USA > New York > Nassau County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 8
USA > New York > Suffolk County > Long Island; a history of two great counties, Nassau and Suffolk, Volume I > Part 8
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"1. That upon Long Island, a line Run from the western- most part of Oyster Bay, and soe in a straite and direct line to the sea, shall be the bounds betwixt the English and Duch there, the Easterly parte to belonge to the English, and the westerly parte to the Duch.
"And it is agreed, that the aforesaid bounds and limitts, both upon the Island and the Mayne, shall bee observed and kept unviolable, both by the English, the United Collonies and all the Duch Nation, without any encroachment or moles- tation, until a full and finall Determination bee agreed upon in Europe, by mutuall consent of the two States of England and Holland.
"In Testimony of our joynt consent to the severall fore- going conclusions, We have heerunto sett our hands, the 19th Day of Sept., Anno Dom. 1650.
"Simon Bradstreet, Thomas Prence, Thomas Willett, George Baxter."
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.
Stuyvesant's frequent occupation with military matters proved helpful to British plans. Indian disturbances flared anew early in his administration and continued in intermittent outbursts during much of the period. Learning that a Belgian settlement had taken root on the southerly bank of the Delaware River, at what is now New Castle, he felt duty bound to proceed against these so called trespassers. While he was engaged in wringing an oath of allegiance to Dutch sovereignty from these people, to the north and east of New Amsterdam the English continued to advance notwithstanding their agreement to neither encroach nor molest "until a full and finall Determination bee agreed upon in Europe."
East Hampton, easternmost of the south shore towns, was settled in 1648, two years before the Hartford convention. They named it Maidstone after a village in England from whence some of its founders had hailed. Two years thereafter a settlement was estab- lished at Shelter Island which occupied a position in Peconic Bay about midway of the towns of Southold and Southampton. Hunting- ton was founded in 1653 and the same year, a few miles to the west, straddling the Dutch and English border as agreed upon at Hartford three years before, a group of New Englanders founded Oyster Bay. The first settlers of Brookhaven Town arrived in 1655 and the following year, under a Dutch patent, a number of Hempstead and New England colonists founded Jamaica, well within Dutch territory.
Not until 1663 was the town of Smithtown settled but meanwhile the earlier English towns on Long Island had extended their tentacles of families and groups of families into many other parts of the island. Along the shores of the bays, on the banks of the streams which flowed to the bays, beside the ocean and back in the hills more and more land had been acquired from the Indians, cleared and planted, homes had been built and thus new communities had taken root, not always within the prescribed area of a town. This happened in what was to later become the town of Islip. The westerly section of Southold Town was settled many years before that section was made into the separate town of Riverhead.
This movement on Long Island was part of a general advance along the frontiers of the English colonies as a whole. It had become more intense following an unsuccessful attempt by Massachusetts to acquire New Netherland by purchase from its Dutch proprietors. In 1641 the Rev. Hugh Peters of Salem, officially named for the mis- sion, had journeyed to Holland to ascertain if the Dutch province could be bought as a means of peacefully settling all boundary dis- putes. England's home government, however, embroiled at the time in civil war, was in no mood to condone a transaction of such magni- tude. Her ambassador at the Hague, Sir William Boswell, advised Massachusetts rather "to push forward their plantation and crowd on, crowding the Dutch out of those places where they have occupied, but without hostility or any act of violence."
Sir William's advice was at best somewhat tardy as New England had been "crowding the Dutch out" for several years previous to 1641. Especially in the vicinity of the Connecticut River had the
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crowding process been employed and, as Director-General Kieft had repeatedly complained to his employers in Europe, with gratifying results for the English. The House of Good Hope, a fortified trad- ing post which the Dutch maintained some miles up the Connecticut River, had failed completely to keep the English back. Even as early as the winter of 1634-35 Englishmen had founded the village of Weatherfield only a few miles north of the Dutch post. Windsor, Hartford and Springfield had been settled a short time later. New Haven was founded in 1638 and barely a year later the fortified settlement of Saybrook had been established at the very mouth of the Connecticut. Then in rapid succession came Milford, Stratford, Norwalk, Stamford and Greenwich until the Dutch House of Good Hope was practically surrounded by English communities.
