USA > New York > New York City > In olde New York; sketches of old times and places in both the state and the city > Part 2
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American ships continued to rule the wave, until superseded by the more reliable steamers. But what a turn in fortune's wheel! In 1853 American ships
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securing cargoes in English home ports amid the fiercest competition; in 1883 almost every pound of America's exports afloat in British bottoms, and scarcely an American vessel in commission in the foreign trade!
CHAPTER II
THE FRENCH ADMIRAL PIERRE DE LANDAIS
TN 1880, St. Patrick's churchyard was one of the few in the densely populated portion of the city remaining intact, and had long been closed to in- terments except by special permit of the Board of Health.
A blank brick wall hid it from the three streets Mulberry, Mott, and Prince that bounded it: the old Cathedral of St. Patrick overshadowed it, while the office of the Calvary Cemetery Association formed part of the northern boundary.
If one hunted up the old sexton and was admitted he found little turf within, little shade, a litter of twigs and leaves on the ground, some of the tomb- stones shattered, and others overthrown or leaning far out of the perpendicular; while the voices of the few birds that harbored there were drowned by the dis- cordant noises of a squalid neighborhood.
In this ground a tombstone was long ago erected with this inscription :
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A La Memoire de Pierre de Landais, Ancien Contre Admiral au service Des Etats Unis. Qui disparut June, 1818, ae 87 ans.
For forty years prior to the above date Pierre Lan- dais had been one of the noted characters of the city. He claimed the rank of "Admiral," and those who would retain his favor were obliged to observe a punc- tilious regard for the title. His short, stout figure clad in a faded Continental uniform - cocked hat, small sword, knee breeches, and all - seated in the shade of Printing-House Square or pacing slowly down Broadway to the Bowling Green - his favorite prome- nade - was a familiar object to the New Yorkers of one hundred years ago. In the coffee-houses and inns, equal sharers of his attentions, he never failed of a circle of admirers to whom he recounted stirring tales of sea fights in which he had been an actor, and generally concluded with an account of his capture of the Scrapis and Countess of Scarborough, and a hearty denunciation of the man who had stolen the laurels of that conflict from him. His persistency as a claimant
ST. PATRICK'S CEMETERY
In the centre of the foreground is the tombstone of Admiral de Landais. From a photograph taken in 1907, especially for "In Olde New York"
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The French Admiral Pierre de Landais
before Congress alone made him noteworthy. He had claims for arrears of pay and for prize money, and urged them for forty years until he became the Nestor of American claimants. Every year, at the sitting of Congress, he hurried to Washington in the lumbering old coaches that then connected the cities, and haunted the lobbies and galleries of the Capitol like an unquiet spirit, deluging Congress with petitions and memorials, watching its proceedings with feverish interest, and button-holing members at every oppor- tunity in the interest of his claims. In the journals of Congress no name appears more frequently among the petitioners and memorialists than his; but although his petitions were personally urged, and often accom- panied by letters offering cogent reasons why his claims should be allowed, they were never granted, and the old man, year by year, returned to his lodgings at the close of the session as empty as he went, to renew the conflict with poverty, and live in the hope of better fortune another year.
