upon the Island
of Manhattan and its surroundings. When, in the
quiet of yesterday's sunset, Nellie said that she could
fancy she heard the croaking of the frogs in the
marshes beyond Horn's Hook, I took down the jour-
nal of Peter Kalm and pointed out a paragraph which
followed his description of the trees that gave " an
agreeable shade " to the streets of the little city.
" Besides numbers of birds which make these their
abode," he writes, " there are likewise a kind of frogs
which frequent them in great numbers in summer.
They are very clamorous in the evening, and in a
manner drown the singing of the birds. They fre-
quently make such a noise that it is difficult for a per-
son to make himself heard." Poor man, the mosqui-
toes, which he always found troublesome, "did so
disfigure " him at one time that he could not appear
in public, and this may account for his prejudices on
the subject of tree-toads and lobsters.
We are always finding something new in or about
our ancient homestead, and this time we have made
an important discovery. It was the old colonel who
set it on foot. We had been speaking of the islands
that day to the north and east of us ; of how little the
busy New Yorker recked of the orchards and meadow
392 MY SUMMER ACRE
lands, the stately willows and towering elms of Ran-
dall's Island, and how general was the ignorance of its
history ; wondering whence North and South Brother
islands got their names, and talking over the days
when Aunty Ackerson had her farm-house where the
pest-houses of the city now stand, and raised her
chickens under the shadow of Uncle Sam's light-house.
As we paced up and down the path of the little bluff
at the river's side in which the lawn ends, the old
colonel stopped, pointed to an inequality in the
ground, and said, " What's that ?" I told him that it
was probably a part of an old terrace. " Terrace !"
he shouted ; " and you are your grandfather's ghost,
I presume. It's part of an earthwork, Felix." Mind-
ful of the experience of the Pickwick Club in the case
of " Bill Stumps, his Mark," I begged the colonel not
to fire off the town pump. For be it known that at
the announcement of peace in 1812, the good people
of Hebron, in the land of steady habits, resolved to
fire a salute, and to this end pulled up the town pump,
had it banded with iron by the village blacksmith,
loaded it up, and touched it off. The fragments of
that unique piece of artillery were found in the next
township, and its fate has been used as a warning
against vaulting ambition ever since. But the old
colonel persisted, and we went to work and caught
our " snook." We had been on both sides of earth-
works in piping times of war, and could not be mis-
taken in our conclusions. Besides, the record bears
us out and shows that this acre was fighting ground in
the days when redcoats were emblems of oppression.
Though the East River has been the scene of but
little fighting, it has yet witnessed vast military prep-
MY SUMMER ACRE 393
arations ; and in the withdrawal of Washington's army
in the face of Howe's victorious legions, on the night
of August 30, 1776, it saw one of those master move-
ments which command the admiration of all military
men. I sit on the back porch, and looking out upon
the swift and turbulent waters, I try to recall the
scenes of those days of yore, when a fleet of English
ships rode up and down the river ; when Howe sent
troops in boats from Hallett's Point to occupy Bu-
chanan's and Montressor's islands (as they were then
called), and the scanty American garrisons evacuated
the works along the front ; when Sir Henry Clinton,
with 4000 men, crossed the river in flat -bottomed
boats from the mouth of Newtown Creek and landed
at Kip's Bay under cover of a rattling cannonade
from ten ships of war ;
when a fleet of thirty-seven
war vessels and 400 trans-
ports threatened annihila-
tion to the meagre little
army with which Wash-
ington was retreating;
when men were so plenti-
ful and cheap in their ca-
KIP'S HOUSE
pacity as food for powder
that soldiers from Hesse were hired at the rate of
$34.50 for every one killed, with the understanding
that three wounded men were to count as one dead
hireling, in the settlement of accounts; when these fat-
witted Hessians garrisoned this very water-front and
the redoubt that began in my garden and reached out
to the north and west ; when, after long years of occu-
pation, the British flag was at length hauled down from
394 MY SUMMER ACRE
every bastion and rampart on the Island of Manhat-
tan, and peace came to deck these earthworks with
the dandelion and the daisy.
Before the battle on Long Island, the American
forces had fortified the most important points on the
East River. A redoubt was cast up at Turtle Bay,
between Forty -fourth and Forty -sixth streets; a
breastwork at the shot -tower, foot of Fifty -fourth
Street ; a battery on the bold bluff at Seventy-fourth
Street ; another at the foot of Eighty-fifth Street ; and
a strong work, known as Thompson's battery, upon the
jutting promontory at the foot of Eighty-ninth Street,
then called by the name of Horn's Hook, and after-
wards Gracie's Point. This fortification commanded
the mouth of Harlem River and the narrow channel
at Hell Gate. A small work was also erected on
Snake Hill, now Mount Morris, in the park of that
name. These were the fortifications mapped out by
the engineers ; but besides these there were earthworks
erected to command every place at which a landing
could be effected and intended as a protection for
light field-pieces. The whole river-front bristled with
the preparations for war, and in my boyhood the
traces of the works were plainly visible at Turtle Bay,
at Horn's Hook then a beautifully shaded, grassy dell,
and still retaining many of its old characteristics and
on the rocky and well-wooded bluffs that lay between.
When the British took possession of the island, by a
simultaneous descent on Turtle Bay and Horn's Hook,
they found that the works which the Americans had
erected were excellently adapted to their own defence,
and they occupied and strengthened them. They had
found out their value by experiment ; for on the night
MY SUMMER ACRE
395
after the battle of Long Island a forty-gun ship that
had passed the lower batteries and sought anchorage
PLAN
or
NEW YORK ISLAND
AND PART OF
LONG ISLAND
SHOWING THE POSITION OFTHE
AMERICAN &. BRITISH
ARMIES
AUGUST 27th.
1776
s
in Turtle Bay
had been hull-
ed by round-
shot from a field battery upon the high bank at Forty-
sixth Street, and had been compelled to seek shelter in
the channel east of Blackwell's Island.
As a boy I can vividly recall the picturesqueness of
the small rock- bound cove of the East River known
as Turtle Bay. The banks, which were high and pre-
cipitous, afforded a safe and snug harbor for small
vessels. Here, in the year before the Declaration of
Independence was signed, the British authorities had
made a magazine of military stores, and these the
396
MY SUMMER ACRE
Sons of Liberty, whose names are on New York's
roll of patriotic honor, determined to seize. They
knew the ground well, and laid their plans so as to in-
sure success. Under the direction of John Lamb and
Marinus Willett, a chosen band of twenty secured a
sloop at a Connecticut village on the Sound, swept
down stealthily through the perilous channels of Hell
Gate in the twilight, and at midnight surprised and
captured the guard at Turtle Bay and secured the
stores. The old storehouse in which these valuable
munitions of war were deposited was yet standing,
in my boyhood, upon a grass -grown wharf on the
southern side of the little bay. It is gone now, and
the view from the rocky heights is changed, but the
memory of brave men in the days wherein patriotism
was cradled lingers there yet.
This region saw other troublous times later on. In
the summer and au-
tumn of 1814, New
York was thrown
into a wild fever of
excitement over a
rumor that the Isl-
and of Manhattan
was to be invaded
by a British army.
The defences were
few and insufficient.
De Witt Clinton, the
mayor, issued a stir-
ring address to the people to give their personal services
to aid in the completion of the unfinished fortifications
of the city. Four days later 3000 persons were at
TURTLE BAY
MY SUMMER ACRE
397
OLD STOREHOUSE AT TURTLE BAY
work, and even the city newspapers suspended pub-
lication in order to give a helping hand. The men
who handled pick and spade were journeymen print-
ers, college students, sons of Erin, members of Asbury
African Church, pi-
lots, masons, and
many heads of man-
ufacturing establish-
ments. School-teach-
ers and their pupils
went out together to
give their aid, and
urchins who were too
small to lift a spade
carried earth on shingles to add their mite to the breast-
works. Such was the magnificent display that New
York made of its heart of fire; and when the works
were completed, every lad who could carry a musket
on his tender shoulders offered himself to be enlisted
for the war.
To guard against inva-
sion by way of Long Island
Sound, the fortifications
built upon the East River
during the Revolution were
strengthened, and new ones
were erected. Hell Gate and
the channels of the East
River were occupied by bat-
teries, some of which were
protected by towers. On
Hallett's Point quite an extensive work was laid out, and
named Fort Stevens. In its rear, on Lawrence Hill,
TOWER AT HALLETT S POINT
39^ MY SUMMER ACRE
which commanded a wide sweep of land and water, a
stone tower was erected, which stood there until re-
cently, when the hill was levelled. On Mill Rock,
where in late years Sandy Gibson built his rustic
bower of refreshment for wearied fishermen, a very
strong block-house and a powerful battery were placed,
adding to the already sufficient terrors of rock and
current. The fort at Horn's Hook was renewed ; re-
doubts were built at Rhinelander Point and at the
mouth of Harlem Creek ; and at Benson's, nearly on a
line with the present Second Avenue, was a smaller
earthwork intended to guard the mill-dam and fording-
place on the creek. Intrenchments extended back
to Benson's Creek, which then emptied into Harlem
FORT STEVENS AND MILL ROCK
River at the cove. At the head of Harlem Creek
was the beginning of a parapet and ditch, which ran
to Fort Clinton, on an elevated rock, now known as
Mount St. Vincent, in the north-eastern part of Cen-
tral Park. These defences bristled with the para-
phernalia of war when completed, but the enemy
never came to test them. The ploughshare and pick-
FORT CLINTON AND HARLEM CREEK
axe have almost obliterated them and left but the
merest fragment here and there by way of remem-
brance. The roll-call of the Destroyer has been even
more busy among the battalions of their defenders.
Yet to-day I number among my friends, still erect
and stalwart, though approaching the century mile-
stone of his life, a gallant, white-haired gentleman
who, in the ruddy strength of eighteen years, marched
out under the command of Capt. Thomas Addis Em-
met to do his devoir as a soldier of freedom. Emmet,
who died in a court-room in the city while pleading
an important case, lies buried under the shadow of old
St. Paul's.
We were talking the other day about the islands in
the East River, the old colonel and I, and he ex-
pressed his surprise that they had so long been a
sealed book to him, as they yet were even to the
New Yorker to whom they came as a territorial heri-
tage. Did you ever hear, I inquired, that a battle
had been fought upon one of them ? and he confessed
that it had taken him eighty years to find it out.
Then I told him the story of the engagement at Ran-
dall's Island, which was known to military map-makers
as Montressor's Island, on a September evening, in
400 MY SUMMER ACRE
1776.* On this island the British had placed a quan-
tity of ammunition and stores, and the Americans de-
termined, if possible, to seize them. A week after
the brilliant and successful battle of Harlem Plains a
battalion of 250 picked men, under command of Colo-
nel Jackson, of Massachusetts, guided by Major Hen-
ly, aide-de-camp to General Heath, made a descent
upon the British at Montressor's Island, with the idea
of giving the redcoats a surprise. It was a dark night,
September 24th, and the plans were well laid, and
would have been successful had not an impetuous
soldier discharged his gun prematurely. As it was,
the little column charged bravely against the earth-
works that were defended by twice their numbers.
* In the course of writing these papers, I find that the island to which
we give the name Randall was known to our fathers as Randel's Island,
and the weight of testimony seems to give weight to the latter designa-
tion. Originally known as Little Barent's Island, this was corrupted
into Little Barn Island. When Elias Pipon bought it in 1732 he built
a substantial house there, into which he removed his family, and chris-
tened it Belle Isle. Fifteen years later George Talbot purchased the
property, settled on it, and gave it his own name. In 1772 he sold the
island to Capt. John Montressor, who resided there when the British
troops occupied it, and on the maps of the period it is designated as
Montressor Island. The island passed into the hands of Samuel Ogden
in the spring of 1784, but he had no chance to change its name, for in
the fall of the same year he sold it to Jonathan Randel for the sum of
,24. It was from the executors of this gentleman that the city pur-
chased the island for $50,000 in 1835, and the city has evidently sought
to perpetuate the memory of its last owner, but has disagreed with
him in the manner of spelling his name. However, it is the misfortune
of a hero killed in battle to have h?s name misspelled in the despatches,
and it is probably too late to do justice to the memory of Brother Jona-
than. " My little dear," said the genial showman to the little girl who
asked him which of the animals was a camel and which a hippopotamus,
"you pays your money and you takes your choice."
MY SUMMER ACRE
401
It was a magnificent but useless display of gallantry.
The assaulting column was repulsed with the loss of
twenty-two men as many as had been slain on Har-
lem Plains. Among the killed was Major Henly, who
was shot at the head of his men and while cheering
them on. His body was recovered, carried back to
the American camp, and buried by the side of Colonel
Knowlton, hero of the engagement of the week be-
fore, within the embankments of a redoubt on the
lofty bank of the Harlem River. The prominent
outlines of the earthworks on that wooded promon-
tory and the old road down the steep hill to the cove
beyond High Bridge have but very recently given
way to the touch of time and improvement. It was
a sad surprise to the Americans, this first and only
battle on the islands of the East River.
" The Americans were scooped, weren't they ?" in-
quired Master Felix. Now, I hate slang of any sort,
FORT FISH
26
4O2 MY SUMMER ACRE
and yet I have been forced more than once to admit
that it is very expressive in the way of phraseology,
and that much of it is very good English. So, as I
meditated upon a proper method of rebuke, it occurred
to me that the word might be of Dutch derivation,
and turning to my library I became convinced that it
was so. For a traveller from Holland, who passed
through " the island of Manathans " 200 years ago,
has left it on record that when he reached Nieu Haer-
lem he stopped at the house of one Geresolveert (that
is, his Christian name was " Resolved "), who was a
scoup, or constable, of New Amsterdam. Evidently
he was the right sort of man for his business, for the
guileless traveller adds that his house was "constantly
filled with people all the time, drinking for the most
part an agreeable rum." The inference from his titu-
lar designation is irresistible. It is plain that the
scoup who gathered in offenders against the laws has
enriched the dictionary of slang with one of its most
expressive words. Master Felix is right. The Ameri-
cans were scooped.
MY SUMMER ACRE 403
CHAPTER VII
PANORAMA OF ANCIENT EAST RIVER HOMES A LOW DUTCH FARM-
HOUSEAT TURTLE BAY FARM THE GROVE IN THE WOODS OLD
GRAVES AT THE WATER-SIDE.
NELLIE and the old colonel are walking in the
flower-garden, with their heads close together, and as
intent on each other as if they were a pair of lovers.
They are often at the river-side, finding endless enter-
tainment, apparently, in the beautiful panorama of the
East River. The garden has flourished all summer
under my daughter's dainty hands. Roses, holly-
hocks, and lilies have ceased to bloom, but the beds
are gay with marigolds, lady's-slippers, petunias, Indian-
shot, cockscomb, mignonette, and the white, purple,
and pink blossoms of the morning-glory. For my
own pleasure I planted a cluster of sunflowers, and a
score of sturdy disks of gold turn themselves to the
monarch of day as he wheels across the sky, and sway
with the winds. On the other side of the broad path,
the corn, pumpkins, and tomatoes flourish luxuriantly,
to the delight of black Diana's heart, and Nebuchad-
nezzar and his kindred have made discovery of a bed
of catnip, among whose fragrant stalks they roll and
twist their lithe bodies with perhaps a dim remem-
brance of ancestral tiger days in the jungle.
As I look out upon my little kingdom of petunias
and tomatoes the thought comes to me, that after
404 MY SUMMER ACRE
man had been created the first care of his Creator
was to make a garden for him. " And the Lord God
planted a garden," says the record. Then follows a
glimpse of home and its comforts in the narration
that " out of the ground " grew " every tree that is
pleasant to the sight and good for food." It is a
homely picture, perhaps, to be inserted by the side of
the canvas on which chaos and the birth of a world
are painted, but I understand it here with my garden
spread before me, and can even fancy how lonely it
must have been for Adam, with all its fresh, young
beauty, when he had only his cats to keep him com-
pany. Those figures coming towards me, the daugh-
ter whose years have not yet reached a score and the
friend and comrade whose summers are climbing up
into five score, bear witness to my heart with every
step that " it is not good that the man should be
alone," and my tongue instinctively hails them. " What
are you two plotting against the peace of this com-
monwealth ?" " Felix," said the old colonel, solemnly,
" ask the cats. They have heard us, and you ought
to know their language by this time." My daughter
smiled mischievously, and said, " Do you remember
what your grandmother used to tell you, when you
asked what she was to give for dessert ?" I could but
smile. The mention of my grandmother, the unfor-
gotten guardian of the golden days of life's fairyland
the magic epoch which every man recalls with a
touch of tender reverence in his voice as he utters the
time-worn preface " when I was a boy," always brings
a smile and peace.
