A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 12

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188

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HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

until he became one of the richest land owners in the colony. Under him the colony pros- pered, although the English to the east con- tinued troublesome, and the fur trade reached greater proportions than ever before. But envious people regarded his growing personal wealth with jealousy and he was relieved of his power by their "High Mightinesses" in Holland who sent William Kieft to rule in his stead. In estimating the value of Van Twill- er's character and work in New Netherland, modern historians invariably color their views, sometimes unconsciously, from the pages of Washington Irving's "Knickerbocker," where the doughty Governor is handed down to pos- terity in a full-length picture, as it were, as "Walter the Doubter." But while the genius of Irving has thus, as it were, forced his view of Van Twiller, intended only as a caricature, into the pages of history, it should not be ac- cepted above its historic worth, the worth of any piece of caricature-written or pictorial. There seems no doubt that Van Twiller was an able administrator, a man of considerable energy and firmness and that his administra- tion greatly added to the extent and value of the West Indian Company's property in New Netherland, while his own investments, how- ever brought about, showed that he fully be- lieved in its continued prosperity. It was during his reign that Long Island may be said to have been opened up for settlement ; and, indeed, after his own authority had passed, he appears to have had supreme faith in Long Island, for Teunis G. Bergen ("Early Settlers of Kings County," page 363) tells us that in 1643 he obtained a patent for lands at Red Hook and a patent July 16, 1638, for one of the flats (prairies) in Flatlands known as Kaskutensuhane. In June, 1636, Jacob Van Corlaer purchased from the Indians a plat of ground to which was given the name "Castateauw," "between the bay of the North River and the East River." Some lands lying to the west of Corlaer's purchase were brought the same day by Andries Hudde and Wolfert Gerritsen Van Couwenhoven, and a tract to the

east was bought by Van Twiller. In all, some 15,000 acres were thus bought and at once brought into cultivation or adapted for stockraising; and on this property afterward rose the village of New Amersfort, or, as it was later called, Flatlands, which was possibly the first part of Long Island to be settled by white men. In the course of the same year Jacques Bentyn and William Adriaense Bennet bought from the Indians, or from their Sachem, a piece of ground of about 930 acres, extending from near the present Twenty-eighth street, along Gowanus Cove and the bay, to the old New Utrecht line and including what is known as Ocean Hill in Greenwood Cemetery. Bennet was an Englishman and a cooper by trade. Bentyn was also an Englishman, and when he bought the land with Bennet he was Schout Fiscal of New Amsterdam, the leading municipal legal adviser of the place-sheriff and cor- poration counsel in one. He soon tired of his Long Island property, for in 1639 he sold his interest in it to Bennet for 350 guilders. He continued to be an influential member of the New Amsterdam community for many years, was one of the twelve Representatives in 1641 and a member of the Council. In 1648 he left the country and went to Europe, probably having acquired a moderate com- petence and disappears from our view. Ben- net remained on the land, and built a dwelling upon it, the first house so far as we know ever erected in Brooklyn. He had married a widow just prior to acquiring the Gowanus property and .very probably it was she who induced him to build a house. He died early in the year 1644 or at the close of 1643, leaving her with four children, Adriaen, William, Sara and Christian, while another, Mary or Maria, was born in May, 1644, after her father's death.

The widow lost no time in securing a new helpmeet, and on Oct. 9, of the same year (1644), married Paulus Vanderbeek, and by him had two sons and three daughters. With her third husband she resided in New Am-

THE DUTCH-SOME EARLY GOVERNORS.

sterdam, but afterward returned to Long Isl- and, of which, in 1661, Vanderbeek became farmer of the excise, and in 1662 he was ferry-master. He bought a plantation in Gravesend in 1673 and figures in several other real-estate deals. He stands out in local history as the founder of the Vanderbeek family, his wife presenting him with four sons and two daughters. Many of his de- scendants are now to be found in New Jer- sey. All of Bennet's family were successful in life. His eldest son engaged in farming and had a property of 150 acres at Bay Ridge, which in 1681 he sold to the ancestor of the Denyse family. Later he bought from his mother a farm at Gowanus, paying her 12,000 guilders for it in produce, and was regarded as a man of means. He died at Gowanus about 1700. His brother William also owned a farm at Gowanus, and like all others in the family was a stanch member of the Dutch Church. In fact the family was more Dutch than English and the found- er seems to have accepted the situation with phlegmatic equanimity.

