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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01068 6282 E
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COMLEY'S
HISTORY OF THE
STATE OF NEW YORK,
EMBRACING
A GENERAL REVIEW OF HER AGRICULTURAL AND MINERALOGICAL RESOURCES, HER MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES, TRADE AND COMMERCE, TOGETHER WITH A DESCRIPTION OF
HER GREAT METROPOLIS,
FROM ITS SETTLEMENT BY THE DUTCH, IN 1609.
BY W. J. COMLEY.
ALSO, AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY OF SOME OF THE OLD SETTLERS, AND MANY OF HER MOST PROMINENT PROFESSIONAL AND BUSINESS MEN.
6
SPLENDIDLY ILLUSTRATED.
840
NEW YORK: COMLEY BROTHERS' MANUFACTURING AND PUBLISHING CO., 767 AND 769 BROADWAY.
1877.
LLMOD
1737669
DEDICATION.
TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK; -
TO YOU WHO HAVE DEVELOPED THE RESOURCES AND BUILT UP THE CITIES AND TOWNS OF THIS STATE; TO YOU WHO HAVE GIVEN IT ITS WEALTH, ITS FAME, AND ITS BUSINESS; TO YOU WHO HAVE GIVEN IT ITS REPUTATION ABROAD AND PROSPERITY AT HOME,
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED,
BY
The Author.
PREFACE.
TN laying before the public a new work, designed to present the growth and 1 the importance of the commerce and manufactures, and the development of the agriculture and mineralogy of the Empire State, it is not to be expected that a plan so entirely new, and so ambitious, should be executed with either the precision or the completeness that may be attained by those who travel in a beaten path.
That the task has been adequately performed, is an assertion which is left for other and less deeply interested persons to make. Yet it is not our pur- pose to offer one word of apology for faulty arrangement, or for imperfections, the causes of which are as patent as the blemishes themselves.
The history of trade, like the history of any other of the transactions in human affairs, can only be intelligently presented to the mass of readers by seizing upon such facts as most fully illustrate its character, and holding up a series of pictures which constitute a congruous whole.
All candid minds must pronounce at once upon the impossibility of clabo- rating in every detail, in a single volume, the working of the wonderful engine of trade, which is operating continually in our midst. Such a result has not even been attempted; but in its place it has been sought to give a series of outlines, presenting the most prominent features of the relations of the State of New York, with her tributary country, in such manner as to best convey an idea of the magnitude and direction of her commerce, and the requirements it has to supply.
The biographical feature of the work is not new, since biography in some form is inseparable from the relation of any hunan action; yet, in its treatment in the book the history of men is interwoven with the record of their affairs, in the same intimate connections which they sustain in the daily current of commercial life. Business affairs do not transact themselves; therefore it seemed eminently proper that their history should be blended with the life struggles and triumphs of the men who are charged with the responsibility of their movement.
While not deprecating honest criticism, I will yet express the hope that the difficulties, inherent in such a task as we have undertaken, will meet with due consideration when the value of the work itself is being estimated.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS.
TITLE-PAGE.
DEDICATION
PREFACE ...
Ancient Pre-occupants of the Region of Western New York 33
The Iroquois or Five Nations. 4-1
New York State. 46 64
Early Glimpses of Western New York
Observations of Wentworth Greenhalph. 65 Governors of the Colony and State .. 70
Great Cities.
71
New York City. 75 77
Domestic Exports from the Port of New York for the Last Twenty Years.
Foreign Exports from the Port of New York for the Last Twenty Years 77
Foreign Imports at the Port of New York for the Last Twenty Years. 77
Receipts of Domestic Produce at New York for the Year 1876. 78 Exports of Produce from New York for the Year 1876.
78 79
Finances.
79
Courts
Education
Churches
Charities
Public Buildings
Water-Works ..
Markets.
Fire, Police, and Post-Office Departments.
History of New York City ..
90
Advantages of New York as set forth a Century ago.
Mementoes of the Olden Time.
III
A Duel.
III
The Seasons
III
An Earthquake.
III
The Commercial Marine.
III
Small-Pox III
First Fire-Engines. III
Hard Times.
