USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 5
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More than once have we caught a glimpse of the church arrange- ment provided for the Flatlands people. The date of church organi- zation, February 9, 1654, is exactly identical with that of Flatbush, for the two churches were to form one society. In the building of the church in the neighboring town the Flatlanders were ordered to bear a part by contributing timber, and later their contribution in money was counted at 120 guilders ($48). During nine years Mr. Polhemus, when he came to Flatlands, was fain to preach in the open air, in barns, or private houses. But in 1662 the people asked leave of the Director to build a church of their own. Permission was readily
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granted, and in 1663 they had the satisfaction of holding worship in a building which their own industry and means had reared. It was an odd construction; the form was octagonal, with roof rising to a point surmonnted by a belfry. "The pulpit of the original church," writes a pastor of the present century, " was of the ' wineglass ' style, had a sounding board, and was furnished with a bench. The hearers' seats were not luxurious-they were benches." A miniature model of the queer little edifice is to be found at the parsonage to-day. It was sub- stantial enongh, for it stood and was in use until 1794. As to school matters in Flatlands, they must be left to conjecture for the period preceding the English conquest, no records proving the existence of a school until 1675; but as these indicate a condition of advanced vigor, it must have been in existence for several years.
The settlement of New Utrecht began on the shores of Gravesend Bay at a place which, in the Indian tongue, bore the name of Nayack, a designation since transferred to a beautifully situated village far up the Hudson River. Shortly before the Indian wars Director Kieft bought from Chief Penhawitz, of the Canarsees, a tract of land reaching all the way from Coney Island to Gowanus, in the name of the West India Company. The early grants within New Utrecht ter- ritory were made from the lands thus acquired. But the Nyack, or Nayack tribe of Indians occupied the portion of the shore near Fort Hamilton and the Narrows, and when the actual settlers came they repeated the ceremony of purchase in order to make assurance doubly sure. This second purchaser was none other than one of the Direc- tors of the West India Company, a member of the Chamber of Am- sterdam (see page 11, Vol. I.). He was a resident of the City of Utrecht, however, and a Schepen of that ancient episcopal town-the Honorable Cornelis van Werckhoven, evidently a man of substance, for the shareholders of the Amsterdam Chamber had to be the heav- iest investors in the stock of the company. Not content to leave the acquirement of this property to agents, he came to New Amsterdam in person, with his wife and children, and in November, 1652, met members of the tribe of the Nyacks, and bought from them the prop- erty at the month of the Hudson. History has kept an account of the price paid: two pairs of shoes, six pairs of stockings, six shirts, six combs, six knives, two pairs of scissors, and six adzes. One wonders how far the articles of apparel would go around to clothe the tribe, and whether the combs were not made to serve rather as musical in- struments than to improve the toilet of the savages. Proceeding at once to improve his land, van Werckhoven built a farmhouse upon it, a part of which is still standing on the very site. We can imagine what a delightful prospect must have opened to him from its windows, the bold heights of the Narrows (called Hamel's Hoofden, or Heads, at that time) on his right, the broad Lower Bay, widening out beyond the cove, or bay of Gravesend, and the heaving
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ocean beyond them both, carrying the vision uninterruptedly to the far distant horizon. It speaks well for a man's taste that he should select such a site. Upon his plantation also he built a mill, and fur- ther made plans to be later put into execution for an extensive colony. In fact, everything seemed to have been done upon the basis of a Patroonship, such as van Rensselaer founded at Albany. Having made these generons arrangements he departed for Holland to ob- tain the requisite number of colonists, leaving affairs upon the plan- tation in charge of Jacques Corteljan (whence the familiar name of Cortelyou), who was a man of education, the teacher of his children, and whose name appears upon hundreds of legal papers in Kings County as surveyor. Van Werekhoven, unfortunately, died soon after his return to Holland. This was in 1656, and Cortelyon was thus prevented from going on with the work planned by his employer, as funds for the same were not forthcoming. Yet it seemed a pity to let go to waste so fine a property in so attractive a situation. A man with the resources of Cortelyon soon fook effective measures to com- plete the original project. He induced a number of persons to join him in an application to the Colonial Goverment for grants of small lots, not too much for their limited means, yet which, if properly im- proved by their separate industry, would, in the aggregate, produce results of great benefit to the colony, and accrue an important revenue to the Company. The petition was readily granted, and twenty-one patents were made ont for lots of fifty acres each. Nineteen of these were taken by as many individuals, and two of them reserved for the benefit of the poor. Jacques Cortelyou was, of course, one of these earliest patentees. Another one was Nicasius de Sille, member of the Colonial Council, and sometime secretary, a man of fine parts, who figures constantly in the pages of the history of New Amsterdam and the Long Island towns. The patents were dated January 16, 1657, and in this same year de Sille built the house which stood until 1850, and was the scene of the death of General Woodhull in 1776. (See ent on page 83. Vol. I.) A tile from the roof is still preserved by one of the New Utrecht families, and graced the exhibition of colonial antiquities at the Chicago Fair in 1893.
