USA > New York > New York County > Manhattan > The pioneers of New-York. An anniversary discourse delivered before the St. Nicholas Society of Manhattan, December 6, 1847 > Part 3
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* Bancroft.
t The conditions of membership of the St. Nicholas Society of New-York, have no reference to a Dutch extraction, as is generally supposed. Chancellor Jones, the venerable president, is a descendant of a Welsh officer, who, like the founders of several other distinguished New-York families of similar extraction, served in the armies of the Prince of Orange before coming to settle in this State.
# These last ultimately stamped the language of New-York ; whose very
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In 1624, ten years after the Hollanders established their twee forts on the Hudson, and commenced that line of posts which soon extended from the Connecticut to the Delaware, we have the first infusion here of the different races from which, one hundred years later, the genuine Knickerbocker was evolved.
A large body of WALLOONS, inhabitants of the frontier between France and Flanders, who spoke the old Gallic language, and professed the reformed religion, applied in 1622 to Sir Dudley Carlton to settle in Virginia, with the privilege of erecting a town there. The Walloons, during " the thirty years" war, distinguished themselves for their valor and savage spirit, and the governor of Virginia seems not to have given a satisfactory reply to what he probably considered an arrogant condition, which they proposed as the basis of any settlement in his colony, viz :- That they should be governed by magistrates elected by themselves .* Several families of these Walloons therefore, established themselves (in the year 1624,) in New Netherland, within the confines of the present town of Brooklyn, on Long Island, where the Wallabout (or " Bay of Foreigners,"-Wale Bocht,) still identifies their memory with the locality; and several other families of the same race, taking one of Christianse' " stations" as the nucleus of their colony, augmented the settlement at the base of the Katzbergs, near the head of ship navigation, on the Hudson.
In 1642 a band of representatives of the English race appear in New Netherland, and plant themselves beside their Belgie and Gallic predecessors, with whom they soon become blended by intermarriage. In this year a band of religionists, led on by the Rev. Mr. Doughty, Richard Smith, and others, who had followed the Pilgrims from old England to New England, were compelled to withdraw from the latter country by the persecution they received there; and, after making formal application to the authorities of
English provincialisms, in many respects so different from other English provincial- isms of New England, go far to disprove an identy of provincial origin in the English settlers of either colony ; much less that the Puritans ever imprinted their peculiarities upon New-York as " New England's eldest daughter !"
* O'Callaghan.
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New Netherland, they had a grant of land assigned to them. Endowed with the usual privileges of free manors, such as free exercise of their religion, powers to plant towns, build churches, nominate magistrates, and administer civil and criminal jurisdiction. Six months later, Throgmorton, who had already been driven with Roger Williams from Massachusetts by the fiery Hugh Peters, procured permission to settle thirty-five families on the lands in Westchester county, now known as Throg's Neck, which the New Netherlanders at that time named Vredeland, or " Land of Peace." A meet application, as O'Callaghan remarks, " for the spot selected by those who were bruised and broken down by religious perse- cution." In the same year the Lady Moody, with her minor son, Sir Henry, and many followers, fled in a similar manner from New England to the asylum of New Netherland, and founded the town of Gravezande, (now Gravesend,) on Long Island. To which island Thomas Ffarrington, John Townsend, William Lawrence, John Ffirman, and others, were compelled, in the next twenty months, to remove with their families, from New England; and after accepting a grant of land from the authorities of New Nether- land, enroll themselves as liegemen of that province.
The historian De Laet says, in speaking of this period of the history of New Netherland, "numbers, nay, whole towns, to escape from the insupportable government of New England, removed to New Netherland to enjoy that liberty denied them by their own countrymen." So great was the influx of Englishmen who came now, not as the veritable Pilgrims had proposed in Holland, " to reform any thing which was amiss " among their entertainers, but to enjoy true Knickerbocker freedom, that the director-general of this province, in order "to prevent the disturbance of harmony and social intercourse, more or less, by the incoming of so many strangers to reside here," appointed George Baxter as " English secretary of the council of New Netherland." It is worth stating in this connection, however, that the Dutch language is at this very day still spoken in many of the localities of Long Island by some of the descendants of these, then " strangers." It is to this early English immigration that certain ingenious theorists have attempted
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to trace the liberties of New-York, and establish them as of Puritan origin. But these men most assuredly camo not hither to bring " Puritan freedom," but to escape " pure Anglo-Saxon " tyranny, and their descendants have ever been among the staunchest children of St. Nicholas.
