USA > New York > Schenectady County > Schenectady County, New York : its history to the close of the nineteenth century > Part 13
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"Dey shall work," said the fariner in the Dutch dialect, " I am der axaceter." "Dey shall be eddicated," gave back the plucky widow in the same vernacular, "I am der axetrix." And she had her way, and a grand way it was. Joseph C., became Mayor, Sena- tor, Supreme Court Judge and Governor. Henry, Senator from Albany county, dying worth $2,000,000, then the richest man in the
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ORDINANCE TO REPAIR.
state according to the New York Sun. John B., Member of Con- gress from Madison county and one of the builders of the Welland canal. Andrew, doctor of divinity and one of the first professors in Union college. On the tomb of Col. Christopher is a long and lurid epitaph setting forth his service to king and country as soldier and statesman, showing that Schenectady had given the young soldier all she had to bestow.
On the tablet over his widow is inscribed " Jane, consort of Col. Christopher Yates." Only this and little more. And yet all the name and fame that the four sons achieved was due to the magnifi- cent energy of the consort.
Jane Bradt lived in a day when whatever women did they reaped small credit for. Tempora mutante et nos mutamus. The grey mare these days is often the better horse and is recognized as such, especially when she is a widow.
Yates was but thirty years of age when elected. His enemies then and afterwards declared he was dull of intellect and mnulish in dispo- sition. His friends lauded him as the possessor of tons of horse sense. Probably a truthful description of him would land him somewhere about half way between the two extremes. That he was an upright judge and that his decisions are sound law and well and tersely written in the language of a graduated scholar is the best answer to the abuse which his independence of the political bosses subsequently drew down upon him. Anyway the city started well under his mayoralty.
The first ordinance was to repair markets in Niskayuna, (Union street), where Mr. Walter S. Van Voast now resides. A committee was appointed to ascertain the title to the clock in the old Dutch church, the granting of a petition to publish the first newspaper in the city. The Schenectady Gazette and Mohawk Intelligence to be issued every Tuesday and Friday at $3 per annum, of which one Thomas Stewart was editor. A law was passed suppressing improper assembling of slaves.
In 1799 there were two fire companies, Nos. 1 and 2, twenty men in each, John Peek and John Glen the respective captains.
The city was composed of the first and second wards. Night
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SCHENECTADY COUNTY: ITS HISTORY.
watchinen were appointed Nov. 24th, 1798, at two dollars per night, to be allowed to each watch of four men. Corl and Andrew Rynex were appointed superintendents and to select their own subordinates. John Corl selected George Hoppole, Joseph Van de Bogart and Jacob Marselis. Andrew Rynex appointed William Rynex, Valentine Rynex and Andrew Rynex, Jr., thus keeping the police force all in the family. These men seem to be the first police- men of which we have official record.
July 8th, 1799, the streets of the city were laid out and renamed. Front street, renamed Union street, changed from Niskayuna street, leading to Niskayuna Hill (College Hill). State street was changed from Albany street, Green street to Washington street, (avenue), Church street to Ferry street, Maiden Lane, its pretty name now changed to Centre street. College street and Jay street were the same as now. Fonda street seems to have been called Water street and Mill Lane was as now. Montgomery street, (Barrett) was opened in 1803.
From two until four p. in., of December 24th, 1799, the bells of the city were tolled in memory of George Washington, and the mayor and aldermen wore crape for thirty days.
On January 3d, 1801, the device of the city seal was adopted. It was a sheaf of wheat, the crest of which was taken by the mayor for his coat of arms.
On March 30th, 1802, an ordinance for building the Albany turnpike was passed. The turnpike was thereafter laid out and established but it was not until almost 1811 that it was stoned and graded as parts of it are yet.
