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PIONEERS OF NEW - YORK ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE DELIVERED BEFORE THE ST. NICHOLAS SOCIETY OF MANHATTAN, 1847 HOFFMAN
GC 974.7 H67p 1733162
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
GC
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01146 4820
THE PIONEERS OF NEW-YORK.
AN
ANNIVERSARY DISCOURSE
DELIVERED BEFORE THE -
St. Nicholas Society of Manhattan,
DECEMBER 6, 1847.
[" The first settlement of this State coincided with its natural advantages. While Englishmen came to America, either flying from ecclesiastical intolerance or pursuing the treasure its savages were supposed to possess, Dutchmien, inspired by the spirit of trade, instead of sitting down on the skirts of the New World, boldly penetrated to the head navigation of the Hudson. They built there a fort in the year 1614, and gave it the name of that august family, whose talent- and labors, alike in the cabinet and the field, secured the liberty of England as well as of Holland, and established the Independance of Europe. * * * Cinidren of commerce, we were rocked in the cradle of war, and sucked the principles of liberty with our mother's milk."-Governeur Morris, Dec. 6, 1812.]
BY C. F. HOFFMAN
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NEW-YORK: STANFORD AND SWORDS, 139, BROADWAY. 1
1848.
840
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1733162
THE PIONEERS OF NEW - YORK.
MR. PRESIDENT and Brethren of the St. Nicholas Society, I greet you on the occasion of this anniversary of the revival of our ancient fraternity: a revival which first brought us together in genial fellowship, to honor the memory and keep alive the traditions of the early pioneers of New-York of every race.
I will not emulate the learned Diedrich Knickerbocker, by commencing this discourse with a history of the rest of the world, as forming a proper prefatory chapter to the more important annals of Manhattan, but like him, I must resort to pages ancient as those of Sanchoniathan Manetho and Berosus, for the proper and duly ceremonious introduction of my theme.
Among the countless legends of Arabian fiction, there is a story of a certain travelling angel-a sort of spirit tourist, who, wandering about from planet to planet, would always after an interval of a thousand years, look in upon our orb as it were, and rest his wings for awhile near a particular spot, upon which he invariably first alighted.
That fair spot of earth, it would seem, when first he visited it, was wildly overgrown with ancient trees, and one lonely half- naked savage stalked amid their glooms, the only human occupant.
" Art thou the only dweller here ?" asked the wayfaring-angel.
" I dwell not here," replied the savage, "I but wandered hither like thyself-man dwells not here-man never hath dwelt here!" and the sullen hunter strode off to deeper coverts and a more lonely shade.
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A thousand years went by-again the angel stood upon the carth !
He saw the eternal hills around, the same. But the leafy plain which they had encircled, how looked it now ?
Mosques-domes-minarets, the sanctuaries of the faithful, the abodes of a million of worshippers, reflected the sunshine from their white parapets. The streets swarmed with life. The rich bazaars, the marble palaces and frequent fountains, proclaimed centuries of busy toil, of successful industry, of present abounding luxury. "This noble and flourishing city ! How long hath it stood here ?" asked the angel of one of its thronged multitude.
"Knowest thou not the diadem city of the earth ?" responded the inhabitant. " This city ! It was always thus magnificent ! Alla alone can tell when first its mosques were reared by the Faithful."
Another thousand years have passed away-the angel is again there. He stands upon the shrubless and barren borders of a lake where fishermen are drawing their nets, and he calls to them from the shore ---
"Friends! where is the ancient city which once reposed amid these hills ?"
The fishermen shake their heads : they have never heard of it. Their fathers have fished for many generations in that lake, which always washed the base of the surrounding hills as now !
The legend goes on to relate that the spirit traveller returned twice or thrice yet again at the same intervals of time. Where he looked for the lake on his next visit, he found a meadowy pasture !
The herdsmen tending the flocks that were scattered over it, laughed at his tradition of the sandy shored lake; and turning up the rich black soil with their staves, averred that those grassy fields had ever been the same as now.
