USA > New York > New York City > Walks in our churchyards; old New York, Trinity Parish > Part 5
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VII.
" MY beloved spake, and saith unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo. the winter is passed, the rain is over and gone ; the flowers appear on the earth ; the time of the singing birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." Was there ever a sweeter song of spring than this which echoed in the vine- yards of the Holy Land three thousand years ago when the tender grape leaves "gave a good smell " and the orchards of pomegranates were in blossom ? Its melody sweeps by me now as I walk in the old churchyard and mark how the air is fragrant with the freshness of the buds that have groped their way through the brown earth, with the scent of blooms on the lilac bush and the delicate odor of leaves that have slumbered all winter in the heart of the elm and dreamed of the spring upon which they are entering. The birds have come with the warm south wind to make music at the wakening of tree and flower, and they thrill with joy as they hail this new crea- tion and each tiny, swelling breast is a fountain of gratitude which shames the race that receives so
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much and gives back so little. If there were no other preachers of the resurrection, bird and bud would proclaim it in this old churchyard to the living and in behalf of the dead.
For more than two hundred years the time of the singing birds has come to some of those who now sleep under the shadow of the massive pile which is known to a new generation as old Trinity. A score of years before the first church edifice of the parish was erected, a burial plot was opened by the city authorities outside of the wall of pali- sades built for the city's defence and this was added to the church grounds a few years after the church was opened for service. It was a sightly place. The green sward stretched down to the river and ended in a bold bluff. At the end of the city wall was a green knoll known as Oyster Pasty Mount, surrounded by a battery of guns. The commerce of the little metropolis passed by in sight of the stones above the sleeper's dust. Church and graveyard lay beyond the toil and traffic of the town, embowered in green and amid a rural landscape. The original charter of Trinity parish provided for the erection of a church " near " to the city of New York. It is difficult
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to imagine the scene that was presented to the eyes of the first worshippers in the church that was even in that day the pride of the city. They came from city homes on the Bowling Green, in Hanover Square, on Queen Street and in the Broad Way and as they neared the church door they saw green fields stretching before them and a river on either hand. At their feet, then as now, were the graves of the dead. But there were no noises of the workaday world to break upon the music of the wild-wood singers and trees of the primeval forest stood sentinel above the graves and wild flowers of the wood crowned them with their dainty beauty. In the warm, bright sun- shine of to-day and with the sweet scents of spring around me, as I close my eyes for a moment I can leap across the separating gulf of two centu- ries and see the little churchyard in its framework of green fields, bits of forest, lumbering windmills and distant villas, a spot most fit to be called GOD'S acre.
One of the earliest burials in the immediate neighborhood of the church edifice was that of a noble English lady, daughter and sister of an earl and a viscountess in her own right. When the
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workmen were removing the foundation of the tower of Trinity Church, in 1839, a vaulted grave was opened which was found to contain the frag- ments of a coffin, a large plate and the ashes of Lady Cornbury, wife of the royal Governor of New York, who died in this city August 11, 1706, and was buried in the churchyard, close to Broad- way and opposite Wall Street. A daughter of the Earl of Richmond, she was in her own right Baroness Clifton, and her arms, together with her pedigree, date of death and age were found rudely graven on the plate. Lord Cornbury was son of the Earl of Clarendon and first cousin to Queen Anne. A man of many faults, he was devoted to his wife, watched by her bedside night and day and mourned her sincerely. His name is affixed to the charter of Trinity Church. A new vault was provided for the remains of Lady Cornbury and in this the poor relics of the dead, with the plate of silver whose rude emblazonment made a strange contrast to its pompous display of heraldic pride, were deposited. Solitary and alone in its tomb, the dust of this noble and gracious lady, who perished in her youth in a land of strangers, has echoed for nearly two hundred years the foot-
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steps of busy men and the roar of a multitude who long since ceased to pay respect to royalty.
