Early records of the city and county of Albany, and colony of Resselaerswyck, Volume 2, Part 1

Author: Albany County (N.Y.); Pearson, Jonathan, 1813-1887; Van Laer, Arnold J. F. (Arnold Johan Ferdinand), 1869-1955
Publication date: 1869-1919
Publisher: Albany, The University of the state of New York
Number of Pages: 452


USA > New York > Albany County > Albany > Early records of the city and county of Albany, and colony of Resselaerswyck, Volume 2 > Part 1


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org.


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41


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The University of the State of New York


New York State Library


History Bulletin 9


EARLY RECORDS


OF THE CITY AND COUNTY OF ALBANY AND


COLONY OF RENSSELAERSWYCK


Volume 2


(Deeds 3 and 4, 1678-1704)


TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DUTCH


BY JONATHAN PEARSON


LATE PROFESSOR OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IN UNION COLLEGE


REVISED AND EDITED BY A. J. F. VAN LAER, Archivist


ALBANY THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK 1916


MEN


LIBRARY


THE UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK


Regents of the University With years when terms expire


1926 PLINY T. SEXTON LL.B. LL.D. Chancellor - - Palmyra 1927 ALBERT VANDER VEER M.D. M.A. Ph.D. LL.D. Vice Chancellor Albany 1922 CHESTER S. LORD M.A. LL.D. - - Brooklyn 1918 WILLIAM NOTTINGHAM M.A. Ph.D. LL.D. - Syracuse


1921 FRANCIS M. CARPENTER - Mount Kisco


1923 ABRAM I. ELKUS LL.B. D.C.L. - New York 1924 ADELBERT MOOT LL.D. - - Buffalo 1925 CHARLES B. ALEXANDER M.A.LL.B. LL.D.Litt.D. Tuxedo 1919 JOHN MOORE - Elmira -


1928 WALTER GUEST KELLOGG B.A. - Ogdensburg


1917 WILLIAM BERRI -- - - Brooklyn


1920 JAMES BYRNE B.A. LL.B. -


- New York


President of the University and Commissioner of Education JOHN H. FINLEY M.A. LL.D. L.H.D.


Deputy Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner for Elementary Education" THOMAS E. FINEGAN M.A. Pd.D. LL.D.


Assistant Commissioner for Higher Education


AUGUSTUS S. DOWNING M.A. L.H.D. LL.D.


Assistant Commissioner for Secondary Education CHARLES F. WHEELOCK B.S. LL.D.


Director of State Library JAMES I. WYER, JR, M.L.S.


Director of Science and State Museum JOHN M. CLARKE Ph.D. D.Sc. LL.D. Chiefs and Directors of Divisions Administration, GEORGE M. WILEY M.A. Agricultural and Industrial Education, ARTHUR D. DEAN D.Sc., Director


Archives and History, JAMES A. HOLDEN B.A., Director Attendance, JAMES D. SULLIVAN Educational Extension, WILLIAM R. WATSON B.S. Examinations, HARLAN H. HORNER M.A. Inspections, FRANK H. WOOD M.A.


Law, FRANK B. GILBERT B.A. Library School, FRANK K. WALTER M.A. M.L.S. School Libraries, SHERMAN WILLIAMS Pd.D. Statistics, HIRAM C. CASE Visual Instruction, ALFRED W. ABRAMS Ph.B.


New York State Library . Albany, N. Y.


Hon. John H. Finley President of the University


DEAR SIR: I have the honor to transmit herewith and to recom- mend for publication the first volume of Professor Jonathan Pearson's translation of those early Dutch records of Albany, the editing and publishing of which was authorized by vote of the Board of Regents, June 25, 1914. This editing has been carefully done with constant reference to the original records by Mr A. J. F. van Laer, Archivist in the State Library. The present work follows in immediate chrono- logic sequence Professor Pearson's volume of nearly fifty years ago and his own earlier title has been continued for the present series.


In the editor's introduction, details appear as to contents of the present instalment with interesting comment on the significance of the material as a fruitful source for the social, personal and political history of colonial New York. The deeds, mortgages and wills when thus translated and carefully edited are also of high practical value in connection with local real estate titles and litigation.


