USA > New York > Essex County > Bloomingdale > The New York of yesterday; a descriptive narrative of old Bloomingdale, its topographical features, its early families and their genealogies, its old homesteads and country-seats, the Bloomingdale Reformed church, organized in 1805 > Part 7
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
To commemorate NEW YORK CITY DEFENCES during the War of 1812, Barrier Gate, McGown's Pass, Barrier Gate, Manhattanville, Forts Clinton, Fish, and Haight, and three stone towers.
Also in honor of MAJ .- GEN. GARRIT HOPPER STRIKER, (then captain). 5th Regiment, 2d Brigade. Erected by U. S. D. 1812.
Empire State Society.
February 22, 1900.
٢
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The tablet is incorrect in commemorating Fort Haight. It should be Laight. The ruins of the tower at 123d Street and Amsterdam Avenue (within Morningside Park) were marked by a memorial erected by the Women's Auxiliary to the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, on Saturday, June 4, 1904. These are the remnants of Fort Horn, named in honor of the Major who supervised the general construction of the defences. On Feb. 23, 1898, on the occasion of a flag-raising there, this name was used. It should be preserved. A bronze tablet on the site of Fort Clinton was put up by the children of the City History Club, Nov. 24, 1906. The works at Harlem Heights were pronounced by the press at the date of their construction as being "numerous, compact, and judicially placed and form a romantic and picturesque view, as well as an impassable barrier to an enemy's march." They were never tested, the Treaty of Ghent being signed on Dec. 24, 1814. Intelligence thereof was received at 8 o'clock on the Saturday evening of Feb. 11th, by the British sloop-of-war Favorite, 42 days from Plymouth, and by 10 o'clock the city was vol- untarily illuminated. As Edward Hagaman Hall's monograph entitled, McGown's Pass and Vicinity, a learned historical review to which attention is called, states, "the first months of 1815 saw McGown's Pass deserted." Thus the second chapter in the military chronicles of Bloomingdale Heights is brought to a close.
The land on which "the Pass" was located was a part of twenty acres lying within the Harlem line which was purchased by George Dyckman of the Bloomingdale family in 1729. He had married, 1712, a daughter of Teunis Idese van Huyse, who, in dividing
HUDSON TOWER AND LORD COURTNAY'S, 1814
From a water color accompanying General Swift's Report "Hudson Tower was commenced July 16, 1814, and was located at Monte Alta, on the river near 123d Street" GUERNSEY
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his farm, gave (1720) one section thereof to Dyckman. From another son-in-law (Abram Montanye), Dyck- man purchased an adjoining section at the same time that he acquired the land at the Pass. These twenty acres he sold with other lands in 1748 to Adolph Benson and Jacob Dyckman, Jr. The latter was of the Kings- bridge family, which, so far as can be ascertained, is not related to that of Bloomingdale. He had married circa 1742, Catalina, daughter of Samson Benson, the sister of said Adolph. On his ten acres he constructed a stone house on the hill on the east side of the Post Road, where he kept a tavern. The Colonial Assem- bly met there from October 24 to November II, 1752, during which time Governor George Clinton and Council, while in attendance, stopped at the neighbor- ing house of Benjamin Benson. After Captain Daniel McGown, a seafaring man of Scotch nativity, who had married Catharine Benson, was lost at sea, his widow bought the Dyckman property and, with the assist- ance of her son Andrew, continued the business. This pass in the Post Road thereupon took the name of the new proprietor, having theretofore been known in succession by the name of Dyckman and Benson, former owners. The son Andrew likewise connected himself with the Bensons by marrying Margaret Benson in 1784. The date of the painting is indefi- nite and shows the locality from an easterly point of view. Mount St. Vincent in Central Park, seen in the distance, occupied the site of the original Jacob Dyckman house and was built on its foundation. The viaduct, where the train is noticed, is present Fourth Avenue, and Third Avenue dominates the foreground. The smaller house with the gable end in sight is the McGown house. The first house on the
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site was burned by the Indians and during the Revolu- tion only the cellar walls were standing. It was later rebuilt of stone. It faced on 106th Street when that thoroughfare was laid out. The large stone house shown on Third Avenue was constructed by Samson Benson McGown, son of the Andrew above mentioned, born 1797, Assistant Alderman of the Twelfth Ward, 1852 and 1853. It was built prior to 1850 and this circumstance fixes, in a measure, the date of the picture. The culvert carries Third Avenue over Harlem Creek ("the Canal," in the local parlance of later Dutch residents), an estuary of the East River, the mouth of which lay between present 106th to Iroth Streets and overflowed considerable territory generally lying be- tween 105th and 108th Streets as far east as Fourth Avenue, where a swamp spread from 103d to 108th Streets. The source of the stream which ran through it was at 135th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, and another branch at 12Ist Street and Tenth Avenue. Harlem Mere in Central Park is the only present-day reminder of this creek. This waterway was known in early Dutch history as Montagne's Kill, after Dr. Johannes de la Montagne, the Huguenot pioneer settler of Harlem who arrived from Holland in 1636 and obtained a grant of 200 acres hereabouts, from Governor Kieft. To this plantation he gave the sentimental name of Vreden-dal-peace or quiet dale-a retreat which did not prove entirely peaceful, as the red man lurked too near at hand. The Benson stone house stood until 1865 in 109th Street between Second and Third Avenues, and there Hannah, the daughter of John Horn and widow of Peter Benson, was joined in marriage in 1804 to the Rev. John Frelinghuysen Jackson, the minister of the church
THE MCGOWN FARM AND HOUSES From an oil painting in possession of Mrs. Henry P. McGown
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at Harlem and later of that at Sleepy Hollow made memorable by Washington Irving.