Not far from the resting place of one who could call England's Queen her cousin and who in life had worn a coronet in court circles, is a grave lying hard by the north door of the church, which illustrates strikingly the strange contrasts pre- sented by Trinity churchyard. The slab which was restored and reverently placed above it by the corporation of the parish tells in quaint style the story of a useful life. A printer sleeps be- neath it. But he was a man as exemplary for his piety, patriotism and integrity as for his work as a craftsman. Born in England, he emigrated to Pennsylvania before the city of Philadelphia was laid out. In 1693 he removed to New York and established the first printing press in this city. Here in his shop on Queen Street, at the sign of the Bible, the first book published in the colony, "A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman Leaving the University, concerning his Behaviour and Conversation in the World " was "printed and sold by Wm. Bradford, Printer to his Majesty, King William." Here also was isued, Oct. 16, 1725, the first newspaper in the city of New York,
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a small foolscap sheet called the "New York Ga- zette." A man of enterprise he was the first who printed an English edition of the Bible in the Middle Colonies ; the first who printed the Eng- lish Prayer Book here; founder of the first paper mill in the country; printer of the first map of New York ; for upwards of fifty years printer to the colonial government and the earliest champion of the freedom of the press and its rights. To such a man an Earl's coronet would be a bauble. The venerable printer could better appreciate the pension he had earned by half a century's labor in the service of the government. Indeed, printer Keimer of Philadelphia, from whom Benjamin Franklin learned his trade, was moved to envy by the liberality which made Bradford passing rich on sixty pounds a year, and the envious dweller in the City of Brotherly Love closed some dog- gerel upon the event with these lines :
"Though quite past his age and old as my gran'num, The government pays him pounds sixty per annum."
Every pilgrim to Trinity churchyard can read the inscription on Bradford's tomb, but it is not so easy to find the queer, old-fashioned obituary no-
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tice written by one of his own apprentices who sleeps in an honored grave on the other side of the sacred enclosure. The "New York Gazette, Revived in the Weekly Post Boy," for Monday, May 25, 1752, says: "Last Saturday Evening departed this Life, Mr. Wm. Bradford, Printer, of this City, in the 94th Year of his Age: as the Printer of this Paper liv'd upwards of eight Years Apprentice to him, he may be presumed to know something of Him. He came to America upwards of 70 years ago, and landed at the Place where Philadelphia now stand, before that City was laid out, or a House built there : He was Printer to this Government upwards of 50 years; and was a man of great Sobriety and Industry ; a real Friend to the Poor and Needy ; and kind and affable to all ; but acquiring of an Estate happened not to be his Faculty, notwithstanding his being here at a Time when others, of not half his good Quali- fications, amassed considerable Ones : He was a True Englishman and his Complaisance and Af- fection to his Wives, of which he had two, was peculiarly great; and without the least Exaggera- tion it may be said that what he had acquired with the first, by the same Carriage was lost with
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the second : He had left off Business for several years past, and being quite worn out with old Age and Labour, his Lamp of Life went out for want of Oil." As a picture of a good man's life, ap- preciative but never seeking to flatter, this memo- rial will take rank with the old masters of litera- ture. The inscription on the tombstone gives the age of Wm. Bradford as ninety-two and is prob- ably correct, though his obituary notice adds a year. In fact it has become illegible through fracture of the stone, but where it drops into poetry it can readily be read :
" Reader reflect how soon you'll quit this Stage : You'll find but few attain to such an Age. Life's full of pain, Lo there's a Place of Rest Prepare to meet your God then you are Blest."
In a vault on the south side of the church and under a brownstone slab that bears his name and a date, rest the ashes of Hugh Gaine, who for more than forty years was a printer and publisher in this city, and from 1792 to 1807 was one of the vestrymen of the parish. Born in 1726, he em- barked in business soon after reaching his major- ity, and kept a book store in Hanover Square under the sign of the Bible and Crown. Here in
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1752 he established the "New York Mercury" which became in time an ardent advocate of the rights of the colonies. As delineated by the events of his life, Mr. Gaine seems to have been an amiable sort of gentleman whose integrity and morality were above suspicion, but with whom business was business, for during the occupation of this city by the British his paper maintained the cause of the king and turned the cold shoul- der to the "rebels." After the evacuation of the English forces in 1783, he retired to New Jersey for a while, but, on petitioning the Legislature of New York for pardon, he was allowed to remain here. His book store was continued under another sign than that of the Crown and he lived to become a popular citizen under the republic, passing away in 1807 at the ripe age of eighty- one.