In his History of the Town of Southampton, Dr. James Truslow Adams, whose career as a writer of history began with this Long Island book, pointed out that the progressive settling of New England had few if any parallels in history. Here as well as on Long Island, settlements scarcely established would encourage relatively large groups of their own residents to move further into the wilderness to start new villages. Although a contributing factor to this movement may have been man's age old yearning for "greener pastures", a more fundamental reason was undoubtedly the grim resolve of Eng- lishmen, spurred on by a well defined national policy, to keep "crowd- ing the Dutch out" of territory which England was determined to possess.
Belatedly Kieft had purchased Indian title to all the territory lying between the Hudson river and the present town of Norwalk. Much of this area had by then, however, been acquired piece-meal. from local Indian tribes by groups of Englishmen. One such group in 1646 established itself within 50 miles of Albany which the Dutch had settled as Fort Orange a generation before. Nevertheless, accord- ing to Dixon Ryan Fox's Yanks and Yorkers, "it was upon Long Island that the impact chiefly came. Here, and especially in the eastern parts, were planted institutions and ideas that were to affect international relations as long as two flags shared the area between the Delaware and the St. Croix and, indeed, were to affect the whole subsequent history of New York."
By 1647, when Peter Stuyvesant assumed the director-general- ship of New Netherland, Southold and Southampton had for nearly a decade been the only settlements on eastern Long Island. Except for the Gardiner family which had arrived in 1639 to occupy its island manor, the inhabitants of these two English towns were the only known white residents of Long Island east of Hempstead. Though chartered through English channels and acknowledging their allegiance to England's colonial system these towns functioned solely through their town meetings.
Bancroft pointed to the early settlements of New Jersey to show "with how little government a community of husbandmen may be safe." Nevertheless, the towns of Southold and Southampton, the first English towns to be established in what was to eventually become the State of New York, furnished a far better example of this very
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thing during their earliest years. The New Jersey settlements, like those of western Long Island, were in recognized Dutch territory and functioned under the constant scrutiny if not the complete con- trol of Dutch provincial authority. The settlements of New England and Virginia were in every case integral parts of their colonial gov- ernment. Southold and Southampton, on the other hand, stood alone, isolated by wilderness and the often turbulent waters of Peconic Bay from one another and separated by miles of sea from the New England colonies.
Thus without benefit of and, at the same time, interference from any colonial government, these two towns shaped their own destinies. Here the spirit of self government was nurtured to a greater extent than elsewhere in the western world. This process continued in these two English towns at the easterly end of Long Island from the year 1640 until the English conquerors of New Netherland created the East Riding of Yorkshire of what is now Suffolk County and made these towns subdivisions thereof.
The founders of Southold and Southampton were a hardy lot, as hardy as, and perhaps even more venturesome, it would seem, than the general run of their countrymen who chose to remain in such established communities as Lynn in Massachusetts and Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut. Like their New England brethren, they were predominantly of Puritan faith. Like them, they espoused religious freedom, but only within their own interpretation of the term. These resolute pioneers were intelligent as well as religious. As had the founders of Plymouth, the founders of Southold and Southampton chose the common law of England as their system of jurisprudence but, without adopting it in toto, they drew from its principles what in their opinion best suited the conditions under which they were to live. As had the Puritans of New England, these Puritans of eastern Long Island borrowed from the law of Moses a system of compensatory penalties as rigid as their own standards of right and wrong. They elected from among themselves magistrates whose duty it became to administer the laws enacted and impose the penalties prescribed by a majority vote of the people at town meeting assembled.
When in 1644 Southampton entered combination with the juris- diction of Connecticut it did so purely as a protective measure, relinquishing none of its local authority to that colony. The same is true of Southold when four years later it took a similar step in regards to New Haven, and when in 1649 the town of East Hampton voted to combine with Connecticut, the action was of so little moment that it was not verified by the mother colony until some years later. The town meeting continued to be the only seat of government in these east end towns until, as previously stated, the year 1665.
