USA > New York > New York City > Old New York : a journal relating to the history and antiquities of New York City, Vol. II > Part 13
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Sixteen acres of Basse Bowery, a low meadow land, is granted unto Ariaen Cornelisson for the consideration of one fat capon a year.
1689. Oct. 14. The Governor, Leisler, issued the following proclamation : Whereas, by order of the Committee of Safety, it was ordained that the Mayor, Sheriff and Clerk should be chosen by the majority of the votes of the freeholders, etc.
1691. The Colonial Assembly first printed their journal. The work, however, was not done till 1693. The first law enacted was in relation to the streets of the city of New York, bearing date Oct. 1st, 1691. The act was confirmed by the King and re- mained in force till 1787.
April 9. The Laws and Acts of the General Assembly of their Majesty's Province of New York, as they were enacted in divers sessions, the first of which began April 9, A. D. 1691, at New York. Printed and sold by William Bradford, printer to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary, 1694. Small folio, pp. 240.
May 16. Leisler and Milborne suffered death as traitors. The people of the colony were greatly incensed at this bloody trans- action, but they were overawed by the soldiers. It is reported that Governor Sloughter signed the death warrants while in a state of intoxication.
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1693. The Dutch Reformed Church in Garden street built.
"The houses enumerated this year are five hundred and ninety-four, and the lands have advanced to ten times their former value."
The first printing press set up in New York City by William Bradford.
1696. The Quakers built a meeting house in Crown, now Liberty street.
1697. "Ordered that four citizens perform the night guard, and further ordered that during the dark nights the housekeepers. shall put lights in their windows fronting on the street, and during the dark time of the moon every seventh householder shall hang out a lantern and candle on a pole every night."
1698. The Council resolve to build a new City Hall, to be situated at the head of Broad street. This same house afterwards became Congress Hall. The site is now occupied by the United States Custom House (in 1890 the Sub-Treasury).
Trinity Church built, enlarged 1737, and entirely destroyed by the great fire Sept. 21, 1776, rebuilt in 1788, consecrated by Bishop Provost, first opened for worship in 1698 by the Rev. Mr. Vesey. The cemetery of the church was a gift of the Common Council to the Vestry in 1703, on condition that it be neatly fenced, and that fees for burial be limited to three shillings and sixpence for grown persons, and one shilling and sixpence for those under twelve years of age. By the records it appears that. the cemetery had received more than 160,000 bodies before 1776. Razed and again rebuilt in its present magnificent style between 1839 and 1846, consecrated May 21st, 1846. Cost of the new edifice, $358,629.94.
May 23. "No person absent twelve months considered a free- man unless he keeps fire and candle."
1699. First post-mortem examination in the city of New York.
The old City Hall sold to John Rodman for $920, the City Council reserving the bell, the King's Arms and ironworks be- longing to the prison.
The ferry let for seven years with this provision, that two good scows should be provided to keep for the use of ferrying
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Gowans' Western Memorabilia.
cattle, and two small boats for passengers. The fare to be for a single person eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence ; a horse, one shilling.
1700. The Assembly passed a law making it death for any Po- pish priest who should voluntarily come into the province.
1701. Oct. 5th, the Earl of Bellomont, Governor of the province died, universally regretted by the people, and a positive loss to the colony.
1702. The yellow fever visited New York and carried off a great many of the inhabitants.
1703. " Feb. 24. Ordered, that a public bonfire be made this night at the usual place in this city, and ten gallons of wine and a barrel of beer be provided at the expense of the city, on account of the success of his Majesty's arms at Vigo and in Flanders, and housekeepers ordered to illuminate."
"November 1. Resolved, that a large whipping post, pillory and stocks be forthwith erected before the City Hall of this city in Wall street. Mr. Vesey be paid as usual for the corporation sermon, £5."
1710. Lutheran Church built upon the ground afterwards occupied by Grace Church.
1713. "October 24. Richard Cooper is appointed public whip- per of the city with a salary of £5."