On his final visit the angel found a still more novel aspect on the scene .. The very mountains which once girdled it had sunk into the earth, and yielded their place to two broad arms of the sea, which now encircled that legendary spot in their embrace. The turfy savannah, for which he looked, was now broken up into
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hill and dale, laced.by pebbled brooks or seamed here and there by deep artificial excavations. The once grassy and mountain. girt plain had become AN ISLAND. He saw in one part strange shrubs, growing here there upon pinnacles of rock, which had either been thrown down from hills that had crumbled long ago, or lifted up by hidden energies of the earth beneath. But many roads crossed each other at intervals between them. In the most rugged situations the labor of man had so far subdued the ungenial soil, that many a garden and orchard relieved and diversified that island; over which from the sea-ward extremity a vast city seemed to be growing even while the angel gazed : growing up from the very bosom of the bitter and brackish waters, as if the energies of old Ocean himself were lifting it from his foam, and pushing it as it expanded, still farther and farther landward !
This, (quoth the angel,) must be an intelligent people, who make so thrifty a use of this forbidding soil-this must be a people most highly favored by a god-like intelligence, whom the powers of nature thus combine to favor in rearing their fast growing city.
And he asked one of the dwellers, " where are the ancient races that once flourished here ?"
" This is a new land," was the reply. " It has been a wilderness since time began-a desert untrod by civilized man till we came to settle and reclaim it."
" Well then (said the inquisitive spirit,) this noble city, who reared it from the waves ?"
" We did-we Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock," cried the same lialf a dozen voices in the highest Puritan key.
".Why, my friends, (said the angel, speaking now with something of a Dutch accent,) even while I have gazed upon this moilius; multitude, gazed through the two centuries, which are to me but as a moment of time, I have seen three races of men succeeding each other in power here, and all of them preceded you on the spot whose story of yesterday you profess to tell me."
And such is history !- Such, in the moral world developed around us, are the broad contrasts, the incessant changes in human thought and action, that although upon our continent, we find only
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in Uxmal and Palenque, some approach to the physical realization of the Arabian fable, it shadows forth but too truly the mind of man. The alternate mental feebleness and proud intellectual achievement of our race, its darling love of existing idols, its arrogant reliance upon the Present, its childlike forgetfulness or stupid and dotard oblivion of the Past. Its again re-nascent energies and its insolent confidence that the youth thus once more re-invigorated, though rocked on the graves of countless civilizations, shall preserve its fresh enlightenment for ever.
Such is history! Alas! too often such especially is American history. Such, above all, is the history of the State in which we live-a growing empire of more than two centuries, with a story only of yesterday.
The predominance of the English race in the ultimate settlement of these United States, has made us but too ready to forget the claims of other nations (which are likewise represented in its present population) to the honor of exploring and planting it.
Without diminishing the glory of Cabot in maritime exploration, to the navigators of Holland is due the credit of first carefully surveying our whole Atlantic coast, and minutely mapping that part of it from Cape Cod to Henlopen. To the French, that of making known our vast inland waters, from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the tideless wave of Lake Superior, the savage torrent of the . Missouri, and the far winding current of the Mississippi.
. The nautical enterprize and the abundant maritime resources of the Dutch, whose navy (according to Sir Walter Raleigh) numbered ten ships to one for that of England,* gave them pret eminent advantages over all other nations in examining the indented coast of the whole Atlantic sca-board of America, and selecting the most elegible points for such colonies as they chose to plant; while the topographical science of the French, (whose skill in
* At a later day one Dutch commercial establishment alone, without the aid of the Provincial or Federal government of the United Provinces, " could equip a fleet of fifty sail of the line without building a single vessel." [ Basnage in the Universal History.] Dutch words still supply half the technical terms used on shipboard.
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engineering was subsequently made famous over Europe by the pupils of Vauban,) fitted them for the reconnoisance which they consummated with so much skill upon this Northern Continent.
The very points which the latter selected for military or trading posts two hundred years ago, have since become the most important towns west of the Alleghanies.
