USA > New York > New York City > Old New York : a journal relating to the history and antiquities of New York City, Vol. II > Part 33
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John Henry Starin.
believing further that to honor this type is the purpose of this meeting, I accept ; in the name of the sweet lady, true wife and fond mother whose gentle influence has done so much to make John H. Starin what he is ; in her name and upon behalf of our family I accept this magnificent work of art.
"Let it stand as an evidence of the fact that so long as our glo- rious flag shall fly the highest honors in this land are open to the poorest boy. Let it stand as a monument to brains, pluck and work. Let it stand a monument to open handed generosity and kindliness of heart. And when the time shall come-may it be far distant, O ye powers above-when the time shall come for its original to go to his fathers ; then, when all jealousy, all envy shall have been buried under the flowers of appreciation and love, let those who look upon it say, as well they may : This is the statue of a man who won great distinction through great trial; this is the statue of a man who always had a helping hand for the needy and the poor ; this is the statue of a man who, even in the hour of his greatest triumph, was always ready to welcome and greet the humblest friend of his youth; this is the statue of John Henry Starin."
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Among the numerous telegrams and letters which were received in connection with the unveiling, the following are of special interest. The United States Senator for the State of New York sent this telegram :
"SYRACUSE, Oct. 6, 1890.
" TO THE HON. HOWARD CARROLL, NEW YORK :
" I regret exceedingly that I cannot unite with Messrs. Root, Erhardt and others in unveiling the statue of Mr. Starin, and in other ways showing our friendship and respect for him at Starin Place to-morrow. Pressing duties retain me here. Please ex- press my regret and esteem to Mrs. Starin and your family.
" FRANK HISCOCK."
The following gem of composition came from the world- famous president of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad :
noilisogntas
miwollot adT
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John Henry Starin.
"NEW YORK, Oct. 15.
" MY DEAR MR. CARROLL: On my return to town a week after the 7th I find your letter notifying me of the unveiling of the statue of Mr. John HI. Starin at Fultonville on that day. I deeply regret that I did not know of the date in time so that if unable to attend I might have sent a letter indicating as far as language . would permit my appreciation of the character, career and public spirit of Mr. Starin. The much discussed question of what con- stitutes a typical American is best answered by living examples. The young man who, with no better opportunities than his com- panions, rises so far above his surroundings as to command the attention not only of the community in which he was born, but of the larger constituency of the State and of the nation, who is suc- cessful in business, distinguished in public life and fills in a large measure the duties of a benevolent and sympathetic citizen, is the product of American institutions and the best evidence of the op- portunities they offer.
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" It is difficult for me to speak in measured phrases of Mr. Starin, because twenty-five years of intimate acquaintance with him has continuously increased my esteem for the man and my affection for my friend. Starin Place and the statue will last long, but not longer than the memory of the distinguished citizen whom they commemorate.
"I am very truly your friend, "CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW."
