USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume I > Part 7
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
been retired to private life not long after the opening of the new ad- ministration. Even while the squadron conveying the Director was still on the high seas Stuyvesant had taken some dislike to him, and publicly insulted him. He was now interested in cultivating a peach orchard, and finding a squaw one evening stealing the precious fruit, he inthlessly shot her down. Vengeance was sure to follow so wan- ton a provocation. But the Indians awaited a favorable opportunity. While Stuyvesant had withdrawn all available fighting men for the great and bloodless expedition to the Delaware, a swarm of savages of the Mohawk, the Mohican, and other river tribes, rushed down upon the almost defenseless city. They entered the farmers' houses on the way down, killing and burning as they went. In the early morn- ing of September 15, 1655, they came before the fort into which the fighting men that remained had hastily withdrawn, to present as good an order of defense as they could. Van Dyck was wounded, but not mortally, by an arrow, and Schepen Van der Grift barely missed being brained by a tomahawk. The Indians were a little can- tions about the fort guns, however, and assembled upon the river strand, planning new ontrages. A delegation from the fort went ont to parley with them ; at first they promised to go over to Nutten (Gov- ernor's) Island for the night. But when they failed to cross over, and a second attempt to parley with them was made, they attacked the party sent to them on the errand of peace, killing one of them. Then the Dutch opened tire, driving them into their canoes. As they pad- dled away, however, they still managed to kill a few of the colonists. They crossed the river to the JJersey shore, and soon one after another farm or settlement was in flames. Thence paddling over to Staten Island, twenty-three of the ninety colonists fell victims to their rage. It was estimated that nearly a thousand red men engaged in this work of sanguinary retaliation. The reign of terror lasted three days, in which brief period over one hundred of the settlers were killed, one hundred and fifty were taken prisoners, and more than three hundred lost all their possessions. Stuyvesant was hastily sum- moned back to Manhattan, and by a mixture of firmness and tact. and a self-restraint which he exhibited as a soldier, but never could command as a civilian, he soon brought the Indians to termis. and secured permanent quiet throughout the neighboring settle- ments.
Such then was the run of events while ruled the last of the four Di- rectors-General, and New Netherland was coming to the end of its subjection to the flag of the Dutch Republic. What was the incipient metropolis beginning to look like, and what were some of the phases of existence to be met with? At the time New Amsterdam became an incorporated Dutch city, the population is said to have mimbered some seven hundred and fifty souls. Yet even at that time the city was considered to embrace the whole of Manhattan Island. It is no
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wonder then that wolves and bears infested the more lonely regions of the city, and many a head of cattle was sacrificed to their voracity. In 1660 part of this vast ontlying wilderness was laid out as a vil- lage, which received the name that still denotes that portion of our city, but which has become the center of it instead of a remote out- post. The people of New Amsterdam never forgot after what city they named their town, and so as settlements were made in the neigh- borhood, they would recall the vicinity of the mother city by giving to such places the names of neighboring localities at home. A num- ber of families going out to the northeast extremity of the island were given the privilege of erecting a church, which they built near the river. And the name New Haerlem seemed a proper appendix to that of New Amsterdam.
New Amsterdam would not have been a Dutch city without a mi- litia or " schuttery." No town at home was withont its doelen, and tourists to-day find Doelen Hotels in every part of Holland, these being originally the headquarters or armories of the train-bands. The New Amsterdam militia, called the Burgher Wacht, Citizen's Watch or Guard, consisted of two companies, one carrying a blue ensign, the other one of orange. They seem to have had some difficulty in provid- ing themselves with a sufficient supply of firearms, but Stuyvesant took a great interest in them, and allowed them to be supplied from the Company's chest, until they could purchase their own. After the incorporation the authorities established a " Rattle Watch " of about six men. These were to do duty at night, to give alarm in case of fire, to arrest thieves or prowlers. They carried a large rattle which announced occasionally that they were on hand, or aroused the citi- zens in case of need. Thirty or forty years ago such a rattle might be heard in the streets of many a Dutch city in the dead of night, and it may be a practice still in some provincial towns. The Rattle Watch was not left alone, however, to cope with the problem of fires. A fire department had been created even before the city was incorporated, but in 1657 more effective measures were taken than ever before for preventing or extinguishing fires. Hooks and ladders, and ropes and leather buckets, were provided. Before November 1 two shoemakers had constructed one hundred and fifty of these buckets, and they were distributed over the town at convenient points. a dozen in each place. while abont fifty were kept at the City Hall.