Another printer who sleeps in the southern half of the graveyard is James Oram. The white marble headstone which marks his place of burial says that he died on the 26th of October, 1826, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. Another ex- isting memorial of his busy life is the " New York Price Current and Shipping List," which he es-
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tablished in 1795, and which is still published and is a valuable property. When the completion of the Erie Canal was celebrated in this city in 1825 by a great procession in which all the local crafts and trades were represented, the printers displayed in their ranks a platform on wheels drawn by four horses and on the platform was placed the library chair of Benjamin Franklin, in which the vener- able James Oram, noticeable always by his re- markable likeness to that eminent printer and philosopher, was seated. Before the next year had passed, he was called away to his reward.
In one of the vestry rooms of Trinity Church . is a mural tablet which bears the following in- scription :
In memory of Thomas Swords Who was for fifty years an Eminent Publisher and Bookseller in this city And for thirty-five years a Vestryman of this Church. Born in Fort George, Saratoga County, N. Y. Jany 5th 1764. Died in this City June 27th 1843.
This tablet has a peculiar interest for me, be- cause I can recall so vividly the old church book ...
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store of Stanford & Swords, at 137 Broadway, which was not only the gathering place of the clergy, but was frequented by all literary men and antiquarians because it was the oldest establish- ment of its kind in the city. I remember dis- tinctly the wrinkled, pleasant face of "Uncle Tommy " Stanford, as he was wont to be called by his intimates, and can see him moving about among his books in the dress coat which was then habitually worn by many professional and busi- ness men, and his invariable habiliments of black. His partner, Mr. James R. Swords, was a man of fine appearance, genial manners and great popu- larity. The original firm of T. & J. Swords was established 1787, and its place of business in Pearl Street was known familiarly as the " Church House " before the century had closed. Thomas Swords, the senior partner, had commenced his business career in the employ of Hugh Gaine. The partnership of T. & J. Swords was continued until the retirement of Mr. James Swords in 1829, and the business was continued under the firm name of Swords & Stanford, and subsequently Stanford & Swords until the death of Mr. James R. Swords in 1855, soon after which the old house
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ceased to exist. Mr. Swords was but thirty-nine years of age at the time of his death, but such was his popularity that unusual honors were paid him. On the day of his funeral the publishers and booksellers closed their places of business and attended the funeral at Trinity Chapel in a body. This has never been done since. The tide of traffic in the city has become too great to be stemmed by a funeral.
Thomas Swords, founder of the famous old firm of publishers, was a son of Thomas Swords of Maryborough, Town of Swords, Ireland, who came to this country as an officer in the English His father was in garrison at Fort George army.
when he was born there, in 1764. In the church- yard of old St. Paul's, in this city, is a tombstone with the following inscription : "Near this spot were deposited the remains of Lieutenant Thomas Swords, late of his Brittanic Majesty's 55th Regi- ment of Foot, who departed this life on the 16th of January, 1780, in the 42d year of his age; and underneath this tomb lies all that was mortal of Mary Swords, relict of the said Lieutenant Thomas Swords, who, on the 15th day of Septem- ber, 1798, and in the 55th year of her age, fell a
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victim to the pestilence which then desolated the city of New York. As a small token of respect and to commemorate the names of those who deserved and commanded the esteem of all who knew them, this tomb was erected Anno Domini 1799." The pestilence which then swept the little city was the yellow fever which was so fatal that "nearly one-half of those cases reported died," and over two thousand deaths were regis- tered in a few weeks.
