Historic Towns of the Middle States

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

By ALBERT SHAW

The designation “Middle States” has a negative, rather than a positive, significance. In our later history, as well as in that of our colonizing and federalizing periods, the term “New England” has had a definite value for many purposes besides those of geographical convenience: and it is equally true that “the South” has meant very much in our American life besides a mere territorial expression. But the “Middle States” lack the sharply distinguishing characteristics of the other groups. In more senses than the strictly literal one, the two immense States of New York and Pennsylvania, with one or two smaller neighbors, have occupied middle ground.

If New York, on the one hand, has been somewhat closely related to New England, Pennsylvania has had many neighborly associations with Maryland and Virginia. New Jersey, meanwhile, has been a close link between Pennsylvania and New York. The development of New England was dominated in a marvellous way by a set of ideas, religious, political and philosophical, that belonged to a certain phase of the English Reformation. Virginia and other settlements to the southward had their origins in a colonizing movement that was more typically representative of contemporary English manners, views and ways of living. The aristocratic system would have disappeared rapidly enough in the South but for the gradual extension of an exotic institution,—that of African slavery.

The Middle States had a more varied origin,—one that does not lend itself so readily to the purposes of contrast and generalization. The Hudson, called by the Dutch the North River, and the Delaware, which they called the South River, were both entered by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, in 1609; and apart from an extremely limited settlement of Swedes on the west bank of the Delaware, it was the Dutch who controlled the beginnings of European settlement along the seaboard of what afterward came to be known as the Middle States section. The Dutch colonization was not large, but it had a strong and persistent influence upon the subsequent development of New York and the region round about.

The gradual predominance in New York of men of English speech and origin came about partly by infiltration from the New England colonies and partly by direct migration from England. There resulted a natural and harmonious fusion between the Dutch pioneers on the Hudson and the English-speaking colonists. Various Dutch institutions survived long after the English language had come into general use.

Before the grant of Pennsylvania to William Penn, the settlers on the Delaware had been mainly Swedish, Dutch or otherwise from continental Europe. William Penn’s colonists at the outset were largely English Quakers, and some years later there arrived great numbers of Germans, some French Huguenots, and a good many Scotch-Irish Protestants.

Thus, as compared with New England on the one hand and the Southern colonies on the other, the Middle States had cosmopolitan, rather than purely English, origins. This cosmopolitanism has remained, as a leading factor in all their subsequent history. The spirit of compromise and tolerance that had been developed in the middle section by the contact of different nationalities was of incalculable value when the time came for the co-operation of the thirteen colonies in the struggle for independence, and in the subsequent formation of their federal union.

If the colony which developed into the Empire State, and that which came to be known as the Keystone State, had occupied some other geographical position than the one they held as a buffer between New England and the South, the history of America might well have taken a wholly different course. For there was almost as much difference in institutions, life and points of view between the New Englanders and the Virginians of Colonial days as between the New Englanders and the Canadian Frenchmen across the St. Lawrence. But the transition from New England to New York was easy, and involved no violent contrasts. There had been a steady movement of population from the New England States westward across the eastern boundary line of the State of New York. On the other hand, it was comparatively easy for Maryland and Virginia to co-operate with Pennsylvania. In so far, indeed, as population had extended back from the tide-water districts into the hill country and the Appalachian valleys, the settlement both of Maryland and Virginia had proceeded very largely from Pennsylvania.

Thus the Middle States had a great mission to perform in uniting and holding together the more extreme sections. In the development, after the Revolutionary War, of the country west of the Alleghanies, this harmonizing influence of the Middle States was very conspicuously shown in the creation of the great commonwealth of Ohio, and only to a less degree in the making of a number of other States in what has now come to be called the Middle West—the region that produced men of the type of Lincoln and Grant, and that joined with the old Middle States in later crises to preserve the Union and fuse its elements into a homogeneous nation.

No communities in the world lend themselves more profitably to the study of history than these which are described in the present volume. Concrete illustration aids no less in the study of history than in that of the physical sciences; and these towns of the Middle States illustrate not only the more recent tendencies that have marked the course of human history, but also lead us back by easy stages to an insight into conditions of an earlier time. For example, the survivals of the Dutch régime in New York quicken a sympathetic interest that greatly aids the comprehension of the international career of the Netherlands. On the very day when these remarks are written, the larger news of the world—that which is history in the making—concerns itself with two widely severed scenes of early Dutch colonization. From Paris comes the decision of the Venezuela arbitration tribunal, involving principally the material and legal facts as to the extent of Dutch exploration and settlement in the same general period as the Dutch colonization of New York. The relations of the Dutch and English in successions and exchanges of jurisdiction on the northern coast of South America can only be understood in the light of the history of the settlements at the mouth of the Hudson River.

In like manner the conditions of Dutch settlement in South Africa in the middle of the seventeenth century are best comprehended in connection with the story of contemporary Dutch colonization in America. The Knickerbockers of New York and the Boers of the Transvaal are of common origin,—a fact frankly recognized by the Holland Society of New York in its expressions of sympathy with the Dutch element in South Africa in its struggle against fate.

The history of the communities of Pennsylvania affords a convenient initiation into much of the complex religious and ecclesiastical history of Europe. Penn brought the Quakers and other fine English stock from the middle and north of England for reasons that go to the very heart of the English life of the seventeenth century. A little later the Protestant Germans of the Palatinate came in great numbers, impelled by motives to understand which is to find oneself essentially comprehending the conditions of Church and State that so disturbed and harassed Western Europe for a long period. Thus, to study the great city of Philadelphia in its origins, its later accretions and its existing conditions, is to find inviting avenues leading into many fields of historical inquiry both of the new world and the old.

What single spot could one find anywhere that would more naturally stimulate the study of political and economic history in the nineteenth century than old Castle Garden at the lower end of New York City, through which millions upon millions of immigrants have entered the Western world to find contentment and prosperity? Many of these came from Ireland; and the municipal life of New York City has been profoundly affected by that fact. To answer the question why these people left Ireland and, in leaving, why their destination was New York rather than some port in the British colonies, is to review the history of the Irish land system, the Irish Church and the political administration of Ireland for several generations.

An enormous element of the present population of New York, as well as of the country at large, is made up of a comparatively recent German immigration, to understand which one must learn something of the German revolutionary movement of 1848, the growth of German militarism and the conditions under which educational progress in Germany has outstripped the average material prosperity. Still more recently there has been a huge immigration of Russian Jews, with local effects of a most marked character in the city of New York. To know why these Jews have come is to look into racial, political, and economic conditions throughout the great empire of the Czar.

To study the main routes of communication in a region like our Middle States is to gain an insight into the relations of physical conditions to historical development that will be of no little use in the study of other origins and remoter periods. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance, for instance, of the part that the Hudson River has played in the history of the Western Hemisphere since its discovery and settlement by the Europeans. The route by way of the Hudson, Lake George and Lake Champlain afforded in the early times the one interior passage to the St. Lawrence from the settlements on our seaboard.

Much of the land adjacent to the river was granted in large tracts under the Dutch system to patroons, so called, who were virtually feudal lords. Upon some of these tracts there still survive various peculiarities of the feudal system of land tenure. To know something of what feudalism meant as respects the control of the land, the student might find a worse method than to trace back the history of one of these Hudson River estates to the period of the Dutch grant, in order to get so much nearer to the survivals of the mediæval system in Europe.

At the spot where I live on the Hudson, and where I am now writing, the environment is suggestive of almost three centuries of American history. I look out upon the great stream which Hudson navigated in the Half Moon in 1609, and upon which sailing craft have been plying almost continually ever since. I see great steamers passing where Fulton first experimented with steam navigation. The highway near by is the old Albany post-road, this immediate part of which was known as Edgar’s Lane and was opened in 1644. This morning I heard the pleasant notes of a coaching-horn, and looked out to see a stately four-in-hand on its way to the city, a forcible reminder of at least a century and a half of regular mail coaching on that same road. My home is a part of what was the old Philipse manor; and at Yonkers, a few miles below, one finds the manor-house, now in constant use as a municipal building. It was partly built in 1682, and assumed its present dimensions in about 1745.

On this very ground, and on the hills lying to the eastward, Washington’s army was encamped for a number of weeks in 1777, and near by is the well-preserved colonial house where Washington and Rochambeau sojourned for some time, and where the Yorktown campaign was planned. In the river at this point, on several occasions, the British frigates made appearance, the last of these being the final meeting between General Washington and General Sir Guy Carleton, in May, 1783, on the suspension of hostilities. A few miles farther up the road one comes to the lane that leads to Washington Irving’s “Sunnyside,” with its tablet stating that the house was first built in the year 1650.

With these older historical souvenirs in mind, I turn to the southward, and there, as a reminder that the current of American history flows on, and that our past is in no manner detached from the present and the future, I see, standing out in bold relief on the horizon, the tomb of General Grant, while anchored in the river lies the Olympia, the flag-ship of Admiral Dewey, just now returned from adventures as fraught with history-making results as was the presence of Hudson’s Half Moon in this same river two hundred and ninety years ago.

The historical significance of the Hudson might be illustrated in some such way at many another point upon its banks. The location of Albany is particularly to be noted as one evidently intended by nature for an important rendezvous. In the earlier period Albany and the Saratoga district, and certain points of advantage in the Mohawk Valley, were of great strategic importance. They were natural gateways, which had to be held first against the Indians and Frenchmen, and afterward against the British. Their later importance has had to do with canals, railroads and the development of commerce.

But of Albany it must be said that it has also the distinction of being one of the three or four chief law-making centres of the English-speaking world. In no other way has the State of New York exerted so wide an influence upon the country at large as in the working out of laws and institutions which have been re-enacted almost without change by a great number of the other States of the Union. Thus Albany has been a great training school in politics and legislation.

Before the days of railroad building, the Erie Canal was the greatest undertaking that this country had witnessed in the improvement of its transportation facilities. This waterway connected the Great Lakes with the Atlantic by way of the Mohawk and Hudson valleys; and among other results of a far-reaching nature there followed the development of the city of Buffalo, a commercial and manufacturing community founded in the opening years of the nineteenth century, and destined in the twentieth to achieve such growth and splendor as few men are yet bold enough to anticipate.

We have seen in our generation fierce rivalry for the occupation of Khartoum, at the head of Nile navigation, with one expedition succeeding another until the final success of the English under General Kitchener. The possession of Khartoum was known to carry with it the control of the fertile Soudan beyond, as well as to affect the permanent mastery of the valley of the lower Nile to the Delta. In some such manner the French and English in the middle of the eighteenth century appreciated the strategic importance of the point at the junction of the Alleghany and the Monongahela rivers, where the Ohio took its start, and from which navigation was unobstructed all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. It was in large part the struggle for the site of Pittsburgh that gave Washington the military training and the large perception of the future of America that fitted him for his great tasks of leadership. The development of Pittsburgh and the opening of the Ohio furnish most instructive and interesting chapters in the history of our country.

The quaint or curious or heroic beginnings must always have their fascination; and it is likely enough that for a long time to come they will take a little more than their normal or proportionate share of the page of history. But real history is learning also to concern itself with other things. The story of Princeton, now so largely that of Revolutionary annals, will henceforth increasingly be the story of the life and work of a great university. That of Pittsburgh will become in expanding proportions the story of the development of the arts and crafts and of manufacturing in this country, and of the struggle of skilled labor for an ever-larger share in the advantages made possible by the enormous increase in the volume of production. The story of Philadelphia will, to an increasing extent, be that of the best housed and most contented of all the great communities in the world, full of evidences of private thrift and the domestic virtues, while exhibiting the paradox of a relatively low degree of efficiency in matters of common concern like municipal administration.

The historic towns of the Middle States are now engaged in the making of history in ways very different from those of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods, but in ways certainly not less important. But their future will be the wiser and happier for a studious devotion to the records of their honorable past, and they cannot be too zealous in the perpetuation of the old landmarks.

HISTORIC TOWNS OF THE MIDDLE STATES — ALBANY

“This antient and respectable city.”—(Washington, 1782.)

By WALTON W. BATTERSHALL

Albany, unlike the proverbial happy woman, has not only age but a history. Its age is indicated in its claim to be the second oldest existing settlement in the original thirteen colonies. The claim is fairly sustained, but we must remember that the alleged discoveries and settlements of those nomadic times are a trifle equivocal. On the other hand, the historical significance of Albany is based on two unquestioned facts: for a century it guarded the imperilled north and west frontiers of Anglo-Saxon civilization on the continent; for another century it has been the legislative seat of the most powerful State in the Republic.

On the 19th of September, 1609, old style, the yacht De Halve Maen, six months from Amsterdam, in command of Henry Hudson, dropped anchor a few miles below the present site of Albany. Four days spent in the exchange of civilities with the Indians and the taking of soundings from the ship’s boat farther up the stream, convinced the speculative explorer that the beautiful river among the hills gave no promise of a water path to China, and the Half-Moon, freighted with wild fruits, peltries and pleasant impressions, turned her prow homeward.

From the Dutch and also the English point of view, the English skipper of the Dutch ship had discovered the river. It appears however that in 1524 Verrazzano put a French keel, La Dauphine, far up the same stream, to which he gave the name La Grande, and, some time after, French fur traders built a rude château, or, as we would say, fortified trading-post, on Castle Island, just off the hills of Albany. But the France of Francis I. had no colonizing grip, and La Nouvelle France was simply a name which stretched along the Atlantic seaboard on the French charts of the sixteenth century.

On the return of Henry Hudson, his discovery was claimed by his patrons, the Dutch East India Company. They named the river the Mauritius⁠[13] (Prince Maurice’s River), and the outlying country, known as Nieu Nederlandt, had good report in Holland for its furs and friendly savages.

The Amsterdam merchants were alert, and other Dutch vessels, following in the wake of the Half-Moon, pushed up the river to the head of navigation. There they found on the west bank the Maquaas, or Mohawks, and on the east bank the Mahicans, or Mohegans, with whom they had profitable transactions.

To consolidate and protect their ventures, a group of merchants petitioned the States-General of Holland for the exclusive privilege of traffic with the aborigines on the river. The elaborate map of Nieu Nederlandt which they presented with their petition was discovered in 1841 in the royal archives at the Hague, and a facsimile is now in the State Library at Albany.⁠[14] A license for three years was granted. Thereupon, in 1615, the ruined château on Castle Island was rebuilt, equipped with two cannon and garrisoned with a dozen Dutch soldiers. In compliment to the Stadtholder, it received the name of Fort Nassau.

This occupancy in force of Castle Island (now called Van Rensselaer Island) was brief, for the spring freshets proved too much for even the amphibious Dutch musketeers and traders, and it hardly can be called a settlement.

It is an interesting fact, that the valley of the Hudson narrowly missed the honor of being settled by the passengers of the Mayflower. Under the November skies of 1620, that historic vessel, with its valuable cargo of religious and political seed-corn, for several days had been beating about the point of Cape Cod. Old Governor Bradford, with quaint spelling and phrasing, tells the story of the mishap:

“After some deliberation had amongst them selves and with yᵉ mʳ of yᵉ ship, they tacked aboute and resolved to stande for yᵉ southward (yᵉ wind and weather being faire) to finde some place aboute Hudsons river for their habitation. But after they had sailed yᵗ course aboute halfe yᵉ day, they fell amongst dangerous shoulds and roring breakers, and they were so farr intangled ther with as they conceived them selves in great danger; & yᵉ wind shrinking upon them withall they resolved to bear up again for the Cape.”⁠[15]

Thus Plymouth Rock became the intellectual door-stone of the New World, and the banks of the Hudson inherited one of the sad “might-have-beens” of history. However, Douglas Campbell, in his trenchant and disturbing book, The Puritan in Holland, England and America, has told us that the distinctive principles of our American social and political life show, on critical inspection, the Dutch hall-mark.

The America of 1621 was much more of a “dark continent” than the Africa of fifty years ago. The adjective applies both to the skin of the autochthons and the mind of the explorers. In the commercial circles of Amsterdam, Nieu Nederlandt was supposed to be a part of the West Indies. Therefore it was that the new company which was devised for its exploitation and chartered in the year mentioned, took the name of The Dutch West India Company.

Under its auspices, in March, 1624, the ship Nieu Nederlandt sailed from Amsterdam by the accustomed route of the Canary Islands for the Mauritius River. She carried thirty families, chiefly Walloons, refugees from Belgium who had settled in Holland, and a few Dutch freemen. Some of the families were landed on Manhattan Island, but the majority proceeded up the river and selected for their settlement the fat meadow on the west shore above Castle Island. Under the shadow of the clay hill on which the Capitol now lifts its masses of sculptured granite, they built rude huts sheathed in bark, and a little log fort which they named Fort Orange. The Indians were friendly and eager to barter, and enthusiastic reports were at once sent over to Holland, with corroborative otter and beaver skins.

Two years after this settlement at Fort Orange, the Dutch West India Company purchased Manhattan Island from the Indians for sixty guilders in high-priced goods and, planting a colony and fort on the south end of the island, brought up the population of Nieu Nederlandt to two hundred souls. The Company, desiring to stimulate colonization, in 1629 projected the manorial or patroon system; a combination of feudal idea and Latin name, patronus. Killiaen Van Rensselaer, one of the directors and a rich merchant of Amsterdam, at once obtained an extensive grant of land south of Fort Orange and, by the purchase of the land from the Indians and the planting of a colony, became the patroon of Rensselaerswyck. He never visited his “colonie,” but before his death in 1646, he had sent from Holland over two hundred artisans and farmers, and included in his manor a territory forty-eight by twenty-four miles, and also another tract of sixty-two thousand acres.

Thus Albany began with a Dutch imprint, which to this day has given to the city its distinctive mark. Forty years of Dutch sagacity and thrift rapidly developed the colony. It was on the whole a prosperous period, enlivened by chronic disputes between the garrison and the manor, and disquieting rumors regarding belligerent Indians and the French. It throws on a small canvas sturdy personages and stirring events. Brandt Van Slechtenhorst, the stiff upholder of the manor claims against the doughty Pieter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch Director-General; Domine Megapolensis, the first Dutch minister; and the flitting figure of the Jesuit missionary, Father Jogues with his hands mangled by the Mohawks and kissed by the Queen of France, would make any canvas picturesque. To take Washington Irving’s delicious bit of humor too seriously shows a melancholy lack of humor.

Certainly the Dutch burghers of Albany did not take very seriously the English occupation of Nieu Nederlandt in 1664. The seizure was colored by an old claim of uncertain dimensions based upon the Cabot discoveries, which for a long time had strained the relations between England and Holland concerning colonial matters. The capitulation was bloodless, and to Albany it brought little change, save that the English flag, in place of the Dutch, fluttered over the ramparts of Fort Orange, which took the name of Fort Albany in commemoration of the Scotch title of the Duke of York, the new lord of the province. The great manorial grant was confirmed, and in all its habits of thought and life the colony remained Dutch. The happiest change and perhaps the most startling shock came from the fact that the Duke of York, bigot as he was, broke the tradition of the period and introduced in his province religious toleration.

The English came, but the Dutch remained. The old Holland stock on the bank of the Hudson kept its root in the soil and has made vital contributions to the American hybrid, which have had scant recognition in our popular histories. The fact is, the Dutch were not given to writing books. They had fought for their religion and motherland, and had held them both against the assault of a powerful foe, but the recital of the story they left to the more expert tongues and more eloquent pens of Englishmen. Their type of character and social usage has proved its vigor and worth by its quiet persistence and dominance in New York life of to-day. In old Albany, even under English rule, ideas and customs which had their birth behind the dykes of Holland were conspicuously in the ascendant.

Albany became a city in 1686 by a judicious charter granted by Governor Dongan. A diagram in the Rev. John Miller’s Description of the Province and City of New York, published in London, 1695, gives us an idea of the new-born city. It consisted of about a hundred houses surrounded by a stockade, which was pierced to the north and south by narrow gateways. Above the stockade the most conspicuous objects were the pyramidal roof of the Dutch church at the foot of Jonker Street (now State Street), surmounted by three small cannon, and, on the eminence at the upper end of the street, the bastions of Fort Frederick, which had inherited the responsibilities and honors of the dismantled Fort Orange.

For about forty years after the peaceful seizure by the English, the old Dutch church, where the prosperous burghers worshipped, and a Lutheran church of somewhat intermittent life but hospitable to outsiders sufficed for the religious needs of the city. The officers of the garrison, however, and probably most of the soldiers were Church of England men. There was much in the service of the Dutch Church of that day which must have suggested pleasant reminiscence. Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday were festivals brought from Holland, and were duly celebrated in the church and at the fireside. Queerly enough, in the accounts of Pieter Schuyler, the deacon of the Dutch church in 1683 and the first mayor of the city, we read that “the 13th of January was observed as a day of fasting and prayer, to divert God’s heavy judgment from falling on the English nation for the murder of King Charles, martyr of blessed memory,” and that the expenses therefor were seventeen guilders.

But the theological coin of the Synod of Dort, whether acceptable or not to the English, was more or less inaccessible, being hid in the napkin of the Dutch language. Evidently there was need of an English house of worship in Albany. In 1714, therefore, Governor Hunter issued letters patent granting a plot of ground in Jonker Street below the fort for a church and cemetery. The Common Council made protest. The point at issue was a question, not of doctrine, but of municipal rights. They issued notice to suspend the laying of the foundations. They arrested the workmen. They petitioned the Governor. They sent a messenger by express in a canoe to New York,—a journey in those days of such magnitude that the church was well under way by the time the return voyage was accomplished. Despite all obstacles, the work went on and in the course of a year the first English church west of the Hudson was built. The two churches, the Dutch at the foot and the English at the head of State Street, were the chief ecclesiastical landmarks of eighteenth-century Albany. Like rocks in a stream, they stood in the broad thoroughfare and preserved the magnificent approach to the future Capitol.

Little as it was, Albany was the nest of important events and a maker of history in those troublous days. Second to New York in size and resources, it served as a wary sentinel and tremulous alarm-bell to the exposed province. For well-nigh a century, all beyond it to the west and north, except the hamlet of Schenectady and the French settlements on the St. Lawrence, was wilderness and savages. It occupied a post of the gravest peril and responsibility. We get a glimpse of the situation and of the current history in the scene on that Sunday morning, the 9th of February, four years after the granting of the charter, when Symon Schermerhoorn, shot through the thigh, told at the north gate of the stockade his breathless story of the night attack and the horrible massacre at Schenectady.

Between the hostile French in Canada and the little frontier city on the Hudson roamed the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy, upon whose friendship and fealty in large measure hung the destiny of the English possessions. The stockade, thirteen feet high, would have been of little account if that living bulwark of savage allies had yielded to the arms or the bribes of the French. That the bulwark did not yield, that the fealty of the Indians was won and, through every peril, kept unbroken, was owing to the sagacity and honorable dealing of the government and burghers of Albany. The House of Peace—this is the name which the Mohawk sachem, at one of the council-fires, gave to the Albany of those olden days, and, in the graphic phrase of his Indian oratory, he pictured at a stroke its political value and place in history; for there, by repeated formal treaties and habitual friendly intercourse, were riveted the “Covenant Chains” which made the confederation of the Six Nations the guardians of the feeble province.

There is a scene in The History of New York, by William Dunlap, which is illustrative. The date is 1746 and the central figure is the celebrated Col. William Johnson, Indian agent, whom George II. made a “baronet of Great Britain.”

“When the Indians came near the town of Albany on the 8th of August, Mr. Johnson put himself at the head of the Mohawks, dressed and painted as an Indian war-captain. The Indians followed him painted for war. As they passed the fort, they saluted by a running fire, which the governor answered by cannon. The chiefs were afterwards received in the fort-hall and treated to wine. A good deal of private manœuvring with the individual sachems was found necessary to make them declare for war with France before a public council was held. The Iroquois took to the 23d of the month for deliberation, and then answered, the governor being present.”

During the French wars, Albany, from a military point of view, was probably the most animated spot on the continent. It was the storehouse for munitions of war and the rendezvous for the troops. English regulars and provincial militia swarmed in and about the city. After the unsuccessful campaigns of 1756 and 1757, the town was filled with refugees, reciting the slaughter of the garrison at Fort William Henry, and the murder and havoc wrought by the Indians in pay of the French. Hundreds of loyal Indians, with their squaws and papooses, encamped under the stockade. The houses and barns were filled with wounded soldiers brought from the seat of war. In the pauses of the campaigns, notwithstanding the horrible rumors and actual disasters, the “dangerously accomplished” English officers made merry life in old Albany, picturesque details of which are given in that charming chronicle of colonial days, Memoirs of an American Lady (Mrs. Philip Schuyler), by Mrs. Grant of Laggan.

In the opening of the campaign of 1758 there was grief and consternation in the province. Tidings came that Lord Viscount Howe had been killed in a skirmish on the march against Fort Ticonderoga. The body of the brilliant soldier was brought to Albany by his friend, Captain Philip Schuyler, and was buried beneath the chancel of the English church. The stone recently unearthed in the village of Ticonderoga, which bears the inscription, evidently scratched by a knife or bayonet, Mem of Lo Howe killed Trout Brook, probably marked the spot where Lord Howe fell. There is abundant evidence that his body now lies beneath the vestibule of St. Peter’s Church. The Church Book of the parish contains the following entry: 1758, Sept. 5th. To cash Rt for ground to lay the Body of Lord how & Pall £5. 6. 0.

In the following year, the fateful victory of Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham gave Canada to England and ended the hard-fought duel between the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon for the sovereignty of the continent.

Some years before this, the Stadt Huys, the old City Hall of Albany, was the scene of a significant event which was the prelude of one still more momentous. There in 1754 Commissioners from the several provinces convened to renew the “Covenant Chain” with the Six Nations, and to discuss the best methods for uniting and defending the colonial interests. The foremost spirits and political prophets of the colonies composed the assembly. Numerous Indian sachems, with their stately bearing and barbaric splendor, decorated the scene of the deliberations. The “Plan” adopted by the convention was not accepted by the Crown, but it was the first attempt to articulate the idea of a colonial union, and it bore two names, Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Hopkins, which in due time were affixed to the Declaration of Independence.

Before the lightning flashed in the volley at Lexington, there were centres of influence throughout the colonies breeding storm. Albany was one of them. The heart of the old Dutch town was fired with the indignations and enthusiasms of the time. There were tories of course, but the temper of the city and the attitude of those who controlled the situation are indicated by the fact that, when the Province of New York had fairly opened the fight, the old fort on the hill was extemporized into a tory jail.

As early as November, 1774, the freeholders of the city appointed a Committee of Safety and Correspondence, which proved a vigorous agent in propagating the war spirit and furnishing men and money for the Continental army. The following names appear on its lists: John Barclay, Chairman, Jacob C. Ten Eyck, Henry I. Bogert, Peter Silvester, Henry Wendell, Volkert P. Douw, John Bay, Gysbert Marselis, John R. Bleecker, Robert Yates, Stephen De Lancey, Abraham Cuyler, John H. Ten Eyck, Abraham Ten Broeck, Gerret Lansingh, Jr., Anthony E. Bratt, Samuel Stringer, Abraham Yates, Jr., and Cornelis van Santvoordt. In the records of the committee occurs this significant minute: “Pursuant to a resolution of yesterday, the Declaration of Independence was this day read and published at the City Hall to a large Concourse of the Inhabitants of this City and the Continental Troops in this City and received with applause and satisfaction.”

At the beginning of, and all through the struggle for independence, Albany was a strategic point of the utmost importance. The war-office in London and the British commanders in the field recognized that it was the key to the situation in the north. There is a passage in the oration of Governor Seymour at the Centennial Commemoration at Schuylerville, the actual scene of Burgoyne’s surrender, which condenses and interprets one of the most important chapters in the history of the Revolution.

“It was the design of the British government in the campaign of 1777 to capture the centre and stronghold of this commanding system of mountains and valleys. It aimed at its very heart,—the confluence of the Hudson and the Mohawk. The fleets, the armies, and the savage allies of Britain were to follow their converging lines to Albany, and there strike the decisive blow.”

As sometimes happens, the blow struck the striker. Col. Philip Schuyler, the young officer who brought the body of Lord Howe to its burial, was an ardent patriot and the most distinguished citizen of Albany. On the recommendation of the Provincial Congress of New York, he had been appointed by the Continental Congress a major-general in the armies of the United Colonies and had assumed command of the Northern Department. He was displaced in favor of General Gates, but he retained the confidence of Washington, and it was he who planned and conducted the campaign which resulted in the victory of Bemis Heights and the surrender of Burgoyne. This event broke the formidable menace that hung over the province and the colonial cause. The defeated British general found himself in the hands of a courteous foe, and for several months he meditated and mitigated his disaster amid the elegant hospitalities of the Schuyler mansion in Albany.

In 1797, “this antient and respectable city of Albany” (to quote the courtly compliment of Washington) became the capital of the State. At the close of the Revolution, New York had not yet determined its seat of government. From 1777 to 1796 it peregrinated between Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Albany and the city of New York. Not until the twentieth session of the Legislature was the long dispute settled. The geographical advantages of Albany finally carried the day, and for the last hundred years the site of the frontier fort has been a political arena and an illustrious seat of legislative and judicial power.

The Albany of “modern times,” as the phrase is understood in our American life in which everything is new except human nature, has preserved few of the ancient landmarks. The only souvenirs are the bronze tablets which were devised at the Bicentennial in 1886, and which now designate the historic sites in the city. If one, reverent of ancient and vanished things, make pilgrimage to the tablet near the curb on the lower edge of the Capitol Park (a block above the site of Fort Frederick), to the one on the corner of Broadway and Steuben Street (the site of the northeast gate), and to the one near the curb on lower Broadway two blocks from State Street (the site of the southeast gate), he will define quite accurately the girdle of the palisadoes which protected old Albany.

If he pass the memorial of the northeast gateway, a place of memorable outgoings and incomings, and continue up Broadway about three quarters of a mile, he will find a bronze tablet bearing the inscription: “Opposite Van Rensselaer Manor-House. Erected 1765. Residence of the Patroons. This spot is the site of the First Manor-House.” It was an unpretentious one-story building of Holland brick, half fortress and half dwelling. The final Manor-House, on the other side of the road, was a structure of another fashion. At the time of its erection, 1765, it was considered the handsomest residence in the colonies. Thither Stephen Van Rensselaer brought his young bride, Catherine, daughter of Philip Livingston, and his babe, who became General Van Rensselaer. It stood amid the drooping elms of a large park and was decorated with a taste and luxury startling to the period. In 1843 the building was enlarged and enriched by the elder Upjohn. Once a stately mansion, the scene of splendid hospitalities, it has shared the American fate of obstructive antiquities in thriving towns. The railroad and the “lumber district” crowded and finally strangled it. For several years it stood empty and dismantled, and obviously had outlived both its beauty and its use. In 1893 the stone and timbers were transported to the Campus of Williams College, where they were reconstructed into the Sigma Phi Society building, which perpetuates a remote suggestion of the famous Manor-House.

In the southern part of the city, on Clinton Street, is a bronze tablet which designates the sister of the Manor-House, the Schuyler mansion, built by the wife of General Philip Schuyler while he was in England in 1760. This historic relic stands on a plateau above the street, surrounded by a remnant of the original garden, but the broad avenue, shaded by elms, which once gave approach to the mansion from the river, is overgrown with houses. Though used at present as an orphan asylum under the charge of the Order of St. Francis de Sales, it retains substantially its original features. It is a dignified and spacious house; not remarkable architecturally, but fragrant with history. Here Burgoyne enjoyed his imprisonment. Here Washington, Lafayette, Count de Rochambeau, Baron Steuben, Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Aaron Burr, and other notable men of old were entertained. Here Alexander Hamilton and Elizabeth Schuyler were married, December 14, 1780. Besides famous guests and weddings, its chief feature of historic interest is the staircase, apropos of which, we quote from Mr. Marcus Reynolds’s article on The Colonial Buildings of Rensselaerswyck in The Architectural Record of 1895.

“Here is shown the famous tomahawk mark. In 1781 a plan was made to capture General Schuyler and take him to Canada. A party of tories, Canadians and Indians surrounded the house for several days, and at length forced an entrance. The family took refuge in the upper story, leaving behind in their haste the youngest member of the family, Margaret Schuyler, afterward the wife of the patroon. An elder sister going to rescue the infant, was pursued by an Indian, who threw his tomahawk at her as she fled up the stairs. The weapon entered the hand-rail near the newel, and the mark is still shown, which would be conclusive evidence if the same story were not told of the Glen house in Schenectady, the only house unburnt in the massacre of 1690.”

With all its historic associations, Albany is not conspicuous for the scenery it has furnished for the enchantments of poetry and romance; still it is not altogether destitute of literary honors. Its colonial life figures in the Satanstoe of the great Fenimore Cooper and in Harold Frederick’s In the Valley. The Normanskill, which tumbles into the Hudson at the south end of the city, flows through the Vale of Tawasentha, the scene of Longfellow’s Hiawatha. The hills and forests about the city suggested many a delicate detail in the woodland rhythms of Alfred Street, who made his home and burial-place in Albany. Its old Dutch life with its sedate charm has been pictured by a living Albanian, Leonard Kip; and probably the house still stands on Pearl Street or Broadway, in which Henry James found the charming girl who stood for his Portrait of a Lady.

On the east bank of the Hudson, in old Greene Bosch, opposite the city, decays the dishonored ruin of Fort Crailo. The date, more or less mythical, is 1642. It was the headquarters of General Abercrombie, and in the garden back of the house a derisive British surgeon, Dr. Stackpole, composed the immortal jingle of Yankee Doodle. If, in 1800, one stood on the southeast corner of State and North Pearl Streets, opposite the famous elm which Philip Livingston planted in 1735, his eye glancing up the street to the north would be arrested by a picturesque relic of Dutch Albany, the Vanderheyden Palace. Of course it has joined the departed, but its ghost appears in Washington Irving’s Bracebridge Hall, and its old weather-vane now swings above the porch of Sunnyside.

Some of the colonial structures were fine and famous in their day, but in truth, in our American towns, imposing architecture is a thing of recent date. Few cities give more favorable sites for architectural effects than the three hills of Albany. It is not too much to say that the wealth and taste of its citizens have conspired with its peculiar advantages of position. The architecture of Albany has an exceptional value. The City Hall, with its Romanesque doorways and majestic campanile, is a fine specimen of the great Richardson. The Albany City Savings Bank, recently constructed, is a classical gem, inadequately set, but cut by a master hand. Its Corinthian monoliths and graceful dome satisfy the eye, and the whole structure is a suggestive instance of what trade can do in the interests of art.

The four examples of ecclesiastical architecture of more than local interest are the North Dutch Church, an exceptionally good specimen of the style which obtained in the beginning of the century; the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, with its lofty double spires emphasized by the site, and its spacious interior treated with taste and dignity; St. Peter’s Church, with its noble lines, artistic windows and finely detailed tower,—“one of the richest specimens of French Gothic in this country”; and the Cathedral of All Saints, whose unfinished exterior encloses columnar effects and a choir-vista which remind one of an impressive mediæval interior and give the edifice a distinctive place among the churches of America.

These architectural monuments, however, and the city itself are overshadowed by the new Capitol. This massive structure, since its corner-stone was laid on the 24th of June, 1871, has absorbed over twenty millions of dollars. The enormous bulk, the difficult foundations, the obdurate granite, the elaborate sculptures, the mistakes and afterthoughts, sufficiently account for the money. The old Capitol, which stood in front of the southeast corner, well-nigh could be tucked into one of its great pavilions. The edifice is of such cost, size, and architectural importance, that one discusses it as he might discuss Strasburg Cathedral or the weather. Claiming simply the freedom of personal impression, one may say that its weakest feature is the eastern façade, which gives an inadequate suggestion of the size of the building and moreover is dwarfed by the projecting mass and lofty ascent of the gigantic stairway. He may also say that the Capitol declares its highest points of architectural interest in the constructive and decorative treatment of the interior.

The edifice has been built with the advantage of large ideas and limitless resources, and the disadvantage of fluctuating ideas and a succession of architects. These facts have left their imprint on the structure but, with all that can be said in criticism of details and of unused possibilities, it can fairly be ranked among the great buildings of modern times.

As one approaches Albany, the colossal bulk of the Capitol thrust against the sky seems to dominate the city as the great cathedrals of Europe dominate the towns that have grown or decayed under their shadow. But there are other structures and artistic things, representing the local life, that are worthy of remark.

The State Museum of Natural History, in Geological Hall, a block below the Capitol, vies with the State Library as a credit to the State and the haunt of the student. It is one of the largest and best arranged museums in the country, and its collection of the paleozoic rocks of New York, which figure so largely in the nomenclature of geology, is a monument to an eminent name in the scientific world, James Hall, late State Geologist.

Near the Capitol Park is the Albany Academy, in whose upper rooms Henry and Ten Eyck demonstrated the electrical facts which were applied by Morse. Up the hill, on the southwest corner of the city, stand the pavilions of the new Hospital, built in 1899, and the Dudley Observatory, of note in the stellar world. On Washington Avenue is Harmanus Bleecker Hall, built from the fund held in trust for more than half a century by Chancellor Pruyn and Judge Parker. On State Street opposite the Capitol is the building of the Historical and Art Society, which, though new-born, has already done valuable work in collecting sequestered relics of history.

Under the elms in Washington Park are two fine bronzes: Caverley’s statue of Robert Burns and Rhind’s statue of Moses at the Rock of Horeb. Fortunately one of the earliest and two of the noblest creations of the sculptor Palmer are in the city of his home: his Faith at the Cross, his Livingston, and his Angel of the Resurrection.

Albany the Old has become Albany the New. In many ways the new is more energetic and more splendid than the old. The town is large enough to show the characteristic features of our American life in its more sensitive and vigorous centres, and small enough to retain local color and distinctive traits. It is self-centred, believes in itself, and has the instinct to discern and the habit of demanding the best things. It is a place where the finest flavors of the old life linger in and temper the broader spirit and more robust movement of the new life; a place that perpetuates its traditions of social elegance and hospitality; a place, too, that has been the cradle and home of men of commanding force, who have contributed to the highest life of the nation and have left their names on enduring structures of thought and art and economic organization.

The city lies at the intersection of the great thoroughfares of traffic and travel in the richest and most densely populated portion of the republic. Its facilities for production and distribution may give it in the future an enormous industrial development. This fortune is not unlikely, but, to those who estimate in large ways the values of life, it cannot heighten the beauty or deepen the charm of the Albany of to-day.

SARATOGA

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GREAT WATERWAYS

By ELLEN HARDIN WALWORTH

There are names which are more than famous—they have a distinct individuality; their sound to the ear or appearance on the page arrests attention, arouses interest, and presents a clear picture to the mind. Such a name is Saratoga, with its romantic record, its picturesque scenery, and its beautiful village,—the “Queen of Spas.” Nature has furnished Saratoga with a regal setting on the lower spurs of the Adirondack Mountains, the last elevations of the Palmertown range, on the edge of the world’s first continent.

Here where the Laurentian rocks stand out boldly over the sands of the old Silurian sea, and where the mighty waterways sweep down from the great northern gulf southward, and from the great northwestern lakes eastward, lies Saratoga Springs. These valleys, bearing the waters of Lake Champlain, Lake George, and the upper Hudson on the north, and of the Mohawk River on the west, have been for centuries the great war-paths of the Indians and of civilized nations. If America is not old, at least her maturity is marked in this region by the scars of war, and by the lines of struggle for the sovereignty of the great waterways. Here are veritable ruins,—old Fort Carillon, later “Old Ticonderoga,” Fort Frederick, afterward Crown Point, and traces here and there of the line of forts extending from the Indian carrying-place at Fort Edward down on either bank of the Hudson to old Saratoga, now Schuylerville, where the great monument commemorative of Revolutionary victory marks the national character of that struggle, and where, eight miles below, at Bemis Heights, fourteen granite tablets, each a monument five or six feet in height, mark the fighting-ground. Through the Mohawk Valley are signs of the “Long House” of the Six Nations, of massacres and battles, that tell their story of three centuries.

The story of Saratoga cannot easily be limited to Saratoga Springs, although it has fifteen thousand inhabitants who retain their quaintly rural government and cling to the appellation of “village.” Village though it be, it is imposing with its stately hotels, spacious streets, large business houses, many beautiful villas, fine public halls, handsome churches, and numerous valuable mineral springs; which, like the residences, are set amid magnificent trees, forest pines and cultivated elms that rival the famous trees of New Haven. From the surrounding hills the village seems to nestle in the original wilderness. But it is always active,—in winter with its toboggan slide, snow-shoe club, trotting matches on the ice-bound lake, and snow-bound streets rolled to marble smoothness for gay and luxurious sleigh-riding; in summer, its brilliancy is often compared with that of Paris. In the loss of the old-time social exclusiveness it has gained in cosmopolitan character and in the rich variety of its life and amusements.

