History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 216

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 216

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6 Certificate recorded iu Lib. A. of Religious Societies in West. Co. Reg'r. office p. 59.

1 II. Bradford's Laws, 19.

2 Ante pp. 98 to 108 inclusive,

3 Town Records of Rye.

4 Town Records of Rye.

6 In 1704, Madame Kuight, in her Journal before referred to, says in speaking of the towns of Mamaroneck, Rye, and Horseneck (Greenwich) " that one church of England parson officiated in all these three towns once every Sunday throughout the year."

873

MAMARONECK.

was effected under the later law, in order that some of its benefits might be availed of.

The first meeting with this object was held 5 April 1817 and the new incorporation was effected June 9th 1817. The Parish was admitted to union with the Convention on the 1st of October 1817, Dr. Guy Carleton Bayley being its first delegate. The next year 1818 Mr. William H. de Lancey then pur- suing his studies iu Theology with Bishop Hobart was the lay delegate. The Church Wardeus were the same, John Peter de Lancey and Peter Jay Munro. The vestrymen under the new organization were Henry Gedney, Benjamin Hadden, Jacob Mott, Thomas J. de Lancey, Benjamin Crooker, Guy C. Bayley, Monmouth Lyon, Edward F. de Lancey. The Rev. Mr. Haskell, who was Mr. John P. de Lan- cey's Rector at Rye, and under his influence long afforded a nursing hand to the infant parish, often giving it services both on Sundays and week days. Mr. de Lancey kept up his connection with, and pew in Rye Church to the time of his death in 1828, and

ST. THOMAS' CHURCH, (OLD).

he also had a pew in the church at New Rochelle by way of aiding that parish then needing all the help it could get.

No clergyman was regularly called at first. After Mr. William H. de Lancey was ordained Deacon in 1820 he served temporarily for a few months in Grace church, New York, and subsequently in Trinity church, N. Y. In the spring of 1821, when the latter temporary engagement ended he returned to his father's House at Mamaroneck, until Bishop Ho- bart could give him a permanent parish. While at Mamaroneck he was called to St. Thomas's, accepted, and served gratuitously, till 1822 when through Bishop Hobart's recommendation he was invited by Bishop White of Pennsylvania, to become his personal assistant in the "three Uuited churches" of Christ church, St. Peter's, and St James's in Philadelphia of which he was also Rector. This invitation Mr. de Lancey accepted, and iu April 1822 took up his resi- dence in that city. He thus became from June 1821

to April 1822, about ten months, the first clergyinan regularly in charge of St. Thomas's, Mamaroneck.

In 1823 a frame church with pointed windows and a low tower was erected, and consecrated on the 17th of June in that year by the Rt. Rev. John Henry Ho- bart, then the Bishop of New York. The expense was mainly borne by Mr. John Peter de Lancey, Mr. Peter Jay Munro, and Mr. Purdy the father of the present Mr. Samuel G. Purdy, of Harrison. The clergy present werc the Rev. Lewis P. Bayard and the Rev. Lawson Carter, both warm friends, and the former a relative of Mr. de Lancey and the wife of Mr. Munro. A cut of it is given which shows the edifice as it was originally. It was enlarged some years later, in 1835 by a chancel, and again in 1857-at the chan- cel end by an addition containing another window on each side, and so remained uutil removed, and subse- quently torn down, on the erection of the present striking and exceedingly handsome stone church, built at their sole expense and presented to the church corporation, by Mr. James M. Constable and his children as a memorial of his wife and their mother the late Mrs. Henrietta Constable, who de- parted this life February 11th, 1884. The Corner- stone was laid December 4th, 1884, by the Rt. Rev. Henry C. Potter, Assistant Bishop of New York, and the church was consecrated by the same Prelate June 10th, 1886, the Rev. Dr. Swope of Trinity Par- ish, New York, preaching the sermou. The new church, of which an engraving is given from a draw- ing expressly made for the purpose by Mr. Bassett Jones its masterly Architect, is a beautiful building, chaste, simple, dignificd, and very effective. It is a perfect specimeu of an old English Parish Church. The style is the Early English Gothic, with the mas- siveness often found in the churches of that period. It is built of Belleville brown stone, rusticated, and consists of chancel, nave, tower, and two porches. The entire length is 127 feet, that of the nave alone 70 feet, the chaucel, a square oue, is 25 deep by 19 feet wide, and the height of the tower is 87 feet. It has a high open timbered roof in the rich yellow pine of the Southern states. The altar and reredos are of Caen stone richly sculptured, the latter showing an exquisitely executed bas-relief of the Last Sup- per of Leonardo da Vinci. The pulpit is also of Caen stone carved, surmounted by a wide polished brass panelled rail of antique design. The windows are of English stained glass all showing figure subjects finely executed. The font, after a special and beau- tiful design of the architect, is of the deeply rich tinted Derbyshire Spar, recently discovered in larger masses than ever before known, not far from the City of Chesterfield in Derbyshire in England, all higlily polished inside and outside. The pews in num- ber 80 afford 350 sittings and are of oak. The Tower contains a very musical sweet toned chime of 10 bells, and a clock which strikes the quarters and half hours, as well as the hours.