His history has the elements of a romance. One cannot but feel, too, on reviewing his career, that there may have been a grain of injustice in the treatment he received from his adopted country. He was born a Count of France, and early rose to the command of a French line-of-battle ship, but relinquished all in 1777 to join his fortunes with those of the young re- public across the sea, then engaged in her gallant
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stand for liberty. Baron Steuben recommended him, and Silas Deane, then American Commissioner to France, gave him the command of the ship Heureux, rechristened the Flammand, recently purchased to convey military stores to America. His commission, dated March 1, 1777, was accompanied by this interest- ing letter from the worthy Commissioner: "I give you a commission to use in case of necessity or advantage in making a prize, but you are not to go out of your course for that purpose. You will keep an account of your expenses, which will be paid you on your arrival in America. I shall write to the Congress by other conveyances, and assure them that you have received nothing but your expenses, and your generous confidence in them will not pass unnoticed." So good an authority as the Marine Committee of Congress testified to the skill and address with which Landais executed this commission, in eluding the British cruisers sent to intercept him, and bringing the Flam- mand safely into port. Congress also showed its appreciation of him by commissioning him a captain in the navy, and ordered 12,000 livres to be paid him "as a pecuniary consideration cqual to his services." The Marine Committee also gave him the oversight of the ships-of-war then building at Portsmouth and Salisbury for the newly-created navy, in their report to Congress styling him "an excellent sea officer, and skilled in the construction of ships-of-war." The next
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The French Admiral Pierre de Landais
summer he enjoyed a still more signal mark of its favor. On the 29th of May, 1778, the Alliance, a fine and uncommonly fast frigate of thirty-six guns, was launched at Salisbury, Mass., where she had been long building. She went into commission June 19, and for her maiden voyage was ordered to transport the Mar- quis de Lafayette and suite to France. Her com- mander, duly commissioned by Congress, was the Admiral Pierre Landais. The memorable voyage of the Alliance, the motley character of her crew - a part of whom were English seamen from a vessel wrecked on the Massachusetts coast - how these mutinied as the vessel neared the British coast, and how the mutiny was promptly quelled by Landais, and the vessel safely brought into Brest, is told in history.
In France Landais met his evil genius in the person of the famous Admiral John Paul Jones. Landais had his faults, being haughty, imperious, punctilious, quarrelsome, and a martinet. Jones was all this and more, and the two were at enmity from the moment of meeting. They met first in August, 1779, at Brest, where a little squadron composed of four French vessels and the Alliance had rendezvoused in order to make a swoop on the Baltic fleet then about due in England. Jones, in command of the Bon Homme Richard, was the senior officer, and there was trouble before the fleet sailed as to who should command it,
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In Olde New York
but the matter was amicably settled at last by each of the five commanders signing an agreement to act in concert under the commissions received from Con- gress. The squadron got under way August 14, and on the 23d of September met the Baltic fleet, con- voyed by the Serapis and Countess of Scarborough. The details of the engagement that followed are so familiar that I need not repeat them. The charges so frequently made against Captain Landais by Jones in his report of the affair to Franklin, and corroborated by the statements of other officers of the fleet, merit attention. It was charged that the Alliance held aloof at the opening of the engagement, and that when she came to the aid of the Bon Homme Richard, then engaged with the Serapis, she poured her broadsides into the former, and repeated the maneuver again and again, never once striking the Serapis except over or through the decks of the Richard. The report did more than this - it distinctly charged the com- mander of the Alliance, first with cowardice and then with treachery - that he designed to sink the Richard in order to win for himself the glory of capturing the Serapis. These charges were generally accepted as true by the American public of that day, and have passed into history as truth. This paper makes no attempt to disprove them. It is but due to Captain Landais to say, however, that he met them with an indignant denial, and that he at once demanded a
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The French Admiral Pierre de Landais
trial, where he might be confronted with his accusers, which demand was not granted.
He showed himself to be no craven, however, by calling out one of his defamers - Captain Cottineau, of the Pallas - and running him through with his smallsword. This exploit he followed up by chal- lenging the commander of the Bon Homme Richard. No meeting, however, took place. Franklin, obliged to notice the charges, ordered Landais to Paris to answer them; but although the latter promptly pre- sented himself at the capital, and used every effort to that effect, he failed to secure a trial.
Finding his efforts there fruitless, Landais, early in 1780, applied to Franklin for leave to go to America to answer the charges preferred against him there. Franklin, no doubt glad to have the affair off his hands, consented, and ordered his expenses paid. A few weeks later, March 17, Landais wrote again to Frank- lin asking to be reinstated in command of the Alliance, which had by this time come into French waters and was lying at L'Orient, and which, it was rumored, was soon to sail with stores for America. A testi- monial from fourteen officers of the Alliance, declar- ing Captain Landais to be a brave and capable com- mander, and a letter from the crew, saying that unless their prize-money was paid and their former captain restored to them they would not sail in the Alliance, accompanied the letter. Franklin deemed the send-
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ing of this letter an act of unparalleled effrontery, and in his reply frankly told its author so. At this juncture Arthur Lee, agent of the United States at Paris, came to the aid of our hero with an opinion that by the terms of his old commission from Congress, which had never been revoked, he was still lawful commander of the Alliance, and indeed responsible for her until relieved by Congress; and, with this con- venient instrument in his pocket, Landais lost no time in getting to L'Orient and regaining his old command. Then the Alliance hastily completed taking in cargo and put to sea. Arrived in Boston her captain found the Court of Inquiry he had demanded awaiting him. Its verdict, based solely, as its victim affirmed, on the testimony of his enemies, was guilty of the charges preferred by Jones, and its sentence a summary dis- missal from the service. Degraded in rank and stained in reputation, the Admiral returned to France and took service under the Republic. He was at once given command of the seventy-four-gun frigate Patriot, and did efficient service in the war which the young General Bonaparte was then waging in Italy. In 1797 he quitted the French service and returned to New York, which continued to be his residence until his death in 1820. These years were spent solely in pressing his claims upon the attention of Con- gress.