I have seen an edition of Bishop Hobart's "Companion to the Altar " bearing the imprima- tur of P. A. Mesier and the date 1823, and in the southern portion of Trinity churchyard is the burial vault of Abraham and Peter Mesier, built far back in the last century. The family was famous in the annals of the city and the church, doing faith- ful service in the municipal as well as the parish corporation. Its members were wealthy, too, for they lost no less than fifteen houses by the de- structive fire of August 1778. There was an
Abraham Mesier who was Assistant Alderman of the Out Ward in 1698. Peter Mesier served as Alderman of the West Ward from 1759 to 1762, and his son Abraham was Assistant Alderman
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from 1770 to 1773. Then came Peter A. Mesier, merchant, Alderman of the First Ward from 1807 to 1818 and a vestryman of Trinity parish at the same time. David Lydig, founder of the New York family of that name, married the beautiful daughter of the first Peter Mesier. In the "Diary of Philip Hone," under date of December 14, 1847, I find the following entry: " Another old friend is gone. Peter A. Mesier died suddenly, on Wednesday night, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. I attended the funeral as a pall-bearer this afternoon, from his home, No. 51 Dey Street, next door to the one in which I was married, more than forty-six years ago. The funeral ceremony was performed in Trinity Church." Mr. Mesier kept a book and stationery store, first on Pearl Street and afterwards on Wall Street, opposite the Man- hattan Bank. It was a favorite haunt of business men in the first quarter of the century, because it gave a literary flavor to trade, and for the reason that the head of the house was a pillar of church, state and society.
Turning from the graves of these honored rep- resentatives of the art preservative of all arts- the printer's craft-I pause to read some of the
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verses on the headstones that stand closely clus- tered together in the older portion of the church- yard. There is a fascination about graveyard poetry which can neither be explained nor resisted. To-day, I am in the mood for reading the expres- sions of faith in their resurrection which are graven on the tombstones of these sleepers. Sometimes the versification is rude, buth the faith is always sublime. Many stones bear that mag- nificent stanza, beginning, " My flesh shall slum- ber in the ground "; an infant's headstone shows the legend, "Sleep, lovely babe, and take your rest "; an old man's tomb tells that " So He giveth His beloved sleep." Everywhere is the testimony that death is but a sleep to be followed by a joy- ful resurrection. It is testimony in stone to the doctrine that was last to be believed and first to be doubted by the early disciples of Christianity --- the resurrection of the body. I had just risen from reading in the published letter of a renegade to the faith, a statement that the majority of the clergy of the church had ceased to hold to this old-fashioned dogma, and that it had grown obso- lete among the faithful. I knew that this was a palpable falsehood, but I felt that I needed the com-
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fort of these testimonies of the rock and the added witness of bird and bud and blossom. There would be for me no power in The Arm that could not raise my flesh from the dust. The slumber beneath the sod would lose all the sweet- ness of its promise of rest, but for the certainty of waking and looking into the eyes of the loved and lost and being welcomed by them. And to be a stranger in the house of many mansions, chasing after phantasmal apparitions, looking in vain for familiar faces and finding only the airy nothings of agnosticism, would be torment even to the most unselfish of souls. God be thanked that every day, with every service in the old church, there comes to every sleeper in the old churchyard the undying testimony of the living worshippers, "I believe in the resurrection of the dead."
VIII.
THE graves of the unknown dead in the upper half of Trinity churchyard are more numerous than the tombs of those whose names are regis- tered in the burial records. The greater part of this section was a city cemetery for twenty years before the first church building was erected, and I have heard that there is a tombstone there which bears an inscription in Dutch to the memory of a maiden from Holland, who died in 1639, but I have never been able to find it. I had the story from an antiquarian who insisted that the date of the inscription was given in the Dutch language and not in numerals and therefore it had escaped my eye. The grave may be there, though the old city charter, granted by Governor Dougan in the time of James the Second, and bearing date of 1686, speaks of "the new burial place without the gate of the city." When the young Dutch maiden passed away, New York was a little Dorp, or village whose houses clustered around that part of the city which is now called Coentie's Slip and the Bowling Green. It was a long and dreary road by which they carried the dead girl's body
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from her home beside the river to the green hill far away from the little settlement.
