USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York : its origin, rise, and progress Vol. III > Part 19
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ORIGIN OF HISTORICAL SOCIETIES IN AMERICA. 507
measure was brought together through John Pintard's instrumentality, at a time when to give it any countenance whatever was sure to bring upon the advocate of the ruinous measure the anathemas of certain of the political leaders of the day, and official proscription. I remember well how cautiously and how secretly many of those incipient meetings in favor of the contemplated project were convened; and how the manly bosom of Clinton often throbbed at the agonizing remarks the Opposition muttered in his hearing, and the hazard to his personal security which he sometimes encountered."
The idea which resulted in the formation of the New York Historical Society had long been cherished by John Pintard. He first became deeply impressed with the importance of preserving records of events while secretary for his uncle, the commissary for American prisoners in the Revolution. His plan gradually unfolded itself to the scholarly men of the period. As early as 1789 the celebrated Rev. Jeremy Bel- knap wrote from Boston to Postmaster-General Hazard, then residing in New York: "This day Mr. Pintard called to see me. He says he is an acquaintance of yours, and wants to form a society of anti- quaries, etc. He seems to have a literary taste."1 Hazard replied : "Mr. Pintard has mentioned to me his thoughts about an American Antiquarian Society. The idea pleases me much. Mr. Pintard has re- cently purchased a large collection (in volumes) relating to the American Revolution. It was made by Dr. Chandler, of Elizabethtown, who was in England all the war. It is valuable, as is Mr. Pintard's library." In October, 1790, Hazard wrote to Belknap, "I like Pintard's idea of a society of American antiquaries ; but where will you find a sufficiency of members of suitable abilities and leisure ?" In the spring following Pintard wrote to Belknap inquiring after the welfare of the contemplated institution, and informed the eminent theologian that a magazine account would soon appear of the New York Tammany Society. He said, "This being a strong national society, I engrafted an antiquarian scheme of a museum upon it. It makes small progress with a small fund, and may possibly succeed. We have a tolerable collection of pamphlets, mostly modern, with some history, of which I will send you an abstract. If your society succeeds we will open a regular correspondence, etc. If my plan once strikes root it will thrive."
Pintard's plan did strike root, and his prediction regarding its future
1 Mass. Hist. Coll. Vol. III. Fifth Series, Belknap Papers, Part II. ; Belknap to Hazard, August 10, 1789 ; Belknap to Hazard, August 19, 1789 : Belknap to Hazard, August 27, 1789 ; Hazard to Belknap, September 5, 1789 ; Hazard to Belknap, October 3, 1790 ; Pintard to Belknap, April 6, 1791. Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., 1791 - 1835.
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prosperity proved correct. The Massachusetts Historical Society, with Belknap at its head, was organized in 1791. Thirteen years later the New York Historical Society entered upon a healthful existence, being the second institution of its kind in America. To Pintard is due the honor of originating both; indeed, he may with justice be pronounced the Father of Historical Societies in this country.
The men of letters who comprised its first membership did vastly more than establish the high character of the New York Historical Society upon a solid and permanent basis. They were instrumental in directing public attention throughout the land to the preservation of contemporary records as the data from which all future history must receive its true impress. The amazing perversion of facts by political writers at that particular epoch was an additional stimulus to fidelity in historical re- search grounded upon documentary testimony. In New York, garrets and trunks were ransacked for letters and papers which had been cast aside as worthless, scattered documents were rescued from oblivion, and erelong material of consequence was concentrated and made avail- able for reference. Prior to 1804 but one history of New York had been printed, that of Smith, and this came down only to 1756. But the Society never rested until the period of our colonial history was as well known as that of a later date ; it procured an action of the Legislature by which the archives of France, Holland, and England were examined, and it restored to the State government on more than one occasion im- portant portions of its long-lost documents ; it has also issued of its own publications twenty-four volumes, in addition to many historical essays and addresses in pamphlet form. Its accumulations, during the three fourths of a century since its foundation, have been so extensive, varied, and of such rare worth, that an architectural structure is contemplated of sufficient magnitude for their proper accommodation.1
1 The New York Historical Society first occupied a room in the old City Hall in Wall Street from 1804 to 1809, then removed to the Government House opposite the Bowling Green, and remained from 1809 to 1816, occupied the New York Institution from 1816 to 1832, Remson's Building, in Broadway, from 1832 to 1837, Stuyvesant's Institute from 1837 to 1841, the New York University from 1841 to 1857, and, after struggling with pecuniary difficulties that were almost destructive, came out of the trial triumphant, and celebrated its fifty-third anniversary by taking possession of its present building on the corner of Second Avenue and Eleventh Street, which, when projected and erected, was supposed capable of per- manently providing for the needs of the Society. Material poured in so profusely, however, that before 1860 the officers in charge complained of want of space ; and for twenty years past the subject has been agitated of removing the magnificent collection to a more suitable loca- tion in the upper part of the city - thus establishing a "Museum of History, Antiquities, and Art," which will not only be an honor to New York but to the continent of America. Plans for this object are now under consideration.
