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 18
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labor. Many a young man owed to his kind interest in his welfare the course of his after life, and his success in it. Hundreds of shade-trees now adorn the streets and avenues of Harlem, planted by him." Fond of such matters, he had gathered a mass of information relative to that section, and especially to its land titles, both in MSS. and in the storehouse of his retentive memory; and which, with the en- lightened liberality that so distinguished him, he permitted the author to make free use of for the compilation of this work. Mr. Adriance was born February 13, 1794. in the old Sickels house, spoken of elsewhere, was educated at Yale, and devoted his life to the law. He died August 26, 1863. He was a lineal descendant of Adriaen Reyersz, an early settler at Flatbush, L. I., the son probably of Reyer Elberts, from Utrecht, whose wife by a former husband was mother of Goosen Gerritse Van Schaick, ancestor of the Albany Van Schaicks. See Pearson. Adriaen Reyersz came to this country. as he stated, in 1646. He married July 29, 1659, Anna, daughter of Martin Schenck, a name of celebrity in Holland; was a leading man and an elder at Flatbush, and died November 24. 1710. One of his children. Elbert, born 1663, settled in Flushing, married, 1689, Catalina, daughter of Rem Wanderbeeck, ancestor of the Remsens, and by her had Rem, Elbert and Anneke; these retaining the patronymic (whence Adriance) as their surname. Rem married Sarah, daughter of George Brinckerhoff, and died, aged 40 years, in 1730. His sons were Elbert, born 1715; George, 1716; Abraham, 1720: Isaac, 1722; Jacob, 1727; Rem, 1729. George, Abraham and Isaac went to Dutchess County; Isaac married Latetia Van Wyck and Ida Schenck, and was father of Rem, Theodore, Isaac, John and Caroline, who married Charles Platt, of Plattsburgh. John came to Harlem after the Revolution, married Mary, daughter of John S. Sickels, and died October 23, 1849, aged 87 years, being the father of Isaac, first named.
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CHAPTER X. 1651-1656
NEW EFFORTS, BUT SAD FAILURES.
K UYTER'S thoughts now turned wistfully toward his de- serted bouwery at Zegendal, which stood in danger of forfeiture for non-improvement. He longed to make one more attempt to occupy his broad acres, if by the favor of Heaven he might retrieve the misfortunes of the dozen checkered years that had passed since his eye first rested with delight upon that lovely spot. But his unaided means were inadequate to the effort. His house and barns must be rebuilt, the soil again brought under the plow. The course he took to effect it is explained in the fol- lowing instrument :
This day, the 23d of September, 1651, a friendly agreement was made between Mr. Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, a free merchant, on one side; and the Hon. Petrus Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland, Curacao, and its dependencies, Lucas Rodenburg, Governor of Curacao, and Cornelis De Potter, free merchant, of the other side, concerning a piece of land lying on Manhattan Island, and belonging to said Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, named Zegendal, or by the Indians called Schorrakin, bounded on the south by land of William Beeckman, Lieutenant of the Burgher Company at this place, and westward by the bounds of the Hon. Johannes La Montagne, so on in a north course to the first rock, and on the east to the Great Kill; having to the west toward the North River, a meadow of three or four morgen; the aforesaid land containing about two hundred morgen, yet not precisely known, but remaining to be ascertained with more accuracy; on the following conditions, viz .:
That said Kuyter shall cede, transport and convey to the said Stuy- vesant, Rodenburg and De Potter the three-fourths parts of said land, being one-fourth part for each, while the said Kuyter retains one-fourth part for himself, and to his own behoof, upon condition that the said Kuyter shall receive from the aforesaid gentleman the sum of One Thousand Carolus Guilders, of which sum each of said gentlemen is to pay a third part, with the understanding that the said money is to be employed at once in the cultivation of the said land; which land is to remain undivided, until it is agreed by a majority of those interested, to make a partition of the shares.
During which time said Jochem Pietersen Kuyter is to remain the cultivator and superintendent of all the land, to the greatest profit and best advantage of all interested, among whom he is to distribute the
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profits in equal shares, whether such profits come from grain, stock, or otherwise. It being understood, however, that the wife of Jochem Pie- tersen Kuyter may keep for her family some hens and ducks. The said Kuyter shall receive for his services as cultivator, one hundred and fifty guilders (per annum), that is to say, each of the three co-partners shall pay fifty guilders.
