A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 45

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.

ers Mrs. Elizabetlı Bartlette and Miss Laura Barnum, "by whom the young ladies will be instructed in all the branches of a polite and well finished education."

The fame of Dr. Eigenbrodt, or rather the high reputation his genius as a teacher had won for the academy, carried it safely during the principalship of his successors, Michael Tracy, the Rev. William Errenpeutch and the Rev. John Mulligan; but a new impetus was given to its fame by Henry Onderdonk, Jr., who became principal in 1832. This grace- ful and painstaking student of history and en- lightened antiquary was born at Manhasset June II, 1804, and belonged to an old and prominent Long Island family, he being fifth in descent from Adrian Andriese Onderdonk, who settled in Flatbush from Holland before 1675. One of his uncles was the fourth Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, and another, Bishop of Pennsylvania. Henry was graduated from Columbia College in 1827 and received his bachelor's degree from Har- vard in 1828. He was a most accomplished classical scholar and a steady and zealous ad- vocate of temperance, on which he often spoke in public, and the subject of local history was also a theme with which he delighted many audiences. He retired from his connection with Union Academy in 1865, and thereafter busied himself with literary pursuits, espe- cially historical and antiquarian researches, until his death, on June 22, 1886. Mr. Onder- donk was the author of quite a number of works, which are of value to the historical students of Long Island and more particularly of Kings and Queens counties, among them being "Revolutionary Incidents of Kings, Queens and Suffolk Counties," "Battle of Long Island and British Prisons and Prison Ships," and "Queens County in Olden Times."

With the retirement of Onderdonk from the principalship, Union Academy began gradually to decline, the extension and eleva- tion of the public-school system having prob-

ably as much to do with its lack of success as any other cause. At all events, after an existence of eighty-three years the institution was abandoned, in 1873, and the buildings were then sold for $5,250 and converted by their purchaser, Alexander Hagner, into dwellings.

Another eighteenth-century academic in- stitution, and the only other one, was that at Huntington, in Suffolk county; but there was this difference between it and the three already named, that while they were under the Regents and to a certain degree under State control and supervision, Huntington Acad- emy, from the time it opened its doors until it was abandoned, remained a private institu- tion. Regarding this academy Mr. Charles R. Street, the historian of Huntington township, writes :

Many will remember the old Huntington Academy standing on the hill near the centre of the village. It was in its day a monument of the enterprise and liberality of the genera- tion who endured the trials of the Revolu- tionary War, for it was built about 1793 by an association of fifty of the leading citizens of Huntington. It was a two-story building with a belfry, and was quite an imposing edi- fice for the period in which it was built. It was outside of the common-school system and was intended to, and generally did, furnish the means for a more liberal education than was provided by the surrounding common schools. It stood for more than nfty years, and many of the best educators of the period taught generation after generation of Hunt- ington youths within its walls. It prepared for college the sons of those who were am- bitious to give their sons a liberal education. A complete list of the teachers employed in the earliest years as principals of the academy cannot now be obtained. Among those of later years may be mentioned Dan Ditmas, Jolın Rogers, Charles Nichols, Selah Ham- mond, Samuel Fleet, Mr. Rose, Mr. Branch, Ralph Bull, Adison L. Hunt, D. G. York, James H. Fenner, Horace Woodruff, Charles R. Street, John W. Leake and Israel C. Jones. The academy was torn down about 1857 to make way for the present Union school

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THE STORY OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS.

building. The bell from its tower, which rang out its tones over hill and vale for fifty years, calling together the boys and girls of Hunt- ington, is now in the engine house of the Huntington Fire Company.

