The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884 Volume I, Part 9

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed. cn; Brockett, L. P. (Linus Pierpont), 1820-1893; Proctor, L. B. (Lucien Brock), 1830-1900. 1n
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1114

USA > New York > Kings County > Brooklyn > The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884 Volume I > Part 9

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Nearly all the produce raised within twenty-five miles of New York is carted in with teams by the proprietors, in the night. The largest part is sold at wholesale to dealers or middle-men, between midnight and daylight, chiefly in the vicinity of Washington market, which until recently was the center of the

retail as well as the wholesale trade. A few years ago, in consequence of the great throng of market wagons, which for years had greatly impeded business in the lower part of the city, a market was established in the vicinity of West Twelfth street and Tenth avenue. Those who do not sell at wholesale remain until day- light, when the retail trade begins. The grocers then come for their daily supply. Produce sent by water or rail is consigned to commission dealers.

Twenty-five years ago all the milk supplied by Long Island was produced within so small a distance from the city that it was taken in in wagons. Market gar- dening becoming more profitable, the area of milk production was gradually extended eastward along the lines of railroad ; until, at the present time, it has assumed immense proportions. Swill milk is still pro- duced largely in the suburbs of Brooklyn ; but that industry is by common consent ruled out as an agri- cultural pursuit.

The selling of hay was the first innovation upon the old system of stock raising as a source of income. The old theory that unless the hay and corn were fed upon the land its fertility would be reduced, was soon ex- ploded ; and the wisdom of the new enterprise was de- monstrated by the fact that the returns from the sale of hay were so much greater than from the sale of stock, that the farmer could afford to buy stable manure, street sweepings, lime and ashes from the city to apply to his land. The benefits of liberal expendi- tures for these fertilizers in market gardening are still more apparent. Guano and artificial or manufactured fertilizers have been largely used with good results ; but stable manure is the great staple manure for mar- ket gardeners, for they raise double crops each year, a draft no land can endure without constant manuring.

On the margins of creeks along the south side of the island are immense shell banks left by the Indians; these clam, or quahaug, shells have been burnt and the lime used profitably. The fish called menhaden, how- ever, has been most largely employed. THOMPSON, in his history of Long Island, published in 1839, estimated that a hundred million were annually taken for that purpose. He says : "The profusion of this species of fish and the consequent cheapness of the article will probably always insure its use in those parts of the island where they abound." But the establishment of factories for extracting oil from them has long since precluded their use ; although the refuse is dried and sold under the name of fish guano.

Montauk Point is about 20 miles long and contains nine thousand acres. It has been owned in common by about forty individuals in shares. It has never been tilled or used for any purpose other than pasturage of cattle, horses and sheep ; each owner being entitled to place upon it seven cattle, or forty-nine sheep, per share. About two years since the entire area was sold to Arthur Benson, Esq., of Brooklyn.

40a

GENERAL HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

There are more than one hundred square miles, or seventy thousand acres, of salt meadows bordering the bays and harbors of Long Island. From these marshes immense quantities of hay are taken, which, with corn stalks, is largely used for wintering young stock and dry cattle. There are three kinds of grasses growing upon them, distinguished by the names of sedge, salt and black grass.

The scarcity and advance in the price of farm labor, as well as the advantages attending their use, have caused the introduction of the best farm implements . and agricultural machinery. Stones are used to some extent as fencing material where they are available, but by far the largest part of the island is entirely des- titute of stones large enough for the purpose. Chest- nut timber is abundant on all the rolling woodlands, and furnishes the material for about all the farm fences.

The cranberry has recently been introduced in many parts of Suffolk county, with great success. The soil and the conditions are favorable, and this industry pro- mises, in a few years, to become an important one.

The Hempstead Plains, which, through a mistaken policy, have until recently been held as public domain, are susceptible of remunerative cultivation. The soil is a dark, rich vegetable mould or loam from one to three feet in depth. The hollows which cross the tract at regular intervals appear to have been ancient water-courses. There is another and still more exten- sive tract extending eastward from the Plains, reach- ing to the head of Peconic Bay, which, like Hempstead Plains, has hitherto suffered from an entirely unwar- rantable and niistaken aspersion of the character of its soil and consequent adaptation to cultivation.

As all previous histories of Long Island have* wittingly or unwittingly perpetuated this erronous im- pression, we take pleasure in presenting an ample refu- tation of the same, in the form of an autobiographical sketch of Dr. EDGAR F. PECK, who speaks ex cathedra on this subject, and who represents the enlightened sentiment of the present day, as regarding these much- abused Long Island lands.

