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 51
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1 It was erected in 1763 by Bernart R. Cuyler, and its solid, unbroken walls stand as a silent testimo- nial to the honesty of the dead and gone builder. The date and the architect's initials are still to be seen on the side of the building, worked in wrought- iron characters, quaint and old. The Rhinelander family has owned the property since 1790, and much of the land around it has been in their pos- session much longer than that. When first erected the house was used as a sugar-house, but the great interest in the old building is in the memory of the use to which it was put in Revolutionary times. The grated windows, the dungeon-like under- ground cellars, the general air of solidity and im- pregnability which impress the observer at first sight, bear out the assertion, which has become a creed among the neighbors, that during the Revo- lution the sugar-house was diverted from its legiti- mate use and turned into a British prison, where many an American patriot suffered not only im- prisonment, but cruelties and starvation. That it must have made a prison of the worst kind was lately to be seen by a look at the forbidding build-
ing from Rose street, when the sides facing on that street were exposed to full view by the demoli- tion of the modern structures which had covered them for years. At the present writing the struc- ture is no more. On the side facing toward the east many windows were walled up during the last fifteen years, but there were still six grated openings left. Three were in the gable and the others along the south side. Underneath them was a great vaulted passageway made of heavy masonry like the whole building. Still another opening was to be seen alongside of it, half- hidden by rubbish, and the barred outline of another cell-window also visible after close exam- ination. The key of the ancient prison is still preserved. It is a large affair of wrought iron, about a foot long, and weighs about half a pound. A number of other relics have been found and preserved, among them a heavy iron ax, shaped like a battle-ax, and a coin, inscribed "Carolus III. Dei Gratia, 1791," on one side, and " M. 2 R. F. F. Hispan et Indrex" on the other, was found between the boards of the floor. EDITOR.
NEW-YORK AT THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD 453
the memory of the present generation at two cents the pound, is already a stranger to our waters.
Game, both of flesh and fowl, was in equal abundance. There were deer on Long Island, hares and rabbits in abundance, and the air was thick with wild fowl in the seasons of flight. The elders of the pass- ing generation have seen armies of geese on their southern migration, and flocks of ducks hanging over the Harlem flats, so thick as to cast their shadows on the plain like obscuring clouds; and woodcock were in abundance in the coverts about Jones's Wood and the line of present Eighty-sixth street. The New-York gentleman who in the colonial days varied his business occupation with a few days' shooting had no lack of sport. Such inveterate Nimrods as Theophylact Bache, whilom president of the Chamber of Commerce, had their country- seats at Flushing, L. I., in the last half of the past century; and it is said of them, as the writer has seen of others with his own eyes in the first half of this century, that, starting out with a horse and wagon and a brace of hunting dogs, they would return after an outing to Islip and the Moriches, with a heaping load of game, large and small, partridge and quail, plover and snipe, wild geese and ducks, the beau- tiful pile of variegated plumage sometimes surmounted by the ant- lered carcass of a deer.
There is nothing special to be said of the meat staples; but there was a constant importation of fine stock, and as the pastures of Long Island and of the North River counties were rich of soil, there is no doubt of their quality. In 1761 the standard prices, as established by law, were : beef, 4}d. per pound; pork, 52d .; veal, 42d. to 6d .; butter, 15d. per pound; and milk at six coppers the quart. Bread by the as- size: the price of a loaf of one pound (twelve ounces) was fixed at four coppers. The fine wheat flour of the New-York colony had no superior in the world.
Vegetables were in unusual plenty. This was a taste inherited from the Dutch; the English to this day knowing little of the vegetable as a delicacy, though using it freely as a food. The finer varieties were grown in gentlemen's gardens, which abounded within the city limits. The Harlem flats were prolific in this product. The markets were sup- plied from boats which daily brought in their high-heaped loads from the Jersey flats and Long Island. The asparagus from the Coney Island marsh, long, white, and rose-tipped like a lady's finger, was noted for its peculiar aroma, smacking of its native saline origin. The Bermuda potato was already domesticated : a sample was brought to New-York from Plumb Island in 1748 which weighed no less than seven and one half pounds.
