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M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01177 9573
THE
Olden Time in lew york. C
BY
A MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY.
W. I. Kib
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KIP'S BAY HOUSE IN 1691.
I. NEW YORK SOCIETY IN OLDEN TIME.
II. TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND.
NEW YORK : G. P. PUTNAM & SONS, M DCCC LXXII.
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/oldentimeinnewyo00kipw_0
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NEW YORK SOCIETY
IN THE
OLDEN TIME.
PREFACE.
PROBABLY no article has appeared for years in a New York literary journal which excited the attention of the community to the extent of the first of those reprinted in this volume- "New York Society in the Olden Time." It was published in Putnam's Magasine for September, 1870. While the papers generally criticised it, and contended that the present times were best, those, on the contrary, whose associations stretched back into the past, hailed it as a faithful portraiture of life as it was in the Colony and in the generation which succeeded our separation from the Mother Country. A member of one of our oldest Colonial families writes to the author : " I did not know there existed in this modern time any one having the knowledge as well as courage to write so clear and un - biassed a review of the past."
The author has yielded, therefore, to the request of friends to enlarge the article and give it a more permanent form. It is a picture of a state of things gone never to return, and per- haps for that reason is worthy of preservation. A few years longer and no one will be left who could give these reminis- cences.
The second article in this volume is different in its style and object, being published in a journal of a widely different char- acter. It appeared in the July, 1871, number of the " New York Genealogical and Biographical Record." This also has been considerably enlarged by notices of other families.
Perhaps, together, these two articles may save from perish- ing, some recollections of the Old Régime.
While for the young, who are looking only to the shadowy future, these pages may possess but little interest, perhaps
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PREFACE.
there are those with whom the light is fading, who will find here familiar scenes and names which will call up again " the buried past," until the tones sound to them (as one writes the author) "like the voice of their own dear kindred."
NEW YORK, Jan., 1872.
NEW YORK SOCIETY
IN THE
OLDEN TIME.
To lament the days that are gone, and believe the past better than the present, is a tendency which has been remarked as far back as the days of Solomon. "Say not thou," says the wise king, " What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." However this may be, it is a propensity which has always exist- ed, to compare unfavorably the present with the distant past. The Golden Age of which poets sang was in " our fathers' day, and in the old time before them."
From this feeling the writer realizes that he is not free, and, in many respects, might be inclined to impute his estimate of the present to the waning light in which he sees it. When dealing, however, with facts with which he is well acquainted, he feels that he cannot be prejudiced; and in this way it is that he contrasts the society of the present with that which once existed in New York. From his distant home he looks back on the rush and hurry of life as it now exists in his native city; and, while he realizes its increased glitter and
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NEW YORK SOCIETY
· splendor, he feels that it has depreciated from the dignity and high tone which once characterized it.
Of the society of the olden time he can, of course, know but little by actual experience. His knowledge of it began when the old regime was just passing away. In the days of his childhood, the men of the Revolution were fast going down to the grave. Of these he knew some in their old age. His father's contemporaries, however, were somewhat younger, though brought up under the same influences. But when that generation departed, the spirit which had aided in forming their characters had gone also, never again to be felt. To many of these men he looked up as if they were superior beings; and, indeed, he has felt, in all his passage through life, that he has never seen the equals of those who then stood forward prominently in public affairs.
The earliest notice we have of colonial society is in Mrs. Grant's delightful " American Lady." She was the daughter of a British officer who came over with troops during the old French war, and her reminis- cences begin about 1760. Her residence was princi- pally in Albany, with the Schuyler family. Still, she was brought in contact with the leading families of the colony, and as she was in the habit of often visiting New York, she learned much of the state of things in that city. She writes thus of the old Dutch and colo- nial families of that day : "They bore about them the tokens of former affluence and respectability, such as family plate, portraits of their ancestors executed in a superior style, and great numbers of original paintings, some of which were much admired by acknowledged judges." In New York, of course, the highest degree of refinement was to be seen, and she says: "An ex- pensive and elegant style of living began already to take place in New York, which was, from the resi-
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IN THE OLDEN TIME.
dence of the Governor and Commander-in-Chief, be- come the seat of a little court."
