USA > New York > New York County > Harlem > Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles > Part 17
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of Vander Donck. His patent was issued August 18th, 1646, and in after years was confirmed to his children, from whom are descended two families of Ulster County,-Jansen and Van Keuran, the last name corrupted from Keulen .* It does not ap- pear that Matthys himself ever occupied this land; at the date of the patent he was living at Fort Orange. His hundred acres must have reached quite down to the Jansen and Aertsen grant, hereafter noticed. The latter, according to the patent, as cer- tainly reached northward to "Tobias' Bouwery." Tobias Teunis- sen, late farmer. for Dr. La Montagne, is here referred to, and the facts stated warrant the conclusion that Teunissen now occu- pied Matthys Jansen's land either under a lease or an agreement to purchase. To this sequestered home, beside the Great Kill, Tobias had taken a new vrouw, in hope of happier years, though the spirit and activity he had shown in the late Indian war made his situation not without peril. But, courageous of heart, he did not anticipate the fate which awaited him.
Pieter Jansen, in company with Mr. Huyck Aertsen, then a schepen at Brooklyn, had taken up a tract of land lying between Tobias' bounds and what is now known as Sherman's Creek, and for which a groundbrief was given them March 11th, 1647. Jansen was a hardy Norwegian of twenty-seven years, had been in the employ of Kuyter, and was present on that fearful night when his house was burned by the savages. The next summer after the patent was secured, Pieter, the Norman, as he was usually called, took to his heart and home a young wife, Lysbet Jansen, from Amsterdam, and near the same time, by the death of Aertsen, was left in sole care of the bouwery, though between the widow and the next of kin (for Aertsen left no children) his share did not want for claimants. Aertsen was born at Rossum, a village of the Bommellerwoert, an island formed by the Waal
* Matthys Jansen became a trader on the Hudson, removed to Fort Orange, and thence to Esopus, where he died prior to 1663. That year, February 15, the deacons loaned 1000 gl. from his estate. His widow, Margaret Hendricks, married Thomas Chambers, Lord of the Manor of Fox Hall. Jansen had four children. viz., Jan, Matthys, Catharine, married, 1660, Jan Jansen, from Amersfoort, and Anneke, who married, 1668, Sergt. Jan Hendricks Buur, alias Pearsen.
Jan Matthyssen, born at Fort Orange, married, in 1667, Madelaine, daughter of Matthew Blanchan, was an elder of the Kingston church, and died between 1719 and 1724. He had Matthys, Thomas, Jan. Hendrick, David, Margaret, who married Barent Burhans; Magdalene, married Richard Brodhead; Sarah, married Elias Bun- schoten; Catharine, married John Crook, Jr., and Mary, who died early. These bore the name of Jansen, in English Johnson. Jan took to the sea, went to England, and in 1690 was thought to be dead. From the other sons were the respectable Jansens of Ulster County, some of whom bore a conspicuous part in the Revolution.
Matthys Matthyssen was made a captain in 1685, and later served against the French on the northern frontier. He married Tietie, daughter of Tjerck De Witt. and had issue Matthys, Tjerck, Nicholas, Thomas, Gerardus, Hasuelt, Sarah, mar- ried Matthew Du Bois; Leah, who, with Hasuelt, removed to New York, and Barbara, married Peter Tappan. (See Annals of Newtown, p. 303.) It was these six sons of Matthys who, says an old manuscript, "changed their names of Matthyssen to Van Keuren," and whence the numerous family so called.
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and Maas; but he had a brother, a burgher at Utrecht, who, on having notice of his death, and taking proof thereof December 30th, 1647, was declared his only heir. For reasons similar to those for which other patents within Harlem were afterward held to be vacated or void, the validity of this title was subsequently called in question, and by a decision of the governor and council and a compromise with the successors of Jansen and Aertsen, became vested in the freeholders of Harlem. It has additional interest as covering the identical tract known in our time as the "Dyckman Homestead."*
These bouweries, forming the outposts of settlement on the north end, were evidently laid out by actual survey, whence the courses and distances and the uneven quantity, seventy-four morgen, one hundred and six rods, in that to Jansen and Aertsen. The stretch of alternate heights and hollows, reaching from Sher- man's Creek down to the Flats, had not yet a solitary white set- tler. Through its forests and thickets red men hunted the deer and beaver, and rudely tilled other portions, one of which was known as the "Great Maize Land." Indeed the Indian title to this part of Manhattan Island was not fully extinguished till 1715.
