USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 10
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
in this vicinity, as it is borne by one of the streets-had committed the deed, and he was hung for it at Flatbush, a penalty which then was meted ont to whites and blacks alike for the crime of theft. On the Heights, Columbia Street, between Middagh and Cranberry streets, a spot called Tower Hill at that day, one John Cornell had in 1774, opened a house as a tavern. But he evidently took no risks on stocking it with drinkables, for parties who wished entertain- ment were instructed to bring their own liquors. A better indication of the kind and number of inhabitants gathering at the ferry is the fact that in the newspapers of the city across the river advertisements are constantly appearing in the years before the Revolution, show- ing that school advantages were earnestly sought and provided by the people. In 1749 one JJohn Clark recommends himself to the public as a teacher at the Ferry on " Nassau Island," his branches including French and Spanish. He would take scholars to board. In 1763 a combination of three men, representing districts so comparatively wide apart as Wallabout, the Ferry, and Red Hook-Aris Remsen. John Rapalje, and Jacob Sebring-made for themselves the honor- able record of hiring a recent graduate of Yale, Punderson Austin, A.B., to teach Greek and Latin at the Ferry as the most central of the three. One antiquarian of Brooklyn tells us of the location of a schoolhouse somewhere on the slope of the hill between the present Doughty and Willow, and Hicks and Columbia streets. Before the Revolution it had for teacher Benjamin Brown, a Connecticut man, and patriotic in his sympathies. He had nineteen scholars at one time, but there was no keeping school when the British came, as the schoolhouse stood right within the lines. Ft. Sterling being within a stone's throw of it.
Of the other sections of Brookland township which were the nuclei of greater things to come, Wallabout and Gowanus, the former emerges from the happy condition of states which have no an- nals, by reason of some notices of the experiences of Mr. Aris Rem- sen, whose interest in education we have just indicated. He was the owner of a mill-turned by the tide, of course-and on November 5, 1761, it was totally destroyed by fire, together with a large quantity of grain in it. He was also the owner of negroes, as all men of sub- stance in the colony were in those days, and his appear to have had a great propensity for running away. In 1764 one was thus adver- tised, who, it would seem, must have been easily identified. His ap- parel consisted of a Scotch bonnet, short. wide trowsers, and half- worn shoes with steel buckles. He was apt to get drunk, and then he would stutter. As his stuttering could be produced in good English. French, Dutch, Spanish, and in " a little of other languages," one would hardly be likely to pass him in the street without looking a second time, or stopping to listen to this emission of Babel sounds from his hesitating lips, which must have been unique and overwhelm-
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
ing. It is a pity no phonograph was in vogue in those days. Gow- anus furnishes the annals of the ante-Revolutionary times with the account of a bear hunt in 1759. It was on a Sunday that Master Bruyn walked past the house of Cornelius Sebring, near Red Hook, and took the water when he reached the banks of Buttermilk Chan- nel. The sacredness of the day did not prevent Mr. Sebring offering chase in a boat as the beast deliberately proceeded to swim across the Bay. His man's shot missed the bear, but Sebring himself had better luck, and killed the quarry. Sebring had erected a mill and dammed up an inlet to catch the water at high tide, as Brouwer had done at the head of Gowanus Creek. In 1709 the historic " Yellow Mill " was put up by Adam and Nicholas Brouwer, the sons of Adam, of Brouw- er's Mill, also soon to become historic. It was later called Denton's Mill. It utilized a bay or cove formed by a branch of the creek running westerly, and the mill stood about on what is now First Street, between Second and Third avenues.
The memorable Assembly which Bancroft mentions as meeting Governor Lord Lovelace in 1709 was the only one the unfortunate nobleman did meet. As we saw in our previous volume, he died very soon after that. The senior member of Council, and the President by virtue of that seniority, was Dr. Gerardus Williamson Beeckman, a native and townsman of Flatbush. As President, he became Acting- Governor until the arrival of the next Governor, General Robert Hun- ter, who did not appear upon the scene until the next year, 1710. It was felt as a proud distinction by his fellow-townsmen. In the year 1749 Flatbush was gratified by the erection within its bounds of a handsome Manorial Hall, which more recently bore the name of Melrose Hall, and was removed from the eyes of lovers of antiquity only a few years ago, although the noble avenne of trees leading up to the front door has still some remnants of its glory left. It must have looked very imposing amid its earliest surroundings, with noth- ing to rival its grandeur but the low-roofed, one-storied, substantial Dutch farmhouses. Gilded drawing-rooms, wainscotted halls, end- less and mysterious closets, panels, and secret doors and passages galore-all lent a weird charm heightened by tradition to the build- ing. It seems to have been arranged on a prouder scale even than the Walton house, in New York, built a few years later. An Englishman of the name of Lane was the original owner; in the time of the Revolution we shall find it in the possession of another, prominent in the counsels of the enemy. During the winter of 1757-8, the County Courthouse was greatly damaged by a fire in one of the adjoining and auxiliary buildings. A new Courthouse was therefore built the next year, with a jail included under the same roof.