Once more I am in the old-fashioned dining-room,
where my grandmother sits stately and dignified at
MY SUMMER ACRE
405
the head of the table of polished mahogany, on which
mats do service for table-cloth,' under the service of
priceless china; where Abraham, the colored waiter,
whose mother had been my grandmother's slave,
stands behind her chair, erect as a grenadier ; where
an impatient urchin, whose great gray eyes and round-
ed cheeks I have long ceased to see in the glass, is
seated in torture on a straight-backed chair, which he
abominates, and I know he has put a question, for
MECHANICS BELL TOWER
across the polished surface of the dark mahogany
comes a dignified utterance which is strangely in con-
trast with the love that I never failed to find in my
grandmother's eyes " Wait and see !"
It was natural that we should fall into talk once
more of our favorite theme, the beauties of the East
River shore of the Island of Manhattan, and that the
406 MY SUMMER ACRE
old colonel and I should compare recollections of the
days when it was peerless for scenery. The tourist
now sees a succession of docks, broken here and there
by rocks on which shanties have been thrown togeth-
er, by the remains of a bluff, which recalls the terraces
of a gentleman's country-seat in the past, by the
ghosts of some old houses that were mansions of
wealth in the past, or by a house and garden here and
there, decayed but still genteel, bent upon keeping up
appearances to the last. Some few landmarks still
survive. The old mechanics' bell, which for nearly
sixty years has rung out the hours of work and dinner
over the ship-yards of the Eleventh Ward, and whose
music is one of the recollections of my boyhood re-
calling days when I " played hookey " from school in
order to witness a launch, and the clangor of the bell
was a sort of brazen conscience that took the edge off
my enjoyment still stands and keeps up its warning
of the flight of time, close by the East River, at the
foot of Fourth Street. The old shot-tower yet looms
up hard by the foot of Fifty-third Street, and people
who wish to speak of the neighborhood begin as of
yore with the preface : " You know where the old shot-
tower is," as if everybody had known it from infancy.
The rocky height known as Dead Man's Rock, that
used to mark the beginning of Jones's Wood half a
century ago, and that still has the same name, is there
yet, but has become ignoble as the boundary of Battle
Row, all too well known in police annals. And at
Horn's Hook, opposite Hallett's Point, a group of
great elms still sway in the breeze as they did in the
days when Halleck and Paulding and Irving walked
beneath their shade.
THE WALTER FRANKLIN HOUSE
The East River was by nature so much more pict-
uresque than the Hudson, that the wealth and fashion
of the little City of New York fixed upon it in the
early part of the last century as a choice spot for
country-seats. Pearl Street had become noted in the
colony for its stately mansions, with gardens stretch-
ing to the water-side. Then came the cluster of aris-
tocratic dwellings at Franklin Square, the estate of
Rutgers, the farms of the Bayards and De Lanceys,
the seat of Marinus Willett at Corlear's Hook, the
boweries of Peter Gerard Stuyvesant and his brother
Nicholas Stuyvesant, and beyond these, for four miles
up the river, the early part of this century witnessed
the erection of a large number of elegant villas like
the Coster mansion near Thirtieth Street, on the river-
bank, a stately edifice in the Grecian style of archi-
tecture, which, in my boyhood, was the country resi-
dence of Anson G. Phelps. But even as a boy I had
more interest in the historic homes of the Kip and
4 o8
MY SUMMER ACRE
Beekman families. I remember both of these houses
well. The Kip mansion, erected in 1655 by Jacobus
Kip, was a large double structure, with three windows
on one side of the door and two on the other, and
with an ample wing besides. It was built of brick
imported from Holland, and a stone coat of arms of
the Kip family projected over the doorway. It was
the oldest house on the island when it was demolished
in 1851, and Thirty-fifth Street and Second Avenue
now pass over its site and give no sign of its exist-
ence and story. Neither Oloffe, the dreamer, nor
Heinrich Kip, whose great goose gun was the terror
of prowling Indians, would now recognize the place
JACOB HARSEN HOUSE
MY SUMMER ACRE 409
that even in my recollection was encompassed by
pleasant trees and sweet with grassy meadows that
were reflected in the sparkling waters of the little bay.
In Turtle Bay, half a mile above, the British ships
of war used to find safe harbor in the storms of win-
ter, and here Lord Howe found a convenient landing-
place when he invaded the island and drove out " the
rebels." On a knoll above the bay and overlooking
it stood, near Forty-first Street, the summer residence
of Francis Bayard Winthrop, whose estate was known
as the Turtle Bay farm. There was a grist-mill on
this place, fed by a brook that took its rise in the low-
er part of the present Central Park. It was known,
before the time of the Winthrops, as De Voor's mill-
stream, and where it crossed Fifty-fourth Street, be-
tween Second and Third avenues, just below " Old
Cato's" on the Eastern post -road, there used to be
a wooden bridge of which the Rev. Mr. Burnaby, a
traveller in these parts in 1759, says: " In the way there
is a bridge, about three miles distant from New York,
where you always pass over as you return, called the
Kissing Bridge, where it is a part of the etiquette to
salute the lady who has put herself under your pro-
tection." Mr. Burnaby speaks as if he had made trial
of the etiquette of the day, and evidently he found it
soothing if not pleasant, for he utters not a word of
protest. The lady's opinion is not given, but she
must have known the penalty, and in a rural scene like
this rusticity is pardoned. The mill, the brook, the
bridge, the fields silvered in the moonlight, the river a
few rods away, a wilderness of woodlands at one side
and the spires of the city rising three miles away
can it be that it is of the centre of a busy, bustling
410 MY SUMMER ACRE
metropolis that these words are written and this pict-
ure painted ?*
There is one landmark of which I have not spoken,
and that is yet the most notable of those that remain.
Close by the old shot-tower stands a house that is a
perfect specimen of the Dutch architecture of two
centuries ago, and is probably the oldest building in
the city. Long before the War of the Revolution it
was known as the Spring Valley farm-house. Out-
* In 1809, when the commissioners of streets and roads were laying
out the plan of the new city above Houston, then North Street a plan
which, owing to the accuracy of the survey made by John Randel, Jr.,
their engineer, has stood the test of sixty years without revealing a mis-
take the Bowery was the principal road leading to Harlem and to
King's Bridge. At the present Madison Square the Eastern post-road
diverged from the Bloomingdale Road, crossing Fourth Avenue near
Twenty-ninth Street, and passing through the hamlet known as Kip's
Bay, or Kipsborough, which lay to the west of Third Avenue and ex-
tended from Thirty-second to Thirty-eighth Street. Thence it swept
towards the west, close to the Croton reservoir at Forty-second Street,
made another bend, and crossed the road to Turtle Bay on the East Riv-
er, at Third Avenue, between Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth streets.
Sweeping still to the east, it crossed Second Avenue at Fifty-second
Street, crossed it again at Sixty-second Street, and then followed the line
of Third Avenue, passing Harsen's cross-road at Seventy -first Street.
At Seventy-seventh Street and Third Avenue it crossed a small stream
known in the last century as the Saw-Kill, and Mr. Randel assures us
that the bridge which spanned this stream was known to all the young
men and women of his day as the Kissing Bridge. But the English his-
torian of the last century, and a clergymen to boot, assures us that the
Kissing Bridge was the edifice of plank that crossed De Voor's mill-
stream at Fifty-fourth Street, between Second and Third avenues,
while a solemn Dutch historian of the seventeenth century, whose seri-
ousness is not to be doubted, has placed it on record that the original
and genuine Kissing Bridge was the one which crossed the stream that
rippled down through Pearl Street from the Collect Pond and crossed
the post-road now Park Row at the intersection of that street.
MY SUMMER ACRE 413
side, the walls are clapboarded, but an inside view dis-
closes the massive stone and the huge cross-beams
hewed out of solid oak. The grading of the street
has made an additional story of the cellar, but origi-
nally the house had a single story and attic, with long
sloping roof and ample porches the very ideal of
Knickerbocker rest and luxury. A generation ago it
was known as the Brevoort estate and house ; before
that time it bore the names of Odel and Arden, but
the builders belonged to the family who gave their
name to the mill-stream, and whose name, like that of
many another old Dutch family, is spelled in a differ-
ent way each time that it is written, as thus : Duffore,
Deffore, Devoor, Devore, and De Voor. The original
grant of sixty acres was made by Sir Edmund An-
dross to David Duffore in 1677, and the spelling of
the name is changed in each successive deed on record.
There is another venerable house standing on East
Sixty-first Street, near Avenue A, which was com-
pleted just before the Revolution as a summer resi-
dence for Colonel William S. Smith, who had married
the only daughter of Vice-President John Adams. It
is emphatically a mansion, with two huge wings joined
together by a portico in front and an extension in the
rear, and its erection, together with an unfortunate
speculation in East River real estate, bankrupted the
owner before his work was completed. The records
show that his possession of the thirty acres he had
bought from Peter Prau Van Zandt was very brief.
Much more of an old-time mansion was the Beekman
House, which, until 1874, stood near the corner of Fifty-
first Street and First Avenue. In its later days it had
fallen from its high estate into shabby disrepute, but
4H MY SUMMER ACRE
neither the hand of time nor the presence of a troop
of ragged tenants could destroy its dignity. About
it clustered more historic recollections than were at-
tached to any other house in the city, and the pen of
Madame Riedesel, wife of the
general who surrendered with
Burgoyne, has immortalized it.
Howe, Chester, and Carleton
held possession of it more than
seven years, and during that
THE BEEKMAN GREENHOUSE time it was the scene of the trial
and condemnation of Captain
Nathan Hale, the martyr spy of the Revolution. Its
greenhouse, in which the latter is said to have passed
his last night on earth, and its extensive gardens, fell
with all their glories twenty years before the old man-
sion gave up the ghost, but I recall them every time
the train whirls me over their grave.
What a place of delight Jones's Wood used to be
in the olden days ! It was the last fastness of the for-
est primeval that once covered the rocky shores of the
East River, and its wildness was almost savage. In
the infant days of the colony it was the scene of tra-
dition and fable, having been said to be a favorite re-
sort of the pirates who dared the terrors of Hell Gate,
and came here to land their treasures and hold their
revels. Later, its shores were renowned for its fish-
eries, and under the shadow of its rocky bluff and
overhanging oaks the youth of a former generation
cast their lines and waited for bites. The ninety acres
which composed the wooded farm that was known in
olden times as the Louvre passed through many hands
until it came into the possession of the Provoost fam-
MY SUMMER ACRE 417
ily in 1742, and here they built and occupied for near-
ly sixty years. Then they deeded their broad acres
to Mr. John Jones, reserving the family vault and the
right of way thereto. The old graves are there yet,
but the ancient chapel has been transformed into a
club-house, and the youthful athletes of to-day play
leap-frog among the tombstones.
It was the custom of the early settlers to have their
dead laid to rest near the home of the living, and it
was not until as late as 1802 that the family vault of
the Bayards, at the foot of Bunker Hill now at the
crossing of Grand and Mulberry streets was demol-
ished. The home of the Provoosts, near the foot of
Seventy -first Street, and the family vault, cut in a
rocky knoll near by and covered with a marble slab,
lay in neglected ruin long after the woods had become
a favorite resort for picnic parties. The Provoosts
were a remarkable family, connected as they were
with some of the old historic families of Manhattan.
Samuel Provoost, whose mother was daughter and
heiress of old Harman Rutgers, was an assistant min-
ister of old Trinity when the war broke out. Being a
thorough American at heart, his preaching gave of-
fence to the Tories and he was deprived of his posi-
tion and sent into retirement, to emerge triumphantly
afterwards as the first Bishop of New York and Presi-
dent of Columbia College, his atma mater.
A cousin of the bishop, David Provoost, better
known in his day and generation as " Ready-money
Provoost," was quite another character. A soldier in
Washington's army, and wounded at the battle of
Long Island, he became in after- years a noted smug-
gler, having his chief stronghold at Hallett's Point,
4l8 MY SUMMER ACRE
and successfully defying the officers of the law to the
end of his wild career. He always had a reason for his
faith, and as he had plenty of money, his reasons were
listened to with the deference that wealth commands.
He had fought against England and taxation, he said,
only to be more pestered with custom-houses than
ever. With an assumed roughness of diction, which
was really foreign to his education or social position,
he made his defence openly, and to a merchant who
took him to task, said : " I'm for making an honest
living by free -trade. There's Congress just been in-
troducing a tariff, as they call it, and Madison, Carroll,
and old Roger Sherman and all on 'em are voting for
it, but by the Eternal, old ' Ready Money ' will stand
by his ' reserved rights,' as they call 'em away there in
Virginny, and nullify the custom-house laws as long
as the * Pot ' boils in Hell Gate !" The fiery old smug-
gler was laid to rest in the family vault, by the side of
his wife, at the ripe age of ninety. Long afterwards
the boys used to gather there and tell each other
wonderful stories of the unearthly doings of the old
man's ghost. Not one of them could have been per-
suaded by all the ready money in the city to keep a
night's vigil under the trees that overhung the lonely,
desolate grave. Music, dance, and merrymaking must
have exorcised it, however obstinate, long ago.
The September sunshine, which through the last
two weeks of drought has seemed to be filled with
gold dust, has sprinkled the lawn with a fresh crop of
dandelions. If this humble little flower were an in-
mate of the greenhouse, it would adorn fair bosoms
and win extravagant admiration, for its beauty is un-
questioned. But it keeps on its way quietly, and per-
MY SUMMER ACRE 419
haps is happier in the lessons it teaches of home joys
and fireside affections. It belongs to the home, and I
have seen men pause and watch a dandelion that had
strayed into a tiny square of grass in front of a city
house, and- was sure that I knew what was in their
hearts.* I knew their thoughts had gone back to the
farm on which they had been reared, the dooryard
filled with dandelions, and the faces at the window
that had watched their departing steps years before.
It was this remembrance that, in a railroad cut across
the river the other day, turned fifty faces towards a
single yellow flower that had somehow taken root and
blossomed in a rocky crevice twenty feet above the
level of the tracks. Solitary amid the rocks, beautiful
by its contrast to the rough stone, the little dandelion
sat there and bloomed and sent out its reminders of
home and fireside as no grand lily or radiant rose
could have done.
No, Diana. Tell the man that I do not want to
have the grass cut.
* Henry Ward Beecher wrote a characteristic paper upon precisely
this subject a single dandelion in a city front-yard. Mr. Beecher re-
tained such liking for his own little essay that not long before his death
he read it at one of the " Authors' Readings " in the Madison Square
Theatre. L.
420 MY SUMMER ACRE
CHAPTER VIII
THE HELL GATE COLONY GLIMPSES OF EAST RIVER HOMES ST.
JAMES'S CHURCH THE ASTOR COUNTRY-HOUSE WHERE IRVING
WROTE "ASTORIA" THE HOME OF ARCHIBALD GRACIE NEW
YORK AND ITS VISITORS
THE memory of my school-days haunts me even to
the boundaries of my summer acre. For on the East
River is a tract of land which covers eight or nine
blocks, and extends from Seventy-sixth Street to be-
yond Seventy-ninth Street on the water-front, which
is the property of the New York Protestant Episcopal
Public-school, which is the charter name of the Trinity
School of my boyhood. Founded in 1709, it was par-
tially endowed by Trinity Church, and received this
bequest of valuable real estate in 1800 from Mr. Ba-
ker, and in 1806 was incorporated by the Legislature.
Taxes and assessments have swallowed up half of this
land ; the school had no friends in the city govern-
ment to protect its interests, and had to see its prop-
erty forfeited while the City Fathers were lavishing
lands and appropriations on the Church of Rome. In
1832 the vestry of Trinity Church granted to the trus-
tees, at a nominal rent, the lease of five lots of ground
in Canal, Varick, and Grand streets, on which was
erected a large brick school-house, that is still stand-
ing, though the school has moved its headquarters
three miles away. Here the Rev. Dr. Morris, a ro-
bust, scholarly, jolly graduate of Trinity College,
MY SUMMER ACRE 42 1
Dublin strict in discipline, but foremost in our out-
door sports wielded the rod diligently for nearly five-
and-twenty years. I have pleasant remembrances of
his reign; of wrestlings with Anthon's Homer and
Greenleaf's Arithmetic ; of uproarious singing which
sorely vexed Dr. Hodges, our musical instructor, and
of learning to flourish birds and skeletons under Mr.
Barlow, our elegant writing-master, who always offi-
ciated in a dress-coat ; as well as of countless merry
games of " Red Lion " and " How Many Miles ?" in
the playgrounds of the school.
Our ancestors had a queer way of mixing up what
we would now call the sacred and the profane. They
went to church regularly, as a matter of duty, and
quite as regularly they went to the theatre also. Gov-
ernor and mayor had their canopied pews at the one
place and their curtained boxes at the other, and no-
body appeared to think the worse of them for going
to either place. When a struggling congregation
needed help to build a church, the authorities would
order a lottery to raise money for the purpose, and
when a charitable enterprise needed a helping hand
they would secure it a benefit at the theatre. Only
last week I discovered in the files of the New York
Gazette, Revived in the Weekly Post-boy, for March 26,
1750, an advertisement which recited that "by his
excellency's permission" Admiral George Clinton
was then governor of the colony " a tragedy called
' The Orphan ; or, the Unhappy Marriage,' wrote by
the ingenious Mr. Otway," would be performed the
next evening at the theatre in Nassau Street for the
benefit of the Episcopal Charity-school, as Trinity
School was first termed, whose school-house had been
422
MY SUMMER ACRE
recently destroyed by fire. The advertisement, after
giving the prices of admission, concludes with a de-
lightful warning to the gilded youth of the period :
" To begin precisely at half an hour after 6 o'clock,
and no person to be admitted behind the scenes."