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FOUNDERS OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The founders of the New York Historical Society deserve more than a passing notice. They represented the highest culture of the city, and were veritable educators of the public taste. Special committees ap- pointed to further the studies of zoology, botany, mineralogy, philosophy, and other subjects developed into separate societies. Art, science, and literature were encouraged and fostered. The influence of the institution became not only a blessing but a power; and its example was borrowed by the forming communities in the country at large, until similar organi- zations are to be found in nearly every county in the State, and in all the large cities of the United States.
Judge Benson, the first president of this ancestor of the great family of Historical Societies in America, was a native of New York, educated in Columbia College, identified through a life of usefulness with the progress of the city, and had distinguished himself in State legislation, in Congress, and in jurisprudence. He had reached his sixtieth year honored and be- loved. His integrity was a proverb. He was a man of superior talents as well as of efficient excellence, a ripe English and classical scholar, and well versed in Indian lore and Dutch history. Among his writings left us is an exhaustive paper on the subject of " Names," which, after reading before the Historical Society in 1816, he printed in a small pamphlet ; it ie now a rare antiquarian curiosity.1 With the scholarship and accomplish-
1 Memoirs, by Egbert Benson, entitled Names ("chiefly names of places, and further re- stricted to places in that portion of our country once held and claimed by the Dutch by right of discovery, and by them named New Netherland "), printed 1817. Judge Egbert Benson was born 1746, died 1833. He was the son of Robert Benson (2), born 1712, died 1762, who was the son of Robert Benson (1), born 1686, who was the son of Samson Benson, born 1652, -married the daughter of Robert Van Deusen - who was the son of the first of the family in New York, Dirck Benson - or Bensing, Bensinck, Bensick, Bensich, as the same was variously entered upon the Dutch and English records. Dirck Benson came from Holland with the first settlers on the Van Rensselaer manor, and his arms were painted upon the window of the first church in Albany ; in 1653, according to the land papers, he purchased a lot in Broadway, New York City. He seems to have been a man of property and im- portance among the men of his time. He had five children, of whom Samson was the second son. Samson had seven children, three of whom were daughters ; Elizabeth married Egbert Van Borsum. Robert (1), second son of Samson, had three children : 1. Elizabeth, married Hermanus Rutgers, whose son Robert married Elizabeth Beekman, and daughter Mary married Anthony M. Hoffman ; 2. Catharine, married Colonel Martin Hoffman ; 3. Robert (2), married his cousin, Catharine, daughter of Egbert and Elizabeth Benson Van Borsum. The children of the latter were : 1. Robert (3), Secretary of the Convention which adopted the constitution of New York, born 1739, died 1823 ; 2. Henry; 3. Judge Egbert, above mentioned, who never married ; 4. Anthony ; 5. Mary ; 6. Cornelia. Robert (3) married Dinah, the beautiful daughter of John Couwenhoven, whose children were : 1. Robert (4) ; 2. Catharine, married John L. Lefferts ; 3. Egbert, who was a personal friend of Henry Clay and many of the great men of his time, married Maria, daughter of John Couwenhoven, and his children were, Susan, Robert (5), Egbert, George M., Leffert L., Maria E., Henry,
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ments of the two first vice-presidents, Bishop Moore and Judge Brockholst Livingston, the reader is already familiar. Rev. Dr. John M. Mason was esteemed the greatest pulpit orator of his time. He was forty-four years of age, of noble and peerless bearing and marvelous erudition. Animation of manner, warmth of temperament, vigor of thought, and energy of diction were his special characteristics. He temporized with no errors, and was intimidated by no obstacles. Lethargy and indifference found little repose within sound of his voice. Through his efforts a theological seminary was established in New York in 1804, of which he was ap- pointed professor. Rev. Dr. Linn was distinguished alike for pulpit elo- quence and varied scholarship. He was untiring in his efforts to promote the interests of the society, and was laden with historical materials. Rev. Dr. Miller was about thirty-five, and had already acquired much reputation as a theological and polemical writer. His Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, published in 1803, marks an era in our literature ; and according to a British critic its author richly deserved the praises of both hemispheres. He was a Presbyterian pastor in New York from 1793 to 1813, when he became a professor of Ecclesiastical History and Church Government in the Theological Seminary at Princeton. So deeply were his sympathies engaged in the objects of the Historical Society, that he contemplated a History of New York, and collected ex- tensive materials for that purpose.
