USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, from its earliest settlement to the present time > Part 18
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In 1707, Ebenezer Wilson, a prominent merchant and politician of the city, was appointed mayor. During his administration, Water street was extended from Old Slip to John street. Broadway was also paved from Trinity church to the Bowling Green, and the residents permitted to plant trees before their houses. These pavements
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were of cobble stones, the gutter curb being of wood. The gutters ran through the middle of the streets. Brick was universally used for sidewalks-flag-stones being as yet unknown to the city authorities. The posts for tying horses were also ordered to be removed from the streets. New and more stringent regulations were passed in respect to fires, the fire-wardens were directed to keep strict watch of all hearths and chimneys within the city and to see that the fire-buckets were hung up in their right places throughout the wards, and two hooks and eight ladders were purchased at the public expense for the use of the embryo fire-department.
The ferry lease, granted in 1699, having now expired, the ferry was leased again on similar conditions to James Harding, at a yearly rent of one hundred and eighty pounds sterling. The rates of ferriage remained the same. The lessee was required to keep a house of entertainment at the new brick ferry-house which had been built by the corporation on Long Island, and to keep the premises, consisting of a house, barn, well, and land- ing-bridge, in good repair. He was also required to keep a pound for cattle, and to keep two scows and two small boats constantly plying between the shores. These boats were to receive and discharge passengers and freight on Mondays and Thursdays at Countesses' Key,* or the foot of Maiden Lane ; on Tuesdays and Fridays, at Burger's Path, for Hanover Square ; and on Wednesdays and
* So called from the Countess of Bellamont.
t This appellation originated in this wise. The land in the vicinity of Hanover Square and William street having been originally owned by Borger Joris, one of the early Dutch settlers, the latter street became known as Borger's, afterwards corrupted to Burger's Path.
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Thursdays at the dock at Coenties Slip. The landing- place on the Long Island shore was a little below that of the present Fulton ferry.
Mayor Wilson retained his office for three years. Before the first had expired, news reached the city of the recall of Lord Cornbury. His future career we have already indicated. On the 18th of December, 1708, John, Lord Lovelace, Baron of Hurley, who had been appointed the spring before as Cornbury's successor, arrived at New York, and was joyfully welcomed by the citizens. In April, 1709, he convened his first Assembly, of whom he demanded the grant of a permanent revenue and the payment of the governmental debts, together with a full examination of the public accounts, "that it " might be known to all the world that the public debt " was not contracted in his time." This last request was hailed by the colonists as a good omen of the just inten- tions of their new governor. But past experience had taught them the importance of retaining the control of the revenue in their own hands, as the only means whereby they could secure a real power in the govern- ment, and they were little disposed to grant the first demand of Lovelace. They offered to raise twenty-five hundred pounds for the expenses 'of the ensuing year, sixteen hundred of which were to be appropriated to the governor's salary, and the remaining nine hundred to the maintenance of the forts at New York, Albany, and Schenectady, together with the payment of printing bills and other contingent expenses. The conduct of Corn- bury and his predecessors had taught them a useful les- son, and they were firmly resolved henceforth to grant
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none but annual appropriations, and thus to make the salary of the governor dependent upon his good conduct from year to year. How well Lovelace would have rel- ished this independent proceeding can never be known, for he died on the 5th of May, 1709, the same day on which the act was passed, leaving the government in the hands of the lieutenant-governor, Major Richard Ingoldsby, our old acquaintance in the affair of Leisler. He administered the government for eleven months, when the complaints of his subjects concerning his mis- management of a hostile expedition which had been dis- patched against Canada, caused his removal. Gerardus Beekman, the president of the council, assumed the direc- tion of affairs during the short period that intervened before the arrival of the newly-appointed governor.
