USA > New York > New York City > History of New York city from the discovery to the present day, V.1 > Part 15
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"On the 15th of April, 1748, a number of gentlemen met in the vestry of King's Chapel, or Trinity Church, then situated where the present church stands in the Broadway, but, at the time referred to, overhanging the banks of the Hudson, whose limits have since been pushed back a quarter of a mile by the contfactors and dust-collectors ; and these gentlemen being of the opinion, after a deliberate consultation, that it was necessary to have a chapel of ease connected with Trinity, it was then and there ordained that the Church-ward- ens, Colonel Moore, Mr. Watts, Mr. Livingston, Mr. Chambers, Mr. Horsman- den, Mr. Reade, and Mr. Lodge, be appointed a committee to select a place for the erection ' of ye' Chapel of St. George's. Another meeting was held on the 4th of July, 1748. Colonel Robinson, one of the committee, reported that he had agreed with a Mr. Clarkson for a number of lots, for which that person had asked the sum of £500, to be paid in a year ; and several persons in Mont- gomerie Ward had stated to him that the lots of Colonel Beekman, fronting Beekman and Van Cliff Streets, would be more commodious for building the said chapel, and proposed that if the vestry would agree to the building of the chapel on Colonel Beekman's property. the inhabitants of Montgomerie Ward would raise money among themselves to purchase the ground, and that if Mr. Clarkson insisted on the performance of the agreement with him for his lots, they would take a conveyance for them, and pay the purchase-money ; which was agreed to after many hot words; for these respectable vestrymen, in a manner like all vestrymen from time immemorial, had tempers of their own, and no doubt they were exercised at the fact that the doughty Robinson had taken upon himself to make an agreement to purchase lots for £500, a very large sum in those days, when the gold-board had not been established, while, on the other hand, the inhabitants of Montgomerie Ward, which was afterward called the ' Swamp' in the memory of man, were, without whip or spur, eager for the honor and glory of the future, to furnish the lots and build upon them a church. Well, the vestrymen went home and drank more arrack-punch, sweet- ened with muscovado sugar, and punished ' oetykoeks,' greasy with oil and other substances, and then returned to the bosoms of their respective families. Dona- tions poured in to the committee, and the first subscription, of £100, was made by Sir Peter Warren, who desired, if not inconsistent with the rules of the church, that they would reserve a pew for himself and family in perpetuity. The Archbishop of Canterbury contributed ten pounds. The installation services were held on the 1st day of July, A. D. 1752; but there being no bishop in the country at the time, it was consecrated agreeably to the ancient usages of the church. The Rev. Henry Barclay, D. D., at this time, was the rector, and Rer. Samuel Auchmuty, D. D., assistant minister of Trinity Church. Being finished
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in the finest style of architecture of the period, and having a handsome and lofty steeple, this edifice was justly deemed a great ornament to the city. It first stood alone, there being but few other houses in its vicinity. Shortly sub- . sequent, however, the streets were graded and built upon, and now the im- mense warehouses of enterprising merchants and handsome private residences surround it on every side. When first constructed, the interior arrangement of St. George's differed considerably from the present, the chancel at that time being contained in the circular recess at the rear of the church, and the altar standing back against the rear-wall in full view of the middle aisle. There was also some difference in the arrangement of the desk, pulpit, and clerk's desk. An interesting relation is told concerning the material of which this part of the church-furniture was made, and it may be thus condensed : In one of the voyages made by a sea-captain, whose vessel was unfortunately wrecked, he sustained, among other injuries, the loss of the vessel's masts. This disas ter occurring on a coast where no other wood than mahogany could be procured, , the captain was obliged to remedy the loss by replacing the old masts with masts made of mahogany. This ship, thus repaired, returned to this port about the time St. George's was building, when more suitable masts were substituted. and those made of mahogany were donated to the church. The pulpit, desk, and chancel-rails were removed some years afterward, and it may be interest- ing to state that that they can now be seen answering a like capacity in Christ Church, in the little town of Manhasset, on Long Island.
