History of the city of New York, 1609-1909, Part 1

Author: Leonard, John William, 1849-
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: New York, The Journal of commerce and commercial bulletin
Number of Pages: 962

USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 1

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Gc 974.702 N422Le 1142783

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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01145 1702

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HISTORY

OF THE

CITY OF NEW YORK

1609-1909

FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERIES TO THE HUDSON-FULTON CELEBRATION

TOGETHER WITH BRIEF BIOGRAPHIES OF MEN REPRESENTATIVE OF THE BUSINESS INTERESTS OF THE CITY

BY JOHN WILLIAM LEONARD

Seal of New Amsterdam

New York THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE AND COMMERCIAL BULLETIN

1910

Lincoln Book Shop 8.50

1142783

I have read somewhere-in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think -that History is Philosophy teaching by Examples.

-HENRY ST. JOHN-On the Study and Use of History.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

-CARLYLE-Essay on History.

In a word, we may gather out of History a policy no less wise than eternal; by the comparison and application of other men's fore- passed miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings.

-SIR WALTER RALEIGH-History of the World.

I N T RODUC T I 0 N

PREFACE

T WOCHE CITY OF NEW YORK has recently celebrated with much enthusiasm the tercentenary of the discovery of its site by civilized man. Its citizens have been brought into retrospective mood, and not only residents, but many outsiders, have been aroused to a new interest in the story of the birth, growth and present preeminence of New York among American cities. Therefore, it has been deemed an appropriate time for the production of a history which is neither too voluminous to be available to the average reader, nor so abbreviated as to be inadequate.

It has been the aim, in planning and writing the present volume, not only to tell a true and interesting story, but also to make the narrative explain and illustrate the factors that have led up to the present greatness of our metropolis; giving its record of crude and misdirected beginnings, of the men and events which have helped or retarded its earlier and later growth, and of the integers and personalities of its present greatly expanded importance and its metropolitan interests.

In the earlier portion of this history there will be found much recorded which relates to the Province of New Netherland at large, rather than to the local happenings of New Amsterdam. At that time the two were, at many points, inseparably connected, and the provincial problems, worked out in the city, controlled its destinies and affected its interests in so many ways, that the story of the province becomes equally that of the city. After the Revo- lution this closeness of relation greatly diminishes, and State and national questions only impinge upon the civic story to the extent of the participation of the city in them.

Wherever clarity in the narration of historical events involves interpre- tation of character or motives, the endeavor has been made, in this volume, to be just. Judicial fairness in historical criticism is greatly benefited by per- spective, and it is more possible to fairly interpret those events which occurred before our own time than those which, because of nearness, each observer must see from his individual angle. For this reason the events of the city's earlier history are dealt with in a more critical spirit than those of later days, and there has been no endeavor to attempt, in this history, the interpretation of any events so recent as to be in the realm of present controversy. Even as to the events of the city's earlier days, the estimate of motive and charac- ter is difficult, because many things which, in the evolution of ethics, we have come to regard as outrageous, were then looked upon with complacency, if not with approval.

vii

viii

HISTORY OF NEW YORK

Many books have been written about the history of New York, but it has been twenty years since one was published covering the general history of the city from its beginning to that date. That publication, The Memorial History of the City of New York, in four large volumes, was ably edited by General James Grant Wilson. It is a collection of monographs, by several authors, on the various periods and subjects, and is very valuable to the special student of New York history, but too voluminous for the purposes of the more casual reader. Other older and shorter histories by M. J. Lamb, Mary L. Booth, William L. Stone and others, seem, in our day, when there is so much historical material available which was not then accessible to these authors, scarcely ade- quate for those who desire a history which shall combine a fair degree of com- pleteness of historical detail with conciseness of statement. Besides these, there are many volumes relating to phases and periods of the history of the City of New York, of which by far the most valuable, and in fact, the ablest, most exhaustive and most scholarly contribution to the history of the city which has yet been made is the recently published two-volume History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century, by Mrs. Schuyler van Rensselaer, LL.D.