Robert Hunter arrived in the early part of the sum- mer of 1710, and immediately assumed the direction of the government. He was a fair sample of the freaks of fortune. Born of humble Scotch parentage, he was apprenticed while yet a boy to the service of an apothecary. The embryo governor soon tired of the mortar and pestle, and it was not long before he ran away, and enlisted in the army as a common soldier. He was handsome, talented and ambitious, and possessed of an education far above his station ; these qualities attracted the notice of his superiors, and procured him a speedy promotion. He soon became a favorite of the officers, preferment followed preferment in rapid succession, and ere many years had passed, the humble apothecary-boy had risen to the rank of a brigadier in the English army. His fine talents and graceful man-
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ners won him the friendship of many of the distinguished literary men of the day, Addison and Swift among the rest, and the hand of an English heiress, Lady Hay, through whose influence he obtained the commission of lieutenant-governor of Virginia. While on his way to his new command, in 1707, he was captured by a French privateer and carried back a prisoner to Europe. But fortune, which seemed harsh to him in this single instance, was only reserving him for a higher destiny. After a short imprisonment, he was exchanged, and invested with the government of the provinces of New York and New Jersey. In education, mind and man- ners, he was superior to most of his predecessors ; but he had received strict instructions to guard the claims of the crown against the demands of the people, and to repress the spirit of independence which had manifested itself so strongly of late in their legislative bodies.
With the new governor came three thousand Ger- mans, natives of the Palatinate, who, driven from their homes by the inhuman commands of Louis XIV. at the instigation of Louvois, had besought the English gov- ernment to give them homes in the New World. Ten thousand pounds sterling were appropriated by parlia- ment to defray the expenses of the unfortunate exiles, who, in return, indentured themselves for a term of years to manufacture tar for the naval stores of Great Britain. This was the commencement of German immigration. A considerable number of the new-comers remained in New York, where they built the Lutheran church in Broadway on the site of the future Grace church soon after their arrival ; some ascended the Hudson River
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to Livingston's Manor, and commenced the cultivation of the tract of land now known as the German Flats, and by far the greater part migrated to Pennsylvania and laid the foundation of the German population which now forms so large an element in that State.
On his arrival, Hunter directly attached himself to the anti-Leislerian party, which, at this time as formerly, for the most part comprised the aristocracy of the city. His first council was composed of Gerardus Beekman, whom we have already mentioned as administering the govern- ment after the dismissal of Ingoldsby; Rip Van Dam, a Holland merchant and one of the wealthiest men of the city ; Killian Van Rensselaer, of the family of the well- known patroon of Rensselaerswick ; Judge Montpesson, an eminent lawyer, John Barbarie, one of the early Huguenot settlers, and Frederick Philipse, already known to us from his action in the revolution of Leisler in 1789.
Immediately on his arrival in New York, Hunter secured the support of Lewis Morris, one of the most influential land-owners in New York and New Jersey. He was the son of Richard Morris, an officer in Cromwell's army, who had emigrated to America soon after the retrocession of the province to the English, and purchased a manor ten miles square in the neighbor- hood of Harlem, to which he gave the name of Morrisania. Dying soon after, he left his only son to the care of his brother Lewis, who took up his residence on the estate in question, and at his death, made his nephew his sole heir. Lewis Morris* was an adherent of the Leislerian
* See Appendix, Note K.
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an official appointment from his friend and countryman, Governor Hunter, and took up his permanent abode.
These three men, with Schuyler, Smith and Living- ston, were now the leading spirits of the province. The council consisted of Peter Schuyler, Abraham de Peyster, Robert Walters, Gerardus Beekman, Rip Van Dam, Caleb Heathcote, John Barbarie, Frederick Philipse, John Johnston, Francis Harrison, Mr. Byerly and Mr. Clarke.