Wrote the Hon. Henry J. Scudder in 1883 in reference to these early communities: "Habit suggested the township as a form of municipal organization. No statute determined its limits, or regu- lated the duties and obligations of its citizens. Society, in some respects, was returned to its original elements. * Here, if ever, was witnessed for a generation and a half a system of petty
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governments resting for their existence and power solely upon the consent of the governed. Townships erected upon the area of a grant from Indian sachems found their inhabitants compacted in a small locality as well for protection and assistance as for the grati- fication of social tastes."
Peter Stuyvesant
The independence of these early east enders was reflected in the attitude of their town governments. Neither Southold nor South- ampton sought the cooperation of the other. "Great distances inter- vened between these settlements," declared Scudder, "and these distances forbade general communication. Thus the laws of town- ships, framed by no common body of representative legislators, lacked harmony, and presented differences in penalties and observances." These differences, however, far from constituting a defect in the system, accentuated the effectiveness of the town meeting in solving problems peculiar to its own jurisdiction.
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"The first town court erected by the Dutch was one for the bene- fit of the English residents of Hempstead," declared Robert Ludlow Fowler in his Historical Introduction to the Bradford Laws. This was some three years after magistrates had first been elected by Englishmen at the east end. Nor was it the only instance of New Netherland emulating the example set by its English neighbors. It is probable that town charters would not have been granted as early as they were in New Netherland but for the example set by Southold and Southampton. That New Netherland's first town charters were granted to its English settlements would seem to bear this out. These English subjects of the Dutch province, glimpsing the greater privileges accorded their countrymen of the east end towns, were spurred to seek further concessions for themselves. When their demands were denied or only partially met, it was these English inhabitants of New Netherland whose public utterances and written remonstrances fostered and increased the internal discontent which contributed so greatly to the ultimate overthrow of Dutch sovereignty in America.
Stuyvesant in 1652, following instructions from the directors of the West India Company, took steps to end various "malicious and evil" practices by which, during previous years, many parcels of land at the west end of Long Island, as elsewhere in New Netherland, had been illegally acquired and sometimes sold at enormous profit by certain "covetous and greedy" speculators. In their instructions to Stuyvesant, the directors declared that "in regard to Long Island, it will be the most important and best for the Company, in our opin- ion, until a fixed plan shall be decided on, to distribute to each person, according to his circumstances and means for cultivation and planta- tion, as much land as shall be allotted to each Colonist."
Accordingly on July 1, 1652, Stuyvesant and council enacted an ordinance forbidding "all persons, of what quality soever they may be, directly or indirectly from buying or attempting to obtain any Lands from the Natives of the Province, much less by virtue of purchase or donation undertake to occupy, or sell or convey them to others, without the previous consent or approbation of the Company or its Deputy here".
This document also provided for the annulment of a number of "purchases, sales, patents and deeds", among which were listed the groundgrants which had been issued in 1636 by then Director- General Van Twiller to himself and others for the three large Brooklyn flats, to which reference has previously been made. Also annulled were titles to "the Maize land, Flat and Valley of Canarisse (Canarsie), conveyed by gift of the Indians to Jacob Wolphertsen, to the serious damage and prejudice of the new village of Midwout", and "the lands of Sloops bay and Oyster bay, called Matinnecongh, which the natives declare were purchased by Govert Loockermans and Company".
The ordinance stipulated, however, that "to the Purchasers or pretended owners, shall be reimbursed and restored whatever they by fair account can show that they have paid and given for said lands." The property thus confiscated by the director-general and
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council would, it was made clear, be redistributed by allotting "to all and every person, under proper Patent and conveyance, in real and actual property, as much Land as the undertaker will and can culti- vate and settle, on condition that he will renew the Fief with the Company and have the transfer of the land recorded."