Just below the school lands were the summer resi-
dences of Richard Riker and John Lawrence. The
former was for nearly half a century a well-known
character in the city. In his dashing youth " Dickey "
Riker was the mirror of fashion ; in his limping old
age he was known to the legal fraternity as " Old
Pecooler," from his habit, as recorder, of beginning
almost every charge to his juries with the remark that
there was something " very pecooler," as he phrased
the word peculiar, about the case in question. With
the exception of two years, Mr. Riker filled the office
of recorder from 1815 to 1838. His pretty cottage on
the East River, whose broad veranda, shaded by oaks
RICHARD RIKER'S HOUSE
MY SUMMER ACRE 423
on either side, was then a bower of rest and lovely
scenery, no longer exists, for Seventy -fourth Street
passes directly over its site and through the grassy
knoll on which it was situated.
Some of the old residences, frame structures that
were erected seventy or eighty years ago, still stand,
though their surroundings are all changed, and it
seems a pity that they have survived the destruction
of the green fields and graceful bits of forest that sur-
rounded them. Ancient Ash Brook as the old Law-
rence mansion at the foot of East Twenty-fifth Street
used to be called the home in my boyhood of John
Lawrence, merchant and man of affairs, continues to
defy Time's ravages, and is yet embowered in a lovely
garden that occupies nearly a city block, shut in by a
high brick wall. The pretty little stream long known
as Ash Brook has been stamped out by pavements,
but there are some oaks still standing there that can
recall the music of its ripples. At Eighty- second
Street and Avenue B is the country residence of
Joshua Jones, a long wooden structure of olden fash-
ion, with a gallery on the roof, and the usual broad
verandas in front and rear. Two blocks above, the
homestead of the Schermerhorn family, a more ambi-
tious structure of two stories and a half, surmounted
by a cupola, still looks out towards Hell Gate and the
islands. The family owned at one time considerable
real estate in this section, and several houses were
built by and for the younger members. Their neigh-
bors were the Jones families, the Winthrops, Duns-
combs, Kings, John Wilkes, a lawyer, whose city house
was in Wall Street, and who was a relative of the fa-
mous and eccentric English Member of Parliament
424 MY SUMMER ACRE
of that name ; Josiah Ogden Hoffman, Charles King,
and John N. Grenzebach, whose father's grocery store
on Park Row had been an ancient city landmark.
The latter's estate was at Third Avenue and Seventy-
fifth Street, and the house was an ambitious frame
structure of three stories, which for nearly half a cen-
tury attracted notice as a relic of a luxurious period
in the past.
The little colony of citizens who had their country
places hereabouts were mainly Episcopalians, and in
the summers, which were unduly prolonged for them
by yellow -fever visitations, they felt the need of a
church. When, in 1807, the city corporation thought
of improving their common lands, which then extend-
ed from about Forty-fifth to Eighty-sixth Street, they
laid out a park between Sixty-sixth and Sixty-ninth
streets and Third and Fourth avenues, on whose
grounds now stand the Seventh Regiment Armory,
the Normal School, and several hospitals, and called
it Hamilton Square. A plot of land at Lexington
Avenue and Sixty- ninth Street was marked, on the
map then made, as " a piece of land intended for a
church or academy." For this lot application was
made to the authorities, and the vestry of Trinity
Church was petitioned for assistance. Both requests
were granted, the common council giving the land,
and Trinity Church a gift of $3000. The church, af-
terwards known as St. James's, Yorkville, was conse-
crated in 1810 by Bishop Moore. It was not much
of a building, architecturally speaking. Indeed, it
was a plain wooden structure, of the house-carpenter
style of architecture, surmounted by a little pepper-
box sort of a steeple. But what mattered its style?
MY SUMMER ACRE 425
It had no rival within sight. For fifteen years after
it was finished Yorkville had no existence, not a house
having been built on the common lands. It was a
country church, amid outlying farm lands. Situat-
ed on the summit of Hamilton Hill, it was a land-
mark for miles around. A road crossed the island just
above it, at Seventy-second Street, known as Harsen's
Road, and through this rural lane came the rector
of St. Michael's, Bloomingdale, to preach on summer
mornings, when the sacred edifice was beset on all
sides by the carriages of the rich and the wagons of
humbler folk. For thirty years there was only sum-
mer preaching in this old country church, and then
the town had grown up about it, and it threw away
its Bloomingdale crutch and walked alone. Park,
church, and farms have been obliterated, and yet I
turn from the river's side and look westwardly, and
fancy that I can once more see the familiar old pep-
per-box spire which I was taught in boyhood to rev-
erence. The hand of the destroyer who wields the
pick is mighty, but more potent still is the slight, gen-
tle touch of memory.
The first vestry of the church was selected in 1810.
The wardens were Peter Schermerhorn and Francis
B. Winthrop. The vestrymen were David Mumford,
John Mason, John G. Bogert, Peter Schermerhorn,
William H. Jephson, John Jones, John H. Talman,
Charles King ; and the inspectors of election were
Joshua Jones, Martin Hoffman, and Isaac Jones. In
1843, when the church first called a minister of its
own, the wardens were Joseph Foulke and Peter
Schermerhorn, and among the vestrymen were Thom-
as Addis Emmet, John H. Riker, and Rufus Prime.
426 MY SUMMER ACRE
Perhaps it would be hardly proper in this connection
to speak of those venerable men as the Hell Gate col-
onists, but such they were indeed, attracted to this
section of the Island of Manhattan by its marvellous
and diversified beauties of land and water. They
built their homes here, erected their family tombs,
set the light of their church on a hill, and planned for
the peaceful occupation of generations, little dream-
ing that before the century closed their homes would
be swept away by a tidal wave of population, and
their own bones torn out of the sod and trotted away
to some crowded city of the dead.
There is but one New York. I have visited London
at my leisure, and have made my home in Paris ; have
seen the tropical beauty of South American cities, and
the Arctic glory of the old French towns in Canada ;
but I want to put it on record that there is only one
New York, and that it is peerless. No other city pos-
sesses natural beauty to compare with it.
In an article written for the Talisman in 1828, Mr.
Gulian C. Verplanck takes the ground that New York
was even then one of the pivots of creation. " It is a
sort of thoroughfare," he says, "a spot where almost
every remarkable character is seen once in the course
of his life, and almost every remarkable thing once in
the course of its existence. Does anybody in that
city want to see a friend living in Mexico, or Calcutta,
or China, all that he has to do is to reside quietly in
New York and he will be gratified. The object in
search of which he might compass half the globe will
present itself in his daily walk when he least expects
it." With the exception of Mont Blanc, Westminster
Abbey, and the Emperor of China, this is probably
ATLANTIC GARDEN, No. 9 BROADWAY
true. Here Jonathan Edwards, Whitefield, and the
apostolic Tennant have preached, and Oglethorpe and
Count Zinzendorf have exhorted ; here Washington
has dwelt in state, and Jefferson has kept his quiet
house on Cedar Street ; here Talleyrand has displayed
his club-foot and his power to be sarcastic, even with
children; here lived for a time Billaud de Varennes,
who led the French mob at St. Antoine ; and here
Count Auguste Louis de Singeron, one of the gallant
band of officers who defended the King on that Au-
gust night when the Tuileries ran blood, sold cake and
candies to the children ; here King William IV., of
England, disported himself as a midshipman, learning
to skate on the Collect Pond, and King Louis Philippe,
of France, taught school in the old Somerindyke man-
sion on upper Broadway ; here Volney, Cobbett, Tom
Moore, Murat, the Bonapartes, and heroes and acade-
428 MY SUMMER ACRE
micians enough to fill a volume with their achieve-
ments and set society by the ears have visited or
dwelt in tents. The procession has been moving on
ever since. I have seen the future King of England
on our streets; slender, fiery Don Carlos ; fierce Henri
de Rochefort ; the jovial but darksome " King of the
Cannibal Islands," whose august name Kalakaua was
turned into " Calico " by irreverent urchins ; several
exiled Haytian monarchs, more or less dark of aspect ;
General Paez, and a long succession of South Ameri-
can soldiers and rulers ; and even his august autocracy,
the Shah of Persia, has recently remarked in confi-
dence that he would like to visit New York, and would
do it but for the fear that his distinguished friends
who hold the helm in Russia and England might take
advantage of his absence to dismember his kingdom.
In a letter written by Washington Irving, from
Paris, in 1824, to Henry Brevoort, he speaks of his in-
tense delight at having received a visit from Domi-
nick Lynch, and having a long chat over old times
and old associates. They talked about New York
until he became homesick. " I do not know," he
says, " whether it is the force of early impressions and
associations, but there is a charm about that little
spot of earth, the beautiful city and its environs, that
has a perfect spell over my imagination. The bay,
the rivers and their wild and woody shores, the haunts
of my boyhood on land and water, absolutely have a
witchery over my mind." Then he rises to a climax
which should be read in the hearing of American col-
onies abroad, and writes : " I thank God for having
been born in such a beautiful place among such beau-
tiful scenery ; I am convinced that I owe a vast deal
MY SUMMER ACRE 429
of what is good and pleasant in my nature to the cir-
cumstance." I close my eyes, shut the book, and try
to fancy Washington Irving, as I saw him in his hon-
ored old age, moving about these old-fashioned rooms.
It is one of the legends of the house, that in the ear-
lier years of his fame he was many times a guest at
the table of its hospitable owner, and that he knew
the family well his letters attest. If I were the own-
er I would rather that the feet of Washington Irving
had crossed my threshold than to have numbered
among my visitors any or all of the great men I have
mentioned.
To me the whole atmosphere of Hell Gate is redo-
lent with the memory of Washington Irving. As
boy and man I know that he walked under the trees
that still remain by the side of the river, and here he
dreamed and wrote of ancient Dutch voyagers, of hob-
goblins and ghosts of pirates, and likewise of every-
thing that was sweet and lovely in nature. When he
wished to retire from the clamor and bustle of the
City of New York, where fashion then had pushed its
way far out into the purlieus of Bleecker and Great
Jones streets, and was even dreaming of turning the
wild waste at Fourteenth Street, that stretched irregu-
larly between the Bloomingdale Road and the Bowery
(as it was then known) into Union Square, he came
up to the summer home of the elder John Jacob Astor,
on Hell Gate, for rest from what he called the " irk-
some fagging of my pen," or for planning and writing
new books, and, as in every place which he visited, he
has left here the pleasant impress of his personality.
It was the fashion of his day to look upon Mr.
Astor as a man whose only object of devotion in life
43 MY SUMMER ACRE
was the mighty dollar. He had amassed a fortune
which was considered colossal, and there were many
to envy him and to detract from his credit ; many
who chose to forget that had not John Jacob Astor
and Stephen Girard come forward with their dollars
to help the country in its last war with Great Britain,
there would have been no powder for American can-
non and no balls in American muskets. But most
of all, I have honored Mr. Astor for the reason that
Washington Irving esteemed him. It is a compara-
tively easy matter to bequeath a slice of one's fortune
to found a public library, but a thousand times more
difficult to acquire the friendship of such a man as
Irving; and that the latter had a cordial admiration
for the great merchant is evinced in many of his let-
ters. It was because of the personal cordiality which
existed between them that Irving found it so pleasant
to be a guest for weeks at a time at his country-seat,
as well as to be a frequent and familiar visitor at Mr.
Astor's city home, which then stood on Broadway,
upon the site of the present Astor House.
In a letter to his brother Peter, bearing date Sep-
tember 25, 1835, Washington Irving writes: " For up-
ward of a month past I have been quartered at Hell
Gate with Mr. Astor, and I have not had so quiet and
delightful a nest since I have been in America. He
has a spacious and well-built house, with a lawn in
front of it and a garden in the rear. The lawn sweeps
down to the water-edge, and full in front of the house
is the little strait of Hell Gate, which forms a con-
stantly moving picture." Here Mr. Astor kept what
his guest calls " a kind of bachelor hall," the only other
member of the family being his grandson, Charles
MY SUMMER ACRE 43!
Astor Bristed, then a boy of fourteen, who afterwards
inherited the place. Later, Mr. Irving goes on to say:
" I cannot tell you how sweet and delightful I have
found this retreat ; pure air, agreeable scenery, a spa-
cious house, profound quiet, and perfect command of
my time and self. The consequence is that I have
written more since I have been here than I have ever
done in the same space of time." Two weeks later
he writes to the same brother that he has " promised
old Mr. Astor to return to his rural retreat at Hell
Gate, and shall go out there to-day." In another let-
ter, written on Christmas Day, he says that Mr. Astor
does everything in his power to render his stay agree-
able, " or rather, he takes the true way, by leaving us
complete masters of ourselves and our time." The
reason he uses the plural number is that his nephew,
Pierre M. Irving, was with him, engaged under his
supervision in digging out the material for his great
work Astoria, which had been taken up at Mr. Astor's
request and prepared in his Hell Gate mansion for
publication. The early part of the next year, 1836,
found Mr. Irving still hard at work in " that admira-
ble place for literary occupation," Mr. Astor's " coun-
try retreat opposite Hell Gate," and there he was still
busy in February, " giving my last handling to the
Astor work. It is this handling which, like the
touching and retouching of a picture, gives the rich-
est effects." And it was while he was giving this ex-
quisite setting to his rare ancl masterly pictures of
wild life on the Pacific that the great American mas-
ter of letters was from time to time a welcome visitor
across this worn and faded threshold.
Other homes in the neighborhood made him wel-
432
MY SUMMER ACRE
come, as they had done before. During the War of
1812, in which, by- the -way, Washington Irving did
service on the staff of Governor Tompkins, and earned
the truly American title of colonel, which he made
haste to drop, he was a guest at the rural home of
the Lefferts, near the present Ninety-first Street and
THE GRACIE HOUSE
Third Avenue a house which is still standing. In
January, 1813, he writes: "Mr. Gracie has moved into
his new house, and I find a very warm reception at
the fireside. Their country-seat was one of my strong-
MY SUMMER ACRE 433
holds last summer, as I lived in its vicinity. It is a
charming, warm-hearted family, and the old gentleman
has the soul of a prince." Could praise go further ?
Yet it was deserved, I am sure. Archibald Gracie
was one of New York's great merchants, and Oliver
Wolcott said of him : " He was one of the excellent
of the earth actively liberal, intelligent, seeking and
rejoicing in occasions to do good." Josiah Quincy,
who was entertained by him at his country-seat on
the East River, opposite Hell Gate, writes of the
place as beautiful beyond description, and says : " The
mansion is elegant, in the modern style, and the grounds
laid out with taste in gardens." The house stood
and still stands in an excellent state of preservation
on the East River, at Horn's Hook (sometimes called
Grade's Point and Rhinelander's Point), at the foot of
Eighty-ninth Street. It still looks out upon the whirl-
ing, foaming waters of Hell Gate ; its lawn still stretch-
es to the river; huge elms yet shade its ample porches,
and it is a landmark yet to those who navigate the
three channels of the Gate ; but it long since passed into
the hands of strangers, and its present possessors may
not know or care what ghosts of footsteps all unfor-
gotten by fame or tradition still linger regretfully
about its halls.
I hear at the door the step of the old colonel, and
I know he will drag me from my books to take what
he calls the medicine of fresh air and sunshine. He
asks me what I have been writing about, and when I
have read him a page or two, he exclaims, with charm-
ing frankness, " Nonsense ; why don't you tell of Gen-
eral Scott's dinner at the Gracie homestead, and of
Commodore Chauncey's country-box just above here,
28
434 MY SUMMER ACRE
and put a little soldiering and fighting in your letters.
I don't think much of steel-pens or goose-quills, either,
for that matter. If I had sixteen sons I would put
them all into the army every one, sir and make
them fight for bread and their country. I would, by
by Nebuchadnezzar, sir !"
I thanked Nebuchadnezzar for coming in at this
crisis and purring his approval of my visitor, but I
could not resist the chance to fire a shot. As he sat
down and took the cat in his lap and stroked its yel-
low coat, and did it gently with a touch that showed
a tender and deep humanity in his heart, I said,
" What a pity that your grandson should be a parson.
I must warn Nellie against putting her trust in any-
thing but a soldier!"
Nellie had entered the room without my seeing her,
and, as she laid her hand upon his arm, her face was
rosy and his was scarlet. He put the cat down gen-
tly, lifted a wrathful finger, and, with time only to ex-
claim, " Felix, I " was conveyed away in safety by
my daughter.