874

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

In the same enclosure with the church, and a short distance from it stand the Rectory and parish build- ings in the same style of architecture but built of brick with brown stone casings, and slate roofs. They are happily of irregular shape and combined so under a series of varying angles and roofs, that they present to the eye but a single very picturesque edifice. The whole together, though the general effect is im- paired by being in the business and not very attrac- tive part of the village, an evil that has been partially remedied by the liberal purchase and removal of ad- joining buildings, and throwing their area into fair gardens, form one of the most thorough, complete, beautiful and churchly group of Parish edifices, with appropriate surroundings in this county, and are a noble monument to the Wife and Mother in whose memory they have been erected.

ST. THOMAS' CHURCH, (NEW).

At Larchmont a handsome frame chapel was erect- ed four years ago by the Trustees of the Larchmont Land Company for general services. Afterward it was organized as a chapel of ease of St. Thomas's Church Mamaroneck under the ministration and direction as to its services of the Rector of that church for the time being. It and the Sunday school attached to it is only open during the summer season. Usually an arrangement is made with the assent of the Rector of St. Thomas with some clergyman temporarily for the services at the chapel during the scason. The Trustees in 1886 are Marcus P. Wood- ruff and David Jardine.

A Methodist Society was organized and a frame church built in Mamaroneck, on High Street in 1813. It there continued with a small congregation till about the year 1850, when it was removed to Rye Neck and a large and handsome frame church edifice was there erected about a third of a mile from the Mamaroneck River Bridge and nearly at the junction of the old Westchester Path with the road running east from that Bridge, an account of which falls ap-

propriately in the chapter on Rye. The late Mr. James M. Fuller organized a Methodist Sunday- school and erected a building for its use in 1878 on Weaver street mainly at his own expense, which he superintended himself until his lamented death in June 1885, when Mr. William H. Stiles succeeded him assisted by Mr. Bradford Rhodes. The object is to afford Sunday-school instruction to children in the neighbourhood, which is distant from the villages of Mamaroneck and Rye Neck. All the gentlemen connected with it are Methodists but it is under- stood that it is not conducted under the auspices of any denomination in particular.

The Incidents of the Revolution which occurred in Mamaroneck are not many. Its inhabitants as well as the great majority of the People of the County were a perfectly satisfied, quiet, community, satisfied with their surrounding, and their lot. They had a market within a day's journey or a day's sail for all that they could raise beyond their own wants. Their taxes were light and they managed their local concerns for them- selves under the easy laws of the Province. They felt no pressure of any kind or from any quarter. Even in the politics of the day there was no high party feeling, still less any undue excitements. They were a happy, contented people perfectly satisfied to be let alone.

When the movements of politicians of New York and other places against the English Ministry began, which resulted, contrary to the wishes of those who first started these movements, in the Declaration of Independence, the people of Westchester as a mass were not in favor of them. Neither were some of those who gave a final assent to them. Hence it was that not- withstanding that Westchester eventually became the Neutral Ground, the people who dwelt in it were more in favor of the old state of things than in the proposed new one. It was natural. It is so in all countries under all systems. Those who excite revolutionary movements to overthrow old governments, are always a minority, and usually a very great minority, of the inhabitants of the Country the institutions of which are changed by violence or war. Hence it was that in 1774 the people of Mamaroneck opposed the action of the Committee of Correspondence, set forth in their circular of 29 July 1774 as also did those of Rye. 1

When it was known that Gage's Army in Boston was getting short of provisions late in 1775, a sort of killing bee was held at William Sutton's house at de Lancey's Neck, the neighboring farmers drove cattle there and a certain day killed and dressed, and after- ward salted down and barrelled as soon as it could be done, beeves enough to load a sloop as a contribution to the besieged troops at Boston. She was loaded at Indian point, near the present home of Mr. James J. Burnet, and sent off on her voyage. Butshe never got

1 See Proceedings of Mamaroneck, &c., in I. Force's Archives.

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MAMARONECK.

to Boston. Through some carelessness in running out with a smart breeze, she ran a little too uear thie end of a reef in rounding the Scoteh Caps, struck a pointed rock, and sank beyond it with all on board. The crew was saved but the beef in the hold was all lost. It is not related that any secoud attempt was ever ınade.