Thus, in a most systematic and aggressive manner, the township of New Utrecht was invaded by a large and sturdy company of colonists. That its name should be this was a foregone conclusion, and while other mementos of that province have departed from the nomencla- ture of the county, it is fortunate that the most unmistakable one of all has clung to it until our own time. As to the names of the earliest families, de Sille has no representatives here: but Cortelyou is a fa- miliar cognomen. as is also that of van Brunt. Termes and van Dyckes, while plentiful elsewhere, are not now found in this vicinity: while the name of van Pelt, grown familiar of late to the traveling public because attached to a railway station in the town, represents
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none of these earliest settlers, but rather those who drifted across the boundary line from Gowanus.
It is somewhat surprising that with so vigorous and even populous a beginning, it was not till three years later that town government was initiated in New Utrecht. The first Schepens were John Thom- assen van Dycke. Rutger Joosten van Brunt, and Jacob Hellakars (or Helligers). It was the same year that all the five Dutch towns were placed under the care of one Schout, Adriaen Hegeman being appointed to that office for New Utrecht, as for the others, in 1661. The town was ordered to prepare for war in time of peace. A strong palisade was erected, and the forest cleared within the radius of a gunshot, so that the savages might spring no surprises upon the col- onists. The enemy thus prepared for did not trouble the people, but they bore more than their share of the hostilities perpetrated by the Puritan adventurer John Scott, of whose exploit.we shall speak later. Of the church, not much is to be said before the English conquest, for no organization of the people took place until 1677. The worshipers here had to content themselves with a wholesome walk, or a rough ride to Flatbush, or Flatlands, or Breukelen.
In 1661 was effected the combination of the " Five Dutch Towns " of Kings County into a sort of general government, in which, as we saw, one Schout was made to serve for all. Bushwick at the north was added to the group at the same time with New Utrecht, and hence our next account must be of that somewhat distant locality. It is worthy of note also that this town became a part of the municipality of Brook- lyn nearly forty years before any of those we have been describing in this chapter. Like some of these, its early history presents us with a designation other than that which has made it familiar to us. This was New Arnhem, in honor of the capital of Gelderland province, Holland, from which province also hailed one of Breuckelen's fathers, Huyck Aertsen van (i.c., of) Rossum, as we stated. But the descrip- tive title here, as in other places, was more potent than fond remem- brances of the Fatherland, especially when perhaps only one of the settlers came from the locality thus honored. Boschwyk, " retreat in the forest," had reference to conditions apparent to the eye, and was picturesque enough in itself to deserve perpetuation. Hence it be- came the name also adopted under the English régime, and in the form of Bushwick has not yet died out among us.
