USA > New Jersey > Hudson County > Paper read before the historical society of Hudson County. 1908 > Part 1
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Class_ F143 Book HSH6. PRESENTED BY
142 13 46
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PAPERS READ
2/62
BEFORE
The Historical Society of Hudson County. 200.1
Organized January 17, 1908.
OFFICERS
President :
DANIEL VAN WINKLE.
Vice Presidents : 1st-REV. C. BRETT. 2d-JOHN W. HECK.
Treasurer : Librarian :
NELSON J. H. EDGE.
W. H. RICHARDSON.
Corresponding Secretary :
Recording Secretary :
DR. J. C. PARSONS.
LOUIS SHERWOOD.
Board of Governors :
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W. D. FORBES
MR. J. CURRIE
OTTO ORTEL
J. H. HORNBLOWER, M.D.
WM. J. DAVIS
ALEX. MCLEAN
DEWITT VAN BUSKIRK DAVID R. DALEY
J. J. VOORHEES.
From Free Public Library :
B. F. STOWE
DR. GORDON K. DICKINSON.
F142 H8HG
The Society 17 110
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THE DUTCH SETTLEMENTS IN HUDSON COUNTY Paper read before "The Hudson County Historical Society" by the Rev. Cornelius Brett, D. D. 11 Friday evening, March 27, 1908.
EOLOGICALLY, Hudson County lies at the southern end of the deep valley of the Hudson River and Lake Champlain. So deep is this valley, that a rise of 150 feet in the sea-level would cut off New England from the rest of the continent, making it a great island. This valley was once the bed of an immense glacier of an average depth of 2,000 feet. It denuded the ridges of earth and disintegrated rocks, deposit- ing mud and gravel." For this beginning of Hudson County in the long, long ages before man arrived, or the first Dutch gutteral was uttered, I am indebted to a member of this soci- ety, our fellow citizen Alexander McLean, who assisted Prof. Cook, the learned State Geologist, in his explorations and surveys.
Topographically, our County is the smallest in the State, covering less than 75 square miles of highland and lowland, rock soil and swamp. Geographically, it includes the land ly- ing between the Hudson and the Passaic, between the lower limits of the Palisades and Kill von Kull. Politically, the County was in 1840 set off from old Bergen County, which or- iginally extended from the Kill to the New York State line. The northern portion retains the name Bergen, to which it has no right; while the new County was baptised Hudson, af- ter the river which washes the eastern shore.
The aborigines of New Jersey belong to the great Algon- quin family, whose branchies reached from the frozen shores of Hudson Bay to the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. The na- tion spreading their wigwams over our now familiar hills and plains was the Lenni Lenapé. The name is said to mean "our men," or the "original Indian." The people are described as of moderate stature, properly shaped, dark-eyed, black-haired, wearing the all-too-familiar scalp-lock, their bodies usually an- ointed with animals' oil or stained symbolically with mineral or vegetable dyes. Among the men there were many who ap- proached physical perfection, the women in youth being statu-
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esque rather than beautiful. The tribes lived in villages, but wigwam sites were frequently changed as the nomads sought new hunting and fishing grounds. They lived in the midst of squalor, usually upon maize, beans and roasted nuts, but when the supply could be obtained, devoured the fish from bays and rivers and the abundant game of the forests. Local option was not an issue at their council fires, for intoxicating drink was unknown until introduced by the whites. The rudest form of tribal government prevailed; but as compared with other tribes, the Lenni Lenapé seem to have been remarkably peace- ful. Their relics of arrow-heads and rude implements of stone and sun-baked pottery are still found in the hills of Essex and the valley of the Raritan.
