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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01126 3909
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AN
ADDRESS 0
1
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
SAINT NICHOLAS SOCIETY
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
BY -
JAMES W. BEEKMAN
SATURDAY DECEMBER 4
1869
494
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY
MDCCCLXX
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/addressdelivered00beek 0
1735296
Extract from the Minutes of the St. Nicholas Society.
" At a special meeting held at the rooms of the Historical Society, on the 4th day of December, 1869, after the delivery of an Address by the Hon. JAS. W. BEEKMAN,
It was resolved,
" That the thanks of the Saint Nicholas Society be presented to the Hon. JAMES W. BEEKMAN, for the interesting and instruct- ive Address delivered by him, at the request of the Society, and that a copy of the Address be requested for publication.
" Attest. A. R. MACDONOUGH,
Secretary."
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THE
FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
Brothers of St. Nicholas :
When the Turkish sultan, Amurath III, heard some foreigners describe the protracted and obstinate con- flicts between the Spaniards and the Hollanders in the sixteenth century, he called for a map, and seeing how small a space was covered by the United Provinces, he quietly remarked : " If the business were mine, I would send my pioneers, and make them shovel such an insig- nificant corner of the earth into the sea." This corner of the earth, however, has given to the world the print- ing press, the telescope, and free schools; and by these three mighty agencies, has developed modern civiliza- tion. Preserving her identity by her language, Holland has imparted her spirit to those English-speaking nations which have become great by Dutch example.
As children who have thriven in the world by the help of the wise teachings of good parents, love to visit the old homestead, even if it be no larger or more stately than when it was built, so let us go for a while, to the fatherland. Let us see what is going on there now, and compare the fortunes of those of the family who have staid at home, with the condition of the wanderers who went west.
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
The founders of New York were Netherlanders. The seven united provinces in 1609, covered nearly the same territory which now is known as the Kingdom of the Netherlands ; a little kingdom about two hundred Eng- lish miles long, and one hundred and ten miles wide. Its surface is less than one-fourth of the extent of the state of New York, and its population in 1863 was three and a half millions. Numerous colonies containing many millions of men, are subject to the Dutch flag. In the east, are Java, Madura, Banca, Ternate, Am- boyna, Banda, Timor, extensive possessions in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes and New Guinea, with a population, ten years ago, of sixteen millions and a half. In America, Dutch governors control the colonies of Sur- inam, Curaçao, St. Eustatia, St. Martin's, Saba, and Aruba, and in Africa there is Guinea, containing over one hundred thousand souls.
Listen to an account of our fatherland as it now is: The sea is kept out by dykes that have cost fifteen hun- dred millions, reckoned in our American dollars, and these dykes require to keep them in repair, the yearly expenditure of two millions.
Ninety lakes have been drained, and within thirty years the Harlem sea has been pumped dry. By this triumph of Dutch engineering more than seventy square miles of good land have been reclaimed, and where large vessels were sailing, now stands a thriving town of over five thousand inhabitants.
A vast ship canal, seventeen miles long, from Am- sterdam to the North sea, is on the point of being opened
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
to commerce. The port by which this canal enters the ocean, is deep enough for the Great Eastern steamship, and is built of blocks of artificial stone formed out of the sand of the beach. The walls jut out a mile into the sea, and enclose a harbor two hundred acres in ex- tent. The Zuider Zee, is also soon to be partly dried, for the surveys are complete, and the money is ready for the execution of a vast engineering work by which more than seven hundred square miles of dry land will be added to the main shore. The ship canal of the Helder, for many years in use by the East India mer- chantmen, is fifty-one miles long.
The eloquent Saurin said that Holland, created in the midst of marshes, has no solid foundation except in the wisdom of her rulers and the untiring industry of . her people.
