USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 7
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EJ Meeker.
ARVERNE, ROCKAWAY-A CHOICE LONG ISLAND SPOT WITHIN CITY BOUNDS.
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render it was stipulated that only the troops under Nicolls should bear a part, and that the New England and Long Island volunteers should be kept at the Ferry on the further side of the river. He was apprehensive that these Yankees had itching palms for some of the good things on Manhattan Island, to secure which they had been striving for a generation, and the people were also inspired with a wholesome suspicion of them, the reason given for the stipulation be- ing that " the citizens dreaded most being plundered by them."
On August 29, 1664, therefore, New Amsterdam and the compo- nent towns of the later Brooklyn, and all of New Netherland, became the property of the Duke of York, and subject to the English flag. Accordingly, official notice was given of that fact on the part of the retiring Colonial Government. Secretary van Ruyven was directed to address a note, dated that very day, to the clerks or secretaries of the various townships from Bushwick to Gravesend, on the receipt of which they were officially discharged from their oaths of allegiance to the Dutch West India Company and the States-General of the Re- public. The date is found to be September 8, because England oc- cupied the position in the 17th century that Russia does in the 19th, and was several days behind the scientific calendar adopted by the Dutch in 1584. The note is interesting reading, announcing a mo- mentous occurrence in dispassionate language, and giving the de- tails of the transaction and the change of names with effective sim- plicity :
"It has occurred that New Netherland has been surrendered to the English, and Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of the West India Company, has marched out of the Fort with his men along the Bever's Padt (Beaver Street) to the Dutch ships which lay there at the time, and Governor Richard Nicolls, in the name of the King of England, ordered a corporal's guard to take possession of the Fort. Afterward the Governor, with two companies of men, marched into the Fort, accompanied by the Burgomasters of the city, who in- ducted the Governor, and gave him a welcome reception. Governor Nicolls has changed the name of the City of New Amsterdam, and called the same New York, and the Fort, Fort James."
On the receipt of this note the five Dutch towns ceased to be Dutch and became as English as the sixth, Gravesend. It was well that the magistrates and clerks should be advised of the change of names, that legal instruments might duly recognize the altered conditions. Brodhead. a descendant of the English, in his history of the State, comments on the conquest thus: "The flag of England was at length triumphantly displayed, where for half a century that of Holland had rightfully waved, and from Virginia to Canada the King of Great Britain was acknowledged as sovereign. Viewed in all its aspects, the event which gave to the whole of that country a unity in allegiance, and to which a misgoverned people complacently
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submitted, was as inevitable as it was momentous. But whatever may have been its ultimate consequence, this treacherous and violent seizure of the territory and possessions of an unsuspecting ally was no less a breach of private justice than of public faith. It may. in- deed, be affirmed that among all the acts of selfish perfidy which royal ingratitude conceived and executed, there have been few more char- acteristic and none more base."
CHAPTER III.
UNDER ENGLISH RULE.
HE arrival of the English was marked by the application of new names to all their surroundings. Not only did New Amsterdam become New York, a perfectly inept conjunc- tion in name of municipalities utterly distinct in charac- ter; as was Harlem fruitlessly dubbed Lancaster. But Long Island and Staten Island were wiped out officially, and became Yorkshire. In imitation of the original Yorkshire, the one in America was di- vided into three Ridings (i.e., Thrithings, or third parts). The pres- ent Suffolk County became the East Riding; the present Kings Coun- ty, with Newtown and Staten Island, and perhaps also a' part of West- chester, became the West Riding, while the North Riding included all of the rest of Queens County. Thus the North and the West Rid- ings embraced precisely all the parts of the Greater New York out- side of Manhattan Borough. It is curious to read in Dutch docu- ments of that day how they labored to express the new name in the five Dutch towns, which could not have been very intelligible to the simple farmers. In some records we find it twisted into the form " Weestreydinghe." It was to be expected that the towns them- selves must also experience a change of name. Hence Breuckelen re- ceived the designation Brookland, as the English doubtless did not know what else to make of it, and they had never heard of the namesake in Holland. Midwout might have been made into Mid- wood with advantage, but instead, Vlacke Bosch was translated into Flatbush. It was just as well that New Amersfoort, so big a name for so small a place, should be made to correspond with its neighbor as a descriptive title, and henceforth be plain Flatlands. Boschwyck was treated very much like Breuckelen, translated to the sound rather than to the sense, and hence became Bushwick, with its tail-end sticking in Dutch antiquity, like Milton's lions emerging from the soil. New Utrecht, not an easy word to pronounce, was strangely retained. It is possible that the fame of the University had made the English conquerors acquainted with the geographical signifi- cance, a point they failed to see in regard to Breuckelen and Amers- foort. Gravesend, even if it did wear a Dutch form at first, was Eng- lish enough in that shape to serve excellently under the English rule.
