USA > New York > New York City > Historic tales of olden time; concerning the early settlement and advancement of New York city and state. For the use of families and schools > Part 7
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There were market houses at every one of the slips in his time ; the one at the foot of Wall street, nigh the Tontine, was called the Meal Market.
Said he often heard of Lindley Murray, (the gram- marian) having leaped across Burling's Slip, (about . twenty-one feet,) with a pair of fowls in his hands as he came from market. He believed it, and others spoke of it to me as true, and that his lameness afterwards was imputed to his efforts.
Mr. Tabele said there were but few streets paved. Broadway and other streets had all their gutter ways in the middle.
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He remembered the Oswego market in Broadway, opposite to Liberty street. When demolished, another was placed at the west end of Maiden lane.
The Bear Market was the only one on the North River side. It took its name from the fact of the first meat ever sold in it having been bear meat, killed as the bear was swimming from the neighbourhood of Bergen shore.
William street, from John street northwards, used to be called Horse and Cart street, from an inn near there having such a sign.
Mr. Thorburn, the seedman, told me that when they were digging in Broadway to lay the Manhattan pipes, they came to the posts of the city gate once at Wall street. He also showed me a rarity in the first direc- tory ever made for New-York, say in the year 1786. The very names of that day are curious; so few then who were foreigners. Such was the novelty or uselessness of a directory then, when every man knew his neigh- bour, that no other was attempted till the year 1793, that one Mr. Thorburn also possesses.
Mr. Thorburn's seed house is a curiosity itself-a rare conception on his part ; and presenting to the eye of a walking passenger along the streets, a little rus in urbe.
. An ancient house at the corner of Beaver lane and Broadway, of original two stories high, has its cellar wall exposed out of ground, thus showing the cutting down of Broadway six to eight feet at least. If we keep the idea of that elevation, we may form some idea of the primitive elevation of the ground whereon the fort stood ; aged men have told me they thought the highest elevation of the parapet walls was about equal to the walls of present houses near there.
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Mr. Daniel J. Ebbets, aged seventy-six, who has been a very observant youth and is now an intelligent gen- tleman of lively mind, has helped me to many facts.
He says, the present Bowling Green was once an cbleng square, and was well surrounded with large locust trees.
As late as the year 1787, he had assisted to draw a seins on the beach, where runs the present Greenwich street, say from . Beaver lane to Battery : there they caught many fish and much of herring ; the beach was beautiful ; there boys and horses were wont to bathe and sport in the wave. A street to be there never en- tered the head of the sportive youth. A large rock (see it on Lyne's map) stood out in the middle of pre- sent Greenwich street, then in the water, on which was a kind of rude summer house, much to the mind and fancy of the boys; affording them a resort of much frolic and youthful glee.
Then Mr. Ebbets saw no commerce, nor vessels along the North River side. The Albany sloops all went round to East River, and all their sailors talked Dutch, and all understood it enough for their business.
He was familiar with the plot of the old fort, and described it thus :- first the green bank, which was sloping, was about fourteen feet high, on which was erected a wall of about twenty feet additional height. An old linden and two apple trees on the city side, were as high as the walls. Some barracks lay along the line of State street.
The Broadway, in 1772, entered only as high as the Hospital. Where the Hospital is, was " Rutger's or- chard."
There was a rope walk (Vanpelt's) a little north of
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Courtland street, running from Broadway to the North River. All the old deeds on north side of Courtland street, speak of fifteen feet of the said walk as in their lots. Another ran parallel to it from opposite the pre- sent Bridewell prison ; and in its place, or near it, was formerly a range of British barracks ; [as I think since, in the line of the present Scudder's Museum. ]
The " brick meeting," built in 1764, on Beekman street, near Chatham street, was then said to be in popu- lar parlance, in " the fields." There Whitefield was heard to preach.
Back of the above-mentioned barracks, and also be- hind the present jail, was a high hill, and on its descent a Negro burying ground ; and thence further down, it was a fine meadow.
The British army gave the name of " the Mall" to their parade ground fronting the Trinity church.
There were very fine Sun fish and Roach fish caught in the Collect Pond.
