USA > New York > New York City > Annals of St. Michael's ; being the history of St. Michael's Protestant Episcopal Church, New York, for one hundred years 1807-1907 ; > Part 9
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Annals of St. Michael's
of this family are entered on the records. Perhaps Dr. David Tilden Brown, who became vestryman in 1860, having been, since 1852, the head of the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum, should be included in this group, inas- much as he came of a New England Congregational family.
Dr. Brown and Dr. Mott belong distinctly to the period of the passing of old Bloomingdale, Dr. Mott representing also the property holders of a second generation, who bought the original country places, cut them up, and built new houses. To this class belongs, likewise, Mr. David S. Jackson, who first appears as a vestryman in 1850. He bought some acres of land to the west of Bloomingdale Road, from rooth Street northward (the old Vroom farm), and built there three houses, one of which, recently torn down, on IoIst Street and Broadway, was for many years the residence of Rev. T. M. Peters and came to be regarded in the neighborhood as the "rectory." Some years earlier, in 1835, Mr. William P. Furniss, who entered the Vestry in 1856, bought from the estate of Mrs. Ann Rodgers, whose husband, William Rodgers, was one of the found- ers of the church, a considerable property north of Striker's Bay (later, in 1856, he added to this part of Striker's Bay farm), and erected there, in 1837, a large house, which still stands between 99th and 100th streets on Riverside Drive. The old Rodgers home- stead, as narrated elsewhere, became a hotel.
The story of Elmwood will serve to illustrate one of the methods of the passing of old Bloomingdale houses. This house was situated on the present site of St. Agnes's Chapel. It belonged at the close of the eigh- teenth century to a Mr. Apthorpe, after whom was called, also, the lane which ran along the northern edge
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TWO OLD MANSIONS I. Elmwood : the Apthorpe and Jauncey Homestead
2. Burnham Hotel, formerly Baron Vandenheuvel's Country Home
II3
Story of Elmwood
of the property at 92d Street, forming a channel of communication with upper Yorkville. At some time before 1807 it passed into the hands of William Jauncey, one of the original founders of St. Michael's Church. Later Jauncey's daughter, Jane Mary, having married Herman Thorn, who became a vestryman in 1819, the Thorns took the house and continued to reside there until about 1830. It was a good place for chil- dren, and in the register of St. Michael's Church is re- corded the baptism of seven children of Herman Thorn of Elmwood and Jane Mary Jauncey, his wife, between 18II and 1829. The place was next occupied by William G. Buckner and Emily Anna Bulow, his wife, two of whose children were baptized in St. Michael's Church in 1835 and 1837 respectively. Mr. Buckner himself became a vestryman in 1838 and served in that capacity until 1841. This place was one of those disturbed by the erection of the aqueduct at about that time, and appears to have been abandoned as a residence on that account. A race track was now laid out here and train- ing stables built; for Bloomingdale Road, it should be said, was a favorite drive for the owners of fast horses, and the old house became a hotel. With the laying out of the Park, the development of Harlem Lane and the disuse of Bloomingdale Road for fast driving, the race course was turned into market gardens, and the old house and the grove about it became an excursion and picnic resort. Here were held at one time the annual excursions or picnics of St. Michael's Sunday School. Gradually it became less and less reputable as an ex- cursion resort. The house fell into great disrepair, and the once beautiful grounds were cut to pieces by the opening of new streets, and with the construction of the elevated railroad Elmwood finally became a miser-
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Annals of St. Michael's
able tenement, and then was torn down to make way for modern buildings.
The families who occupied the old Bloomingdale homes intermarried freely, and the records of their marriages and of the baptisms of their children appear at least as often on the St. Michael's register as on the registers of the down-town churches to which they also belonged. The Malis, Weymans, Staceys, Whitlocks, von Posts, Schwabs, and Punnetts were all connected with one another, and in general the details of their relationship can be traced from a study of St. Michael's register. This group was very active in the affairs of St. Michael's Church from about 1840 to 1860 and a little later.