We have been hearing of their industry ; let us turn now, for a moment, to their wisdom. The Dutch make a duty of systematic benevolence. They have a Society for the Public Good, as it is well named, having two hundred and twenty branches, and fourteen thousand members, who meet once a fortnight and consider the best means of promoting schools, asylums and hospitals. The discussion of politics and religious doctrines is pro- hibited. The measures agreed on, are carried out in concert by the members. More than seven thousand four hundred charitable societies, four hundred and ninety-four hospitals, one hundred and thirty-eight asy- lums, forty establishments to procure work for poor workmeu out of employ, make up part of the inventory
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
of Dutch good works. There are pauper colonies on waste sandy plains, which were drifting barrens. A million of guilders are annually spent upon these re- formatories, where the labor of the poor whom the com- munity must care for, reclaims useless lands, and almost pays for the maintenance of the colonists. The yearly incomes of all the charities of Holland exceed four mil- lions of dollars. But what shall we say about the four thousand schools, with their four hundred and sixty-six thousand scholars, one-eighth of the entire population. Surely they constitute the crowning glory of our father- land, and the perfect religious freedom which every- where prevails, is their natural result.
Of the commerce of the Netherlands it will be suffi- cient to remind you that in 1861, the imports were two hundred millions, the exports seventeen hundred millions, and the tonnage afloat was over seventeen hundred thousand tons.
" The people," says a very recent American traveler, " are much the reverse of the types made familiar to us by Diederick Knickerbocker." . " The men are shrewd and honest; - enterprise and activity are in operation all over the land." 1
As to the government of the country, the limited monarchy which now rules the Low Countries, is but the executive of the people, whose states-general, in their wholesome and moderate method of voting and of representation might be imitated by other free nations
1 New York Tribune, Nov. 4th, 1869.
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
with advantage. There are two houses in the Dutch legislature; the upper house consists of thirty-nine members elected for nine years, one-third retiring every third year, and is made up of the largest tax-payers, who are returned by the different states or provinces. The lower house contains seventy-two members chosen for four years, from thirty-eight electoral districts, one for every forty-five thousand inhabitants. Elections occur every second year. Every voter must be twenty- three years old, and must be a tax-payer to the amount of at least eight dollars a year. Each province fixes its own local rate of qualification for voters, which in some districts is as high as sixty-five dollars, yearly tax. The members receive a salary of eight hundred and fifty dol- lars and traveling expenses, and the sessions must, by law, continue not less than twenty days.
With this picture of the fatherland of to-day in your memories, go back with me now two hundred years of history, and let us compare our own American home at that time, with the Netherlands as they then were:
" The two hundred and eight walled cities, many of them among the most stately in Christendom, the one hundred and fifty chartered towns and sixty-three hun- dred villages, the sixty fortresses of surprising strength," which made up the United Provinces in 1550, had passed through a century of war and religious persecu- tion. But the Hollanders had been battling with a new weapon in their hands-Laurence Koster's types had in 1423, made it possible to produce a Bible for five crowns, which before Koster's invention could not be had
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
for five hundred. More than a century of free printing had produced generations of thinking soldiers, who cul- tivated letters and the arts in the midst of battles and sieges. Eighty years of fighting seemed only to enrich a land which its enemies vainly hoped to wear out.
Almost two centuries had elapsed since printed books were given to the people, before our Dutch forefathers made their settlements in America. In 1609, when Hendrik Hudson first landed on the island of Man- hatas, free schools and freedom of religious creeds had long been established and undisputed things in the fatherland. Emerging triumphantly from their long contest with Spain, the United Provinces then saw their palmiest days. There were then, as now, but three and a half millions of people, who dwelt upon a territory that covered but fourteen thousand square miles; "yet," says Motley, "the Dutch republic was the first free nation to put a girdle of empire round the earth. It had courage, enterprise, intelligence, perseverance, faith in itself'; the instinct of self-government and self- help, hatred of tyranny, the love of science, of liberty and of money. It had one great defect; it had no country."
When New York was founded, this " nation without a country," had nearly one hundred thousand sailors, who manned more than three thousand ships. Eight hundred smaller vessels carried on the famous herring fishery, while swarms of river craft and canal barges were employed in a vast inland trade. Commerce was mainly free. Thus, without natural resources, by sheer
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
force of intellectual power and intelligent courage, IIol- land, with freedom and common schools as her instru- ments, unlocked and gathered for herself the wealth of the world; while Spain, with a vast territory, abound- ing in every means of riches and prosperity, was sinking into ruin, under a government of ecclesiastics, which punished heresy with death, and education with torture. In those triumphant days of the fatherland she laid the foundations of this metropolis, and of these United States of America. Her influence and character, if not her language, pervades them now.