In 1800 Oyster Bay was able to boast its academy, another private enterprise, and the spread of such institutions slowly but surely over almost the entire island testified to the steady awakening of the people of Long Island to a full realization of the benefits which flow to the commonwealth from full and ample educational privileges. The common school is a duty, the establishment of such in- stitutions was deemed a matter of prime ne- cessity by the Dutch and the New England settlers on Long Island, but it took time to instil into people's mind a true conception of what is really included in the term education. As early in the history of the Commonwealth of New York as 1789, two lots in each town- ship were set aside by the Legislature for school uses, and in 1795 $50,000 was voted to be paid annually for five years for the maintenance of schools. Even lotteries were authorized by the Legislature in aid of educa- tion. In 1805, as a result of a message from Governor Lewis, 500,000 acres of the public lands in the State were ordered to be placed on the market, the proceeds to be laid aside as a school fund, the interest of which was to be divided among the common schools when it amounted to $50,000 a year. It was not, however, until the middle of the nineteenth century that steps were really taken to lift education-primary, high-school and aca- demic-out of the hands of individuals and make it a part of the work of the State, a cen- tral bureau working in harmony with local authorities in each section. "In 1848," writes Ellis H. Roberts in his "History of New York," "Nathaniel S. Benton reported that many cities and villages by voting to remit tuition had made their schools free, and he urged that the State should render the sys- tem uniform. His successor, Christopher

Morgan, argued the imperative duty of the State to educate all its children as a preventive of crime and pauperism; and March 26, 1849, an act was passed submitting to the people at the ensuing election a proposition for free schools, supported by the existing funds and by taxation, to be kept for at least four months in each year, for all children between the ages of five and twenty-one. Every county except Tompkins, Chenango, Cortland and Otsego gave for the policy majorities aggre-

GOV. MORGAN LEWIS.

gating 158,000. Difficulties in the administra- tion of the law caused a demand for its re- peal, and seventeen counties voted for sus- taining free schools, and showed a majority in their favor of about 25,000. Under pledge made during the canvass the details of the law were modified by the Legislature, especially those which related to the raising and distri- bution of school moneys and to the retaining of rate bills ; but legislation soon followed pro- viding for free and union schools in the cities and villages and chief towns, and in 1867 all

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the common and normal schools, and the de- partments in academies for the instruction of common school teachers, were declared ab- solutely free."

Progressive legislation of this character proved the death-knell of such institutions as Union Academy and Huntington Academy

and other locally managed schools. Since then the educational system of Long Island has fully kept pace with modern requirements, and in many respects has proved itself a lead- er in the most approved methods of scholastic training in primary as well as advanced schools.

CHAPTER XXIV.

INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS-ROADS AND RAILROADS-THE MAGNIFICENT OUTLOOK FOR THE FUTURE:

far as we can learn the road system of Long Island, apart from the In- dian trails, commenced with the wagon clearing which started from what is now Fulton Ferry and led up the hill- side to the plateau on which the city hall of Brooklyn is the present most pronounced architectural feature. In modern times it would hardly be deemed worthy of being called a road, and probably it was simply a development of an Indian trail widened enough to permit a wagon to pass, and leveled where it was absolutely necessary that leveling should be done to prevent a horse or an ox from breaking its neck. We have no actual description of that primitive road : possibly it differed in no respect from the other roads which then served as the means for internal communication in the country. The fact that it elicited no comment, that it was neither bet- ter nor worse than its neighbors, however, en -. ables us to form an idea of what it was like from the description we have of others. It was not straight. If a clump of trees stood in what ought to have been its course, it was easier to direct the road around the obstruc- tion than to cut the trees down. No part of the road was hardened, and where a gully crossed it the hole was filled in by a tree or by a number of branches being thrown into it and loose earth piled on top. In summer the growth of weed and fern which spread over it from the luxuriant hand of nature prevented it from becoming a bed of sand. In other sea-

