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 40
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Samuel Demarest was born, 1556. at Mannheim, and marierd, about 1678. Maria. daughter of Simon De Ruine, who survived him. He died in 1728. His sons who reached manhood. were. David. born 1681 (Mattie Debaun) : Samuel ( Annetie V'an Hoorn); Peter (Margaret Herring): Simon, born 1699 (Vrouwtic Herring) ; and his daughters were, Magdalena, born 1680 (Cornelius Banta) ; Jacomina (Samuel Helling and Cornelius Van Hoorn); Judith ( Christian Debaun and Peter Durie) ; Sarah (John Westervelt) : Rachel (Jacobus Peek) : Susanna, born 1703 (Benjamin Van Buskirk). To most of these Samuel assigned portions of his lands before his death.
We cannot extend these interesting details. so far, we believe. entirely reliable: but invite some one to fill out the genealogical lines, which. in 1820. were said to embrace seven thousand names!
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the deceased in his lifetime had brought to the widow." The plan to build a new house, the timber for which was already contracted for with Daniel Tourneur, was suddenly arrested, and the widow turned her contract over to the town. Thereupon the following resolution was passed September 7th:
The Constable and Magistrates, with the advice of the whole Com- munity, have found good and resolved to rebuild and renew the town's house for the Voorleser; and Daniel Tourneur has agreed to cut the tim- ber needed therefor, as he was held to do for Maria Vermelje, for 130 guilders (on condition it shall cancel her whole debt in the town's ac- count) ; to wit: 5 beams twenty feet long, broad in proportion; 12 posts ter. feet long, 4 sills twenty-two and twenty feet long, 2 rafters, 2 girders, I other spar, all twenty-two feet; also split shingles for the roof; all finished to deliver at the stump, and they of the community shall ride out the said timber, as it is ready, and bring it to the work, etc .*
Leaving Tourneur to perform his toilsome work of hewing, and good Vander Vin to make the best of his straitened circum- stances,-for owing Gerrit Van Tright, of New York, merchant, "64 gl. 13 st. in beaver, 100 gl. 17 st. in sewant, and 2 pieces of eight in silver," he was obliged, July 27th of this year, to mortgage his house and lot on the Beaver Graft, whence he de- rived a part of his support,-other matters now claim a notice.
Changing the lines on Van Keulen's Hook was a fruitful cause of misunderstanding between adjoining owners during this and the preceding year. Hendrick Kiersen's lease of the Tourneur lots had not yet expired. Pierre Cresson, who joined Tourneur on the west, summoned Kiersen to court, June 7, 1677, demanding that he should give up the strip of his land on which he had sowed. Kiersen said he had only used the land he had hired of Tourneur.
"The Honorable Court having maturely considered the case in question, and finding it to be a mistake general among the
* Isaac Kip was of a worthy and well known family, for an account of which see Holgate's Am. Gen. and the N. Y., G. & B. Rec., for 1877.
Mr. Kip was born at Amsterdam, in 1627. He was much respected at Harlem, and was nominated for magistrate October 27, 1675. He had no children bv Maria Vermilye; but his first wife, Catalina, daughter of Hendrick Jansen, bare him Hen- drick (see p. 163), Tryntie, Abraham, Isaac, Jacobus, Johannes. Tryntie married Philip de Forest. Jacobus was the great-great-grandfather of Rev. Francis M. Kipp. and Rev. Wm. . I. Kipp, D.D. Johannes, baptised January 20, 1669, is the subject of a letter in my possession, written in Dutch, on a sheet four by six inches, and which read thus:
Mrs. Mary Kip. After salutation; These friends come to counsel with you to the best and most proper way to manage it with Johannesie Kip, the youngest child of your husband, my brother deceased. 'T'is such I should also have come, but have just now in daily employ four strange masons, and cannot leave them. Therefore re- quest that you with the friends will please consider all that is needful to do for the welfare of the child, and further provide that which is necessary. What you and the friends do, shall be acceptable to me. Hoping that both sides may agree in all friendship for the best; whereof not doubting, commend you to God's protection, and remain,
1678, the 26 July Kipsberry.
Your affectionate Jacob Kip.
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users and owners of these lots, consent and order that, as it is now sowed, it shall remain as it is till the crop is off the land ; and that then each one shall plough and sow his land according to the last survey made and staked off by the sworn surveyor."