It was under Van Twiller's administration, too, that what we now call the Wallabout was settled. On June 16, 1637, George Rapalie (Joris Jansen) obtained a patent for some 325 acres which he had purchased of the Indians, now occupied, in part, by the United States Marine Hospital. The property, as we have seen in the chapter devoted to the Indians, was called Rinnegackonck, and it was afterward described as "lying on Long Island in the bend of Marechkawieck, as the Indians once called the Wallabout. It does not seem, however, that Rapalie took up his residence on this prop- erty until 1654, when he set up his house there. From 1655 to 1660 he was one of. the Magis- trates of Breuckelen and he was the founder of a family which from that time to the pres- ent day has been prominent in the City of Churches and which will often be referred to in these pages.

Under Van Twiller's successor, William Kieft, who held the reins of government from

March 28, 1638, until May 11, 1647, the set- tlement of the western section of Long Island went cn with what would in our days be termed a "rush." Kieft seems to have been an irasci- ble, domineering individual, with a limited amount of brains and an unlimited allowance of self-assurance -a sort of pepper-box dressed up in the clothes of authority. It is, of course, possible that our notions of his per- sonality have been twisted by Washington Irving's caricature; but a study of Kieft's official acts prompts the belief that Irving did not depart very far from historic truth when he wrote in his veracious history the following lines regarding this product of the Dutch Colonial Service-"William the Testy:"

He was a brisk, waspish, little old gentle- man, who had dried and withered away, partly through the natural process of years and partly from being parched and burnt up by his fiery soul, which blazed like a vehement rushlight in his bosom, constantly inciting him to most valorous broils, altercations and misadventures. * * His visage was broad and his features sharp, his nose turned up with the most petu- lant curl; his cheeks were scorched into a dusky red-doubtless in consequence of the neighborhood of two fierce little gray eyes, through which his torrid soul beamed with tropical fervor. The corners of his mouth were curiously modeled into a kind of fret- work, not a little resembling the wrinkled pro- boscis of an irritable pug dog; in a word, he was one of the most positive, restless, ugly little men that ever put himself in a passion about nothing.

Such, rightly or wrongly, is the ideal of William Kieft, which we are forced by the genius of Diedrich Knickerbocker, backed up by all the veritable history and evidence which have come down to us, to accept as a true presentment of the successor of "Walter the Doubter." At best, what we do know of veritable history brings before use as a sort of opera-bouffe hero with a touch of villainy running through all his actions. Before coming to America his career was clouded by scoundrelism,-so much so

HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

that he was hanged in effigy in his native Hol- land. His ill-fame had preceded him to the New Netherland, and when he landed at New Amsterdam on March 28, 1638, after his voy- age across the Atlantic on board "The Her- ring," he was received with marked coldness. Possibly that did not worry him very much. His purpose was to make a fortune rather than to make friends. He was a believer in gov- ernment by proclamation, and soon after his arrival had the trees and fences in and around New Amsterdam covered with proclamation placards ordaining all sorts of regulations, even regulating the hour when people should go to bed and when they should arise to pursue their usual vocations. However, he turned his au- thority to some use, for he built a stone church inside the fort, laid out Pearl street for sub- urban residences of a high class, interested himself in the cultivation of orchards and gar- dens, instituted two grand county fairs and by the liberal land policy-not only offering free passage from Holland but giving an emigrant practically free of cost a patent for as much land as he and his family could cultivate, and requiring only an oatlı of fidelity to the States General to enable foreigners to hold land and acquire the status of citizenship-he rapidly promoted new settlements, singly or in groups, in his domains. Still, his first thought was to make money for himself. He established a distillery or brewery on Staten Island; owned and conducted, by deputy, a stone tavern on the shore of the East River at the corner of Pearl street and Coenties Slip, and lost no opportunity of adding to his private fortune. He was quite a fussy tyrant, too, and inter- fered in all sorts of ways with the private affairs and arrangements of his subjects. His conduct more than once called down the de- nunciation of Dominie Bogardus in the pulpit, and he retaliated by causing his soldiers to beat their drums and play all sorts of noisy pranks outside the church, so that the good clergyman had to confine himself to moderate language for the sake of being permitted to preach in peace. In fact, for a long time there

