USA > New York > Bronx County > The Bronx and its people; a history, 1609-1927, Volume I > Part 2
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THE BRONX AND ITS PEOPLE
ough side, and Willett's Point on Long Island, or Queens Borough, sides are the separating points between the East River and the Sound.
Eastchester Bay is an estuary between Throgg's Neck on the south and City Island and Rodman's Neck on the north. At its head, East- chester Creek, or Hutchinson's River, empties after its course of eight miles from Scarsdale. The Indian name of the stream was Aquean- noncke, or Aqueanouncke, a variant of Aquahung. Its lower portion is a tidal stream, whose depth and course have been changed by the Federal Government, so that it is navigable to the city line. Black Dog Brook, the former Eastchester boundary line, flows into Eastchester Creek at Baychester, while a short distance above is Rattlesnake Brook, whose mouth is called Mill Creek, from the old tide mill, which was located there. Between Rodman's Neck and Hunter Island is Pelham Bay. The islands in the borough included Paparinemo and Crab, both of which have disappeared. Lying in the East River, a short distance above Port Morris, are North and South Brother islands, called by the Dutch Gesellen. The former has a lighthouse on it and is used by the city government for hospital cases of infectious and contagious diseases. Riker's Island is much larger and lies toward the mouth of Flushing Bay, Long Island. This island, as well as several others, was used during the Civil War for the encampment and drilling of recruits, and also for hospital purposes. It was bought by the city in 1884, and for some time was used as a dumping ground for the refuse of the city, much to the disgust of the inhabitants of the borough who found it almost impossible to breathe when the wind blew from the water. The Board of Health finally stopped the nuisance, which was endangering the health of the people. The island is still used for city refuse, but incineration plants have been installed and no odor is per- ceptible except when close to the island. Riker's Island originally con- tained eighty-seven acres, but extensive crib work has been constructed and there has been much work of filling so that the island contains over four hundred acres used for municipal purposes. The work has been done by prisoners from Blackwell's, or Welfare Island, the first batch of prisoners, a hundred and fifty in number, being transferred to the island June 21, 1903. A lighthouse on Riker's Island helps to mark the navi- gation of the East River. Between Throgg's Neck and Long Island are several rocky islets visible at low tide which are called the "Stepping Stones"; on one of them is a lighthouse.
City Island, comprising two hundred and thirty acres, lies off Rod- man's Neck on the northerly side of Eastchester Bay, and is a long, nar- row strip only a few feet above the waters of the Sound. Hart Island, of eighty-five acres, lies to the eastward of City Island ; in 1774 Oliver De
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Lancey, of West Farms, came into possession of it. It was then called Spectacle Island or Little Minnefords. Later, it passed into the posses- sion of the Haights and Rodmans, then into the hands of John Hunter, and finally into the hands of the city of New York, which maintains there a potter's field, a hospital for convalescents, and a workhouse under the Department of Charities. High Island lies north of City Island, and in the vicinity of these larger islands are several rocky islets called Rat Island, the Chimney Sweeps, and the Blauzes. Bolton says that this section was formerly the resort of immense numbers of wild ducks, as many as one thousand being shot in six hours. Today, when there is bad weather in the Sound, many vessels of all kinds seek refuge under the lee of the islands until the weather improves. Goose Island is a small island lying in the mouth of Eastchester Creek.
The southern extremity of the Riverdale Ridge is called Spuyten Duyvil Neck. The fourth proprietor was George Tibbett, or Tippett, whose house was near the end of the point; in consequence the neck was known in ancient times as Tippett's Neck, or Tibbett's Hill. The neck passed into the hands of the Berriens by the marriage of one of them with Dorcas, the great-great-granddaughter of the original Tippett ; and after the Revolution and until the present, the promontory has been known as Berrien's Neck. The Manhattan tribe of Indians had an important village and castle called Nipinichsen, "a small pond or water- ing place," upon the point, to which, and to the section adjoining, they applied the name of Sharockkappock, or Shorakapkock, which means, "as far as the sitting-down place," a reference, perhaps to the fact that the traveller had to sit down and wait for the tide to fall at the wading- place across the creek. Port Morris is situated upon a neck of land jutting into the East River. It was originally called Stony Point, or, since it was low land, sometimes surrounded by water at high tide, Stony Island. This section has been filled in by the city, sewers built, and streets laid out; and several large factories have been erected by private parties. It was formerly a part of the manor of Morrisania ; and the Morrises counted on making it a rival to New York on account of the depth of the water and the convenience of access for large vessels, the "Great Eastern" having actually anchored off the point. In fact, Port Morris was for several years a regular port of entry with its own custom-house.