These claims were for arrears of pay while in actual
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The French Admiral Pierre de Landais
service in the Navy, and for arrears of prize money. The Alliance, while under his command, had taken three prizes, valued in the aggregate at $40,000, which she sent into Bergen, Norway, but which the authori- ties there, overawed by British power, delivered to their former owners. The commander's share of this money Landais later made the basis of a heavy claim against the Government, with what success has been stated. His pugnaciousness even in old age seems not to have deserted him. On one occasion while in Washington, it is said, hearing that a Congressman had spoken slightingly of him in debate, he mounted his smallsword and proceeded to the gallery of the House, where he despatched a page to the offending member with an invitation to meet him on the field of honor. Toward Admiral John Paul Jones, whom he regarded as the author of his misfortunes, he en- tertained the deepest antipathy. The story goes - set in motion by himself - that on one occasion he met the Chevalier in Water Street and coolly spat in his face - a story which was denied by Jones and his friends as often as told. Toward the close of his career the Count became miserably poor, eking out an existence by the aid of an annuity purchased years before by his arrears of prize money.
In a memorial addressed to Congress during this period, and later published in a pamphlet now ex- tremely rare, he thus refers to his exploits and to the
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straits to which he is reduced. The words are en- tirely typical of the man. He says:
"I was born and brought up in affluence; was admitted into the sea-service of the King of France in 1762, in which service I was wounded in the year 1763, in a glorious sea-battle; circumnavigated the globe under command of M. de Bougainville in the years 1766-67-68; had command of a line-of-battle ship in 1773; brought into Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1777, a ship loaded with brass guns, mortars, etc., for the United States. Being returned to France in 1791, I had command of the French 74-gun ship Patriot, and had at different times under my orders ten squadrons or divisions of the army. The Patriot was the nearest ship to the batteries of the city of Oneglia at the taking of it. With seven ships of the line I took the Island of Antioch in 1792, which was guarded by 2500 men."
He then goes on to state that, promoted to the rank of Rear-Admiral, he had command of the ship Ocean, of 122 guns, on board of which his allowance for table expenses alone was forty livres per day; that he had a fortune when he came to this country, all of which had been spent in urging his claim; so that for the last seven years he had been reduced to living on a dollar a week and "when at home to do the meanest drudgery of my lodging in order to keep my honor and integrity unsoiled and to preserve my life."
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The French Admiral Pierre de Landais
The last few years of his life were spent in Brooklyn, in a house on Fulton Street. He frequented his accustomed haunts, however, so long as strength per- mitted. His eccentricities increased with age. He evinced much bitterness against Congress and the Government, and his sense of honor became so nice that he would not even allow a friend to pay his fer- riage over the river. In 1818 he ordered a tombstone, caused to be engraved upon it the inscription given in the beginning of this paper, and then placed it at the head of his prospective grave in St. Patrick's Church- yard. When attacked by his last illness he was carried at his own request, to Bellevue Hospital, and there died September 17, 1820. After a long search I suc- ceeded in finding the record of his death and burial in the books of the Cemetery Association, as follows: "Admiral Peter Landais, died in Bellevue Hospital, Sept. 17, 1820. Funeral expenses $20.62}. Paid."