Coming to the settlements on the Flats, the Otter-spoor farm, which Van Tienhoven had "long since conveyed" to Van Keulen, of Amsterdam, and whence, as before said, it took the name Van Keulen's Hook, was only made sure to the latter the month before the new Indian treaty was ratified, by a patent from Kieft to Van Tienhoven, the object and effect of which was to give ยท him power to sell, and to perfect the title in Van Keulen, no patent having been issued before. With so firm a tenure it is remarkable that no evidence appears of any further attempts on the part of Van Keulen to improve this valuable tract, nor is his ownership again distinctly recognized. While the evidence we have bearing upon it is far from satisfactory, our solution is that Matthys Jansen Van Keulen, being authorized by the Amsterdam merchant, received from Kieft the grant of Papparinamin in exchange for Van Keulen's Hook.
Dr. Montagne, with brightened prospects, and about to wed
lows: * The Jansen and Aertsen Patent, or rather the descriptive part, reads as fol- "A piece of land lying between Montagne's hay meadow and Tobias' bouwery, stretching from the north corner of said meadow south-southeast to the hook, two hundred and seventy-five rods. It goes" to a spring (fontyn) against the high land, and from there to the end of a creek coming out of the North River, northeast by north along the high hills an hundred and seventy-five rods, and from there,t to the kill which runs around the Island of Manhattans, an hundred and twenty rods south-southeast, seventy rods southeast, and thirty south-southeast; and along the before-named kill to the aforesaid hook, two hundred rods; the same amounting to seventy-four morgen, one hundred and six rods." Dated March 11, 1647. * i. e., On the west side. t Being its northern boundary.
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the widow of Arent Corssen Stam, who two years previous, sail- ing for Holland on the public service, had perished at sea, took occasion, May 9th, 1647, only two days before his friend Kieft closed his directorship, to secure a patent for the farm Vreden- dal, to which was now joined what was not included in the original grant to Hendrick De Forest, namely, the point or neck of land called Rechawanes, extending out to the East River, and since known as the Benson or McGown farm. As belonging to the oldest title in the township, and one to which an unusual inter- est attaches, we feel warranted in giving a translation of the patent entire.
We, William Kieft, Director General, and the Council, residing in New Netherland, on behalf of the High and Mighty Lords the States General of the United Netherlands, his Highness of Orange, and the Honorable Messeurs, the Managers of the Incorporated West India Com. pany, do, by these presents, acknowledge and declare, that we on this day, the date underwritten, have given and granted unto Sieur Johannes La Montagne, counsellor of New Netherland, a piece of land situate on the Island of Manhattans, known by a name in the Indian language which in the Nether Dutch signifies the Flat Land, containing one hundred morgen in the flat, lying between the hills and kill; and a point named Rechawanes, stretching betwixt two kills, till to the East River; ( which above described land was occupied by Hendrick Forest deceased, and has been purchased by the said La Montagne at public auction in the Fort. for seventeen hundred guilders ; ) with express conditions and terms that he Johannes La Montagne, or whoever by virtue hereof may accept his action, shall acknowledge the Honorable Managers aforesaid as his Lords and Patroons, under the sovereignty of their High Mightinesses the Lords States General, and obey their Director and Council here in all things. as good inhabitants are in duty bound to do; provided further that they subject themselves to all such burdens and imposts as are already enacted, or may hereafter be enacted by their Honors; constituting therefore the said Sieur La Montagne, or whoever may hereafter obtain his action, in our stead in real and actual possession of the aforesaid lot and land, giving him by these presents. full power, authority and special order, the aforesaid parcel of land to enter upon, cultivate, inhabit and use as he would lawfully do with other his patrimonial lands and effects, without we the grantors in the quality aforesaid, thereunto having, reserving or saving any, even the slightest part, action or control whatever, but to the behoof as aforesaid, from all desisting, from now henceforth and forever. Promising moreover, this transport firm, inviolable and irrevocable to keep, respect and fulfil, all under the penalty provided therefor by law. In witness, these presents are by us signed and confirmed with our seal in red wax hereto appended. Done in Fort Amsterdam, in New Nether- land, the 9th day of May, 1647.
WILLEM KIEFT.