All these immigrants, as well as some who came in from Virginia about this period, took the oath of fidelity to the director and council of New Netherland, " to follow the director or any of his council wherever they shall lead; faithfully to give instant warning of any treason or other detriment to THIS COUNTRY, that shall come to their knowledge; to assist to the utmost of their powers in defending with their treasure and their blood, the inhabitants thereof, against all enemies."
In the cordial reception of these immigrants we have the fullest recognition of the cosmopolitan spirit which has since then made New-York the metropolis of the Union. In the jealous exaction of this formidable oath of fealty, we have the most solemn safe. guard against the perversion of that cosmopolitan spirit to nny external use against the pride and honor of the land we call our own. In confirmation of the latter spirit, we have the words of that curious proclamation of the council of New Netherland, which, ten years later, marks the presence of the next element of the Knickerbocker lineage.
This paper, which bears date 1Sth September, 161S, sets forth, " Whereas it has been seen with great concern, that many Scotch merchants, who, from time to time, come from their own country over here, after having sold out their cargoes, go with their ships to some other place without doing any benefit to this country. which is an injury to our people, who are obliged to bear all the burdens : Therefore it is deemed adviseable for the inhabitants of New Netherland to take action, so that from this time fossa, all Scotch merchants and small dealers who come over from thei: own country with the intention of trading here, shall not be per- mitted to carry on any trade in the land, until after they have had a residence here in New Netherland three years. And further.
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more, they shall be compelled, within one year after their arrival, to erect a decent habitable tenement in New Netherland."*
The next element of Knickerbockerhood dates from the year 1665, when the colony of " New Swedeland " surrendered to Peter Stuyvesant, who, upon the refusal of the Swedes to swear allegi- ance to the conquerors, "picked out the flower of the Swedish troops, and sent them, with some of the principal inhabitants, to Manhattan."t A portion of these established themselves in this city, while others soon removed to the Walloon colony of Esopus, in what is now Ulster county .¿
* Paulding's New Amsterdam.
t See Coll. New-York Historical Society, 1814 and 1841.
t Coll. New-York Historical Society. Many of these Swedish colonists were Finns. Dunlap, vol. i. p. 127, shows how intimate was the relation kept up five years after this period, between the Swedes of New-York and those on the Delaware ; the latter of whom, being the most numerous, were confidently appealed to by the former in 1670, to assist them in building a place of worship, and the governor gave permission to a Swedish gentlemen, upon petition of the ministers and elders of the Lutheran Church of New-York, to go to Delaware to solicit benefactions for that purpose. The names of the Swedes, alike both of those who were transplanted to Manhattan, and those who remained upon the Delaware, soon changed and assimilated in sound to the names of the Dutch, German, or English neighborhoods that surrounded them. To a list of Swedish colonists given by Andrew Radman, there is the following note in the Rev. Mr. Clay's Annals of the Swedes on the Delaware. " The reader will perecive how much the orthography of many of the above names has changed in progress of time : Bengsten is now Bankson ; Bonde has become Boon ; Srensen, Swan-on : Gostasson, Justis ; Jonasson, Jones ; Jocum, Yocum; Kyn, Keen ; Hoppman, Hoffman ; Von Culen, Culen; Halling, Hew- lings; Wihler, Wheeler, etc." The American Scandinavian Society ought to look after the traditions of this colony, in reference to which the Rev. Mr. Clay, in the work above quoted, justly complains that " the geographers and historians of America, while they have been very particular in detailing the circumstances connected with the arrival and settlement of the English on James river, and of the Pilgrims in New England, scarcely mention that there was ever such a colony as the Swedes on the Delaware." But, alack for the poor Swedes, the merciless satire of Irving has given their last battle at Fort Christina such unhappy immor- tality, that neither poetry, preaching, nor Frederika Bremer could now ever effect for the BIRD-GRIP what the two former have done for the MAYFLOWER; whose
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In 1664 crowded in the cavalier followers of the now restored Stuarts, some of whom, (like the Pilgrim fathers.) had been sojourners, with their prince, in Holland, and spoke her language ; as did the brave Calvinist " Captain John Underhill with his wife," Lyon Gardiner, who also " had served in the low countries," and other English exiles and soldiers of fortune who preceded the cava- liers, and played an active part in the Indian wars of Long Island; where some of Charles II's Tangier officers took up their manor grants beside them, and in the mention of their neighborhood, bring up, to this day, their military service in Africa as immortalized in the quaint periods of old Pepys. Many were the manor grants made to these last comers amid the fair lands of New-York, when the bigotted English Duke, from which THE NIAGARA STATE takes its unmeaning provincial name, established a British government over the province.
