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 26
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a London merchant. The engine was received in March, 1763, and on the second of April following, the sum of one hundred and fifty-eight pounds nineteen shillings and six pence was ordered to be paid for it. At this time the number of the city's firemen was thirty-one. 1 In November of the same year the common council pur- chased forty-eight leather fire-buckets and ordained that each of the aldermen and the assistants should be the keeper of four buckets on which were painted designat- ing numerals.
An ordinance was published in October, 1765, by the common council, that "two sufficient persons " in each ward should be appointed viewers of chimneys, hearths and places where ashes were kept, whose duty it was to inspect the same once every fortnight, and when any fire or hot ashes were unprotectedly exposed to notify the person or persons responsible for the same, and should he, she or they fail or refuse to act as instructed, the latter were to be fined forty shillings. Any person or persons permitting his, her or their chimney or chim- neys to become foul with soot and the same should catch fire, were to forfeit the sum of forty shillings. Any member of the city-guard discovering an accidental fire was entitled to a reward of three pounds.
The ordinance also enjoined that householders . using two fire places should possess two leather buckets ; brewers, tavern-keepers, and bakers should have three.
1 In the first ward : Volkert van Vechten, Gerrit van Zandt (Sante), jr., Jacob Roseboom, Peter Ryckman, Stephen Schuyler, Marte Myndertse (van Iveren), William Fryer, John Stevenson, John Johannes Lansingh, and Isaac Bogart, jr. In the second ward : Gerardus Lansingh, Jacob Bleecker. Isaac Verplanck, Casparus Pruyn, Volkert A. Douw, Nicholas Marselis, Peter Williams, John Marselis, Anthony Bleecker, Sander Lansingh, Corne- lius van Schelluyne, John H. Roseboom, and Gysbert G. Marselis. In the third ward : Abraham L. Fonda, Philip De Forest, Abraham Schuyler, John Ten Broeck, Abraham Cuyler, Nanning H. Vischer, Thomas Hun, and Isaac van Arnem.
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The buckets were to "be marked with at least the initial letters " .of the names of the owners. Any person who failed to comply with the requirements of the ordinance was to forfeit six shillings. If any person should retain for forty-eight hours a bucket belonging to another that had been used at a fire and did not return it to the owner, or if ignorant of the latter's name, to the city- hall, he was to pay a fine of ten shillings for each bucket retained by him.
To impress upon all the duty of assisting in ex- tinguishing fires, the following official censure was added to the third section of the ordinance : "It seems astonishing that in a Christian country where the essen- tial principles of professed religion lay the people under an indispensible obligation to do to others as they would others should do unto them, [that some] should see their neighbors' houses on fire and not use their utmost endeavours to assist them to quench it ; notwithstanding experience shews that there are people so far abandoned as to appear, as it were, to shew their indifference, and instead of assisting, a duty required by the laws of Christ- ianity & nature, often impede and hinder others from assisting their neighbors in such casualty and distress."
To remedy "such inexcusable remissness in such dangerous casualties," it was ordained that the mayor, the recorder, the first two aldermen, and the sheriff were to repair to the place where there was a fire to "have the care and direction of the people & Fire en- gines," and "all other Tools and Instruments " for the speedy extinguishment of the fire ; that the other alder- men with the assistance of the constables were "to have the ranking, placing, and directing of the people to hand water ;" and that any person, "ordered and di- rected at or about such fire " by any of these officials,
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neglecting or refusing to obey and perform their orders, was "to forfeit and pay for every such neglect and refusal the sum of ten shillings current money."
"In case of any outcry of fire or any other alarm, riot, rout or insurrection," it was ordained that persons dwelling in rooms fronting the streets, lanes, and alleys of the city, were immediately to "illuminate and set three or more Candles " in their front windows to re- main there "illuminated until Day Light unless such fire, alarm, riot, rout, insurrection " should " sooner be extinguished or quelled." Any person who should neg- lect this duty was to forfeit three shillings.