And in order to make a good beginning, with God's assistance, there shall be built at the expense of said partners, on the land aforesaid, a suitable dwelling house to accommodate the said Kuyter. But this dwell- ing hous shall be the property of all the partners in common; and Kuyter shall keep a correct account of all expenses connected therewith, and of other expenses, and communicate it to the partners.
And it is further stipulated that as soon as any distribution of grain is made, or that the land shall be divided by the partners aforesaid, the said Kuyter shall previously receive his thousand guilders for the transfer and cession of said land, and when such division shall take place, it shall be done by lot, without allowing any preference to any of the parties. Further stipulated that in case of the absence of one of the partners, an- other must be put in his place, and secondly that in case the said culti- vator should die, another may be placed in his stead, though all the partners be not consulted. Further, that in case of such decease, the widow of the deceased shall succeed in his share, or may transfer it to one of the partners.
And therefore that this contract may have full effect, said Jochem Pietersen Kuyter transfers his lands to the partners aforesaid, as if he had actually received the stipulated sum; while they on their part, for his security, submit their persons and property, real and personal, present and future, to the control of any court of justice. In witness whereof it is signed at New Amsterdam.
JOCHIEM PR. KUYTER. P. STUYVESANT. L. RODENBURG. CORNELIS DE POTTER.
Witness, NICHOLAS BLANK.
In presence of me,
JACOB KIP, Clerk.
But the state of the country was becoming "more and more disquieted." Under such circumstances, no wonder that Kuy- ter hesitated about proceeding to restore his ruined buildings and fences, more especially as he could show no deed for his lands, which had either never been executed or had been lost in some one of his disasters. This left his boundaries, if not his title, in uncertainty. But, applying for a groundbrief and receiv- ing a favorable answer (Montagne and Van Tienhoven stating to the council their knowledge of the original grant by Kieft, and its limits), Kuyter was reassured on this point, and led to prosecute his work, though with no slight misgivings as to the result .* The farmers on the Flats had no heart to make improve-
. "Jochem Kuyter, by petition, requested a groundbrief for his lands which the Hon. Dr. W. Kieft, deceased, gave him in the year 1639, in July, and which were pointed out by Mr. Montagne and the Secretary.
"The Director and the Council answer: The applicant is directed to take a copy of his groundbrief from the register book of the groundbriefs, where the Director and Council think the same is recorded. If it is not, he shall be preferred before
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ments which in an evil hour might be laid in ruins by the sav- ages, who, on pretext of not having been paid for their lands, did not hesitate, as a chance offered, still to attack and murder the settlers on the scattered bouweries. Thus it soon after hap- pened to Pieter Beeck, before noticed, formerly deacon and now one of the selectmen, to which office he and Kuyter had recently been appointed. He and three workmen, while engaged at his bouwery near Hellgate, May 17th, 1652, were surprised by sav- ages and all cruelly murdered.
Kuyter, Beeckman and others were threatened to have their bouweries burned, should no satisfaction be given. Montagne was otherwise embarrassed. Heavily indebted to the company and burdened with a large family, he was dependent upon the director or government for a meagre support, and had no means to expend on his deserted plantation. Many persons who would have undertaken new bouweries were kept from doing so 'through dread of the Indians and their threats." The public disquietude was greatly enhanced during this year and the next by absurd rumors that the Dutch authorities were plotting with the Indians to cut off the English residents in and near Manhattan; reports which had. well nigh caused a rupture with the New England colonies, and so wrought upon some of the neighboring English settlers upon Long Island that they left hastily and took refuge in Connecticut. As the natural effect of this state of things, no new bouweries had thus far "been formed on the Island of Man- hattan during Director Stuyvesant's administration," though "some had been abandoned."
Kuyter in the meantime won for himself a large share of the public favor as one foremost in the church, and since he was chosen, January 30th, 1652, an efficient member of the board of selectmen. After this, on an important occasion, Stuyvesant honored him with a request to sit with the council. Indeed it excited surprise that one "whom the director formerly, for the affair of the selectmen, did publicly banish the country with ringing of the bell," should have been reinstated in the same office, and also in the eldership. But a new honor was now conferred upon him, a seat among the schepens of New Amster- dam, on the first institution of that office here in 1653. Usually present at their sittings, so valued were his counsels that on some special occasions a messenger was sent to Zegendal to
others, and a new groundbrief of his lands be executed; in case the petitioner re- mains inclined, according to promise, again to improve and cultivate his lands. Done in meeting of the Director and Council, the 29th January, 1652." Extract from Council Minutes.