The danger of fire as the population increased naturally convinced the people of the expediency of building safer houses. The wooden dwelling, with its wooden chimney and its thatched roof, was a con- stant invitation to the fire fiend. Yet such dwellings were still in the majority as late as 1658. An ordinance of that year forced the people to build chimneys of stone or brick, and forbade roofs of straw or reeds. From that time may be dated the change in the ap- pearance and quality of the dwellings, and some of the more pros-
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perous citizens put up mansions of some pretension. Stuyvesant found the Governor's house in the fort unsuitable for occupancy. It had been good enough for the bachelor directors, but he wanted some- thing better for his lady. So he built a substantial house of stone at the water's edge, about where is the corner of Whitehall and State streets now. A little garden surrounded the dwelling, and a private miniature dock housed the Director's barge of state. The house re- ceived the name of Whitehall in later days, and thence has the street derived its designation.
It was during this term that many of the streets familiar to us now began to be laid out and received names, some of which have come down to our day in English form. Wall Street was as much a fortifi- cation as a street. Eleven families lived on the south side, and ten on the north, or outside, called Cingel. In the middle ran a line of solid planks pointed at the top, set close together, and held firmly by cross timbers; it stretched quite across the island, from Broadway to the East River. At the river's edge there was a " water gate," and on Broadway a " land gate " opened a way into the country. Broad- way was then called the Heeren Straat, or Gentlemen's Street, and twenty-two families resided upon either side. On the west side the vards or gardens reached to the water. Coming down the hill to the fort, there was the open space now called the Bowling Green. It was called the Marketfield (Marktveld) then, and a row of houses, ar- commodating eleven families, stood on the left or east side. Burgo- master Crigier lived here, and a little alley or steegje running to Broad Street, finds its equivalent to-day in Markettield Street. Stone Street was then Brouwer Straat, because Burgomaster Van Cortlandt. a fa- mons brewer, lived in it, while it derived its present name from the fact that it was paved sooner than its neighbors. Parel Straat indicates where Pearl Street was to be afterward, although the name then indi- rated only one block from State to Whitehall, where the oyster shells on the beach gave a faint suggestion of the pearl. Pearl from White- hall to Broad was then called 't Water, and here stood the old discard- ed church, where former Schepen and Burgomaster Allerton had his store at this time. Again, Pearl from Broad to Wall Street, was called Hoog Straat, or High Street, and this was the thoroughfare most closely beset with dwellings. It must be remembered that it faced the river, and thus had only one row of houses, vet forty-one families re- sided here in 1664. To keep the high tides from invading these homes the city built a sort of sea wall, called a " Schoeying, " along the shore, reaching from the City Hall at. Coenties Slip, to the " water gate " at Wall Street.
But perhaps the most interesting feature of the old city, and one most difficult to recall, because all traces of it are utterly removed, is the system of canal streets which so lovingly reproduced conditions in the mother city of Amsterdam. Who would think to-day that
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
NEW
ASTERDE
STUYVESANT DESTROYING NICHOLS'S LETTER.