In the two decades immediately preceding, the De- Peysters played the principal rôle, there being at one time four members of that family, three of them brothers, on the Vestry of St. Michael's. Reference was made in the first chapter to Captain Frederick DePeyster, one of the founders of the church, who was also vestryman from 1815 to 1816. His second son, Robert G. Liv- ingston DePeyster, succeeded his father on the Vestry in 1817. In the following year the eldest son, Captain James Ferguson DePeyster (Samuel Ferguson served on the Vestry with Frederick DePeyster), became treas- urer of the church, and so continued until his death in 1874, filling also the position of warden from 1830. He was prominent in the religious and benevolent life of the city, a governor of the New York Hospital and Bloomingdale Asylum, president of the New York Dispensary, treasurer and trustee of the Bleecker Street Savings Bank, vestryman of Trinity Church, and treasurer of the Society for the Promotion of Religion and Learning. He was the father of the late
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The DePeyster Family
Frederick J. DePeyster. Frederick DePeyster, Jr., the third son, became a vestryman and also clerk of the Vestry in 1825, continuing to serve in that capacity until 1839, during a part of which time he was also a vestryman of St. Ann's, Fort Washington, representing that church in Convention. He was president of the New York Historical Society and the Society Library and clerk of the Board of the Leake and Watts Asylum, which was directly opposite his father's old home in Bloomingdale, and the register of St. Michael's Church contains the records of his marriage in 1820 to Justina May Watts, whose father was one of the founders of that institution. By this marriage he became the father of the late General John Watts DePeyster. In 1835 Frederick DePeyster's fourth son, Abraham, who had been absent from the country for some years in Brazil, where he made a fortune, joined his three brothers on the Vestry. Like his elder brother, R. G. L. DePeyster, he died unmarried in his father's house. His burial in the DePeyster vault in St. Michael's churchyard is recorded in 1836.1 In 1834, their dis-
1 In the DePeyster Book, prepared by General John Watts De- Peyster, the date of Abraham's death is given as 1830. According to the St. Michael's records the proper date is 1836. These records also show that the Genealogy is in error with regard to the daughters of Frederick DePeyster by his second wife, Ann Beekman. (Accord- ing to the map of 1815 a John Beekman had a place just north of Caspar Meier's, about 120th Street and the North River.) He had, by his first wife, Helen Hake, five sons, and by his second wife, Ann Beekman (daughter of Gerard Beekman and granddaughter of Pierre van Cortlandt), six daughters, not five, as recorded in the Genealogy: Cornelia Beekman, born 1803, married Richmond Whitmarsh of North Carolina and Rhode Island (the baptism of two of their children is recorded at St. Michael's); Ann Frederica, born 1805, buried in the DePeyster vault in St. Michael's in 1840; Margaret, born 1806: Mary Elizabeth, born, 1808; Sarah Matilda Beekman, born 1813, whose sponsors were Philip Van Cortlandt of
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Annals of St. Michael's
tant cousin,1 James DePeyster, was also added to the Vestry. He married Emily Maria Livingston, and the St. Michael's register contains the record of the baptism at Cheviot Hill, Livingston, Columbia Co., June 25, 1840, of their three children, Henry, Edgar and Beek- man. One more DePeyster family appears on the records,-that of Frederick Augustus or Augustus Frederick. (It is characteristic of the method of record- in those days that the same name appears under both forms.) Four of his children, Maria Roosevelt, Justina Watts, Jane Augusta, and Augustus, were baptized in St. Michael's between 1818 and 1837. His second daugh- ter, born in the same year in which Frederick, Jr., married Justina Watts, was named after the latter; and besides the record of her baptism there appears also the record of her marriage, in 1837, at the house of her father, in Green Street, to Charles Fox Hovey of Bos- ton. We have noted this family at some length, because of the important part which it played in the parish up to about 1840, when the aqueduct was built and the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum located just across the lane from the Frederick DePeyster home- stead. After this the name disappears from the records,
Westchester, Sarah Beekman of St. Croix, and the mother; Catherine Matilda, born 1818 (given in the DePeyster Genealogy as 1822), sponsored by Philip Van Cortlandt, Catherine C. Clarkson, and the parents, who married Benjamin Hazard Field.
1 Frederick DePeyster was descended from the original Johannes DePeyster through his third son, Hon. de Heer Abraham, his seventh son, Hon. Abraham, and his third son, James Abraham, being him- self the eighth son of the latter. James was descended from the same original ancestor through a second Johannes; William, who married Margaret Roosevelt; Nicholas, who married Frances DeKay, and whose house stood at the one time terminus of the Blooming- dale Road, at 114th Street and Broadway; and James William, who married Anna DePeyster at Curaçoa in 1775.
FREDERICK DEPEYSTER HOUSE On Site of Present St. Luke's Hospital. From Painting in Possession of Mr. P. J. McIntyre.
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Clarksons and Livingstons
only James F. De Peyster retaining his connection with the parish as warden and treasurer until his death.
