USA > New York > New York City > Walks in our churchyards; old New York, Trinity Parish > Part 3
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known General J. Watts de Peyster. It is a famous family line, but as I stand by the side of the stone that covers but heaps of crumbling ashes, I know that none of these things are written down in the books of record that stand in the celestial archives, waiting to be opened for judgment. None, did I say ? The story of the gathering in of orphans into an asylum of refuge, the good deeds of a hand ready to give to all who were in want, are written there in letters of gold.
One of the most picturesque spots on Manhat- tan Island, and a relic of old times well worth a pilgrimage, is the old Watts mansion, at about 14Ist Street, and midway between 6th and 7th Avenues. For half a dozen blocks the streets have not been cut through and this part of the estate is a farm of substantial size, with all rural accessories. The great square house with its tall columns in front and its observatory which has seen a city grow up about it of late years, was a conspicuous object in the landscape when the Watts family transferred their country house from the East River and Madison Square to a spot which they were sure the slowly-growing city would not disturb for a couple of centuries. Now
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the authorities are eager to cut streets through the green sward and level the great groups of oaks and cottonwood that lend an air of age and dignity to the place. The old New York mer- chant and man of affairs was a comfortable sort of soul and liked to have his little farm and ample mansion on the upper part of the island of Man- hattan and of these few remain The Gracie man- sion is to be swallowed up in the East River Park in a few months, the " Grange " of Alexander Hamilton has been moved and remodelled into a new St. Luke's church, and none can tell how long the old Watts homestead and the newer stone mansion on the same street, a stately build- ing whose owners still bear the name of Watts, will resist the march of improvement. £ Old An- thony Lispenard Bleecker had a farm which reached from the Bowery to Minetta Lane and from Bond Street nearly to Houston, but not one acre of it now belongs to the family and only the name of the street near its lower boundary recalls the name of its early possessors. So goes the world of change. In one case a family name be- comes extinct in the direct line, in another its wealth is diverted into the hands of innumerable
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descendants, and we have no choice in the matter, even if we desired to make it or knew how to choose. And this is one of the lessons that a walk in the old churchyard, under the golden sun of October and amid falling leaves impresses upon the overworked harvesters in the world's field. The sheaves are golden but we cannot tell who shall gather them.
The other day, as we walked from the old Watts' place to the neighborhood of Hamilton Grange, Master Felix Oldboy who walked by my side and held my hand tightly in his own, said : " New York is growing up into the woods- look ! " Through little knots of forest trees and across boulders of vine-clad primeval rocks, we could see blocks of new houses that looked as if they had been dropped there in a night. Close at hand a laborer was plying his axe against the trunk of a lordly oak, undoing in an hour the work of centuries. With the stroke of the cruel steel there came back to me the remembrance of an old-time school in which, some fifty years ago, I sat under the ministrations of an old-fashioned teacher. Like many of his kind, he loved to hear himself talk, and once in a while he uttered a
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thought worth keeping in memory. One of his maxims, frequently heard, was this: "The boy who would injure a shade tree would kill a man." It was an exaggeration, of course, but I think it taught us all to have a reverence for the leafy children of the forest.
Often when I pass St. Paul's I think of old Sex- ton Brown, who planted the ancient elms in the churchyard. He passed away long decades ago, and his grandson grew up to be a Bishop of the Church and died, but the trees still live and give out a grateful shade. What hands planted those in Trinity's garden of the dead I do not know, but they deserve to be chronicled, for they builded better than they knew and through leaf and branch have spoken words of hope and cheer to countless thousands. If the many men who plod outside will try my prescription, and come within the sacred enclosure and walk under the over- arching trees and between the graves, they will gather health and something better still, for, even in November the bare boughs will whisper to them of a spring that is coming after the snows of winter, and of a new life that will break the sleep of bud and leaf and blossom and make all the trees of the wood to rejoice before the Lord !
ST. PAUL'S CHAPEL ..
IV.