Every writer dealing with the early history of the City of New York must be indebted to the careful and painstaking work of J. R. Brodhead, E. B. O'Callaghan and B. Fernow in the collection and compilation of the docu- ments relating to the Dutch, Colonial and early State periods, including the ten volumes (and additional index volume) of New York Colonial Documents Procured in Holland, England and France by J. R. Brodhead (edited by O'Callaghan), and the other three volumes, edited by B. Fernow; the Docu- mentary History of the State of New York, by O'Callaghan, four volumes; and the History of the State of New York, by Brodhead (two volumes). The History of New Netherland, or New York Under the Dutch, by O'Callaghan, also contains much valuable material.

The story of New York as given in the present volume has been prepared after an extensive reading and study of many documents and numerous vol- umes, including besides all those mentioned above, scores of others bearing on the city's history. The History of the City of New York, by D. T. Valentine, has furnished valuable material, as have the Manuals, of various dates, by the same author; the Manual of the Reformed Church in America, by Rev. Dr. Edward T. Corwin, has also proven very useful, as has Historic New York, edited by Goodwin, Royce and Putnam; New York Old and New, by R. R. Wilson (two volumes) ; Nooks and Corners of Old New York, by Charles Hemstreet; Janvier's In Old New York; Inness' New Amsterdam and Its People; Satterlee's Political History of the Province of New York; also, for the Revolutionary period, John Fiske's History, various lives of Washington, and The Declaration of Independence-Its History, by John H. Hazelton.

C H

P T

THE DISCOVERY OF MANHATTAN ISLAND AND THE HUDSON RIVER

When Columbus sailed westward with his caravels it was not a new continent which he hoped to discover, but a new way to an old one. Vasco di Gama, the Portuguese navigator, had found a way by water to India, having rounded the Cape of Storms, which later was rechristened the Cape of Good Hope, but the way was long, and the ships of that day were small. Geogra- phers had, even in the days of Greek philosophy, reasoned out that the earth was a sphere, though there were widely divergent views as to its size, some of the greatest authorities believing that its circumference was forty thousand miles, while others reckoned it much smaller.

In Columbus' day the prevailing scientific opinion was that from the Canary Islands, which was the meridian from which longitude was then cal- culated, it was only about nine thousand miles to the eastern coast of "the Indies," or "far Cathay," the treasures of which the kings and merchants of Europe were alike anxious to tap, and as the conformation of the eastern coast of Asia was only slightly known, it might prove to be even a less dis- tance away.

In that faith the Genoese navigator, Columbus, after desperate effort to interest other monarchs, finally gained the ear and aid of Ferdinand and Isabella, and sailed toward the setting sun, flying the flag of Castile and Arragon. When he found land, in 1492, he thought it was the Indies and so named it, the islands retaining the name of "West Indies" to this day. In 1499 he found the mainland of South America, still thinking he had reached India, and in that belief he died. He was not the first to see the main- land, however, the Venetian brothers Cabot, flying the English flag, and the Florentine, Americus Vespucius, having both found the coast of North America in 1498. It is the latter from whom the continent takes its name, though whether he or the Cabots first saw the mainland is a question that still remains in the realm of controversy. The stories of pre-Columbian dis- covery by Eric the Red and other Norsemen are doubtless true, as are, per- haps, the traditions of an even earlier knowledge of the Western Continent by the Irish, and of a Twelfth Century visit by Welsh adventurers. But the results of these visits had been forgotten and unutilized for centuries, and do not dim the lustre of the achievement of Columbus and his immediate succes- sors in the opening up of the New World to commerce and to civilization.

Vespucius and the Cabots, perhaps, knew it was a new continent they had found, although the fact was not fully conceded for nearly half a century;

HISTORY OF NEW YORK

but they, and after them other navigators, believed that some cleavage in the continent would be found, by means of which they would discover a passage to Cathay. Among those who explored various parts of the North and South American coast lines the Spanish and Portuguese were most numerous, but it was under the French flag that the Florentine navigator, Giovanni Verrazano, made the discovery of what is now known as New York Bay. Verrazano was a skillful sailor, whose training had been obtained on the Mediterranean. In 1523 he entered the service of Francis I of France, in the profession, then deemed honorable, though dangerous, of a privateer, and engaged in capturing Spanish ships returning from Mexico with treasure taken from Montezuma. Later that year he projected a voyage "for the dis- covery of Cathay." He started with four ships, two of which he lost in a severe gale which drove him back to port, and after making repairs he started again. The other ship soon returned, its captain having quarreled with Ver- razano, who pursued the voyage alone in the ship Dolphin, going first to a small island south of Madeira, whence he started toward the West, January 17, 1524 (O. S.).