Another eminent divine, whose high character and literary attainments rendered him an important auxiliary, was Rev. Dr. John N. Abeel. He was of the same age as Rev. Dr. Miller, young, magnetic, full of life and vivacity, and the possessor of a voice of much sweetness and melody. He was a polished speaker, and rarely failed to capture the attention of an audience. Dr. David Hosack was also thirty-five; he had had the advantage of medical training in Edinburgh and London, under the most celebrated professors of the age. When he returned to New York in 1794, he brought the first collection of minerals introduced into America ; also a collection of the duplicate specimens of plants from the herbarium of Linnæus, now constituting a portion of the Museum of the Lyceum of Natural History in the city. While a professor of Botany in Columbia College, he founded the Elgin Botanical Garden, in 1801, a work of princely munificence, where amid twenty cultivated acres he illustrated
Richard H. ; 4. John, married Sarah M., daughter of Augustine H. Lawrence, whose children were, Robert Augustine, Catharine, Sarah - married the Hon. David Stuart - and Julia ; 5. Maria, married Judge Leffert Lefferts, whose daughter, Elizabeth Dorothea, married the Hon. J. Carson Brevoort; 6. Elizabeth ; 7. Jane, married Richard K. Hoffman, M. D., whose daugh- ter Helena married Benjamin Woolsey Rogers. - Family Archives.
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to his classes the mysteries of the vegetable kingdom - the loves and habits of plants and trees.1 He was one of the original projectors of the Literary and Philosophical Society, besides giving much of his time and talent to historical pursuits ; he was president of the Historical Society from 1820 to 1828. The presence of Samuel Bayard and Peter G. Stuy- vesant at the inauguration of the Society was significant. They were gen- tlemen of education, culture, wealth, public spirit, and benevolence, and they bore names dear to the New York heart. Bayard resided in New Jersey, where he had done much to promote learning. His wife was Martha Pintard, a cousin of John Pintard. But although living in another State, he was essentially a New-Yorker, and like Stuyvesant con- tributed no little to perpetuate the fame of his ancestors.
Anthony Bleecker excelled all others in devotion to the future charac- ter of New York. His taste was indispensable to every arrangement for the good of the prospective Society. He was remarkable for generous sympathy as well as literary instinct, and was a favorite with all the men of letters of his time. Mayor De Witt Clinton was everywhere helpful. He believed the institution would perform a double service through the clear- ing of the way for other herculean enterprises already taking shape in his mind. He was an intellectual giant. Comprehending the great needs of the community at large, he could also note the intermediate steps to remark- able achievements. Few men were ever more industrious, or applied genius and industry to higher and more important ends. His scholarship was as varied as his usefulness. Metaphysics, theology, poetry, belles lettres, natural history, zoology, botany, mineralogy, ichthyology, and orni- thology, all in turn occupied his attention. His collection of minerals in after years formed one of the most valuable private cabinets in the United States. He was elected an honorary member of many learned societies in Great Britain and on the continent of Europe, and corresponded with
1 The Elgin Botanical Garden became the resort of the curious. It was on Murray Hill near the site now occupied by the Roman Catholic Cathedral, covering the ground be- tween Fifty-first and Forty-seventh Streets, and Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Here Michaux, Barton, Mitchell, Doughty, Pursh, and Le Conte often repaired to solve the doubts of the cryptogamist, or to confirm the nuptial theory of Vaillant. Torrey, the eminent naturalist and public benefactor, was a pupil of Dr. Hosack, as was also Professor Gray. Since Dr. Hosack's death the botanical nomenclature enrolls no less than sixteen species of plants of different regions under the genus Hosackia. (Old New York, by Dr. John W. Francis. ) François A. Michaux, mentioned above, was the only child of Andre Michaux, far famed through his Oaks of North America, and his Flora. Young Michaux was the author, in 1804, of A Journey to the West of the Alleghany Mountains, to which was added a work on' Forest Trees ; through his influence a great number of American forest trees were planted in the Garden of Plants, in Paris, where he resided through a long and useful life. Frederic Pursh was the author of the Flora America Septentrionalis, and for several years the curator of the Elgin Botanical Garden.