THERE has been a fall of snow upon the church- yards, and the white flakes, after whirling like disembodied blossoms of summer over the house- tops and through the streets, settled down upon the graves of the blessed dead as silently and sweetly as if they were a benediction from heaven. With the next day, the sun shone brightly, and up through many a rent in the white coverlet of the snow, the grass, that had kept its greenness in spite of wintry blasts, peeped triumphantly again, speaking of resurrec- tion in the language God gave it; when, after having created it and realized its loveliness, He " saw that it was good." A ragged urchin stood at the iron railing of the churchyard of old Trin- ity, and pointing to the grass that was struggling up to the sunshine, said to a boy as unkempt as himself : "See, Billy, it's summer yet under the snow!" The lad who spoke may never know why a man with white hair who was passing and heard him, pressed something into his hand and with " Thank you, my boy," walked quickly away, leaving him dazed with astonishment. Yet it
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may be that the chance word of the child of the streets-if anything be chance in a world where no sparrow falls to the ground without notice- has already been sunshine upon the snows of a heart that had thought its roots of tenderness buried beyond hope of resurrection.
There is to me a peculiar significance in the fact that the oldest known grave in Trinity church- yard is that of a child. It is as if He who knew the hearts of men and understood the wild cur- rents of human passion that swell and roar around this quiet acre of the dead, had again taken a little child and set him in the midst of the living. Here is the quaint record of a babe whose death left a vacant chair in a New York household of more than two centuries ago :
W .C. HEAR . LYES . THE . BODY OF . RICHARD . CHVRCH ER · SON · OF · WILLIA M . CHVRCHER . WHO . DIED . THE . 5 OF . APRIL 1681 . OF . AGE 5 YEARS AND . 5 . MONTHES
The brown and broken slab which bears this
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inscription stands in the nothern half of the churchyard, is of sandstone, and on its back are cut in high relief a winged hour glass and a skull and cross bones. The artistic care bestowed upon this mute memorial shows that the little one left aching hearts as well as a vacant chair behind him. Next in point of age, and standing next to it in the enclosure, is the tombstone of a young girl, who was evidently a sister of little Richard Churcher. Its inscription reads : " Here Lyeth the Body of Anne Churcher. Died May the 14, 1691, Aged 17 Years and 3 Quarters. Buryed May the 16, 1691."
When these graves were dug, New York, a little city of barely three thousand inhabitants, had but recently come into possession of the English. The members of the established church held ser- vice in a little chapel in the Fort, to which Queen Anne had presented a silver communion set, and Trinity parish had not been organized. The first church edifice was begun in 1696 and finished in 1697. In the Governor's glebe in which it was erected a graveyard already existed, and when in May of 1697 the Assembly, with the approval of the Governor and Council, passed an act by which
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" a certain church and steeple lately built in the city of New York, together with a parcel of ground adjoining " was to be known as Trinity Church, this burial spot was included, and the shadow of the spire has ever since rested upon the tombs of the young brother and sister. They passed away in one of the most unquiet epochs that the city has ever known. The revolution of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the imprisonment of the seven bishops in the Tower by James the Second of England and the revolution which raised William of Orange to the throne of Great Britain, created terrible alarm on this side of the ocean and finally bore fruit in an uprising which made Jacob Leis- ler, as a champion of Protestantism, the virtual ruler of New York. On the very day in which Anne Churcher was borne to her grave, Leisler was hung, on a charge of treason, in his own gar- den on Park Row, about where the statue of Ben- jamin Franklin now stands, and was buried at the foot of the scaffold, to be disinterred and carried to an honored grave a few years later. There was a striking contrast in the two funerals on that stormy day of May (for history says it was tem- pestuous) and between the fate of the fair young
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girl and this first and last execution in New York for a political crime.
I like to find tombstones erected over the dust of little children. It is a matter of obligation to place a stone upon the grave of the dead states- man, soldier or merchant, but the babe is apt to be forgotten except by the mother that nursed it, and the world does not always take account of these infants of a span whose angels behold our Father's face. One cannot help but think the better of human nature when he comes across the memorials of white souls that cast no shadow in the world and of little feet that left no print be- hind them save on the loving hearts they left be- hind when they walked with God up the hills of Beulah. A strange character in this city, who was known to everybody two generations ago as " the mad poet," said, when he lay dying in one of our hospitals, " In Heaven I shall have what I love most-plenty of fresh air, flowers and little children." I have always thought that the man with such a heart was certainly not more crazy than his critics.