Society, in that day, was very stationary. About 1635 the first Dutch settlers came out, and the country was much of it occupied by their large grants, many of which had attached to them manorial rights. They brought with them some of the social distinctions of the old country. In the cities of Holland, for a long time, there had been "great" and "small" burgher rights. In Amsterdam the "great burghers " monopolized all the offices, and were also exempt from attainder and confiscation of goods. The "small burghers " had the freedom of trade only. In 1657 this "great burgher" right was introduced into New Amsterdam by Gover- nor Stuyvesant.
In Paulding's " Affairs and Men of New Amsterdam in the Time of Governor Peter Stuyvesant," we find a list of the recorded GREAT CITIZENSHIP, in the year 1657. As a matter of the olden time, it is here given entire :
-
Joh. La Montagnie Jun. Jan Gillesen Van Burggh.
Hendrick Kip Jun. Capt. Martin Crigier.
Hendrick Kip.
Carel Van Burggh.
De Heer General Stuyvesant.
Jacob Van Couwenhoven.
Domanie Megapolensis.
Laurisen Cornelisen Van Wel.
Jacob Garritsen Strycker.
Johannes Pietersen Van Burggh.
Van Virge.
Cornelis Steenwyck.
Wife of Cornelis Van Teinhoven.
Will. Bogardus.
Hendrick Van Dyck.
Daniel Litschoe.
Isaac Kip.
Pieter Van Couwenhoven.
" These twenty names," says William L. Stone, writing in 1866, "composed the aristocracy of New York two hundred and nine years ago. We have also before us the names of the ‘Small Citizen- ship,' which numbered two hundred and sixteen. In a few short years it was found that the division of the
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NEW YORK SOCIETY
citizens into two classes produced great inconvenience, in consequence of the very small number of great burghers who were eligible to office. It now became necessary for the Government to change this unpopu- lar order. In the year 166S the difference between 'great' and 'small' burghers was abolished, when every burgher became legally entitled to all burgher privileges." *
About fifty years after the arrival of the early Dutch settlers, they were followed by the Huguenots, driven abroad principally by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and including, in their number, members of some of the best families in France. Thus came the Jays, De Lanceys, Rapaljes, De Peysters, Pintards, &c. In 1664 the English took possession of the col- ony, and, from that time, English settlers increased. The colony became (as Paulding says) "a place in which to provide for younger sons." Still, this often brought out scions of distinguished families and the best blood in England.
Thus matters stood until the Revolution. The country was parcelled out among great proprietors. We can trace them from the city of " New Amster- dam" to the northern part of the State. In what is now the thickly-populated city were the lands of the Stuyvesants, originally the Boweric of the old Gover- nor. Next above was the grant to the Kip family, called " Kip's Bay," made in 1638. In the centre of the island were the possessions of the De Lanceys. Opposite, on Long Island, was the grant to the Law- rence family. We cross over Harlaem River and reach " Morrissanea," given to the Morris family. Beyond this, on the East River, was " De Lancey's Farm," another grant to that powerful family; while on the
* Stone's " History of New York City," p. 33.
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IN THE OLDEN TIME.
Hudson, to the west, was the lower Van Courtlandt manor, and the Phillipse manor. Above, at Peekskill, was the upper manor of the Van Courtlandts. Then came the manor of Livingston, then the Beekmans, then the manor of Kipsburgh, purchased by the Kip family from the Indians, in 1686, and made a royal grant by Governor Dongan, two years afterwards. Still higher up was the Van Rensselaer manor, twenty- four miles by forty-eight; and, above that, the pos- sessions of the Schuylers. Further west, on the Mo- hawk, were the broad lands of Sir William Johnson, created a baronet for his services in the old French and Indian wars, who lived in a rude magnificence at Johnson Hall. All this was sacrificed by his son, Sir John, for the sake of loyalty, when he took up arms for the king and was driven into Canada. The title, however, is still held by his grandson, and stands re- corded in the baronetage of England.
