USA > New York > The history of the late province of New-York, from its discovery, to the appointment of Governor Colden, in 1762. Vol. I > Part 22
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Besides the city hall, there belong to the corporation, a large alms-house, or place of correction, and the exchange, in the latter of which there is a large room raised upon brick arches, generally used for public entertainments, concerts of music, balls, and assemblies.
Though the city was put under the government of a mayor, &c. in 1665, it was not regularly incorporated till 1686. Since that time, several charters have been passed : the last was granted by governor Montgomerie on the 15th of January 1730.
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It is divided into seven wards, and is under the govern- ment of a mayor, recorder, seven aldermen, and as many assistants, or common councilmen. The mayor, a sheriff, and coroner are annually appointed by the governor. The recorder has a patent during pleasure. The aldermen, assistants, assessors, and collectors are annually elected by the freemen and freeholders of the respective wards. The mayor has the sole appointment of a deputy, and, together
with four aldermen, may appoint a chamberlain.
The
mayor or recorder, four aldermen, and as many assistants, form "the common council of the city of New-York ;" and this body, by a majority of voices, hath power to make by- laws for the government of the city, which are binding only for a year, unless confirmed by the governor and council. They have many other privileges relating to ferriages, mar- kets, fairs, the assize of bread, wine, &c. and the licensing and regulation of tavern keepers, cartage, and the like. The mayor, his deputy, the recorder, and aldermen are constituted justices of the peace ; and may hold not only a court of record once a week to take cognizance of all civil causes, but also a court of general quarter sessions of the peace. They have a common clerk, commissioned by the governor, who enjoys an appointment worth about four or five hundred pounds per annum. The annual revenue of the corporation is near two thousand pounds. The standing militia of the island consists of about 2,300 men,* and the city has in reserve, a thousand stand of arms for seamen, the poor and others, in case of an invasion.
The north-eastern part of New-York island is inhabited principally by Dutch farmers, who have a small village there called Harlem, pleasantly situated on a flat cultivated for the city markets.
* The whole number of the inhabitants exclusive of females above sixty, ac- cording to a list returned to the governor in the spring 1756, amounted to 10,468 whites, and 2,275 negroes ; but that account is erroneous. It is most probable that there are in the city 15,000 souls.
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WEST-CHESTER.
This county is large, and includes all the land beyond the island of Manhatans along the sound, to the Connecticut line, which is its eastern boundary. It extends northward to the middle of the highlands, and westward to Hudson's river. A great part of this county is contained in the manors of Philipsburgh, Pelham, Fordham, and Courtlandt, the last of which has the privilege of sending a representative to the general assembly. The county is tolerably settled ; the lands are in general rough but fertile, and therefore the farmers run principally on grazing. It has several towns, East-Chester, West-Chester, New-Rochelle, Rye, Bedford, and North-Castle. The inhabitants are either English or Dutch presbyterians, episcopalians, quakers, and French pro- testants ; the former are the most numerous. The two episcopal missionaries are settled at Rye and East-Chester, and receive each £60 annually, taxed upon the county. The town of West-Chester is an incorporated borough, enjoying a mayor's court, and the right of being represented by a member in assembly.
DUTCHESS.
This county adjoins to West-Chester, which bounds it on the south, the Connecticut line on the east,* Hudson's river on the west, and the county of Albany on the north. The south part of this county is mountainous and fit only for iron works, but the rest contains a great quantity of good upland well watered. The only villages in it are Poghkeepsing and the Fish-Kill, though they scarce deserve the name. The inhabitants on the banks of the river are Dutch, but those more easterly Englishmen, and for the most part, emi- grants from Connecticut and Long Island. There is no episcopal church in it. The growth of this county has been
* In describing the limits of the several counties, I regard their bounds accord- ing to the jurisdiction as now exercised in each, rather than the laws relating to them, which are very imperfect, especially the general act in 1691. The greatest part of Hudson's river is not included in any of our counties.
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very sudden, and commenced but a few years ago. Within the memory of persons now living, it did not contain above twelve families; and according to the late returns of the militia, it will furnish at present above 2500 fighting men.
ALBANY.
This county extends from the south bounds of the manor of Livingston on the east side, and Ulster on the west side of Hudson's river ; on the north its limits are not yet ascer- tained. It contains a vast quantity of fine low land. Its principal commodities are wheat, peas, and pine boards.
The city of Albany, which is near 150 miles from New- York, is situated on the west side of the river. There our governors usually treat with the Indian dependents upon the British crown. The houses are built of brick in the Dutch taste, and are in number about 350. There 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 public 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 palisadoes, 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, chamber- lain, 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 general quarter sessions.
