USA > New York > Albany County > Albany > The history of the city of Albany, New York : from the discovery of the great river in 1524, by Verrazzano, to the present time > Part 25
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Among the troops of the different colonies that were encamped on both sides of the river, near Albany, in June and July, was the regiment of Colonel Ephriam Williams from Massachusetts. While waiting for orders to march to join General Johnson at Lake George, Colonel
1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 994, 997.
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Williams made his will at Albany, on the twenty-second of July, in which he made certain bequests for the es- tablishment of a free school. Williams' College, at Wil- liamstown, Massachusetts, preserves the memory of its distinguished founder in the name it bears. Colonel Williams, on the eighth of September, was attacked by the French forces under General Ludwig August Dieskau in a narrow pass, about four miles from the fortified camp of the English army. While valiantly repelling the as- sault of the enemy, Colonel Williams was killed. Having forced this small detachment to retreat, Baron Dieskau then advanced and engaged the main army commanded by General Johnson. The valor of the colonial forces soon put to route the French troops and their Indian al- lies. Baron Dieskau was badly wounded in one of his legs and fell into the hands of the English. He was taken to Albany, where he had all the care he desired. Sometime afterward he was sent to New York and thence to England, where he died. In a letter, written by an artilleryman who was in the engagement, the negro- soldiers are highly praised for brave conduct : "Our Blacks behaved better than the whites." General John- son received a wound in one of his hips.
The general, writing, on the sixteenth of September, thus speaks of the wants which delayed his advance on Crown Point : "Our Expedition is likely to be extreamly distressed & I fear fatally retarded for the want of Wag- gons. The People of the County of Albany & the Adja- cent Counties hide their Waggons & drive away their Horses. Most of the Waggons taken into this Service have deserted, some Horses are quite jaded, & some few [have been] killed by the Enemy & several [have] run away. Most of our Provisions are at Albany."
The council of war, finding that it was impossible to
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supply the army at Lake George with provisions and other things needed by it to attack Crown Point before the beginning of winter, concluded to abandon the project and to disband the troops.1 Having built Fort William Henry and garrisoned it with six hundred men, General Johnson returned with his other troops to Al- bany. King George II., to reward him for his services, granted unto him and "his heirs male, the dignity of a baronet of Great Britain," and presented him with a gratuity of five hundred pounds sterling.
The Rev. Samuel Chandler, chaplain of one of the Massachusetts regiments, while on his way to Fort Ed- ward, stopped several days in October, 1755, in Albany. In his journal are a number of observations respecting the city. The ferry-charge for a man and horse ferried from Greenbush, he says, was "10 coppers." He boarded at Lottridge's, which was "called the English tavern," opposite the dwelling of the Widow Jenaverie, on the opposite corner of the street. Some of the fire- places in the houses of the Dutch people had very small jambs with three or four rows of tile, others had "no jambs at all." Along the streets were "rows of small button trees." Many of the brick-houses were curiously flowered with black bricks, and " dated with the same." The governor's house was ornamented with two black brick-hearts. The brick-houses were commonly one story
high and their gable-ends were "notched like steps." They had "window-shutters " and "loop holes" in the cellars. The vanes on the house were mostly figures of horses, lions, geese, and sloops. The bells were "often ringing ;" they were rung and not 'tolled for funerals. "The settees" in front of the doors of the houses were "kept scoured very neat." From the north gate of the 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 1014, 1021. 21
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city to the river was a stone wall "with loop holes." The bedsteads were boxes with boarded bottoms ; each had a feather-bed, an under sheet, and a blanket-cover. There were many compactly built houses along the road from the north gate to Madam Van Rensselaer's seat, at the mills, which mansion was "pretty grand." Colonel Cuyler told him that there were about five hundred families in the city.
On Sunday, the twelfth of October, Chaplain Chand- ler went up to the Flats, [ now called Port Schuyler, on the south side of West Troy, ] where two or three com- panies of soldiers were encamped, and preached in Col- onel Philip Pieterse Schuyler's barn, taking for his text the first verse of the fifteenth chapter of Genesis. The colonel and the members of his family attended the ser- vices. After dining with Colonel Schuyler, his hospita- ble host had him conveyed in the afternoon in his chaise or chair to Albany. 1
In October, 1756, there were a number of persons in the city taken with the small pox, and the common coun- cil ordered that the people in the houses in which there were persons afflicted with it should not go abroad nor permit others to visit them.