The common council to protect the business of those whom they had appointed to remove the soot from foul chimneys, also ordained that no person should "presume to cleanse any of the chimneys in the city" except the city-sweeps. 1
The society of Presbyterians, organized in 1760, re- ceived permission from Lord Amherst on the seventh of March, 1762, to make use of the forage-house near the main guard-house, as a "place of worship." On the sec- ond of September, the mayor, aldermen and commonalty transferred to John McComb, David Edgar, Samuel Hol- liday, Robert Henry, Abraham Lyle, and John Monro, elders of the English Presbyterian church, for ever in trust for the use of the society, the plat of ground on the northwest corner of Hudson Avenue and William Street, then described as lying in the first ward of the city, "having to the East the street that adjoyns to the Lotts of William Fryer and others, on the North, West, and and South by the commons." 2 As set forth in the deed, 1 Albany records, 1761, 1762, 1763, 1765.
2 "In front along the said street one hundred and thirty-two feet, con- taining on the North side thirty feet, on the South one hundred and forty- eight feet, and on the West side one hundred and ninety-two feet, all Ryn- land measure, according to a Map thereof made by Mr. John R. Bleecker."
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the ground was given "to erect and build a Presbyterian Meeting-house on, and to and for no other use and in- tention whatsoever."1 The church, it appears, was shortly afterward built on it, for in October, 1766, the plat is described as the "piece of ground where the Presbyterian Meeting is erected on."
The part of the hill on the south side of the fort and west of South Pearl street was at this time called Gal- lows hill. On the twenty-sixth of July, 1762, the com- mon council resolved that the land immediately west of the fort where the gallows was then standing and the land on Gallows hill should be laid out in acre-lots and sold at public vendue for a term of twenty-one years with such restrictions as should be agreed upon there- after.
The authorities in February, 1763, bought of William Brefit a bound servant, named James Nox, for the sum of nine pounds sterling, to serve the city for the remain- der of his term of service as a public whipper. Public sentiment in the eighteenth century, it would seem, had a different education than it has at present, for it was resolved by the aldermen that five tickets of the New York lottery should be purchased "in behalf of the cor- poration," and the mayor was ordered to take them to New York and present them on the day of drawing. On the tenth of January, 1763, Volkert P. Douw, the mayor, delivered to the city-clerk four pounds five shillings, drawn by one of the tickets, the other four having drawn blanks. 2
The patroon of Rensselaerswyck, Stephen van Rens- selaer, in 1765, completed the building of his attractive and commodious manor-house. The date of its erection
1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. Albany records, 1760, 1763, 1766.
2 Albany records, 1762.
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in large iron numerals ornament the stately edifice still standing a short distance north of Thacher Street, in the north part of the city. Almost opposite it, on the west side of Broadway, is the one-story, brick office of the estate, containing a large number of manorial pa- pers, maps, and account-books, some of which are more than two hundred and fifty years old.
It was during this period of peace that Mrs. Grant acquired her knowledge of the people of Albany, of whose habits and customs she wrote so comprehensively in her "Memoirs of an American lady." Describing a custom which she thought was peculiar to Albany until she read an account of one similar to it followed in Geneva, France, she says :
" The children of the town were all divided into com- panies, as they called them, from five to six years of age, till they became marriageable. How those com- panies first originated, or what were their exact regula- tions, I cannot say ; though I, belonging to none, oc- casionally mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number ; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence above the rest, were called heads of the company, and as such, were obeyed by the others. * *
"The companies of little children had also their head. All the children of the same age were not in one com- pany ; there were at least three or four of equal ages, who had a strong rivalry with each other ; and children of different ages in the same family belonged to different companies. Each company, at a certain time
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in their porches every fine evening. Of the more sub- stantial luxuries of the table they knew little, and of the formal and ceremonious parts of good breeding still less."