Sixteen or eighteen miles north-west from Albany lies Schenectady, on the banks of the Mohawks' branch, which falls into Hudson's river twelve miles to the north of Albany. This village is compact and regular, built principally of brick,
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on a rich flat of low land surrounded with hills. It has a large Dutch church with a steeple and town clock near the centre. The windings of the river through the town and the fields (which are often overflowed in the spring) form, about harvest, a most beautiful prospect. The lands in the vale of Schenectady are so fertile that they are commonly sold at £45 per acre. Though the farmers use no kind of manure, they till the fields every year, and they always pro- duce full crops of wheat or peas. Their church was incor- porated by governor Cosby, and the town has the privilege of sending a member to the assembly.
From this village our Indian traders set out in battoes for Oswego. The Mohawks' river, from hence to fort Hunter, abounds with rifts and shoals, which in the spring give but little obstruction to the navigation. From thence to its head, or rather to the portage into the Wood Creek, the conveyance is easy, and the current less rapid. The banks of this river are in general low, and the soil exceeding good. Our settle- ments on the north side extend to Burnet's field, a flat inhabited by Germans, which produces wheat and peas in surprising plenty. On the south side, except a few Scotch- Irish in Cherry Valley, at the head of the Susquehanna, we have but few farms west of the three German towns on Schohare, a small creek which empties itself into the Mo- hawks' river, about twenty miles west of Schenectady. The fur trade at Oswego is one of the principal advantages of this county. The Indians resort thither in May, and the trade continues till the latter end of July. A good road might be made from Schenectady to Oswego. In the sum-" mer of 1755, fat cattle were easily driven there for the army under the command of general Shirley.
The principal settlements to the northward of Albany are Connestigiune, eastward of Schenectady on the Mohawks' river, which, a little lower, tumbles down a precipice of about seventy feet high, called the Cahoes. The surprise which, as one might imagine, would naturally be excited by the view of so great a cataract, is much diminished by the VOL. 1 .- 40
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height of the banks of the river ; besides, the fall is as uniform as a mill-dam, being uninterrupted by the projection of rocks.
At Scaghtahook, on the east side of the north branch of Hudson's river, there are a few farms, but many more several miles to the eastward, and about twenty-five miles from Albany in the patent of Hosick. These were all broke up by an irruption of French and Indians, who, on the 28th of August 1754, killed and scalped two persons, and set fire to the houses and barns.
About forty miles to the northward of Albany, on the west side of the river, lies Saratoga, a fine tract of low land, from which several families were driven by the French Indians in the late war. A project of purchasing these lands from the proprietors, settling them with Indians, raising a fort there, and cultivating the soil for them, has been often talked of since captain Campbell's disappointment, as a proper expe- dient to curb the scalping parties sent out from Crown Point.
In the southern part of the county of Albany, on both sides of Hudson's river, the settlements are very scattered, except within twelve miles of the city, when the banks become low and accessible. The islands here, which are many, contain perhaps the finest soil in the world.
There are two manors in the county, Renslaerwick and Livingston, which have each the privilege of sending a mem- ber to the assembly. The tenants of these manors, and of the patents of Claverack, have free farms at the annual rent of a tenth of the produce, which has as yet been neither exacted nor paid. At Ancram, in the manor of Livingston, is an iron furnace about fourteen miles from the river : its best and most improved lands lie at Tachanic in the eastern parts, which have of late been much disturbed by the inroads of the Massachusetts Bay, on this and the patents of Wes- ternhook and Claverack.
The winters in this county are commonly severe, and Hudson's river freezes so hard a hundred miles to the south- ward of Albany, as to bear sleds loaded with great burdens.
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Much snow is very serviceable to the farmers here, not only in protecting their grain from the frost, but in facilitating the transportation of their boards and other produce to the banks of the river against the ensuing spring.
ULSTER.
This county joins to that of Albany, on the west side of Hudson's river. Its northern extent is fixed at Sawyer's rill : the rivers Delaware and Hudson bound it east and west, and a west line from the mouth of Murderer's creek is its southern limit.
The inhabitants are Dutch, French, English, Scotch, and Irish, but the first and the last are most numerous. The episcopalians in this county are so inconsiderable that their church is only a mean log-house. The most considerable town is Kingston, situated about two miles from Hudson's river. It contains about 150 houses mostly of stone, is regu- larly laid out on a dry level spot, and has a large stone church and court-house near the centre. It is thought to resemble Schenectady, but far exceeds it in its elevation : on the north side of the town the Esopus kill winds through rich and beautiful lawns. The people of Ulster having long enjoyed an undisturbed tranquillity, are some of the most opulent farmers in the whole colony.