sons it was a bed of mud, especially in the spring-time, when the snows were melting and the rivulets and creeks were bursting with the waters rushing from their sources in the high ground nearer the centre of the island, and when nature was throwing off the passiveness of winter and preparing to adorn hill and dale, field and meadow, in her owin beautiful and unaided way. Should a loaded wain once get stuck, it had to remain fast until a dozen men could be gathered to give it a fresh start ; and sometimes that operation itself lasted an hour or two. No stage coach in the earlier days ever ran over such a road; none was needed. The stolid passenger, unencumbered by baggage, passed along as well as he could regardless of mud, or flower, or creeping thing, with rifle rcady to unsling at a mo- ment's notice should a wild animal cross his patlı, or the savage glare of an angry Indian dart on him from some near-by thicket. If he had to tise a wagon, the solid sturdy Dutch wain, innocent of springs and an adept in the art of jolting, was the only thing at com- mand. The road really belonged to everybody and so, of course, belonged to nobody. When an accident happened through a fissure caused by rain, or the action of frost and ice, or if a tree fell across the track, those who essayed to repair the effects of the accident tried to remedy the trouble while on the spot ; other- wise nothing was done. It was, part of the way, a steep and toilsome ascent for man and beast, and the descent, in places, for horses

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HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

or wagons was even more dangerous. A sim- ilar path stretched from the Wallabout to the ferry and these two were the pioneer roads of an island which now holds up its system of highways to the admiration of the world.

As the population increased the roads nat- urally continued to lengthen and to become more numerous, following possibly in all cases the old Indian trails. We soon read of a road from the old village of Breuckelen to Go- wanus, and one which passed onward until Coney Island was reached, and that road was good enough to arouse no invidious remarks when the Labadist fathers passed over it in 1670. That the early roads were narrow, crooked and irregular, that they crossed eaclı other in reckless fashion, that they often ended in a farmhouse gate, and a new road had to be discovered or pointed out for further prog- ress, did not seem to detract from their value in the eyes of the traveler or awaken, appar- ently, a desire for improvement on the part of the residents. The cow-paths, as they called most of them, were convenient, cost nothing or next to nothing for maintenance and repair, and in a settled community were as good as could then be contrived, or even apparently desired.

Brooklyn, however, early showed an inter- est in improving or at all events in maintain- ing the roads which gave it access to the outer world, and Gabriel Furman tells us that"there are many instances in record previous to 1683 of the Constable of Brooklyn being ordered to repair the roads and in case of neglect im- pose a fine." It was not, however, until 1704 that a real effort was made to improve the roads, not only around Brooklyn but through- out the entire State. In that year the Legis- lature passed a law by which three commis- sioners were appointed in each of the counties on the island to lay out a highway from Brooklyn Ferry to Easthampton. The Kings county Commissioners, Joseph Hagaman, Peter Cortelyou and Benjamin Vandewater, lost no time in attending to their part of the project, and straightway proceeded to lay out

what is now part of Fulton street, beginning at "low water marke at the ferry," following the line of the old path as much as possible, and extending it to New Lots, Flatbush. The road was of a uniform width of four rods, and it was "to be and continue forever." The entire road was in due time finished to East- hampton and as "the King's Highway" be- came the first of the famous highways of Long Island. Part of it retains that name even to the present day. For many years it was the standard road of the island and a landmark which was regarded as so inefface- able that boundaries of real estate were reg- ulated by it, and cross roads were from time to time laid out so as to strike it at different points. At the Brooklyn end especially the amenity and proportions of the road appear to have been zealously guarded, and prosecu- tions in connection with it were not unfre- quent. It would seem that abutting property owners were ever ready to encroach upon it bit by bit, especially near the ferry, and it was frequently discovered that its width was seri- ously diminished in other places. Thus in 1721 complaint in individual cases of en- croachments were made to the General Ses- sions against various trespassers, and the serious condition of things may be estimated from the reply of Jan Rapalje and Hans Ber- gen to one complaint. They did not deny the trespass or confiscation on the public prop- erty, but averred that in so doing they were no worse than others. "If all our neighbors will make the road according to law," they said, they were "willing to do the same, but they are not willing to suffer more than their neighbors." However, they were indicted, and steps taken to restore the road to its legal width of four rods. The subsidiary roads were as a general rule two rods in width and in most cases a fence or hanging gate separated them from the highways or from the farm paths, and it was a part of the common law that such gates should be always shut or put to by persons that pass in or out. By 1733 three fairly good high roads trav-

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INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS.

ersed the island from east to west, one on the north shore, one on the south and one through the centre. In places these thoroughfares were left just as nature had made them witlı little done by the hand of man except to mark out their boundaries. In modern times they would not be regarded as roads at all, but they fully served their purpose and probably were about as good as the soil permitted or as the sparse population could provide. They were mainly used at first for the transportation of produce and farming supplies, and, supple- mented pretty freely, as it seems to us, by cross roads, they served every practical pur- pose.