For fear of encountering and being captured by the vessels of Spain or Portugal, which countries claimed the entire New World under the decree of Pope Alexander, Verrazano kept north of the much-traversed route taken by the ships of those countries bound to or from Cuba and Mexico, and steering due west, reached the continental coast at about latitude 34º north, on March 7, 1524. He sailed south fifty leagues, in order to connect his reckoning with the verified discoveries of the Portuguese, then went on a northerly course, striking the land again at a point near where the City of Charleston, South Carolina, now stands.

His voyage northward followed the coast line, and about that voyage an account, much fuller than that of most travelers of that era, is contained in a "Letter" written by that navigator to his patron, Francis I, and a map, the most correct made in the Sixteenth Century, of the Atlantic Coast from the Cape of Florida to Cape Breton. From his time to the present there have been those who have cast doubt upon this Verrazano, and one of the latest American encyclopædias continues the attitude of skepticism, but the intrinsic merit of the narrative and the most searching tests of modern criticism have put the facts of the voyage of this explorer beyond doubt.

Verrazano's letter is an interesting one, but the story cannot be recited here, except in brief reference. He peered into the mouths of Chesapeake Bay and of Delaware Bay and thence proceeded to New York Bay, which he entered. He tells how he found a "pleasant situation among some little steep hills through which a river of great size, and deep at its mouth, forced its way to the sea." Finding a good anchorage in what we now know as the

VERRAZANO AND GOMEZ

Narrows, he concluded not to venture up the river with his one ship, so he took the boat, and with his men pulled up for half a league or so, coming into a "beautiful lake" which is now known as New York Bay. Verrazano and his followers found many of the natives in thirty or more canoes, who came to look with wonder and evident admiration upon the first white men they had ever seen. They were friendly and unafraid, and showed the visitors the best landing place for their boat. On the surrounding shores, well wooded but now leafless except for here and there an evergreen pine, he and his men saw the smoke of numerous wigwams, and he estimated the size of the lake as about three leagues in circumference, which is not far wrong. He spoke appreciatingly of the beauties of the scene, but as he was seeking a passage to India, he saw that his object could not be reached by way of a lake formed at the mouth of a swift river. So he returned to the ship without going to Manhattan, and earlier than he would have done had it not been that a "vio- lent contrary wind" blew in from seaward, making it necessary to go back to his ship and get her out into open water. His description of the region fits no other part of the coast. He landed on the shore of Staten Island, and probably Long Island, from New York Bay, and afterward up the coast, which he described with accuracy. A triangular island (Block Island) which he discovered, he named Luisa, after the French king's mother. New York Bay he had named San Germano, evidently out of compliment to his patron's palace of St. Germaine. Verrazano's career after this voyage is not certainly known. He went on another voyage, and one account says was cap- tured by Spaniards and executed, while another says that he landed on a coast inhabited by cannibals, by whom he was captured and roasted and eaten in sight of his comrades.

The next visitor after Verrazano was Estevan Gomez, who was a Portu- guese but in the service of Spain. There was held a nautical congress at Badajos, in 1524, in which the question of a new expedition to the Indies was discussed. Gomez was an experienced navigator, but had lost much of his prestige by leaving Magellan in the strait now named for that explorer, in 1519, when he was serving as chief pilot of the expedition, and returning to Spain. As a result of the congress, however, Gomez, who seemed very enthu- siastic about his ability to find his way to Cathay by some passage he would discover to the north, was outfitted by the Spanish king, aided by some mer- chants, and in January or February, 1525, went to Cuba and then north as far as the Maine Coast. He returned about the end of the same year. No outlet to Cathay was found and Gomez, on his return, met with much ridi- cule, for he brought back little knowledge of the country beyond the statement that he found there many trees and fruits "similar to those of Spain," which excited little interest in the mind of the Spanish merchants, who dreamed of

HISTORY OF NEW YORK

"the treasures of Ormus and of Ind," or of lands which, like Mexico and South America, yielded gold, gems and spices. Gomez left no detailed description of his voyage; but failing to find his passage to Cathay he loaded his ship with Indian captives to be sold into slavery in Europe.