The central and northern portions of the island have a soil rich in the mineral elements and phosphates essential to plant growth. In many places, particu- larly at Brentwood and Central Islip, there is a fine

substratum of clay that holds the moisture and pre- vents leaching, the rich yellow loam being almost entirely destitute of sand. These clay deposits are fre- quently of a quality not excelled by any in America for building-brick; and abundant strata, fully equal to the best grades of Europe for pottery, have recently been discovered in Suffolk County. Hence wheat, potatoes, cabbage and other strong growing crops are more successfully grown than on the alluvial portions of the island.

EDGAR FENN PECK, M.D.

Edgar Fenn Peck, M.D., was born September 20th, 1806, in the town of Amenia, Dutchess County, State of New York. His father, Henry Peck, was a native of Milford, Conn., and son of Michael Peck, a descendant of Joseph Peck, who came over with Davenport's colony to New Haven in 1638, and after residing awhile at New Haven, settled in Milford about 1641. The house he built and lived in in Milford stood two hundred years, and was occupied by his descendants until it was taken down; his descendants are in Milford now, on the paternal land. The mother of Dr. Edgar Fenn was Julania Chapman, daughter of Zervia Strong and Nehemiah Chapman, of Sharon, Conn., and a direct descendant by his English wife of Elder John Strong, of Northampton, Mass.

The parents of Dr. Edgar Fenn removed from Amenia, when he was very young, to the northern part of the State of New York, to Washington County, and were there during the war of 1812, and were in Salem in 1816, '17, and '18; and Edgar went to school in the Washington Academy, one of the most distin- guished academies in the State; he was in the English depart- ment under T. N. Allen. George W. Bethune, the " Yorker Boy," as he was called in school, was in the classical department in the Washington Academy; he was also in the sabbath school with John and Mary Williams, who became the wife of Dr. Bethune. He attended the church and sabbath school of the Rev. Dr. Alexander Proudfit, God bless his name and memory. Early in 1818 the family returned to Sharon, Conn., near his grandfather Chapman's, in the eastern part of the town.

I now propose to change the form of narrative. and to speak and write in the first person. I was twelve years old when we returned, and here among kindred and friends of great merit, of religion, learning and good schools, which I attended in the win- ter, and worked in the summer mostly upon the farm; and here I acquired a most thorough knowledge of farming, for which I had a great desire.

I always thought a farmer's life was the most useful and most happy. The immortal Washington said that "Agriculture " is the most healthful, the most useful, and the most noble " employment of man." The first work of the Lord, after the great creation, was to plant a garden, to the east of Eden. I would have been a farmer, but I had no means to buy a farm, and my kind father had none to give me; but I acquired great skill for a youth upon the farm. I learned to plough and to hoe, to plant and to sow, to reap and to mow; I learned to bud and graft when fourteen years old; I learned to raise trees from tree seed, acorns, hickory nuts, and keys from the great sugar maple; I learned by observation and analogy when a boy, by seeing or finding acorns and hickory nuts under the trees, in the spring, sprouted, and seeing the young tree-plants under the sugar maple, and the apple seeds, sprouted under the apple trees ; it occurred to me if those nuts and tree seeds were planted, they would grow; I tried it, and they did grow. I had never heard or read anything about plant- ing tree seed ; the only thing I had ever read was that " Tall oaks from little acorns grow." There was nothing said about planting them.

* We make but one exception, viz., that of Mr. JAMES B. COOPER's brief History of the Town of Babylon, contained in the History of Suffolk County, recently published by Munsell & Co., the publishers of this work, and which is as follows :

"With the exception of the sand dunes which border the Atlantic Ocean, and a narrow ridge of hills known as the Half-way Hollow Hills, the surface of the town is remarkably level." "The center portion, consisting of level plains, up to forty years ago was covered with pine forests. Since railroads have been operated through these pine-lands numerous fires have occurred, mostly kindled by sparks from locomotives, causing great destruction to the timber, and there are now only found thick tangled scrub oaks and stunted pines. Only a small portion of this kind of land is under a good state of cultivation. The soil is mostly a sandy loam. The land is easily cleared, and is adapted to the growing of grain and root crops, and probably in a few years large tracts will be cleared and cultivated."

Edges of Jeck MS.