As already stated, the old Bloomingdale families were much intermarried. Mr. Richmond was himself con- nected with a number of them through his marriage with the daughter of General Clarkson. James F. DePeyster, the treasurer of the church, married, as his second wife, another daughter of General Clarkson. Garrit Van Horne, one of the founders, married a sister of General Clarkson. Their daughter, Mary Johanna, married Adam Norrie, and the baptism of a daughter of the latter is recorded in the register. The vital his- tory of not a few families is thus recorded through three generations. Under date of October 4, 1827, there is a record of the marriage of David Augustus Clarkson and Margaret Livingston, daughter of Edward P. Livingston, at Clermont, in the presence of Robert L. Livingston of Clermont, John S. Livingston, Edward Livingston of New Orleans, James R. Roosevelt, Will- iam B. Astor and lady and many others. In 1836 Will- iam B. Clarkson married Adelaide Margaret, daughter of Robert L. Livingston, and the births and burials of their children and grandchildren appear in the records of St. Michael's. Robert, son of Robert L. Livingston, married Frances A. Goodhue, daughter of Jonathan Goodhue, in 1836. Somewhat earlier Schuyler Living- ston married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas and Susan Barclay, who was buried in St. Michael's in 1817. The church records show a continual interlacing of all these old families. In 1843 Dr. A. V. Williams married as his second wife (his first wife was a daughter of Wm. A. Davis, one of the founders), a sister of Mr. Richmond. The members of the church, including the rector, formed almost a family group.
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Annals of St. Michael's
The marriages and baptisms were often performed not in the church, but at private houses in the city, at country homes in Columbia County and elsewhere, or even in other churches, for the rector of St. Michael's seems to have been regarded by many of these old fami- lies as their special rector and pastor, even more than the rector and pastor of the city church to which they belonged.
Occasionally the records introduce us to persons or families who played an important part in civic life in New York or elsewhere. Some such have already been mentioned. To them may be added Judge Wendell, who was a vestryman from 1849 to 1850, and Hon. Gideon Lee, vestryman from 1829 to 1836, during part of which period he also held office in St. Mark's and St. James's Churches. He was the last mayor of New York elected under the old charter by the Common Council in 1833. In 1814 is recorded the mar- riage of Ralph Isaac Ingersoll of New Haven, later a prominent leader in the Democratic party in Connec- ticut, and father of Governor Charles Ingersoll, to Margaret Catherine Eleanora Vandenheuvel, daughter of Baron Vandenheuvel, the marriage taking place at the house of the latter, afterwards the Burnham Hotel, on 79th Street and Broadway.
James Renwick, who became a vestryman in 1819, was a well known engineer and professor in Columbia. He married Margaret Ann, daughter of Henry Bre- voort, and two of their children were baptized at St. Michael's, Henry Brevoort in 1817, and in 1818 James, the famous architect, who designed Grace Church and St. Patrick's Cathedral. In 1849 is recorded the mar- riage of Fulton Cutting to Ellen Justine Bayard, at the house of her father, Robert Bayard, in Irving Place.
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Rhinelanders and Wagstaffs
In 1834 the poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck, stood witness at the baptism of Catherine DeKay and her mother, Janet Halleck, daughter of Joseph Rodman Drake, and wife of George C. DeKay; and it is noted that the water for this baptism was brought from the "river Jordan in India," by George C. DeKay.
Originally, as stated before, St. Michael's parish included the entire upper half, or rather much more than half of Manhattan Island, both east and west; and even after St. James's parish came into existence some of the east siders continued their connection with St. Michael's. This was true of the Rhinelanders. William Rhinelander was a vestryman from 1808 to 1823 and his son, Frederick William, after him until 1828. In the register of St. Michael's Church there is recorded in the year 1815 the marriage of Mary Robart, daughter of William Rhinelander, to Robert James Renwick, and the baptism of two children by that mar- riage, William Rhinelander and Jane Jeffrey, in 1816 and 1818 respectively. William Rhinelander himself was buried in St. Michael's churchyard in 1825. Isaac Jones continued a vestryman of St. Michael's until 1822. A baptism of a member of the Rutter family of Yorkville, Harriette Jane, daughter of John and Agnes, is recorded as late as 1837. Of the Wagstaffs, another east side family, three generations are recorded in St. Michael's Church from David and Sarah Ann, his wife (1769 to 1854), down through a second David and Sarah Ann, the granddaughter, baptized in 1820. It was, apparently, the possession of a vault in St. Michael's which kept the Wagstaffs in touch with that church, where, however, they were baptized and mar- ried as well as buried. Another east side family, the Delafields, appear to have been connected with St.