Adjoining Port Morris on the east is Oak Point, formerly called Leg- gett's Point, from a family of the name who owned it from pre-Revolu- tionary days. Gabriel Leggett, the founder of the family, married into the Richardson family and thus came into possession of this part of the West Farms tract. The neck to the west of the Bronx River is
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called Hunt's Point after the proprietor of 1688. It really consists of two points, the more westerly being called Barretto's Point, after Francis Barretto, a wealthy New York merchant who settled here about 1840. The Indian name of Hunt's Point was Quinnahung, which means "a long, high place." The neck between the Bronx River and Wilkin's Creek is known as Cornell's Neck, after the proprietor of 1646. Its extremity is called Clason's Point, after a later owner. Its Indian name was Snakapins, probably a personal name, or, perhaps a corruption of Sagapin, a ground nut, or of Chincapin, the dwarf chestnut. Castle Hill Neck is the next point to the eastward. On the eastern side of Westchester Creek is Ferris Neck, so called after the family who owned it; its extremity is called "Old Ferry Point," from the ferry that con- nected it with Whitestone, Long Island, from ancient times. Throgg's Neck is the long, narrow point on which Fort Schuyler is situated. It gets its name from the original proprietor of 1643, John Throgmorton, or Throckmorton. Upon its northerly side is Locust Point, or Island. Between the Sound on the north and Eastchester Bay on the south is the largest of all the necks in the borough. From its first white in- habitant, Anne Hutchinson, it was called by the Dutch, Annes Hoeck, that is Anne's Neck. Later when Thomas Pell became proprietor of this whole section the neck was called Pell's Neck, or Point; and after the formation of the manor Pelham Neck. A later owner sold to Samuel Rodman the end of the neck opposite City Island, and hence we have the name by which it is known today, Rodman's Neck.
Topography and the Glacial Period-So much for the topography. It will be worth while to give some attention to the tale the topography tells and in particular to that part of it that deals with the Ice Age. A great mass of ice once moved slowly over the district, leaving the. traces that exist today in the form of gigantic boulders and layers of rock that are polished until they fairly shine. "Looking backward through the centuries" to quote the words of one interpreter of the script written on the face of the region, "the populous city fades from sight as a dissolving view, and a great sheet of ice appears. It is the glacial epoch, the ice age, and we are looking backward, not through hundreds of years only, but through thousands of years. We are contemplating 'terrestrial map-making.' The Divine Builder is laying the foundations." Scattered through the borough there are evidences everywhere existing that were left when the immense glacier melted and carried its margin to the north. Some of the burden it left behind had been brought to the district from hundreds and even thousands of miles away. The principal and the best known was recently destroyed. This was the old "Pudding Rock," that was once a prominent landmark at the intersection of Boston
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Road and Cauldwell Avenue. Many were the tales told of this huge mound of rock. Rising "not unlike a pudding in a bag," it was grace- fully ornamented at the top by an attractive group of cedar trees, its dimensions being twenty-five feet high and thirty-five feet in diameter -a truly great boulder. The Indians were not slow in discovering that it had a natural fireplace on one side, where they cooked their oysters and clams and held their corn-feasts.
When the Boston Road was opened Pudding Rock became a camping place of the Huguenots, on their way to worship in New Amsterdam, from New Rochelle. Then came the scientist who at once announced that Pudding Rock was an alien in the region and did not belong to any of the natural rocks in the vicinity. It was in reality a glacial waif, left stranded by the mass of ice that had borne it hither. Another famous glacial stone is the Split Rock of Pelham Bay Park on Collins Lane or Split Rock Road. Cleft directly in the middle, with a good sized tree growing in the fissure, this great boulder is one of the sights of the neighborhood, and stands a few feet south of this historic road- way, not far from the city line. Rivalling Split Rock in interest is the famous Rocking Stone of Bronx Park, a little west of the buffalo range in the southerly portion of the Zoological Park. This, according to accounts, was a source of great wonderment to the Indians, who were in the habit of gathering round it and holding medicine dances after the fashion of their tribe. In the days before there was a Bronx Park, this rocking stone stood on the extensive estate of the Lydigs, and it is said that the foreman of the place attempted to drag it away from the spot it had occupied for so many centuries. The combined efforts of twenty-four oxen, it is said, proved unavailing to stir it from its place, and yet anyone, by pushing from the right direction, can easily cause it to rock back and forth.