Nor was there a less abundance of fruit. By universal consent the Newtown pippin is the king of apples. In the colonial days the golden
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variety of this crisp, aromatic fruit bore away the palm. The Dutch were partial to the russet, a variety now rarely found in old-time per- fection. Among pears the Seckel, which grew to perfection on Long Island, was easily the favorite. The constant trade with the English West India Islands kept the city fully supplied with tropical fruit; and in the season the wharves fairly groaned with the weight of the pineapples, oranges, and plantains from Jamaica and St. Eustatius, constituting the deck-loads of the barks and brigs which brought in the sugar and molasses from these sunny isles. The sugar was in- tended for the refineries which the Bayards and the Livingstons, the Cuylers, the Roosevelts, and the Van Cortlandts, had for years con- ducted to their great profit;1 while the molasses was for the numerous distilleries which supplied the city and the Indian traders with the staple drink of the century, "Jamaica rum." Rarely was a meeting held of the merchants at their "Long Room over the Exchange"; or of the Whig club of lawyers which met at the King's Arms Tavern, where George Burns kept the Gentlemen's Coffee-house, and plotted to destroy church and state (according to Judge Jones); or of the Social Club at Sam Fraunces', without a bowl of fragrant beverage of which rum was the main ingredient.
But this was the convivial, not the customary drink of the day. The flowing bowl was reserved for the tavern, or social gatherings. Madeira, king of wines, reigned supreme at the tables of the gentry. True, there were always to be found the wines of Sicily and the Ca- nary Isles, the red vintages of Oporto and Bordeaux, the bright aro- matic product of the Xeres and Amontillado districts, and champagne occasionally appeared. But for the staple every-day drink, and for the more solemn occasions,-birthdays, majority-days, marriages, and funerals, the only great events of social life,-Madeira, and Madeira only, was the wine; and the skilful gentleman who looked to his wines as his notable lady to her larder and preserve-room, knew well the process by which, with age and care, he could bring his vintages to each note in the gamut of flavor and delicacy. A gentleman's cel- lar was no sinecure, nor was its construction the affair of an hour or a day. As each vessel laden with the precious freight arrived (the cargo, all in casks, had no distinctive name, but thereafter took that of the year of the vintage alone), the merits of the wine would be tested. Certain vintages became famous: that of 1767 had a reputation equal to that of the later vintage of the comet year.
1 The Livingston sugar-house stood in Crown street (now Liberty), near the Dutch church. Many citizens will remember the stone archway through which the mails were delivered from the Post-office established in the church adjoining. The Bayard's was in Wall street, close to the City
Hall ; the Van Cortlandt's, on the northwest cor- ner of Trinity churchyard; the Roosevelt's, in Queen street, near the Walton House ; the Cuy- ler's, later the Rhinelander's, on the corner of Rose and Duane streets, has only lately been torn down.
A. The Fart
T. S' Georges Chapel
B Trinity Church
M. Morarian Muting
C OlaTruck Church.
N .For Lutherins,Mating
Z Berlins Market
D Frenos Church
O Costum House
1 Oswego Market
E FerMuto Church
P Gererara House
2 Engluk Free School
E Therbylerine Meeting
Q Secretarya Office
G- Quakers Meeting
Bleck Hause
W.Baptist Meeting
S ErMange
5 Gator.
I Lutheran Church
T. Fish Market
K. Jews Synagogue
V Old Ship Market
RIVER
Tver
Bolton
BRO
Road
BET
77
tal Milner 1320 feet
HAR B
OUR
MAP OF NEW-YORK IN 1767.