was open warfare between the Dominie and the Governor. When Kieft, as a result of a petition from the colonists denouncing his venality, his arrogance, his tyranny and his needless Indian wars, was summoned to re- turn to Holland, he carried with him on the ship, among his personal property, something like $100,000, the practical results of his states- manship. The vessel, "The Princess," was hailed with ironical salutes as she weighed anchor and started on her voyage with this precious personage on board, and the people did not even try to conceal their joy over his departure. The ship was wrecked on the English coast, however, and Kieft and his money went to the bottom! Dominie Bo- gardus, who was on the same vessel, was also among the eighty persons who perished in the disaster.

While there is no clear evidence on the point, it seems likely that Kieft visited Long Island several times and had something of a clear idea of its advantages as a place for colo- nization. So far as we can learn he never per- sonally owned any of its acres: probably he believed Staten Island a more eligible field for his operations, being nearer the direct way by which shipping passed in and more in line with the commerce of the Hudson. But for pur- poses of settlement he bought from the Indians, in 1639, practically all the land comprised in the old county of Queens, and in the following year, by purchase from Penhawitz, the chief of the Canarsies, he added to the territory at the disposal of the West India Company all the land it had not up to that time acquired in what afterward became the county of Kings, with the exception of a tract between Coney Island and Gowanus (New Utrecht), which was added in 1645. By a charter promul- gated in 1640, trade and commerce restrictions were removed so that any reputable person could so engage. What is equally important in Long Island history was that liberal pro- vision was made for the founding of towns and villages, and the magistrates of such com- munities were to be named by the people, sub-

HOTEL

OLD BUSHWICK.

ject, of course, to the approval of the Gover- nor and his Council. The Governor was the court of last resort in all disputes, even the most trifling; religion was restricted to that of the Reformed Church, and while the com- pany bound itself to maintain preachers, teach- ers and spiritual visitors, as well as to protect the secular interest of the colonists, it expected that the necessary means would be furnished out of the revenues of the Colony. The taxes were exorbitant, the customs tariff was onerous and outside trade was restricted to the mother country in the first place-that is, all goods exported had to be sent first to Holland. But the latter restriction did not cause much trouble, and in spite of the imposts people man- aged to thrive.

So newcomers poured in in a steady stream, and as much as possible Kieft and his Council directed their attention to the beautiful shore lying across the arm of the sea which flowed

to the east of New Amsterdam. In August, 1639, Anthony Jansen, from Salee, secured a patent for 100 morgens (200 acres) of land lying within the territory afterward occupied by the towns of Gravesend and New Utrecht, of which territory he was the pioneer. He was a citizen of rather dubious character, seems to have been locally known as "the Turk," and very probably Kieft awarded him that out-of-the-way piece of property to satisfy any claim he might have for service rendered, and, in short, to get rid of him. Anthony re- sided in New Amsterdam for six or seven years prior to 1639, and there owned a bouw- ery. His wife, Grietje Reiniers, rejoiced in a character and temperament and reputation pretty much in keeping with his own, and in April, 1639, both were ordered banished from New Amsterdam for being slanderous and troublesome persons. They at once moved to their Long Island possessions and there "the

HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

Turk" built himself a home and settled down to farming. Of this house the remains were long afterward found, as told by Teunis G. Bergen in his "Early Settlers of Kings County" (page 155) :

In 1879, in leveling the sand dunes on the upland on the edge of the (Gravesend) Bay a little southeast of the buildings of Mr. Gun- ther at Locust Grove, which dunes had been blown up by the beach and which had been gradually extending back with the abrasion of the shore or coast, the remains of two separate pieces of stone wall, about two feet high and one foot wide, made mainly of unbroken field stones laid in clay mortar, with a clear floor between them, were exhumed. These remains were covered with from four to ten feet of sand, and are probably those of the barn or other farm buildings of Anthony Jansen, it being customary in the early settlement of this country to construct their threshing floors of clay, of which specimens existed and were in use in the younger days of the author, their roofs being made of thatched straw instead of shingles, as at present.

In 1660 Anthony sold his patent to Nich- olas Stillwell, the English ancestor of the noted Brooklyn family, and in 1669, on the death of his wife, he disposed of his plantation lot in Gravesend to his son-in-law, Fernandus Van Sickelen, and returned to New Amsterdam. In 1670 he married again, and died some six years later.