A rock, chance poised and balanced lay, So that a stripling arm might sway, A mass no host could raise. In nature's rage at random thrown, Yet trembling like the Druid's stone, On its precarious base.
This rocking stone, like the others, is completely different in its mineralogy from the rock on which it rests. Had the glacier carried it but a little further south, it would be in soft earth instead of on ice- polished veins of rock. Doubtless not a few similar boulders were carried by the ice sheet and thrust into the sea.
On a section of the historic roadway from which the Split Rock may be seen, between Barrow station and City Island, rises a solitary senti-
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nel, emblazoned with a bronze tablet and known as "Glover's Rock," in commemoration of the masterly retreat conducted by Colonel Glover during the Revolution, holding in check the redcoats under Howe, and enabling Washington with his men to reach a place of safety. It is about opposite "Jack's Rock," one of the best fishing resorts in the neighborhood. Within the limits of Bronx Park, of glacial curiosities, too important to be passed over, there are the glacial grooves, indenta- tions in the solid rock, showing where the mass of ice ploughed its way along, leaving these deep furrows in its wake. In the precipitious side of a cliff is the "Indian Well," also styled the "Indian Bath," a rocky basin perhaps used by the Red Men as a place to grind their corn, in the hollow of which, some large stone, whirled round and round by the action of the ice sheet, carved out this deep hole. Then the outside of the cliff evidently fell forward towards the river, releasing the stone that had done the work, but leaving its resting place behind. Somewhat to the south will be found the "Bear's Den," a romantic spot where the rocks were piled perpendicularly by some great force, between them being a natural cave in which a family of bears may have made its home and reared its cubs. To the south of the "Bear's Den" may be seen the "Indian Burying Ground," where a mass of stones are standing on end in truly druidical fashion. Whether this be the work of the ice or the Indians or white men, there it remains, one of the curiosities of the Botanical Garden. Then there is the great boulder, called the "Black Rock," partially imbedded in the salt marshes to the south of the West- chester Turnpike, not far from Pugsley's Causeway. This is supposed by some to be a meteorite, but at any rate there it lies, deeply sunk in the ground, within sight of the home of the Westchester Golf Club. Overlooking the new Jerome Park Reservoir, just in front of the regis- ter's office, stands another remarkable rock, fortunately on city property, and thus likely to be preserved. If we pass to the southwest, just out- side the reservoir's domain, we will come upon a flat surface of rock, bearing very distinctly the marks of the grinding of the glacier. Clearly indented also are two depressions, the rough size and shape of human feet. We would have to imagine a glacial man of extraordinary deport- ment, however, to think of him being responsible for those two footprints in the plastic rock. He must have stood with his toes turned far out, almost too far to have rendered it possible. There are many other boul- ders that have as yet withstood the advancing march of civilization, such as the one on the top of the ridge overlooking Jerome Avenue, and the great rock near the southerly limit of Claremont Park. They are wit- nesses to the vast age of solitude that preceded the coming of human- kind, mileposts in the long path of development that had to go before
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the region was made habitable for the frail energy of man. They are relics from before the age of the mastodon, and the woolly rhinoceros, and have come to us out of epochs so distant that it is hard for the mind to grasp an idea of the time that has intervened. They bring home to us the lesson that we are surrounded by mystery and infinity, and that we and our environment are not the prosaic beings we appear to be with the novelty worn off, but are an incomprehensible amalgam, the precipitation of forces now working and for ever to be at work.