In considering the story of Saratoga, we cannot confine our attention to the town of Saratoga Springs, with its sharply defined boundaries and rectangular lines of political division which mark the limit of the voters for supervisor at the annual town-meeting. But if we include the county in our narrative, then, indeed, may we recall the vision which presents the individuality of the name Saratoga. For Saratoga County is outlined by a great eastward and southern sweep of the Hudson River for seventy miles from its narrow gorge at Luzerne, where the wild savage chief of colonial days leaped across the mighty river to escape his pursuing foe, down over the precipitous Palmer’s Falls, and over the cavern-haunted Glen’s Falls, and onward to old Fort Edward, where its waters turn shortly to the south and pursue their troubled way along the “hillside country,” which received here its Indian name, “Se-rach-ta-gue,” which means “hillside country of the great river.” It is also said that in the Indian language Sa-ragh-to-ga means the “place of the swift water,” in allusion to the rapids and falls that are in contrast with the “still water” a few miles below. Thence the Hudson flows on until it receives the four sprouts or mouths of the Mohawk River, which spreads out from the precipitous falls at Cohoes. This great intersecting western valley separates the northern from the southern highlands of New York, and is, like the great northern valley, a natural highway and thoroughfare. In the angle formed by the junction of these two long, deep valleys or passes through the mountain ranges, “in the angle between the old Indian war-trails, in the angle between the pathways of armies, in the angle between the great modern routes of travel, in the angle formed by the junction of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers,” is Saratoga County, the Saratoga of history and romance. Not only the stealthy tread of the Iroquois sped over these hills, not only the swift canoe of the Algonquin shot over these streams, but also the disciplined armies of France and of England marched and countermarched, fought by day and bivouacked at night on this ground, from the time that Hendrick Hudson opened the lower valley of the Hudson River, and Samuel Champlain discovered the broad lake that bears his name, until the Revolutionary period closed.

While Jamestown was still struggling for existence, and Plymouth Bay was still unknown, the contest had already begun in the northern valley of the Hudson which initiated its long service to the progress of the western world. This remarkable triangle, the Saratoga and Kay-ad-ros-se-ra of the Indian occupation, and the Saratoga County of the present time was, like Kentucky, “the dark and bloody ground,” the hunting- and fishing-place of the Five Nations on the south, and their enemies, the Algonquins, on the north. Here each summer, in search of fish and game, they built their hunting lodges on Saratoga Lake, called by the Dutch, who believed it to be the “head-waters” of the Hudson, “Aqua Capita.” Every season brought conflict between the savage tribes, and later the French, year after year, marched down from Quebec and Montreal to intimidate their unceasing foes on the Mohawk.

In 1642, and again in 1645, the Iroquois in retaliation hastened along the old war-trail at the foot of Mount McGregor and returned each time laden with their tortured captives, the French prisoners and their Indian friends. The two famous expeditions of Courcelle, Governor of Canada, and of Lieut.-Gen. de Tracy, made their way in 1666 through the valley; first on snow-shoes, to starvation and despair—and again with the buoyant tread of a victorious legion. In 1689 the Iroquois followed the old trail on their way to that massacre of Montreal which emphasized what is justly called the “heroic age” of that poetic and devoted settlement. The French and Algonquins again in 1690 bivouacked at these springs as they descended to the cruel massacre of Schenectady. And in the same year the English, led by Fitz John Winthrop, made a fruitless march over the historic war-path.

The French, urged by Frontenac, came down the valley in 1693, destroyed the castles of the Mohawks, and started on their return with three hundred prisoners. The news created intense excitement through the whole Province of New York. Governor Fletcher hurried up from New York City, Major Peter Schuyler hastily gathered three hundred white men and three hundred savages for defence, and was joined by Major Ingoldsby from Albany with an additional force. Coming along the old trail, the French and Indians halted with their captives about six miles north of the village of Saratoga Springs, at a point near Mount McGregor at King’s Station. The battle-ground lies on the terrace, which is distinct from the foothills of the mountains, and has long been known as the “old Indian burying-ground.” On this plateau, so near the gay streets of Saratoga, the camp-fires of a thousand hostile men throwing up entrenchments flared through the night. On the following day the English sustained successfully three fierce assaults on their works, and the French, worn with the long journey, were glad to retreat in the darkness of a raging storm, as night fell on their wounded and captives.

Again, during Queen Anne’s War, beginning in 1709, old Saratoga, which lies at the mouth of the Fishkill, was so seriously threatened that Major Schuyler built a fort below the mouth of the Batten Kill. In 1731, the French built Fort Frederick at Crown Point. From this stronghold, during King George’s War, which began in 1744, they swung their forces with deadly effect upon the English settlements. The forts at Saratoga were then refitted and manned, but not in time to prevent the terrible massacre of old Saratoga in 1745.

History has recorded and poetry sung the woes of Wyoming and of Cherry Valley, but the silence of the virgin forest has encompassed the tragic events that occurred at Saratoga on the fatal morning of the 17th of November, thirty years before the Revolution.

“Profound peace had reigned in the old wilderness for a generation, and the fertile soil had filled the smiling land with fatness. Many dwellings and fruitful farms dotted the river bank; long stables were filled with sleek cattle, and around the mills were huge piles of timber waiting the market down the river.”

The scowling portholes of the old Schuyler mansion seemed to laugh between the tendrils of the creeping vines. Suddenly, in the early morning, the scene of peace and prosperity was changed to slaughter, pillage, and destruction. Philip Schuyler, the elder, was offered immunity in the midst of the fray, but he spurned safety at the expense of his neighbors, and was shot to death in his own doorway. The houses and forts were burned to the ground, the cattle killed or burned in their stalls, and only one or two inhabitants escaped to tell the tale.

This war was a prelude to the French and Indian, or Seven Years’ War, which, with its five campaigns, raged continuously through the war-worn valley of the grand northern waterways. Nearly a century and a half of struggle, first of the French discoverers and missionaries with the savages, and then of the Frenchmen and Iroquois, and later the French, the Indians, and the English, had proved the importance of this valley as the northern doorway to the country. Of the three expeditions first planned to be sent simultaneously against the French—one under Braddock against Fort Duquesne, another under Shirley against Niagara, and another under Johnson against Crown Point,—the third was considered the most important.

In August, Major-General William Johnson took command in person and pushed on to the outlet of Lake George, intending to build a fort at Ticonderoga as a defence against Crown Point, to which the French had extended their possessions in the last interval of peace. Before his design could be accomplished, desperate warfare disturbed the placid waters of the beautiful lakes and so discolored their outlying waters that time has not yet effaced the name of “Bloody Pond.”

Abercrombie’s campaign in 1758 was a fatal mistake. The brilliant hope inspired by his fine army of Regulars with their splendid accoutrements, his thousands of boats paraded on the broad lake with banners flying and strains of music unknown in the wilderness, was turned to gloom when a few days later the boats returned laden with the dead and dying, and carrying the body of the beloved Lord Howe.

Again, in 1759, the war-trail of old Saratoga was trodden by an English army, twelve thousand strong, under the command of the successful Lord Amherst. In the autumn the final conflict came when the death of Wolfe signalled the triumph of England, and the great waterways passed under the sovereignty of the Anglo-Saxons.

For some years, Sir William Johnson suffered from the effects of a wound received in the hip during the war. In 1767, his Indian friends told him about the “Great Medicine Waters” of Saratoga, and carried him by boat and on a stretcher to the mysterious spring. The waters proved so beneficial that he was able to return over the “carrying-place” unaided and on foot. The waters which he drank were taken from the High Rock Spring of Saratoga Springs. Once they overflowed the cone-like rock through which they now rise and from which they are dipped, and the rock was gradually deposited and formed by the overflow. The process has lately been repeated by new springs like the Geyser and the Champion, which for some years threw the water several feet into the air, leaving a heavy cascade-like deposit about the opening. Gradually the waters subsided, the geyser effect was lost, and like the High Rock Spring they have fallen below the level of the ground.

In the year (1767) of Sir William Johnson’s expedition, the old land troubles with the Six Nations were settled amicably at the Fort Stanwix conference, where over three thousand red men met the English commissioners. The complaints of alleged frauds in purchase and surveys included the Kayadrossera patent, which covered 700,000 acres lying between the Hudson and the Mohawk, obtained by grant in 1703 and confirmed in 1708.

Yet quiet did not prevail. The restless spirits of the wilderness were stirred by their first political aspirations. The Schuylers, whose possessions extended over the old Saratoga hunting-ground, awoke the farmers to an interest in the burning questions of the day. Sloops sailing up the Hudson brought rumors of riots in New York City, and of the resistance offered by the Sons of Liberty to the execution of the Stamp Act. When news came that no good patriot would wear imported garments, the women redoubled their efforts to produce from spinning-wheel and loom the homespun fabric. As the King grew more determined, and the people learned more clearly what rights were theirs, the British soldiers became violent and the patriots more indignant and outspoken. The first military order of the home government to put the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga on a war basis was quickly followed by the tramp of soldiers through the wilderness. The rumble of artillery and of commissary wagons broke once more the stillness of the forest. The farmers who lived along the old war-trail revived by the evening fireside the stories of the French and Indian wars. The Indians, quick to discern the coming storm, began once more, under the influence of the Johnson family (allied to them through Brandt and his sister), to destroy property and massacre the unprepared. The settlers of the “long valley” were bearing at this time the brunt of the preliminary warfare of the American Revolution. They met the issue bravely. While they fought, their wives and daughters gathered in the crops, melted into bullets the treasured pewter teapots and sugar-bowls, learned to shoot, to barricade their houses or their little forts, and to conceal themselves from prowling bands of Indians and savage Tories. It was then that the Royalist Governor Tryon, taking refuge on a war vessel, exclaimed, “The Americans from politicians are now becoming soldiers.” Had he witnessed the courageous deeds of the women of the great waterways, he would perhaps have added, “The women from housekeepers are becoming farmers and fighters.”

New anxieties arose in the Province of New York as rumors multiplied of the advance in stately procession of a new and splendid army of the British, recently arrived in Canada, down the old war-path through Champlain and Lake George on the way to Albany to unite with the British wing ascending the Hudson River. Inspired by General Schuyler, commanding the American army, the farmers seized whatever firearms they could find and hurried to his camp. The women of Albany hammered the leaden weights from the windows of their houses, moulded them into bullets, and urged on the men. The militia of New England, aroused by the invasion, came by hundreds and by thousands until the river hills were covered. The hasty breastworks planned by Kosciuszko were completed, and the rude recruits were hurriedly formed into regiments and brigades. Gates, who superseded Schuyler, lay with his staff in the rear of the army, while Morgan with his riflemen held guard at the western extremity of the entrenched camp on the hills, with his headquarters at Neilson’s. This was the defensive camp of the Americans at Bemis Heights, and it stretched from the river bank westward over the hills about two miles and faced the north. Here they lay in wait for Burgoyne, who had rallied from his repulses at Bennington and Fort Stanwix, and was pressing down the bank of the Hudson River toward Albany from Fort Edward.

On the 13th of September, a bridge of boats was stretched across the Hudson River—just below the mouth of the Batten Kill—for the passage of Burgoyne’s army. They halted for the first night amid the charred wheat-fields of General Schuyler’s farm on the south side of the Fishkill. On the morrow they hastened on to Coveville, and thence to Seward’s house, where again their white tents were spread over the country.

On September 19th Burgoyne moved forward to outflank the American camp on the west. An obstinate fight of many hours about the old farm-well and in the great ravine followed, and the British failed in their attempt to pass the Americans or to weaken their line. But they held persistently to the position they had taken at Freeman’s Farm and at the close of the battle fortified their camp from the point on Freeman’s Farm in a line to the eastward on the bank of the river, where they built three redoubts upon three hills. The fortified camp of the Americans lay about a mile and a half below in a line parallel with the British. Here, within bugle-call of each other, for two weeks, the hostile forces sat upon the hills of Saratoga, frowning defiance at each other, and ready to open the conflict at a moment’s warning.

Burgoyne waited in vain for the Americans to attack him behind his works, and for a message, hourly expected, that Clinton would come from New York to his relief. Hunger pressed sorely upon the army. The brilliant conquests he had pictured to himself were fading from his grasp. He called his officers together in council. Silence and gloom hung over them. Should they advance or retreat? His imperious will dictated the advice he desired. Finally Fraser sustained the commander. An advance was ordered. On the 7th of October the British marched from their entrenchments in battle array. Burgoyne led the centre; Fraser a flanking column to the right; the royal artillery to the left, and the Hessians in reserve. Like a great bird of prey they settled in line of battle upon the broken ground that separated them from the American camp. Gates took up the gauntlet thus thrown down and exclaimed, “Order out Morgan to begin the game.” With a word to his command the watchful and heroic Morgan dashed into the struggle, scattered Burgoyne’s advance-guard, rushed on against the trained forces of Fraser, and swept them from the position to the left which they had taken in advance. With masterly skill and courage, Fraser rallied his men, and was forming a second line of defence, when he fell mortally wounded.

The sharp whistle of Morgan called his men once more to action. They charged, while Poor and Larned attacked the centre and the right. The battle swayed back and forth through the great ravine. Another charge from Morgan and the British retreated to their entrenchments. At this moment the impatient Arnold, stung to madness by the slights put upon him by Gates, dashed across the field. He gathered the regiments under his leadership by his enthusiasm, bravery, and vehemence. He broke through the lines of entrenchments at Freeman’s Farm. Repulsed for a moment, he assailed the left and charged the strong redoubt of Breyman which flanked the British camp at the place now called Burgoyne’s Hill. The patriot army, fired with hope and courage, crowded fearlessly up to the very mouth of the belching guns of the redoubt, won the final victory of the day, and then, exhausted by the desperate fight, dropped down for a few hours’ rest before they took possession of the British camp.

But there was no rest for the defeated army. Silently and sullenly during these hours, they withdrew from the works at Freeman’s Farm, and huddled closely together under the three redoubts by the river. Here the women, Madam Riedesel, Lady Ackland, and others, trembled and wept over the dying Fraser. Here the hospital stood with its overflowing throng of the wounded and the dead. The great and princely army waited in doubt and despair while their commander wavered in his plans. Should he try to hold his dangerous ground, should he risk another engagement, should he retreat? The last course was chosen. On the following night a retreat began as the last minute-guns were fired magnanimously by the Americans, in honor of Fraser’s funeral, which took place at sunset. The sun fell behind the heights upon which the exultant Americans lay; heavy clouds followed, and quickly after, amid the drenching rain, the army of Burgoyne, abandoning their sick and wounded, began the retreat up the river.

Retracing their steps from Bemis Heights, the scene of their disaster, they followed up the river road to the Fishkill and the Schuyler mansion, which they burned to the ground. Failing here in an attempt to make a stand against the advancing Americans, they fell back, formed an entrenched camp, and planted their batteries along the heights of old Saratoga. In this camp they still hoped to hold out until relief should come up the Hudson from New York. Here the romance and pathos of the campaign culminated, as described by Madam Riedesel, the accomplished and beautiful wife of the Hessian general, in her thrilling account of the retreat and of the agonizing days that followed. At the Marshall house, where she had taken refuge, the cannonballs thrown across the river crashed through its walls, and rolled along the floor, so that the sick and wounded were driven into the cellar where she and her children and the broken-hearted widows of the dead were suffering, watching, and starving. Frail by birth and rearing, Madam Riedesel stood in the doorway of the cellar, and with arms outspread across the open door held at bay the selfish, brutal men who would have crowded out the sick and dying. Burgoyne and his army, entrenched on the hills, and with the river below, yet had no water to drink, except a cupful brought now and then for the faint and wounded from the river by the British women, on whom the gallant Americans, ever tender toward woman, would not fire.

Finally, driven to the last extremity, with the Americans on the north, where Stark had seized Fort Edward, to the east, where Fellows held the river bank, and to the south, where Gates had thrown his victorious army, Burgoyne sent in his terms of surrender. Almost on the site of old Fort Hardy, his brave but unfortunate troops laid down their arms, and near the site of the old Schuyler mansion, which they had so recently burned, Burgoyne surrendered his sword to General Gates. Along the road, just across the Fishkill, the American army stretched in two lines, between which the disarmed prisoners were marched to the shrill notes of the fife and the measured beat of the drum, to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” played for the first time as a national air.

General Schuyler, the hospitable and magnanimous, was on the ground. Neither the slight he had received from Congress nor the injuries inflicted on him by the British could quench his generous nature. He rejoiced with his victorious countrymen, he sympathized with the fallen enemy, he protected and cared for the helpless women.

During the summer of 1777 he had cut a road from his farm at old Saratoga through the wilderness to the High Rock Spring, already famous for its medicinal properties. He built a small frame house on the ledge of rocks overhanging the spring, and here for several summers his family came with him for rest and recreation as they had formerly gone to the comfortable mansion at old Saratoga. This was replaced by a rude cabin, and there, in 1783, Washington was entertained when, with General Clinton, he came to visit the Saratoga battle-ground. The party proceeded northward to Ticonderoga, and on their return stopped at High Rock Spring. General Washington was so strongly impressed with the value of the water and the beauty of the region that shortly afterward he tried to buy the property, but Livingston, Van Dam, and others had already secured it.

The events of the Revolution had discouraged the few settlers who first came to the springs, and for years afterwards but two log cabins offered a shelter to adventurous tourists. In 1791, Gideon Putnam cleared his farm at Saratoga, and Governor Gilman of New Hampshire in 1792 discovered Congress Spring. Putnam built his large boarding-house and tavern, and far-seeing and liberal-minded, he purchased extensive tracts of land and secured the foundation of the beautiful and prosperous village which is now a delight to visitors and a valued home to its residents. It is essentially a place of “homes,” where people of large or small means are assured of that quiet and ease which cannot be found in cities or towns which depend for their prosperity on active commercial or manufacturing interests.

SCHENECTADY

THE PROVINCIAL OUTPOST OF LIBERTY

By JUDSON S. LANDON

Schenectady was settled in 1662. To give to the story of the settlement its proper character among the beginnings of free institutions in America it is necessary to recall the fact that the States-General of the Netherlands in 1621 chartered a trading concern, the Dutch West India Company, granted it the monopoly of the fur trade in New Netherland, and permitted it to govern, so long as it could, whatever colonies might inhabit the territory. The company thus formed ruled over the territory from 1624 to 1664, when the English, trumping up a stale claim of prior discovery, interfered and took possession.

The company’s rule was arbitrary, but not without good features. Traders are not apt to cavil over religious dogmas,—the company permitted freedom of conscience and worship. Subjects and servants render better obedience and service if treated with kindness and justice. The directors of the company seemed to know this, and professed to govern accordingly, but their governors sometimes found pretexts for the injustice which promised the surest profits.

Some of the colonists insisted that the people ought to have a part in the government. The Dutch governor, when he most needed their support, would promise concessions. He sometimes seemed to have begun to make them, but he made none that were substantial. Why should the trading company sentence itself to death?

Agriculture was necessary for the food-supply of the new province, and promised customers for the imports from Holland. Liberal terms were extended to the agriculturist. Men of wealth were tempted by offers of vast tracts of land, with a sort of feudal sovereignty, on condition that each of them would establish fifty families upon his domain. Among others the manor or lordship of Rensselaerswyck was established, embracing nearly all the territory now comprised within the counties of Albany and Rensselaer. Literally its jurisdiction was subject to that of the West India Company, but practically it was independent of it. The company established a trading and governmental post at Beverwyck or Fort Orange, now Albany, and exercised supreme jurisdiction, exclusive of that of Rensselaerswyck, for at least musket-range about the fort.

Among the colonists and traders who had been attracted to Beverwyck and Rensselaerswyck were some intelligent and enterprising men, mostly Protestant Dutchmen, who, after varied experience but general good fortune in the province, resolved to go apart by themselves and establish a community where justice equality and liberty could be secured and enjoyed, free from the overlordship of a patroon, and as remote as was practicable from contact with the grasping West India Company, either at Fort Orange or Manhattan.

The leader of these men was the founder of Schenectady, Arendt Van Curler. He was the nephew of Killiaen Van Rensselaer, and came from Holland in 1630 as director of his uncle’s principality. This he managed with great success for many years. All accounts agree in describing him as a man of honor, benevolence, ability and activity. His unvarying fairness and tactful address soon secured for him the respect and confidence of all who knew him, and especially of the Mohawk Indians. In their opinion he was the greatest and best white man they ever knew. They decorated him while living with the distinction of “very good friend,” and honored him when dead by calling other governors “Curler” or “Corlear,” a title which still survives with the same meaning in the language of the scattered remnants of their tribe. It was through his good offices that peace was secured between the province and the Five Nations, among whom the Mohawks were the foremost, and preserved unbroken during his life. By following his policy peace was long maintained after his death.

The beauty and fertility of the Mohawk country early attracted his attention. A letter addressed by him in 1643 to the “Noble Patroon” at Amsterdam exists, in which, after giving an account of his stewardship as manager of his uncle’s interests, he writes that the year before he had visited the Mohawk country, where he found three French prisoners, one of them being the celebrated Father Jogues, “a very learned scholar, who was very cruelly treated, his finger and thumb being cut off.” These prisoners were doomed to death, but Van Curler succeeded in effecting their release. Father Jogues, however, eager for the salvation of their souls, returned to them two years later, to suffer martyrdom at their hands. In this letter Van Curler writes:

“Within a half-day’s journey from the Colonies lies the most beautiful land on the Mohawk river that eye ever saw, full a day’s journey long.” He says “it cannot be reached by boat owing to the strength of the stream and shallowness of the water, but can be reached by wagons.”

Another part of this letter is worth transcribing:

“I am at present betrothed to the widow of the late Mr. Jonas Bronck. May the good God vouchsafe to bless me in my undertaking, and please to grant that it may conduce to His honor and our mutual salvation. Amen.”

We know that the good lady long survived him, and as his widow was conceded some special privileges by the government.

“The most beautiful land” upon which Van Curler looked, was the Mohawk Valley, embracing Schenectady and extending far to the westward.

As he stood upon the crest of the upland southwest of the present city, where the sandy plain abruptly ends and gives place to the rich bottom-lands a hundred and fifty feet below, he looked northwesterly upon a wide expanse of meadow, through which the Mohawk River, gleaming in the sunlight, slowly wended. His eye rested upon the outline of that break in the mountains where the Mohawk has gorged its bed, through which in our day the New York Central Railroad passes from the seaboard to the Mississippi without climbing a foot-hill. It is the only level pass through the great Appalachian chain between the St. Lawrence Valley and the Gulf of Mexico. Not a tree and scarcely a bush grew upon this plain, but here and there were scattered patches of beans, corn and pumpkins, the fruit of the industry of the Mohawk women; and upon the higher ground where Schenectady now stands, the second great castle of the Mohawks, the Capitol of the Five Nations, stood, surrounded by many wigwams of the tribe. The nearer hills and the more distant mountains were clothed with forests. This cleared and fertile intervale, set in its forest frame, was due to the volume of water which in the spring freshets pours down the river. Three miles east of the city its channel is crossed by great ledges of shale rock, through which the river has cut its way, which still remains too narrow for the immediate passage of its waters when greatly swollen. These, overflowing and enriching the bottom-lands above, also denude them of their forest growth.

The Indian name of the place was Schonowe, the first syllable pronounced much like the Dutch “schoon,”—beautiful. Some of the Dutch, sharing Van Curler’s idea of the beauty of the place, wished to call it Schoon, beautiful, achten, esteemed, del, valley,—Schoonachtendel. The Indian name and the Dutch substitute were combined and confounded in a various and perplexing orthography which remains to us in the deeds, wills and other papers of that time, from which the name Schenectady was finally evolved.

Although Van Curler was attracted thus early by this beautiful land, it was long before he could realize his purposes. He married the Widow Bronck and continued the care of his uncle’s interest in the manor of Rensselaerswyck. But despite the success of his management the longer he stayed the more he saw and deplored the evils inherent in the feudal system. To his enlarged and benevolent mind the system itself was essentially one of serfdom.

The patroon was lord of the manor, the owner of all the land and of a fixed share of all the produce of his subjects or tenants, with the right of a pre-emption of all the surplus beyond what was necessary for their support. They took an oath of allegiance to him: they could not hunt or fish or trade or leave the manor without his consent or that of his representative. If they sold their tenant right and improvements, a part of the price was his. His will was the law, for his subjects renounced their right of appeal to the provincial government from his decrees or those of his magistrates. He was an absentee, and measured the merit of his agents by the amount of their remittances. The government of the province as administered at Fort Orange or at Manhattan was as good as could be expected from a trading company, but was odious to men of Van Curler’s enlarged understanding.

The firearms of white men at Beverwyck and in Rensselaerswyck began to impair the value of the hunting grounds in their vicinity, and Van Curler learned that the Indians might consent to sell their lands at Schenectady. He looked about for associates in the purchase of the lands and their settlement, and sifted out fourteen. He applied to the Director General or Governor of the province, Peter Stuyvesant—whose real qualities and worth and those of his good subjects the pen of Irving has replaced with the genial travesties of his enduring caricature,—and obtained his reluctant consent to the purchase. He then applied to the Indian chiefs. They too were reluctant. Schonowe was the site of one of their most ancient castles. It had long been their favorite home. Their traditions covered many generations, but no tradition reached back to their first coming. Still they well remembered that Hiawatha had lived here, two centuries or more before.

Hiawatha, the chief, of whom the Great Spirit was an ancestor, and whose wisdom, goodness and valor far surpassed that of other men, was the founder of the confederacy of the Five Nations. He devoted his long life to the good of his people, teaching them to live nobler and better, and finally was borne in the flesh to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Longfellow sings of Hiawatha with no stint of poetic license, but his harmonious numbers do not surpass the Indian estimate of his qualities. No doubt there was such a man, of exceptional wisdom, valor and influence, and that he disappeared without being known to have died. Around his memory tradition, employing the figurative language of the Indians, accumulated myths and magnified them.⁠[16]

Van Curler was persistent, and in the end the Indians could not find it in their hearts to deny their “very good friend,” and the deed was formally executed and delivered at Fort Orange, July 2, 1661.

The founders entered into possession. The Indians bade them welcome, and began to move their wigwams up the valley. It was their first step in the many stages of their unreturning journey toward the setting sun. Their own sun thus passed its zenith, but they did not know it.

The colonists fixed their home or village lots upon the land above the sweep of the river floods, occupying for this purpose that part of the city west of the present Ferry Street. They assigned to each proprietor a village lot, two hundred feet square; a larger lot for a garden just south of the village, and a farm upon the bottom-lands beyond, with privileges in the outlying woodlands. Other settlers joined them. They sold them village lots and farm and garden lands, until the farm lands of the Van Curler grant were disposed of. Those who came still later bought village lots, but they had to buy farms of the Indians from lands outside of the Van Curler grant. Mechanics, traders and workmen came who did not want land, or lacked the means to buy it. Many of the proprietors were rich enough to own slaves, which—or shall I say whom?—they brought with them. Very soon by dint of industry their houses were built of the lumber sawed at their own mills, their farms were promising abundant crops, their gardens were blossoming, while their cattle were grazing in more distant pastures.

In this little republic the freeholders were the source of authority. By them and of them five trustees were elected “for maintaining good order and advancing their settlement.” The “Reformed Nether Dutch Church” was early established with its elders and deacons, and later, with its settled domine, maintained a guardianship over the people and especially the widows, orphans, and the poor. The community was under the titular jurisdiction of the province; the laws of Holland were in force with respect to contracts, property rights, and domestic relations, and were observed as a matter of course. The governor appointed the trustees or their nominees, schepens or justices of the peace, and they appointed a schout or constable, with large executive powers. This official, conscious of his power, and arrayed in a garb denoting it, solemnly pointed his pipe stem and sometimes even shook his sword, at the wayward. If any were so refractory as not to mend their ways after such an admonition, he haled them before the schepen. This magistrate, as his commission was construed, had the right so to supply the defects in the Dutch laws and the ordinances of “Their High Mightinesses, the noble Dutch West India Company,” as to “make the punishment fit the crime.” This meant that he could impose such a fine as the schout thought collectible, or such other punishment as he would undertake to inflict. Causes of great gravity, such as complaints by the traders at Beverwyck that the accused had infringed upon their monopolies, were brought before that jurisdiction, but the records disclose no practical benefits to the complainants.

In 1664, two years after the first settlement, the province and its government passed by conquest from the Dutch to the English. This made but little change at Schenectady. The system of government already begun was continued. The manor of Rensselaerswyck was confirmed to the patroon with some change in the sovereignty, but none in his property rights. Beverwyck became Albany, the county of Albany was established, and embraced Schenectady. The court at Albany took jurisdiction of such larger causes as the “Duke’s Laws,” conferred upon it, and the minor ones remained as before within the jurisdiction of the local magistrates. There were but few ministers of the gospel in the province, and it was not until 1684 that the Reverend Petrus Thesschenmaecher, a graduate of the University of Utrecht, was installed as their first resident pastor or domine. It was a memorable day, when that pious man, in his black silken robe, ascended the high pulpit of the church edifice which, loopholed for musketry together with his dwelling-house, awaited his coming, and in the deep solemn guttural of his Nether Dutch speech, led the worship of his dutiful flock. These Dutch Protestants did not agonize about God’s wrath like the Puritans; they assumed His loving care, as a child does its father’s. The ordinances and forms of worship prescribed by the Church were regarded as duties to be observed as well as privileges to be enjoyed, and the higher the social or official state of the individual, the more prominent and circumspect must he be in his religious observances. One of the documents of that day opens in these words: “We, the justices, consistory, together with the common people of Schanegtade, conceive ourselves in duty bound to take care of our reverend minister.” It is signed by the justices, elders, deacons and many others who, we must assume, were “common people.” There remains a marriage contract in which a widower and a widow recite how much property each brings to the marriage state; the widow enumerating among other property three slaves, for whose freedom upon her decease, however, she provides. No doubt the justices, the consistory, the freeholders and the common people observed this order of precedence on this and all like occasions; the widow being preceded by a slave bearing a warming-box for her feet, a metrical version of the Psalms, and the book of devotion containing the liturgy, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Confession of Faith and the canons of the Church, as all these had been approved by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619.

Long before this learned graduate of the University of Utrecht was secured, the Rev. Gideon Schaets, minister at Albany, was permitted by his Church to visit Schenectady at least four times a year, upon a week day (“since it would be unjust to let the community be without preaching”—so the record at Albany recites), and administer the Lord’s Supper, baptize the children and officiate at marriages. Marriage, however, was a civil function over which a magistrate was competent to preside. As early as 1681 the Church had an investment for the support of the poor of 3,000 guilders, which had reached 4,000 guilders in 1690, when the Church perished in the destruction and massacre of that year.

The inhabitants of this frontier village, who welcomed with open hands and glad hearts their first domine, might well be pardoned if there was a leaven of worldly pride in their greeting. Where else in all the provinces was there a more prosperous, more generous, more intelligent and better ordered people? There was no lack of substantial plenty. Who more than they were entitled to establish a Church and have a domine of their own? In October, 1683, the first legislative assembly chosen by the freeholders was summoned to convene in New York, to frame laws for the province. By the governor’s proclamation Schenectady had been accorded a representative, and thus its importance in the body politic was recognized. The village was the frontier bulwark of civilization, where the white man and the Mohawk Indian, by keeping faith with each other, kept bright the chain of friendship which made the Five Nations the allies of the Province of New York. To guard against French and Indian incursions, a stockade had been built around the village. This was a high fence made of three rows of posts set together firmly in the ground. There was a gate upon the north and south sides, and a fort within the stockade at each gate. Although often alarmed, it was not until the war between England and her allies and France, which was soon declared after James II. abdicated the crown of England in the revolution of 1688 and William and Mary came to the throne, that this frontier village was seriously threatened. Jacob Leisler, a Dutch trader and captain of a military company, of great zeal but of small ability, seized the government in the name of William and Mary and brought confusion among the people by his presumption. The common people favored Leisler. They “blessed the great God of Heaven and Earth for deliverance from Tyranny, Popery, and Slavery.” The aristocracy opposed him, and complained that “Fort James was seized by the rabble, that hardly one person of sense and estate does countenance.” Their wisest leader, Van Curler, had long been dead;⁠[17] and the people of Schenectady became hopelessly divided. Warnings were frequent, but vigilance was relaxed, and at last the blow fell upon a defenceless people.

On the night of the 8th of February, 1690, one hundred and fourteen Frenchmen and ninety-six Indians, sent by Frontenac, Governor General of Canada, after a twenty-two days’ march from Montreal, through the snow and the wilderness, stole in through the open gates of the stockade, massacred sixty of the inhabitants, plundered and burned about sixty houses—leaving only six—and carried away thirty captives. The survivors, who were fortunate enough in the confusion to escape either by accident or flight, numbered about two hundred and fifty. Their distress cannot be described. They buried their dead, their beloved pastor being among the slain. They made what provision they could against the severity of the winter and then took thought of the future. Should they abandon the place where for a quarter of a century they had lived in peace and plenty, and seek safety elsewhere? Help and counsel came to them from Albany, Esopus and New York, from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and not least from the friendly Mohawks, all encouraging them to stay. Indeed, there was no place of assured safety in the whole province. The war threatened all the English colonies. The colonies sent their delegates to New York, where they concerted measures for the common defence. This was the first general American Congress. To abandon Schenectady would be to encourage the enemy, to endanger the whole province by discouraging its allies, the Iroquois or Five Nations, causing them to distrust the valor and prowess of the English arms, and possibly to embrace the oft proffered alliance of the French. Schenectady must be held, cost what it might. The survivors finally concluded to stay. Twenty-four of the freeholders subscribed to a paper, stating:

“In the first place, it is agreed to resort to the North Fort to secure our bodies and defend them.

“Secondly, that the crops or fruits of the earth—that is, the winter grain, shall be in common for the use of all, and all the mowing lands for this year.

“Thirdly, the widows shall draw their just due and portions.

“If any one will voluntarily depart or draw up for Canada, he shall yet have his full share and the benefits.

“Every one that shall stand to these articles shall obey the orders of their officers, on the penalty of such punishment as shall be seasonable, without expecting any favor, grace or dissimulation.”

The survivors began the work of reconstruction and defence. Every able-bodied man became both citizen and soldier, ready for service at home or on scout or picket or skirmish duty, wherever the approach of the enemy was to be feared. Schenectady became a military camp where the provincial troops, reinforced by detachments from New England and by their Iroquois allies, made good the safety of Schenectady and thus kept watch and ward over the English dominion in North America. They recognized Governor Leisler’s authority and sent a representative to the two sessions of his Assembly held in April and October, 1690.⁠[18]

The warlike state of things existed from 1690 until after the peace of Ryswyck in 1697. Upon the return of peace, Schenectady began to resume its former state and prosperity. The people rebuilt their church and called the Rev. Bernardus Freerman as their pastor. How dear he became to them the many children named in his honor attest. The Dutch population was sprinkled with a few English-speaking soldiers who chose to make it their home. Its importance increased as a centre of trade, not only with the Indians, but with those hardy pioneers, who, attracted by the fertile lands, or the desire to join the friendly Indians in their hunting expeditions, pushed farther up the valley. The traders at Albany protested against this invasion of their monopoly, and also against the exercise of milling, weaving and tanning privileges, but in a famous law-suit in the Supreme Court of the province, the Albany monopolists were beaten, and Schenectady’s full right to freedom of trade and manufacture was established. Then came Queen Anne’s War with the French, lasting from 1701 to 1713, and Schenectady was again in peril, and again garrisoned, for the same reason and much in the same way as before; but, the Iroquois having made a treaty of peace with Canada, the brunt of the war fell upon New England and Schenectady passed safely through it.

From the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the “Old French War,” 1744-48, peace prevailed. In the latter war many inhabitants of the village were killed in skirmishes or cut down by skulking Indians in the service of the French. In one skirmish, or rather massacre, at Beukendal, three miles northwest of Schenectady, twenty men were killed and thirteen captured and carried away. Then came the last French war, from 1753 to 1763. The English now had posts at Fort Hunter, Fort Schuyler, Fort Johnson and Oswego on the west, at Fort Ann and Fort Edward on the north. Sir William Johnson and others had established settlements up the Mohawk Valley. Sir William was general superintendent of Indian affairs and a Major-General in the English service. His influence over the Iroquois was commanding; his early victory at Lake George was important; the English carried the war into the French territory. Schenectady enjoyed immunity from attack, and was enabled, besides maintaining a garrison in its fort, to send its quotas of troops to distant service, one company assisting in the English siege and capture of Havana in 1762.

The treaty of Paris in 1763, by which the French yielded the dominion of North America to the English, seemed to promise a lasting peace. But the War of the Revolution came on. Our Indian allies, the Iroquois, remained faithful to their long allegiance to the English Crown, and became our enemies under the leadership of Sir John Johnson, who, succeeding to the estate and title of his father, Sir William, adhered to the Crown, under which both became ennobled. Schenectady was again threatened, from the side of Canada, but by its former friends and allies. Aside from its contribution of six companies to the patriot cause, its position made it the base from which those who adhered to the English cause sought to send aid and comfort to the enemy. General Washington came here early in the struggle, and made arrangements for the frontier defence.⁠[19]

The Schenectady patriots appointed a committee of vigilance and safety, who, as the one hundred and sixty-two written pages of their records show, repressed with strong hand and scant ceremony the slightest evasions of the orders of Congress and of the military authorities, and all attempts at treasonable intercourse with the enemy. Finally American independence was won, and Schenectady, after nearly a century of unrest, enjoyed the blessing of permanent peace. The forts and stockade soon disappeared.

Meantime the little village had steadily grown, becoming a chartered borough in 1765, and advancing to the dignity of a city in 1798. Schenectady received its first officially carried mail on the 3d day of April, 1763,—Benjamin Franklin being the colonial postmaster-general,—founded the Schenectady Academy in 1784, which became Union College in 1795, and read its first newspaper, The Schenectady Gazette, January 6, 1799.

The military occupation and the increasing importance of the frontier trade added largely to the English population. As early as 1710, the Rev. Thomas Barclay, the English chaplain to the fort in Albany, preached once a month at Schenectady, where, as he writes, “there is a garrison of forty soldiers, besides about sixteen English and about one hundred Dutch families.” At that time the Dutch had no pastor. Mr. Barclay writes, “There is a convenient and well built church which they freely give me the use of.” It was not, however, until 1759, when there were three hundred houses in the village, that the English population undertook the erection of a separate church. They “purchased a glebe lot and by subscription chiefly among themselves erected a neat stone church,” and called it St. George’s. This stone church, with its subsequent additions, is the handsome St. George’s of to-day. Its site had previously been covered by the English barracks. There is a tradition that the Presbyterians assisted in the erection of St. George’s with the understanding that the Anglicans were to go in at the west door and the Presbyterians at the south door, but that the Anglicans managed to get the church consecrated unknown to the Presbyterians. The latter, upon finding it out, were so indignant that they set about building a church for themselves. Be this as it may, the Presbyterians commenced building their church in 1770, and finished it with bell and steeple, the latter surmounted by a leaden ball gilded with “six books of gold leaf.”

In 1767 the Methodist movement began here under the lead of Captain Thomas Webb, a local preacher bearing the license of John Wesley. The movement was favored and advanced by the preaching of that great orator, George Whitefield, then making his last American tour. The society, however, waited until 1809 before building its first church edifice. In the same year Schenectady County was carved out of Albany County.

All this while the English speech was gaining over the Dutch. Children of Dutch parents, despite the teaching of the nursery, would acquire and use the English idiom. Finally some of the members of the Dutch Church ventured to suggest the propriety of having service now and then in the English tongue. The staid burghers were shocked. But, the question once raised, the younger generation grew bolder, and the elder began to listen. Domine Romeyn, a graduate of Princeton College, a fluent master of both languages, and eminent for his varied learning and as the founder of Union College, was pastor of the Church from 1784 to 1804. He so far yielded to the new demand as to preach in English upon occasions of which he was careful to give previous notice. It was not until 1794 that the leading members of the Church represented to its consistory the necessity of increasing the services in English,⁠[20] “to the end that the church be not scattered.” Ten years later, at the close of Domine Romeyn’s long ministry, the Dutch language ceased to be heard from the pulpit of the church. But there are still surviving a few—very few—inhabitants to whom the Dutch is their mother tongue. One of them informs the writer that when he visited Holland he conversed with ease with the people, but that he sometimes used words not familiar to them and afterwards learned that these words were of Indian origin.

