USA > New York > New York City > In olde New York; sketches of old times and places in both the state and the city > Part 6
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signed by the bailiffs of their native town. Their leader was a grave, thoughtful man of mature years, - their pastor, Joshua Kockerthal, "Evangelical minis- ter," as he is called in the Lords of Trade Documents, - a Great-heart who had led the little band in all their wanderings and had now safely conducted them ยท to England. Pastor Kockerthal lost no time in pre- senting to Queen Anne a petition, in which he asked to be sent with his own company, and others of his countrymen that might follow, to her majesty's colonies in America.
Never did petition receive from authority a more favorable hearing. Queen Anne's womanly heart was moved to pity by the woes of the exiles. To her ministers the petition seemed to open the way to a master-stroke of policy in the settlement of the colonies. The aggressions of the French in Canada were then beginning to be felt along the whole northern frontiers of New England and New York, and the planting of a large body of Germans, natural enemies of France, on the frontier was a policy to be pursued with spirit. They heartily seconded, therefore, the queen's design of sending the petitioners to her colony of New York. The queen defrayed the cost of their transit, it is said, from her own private purse. Sending for Pastor Kockerthal, she questioned him concerning his history and that of his people, promised him free transporta- tion with his company to their new homes, and agreed
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further to furnish them with seed, agricultural tools, and furniture, lands free of tax and quit-rent, and to support them for one year, or until their first harvest could be reaped. To Pastor Kockerthal Queen Anne was even more generous, granting him five hundred acres as a glebe for the support of his wife and children besides a douceur of twenty pounds for the purchase of books and clothing. The males were also nat- uralized by the Crown before leaving. The ship Lyon was got ready, and sailed early in August, 1708, in company with Lord Lovelace, who had been ap- pointed governor of New York. There were fifty-two Palatines on board, - one a babe of two weeks, and several others of tender age.
The majority of the adults were vinedressers and husbandmen; but there were also a smith, a carpenter, a weaver, and a stocking-maker among them. Few particulars of the voyage have been preserved. They had a long and stormy passage of more than four months, reaching New York late in December, 1708. Several of the passengers had died on the voyage, nearly all were sick, and the whole company was quarantined for some weeks on Staten Island before being admitted to the city. As soon as possible, Lord Lovelace set about selecting a site for their settlement. On the west bank of the Hudson, just above the High- lands, familiar now to travelers as the site of the city of Newburgh, there was a tract of country that in soil
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and natural scenery was thought as near an approach to that of the Rhine as could be found in the New World; and here the little band of storm-tossed voyagers was established.
The tract granted them comprised two thousand one hundred and ninety acres, and was laid out in nine lots leading back from the river, including a glebe of five hundred acres for the minister. Here the wan- derers made a clearing, erected houses, built roads and bridges, and, in due time, added a church and school- house, which Queen Anne furnished with a bell,1 and thus laid the foundations of an enterprising and flourish- ing town.
Pastor Kockerthal remained only long enough to establish his flock in their fold. The country pleased him. The government had fulfilled its promises to
1 This bell is still preserved in the city of Newburgh as a precious relic. It is a small bell, of about twenty-five pounds' weight, very sweet in tone, and bears the inscription "Una fecit Amsterdammi, 17 -. " Its vicissitudes have been many. When first given to the Palatines, their church was not ready, and it was loaned for a season to the Lutheran church in New York. On the abdication of their grant by the Palatines, it became the property of the Church of Eng- land, which succeeded to the glebe, and on the outbreak of the Revolution was buried in a swamp to prevent its falling into the hands of the Whigs. Later it called the village children to school and then, in a few years superseded in this high office by a new bell, it was hung in the stables of the village hotel to give the hour to the workmen. When the writer first saw it, in the spring of 1882, it hung in a grocery-store; and he understands that it has since been removed to the Washington Head quarters for preservation.