Twenty years later, following the detached families of Norman Protestants, who had previously come hither through the ports of Holland, began thegreat Huguenot immigration into New-York, when so many families of persecuted Frenchmen migrated hither, and established themselves, some in the city of New-York, some on Staten Island, some at New Rochelle, in Westchester county. some near De Vrie's ancient station, in what is now Rockland county, and some, it is believed, in New Paltz, Ulster county.
In 1710 New-York, " originally only a field of wild-wood enterprize for the Dutch and Scotch fur trader, but at an carly day the chosen asylum of the French anti-Romanist and English anti- Puritan," became the asylum of three thousand German exiles. who, flying from the devastation of " the blazing Palatinate," migrated in one body to the valley of the Hudson; while the wary of Europe, and especially the discomfiture of the pretender to the British crown in 1715, sent hither many au English, Irish," and
very name alone can sink the whole Swedish navy of American omigration -- the Bird-grip, and Key of Calmer, the Swan, Eagle, and Golden Shark, the Fama, Charitas, Blac !:- cat, and Mercurius.
* The Irish immigration into New-York, which for several generations has perhaps exceeded that of any other race, seems not to have been very large before
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Scottish soldier, who fought under opposite banners abroad ;-- sent the banished captive, and his land-bountied conqueror to sit down side by side and cultivate the arts of peace together upon the genial soil of New-York.
The political history of our State in the intervening and sub- sequent years, incessantly brings up the names of different repre- sentations of all these races.
It is often a jarring history when we look to public life, but in . the private circle there seems to have been an early absorption of national peculiarities into one general colonial character, based in the main upon domestic habits .*
the Revolution ; although, (as in the case of the Irish Clintons intenmarrying with the Dutch De Witts, originating the former distinguished New-York family,) a genealogist would discover that Irish blood contributed at an early day to form the characteristic stock of New-York.
* That is according to the competent testimony of an enlightened European observer, who resided here for many years in the middle of the last century, when New-York was at her full social maturity, and when the witness to the condition of things here was the acute and discerning friend and correspondent of the critical. Dugald Stewart, the great metaphysician.
According to the intelligent Mrs. Grant of Laghan, whose delightful reminis- cences of early New-York, hive of late years found a singular counterpart in the pictures of Swedish society given by Fredrika Bremer, there were in her day but few youth of character or respectability, who had not made one or more expeditions to the frontiers, serving at least one campaign in the interminable wars on the Canadian frontier. Yet, the great simplicity of manners, the peace, security, and abundance which prevailed in the Valley of the Hudson, gave to that favored region a character of ahnost pastoral tranquillity. " This singular community," says the observing Scotch woman, " seemed to have a common stock, not only of sufferings and enjoymeats, but of information and ideas." Some pre-eminence in point of knowledge, there certainly was, yet those who possessed it seemed scarcely conscious of their superiority. The daily occasions which called forth the exertions of mind, sharpened sagarity, and strengthened character; avarice and vanity were there confined to very nar. ow limits; of money there was very little, (wampum beads being actually for a whole generation the principal medium of exchange,) and dress was, though in some instances valuable, not subject to the caprice of fashion ; the beasts of prey that haunted their enclosures, (for wolves and bears especially abound in this colony.) and the enraged savages that always hung threatening on their boundaries, made them more and more endeared to each other.
