Oass Book COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT THE HISTORY The City of Albany, NEW YORK, FROM fSCOVERY OF THE GREAT RIVER IN 1524, BY VERRAZZANO, TO THE PRESENT TIME ARTHUR JAMES WEISE, M. A. ^ . ■• ^ 1884, ^Ji / E. H. BENDER ALBANY : 71 & 73 STATE STREET Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by E. H. BENDER In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington (xV^v-r PREFACE. Although written two hundred and sixty years after the occupation of the site of the city of Albany by the first settlers, this work presents a number of facts con- tradicting certain statements respecting that event and others preceding it. It will be seen in the first chapter that Henry Hudson, the English navigator, was not the discoverer nor the first explorer of the river which now bears his name. The Grande River, as the Hudson was first geographically designated, was discovered in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, who had been commissioned to make discoveries of new countries by Francis I., king of France. Shortly afterward it was ascended to its navigable height by French seamen trading for furs with the Indians living on its shores. The title of the French to the discovered territory was perfected by occupation. Early in the sixteenth century they built, as it appears, two forts, one on the island where the city of New York is, and another on Castle Island, near the site of Albany. When the first vessel conveying emigrants from Amsterdam, Holland, to the country of the Grande River reached the mouth of the noble stream, the officer of the French barque, anchored there, not only declared the fact of the previous possession of the attractive domain by his countrymen but peremptorily forbade the occupation of this part of New France by the Dutch usurpers. IV PREFACE. Remarkable as it is true, the greater number of the first settlers of Albany were Walloons, — French people. Hitherto the year 1623, instead of 1624, has erroneously been given as the date of the planting of the first colony on the site of the city of Albany. The peculiar prominence of Albany as the council- place of the Indians and the English governors of the American provinces in the colonial period; its peculiar geographical position as the military gate-way of the country during the Indian and French wars and during the revolutionary struggle ; its selection as the place of the convocation of the first provincial congress which form- ulated a "plan of a proposed Union of the several col- onies ;" these and many other important facts make its history notable and attractive. The writer regrets that his subject-matter was by agreement limited to a certain number of pages, and that he was compelled to condense much of it into abridged statements. In ending the task of writing this, the first history of the city of Albany, I deem it a conscionable duty to pay a friend's tribute to the memory of Joel Munsell, deceased, the assiduous and painstaking compiler of the "Annals of Albany" and the "Collections on the His- tory of Albany." His unrequited industry evidently merits a public memorial from the citizens. It is a pleasure to remember personal courtesies. To Henry A. Homes, LL. D., the librarian of the General Library of the State of New York, to his assistant, George Rogers Howell, to Stephen B. Griswold, the librarian of the Law Library, to Berthold Fernow, keeper of the French, Dutch, and English records in the State Library, to W. Bayard Van Rensselaer, Theodore Town- ^end, and J. H. Van Antwerp of Albany; to Horatio Sey- PREFACE. V mour, LL. D., ex-governor of the State of New York, of Deerfield, Oneida County; to Dr. T. M. Coan of New York City; to DeWitt Clinton, librarian of the Young Men's Association Library, and to William H. Young of Troy; I am under many obligations for official ser- vices and desired information, Arthur James Weise. Troy, N. Y., August 2, 1884. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE. Discoveries and explorations. Giovanni da Verrazzano enters the bay of the Grande River. The French ascend the stream to its navigable height. Henry Hudson's voyage. The French chateau on Castle Island. Organization of the West India Company. . . I-IV CHAPTER II. Sailing of the Walloons and Dutch freemen to New Netherland. The site of the colony. Fort Orange. The Wilden. Van Kreicke- beek's partisanship. The patroons. The charter of exemptions and privileges. .......... 18-36 CHAPTER III. Kiliaen van Rensselaer. The territory of Rensselaerswyck. First set- tlers. Leases of land. Officers of the manor. The fur trade. Shell- money of the Indians. The patroon's instructions. . . 37-52 CHAPTER IV. The call of the Rev. Joannes Megapolensis, jr. Sketch of the Mohawk Indians. Father Jognes's captivity. Beeren Island fortified. The church at Fort Orange. Petrus Stuyvesant's directorship. " Wooden Leg's dogs." The burgerlijke oath. . . . . . 53-93 CHAPTER V. The troubles at Fort Orange. The dorpe Beverswyck. The tapsters' excise. Erection of the block-house church. Persecution of the Lutherans. The armed Mohawks. The village palisaded. The boschloopers. Anneke Janse Bogardus's will. . . . 94-134 CHAPTER VI. New Netherland coveted by the English. Its territory given to the duke of York and Albany. Surrender of the Dutch. Governor NicoUs's orders. The fort and village of Albany. . . . 135-152 CHAPTER VII. The province regained by the Dutch. Willemstadt. Immunities granted to the patroon. The head-church. Fort Nassau. New Netherland surrendered to the English. ...... 153-158 VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER VIII. PAGE. The village again named Albany. Indian hostilities. Militia laws. The Fuyck. Description of the place. The burghers. The house of peace. ... 159-183 CHAPTER IX. Manners and customs. Houses. Furniture. Occupations. Shops. Inns. Church-going. Festival days. Funerals. Marriages. . . 184-196 CHAPTER X. Charter of the city. The municipal officers. Rules and regulations. French invasion. Military preparations. . . . 197-215 CHAPTER XL A French project. The city to be attacked. Captain Bull's visit to Al- bany. Jacob Leisler's usurpation. The province disturbed. The massacre of the inhabitants of Schenectady. . . . 216-251 CHAPTER XII. Indian affairs. Albany described. Land taken from the Indians. Dic- tatorial power of royalty. The Five Nations. . . 262-269 CHAPTER XIII. The building of the stone-fort. Fugitive slaves. Schaihtecogue land. Invasion of Canada. A missionary's letter. . . . 2'70-28'7 CHAPTER XIV. Intemperance of the Indians. The trade of the frontier. Albany's geographical position. Another war with France. Description of the city 288-312 CHAPTER XV. The colonial congress. Military movements. The fur trade. Anglo- mania. .......... 313-332 CHAPTER XVI. The city's revenues. Fire precautions. A public whipper. Character istics of the people. Docks built. Masonic lodges. . 333-353 VIII TABLE OF COIN TENTS. CHAPTER XVII. PAGE. The revolution. The committee of superintendence and correspondence. Albany regiments. Reading of the Declaration of Independence. The invasion of Burgoyne. First meeting of the legislature in the city. Washington's visit. ...... 354-385 CHAPTER XVIII. The business of merchandizing. Stages. The opening of a theatre. A centennial celebration. A federal procession. The city described. Establishment of a bank. The trade of Albany. . . 386-423 CHAPTER XIX. The capital of the state of New York. Erection of a public building. A large fire. A new state-house built. The first steamboat on the Hudson. Albany in 1813. 424-457 CHAPTER XX. The city's wealth and prosperity. Celebration of the opening of the Erie canal. The Mohawk and Hudson railroad. The public schools. The new capitol. .... ... 45S-48C ADDENDA. Historical summary, 487-492 Churches, 493-606 Newspapers, 506-510 Mayors, 510-511 Banks, 511-512 Changed names of streets, 512-513 Census, 514 Free and Accepted Masons 513-514 Independent Order of Odd Fellows, ..... 514 Index 515-520 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. CHAPTER I. DISCOVERIES AND EXPLORATIONS. 1524-1623. On a bright day near the end of April, 1524, a num- ber of aborigines fishing in the lower bay of New York descried a strange object floating toward them from the sea. Much excited by the apparition, the amazed savages rapidly rowed to the neighboring islands to apprise the inhabitants of the extraordinary spectacle. Hundreds of inquisitive, fascinated faces were soon turned toward the mysterious thing. At first a wild speculation assumed it to be an unknown aquatic monster, then a less fanciful one conjectured it to be a large house drifting in from the sea. The slowly moving body was closely watched by the wondering crowds. As it approached they saw that it was an immense boat, filled with people and pro- pelled by wind-expanded cloths hung before poles rising high above its curiously shaped hull. The novel craft having found a suitable riding-place in the spacious haven cast her anchor in the sight of the excited natives, who, 2 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. with loud shouts of dehght, witnessed the first mooring of a European ship in this discovered roadstead. ^ The anchored vessel was the French ship, La Dau- phine, with a crew of fifty men, commanded by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an experienced navigator. Having been commissioned by Francis I., king of France, to seek a western sea-route to India and to make discoveries of new lands, he had sailed from the port of Dieppe late in the year 1523. Verrazzano had descried, on the eleventh of March, 1524, {old style,) the coast of North America, on the thirty-fourth parallel of north latitude. He had afterward explored the coast southwardly for fifty leagues, and then had turned and sailed northwardly, frequently going ashore to survey the country and to ac- quaint himself with the habits of the friendly natives. Eager to learn whether the bay in which his ship was anchored were not a part of a navigable strait through which he might sail to Cathay, in Eastern Asia, Verraz- zano ordered the ship's boat to be manned, and began the first exploration of the mighty river that poured its flood into the bay through the channel now called the Narrows. The gazing savages, seeing the boat moving toward the upper bay, hastened with renewed exclamations of de- light to the nearest shores to inspect more closely the un- known visitors. Here, partly clad with barbaric dresses of skins, birds' feathers and decorative wampum, the dusky-colored aborigines, with frequent signs and various calls, manifested their friendliness toward the explorers, who, in mid-stream, rowed by them. Entering the upper bay of New York, described by the delighted navigator as a most beautiful lake formed by the descending waters of the great river, Verrazzano 1 Vide The Rev. John Heckewelder's paper concerning an Indian tradi- tion of the first arrival of Europeans in New York Bay. Collections of the New York Historical Society. Second series, vol, i. pp. 71-74. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 3 perceived it to be an excellent harbor for the largest ves- sels, and the surrounding country an attractive region diversified by hills, in which he thought valuable min- erals might be found. Here the inquisitive Indians steered their canoes toward the boat, and, rowing around and about it, gazed at the fair faces and European dress of the strangers with the greatest curiosity and admira- tion. Suddenly a violent gale of wind from the direc- tion of the sea warned the circumspect navigator of his remoteness from the Dauphine, and he ordered the boat to be rowed to the distant ship, not a little displeased by the sudden termination of his pleasurable exploration of the beautiful bay. On the return of the explorers to the ship her anchor was weighed and the Dauphine put to sea, sailing north- wardly as far as the fiftieth parallel of north latitude, where she stood for France, and early in July arrived at the port of Dieppe, From this place, Verrazzano sent a letter to Francis I., dated on the eighth of the month, describing the New Land ' ' never before seen by men either in ancient or in modern times," which he had dis- covered and explored for more than eleven hundred miles. ^ In consequence of these discoveries, the northern part of the continent, extending along the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, was called by the French, La Nouvelle France (New France). The valu- able furs of the beaver, otter, marten, and other animals of the nev/ country induced certain French capitalists, merchants, and ship-owners to send a number of vessels to different parts of its coast to barter with the natives 1 Parts of the coasts of Labrador, Newfoundland, Cape Breton Island, and Nova Scotia had been discovered and explored by the Cabots in 149*7 and 1498. Gaspar Cortereal, in 1500 and 1501 had inspected parts of the coasts of Labrador and Newfoundland. 4 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. for peltry. Some of these barques sailed to the beautiful bay discovered by Verrazzano, and explored the Grande Eiver, as the Hudson was then called, to the height of its navigation. Here the friendly savages received the French fur- traders with a large-hearted hospitality, which greatly contributed to the success of the first ventures of these speculative Europeans. To enlarge and protect the exclusive traffic begun so advantageously with the abo- rigines of the different villages near the confluence of the two rivers, now known as the Mohawk and the Hud- son, the French undertook to build, about the year 1540, a fortified trading-house or castle on the long, low island, lying in the little bay, on the west side of the Grande River, near the site of the city of Albany, Unfor- tunately before the building was completed, the island was inundated by the flood of a great freshet. The partly erected walls of the chateau and the environing earthworks were so much damaged by the rushing water tha-t they were never repaired by the French, nor was the island any longer deemed habitable by them. These trading ventures of the French to the Grande River, dur- ing the sixteenth century, made them well acquainted with the topographical features of the adjacent country. On many of the maps of La Nouvelle France made dur- ing this period the noble stream is plainly represented from Sandy Hook to its navigable limits.^ The exploration of the Grande River by Henry Hudson in 1609, was suggested to the English navigator by infor- mation derived from published descriptions and maps of New France. It was confidently believed by many per- sons that in North America a navigable passage could be found through which vessels could pass to the Indian Ocean and sail to the Molucca or Spice Islands. Spain, 1 About one hundred and seventy-five miles from the ocean. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 5 England, Portugal, and France, in turn, had already sent their great sea-captains across the Atlantic to search for such a water-way to the East. Magellan, in 1520, found the strait which now bears his name and through it the ships of Spain passed to the Moluccas. ^ Certain wealthy commercial companies in the United Netherlands, in the latter part of the sixteenth century, fitted out ships and sent them to explore the ice-girdled ocean north of Europe for a navigable route to Asia. These perilous enterprises did not accomplish the purposes of the Dutch capitalists. Still the hope of finding a sea-path to the Orient stimu- lated other voyages of discovery in the same frigid field of the eastern hemisphere. An exploration of the Arctic Ocean, north of Novaya Zemlya, it was thought would result in the discovery of an open polar passage to Northern Asia, where a naviga- ble channel could be found by which vessels might sail southward into the interior of the continent. For the purpose of learning whether this conjecture were true the speculative managers of the Dutch East India Com- pany engaged Henry Hudson to command a vessel to be manned and equipped for the undertaking. ^ He set sail from Amsterdam, with a crew of twenty men, Dutch and English, on the twenty-fifth of March, 1609, {old style,) in the yacht, De Halve Maen, (The Half Moon,) of forty lasts or about eighty tons burden. Leaving the 1 Vide The discoveries of America to the year 1.525. By Arthur James Weise. New York, 1884. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 2 Hudson was unacquainted with the Dutch language, and he therefore employed Jodocus Hondius, a learned Hollander, to act as his interpreter in his conferences with the directors of the East India Company. Hondius as- sisted him in making the following contract with the Amsterdam chamber, to which instrument he and Hondius signed their names : "On this eighth of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and nine, the directors of the East India Company of the chamber of Amsterdam, of the ten years' reckoning, of the one part, and Mr. Henry Hudson, Englishman, assisted by Jodocus Hondius, of the other part, have Sagueual COPY OK A PART oF GtRARD MEKLAI..R ;, mah ..k THE WORLD, MADE AT DUISBURG IN 1 569. 6 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Texel, the English navigator steered northwardly, and, after doubling North Cape on the coast of Norway, stood for Novaya Zenilya. On this last course Hudson encount- ered a barrier of ice which compelled him to relinquish the purpose he had in view. Unwilling to return to Hol- land without making an attempt to reach India by sail- agreed in manner following, to wit : That the said directors shall in the first place equip a small vessel or yacht of about thirty lasts [about sixty tons] burden, with which, well provided with men, provisions and other necessa- ries, the aforenamed Hudson shall, about the first of April, sail, in order to search for a passage by the north, around by the north side of Novaya Zemlya, and shall continue thus along that parallel until he shall be able to sail south- ward to the latitude of sixty degrees. He shall obtain as much knowledge of the lands as can be done without any considerable loss of time, and if it be possible return immediately, in order to make a faithful report and rela- tion of his voyage to the directors, and to deliver over his journals, log-books and charts, together with an account of every thing whatsoever which shall happen to him during the voyage, without keeping any thing back ; for which said voyage the directors shall pay to the said Hudson, as well as for his outfit for the said voyage as for the support of his wife and children, the sum of eight hundred guilders ; [about three hundred and twenty dollars ;] and, in case (which God prevent) he do not come back or arrive here- abouts within a year, the directors shall further pay to his wife two hundred guilders in cash ; and thereupon they shall not be further liable to him or his heirs, unless he shall either afterward or within the year arrive and have found the passage good and suitable for the company to use ; in which case the directors will reward the aforenamed Hudson for his dangers, trouble, and knowledge in their discretion, with which the before-mentioned Hudson is content. And in case the directors think proper to prosecute and con- tinue the same voyage, it is stipulated and agreed with the aforenamed Hudson, that he shall make his residence in this country with his wife and children, and shall enter into the employment of no other than the company, and this at the discretion of the directors, who also promise to make him satisfied and content for such further service in all justice and equity. All without fraud or evil intent. " In witness of the truth, two contracts are made hereof, of the same tenor, and are subscribed by both parties and also by Jodocus Hondius, as interpreter and witness, " Dated as above. " Dirk van Os. "J. Poppe. "Henry Hudson. "Jodocus Hondius, " witness." Vide Henry Hudson in Holland. By Henry C. Murphy. The Hague, 1859. pp. 34-36. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY„ 7 ing in a different direction, he gave his officers and crew the choice of two proposals : "The first was to go to the coast of America at the fortieth degree of latitude, mostly incited to this by letters and maps which a certain Captain Smith had sent him from Virginia, and in which he showed him a sea by which he might circumnavigate their southern colony [in Virginia] from the north, and from there pass into a western sea. The other proposal was to seek the pas- sage by Davis's Strait." ^ Hudson's men preferred to make the first voyage, partly influenced by what had been suggested in the communications of Captain John Smith, and partly by a desire to avoid the lower temperature of the more north- ern region of the continent. The so-called Western Sea, which it was thought Hudson could reach by sailing- through some unexploi-ed passage extending to it from the Grrande River, is exhibited on the map of America made by Michael Locke, the English cartographer, in 1582. ^ On this fan- shaped chart it is designated Mare de Verrazana 1524 (Sea of Verrazzano 1524). North of it the Gi'ande River is represented as an outlet of the St. Lawrence River. ^ The Half Moon, having taken on board a supply of fresh water at the Faroe Islands, sailed westward toward 1 Belgische ofte Nederlandsche oorlogen ende geschiedenissen begin- nende van 't jaer 1595 tot 1611, mede vervatende enighe gebueren handel- inghe. Beschreven door Emanuel van Meteren. Gedruckt op Schotlant buyten Danswyck by Hermes van Loven. 1611. boek xxx. fol. 32*7. 3 Locke's map, dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, was used by Richard Hakluyt, the English collector and publisher of voyages and travels, to illus- trate his work entitled : Divers voyages touching the discouerie of America. London, 1582. Vidf The discoveries of America to the year 1525. By Ar- thur James Weise. New York, 1884. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 3 As late as the year 1625, the Dutch explorers of the Grande River were ignorant of its course beyond the height of its navigation. Joannes de Laet, the Dutch historian, remarks : "Judging from appearances, this river ex- tends to the great river St. Lawrence, or Canada, for our skippers assure us 8 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Newfoundland. On the third of July the yacht came among some French vessels taking cod on the fishing banks. Sailing southward, the explorers approached the peninsula of Virginia, ' ' in latitude 37° 45', " says Van Meteren, the Dutch historian, writing two years after the voyage. ' ' They then held their course along the coast until they reached, in latitude 40° 45', a good entrance between two headlands. Here they discovered and entered, on the twelfth of September [1609, old style,'] as beautiful a river as could be found, very wide and deep, with good anchorage along both shores. They ascended it with their large vessel as high as 42° 40', and went still higher with the ship's boat.^ At the mouth of the river they found the natives brave and warlike, but beyond, up to the highest point of the stream, friendly and hospitable, having great numbers of skins and furs, as those of martens and foxes, and many other commodi- ties, birds, fruits, and even white and blue grapes. They treated these people civilly and brought away a little of whatever they found among them.*' When the Half Moon, on the warm afternoon of the nineteenth of September, cast her anchor and swung with the tide, near the site of the city of Albany, the observ- ing Indians, well aware from their intercourse of nearly a century with the seamen of France what would be most acceptable to the officers and men on the strange that the natives come to the fort [Fort Orange, the site of Albany] from that river, and from Quebec and Tadoussac." — Nieuwe Wereldt ofte beschrijvinghe van West Indien. Door Joannes de Laet. Tot Leyden, 1625. boek iii. cap. ix. Vide Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. i. p. 399. 1 The Dudley Observatory in the city of Albany, about three-fourths of a mile north of the Capitol, is in -1:2° 39' 50" north latitude, and in 3° 15' 26" east longitude from Washington ; and in 73° 44' 49" west longitude from Greenwich. 2 Belgische ofte Nederlantsche oorlogen ende geschiedenissen beginnen de van 't jaer 1595 tot 1611. boek xxx. fol. 32*7. Vide Henry Hudson in Hol- land by Henry C. Murphy. Appendix, pp. 62-65. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 9 vessel, hastily carried to their canoes clusters of wild grapes, a few pumpkins, some otter and beaver skins, and rowed to the yacht. Having reached her deck they readily bartered their commodities for beads, knives, hatchets, and other things. Hudson, desiring to know whether he could sail farther northward, sent his mate and four men the next day to take soundings. They went up the river two leagues and found the depth of the water to be two fathoms, and the channel very narrow. On the third day while the carpenter was on land making a fore-yard, Hudson in- vited several Indian chiefs to partake of some wine and strong liquor in the cabin of the Half Moon. These were freely imbibed by his guests and in a short time the In- dians were tipsy and one drunk. A merry chief had his wife with him, but she with womanly propriety de- meaned herself so modestly that her behavior was admir- ingly observed by Hudson and his officers. On the afternoon of the fourth day a delegation of Indians visited the vessel and presented Hudson with a quantity of tobacco and some wampum. One of the number made an oration, on the conclusion of which the savages placed a large platter of venison before the navi- gator who courteously eat a part of the cooked meat. The delighted Indians then bowed reverently before him and left the vessel. Late that night Hudson's mate and four of the crew returned from the upper part of the river where they had been during the day taking soundings. At the distance of about eight leagues from the vessel's anchorage they had found the water quite shallow and not deep enough for the draught of the Half Moon. This report satisfied Hudson that Captain John Smith's expectations of his finding a navigable passage to India in that direction 10 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. were false, and he therefore determined to return to Hol- land. At noon on the _^twenty-third of September, the yacht's small anchor was weighed, and the Half Moon sailed down the river on the homeward voyage. On the fourth of October she left the lower bay at Sandy Hook, and stood for England. On the seventh of November she arrived at Dartmouth, from which place Hudson sent the report of his voyage to the East India Company.^ Giving little consideration to the English navigator's description of the^physical features and chief j)roductions of the country of the Grande^ River, the money-making managers zealously furthered the company's commer- cial interests in other parts of the world. Some of the Dutch seamen who had made the voy- age with Hudson wisely inferring that a venture to the Grande River for furs would profitably remunerate those investing money in such an enterprise, advised certain merchants of Amsterdam to send a vessel to the river to procure a cargo of peltry. This advice induced a num- ber of capitalists to fit out a ship, which, in 1610, sailed to the river and obtained a large quantity of furs, which were sold in Holland at high prices. Several similar ventures were afterward made which were highly profit- ble in their returns. While trading with the "'Maquaas," ^ at the height of the river's navigation, the Dutchmen learned that the French had been coming for many years to traffic there for furs. Besides giving the Dutch, traders this informa- tion the friendly aborigines showed them the ruins of the chateau on Castle Island. The sagacious Hollanders, hav- ing inspected the dilapidated castle, took measurements 1 p^idc Purchas his Pilgrimes. London, 1625. part iii. pp. 593, 594. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. vol. i. pp. 139, 140. 2 The " Maquaas " were also called " Maikans," and " Mahakuaas," by the Dutch. These Indians are more familiarly known as the Mohawks. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 11 of its walls and outworks, thinking, perhaps, that the structure might be made serviceable to them should they at any time occupy the country. To obtain the license and protection of the govern- ment of the United Netherlands the merchants and skip- pers interested in these voyages petitioned the Lords States General to be permitted exclusively to visit and traffic with the natives of this part of America. In their prayer they set forth that after great expense, risk, loss of ves- sels and other reverses during the year 1614, they had discovered, with five ships, " certain new lands situate in America, between New France and Virginia, being the sea-coast between the fortieth and forty-fifth parallels of north latitude, and now called Nieu Nederlandt (New Netherland)." ^ With this petition they presented an embellished map ( caerte ) representing the territory of Nieu Nederlandt. ^ Inconsiderately the so-called discov- 1 Nieuwe Wereldt. De Laet. boek. iii. cap. vii. Holland documents in the General Library of the State of New York. vol. i. pp. 39-46. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. i. p. 291. 2 This highly elaborated map, in the General Library of the State of New York, in Albany, bears the inscription : " The original carte figurative, of which the above is an accurate fac-simile, was found on the 26th of June, 184:1, in the loket-kas of the States General, in the royal archives at the Hague. It was annexed to the memorial presented to the States General, on the 18th August, 1616, by the 'Bezuindhebbers van Nieuiv Nederlandt,' pray- ing for a special octroy according to the placaat of 27 March, 1614 ; and is referred to in the memorial as shewing the extent of the discoveries made by schipper Cornells Hendricxx. of Munnikendam, in a small yacht of 8 lasts burden, named the Onrust which the memoralists had caused to be built in New Netherland. Copie d'aprh I' original par P. H. Loffelt. La Haye. Juillet, 1841. The Hague, 2*7 th July, 1841, J. Romeyn Brodhead, agent of the State of New York." Although subscribing his name to this statement, Brodhead afterward wrote as follows : "I think, however, that it was actually prepared two years before, from the data furnished by Block immediately after his return to Holland, and that it was exhibited to their high mightinesses for the first time on the 11th of October, 1614. The charter granted on that day to the directors of New Netherland expressly refers to a ' Figurative map prepared {getratisfigeert) by them,' which described the sea-coasts between the fortieth and forty-fifth degrees of latitude. This the parchment map clearly does. 12 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. erers of this part of New France inscribed the following information on the chart, immediately above the site of the city of Albany. "But as far as one can understand from what the Maquaas [ Mohawks ] say and show, the French come with sloops as high up as to their country to trade with them. ^ The site of the ruins of the French chateau, on Castle Island, which the Indians had shown the Dutch traders, was also represented on the map. They called the fortifi- cation Fort Nassau, in honor of Prince Maurice of Nassau, the stadtholder of the United Provinces, and placed the following descriptive memoranda near it : ' ' Fort Nas- sau is fifty-eight feet wide between the walls in the quad- rangle ; the moat is eighteen feet wide." — " The house in- side the fort is thirty-six feet long and twenty-six wide."^ The ignorance of the Dutch settlers of Albany re- specting the nationality of the builders of the fort on Castle Island gave currency to various conjectures. By some it was assumed that the Spaniards had built the It, moreover, defines New Netherland as lying between New France and Virginia, according to the description in the charter. The map was prob- ably presented a second time on the 18th of August, 1616, when the directors of New Netherland exhibited their memorial for a further charter, to which it was attached." — History of the State of New York. By John Romeyn Brodhead. New York, 18.53. vol. i. Appendix. Note. p. 7.56. "This map" says Brodhead, "is undoubtedly one of the most interest- ing memorials we have. It is about three feet long, and shows very mi- nutely the course of the Hudson River from Manhattan to above Albany, as well as a portion of the seacoast ; and contains likewise curious notes and memoranda about the neighboring Indians, the work, perhaps, of one of the companions of Hudson, * * * made within five years of the discovery of our river, its fidelity of delineation is scarcely less remarkable than its high antiquity." — John Romeyn Brodhead's address before the New York Historical Society, Nov. 20, 1844. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. 1845. p. 16. 1 " Ma so vele men heeft connen verstaen uyt V seggen ende beduyen van de Maquaas so cometi de Fra>i(oysen met shncpen tot hovein aen haer land met haerhiy haudelen." 3 '■^ Fort van iVassoureen is binnen de I'allen jS voeten wydt in 't vier- cant ; de gracht is zvydt i8 voeien." "7 huijs is jb voeten la7ich en 2b wyt in 't fori." THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. J 3 castle. But this supposition did not seem plausible for there was no historical evidence that the Spaniards had ascended the river to the height of its navigation. The two Labadist missionaries, Jaspar Bankers and Peter Slu5^ter, visiting Albany, in 1680, speak of the ruins of the fort and of the conjecture concerning the people v^'ho built it : "In the afternoon, [Sunday, April 28,] we took a walk to an island, upon the end of which there is a fort, built, they say, by the Spaniards. That a fort has been there was evident from the earth thrown up, but it is is not to be supposed that the Spaniards came so far in- land to build forts, when there are no monuments of them to be seen down on the sea-coasts, where, however, they have been according to the tradition of the Indi- ans." * The petition of the Dutch fur-traders was favorably considered by the Lords States General. They granted them, on the eleventh of October, 1614, a special license to make four voyages to the country called by them Nieu Nederlandt, "within the period of three years, to begin on the first day of January, 1615, or sooner," Having obtained the exclusive privilege to traffic with the natives of New Netherland, the company sent Hen- drik Corstiaenssen, ^ an experienced skipper of Amster- dam, in 1615, to Prince Maurice's River, {Riviere van den vorst Mauritius,) as the Grande or Hudson River was 1 Journal of a voyage to New York and a tour in several of the American colonies in 1679 and 1680, by Jaspar Bankers and Peter Sluyter of Wiewerd, in Friesland. Translated from the original manuscript, in the Dutch lan- guage, for the Long Island Historical Society, by Henry C. Murphy. Memoirs of Long Island Hist. Soc. 1867. vol. i. p. 318. 3 The terminations se and sen were used by the Dutch as suffixes to the father's name to designate the child's relation. Thus Corstiaens.fi?« signified the son of Corstiaens ; Pietenr^ the son of Pieter ; ]3.nsen, the son of Jan ; Rutgerj^w the son of Rutger ; Eve Albert-f^" Bratt, Eve, the daughter of Albert Bratt ; Anna Dirkj;? van Vechten, Anna, the daughter of Dirk van Vechten 14 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. designated on the map of 161 -i, with orders to occupy Castle Island and to repair the damaged walls of the French chateau. Having removed the debris, he rebuilt the dilapidated parts of the structure. A garrison of a dozen Dutch soldiers was then placed in it. To render Fort Nassau defensible against any attack of the Indians, two small cannons {gotelinghen) and eleven stone swivel- guns, (steen stucken,) used on ships, were put in position within the earthworks. ^ During the period of three years in which the company was privileged to trade with the natives of New Nether- land, the only known instance of any bad feeling mani- fested by the latter toward the Dutch, was on the return of a young savage, named Orson, from Holland, who had gone there with Adriaen Block, a Dutch navigator. "This exceedingly malignant wretch," as he is designated by a contemporaneous Dutch historian, cherished a deep resentment toward Hendrik Corstiaenssen, and, at his first opportunity, shot the commander of Fort Nassau. However, before he got beyond the range of a bullet, he was made to pay the penalty of his blood-thirstiness. ^ Corstiaenssen's subordinate officer, Jacob Elkens, was then placed in command of Fort Nassau. The latter remained in charge of the post until the spring of 1618, when a great freshet again inundated Castle Island, and injured the fort so much that it was abandoned by the Dutch, and never again occupied by them.'^ When the exclusive trading privileges of the company ceased, in 1618, several vessels were permitted by the Lords 1 Nieuwe Wereldt. De Laet. boek. iii. cap. vii. ix. Albany records, in the General Library of the State of New York. vol. xxiv. fol. 167. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. i. pp. '291, 299. 2 Historische verhael door Nicolaes a Wassenaer. Amsterdam, 1621- 1632. deel viii. fol. 85. Documentary history of New York. vol. iii. p. 26. 3 Niewue Wereldt. De Laet. boek iii. cap. ix. Albany records, vol. xxiv. fol. 167. , THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 15 States General to be sent to the Mauritius River to ob- tain furs. The information which the fur traders carried to Hol- land concerning the salubrity of the climate of New Netherland, the fertility of its virgin soil, the numerous water- courses irrigating the country, the excellence of the growing timber, the abundance of fish in the streams, the great flocks of fowl, the vast number of wild animals, the profusion of good fruit, and the surprising friend- liness of the natives, inclined a number of the inhabi- tants of the Netherlands to think of emigrating to the attractive region. Among the first to express a desire to go as colonists to New Netherland was a body of Puritans from England, living in the city of Ley den. Speaking- through their pastor, the Rev. John Robinson, they made known to some of the merchants formerly trading in New Netherland their willingness to remove to the- new country, provided that they should be protected by the government of the Netherlands. The merchants to whom the application had been made, addressed a let- ter, in February, 1620, to the prince of Orange and a memorial to the Lords States General, expressing the desire of the Puritans to become colonists of New Neth- erland and soliciting the privilege of transporting the lat- ter to the place selected, should their high mightinesses comply with the prayer of the petitioners. For some unknown reason the request was not granted, and conse- quently it happened that another and a less inviting part of North America obtained the historical distinction of being settled by the Puritans. ^ The remarkable prestige which the Dutch East India Company had acquired by its extensive commerce and extraordinary earnings now induced a number of wealthy ] Hoi. doc. vol. i. fol. 94-98, 103. 16 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. merchants of Holland to apply to the Lords States G-en- eral for the exclusive privilege of sailing and trafficking within the territorial limits of certain countries over which the government of the Netherlands had assumed jurisdiction. The charter incorporating the Dutch West India Company was given, on the third of June, 1621, under the great seal of the Lords States General. The exclusive privileges conferred by this instrument pei-- mitted the ships of the company to traffic on the coast and in the interior of Africa from the tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope, in America and the West Indies, for a term of tjwenty-four years, beginning the first day of July, 1621. To this corporation was granted the power to make contracts, engagements, and alliances with the rulers and people of the countries designated in the charter, to build forts, to appoint and discharge offi- cers, to advance the settlement of unoccupied territory, to enlarge the channels of commerce and to multiply the sources of revenue. The Lords States General required the company to communicate to them, from time to time, such contracts and alliances as it might make, and to inform them respecting the situation of all the fortresses and settle- ments erected by its agents. In the appointment of civil and military officers and in giving instructions to them, their high mightinesses were to be consulted, and all commissions of its officers were to be issued under the seal and authority of the Lords States General. If troops were needed their high mightinesses were to furnish them, but they were to be paid and supported by the company. The charter intrusted the government of the corporation to five chambers of managers. These cham- bers and the government of the Netherlands were repre- sented by a college of nineteen persons, of which number THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 17 eight were from the Amsterdam chamber, four from the Zeeland, two from the Maas, two from the North Hol- land, and two from the Friesland. The government had one representative. A commercial and colonization company invested with such extensive powers as were conferred on the incor- porators of the West India Company by this patent needed no little time for organization. Therefore its di- rectors were not prepared to prosecute the purposes of its incorporation with any noteworthy enterprise until the twenty-first of June. 1623, when the rules and regu- lations of the company were formally approved by the Lords States General. ^ 1 Hoi. doc. vol. i. fol. ] 04—106. Groot placaat boek. vol. i. fol. 566. CHAPTER II. FORT ORANGE. 1624-1629. After perfecting their plans of colonization, the direc- tors of the West India Company had not long to wait for a desirable body of emigrants to accept the offers they had publicly made to all persons who might be induced to become settlers of the fertile regions of New Nether- land. For at this time there was living in Holland a large number of French protestants who had come from the Southern Belgic provinces of Hainault, Namur, Lux- emburg and Liege to escape the persecutions of the Spanish Inquisition, These people were called Walloons, and were highly esteemed by the Dutch on account of their probity and industry. ^ The departure of the Pu- ritans from Holland, in 1620, to settle in America, led a number of these French refugees to desire the same priv- ilege of emigrating to it. In order to obtain from the English government the necessary license, the Walloons addressed a petition to the British embassador at the Hague, dated the fifth of February, 1622, signed by Jose de Forest, praying that permission might be granted to 1 The name originated with the Saxons who called all foreigners Wallens: " Saxones occupato regno Brita7i7iico , quoniam lingua sua extraneuin que77ilibet Wallu77i voca7it, &^ gentes has sibi extraneas Wallenses voca7it, Ss" inde tisque in hodietmi77i barbara 7iunciipatio7ic ^ ho7iiines Wallenses, 6^ te7'7a Wallia vocita- tur." — Descriptione Cambriae. Sylvester Giraldus. cap. vii. 18 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 19 fifty or sixty families, embracing about three hmadred persons, residing at Amsterdam, to settle in Virginia.