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the most distinguished men of the age.1 The scientist, Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, of the first standing committee, was one of the strong pillars of the Society through all its tender years. He possessed an ex- ceptional memory, with unusual opportunities for collecting and collating information. He was in the national counsels at Washington the greater part of the first dozen years of the century, but he found time to be of essential service to New York notwithstanding his numerous occupations. His medical career, professional labors, political services, and literary and scientific writings all give evidence of superior merit; he was a sort of hu- man dictionary, whose opinion was sought by all originators and inventors of every grade throughout his entire generation. He edited the Medical Repository, commenced in 1797, for sixteen years, in which he was aided by Dr. Edward Miller. His analysis of the Saratoga waters greatly enhanced the value and importance of those wonderful mineral springs. His mineralogical survey of the State of New York in 1796, of which he published a report in the first volume of the Medical Repository, gave Volney many hints. It was the first undertaking of the kind in the United States, and secured its author a wide reputation. His ingenious theory of the doctrines of septon and septic acid gave impulse to Sir Humphry Davy's vast discoveries ; and his essays on pestilence awak- ened inquiry all over the world. As early as 1788 he had served as a commissioner to treat with the Iroquois Indians for the purchase of lands in Western New York ; and in 1793 we find him in company with Chan- cellor Livingston and Simeon De Witt establishing the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and the Useful Arts. Duyckink enumerates one hundred and eighty-nine distinct achievements or impor- tant acts of Dr. Mitchill's busy life.2 In course of years he became an active member of nearly all the learned societies of the world.
·
Dr. Mitchill's versatility of talent has been the theme of many writers. The wits of the day ridiculed his hospitality to new ideas, and perpetrated
1 While yet quite young De Witt Clinton became a member of the ancient fraternity of Freemasons, which included such men as Washington, Lafayette, Franklin, Pinckney, Marshall, and Chancellor Livingston ; and in 1816 he was unanimously elected to the highest masonic office in this country, which he retained until his death.
2 The first reads thus : " Returns from Europe with the diploma of M. D. from Edinburgh, obtained in 1786 - after having been initiated into the mysteries of Freemasonry, in the Latin Lodge of the Roman Eagle, by the famous Joannes Bruno, 1787." Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill was born in North Hempstead, Queens County, Long Island, August 20, 1764 ; died in New York City, 1831. Through his maternal uncle, Dr. Samuel Latham, of the same village, he was placed under the instruction of Dr. Leonard Cutting (who was classically educated at Cambridge, England), and afterwards went to Edinburgh to complete his studies, remaining nearly four years, a contemporary student with Thomas Addis Emmet and Sir James Mackintosh, and while there enjoyed the best intellectual society in Scotland.
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all manner of jokes at his expense, which he seemed to enjoy as well as the rest of the town. His faith in steam navigation was a special object of satire, he having warmly advocated in the Legislature the passage of the act of 1798, which conferred the right upon Chancellor Livingston to navigate the waters of New York by steam ; and he had the satisfaction, in 1807, of turning the tables upon those who laughed, by sailing in the first steamboat to Albany.