41a

CAPABILITIES AND DEVELOPMENT.

I had a very strong desire from my childhood for knowledge and learning, a thirsting after knowledge, and I spent all my time, when not at work, with my books and studies, and won- dered if I would ever become a learned man, and be good and useful. It was seldom that I ever spent any time in play and pastimes ; I had no time to spare. I never played a game of cards, or checkers or chess, never saw a game of billiards played in my life, was never in a theatre but twice, and then not to see the play through. I adopted total abstinence in 1824, two years before Dr. Beecher preached his immortal sermons against intemperance in Litchfield in 1826. I knew Dr. Beecher well in my youth. There were two men then in Connecticut who were my beau ideals as men and divines-Lyman Beecher, of Litchfield, and the Rev. Joel Hawes, of Hartford. My pious and excellent mother used to think that boys ought not to drink cider after it had fermented, and in compliance with her wish I abandoned it. I had never heard any temperance speech, or read any temperance paper; I had read but one book on tem- perance, the Bible; that I had learned from childhood by the teaching of my mother. She had instructed me on the great sin of drunkenness and its terrible punishments, declared by the Lord.

In 1826 I commenced the study of medicine, in the office and under the tuition of a relative, my cousin Dr. Clark Chap- man, a man of learning and great skill as a physician. Dr. Chapman is now living, at the age of eighty-six, in Groton, Tompkins County, N. Y. I had a task before me, one that re- quired great industry, prudence and self-denial, to pursue my studies and to support myself, which I did by teaching school a part of the time.

As a medical student, I took up the subject of intemperance, and the effect of alcohol on the human system, as opened by Dr. Beecher. I read everything that I could find on the subject, and gave special attention to diseases directly resulting from strong drink, particularly to delirium tremens, which was not then well understood-nor its treatment. I soon had the reputation of being very successful with hard cases of alcoholic disease in the different medical offices I was in during my studentship, as I was in more than one, and the hard cases were handed over to me, particularly delirium tremens, "the trembling delirium," and I was very successful in treating it. My first medical lectures were attended in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. I was licensed to practice, at Fairfield, January 30th, 1830; and I im- mediately entered practice in my native County of Dutchess, at Hyde Park, as a partner with the late Huntting Sherrill, M.D., then President of the Dutchess County Medical Society, and one of the principal physicians and surgeons of the county. My thorough study and under practice whilst a student had qualified me for full practice. That able, eminent Professor, David Hosack, M.D., whose country seat was at Hyde Park, showed me great kindness by giving me access to his extensive medical library, and instruction on any question I asked.

In 1831 I removed to New York, and took an office at No. 96 Duane street, near Broadway, so as to be between the Hospital (then on Broadway, between Duane and what is now Worth street) and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, then in Barclay street near Broadway, that I might have access to, and the advantages of both of these great medical institutions. The situa- tion or position, was central and most advantageous. I soon found myself in practice, and made the acquaintance of the leading medical men of the city, the President and professors of the College, from whom I received great kindness and attention.

On the approach of the Asiatic cholera I revived my reading on that terrible disease, to make myself thoroughly acquainted with all that could be known about it. I had five years before read all that could be found of its history in the foreign and American medical journals, and as it came to New York conster- nation and dismay fell upon the city; all business was suspended, and multitudes fled to the country.

" Come when the blessed seals, That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke ; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, or ocean storm, And thou, oh ! Death, art terrible."

A special medical council was formed by the city authorities, consisting of twelve of the most eminent physicians of the city, with Dr. Alexander H. Stevens, the President of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, at its head; and I received an appoint- ment under this council to take charge of the medical stations in the Twelfth Ward, and the hospital formed on Eighth street; and I had the care of all the stations from the old almshouse, which stood where the Worth monument now stands, to King's Bridge, with the exception of the Bloomingdale station, which was under the care of Dr. Williams.

I entered immediately upon the work assigned, and the ter- rible scenes of suffering and death I cannot here describe. Those at the Yorkville hospital on Eighty-sixth street were horrible. It was filled with the dead and dying, equal to those scenes de- scribed by old Defoe, in his history of the Great Plague in London.

One day I had six dead bodies laid out in the hospital, as the fear and dread upon the people was so great that no one could be found to take away or remove the dead. These did not all die in the hospital ; some were brought in dead, others speech- less and dying. The records were, "name and age unknown." I roomed in the hospital, and was there day and night.

