USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume III > Part 24
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A fire occurred in New-York in May, 1811, which for years was spoken of as "the Great Fire." Between eighty and one hundred large buildings were burned, and for a time it seemed as though the whole city would be destroyed. It began on Chatham street, near Duane, on a Sunday morning, and was fanned by a high wind blow- ing at the time. While it was raging the spire of the Brick Church caught fire from flying embers, and for some moments it seemed to the spectators that the famous structure was doomed. No ladders or fire-engines could reach the spot, yet a single hand could have dashed down the brand and extinguished the flame. A sailor in the crowd, quick to perceive the situation, gained access to the roof, climbed the tall steeple by the aid of the lightning-rod, and extinguished the brand by beating it with his hat; while the multitude below cheered the act lustily as being that of a hero. This done, he descended to the ground, and was lost in the crowd; nor could he be induced to come forward and disclose his identity, although a reward was voted by the officers of the church in gratitude for the timely act.
The project of water communication between the Hudson and the great lakes divided public interest with the growing certainty of war with England during the years 1811 and 1812; or, more properly speaking, the prospect of war with England turned men's attention more and more to our inland commerce and to its possibilities and necessities. Christopher Colles, soon after the Revolution, set on foot certain experiments intended to make the Mohawk a navigable water- way. General Philip Schuyler had proposed a system of locks to surmount the cataracts of the Mohawk at Little Falls, and a canal about two and three-fourth miles long, having five locks, had been built as early as 1796 to demonstrate the feasibility of the plan. In 1791 the legislature of New-York had appointed commissioners to survey the region between Wood Creek, which falls into Lake On-
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tario, and the Hudson, and to report as to the cost of making canals between the two streams. In 1792 the legislature incorporated the "Inland Navigation Company," of which General Schuyler was the first president, and which in 1797 had connected Wood Creek with the Mohawk, and a few years later had carried its improvements so far that boats could pass from Schenectady into Oneida Lake.
Gouverneur Morris, so far as we find, was the first to put upon paper the project of a canal from the Hudson to Lake Erie. After a journey down the St. Lawrence through Lake Ontario, and by land
to Lake Erie, he wrote in 1801 to John Parish that a large commerce would at no distant period whiten those inland seas, and that AK one tenth of the cost to Britain of the last campaign would have enabled ships to sail from London through the Hudson River to Lake Erie. This gen- tleman, in company FIRST FREE-SCHOOL BUILDING. with Jesse Hawley and James Geddes, published many essays and communications on the general subject in the State press. The latter, in 1810, gave the surveyor-general, Simeon De Witt, an ex- haustive report of a survey he had made on his own responsibility, which was laid before the legislature, and that body appointed a com- mission, of which Gouverneur Morris was chairman, "to explore the whole route for inland navigation from the Hudson River to Lake Ontario and to Lake Erie."
This commission reported in the spring of 1811 that the survey had been performed, and that the project was entirely feasible; whereupon the legislature passed an act investing the commission- ers with "power to manage all matters relating to the navigation between the Hudson and the lakes," and added Chancellor Livingston and Robert Fulton to the commission. The body was authorized to apply for aid to Congress and to other States, to negotiate with the Inland Lock Navigation Company for the purchase of its charter and property, and to ascertain if a loan of five millions of dollars could be negotiated. The commission applied to Congress for aid, but met with a cool reception, although Gouverneur Morris and De Witt Clinton appeared for it in person. It was admitted that the project was of national interest and importance, but it was said that nothing VOL. III .- 14.
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could be done for New-York that was not done for the other States, and the application, without being rejected, was never acted upon. This lukewarmness on the part of Congress, and the breaking out of the war of 1812, with the opposition of many in the State, who re- garded the enterprise as chimerical in the extreme, deferred the com- pletion of the mighty project until another generation of men had come upon the scene.