The very names of places, in some cases, show their history. Such, for instance, is that of Yonkers. The word Junker (pronounced Younker), in the languages of Northern Europe, means the nobly-born-the gen- tleman. ' In West Chester, on the Hudson River, still stands the old manor-house of the Phillipse family. The writer remembers, in his early day, when visiting there, the large rooms and richly-ornamented ceilings, with quaint old formal gardens about the house. When, before the Revolution, Mr. Phillipse lived there, "lord of all he surveyed," he was always spoken of by his tenantry as " the Yonker" -- the gentleman -- par excellence. In fact, he was the only person of that social rank in that part of the country. In this way the town, which subsequently grew up about the old manor-house, took the name of Yonkers.
This was a state of things which existed in no other
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NEW YORK SOCIETY
part of the continent. In New England there were scarcely any large landed proprietors. The country was divided up among small farmers, and, when the Revolution commenced, the people almost unanimously espoused its cause. The aristocratic element, which in New York rallied around the Crown, was here en- tirely wanting. The only exception to this, which we can remember, was the case of the Gardiners, of Maine. Their wide lands were confiscated for their loyalty; but, on account of some informality, after the Revolution they managed to recover their property, and are still seated at Gardiner.
At the South, where so much was said about their being "the descendants of the Cavaliers," there were no such feudal relations. The planters had no ten- antry ; they had slaves. Their system, therefore, was similar to that of the serfdom of Russia. With the colonial families of New York it was the English feu- dal system.
Hereditary landed property was, in that day, invest- ed with the same dignity in New York which it has now in Europe; and, for more than a century, these families retained their possessions, and directed the infant colony. They formed a coterie of their own, and, generation after generation, married among them- selves. Turn to the early records of New York, and you find all places of official dignity filled by a certain set of familiar names, many of which, since the Revo- lution, have entirely disappeared. As we have re- marked, they occupied a position similar to that of the English country gentleman, with his many tenants, and were everywhere looked up to with the same kind of respect which is now accorded to them. Their position was an acknowledged one, for social distinctions then were marked and undisputed. They were the persons
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IN THE OLDEN TIME.
who were placed in office in the Provincial Council and Legislature, and no one pretended to think it strange. "They," says a writer on that day, " were the gentry of the country, to whom the country, with- out a rebellious thought, took off its hat."
Holmes, in his poem of " Agnes," thus describes the effect produced upon country people by the sight of a gentleman's equipage :-
" And all the midland counties through, The ploughman stopped to gaze, Where'er his chariot swept in view Behind the shining bays, With mute obeisance, grave and slow, Repaid by bow polite -- For such the way with high and low Till after Concord's fight."
In that age the very dress plainly marked the dis- tinctions in society. No one who saw a gentleman could mistake his social position. Those people of a century ago now look down upon us from their por- traits, in costumes which, in our day, we see nowhere but on the stage. Velvet coats with gold lace, large sleeves and ruffles at the hands, wigs and embroidered vests, with the accompanying rapier, are significant of a class removed from the rush and bustle of life-the " nati consumere fruges " -- whose occupation was not -to toil. No one, in that day, below their degree, assumed their dress; nor was the lady surpassed in costliness of attire by her servant. In fact, at that time, there were gentlemen and ladies, and there were servants.
The manner in which these great landed estates were arranged fostered a feudal feeling. They were granted by Government to the proprietors, on condi- tion that, in a certain number of years, they settled so
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NEW YORK SOCIETY
many tenants upon them. These settlers were gener- ally Germans of the lower class, who had been brought over free. Not being able to pay their passage-money, the captain took them without charge, and then they were sold by him to the landed proprietors for a cer- tain number of years, in accordance with the size of the family. The sum received remunerated him for the passage-money. They were called, in that day, Re- demptioners; and, by the time their term of service --- sometimes extending to seven years-had expired, they were acquainted with the ways of the country and its manner of farming, had acquired some knowledge of the language, and were prepared to set up for them- selves. Thus both parties were benefited. The landed proprietor fulfilled his contract with the Government, and the Redemptioners were trained for becoming in- dependent settlers.