It may be a shock to historical prejudices to announce that Henry Hudson did not discover the river which bears his name. John Fiske remarks "the student of history gets accustomed to finding that the beginnings of things were earlier than had been supposed." Attracted by the fisheries on the New- foundland banks, sailors from southern Europe, as well as Nor- mandy and Brittany, arrived in large numbers. They found fish more abundant than gold, and became practical in their adaptation of the unknown treasures of the New World. From time to time these fishing boats entered the mouths of the large rivers, and there are traces in maps and log books of their pres- ence in our own magnificent harbor. On the 17th of January, 1524, Giovanni de Verrazano, in command of a single ship, La Dauphine, set sail from the Madeira Islands, determined, if possible, to reach Cathay. About the middle of April he ar- rived at Sandy Hook, which he called Cape St. Mary. The neighboring hillsides were alive with peering savages. He was not deceived, as Hudson was, by the delusion of a northwest passage through the Hudson River, for he likens the upper bay to a beautiful lake and tells of the steep hills between which "una grandissima riviera" (a very great river), emptied into the bay. Canoes filled with red men, brave in paint and feath- ers, darted hither and thither. On his departure from the harbor, he seems to have discovered Coney Island, to which he gave the name "Angouleme," in honor of Duke Franeis, af- terward Francis the First of France. He cruised along the southern shore of Long Island, gathering wampum at Rocka- way Bay, almost circumnavigated the island, called Block Island
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"Louise," after the king's mother, and gave to Point Judith (the familiar torture of passengers on the Fall River Line) the name of Cape St. Francis.
In 1525, the Spanish Captain Estevan Gomez calls the Hud- son River "The River of the Steep Hills," and probably pur- chased some furs from the Mohawks of northern New York. In 1542, a Frenchman, Allefonsce, approached New York Harbor through Long Island Sound, and a few phrases in his descrip- tive letter indicate that he encountered the dangerous currents at Hell Gate.
On certain old maps, immediately after Verrazano's voyage in 1527, there began to appear the name of "Nor- umbega." The maps were, of course, rude suggestions of the outlines of sea and shore, without any attempt at measurement or triangulation. This strange name seems to be applied to three things:
Ist. A spacious territory over which the name is written large.
2nd. A river somewhere in that territory.
3rd. A town or village somewhere upon that river.
There is no difficulty in locating the territory, for it is what may be roughly described as equivalent to New England. But concerning the river there has been a wide difference of opinion, and concerning the origin of the name, to quote from Fiske, "there has been much broad guessing." The historians of Maine have claimed the Penobscot River as the original Nor- umbega. Bostonians, who are given to claiming everything in sight, imagine that the Charles River was intended. Why should the people of New Jersey be less ambitious? We certainly have as much warrant as any other claimant for the assertion that the river of Norumbega was the Hudson and that the town was an original settlement on Manhattan Island, which had been swept away before the coming of the Dutch.
We therefore begin our history of Hudson County by the claim that the familiar name of Bergen is the oldest title given by early explorers to any part of the North Atlantic seaboard which has held its place unto the living present. I fortify my claim by an extract from John Fiske:
"The name is evidently connected with Verrezano's voy- age, and the Hudson River is the only one which in his letter he speaks of entering. He describes the Hudson as a very
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broad river running between small, steep hills, which indicates that he may have gone up as far as Spüyten Duyvil. Now, if this was really the River of Norumbega, visited and described by this party of Frenchmen, it is fair to ask if the name may not be some French epithet mutilated and disguised in its pil- grimage among the map makers. Might not the map name 'Norumbega' be simply a Low Latin corruption of 'Anormée Berge?' In sixteenth century French, that means 'Grand Scarp' and where could one find a better epithet for the majestic lines of cliffs that we call the palisades? A feature so unusual and so striking, that no one could hardly fail to select it for descrip- tion. The river Norumbega, then, is simply the river of the Grand Scarp. It is in favor of this view that on some old maps the name occurs as 'Norumberg' and 'Anorumberga." One hundred and forty years later, the founders of the first perma- ment settlement in New Jersey revived the ancient name, and, giving the Dutch ending to the French "Berge," they called the Grand Scarp by the familiar name "Bergen," which, for nearly 250 years, has been honored by our fathers and our- selves.
These early explorers must not, however, be allowed to snatch the laurels from the brow of Henry Hudson. When he discovered the magnificent harbor of New York, and the lordly river which bears his name, it was virtually a fresh discovery. All traces of the Norumbega and the French had vanished. No relic had been left behind by Florentine or Spaniard, while the English claims to the territory were so vague and undefined that Europe never acknowledged them. Moreover, the colonization of the New Netherlands was the direct result of Hudson's voyage.
