Notices of Early Dutch Times. 165

We shall therefore endeavour to exhibit something character-
istic of the times, the doings, and the familiar concerns, of those
Dutch burghers.

The Dutch Reformed were always thorough church-going
members, and fully fraught with ardent zeal for all the faith of
Calvin. They therefore gave no countenance to Lutherans,
Jews, Quakers, &c. Bi t when the English came to rule, it suffi-
ciently chagrined them to see Governor Lovelace so lax, as in
1674 to authorize the Lutheran congregation to erect a church,
and to "seek benevolence from their brethren here and on the
Delaware.''^ It was about this time that Edmundson, a friend
from England, was allowed to preach to such as would assemble.
He held his first meeting at an inn, where the magistrates also
attended, probably as much to check and restrain errors as to
profit themselves. The celebrated Geo. Fox was also in the
neighbourhood, preaching on Long Island, and particularly to a
congregation under a great oak tree, still standing at Flushing,
the property of the Bowne family. All this toleration was
strikingly diff'erent from the previous rule under the Dutch gov-
ernor Stuyvesant. He had ordered the head of the above-named
family out to Holland for trial, for the public performance of his
religious views as a Quaker. About that time the public peace
had been disturbed by those Quakers, whom the Friends them-
selves sometimes censured as "ranters." Such a one, as the re-
cords state, " pretending to be divinely inspired, came into the city
and made terrible hue and cry in the streets and on the bridge,
crying woe, woe, to the crowne of pride and the drunkards of
Ephraim : Twoo woes past, and the third coming, except you
repent. Repent — repent, as the kingdom of God is at hand !"
He also entered the church, making a great noise, for the purpose
of disturbance, as their manner was. Finally, he was prosecuted,
flogged, and banished.

The Dutch Reformed Church — "the Gereformeerde Kerck,"
was erected loithin the fort by Gov. Keift in 1642, being a stone
structure, with split oaken shingles, then called "wooden slate."
The cause and manner of its establishment has been curiously
related by De Vries, saying, " as I was every day with Comdr.
Keift, I told him, that as he had now made a fine tavern — the
Stadt-herberg, at Coentie's slip — that we also wanted very badly
a church ; for until then we had nothing but a mean ham (in
appearance) for our worsliip ; whereas iii New England, their
first concern was a fine church, and we ought to do the same.
Wherefore, I told him I would contribute a hundred guilders,
and he as governor, should precede me. Whereupon we agreed,
and chose J. P. Kuyster and I. C. Damen, with themselves, as four
Kerck- Meesters to superintend the building. John and Richard
Ogden contracted to build the same of stone for 2500 guilders,
say £416. It was to be seventy-two feet by fifty-two feet, and



1G6 Notices of Early Dutch Times.

sixteen feet high. After its construction, the town bell was re-
moved to it. There it was a kind oifac iotum, and may possibly
account for the present partiality for cuvipanalary music still so
fostered and prevalent in New York. x\ll mechanics and labourers
began and ended work at the ringing ; all tavern-keepers shut
house after the ringing; courts and suitors assembled at the ring-
ing ; and deaths and funerals were announced by the toll. An
earlier church was built on the IJattery ground, which was pulled
down in 1642, when the above one was built. The earliest church
records are lost — but records of baptism exist, and have been con-
tinued ever since 1620. The earliest list of enrolled members,
begins in 1649, at which time, three hundred names appear.

New York, like other colonies, had also its plague o{ witchcraft.
In 1665, a man and wife were arraigned and tried as witches,
and a special verdict oi guilty was brought in by the jury against
one of them. In 1672 the inhabitants of West Chester complained
to the governor and council against a witch which had come
among them ; she having been before imprisoned and condemned
as a witch at Hartford. In 1673 a similar complaint was also
made ; but the military governor, Capt, Colve, a son of the ocean,
not under this land influence perhaps, treated it as idle or super-
stitious, and so dismissed the suit. We thus see that Salem was
not exclusive in her alarms ; but that New York, Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia, each severally had their trials of
witchcraft.

The city schoolmasters were always, ex officio, clerks, choristers,
and visiters of the sick.

In the early times, reed and straw roofs and wooden chimneys
were so common in ordinary houses, that they had regularly ap-
pointed overseers to inspect them and guard them against fires.