"If you went to spend the day anywhere you were received in a manner we should think very cold. No one rose to welcome you ; no one wondered you had not come sooner, or apologized for any deficiency in your en- tertainment. Dinner, which was very early, was served exactly in the same manner as if there were only the family. The house indeed was so exquisitely neat and well regulated, that you could not surprise these people ; they saw each other so often and so easily, that intimates made no difference. Of strangers they were shy ; not by any means from want of hospitality, but from a con- sciousness that people who had little to value themselves on but their knowledge of the world and ceremonies of polished life, disliked their sincerity and despised their simplicity. If you showed no insolent wonder, but easily and quietly adopted their manners, you would re- ceive from them not only very great civility but much essential kindness. * X *
" After sharing this plain and unceremonious dinner, which might, by the by, chance to be a very good one, but was invariably that which was meant for the family, tea was served in at a very early hour. And here it was that the distinction shown to strangers commenced. Tea here was a perfect regale, being served up with various sorts of cakes unknown to us, cold pastry, and great quantities of sweetmeats and preserved fruits of various kinds, and plates of hickory and other nuts ready cracked. In all manner of confectionery and pastry these people excelled ; and having fruit in great plenty, which cost them nothing, and getting sugar home at an
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easy rate, in return for their exports to the West Indies, the quantity of these articles used in families, other- wise plain and frugal, was astonishing. Tea was never unaccompanied with one of these petty articles ; but for strangers a great display was made. If you stayed [for] supper, you were sure of a most substantial though [a] plain one. In this meal they departed, out of com- pliment to the strangers, from their usual simplicity. Having dined between twelve and one o'clock, you were quite prepared for it. You had either game or poultry roasted, and always shell-fish in the season ; you had also fruit in abundance. All this with much neatness but no form."
Of the detached Indian families, who in summer resided in the vicinity of the houses of wealthy persons living near the city, Mrs. Grant thus speaks : "They generally built a slight wigwam under shelter of the orchard-fence on the shadiest side ; and never were neighbors more harmless, peaceable, and obliging-I might truly add industrious-for in one way or other they were constantly occupied. The women and their children employed themselves in many ingenious handi- crafts, which since the introduction of European arts and manufactures, have greatly declined. Baking trays, wooden dishes, ladles and spoons, shovels and rakes ; brooms of a peculiar manufacture made by splitting a birch-block into slender but tough filaments ; baskets of all kinds and sizes, made of similar filaments, enriched with the most beautiful colors, which they alone knew how to extract from vegetable substances, and incor- porate with the wood. They made also of the birch- bark (which is here so strong and tenacious that cradles and canoes are made of it,) many receptacles for holding fruit and other things, curiously adorned with embroid-
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ery, not inelegant, done with the sinews of deer ; and leg- gins and moccasins, a very comfortable and highly orna- mental substitute for shoes and stockings, then univer- sally used in winter among the men of our own people.
"They had also a beautiful manufacture of deer-skin, softened to the consistence of the finest chamois leather and embroidered with beads of wampum, formed like bugles ; these, with great art and industry, they formed out of shells, which had the appearance of fine white porcelain, veined with purple. This embroidery showed both skill and taste, and was among themselves highly valued. They had belts, large embroidered garters, and many other ornaments, formed, first of deer-sinews, divided to the size of course thread, and afterwards, when they obtained worsted . thread from us, of that material, formed in a manner which I could never comprehend. It was neither knitted nor wrought in the manner of net nor yet woven; but the texture was more like that of an officer's sash than any thing I can compare it to. While the women and children were thus employed, the men sometimes assisted them in the more laborious part of their business, but oftener occu- pied themselves in fishing on the river, and drying or preserving, by means of smoke, in sheds erected for the purpose, sturgeon and large eels, which they caught in great quantities, and of an extraordinary size, for winter provision. * *
"The summer residence of these ingenious artisans promoted a great intimacy between the females of the vicinity and the Indian women, whose sagacity and comprehension of mind were beyond belief.
" It is a singular circumstance, that though they saw the negroes in every respectable family not only treated with humanity but cherished with parental kindness,
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they always regarded them with contempt and dislike, as an inferior race, and would have no communication with them. * *
" The Indian women, who, from motives of attach- ment to particular families, or for the purpose of carry- ing on the small traffic already mentioned, were wont to pass their summers near the settlers, were of detached and wandering families, who preferred this mode of living to the labor of tilling the ground, which entirely devolved upon the women among the Five Nations.