From these Redemptioners many of the wealthy farming families, now living in the Hudson River coun- ties, are descended. In an early day they purchased lands which enriched their children. The writer's fa- ther once told him of an incident which occurred in his grandfather's family. One of his German tenants, having served out his time of several years' duration, brought to his late owner a bag of gold which had come with him from the old country, and was sufficient to purchase a farm. "But," said his master, in surprise, " how comes it, Hans, with all this money, that you did not pay your passage, instead of serving as a Redemp- tioner so long?"-" Oh," said the cautious emigrant from the Rhine, " I did not know English, and I should have been cheated. Now I know all about the coun- try, and I can set up for myself."
These tenants, however, looked up with unbounded reverence to the landed proprietor who owned them,
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IN THE OLDEN TIME.
and it took much more than one generation to enable them to shake off this feeling, or begin to think of a social equality.
There was, in succeeding times, one curious result of this system in the confusion of family names. These German Redemptioners often had but one name. For instance, a man named Paulus was settled as a tenant on an estate. As his children grew up, they needed something to distinguish them. They were Paulus' Jan and Paulus' Hendrick. This naturally changed to Jan Paulus and Hendrick Paulus, and thus Paulus be- came the family name.
This was well enough. But they frequently took · the name of their proprietor. He was known as Mor- ris' Paulus, and this, in the next generation, naturally changed to Paulus Morris, and his children assumed that as their family name. In this way there are many families in the State of New York bearing the names of the old landed proprietors, which have been thus derived.
Some years ago, a literary gentleman, who was com- piling facts with regard to the early history of the State, came to the writer, very much puzzled. " Who," said he, " are these people ? I find their names in Dutchess County, and yet, looking at Holgate's pedigree of that family, I see they cannot belong to it. Where did they come from, and where do they belong ?" The above account was a satisfactory solution of the mystery.
But to return to this system. It was carried out to an extent of which, in this day, most persons are igno- rant. On the Van Rensselaer manor there were, at one time, several thousand tenants, and their gathering was like that of the Scottish clans. When a member of the family died, they came down to Albany to do honor at the funeral, and many were the hogsheads of 3
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NEW YORK SOCIETY
· good ale which were broached for them. They looked up to the " Patroon " with a reverence which was still lingering in the writer's early day, notwithstanding the inroads of democracy. And, before the Revolution, this feeling was shared by the whole country. When it was announced in New York, a century ago, that the Patroon was coming down from Albany by land, the day he was expected to reach the city crowds turned out to see him enter in his coach-and-four.
The reference to the funerals at the Rensselaer manor-house reminds us of a description of the burial of Philip Livingston, one of the proprietors of Livings- ton manor, in February, 1749, taken from a paper of that day. It will show something of the customs of the times. The services were performed both at his town-house in New York, and at the manor. "In the city, the lower rooms of most of the houses in Broad- street, where he resided, were thrown open to receive visitors. A pipe of wine was spiced for the occasion, and to each of the eight bearers, with a pair of gloves, mourning ring, scarf and handkerchief, a monkey-spoon was given." (This was so called from the figure of an ape or monkey, which was carved in solido at the ex- tremity of the handle. It differed from a common spoon in having a circular and very shallow bowl.) " At the manor these ceremonies were all repeated, another pipe of wine was spiced, and, besides the same presents to the bearers, a pair of black gloves and a handkerchief were given to each of the tenants. The whole expense was said to amount to {500."