On November 8, 1639, Thomas Bescher, or Beets, an Englishman, received a patent for land at Gowanus, on which he intended to have a tobacco plantation ; but he did not succeed in following out his intentions, apparently, and he seems to have sold his patent without de- lay to Cornelius Lambertson (Cool), who set- tled on the land, removing there from New Amsterdam.

Frederick Lubbertsen on May 23, 1640, ob- tained a patent for a large tract covering most of South Brooklyn, and in 1645 added to the extent of his lands by another patent also within the limits of modern Brooklyn. Cor- nelius Dirckson Hoogland, who in 1642 kept

an inn at Peck Slip, eked out its earnings by running a boat between that place and a point on the Long Island shore just a little to the south of the present Fulton Ferry house, of which this service was the beginning. He was not appointed ferry-master until 1652. His son Dirck, who seemed to aid him in his ardu- ous labors, secured a patent Dec. 22, 1645, for twelve morgens of land in Brooklyn, and on June 24, 1647, he received another patent con- veying to him additional seventeen morgens, besides the ferry. These two were the first ferry-masters, and appeared to have a tavern at each terminus of the then perilous journey across the East River. Andries Hudden, in 1636, when a member of Van Twiller's Coun- cil, bought considerable property in what after- ward formed parts of Flatbush and Flatlands, and on Sept. 12, 1645, received a patent for thirty-seven morgens next to the property of . Lubbertsen. In quick succession land patents were granted to Claes Cornelisse (Mentelaer) Van Schlouw, Henry Bresser, Jacob Wolpher- sen (Van Couwenhoven), Edward Fiskock, William Cornelisen, Peter and Jan Montfort, Hans Hansen Bergen (Hans the Boore), Jan Evertsen Bout, Huyck Aertsen Van Rossem, Joris Jansen Rapelie, and to Caesar Alberti (ancestor of the Albertus family), until, stand- ing on the east shore of New Amsterdam and looking across the river, the coast of Long Island as far as the eye could see was dotted with farms when Kieft's administration came. to a close. These settlers do not seem to have been cut off from the New Amsterdam com- munity : they were rather regarded as part of it and deemed not the least influential of its component parts. At least, so we judge from the fact that when, in answer to a popular demand, "twelve select men" were chosen to- advise with Kieft upon his foolish Indian policy, three of them were more or less identi- fied with Long Island-Jacques Benton, Fred- erick Lubbertsen and Joris Jansen Rapelie.

One of the last of Governor Kieft's official acts of any importance was the formal organi- zation of the town of Breuckelen. The tract

PETER STUYVESANT.

THE DUTCH-SOME EARLY GOVERNORS.

of territory called by the Indians Merech- kawikingh, extending, roughly, from the Wallabout to Gowanus, contained some of the most fertile lands on the western end of the island. On this tract, about a mile and a half from the ferry, just about what is now the junction of Smith and Hoyt streets and a little southeast from where the City Hall and Court House now stand, and on either side of the road leading to the ferry, Bout Van Rossem and other patentees had built their dwellings so as to be close together for mutual protec- tion. They took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the charter of 1640 and asked per- mission "to found a town at their own ex- pense." Kieft graciously responded and is- sued a formal recognition of the new town, to which the name of Breuckelen (after the town in Holland) was given, in June, 1646. The people had elected, on May 21 that year, Jan Eversen Bout and Huyck Aertsen Von Ros- sem as Schepens, and Kieft confirmed the elec- tion. A few months later the Governor ap- pointed Jan Teunissen as Schout, or constable, and so before the close of 1646 the municipal organization of the young town was complete.

Teunissen appears to have been a carpen- ter as well as a constable, for in 1646 lie con- tracted to build a house at the ferry. In 1647 he was sued for debt, so that his varied en1- ploynients did not turn out very remunerative.

During Kieft's term there were other towns besides Breuckelen established on Long Island. Gravesend was the subject of a patent issued Dec. 19, 1645. Southold and Southampton were also founded while Kieft held office, but they never acknowledged his authority, and looked for protection to New England. On the other hand, the claim which Connecticut and Massachusetts made over Long Island the Dutch Governors never fully acknowledged, nor did they regard Lord Stirling's claim as worthy of a moment's consideration.