III
Election. III
Burning of the Archives of Trinity Church. II2
The Oyster Pasty Battery. I12
Whales in the North River. II2
Wild Pigeons. I12
Sole of Slaves 112
79 80 83 83 85 87 87 88
An Historical Summary of the Several Attacks made upon the City of New York, and the Meas- ures that have been adopted for their Defence from 1613 until IS12.
95
109
Manufactures.
PAGE
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
Pillory and Cage ..
112
King George's Statue.
The Battery .. 112
The Dutch Church in the Fort.
112
The Windmill on the Commons.
113
The City Fathers.
113
Beekman's Swamp.
113
The First Public Library
I13
Negrocs and Slaves
113
Office-holders.
II3
Trinity Church. .
113
Bolting and Baking Monopoly
113
Watch and Police Regulations
II44
Captain Kidd.
115
Classical School.
II6
Road to Harlem. .
II6
Lighting the City.
116
Arrival of a Governor
II6
Duties of Aldermen.
116
Showing Date and Birth of First Female Born in New York
ITT
The Battery.
117
Mails. .
I18
The Original Mammoth
IIS
Capture of Pirates ..
TIS
The First Presbyterian Church in Wall Street.
HIS
First Daily Newspaper
118
Cold Weather.
1IS
A Nobleman's Mother.
IIS
Estimate of the Support of the City.
119
Mild Weather ..
119
After the Great Fire.
First Negro Plot in the City of New York
119
Brooklyn. I21
Title-page, Biographical Encyclopaedia 327
Preface, 329
Biographies.
33I
Social Amusements in the Olden Time.
Ferry to Long Island.
II7
Pirates and Privateers.
of 33
THE ANCIENT PRE-OCCUPANTS OF THE REGION OF WESTERN NEW YORK.
Tur local historian of almost our entire continent finds at the threshold of the task be enters upon, difficulties and embarrassments. If for a starting-point the first advent as civilization is chosen, a summary disposition is made of all that preceded it, unsatisfactory to author and reader. Our own race was the successor of others. Here in our own region, when the waters of the Niagara were first disturbed by a draft of European architecture -- when the adventurous Frenchman would first pitch a tent upon its banks, there were " lords of the Forests and the lakes" to be con- sulted. Where stood that humble primitive "palisade," its site grudgingly and suspic iously granted, in process of time arose strong walls-ramparts, from behind which the armies of successive nations were arranged to repel assailants. The dense forests that for more than a century enshrouded them, unbroken by the woodman's axe, have now disappeared, or but skirt a peaceful and beautiful culti- vated landscape. Civilization, improvement, and industry have made an Empire of the region that for a long period was tributary to this nucleus of early events. Cities have been founded-the Arts, Sciences taught; Learning has its temples and its votaries; History its enlightened and earnest inquirers. And yet, with the pre- occupant lingering until even now in our midst, we have but the unsatisfactory knowledge of him and his race which is gathered from dim and obscure tradition. That which is suited to the pages of fiction and romance, but can be incorporated in the pages of history only with suspicion and distrust. The learned and the curious have from time to time inquired of their old men ; they have sat down in their wig- wams and listened to their recitals ; the pages of history have been searched and compared with their imperfect revelations, to discover some faint coincidence or analogy; and yet we know nothing of the origin, and have but unsatisfactory traditions of the people we found here and have almost dispossessed.
If their own history is obscure; if their relations of themselves, after they have gone back but little more than a century beyond the period of the first European unigination, degenerates to fable and obscure tradition, they are but poor revelators ot & still greater mystery. We are surrounded by evidences that a race preceded them, farther advanced in civilization and the arts, and far more numerous. Here and there upon the brows of our hills, at the head of our ravines, are their fortifica- tions; their locations selected with skill, adapted to refuge, subsistence, and defence. The uprooted trees of our forest, that are the growth of centuries, expose their mouldering remains; the uncovered mounds, masses of their skeletons promiscu- ously heaped one upon the other, as if they were the gathered and hurriedly entombed of well-contested fields. In our valleys, upon our hill-sides, the plough and the spade discover their rude implements, adapted to war, the chase, and domestic use. All these are dumb yet eloquent chronicles of by-gone ages. We ask the red man to tell us from whence they came and whither they went ? and he vither amuses us with wild and extravagant traditionary legends, or acknowledges himself as ignorant as his interrogators. He and his progenitors have gazed upou these ancient relics for centuries, as we do now-wondered and consulted their
5
£
34
COMLEY'S HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
wise men, and yet he is unable to aid our inquiries. We invoke the aid of reve- lation, turn over the pages of history, trace the origin and dispersion of the races of mankind from the earliest period of the world's existence, and yet we gather only enough to form the basis of vague surmise and conjecture. The crumbling walls- the " Ruins," overgrown by the gigantic forests of Central America, are not involved in more impenetrable obscurity, than are the more humble but equally interesting mounds and relics that abound in our own region.