The cat and I had the laugh to ourselves. Nellie
and the old colonel think that I know nothing about
the young minister and her ladyship. I would like to
question Nebuchadnezzar, as I think he knows more
about it than I can guess.
MY SUMMER ACRE 435
CHAPTER IX
UNSOLVED PROBLEMS OF LIFE THE OLD POST-ROAD AND ITS HELL
GATE BRANCHES HOMES OF MERCHANT PRINCES MANHATTAN'S
BIGGEST TREE
THE old colonel advises me to buy a tub and sun
myself in it during these early days of autumn. He
found me this morning a perplexed philosopher. I
had been troubled by the unsolved problems of life.
My opposite neighbor, name and nativity unknown,
who lives in a shabby little frame-house, always runs
to his door when he hears the sturdy step of Bob, the
postman, turn the corner, and hails him as he passes
with an inquiry for letters. Nobody thinks of writing
to him. He has had but one letter this year, and yet
he would as soon think of omitting his breakfast as of
letting this ceremonial of inquiry pass. Why he does
it is a problem which puzzles me. I put it to the
postman, and he figured upon it thoughtfully for a
moment and then gave it up ; but he also gave it to
me as a bit of his experience that the people on his
route who seldom received a letter were always the
most anxious to learn whether the mail had brought
anything for them.
My cheery friend, the postman, found me sitting on
the front porch, under the shade of the honeysuckles
that threw a shadow on half the porch and have
clambered up to the gallery on the roof, and singled
out one missive of those that he handed me, and said,
436 MY SUMMER ACRE
" I have brought you a real letter, and no mistake, this
time." It was even so. Four sheets of letter-paper,
closely written, and from a friend who is the busiest
man of my acquaintance, though his years are almost
threescore and ten. It was a charming epistle, full of
news, and pervaded by his own personality. But he
also gave me a problem to solve. He had been able
to take a vacation of but three weeks, and on his re-
turn it had taken him three weeks more to put his
books and papers to rights again. Why is it so? he
asked me ; and then he made the assertion that if he
had been absent for three months it would have been
the work of three months afterwards to get everything
settled down again, and he left me to puzzle over the
problem. Rejecting the tub idea, the old colonel and
I took our chairs out upon the back porch, with the
swift waters leaping and sparkling at our feet, twenty
feet below the top of the bluff, and a late cat-bird call-
ing in the branches overhead, and talked over the fact
that we had learned so much and knew so little. We
spoke, as we so often do now, of our childhood, of our
school-days, and our playmates ; thinking silently as
we spoke, perhaps, of another childhood, a school yet
to come, and renewed companionships that had been
broken in the past. Our talk recalled a picture of the
past that had become almost forgotten.
It was of my grandmother the picture in my li-
brary of a dainty maiden in clinging robes and baby
waist, and with great sunny curls heaped high above
her unwrinkled forehead, is her portrait painted in the
day of her belleship in the later years of her life,
when her cap was her care and her knitting was her
comfort. " Felix/' she said, one day, as she stopped
HELL GATE FERRY
MY SUMMER ACRE 439
knitting to smooth down the long lace lappets of her
cap, " I have been thinking while you were at school
how little we learn here in threescore years, and yet
when we are children we expect to learn everything
by the time we are grown up. But we'll know it all
by-and-by, that's one comfort, and for a little while it
doesn't signify.'*
It was in the days when young ladies were habited
as my grandmother's portrait presents them, and gen-
tlemen of fashion wore the collars of their coats tucked
up under their ears and swathed their necks in volumi-
nous silk or muslin neckerchiefs, when among the el-
ders the queue was going slowly out of fashion, and
knee-breeches struggled to hold their own against the
more democratic trousers, that the glory of the Hell
Gate colony was at its height. The members had
their stately homes in the city, to and from which
they travelled in the chaise, or lumbering coach of
the period, or, as the gentlemen usually preferred, on
horseback.
At the time of which I write the Hell Gate Ferry
was at the foot of Eighty-sixth Street, opposite the
extreme northern end of Blackwell's Island, and there
was a road to it that started from a point just south
of Eighty-third Street. Below this, at Seventy-ninth
Street and Third Avenue, was what was known as
Odellville in my boyhood. It answered to the defini-
tion of a point, being without position or magnitude.
West of the road was Odell's grocery store a two-
story frame building, which yet stands, though hum-
bled by its brick and stone neighbors. The cottage
of " Granny " Gates, a niece of Gen. Horatio Gates,
200 feet distant, and on the other side of the post-road
440 MY SUMMER ACRE
which here passes between Second and Third avenues,
has been swept away ; but Pye's Folly, a row of brick
houses erected thirty years before this time, which
proved a ruinous investment, has survived its project-
or, though it has grown aged and shabby of aspect.
Connected with the main roadway to the ferry were a
number of branch roads, mostly shaded by rows of
trees, among which the Lombardy poplar was popu-
lar, which led to the country-seats of the gentlemen
who always spoke of their places as being on Hell
Gate. Commodore Chauncey's villa was south of
Eighty -fifth Street, and between Avenues A and B;
John Jacob Astor's on the south side of Eighty-eighth
Street, his farm extending between Avenues A and B
and Eighty-seventh and Eighty-ninth streets; Archi-
bald Grade's house was east of Avenue B, and north
of Eighty-eighth Street ; Nathaniel Prime's comforta-
ble homestead lay north of Eighty-ninth Street, and
west of Avenue A; and the farm-house of William
Rhinelander stood north of Ninety-first Street, over-
looking the bay, which then swept far in shore from
Horn's Hook, and looking out upon Mill Rock, and
the Frying Pan.
Two of these houses yet remain, and yesterday I
made a pilgrimage to their thresholds, and then sought
the sites of those others which had been swept to de-
struction by the tidal wave .of improvement. The
besom of the speculator is implacable. In a few
weeks the old house in which I live will be torn down,
and modern bricks fashioned into a tenement -house
will replace it. When I went into Riverside Park
yesterday one of its guardians told me that the old
brick mansion which stands in its enclosure, note-
MY SUMMER ACRE
441
worthy for its great hall ending in an entrance- door
at either side, is doomed. Thomas Addis Emmet
used to spend his summers here, and with Wash-
ington Irving was
a frequent guest
at the house of
Archibald Gracie,
where not infre-.
quently fifty guests
sat down to din-
ner. The site of
John Jacob Astor's
home is desolate.
A few aged and
half- withered
trees, some grassy
mounds and strag-
gling bushes, give
token that the
place was once in-
habited, but that is
all. It is a pity,
too. The house
I have a picture of
it before me is a
square frame build-
ing, with an exten-
sion in the rear.
The great door of
the hall had a win- MONUMENT TO THOMAS ADDIS EMMET
dow of correspond-
ing size above it, and two windows on either side. The
wide, low porch was supported by four pillars, which
442 MY SUMMER ACRE
reached to the roof, and the latter, peaked at the cen-
tre, had a single dormer-window in front. The lawn is
open in front towards the water, but on either side, and
at the rear, are trees of various kinds evergreens,
beeches, and elms. There is no pretension about the
house or lands, neither the display of the landscape-gar-
dener or the architect, but the house looks like a fitting
nest for the man who dreamed Astoria and penned it.
The fact is that the gentlemen of high-collared coats
built for comfort and hospitality. Two blocks away
is the country home of Nathaniel Prime, the great
banker of the firm of Prime, Ward & Sands, who
married a daughter of Comfort Sands, and when in
town lived in state at No. I Broadway. His country-
seat, which faces to the north-east, looking across
Hell Gate and up the East River, is a model of a sub-
urban homestead. Its broad porches at the front,
side, and rear were made to shelter its great hall and
wide rooms from the sun and the winds. The house,
which is two stories in height, but is made massive in
appearance by its abutting wings, is in an excellent
state of preservation, and is now one of the buildings
occupied by St. Joseph's Orphan Asylum. Yesterday,
as I passed, a score of merry lads were running across
the lawn, which stands high above the grade of the
street, shouting at their play. As I walked slowly up
the street and looked back at the peak of the roof,
marking the old-fashioned arched window in the cen-
tre of the garret and the quarter windows on either
side, I could have wished myself an orphan under its
shelter if only they would let me bring my pipe, two
of the cats, and The Boy !
Though the rural homestead of Archibald Gracie
I AND 3 BROADWAY IN 1828
still stands in much of its primitive strength and
comeliness, it may disappear at any time. The firm
of Archibald Gracie & Co. exists as it did a hundred
years ago, but the house in which Louis Philippe,
John Quincy Adams, Tom Moore, and Washington
Irving were guests of its founder long since passed
into other hands. Its surroundings are not attractive,
and a high board fence is an unpleasant feature, but
its grounds are still so spacious, and the memories of
those who were sheltered under its roof are yet so
tangible, that it is worth a walk on foot from the Bat-
tery to Horn's Hook to view it in the golden haze of
these autumnal days and hang the picture up in mem-
ory's gallery. Beautiful for situation, it stands on a
444 MY SUMMER ACRE
cape that juts out into the river, and its windows
command a view of Hell Gate and its rocks, the isl-
ands in the upper channel, Long Island's wooded
shores, the forests that hang above Oak Point, the
growing, throbbing streets of Harlem ; a hundred
flashing craft are spread before the eye, and nearer at
hand is a lawn that yet has the look of velvet, in
which seven great trees and a score of lesser ones
stand sentinel. Supreme among the group, a mon-
arch no less by right of his majestic growth than be-
cause of his two centuries of years, towers a mighty
cotton-wood, which measures fourteen feet in circum-
ference at the height of thirty -six inches from the
ground, and lifts itself up fifty feet from the earth be-
fore it sends out its branches. Its enormous dome,
symmetrical and beautiful, makes a landmark which
every man who sails the waters of the East River
would miss and mourn if storm uprooted it or axe
were laid at its root. The house large, roomy, fenced
round with wide porches that take away from its
size rather than add to it looks as if it might readily
accommodate a hundred guests, and were prepared
to-day to welcome them. Eighty years ago it was
the home of an American prince, whose fleet of clip-
pers with their red and white signals was known in
every sea only a merchant, but hospitable as a king.
It seems strange to read in a city newspaper of 1809,
published when Mobile was a Spanish settlement, and
there was but one steamboat in all the world, and fash-
ionable New York dined at three o'clock, the an-
nouncement that Archibald Gracie, of Mobile, has
taken into partnership his son Archibald, and that the
business will be conducted under their joint names.
MY SUMMER ACRE 445
In the son's veins, through his maternal ancestry,
mingled the blood of the last colonial Governor of
Connecticut, and of Matthew Rogers, who owned and
occupied the unique building at No. 8 State Street,
facing the Battery.
I sit here thinking of those trees on historic Horn's
Hook trees which stood there when, in 1760, Jacob
Walton, a colonial merchant prince, brought hither to
his elegant country-seat his fair young bride, Polly
Cruger, daughter of Henry Cruger, the colleague of
Burke as Member of Parliament from Bristol ; when,
fifteen years later, Gen. Charles Lee ordered the house
to be vacated, and made it his own headquarters ;
when, a year later, the British moved up the Long
Island shore to Hallett's Point, after the disastrous
battle on Brooklyn Heights, and opened a heavy
artillery fire upon the American works and garrison
at Horn's Hook, and which have witnessed all the
changes since. How long have these mute witnesses
of the country's glory and the city's growth to live?
It was unpardonable stupidity that did not seize this
choicest of all points on the East River for a public
park ; it will be the height of cruelty to slay these
surviving monarchs of the primeval woods that once
covered this part of the Island of Manhattan ! Who
will dare wield the axe to kill this king of all our trees
the last of the giant cotton-woods? In answer to
this question comes a memory of the first school that
I attended, when but a mite of a boy. The teacher
was scholarly, but eccentric. He should have been a
college professor, but was such a child himself that he
taught a primary school. One of the larger boys had
cut into and partly girdled a maple in front of the
446
MY SUMMER ACRE
school -house, and how the boy did catch it! The
single sentence of reproof has always remained with
me : " The boy that would injure a shade-tree would
kill a man." I used to make light of the old peda-
gogue's verdict ; now I am afraid that I believe it.
The old colonel, into whose protecting lap Martha
Washington has climbed, vows that he will slay with
his own hand the wretch who dares thrust his steel
into the great Gracie tree.
A DUTCH HOUSE
MY SUMMER ACRE 447
CHAPTER X
A GLANCE AT HARLEM THE LESSON OF THE WOODPECKER A GREAT
MILL-POND THAT HAS DISAPPEARED THE OTTER TRACK AND
BENSON'S CREEK GRIST-MILLS ON THIRD AVENUE OLD DUTCH
HOMES AND NAMES
THERE was a woodpecker at work on the big
cherry-tree this morning. For an hour he hammered
away, with an industry which ought to have brought
him a good breakfast. His figure flashed from one
side of the trunk to the other with such rapidity that
we watched with wonder to see where the silver fret-
ting of his wings and the sheen of his glossy black
back would next show themselves. A busy little fel-
low be, who paid no attention to the idle crew that
gazed at him in delight, but thrust his bill into worm-
holes with an accuracy that never made a mistake. It
was my daughter Nellie who descried him first. She
took me by the button-hole as I pushed my chair
back from the breakfast - table, marched me out on
fhe porch, and, pointing to the woodpecker, bade me
behold my prototype. " See," she said, " how he delves
into dark places and digs out their hidden treasures,
happy when he has brought to light the secrets that
are hidden there." I pleaded guilty, with a smile,
and took off my hat to the speckled delver.
Yes, mine has been the life of the little bird this
summer, and I am loath to leave my ancient home-
stead and pause from its antiquarian studies. An-
44$ MY SUMMER ACRE
other year and the house that has known fourscore
years of the joys and sorrows of life will be levelled
to the ground, the axe will be hurled against the heart
of these old trees, my garden will disappear, and on
the real estate map of the city a red parallelogram
will take the place of the yellow one of to-day, to de-
note to the inquirer that a row of brick tenements oc-
cupies the site of the quaint old frame-house by the
river. So I linger, while it is yet possible and while
the golden glory of these autumnal days makes life
under the scarlet leaves of tree and vine a luxury,
over the landscape whose forgotten beauties still exist
for me. I trace out the brooks and ponds, headlands
and meadows, country-seats and farm-houses, hills and
bits of forest of the olden time, and for the moment
they are real. I call up the sturdy old Dutch farmer
in voluminous waistcoats and leathern breeches, the
bewigged and belaced English colonist who brought
with him the roystering ways of the mother-coiwitry,
and made the valley of the Harlem resound with the
cry of the fox-hunt ; the soldiers in the scarlet of the
King and the patriot battalions in buff and blue ; the
merchant princes and jurists and men of leisure, whose
country residences once crowned every hillock in view;
the mill-pond and creek in the distance ; the little ru-
ral village, and its whitewashed church surmounted by
a gilded weathercock; the stage-coach, horse -ferry,
and rustic tavern all these are hammered out by the
bill of the literary woodpecker. It is not much in
the eyes of a financier, perhaps, but then he would
not think much of the busy little bird either, and
the latter, though not so large as the hawk or a
buzzard, is as merry as the day is long. What more
MY SUMMER ACRE 449
could he ask? He has his wings and his twig, and he
finds his worm when he wants it. For anything be-
yond, he is wise enough not to bother his head.
It is always worth while to go to the bottom of a
hole and find the nugget that lies there. I have been
looking up the meaning of the old Dutch designation
" hook," which occurs so frequently on the ancient
maps of the Island of Manhattan, and which yet sur-
vives in Tubby Hook on the North River. That pro-
found work, entitled the Goot Woordenboeck, published
at Rotterdam in 1658, says that the word " hoeck," or
" hook," signifies a nook, a corner, or an angle. The
ancient maps of the Hell Gate district locate Hoorn's
Hook at the foot of Eighty -ninth Street, and Van
Kenlen's Hook at the southern bank and outlet of
the Harlem River. The latter took its name from
the family who pre-empted and occupied the 200 acres
south of the Harlem and extending to Fifth Avenue.
Although a landed proprietor by the name of Horn
purchased a portion of the property in the neighbor-
hood of Eighty-ninth Street, the locality did not de-
rive its title from him, but, like New Amsterdam and
New Haarlem, it was baptized in memory of Hoorn
in Holland, where Siebert Claesen, a wealthy burgher
of New Amsterdam in the days of Governor Peter
Stuyvesant, had passed many pleasant days, and whose
fragrant memory he desired to perpetuate.
As early as 1636 the pioneers of Dutch civilization
made their appearance in the fertile plains at the foot
of the rocky height to which they gave the name of
Slang Berge, or Snake Hill, now called Mount Morris.
There had been an Indian village at this point, and
the Indians had given to the land the musical name
4$0 MY SUMMER ACRE
Muscoota, signifying the flats or meadows, and the
river was designated by the same title. Isaac de
Rasieres, who was secretary of the Dutch West India
Company in 1628, gives the first written description
of the locality, and says that while towards Hell Gate
and to the westward it was rocky and full of trees,
towards the north end it had good bottom-lands.
