USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume II > Part 16
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subjuns, sein his armies ix the Palatinate and, on the pretext that it harterad herwnies ravaged in unterly. Perhaps no land was ever more therongiy dedeed Orties and towns, gardens, vineyards, and grain- felds, wert Imrued In the time of terror, it is said, from the elector's mustdie & Heidelberg Two e'ties and Twenty-five towns were counted in flames is the sum: mmert The people, after enduring the lust and troshy if the invaders war thrus forth and became exiles and wan- deres though Enage As the gering of the eighteenth century sur { ar mr. wir less making their way to England. Good Gover Live bus spassand as the English throne. They had heard Rung sir vas Endy agout wrward three persecuted for conscience' saky: besides, son was ommersi with the prince by ties of blood,
h : sony if it's time toadd of tha- handed at Whitehall and maschi gdy trini f. L.more smeets in their shovel-hats, SAINT THE LOT waden sites tojects of much curiosity to the cirizens. Ar seir habi sord: s ILL. CITe War of mature years, the Jedna ' this har iridis wir gosee. Jeis Kocherthal, "Evan- göra minister" is he is ermel in the derments of the Foreign Odice. The ciergeman hul an cept in view: he preferred a peti- toon to town Jane praying has se a company of forty-one souls- men. women, ami chfbiren-vere son w be sent to her Majesty's col- oaie in America the famur nicht be amended also to those of his countrymen whom he mepresentar The queen received the petition graciasiy. ani in pity the me anties was fisposed to grant it. Her ministers favored me prijeet from reasons of state. It would be an excellent plan, they arenei, so piant these Palatines hereditary enemies of che French, on the former frontier of New-York, and thus interpove them as a barrier w the inroads of the French and In- dians The queen sent for Pastor Kocherthal, and questioned him minutely concerning his history ani that of his people. In reply the latter exhibited certificates of good character signed by the bailiffs of his native town, and which siso stated that the bearers had been despoiled of everything by the invaders, whereupon the queen was graciously please i not only to grant their request, but also free trans- portation to their new homes, lands free of tax or quit-rent, seed, agricultural tools and furniture, and to support them for one year, or until their first harvest could be gathered. They reached New-York in December. ITVe, and after some months were settled on a grant of two thousand one hundred and ninety seres on the west bank of the Hudson, just above the Highlands, now the site of the beautiful city of Newburg. Here the storm-tossed wanderers cleared lands, built houses, roads and bridges and erected a church. which Queen Anne endowed with a bell, and laid the foundation of a thriving town.
ROBERT HUNTER AND SETTLEMENT OF THE PALATINES 127
Pastor Kocherthal remained only long enough to see his little colony firmly established, and then embarked for England, where he held an audience with the queen, and, gaining her countenance, went to Germany, and gathering his bruised and smitten coreligionists to the number of three thousand, brought them to England by the way of Rotterdam. It was a much larger number than had been expected, and the question of their disposal proved an embarrassing one to the queen's ministers. Some suggested settling them in Jamaica, but this did not seem feasible- they hesitated at incurring the expense of transporting so large a body to America, and of subsisting them there for a year as they had done their predecessors. At this junc- ture General Hunter, who had just been appointed governor of New- York, suggested employing the Palatines in the production of naval stores until they should repay the cost of their passage. At this moment the Admiralty were considering the project of drawing their naval stores, masts, ship-timber, etc., from their American colonies instead of from Norway, and a commission had been appointed, in 1698, to investigate. They had even gone so far as to offer a bounty of four pounds on every tun of tar imported from America. General Hunter's argument, as contained in a subsequent lords of trade report to the queen, was quite ingenious. "Your Majesty," he urged, "imports four thousand seven hundred barrels of tar yearly from the Baltic States. It has been found in America that one man can make six tuns of stores per year; and several working together could make double that in proportion. We suppose that six hundred men employed in it will produce seven thousand tuns a year, which, if more than your Majesty needs, could be profitably employed in trade with Spain and Portugal." The cost of production was estimated at five pounds a tun, and that of transportation at four pounds, at which figures it could be sold as low as Norway tar; and calculations were made to show how easy it would be in this way for the Palatines to refund the money advanced them, while at the same time they could be making their homes in the wilderness. The proposition of the governor was accepted. The Palatines signed a contract agreeing to settle on such lands as should be allotted them, not to leave them without the governor's permission, not to engage in woolen-manufacture, and to suffer the naval stores produced to be devoted to the payment of the money advanced. The queen, on her part, agreed to transport them to New-York, to subsist them for one year after their arrival, to fur- nish them with seed and implements, and to grant them, as soon as the debt was paid, forty acres of land each, to be free of tax or quit- rent for seven years. Several sites were discussed as being suitable for this settlement - one on the Mohawk above Little Falls, fifty miles long by four wide (the present Herkimer and German Flats);
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another, "between twenty-four and thirty miles in length," on "a creek which runs into said River" (Schoharie !); a third on the east side of Hudson River, " twelve miles long by seventy wide"; and a fourth on the west side, " twenty miles wide by forty long." But it does not appear by their contract that a grant of any one of these tracts was specifically made them. The matter was left to the discre- tion of the governor.