To give a clear idea of the events which signalized the administration of Burnet, we must glance briefly at the general position of affairs in the province. It was the fixed policy of the French government to gain control of the Indian trade, both along the northern frontier and in the regions of the Far West. This. not only secured to them a lucrative traffic, but furthered their ultimate design of attaching the Indians to themselves, and, with their aid, rendering themselves masters of the province. For this end, Jesuit missionaries had long been mingling with the wandering tribes, seeking to secure them through con- version to the interests of France. Forsaking the com- forts of civilized life, the devoted and adventurous disciples of Loyola penetrated the unknown regions of the West, and, skillfully ingratiating themselves with the sons of the forest, established missions where the foot of white man had never before trod, and laid open the inmost recesses of the wilderness to the march of civiliz- ation. In 1675, La Salle had founded Fort Frontenac at the entrance of the Ontario ; then, with Tonti and Hennepin, had pushed his explorations to the distant regions of the Mississippi. The missionaries and traders
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followed in the path thus opened to them by Jesuitical enterprise, and the Indian territory was soon everywhere traversed by the indefatigable emissaries of the French government. In the beginning of Burnet's administra- tion, the Chevalier de Joncaire, himself a Jesuit and a man of noble birth and fine talents, who, having been made captive by the Senecas, had won their favor and been adopted into their tribe, established a permanent trading-post at Fort Frontenac, from which he designed to command the region of the Mississippi through the medium of the western traders.
As the goods sold by the French traders were mostly of English manufacture, and purchased in the city of New York, the merchants were well satisfied with an arrangement which enabled them to dispose of large quantities of goods with very little risk or trouble to themselves. But Burnet, who had studied the position of affairs attentively before his departure from England, comprehended the ultimate result of this dangerous policy, and saw clearly that the safety of the province depended on establishing a line of English trading-posts along the northern frontier, and thus counteracting the designs of the French government. Through the influ- ence of Lewis Morris, he prevailed upon the first Assem- bly that convened after his arrival to put an end to the circuitous traffic by passing a bill prohibiting all sales of goods to the French, under penalty of the forfeiture of the articles, with an additional fine of one hundred pounds. This bill was warmly opposed by the mer- chants interested in the traffic, who, thinking only of the present, viewed it as a death-blow to their lucrative
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trade. They complained loudly of the governor's con- duct to the Board of Trade, and it was only through the earnest efforts of Cadwallader Colden, who warmly espoused the new policy, that this important measure was finally sustained.
In 1722, Governor Burnet commenced the erection of a trading-post at Oswego, and from this may be dated the foundation of that profitable fur traffic which formed the basis of so many colossal fortunes. This opening of a new path in commerce wrought a revolution in the aims and lives of the young men of the city. These youths, instead of remaining, as formerly, behind their fathers' counters or entering the beaten track of the West India trade, now provided themselves with a stock of guns and blankets, and set out with a trusty servant in a bark canoe to explore the pathless wilderness. Here they roamed for months in the primeval forests, forced at every step to turn aside to avoid some deadly reptile or fierce beast of prey, or to guard against the wiles of an insidious foe, ever on the alert to entrap them in some snare, and to purchase their goods at the expense of their lives. Forced to depend for their sub- sistence on the quickness of their eye and the sureness: of their aim, to journey by day through thicket and marsh, over cataract and rapid, to sleep at night with no other canopy than the stars and sky, and to be constantly on their guard against the unseen danger which was lurking everywhere about them, this forest education called forth all their resources of courage and sagacity,. and they came from the trial with muscles of iron, nerves. of steel, and a hand and eye that never flinched before.
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the most deadly peril. No fiction of romance can sur- pass the adventurous career of these daring travellers who thus pursued the golden fleece in the wilds of America ; and those who came forth from this school of danger were well fitted to play their part in the approaching tragedies of the French and Indian war and the drama of the coming Revolution.
In the same year of the establishment of the Oswego trading-post, a congress composed of the governors of New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia, with deputies from the other colonies, assembled at Albany to consult toge- ther in respect to the war. This congress framed a me- morial to the English government, urging the erection of the projected line of trading-posts as the only means of thwarting the policy of the French and securing the safety of the English provinces. No attention was paid to their request, and the scheme that would have pro- tected the colony from the future ravages of the French and Indians was at length reluctantly abandoned by the disappointed governor.