On the death of Dr. Arnold, of Harlem, I left the Yorkville hospital at the request of Dr. Stevens, and went to Harlem where the cholera had been extremely fatal. Whole families were swept away. The fate of the family of the Rev. Mr. Hinton, the Episcopal clergyman, was terrible. They all died in one night -father, mother and children. I believe there were two chil- dren. They died in the house on the southerly side of One Hundred and Twenty-seventh street, about one hundred and fifty feet west of Third avenue. At evening they assembled at the sup- per-table; when the morning came they were all dead and buried. Dr. Arnold, the physician who owned the house, lived with them, and he was smitten with the fell disease early the next morning, and fled to a neighbor's house, where he died before 12 o'clock. He had been daily to the Yorkville hospital. He called there the afternoon before his death, and I had a full talk with him on the state of the pestilence in Harlem. He was greatly excited and anxious. The next morning, when Dr. Stevens ar- rived with me in Harlem, we found Dr. Arnold in a state of col- lapse and speechless. He died in less than half an hour. I held his hand when he breathed his last.

To show with what suddenness and fatality the fell disease took its victims, on Dr. Stevens' return to the city he sent a young physician, Dr. Heston, who was from Pennsylvania, to take my place at the hospital. I remained in Harlem. About 1 o'clock in the morning, after I left the hospital, a messenger came to me in great haste to go immediately to Yorkville-that Dr. Heston was sick; and, as soon as a horse could be harnessed I drove there, and as I arrived at the house of John G. Kip, on Third avenue, near Eighty-sixth street, where I had taken my meals, and where Dr. Heston was ; his dead body was being brought down-stairs in a rough board box as a coffin. Consternation and dismay fell upon all the people on that part of the island of New York. The house of the dead where death had left not one, "no, not one," was an object of fear and dread. No one dared to open it, and after several days I went to the house with the Rev. Dr. C. D. Westbrook, who was Health Warden of Harlem. Dr. Westbrook standing at the gate, I opened the house and went in alone and threw open the doors and windows. The house was silent-the silence of death. Whata picture ! Every- thing in disorder ; table standing with dishes in confusion, un- washed, as if left before the meal was finished; beds in con-

42a

GENERAL HISTORY OF LONG ISLAND.

fusion, ladies and children's hats and garments hanging on chairs or on the floor, as if the inmates had suddenly fled in fright.

I continued my medical labor on that part of the island for more than two years, and at the request of the Mayor and prom- inent citizens, I examined all that part of the island to Kings Bridge. There were places of low and wet ground where ma- larious diseases prevailed, and on these places and localities the cholera was most fatal, and all these places I examined specially with a view to their sanitary condition.

The Harlem flats had the reputation of being unhealthy, and intermittent fevers were common, and fevers of a high and fatal grade often prevailed. It was said by medical men that these Harlem fevers more nearly resembled yellow fever than fevers in any other locality around New York.

I attended the late Judge D. P. Ingraham through a very serious illness of fever, a high grade of bilious fever with typhoid symp- toms. I gave him the most prompt and constant attention, for I was doubly interested in him, not only as my patient, but as my friend. The late Dr. John C. Cheesman, of New York, said he believed that my prompt and careful attention, under Providence, saved Mr. Ingraham's life; because Dr. Cheesman knew the ob- stinate and fatal character of those Harlem fevers. I was in practice all this time under a license, which gave the full privi- leges and power of the profession, and I had the most able ad- visers, such as Dr. Alexander H. Stevens, President of the Col- lege, and all the professors, Dr. Valentine Mott, Dr. John B. Beek, Dr. Hosack, and Dr. J. C. Cheesman. These eminent men were always ready to render me any aid or advice in practice.

In the session of 1832-3, I graduated and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the old Barclay street College of Physicians and Surgeons of the City of New York. I also re- ceived an honorary degree of M. D. from Rutgers College.

On the 2d December, 1834, I married Margaretta, daughter of the Rev. John F. Jackson, of Harlem, N. Y., a lady of great per- sonal beauty and merit. With her I lived forty-one years. I

was always a domestic man. My heart was in my wife and children and in my home. We had two dearly beloved and deeply lamented daughters. The youngest, Emma Louisa, died young; the eldest, Julia Anna, a child of great promise, lived until her seventeenth year. My blessed wife died in 1875, aged sixty-six. I am childless and unmarried. " Nor wife nor chil- dren more shall I behold."