No little government machinery was set in motion by the enter- prise. Her Majesty's surveyor-general of the woods, John Bridger, was ordered down from New England to instruct them in the art of making tar. Overseers were appointed at a salary of one hundred pounds per annum, a commissary and clerk to receive and care for the stores at two hundred pounds, and a factor in England to place the stores on the market there at the usual commission. Ten vessels were collected at Plymouth for the transportation of the emigrants, the whole being put in charge of the new governor, General Hunter. No account of the scenes witnessed at the embarkation has come down to us, but they must have been of unusual and pathetic interest. Hundreds of their compatriots no doubt crowded the quay to bid them farewell and God-speed. So large an exodus had not been wit- nessed in modern times. There were three thousand people,- men, women, and children,-after twenty years of wandering, about to sail over a vast and stormy sea to a land as vague and shadowy to them as Atlantis is to us. An ill portent occurred, it is said, before the fleet left the harbor. A boat passing from one vessel to another was over- turned, and its occupants drowned, and almost before the land faded a great storm arose and scattered the fleet, injuring one vessel-the Berkeley Castle-so seriously that she was obliged to put into Ports- mouth for repairs. The voyage proved long and stormy, and, in their small vessels, crowded and badly provisioned, was full of hard- ship and discomfort to the voyagers. To add to its terrors, a mortal sickness broke out among them, which before the Narrows were sighted consigned four hundred and seventy of them to an ocean tomb.1 The fleet, or a part of it, arrived at New-York, as we have seen, on June 14, 1710. The authorities of the city were somewhat dismayed at the quartering upon them at once of so large a body of people. The mayor and common council presented a petition to the provincial council asking that they might be landed on Nutten (now Governor's) Island, fearing there might be "contagious distempers" among them which would endanger the health of the city. The council coincided with this view, and appointed Doctors Garran, Law, and Moore a committee to visit the Lyon, and report as to their
1 Surgeon Benson, of the ship Lyon, in a petition and thirty of the people on his ship were ill at to Governor Hunter, declared that three hundred one time.
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health and condition. Johannes Hibon and Peter Williamse, carpen- ters, were ordered to build huts for them on the island. Finally it was ordered that the Palatines with their goods be forthwith landed on Nutten Island.
The vessels of the fleet came straggling in one by one. On June 16 three of the Palatine ships were still missing, and the people who had arrived were in a deplorable, sickly condition. On the 24th the Herbert frigate, with the tools, tents, and arms provided for the emi- grants, was cast away on Mon- tauk Point, and the Berkeley Castle was still missing. "The poor people," Hunter wrote, "have been mighty sickly, but recover apace." On the 12th of July he established courts of judicature on Nutten Island for the government and protection of the Palatines, and forbade exactions and extortions in the price of bread and provisions purchased by them. On the 20th an order of the council provided for apprenticing such of the Pal- atine children as were orphans, or whose parents were unable to support them. The boys were MRS. RIP VAN DAM. bound out until seventeen years old, and the girls until fifteen.1
As soon as he could arrange affairs at New-York, Hunter turned his attention to settling the exiles. Taking with him his surveyor-gen- eral, John Bridger, he sailed up the Hudson as far as Albany, noting all desirable sites for their settlement along the way. At Albany he made inquiry of the principal men there as to the lands at Schoharie and on the Mohawk, and was assured by them that the site was wholly impracticable-first, because the lands were still held by their Indian owners, the Five Nations; second, because of the danger of incursions from the French and the Canada Indians; third, because the lands were fully twenty miles from any pine-trees, so that the people could not perform their contract to make naval stores in payment of their ex- penses. It was the great mistake of Governor Hunter's administration that he listened to these representations without himself going to view the lands. The parties making them were interested. They wished
1 The names, ages, parents, etc., of those inden- tured between August 31, 1710, and May 5, 1714, are given in the "Documentary History of New- York." 3 : 566, 567. There were sixty-eight in all, VOL. II .- 9.