^ The directors of the West India Company, learning that the Walloons had preferred the request, at once made known to the latter the particular advantages which they offered to emigrants becoming colonists of New Netherland.^ Persuaded that no better opportunity for obtaining so many material and political benefits would again favor their purposes and be so conducive to their welfare as settlers in a new country, they accepted the overtures of the company and began to make prepara- tions for leaving the Netherlands. The colonization of New Netherland evoked consider- able discussion in Holland, and a number of practical suggestions were published concerning the measures that should be taken by the directors of the West India Com- pany to promote the welfare of those emigrating to the new country. Wassenaer, the Dutch historian, writing at the time of the embarkation of the Walloons, remarks, that for the latter "to go in safety it is first of all neces- sary that they be placed in a good, defensive position and be well provided with forts and arms for the Span- iard, [the king of Spain,] who claims all the country, Vs^ill never allow any one to gain a possession there. " ^ The ship, Nieu Nederlandt, of one hundred and thirty lasts burden, commanded by Cornelis Jacobsen May of Hoorn, with thirty families on board, sailed from Ams- terdam, at the beginning of March, 1624, for the Mauri- tius River.* The vessel took the usual route of ships 1 London documents, vol. i, fol. 24. 2 Hoi. doc. vol. i. fol. 118. 3 Historische verhael. Wassenaer. deel. vi. fol. 147. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 22. 4 Although the writers who have quoted Wassenaer as their authority for their statements that the Nieu Nederlandt sailed in March 1623 to the Mau- ritius River with the first colonists of New Netherland, they, as it will be 20 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. sailing to New Netherland at this time. Proceeding first to the Canary Islands, off the west coast of Africa, to catch the trade- wind, she stood for the Bahamas. Pass- ing between the latter and the Bermuda Islands, she then followed the trend of the coast of the continent north- wardly as far as the Sandpunt, the low point of land now called Sandy Hook. The king of Spain contrary to general expectation did not take any steps to prevent the planting of the colony. France, however, sent a barque to the bay of the Grande River to forbid the West India Company taking- possession of her territory. Consequently when the Dutch ship passed through the Narrows, May was much surprised to see a vessel, flying the flag of France, riding at anchor near the Dutch yacht, the Mackerel, moored in the mouth of the river. ^ When he sought informa- tion concerning the presence of the barque. May was told that the French vessel had come there to plant monuments bearing the insignia of France and to assert that country's possession of this part of North America by right of discovery. An angiy controversy ensued be- tween May and the French officer. The combative Hol- lander declared that the assertions of the Frenchman were only assumptions, and that the commission from their high mightinesses, the Lords States General, which he exhibited, substantially proved the title of the Dutch to the country. Not to be frustrated or further obstructed in carrying out his present commission by a prolongation of the vexatious controversy. May, Avith the assistance of seen by referring to Wassenaer, do not use his dates which are plainly printed on the margins of the pages of his valuable work. He gives 1624 for the sailing of the vessel carrying the first emigrants to New Netherland. 1 The Mackerel had sailed from Holland on the sixteenth of June, 1623, but did not arrive at the Mauritius River until the twelfth of December. She remained at the mouth of the river during the winter of 1623-24, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 21 the crew of the Mackerel, compelled the French officer to depart with his ship from the bay. ^ Rid of the disturbing presence of the French vessel, May landed a number of emigrants on ' ' Mannatans " Island, where now the city of New York is built. - The Nieu Nederlandt then ascended the river to the country of the Maquaas and Mahicans. ^ On the west bank of the river, a short distance north of Castle Island, whei-e a narrow, verdurous plain lay pleasantly sheltered b}^ the westward hill, the little band of Walloons with a few Dutch freemen disembarked. In the warm sunlight of that serene May day of 1624, 1 " The West India Company being chartered to navigate these rivers did not neglect so to do, but equipped in the spring [of 1624] a vessel of 130 lasts, called the New Netherland, {Xieii Nedcrlaiidi ghenaeint,) whereof Cornells Jacobsen May of Hoorn, with 3(» families, mostly Walloons, (jo Iluysghesinnen nicest IVae/e/i,) to plant a colony there. They sailed in the beginning of March, and directing their course by the Canary Islands, steered toward the Wild Coast, and gained the west wind which luckily took them in the beginning of May into the river first called A'/o de Montagues, now the river Mauritius, lying in 40)^ degrees. He found a Frenchman lying \\i the mouth of the river, who would erect the arms of the king of France there ; but the Hollanders would not permit him, opposing it by the commission from the Lords States General and the directors of the West India Company ; and in order not to be frustrated therein, with the assis- tance of those of the Mackerel, which lay above, they caused a yacht of 2 guns to be manned, and convoyed the Frenchman out of the river." — His- torische verhael. Wassenaer. deel vii. fol. 11. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 23. - Catelina Trico, an aged woman, born in Paris, in a deposition made b^' her on the fourteenth of February, 1684-5, said that she came to New Netherland "either in the year one thousand six hundred and twenty-three or twenty-fouer to the best of her remembrance." In another deposition, made the seventeenth of October, 1688, she said that she was one of the passengers of " ye first Ship yt came" to New Netherland, sent by the West India Company, and that " as soon as they came to Mannatans now called N : York they sent Two families & six men to harford River & Two families & 8 men to Delaware River and 8 men they left att N : Yorke to take Possession and ye Rest of ye Passengers went wth ye Ship up as farr as Al- bany." — Deed book, vii. New York colonial manuscripts, xxxv. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 81, 32. ^ The Maquaas or Mohawks inhabited the west bank of the Hudson River, near the confluence of the Mohawk River, and the country westward bordering the latter stream. The Mahicans or Mohegans dwelt on the east bank of the Hudson River, 22 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. they began to explore with inquisitive eyes the green meadow where the hearth-stones of their new homes were to be laid. They drank with critical taste the water of the hill-side springs, and speculatively wandered over the old, uncultivated corn-fields of the savages. Looking across the slowly flowing river, they beheld the palis- aded village of the Mahicans with its peculiarly built houses. The landing of the colonists having been seen by some of the Maquaas and Mahicans, the news of the arrival of the Dutch ship was soon known to both tribes. Large numbers of the Wilden ^ began to come on foot and in boats to the landing-place of the roving emigrants. The latter had now ample opportunity to observe their strange visitors. They saw the men were brawny-limbed, well- proportioned, and of a stature equal to their own. Their black eyes and white teeth were in striking contrast with the more disguised features of their beardless, dirty, dusky red faces, variously streaked with paint of differ- ent colors. Their jet-black hair, coarse and straight, was allowed by some to grow only on one side of their heads. Many of the warriors had only crown-locks decorated with large feathers of birds of prey. A number of fiercer mien had narrow growths of short, bristly hair, extending from the tops of their foreheads to the backfe of their necks, with braided locks on each side. Their clothing was scanty, filthy, and rudely fashioned. Short, double aprons of skins covered their loins. Their bodies were loosely clad with the skins of deer, bear and other animals. Some wore mantles of turkey-feathers knit together with strings of skin. Their lower limbs and feet were incased in deer-skin leggins and moccasins. 1 The Dutch name for the Indians. Wild, wild ; plural zvilden. Wilde menschen, savages. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 23 The women accompanying them were better attired. Their hair was bound in short rolls, about a hand long. A number wore head-bands ornamented with pieces of shells. The band confining their hair was fastened be- hind, over the roll, in a bow-knot. One or two had fine complexions, several were comely and attractive, and none were remarkably ugly. They were all clothed in dressed deer-skin garments, the lower borders of which, extending below their knees, were elaborately embroid- ered with wampum and strips of fur. With a womanly desire to be attractive, their necks and arms were encir- cled with barbaric ornaments and European trinketry. Their breasts were partly covered with the upper part of a soft, finely dressed deer-skin garment worn next to the skin. Their girdles were very prettily ornamented with wampum, as were also their leggins and moccasins. They also had various ornaments of metal, bone, and shell suspended from their ears. Very few of the Wilden, either the men or the women, were wholly clad in skins. Some had pieces of duffel-cloth thrown across their right shoulders and drawn about their bodies, the ends draping their lower limbs almost to their ankles. ^ Cornelis Jacobsen May, intrusted with the adminis- tration of the West India Company's affairs in New Netherland, soon summoned the colonists about him and assigned to them the quantities of land which they sev- erally were able to cultivate. Then began the humble house building. Small spaces of ground were cleared, holes dug, posts planted and spars split. The latter were then bound horizontally to the upright posts with withes, ' Beschrijvinge van Nieuw Nederlant door Adriaen van der Donck. Am- sterdam, 1656. pp. 52-54, 56-58. Description of New Netherland. Coll.N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second Series, vol. i. pp. 190, 191, 194, 195. Korte ontwerp van de Mahahuase Indianen in Nieuw Nederlandt. Be- schreven in 't jaer 1644. Door Johannem Megapolensem, juniorem. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second Series, vol. iii. p. 154. 24 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and over this frame- work large pieces of peeled bark were securely fastened. Arches of bark formed the roof of the hut ; clay, sod and stones the hearth and chimney. While the colonists were building their cabins, the men in the service of the West India Company were construct- ing, near the river, a small log-fort. Having removed their families and household goods from the ship into their bark-huts, the settlers with resolute hearts and active hands began to till the land assigned them. The weed-grown corn-fields of the Indians were digged and sown with wheat and rye. Clearing away the matted vines and brushwood on parts of the grassy plain, the colonists dug shallow holes, at short intervals, and cast in them a few grains of Indian corn, which they covered with the rich loam displaced by their broad hoes. The vegetable seeds brought from Holland were also planted in small patches which became the particular care of the active housewives. The warm summer's sun quickly germinated the seed in the fertile fields, and in a few months the rapidly ripening grain was "almost as high as a man." Soon also upon the tables of the settlers appeared the productions of their gardens,— the first returns for their laborious cultivation of the virgin soil of New Netherland. The trapping season that began in December was now ended, and the Indians daily resorted to the little settle- ment bringing peltry to barter for European commodi- ties. The little fort of logs and earth was constructed and called Fort Orange, in honor of Maurice, the prince of Orange. ^ Daniel van Krieckebeck was appointed 1 ^'' Een Fort met ^. punten Orangie ghenaemt opgeivorpen en voltopt.''' — Historische verhael. Wassenaer. deel. vii. fol. ii. Doc. his. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 23. The principality of Orange was on the east side of the river Rhone, in Southeastern France. Its territory was about twelve miles long and about THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 25 commissary of the post. The Mackerel, having!taken on board a cargo of furs, now sailed for Amsterdam, where, in August, she arrived with Director May's official com- munications, and letters from the colonists. ^ The gratifying reports brought from Fort Orange by the Mackerel, were, later in the year, more fully con- firmed by letters and messages carried to Holland by the Nieu Nederlandt. which sailed from Fort Orange when "the harvest was far advanced," taking as her cargo fifteen hundred beaver and five hundred otter-skins and other things, which, when sold, returned to the West India Company more than twenty-eight thousand guilders. ^ The settlers gave very laudatory accounts of New Netherland. Its agreeable climate, attractive scenery, and wonderful fertility were highly extolled by them. "We were greatly surprised," wrote one, "when wp arrived in this country. Here we found beautiful rivers, bubbling streams flowing down into the valleys, pools of running water in the meadows, palatable fruits in the forests, strawberries, pigeon-berries, walnuts, and wild grapes. Acorns for feeding hogs are plentiful in the woods, as also is venison, and there are large fish in the nine wide. From the time of Charlemagne it has successively been in the possession of the houses of Giraud-Adhemar, Baux, Chalon, and Nassau. 1 Catelina Trico, in her deposition, further related : " There were about 18 families aboard who settled themselves att Albany & made a small fort, and as soon as they had built themselves some hutts of Bark : ye Mahikan- ders or River Indians, ye Maquase, Oneydes, Onnondages, Cayougas, & Sinnekes, wth ye Mahawawa or Ottawawawaes Indians came & made Cov- enants of friendship wth ye sd Arien Jorise there Commander Bringing him great Presents of Bever or oyr Peltry & desyred that they might come & have a Constant free Trade with them wch was concluded upon & ye s^ na- tions come dajdy with great multidus of Bever & traded them wth ye Chris- tians." — N. Y. colonial MSS. xxxv. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 31, 32. 2 A guilder or florin having the value of twenty stivers was equal to about one shilling and ten pence sterling, or about forty cents of our money. Historisch verhael. Wassenaer. deel viii. fol. 185. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 25. 26 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. rivers. The land is good for farming. Here is especially the liberty of coming and going without fear of the naked natives of the country. Had we cows, hogs, and other animals fit for food, (which we daily expect in the first ship,) we would not wish to return to Holland, for whatever we desire in the paradise of Holland is found here. If you will come here with your family, you will not regret it." " This and similar letters," says Baudar- tius, a Dutch scholar, writing in 1624, ''have roused and stimulated many to resolve to emigrate there with their families in the hope of being able to obtain a handsome livelihood, confidently believing that they will live there in luxury and ease, while here on the contrary they must earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. " ^ The prosperous beginning made by the colonists was regarded by the directors of the West India Company as presaging a still greater success of its colonization schemes. The cheering intelligence also created consider- able comment among the people of the United Provinces respecting the company's future policy in administering the affairs of New Netherland. The prospects of the two colonies on the North and South rivers, ^ as the Hudson and the Delaware were called by the Dutch, are thus ad- verted to by Wassenaer : "These colonies have already a prosperous beginning, and it is hoped that they will not be neglected but be zealously sustained not only there but at the South River. For their growth and prosperity it is highly necessary that those persons sent out be well provided first of all with means of subsistence and de- fense, and as freemen that they be settled there on a free tenure so that all they work for and obtain be theirs to 1 Gedenkwaardige geschiedenissen zo kerkelyke als wereldlyke, door Gulielmus Baudartius. Arnhem, 1624. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. 132. 2 A number of colonists settled at the mouth of the Timmer kill, a creek flowing into the Delaware, a short distance below Camden, New Jersey. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 2Y dispose of and sell as they may wish, and that he who is placed over them as a director shall act as their father not as their executioner, leading them with a gentle hand, for whoever rules them as a friend and associate will be beloved by them, for he who orders them as a superior will subvert and nullify every thing, yea, will excite against him the neighboring provinces to which they will fly. ' It is better to rule by love and friend- ship than by force.'" ^ During the fall and winter the colonists cleared other spaces of land for cultivation and built more commodi- ous and comfortable log-houses than the rude huts of bark in which they had first lived. They now had also opportunities to hunt and obtain game. Some also vis- ited the villages of the hospitable Maquaas and Mahi- cans. Many of the bark-houses of the savages were more than a hundred feet long, though seldom wider than twenty feet. To construct one, the Indians began by setting in the ground, in two straight rows, long hickory- poles stripped of their bark, placing the rows as far apart as the intended width of the house. Bending the poles inward they bound them together at their upper ends to form the arch of the roof. They then fastened long, narrow pieces of wood horizontally to these poles ; and for the covering of this frame- work they used the bark of ash, chestnut, birch, and of other trees, peeling it in pieces about six feet wide and as long as they could obtain it. These pieces they attached with withes to the frame- work, putting the smooth side of the bark inward, and leaving an opening about a foot wide at the crown of the roof for the escape of smoke ascending from the fires built along the middle of the house. They lapped the edges of the pieces of bark far enough over each 1 Histoi'ische. verhael. Wassenaer. deel vii. fol. ii. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 24. 28 THE HISTORY OF ALBAISTY. other so that the subsequent shrinking of the covering left no openings. These houses were moderately warm in winter. They were often occupied by ten, twelve, and eA^en more famihes. The members of each family were allotted a particular space in them. Sometimes more than a hundred persons dwelt in one of these long build- ings. When fishing or hunting at great distances from their villages, the Wilden usually erected temporary huts of bark or skins. Their fortified or inclosed villages were generally built on steep hills near creeks and rivers, and on sites that were inaccessible excej^t from the water-side. To render their villages defensible, the Wilden surrounded them with a double row of oak-palisades. They first laid several heavy logs closely together for foundation- pieces. On each side of these they planted strong palis- ades, the upper ends crossed and securely held together with withes. They further made the inclosing palisades difficult to be climbed over by placing between the crossed ends the trunks of trees and their branches. Inside these strongholds there wei-e sometimes more than a hundred bark-houses. In less defensible situations the villages of the Wilden were not inclosed. ^ During the fall and winter the colonists had fre- quent opportunities to learn something of the habits of that remarkable rodent, the beaver, which made the site of Fort Orange a famous fur-emporium for several cen- turies. ^ They also observed the novel ways of trapping 1 Beschrijvinge van Nieuw Nederlandt door Adriaen van der Donck. pp. .58-60. 