Six days afterward Dr. Montagne's brother-in-law, Isaac De Forest, obtained from the new director, Stuyvesant, the ground- brief for a bouwery previously granted him, consisting of fifty morgen of surplus land which had been found to lie between the Kuyter and Van Keulen tracts. It bordered on the Harlem
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River, opposite the mouth of "Bronck's Kill,"-the passage, still called "The Kills," parting Randell's Island from the Westchester shore. Upon this fifty-morgen tract the village of New Harlem was subsequently laid out and ran its humble career, but "the lawn where scattered hamlets rose" has so changed before the rise of modern structures that barely one of its ancient dwellings remains .*
The bouweries mentioned, with Zegendal, or Kuyter's farm, were the only ones, so far as known, yet begun within the terri- torial limits to which our history refers. Kuyter, though one of the most energetic of the settlers, had been strangely baffled in his efforts to improve his lands. Yet to his various disappointments and losses other trials, and more severe, were to be added. But the indomitable spirit of the man, rising superior to misfortune, exhibits Kuyter throughout in a character to be admired, and in which we cannot but be interested. The ill-feeling which had sprung up between him and Kieft, as already alluded to in con- nection with the burning of Kuyter's house, grew out of Kieft's culpable rashness in bringing on the Indian war. The good Dominie Bogardus, sorely grieved by the director's course in authorizing the cruel massacre of the Indians, and thus provoking the fearful retaliation which had followed, had expressed himself freely in regard to these things, "many times in his sermons," while also rebuking the prevalent immorality, avarice, and other gross indulgences. This pungent preaching so offended the director that he forsook the church, absenting himself for more than three years, his example also leading off nearly every officer of the church and government, not excepting the usually discreet counsellor, Montagne, who had formerly been an elder. Kuyter himself had once felt hard toward the dominie for refusing him a favor which Kieft had asked in his behalf; but he was not vindictive, and this was a bygone. As a ruling elder, and con- trolled by his religion and strong sense of justice, he did not hesitate now to sustain the minister and his utterances, although not another member of the consistory stood by him. In conse- quence he brought upon his own head the maledictions of the director, which were in no wise appeased by Kuyter's official action as one of the Eight Men, a body which, representing the people, had felt it a duty to address the directors in Holland, exposing Kieft's misrule in New Netherland and the ruinous condition to which, as a consequence, the colony had been reduced. As to the differences between Bogardus and Kieft, these, after
* See De Forest Family, Appendix A.
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a sharp warfare, had ended in a reconciliation. But not so with Kieft and Kuyter, whose mutual animosity another year did not quench, while Cornelis Melyn, also an active member of the Eight Men, came in for a share of Kieft's hot displeasure. These two honest men were as thorns in the side of the director. Nor could they easily bear either the insults which he had heaped upon them, or the heavy losses they had sustained through his maladministration ; and thus the case stood when Kieft was superseded in office by General Petrus Stuyvesant, who arrived May 11th, 1647. In some remarks made on the occasion of formally resigning the government to his successor, Kieft thanked the people for their fidelity, evidently expecting to be compli- mented in return. But on the contrary, Kuyter, Melyn, and one or two more had the frankness to speak out and tell him that they would not thank him, as they had no reason for doing so!