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the letter, and he felt that he could not remain at ease until his bruised and smitten countrymen in Germany had been brought to this land of plenty and liberty. In a few months he embarked, again made the tem- pestuous voyage, appeared before the queen, and, having gained her countenance for his project, set out for Germany to collect his co-religionists and lead them, a second Joshua, to the promised land. By the fall of 1709 he had assembled three thousand exiles at different points on the Rhine, eager for the enter- prise, and late in the year they came to England, touching on the way at Leyden.
The English government had encouraged Pastor Kockerthal's mission, if it had not directly authorized it: still, with a lynx-eyed opposition scanning its every move, it hesitated at incurring the expense of trans- porting this large body of emigrants to America and subsisting them there for a twelvemonth, as it had done their predecessors. There happened to be in London at this juncture a gentleman - Colonel Robert Hunter - who, having been recently appointed governor of New York, took a great interest in the affairs of the province, and who suggested a plan for relieving the ministry of its difficulty. This plan was to employ the Palatines after their arrival in the pro- duction of naval stores until the expenses of their transit had been fully met. In 1698 a commission had been appointed to inquire into the capacity of the
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American colonies for the production of naval stores, and to survey the woods and forests for masts, oak timber, pitch-pine, and land suitable for the produc- tion of hemp, the sanguine ministers evidently believ- ing that American oak in English shipyards was some- thing to be desired. A bounty had also been offered for every barrel of tar or turpentine imported from America. Colonel Hunter's reasonings on the sub- ject, as subsequently adopted and reported by the Lords of Trade to the queen, were novel and inter- esting. "Your majesty," it was argued, "imports four thousand seven hundred barrels of tar yearly from the Baltic States. It has been found in America that one man can make six tons of stores per year; and several working together could make double that in proportion. We suppose that six hundred men employed in it will produce seven thousand tons a year, which, if more than your majesty needs, could be profitably employed in trade with Spain and Portugal." The cost of production was estimated at five pounds a ton, and that of transportation at four pounds, at which figures it could be sold as low as Norway tar; and calculations were made to show how easy it would be in this way for the Palatines to refund the money advanced them, while at the same time they could be making their homes in the wilderness. The recom- mendations of the Lords of Trade were adopted.
The Palatines signed a contract agreeing to settle
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on such lands as should be allotted them, not to leave them without the governor's permission, not to en- gage in woolen-manufacture, and to suffer the naval stores produced to be devoted to the payment of the money advanced. The queen, on her part, agreed to transport them to New York, to subsist them for one year after their arrival, to furnish them with seed and implements, and to grant them, as soon as the debt was paid, forty acres of land each, to be free of tax or quit-rent for seven years. There was at this time in the beautiful Mohawk Valley, on the site of the present towns of Herkimer and German Flats, a tract of ungranted land to which the Indians held a quasi claim, although it was not occupied by them; and this was selected as the site of the Palatine settle- ment.
To Colonel Hunter was assigned the duty of plant- ing the exiles in their new home. The instructions given to this gentleman show that much machinery was set in motion by the enterprise. Mr. Bridger, her majesty's Surveyor-General of America, was ordered down from New England to instruct the people in the art of making tar. Overseers were appointed to keep them at work, at a salary of one hundred pounds per annum, a commissary to receive the stores, at two hundred pounds for himself and clerk, and a factor in England to place the stores on the market there, at the usual rate of commission. Ten vessels were
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got ready to transport the colony. They rendezvoused at Plymouth, the point of departure of so many pilgrim companies, and here, early in the spring of 1710, the company embarked. The scene must have been one of unusual and pathetic interest, though no account of it has come down to us. The voyage was to be the complement of twenty years' wanderings, and its end rest, competency, home. So large an hegira had never been known before, at least in modern times, and was not subsequently equaled. Three thousand people, - men, women, children, babes in arms, - repre- senting nearly all crafts, professions, and conditions, gathered on the pier, all placed on a level by one hard condition, - biting poverty. There were hand-shak- ings and mutual farewells, then the heave-ho of the sailors, the filling of sails, and the fleet moved slowly out of the harbor. Tradition says that an event of evil moment attended the departure: a boat passing from one ship to another was capsized and all its pas- sengers drowned; and almost before the land had sunk from view a storm arose and scattered the fleet, one vessel - the Berkeley Castle - being so disabled that she was obliged to put into Portsmouth for repairs, and reached New York several days behind the other vessels. The voyage was long and disastrous. Crowded into small vessels, supplied probably with insufficient food, tossed by the sea, and worn out by their pre- vious sufferings, sickness broke out among the poor
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people, and death reaped a fearful harvest. Almost the only details of the passage are given in two letters from Governor Hunter to the Lords of Trade, dated at New York, - the first, June 16, 1710, in which he says that he had arrived there two days before, and adds, "We want three of the Palatine ships, and those arrived are in a desperately sickly condition." He writes again July 24, "The Palatine ships are all safe, except the Herbert frigate, with tents and arms, cast away on the east end of Long Island, July 7. The men are safe, the goods damaged. The Berkeley Castle, left at Portsmouth, not in. The poor people have been mighty sickly, but recover apace. We have lost about four hundred and seventy of our number." Four hundred and seventy out of a total of three thousand !