In the year 1670, there appeared in London, A brief Character of the Low Countries under the States, written long since, being three weeks Observation of the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants. The author was Owen Feltham, an Eng- lish gentleman of liberal culture, to the ninth edition of whose admirable Resolves these Observations appear as an appendix. "'Tis indeed," says he, " but a bridge of swimming earth, or a flag, somewhat thicker than ordinary, * almost all of them ( the Dutch ) are scamen born. They have not of their own, materials to compile one ship, yet how many nations do they furnish ? Where have you under heaven such impreg- nable fortifications? The conies find rocks, and they make them. For war they are grasshoppers, and with- out a king, go forth in bands to conquer kings.
" Their merchants are at this day the greatest in the universe. Even among us they shame us with their industry -they win our drowned grounds which we cannot recover, and chase back Neptune to his own old banks.
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" Their merchandise amounted in Guicciardini's time to fourteen millions per annum, whereas England, which is in compass almost as large again, and hath the ocean as a ring about her, made not above six millions yearly.
" They are in some sort gods, for they set bounds to the sea, and when they list, they let it pass them. Even their dwelling is a miracle. They live lower than the fishes in the very lap of the floods. They are a glass in which kings may see that the desire of being too abso- lute is to walk upon pinnacles and the tops of pyramids, that liberty in man is as the skin to the body not to be put off but together with life. 'Tis an uni- versity of all religions, which grow here confusedly. You may here try all, and take at last what you like best."
Charles II, of England, who knew Holland well, used to say that he believed Providence would preserve Am- sterdam, if it were only for the great charity its people have for their poor.
There is a curious description of Holland given by old Peter Heylin, who about the very time that Captain Cornelis Jacobsen Mey brought over his welcome com- pany of colonists to Manhattan, in 1623, speaks of Amsterdam as " a very fair haven towne where divers times at one tyde, a thousand ships of all sorts have been seene to goe out and in." "The women," says he, " are all laborious in making stuffes, nay, you can scarce find a boy of four years of age, which cannot earn his own meat."
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
In the beginning of the seventeenth century when the fatherland was thus prosperous, New Netherland in America was occupied but by a few small trading posts, like those of the Hudson's Bay Company in later times.
Our own ideal Dutchman, as pictured in Valentine's Corporation Manual, and made familiar to us as the Knickerbocker (child's marble baker) of Washington Irving, is merely a laughable caricature of the rough emigrant who came over as the factor and servant of the great trading companies of that period. He presents as just a picture of the Hollander, as Samuel Slick, the clockmaker, affords of the New Englander, or Don Quixote, of the Castilian gentleman.1
Manhattan island, two hundred years ago, was but a barbarous country. In a recent special report made to
? The ridicule which a few English writers have cast upon the Dutch has given us a false notion of their merit. We begin with our school Readers, we confirm our prejudices with Goldsmith's Traceller, and esta- blish our faith in the stupidity of Netherlanders, out of the veracious history of Washington Irving. D'Israeli, the elder, in his Curiosities of Literature, quotes approvingly the poet Churchill, who carned from - the same critic, by his licentiousness and laziness, the severe comment " that Churchill was a spendthrift of fame, posterity owes him little, and pays him nothing." Churchill, (who wrote about 1763), finely, according to D'Israeli, says of Genius, that it is independent of situation
" And may hereafter, even in Holland, rise."
Oliver Goldsmith, in 1765, after describing Holland, in his admirable poem, The Traveller, as
" A land of tyrants, and a den of slaves; "
speaks of the Dutch, as being
" Dull as their lakes that slumber in the storm."