Broad Street was once a canal street? A creek or inlet curved np from the river, stopping at the bottom of the slight elevation which is still apparent in the short block from Exchange Place to Wall Street. This inlet (sometimes designated by the rather undignified term " ditch ") was deepened and widened and its sides straightened and boarded up in the approved Dutch manner of making canals. And then the street thus duly adorned with a waterway in the center was named the " Heeren Gracht," or Gentlemen's Canal. Twenty families resided here, among them the oft-named Patroon of Staten Island, Cornelins Melyn. A family by the name of Romeyn lived here, and also one Nicholas Du Puys, to whose presence in the town we doubt- less owe the existence in these days of " our own " Chauncey M. De- pew. Not satisfied with one canal street, the New Amsterdam-
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mers would fain have two others. The famons " Heeren Gracht " of Amsterdam, then and now the Fifth Avenue of the Dutch metropolis, received a counterpart in the new town. The " Prinsen Gracht." a thoroughfare only less noted, received a reproduction on a very small scale, by fixing up a ditch at right angles to Broad Street, where Beaver Street now runs to its terminus in Pearl. Here lived about seventeen families, Jacob Kip, the town secretary among them; and here, too, resided one Baai Roosvelt, a name onr city shall not " will- ingly let die." Toward the west, Beaver Street was also made into a canal street, named " Bever Gracht." A bridge over the Broad Street canal gave the name to Bridge Street (Brugh Straat), and upon this bridge the merchants of that day did mostly congregate, constituting it a sort of imprompin and primitive exchange, almost under the shadow of the tower of the Produce Exchange that now is. Of the other streets then laid ont and occupied by houses we need only men- tion briefly the Smee Straat (Smith Street), now the part of William between Broad and Wall, including Sonth William : Smits Valey (Vly or Fly), along the East River from Wall to Fulton Ferry. and 't Water (the Water), the west side of Whitehall from State to Pearl. Dr. Hans Kierstede, Anneke Jans's son-in-law, resided npon the latter. and fourteen other families besides.
It was not until Stuyvesant's time that the problem of laying ont streets and building upon them with some idea of regularity received any attention. At his instance surveyors of streets and buildings were appointed. In November, 1655, Allard Anthony, burgomaster. and Councilor Dr. La Montagne constituted a committee to report upon the work of the surveyors. Sanitary conditions were also im- proved under the Director's care. A dock was constructed on the East River side off " the Water" described above, and anchorage places assigned in the river for ships of various bnrden or dranght. Postal facilities there were none; the Company had a box placed at the en- trance of their new building on the Rapenburg at Amsterdam for the reception of all letters to America, and they recommended that a similar device for collecting the mail in one spot and carrying it in one bag be adopted at New Amsterdam. Trade with the neighboring colonies, or with foreign countries abroad was only to be carried on in ships of the Company. It may easily be imagined that this restric- tion served as the signal for a brisk smuggling business. The eur- reney of the town and province was still beaver skins and wampum. or beads string on strings, or loose. The latter was a currency easily mutilated, and while a certain number of beads, white or black. rep- resented a Dutch sinver (=two cents T. S.). the introduction of broken beads, or those of a poor anality from New England, bronght about a great confusion of values, and the withdrawal of the better kind from circulation. Stuyvesant labored long and earnestly to remedy the matter by banishing the primitive Indian currency alto-
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gether and substituting Dutch coins of small value. But he was dis- couraged and opposed in the measure by the Company at home.
As may be imagined, the population of the town was considerably depleted by the ravages and the fright of the Indian rising in 1655. But soon after, there came to be a replenishing by means of immi- grants from the home country. There is preserved a list of arrivals per various ships from 1657 to 1664, and from this we learn both the partienlar persons and families that came over, and the precise mm- ber of accessions from year to year. These figures will be interesting in comparison with the myriads that now annually arrive at our port. In 1657 there were only thirty-three. In 1658 the number ad- vanced suddenly to three hundred and five, one ship, the " Faith," carrying as many as a hundred. In 1660 one hundred and seventy-one persons arrived, but a member of these