The exiles once landed, Mr. Bridger was sent off to the Mohawk lands to see if they were suited for the purpose in view, and returned in due time with an un- favorable report. The lands were undoubtedly good, he admitted, but the entire absence of pines precluded the idea of using them for the production of naval stores; and even if pines were to be had, their remote- ness from market was an insuperable objection : besides, if the people were settled on these extreme frontiers they could not be protected from the inroads of the French and Indians, - as if the government had not designed planting them there as a check to those in-
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roads. To get a correct idea of the animus of this report, we must glance briefly at the state of the colony of New York. After the conquest of India, it came to be regarded as an asylum for bankrupt politicians and impecunious younger sons of the English nobility, who went out poor, and in a few years, by the simple process of peculation in office, returned rich. New York at this time sustained much such a relation to the mother country, though of course in lesser degree. Pirates and smugglers in the ports, land-grabbers, tax- collectors, and commissaries in the interior, offered rare opportunities to officials with itching palms. Most of the land then taken up was held in great estates by certain patroons and lords of manors, who held the rights of the commonalty in utter contempt. These men had great influence with the colonial govern- ment. There was what would be called now a "ring" at Albany, that had already cast covetous eyes on the beautiful Mohawk Valley and were not willing that it should be given to a band of needy German emigrants.
While Mr. Bridger was making his survey, Gover- nor Hunter had been approached on the subject by one of these gentlemen, Robert Livingston. Mr. Livingston was a native of Scotland, a man of ability and great force of character, who, in several offices had done the colony good service, but who was tainted with the leprosy of covetousness. By means of these offices and his interest with the royal governors he had
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become very wealthy, and was now the owner of a manor of one hundred and sixty thousand acres. His manor-house stood some six miles back from the Hudson, on a knoll overlooking one of the intervales of the river, and has been described as "a long, low, rambling dwelling of stone, with heavy roofs, stout oaken doors, and windows so deeply set in the walls that they looked like embrasures." Within it was fur- nished with some approach to European elegance. Over his wide domain Livingston ruled as an autocrat. He had been endowed with all the rights enjoyed by English lords of the manor, had many retainers in his hall, many horses in his stalls, and the command of a militia company formed of his followers, all of which combined with his free hospitality to make him popular at home and potent in affairs of state.
Mr. Livingston advanced the objections to the Mohawk lands which have been stated, and proposed instead a tract of six thousand acres on his own manor, heavily timbered, contiguous to the river, and in every way suited to the object. He would dispose of it for such a purpose at a sacrifice, - four hundred pounds sterling. Without entering into details, we may say that the offer was accepted. In October, 1710, the poor Palatines, robbed of the Canaan which had been promised them, were planted in the gloomy pine forest on the Livingston estate. Some refused the hard conditions and remained in New York, founding
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there the first Lutheran church in this country; others joined their countrymen in Pennsylvania. Those that went were settled in five villages, or "dorfs," - three on the east bank, known as the East Camp, and two on the west bank, directly opposite, on a tract of un- granted land, called West Camp. Two thousand two hundred and twenty-seven Palatines were settled here, the remainder having died or been left at New York and other points.