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solicit his attendance. But on March 2d, 1654, he met with the city council for the last time. The threats of the Indians were now to be put in execution. Only a few days after, the savages murdered him in his house on his bouwery. Secure in their city home, his family were spared his fate .*
Kuyter's death caused a profound sensation. The com- munity had lost a good and useful member, and with unfeigned sorrow Stuyvesant announced the sad event to the directors in Holland, who responded with expressions of regret at his un- timely death. Labor on the bouwery was necessarily interrupted for a time. On April 22d following, Kuyter's widow, Leentie Martens, empowered two of her friends, Govert Loockermans and the notary, Dirck Schelluyne, "to proceed to the liquidating, taking and fairly closing to the final account and reliquiae, with Director General Petrus Stuyvesant, Hon. Lucas Rodenburg, and Mr. Cornelius De Potter, regarding the lands named Zegen- dal, belonging to her deceased husband, with the effects, as they were farmed and cultivated by her said husband in company with the above named gentleman, pursuant to contract dated the 23d September, 1651."
These managed to keep the farm under tillage, while the widow, in the persons of other friends, gave bonds for the de- livery of the grain which should be raised, in satisfaction of the claims of the several partners. For two summers the farm work went on, the sowing, reaping and gathering of the ripened harvest ; not, however, without much distrust of the wily savages and fears for their personal safety. So insecure was it considered that the sureties for Mrs. Kuyter required of the other owners indemnity bonds "for all losses and interests which should occur through fire, robbery, or other unexpected accident, either to the lands of the late Kuyter or to the crops." These apprehensions of further trouble from the Indians were well grounded. This island and its vicinity now of a sudden became the scene of ruth- less massacres.
Very early one morning, September 15th, 1655, sixty-four
* The Indians were resolved upon expelling the whites from this end of the Island. upon the ground that they had not been duly paid for their lands. True, the Indians had sold the Island to the company in 1626, and by virtue of this pur- chase the government had made the land grants to the settlers. Of course the latter deemed their title good and valid. But it is certain that the Indians did not recognize the sale as a surrender of all their rights and privileges on this part of the Island. Perhaps, grown wiser in a generation, they saw that the trivial price then paid them ($24) was no equivalent for their rich maize land and hunting grounds. But they probably claimed to have reserved (as they often did in their sales) the right of hunting and planting, because in after years the Harlem people so far admitted their pretensions as to make them further compensation. Well had it been for the colonists had they earlier given heed to the dissatisfaction of the Indians and done something to remove it.
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canoes of armed savages landed on the beach at New Amster- dam, and before scarcely anyone had risen scattered about the town and began to break into the houses for plunder. All was alarm and confusion, and to make matters worse, Stuyvesant was absent, having departed on an expedition to the Delaware a few days before, taking with him most of the garrison. The mem- bers of the council finally prevailed with the chiefs and their people to withdraw from the city, but at evening they returned, and a skirmish took place between them and the Dutch soldiers, blood flowing on both sides. The now enraged Indians departed, but on that doleful night began a horrible slaughter of the set- tlers, full fifty of whom fell within three days, while over an hundred, mostly women and children, were carried into captivity.
Hordes of armed savages, thirsting for blood, swept over these Flats, slaying the settlers, plundering and burning their houses, and devastating their bouweries. Cornelis Claessen Swits, whose father, as we have seen, had been killed by an Indian, now owned the farm on the Flats originally granted to Isaac De Forest, but which Swits had purchased from Beeckman, March 10th, 1653, selling the latter in exchange his plantation near Curler's Hook, later known as the "Delancey Farms."