As Schenectady is two hundred feet above tide-water at Albany, it early became the headquarters of the western trade, goods being carried to and from the West upon canoes, bateaux, and the “Schenectady Durham boats.” The trade developed into large proportions, and during the hundred years closing with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, many traders made fortunes which were considered large in those days. Upon the completion of the canal the commercial prosperity of the city declined. The decline seemed to be confirmed by the era of railroads, notwithstanding the “Mohawk and Hudson” was the first railroad built in the State, its first passenger train arriving in Schenectady from Albany, September 12, 1831, and on the second railroad, the “Saratoga and Schenectady,” the first train left Schenectady for Saratoga, July 12, 1832.

The business revival, however, came at last. For fifty years its locomotive works have been renowned, finding customers even in England. Now, that oldest of powers and newest of merchandise, electricity, has its greatest plant here, from which its products seek the ends of the habitable globe. These, with many other industries, disturb the city’s ancient repose. It no longer comprises a people exclusively of Dutch, English and Scotch ancestry, but embraces a polyglot assemblage. For more than a century Union College, founded in an age less tolerant than our own upon the basis of Christian unity, implied by its name, over which the celebrated Doctor Nott presided for sixty years, and the accomplished Doctor Raymond now presides, has been sending forth year by year its graduates. Among them—as the College justly boasts—is a long list of leaders in Church and in State, in the halls of learning, among the votaries of science, where industrial and professional skill achieves the worthiest triumphs, and where human needs require the wisest methods of helpfulness; and every sign indicates that this long list will continue to lengthen.

If there is any lesson, it is simple. The town was founded in the spirit of liberty and justice; the people cherished and cultivated the spirit so well that the Mohawk Indian for one hundred and twelve years respected and reciprocated. May the spirit long prevail!

NEWBURGH

THE PALATINE PARISH BY QUASSAICK

By ADELAIDE SKEEL

Mr. Secretary Boyle to Lord Lovelace

Whitehall, 10th Aug’st, 1708.

My Lord:—The Queen being graciously pleased to send fifty-two German Protestants to New York and to settle ’em there at Her own expenses, Her Majesty as a farther act of Charity is willing to provide also for the subsistence of Joshua de Kockerthal their Minister and it is Her Pleasure that you pass a grant to him of a reasonable Portion of Land for a Glebe not exceeding five hundred acres with liberty to sell a suitable proportion thereof for his better Maintenance till he shall be in a condition to live by the produce of the remainder.

I am, my Lord

Your L’dshp’s Most faithful humble servant

H. Boyle.

Lord Lovelace.

A bridge of sighs spans the distance between the coming of Newburgh’s earliest settlers, the German Lutherans from the lower Palatinate on the Rhine, to the later arrival of the English, Scotch, French and Irish. The Lutherans were religious exiles, whose villages had been burnt, whose homes had been destroyed and whose strong Protestant faith alone survived the wreck of their fortunes. Of this poverty-stricken company, nine with their wives and children were sent up Hudson’s River to occupy the present site of Newburgh.

The first intention of Queen Anne of England to send these Germans to Jamaica where white people were needed, was set aside “lest the climate be not agreeable to their constitutions, being so much hotter than that of Germany.” Apropos of the intelligent consideration of these Commissioners of Emigration in 1709, one questions if the half-clad travellers who are described in an old document as “very necessitous,” found the climate of Hudson’s River agreeable to their constitutions in winter-time.

In winter time! Sailing up the river in summer-time past Sleepy Hollow and Spuyten Duyvil, beyond the wide Tappan Zee, through the Gate of the Highlands where the waters narrow and the mountains cross, where the fairies dance on old Cro’s Nest, and Storm King dons and doffs his weather cap, on into Newburgh Bay where the Beacons guard the Fishkill shores, and the Queen City of the Hudson rises in green terraces on the western bank, the tourist idly wonders if these Palatine pilgrims, worn by the ravages of persecution, had eyes to see the beauty of the land they were about to possess. It is possible, notwithstanding the ice-bound waters and snow-covered country, that their homesick hearts may have been warmed by the sight of a river not unlike their Rhine. As yet no Irving, Paulding, Cooper, Drake or Willis had cast the magic witchery of his tales over these scenes, yet a century before, the Half-Moon had passed this way and perhaps the stories Henry Hudson’s crew brought back of red devils dancing in rocky chambers amused the children aboard the sloop of the German Lutheran exiles.

More pertinent in historical research than such imaginings is the contrast between the temper of these voyagers and those others who sailed in the Mayflower, and before landing covenanted with one another “to submit only to such government and governors as should be chosen by common consent.” The shores of the Hudson were no less fertile than those of Massachusetts, yet the Palatines showed far less aggressiveness than the Pilgrims, and far less courage to stand alone. The story of these Lutherans here in Newburgh is a story of petitions first to one Right Honorable Lord and then to another,—petitions which, alas! were too often unheeded, although the petitioners sorely in need of help never failed to sign themselves

Your Honours
Most Dutyfull
and most obedient Company
at Quassek Creek and Tanskamir.

In one letter to the Right Honourable Richard Ingoldsby Esq’ʳ, Lieutenant Governor and Commander-in-Chief over Her Majesty’s Provinces in New York, Nova Caesaria and Territories depending thereon in America &c. as also to Her Majesty’s Honourable Council of this Province &c. they plead that “they do not know where to address themselves to receive the remainder of their allowance of provision at 9d per day.”

Again, in their search to find “a Gentleman who might be willing to support said Germans with the Remainder of their allowance the entire summ of which is not exceeding 195 lbs, 3sh,” they but succeed in finding a gentleman whose offer of assistance they considered only as “fine talke and discourse out of his own head”—by which one learns the supplicants were left hungry and cold on their hilly farms, waiting for help which came slowly and for crops which yielded but scantily.

Whoever institutes a comparison between the Palatines and the Pilgrims must remember the Pilgrims came to America, a compact society fortified by friends at home soon to follow, while the Palatines, beggared by the most terrible of religious persecutions, were sent, as individuals, by Queen Anne to her colonies, as to-day dependent children of the State are sent to the far West. They were absolute paupers, yet such was their moral excellence that a writer on Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River indirectly commends these poor Germans.

“From the banks of the Rhine the germ of free local institutions borne on the tide of western emigration found along the Hudson a more fruitful soil than New England afforded for the growth of those forms of municipal, state and national government which have made the United States the leading Republic among nations, and thus in a new and historically important sense may the Hudson river be called the Rhine of America.”

The patent granted the Lutherans known as the Palatine Parish by Quassaick contained within its boundaries forty acres for highways and five hundred for a Glebe. The Glebe is bounded by North Street on the north and by South Street on the south. Across its western border ran Liberty Street, then the King’s Highway, although no king save Washington, who refused the title, ever trod its dust. The Glebe was “for the use of the Lutheran minister and his successors forever,” but they really possessed it only about forty years,—thus liberally was “forever” interpreted two centuries ago.

says the nursery rhyme. Here the evolution of a parish has for its germ the church and steeple, the minister and all the people being a later development. The germ of this Lutheran parish was the minister, Joshua de Kockerthal,⁠[21] whose missionary labors on both sides of the river cannot be overestimated. After the minister came not the church nor the steeple, but the bell, a gift from no less a lady of quality than Queen Anne herself. It was highly prized by these Lutherans and loaned to a church in New York on condition that “should we be able to build a church at our own expense at any time thereafter then the Lutheran Church of New York shall restore to us the same bell such as it now is or another of equal weight and value.”

The church was built probably in 1730, and the Reverend Michael Christian Knoll was appointed to minister in the parish, a part of his salary to be paid in cheeples of wheat, sustenance certainly more nourishing than the codfish received by the minister on Cape Cod in lieu of pew-rent in gold coin of the realm. The church itself, which was standing in 1846 within the memory of a few of Newburgh’s citizens, was about twenty feet square without floor or chimney. The roof ran up into a point from its four walls, and on the peak a small cupola was placed in which hung Queen Anne’s bell. This bell, evidently not cast in the mould of the one unalterable Confession of Augsburg, but bewitched by its donor with Episcopacy, presently rang out changes and ceased to “call the living, mourn the dead and break the lightning” exclusively in behalf of the German Lutherans.

The English were now buying farms from the discouraged Germans whose complaint that their patent was all upland can hardly be denied by any one who, aided by a rope, climbs Newburgh’s hilly streets to-day. The story, however, that the United States Government located the city’s post-office on a shelf-like site so that shy lovers in search of a billet-doux need not call at the window but may look down the building’s chimney from a street above is probably apocryphal.

The Palatines abandoned Newburgh for a more fertile soil in Pennsylvania and elsewhere about 1747. The newcomers, who were mostly of English and Scotch descent, took their places, so that nothing remains to tell of the early settlers save the streets they laid out and the church in the Old Town burying-ground whose site is now marked by Quassaick Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution.⁠[22]

According to history, the few remaining Lutherans did not give up their church without a struggle. On a certain bright July Sunday the two congregations met, each with its minister at the head, accompanied by many people from both sides of the river and the Justices of the Peace who carried staves of office. Birgert Meynders, a burly blacksmith and bold defender of the Lutheran faith, fell crushed by the falling door, and then the jubilant English rushed in to hold the fort. It was after this memorable riot that the Reverend Hezekiah Watkins,⁠[23] a most excellent clergyman, preached his first sermon in Newburgh, possibly from a text in the psalter for the day, “Why do the heathen so furiously rage together?”

Legend says some Lutheran boys on a moonless August night stole the bell and buried it in a swamp where, punished for apostasy, it lay for years tongue-tied in the black mud while hoarse frogs croaked their pessimistic comments over it. The defeated Lutherans would doubtless have been pleased could they have foreseen half a century later when all that savored of England, were it book, bell or candle, was out of favor, the Anglicans in their turn ejected, the building used as a schoolhouse, and the rent of the Glebe lands pass entirely from the Church.

The swamp in which the bell was hidden has of late years been transformed into one of Downing Park’s lakes, and from its smooth waters one may hear on summer evenings the ghostly tolling of bells, as bells toll in the buried cities beneath Swiss lakes. The tolling has a martial sound, a call to arms, as if the little bell had forgotten the smaller church squabble in the larger quarrel between King George and his Colonies. Some authorities insist that the bell was dug up, and that it gladly used its long silent tongue in Freedom’s cause as behooved a Liberty Bell. It hung during the present century, old inhabitants tell us, in the cupola of the Newburgh Academy, and was at length sold and melted for a new one by an iconoclastic school Board.

At the breaking out of the war for American Independence there were but a dozen or more houses on the Glebe, and a few to the south. Among these was the stone residence of Colonel Jonathan Hasbrouck which had been built in part by Birgert Meynders. Lieutenant Cadwallader Colden had his home near and there were many among his satellites willing to drink damnation to the Whigs when asked by the ever vigilant Committee of Safety to sign the pledge.

It may be thought strange that Newburgh has been considered of great Revolutionary importance when no battles were fought nearer its vicinity than those of Stony Point and Forts Clinton and Montgomery, but, although the place had an hereditary tendency to toryism, its geographical environment filled it to overflowing with plucky patriots. It is well known that it was the design of the British to get possession of the Hudson, and by cutting off the New England States to weaken the forces of the Continental Army. Appreciating this fact, Washington came up the river in 1776 as far as Constitution Island and, at the suggestion of Putnam, fortified West Point. Newburgh came under the same military direction, so that one leading officer after another made his headquarters in the vicinity.

At Vail’s Gate, four miles south of Newburgh, is the Thomas Ellison house built by John Ellison, the headquarters of Generals Knox, Green and Gates, and of Colonels Biddle and Wadsworth. Here too the pretty Lucy Knox gave a dance at which General Washington tarried so late as to incur the displeasure of his wife. The names of Maria Colden, Gitty Wyncoop, and Sally Jensen, the belles of the ball, are scrawled on a window-pane in the dining-room.

Following Silver Stream down to Moodna Creek, three or four miles south of Newburgh, we find the Williams house, the residence of General Lafayette, in the cellar of which the Dutch loan lies buried past finding, while opposite are the remains of the forge at which were made parts of the obstructions thrown across the river to prevent British ships from sailing up.

Westward at Little Britain, six miles from Newburgh, is Mrs. Fall’s house, the headquarters of George Clinton, and here on the floor is the stain where the spy who swallowed the bullet took the emetic and revealed the proposed treason. The old homestead of the Clinton family was in Little Britain, and hither James Clinton, after the attack on Forts Clinton and Montgomery, returned, his boots filled with blood. One of his great-grandchildren relates that he entered the dining-room where the family were eating breakfast, and requesting his mother and sisters to retire lest they faint from the sight of his wounds, as was the habit of gentlewomen of the last century, told the story of his escape to his father. The statue of his distinguished brother, George,⁠[24] stands in Newburgh’s business centre on the Square which oddly enough bears the name of Colden, the leading family of colonial days. The distinguished Coldens, although not patriots, added a lustre to the town, and the Clintons will not quarrel with their shades.

Mad Anthony Wayne, the Rough Rider of his day, had his headquarters on the Glebe near the present corner of Liberty Street and Broad. Weigand’s tavern, with the whipping-post in front of the door, a rendezvous of soldiers, stood on Liberty Street not far from the Lutheran Church.

Revolutionary interest in Newburgh focuses on the coming of Washington to the Hasbrouck house in March, 1782, although recent research discredits the story pictured on the covers of our copybooks in school days of the disbanding of the whole Continental army on these grounds. In 1779-80 Washington had lived in the Ellison house, no longer standing, in New Windsor, a small village to the south on the river, separated from Newburgh proper by the Quassaick Creek, but after the surrender of Yorktown, he and his family with his staff became the guests of Colonel Jonathan Hasbrouck in the stone house, on the corner of Washington and Liberty Streets. Here Washington wrote his reply to the Nicola letter, which in popular parlance offered him the crown. Here is the chair in which he sat when he took his pen in hand and dipped it in ink to put on paper words which after more than a hundred years glow with the fervor of their author’s single-hearted purpose.

Newburgh, May 22d, 1782.

Colonel Lewis Nicola,

Sir:—With a mixture of great surprise and astonishment, I have read with attention the sentiments you have submitted to my perusal. Be assured, sir, no occurrence in the course of the War, has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the army as you have expressed, and I must view with abhorrence and reprehend with severity. For the present the communication of them will rest in my own bosom, unless some further agitation of the matter shall make a disclosure necessary.

I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address, which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. At the same time, in justice to my own feelings, I must add that no man possesses a more sincere wish to see ample justice done to the army than I do, and so far as my powers and influence, in a constitutional way, extend, they shall be employed to the utmost of my abilities to effect it, should there be any occasion. Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself, or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself or anyone else, a sentiment of the like nature. With esteem, I am sir,

Your most obedient servant,

G. Washington.

Leaving Washington’s Headquarters at Newburgh one turns southward and crosses Quassaick Creek, at one time known as the Vale of Avoca, to hear above the whirr of to-day’s many intersecting railroads the echoes of Indian paddles. It is said the ghosts of Indians still linger here in their canoes waiting to carry away Washington, for near is the site of the Ettrick house whose host treacherously invited the Commander-in-Chief to dinner with intent to kidnap him.

“General, you are my prisoner,” said Mr. Ettrick, pushing aside his wine-glass and rising from the table.

“Pardon me, sir, but you are mine,” was the quiet answer, and instantly the life-guards appeared and poor Ettrick was put in chains, his pretty daughter escaping on account of the timely warning she had given her father’s guest.

Standing on the slopes of Snake Hill, to the west of Newburgh, where was the last cantonment of the American Army on the site of the Temple, a building used for Sunday services, for Masonic purposes and as a gathering-place for social entertainment, a site now marked by a monument, one hears again those words spoken by Washington when in March, 1783, the circulation of the Newburgh letters caused unrest among the unpaid troops.

“You see, gentlemen,” he said as he arose to read his address, putting on his spectacles as he spoke, “that I have not only grown grey but blind in your service....

“Let me conjure you,” he continued, “by the name of our common country, as you value your own sacred honor, as you respect the rights of humanity, as you regard the military and national character of America, to express your utmost horror and detestation of the man who wishes under any specious pretense to overturn the liberties of our country and who wickedly attempts to open the flood-gates of civil discord....

“By thus determining and thus acting you will pursue the plain and direct road to the attainment of your wishes ... you will by the dignity of your conduct afford occasion to posterity to say when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to mankind, ‘Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.’”

Crossing the river by the ferry sloop to Fishkill one finds in this Revolutionary centre of military supplies much of interest. Here were Baron Steuben’s headquarters in the Verplanck house, where the Nicola letter was written and the Society of Cincinnatus in part was formed; here at Swartwoutville the headquarters of Washington; here on the Wicopee, in the James Van Wyck house, the residence of John Jay, and at Brinkerhoff, in the home of Matthew Brinkerhoff, the roof which sheltered Lafayette when he lay ill of a fever. The Dutch Church in Fishkill has been made famous by Cooper’s Spy. Trinity Church was a hospital, and on the banks of the Hudson at Presqu’Ile one rests under the oak which shaded Washington when he waited for his letters to be brought to him from Newburgh.

Is it not a message of courage and patriotism which lives on in the descendants of the Hasbroucks, the Belknaps, the Williamses, the Fowlers, the Deyos, the Townsends, the Carpenters, the Weigands and others whose records emblazon the pages of Newburgh’s history?

In this last century not only material wealth has come to Newburgh, but the richest treasures of the town have been brought hither by its idealists, men to whom has been granted the gift of vision. Among these are numbered preachers, poets, artists, historians, novelists, physicians, lawyers and philanthropists, and on this roll of honor are written the names of the Reverend John Forsythe, N. P. Willis, H. K. Brown, A. J. Downing, S. W. Eager, E. M. Ruttenber, J. T. Headley, E. P. Roe, Carroll Dunham, E. A. Brewster and Charles Downing.

TARRYTOWN-ON-HUDSON

ITS HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS AND LEGENDARY LORE

By HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson is interesting from many points of view. It is beautiful in itself, with a touch of that ripe, old-world beauty which is the rich deposit of a long association of man with nature; a beauty which reveals its depth in the fulness of foliage, the girth of ancient trees, the texture of the grass, and that atmosphere of ancient and familiar use which, although invisible and impalpable, lends a peculiar charm to settled towns and countries. For Tarrytown has a long history—as history is reckoned in this new world—and an ancient date. It wears the air of a locality which was in full life in Colonial times. The old houses are few, but the modern village is embowered in a landscape which has known human companionship and care these two centuries and more. A road may show the latest skill in road-making, but if it was once a highway along which coaches ran in the brave days of the old inns and the ancient whips and hostlers, there is always the suggestion of long use about it. It has been for so many decades a part of the landscape that nature seems to have had a hand in its making. The grass grows down to it and the earth slopes away from it as if these things had always been as they are. No one can walk through Tarrytown along its chief thoroughfare, without recognizing on every hand the signs of the old highway on which coach horns were once heard, and later the bugles rang as redcoats flashed through the trees or marched along the ancient way.

The village rises from the water’s edge to the summit of the low hill which runs parallel with the eastern shore of the Hudson for many miles; it has one main thoroughfare, bisected by many cross streets of a later date; it is, for the most part, carefully kept, as befits its age, its intelligence, and its wealth; and, looked at from the river, it is almost buried in a wealth of foliage. It has at all times an air of repose, as if it had done long ago with the hard work of settlement and organization, and had earned exemption from the rush and turmoil which characterize new communities. In this country a town which has passed its bicentennial has a right to conduct life with a certain dignity and repose. It is doubtful if Tarrytown ever knew any great bustle or uproar; from the beginning it is probable that its inhabitants did not suffer themselves to be driven into undue energy of mood or habit. A placid temper, a disposition to keep on easy terms with life and neither give nor ask more than becomes a man of a quiet habit of mind, have left their impress on the community. It is a place in which history is preserved rather than made, although when it had occasion to make history, the work was done with picturesque effectiveness.

When Hendrik Hudson broke the quiet waters of the Tappan Zee for the first time, in September, 1609, with the keel of the Half-Moon, he saw along the eastern shore of the noble river which was to bear his name an unbroken forest. The region was singularly beautiful, with a stillness which it has not wholly lost; for rivers carrying deep currents always convey an impression of stillness. Mr. Curtis has spoken of the lyrical beauty of the Rhine and the epical beauty of the Hudson; the first passing, with rapid movement, through a long series of striking and romantic localities, the second flowing sedately through a landscape of larger compass, of more massive composition, of a beauty sustained through a hundred and fifty miles of noble scenery. It is, of course, a matter of pure fancy; but there seems to have been some kinship between the men who settled the continent and the localities they chose for their homes. The hardy French adventurers were peculiarly at home along the St. Lawrence and the trails from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi; the stern soil of New England would not have given its rare smile to men of a temper less strenuous than that of the Puritan and Pilgrim; the waterways of the James, the Potomac, and the Chesapeake lent themselves readily to the habits and occupations of English gentlemen in the new world; Florida and Louisiana seemed to find their elect explorers and settlers in the Spanish adventurers and gold-seekers; while the quiet of the Hudson was hardly broken when the Dutch settlers began to till the land north of Manhattan Island and to build their substantial homes. They could be voluble and noisy when occasion required, but they were of a phlegmatic temper and leisurely by habit.

The reports sent abroad by Hudson’s men when they found themselves once more in Holland in the late autumn of 1609, were repeated and passed from town to town among merchants who were as eager for trade as they were stolid in manner. Small ships were soon plying westward, bent upon trade with the well disposed Indians whom Hudson found scattered from Manhattan Island to the place where Albany now stands. The possibilities of profit in the fur trade were quickly discovered by these shrewd merchants; the nucleus of a settlement was made on the island, and rude huts hastily put together were the beginnings of one of the greatest of modern cities. The traders bought furs, tobacco, and corn in exchange for trinkets and rum; they hunted, fished, and lived after the manner of their time and kind, but for the most part on good terms with their Indian neighbors; at long intervals tiny ships from the old world crept into the harbor, and went back again laden with the skins of the beaver, the otter, and the sable. In 1621 the West India Company received a charter from the States-General of Holland, with the monopoly of the American trade, and a grant of the vast territory discovered by Hudson, which was called the New Netherlands. The great trading company, one of a small group of commercial organizations of almost sovereign powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drew its profits not only from barter with Indians, but from the sacking of cities on the Spanish Main and the capture of Spanish treasure-ships.

In 1624 families arrived on the island and community life began in New Amsterdam; two years later the first governor of the Colony arrived with a company who brought their wives, children, cattle, and household goods of all kinds with them and, by giving these hostages to fortune, committed themselves irrevocably to the new world and its destinies. Manhattan Island was bought from the Indians for twenty-four dollars, and the name of New Amsterdam reminded the settlers of their blood and their history. It was not, however, until Peter Stuyvesant took up the reins of government with a firm hand and in a somewhat choleric temper that the little community ceased to be a trading-post and became a Dutch colonial town. The first comers were largely penniless; the later comers were men of position and substance. Many races were soon represented in the new town, but the Dutch remained for many years the ruling class. In 1664 the Colony passed into English hands and New Amsterdam became New York.

The territory north of the island early attracted attention, and energetic and far-seeing men set about acquiring title and adding acre to acre until great estates were created. In Westchester County, which then bounded the city of New York on the north, six manors, including the greater part of its territory, were granted; that of Fordham leading the way in 1671. The largest of these manors were Phillipsburgh and Cortlandt, and Tarrytown became the residence of a great landowner who secured manorial rights in 1693. This territorial magnate, a true lord of the manor so far as greatness of estate was concerned, was a man of humble birth, and a carpenter by trade. He came to New Amsterdam in 1647, and being a man of sagacity and foresight, soon found his chance in the opportunities of the new world, became a fur trader, married a rich widow, and in course of time became probably the richest man in the Colony. Vredryk Flypse, or Frederick Philips,⁠[25] knew how to take occasion by the hand when English rule was established in New York. He foresaw the increased value of the lands along the Hudson, and in 1680, by the first of a series of grants, pieced out by various purchases, he became the owner of a noble domain, stretching from Spuyten Duyvil to the old Kill of Kitchawong, or Croton, and from the Hudson to the Bronx.

The Dutch settlers in the new world were less adventurous than their fellows of English and French blood, but they had early established trading-posts as far north on the Hudson as the present site of Albany, and they had crept quietly up the eastern shore of the river, and small farms were beginning to break the long line of forest. The beginnings of Tarrytown probably date back as far as 1645, but of its earliest history no authentic records remain. In 1683, when Frederick Philips began the building of a manor-house on the quiet Pocantico, he found a small community of farmers, living in a quiet, frugal way, and carrying on the business of life with thrift and industry but in a spirit of great tranquillity. The broad waters of Tappan Zee could hardly have caught the reflection of the primitive farm-houses hidden among the trees. These houses were unpretentious in dimension and appearance, but they had a substantial air. There was nothing provisional in the aspect of the scattered settlement; it struck tenacious roots into the soil from the very start.

“In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson,” writes Irving, in his vein of quiet humor, “at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known as Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days.”

This derivation of the name of the delightful town which Irving loved so well, has probably as much authority behind it as many derivations which have come to be unquestioned; but if Irving’s genial humor leaves some sceptics dissatisfied, they may take refuge in an alternative derivation, which traces the modern name to the more credible legend that one Terry was the earliest settler, whose name became fastened upon the little hamlet first as Terry’s town, which afterwards was naturally metamorphosed into Tarrytown. Be this as it may, a spirit of peace seems to have reigned in the region from the beginning, and the sturdy Dutch farmers kept the peace with their Indian neighbors. There are no traditions of midnight alarms in the early story of the community. Indian canoes were seen for many a year on Tappan Zee, and it is said that Indian hands assisted in raising the walls of the quaint and venerable church which still keeps watch over its earliest worshippers in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. These pioneer settlers had few wants, and supplied them with home-made articles or hand-woven fabrics. Manhattan Island was too distant in time to be accessible for daily supplies; shops were still to come; and the peddler, with whose figure and habits Cooper was subsequently to make the whole world acquainted, distributed finery and small wares through the section.

Under the royal grant and license which authorized Frederick Philips to acquire certain tracts of land in Westchester County, says an old chronicler, the grantee agreed “to let any one settle on said land free, for certain stipulated years, in order that it should as soon as possible be cultivated and settled.” These terms seem to have been accepted by the few settlers already on the ground, and by others who were attracted by the impulse which the lord of the manor (for such Philips was in influence and authority) gave to local industry. The great estate was not secured in a day; it was consolidated by a series of purchases covering a period of years, and among these purchases was the site of the present village of Tarrytown, which was paid for in rum, cloth, tobacco, and hardware. The great proprietor laid the foundations of permanent community life by building, within a comparatively short time, a mill, a manor-house, and a church. The Pocantico flows into the Hudson just beyond the northern boundary of the Tarrytown of to-day; and on the shores of the quiet bay which puts in at that point, protected by a long and heavily wooded promontory which extends well into the river, Philips chose a sheltered and beautiful site for his home. His own ships brought building materials from Holland and unloaded them on the wharf built on the premises. The architecture of the manor-house was of the Dutch order so familiar along the Hudson; the heavy walls were of stone; the roof was spread on great hand-hewn rafters; the doors were divided into upper and lower sections, and swung on ponderous hinges; from the end of the wide hall, stairs ascended by easy rises to the upper floor. Through openings in the foundation walls on the southwest side small howitzers commanded the approach by land or water. A mill was quite as essential as a house, and the substantial structure which still resists the assaults of time in placid old age, bears witness to the thoroughness with which Philips did whatever fell to his hand. Beside its ancient pond the venerable mill still witnesses to a past which cannot be wholly lost while the little group of buildings remains.

To complete this interesting group, which Tarrytown ought to preserve with pious care, and at no great distance from the manor-house, stands the old Dutch church, one of the most quaint and best preserved monuments of early history on the continent. He would be a bold man who would venture to state definitely the date at which the building of this ancient edifice was begun; on that point a wide latitude must be permitted and discreet silence preserved. It answers all purposes of intelligent curiosity to be told that the foundations were probably laid as early as 1684, and that the building was completed, probably, not later than 1697. The bell which still hangs in the little steeple and which may be heard on quiet Sunday afternoons in the late summer or early autumn, when services are held in the ancient structure, was cast in 1685, and bears the inscription, “Si Deus pro nobis quis contra nos.” The church was built with characteristic solidity, the walls being more than two feet thick; a great pulpit with a sounding-board projected from the eastern end; the benches on which the congregation sat were without backs; and the doctrine expounded from the sacred desk was of a kindred soundness of fibre. Some concession to human weakness was shown to the lord of the manor, in the comfortable and imposing arrangement of the large pews on the right and left of the minister. The farmers filled the body of the little church, while slaves, redemptioners, and other obscure persons, with the choir, sat in the tiny gallery. In 1697, the Rev. Guiliam Bertholf began a kind of visitorial ministry in the new church, coming three or four times a year to preach and administer the sacraments. He was a native of Sluis, in Holland, emigrated to the new world in 1684, and became a preacher nine years later. His ability and zeal gave him wide influence, and he was instrumental in organizing a number of churches of the Reformed faith and order. From this initial ministry until the present time, although the congregation has moved to a larger and modern edifice, the succession of faithful preachers has never been broken, and the historic pulpit of Tarrytown has never been more thoroughly identified with generous devotion, high character, and unusual gifts of nature and speech than during the last twenty-five years. During the stormy years of the Revolution the church was frequently closed; and at the close of the struggle the trappings which had distinguished the pews of the lord of the manor were torn down, and elders and deacons sitting in the seats once set apart for the local aristocracy emphasized the triumph of the democratic idea in Church and State. Not long afterwards another innovation was made by the substitution of English for Dutch in the services.

In October, 1897, the two hundredth anniversary of the church was celebrated with services which recalled, with unusual completeness, the varied and instructive history of the old building and of the community.

The modern village lies to the south of the church, which is hidden beneath ancient trees, and is still enveloped in an atmosphere of old-time silence and repose. The Pocantico flows beside it, almost unseen when the midsummer foliage is spread over it; while to the north, climbing a gentle slope and sinking softly down to the brook, is the ancient burying-ground, in which the first interments were made about 1645. The place is singularly peaceful and of a rare and gentle beauty; the gradual slope dotted with ancient graves, protected on the east by wooded heights, overhung with old trees, and commanding on the west glimpses of the broad expanse of the Tappan Zee, and, from its higher levels, the tree-embowered village, the long line of shining water, and the distant front of the Palisades. There is probably no other locality in America, taking into account history, tradition, the old church, the manor-house, and the mill, which so entirely conserves the form and spirit of Dutch civilization in the new world. This group of buildings ranks in historic interest, if not in historic importance, with Faneuil Hall, Independence Hall, the ruined church tower at Jamestown, the old gateway at St. Augustine, and the Spanish cabildo on Jackson Square in New Orleans; and the time will come when pilgrimages will be made to this ancient and beautiful home of some of those ideals and habits of life which have given form and structure to American civilization.

It was the misfortune of Tarrytown to lie in the path of both armies for many dreary months during the Revolution; and no section of the country felt the uncertainty and terrors of war more keenly. When Cooper looked about for an American subject for his second novel, his interest in the history of Westchester County, in the lower part of which he was for a number of years a resident, led him to a fortunate choice, and The Spy remains not only one of the best of American novels of incident, but a vivid report of the suspense and misery of the country between the Highlands of the Hudson, held by the American forces, and the city of New York in the hands of the British. That section was mercilessly harried by friend and foe. The few families which made the little hamlet of Tarrytown, never knew whether the Skinners or the Cowboys would appear next; the only certainty in the situation seems to have been that, sooner or later, whatever was portable and valuable would be carried off. There was much quiet courage in the form of patient endurance in those years when church and school were closed, crops gathered by hands that had not sown, houses burned in the dead of night, and all normal community life at an end. Caught in the centre of the storm of war, Tarrytown not only suffered severely but bore her losses with conspicuous fortitude and courage. In many sudden forays, as well as in the larger movements of the American forces, the men of Tarrytown played their parts with notable pluck and daring.

The devotion of a majority of the people of the place to the American cause had its reward in the lasting association of the town with the most romantic and tragic episode of the war; and the incorruptible patriotism of three Westchester County men not only averted what might have been a crushing calamity, but immortalized the scene of their resistance to temptation. On the 24th day of September, 1780, Major André, bearing dispatches of a treasonable nature from General Benedict Arnold, then in command of the American forces at West Point, was captured on the highway at a place now marked by a monument, by John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. These obscure militiamen, soon to become famous, were watching the road, when a horseman appeared riding toward the south. He was promptly challenged, ordered to dismount, and examined as to his business and destination. His answers to the questions put to him by his captors confirmed their suspicion that something of unusual importance was in the air. The determination to search the unfortunate young officer more thoroughly was met with offers of a large sum of money; but the militiamen were not to be bribed, and to their fidelity is due the discovery of the plot to place West Point in British hands. The moral effect of Arnold’s fall was counteracted in large measure by the incorruptibility of André’s captors, and the monument which marks this historic site commemorates the integrity of the American militiamen quite as much as the dramatic episode which ended the careers of Arnold and André.

Tarrytown has had the double good fortune to be the scene of the most striking act of the drama of Arnold’s treason, and to be the custodian of one of the few American legends. In his youth, Washington Irving knew the region intimately. He was given to solitary walks, for he was a dreamer by nature and habit. Wolfert’s Roost was even then an old farm-house, built close to the water’s edge, where the glen broadens to the river. It had colonial and revolutionary associations, and, above all, it had the charm of a situation of singular beauty. Irving seems early to have fallen under the spell of the shaded waterside and the romantic glen. In 1835, after an absence of seventeen years in Europe and an extensive journey through the South and West, which bore fruit in A Tour on the Prairies, the recollections and affections of his youth drew him to Sunnyside, now about a mile and a half south of the railway station of Tarrytown, and he became the possessor of a home which will always be associated with our early literary history. The house was enlarged, and began to take on that air of ripe and reposeful beauty which made it an ideal home for a man of letters. Under this roof his later books were written, and here he was sought by the most interesting men of his time.

Irving’s familiarity with the Hudson River and its historical associations had already borne fruit in the Sketch-Book in two original and characteristic legends. Like his illustrious contemporary, Sir Walter Scott, Irving was a born lover of traditions of all sorts; a man with a genius for getting the poetry and romance out of the past. In The History of New York, impersonated in Diedrich Knickerbocker, he created a legend; in Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow he gave lasting fame to two stories full of the Dutch spirit. Sleepy Hollow lies to the north and east of Tarrytown, within easy walking distance. It is still secluded and quiet and the stir of modern times has not broken in upon its ancient seclusion.

“A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.... A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual dream.”

Since the days when these words were written the air of Sleepy Hollow has not escaped the general stirring of a more hurried age; but on summer afternoons the meditative visitor still finds the valley a place of silence and peace. The master of the spell which has brought so many pilgrims to Tarrytown sleeps in the ancient graveyard; the home which he loved with a love deepened by years of exile, still stands, somewhat enlarged, but not despoiled of its secluded and ivy-clad loveliness.

Great estates have been formed about Tarrytown and stately homes line the shores of the river, but the place has kept something of its old simplicity and repose. It has never lacked the presence of those to whom its traditions of refined social habit and generous intellectual life have been sacred; and its distinction is still to be found in an atmosphere which is in no sense dependent on its later and larger prosperity.

NEW YORK CITY

THE COSMOPOLITAN CITY

By JOSEPH B. GILDER

By comparison with London, New York is a city of the second size, lacking some millions of the population of the modern Babylon. Even Paris, though less populous, outranks the American metropolis in many of the elements that go to the making of a great city. But in drawing these comparisons it must be remembered that only three centuries ago, when the French and English capitals had been places of importance for over a thousand years, New York was a wooded island, criss-crossed by innumerable streams, indented by morasses and infested by Indians and wild beasts. European civilization was wrinkled with age long before a permanent roof was erected on the island of Manhattan; and three lives such as that of ex-Mayor Tiemann, who died here in his ninety-fifth year, in the summer of 1899, would have spanned the entire history of the town from the Dutch discovery to the reign of Richard Croker.

The first white man’s habitation in what is now New York was a grave; for the crew of Hudson’s Half-Moon, after their fight with the aborigines on the mainland above Spuyten Duyvil Creek, in September, 1609, buried their dead before sailing homeward from their voyage of discovery up the great river named for their commander.

Four temporary dwellings, presumably little better than wigwams, housed Skipper Block and the crew of the Tiger near the lower end of the island, while they rebuilt their burned vessel, during the winter of 1613-14. The site of the present city was bought from the Indians on May 6, 1626, for trinkets worth sixty guilders, or four-and-twenty dollars—less than one tenth of the rate paid a few years since for a single square foot of land. Building was begun at once and pushed with vigor. Fort Amsterdam—a blockhouse partly shielded by palisades—marked the extreme southern limit of the island; and the first bark-roofed cottages were clustered close together under its harmless, necessary guns. A warehouse with stone walls and a thatched roof sprang up as soon as a stronghold had been built; and a horse-mill, with a loft fitted up for the simplest form of religious services.

Fort Amsterdam was a fortress in name only. Scarcely had it been completed when it began to fall into disrepair; and the pigs were forever rooting in its sodded earthworks, and threatening its very foundations. Thus early was it that these four-footed scavengers made their appearance in the history of New York, playing as picturesque, though not as patriotic, a part therein as that of the legendary Roman geese. Not till well forward in the present century did they disappear from the streets and the annals of the city.

Peter Minuit, the first Director of New Netherlands to hold his place for more than a year, and the first to organize a permanent provincial government, sent home hopeful reports, and backed them with shipments of fur and timber; but the expenses of administering the colony ultimately exceeded its earnings, and the West India Company was disappointed of the revenue it had counted upon receiving from the new settlement.

The little village grew but slowly. When it had spread so far northward as the line of what is now Wall Street—which is so far down-town to-day that many a New York woman, native-born, has yet to see it for the first time—a stockade was set up across the island, narrower then than now, to fence off the village from the farms (bouweries) of the more adventurous pioneers, and the forest that bordered them. This defense, completed in 1653, consisted of palisades and posts, twelve feet high, with a sloping breastwork of earth and a ditch on its southern side. In less than two years its height was doubled to keep the Indians from leaping over it.

But neither the Fort with its stone guns, nor this high wooden wall, was ever called upon to withstand a vigorous attack or resist a siege; for whenever the place was seriously threatened, its flag came fluttering down, and its keys were turned over to the enemy. This happened first in August, 1664, when Col. Richard Nicolls appeared in the bay, as deputy of the Duke of York, to whom Charles II. had granted all the territory between the Connecticut River and Delaware Bay, and demanded the Fort’s surrender. The claim of the English was nebulous to the last degree. As Freneau neatly put it,

But the flimsiest pretension, if vigorously backed, outvalues the strongest if less sturdily maintained; and Director Stuyvesant found his people unwilling to support him in defying the intruder. So down dropped the Dutch colors and up ran the British.

Precisely nine years later, however, what had formerly been called New Amsterdam, but was now New York, yielded itself to a little Dutch fleet without striking a defensive blow. Captain Colve’s victory was so lightly won, indeed, that the English commander, Captain Manning, was courtmartialled for his apparent inefficiency, cowardice or treason, and the estates of the Governor, Colonel Lovelace, who, when the blow fell, was absent on affairs of state, were confiscated by the Duke. The triumph of the Hollanders was short-lived; for the year 1674 had not run its course when Major Edmund Andros assumed the governorship, and by the terms of a treaty of peace between England and the States-General, New Orange, as the place had been christened by the Dutch, again and finally became New York.

New York has been in turn a Dutch village, an English town, and an American city. In its infancy it was wholly Dutch; but in its early youth the population was so leavened by English immigration that the transition to English control was less violent than one might expect it to have been. English influence was powerful even in Stuyvesant’s day; and when Stuyvesant was supplanted by Nicolls, the Dutch element was still powerful in the councils of the little town. The new ruler moved slowly and cautiously in anglicizing the government, and almost all the changes he made were for the better. The brief resumption of Dutch authority in 1673 was reactionary and wholly detrimental to the interests of the community; and, all things considered, the peaceful cession of the town to England, a year later, was the happiest chance that could possibly have befallen.

A more violent and radical change was effected in 1689, when Jacob Leisler seized the occasion of the fall of the Stuart dynasty to grasp the reins of government which Andros had been forced to drop. By the aid of the militia and with the support of nearly all the less prosperous townsfolk, he administered public affairs till that good Dutchman William III. of England commissioned Governor Sloughter to hang the usurper and reign in his stead. Leisler’s rule had been in many respects an enlightened one, and years afterward his adherents succeeded in having his dishonored bones dug up and honorably reinterred. It was in this town, and at the instance of this earnest but ill-balanced and despotic champion of the poor, that the American Colonies took their first step toward concerted action, their objective being the overthrow of the French at Montreal.