On December 11, 1809, the first free school building in New-York was dedicated. The corporation by which it was erected-known as the "Free School Society of the City of New-York"-had been founded in 1805, as was shown in the previous chapter. In 1808 the charter was altered, the corporation taking the name of the "Free School Society of the City of New-York." The same year, the school having out- grown its quarters in the building near the almshouse, the edifice before mentioned was built on a large lot in Chatham street, also given by the city. This first public-school building in New-York was of brick, and THE RUTGERS MANSION. contained one large school-room proper, capable of accommodating five hundred pupils, a trustees' room, apartments for the teacher, and a second and smaller school-room that would accommodate one hundred and fifty pupils. The feature of the dedicatory exercises was an address by De Witt Clinton, in which he stated the object of the society to be, not the founding of a single academy, but the establishment of schools. Colonel Rutgers's gift of two lots on Henry street was coupled with the condition that a school building should be erected on the site donated before June, 1811. Thirteen thousand dollars were promptly subscribed by the citizens of New-York, and the corner-stone of the second structure was laid by Colonel Rutgers on November 11. 1810, in the presence of a large company. In 1811 the vestry of Trinity Church gave two large lots on the corner of Hudson and Grove streets for a third school building. There were six of these public-school buildings in the city by 1825, and that year the legislature changed the name of the society from " Free School Society " to " Public School Society."
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At the same time that the public schools were slowly growing into form, one of those noble charities which have been the pride and boast of New-York was founded, the New-York Orphan Asylum Society. This was the work of several cultivated and benevolent ladies,- Mrs. Isabella Graham and her daughter, Mrs. Joanna Be- thune, Mrs. Sarah Hoff- man, Mrs. Alexander Hamil- ton, and others,-who called a public meeting on the 15th of March, 1806, for the organizing of the so- ciety. Its first asylum stood on an acre of ground in Bank street, a plain sub- stantial structure fifty feet square, erected at a cost of twenty-five thousand dol- lars. The society was not able to meet the entire Nachangles Irving amount at the time of building, but the debt was soon discharged by the donations and gifts of philanthropic persons. In 1840 the society, by selling its down-town property at a greatly increased price, and aided by a generous public, was able to build the noble and well-appointed edifice on the banks of the Hudson, at Seventy-fourth street.
Early in the year 1812 a bill was introduced in the legislature which convulsed the State, and so stimulated partizan feeling as to threaten, in the minds of some, the stability of government itself. The disturbing cause was nothing more terrible than a bill to charter a Bank of North America in New-York city, with a capital of six millions of dollars, four hundred thousand of which were to be devoted to the common-school fund; one hundred thousand for the support of academies and colleges; a hundred thousand more to be paid into the State treasury after twenty years, provided the corporation should be given a monopoly of banking in the State during that time; one million to be loaned to the State, to be used in the construction of canals; and an equal sum to manufacturers and farmers throughout the State for the promotion of manufactures and agriculture-in some of its features much like the subtreasury scheme of modern enthusi- asts. The bill was made a party issue at once-the Federalists sup- porting it with great unanimity, the Republicans as a party opposing
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it, although there were many of the wealthier and more influential leaders who were openly or secretly in favor of it.
The Republicans, led by Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. pointed to the power wielded iu politics by the old United States Bank. whose charter bad but just been abrogated after a bitter strug- gle, and to the Manhattan Bank, created by Aaron Burr in 1799 under the guise of a water company, and denounced several of the propositions of the present scheme as being worse than either. At an early stage of the contest it be- came evident that the bill would pass. many interests be- ing marshaled in favor of it and Governor Tomp- kins resorted to an expedient of doubtful utility, and without pre- cedent. to defeat it. He used the power conferred on him by the constitution of New-York, and prorogued the legislature for sixty days, alleging in defense of his action that many of the members had been bribed. The greatest excitement attended the reading of the governor's message dismissing the legis- lators for sixty days. Orators in favor of the bank charged that Tompkins had an eye on the presidency, and was seeking to make capital for himself by his heretofore unheard-of action, and to defeat the nomination of Clinton, whose canal schemes it was believed committed him to the support of the bank. For a time the opposing parties were at the point of blows; but the legis- lature was dissolved, and ou reconvening on May 21 did what might have been expected-at once passed the bill chartering the Bank of America. Oliver Wolcott, late secretary of the treasury, became its first president.