November 3. Preparations for celebrating the anniversary of the gunpowder plot by a bonfire and seven gallons of wine at the expense of the Common Council ; and for the Queen's birthday another bonfire and five gallons.
1716. A law passed for regulating midwives. They were sworn to be faithful in their service, to commit no frands in changing children, nor to be accessory to any pretended deliveries, not to assist in any frauds or concealments of births, and above all never to speak of the secrets of their office.
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THE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN NATIONALITY .- Dr. Albion W. Small, the President of Colby University, has contributed to the current series of publica- tions of the Johns Hopkins University a valuable and interesting essay upon the Beginnings of American Nationality. The part at present published only leads us through the action of the First and Second Continental Congresses, later events remaining to be published in the future. In this section, however, we cannot fail to recognize the industry, the patience, and the skill to bring together isolated facts which characterize Dr. Small's method of working, nor the clear- ness with which he states his deductions. His method is the true one, that of grouping the facts together and then drawing a deduction from them, instead of establishing a theory and then quoting only the things which seem to support it. Those who studied their American history before the war know how all their views were tinctured by the histories, such as Bancroft and Grahame, and the essays upon the Government, such as De Tocqueville's, that were accessible at that time ; and how, when larger knowledge was sought. it was obtained from biographies of eminent Americans, whose political career had been bright, but who were inevitably partisans of the State's rights or the Federalist theory. Those who read lives of Washington, Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris became convinced that we began as a nation in 1774 or 1775 ; those who derived their history from lives of Jefferson, Madison, or Calhoun, or from Benton's Thirty Years' View, denied these conclusions. According to the latter we never have been such a nation as Marshall or John Adams desired. The truth lies between the two, but like all truths cannot be shown in its full proportions at once. The patient investigations of the present generation of historical students will, how- ever, soon make matters clear to all who desire an exacter knowledge. The first sources have been looked into ; original texts have been published ; sum- maries have been made of the facts thus gleaned ; doubts have been stated and fallacies refuted. We are now nearly ready for a study of the history of the last century. The value of the labors of Bancroft and other painstaking histo- rians of the second and third quarters of the century cannot be denied. In par- ticular our debt is great to Mr. Bancroft. The first of all American historians who understood the value of original and contemporary testimony, with the faculty of bringing together the result of his work, he was the pioneer for all of us. But the field was too vast to be drawn into one single history, written by a man however able. Witness the work which can be placed upon single parts of our annals, as Adams is doing with Jefferson's administration, and Schouler with a period of less than a hundred years. Even their works will in the end be superseded by fresher and fuller ones, having details not possible now to obtain, and with advantages in grouping material that no one at present has.
We are therefore glad that Dr. Small has taken up a period so full of interest to all genuine Americans, in which we see the germs of our present Congress and Union, although neither had then been thought of, if we use words
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according to their present acceptation. He has carefully brought together the records of the appointment of delegates to the Congresses, has explained what each of these bodies did, and what, judging by documentary evidence, their own estimate of their powers was. To the first Congress were sent representatives from only twelve of the colonies, Georgia having no one present to speak for her ; but in the Congress of 1775 Lyman Hall was admitted as a delegate from the parish of St. John's, in that province. The powers of these representatives were derived from many sources. To the first Congress, held at Carpenters' Hall, in Philadelphia, the legislatures of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania chose delegates ; those of Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and New Hampshire were selected by com- mittees ; New York elected its men ; and in North and South Carolina they were chosen by mass meeting. Each of these procedures was of doubtful legality, and when the whole body came together the same taint would attach to its powers. This, Dr. Small makes clearer than any previous writer. Granted that each of these communities had a right in some way to send dele- gates to a Continental Congress, the irregularity of the methods pursued in choosing them would have invalidated their action, if this depended at all