USA > New York > New York City > Leslie's history of the greater New York, Volume II > Part 8
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A few residents were gathering during this period about the " Ferry." In 1654 Egbert van Borsum obtained a patent for land near the place where he landed his passengers on this side, which patent he prudently renewed when the order to do so was issued by Nicolls. In 1666, a strip of twenty feet more was added to the grant. The lease of the ferry was constantly increasing in value. In Jan- uary, 1674, C. Dyre leased it for a year at £103. In 1693 John Ariesen, who had agreed to pay £147 per year for it, complained of poor cus- tom, and he was allowed to reduce the amount to £140. Rates were now much less, but passengers more frequent. The fare was 16 cents for a person, and one shilling (25 cents) for a horse or beast. In the year 1698 the prosperous Rip van Dam leased the ferry for seven years at £165 per annum. Four years later he became a member of the Governor's Council, and as its President in 1731, became Acting- Governor on Montgomerie's death. For part of those seven years his ferry rental went to help pay the expense of building the new City Hall in Wall Street. In 1699 an important addition was made to the attractions of the Ferry as a means of transportation, and of the
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" Ferry " as a place of residence. The City of New York put up a brick building twenty-four feet front, forty feet deep, with a stone cellar, and two stories above that. It was completed in 1700 at a cost of £435, and it was meant to serve as a ferryhouse and tavern. The circumstance that New York City was leasing the ferry and build- ing houses on the Long Island side of it is explained by the fact that in Dongan's Charter of 1686 the ferry is made the property of the cor- poration, and a grant was also made of the jurisdiction of the city over " vacant lands to low water mark all around Manhattan Island." The city fathers quietly interpreted that all around as taking in the opposite shore of the East River as well as that on Manhattan Island. And since there was a reasonable doubt possible on the subject, they easily obtained from the pliable Lord Combury, in 1708, a special charter definitely stating that this interpretation was the correct one. Out of this charter and that of 1731 grew endless and bitter controversies between the two cities of Brooklyn and New York, that even legislative inter- SOIT+ QVI - MAI vention at Albany could not settle, so that the New York claim to ferry rent- als was never set aside.
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e Three miles from the Ferry and two miles beyond Brencklyn Church, the * JAON NSE OVIN hamlet at Bedford Corners was adding unto itself inhabitants. In the early days of English rule, although it was but a few years old, there was no pre- sumption in the notion that Bedford DUKE OF YORK'S SEAL. was a rival of Brooklyn, and just as likely as not to ontshine and swal- low up the latter, instead of the reverse process taking place. In the years 1666 and 1667 the English Governor was granting patents to this and that Wallabout landowner, extending their property to within the region of New Bedford. Thomas Lambertse, John Lau- rensen, and Michael Hansen (Bergen) seemed to be among those who lived or had land there, and in 1700 Lambertse conveyed one of his patents to Leffert Petersen, of Flatbush, whose children, being nat- urally named Leffertsen, originated the chief name which has ever fig- ured in Bedford history. In 1668 this same Thomas Lambertse was given a license by Governor Francis Lovelace to keep a public house there, so that travel must have been coming around that way. In- deed. the " corners" was a busy spot, for not only did JJamaica farmers and some of those from Flatbush or New Lots pass by here. but people from Flushing and Newtown, on their way to New York, must needs come around by Bedford in order to avoid the bays and
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creeks of the Wallabout. In the year 1683 it looked as if the sanction of government was intending to sustain the claim of Bedford to be Breuckelen's eqnal. The distribution of counties and of towns in counties, already mentioned, named Bedford as one of the towns of Kings County, with the six others. But somehow the town idea did not materialize to any extent, and Bedford remained only a " neighborhood," or " corners," within its town of Breuckelen. In- dustry seems to have found its way to Bedford as well as travel, and perhaps travel at the tavern drew the industry, for a brewery was erected on the Cripplebush Road (now Bedford Avenue), not far from Fulton Street or the Jamaica Highway. In 1701 John Bybon sold a half interest in the buildings and plant to Cornelius Vanderhove, so that these gentlemen probably entered into partnership.