In the geographical description of the province, con- tained in Smith's history of New York, printed in Lon- don in 1757, is the following important information con- cerning the city and county of Albany : "This County [of Albany] extends from the South Bounds of the Manor of Livingston on the East Side, and Ulster on the West Side of the Hudson's River ; on the North its Limits are not yet ascertained. *
" The Houses [in the city of Albany] are built of Brick in the Dutch Taste, and are in Number about 350. There 1 Coll. on history of Albany. Munsell. vol. ii. pp. 374, 375.
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are two Churches in it. That of the Episcopalians, the only one in this large County, is a Stone Building. The Congregation is but small, almost all the Inhabitants resorting to the Dutch Church, which is a plain, square, stone Edifice. Besides these they have no other publick Buildings, except the City Hall and the Fort, the latter of which is a stone Square, with four Bastions, situated on an Eminence which overlooks the Town, but is itself commanded by higher Ground. The greatest Part of the City is fortified only by Palisades, and in some Places there are small Cannon planted in Block-houses.
"Albany was incorporated by Colonel Dongan in 1686, and is under the Government of a Mayor, Recorder, six Aldermen, and as many Assistants. It has also a Sheriff, Town Clerk, Chamberlain, Clerk of the Markets, one High Constable, three Sub-Constables, and a Marshal. The Corporation is Empowered besides to hold a Mayor's Court for the Trial of civil Causes, and a Court of Gen- eral Quarter Sessions."
The Hudson River is thus described : "Its Source has not, as yet, been discovered. We know, in general, that it is in the mountainous, uninhabited Country, between Lakes Ontario and Champlain. In its Course Southward it approaches the Mohawks River within a few Miles at Saucondauga. From thence it runs North and North- easterly towards Lake St. Sacrement, now called Lake George, and is not above 8 or 10 Miles distant from it. The Course then to New York is very uniform, being in the Main South 12 or 15° West.
"The Distance from Albany to Lake George is com- puted at 65 Miles. The River in that Interval is naviga- ble only to Batteaus, and interrupted by Rifts, which occasion two of a half a Mile each.1 There are three
1 " In the Passage from Albany to Fort Edward, the whole Land Car- riage is about 12 or 13 Miles." Idem.
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Routes from Crown Point to Hudson's River in the Way to Albany ; one through Lake George, another through a Branch of Lake Champlain, bearing a Southern Course, and terminating in a Bason, several Miles East of Lake George, called the South Bay. The third is by ascending the Wood Creek, a shallow Stream, about one hundred Feet broad, which, coming from the South-east, empties itself into the South Branch of the Lake Champlain.
" The Place, where these Routes meet on the Banks of Hudson's River, is called the Carrying Place. Here Fort Lyman,1 since called Fort Edward, is built ; but Fort William Henry, a much stronger Garrison, was erected at the South end of Lake George, after the Repulse of the French Forces under the Command of Baron Dieskau on the 8th of September, 1755. General Shirley thought it more advisable to strengthen Fort Edward in the Concurrence of three Routes than to erect the other at Lake George 17 Miles to the Northward of it; and wrote a very pressing Letter upon that Head to Sir William Johnson, who then commanded the Provincial Troops. * *
"The Tide flows a few Miles above Albany. The Navigation is safe, and performed in Sloops of about 40 or 50 Tons burden. The River is stored with a Variety of Fish, which renders a Summer's Passage to Albany exceedingly diverting to such as are fond of Angling."
Adverting to the character and manners of the people of the province, the well-informed historian says : "English is the most prevailing Language amongst us, but not a little corrupted by the Dutch Dialect, which is still so much used in some Counties that the Sheriffs find
1 Named in honor of General Phineas Lyman, the commander of the Connecticut troops under Johnson in 1755.
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it difficult to obtain Persons sufficiently acquainted with the English Tongue to serve as Jurors in the Courts of Law.