" There is an incident connected with the beautiful font of this church which will also bear repetition. Originally intended for a Catholic church in South America, it was shipped on a French vessel to be carried to its destina- tion ; but whilst on the voyage it was captured by the English during the old French war and brought to this city. This font is made of white marble, and is a masterly piece of workmanship. In 1814, when St. George's was burned, this font was supposed to have been destroyed, but it was found about thirty years ago in a remote part of the church, where it had been removed during the conflagration. It was somewhat damaged, but not enough, however. to prevent its further use ; and after being cleaned and repaired it was replaced in front of the chancel, where it now stands, an interesting feature of the time- honored building.
"One of the melancholy events associated with this old church was the sudden death of the Rev. John Ogilvie. On the 18th of November, 1774, whilst. delivering one of the lectures he was in the habit of holding on Friday even- ings, he was struck with apoplexy. He had given out his text : 'To show that the Lord is upright : he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.' -Psalm, xcii, 15: and after repeating a sentence or two he sank into the read- ing-desk, and was deprived of speech. He suffered thus for eight days, when he was relieved by death. It was in this chapel, in July, 1787, that the Right Rev. Samuel Provost, the first bishop of the diocese of New York, held his - first ordination, at which time the late Right Rev. Richard C. Moore, D. D., Bishop of Virginia, and the Rer. Joseph G. I. Bend. of Baltimore, were made deacons. In the year 1811, arrangements were made for a separation between the congregation of St George's and the corporation of Trinity Church, after which the former became duly organized as a separate parish, known as St. George's Church.
" The following persons composed the first vestry : Church-wardens -
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ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL
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Gerrit Van Wagenen and Henry Peters. Vestrymen-Francis Dominick, Isaac Lawrence, Isaac Carow, Robert Wardell, Cornelius Schermerhorn, John Onderdonk, Edward W. Laight, and William Green. After St. George's became a separate parish, its first minister was the Rev. John Brady, who after- ward became an assistant under the Rev. John Kewly. St. George's was entirely consumed by fire in the month of January, 1814, nothing being saved but the bare walls. After a proper examination, these walls were decided to be safe enough to bear another roof, and when this was put on the whole interior of the building was renewed. The interior of the church is much more handsomely finished than the exterior, the carved capitals of the Corin- thian order presenting a fine specimen of architectural beauty. The ground- floor is divided into three aisles, and on either side a commodious gallery is supported by massive columns. At the west end, and connecting these two, there is another gallery, in the middle of which is located a handsome ma- hogany organ. Above this end gallery there are two smaller ones, which are used by the Sunday-school pupils. From the center of the ceiling three large magnificent glass chandeliers depend, and these are among the few articles that were saved from the fire. Over the side-galleries three smaller but very beau- tiful chandeliers are hung above the arches. When St. George's was com- pleted a second time, it was placed by the vestry under the pastoral charge of the Rev. Dr. Milnor, who continued to fill the rectorship until the Sth of April, 1845, when he died. This venerable minister was held in high esteem by his parish, and his death was sincerely lamented. He had been a lawyer in Philadelphia in early life, and for several terms represented that city in Congress. In 1813, he abandoned secular pursuits, and was admitted to priests' and deacons' orders by Bishop White.
" One hundred years after the consecration of St. George's, a grand cente- nary celebration was held in the church, and hundreds of worhipers knelt in the shadow of the pulpit from which George Washington had often heard the sacred text read and expounded. Dr. Tyng held the rectorship until the new edifice in Sixteenth Street was finished, when the communion service was removed to the new church, and a number of old relics carried away. Now the venerable pile is being gutted from organ-loft to altar, and the hungry doors s and open that all may see the nakedness of the edifice. The old gray flag-st nes, worn by the feet of Schuylers, Livingstons, Reades, Van Cliffs, Beek ans, Van Rensselaers, Cortlandts, Moores, and others, well known and respected in the infancy of the metropolis, are to be torn up and converted into lime ; the pulpit will go to a junk-shop, and the rest of the furniture to the wood-yard. At present the graves of Revolutionary heroes serve as a depository for ashes and rubbish, and vessels are emptied daily from the win- dows adjoining on places where, a hundred years ago, were carved the sacred words never to be effaced. " Requiescat in pace." The old church has to be torn down, and the six lots will be sold to the highest purchasers. The church was the oldest in the city but one. the building occupied as a post-office having been the first building erected as a place of worship. The property purchased from Colonel Beekman for £500 is now worth, it is said, half a million of dollars." *
* The site of this building is now (1871) occupied by the elegant marble building of the Oriental and American Stove Works.