The following extract from the proceedings of the common coun- cil, August 8th, 1812, reads very strangely:
Wm. McClymon makes charges against the night watchmen, and a committee was appointed to investigate; they were reprimanded and told their duty ; they had to wear badges and carry a staff at least five feet in length when on duty, going out two at a time. Their duties read as follows : That two of the said watchmen shall patrol the streets of that part of the city within the jurisdiction of the common council, and every hour with an audible voice call the
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STREET IMPROVEMENTS.
hour of night at the intersection of one street with another; in case of fire they shall alarm the citizens as they repair to the place of the fire ; they were commanded to arrest all slaves over twelve years of age who appeared on the streets after the hours set down to com- mence the watch, unless they had a lighted candle in a lantern or being with their master or mistress or having a pass in writing. Many of the older generation will remember that curfew rang at nine o'clock regularly, it being, for the latter years of the prevalence of the custom, sounded by the Methodist bell in Liberty street, and a loud sounding bell it was. It was a relic of the old slave days when the niggers were rung off the street up to a date within distinct rec- ollection. Every man of sixty can remember the old town crier who used to go about the street with a heavy hand bell and announce in a tremendous voice "boy lost," or any other great event worthy of public attention.
The paving of the streets was first made from gravel from sur- rounding quarries ; Washington street was the first to be made so passable. Ferry street followed and both streets were put in order in 1804. Church, Union and Front streets followed. These were then business streets filled with shops of the merchants, great and small. Cobblestones followed. The material was obtained from the rifts in the river at the head of Frog alley. Washington avenue, . Church street, Ferry, Union and State from Ferry west were paved in the early twenties before Lafayette came here. But as late as 1845 State street was unpaved from the Vendome and eastward. Front, Green and Ferry had only cobblestone paved sidewalks when the cholera caine in 1832. At the construction of the Albany turn- pike the Scotia dike was completed.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BRIDGE AND RAILROAD.
The old Mohawk bridge was built by the Mohawk and Hudson Turnpike Co. It was begun in 1806 and completed in 1809. The
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SCHENECTADY COUNTY: ITS HISTORY.
architect was Theodore, cousin of that gay and rascally Lothario, Vice President Aaron Burr. Theodore Burr was reputed to be the greatest bridge architect in America. David Hearsay was the builder. He was a mason by trade, lived by the bridge at the pres- ent residence of Ex-Judge Yates and with his eyes upon the work, day and night a magnificent job he inade of it. When finished it was unsurpassed in beauty and solidity by any structure in America. It was erected on three massive piers whose greater size readily dis- tinguished them from the others put in in 1835-an architectural blunder. It was really the first approach ever made to a suspension bridge. It was nine hundred feet in length in three lofty and mag- nificent spans, each of three hundred feet, inade of two inch timbers of Norway pine. These spans were shingled to keep them fromn the weather. They were of enormous size, four feet thick by three broad. Had the great architect lived, this, his masterpiece, would be standing to-day. But it began to sag, the uprights rotted and on the dissolution of the M. & H. Turnpike Co., it was sold to capitalists whose misplaced economy neglected that watchful repairing so neces- sary to a wooden structure of this size, so that the uprights and interior timbers rotted. Meanwhile it had apparently sagged ; four more piers were built under it, destroying plan and principle of structure so that the old bridge became a succession of hills and valleys. It had been covered over with a barn-like unpainted cover- ing of rough hemlock boards, which, becoming weather beaten from the total absence of paint, made it in its old days a ghostly, ghastly tunnel over the river-it could only be described as spooky. Menag- erie elephants sometimes would not cross, and on one occasion in the early sixties, the whole town watched with delight while the ele- phants who refused to cross, sported with glee in the warm current on a hot summer day and had to be driven across by the steel hooks of the keepers.
Meanwhile, David Hearsay living beside it, was the bridge keeper and guarded the creation of Burr's genius and his own handiwork with "a heathen veneration. With him, for half a century, was old Christopher Beekman, better known as "Uncle Stoeffel," the friend and father of the Delta Phis of Old Union-after them the
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THE OLD BRIDGE.