Oswego, Niagara, Pittsburg, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans, have all fulfilled the destiny that was predicted for them when designated by the sagacious Frenchmen as the keys of the respective regions in which they are situated.
Nor have our pure Anglo-Saxon chroniclers contented them- selves with slurring over the all-important part which other Europeans had alike in planting this vast empire, and in developing its exhaustless resources. But with regard to this State particularly, in their works of solemn history, in their school books, in their public lectures, and in their anniversary addresses, they, in the blind pursuit of an unmeaning theory, seem to aim with singular industry and a most perverted ability, to obliterate the peculiar story of New-York, and joint on to New-England, hier elder provincial sister here, as a modern colony of Massachusetts Bay! A most erroneous and offensive assumption, which is every day more and more passing into the minds of the multitude as estab- lished truth. And while the Massachusetts-man, the Virginian and. South Carolinian, are still identified with their fathers, in both private and historical association ; New-York, alike in the partizan writings of the annalist and in the habitual mention of the daily press, is scarcely recognized as having more than a territorial existence previous to the revolution. The popular phrase of " OUR Pilgrim fathers," has become perfectly domesticated in the public lecture-rooms of this city; and no one thinks of discussing a question of morals in the newspapers, without referring to " the customs of our Puritan ancestry." Both these phrases, indeed, have more than once, of late years, been used in our State Legislature, to add force to some doctrinal appeal. And if the inquiring spirit of the apologue makes his " angel visits" as far between as formerly, he will find not a recognition remaining of
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the ten generations of pioneering energy of which this State was the scene before the Puritan interpreter of history was abroad.
It should be remembered, that while modern New-York is so much indebted to the healthful current of New England immigration, which poured in immediately after the revolution, her ancient story, which new associations are so fast obliterating, is characteristically her own. Her own at least from the landing of Hendrick Hudson in 1609, to her first act of revolution in seizing the stamped paper of the British crown in 1766. And while it might be in very ques- tionable taste to carp at or arraign the natural associations of those who compose, if not the largest, yet perhaps the most intelligent, and possibly the most valuable portion of our fellow citizens through- out the State generally, yet this covering up and obliteration of her ancient story is not altogether well ! New-York, though she had no Speedwell nor Mayflower freighted with precious hearts, daring the wilderness for conscience's sake-New-York was still planted, and carlier planted, by men as bold to confront the perils of a new climate or the horrors of savage warfare, as those who landed at Plymouth-by men, too, who penetrated beyond the mountains, and established their little colonies a hundred and fifty miles from the sea-shore, without thinking that they did any thing extraordinary enough to transmit their names to posterity .* Why is it that we
" Schenectady was commenced shortly after Christiause planted a colony at Fort Orange, acting under the edict of 1611." (Dunlap.) Individual enterprize having thus started the colony on the Hudson, and those individuals having established four colonial stations, one at Manhattan, one at the head of ship navigation, one at the head of tide water, and one on the Mohawk, all prior to 1618, and each of which is at this moment a populous town; the date of the actual settlement of the Hudson cannot be arbitrarily postponed to the subsequent periods of their chartered settlements, under specific corporations. If the colonies planted under the ediet of 1611. be set aside for the further acts of colonization, which took place under the incorpor itions and charters of 1621, 1623, 1629, or 1645, in order to place us here after the Parkans, we ought by the same reasoning to assume a much later and still more str.king era of the colonization of New-York, as the great landmark of our history. That landmark, which most definitely severs us from New-England as being no Puritan province of hers, is the English planting of this colony by the cavaliers of Charles II. time, when the. Duke of York took
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hear so much of " the Puritan Anglo-Saxon stock," who first settled on the outer-casing of this continent ? Why is it that we hear so little of those who struck inwardly to its heart, and grappled at once with its strong vital pulsations at the head of its tide-waters ? Those bold Belgic navigators, whose flag led that of England on every sea-those devoted Huguenots, who recoiled with such energy from the grasp of despotism, that they made but one stride from luxurious France to this then savage wilderness- those brave English cavaliers, who recoiling from Puritan intoler- ance, with the same determined spirit as did the Huguenots from Papal bigotry, came hither with little but cloak and rapier, to carve out their fortunes amid the forests of New-York ? Why is it that we hear so seldom of this trinity of good blood, which blending for two hundred years on the soil of New-York, now flows in the veins of her native-born children, and bred a crop of men that will mate with the " Puritan Anglo Saxon" in any State of this Union ?