The mind of the Hollander was instinctively drawn
to what the early colonists called the flats of the Isl-
and of Manhattan, and the region was all the more
attractive because it was bordered by salt meadows
traversed at many points by creeks and kills. Under
the shadow of Snake Hill they laid out a village. Its
present spires and shipping, its railways and colossal
structures of brick and stone, form part of the land-
scape from my windows, but they do not obliterate
the woods and fields, the old Dutch homesteads and
farm-houses, the streams and inlets now vanished but
upon which my eyes looked more than forty years
ago, and whose remembrance is as vivid as the city
home of my childhood.
When the present plan of city streets was adopted,
eighty years since, the eastern post -road, which di-
verged from the present Third Avenue at Eighty-
third Street and crossed Fourth Avenue at Eighty-
fifth Street, passed the corner of Observatory Place
and intersected the Middle Road at Ninetieth Street.
Observatory Place was intended as a square for a
reservoir, and extended from Eighty-ninth to Ninety-
fourth Street, and from Fifth to Sixth Avenue. The
road then passed in a northerly direction between the
latter avenues, and crossed a small bridge over the
head of Benson's tide mill-pond, near One Hundred
V \
MY SUMMER ACRE 453
and Fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, and thence swept
a little west of Third Avenue, through the village of
Harlem, which was located between One Hundred
and Sixteenth and One Hundred and Twenty-fifth
streets, and so on to the Harlem River. From Ninety-
second Street there was a road which crossed over to
Kingsbridge Road, striking it a little to the west of
the present Eighth Avenue at Myer's Corner, about
One Hundred and Thirty-first Street. Another lane,
called the Harlem Road, passed from the village over
the Harlem flat to the north of Snake Hill, and made
a junction with the Kingsbridge Road at Myer's Cor-
ner. These roads were all laid out in the seventeenth
century, at which time also the diverging road to
Hoorn's Hook was cut through the woods that then
lined the banks of the river. The land must have
been exceedingly fair to look upon then, for Governor
Wouter Van Twiller, who had laid hands upon the
Island of Tenkeins opposite, now known as Ward's
Island, to appropriate it, as early as 1633 pre-empted
all the lands bordering on Hell Gate Bay which had
obtained the name of Otter-spoor or otter track, from
the number of otters with which it abounded.
Through this tract swept a creek which was 100
feet wide at its mouth and 20 feet deep, and was navi-
gable for half a mile or more inland. It emptied into
Hell Gate Bay near One Hundred and Seventh Street,
thence stretching westwardly up and beyond Fifth
Avenue, one of its sources being in Central Park, and
the other, a rippling brook, fed by crystal springs that
nestled at the foot of the rocks in Morningside Park.
The spring in Central Park was known as "Montanye's
fonteyn," and still exists in its perennial freshness
454 MY SUMMER ACRE
The curious wayfarer might find it in its original basin
on the line of One Hundred and Fifth Street and to
the west of the Sixth Avenue line, but the basin has
been covered up, and a hidden pipe leads the waters
to the foot of the hill where, in a " hook " or angle of
the rocks, it bubbles forth as merrily as of old, and
leaps along its ancient bed until it falls into the waters
of Harlem Lake. Originally known as Montanye's,
the next century gave the name Benson's Creek to
this stream, and on later maps it appeared as Harlem
Creek until obliterated by the march of the spade
and the hod.
The Dutch had hardly begun to farm the fertile
glebe of Harlem before one of their number saw the
advantages of the stream, and proposed to the good
burghers to help him in building a bridge. But they
deliberated long, and doubtless smoked up several
hogsheads of tobacco before they could see their way
clearly to such a venture. At last they seemed to
have organized a sort of trust, or " combine," in the
line of public improvements. Not to do things by
halves, they determined that Harlem should have a
grist-mill, a tavern, and a ferry, and they proceeded to
put the enterprise in operation. The dam for the
mill was built in 1667. It crossed the creek a little
to the west of Third Avenue at One Hundred and
Ninth Street, and at its northern end stood the grist-
mill. There was a stone bridge at Third Avenue, and
another crossed Mill Creek at One Hundred and
Eleventh Street and Fifth Avenue, the mill-pond ex-
tending this distance back and giving its name to the
principal brook that fed it. In 1730 Derick Benson
became owner of the property, having removed hither
MY SUMMER ACRE
455
from Greenwich Village the Bassen Bouwery of
old Dutch days, where dwelt the Mandevilles, Van
Schaicks, Woertendykes, and Somerindykes of Hol-
land ancestry. For some years the mill had fallen
into disuse, and in October, 1738, the town granted
permission to Samson Benson, his brother, to erect a
mill with a dam and dwelling-house.
COURTNEY'S (CLAREMONT) FROM HARLEM TOWER
During the War of the Revolution these buildings,
which were occupied by the military, who had a for-
tification at Benson's Point (the southern bank of
the creek, known later as Rhinelander's Point), were
burned to the ground. After the war was ended
Benjamin Benson built a new mill and a substantial
stone dwelling on the Mill Camp farm, as it was then
called. In 1827, when the Harlem Canal was begun,
45 6 MY SUMMER ACRE
that speculative enterprise, gigantic for those days,
which was to unite the waters of the Hudson and
East rivers by a navigable canal from Benson's Point
to Harlem Cove, now Manhattanville, the mill, a frame
building three stories in height, was taken down, but
the dwelling-house was spared until 1865. I well re-
member the canal, with its stone embankments and
locks, which was extended beyond Fourth Avenue be-
fore it was abandoned ; and, indeed, the man of forty
can recall it, and picture to himself how oddly ap-
peared this bit of costly enterprise that crossed deso-
late marshes and barren wastes of ground. It has
disappeared now, and a busy city covers up all trace
of canal and marsh. The stranger would never dream
that the snipe had so recently teetered on the site of
yonder tall houses, and that it was only the whistle of
the elevated train that finally drowned his cry. But
there are old men who remember the quiet mill-pond
and its overhanging willows, the dusty roadway lined
with beeches and elms, the stone bridge and the salt-
marshes on either side, and out towards Hell Gate
Bay and Horn's Hook the beautiful country-seats
which diversified the landscape of river, rapids, mead-
ows, and islands.
On either side of Benson's Creek, in the time of
which I write, were stately country-seats which faced
the mouth of the stream, and whose lawns stretched
down to its waters. One' of these, the Bayard house,
still stands on One Hundred and Tenth Street, be-
tween First and Second avenues. It is almost hidden
by gigantic gas-tanks at the front and rear. Yet it
still looks towards the stream that is no more, and has
strangely outlived it. Now, after nearly a century of
MY SUMMER ACRE 457
life, it retains much of its old look, and its chimneys
at either end, its shingled roof, wide porch, and the
broken slant of its galleried roof, proclaim its antiqui-
ty. Lifted high above the street, something of its
once magnificent lawn is still left, and a cotton-wood
and elm, each seemingly older than the house they
guard, stand on either side as mute witnesses to a
splendor that has been lost forever.
I do not know what name, if any, this ancient man-
sion bore in the days of its glory, but there were some
names emblazoned on the old Dutch homes of Har-
lem that deserve to be rescued from oblivion. One
would not suspect the Holland tradesmen and naviga-
tors of a tendency to poetry, yet these sterling old
souls had it in their hearts, if not on their tongues.
They may have cheated the Indians, sworn at the
Yankees, and drunk heavily of schnapps on the Strand,
but when they came back to their boweries the spirit
of home brooded under their ample vests. Zegendal,
" the vale of blessing," was the name one sturdy set-
tler in Harlem bestowed upon the homestead he had
made, and another called his glebe Vredendal, " the
vale of repose," or quiet. It is a pity that some of
these names could not have been preserved ; a greater
pity still that the old Indian names which the aborigi-
nes of the Island of Manhattan bequeathed us have
almost passed into oblivion. No one remembers that
the Harlem River was called the Muscoota ; Tib-
bett's Brook is usurping the name Mosholu ; Spuy-
ten Duyvil has superseded Schorakapok, or Spouting
Spring, and the land around Hell Gate Bay no longer
recalls its Indian designation, Conykeekst the home
of the rabbit. Through the haze of these autumnal
458
MY SUMMER ACRE
days I look out upon fields on the farther shore in
which the shocks of corn stand like wigwams of the
red man. The corn will be gathered to-morrow, and
the winds from the north will sweep away the golden
mists of to-day. I am very sorry for the Indian, but,
really, this beautiful island is a little too good for him,
even were he all that Fenimore Cooper has painted
him.
HEAD OVER WINDOW OF THE WALTON HOUSE
MY SUMMER ACRE 459
CHAPTER XI
RAMBLES AROUND HARLEM IN MY SCHOOL-BOY DAYS EARLY SET-
TLERS AND THEIR HOMES AN INTERIOR VIEW THE STAGE-COACH
ERA A VILLAGE ALDERMAN OF THE OLDEN TIME
" FOR what is the City of Haarlem famous?"
" For its great organ the largest in the world."
These words were certainly not spoken. They
came back to me from the mists of half a century
ago, and were the echo of my thoughts^ Master Felix
and I were sitting in the library. He was studying
his geography lesson, and I was reading about the
pioneers who established a " Nieuw Haarlem " on the
flats of Manhattan. There may have been an unseen
connection between these two facts, but I maintain
that no sound was audible. The echoed question and
answer brought before me a little urchin in round-
about and trousers, with a ruffle around his neck,
standing with his class in a room which occupied the
entire front of the second story in a little brick house
on Franklin Street. Desks for a score of boys were
strung closely together against the front and sides of
the room. At the rear was a mahogany table, behind
which sat the teacher in his arm-chair. On the table
were books, bunches of quill-pens, and sand-boxes for
the steel-pen was an object of prejudice and blotting-
paper was unknown together with forfeited apples,
cakes, fly-boxes constructed of paper, balls, and mar-
460 MY SUMMER ACRE
bles, and certain flat rulers and rounded rattans, which
were used interchangeably, according as discipline was
administered to the palm of the hand or other more
robust portions of the juvenile anatomy. In those
days there was no revised version of the Scriptures,
and our teacher, who was a son of the granite hills of
New Hampshire, and likewise superintendent of the
Sunday-school attached to the Presbyterian Church
on Murray Street, was a devout believer in King Sol-
omon's advice about sparing the rod and spoiling the
child.
It is a pleasure to note the love for their city which
lies in the hearts of the old sons of New York, and
which seems not only to survive many other emo-
tions, but to grow deeper with advancing years. More
letters with a word of sympathy in his pursuits have
come to Felix Oldboy than he has had time to ac-
knowledge, and most grateful among these have been
kindly messages from some of my old school-fellows.
The latest of these came from the Union Club, written
by a gentleman of scholarly tastes and civic eminence,
whom every New Yorker would recognize were I to
write his name, in which he says : " I entered the
school of J. J. Greenough, as a student, in May, 1839,
more than fifty years ago, then at No. 399 Greenwich
Street, near Jay, on the east side of the street, and re-
mained three years, when I entered the university
grammar-school. In May, 1840, Mr. Greenough re-
moved his school to No. 18 Walker Street, and the
next year to Franklin Street. Of those who were
students at the school during my term I know of only
three living : George C. Wetmore, Theodore Wet-
more, and George De Forest Lord. I have many
MY SUMMER ACRE 463
pleasant recollections of those school -days, it being
the first boys' school that I attended. I saw much of
Mr. Greenough after I left his school; he always felt
very kindly towards me, and on my departure pre-
sented me with a recommendation to a new school,
handsomely engrossed, which I have preserved. He
also gave me his portrait in oil, taken many years be-
fore, which I now have. This I looked at this morn-
ing to refresh my memory of the old days." It is a
pleasure to read such a letter. As I hold it in my
hand and look back to the past, the rod of which I
stood in awe changes into an olive-branch in the hand
of my ancient teacher, and his shade smiles as pleas-
antly upon me as if I had never gleefully plotted his
discomfiture.
But, with the garrulousness of a seventeenth - cen-
tury preacher, whom I shall presently have need to
quote, I am wandering from my text. Harlem was
always to me, in my younger days, the land of delight-
ful mystery, the ultima thule of the Island of Man-
hattan, a region of hill -side and forest, of rocky de-
files and marshy meadows, of brooks, in whose head
waters the sunfish and perch abounded and at whose
mouths the succulent flounder could be caught, of
pleasant shade under the cotton-wood, oak, and tulip
trees, of buttercups, daisies, and gentians, of farm and
village life as contrasted with city roar and rumble.
A picnic in this region was the acme of school-boy
pleasure, especially if it included a trip on the rail-
road, which slowly crept through the deep passes cut
through the rocks at Yorkville, stopping at Harsen's
cross-road and at the middle road to drop its pas-
sengers, and landing, finally, after what seemed a long
464 MY SUMMER ACRE
ride, at lonely Harlem. The nineteenth century has
not gone out without witnessing vestibule trains, with
modern hotel accommodations on wheels ; but this
luxury of travel will never bring me the same amount
of pleasure that I used to extract from the barracks
on wheels of forty years ago, the horse-hair seats, nar-
row windows with small panes of glass, and flat, un-
ventilated roofs. Uncomfortable though they were,
they were to me as the enchanted carpet of the Ara-
bian Nights, and no similar amount of enjoyment
could be purchased elsewhere for a shilling.
History represents the early Dutch settlers as a
phlegmatic race who had always an eye to the main
chance, but I shall never hesitate to express the opin-
ion that they had also an eye to the beautiful, even if
poetry was made secondary to pelf. It must also be
remembered that many of the men who first came to
New Amsterdam were Huguenot refugees, who had
kept up, during their temporary exile in the lowlands
of Holland, a vivid remembrance .of the mountains
and meadows of la belle France. The pioneer settler
in Harlem, Henri De Forest who dwelt but one short
year in the home he had built under the shadow of
Snake Hill, and then was called to enter the house
not made with hands was a native of France, and of
the reformed faith, and several of his colleagues had
the same ancestry. I do not wonder at their enthu-
siasm for the place they selected for their new colony.
If they climbed Snake Hill and looked abroad, I do
not wonder that they were enchanted with the pros-
pect. Three rivers glanced in the sunshine before
them ; mountain, forest, and plain were parted by
small ponds and innumerable brooks, and at their
MY SUMMER ACRE 465
feet, sheltered by two ranges of hills from the blasts
of the north-westerly winds, lay a rich alluvial belt
that promised a hundred-fold return to their labor as
husbandmen. They felt that it was good to be there;
and building better than they knew, they hewed out
the rafters that were to be the foundations of the
magnificent new city of to-day that covers the sites of
their farms of the olden time.
Yesterday I climbed Mount Morris, and changed as
the scene has become by the improvements which in
two centuries have blotted out much of the ancient
loveliness of the landscape, I felt like challenging any
other city in the world to produce its equal. There
sparkled the East River and Hell Gate, with their
setting of emerald islands and wooded banks ; there
the waters of the Harlem, spanned by aqueduct and
bridge, wound along until they seemed to sink into
the base of the distant, purple Palisades ; there again
rose the wooded heights of Fordham on one side and
of Inwood and Fort Washington on the other ; and the
rocky ramparts of Morningside Park, with the teem-
ing city below, while the hills and trees and meadows
of Central Park broke the monotony of bricks and
mortar and made a pleasant resting-place for the eye.
All around me, at my feet, rose the magnificent public
buildings and homes of a city that had grown up in a
decade built as by the magic of a day the city of
Nieuw Haarlem; indeed, but a city of which the timid
projectors of the village on the flats never dreamed.
Yet let us not be surprised that they did not dream
of it, when the man who projected and built the Erie
Canal De Witt Clinton, New York's greatest mayor
deemed it an improbability that the land at this
466 MY SUMMER ACRE
end of the Island of Manhattan could be built up in
city fashion during the present century.
The garrulous preacher of the seventeenth century,
to whom reference has been made, was a schismatic
of the Labadist persuasion, who, like other fanatics,
believed that all the salt of the earth was confined
to his mite of a sect. He made one of his visits to
Haarlem in the October days of 1679, and he de-
scribes the Dutch minister, who sometimes preached
there, and whom he did not fellowship in doctrine, as
" a thick, corpulent person, with a red, bloated face,
and of a very slabbering speech." If we are to credit
this apostle of heresy, the people of the village spent
much of their time in drinking rum and carousing;
but even this narrow-minded man could not help be-
ing impressed by the natural beauty of his surround-
ings. "A little eastward of Nieuw. Haarlem," he
writes in his journal, " there are two ridges of very
high rocks, with a considerable space between them,
displaying themselves very majestically, and inviting
all men to acknowledge in them the majesty, gran-
deur, power, and glory of the Creator, who has im-
pressed such marks upon them." And he rounds off
his description with the assertion that the grapes
were as good as any he had tasted " in the Father-
land," and that " the peaches were the best he had
ever eaten."