NORTH
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
One cask or more were selected, duly cellared, and kept in the wood. One cask only was drawn from during the first year. The next year a second purchase was made. The partly emptied cask was filled from the new purchase; the third year the process was repeated, the new wine being used every day, and the predecessors, in the order of the importance of the occasion, according to their ages. In due time the older wines were drawn off in demijohns, or sometimes bottled. The lees of the casks served as a base for the Jamaica rum, and gave it a wonderful aroma. But only ample cellars could afford this degenerate use. The cellars took the names of their owners when, by some luck- less hap, they came to the vendue-room - a rare fate. The vintages treated by wine-merchants later took the names of the vessels by which they were received. Instances in a not remote day must be fa- miliar, as the Essex, Jr., the Juno, and the Brahmin Madeiras were all from the same vineyard, and brought in by these vessels, while the Farquhar, the Bingham, and the Paulding Madeiras took their names from the owners of the respective cellars ; the March and Benson, from the importers; the Monteiros, from the grower; the Metternich, from the origin of the grape. All these, however, are modern fashions. There is no trace of them in the colonial days.
Let us now look for a moment into the manner of life and amuse- ments of our forefathers. Their habits were regular, or rather their hours were regular. They rose early, if not with the sun, and had an hour or more at their office or stores, which, before the Revolution, were usually under the same roof as their dwellings; and after a visit to the market, which no head of a New-York house ever omitted, breakfasted in a hearty manner. The dinner-hour was from one to three, and the tea at nightfall, what to-day would be called "high tea." A supper invariably followed at the tavern, or coffee-house, where ale or punch was drunk, crabs were picked out, or escalloped oysters (a favorite dish) eaten, and pipes smoked in the winter; or in the summer lighter beverages, with fruit or ices, consumed at the tea- and mead-houses, the Ranelagh or the Vauxhall, on the outskirts of the town.
1 For the high gentry, the English officials, and those of the colony in particular who had country estates in the neighborhood of New- York, racing was the chief delight. New-Yorkers of to-day will open their eyes when they are told that in 1742 a race was run on the Church Farm, not a stone's throw to the northwest from where the present Astor House stands; and that here in 1750-five horses run- ning for the October subscription plate - Mr. Lewis Morris, Jr., car- ried away the prize. His horse is not named. It was not the custom then to name horses which had not taken a purse, and this race was open only to horses which had never taken a purse on Manhattan
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NEW-YORK AT THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD 457
Island. The great course was the Newmarket, on Hempstead Plains, an ideal piece of ground for a track, to which, in May of that year, twenty chairs and chaises crossed the ferry' the day before the "event," and a far greater number of horses, "and it was thought that the number of horses on the plains at the race far exceeded a thou- sand." The chief racing-stables in the New-York province were those of Morris and De Lancey in Westchester. In 1753 the subscription plate was run for at Greenwich, on the estate of Admiral Sir Peter Warren, who had died the year previous, and which was now in charge of his kinsman and executor, Oliver De Lancey, a famous sports- man. General Monckton later occupied "Richmond" during his brief stay in this govern- ment. The governor had a fine THE LIVINGSTON SUGAR-HOUSE. horse named Smoaker, with which John Leary, the jockey of the day, won a bowl which he would not surrender to Watts, the general's friend, not even under threat of the terrors of the law. Five years later Leary was still tenacious. Besides the Church Farm and Green- wich tracks, there was a third course at Harlem. There were other New-Yorkers keen for the sport: Anthony Rutgers, of New-York, and Michael Kearney, Irish-born,-who married a daughter of Lewis Morris, and was ancestor of the dashing Phil Kearney of military fame,- were thorough sportsmen. The middle and southern colo- nies were not behind in their love of sports. Dr. Hamilton led the patrons of the turf in New Jersey, and Mr. Daniel Dulaney, who was also of Irish birth, those of Maryland.