The most striking characteristic of New York has always been its cosmopolitanism. As Governor Roosevelt points out in his capital review of the city’s history, no less than eighteen different languages and dialects were spoken in the streets so long ago as the middle of the seventeenth century. The Dutch, the English and the Huguenot refugees from France predominated, but there were many Walloons and Germans, and a large body of black slaves. The riffraff of the Old World was to be found here, as well as the nobly adventurous; and, in fact, at all times since, the proportion of foreign-born residents has been very large.

In the period immediately preceding the Revolution, the desire for independence was far less general in New York than in Massachusetts or Virginia. The large land owners and leading merchants were mainly members of the Church of England; and while there was no state church, so called and admitted to be such, the Anglicans were first in wealth and fashion, and their organization enjoyed exclusive privileges. Even King’s College (now Columbia University) was placed officially under Church control. The court party included not only the Anglican clergy and almost all the laity, but even an influential section of the membership of the Dutch Reformed Church. It included such families as the De Peysters, the De Lanceys and the Philippses in the city and its suburbs; and the Johnsons, who dominated central New York. There were Tories even on the Committee of Fifty-one that first authoritatively proposed the assembling of a Continental Congress. In no other colony was the Tory element so numerous and powerful; in none other were the patriots opposed by so active a spirit of loyalty to the Crown, and so vast a bulk of indifference on the part of property-owners, solicitous for nothing but the security of their possessions. At first the Schuylers, the Livingstons, and Hamilton, Jay and Morris found their support almost wholly among the masses, who rose not only against England, but also against the domination of the classes, which was more oppressive in the aristocratic city of New York than in the democratic town of Boston, or in Philadelphia. Thus, it was the so-called Sons of Liberty that had led in the agitation which made the Stamp Act a dead letter, so far as this colony was concerned, and a decade later prevented the landing of taxed tea on New York wharves. And their demonstrative radicalism found little response in the minds of some of the ablest civil and military leaders contributed by this colony to the work of liberation and reconstruction. But the violence of the mob could not blind such men to the essential justice of the American cause, and the actual beginning of the war found a large majority of the best people of the colony definitely committed to a patriotic course. So when Washington and his army were driven hither from Brooklyn and hence to New Jersey, in 1776, New York was no longer the populous place it had been before their sympathizers fled from the terrors of hostile military rule.

For the next seven years this remained the chief British stronghold in America. If the eastern and southern colonies could be split apart by English control of the Hudson, the backbone of the colonial federation would be broken—as the backbone of the Confederacy was broken, nearly a century later, by Sherman’s march to the sea. So every energy was bent toward dislodging the Continentals from this dividing-line. This was the immediate object of Arnold’s treachery, as well as of many an overt movement from south and north. But Washington outgeneralled the enemy and kept the federation intact, till the capture of Yorktown made New York no longer tenable by the foe. The city was well-nigh ruined by its experiences during these seven terrible years; and the outlying country to the north—Westchester County—suffered no less severely, being exposed to raids from the opposing bodies of regulars, and to constant marauding at the hands of free-booters, who pretended affiliation with one side or the other, sometimes in good faith, but often merely as a pretext for lawless depredations.

The most joyously celebrated event in the annals of Manhattan was the city’s evacuation by the British at the close of the war. On the day that this occurred, November 25, 1783, General Washington arrived in town and dined at Fraunces’s Tavern; and hither he repaired again, ten days later, on the eve of his departure for Annapolis, to bid farewell to his officers. In this same building, and in the same Long Room, the first meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce had been held, in 1768, fifteen years before any similar association was organized in Great Britain. This hostelry had, indeed, been the fashionable rendezvous of New Yorkers since 1762, when the shop at the southeast corner of Broad and Pearl Streets was converted to still more public uses by Samuel Fraunces (“Black Tom”), who in later years was to become the first President’s steward. At the beginning it was known as the Queen’s Head Tavern, its sign bearing a portrait of Queen Charlotte. Enlarged, and otherwise altered, but not improved, Fraunces’s Tavern is still, as it has always been, a public-house, though fashion has long since deserted it. It would be most deplorable if the march of improvement (in whose name, as in Liberty’s, so many offences are committed) should ever be allowed to obliterate this most aged and interesting relic of old New York.

The war of 1812 was by no means popular with the representative merchants of New York, despite the fact that the enforcement of England’s pretended right of search had acted almost as a blockade of the port for some years before the outbreak of hostilities. It had been a common occurrence for merchantmen in the lower bay to be stopped by a shot across their bows, and searched for possible British subjects among their crews. But when war came the fighting spirit was aroused, and many a privateer was fitted out to prey upon the enemy’s merchant marine. Rich prizes were taken, and desperate engagements were fought between the crews of brigs and schooners from New York and British men-of-war’s men who interfered with their privateering practices. A few years earlier (1807), Fulton had demonstrated on the Hudson the practicability of steam navigation; and now he built in New York, under Congressional direction, a steam frigate, iron-clad and heavily armed. This formidable craft might have been depended upon to raise the British blockade, had it not been raised still more effectually by a declaration of peace. The city did not suffer in this second war with England as it had suffered in the first. Instead of waiting for years, as before, to recuperate, it entered at once upon a period of unprecedented growth. The return of peace stimulated immigration, and local prosperity was vastly augmented by the opening in 1825 of the Erie Canal.

Until 1822, the mayor was appointed by a State council, presided over by the Governor; thereafter, until 1834, he was chosen by the municipal council; since then he has been elected by the people. But democratic rule was not always found to work satisfactorily, and in 1857 the control of local affairs was largely delegated to the legislature. This precaution proved of comparatively little value, however, and the Tweed ring of local office-holders found little difficulty in running things as they wished and robbing the tax-payers of millions upon millions. The charter of the city recently created by the amalgamation of New York, Brooklyn, etc., professed to restore home rule, in large measure; but so much of the supposed boon as it confers may be withdrawn at any time by State legislation, and bills withdrawing it piecemeal are, in fact, introduced at every session of the legislature.

When secession threatened, in 1861, the Democratic city of New York was the least friendly of Northern communities in its attitude toward the federal government. The common council, indeed, rapturously applauded the mayor’s formal suggestion that the city itself secede. But the first overt act of hostility at the South showed that, beneath this surface sympathy with the secessionists, the great mass of earnest citizens were ardent in adherence to the Union. Life and treasure were poured out more than abundantly. The Seventh Regiment—the “crack” militia organization of the city, if not of the nation—hurried off to Washington to guard the capital from surprise; and tens of thousands of volunteers followed to the front. No one city contributed more to the national cause. In fact the city’s contributions were too liberal for her own good; for the consequent dearth of able-bodied honest men at home left the community a prey to the enemies of society, and regiment after regiment had to be called back to restore order. The worst outbreaks were the so-called draft riots, caused by the enforced enlistment of troops; in these uprisings, negroes were the special object of the mob’s hostility.

The first few huts in New Amsterdam were huddled together beneath the sheltering walls of the Fort. There was but one general direction in which the hamlet could extend; yet it was long before the northward movement filled with shops and houses the space between the Fort and the line of Wall Street, and for several years thereafter the great Wall marked the boundary of the village. The Revolution found the border pushed forward to the edge of the Common, where the post-office stands to-day. The chief outlet from this point lay eastward, through what is now Park Row to the Bowery, and thence through the outlying farms to Westchester County, Connecticut and Boston.

On the west side there was another outlet, skirting the Hudson River and extending to the little village of Greenwich; and the occasional outbreak of yellow fever in New York made this a popular resort. The influx of twenty thousand refugees during one of these scares, early in the present century, completely changed the character of this village, and although most of the newcomers returned to the lower end of the island, Greenwich had practically become, by 1830, an integral part of the city. The northward spread via Greenwich Street, the Bowery and Broadway continued, till Yorkville and Harlem on the east and Manhattanville and Bloomingdale on the west were absorbed by the growing city. In 1874 the Harlem was crossed, and New York ceased to be an island; in 1895 still further accessions were made in Westchester County. But the crowning event in the expansion of the city was the legislation by which, on January 1, 1898, Brooklyn and the outlying towns and villages on Long Island, and all of Staten Island, were brought within the limits of New York—an act that raised the population at a stroke from less than 1,900,000 to near 3,400,000, and incidentally brought almost half the people of the State under the immediate rule of Tammany Hall.

A word should be said as to the Society, named in honor of Tamanend, an Indian chief who signed one of the treaties by which William Penn acquired the site of the city of Philadelphia. One of many societies of the same name, organized for social and political purposes toward the close of the eighteenth century, it reflected, to a certain extent, a spirit which had prevailed among the younger officers of the Revolution who had felt the force of Rousseau’s idealization of primitive man. Its first meeting was held on “St. Tammany’s day” (May 12), 1789. In membership it was allied with the Sons of Liberty and the Sons of 1776, and it has always professed “intense Americanism,” so far as that phrase is synonymous with Anglophobia. At first its ranks were recruited from among the small merchants, retailers and mechanics of the city; and by coming into close touch with the mass of immigrants that form so large a proportion of the population, giving the newcomers employment in some cases, in others charitable aid, instructing the alien voter as to his political rights and privileges, and directing him in their exercise, it has built up an enormous voting machine, insufficient to defeat a united opposition, but almost invariably so fortunate in local contests as to find its opponents divided. While nominally Democratic in national affairs, Tammany has never scrupled to oppose the Democratic party in the pursuit of its own immediate end—the control of local offices and revenues. This powerful machine has now for several years been dominated by an illiterate immigrant.

Comparatively recent as were the beginnings of the city, hardly a trace of the original village remains. Not a single building has come down to us from the Dutch period. It was to have been expected that something would survive the flight of less than three centuries. A happy chance might easily have preserved the stone “temple” erected within the walls of the Fort in 1652, or the slightly older warehouse, or some one of the many curious little stone or brick houses in which the burly burghers of the seventeenth century smoked their long pipes by the chimney-side, while their wives plied the spinning-wheel, their daughters spread the board, and their children, in padded breeches, played about the sanded floor.

The Stadt Huys, originally built as an inn, to relieve Director Kieft of the burden of overmuch entertaining, dated back to the same year as the Dutch Reformed Church in the fortified enclosure. The organization of the old church is still maintained, and the functions of the city government have been performed in successive buildings to the present day; but the picturesque old government house—fifty feet square, three stories high in the walls and two in the attic, with windows in the gable of its crow-stepped roof,—that should have been cherished as a most interesting relic of the city’s earliest period, lasted but a little way into the present century, having then been used for over a hundred years for commercial purposes.

Chief among the few other survivals from the early days, and antedating all of them, is Bowling Green. This oldest bit of park land in the city dates from the Dutch occupation. It lay immediately in front of the Fort, and no building has ever stood upon its diminutive, oblong site. The relatively old row of buildings (Steamship Row) which overlooks it from the south will ere long be replaced by a Custom House worthy of the second port of entry in the world. This will occupy the site of the old government house, which once served the purpose for which the new building is designed. In 1771, it was found advisable to enclose the Green with an iron fence. Bereft of the crowns that surmounted the posts, the fence still surrounds it, though the equestrian statue of George III., which it was put up to protect, vanished in 1776. In the excitement that followed the reading of the Declaration of Independence, in that year, the crowd marched down Broadway from the Common, and tumbled the King from his pedestal. The leaden carcass was shipped to Connecticut, where the wife and daughter of Governor Wolcott cannily converted it into rebel bullets. An indignity similar in degree though different in kind was offered to America’s eloquent Parliamentary advocate, William Pitt, whose marble effigy at Wall and William Streets was decapitated during the Revolution by the Tories, and left standing for years as a mere “disturber of traffic.”

The house at No. 1 Broadway, looking eastward over the lower end of Bowling Green, built in 1760 by Colonel Kennedy, afterward Earl of Cassilis, and occupied in turn by the American leaders, including Washington, and by the English, including Cornwallis, Howe and Sir Henry Clinton, was the scene of Major André’s last interview with the British commander before his fatal journey to West Point. And in another house in Broadway overlooking the Green, Benedict Arnold had his quarters after his flight and the exposure of his infamous plot. Mention of the gallant young British officer, André, naturally suggests the name and fate of Nathan Hale, whose heroism is commemorated by a noble statue by MacMonnies, which faces Broadway from the lower corner of City Hall Park, not far from the spot where the American spy was hanged from an apple-tree. The Beekman “Mansion,” overlooking the East River near what is now Fifty-first Street, the scene of Hale’s trial and condemnation, survived till 1874; the Kennedy House, identified with André’s memory, lasted eight years longer.

A picturesque feature of the old town was the canal that ran from the city wall to the bay, becoming first an artery of trade, and then a centre of fashionable life, as Broad Street, which took its place, has since been a centre of commercial activity. It was directly opposite Broad Street, in Wall, that the foundations of the new City Hall were laid in 1699, the sale of the Stadt Huys helping to defray the cost of the more pretentious structure. The arms of the English Governor, Lord Bellomont, were blazoned on its walls; but two years later the marshal was called upon to remove and destroy them. When New York became the seat of the national government, the ninety-year-old City Hall, partly reconstructed and lavishly decorated, became the meeting-place of Congress. The most memorable day in its history was the 30th of April, 1789, when, attended by Chancellor Livingston and the committees of Senators and Representatives, standing upon its balcony in the presence of a great concourse, not merely of New Yorkers, but of Americans from all the colonies, gathered together from far and near, George Washington took the oath of office as first President of the United States. Where the Capitol then stood now stands the Sub-Treasury, with Ward’s bronze Washington looking gravely down from its steps upon the feverish turmoil of Wall Street.

The oldest existing municipal building in New York is the Hall of Records, in City Hall Park, whose contents are erelong to be housed in a spacious, fire-proof edifice. It dates from the middle of the eighteenth century. Its site formed a part of the Common, and it stood appropriately convenient to the gallows, for it was originally a jail—the first building on the island ever designed exclusively for the detention of law-breakers. In popular parlance, as in practical use, it soon became the Debtors’ Prison. When the British occupied the town during the Revolution, it was turned to account as their principal military prison, being known as The Provost, in reference to the title of the brutal Cunningham, who was charged with the custody of American prisoners of war—amongst others, “that d—d rebel, Ethan Allen.” The building was a debtors’ jail again from 1787 to 1830; on the completion of alterations projected at the latter date, it became, in 1835, the Register’s office, and as such will probably see the close of the nineteenth century.

Vastly more attractive to the eye than this treasury of real-estate records, and not wholly lacking in historic interest, is the adjacent City Hall. This really handsome building, in the style of the Italian Renaissance, was begun in 1803, and completed nine years later. The likelihood of the city’s extending beyond it seemed too slight to warrant lavishing upon its back the white marble which adds so much to the dignity and grace of its façade; the rear wall was accordingly constructed of a cheaper stone. In the “Governor’s room” on the second floor, used for official receptions, are the desk on which Washington wrote his first message to Congress, the chair in which he was inaugurated as President, and the chairs used by the first federal Congress.

In the same neighborhood, just beyond the lower extremity of the old Common, now City Hall Park, stands St. Paul’s Chapel, Trinity parish—an edifice much older than the parish church, which for the past half-century, like its successive parent buildings, has stood farther down Broadway, opposing its bulk to the westward progress of Wall Street. Fenced off by iron palings, and bordered on each side by a strip of graveyard, the chapel turns a picturesque and perhaps scornful back upon the “topless towers” of Broadway—little dreamt of when its foundations were laid in 1766, or three-and-twenty years later, when President Washington attended service there on the day of his first inauguration. These heaven-aspiring structures were only beginning to turn the street into a canyon when the first President’s successor in office sat in the same pew on the same day a century later (April 30, 1889).

Private houses of historic interest abounded not many years ago, notable among them the country-seat called Richmond Hill, near the long since absorbed village of Greenwich—a stately dwelling, identified with many familiar names. John Adams lived there during a part of his first term as Vice-President, and Aaron Burr started thence on that fateful July morning in 1804 that saw the death of Hamilton at his hand, and the end of his own political career. Of equal note was the house on Murray Hill, where Mrs. Murray detained the British commander at lunch while the American troops, under Putnam, made their escape from the island in 1776.

The so-called Jumel Mansion, built for Washington’s whilom flame, Miss Mary Philippse, by her successful suitor, Col. Roger Morris, and afterwards occupied by Washington as his headquarters, became in turn the property of the nation (Morris having been a royalist), of John Jacob Astor, and of Stephen Jumel, whose erratic widow married Aaron Burr, but soon tired of him, turned him out of doors and dropped his name. From its coign of vantage on Harlem Heights at 169th Street, this dignified colonial dwelling still looks down upon the Harlem River and across to Long Island Sound. And at the foot of East 61st Street is yet to be seen—vine-covered, and embowered in trees and shrubs—the substantial stone residence of Col. William Smith, who married the daughter of President Adams, and ruined himself by speculating in east-side real estate. But the scarcity of such relics, and their glaring incongruity with their surroundings, emphasize the divergence between the old New York and that which is termed the Greater.

In the hall of Cooper Institute, Abraham Lincoln made that great speech which first fully revealed him to the people of the Eastern States; and hither he was brought, to lie in state in the City Hall, when a martyr’s death had disclosed his greatness still more clearly to all his countrymen.

Here have lived, for longer or shorter periods, sundry Presidents of the United States, from Washington to Cleveland; the city has been the permanent or occasional home of statesmen such as Jay and Livingston, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris; of political agitators such as Aaron Burr and “Commonsense” Paine, and political leaders like DeWitt Clinton and Samuel J. Tilden; of authors such as Washington Irving, whose burlesque local history marked him out as the father of American light literature, Fenimore Cooper, the most popular of American romance-writers, and Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman, most individual of American poets. Here, for longer or shorter periods, have lived and labored Curtis, and Bayard Taylor, and Stoddard, and Stedman, and Aldrich, and Howells, and that greatest of poets among journalists and journalists among poets, William Cullen Bryant, editor of The Evening Post and one of the founders of the Century Club; and Horace Greeley, founder of The Tribune, and most famous of American editors since Benjamin Franklin. As a resident of Brooklyn, and editor of a metropolitan religious weekly, the best-known preacher of the century, Henry Ward Beecher, was virtually a citizen of New York. In the annals of invention, the names of four New Yorkers stand out conspicuously—Fulton and Ericsson and Edison and Morse. And of all the free-booters that ever terrorized the sea, none has left a more awful and enduring fame than a once respectable resident of Liberty Street, renowned in song and story for two centuries as Captain Kidd.

The hospitality of New York and her people is proverbial. Every distinguished visitor to America for more than a century past has been entertained here, officially or informally. Among the city’s guests have been William IV. of England, while yet a sailor prince; Lafayette, Louis Kossuth, the Prince of Wales, the Grand Duke Alexis, the Emperor of Brazil, the Princess Eulalia, the Duke of Veragua, Li Hung Chang and the Marquis Ito. Almost all the greatest preachers, orators, players, singers, and instrumental performers of the nineteenth century have added to their fame or wealth by facing New York audiences; and among the great writers who have visited us have been Dickens, Thackeray, and Kipling.

While New York is easily first among the cities of the New World in commercial importance, it is not on material bases only that her supremacy rests. No community throughout the world responds more generously to every appeal for sympathy or help, whether the call be local, national or foreign. Her interest is keen in educational work of every kind. Columbia University—one of the oldest of local institutions, and more than local in its aims and fame and influence—has of late, through the liberality of her sons and other citizens, been housed in a manner commensurate with her requirements and aspirations; and so also has the less venerable but justly honored New York University. And the past few years have seen Barnard College for women and the Teachers College (both allied with Columbia) emerge from the chrysalis state into forms of beauty and power. The public-school system, moreover,—thanks to a recent brief respite from Tammany control,—is in better condition to-day than at any previous period of Tammany administration.

Of American literary activity, despite Boston’s ancient and deserved prestige, it cannot be denied that New York is to-day the centre, as it is the centre of the publishing trade, in books and periodicals. Boston, with her splendid Public Library, has set an example which the metropolis has been slow to follow; but the consolidation of the Astor, Lenox and Tilden collections, and their prospective housing in a magnificent and admirably situated building, has gone far to remove the reproach incurred during long years of public indifference to popular needs. The venerable Society Library, the modern and many-branched Free Circulating Library and kindred institutions have helped to create and in part to meet the demand which the Public Library in its new home may reasonably be expected to satisfy. Equally important in their way are those half-social, half-educational essays toward the solution of some of the problems of the slums—the University Settlement of men and the College Settlement of women. As a further indication that New York is not wholly given over to the worship of Mammon, it may be mentioned that the Greek Club, with its fortnightly meetings for the reading and discussion of the classics, has been for more than three decades the only circle of its kind in existence.

In art, the invaluable treasures of the Metropolitan Museum foster the love of what is enduringly beautiful in sculpture, painting, architecture, etc.; while the schools of this museum and of the National Academy of Design and the Society of American Artists, to say nothing of the more utilitarian classes of Cooper Institute and the School of Artist Artisans, afford instruction in art of such a sort as to render foreign study no longer indispensable, albeit no less attractive than of old.

Of music, vocal and instrumental, such feasts are spread before the local amateur as can be matched for quality and abundance in no other city at home or abroad, and while this is not true of the drama also, as the Comédie Française has never come hither in a body, it is yet a fact that nearly all that is best is seen, sooner or later, on the New York stage.

By what rapid strides the city is moving forward in some directions, while halting lamentably in others, needs not to be pointed out. There is expert testimony to the effect that in public morality it has at least held its own during the past half-century; we trust it may some day work out its salvation in things political, and cease to be the mild milch cow of thirsty demagogues. It can never vie in picturesqueness and historic interest with its European peers in population and importance, nor atone by its singularly fortunate situation for its poverty in little parks and its richness in rough-paved, right-angled and treeless streets and avenues; yet it may some day rival even Paris in the absolute beauty of its public and private buildings and historic monuments. A brave beginning has been made, in the Washington Arch, the Madison Square Garden, the Columbia and the New York University buildings, the Washington, Hale and Farragut statues and certain churches, club-houses and private dwellings. And in the Cathedral of St. John, the Public Library, the Academy of Design and the Botanical and Zoölogical gardens, a further stride will be made erelong in the only directions in which æsthetic leadership seems possible.

BROOKLYN

THE TOWN ON FREEDOM’S BATTLE-FIELD

By HARRINGTON PUTNAM

The earliest Dutch settlements within the present borough limits are not so old as the first hamlets on Manhattan. More than a score of years after the houses and forts of New Amsterdam looked out across the East River, the forest-crested heights of the west end of Long Island remained in undisturbed Indian occupation.

The Dutch settlers were deterred, rather than attracted, by this magnificent stretch of green woodlands extending along the high shore. The Holland people were not accustomed to timber clearing and therefore sought access to the island by the smoother meadow-lands of Gowanus, and afterwards to the north where the sloping grasslands about the Waalboght invited the settler to essay gardening without too much preparation with the axe. The early Long Island farmers advanced on the territory of Brooklyn by flank attacks, seeking to turn the wings of the extended forest, rather than boldly to engage in the struggle with the densely wooded heights in front. These pioneers were thrifty, energetic Hollanders and Huguenots whose farms soon required regular communication with Manhattan. In 1642 a public ferry was established between the present foot of Fulton Street and a landing in Peck’s Slip. The houses clustered about this Long Island landing constituted a little settlement called The Ferry.

As the Indians were dispossessed from their maize-fields, the colonists found sites for a small village a mile or so inland. The modern visitor who comes up Fulton Street should stop about the corner of Hoyt and Smith Streets to locate this settlement and picture a primitive hamlet of small one-story frame cottages, sometimes surrounded by palisades for protection against attacks. The open lands were of small extent, with forest to the east and west, and streams running south into a wide morass, where is now Gowanus Canal. Undoubtedly the undrained land of this settlement, receiving copious moisture from the surrounding forests, contained many a marsh and fen like the homelands of Holland. So the settlers called it the brookland, or Breuckelen, after an ancient village of that name on the river Vecht in the Province of Utrecht. The records of old Breuckelen are traced by local antiquarians of Utrecht to the time of Tacitus. In its variant forms, Bracola, Broccke, Brocckede, Broicklede and Brocklandia, it describes a moist meadow-land. Or, as a Dutch writer declares, the town on the Vecht was called Breuckelen from the marshes (a paludibus). Its beautiful gardens and quaint castles, as the emigrants had beheld them when starting out from home, perhaps remained in the imagination of the Long Island settlers as an ideal of what their western home should some day become.

Just as Utrecht and Amersfoort are near-by towns to Breuckelen in the Lowlands, so New Utrecht towards the south—near the present Fort Hamilton—and Amersfoort (Flatlands) attested the determination of these Netherlanders to preserve the associations of their origin between the Rhine and the Zuyder Zee.

The life of these hard-working settlers was not all hardship. Their low houses with projecting roofs were strong and comfortable; the wide spacious fireplaces gave warmth to a generous hospitality that laid on the board wild turkeys and Gowanus oysters and other good eatables, followed after the repast by the long clay pipes, which, when over, left the weary toiler to be ushered to his night’s rest in a partitioned-off bunk or betste. But these material comforts were not all the results realized by the efforts of the first pioneers. These Dutch settlers were zealous for religion, liberty, and good schools; and from the first were not deficient in a commendable zeal for the public welfare.

Under the form of Colonial government the burghers were invited to submit all difficulties to the Governor and council, who were fond of the exercise of a strong, minute, and careful paternalism. The country folk were not expected to intrude on the authorities their own ideas of liberty, but merely to obey loyally what good, old, obstinate, arbitrary Governor Stuyvesant should command. Yet even when he had spoken with the official concurrence of his council, the eager spirits in Breuckelen would often cavil, and boldly presume to come over to Manhattan to stir up criticism and public remonstrance. So they were honored with a special order. The folk of Breuckelen, Amersfoort and Midwout (Flatbush) in 1653 were directed to forbid their residents from attending political meetings in New Amsterdam.

At this time the civic virtues were enforced in Breuckelen, and the good of the village put before the preference of a private citizen to retire from public office. The Governor would not allow any one to decline to serve in an official capacity. The schepen-elect of Breuckelen proposed not to continue in office for another term. He even said he would sooner go back to Holland than remain burdened by the duties of schepen. The Governor quickly took him at his word. The Sheriff was formally required to notify him of this order of the Governor which stated with remarkable clearness the obligation of good townsmen to the public and the penalty for its neglect:

“If you will not accept to serve as schepen for the welfare of the Village of Breuckelen, with others, your fellow residents, then you must prepare yourself to sail in the ship King Solomon for Holland, agreeably to your utterance.”

No further refusals to hold office appear to have embarrassed the council.

The colonists of Breuckelen were specially solicitous for a meeting-house and domine. They insisted that they should have good measure in discourses and that if the services should be abbreviated by the preacher, then on their side no tithes should be forthcoming. The first meeting-house was begun in 1654 at Midwout (Flatbush). Soon they worshipped in the partly roofed building. After much difficulty and repeated applications to the Council it had been arranged that the Rev. Mr. Polhemus should have his morning discourse at Flatbush, with his evening service alternately at Midwout and in Breuckelen.

Governor Stuyvesant may have fancied that he had composed the difficulty. Next winter, however, the Governor was presented with a further remonstrance against the cutting-short of these alternating evening devotions. They thus complained of this brief and scanty service:

“Every fortnight on Sundays he comes here, only in the afternoon for a quarter of an hour, when he only gives us a prayer in lieu of sermon, by which we can receive very little instruction; while often, while one supposes the prayer or sermon (whichever name might be preferred for it) is beginning, then it is actually at an end, by which he contributes very little to the edification of his congregation.”

To modern ears, this seems a strange grievance for legislation.

Governor Stuyvesant, however, admonished the Breuckelen folk to pay their full tithes. Doubtless he privately reminded Mr. Polhemus of his duties and obligations to give his people full service.

In three years they obtained a domine of their own. The Rev. Henricus Selyns, a learned and devout young clergyman of a prominent Amsterdam family came to Breuckelen in 1660. At first his parishioners worshipped in a barn, but a meeting-house was soon erected. His spiritual labors and influence were successful, and the four years of Mr. Selyns’s ministrations were affectionately remembered. Compelled to return to Holland by the last illness of his father, he came to America and settled in New York eighteen years later. His warm admiration for Cotton Mather is attested by a graceful Latin poem appended to the later editions of the Magnalia.

Breuckelen was equally fortunate in a schoolmaster—Carel de Beauvois—a cultured French Protestant from Leyden, who was appointed in Breuckelen in 1661. Besides his duties, in the church, of precentor and Scripture reader, it was stipulated that:

“He shall properly, diligently, and industriously attend to the school, instill in the minds of the young the fear of the Lord, and set them a good example; to open the school with prayer and close with a Psalm, also to exercise the scholars in the questions in the groat regulen of the Rev. pious and learned father Do. Johannes Megapolensis, Minister of the gospel in N. Amsterdam.”

Here was a hamlet of but thirty-one families who were not satisfied until they could listen to the ablest preaching of the day, and were also favored with superior educational facilities.

Meanwhile the Dutch order was changing. The neighboring village of Gravesend was being settled by the English. From Connecticut came Quakers, who sowed the seeds of non-conformity and inculcated a new and strange doctrine, that taxes should not be levied to maintain the clergy, a principle especially attractive to those whose tithes were paid with a grudging hand.

At the end of the Dutch régime there were four or five little scattered hamlets within the present borough. The Wallabout had the larger French and Huguenot population. Eastward the English settlers were coming into farming competition with their Dutch neighbors.

There was no great alarm or disappointment manifested on Long Island when on a morning in August, 1664, a British fleet was found to have assembled in the Narrows. Colonial militia under the British flag from New England came through the Sound and encamped on the Breuckelen shore. On September 8, 1664, New Amsterdam yielded, and Governor Nicolls raised the flag of Great Britain on the fort. Then New Amsterdam became New York; Long Island and Staten Island, and probably part of Westchester County, were made an English “shire,” and Breuckelen, after some changes of spelling, was known as “Brooklyn in the West Riding of Yorkshire.”

This settlement of Dutch and Huguenots, maintained under the Colonial government of New Amsterdam, in the score of years before the British conquest had acquired a distinctive character. Contrary to a prevalent opinion, these first Dutch settlements, in a sound and vigorous sense, were essentially democratic. In the absence of class privileges—the spirit to refer all questions to the supreme consideration of the general welfare; to subordinate individual claims to the rights and advantage of the public—Breuckelen and Vliessingen (Flushing) compared favorably in civic life with contemporary villages in New England. As Holland had been dyked against the sea by close, unremitting, and intimate co-operation—a spirit further developed in the protracted struggle for independence—so the smaller Dutch colonies in New York, while they kept their agricultural character, retained a collective rather than an individual ideal, which tended to exclude none from equal social opportunities. They never had to struggle with the incubus of a modified feudalism, which, though inevitably breaking up, was leaving its impress of regard for rank and class privilege in the American colonies of British origin.

Colonial life under British rule was marked by more rigid laws as the communities grew. The careful protection of common-lands was strictly attended to, especially the town forests of Brooklyn against the encroachment of those who would surreptitiously cut away the timber. Trustees of the common woodlands were appointed; but in the year 1702 these lands were equitably divided and all allotted to each householder in Brooklyn to insure their better protection.

Gradually the English language was spoken in the churches and upon ceremonious occasions. A waggish tale of Domine Schoonmaker of Flatbush relates his difficulties in a wedding service. Fluent and eloquent in his mother tongue, he essayed the ceremony in English, with the manner, gestures, and all the courteous dignity of the old school. His English failed him at the very close of the service. Conscious of the literalness of his extemporized translation of the formula, he finished with a bow, adding with solemnity and modulated emphasis, “I pronounce you two to be one beef.”

English customs gradually came in vogue. More aristocratic usages superseded the democracy of the Dutch settlers. Slavery existed in Brooklyn as in New York. Brick and stone buildings arose along Fulton Street. Twice, in 1745 and 1752, the Colonial legislature of the Province met in Brooklyn, on account of the prevalence of smallpox in New York.

The rural character of the town is well illustrated by an event in 1759. A large bear then passed along the farms in South Brooklyn, and being pursued took to the water near Red Hook, where he was shot from a boat.

The ethics of 1774 approved the aid of lotteries to build an orthodox church in Brooklyn, which the public were assured should be of no doubtful laxity, but a church conformable to the discipline of the Church of England, and under the patronage of Trinity Church, New York.

In the matter of amusements in 1774, New Yorkers came to Brooklyn for many of their sports. Here horse-races were run. In that year an ambitious innkeeper on “Tower Hill”—a site along the present Columbia Heights between Middagh and Cranberry Streets—announced that there would be a bull baited there every Thursday afternoon.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, Brooklyn numbered between three and four thousand persons grouped in four neighborhoods. There were then three ferries to New York. At the old (Fulton) ferry was a famous tavern which figured often in the times of British occupation. The two principal villages were then called Brooklyn-church and Brooklyn-ferry.

At the first movements of the Patriot party in New England the people of Kings County were little stirred. Suffolk County, at the eastern end of Long Island, more readily responded to the first news from Massachusetts. After the battle of Lexington, Brooklynites assembled and passed resolutions and elected delegates to the Provincial Congress.

The modern visitor to the Borough of Brooklyn has difficulty to realize that what is now densely built up, and covered by grading and asphalt, marks the battle-ground of one of the greatest engagements of the Revolution. The houses of Charlestown cover the battle-ground of Bunker Hill, but that was a struggle over a single redoubt, while Brooklyn is built upon a line of battle nearly three miles in length. In the Civil War, Northern people recall the great disaster of the first battle of Bull Run, fought with modern armies and improved weapons. Yet in that all-day conflict, with the disastrous rout and pursuit, the Union loss in killed, wounded and prisoners probably was not as great numerically as the loss suffered by the American forces in the half-day of fierce fighting in Brooklyn. The Federal forces at Bull Run suffered in killed, wounded, and missing 2896, while the patriot losses in this, the first pitched battle of the Revolution, were estimated at 3300 by the British, of whom 1097 were prisoners (three being generals); and late American historians are inclined to accept this estimate as approximately correct.

In the summer of 1776, a formidable fleet assembled in the lower Bay of New York. These vessels bore from Nova Scotia the armies that had evacuated Boston, and another fleet of nine war vessels and thirty-five transports brought in the forces under Clinton that had been repulsed in the attack on Fort Moultrie at Charleston. At last, on the 12th of August arrived the Hessian forces in eighty-two transport-ships guarded by six war vessels. On board were 7800 Hessians and 1000 English guards.

The observer at the Narrows must have daily beheld a naval pageant such as can no more be seen in modern warfare. From the first distant glimpse of the line of sails standing in for Sandy Hook, until they finally manœuvred to their crowded anchorage by Staten Island, the effect was most picturesque. It was not a fleet of dark, sullen sea-dogs, with only an inconspicuous hull built to carry a destructive armament. The coloring of these vessels against the green background of Staten Island in the olden days of oak and hemp would have delighted a painter. The upper works outside were sometimes dark blue or canary yellow, surmounted by waving lines of gilt. Below were black streaks running fore and aft near the water-line; as the ships slowly lifted in a seaway, they disclosed a white under-surface that must have made an admirable target for the opposing gunner. The grand air of the frigates was further enhanced by elaborate ornamentation with emblematic devices about the carved figure-head, and heavy gilded scrollwork above the stern-lights, and high stern-gallery. From the bluffs along the Narrows, the view down upon the decks would show that all inboard surfaces, even the gun-carriages and the inner side of portholes, were painted blood-red—so as not to have the carnage of battle too much en évidence.

At one time over four hundred transports, guarded by thirty-seven men-of-war, had gathered. Lord Howe on the land, and his brother, Admiral Howe, on the sea were in joint command.

The patriot forces had carefully entrenched a line of defensive works, laid out by General Nathaniel Greene. The good judgment with which these forts were placed was attested by the deliberate adoption of almost the same line of redoubts and forts in the subsequent defences of Brooklyn by the engineers in the campaign of 1814, when Brooklyn was again prepared to resist British attack.

The fortifications of Brooklyn in 1776 extended in an irregular line from Fort Defiance at Red Hook opposite Governor’s Island across to Fort Box on Bergen’s Hill near the corner of Court Street and First Place. At the junction of Clinton and Atlantic Streets, or a little easterly, was a steep conical hill called the Ponkiesburgh, and on top, surmounting a line of spiral trenches, a redoubt, called Corkscrew Fort. Between Atlantic, Pacific, Nevins, and Bond Streets was a redoubt mounting five guns called Fort Greene. Thence the line ran zigzag across the present Fulton Street, to the west of the junction of Flatbush and Fulton Avenues, along the hill slope to Fort Putnam, on the eminence now called Fort Greene Park, a commanding height where were mounted five guns. The number of guns mounted upon the works from Fort Putnam to Fort Defiance was thirty-five—mainly eighteen-pounders—an armament in part captured from Ticonderoga.

From this fort the line extended northwesterly to a spring at the verge of the Wallabout, near the corner of Flushing and Portland Avenues. This interior line of defence was nearly two miles long. Between these forts were lines of trenches further defended by trees and sharpened stakes, forming an abatis, in the construction of which the Continental woodsmen were always proficient. Within this line of defence was Fort Stirling, which was back near Columbia Heights.

It is difficult after a century of grading and building to conceive that an extensive morass then covered nearly all the lands south of the present Hamilton Avenue, save about the small island height at Red Hook. Gowanus, with several large ponds raised by Brower’s Mill-dam, flooded and made impassable nearly all the area extending from Fourth Avenue to Smith Street. This was crossed by a narrow causeway along Freeke’s Mill-pond. On the higher lands beyond, extending from Greenwood along Prospect Park towards East New York, were dense woodlands, that were only practicable for an advancing army by certain passes or narrow wood-roads. The principal route from the Narrows to Brooklyn was along the site of Third Avenue by a good road then known as the Shore Road.

The battle of August 27, 1776, was fought almost entirely outside this line of fortifications. Knowing that the British forces had been moving towards Brooklyn from the Narrows, General Putnam had posted troops in detachments in order to check the hostile columns as they should come through the wood-roads and passes. It was natural to expect the principal British advance by the Shore Road, as there they would be at all times within supporting distance of the fleet.

On August 26th the Hessians under de Heister had occupied Flatbush, and Lord Cornwallis had reached nearly to Flatlands.

In the forenoon of the 27th, Stirling commanded the patriot right, extending from the shore near the foot of Twenty-third Street up Greenwood Heights about to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street. This position was to repel the expected attack by the route of the Shore Road. Sullivan commanded the centre, which was an irregular congeries of militia posted along the summits of hills in Prospect Park and across the Flatbush Road. Colonel Miles with the 1st Pennsylvania regiment occupied the hills near the Clove Road to the south of Bedford, with some Connecticut levies continuing the line still further eastward. Instead of a co-ordinated supporting line of battle, these dispositions were intended as little more than a body of skirmishers, too widely strung-out to be opposed to an actual attack.

The beginning of a movement of British troops at daylight on the Shore Road, and the evident efforts of the fleet to sail up the Bay, which the light wind and ebb tide prevented, indicated that the hardest fighting would be by the right under Stirling. The entire patriot force inside and without the entrenchments was 5500. The British force was over 16,000 men. While the troops were facing each other along this position, a strong flanking column under Sir Henry Clinton, with Lord Howe the commander-in-chief, had stealthily marched from Flatbush to East New York, during the night, and had followed a sunken road through the present Cemetery of the Evergreens, called the Jamaica Pass. This was about five miles to the east of Sullivan’s position. Before daylight, at about a mile from the Pass, the column halted and sent forward a force which captured the American patrol and officers, and soon after a detachment secured the Pass. The light infantry advanced at the first appearance of day, and occupied the heights of Bushwick, followed by the guards with the field-pieces under Lord Percy, and the 49th regiment with four guns and the baggage brought up the rear.

After breakfasting, the flanking column marched along the turnpike to Bedford, where they arrived at half-past eight o’clock; thence they advanced along the rear of Miles’s troops, who were unconscious that they were being surrounded.

Fearfully outnumbered as they were, the Americans were now attacked in front by the Hessians advancing from Flatbush under General de Heister, and in the rear by this flanking column. The result was disastrous. Sullivan’s command was cut to pieces and himself captured. Terrible slaughter occurred in the woods and the slopes towards Fourth Avenue. The only escape not closed by the British was across the mill-dam and marshes of Gowanus.

