USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 3
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Evidently, to judge from the catalogue of duties prescribed for the schoolmaster, the organization of the church preceded that of the school. As will be shown more particularly in the next chapter, the people of Brenckelen had been combined, together with some of the other neighboring towns, into one church organization with the peo-
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
ple of Flatbush in 1654, and the pastor called to that church served.all the rest. Those who did not care to go further inland for their relig- ious services went over to the church in the fort, where Domine Bogardus preached until 1647, and Domine Megapolensis held forth up to the time of the English conquest. But the worshipers had to depend much upon the weather, and in winter-time their attend- ance was necessarily very irregular. The matter was remedied somewhat in 1656, when, on the condition of their continuing their contribution toward the support of the Rev. John Theodorus Pol- hemus, the pastor of the combined congregations, who had hitherto preached only at Flatbush, the people of Breuckelen asked that he preach alternately at the two places. This was granted, and the Dom- ine was required to observe this arrangement whenever the weather permitted. The salary of Mr. Polhemus was fixed at 1,000 guilders ($400), of which Flatbush was to contribute 400 gld. ($160), and Breuckelen and Flat- lands each 300 gld. ($120). This seemed fair enough. but the share was not borne by Breuckelen with equanimity, because they did not get as much service out of Mr. Polhemus as they thought they ought to have, and even what - he did give was not much appreciated as to its quality. Di- BREUKELEN-STREET ALONG RIVER. rector Stuyvesant, however, insisted up- on the fulfillment of the contract, and the 300 guilders were assessed upon the various families of the town. Twenty resi- dents of Breuckelen and the Ferry were made to contribute 171 gld .; twelve at the Wallabout, 88 gld. ; and seven at Gowanus, 60 gld. This forced benevolence, however, was more easily put upon paper than collected in cash, and Mr. Polhemus had to suffer many depri- vations as the result of the disaffection of part of his flock. Yet they had nothing against him personally. They laid the blame upon that which was no fault of his-his extreme old age, and the difficulties of going about the country were such that often there was no time for him to do anything but offer a prayer. There was but one way out of the trouble: to obtain a minister of their own. Accordingly, in 1659, a petition was addressed to the Director and Council, and. as the result, there arrived at New Amsterdam in the next year, the
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
Rev. Henricus Selyns, who was assigned to serve as minister of the church at Breuckelen. We have already become familiar with this estimable clergyman, for in 1682 he became the pastor of the Re- formed Church of New York City, remaining in that capacity, and serving with great acceptance, until his death in 1701. His engage- ment for Breuckelen was to last four years, as he had promised his parents to return at the end of that period, so that we find him going back to Holland in July, 1664, just one month before the surrender of the colony to the English. There was at first no residence for their minister at Breuckelen, and therefore he remained at New Amster- dam, thus making his services dependent a good deal upon the state of the weather and the possibility of crossing the East River. But in 1662 this defect had been remedied, and'a decent dwelling reared by the parishioners, who now asked the Director to permit their pastor to change his residence and live among them. It does not appear that all of the salary of 600 gld. ($240) was paid by the Breuckelen church. The 300 gld. formerly paid (or supposed to be paid ) by them to Polhemus was ordered to be transferred to Selyns; perhaps the West India Company paid the rest. When Selyns came to reside at Breuckelen, Director Stuyvesant entered into the arrangement with him of which mention is made in the previous volume, whereby he agreed to pay part of his salary if he would come over every Sun- day evening and preach at the Bouwery to his family and servants, and those of his neighbors there.