A later traveller, writing a quarter of a century after-
wards, gives us a glimpse of the interior of one of the
homes of Harlem, and, being a woman, her eyes ob-
serve narrowly. "The inside of them" (meaning the
houses), she writes, " are neat to admiration ; the
wooden work, for only the walls are plastered and
MY SUMMER ACRE 467
the sumers [the central beam] and gist [joist] are
plained and kept very white scowr'd, as so is all the
partitions made of Bord. The fireplaces have no
Jambs, as ours have, but the backs run flush with the
walls, and the Hearth is of Tyles and is as farr out
into the Room at the Ends as before the fire, which
is generally Five foot in the lower rooms ; and the
piece over where the mantle tree should be is made
as ours with Joyner's work and, as I suppose, is fast-
ened to the iron rodds inside. The House where the
Vendue was had Chimney Corners like ours, and they
and the Hearth were laid with the finest tile that I
ever see, and the staircases laid with white tile, which
is ever clean and so are the walls of the Kitchen which
had a Brick floor." The tiles in the staircase were set
into the wall, forming a continuous border to the up-
per line of the stairs, as can still be seen in some of
the old Dutch houses in the interior, and notably in
the old Coeyman homestead on the bank of the upper
Hudson.
I have said that the growth of New York has far
outstripped even the most sanguine expectations of
De Witt Clinton, and I read this in the report made
by the commissioners he appointed to lay out the
streets and roads of the city under the act of 1807
Gouverneur Morris, Simeon De Witt, and John Ruth-
erford. In laying out the streets they made provision
for a parade-ground for the militia, to extend from
Twenty-third to Thirty-fourth Street, and from Third
to Seventh Avenue, as well as for other smaller parks ;*
*It was at the suggestion of Hon. James Harper, when Mayor of
New York, and under his influence, that Madison Square was laid out
as it now exists. L.
468 MY SUMMER ACRE
and in their report to Mayor Clinton, in 1809, they
apologize for doing so, and add : " It may be a sub-
ject of merriment that the commissioners have pro-
vided space for a greater population than is gathered
at any spot this side of China. They have, in this re-
spect, been governed by the shape of the ground. It
is not improbable that considerable numbers may be
collected at Harlem before the high hills to the south-
ward of it shall be built upon as a city ; and it is im-
probable that, for centuries to come, the grounds north
of Harlem flat will be covered with houses. To have
come short of the extent laid out might therefore
have defeated just expectations; and to have gone
further might have furnished material to the perni-
MCGOWAN'S PASS IN 1860
cious spirit of speculation." The ghosts of the highly
respected citizens who penned these words must be
mightily dumfounded at the city that stretches up from
the Battery to the Harlem River, leaps across that
MY SUMMER ACRE 469
stream on wings of steam, and is rapidly striding tow-
ards the classic Bronx.
As designed by Mr. John Randel, the city surveyor
under Clinton, Harlem was to have two parks. One
of these, Harlem Square, was laid out between One
Hundred and Seventeenth and One Hundred and
Twenty-first streets and Sixth and Seventh avenues,
on the common lands of the city. The other, to be
known as Harlem Marsh Square, was laid out on the
commissioners' plan from One Hundred and Sixth to
One Hundred and Ninth Street, and from Fifth Ave-
nue to the East River at Benson's Point. It con-
tained nearly seventy acres, and until the canal at this
point was projected, was considered the best and
most healthful means of disposing of Harlem Creek
and its adjacent marshes, whenever the growth of the
village should demand the obliteration of the mill-dam
and stream. And hereabouts, I must not omit to say,
was the home of the McGowns, who gave their name
(written in history as McGowan) to the famous rocky
pass, still traceable in the upper part of Central Park,
through which the troops of Washington sent the red-
coats flying at the battle of Harlem Plains. Mr. An-
drew McGown, the famous old Harlem Democrat, fa-
ther of Judge A J McGown, was fond of sailing on
the waters of the East River, and kept his yacht at
t his residence, which stood at the foot of One Hundred
and Ninth Street. He had a canal cut through the
marshes to the foot of his lawn, to enable him to have
his yacht brought up close to the house, and it re-
mained open until quite recently, when it had to be
filled in to sustain the onward march of improvement.
The McGown family originally came from Scotland,
WORKS AT MCGOWAN'S PASS, WAR OF 1812
and settled in Harlem a number of generations ago.
In the days of '76 Daniel McGown, father of Andrew
McGown, resided at the homestead in McGown's
Pass, about where Mount St. Vincent Hotel now is
at One Hundred and Sixth Street and Sixth Avenue.
After the gallant action on Harlem Plains, where the
Americans for two days successively drove back the
British troops, sending them whirling below Yorkville,
Lord Howe moved up his entire army from the city
to retrieve the disaster. The advance-guard was the
Hessian brigade. They stopped at the McGown home-
stead, and found that the only male person at home
was this child of twelve years Andrew McGown
whose father was in Washington's army. The boy
was pressed into service to guide the column of mer-
cenaries against the American camp. Quick-witted
and patriotic, he gave no sign that he was other than
pleased, but he led the Hessians a merry dance over
MY SUMMER ACRE 471
hill and marsh and meadow, down to the North River,
near the present Riverside Park, while the American
forces were leisurely taking themselves out of the
way and camping behind their intrenchments at Fort
Washington. A boy that day was the salvation of
his country.
It was by such a spirit as this little lad's that inde-
pendence was achieved and the corner-stone of the
country's prosperity was laid. We need a little more
of it in these days of Irish-American, German-Ameri-
can, and other un-American mixtures, when it is made
a political crime to call one's self an- American sim-
ply, or to act or vote as such, and when an eloquent
imported preacher proclaims that there are no Ameri-
cans except the Indians. The boys and the men who
fought in the Revolution were the fathers of the race,
and the women who suffered in their absence, and
sustained these heroes by their patriotism, were the
mothers. When they are forgotten, or when we cease
to honor them, it will be near the hour of sunset in
our land.
Fifty or sixty years ago, when the only passenger
conveyance between Harlem and New York was by
Dingledine's stage, which left the corner of One Hun-
dred and Twenty -fifth Street and Third Avenue at
seven o'clock in the morning and reached Park Row,
opposite the City Hall, shortly before ten o'clock,
returning at 3 P.M., the stage used to carry up and
down half a dozen gentlemen, then young, but after-
wards distinguished. Among them were Judge D. P.
Ingraham, grandson of Daniel Phoenix, an eminent
and wealthy citizen, who was City Treasurer, father
of the present Judge Ingraham ; Edgar Ketchum, af-
472 MY SUMMER ACRE
terwards Register in Bankruptcy; Alderman Charles
Henry Hall, Daniel Fanshaw, printer to the American
Tract Society, and Isaac Adriance. They have passed
away, full of honors as of years, leaving precious and
fragrant remembrance. The fare on the Dingledine
line was twenty-five cents. A few years later the stages
found that it paid to make hourly trips. At first they
used to leave from No. 21 Bowery, which was a sort
of country -hotel, with stables in the rear, but after-
wards they resumed their old stand at Park Row.
The fare at that time, as I well remember, was a
BULL'S HEAD TAVERN, ON THE SITE OF THE BOWERY THEATRE
shilling, and the ride usually gave the passengers exer-
cise enough for a week.
The first street paved in Harlem was One Hundred
and Twenty-ninth Street, and this improvement was
effected in 1832. The pavement, with flagged side-
ROSE STREET SUGAR-HOUSE
[As it appeared in 1892, just before it was demolished]
MY SUMMER ACRE 475
walks, extended from Third to Eighth Avenue. How
much of a public improvement this was may be
judged from the fact that at the time there were no
paved streets in New York north of Clinton Place and
St. Mark's Place, except a few in Greenwich Village.
It was due to the efforts of Alderman Hall, who also
caused both sides of the street to be set out with elms,
many of which, and some of gigantic stature, still re-
main to show how good deeds survive our dust. The
city had men for aldermen then. During the fearful
cholera season of 1832 it became the duty of Alder-
man Hall, with several of his colleagues, who with him-
self constituted the Board of Health, to visit the quar-
antine on Staten Island. It was a perilous duty, but
they did not hesitate. Within a fortnight all but
Alderman Hall had died of the epidemic. Two of
the alderman's brothers Jonathan Prescott Hall and
David P. Hall were famous lawyers of the olden
time, and the three names deserve a place in the city's
pantheon when it shall be built.
The old cotton -wood on the Gracie lawn is the
largest tree on the Island of Manhattan, and I had
thought it the largest in the city limits, but opposite,
a lonely sentinel on the marshy point of Ward's Isl-
and, is a venerable cotton-wood that is seventeen feet
in girth at a point three feet from the ground. Who
planted these giants? It was the Laird of Dumbie-
dikes who, when he lay dying, said to his son and
heir : " Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may
be aye sticking in a tree ; it will be growing, Jock,
when ye're sleeping." And how much of human nat-
ure was there in his next words : " My father tauld me
sae, forty years sin', but I ne'er fand time to mind
476 MY SUMMER ACRE
him." Our Harlem alderman found the time, and I
have no doubt that as he now looks up into the
branches of the tree of life by the side of that other
river, he thinks of the little elms he stuck into the
ground hard by our river's waves, and is glad that he
planted them.
TO BE SOLD,
ATVendue, onTuefday the I2th inft,
at the Houfe of Mr John Williams*
near Mr Lifpenard's : A Leafc from Tri-
nit/Church, for Old John's Land, for 12
Years to come . ? *
AN OLD ADVERTISEMENT
MY SUMMER ACRE 477
CHAPTER XII
INDIAN RAIDS AND MASSACRES A ROLL OF HONOR THE OLD DUTCH
CHURCH ST. ANDREW'S PARISH DAYS OF PESTILENCE AND DEATH
MY comrade and companion, Nebuchadnezzar, the
great yellow cat who is the pride of the household,
went on the war-path this morning. From the library
window I watched his noiseless, stealthy tread ; his am-
bush behind the lilac roots ; his patient, moveless gaze,
and then his sudden spring upon the prey ; his up-
lifted claws, the torture of his victim, and the final
process of scalping, which left the rat without a head.
Presently the victor strutted proudly in, with tail up-
lifted like a banner and a grim smile of satisfaction
about the jaws, and then I felt him rubbing his sleek
body against my legs with a purring hymn of triumph.
It was a genuine picture from nature, and, as it was
unfolded, I could readily see whence the red man had
drawn his habit of patient endurance and methods of
warfare. Had I been a Brahmin, I might have be-
held in Nebuchadnezzar the transmigrated soul of
Massasoit or Philip of Pokanoket.
I had intended to sit down and write of the streets
and people of Harlem village, but my cat has set me
thinking of the days when the Indians were a dream
of terror to the early settlers under the shadow of
Snake Hill and upon Hell Gate Bay, and of the
doughty pioneers who returned from work to find
4?8 MY SUMMER ACRE
their homes on the " otter tract " a heap of ashes, or
were slain, together with wife and children, on the
lands now traversed by railways and thickly sown
with enormous buildings. If the men of those dark
days, every one of whom seemed to have the soul of a
king in his rugged breast, could awake, what would be
their astonishment to see the city of palaces that has
risen from the isolated village cottages of a decade or
two ago, and what would stout Nicholas de Meyer say
to the luxurious homes that surround Mount Morris
Park, in one of which his lineal descendant, Mr. Joseph
O. Brown, the sage of Harlem, has his abode? As
little dreamed the parents of the first white child born
in New Amsterdam, in their thatched cottage hard by
the Battery, that its lineal descendant, Judge Charles
H. Truax, would live in a home in Harlem fit for a
nobleman, when that distant village would be almost
the centre of the city, and would honor the family
name upon the bench of justice. Time has seen many
changes, but few like those which have built up the
commercial metropolis of the western world.
It is passing strange that so little is known of the
Indians who inhabited the Island of Manhattan and
of their relations to the early settlers. Fenimore
Cooper has immortalized in romance the Delawares
and Iroquois of the interior regions of the colony,
but no poet or writer^ of romance has risen to em-
blazon the courage of the settlers who had to battle
for their homes in these fertile glades ; and the his-
torian has passed lightly over the bloody deeds by
which the savage took vengeance for his wrongs. In
reading the pages of history, one would be led to sup-
pose that the Dutch colonists, after purchasing the
MY SUMMER ACRE 479
island for a few dollars, with sundry trinkets and bot-
tles of veritable Dutch fire-water thrown in, had been
permitted to take quiet possession of the land and
push on their settlements without hinderance. The
truth was otherwise. The Indians had sold the land,
but reserved to themselves the right of hunting at
will and pursuing the game everywhere. It was their
means of livelihood, and when in time it came to in-
terfere with the farmer's methods of sowing and gath-
ering his crops, there was trouble. Their principal en-
campment was at Wickquaskeek, or " the birch-bark
country," in the forests which stretched down from
Inwood to Fort Washington, and from this camp
they took their right name. A haughty and proud
race, they kept much aloof, and had given no trouble
until Director Kieft attempted to levy a tax of corn,
furs, and wampum upon them. It was a most impolitic
measure, and as Montagne, one of the Harlem colo-
nists, said : " A bridge has been built, over which war
will soon stalk through the land." Hostilities followed,
and forty Indians were massacred one night in cold
blood at Corlear's Hook, some of whom were friendly
Mareekawaks, from Brooklyn. Retaliation came next.
The farms at Harlem were devastated ; Kuyter's bow-
erie v/as burned to the ground while the guard of sol-
diers were asleep in the cellar or underground hut,
and the settlers fled for protection to New Amster-
dam. A temporary truce was patched up, and then
hostilities broke out afresh. Pieter Beeck, who owned
the patent at Horn's Hook where the Gracie house
now stands was surprised while at work on his farm,
and, with his three workmen, was cruelly murdered.
Still the Indians were refused compensation for their
480 MY SUMMER ACRE
rights and privileges, and they announced their deter-
mination to expel the whites from the northern end
of the island. A foray of three days ensued in Sep-
tember, 1655, during which fifty settlers were slain, and
over one hundred, mostly women and children, were
carried into captivity. Hordes of armed savages swept
over the flats. Jochen Zuyter was slain at his bow-
erie ; later his wife fell a victim to the savages. Cor-
nelis Swits and Tobias Teunissen were killed, their
homes on the flats and their crops destroyed, their
families carried into captivity, and all the neighboring
settlements were swept away. The fury of the red
men led them also to cross the East River and carry
desolation up and down the Long Island shore. It
was a scene of wide-spread devastation, such as sick-
ened the hearts of the soldiers sent up from New
Amsterdam to bury the dead and protect the living,
and it went on growing in blood and blackness until
the director and council at New Amsterdam passed
an ordinance, in 1656, requiring isolated farmers to re-
move their families to the village, and to go out only
with armed parties to till their lands and gather their
crops.
England has her Abbey Battle Roll, on which her
proudest peer is prouder yet to find the family name
written, and Harlem should keep in similar remem-
brance the names of the stout-hearted pioneers, who
battled to the death for the very existence of the an-
cient village. The story of their struggle of twenty
years for existence, though it ended in failure, is a rare
record of heroism, and deserves more than the little
glimpse of sunshine which my pen lets in upon it.
Upon this roll of honor, in addition to those whom I
MY SUMMER ACRE 483
have named, I should enter the names of the De For-
ests, Van Keulens, Delavalls, Waldrons (headed by
stout old Resolved Waldron, the baron), Vermilyes,
Tourneurs, Dyckmans, Kortrights, Delamaters, Bus-
sings, and every pioneer who could be raised up from
the dim but glorious past of local history. Some
day the world around us will wake to the knowledge
that there is a vein of heroism which we now tread
underfoot, but that will be richly worth unfolding to
the light. The men who succeed are the men who
make history, but it is the men who do not succeed
that furnish most of the romance to life. It was the
pioneer whose fertile lands had been devastated by
the savage, and whose hearth-stone had been drenched
in the blood of women and children and their defend-
ers, that made the future village of Harlem possible,
and determined the authorities at New Amsterdam
to make it an armed outpost of this city, alike against
the wily savage and the unscrupulous Yankee.
The village was laid out on Church Lane, whose
grassy paths and air of rural repose, overhanging elms
and adjacent gardens, are still kept in the memories
of some old inhabitants of the plain as an exquisite
picture which can never be forgotten. The road fol-
lowed an old Indian trail to the Harlem River and
the ferry at Morrisania. If one should draw a straight
line from the north-eastern corner of One Hundred
and Nineteenth Street and Lexington Avenue to the
north-east corner of One Hundred and Twenty-third
Street and Second Avenue, and thence to the river,
it would pass through the centre of the old Harlem
Road or Church Lane. Half a block from the point
of departure it crossed the Eastern Post -road, into
4^4 MY SUMMER ACRE
which at One Hundred and Twenty -first Street and
Sylvan Place came the old Kingsbridge Road from
the north-west. The meeting of these roads made
what was known to the village folks as the Five Cor-
ners, where a market was established in 1807, and
where again in 1840 a law was passed for the erection
of a market-house and for the purposes of a public
square. The market was a failure, the city was neg-
lectful, and for years this land, occupying the half
block between Sylvan Place and Third Avenue, was
taken possession of by a " squatter," who paid no rent
to the city.