The City Hall at the head of Broad street, (after- wards the Congress Hall) besides holding the courts, was also a prison. In front of it, on the head of Broad street, he remembered seeing there a whipping post, and pillory, and stocks. He has seen them lead the culprits round the town, whipping them at the cart tail. They also introduced the wooden horse as a punishment. The horse was put into the cart-body, and the criminal set thereon. Mary Price having been the first who had the infamous distinction, caused the horse ever after to be called, " the horse of Mary Price."
So recently has a part of Water street been filled up, that he could now lead to the spot there, where could be found the body of a vessel deep under present ground.
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""He verified the fact in Moulton's book, of a canal (or channel) of water running out of the present Bea- ver street, into the Broad street canal, in primitive times. He said that half way between Broad street and New street, in Beaver street, there had been dug up two bars of lead, evidently dropped overboard from some boat. At same place was a cedar post, upright, having on it the lines of the ropes of boats once tied to it.
The Mineral Spring, No. 8 Jacob's street, quaintly enough called "Jacob's Well," is a real curiosity, whether regarded either as an illusion or as a reality. The en- terprise was bold to bore there one hundred and thirty feet, and the result is said to be that they found a spring having the properties of the Saratoga and Con- gress waters. Some distrust it, but the proprietors say, twenty-five thousand persons used it last year. It is a part of Beekman's swamp.
The house in Peck's Slip, north side, a yellow frame, No. 7, was pointed out to me by an aged person, as being in his youth the nearest house to the river, which was then so near, he could jump into the river then ranging along Water street, near to it. He said also that "Walton house," close by on Pearl street, No. 324, had its garden in its rear quite down to the river. He said the hill called Peck's Hill, from Walton house to the Franklin Bank, (at the union of Cherry and Pearl streets) was originally a much higher hill.
I went out to the Dry Dock and Steam Mill, for sawing, &c. on the river margin of "Stuyvesant's Swamp," or flats. It is a very wide extended wet flat, over which tides used to overflow, now sluiced out. Some low grass meadows appear ; but generally it is a waste, coming now into incalculable value to that
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family as building lots. The adjacent hills furnish abundance of coarse sand and gravel material for filling up, which is now busily pursued in the lines of the in- tended streets. Some of the ancient oaks are scattered around, and many stumps showing the recent woods about here, wherever not submerged in water. At the point or hook, a little beyond the Dry Dock, I saw a small mount, on which, in the revolution, was a small redoubt, near which lay the King Fisher sloop of war.
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I observed great digging down of hills and removals of earth going on, all about the Stuyvesant Mansion house and farm. Mr. Nicholas S- told me they often came to Indian graves, known as such by having oyster shells interred with the bones and sometimes some fragments of frail pottery.
Just beyond " Peter's Field" and mansion, extending up to the Fever Hospital at Bellevue, is a great"bend or bay, which is now all filling up with innumerable loads of earth from the adjacent high grounds ; the whole having a long wharf in front, calculated to ex- tend down to the Dry Dock, all of which is to be laid out in streets and city lots. It is an immense and spirit- ed undertaking, affording constant business for the la- bouring poor.
Canal street is a grand undertaking, effecting a great benefit, by draining through a great sewer the waters which once passed by the former canal to the Collect. The street is broad and the houses genteel ; but as this region of ground was once swampy, it is liable now to have wet or damp cellars throughout the range of Lis- penard's Swamp to the northward, and from Lafayette theatre, (which is laid on piles) down to the North Ri- ver. Chapel street, which runs southward from Canal
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street, follows the line of a former water-course (con- necting with the canal formerly and now by a sewer) quite down to Leonard street. and has been all made ground, filled-in over the sewer.
From the inlets to those sewers is emitted a strong offensive smell of filth and salt water, only however perceptible at the apertures, and never known to have any.deleterious effect on health. .
Mr. Wilke, President of the Bank, told me he once stood centinel as a volunteer on the sand beach, close to the present old sugar house still standing nearly in the rear of the present City Hotel, on Broadway. Thus proving what I had before heard from Mr. Swords and others, that at the rear of Trinity church yard, a little beyond where Lumber street is now, the boys used to swim.
Mr. Wilke also told me he knew the parties who in 1780 fought a duel in the rear of the hospital ground.