This letter from a Bloomingdale boy should be added. The writer was the son of the Rev. George Strebeck, founder and first rector of St. Stephen's Church, and was at the date thereof seventeen years of age, having run away to seek glory on the sea, from his uncle Jordan Mott's residence, where he was stop- ping during his father's absence in the South seeking health. His mother had died two years previously.
ON BOARD THE UNITED STATES BRIG NIAGARA ON LAKE ERIE, NOV. 9, 1813.
DEAR UNCLE :-
After a variety of misfortunes you will at length find me on Lake Erie. The limits of this small sheet of paper and my time will not allow me to recount the various scenes I have gone through since last I saw you. Suffice it to say that three times I have been made prisoner, twice by the British; once carried to Jamaica (W. I.), once to Halifax; and once by the Algerians and carried to Tunis.
Both times that I was taken by the English I was regu- larly exchanged and sent once to Boston, from which place I wrote a letter to you but never received the scratch of a pen in answer, and once to New Orleans where I wrote another and being destitute of money and clothes was obliged to enter in the States' service on board the Brig Syren. I sailed from New Orleans to New York but was obliged by stress of weather to put into Boston when I was drafted to go on Lake Ontario and was ordered on board the General Pike. As soon as she was ready for sailing, I was again drafted for the upper Lake where I went on board the Lawrence, but was shortly transferred from her to the Niagara, on board of which vessel I was during the action the event of which decided the fate of Canada and in which action I was severely wounded in the head but
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by good attendance have recovered. The account of the action no doubt you have seen in the papers and as I have not time, I will not describe it. It is uncertain whether we shall remain here this winter or not. If we do not, in all probability we shall come to New York when I shall have the satisfaction of seeing you and the rest of my friends.
Your affectionate nephew, JORDAN MOTT STREBECK.
The London Gazette of Nov. 19, 1814, contained an account of the capture, after a chase of eleven hours, by H. M. S. Medway, Captain Brine, on July 12th, of the U. S. brig-of-war Syren of 16 guns and 137 men. It adds that during the chase, the prize threw over- board all her guns, boats, anchors, cables, and spars.
THE GREAT SOMERINDYKE FARM, 1862 Looking north from Columbus Circle
III harsenville
The limits of this hamlet are no more definitely defined than those of other settlements in the Bloom- ingdale District. It was a local appellation and took its name from the Harsen family which came to live therein in 1763. For the purposes of this compilation its confines are limited to the Somerindyck and Dyck- man farms and part of the de Lancey, afterwards the Apthorp, tract. The farm first mentioned stretched from 57th to 70th Streets, and from the Commons to the river. The southwest corner of Central Park ab- sorbed a strip of it lying generally between 59th and 68th Street, as far east as Sixth Avenue. The entire territory to and beyond the Bloomingdale Church, the belfry of which is seen in the distance in the view reproduced, was included in this great farm. Prior to 1735, it was acquired by Etienne de Lancey, the Huguenot, who settled in New York in 1686, becoming one of his Majesty's Council. He devised it to his children, five sons and two daughters. The will of Stephen, one of the former, was proved in 1746, leaving his share to his brothers and sisters. Of the latter, Susannah had married Sir Peter Warren of British naval fame, then living in the city, and Anne, the Hon. John Watts, who also served as a member of the
6
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Council. Peter and Oliver, other sons, and these sisters executed a partition deed in 1747 to their elder brother James, who was Lieutenant-Governor of this province. He died in 1760, when his eldest son and namesake inherited the property by right of primo- geniture. By act of the Legislature passed Oct. 22, 1779, he was attainted of treason, and these premises, containing 200 acres, were sold by the two Commis- sioners of Forfeiture and bought in by John Somerin- dyck, Oct. 19, 1784. When the new owner died six years later, he was survived by two sons and three daughters. The Ward, Cargill, Nash, and Low prop- erties, already described, occupied the southerly part of the tract.