That persons going to Jamaica or Flatbush should pass through Breuckelen on the way from the Ferry, lets itself be easily understood. But it appears that the traveler to Gowanus found it expedient to avoid the hills on his right, passed through Breuckelen, with its un- handsome church, and then, somewhere on Flatbush Avenue, about where Fifth Avenue is now, he struck into the Gowanus Road, which followed pretty closely the line of the present Fifth Avenue. This detour was necessary to avoid the head of Gowanus Creek. To get to Red Hook, Red Hook Lane offered its conveniences, and this name has conveniently clung to a mere fragment of it, in order to inform us where it branched off from the main road. It would be necessary to travel by the lane to get to the numerous tide mills placed here and there on bays or ponds formed by the Gowanus Creek, and the inlets and shallows along the Buttermilk Channel. Brouwer's Mill was there, and van Dyke's and Sebring's (formerly Snebringh). Brouwer's, destined to become historic in 1776, emerges from obscur- ity by reason of a curious defect in business instinct displayed by its owner and operator in 1668. Adam Brouwer was complained of by citizens and town officials that he was averse at times to turn his mill to its proper uses, and grind corn for customers. This was indeed a heinous offense, but it would seem principally injurious to Mr. Adam Brouwer's pocket, as there were other mills about. But the com- plaint was taken cognizance of by Governor Lovelace, and Brouwer was duly admonished to perform the duties of a miller or suffer the consequences, the penalties of the law thereunto annexed. As the mill stood in its place a hundred years and more later, and still bore Brouwer's name, we must assume that the owner's extraordinary business tactics did not bankrupt him.
Our next excursion must be to Flatbush, to see what English rule was doing for that town. As in the case of the other towns. new patents establishing the ownership in property on the English founda- tion were granted in the years 1667 and 1685. Strangely enough, so late in the day, the Indians still inspired respect or fear enough to
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make the Flatbush people comply with a demand that they establish their title to the land by a purchase from them, after the patent given by the Colonial Government in 1667. In 1670 Eskemoppas, a Sachem of the Rockaway tribe, chose to deny that the Canarsees had a right to dispose of the lands the patentees occupied. Hence he desired them to pay him a good round sum. This being done, he and his brothers duly signed a deed of sale with their marks, Eskemoppas adopting the pound sign (£) for his, and his brothers the sign for and (&) and an f respectively. Several fathoms of black and white seawant belts, blankets, guns, pistols, powder, lead, half a barrel of strong beer, and three cans of brandy, were some of the items of the price. Six shirts were deemed sufficient to go around the tribe. This spirit of conciliation toward their savage neighbors brings into stronger contrast their resistance to the unjust encroachment upon their rights by the civilized power to whom they had subjected them- selves. In 1684 Flatbush was made the scene of an indignation meet- ing, attended by people from all the other towns. The burden of complaint was, that in violation of the terms expressed and implied upon which the surrender was solicited and made, the English had sought to force their church on the Dutch, and were trying to compel them to summarily abandon the use of their vernacular in all public concerns and cases before the courts. That the people were pro- foundly sincere in this matter is proved by the fact that two cases then pending before the courts were withdrawn by the litigants and left to the arbitration of referees appointed at this meeting. Indeed. the courts had so little to do after this date that they simply met to adjourn, the Dutchmen sturdily maintaining that no rights of theirs should be " adjudicated by an English court." It was a hundred years ere a lawyer found it worth while to set up an office in the county. For the obvious reasons that Gravesend was English, and had been so commendably premature in rendering allegiance to the Duke of York, the County Court House was set up in that town. But it was an inconvenient location, and in 1685 the central situation of Flatbush induced the Government to erect a Court House there. Flat- bush remained the seat of the county until 1832, when it was re- moved to Brooklyn. In 1698 Flatbush could boast a population of four hundred and seventy-six souls, while Breuckelen had five hun- dred and nine. Her taxable property in 1675 indicated a value of £5,079, which, in 1683, had increased to £7,757.