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Annals of St. Michael's
Michael's only by the possession of a vault there, in which four members of the family, a wife and three children of Dr. Edward Delafield, were buried between 1834 and 1851.
Several of the old Harlem families are also repre- sented by marriage and baptismal records in St. Michael's register, and occasionally one appears as vestryman. Billop Benjamin Seaman married Hester Mary Cortwright in 1812 at the country seat of Edmund Seaman, Esq. Thirteen years later Edmund Cort- wright (this is at times spelled Kortright) married Sarah Alice Baretto, in the presence of Mrs. Living- ston, Gideon Lee, and others. In 1814 Guy Carleton Bailey (spelled in the records indifferently Bailey and Bayley) married Grace Roosevelt of "Haarlem." He became a vestryman of St. Michael's Church in 1812; later we find him also in the vestry of St. Andrew's Church, Harlem. Jacob Lorillard, who was elected warden in 1838, had land interests in both Harlem and Bloomingdale, but the former was his residence rather than the latter. He therefore declined the election to St. Michael's Vestry, but accepted Harlem.
Fort Washington and Carmansville people continued to be represented in the register of St. Michael's Church until quite a late date. Four children of John Church Hamilton, son of General Alexander Hamilton, were baptized there between 1818 and 1831. In 1846 is recorded the baptism of a granddaughter of Audubon, the naturalist. There are also several notices of mar- riages and baptisms of members of the Bradhurst family, whose place was at about 153d Street, and what is now St. Nicholas Avenue. The latest of these is the marriage, in 1845, of Hickson W. Field, Jr., to Mary Elizabeth Bradhurst, with the baptism of Eliza-
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Old New York Merchants
beth Bradhurst Field in the following year, among whose sponsors were John Jay and his wife. There is also a record of the burial of Mrs. John M. Bradhurst in 1858. Hickson Field, Sr., was one of the great mer- chants of the day, engaged in the China trade and the wholesale drug trade. He retired from business in 1838.
Among the old New York merchants who do not ap- pear as founders or original pew-holders of St. Michael's Church, but who settled in Bloomingdale at a slightly later date was John Clendining (also spelled Clenden- ing), formerly of Pearl Street. He retired from busi- ness in 1811, bought a piece of land extending from 99th Street to 105th Street and from 8th Avenue nearly to Ioth Avenue, and built a substantial brick house on 104th Street in the very centre of what is now Colum- bus Avenue. Toward the middle of the century this house became the Marshall residence, and when 9th Ave- nue was opened it was moved bodily to the southwest corner of 104th Street and that Avenue. In the St. Michael's register are recorded the death of Letitia, wife of John Clendining, in 1843, the marriage of two of his children, Letitia and Jane, and the baptism and burial, in the Hazzard vault in St. Michael's church- yard, of a child of the former, three generations in all. Another of the great merchants of those days, whose name appears as vestryman from 1821 to 1825, was Isaac Lawrence of Pearl Street, who was also president of the Bank of the United States.
Sometimes little glimpses of romance connect them- selves with the story told by the records. Jacob Schieffelin, one of the first founders, married a Quaker maiden, Lawrence by name. She, of course, was read out of meeting and became perforce a good Church-
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Annals of St. Michael's
woman. Her family remained staunch Quakers, and when Jacob Schieffelin gave the land for a church in Manhattanville his brothers-in-law instantly built a Quaker meeting-house by the side of it. Oliver H. Hicks, also one of the original founders, was himself a Quaker by origin. His uncle, Elias, was the founder of the Hick- site sect, but his father was orthodox. Oliver loved and married a Churchwoman, Julia Bush, and for love of her was read out of meeting and became a de- voted Churchman. On part of his country place St. Michael's Church was built. The Royalist connection of many of the members of St. Michael's during its first two decades has already been pointed out. To the number of those mentioned in the first chapter should be added Robert T. Kemble, one of the original trustees and the first treasurer of the church, who had been Commissary General of the British forces in New York during the Revolution. His wife was a Miss Cadwala- der of Philadelphia They owned a large tract of land on the river in the general neighborhood of 104th Street. Later he became seriously involved financially, and the original property passed into other hands and was cut up into smaller places. Guy Carleton Bailey, of Harlem, mentioned above, who was vestryman from 1812 to 1815, and again from 1831 to 1834,1 is another example of the old Royalist connection. He was named after Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, Governor of Canada, and later, in the last years of the Revolution, Clinton's successor as Commander of all the Colonies.