mostly orphans, ranging in years from three to fifteen. Their masters resided in different parts of Long Island, New-York City, and the valley of the Hudson, and one in Connecticut.
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to reserve the rich lands of the Mohawk and Schoharie for themselves, and to sell certain much less desirable tracts on the Hudson, of which they were owners, for the Palatines. On his way up, Hunter had been entertained by Robert Livingston at his manor-house, and had been offered by that gentleman a tract of six thousand acres on the Hudson, forming a part of his manor. Livingston was a man of great ability and force of character, who held many offices under government, and was of vital service to the infant colony. His one fault was an undue acquisitiveness, which inclined him, so that his estate was increased, to have little scruple as to the means employed. He had formed a scheme to enrich himself not only by selling his land at a good price, but also by vietualing the Palatines. "Colonel Schuyler, the 'Patroon,' and others" seem to have been associated with him in the plot to keep the people off the lands promised them.1 Hunter fell straightway into the trap. He purchased the traet of Livingston for four hundred pounds, "country money " (two hundred and sixty-six pounds sterling), though, as he soon learned, and as the Palatines were quickly told, the lands on the Mohawk were much better adapted for the purpose. The tract is now included in the town of Germantown, about eight miles below the city of Hudson: its northeast boundary extended to within two miles of the manor-house. "Over against it, but a little further," the governor found a small traet ungranted, about a mile in length along the river, where he decided to plant those not provided for on the east side: but there not being sufficient land there, he purchased of Mr. Thomas Fullerton an adjoining tract of eight hundred acres. Three villages or "dorfs" were laid out by Surveyor Bridger on the Living- ston tract, called " East Camp." and two on the west side, called "West Camp." Late in September, 1710. the people began to embark for their new homes: that is, such as were willing to go. Two hundred and fifty died in New-York, some remained in that city, or joined their brethren in Pennsylvania, having probably been aided to discharge their debt to the queen. A number of young children had been in- dentured, as we have seen, one of the chief sources of later discontent; so that but two thousand two hundred and twenty-seven were settled on the Hudson.
Livingston, who had a brewery and bake-house on his estate, ap- plied for and received the contract for vietualing them. His contract obliged him to furnish each adult a third of a loaf of bread a day,-the loaves of such sort and size as were sold in New-York for fourpence
1 . Da Pre to Mr Vernon. " De. Hisz. 3: 02 : This canvetion with Livingston was used with crear forry against Hunter by the opp uitina at bom and bad much to do, no doabs. with the me payment of his hills for subsisting the Palatines The great Clarendon in a letter . Lord Dartmouth. Secretary of State, wrote : " I think it unhappy that
Colvoel Hunter at his first arrival in his govern- ment has fallen into such il bands. for this Liv- ingston has been known many years in that pro- rince for a very ill man. He formerly victualed the forces at Albany, in which he was guilty of mud notorious frauds by which he greatly im- proved kis estate. He has a mill and brewhouse
ROBERT HUNTER AND SETTLEMENT OF THE PALATINES 131
halfpenny,-and a quart of beer to each daily from his brewhouse. The first step of the people was to build houses and make clearings. In the spring, under overseers, they were set to discharging their obli- gations to the queen by preparing the trees for tar-making. Two years were required for the process : in the spring, when the sap was up, they barked the north side of the tree; in the autumn, before the sap was down, the south side; the next spring, the east side; and the succeeding autumn, the west side. Then, when the tree was fully dead, it was cut into proper lengths and exposed to slow combustion in a rude kiln, by which means the tar was extracted. Turpentine was pro- cured by bleeding the trees as now practised. Overseers were ap- pointed to keep the people at work, and so zealous for the queen were they that the boys and girls even were set to gathering pine-knots and fat pine, from which alone, Governor Hunter reported, sixty bar- rels of tar were made the first year.