It has been noticed a few pages above that Domine Polhemus de- parted this life in 1676, and that the Rev. Caspar van Zuuren sue- ceeded him in 1677. He remained in service of the churches, with his center of operations at Flatbush, until 1685, when he returned to Hol- land. In some records there then appears the name of James Clark as pastor, but the best authorities are exceedingly suspicious of the correctness of that item, and certainly the name is too English for a
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Dutch preacher. He is given a pastorate of ten years from 1685 to 1695. But at the same time, and with the records clear about him, the Rev. Rudolph van Varick is set down as the pastor from 1685 to 1694, while Domine William Enpardus finished out the con- tury, remaining in service until 1702. These ministers continued to have considerable trouble to keep the proportion of preaching-turns among the widely scattered congregations so as not to excite jealousy or bickering. If a turn failed to be given to one and another obtained it, the thrifty farmers at once counted up how much that would re- lease them from their share of obligation toward the support. But often a town failed to get a turn because they failed to fetch the min- ister, sometimes on account of bad weather, sometimes for no special cause. It seemed reasonable enough that in such a case, if the Domine chose to occupy his time in preaching to the people at Flat- bush, where he lived, no one need complain. But complaint was made, and a dispute on that head was referred by Domine van Znuren to the consistory of New York in 1679. The Flatbush people cer- tainly deserved a little extra soul-treatment, for the fact that the pastor lived among them gave them a chance to contribute to his com- fort beyond the mere stipulations. It was due also to their generosity and energy that a new church, much better than the one finished in 1660, was put up near the close of the century, or just two hundred years ago this year. Only a hundred years later the edifice that now graces the handsome avenue of Flatbush was placed upon the same site. The one of 1698 was built of stone, was sixty-five feet long by fifty broad. There were no pews, but the andience was placed upon benches or chairs. The people of the whole town, including those living upon the distant " New Lots," bore a share in the cost of it which was still calculated, thirty-four years (or a whole generation ) after the English conquest, in the guilders of Holland. The amont was 15,728 gld. ($6,291.20). Always associating school with church. as we must, in treating of the history of these Dutch towns, we find upon the minutes of the Consistory, under date of October 8, 1682. an agreement with Johannes van Eckelen, schoolmaster. He was certainly maintained in no niggardly manner, though the support now wholly fell upon the townspeople themselves. His salary was 400 gld. ($160), to be paid in wheat, delivered to him at the Ferry, so that at the market there, or just across in New York, he could readily turn it into cash. He had a dwelling house, pasturage, and meadow for his free use. Besides this, he had fees from the scholars : " For a speller or reader, 3 guilders a quarter; and for a writer, 4 gld. for the day school; in the evening, 4 gld. for a speller or reader, and 3 gld. for a writer, per quarter." School was held from 8 to 11 o'clock in the morning, and from 1 to 4 in the afternoon. At the opening of the school one of the children read a morning prayer printed in the Catechism, and it was closed with the prayer prescribed " before din-
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ner." Besides the ordinary branches, on Wednesdays and Saturdays the children were taught the Catechism, which they were required to recite on Sunday in the church.