"The Manners of the People differ as well as their
Language. * * * In the City of New York, through our Intercourse with the Europeans, we follow the Lon- don Fashions ; though by the Time we adopt them they become disused in England. Our Affluence, during the late War, introduced a Degree of Luxury in Tables, Dress, and Furniture, with which we were before unacquainted. But still we are not so gay a People as our neighbors in Boston and several of the Southern Colonies. The Dutch Counties, in some measure, follow the Example of New York, but still retain many Modes peculiar to the Hol- landers. * * *
"The Fur Trade though very much impaired by the French Wiles and Encroachments, ought not to be passed over in Silence. 1 The Building of Oswego has conduced more than any Thing else to the preservation of this Trade. Peltry of all kinds is purchased with Rum, Am- munition, Blankets, Strouds, and Wampum or Conque- shell Bugles. The French Fur Trade at Albany was carried on till the Summer of 1755 by the Caghnuaga Proselytes ; and in Return for their Peltry they received Spanish Pieces of Eight, and some other Articles which the French want to complete their Assortment of Indian Goods. For the Savages prefer the English Strouds to theirs, and the French found it to their Interest to pur- chase them of us, and transport them to the Western Indians on the Lakes Erie, Huron, and at the Streight of Misilmakinac. * *
1 " It is computed that formerly we exported 150 Hogsheads of Beaver and other fine Furs per Annum, and 200 Hogsheads of Indian-dressed Deer- skins, besides those carried from Albany into New England. Skins undressed are usually shiped to Holland." Idem.
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"The money used in this Province is Silver, Gold, British Halfpence, and bills of Credit. To counterfeit either of them is Felony without Benefit of Clergy ; but none except the latter, and Lyon Dollars are a legal Ten- der. Twelve Halfpence till lately passed for a Shilling ; which being much beyond their Value in any of the neighboring Colonies, the Assembly, in 1753, resolved to proceed at their next Meeting, after the 1st of May ensuing, to the Consideration of a Method for ascertain- ing their Value. A Set of Gentlemen, in Number Seven- ty-two, took Advantage of the Discredit that Resolve put upon Copper Halfpence, and on the 22d of December, subscribed a Paper, engaging not to receive or pass them except at the Rate of fourteen Coppers to a Shilling. This gave Rise to a Mob for a few Days among the lower Class of People, but some of them being imprisoned, the Scheme was Carried into Execution, and established in every Part of the Province without the Aid of a Law. * * *
"Our Schools are in the lowest order ; the Instructors want Instruction, and through a long shameful Neglect of all the Arts and Sciences, our common Speech is extremely corrupt, and the Evidences of a bad Taste, both as to Thought and Language, are visible in all our Proceedings, publick and private. * * The People, both in Town and Country, are sober, industrious, and hospitable, though intent upon Gain. The richer Sort keep very plentiful Tables abounding with great Varieties of Flesh, Fish, Fowl, and all kinds of Vegetables. The Common Drinks are Beer, Cyder, weak Punch, and Maderia Wine. For Desert we have Fruits in vast Plenty of different Kinds and various Species. *
"Few Physicians amongst us are eminent for their Skill. Quacks abound like Locusts in Egypt, and too
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many have recommended themselves to a full Practice and profitable Subsistence. This is the less to be won- dered at as the Profession is under no kind of Regulation. Loud as the Call is, to our Shame be it remembered, we have no Law to protect the Lives of the king's Subjects from the Malpractice of Pretenders. Any Man at his Pleasure sets up for Physician, Apothecary, and Chirur- geon. No Candidates are either examined or licensed, or even sworn to fair Practice. * *
"The Clergy of this Province are in general but in- differently supported ; it is true they live easily, but few of them leave any Thing to their Children. * * * As to the Number of our Clergymen, it is large enough at present, there being but few Settlements unsupplied with a Ministry, and some superabound. In Matters of Religion we are not so intelligent in general as the In- habitants of the New England Colonies ; but both in Respect and good Morals we certainly have the Ad- vantage of the Southern Provinces." 1
In 1756 another attempt was made to reduce the French forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Again the Hudson between New York and Albany became picturesque with the numerous vessels bearing troops and the munitions of war to the head of the river's navigation. On both sides of the river near the city were camps of English soldiers and provincial militia. On the twenty- fifth of June, General James Abercrombie arrived with two regiments of regular troops. About ten thousand men were to be seen daily drilling and manœuvering on the banks of the river in the month of July. The music of fifes and drums made the inhabitants familiar with the different notifications governing the routine of camp-
1 History of New York. Smith. pp. 197, 198, 201, 202, 210, 211, 212, 214, 216, 217, 228.
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life. Hundreds of Indians in their war-paint frequented the city with their squaws and children. On the twenty- seventh of July, the Earl of London arrived and took command of the army. However, before it had accom- plished the purposes of its organization, the French had attacked Fort Oswego and had made the English com- mander surrender its garrison and stores. This success of the French in August, abruptly terminated the cam- paign of 1756.