* Wilhelmus Beeckman, whose descendants, numerous and highly respectable, have usually written their name Beekman, was a son of Hendrick Beeckman, by his wife Mary, daughter of the excellent Wilhelmus Baudartius, annalist and pastor at Zutphen, in Gelderland, at which place our Beeckman was born April 28. 1623. Holgate (Am. Genealogy) says he was born at Hasselt, in Overyssel, but Beeckman's marriage entry in the N. Y. Coll. Chh. Rec., more reliable as indited by himself, says at Zutphen. Coming out to Manhattan. in 1647, to serve as a cierk for the W. I. Comp., the next year he exchanged this for a mercantile life, and the vear following married a young lady from Amsterdam. Catharine, daughter of Hendrick De Boog. Being "an honest and polite man," he was elected schepen in 1653, and began a long and honorable public service. His "ability, piety and experience" gained him the position of Vice-Director on the Delaware, which he held from 1658 to 1663. Then recalled and made sheriff at Esopus, he served as such till the close of Governor Lovelace's rule, when he engaged in the brewing business at the Smith's Fly, in N. Y. Filling an alderman's seat much of the time till his final retirement, in 1606, and having also served as an elder both at Kingston and at New York, he died in this city in his 85th year, September 21, 1707. He had nine children, viz., Maria, born 1650, married Nicholas William Stuyvesant. son of the governor; Hen- drick, born 1652; Gerardus, born 1653; Cornelia, born 1655, married Capt. Isaac Van \'leck; Johannes, born 1656, Jacobus, born 1658, died 1679; William, born 1661; Martinus, born 1665, and Catharine, born 1668, who married Gerard Duyckinck, as per Holgate, p. 75. Of these, Martinus is not again named, unless he that joined the military force sent by Leisler to Albany in 1690. William, who united with the New York church in 1681, became a Labadist. Johannes, "a mariner," married, in 1685, Aeltie, daughter of Thomas Popinga. from Groningen, and in 1699, removed to Kingston, N. Y .; issue William, Thomas, Johannes, Hendrick, Mary, Catharine, Rachel. Hendrick, who also settled in Kingston, married, 1681, Johanna, widow of Joris Davidsen and daughter of Capt. Jacob Loper; issue William, Catharine, Hen- drick and Cornelia. Gerardus, M. D .. of Flatbush and New York, married, October 25, 1677, Magdalena, daughter of Stoffel Janse Abeel, of Albany. He died October 10, 1723. His children were William, horn January 25, 1679. died young; Christo- pher, born January 4. 1681. married Mary. daughter of Abram Delanoy; Adrian, born August 22, 1682, married Aletta Lispenard and Lucretia De Key; William, M. D., born August 8, 1684, married Catharine, daughter of Peter Delanoy; Jacobus, M. D., born August 7, married Elizabeth, daughter of Johannes De Peyster; Catha- rine, born May 25, 1689, married Charles Le Roux; Gerardus, born June 9, 1693. married Anna Maria Van Horne and Catharine Prevoost: Cornelia, born May 25, 1698, married Richard Van Dam; Hendrick, of New York, merchant, born December 11, 1701, died, unmarried, September 4, 1643, and Maria, born January 10, 1704,
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Since his good vrouw, Adriana, had lost her father, Cornelis Trommels, of Rengerskerk, a quiet hamlet in the Island of Schouwen, what changes she had experienced! Left an orphan to the care of a guardian at Brouwershaven, she had, after other vicissitudes, found a home on these beautiful but solitary plains, having since her arrival here inherited some property from an aunt in Zeeland. She was now the mother of five children be- tween the ages of three and fifteen years. Swits had built him a house, and labored hard upon his farm of fifty morgen, in clear- ing the land, etc., hoping by patient industry to cancel a debt of seven hundred guilders due the West India Company for commodities advanced to him. His good friend Tobias Teunis- sen was equally busy on the bouwery near Spuyten Duyvel. His present wife, whom he had married in 1649, was a daughter of Claes Boone, of Amsterdam, at which place her mother, Beatrice Hermans, was still living, on the Boomstraat. Jannetie also had had her trials, having lost a former husband, Urbane Leursen, with whom she had come to New Netherland (we think he per- ished in the Princess, on board which he had served), and who left her with three children, other three being added after she married Tobias, though but one was surviving, namely Teunis, now between four and five years of age.
These two households felt the full force of the Indian raid. Being "miserably surprised by the cruel, barbarous savages," both Swits and Teunissen were massacred, their goods plundered or burned, and their terrified wives and little ones captured and hurried away to their haunts in the forest. The crops on the bouweries were destroyed, and the cattle cither killed, driven off, or left to wander in the woods. The same scene was enacted at the Kuyter bouwery. The grain, etc., was burned, but, sadder still, the widow Kuyter, now the wife of Willem Jansen, from Heerde, in Gelderland, also fell a victim to savage fury, though the husband by some means escaped .*
married Jacob Walton. Our distinguished New York Beekmans have been chiefly of this branch. For fuller details consult Holgate's mainly accurate account before cited, and also Our Home, which contains a valuable but not faultless article upon the Beekman family.