On that memorable raid when one hundred and thirty valiant men rode and ran after Captain and President John Scott, in January, 1664, this Chief Magistrate of the Confederacy of English Long Island towns also made an entry into the good old town of Flatlands. Hay- ing a general and patriotic disgust for all things Dutch, what here met his eye must have been particularly gratifying to the sight, for he is recorded to have exclaimed, " This is a handsome place, and has a fine church." The octagonal structure, with its sugar loaf roof, was then new, scarcely a year old. If on Scott's arrival it had been any- where near a church service he might have thought he had inadver- tently ridden into a fortified camp, for the people were summoned to worship by the sound of a drum! This too martial call to so peaceful an exer- cise was superseded by the tinkling of a bell in 1686, when 556 guilders ($222.40) were raised for the purchase of one, of which only 456 gld. ($182.40) were needed; a very encouraging showing for the generosity of the peo- ple. It took a year to get a bell, so it may have been cast in Holland, and 7 gld. ($2.80) was duly laid aside to KING WILLIAM III. OF ORANGE-NASSAU. get a rope for it. The cause of education flourished in Flatlands, in spite of the indifference of the Eng- lish authorities. The church officers saw to the schooling of the children, and in 1675 they called the institution supported by the church " The School of the Town." The Elders saw to the quali- fications, mental, moral, and religious (or theological) of the teach- er. and the Deacons had in charge the supply of books, the ac- counts giving an interesting insight into the elementary textbooks on secular and religious knowledge by means of which the bucolic youth were taught. It is pleasant to note that from among their own number teachers could be supplied, for the incumbent in 1675, William Gerritsen van Kouwenhoven, was evidently of the family of the earliest settler. John Brouwer, who was appointed in 1688, and Peter Tull, whose engagement dates from 1691, may have been importations. Tull must have been one of those pedagogues who could not leave strong drink alone, for in later years he figures in the records as a pauper. There was a schoolhouse in those early days, too, located near the church, on part of the "church lot" indeed, which also included a burying-ground. In 1697 a new schoolhouse ro-
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placed the first one at the cost of $654.40. Early in the present cen- tury it was sold to one of the neighbors for $20; this was a Mr. Nich- olas Schenck, evidently a descendant of schoolmaster Martin Schenck. one of the deacons of the church also, whose term began in 1704. In- deed, an examination of the patents under Nicolls (1667) and Don- gan (1685) reveals in the lists of the patentees the persistence of the family names. Then, as now, we notice the patronymies of Stoothoff, and Cowenhoven, and Voorhees. The charters, or patents, how- ever, did not serve to avoid uncertainty as to boundaries and pos- sessions. A serions dispute, unfortunately prodneing much acri- mony between neighbors and compatriots, long hung fire between Flatbush and Flatlands, in regard to their respective right and title to the Canarsee meadows. Courts, commissioners, and governors had the matter under consideration, and fines were imposed and re- fused. The fine was laid on Flatbush, finally reaffirmed in 1691, but still unpaid, so that, as a Flatlands historian remarks, there still is dne this £10, with a snug interest of two hundred years' standing. While these Canarsee meadows were in dispute, it does not appear that any Indian tribe worked the scheme on Flatlands that they did in the neighboring town, as mentioned above, claiming that they had greater title to the territory than the other. Yet an incident in In- dian life of considerable interest is worthy of mention, as a part of Flatlands history. On April 2, 1691, scarcely a month after his ar- rival, and while the fate of Leisler still hung in the balance, Governor Sloughter came to Flatlands to hold conference with a Sachem of the Canarsees. The latter was attended by his two sons and twenty warriors. The Sachem congratulated the Governor upon his recent safe arrival, and remarked that he regarded him as a tall tree with spreading branches, beneath whose shadow he and his people begged to be allowed to stoop and take shelter. He presented Sloughter with a belt of wampum thirty fathoms long, which was quite an In- dian fortune. It seems, too, that the Indians were quite up in the politics of the day, for the younger of the two sons, on leaving, handed over a bundle of brooms with the casual observation " that as Leisler and his party had left the honse very fonl, he had been ad- vised to bring the brooms with him for the purpose of making it clean again." There is a refreshing air of spontaneity about this po- litic speech, which could not have been very gratifying to the Long Island people, who seriously quarreled with Domine van Varick for speaking his mind rather freely about " the rabble " who followed Leisler.