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The Stamp Act Congress brought together in New-York gentlemen who knew each other well by reputation, but who had never before met in person. In the years that followed there sprung up a great rivalry between the northern and southern colonies. The years 1767, 1768, and 1769 are memorable in the history of the turf. Lewis Morris won reputation for his Westchester stables with his American Childers and Strumpet. In October, 1769, James De Lancey, with his imported horse, Lath, brought home from the Centre course at Philadelphia the £100 prize. The De Lancey stables were the most
1 This ferry was from the Fly Market Slip, at the road to Jamaica, along which the drovers and the foot of the present Maiden Lane, to the land- farmers gathered. ing at Brookland. Brooklyn was but a hamlet on
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expensive of any at the north, and from this period to the Revolution their colors were on every course. A curious instance shows the diffi- culties sportsmen as well as tradesmen had to contend with because of the debased state of the coinage and the irregular values of the currency of the colonies. On the Maryland course, Dulaney made a match with De Lancey for a race for a "struck half-bushel" of Span- ish dollars- that is, by weight. Later the Marylanders declined to stake their money against Virginia currency at the Leestown course on the Potomac, the Virginia paper having been "counterfeited in a masterly manner."
The most celebrated of the races of the stamp-act period was that between True Briton and Selim in 1765, at the very height of the hos- tile feeling against Great Britain. True Briton was English-born; Selim, a grandson of the Godolphin Arabian, was American-born, and had the fleetest foot in the colonies. The race was over the Phila- delphia course and for £1000 stakes. One Waters, who owned True Briton, had challenged the continent, in true British boastfulness of language, to a trial of speed. Samuel Galloway of Maryland answered his defiance with Selim. The race was hardly a trial of speed, but the matchless Selim bore off the honors and the purse. Another True Briton belonging to James De Lancey won Revolutionary fame. It is said of this animal that Colonel Oliver De Lancey would jump him back and forth from a standstill over a five-barred gate. In 1768, the "teriffic Selim " came to grief with Dr. Hamilton's Figure, a scion of the Duke of Devonshire's Arabian, on the course of Upper Marl- borough, near Newburgh on the Hudson. These are but instances of the trials for speed in which the New-York stables were represented. They serve to show not only the spirit, but the wealth of the period.
Racing on the water was not much in fashion, though the gentry had their barges, and some their yachts or pleasure sail-boats. The most elaborate barge (with awning and damask curtains) of which there is mention was that of Governor Montgomerie, and the most noted yacht was the Fancy, belonging to Colonel Lewis Morris, whose Morrisania manor, on the peaceful waters of the Sound, gave fine har- bor and safe opportunity for sailing. There is an interesting account of a boat-race in 1756 by one of sixteen whale-boats (each manned by six men) which arrived in New-York from Cape Cod on the way to Albany for bateau service in the Canada campaign, with a "pettiau- ger" belonging to the city. The Cape Cod men won the wager with ease, much to the chagrin of the townsmen.
There were other less humane sports : bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and cock-fighting. A bull was baited in 1763 by the keeper of the tavern under the sign of the De Lancey Arms, in the Bowery Lane. Bulls were baited at Bayard's Mount, the elevation near the corner of Mul-
NEW-YORK AT THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD 459
berry and Grand streets. Bear-baiting became more rare as the animals disappeared from this neighborhood. Cock-fighting was a more aristocratic pastime. The De Lanceys were patrons of this cruel sport, one to be traced to an English origin, but hardly less cruel than the old Dutch and New Netherland custom of "pulling the goose." Good fighting-cocks were advertised in the New-York papers, as were cock-gaffs of silver and steel; and the sign of the Fighting- Cocks long hung in such an aristocratic neighborhood as next door to the Exchange Coffee House. In 1763, however, it had been removed to a tavern at the Whitehall Slip. Shrove Tuesday was the day for the pitched mains. This sport lasted well into this century as a pub- lic amusement. Again, fox-hunting was a favorite pastime, both in the Pennsylvania and the New-York colony. There were foxes on this island, but the less broken grounds of Long Island afforded better running, and by permission each year three days' sport was had on the Flatland plains, the huntsmen meeting at daybreak during the autumn racing-season. That the sport offended some gentle natures appeared by a letter from a female, published before the Revolution, which closes with the delightful satire,
A fox is killed by twenty men, That fox perhaps had killed a hen; A gallant act no doubt is here ! All wicked foxes ought to fear When twenty dogs and twenty men Can kill a fox that kill'd a hen.