upon the observation of time honored forms. But what the author fails suf- ficiently to notice is the total lack of constitutional power on the part of the colonies to continue their separate life after the royal governors had ceased to co-operate with them. The first Congress was an unconstitutional body ; it was not regularly formed ; what it did it had no authority for. But the same was the case with the colonies separately. All the governments which they had had since 1690 derived their powers from the King. He granted the charters ; he made the corporations ; he vetoed such acts as he saw fit, and his governors did the like ; he made war and peace, appointed judicial officers, exercised the power of pardoning, granted lands, made new colonies, gave charters to cities, and performed many other acts which showed that he was, as in England, the fountain of power. We were then governed by British customs, and frequently appealed to the common and statute law of England for justification and precedent. Our constitutions were English. If there is, or was, such a thing as a British constitution, it may be defined as the govern- mental precedents and customs of the country, as declared and set forth by the laws of the land and their construction by the courts of law. That constitution can only be altered by Parliament and the King, acting jointly. It would justly be regarded as an infraction of the constitution of England for the House of Commons and the House of Lords to abolish the crown, although there might be good reasons for it ; it would also be regarded as an infraction for the King and the House of Commons to abolish the Lords. It could be done, and it is probable an upper hereditary house will disappear within the next hundred years, but it will not be by resolve of the Commons alone. Yet, with British constitutions, and proclaiming the greatest love for British institu- tions, this was just what was done then, allowing that the assemblies acted in each case. They did not, however. Forms of government unknown to the law in either England or America drove away the Governors and many of the members of the Council ; thus destroying two co-ordinate branches of the
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government at once. There were also grave irregularities about the lower house. The Sheriffs had not received a mandate that an election should take place, and consequently the poll was extra-legal and invalid. Their assembly was of no value, because their election had not been lawful, and had it been just what it should have been they could pass no enactments without the con- currence of the two other law making powers. Such was the state of affairs generally. How then, could such illegal assemblages either in 1774, 1775 or 1776 select, or cause to be selected, delegates to another body still more irregular than itself ?
The answer to these queries is plain enough. The delegates were not selected because there was any warrant in British law for them, but because there was an overwhelming necessity for something to be done, and the neighbors of those selected believed they could place confidence in them. This was the case also in regard to the colonial governments, and afterwards of the State governments. Power must be lodged somewhere for that which ought to be done. Whatever was agreed upon by Hancock, Lee and Franklin, acting under the best informa- tion they could obtain, was very likely the best action that could be thought of. The same obedience was paid to them as to the colonial legislatures, also illegal, and in fact the first two Congresses had more attention paid to their acts than the later ones, although it might be said that a continuance of their powers from year to year had then given them a semblance of constitutionality.
It is always difficult in a revolution to tell when the period has come when the new government has overturned the previous authority and set up its own. We have, however, a clearer conception of these matters than we had formerly, for we have seen within the life of the present generation three or four changes in France, a multitude in other countries in Europe, several in Mexico, the rev- olution in Brazil, and the rise and fall of the Southern Confederacy. To a great extent the methods followed in the South in 1861 were the same as those pursued at the outbreak of the Revolution. Committees were appointed in every district ; suspected persons were pointed out ; obstinate ones were silenced and driven away. At the beginning of the War of Independence there were great numbers of adherents to the British crown still here ; they contested every step, so far as they dared, and they were frequently able to carry their points. Thus New York did not give in its adhesion to the action of Congress till some time after the other colonies did. There was organization among those who resisted the separatist movement. Each side terrorized the other, so far as possible. But the expression, a committee of safety, which Dr. Small uses concerning the first and second Congresses, applies as well to the legisla- tures in most of the colonies. It cannot be too strongly dwelt upon that these organizations, while having a color of law, were sanctioned by no principle hitherto known.