* The little [grain] they had was maize ; this with kidney-beans and tobacco, the only plants they cul- tivated, was sown in some very pleasant fields along the Mohawk River by the women, who had no implements of tillage but the hoe and a kind of wooden spade. These fields lay around their castles, and while the women were thus employed, the men were catching and drying fish by the rivers or on the lakes. The younger girls were much busied during the summer and autumn in gathering wild fruits, berries, and grapes, which they had a peculiar way of drying to preserve them for the winter. The great cranberry they gathered in abund- ance, which, without being dried, would last the whole winter and was much used by the settlers. These dried fruits were no luxury ; a fastidious taste would entirely reject them. Yet, besides furnishing another article of food, they had their use, as was evident. Without some antiseptic, they who lived the whole winter on animal food, without a single vegetable, or anything of the na- ture of bread, unless now and then a little maize, which they had the art of boiling down to softness by lye of wood-ashes, must have been liable to the great scourge of northern nations in their primitive state, the scurvy, had not this simple desert been a preservation against
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it. Rheumatism, and sometimes agues, affected them, but no symptom of any cutaneous disease was ever seen on an Indian.
"The stragglers from the confines of the orchards did not fail to join their tribes in the winter ; and were zealous, and often successful, in spreading their new opinions. * If you do not insult their belief, (for mode of worship they have scarce any,) they will hear you talk of yours with the greatest patience and atten- tion. Their good-breeding, in this respect, was really superlative. No Indian ever interrupted any [one, even] the most idle talker ; but when they concluded, he would deliberately, methodically, and not ungracefully answer or comment upon all they had said, in a manner which showed that not a word had escaped him. * * *
"The girls in childhood had a very pleasing appear- ance ; but excepting their fine hair, eyes, and teeth, every external grace was soon banished by perpetual drudgery, carrying burdens too heavy to be borne, and other slavish employments considered beneath the dignity of the men. These walked before, erect and graceful, decked with ornaments, which set off to ad- vantage the symmetry of their well formed persons, while the poor women followed, meanly attired, bent under the weight of the children and utensils which they carried everywhere with them, and disfigured and degraded by ceaseless toils. They were early married : for a Mohawk had no other servant but his wife; and whenever he commenced [to be a] hunter, it was requi- site that he should have some one to carry his load, cook [with] his kettle, make his moccasins, and above all, produce the young warriors who were to succeed him in his honors of the chase and of the tomahawk."1
1 Memoirs of an American lady. pp. 39, 40, 41, 53, 54, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71.
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Great Britain to obtain a revenue from her colonies in America sufficient to defray the expenses of their government and defence, made them subject to her tax- ation by an act of parliament in 1764. Among the measures designed to raise the needed money was the Stamp act passed in March, 1765, by which the people of the colonies were required to use stamped paper sold by the British government for their bonds, deeds, notes, and other business-papers. The taxed people, being denied the right of representation in the parliament making these laws, at once denounced them as unjust and despotic. In the city of New York, on the first of November, 1765, when the Stamp act was to be operative, a large number of the citizens manifested their opposi- tion to it by burning an effigy of Lieutenant-governor Colden, who was at the time administrating the govern- ment of the province. This and other significant de- monstrations of hostility toward the government of Great Britain kept the city in a state of great excite- ment for a number of days thereafter.
Sir William Johnston writing, on the twenty-second of November, to the Lords of Trade, from Johnson Hall,1 adverts to the commotion caused by the im- position of the stamp act : "The late furious & au- dacious behaviour of the New Yorkers,-excited and supported by several Persons of Consequence there -are doubtless laid before yr Lordships by every faith- ful servant who dare write and is not afraid that his House shall be burned or himself massacred, amongst which small number, I beg leave to assure you, I am one, & one disinterested, acting on a principle of regard to the welfare of the Colonies, well knowing the Discords in which they would be speedily involved if