That Peter Stuyvesant himself had an eye to the value of Long Island real estate is shown by his acquiring for his own use, with no apparent irregularity, a large plantation in that part of present Brooklyn then known as Amesfoort.
The only known official reference to Director Stuyvesant's bouwery, according to Frederick Van Wyck's The First White Settle- ment of Long Island is in a contract which his agents made on July 10, 1655, with a neghbor, Peter Claessen Wyckoff, to "fodder and winter according to custom all the cattle, which the said Honorable General has at present on his bouwery at Amesfoort, both young and old, big and little, without any exception; he shall also sow all the land that is fit for planting, provided that he shall deduct from the rent and bring into account the grain he has sowed therein. For said wintering of all the cattle and sowing of the suitable land, said Peter Claessen shall be paid the sum of 325 guilders, on condition that he leave the manure of his own and the General's cattle on the bouwery."
Although Stuyvesant did succeed in clearing involved titles to much of the land at the westerly end of Long Island, and is so credited by historians generally, he never during his long term of office came to fully appreciate certain other rights to which his con- stituents were entitled. Towns chartered by the Dutch bore little resemblance to the English towns of New England and eastern Long Island. In New Netherland the incorporated town was empowered to nominate three men for each office of magistrate, the choice of the one to serve being left to the Governor and his Council. Later these towns were permitted to nominate two men from whom the Governor and Council must choose one. Thereafter, however, the townspeople had no voice in the matter as the magistrates themselves named the two nominees from whom their successors were to be appointed by Governor and Council. Thus many a magistrate, if satisfactory to the provincial authorities, was perpetuated in office though he might be quite undesirable to his fellow townsmen.
The town meeting, as the English colonies knew it, did not exist in New Netherland where every act of a magistrate was provisional upon ratification by governor and council. The attitude of Stuyvesant is shown by his statement in response to the people's demands for more direct representation. He declared :
"If it is to be made a rule that the selection and nomina- tion shall be left to the people generally, whom it most con- cerns, then every one would want for Magistrate a man of his own stamp, for instance a thief would choose a thief and a dishonest man, a drunkard, a smuggler, etc., their likes, in order to commit felonies and pranks with so much more freedom. It appears very strange, that the remon-
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strants endeavor to deprive the Lords-Directors, being the absolute masters and owners of this Province, of the right, that every Lord and Patroon in the Fatherland exercises on his manor and the smaller Patroons in this country pretend and usurp for their colonies, namely the right of appointing
their own Sheriffs, Secretaries, Clerks and Delegates. *
According to Dixon Ryan Fox, "When Peter Stuyvesant came to govern New Netherland he soon realized that New England ideas might undermine the sound health of his province, as he saw it. He
(Photo Courtesy of The Historic American Building Survey, Library of Congress) Suydam House, Centerport
was far less hospitable than Kieft had been to New England settle- ment and no groups were permitted to come on New England condi- tions until about 1662, when the Company was desperately anxious for a more populous province on almost any terms." That New Netherland's closed door policy tended to intensify English settle- ment of eastern Long Island as well as western New England there seems little doubt. At the same time, English residents of New Netherland, who already comprised a considerable portion of the population, increased their efforts to undermine and discredit those who governed their adopted homeland. Even the Dutch burghers had become deeply resentful of an administration whose acts emanated from the lofty position that, to quote Stuyvesant, "We derive our authority from God and the West India Company, not from the pleasure of a few ignorant subjects."
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To add to the Governor's troubles, word came that his country and England were again at war and that New Haven, Connecticut and Plymouth were endeavoring to induce the colony of Massa- chusetts to join in a concerted attack upon the Dutch province. New Haven finally appealed to England and the militant Cromwell responded by sending several ships of war to cooperate. Arriving at Boston about the end of May, the little fleet was all that was needed to drive Massachusetts into the coalition. However, nothing came of the project for while the colonies were in the course of mobilization word came from abroad that peace had been declared.