Meanwhile, the usual bickerings had continued to exist between the governor and the Assembly. This body, so friendly to him on his arrival, had in part been alienated by his recent policy. The merchants engaged in the circuitous trade spared no pains to assail him in public and private, and a powerful opposition was thus excited against him. A dispute in which he became involved in 1724 with Stephen De Lancey, a wealthy merchant and a patron of the French Huguenot church in Pine street, increased the difficulty. A portion of the congregation, headed by Mr. De Lancey, becoming dis-
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satisfied with the Rev. Louis Rou, the pastor of the church, dismissed him on the charge that he had flagged in his duty, and had introduced innovations into the church discipline. M. Rou and his friends appealed from this decision to the governor and council, who sustained them in opposition to the party of De Lancey, and decided that the malcontents had no right to dismiss their minister. The affair caused great excitement ; indignant memorials were published on both sides, and the opposition party which had been raised against the the governor by the suppression of the French trade, received new accessions from day to day. Soon after, De Lancey was elected as member of the Assembly, when Burnet refused to administer the oaths to him, alleging that he was not a subject of the crown. De Lancey, who, though born in France, had left it before the revocation of the edict of Nantes, insisted that he had received a patent of denization in England under the hand and seal of James' II., and the Assembly sus- tained his claims against the governor.
The five years' revenue granted on the arrival of Burnet having expired, the Assembly refused to renew it for a longer term than three years. This was the same Assembly that had been elected under the auspices of Hunter, but its character and disposition had widely changed. Several of the best friends of the governor had died, and their places had been filled by new members; the suppression of the circuitous trade had alienated many more, and the once pliant Assembly had grown harsh and unyielding. Burnet at length dissolved the body ; but the new Assembly that convened in 1727
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proved still more refractory. This was made up mostly of the friends of the French trade, men whose interests were directly affected by its suppression, and who were chiefly anxious to procure a repeal of the obnoxious act and thus to thwart the policy of Burnet. The continu- ance of the Court of Chancery, instituted by Hunter, also gave rise to general dissatisfaction, which was greatly increased by his assumption of the chancellorship. After a short session, he dissolved them as incorrigible. But their efforts did not stop here ; his commission expiring soon after, on the death of George I., they represented to the ministry that the interests of the province demanded a new governor. Their arguments were lis- tened to ; Burnet was transferred against his wishes to the government of Massachusetts, and John Montgomerie was appointed his successor. In 1729, the obnoxious act was repealed, the circuitous trade again established, and the ulterior designs of the French government thus aided unwittingly by the merchants of New York.
Burnet was a man of fine talents, but his was the mis- fortune of not being understood. Had he been ably seconded in the schemes which he sought to execute, he would have saved the province from the horrors of future Warfare and insured its peace and prosperity. Of a dif- ferent stamp from his rapacious predecessors, he spared neither time nor money in the fulfillment of his projects for the public good. The trading-post at Oswego was built in part from his private fortune-a debt which was never repaid by the English government-and he left the province poorer than he had entered it. . He was of literary tastes, polished manners and a genial tempera-
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ment, and, but for the unhappy dissensions engendered by his system of policy, would have been one of the most popular of the colonial governors. Under his auspices, the era of journalism was first commenced in the city by the New York Gazette, published in 1725 by William Bradford, the government printer. This was a half-sheet paper, and was printed once a week. It was increased to four pages during the following year.
We will now glance at the progress of the city dur- ing the past eight years. The changes in this time had neither been marked nor numerous. The city had increased in population to nearly eight thousand inhabit- ants, and the vacant lots were gradually becoming filled up and peopled. In the first year of Burnet's adminis- tration, Robert Walters, a Holland merchant, who had long filled a prominent position in the city, was chosen mayor. He was also a member of the council both of Burnet and Montgomerie ; was a devoted adherent of the Leislerian party, and a popular man among the democracy. He retained the office of mayor for five years. Little worthy of note occurred during his admin- istration, the principal event of which was the publica- tion of Bradford's newspaper in 1725, of which we have already spoken. Various municipal ordinances concern- ing the restriction of negroes, etc. were enacted, but they were but modifications of those which we have already noticed.