Another point which should be noted is the inaccuracy of saying that thirteen corporations were here created by British law and that the colonists were amenable to British law. That was not the theory of Franklin, nor of John Adams. Their theory was that we were inhabitants of a country originally set- tled by Englishmen, and that we were subjects of an English King. The acts of Parliament were binding upon the inhabitants of England, but they had no
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power over us. No other theory than this was current among American patri- ots. They threw off allegiance to the British crown, but not to the British Par- liament ; they petitioned the King for a redress of grievances ; they denied the right of Parliament to make any internal laws relative to ourselves, as they were not represented in that body. Thus in the first Congress they say that they " are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several pro- vincial legislatures in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their sovereign." This appears in the acts of every legislature and the address of every public man. As we were not represented in the British Parliament, they had no right to make laws for us. If they had made such enactments for us, they had power to make new ones. Upon what theory, then, could our countrymen have resisted ?
Gen. Charles W. Darling, of Utica, has forwarded us copies of two pam- phlets lately issued by him. One of them is upon unpublished Washington portraits, in which he dwells upon the attainments of the painter Robertson, a Scotchman who came here in 1791 and set up a studio in New York. The other pamphlet is upon New Amsterdam and New Orange. It is a well arranged summary of the Dutch history of this colony, compressed of course, as it must be, but making a careful and painstaking statement of the sequence of events here prior to 1673. At the close is a chronological table. A number of the names of persons and places, in the body of the pamphlet, are misspelled.
MINOR PARAGRAPHS.
CHARLOTTE TEMPLE .- A correspondent, " C. I. B.," has been kind enough to send to this office the subjoined communication. It will be recollected that while we questioned the name of the heroine, whom Mrs. Rowson, by her gen- ius, made familiar as a household word before we were born, we never doubted the truth of the leading incidents upon which the romance is founded. In the reply to "J. H. B., Jr.," in our last, we incidentally requested him, when next he visited Trinity churchyard, to examine closely the slab upon which the name of "Charlotte Temple " is cut, and that when he had compared it with others in the vicinity he would find it quite modern. It never appeared to us to be the stone which should mark the resting place of the heroine of the novel. It would now seem, from the statement of the late Judge Furman, that so recently as 1825 -- only thirty-four years ago-he, nor the friend who accompanied him, could not find a gravestone over the place supposed to contain the mortal re- mains of the unfortunate girl. We will here only remark that the question is an interesting one, and doubt not it would gratify many to know what was the real name of the Charlotte Temple of Mrs. Rowson's novel :
"I have read the articles published in the columns of the New York Dis- patch of August 13 and August 20, relative to the gravestone of Charlotte
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Temple, and beg leave to make a few statements in relation to the matter in dispute. I agree perfectly with the editor in his replies to 'J. H. B., Jr., and ' Lightning Webb.' Charlotte Temple was no doubt a fictitious name, though the story is mainly true, and relates the trials and hardships of a real sufferer who may have been personally known to Mrs. Rowson, her vivid his- torian. In a copy of the work, which formerly belonged to the late Judge Ga- briel Furman, of Brooklyn, well known as the historian of that city, and which book is now in the possession of Mr. William Gowans, a bookseller in Centre street, there it a manuscript note in the handwriting of the judge, of which the following is an exact copy :
". According to tradition, Charlotte Temple, the heroine of this affecting little tale, was buried in Trinity Church burying ground, on the easterly side of the church. Twelve or thirteen years ago I, together with a friend, with our own feelings excited by a perusal of this story, on a beautiful summer evening, en- deavored to find some memorial of the unfortunate Charlotte in that ancient burying place, and although we discovered very many gravestones of that date, yet our search was in vain as to the object we had in view. The story, on the title page, is said to be a tale of truth, and I have no doubt but it is so, for I have heard old people who were living during the period of the Revolu- tionary War speak of the main facts in this tale as being true.
" 1837.
G. FURMAN, Brooklyn, L. I.'
"In the same book there is likewise the following note, also in the handwrit- ing of the judge :
"' Feb. 16th, 1846 .- Last night the old cottage on the corner of Pell street and the Bowery, New York (the northwesterly corner), was destroyed by fire. It has long been occupied as a small tavern and stage house. This was the house in which Charlotte Temple died, it then standing out in the country, some considerable distance from the city, although now far south of the real center of population in New York. Poor Charlotte was repulsed from the Walton House, in Pearl street, when she came to this cottage, then a small building, it having been built upon since the Revolution. G. F.'