This county is most noted for fine flour, beer, and a good breed of draught horses. At the commencement of the range of the Apalachian hills, about ten miles from Hudson's river, is an inexhaustible quarry of millstones, which far exceed those from Colen in Europe, formerly imported here, and sold at £80 a pair. The Marbletown millstones cost not a fourth part of that sum. This, and the counties of Dutchess and Orange, abound with lime-stone, and on the banks of Hudson's river are found great bodies of blue slate.
The principal villages, besides Kingston, are Marbletown, Hurley, Rochester, New Paltz, and the Walkill, each of which is surrounded with fine tracts of low land. The militia of Ulster is about 15 or 1600 men and a company of horse.
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ORANGE
County is divided by a range of mountains, stretching westward from Hudson's river, called the Highlands. On the north side the lands are very broken but fertile, and inhabited by Scotch, Irish, and English presbyterians. The society's missionary in Ulster preaches here sometimes to a small congregation of the episcopal persuasion, which is the only one in the county. Their villages are Goshen, Bethle- hem, and Little Britain, all remarkable for producing, in general, the best butter made in the colony. The people on the south side of the mountains are all Dutch ; and Orange town, more commonly called by the Indian name Tappan, is a small but very pleasant inland village with a stone court- house and church. The militia consists of about 1300 fight- ing men.
This county joins to the province of New-Jersey on the south ; and the non-settlement of the partition line has been the greatest obstruction to its growth.
There is a very valuable tract called the Drowned Lands on the north side of the mountains, containing about 40 or 50,000 acres. The waters which descend from the surround- ing hills, being but slowly discharged by the river issuing out of it, cover these vast meadows every winter, and hence they become extremely fertile. The fires, kindled up in the woods by the deer hunters in autumn, are communicated by the leaves to these meadows before the waters rise above the channel of the river, and a dreadful devouring conflagration overruns it, consuming the herbage for several days. The Walkill river, which runs through this extensive amphibious tract, if I may use the expression, is in the spring stored with eels of uncommon size and plenty, very useful to the farmers residing on its banks. The river is about two chains in breadth, where it leaves the drowned lands, and has a consi- derable fall. The bottom of it is a broken rock, and I am informed by Mr. Clinton, a gentleman of ingenuity and a mathematical turn, that the channel might for less than £2000 be sufficiently deepened to draw off all the water from
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the meadows. Some parts near the banks of the upland have been already redeemed from the floods ; these spots are very fertile, and produce English grass, hemp, and Indian corn.
The mountains in the county of Orange are clothed thick with timber, and abound with iron ore, ponds, and fine streams for iron works. Goshen is well supplied with white cedar, and in some parts of the woods is found great plenty of black walnut.
Before I proceed to the description of the southern counties I beg leave to say a few words concerning Hudson's river.
Its source has not as yet been discovered ; we know in general that it is in the mountainous, uninhabited country, between the 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 eight or ten miles distant from it ; the course then to New-York is very uniform, being in the main south twelve or fifteen degrees west.
The distance from Albany to lake George is computed at sixty-five miles : the river in that interval is navigable only to Batteaus, and interrupted by rifts, which occasion two port- ages of half a mile each .* There are three 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 Cham- plain.
The place where these routes meet on the banks of Hud- son's river, is called the Carrying Place : here fort Lyman, since called fort Edward, is built ; but fort William Henry, a much stronger garrison, was erected at the south end of lake
* In the passage from Albany to fort Edward, the whole land carriage is about twelve or thirteen miles.
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George, after the repulse of the French forces under the com- mand 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 seventeen 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 banks of Hudson's river are for the most part rocky cliffs, especially on the western shore. The passage through the highlands affords a wild romantic scene for sixteen miles through steep and lofty mountains : the tide flows a few miles above Albany, the navigation is safe, and performed in sloops of about forty or fifty tons burden, extremely well accommo- dated to the river : about sixty miles above the city of New- York the water is fresh, and in wet seasons much lower ; the river is stored with variety of fish, which renders a summer's passage to Albany exceedingly diverting to such as are fond of angling.
The advantages of this river for penetrating into Canada, and protecting the southern colonies from the irruptions of the French, by securing the command of the lakes, and cutting off the communication between the French settlements on St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, though but lately attended to, must be very apparent to every judicious observer of the maps of the inland part of North America.
The French, as appears from the intended invasion in 1689, have long eyed the English possession of this province with jealousy, and it becomes us to fall upon every method for its protection and defence.
The singular conveniency of Hudson's river, to this province in particular, was so fully shown in one of the late papers, published in 1753, under the title of the Independent Reflec- tor, that I cannot help reprinting the passage relating to it.
