History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 178

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354

USA > New York > Westchester County > History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I > Part 178

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" These tirst exiles from France, seeking permanent homes and rolig- ions liberty, though, to a great extent, 'spoiled of their goods,' realized actually the sentiment so well- emphasized by Daniel Webster in ad- dressing the young Americans, namely, 'character is capital,' being in the best sense, 'well to do,' free and inclined to contract family alli- ances from choice, taste aud personal qualities rather than from consid- erations of mere expediency or goading necessity. Few and weak though they seemed, their place in history is as clearly defined as that of the 'ten thousand' retreating Greeks whom Xenophon has inmortal- ized, having been long ago distinguished as a part of that heroic 'fifty thousand' who tled from France to England about four years before the annulling of the edict of Nantes, signed by llenry IV. in 1598, for the protection of Protestants, and revoked by Louis XIV. in 1685 ; having been in force, nominally, though not really, nearly fonr-fifths of a century. Having emigrated from England to New York, some of theni by way of the West Indies, partienlarly St. Christopher's and Martiu- ique, they found the most beautiful lands of the vicinity chartered under English manorial proprietorship, whereby it was made easy for them to establish themselves iu new aud permaneut homes. All nuti- pathies of blood or race melted away in the presence of a common Christianity. Au area of six thousand acres, a part of the Manor of Pelham, was conveyed to their friend and agent, Jacob Leisler, mer- chant of New York, on acceptable terms, in 1689, surveyed and divided into lots or farms by Alexander Allaire and Captain Bond, in 1692; named New Rochelle in memory of the old fortress of Protestantism in France, and then the family life of the two people, by its own interior law of development, grew into a civil and social unity, 'compact to- gether,' under the sway of a common scutiment, as if all gloried in the same genealogical origin.

" In this retrospective view of Bi-centennial history we can hardly trace the fortunes of rich domain so beautiful as was this broad, pictur- esque area of almost ten thousand acres, so ucar the rising metropolis, constituted by royal, ducal and colonial authority, under lawful grant and puteut of his majesty, ('harles II., und also of bis sterner brother, King James II., 'an absolute, eutire, eufraucbised township und place of itself, in no manner of way to be subordinate or under the rule of any riding, township, or place of jurisdiction,' and then observe how it was ' willed ' at once by its first proprietor, Thomas Pell, into the possession of an English heir, his nephew, a young man, only twenty-five years of age, without being sympathetically alive to the import of the doubtful questioning put by the more advanced of the exiles. 'What mauner of man is tbis lord of the Manor? What have been his antecedents ? Is his spirit akin to that of the intriguing, persecuting royal duke, James of York, now king, through whom, by special permission of his majesty, Charles II., the earlier charter of proprietorship was received ?' The inquiry was serious, the answer was enconragiug. The young lord's biography was easily traced. Ilis environment suggested cheerful proph- ecies, although his youthful years had been passed amid a general un- settlement of things in church and state. Adverse to the pursuit of his studies contiunously in due course, his home-life and school-life under his father's eye furnished advantages quite exceptional for liberal self- culture, adapted to qualify him for the place of lordly eminence be-

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omneathed to him in this new world as the protector of an oppressed peo- ple, the founder of a community truly unique as to condition and char- acter.

"At this point of our retrospect let us take up the exiled lingnenot's question. What were this young lord's antecedents ? Ilis father, whose name figured largely in the state papers of the protectorate as the right Honourable John l'ell, was eminent among English educators. Born on the first day of March, 1610, at Sonthwycke, Sussex County, England, of which parish his father, the Rev. John Pell, was then rector, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1623, and, before the end of another decade, had won European fame as an author iu the higher range of philosophical and mathematical studies. Having accepted the offer of a professorship in Amsterdam, he then attracted the regard of the Prince of Orange, by whom he was appointed to the professorship of mathematics at Breda, in Holland, where a Military and Naval Academy had been established. This, having achieved a brilliant career in the prime of life, he was chosen by Oliver Cromwell, in April, 1654, English resident ambassador to the Swiss cantons. This confi-

deutial relation to the lord protector at the time when he stood forth at the height of his power, the recognized protector of Protestant Switzer- land against the persecuting powers of the continent, gives ample proof of an enlarged statesman-like style of mind in harmony with the liberal ideas and progressive spirit that have throughout our own century thus far ruled the course both of English and American history. A single fart recorded hy Mr. Bolton in his ' History of Westchester County'1 puts this inference beyond all questioning : ' In the Landsdowne MSS.are cleven volumes of Dr. l'ell's, written in excellent stylc. The first vol- ume contains a vast fund of information. respecting the persecutions of the Piedmontese.' Evidently his sympathies were with the true leaders of the age ; not with the oppressors, but the oppressed.