The side-shows afforded entertainment to a different class. There ; is notice of a panther, seven feet long, which leaped from a window into the street, in July, 1732, and was finally shot; but whence it came no man knew. In 1751 there was advertised to be seen at the house of Mr. Edward Willett, at Whitehall, a creature called a Japanese, of about two feet high, his body resembling a human body in all parts except the feet and tail: price, one shilling; children, ninepence. In 1765 there was to be seen at the house of Mr. Edward Barden in the Fields, at the sign of the King's Arms, a white girl, aged thirteen years, born of black parents; she is styled a "white-negro." And at the same place there was advertised to be sold "a likely negro man who can play very well on the French Horn and Trumpet, fitting to wait on a gentleman." In 1751 the town was invited to see, at the house of John Bannin, next door to Mr. Peter Brower's, near the Dutch church, "a curious live porcupine of various colors; a creature armed with darts, which resemble writing pens though of different colour, and which he shoots at any adversary with ease when angry or at- tacked, though otherwise of great good humour and gentleness." In
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
1755 Captain Seymour arrived in New-York in the ship Fame in eight weeks from Cadiz. He brought with him a young lioness which he took on board at Gibraltar. He also brought from the African coast two ostriches, "fowls of that country," but they died on the voyage. In 1754 a living alligator, full four feet long, was shown for sixpence. In December, 1759, at the sign of the Ship-a-Masting, at the upper end of Moravian street, near the back of Spring Garden, there was advertised to be seen "a wild animal lately brought from the Missis- sippi, called a Buffalo." Occasionally young elks were on exhibition.
Of shows of another variety there was in 1755, at the house of Adam Vandenberg in the Broadway, a musical machine which represented the tragedy of "Bateman." The showman was Richard Brickell, a
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VIEW OF BROAD STREET AND THE CITY HALL.
famous posture-maker, who took the theater in Nassau street for a display of "his dancings and tumblings." Anthony Joseph Dugee, who in 1753 announced himself as "late an apprentice to the Grand Turk Mahomet Caratha," danced at Vandenberg's garden "on a slack rope scarcely perceptible, with and without a balance," a measure which had given the greatest satisfaction to the King of Great Britain. Wax figures were exhibited by Martha Gazley as early as 1731. They were of fruit and flowers; but a more ambitious effort was made in 1749, when "the effigies of the Royal Family of England, and the Empress Queen of Hungaria and Bohemia," with the play of "Whit- tington and his Cat," were the features of entertainment. In 1739 there was given in Holt's Long Room " a new pantomime in grotesque
NEW-YORK AT THE CLOSE OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD 461
characters, called "The Adventures of Harlequin and Scaramouch." Punch's opera, "Bateman, or the Unhappy Marriage," with a fine dia -! logue between Punch and his wife Joan, acted by "a set of lively figures late from Philadelphia," was given in 1747 at the sign of the. Spread Eagle, near Whitehall Slip. The circus, with Mr. Faulk's noted performance in horsemanship, appears in 1771. The solar or camera-obscura microscope, and David Lockwood's unparalleled musi- cal clock, which "had been shown twice to the King in his royal palace of St. James," delighted and instructed the town in 1743. A micro- cosm, or the world in miniature, was displayed at the New Exchange in 1756. A panorama of the battle of Culloden was exhibited in 1750. A grotto with a "Statue of Mars within pointing to General Amherst a short distance away, as meaning, 'Behold a living hero!'" was the curiosity of the neighborhood of the Bowling Green, being shown in the house next door to Mr. Rutherfurd's, in 1762. In 1763 the city of Malaga in miniature was exhibited opposite the Old Slip, and in 1764 a model of the city of Jerusalem, as Josephus describes it, was on view opposite " the Honorable John Watts' Esqr. near the Exchange." Experiments in electricity were given at the assembly-rooms of the City Arms in the Broadway by William Johnson in 1763. These notices have been given somewhat in detail as showing the manner in which localities were indicated in the days when street numbers were unknown, and signs appearing to the eye were the only guides. The theater opened, as has been stated, in 1750. The performances continued, with occasional interruptions, till August, 1773, when the depression arising from the political situation brought all public and most private entertainments to a close.