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The absorption of the French in their own internal strug- gles diminished their enthusiasm for discovery and coloniza- tion. Spain had ceased to be the mistress of the Atlantic. Meanwhile the English and the Dutch were coming to their own as the recognized sea-kings of the age. The Muscovy Company was incorporated in England in February, 1555. Its object was the discovery of a northeastern passage to the In- dies, and incidentally trading with Russia on the way. One of its founders was a Henry Hudson, an alderman of London. His grandson bore his name and carried his arms. We are told that a warm friendship existed between Hudson and that
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famous Captain John Smith, who did such noble service in the colony at Jamestown. He first appears in history as the com- mander of an expedition to the northeast in 1607. Of the man himself we know very little. Diedrich Knickerbocker is the only historian who has ever ventured to describe his personal appearance. He tells us that Hudson had learned to smoke to- bacco under Sir Walter Raleigh, and is said to have been the first who introduced the fragrant weed into Holland, which made him the most popular man in the Low Countries. "He was a short, square, brawny old gentleman with a double chin, a massive mouth, and a broad copper nose which was supposed, in those days, to have acquired its fiery hue from the constant neigh- borhood of the tobacco pipe. He wore a true Andrea Ferrara tucked in his leather belt, and a commodore's cocked hat on one side of his head. He was remarkable for always jerking up his breeches when he gave out orders, and his voice sound- ed not unlike the brattling of a tin trumpet, owing to the num- ber of hard northwesters which he had swallowed in the course of his seafaring. His mate was a certain Master Robert Juet (some pronounced it Chewit), because he was the first man who ever chewed tobacco."
On the 4th of April, 1609, Hudson sailed out of the Zuy- der Zee in the service of the East India Company. It was not an uncommon thing, at that time, for explorers of renown to pass from one service to another. His vessel was the Half Moon. It could not have been heavier than eighty tons. One historian says that it was twenty tons smaller. It was known as the Vlie Boat, in Holland, because it was built to sail on the river Vlie. Its crew consisted of less than twenty souls, half English, half Dutch. The general instruction given by the company was that the Half Moon should not sail south of 60° and that an attempt should be made to discover the northwest passage to the far-off Indies. Hudson disobeyed his orders by cruising up and down the Atlantic seaboard until, on the 3rd of September, he anchored off Sandy Hook. Even though 85 years before, Verrazano had looked upon the same beautiful prospect, and French mariners had followed him to bring back to Europe furs in exchange for beads, we look upon this little yacht, riding at anchor in the great ship channel that forms the gateway to the harbor of New York, as the pioneer of that civilization which has come to claim for its own the great me-
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tropolis of the western world, destined to be within a century the most populous city on the globe. Hudson's log has been lost, but fortunately the private memoranda of his mate are in the archives of the Hague. He shows his appreciation of the beautiful when he says : "It is a very good land to fall in with and a very pleasant land to see." To the south stretched the long strip of sand now occupied by the defenders of our city, and the heights of Navesink rose invitingly before him. The great horseshoe of green, broken again by the sparkling waters of the Raritan and the distant heights of Staten Island, bounded the prospect towards the north. The natives seemed friendly. They were clad in loose but well-dressed skins, and the women wore ornaments of yellow copper. They were ready to ex- change green tobacco for knives and beads and brought sam- ples of their maize and hemp. They also laid upon the deck of the Half Moon huge yellow spheres which the Dutch called the vine apple, and for the first time Europeans knew the value of the American pumpkin as an addition to their dietary. Pump- kin pies were probably to come later, when Dutch dairies had been established. But that such huge fruits could be so de- licious, was a surprise to the hungry navigators, content for so many months with hardtack and salt meats. One of the Indian names for the Hudson River was "The place for the pelicans," and all early explorers tell us that the island of Manhattan was at times white with swans. Seals in large numbers came half way up the bay. Robyn's Reef, familiar to those who cross the ferry to Staten Island as the site of the lighthouse whence at night comes the beautiful flash, derived its name from the seals which covered it, robyn being the Dutch name for seal. Tradition says that a whale once came up as far as Cohoes, a town on the river above the head of present steam- boat navigation.
Speaking of names, few rivers have ever boasted of so many as our Hudson, for beside the Indian titles, the Dutch called it The Great River, and to distinguish it from the Dela- ware, The North River. At one time it is called Mauritius, in honor of Prince Maurice of Orange, while from the west bank and the east bank came in succession the names, The River of Pavonia and the River of Manhattan. It was, however, reserved for the English, on their conquest, to give the name and the title of the explorer himself, who, although he sailed
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under the Dutch flag, was an Englishman by birth.