"In connection with a fact so significant we are not surprised to learn that while serving the government of his country at Zurich, Mr. Pell's letters to his wife, at home, indicate minute attention to the elementary education of his only son, the future ' Lord John," of Pelham, partienlariz- ing the most suitable schools, the studies and the teachers appropriate to the young scholar's situation or turn of mind, even urging special care as to the style of peumanship required by the boy 'eleven years old,' in danger of forming wrong habits at the ontset. Four years after his many educational counselings had been written from Zurich, while the school-life of John was still in progress, the English mission to Switzer- land was terminated, the minister was commended, called home, and in- formed on his arrival that the Lord Protector was dying. Very soon the whole country was convulsed ; but, despite the agitations of that disas- trous period, the youthful heir of a trans-Atlantic 'Lordship,' fifteen years of age at the time of his father's return, was exceptionally favored as to his opportunities for receiving the best possible training under the eye of his watchful parents, who had already taken rank with the best educators of England.

"Fortunately for the professor, while occupying so effectively his chair at Breda, he found it within bis power to confer personal favors upon the exiled King, Charles II, then sojourning there. These were grate. fully remembered, and opened the way, soon after the restoration, for his being admitted into ' holy orders,' by the Bishop of London, in 1661, for his being honored with the degree of doctor of divinity, gifted by the crown with the rectory of Fobbing, in Essex, and afterward by the Bishop, with that of Lavingdon, in the same county; all showing that the change of government from commonwealth to kingdom, brought to him no great distress, nor interfered with the educational interests of his family. The scholar, the diplomatist, the statesman, who had been rec- ognized throughout Europe as the representative of the Lord Protector in defence of the peoples oppressed for conscience sake, was eminently qualified, of course, to train his only son into sympathy with his own ideas and the martyr spirit of the exiles who were to seek transatlantic homes within his own lordly domain.

In this timing of events the llugnenot Pilgrims discerned a divine adjustment of means to euds as real and apt as was that traced by the Israelites in the predicted exaltation of the youthful Joseph to that an- cient ' Lordship' that prepared their way to the land of promise. Of the fine qualities of character exemplified by these heroic people, and the possibilities of their future, he was thoroughly appreciative. Ilow dif- ferent might have been their fortunes had he, like some leading men of the period, favored the exclusive policy of the reigning monarch by whom the manorial charter had been granted, and whose measures, ere long, rendered the English Revolution a logical necessity. But all anti-

pathies were overruled, and in the annals of the following century we trace the gradual growth of a well-ordered and happy community, dis- tinguished by an inherited refinement of manners and a degree of intel- lectual culture that made New Rochelle of Pelham what the legal phrase of the charter designated the manor, 'a place of itself ;' uniqne ; winning to its homes and schools the best elements of family life and social advancement. At the opening of the nineteenth century, the French language, spoken in purity and elegance, still lived as the vernac- nlar of home life, attracting the more progressive class of students, . whereof the names of Washington Irving, John Jay, Philip Schuyler, and Gouverneur Morris may be taken as exponents. A few who were children at that period are yet living, and remember the ladies who, like Mary Beslie, the sister of Dr. Oliver Beslie, possessed home libraries containing the standard works of French Literature that had nourished the intellectual youth of their mothers in France. As it has been well- said by Macanlay, that the fusion of Norman and Saxou elements in the thirteenth century produced the England that has figured as a power in a world of history, so that we may truly say that the fusion of English and French elements in this manorial tract, bought originally of the Indians by Thomas Pell, Esq., in 1654, confirmed by an English King, James II, as a " lordship," in 1687, produced a social growth of fine typal character, and furnished a contribution distinctively its own to the progress of American Colonial civilization.