The public balls were given at the principal taverns. After the middle of the century the long room at the City Arms on the Broad- way was the favorite dancing-hall. The most minute account of the dances appears in the notice of the ball in honor of the Prince of Wales's birthday, in 1735, at the Black Horse Tavern, near the Old Dutch church. The ball opened with French dances,-the gavotte, the minuet, the courante, and the chacone,- all somewhat grave in their movement, and therefore suited to the stiff-starched fashion of both female and male attire. After this Mrs. Norris led down the country- dances. She was a daughter of Colonel Lewis Morris, and had mar- ried Captain Norris of H. M. S. Tartar, second son of Admiral Sir John Norris, an officer on the Atlantic station. Dancing assemblies met also at the City Arms once a fortnight during the gay season. In 1763 Charles McEvers and C. Duane were the managers. Con- certs, instrumental and vocal, were given here also. In 1765 Mr. Hulet announced a concert, and that " the first violin would be per- formed by a gentleman lately arrived," and a solo by the same hand
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(evidently an amateur), the other instrumental parts by gentlemen of the town. The dancing assembly was an idea of Edward Willett, the host of the Province Arms, and the subscription to each meeting was eight shillings.
A word as to costume. The day habits were plain enough, as the gentlemen were all busy and the housewives had no idle time on their hands in a population whose chief occupation seems to have been eat- ing and drinking; but the evening dress was always of the very latest St. James cut. The men wore long-waisted coats of velvet, silk- or satin-lined, silver- or gold- embroidered, buttons of precious metal, cuffs and jabots of rich Flemish or Spanish lace, long waistcoats of brilliant pattern, small-clothes, silk stockings, and diamond- or paste- buckled shoes; their gloves were white dressed leather, with lace trimmings; they had wigs or perukes; they carried cocked hats, and wore silver-hilted swords, which hung from richly embroidered sashes. In a word, they could ruffle it with the best of their English cousins. The ladies dressed their hair low or high according to the latest mode, wore stiff laced bodices, skirts with deep panniers, hooped petticoats of considerable width (though not as vast as those of the London dames, which blocked the passages), high-heeled colored shoes, and, later, slippers of dainty satin or white dressed kid. They carried fans of the latest pattern. The stuffs were rich, and heavily brocaded in bunches of gold and silver of the large English pattern. By day they were simple as Cinderella at the chimney-corner. Their gowns were of plain, sensible material, woolen or calico, made short, with aprons of linen; their hats small, their hoods quiet, and at home always a muslin cap. There was a vast variety of dress-goods from which to select, shipped from the four quarters of the globe. Of this we may judge from the first advertisement of Mr. Isaac Low, one of the leading dry-goods importers. On November 6, 1766, he announced in Holt's "New-York Journal" that he "has just imported an assort- ment of goods suitable to the season, consisting of coatings, broad- cloths, flannels, embossed serges; Paris-fans and half sticks, spotted ermine shalloons, satinets, callimancoes, oznabrigs, sheeting; Russia drilling donlass, garlix Callicoes, cottons, cambricks, lawns; both muslin taffatus, Persian cotton lungee and new silk romalls, bandan- noes and women's gloves; worsted and cotton hose, &c., &c. which he will sell on the most reasonable terms at his store, between the Exchange and Coenties market. Imported since the above: A fresh assortment of beautiful checks and callicoes from the fountain head; Scots handkerchiefs, bed bunts, bed ticks, gartering, binding, &c." In 1768 he advertised flowered petticoating, silk corsets and Damascus silk Lorettos, silk burdets and dressed deerskins.
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