In Sylvan Place the antiquarian will find the only
surviving traces of the old Eastern Post-road, which
took up part of the little street and a large slice of the
block to the east of it. Old Church Lane and the
Kingsbridge Road also touched upon either corner of
the little street, but one may see in the trees which
stand in its roadway, and reach their lines out into the
blocks adjoining, plain traces of the double line of elms,
silver poplars, and willows through which the old stage-
coach to Boston used to plod its way. Along the Har-
lem Road, from One Hundred and Twentieth to One
Hundred and Twenty-third Street, and reaching back
six hundred feet or more to the north-west, lay the
lands of the Reformed Dutch Church, and at One Hun-
dred and Twenty-first Street and Third Avenue stood
the church which I remember as a boy, and which has
since been moved to a rear lot, and now faces upon
the street instead of the avenue. This was built in
1829. The original church edifice stood at the other
end of Church Lane, at One Hundred and Twenty-
fifth Street, about midway between Second and Third
MY SUMMER ACRE 487
avenues, where was also the old cemetery. The first
structure was of wood; the second, erected in 1685,
was of stone, and aspired to the dignity of an arched
door, steeple, and weathercock. William Hellaker,
of New York, contracted to build it for the sum of
750 guilders in wheat. According to the prevalent
Dutch custom of building houses, ships, and public
buildings as broad as they were long, in accordance
with the average physical proportions of the genuine
Knickerbocker, the contract says : " The size of the
church across either way is thirty-six Dutch feet."
There is no doubt that it appeared a thing of beauty
to all village eyes, when the gilded vane or weather-
cock, with the glittering ball on which it was perched,
and for which John Delamater had been credited nine
florins, was proudly raised to the top of the steeple,
and left there to decide for once and always any
dispute as to the way of the wind. Among the sub-
scribers I note the names of Tourneur, Dyckman,
Kortright, Bogert, Van Brevoort, and Geresolveert (Re-
solved) Waldron, for 100 florins each every man of
note in the colony for some substantial sum. The
total cost, in addition to work and material furnished
by the people, was 2600 guilders.
Everything went well in the new church until the
Leisler troubles of 1690, when the Harlem people nat-
urally took sides with the martyred Dutch governor,
who had been executed for his fidelity to the rights
of the people, and they cut loose from the brethren
of New Amsterdam to such an extent that Dominie
Selyns wrote to the classis of Old Amsterdam that the
Harlem people had run away with the idea that they
could live without ministers or sacraments. The breach
488 MY SUMMER ACRE
was soon healed, however, and the church grew strong
and prosperous. Until the organization of St. Mary's
Episcopal Congregation at Manhattanville, the Re-
formed Dutch Church at Harlem was the only church
of any denomination within the limits of Harlem,
which, as a separate village organization, comprised
the upper half of the Island of Manhattan, and held
to its boundary-lines (from the foot of Seventy-second
Street on the East River to the foot of One Hundred
and Twenty-fifth Street on the Hudson) with great
tenacity in all questions which concerned itself and
the city at the other end of the island.
There was a sturdy independence about these an-
cient Dutch and Huguenot pioneers, which occasion-
ally came to the surface in their church legislation.
At one time, in order to pay the salary of Jan la
Montagne, voorleser (that is, foresinger, who led the
singing and read the Bible in the church) and school-
master, the magistrates laid a tax upon the land. But
it came to nothing. The people objected to being
taxed for religious purposes. They had enough of
that in their old homes, and the French and Walloons
especially had suffered cruel treatment under this pre-
tence of tithes. The opposition proved effectual, and
a return was made to the old method of free-will offer-
ings, and with apparent success.
There was also a good deal of human nature in the
little settlement, and sometimes it involved disputes
that were difficult to arrange amicably. No sooner
had this matter of the foresinger been settled than
public excitement was raised to fever heat by the
refusal of several leading men to pay the prices as-
sessed by the pound-master. Horses belonging to Cor-
MY SUMMER ACRE 489
nelis Jansen, the innkeeper, to Resolved Waldron and
Adolph Meyer, oxen that were the property of David
Demarest and Jean le Roy, and hogs owned by Dela-
vall and Roloefsen, were found without a herder " upon
the bouwland " or cropping the herbage " in the gar-
den " belonging to the church, and straightway were
driven to the pound. The delinquents complained that
a raid had been made upon the Sabbath day, and de-
clined to pay the 74 florins exacted from them by way
of fines. It took a whole day's confab at the village
tavern, amid clouds of smoke and endless pots of beer,
to adjudicate the matter, and at the end the bill of
the worthy tapster was fully equal to the amount of
fines collected. Here is a copy of the bill paid by the
town :
Cornells Jansen, Credit :
Drank at the settlement of the fines, the 2$th day of FI. Kr.
October, 1671, at two bouts 34 o
Also for Mr. Arents, engaged at writing, 2 vans beer i 12
Further, after the settlement was concluded, also
drank 5 vans beer and I muts rum 4 10
40 2
It is not told who got the rum, but the secretary of
the conference was found physically equal to four
quarts of beer, the vaan being two quarts in measure
and the mutsje one gill.
As a boy I have a much more vivid remembrance
of the old Episcopal church of Harlem. On Ascension
Day, in the forties, Trinity School made its annual
excursion to this ancient Dutch burgh, and some of
us discovered that the church doors were unlocked,
and went in. It was a wooden building, of the then
49 MY SUMMER ACRE
favorite Grecian style of architecture, with Doric col-
ums in front, and a pepper-box steeple. Standing in
the block on Fourth Avenue, between One Hundred
and Twenty-seventh and One Hundred and Twenty-
eighth streets, it commanded in its earlier days a
magnificent view of Harlem and the East River, the
still unoccupied meadows by the water-side, the hills
beyond, the virgin islands beyond the mouth of the
Harlem, and the hills that rose on all sides in the dis-
tance, all as yet unmarked, save by scattered villas.
In the days when I first visited the church it was a
rural edifice, in a rustic village, and its atmosphere was
one of delicious repose. I recall the tables of the Ten
Commandments, the high pulpit, reached by stairways
at either side, the ample desk and little mahogany
" altar," so distinctive of the days when ritualism had
not as yet been resurrected by the Oxford Tracts.
But what most attracted my notice there was a marble
tablet on the wall to the memory of the first rector of
the church, George L. Hinton. A son of his, a boy of
the same name, was my school-mate then, and, no
doubt, stood at my side as I reverently read the in-
scription. The son had been orphaned in a few hours,
the father and mother having perished by cholera on
the same day in the awful visitation of 1832.
At one of the earliest meetings for the organization
of this church, Mr. Charles Henry Hall made a gift of
twelve lots on condition that the church bought six
adjacent lots, and he was also one of the largest sub-
scribers to the building fund. A wealthy merchant,
he had his home on the site of the Metropolitan
Hotel, occupying the entire block, with fine stables
in the rear. But in 1829 he moved his family and
MY SUMMER ACRE 493
his magnificent stud of horses to Harlem. He was
one of the first vestrymen of the church. Among
other early members of that body were Lewis Morris
and Abel T. Anderson, prominent Knickerbockers ;
A. B. Sands, William Randel, Aaron Clark, Mayor of
New York from 1837 to 1839; Edward Prime, the
banker; Robert Ray, John A. Sidell, Archibald Watt,
District-attorney Nathaniel B. Blount, Colonel James
Monroe, nephew of the President of that name ; Will-
iam G. Wilmerding, Jacob Lorillard, and other men of
note living on the East River and on the Harlem as
far up as High Bridge, where Colonel Monroe then
had his residence. The first church was destroyed by
fire in 1871. It was rebuilt on the same site, a hand-
some Gothic edifice of stone, but recent changes of
population have been so great that it was recently de-
cided to move the church site to the corner of Fifth
Avenue and One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street,
and to occupy yet another and larger edifice.
The cholera made a terrible sweep in the village
of Harlem on its first visitation, in 1832, and in many
cases the sick and the dead were alike neglected. It
was the Asiatic plague ; it slew whole households in a
few hours ; its very name was a horror. At that time
the engine-house of the Harlem fire company, No. 35,
located at the south-west corner of Third Avenue and
One Hundred and Twentieth Street, a few feet to the
west of Church Lane, was used for a temporary morgue.
Two negro men had charge of it, and they were com-
pelled to act in the triple capacity of grave-digger,
sexton, and minister. Scores of victims, when the
plague was at its height, were daily received there,
hastily thrust into pine boxes, and buried in the church-
494 MY SUMMER ACRE
yard just beyond. I have heard an aged physician say
that it was rumored afterwards that some were buried
alive, but the exigency was too great for delays, and
even the ties of kindred were sacrificed to fear of the
pestilence. One day a man was found dead under the
old willow-tree yet standing in the vacant lot on the
south side of One Hundred and Twenty-first Street,
opposite the church. A coroner's jury was hastily
empanelled, viewed the body, and returned a verdict
of death by cholera. In a week, eleven of the jury-
men had perished by the epidemic, and the one ex-
ception, marvellous to tell, was the foreman, Charles
Henry Hall, who subsequently survived all his official
associates of the Board of Health on their visit a few
days later to the city quarantine.
MY SUMMER ACRE 495
CHAPTER XIII
WRESTLING WITH HARLEM GENEALOGIES CHANGES IN OLD DUTCH
NAMES THE VILLAGE PATENTEES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS
GOVERNOR NICOLLS CHANGES THE NAME TO LANCASTER THE
ANCIENT FERRY-MAN AND HIS FEES
THE lapse of time, I find, has wrought as great
havoc with the patronymics of Hollanders as my
boyish lips ever did with the names of Hebrew wor-
thies and the rivers and hills of Palestine. Indeed, it
would be next to impossible to trace some of the old-
er New York families by the names which they now
bear. Take the Rutgers for an example. Among
the colonists who sailed for New Amsterdam in Octo-
ber, 1636, was Rutger Jacobsen Van Schoenderwerdt.
The last name indicates that the future settler came
from a pretty Dutch village near where the Van
Rensselaers had their country-seat. Twenty -five
years later he had become owner of a brewery and
a sloop that traded to Albany, and was a magistrate
and " the Honorable Rutger Jacobsen " on the rec-
ords of Church and State. His only son was known
as Harman Rutgers, a private in the doughty burgh-
er corps of New Amsterdam, afterwards its captain, a
brewer like his father, and who became a purchaser
of the brewery of Isaac de Forest, son of one of the
earlier pioneers of Harlem, whose dwelling-house and
brewery were on the north side of Stone Street, near
Whitehall, where the well that supplied water for the
496 MY SUMMER ACRE
brew is said still to be visible. He was a sturdy scion
of the Holland stock and devout withal, for in his
family Bible, after announcement of his marriage, he
places on record the prayer which many a modern cit-
izen would be shamefaced about writing, though he
might hold it in his heart : " May the Lord grant us a
long and happy life together. Amen." But then he
prayed for his brewery, too : " May the Lord bless the
work of our hands!"
Time has played similar tricks with some of the
names which the old settlers in Harlem brought with
them from the father-land. Claude le Maistre, for
instance, an exile in Holland from his home in Artois,
France, was the ancestor of the entire Delamater fam-
ily in this country, one of whose descendants, Schuyler
Colfax, born in a house yet standing in North Moore
Street, became Vice-president of the United States.
Joost Van Oblinus, one of the original patentees, and
a magistrate of worth and renown in the annals of the
old city and village, would find his name changed to
Oblienis and Oblenis, and finally become entirely ex-
tinct on the Island of Manhattan, though it is yet
found in other parts of the State, and in more than
one case has oddly taken, through some strange influ-
ence of association, the Irish form of O'Blenis.
There were, in the early part of the seventeenth
century, a large number of French Hugenots who had
become refugees for religion's sake, in Holland, among
them the original members to whom the Corporation
of New Amsterdam issued patents for lands in Har-
lem. Captain Joannes Benson, whose descendants left
their name imprinted on the mill and stream which
became noted in village annals, was an exception, and
MY SUMMER ACRE 497
by birth a Swede. Into his family the McGowns mar-
ried, and from this source, also, Eugene Benson, the
artist, now of Rome, Italy, traces his lineage. Jan
Dyckman, ancestor of the family of that name at
Kingsbridge, became one of the most prosperous and
wealthiest of the colonists, and, like the Brevoorts
and Montanyes the latter claiming their common an-
cestry in Abram de la Montanye left many descend-
ants both in the direct and collateral branches, as did
the descendants of Daniel Tourneur, a native of Pic-
ardy, in France, who have won their spurs alike in
mercantile life and in society.
This very week in which I write has seen the cele-
bration of the fiftieth anniversary of the ministry of
the Rev. Thomas E. Vermilye, D.D.,the venerable sen-
ior pastor of the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church,
and he, with the bankers who bear that name, and
nearly all who bear the name of Vermilye or Ver-
milyea, trace their common ancestry to Johannes
Vermilye, the patentee who came originally from one
of the Walloon towns in Artois. One of the most
intelligent and the most noted of the Harlem colon-
ists was Resolved Waldron, a printer of old Am-
sterdam and a burgher of New Amsterdam, whose
descendants were many, and who was connected lat-
erally, through his issue, with many of the leading
families of the colony. His name has remained un-
changed in the male line. But perhaps the most cu-
rious change of all to be noticed in this connection
is that which gave to the settlement the Kortright
ancestry. Cornelis Jansen, a stout trooper in the fa-
ther-land, who bequeathed to his eldest son, Johannes,
"the best horse and the best saddle, and the best
33
498 MY SUMMER ACRE
boots and the best pistols, holsters, carbine, and cut-
lass," did not leave him any patronymic, but Johan-
nes was at first called Cornelissen, and took the name
Kortright when he had acquired the farm of Cornelis
Kortright by purchase and entered upon its posses-
sion. The name thus taken as of right going with the
land was faithfully transmitted to his descendants.
A week or two ago I received a letter from a val-
ued friend in Harlem, in which he asked whether I
had ever heard that the village was once called Lan-
caster or New Lancaster? In writing back, I rather
ridiculed the suggestion, and yet I lacked discretion,
for he was right. When Richard Nicolls became
governor of the colony, acting under his Royal High-
ness and eminent rascality the Duke of York, he had
sought to please his master by changing the name of
New Amsterdam to New York, and then cast his eyes
around for other changes which should obliterate, so
far as they went, the memory of the Dutch occupa-
tion. The flourishing little settlement of New Haar-
lem caught his gaze, and forthwith he drew up a pat-
ent in which the "freeholders and inhabitants " are
notified that "the said town shall no longer be called
New Haarlem, but shall be known and called by the
name of Lancaster." This was one of the titles
borne by his master, the besotted Duke of York, to
whose pleasures the fertile Duchy of Lancaster, in
England, contributed its revenues. The people of
Harlem were at first astounded and then indignant.
They determined to ignore the Governor's order and
take the consequences. Happily, the change was not
insisted upon, and it appears in no deeds of record,
and exists only in the above patent, which is ad-
MY SUMMER ACRE $01
dressed to the " inhabitants of Harlem, alias Lan-
caster, upon the Island of Manhattan," and in the
written directions for drafting it, in which Governor
Nicolls presented three conditions to be observed,
viz.: That the town should be forever thereafter
called by the name of Lancaster ; that one or more
boats should be built, " fit for a ferry," and that the
range of the cattle into the hills and forests to the
west of the village should be extended. The latter
two conditions the village burghers were very glad to
grant, but the former they stoutly and steadfastly re-
jected.
The settlement had been originally christened
Nieuw Haarlem, by Governor Petrus Stuyvesant, who
exercised royal prerogatives in such matters. There
was no one of the pioneers who came from Haarlem
on the Sparen, and therefore no jealousies could be
excited. Perhaps the last (and best) of the Dutch
governors fancied there was a resemblance between
the two localities for the old city was washed by a
gentle river and girt about with groves of elms, a great
beauty in a land where forests were rare. Quiet as
was ancient Haarlem, its history was heroic. For this
reason above all others the settlers at New Haarlem
were determined not to lose the inspiration of a glori-
ous name, more especially not at the bidding of the
Duke of York, whose fidelity to the reformed faith of
England was more than suspected. For it must be
borne in mind that the village was, in the first place,
a city of refuge for those who had suffered from re-
ligious persecution the axe, the sword, the stake, and
the dungeon of the Inquisition. Of the thirty -two
heads of families who were freeholders in 1661, eleven
5O2 MY SUMMER ACRE
were French Protestant refugees ; four were Walloons
of French birth ; four were Danes, three Swedes, three
of German extraction, and but eight, or one-fourth
of the whole number, were Hollanders. Many of the
French subsequently removed to Staten Island and
New Rochelle, and the farms were mostly sold to
Hollanders, rarely to Englishmen, and the village
thus became settled down to Dutch customs and
modes of thought, and thus remained to the early
part of the present century.