The most important Revolutionary incident, was the night battle on Heathcote Hill and the high ridge above it, between the Delaware Regiment, and parts of First and Third Virginia Regiments of Wash- iugton's army, under Colouel Haslet aud Major Green, aud Roberts's Rangers of Howe's Army under Major Rogers, resulting in the repulse of the former with severe loss to the latter who retained their posi- tion. On October 21st, 1776, Rogers's Corps of about 400 or 450 meu which formed the extreme end of the right wing of Howe's Army, then moving up from Pelhamu Neck, reached Mamaroneck and eucamped upon the high flat of Heathcote Hill, under the lee of the ridge above it for protection from the North- west winds, which at that seasou had grown cold. No enemy was beyoud them and this position was therefore chosen. Rogers himself made his head- quarters in a small house which then stood directly on the north side of the old Westehester Path or road, right opposite the gate of the lane which ran down de Lancey's Neck to Sutton's House, which stood withiu the present Miller premises now owued by Mr. J. A. Bostwiek. On the 22d of October Wash- ington rode up to White Plains in advance of his army, who had then reached Valentine's Hill. Learn- iug there of Rogers's advance and position, he at once sent orders to Colonel Haslet to take his Delaware regiment of 600 strong, and 150 men of the First and Third Virginia uuder Major Green, and surprise and cut him off.1 The Virginians were to lead the attack and the Delaware troops to support them. Rogers had been a scout of Sir William Johnson's with Israel Putuau, in the French War, was a man of fair edu- cation, not much principle, but extremely bold, cour- ageous, aud wary. Knowing the American Army was below his position and to the southwest of it, he ex- teuded his pickets more than a third of a mile the second night beyoud where they were on the first night and doubled their uumbers, and theu went to his own headquarters. Haslett marched all night and reached the neighborhood before day. His guides not aware of the change in Rogers's pickets led the Virginians directly upon them in the dark, which threw them into confusion. At onee all hopes of a surprise van- ished. The uproar roused Rogers's eamp, the men rushed to the top of the ridge overlooking it and be- fore they could form, their own pickets and the Vir- ginians mixed together came rushing in upon them. It was pitch dark, and the fighting went on in the utmost confusion, the Delawareans, Virginians and

1 III. Force, Fifth Series, 576.

Rangers being all mixed together each man fighting for himself. Right iu the midst of it rushed Rogers. Roused by the noise, he flew up to the fight not know- ing how it was going, but roaring out with presence of mind, in stentorian tones, "They are running," " they are ruuning," " give it to 'em boys, damn 'em, give it to 'em." Reassured by his voice and words the Rangers, actually on the point of fleeing, rallied, redoubled their efforts, and the American forces fell back taking many prisoners with them, and the Rangers remained in possession of the ground. The surprise was a failure, the actiou really a drawn one though the Rangers retained the field, Rogers's wari- ness and presence of mind being all that saved them from defeat and capture. Such is the account that has come down from men living in Mamaroneek at the time. Col. Tench Tilghman, Washington's aid, writing the afternoon after the fight to Wm. Duer says " They attacked Rogers at daybreak, put the party to flight, brought in thirty-six prisoners, sixty arms, and a good many blankets; and had not the guides undertook to alter the first disposition, Major Rogers, and his party of about 400, would in all prob- ability have fallen into our hands. We don't know how many we killed, but an officer says he counted twenty-five in one orchard. We had twelve wounded, among them Major Green aud Captain Pope."? The fact is the number killed on each side is not certainly known. All of both sides were buried just over the top of the ridge almost directly uorth of the Heath- cote Hill house, in the angle formed by the present farm lane and the east feuce of the field next to the ridge. There their graves lie together friend aud foe but all Americans.3 . The late Stepheu Hall, (father of the late Abram, Isaac, and Thomas, Hall) a boy of 17 or 18 at the time, said that they were buried the morn- ing after the fight and that he saw ninc laid in one large grave.4 Such was the skirmish on Heathcote Hill, the only " engagement " about Mamaroneck during the Revolutionary War. There was another on the back part of the Mauor of Scarsdale at the Fox Mead- ows, immediately before the battle of White plains, but that does not fairly belong to this chapter.