I During the first decade of the century it was the property of Gouverneur Kemble, and was a favorite resort with its young owuer, the Irvinga, Paulding, Captain Porter, father of the late Ad- miral, Henry Brevoort, and others, who made the ancient mansion gay with their fun and frolic. Kemble, in a note to the Editor dated February,
1872, says: "The old place near Newark, in New Jersey, christened . Coskloft Hall' by Mr. Irving. was called Mount Pleasant. The house was built by Nicholas Gouverneur, grandson of Abraham Gouverneur, who married the daughter of Jacob Leixler." EDITOR
:
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During the period under consideration, literature had flourished as never before in the history of the city. In 1807 a young man named Washington Irving was living with his mother on William street, writing clever articles for the "Morning Chronicle," edited by his brother, Dr. Peter Irv- ing, and quite unknown A HISTORY to fame. Boarding with his sister, the wife of OF William Irving, brother of Washington Irving, NEW YORK, was a young clerk in the loan-office, of fine liter- FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD TO THE END OF THE DUTCH DYNASTY. ary ability-James Kirke Paulding. The two young men became fast friends, CONTAINING and in summer were in Among many Surprising and Curious Matters, the Unutterable Ponderings of WALTER THE DOUBTER, the Disastrous Projects of WILLIAM THE TESTY, and the. Chivalric Achievements of PETER THE HEADSTRONG, the three Dutch Governors of New AMSTERDAM: being the only Authentic History of the Times that over bath been, or ever will be Published. the habit of leaving the heated city and going out to the old Gouvern- eur mansion on the banks of the Passaic, a short distance above the city of Newark. Here the BY DIEDRICH KNICKERBOCKER. plan of a rollicking, half- humorous, half-satirical De mantein die in Duiffer lag, Die koint met klaarbeid aan Den Dag. publication, mirroring the fashions and follies IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. of the town, was con- ceived, and the first num- ber largely written. The new publication - called PUBLISHED BY INSKEEP & BRADFORD, NEW YORK , BRADFORD &' INSKEEP,, PHILADELPHIA ; WM. M'IL. HENNEY, BOSTON ; COALE & THOMAS, BALTIMORE; AND MORFORD, WILLINGTON, & CO. CHARLESTON. "Salmagundi "- was is- sued on January 24, 1807, and at once took the city by storm. Its purpose 1809. was announced to be "to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age"; and it did this so effectually, yet with so much bonhomie and good humor, that it became the talk of polite society, and much interest was aroused as to the identity of its authors.
The same year Washington Irving, assisted by Dr. Peter Irving, commenced his immortal work, " Knickerbocker's History of New- York," in reality a burlesque on the "Picture of New-York " recently published by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, but written with so much veri-
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similitude and appearance of truth as to be accepted for sober his- tory by many intelligent readers. Knickerbocker's History first appeared in 1809. Its charm is perennial. It has left its impress upon the early history of the great city. Whatever may be later
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said or written, the term."Knickerbocker" will still cling to the early Dutch settlers of Manhattan, and their manners, customs, and charac- teristics will, in the popular eye, remain such as were pictured in the pages of Diedrich Knickerbocker.
NEW YOR
SEAL
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
COCKLOFT HALL.
Sixty-six years ago the village of Newark -the Newark of Archy Gifford's day -and New-York were connected by a quartette of stages, drawn by four horses; and in one of the four lumbering vehicles was often seen, on summer Saturday after- noons, a party of gay, rollicking young New-Yorkers, who were deposited at the gate of an old mansion which, with its surrounding twenty or more acres, was then known as the " Gouverneur Place." " The place," says James K. Paulding, " was pleasantly situated on the banks of a pastoral stream ; not so near town [New-York] as to invite an inundation of idle acquaintances who came to lounge away an afternoon, nor so distant as to render it an absolute deed of charity or friendship to perform the jour- ney." In the year 1795 this property, situated about a mile to the north of Newark, on the Belleville road, was inherited by Gouverneur Kemble from his uncle Isaac Gouverneur, whose portrait, painted by Stuart, occupies the place of honor in the dining-hall of Mr. Kemble's residence at Cold Spring, variously designated by his friend Washington Irving as "Bachelor's Hall," "Bachelor's Nest," "Bachelor's Elysium." Mr. Kemble, in a letter to the writer, dated February 6, 1872, says : " The old place near Newark, in New Jersey, christened Cockloft Hall by Mr. Irving, was called Mount Pleasant. The house was built by Nicholas Gouverneur, grandson of Abraham Gouverneur, who married the daughter of Governor Jacob Leisler. At the death of Nicholas the property passed into the possession of his brother, Isaac Gou- verneur, from whom I inherited it, in 1795, and sold it, I think, in 1837 or '38."