Three days after his arrival Hudson dispatched a dory with John Coleman in command of four rowers. They found the shores on both sides pleasant with grass and flowers, and a little removed from the shore they noted that great oaks cov- ered the hills. The Indians taught them the value of sea food and brought them fish of great variety and abundance. Lob- sters six feet long, such as we never see in market nowadays, are described by the chronicler; and for the first time a Eu- ropean tasted an American oyster. We read of ambrosia re- served for the gods, but what must have been the gastronomic surprise of these white men as the copper-colored savages opened blue-point and saddle-rock, and they learned the exquis- ite flavor of oysters on the half shell, without our modern dread of typhoid fever! Would that Charles Lamb might have told this story as he has told of the discovery of crackle by the Chinese! Coleman and his party made their way to the mouth of Kill von Kull, that is, the Kill, or River, of the Bay. They seem to have entered the Kill and rowed as far as Newark Bay, which they called Achter Coll (The Back Bay), to distin- guish it from the harbor or the front. The news of the ar- rival had meanwhile reached the Island of Manhattan, whose tribes were not so friendly as those of New Jersey, and canoes filled with braves in war paint and feathers put forth for the first battle with their conquerors. The little crew beat off their assailants, but not until a poisoned arrow had wounded their captain, who soon after died. The Dutchmen made their first landing in New Jersey to lay their comrade beneath the sands of the Hook. He was the first of many martyrs to per- ish, in the cause of advancing civilization, in our now populous Middle States-the first white man to be buried in the soil of our own New Jersey. The Society of Colonial Wars is pro- posing, as part of the ter centennial of 1909, to commemorate this tragedy by marking John Coleman's grave.
On the 11th of September, the Half Moon weighed anchor and made her way to the north of the Kill, and on the next day stood off our own Communipaw. On the 13th, invited by the prospect of finding the passage to the East Indies and cover- ing the captain with glory as the great explorer of all time, the Half Moon began the ascent of the Hudson River. A day's sail brought them to Stony Point, to be celebrated in af-
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ter years by the mad exploit of Anthony Wayne. On the 22d, as the lead showed little more than a fathom of water, the cap- tain was forced to the disappointing conclusion that he was sailing on a river whose shallows and narrows dissolved his day-dream of a navigable channel opening towards the spice groves of the Indies. We wonder whether the crew were too sorrowful to give their captain the laugh, as another disap- pointed boat-load did at Ha Ha Bay on the Saguenay. On the return voyage the Half Moon was attacked by the enraged sav- ages near the northern point of Manhattan Island. There was no loss of life, but the vessel took refuge in a harbor on the Jersey shore, just to the north of what is now known as Castle Point. From the diary of Juet, we have the first description of our county :
"Within a while after" (that is, after the attack by the In- dians, on the second day of October, 1609) "we got down two leagues beyond that place and anchored in a bay clear from all danger of them on the other side of the river, where we saw a good piece of ground, and hard by it there was a cliff that looked of the colour of white-green, as though it was either a copper or silver mine, and I think it to be one of them by the trees that grow upon it, for they are all burned, and the other places are green as grass."
We recognize in this an accurate word picture of Castle Point, on which are situated the mansions of the Stevens fam- ily. On the fourth of October the Half Moon was back again in the harbor and immediately set sail for Europe. Hudson confessed his failure and disappointment, but, on the other hand, told such wonderful stories of the abundant game on the mountains overlooking the river, that the Netherlands were stirred with enthusiasm.
The year 1609, memorable for Hudson's great discovery, closed the contest between Spain and the Netherlands. Spain reluctantly acknowledged what had long been an accomplished fact, the independence of the Dutch provinces. The acknowl- edgment, it is true, only took the form of a truce which was to last twelve years. But those hardy Dutchmen knew full well that Spain could never recover her advantage, and that the cause of civil and religious liberty had triumphed in the Low Countries. During the next four years, private enter- prise sent out seven small ships to exchange the skins of
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beaver, otter, and mink, so valuable in northern Europe, for blue glass beads and stripes of red cotton.
The heart of the citizen of New Jersey swells with pride as he reads the veracious history by the aforementioned Died- rich Knickerbocker, which maintains that the colonization of the Western Shore of the Hudson River was affected before the first huts were built on Manhattan We find Knickerbocker guilty of an anachronism in a description of the ship which brought over the colonists. He says:
"She was named Goede Vrouw, in compliment of the wife of the President of the West India Company," but, as we shall find, the West India Company was not organized until 1618, and by that time a palisaded fort had heen erected and a little colony of rude huts gathered around it on Manhattan Island.