His voyage was the foundation of a map prepared by Ribeiro, the famous cosmographer, in 1529. Upon this map Sandy Hook, much too large, appears under the name "Cabo de Arenas" (the Cape of Sands), while Long Island is much too small, and the stream between it and Staten Island is marked "Rio de Sanct Antonio."

Without further reference to the voyage of Gomez, or of the voyagers who followed him in cruises along the eastern coast of North America from Newfoundland to Florida, it suffices to say that none seems to have paid any special attention to New York Bay or the Hudson River, during the Fifteenth Century. The Seventeenth Century, however, was full of events which were of importance to the future of this region, the first and historically the greatest of these being the visit to these shores, in 1609, of Henry Hudson, an Eng- lishman, but at the time commanding the quaint Dutch vessel, the Helve Maen (Half-Moon), in the service of the Dutch East India Company.

The recent tercentennial celebration of the achievement of Hudson was not inappropriately undertaken, nor was the tribute to the importance of his work, which that celebration implied, unworthily bestowed. For while it is true that at least one previous party of Europeans-Verrazano and his com- panions-had looked upon and admired the rippling waters and surrounding hills of New York Bay, and had brought back some historically valuable information full eighty-five years before, and that Estevan Gomez and some other navigators had noted Sandy Hook upon their maps, it was Hudson's voyage that led to the settlement of the country and fixed the character of its future population. Had Verrazano's visit been practically followed up by the monarch to whom he addressed his famous "Letter," New York might be, under the name of "Nouveau Paris," an Occidental transplantation of Gallic blood and characteristics; or if Gomez had been praised for what he did dis- cover, rather than ridiculed for his failure to capture the ignis fatuus of a western outlet to Cathay, the region between New England and the English settlements in Virginia might have been parceled out into baronial estates to haughty Spanish hidalgos. But Henry Hudson came, and because of his coming, the country was settled by people of the Germanic rather than the Latin races.

Two years before Hudson came with his Half-Moon, the English had begun the settlement of Virginia at Jamestown, an event the tercentenary of which was appropriately commemorated by the holding of the Jamestown Exposition, in 1907. This was not the first English settlement in North

HENRY HUDSON SEEKS CATHAY

America, but the earlier southern settlement on the Carolina Coast, made under the auspices of Sir Walter Ralegh, had been wiped out by disease or massacre. After the voyages made by the Cabots for England and Spain, of Verrazano for France, of Gomez for Spain, John Rut for England and Jean Allefonsce for France, several others passed up and down the coast from Florida to Newfoundland and further north, seeking vainly for the much desired western short-cut to Cathay. Even at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century the hope that the new route to India might be found in the temperate zone was not entirely abandoned; but it became more and more the belief of navigators that the new route must be found through Arctic waters, either by a Northeast or a Northwest Passage. Acting upon this opinion some expeditions had gone out which, while they ended in disaster, yet developed nothing to disprove the existence of an Arctic passage, east or west. It is in connection with another Arctic attempt that Henry Hudson first appears in the brief recorded career which has placed him on the roll of fame as one of the world's most distinguished historic navigators.

Of Henry Hudson's early life nothing is definitely known. It is said that a man of the same name was in the employ of the Muscovy Company in the early half of the Sixteenth Century, and from this has been built up a theory that the navigator was a son or grandson of that Hudson, and that, like some other sons of employees of that company, he had been brought up in its service, there learning the art of navigation. However much or little basis there may be for this possible but by no means proven story, it is as a man already a master of the art of navigation that we have the first glimpse of his actual career which has found its way into recorded history.

In the employ of the Muscovy Company of London, Henry Hudson sailed northward in the ship Hopeful, April 19, 1607, bent upon the endeavor to reach the Orient through some channel in the Arctic seas. He penetrated as far as Spitzbergen, or within ten degrees of the Pole, then returned to Lon- don, unsuccessful, so far as regards the object of his voyage, but convinced that success, under better climatic conditions, was possible. He went again in 1608, once more representing the Muscovy merchants of London, but again unsuccessful in his quest, though adding much to the world's knowledge of the regions around Nova Zembla, where, during the half century before, sev- eral expeditions had come to grief.