For the newly apportioned Yorkshire, a High-Sheriff was assigned
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to duty, and for each riding a Deputy-Sheriff. Justices in the towns took the place of the Schepens, retaining their office for an indefinite period at the Governor's pleasure, while the High-Sheriff and his Deputies were annually appointed. In a few years the deputies were found to be unnecessary or superfluous, and the High-Sheriff passed away when Yorkshire ceased to be, and the counties were regulated. Beside the Justices, the Anglicized towns now obtained other officers on the home plan. Each town had its constable, and eight (later four) overseers, or opsienders, as the Dutch translated the name. Documents relating to transfers of property, or the be- queathing of inheritances, continued to be written in Dutch for sev- eral decades after the surrender, and that in spite of an attempt to compel the use of English exclusively. In one or two instances, papers in Dutch were thrown out of court in litigations about prop- erty. Yet the records of Flatbush and other towns are invariably Dutch, which must have proved too strong in its hold upon a rural community to be abolished by more legislative action. Time and its modifications of environment and education needed to bear a hand in a change so fundamental. A very careful regulation of courts with gradations in their jurisdiction was established by the English au- thorities. There was first the " Town Court," composed of the con- stable and two overseers. It had cognizance of causes involving five pounds, or less. Justices of the peace might preside in such courts. but it was not a requirement. The next highest conrt was the " Court of Sessions." It sat twice a year in each riding, and was constituted by the justices of the peace of the towns in the riding. At first the justices were allowed twenty pounds a year for their services; later they received only a reimbursement for expenses. Criminal canses, and others involving more than five pounds, that had their origin within the bounds of the riding; civil cases, and criminal cases that were not capital, were tried in these courts before a jury of seven men, who reached their verdict by a majority vote. In capital cases, the jury was to be of twelve men, and their verdiet unanimons. Decisions of these courts under twenty pounds could not be appealed from. Other cases might proceed to the next higher court. The members of the Colonial Council, its Secretary, or the High-Sheriff, had authority to sit with the Justices of the Court of Sessions, and when any such of- ficial was present. he was obliged to preside. The next and highest court was the " Court of Assize," sitting once a year in New York City, and constituted by the Governor, the Council, and the magis- trates of the several towns.
About six months after the surrender a convention was called to meet at Hempstead, to which each of the sixteen towns on Long Island, and the town of Westchester, were asked to send two dele- gates. At this meeting the civil regulations described above were arranged for the several towns. Governor Nicolls, or his representa-
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tive, spoke them very fairly, and gave them an impression that the most liberal policy would be pursued toward them on the part of his master, the Duke of York. Under the designation of the " Duke's Laws," the changes and appointments in town names and town gov- ernments, and judiciary matters, were established and promulgated. But a wider range of subjects than this was embraced within these Laws. It regulated the conduct of neighbors toward each other, pro- viding punishment for angry or vituperative terms. Slaves were not to be kept except they were convicts, or sold themselves for passage money or service. Atheism, murder, lasciviousness, kidnaping, lèse Majesté, conspiracy, smiting parents, were all subject to the death penalty. The marking of hogs, brewing, and burying, public wor- ship, Sabbath keeping, divination, medical attendance, times for ex- ecution, marital relations, marking horses, selling liquor to Indians, and a thousand and one other things were jumbled together and re- ceived impartial attention in these Duke's Laws.