On May 11, 1647, Peter (Petrus) Stuy- vesant landed in New Amsterdam and assumed the reins of Government vice Kieft, then crossing the high sea with his boodle and dis-

grace. Like that of his predecessor, we find it difficult to estimate this man's character cor- rectly, for at the very mention of his name there arises before us Irving's masterpiece of caricature-Peter the Headstrong. Stuyve- sant's notions as to the Divine authority of rulers, his contempt for the people generally, his arrogance, his irascibility, his tyrannical spirit, his interfering, contentious disposition, his narrow-mindedness and his cocksuredness soon made him as unpopular as ever Kieft had been ; and it was not long before he had quar- rels of all sorts on his hands, both with the church and the State, with the patroons as well as with the citizens who dwelt within the shad- ow of the Stadt Huys. He was even sum- moned to Holland to give an account of his policy, but he declined to go. In 1653 New Amsterdam got a new charter, giving it a large measure of self-government, but Stuy- vesant would have none of it; and although it became the law, it remained practically in abey- ance for many years. By and by, when the people began to understand his character rightly, to appreciate his honesty, his courage, his solicitude for the welfare of the popula- tion, his profound respect for authority, his clear judgment and simplicity of heart, they got along better with him, and fought his peculiarities without in the least forgetting the respect due to an honest gentleman of mediae- val notions, who meant well toward them all in his heart of hearts, and who, in spite of his notions as to the source of government, was in. many ways a stanch supporter of liberty and progress. Under him New Netherland pros- pered exceedingly, and if in his dealings with the English he threw in a principality in a boundary dispute, he fairly preserved peace, cultivated as carefully as he could and as cir- cumstances permitted the good graces of the aborigines and the British, and proved a strong and fairly progressive executive.

Long Island fully shared in that prosperity which is the most marked feature of Stuyve- sant's long tenure of the Governorship. He was much better acquainted with the island'

HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

than any of his predecessors, and in fact owned a bouwery at Flatlands, which he leased to a countryman, Jacobus Van Dalem. He was, one would think from his grants of land, deeply interested in its progress ; but he had no patience with the attempt of the people there to underrate his authority. It was during his administration that the town system of Kings and Queens may be said to have developed, and Flatbush, Flat- lands, Newtown, Flushing, and Hempstead arose under his signature, but he would not permit them to exercise self-government or permit their Schepens to be more than figure- heads. In short, while the law permitted these municipalities to be formed, he made it his business to see to it that his wishes and views were paramount to those of Schep- ens or people. This the Long Island com- munities fought against, and on December II, 1653, delegates from each of the towns met and drew up a protest against Stuyve- sant's methods which they addressed to the Governor and Council and "to the Council of the High and Mighty Lords the States General of the United Provinces." In the course of it they said :

We acknowledge a paternal government which God and nature has established in the world for the maintenance and preservation of peace and the welfare of men, not only principally in conformity to the laws of na- ture, but according to the law and precepts of God, to which we consider ourselves ob- liged by word and therefore submit to it. The Lord our God having invested their High Mightinesses the States General, as his ministers, with the power to promote the wel- fare of their subjects, as well of those re- siding within the United Provinces as those on this side of the sea, which we gratefully acknowledge; and having commissioned in the same view some subaltern magistrates and clothed them with authority to promote the same end, as are the Lords Directors of the privileged West India Company, whom we acknowledged as Lords and patroons of this place, next to your Lordships, as being their representatives.

After further homage of this sort the repre- sentatives of the village or towns then set forth their complaints. They refer to the arbitrary government set up by Stuyvesant, to the appointment of local officers without an expression of the will of the people, to the putting in force as occasion arose obsolete laws, so that good citizens hardly knew when they were not violating some ordinance or proclamation, to the length of time in which honest applications for land patents were kept pending, and to the prompt and easy manner in which large tracts of valuable land were awarded to those favored individuals who had some sort of a "pull," as modern politicians would call it, with the authorities. Therefore, trusting to their High Mightinesses to "heal our sickness and pain," the delegates signed the document as follows :

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A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 12

Author: Ross, Peter. cn Publication date: 1902 Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1188

Author: Ross, Peter. cn
Publication date: 1902
Publisher: New York ; Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1188