By the year 1735 probably every village on Long Island was connected, if not on the high- way, by a road which led directly to it and so those at the west end could readily do busi- ness with Brooklyn, while at the east end the ports which opened up to the settlers the Sound and the Connecticut shore towns. were easily available. In 1764 the main roads, those on the shore lines especially, acquired an ad- ditional importance as the route over which the mail was transported and the bi-monthly passage of the mail-carrier on horseback was not only an event but served to arouse, slowly indeed, it must be admitted, an interest in the great thoroughfares. That was indeed the weakness of the prevailing road system. The farmer struggled with the roads probably twice a year and then thought no more about them. The dweller at Southampton did not see he had any business with the condition of the roadway at Islip; those who were sup- posed by law to look after the roads had no money to effect improvements, and the peo- ple, say of Bridgehampton, or Gravesend, would certainly have rebelled had they been assessed for road improvements two miles be- yond their limits,-improvements which it was quite probable they might never see, for peo- ple did not travel much in those days. The introduction of the mail-carrier service was the first cause which made the question of the public roads became equal to general inter-

est with the poll tax. It was a beginning in that direction. That was all, for the post route then established, one of those laid out by Franklin when he was Postmaster General, did not flourish and the service appears to have been withdrawn, at all events in its en- tirety, long before the Revolution. Of course, in winter time it could not be maintained with anything like regularity, and the service was not much missed, for the early Long Island settlers were not at all given to the use of the pen. Furman tells us that while the Rev- olutionary struggle was in progress, and for some years after it was over, "a respectable old Scotchman named Dunbar was in the habit of riding a voluntary post between the city of New York, along the south road, to Baby- lon and from thence a few miles to the east, and then across the island to Brookhaven. He thus brought to the inhabitants of the cen- tral portions of the island their letters and newspapers about once a week or once a fort- night, depending upon the state of the weath- er." Up almost to the beginning of the nine- teenth century there was not a single post office on Long Island. Those living on the west end got their mail in one way or another from the postoffice at New York, and those on the east end and along the Sound generally had their mail matter addressed to some of- fice in Connecticut whence it was carried as near to them as possible in some trading vessel.

It was not until the introduction of turn- pike roads that much progress in real road- making was seen. About 1810 turnpike road building first began to obtain a foothold in the country, and although it was considered un- American to have public roads which could not be used by all and sundry free of cost, a brief experience developed the fact that the small fees paid at each turnpike amply repaid those assessed. On Long Island the first of these roads was laid out by the Brooklyn and Jamaica Turnpike Company, and in quite a short time it demonstrated itself to be suclı a public convenience that it was extended to Hempstead and to Jericho, and from the

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HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

latter an extension was built to Smithtown. Jamaica soon became the centre of other roads until it was possible to drive along a turn- pike from there to Oyster Bay, on the north, and to Babylon on the south shore, while a short stretch of four and a half miles from Sag Harbor to Bridgehampton showed the people of the eastern end what could be ac- complished by taking advantage of the Turn- pike Companies' acts. Toll bridges were also introduced in connection with the turnpike system and quite a number of these were erected, such as those at Flushing, Williams- burg, Gowanus, Sag Harbor and Coney Island.