Sarah Somerindyck became the wife of John H. Talman, a vestryman of St. James's Church in Hamilton Square, heretofore mentioned. Their home lay be- tween 67th and 69th Streets on the west side of Tenth Avenue. The house was frame, three stories high, and the extensive grounds sloped to the river. A handsome grove of oaks and chestnuts fronted the avenue, flanked by a fine elm at one end of the house and a large button-ball at the other. A fish pond, covering half an acre, whereon was a private ice-house, were features of the place. Water therefor was sup- plied by springs from a stream which started in a swamp at 75th Street and crossed the Bloomingdale Road under a culvert just north of 73d Street, and ran its course to the Hudson River between 68th and 69th Streets. In 1852 this property was rented by Robert H. Arkenburgh, the tobacco merchant, whose family lived there for seventeen years. Mrs. Talman died April 30, 1867, and the property was partitioned and sold the following April.
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On a portion of the farm which fell to Abigail Somer- indyck, the widow of Leonard Thorn, a triangle be- tween 69th and 70th Streets west of Tenth Avenue, was located a one story and attic house with Dutch gables, flat and rambling in architecture with wings on either end. Piazzas surrounded it on three sides, and the main front faced the south. Its situation in a dense forest made it hardly visible from the Road, and the stream above mentioned, which crossed the grounds, lent a picturesque diversion. This plot was purchased in 1815 for $3000, by Jacob Barker, the famous Quaker banker, broker, and speculator in general, whose eccentricities were the talk of the day. It was his custom to drive his four-in-hand to and from business in the Wall Street section, via the Blooming- dale Road. Fitz-Greene Halleck entered his counting- room in the warehouse yet standing on South Street, near Burling Slip, in June 1811, where the poet-clerk remained for twenty years. For seventeen years thereafter he was employed in the office of John Jacob Astor. Charles F. Park lived in the Barker house at a later period, whose daughter Anna was con- sidered the belle of Harsenville with Miss Annie Cargill a close second. Mr. Park was a wholesale tea and coffee merchant on West Street, near Liberty. The family, which left Bloomingdale in 1849, were not identified with the local church, which they attended on occasions, as they belonged to the Duane Street Church. He died in 1865, aged 49. The property was known as the Reynolds place when torn down about a dozen years ago.
The Dyckman farm, containing 188 acres, adjoined the Somerindyck farm on the north. It was acquired from Rebecca, the widow of Adrian van Schaick, in
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1701 for £450. Cornelius Dyckman, to whom the deed ran, was the son of Johannes, who was born at Leeu- warden, in Friesland, in 1647, and came out to Fort Orange where he filled the office of Chief Clerk and Vice-Director of the colony. The son married Jan- netje, daughter of Dirck Claessen Potter, an original patentee of Harlem, and settled in Albany County at Niskayuna on lands which he was compelled to aban- don in 1690 at the French and Indian invasion. He found a temporary home in Bergen County, New Jersey, but removed to Harlem where he was constable in 1698. While living in Bloomingdale in 1719 he disposed of a part of his Niskayuna lands to Evert van Ness. Dyckman was a farmer but tilled only small sections of the large, heavily wooded farm. He died prior to 1722 at his homestead, which stood facing the Road in the block north of the northwest corner of present Tenth Avenue (Amsterdam) and 70th Street. When the avenue was opened the house was left in a diagonal position to that thoroughfare. Of his children Wyntie married Johannes Kortright, Cornelia, Jacob Harsen, and Elizabeth, John Sprong. The will devised the farm to the sons George and Cornelius. The latter sold his share to his brother in 1736 for £225, who directed his executors, John Harsen (married his daughter Rachel in 1749) Garret Cozine (married his daughter Jannetje four months later), and Jacob Leroy, to sell his realty. By inden- ture dated 1763 they deeded 94 acres to Jacob Harsen (the brother of John), who conveyed one half thereof to Garret Cozine and the balance to Johannes Harsen. Cozine, dying in 1773, divided his interest into thirds, subject to a life estate in the widow, and through the death of Cornelius and Hannah, the other heirs,
HARSENVILLE DIST.