During this century Flatbush began to be a center of learning, a proper culmination of the movement being found in the seminary established here before its close. Gradually the government lan-
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
guage was making its way in the Dutch towns, and seven years before the first English pastor was called to the Reformed Church of New York, the people of Flatbush were engaging a teacher to instruct youth in English as well as Dutch. In the New York Post Boy for April 17. 1758. appeared an advertisement saying that there was wanted at Flatbush a person qualified to teach reading and writing in both Dutch and English. At the same time " such another person " was desired for the New Lots; but if that was too much to expect. and he could only teach reading and writing in one language (which was doubtless the Dutch), then he might still have good reason to hope for an engagement. Matching the superior advantages of a classical education provided by the enterprise of the denizens of Breuckelen, ten years before, we find that in 1773 Flatbush had caught up with its neighboring town, being a grammar school adver- tised kept by a Mr. John Copp, who undertook to teach Latin and Greek. To induce boarding-scholars nothing is said of treacle or gingerbread. but that they should have the advantage of being taught geography during the long winter evenings. with an indefinite mass of instruction left to the imagination, being vaguely described as "many other useful particulars that fre- HESSIAN HUT. quently occur to the teacher." Boarders would certainly get their money's worth at Mr. Copp's. The Dutch language, it seems, long held its own in the schooling of the village. One authority says it was not till 1776 that English was taught exclusively. In a charming picture of social life at Flatbush in 1776, given by its historian, Mrs. Vanderbilt, we are made to see how only exceptionally bright children got away from the exclusively Dutch education, even after English was taught side by side with it.
A hint has already been given of the troublous times in the church life of the Dutch towns during this 18th century. At the beginning of it the Rev. Bernardus Freeman was called from Schenectady to suc- ceed Domine Lupardus, who had died in 1701. The elders asked per- mission of Governor Cornbury to make this call. and thereby they mor- tally offended the Dutch congregation, who wanted no interference or recognition of the authority of the English Government. At an indignation meeting at Flatbush the elders were deposed and others elected. Then Freeman acted indiscreetly in being too anxious to come, and finally, after he had come in spite of all opposition, the faction against him called another minister. the Rev. Vincentius Antonides, who arrived directly from Holland in 1706. Now. indeed.
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
a formidable church fight was on, with two spiritual leaders to .head the charge on either side. An attempt was made to divide the duties of the ministers among the many congregations constituting the par- ish, one plan proposed more than once being that Domine Freeman should confine himself to New Utrecht and Bushwick, while An- tonides should have the three central towns and Jamaica, which had been added to the churches in 1702. But Freeman wanted to have Flatbush also, to which he was originally called, and Antonides would not consent to any alternative preaching with him there. It was not till 1714 that all was peace again, both Domines taking up their residence at Flatbush, and dividing preaching turns between them in all of the original five towns and Jamaica. Freeman died in 1741, and Antonides in 1744. After their demise there still were agi- tations and differences, but these grew out of the more abstract ques- tion as to dependence on or independence of the Church in Holland. It appears, however, that the practice of having two ministers, into which these Long Island towns fell almost accidentally, was found to be so useful, in view of the many districts to be served, that it was kept up till the Revolution. Thus we find Arondeus and van Sin- deren the pair that succeeded Freeman and Antonides; then Cur- tenius with van Sinderen, and when the former died after an incum- beney of only one year, Rev. John Caspar Rubel occupied the position with Domine van Sinderen, till the Revolution disturbed all the ar- rangements of the Dutch Church on Long Island. Rubel had had no very savory career in the German Reformed Church, where he fo- mented strife and division in the church of Philadelphia. He wrote but very indifferent Dutch, and his speaking of it could not have been the most correct or elegant. The evil in his make-up finally came out in cruelty to his wife and in drunkenness, for which he was deposed from the ministry in 1784. When the Revolution was approaching, the two ministers were divided in sentiment, van Sinderen being a strong advocate of independence, and Rubel a violent Tory. He re- mained at his post during the occupation of the British, and affiliated quite too freely in coarseness and drink with the Hessians.