It is because you, brethren of St. Nicholas, have too long neglected the story of your fathers! Too coldly fostered, or too carelessly criticised the efforts of your own sons or of strangers, to illustrate it. It is because too many of the modern children of New-York, looking back for ever, like the patriarch's wife, to scenes they have left, offer but petrified affections to those local memories and that State pride to which you yourselves are so faithless !
In those old colonial days, when the now popular dogmas about " the Puritan Anglo-Saxon race " had not been broached, either in the student's closet or the breeder's stable, the chance traveller who visited the banks of the Hudson and Mohawk, observed the happy fusion of national prejudices, and the general case and uniformity of sentiment which prevailed among the descendants of the different European stocks by which that noble valley was originally planted; but, while recording that the general system of
possession here, and filled the province with Englishmen as different in character from the Puritans as were the Netherlanders themselves.
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opinions here was far more liberal and tolerant than that prevailing in the neighboring colonies, those who have stated the fact leave us to make up our own judgment as to the cause. We may ascribe the amiable trait to the social intercourse and frequent intermarriages of the different races already alluded to; we may attribute it to the homely fact, that most of the settlers of New- York came hither to enjoy life, not to establish creeds; to secure a domestic fireside, not to make converts to new political truths ; or, lastly, we may look for the cause in the nature of their favorite pursuits, and the mollifying effect, upon manners, of many a simple old festal custom : for our graceless Knickerbockers danced round a Maypole in the Bowerie, while the Puritan Anglo-Saxons burned witches at Salem. But in which ever direction we look, we are compelled to admit, that the planters of this Hollander colony-the Norman refugees to this Huguenot asylum, the cavalier exiles to this English province, whose commingled blood flows in the veins of the children of St. Nicholas, have left the creoles of the soil of New-York no claim to the glories which we cheerfully accord to other sections of the colonial stock of America, on the score of their genuine Anglo-Saxon Puritan descent.
We claim no prestige of European origin; no hereditary right of superior intelligence; no aristocracy of race which shall place us at the head of the colonial planters of these United States, as the leading type of them all. We have no rivalship with the English Churchman of ancient Virginia, or the English Puritan of old Massachusetts; with the Roman Catholic who planted tolerant Maryland, or the Swedish Lutheran of the gallant little State of Delaware.
We claim ouly that the spirit which characterized the pioneers of New-York is her own, and that it was borrowed from no other American colony. That her ancient political history is her own, and not an excresence upon those of any other province. That her laws, usages, rights, and liberties spring from her own people -- were developed by their wisdom-matured by their experience, and defended by their valor. We claim that the glory of the land, which men love to call the " The Empire State," has its well
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springs in the hearts of these our progenitors. We regard their councils and their deeds as a sacred bequest to memory, with a !! who now enjoy the fruit of the tree which they planted. And we take pleasure in believing, that not only their immediate descendants, but every true son of New-York:, to what ever part of Europe or America he may care to trace his extraction, is unwilling that the fathers of this State should have their labors obliterated in tradition- , is unwilling that the peculiar story of this ancient colony should be merged in other associations, and superseded by the encroaching annals of any sister State ; superseded here at least, amid the very graves of the men who fashioned that home in the wilderness, which we live to enjoy a metropolis of luxury.
Our object to-night then is not a scholastic examination of the early annals of New-York, but a discursive recurrence to a few characteristic passages for the sake of freshening old sympathies, and brightening the chain of memories which link us to the fathers of Manhattan.