Bushwick was the latest of the towns to be settled, as well as or- ganized. Patents for lands in this vicinity had been granted to Abra- ham Rycker as early as 1638. In 1643 a patentee thus favored was George Baxter, Kieft's English Secretary to the Council. But none of these earlier landholders ever actually occupied the property. Baxter was identified with the town of Gravesend, as we shall see. Some other transactions in the way of patents and transfers thereof bring us face to face with another name of general interest. A tract
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of land adjoining Newtown Creek, and extending to some distance on either side of Meeker Avenue, which crosses the creek by means of Penny Bridge, had been patented to one Adam Mott in 1646 After one or two later transfers, it was conveyed in 1653, " with the house- ing thereupon," to Jacob Steendam, a resident of New Amsterdam, having a house and lot on Pearl Street, then called the Strand, and ex- tending but for one block from the present State Street to Whitehall. Jacob Steendam was the earliest poet of New Netherland, precursor of Halleck, and Willis, and Bryant. One of Brooklyn's distinguished citizens and one time mayor, the Hon. Henry C. Murphy, gives him an honored place in his " Anthology of New Netherland," and furnishes speci- mens of the flights of his muse. In 1649 Steendam had published at Amsterdam a collection of pieces under the title of " Distelvink," or " Song-finch." He emigrated to the new world, and must have had some superfluous money, for he invested in real estate in various parts of the colony. Besides his Pearl Street property, he owned a house and lot on Broadway. In 1652 he purchased a farm in Flatlands, and he also had one at Maspeth. before he bought the land on this side of Newtown Creek. It may not be a gracious reflection, but it is possible that his muse was now stimulated to renewed exertions with the expectation of enhancing the value of these varied possessions. At any rate, in 1659 we find him aiding the representations of the advantages of settling in New Netherland made by others in prose, by a poem WAMPUM BELT. entitled "Complaint of New Amsterdam to her Mother," which was intended to awaken the ancient city to the fact that a little more interest in her daughter, and a little more invest- ment of capital, would secure very favorable results. In the same line of effort was the poem Steendam published, in 1661, on " The Praise of New Netherland." It is somewhat doubtful whether Bush- wick may claim the honor of the poet's residence within her borders. In the year 1663 he had gone back to Holland, and one Jacob Stryker was authorized to act as his attorney. But he evidently did not pay much attention to this property, for in 1667 it was declared forfeited by reason of neglect on his own part and on that of his representative for several years previous.
In 1660 actual settlement of the town commenced, and the several steps in the movement are carefully preserved in the records of the town. From this it appears that the earliest settlers were mainly
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French people, who had fled from the persecutions in France which foreshadowed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Find- ing refuge in Holland, they next looked for a permanent home in the Republie's colony in America. On February 16, 1660, fourteen of these interesting and valuable immigrants appeared before Director Stuyvesant. They had not been long enough in Holland to have ac- quired the language, and hence they had with them as interpreter one Peter Jansen De Witt. They asked to be assigned a town plot in Bushwick, a spot which they had already visited and selected as a desirable home. Stuyvesant received them graciously and appointed the 19th for going over there in person to comply with their request. Hisown wife wasa Bayard, and therefore of French descent, her father being a clergyman who had sought shelter in the Dutch Republic; hence he naturally felt drawn to these petitioners, and a little trouble was by no means too much for him. On the day appointed the Di- rector came over with Nicasius de Sille, then Schout Fiscal of the Col- ony, Secretary van Ruyven, and our friend Jacques Cortelyou. the ever skillful and reliable surveyor. Twenty-two house lots were laid out, and on March 7, the first house having been completed, William Traphagen and Court Mourissen took up their residence in it. On the 14th. Director Stuyvesant came once more to visit the ground, and at the request of the people, in whom he mani- fested such kindly concern, he gave the village or town its name of Boschwyk, or Bushwick. By the next year twenty-five houses had al- ready been erected, and the village badé fair to prosper. In accordance with the prevailing custom, town government had been instituted. and from six names placed in nomination before the Director by the votes of the community, he selected three Schepens, Peter Jansen De Witt, their interpreter, whose services in the capacity of Schepen were obviously needed among his French neighbors, Jean Tilje, and Jean Comlite, which are evidently Dutch attempts at reproducing French names. It has been already stated that the town was joined with the four other Dutch towns under the care of the Schout Adriaen Hegeman. In 1662 Hegeman was succeeded by Nicasius de Sille, of New Utrecht. The combination of the five towns was also signalized by a division in the functions of the Schout, the clerical portion being now assigned to a secretary of the district. Ecclesiastical government kept pace with the civil, and worshipers from the extreme north in Bushwick had to attend church equally with those from the ex- treme south in New Utrecht, at Flatbush, or Flatlands, or Breuckelen. Even when churches were organized and buildings erected, the or- ganization was a collegiate one for all the towns, and one pastor continued to serve all for many a decade to come. The annals of school life are fortunately more satisfactory here than in some of the other towns. The town had not been in existence a year when in December, 1662, the Schepens represented to the Colonial Council
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that they had supplied a great want felt in their midst by the ap- pointment of a competent person to teach school. They gave his name as Boudewyn (i.e., Baldwin ) Manout. This has a French look, and very likely a Walloon or Huguenot would best serve the purposes of an instructor among these French families. Yet he must know Dutch too, and this was secured by the fact that he had been educated in Holland. In fact, he was declared to hail from Krimpen-on-the- Lek, a considerable village directly west of Rotterdam, situated on the Lek River, a tributary of the Meuse, or arm of the Rhine; another village of the same name being situated a little nearer Rotterdam on the Yssel river, another branch of the Rhine, or tributary of the Meuse. Like Carel de Beauvoise (also a Hugnenot or Walloon), of Breuckelen, other duties beside teaching fell to him, such as clerk to the Court or Board of Schepens, and reader of sermons. Ilis sti- pend, however, was double that of De Beauvoise, or 400 gld. ($160); but his perquisites may not have been so many. In addition he re- ceived dwelling and firewood free. Doubtless it was at his own house that he taught the children, and the old schoolhouse on the corner of Bushwick Avenue and North Second Street was not built till some years later.