Meanwhile Cornwallis was detached to attack Stirling’s line, which had still held its position on the western side of Prospect Heights. Desperate indeed was the plight of this devoted remnant of the army, outnumbered on all sides. General Grant, the British commander in front, had pressed forward (after having repeatedly been driven back) and finally surrounded and captured Atlee’s riflemen. Stirling gallantly determined to attack Cornwallis, and drive him back and so get an opportunity to cross by Brower’s Mill-dam to the defences of Fort Box. Here was the heroism of the day. Taking command of Smallwood’s gallant Maryland regiment and forming in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, Stirling led these brave young Marylanders three times in a charge on Cornwallis’s lines. Closing their ranks as they were cut down by grape and canister, the Maryland onset drove the British back behind the stone Cortelyou house. Once they forced the gunners from their guns, but at last, overwhelmed by numbers, the survivors fell back, leaving 256 killed out of 400. It was the sight of this brilliant charge and the spirited but frightfully unequal contest that caused Washington to wring his hands in anguish and say: “Good God! what brave fellows I must lose this day!”

While these Marylanders gallantly sacrificed their lives to hold Cornwallis in check, a large portion of Stirling’s command crossed the Gowanus Creek and brought the tattered colors of Smallwood’s regiment and over twenty prisoners within the lines. The battle was over at noon. The bodies of the gallant Maryland heroes—the flower of the army—were afterward buried on a small knoll or island. Third Avenue runs across it, between Seventh and Eighth Streets, but its site is far below the present street level.

In estimating the service of these Marylanders, it is to be recalled that they were young, never before under fire, and were led without their own colonel, who was detached the day before for a court-martial in New York. When the charges were made, the troops had already been several hours fighting, and had to re-form under fire, after it was plain that the battle was lost. The attacks were up an ascent, against superior numbers, strong artillery, and an overwhelming body of seasoned veterans. Even the assault and death of Montgomery at Quebec were not more gallant. Unlike that hopeless attack, the Marylanders accomplished their purpose by their sacrifice, and stopped the advance of Cornwallis. The brilliancy, dash, and steady persistence of this charge have not been properly recognized.

After the repulse of the patriot army, the battle ceased. The prudence of Lord Howe would not permit the English army to move upon the entrenchments. Bunker Hill with its terrible memories was too recent.

The next day, the 28th, Washington reinforced the Brooklyn troops, increasing their number to 9000. Among them were Colonel Glover’s battalion of fishermen and sailors from Salem and Marblehead. On that day heavy rain prevented an attack. In the afternoon the British began regular siege approaches towards Fort Putnam by a trench starting from the present Clinton Avenue near the corner of De Kalb Avenue.

A council of war decided on evacuation. Even in this extremity Washington caused an elaborate statement of reasons to be drawn up as the grounds of his action. That night, aided by the dense fog, the entire body were rowed over by Colonel Glover’s Marblehead boatmen. The skill and admirable mastery of detail in this retreat were Washington’s. For many hours he sat on his horse at the ferry, patiently superintending the embarkation. At least on one occasion he had to check a rush of impetuous and alarmed men from crowding into the boats. Finally with the last crew he embarked. The retreat of the entire force from Long Island was safely effected. At four o’clock only empty trenches were revealed to the invaders.

In Prospect Park is a monument to the heroism of this gallant Maryland regiment. At different streets are memorial tablets to mark the lines of defence. Perhaps some day a statue of Washington, near the old ferry, will mark the spot where his prudence and skill saved the American Army.

During the British occupation the noble forests of Brooklyn were destroyed. One may search in vain for any oaks or elms about the City that are really ancient.

The mention of the Wallabout and the present site of the Navy Yard recall some of the most painful memories of our history—the horrors of the prison-ships. Few indeed are the Revolutionary families that have not had deep sorrows connected with the ships Whitby, Good Hope, Old Jersey, John, Falmouth, and other hulks, where the martyrs ended their severe captivity. The bodies of the victims—having been removed from time to time—are now, it is hoped, in their final resting-place on the westerly front of Fort Greene Park opposite the Plaza. As yet no monument, not even an inscription, marks the spot where were reverently laid the bones of 11,500 martyrs to American liberty.

The Navy Yard, starting in 1824, has become the foremost in the country. Here are gathered trophies of the Nation’s battles on many seas. In a little enclosure near the Commandant’s office, are grouped captured ordnance, with a howitzer that did service under Hull on the Constitution. Trophies from the Spanish war have lately been added to this collection. Here are the guns taken from the burnt and shattered Almirante Oquendo and Vizcaya, and by them is mounted a submarine contact mine from the defences of Guantanamo, which the Texas broke adrift without exploding the deadly contents. Not far away was built the ill-fated battleship Maine. In these docks were outfitted many of the fleet that fought the battle of Santiago. In the Spanish war, the Brooklyn Navy Yard was where most of the yachts and merchant steamers, purchased in emergency, were converted into cruisers. Under Naval Constructor Bowles, the unparalleled record was made in 1898 of thirty-four vessels thus converted and fitted out for service in the auxiliary navy in ninety-three days!

At the southern shore of the enlarged Brooklyn are the forts and batteries defending this part of Long Island. Under the modern defences of Fort Hamilton, still is preserved Fort Lafayette, an island structure of masonry, valueless for war, but ever to be kept for its associations. Built in 1812 to defend the Narrows, its name was changed at the time of Lafayette’s return in 1824. In 1861, it was used to imprison those from Maryland and the border States, whose loyalty the Federal Administration distrusted. When the Judges of Brooklyn issued writs of habeas corpus to bring up these political suspects, and inquire into the justice of their captivity, the remedy was to hurry the prisoners to Fort Warren in Boston Harbor, beyond the reach of the process of New York courts.

Here also, in 1862, a division commander of McClellan’s army was held prisoner. General Charles P. Stone, a graduate of West Point, was blamed for the disaster at Ball’s Bluff. By secret orders of Secretary Stanton, he was arrested at midnight, hurried to New York, and kept forty-nine days in solitary confinement in Fort Lafayette, without trial, charges, or answer to his appeals for a hearing! Congress finally vindicated him and set him free, after one hundred and eighty-nine days’ imprisonment.

The interior of the Fort was burned out in the winter of 1869. Its armament has never been replaced. The dark red circular walls stand at the opposite end of the Bay from the Statue of Liberty, and furnish an impressive contrast, in their memories of an American Bastille.

On the completion of the new Shore Road, following the contour of the Narrows, an admirable approach upon the bluff overlooking the Bay will lead the visitor to this Golden Gate of the commerce of New York.

The traditions of home rule, local self-government, and civic conscience have come down from the early Brooklyn agitations against the government of Peter Stuyvesant. Brooklynites before consolidation with the greater city had a liberal home-rule charter that was first administered under Mayor Seth Low. Through his government, the “Brooklyn plan” became the ideal of other municipalities.

The ancient zeal for education and schools has not declined. Besides the college, academy, and public schools, two Brooklyn institutions distinctively illustrate the modern trend of popular municipal education. The Pratt Institute, with its wide and helpful teaching in the industrial arts, is perhaps the most famous of all Brooklyn benevolences. But the enlarged and expanding Brooklyn Institute, with its multiform departments, its generous field of lectureships, and its museum, is destined to become the model for organizations planned to diffuse popular culture in cities.

The regard of Brooklyn for the Church and the influence of the clergy on the life of Brooklyn are proverbial. To recall the names of Brooklyn’s clergy is to mention many leaders of the American pulpit. Not a little of their inspiration has come from the influence and history of Brooklyn itself. In its growth from village to city, and then to borough, it has developed along the lines of equality of social opportunity, and thus unconsciously has been reaping the fruits of the lives and examples of its Dutch founders.

PRINCETON

PLANTING AND TILLING

By WILLIAM M. SLOANE

Princeton is by no means one of the oldest settlements in the State of New Jersey, and yet it has a history of more than two centuries, the first homestead having been established there in 1682. Although situated midway, or nearly so, between two of the largest Colonial towns, and nearly equidistant from the head of navigation on two important streams, the Raritan and the Delaware, it remained a quiet and unimportant hamlet for over half a century. Most of the travel between New York and Philadelphia went by way of Perth Amboy and Camden; there was little to interrupt the humble labors of the settlers in clearing the forest and tilling the soil.

Yet the roll-call of Princeton’s pioneers reveals names which are now synonymous with patriotism and famous wherever American history is studied: Stockton, Paterson, Boudinot, Randolph, and others almost as renowned. Their instinctive Americanism is first recorded in a successful protest to the provincial authorities against the quartering of British troops in their humble homes during the French and Indian War.

October 22, 1746, the College of New Jersey was chartered by Governor Hamilton, an act notable in American history because the first of its kind performed without authorization from England or the consent even of the provincial legislature. The institution was opened under President Dickinson in May, 1747, at Elizabethtown. After his death, which occurred in October of the same year, the few students were transferred to Newark and put under the care of the Rev. Aaron Burr, one of the twelve trustees. On the fourteenth of the following September, Jonathan Belcher, just appointed governor, granted a new charter fuller and more formal than the first. His interest in the college was from the outset very great, and his opinion, already formed, that Princeton was the most desirable spot for its permanent site ultimately prevailed, the citizens of the hamlet proving more active and liberal than those of New Brunswick, already a good-sized town, to which likewise terms were proposed “for fixing the college in that place.”

Thereafter the little settlement grew rapidly and soon became a considerable village. In 1756 the new buildings were virtually completed and the college was transferred to its future home. Notable men from throughout the State and from the cities of New York and Philadelphia became interested in the new seat of learning. More noteworthy still were those who taught and those who studied in it. Within a decade after the completion of Nassau Hall the names of Burr, Edwards, Witherspoon, of Livingston, Rush and Ellsworth, of James Manning, Luther Martin and Nathaniel Niles became Princeton names. The stream of influential patronage once started continued to flow until long after the Revolution. It included men from New England on the one hand, and from the South on the other, with, of course, a powerful element from the Middle States.

Princeton College is the child of Yale. But the parting was not entirely amicable. Theological controversy grew very fierce, even for the Connecticut Valley, in the days of Whitefield’s preaching. The conservatives or Old Lights held the reins and were not kindly disposed toward the innovators or New Lights. The trouble culminated in the expulsion from Yale of David Brainerd because, defying the Faculty’s express command, he attended New Light meetings and would not profess penitence for his fault. This occurred in 1739; thereafter an even stronger feeling of discontent smouldered among the liberal Calvinists until finally the way was clear for founding a new training-school for the ministry and the learned professions on broad and generous lines. Brainerd became a most successful and famous missionary. He was betrothed to the daughter of Jonathan Edwards and died at her father’s house, a victim of his own laborious and devoted life. This was less than a year after the College of New Jersey had been founded by a body of liberal-minded men of all orthodox denominations, under the influence of a few leaders who sympathized with both Brainerd and the Edwards theology. The first charter was granted by an Episcopalian governor to four Presbyterian clergymen, and one of the original trustees was a Quaker. Governor Belcher, who enlarged the charter and made the College “his adopted daughter,” was a man of the most catholic feeling. Fourteen of the trustees under the permanent constitution were Presbyterian clergymen, an arrangement corresponding to the similar one whereby the majority of the governing body of Yale was composed of Congregational ministers. This wise guardianship has kept the two universities true to their traditions, and the flourishing condition of both is the strongest proof anywhere afforded that temporal affairs do not necessarily suffer when committed to the charge of spiritual advisers. Considerable sums of money were raised in England by the personal solicitation of Tennent and Davies, two clergymen sent out for the purpose by the Trustees. The ten laymen of the first Princeton board represented various orthodox denominations, including Episcopalians and Quakers. There is not a syllable in the charter concerning creeds, confessions, or religious tests. It is very significant of the vast improvement in public morality that a college founded under such auspices a hundred and fifty years ago was partly endowed and supported by lotteries authorized and drawn both in Connecticut and New Jersey.

From the day when the College was installed in its grand new home, history-making went on apace in Princeton. Nassau Hall was a majestic building for those days; distinguished foreign visitors to America all noted its dimensions and architecture in their written accounts of travel. Indeed, even now, with the tasteless alterations of chimneys, roofs and towers made necessary by fire and carried through with ruthless economy, it may be considered one of the great monumental college buildings in America. It is, however, far more than this; we assert without fear of contradiction that it has no peer as the most historic university pile in the world. This contention rests on the fact that it saw the discomfiture of the British at the ebb-tide of the American rebellion, harbored the Government of the United States in its critical moments and cradled the Constitution-makers of the greatest existing republic. No other university hall has been by turns fortress and barrack, legislative chamber and political nursery in the birththroes of any land comparable to our land.

The building was designed to be complete in itself; it contained lodgings for a hundred and forty-seven students, with a refectory, library and chapel. The class which entered under Dickinson, the first president, had six members, of whom five became clergymen. His untimely death a year after his election made his administration the shortest but one in the College history. During the ten years of Burr’s tenure of office (1747-1757) the total number of students was a hundred and fourteen; half of them entered the ministry. The short presidency of Jonathan Edwards lasted but a few months. It gave the glory of his name, that of America’s greatest metaphysician, to the College, the sacred memories of his residence to the venerable mansion now occupied by the Dean, and the hallowed custody of his mortal remains to the Princeton graveyard, a spot to which thousands have made their pilgrimage for the sake of his great renown. In this enclosure he lies beside his son-in-law, the Rev. Aaron Burr, who was his predecessor. At his feet are the ashes of the brilliant and erratic grandson, the Aaron Burr so well known to students of American history. President Davies, who followed Edwards, held his office for only two years, and was succeeded by Finley who presided for five. Under the latter the number of students present at one time rose to one hundred and twenty. All told, a hundred and thirty sat under his instruction, and of these less than half, fifty-nine, became clergymen.

This tendency to send fewer and fewer men into the ministry is highly significant. It reached its climax under the next president—the great Scotchman whose name is among the most honored in the history of his adopted country—John Witherspoon. His incumbency was coincident with the Revolutionary epoch, lasting from 1768 to 1794. In those twenty-six years four hundred and sixty-nine young men graduated from the College; of these, only a hundred and fourteen, less than a quarter, became clergymen, an average of between four and five a year. This phenomenon was due to the fact that Witherspoon, though lecturing on Divinity like his predecessors, was vastly more interested in political than in religious philosophy. So notorious was this fact that many a pious youth bent on entering the ministry passed the very doors of liberal Princeton to seek the intense atmosphere of Yale orthodoxy, while many a boy patriot from New England came hither to seek the distinction of being taught by Dr. Witherspoon.

The first eight years of Witherspoon’s presidency embraced the period of political ferment in the Colonies which ushered in the War of the Revolution. From the very beginning of his residence in America, the new president espoused the Colonial cause in every conflict with Great Britain; he was soon accounted “as high a son of liberty as any man in America.” Not content with enlarging and improving the College course, he collected funds throughout the Colonies from Boston to Charleston, and even laid Jamaica under contribution to fill the depleted College chest. From the pulpit of the old First Church his voice rang out in denunciation of the English administration, until in his native land he was branded as a rebel and a traitor. The spread of the Reformation was more largely due to the fact that Luther was a professor in the University of Wittenberg than to any other single cause; the adherence to the Revolution of the powerful Scotch and Scotch-Irish element in the Colonies was chiefly if not entirely secured by the teachings of John Witherspoon from his professor’s chair in Nassau Hall. To him and John Dickinson, author of the Farmer’s Letters, belongs the credit of having convinced the sober middle classes of the great middle Colonies that the breach with England was not merely inevitable, but just and to their interest.

But Witherspoon was more than a teacher, he was a practical statesman. His country-seat was a farm on the southern slope of Rocky Hill, about a mile due north of Nassau Hall. Its solid stone walls still bear the classic name which he gave it, of Tusculum. In his hours of retirement at that beloved home he seems to have brooded more on the rights of man than on human depravity, more on law than on theology, more on Providence in His present dealings with men than on the remoter meanings of God’s Word. In the convention which framed the constitution of New Jersey, he amazed the other delegates by his technical knowledge of administration and led in their constructive labors; he assisted in the overthrow of William Franklin, the royal governor; was elected to the Continental Congress, and in the critical hour spurred on the lagging members who hesitated to take the fatal step of authorizing their president and secretary to sign and issue the Declaration of Independence. With solemn emphasis he declared:

“For my own part, of property I have some, of reputation more. That reputation is staked, that property is pledged on the issue of this contest; and although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather that they descend thither by the hand of the executioner, than desert at this crisis the sacred cause of my country.”

The word “God” occurs but once in that famous document. Jefferson wrote it with a small “g.” Witherspoon was the solitary clergyman among the signers; neither he nor his neighbor, friend, and supporter, Richard Stockton, of Morven, who was a member of his church, set their hands the less firmly to sign the paper. Finally, Witherspoon was a member of the secret committee of Congress which really found the means of moral and material support for the war down to its close. He was chosen in the dark hours of November, 1776, to confer with Washington on the military crisis; he was a member, with Richard Henry Lee and John Adams, of the committee appointed that same winter to fire the drooping spirits of the rebels when Congress was driven from Philadelphia to Baltimore. He was a member, too, of the boards of war and finance, wrote state papers on the currency, and framed many of the most important bills passed by the Continental Congress. It was not unnatural that when, at the close of the war, Congress was terrified by unpaid and unruly Continentals battering at its doors in Philadelphia, it should seek refuge and council, as it did, in John Witherspoon’s college.

Thus it happened that Nassau Hall became one of the hearthstones on which the fires of patriotism burned brightest. From 1766 to 1776 there were graduated two hundred and thirty young Americans. What their temper and feeling must have been may be judged from the names of those among them who afterwards became eminent in public life. Ephraim Brevard, Pierrepont Edwards, Churchill Houston, John Henry, John Beatty, James Linn, Frederick Frelinghuysen, Gunning Bedford, Hugh Brackinridge, Philip Freneau, James Madison, Aaron Burr, Henry Lee, Aaron Ogden, Brockholst Livingston, and Wm. Richardson Davie. Those ten years produced twelve Princetonians who sat in the Continental Congress, six who sat in the Constitutional Convention, one President of the United States, one Vice-President, twenty-four members of Congress, three Judges of the Supreme Court, one Secretary of State, one Postmaster-General, three Attorneys-General, and two foreign ministers. It may well be supposed that the clergymen who were their comrades in those days of ferment were, like their great teacher, no opponents of political preaching. The influence of such a body of young men, when young men seized and held the reins, was incalculable.

“We have no public news,” writes James Madison from Princeton on July 23, 1770, to his friend, Thomas Martin,

“but the base conduct of the merchants in New York in breaking through their spirited resolutions not to import; a distinct account of which, I suppose, will be in the Virginia Gazette before this arrives. The letter to the merchants in Philadelphia, requesting their concurrence, was lately burned by the students of this place in the college yard, all of them appearing in their black gowns and the bell tolling.... There are about 115 in the College and in the Grammar School, all of them in American cloth.”

“Last week, to show our patriotism,” wrote in 1774 another Princeton student, Charles Beatty,

“we gathered all the steward’s winter store of tea, and having made a fire in the campus we there burnt near a dozen pounds, tolled the bell, and made many spirited resolves. But this was not all. Poor Mr. Hutchinson’s effigy shared the same fate with the tea, having a tea-canister tied about his neck.”

With such a nursery of patriotism at its very hub, the temper of the surrounding community can easily be pictured. The proposition for a provincial congress came from Princeton. John Hart, a farmer from the neighboring township of Hopewell, and Abraham Clark, a farmer’s son from the neighboring county, were associated with graduates from Princeton College and delegates from Princeton town in conducting its deliberations. Both were made delegates to the Continental Congress and both, along with Witherspoon and Stockton, were signers of the Declaration of Independence. Even Francis Hopkinson, the fifth signer for this State, a Philadelphian in reality, though a temporary resident of Bordentown, was, as the friend and co-worker of Freneau and Brackinridge, intimately associated with Princeton influence. When rebellion was finally in full swing, the Committee of Safety for New Jersey held its sessions here, probably in Nassau Hall, possibly in the famous tavern. It is well known that neither the Continental Army nor the people of the United States at large were profoundly impressed by the Declaration of Independence. This was not the case in Princeton, for the correspondent of a Philadelphia paper wrote that on July 9, 1776, “Nassau Hall was grandly illuminated and independency proclaimed under a triple volley of musketry, and universal acclamation for the prosperity of the United States, with the greatest decorum.”

Seven days previous to this demonstration, the Provincial Congress, sitting at Trenton, had adopted a new State constitution; nine days later the first Legislature of the State assembled in Nassau Hall—the College library room—and chose Livingston governor. They continued more or less intermittently in session until the following October after the invasion of the State by British forces. Before the invaders they fled to Trenton, then to Burlington, to Pittstown, and finally to Haddonfield. After the battles of Princeton and Trenton they promptly returned to their first seat and resumed their sessions.

The storm of war broke upon Princeton early in December of the same year, 1776. The British Army, landed from Howe’s fleet in New York Bay, had entirely worsted the American forces. Brooklyn, New York, Fort Washington with Fort Lee had been successively abandoned, and Washington in his memorable retreat across this State reached Princeton on the first of December. Stirling, with one thousand two hundred Continentals, was left as a rear-guard, while the Commander-in-Chief with the rest, one thousand eight hundred, and his stores, pushed on to Trenton, whence he crossed in safety to the right bank of the Delaware. On the seventh, Cornwallis entered Princeton at the head of six thousand Anglo-Hessian veterans, driving Stirling before him. The invaders were quartered in the College and in the church. Both Tusculum and Morven, the estates of the arch-rebels Witherspoon and Stockton, were pillaged, and the new house of Sergeant was burnt. All the neighboring farms were laid under contribution for forage.

Popular disaffection followed in the course of Washington’s retreat. Large numbers of the people and many of the State officials accepted the English offers of amnesty. The patriots were compelled to abandon their homes and flee across the Delaware. Two regiments were left by Cornwallis in Princeton as a garrison. The rest of his troops were established in winter quarters at New Brunswick, Trenton and Bordentown. Washington’s thin and starving line stretched along the Delaware from Coryell’s Ferry to Bristol. Congress fled to Baltimore. Putnam, with no confidence in Washington’s ability even to hold his ground, was making ready for a desperate defence of Philadelphia.

There was as yet no French alliance, no adequate supply of money raised either at home or abroad, no regular or even semi-regular army,—nothing, apparently, but a disorderly little rebellion; for the first promise of constancy in New England and of regular support for a considerable force of volunteers had had as yet no fulfilment. The English felt that the early ardor of radical and noisy rebels would fade like a mist before Howe’s success; Canada was lost; New York as far as the Highlands was in British hands; so also were New Jersey and Long Island, which latter virtually controlled Connecticut. Howe believed the rebellion was broken; Cornwallis had engaged passage to return home.

While the British were lulled into security, Washington and the patriots, though desperate, were undaunted. A well considered and daring plan for a decisive sally from their lines was formed and carried to a successful issue. On Christmas night two thousand four hundred men were ferried over the Delaware nine miles above Trenton; the crossing was most dangerous, owing to the swollen waters and the floating ice; the ensuing march was made in the teeth of a dreadful storm. The affair at Trenton was scarcely a battle, it was rather a surprise; the one thousand two hundred Hessians were taken unawares and only a hundred and sixty-two escaped; nearly a thousand were captured. What made it a great event was its electrical effect in restoring courage to patriots everywhere, together with the inestimable value to Washington’s troops of the captured stores and arms. He did not occupy the place at all, but returned immediately to his encampment on the other shore to refit.

The ensuing week was certainly the most remarkable of the Revolution. The English in New York were thrown into consternation. Cornwallis hastened back to Princeton, where he collected between seven and eight thousand men, the flower of the British army. Washington’s force, on the other hand, was reinforced with a speed and zeal bordering on the miraculous. Three thousand volunteers came in from the neighborhood and from Philadelphia. The term of service for nine hundred of his men would expire on New Year’s day; these were easily induced, in the new turn of affairs, to remain six weeks longer. Washington and John Stark both pledged their private fortunes and Robert Morris raised fifty thousand dollars in Philadelphia. The mourning of the patriots throughout the Middle States was changed into rejoicing.

On the thirtieth of December the American army began to recross the Delaware; the movement was slow and difficult owing to the ice, but was completed the following day. On January 1, 1777, Washington wrote from Trenton that he had about two thousand two hundred men with him, that Mifflin had about one thousand eight hundred men at Bordentown on the right wing and that Cadwalader had about as many more at Crosswicks, some miles to the east. He thought that no more than one thousand eight hundred of those who passed the river with himself were available for fighting, but he intended to “pursue the enemy and break up their quarters.”

Next day Cornwallis, leaving three regiments and a company of cavalry at Princeton, set out by the old “King’s Highway” for Trenton. At Maidenhead, now Lawrenceville, there was a skirmish between his van and the American outposts; thence for over five miles his march was harassed by irregular bodies of his foe, General Hand being stationed in command of a detachment at Shabbakong creek, and General Greene about a mile this side of Trenton. It was four o’clock, and therefore late in the short winter day when the English General reached the outskirts of the city. There stood Washington himself with a few more detachments, ready still further to delay the British march through the town. Withdrawing slowly, the last Continental crossed the bridge over the Assanpink in safety, to fall behind earthworks, which in anticipation of the event had been thrown up and fortified with batteries on the high banks behind.

The British attacked at once, but were repulsed; undismayed they pressed on again, and again they were driven back across the narrow stream. The spirited conflict continued until nightfall, when the assailants finally gave up and withdrew to bivouac, hoping to renew the fight next morning. In this affair on the Assanpink about a hundred and fifty, mostly British, were killed. Cornwallis dispatched messengers to summon the men he had left at Maidenhead and Princeton, determined if possible to surround, overwhelm and annihilate Washington next day. But the battle on the Assanpink was destined to be the only real fighting in Trenton. Washington had in mind the strategic move which rendered this campaign one of his greatest, if not his very greatest. He determined to outflank his foe by a circuitous march to Princeton over the unguarded road on the south side of the Assanpink.

The night was dark and cold; the camp-fires of both lines burned strong and bright. Behind those of Cornwallis there was a bustle of preparation for the next day’s battle; behind those of Washington there was a stealthy making ready for retreat. The baggage was packed and dispatched to Burlington; a few men were detached to keep the fires well fed and clear; the rest silently stole away about midnight. Their march was long, between sixteen and eighteen miles, and difficult because the frost had turned the mud on the roads into hummocks. But at sunrise on the third of January the head of the column had crossed Stony Brook by the bridge on the Quaker road, and stood about a mile and three-quarters from Princeton, awaiting the result of a council of war. They were masked by the piece of woods which is still standing behind the Quaker meeting-house. It was determined that Washington with the main column should march across the fields, through a kind of depression in the rolling land intervening between the meeting-house and Princeton, in order to reach the town as quickly as possible. Mercer, with three hundred and fifty men and two field-pieces, was to follow the road half a mile farther to its junction with the King’s Highway, and there blow up the upper bridge over Stony Brook, that by which Cornwallis’s reserve, marching to Trenton, must cross the stream. This would likewise detain Cornwallis himself on his return in pursuit.

There were three actions in the battle of Princeton. Two of the three English regiments left in reserve at Princeton were under way betimes to join Cornwallis at Trenton. One of these under Colonel Mawhood, with three companies of horse, had already crossed Stony Brook and had climbed the hill beyond, before they descried Mercer following the road in the valley below; the other was half a mile behind, north of the stream. Mawhood quickly turned back and, uniting the two, engaged Mercer. The Americans were armed with rifles which had no bayonets, and although nearly equal in number to the enemy they were first slowly then rapidly driven up the hill to the ridge south of the King’s Highway and east of the Quaker road. They stood firm before the firing of the English, but yielded when the enemy charged bayonets. In this encounter Mercer was severely wounded and left for dead. Many other officers were likewise wounded as they hung back, striving to rally the flying troops.

Washington, hearing the firing, stopped immediately and, leaving the rest of his column to follow their line of march, put himself at the head of the Pennsylvania volunteers and wheeled. Summoning two pieces of artillery he turned to join the retreating forces of Mercer. The British reached the crest of the hill in pursuit before they saw Washington’s column. The sight brought them to a halt, and while they formed their artillery came up. It seemed to Washington a most critical moment. In an instant Mercer’s command was fused with his own men, and placing himself well out before the line he gave the order to advance. There was no halt until the Commander himself was within thirty yards of the foe; at that instant both lines volleyed simultaneously. The fire was hasty and ineffective. Washington, as if by a miracle, was unscathed. As the smoke blew away, an American brigade came in under Hitchcock, while Hand with his riflemen attacked the British flank. In a few moments Mawhood gave up the fight; his troops, after a few brave efforts, broke and retreated over the hill up the valley of Stony Brook. The bridge was then destroyed.

Meantime the head of the American column had reached the outskirts of Princeton. There, on the edge of the ravine now known as Springdale, was posted still a third British force composed of soldiers from the 40th and 55th Line. The Americans, with Stark at their head, attacked and drove them back as far as Nassau Hall, into which the fugitives hastily threw themselves. From the windows scattered remnants of their regiments could be seen fleeing through fields and byways toward New Brunswick. The American artillery began to play on the walls of the building; one ball, it is said, crashed through the roof and tore from its frame the portrait of George II., hanging in the Prayer Hall; another is still imbedded in the venerable walls. A Princeton militiaman, with the assistance of his neighbors, finally burst the door and the little garrison surrendered.

When Donop retreated from Bordentown to Princeton after the battle of Trenton, he threw up an arrow-head breastwork at the point not far from where Mercer and Stockton Streets now join; on this still lay a cannon of the size known as a thirty-two pounder, the carriage of which was dismantled. It was early morning when Cornwallis became aware that his expected battle would not be fought at Trenton; the roar of artillery gave him the terrible assurance that the blow had been struck on his weakened flank,—that his precious stores at New Brunswick were in danger. Swiftly he issued the necessary orders and appeared at the west end of the town on the King’s Highway, just as Washington was leaving Princeton, his van having been delayed in crossing Stony Brook. The citizens had loaded the gun in the breastwork and on the approach of the intruders they fired it. This utterly deceived the English generals, for they thought themselves facing a well-manned battery. It was some time, tradition says an hour, before they were undeceived and in that precious interval Washington collected his army and marched away. His forces were too weak to risk the venture of seizing New Brunswick, even temporarily; accordingly he turned northwestward and reached Morristown in safety. There and at Middlebrook his headquarters practically remained for the rest of the war. The English were content to secure New Brunswick.

In the battle of Princeton there were engaged somewhat under two thousand men on each side. The actual fighting lasted less than half an hour. We lost very few men—so few that the number cannot be accurately reckoned—possibly thirty; but we lost a brave general, Hugh Mercer, a colonel, a major, and three captains. The English soldiers fought with unsurpassed gallantry. They lost two hundred killed and two hundred and fifty captured, but no officers of distinction. It was not, therefore, a big fight, but it was none the less a great and decisive battle. How important Washington felt it to be, is attested by his personal exposure of himself. How decisive the great military critics have considered it, is shown by the fact that the campaign of which it was the finishing stroke is held by them to have been typical of his genius as a strategist. The two affairs of Trenton and Princeton are in the short histories of the Revolution generally reckoned together. And naturally so, since they occurred so near to one another in time and place. But, strategically and tactically examined, the battle of Trenton made good Washington’s position behind the Delaware; the battle of Princeton secured New Jersey and the Middle States.

After the preliminary actions which took place in New England the remainder of the Revolution falls into three portions—the struggle for the Hudson, to secure communication between New England and the Middle States; the struggle for the Delaware, to secure communication between the Middle States and the South; and thirdly, the effort to regain the South. After the battle of Princeton, Washington was able to establish a line from Amboy around by the west and south to Morristown; New England, the Middle and Southern States were in communication with each other and free. As a result of the first campaign by a numerous and well-equipped Anglo-German army the English held nothing but Newport in Rhode Island and New York City, with posts at King’s Bridge on the north and at New Brunswick on the south. The proof was finally secured that Washington with a permanent army such as the Colonies might, unassisted, have furnished him, would have been a match for any land force the English could have transported to America.

For the remaining years of the war Princeton was held by the Americans. Both the Legislature of the State and the Council of Safety held their meetings within its precincts; for a time Putnam was in command of the little garrison, for a time Sullivan. Early in 1781 thirteen hundred mutinous Pennsylvanians of Washington’s army marched away from Morristown and came in a body to Princeton. They were met by emissaries from Clinton who strove to entice them from their allegiance. But, though mutinous, they were not traitors, for they seized the British emissaries and handed them over to General Wayne to be treated as spies. A committee of Congress appeared and made such arrangements as pacified them. In the autumn of the same year the victory of Yorktown was celebrated with illuminations and general rejoicings. The College was again in session with forty students and local prosperity was restored. In 1782 there was held a meeting to support a continuance of the war.

The Revolutionary epoch was fitly brought to a close by a meeting of Congress in Nassau Hall. On June 20, 1783, three hundred Pennsylvania soldiers who were discontented with the terms of their discharge marched from Lancaster to Philadelphia and beset the doors of Congress, holding that assembly imprisoned for three hours under threat of violence if their wrongs were not redressed. The legislators resolved to adjourn to Princeton. They were made heartily welcome, the college halls were put at their disposal, and the houses of the citizens were hospitably opened for their entertainment. Their sessions were held regularly in the College library for over four months, until the fourth of November, when they adjourned to meet at Annapolis three weeks later. Washington was in Princeton twice during this time: once at commencement in September, when he made a present of fifty guineas to the trustees—a sum they spent for the portrait by Peale which now hangs in Nassau Hall, filling, it is said, the very frame from which that of George II. was shot away during the battle. The second time he came in October, at the request of Boudinot, President of Congress, and a trustee of the College, to give advice concerning such weighty matters as the organization of a standing army to defend the frontiers, of a militia to maintain internal order, and of the military school. The Commander-in-Chief was received in solemn session and congratulated by the President on the success of the war. He replied in fitting terms. According to tradition he occupied while in attendance on Congress a room in a house now replaced by the handsome Pyne dormitory on the corner of Witherspoon and Nassau Streets, but his residence was the colonial mansion three miles away on the hill above the town of Rocky Hill which has been preserved as a historical monument and revolutionary museum by the liberality of Mrs. Josephine Swann. It was from this place that he issued his famous farewell address to the army.

But the greatest occasion in Princeton’s history was on the thirty-first of the same month. Congress had assembled in the Prayer Hall to receive in solemn audience the minister plenipotentiary from the Netherlands. There were present, besides the members, Washington, Morris, the superintendent of finance, Luzerne, the French envoy, and many other men of eminence. The company had just assembled when news came that the Treaty of Peace had been signed at Versailles. Many brilliant and beautiful women were present, and their unchecked delight doubled the enthusiasm of all. The reception was the most splendid public function thus far held by the now independent republic. On the twenty-fifth of November the British evacuated New York. Washington left Princeton to attend the ceremony, and afterward journeyed by Annapolis to his home at Mt. Vernon. He believed that, his military career being concluded, he was to spend the rest of his days as a private gentleman.

Providence had ordained otherwise. He had carried the difficult, strange and desultory War of the Revolution to a successful end; he had, by wise counsel and firmness, averted the dangers of a civil war which seemed imminent, so far as he could judge from the temper of those about his headquarters at Newburgh. Once more he was to enter the arena of embittered strife, but in a conflict political and not military. Three of the five great actions in which he was personally present during the Revolution were fought on Jersey soil; his next leadership was displayed in a contest waged in Philadelphia, but largely by Jerseymen or Princetonians. Princeton’s place in American history can not be understood without consideration of the Constitutional Convention, where the passions of localism, separatism and sectional prejudice broke forth afresh. The assembly contained many wise and far-seeing men. Of its fifty-five members, thirty-two were men of academic training. There were one each from London, Oxford, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and five had been connected with the checkered fortunes of William and Mary. The University of Pennsylvania sent one, Columbia two, Harvard three, Yale four and Princeton nine. The most serious dissension, as is well known, was concerning the relative importance of large and small States in legislation. The Virginia, or large-States plan, was for two houses, basing representation in both on population. It was essentially the work of James Madison, a pupil of Witherspoon. The Jersey, or small-State, plan was for one house, wherein each State should have equal representation. It was the cherished idea of Paterson, another Princetonian. Over these two schemes the battle waged fiercely until it seemed that even Washington, the presiding officer, could not command peace or force a compromise, and that the convention was on the verge of dissolution. Connecticut had ever been accustomed to two houses—one representing the people, one the towns. It was the compromise suggested on this analogy by Sherman and Ellsworth, and urged by them, with the assistance of Davie from Georgia, which finally prevailed. Ellsworth and Davie were both Princetonians. Madison joined hands with Washington in the successful struggle for the acceptance of the new Constitution in Virginia—both Ellsworth and Paterson, their end attained, became the most ardent Federalists.

The history of Princeton during this century has of course not been so dramatic as it was in the last, but the town and neighborhood have secured the permanent influence foreshadowed by its Revolutionary record. They shared in the control of State and nation, they gave their sons freely to the service of the country in each of the three wars since fought. But of course the story of Princeton is, in the main, the story of the University. Reopening its doors under Witherspoon with about forty students, its graduating class as early as 1806 numbered fifty-four, and thence to the outbreak of the Civil War it enjoyed almost unbroken prosperity under four presidents, Samuel Stanhope Smith, Ashbel Green, James Carnahan and John Maclean. The first care of its friends was to provide for thorough training in science, so that it has the honor of having had the first American professor of chemistry. For a time it likewise had a professor of theology; but the founding of the Theological Seminary in 1812 and its permanent location in Princeton the following year committed that branch of learning to an institution which has since become one of the most important in the country. From time to time new buildings were added to both College and Seminary as necessity required. How stern the college discipline was is shown by the fact that at intervals, fortunately rare, students were sent to their homes in numbers scarcely credible in this quieter age; on one occasion a hundred and twenty-five out of something over two hundred. In 1824 Lafayette graciously accepted the degree of Bachelor of Laws from the authorities while passing from New York to Washington. In 1832 Joseph Henry was made professor of natural philosophy, a chair he held with the highest distinction, for it was in his Princeton laboratory that he made his epochal discoveries in electricity, stepping-stones to the revolution of the world by its use; in 1848 he was made director of the Smithsonian Institute. In 1846 was organized a Law School; its three professors were men of the highest distinction, but the project was premature. In 1855 flames destroyed all but the walls of Nassau Hall, whereupon it was speedily remodelled as it still stands; the variation, slight as it was from the original, appears to have been in the interest of economy rather than beauty.

The only serious check in Princeton’s prosperity was caused by the Civil War. Though a large proportion of the students had always come from the Southern States, the rest were enthusiastic in their Northern sympathies, and the national flag was hoisted by them over Nassau Hall in April, 1861. The minority tore it down, but it was promptly restored to its place by a gallant citizen of the town, who in climbing to the apex of the cupola twisted the shaft of the weather-vane and fixed the arrow with its head to the north. Thus it remained until conciliation was complete a few years since (1896), when the pivot was repaired so that the historic index may point in all directions at the will of the winds. The withdrawal of the Southern students left the numbers of the ever-loyal University at a low ebb, and it was not until after the accession of James McCosh to the presidency that the new clientage which has so munificently supported him and his successor was secured. It is also gratifying to note that the sons of the old Princeton Confederates are returning in ever greater numbers. The presidencies of Dr. McCosh and Dr. Patton are too near to belong to history. The evidences of the enormous strides made in material equipment are on every hand: splendid and beautiful buildings, professors of distinction in great numbers, and a body of students numbering, along with those of the Seminary, about fifteen hundred. Near by is the famous Lawrenceville School, itself an epochal institution in the history of our secondary training. Wherever men converse of science, literature or art, the names of Princeton’s sons must be considered; but her chiefest glory thus far has been in her contributions to political and educational life. Representative of a definite theory and practice in her sphere, she breeds men in abundance to uphold her banner in the face of all assaults.

Time, place and the men—these are the factors of history; the first and the last vanish, the scenes alone remain. If history is to be made real, if we are to know in the concrete, from the experience of the men and women who have left the stage, what alone is possible for ourselves and our race, we do well to see and ponder the places which knew those who have gone before. Princeton possesses, in Nassau Hall, a focus of patriotism—a cradle of liberty. In her battle-field, the spot where culminated one of the greatest campaigns of one of the greatest of generals; and in her sons one sees the triumph of the moral forces which combine in true greatness. The lesson to be learned from Princeton’s historic scenes should be that intellect and not numbers controls the world; that ideas and not force overmaster bigness; that truth and right, supported by strong purpose and high principle, prevail in the end.