This was all very paternal, and the impression of liberal condnet on the part of the Duke, added to these minute directions for their wel- fare in material and spiritual matters, quite overcame the assembly at Hempstead. So they drew up an address expressing their grati- tude and devotion, signed by all the members, on March 1, 1665. But the people found that the paternalism was a little too pronounced. There were no provisions for the expression or action of the popular will. The officers were to be appointed from headquarters at Fort James, just as they had been from headquarters at Fort Amsterdam. They had submitted to the change of masters, hoping for a change of conditions in this respect, and none were forthcoming. So the dele- gates, when they came back to their homes from Hempstead, found that they had planted their feet squarely into hornets' nests, and the buzzing and stinging were none too pleasant. Indeed, the Court of Assize had to come to the resene, and promulgated a threat that legal proceedings should be instituted against every one who should be ac- cused of detracting or speaking against any of the deputies who had signed the address to the Duke of York.
Another source of acute discontent was the command of Nicolls mentioned in our previous volume, that all the town patents must be renewed. This has usually been characterized as a harsh measure by historians, and principally a scheme to raise revenue, as the new patents were to be roundly paid for. Yet there was some plausibility in the measure. The seizure of the province was upon the ground that the Dutch had no right or title to any territory in the regions occupied by them. Hence, it was only logical that patents in the Dutch towus should be renewed to be held directly of the new, and as alleged, the now legitimate government. And it seems that many of the towns in Suffolk County had never received any patents at all. At the same time, the order realized a snug sum for Governor Nicolls in the
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Colonial coffers, which could not look for much replenishment from the Duke or the King. Some of the patentees manifested a disposition to resist the order, but the withdrawing of all right or title to their property was a weapon too serious to be encountered, and submission had to be general, with good grace or bad. A severe charge to be brought against the English rule as now established, and which in- flieted a worse wrong than the payment of fees for titles already long held and established undisputed, was the policy the new régime pur- sued with regard to an institution most vitally affecting the welfare of the State, and, which, in the Dutch Republic, had received intelli- gent encouragement ever since its foundation in 1579. This was the matter of schools. As we have sought to point ont in our accounts of the several towns, it was not long after settlement had been made and governments initiated, that the schoolmaster began to appear, some- times after the church, sometimes before. He was given a liberal support, and where the people could not quite contribute the desirable salary, an appeal to the Colonial Council was always met promptly and generously. It is not to the credit of the English authorities that all this was now quite different. The teachers laboring among the Dutch comuminities were not subsidized by the Council, and were left entirely to the resources of the towns or villages themselves. And nowhere, in these or in towns settled by their own peo- ple, were English schools established. Public encouragement of education was entirely a Dutch idea and a Republican GOV. THOMAS DONGAN. idea, and hence our own Republic later inherited the policy.
A change of importance in the history of the component towns as a whole took place in 1683, when some of the conditions began to pre- vail wherewith we are familiar to-day. and which have only lately been seriously disturbed or modified by the swallowing up of all these communities by the great metropolis that was growing on the other side of the East River. Governor Thomas Dongan's name lingers in the memory of New York City, because of the charter bearing his name, and given in his time. But he brought to the Province other memorable innovations. The Duke of York, yielding to the wishes of the people of his Province, sent Dongan with instructions to sum- mon a representative Assembly. It met on October 17. 1683, and in the " Charter of Liberties " adopted by it occur the provisions which somewhat altered the face of the Province on the maps. It was di- vided into ten connties, as we saw in our previous volume, from which
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delegates were to sit in a permanent annual Legislature, or Provin- cial Assembly. The division into counties at once did away with the Yorkshire scheme. Staten Island was made into a county by itself, called Richmond, which lives to-day in the name of the borough. Kings County was constituted by the six towns of Brookland, Bush- wick, Flatbush, Flatlands, New Utrecht, and Gravesend. Newtown was taken out of its connection with them as a part of the West Rid- ing of York, and made one of the towns of Queens County. West- chester was also separated from that riding, and made into a separ- ate county, and the East Riding became Suffolk County. Now also disappeared the High-Sheriff of Yorkshire, and each county was given its own Sheriff. The Courts of Sessions were to meet twice a year as before, but a Commissioner's Conrt was instituted, meeting on the first Wednesday of every month, and also a Court of Over and Ter- miner in each county to hold session annually. The Assembly of New York, which was destined to do great things, and in the begin- ning of the eighteenth century sounded the note that presaged liberty, was not called into much requisition at the beginning, fair as that seemed. It met the second time in October, 1684; was summoned for the third time in 1685; but then it does not come across the thresh- hold of history again until one of a decidedly democratic character was summoned by Leisler.