" The incidental reference hy name to an excellent lady who had passed the border line of 'three-score and ten' before the nineteenth century began, recalls to mind one whose image is associated with my earliest memories and with my first impressions of the primitive style of the enltivated llugnenot's life and manners. Madame Beslie, while in thought I replace her amid the old surroundings iu Pellham, New Rochelle and New York, reappears in my retrospective musing as I saw. her often in my school days, a queenly woman of ninety-five years, not bentby age, retaining her natural ease and grace of movement, stillable by her winning ways to draw ns young folk to her side as listeners to her talk winle she rehearsed the memories of her youth. The younger children of the family circle, usually speaking of her as 'Aunt Mollie Bayley,' were oliliged, each in turn, to take a lesson on the different spellings of French words that sound alike. When her memory became mureteutive of things recent, it kept freshi as ever the things long past ; hence whensoever I greeted her after absences of a month or week, she would place her hands upon my temples, then kissing me upon the fore- head, would pleasantly allude to the old French mode of salutation. At once, as if making a new communication, she would repeat, with an in- terest as lively as ever, the story of the exodus, the deadly persecution in France and the fate of her grandmother, who had been dragged through the streets of Paris by the hair of her head. Having ended her narrative, the turn of her familiar talk would he suggested, often by the old French book that she would happen to be holding in her hand, or hy a reference to some volume or pictured page within the glass doors of her book-case. Gifted as she was with communicative power, she was, at the same time, one of the best of listeners, calling forth from her company the best they had to offer ; and, indeed, I have sometimes wondered whether the charms of her conversation were to he regarded the more eminently as au inher- ited talent, as the incideutal outcome of favoring social influences, or the product of some kind of educational training that had grown into 'a second nature.' Though uncertain just now as to the date of her de- parture from earth (not far from the close of 1817), I can truly say that her beautiful example of refined Christian womanhood has heen ever be- fore me as an exponent of Iluguenot character, shaping my conceptions of Iluguenot home-life and keeping alive my sympathies with the spirit of Ilugueuot history.

" Coincident with these sentiments, as to inherited culture, was the impression made upon the mind of New England by the example of pub- lic spirit exhibited in the city of Boston by a native of New Rochelle more than a century and a quarter ago. From the earliest days of the American Revolution Faneuil Hall has been to Boston a household word, familiar to the lips of men, women and children as the memorial of lIngnenot munificence, rendered classical by historic associations that quicken the pulse of patriotism and call forth the spirit of song in com- memoration of the ' cradle of liberty.' Thus the name of a lIugnenot of New Rochelle has not only held a shining place in the annals of the colonial commonwealth, but lives in the nation's history as a source of inspiration, awakening memories that are an uplifting power.

"Although the name of this man, thus memorialized, has been daily re- peated in the first city of New England by four or five successive gener- ations, yet his short and inspiring life-story had been permitted almost to fade away from memory until its late restoration to the popular range of home reading by the pen of Charles Smith, who has contributed a

1 Volume ii., p. 51.

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PELHAM.

choice chapter to the memorial history of Boston. The uncle of Peter, the founder and ilonor of the hall, was Andrew Faneuil, who fled from France to Holland in 1685, and thenee, as the record shows, had become, itt 1691, a tax-payer und citizen of Boslon. At the opening of the eighteenth century he had taken rank as the leading merchant of the city in point of wealth, trusted by all as a man of honesty and honor. llis death, in 1737, seemed indeed an untimely event. The sense of loss was universal, expressed by the gathering at his grave-a procession of eleven linndred persous, representatives of the whole people. llis prop- erty was ' willed ' to his nephew l'eter, who, nt cighteen years of age, had left his native town, New Rochelle, and sojourmed for a short pe- riod in Rhode Island, whither he had accompanied his father, Benjamin. Proceeding thence to Boston, he entered into the service of lis U'nele Andrew, and soon won the confidence and the love that issued iu his appointment as his uncle's executor and residuary legatee. 1hs career was brief but brilliant. Though he lived only five years after his uncle's deerase, he rendered that small fraetion of life a fine historical episode in the municipal record of his time.