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The Pioneers of New-York then were, as we have seen, of any other than " Puritan Anglo-Saxon " origin. From the brown
In this calm infancy of society the rigors of law slept, because the fury of turbulent passions had not yet awakened it. Fashion, that whimsical tyrant of adult com- munities, had not yet erected her standard; " yet no person," says Mrs. Grant, " appeared uncouth or ill-bred, because there was no accomplished standard of comparison ; their manners, if not elegant and polished, were at least easy and independent, while servility and insolence were equally unknown." Belted in, as it were, by the formidable Iroquois on their northern and western border, and acknowledging those martial tribes as their chief bulwark against the allied Hurons and French of Canada, they were thus brought in immediate contact with those whom the least instance of fraud, insolence, or grasping meanness, might have converted from even valuable friends into resistiess enemies. They were thus, wa arc told, compelled at first to " assume a virtue if they had it not," while the daily pressure of circumstance, at last rendered that virtue habitual.
With regard to the New-York women of that day, the same writer bears par- ticular testimony that while their confined education precluded elegance of mind, the simplicity of their manners was as far removed as possible from vulgarity. " At the same time," she observes, " these unembellished females had more com- prehension of mind, more variety of ideas, more, in short, of what may be called original thinking, than could be easily imagined." Indeed it was on the women that the task of religious instruction chiefly devolved ; and the essentials rather than the ceremonials of piety, being instilled by them, the mothers of the colony were thus regarded with a reverence which gavo a simple earnestness to the character . when mixing in secular concerns.
Of the domestic, or rather the out-of-door pursuits of these simple housewh a, there is one charming picture which has como down to us. While the custom of the male head of the household cherishing some ancient tree planted immediately in front of the door-way, was almost universal in both town and country, alke in Albany and New-York, as well as in every rural settlement, each dwelling was adorned with its little garden, which was under the special care of the mistress of the family. The garden spot, devoted equally to flowers and esculent vegetables, was thought to evidence equally the advance of her taste and the condition of ler house-keeping. After describing these gardens as " extremely neat, but small, and not by any means calculated for walking in," the European resident ex line, " I think I yet see what I have so often beheld in both town and country, a respectable mistress of a family going out to her garden in an April moring, with her great calash, her little painted basket of seeds, and her robe over her shoulders, to her garden labors. These were by no means figurative ;
'From morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve,'
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plains of Normandy and the green vales of England; from the sunny hills of Savoy and the bleak wastes of Finland, came they
a woman in very easy circumstances and abundantly gentle in form and manners, would sow and plant, and rake, incessantly." These fair gardeners (we are also told) were likewise good florists, and displayed much emulation aud solicitude in their pleasing employment.
In connection with this glimpse of not uninteresting homely habits it may be worth while to recur to the condition of slavery in early New-York. So utterly is this institution now effaced from among us, that it has become difficult to realize how much is due to the far-seeing statesman and pure patriot, through whose instrumentality, chiefly, abolition was effected within our borders. Yet in no colony of our present Union did slavery more generally prevail than in that of New- York ; for while the social distinctions, depending upon taste and education, were quietly respected, there was here no division of society into two great classes, as at the south ; where one great landed proprietor could count hundreds of human beings as his serfs, while another of the same blood, was sunk almost below the servile tiller of the soil, by the very fact of his owning no property in any man but himself. For, while the number of slaves in any New- York family rarely exceeded a dozen, there was hardly a dwelling in the colony that did not shelter some of these family appendages. Slavery was indeed here literally " a domestic institu- tion." " There were no field negroes," no collection of cabins remote from the house, known as " the negro quarters." The slaves lived under the same roof, and partook of the same fare as the rest of the family, to which they belonged. They were scrupulously baptised teo, and shared the same religious instruction with the children of the' family. There was no especial law, we are told, preventing the barter of slaves; but a natural sentiment, which had grown into a custom, as compulsory as any law, prevented the separation of families ; and, above all, the sale of any child without the permission of the mother, who would often exercise her own caprice in desiguating its fature master. The exchange of slaves was also almost invariably limited to family relatives. When a negro woman's child attained the age of three years, it was solemnly presented, the first new year's day following, to the son, or daughter, or other young relation of the family, who was of the same sex with the child so presented ; and when in after years, the youthful master went out to seek his fortunes upon the frontiers, a thousand instances are related of the fidelity and devotion of these sable squires, amid the perils of the wilderness.