The pastorate of Domine Henry Selyns began formally on Sep- tember 7, 1660. On that day a large number of people assembled not only from Breuckelen, but also from the surrounding towns. There was, as yet, no church building, but the barn of one of the farmers of the hamlet was arranged for the reception of the multitude, and a rude construction was made to serve as a pulpit. Domine Selyns entered the place accompanied by Martin Krigier, one of the Burgo- masters of New Amsterdam, and the Hon. Nicasius de Sille, member of the Colonial Council, a man of culture, and something of a poet. They read in the hearing of the people the open commission of the Director-General, on the strength of which Mr. Selyns had gone to America. Then the call of the consistory was read and publicly ac- cepted by the pastor, who thereupon preached his inaugural sermon. The effort must have produced great satisfaction, for, although Selyns was yet a very young man, he possessed decided talents, and mani- fested ability in and out of the pulpit of many sorts when, in later years, he was pastor in New York City. The church consisted, at this time, of twenty-four members and thirty-one families, counting in all one hundred and thirty-four persons. The consistory was made up of one elder and two deacons. Matters soon improved under the vig- orous and acceptable ministrations of the new pastor. Each year saw many added to the church, and the list in 1664, when Selyns left,
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was a long one. Families in goodly numbers at Bedford, Wallabout, Gowanus, Cripplebush, were at that time identified with the organi- zation. The audiences were much increased by people coming all the way from Gravesend, where there was no Dutch church, and also by attendants who walked or rode from Flatbush and Flatlands, who ought to have stayed at home to hear their own Domine Polhemus. But the young and talented Selyns drew not only the Long Island- ers; strangely enough the number of auditors from the surrounding towns was exceeded by those who crossed over from Manhattan; re- markably prophetic of conditions in the present century, when New York poured its thousands into Brooklyn to throng the audiences of a Beecher and a Talmage. And yet all this time there was nothing but a barn to preach in. Domine Selyns expected that during the winter after his arrival the church would be erected, but it was not done. Possibly the necessity of a parsonage for his residence among them seemed more imperative, and, as the people were not blessed with great wealth, this was all they could accomplish. In 1661, at the pastor's solicitation, a bell was presented to the organization by the West India Company, and it may be presumed that it was hung upon the consecrated barn, for the worthy factotum de Beauvoise to ring on Sundays, and also in case of any alarms that needed the assembly of the townspeople. The church was not built until 1666, as we shall see later, and thus when Domine Selyns left in 1664, this desideratum in village church-life was still in prospect. His leaving was a sad loss to the community. At first the people were held together at services conducted in the customary place, at which Schoolmaster de Beauvoise was put to a new use in the reading of a sermon from the published collection of some famous Dutch divine. But ere long the old arrangement of services shared or alternated with the other towns was reverted to, and for many a year to come the people had again to be satisfied with the ministrations of Domine Polhemus, of Flatbush.
We have thus far confined our attention to one section of the town of Breuckelen, that where the hamlet or neighborhood of that name was growing up. But other neighborhoods were forming nuclei of population for the great city that was eventually to embrace them all, and none of these showed so vigorous a growth as that known as " The Ferry." The name indicates its location. The center of colo- nial government at the Fort, the natural tendency of trade to concen- trate at the City of New Amsterdam-later to develop into the rapidly advancing City of New York-made it ever most desirable that com- munication should be maintained between Long Island and Man- hattan Island. There seemed to be but one spot for the establish- ment of such communication. Nature usually takes a hand in such determinations, and the point where the two islands came closest together and made the passage the shortest, could not but lead to its
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
selection for the earliest ferry. There is a fanciful account some- where of a ferry previous to the one at the foot of Fulton Street. It is represented as starting from the foot of JJoralemon Street, crossing the river where the tide swirls at its worst, and going up all the way to the head of the creek in Broad Street, where, on the corner of Exchange Place, there was a ferryhouse. It was certainly a very long way to get around. It might have been better to land passen- gers somewhat nearer the mouth of the creek and the foot of Broad Street, where most of the people lived. Even in 1693 it was an objec- tion to the building of a church in Garden Street ( now Exchange Place), because it was so far uptown, and away from the center of population. Why, then, a ferryhouse on the corner of that street? This ferry could not have preceded the other, whose date is no later than 1642, if Exchange Place is alleged as its terminus, because, as will be seen on our map of village lots in 1642, in the former volume (opposite page 26), the ditch in Broad Street is shown to be navigable no higher up than Beaver Street; for the rest it percolates through the Sheep's Pasture, not being deepened into a canal as far as Ex- change Place till several years later. Again, if the reader will turn to the " earliest map of the city," of the date 1642 (I. p. 27), he will notice a " road to the ferry " marked upon it, and also the ferry itself. apparently beyond the present Wall Street, and thus about where Fulton Ferry lands its passengers from Brooklyn to-day. And this is opposite the foot of Fulton Street in Brooklyn itself.