They were accustomed to plant May -poles on New Year's and
May-days. Sometimes they planted a May-pole, adorned with
ragged stockings, before the door of a newly-wedded bridegroom.

The Dutch were remarkable in their choice of high sounding
names for their vessels ; an old record, describing a collection at
one time in New York, gives such names as the following, to wit :
The Angel Gabriel, King David, Queen Esther, King Solomon,
Arms of Renselaerwyck, Arms of Stuy vesant. The Great Christo-
pher, the Crowned Sea Bears, the Spotted Cow, &:c.

Wm. P. Van Rensselaer, Esq. of Beverwyck,has in his posses-
sion the wedding ring which belonged to the wife of the first
Patroon, preserved with family regard since 1627 — and Gen. Van
Cortland has a gold watch, which came out with his forefathers.

New York was once distinguished for its manufacture and
trade in Indian wampum, called seaivant, deriving the material
from Long Island, which place the Indians called SeivanJiacky,
importing the Land of Shells. They made the chief of it from
periwinkles and quahaugs, (clams), and sometimes from the



Notices of Early Dutch Times. 167

inside of oyster shells.* This, when rounded into proper shape,
became the proper money of the Indians ; and with this, all who
purposed to trade with them for furs, &c. provided themselves at
New York. A letter of Governor Penn's is on record, wherein
> he speaks of his having sent there from Philadelphia to make
"his purchases of wavipum, at great prices." For numerous
years, while coin was scarce or unnecessary, it was the custom
to pay off the company's officers, and even the clergy too, in sea-
want or beavers. The current value of the seawant was six
beads of the white, or three of the black, for an English penny.
The value and importance once attached to this seemingly strange
money in our consideration now, may be seen set forth, in 1641,
in an ordinance of the city council sanctioned by Governor Keift,
saying, " that a great deal of bad seawant, nasty rough things,
imported from other places," was in circulation, while " the good
splendid seawant, usually called Manhattan'' s seawant, was out
of sight or exported, which must cause the ruin of the country P^
Therefore, it is added, that " all coarse seawant, well stringed,
should pass at six for one stuyver only ; but that the well polished,
at four for a stuyver." In 1657, they were publicly reduced from
six, to eight for a stuyver, which is two-pence. The wampum
was used greatly by the Indians to decorate and ornament their
persons. The women strung theirs, and hung them round their
necks, and sewed them on their mocassins and mantles.

The Dutch bore several names among the Indians. They
called them Swannakwak or Swanekens ; also Assyreoni, the
cloth makers ; Charistooni, the iron workers ; Sankhicanni, the
fire workers, in allusion to their use of matchlocks.

The lands on York Island, without the bounds of the town
walls, along Wall street, appertained to the company, and were
either used for public grazing grounds, for the town cows, sheep,
or swine, or else for the governor's farms, under the names of
Bouwerys. The Bouwery or farm sold to Governor Stuyvesant
in 1631, now so invaluable as building lots in the hands of his
descendants, was originally purchased by him for 6,400 guilders
(1,066/.), and having besides the land, " a dwelling-house, barn,
reek lands, six cows, two horses, and two young negroes."

On another farm the company erected a ivint molen (wind-
mill) for the use of the town. Its site was by the Broadway,
between the present Liberty and Courtland streets. The first
having decayed, it was ordered, in 1662, that there be another on
the same ground " outside of the city land-port (gate) on the
company's farm."

There was once a water mill near the Kolch, having its outlet

* Heckewelder says, "The universal name the Monseys had for New "Vork
was Laapawachking, the place of stringing wampum beads. Those Indians say-
ing, that once the Indians there were every where seen stringing beads and
wampum which the whites gave them."



16S Notices of Early Dutch Times.

of water to the North river. In order to obtain more water for
the mill, the use of the valleys was granted to the miller; and as
the race he had dug admitted the salt water occasionally into tlie
kolch of fresh water, to its injury, he was required by law, in
16G1, to liang a waste gate so as to bar the passage of the salt
water.