The concentration of troops at Albany in 1757 to repel the advance of the French force under Montcalm had no successful results. The latter's attack on Fort William Henry in August and the massacre of the vanquished garrison, caused the people of Albany the greatest anxiety and alarm. The city now became a place of refuge to the settlers along the frontier. During the fall and win- ter a large number of soldiers were quartered in the city.
" A regiment came to town about this time," says Mrs. Anne Grant in her "Memoirs,"1 "the superior officers of which were younger, more gay, and less amenable to good counsel than those who used to command the troops which had formerly been placed on this station. * * * Those dangerously accomplished heroes made their ap- perance at a time when the English language began to be more generally understood, and when the pretensions of the merchants, commissaries," [and others,] "to the stations they occupied were no longer dubious. Those polished strangers now began to make a part of general society. * * By this time 'the Anglomania was · beginning to spread. A sect arose among the young people, who seemed resolved to assume a lighter style of dress and manners, and to borrow their taste in those respects from their new friends. *
1 She was the daughter of Duncan McVicar, and married the Rev. James Grant in 1779. Her "Memoirs" was first published in 1808.
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"The colonel of the regiment, who was a man of fashion and family, and possessed talents for both good and evil purposes, was young and gay, and being lodged in the house of a very wealthy citizen, who had before, in some degree, affected the newer modes of living, so captivated him with his good breeding and affability, that he was ready to humor any scheme of diversion which the colonel and his associates proposed. Under the auspices of this gallant commander, balls began to be concerted, and a degree of flutter and frivolity to take place, which was as far from elegance as it was from the honest, artless cheerfulness of the meetings usual among them.
"Now the very ultimatum of degeneracy, in the opin- ion of these simple good people, was approaching ; for now the officers, encouraged by the success of all their projects for amusement, resolved to new-fashion and en- lighten those amiable novices whom their former schemes had attracted within the sphere of their influence ; and for this purpose a private theatre was fitted up and pre- parations made for acting a play. * "The play was acted in a barn and pretty well attended. It was the Beaux' Stratagem, no favorable specimen of the delicacy or morality of the British theatre ; and for the wit it contained very little of that was level to the comprehension of the novices who were there first initiated into a knowledge of the magic of the scene. * They laughed very heartily at seeing the gay young ensigns, whom they had been used to dance with, flirting fans, displaying great hoops, and, with painted cheeks and colored eyebrows, sailing about in female habiliments.
" The fame of their exhibition went abroad, and opin- ions were formed of them no way favorable to the actors
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or to the audience. In this region of reality, where rigid truth was always undisguised, they had not learned to distinguish between fiction and falsehood. It was said that the officers, familiar with every vice and every disguise, had not only spent a whole night in telling lies in a counterfeited place, the reality of which had never existed, but that they were themselves a lie, and had de- graded manhood and broken through an express prohibi- tion in Scripture by assuming female habits ; that they had not only told lies, but cursed and swore the whole night, and assumed the characters of knaves, fools, and robbers, which every good and wise man held in detestation, and no one would put on unless they felt themselves easy in them. Painting their faces, of all other things, seemed most to violate the Albanian ideas of decorum, and was looked upon as a most flagrant abomination. Great and loud was the outcry produced by it. Little skilled in sophistry, and strangers to all the arts 'that make the worse appear the better reason,' the young auditors could only say 'that indeed it was very amusing, made them laugh heartily, and did harm to nobody.' So harm- less, indeed, did this entertainment appear to the new con- verts to fashion, that the Recruiting Officer was given out for another night."1
In 1758 another army was sent to reduce the fort at Ticonderoga. In the early part of the summer a number of regiments under the command of General Abercrombie encamped in the great field on the south side of the city, commonly known as the Pasture. Lord Howe was among the British officers who had tents in the camp. The unsuccessful assault upon Fort Carillon, at Ticonderoga, in July, and the subsequent retreat of Abercrombie's dis-
1 Memoirs of an American lady, with sketches of manners and scenery in America as they existed previous to the Revolution. By Mrs. [Anne] Grant. Phila., 1846. pp. 152, 153, 156, 158, 159.