Gravesend's effusive readiness to change masters was rewarded in 1668 by the establishment there of the Court of. Sessions, for the ac- commodation of which a Court Honse was built. It had been accus- tomed to sit at Flatbush before this. The inconvenience of the loca- tion compelled the return of the court to the latter town in 1685. as we
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saw above. It is enrious to observe of what offenses the laws of the land took cognizance, and what penalties were meted out for them. A man at Gravesend, hinting that his neighbor could not pay his debts, was fined. A woman was convicted for slander, and con- demned to stand in irons for half an hour. Thomas Applegate had dared to say that " Governor Stuyvesant took bribes," for which he was condemned to have his tongue bored through with a hot iron. As he confessed, it may be that the Director commuted the barbarous sentence. In 1679 Ferdinand van Strickland was presented before the Court of Sessions for refusing to entertain a stranger who came from Huntingdon on court-business; upon which the cont threatened to revoke his license as tapster, if he did not mend his ways. The staid old farmers in the good old days seemed to have had their outbreaks of turbulence. The Court of Sessions, in June, 1669, was greatly out- raged at the conduct of certain unknown parties. Fences had been wantonly pulled down; the sacredness of the court had been invaded by treating with contempt one of its instruments of punishment, for the stocks had been ignominiously " thrown down," putting them out of gear for the proper exhibition of of- fenders to the public gaze in their merited disgrace. As those acts of violence could have been prevented by the ordinary vigilance of a town-watch, and there being none, the punishment for these riotous proceedings was laid upon the town itself, which was fined five pounds unless it should discover the miscreants. Strict laws were made for the observance of the Sabbath in 1675, and repeated subsequent- ly, which read as if composed by some Puritan of the Puritans in the days of Cromwell, instead of a Governor who had just come from the midst of the ribald license in morals and religion which characterized the reign of Charles II. in England, as a deliberate protest and reac- tion against the preceding conditions. It is doubtful whether Graves- end would have been very stringent or puritanical in its observance of Sunday, although treating the day with dne respect, because they were not in the habit of having regular or public religious services. The Quakers had confirmed these earlier ideas of the settlers and con- verts to this persuasion continued to be made. It was but natural that to the " Mecca of Quakerism " George Fox himself should come. We find him there in 1672. He had been visiting Maryland, where religious liberty was first realized. Reaching Middletown in New Jersey, a sympathizing resident there took Fox and his companious and their horses in a large boat over across the Lower Bay to the Gravesend shore. After a visit to Rhode Island, he came back to Gravesend a second time in July, 1672.
Affairs of interest in New Utrecht after the conquest center main- ly about the church. It was not till 1677 that the growth of the town warranted a separate organization, so as to secure a turn in the services of the Pastor of the Five Towns. Before this, as we saw, the
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two extremes of north (Bushwick) and south (New Utrecht), had to meet in worship at Flatbush, or Flatlands, or Breuekelen. Twenty- six families were now organized into a separate society, and two elders and two deacons made up the first consistory. The next step was the building of a church. The " New Utrechtenaars " were not in a hurry about that; they deliberated, or at least contemplated the matter for twenty-three years. But then, in 1700, they produced very satisfactory results. Its site is worth remembering, for it fixes an interesting event connected with the Battle of Long Island. We must not look for it on the spot where the present solid structure stands, with its handsomely decorated interior. A pretty good stroll down the broad avenue which it fronts will bring us to the corner of Sixteenth Avenue, and there on our left we will see the old church- yard. It was here it stood until 1828, and just by the side of it, to the left as one faced it, was the house of Nicasins de Sille, of which men- tion was made above, and which we shall encounter later again. The shape was octagonal, with pointed roof, like the one at Flatlands; it was built of stone, " with side-walls of bowlders," a belfry surmount- ing the apex of the roof, with bell-rope hanging down into the center of the auditorium. Here was to be seen a high pulpit, reached by wind- ing steps, the box containing the preacher and the pillar supporting it resembling a huge goblet. Over the pulpit was the sounding-board, like the lid of a sugar bowl, upon the knob of which was perched a gilt dove, symbolizing the descent of the Spirit. This dove is still preserved by one of the van Pelt families of the place, and, with the tile from De Sille's house, graced the collection of colonial antiqui- ties at Chicago, in 1893.
It happened to be on August 29, 1673, the ninth anniversary of the surrender, that Captain Kuyff and Lieutenant De Hubert came to New Utrecht, commissioned by Governor Colve to take the oaths of al- legiance to the Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, from the men of New Utrecht. There was not one that failed to re- spond. for the old cry, " Oranje Boren," Orange on Top, could still stir the heart of these Republicans. Forty-one heads of households were recorded as taking the oath. Two years before a calamity befell our old friend Jacques Cortelyou, living at Nayack, on the Bay shore. His house in the village was burned down, and the fire, spreading to neighboring buildings, a goodly part of the village, covering a radins of half a mile, was destroyed. The disaster was made the subject of an appeal on the part of Governor Andros to " Bruyekline " (another spelling !) and the other towns, to assist their neighbors in repairing their loss. With regard to Cortelyou in particular, it was suggested " to assist him with one Dayes worke " in rebuilding, " this or the next weeke, as he shall direct." And as to his " Neighbors," that they like- wise assist them " in their present distress if requested thereunto by them, in the which you will do a good and charitable worke." The
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