were soldiers. In 1661 just one less than a hundred emigrated to New Netherland; in 1662 there were two hundred and eight; in 1663, two hundred and fifty-two; and in 1664, sixty-fonr, eight of whom arrived in a vessel appropriately called the " Broken Heart," in view of the feelings of the Director in having to surrender. The whole number of immigrants as thins re- corded amounted to eleven hundred and thirty-two. Some of these ships seemed to ply regularly between old Amsterdam and New Am- sterdam, as their names appear upon the list three or four times. Many of these immigrants were mechanics, farmers, and trades peo- ple; many of them came over with large families of children. In April, 1660, the " Spotted Cow " conveyed two families with seven children, and one with eight. While these new arrivals mostly belonged to the hmmbler classes of society, occasionally men of learning or of wealth came over. Indeed, so definitely had " classes " already established themselves in the young community that the body of the Nine Men was made up of three men representing the large land proprietors or Patroons, three to represent the merchants or shop-keepers, and three the farmers and mechanics. There was also a professional class, composed of a few lawyers, two ministers, and a couple of phy- sicians and surgeons. At the instance of one of the latter a primitive hospital was instituted, with a matron at a salary of 100 florins ($40). This was doing well for so small a town and so limited a population, which at the time of the surrender was estimated at about fifteen hun- dred sonts. The church in the fort was still sufficient for the spiritnal needs of the people, and one pastor at first served them well enough. The Rev. Johannes Backerns, who had been settled at Curacao when Stuyvesant was stationed there, was perhaps induced for that reason to come to New Amsterdam. But he stayed only one year, not liking the commotions aronsed by the arbitrary conduct of the Director, and in which he was innocently made to bear a part. In 1649 the Rev. Jo- hannes Megapolensis was requested to come down from Fort Orange, where he had labored since 1642. He remained in New Amsterdam
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till 1669, and in 1664 was joined in his labors there by his son, the Rev. Samnel, who remained till 1668, and then went to Holland. In 1652 the Rev. Samnel Drisius became co-pastor of the Dutch church, so that at the time of the surrender no less than three ministers np- held the doctrines of the Synod of Dort on Manhattan Island. And it is painful to add that now, perhaps from this access of theologi- ans, no other doctrines were tolerated in New Amsterdam or in the vicinity. A Lntheran pastor called by some devont Germans was promptly turned face abont by the Director and shipped back to Hol- land. Placards like those of the Inquisition at Brussels of old were posted at Midwont (Flatbush) forbidding any person from harboring Qnakers. Baptists too were held to be equally obnoxious, and were banished from the town. Domines Drisins and Megapolensis were directly responsible for this intolerant condnet on the part of Stny- vesant, and they urged him to go to even greater lengths than he did. Yet to the credit of Megapolensis it minst be said that he was largely instrumental in rescuing both Fathers Jognes and Bressani from the Indians. To Drisins, on the other hand, belongs the credit of urging the establishment of a Latin school. Dr. Alexander Charles Curtins was called to be principal of it, and in three years after its establish- ment (1659) it drew pupils from Virginia and the Delaware. As to schools for more elementary studies, one was opened by Jan Steven- son in 1648, and another by Jan Cornelissen over a grocery store in 1650. Moneys were occasionally collected for building a school-honse under both Kieft and Stuyvesant, but the funds were almost invari- ably needed for administrative purposes, and school was kept at the honses of the teachers. But besides these schoolmasters appointed and paid by the West India Company, and under the supervision of the church, there were also private teachers. The Rev. . Egidins Lnyek was one of these. He had come over as private intor in Stuy- vesant's family, for his own and the Bayard children, but for some reason he was dismissed. He pursned his profession at his house in the now extinct Winckel Straat. A school was started also for the benefit of the children of the settlement which had grown up around Stuyvesant's Bonwery in the neighborhood of Thirteenth Street and Second Avenne. Here also religions services were held in the after- noon of Sundays, the Rev. Henry Selyus, who came to Breuckelen in 1660, officiating there, as well as at the Wallabont and Gowanus. Thus in 1664, conting Harlem also, the gospel was dispensed simmil- taneously at three different localities on Manhattan.