PHILADELPHIA

THE CITY PENN FOUNDED AND TO WHICH FRANKLIN GAVE DISTINCTION

By TALCOTT WILLIAMS

Cities are of nature. Their long life flows in ways she has made longer than the changing rule of which they are part. Nations and boundaries are of man and his laws. Artificial creations all. Cities and their sites are of the same forces as form the rivers and ports, the passes and pathways on which they stand and last as long. Rome outlives its empire, and Damascus the shock of massacre from Chedorlaomer to Timur. The cities of Europe are still where they were twenty centuries ago. The civil structure into which they fit has changed until nothing is left of what once was. These things are missed in the general. They come to be seen in the particular.

Philadelphia stands, and necessarily stands on the straight, ruler-like “Falls line” which passes through every city site from New York to Montgomery, because this prodigious slip changes river navigation wherever it crosses a river valley. Where marine navigation stopped to-day and then, Penn put his city, its site a peninsula about which two rivers joined, a rich alluvial plain, covered with glacial clay, with schistose rocks cropping out across it, the palæozoic marble of the Atlantic coast hard by, and a strip of green serpentine crossing the country from the highest points in the future limits of the city to Chester County, its first granary and feeding ground. These things—the half-sunken Lower Delaware River spreading into Delaware Bay, the term of navigation at the junction of two rivers, and the abrupt approach to the sea of a formation elsewhere miles from the ocean—make Philadelphia all it is in outer look, a flat city built of its own clay, garnished with its own marble, a seaport knowing the sea only in its rivers.

In this inland port, as you float in either river, seafaring masts and main rigging, black and tarred, silhouette against the tender green of growing fields. The early houses were brick of the glacier’s leaving, matching London in color; for both are ground out of the same earth mill. Its early stone houses were of the narrow contorted gray schists, and marble quarries had been opened, exhausted and closed to trim the brick before the Revolution. Later these were varied by the green serpentine, a hideous, dull color, the red sandstone of the fertile inland plains, and at last, as railroads made it easy to seek a door-step 1,000 miles away, the marble of Vermont built the City Hall, the granites of Cape Ann the Post Office, and Ohio ashlar a growing number of private homes, matching London once more as a close congener of the Portland stone Penn saw builded into St. Paul’s. The outer resemblance to London noted by Matthew Arnold and many an one besides, rests, as such things do, on concrete fact.

William Penn in 1682 came into no empty Western world. The Dutch and Swede had been entering these waters for near a century. They were charted, tracked and known. Uneasy frontier alarms were over. Farms dotted all the region. For the first time, in Fox’s Journal, a decade before Penn, we catch the accent and atmosphere of the American settler living lonely and safe. He was as yet neither of these in New England, New York or the Southern States. The Swedes had left their work in Swedes’ Church, with its timber, roof and tower recalling North Europe, as its carved angels do the wood sculpture of the pine forest. There was a tavern, the Blue Anchor, possibly (not probably) still standing, waiting for Penn at the little boat harbor, now Dock Street. A thriving commerce of a ship a week was already busying the river with its boats. On the crest of the low hill that rose from this boat-haven, Penn planted the house which now stands in the Park. On this crest ran Market, and where the land began to dip to the Schuylkill, Broad Street crossed, the first streets to be run by the prospector and real-estate speculator, on a plan by whose geometrical extensions both are still guided, in these days of new boulevards in old cities the oldest and least changed of any city plan in civilized lands. On this background of growing farms and frequent vessels, Penn sketched the Commonwealth. He and his were fortunate in his bringings. He came from Central England, that central mark and beach line from which so large a portion of the worthier of the race spring. He drew his settlers in the north of the kingdom from the line of Fox’s trips, whose Cumberland and Lancashire converts dotted the region about Philadelphia with names familiar in his Journal, Lancaster, Swarthmore, Merion, and Haverford. All South England had been stirred by Monmouth’s Rebellion and the Revolution, the work of the South as the Commonwealth had its leader in the North. Philadelphia, therefore, drew chiefly from Saxon, and less from Danish or Celtic England, than had New England. Its leaders came from the thrifty business classes of London, “city” people, instead of from the gentry as had Virginia’s. Ten years later, Louis was harrying the Palatinate, and a German population, skilled in the mechanic arts, came and gave Philadelphia its manufacturing foundation. Penn was pietistic, his mother was from Holland, and this gave him continental acquaintance and sympathy with continental dissent, which later brought the Moravians and gave the colony relations with Central Europe, an early and prolific press, and patience with political oppression, a dubious virtue still surviving.

The town grew like a weed and as rank. Grain was cheap, thanks to the limestone plain just beyond the low primitive rocks. Trade flowed in from the West Indies and Europe. In thirty years the place was bigger than any in the provinces. The Proprietor’s square house set the fashion, built from imported brick. Farmsteads on the road out to the German town of the new immigrants were built of the gray schists of the region. Ship-building began. Pirates lurked in the river below. The Proprietor’s official residence, now gone, fronted on the fouling pool where boats came, and matched the English country-house of South England. A little State House, which closely resembled in outer look the market-house of the same period on Second Street to the south, was built on Market Street, near the open rising ground on which Letitia Penn’s dwelling stood. Merchants’ homes were on its low hill; some of those still there are probably of this period when of imported brick. There is a row of houses on Swanson Street recalling the mechanics’ homes. In green quiet still held, the Friends’ meeting-house was erected—the present building far later. Low houses and warehouses clustered about what is now Dock Street—probably not one left. The swarm of some two thousand houses stretched along the river for what is now a square or two. Beyond were a few fields. Dense forests stood to the Schuylkill, and crowned all the little hills about, save that Fairmount stood bare, as is indeed the fashion of the sterile, rocky height. Schools were opened, of which one survives in the “Penn charter” school on Twelfth and Market. The city began its chartered existence, and the portraits of its first mayors, whose descendants are still part of the active life of the city, recall those of Guildhall, not as with like New England iconography, the Puritan remonstrants of James and Charles. An almanac was issued from the press of Bradford, whose solitary copy in the Historical Society begins printing for the State. A polyglot literature was in progress, apparent in more than one collection. The long, low, brick-built town left its image in 1720 in the picture in the entrance of the Philadelphia Library. Market stalls filled the river end of the street to which they gave a name, and these the civic organization, the peak-towered State House, the courts, the brick houses, the Proprietor’s residence, the city ordinances, the entire machinery of life, followed and imitated as closely as might be, on the edge of the wilderness, the market borough of an English shire. The town had had its first big boom and was near wallowing in its first reaction,—houses empty, more money in demand, debts oppressive, and all hope gone, when (1723) the great genius, Benjamin Franklin, who was to be its second founder and save it from Friend and Precisian, Palatinate Dutch, German, and Pietist, walked up Market Street and turned down Fourth in early morning. He was to give Philadelphia its better civilization. For near seventy years, he was to be, so far as the civilized world was concerned, the city and all in it worth knowing. By supreme good fortune all his past, or at least as much as it is desirable to know, is laid bare to the visitor. The houses in which he is said to have had his lodging as apprentice—old enough for this, at least—look down from Lodge Street on Dock Square. His old home on Market, between Third and Fourth, is long since gone, but it stood back from the street and was doubtless of the type of the roomy old houses now on Third south of Walnut, or the house of Hamilton in Woodlawn Cemetery. The letter-books of Franklin, with his correspondence for over twenty years, are at the American Philosophical Society which he founded, which first commemorated his death, and, a century later, the centenary of his obsequies. The best of his portraits is there, Houdon’s bust of the old man, and the roomy-seated chair of “Dr. Heavysides.” His dress buckles are in the Historical Society, and the teacups over which he bowed his compliments, and some speeches which Madame Helvetius rightly held more dearer than compliments, frowsy as Mrs. Adams found her. There, too, is the dubious portrait, which, whether it is Franklin in his youth or no, looks the youth of his male descendants. Part of his electric machine, and his printing-press, are in the Franklin Institute, part in the Philadelphia Library, which he also founded, and a Leyden jar, perhaps of the great experiment, at the American Philosophical Society. The fire-bucket of his company, and the sword he wore in his brief but not inglorious military service, are in the Historical Society. One probable site of the field in which he flew his kite is filled by the present Record building. His statue is on the front of the library at Juniper and Locust; another—worthy—is to the right on Chestnut Street, looking on the flow of men and women in the city life he loved, for in the country he never willingly spent a day. Not a stage of his life but can still be followed by the historical pilgrim in Philadelphia. He can follow in Franklin’s steps,—the steep slope up which he walked to enter—with old landing-stairs still in place south of Market—the Fourth Street corner, the site of his job office, the purlieus of Dock Street, from whence came the mire that never quite left his garments, the lots of the Market Street home where his better years were passed, his pew at Christ’s Church, the State House he entered for a half-century in so many capacities—King’s officer, contractor, colonial legislator, rebellious congressman, signer of the Declaration and Constitution,—his eye through all the years on the gilded sun one can yet trace on the back of the President’s chair—and last, when his own sun was at its setting, as member of the Constitutional Convention of his own State, and his modest grave at Fifth and Arch, where one may still uncover at the last memory of the most human of all Americans. Most of us, least of other lands, prefiguring in life, work, and character our invincible patience, our good humor, our quenchless curiosity, our careless disorder in trifles, our easy success in serious affairs, our sluttish phrase, our high spirit, the even equality of our manners, our perpetual relish for the simple environment and the homelier joys of our life, our neglect of means and detail, our perseverance and achievement in the final end, our self-consciousness and our easy conviction that neither fate itself, nor our own careless disregard of a less wise past, can rob us of our appointed place in the advancing files of time.

Franklin’s busy march through these streets bridged two great periods. His half-century before the Revolution, fifty-two years from his landing to Lexington, was a season of prodigious material expansion whose signs are all about the city. Then were built those pleasant places in the Park, and homes like that of John Penn’s in the Zoölogical Garden, ending in the privateer’s house which was later to be Arnold’s headquarters, to-day Mt. Pleasant. John Bartram built his stone house, set up its pillars and laid out his Botanical Garden, both happily standing and city property, his cypress alone dead,—slow failing through the years in which one lover has each spring sought it,—but much of his sylvan wealth remains, still a record of his science and of the economic conditions which gave him means for his long and costly trips. For when there were neither roads nor railroads the “distance-rent” of farm land near a city was enormous. The farm hard by swept in all the profit of days of teaming of which the railroad has long since robbed it and diffused it over a wide area, levelling up, as is our American way. The home, the life, the leisure, the acquaintance and the society possible 150 years ago to a man who farmed suburban acres are all attested when you stand in Bartram’s garden by the river on the gray rock of the only rock wine-press this side of the Atlantic, and remember that on this curving path Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Rittenhouse, Morris, and Kalm, and a score more of the century’s great, supped in the cool, open evening with a host whom the first two found at a sudden coming bare-headed, barefooted and plowing. The Revolutionary houses of the environs tell of the farm-profits of this period; so do the “clasped hands” and the “green tree” on the fronts of the olden homes—few or none dating back of the Revolution—which record the organization of rival insurance companies; the earliest building of the Pennsylvania Hospital on Pine with quaint old-world aspect, the little strip of wall at Tenth and Spruce, once part of the almshouse which Longfellow blended with the hospital in Evangeline; Carpenters’ Hall, the only Guild house in the colonies; the bit of wall still standing of the brewery at Fifth and Wharton; of the first play-house in the city and, most important of all, the two chief colonial monuments of the city, Christ Church and Independence Hall.

These buildings mark much. The city from a mere “Front” Street on the river, and two behind it, had grown up to Seventh and Eighth in a half ellipse which ran in thriving homes from Kensington, grew thronged about Chestnut, now passing Market in the race,—so that Market and Arch have the oldest house-fronts to-day,—and then thinned out again towards the scene of the Mischienza. In this area are scattered the mansions of the Colonial and immediate post-Revolutionary period, with Mrs. Ross’s house on Arch Street as type of the mechanic’s dwelling of the day, happily preserved and now bought as a memorial of the flag first made there. Beyond them begins the modern city of this century, of machine-made brick, of lumber sawed by steam, and house plans fitted to the growing value of the city lot. The growth which thus expanded the city of Penn into the city of Franklin was no mere accretion of population. It came of a profitable trade, of a share in adventures by sea and land, not always legal, and always dangerous, and of a close connection between the merchants of this city and those of London, from which the ancestors of more than one Philadelphia Friend were drawn, for Penn had borne his testimony in the Grace Church and Wheeler Street meeting-houses in London. When the richer men of the city came to erect its chief church, it was Gibbs’s St. Martin in the Fields which suggested the interior of the building on Second Street, and it was London brick architecture which was followed in Independence Hall and its open arches,—now restored,—despoiling the record of recent history to decorate and sometimes disfigure an earlier period, as is the manner and method of restoration the world over. These buildings in their size, their grace, their Georgian flavor, their cost,—for both were extravagant as times then went,—stood for an opulent mercantile connection between the metropolis of colonial and of royal England, a connection never quite lost, as the resemblance of the younger city to the older has never quite vanished. New York suggests Paris in spots, but no Philadelphian in his wildest flight ever thought that Philadelphia did.

When the Revolution came, Philadelphia sacrificed its English trade as promptly as ninety years later the city, loyal to its principles, sacrificed its Southern trade, and in both times and both sacrifices New York lagged to the rear in action and came to the front in assertion. Independence Hall still looked out on green fields to the west, and Rittenhouse’s little observatory—earliest of American star-gazing spots, whose telescope, earliest of our astronomical instruments, is in the American Philosophical Society—still stood in the square where Howe’s artillery was to be parked. The jail of “Hugh Wynne” was on the southeast corner of Sixth and Chestnut, on whose site Binney’s home was to stand later, the hero of another struggle for freedom. In the northeast corner of Washington Square was the potter’s field, last opened a century ago for yellow-fever victims. The house, Dutch built, and hence close to the street edge, in which Jefferson was to write the draft of the Declaration, preserved by the American Philosophical Society, was on Seventh and Market, its commemoration tablet on the wrong lot. A tavern fronted the Hall, and its stables ran opposite to the main door, its flies worrying the Continental Congress on a hot historic afternoon. The sharp rise which still ascends between Callowhill and Spring Garden was crested by the British works, of which the first was at Second and Poplar. From the Market Street Bridge it is still possible to make out the hill on which Hamilton planted his field-pieces to engage the British tête-du-pont, held by the 72d Highlanders. The Hessians camped in the open space at Gray’s Ferry, as the bridge of many years is still called. The stately house which held the Mischienza has disappeared only within a few years. The houses on the main street of Germantown still bear the mark of the battle, and look unchanged on the street whose fogs still veil it as on the day of conflict. The city now had from the river the sky-line which it substantially retained up to twenty years ago, when the steeples and the towers the Revolutionary period knew were dwarfed by the many-storied steel frames of to-day.

The returning tide of prosperity after the Revolution has left one mark in the Morris dwelling on the south side of Eighth, between Locust and Walnut, type of the wealthy home of the day. The biggest of the period was Robert Morris’s, on the site of the Press Building, left as his “folly.” The peak-roofed house in roomy squares now gave way for thirty years to the house built flush to the street, which in the generation between 1790 and 1820 spread the growing city up to Tenth Street or so, and of which many are left. With this growth dwellings pushed beyond South on one side and beyond Vine on the other, the fringe of the city limits becoming an Alsatia still apparent, mechanics’ homes crowding just beyond as they still do, until met north and even south by more pretentious dwellings. In this thirty years the city grew from 42,000 to 108,000, and it faced first the problem to which only the American and Australian city has proved fully equal in all the round of semitropical summers north or south of the equator. The city, as it inherited from England its city government, had also inherited from there its well-water supply, its surface drainage, its slovenly streets, its practice of crowding the homes of the poor on back lots, so as to fill the area on which they stood with unsavory wynds, and its habit of intramural interment and intramural slaughter-houses, all which, even the Latin cities of two thousand years ago, taught by hotter summers, had outgrown. In the tepid temperature and light but even rain-fall in England these worked few ills until the middle of this century. Under our torrid summer, our tropical rain-fall, and our swift changes, all these things meant disease and death, and the unconscious problem which faced the city a century ago and left its mark on the map was recorded in yellow fever, born of water-supply and filth together with overcrowding, and all the evils of bad water and overcrowding.

Water-works were at last built, the most considerable then known, their site where the Public Buildings stand and their picture in the Historical Society; a systematic street scavenging began, building on the back of lots was prohibited, years before New York, and two generations before the European city; a fixed yardage, small, but sufficient to transform the city map, was required of each dwelling; paving and sewerage commenced, the almshouse was moved, a city hospital was established, and a most important legal decision made easy the purchase of house lots by the poor and frugal. The solution was not complete. Typhoid lurks where yellow fever once raged, but crowding was prevented and the city has no slums in the region outside of the area which has been built over since the ordinances of the first twenty to thirty years of this century stopped overcrowding and saved its poorer citizens from the awful fate inflicted by the titled avarice and civic mislegislation of London and Glasgow. Nor ought any one to look across the Schuylkill from the Zoölogical Garden at the lovely and related group which houses the Fairmount Water-works without a thrill of pride that this was the beginning of the problem of preserving health in heat and rain, which since the world began had meant pestilence to the city in like climes. As is the American habit, the supply looked first to quantity, and later to quality; and as is also the American habit, both will be secured in the end. So the large provision for the almshouse of seventy years ago has given the space for the University and its buildings, its cognate institutions, hospitals and museums, taken collectively, one of the most liberal grants made by any modern city to the work of higher education not under its own control, a grant which owed its initiative and early success to Dr. William Pepper, whose statue overlooks the site he secured to learning and to science. There the University has grown, covered its site with a score of buildings, added department to department, doubled its students in a decade, received more in gifts under its present Provost, Mr. Charles C. Harrison, than had come to it in all the century and a half of its history, knit the community to it and given it intellectual leadership by a group of affiliated societies, linked itself to the public schools by municipal scholarships supported by the city, opened courses for teachers, spread its lectures over the State and in all ways made itself not only an institution of learning for students, but of teaching for the community.

The development of civic institutions in the first quarter of the century was accompanied by the founding, each to-day housed in conspicuous recent edifices of the past decade, of State-aided institutions for the Deaf and Dumb, 1820, for the Blind, 1833, and the House of Refuge, 1828. This philanthropic impulse came, as such generally does, as part of a rapid material development which, in a score of years ending with the commercial crash of 1837-39, had laid the foundations of the manufacturing activity and the internal commerce of Philadelphia. It was in this period that the Music Fund Hall (1824), Eighth above South, was built. The Exchange, 1832, the most pretentious building of its day, was erected near the close of the period, and the pillared row, following a London model, was built on Spruce between Ninth and Tenth, the largest and most costly private dwellings of its day. The next Colonnade row, nearly twenty years later, occupied the site, and gave the name to the Colonnade Hotel, Fifteenth and Chestnut. St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s stood for opposite extremes of the church edifices of the forties. The taste of the Federalists and Whigs of the day filled the city with the pseudo-classic, from which Europe was just departing—the United States bank, now the Custom-house, the Mint, the building in which Girard had his bank, back of the Exchange, and lastly Girard College, not easily forgot, however unfit for its purpose, if once seen from St. George’s hill on its airy height. The ship-building firm of Cramps was established 1830, and Baldwin’s Locomotive Works 1837, both products of the same period of activity. Ten years later began the Pennsylvania railroad comparable to a kingdom in revenue power and the ability of chiefs like Frank Thomson. The city flowed across Broad Street, and solid blocks pushed their way in brick and white marble, turning later to New York’s brown-stone, up each flank of the city on Pine and on Arch, spreading out in an area beyond Broad Street, which the crash of credit, and the failure of the State for a season to pay the interest on its bonds, left tenantless, often roofless, covered with mortgages and the prediction, heard first under Governor Keith, 1725, repeated within this decade, that the city would never need the houses which a boom had erected.

The city of the period before the war had now been built and the suburbs had grown close to the consolidation of 1854. Railroad access had created, across the Schuylkill, the village of Mantua, which was to become West Philadelphia as it extended southward and was reached by new bridges and street-car lines. To the north, just beyond the old British redoubts, factory owners, managers and foremen, mechanics and operatives, with the retailers they required, had built their homes on the higher ground, north of the great industries growing on the low and lightly taxed land, easily accessible by railroads from the coal-fields, beyond the old city limits at Vine, and extending to Callowhill and beyond. This created the city of Spring Garden. The river settlements, the Northern Liberties, Kensington, Richmond, grew under the triple influence of manufacturers and cheap coal, out of the villages whose farm-houses, taverns and mechanics’ dwellings of the early years of the century still dot the raw newer dwellings of the past forty years. Like settlements had grown in Southwark and Manayunk. The gaps and sutures still remain to mark the old divisions. The squalid stretches of South Street from river to river, for nearly a century the resort of cheap stores which sought city trade, and avoided city taxes. The like ragged selvedge along Vine, influenced, too, along much of the line by low, open ground. The gap fringing both banks of the Schuylkill, marking days when the railroad and the Market Street bridge made the more distant uprise of Fortieth Street more accessible than the lower region nearer. The bare and vacant patches about Germantown Junction, over which the old village has never quite grown down to meet the approaching city, where for various reasons of grade, access was not easy, and where institutions like Girard College and the Penitentiary, with a cemetery or two, like rocks in a moving stream, have stopped and divided the glacier-like spread of the city. These things have made Philadelphia, like London, a city of accretions from divers centres, and not, like Paris or New York, a steady, symmetrical and continuous growth from one organic centre.

The war found a city which, united, had more than the area of London (Philadelphia, 82,807 acres; London, 74,692), and at almost every stage of the growth of the two a quarter of the population of the vaster metropolis. Since room is the chief factor in civic comfort, there has never been a year in which the average man has not been just about four times as comfortable in Philadelphia as in London, and he has always had higher wages by a quarter to a half, paid less for food and lodgings, and paid more for clothing, light and coal. He has lived here, a family to a house, where a quarter of London has been a family to two rooms. Most of all, for twenty years past has this growth of the small houses of labor gone on, their number swelling faster than the tale of families seeking them. These conditions, secured by a wise civic policy early in the century, had reached the full development, which they have since maintained, at the opening of the war. Inexpressibly dull was the extension the city now made, the dreary reaches of homes, which oppress the stranger west of Eleventh Street, and appear in unvarying blocks on the North and South Streets, the building operations of the ’40s and ’50s, in whose even rows were the last, worst expression of the dull, utilitarian spirit of the pre-war, pre-centennial period. Napoleon LeBrun built the Cathedral and the Academy of Music, a brick shell holding a shapely and grandiose interior, and Walton and McArthur added to the pseudo-classic. When the Jayne Block went up on Chestnut, east of Third, it was believed to be the largest single business building yet erected on the continent. The Girard, 1852, was one of its largest hotels, and echoed the Italian palace front which Barry had taught London in his Reform Club.

The development in manufactures after the war, railroad expansion and the somewhat deceptive prosperity of the Centennial gave the city the same sudden burst which Chicago had in 1893, and Philadelphia took on the aspect in the next twenty years, 1876 to 1896, which the great city will always hold. Cheap freights poured in new building-stones, and the easily worked green serpentine was used in the University buildings and the Academy of Natural Science on Logan Square. It was employed in the Academy of Fine Arts, less agreeable than the earlier front of the same institution, now a theatre on Chestnut. The architectural impulse first felt at the Centennial broke up the traditions of a century, and building of the last twenty-five years, often bizarre, always shows, even in the humblest row, intent, design and recognition, however uncouth, of the just claim of decoration.

The seeing eye and loving can still trace all these changes of a century. The very kernel of the city, and its warehouses about Dock Square, and the river front, the expansion before the Revolution, the pause just after, the growth in the period after 1787, the addition early in the century and the great growth before and after the war and for twenty years past. Each has its character and quality, its message and purport, and these as they extended have met a growth as distinct and recognizable, north, west and south. The marks of these things and their metes and bounds, the current and course of population, the monuments of the past, the changing fashion of each decade and the desire of the present, these are all written in this moving tide of houses which has flooded all the wood-grown fields of two centuries ago. Generation by generation has seen a wider comfort, a higher level of life, an improving education and more abundant resource for the Many for whom this city has always existed. Dull, sordid, narrow, much of this life has been. From its dawn, it has had its seasons of stagnant corruption, and Penn but wrote the despair of all who have served it since, yet no man has labored and lived in it but has come to know its charm, to feel its life, to trust to the sure tides of its being, welling always towards a more complete comfort, and to love this vast amorphous city which broods over its children with a perpetual home nurture.

WILMINGTON

“Her mingled streams of Swedish, Dutch and English blood.”

By E. N. VALLANDIGHAM

When the adventurous William Usselinx, native of Antwerp and merchant of Stockholm, was growing old, he proposed to King Gustavus Adolphus that Sweden organize a trading company to operate in Asia, Africa, America, and Terra Magellanica. The King lent ear to Usselinx, and Usselinx was able to picture to the Swedish people the beauty and fertility of the region bordering on the Delaware, “a fine land, in which all the necessaries and comforts of life are to be enjoyed in overflowing abundance.” The proposed plans sped well for a time; the King pledged a great sum from the royal treasury in aid of the new company, and the Swedish people, nobles and commons, subscribed to the stock. But the King was shortly to be busied in the wars of Germany, and when he died at his great victory of Lützen, the plans of Usselinx were yet unexecuted. One biographer of Gustavus, indeed, says that the little fleet intended for America was seized by the Spaniards, but it is by no means certain that such a fleet ever set sail.

Queen Christina, the daughter of Gustavus, permitted her able chancellor, Oxenstiern, to revive the charter of Usselinx, and Oxenstiern employed to take out a Swedish colony to the Delaware probably the fittest man in all the world for that task, Peter Minuet, sometime Governor of New Netherlands, driven from his post by the jealous factors that they might put in his place the more pliant Walter Van Twiller, surnamed the Doubter. The exact date of Minuet’s expedition is unknown, but Kieft, who succeeded Van Twiller in the Governorship of New Netherlands, made protest in May, 1638, against the presence upon the Delaware of Peter Minuet, “who stylest thyself commander in the service of her Majesty the Queen of Sweden.” Kieft warned Peter “that the whole South River [the Delaware] of the New Netherlands, both the upper and the lower, has been our property for many years, occupied by our forts, and sealed by our blood.”

When Kieft’s protest reached the newly arrived Swedes, they were already in snug quarters on the edge of the River Minquas, as the Indians called it, or Christina, as the newcomers named it (set down on modern maps as Christiana, but in the mouths of those that navigate its waters, called Christeen); for they had sailed up the Delaware in the Bird Grip, or Griffin, and the Key of Calmar, and entering the Minquas, had come to anchor in deep water close against a natural wharf of rock, well within the present limits of Wilmington. Thus was made the true beginning of the city, though no part of the region it now occupies bore the name of Wilmington until a full century later.

The newcomers built close to their original place of anchorage a little fort, and behind it a little village. Hudde, the Dutch commander at Fort Nassau, thirty miles up the Delaware, describing the Swedish fortification seven years later, says that it was “nearly encircled by a marsh, except on the northwest side, where it can be approached by land.” The fort was then and for years afterward, the only place of worship in the immediate region, and here from the founding of the colony the Rev. Reorus Torkillius, a Swedish clergyman of Latinized name, conducted the Lutheran service in the Swedish language. Thus church and state were planted together. Pastor Campanius, who came five years after Torkillius, found that beside Fort Christina had sprung up the village of Christina Harbor, or Christinaham, and Engineer Lindstrom, who came when the settlement was not yet twenty years old, has left us a map of this earliest Wilmington.

Before the Dutch had time to call the Swedish intruders to a reckoning Minuet died, and John Prinz was sent out as Governor. There had been the short intervening reign of Peter Hollendare. Prinz came under a cloud, having lost his rank as First Lieutenant by his over-hasty surrender of Chemnitz. Probably this fact may account for his restless energy as Governor of New Sweden. He sought to regain in the new world repute lost in the old. Prinz came with two ships, an armed transport, munitions of war, troops, and many immigrants, and with instructions to maintain and promote piety and education, to develop the resources of the colony, agricultural and mineral, to make friends with the Indians, and to live at peace with all neighboring Europeans. But he was to resent by force of arms, if need be, the pretensions of the Dutch to any territorial or other rights upon the west side of the Delaware.

Prinz built at Tinicum, or Tenacong as the Indians called it, near the present city of Chester, Pennsylvania, a fort to threaten the Dutch Fort Nassau, above; and likewise at the mouth of Salem Creek, on the Jersey shore, where the English had a small settlement, he built Fort Elfsborg, or Elsinborough. Both were promptly armed and garrisoned. He built still another fort, this time on the Schuylkill, within gunshot of its mouth, and in 1646 he ordered a Dutch trading-vessel from that river. Furthermore, he caused to be torn down with despiteful words the arms of the Dutch, set up in sign of possession upon the present site of Philadelphia, and when reminded of the Dutch West India Company’s prior claim, he profanely answered that although Satan was the earliest possessor of hell, doubtless he sometimes welcomed new comers.

But a day of reckoning was speedily to come, for Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of the New Netherlands, moved by the amazing activity of Prinz, bought from the Indians all the west side of the Delaware from Minquas Creek to Bompties (or Bombay) Hook, and in 1651, as some say,—before the building of Elfsborg as others say,—built Fort Casimir at Sand Huken, now Newcastle, on the Delaware, five miles below Fort Christina, and within sight of Elfsborg. Whichever fort was built first, it is pretty certain that the Swedes soon deserted Elfsborg, after naming it in disgust Myggenborg, which means Fort Mosquito. The excuse for the desertion was the insupportable insect pests of the region; so early did the New Jersey mosquito earn the reputation that clings to him even to this day. As for Prinz, alarmed at the activity of the Dutch, he vainly petitioned the home government for aid, and at length went off to Europe, leaving as deputy his son-in-law, John Pappegoja.

And now the comedy of outflanking was to be followed by the comedy of bloodless capture and recapture, for Prinz had not been long gone when there arrived in the Delaware from Sweden, in the man-of-war Eagle, John Claudius Rising, as commissary and counsellor to the Governor, and Peter Lindstrom, military engineer, together with arms and soldiers. The Dutch at Fort Casimir were living in unsuspicious peace when the Eagle suddenly appeared before the fort and demanded that the place surrender, as occupying Swedish ground. Rising enforced his demand by landing thirty soldiers, and the Dutch yielded upon favorable terms which secured to them all their property, public and private, and granted as well the honors of war. As the capture was made on Trinity Sunday, the name of the place was changed by the Swedes to Trefalldigheet, or Fort Trinity. This incident, which befell in the year 1655, is notable as the first passage at arms, if such it may be called, between rival European claimants to the western shore of the Delaware.

But Rising’s prompt policy of aggression was a mistake, for it left the Dutch no alternative but counter-aggression; and accordingly Peter Stuyvesant, with seven ships and six hundred or seven hundred men, appeared before the deserted Elfsborg late in August, 1655, captured a few straggling Swedes ashore, endured the mosquitoes for one night only, and next day, having landed a force north of Fort Trinity to cut it off from Fort Christina, demanded that the garrison surrender. Swen Schute, the Swedish commander, despite a name that ought to have been formidable in war, was as obligingly prompt in compliance as the Dutch commander had been a few months earlier. There was, as before, a friendly arrangement as to the guaranty of property, public and private, but Swen Schute never dared return to Sweden lest he be brought to book for his alacrity in surrendering.

Now came the taking of Fort Christina, immortalized by Washington Irving’s genius of burlesque. Rising, aware of his weakness, professed to believe that the Dutch had no further hostile intent, but when they invested Fort Christina on three sides, planted cannon, and called for the surrender of the place in forty-eight hours, he first temporized, then put on a bold face, and finally, without striking a blow, surrendered. So ended Swedish rule in Delaware, and so began the short-lived Dutch supremacy.

The Dutch guaranteed to the vanquished religious liberty and all other reasonable privileges, so that few Swedes took the chance afforded of selling their property and removing out of the jurisdiction. The Swedes, indeed, were soon reconciled to Dutch rule, and in fact the colony remained, in all save politics, as truly Swedish as it had been before. The Dutch children learned the Swedish tongue, and as the Swedes far outnumbered the Dutch, the latter were soon lost in the mass of the former. When a nephew of Prinz visited the country, late in the seventeenth century, he found that the people “used the old Swedish way in all things.” Pastor Rudman wrote home to Sweden that the mother tongue was still spoken in all its purity by the colonists at Christinaham, and as a matter of fact it did not entirely cease to be used in the services of the Swedish church until more than a century and a quarter had elapsed.

Luckily for the Swedes they were too busy to trouble themselves about a change of masters, and when the agents of James, Duke of York, having possessed themselves of New Amsterdam in 1664, after Charles I. had magnificently given to James all the country between the Connecticut and the east bank of the Delaware, also seized New Sweden as a dependency of New Netherlands, the good folk at Christinaham accepted the new situation and went about their business. The attempted rebellion of Königsmark, “the Long Finn,” who called himself a son of General Count William Von Königsmark, and the historical interlude of the Dutch occupation in 1673 and 1674, when the forts changed hands, in the usual bloodless fashion, twice in a few months, did not profoundly shake the community on the Minquas. The second surrender left the English in secure possession.

In the midst of this apparent indifference to governmental changes, one thing did move the Swedes, and was doubtless in part responsible for the welcome they gave the return of the Dutch: this was a tariff imposed by the English rulers upon all inward-bound merchandise passing the capes of the Delaware. At this juncture there came to the rescue the best friend the Swedes had yet found in the new world, a man so wise and just in his dealing with civilized man and savage on this side the Atlantic, so generous, tolerant, large-minded and large-hearted in all that concerned the great powers entrusted to him, that one can hardly understand how even so audacious an iconoclast as Macaulay had the hardihood to assail his memory. This man was William Penn, who, having recently become trustee for Quaker estates in West Jersey, made prompt protest against the tariff and had it revoked—an early triumph for the principle of no taxation without representation.

When, soon after, he became proprietor of the “Three Counties on the Delaware,” the Swedes of Christinaham and the region round about knew him and were glad. Penn had an equally good opinion of the Swedes, for he says:

“As they are a proper people, and strong of body, so they have fine children, and almost every house full. It is rare to find one of them without three or four boys and as many girls, some six, seven and eight sons. And I must do them that right to say I see few young men more sober and laborious.”

A Swedish writer of about the same period notes that the Swedish farmers are as well clad as the residents of cities. Penn describes the houses in his new possessions as of a single story and divided into three apartments. A house and a barn suitable to a colonist might be built for seventy-five dollars.

Penn noted, however, that the Swedes were not so well educated as they should have been, and a few years later they were in such need of religious instruction, although they had but recently lost their pastor, that, partly through the representations of the proprietor and partly through the importunities of the Swedes themselves, the King of Sweden was induced to send out to Delaware the Rev. Eric Bjork. This good and energetic man, finding inconveniently situated the Swedish Lutheran church erected in 1667 at Crane Hook, or Tran Hook, near the mouth of the Christiana, conceived and executed the plan of building a new church near the scene of the original Swedish landing at the Rocks. The new edifice was the Old Swedes of to-day, which celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of its dedication on the 28th of last May. This venerable church, now Holy Trinity of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Delaware, is revered and cherished as the one visible link which joins the city of Wilmington to her earliest past. In the churchyard lie the dead of many generations, and of almost all denominations. Here, side by side with the Swedish colonists of the early eighteenth century, lies the late Bishop Alfred Lee of the Episcopal Church, who in life, as learned as he was modest, was one of the American Committee for the Revision of the King James Bible. Here, too, was recently laid to rest, amid many of his kinsfolk, the late Ambassador Thomas F. Bayard, worn with long and honorable public service.

Thanks to the late Dr. Horace Burr we have an English translation of the earliest records of Old Swedes. In these records is contained a curious account of the difficulties attendant upon the building of the new church. There were quarrels over the glebe, the usual troubles with the contractor, and the inevitable changes of plan after the work was under way. Hired sawyers were paid so much per foot, and “drink.” In order to save wages the men of the parish came as they found leisure and hewed the timbers. Masons and other skilled mechanics came from Philadelphia, then “a clever little town,” and with them came Dick, a negro mortar-mixer.

Notwithstanding the erection of the new church, the community seems to have grown away from the scene of the original landing, until in 1731 Thomas Willing, son-in-law of Andrew Justison, of Swedish blood, laid out upon the Christiana front, half a mile from the Rocks, a new town modelled upon the rectangular plan of Philadelphia. The first house in Willingstown, built at the corner of Front and Market streets, bore in its brick gable a stone with the inscription, “J. W. S., 1732.” Three years later the place was only a small hamlet, but in that year Willingstown had a new birth, for then William Shipley, a wealthy, well educated and energetic English Friend of Ridley in Pennsylvania, came to the place and made himself, so to speak, its second founder. He came through the influence of his second wife, Elizabeth Lewis, a preacher of his own sect, who saw in a vision a goodly land lying at the foot of a hill and traversed by two rivers, one wild and dashing, the other sluggish and serpentine, and visiting by accident the region of the Swedish settlement on the Christiana, recognized the landscape of her vision.

William Shipley built his house—an admirable example of eighteenth-century brickwork—at the corner of Fourth and Shipley streets, where it recently gave place to a modern business building. He built, also, a market-house for the town at the corner of Fourth and Market streets, and in doing so, paved the way for a quarrel with the partisans of the Second Street market-house, a body of citizens including many Swedes.

So potent was the magic of William Shipley’s presence that in four years the town had reached six hundred inhabitants. Next year it received a borough charter from Penn, and its name was changed to Wilmington, in honor of Lord Wilmington, says Ebeling, the German historian. It was a tight little borough, the Wilmington of that day and of fifteen or twenty years later. The burgesses, who at first met about in taverns, at length were comfortably housed in a neat little Town Hall built upon arches over one end of the Second Street market. There were fairs during most of the eighteenth century; fairs to which hundreds came in holiday attire and dancing shoes to make merry to the sound of bagpipe, flute, fiddle and trombone. It is significant of grave Quaker austerity, perhaps, that the fairs were suppressed by act of Legislature in 1785, as nurseries of vice, a scandal to religion, and an offence to well ordered persons. There may have been some excuse for this severity, for indeed with the coming of the English had come something of the brutality of eighteenth-century English manners. Bullies fought naked to the waist in the market-place, and hired ruffians nearly cut down the posts that supported William Shipley’s market-house. The most picturesque modern survival of Wilmington in the eighteenth century is the King Street open-air market, and with it remains the statute against forestalling, made to meet the case of some early monopolist.

Wilmington’s Quaker peace was little disturbed by echoes of European wars in the eighteenth century, though in 1741 the Christiana was fortified against possible Spanish pirates; but when the war of the Revolution came, Wilmington was loyal and ready. Old folk still preserve the tradition of Washington’s presence in the city just before the battle of the Brandywine, of his gay French officers in the sober house of a Quaker citizen, of President John McKinly’s capture at midnight by a detachment of British sent in after the battle, of the British wounded crowding the houses of citizens and probably saving the town from bombardment by British ships of war in the Delaware. Tradition recalls, too, the visit of Washington in his hour of victory, when he journeyed homeward to Mount Vernon, of his other visit on his journey northward to be inaugurated as President at New York, and of still another visit in 1791, when he made his famous progress through the country. On that last visit, riding in his chariot of state through little Brandywine village, opposite Wilmington, on the left bank of the Brandywine, he stopped at the house of miller Joseph Tatnall, to learn that he was at the mill, and then, with those great strides of his, walked through the village street to the edge of the stream, entered the mill, and talked with the courageous patriot Quaker of his services to the army during the war.

By this time the borough had travelled far from the crudity of Swedish days and had even departed somewhat from the severity of Quaker tradition. There were French emigrants from the black terror in Santo Domingo, and from the red terror in France. There were soon to be other French immigrants,—Du Ponts, bringing a mingled flavor of aristocracy, learning and benevolence, destined to found great factories and to give patriot soldiers and sailors to the land of their adoption, and yet to retain even to the fifth generation the Gallic face, and air, and manner.

Wealth and elegance were come to the little community on the Minquas. Had not Robert Montgomery made the tour of Europe, and did he not for four months during the plague of yellow fever at Philadelphia entertain Governor McKean of Pennsylvania? Did not another wealthy citizen entertain one hundred refugees of the same period? And there was Gunning Bedford, Jr., aide-de-camp and friend to Washington, inheritor of his crimson satin Masonic sash, his appointee as first Federal Judge for the District of Delaware. He and his wife, a Read of distinguished colonial stock, entertained friend and stranger with splendid hospitality in the very house in Market Street that had been the headquarters of Washington’s French officers. The Bedfords were Presbyterians. Gunning Bedford, Jr., worshipped in the quaint little First Presbyterian Church in Market Street near Tenth, now reverently preserved and occupied by the Delaware Historical Society. Hard by in the churchyard you may see Judge Bedford’s tomb, a low but graceful domed shaft facing the public street, so that all may read the lesson of civic virtue, and bearing an inscription that closes thus:

“His form was goodly, his temper amiable,

His manners winning, and his discharge

Of private duties exemplary.