About the middle of the century a new de- velopment in road building was inaugurated by the introduction of the plank-road system. It seemed for a time as if the people at the eastern end of Long Island had fully awak- ened to the need of good roads, and as the plank system seemed to fill the want by afford- ing a quick, cheap and satisfactory solution the craze for that form of road-building reached such a point that it was described as a mania. Probably the most noted of these roads was the one owned by the Myrtle Ave- nue & Jamaica Plank Road Company (incor- porated with a capital of $55,000), which built a stretch of road five and a half miles long, extending from the end of Myrtle avenue to a point about a mile west of Jamaica, where it joined another similar structure, known as the Jamaica & Brooklyn Plank Road. After a while it was found that the maintenance of such roads was pretty costly, owing to the need of constant watchfulness and incessant repair, and they were gradually abandoned. Still the public convenience and profit arising from the possession of good roads was not lost upon the people, and the roads througli- out the island steadily improved year after year. The introduction of the bicycle and the cry raised in its palmy' days by the League of American Wheelmen lcd, in 1890 or there- about, to a revived interest in the question of good roads all through the State. In that

movement Long Island was particularly active and her systems of roads soon became recog- nized as among the best in the metropolitan district, much better in the aggregate than those of Westchester county and those of New Jersey outside of a limited area. The ques- tion of by-paths was not taken up by the local authorities as quickly as the cycling en- thusiasts demanded and much grumbling re- sulted, but that problem has been happily set- tled, for the steadily extending mileage of what are called cycle paths is opening up al- most every corner of the island to the pedes- trian as well as to the cyclist, and also bring- ing slowly but surely a good road to every little village, no matter how remote it may be from the great arteries of travel, and even to every farm homestead.

A capital sketch of the condition of the Long Island roads in 1845 is given in Prime's "History," and as that reverend historian wrote on the subject from personal observa- tion his remarks have more than passing value and are worth being quoted here. He said:

The roads of Long Island are exceedingly numerous and difficult for strangers. There are three principal avenues running nearly through the whole length of the island, which are distinguished as the North, Middle and South Roads. These are not only intersected by others leading from one town and neigh- borhood to another, but in the most uninhab- ited parts there are numerous wood-paths well worn by constant carting which vary so little from the course of the main road, and not in- frequently appear the most direct and most used, that the stranger is constantly liable to go astray ; and that, too, where he might re- main a whole day without meeting a person to set him right. Some of these turnouts have been guarded by guide-boards, but in general the inhabitants have been too inattentive to this important provision.

A large portion of the South and the Middle Roads, after you enter the county of Suffolk, leads through large sandy plains and forests, and to one who has never traveled such a region of country it is impossible to convey an adequate idea of the inconvenience and obstruction to locomotion which are here

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INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS.

presented. After a heavy rain, if only a single carriage has preceded you to open the ruts, you may get along with tolerable speed, pro- vided your wheels fit the track. But in a time of drought the sand in many places is so fine, deep and fluid that you may travel for miles with the lower felloe of your wheels con- stantly buried out of sight.

But while the people of Long Island are not to blame for the natural condition of their

pact and by the gradual admixture with the sand improves for many years, though like all human works it does not become everlasting, but its advantage is seen for a long period.

The entire counties of Kings and Queens both in the public roads and numerous turn- pikes present as pleasant journeying for man and as comfortable traveling for beast in every direction, and at all seasons of the year, as any other equal district in the State; and the north

A PICTURESQUE BIT OF ROAD.

roads, for, unlike in many other parts of the country, they have not selected the best lands for themselves and devoted the hills and hol- lows and slough-holes to the roads, but have given as good as they had, they are entitled to great credit in many places for the efforts which have been made, with vast toil and ex- pense, to improve upon nature. Where a bed of loam has been discovered they have dug out and hauled thousands and thousands of loads covering the whole path from six to twelve inches deep for miles in succession. By this process the road soon becomes com-

side of the island throughout furnishes a com- pact substratum and excellent material for roads, though there is too much reason to complain of negligence in their improvement. The most of the labor done in cutting down hills and filling up valleys is performed by the direct agency of water during copious rains. The work thus executed, without the direction of human intelligence receives a few finishing strokes from the hand of man, when the necessity is imposed by some frightful gully formed or some huge rock dislodged by the powerful but senseless agent.

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A history of Long Island, from its earliest settlement to the present time, Part 45

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