In the year 1648 came to a close the Eighty Years' War for Dutch independence. Then finally and formally by the Treaty of Monster, or Peace of Westphalia, Spain acknowledged what it had been forced to concede virtually four decades before at the truce, that the United States of the Netherlands were a free and independent nation, to be ranked as a sovereign state with all the other states of Europe. In
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the same year English patriots, taught by the Dutch Declaration of Independence of 1581, had dealt summary punishment to the king who had proved himself unworthy to reign. Unnatural war between the Commonwealth of England under Cromwell and the Dutch Repub- lic under John De Witt, had raged for many years while Stuyvesant ruled Now Netherland, and during those years he had been constantly apprehensive of an attack by a force sent ont by the mother country. He had no fear of the surrounding colonies, but fully expecting an at- tack from a naval and land force from abroad, he constantly urged upon the Company, and upon the citizens, the necessity of strengthen- ing the defenses of Manhattan, and especially the fort. But no heed was paid to his representations, and at the return of peace the ex- penditures required seemed still less desirable. Charles II. was ro- stored to the throne of his father in 1660. He had enjoyed aid and comfort and asylum in Holland during much of his exile. Upon his accession it was no wonder that all thoughts of war between the two countries should have been far from men's minds. And so there was no war in 1664. Who then could have expected that now would hap- pen what failed to occur in the years of war? Suddenly in Angust of that year for English vessels, carrying a force of several hundred land troops, the whole expedition under the command of Colonel Richard Nicolls, appeared in the Upper Bay and demanded the surren- der of fort, city, and province. In return for the benefits the Dutch had bestowed upon him, Charles IT. had patented away all of their possessions in America to his brother James, Duke of York. and Nic- olls claimed the region on the strength of this grant. At the same time there was a rising among the English villages of Long Island. A force of English colonists stood ready to invade the boundary of New Netherland there, doubtless not without collusion with the invading expedition from abroad. Stuyvesant, conscious of his defenseless state, a dilapidated fort, inadequate supply of troops, practically no fortifications to protect the city against civilized foes, was yet too much of a soldier to think of immediato surrender. He tore the letter demanding it into fragments, and was for making a desperate resist- ance. But his greatest weakness was a discontented commonalty. In violation of the spirit of their institutions at home, Stuyvesant had ruled them as a despot in the service of a commercial monopoly. They wished to share the more liberal treatment which the English col- onies enjoyed. There really was no possibility of successfully resist- ing the overwhelming odds threatening by land and water. The Council voted surrender, the citizens clamored for it. Trate and self-willed to the last. Peter the Headstrong stormed up and down the walls of the fort. He would have trained and discharged defiant guns with his own hands. But Domine Megapolensis quietly went up to him, represented the hopelessness of the case, plead against the needless destruction of innocent lives, and Stuyvesant vielded.
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On August 29, 1664, Col. Richard Nicolls and his troops landed upon Manhattan Island; the flag of the Republic was lowered from the staff where it had so prondly waved for half a century, and the royal ensign of England was run up in its place.
CHAPTER III.
THE CITY BECOMES ENGLISH.
EW AMSTERDAM had now become New York. How ap- propriate was the former name, how entirely unsignificant the later one! There is nothing in York to suggest its namesake in the new world. Its associations are entirely ecclesiastical, not at all commercial. Its position in the real has no parallel to that of our city in the Republic. But Amsterdam was then, and is now, to its country what New York is to the United States. It is not the political, but the commercial capital of Holland, just as New York is not the seat of government, but the metropolis of America. It would be a matter of poetic fitness and historic irnth, if not of any special euphony, if even yet the original name were to be restored, and the one designation for all of Greater New York were once again to be New Amsterdam.
It seems hardly worth while to open the discussion of the English claim to the territory of New Netherland, for we shall never arrive at any satisfactory settlement of the question. No doubt the discov- eries on the North American Continent made by the Cabots in 1497 and 1498 gave England a general title to it, as the matter was under- stood in those days. Subsequent patents given to Virginia or New England settlers no doubt overlapped sufficiently to quite cover the degrees of latitude where the Dutch province was located. We read a enrions statement in William Smith's history, published in 1732. He says that Hudson discovered these regions in 1608 (sic) and " sold " his claim to the Dutch. And he continues naïvely: " their writers contend that Hudson was sent out by the Dutch East India Company. There was a sale, however; the English objected, but they neglected settlement." Investigation has since proved that the ac- count of the Dutch writers was more than a contention. It had a solid basis of fact. Yet it is also true that Captain Hudson was in- duced to seek the vicinity of our river by maps or hints given him by Captain John Smith, who may have had a view of our coast, if not of the river. Accommodating as was international law in the matter of discovery, it did contain this proviso, that title to a country discov- ered was only perfected if discovery were followed by occupancy. Queen Elizabeth maintained this principle of Vattel's very strongly against Spanish claims; and it told with great force against English
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