The brief interval of the resumption of Dutch authority, as the result of the capture of New Netherland in fair war in 1673, produced but transient results upon the Long Island towns now composing Brooklyn. The coming of their compatriots was of course hailed with delight. English rule had not proved so wonderful an improvement upon Stuyvesant's and the West India Company's, after all, and Gov- ernor Anthony Colve held the territory directly for the States-Gen- eral of the Republic. On August 14, 1673, less than a month after the capture, the towns of Long Island, from one end to the other. were required to send delegates to New Orange (now the name of New York ), in order to swear allegiance to the Prince of Orange. The five Dutch towns did it readily enough, but the English towns, includ- ing Gravesend, hesitated. But Colve was not to be trifled with. On December 15, the Governor went in state to Flatbush to meet another convention of delegates. But before another year had gone di- plomacy had restored New Netherland to English rule, and the fifteen months of interruption were soon forgotten.
After this review of events which involved all the component towns of Brooklyn in one common current of history, we must now turn again to each one separately to observe what had taken place of local interest within each from the English conquest until the end of the century. And, as before, we place Brenekelen, now Brookland, and not yet Brooklyn, first upon the list. In October, 1667, the town. mentioned by its Dutch name, received a new patent under the hand
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and seal of Governor Nicolls in the name of the Duke of York, and so the right of the inhabitants to their property was definitely secured under the new regime. The process was repeated in 1686, when the Duke of York had become King James II., and mainly for the pur- pose, it seems, of settling the question of the amount of quit-rent to be paid by the town. This item read as follows: " Yielding, ren- dering, and paying therefor, yearly and every year, on the five and twentieth day of March, forever, in lieu of all services and demands whatsoever, as a quit-rent to his most sacred Majesty aforesaid, his heirs and successors, at the City of New York, twenty bushels of good merchantable wheat." The date selected, it is to be remembered, was not an arbitrary one, or taken at random, but was New Year's Day in the calendar then in vogue in English dominions. To stim- ulate enterprise and emulation in a farming community whose trib- ute itself was expressed in agricultural products, au advance was made on former times by the appointment of an annual fair. The village had had its market days for some time, supplemented by a fair in New Amsterdam that then was. In 1675 a yearly fair was ap- pointed for Breuckelen itself, to be held at the Ferry, so as to entice buyers from New York to come over. It was to be held on the first Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of November. Not content with this display of farm produce on this side of the river, the farmers from Long Island had an opportunity to go and place their choice ar- tieles in competition with those of the farmers of Manhattan, West- chester, and New Jersey, at the fair in New York, which was to be held on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the same week. It is to be feared that Domines Polhems, Nieuwenhuysen, and the other divines would find their audiences rather depleted on the Sunday after this entire week of " fairing "; and there may have been much call for pastoral visitation and the censure of consistory upon the good men- bers whose heads were not strong enough to bear the rum or beer of that day. In this same year, 1675, Breuckelen already led the other towns in population, and in the value of assessed property. The fig- ures are not large, but they are in advance of those of Flatbush and the others. The number of persons assessed was sixty, and the value of the property, £5,204.