2 The dome-shaped lodges of the beaver were found mostly erected on the banks of deep streams, a short distance from the water's edge. The industrious animals in companies of four, two of each sex, began to con- struct their houses about the beginning of September, the work of building continuing through the fall until the ground was frozen. The structures erected bv them were about five or six feet high, and the walls from two to THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 29 these vigilant and timid animals by the Indians, and the manner in which the dihgent hunters cured the peltry for traffic. While the Mauritius Eiver, in winter, was frozen and the colony at Fort Orange isolated from the visitation of ships from Holland, the directors of the West India Com- three feet thick, built of the trunks of small trees such as the maple, the birch and the poplar, gnawed in lengths of two or three feet. The inter- stices were filled with sticks and stones, cemented solidly together with clay, so as to be impenetrable to animals of prey. In the floor of each house was a hole for egress and ingress, the opening connected by an underground water-way with the bottom of the stream. Four old beavers, two males and two females, with their progenies of six or eight young, were found occupying a lodge. These houses were not con- tiguous but were constructed at different distances along the water-courses. The channels of shallow streams the beavers dammed to deepen the water so that it might not freeze to the bottom and prevent their escape from their lodges. The dams were built straight across the stream where the flow of the current jwas slow, but where it was swift the middle part of the dam was built convex, the centre projecting up the stream. Full-grown beavers measure from the tips of their noses to the ends of their tails from forty to fifty-five inches, and weigh from thirty to sixty pounds. Their tails are about ten inches long and about five inches broad, shaped like a paddle and covered with black, horny scales. Their senses of smell and hearing are acute but their vision is of small range. Their feet are bare and blackish, with strong, brown nails, and are webbed to the roots of the claws. Their upper and lower jaws have each two large, sharp in- cisor and eight molar teeth. When beavers build their lodges and dams they usually select trees that are not more than six inches in diameter, the trunks of which they gnaw around with their incisors, cutting spaces about five inches in width. When gnawed through, the ends of the severed wood closely resemble in shape the lower part of a child's top. Beavers generally find their timber near the place of building or up the stream, whence they float it to the selected site of the house or dam. The food of beavers is bark of such trees as the willow, poplar, and alder. The females commonly bear in the month of May, giving birth to two, three or four young. The beaver lives from twelve to fifteen years. Adriaen van der Donck, who lived at Fort Orange from the year 1641 to 1646, and traded for years with the Indians, published in 1656 the following description of the fur of the beaver and the use made of the pelt: "The beaver's skin is rough, but thickly set with fine fur of an ash-gray color, inclining to blue. The outward points also incline to a russet or brown color. From the fur of the beaver the best hats are made that are worn. They are called beavers or casioreums from the material of which they are made, and they are known at present by this name over all Europe. Out- 30 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. pany took action in certain matters that might contri- bute to the welfare of the settlers and induce other per- sons to emigrate to New Netherland, They at the same time commissioned William Verhulst to succeed Cornells Jacobsen May as resident-director during the year 1625. Having registered the names of foity-five emigrants upon its books, the company sent them with a consign- ment of agricultural implements and a number of horses and other cattle in the spring to New Netherland. The news of the continued prosperity of the colonists and of the peaceful relations existing between them and the Indians influenced so many people to emigrate to the Mauritius Eiver that the company determined to plant a colony on the island, where now is the city of New York. In 1636, the company purchased the island from the Indians for sixty guilders,^ Pieter Minuit, the third side of the coat of fur many shining hairs appear, called wind-hairs, which are more properly winter-hairs, for they fall out in summer and appear again in winter. The outer coat is of a chestnut-brown color, the browner the color the better is the fur. Sometimes it will be a little reddish. "When hats are made of the fur, the rough hairs are pulled out, for they are useless. The skins are usually first sent to Russia, where they are highly valued for their outside shining hair, and on this their greatest recommenda- tion depends with the Russians. The skins are used there for mantle- linings, and are also cut into strips for borders as we cut rabbit-skins. Therefore we call the same peltries. Whoever has there the most and the costliest fur-trimmings is considered a person of very high rank, as with us the finest stuffs, and gold and silver embroidery are regarded as the append- ages of the great. After the hairs have fallen out, or are worn, and the peltries become old and dirty and apparently useless, we get the article back and convert the fur into hats, before which it cannot be well used for this purpose, for unless the beaver has been worn and is greasy and dirty, it will not felt properly ; hence these old peltries are the most valuable. The coats which the Indians make of beaver-skins and which they have worn for a long time around their bodies until the skins have become foul with perspiration and grease are afterward used by the hatters and make the best hats." — Beschrii'vinge van Nieuw Nederlandt door Adriaen van der Donck. pp. 82- 89. Vide. Coll. N. Y.Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. i. pp. 190, 191, 194- 197, 220-227. 1 Historische verhael. deel xii. fol. 38, 39. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 27, 29. Hoi. doc. vol. i. fol. 155. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 31 resident-director, having arrived on the fourth of May, made the island the seat of the government of New Neth- erland. The south point of the island was selected for the site of a fort, the ground-plan of which was staked out by the company's engineer. Thirty bark-cabins were erected by the colonists near the rude fortification. The two comforters of the sick, {kranck-besoeckers,) Sebastian Jansen Crol and Jan Huyck, were the conductors of the religious services of the settlers on Sundays. The new settlement at Fort Amsterdam increased the population of New Netherland to "two hundred souls." ^ A number of the settlers at Fort Orange disliking the isolated and remote situation of the colony at the height of the river's navigation now removed to the lower set- tlement. Shortly afterward they were followed by the other settlers with their families. The removal of the latter was caused by an indiscreet act of the commander of Fort Orange. The two tribes of Indians, the Maquaas and the Mahi- ' cans, made war upon each other. The palisaded village of the latter, on the east side of the river, was opposite the fort, and the colonists were the terrified witnesses of the horrors of Indian warfare. Van Krieckebeek, com- manding the small garrison of Fort Orange, having been solicited by the Mahicans or Mohegans to take part with them in an attack upon the Maquaas or Mohawks impru- dently consented. Taking with him six soldiers from the fort he went with a body of Mohegans to meet a party of Mohawks. When they had gone about a mile from the fort they suddenly came upon the Mohawks who repulsed them so valiantly that they were forced to retreat leaving many slain, the Dutch officer and three of his men being among the number. It is related that 1 Historische verhael. deel xii. fol. 38. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 28. 32 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "among the latter was Tymen Bouwensen, whom [the Mohawks] devom-ed, after they had roasted him. The rest they burnt. The commander was buried with the other two by his side. Three escaped ; two Portuguese and a Hollander from Hoorn. One of the Portuguese was wounded by an arrow in the back while swimming. The Indians carried a leg and an arm home to be divided among their families, as a proof that they had conquered their enemies." ^ The horrifying details of this affair caused great con- sternation in the settlement, while the fear of the fort being attacked by the Mohawks in retaliation for Van Kreickebeek's partisanship increased the general feeling of insecurity. The terrified people were no little cheered a few days thereafter by the arrival of Pieter Barentsen, the chief fur trader of the West India Company, whose business it was to go from point to point to collect peltry from the Indians for shipment to HoUand. He made it his mission to go at once to the Mohawks and learn at once what feelings of resentment they might have toward the Dutch. They frankly told him that they had never injured the Hollanders and asked why the latter had med- dled with them. Unable to ascertain anything respecting their intentions, Barentsen returned to Fort Orange and assumed the command of the sixteen men composing the garrison. Apprehensive that the revengeful Mo- hawks might be instigated to make a sudden descent upon the little settlement, he had the remaining eight families conveyed to Fort Amsterdam. The only per- sons left at the post were those of the garrison and twen- ty-five fur traders under Sebastiaen Jansen Crol, the new vice-director, {onder directeur). ~ 1 Historische verhael. deel xii. fol. 38. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 28. 3 Historisch verhael. deel xii. fol. 38 ; deel xvi. fol. lo. Doc. hist. N. Y- vol. iii. p. 28. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 33 The hostilities between the Mohawks and the Mohe- gans continued through the year 1627. The Mohawks, who were greater in number, at last successfully assault- ed the palisaded village of the Mohegans, and finally, in 1628, drove the few valorous survivors of the tribe to the Connecticut River. ^ The West India Company finding that the coloniza- tion of New Netherland had been attended with consid- erable expense, which added nothing to its revenues, abandoned, in 1629, the undertaking of sending settlers to the Mauritius River with the expectation that its out- lays would in time be returned in profits arising from the exclusive sale of its commodities to the colonists and from the export-duties on grain and other produce which its ships carried to Holland. The directors of the company now agreed to favor another scheme by which it was beheved an enriching revenue could be obtained. They decided to divide the country into manors to be granted to proprietary lords, called patroons or patrons of New Netherland. A charter of privileges and exemptions was therefore drafted and reported to the assembly of the nineteen representatives. On the seventh of June, 1629, the body formally approved the new plan for the colonization of New Netherland, which was duly rati- fied by their high mightinesses, the Lords States Gen- eral. In order to become a patroon it was required by the charter that the person so inclined should first notify the company that he intended to plant a colony in New Netherland, and then, within the space of four years immediately thereafter, settle upon the selected land fifty persons over fifteen years of age. He was permit- ted the choice of such land as he might deem suitable extending four Dutch or twelve English miles along one 1 Historische verhael. deel xvi. fol. 13. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 30. 3 34 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. side of a navigable river, or two Dutch or six English miles along both sides of it, and so far back into the interior as the situation of the occupiers would admit. The land thus selected was not to be taken possession of until the Indian proprietors had been satisfied with a compensation for it. Each patroon was then to be granted the full possession and enjoyment of the land within the limits of his manor and the right to dispose of it by testament. The chief command and the lower jurisdiction of these estates were given to the patroons, and no person was allowed to fish, hunt, and own mills on them except such persons as the proprietors permitted. The patroons were privileged to sail and traffic along the coast of North America, from Florida to Newfoundland, provided their vessels returned with all the commodities to Fort Amsterdam and paid a duty of five per cent, on them to the agents of the West India Company before shipping them to Holland. Along the cost of New Neth- erland they were allowed to trade with such goods as they wished to dispose of, and to receive in return for them all kinds of merchandise ''except beavers, otters, minks, and all sorts of peltry, which trade " the company reserved to itself. Where the company had no fur col- lectors there the patroons were privileged to trade for peltry on the condition that they should pay to the com- pany " one guilder for each merchantable beaver or otter- skin " obtained by them. The commodities brought from Holland in the company's ships for the colonies of the patroons were to be transported at certain rates ; goods carried by other vessels for them were dutiable to the company. The colonists of the patroons were to be "free from customs, taxes, excises, imposts, or any other con- tributions for the space of ten years." But they were not "permitted to make any woolens, linen or cotton- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 35 cloth, nor to weave any other stuffs " in the new country "on pain of being banished, and as perjurers to be arbi- trarily punished." All judgments given by the courts of the patroons, exceeding the sum of fifty guilders, (about twenty dol- lars) had an appeal to the director and council of New Netherland. A colonist entering the service of a patroon was not permitted to leave it or to engage in that of another unless a consent in writing was first obtained from the patroon having control of the person desiring to make the change. The West India Company promised to do everything in its power to apprehend any colonist breaking his contract of service and to deliver him into the hands of his patroon or of the latter's attorney to be proceeded against according to the laws of the Nether- lands. The patroons were to appoint deputies whose duty it should be to furnish information to the director and council of New Netherland concerning all things relating to their colonies, and at least once in twelve months, to make reports of their condition to the company. The patroons and the colonists were, as soon as it was prac- ticable, to find out ways and means whereby they might support a minister and school-master that the service of God and zeal for religion might not grow cold and be neg- lected. The patroons were also enjoined to procure a com- forter of the sick for the settlers as soon as they planted a colony. The company promised to provide the colonists with as many negroes as it conveniently could on con- ditions thereafter to be made. Such private persons as on their own account or others in the service of masters in Holland, who should be inclined to emigrate to New Netherland, were, with the approbation of the director and council at Fort Amsterdam, privileged to take up as much land as they were able to improve and were granted 36 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the right to enjoy the same in full property either for themselves or their masters. ^ This charter seemingly a brief summary of well-de- fined franchises clearly mirrors the real object contem- plated by the self-interested projectors of the instrument. Its honoring conditions of proprietorship were devised to entice wealthy men to risk capital in a speculative scheme that might be attended with irreparable 1 osses. With spe- cious promises of freedom from taxation it was planned to induce poor men to place themselves in bonds of servitude and to submit to the arbitrary laws of rigorous masters. Its prohibitions were the suggestions of ava- rice and its privileges were only granted to those who were deemed able to fulfill all the pledges of tribute which it exacted. It was to subserve the selfish purposes of a greedy monopoly which failed to hide its mercenary fea- tures behind a thin mask of philanthropy. In a distant country removed from public observation and censure this instrument commissioned men to lay anew the foun- dations of feudalism and to fetter human freedom with the shackles of serfdom. The charter was published in 1630, and the pamphlets containing it were widely circu- lated through Holland. ^ 1 Historische verhael. deel xviii. fol. 94. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second Series, vol. i. pp. 369-371. 2 The pamphlet has this title: " Vryheden by de Vergado-inghe van de N'egenthiene van de Geoctroyee7-de West-Indische Compagnie vergutit aen alien den ghenen, die eenighe Colonien in Nieuw Nederlandt sullen planten. In het licht ghegheven. Om bekentre tnaken wat Projijten ende Voordeelen aldaer in Nieu Nederlandt, voor de Coloniers ende der selver Patroonen ende Meesters, 7nidts- gaders de Participanten, die de Colonien aldaer planten, zijn bekomen. \^En- graving\ West indjen kan sijn Nederlands, groot gewi7i. Verkley nt' svijands Macht bringt silver-platen in T' Amstelredam. Voor Marten Jansz Brandt, boeckverkooper, zvoonende by de nieutuekerck, in de Gerefotvnerde Catechismus. Anno 1 6 JO." CHAPTER III. RENSSELAERSWYCK. 1630-1641. Among the first persons to make known to the West India Company their intention to plant colonies in New Netherland was Kiliaen van Rensselaer,^ a wealthy di- rector of the Amsterdam chamber, who, for many years had been a dealer in diamonds and pearls in that city. ^ The authority to settle a colony on such land as he should select was formally conferred on him, on the nineteenth of November, 1629. ^ He then sent instructions to Sebas- tiaen Jansen Crol, at Fort Orange, to purchase for him a tract of land from the Indians, sufficient in extent for the settlement of a colony. Crol at once made the neces- sary overtures to certain Indians possessing land near the fort. The Indians, on the eighteenth day of April, 1630, conveyed to Van Rensselaer the tract of land called Sanckhagag, on the west side of the river, extending 1 Kiliaen or Kelyaen van Rensselaer was the son of Hendrik and Maria {nee Pafraats) van Rensselaer. His first wife was Hellegonda van Bylet, by whom he had one son, Johannes, who married his cousin, Elizabeth van Twiller. In lti27, Kiliaen van Rensselaer married Anna van Wely, by whom he had eight children: 1. Maria; 2. Jeremias, who married Maria, daughter of Oloff Stevensen van Cortland ; 3. Hellegonda ; 4. Jan Baptiste, who married Suzanna van Wely ; 5. Eleonora ; 6. Suzanna, who married Jan de la Court; 7. Nicolaas, who married Alida Schuyler; and 8. Rykert, who married Anna van Beaumont. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. - Korte historiael door D. David Pietersz de Vries. Hoorn, 165.5. fol. 162. 3 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Protest of Nicholas Coorn. 37 38 ■ THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. from a point above Beeren Island to a point opposite Smack Island, in breadth "two days' journey inland." ^ Meanwhile Kiliaen van Rensselaer actively exerted himself to obtain the quota of people which the West India Company required to be settled the first year on the selected land. With practical sagacity he had maps made that attractively represented the lands he had se- lected on the North River for his colony. ^ His judicious advertisements induced a number of persons to accept the proposals he offered them as settlers of his manor, and these set sail, on the twenty-first of March, 1630, from Holland, in the Unity, commanded by Jan Brouwer. '^ Having arrived at Fort Amsterdam on the twenty-fourth of May, the ship ascended the river to Fort Orange, where Commander Crol sent the settlers to the land which he had recently purchased for their occupancy. The patroon desired another tract of land and empow- ered Gillis Hossett to purchase it. This commission he executed on the twenty-seventh of July, 1631, and ob- tained from the Indians a piece of land extending along the west side of the river, from Fort Orange northward to a point ' ' a little south of Moenemines castle. " * At 1 Beeren Island is eleven miles south of Albany and was called by the Dutch Beeren Eyla?zdt, Bears Island ; beer, a bear, beeren, bears. The small bay between it and the west bank of the river was early known as Ouwee Ree (Old Harbor). Smack Island is north of Beeren Island. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Book of patents. G. G. p. 9. ^. 2 In the book of accounts of Rensselaerswyck, under the date of Febru- ary 8, 1630, is the following entry in Dutch : "To Gillis van Schendel for one map on parchment, and four ditto on paper, of the islands and other tillable lands, {bozitulanden,) in my colony, to be sent there for their use, 6 Rix dollars." — MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 3 Among the number of emigrants were Wolfert Gerrittsen, the farm- overseer, (opper-bouwmeester,) Brant Peelen from Nieukerk, a farm-laborer, (bouw-knecht,) Rutger and Seger Heindricksen from Soest. — MSS. of Rens- selaerswyck. * "Monemins Casteel " represented on the map of Rensselaerswyck, was seemingly on Haver Island, between the third and fourth branches of the Mohawk River, south of Waterford. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 39 the same time he purchased the tract called Gesmessert, lying on the east side of the river, opposite Castle Island, extending "from Petanock, the Molen kill, northward to Negagonse, in extent about three [Dutch miles]." ^ In order to advance more rapidly the growth of the colony, Kiliaen van Rensselaer formed a limited partner- ship with Samuel Godyn, Johannes de Laet, and Samuel Blommaert, three influential members of the Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company. ^ To give greater publicity to the advantages to be obtained by persons be- coming colonists of Rensselaerswijk or Rensselaerswyck, '^ new maps of the estate were drafted and other advertise- ments made of the fertility of its farms and the produc- tions of the new country. Not only were the several tracts of land invitingly displayed upon these maps but representations of towns were also delineated on them, bearing the names of the manorial co-partners. Notes containing information concerning game were also in- scribed on these maps. * 1 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Book of patents. G. G. p. 4 2 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Hoi. doc. vol. v. fol. 298. Albany records, vol. vii. fol. 72, 73. Korte historial. De Vries. p. 162. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. iii. p. 89. 3 Wijk or zuyck, noun feminine, refuge, parish, ward, district, manor. Anglo-Saxon wic, a port, village. In all original Dutch words the letters ij are used instead of y. In Dutch compound words formed of two nouns either the two remain unchanged, or the first noun takes an j or an ^ as Rensselaetszvyck Rensselaer-manor ; kerkeburt, church-neighborhood. 4 "Opposite Fort Orange, on the south point of De Laet's Island are many birds to be shot, geese, swans, and cranes. Turkeys frequent the woods. Deer and other game are also there ; also wolves but not larger than dogs. On De Laet's Island are many tall and straight trees suitable for making oars. Fat and excellent venison can be obtained in large quanti- ties from the Maquaas, principally in the winter ; three, four, or five hands of wampum for a deer. Deer would be exchanged readily for milk or butter. Deermeat is well suited for smoking and pickling." " In the fourth kill are pike and all kinds of fish. Here the sturgeon are smaller than at the Manathans [the island on which New York is built.] One can be bought from the Wilden for a knife." V^ide Map of Renssel- aerswyck. 40 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. The exclusive privilege of the West India Company to trade for peltry with the Indians of New Netherland was, in April, 1633, boldly infringed upon by some Eng- lish merchants of London, who sent a ship to the Hudson River to obtain a cargo of furs. They had taken into their employment Jacob Elkens, who earlier in the cen- tury had command of Fort Nassau on Castle Island. While in the service of the West India Company he had won the confidence and the good- will of all the tribes of the northern territory of New Netherland, and was there- fore well-suited to carry out the instructions of his Eng- lish employers. The sight of a strange ship, flying the British flag, ap- proaching unannounced the wharf at Fort Orange caused considerable ex:citement in the little fortification. Eager to know what object had brought the English vessel to the height of the river's navigation, Hans Jorissen Hou- ten, commanding the garrison, sent an officer to the English ship to obtain information concerning her pres- ence in this part of New Netherland. When he learned that she had come there to traffic for furs and that her officer claimed that the surrounding territory belonged to G-reat Britain, he immediately ordered Captain Trevor to depart from the river with his ship, and forbade him to trespass upon the commercial privileges of the incorpo- rated body of Dutch capitalists. ^ As if complying with the command of Captain Houten, the English seaman departed with his ship. However, as soon as he was out of sight of the gazing garrison, he ran his vessel close to the west bank of the river and there cast anchor. Un- der Elkens's superintendence a tent was pitched on the shore and an assortment of English goods was conspicu- 1 The English claim to the territory of New Netherland was based on the discoveries of the Cabots in 1497 and 1498, and on the grant given in 1 584 to Sir Walter Raleigh by Queen Elizabeth. THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. 41 ously displayed in it. The Mohawks, learning that their old friend Elkens had come again to trade with them repaired in large numbers to the tent, carrying with them their packs of beaver and otter-skins. The fur- traders of the West India Company heard these facts with no little astonishment. Having then no means to eject the invaders, the Dutch traders erected a tent near the one occupied by Elkens and became the eager com- petitors of the zealous factor for the furs of the Indians. To induce the Wilden to barter with them, they loudly disparaged the value of the English goods and trucked their cloths and wares at lower rates. Exasperated by this opposition, Elkens then took advantage of their pres- ence by sending a shallop up and down the river to col lect furs from those Indians who had been intimidated by the Hollanders from visiting his tent. One day the shallop ventured too near Fort Orange, and fell into the hands of Commander Houten. Sticking green boughs about her, he and a number of the soldiers of the garri- son sailed in the captured vessel to the place where the English were trafficking with the Indians. Here he found three vessels and a body of soldiers sent from Fort Amsterdam by Director Van Twiller ^ to seize the Eng- lish vessel. Deaf to the protestations of Elkens, who loudly declared that he had the right to trade on soil be- longing to Great Britain, the Dutch soldiers carried the English goods on board the British ship and then pulled down the tent of the enraged factor. To add to the dis- grace of the English, it is said that the elated trumpeter of Fort Orange loudly blew his instrument while the ejectment of the interlopers was in progress. It is fur- ther related that some of the excited Hollanders beat several of the Indians who had come to trade with El- 1 Pieter Minuit sailed for Holland in March, 1632. Wouter van Twiller arrived at Fort Amsterdam in April, 1633. 42 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. kens. The English ship was taken to Fort Amsterdam, where she was detained a short time by Director Van Twiller, and then permitted to return to England. When she arrived at London, the English merchants presented to the embassadors from the Netherlands a formal com- plaint of the ill-treatment their agents had received on British territory at the hands of the Dutch, and de- manded the payment of damages for the losses they had sustained. The Dutch government answered these charges by affirming that the English had no right to trade within the limits of New Netherland ; alleging that the river and the adjoining country were discovered by Henry Hudson at the expense of the East India Com- pany in 1609, "before any Christians had been there, as was certified by Hudson;" and that "the West India Company had commanded, possessed, and cultivated the country from the beginning of its charter, and had car- ried on trade there, without any person having with rea- son questioned" its privilege "or sought to destroy its trade by force, except some prohibited traders " and Jacob Elkens. Besides giving emphasis to these declarations, it was added that the West India Company ' ' had suf- fered special loss;" that "the injurious seed of discord had been sown " between the Indians and the Dutch, who previously had lived with each other in friendship ; and that "other serious mischiefs" had resulted from El- kens's visit, such as "the killing of men and of cattle." ^ One of the most noticeable consequences of this affair was the special attention given to the welfare of the per- sons employed at Fort Orange to collect furs by the West India Company, Through Director Van Twiller orders were given to Dirck Cornelis Van Wensveen to erect within the fortification "a handsome large house with a 1 Holland doc. vol. ii. fol. .51-88 ; 140-143, 196. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 43 flat roof and lattice- work, and eight small dwellings for the people." ^ The extensive territory of Rensselaerswyck had as yet few settlers. ^ Each year, however, increased the num- ber of its inhabitants. Many of these early pioneers, whose patient toil transformed the wilderness of the Up- per Hudson into palisaded fields of waving wheat and wide acres of tasseled maize, dwelt at first in temporary huts, the construction of which is thus described by a Dutch writer: "They dig a square pit in the ground, cellar -fashion, six or seven feet deep, and as long and as wide as they think proper. They case the earth inside with wood all around the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth. They floor this cellar with plank and clapboard it overhead for a ceiling, run a roof of spars 1 Albany records, vol. i. fol. 86. 2 In 1630 the following names of persons, residing at Fort Orange and in Rensselaer's manor are recorded in the books of monthly wages and the manuscripts of Rensselaerswyck : Wolfert Gerritsen, Rutger Hendricksen van Soest, Seger Hendricksen van Soest, Brandt Peelen van Nieukerke, Simon Dircksen Pos, Jan Tyssen, Andries Carstenssen, Laurens Lau- renssen, Barent Tomassen, Arendt van Curler, Jacob Jansen Stol, Martin Gerrittsen van Bergen, Claes Arissen, Roeloff Jansen van Maesterlandt,. Claes Claessen, Jacques Spierinck, Jacob Govertsen, Raynert Harmensen, Bastiaen Jansen Krol, Albert Andriessen Bradt. In 1631 : Maryn Adriaensen van Veere, Thomas Witsent, Gerrit Teu- nissen . de Reus, Cornells Teunissen van Westbroek, Cornells Teunissen van Breukelen, Johan Tiers, Jasper Ferlyn, Gerrit Willem Oasterum, Cor nelis Maessen van Buren Maassen, Cornells Teunissen Bos. In 1634 : Jan Labbadie, Robert IJendricksen, Adriaen Gerritsen, Lu- bert Gysbertsen, Jan Jacobsen, Jacob Albertzen Planck, Joris Houten, Jan Jansen Dam. In 1635 : Jan Terssen van Franiker, Juriaen Bylvelt, Jan Cornelissen, Johannes Verbeeck. In 1636: Barent Pieterse Koyemaus, Pieter Cornelissen van Munnich- endam, Dirck Jansen van Edam, Mauritz Janssen, Arent Andriessen van Frederickstad, Michel Jansen, Jacob Jansen van Amsterdam, Simon Wal- ings van der Belt, Gysbert Claessen van Amsterdam, Hans Zevenhuyzeri, Cristen Cristyssen Noorman van Vlecburg, Adriaen Hubertsen, Rynier Ty- manssen van Edam, Tys Barentsen Schoonmaker van Edam, Tomas Jan- sen van Bunick, Cornells Tomassen, Arent Steveniersen, Johan Latyn van M THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. clear up and cover the spars with bark or green sods so that they can hve dry and warm m these houses with their famihes for two, three, and four years. * ^' * * The wealthy and principal men in New England in the beginning of the colonies constructed their first dwelling houses in this fashion for two reasons. First, in order not to waste time in building and not to stand in want of food the next season ; second, in order not to discour- age the poorer laboring people whom they brought over in numbers from. Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country became more cultivated, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousand dollars." ^ Verduym, Claes Jansen van Nykerk, Rutger Jacobsen van Schoenderwoerdt Ryckert Rutgersen. In 1637 : Jan Michaelsen van Edam, Pieter Nicolaussen van Nordinge, Teunis Cornelissen van Vechten, Burger Joris, Jan Ryersen, Abraham Stevensen, Cornelis Teunissen van Merkerk, Goosen Gerritsen van Schaick, Willem Juriaensen Bakker. In 1688 : Jan Dircksen van Amersfoort, Gerrit Hendricksen, Wybrant Pietersen, Willem Meynten, Cornelis Leendertsen, Francis AUertsen, Mar- tin Hendricksen van Hamelwaard, Roeloff Cornelissen van Houten, Adri- aen Berghoorn, Volckert Jansen, Hendrick Fredricksen, Jacob Jansen Nos- trandt, Christoffel Davits, Claes Jansen Ruyter, Jacob Flodder, Gysbert Adriensen van Bunick, Teunis Dircksen van Vechten. In 1639 : Jacob Adriaensen van Utrecht, Ryer Stoffelsen, Cryn Corne- lissen, Adam Roelantsen van Hamelwaard, Sander Leendertsen Glen, Pieter Jacobsen, Johan Poog, Gilles Barentsen, Cornelis Spiernick, Claes Jansen van Breda, Claes Tyssen. In 1640: Nys Jacobsen, Jannitje Teunissen, Jan Teunissen, Teunis jacobsen van Schoenderwordt, Andries Hubertsen Constapel van der Blaes, Andries de Vos, Adriaen Teunissen van der Belt, Jan Creynen, Jan Jansen van Rotterdam, Jacob Jansen van Campen, Cornelis Kryne van Houtten, Jan Cornelissen van Houten, Claes Gerritsen. In 1641 . Adriaen van der Donck, Cornelis Antonissen van Slyck, Claes Gysbertsen, Wolfertsen, Teunis de Metselaer, Joris Borrelingen, Claes Jan- sen van Ruth, Cornells Cornelissen van Schoonderwoerdt. — MSS. of Rens- selaerswyck. The Dutch preposition r'aii means of, from, or by ; van Frederickstad V. e., of or from Frederickstad. 1 Information relative to taking up land in New Netherland. By Cornelis van Tienhoven. 1650. Hoi. doc. vol. v. fol. 145, 146. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. 31. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 45 The first farm placed under cultivation by the patroon in 1630 was in charge of Wolfert Gerrittsen, the prin- cipal farm-master {ppper-houtvmeester), who was paid twenty guilders or eight dollars a month for his service besides his board. A farm-hand {bouiv-knecht), re- ceived from twenty -five to one hundred and twenty guilders or from ten to forty -eight dollars a year as wages in addition to his board. Colonists without capital, be- fore leaving Holland, were often furnished by the patroon with clothing and money, for which they were to pay him thereafter a stipulated quantity of produce or a cer- tain sum of money or a specified length of wampum. The first settlers erected on the land assigned them temporary huts, in which they dwelt until the houses built at the expense of the patroon were ready for occupation. The latter stocked these farms with horses and other cattle, and also provided his tenantry with agricultural imple- ments. A farm and its buildings were sometimes leased at an annual rent of three hundred guilders, (about one hundred and twenty dollars,) sometimes for five hundred guilders, (about two hundred dollars,) payable in mer- chantable beaver-skins, produce, money or zeewan. The lessees were required to give annually to the patroon the tenths of all the grain, fruit, and other productions of the cultivated land, and also one-half of the increase of the cattle. It was often stipulated that lessees were to per- form each year for the patroon certain kinds of labor, as cutting in the forests a number of pieces of wood and conveying them to the bank of the river, and to give him one or more days' service with their horses and wagons. Several bushels of wheat, a number of pounds of butter, and a few fat fowls for a quit-rent were also commonly demanded of the colonists renting farms. When settlers erected farm-buildings at their own expense, these fre- 46 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. quently reverted to the patroon in lieu of rent. The lessees were bound under oath not to lodge any unlicensed traders in their houses nor to receive their goods on pain of forfeiting all the rights granted by the patroon. When any question arose between lessees, the matter in dispute was to be submitted to the court of the manor without any appeal or further complaint respecting the decision rendered. Lessees were to submit themselves as faithful subjects to all the regulations, orders, and conditions made by the patroon and to those thereafter made by him. The patroon had the right of purchasing before all other persons the grain and cattle of his tenants and also other property belonging to them. When a colonist died intestate, his property in the wyck reverted to the pat- roon. The settlers were required to take their grain to the patroon's mill to be ground, which he was to keep in repair for their accommodation. The president and council of Eensselaerswyck were empowered to execute the laws of the civil code, to en- force the enactments of the Lords States General, the ordinances of the West India Company and of the di- rector and council of New Netherland, and the rules and regulations of the manor. Two magistrates or justices {gerechts-persoonen), and the commissary-general formed the court of the manor. The other officers were the sheriff {schoiit), and a hangman {scherprechter). ^ In order to possess an extent of land on the east side of the river equal to that which he had purchased on the west side, the patroon instructed Jacob Albertzsen Planck, the first sheriff of Eensselaerswyck, to buy from the In- dians the tract called Papsickenekas, extending south- ward from a point opposite Castle Island to a point opposite Smack Island. This additional land, pur- 1 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. /Poj^ K O ■V.A. ,B E .li G^ I C Aj) iWe J^ I E U W Cana'jero EattOraa^e^ ^■ii^Uiimouit^o B d Ondc net L^t HbriJ jl^Sohffpinalkpncli. ^^^rsS^innerihooecJi I //■^'^^hoci^ 22Jff22 \Roe/o/J^anloO?rs ■Tan "Waranajvank ,,^ , , .HOR Sauwan] O ^^ '-"£*'? '^ "t -Vertdri ;^2^ > li Wecke Pinjers J VoynJ^i 'aterfityn. '^„.<^ . v/,>,;._^« 3Iatovaiu;oxis fe^T"^ (S:::^?^" UCaraticoits THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 4T chased on the thirtieth of April, 1637, made Kihaen van Rensselaer and his co-partners the patroons of a manor about twenty-one miles long and forty-six wide, containing more than six hundred thousand acres of land, at present included within the limits of the counties of Albany and Rensselaer.^ No people of the nations of Europe were more ac- quisitive than those of Holland. To obtain soil for culti- vation they took from the sea the low land of their once inundated country and inclosed it with massive barriers of sand and stone. With marts and manufactures they drew to the ports of the United Provinces the merchant- men of Europe. Their monopolies vexed the neighboring nations. They sailed all seas in quest of wealth. They received usury from royal borrowers. To get property and to increase their possessions was the quickening thought that animated the energies of the diligent in- habitants of Holland. This love of gain prompted the patroons of New Netherland to claim the right to trade for furs within the limits of their manors. Forthwith the West India Company filed a protest with the Lords States General calling the government's attention to the fact that the charter of privileges and exemptions of ] 629 expressly reserved the traffic in all kinds of peltry to the corporation. The special immunity of the West India Company being ignored by the patroons, the colo- nists in turn began to trade clandestinely with the Indians and afterward openly. When Wilham Kieft succeeded Wouter van Twiller as director of the com- pany's affairs, in 1638, the agents of the patroons and the colonists were actively competing with one another in the lucrative fur trade. ^ 1 Willem Kieft arrived at Fort Amsterdam, March 28, 1(338. 2 Book of patents. GG. pp. 13-16 ; 24-26. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Map of Rensselaer's manor, 1767. 48 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. In April, 1639, the Dutch navigator, David Pietersen de Vries, visited Fort Orange. The short account of his sojourn on Castle Island with Brandt Peelan, although marred by an unwarranted reflection respecting the patroon and his co-partners, furnishes several note- worthy incidents belonging to the early history of Rensselaerswyck. He says : "On the twenty- eighth we arrived at Beeren Island, where many Indians were fishing. * * * * In the evening we reached Brand- pylen's Island, that lies a little below Fort Orange and belongs to the patroons, Godyn, Ronselaer, Jan de Laet, and Bloemart, who had also more farms there which they had put in good condition at the company's cost, for the company had sent cattle from Fatherland at great expense, and these individuals, being the commis- sioners of New Netherland, had made a good distribution [of them] among themselves, and while the company had nothing but an empty fort, they had the farms and trade around it, and each farmer was a trader. * * * * "While I was at Fort Orange, on the thirtieth of April, there was such a high flood at the island on which Brand-pylen lived, who was my host at this time, that we were compelled to leave it and to go with boats into the house where there were four feet of water. This freshet continued three days before we could use the dwelling again. The water ran into the fort, and we were obliged to repair to the woods, where we erected tents and kindled large fires." ^ Several appeals made to the Lords States General to decide the matters in dispute between the West India Company and the patroons obtained, in 1640, the ap- proval of a new charter of privileges and exemptions. 1 Korte historiael. fol. 152. Coll. N. Y. ,Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. iii. pp. 89-91. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 49 Among the articles of this instrument was the provision allowing all patroons, free colonists, and inhabitants of New Netherland the privilege of selling goods brought from Holland by the payment of a duty of ten per cent, on their first cost to the West India Company. Another provision permitted the inhabitants to trade for peltries, but an export duty of ten per cent, in cash was required to be paid to the director and council of New Netherland upon all furs sent to Holland. Persons shipping com- modities from New Netherland were first obliged to pro- cure a permit and then to bind themselves to send them to the company's stores in Holland. The prohibition on the manufacture of woolen, linen and cotton cloth in the new country was removed. Whoever should convey a colony of five adult persons to New Netherland was en- titled to receive a tract of two hundred acres of land, with the privilege of hunting and fishing in the public forests and streams, "No other religion was to be pub- licly tolerated or allowed in New Netherland except that which was then taught and made a rule of practice by authority in the Eeformed Church in the United Prov- inces." The company renewed its pledge to provide the colonists "with as many negroes as possible." The juris- diction of the patroons was not abridged. An appeal from the manor-courts could be made to the director and council of New Netherland when the amount in dispute exceeded the sum of forty dollars, and from all judgments in criminal cases as in the Netherlands,^ The liberty of trafficking for fm's was soon abused by the settlers. Some thinking that an opportunity was now afforded them to make their fortunes personally frequented the Indian villages and trucked for peltry. Others invited the Indians to their houses, admitted them 1 Hoi. doc. vol. ii. fol. 234, 235, 239-262. 