pater-familias to every under-graduate. Uncle Stoeffel knew inany great men in their youth and many of the renowned of the land came to see him at commencement time. He was a quaint old Ger- man with laughable lapses of English, with a remarkably well educated cat as his inseparable companion. He was an ideal toll- taker. The cavernous old structure, as might well be imagined, was invested and infested at night by all the dissolute and disreputable vagabonds of both sexes in the city. He lived in the ramshackle old toll-house on the spot where the present structure stands, kept it scrupulously clean, slept with an eye and an ear always open. The ruffian whoever and however desperate he was, who persistently refused his toll or used a threatening word or moveinent, went down like a stricken ox under the hickory club always within reach. A strange old character, simple as a child, an old confiding Dutch baby, loving the boys, upon whom the ingrates were always playing tricks. And they owed him much and owed it often. When the wayward undergraduate emerged from a "skate" with swelled head and leaden stomach and a copperas palate and could not get relief, he would stagger down to the old toll house for the cure that Uncle Stoeffel knew how and was ready to give any time of the day or night. Uncle was a devout Methodist according to his lights. He would stand the victim of youthful ebullition in the center of the floor clad in the "altogether " and give him a tremendous bath on the clean boards, stuffing him with sour condiments of his own con- coction, accompanied by religious admonition throughout, a strange mixture of piety and pickles, of pails of water, the Pentateuch and the Psalins of David.
Between David Hearsay, a calın, dignified gentleman, and the pep- pery Gerinan, there was always a bickering warfare, though no doubt their friendship born of close comradeship of fifty years was deep and sincere. Hearsay was a rigid Episcopalian, Stoeffel a decided dissenter. Hearsay abhorred tobacco, Uncle with his tobacco pipe all day long. When the two old men, very nearly of an age, and that age was about eighty, Hearsay was continually warning Stoeffel that his excessive smoking would bring him to an early grave, Stoeffel's answer was only a more vigorous puff.
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Hearsay died leaving a decent competence for his widow. Uncle went where he never should have gone-to the poorhouse. Long after Hearsay's death, he met an old resident and greeted him. "So Hearsay saice de smoke would dry mne ub? Vere is Hearsay now, taging doll some vere else. My bibe and I is here."
Heim Stoeffel, let us hope that when long ago St. Peter mnet you at the gate, he recognized his earthly fellow craftsman and in pater- nal spirit swung wide open the pearly portal without a creak in its jeweled hinges.
Every time an unusually strong spring freshet came roaring down, the town used to gather at its abutments to see it carried away. But icebergs and glaciers crumbled year after year against it.
In 1866 a great canal boat lifted by the torrent out of the big ditch into the river came down heralded by the telegraph. The city rushed to witness the final demolition of the unsightly row of old barns and shanties. The boat came down in the full sway of the current on the Glenville side, struck the bridge with the impact of a clap of thunder, and halted one instant. There was a crash of tim- bers-it was not the bridge. The massive bull-head boat crumbled, turned tail up in defeat, and bowing its head to the genius of Burr and the workmanship of Hearsay emerged a crumbling mass on the eastern side.
But the old bridge had to go. Glenville had bought it. District Attorney Fahn took the matter in hand, caused it to be indicted as a public nuisance. It was found guilty and ordered abated. Glen- ville, August 8th, 1873, as appears from a receipt kindly loaned by Mr. Charles P. Sanders, son of the Charles P. Sanders who is men- tioned therein, then Supervisor of the town of Glenville, purchased the bridge and its equipments in behalf of said town, from William Van Vranken, as treasurer of the Mohawk Bridge Company, paying therefor $12,000 on behalf of the town and $600 made up by pri- vate subscription. The wooden structure was sold at auction in parcels and brought about $500.
It was cut up for matches and the new iron structure took its place in 1874. While in process of demolition, after the covering was ripped off, it returned in its last hours to the beauty of its youth.
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WAR OF 1812.
The superb arches and the graceful curves of the original structure were revealed. It disappeared, as it was created, a thing of beauty, and, as inany competent bridge builders said, under proper care and management, still a thing of long life and strength.
And now another war breaks out between England and America in which Schenectady had not the slightest interest or concern. The old mother country had been impressing seamen on board American vessels on the high seas and claiming the right of search. But with a strange oversight, William Pitt had neglected to overhaul the Durham boats and Schenectady had no other seamen. The great prime minister would have found grand material in the sturdy navi- gators of the river, but in the press of business he let the grand chance go by and the big flat bottoms were poled and sailed along, bearing produce to the west and bringing down the agonizing cobblestones for pavement to bruise and batter their fellow citizens and their children for nearly a century without let or hindrance or the cruel grasp of the British oppressor.