In visiting Thomas Rammey, a good chronicle, I learned from himself and wife, several facts, to wit :-
Rammey had lived in Cross street; while there, he dug up remains of the old Magazine, and he could see evi- dence that water sometimes had enclosed it, [as Lyne's ancient map had shown.] His mother-in-law, if alive, would be one hundred and six years of age. She often talked of the block houses and palisades across the city, behind present City Hall ; said the Indians occu- pied many places outside of their line, and used there to make baskets, ladles, &c. for sale. Many of them hut- ted outside the present Hospital, towards the North River.
She well remembered they were used at times, in high waters, to have a ferry boat to cross the people in Chat-
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ham street, over where it crosses Pearl street, where it is still low ground. Lyne's map of 1729 marks this same place with a bridge.
She had a recollection of the wife of Gov. Stuyve- sant, and used to go out to his farm near the flats, and there see numerous fish caught.
She remembered and spoke much of the Negro Plot -said it made terrible agitation-saw the Negroes hung back of the site of the present jail, in the Park. A wind-mill once stood near there.
The Jews' burying-ground was up Chatham street, on a hill, where is now the Tradesman's Bank.
She said the water once run from the Collect both ways; i. e. to the East River as well as to the North Ri- ver. Sometimes the salt water came up to it from the North River in the winters, and raised the ice.
In her time the strand or beach on the East River was along present Pearl street generally ; and at the corner of Pearl street and Maiden lane, there dwelt her brother-in-law, who used to keep his boat tied to his stoop to ferry him off by water.
She said Maiden lane got its name from the practice of women, the younger part, generally going out there to bleach their family linen : all of which was then made at home. It had a fine creek or brook, and was headed by a good spring. Some time afterwards, minor springs remained for a time in cellars there, and one was in Cuyler's house till modern times. The hills adja- cent, clothed in fine grass, sloped gradually to the line of Maiden lane, and there she bleached with many others.
She said Broadway went no higher than St. Paul's church.
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She said " Chapel Hill," where is now Dr. Milnor's church, on Beekman street, was a very high mount and steep, from which the boys with sleds used to slide down on the snow, quite to the swamp below. With this agrees the fact told me by Mr. James Bogert, that his father, in latter times, used to ride up to it as a high apple orchard.
Mr. Rammey said, that behind the City Hall once stood an old Alms house, built in 1710, and taken down about the year 1793; perhaps the burials behind it gave rise to the remark made to me by Dr. Fran- cis, that along the line of Chamber street are many graves.
He says he used to be told that the real " ferry house" on Broad street, was at the north-east corner of Garden street, now Exchange place, and is lately taken down, [and so several others have also suggested to me] ; and that the other, (No. 19) a little higher up, (the north end of the custom house store) was only a second inn., having a ferry boat sign, either in opposition, or to per- petuate the other. He said the boats were flat bottom- ed, and used to come from Jersey. To me I confess it seems to have been a singular location for a ferry, but as the tradition is so general and concurrent, I incline to think it was so called from its being a resort of coun- try boats coming there to find a central place for their sales. I have heard the names of certain present rich families, whose ancestors were said to come there with oysters.
A man actually born in the old ferry house, at the corner, and who dwelt there forty years, described it as a very low one story house, with very high and steep pediment roof; its front on Broad street ; its side along
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Garden alley had two dormer windows in the roof, much above the plate ; shingle roof covered with moss : one hundred years probably of age ; had an iron boat, and vars and anchor for a sign; the "Governor's house" adjoined it in the alley. An old lady close by confirmed all this. A picture of the whole scene is an- nered.
Mr. David Grim, an aged citizen, to whom we are indebted for much valuable data given to the Historical Society, has estimated in detail the houses of the city in 1744 to have 1141 in number, of which only 129 houses were on the west side of the Broadway to the North River inclusive : thus evidencing fully, that the tide of population very greatly inclined to the East River.
Mrs. Myers, the daughter of said D. Grim, said she had seen the British barracks of wood, enclosed by a high fence. It extended from Broadway to Chatham street, along present Chamber street, exactly where is now the Museum. It had a gate at each end ;- the one by Chatham street was called " Tryon's Gate,". after the name of the governor, from which we have de- rived since there, the name of " Tryon's Row."