CHAPTER V.
MR. CLINTON was at his country-seat at Flushing, L. I., when his successor, Sir Danvers Osborne, arrived. This was on Sunday, the 7th of October, 1753. The council, mayor, corporation, and the chief citi- zens met the new Governor on his arrival, and
1753. escorted him to the council chamber. The following day Mr. Clinton called upon him, and they both dined with the members of the council. On Wednesday morning Mr. Clinton administered to him the oath of office, and delivered to him the seals; at the same time delivering to James De Lancey his commission as Lieutenant-Gov- ernor. As soon as these forms were finished, Governor Osborne, attended by the council and Mr. Clinton, set out for the Town-hall, where the new commission was usually rea to the people. Scarcely, however, had the procession advanced a few steps, when the rabble, incited, it is said, by the De Lancey faction, insulted Mr. Clinton so grossly as to compel him to leave the party and retire into the fort. In the evening cannon were fired, bonfires lighted, fire-works displayed, and the whole city was given up to -a delirium of joy. Amid all these rejoicings, the new Governor sat in his room, gloomy and sad; and. seemingly averse to conversation, retired early. On Thursday morning he informed the council that his strict orders were to insist upon an indefinite support for the
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Government, and desired to have the opinion of :... board upon the probabilities of its success. It was universally agreed by the members present that the Assembly never would submit to this demand, and that a permanent support could not be enforced. Turning to Mr. Smith, who had hitherto remained silent, he re- quested his opinion, which being to the same effect as that just expressed, Sir Danvers Osborne sighed, and. leaning against the window, with his face partially con- cealed, exclaimed, in great mental distress, "Then, what am I sent here for ?" That same evening he was so unwell that a physician was summoned, with whom he conversed for a little time, and then retired to his cham- ber, where he spent the most of the night in arranging his private affairs. In the morning he was found sus- pended from the top of the garden-fence, dead .*
Sir Danvers Osborne had lost a wife, to whom he was passionately attached, shortly before coming to New York. This acting upon a mind morbidly sensitive. had thrown him into a melancholy bordering upon insanity. He came to the Government charged with instructions much more stringent in their tone than those given to his predecessor ; and, knowing the difficulty which Mr. Clinton experienced during his administration, he saw before him only a accession of storms and tempests. Almost the first w eds of the city corporation in their address to him in the Town-hall-" that they would not brook any infringement of their liberties, civil and religious"-con- vinced Sir Danvers Osborne of the utter impossibility of the task assigned to him. All these causes working upon a morbid state of mind-wishing to carry out his instruc- tions on the one hand, yet seeing its utter hopelessness on
* Manuscript affidavits of Philip Crosby and John Milligan before the council. Sworn to October 12th, 1753, and now preserved in the Secretary-of- State's Office, Albany, N. Y.
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the other-produced a temporary insanity, in which state he committed the rash act. Party rage, it is true, threw out suspicions of unfair play; and the council even thought it worth while to appoint a committee to investi- gate more fully the circumstances of his death; but these suspicions, it was made clearly evident, were entirely without foundation.