Again, Glaude le Maistre claimed and put under arrest the grain which had been sowed by Joost Van Oblinus on a strip of land that fell within Le Maistre's line. On a complaint by Oblinus July 12, 1677, the town court, a little mystified in this instance, directed "the plaintiff to cut and carry in his grain. but that he shall take account how much has stood upon the strip of land in question, and keep the same separate till further order.'
Again, on September 5, 1678, Cornelis Jansen complained of Jan le Maistre, "concerning a strip of bouwland upon Van Keulen's Hook"; that he "had not fixed his land properly accord- ing to promise." Defendant said that he had regulated the land as it should be, and that the plaintiff might have ploughed it; proves that he had proposed and plaintiff had refused an arbitra- tion as to the fitness. After hearing parties the Court went out and viewed the situation, "in order afterwards to judge as they should": and then the parties came to an agreement,-Jansen to have his strip of land, etc., and the costs to be borne half and half. Then the Court passed the following general order :
"Is moreover resolved and established that from now for- ward, to prevent further questions concerning the fences upon Van Keulen's Hook because of the changing of some strips, those intending to reset their new fence instead of old, remain bound to remove the old from the new, and to set it properly; according to which each one must conform himself."
The year 1678 at the dorp wore away with no other notice- able incident except the usual choice of town officers, and the visit from Dominie Nieuwenhuysen to install an elder and deacon. On the latter occasion. Glaude le Maistre, at the expense of the town. furnished "a half-vat of good beer" for the entertainment of the dominie and the congregation, and Waldron, Dyckman. Bussing, and Oblinus, advanced the dominie each 3 guilders (in all 12) for his services, while Jan Nagel provided the wagon to bring and return his reverence: the visit costing the town in all 41 guilders.
An episode of the current year was a marriage in high life
* Coin was then so rare an article in the colony, that Vander Vin makes a note to this case as follows: "The Plaintiff paid for the extraordinary session a double gold ducat, 9 guilders Holland: in sewant, 36 guilders." So it then took four guilders in sewant to make one in coin.
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at New York, that of Thomas Codrington, merchant, to Margaret, daughter of the then mayor, Captain Delavall. Having resumed · active business on his return from England, the captain was now in the height of his prosperity, and enabled to do hand- somely by his daughter, upon whom, October 9th, in view of her nuptials soon "to be solemnized," he settled the sum of £500.
. Twenty years later, Captain Codrington, meanwhile risen to wealth and official distinction, became a freeholder of Harlem, by the purchase of the Baignoux farm; the good services which he rendered the town in its public affairs only ending with his death in 1710.
It speaks well for the prevailing security at this period, that but seldom an act of robbery comes to notice. A flagrant case which occurred in the spring of 1679 made the greater ex- citement at Harlem, as one of the thefts was committed at "the house of Daniel Tourneur's sister," the wife of Frederick De Voe. The thief was one Williams, who having stolen a horse at Stamford, had also robbed several persons in Fordham. Being arrested, and, by an order from the Governor of March 3d, "delivered pinioned into the hands of the constable of Harlem," Waldron conducted him to New York for trial. He was con- victed on May 8th, of horse stealing, upon several affidavits taken at Stamford.
This year another French refugee left the town with his family. This was Pierre Cresson. After selling out his farm, May 23, 1677, to Jan Hendricks Van Brevoort, who had had it a year under lease, he built upon and occupied his outside gar- den No. 14. This he now sold, March 5, 1679, to Jan Nagel, who owned No. 13, for 100 guilders in goods or grain, a pair of oxen, one cow, and a half-firkin of soap. Cresson removed to Staten Island, having already secured a lot of land at or near Long Neck, on the northwest side of the island, for laying out which an order had issued from the Secretary's office, May14, 1678. A small stream, on which lay his meadow at Sherman's Creek, was long called after him "Pieter Tuynier's Run."
This year gave rise to a protracted law-suit between Daniel Tourneur and Cornelis Laurens Jansen, as plaintiffs, and Colonel Lewis Morris, defendant, concerning certain meadows on Stony Island, which the plaintiffs claimed to have owned "upwards of sixteen years." This carried their title back to Stuyvesant's grants, in 1663, to Tourneur, Cogu, and De Meyer. Morris claiming the meadows as within his purchase, had sent his men in haying time to mow and gather the grass. The others com-
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plaining of this trespass, obtained from the Council the following mandate in their favor:
"Ordered that the Petitioners do continue in quiet poses- sion of the said meadows at Stone Island, according to their grants. And if Colonel Morris have any claim or pretence thereto, the same is to be heard and determined at the next Gen- eral Court of Assizes."