Flatlands participated in the disturbances of church life, but oth- erwise not much falls to be noticed. In 1705 a new part of the town was divided into lots, and thus the Flatlands Neck district received regular settlement. In 1715 a militia company was formed in the town, of which Roelof Terhunen was made captain. On Flatlands plains the militia of the other towns were wont to gather for their drills. A record states that in 1755 there were twenty families who kept slaves; of these, one had four, two owned three, the remainder one or two each. The church was repaired and enlarged in 1762, or a hundred years after its erection, the quaint octagonal shape being now changed. Three of the sides in front were broken out, and only the rear left in the original form. the front portion being made
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
rectangular; the enlarged auditorium furnished one hundred and fifty " sittings." A sitting, or pew, or bench, went with a family's farm, descending by inheritance.
Of New Utrecht we need only say that for a while it seemed as if separate church government, with a pastor of its own, was about to be realized when Domine Freeman was installed there as pastor, but this was not to be for several decades thereafter. The negroes of New Utrecht showed some inclination to turbulence in 1706, so that, in ap- prehension of an ontbreak, a governor's proclamation gave the inhabi- tants the privilege " to fire upon them, kill and destroy them, if they can not otherwise be taken." Perhaps this was enough to keep them in order. During this period Denyse Denyse, living almost on the spot where Fort Hamilton is now, established a ferry across the Nar- rows to Staten Island. Hence this section of the town came to be known as Denyse's Ferry, and one milestone at least near the present church indicates a distance of two and a half miles from " Denyse's Ferry," and marks the general direction of the road toward it. Shad fishing was an important industry, the Cortelyous naturally engaging in it, living as they did near the Bay. In 1749 their seines caught nine thousand of the luscious fish.
In regard to Gravesend, it is mainly worth while to note the be- ginning of the history of a Dutch church in the town. That there should finally have sprung up such an institution in this intensely English settlement, and that. too, nearly a hundred years after the English conquest, is certainly instructive. It indicates the persist- ence of the Dutch character not only, but its power to impress itself upon a region where it prevails. When Domine Freeman, in the earlier years of the controversy, was naturally thrown back more upon his own vicinity at New Utrecht, he began preaching in this neighboring town. There soon grew up some sort of organization, for from 1706 on there are accounts preserved of payments to Mr. Freeman in the way of salary. After harmony was established be- tween Freeman and Antonides in 1714, both names appear in the records, and thus Gravesend became a part of the collegiate arrange- ment of the churches of Kings County. There is a dispute as to when the first church was erected. One authority claims the date to be 1720, because certain deeds in that year speak of a property bounded " southerly by ground whereon the meeting-house stands." But we must not forget that Gravesend was once the " Mecca of Quaker- ism," and hence the meeting-house may have been used by that per- suasion. Yet. if so, it might also have been turned over to the new- and now really first-church organization. At any rate. a second building was put up about 1763, which year was also signalized by another advance movement in church life. The collegiate partner- ship in even two preachers gave any individual church, with six or seven others, but little of a pastor's attention. So in 1763 Gravesend
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separated from the rest, and called the Rev. Martinus Schoonmaker. Ile was a native of Ulster County, N. Y., and had pursued his theo- logical studies in this country. He received his license to preach in the same year. But curiously enough he was also called as pastor of the Harlem Church. He could therefore have given but one Sun- day alternately to his two charges, as it took the greater portion of a day to get from Harlem to Gravesend in those times. After the Revolution Schoonmaker became pastor of all the Kings County churches, with one or two Queens County congregations thrown in.
The history of education in Gravesend began in a quite business- like manner by the formation of a company of nineteen persons. These purchased an acre of ground, upon which stood a house, and these were to be devoted forever to the purposes of public instruc- tion. The deed for this property is dated April 8, 1728. It was within the bounds of the original town-square. The house was like so many in the Dutch towns : one story frame, and it served as a school for sixty years.