Immediately on the death of Governor Osborne, Mr. De Lancey, by virtue of his commission as Lieutenant- Governor, assumed the reins of government. The rôle which, he was henceforth to play, though difficult, was acted with his usual shrewdness and address. He had now to convince the ministry that he was zealous in the promotion of the interests of the Crown; while, at the same time, if he would retain his own popularity, he must show the Assembly that he was true to his former princi- ples, and by no means required a compliance with the instructions, which, on the part of his majesty, he should present to them. " As his majesty's representative, he was obliged to urge their compliance with seeming sincerity and warmth; but as James De Lancey, their old friend and best adviser, it was his real sentiment that they never ought to submit." The change in the administra- tion, however, was productive of one good result-that of infusing into the Assembly a desire to take active meas- ures for the defense of the province, now threatened with a desolating Indian war. Before the close of the session, an elaborate complaint to the Crown and a representation to the Board of Trade against Mr. Clinton were drawn up, and forwarded, through Mr. De Lancey, to the Home Gov- ernment. . The Assembly was then prorogued to the first Tuesday of the following March-the Lieutenant-Gov- ,ernor tenderly remarking, before they parted, that they " must be sensible they had not acted with his majesty's royal instructions."
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In the General Assembly, which met on the 15th of October, 1754, was first manifested the want of that har- mony which had hitherto been so flattering to Mr. 1754. De Lancey's administration. The reluctance of the Lieutenant-Governor at the congress to accede to the plan of union first awakened suspicion in the public mind that his sympathies were on the side of the Crown, and that the affection which he professed for the people was. only a cover to his own ambition. There were also a few of Mr. Clinton's friends left, around whom were gathered a small opposition ; and the partiality which Mr. De Lan- cey had shown to his partisans since coming into power disgusted others and added to the discontent which was now quite general. To this was added another source of ' dissatisfaction-viz., the course he had taken in the found- ·ing of the college. To understand this latter point more clearly, it is necessary to glance at the origin of the con- troversy which was now raging fiercely, and which had already divided the Assembly into two parties.
The province of New York at this period was divided in its religious views into two sects-the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian -- the former being led by James De Lan- cey and the latter by William Livingston. The Presby- terians, though outnumbering ten to one the Episcopalians, had n t fairly recovered from the oppression of the early Gove, nors, Fletcher and Cornbury ; and they would prob- ably have remained quiet had not the Episcopalians, with great lack of judgment, stirred up anew the embers of controversy.
The people of New York, awakened to the importance . of stimulating education, raised, by successive lotteries, the sum of three thousand four hundred and forty-three pounds for the purpose of founding a college; and, in the fall of 1751, passed an act for placing the money thus raised in the hands of ten trustees. Of these, seven were
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Episcopalians, two belonged to the Dutch Church, and the tenth was William Livingston, an English Presbyterian. This manifest inequality in favor of the Church of Eng- land at once raised a well-founded alarm in the minds of the other sects, who very justly perceived in this an attempt to make the college entirely sectarian, by which only those in the Episcopal Church could participate in its benefits. Nor were they left long in suspense, for it soon became well understood that the majority of the trustees were to have the college under their control, and were intending shortly to petition the Lieutenant-Governor for a charter, in which it was to be expressly stipulated that no person out of the communion of the English Church should be eligible to the office of president. Far-seeing men uttered gloomy forebodings; and a belief soon dif- fused itself through the minds of intelligent dissenters that. this was only the foreshadowing of an attempt to introduce into the colony an established church.
This idea was to a majority of the colonists repugnant in the extreme. The union of Church and State, with its tithes and taxes, was, like the " skeleton in armor," ever present to their imaginations, stimulating them to the utmost resistance. Mr. Livingston, therefore, partially with the view of exposing the evils of a college founded upon such sect rian principles, established a paper called the Independent Reflector. The articles which successively appeared from his pen on this subject were able and pun- gent. Under his lash the leaders of the church party winced; and, in their agony, charged him with the design of breaking up the plan of any college whatever, and dreaded lest he should obtain a charter " for constituting a college on a basis the most catholic, generous, and free." These attacks of the church party were returned with redoubled violence, and the controversy had now risen to fever-heat.
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But the efforts of Mr. Livingston and other able writ- ers to prevent the incorporation of King's (Columbia) College under these principles were fruitless ; and Mr. De Lancey accordingly granted the charter. The Rev. Sam- uel Johnson, from Stratford, a worthy man, was called to the president's chair, and Mr. Livingston was appointed one of the governors, in the hope of silencing his opposition.