Thus the matter rested till the next annual return of the haying season.
The signal event of the year was the visit of the two Laba- dist travelers, Sluyter and Dankers, from Wieward, in Fries- land. Their journal affords us this interesting description of their visit.
Under date of October 6, 1679, they say: "We left the village called the Bouwery, lying on the right hand, and went through the woods to New Harlem, a tolerable village situated on the south side of the Island, directly opposite the place where the northeast creek and the East River come together." Their object was "to explore the Island of Manhattan," which in their view ran east and west, but in this respect we correct their account in italics. "This island is about seven hours' distance in length. but is not a full hour broad. The sides are indented with bays, coves, and creeks. It is almost entirely taken up; that is, the land is held by private owners, but not half of it is cultivated. Much of it is good woodland. The south end on which the city lies is entirely cleared for more than an hour's distance, though that is the poorest ground; the best being on the east or north side. There are many brooks of fresh water running through it, wholesome, and fit for man and beast to drink, as well as agreeable to behold; affording cool and pleas- ant resting-places, but especially suitable for the construction of mills, for while there is no overflow of water, yet it can be shut off and so used."
With eyes accustomed only to monotonous plains and pas- tures, they viewed with delight the variety of landscape. Mount Morris and the heights lying westward of the flats they describe as "two ridges of very high rocks, with a considerable space between them, displaying themselves very majestically, and in- viting all men to acknowledge in them the majesty, grandeur, power, and glory of their Creator, who has impressed such marks upon them." The last reference is probably to the out- cropping of the gray stone along the entire face of the west
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heights. "Between them runs the road to Spyt den duyvel .* The one to the west is most conspicuous; the east ridge is cov- ered with earth on its west side, but it can be seen from the water or from the mainland beyond to the cast. The soil between these ridges is very good, though a little hilly and stony, and would . be very suitable in my opinion for planting vineyards, in conse- . quence of its being shut off on both sides from the winds which would injure them."
With Gerrit Van Duyn, of Long Island, who had volunteered to show them the way, they reached Harlem. "As our guide, Gerrit, had some business here and found many acquaintances, we remained over night at the house of one Geresolveert (mean- ing Resolved Waldron), constable of the place, who had formerly lived in Brazil, and whose heart was still full of it. This house was constantly filled with people, all the time drinking; for the most part that detestable rum. He had also the best cider we have tasted.
"Among the crowd we found a person of quality, an Eng- lishman named Captain Carteret, whose father is in great favor with the king, and he himself had assisted in several exploits in the king's service. This son is a very profligate person. He married a merchant's daughter here, and has so lived with his wife that her father has been compelled to take her home again. He runs about among the farmers and stays where he can find most to drink, and sleeps in barns on the straw. If he conducted himself properly, he could be not only governor here, but hold
. Harlem lane. . (See note p. 282). The road from Ilarlem village to Spuyten Duyvel had been laid out recently by order of the Mayor's Court of November 7, 1676. and pursuant to which the inhabitants on December 7, met and "resolved to make the road between this village and Spuyten Duyvel: to begin on Saturday the 9th of this month." Harlem lane was probably regulated about the same time. Its first house was put up by the Tourneurs as early as 16,9, and stood "about where 7th avenue intersectes 115th street." Says one looking back over half a century. "I re- member the depression where the partly filled up cellar was, and the two large old ox-hearted-cherry trees that stood probably in front of the house." The only ancient dwelling left on Harlem lane is the old V'an Bramer house, on the east side of the lane midway between 117th and 118th streets. its gable end to the road, and fronting to the south. It was built not long before the Revolution, probably by Hendrick Van Bramer. who lived there in 1774. Fifteen years ago we noted: The front and the west end were laid up of hainmered red or free stone. Query, why were not all sides of stone? The oldest portion measured 18 by 31 feet; for the frame addition of 15 feet 6 inches on the east end was modern. Its exterior was tasty. The eaves were low. the roof had a modern pitch: while the short beveled chimney tops, and the quaint dormer windows, with fiat roofs sloping downward toward the front, had a decidedly antique air. The weather-beaten clapboards (on the rear and on the gable above the caves the same). were very thick, rabbeted deep, finished with a half-inch bead. and put on with large wrought nails. The window sills, etc., were of black walnut, the sash stiles very heavy and the glass all 7 by 9. The two front doors were in halves after the old fashion, and hung on strap hinges. The ceilings low, not plastered, showed the bare, heavy oaken timbers, planed and beaded; and the stair to the loft was a perpendicular ladder! Some claim it to be the very house that De Forest and Montagne built on this Flat in 1637, which had two doors and was 18 feet wide. But that was 12 feet long, and measured by Dutch feet. Plainly no such antiquity can be assigned it. as the deed for the land given by \rent and Lourens Kortright to Benjamin Benson. February 9. 1755, mentions no tenement.