Soon Hunter was confronted with what proved to be one of the most harassing conditions of his administration-the refusal of the author- ities at home to pay his bills for expenses incurred on behalf of the Palatines. A new ministry had come into power, quite willing to make the acts of their predecessors appear corrupt and extravagant. Early in October, 1710, he wrote to the lords of trade, saying that he was much alarmed by a letter from Mr. Perry stating that he not only could not get from the treasury the money advanced by him (Hunter) for the Palatines, but was informed by the officers there that he must expect it out of the ten thousand pounds voted by Parliament for the purpose. "I know not what Parliament has voted," he con- tinues, . . . "but I know . . . that I am ordered to put in execution that scheme which directs that they should be subsisted at the rate of 6d. and 4d. per diem, full grown and children, .. . and for that pur- pose had bills of £8000 given me, which will soon be expended, and then I must see the poor people starve, or subsist them upon what credit I can make here, which if not supported at home I am undone,"- a contingency which soon came to pass.
Having settled the Palatines, the governor turned his attention to other affairs of his provinces. Those of New Jersey he found in even worse confusion than New-York. "Unless Her Majesty be pleased to remove from her Councill in the Jersey's William Pinhorne, Daniel Coxe, Peter Soumans, and William Hall, there are no hopes of peace and quiet in that province," he wrote the lords of trade in May, 1711.
upon his land, and if he can get the victualing of the Palatines, who are so conveniently posted for this purpose, he will make a good addition to his estate. . . . I am of opinion, if subsistence be all, the conclusion will be that Livingston and some others will get large estates, the Palatines will be none the richer, but will be confirmed in that
laziness they are already prone to." The earl, however, was opposed to the emigration of the Palatines. It is just to Livingston to say that a commission appointed to inquire into his ac- counts while quartermaster exonerated him from charges of fraud.
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Coxe was the principal man of the colony, proprietor, and for some years governor, of West Jersey. He had been a member of Lord Cornbury's council in 1706, speaker of the house, and from 1734 to his death, in May, 1739, was associate justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey. His is a marked name in American literature, from his "Description of the English Province of Carolina, by the Spaniards called Florida, and by the French La Louisiane," which in its preface contained a plan outlined at length, and with no little force of argu- ment, for a confederation of the American colonies. Having been published in London in 1722, this antedated by thirty-two years the celebrated scheme of Franklin, first broached at Albany in 1754, and which is popularly supposed to have been the parent of the confederation of 1776-78. Peter Soumans was a native of Holland, son of one of the twenty-four proprietors of East Jersey. William Pinhorne has been before introduced to the reader. The fault of these gentlemen was that "they could not agree in Council on any question submitted to them"; that they caviled and wrangled on matters foreign to the business in hand, and "spent RELICS OF THE PALATINES.1 much time in indecent reflections on the conduct and memory of a person of honor recently deceased," fre- quently with so much heat that the governor was forced to interpose to preserve decorum. In this same letter Hunter asked for the ap- pointment of a wholly new council, and proposed the names of eight good men for it-John Hambleton (Hamilton?), General Postmaster; Thomas Byerly, Collector of New-York and a proprietor of the Jerseys; John Reading, Clerk to the Council of Proprietors; Robert Wheeler, "a very honest, substantial inhabitant at Burlington," for the Western Division; and David Lyell, a proprietor, and John Anderson, William Morris, and Elisha Parker, "wealthy, honest men," for the Eastern Division. The assembly sustained him in this demand for a new upper house. The matter was held in abeyance by the home ministry until statements from the other party interested could be secured.
The governor gave a sadder account of affairs in New-York. He found the assembly refractory, restive under the queen's authority, clamorous for charter governments like those enjoyed by their neigh- bors, and unwilling to vote salaries for the queen's officers, or any sup- plies for government. It was not that he was personally unpopular -the leaven of independence was working. By and by the speaker reported that the house "had resolved by a great majority to go home
1 These shoes, nearly two centuries old, and worn by one of the Germans from the Palatinate, are preserved by the New-York Agricultural Society. EDITOR.