We are prone to speak of ourselves as the inhabitants of a new world ; and yet we are confronted with such evidences of antiquity ! We clear away the forests and speak familiarly of subduing a "virgin soil;" and yet the plough up-turns the skulls of those whose history is lost ! We say that Columbus discovered a new world. Why not that he helped to make two old ones acquainted with each other ?
Our advent here is but one of the changes of TIME. We are consulting dumb signs, inanimate and unintelligible witnesses, gleaning but unsatisfactory know- ledge of races that have preceded us. Who in view of earth's revolutions; the developments that the young but rapidly progressive science of Geology has made ; the organic remains that are found in the alluvial deposits in our valleys, deeply embedded under successive strata of rock in our mountain ranges: the impressions in our coal formations; history's emphatic teachings; fails to reflect that our own race may not be exempt from the operations of what may be regarded as general laws? Who shall say that the scholar, the antiquarian, of another far-off century, may not be a Champollion deciphering the inscriptions upon our monuments-or a Stevens, wandering among the ruins of our cities, to gather relics to identify our existence ?
"Since the first sun-light spread itself o'er earth ; Since Chaos gave a thousand systems birth ; Since first the morning stars together sung ; Since first this globe was on its axis hung ; Untiring CHANGE, with ever-moving hand, Has waved o'er earth its more than magic wand." *
Although not peculiar to this region, there is perhaps no portion of the United States where ancient relics are more numerous. Commencing principally near the Oswego River, they extend westwardly over all the western counties of our State, Canada West, the western Lake Region, the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Either as now, the western portion of our State had attractions and inducements to make it a favorite residence; or these people, assailed from the north and the east, made this a refuge in a war of extermination, fortified the commanding eminences, met the shock of a final issue; were subject to its adverse results. Were their habits and pursuits mixed ones, their residence was well chosen. The Forest invited to the chase; the Lakes and Rivers to local commerce-to the use of the net and the angling-rod; the soil, to agriculture. The evidences that this was one, at least, of their final battle-grounds, predominate. They are the fortifications, intrenchments, and warlike instruments. That here was a war of extermination, we may conclude, from the masses of human skeletons we find indiscriminately thrown together, indicating a common and simultaneous sepulture; from which age, infancy, sex, no condition, was exempt.
In assuming that these are the remains of a people other than the Indian race we found here, the author has the authority of De Witt Clinton-a name scarcely
" "Changes of Time," a Poem by B. B. French.
35
COMLEY'S HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
Des Mentified with our literature than with our achievements in internal improve- In a discourse delivered before the New York Historical Society in ISI1, At clinton says : " Previous to the occupation of this country by the progenitors the present race of Indians, it was inhabited by a race of men much more popu- vy and much farther advanced in civilization." Indeed the abstract position may Ir regarded as conceded. Who they were, whence they came, and whither they went. have been themes of speculation with learned antiquarians, who have failed to arrive at any satisfactory conclusions. In a field, or historical department, so Mey and thoroughly explored, the author would not venture opinions or theories of his own, even were it not a subject of inquiry, in the main, distinct from the objects et his work. It is a topic prolific enough of reflection, inquiry, and speculation, for volumes, rather than an incidental historical chapter. And yet, it is a subject of too much local interest to be wholly passed over.