In the spring of 1841, at a time of serious illness in my family, I went to Long Island. One of my daughters had died and the other was extremely low, and my wife's health greatly im- paired. Medical friends advised this removal to the country as the only chance for my daughter's recovery. My attention was directed by friends to Long Island, and to the village of Smith- town Branch, Suffolk County- forty-five miles from New York City.

There I found a pleasant rural place, that had been occupied by the Rev. Ithinar Pillsbury, a Presbyterian minister, as a par- sonage. Mr. Pillsbury was a New England man, and had care- fully cultivated the garden and grounds of four acres around the house, and had filled the garden and orchard with choice fruit and ornamental shrubbery. He was a man of great learn- ing and ability as a divine. Rev. Dr. Prime, in his History of Long Island, published in 1845, says of Mr. Pillsbury that, in 1834, " he, with a chosen company, formed in good old Puritan style, emigrated and settled in the town of Andover, Illinois. Mr. Pillsbury is deservedly regarded as the patriarch of this new settlement, and a worthy example of future emigrants." The Rev. Mr. Pillsbury founded a college at Andover, Ill., and was president of it during the remainder of his life. There, at Smithtown, on this Old Parsonage Place, as it was called, we found a pleasant and happy home. The society was excellent, and here I was induced to remain, as the health of my daughter improved to recovery. I knew much generally of Long Island.

I knew it was the oldest settled part of the State, that it was called the "Garden of America," and I supposed it was all settled throughout; that all the lands on it that could be culti- vated had been cultivated, I had never been any further east on the Island than from Flushing across to Jamaica, and to Rock- away. I had never heard of the great " barrens" of Hempstead Plains. When I went to Smithtown to look at the place, I took the cars of the Long Island Railroad, then completed as far as Hicksville, twenty-five miles from Brooklyn (it was a pleasant day in March), and soon after passing Jamaica we opened on to Hempstead Plains, a vast and beautiful country, which I thought was the handsomest tract of land I had ever beheld. That was my first impression of it then, and it is my opinion of it now. It was covered with cattle and sheep as far as the eye could see. Hempstead Plains is a great and beautiful prairie, an upland meadow. The old historian, Denton, who wrote in 1670, more than two hundred and ten years ago, whose book is called the " Gem of History," says : "Towards the middle of the Island lieth a plain, sixteen miles long and four miles broad, containing sixty-four square miles, or more than forty thousand acres, upon which there is neither stick nor stone, and it produces very fine grass which makes exceeding good hay, which is no small benefit to the towns which own it."

The soil of Hempstead Plains is a fine, dark and perfect loam, of an average depth of three feet over the centre surface of the whole plains, and is of the most productive kind. It is in its native and natural condition exactly such a soil as a lady would seek to fill her flower-pots with.

A. T. Stewart, the merchant prince of New York, purchased of the town of Hempstead, by which it was owned as common land, on September 13th, 1869, 7,000 acres, at $55 an acre, and paid in checks, one of $200,000, and two of $100,000 each, and founded and laid out Garden City on Hempstead Plains, and put under cultivation a farm of 2,500 acres, surrounding Garden City.

The work on this great farm was done by W. R. Hinsdale, a farmer, and general superintendent of the Stewart property at Garden City. Mr. Hinsdale is a highly intelligent agriculturist and practical farmer. The land of Garden City, on Hempstead Plains, is more than 100 feet high above tide water, an elevated table-land, sloping to the south; the climate is perfectly healthy and the water of the purest kind, and inexhaustible. The turf is so thick and strong on the Plains that it is necessary to use a team of three horses to turn a furrow through it. This is the tract of land so long stigmatized by Long Islanders, and by Hemp- stead men in particular, as being barren and utterly worthless.

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The civil, political, professional and ecclesiastical history, and commercial and industrial record of the county of Kings and the city of Brooklyn, N. Y., from 1683 to 1884 Volume I, Part 9

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed. cn; Brockett, L. P. (Linus Pierpont), 1820-1893; Proctor, L. B. (Lucien Brock), 1830-1900. 1n Publication date: 1884 Publisher: New York : W. W. Munsell & Co. Number of Pages: 1114

Author: Stiles, Henry Reed, 1832-1909, ed. cn; Brockett, L. P. (Linus Pierpont), 1820-1893; Proctor, L. B. (Lucien Brock), 1830-1900. 1n
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: New York : W. W. Munsell & Co.
Number of Pages: 1114