These flings at the rival nation, were political. The tories, offended at the revolution of 1688, which brought a Dutch sovereign into Eng-
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
the legislature of New York, on the present state of education in the United States and in other countries, by V. M. Rice, superintendent of public instruction, he says : "That part of New York above Canal street was infested by Indians, and it was necessary, much later, to provide means of defence against them. The colo- nists subsisted principally by fisheries and the fur trade, together with a little agriculture. Their largest town was no greater than a small village of the present time, having but fifteen hundred inhabitants. Albany was not half as large, and besides these, there were no other villages larger than a country cross road of to-day, with ten or a dozen houses. Brooklyn, the third city of the
land, ridiculed the foreigners, yet with discretion. Butler in Hudibras, who could not have loved the Calvinism of Holland, is respectful, for he wrote before the national offence was given. Shakespeare nowhere says any thing worse of the Dutch, than that they were " bluff Hol- landers."
It was only in later days that the ridicule began, which we have imported into America. DeFoe satirized without mercy this English fashion of abusing William III, and his nation, in his "True-born Englishman."
" These are the heroes who despise the Dutch, And rail at new come foreigners so much. Forgetting that themselves are all derived From the most scoundrel race that ever lived : A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns.
" The Pict and painted Briton, treach rous Scot, By hunger, theft and rapine hither brought, Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains, Who joined with Norman French, composed the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed."
The literary reputation of the Dutch, may be safely left to the judg- ment of Hallam, who in his introduction to the Literary History of Europe, pronounces Holland " the peculiarly leurned State of Europe through the 17th century."
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United States in 1860, was half tilled by a few farmers, who took the best land and let the other run to waste. Yet with this scanty population, they kept six clergy- men employed and paid. Three public schools, besides the Latin one, were kept going, and there was a score of private schools." "No great attention," says Super- intendent Rice, "was paid, by the English, to educa- tion."
In an earlier portion of his report, he pays this just tribute to our fatherland: " At a time when persecution was the rule throughout Europe, the Low Countries formed an honorable exception. No man was perse- cuted for adherence to Arminianism or Catholicism, to Luther or to Loyola. At the same time, they provided for the intellectual progress of the children by establish- ing the first system of common schools in Europe." This is testimony from a quarter not likely to be prejudiced.
We have a very early, but imperfect account of Man- hattan, two hundred and forty years ago, in the letter of Domine Michaelius, written on the 11th of August, 1628, at Manhatas, and addressed to "Domine Adrian Smoutius, dwelling upon the Heerengracht, not far from the house of the West India Company, in Amster- dam." This letter has been preserved and translated by Henry C. Murphy, the eminent Dutch scholar, to whom we owe so much of our knowledge of the litera- ture of Holland and of New Netherland. "The people here," says Michaelius, "for the most part are all free, somewhat rough and loose, but I find in most all of them both love and respect towards me. We had at the
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first administration of the Lord's supper, full fifty com- municants. They fell much wood here to carry to fatherland, and are making a windmill to saw wood. We have also a grist mill. They bake brick, but it is very poor."
New York, as lately as in 1673, when it was called New-Orange, contained not more than three hundred houses, and as many thousand inhabitants. The whole province held no more than six thousand people of European origin, nearly all of them Hollanders. The entire wealth of the city as assessed in 1675, amounted to two hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars. With the removal of the restraints which were inseparable from colonial government, the growth of New York began. Notwithstanding the disasters of three wars, two with England, and the recent civil struggle whose vast proportions we cannot ourselves yet understand, wars which extended at intervals over more than four- teen years, our city has, within two centuries, increased in wealth three thousand times, and in population almost
- four hundred fold. This extraordinary progress is due to commerce supported by free institutions and univer- sal education. We shall see how large a share Holland had in producing and developing them.
1 There is a journal of a voyage to New York in 1679- 1680, by Jaspar Dankers and Peter Sluyter, two mem- bers of a religious seet called Labadists, who came to America to look for a suitable place for a colony of their
1 1 Memoirs of the Long Island Historical Society, volume I.