Here, then, was located the earliest ferry to Manhattan Island. The conditions at first were primitive enough. A rude, clumsy boat lay ready to convey passengers across the swift current. either by means of the laborious oar, or the lazy sail. The passenger of the human species might have to share the limited space with those of the animal kingdom, the beasts of the barn yard, not always too sav- ory, nor yet submissive with equanimity to a mode of progress and an element which did not enter into their usual experiences of life, so that often their unreasonable commotion upset the boat. If busi- ness was not brisk, and the good ferryman was improving his leisure by cultivating a field some distance off, the person desirous of cross- ing was fain to blow upon a horn hung conveniently within the notch of a tree. The privilege of ferrying was one secured only at the cost of a franchise-fee to be paid to the Director or Government of the Colony. It seemed to the City Council, after the incorporation of New Amsterdam, as if the granting of the privilege and the pay- ment therefor belonged logically to the municipality. But when the Burgomasters made this representation of the case to Director Stuyvesant, he was far from seeing it in that light, and kept the ferry under colonial jurisdiction. And hence we find the Council passing ordinances for the regulation of its hours, and fixing the rates for man and beast. In summer passengers might expect to be accommo-
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HISTORY OF THE GREATER NEW YORK.
dated with a passage between the hours of 5 a.m. and 8 p.m .; in. win- ter between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. The ferryman was not required to im- peril his own life or that of any too-impatient passenger by crossing over in a storm. ' There were then no storm signals of elaborate de- sign on the top of lofty office buildings on Broadway. Yet there was a sign which was to be taken note of by the ferryman. If the sails of the windmill upon the wall of the Fort were taken in, and the bare framework exposed to the wind, then he might know that there was a gale on too perilous for crossing; for a windmill might be in want of wind, but too much of it would make the grindstones go around at too mad a rate. The cost of ferriage was also carefully regulated. A wagon or cart with two horses had to pay all of two and a-half florins, equal to $1; truly a prohibit- ive fare. It was only twenty cents less for a one-horse cart. A human passenger, male or female, Indian or white, was impartially charged 30 Dutch cents, or 12 U. S. Other articles or animals were taxed in proportion, so that using the ferry was a serious business, not to be thought of unless the profits of the passage would justify the expense. It was worth while paying some- thing for the ferry license, and we can not wonder that an offer of 300 gld. ($120) per annum was made for it in 1655. Three years later it was leased again at the same fig- ure. The earliest ferryman was
BREUKELEN-VIEW FROM RAILWAY.
Cornelis Dircksen, who, in 1642, oc- cupied a house and garden near
the ferry landing on the Long Island side. He also put up an inn at the other terminus, near the present Peck Slip. William Thomassen bought his establishment on Long Island and the ferry license for 2,300 gld. ($920), in 1643, and the next name on the list is that of William Jansen. The offer of 300 gld. per annum was made by Egbert van Borsum, who retained possession of the license until his death in 1663, when his widow and his son Hermanus kept up the business. By this time buildings of some pretentiousness graced the shore at " The Ferry." Van Borsum had erected a ferryhouse, which at that time meant also a sort of hotel or tavern, as long hours of travel separated the farmers from their homes when they arrived at the ferry, and they might often enough need to be entertained over night before they could cross the fickle current. History makes record
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of a famous banquet prepared at this tavern by the mistress of the house, Mrs. van Borsum, when covers were laid for fourteen persons at the snig little figure of 310 gld. ($124). This dwelling gathered about it others of those who found it profitable to cultivate fields so near the means of communication with the ever-drawing markets of New Amsterdam. A much-traveled road, too, became that to the ferry from the settlements in the interior. From Jamaica and Flat- lands and Flatbush the road wound through the hamlet at Brencke- len; even from Gowanus the road preferred to follow the lower levels till it struck the highway from Jamaica and Flatbush, east of Breuckelen, and then passing beyond this settlement, ran into the open country again, and over the brow of the hill at Sands Street, curved along its side so as to make the descent easier to the landing at the river's edge, which was much nearer to Front Street than it is to-day. In the course of time we shall find that the attractions of the ferry occasioned the realization of the conditions that made pos- sible the growth of a city, as the thickest population congregated in that vicinity.