We have left the consideration of Gravesend's early annals to the last because the other towns not only bore characteristics so entirely similar, but also because, for that reason, they were together made to constitute one district, known as the " Five Dutch Towns." Graves- end was a town quite sui generis, and therefore perhaps also kept . somewhat distinct politically. Yet in chronolgical order it should take precedence of all the others, even of Breuckelen. Those who have studied the movements of Hudson and his crew between Sep- tember 2, 1609, when he anchored inside of Sandy Hook, and Sep- tember 12, when he began his ascent of the Hudson River, from the point of view of the patriotic Gravesender, find that on one of the boat excursions a landing was made on Coney Island. and thus within the bounds of this town the foot of the white man first trod the soil of New Netherland. Some bolder spirits would improve on that, and discover a landing of Verrazamo, with the flag of France, in 1524. Apart from that, however, Gravesend was before the other Kings County towns in point of settlement and government.
Individual and unorganized settlement was first. The earliest of all the patentees, Antonie Jansen de Salee, is declared on good an- thority to have been the brother of George (or Joris) Jansen de Rapallo (or Rapalje). of the Wallabout, and to illustrate the con- fusion that is apt to confound the genealogical inquirer. it is stated that the descendants of Antonio retained the use of Jansen (later Johnson) as a patronymic, while those of George fixed on Rapalje. Antonie was a man of mark. of immense stature and enormous strength, and had come over to New Netherland in 1623. In 1639 he
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was residing on Manhattan Island, and applied for a patent of land on Long Island. In the State archives at Albany the record looks as if he received it then; but if so, a repetition of it was for some reason made four years later, in 1643, and it does not appear that Jansen undertook to go over to reside on the land till then. The grant was for 100 morgen, or 200 acres, and the exact spot was the vicinity of the present Unionville, near Gravesend Bay. He soon had a neighbor to the west of him in Robert Pennoyer, who may have been a French- man also, to judge from his name, and from the express stipulation that he must swear allegiance to the Dutch Republic. Still another settler invaded the solitude of Coney Island. This was Guisbert (if he were French) or Gysbert (if Dutch) Op Dyck, which was unmis- takably Dutch. Guisbert Island received its name from him, and it was a part of the island of Conies (or Conynen, i.e., Rabbits).
Meanwhile, more nearly at the center of the township, had begun a remarkable settlement of a more extended and systematic kind, It was here that Lady Deborah Moody came to found a home for her- self, where she would finally be rid of civil or ecclesiastical persecu- tion. She had hoped to find relief from this in New England, and took up her abode at Salem in 1640, where she joined the Independent Church. Conceiving some notions about infant baptism that were not down on the program of that church, she was carefully admon- ished and finally excommunicated. As she had not come to America for this sort of experience, she threw up her plantation of five hun- dred acres near Salem, and a farm near Lynne, for which she had paid £1.100, and set off in quest of a land of real freedom. Director Kieft. perhaps not a very religious man, was very tolerant of all faiths, as Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, and Mr. John Throgmorton, and Rev. Francis Doughty, all driven out of New England for their Anabaptist heresies, had already found. Hence. Lady Moody and her son, Sir Henry, with several of her attached followers, or dependants, came to New Amsterdam early in the year 1643. The next thing in order was a set- tlement, and the region now known as Gravesend was selected for the new undertaking. The name is uncertain of origin. It may be English, it may be Dutch. England has her Gravesend, and Lady Moody and all her people were English; but none of them hailed from Gravesend, although they may have sailed thence; but that was now so long ago that therein seems to lie no special reason for the nomen- clature. There was a Dutch village called 's Gravezande (the Count's Beach), lying near the coast of Holland on the North Sea, and there was sand and beach enough in the American Gravesend to make the application of that name appropriate. But the settle- ment was, perhaps, too entirely English to warrant the giving of a Dutch title. Nevertheless, it was a Dutch instrument which had to convey the grant, and it is more than likely that the Director would insist on a Dutch name, especially when one so apt conkdl be utilized.