Queen Anne, it will be remembered, had agreed to maintain the colonists for a year after their arrival. The stated daily stipend had been fixed at sixpence for adults and fourpence for children before leaving England. The contract for supplying them was given to Livingston. The rations furnished, according to the terms of his contract, which is still in existence, were a third of a loaf of bread a day, the loaves of such size and sort as were sold in New York for fourpence halfpenny, and a quart of beer from his brew-house. The first act of the settlers was to build rude log houses for shelter; their next, to clear the ground. The homes so long and ardently looked forward to were at last theirs. How depressingly must they have compared with the homes they had left! Instead of the smiling fields and vineyards of the Fatherland, a gloomy pine forest, extending far as the eye could reach; instead of the Rhine, a sullen, forest-fringed river; in place of busy city and romantically-perched castle, the log hut
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of the settler and the wigwam of the savage. Quite different, too, from what they had been accustomed to were the duties that awaited them here. Instead of the reaping and sowing, dressing of the vine and treading of the purple vintage, the hard, thankless task of the pioneer, - forests to hew, houses to build, lands to clear, roads to open, a dock to construct; and to these was added the drudgery of a distasteful occupation. The first winter they were employed in building houses and making clearings. In the spring, under harsh taskmasters, they began discharging their obligations to the queen, and continued it, many of them, for twelve long years of servitude.
Their first act was to prepare the trees for tar- making. In the spring, when the sap was up, they barked the north side of the tree; in the fall, before the sap was down, the south side; in the succeeding spring, the east side, and in the fall again, the west side, - the object being to retain the sap in the wood. Two years were required by this process to prepare the tree. Then, when it was fully dead, it was cut into convenient lengths, and the tar extracted from it by slow combustion in a rude kiln. Turpentine was extracted by bleeding the trees, as is now practised. So earnest were the overseers that the boys and girls were set to gathering pine knots, from which alone, Governor Hunter reported, sixty barrels of tar were made during the first season.
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It was not long before the poor Palatines discovered that they had sold themselves into a virtual slavery. The clause in their contract which granted them their lands only when they should have repaid the cost of their transportation was fatal to their liberty; for it soon became apparent that naval stores could not be produced on the Hudson so cheaply and of such quality as the British ministry had predicted, that when sold in open market they could not com- pete with the Swedish article, and that after the salaries of instructors, commissaries, overseers, agents, and . clerks were paid, very little was left to the credit of the Palatines. The prospect of discharg- ing their debt by these means in that century seemed hopeless. The condition of the emigrants soon became pitiable: they were looked upon as paupers subsisting on the bounty of government, and treated accordingly. The neighboring white settlers regarded them as interlopers, and had little inter- course with them, and then only to fan their discon- tent. Nearly all the officials made a spoil of them; but none aroused so many bitter complaints as did the chief commissary, Robert Livingston. It was alleged that the bread he furnished them was moldy and lacked the stipulated weight, and that the beer was so bad as to be undrinkable; furthermore, that by his interest with the overseers they were oftener employed in clearing the manor lands than on their own reser-
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vation.1 More than once these complaints became so bitter that Governor Hunter came in person to in- vestigate them. He was accompained by his staff, and was received with every mark of consideration and respect at the manor-house. Samples of the bread and beer furnished were shown him; he heard the statements of the contractor; and the conclusion of the matter was a speech to the disaffected, in which he recounted the goodness of the queen and upbraided them for a set of sturdy rogues who were making but a poor return for the favors shown them.