In the southern half of the churchyard is a tombstone which has withstood the storms of
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more than one hundred and thirty years, and which attracted my notice even as a boy because of the quaintness of the verses which testify to the virtues of a child. More than forty years have passed since I first read them and they preach more powerfully now than then, in the light of the intervening days. The inscription says that beneath the stone "lies ye Body of Mary Wragg," and that she "departed this Life, Oct. 29, 1759, in ye IIth year of her Age." Then follows this remarkable tribute to her memory :
Her days Whear short as ye Winter's Sun from Dust she came to Heaven return. Beneath this Child a-sleeping Lies to Earth whose ashes Lent More Glorious shall hereafter Rise tho' not more Inocent.
When the archangle's Trump shall Blow and Souls and Bodyes Joyn, What Crowds will wish their lives Below Had been as short as thine.
It is noticeable in connection with this inscrip- tion that our ancestors were not always gifted in the art of spelling, and indeed nobody thought of criticising so great a man as George Washington because he was not as familiar as he might have
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been with the mysteries of the spelling book. Not far from the tombstone last mentioned are two small headstones which stand side by side and indicate the graves of two infants belonging to the same family, who successively bore the name which is spelled "Hellen " on one stone and " Hellin " on the other. The same peculiarity is even observable in some of the family names, which, as graven on stone, differ from the com- monly received nomenclature.
In walking among these ancient tombstones I am grimly reminded of a remark made by the late Rev. Dr. Hallam, of New London. Sitting in the library of Bishop Williams, at Middletown, Connecticut, he startled that prelate by abruptly exclaiming, " I wonder whether we shall have to live in the next world with the sort of cherubim that we see carved on tombstones. I really hope not, for I fancy that it might be disagree- able." The fancy might readily be forgiven by one who has made a study of the winged heads that adorn many of the funereal slabs in Trinity churchyard. They are of every degree of grue- someness, only each a little more horrible than the others. Yet the artists meant well and have
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discovered their mistake by this time. That there is no accounting for tastes is a truism learned early in life, and some of these memorial stones emphasize the fact. One in particular which con- sists of two slabs joined in one, has a skull carved in relief at the head of each division of the slab, but turned in different directions. The inscrip- tion on one side is "T. S., H. S., D. S., I. S., S. S., 1731," and on the other " H. L., 1731." As a bid to provoke curiosity the inscriptions are a success.
I have spoken of the variation in the spelling of family names, and a conspicuous instance is the inscription on the stone which marks " Mari- nus Willit's Vault." His autograph reads "Mari- nus Willett," and by this name he is equally dis- tinguished in martial and civic annals. The ca- reer of this illustrious son of a Long Island farmer covers a wide stretch of this country's his- At eighteen he was lieutenant in a colo- nial regiment that participated in the disastrous attack on Ticonderoga in 1758; at thirty-five he was one of the most active leaders of the Liberty Boys in this city; as colonel of a Continental regiment he accompanied Gen. Montgomery in
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the expedition against Quebec and fought at Monmouth; made a Brigadier-General by Presi- dent Washington, he fought in the Indian wars; subsequently he was sheriff and mayor of the city, and in 1830, in his ninety-first year, his body was laid at rest in the family vault. As I stood by his grave and looked around the sacred enclosure, I could not help thinking of the change that had been wrought since his day in the conduct of our municipal affairs. Elected Mayor in 1807, his hands were upheld by a Board of Aldermen whose members were men of acknowledged ability and integrity, who accepted the office as a civic duty. They were the fathers of the city, indeed, and to the fact that they held the administration of muni- cipal affairs to be a grave responsibility, New York is indebted for its present prosperity. Close to the tomb of Mayor Willett are the ashes of some of the men who served with him in the city's councils. Among these were Peter Mesier, who was Alderman from 1807 to 1818; John Slidell, who held the same office in 1807 and 1808; Augustine H. Laurence, Alderman from 1809 to 1816 and Wynant Van Zandt, Jr., who served as Alderman from 1802 to 1806. They were all
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gentlemen of high social standing, eminent in business and professional life, and were members of the vestry of Trinity Church. But we can hardly fancy a vestryman of to-day consenting to allow his name to be mentioned in connection with the office of Alderman.