Knickerbocker is, however, minute in his description of the ship: "She was of the most approved Dutch construction, made by the ablest ship carpenters of Amsterdam, who, it is well known, always model their ships after the fair forms of their country-women. Accordingly it was 100 feet in the beam, 100 feet in the keel, and 100 feet from the bottom of the stern post to the taffrail. Like the beauteous model, who was declared to be the greatest belle in Amsterdam, it was full in the bands, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, with a copper bottom, and withal a prodigious poop. For a figurehead they bore the goodly image of St. Nicholas."
After a prosperous voyage from Holland, they came to anchor under Gibbet Island. This was the early name of what is now Ellis Island, because, in early colonial days, criminals were carried thither for execution. Here they looked upon the little Indian village, which even at that time bore the name of Communipaw.
A boat was immediately dispatched to enter into a treaty with the Indians, but the Indians were so terribly frightened at the tremendous and uncouth sound of the Low Dutch language, that they one and all took to their heels, scampered over Ber- gen hills, and buried themselves in the marshes, where they all miserably perished to a man, their bones being collected and decently covered by the Tammany Society of that day, formed that singular mound called Rattlesnake Hill, which rises out of the centre of the salt marshes, a little to the left of the Newark causeway. Finding the place deserted, the crew
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of the ship landed on the shore and founded the settlement which they called by the old Indian name.
From Communipaw the colonists set out one day to found the more important colony on Manhattan Island, and for this reason Knickerbocker gravely asserts that "Communipaw was the egg from which was hatched the mighty city of New York."
Washington Irving seems to have been particularly at- tracted towards the Communipaw of his day. Writing just a century ago, he asserts, from his own experience, that on a clear summer evening you may hear from the Battery of New York the obstreperous peals of broad-mouthed laughter of the Dutch negroes.
"As to the honest burghers of Communipaw, like wise men and sound philosophers, they never looked beyond their pipes, nor troubled their heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood. They lived in profound and envi- able ignorance of all the troubles, anxieties, and revolutions of this distasteful climate. I am even told that many among them do verily believe that Holland, of which they have heard so much from tradition, is situated somewhere on Long Island; that Spiking Devil and the Narrows are the two ends of the world; that the country is still under the dominion of their High Mightiness; and the city of New York still goes by the name of New Amsterdam. The traits of the original settlers are handed down inviolate from father to son. The broad- brimmed hat and broad-skirted coat continue from generation to generation. The language likewise continues unadulterated by barbarous innovations, and so critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his dialect, that his reading of a Low Dutch Psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as the filing of a hand-saw."
Irving further tells how two famous relics were preserved in one of their farmhouses from generation to generation. One was Governor Wouter Van Twiller's hat, and another was Governor Kieft's shoe. These had gathered the dust of a century, when, in a spasm of house-cleaning, one of the Dutch mothers swept them out. The shoe she swept into the bay, where it speedily became covered with oysters, and the famous "Governor's Foot" brand was developed. The hat fell into the garden and was speedily enfoliated by a growing cabbage, which variety, known as the "Governor's Head," soon became
famous in the markets of New York.
Going back to the early days, he tells us that a brisk trade in furs was soon opened and the burghers of Communipaw grew rich, because the Dutchman's hand on the scale always weighed one pound, and his foot two pounds, so that no pile of peltries ever weighed more than two pounds.
There is a tradition still current among the old families of Communipaw, that somewhere in the 30's Washington Irving was entertained at the old Van Horne House, still standing on Phillips Street, behind the cove, which so rapidly is becoming a part of Jersey City real estate, and was escorted on a tour of inspection of the old houses which at that date were standing.
When Knickerbocker's history was first published, our Dutch father's took umbrage at the pleasantries of the author, and some waxed indignant at the liberties taken with the founders of the New Netherlands. Irving explained that he did not expect to be taken seriously, and that his chronicle was nothing more than a jest. A change came over the spirit of criticism a little later when the name Knickerbocker, which Irving first heard among the families of Rensselear County, was adopted as a title of the descendants of the founders of New York and New Jersey.
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