THE VAN BRAMER HOUSE.
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higher positions, for he has studied the moralities, and seems to have been of good understanding; but that is all now drowned. His father, who will not acknowledge him as his son, as before, allows him yearly as much only as is necessary for him to live.
"Saturday, 7th .- This morning, about half-past six, we set out for the village, in order to go to the end of the Island; but before we left we did not omit supplying ourselves with peaches which grew in an orchard along the road. The whole ground was covered with them and with apples, lying upon the new grain with which the orchard was planted. The peaches were the most delicious we had eaten." Proceeding up the Island, they add :
"We crossed over the Spyt den duyvel in a canoe and paid 9 stivers fare for us three, which was very dear. We followed the opposite side of the land and came to the house of one Valen- tyn"-this was the ancestor of the Valentines of Westchester. He was not at home, but his Dutch vrouw, who was from Beest, in Gelderland, glad to see the Hollanders, entertained them at breakfast : after which they came down on that side to Col. Morris's, meeting his nephew Walter Webley, ready to cross the river. "He carried us over with him and refused to take any pay for our passage, offering us at the same time some of his rum, a liquor which is everywhere. We were now again at New Har- lem, and dined with Geresolveert, at whose house we slept the night before. and who made us welcome. It was now two o'clock : and leaving there we crossed over the Island, which takes about three quarters of an hour to do, and came to the North River, which we followed a little within the woods, to Sappokanikke." A few days after at Staten Island they fell in with Pierre Cresson." Had the elder Tourneur been living, this visit- of the
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* Pierre Cresson, or Moy Pier Cresson (me Pier Cresson), as he always wrote his name, is the subject of interesting notice in the journal of these Labadists. Under date of October 13. 1679, they say, "We pursued our journey this morning from plantation to plantation, the same as yesterday, until we came to that of Pierre le Gardiner, who had been a gardener of the Prince of Orange, and had known him well. He had a large family of children and grand children. He was about seventy years of age, and was still as fresh and active as a young person. IIe was so glad to see strangers who conversed with him in the French language about the good, that he leaped for joy. After we had breakfasted here they told us that we had another large creek to pass called the Fresh Kill, and there we could perhaps be set across the Kill van Kol to the point of Mill Creek, where we might wait for a boat to convey us to the Manhattans. The road was long and difficult, and we asked for a guide, but he had no one. in consequence of several of his children being sick. At last he de- termined to go himself, and accordingly carried us in his canoe over to the point of Mill Creek in New Jersey." Here they "thanked and parted with Pierre le Gardinier." Pierre and his son Joshua. had cach obtained a grant of 88 acres on the west side of the island, which were surveyed for them December 24. 1680, and patents issued December 30. This is the latest notice found of Pierre. His children, so far as ap- pears, were Susannah. Jaques. Christina, Rachel, Joshua and Elias. Susannah, born at Ryswyk, married, 1658, at New Amsterdam, Nicholas Delaplaine. Her father gave her a marriage portion of 200 guilders. Christina, born at Sluis, married Jean Letelier and Jacob Gerritsz Haas. Rachel, born at Delft, married David Demarest, Jr., Jean Durie and Roelof Vanderlinde. Joshua Cresson. born 1659, and Elias, born 1662,
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Labadists must have restored faded reminiscences of the father of the sect, Labadie, when by his eloquence he so moved the hearts of the people of Amiens. If others had personal knowl- edge of those scenes, as Demarest, Disosway, Cresson, they had removed, and the interest which the travelers awakened at Har- lem was probably confined to the objects of their visit, their character and movements. Professing the doctrines of the Dutch Church, but warmly advocating a higher religious life, they ap- pear to have won the respect of all till they began to make proselytes to their peculiar social ideas, which nearly resembled those of the Shaking Quakers. But they gained over to their views members of several respectable families, as those of Beek- man, Bayard, Cresson, and Montanye, some of whom were per- suaded to join the community established by Sluyter at Bohemia Manor, in Maryland.