4 50 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. to their tables, placed napkins before them, gave them wine, and bestowed upon them the most obsequious at- tentions, which, it is said, the Indians, in time, looked upon "as their due and desert," and that when these civilities were not paid them they manifested great dis- pleasure. Some of the colonists of Rensselaerswyck, perceiving that the Mohawks wanted guns and were will- ing to pay twenty beavers for each piece, and as much as twelve guilders for a pound of powder, sold fire-arms and ammunition to them, from which large profits were real- ized. These private transactions were soon known to the traders coming from Holland to the height of the river's navigation, and they from time to time brought from the Netherlands guns, powder, and lead which they traded for peltry with the Mohawks. The four hundred war- riors of this tribe soon became expert in the use of these death-dealing weapons, achieving ' ' many profitable for- ays" in Canada, and making ''the surrounding Indians, even as far as the sea-coast," to whom previously the Mo- hawks had in like manner been subject, pay them tribute. The Indians whom the Mohawks had humbled into sub- mission now became eager to possess guns and ammuni- tion in order to release themselves from the degrading domination of the latter. Death being the published penalty for furnishing the Indians with fire-arms, the settlers of the lower colony, at Fort Amsterdam, could not be induced to provide the importuning Wilden with the desired weapons. The refusal of their daily requests affronted the Indians of this part of New Netherland, who called the colonists ^'materiooty," (cowards,) and saying that the Dutch might " be of some importance on water but were of no account on land," that as a people they ' ' had neither a great sachem nor any chiefs. " ^ 1 Journael van Nieu Nederlant. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. Y, 8. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 51 Wampum, the shell-money of the Indians, was now counterfeited by some avaricious Hollanders, whose "ill- made, rough zee wan " lessened the circulation of the more valuable article made by the Wilden. The Indians made it by shaping small pieces of the shells of such testaceous fishes as the periwinkle, cockle and mussel into cylindrical beads, about a quarter of an inch long, perforated lengthwise like a pipe- stem. These were strung on strings and woven together into strips, some as broad as a man's hand and of different lengths. As money, the black or dark-purple beads were rated at double the value of the white ones. Not only was wam- pum used as money by the Indians, but they also highly prized it as a decoration, wearing it around their necks and arms, and attaching it to their clothing. They also gave it as a pledge for the fulfillment of their compacts and as a significant token of their good- will, when about to engage in conferences of any special importance. For a long time four beads of Indian wampum had the cur- rent value of a stiver (about two cents) in New Nether- land. The baser zeewan made by the Dutch threatening "the ruin of the country," a law was enacted by the director-general and council of New Netherland, by v/hich six of the inferior beads were declared the equivalent of a stiver. ^ Arendt van Curler, who, in 1630, had been appointed assistant commissary of Rensselaerswyck, was now commissary -general of the manor. In the fall of 1641 Adriaen van der Donck, a graduate of the university of Leyden, Holland, assumed the duties of the schout-fiscaal or attorney-general of the colony. This officer, before sailing to New Netherland, was instructed by Kiliaen van Rensselaer to prosecute a number of farmers on his lAlbany records, vol. ii. fol. 108-111, 118-119. Hoi. doc. vol. v. fol. 360. 52 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. manor who were hiring laborers not in the service of the patroon, which transactions the latter declared tended greatly to his injury, "to the downfall of the colony, the transgression of his ordinances," and were "directly con- trary to their promises and sealed contracts." These of- fenders and other transgressors were to be brought by the attorney-general before the officers of the patroon, and action was to be taken against them, in order that they might be punished ' ' by penalties and fines, conformably to law." ' 1 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. CHAPTER IV THE KERKEBUURT. ^ 1642-1651. Kiliaen van Rensselaer was peculiarly qualified for the duties of his patroonship. He was self-reliant and practical, wealthy and ambitious. His plans for the set- tlement of his colony and his measures for the welfare of his people evince the sound judgment and the executive ability which gave his acts no little prominence in the history of New Netherland. He built comfortable houses and ample barns for his tenants ; provided them with agricultural implements and live-stock ; erected saw and grist-mills at convenient places on the larger water-cour- ses of the manor ; and supplied his store with suitable goods to meet the common wants of the colonists. The number of inhabitants of Rensselaerswyck had become so large in 1642 that the patroon willingly com- plied with the requirements of the West India Company to secure for the settlers the services of a clergyman of the Reformed Church. He requested the classis of Am- sterdam to provide the people of the manor with a "good, honest, and pure preacher. " The Reverend Doctor Joan- nes Megapolensis, junior, the pastor of the congregation of Schorel and Berg, belonging to the classis of Alkmaar, was selected. This clergyman formally accepted his call 5 From kerk, church, and Iniurt, neighborhood. 53 54 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. to the new field of pastoral labor, on the sixth of March, 1642. ' One of its conditions was that he was to serve the patroon six years and to receive an annual salary of one thousand guilders, (four hundred dollars,) the first three years, so that he and his family should be ' ' able to maintain themselves honorably and not be necessitated to have recourse to any other means, either farming, trading, cattle-rearing or such like, except the diligent performance of his duties for the edification of the in- habitants and Indians.'- This salary was to be paid in " meat, drink, and whatever he might claim," one-half in Holland, the other in New Netherland, at the current prices. He was also to receive a yearly donation of thirty schepels ( twenty -two and a half bushels ) of wheat, and two firkins of butter, or sixty guilders. If his services should be satisfactory to the patroon, it was further stip- ulated that the latter was to give him annually, for the last three years, two hundred guilders additional salary. The patroon besides giving the clergyman a present of three hundred guilders before he embarked for New Netherland, also agreed that he and his family should not be at any expense for food while making the voyage, and that his salary should begin on the day of his arrival at Fort Orange. ^ On the twenty-second of March, the classis of Amsterdam duly accredited him ' ' to preach God's word in the colony " of Rensselaerswyck, "in con- 1 The acceptance of the call was attested, in Amsterdam, by Adam Bessels, a co-partner of the patroon, the Rev. Jacobus Laurentius and Petrus Vv^ittewrongel, ministers of the Reformed Church. 2 In the agreement it is stated that the Rev. Dr. Megapolensis was thirty-nine years old, that his wife, Machtelt, was forty-two years of age, that their children, Hellegond, Dirrick, Jan, and Samuel, were respectively, aged fourteen, twelve, ten, and eight years. The clergyman was the son of the Rev. Joannes Megapolensis, pastor of the church at Coedyck, Holland, and of Hellegond Jansen. He married his cousin, Machtelt Willemsen, daughter of Willem Steengs, or Heengs. — Albany records, vol, v, fol. 323. 339. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 55 formity with the government, confession and catechism of the Netherland churches and the synodal acts of Dord- recht." The Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company demanded that the credentials of the Reverend Doctor Megapolensis should be submitted to it for approv- al, claiming that the commission granted him by the classis of Amsterdam was not valid without its attesta- tion and sanction. This prerogative Kiliaen van Ren- sselaer was unwilhng to concede to the company. How- ever, as the vessel to convey the clergyman and his family to New Netherland was ready to sail, the patroon waived his objections to the company's approval of the document in a written protest. Having formally ex- amined the paper, the directors of the Amsterdam cham- ber gave it their indorsement on the sixth of June. The ship, De Houttuyn, then sailed for New Nether- land, having as her passengers, the clergyman and his family, Abraham Staes, surgeon, Evert Pels, brewer, and his wife, Hendrick Albertsen and his wife, and four- teen other emigrants. ^ These colonists arrived at Fort Orange on the thirteenth of August. Arendt van Curler as instructed by the patroon, provided the minister and his family with lodging and boarding until he could build a suitable house for them. Fearing that the colonists of his manor, living, as they did, at wide intervals from one another, might, at some time, fall victims to savage treachery and revenge, as had been the lot of some of the settlers near Fort Amsterdam, the patroon determined to have them dwell in the neighborhood of the church, which he intended to build near the walls of Fort Orange. He therefore made a small map of the proposed church- vicinage, designating the place for the site of the church, 1 Among these were Cornells Lamberssen, Jochlm Ketlelhuer, Johan Helms, Johan Carsterssen, Jeuriach Bestvaell, Claes Jansen, Paulus Jansen Hans Vos, and Jurien van Sleswyck. — MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 56 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the parsonage, the manor-house and the dweUings of the traders and mechanics. This plan he showed to Abraham Staes and Evert Pels before they sailed from Amsterdam, who promised to build their houses on the sites designated by the patroon. The ferry established between the east and west banks of the river was given in charge of Hendrick Albertsen, who built a ferry-house on the north side of the Bever kill, ^ flowing into the Hudson, where now is the eastern terminus of Arch Street. The patroon's directions respecting these matters were conveyed to Commissary Van Curler in memoranda given to the Rev. Dr. Megapolensis, on the third of June. Hendrick Albertsen, the patroon writes, ' ' has been treating with me for the place of ferryman, fixing his dwelling by the Bever kill, in order to convey the people to the church- neighborhood and back again from it. As the church, the minister's house, that of the officer, and also all those of the trades-people must hereafter be established there, as Abraham Staes and Evert Pels, the brewer, have undertaken, I am entirely willing, and consent that, with the exception of the farmers and tobacco- planters, who must reside on their farms and plantations, no tradesmen, henceforth and after the expiration of their service, shall establish themselves elsewhere than in the church-neighborhood in the order and according to the plan of building sent herewith ; for every one residing where he thinks fit, separated far from the others, would be unfortunately in danger of their lives, in the same manner, as sorrowful experience has taught around the Manhattans. Concerning these matters the commissary, Arendt van Curler, shall give notice to all persons, being called together, so that they may regulate themselves accordingly. '■ 1 The Bever kill was early called the First kill. The stream is now known as Buttermilk creek. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 57 The patroon's commissary, in obedience to the in- structions given him, contracted "for the building of a house for Domine Megapolensis which should be ready precisely at Christmas." The contractors, however, were dilatory, and it was not until November that they were ready to begin building. Then Van Curler thinking that it would be unwise to permit the work to proceed so late in the season, and ''that the house would cause great expense in meat and drink, and the work not be ad- vanced," broke the contract. Fortunately, at this time Maryn Adriaensen van Veere offered to sell to the disap- pointed commissary a newly-built "house of oak-wood, all ready, cross casings, door casings, all of oak." The domine was consulted, who, after examining the build- ing, concluded that it was better adapted to his wants than the one to be erected for him. Thereupon Van Curler purchased it for three hundred and fifty guilders, or one hundred and forty dollars. ^ In order to preach to the Indians Domine Megapolen- sis began to study their peculiar language. In his short sketch of the Mohawk Indians, written in 1644, he tells of the many perplexities which embarrassed him in ac- quiring a knowledge of the Mohawk tongue. ^ He calls the Mohawks, Mahakinbas and Mahakuaas, oi- as they denominated themselves, Kajingahaga. The Mohegans he calls Mahakans, or as they were designated in the In- dian language, Agotzagena. ' ' The Mohawks are divided 1 MSS. of Rensselaerwyck. 2 Korte ontwerp van de Mahakuase Indianen in Nieuw Nederlandt, haer landt, stature, dracht, manieren, en magistraten ; beschreven in 't jaer 1644 ; door Johannem Megapolensem, juniorem, predikant aldaer. Amster- dam. Bij Joost Hartgers, bookverkooper op den dam. Anno 1651. A short sketch of the Mohawk Indians in New Netherland, their land, stature, dress, manners and magistrates, written in the year 1644, by Johan- nes Megapolensis, junior, minister there. Amsterdam. By Joost Hartgers bookseller, at the dam. Year 1651. Vide Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. viii. pp. 137-160. 58 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. into three tribes, called Ochkari, Anaware, Okfiaho, the bear, the tortoise, and the wolf. Of these, the tortoise is the greatest and most eminent, and the members of it boast that they are the oldest. '^' * * These have made a fort of palisades, and they call their castle Asseriie. ^ Those of the bear tribe are next to these, and their castle is called by them Banagiro. The last are the descendants of these, and their castle is called Thenon- 1 "The Maquaes have four touns, vizt Cahaniaga, Canagora, Cona- jorha, Tionondogue, besides one small village about 110 miles from Albany. " Cahaniaga is double stockadoed round, has four ports, about four foott wide a piece, conteyns about 24 houses, & is situate upon the edge of an Hill, about a bow shott from the river side. "Canagora is only singly stockadoed, has four ports like the former, conteyns about 16 houses ; itt is situated upon a fHatt, a stones throw from ye water side. " Conajorha is also singly stockadoed, and ye like manr of Ports and quantity of houses as Canagora, ye like situacon, only about two miles distant from the water. "Tionondogue is double stockadoed round, has four Ports, four foott wide, a piece, contains about thirty houses, is scituated on a hill a Bow shott from ye River. "The small village is without! ffence, & conteyns about ten houses, lyes close by ye river side, on ye north side, as do all ye former. " The Maques passe in all for aboutt 300 fighting men. * * * " The Onyades have butt one towne, which lys aboutt 130 miles westward of ye Maques, itt is situate aboutt 20 miles from a small river which comes out of ye hills to ye southward and runs into the Lake Teshirogue [Oneida Lake,] and aboutt 30 miles distant from the Maques river, which lyes to ye northward ; the towne is newly settled, double stockadoed. * * * The towne consists of aboutt 100 houses, they are said to have aboutt 200 fighting men. * * * "The Onondagos have but one towne butt itt is very large. consisting of about 140 houses, nott fenced, is situate upon a hill thatt is very large, the Banke on each side extending itt selfe att least two miles. ""' * * They have likewise a small village about two miles beyound thatt, consisting of about 24 houses. They ly to the Southward of ye west, about 36 miles from the Onyades. * * * The Onondagos are said to be about 350 fighting men. ^ '' "The Caiougas have three townes about a mile distant from each other, they are not stockadoed, they doe in all consist of about 100 houses, they ly about 60 miles to the Southward of ye Onondagos. * * * They passe for about 300 fighting men. * * >^ "The Senecques have four towns, vizt Canagora, Tiotohatton, Canoen- ada and Keint-he ; Canagaroh and Tiotohatton lye within 30 miles of ye lake THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 59 diogo. Each of these tribes carries the animal after which it is called (as its ensign) when it goes to war. i * * * "These two nations [the Mohawks and the Mohegans] have different languages that have no affinity with each other, as the Dutch and the Latin. These people formerly carried on a great war against each other, but since the Mahakanders were subdued by the Mahakobaas, a peace has existed between them, and the conquered are obliged to bring an annual contribution to the other. We live among the people of each tribe of these Indians, who, coming to us from their country or we going to them, manifest by many acts a great friendship for us. The principal nation of all the savages and Indians in this Neighborhood with which we are acquainted, are the Mahakuaas, vvho have laid all the other Indians near us under contribution. This nation has a very heavy Ian- * guage, and I find great difficulty in learning it so as to ffrontenacque [Lake Ontario,] and ye other two ly about four or five miles apiece to ye southward of these. * * * None of their towns are stockadoed. " Canagorah lyes on the top of a great hill. * * * Contayning 150 houses ; Northwestward of Caiougo 72 miles. * * * Tiotehatton which signifies bending, itt lyes to Westward of Canagorah about 30 miles, con- tains about 120 houses. * * * " Canoenda lyes about four miles to ye Southward of Canagorah, con- teys about SO houses. * * * Keint-he lyes aboutt four or five miles to , ye Southward of Tiotehatton, contayns about 24 houses. * * * 'Yhe ■ Senecques are counted to bee in all aboutt 1000 fighting men." — Observations of Wentworth Greenhalgh in a Journey from Albany to ye Indyans west- ward ; Begun May 2Sth, 1677, and ended July ye 14th following. London doc. iii. Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 20. 1 Each tribe has, in the gable end of its cabin, the animal of the tribe painted ; some in black, others in red. * * * " When they go to war and wish to inform those of the party who may pass their path they make a representation of the animal of their tribe, with a hatchet in his dexter paw ; sometimes a sabre or a club ; and if there be a number of tribes together in the same party, each draws the animal of his tribe, and the number representing the tribe's party all on a tree from which the bark has been removed. The animal of the tribe heading the expedition is always the foremost." — The nine Iroquois tribes. 1666. Paris doc. i. Doc, hist. N. Y. vol. i. pp. 11, 12. 60 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. speak and preach to them fluently. There is no Chris- tian here who understands the language thoroughly ; those who have lived here long can hold a kind of con- versation just sufficient to carry on trade with them, but they do not understand the idiom of the language. I am making a vocabulary of the Mahakuaa language, and when I am among them I ask them how things are called; but as they are very stupid, I sometimes cannot get an explanation of what I want. Besides what I have just mentioned, one will tell me a word in the infinitive mood, another in the indicative ; one in the first, another in the second person ; one in the present, another in the praeter perfect tense. I often stand and look but do not know how to put it down. And as they have their declensions and conjugations, so they have their augments like the Greeks. Thus I am as if I were distracted, and fre- quently cannot tell what to do, and there is no person to set me right. I must do all the studying myself in order to become in time an Indian grammarian. When I first observed that they pronounced their words so differently, I asked the commissary of the company what it meant. ^ He answered that he did not know, but imagined they changed their language every two or three years. I told him in reply that it could not be that a whole nation should so frequently change its language ; and, though he has been associated with them here these twenty years he can afford me no assistance. * * * - "We go with them into the woods, we meet with each other, sometimes at an hour or two's walk from any houses, and think no more about it than if we met with a Christian. They sleep by us, too, in our chambers, before our beds. I have had eight at once, who lay and slept upon the floor, near my bed; for it is their custom to 1 Sebastian Jansen Crol. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 61 sleep only on the bare ground, and to have only a stone or a piece of wood under their heads. In the evening they go to bed very soon after they have supped ; but they rise early in the morning, and are up before day begins to break. They are very slovenly and dirty. They do not wash their faces or hands, but let all kinds of filth remain upon their yellow skin, and look as dirty as hogs. Their bread is Indian corn beaten into pieces between two stones, of which they make a cake, and bake it in the ashes. Their other victuals are venison, turkeys, hares, bears, wild cats, their own dogs and other things. The fish they cook just as they get them out of the water without cleaning them ; also the entrails of deer, with all their contents, which they cook a little ; and if the entrails are then too tough, they take one end in their mouth and the other in their hand, and between hand and mouth they separate and eat them. So they do commonly with flesh. They cut a little piece and lay it on the fire so long as it takes one to go from house to church, and then it is done ; and when they eat it, the blood runs down their chins. They can also take a piece of bear's fat as large as two fists, and eat it with- out bread or any thing else. It is natural to them to have no beards. Not one in a hundred has any hair about his -mouth. "They paint their faces red, blue and other colors, and then they look like the devil himself. They smear their heads with bear's grease, which they all carry with them for this purpose in a small basket. They say they do it to make their hair grow better and prevent their having lice. When they travel they take with them some of their maize, a kettle, a wooden bowl, and a spoon. These they pack and hang on their backs. When- ever they are hungry, they immediately make a fire and 62 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. cook. They can get fire by rubbing pieces of wood together one against the other, and that very quickly. "They have their set times for going to catch fish, bears, panthers, and beavers. In the spring they catch vast quantities of shad and eels, which are very large here. They lay them on the bark of trees in the sun, and dry them thoroughly until they are hard, and then put them in notasten or bags, which they plait from hemp, which grows wild here, and keep the fish till winter. When their corn is ripe, they take off the ears and put them in deep pits, and preserve them the whole winter. They can also make nets and seines in their fashion ; and when they want to fish with seines, ten or twelve men will go together and help one another, all of whom own the seine in common. * * * * "They generally live without marriage, but if any of them have wives, the marriage continues no longer than they think proper, and then they separate and each takes another partner. , I have seen those that had parted, and afterward lived a long time with others, seek their former partners and again be one pair. On the birth of a child, the women go about immediately afterward, and be it ever so cold it makes no difference, they wash themselves and the infant in the river or the snow. They "will not He down (for they say that if they did they should soon die), but keep going about. * - * The men have great authority over their wives, so that if they do any thing which affronts them and makes them angry, they take an axe and knock them in the head, and there is an end of it. The women are obliged to prepare the land, to mow, to plant and do everything. The men do nothing except hunt, fish, and go to war against their enemies. They are very cruel toward their enemies in time of war. They first bite off the nails of the fingers of their cap- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 63 tives, and cut off some joints, and sometimes all the fin- gers. The captives are afterward forced to sing and dance before them stark naked ; and finally, they roast their prisoners dead before a slow fire for some days, and then eat them. The common people eat the arms, the rump and trunk, but the chiefs eat the head and heart. * * * ''They have also naturally a great opinion of them- selves. They say, ' I hy Othkon^ — (I am the devil), by vp'hich they mean that they are unequalled. In order to praise themselves and their people, whenever we tell them they are very expert at catching deer, or doing this and that, they say, ' Tkoschs ko, aguweechon kajingahaga kouaane Jountuckcha Othkon;^ that is. Really all the Mohawks are very cunning devils. * * * They also make of the peeling and bark of trees, canoes or small boats, which will carry four, five, and six persons. They also hollow out trees and use them for boats, some of which are very large. I have several times sat and sailed with ten, twelve, and fourteen .persons in one of these hollowed logs. We have in our colony a wooden canoe obtained from the Indians, which will easily carry two hundred schepels [one hundred and fifty bushels] of wheat. The arms used by them in war were formerly a bow and arrow, with a stone axe and clap-hammer, or mallet ; but now they get from our people guns, swords, iron axes and mallets. * * * They place their dead upright in holes, and do not lay them down, and then they throw some trees and wood on the grave, or inclose it with palisades. * * * ' ' They are entire strangers to all religion, but they have a Tharonliijouaagon, (whom they also otherwise caU Athzoockkuatoriaho, ) that is, a Genius, Tvhom they honor in the place of God ; but they do not serve or present offerings to him. They worship and present offerings to 64 THE HISTOBY OF ALBANY. the devil, whom they call Otskon, or Aireskuoni. If they have any bad luck in war, they catch a bear, which they cut in pieces, and roast, and these they olfer up to their Aireskuoni, saying the following words : ' great and mighty Aireskuoni, we know that we have offended against thee, inasmuch as we have not killed and eaten our captive enemies ; forgive us this. We promise that we will kill and eat all the captives we shall hereafter take as certainly as we have killed, and now eat this bear.' Also when the weather is very hot, and there comes a cooling breeze, they cry out directly, 'Asoronusi, asoronusi, Otskon aworouhsi reinniiha ; ' that is, I thank thee, I thank thee. Devil, I thank thee, Oomke ! If they are sick, or have a pain or soreness any where in their limbs, and I ask them what ails them, they say that the devil sits in their body, or in the sore places, and bites them there ; and they always attribute to the devil the accidents which befall them ; they have no other re- ligion than this. When we pray they laugh at us. Some of them really despise praying ; and some, when we tell them what we do when we pray, stand astonished. When we have a sermon, sometimes ten or twelve of them, more or less, will attend, each having a long to- bacco pipe that he has made, in his mouth, and will stand awhile and look, and afterward ask me what I was doing and what I wanted that I stood there alone and made so many words, while none of the rest might speak. I tell them that I admonish the Christians that they must not steal, nor commit lewdness, nor get drunk, nor commit murder, and that they too ought not to do these things, and that I intend in^ course of time to preach the same to them and come to them in their own country and castles (about three days' journey from here, further inland,) when I am acquainted with their language. They THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 65 say I do well to teach the Christians, but immediately add, ^ Diatennon jawij Assyreoni, hagiowisk,^ that is, Why do so many Christians do these things ? They call us Assyreoni, that is, cloth-makers, or Charistooni, that is, iron workers, because our people first brought cloth and iron among them." ^ A few weeks before the arrival of Domine Megapolensis at Fort Orange, about seventy Mohawk warriors set out on a foray. On the fourth of August they attacked from both sides of the St. Lawrence River a party of Huron Indians and French priests who were ascending the river to the Huron country in twelve canoes. Twenty- two prisoners were taken in the brief struggle. On the march to the Mo- hawk River the captives were subjected to a series of sav- age cruelties, which are partly described by Father Jogues, in a letter written by him at Rensselaerswyck, dated August 5, 1643. ^ This holy man they had beaten senseless because he had manifested a tender commiseration for one of the tortured prisoners. "Scarcely had I begun to breathe, when some others, attacking me, tore out, by biting, almost all my finger-nails, and crunched my two forefingers with their teeth, giving me intense pain. * * * No trial, however, came harder upon me than to see them, five or six days afterward, approach us jaded with the march, and in cold blood, with minds nowise excited by passion, pluck out our liair and beard, and drive their nails, which are always very sharp, deep into parts most tender and sensitive to the slightest impres- sion. * * * On the eighth day we fell in with a band of two hundred Indians going out to fight ;^ and as it is 1 Vide Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. viii. pp. 13t-160. 2 This letter, it is said by the translator, .John Gilmary Shea, was ad- dressed to the provincial of the Jesuits at Paris. The original, in its classic Latin, was printed by Alegambe, in his Mortes illustres, Rome, \&b1 ; and by Tanner in his Societas Militans, Prague, 16'75. 3 At an island in Lake Champlain. 5 66 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the custom for savages, when out on war-parties, to ini- tiate themselves, as it were, by cruelty, under the belief that their success will be the greater as they shall have been the more cruel, they thus received us : First render- ing thanks to the sun, which they imagine presides over war, they congratulated their countrymen by a joyful volley of musketry. Each then cut some stout clubs in the neighboring wood in order to receive us. After we had landed from the canoes, they fell upon us from both sides with their clubs in such fury, that I, who was the last and therefore the most exposed to their blows, sank overcome by their numbers and severity before I had accomplished half the rocky way that led to the hill on which a stage had been erected for us. I thought I should quickly die there ; and therefore, partly because I could not, partly because I cared not, I did not rise. How long they spent their fury upon me He knows for v^hose love and sake it is delightful and glorious thus to suffer. Moved at last by a cruel mercy, and wishing to carry me to their country alive, they ceased to strike. And thus half dead and covered with blood, they bore me to the scaffold. Here I had scarce begun to breathe, when they ordered me to come down to load me with scoffs and insults, and countless blows upon my head and shoulders, and indeed on my whole body. I should be tedious were I to at- tempt to tell all that the French prisoners suffered. They burnt one of my fingers, and crushed another with their teeth ; the others already thus mangled they so wrenched by the tattered nerves that even now, though healed, they are frightfully deformed. * * * On the eve of the As- sumption [the fifteenth of August], about three o'clock, we reached a river which fiows by their village. ^ Both banks were filled with Iroquois, who received us with clubs, 1 The Mohawk. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 67 fists, and stones. As a bald or thinly- covered head is an ob- ject of aversion to them, this tempest burst in its fury on my bare head. Two of my nails had hitherto escaped ; these they tore out with their teeth, and with their keen nails stripped off the flesh beneath to the very bone," Shortly afterward Father Jogues was approached by an old Indian, who compelled an unwilling squaw to cut off his left thumb. ^ The news of the foray of the Mohawks soon reached Fort Orange. It startled the little community. The armed Mohawks were greater in number than the sol- diers of the garrison and the able-bodied men of the manor. No one could tell how soon some sudden freak of savage temper might suggest an attack upon the fort and the pillage of the farms. The power to enslave French- men might prompt an attempt to subject the people of the church- neighborhood to a similar servitude. The colonists were governed by their apprehensions. They resolved to do two things. The first was to retain the good will of the Mohawks by presenting them with some significant tokens of their friendship. The second was to procure the early release of the French prisoners by offering their captors a large ransom. Ai^endt van Curler, the patroon's commissary, Jan Labatie, a French settler, and Jacob Jansen of Amster- dam, were delegated to visit the Mohawks, and to renew the former covenants of peace, and amity, and to make overtures for the liberation of Father Jogues, and his assistant laymen, (donnes,) William Couture and Rene Goupil. They proceeded to the Mohawk village, where as Arent van Curler relates the three Frenchmen were kept prisoners, "among them a Jesuit, a very learned man, whom they had treated very badl}'" by cutting off his fin- 1 The Jogues papers, translated and arranged, with a memoir, by John Gilmary Shea. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. viii. pp. 174-182. 68 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. gers and thumbs. I carried i^resents there, and desired that we should hve as good neighbors and that they should neither harm the colonists nor their castle, to all of which the savages of all three villages readily agreed. We were entertained there very well and very kindly. We had to stop before each castle for about a quarter of an hour that the savages could get ready and re- ceive us with a number of salutes from their muskets. They were highly delighted that I had come there. Some men were immediately ordered to go hunting and they brought home very fine turkeys. After thoroughly in- specting their castle, I called together all the chiefs of the three castles and advised them to release the French prisoners, but without success, for they re- fused it in an eloquent speech, saying : ' We shall be kind to you always, but on this subject you must be silent. Besides you well know how they treat our people when they fall into their hands. ' Had we reached there three or four days later they would have been burnt. I offered them a ransom for the Frenchmen, about six hundred florins in goods, which all the colony was to contribute, but they would not accept it. We neverthe- less induced them to promise not to kill them, but to carry them back to their country. The Frenchmen ran screaming after us and besought us to do all in our power for their delivery from the savages. But there was no chance for it. On my return they gave me an escort of ten or twelve armed men who conducted us home. * * * Two of these Frenchmen, of whom the Jesuit was one, were at my house last May. They expressed their hope that means could be found to procure their release. As soon as the Indians return from hunting, I shall en- deavor to obtain their freedom." ^ 1 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Letter of Arendt van Curler to the patroon dated at "the Manhattans," June 16, 1643. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 69 It was not until the summer of 1643 that a way of escape was opened to Father Jogues. About the first of August he was permitted to accompany a party of Mo- hawks to Fort Orange. He then went with them to "a place seven or eight leagues below the Dutch post," to catch fish. Returning about the middle of the month, the Indians tarried at Fort Orange. Here he was advised by the officer commanding the garrison to get privately on board of a vessel anchored in the river and about to sail to Virginia, whence it would carry him to France. He was greatly perplexed. He was afraid that the Indians would suspect the Dutch of aiding him to escape. He said he would wait until morning be- fore accepting or declining the advice given him. "As soon as it was day," he writes, "I went to salute the Dutch governor, and told him the resolution I had come to before God. He called upon the officers of the ship, told them his intentions, and exhorted them to receive and conceal me, in a word, to carry me over to Europe. They replied that if I could once get aboard their vessel I was safe, and would not have to leave it till I reached Bordeaux or Rochelle." "'Cheer up, then,' said the governor, 'return with the Indians, and this evening, or in the night, steal off quietly and get to the river, where you will find a little boat which I will have ready to take you to the ship.' ' ' After most humble thanks to all those gentlemen, I left the Dutch, better to conceal my design. In the evening I retired, with ten or twelve Iroquois, to a barn, where we spent the night. Before lying down I went out to see where I could most easily escape. The dogs, then let loose, ran at me, and a large and powerful one snapped at my bare leg and bit it severely. I immediately entered the barn, the Iroquois closed the door securely. 70 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. and to guard me better came and lay beside me, the one who was in a manner appointed to watch me. Seeing myself beset with these mishaps, and the barn secured and surrounded by dogs that would betray me if I attempted to go out, I almost thought I could not escape. * * ^ This whole night also I spent without sleep. Toward day I heard the cocks crow. Soon after, a servant of the Dutch farmer, who had received us into his barn, entered by some door I had not seen. I went up to him softly and made him a sign, not understanding his Flemish, to stop the dogs from barking. He immediately went out, and I after him, when I had taken up my little luggage consisting of a little office of the Blessed Virgin, an Imitation of Christ, and a wooden cross which I had made to keep me in mind of my Saviour's suffer- ings. Having got out of the barn without making any noise or waking my guards, I climbed over a fence sur- rounding the house, and ran straight to the river where the ship was. It was as much as my wounded leg could do, for the distance was a quarter of a league. I found the boat as I had been told, but as the tide had gone down it w^as high and dry. I pushed it to get it to the water, but finding it too heavy, I called to the ship to send me their boat to take me on board. There was no answer. I do not know whether they heard me. Be that as it may, no one appeared, and day was beginning to reveal to the Iroquois the robbery which I had made of myself, and I feared to be surprised in my innocent crime. Weary of hallooing I returned to my boat, and praying to the Almighty to increase my strength, I suc- ceeded at last so well by working it slowly on and push- ing stoutly that I got it into the water. As soon as it floated I jumped in and reached the vessel alone, unper- ceived by any Iroquois. I was immediately lodged in the THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 71 bottom of the hold, and to hide me they put a large box on the hatch. I was two days and two nights in the hold of this ship, in such a state that I expected to be suffo- cated and die of the stench. * * * "The second night of my voluntary imprisonment the minister of the Hollanders came to tell me that the Iroquois had made much trouble, and that the Dutch settlers were afraid that they would set fire to their houses and kill their cattle. * * * j ^as taken to his house, [that of the officer who had advised him to es- cape], where he kept me concealed. These comings and goings were done by night, so that I was not discov- ered."^ "The Iroquois," he says in another letter, "came to the Dutch post about the middle of September, and made a great deal of disturbance, but at last received the presents made by the captain who had me concealed. They amounted to about three hundred livres, which I will endeavor to repay. All things being quieted, I was sent to Manhattan, where the governor of the country resides. He received me kindly, gave me clothes and passage in a vessel which crossed the ocean in mid- winter. "^ 1 Father Jogues's letter, dated Rensselaerswyck, August 80, 1643. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. viii. pp. 201-214. 2 Letter of Father Jogues to Father Charles Lalemant. Rennes, January 6, 1644. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. viii. pp. 214, 215. It is said that on his arrival in France, " honors met him on every side ; objects belonging to him were eagerly sought as relics ; the Queen Regent even requested that he should come to Paris, that she might see so illustrious a sufferer. All this was painful to him, and it was not till three times summoned that he proceeded to the capital. He longed to return to Canada j but one thing prevented his departure. The mangled hands which had been reverently kissed by the Queen and Court of France, were an obstacle to his celebrating the holy sacrifice of the altar. A dispensation was needed. Urban VHI. then sat in the See of Peter, a pope noted especially for the stringent rules which he introduced against any symptom of public veneration to the departed servants of God until their life and virtues had been sifted and examined in the long and minute legal proceedings for canonization. 