Very truly yours J. I. WYER, JR Director


UNIVERSITY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK


OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT


Approved for publication this 21st day of May, 1915


President of the University


PREFACE


The early Dutch records in the Albany county clerk's office, though long recognized as exceeding in interest and fulness many similar records in other parts of the State, have thus far been among the least accessible for historical purposes. Translations from these records were made by the late Professor Jonathan Pearson almost half a century ago, but with the exception of a small portion cover- ing the first two volumes of Deeds they remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1887 and could not be found in the summer of 1899 when the present editor made inquiries about them. In 1886, at the time of the Albany bicentennial celebration, Judge Franklin M. Danaher proposed to have translations of the records printed, but the plan did not go through. Shortly afterwards two copies of a manuscript calendar of the records were made by Berthold Fer- now, one for the county in connection with the preparation of a printed index of grantors and grantees, and the other for the late John V. L. Pruyn of New York; but of these the first has disap- peared, except the part relating to the court records of 1652-85, and the second, after having been placed in the hands of the editor for eventual publication by the State, was destroyed by the Capitol fire of March 29, 1911. In view of these unsuccessful attempts to make the contents of the records available and of the fact that the records themselves barely escaped destruction in the fire of the old city hall on February 10, 1880, it seems especially fortunate that the State Library should now be able to publish part of the long lost transla- tions of Professor Pearson which recently have been found and generously placed at its disposal by the author's sons, Mr John M. Pearson and Dr W. L. Pearson, of Schenectady. The manuscript received contains, besides the translations included in this volume, translations of two volumes of Notarial Papers, 1660-95, one volume of Mortgages, 1658-60, one volume of Court Minutes, 1658-59, and portions of two volumes of Wills, 1685-1765, all of which, with the exception of the Court Minutes, have been revised and will shortly be issued in two or more additional volumes. The Court Minutes, which belong to a separate series of records running from the establishment of the first court at Beverwyck in 1652 to the organization of the Mayor's Court in 1686, will be reserved for the present, but it is hoped that before long an opportunity may


[5]


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EARLY RECORDS OF ALBANY


be found to publish them also in their proper chronologic place in that important series of records. The entire manuscript, inclusive of the court record, consists of 1711 pages, which are numbered from I to 407, from 436 to 587, from 487 to 918, and from 477 to 820. Allowing for a certain amount of overlapping of the figures and for the possibility that one group of 476 pages may have con- tained translations of the first two volumes of Deeds which have appeared in print but which may have been counted as unpublished, it would seem that the manuscript constitutes about one-half of the unpublished material that is alluded to in the following passage from Major J. W. MacMurray's preface to the History of the Schenectady Patent, by Prof. Jonathan Pearson and others, which was published in 1883.


Professor Pearson, of Union College, enjoys a well-earned repu- tation as student, translator and writer on the colonial history of northern New York. During the past forty or more years, he has been a constant worker at the records of the ancient county of Albany and has accumulated a vast store of information, which has fortunately been put in writing and embraces many thousand pages of legal cap manuscript. This herculean task was a labor of love without hope of pecuniary profit ; as Professor Alexander aptly ex- presses it - the recreation of a busy life. His friend, the late Joel Munsell, of antiquarian fame, induced him to print much of this matter and "Early Records of the County of Albany," translated from the original Dutch, " Contributions Toward the Genealogies of the First Settlers of Schenectady," "Genealogies of the First Settlers of Albany," "History of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in Schenectady," besides very many magazine and news- paper articles have been given to the public from Munsell's Press. There remain more than four thousand pages of unpublished manu- script and notes, much of which was written many years ago.


Just what the rest of these four thousand pages contained it is impossible to say, but from other statements in the same history and from rough notes left by Professor Pearson, it seems that they must have consisted partly of translations of church and city rec- ords of Albany and Schenectady and partly of manuscript for a last volume on the history of Schenectady, relating to the city proper, more especially to streets, schools, churches, names of locali- ties, mills, streams, hills etc.