The travelers staying a night with Waldron and dining with him the next day, should have made no mistakes in speaking of him. Yet we suspect they have. Waldron's history is sufficient- ly known to make it improbable that he had ever visited Brazil. But the voorleser, Vander Vin, whom they must have seen and conversed with, had spent some of his earlier years in that country. when clerk of the High Court of Justice at Maurits- stadt, during the presidency of the Heer Johan van Raasvelt. He kept the minutes of this court. Here he had met with Hon. Matthys Beck and his uncle Jacob Alrichs-both afterward vice- directors, the one at Curacao and the other on the Delaware- who were then among the Heere Electors of Schepens at Maurits- stadt. Vander Vin might well retain vivid impressions of his experiences in Brazil at a very exciting period in the history of the Dutch occupation there, to which we have before alluded, and have been "still full of it," as the travelers say of Waldron. Mis- takes easily find place in the hastily-written notes of tourists, and the journal of these travelers forms no exception.
both lived upon Staten Island, the latter, we presume, succeeding to his father's farm. He was high sheriff of Richmond County, under I.eisler. One Joshua Cresson lived at North Branch, N. J., in 1720.
Jacques Cresson, of good repute and much respected at Harlem where he owned property and held office. married, 1663, Marie Renard, of whom we have given some account. They had issue. Jaques, born 1665: Maria. 1670: Susannah, 1671: Solomon. 1674; Abraham, and Isaac. 1676: Sarah, 16,8: Anna, 1679; Rachel, 1682. Jaques' injury, January 31. 1677, and sad death. August 1, 1684. we leave unrecorded. Ilis widow, with her son Jaques or Jacobus, sold their house in Stone street. September 9. 1685, and taking a church letter, November 25. she sailed. with her family. for the Island of Curacao. Later they returned. and Mrs. Cresson reunited with the church at New York, May 28, 1701, but it is evident they soon left again for Philadelphia. Solomon Cresson served as constable there in 1705, and others of the family are found in that vicinity. The descendants include the late eminent philanthropist, Elliot C'res- son, and the present Dr. Charles M. Cresson. The name of late years has worked up the valley of the Susquehanna into New York State.
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"Great injustice has been done to the memory of Capt. James Carteret," says the historian of Elizabeth; and a truer re- mark was never uttered. We do not believe all the hard things said of him by the Labadist travelers, for we recall the oft-told story of his illegitimacy, now at length admitted to be a fiction. In quest of information wherewith to embellish the narrative of their tour, and strongly inclined to the hypercritical, the tourists were likely to swallow any bit of scandal which their fellow Dutchmen at Harlem were ready to deal out to them against the English in general, and Delavall's family and kin in particular ;. one-sided stories, which the brevity of their stay gave no oppor- tunity to correct. Into these old prejudices none probably entered more heartily than Waldron, who, albeit he was of English ex- traction, evidently cherished no affection for the land of his ancestors .*
Carteret, it is true, had been unsuccessful in business ven- tures, incurring debts which, maugre his willingness and promises, he found it hard to pay ; but it is difficult to believe him so utterly the vagrant he is represented, being still a land-holder at Harlem. That Mrs. Carteret, having young children, should prefer a comfortable city home under her father's roof, was not so strange for one to whom the society at Harlem was uncon- genial, or could offer little that was attractive. And so there was room for dislike or prejudice to put the worst construction upon it. But why argue about that which could have been scarcely more than a matter of temporary convenience? as Mrs. Carteret. while her father was still living, accompanied her husband to Europe. to look after his landed interests there ; probably making their principal home in the Island of Jersey, where their only daughter was married in 1699, and so respectfully noticed as "daughter of the Honorable James De Carteret." Certainly Capt. Carteret was treated with much consideration at Harlem, where on Oct. 20th, 1677. he received a nomination for magistrate. If he was a hard drinker. he lived in a day and community when indulgence was the rule. He was well read in the Scriptures : and also reverenced them. if his apt quotations in his letter re- ferred to be taken as evidence. That his heart had a tender side.
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