But the city did its share all the same. She had, as appears, but one independent company at the time, commanded by Jonas Holland, the ancestor of Alexander Holland, formerly treasurer of Union college. He was a major under General Scott and raised a company in Schenectady that participated in this war. Nicholas Van Slyck, grandfather of the late Christopher Van Slyck, was conspicuous in military circles at this time. From all the records, none of which are now in the adjutant general's office in Albany, being all in the war department of the United States, there were several officers and men from Schenectady who did splendid fighting in that war. Col. John B. Yates, the son of Christopher Yates, captain of a troop of horse under Wade Hampton, won great renown on the Canadian border. But probably the grandest fighter that went from Schenec- tady in that war will be remembered by inany of us. The late Hon. Keyes Paige, brother of the distinguished Alonzo W. Paige, justice of the Supreme Court, and father of Ex-Postmaster Paige, who bears his name, of the Misses Clara C., and Fanny C. Paige of Washing- ton avenue, of the late Joseph C. Y. Paige, formerly city chamber-
II
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SCHENECTADY COUNTY: ITS HISTORY.
lain of Albany, graduated at Williams college, 1807, was appointed cadet in the United States army, 1808, lieutenant, 1812, captain, 1813, of United States infantry, colonel of militia, 1817, admitted attorney at law, 1810, district attorney, 1818, clerk of Supreme Court, 1823 and regent of the University of New York, 1829. He resided for several years in Albany, of which city he was mayor, but returned to Schenectady, where he died December 10th, 1857, being sixty- nine years of age. Paige was a gallant and distinguished soldier, especially noted not only for his bravery but for the devotion of his men. He fought all along the Canadian border, was the trusted and honored subaltern of Van Rensselaer and was an interesting charac- ter in Schenectady, where he returned to pass his old age and where he died not many years ago.
Robert H. Wendell, well remembered yet as Harry Wendell, own- ing Wendell quarry, was a captain in 1812 and 1814, and fought all through the war.
But the quaintest old character that ever came out of that war was Hugh Riddle, grandfather of William H. Hathaway, the leading liveryman of this city. He returned from service full of wonderful stories, an independent, fearless and altogether too reckless, old man. His remarkable escapes and adventures created considerable scepti- cism among his friends, and his stories were laughed at. But in 1852, General Scott, on his political campaign for the presidency, passed through Schenectady in all the glory of his "fuss and feathers" a magnificent looking figure. As he appeared upon the platform in the midst of the Whigs, whose pet he was, he saw in the multitude the tall rugged form and seared face of Hugh Riddle. Perhaps fromn real enjoyment of memory, more likely from that spirit of demagog- ism which was the alloy of his splendid character, he shouted out : " Is that you, Hugh Riddle ?" Hugh had been telling the story of his having been taken prisoner and having been rowed away in a boat, and of his captors getting drunk and of his taking possession of their guns and waking them up with the statement that he would shoot the first man who disobeyed, and inade them row him back to the American shore, so when Scott, in his great voice roared out : " Have you seen the men in the boat yet ?" the old man's triumph
15I
ROUTE OF CANAL.
was complete. Thereafter for weeks the town was not big enough for him and his hat did not fit him.
Captain Hugh Robinson, connected with all the old families by birth and consanguinity, was also an officer of high repute in that war ; an old bachelor, whose headquarters was Carley's store and whose reminiscenses were delightful.
A widow or two still lives and draws pension, we believe, but of course all who remember anything about that war have long since gone, and the records are very sparse.
Of Robert Yates we have written in the stories of the early settlers.
The War of 1812, so far as business is concerned, was a beneficence to Schenectady. All the troops going to the frontier passed this way. The channel of the Mohawk was very different, inuch broader and deeper by far. General Scott encamped with two regiments of infantry west of the Mohawk bridge under the hotel now situated there, at its Glenville terminus.
The route of the Erie canal as originally laid out, was along the Bennekill, Frog Alley river, to meet the convenience of the great forwarders and mercantile houses along that street. But the fire of 1819 made terrible havoc through all that section of the city. The retail business houses were generally destroyed. Still it probably would have taken that route but for the deterinined efforts of Resolve Givens, the proprietor of the hotel which for over sixty years bore his name, and which, in exterior looking no better than a country tavern, was one of the best kept hostelries in the state. Its table was always admirable, even to the time of its destruction to make way for the present imposing and elegant Edison.