"In the year 1740 the people were divided into two parties, nearly equal in numbers, by the discussion of a proposal to meet a public need -the erection of a central market-honse. The opponents of the enter- prise were persistent, though the grounds of their action are not clearly discernible. In this state of the public mind Peter Faneuil came for- ward and offered to erect the building at his own così, 'o be improved for a market for the sole uses, benefit and advantage of the town, pro- vided that the town of Boston would pass a vete for that purpose, and lay the same under such proper regulations as shall be thought neces- sary, and constantly support it for said use.'

" The selectmen called a meeting to act upon the proposal; 367 votes were cast for necepting the gift, 360 against it. Mr. Faneuil en- larged his plan, and over the market erected a splendid hall, capable of necommoilating a thousand persons. At a town-meeting in the town. house, September 13, 1743, a vote was unanimously passed accepting the gitt, and appointing a committee, consisting of the moderater of the meeting, the seleclmen, the representative lo the general court and six other gentlemen, 'to wait upon Peter Fanenil, Esq., and in the name of the town to render him their hearty thanks for so bountiful a gift, with their prayers that this and other expressions of his bounty and charity inny be almindantly recompensed with the divine blessing.'

" The first town-meeting held within the walls of l'anenil Hall, 1713, was the occasion for delivering a enlogy on the life and chinracter of the elonor by Mr. John Lovell, master of the Latin school. In his oration Mr. Lovell said, after referring to private charities, 'Let this stately celitice which bears his name witness for him what sums he expended in public muuificence. This building, creeted by him at his own indueuse charge, for the convenience and ornament of the town is incomparably the greatest benefaelion ever yet known to onr western shore.' Thurs Boston a century and a quarter ago gratefully declared to the world that, although the Inguenot element did not much affect the population as to quantity, it was an effective factor of sterling worth us to quality, and that the finest expression of ils spirit and style was to be found in the magnificent record left there by the large-sonled young Inguenot of New Rochelle.

" llaving mentioned the year of Mr. Fanenil's departure, 1743, it may be noted, incidentally, that in 1813 the celebration of our national in- dependence in Faneuil Hall awakened into new life old historic associa. tions, and imparted to that day's observance somewhat of the dignity of a centennial recognition. On the fourth of July of that year Mr. l'harles Francis Adams delivered his first public oration, and, as had heen expected, in the presence of the venerable ex-president, his father. Having been invited to officiate as chaplain on that occasion, I repaired to the conneil chamber of the city hall half an hour before the time of forming the procession. While reclining alone upon the old-fashioned window-seat, enjoying its pleasant outlook, the ex-president entered the room. Ere long, taking his seat beside me, he touched upon a few rem- iniscences of the pasl, and then said in n fone expressive of profound feeling, 'This is one of the happiest days of my whole life. Fifty years expire to-day since 1 performed in Boston my first publfe service, which was the delivery of an oration to celebrate our national independence After a half century of active life 1 am spared by a benign providence to witness my son's performance of his first public service -to deliver an oration in honor of the same great event.' To this I answered, "Mr. President, I am well aware of the notable connection of events to which yon refer, and having committed and declaimed a part of your own great oration when a school boy in New York, I could, withont effort, repeat it to you now.' To 'the old man oloqueut,' as well as to myself, the coincidence was an ngreeable surprise. At the close of the services con-

nected with the delivery of the oratien, the guests of the city were gath- ered at the festal banquet in Faneuil llall. There I was called upon 98 chnplain, not only to invoke the divine benedietion, but to respond te a patriotie sentiment that awakened memories of the heroic dead. To me, certainly, it was an uplifting thought, that, like the founder of the hall, belonging by birth to Pelham and New Rochelle, at the end of a century from the year of its completion and his departure, I wns standing in the thronged edifice that memorialized his name, nlive to the significance of the position, well assured that by every nttered word I was but voicing the ideas that he loved, that he expressed in deeds more eloquent than words, and made his record a treasured legney.