Though the possibility of a more southern passage had not been entirely abandoned by Hudson and other navigators, it seemed less probable than one further north; and to find an Arctic passage to the Indies had now become the greatest object of geographical ambition. Not only the Muscovy Company, Hudson's English employers, but also France and Holland, had their eye on the coveted goal. The States-General of Holland held out a reward of twenty-

HISTORY OF NEW YORK

five thousand florins as an inducement for success in Arctic exploration. In the two voyages just mentioned, Hudson, while he had not succeeded in accom- plishing his object, had gone further toward success than any of his predeces- sors in that field of adventure, and was evidently the man best fitted to com- mand an enterprise of this kind.

The Seventeenth Century was Holland's Golden Age; and the year 1609 was one of especially marked importance in the commercial history of the Neth- erlands, as in January of that year the Bank of Amsterdam was established by decree of the municipality. The Dutch merchants of that day were the most enterprising in the world; the discovery of the Northern Passage was their most eager ambition, and as Henry Hudson's was the name that filled the ear as the greatest Arctic navigator of his day, it is not at all surprising that on January 8, 1609, he was in conference with a committee of two mem- bers from the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company, with Jodocus Hondius, a citizen of Amsterdam who had formerly lived in London, as interpreter and witness.

This was not the first interview that Hudson had with the company, but at the previous one the directors had desired him to postpone the voyage for a year. Hudson was a man with whom activity was a necessity. He was as impatient as he was intrepid, and was not of the temperament to brook a year of idleness.

The French ambassador at Amsterdam, hearing that Hudson's services had not been engaged, hastened to advise his royal master, Henry IV, of the fact, and to counsel the securing of his services at the head of a French expe- dition. The directors of the Dutch East India Company, hearing of the French negotiations, hastened to close with Hudson, and then occurred the conference just referred to, at which a contract was signed. It stipulated that the directors were to equip a vessel of sixty tons burden for a voyage to the North around the northern extremity of Nova Zembla, continuing eastward on that latitude until Hudson could turn to the south and steer for India. For this voyage the directors were to pay the navigator the sum of eight hundred florins (or $320), as well for his outfit as for the support of his wife and children, and the contract said: "in case he do not come back ( which God pre- vent) the directors shall further pay his wife two hundred florins ($80) in cash." In the event of the success of his quest, the directors promised to reward him in their discretion.

After nearly three months of preparation, the Halve Maen, or Half- Moon, was fully equipped, and on April 4, 1609, sailed from Amsterdam. Two days later the vessel passed out from the Zuyder Zee, through the channel between Texel and North Holland into the North Sea. After about a month of sailing it was found impracticable to reach Nova Zembla, because of the ice,

HENRY HUDSON REACHES NEW YORK BAY

and Hudson called his crew of twenty men together. The Northeast Passage having proved to be impracticable at this time, he had a mind to try a western route, either northward through Arctic Seas via Davis' Strait, or by a more southward route which was rumored to exist at about latitude 40° north, as indicated by a map in his possession furnished by his friend, Captain John Smith of Virginia. The crew preferred the northern route, but Hudson, either deliberately or because of stormy weather, took the southerly route; because the next thing known of him is that he landed on the coast of New France, in latitude 44°, and replaced his foremast with one cut new from the hitherto untroubled forest. From there he went southward until he came to Cape Cod, and then went southeast until he reached Chesapeake Bay. Thence he coasted northward, intent on the discovery of the rumored passage, or strait, supposed to exist at or about 40° north latitude. He entered Delaware Bay, then went north again, keeping in sight of the New Jersey coast, and September 2, 1609, cast his anchor in the Lower Bay of New York, in sight of "high hills" (the Navesinks). It was, according to his narrative, "a very good land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see." There the ship remained for ten days, with occasional changes of position, sending out boats to make soundings and find channels, and dealing, with much caution, with the natives, who constantly flocked around the ship. One boat went up the Narrows to explore the bay beyond, and on this trip one of the crew, named Coleman, lost his life, being shot through the throat with an arrow.

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History of the city of New York, 1609-1909, Part 1

Author: Leonard, John William, 1849- Publication date: 1910 Publisher: New York, The Journal of commerce and commercial bulletin Number of Pages: 962

Author: Leonard, John William, 1849-
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: New York, The Journal of commerce and commercial bulletin
Number of Pages: 962