As the title indicates, the present volume contains translations of volumes 3 and 4 (or C and D) of Deeds, ranging in date from July I, 1678, to March 14, 170}. Of the first of these volumes the


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DEEDS 1678-1704


text as here printed is complete, it having been deemed desirable to add to Professor Pearson's translations copies of a few English deeds which occur in the record ; but as regards Deeds, v. 4, which is largely in English and which, besides a record of conveyances from December 25, 1688, to September 28, 1705, with two receipts of May 1, 1707, and May I, 1708, contains five pages of proceed- ings of the Court of Sessions held for the town and county of Albany on March 3, 168g, and June 2, 1685, the printed text is confined to such instruments as were originally recorded in the Dutch language. As may be inferred from statements made above, the present volume forms a direct continuation of Professor Pear- son's earlier publication covering the first two volumes of Deeds, which appeared separately in 1869 under the title of Early Records of the City and County of Albany and Colony of Rensselaerswyck, 1656-1675,1 and again in 1870 and 1871 as part of volumes 3 and 4 of Munsell's Collections on the History of Albany, this time with the addition in volume 4 of the Collections of "A Key to the Names of Persons occurring in the Early Dutch Records of Albany and Vicinity," "Contributions for the Genealogies of the First Settlers of Albany," and "Diagrams of the Home Lots of the Village of Beverwyck." From the nature of the case, the character of the rec- ords here presented is largely that of the earlier series and little need be added therefore to the preface which Professor Pearson supplied to the first volume. It should be noted, however, that while the earlier records fell to a considerable extent within the period of Dutch control over the colony, when Dutch laws prevailed in regard to the title and transfer of real estate, the records covered by the present volume fall entirely within the period of British occupation and witness the gradual change from Dutch to English methods of conveyancing. As is well known, the articles of surrender ratified on September 8, 1664, by the Dutch authorities and the British commander, declared all inhabitants of New Netherland to be " free denizens" and secured to them their property as well as the enjoyment of Dutch customs concerning inheritances. Under this agreement, the people of Albany and vicinity continued for a period of nearly twenty years to follow their customary procedure in regard to the transfer of real property and to record their instru- ments in the Dutch language, unaffected by the provisions regarding such matters in the Duke's laws promulgated at the Hempstead meeting of 1665, which, though intended to be ultimately the law


1 In reality running from August 19, 1654, to June 20, 1678, with two deeds of March 3. 1679.


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EARLY RECORDS OF ALBANY


of the whole province, it was at first not thought prudent to enforce . in the Dutch settlements in the Hudson and Mohawk valleys. As an exception to this rule, however, must be mentioned the pro- vision in the Duke's laws whereby tenure of lands was to be from the Duke of York and all persons were required to bring in their old grants and take out new patents from the governor. This pro- vision applied to Albany as well as to other parts of the province and accounts for a long series of confirmatory grants issued for the greater part in 1667 and 1668 which in the absence of many of the Dutch patents are of the utmost importance for a knowledge of the original land titles and which for that reason have been fre- quently cited in the present work. As regards the form and regis- tration of conveyances between private individuals, the first im- portant changes were introduced by the General Assembly convened by Governor Thomas Dongan in 1683. First came the act to divide the province into shires and counties, passed November 1, 1683, whereby the county of Albany was erected and described as " to conteyne, the town of Albany the County [colony] of Renslaers- wyck, Schonechteda, and all the Villages, neighbourhoods and Christian Plantacons on the East side of Hudsons river from Roelof Jansens creeke, and on the West side from Sawers Creeke to the Sarraghtoga." In consequence of this act we find the term " Justices of the Peace of the County of Albany " used instead of the former expression " Commissaries of Albany, colony of Rensselaerswyck and Schenectady," though not till June 13, 1684, and by no means regularly thereafter. Two days later, on November 3, 1683, an act was passed entitled "An act to prevent ffrauds in conveyancing of lands," which provided that from and after the 25th of December next after the date of the act no grants, deeds, mortgages or other conveyances whatsoever of any lands or tenements within the province would be of any force or validity in law unless recorded within six months in the register of the county wherein such lands or tenements lay, and furthermore, that once a year the clerk of each county was to transmit to the secretary's office at New York, for registration in that office, all deeds, mortgages and other convey- ances of which the consideration exceeded the sum of fifty pounds. This act remedied whatever defects there may have been thought to exist in the Dutch method of recording deeds and mortgages but of course did not affect the question of validity of former instru- ments, more especially that of the informal mortgages that were included in many Dutch bonds. Consequently, on October 29, 1684, the Assembly passed an act entitled "A Bill Concerning fformer


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DEEDS 1678-1704


Mortgages," whereby all mortgages of lands, houses and tenements duly and legally obtained and made according to the former cus- toms of the province before its restoration to his Majesty and Royal Highness were to be deemed and adjudged in any of the courts of equity and courts of record within the province as effectual in law and right, as if according to the methods and practice of England or the laws now established.