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Catharine Cozine became vested with the whole southerly half of the tract in question. She inter- married with Jacob Harsen in 1773, who was a nephew of the Jacob Harsen first above mentioned, and this half, with the easterly portion of the northerly half, formed the well-known Harsen farm.
After the marriage the Harsens lived in the family homestead where the bride had resided with her par- ents, and it was in the parlor of this house, then occu- pied by them, that a number of the neighbors met one dark and stormy night in September of 1805 and organized a Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, under the name of The Church at Harsenville, as the hamlet which had grown up thereabouts was denominated. At this foregathering the organization was duly ce- mented by the election as members of the first Consis- tory of
Andrew Hopper Jacob Harsen
James Striker Philip Webbers
all descendants of Holland progenitors and of one family connection, at the mention of whose names arise memories redolent of old Bloomingdale.
That important thoroughfare, the Harsenville Road, began at the east line of the Bloomingdale Road, be- tween 7Ist and 72d Streets, and ran diagonally across the territory now composing Central Park to the Old Post Road (Third Avenue). In 1803 Harsen and another landowner had [petitioned the Common Council respecting the opening of a cross road between the Middle (Sixth Avenue) and the Post roads and on June 27th the then Street Commissioner, Joseph Brown, to whom it had been referred on the 20th, reported that, although the making of cross roads had
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not been a condition of the alternate sale and leasing of lots by the city on the Commons, yet it was gen- erally understood to be an implied one and should, in his opinion, "be immediately attended to as ben- efiting the lots sold, increasing public convenience, and promoting the interest of the Corporation in giving additional value to their property." So he recommended that the prayer of the petitioners be granted, that the Road Master be directed to cause the said cross road to be worked and opened forthwith, and that the same be done either by contract or otherwise as said Road Master may deem best for the public interest. The report was thereupon confirmed and the Street Commissioner was directed to receive and submit contracts for the work.
Prior to this application there had been a farm road in use at this location, i. e., from the Bloomingdale to the Middle roads, and the above contemplated work was intended to extend it to the Post Road,-as is evidenced by this entry in the minutes of the Board, 1804 (vol. xiv., 521) :
The Committee to whom was referred the matter of widening and improving the road near Alderman Harsen's in Bloomingdale to the Middle Road, reported that they had advertised for proposals and that from the several received that of Abel Thayer and others was the lowest. The contract was confirmed to them accordingly.
Some sixteen acres of the northernmost portion of the farm which was chosen by George Dyckman under the terms of the will, lying between the Road and the river, and 72d and 73d Streets, came into pos- session of John Broome in 1801. He became Lieuten- ant-Governor of the State three years later and was a prominent member of many commercial and char-
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itable organizations. Bullock Street was changed to Broome Street, in his honor on April 7, 1806. Broome County likewise preserves his name. The house thereon was located in the centre of the plot on the west side of the Road, between the streets above stated, and was called "Chevilly." This was built by Mme. d'Auliffe, dame d'honneur to Marie An- toinette. The tragedies of the Reign of Terror caused a large exodus of émigrés to America and this member of the court circle came with the first refugees, many of whom gravitated toward Bloomingdale. With her came her three little daughters. In this pretty house, erected in the French style, she set up an es- tablishment that was much admired for its elegance and good taste. It became the centre to which was attracted many who found an asylum on these shores, among whom some of the old New York families were welcome guests. Among its constant visitors was the Marquis de Cubières, a gallant of the vanished court, who was a fine type of the gentleman of the ancient régime, though, perhaps, never quite recon- ciling himself to the institutions of republican America. He named his horse "Monarque," and, mounted thereon, he might have been seen making frequent pilgrimages out into the country from his home in Broad Street, to visit his friends at Chevilly. Another welcome guest was Col. August de Singeron who had commanded the Cuirassiers of the Guard at the Tuil- eries on the fatal Tenth of August. After having seen the last of his hapless sovereign, whose refuge in the Assembly was but the antechamber to the prison and the scaffold, the Colonel fled by way of L'Orient to this country. When the young Duc d'Orleans and his brothers, the Duc de Montpensier and the Prince
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de Beaujolais, came to New York, they soon found their way to Chevilly, where Madame and her little circle made the fugitives feel less poignantly the loss of country, rank, home, and kindred, surrounding them with an atmosphere that reminded them of Versailles. In after years, when King of the French, Louis Philippe used to speak with gratitude of the hospitality extended to him in that time of adversity.