Washington Irving, when he wrote his facetious notices of New
York manners, in his Knickerbocker, accurately depicted life, as
it passed in the early colonial days, saying, — " In those good
days of simplicity and sunshine, a passion for cleanliness was the
leading principle in domestic economy, and the universal test of
an able house-wife ; a character which formed the utmost ambition
of our unenlightened grandmothers. The front' door was never
opened except on marriages, funerals, new years' days, the festival
of St. Nicholas, or some such great occasion. It was ornamented
with a gorgeous brass knocker, curiously wrought, sometimes in
the device of a dog's, and sometimes of a lion's head, and was
daily burnished with such assiduity, that it was sometimes worn
out by the very precautions taken for its preservation. The whole
house was constantly in a state of inundation, under the disciplme
of mops and brooms and scrubbing brushes ; and the good wives
of those days were a kind of amphibious animal, delighting ex-
ceedingly, to be dabbling in water.

" The grand parlour was the sanctum sanctorum, where the
passion for cleaning was most indulged. In this sacred apartment
no one was permitted to enter, excepting the mistress and her
confidential maid, who visited it once a week, for the purpose of
giving it a thorough cleaning and putting things to rights, always
taking the precaution of leaving their shoes at the door, and
entering lightly on their stocking feet. After scrubbing the floor
and sprinkling it with fine white sand, which was curiously
stroked into angles and curves with a broom ; after washing the
windows, rubbing and polishing the furniture, and putting a new
bunch of evergreens in the fireplace, the window shutters were
again closed, to keep out the flies, and the room carefully locked
up, until the revolution of time brought romid the weekly clean-
ing day.

" As to the family, they always entered in at the gate, and
most generally lived in the kitchen. To have seen a numerous
household assemble around the fire, one would have imagined
that he was transported back to those happy days of primeval
simplicity, which tloat before our imaginations like golden visions.
The fireplaces were of a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the
whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white,
nay even the cat and dog, enjoyed a community of privilege, and
had each a right to a corner. Here the old burgher would sit in
perfect silence, puffing his pipe, looking in the fire with half-shut
eyes, and thinking of nothmg, (in happy absence from care,) for



Notices of Early Dutch Times. 169

hours together ; the goede vrouw, on the opposite side, would
employ herself diligently in spinning yarn, or knitting stockings.
The young folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with
breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the
oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner
of the chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon,
a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly
ghosts, and hair-breadth escapes, and bloody encounters among
the Indians.

" In these primitive days, a well regulated family always rose
with the dawn, dined at eleven, and went to bed at sundown.
Dinner was invariably a private meal, and the fat old burghers
showed incontestible symptoms of disapprobation, and uneasi-
ness at being surprised by a visit from a neighbour on such
occasions. But though our worthy ancestors were thus singu-
larly averse to giving dinners, yet they kept up the social bands
of intimacy, by occasional banquetings, called tea-parties. These
fashionable parties were generally confined to the higher classes,
that is to say, such as kept their own cows, and drove their
own wagons. The company generally assembled about three
o'clock, and went away at six, unless it was in winter time,
when the visit was a little earlier, that the ladies might get home
before dark. Sometimes the table was graced with apple-pies,
or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears, but it was
always sure to boast of dough-nuts, or oly koeks, with plenty
of fried ham, cut up in convenient morsels, and well charged
with gravy.

" The tea was served out of a majestic delft tea-pot, ornamented
with paintings of fat little Dutch shepherds and shepherdesses,
tending pigs, with boats sailing in the air, and houses built in the
clouds, and sundry other ingenious Dutch fantasies. The beaux
distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this
pot, from a huge copper tea-kettle, which might make the beaux
of the present day sweat merely to look at it ! To sweeten the
beverage, a lump of sugar was laid beside each cup, and the
company alternately nibbled and sipped with great decorum.

" In such parties, the utmost propriety and dignity of deport-
ment prevailed. No flirting, no coquetting, no gambolling of
old ladies, nor hoyden chattering and romping of young ones,
no self-satisfied struttings of wealthy gentlemen, with their brains
in their pockets, nor amusing conceits, and monkey divertiseraents
of smart young gentlemen with no brains at all. On the contrary,
the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush-bot-
tomed chairs, and knit their own woollen stockings ; speaking
but little, and chiefly in brief answers to questions put to them,
few and far between. As to the gentlemen, each of them tran-
quilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the

OQ P



170 Notices of Early Dutch TitJies.

blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated ;
wherein sundry passages of scripture were piously portrayed.