. Jochiem Pietersen Kuyter was an ordinary man. His career was one of those not so rare in human history, which seems a failure in the light of worldly ambition, but when viewed from a higher standpoint, both a success and a triumph. Not in his laudable efforts to subdue the wilderness, but by his bold defense of popular rights, he conferred invaluable benefits upon his fellow-colonists and those succeeding them, and which entitles him to a place on the roll of public benefac- tors. Kuyter should have a memorial in Central Park. It is an interesting query whether his descendants do not compose the highly respectable family of Keator, seated very early in Marbletown, Ulster County, most patriotic "associators" in behalı of independence in 1775, though now widely scattered, some having Anglicized their name into Cator. These are traced back to Melchert Claesz Keeter, born at Amsterdam, who married, in 1674, widow Susanna Richards, from Oxford, and settled in Marbletown.
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The Indians had threatened "to root out the Dutch," and well they kept their word; nor did they spare the English, either. All the neighboring settlements were also swept off. The lands of Vander Donck, "bordering on our island, and only parted from it by a small creek, in some places passable at low water," had been "divided and settled by his children and associ- ates, in various plantations and farms, but which in the massacre, were abandoned." The occupants of Jonas Bronck's land met with no better fate. Adjoining Bronck's land lay Cornell's Neck; its patentee, Thomas Cornell, an Englishman from Here- fordshire, who had served the company as a soldier, "was driven off his lands by the barbarous violence of the Indians, who burned his house and goods and destroyed his cattle." On Long Island side the house and plantation of William Hallett, another English- man, opposite Hoorn's Hook, "were laid waste by the Indians." Their canoes kept prowling about Hellgate, and on October 13th about thirty savages stealthily approached the house of Hallett's neighbor, Pieter Andriessen, living at the present Ravenswood, and the same who came over with Bronck. He and five other persons who chanced that day to be at his house were attacked, four of the six wounded, and all captured ; the savages then having the effrontery to send two of them to New Amsterdam, with an offer to release the others on receiving some guns, ammunition, etc., which they demanded.
In a few days the Indians having glutted their revenge, and willing to get the captives off their hands, made overtures, which resulted in the ransom, during the month of October, of a large number, but the families of Teunissen and Swits were not in- cluded. Meanwhile Stuyvesant having returned from the "con- quest" of the Swedish colony on the Delaware, his soldiers were ready for an exterminating war upon the Indians, and which some strongly advised. But this was opposed by Montagne in the council, on the ground of their weakness. "If," he urged with a convincing logic, "we have no power to prosecute a war, then it becomes necessary that we remain quiet till we shall obtain it, and meanwhile not to place too much confidence in the Indians. As for the great damage we have suffered from the savages, I know of no remedy, because reparation seems not to be had from them either by war or peace; and with respect to the captives, experience has taught us that they cannot be recovered without ransom." This moderate and discreet advice met the approval of the director himself, who also expressed his opinion that the first
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attack upon the Dutch was not premeditated, but was provoked by a "too hasty rashness on the part of a few hot-headed spirits."
Parties were sent out to bury the dead and collect the stray stock. Such a scene was presented of poor slaughtered remains, blackened ruins, and general devastation as appalled the hearts even of brave soldiers. Some of the cattle belonging to the mur- dered Swits were found in the woods, brought in and cared for. And toward the close of November his widow and children, with those of Teunissen, were happily restored to their friends at New Amsterdam .* The hostile attitude of the Indians and the fear "of being again as suddenly surprised" were an effectual bar to any present attempt at rebuilding the ruined habitations on the Flats. Indeed, such of the settlers as survived were impoverished : "dispossessed of their properties, and not left wherewith to provide food and clothing." And though others, having courage and means, would venture upon these lands and run the hazard, they were now wholly prevented from so doing by an ordinance of the director and council, passed January 18th, 1656, which prohibited all persons from dwelling in exposed situations, and required the farmers upon isolated bouweries to forthwith remove, with their families, into the nearest village, where they would abide more safely, be able to act in concert in case of danger, and go out in armed parties to till their lands and gather their crops.
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