In 1725, Johannes Jansen, a merchant of Holland origin, was appointed mayor. He retained the office for but one year, when he was succeeded by Robert Lurting, a shipping merchant, who had long been actively
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engaged in politics, and had acted as alderman for sev- eral years. He retained the office until his death in 1735.
On the 15th of April, 1728, John Montgomerie arrived as governor and chancellor of New York and New Jersey. Montgomerie had been groom of the bed- chamber to the Prince of Wales, now George II. Though bred a soldier, he was of a yielding and indolent temperament, and his antecedents had not certainly been calculated to fit him for the important command which was now intrusted to him. He came charged to carry out the policy of the late governors, and to sustain the Court of Chancery ; but he shrank from the task, and only assumed the chancellorship when specially com- manded ; and then under protest and avowedly as a mat- ter of form. The citizens gave him a cordial welcome. On the day after his arrival, the mayor and corporation presented him the freedom of the city in a gold box ; and at their first session, the Assembly granted him the five years' revenue which they had so persistently refused to the late governor. Affairs glided on smoothly enough during his administration, the principal event in it being the grant of an amended city charter in 1730. By this charter, the limits of the city were made to comprehend four hundred feet below low-water mark on the Hudson River from Minetta Brook or Bestavers Killitje south- ward to the fort, thence the same number of feet beyond low-water mark round the fort and along the East River as far as the north side of Corlear's Hook, the west side of Pearl street being reserved for the use of the fort. The sole power of establishing ferries about the island, with all the profits accruing therefrom, was
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granted to the corporation, the rates of ferriage to be fixed by the governor and council or by an act of the Assembly. A grant and confirmation was also given them of the lands held by them on Long Island, including the ferry, ferry-house and appurtenances. The market- houses, docks, slips and wharves with all the profits arising from them were granted to the city. The appointment of subordinate officers was given to the mayor, with the advice and consent of the common council. Provision was made for a court of common pleas to be held on every Tuesday in the year by the mayor or his deputy, with two or more aldermen, power being given them to adjourn the same for a period not exceeding twenty-eight days. Authority was given to the mayor or recorder, with a majority of the aldermen and assistants, to meet and make or repeal such by-laws and ordinances as they might deem fit -- such ordinances to continue in force a twelvemonth unless repealed. Provision was made for a new division of the city into seven wards, the limits to be hereafter determined by the common council, each ward to choose the usual num- ber of officers annually, with such a number of constables as the common council might direct, and to be the sole judge of the election and qualifications of its own offi-
cers. The mayor, recorder and aldermen were consti- tuted justices of the peace for the city and county of New York, with power to hear and determine all pleas of forty shillings and under, and to nominate and appoint. proper officers for that court. The mayor, recorder and three or more of the aldermen were invested with power to administer oaths to freemen and
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officers of the city, and to make as many freemen as they should see fit ; also to hold general quarter sessions for the city and county, the mayor, recorder and eldest alderman constituting the quorum. Power was given to the corporation to erect necessary public buildings and to appoint the proper officers ; also, to sue for their law- ful dues and demands in the name of their chamberlain. The petition of the common council that the offices of mayor, recorder, sheriff, coroner and town-clerk might henceforth be elective was refused by the governor after some consideration, and these officials continued as here- tofore to be appointed by the governor and council. The mayor was appointed clerk of the market for the time being. The jurisdiction of the city was fixed to begin at King's Bridge, thence to run down by the main- land to the point within the shortest distance from Long Island, including Great and Little Barn Island ; thence, crossing to low-water mark on the Long Island shore, to extend down by the same mark to Red Hook ; thence to run on a straight line to the lower end of the southern- most Oyster Island ; thence to extend northerly along the west side of the three Oyster Islands up the Hudson to Spiking Devil or Spuyten Devil Creek, and thence along low-water mark to King's Bridge, the place of beginning. The grant of all the waste and unappro- priated lands of the island, which had been made to the city by the Dongan charter of 1686, was again con- firmed by the new charter. The wharves along the shores were required to be made forty feet broad, both for the greater convenience of trade, and to fit them for the erection of batteries, the government reserving the
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