“Reader, may his example stimulate you to improve the talents—be they five, or two, or one—with which God has entrusted you.”

Wilmington built her new Town Hall just a century ago last year, and Friend Joseph Tatnall gave the clock that shone in its tower and told the hours. The clock went out of use more than thirty years ago, but the building remains, not altogether spoiled by modern additions, sacred because of its associations, and testifying to the solidity with which the city fathers built in the last century.

When the City Hall was built Penn’s charter, unamended, still served the community, and continued to serve until 1809, when it was amended and the borough limits were enlarged. The town was yet merely a borough when the War of 1812 came on, and Senator James A. Bayard, the first of four Bayards to represent Delaware in the United States Senate, helped with his own hands to build a fort almost upon the site of Fort Christina. A city charter came in 1832. The mayor was elected for three years by the city council, and the first mayor chosen was Richard H. Bayard.

Wilmington as the intellectual centre of the State was naturally also the home of radical thought. Quaker sentiment had sunk deep into the community. An anti-slavery society was organized early. A great meeting at the Town Hall in 1820 adopted resolutions against the extension of slavery into the territories. Sam Townsend, a picturesque and characteristic figure in the mid-century politics of the State, was amazed and horrified to find that his brother, home after a week’s visit to Wilmington, had returned with a tincture of abolitionism. Sam and his neighbors labored with the erring one, but could not meet his arguments against holding one’s fellow-men in bondage until Sam bethought him to deny the humanity of the negro, and thus snatched the brother as a brand from the burning.

Wilmington was a station on the “underground railroad,” and Thomas Garrett, a Quaker of Pennsylvanian birth, was the station-master—a man of prudence but of dauntless courage, who, left penniless at sixty by reason of a fine imposed upon him for violation of the Fugitive Slave Law, declared upon the court-house steps in his peculiar lisp: “I did it; I’m glad I did it; and I’d do it again.” The Civil War came too soon for him, he said, for he had hoped to help away three thousand slaves, and had stopped at two thousand seven hundred.

The conflict found Wilmington a little city of rough-cobbled streets, the metropolis of a small surrounding territory, visited daily by country folk, who drove twelve or fifteen miles,—came “to town,” as the phrase went,—and having made their purchases, drove home, whipping in dread past “Folly Woods,” since the days of Sandy Flash a place of evil reputation. The firing upon Fort Sumter stirred the community to its depths, and the city lost no time in sending to the front more than her quota of volunteers. Flags fluttered out all over the city. Barbers made haste to add to their poles a third stripe, a blue one, in token of loyalty. Amid all the enthusiasm it was a time of acrid bitterness, for Delaware was a border State with citizens holding openly or secretly opinions of many shades other than that recognized as true blue. There were reported sullen threats of incendiarism on the part of the disaffected; there were many arrests of the disloyal, and stubborn but entirely conscientious men, who would not take the oath of allegiance and were imprisoned or publicly shamed. It was no time for a nice weighing of motives, and the fires of the war-time hatreds were nearly a generation in cooling. The city came out of the war chastened by sorrow and pained by bitter contention, but ready for a newer and broader life. She has since grown to 70,000 people. Her boundaries have been extended to the Delaware; her factories have vastly increased in volume and variety. Miles of territory have been covered with new homes. Water-works, sewers and parks have been created. New Castle, the old Dutch capital of New Amstel, has yielded up the court-house to Wilmington, but has held on to the whipping-post, as perhaps not quite in keeping with the modern mood of the city. But in spite of growth and change the old Quaker spirit, the ineradicable instinct of sobriety and decency, remains along with the Swedish and Dutch names two and a half centuries ago. When the hush of evening falls upon the city and the crowds have melted from the sidewalks, then in the dusk of the deserted streets one may easily imagine the distinguished William Shipley and the gracious Elizabeth, the grin of broad-faced Dutchmen fresh from the harrowing of Swen Schute, the spectral figures of tow-haired Swedish farmers, or the grave, black-clad form of Pastor Torkillius with solemn eyes bent upon wondering peasant lads and lasses.

BUFFALO

“THE QUEEN CITY OF THE LAKES”

By ROWLAND B. MAHANY

Few cities of the United States have a history more picturesque than Buffalo, or more typical of the forces that have made the Republic great. At the time of the adoption of the Federal constitution, in 1787, not a single white settler dwelt on the site of what is now the Queen of the Lakes; and it was not until after the second presidency of Washington, that Joseph Ellicott, the founder of Buffalo, laid out the plan of the town, which he called New Amsterdam. Ellicott was a man of great ability, force and foresight, and with prophetic vision he saw the future importance of the city, which is now the fourth commercial entrepôt of the world. He had been the assistant of his brother, Andrew Ellicott, the first Surveyor General of the United States; and the two brothers, together with General Washington,—himself an engineer by profession,—had collaborated with Captain Pierre Charles L’Enfant the plan of the National Capital. With the beautiful design of Washington City fresh in his mind, Joseph Ellicott gave to the village of New Amsterdam a similar system of radiating broad avenues, embracing in the territory they enclosed rectangular systems of streets. The avenues were 99 feet in width and the streets 66 feet. The surveys were begun in 1798 and completed in 1805. Indirectly, therefore, Buffalo is indebted to President Washington for some of its topographical features.

The early history of the village is not unlike that of most of our inland cities which have grown from conditions common to the Canadian and to the western frontier; and differs, perhaps, chiefly in this regard, that owing to the natural advantages of the town’s situation and its proximity to the great cataract of Niagara Falls, its annals are rich with instances of exploration, of war and of romance; for adventure and enterprise met here at the beginning of the century.

The period when the Mohawks, the Eries, the Hurons, the Tuscaroras, the Neuters (so called because they were a peaceful tribe) and the Senecas were the sole possessors of this region was succeeded by the epoch of the French traders, whose business was in turn absorbed by their Dutch competitors. These gave way to the alert descendants of New England, who yielded back again the supremacy to a group of Dutch capitalists, composing the Holland Land Company, whose first agent was Joseph Ellicott.

The primitive scenery of Buffalo must have been almost incomparable in its beauty. The wooded hills, the fertile plains, the superb river and the mighty lake enchanted alike the savage and the civilized beholder. Even now, when commerce has invaded the loveliness of the prospect by investing one of the greatest harbors in the world with a fortress of elevators and crowding it with a forest of masts, artists and tourists unite in saying that the Buffalo sunsets are not rivalled anywhere save by those on the Bay of Naples.

In 1806, the first schoolhouse was built on the corner of Swan and Pearl streets,—the humble pioneer of an educational system that now embraces sixty modern grammar schools, three collegiate High Schools, and innumerable independent and private institutions of learning. Notable among these latter is the Le Couteulx Asylum for the instruction of the deaf and dumb. This beneficent institution owes its origin to the liberality of the Le Couteulx family. Louis Stephen Le Couteulx de Caumont, a Norman-French gentleman of station and culture, was the founder of the family in Buffalo. He came to New Amsterdam in 1804.

On February 10, 1810, the “Town of Buffaloe” was created by an act of the legislature. This was the name originally given to the settlement by the Senecas, and there is little doubt that it was derived from the visits of the bison to the neighboring salt-licks. However that may be, the village of New Amsterdam was merged in 1810 into the town of Buffalo.

With the disappearance of the Dutch appellation of the town, vanished also the Dutch nomenclature of the streets. Van Staphorst and Willink Avenues were connected and called Main Street; Stadinzky Avenue, a name suggestive of the Polish element that later was to swell in such numbers the population of the city, became Church Street; Niagara Street succeeded Schimmelpennick Avenue; and Vollenhoven Avenue was changed into Erie Street.

The origin of some of Buffalo’s thoroughfares is interesting and amusing. Utica Street was formerly a lane on the old Hodge farm, and led from the Cold Spring region to the Elmwood Avenue district. The people using it, however, were very careless about closing the gates, and this so irritated Mr. Hodge that he locked the gates and closed the lane. An indignation meeting was called in the little schoolhouse at Cold Spring. The schoolmaster was the chief speaker, and unless tradition does violence to his grammar, the principal part of his speech consisted of the declaration that “them Hodges is maintainin’ a ‘pent-up Uticky.’” When Mr. Hodge heard of the meeting, he relented and offered to give the people the lane on condition that the town government would lay out a street. The offer was accepted and the new thoroughfare was called Utica Street in commemoration of the schoolmaster’s speech.

The inevitable newspaper appeared on the 3d of October, 1811, when the Buffalo Gazette issued its first number. The Gazette was the forerunner of journals which to-day recognize as their only competitors the Metropolitan press.

On the 26th of June, 1812, the tidings of war with Great Britain reached Buffalo, and on August 13th the first gun of the struggle is said to have been fired by the battery at Black Rock, then a rival, now a suburb, of Buffalo. The excitement was intense; for all recognized that the growing town, because of its frontier situation, was sure to be one of the theatres of hostilities. Nor was this a mistaken idea, as subsequent events proved. Immediately after the declaration of war, the British soldiers from the Canadian garrison at Fort Erie, directly across the river from Buffalo, made an incursion, and captured the schooner Connecticut, at anchor in the Buffalo Creek. This humiliation, however, was more than wiped out by the daring exploit of Lieutenant Jesse D. Elliott, U. S. N., who, on October 9, 1812, crossed the river, and boldly attacked two vessels lying under the guns of Fort Erie. One of these, the Detroit, of six guns, had been captured by the British at the surrender of that town; the other was the Caledonia, of two guns. With a loss of two killed and five wounded, Elliott’s force captured both vessels and took prisoners, officers and men, to the number of seventy-one. Forty-seven American prisoners taken by the British at the River Raisin, were released by Elliott. The Detroit was carried down the stream when the cables were cut, and ran aground on Squaw Island. The British opened a lively cannonading from the Canadian shore and attempted to recapture the vessel, but were driven off by the Americans, who, unable to float it, burned it to the water’s edge. For his brilliant coup, Lieutenant Elliott was voted a sword of honor by Congress.

One great advantage the British possessed early in the war was their superiority on the Lakes. The Queen Charlotte, of twenty-two guns, the Hunter, of twelve guns, and a small armed schooner patrolled the Erie coast-line in the neighborhood of Buffalo, and kept the inhabitants of the region in a constant state of fear and excitement. To remedy this disadvantage, the Government, in the spring of 1813, sent Captain Oliver Hazard Perry to fit out a war fleet at Erie, Pennsylvania. He arrived in Buffalo in March, and thence proceeded to his destination. The Government had purchased a number of merchant craft, and these he immediately began converting into men-of-war. Some new vessels also were built. Five gunboats were fitted out at Buffalo on Scajaquada Creek. On September 10, 1813, Perry, with an inferior force, both in the number of men and guns, gave battle to the British and captured or destroyed their entire fleet. This victory was not only the most notable of the war, but is one of the most conspicuous in our naval history. In the midst of the battle Perry’s ship was sunk, and he left it in an open boat, and, under the fire of the enemy, went to another vessel of his fleet, whence he directed the operations that rendered the battle of Lake Erie an illustrious triumph for American arms.

In a few months, however, the exultation of Buffalo’s citizens was turned into mourning through the burning of the town by the British. On the 29th of December, General Riall, with twelve hundred men, regulars, militia and Indians, landed below Scajaquada Creek, and owing to the confusion which prevailed in the councils of the local military commanders, captured the town with little difficulty. The inhabitants had fled, and every dwelling, with one or two exceptions, was given over to the flames. Mrs. St. John and two of her daughters remained to protect their house, and owing to the chivalry of Colonel Elliott, the commander of the Indians, neither the ladies nor their household possessions were molested. Mrs. Joshua Lovejoy, who also remained in her home, where the Tifft House now stands, was imprudent enough to have an altercation with the Indians, and was slain by one of them. Her house was burned, and her dead body with it.

On the withdrawal of the British, the citizens returned from their flight, bringing back with them such household goods as they had gathered together on their hasty departure, and forthwith the rebuilding of Buffalo commenced. The American loss in the engagement preceding the capture of the town was heavy. Between forty and fifty of our troops were killed, as many more wounded, and about ninety prisoners were carried off by the victors. From all these reverses the people of the little town measurably recovered in the succeeding five or six months. On April 10, 1814, Brigadier-General Winfield Scott came to Buffalo, and shortly after, Major-General Brown arrived. The preparations for an advance on the Canadian position were pushed forward as rapidly as possible, and on July 3d the movement began. Three brigades,—two of regulars, one of volunteers,—accompanied by a few Indians, crossed the river, and captured Fort Erie. Thence proceeding down the Canadian bank, they engaged the enemy at Chippewa on July 5th, and won a decisive victory.

The Americans wore temporary uniforms of gray, and it was in honor of the conspicuous gallantry displayed by our troops in this conflict that gray was adopted as the uniform for the West Point cadets.

The volunteer brigade was commanded by General Peter B. Porter, for many years a member of Congress from Erie County, and afterwards Secretary of War for a brief period under John Quincy Adams. General Porter distinguished himself also in the battle of Lundy’s Lane, and throughout the war gained such reputation for valor, skill and eloquence, that to him has been assigned the credit of being the pioneer in organizing the volunteer system of the American Army.

During all this war the famous Seneca chief, Red Jacket, took an active part in behalf of the Americans, and though he had little love for the white men on either side of the controversy, still his influence was cast in favor of those who were the neighbors and friends of his people. Innumerable anecdotes are told of the wisdom, oratory and dignity of the great sachem, and a later generation has raised in Forest Lawn Cemetery an imposing statue to his memory.

After the battle of Chippewa, General Riall, the British commander, retreated to Queenstown, and thence to Fort George, the Americans in pursuit. The British, however, were reinforced and General Brown decided to return to Fort Erie. Riall, in turn, pursued. On July 25th the contending forces met near Lundy’s Lane, and one of the most fiercely fought battles of the war followed. The conflict began a little before nightfall, and raged until nearly ten o’clock, when the Americans held undisputed possession of the field. General Riall and one hundred and sixty-eight prisoners were captured. Both General Brown and General Scott were wounded, as was also Captain Worth, afterwards famous in the Mexican War.

The command of the American forces then devolved upon General Ripley, who took up his position at Fort Erie and was there besieged by Lieutenant-General Drummond. On August 3d, the British directed a savage onslaught against the Fort, but were driven back with loss. They continued, however, to invest the American position. On September 17th, General Porter headed an attack on the besieging force, and such was the gallantry of the American volunteers that the British veterans were dispersed. General Napier, the English military historian, cites this sortie as one of the few in all history that at a single stroke compelled the raising of a siege. The Governor brevetted Porter a major-general, and Congress voted him a gold medal.

With this exploit at Fort Erie, the War of 1812 was practically over, so far as the interests of Buffalo were concerned. When the American troops retired from Fort Erie, they blew it up, and its ruins are one of the picturesque features of the region about Buffalo.

The commercial greatness of the city is indissolubly associated with the Erie Canal. In 1807-8 Jesse Hawley of Geneva wrote a series of articles in the Ontario Messenger. In these he advocated the construction of a grand canal connecting Lake Erie with the Atlantic Ocean. This idea found favor with Joseph Ellicott, DeWitt Clinton, Gouverneur Morris, and Peter B. Porter, and so strong did the sentiment for the project become, that in 1816 a bill passed the Assembly, directing that the work of construction be commenced. The Senate, however, decided that additional surveys should be made. The work of preparation was inaugurated July 14, 1817; and on the 9th of August, 1823, the work of actual construction began in Erie County by the breaking of ground for the canal, near the place where is now the Commercial Street bridge in Buffalo. The great waterway was completed on October 25, 1825, and the first boat, Seneca Chief, started on its voyage from Buffalo to the Hudson. DeWitt Clinton, then the Governor of the State and chief promoter of the canal, graced the ceremonies with his presence.

In this connection, it is interesting to observe that, in 1819, the question whether Buffalo or Black Rock should be the western terminus of the canal was settled in favor of the former through the public spirit and enterprise of Charles Townsend, Samuel Wilkeson, Oliver Forward and George Coit. These men gave each a bond of $8,000 for the purpose of securing a loan of $12,000 from the State to construct a harbor, the State reserving the right to accept or reject, as it pleased, the completed work. From this time on, Judge Wilkeson devoted his immense energies and great executive ability to the interests of Buffalo in connection with the canal, and to him may justly be ascribed the credit of being the founder of her lake commerce. It was altogether appropriate, therefore, that, on the opening of the canal, he should have been given the honor of pouring into the lake the water brought from the ocean, an event described as the Wedding of the Atlantic and Lake Erie. It recalled the marriage in old time of Venice and the Adriatic.

Near where LaSalle, in 1679, built his little sailing vessel, the Griffin, three New York capitalists completed on May 28, 1818, the first steamboat that plied the waters of Lake Erie. This was fittingly named, after the Wyandot chieftain, Walk-in-the-Water. The little vessel was lost three years later, but it marked the beginning of steam navigation on the Lakes—since grown to such perfection as to rival the navigation of the sea.

The influence of the Erie Canal has been incomparably great, not merely in the rise of one city, but, in a larger sense, in the development of the State and the nation. The commercial forces which it generated have aided in building up the wealth of the Middle West, and the impetus of the resultant enterprise has finally reached every industry of the continent. To the canal, more than to any other factor, Buffalo owes its growth and importance. The little hamlet founded by Joseph Ellicott now has a population of 390,000. The city’s coal receipts in 1898 were 2,455,191 tons; its lumber receipts, 189,075,938 feet; its grain receipts, 267,395,434 bushels. It has a harbor enclosed by a new breakwater nearly four miles in length, and costing over $2,000,000. The coal interests have constructed the greatest trestles in the world. Forty-one elevators, with a capacity of 20,920,000 bushels, line the harbor. There are 3500 manufactories. The park system comprises thousands of acres, with seventeen miles of park driveways. Twenty-six railroads enter the city, with 250 passenger trains daily, and have nearly 700 miles of trackage within the city limits. The electric power from Niagara Falls is delivered at Buffalo in practically unlimited quantities. There are 24 banks, and 184 churches. The city has 116 miles of street paved with stone, 6 miles paved with brick, and 225 miles with asphalt, or more asphalt than any other city in the world, not excepting Paris, Washington, or London. Two public libraries contain more than 180,000 volumes. In handling flour and wheat, Buffalo is the first city in the world. Its fresh-fish industry aggregates an annual distribution of 15,000,000 pounds. Buffalo’s horse market is the most important in the country; and in cattle and hogs, the trade of the city is second only to that of Chicago. The sheep market is the largest in the United States.

The climate of Buffalo, with the exception of high winds during certain portions of the winter, is probably as delightful as that enjoyed by any city on the globe. In summer, the temperature is nearly always moderate, and when other cities suffer from extreme heat, the people of Buffalo are blessed with the conditions common to late summer in other regions.

The residence portion of the city is celebrated for its beauty. The avenues are wide, the dwellings elegant and commodious, the lawn effects charming, and the trees superb.

Buffalo is entering upon what might be termed its metropolitan period. New forces, new ideas, are building splendid superstructures on the foundations established by the generation now passing away. From the time of the city’s incorporation, in 1832, the bench and the bar, the medical and the clerical professions, have been especially rich with the names of those who have left a lasting impress upon the thought of the city, the state and the nation. The political life and the business progress have been dignified by men of intellect and character. Such names as the Right Reverend Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Western New York; the Right Reverend Stephen Vincent Ryan, Roman Catholic Bishop of Buffalo; John Ganson, one of the giants of the legal profession; Millard Fillmore, a former President of the United States; Doctors George N. Burwell and John Cronyn, cultured physicians of the old school; William I. Williams, the pioneer of Buffalo’s unrivalled paved streets; the Reverend Doctor William Shelton, rector of St. Paul’s Church; the Reverend Doctor John Lord, perhaps the most famous of Buffalo’s Presbyterian divines; James M. Smith, Justice of the Supreme Court, recall types of men whose ability, integrity and civic worth would contribute to advance civilization in any community.

During the Civil War, Buffalo did its patriotic share towards the preservation of the Union. The names of William F. Rogers, Michael Wiedrich, James P. McMahon, Daniel D. Bidwell, Edward P. Chapin, John Wilkeson and William Richardson are cherished by the people of Buffalo and Erie County as typical of the soldiers who, in regiment after regiment, enlisted there for the war.

In legislation, also, the city contributed its part to the successful prosecution of the struggle. On December 30, 1861, Mr. E. G. Spaulding, member of Congress from Buffalo, introduced the bill which afterwards became famous as the Legal-Tender Act, whereby the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to issue $50,000,000 in Treasury notes, payable on demand, in denominations of not less than $5, these to be the legal tender for all debts, public and private, and exchangeable for the bonds of the Government at par.

Nearly every element of American progress has entered into the growth of this beautiful city. Its development has been brilliant in enterprise, luminous in education, rich in romance, splendid in achievement, and noble in patriotism. In a word, Buffalo has kept pace with the Great Republic.

PITTSBURGH

THE INDUSTRIAL CITY

By SAMUEL HARDEN CHURCH

George Washington, the Father of his Country, is equally the Father of Pittsburgh, for he came thither in November, 1753, and established the location of the now imperial city by choosing it as the best place for a fort. Washington was then twenty-one years old. He had by that time written his precocious one hundred and ten maxims of civility and good behavior; had declined to be a midshipman in the British Navy; had made his only sea-voyage to Barbadoes; had surveyed the estates of Lord Fairfax, going for months into the forest without fear of savage Indians or wild beasts, and was now a major of Virginia militia. In pursuance of the claim of Virginia that she owned that part of Pennsylvania in which Pittsburgh is situated, Washington came there as the agent of Governor Dinwiddie to treat with the Indians. With an eye alert for the dangers of the wilderness, and with Christopher Gist beside him, the young Virginian pushed his cautious way to “The Point” of land where the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers forms the Ohio. That, he declared, with clear military instinct, was the best site for a fort; and he rejected the promontory two miles below, which the Indians had recommended for that purpose.

As early as 1728 a daring hunter or trader found the Indians at the head waters of the Ohio,—among them the Delawares, Shawanese, Mohicans and Iroquois,—whither they tracked the bear from their village of Logstown, seventeen miles down the river. They also employed the country roundabout as a highway for their march to battle against other tribes, and against each other. At that time France and England were disputing for the new continent. France, by right of her discovery of the Mississippi, claimed all the lands drained by that river and its tributaries,—a contention which would naturally plant her banner upon the summit of the Alleghany Mountains.⁠[26] England, on the other hand, claimed everything from ocean-shore to ocean-shore. This situation produced war, and Pittsburgh became the strategic key of the great Middle West. The French made early endeavors to win the allegiance of the Indians, and they felt encouraged to press their friendly overtures because they usually came among the red men for trading or exploration, while the English invariably seized and occupied their lands. In 1731 some French settlers did attempt to build a group of houses at Pittsburgh, but the Indians compelled them to go away. The next year the Governor of Pennsylvania summoned two Indian chiefs from Pittsburgh to say why they had been going to see the French Governor at Montreal; and they gave answer that he had sent for them only to express the hope that both English and French traders might meet at Pittsburgh and carry on trade amicably. The Governor of Pennsylvania sought to induce the tribes to draw themselves farther east, where they might be made to feel the hand of authority, but Sassoonan, their chief, forbade them to stir. An Iroquois chief who joined his entreaties to those of the Governor was soon afterward killed by some Shawanese braves, but they were forced to flee into Virginia to escape the vengeance of his tribe.

Louis Celeron, a French officer, made an exploration of the country contiguous to Pittsburgh in 1747, and formally enjoined the Governor of Pennsylvania not to occupy the ground, as France claimed its sovereignty. A year later the Ohio Company was formed, with a charter ceding an immense tract of land for sale and development, including Pittsburgh. This corporation built some storehouses at Logstown to facilitate their trade with the Indians, which were captured by the French, together with skins and commodities valued at £20,000; and the purposes of the Company were never accomplished.

As soon as Washington’s advice as to the location of the fort was received, Captain William Trent was dispatched to Pittsburgh with a force of soldiers and workmen, packhorses and materials, and he began in all haste to erect a stronghold. The French had already built forts on the northern lakes, and they now sent Captain Contrecœur down the Allegheny with one thousand French, Canadians and Indians, and eighteen pieces of cannon, in a flotilla of sixty bateaux and three hundred canoes. Trent had planted himself in Pittsburgh on February 17, 1754,—a date important because it marks the first permanent white settlement there. But his work had been retarded alike by the small number of his men and the severity of the winter; and when Contrecœur arrived in April, the young subaltern who commanded in Trent’s absence surrendered the unfinished works, and was permitted to march away with his thirty-three men. The French completed the fort and named it Duquesne, in honor of the Governor of Canada; and they held possession of it for four years.

Immediately on the loss of this fort, Virginia sent a force under Washington to retake it. Washington surprised a French detachment near Great Meadows, and killed their commander, Jumonville. When a larger expedition came against him, he put up a stockade near the site of Uniontown, naming it Fort Necessity, which he was compelled to yield on terms of marching away with the honors of war.

The next year (1755) General Edward Braddock came over with two regiments of British soldiers, and, after augmenting his force with Colonial troops and a few Indians, began his fatal march upon Fort Duquesne. Braddock’s testy disposition, his consuming egotism, his contempt for the Colonial soldiers and his stubborn adherence to military maxims that were inapplicable to the warfare of the wilderness alienated the respect and confidence of the American contingent, robbed him of an easy victory and cost him his life. Benjamin Franklin had warned him against the imminent risk of Indian ambuscades, but he had contemptuously replied: “These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia; but upon the King’s regular and disciplined troops, sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.” Some of his English staff-officers urged him to send the rangers in advance and to deploy his Indians as scouts, but he rejected their prudent suggestions with a sneer. On July 9th his army, comprising twenty-two hundred soldiers and one hundred and fifty Indians, was marching down the south bank of the Monongahela. The variant color and fashion of the expedition,—the red-coated regulars, the blue-coated Americans, the naval detachment, the rangers in deerskin shirts and leggings, the savages half-naked and befeathered, the glint of sword and gun in the hot daylight, the long wagon train, the lumbering cannon, the drove of bullocks, the royal banner and the Colonial gonfalon,—the pomp and puissance of it all composed a spectacle of martial splendor unseen in that country before. On the right was the tranquil river, and on the left the trackless wilderness whence the startled deer sprang away into a deeper solitude. At noon the expedition crossed the river and pressed on toward Fort Duquesne, ten miles below, expectant of victory. What need to send out scouts when the King’s troops are here? Let young George Washington and the rest urge it all they may; the thing is beneath the dignity of his Majesty’s General.

But here, when they have crossed, is a level plain, elevated but a few feet above the surface of the river, extending nearly half a mile landwards, and then gradually ascending into thickly wooded hills, with Fort Duquesne beyond. The troops in front had crossed the plain and plunged into the road through the forest for a hundred feet, when a heavy discharge of musketry and arrows was poured upon them, which wrought in them a consternation all the greater because they could see no foe anywhere. They shot at random, but without effect, while the hidden enemy kept up an incessant and destructive fire. In this distressing situation their courage forsook them, and they fell back into the plain. Braddock rode in among them, and he and his officers persistently endeavored to rally them, but without success. The Colonial troops adopted the Indian method, and each man fought for himself behind a tree. This was forbidden by Braddock, who attempted to form his men in platoons and columns, making their slaughter inevitable. The French and Indians, concealed in the ravines and behind trees, kept up a cruel and deadly fire, until the British soldiers lost all presence of mind and began to shoot each other and their own officers, and hundreds were thus slain. The Virginia companies charged gallantly up a hill with a loss of but three men, but when they reached the summit the British soldiery, mistaking them for the enemy, fired upon them, killing fifty out of eighty men. The Colonial troops then resumed the Indian fashion of fighting from behind trees, which provoked Braddock, who had had five horses killed under him in three hours, to storm at them and strike them with his sword. At this moment he was fatally wounded, and many of his men now fled away from the hopeless action. Washington had had two horses killed and received three bullets through his coat. Being the only mounted officer who was not disabled, he drew up the troops still on the field, directed their retreat, maintaining himself at the rear with great coolness and courage, and brought away his wounded general. Sixty-four British and American officers, and nearly one thousand privates, were killed or wounded in this battle, while the total French and Indian loss was not over sixty. A few prisoners captured by the Indians were brought to Pittsburgh and burnt at the stake. Four days after the fight Braddock died, exclaiming to the last, “Who would have thought it!”

Despondency seized the English settlers after Braddock’s defeat. But two years afterward William Pitt became Prime Minister, and he thrilled the nation with his appeal to protect the Colonies against France and the savages. His letters inspired the Americans with new hope, and he promised to send them British troops and to supply their own militia with arms, ammunition, tents and provisions at the King’s charge. He sent twelve thousand soldiers from England, which were joined to a Colonial force aggregating fifty thousand men,—the most formidable army yet seen in the new world. The plan of campaign embraced three expeditions: the first against Louisburg, in the island of Cape Breton, which was successful; the second against Ticonderoga, which succeeded after a defeat; and the third against Fort Duquesne. General Forbes commanded this expedition, comprising about seven thousand men. The militia from Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland was led by Washington. On September 12, 1758, Major Grant, a Highlander, led an advance-guard of 850 men to a point two miles from the fort, which is still called Grant’s Hill, where he rashly permitted himself to be surrounded and attacked by the French and Indians, half his force being killed or wounded, and himself slain. Washington followed soon after, and opened a road for the advance of the main body under Forbes. Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, had just been taken by General Amherst, with the result that supplies for Fort Duquesne were cut off. When, therefore, the French commandant learned of the advance of a superior force, having no hope of reinforcements, he blew up the fort, set fire to the adjacent buildings and drew his garrison away.

On Saturday, November 25, 1758, the English took possession of the place, and on the next day General Forbes wrote to Governor Denny from “Fort Duquesne, now Pittsburgh, the 26th of November, 1758,” and this was the first use of that name. On this same Sunday the Rev. Mr. Beatty, a Presbyterian chaplain, preached a sermon in thanksgiving for the superiority of British arms,—the first Protestant service in Pittsburgh. The French had had a Roman Catholic chaplain, Father Baron, during their occupancy.

The English proceeded to build a new fort about two hundred yards from the site of Fort Duquesne, which they called Fort Pitt. This stronghold at Pittsburgh cut off French transportation to the Mississippi by way of the Ohio River, and the only remaining route, by way of the Great Lakes, was soon afterward closed by the fall of Fort Niagara. The fall of Quebec, with the death of the two opposing Generals, Montcalm and Wolfe, and the capture of Montreal, ended the claims of France to sovereignty in the new world.

The new fort being found too small, General Stanwix built a second Fort Pitt, much larger and stronger, designed for a garrison of one thousand men. The Indians viewed the newcomers with suspicion, but Colonel Henry Bouquet assured them, with diplomatic tergiversation, that, “We have not come here to take possession of your country in a hostile manner, as the French did when they came among you, but to open a large and extensive trade with you and all other nations of Indians to the westward.” A redoubt (the “Block-House”) built by Colonel Bouquet in 1764 still stands, in a very good state of preservation, being cared for by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The protection of the garrison naturally attracted a few traders, merchants and pioneers to Pittsburgh, and a permanent population began to grow.

But the indigenous race continued to resent the extension of white encroachment; and they formed a secret confederacy under Pontiac, the renowned Ottawa chief, who planned a simultaneous attack on all the white frontier posts. This uprising was attended by atrocious cruelties at many of the points attacked, but we may take note here of the movement only as it affected Pittsburgh. At the grand council held by the tribes, a bundle of sticks had been given to every tribe, each bundle containing as many sticks as there were days intervening before the deadly assault should begin. One stick was to be drawn from the bundle every day until but one remained, which was to signal the outbreak for that day. This was the best calendar the barbarian could devise. At Pittsburgh, a Delaware squaw who was friendly to the whites had stealthily taken out three of the sticks, thus precipitating the attack on Fort Pitt three days in advance of the time appointed.

The last stick was reached on June 22, 1763, and the Delawares and Shawanese began the assault in the afternoon, under Simon Ecuyer. The people of Pittsburgh took shelter in the fort, and held out while waiting for reinforcements. Colonel Bouquet hurried forward a force of five hundred men, but they were intercepted at Bushy Run, where a bloody battle was fought. Bouquet had fifty men killed and sixty wounded, but inflicted a much greater loss on his savage foes, and gained the fort, relieving the siege. As soon as Bouquet could recruit his command, he moved down the Ohio, attacked the Indians, liberated some of their prisoners and taught the red men to respect the power that controlled at Pittsburgh.

In 1768 the Indians ceded their lands about Pittsburgh to the Colonies, and civilization was then free to spread over them. In 1774 a land office was opened in Pittsburgh by Governor Dunmore, and land-warrants were granted on payment of two shillings and sixpence purchase money, at the rate of ten pounds per one hundred acres.

With the French out of the country, the Colonies began to feel the oppression of a British policy which British statesmen and historians to-day most bitterly denounce. Their opposition to tyranny found its natural expression in the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775. The fires of patriotism leapt through the continent, and the little settlement at Pittsburgh was quickly aflame with the national spirit. On May 16th a convention was held at Pittsburgh, which resolved that

“This committee have the highest sense of the spirited behavior of their brethren in New England, and do most cordially approve of their opposing the invaders of American rights and privileges to the utmost extreme, and that each member of this committee, respectively, will animate and encourage their neighborhood to follow the brave example.”

No foreign soldiers were sent over the mountains to Pittsburgh, but a more merciless foe, who would attack and harass with remorseless cruelty, was impressed into the English service, despite the horrified protests of some of her wisest statesmen. American treaties with the Indians had no force against the allurements of foreign gold, and under this unholy alliance men were burnt at the stake, women were carried away, and cabins were destroyed.

With the aim of regaining the friendship of the Indians, Congress appointed commissioners who met the tribes at Pittsburgh; and Colonel George Morgan, Indian agent, writes to John Hancock, November 8, 1776:

“I have the happiness to inform you that the cloud that threatened to break over us is likely to disperse. The Six Nations, with the Muncies, Delawares, Shawanese and Mohicans, who have been assembled here with their principal chiefs and warriors to the number of 644, have given the strongest assurance of their determination to preserve inviolate the peace and neutrality with the United States.”

These amicable expectations were not realized, and General Edward Hand came to Pittsburgh the next year and planned an expedition against the Indians. Colonel Broadhead took out Hand’s expedition in the summer and burnt the Indian towns.

The depreciation of paper currency, or Continental money, had by this time brought the serious burden of high prices upon the people. The traders, who demanded apparently exorbitant rates for their goods, were denounced in public meetings at Pittsburgh as being “now commonly known by the disgraceful epithet of speculators, of more malignant natures than the savage Mingoes in the wilderness.” This hardship grew in severity until the finances were put upon a more stable basis.

By 1781, there were demoralization and mutiny at Fort Pitt, and General William Irvine was put in command. His firm hand soon restored the garrison to obedience. The close of the war with Great Britain was celebrated by the issue of a general order at the fort, November 6, 1781, requiring all, as a sailor would say, “to splice the main-brace.”⁠[27]

Up to this time the Penn family had held the charter to Pennsylvania; but as they had maintained a steadfast allegiance to the mother country, the General Assembly annulled their title, except to allow them to retain the ownership of various manors throughout the State, embracing half a million acres.

In order to relieve the people of Pittsburgh from going to Greensburg to the court-house in their sacred right of suing and being sued, the General Assembly erected Allegheny County out of parts of Westmoreland and Washington counties, September 24, 1788. This county originally comprised, in addition to its present limits, what are now Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Crawford, Erie, Mercer, Venango and Warren counties. The act required that the court-house and jail should be located in Allegheny (just across the river from Pittsburgh), but as there was no protection against Indians there, an amendment established Pittsburgh as the county-seat. The first court was held at Fort Pitt; and the next day a ducking-stool was erected for the district, at “The Point” in the three rivers.

In 1785, the dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania for the possession of Pittsburgh was settled by the award of a joint commission in favor of Pennsylvania.

A writer says that in 1786 Pittsburgh contained thirty-six log houses, one stone and one frame house and five small stores. Another records that the population “is almost entirely Scots and Irish, who live in log houses.” A third says of these log houses, “Now and then one had assumed the appearance of neatness and comfort.”

The first newspaper, the Pittsburgh Gazette, was established July 29, 1786. A mail route to Philadelphia, by horseback, was adopted in the same year. On September 29, 1787, the Legislature granted a charter to the Pittsburgh Academy, a school that has grown steadily in usefulness and power, and is now the Western University of Pennsylvania.

In 1791, the Indians became vindictive and dangerous, and General Arthur St. Clair, with a force of twenty-three hundred men, was sent down the river to punish them. Neglecting President Washington’s imperative injunction to avoid a surprise, he led his command into an ambush and lost half of it in the most disastrous battle with the redskins since the time of Braddock. In the general alarm that ensued, Fort Pitt being in a state of decay a new fort was built in Pittsburgh at Ninth and Tenth streets and Penn Avenue,—a stronghold that included bastions, blockhouses, barracks, etc., and was named Fort Lafayette. General Anthony Wayne was then selected to command another expedition against the savages, and he arrived in Pittsburgh in June, 1792. After drilling his troops and making preparations for two years, in the course of which he erected several forts in the West, including Fort Defiance and Fort Wayne, he fought the Indians and crushed their strength and spirit. On his return a lasting peace was made with them, and there were no further raids about Pittsburgh.

The Whiskey Insurrection demands a brief reference. Whiskey is a steady concomitant of civilization. As soon as the white settlers had planted themselves securely at Pittsburgh, they made requisition on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs of flour and three thousand kegs of whiskey—a disproportion as startling as Falstaff’s intolerable deal of sack to one half-pennyworth of bread. Congress, in 1791, passed an excise law to assist in paying the war debt. The measure was very unpopular, and its operation was forcibly resisted, particularly in Pittsburgh, which was noted then, as now, for the quantity and quality of its whiskey. There were distilleries on nearly every stream emptying into the Monongahela. The time and circumstances made the tax odious. The Revolutionary War had just closed, the pioneers were in the midst of great Indian troubles, and money was scarce, of low value and very hard to obtain. The people of the new country were unused to the exercise of stringent laws. The progress of the French Revolution encouraged the settlers to account themselves oppressed by similar tyrannies, against which some of them persuaded themselves similar resistance should be made. Genêt, the French demagogue, was sowing sedition everywhere. Lafayette’s participation in the French Revolution gave it in America, where he was deservedly beloved, a prestige which it could never have gained for itself. Distillers who paid the tax were assaulted; some of them were tarred and feathered; others were taken into the forest and tied to trees; their houses and barns were burned; their property was carried away or destroyed. Several thousand insurgents assembled at Braddock’s Field, and marched on Pittsburgh, where the citizens gave them food and submitted to a reign of terror. Then President Washington sent an army of fifteen thousand troops against them, and they melted away, as a mob will ever do when the strong arm of Government smites it without fear or respect.

Pittsburgh was incorporated a borough in 1794. Her first glassworks was built in 1797; and both her population and her industries multiplied until she was made a city in 1816. In 1845 (April 10th), a great fire destroyed about one third of the total area of the city, including most of the large business houses and factories, the bridge over the Monongahela, the large hotel known as the Monongahela House and several churches;—in all about eleven hundred buildings. The Legislature appropriated $50,000 for the relief of the sufferers.

In 1877, the municipal government, being, in its personnel, at the moment incompetent to preserve the fundamental principles on which it was established, permitted a strike of railroad employees to grow without restriction as to the observance of law and order until it became an insurrection. Three million dollars’ worth of property was destroyed by riot and incendiarism in a few hours. When at last outraged authority was properly shifted from the supine city chieftains to the indomitable State itself, it became necessary, before order could be restored, for troops to fire, with a sacrifice of human life. The lesson was worth all it cost, and anarchy has never dared to raise its head in the corporation limits since that time.

In 1889, the great flood at Johnstown, accompanied by a frightful loss of life and destruction of property, touched the common heart of humanity all over the world. The closeness of Johnstown geographically made the sorrow at Pittsburgh most poignant and profound. In a few hours almost the whole population had brought its offerings for the stricken community, and besides clothing, provisions and every conceivable thing necessary for relief and comfort, the people of Pittsburgh contributed $250,000 to restore so far as possible the material portion of the loss.