About the year 17SS the whole of the ancient fort, near the site of the present Battery, was all taken down and levelled under the direction of Messrs. J. Pintard, Vansant, and Janeway, as city commissioners. The design was to prepare the site to erect thereon a house for General Washington as President of the United States; but as the Congress removed to Philadelphia, he never occupied it, and it therefore became the " govern- or's house" in the person of Governor Clinton.
In taking down the ancient Dutch chapel vault, they
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came to the remains of Lord and Lady Bellermont, in leaden coffins, known by family escutcheon and in- scriptions on silver plates. These coffins, with the bones of several others, were taken by Mr. Pintard, who told me, to St. Paul's church ground, where they all rest now in one common grave, without any notice above ground of " storied urn or animated bust." The silver plates were taken by Mr. Vansant for a museum ; but he dying, they fell into hands which, with much bad taste, converted them into spoons ! A story much like this is told of the use made of the coffin plates of Go- vernor Paulus Vanderbrecke and wife, placed first in G. Baker's museum, and afterwards in Tamany Hall. Lord Bellermont died in 1701.
This brief notice of the once renowned dead, so soon „divested of sculptured fame, leads me to the notice of some other cases where the sculpturor's hand could not give even brief existence to once mighty names ; I refer to the king's equestrian statue of lead in the centre of the Bowling Green, and to Pitt's marble statue in Wall street, centre of William street. Both are gone, and scarcely may you learn the history of their abduction. So frail is human glory !
The latter I found, after much inquiry and search, in the Arsenal yard on the site of the Collect. It had be- fore been to Bridewell yard. The statue is of fine marble and fine execution, in a Roman toga, and showing the roll of Magna Charta ; but it is decapitated, and without hands-in short, a sorry relic ! Our patriot fathers of the revolution, when they erected it, swore it should be as eternal as " enduring marble ;" they idolized the man as their British champion,
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"In freccom's cause with generous warmth inspired."
But the fact was, while the British army occupied New- York, their champion lost his head on some unknown occasion, and has never since been heard of! The statue itself was taken down soon after the peace, both as an inconvenience in the street, so narrow there in the busy mart, and also as a deformity. Alexander M'Cor- mick, Esq. who dwelt near the statue, told me it disap- peared the night of St. Andrew, when, as it was whis- pered, some British officers, who had been at their revels, struck it off in revelry rather than in spite. No inquisi- tion was made for it at the time ; one hand had before been struck off, it was supposed, by boys. A story was told among some Whigs, that the Tories had struck off the head in retaliation for the alleged insult offered to the king, by drawing his statue along the street to melt it into bullets for the war. My friend John Baylie was present in April, '76, and saw the degrading spectacle. He saw no decent people present ; a great majority were shouting boys. The insult, if so meant, was to the dead, as the statue was of George II., "our most gracious king !"
" Then boast not honours. Sculpture can bestow Short-lived renown !"
[Querie : should not the Society of Artists possess and repair such a piece of art as Pitt's statue ?]
. Before the revolution, and even some time afterwards, William street was the great mart for dry good sales, and chiefly from Maiden lane up to Pearl street. It was the proper Bond street too for the beaux and shopping belles. Now Broadway has its turn.
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Pearl street then had no stores, but it was the place of good dwellings ; then Broadway had no stores or bu- siness, and had but a few scattered houses about the region of the new City Hall.
Before the revolution, the only road out of town was by the Bowery road, and was once called " the high road to Boston."
The Bowling Green .was before called " the Parade."
Mr. Thomas Swords, aged sixty-six, told me he re- membered to have seen the remains of an old redoubt by Grace and Lumber street, (corner), the same which was presumed once to have terminated the northern line of the city along Wall street. It was a hill there ; there American prisoners were buried in time of the revolu- tion ; and he has seen coffins there in the wasting banks of the mount ; at the foot of it, was the beach along the North river.
The grand-father of Mr. James Bogert told him that oyster vessels used to come up Broad street to sell them ; and in later times, water used to enter cellars along that street from the canal.