Mr. Starin has now been for many years one of the leading busi- ness men of New York. His early experience with poverty, the close application which it was necessary for him to exhibit in his years of youth, the economy and attention to details which he was obliged to display, have borne their fruit in him since. He has always been master of his business, even in the smallest details. He organized it, and himself directed every step in its growth. His was no fortuitous rise. He inherited no wealth ;. he was trained in other occupations, and this business he created from its foundation. Many able men have succeeded to enterprises begun and well started by others, if not already highly suc- cessful. This was not his case. Yet his is the largest harbor naval
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service of the kind in the United States, if not in the world. The list of his vessels reaches up into the hundreds, their size vary- ing from vessels three hundred feet long down to the smallest lighter. Every operation of commerce is performed by them. Mr. Starin has not only been extremely successful in his busi- ness ventures, but has found time to take a large part in the affairs of this great city and State. He has been a member of the Chamber of Commerce since 1874. Upon the death of Horatio Seymour in 1880, he was elected President of the Saratoga Monu- ment Association. This organization was made for the purpose of erecting upon the battle ground back of Schuylerville an appro- priate shaft to mark the place where the Americans met the British and IIessian forces in 1777 and defeated them. It was this battle which secured for us the open support of France, and was one of the three chief contests of the Revolution-Bunker Hill, the begin- ning of hostilities, which showed that we could fight ; Saratoga, that proved that we were able to meet a first class army from England on equal terms, and Yorktown, which closed the war. Other battles were sanguinary, but each of these were followed by far reaching consequences. Many years ago the citizens of Messa- chusetts raised their shaft in Charlestown, and Congress did hon- ors to the victors at Yorktown. But had it not been for Mr. Starin no monument would yet have been erected at Saratoga. He ob- tained a gift of $30,000 from Congress; he subscribed liberally himself, and he induced others to give. His memory will be for- ever associated with these sacred grounds. He is a trustee of Union College, and a member of more than thirty clubs and societies of a public nature. With the leading men of all parties in the Union he has been at all times in familiar acquaintance, and he enjoyed the intimate friendship of Presidents Grant, Garfield and Arthur. But beyond all his achievements in business and public life his friends place the fact that he has not been spoiled by his increase in means, his heart beating as warmly for the poor and distressed as ever it did. His private benefactions, his deeds of kindness have been numberless, though the world knows little of them. As has been well said he is a typical American, and his city and the State may well be proud of hir.
GULIAN C. VERPLANCK.
Twenty years have passed since the venerable form of Guliau Crommelin Verplanck was laid to rest in the old cemetery at Fish- kill. beside his father and grandfather. There are few now who remember his noble, intellectual face and recall his charming con- versational powers. From the interesting biographical sketch by Judge Daly, and from some old family letters, the material for this little memoir is taken.
Mr. Verplanck" was born at his grandfather's house in Wall Street in 1786. Ilis mother died while he was an infant, and he was brought up by his grandmother, Judith Verplanck, daughter of Daniel Crommelin, of Amsterdam. At the early age of fifteen years he was graduated from Columbia College, and afterward studied law in the office of Edward Livingston, and was admitted to the bar by Chancellor, then Chief Justice, Kent, at the age of twenty-one.
In 1811 he married Mary Elizabeth, daughter of John Ward Fenno, of Boston. This marriage with a lady of great charm of
* Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, LL. D., was for more than fifty years one of the best known among literary men of New York. He was born in that city in 1786 ; graduated at Columbia College in 1801 ; studied law with Edward Livingston ; was admitted to the bar in 1807, and made his first appearance in public as a Fourth of July orator in the North Dutch Reformed Church in 1809. In 1811 he was a principal in the defence of a student of Columbia College during the commencement exercises at Trinity Church, and was fined by Mayor De Witt Clinton for an infraction of law. The matter assumed a political aspect, and some of Mr. Verplanck's earlier literary efforts were in the form of political writings, the most noted of which was "The State Triumvirate." & sharp satire aimed at De Witt Clinton and his friends. In 1811 Mr. Verplanck married Miss Eliza Fenno, by whom he had two children, one of whom survives. In 1813 he became a contributor to the Analectic Magazine, edited by Washington Irving. He went to Europe in 1816, and remained two years. On his return he delivered an anniversary discourse before the New York Hospital, which gave him a great literary reputation. He became an earnest politician, and was elected a member of the New York Assembly in 1813 by the "Bucktail" party, opposed to Clinton. He was appointed a professor in the Union Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1825 he was elected to Congress. On retiring from that position he devoted himself mainly to literary pursuits. In a discourse before the literary societies
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manner and personal beauty was one of great happiness, but early clouded over by the delicate health of Mrs. Verplanck, which ne- cessitated a change of climate, but too late to save the life of this lovely and long lamented lady, who died in Paris in May, 1817, leaving her husband a widower, as he remained all his life.
Mr. Verplanck had left his children at his father's house at Fish- kill-on-the-Hudson, and wrote to his sister, who had charge of them, from Amsterdam in September, 1817: "Your account of my chil- dren increases my desire to return. I should like very well to see Italy, but I cannot think of buying that pleasure at so dear a rate as another Winter's absence.