" This early colonial civilization, which we have traced frem its be- ginning, with its style of cullure so unique on aeeonnt of its variety of elements fused into newly developed characters, ere long put forth a power of attraction that gathered to it and around it people of congenial tastes, appreciative of the social qualities and educational aspirations recognized as a transmitted heritage. Long remembered mong these whe, at the close of the last century, sought a home in old Pelham, was a man of large fortune, an educated gentlemen, a bachelor just touch- ing the herder of middle life, of whom, as it seems, only one memorial can now be found, and that the marble slab at the head of his grave, hinting briefly at the beginning and ending of his life-story. A single sentence ntters its whole message, this, -In memory of Alexander Bampfield Henderson, Esq., a native of Charleston, in South Carolina, It late of the town of l'elham and county of Westchester, who departed this life 26th December, 1804, aged 47 years.

PETER FANEUIL ..

"On a bright summer's day, abont ten years ago, in a solitary walk among the tombs of the okl French Burial Ground, my attention was arrested by tho inscription here copied. Although I had never seen the man, nor been his contemporary, I felt myself closely related and greatly indebted to him. For 1 was familiar with the story that from his beau- titul residence, separated by l'elham Creek from the land estate of my grandparent, William Bailey, he daily used to walk across the causeway and bridge to our homestead and relieve the loneliness of 'Bachelor Hall,' in the sympathetic enjoyment of our family life. Sneh was his habitude, indeed, during the most important period of my mother's history, her later school days. His private library, a true index of his cherished tastes, was one of the best, at the time, outside of the metropolis ; and it greatly intensihed his enjoyment of it, often recognizing in my mother, n/ Anne Bayley, a keen appreciation of books, to minister to her intel- lectual development by placing at her command the freshest productions of English literature, rendering her familiar with the standard works of Essayists and l'oets, with most of those English classics, indeed, that would be found in the choicest home library at the close of the Eighteenth ('entury. Thus, working 'better than he knew,' he was providing the main topics of interest that ruled the course of our household talk throughout my school days, and was qualifying my mother to hecome, not professionally, but incidentally and really, the attractive companion and cheator of her tive children. Her grateful allusions to him made his name familiar to our ears; and often curious fancy would invest with the golden haze of romance the unwritten history of this 'lame Lonl of the Isle.' Rumor had sometimes whispered that, in his expr-

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

rience, the glow of youthful hope had been dimmed hy the death of a first love, for whose vacant place no substitute could he found on earth.

"In this connection it remains to be said, however, that, whether this suggestion were truc or not, a few well-remembered facts, outlining his life course, werc recently rehearsed to me by Elbert Roosevelt, Esq., whose lite long residcuce in Pelham, near the Island, suggest a series of memories related to the whole vicinity, extending over two-thirds of a eeutury. These conversational statements supply what was lacking to give a desired unity to the story.

" Mr. Henderson, horn in Sonth Carolina, was of Scotch origin ; was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and then took rank as a Sur- geon in the English Army. Thus he was hronght into communication with the British Ambassador in India, and was hy him introduced to the Court of the reigning Prince, who engaged the Surgeon's professional services in behalf of his favorite wife, then seriously ill. The treatuncut was a success, and the delighted Prince honored Mr. Henderson, in his owu way, by the presentation of a beautiful Circassian slave girl, ahout thirteen years of age. This present the Army Surgcon did not hring away with him from India; 'hut, after establishing his home at the Island,' said Mr. Roosevelt, ' he commissioned your father (Captain James Hague, of Pelham, commanding a ship in the India trade) to look after this princely gift, and bring with him the young Circassian as a passenger on his return voyage from Calentta. With her, accordingly, Captain HIague sought an interview, hnt found her so well pleased with her position in the household of a British officer that she could not he induced to leave her new protector. Nevertheless, the Captain was ac- companied with an Indian lad, tho Surgeon's protégé, who was wel- comed, treated as an adopted son, and hore the name of William Hen- derson. The lad survived the retired Surgeon eight years, and was huried hy his side in the old French Burial Ground at New Rochelle. The two graves are surrounded by a well-wronght iron fence, and the smaller marble headstone hears this brief inscription : 'In memory of William Ilenderson, who died January 19, 1812, iu the 25th year of his age.'

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History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 178

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co. Number of Pages: 1354

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354