ROBERT HUNTER AND SETTLEMENT OF THE PALATINES 133
about their business," and advised him to dissolve them. The coun- cil, on being consulted, also thought it better for him to dissolve them than to have them dissolve themselves, whereupon Hunter did so, ac- companying the action with a sharp reprimand. "What course to take in such a juncture," he wrote the lords of trade, "I know not: the Officers of the Government are starving, the Forts on the Frontiers in ruin, the French and French Indians threatening us every day, no public money nor credit for five pounds on the public account, and all the necessary expense of the Government supplied by my proper credit, particularly fire and candle, and repairs for all the garri- sons, and no hopes that I can think of for any remedy; for as to the calling of a new Assembly, I shall either have all the same members, or such others who J. Addwon will return with greater fury." He asked for instructions from the crown, and also as to the establishment of a court of chancery, for which "he had been pelted with petitions" in all the provinces.
To add to the difficulties of his position, religious dissensions soon broke out, and involved him in vexatious disputes and entanglements. Hunter was reported to be lukewarm toward the Established Church. Churchmen charged that he preferred Independents to chief places in the government rather than those of the Church of England. This was the root of the difficulty in New Jersey. In reply to his request for the deposition of Pinhorne, Coxe, Soumans, and Hall, the Rev. Jacob Henderson, missionary of the Church of England in Dover Hundred, Pennsylvania, wrote home a long letter asserting that there were no laws in New Jersey in favor of the Church, as the Quakers and other dissenters being most numerous and having a majority of the assembly, none could be passed; but that hitherto her interests had been conserved by the council, a majority of whom, including the gentlemen above named, were Church of England men; and charging that this was a plot on the part of Governor Hunter and Colonel Lewis Morris to turn out churchmen and place in their room dissenters, or such churchmen as would run into all the measures of the assembly. The reverend gentleman concluded by paying a glowing tribute to the characters of the men proposed to be retired, and speaking in a very damaging way of those proposed for appointment-one of whom he said was a Presbyterian, formerly a ship captain, who had plundered his ship, and with the proceeds bought land; a second, a poor, ignorant person who once kept a ferry at New-York; a third was an Inde- pendent ; a fourth had been brought up "with one Kid, a Pirate "; a fifth was a man of no principles; a sixth was a Quaker; a seventh, a poor, ignorant, insignificant fellow, whom they had made treasurer with the expectation that he would be a mere tool to serve them in
·
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their affairs. This letter brought out a reply, unsigned, but no doubt by Colonel Lewis Morris, somewhat more personal in its charges, and a war of words and letters ensued which must have proved very dis- tracting to the home ministry when it was brought before them.
In point of fact, Hunter was a good churchman, as he iterated and reiterated in letters to the Lord Bishop of London and to his friend John Chamberlayne of London. The report of his lukewarmness came from the Rev. William Vesey, rector of Trinity Church. Mr. Vesey was a good man, but so thoroughly absorbed in his church and parish work as to have become somewhat narrow-minded and bigoted, ready to go to undue lengths in order to advance the interests of his church. Hunter was much more liberal in matters of faith than his predecessors Lovelace and Cornbury, and the two clashed. Hunter, in his letter to the bishop, before mentioned, charged that Mr. Vesey had openly and grossly abused him before his arrival, and ever since that time had been a constant caballer with those who had obstructed all settlement of the revenue "in order to starve me out, as they phrase it." Mr. Vesey's earliest and probably chief grievance is narrated at length by Colonel Lewis Morris2 in a letter to John Chamberlayne. On the governor's arrival, he wrote, application was made to him by Trinity Church for the Queen's Farm, which he immediately gave during his term. This, however, did not satisfy Mr. Vesey, who asked the gover- nor to join him in a petition to Queen Anne to grant it to Trinity Church, it having formerly been granted them by Colonel Fletcher, which grant was vacated among others by act of assembly. This Governor Hunter declined to do, on the ground that the queen was already thoroughly well informed in the case, and that it would be improper for him to join in such a petition. He could do nothing more, he said, than to grant it during his term. Another grievance of Mr. Vesey's was that the governor had refitted the old chapel in the fort and given authority to her Majesty's chaplain, the Rev. John Sharp,3 to officiate on Sundays for the benefit of the garrison. This Mr. Vesey thought an invasion of his jurisdiction. That, however, of which he made the most account was the course of the governor toward the Rev. Thomas Poyer, incumbent of the church at Jamaica.
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