The interesting old country-house, which was also known as Mount Pleasant, was a plain two-story building of wood, with wings to the first floor. A honeysuckle porch met the view from the road, between which and the house was the garden ; on the opposite side a sloping lawn, studded with apple-trees, extended to the river. Entering by the east door was " The Chinese Saloon," while from each side doors opened into the wings, forming a suite of rooms some sixty feet in length. Above were several quaint chambers respectively known as the " Green Moreen," the "Red Silk," the " Pink Chintz," and the " Blue Chintz "- all filled with antique furniture, and the rooms on the first floor were adorned with family portraits. The only regular tenants of the venerable mansion at the time of which we are writing were two old family servants, known as Daddy and Mammy Jacobs, and a negro boy.
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The merry blades who made the old mansion gay with their fun and frolic were the young owner, who was dignified with the title of "the Patroon"; James K. Paulding, known as " Billy Taylor"; Henry Brevoort, Jr., as "Nuncle"; Ebenezer Irving, as "Captain Great Heart "; " Sinbad " was the title given to David Porter, father of the present admiral; Richard McCall, familiarly known as Dick McCall, was dubbed "Ooromdates"; Henry Ogden was called "the Supercargo"; Peter Irving, "the Doctor"; and his brother, Washington, who, having no secondary title, it is believed, had furnished his companions with aliases. This roystering coterie of jolly young fellows were variously designated by Peter Irving as the " Nine Worthies," by Wash- ington as the "Lads of Kilkenny," and by Paulding as the " Ancient and Honorable Order" and the "Ancient Club of New-York."
In Irving's Life it is stated that "the house was full of antique furniture, and the walls were adorned with family portraits. The place was in charge of an old man and woman, and a negro boy, who were its sole occupants, except when the nine, under the lead and confident in the hospitality of the Patroon, as they styled its possessor, would sally forth from New-York and enliven its solitude by their mad- cap pranks and juvenile orgies." Paulding's biographer, in writing of the old man- sion, says: "The Green Moreen [chamber], which occupied the southwestern angle
1
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of the second story, seems to have been the favorite bachelors' quarters. Fast by its western window, on the southerly side of the stoop, grew an immense honey-cherry tree, to the fruit of which the birds were extremely partial; and it is averred that these lazy dogs of Salmagundians would lie in bed there and shoot them. Into this tree ' Billy Taylor' (Paulding) once incautiously climbed, and the rest of the roaring boys, having detected him there, pilfering, pelted him bitterly before they allowed him to descend; and, doubtless, it was a reminiscence of it that suggested one of the finest papers in the second series of 'Salmagundi.' . . . Many were the rare doings and the absurd pranks in and about the house, of which the trials at jumping and the games of leap-frog were of the least." On one occasion a member of the coterie, for some breach of club law or other social offense, was arraigned before a grand court of in-
quisition and solemnly adjudged to the horse- pond, the judges promptly carrying out the sentence in person.