Near the railing at the Rector Street side of the churchyard is a stone which is liable to escape the scrutiny of most eyes by its modest insignifi- cance. It bears two inscriptions. The first, " G. Bend's Vault" is indistinct and evidently much older than the second, which reads, "Bishop Benj. Moore and Charity His Wife." Second Bishop of New York, President of Columbia Col- lege, an accomplished scholar and a man of rare loveliness of character, the entire ministerial life of Benjamin Moore was identified with Trinity Parish. The records show that during the thirty- seven years of his connection with Trinity Church, he baptized more than three thousand infants and adults and solemnized no less than three thousand five hundred marriages. My own family Bible shows that in 1804 my grandfather was married by him, and the other day as I looked at the little stone half hidden among the grass and snow, I
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could not help wondering if they had met and talked the wedding over in that land where there are no such ceremonials.
In the early days of the Parish, the Bishop of London was the nominal rector of Trinity Church, and several years before the war of the Revolu- tion broke out young Benjamin Moore went across the Atlantic and was ordained deacon and priest by the Bishop of London in the chapel of the Episcopal palace at Fulham. But he did not leave his heart in the mother country. At the pretty country-seat of the widow of Captain Thomas Clarke, formerly of the British army, which extended from Twentieth to Twenty-third Streets and from Ninth Avenue to the river, he found his help-meet in her daughter Charity-a name most appropriate to the gentleness of charac- ter which distinguished both husband and wife. Captain Clarke called his place Chelsea, in honor of the home into which England gathers her vet- eran and invalided soldiers, and the designation, which afterwards gave its name to a lovely, rural village clustered on the banks of the Hudson, still adheres to the locality, though all traces of village lines were wiped out years ago. At this spot
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Bishop Moore passed the latter part of his life, dispensing a generous hospitality, and partly be- cause of his profession and in part for some fancy as to its shape, his house was known in the neigh- borhood as " The Pulpit." Cut down to the di- mensions of a single block, the old tree-clad place remained as a landmark up to some thirty years ago, and I recall its loveliness vividly as a rustic oasis in city streets. But to my eyes it was en- chanted ground for the reason that in the old house hidden among the trees dwelt Clement C. Moore, the man-for whose profound scholarship and for the fact that he was the son of Bishop Moore I did not care-who had written the child's jingle of the century :
" "Twas the night before Christmas."
Looking back through the sweet associations of more than half a century of Christmas days, and writing with the fragrant dawn of another Christ- mas upon us, I know not what happier fate could befall one than to have generations of little ones rise up to call him blessed because of the work of his pen, which has added a fresh charm to the
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season that belongs specially to them by right of inheritance from the babe of Bethlehem.
As I close this day's walk through the church- yard of old Trinity, a voice from the secular press calls attention to a forgotten grave and in doing honor to the dust which it encloses, pointedly emphasizes the great historical value of these monumental stones. Two gentlemen wandering through the middle north side, came to a moss covered slab, nearly hidden by the sod. The let- ters of the inscription, worn by the weather of nearly two centuries, were almost undecipherable, and it needed patient tracing to read the legend : " Benj. Faneuil, Died March 31, 1719, Aged 50 yrs. 8 mos. Born in Rochell, France." All the world has heard of Faneuil Hall, in Boston, fam- ous as the " Cradle of American Liberty," built by Peter Faneuil and by him presented to Boston in 1740. But few New Yorkers know that Ben- jamin Faneuil, father of Peter Faneuil, was a resi- dent of this city, and sleeps beneath the trees of Trinity churchyard. The family, driven out of France by the cruel revocation of the Edict of Nantes by which Protestants were tolerated in that kingdom, came to this country with a large
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colony of Huguenots in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Industrious, godly and de- vout, they were a welcome addition to the pop- ulation of New York, and they were not long in building a church of their own on Pine Street- now known as the Episcopal Church Du Saint Esprit-and in founding within sight of the salt waves of the Sound a New Rochelle which should recall at least by name the memory of their old home. Their identity as a distinct class has long been lost, but old men have told me that they have a distinct remembrance of the throng of worshippers who came to the city every Sunday to worship in the Pine Street church. They left New Rochelle at dawn and walked to the city in a body, men, women and children, returning at nightfall, and thinking nothing of the journey in comparison with the blessing they sought and found. When the heat and cold of earth are ended and the sunshine of the resurrection has come, and these devout children of the kingdom go trooping up to the great white throne, I won- der if some of us who have had more privileges will not be glad to sit at the feet of those men of simple faith ?