We have seen that all during Domine Selyns's ministry, from 1660 to 1664, no church building accommodated the crowds from the other towns and Manhattan that came to hear the popular and able young preacher. Steps were initiated shortly after his arrival, but came to nothing during the whole of his stay. But two years after he left, in 1666, the first church was built. It is not difficult to mark the very spot in terms of the modern city. Old maps show that it was located in the middle of the road, on the block between Lawrence and Duf- field streets, and about equally distant from either of these on Fulton Street. But Fulton Street was not then the mathematically straight
1
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thoroughfare it is now. The road wound to either side of the line of the present street, and a bend occurred toward the right (or even- numbered) side exactly half-way between Lawrence and Duffield streets. This would carry the edge of the road a little within the line of the present buildings, and since the church was planted squarely in the center of the highway, we shall have to conclude that it stood upon the sidewalk, exactly in front of Abraham and Straus's well- known emporium. How many of the thousands that pass and re- pass that busy point think that they are treading sacred ground. con- secrated by the devotions of Brooklyn's earliest citizens in Brooklyn's first church edifice? We have pictures of the building which was erected on the same site a century later, but we know not the exact shape of this earliest temple. Eye witnesses of its glory as it was in 1679 speak of it in no flattering terms, but then these men were not partial to churches of other persuasions than their own, so that we may have to take their disparaging judgment with some grains of al- lowance. Speaking of our happy hamlet, they say that it " has a small and ugly little church, standing in the middle of the road." This idea of placing the church squarely in the way of traffic was not original with the bucolic Brooklynites of eld alone. Other Dutch communities, and notably AAlbany, gave evidence of this curious taste. Here Domine Polhemus would come of a Sunday afternoon when it was Breuckelen's turn, and hold forth on the Heidelberg Catechism, if there were time enough for a discourse. Else, perhaps, he would give them but a quarter of an hour's prayer, and be off on his horse for his manse at Flatbush, before dark, for even preachers felt a little ner- vous about spooks in those days, and preferred to be under cover after dark. For ten years longer Polhemus lived and labored, and entered into his well-earned rest in 1676. Then for a year Domine Nieuwen- huysen, of New York, came over to supply the Long Island churches occasionally. The Collegiate arrangement now covered all of the five Dutch towns, and a pastor had to divide his time, and give turns to Bushwick and New Utrecht, at the extremities, as well as Breuck- elen, Flatbush, and Flatlands, at the center. In 1677 the Rev. Caspar Van Znuren was called from Holland, and served these churches for about eight years.
After the Leisler troubles, and when William of Orange and Mary were firmly established on their throne, changes in government were again made for county and towns. Courts of common pleas and gen- eral pleas were created in the county, and the Commissioners' Court ceased to be, its work being committed to the justices of the peace. Each was now to have but one supervisor, and a new office was in- stituted, that of Surveyors of Highways, of which there were three for each town. Several years afterward, or in 1699, trustees, elected at the town meeting by the people, and serving for two years, were charged with many important duties, such as " to order all townes
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business, and to deffend theire limitts and bounds, and to dispose and lay ont sum part thereoff in lotts, to make lawes . . . to raise a small tax ffor to defray the towne charges, to receive townes revenues, and to pay townes debts." The trustees chosen were Benjamin van de Water. Joris Hansen, and John Gerritsen Dorlant. There is a rec- ord of a careful disposition of various woodlands within the bounds of Breuckelen, which shows a curious crossing of properties, as it seems to-day. Thus, all the woods lying between Bedford and Crip- plebush, and covering the hills toward the road to New Lots, were to form the backwood lots of the people living at Gowanus; reckoning from Brouwer's Mill ( Union Street, between Bond and Nevins) to the New Utrecht line. Next, the woods situate between the Flatbush Road and " the path to New Lots," which must be the Clove Road, were to be the holdings of the Bedford and Cripplebush folk. And, thirdly, the woodlands back of Gowanus, clear to the Flatbush and New Utrecht lines, were to belong to the Breuckelen, Ferry, and Wall- about householders. A census taken in 1698 showed that Breuckelen had a population of five hundred and nine souls, and a list of those who took the oath of allegiance to King James IL., in 1686, their previ- ous proprietary Duke, is interesting as affording a glimpse of the es- sentially foreign character of these founders of Brooklyn. Of sev- enty-six adult men, only forty-four are put down as born in the coun- try, the others recorded the number of years they had been here since they left the fatherland. It is worthy of note, too, that about this period, in the ordinance establishing the yearly fair, and in some other public papers of the time of Governor Andros, the name of the town is spelled Breucklyn. It was a step in the evolution of the later and more famous designation.
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