" The desire of seeing the land of ' Arms and Arts and Liberty ' was the strongest inclination of the kind I ever felt, and I feel some gratification in the thought that I have sacrificed it, once to the comfort of Eliza, and a second time to her children. This re- flection fully compensates me for any regret I may hereafter feel on the subject."
The letter which announced the death of Mrs. Verplanck to her sister Maria, the wife of Recorder J. O. Hoffman, contains these touching lines : " It is now over, and you know the worst. For three months my heart has been constantly torn by anxiety, but I now feel a calmness and tranquillity of mind in which I trust you
Columbia College in 1830, he paid a generous tribute to the character of De Witt Clinton (who died in 1828), with whom he so long quarrelled through the press, in which he said : " Whatever of party animosity might have blinded me to his merits died away long before his death."
Mr. Verplanck was elected to the State Senate in 1838, and was a controlling power in the Court of Errors. Through his life be had been a diligent student of Shakespeare, and in 1847 he completed the editing of a new edition of his works, published by Harper & Bros. In this task be exhibited much erudition. For more than fifty years he was a trustee of the Society Library, forty-four years a regent of the University of the State of New York, twenty-six years a vestryman of Trinity Church, twenty-four years president of the Board of Emigration, an active member of the New York Historical Society, many years one of the Governors of the New York Hospital, a trustee of Columbia College, a member of the Sketch Club, and a working member of the Century Club. But while he was liberal in giving his personal attention to the management of various institutions, he was never a contributor of pecuniary aid to any of the benevolent and charitable institutions of the city. He was the inheritor of a liberal competence, but his estate was not very large at the time of his death, in March, 1870 .- Lossing.
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will participate. E.'s was indeed the death of the righteous; her sufferings were long and severe, she had much bodily pain, and was deeply afflicted at the idea of expiring far from her friends and leaving no remembrance of herself in the minds of her chil- dren-but most assuredly she was made perfect by these suffer- ings. Nothing could be more fervent, more humble, yet more confident than her piety, purer and stronger than her faith, or more sincere and profound than her repentance for those sins of omission and faults of temper (you know how few and small they were) with which she reproached herself. She received the com- munion from the hands of the Rev. Mr. Pepys, the chaplain of the British Legation. I felt during the last hours and I still feel a conviction of her happiness so strong and assured that it seems to be given from heaven. I hope the idea is neither presumptuous nor fanatical. God knows with what bitterness I have wept, weeks and months ago, at the very fear and anticipation of this separa- tion, and I cannot now think of the calmness with which I closed her eyes and received her last breath without astonishment as well as gratitude. You are familiar with sorrow, dearest M., and know how to bear it. I confidently trust that the same support which I feel will be given to you. E. was given to me by the Lord, and I feel that in her life and in her death I have been blessed. Whatever may be the course of my future life I am certain that I shall always fondly cherish her memory, because any recollec- tion of her, though sad, will never be painful. She bequeathed you to me. Let me in some measure supply her place in your heart. She is buried in the beautiful Cimetière de Père La Chaise, next in front of the monument of the poet Delille. As to my- self, I feel all the duties that crowd upon me. I desire to return home instantly to my friends and children, but I shall probably never return to Europe, and it seems a duty Iowe myself and my children not to throw away the opportunity of instruction which two or three months' stay longer will afford. "
From Amsterdam he wrote under date of September 4th of the same year : "I arrived here yesterday, and found all my friends well and kind as usual. I am very fond of my Dutch relations. They are among the oldest and most honorable merchants of Eu- rope. The firm under which they trade is the name of my great-
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grandfather, who has been dead many years. In every part of Europe in which I have been I have heard of some act of gen- erosity in honor of this house. Mr. G., who speaks of them in the highest terms, will not, however, allow them to be taken as a specimen of Dutch merchants, and maintains that my friends owe all their liberal notions to their great-grandfather's having been born in America. The weather is very fine ; indeed I have never seen Holland but in fine weather. Faderland always smiles upon me."