Geological History-Placing the geological history of New York and The Bronx in its relation to North American geology in general, it is to be noted that in America an early architectonic outline of a primordial continent appears with two limbs stretching southward. These enclose a broad and shallow basin more open on the west, the floor of which underwent secular changes of elevation and depression. Generally these changes enlarged the land surfaces, progressively through geologi- cal time, from north to south, and inwardly on the edges of the two limbs, while on the extreme east and west the continent also grew out- ward, in an encroachment on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The sedimentation that built up these areas was originally derived from the primary rocks and from the debris of the calcareous parts of sea- animals. Much re-sedimentation from previously lithified sediments contributed towards the extension of the continent at interior points and along oceanic margins, and with this were occasional injections of igneous rock. This earliest, or Archæan continent, was thrown some- what to the east, with the outlying southern extensions existing as linear strips or lenticular islands arranged on the east in axial lines that run northeast and southwest, and on the west, northwest and southeast. But these elevations, in their structural relations, define themselves as parts of a lithic block of comparative shallow sub- mergence which stood between the two oceans-which were abysmal creases on either side of it, and from which rose these archetypal outlines of the North American continent. The extent and parts of the Archaan area on the Atlantic border are thus outlined by Professor James D. Dana :
On the Atlantic border there is the long Appalachian protaxis, extending in- terruptedly from Canada south of the St. Lawrence, along the higher land of Vermont; eastern Berkshire in Massachusetts; Putnam, Orange, and Rockland counties in New York, and Sussex in New Jersey, making the Highland range, which crosses the Hudson between Fishkill and Peekskill; constituting some ridges in southeastern Pennsylvania; thence continuing southwestward along the Piedmont Belt, and through Virginia and North Carolina, constituting in the latter State the Black Mountains; thence into South Carolina and Georgia.
To the northeastward, over New England to Newfoundland there are other
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THE BRONX AND ITS PEOPLE
parallel ranges, bounding broad valleys or basins, as follows: (1) To the east of the Connecticut valley at intervals from Canada to Connecticut. (2) Farther east, from near Chaleur Bay, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, through New Brunswick, southwest to the coast of Maine (including the Mount Desert rocks) and into eastern Massachusetts. (3) The Acadian Range, along western Newfoundland and central Nova Scotia; then submerged off the coast of Maine and Massachusetts; then over southeastern Massachusetts, and probably along Long Island. (4) A central Newfoundland range, which may have had a submarine extension along Sable Island and the shoals about it, east of Nova Scotia. (5-6) The other ranges farther east.
The Acadian is the longest of these Archæan ranges; it is the chief eastern belt of the Archæan on the Atlantic border, and is the strictly Acadian protaxis. Its partial submergence is not in doubt; for, besides indications of this along the seabottom south of Nova Scotia, there is proof of subsidence of several hundred feet in the fiords of Maine and the coast, in the Bay of Fundy, in Massachusetts, and Narragansett Bays and the Long Island Sound. The combination of the Acadian and Appalachian protaxes determined the existence of the great Middle Bay of the Atlantic coast (the southern Bay of Dana extended from Florida to Cape Hatteras, the Eastern Bay from Nantucket Island northward), and in the region of their junction lies the Bay of New York with the mouth of the Hudson. Thus the foundations were laid in Archæan time.
Geology of New York-Spurs from the Archæan terrain reached southward in Westchester County, New York, and western Connecticut, and one of these formed the nucleal member of the Geology of New York, a peninsulated tract built outwards by additions of sediment. This tract, elevated, by reason of very extraordinary superficial contraction of the earth's crust, became variously modified by metamorphism, in- vaded by dike rocks, and mineralized by chemical readjustment of its elements. It remained apparently unmodified, except as acted upon by the atmospheric agencies and by the ice of the Ice Age, and it also remained permanently above the ancient seas throughout the long periods of geologic time from the close of the Lower Silurian to modern and recent days. But on Staten Island and on Long Island later de- posits, younger than the Paleozoic, appear.