A ferry was as necessary to the comfort of the early
Dutch farmers as the church and the tavern. The
cattle- fairs at New Amsterdam had brought New
England horse-jockeys to that city, and when it was
discovered that the cattle from that region were pref-
erable to the domestic breed from Holland, the pat-
entees at Harlem were anxious to trade with them.
The ferry was leased for six years to Johannes Ver-
veelen, " previded hee keepe a convenient house and
lodging for passengers att Haarlem, and he shell have
a small peece of land on Bronckside (Morrisania) and
a place to build a house on, which he must cleare and
not spoyle the meadow." In consideration of his
building these houses, " the governor hath freed him
from paying any excise for what wine or beere he
shall retayle for one year." One penny in silver was
the ferriage for a foot traveller; sevenpence in silver
for man and horse, and sixpence for a horse or any
other animal. As carriages and wagons were not in
use, no charge is specified, but to feed a horse for one
day or night " with hay or grasse " cost sixpence.
Queerest and quaintest of the charges in the list head-
ed "Ye Ferryman and His Rates" were those for
MY SUMMER ACRE 503
hotel accommodation. They read : " For lodging any
person, 8 pence per night, in case they have a bed
with sheets, and without sheets, 2 pence in silver." If
one may be privileged to read between these lines, it
would appear that " the great unwashed " sometimes
travelled up and down the country between Boston
and New Amsterdam, always to the horror of the
good Dutch housewives, who carried cleanliness to
such a pitch of conscience that they went gladly to
domestic martyrdom for their faith, as in the case of
one portly housewife in Harlem who scrubbed her
floor until it broke through with her weight and land-
ed her in the cellar.
The ferry had been in operation but a year when
honest Martin Verveelen found his receipts rapidly
diminishing, and waking from his slumbers to discern
the cause, was informed that the horse -traders from
Connecticut were driving their cattle across the ford
at Spuyten Duyvil, and thus escaping the dues for
ferriage. Complaint was at once made to the magis-
trates, and an investigation showed that " one John
Barcker had passed with a great number of cattle and
horses/' broke down fences that stood in the way and
greatly defrauded the revenues, whereupon he was
cast in exemplary damages. But the future needed
to be provided against, and by order of the authorities
Verveelen removed to Papparmamin, " on the main
side " of Spuyten Duyvil, and set up his ferry anew at
" the wading place," exacting tribute of all who passed
that way except " men going or coming with a pack-
ett from our governor of New Yorke, or coming from
the governor of Connectecott," who "shall be fferried
free." In later years a ferry was opened at Harlem
504 MY SUMMER ACRE
proper, the ferry-house standing at the foot of Church
Lane, where One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Street
touches the Harlem River. It was torn down in 1867,
and, with one exception, was the last relic of the an-
cient dorp or village.
It was not until 1673 that a monthly mail was es-
tablished between New York and Boston by way of
Harlem, and then it became a sensation anticipated
for weeks to see the mounted postman rein up at the
village tavern with his " portmantles " bursting with
letters, and packages of portables, tarrying only long
enough to bait his horse and refresh his inner man
and then dashing away through mud or dust towards
distant New England. A century later the Eastern
Post-road was opened, and mail-coaches went through
once a week, pausing for refreshment at Harlem, and
then turning up the road to Kingsbridge to cross
over by the bridge. Seventy-five years ago the mail-
coaches travelled from New York to Boston twice a
week, and only fifty years ago there was not a loco-
motive running on the Island of Manhattan. The
New York and Harlem Railway Company was incor-
porated in 1831, and two years later had horse-cars
running on a single track to Murray Hill. But it was
a herculean task to cut through the Yorkville tunnel,
and it was not until 1840 that the first steam train on
the road was put in operation between Thirty-second
Street and One Hundred and Twenty- fifth Street.
The locomotive first used on this road exploded on
the Fourth of July, 1843, an ^ occasioned a great loss
of life. The scene of the catastrophe was at Fourth
Avenue and Fifteenth Street. The temporary struct-
ure at which tickets were sold in Harlem in 1840 was
MY SUMMER ACRE 507
a shed that was little larger than an election booth,
and much resembled one.
A volume might be written concerning the early
settlers of this village that has suddenly become a
mighty city their homely, industrious ways, their
uprightness and piety, their thrift, their pride of in-
dependence, their love of fireside and home. I have
been able to do scant justice to these toilers at the
foundations of the city, but their ghosts have been
pleasant companions at " My Summer Acre," and have
been more real to me than those who pass upon the
streets and are of to-day. They will always be to me
as the scents of the roses and honeysuckles that with-
ered in the garden and on the porch, imperishable in
memory.
508 MY SUMMER ACRE
CHAPTER XIV
CRITICISED BY A CROVV FAREWELLS TO THE OLD HOUSE BY THE
RIVER CONVINCED THAT ONE ACRE IS ENOUGH AN OLD-TIME
HARLEM LETTER OUR FAMILY DINNER THE LAST NIGHT OF " MY
SUMMER ACRE."
As I stood upon the back porch this morning to
drink in the sunshine just dashed with frost, I heard
the last of the woodpeckers hammering at the trunk
of the old cherry-tree in search of his breakfast. He
did not seem to be at all lonesome, but rather was
a cheery little fellow with whom business had driv-
en sentiment out of his head, or else, as I fancied,
he might have paused and twittered out a few bird
thoughts about the flight of all the rest of his fellows
in feathers. But he was as heedless of creatures who
cannot fly as were the sea-gulls that were skimming
the waters of Hell Gate, and who, as they at times
swung slowly up and then darted swiftly down through
the sunshine, were a flash of silver in the sky. I stood
and drew in once more the full beauty of the scene :
the rushing river and unquiet Gate, the islands, head-
lands, and black bits of rock amid the broken waters,
with each one its own story of shipwreck and legend
of the goblin days of the colony the brown marshes,
with their stretches of green lawn on the uplands be-
yond them the trees that bounded the horizon, all
bare and brown when seen close at hand, but now
transfigured by the embrace of the sun and I drew it
MY SUMMER ACRE 509
all in, every fair feature of this wonderful Venice in
America, so as to call it up before my eyes in the days
to come when I should talk or think of the old house
by the river. " If I were to moralize upon this scene,"
I began, half aloud, thinking that Nebuchadnezzar
and Martha Washington, who sat curled up in quiet
content on one of the steps at my feet, were my only
auditors. " But you know that you never do anything
else, father," broke in mischievous Mistress Nell, who
had come quietly forward and stood at my elbow,
" and the coffee is getting cold and I am hungry."
Just then there came down from the upper sky the
strident " Ah ! ah !" of a crow who was winging his
way to the fishing-grounds of Long Island, and who
had paused for a moment to fling down his mockery
of the idea that age could moralize or youth be hun-
gered, and Nellie and I turned to each other and
smiled at the wise saying of the bird.
There was nothing left for regret in the lawn and
gardens upon which we turned our backs. There are
bits of emerald in the grass-plot, but for the most part
it is sere and brown. The syringa and lilac bushes,
moved thereto by plentiful rains and a few days of
late, warm sunshine, have sent out stray leaves of
green, as if they were dreaming of a second spring,
and a few marigolds and dandelions yet linger defiant
of frost, but the glory of the flowers has departed. In
black Diana's realm a solitary pumpkin, a very apple
of her eye, revels in riotous sunbeams, and a few dilap-
idated and disreputable stalks of corn keep it com-
pany. The rest has become only a memory that we
can carry away with us. It will serve us hereafter for
epics at the fireside. There is not one of us who will
$10 MY SUMMER ACRE
forget the wealth that this memorable acre poured out
at our feet. " If I were to moralize," I had remarked
only yesterday in strict confidence to my cats, " I
would say that you will dream many a time in the
coming winter of the delights that have been yours
in this delectable land, and whole armies of edible and
well-digested songsters will rise from their graves and
flit through'your slumbers but I forbear." It sounds
magnanimous to close in this way, for, as I have tried
to impress upon Mistress Nellie, I never moralize.
We leave the gardens to the toads and crickets, for
whom the builders, when they come next spring to
remove the roof that has sheltered us and to lay the
foundation of a modern brick abomination in the
shape of flats, will make life a burden.
The coffee was all right, and so were the delicate
pancakes, in whose concoction Diana was a phenome-
non ; but somehow we brought little appetite to our
breakfasts. If we were but sojourners for a season in
the tents of the Knickerbockers we had come to be
fond of our temporary home, and none of us liked to
say to the other in words that this was the last morn-
ing that we should sit down together and have the
trees above our heads and the river at our feet. Even
Master Felix had caught the oppression in our hearts,
and had commenced with, " I say, papa, at this time
to-morrow " when he checked himself, looked at us
with a sudden pang of thought and gave relief to his
feelings by stooping to pinch Nebuchadnezzar's tail,
drawing from that patient animal such a howl of indig-
nant protest that we all joined in the boy's hysterical
laughter. Master Felix turned it off well, and inquired
with deep affectation of interest in antiquities, " I say
MY SUMMER ACRE 511
papa, when will you finish about Harlem ?" It was a
relief to me to say : " That depends on the future, my
son. I have only scratched the surface of the ground
that is rich with a harvest of remembrance. It would
take a whole volume to do justice to the men who
from first to last have made the marshes and wooded
heights of Harlem to blossom into a city. Some day
you may set yourself to the task, if you like." Master
Felix smiled. He likes best to hear of the times
when the Indians had their October camp at Hell
Gate Bay, and reared the piles of oyster-shells which
in after-years testified to their fondness for the deli-
cious bivalve ; or of the days when, with blunderbuss
and musquetoon, the slow but sagacious Dutch youth
pursued the otter and rabbit across the spoor at the
Kills and on to Horn's Hook.
But I must pause here to speak of a letter which I
have recently unearthed and that is addressed to the
" Honorable, Valiant, and Worthy Lords, my Lords
Petrus Stuyvesant, Director-general, and the Council of
New Netherlands." It is written by a worthy voor-
leeser and schepen, one of the founders of Harlem,
who had sought and obtained the assistance of the
council in wooing for his second wife a buxom widow
whose husband had been lost at sea. Things had not
gone well with him afterwards. The winters had been
hard ; his pay had been small ; harvests had been
niggardly, and age had added to his troubles until, at
sixty-eight, he had incurred reproof from the council
for being in debt upon their books. It was a primi-
tive community, in which unflinching honesty was
the rule, and incessant labor every man's lot. The
unfortunate pioneer received the rebuke " with great
512 MY SUMMER ACRE
heart grief," but he adds, "not that my conscience
witnesses to me that I am fallen into the same by
any quis cingit ostio that I may have practised, hav-
ing (without boasting) always kept my household
in victuals and clothes temperately as a common
burgher here ; but the excessive dearth of all things
has driven me insensibly into such need and poverty
as that never in the sixty -eight years that I have
lived, so great distress have felt, finding myself desti-
tute of all means to provide for my daily bread and
provisions for the winter." Yet his courage was un-
daunted. " My life," he writes, "is in Him who hath
always helped me." So the brave old man, whose do-
main covered my little summer acre, and many an-
other that was then equally unprofitable, girds himself
anew for the fight, and comes out victor in the end.
These were the heroes and this the rude but heroic
work that redeemed the Island of Mahattan to civiliza-
tion. Doubtless their spirit survives in their descend-
ants, but I sometimes wish that there were more of
the ancient courtesy of address extant, such as is
shown in this quaint old letter, to which the writer
subscribes himself, "Your Worthy Honors' humble
and willing servant."
One of the surviving and immortal wonders of the
world is the amount of luggage and trash which one
small family can accumulate in the course of a season.
We brought nothing when we came here, which is the
way we put it to ourselves, but it is certain that we
shall carry a mountain away. A few books here, a few
pictures there, an easy chair or two, some additional
comforts, then the furnishings of our temporary home
kept accumulating at the expense of our city house,
MY SUMMER ACRE 515
and now we have been compelled to pack up amid
many groanings of heart and at the expense of a day
of rare discomfort. It would not be so bad if we were
glad to go, but in our hearts we know that we dislike
to close this pleasant chapter in the book, and though
we say to each other that it will be a relief to be
back in our old haunts, we somehow feel an attach-
ment to this ancient mansion that makes the very
ghosts of the men and women who dwelt here in past
centuries seem like familiar acquaintances. This break-
ing-up recalls the legend of the enchanted palace in
which a mortal couple were allowed to dwell in un-
interrupted bliss, but warned { that the walls would
collapse and their luxurious contents vanish at the
first farewell that should be spoken.
The old colonel was our guest at dinner, and Mistress
Nellie was charming as she waited tenderly upon
him. There is a secret between them, as I long have
known, and I trusted to this dinner to reveal it, but
even the mince-pie which my old friend, the Presid-
ing Bishop, says is not orthodox until " Stir Up Sun-
day," for which see the Collect for the First Sunday in
Advent with its genial cheer, did not bring it to the
surface. But we did bravely, none the less. The old
colonel was in his best mood and gave us rare remi-
niscences of his campaigns in Florida against the re-
doubtable " Billy Bowlegs " and the Seminoles, those
fierce but courtly paladins of the Everglades, and at
the request of Master Felix, and on condition that he
will put it into words, I told the story of the " Two
Brothers," from whom the two little islands off Port
Morris in the East River are named. But Diana
capped the climax, when the boy insisted that she
516 MY SUMMER ACRE
should tell him the story of the two Hog's Backs and
Captain Kidd, with which she had more than once
entertained him in the kitchen. " 'Deed and 'deed,
Mas'r Felix, I don't know nuffin 'bout dem beast-
esses !" she cried out from her post behind Mistress
Nellie's chair. " Dat fool nigger what's courtin' me
done tell me 'bout de debbil flying away wid ole
Dutchman and leavin' him straddle de Hog's Back, and
he wants me to go down and hear de old ghostesses
sizzlin' on de Frying Pan Rock. I'ste glad to go back
to folkses any way, 'cause if I stay here any longer dat
nigger '11 want me to dig down at de foot ob de rock
by de garden shore for Cappen Kidd's gold." And so
here were love and legend, buried gold and ancient
fable, as the cap-sheaf of " My Summer Acre." It was
marvellous.
Just then something still more wonderful happened.
My daughter left her place at the table the twilight
was coming on then apace, but we would not have the
candles lighted yet and went and stood by the old
colonel, placing her little hand in his. " Father," she
said, with a playfulness that was painful to me because
its touch of solemnity, u you have been teaching me
all this summer that one acre is enough for happiness,
and I have learned the lesson of contentment with a
small lot in life." I did not dare smile at her little
joke, but the old colonel chuckled and said under his
breath : " A centre shot, by George !" Then Nellie
went on, with a tremor in her voice that lent added
beauty to its gentle music : " Please don't laugh at
my confession of conversion, but make room at your
table to-day for the man whom I honor and revere of
all the world next to you, and to whom I have given
MY SUMMER ACRE 517
my heart." I was speechless. Nellie came and knelt
at my chair. The door opened. I heard a smothered
duet of laughter which convinced me that Diana's
lover and that sable spinster were in the plot, and then
a young man came and knelt by Nellie's side, whom I
knew to be the old colonel's grandson, a college tu-
tor and preacher in Connecticut. Now, I do not like
preachers outside of the Established Church, and I am
still somewhat of a Dutchman in regard to Yankees,
but what was a man of peace to do under such circum-
stances? If I objected that he was not rich in this
world's goods, what became of my pet theory about a
single acre and an old-fashioned home? Besides, I
should be in a minority of one. When the young man
came in at the door behind him stalked Nebuchad-
nezzar, bristling all over with friendliness, his tail borne
high in air as a sacred oriflamme, and doing all that a
cat could do to give the young couple his benediction.
He had at once adopted Nellie's suitor into the family,
and what could I do then but lift Nellie up and kiss
her, with a few natural tears, as I placed her hand in
that of her future husband and bade God bless them ?
It was Master Felix who broke the silence with a re-
mark that set us all at our ease : " Nellie, I'll get him
to teach me how to shoot rabbits."
The old colonel departed early, but it was nine
o'clock before the family took up its line of march and
left the Ark. Like our predecessors of Noah's time,
we went out in pairs, Diana and her sable escort, both
giggling audibly with happiness, in advance. Master
Felix and I came next, and in a basket on his arm
were Nebuchadnezzar and Martha Washington, growl-
ing savagely. At the gate Nellie and Paul lingered for
5 i8
MY SUMMER ACRE
a moment in the shadow of the tall fir-tree. "Come
away/' I said to Master Felix, who had no memories
of youth to recall other lingerings in unforgotten
shadows. The quiet night came down and wrapped
us up. I heard only the chirp of a cricket among
the leaves of the honeysuckle vine onthe porch that
still was full of life though bronzed with frost.
I do not wish to be thought irreverent, but in that
one of the many mansions which will have my name
upon the door-plate, I hope to be as happy as we have
been in " My Summer Acre."
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