" The parties broke up without noise and without confusion —
all carried home in their own carriages, that is to say, by the
vehicles nature had provided them. The gentlemen gallantly
attended their fair ones to their respective abodes, and took leave
of them with a hearty smack at the door ; which, as it was an
established piece of etiquette, done in perfect simplicity and
honesty of heart, (the lady owing something for the attention,)
occasioned no scandal at that time, nor should it now from us,
when thus contemplating the past.

" Even the female sex, — tliose arch innovaters of modes and
forms, seemed for a while to conduct themselves with incredible
sobriety and comeliness. Their hair, untortured by the abomina-
tions of art, was scrupulously pomatumed back from their fore-
heads, with suet tallow, and covered with a little cap of quilted
calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of
Unsey-woolsey, were striped with gorgeous dyes. These were
indeed rather short, but what they needed in length, was made
up in numbers, which generally equalled that of the gentlemen's
small clothes ; and what was still more praiseworthy, they were
all of their own manufacture, of which circumstance, as may well
be supposed, they were not a little vain.

" The gentlemen of those days, were well content to figure in
their linsey-woolsey coats — domestic made, and bedecked with
an abundance of large brass buttons. Half a score of breeches,
heightened the proportions of his figure ; his shoes were orna-
mented by enormous copper buckles ; a low crowned broad
brimmed hat overshadowed his florid visage, and his hair dangled
down his back in a long queue of eel skin.

"Ah, never to be forgotten age,
Where every thing was better than it has been e'er since!"

We may close this article with some little notices and recollec-
tions of Dutch manners, as they appeared in their last remains
when receding from the innovations of later times, to wit:

Capt. Graydon, who was a prisoner on Long Island in the war
of independence, and was quartered at Flat Bush, speaks of his
neighbours as a quiet inoffensive people; as too unaspiring and
contented to have ever made a revolution from their own impulse.'
Their religion, like their other habits, were all plain and unosten-
tatious : A silent grace before meat was their general family
habit. The principal personage in every Dutch village was the
" dominc''' or minister ; and their manner of preaching was
extremely colloquial and familiar. Their most frequent diet was
clams, called clippers ; and their unvaried supper was supon
(mush) ; sometimes with milk, but more generally buttermilk.



Local Changes and local Facts. 171

blended with molasses. Their blacks, when they had them,
were very free and familiar ; sometimes samitering about among
the whites at meal time, with hat on head, and freely joining
occasionally in conversation, as if they were one and all of the
same household.

The hospitality and simple plainness of New York city, down
to the period of 1790 and 1800, was very peculiar. All felt and
praised it. Nothing was too good, and no attention too engross-
ing for a stranger. It was a passport to every thing kind and
generous. All who were introduced, invited him to their home
and board. As wealth and pride and numbers came in, it wore
off more and more ; till now it follows selfishness and reserve
like other great cities.



<■♦ »i »



LOCAL CHANGES AND LOCAL FACTS.

" To observe and preserve."

A GENTLEMAN of eighty years of age, in 1S2S, told me of his
digging out the trunk of a walnut tree, at nine feet depth, at his •
house at the Coenties slip, near Pearl street.

He well remembered, in early life to have seen a natural spring
of fine fresh water at the fort, at a position a little north-west of
Hone's house. There was also a fresh water well once at N.
Prime's house near the Battery.

He saw the old fort cut down about the year 1 7S8-9, when
they found beneath the vault the ancient Dutch church, once
there, the leaden coffins of Lord Bellermont and lady. Vansant
and Jane way were charged to remove them to St. Paul's church.

He saw a linseed oil factory worked with wind sails, on a
high hill of woods, about a quarter of a mile north-east of the
Kolch. This was about the year 1790.

About the same time he saw a beautiful meadow and flourish-
ing grass cut on the declining hill back of the City Hall towards
the Kolch.

The " tea water fountain " out by Stuyvesant's field, is now
very good, and was in great repute formerly. The region of
country near the prison, on the East river, has now excellent
water. There " Knapp" gets his " spring water" for the city
supply.

A lady of about eighty-six years of age in 1828, said she well
remembered when the locality of the present St. Paul's church
was a wheat field.