Pittsburgh has thus passed through many battles, trials, afflictions and adversities, and has grown in the strength of giants until it now embraces in the limits of the county a population of over one million. The tax valuation of her property is $554,000,000. Her share is more than one half of the whole production in the United States of steel, steel rails, coke, oil, plate glass, glassware, harness-leather and iron pipe. She mines one quarter of the bituminous coal of the United States. She has 2500 mills and factories, with an annual product worth $250,000,000, and a pay-roll of $75,000,000. Her electric street-railway system multiplies itself through her streets for 250 miles. Natural-gas fuel is conveyed into her mills and houses through 1000 miles of iron pipe. Her output of coke makes one train ten miles long every day throughout the year. Her tonnage by river and rail exceeds the tonnage by river and rail of any other city in the world; it is equal to one half the combined tonnage of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Her rail tonnage is three times as large as that of New York or Chicago, double that of London, four times that of Paris, and greater than the combined tonnage of New York, Boston and Chicago. Two hundred and fifty passenger trains and six thousand loaded freight-cars run to and from her terminals every day. Nowhere else in the world is there so large a Bessemer-steel plant, crucible-steel plant, plate-glass plant, chimney-glass plant, table-glass plant, air-brake plant, steel-rail plant, cork works, tube works or steel freight-car works. Her armor sheathes our battleships, as well as those of Russia and Japan. She equips the navies of the world with projectiles and range-finders. Her bridges span the rivers of India, China, Egypt and the Argentine Republic; and her locomotives, rails and bridges are used on the Siberian railroad. She builds electric railways for Great Britain and Brazil, and telescopes for Germany and Denmark. Indeed, she distributes her varied manufactures into the channels of trade all over the earth.

But while these surpassing industries have given Pittsburgh her wealth, population, supremacy and power, commercial materialism is not the ultima thule of her people. She has the largest and handsomest court-house in the world, the crowning architectural triumph of H. H. Richardson. Her churches and schoolhouses are found in nearly every block. She spends a quarter of a million annually on her parks,—Schenley and Highland. She maintains by popular support one of the three symphony orchestras in America. She has given many famous names to Science, Literature and Art. Her astronomical observatory is known throughout the world. Her rich men are often liberal beyond their own needs—particularly so William Thaw, who spent millions for education and benevolence; Mrs. Mary Schenley, who has given the city a great park, four hundred picturesque acres in the very heart of its boundaries; and Henry Phipps, who erected the largest conservatory for plants and flowers in our country. There is one other, Andrew Carnegie, whose wise and continuous use of vast wealth for the public good is nearly beyond human precedent. Mr. Carnegie has spent many millions on libraries, art galleries and scientific museums in Pittsburgh alone, and millions more for similar institutions in other parts of the world. The Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh, comprising Art Galleries, Library, Museum and Music Hall, now in its fourth year, is the rallying-ground of the whole people in their growing love of æsthetic and spiritual life. Its doors are open all day, from nine in the morning until ten at night, free to the people. And the people use it with delight, more than five hundred thousand of them having thronged its halls in this past year.

Pittsburgh is truly an imperial city.

FOOTNOTES

INDEX — Historic Towns of New England — Historic Towns of the Middle States — Some Colonial Homesteads — More Colonial Homesteads — Where Ghosts Walk — BELLES-LETTRES — Browning, Poet and Man — Tennyson — Petrarch — Literary Hearthstones

• A
• Abercrombie, General, 30, 51
• Academy of Natural Science, Philadelphia, 332
• Ackland, Lady, 64
• Adams, John, 266
• Adams, Mrs. John, 310
• Adams, John Quincy, 380
• Albany, W. W. Battershall on, 1-37;
• settled by Dutch, 1-9;
• captured by English, 9;
• incorporated, 10;
• English church built, 14;
• its frontier position, 15-18;
• during the French wars, 18;
• convention of 1754, 20;
• in the Revolution, 20-23;
• becomes the State Capital, 24;
• historic survivals in, 24-37;
• architecture of, 30-32;
• the Capitol described, 32-34
• Aldrich, T. B., 205
• Allegheny, 414
• Almirante Oquendo, 244
• American Philosophical Society, 310, 318
• Amersfoort, 216, 219
• Amherst, Lord, 52
• Amsterdam, 3, 6
• André, John, in New York, 194;
• capture of, 158-161
• Andros, Edmund, 176
• Army, American, volunteer system organized, 380
• Arnold, B., at Saratoga, 62;
• in Philadelphia, 312;
• treason of, 160, 161, 182, 195
• Arnold, Matthew, cited, 300
• As-que-sent-wah, see E. W. Paige
• B
• Baldwin’s Locomotive Works, 326
• Baltimore, Congress flees to, 272
• Barbadoes, Washington’s voyage to, 393
• Barclay, Rev. T., quoted, 100
• Barnard College, 207
• Baron, Father, 407
• Bartram, John, and his garden, 312, 314
• Battershall, W. W., on Albany, 1-37
• Bayard, James A., 360
• Bayard, Richard A., 360
• Bayard, Thomas F., 350, 351
• Beatty, Charles, quoted, 268
• Beatty, Rev., preaches first Protestant sermon at Pittsburgh, 407
• Bedford, Gunning, 267
• Bedford, Gunning, Jr., 358
• Beecher, H. W., 247
• Beekman Mansion, 195-197
• Belcher, Governor J., 252, 257
• Bemis Heights, 23, 41, 64
• Bennington, battle of, 58
• Bertholf, Rev. G., at Tarrytown, 154
• Beverwyck, 73, 81
• Biddle, Colonel, 122
• Bidwell, D. D., 390
• Binney, Horace, house of, 318
• Bird Grip, Swedish vessel, 337
• Bjork, Rev. Eric, builds Old Swedes’ Church, 349
• Black Rock, battery at, 373, 384
• “Block House,” the Pittsburgh, 408
• Bloomingdale, absorbed by New York, 188
• Blue Anchor, the Swedish tavern, 301
• Bordentown, 269
• Boston, 181, 188
• Boudinot, President, of Princeton, 288
• Bouquet, Col. Henry, builds the “Block House,” 407;
• defeats Indians, 407-410
• Bowles, naval constructor, 244
• Bowling Green, 193
• Boyle, H., 107
• Brackinridge, 269
• Bracola, see Brooklyn
• Braddock, defeat and death of, 51, 399-404, 416
• Braddock’s Field, 418
• Bradford, Governor, quoted, 4, 6
• Bradford, press of, 306
• Brainerd, David, expelled from Yale, 256
• Brandt, 56
• Brazil, Emperor of, 206
• Breuckelen, see Brooklyn
• Brewster, E. A., 135
• Brinkerhoff, M., 132
• Broadhead, Colonel, attacks Indians, 412
• Brocklandia, see Brooklyn
• Broecke, see Brooklyn
• Broeckede, see Brooklyn
• Broicklede, see Brooklyn
• Bronck, Jonas, 77, 80
• Brooklyn, 181, 186, 271;
• Harrington Putnam on, 213-249;
• Dutch settlement, 213;
• Dutch settlers described, 216-220;
• first church, 220-222;
• British rule, 224-227;
• battle of Long Island, 228-240;
• the Navy Yard, 242;
• Fort Lafayette, 244-248;
• modern Brooklyn, 248
• Brooklyn Institute, 249
• Brown, General, in War of 1812, 378, 380, 381
• Brown, H. K., 119, 125, 135
• Bryant, Wm. Cullen, 215
• Buffalo, Rowland B. Mahany on, 367-391;
• founding of, 367;
• early history, 368;
• incorporated, 370;
• strategic position in the War of 1812, 373;
• Perry’s victory, 376;
• burning of, 377;
• battle of Chippewa, 378;
• Lundy’s Lane, 380;
• unsuccessful siege by the British of Fort Erie, 381;
• the Erie Canal, 382-384;
• the modern city, 385-391
• Burgoyne, surrender at Saratoga, 22, 23, 58-68;
• imprisoned at Albany, 28
• Burns, Robert, statue of, 36
• Burr, Aaron, 28, 204, 205, 254, 259, 267
• Burr, Rev. Aaron, 252, 259
• Burr, Dr. Horace, 350
• Burwell, Dr. G. N., 389
• Bushy Run, battle at, 410
• C
• Cadwalader, in battle of Princeton, 275
• Caledonia, captured in War of 1812, 374
• Campanius, at Fort Christina, 339
• Campbell, Douglas, cited, 6
• Canada acquired by England, 19
• Carnahan, James, 292
• Carnegie, Andrew, 424
• Carnegie Institute, 424
• Carpenters’ Hall, 314
• Carroll, Charles, of Carrollton, 28
• Caverley’s statue of Burns, 36
• Celeron, Louis, 397
• Centennial Exhibition of 1876, 332
• Champlain, Samuel, 45
• Chapin, E. P., 390
• Charles I., 13, 346
• Charles II., 175
• Chemnitz, surrender of, 339
• Cherry Valley, 49
• Chippewa, battle of, 378, 380
• Christiana, Swedes settle on the, 337;
• fortified, 355
• Christina, Queen, 336
• Christina Harbor, village of, 339
• Christinaham, 346, 347
• Church, S. H., on Pittsburgh, 393-426
• Cincinnatus, Society of, 132
• Clark, Abraham, signer, 268
• Clinton, DeWitt, 205;
• favors Erie Canal, 382, 383
• Clinton, General George, at Saratoga, 69;
• at Newburgh, 124-126
• Clinton, Sir Henry, 194, 229, 236
• Clinton, James, 124
• Coit, George, 384
• Colden, C., 121
• Colden, Maria, 122
• College Settlement, New York, 208
• Colonnade Hotel, Philadelphia, 326
• Columbia University, 207, 211
• Colve, Captain, 175
• Congress, first general American, 94
• Congress, Continental, Witherspoon elected to, 265;
• flees to Baltimore, 272;
• meets in Nassau Hall, 286, 288;
• Declaration of Independence, 318;
• and the Indians, 412
• Congress, U. S., and Whiskey Insurrection, 417
• Congress Spring, see Saratoga
• Connecticut, the, captured in War of 1812, 374
• Constitution, the, 242
• Constitution, U. S., adoption of, 367
• Contrecœur, Captain, 399
• Convention of 1787, 290
• Cooper, J. Fenimore, 29, 110, 157, 205
• Cooper Institute, 204
• Cornwallis, Lord, 194;
• at Brooklyn, 234-237;
• at Trenton and Princeton, 271-283
• Courcelle, 46
• Coxe, Right Reverend A. C., 389
• Cramps, shipbuilders, 326
• Crane Hook, 349
• Cronyn, Dr. John, 389
• Crown Point, 40, 54
• Curtis, G. W., 141, 205
• D
• “Daughters of the American Revolution,” 408
• Davies, President, of Princeton, 259
• de Beauvois, Carel, 222
• Declaration of Independence, 265, 270, 318
• de Kockerthal, Joshua, 107, 115
• Delaware, Washington crossing the, 274
• Delaware Historical Society, 358
• Denny, Governor, 406
• de Rochambeau, Count, 28
• de Tracy, Lieutenant-General, 46
• Detroit, the, captured in War of 1812, 374
• Dickens, Charles, 206
• Dickinson, John, 264
• Dickinson, President, of Princeton, 252, 259
• Dinwiddie, Governor, 394
• Dongan, Governor, 10
• Donop at Princeton, 282
• Dordrecht, Synod of, 89
• Dort, Synod of, 13
• Downing, A. J., 116, 135
• Downing, Charles, 135
• Drummond, Lieutenant-General, besieges Fort Erie, 381
• Duke Alexis, the Grand, 206
• Duke of Veragua, 206
• Duke of York, 9
• Dunham, Carroll, 135
• Dunlap, Wm., quoted, 17
• Dunmore, Governor, at Pittsburgh, 410
• Du Ponts, the, 357
• Dutch church, Tarrytown, 152-156
• Dutch East India Company, 3
• Dutch West India Company, 7, 71, 75, 87, 335, 340
• E
• Eager, S. W., 135
• Eagle, the, 341
• Ebeling cited, 353
• Ecuyer, Simon, 410
• Edison, Thomas, 206
• Edwards, Jonathan, at Princeton, 254, 256, 259
• Elfsborg, 343
• Elizabethtown, 252
• Ellicott, Andrew, 367
• Ellicott, Joseph, founds Buffalo, 367-369, 385;
• favors Erie Canal, 382
• Elliott, Lieut. J. D., in War of 1812, 374
• Ellison house, Newburgh, 122, 126
• Ellsworth, Oliver, 254, 291
• Elsinborough, 343
• Emperor of Brazil, 206
• Erie Canal, history of, 104, 186, 382-385
• Ettrick house, Newburgh, 128
• F
• Fairfax, Lord, estates of, 393
• Fairmount Water-works, 324
• Fall’s house, at Newburgh, 124
• Faneuil Hall, 157
• Fillmore, Millard, 383, 389
• Finley, President, of Princeton, 260
• Five Nations, see Indians
• Flash, Sandy, 362
• Fletcher, Governor, 46
• Flypse, Vredryk, see Philips
• Forbes, General, 405, 406
• Forest Lawn Cemetery, Buffalo, 380
• Forsythe, Rev. John, 135
• Forts: Albany, 9;
• Amsterdam, 172;
• Ann, 97;
• Box, 232;
• Carillon, 40;
• Casimir, 341;
• Christina, 339, 341, 343, 360;
• Clinton, 121, 124, 125;
• Corkscrew, 232;
• Crailo, 30;
• Defiance, 232, 233, 417;
• Duquesne, 51, 401, 405, 406;
• Edward, 41, 58, 97;
• Elfsborg, 340, 341;
• Erie, 373, 378, 380, 381;
• Frederick, 40, 48;
• Frontenac, 405;
• George, 380;
• Greene, 232;
• Hamilton, 216, 244;
• Hardy, 66;
• Hunter, 97;
• Johnson, 97;
• Lafayette, 244-248, 416;
• Lee, 271;
• Montgomery, 121, 124, 125;
• Nassau, 337, 340;
• Necessity, 399;
• Niagara, 407;
• Orange, 7-9, 12, 73, 75, 80, 83;
• Pitt, 407-410, 413, 414, 416;
• Putnam, 232, 233, 239;
• Schuyler, 97;
• Stanwix, 58;
• Sterling, 233;
• Sumter, 362;
• Ticonderoga, 19;
• Washington, 271;
• Wayne, 417;
• William Henry, 18
• Fort Stanwix Conference, 53
• Forward, Oliver, 384
• Fox’s Journal, 300, 302
• Francis I., 2
• Franklin, Benjamin, 20, 28, 99, 205, 307, 400
• Franklin Institute, 310
• Franklin, William, 265
• Fraser at Saratoga, 60-64
• Fraunces, Samuel, 184
• Fraunces’s Tavern, 184
• Frederick, Harold, 29
• Freeman’s Farm, 59, 61
• Freerman, Rev. B., 95
• French and Indian Wars, 16, 46, 50, 91-93
• Freneau, 269;
• quoted, 175
• Frontenac, 46;
• and the Schenectady Massacre, 92
• Fugitive Slave Law, 362
• Fulton, Robert, 185, 206
• G
• Ganson, John, 389
• Garrett, Thomas, 362
• Gates, General, displaces Schuyler, 22;
• at Saratoga, 57-68, 122
• Gazette, The, of Buffalo, 373;
• of Pittsburgh, 416
• Genêt, 418
• George II., 17;
• portrait of, 282, 287
• George III., statue of, in Bowling Green, 194
• Germantown in the Revolution, 320
• Gibbs’s St. Martin in the Fields, 317
• Gilder, J. B., on New York City, 169-211
• Gilman, Governor, 69
• Girard College, 326
• Gist, Christopher, 394
• Gowanus, 213, 218, 233;
• Canal, 214
• Grant, Major, defeat of, 405
• Grant, Mrs., of Laggan, 18
• Grant’s Hill, fight at, 405
• Gravesend settled by English, 222
• Gray’s Ferry, Hessians at, 320
• Great Britain, wars with, 373-382, 411, 413
• Great Meadows, battle at, 399
• Greeley, Horace, 205
• Green, Ashbel, 292
• Greene, Gen. Nathaniel, 122;
• plans defensive works for Brooklyn, 232;
• in battle of Princeton, 276
• Greenwich, New Yorkers at, 188
• Griffin, La Salle’s vessel, 384
• Gustavus Adolphus and Usselinx, 335
• H
• Hale, Nathan, statue of, 195
• Half Moon, Hudson’s, 2, 3, 110, 170
• Hall, James, 35
• Hamilton, Alexander, 205;
• marriage of, 28;
• political principles of, 180;
• in Philadelphia, 320
• Hamilton, Governor, 252
• Hancock, John, 314, 412
• Hand, General, 276, 281, 412
• Harlem absorbed by New York, 188
• Harrison, Provost C. C., of University of Pennsylvania, 324
• Hart, John, Signer, 268
• Hasbrouck, Col. J., 121, 127
• Hasbrouck House, 126
• Hawley, Jesse, and the Erie Canal, 382
• Headley, J. T., 111, 135
• Helvetius, Madame, 310
• Henry, Joseph, 35, 292
• Hessians, at Trenton, 270-274;
• at Gray’s Ferry, 320
• Hiawatha, real story of, 81-83
• Hitchcock at battle of Princeton, 281
• Hodge, Mr., at Buffalo, 373
• Holland Land Company, 369
• Holland, laws of, 85;
• States-General of, 3, 71, 143
• Hollendare, Peter, 339
• Holy Trinity church, Wilmington, 350
• Hopkins, Stephen, 20
• Hopkinson, Francis, Signer, 269
• Houdon’s bust of Franklin, 308
• Howe, Admiral, 230, 271, 272
• Howe, Lord, 194;
• at New York, 230, 236;
• at Brooklyn, 239
• Howe, Lord Viscount, death of, 19, 22, 51
• Howells, W. D., 205
• Hudde at Fort Nassau, 337
• Hudson, Henry, 2, 3, 45, 110, 140, 142, 143, 164
• “Hugh Wynne,” 318
• Hunter, Governor, 14
• I
• Independence Hall, 157, 317
• Indians in history of Saratoga, 16 ff.;
• of Schenectady, 75-84, 91-93;
• of Buffalo, 369;
• of Pittsburgh, 394-411, 416
• Ingoldsby, Major, 48
• Ingoldsby, Richard, 112
• Iroquois, see Indians
• Irvine, Gen. Wm., 413
• Irving, Washington, 9, 30, 81, 110, 161-166, 205, 344;
• quoted, 146, 147
• J
• James, Duke of York, 175, 346
• James, Henry, 29
• James II., 91
• Jamestown, Va., 157
• Jay, John, 132, 180, 205
• Jefferson, Thomas, writes Declaration of Independence, 265, 318
• Jensen, Sally, 122
• Jogues, Father, 9, 76
• Johnson, Sir John, 97
• Johnson, Sir William, 17, 51, 52, 97
• Johnstown Flood, 421
• Jumel Mansion, 202-204
• Jumonville, death of, 399
• K
• Kalm, 314
• Kayadrossera patent, the, 45, 53, 55
• Keith, Governor, 327
• Kennedy, Colonel, 194
• Kennedy House, the, 197
• Kidd, Captain, 206
• Kieft, Governor, 336, 337
• King George’s War, 48
• King’s College, 179;
• see Columbia College
• Kip, Leonard, 29
• Kipling, Rudyard, 206
• Knickerbocker, Diedrich, 164
• Knoll, Rev. M. C., 116
• Knox, General, 122
• Knox, Lucy, 122
• Königsmark, rebellion of, 346
• Kosciuszko at Saratoga, 58
• Kossuth, Louis, 206
• L
• La Dauphine, Verrazzano’s ship, 2
• Lafayette, 28, 206;
• at Newburgh, 122, 132;
• at Princeton, 292;
• in the French Revolution, 418
• Lake Erie, battle of, 376
• Landon, J. S., on Schenectady, 71-106
• Larned at Saratoga, 62
• La Salle, 384
• Lawrenceville School, 295
• Le Brun, Napoleon, 330
• Le Couteulx, L. S., founds asylum, 370
• Lee, Bishop Alfred, 349, 350
• Lee, R. H., 266
• Leisler, Jacob, 91, 95, 177, 178
• L’Enfant, Capt. P. C., and plan for the National Capital, 368
• Lewis, Elizabeth, 352, 365
• Lexington, battle of, 20, 228, 411
• Li Hung Chang at New York, 206
• Lincoln, A., his body brought to New York, 204
• Lindstrom, P., Swedish engineer, 339, 341
• Livingston, Catherine, 25
• Livingston, Chancellor, 197, 205
• Livingston, Philip, 25, 30, 36
• Logstown and the Ohio Company, 394, 397
• London, Philadelphia compared with, 300
• Longfellow cited, 29, 83, 314
• Long Island, battle of, 229-240
• Lord, Rev. Dr. John, 389
• Louisburg, expedition against, 405
• Lovejoy, Mrs. Joshua, 377
• Lovelace, Lord, 107, 175, 176
• Low, Seth, Mayor of Brooklyn, 248
• Lundy’s Lane, battle of, 380
• Luther, Martin, 264
• Lutherans, German, at Newburgh, 108-117
• Lützen, battle of, 336
• Luzerne, French envoy, 288
• M
• Mabie, H. W., on Tarrytown, 137-167
• Maclean, John, 292
• Madison, James, 290, 291;
• quoted, 267
• Mahany, R. B., on Buffalo, 367-391
• Maidenhead, skirmish at, 276
• Maine, the, 244
• Manhattan, island of, 75, 80, 142, 169, 213, 214, 219
• Manhattanville absorbed by New York, 188
• Manning, Captain, 175
• Manning, James, 254
• Mantua, village of, 327
• Marquis Ito, 206
• Martin, Luther, 254
• Martin, Thomas, Madison to, 267
• Mather, Cotton, 221
• Mauritius, 3, 7
• Mawhood, Colonel, at Princeton, 280
• Mayflower, the, 4, 5, 110
• McCosh, President James, 295
• McKean, Governor, 358
• McKinly, President John, 355
• McMahon, James P., 390
• Megapolensis, Domine, 9
• Mercer at battle of Princeton, 279-283
• Messenger, The, of Ontario, 382
• Metropolitan Museum, N. Y., 208
• Meynders, Birgert, 118, 121
• Midwout, 219, 220
• Mifflin in battle of Princeton, 275
• Miles, Colonel, at Brooklyn, 235
• Miller, Rev. John, 10
• Minquas River, 337, 357
• Minuit, Peter, in New Netherlands, 172, 173, 336
• Mischienza, the, 316, 320
• Mohawks, see Indians
• Monmouth’s Rebellion, 302
• Montcalm, death of, 407
• Montgomery, Robert, 357
• Montreal, 178;
• massacre of, 46;
• capture of, 407
• Moravians come to Philadelphia, 302
• Morgan, Gen. Daniel, at Saratoga, 58-62
• Morgan, Col. George, to John Hancock, 412
• Morris, Gouverneur, 180, 205;
• favors Erie Canal, 382
• Morris, Robert, 288, 314;
• in the Trenton campaign, 275;
• house, 320
• Morristown, 285;
• Washington marches to, 283
• Morse, S. F. B., 35, 206
• Morven, 265, 271, 273
• Moses, Rhind’s statue of, 36
• Mount McGregor, 46, 48
• Music Fund Hall, Philadelphia, 325
• Myggenborg, see Elfsborg
• N
• Napier, General, cited, 381
• Nassau Hall, 254, 258, 264, 269, 270, 281, 294, 296
• Navy Yard, Brooklyn, 242-244
• New Amsterdam, 143, 144, 346;
• taken by the English, 175, 224;
• name changed to New York, 175, 187, 224;
• Buffalo first named, 367, 372
• Newburgh, Adelaide Skeel on, 107-135;
• the Palatine settlement, 107-117;
• the coming of the Scotch and English, 117-121;
• in the Revolution, 121-126;
• Washington’s stay in, 126;
• the Nicola letter, 127;
• capture of Ettrick, 128-130;
• Washington’s address to the unpaid troops, 131;
• recent history, 132-135
• New Castle, Del., 364
• New Netherlands, fur trade in, 71
• New Utrecht, 216
• New York, 271, 317;
• J. B. Gilder on, 169-211;
• Dutch settlement, 169-175;
• captured by the English, 175;
• recaptured by the Dutch, 175;
• governorship of Andros, 176;
• resumption of Dutch authority, 177;
• Leisler’s rule, 177;
• in the Revolution, 178-184;
• in the War of 1812, 184-186;
• in the Civil War, 186;
• expansion of, 187-189;
• the Tammany Society, 189;
• historic survivals in, 190-204;
• characteristics of, 204-211
• New York Central Railroad, 78
• New York University, 207, 211
• Niagara, Shirley’s expedition against, 51
• Niagara Falls, 369, 386
• Nicola, Colonel, letter to Washington, 127, 132
• Nicolls, Colonel, at New Amsterdam, 175, 177, 224
• Nieu Nederlandt, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9
• Niles, Nathaniel, 254
• Nott, President E., 105, 106
• O
• Ohio Company formed, 397
• “Old French War,” 96
• Old Jersey, the ship, 242
• Old Swedes’ Church, Wilmington, 350-352
• Oxenstiern revives the Usselinx charter, 336
• P
• Paige, E. W., cited, 83
• Paine, Thomas, 205
• Palatines, at Newburgh, 108-117;
• at Philadelphia, 302
• Palmer, the sculptor, 36
• Paris, treaty of, 97;
• New York compared with, 317
• Parker, Judge, 36
• Paterson, William, 252, 290
• Patton, President, of Princeton, 295
• Paulding, J., 160
• Paulding, J. K., 110
• Penn, John, house of, 312
• Penn, Letitia, house of, 304
• Penn, William, 333;
• founds Philadelphia, 298-307, 316;
• grants charter to Wilmington, 353
• Penn family’s charter to Pennsylvania annulled, 413
• Pennsylvania, charter to, 413;
• dispute with Va., 414
• Pennsylvania Historical Society, 323
• Pennsylvania Hospital, 314
• Pepper, Dr. William, services to the University of Pennsylvania, 324
• Percy, Lord, at Brooklyn, 236
• Perry, Commodore, 376
• Philadelphia, Talcott Williams on, 297-334;
• geographical site, 297;
• early houses, 298;
• coming of William Penn, 300-302;
• rapid growth of city, 302-317;
• in the Revolution, 317-320;
• between 1790 and 1820, 320-323;
• history of water supply, 323;
• the University of Pennsylvania, 324;
• the city before the Civil War, 325-329;
• modern Philadelphia, 329-334
• Philadelphia Library, 306
• Philips, Frederick, and his Manor, 145-151
• Phipps, Henry, conservatory of, 424
• Pilgrims compared with Palatines, 113
• Pitt, William, statue of, 194;
• befriends colonies, 404
• Pittsburgh, S. H. Church on, 393-426;
• site determined by Washington, 393;
• first permanent settlement, 397;
• taken by French, 399;
• the Braddock expedition, 399-404;
• English take Fort Duquesne and name it Pittsburgh, 406;
• Indians attack, 409;
• in the Revolution, 411-413;
• becomes the county seat, 414;
• in the Indian war of 1791, 416;
• the Whiskey Insurrection, 417;
• incorporated, 418;
• the strike of 1877, 420;
• industrial importance, 422;
• higher life of, 423-426
• Plymouth Rock, 6
• Poe, Edgar Allan, 205
• Polhemus, Rev. Mr., at Brooklyn, 220, 221
• Pontiac, confederacy of, 408
• Poor at Saratoga, 62
• Porter, General P. B., in War of 1812, 378, 381;
• favors Erie Canal, 382
• Pratt Institute, 248
• Prince of Wales, 206
• Princess Eulalia, 206
• Princeton, W. M. Sloane on, 251-296;
• first settlement, 251;
• College of New Jersey established at Elizabethtown, 252;
• removed to Princeton, 254;
• parting from Yale, 254;
• early character, 256-260;
• Witherspoon and his administration, 260-266;
• Revolutionary spirit in, 266-270;
• the Trenton campaign, 272;
• battle of Princeton, 274-284;
• mutinous Continentals at, 285;
• Congress meets at, 286;
• Washington’s visits to, 287;
• contributions to the Convention of 1787, 289-291;
• modern Princeton, 291-296
• Prinz, John, in New Sweden, 339-342
• Pruyn, John V. L., 35, 36
• Putnam, at Brooklyn, 234;
• at Philadelphia, 272;
• at Princeton, 285
• Putnam, Gideon, at Saratoga, 69
• Putnam, Harrington, on Brooklyn, 213-249
• Q
• Quassaick, 107, 114, 118, 127, 128
• Quebec, capture of, 407
• Queen Anne, 108;
• gives bell to Lutherans at Newburgh, 115, 117
• Queen Anne’s War, 48, 96
• Queen Charlotte, British war vessel, 375
• Queen Charlotte, portrait of, 184
• Queen’s Head Tavern, 184
• Queenstown in War of 1812, 380
• R
• Raymond, President, of Union College, 106
• Red Jacket in War of 1812, 380
• Rensselaerswyck, 8, 28, 73, 80, 81, 87
• Revolution, Philadelphia in the, 318
• Reynolds, Marcus, quoted, 28
• Rhind’s statue of Moses, 36
• Riall, General, burns Buffalo, 377;
• retreats, 380, 381
• Richardson, H. H., 31, 424
• Richardson, William, 390
• Richmond Hill, 202
• Riedesel, Madame, 64, 65
• Ripley, General, at Fort Erie, 381
• Rising, John Claudius, 341
• Rittenhouse, 314;
• his observatory, 318
• Roe, E. P., 135
• Rogers, Wm. F., 390
• Romeyn, Domine, 102, 103
• Roosevelt, Governor, cited, 178
• Ross house, the Betsy, 316
• Rudman, Pastor, cited, 345
• Ruttenber, E. M., 135
• Ryan, Bishop S. V., 389
• Ryswyck, peace of, 95
• S
• St. Augustine, 157
• St. Clair, defeat of, 416
• St. Francis de Sales, Order of, 28
• St. George’s church, Schenectady, 101
• St. John, Mrs., 377
• St. Luke’s church, Philadelphia, 326
• St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia, 326
• St. Martin in the Fields, Gibbs’s, 317
• St. Paul’s chapel, New York, 201, 202
• St. Peter’s church, Albany, 19, 32
• Santo Domingo, 357
• Saratoga, E. H. Walworth on, 39-69;
• site of, 39-42;
• the name, 42-44;
• French and Indian struggles for site, 45-48;
• massacre of old Saratoga, 49;
• Seven Years’ War, 50-52;
• medicinal value of Saratoga waters discovered, 52;
• the Fort Stanwix Conference, 53;
• preliminary warfare of the American Revolution, 54-56;
• Burgoyne’s defeat and surrender, 56-68;
• General Schuyler makes old Saratoga his summer resort, 68;
• Gideon Putnam founds the present Saratoga, 69
• Sassoonan, 397
• Schaets, Rev. Gideon, 89
• Schenectady, 16, 29, 46;
• J. S. Landon on, 71-106;
• settled, 71;
• subject to the Dutch West India Company, 71-73;
• Arendt Van Curler’s directorship, 75-83;
• land purchased from the Indians, 83;
• character of the early settlement, 83-87;
• under English rule, 87-90;
• the first legislative assembly, 90;
• government seized by Leisler, 91;
• Indian wars, 92-96;
• Schenectady in the Revolution, 97-99;
• religious history, 100-103;
• modern history, 104-106
• Schenley, Mary, 424
• Schermerhoorn, Symon, 16
• Schonowe, 79, 81
• Schoonmaker, Domine, 226
• Schute, Swen, 343, 365
• Schuyler, Elizabeth, marriage of, 28
• Schuyler, Margaret, 29
• Schuyler, Peter, 12, 46
• Schuyler, Philip, shot by Indians, 49
• Schuyler, Gen. Philip, 19, 22, 23, 27, 28;
• in battle of Saratoga, 58-68;
• visits Saratoga Springs, 68
• Schuyler, Mrs. Philip, 18
• Schuyler Mansion, 27
• Schuylerville, 22, 41
• Scott, Walter, 162
• Scott, Gen. Winfield, in War of 1812, 378, 381
• Selyns, Rev. H., at Brooklyn, 221
• Seneca Chief, first boat on Erie Canal, 382
• Seven Years’ War, 50
• Seymour, Governor, quoted, 22
• Shelton, Rev. Dr. Wm., 389
• Sherman, Roger, 291
• Shipley, Elizabeth, 365
• Shipley, William, at Wilmington, 352, 365
• Shirley, expedition of, 51
• Six Nations, see Indians
• Skeel, Adelaide, on Newburgh, 107-135
• Skipper Block, 170
• Sleepy Hollow, 147, 164, 167
• Sloane, W. M., on Princeton, 251-296
• Sloughter, Governor, replaces Leisler, 177
• Smith, James M., 390
• Smithsonian Institution, 294
• Spaulding, E. G., introduces Legal-Tender Act, 391
• Spuyten Duyvil Creek, fight at, 170
• Squaw Island, the Detroit aground on, 374
• Stackpole, Dr., composes Yankee Doodle, 30
• Stanhope, Samuel, 292
• Stanwix, General, builds second Fort Pitt, 407
• Stark, General, 275;
• at Fort Edward, 66;
• at Princeton, 281
• Stedman, E. C., 205
• Steuben, 28;
• at Newburgh, 132
• Stirling, in battle of Long Island, 234-239;
• in Trenton campaign, 271
• Stockton, Richard, 252, 265, 269
• Stoddard, R. H., 205
• Stone, Gen. C. P., imprisoned at Fort Lafayette, 245, 246
• Strasburg Cathedral, 34
• Stuyvesant, Peter, at New Amsterdam, 9, 81, 144, 175-177, 218-221, 248;
• buys land west of the Delaware, 340;
• captures forts on the Delaware, 343
• Suffolk County in the Revolution, 228
• Sullivan, General, at Brooklyn, 235-237;
• at Princeton, 285
• Sunnyside, Washington Irving at, 162, 163
• Swedes, on the Delaware, 335-344;
• their church at Philadelphia, 301
• T
• Tammany Hall, history of, 189, 190
• Tarrytown, H. W. Mabie on, 137-167;
• described, 137-140;
• early Dutch settlements, 140-145;
• derivation of name, 146;
• the Philips Manor-House, 148-150;
• the old Dutch church, 150-156;
• Tarrytown in the Revolution, 157-160;
• capture of John André, 158-161;
• Washington Irving, 161-164
• Tatnall, Joseph, Washington visits, 357;
• gives clock to Wilmington, 359
• Tawasentha, Vale of, 29
• Taylor, Bayard, 205
• Tenacong, see Tinicum
• Thackeray, W. M., 206
• Thaw, Wm., generosity to Pittsburgh, 424
• Thesschenmaecher, Rev. Petrus, 88
• Ticonderoga, 19, 40, 51, 54, 233, 405
• Tiemann, Mayor, death of, 170
• Tifft house, the, 377
• Tilden, Samuel J., 205
• Tinicum, Prinz’s fort at, 340
• Torkillius, Rev. R., at Fort Christina, 338, 365
• Townsend, Charles, 384
• Townsend, Sam, 361
• Tran Hook, see Crane Hook
• Treaty of 1783, 289
• Trefalldigheet, 343
• Trent, Captain Wm., establishes first settlement at Pittsburgh, 397-399
• Trenton, battle of, 270-274
• Trinity Church, New York, 227
• Tryon, Governor, quoted, 56
• Tusculum, 271
• U
• Union College, 102-106
• University of Pennsylvania, 324
• University Settlement, New York, 208
• Usselinx, Wm., and his trading company, 335
• Utrecht, 216;
• treaty of, 96
• V
• Vallandigham, E. N., on Wilmington, 335-365
• Van Curler, Arendt, at Schenectady, 75-84, 92
• Vanderheyden Palace, 30
• Van Rensselaer, Killiaen, 8, 75
• Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 25
• Van Rensselaer Island, 4
• Van Rensselaer Manor-House, 25, 26
• Van Slechtenhorst, Brandt, 9
• Van Twiller, Walter, 336
• Van Wart, Isaac, 160
• Van Wyck house, 132
• Van Wyck, James, 132
• Verplanck house, 131
• Verrazzano, 2
• Versailles, peace of, 289
• Virginia, dispute with Pennsylvania, 414
• Vliessingen, see Flushing
• Von Königsmark, 346
• Von Steuben, see Steuben
• W
• Waalboght, 213
• Wadsworth, Colonel, 122
• Wallabout, village of, 224, 233, 242
• Walk-in-the-Water, first steamboat on Lake Erie, 384
• Walworth, E. H., on Saratoga, 39-70
• War of 1812, see various chapters
• Washington, plan of city, 187, 368
• Washington, George, and the site of Pittsburgh, 393;
• at Great Meadows, 399;
• with Braddock, 404;
• opens road to Fort Duquesne, 405;
• at Schenectady, 98;
• in battle of Long Island, 238-240;
• at Trenton and Princeton, 270-290;
• at Saratoga, 69;
• in New York, 181, 182, 194, 197-202;
• at Newburgh, 114, 122, 126-131;
• visits Wilmington, 355-358;
• instructions to St. Clair, 416;
• plan for the National Capital, 367;
• quoted, 1, 23, 238
• Watkins, Rev. H., 118
• Wayne, Anthony, 125, 286, 416
• Webb, Captain Thomas, 101
• Weigand’s Tavern, Newburgh, 126
• Wesley, John, 101
• Western University of Pennsylvania, 416
• West India Company, 143, 173
• West Point, 122, 160, 378
• Whiskey Insurrection, 417
• Whitefield, George, 256
• Whitman, Walt, 205
• William and Mary, 91
• William III., 177
• William IV., 206
• Williams, David, 160
• Williams, Talcott, on Philadelphia, 297-334
• Williams College, 26
• Williams house, Newburgh, 122
• Williams, William I., 389
• Willing, Thomas, founds Wilmington, 352
• Willingstown, 352
• Willis, N. P., 110, 135
• Wilmington, E. N. Vallandigham on, 335-365;
• plans of Usselinx, 335;
• expedition of Minuit, 336;
• settlement on the Christina, 337;
• governorship of Prinz, 339;
• struggles of the Swedes and Dutch for the Delaware, 341-344;
• Dutch rule, 344-346;
• English supremacy, 346;
• friendly services of Wm. Penn, 346-349;
• Old Swedes’ church, 349;
• Wilmington laid out, 352;
• services of William Shipley, 352;
• the earlier city, 353-360;
• before and in the Civil War, 360-364;
• modern changes, 364
• Winthrop, Fitz John, 46
• Witherspoon, John, 254, 260-271, 290, 291
• Wiedrich, Michael, 390
• Wilkeson, Samuel, 384
• Wilkeson, John, 390
• Worth, Captain, in War of 1812, 381
• Wolfe, death of, 19, 52, 407
• Wolfert’s Roost, 161
• Wyncoop, Gitty, 122
• Wyoming Valley, 49
• Y
• Yale relations with Princeton, 254
• Yorktown, 127, 182
• Yorkville absorbed by New York, 188
• Z
• Zoölogical Garden, Philadelphia, 323

Edited by Lyman P. Powell. With introduction by George P. Morris. With 160 illustrations. 8ᵒ, gilt top, $3.50.

Contents: Portland, by Samuel T. Pickard; Rutland, by Edwin D. Mead; Salem, by George D. Latimer; Boston, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Edward Everett Hale; Cambridge, by Samuel A. Eliot; Concord, by Frank A. Sanborn; Plymouth, by Ellen Watson; Cape Cod Towns, by Katharine Lee Bates; Deerfield, by George Sheldon; Newport, by Susan Coolidge; Providence, by William B. Weeden; Hartford, by Mary K. Talcott; New Haven, by Frederick Hull Cogswell.

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“Petrarch is widely known as a poet of the Italian language whose love for Laura is immortalized in a long series of sonnets. It was an admirable idea for Prof. Robinson to translate for us a selection from the letters of Petrarch, and to intersperse their thoughtful and scholarly, fresh and interesting, notes and comments.”—N. Y. Times.

Studies of the Home Life of Certain Writers and Thinkers. By Marion Harland, author of “Some Colonial Homesteads and Their Stories,” “Where Ghosts Walk,” etc. Put up in sets of two volumes each, in boxes. Fully illustrated. 16ᵒ.

The first issues will be:

In this series, Marion Harland presents, not dry biographies, but, as indicated in the sub-title, studies of the home-life of certain writers and thinkers. The volumes will be found as interesting as stories, and, indeed, they have been prepared in the same method as would be pursued in writing a story, that is to say, with a due sense of proportion.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, New York and London