As a result of these laws, more particularly that of November 3, 1683, we find the English form of deed gradually taking the place of the former Dutch style of transport, the record being at first gen- erally still in the Dutch language and bearing the original signatures of the parties and witnesses, but after August 10, 1685, more often written in English, without actual signatures. Whatever may have been the advantages of the new style of drawing and recording deeds, it is undeniable that from the historical point of view the sub- stitution of a mere record for the original instruments, signed by the parties and witnesses, was a great loss, not only because these signatures gave a personal touch to the records which at this dis- tance of time is of peculiar interest, but because they are of vital importance in determining the identity of many of the persons men- tioned in the records. Indeed it may be doubted whether with the loose method of designating people then in vogue, it would without these signatures be at all possible at the present day to distinguish between the various Jan Thomassens or Cornelis Teunissens who are mentioned in the records now with and then without the addition of a surname or place of origin, so that much of what we know of the relationship of the early settlers hinges on these very signatures which form such a conspicuous feature of the Dutch records.


In the preface to the first volume, much stress has been laid by Professor Pearson on the brevity and vagueness of the descriptions in the deeds and the consequent difficulty of locating the various village lots. This difficulty undoubtedly exists but, as the author himself has suggested, it can in many cases be successfully over- come by comparing the descriptions in subsequent repeated convey- ances of the same lots. From his own experience the editor is con- vinced, however, that no satisfactory solution of the problem can be attained by means of such simple diagrams as Professor Pearson has given in Munsell's Collections. To account with absolute cer- tainty for the many pieces of property owned at different times by the same persons in different parts of the town, as well as for the numerous strips and small parcels of ground that were taken off from or added to the original lots, it is necessary to construct a map


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EARLY RECORDS OF ALBANY


of the entire settlement, drawn to a sufficient scale, preferably, for the sake of greater accuracy and economy of labor, by means of a Dutch ruler, directly from the dimensions in Dutch rods, feet and inches as expressed in the original conveyances, without reduction to English measurements. In doing so, no reliance should be placed on translations, no matter by whom made, nor for that matter on the descriptions in the early confirmatory patents, which themselves are but imperfect translations from earlier Dutch instruments and in which, as shown in footnotes in the present work, the compass direc- tions have in many cases been reversed. The preparation of such a map has long been in the editor's mind. . It would prove of great value in tracing the title to real estate and properly should have pre- ceded the publication of the deeds in order to insure absolute accu- racy of translation. Time, however, forbids its preparation at the present moment and all that can be done is to refer the reader for the location of the lots to the diagrams in Munsell's Collections. It should be borne in mind, however, that by Professor Pearson's own admission these diagrams are quite imperfect and that much remains to be learned in this matter from later registers of deeds and mortgages.


While the value of such records as are here presented lies pri- marily in their character as evidence of title of real estate, it is be- lieved that a careful examination of the volume will reveal a num- ber of things that are of interest to the student of the general history of the period as well as to the antiquarian and the genealo- gist. In the first place it may be pointed out that during the period covered by the present volume the stockaded village around which most of these records cluster occupied an important place in the province as the center of the internal traffic with the native savages and was the scene of many conferences between the Indians and the successive governors. One of the most notable of these con- ferences of which a record appears in this volume was that held in September 1683 in consequence of William Penn's attempt to secure to himself the upper Susquehanna valley, which caused Governor Dongon to make a hurried visit to Albany almost immediately after his arrival in the province. Subsequently, the threatening situation with regard to the French in Canada more than once compelled Governor Dongan to visit Albany and finally in 1687-88, just before his recall to England, to spend the entire winter there. In the second place it is to be noted that the same period saw the final settling of the long-standing controversy between the colony of Rensselaerswyck and the village of Beverwyck or Albany, resulting