She. also spoke of her remembrance of a "ferry house" in



172 Local ChanE^es and local Facts



O'



Broad street, up above "Exchange Place," (then Garden alley)
to which place the Indians used to come and set down in the
street near there, and make and sell baskets.

The place called " Canvas Town," was made after tlie great
fire in 1776. It lay towards the East river, and from Broad
street to Whitehall street. It was so called from the temporary
construction of the houses, and their being generally covered
with canvas instead of roofs. Very lewd and dissolute persons
generally were their tenants, and gave them their notoriety and
fame.

While the old fort existed, before the revolution, it contained
within its bounds the mansion of the governors (military chief-
tains) and their gardens. There governors Dunmore, Tryon, &c.
dwelt. New York was a military station, and as such it had
always a regiment of foot and a company of artillery ; also a
guard ship in the bay.

Mr. Abram Brower, aged seventy-five in 1828, informed me
that the lots fronting the Vly market were originally sold out by
the city corporation, at only one dollar the foot.

He said the market in Broadway (the Oswego I presume) was
once leased to a Mr. Crosby for only 20s. for seven years.

He remembered when only horse boats ferried from Brooklyn,
with only two men to row it, in which service they sometimes
•drove towards Governor's Island, and employed a whole hour.
Only one ferry was used on the North river side, and then not
to go across to Jersey City as now, but down to the Blazing Star.
Those who then came from Bergen, &c. used the country boats.

He said the Dutch yachts (then so called) were from one to
two weeks in a voyage to Hudson and Albany. They came to,
usually every night, "slow and sure." Then all on board spoke
the Dutch language. [The mayor, Thomas Willet, in 1G65,
informs the corporation "he intends for Albania with the first
opportunity, and prays his leave of absence."]

The last Dutch schoolmaster was Vanbombeler ; he kept his
school till after the revolution. Mr. Brower himself went to a
Dutch school, to his grandfather's, Abram Delanoye, (a French
Hugonot, via Holland), who kept his school in Courllandt street.

Elective offices, when they went by merit, and not by partisan
efforts, were of enduring character, to the individual concerned.
Thus to instance one case, in the family of the Bogerts : Henry
Bogert was elected assistant Alderman of the west ward, annu-
ally for sixteen consecutive years, from 1734 to 1750 ; and John
Bogert, Jr. (grandfather of the present James Bogert, Jr.) was
elected Alderman for Montgomery ward, annually for eleven
consecutive years, from 1755 to 1766, when he retired from public
and mercantile life to his country seat at Harlem. Another
John Bogert, of the same family, was elected assistant alderman
for the fourth ward for the years 1797-98, when he became an



Local Chans;es and local Facts. 173



"a



alderman, and was re-elected annually, for four successive years,
and then declined any further election. Edward Holland was
mayor from 1747 to 1756, and John Crugan was mayor from
1757 to 1765. Simon Johnson was recorder, from 1747 to 1768.

The first Methodist preaching in New York was at a house in
William street, then a rigging loft. There Embury first preached;
and being a carpenter, he made his own pulpit, — a true puritan
characteristic.

Mr. Brower, when a boy, never heard of " Greenwich," the
name was not even known ; but the Dutch, when they spoke of
the place, called it Shawbackanicka, an Indian name as he sup-
posed. " Greenwich street" was of course unknown.

He knew of no daily papers until after the revolution. Wey-
man and Gaine had each a weekly one corresponding to their
limited wants and knowledge. The first daily paper was by
F. Child & Co., called the New York Daily Advertiser, began
in 1785.

He saw Andrews hanging in gibbets for piracy ; he was hung
long in irons, just above the Washington market, and was then
taken to Gibbet Island and suspended there; — year 1769.

I notice such changes as the following : —

Maiden lane, called Medge Padje, is greatly altered for the
better; formerly that street was much lower near its junction
with Pearl street ; it was much narrower, and had no separate
foot pavement; its gutter ran down the middle of the street.
Where the lofty triangular store of Watson is seen up said street,
was once a low sooty blacksmith shop, Olstein's (a rarity now in
the sight of passing citizens,) and near it a cluster of low wooden
buildings.

In Pearl street, below Maiden lane, I have seen proof positive
of the primitive river margin there ; several of the cellars, and