The existing quarrel, brought thus directly to the notice of Stuyvesant, now took the form of a complaint preferred by Kieft against Kuyter and Melyn, whom he charged with having sent "some letters to Holland, to the directors, in the name of the Eight Men; among others, one dated 28th October, 1644, con- taining nothing but libels and lies." He demanded justice and the punishment of the accused. This was on June 18th, and next day a copy of the complaint, containing the points of objec- tion to the obnoxious letter, was handed to the accused by the court messenger, with a summons to answer within forty-eight hours. Kuyter and Melyn replied at length on the 22d, and, in a telling statement, invited an inquiry into the truth of what they had written. This defense had little weight with the arbitrary Stuyvesant, himself a great stickler for the divine right of rulers, and the tables were turned against Kuyter and his associate, who, after further preliminaries, were placed under arrest, and on July 16th brought before the director and council for trial. It was plainly to be seen that the court held the atti- tude of both prosecutor and judge. The charges, in brief, were that they had slandered and threatened Director Kieft. The prosecution relied mainly on the letter before referred to, written to the directors in Holland, and pronounced by Kieft to be "full of libels and lies"; of which letter, though it purported to be a memorial from the Eight Men, the accused were declared the authors, and to which, as was charged, they had fraudulently obtained the signatures of their associates. Kuyter, it was further alleged, had, at a meeting of the Eight Men, raised his finger to Kieft in a threatening manner, and said to him that when he
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should doff his robe of office then he would have him! Melyn, as was charged, in speaking of the orders for destroying the Indians in the winter of 1643, had dared to say, "They who gave such orders should look well to themselves, lest they come either to the gallows or the wheel,"-words almost prophetic, consid- ering the manner of Kieft's death. Kuyter explained his remark as quite different from that imputed to him. He and Melyn, standing to their former answer, in which they had fully and ably met the several points of objection to the obnoxious letter,* now offered certain memorials, proofs, and witnesses, "in order to establish the truth of what was written." But these were either rejected or allowed to have no weight, and thus, the evidence being unjustly set aside, the case was carried against the accused, who were pronounced guilty of high contempt of authority. Stuyvesant, in his judgment in Kuyter's case, hinged it on sacred and civil law. "He who slanders God, the magistrate, or his parents," says Bernard De Muscatel, "must be stoned to death." Then he quoted the Scriptures: "Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people." On July 25th they were sentenced,-Kuy- ter to a fine of 150 gl. and three years' banishment from New Netherland; Melyn to a heavier fine and longer exile.
Elated with his success, Kieft soon after took passage for Holland in the ship Princess, carrying with him a fortune which he had amassed here. In the same ship Dominie Bogardus and others embarked, while Kuyter and Melyn, "publicly banished the country," were "brought on board as exiles, torn away from their goods, wives and children," while, as if to mock their mis- ery, the bells in the church were made to ring a merry peal. The vessel sailed August 16th, 1647, but never reached its des- tination. On September 27th, having mistaken their course, they were wrecked upon a rock on the coast of Wales. The wretched Kieft, with death before his eyes, sighed deeply as he said to Kuyter and Melyn, "Friends, I have done you wrong ; can you forgive me?" All night the ship rocked in the sea, and toward morning went to pieces, a large number of persons perishing, including Kieft and Bogardus. Kuyter and Melyn providentially escaped with their lives, though the latter lost a son. "Kuyter remained alone on the after part of the ship, on which stood a cannon, which he, observing in the gray of the morning, took for a man; but speaking to it and getting no answer, he supposed him dead. He was at last thrown on land, together
* This letter may be found and its character judged of by reference to the Col. Hist. of N. Y., i, 109-213. Kieft's points of exception to it are given at p. 203, and the able rejoinder of Kuyter and Melyn at p. 205.
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with the cannon, to the great amazement of the English, who crowded the strand by thousands, and who set up the piece of ordnance as a lasting memorial. Melyn, floating back to sea, fell in with others who had remained on a part of the wreck on a sand-bank which became dry with the ebb. They then took some planks and pieces of wood, fastened them together, and having made sails of their shirts and other garments, they at last reached the mainland of England. As these persons were more concerned for their papers than for anything else; they caused them to be dragged for, and on the third day Jochem Pietersz recovered a box containing a part of them."#
The resolute Kuyter and Melyn passed over to Holland, and appealed to the States General from the sentence rendered by Stuyvesant. Upon a hearing of their case, this body granted a suspension of the judgment, with permission for them to return to New Netherland, and summoned .Stuyvesant to appear at the Hague, in person or by attorney, either to sustain his decision "or to renounce the same."
Armed with a mandamus and passports from their High Mightinesses, and also bearing a letter from his Highness the Prince of Orange to Stuyvesant, dated'May 19th, 1648, admon- ishing him "duly to respect and obey those commands," Kuyter and Melyn were now prepared to return to this country and face their accusers. But detained for some months longer by other engagements, Melyn sailed at the close of the year, leaving Kuy- ter behind, probably to manage the case should Stuyvesant at- tempt to prosecute it further. Reaching New Amsterdam about January Ist, 1649, Melyn presented his letters to Stuyvesant, who was in great wrath over the mandamus, declaring with much bluster his purpose to answer it. Melyn was inclined to push his advantage, but joining the citizens in other complaints against the director, affairs became rather involved; while Kuyter, re- maining abroad for a year longer, more or less, found on his return no obstacle interposed to his resuming his property, and, contenting himself with his own business, he was reinstated in his several offices by Stuyvesant, the breach of friendship between them being soon healed.