Only brief glimpses of history come to us from the annals of Bush- wick in the days that preceded and presaged the Revolution. We see here, as elsewhere, a church go up in or about 1708, on the site where stands the pres- ent one, opposite Conselvea Street on Humboldt Avenue. Back of the property, still in the green sward, with one or two antiquated auxiliary HESSIAN HUT-SECTION. buildings, we perceive a narrow, crooked street. which a little further to the left soon resolves itself into the native earth and wagon tracks of the old road leading to Newtown Creek, which comes into view as we follow its bent course, and ascend a slight elevation not far away. The church was of the regulation kind: octagonal, pointed roof, belfry atop, rooster and weathervane above that. It was of frame instead of stone, as some others were. On the same lot stood the old schoolhouse, at the rear, and facing the lane described above. On the opposite side of the lane rose the town house, not a bit more imposing than the other buildings. In front of it were inflicted those penalties upon evildoers and lampoon-writers and bearers spoken of above. The thrifty townspeople rented it as a tavern, which was as handy for the civil authorities as for the ee- clesiastical, for the domines, as well as the elders and deacons, be- lieved in a " nip " or two to fortify them against the afternoon sermon, which was an exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism. The custom of preaching on the Catechism, though still required in the Dutch churches of Long Island, has now fallen into an " innocuous desue-
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
tude," and who knows but this is due to the absence of the fortify- ing " nip " of older days, which is no longer correct for church digni- taries. We can not refrain from adding an incident of colonial days, which will relieve somewhat the dull, prosaic dinginess of the present surroundings, if we can induce any reader to remember it when he visits the place where Bushwick village once was. In the early part of the century, under Cornbury and under Love- lace, there were continual requisitions of men made upon the towns for expeditions against Canada, though these attempts were uni- formly abortive. Now Peter Andriessen, of Bushwick, a fine young fellow of brains and means, was about to be married to the daughter of John Strycker, of Flatbush, but before the wedding-day arrived, he resolved to enlist, and in spite of tears and entreaties he went away to the North. As time passed his bride remained faith- ful, but months lengthened into years, and Andriessen did not return. Giving up hope at last that he was still alive, the bride- to-be languished and died. On the very day she was buried the faithful swain returned. He had been held all these years in captivity by a tribe of Indians, and, on being liberated, had hastened to claim his beloved. It were well if the mantle of Jacob Steendam, poet and early colonist of Bushwick. had fallen upon some later in- habitant, to celebrate in verse so thrilling a tale of real life.
And now the Revolution was close upon the land, and even the rural districts began to feel the stir of the storm. In 1770, the anni- versary of the repeal of the Stamp Act was celebrated in the towns. Whig and Tory began to take sides, and the division ran often be- tween family relations and even households. Plenty of Tories were found in Kings County, but there were not a few ready to do battle for independence. Early in 1775 a call came from the New York Committee of Correspondence for the Counties to elect delegates to a Provincial Convention to be held in New York City on April 20. On April 15 a committee of delegates, chosen by the towns of Kings, met at the Courthouse in Flatbush; all but Flatlands were represented, and it sent word that it " would not put a negative on the proceed- ings, but chose to remain neutral." Simon Boerum was made chair- man, and the committee chose as delegates to the Convention: Simon Boerum, Richard Stillwell. Theodorus Polhemus, Denys Denice, and Jeremiah Vanderbilt, to go over to New York on April 20, and in the Convention there to choose delegates to the Continental Congress, called by the Congress of September. 1774. to meet in May. 1775. Between that 15th and 20th of April, came the 19th and Lexing- ton, and on the 23d the news of Lexington had come to New York City. The Convention had adjourned on the 22d. Thereupon the Committee of Correspondence by circulars requested the counties to choose Deputies to a Provincial Congress to meet on May 24, 1775. At that Congress a Long Island man, Nathaniel Woodhull, of Mastic. Suf-
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
folk County, was elected President in August, 1775, and again in July, 1776. He was already Brigadier-General, commanding the militia of Suffolk and Queens Counties. But while a Long Island man from Suffolk was thus honored for his patriotic zeal, to which he was to fall a martyr shortly, Kings' deputies had to be admonished for their apathy and irregularity in attending Congress at all. Disloyalty to the colonies, or loyalty to the King, were quite too pronounced, and may have had something to do with Long Island being chosen for the point of attack en route to New York City. Flatlands had pleaded for neutrality at the County meeting in April. Flatbush announced the intention to maintain such at the meeting in May. The infamous plot to capture or poison Washington after he had come to New York in April, 1776, was hatched to a great extent at Flatbush. David Matthews, later the Mayor of New York during the British occupa- tion, who, as we saw in the previous volume, was arrested for com- plicity in that nefarious business, resided at Flatbush, next door to Colonel Axtell, who had bought the Melrose Hall property. Ninety-eight persons were charged with having had a part in the plot, and of these fifty-six lived in Kings and Queens counties. Going back and forth between the city and his country-seat at Flatbush, Matthews was the most convenient instrument of communication between the fomenters of the plot on Long Island and their accomplices in New York. The exposure of the conspiracy did not tend to decrease the ill-feelings cherished by the patriots toward the all too generally loyalist popula- tion of the Dutch towns. It is incomprehensible why these descend- ants of the men who fought for liberty during eighty years should have been so greatly out of sympathy with a kindred struggle to which their American brethren were largely stimulated by the exam- ple of the Dutch Republic. They had certainly never felt or exhibited any great affection for their English masters or fellow subjects. Yet now they were in many cases prepared to make common cause with them against independence. It must have been the inertia of con- servatism, superinduced by the easy prosperity of their bucolic life and pursuits.
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1.1. Landing of the British with Colonel Donops Corps of Chafeurs & Hefrom Grenadiers. with to Pieces of Cannon on the 221 of August.
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