CHAPTER III
TWO MARBLE CEMETERIES
T HERE are two interesting old cemeteries in the neighborhood of Second Avenue and Second Street, one the New York Marble Cemetery, on Second Avenue between Second and Third streets, the other the New York City Marble Cemetery on Second Street, between Second and First avenues. Although their names are similiar, they are separate organizations. Some of their features are peculiar. They are, we believe, the only cemeteries in the city whose owner- ship and managements are entirely non-sectarian. They are the only ones where the old-fashioned custom of interring the dead in underground vaults has always been followed. They contain the only receiving vaults in the city limits open to the general public, and their tombs hold more dust of "ancient families" than any plots of equal proportions in the town.
When they were laid out they were in a waste of pasture field; the city had then barely crept up to Bleecker Street. Now they are surrounded by piles of brick and mortar so high that the sun must be well
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Two Marble Cemeteries
ยท up before its rays touch their flowers and green sward.
The New York Marble Cemetery occupies nearly all the inside, or the back yards, of the block and is entered from Second Avenue through a narrow passageway. From the iron gate on the avenue one would not imagine there was a cemetery within, for there are no monuments at all, and not even slabs to mark the exact position of the stone-lined vaults which are sunken beneath the surface. Set into the high wall surrounding the grounds are tablets bearing the names of the owners of the vaults, 156 in number. At one end is a large index tablet with the names in alpha- betical order, and among them we read the well-known New York names of Kernochan, Parrish, John Hone, Scribner, Stokes, Riggs, Harvey, Van Zandt, Griswold Lorillard, Hoyt, Anthony Dey, Haggerty, and New- comb. The grounds are laid out with three broad avenues, perhaps 200 feet long, and with cross-walks about 85 feet long at either end, and in the far corner is the receiving vault.
The New York City Marble Cemetery is in plain view of the passer-by going through Second Street. Here the vaults are 258 in number and are marked by stone slabs let into the ground, while there are many handsome monuments which have been erected by the vault owners in the memory of their dead. Against the rear wall, opposite the entrance, is a large receiving
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vault, which in its day has held representatives of every nation and clime, both the noble and ignoble, the great and wise of the eity, as well as the stranger who died far from home and kin, within its walls. The principal monuments and slabs bear the names of Gouverneur, Fish, Allen, Bullus, Holt, Gallatin, Griswold, Gross, De Klyn, Quackenbos, Kevan, Howland, and Blood- good, Anthony, Baneker, Bergh, Bogardus, Booraem, Hoffman, Kip, Kneeland, Lenox, Low, Morton, Ogden, Ockershausen, Ridabock, Roosevelt, Saltus, Storm, Tappin, Tier, Tillotson, Van Alen, Van Antwerp, Vantine, Webb, Willett, Winans, Wynkoop, and others.
Much more of history and romance lingers about the old yard than the careless passer-by, or the curious student even, at first sight would imagine. In itself it has little claim to antiquity, having been laid out barely seventy-six years ago. In its vaults, however, reposes the dust of the stout old mynheers and burgo- masters who first settled Manhattan Island. This apparent contradiction is explained by the fact that it has been made a receptacle for the contents of church vaults and family burial-places among the earliest on the island. It was first purchased in 1831 by Perkins Nichols and Ebert A. Bancker, who designed it as a private cemetery for their own families, and for a limited number of others who might purchase rights of interment there. It then formed a part of the
THE NEW YORK MARBLE CEMETERY From a photograph taken in 1907, especially for "In Olde New York"
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Two Marble Cemeteries
Phillip Minthorn farm, and the region round about was covered with farms and pastures. Bleecker Street was then on the outskirts of the city. Second Street and the adjoining avenues had been laid out, but there were no buildings on them, and a series of pastures and marshes, tenanted by geese and cattle, swept to the East River. The purchase comprised some fifteen city lots, and the sum paid was $8643. The next year, 1832, it was regularly incorporated as the New York City Marble Cemetery, the title being vested in a board of five trustees. The construction of vaults was at once begun, and 234 were completed by 1838, at which time the cemetery may be said to have been finished, although twenty-four vaults were opened in 1843. Many vaults had been purchased and many interments made before this, however, one of the first having been that of the remains of ex- President Monroe. Soon after the opening of the ground several down-town churches and many private families purchased the vaults and removed the remains of their dead thither. One of the most notable in- stances of this was that of the Kip family, which pur- chased vault 241 and removed thither generations of their dead from the old family burying-ground at Kip's Bay. About the same time the old South Dutch Church, on Garden Street, purchased vaults Nos. 191 and 192, and deposited the remains of the dead in its vaults which had lain there so long as to be unknown
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In Olde New York
or unclaimed by kindred. Some 5000 dead, the trustees estimate, are now enclosed in these vaults.