. Everardus Bogardus, the pastor, counsellor and friend of our De Forests, La Montagne, Kuyter, Bronck, and their fellow-colonists, who cheered them amid their toils and adversities and in dark hours of peril. joined many in marriage, bap- tized their offspring, oft performed in their stricken homes the last sad rites of sepulture, and frequently acted as guardian of their estates: full justice is yet to be done his memory. His advice often sought for in many affairs affecting individuals or the community, the amount of important business with which he was intrusted on his final departure for Holland evinced the continued respect and confidence of his people. In the record of a useful life, as we apprehend. Dominie Bogardus has left his numerous heirs a better inheritance than they will ever realize from his landed pos- sessions. See Valentine's Manual for 1863, p. 595; also Corwin's Manual.
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Kuyter was not in circumstances to restore his ruined plan- tation at Schorakin; indeed there was little encouragement for any to prosecute labor on the north part of the island, owing to the hostile temper of the Indians, who during these several years waylaid and murdered a number of the settlers dwelling in exposed places. Some still kept up their bouweries; others dis- posed of theirs. Pieter Cornelissen Beeck, an old and respected citizen of New Amsterdam, had come to own one "on this island near Hellgate," adjacent to the Hoorn's Hook patent; while De Forest, expending his means in building several fine houses in New Amsterdam, sold his plantation, November 19th, 1650, to the distinguished burgher Wilhelmus Beeckman. But both Beeck and Beeckman resided in town,* and there Kuyter had entered upon trade, on the Heere Graft, now Broad Street, enjoying a respite from the ills which had hitherto beset his pathway, and retaining a warm regard for his compatriot Melyn. We have dwelt the more fully on Kuyter's case, not only as an interesting passage in Harlem's infantile history, but because it shows how the old struggle with arbitrary power, which had long convulsed European countries, was thus early renewed on this free soil. Kuyter was a representative man. Many like him held that the people had rights as well as their rulers, and that one of these, of vital importance to the colonists, was that of appeal to higher courts in fatherland from verdicts rendered here, the denial of which right was a cause of much puclic clamor against both Kieft and Stuyvesant. Kuyter had proved the fallacy of that assump- tion, and had achieved a victory, not for himself alone, but for the community, for which he was held in highest respect.t
* Pieter Cornelisz Beeck, whose tragical fate remains to be noticed, was master carpenter to the West India Co., in New Netherland, and was born in 1607, at Rotterdam. He came out early via Amsterdam, where he had resided, with him coming his wife Aeltie Willems and a young daughter, Marritie, who, in 1665, mar- ried Pieter Jacobsen Marius, a prominent merchant at New York, who emigrated, in 1644, from Hoogwoudt, his descendants now writing their name Morris. See Bergen Gen. Pieter Beeck had other children born here, viz., William, Deborah, who mar- ried, 1667, Warner Wessels; Elizabeth, who married Capt. Silvester Salisbury, Dr. Coin. Van Dyck and Capt. Geo. Bradshaw; Cornelia, who married, 1672, Jacobus De Haert, and Cornelius, who married, 1667, Marritie Claessen, and had sons Peter, Nicholas, John, Isaac, William, Henry. From these we presume all the Beecks of this stock have sprung. William Beeck, born 1640, son of Pieter, married Anna, daughter of Tielman Van Vleeck (notary public and first sheriff of Bergen), and died at Esopus in 1684, leaving issue Peter, Tielman, Aeltie and Deborah, who all died childless. The widow, Anna, married, 1686, Capt. Jacob Phoenix, a son of whom by this union, Capt. Alex. Phoenix, was father to Hon. Daniel Phoenix, father of the late Rev. Alexander Phoenix, of H.
t Isaac Adriance, gone but not forgotten, was in many respects and in the best sense another Kuyter. "In his life were exhibited Dutch courage and firmness, along with New England enterprise and activity. A true benevolence marked his character, and a high sense of justice. He hated robbery and wrong, and set him- self especially against abuses under municipal law. He sought to reform that law and its administration, and had a powerful influence in doing so. He honored the schoolhouse and the church, and was ever ready to aid them; and many a public work, now deemed noble and valuable, owed its origin in part to his sagacity and
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