1
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heartened forces to Fort William Henry, greatly depressed the people of the frontier. Many of the wounded of the army were conveyed in boats to Albany. The body of Lord Howe, who had been killed at the beginning of the en- gagement with the French, was brought to the city by Captain Philip Schuyler, and buried with befitting honors. By some it is said that the corpse was interred in a vault in the English church, by others, in one in the Reformed Protestant Dutch church.
After the retreat of the army to the south end of Lake George, a detachment of three thousand men under Col- onel John Bradstreet was sent by the way of Albany to reduce Fort Frontenac at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. On the twenty-seventh of August, the English were in possession of it. The two militia-companies from Albany, commanded by Captains Peter Yates and Goosen van Schaick, took part in the successful assault on Fort Frontenac.
Another army, under the command of Lord Amherst, encamped in May and June, 1759, around the city. In July it moved northward to attack Fort Carillon, at Ti- conderoga. The withdrawal of the French forces from it and from the fortifications at Crown Point, permitted the English army without opposition to take possession of the two strongholds. The fall of Quebec and Montreal and the occupation of Canada by the British, ended the war with the French which had so long disturbed and impoverished the people of the city and county of Albany.
The common council, in 1758, to obtain some needed money for the use of the city, established a public lottery, and appointed a board of managers to superintend the sale of tickets. In January, 1759, a thousand pounds sterling had been raised, which were ordered to be paid to the city-treasurer.
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Meanwhile there had been several changes in the pas- torates of the two churches. The Rev. Cornelis van Schie, who had died in 1744, had been succeeded in 1746 by the Rev. Theodorus Frielinghuysen, who was pastor of the congregation of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church until the fall of 1759, when he resigned and sailed to Holland. The Rev. Eilardus Westerlo, in the autumn of 1760, became his successor.
After the Rev. Henry Barclay accepted the rectorship of Trinity church, New York, in 1746, the English church had no clergyman to take charge of its congregation until March, 1749, when the Rev. John Ogilvie, a graduate of Yale College, began his ministrations. While he was absent with the army on the frontier, the Rev. Thomas Brown, deputy-chaplain of the 60th regiment of Royal Americans, supplied his place from the twenty-first of December, 1760, to November, 1761. In 1764 he became the successor of the Rev. John Ogilvie, who that year was made rector of Trinity church, New York.
To organize a Presbyterian church in the city, a num- ber of persons addressed a petition in 1760 to the mayor, recorder, aldermen and commonalty requesting a license to be granted them for the purpose. On the third of April, the municipal authorities complied with the re- quest of the petitioners, and promised to "do every thing in their power to encourage and promote " the under- taking, and ordered the mayor to sign the license and the clerk to affix the seal of the city to the document.
The birthday of King George II., the thirtieth of October, was celebrated in Albany by the burning of a great bonfire, the wood for which cost the city three pounds sterling. 1
1 Doc. history N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 697, 698 ; vol, iv. p. 196. Coll. on the hist. of Albany. Munsell. vol. i. pp. 119, 122,
CHAPTER XVI.
GROWTH OF THE CITY.
1761-1773.
Great Britain's possession of Canada ended the war along the northern frontier of Albany county. The im- poverished people, no longer deterred from pursuing their personal occupations, undertook them with un- usual earnestness and application. The municipal au- thorities, to increase the city's revenues, resolved that no freedom or permission to do business in the city should be given to a merchant without the payment of three pounds twelve shillings, or to any person to manufacture without the payment of one pound sixteen shillings. The mayor was to receive from these sums ' "twelve shillings for his own use," and the clerk one shilling for affixing the city's seal to each freedom. Any person born in the city, having attained the age of twenty-one years, could obtain a freedom on the pay- ment of two shillings.
In 1761, it appears that a town-clock was placed in one of the steeples, for six pounds sterling were to be paid to Philip Reyley for his care of it for one year. By a resolution of the common council, on the twenty- sixth of March, 1762, a new fire engine of the fifth size manufactured by Richard Newsham, was ordered to be purchased for the city through John George Liebenrood,
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