But the vicinity of the Wallabout also contributed its rill toward the immense flow of human existence that throbbed here in later days. Wallabout must be resolved into earlier forms of spelling to reveal its real meaning. It was the Waalen Boght at first : the bend, or bight, or bay of the Walloons; that is, where the Walloons, or people from the southern or French Provinces of Belgium, did most congregate. How early did they come to settle these parts? From a very pretty story about the birth of a girl baby on June 6 (or 9), 1625, the daugh- ter of George (Joris ) Jansen de Rappallo, it would look as if the Wal- loons had got on Long Island very early indeed. This was elever years before Director Van Twiller made his famous purchases of real estate at Flatlands, and that is the earliest case of such transactions on record. Aside from the above-mentioned tale, there are no solid records in black and white to show that Joris Rapalje owned any property at the Wallabout until the year 1637. Meantime there are also on record sundry sworn depositions of his wife, Catalina Trico, before Governor Dongan, in 1685, which tell a straight story enough. From these it appears that she and her husband came over in the New Netherland with that large exodus of Walloons in 1623, described in our former volume. Some of the Walloons were left on Staten Island and some on Manhattan, but none on Long Island, so far as she tells of it. It seems that she and her husband went up to Albany with the remainder of the Walloons, lived there for a few years, and not till the year 1626 did they come down to Manhattan. If their daughter Sarah was born in 1625, she must have first seen the light at Albany or Fort Orange, where Jean Vigne also had been born eleven years be- fore. Although George Rapalje purchased the land at the Wall- about in 1637, he did not reside there till much later. On the map
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of 1642 (Vol. I .. page 26), he is put down as owning a house-lot. not far from John Bout, facing on the present Bridge Street, Manhattan, and touching the south wall of the Fort at the rear. In the records of New Amsterdam he figures as a tavernkeeper, an occupation pursued later also by Jean Vigne, and which was a perfectly respectable busi- ness in those days. Antiquarian research seems to have ascertained the fact that not till 1650, or until the last of his numerous progeny had been born, did he leave Manhattan Island and go to dwell on his land at the Walloon Bay. Here, then, also came to dwell, or had already long dwelt, his daughter Sarah, who was the wife first of Hans Hansen Bergen, and later of Teunis Gysbertsen Bogaert. Ra- palje had bought his farm of two Indian chiefs rejoicing in the names of Kakapeteyno and Pewichaas, and his land is best described as cov- ering the ground where now stands the U. S. Marine Hospital, ex- tending between Nostrand and Grand avennes. Its woodland was upon the hills where Fort Greene is now, and some low meadow land is the level space upon which is laid out the unadorned City Park. The numerous Rapalyes, Rapaljes, Rapelyes, Rappelyeas (and various other spellings of the same), scattered over Newtown and various parts of Kings County, all trace their descent from him and his sons. A creek ran along a part of his property, and emptied into the Wal- loon Bay, called the Rennagaconck, and the plantation sometimes went by that name. His son-in-law, Bergen, was made the owner by patent from the West India Company of a tract of land between the Rennagaconck and what is now Division Avenue, which used to divide Brooklyn and Williamsburgh. Numerous other neighbors settled around Rapalje, and in 1660 they combined in a petition to Director Stuyvesant, asking the privilege of forming a village on the banks of the East River, which should be in view of New Amsterdam. This may have been on the slope of the hill where Clymer, Taylor, Ross, and Rodney streets run up from the Wallabont Canal to Wythe and Bedford avenues. Or, indeed, from the very edge of the river, the view would have been directly upon the city then, as it is now from that neighborhood. Again, within one year of the English conquest, in 1663, another group of landowners, who wished to improve their property back of the Wallabout, which there lay at some distance from their homes in Breuckelen, petitioned the Colonial Council to be al- lowed to make a " concentration " at another point in the vicinity of the bay for mutual protection. This would then constitute a second village or hamlet in the same region. Stuyvesant, who was in the habit of forming villages by proclamation, whether people were will- ing or not, and who had thus made Harlem and Bushwick villages by command, was too glad to grant petitions of this kind. This tendency toward " concentration," or aggregation, was certainly a useful one, for, as Prime remarks in his Ilistory of Long Island, the Dutch were too apt to go singly, every man acting for himself; " each looked out
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for a tract of land according to his taste, and, having secured a grant for as much as he consid- ered a reasonable bowery, or farm. he set himself down for its improvement, leaving others to act for themselves as he had done."