The writer, knowing that Mamaroneck did her full duty in the late civil war, tried some years ago to get at Albany the returns of enlistments and names of the men, but failed, the supervisor uever having filed them.

The following is au account of the descendants of John Richbell, who left only daughters, and of the Mott family of whom one of them was the ancestress. The writer is indebted for it to Mrs. Thomas C. Cor- nell, of Yonkers :

John Richbell, the first patentee of Mamaroneck

" III. Force, Fifth Series 57, 6.

My father told me when he was a boy their green graves were dis- tinctly visible.

+ Abraham Hall told the writer this fact many years ago.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

leaving no sons, his name has not been perpetuated in his children, but some of the descendants of his daughter have been well known in Mamaroneck, and in Westchester County, and in the State and Nation, and should be mentioned here. John and Ann Rich- bell left three daughters. 1st. Elizabeth, the eldest who became the second wife of Adam Mott of Hemp- stead, about the time that her father removed from Oysterbay,-where he had been Adam Mott's neigh- bour,-to make his final settlement at Mamaroneck. -2ª. Mary, who in 1670 married Captain James Mott, second son of Adam Mott of Hempstead by his first wife Jane Hulett. Captain James Mott was long prominent in Mamaroneck, was Justice of the Peace and Supervisor, and left two children James and Mary. -3ª. The youngest daughter of John Richbell, named Anne after her mother, married John Emerson of White River, Talbot County, Maryland.

Elizabeth (Richbell) Mott, gave to her eldest son her father's name and called him Richbell Mott and his grandmother Ann Richbell made him one of her executors and three of the grandsons of this Richbell Mott bore the same name. Richbell Mott was a man of Character and Substance, aud in 1696 married Elizabeth Thorne. He possessed considerable land in Hempstead and made his home on Mad Nan's Neck (Little Neck). His grandson Richbell Mott son of his eldest son Edmond,-born in Hempstead in 1728 ınar- ried in 1749 Deborah Doughty, and died in 1758 leav- ing two daughters Margaret and Phebe. This Mar- garet Mott married in 1772 the Hon. Melancthon Smith of New York one of the most prominent men of the State during and after the Revolution in the policy opposed to that of Alexander Hamilton. Rich- bell Mott Smith, one of the sons of Hon. Melancthon and Margaret (Mott) Smith died on the coast of Ja- pan in 1800. Another son was Colonel Melancthon Smith, the father of Admiral Melancthon Smith U. S. N. on the retired list who distinguished himself so highly during the late Civil war especially at the capture of New Orleans, aud who is now living in an honored old age, at South Oysterbay L. I.

Dr. Valentine Mott, the celebrated Surgeon of New York was descended from Elizabeth (Richbell) Mott's younger son William Mott of Great Neck,-L. I.

James Mott of Premium Point, long a well known resident of the Mamaroneck of a hundred years ago, was the only child of the first Richbell Mott's young- est son Richard, and Sarah (Pearsall) Mott, and was born in Hempstead at " the Head of the Harbor "- now Roslyn in 1742. He married in 1765 his second cousin Mary Underhill, daughter of Samuel and Ann (Carpenter) Underhill of Oysterbay. Samuel Under- hill a cousiu of the Underhills of Westchester Coun- ty, was a great grandson of the celebrated Capt. John Underhill who died in Oysterbay in 1671, aud Ann Carpenter's mother Mary Willet, wife of Joseph Car- penter of Glencove was a grand daughter on her fath- er's side of Capt. Thomas Willet the first English

Mayor of New York, and on her mother's side of Wm. Coddington the first Governor of Rhode Island. The Underhills and the Coddingtons and the Willets and the Motts had become Quakers. James Mott, after a few years as a successful merchant in New York re- tired just before the Revolution, with a moderate com- petence, at the early age of thirty-three and settled in Mamaroneck, ou the " West Neck " of his Grandfath- er's grandfather, John Richbell, on the peninsula nearly in front of the Village of New Rochelle. His wife was then in failing health and he sought a quiet home, remote from the threatenings of war which per- vaded the City. But the war soon came, and in place of quiet, he found himself with wife and children be- tween the lines of hostile armies and exposed to dep- redatious from outlaws on both sides. His wife died early in the Revolution.