: "Judge Furman was the author ,f . Notes on Brooklyn' and other works of a historical character. He was a distinguished scholar, well posted up in his- tory, fond of investigating disputed and unsettled points, and, withal, a man of unimpeachable veracity, as well as a fine, jovial companion. The search of the judge and his companion after the tombstone in question, it will be seen, was in 1825, thirty-four years ago. So, if there was no stone in Trinity churchyard at that time, of the kind alluded to, the one now said to be seen there must be to the memory of some recently deceased individual bearing the same name. The Walton House, in Pearl street, is still standing, though somewhat altered in its appearance. An upper story has been added to it, and the venerable and massive ornaments above the door have been taken away, and the entrance it- self very visibly changed since the fire which happened to it some four or five years ago. This was the house where Mrs. Grayton, the schoolmistress of Charlotte, lived, and from its doors poor Charlotte was turned away on a dark, dismal, stormy night in midwinter. Mrs. Rowson, besides being the author of ' Charlotte Temple,' was also the author of another novel, about the same
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size, called ' Lucy Temple.' This last was a sequel to the former, and professed to give the life and history of the daughter of the poor, unfortunate Charlotte." - New York Dispatch, August 27, 1859.
DAILY NEWSPAPERS IN NEW YORK .- (From the Daily World of Saturday last.)-" We now announce that on and after Monday next the price of the World will be two cents per copy."
In connection with the failure of this last attempt to establish a penny daily in this city in opposition to the Sun, the publisher of that paper presents the following selection from a list of some seventy journals which have failed in a similar effort since the establishment of the Sun in 1833. As an item from the unwritten history of journalism it will be found interesting, while it may, at the same time, furnish a useful hint to those whose taste for the expensive lux- ury of opposition to established institutions is likely to develop itself in future.
Morning Star, 1836; The Union, Human Rights, Splinificator, The Eagle, The Jeffersonian, The Woman. The Man, The Constitution. The Transcript, The Morning Star, 1834; The Crisis, The Humorist, The Democrat, Ladies' Morning Star, The Penny Daily Gazette, The Irishman's Advocate, The Citizen and True Sun, New York Daily Whig, Morning Dispatch, Merchants' Day Book, Major Downing's Advocate, The Native American Democratic Citizen, The Mechanic, The Advertiser, New York Whig, The American Flag. The Democrat. 1836; The True Sun, 1836; The Independent Press, The Irish- man. The Mechanic, The Bee, The Arena, The Aurora, True Sun, 1844; New Era, The Olio, New Yorker, Know Nothing, 1854; The Truth, The Moon, The World, 1860.
The following comparison of the daily circulation of the Sun for the twenty- four weeks since the establishment of the World, June 14, 1860, with the twenty-four weeks next preceding that event, will show precisely how far the circulation of the Sun has been affected by that paper:
24 weeks since June 14.
24 weeks
prev. to June 14.
Highest circulation for any one day
72,000
72,087
Lowest circulation for any one day_
58,320
56,400
Highest average for any week
64,560
65,061
Lowest average for any week
59,152
58,618
Average daily circulation for the twenty four weeks since June 14.
67,780
Average daily circulation for the twenty-four weeks next preceding June 14
63,099
Average difference in the circulation of the Sun during the two periods
2,319
Dispatch, December 1st, 1860.
UPTOWN MARCH OF BUSINESS .- Bond street, once the headquarters of fashionable society, and only a few years ago filled exclusively with private residences, is yielding to the resistless tide of business. Two or three business establishments have already invaded its precincts, and as it is the first step which tells in such a movement, they will have followers and imitators rapidly.
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Batchelor & Brown have taken possession of the old mansion of Gideon Lee ; No. 1 is occupied as a restaurant, and a new bardware store is soon to be opened next to the residence of Dr. Francis. This is the natural progress of events, and in due time even Fifth avenue will probably go through a similar experi- ence .-- Times, January, 1860.
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