The most significant and interesting formations in Manhattan and The Bronx are the crystalline rocks. These are bodies of minera! aggregates in which the component parts are separable minerals, and they are almost exclusvely gneisses, schists, granites, and limestones. The same rocks, and, it may be conceded, the same formations extend over western and northern Connecticut, where the formations, as given by H. E. Gregory, are the Becket gneiss, considered as a pre-Cambrian complex equivalent to the Fordham gneiss of the New York quadrangle ; the Poughquag quartzite, found in the Borough of the Bronx, of Cam- brian age; the Stockbridge limestone, of Cambro-Ordovician age, made referable to the Kingsbridge limestones on New York island; the Berk- shire schist of Upper Ordovician age (Hudson River), and represented
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in the prevalent Manhattan schists and gneisses. The mineral composi- tion of these rocks embraces quartz, mica, feldspar, hornblende, dolo- mite, with a numerous assemblage of accessory minerals and displays contrasted or varied aspects of texture, solidity, or position. They are related to the extended development of the crystalline rocks in New England, which, if regarded as original sediments, shore deposits, or unconsolidated mineral accumulations, have put on a lithological phase of construction in which their first or earlier state and stratification have completely disappeared or been radically modified. This change has supervened through the agency of metamorphism. As Professor H. E. Gregory has said: "An explanation of sedimentary rocks requires a knowledge of the forces operating at the present time on the surface of the earth; it is necessary to understand the action of rivers, wind. ice, etc .; a complete understanding of the crystallines involves a knowl- edge of the forces which are at work within the interior of the earth, as well as an understanding of the chemical and mineralogical com- position of the rocks as they exist."
Crystalline Masses-The development of such crystalline masses means a long history. If the original sediments were muds or granular mineral aggregates, or if the original rocks were lavas, they underwent initial changes into crystalline complexes, which again under strain, pressure, and heat, assumed new mineral constitutions. The mineral feldspar can become changed into quartz and muscovite mica, or, with added magnesium and iron elements, into quartz and biotite mica, or into quartz and chlorite, the free quartz in such cases being supplied by the large percentage of silica in the feldspar (65 per cent), exceeding by almost twenty per cent the amount of silica necessary for the chemical composition of muscovite. Hornblende is changed to biotite and chlorine, and again, secondarily, to zoisite and epidone. The mineral agite changes to hornblende, and it is thought that by addition of needed elements a dolomite (the carbonate of calcium and magnesium) can become hornblende, a variable silicate of aluminum, iron, calcium, mag- nesium, and the alkalies. Throughout these metamorphoses the mica elements retain permanency or are an ultimate term in the transitions. The pressure, almost inevitable as an agent in these changes, gives flatness and parallelism to the resultant minerals, and the schists and gneisses which contain them are banded, fissile, laminated, splitting into rudely smooth leaves or cakes, or exhibiting schistosity, which in the very compact slates becomes fissility, whereby the slate rock cleaves into thin and useful plates. The minerals that play the most conspicuous part in the structure of the crystalline rocks are the feld- spars (silicates of aluminum, calcium, potassium, and sodium), quartz
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(oxide of silicon, silica), the micas (silicates of aluminum, magnesium, potassium), and amphibole (hornblende), with pyroxene, the last two related minerals having composite composition (for the most part sili- cates of aluminum, calcium, magnesium, and iron).
Among the crystalline rocks granite takes a prominent place. It is quite noticeably contrasted with the gneisses and layered rocks from its massive and heterogeneous texture. Its component minerals are not arranged in sheets, but are irregularly intercrystallized and inter- locked, though, under pressure again, granites become granite-gneisses and assume schistosity. Granites are contrasted with the gneisses as massive rocks, made up of feldspar, quartz, and mica, which are mixed together and intercrystallized with accessory minerals. They are re- garded as eruptive, the cooled and crystallized magmas which have been forced upward from underlying sources into the areas above heated, pasty reservoirs, or pushed out and injected as dikes, apophyses or arms into cracks or openings of the invaded beds. Granites appear in the rocks of Manhattan and The Bronx and are referred to igneous protru- sions, though it is not inconceivable that minor veins and tracks of so- called pegmatized gneiss have resulted from a refusion of the meta- morphic gneiss in the development of heat from frictional movement, under stress and plication, upheaval, distortion, or compression, and through the action of included water. In this way the gneiss became saturated with granitic lenses, fillings and streaks, drawn out in parallel- ism wth the enclosing gneissoid envelopes, upon the folding or elevation, under pressure, of the entire complex. Some granite veins suggest seg- gregation or water-filling.
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