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community. On Saturday, September 23d, 1679, they landed at the foot of Broad street, and speak with amaze- ment of the excellence and abundance of the peaches and apples. They went, after a few days spent in making some acquaintance with the settlers, up the Broadway, over the Vliet or fresh water, to Harlem, about three hours travel, just as old Harlem is three hours from old Amsterdam. After returning from a journey to Maryland and Virginia, the Labadists were summoned before Mayor Rombouts, and formally for- bidden to carry on trade, or to travel, especially to Albany, without permission in writing; and they after- wards took a passport, when they went up the Hudson river. "The governor forbade any flour to be bolted, except in the city, and would not permit even Madam Rensselaer at Albany, to use her own flour mill. He forbade the tanning of leather; ordered hides to be sent to Europe unmanufactured, and compelled the shoe- makers to import shoes. This governor was a merchant himself, severe because he was avaricious."
"No money," says Sluyter, "circulates among the people of this New York, who are almost all traders in small wares. They pay each other in wares, and are constantly defrauding one another." This was in 1680, under the English rulers of what had been New Nether- : land. At that time there were but two little hamlets upon Manhattan island, called New York and Harlem; between them lay a wilderness, full of game, of Indians, and even of wolves, as is shown by the following official document, a proclamation issued by Governor Dongan : 3
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
1 "Upon the many complaints of the great mischief done by wolves on this Island of Manhatans, and at the request and desire of severall of the Inhabitants of the said Island that they may have liberty and lycense to huut and distroy the same, these may certifye that Liberty & Lycense is hereby granted to any of the In- habitants of the said Island to hunt and distroy the sª wolves, on Thursday next after the date hereof.
"Given under my hand, at Fort James, this 1ª day of August, 1685.
"THOMAS DONGAN. "Pass'd the office
J. E. SPRAGG, Secy."
What can have transformed this desolate island, within two hundred years, into the metropolis of to- , day? Was it English thrift, or French vivacity; or was it the cosmopolitan instinct of Hollanders ?
Our fatherland in the fullness of its power, had begun to develop itself along the borders of the New World, when European politics caused the transfer of the Dutch colonies to England before they were half a century old. They had, however, enough of Dutch blood and of the training of adversity, to make them the founders of a great city, and the builders of a powerful republic.
The thirteen colonies of the American revolutionary. war, soon free and independent states, were peopled by men of Holland, and of those eastern shires of the Bri-
1 New York Colonial Manuscripts, Dongan, 1686; vol. XXXIII, page 148. Secretary's otlice, Albany.
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THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK.
tish island which had been, for ages, largely settled by emigrants from the Low Countries. These men knew how to take care of themselves. They have moulded, by their wisdom, the growth of these United States into the firm consistency of a mighty nation; while Canada, cared for and cultivated by English statesmanship remains still, colonial Canada, having nothing of Do- minion, but the name. England learned free govern- ment, popular education, how to print, and how to tolerate, from our fatherland. "Holland," said the eloquent Michelet, "was the bulwark, the universal refuge, and salvation, humanly speaking, of the human race." The Dutch Northman taught the Saxon, liberty, and from the earliest times practised its rites at home.
But whence came these Dutch Northmen ?
Far back in the misty days of tradition, a brave con- quering race of hardy pagans are said to have come from the distant cast, into the marshy countries about the mouth of the Rhine. Next, they are heard of as fusing, after a while, into leagues of tribes. These Normans were part of those Aryan races, whose descent points directly to the Scriptural history of the dispersion of the nations, in the plains of SHINAR. Expelled by re- peated overflowings of the sea, men from marshy regions, came in open boats without sails, to the coasts of England. Then the Coranians, coming from a land called by the Romans the land of marshes, swarmed along the banks of the river Humber and upon the fenny low- lands adjacent. Before the beginning of our Christian era, these people had settled thickly the eastern coast
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of Britain, and they welcomed and assisted Cæsar when he landed in Kent, A. D. 55." In the beginning of the ninth century the Low Countries were invaded by North- men who overran the country, and absorbing and inter- marrying with the Menapians they found there, re- mained masters of the land. Heriold, a Danish viking, reigned in Walkeren, A. D. 841. Three Norman chiefs, Roland, Eggard, and Roruc, were the first three counts of Zeeland, and henceforth their Norman followers be- came the Hollanders of history.
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