At the early period at which Mr. Clinton advanced the theory that the Ridge Road was once the southern shore of Lake Ontario-1811 -- when settlement was but just begun, and a dense forest precluded a close observation, he was quite liable to fall tito the error that time and better opportunities for investigation have corrected. The formation, composition, alluvial deposits, etc., of the Ridge Road, with reference to its two sides, present almost an entire uniformity. There is, at least, not the dis- thuiction that would be apparent if there had been the action of water, depositing its materials only upon its northern side. By supposing the Mountain Ridge to have onve been the southern shore of Lake Ontario, it would follow that the Ridge Road may have been a Sand bar. The nature of both, their relative positions, would tender this a far more reasonable hypothesis than the other; and when we add the fact that the immediate slope, or falling off, is almost as much generally, upon the south as the north side of the Ridge Road, we are under the necessity of abandon- ing the precedent theory. There is from the Niagara to the Genesee River, upon the Mountain Ridge, a line, or cordon, of these ancient fortifications-none, as the author concludes, from observation and inquiry, between the two .*
But a few of the most prominent of these ancient fortifications will be noticed, chough only to give the reader who has not had an opportunity of seeing them a general idea of their structure, and relics which almost uniformly may be found in and about them.
U'pon a slope or offset of the Mountain Ridge three and a half miles from the village of Lewiston, is a marked spot, that the Tuscarora Indians call Kienuke.t There is a burial ground, and two elliptic mounds or barrows that have a diameter of zo feet, and an elevation of from 4 to 5 feet. A mass of detached works, with spaces intervening, seems to have been chosen as a rock citadel ; and well chosen --- for the mountain fastnesses of Switzerland are but little better adapted to the pur- poses of a look-out and defence. The sites of habitations are marked by remains of pottery, pipes, and other evidences.
Eight miles east of this, upon one of the most elevated points of the mountain aider in the town of Cambria, upon the farm until recently owned by Eliakim Hammond, now owned by John Gould, is an ancient fortification and burial-place.
* U'pon an elevation, on the shore of Lake Ontario near the Eighteen-mile-Creek, there is a wwand similar in appearance to some of those that have been termed ancient ; though it is unques- totally incident to the early French and Indian wars of this region. And the same conclusion may te trmed in reference to other similar ones along the shore of the lake.
4 Meaning a fort, or stronghold, that has a commanding position, or from which there is a fine
36
COMLEY'S HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
possessing perliaps as great a degree of interest and as distinct characteristics as any that have been discovered in Western New York. The author having been one of a party that made a thorough examination of the spot soon after its first discovery in 1823, he is enabled from memory and some published accounts of his at the time, to state the extent and character of the relics.
The location commands a view of Lake Ontario and the surrounding country. An area of about six acres of level ground appears to have been occupied; fronting which, upon a circular verge of the mountain, were distinct remains of a wall. Nearly in the centre of the area was a depository of the dead. It was a pit exca- vated to the depth of four or five feet, filled with human bones, over which were slabs of sand stone. Hundreds seem to have been thrown in promiscuously, of both sexes and all ages. Extreme old age was distinctly identified by toothless jaws, and the complete absorption of the alveolar processes ; and extreme infancy, by the small skulls and incomplete ossification. Numerous barbs or arrow-points were found among the bones, and in the vicinity. One skull retained the arrow that had pierced it, the aperture it had made on entering being distinctly visible. In the position of the skeletons, there was none of the signs of ordinary Indian burial ; but evidences that the bodies were thrown in promiscuously, and at the same time. The conjecture might well be indulged that it had been the theatre of a sanguinary battle, terminating in favor of the assailants, and a general massacre. A thigh-bone of unusual length was preserved for a considerable period by a physi- cian of Lockport, and excited much curiosity. It had been fractured obliquely. In the absence of any surgical skill, or at least any application of it, the bone had strongly reunited, though evidently so as to have left the foot turned out at nearly a right angle. Of course, the natural surfaces of the bone were in contact, and not the fractured surfaces; and yet spurs or ligaments were thrown out by nature, in its healing process, and so firmly knit and interwoven as to form, if not a perfect, a firm reunion ! It was by no means a finished piece of surgery, but to all appear- ances had answered a very good purpose. The medical student will think the pa- tient must have possessed all the fortitude and stoicism of his race, to have kept his fractured limb in a necessarily fixed position, during the long months that the healing process must have been going on, in the absence of splints and gum elastic bands. A tree had been cut down growing directly over the mound, upon the stump of which could be counted 230 concentric circles. Remains of rude specimens of earthen ware, pieces of copper, and iron instruments of rude workmanship were ploughed up within the area ; also, charred wood, corn and cobs.