These manors were not mere names, but substantial evidences of an authority which, in the present day, exists only in a few of the most despotic monarchial governments of Europe. We will give Holgate's ac- count of these manorial rights, as he was very much
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IN THE OLDEN TIME.
disgusted with the whole system, and sums up his ob- jections with the declaration -" The patroonship of New Netherlands may justly be regarded as nothing less than an odious form of feudal aristocracy transferred to another soil." He says: " The territory was made a manor with feudal appendages. The individual thus undertaking colonization was designated, in the charter, as a PATROON, and endowed with baronial honors. He had, for example, the prerogatives of sovereignty over the dominion which he thus acquired; administered the laws personally or by functionaries of his own appoint- ment ; appointed his own civil and military, as well as judicial officers ; and had magazines, fortifications, and all the equipments of a feudal chieftain. His tenants owed him fealty and military service, as vassals. All adjudications in his court were final, with the exception of civil suits amounting to fifty guilders and upwards, when an appeal lay from the judgment of the Patroon to the Director-General and Council. And it is pro- bable, that a similar remedy was also afforded in all criminal offences affecting ' life and limb,' this being one of the modifications already engrafted upon the feudal sovereignties of Europe.
" The privileges of the Patroon in his manor were similar to those of a Baron of England. Game and fish within his own territorial limits were under his own supervision. Milling privileges, minerals, and pearl fisheries, if discovered, were his personal emoluments ; which last provision was one of those numerous extrav- agancies that for a long period allured the mercantile adventurers of Europe, particularly exemplified in the El Dorado of Spanish adventurers." *
Now, all this was a state of things and a manner of social life totally unknown in New England. We have
* "Holgate's Genealogies," p. 28.
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· already mentioned that most of its inhabitants were small farmers, wringing their subsistence from the earth by hard labor. Here were literally no servants, but a perfect social equality existed in the rural districts. Their " helps" were the sons and daughters of neigh- boring farmers, poorer than themselves, who for a time took these situations, but considered themselves as good as their employers. The comparatively wealthy men were in their cities.
No two races of men could be more different than the New Yorkers of that day and the people of New England. There was a perfect contrast in all their habits of social life and ways of thinking. The Dutch disliked the Yankees, as they called them, most thor- oughly. This feeling is shown, in a ludicrous way, through the whole of Irving's " Knickerbocker." "The Dutch and the Yankees," he says, " never got together without fighting."
There is a curious development of this prejudice in the following clause, which was inserted in the will of a member of a distinguished colonial family of New York, dated 1760. " It is my desire that my son, -
-, may have the best education that is to be had in England or America ; but my express will and di- rections are, that he never be sent, for that purpose, to the Connecticut colonies, lest he should imbibe, in his youth, that low craft and cunning so incidental to the people of that country, which is so interwoven in their constitutions that all their acts cannot disguise it from the world, though many of them, under the sanc- tified garb of religion, have endeavored to impose themselves on the world as honest men."
Once in a year, generally, the gentry of New York went to the city to transact their business and make their purchases. There they mingled, for a time, in its
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IN THE OLDEN TIME.
gayeties, and were entertained at the court of the Go- vernor. These dignitaries were generally men of high families in England. One of them, for instance-Lord Cornbury-was a blood relative of the royal family. They copied the customs and imitated the etiquette enforced "at home," and the rejoicings and sorrowings, the thanksgivings and fasts, which were ordered at Whitehall, were repeated again on the banks of the Hudson. Some years ago the writer was looking over the records of the old Dutch Church in New York, when he found, carefully filed away, some of the proc- lamations for these services. One of them, giving no- tice of a thanksgiving-day, in the reign of William and Mary, for some victory in the Low Countries, puts the celebration off a fortnight, to give time for the news to reach Albany.
During the rest of the year these landlords resided among their tenantry, on their estates ; and about many of their old country-houses were associations gathered, often coming down from the first settlement of the country, giving them an interest which can never invest the new residences of those whom later times elevated through wealth. Such was the Van Courtlandt manor- house, with its wainscoted rooms and its ghost-cham- ber ; the Rensselaer manor-house, where of old had been entertained Talleyrand and the exiled princes from Europe; the Schuyler house, so near the Sara- toga battle-field, and marked by memories of that glo- rious event in the life of its owner-(alas, that it should have passed away from its founder's family!), and the residence of the Livingstons, on the banks of the Hud- son, of which Louis Philippe expressed such grateful recollection when, after his elevation to the throne, he met, in Paris, the son of his former host.
Probably the extent to which hospitality was carried
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