In 1804 he advocated with considerable ingenuity a new name for the country to meet the supposed want of a national term for the people of the United States, and there was a lively debate upon the subject in the new Historical Society. He hit upon "Fredonia " as suggestive of a generous idea, and thus the inhabitants would be Fredes, or Fredonians; but the geo- graphical limits of the country filled up so rapidly that the appellation of " American " continued to prevail and was not esteemed inappropriate. He was both a versifier and a poet, and amused himself at odd moments in humorous fancies and in the production of scientific poems. On one occasion a friend found him after breakfast in the charitable improvement of nursery rhymes. He said : " I have found that the verses commencing ' Four-and-twenty blackbirds, etc.'
abound with errors, and the infantile mind is led astray by false ideas of the musical functions of cooked birds; I have therefore arranged it thus : -
' When the pie was opened the birds they were songless. Was not that a pretty dish to set before the Congress ?'"
In the next breath the learned doctor might have been absorbed in the anatomy of an egg or a fish, deciphering a Babylonian brick, studying the character of meteoric stones, the different species of brassia, or the geology of Niagara, offering suggestions concerning the angle of a wind- mill or the shape of the gridiron, advising with Michaux on the beauty of black walnut for parlor furniture, investigating bivalves and discoursing on conchology with Dr. Samuel Akerly, his brother-in-law, talking over the feasibility of introducing the Bronx River into the city with Professor Colles, or in a profound exegetical disquisition on Kennicott's Hebrew Bible with the great Jewish Rabbi, Gershom Seixas. On one occasion a committee of soap-boilers begged him to defend the innoxious influence of their vocation in a crowded population. For his services rendered to the democratic soap-boilers Chancellor Livingston humorously told him he " deserved a monument of hard soap."
Among the social institutions of the period was the Krout Club, its members being descendants of the early Dutch settlers, and one of its prin- cipal features was an annual dinner where cabbage was served in an end-
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less variety of dishes. The presiding officer was called the " Grand Krout," and it was customary immediately after his election to crown him with a cabbage-head nicely fashioned, throwing at the same instant a mantle of cabbage-leaves about his shoulders. Dr. Mitchill, while thus arrayed as master of a cabbage feast, once delivered a most amusing eulogistic address on the cabbage, closing with the words, "Thy name has been abused, as if 'to cabbage' were to pilfer or steal. I repel with indignation this attempt to sully thy fame." The Turtle Club, comprising the " solid men" of the city, was in the habit of feasting annually on turtle, usually in a shady grove at Hoboken, and Dr. Mitchill also addressed this so- cial clan in one of his happiest strains of humor, stating that "the turtle, by an odd perversion of language, means the cooing bird of Fredonia, and also the four-footed reptile of Bahama." He frequently addressed the ladies through the medium of the Drone Club on the healthful influence of the alkalies, and the depurating virtues of white- washing. He seemed to be equally at home on all subjects, and possessed a charm of manner and a magnetism of mind that was unusual. He did much to advance the public and private interests of New York, and elevate her scholastic reputation throughout the world.
At the important meeting when the constitution of the Historical Soci- ety was adopted additional persons were present, whose names reflect luster upon the oganization : Rev. Dr. John Bowden, for a dozen years profes- sor of Moral Philosophy and Belles Lettres in Columbia College ; Rev. Dr. John C. Kunze, among the most learned divines and Oriental schol- ars of his day, and the first to strongly urge the propriety of educating German youth in English; John Kemp, the eminent mathematician, chosen a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh before he was twenty- one, and who filled not only the chair of Mathematics, but that of His- tory, Geography, and Chronology in Columbia College for a long series of years ; Rev. Dr. William Harris, rector of St. Mark's Church from 1802 to 1816, a classical scholar of rare proficiency, versed in ecclesiastical his- tory, who was afterwards president of Columbia College for many years ; Peter Wilson, a notable linguist, who possessed much other knowledge of value to the new institution ; John Murray, Jr., a clever man, a lover of the arts, a philanthropist, and an early and ardent promoter of our free- school system ; and Dr. Archibald Bruce, a young physician of twenty- eight, who, graduating from Columbia in 1795, soon after made the tour of France, Switzerland, and Italy, and collected a mineralogical cabinet of great value - becoming indeed the first professor of mineralogy in this country, and edited the Journal of American Mineralogy. Rev. John Henry Hobart, subsequently Episcopal Bishop of New York, then thirty years
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