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Lady Moody headed the list of the patentees, and some of the others deserve mention because their descendants still carry the names to this day. Those appearing on the instrument were: " Lady Deborah Moody, Sir Henry Moody, John Tilton, Sergeant James Hubbard. Lieutenant George Baxter." Among the " associates " were Samuel Holmes, John Lake, Nicholas and Richard Stillwell, a Spicer, a Bown. a Delaval, a Bridges, and many others, all unquestionably English. The land secured was laid out in a very systematic manner. " Se- lecting a site near the center of the town," writes the Rev. A. P. Stockwell, a careful annalist of the place, " they measured off a square containing abont sixteen acres, and opened a street around it. This square they afterward divided into four equal squares by running two streets at right angles through the center. The whole was then surrounded by a palisade fence for protection against hostile Indians and against wolves." Further, each of the four smaller squares was again divided into equal sections for house lots, leav- ing a space in the interior for the herding of cattle. About forty sections were thus marked off. upon which they were, upon pain of for- feit. to build homes within six months. This enabled them to live in security to- gether. As in New Utrecht. the outside land was di- vided into lots or farms of ANIMALS OF NEW NETHERLAND. fifty acres each for the sev- eral planters, and an ingenious plan was adopted, whereby these more exposed portions could be enltivated in comparative safety. They were " laid out in triangular form, the apex being at the town square. and the boundary lines diverging therefrom like the radii of a circle, thus enabling every man to go from his home within the village de- fense to his farm with least trouble and exposure to himself." Those of us who remember certain transactions anent the ballot boxes in Gravesend some years ago, readily perceive where the triangular scheme then adopted to bring all the voting districts under one roof and one man's easy control, was obtained from.
It was to be expected that people who set about colonizing in such an orderly way would not be left long without the usual town gov- ernment. At first they formed a sort of home government for them- selves, with Lady Moody tacitly regarded as their chief magistrate. In 1645 Kieft gave them a town-patent, wherein were stipulated " freedom of worship without magisterial or ministerial interference." Hereby they were also permitted to nominate " justices in the town
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court," from whom the Director was to make appointments. This was exactly equivalent to the office of Schepens in the Dutch towns, and in 1646 the three thus invested with magisterial authority were George Baxter, Edward Brown, and William Wilkins. As an evi- dence that the town was a separate entity from its Dutch neighbors, it was given a Schout of its own, James Hubbard being the first in- cumbent, and John Tilton was made secretary of town clerk, at a salary of one guilder (forty cents) for each inhabitant. Another marked distinction was that the town records (still preserved from 1645 down) were kept in English. Yet some of these colonists took care to learn the Dutch language, and George Baxter was employed by Kieft as English secretary to the Colonial Council, in order to translate into English the communications and orders that grew out of the controversies with the aggressive New Englanders. This ar- rangement, however, did not snit Stuyvesant, and he sneered at the idea that the Englishman, Baxter, should be called upon to prepare papers to express the dissatisfaction of the citizens with his arbitrary rule. At one time Baxter and Hubbard showed a culpable forgetful- ness of the favors received from their Dutch friends, for in 1655 they and one James Grover proclaimed Cromwell Lord Protector, and sought to withdraw their town from allegiance to the Dutch flag. They of course failed in the treasonable attempt, and they were cast into prison by Director Stuyvesant ; but at Lady Moody's intervention, they were pardoned and liberated. After that, to pacify these tur- bulent spirits, Stuyvesant left the appointment of Schepens practi- cally in her hands. A bowery, or farm, of sixty acres had been given her by special grant, and here she died, beloved and esteemed to the end, in the year 1659. Sir Henry, her son, sold his interest in the town after her death, and went to Virginia, where he resided till his death. There is preserved a list of books in a library which he possessed while still a resident of Gravesend which shows that he was a man of wide reading, in several languages.
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