From Edinburgh he wrote: " The first thing which struck me in Scotland was the total change of manners. After having been chilled for two months with the coldness, distance and gloom of English manners, I cannot describe to you how strongly I felt and still feel the contrast of Scotch cordiality, welcome, openness, hospitality-in short, of all a traveler could wish in a people among whom he is a stranger. As to the town, ' My own romantic town,' Scott calls it; and it is the only city I ever saw which deserves the name of romantic, and never was a happier epithet."
After his return to America Mr. Verplanck was much occupied with the duties of public life, having been elected to the Legisla- ture in 1819 as a member from the city of New York, which he continued to represent in the Assembly during the years 1820, 1821, 1822 and 1823. He was about this time appointed a pro- fessor in the General Theological Seminary, and before his retire- ment from the Legislature he published a volume on the Nature and Uses of the Evidences of Revealed Religion, a work of ster- ling merit. In 1825 Mr. Verplanck was elected to Congress from the City of New York, and continued to be a member of the House of Representatives for eight years, or until 1833.
"It was," says Judge Daly, " one of the most exciting periods of political history, and in which he was an influential actor. It was chiefly through his instrumentality that the law of copyright was extended from twenty-eight to forty-eight years, in recogni- tion of which a public dinner was given to him in this city. Upon retiring from Congress he devoted himself more especially to lit- erary pursuits. In 1838 he was elected to the State Senate, where he served four years. Ile was for more than fifty years a trustee of the Society Library ; for forty-four years a Regent of the Uni- versity of the State of New York; for twenty-six years he was
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a member of the vestry of Trinity Church, and at his death one of the two church wardens; for twenty-four years he was president of the Board of Emigration, a public trust of the most important and onerous character, to which he attended with the most scrupulous fidelity to the last year of his life." The other offices which he filled will be rapidly passed over to conclude this little sketch briefly.
For more than fifty years a widower, his devotion to the memory of his wife was shown by the discovery after his death of her let- ters, rings and locks of golden hair which had been treasured for so many years in a little writing desk.
His mind was deeply religious, and the depth of these convic- tions was most strongly impressed upon those who knew him most intimately. Once a member of his family, supposing him to be asleep, stepped softly near him, and heard him repeating with deep reverence the words, " Eternity, eternity."
His appreciation of religious poetry was intense. When very young one of his grandchildren recalls the solemnity with which he gave Faber's poems into her hands, almost as a precious legacy. A letter to his great-grandson, written by the Rev. Frederick W. Shelton, who saw much of Mr. Verplanck during the latter years of his life, which he spent chiefly at Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, will serve as a suitable ending to this memoir, for which we have so largely quoted from the biography by Chief Justice Daly, written immediately after Mr. Verplanck's death, in 1870 :
" To Gulian C. Verplanck, now entering his third year, Christ- mas, 1878 : You bear an honored name of delightful memory, and when I reverently recall that name the attempt is choked with an affection which finds no suitable expression in empty words. Your great-grandfather was the friend of all men, and of a type which has become well nigh obsolete. He was the soul of honor, and set off with treasures of learning the unaffected simplicity of more wholesome times. Among groups of children on a festal holiday he was king. With an abiding love for him and love to you, and hoping that in due time you may increase in all the plenitude of his virtues, believe me to be your friend and well wisher.
" FREDERICK W. SHELTON."
E. F. V. R.
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OLD CHELSEA.
On the 16th of August, 1750, Thomas Clarke, an officer, who gained distinction in the old French war in America, purchased an estate from Jacob Somerindyke and Teunis Somerindyke, situ- ated on Manhattan Island. It was a farm of several hundred acres bordering the Hudson River and running eastwardly to what is now known as Seventh avenue. This estate Clarke named "Chelsea," as being the retreat of an old war-worn veteran who had seen much service in the British army. Soon after his purchase of the prop- erty the old soldier died and his widow erected a substantial man- sion on a plot of ground bounded by Ninth and Tenth avenues and Twenty-second and Twenty-third streets, on a commanding position and overlooking a highly picturesque extent of rural scenery. The estate was subsequently purchased by Bishop Moore, president of Columbia College, and he made it his country residence. After a few years passed at Chelsea he gave the house and estate to his son, Clement C. Moore, the author of the well known poem " The Night Before Christmas," who resided on the property until the survey and levelling of the land for building purposes made it necessary to demolish the mansion house.