As already stated in the last chapter, it was the com- pletion of the Hudson River Railroad, about the middle
1 Unless, indeed, the different dates represent two different men, father and son.
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Passing of Bloomingdale
of the century, which was the final factor in the passing of old Bloomingdale. In a letter written by the Rev. Franklin Babbitt of Nyack, N. Y., who was organist from 1851 to 1853, while still a student in the Seminary, and to whom the Vestry of St. Michael's in the latter year presented a black silk gown, "which I have yet, and which was then considered necessary to wear when preaching," gives some idea of the conditions at that period. He writes:
The choir was composed of Miss Catharine Williams, Miss Elizabeth Williams, myself and three boys,-David S. Jackson, Delancey B. Williams and William Andariese, and we thought we made very good music. St. Michael's was then in the hamlet of Bloomingdale-all country- more so than Nyack is now, and far away from the great city. I forget how I used to get there from the Seminary in 20th Street, but remember once walking and finding it a long walk over a dusty country road. About that time the corner-stone of Trinity Chapel was laid, when the clergy robed in Mr. Owen's house on 25th Street and the only one in the block between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. There was no Central Park then, and part of the land where the Park is now was occupied by Irish squatters. I was told, at the time, that the first suggestion of making it a park was by Dr. A. V. Williams, the one physician whom all Bloomingdale then employed and respected. When he made the suggestion, he was acting President of the New York Board of Aldermen.
By the end of that decade the change may be said to have been accomplished. A few of the old timers still continued at that period and a little later to occupy their country homes along the river, like the Punnetts, Malis, Weymans, and Furnisses. Mr. Furniss was the last to maintain the old traditions. Until his death,
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Annals of St. Michael's
in 1872, he drove up with his family from his city home in Bond Street every May, to the house on IoIst Street, living there until November. Some of the old houses were leased to new comers, and still maintained as resi- dences for a period. So General Sickles occupied the McKay-Schieffelin place and the Schwabs the Whitlock place. But in general each lessor was a descent in the scale from his prdeecessor. These houses were built originally for summer residences only; moreover, they had none of what are called modern conveniences, so that after a little, where inhabited, they came to be occupied by people of a very plain sort. A number of them were turned into hotels and one or two became the homes of institutions, like the Howland house, the Mott house, the Jackson house, and the old Jones man- sion, Woodlawn, at 107th Street and Broadway. Some fell into ruins and not a few burned down. The houses along the river continued to be occupied as residences to a much later date than those farther inland, to the east of the Bloomingdale Road. The large properties about the latter were early turned into market gardens and truck farms, as the city, pushing northward, drove out the truck farms of an earlier period and caused the demand for new territory for that industry. The crea- tion of Central Park drove a large part of the scavenger population domiciled there into the lands west of the Park, from 6Ist Street up to 87th Street or thereabouts, who soon created a new wilderness over the greater part of that region, such as they had earlier created in what is now the Park.
Difficulty of communication with the city caused Bloomingdale, a name which had now come to be ap- plied to the region northward of 80th Street, to lag far behind other portions of the city which were in space
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Backwardness of Bloomingdale
more remote. Harlem, on the east side of the city, grew rapidly along the line of the Harlem Railroad. Car- mansville and Manhattanville were both connected with the city by the Hudson River Railroad, but there was no passenger station of that road in Bloomingdale. Consequently Manhattanville and Carmansville both grew, while Bloomingdale remained stationary, and the country residences in the Carmansville neighbor- hood continued to be occupied long after those of Bloomingdale were deserted. Farther southward, also, as narrated in the last chapter, the village of Harsen- ville sprang up on the old Harsen farm, which had originally extended from 69th to 72d streets and from Central Park to the river. For many years the only regular method of communication between Blooming- dale and the city was by the old Bloomingdale stages, which in those days ran from 33d Street and 6th Avenue up to Manhattanville, connecting there with other stages which went on to High Bridge. By 1864 the 8th Avenue horse-car line had been carried as far north as 84th Street and by 1867 it had reached Harlem. Along the streets which were cut through to 8th Avenue there grew up little settlements, for the most part of very plain people. One of these existed at roth Street, another at rooth Street. A settlement of a little better character sprang up at 104th and 105th streets. School No. 54 was built on what is now Amsterdam Ave- nue at about this period, and from there over to the river on one side and 8th Avenue on the other ex- tended a thin line of houses. Eighth Avenue, which ran at this point through a deep cut between high cliffs on either side, was reached from the houses on the bluff by a wooden staircase suspended from the side of the cliff, a perilous climb in wintry weather.
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