,
V.
A PERSON has written to one of the daily papers suggesting that a monument shall be erected in Trinity churchyard to the memory of Benjamin Faneuil, father of the patriot who gave Faneuil Hall to Boston. But unfortunately there are scores of candidates for immortality in marble ahead of the worthy old Huguenot, and if once the special monument business is entered upon it will not be ended until the pretty rural burial place is trans - formed into a grove of glittering shafts. Begin- ning with such men as Bishop Moore, Robert Fulton, Alexander Hamilton, Gen. Willett, Fran- cis Lewis, signer of the Declaration of Independ- ence, the Earl of Stirling, Gen. Lamb, Chief Jus- tice Horsmanden, and a host of old time worthies, where shall the list end ? The shaft in modern times has become merely the marble finger that points down to a grave in which the erstwhile possessor of riches is buried, and is no longer the indication of love and trust that looks up to Heaven. Far better is the suggestion of the Rev. Dr. Mulchahey that old St. Paul's shall be made a Pantheon of memorials to the illustrious dead
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of the church. If this were done the old walls would become a history of the city in stone. The stranger would pass through the aisles and read in every nook and corner the story of heroic pa- triotism, of lives devoted to the welfare of church, commonwealth and city, of the men who in each century towered above their fellows crowned with laurels that were not visible until they were dead. Men would read the records with a quickening of sluggish hearts such as they had not known for years, and it would not need the presence of the vested priest in the chancel and the pealing of the organ, to send them across the threshold of the church with the feeling that they had never stood so close to the glories of eternity.
If, on the other hand, I were asked to whom the first shaft in the churchyard of Trinity should be erected, I should say, unhesitatingly, to the old merchants of New York. It was a merchant and vestryman of Trinity Church who signed the Declaration of Independence, and gave his fortune freely to the patriot cause. Other merchants and vestrymen drew the sword, and like General Matthew Clarkson, won high military hon rs in the field. From the business men of New York
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the parish has for two hundred years drawn the prudent, sagacious counsellors who have so ad- ministered its affairs as to have made it a blessing to the entire municipality. At the upper end of the churchyard stands a shaft to the unknown soldiers of the Revolution whose dust mingles with the soil of God's acre, and it would be an act of justice to balance it by a shaft at the lower end telling how much the parish owes to the business men whose graves are scattered over the ground. In a book that has to do with the old merchants of New York, and that was written some thirty years ago, I read, recently, that " a fair test of the standing of a man in this city is to be found in the fact that he has been a Governor of the New York Hospital." Then the writer goes on to say that "perhaps the best test, as it is the oldest, for selecting worthy men, is the corpora- tion of Trinity Church. For 160 years that so- ciety has selected its vestrymen from the very cream of the cream of our best citizens. You cannot point to a black sheep in the entire list from 1698." Is not this a compliment and in- asmuch as business men furnished the large ma- jority of the vestry, said I not well that the first
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shaft ought to be to the memory of the old mer- chants of the metropolis ?
But if I were a vestryman, I would vote on every possible occasion against disfiguring the grounds with a shaft. I like the churchyard as it is, with its crumbling stones, mossy inscriptions and quaint records of the dead. It has a rural air that is in keeping with its history of two cen- turies, and in the course of half a century I have become so well acquainted even with the wild- eyed cherubim that haunt tops of the gravestones that I have come to fancy they look kindly at me when I stand before them yet once again to read the records over which they keep watch and ward, and I would not for the world exchange them for the smooth lustre of polished granite and a new inscription. No, let the ancient tombstones stand sentinel as long as their rocky fibres will hold to- gether. They are at their worst just now, as to looks. But walking under elm and sycamore I fancy that I can already hear the stirring of the infant leaves in the buds at the end of the branches and I know that the bluebird will be here before my next paper is written, and with coming of bird and leaf and grass and the sunshine of Spring the
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