The granting of this charter was so displeasing to the majority of the people, that the Lieutenant-Governor thought it advisable, in order to win back their former confidence, to urge at the present session the passage of several popular acts. Among them was one for supplying the garrison at Albany and the fortifications along the frontiers, and another for the discharge of the claims of the public creditors, especially the one of Colonel (afterward Sir William) Johnson.
The granting of a charter to the new college, however, had not utterly crushed out opposition to its obnoxious principles. The House still had the disposal of the money which had been raised; and the sectarians having a ma- jority, the trustees were ordered to report their transac- tions by virtue of the act under which they had been appointed. The latter, accordingly, on the Ist of Novem- ber handed in two separate reports, William Livingston reading one, ; ad James Livingston and Mr. Nichol the other. Afte: the two reports had been considered, the House unanimously resolved "that it would not consent to any disposition of the moneys raised by lottery for erecting a college within this colony in any other manner than by an act of the Legislature hereafter passed for that purpose." Permission at the same time was given Mr. Robert Livingston to bring in a bill for incorporating a college, which he introduced that same afternoon.
The introduction of this bill astonished both Houses. It was vain to suppose that the council would give its 23
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COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 1840.
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assent to an act so distasteful to its religious prejudices ; nor was the Lieutenant-Governor likely to directly con- tradict the letters-patent which, on behalf of the Crown, he himself had granted; while the Assembly, composed chiefly of dissenters, dared not reject it. In this predica- ment, a motion was made by Mr. Walton-prefaced with the remark "that the subject was of the utmost conse- quence to the people they represented, with the respect both to their civil and religious liberties "-that the con- sideration of the bill be deferred until the next session, by which time the sentiments of their constituents could be obtained. This motion was gladly seized upon as the only mode which presented an honorable retreat from the position they had so hastily assumed, and was therefore immediately carried.
Thus, with the close of the year, practically terminated the college controversy, which, considered in itself, was not, perhaps, of much importance; but which should not be omitted by the historian, who would show the progress which the citizens of New York were making toward that civil and religious freedom which they afterward attained.
Sir Charles Hardy, the person whom the ministry had appointed to succeed Sir Danvers Osborne, arrived in New York in 1755. He was, like Clinton, an unlettered B. tish admiral, and he had not landed 1750. long before it was apparent that, like him, also, he had not sufficient executive talent to govern without a leader. He therefore soon resigned himself into the hands of De Lancey, who thus again became Governor. Sir Charles Hardy, however, soon became tired of his inactive life; and having, like a sensible man, asked and received permission to resign the government and return to his former profession, he hoisted his flag as Rear-Admiral of the Blue ; and leaving his government in the hands of the
COLUMBIA COLLEGE, 1872.
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:
Lieutenant-Governor, De Lancey, he sailed on the 2d of July, 1757, to take command of an expedition against Lewisburg.
The year before his departure, however, was signal- ized by an outrage upon the citizens of New York, which was long treasured up, and undoubtedly had its full weight in the catalogue of grievances which a few years later was to precipitate the colony into revolution. At this time the colonists were engaged in a bloody war with the Indians and French; and Lord Loudon, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army in America, arrived in New York in December, 1756, with
twenty - four hundred men. His first act after 1756.
landing was to insist that his officers should have free quarters upon the city. This, it will be remembered, was in direct opposition to the charter of liberties, framed by the first Assembly under Governor Dongan ; and the citizens, who saw in this an attempt to burden them with a standing army, became excited, and warmly pleaded their rights as Englishmen. But Loudon was not to be moved. Six men were billeted upon the brother of the Lieutenant-Governor-Oliver De Lancey. The latter threatened, if they were not removed, to leave the country. "I shall be glad of it," replied his lord- ship, at the same time quartering half-a-dozen more upon him, " for then t e troops will have the whole house."* The Corporation insisted that free quarters were against the common law and the petition of rights. "God damn
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