" High roads, which in most trading countries, are ex- tremely expensive, and awake a continual attention for their reparation, demand from us, comparatively speaking, scarce any public notice at all. The whole province is contained
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in two narrow oblongs, extending from the city east and north, having water carriage from the extremity of one, and from the distance of one hundred and sixty miles of the other, and, by the most accurate calculation has not, at a medium, above twelve miles of land carriage throughout its whole extent. This is one of the strongest motives to the settle- ment of a new country, as it affords the easiest and most speedy conveyance from the remotest distances, and at the lowest expence. The effects of this advantage are greater than we usually observe, and are therefore not sufficiently admired.
"The province of Pensylvania, has a fine soil, and through the importations of Germans, abounds with inhabitants ; but being a vast inland country, its produce must, of consequence, be brought to a market over a great extent of ground, and all by land carriage. Hence it is, that Philadelphia is crowd- ed with wagons, carts, horses, and their drivers ; a stranger at his first entrance would imagine it to be a place of traffic, beyond any one town in the colonies, while, in New-York in particular, to which the produce of the country is all brought by water, there is more business, at least business of profit, though with less show and appearance. Not a boat in our river is navigated with more than two or three men at most ; and these are perpetually coming in from and returning to all parts of the adjacent country, in the same employments that fill the city of Philadelphia with some hundreds of men, who, in respect to the public advantage, may justly be said to be laboriously idle: for, let any one nicely compute the ex- pense of a wagon with its tackling, the time of two men in attending it, their maintenance, four horses, and the charge of their provender, on a journey of one, though they often come two hundred miles, and he will find these several par- ticulars amount to a sum far from being inconsiderable. All this time the New-York farmer is in the course of his proper business, and the unincumbered acquisitions of his calling ; for at a medium, there is scarce a farmer in the province that cannot transport the fruits of a year's labour from the best
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farm in three days, at a proper season, to some convenient landing, where the market will be to his satisfaction, and all the wants from the merchant cheaply supplied ; besides which, one boat shall steal into the harbour of New-York, with a lading of more burden and value than forty wagons, one hundred and sixty horses, and eighty men into Philadel- phia ; and perhaps with less noise, bluster, or show than one.
"Prodigious is the advantage we have in this article alone, I shall not enter into an abstruse calculation to evince the ex- act value of it in all the lights in which it may be considered; thus much is certain, that barely on account of our easy car- riage, the profits of farming with us exceed those in Penn- sylvania at least by thirty per cent .; and that difference, in favour of our farmers, is of itself sufficient to enrich them : while the others find the disadvantage they are exposed to so heavy, (especially the remote inhabitants of their country,) that a bare subsistence is all they can reasonably hope to obtain. Take this province throughout, the expense of trans- porting a bushel of wheat is but two-pence for the distance of one hundred miles, but the same quantity at the like dis- tance in Pennsylvania, will always exceed us one shilling at least. The proportion between us in the conveyance of every thing else is nearly the same ; how great then are the incum- brances to which they are exposed ! What an immense charge is saved to us! how sensible must the embarrassments they are subject to be to a trading people !"
RICHMOND
County consists of Staten Island, which lies nine miles - south-westward from the city of New-York. It is about eighteen miles long, and at a medium six or seven in breadth, on the south side is a considerable tract of good level land, but the island is in general rough, and the hills high; the inhabitants are principally Dutch and French, the former have a church, but the latter having been long without a minister, resort to an episcopal church in Richmond town, a poor mean village and the only one on the island, the parson
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of the parish receives £40 per annum, raised by a tax upon the county.
Southward of the main coast of this and the colony of Con- necticut lies Long Island, called by the Indians Matowacs, and named, according to an act of assembly in king William's reign, Nassau; its length is computed at one hundred and twenty miles, and the mean breadth twelve. The lands on the north and south side are good, but in the middle, sandy and barren ; the southern shore is fortified against any invasion from the sea by a beach inaccessible to ships, and rarely to be approached, even by the smallest long-boats, on account of the surge which breaks upon it with great fury, even when the winds are light. The coast, east and west, admits of regular soundings far into the ocean, and as the lands are in general low for several hundred miles, nothing can be more advan- tageous to our ships than the high lands of Neversink, near the entrance at the Hook, which are scarce six miles in length, and often seen thirty leagues from the sea; this island affords the finest roads in America, it being very level and but indifferently watered: it is divided into three counties.
KINGS
County lies opposite to New-York, on the north side of Long Island; the inhabitants are all Dutch, and enjoying a good soil, near our markets, are generally in easy circumstances. The county, which is very small, is settled in every part, and contains several pleasant villages, viz. Bushwick, Breucklin, Bedford, Flat-Bush, Flat-Lands, New-Utrecht, and Graves- end.
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