There are other unknown graves in this portion of the churchyard which no good citizen can con- template without a thrill of pride, and which the corporation of old Trinity has honored fitly by the erection of the only monumental pile to be found in the enclosure. This costly structure faces Pine Street and calls to the hurrying multitudes who bask in the sunshine of liberty, to pause and remember the patriot dead who gave their lives that the land might be free. In the immediate neighborhood of the tall gothic shaft lie in un- marked graves a little army of soldiers of the Revolution. They were brought here for burial from the loathsome cells of the Provost Jail in the Fields-now the Hall of Records in the City Hall Park-from the sugar houses in which they were closely packed and left to die of starvation and disease, and from the old Huguenot Church in Pine Street which had been turned into a hospital. Trinity Church had been burned down in Septem- ber, 1776, when the British army under Lord Howe occupied the city, and the flames at the same time swept the entire west side of Broadway
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as far as St. Paul's Chapel. The graveyard be- came a scene of desolation and so continued for the seven long years of captivity. No one was interred there except the dead American prison- ers and the interments usually took place at night, without funeral ceremonies, and with cruel haste. Philip Freneau, the spirited poet of the patriot cause, who was for some time a captive in the prison-ship Scorpion, moored in the Hudson within sight of the graveyard, wrote that "suc- cessive funerals gloomed each dismal day " of his captivity and added :
" By feeble hands their shallow graves were made; No stone memorial o'er their corpses laid : In barren sands and far from home they lie, No friend to shed a tear when passing by."
Among the builders of vaults in Trinity church- yard, who were nearly always persons of distinc- tion and wealth in the city or colony, there are some names which may almost be classed with the unknown. The name has been lost to the re- membrance of the living through the breaking up of the family, and death or removal have de- stroyed the historical link between the past and
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the present. A brown-stone slab hidden in the grass to the south of the church building, bears the legend, " Apthorpe Family Vault, 1801," yet the name is not to be found in the city directory. To the leaders of modern society it has no sig- nificance, and yet there was a time when for a long period the family held its own with the proudest of the colonial aristocracy. Until within a few months there stood on the westerly side of Ninth Avenue, between 9Ist and 92d Streets, a house famous in the annals of the city and the history of this country and known as the Ap- thorpe Mansion. It was stately and beautiful in its architecture, and its recessed portico, high arched door flanked by Corinthian columns, its oaken beams and carved panels were the admira- tion of the town for many a year. It was built by Charles Ward Apthorpe, one of the counsellors of the royal Governor Tyron, in 1767, and was furnished with regal splendor. Locusts, pines and elms shaded the house and diversified the land- scape of its beautiful park of two hundred acres. A scholar, a courtly gentleman and a born diplo- matist as well, Apthorpe kept free from political entanglements during the Revolution and was per-
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mitted to retain his property afterwards. In the winter of 1789 the beauty, wealth and fashion of the capital of the new republic, together with the most distinguished representatives of the govern- ment, were gathered at the house to witness the marriage of Mr. Apthorpe's beautiful daughter Maria to Dr. Hugh Williamson, member of Con- gress from North Carolina. Charles Ward Ap- thorpe became afterwards a vestryman of Trinity parish, died in 1797 and was buried in Trinity churchyard, but the Williamsons continued to live in the beautiful old house for a generation after- wards, and later it passed into the hands of strangers.
That there was a skeleton in the house of the proud Apthorpes is shown by the queer will made in 1809 by Mistress Grizzel, a daughter of the royal counsellor, which is on file in the surrogate's office. I speak of it here to show how utterly small seem all earthly quarrels when we stand in the presence of the dust that lived and loved and hated once but is now only a handful of faded im- potence. The poor lady thought she had a griev- ance and she bequeathed her forgiveness to her " enemies " whose " malice " she deplored. Yet
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she had a fountain of unfailing kindness in her heart which might have made the desert of her life to blossom as the rose if she had let it have full play. If man was her enemy the beast of the field was her friend and she remembered them even in death. The will says : " I leave a legacy for the support of my favorite cat and the two little dogs intrusted to the care of my unfortunate, kind sister, Ann Apthorpe; for this purpose, I particularly desire, if they are my survivors, that seven dollars may be annually paid to some de- cent person who will keep them and treat them kindly. To those who have no regard for the animal creation, this donation may be deemed an absurd peculiarity, but my care of the dogs I con- sider the last tribute of affection that I can pay to the memory of a highly valued sister, and the playful though mute affection of my cat has so often soothed and cheered my solitary hours that it is grateful to my feelings to believe that my only remaining friend and sister will not consider this request beneath her attention." The poor lady and her sister sleep in the family vault and on its shelves repose also the ashes of some of those with whom she was at war. In the full-orbed
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