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DEEDS 1678-1704


in the erection of the colony into an English manor by patent of November 4, 1685, and the granting of a city charter to Albany on July 22, 1686, whereby its government was definitely placed upon an English basis and whereby all vacant and unappropriated lands within the city limits which had formerly belonged to Rensselaers- wyck were vested in the mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the city. These and other important events lend interest to many details which of themselves are of purely local significance, but there is more. It should be remembered that in history as in many other fields it is intensive rather than extensive investigation that is likely to lead to new results and that nothing gives a clearer insight into the social condition of a given period than the concentrated study of a single typical community. Such a typical community the fron- tier settlement at Albany certainly was and once the character of its population, its mode of living and daily occupations are fully understood, much will be known that applies equally to the contem- poraneous settlements at Schenectady, Kingston, Kinderhook and other parts of the province. As to the character of the population, the reader will doubtless be impressed with the fact that a much larger number of settlers than is generally supposed came from parts of Europe outside of the Netherlands, particularly from East Fries- land, Oldenburg and the duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. As in- stances hereof may be mentioned such names as Evert Jansen Wen- del from Emden, Jan Harmensen from Aurich, Elmer Otten from Isens (Esens), Volckert Jansen Douw from Stapelholm, Jacob Jan- sen from Noortstrant, Jan Fransen from Hoesem (Husum), Jan Thomassen from Wittbek, Casper Jacobsen from Hollenbek, Cor- nelis Barentsen from Ditmars, and others of less-known persons from Norden, Jever, Eiderstedt, Bredstedt, Friedrichstadt and Flens- burg. Just what the cause of emigration from these regions was is an interesting question to which as yet no definite answer can be given. Some of these men may have been of the seafaring class who came over as sailors and who upon arrival decided to stay and to engage in trade. Others may have been engaged as soldiers by the Dutch West India Company and yet others may have sprung from families that during the Spanish war sought refuge across the Dutch borders and rather than to return to the former homes of their parents they may have preferred to join their compatriots across the sea. Whatever the cause, the prevalence of this element is interesting and undoubtedly accounts for the large number of Lutherans in the early settlement which occasioned the call to Al- bany in 1669 of the Rev. Jacobus Fabritius, the first Lutheran minister in the province.


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EARLY RECORDS OF ALBANY


As to the mode of living of the colonists, one should like to have a clearer idea than it is possible to gather from the records of the character of the houses that are mentioned in the conveyances, more particularly whether they were built of brick or wood and whether they consisted of more than one story or not. Practically nothing appears in the deeds that throws any light on these matters, but from certain contracts and specifications in the Notarial Papers which are to appear later it seems evident that between 1660 and 1680 many of the houses in the village were still of the Dutch farm- house type, meaning that the fore part of the house was occupied as a dwelling while the rear part served as a barn, the latter having an open space in the center and stalls and bays on either side. It is probable, however, that this statement does not apply to the more prominent streets, such as Jonker, now State street, on which before 1680 many substantial city houses seem to have been built.1 Inciden- tally it may be noted that the lots on the south side of this street, between Broadway and Pearl street, were all granted on the same day, namely the 23d of April 1652, shortly after Director General Stuyvesant had condemned the lots around the old fort near the present steamboat square. With the exception of the occasional subdivision of a lot, the original lot lines as then laid out have been preserved to this day and can be readily distinguished by any one familiar with the original grants. As under the circumstances might naturally be supposed and as is moreover clearly shown on the plan of the city which accompanies the Rev. John Miller's Description of the Province and City of New York, of 1695, these lots were all laid out in a straight line, a feature which at once disposes of the commonly accepted notion that in the early days the settlement pre- sented an irregular appearance, land being cheap and people being allowed to squat wherever they pleased. On the contrary, the early deeds furnish abundant evidence that from the first the settlement was laid out in quite methodical fashion, experienced surveyors being employed to do the work. This policy, moreover, was in line with the fact that under the Roman Dutch law the title to the street was vested in the government, so that it was important to know just where the street lines were.


In closing, a word remains to be said in regard to the editorial work on these records. Believing it to be his duty to preserve as far as possible the wording of Professor Pearson's translations, the




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