Another interesting feature of Gouver- neur Place was a summer-house, situated in the orchard, not far distant from the river. The author of a pleasant reminiscence 1 gives an agreeable description of it: "The old man" (who serves the purpose of the nar- rator) "sighed, and, turning away his head, he led the way to a small building stand- ing not far from the river's brink, and near an artificial basin or pond, into which, as the tide was full, the Passaic was pouring some of its surplus waters through a narrow sluice. It was octagonal in shape, about eighteen feet in diameter, containing only one apart- ment, with a door facing the river on the east, and having windows opening toward each of the other three cardinal points. It IK Pauling was built of stone, and had been originally weatherboarded; although most of the boards had fallen off. It had evidently been con- structed with great care, being fully plastered within and papered, having an ornamental cornice and chair-board, an arched doorway, and cut-stone steps-all indicating a fastidiousness of finish not ordinarily found elsewhere than in dwellings; but it was far gone toward utter ruin, the window-sashes being all out, the door gone, and the mutilated woodwork showing it to be a resort only of the idle and the vicious. On looking to my companion for an explanation, he said: 'This, sir, was the Cockloft summer-house, and this the fish-pond, which Irving mentions when giving the por- trait of the old proprietor. You may remember the passage: " An odd notion of the old gentleman was to blow up a large bed of rocks, for the purpose of having a fish- pond, although the river ran at about one hundred yards distance from the house and was well stored with fish; but there was nothing, he said, like having things to one's self. And he would have a summer-house built on the margin of the fish-pond; he would have it surrounded with elms and willows; and he would have a cellar dug under it, for some incomprehensible purpose, which remains a secret to this day." As I remember it, in the days of my youth,' continued my aged friend, ' with its window- seats and lockers, I think it requires no " Will Wizard " to solve the mystery of the cellar; but that there the bottles were kept that were wont to surrender their exhilarat-
1 William A. Whitehead, Esq., in Newark "Advertiser," November 30, 1859.
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Winfield Heott pronounced the glowing eulogium on Kemble "that he was the most perfect gentleman in the United States"; and when Washington Irving and Kemble met for the last time, at Sunnyside, in the summer of 1859, on returning to the parlor, after parting at the honeysuckled porch, "his [Irving's] eyes were filled with tears," says his biographer, "and he burst forth with a gush of feeling : 'That is my friend of early life-always unchanged, always like a brother; one of the noblest beings that ever were created. His heart is pure gold.'"-THE EDITOR, in "Independent," May, 1872.
DE PEYSTER ARMS.
ROOSEVELT ARMS.
PELL ARMS.
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CHAPTER VII
NEW-YORK IN THE SECOND WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN 1812-1815 .
REAT BRITAIN, driven to acknowledge the political in- dependence of the United States, even in the hour of defeat cherished hopes of a reconciliation, if not a re- union, with a part of her old colonies. In the negotiations for peace her statesmen had naturally seen the sectional jealousies of the American commissioners, and discerned in them the germs of dis- cord which might mature to a disruption of the new western empire-
ESCAPE OF THE CONSTITUTION.
a disruption from which she hoped to profit. The British ministry observed the antagonism of the different sections of the new nation to each other-an antagonism which had no place or reason under the colonial system, but was a consequence of their new condition.
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If all that was desired could not be wrested from Great Britain, each section was naturally tenacious of what it held to be vital to itself.
It is interesting to note in this, the dawn of the republic, the slight dark spot on the horizon which developed into the dark cloud of civil war-the political struggle between the Northeast and the Southwest; the one for a conservative limitation, the other for an unrestricted territorial expansion. In the negotiations themselves Adams alone represented an immediate vital sectional interest: that of New Eng- land in the fish- eries. The com- munities from which Franklin and Jay came GOD SHALL ESTABLISH S JOHNS LODGE CONSTITUTED" 575 7 were not direct- ly concerned BURNI DOWN THE 8"OF MARCH 577 0 except in the RE BUILT AND OPENED matter of the NOVEMBER 28 5770 OFFICERS THEN PRESIDING boundary and JONATHAN HAMPTON M frontiers. Nei- WILLIAM BUTLER S. W ther of these ISAAC HLKON J W wise, patriotic men was gov- erned by any narrow or self- ish considera- tion. Henry Laurens at the 1 close gave a discordant note in a demand for a clause prohibiting the carrying away of negroes by the British troops on their evacuation. The British commissioners were ready to grant the "liberty" of the fish- eries, but hesitated long before they would concede the "right" on which Adams insisted. The third article of the "provisional treaty " secured to the United States this "right" of fishery, as also the liberty of the coasts of the English banks; the eighth established the Mis- sissippi River to be forever open to the citizens of both countries.
In the course of the negotiations England had resisted any inter- meddling of France. Lord Shelburne held it to be the true policy of Great Britain to settle her differences with her kinsmen without out- side interference. Pride dictated that such concessions as must be made should seem voluntary and not forced. The wisdom of this policy in the removal of any probable cause of friction in her relations
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