The great Talleyrand was always a welcome arrival. Another Frenchman who at this time made New York his home was the famous General Moreau, the rival of Napoleon in popular favor and the victim of that eminent man's jealousy. The Moreaus lived at 119 Pearl Street, a handsome building which was destroyed in the fire of 1835. We can well imagine he was also a guest at Chevilly, for he had property interests near by. In April, 1810, he had loaned some money to Abigail Somerindyck, then the wife of Wil- liam T. Cock, taking a mortgage as security, on some of the lands of the farm she inherited. An act of the Legislature, passed March 29, 1809, had authorized the General and his wife to hold realty within this State, and when, in 1815, decree of foreclosure was entered and sale thereunder effected, the property was bid in for his estate by John S. Roulet who conveyed it to Moreau's widow in 1817. On her death, the Vicom- tesse de Courval, her daughter, as sole heir, through her attorney, Henry C. de Rahm, conveyed it in 1819 to John Low. Subsequently an act was passed April 21, 1828, which enabled her to inherit said land and removed the cloud on the title. This is the property which has been described in the first chapter.
The Somerindyck house, which stood at the north- west corner of the Road and 75th Street, until it was
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torn down to make way for the Boulevard in 1868, was the second oldest in Harsenville, the priority being held by the Dyckman-Harsen mansion. Of essentially Dutch architecture, fifty by eighty feet in dimensions, it had a steep shingle roof and the usual stoep flanked by the customary lateral seats. Here Louis Philippe lived. He was often actually in need, as were the young princes who accompanied him, and to gain a livelihood taught school during his stay in Bloomingdale. The room in which his classes met was maintained in the same condition as during his occupancy until the building was razed. The fire- place was finished with rows of blue and white Antwerp tiles, ornamented with Bible chapter and verse to which the decoration referred, indicated in large characters thereunder. This house was one of the sights of Bloomingdale in the old days. The French invasion added greatly to the gayety and brilliance of society, and left its impress on the locality. Other well- known families were the L'Estranges, de Neuvilles, and de Rivières. M. Jumel, although not to the manor born, was well received because of his kindliness and the popularity of his famous wife. He owned land in Bloomingdale, on which they lived, the house being located between 77th and 78th Streets on the east side of present Amsterdam Avenue, and Madame was a contributor to the funds of the Orphan Asylum and a benefactress by legacy to the tune of $5000.
The Broome property, under his widow's will, fell to her brother James and her sisters Sarah and Julia Boggs, the latter of whom intermarried with John W. Livingston, and these conveyed it to Joseph Simpson in 1821, who the same year transferred it to James Boggs for $8000. In 1867, the latter's heirs-
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at-law sold it to Gustavus A. Sacchi for $400,000. At one time the house was occupied by John Lozier, Alderman of the Sixth Ward, and later certain well- known bachelors and men about town used it as a club house and driving resort. Among them were August Belmont, Appleton the publisher, and Frederick S. Talcott, the broker.
A portion of the southern part of the Teunis Somer- indyck Farm, which lay between the Dyckman and van den Heuvel properties, was purchased by the Orphan Asylum Society, a Presbyterian institution, in 1834. The first of its kind in the city, it was or- ganized in the spring of 1806 at a meeting of ladies held at the City Hotel, then on the site of the Boreel Building. Mrs. Sarah Hoffman and Mrs. Alexander Hamilton were chosen First and Second Directresses and Mrs. Bethune Treasurer. It was located originally in Greenwich village, and Asylum Street, since changed to West Fourth, and Bethune Street are reminders of its existence there. A fine portrait of Eliza, second daughter of Philip Schuyler, who married Gen. Ham- ilton in 1780, is preserved on the walls of the present institution at Hastings-on-the-Hudson. While closely connected with prominent men and events during her lengthened days, a woman of mark and a leader of society, she always had time and thought to devote to its welfare, which she served for forty-three years. She died at Washington, D. C., in 1854. Lying just north of the monument erected to her illustrious husband by the Corporation of Trinity Church is a slab, on a level with the ground, which covers her remains in old Trinity Churchyard.
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