They had, however, other grounds of complaint. Sickness was rife among them, and they were without medicines or physicians. Their children were bound
I A caustic letter from the Earl of Clarendon to Lord Dartmouth, Secretary of State, gives color to these charges. He says: "I think it unhappy that Colonel Hunter at his first arrival in his government has fallen into such ill hands, for this Livingston has been known many years in that province for a very ill man. He formerly vict- ualled the forces at Albany, in which he was guilty of most notorious frauds by which he greatly improved his estate. He has a mill and brew-house upon his land, and if he can get the victualling of the Palatines, who are so conveniently posted for his purpose, he will make a good addition to his estate. . . . I am of opinion, if subsistence be all, the conclusion will be that Livingston and some others will get large estates, the Palatines will be none the richer, but will be confirmed in that laziness they are already prone to." The earl, however, was opposed to the emigration of the Palatines. It is just to Livingston to say that a commissioner appointed to inquire into his accounts while quartermaster exonerated him from charges of fraud.
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out without their consent, and, under colonial law, became the property of their masters as absolutely as the cattle in their stalls. In 1711, in the war against Canada, a requisition for soldiers had been served upon them, and three hundred of their best men had accompanied Colonel Nicholson in the campaign against Montreal, - not all of whom returned. Their chief grievance, however, lay in the fact that the beauti- ful country which had been promised them, and which was to furnish homes for themselves and their children, was withheld, - that by a clause in the contract which they had misunderstood they were held in bondage. There was much discontent among them on these grounds during the first winter, not allayed when some bold spirits who had penetrated the wilderness to the promised land returned with glowing accounts of its beauty and fertility.
Good Pastor Kockerthal spent most of his time with his afflicted brethren, leaving the little flock at Newburgh to the care of local elders. He attended the sick, and knelt at the bedside of the dying with prayers and words of consolation. He counseled patience and moderation, cheered them with the hymns of the Fatherland, and was until death the guide and comforter of the people. 1
1 This unsung apostle died in 1719, and was buried in the midst of the people he had loved so well. His grave is still to be seen in West Camp, in the present town of Saugerties, - a sort of vault
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The pastor was powerless to allay all feeling of dis- content, however, and in May, 1711, Governor Hunter was hastily summoned to the manor to quell a mutiny which had broken out among the Palatines. They had risen against their overseers, he was told, declaring that they would go to the lands at Schoharie which the queen had given them. Hunter, with sixty soldiers whom he had ordered down from the garrison at Albany, marched into the midst of the villages and summoned the chiefs to an account. They stated their grievances, which have been enumerated.
The governor, in reply, reminded them of their solemn contract, and of their obligations to the queen, assured them that the Scoharie country was still
in a field near the Hudson, covered with a large flat stone, on which is inscribed, in German, this mystical epitaph: Wise Wanderer Under this stone rests near his Sybilla Charlotte A True Wanderer The Joshua of the High Dutch in North America and the same in the East and West Hudson's River Poor Lutheran Preacher
His first arrival was with Lord Lovelace 1707-8 January the 1st His second was with Col. Hunter 1710 June the 14th His voyage to England brought forth his heavenly voyage on St. John's Day 1719.
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occupied by Indians, and that if they were settled there they could not be protected from the French. They still continued rebellious, however, and he ended the matter summarily by disarming them and putting them under the care of captains or directors, as the queen's hired servants. After this exploit he returned to New York. For a year the Palatines, deprived of their arms and under the eye of the military, remained passive.
Pastor Kockerthal, writing of them at this period, says: "All are at work and busy, but manifestly with repugnance and only temporarily. They think the tract intended for them a Canaan, but dangerous to settle now, so they have patience. But they will not listen to tar-making." In the fall of 1712 the governor informed them that they must depend upon themselves for subsistence thereafter, as his funds were exhausted. The winter passed in not very successful efforts to keep the wolf from the door, and in laying plans for a re- moval to Scoharie as soon as spring should open. This region seems to have been the Canaan of the wanderers. Roseate visions of it had been flitting through their minds since their departure from Eng- land. Hunters and trappers with whom they came in contact gave glowing accounts of its beauty and fer- tility. It lay in the valley of the Scoharie, near its junction with the Mohawk, some thirty miles west of Albany. It was a natural prairie of rich, deep soil,
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