In the first place, however, I must attempt to meet a statement made by a learned gentleman, when last year addressing a large, . enlightened, and influential association of descendants of the Puritans, from the spot where I now stand. This learned gentle. man, eminent in New-England letters, representing the Punit mnic stock on that occasion, proclaimed to his brethren of the New. , England Society here in New-York, and through them to the New- York public, that " although some few settlements and attempts at settlement might have been previously made in America yet on the 22nd of December, 1620, when the Pilgrims of the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, ought to be dated the actual OPENING of this continent." He likewise was understood to ascribe the introduction of " freedom, religion, and civilization," exclusively to the same Puritanic origin.
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Similar views appear to me to characterize the whole spirit of Bancroft's brilliant History of the United States, a work whose glowing eloquence and varied ability has secured a wide-spread popularity, which is fast making it the standard authority of the country. Should these views finally prevail in our higher literature,
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as they already do in our school books, (written almost exclusively by New- England men,) some of the most interesting and valuable lessons in the philosophy of society, will be lost to those who come after us. I allude to the peculiar and diverse experience of each individual State of the confederacy, in the development of its moral resources and its progress toward a higher civilization. I would have other States of the old thirteen speak for themselves in this matter. As for my own State, unless I much misconceive the character of the people-The Knickerbocker State, notwithstanding the ceaseless iteration of Puritanic assumption in pulpits and lecture rooms throughout her borders, is not yet prepared to accept the neighborly interpretation of American history, which sinks her, next to Virginia, the proudest* of the original " old thirteeners," into the condition of the province of a province! Nor do I think that it will be difficult to show, that however early the Puritanic school- master may have been abroad here, and however New-York may alway have welcomed the representatives of his intelligent and energetic race, as, in her eclectic spirit, she has ever welcomed the enterprize of every land and every language, she is still not Puritanic in her origin, her progress, or her character ; in other words, that tested by her theory, and her practice of " settle- ment," and " freedom," and "religion," and " civilization," her story is her own just as much as is that of Virginia the peculiar property of " the old Dominion."
Before attempting to incet the question in both its physical and its moral aspect, as I shall attempt to do, I will, in order to acquit our neighbors of singular arrogance, so far as I can, attempt to point out the error upon which their encroachment upon our State pride is founded.
> The proudest at least at that tune, when New Plymouth, the genuine Pilgrim colony, to which it is now proposed to amex us, through Massachusetts, seemed about to be annexed to New- York instead of to Massachusetts Bay. Hear old Hutchinson.
" I dare say there is not a man in the colony of Plymouth at this day, who does not think it a mest happy cfreainstance, that they were annexed to Massa- chusetts instead of to New- York."-Hutchinson's Appendix.
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As regards priority of settlement then, it is well known that England, at an early day, claimed this province as a part of Virginia, and claimed it also on the ground, that Hendrick Hudson, though sailing under the flag of Holland when he discovered the river which bears his name, was an Englishman. This claim of priority of possession was the subject of bitter controversy between - England and Holland long after the foundations of New-York were laid by the latter; and the Puritans, in their desire " to enlarge his Majesty's dominions, and live under their natural Prince,"" took as active a part then, as some of them do now, to prove that New- York was old England's, and therefore of right belonged to New- England. When the cavaliers came in here to rule the province in the name of the Duke of York, the English side of the question seemed to be settled, though most assuredly no one then dresmed that it was settled in favor of English Puritans; in reference to whom the whole claim is now made, giving us a second-hand origin.
The opposing races of that day have since blended here, and the question now is, not one of English or Dutch rivalship, but of the early settlement of an American State.
That is the question in its physical aspect.
As regards its moral aspect-that of the independent growth of New-York upon its own ideas of " freedom, religion, and civilizs- tion," and not upon ideas borrowed at second-hand from the Puritans, I will attempt similarly to acquit our Eastern friends here of encroachment, by venturing to interpret what I conceive to be their views upon the subject.
Founded by the earnest sect of the Brownists, as the asylum for their peculiar faith,t one of the earliest acts of the Pusiaus of New-England was to make the most sedulous provision for educa- tion, and the gradual training of a homogeneous caste of fe fre ta faith, doctrine, and opinion. The Church and the Lyceum, o: 、
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