New England reluctantly laid down its arms, Cromwell's ships sailed away and in New Amsterdam Governor Stuyvesant proclaimed a day of rejoicing for well this old soldier realized that his far flung province was in no shape, either physically or spiritually, to long repulse an armed invasion. But peace in Europe did not bring actual peace to the American colonies. Long Island and New England colonists continued to move westward into territory which had been defined by the Hartford Treaty of 1650 as belonging to New Nether- land. One group from Massachusetts, advancing as far as the Hudson, appropriated a Dutch trading post. It was during this period that colonists from Hempstead and New England united to found Jamaica, first seeking and receiving, however, a Dutch charter.
When in 1662 Connecticut received a royal charter from the Stuarts upon their return to the throne of England, the instrument was worded to include all of Long Island as a part of that colony. Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut thereupon sent an emissary to the English towns at the west end of the island to notify them that their only allegiance henceforth was to his commonwealth. Gravesend went so far as to fly the English flag as, incidentally, it had done on previous occasions. Stuyvesant vainly appealed to the general court at Hartford for redress only to be told that "We know no New Netherland, unless you can show us a royal patent for it from his Majesty."
At this juncture in the history of Long Island appeared one John Scott, described by Dixon Ryan Fox as a "magniloquent adventurer" but who had, it would seem, made certain friends at court, among tliem, he claimed, even King Charles II himself. Much has been writ- ten of Scott. Dr. Wilbur C. Abbott, in an 89-page treatise, condemned him roundly as had the renowned Samuel Pepys many years before. On the other hand, Dr. Pollock of Cambridge and the Rev. George Edmondson described Scott as a man of ability who fell afoul of equally ambitious but more powerful agents of the Crown.
Captain, Colonel and finally General, all by self designation at successive points in his career, Scott arrived at Setauket as the duly appointed magistrate of Connecticut but soon thereafter assumed the bogus title of President of Long Island and as such proceeded to appoint his own local officials. Claiming ownership of the island as a whole, he appeared before Stuyvesant and demanded that the Dutch
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relinquish all claims thereto. Such was Scott's power of persuasion, it seems, that the Governor, far from at once evicting the impostor, agreed to take his demand under advisement and was so occupied when word came that the General Assembly at Hartford, over which Governor Winthrop presided, had issued a warrant deposing that "John Scott, inhabitant in the liberties of Ashford, alias Setawkit, on Long Island, stands charged in the court of Connecticut for sundry heinous crimes *
* together with a general charge of villanious and felonious practices."
Arrested, tried and found guilty, Scott was placed in the Hart- ford jail. Heavily fined and even more heavily bonded for his future good behavior, he was held a prisoner while Winthrop journeyed to Long Island, replaced those whom Scott had put in local office and arranged for the confiscation of his property. But while the Con- necticut Governor was thus engaged, John Scott made his escape, returned to Long Island and proceeded to organize a militia. As General Scott, in command of this force, he awaited Colonel Richard Nicolls when in August, 1664, the latter descended upon New Amster- dam. Immediately thereafter, however, Governor Winthrop renewed his prosecution and finally forced Scott to flee the island, leaving his wife, Dorothy Raynor Scott, and their two sons quite destitute.
The conquest of New Netherland came as a prearranged sequence to the grant made by King Charles II on March 12, 1664, to his brother James, Duke of York, "all that part of the main land of New England" etc., etc., "and also all that island or islands commonly called by the several name or names of Meitowacks, or Long Island, situate, lying, and being towards the west of Cape Cod and the Narrow-Higansetts * * "' "", an area which included an important part of New Netherland. To administer the affairs of this empire, the Duke of York appointed Richard Nicolls (sometimes spelled Nicoll) as his deputy governor.
The Earl of Stirling's grant to Long Island, executed in 1636, by the Plymouth Company, was meanwhile released to the Duke by arrangement with Stirling's grandson who, according to Thompson, was paid five hundred pounds therefor. Some authorities, on the other hand, have it that the agreed price was three thousand five hundred pounds but that no part of this amount was ever paid.
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