1 Its site is in Montgomery county.
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they were able to effect that Democratical system which is their sole aim, and which they may hereafter compass unless a timely check is given to that spirit of Libertin- ism & Independence daily gaining ground thro' the Artifices & unaccountable conduct of a few pretended Patriots." 1
"The seditious spirit," writes Lieutenant-governor Colden to Secretary Conway, on the twenty-first of Feb- ruary, 1766, "has not extended greatly into the Country. The city of Albany remained quiet till after their mem- bers returned from the Assembly. Then they excited most unaccountable riots in that place." These, it ap- pears, were not easily suppressed, for a detachment of the forty-sixth English regiment was in midsummer, 1766, sent to quell them. Some of the rioters were then arrested, but "the greater part of them," it is said, fled into the provinces of Massachusetts and Connecticut, where they were "protected by the magistrates," who ignored the requisitions sent for their apprehension. 2
The inconveniencies attending the lading and unlad- ing of vessels anchored off the river bank in front of the city were so patent and great that the common council on the fourth of March, 1766, unanimously determined to erect three stone docks ; the Assembly having pre- viously granted the corporation the right to make such use of the stone-wall built for defense on the north side of the city. The north dock, which was then constructed nearly opposite the site of the stone-wall, was eighty feet long and forty broad ; the middle one, at the foot of Maiden Lane, was eighty feet long and thirty broad ; and the south dock, nearly opposite the city-hall, was of the same dimensions as the middle dock. The city, it seems, built a fourth dock, which with the other three
1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vii. p. 790.
Doc. colonial hist, N. Y, vol, vii. pp. 812, 849, 910.
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were sold at public vendue on the twenty-eighth of March, 1767, to Gysbert Marselis and John Alen, for seventy pounds, they being permitted to possess them until the first of January, 1768, and to charge wharfage for the use of them. Should any of the twenty-eight sloops belonging to the city refuse to use them and "so be free from paying dockage," a certain deduction was to be made from the said sum of money.
A number of the followers of Ulric Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, having organized a society known as the German Reformed church of Albany, addressed a petition to the municipal authorities requesting the grant of a piece of ground on the Wouts Bergh, (the name of the hill north of the fort,) where they desired to build a house of worship. The request was granted, and a deed of the plat was ordered, on the thirteenth of October, 1766, to be given to Charles Hoogstrasser, John Tilman, John James Abbet and John Freligh.
The first lodge of Free and Accepted Masons constit- uted in Albany was called Union Lodge. Its organiza tion, on the twenty-first of February, 1765, was author- ized by a warrant from the provincial grand master, George Harrison, who installed Peter W. Yates as its worshipful master. On the eighteenth of October, 1766, the city gave a deed to Samuel Stringer for a plat of ground "on the Hill near the Fort adjoining the English Burying Place," on which to erect a lodge-building.
The following paragraphs, taken from the by-laws of Union lodge, are noteworthy : "Every one who shall be made a Mason in this Lodge is to pay three pounds 4s for the Fund and one Dollar to the Tyler, for which he shall be entitled to the three degrees without further ex-
pence. * * The Senior warden shall every lodge- night acquaint the master when it is ten o'clock, then
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ye lodge is to be closed unless in cases of extra business, and on lodge-evenings no member under a fine of one shilling shall have more drink than for six pence in the lodge-room without the Master's consent."
The warrant constituting "William Gamble, Francis Joseph von Pfister, Thomas Swords, Thomas Lynott, and Richard Cartwright into a Regular Lodge of Per- fection, by the name of Ineffable," to be held in Albany, was given on the twentieth of December, 1767, by Henry Andrew Francken, deputy grand inspector general of all the superior degrees of Masons in the West Indies and North America.
A procession of the members of the Union lodge, with five of the Ineffable lodge, marched through some of the streets of the city on Monday, the twenty-eighth of December, 1767 ; its order being : the tyler, musicians, apprentices, fellow-craftsmen, two deacons, masters, past masters, wardens, secretary, master, masons of the ninth degree, masons of the fourteenth degree, princes of Jerusalem, and two stewards.
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