During the residence of Clement C. Moore at Chelsea the spa- cious garden and lawn suffered greatly from the depredations of the rough element of the city, who continually visited that section and carried off fruit, flowers, vegetables, or whatever suited their fancy or excited their cupidity. There was no protection from these petty thieves, and an appeal to the authorities at no time brought satisfactory relief. Mr. Moore became very indignant at these oft recurring acts of lawlessness, and to rid himself of the annoyance and loss he at last determined to offer the estate for sale. One day, with this purpose in view, he started to drive down town, and on the way and in the neighborhood of St. Luke's Church, in Hudson street, he encountered James W. Wells, a member and communi- cant of the same church. He was a man of great intelligence, good - sense and characteristic energy, and in all respects an honorable and worthy citizen. Mr. Wells was a carpenter by trade, in moderate
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circumstances, but industrious and possessed of a high appreciation of the great possibilities of the young metropolis that even at that early day was talked about in every portion of the western world, as well as Europe. Mr. Moore unfolded to his fellow-parishioner his grievance at Chelsea and his intention to sell the property.
"What is the price ? " inquired Mr. Wells.
"Forty thousand dollars," was the reply.
" That is very cheap, Mr. Moore. In the course of a few years it is sure to become extremely valuable, as it will be wanted for building purposes when the city grows in that direction."
" That is all very well, but what am I to do ? If I hold the prop- erty I shall be eaten up by taxes, while half my crops are being car- ried away by the vagabonds from Greenwich village and the city."
"There is one way out of the difficulty, Mr. Moore." " Name it."
" Survey the property with reference to a regular grade, lay out the land in the form and size of city lots and invite settlement. Receive small payments down and give liberal terms for the re mainder of the purchase price. If you carrysont the plan wisely, and people can be made to see the advantages of buying homes so convenient to their business down town at a moderate cost, the project is sure to be successful."
" What are the settlers to do for the means of transportation to and from their business ?"
"That can be provided for very easily. There is already a line of stages that run from the corner of Pine and Nassau streets to Charles street in Greenwich village. I think Asa Hall might be prevailed upon to extend his route. If not, some one else can be induced to start a new line."
" All you say looks feasible. If I conclude to offer the land for sale as city lots, as you suggest, will you act as agent ?"
" Well," said Mr. Wells, "I will think the matter over and let you know," and the two friends parted.
It was not a great while after this conversation that the land was surveyed and lots offered for sale and to lease. Nor was it a great while before the Knickerbocker line of stages was established by Palmer & Peters, and the stables for many years after were on the present site of the Grand Opera House at Twenty-fourth street and Eighth avenue.
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Mr. Wells's office at Chelsea (he adopted the estate name for the embryo village) was situated on Ninth avenue, near Twenty-first street, and the agent was soon transacting a brisk business in selling lots. Houses were erected in large numbers, stores of various kinds also opened their doors on the property, and leaseholds were executed for long terms of years, with the privilege of renewals for equally long periods. Large blocks or parts of blocks were sold to large purchasers who stipulated to improve the property. One of the latter was Don Alonzo Cushman, a city merchant who had made money in the dry goods trade, but soon after his pur- chase of lots at Chelsea he turned his attention mostly to real estate, in which he made a large fortune. A block bounded by Ninth and Tenth avenues and Twentieth and Twenty-first streets was set apart for an Episcopal Theological school, with handsomely laid out grounds, and a few years subsequently was in a fashion- able neighborhood of finely built brick and brown stone residences.
The sales of lands in fee and the rentals of other property, known as reserved lots, in forty years swelled the Moore estate until it reached several millions of dollars, while Mr. Wells, the agent, at his death in 1860 left an estate valued at 8200,000, and his heirs are now largely interested in Chelsea real estate.
A fire department was organized, and churches and schools were early established, and intense local pride was manifested in making Chelsea worthy of its favorable location as a residence suburb of the Metropolis.
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