In still another direction must we look for a starting point of the City of Brooklyn. At the south was formed the settlement of Gowanus. What have we in this name? It reminds us of McGowan, or Gowan, and seems an Irish patronymie done into Latin. But on early maps we find it spelled Cujanes, or Gui- janes, and so perhaps we must relegate it after all to the realms of Indian lore. In this region a formidable creek extended far into the island, reaching nearly to the hamlet of Breuckelen, some of whose farms or village lots may have run quite down to its head. Gowanus Creek fell into Gowanus Bay. whose waters laved a considerable por- tion of what is now South Brooklyn, skirting the Erie Ba- sin northward. and sweeping around to nearly Fortieth Street on the south. And all that part of the township back from the bay may be considered as con- stituting the section called Go- wanus. When Director Van Twiller and Andrew Hudde, of his Council, had made the pur- chase of Flatlands spoken of more than once in the first vol- ume, and in the present chapter. another of his Council, Jacques Bentyn. associating a friend with him in the undertaking. followed his chief's laudable ex- ample by purchasing, in the same year, 1636, a tract of land
3.955
....
BREUKELEN'S NAMESAKE OF THE PRESENT DAY- BROOKLYN IN AMERICA.
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of 930 acres from the Indians. This plantation would be. des- ignated now as extending from Twenty-seventh Street all the way to the New Utrecht line or somewhere beyond Fif- tieth Street. Not till five or six years later, however, was purchase followed by occupation, and did the erection of a farm- house mark the beginning of actual settlement. Thereafter occu- pants of this section of the township multiplied rapidly. Cornelis Lambertsen Cool (whose descendants have changed the spelling, but retain the sound of the Dutch name by writing it Cole), was granted a patent by Director Kieft at " Gouwanes," for land extending from the vicinity of Gowanus Creek to a line running up from the middle of Gowanus Bay. Beyond the Cole plantation were lands owned and long occupied by the Van Pelt family, who later gave up these parts, and retired further south into New Utrecht. Such names as Bergen, van Dyck, and Bennett, also appear upon the maps of early grants, and among the pioneers of this section. In the more northern portion, on the right or west bank of Gowanus Creek, appear settlers by the names of van Dyck, de Forrest, and Brouwer. The patent granted to Jan Evertsen Bout, one of the founders of, Breuckelen, seems to have covered land in this neighborhood, for upon it was lo- cated the Brouwer's Mill, which figured so prominently in the excit- ing scenes of the battle of Long Island. In 1661 the mill was owned by Adam Brouwer and Isaac de Forrest, but Brouwer bought out the latter's interest. The head of Gowanus Creek formed a sort of bay or pond with a narrow outlet. This was easily obstructed by a dam, with sluice gates, which kept the waters inside of the pond when the tide receded. A mill was built upon the side of the dam, and an un- dershot wheel placed in the way of the water, as it was allowed to follow the course of that which had gone before at the ebb. This mill was the first of many in this vicinity, as will be noticed later. We are close upon Red Hook as we enter this region of settlement, and Red Hook deserves notice because it figures prominently in Revolu- tionary history, and is now the scene of one of the noblest of Brook- lyn's enterprises, the Atlantic Basin. In 1638, ex-Director Van Twiller, not content with exploiting the West India Company farm at Greenwich, and the Barents (Ward and Randall's) Islands, as well as Nutten, or Governor's Island in the East River, looked with a long- ing eye to the land precisely opposite the latter, and obtained per- mission from Director Kieft to occupy it. In 1652 the West India Company resumed control of it; but in 1657 Stuyvesant gave a patent for the land here to the town of Breuckelen.
The various portions of the old town of Breuckelen, which later were comprised in the city as first incorporated, have thus come grad- ually within the scope of this history up to the period when the great change came over all this region which made New Netherland New York, and placed the prevalent Dutch population under the sway of
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