The ancient handsome two story farm house, occu- pied by James Mott, with its donble-pitched roof, still stands in good repair, fronting to the South, on its own private lane, half a mile east of the Boston road, surrounded by trees and with its own farm buildings and cultivated fields, and in recent years has been occupied by the Pryor family. But the an- cient tide Mill which stood near the house on the land locked bay which made the Mill Pond, and which Janes Mott continued to operate after the Revolu- tion, was replaced about the end of the last century by a large new Mill, and a new dam about half a mile lower down the bay near its mouth .- James Mott's three sons Richard Robert and Samuel had grown to manhood, and they fitted up the new Mill with twelve runs of Mill Stones, and all the improve- ments then known and gave it the name of the Pre- mium Mill, and it was operated with much success and exported flour to Europe while England and France were at war, with large profit. Soon after the Premium Mill was built Richard Mott, the eldest son withdrew from the milling business, and commenced cotton spinning in a small Mill still standing disman- tled, near his pleasant dwelling house, to which he gave the name of Hickory Grove, a little west of where the N. Y. aud N. H. Rail Road now runs near Mamaroneck,-and " Mott's Spool Cotton," had a good reputation for many years. Richard Mott became a Qnaker Minister of considerable reputation. He was a man of fine presence and a graceful and pleasing speaker. He died in Mamaroneck in 1857, in his 90th year.

James and Mary (Underhill) Mott had four chil- dren, born in New York but bronght up in Mamaro- neck. Their eldest son Richard just mentioned was born in 1767. Their only daughter Anne born 1768 married at Mamaroneck in 1785, while still wanting three months of her seventeenth birthday, her father's cousin Adam Mott of Hempstead, in whose veins ran the blood of the best Quaker families of that first set- tlement of the Qnakers in America. The young Adam Mott, the third in descent of the first Adam Mott

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MAMARONECK.

of Hempstead, and the fourth from John Richbell,- brought his young bride to the old Mott homestead, on the shore of the Sound near Hempstead Harbor, on land which had been granted to his great Unele Richbell Mott in 1708 and which Richbell Mott sold to his brother Adam Mott in 1715. The young Adam between 1785 and 1790 built a new Mill at Cow bay -- (now Port Washington,) and prospered there for more than fifteen years, and when his wife's brother Richard retired from the Premium Mill, the remaining brothers Robert and Samuel induced their brother-in-law Adam Mott of Hempstead to leave his prosperous Mill at Cow bay and join them in the Premium Mill, and he removed to Mamaroneek in 1803 and settled in a house afterwards the property of Peter Jay Monroe, and ealled the "Mott House," on a pleasant farm adjoin- ing what is now known as Larchmont. The oldest son of Adam and Anne Mott, born in the ancient Mott homestead near the mouth of Hempstead Harbour in 1788 and named after his grandfather James Mott, went to Philadelphia and there married in 1811 Lu- eretia Coffin, who afterwards as Lucretia Mott of Pliil- adelphia became eminent as a Quaker preacher and eloquent advocate of many reforms. In 1814 James and Lucretia Mott spent some months at Mamaro- neek on the invitation of their Unele Richard Mott to join him in Cotton Spinning, and if the project had been carried out as first proposed, the eloquent Qua- ker Preacher would have been known as Lueretia Mott of Mamaroneck, instead of Lueretia Mott of Philadel- phia. But she was then only 21 years old, and did not so much as imagine that she could speak in publie, and the spinning projeet not coming to satis- factory terms they returned to Philadelphia. Adam and Anne Mott's youngest son Richard, born at Premium Point in 1804, now for many years the Hon. Richard Mott of Toledo Ohio still survives in a vigorous old age of 82, one of the best known men in Northern Ohio.

When the laws of the first Napoleon dragged the United States into controversies with France and England which culminated in the war of 1812, Amer- ican Commerce was erippled or ruined and the Pre- mium Mill at length went under a cloud. One ,entire Ship's cargo from the Mill was eonfiseated in France on a charge of violating a paper bloekade, and no restitution ever made.

and would allow nothing produced by Slave labor to be used in his house, and as far as possible limited his household to American Manufactures. Robert Mott, the second son of James Mott of Premium Point died in New York in 1805 and his youngest son Samuel died there in 1843.

The Premium Mill continued to be operated with varying success for many years and after James Mott and his sons, passed through other hands and in 1843 was purchased by Henry Partridge Kellogg then of Poughkeepsie in whose family it remained for nearly forty years. The Mill itself venerable with age was finally removed within the last three or four years, and near its site now stand several handsome modern Cottages or Villas.

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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 216

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