Old residents of the city, familiar with the cemetery, tell of many striking scenes and incidents in its history. Imposing ceremonies attended the interment here, on the 7th of July, 1831, of the remains of James Monroe, fifth President of the United States. A brigade of militia, under General Jacob Morton, formed the mili- tary pageant. The chief men of the nation joined the procession, and, as the coffin was lowered into the vault, bells tolled, and the flags of vessels in the harbor flew at half-mast. These august ceremonies dedicated the new cemetery, so to speak, and added much to its later repute among the old, exclusive families of the city. At first thought it seems strange that Monroe, a native of Virginia, should have been interred in this little private cemetery on the outskirts of New York. The mystery becomes clear, however, when it is re- membered that his son-in-law, Samuel L. Gouverneur, at whose house he died, owned a vault in the cemetery, and that it was natural for Mrs. Gouverneur to desire her father laid near her own last resting-place. After reposing here for twenty-seven years the remains were exhumed and conveyed to Virginia with rather less of ceremony than had attended their original interment. A simple incident led Virginia to take this action. Early in 1857 a number of gentlemen, natives of that State, but resident in New York, conceived the plan
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Two Marble Cemeteries
of raising a monument to the ex-President over the unrecognized vault that held his dust. The project was hinted abroad, and in course of time reached Virginia, where it seems to have touched State pride and jealousy to the quick. That it should be left to New York to commemorate a son of Virginia who had filled the chair of the Chief Magistrate was deemed a reflection on the Commonwealth, and steps were at once taken to have the remains removed to the State capital. To create public sentiment in favor of this, exaggerated reports as to the condition of the Presi- dent's grave were spread broadcast through the State. He was reported as lying in an old, unused burying- ground, overgrown with weeds and vines, in the outskirts of the city, his grave unmarked, and cattle and hogs roaming at will above it. A committee of two was appointed by Virginia to receive the remains and attend them to their final resting-place in Holly- wood Cemetery, Richmond. At the yard the exhuma- tion was conducted with secrecy, the family being desirous of avoiding a crowd.
At 4.30 o'clock on the 2d of July, 1858, a carriage drove up to the cemetery gate. It contained Alderman Adams, representing the Common Council, and was soon joined by carriages containing the Virginia dele- gates, Messrs. Mumford and O. Jennings Wise, Col. James Monroe and S. L. Gouverneur representing the family, a delegation of resident Virginians, and the
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In Olde New York
undertaker. At five o'clock the coffin of the ex-Presi- dent was placed in the hearse, and, amid the tolling of bells, with the flags of the shipping in the harbor at half-mast, was conveyed to the Church of the Annun- ciation, in Fourteenth Street. Here and at the City Hall it lay in state for several days, and was then con- veyed to Richmond by the steamer Jamestown, its escort, the famous Seventh Regiment, proceeding by the Ericsson. Old members of that gallant corps still remember the service for its heat and discomforts.
The visitor, perhaps, will be apt to linger longest about vaults 191 and 192. Here rest the unknown, unclaimed remains of the early burghers of New Amsterdam. What a stir you fancy there must have been among the ghosts when the edict for clearing out the vaults of the Old South went forth. A hundred and more years they had rested undisturbed. Genera- tions had come and gone. A city had grown up around them. Their descendants, like their property, had been scattered over the earth, and now none remained to eare for their bones. The church authorities, alarmed at the encroachments of the city on their property, ordered a removal to the new cemetery up town. Then came a day when the vaults were opened and the old sexton descended with his box to gather up the dust.
There are other vaults in the yard prolific of mem- ories. In the Morton vault lie the remains of General
THE NEW YORK CITY MARBLE CEMETERY The slab in the foreground covers the vault where James Monroe was interred. From a photograph taken in 1907, especially for "In Olde New York"
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