At the head of a deep gorge, a mile west of Lockport (similar to the one that forms the natural canal basin, from which the combined Locks ascend), in the early settlement of the country, a circular raised work, or ring-fort, could be distinctly traced. Leading from the inclosed area, there had been a covered way to a spring of pure cold water that issues from a fissure in the rock, some 50 or 60 feet down
NOTE .- The following passage appears in "Cusick's History of the Six Nations," the extraordi- nary production of a native Tuscarora, that it will be necessary to notice in another part of the work. About this time the King of the Five Nations had ordered the Great War chief, Shorihawne (a Mo- hawk), to march directly with an army of five thousand warriors to aid the Governor of Canandaigua against the Erians, to attack the Fort Kayquatkay and endeavor to extinguish the council-fire of the enemy, which was becoming dangerous to the neighboring nations ; but unfortunately during the siege, a shower of arrows was flying from the fort, the great war chief Shoribawne was killed, and his body was conveyed back to the woods and was buried in a solemn manner ; but however, the siege continued for several days ; the Erians sued for peace ; the army immediately ceased from hostilities, and left the Erians in entire possession of the country,
37
COMLEY'S HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
the declivity. Such covered paths, or rather the remains of them, lead from many ed these ancient fortifications. Mr. Schoolcraft concludes that they were intended for the emergency of a prolonged siege. They would seem now, to have been but a popr defence for the water-carriers, against the weapons of modern warfare; yet probably sufficient to protect them from arrows, and a foe that had no sappers or miners in their ranks.
There is an ancient battle-field upon the Buffalo Creek six miles from Buffalo, near the Mission Station. There are appearances of an inclosed area, a mound where human bones have been excavated, remains of pottery ware, etc. The Se- necas have a tradition that here was a last decisive battle between their people and their inveterate enemies the Kah-Kwahs ; though there would seem to be no reason why the fortification should not be classed among those that existed long before the Senecas are supposed to have inhabited this region.
A mile north of Aurora village, in Erie County, there are several small lakes or ponds, around and between which there are knobs or elevations, thickly covered with a tall growth of pine; upon them are several mounds, where many human bones have been excavated. In fact, Aurora and its vicinity seems to have been a favorite resort not only for the ancient people whose works and remains we are noticing, but for the other races that succeeded them. Relics abound there perhaps to a greater extent than in any other locality in Western New York. An area of from three to four miles in extent, embracing the village, the ponds, the fine springs of water at the foot of the bluffs to the north, and the level plain to the south, would seem to have been thickly populated. There are in the village and vicin- ity few gardens and fields where ancient and Indian relics are not found at each suc- ressive ploughing. Few cellars are excavated without discovering them. In digging a cellar a few years since, upon the farm of Charles P. Pierson, a skeleton was ex- humed, the thigh-bones of which would indicate great height ; exceeding by sev- mal inches that of the tallest of our own race. In digging another cellar, a large number of skeletons, or detached bones, were thrown out. Upon the farm of M. B. Crooks, two miles from the village, where a tree had been turned up, several hundred pounds of axes were found ; a blacksmith who was working up some axes that were found in Aurora, told the author that most of them were without any steel, but that the iron was of a superior quality. He had one that was entirely of steel, out of which he was manufacturing some edge tools.
Near the village, principally upon the farm of the late Horace S. Turner, was An extensive Beaver Dam. It is but a few years since an aged Seneca strolled away from the road, visited the ponds, the springs, and coming to a field once overflowed by the dam, but then reclaimed and cultivated, said these were the haunts of his youth-upon the hills he had chased the deer, at the springs he had slaked his thirst, and in the field he had trapped the beaver.
The ancient works at Fort Hill, Le Roy, are especially worthy of observation in connection with this interesting branch of history, or rather inquiry. The author is principally indebted for an account of them to Mr. Schoolcraft's " Notes on the Iroquois," for which it was communicated by F. Follett, of Batavia. They are three iniles north of Le Roy, on an elevated point of land, formed by the junction of a small stream called Fordham's Brook, with Allen's Creek. The better view of Fort Hill is had to the north of it, about a quarter of a mile on the road leading from Bergen to Le Roy. From this point of observation it needs little aid of the imag- ination to conceive that it was erected as a fortification by a large and powerful army, looking for a permanent and inaccessible bulwark of defence. From the
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