David Grim, in his very interesting topographical draft of the city as it was in 1742-4, (done by him when seventy-six years of age, in the year 1813) is a highly useful relic and gift of the olden time. His generous at- tention to posterity in that gift to the Historical Society is beyond all praise, as a work in itself sui generis, and not to be replaced by any other data. He was a chro- nicle, who lived to be eighty-nine, and to wonder at the advancements and changes around him ! I here mark some of his facts :
He marks the "Governor's Garden" near the fort, as ranging along the line of Whitehall street, next the fort,
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and there turning an angle of the fort and enclosing westward to the river. This also agrees with the report of others, who told me of seeing deer kept by the go- vernor in front of the fort on the ground of the Water Battery.
Mr. Grim marks the line of a narrow canal or chan- nel in Broad street, as open above the present Pearl street, and there covered by the bridge or Exchange house, or both.
He marks the localities of public wells in the middle of the streets.
He marks Rutger's farm as lying north-west of the Collect, and Winthorn's farm as south-east of the same.
At the foot of Courtlandt street he marks the then only wharf. We know it was built there for the king's purposes, having thereon an Arsenal reaching up to Dey street.
Mr. David Grim told his daughter of there having been a market once held at the head of Broad street. This agrees with what G. N. Bleeker, Esq. told me, as from his grand-mother, who spoke of a market at Garden street, which was in effect the same place.
Bakewell's City Portrait of 1747, a fine perspective, marks the great dock at the foot of Broad street as having a long dividing wharf projecting into it from Broad street, and set on piles, which leads me to the idea of "the bridge" so often named there. It was. probably the landing place for the unloaded goods from vessels in the east and west mole on both sides of it.
A low market house on arches, having a large dial plate on its roof in front, is set at the foot of Broad street.
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The city corporation grants to Trinity church, in 1703, as I saw of record in Mr. Bleeker's office, the grounds there " for a burying place for the inhabitants of the city forever ; and upon any of the inhabitants of said city paying therefor to the Rector, &c. 3s. for each corpse above twelve years of age, and Is. 6d. for any under twelve years of age, and no more." This last emphatic word may seem peculiar when we reflect how very special and exclusive those grounds have been so long occupied.
In the minutes of council of 1696, I saw that a sewer of 1100 feet length was recommended to be made in the Broad street.
I saw in the city commissioner's office, that the popu- lation of New-York, in 1730, was only S638 ; and in 1825, it was 166,086.
David Grim told Mr. Lydigg that he had seen the river water over Chatham street and Pearl street, and extending from the East to the North river ; along the line of the Collect as I presume.
Mr. Brower and others have explained to me, that all along the present Grand street, as it approaches to Cor- lear's Hook, was formerly very high hills covered with apple and peach trees. Much too of the present level of Harman street, leading into Grand street, was for- merly hills of sixty feet height. The materials of these hills so cut down furnish excellent gravel for new streets, and especially the means of extending their grounds out into the rivers.
Hudson's Square is a beautiful embellishment of New-York, redeemed from a former waste, once a sand beach. The large growth of the trees and the abundance of grateful shade, make it, in connexion with the superi-
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ority of the uniform houses which surround it, a place of imposing grandeur. The continuous long lines of - iron palisades, both round the square and before the areas of every house, and up the several door steps, give a peculiar aspect of European style and magnifi- cence.
The residences of Col. Rutgers and Col. Willet, though originally located far out of town, on the East river side, have been surrounded by the encroaching population ; but as the encroachments have not been permitted to close very close upon them, they are still enabled to retain some grounds around them of rural ap- pearance. Col. Willet's house was formerly on a knoll situated on the margin of Stuyvesant swamp. Soon all such recollections will be obliterated by the entire different face of things now beginning to appear there.
David Grim said he remembered when carmen first took about the tea water ; it was but one-third of pre- sent prices. The water, formerly, was good at the wells and some of the street pumps.
He remembered when only one lamp was used in the street-say at the corner of Wall and William streets.
Mr. Brower told me, street lamps came into use about ten years before the revolution. The carts at that time were not allowed to have any tire on their wheels.
The carriage of the mail between New-York and Philadelphia, even since the revolution, was a very small matter ; it was hardly an affair to be robbed, for a boy, without any means of defence, took the whole in saddle-bags on horseback. Then they wondered to see it enlarged, and took it on a sulky ; and by and bye, " the wonder grew," that it should still more enlarge,
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