There is ons remark which I will venture to make, in connection with this branch of our subject, because ity truth may be, even at this late day, verified in Rockland, Orange, Kings, Queens, and other counties of this State, where the full- blooded descendants of the e negro slaves are still foand with their Africau features and complexions, wholly unchanged. In this colony alone was it customary,
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hither to this " land of a thousand lakes;" where blithely gathered the Salmon fisher of Erin's rivers, and the hunter of the Stag through Scottish heather, to ply their sport amid the forest fast-
among the rural population, (after the fashion of dealing with the household serfs of northern Europe, in the olden time,) to seat the menials at the lower end of the family board, but notwithstanding this familiar contact with the race, amalgamation, as I have already hinted, was utterly unknown to our forefathers. The mulatto mixturo was introduced here from other States. As a happy confirmation of the truth of this observation, derived from other sources, I may mention, that after writing thus far, I found, upon referring to the work from which I have already so freely quoted, the valuable testimony of its writer, given in the following words :-
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" It is but justice to record a singular instance of moral delicacy, distinguishing this settlement (the Colony of New-York,) from every other in the like circum- stances. Though from their simple and friendly modes of life, they were from infancy in habits of familiarity with their negroes, yet being early taught that nature had placed between them a barrier, which it was in a high degree criminal and disgraceful to pass, they considered a mixture of such distinct races with abhor- renee, as a violation of her laws. This greatly conduced to the preservation of family happiness and concord. It may be thought remarkable, that our forefathers, while deducing not only their general code of morality, but this special creed as to the preservation of castes from the Bible, likewise pretended to find in the same good book the most unquestionable authority for holding the black race in bondage. They imagined that they had found the negro condemned to perpetual slavery, and thoughit nothing remained for them but to lighten the chains of their fellow Christians after having made them such."
We have now to confess, that though the schoolinaster was abroad amony these primitive people, there were few of them, who, in the expressive language ef our day, could be called " pure intelligences."
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Of law, we are drily told by a contemporary, the generality of those people knew very little ; of philosophy, nothing at all, save as they found them both in the Bible ; the time-cherished possession of every family ; and often their only literary treasure. We have now the laws, the poetry, and philosophy, of which they were so deplorably ignorant ; yet the law-giver, the poet, and the philosopher, might perhaps perversely decide that the spirit which gives vitality to these elements of social elevation, was hardly more diffused than formerly. They either and all of them might declare that Order, the first and Highest lees of Heaven itself-that Truth and Naturalness, the basis of all poetry-that Happiness, the ultimate aim of all philosophy-though by no means so well understood as now, were practised nearly as well ; were enjoyed almost as generally as in our enlightened day .- Coll. New-York Historical Society.
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nesses of New-York, with men who had slaked the fever-thirst of battle in the Rhine and the Scheldt: whither too, to stamp our share in the heritage of England's wit and gaiety, and jocund spirit of prime fellowship, drifted the roystering companions of that " merry monarch," whose inborn selfishness has put many a genial heart for ever out of humor with kingly courtesy and cavalier mirth.
Now when we remember that stringent circumstance handles the plastic power in America which the mumbling fingers of time manages in older countries ; and revert to the character of Ken- tucky, as marked as that of any State in the Union, although it has originated, grown up, and developed itself since the Revolution, we need not wonder that a wholesome attrition of habits, opinions, and prejudices, rapidly developed in New-York a marked phase of society. A phase of society which the European visitor of nearly a hundred years ago characterized as " eminently liberal and tolerant, and marked by a happy fusion of national prejudices."* The free and hearty spirit of the veritable Knickerbocker was at that time fairly evolved from the soil of New-York; and it took not only the " Anglo-Saxon " but all the tribes of Europe to produce that social and political atmosphere in which the native genius of all countries has ever been cordially welcomed; and where that of New England, especially, has matured some of its noblest fruits. And those fruits-if I have fairly traced the meaning of New-York history, and justly interpreted the spirit of New-York institutions, can never righteously be plucked from the generous soil which nurtured them, to minister either to foreign national vanity, or to elevate any scholastic home theory of caste, origin, or religion! all of which the men of New- York, at the very inception of her coloni- zation; all of which they set aside for a different basis of citizenship. That basis, being simply domiciliation, and loyalty to the pride, honor, and dignity of the commonwealth.
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