Schenectady was an important point on the canal. Here was a basin 800 feet long by 200 feet broad where transhipment was made, first from the Mohawk and Hudson Turnpike and afterwards from the Mohawk and Hudson Railway Company. Its heavy walls are still traceable at the old northerly boundaries under the mica shop, and its southerly limit can be discovered in some heavy masonry opposite the Westinghouse works. Freight transportation at this time was immense. At the opening of the canal in 1825, DeWitt
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SCHENECTADY COUNTY: ITS HISTORY.
Clinton, the father of the big "ditch," as they called it, rode through here on a boat with bands of music and grand display.
The three military companies of the city then in existence, a bat- tery of heavy artillery, commanded by John Benson, captain, and Thomas Hannah and David Reese, junior officers ; a rifle company commanded by Nicholas Barhydt as its last captain, and our honor- able citizen, Andrew J. Barhydt, still living, the lieutenant in the company, and a company called the " Braves," commanded by Clems, led the procession. Governor Yates, with other distinguished citi- zens, rode in carriages. It was a great day for Schenectady.
But when the Mohawk and Hudson R. R., was completed, it built a large freight depot just north of the northerly end of the present basin and transported its own freight, and after a while the old basin fell into disuse and was abandoned. But it was a tremendously busy place, full of boats, wedged in as sardines in a box, in its day.
In 1826 Lafayette visited in Schenectady. He stayed but a day, coming in the morning and going away in the evening. He was given a tremendous ovation, met by the military and by eminent citizens in carriages. He was conducted to the then Court House, afterwards replaced by West college, in turn replaced by the Union school building. A platform was erected in front of the centre of the Court House and the people thronged to shake hands with him.
Joseph Yates had been the first mayor of Schenectady, and in 1806 and 1807 was a member of the United States Senate from the east- ern district, and one of the members of a commission, appointed member of the legislature of the state to meet and confer in behalf of the interest of New York and New Jersey to, certain claims of jurisdiction and territory, winning great distinction for the ability with which he discharged his responsibility. In 1808 he was again elected Senator, but after his election, Brocholst Livingstone, then a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State, was promoted to the bench of the United States Supreme Court and Yates was appointed in his place. He was an excellent judge, one of the best the state ever had. In November, 1822, he was elected by an enormous majority over Solomon Southwick, his opponent. It was said of him by those whom his fearless action and resolute purpose had made his
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A SINCERE GOVERNOR.
enemies, that he went into office and out of office the mnost unani- mously of any governor of the state up to his time. Without bur- dening the narrative with the political battles of that day, it is well known history that many of his party became alienated from him. He would not obey the machine, and there were inachines then as now, very grinding machines they were to a man of the Governor's sturdy independence. That he alienated himself from his party, gave him not the slightest concern. He went straight onward in what he believed to be the way of rectitude, and, whether mistaken or not, his perfect sincerity of purpose proved that he acted only from unconquerable strength of his conviction. Stories sometimes humorous and sometimes bitter, all of them false, were published about him in a day when calumnny in politics was worse than now.
In the governor's room in the city hall, New York, his picture is that of a man of distinguished, imposing and very noble person, as fine a representative of a gentleman of the old school in appearance, as any upon its walls.
He may have suffered much from contact with his brilliant though somewhat erratic family connection with the versatile John Van Ness, who was an illustration of the adage "wit and judgment are rarely allied." Governor Yates rarely essayed wit, was not perhaps a dispenser of humor, but that he was a man of solid judgment and great judicial ability, the common law reports of the State of New York abundantly show. He was truly beloved and greatly mourned in Schenectady, which gives to this distinguished statesinan, as it did to his soldier and statesman fathers, all it has in its power to bestow. His only descendants now residing in Schenectady are John Delancy Watkins, his great grandson and his nephew of the same name, a great, great graudson.
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SCHENECTADY COUNTY: ITS HISTORY
CHAPTER XV.
THE GREAT FIRE OF 1819.
Another calamity was destined to fall upon Schenectady. One often hears of " The Great Fire of 1819." No reliable records of it appear in any history of the city, nor can any such be obtained. We have to depend upon surviving eye-witnesses, and secure such infor- mation as we can from the minutes of the Common Council and files of old newspapers.
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