72 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. The officers of the patroon were often at variance. Disagreements and disputes concerning the administra- tion of the affairs of the manor made them openly cen- sure one another, and, in time, each was the leader of a faction. Adriaen van der Donck, the schout-fiscaal, attempted to secure the favor of the colonists by conniv- ing at the infringement of the laws and regulations of the patroon, and by disparaging the official conduct of the commissary-general. Overtaxed by the numerous cares of the management of the manor. Van Curler was made to feel in many ways the brunt of Van der Donck's personal criticism and ill-will. The loyal commissary held the patroon in high respect. In addressing him in his letters he used the most complimentary phrases of personal courtesy. " Most honorable, wise, powerful, and right discreet lord, my lord patroon, with submissive salutation this shall serve to greet your honor and your honor's beloved lady, who is dear to you, with wished-for good fortune, prosperity, and continued happiness." In a letter thus addressed to Kiliaen van Rensselaer, dated ' 'at the Manhattans," June 16, 1643, he speaks of the reprehensible conduct of the attorney-general. Informing the patroon that he had broken the contract made with the men who were to build the house for Domine Mega- polensis and that he had bought a new one from Maryn Adriaensen van Veere, he says : "Van der Donck, hearing this, began to associate with the carpenters and others, and told them that we had issued placards [proclamations] Yet when the application of Father Jogues was presented, and he had learned the story of his sufferings, he forgot his own laws and exclaimed, as he o-ranted it, ' Indignum esse Christl martyrem CJwisii non Inhere sangidnem .' '' In June, 1646, on his way to visit the tribe by whom he had been held pris- oner, he stopped at Fort Orange. In the fall of 1646 he fell into the hands of a war-party of Mohawks, who put him to death with horrible cruelties. Memoir of Father Jogues by John Gilmary Shea. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. viii. pp. 168-172. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Y3 forbidding the colonists to trade with the residents [the traders at Fort Orange] ; that those interested should mutiny, that those who had been connected with this [purchase of the house] had also drawn up the placards, and also that I had undertaken to steal the bread out of the mouths of the colonists. Some who heard him were surprised that an officer of the manor should give such counsel to the people. Some immediately conspired together to protest against me, and under the protest [written by them] drew a circle within which to place their names, so that it should not be known who had first signed it. This protest having been drawn up, some were for driving me out of the colony as a rogue, others wished to take my life. Nothing, however, resulted from these threats. Van der Donck thereafter said he would honestly and to our satisfaction, assist me and the council. But when want pressed him, he withdrew from me and the council to second them. I shall send your honor the affidavits of two persons who told me this with their own lips, so that your honor can readily form an opinion respecting this matter, and what kind of an officer you have here who causes so much trouble to a whole colony. He intends next year to return home. He has been to Katskill with some colonists to examine that place, and. your honor may be assured he intends to look for partners to plant a colony there. Borger Jorissen, who has heretofore been in the lord's colony, will also live there." When Kiliaen van Rensselaer received the informa- tion concerning Van der Donck's intention to plant a colony on the south side of his manor, he forthwith com- missioned Pieter Wyncoop, then at Amsterdam with the ship, the Arms of Reusselaerswyck, to purchase from the Indians the lands lying at Katskill. According to the 74 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. charter of 1629, the patroon claimed that no person could settle a colony within seven or eight miles of his manor, and that he could extend the limits of his own to Katskill if he settled a proportionate number of colonists on it, which number of emigrants was then on board the Arms of Rensselaerswyck. In order to preclude Van der Donck from making such a settlement, the patroon de- clared that he had already included the new tract within his manor, from Beeren Island to Katskill. ^ He therefore instructed Arendt van Curler to con- strain Van der Donck to desist from his undertaking. He wrote : "In case Van der Donck should prove obstinate, he shall be degraded from his office and left on his bouwery to complete his contracted lease. He shall not be allowed to depart, and his office shall be conferred pro- visionally on Nicolaas Coorn till further orders, and he shall be divested of all papers appertaining to his charge. But if he will desist, then he shall be allowed to hold his office and his bouwery. "2 Van Curler also wrote to the patroon concerning the evils which had sprung up in the colony by the general competition to purchase peltry. He said: "The trade heretofore has always been at six fathoms of zeewan, [for a merchantable beaver skin]. Last year the residents as well as the colonists gave seven to seven and a half fathoms. I also gave the same. As soon as they saw that I and the West India Company's commissary gave so much, they immediately gave nine, and since this spring ten fathoms. So at last the trade ran so high that we of the colony and the commissary at the fort agreed to publish a placard as well for the colonists as 1 Letter to Arendt van Curler, dated Amsterdam, Sept. 10, 1643. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 2 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. An order to Arendt van Curler and Pieter Wyncoop concerning Katskill THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. 75 the residents and the company's servants that they should not presume, on pain of heavy fine and confisca- tion of their goods, to trade v^ith the Indians for furs at more than nine fathoms of white wampum, or four and a half fathoms of black ; and that none, on pain of con- fiscation, should go into the woods to trade, and ordered that the officer [Van der Donck] should prevent it. And he has not even once attended to this ; nor will he do so even now. "When he was told that he should take notice of the frauds and abuses in order to prevent the same as much as possible, he declared that he would not con- sent to be the worst man to others, that he would not make himself suspected by the colonists as his years, as officer, were few. And it happened last year, that we agreed together respecting a placard that no residents should presume to come with their boats within the hmits of the colony, on confiscation of the same. There- upon there were great complaints on the part of the colo- nists. * * * Neither I nor the company have scarcely had any trade this year. I believe the residents have conveyed fully three to four thousand furs from above. So great a trade has never been driven as this year, and it would be very profitable if your honor could bring about with a high hand that the residents should not come to the colony to trade. Otherwise yoQr honor will never derive any profit." ^ The patroon, as suggested by Van Curler, did attempt "with a high hand" to prevent traders from coming to his colony to traffic with the settlers and Indians. He ordered Nicolaas Coorn to fortify Beeren Island and to demand of each skipper of a vessel passing up and down the river, except those of the West India Company, a 1 Letter of Arendt van Curler to the patroon, June 16, 1643. MSS. of Rensselerswyck. 76 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. toll of five guilders (two dollars) as a staple right or tax, and also to compel each one to lower his colors in honor of the patroon. In accordance with the instructions given him, he issued a manifesto prefaced with this paragraph : "I, Nicolaas Coorn, quartermaster (wacht-meester) of Rensselaer's castle (steyn) and for the noble lord, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, under the high jurisdiction of the high and mighty Lords States General of the United Nether- lands, and the privileged West India Company, hereditary commander of the colonies on this North River of New Netherland, and as vice-commander in his place, make known to you that you shall not presume to use this river to the injury of the acquired right of the said lord in his rank as patroon of the colony of Rensselaerswyck, the first and the oldest on this river." The loyal wacht-meester charged the intrusive traders with the following offences : "First, you frequent this river without his [the patroon's] knowledge. '^ * * " Second, you have attempted afterward to withdraw from him and allure to yourself the tribes round about, which for many years have been accustomed to trade either at Fort Orange with the company's commissary, or with his commissary especially, and if possible to divert these tribes away to his injury, and to show them other secret trading places, greatly to the prejudice of the West India Company and of him, the patroon. "Third, that you have destroyed the trade in furs by advancing and raising the price thereof on the company's commissary at Fort Orange, as well as on his (the patroon's) commissary ; that you are satisfied if you get merely some profit from it, not caring afterward whether or not the trade be so ruined that the patroon will thereby THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 77 be unable to meet the expenses of his colony, the same bemg greatly prejudicial to him, the patroon. ' ' Fourth, that you sought to debauch and to turn his own inhabitants and subjects against their lord and master, furnishing them among other things with wine and strong drink, and selling this to them at a usurious and high price against his will, causing yourself to be paid in peltries, which they, contrary to his orders and their own promises, trade away, or in wheat, which they purloin from their lord, of which they have given no ac- count, of which the lawful tenths were not legally drawn, of which he, the patroon, has not even received his third part or half according to contract, and of which he has not refused the right of pre-emption, compelling the patroon, who has been assisted by his people with Httle or no advances considering his outlay, to enter these on his books, while you go away with that, yea, with his share, whereby he is deprived of the means to provide his people with all that they require because you so ex- haust them and impoverish his colony, which is highly prejudicial to him, the patroon, "• Since he is not bound to suffer these things from any private individuals, he doth warn you to refrain from doing any of them. Protesting in the name of the said lord, should you presume in defiance of law to attempt to pass by contrary to this proclamation, I am directed to prevent you. Under this manifesto, however, you are permitted to trade with his commissary, but not with the Indians or his particular subjects, as will be seen and read in the admonition and instruction given by him, the patroon, to Pieter Wyncoop, the commissary, and Ai-endt van Curler, the commissary -general, conformable to the restrictions of the regulations contained therein."^ 1 Protest of the patroon, dated the eighth day of September, 1643. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. '78 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. While many of the traders were willing to comply with the regulations of the patroon governing their traffic in his colony, there were some who openly defied the power of his officers to prevent their traffic with the Indians and the colonists. The most humiliating require- ment was that each master of a vessel passing Beeren Island should salute the flag of the patroon. In the summer of 1644, Go vert Loockermans, the skipper of the yacht the Good Hope, sailed from Fort Orange, and when passing Rensselaer's castle contempt- uously omitted the required salute. The vigilant officer of Rensselaer's fort cried out, ' ' Lower your colors ! " "For whom should I," demanded the imperturbable seaman. "For the staple-right of Rensselaerswyck," replied the exasperated commander. "I lower my colors for no one except the prince of Orange and the lords, my masters," shouted the daring skipper. The blunt refusal to do homage to the Rensselaer ensign left no other course of action open to Wacht- meester Coorn than that of firing upon the yacht of the contumacious mariner. Quickly training the nearest cannon toward the passing vessel, the Dutch officer ap- plied a match and fired the piece. Its shot tore through the mainsail and cut away some of the rigging. The ball of a second cannon, fired too high, passed over the Good Hope. A third cannon fired by an Indian sent its missile through the colors of the prince of Orange which the in- trepid skipper was waving above his head. When Loockermans arrived at Fort Amsterdam, on the fifth of July, he lodged a complaint against Coorn and de- manded that reparation should be made him for the damages sustained by his vessel. The director-general THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 79 and council of New Netherland ordered that Coorn should indemnify Loockermans for the injury done to the yacht, and forbade his firing on vessels passing Beeren Island under the penalty of corporal punishment. Seem- ingly the wacht-meester of Rensselaer's fort had no fear of the authority vested in the director and council of New Netherland, for he continued to demand toll and homage as he had previously done. The attorney -general of New Netherland was therefore again directed to notify Commander Coorn that if he did not refrain from inter- dicting the free navigation of the river to the height of its navigation that he would be prosecuted to the full ex- tent of the law. Coorn replied that it was a matter which the government and the patroon might settle be- tween them, and that the step he had taken had nothing else in view but " to keep the canker of free people " ^ out of Rensselaerswyck. Although frequent protests were made against this assumed privilege of the patroon nevertheless staple-right and the prescribed salute to the Rensselaer colors were demanded and obtained for a number of years thereafter by the undaunted com mander of Rensselaer's castle. ^ In mid-summer 1645, Director Kieft to obtain pledges of amity from the Indians of New Netherland visited Fort Orange to renew the former treaties made with the Mohawks and the other Wilden of the surrounding country. While the different conferences with the chiefs of the tribes detained the director-general at the fort, the following incident related by Van der Donck occurred : "It happened on a certain morning that the Indian in- terpreter lodging in the director's house came down stairs 1 " A/soo het gedaen wort om den kancket dervnjbdjden ugt sijn colonie te weren." 'i Albany records, vol. ii. fol. 192, 234, 263, ; vol. iii. fol. 187, 188, 219. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. i. pp. 377-381. 80 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and in the presence of the director and myself sat down and began to streak and paint his face. The director ob- served the apphcation of the paint and requested me to in- quire of the Indian the name of the substance he was us- ing. He handed it to me and I passed it to the director, who carefully examined it and inferred from its weight and its greasy and shining appearance that it contain- ed some valuable metal. I bargained with the Indian for it to ascertain its composition. We experimented with it according to the best of our knowledge, and gave it to be assayed to an expert doctor of medicine, named Johannes La Montague of the council of New Netherland. The mineral was put into a crucible and placed in the fire and after it had been in the fire long enough (according to my opinion) it was taken out, when it yielded two pieces of gold worth about three guilders. This assay was kept a secret. After the treaty of peace was made, an officer and several men were sent to the mountain to which the Indian guided them for a quantity of the mineral. They returned with about a bucketful, in- termingled with stones. * * " Experiments were made with this quantity, which proved as good as the first." The director-general desired to send a small quantity of it to the Netherlands., and dispatched a man named Arent Corsen, with a bag containing the mineral, to New Haven, who took passage in an English ship about to sail to England, whence he was to proceed to Holland. This vessel sailed at Christmas and was lost at sea. "The director-general, William Kieft, sailed from New Netherland for the Netherlands in the year 1 647 on board the Princess, taking with him specimens of the assayed mineral and of several others. This ship was also lost." ^ 1 Beschrijvinge van Nieuw Nederlant door Adriaen van der Donck. Coll. N. Y. Historical Soc. Second series, vol. i. pp. 161, 162. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 81 It was afterwards discovered that the so-called gold was nothing more than pyrites, a combination of sulphur, iron, copper, and cobalt, having a yellowish metallic luster. It is commonly called fool's gold. To celebrate the cessation of Indian hostilities in New Netherland and the ratification of the various treaties of peace made by the director-general and his council with the different tribes, which for five years had been at war with the Dutch living in the vicinity of Fort Amsterdam and on Long Island, a general thanksgiving was ordered on the thirty-first of August, to be observed throughout New Netherland. "Whereas it hath pleased Almighty God, in his un- bounded clemency and mercy, in addition to many previous blessings, to suffer us to reach a long-wished-t'or peace with the Indians ; "Therefore is it deemed necessary to proclaim the fact to all the inhabitants of New Netherland, to the end that in all places within the aforesaid country where Dutch and English churches are established, God Al- mighty may be especially thanked, praised, and blessed, on next Wednesday forenoon, being the sixth of Septem- ber, the text to be appropriate and the sermon to be applicable thereto." A copy of the proclamation was sent to Domine Megapolensis, in Rensselaerswyck, accompanied with this order : "Your reverence will please announce this matter to the people of the congregation next Sunday, so that they may have notice. On which we rely."^ Father Jogues, the French Jesuit missionary, who had returned to Canada, was sent in 1646, by the governor of Canada, as an embassador of peace to the Mohawks, 1 Albany records, vol. ii. fol. 312-317. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. i. pp. 275, 276, 278. 82 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. with whom Father Jogues had been a prisoner. On the sixteenth of May, he set out on his mission from Three Rivers with Mr. Bourdon, a French officer, and four Mohawks and two Algonquins.^ On the twenty-ninth of May they reached Lake George, which was then called by the Indians Andiatorocte. Their arrival at the lake on the eve of the festival of Corpus Christi, instituted by the Roman Catholic Church to honor Christ's body in the holy sacrament, was commemorated by the devout mis- sionary naming the beautiful sheet of water Lac du Saint Sacrement (Lake of the Holy Sacrament). Thence they came to Ossarague, a fishing place on the Hudson. A few days afterward the party reached Fort Orange, where Father Jogues received a hearty welcome from his Dutch friends, to whom, he paid the sum of money that they had so generously advanced to ransom him from the Mohawks. On his return from his visit to the Mohawks he wrote a short description of New Holland, as he de- nominated New Netherland. He had a favorable oppor- tunity at the time of his visit to inspect Fort Orange, and to obtain considerable information respecting the growth of the settlement. His statements, therefore, are not only interesting, but truthful. He writes : ' ' There are two things in this settlement (which is called Rensselaers- wyck, or in other words the settlement of Rensselaer, who is a rich Amsterdam merchant), first, a miserable little fort called Fort Orange, built of logs, with four or five pieces of Breteuil cannon and as many swivels. This has been reserved and is maintained by the West India Company. This fort was formerly on an islafid in the river. It is now on the main-land toward the Iroquois, a little above the said island. Second, a colony sent here by this Rensselaer, who is the patroon. This colony is I The Algonquin tribe lived in Canada. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 83 composed of about a hundred persons, who reside in some twenty-five or thirty houses, built along the river as each one found most convenient. In the principal house lives the patroon's agent ; the minister has his apart, in which service is performed. There is also a kind of bailiff here, whom they call the seneschal, who administers justice. Their houses are solely of boards and thatched, with no mason-work except the chimneys. The forest furnishes many large pines ; they make boards by means of their miUs, which they have here for the purpose. " They found some pieces of cultivated ground, which the savages had formerly cleared, and in which they sow wheat and oats for beer, and for their horses, of which they have great numbers. There is little land fit for tillage, being hemmed in by hills, which are poor soil. This obliges them to separate, and they already occupy two or three leagues of country. ' ' Trade is free to all ; this gives the Indians all things cheap, each of the Hollanders outbidding his neighbor, and being satisfied, provided he can gain some little profit. "This settlement is not more than twenty leagues from the Agniehrorons, [Mohawks] who can be reached by land or water, as the river [the Mohawk] on which the Iroquois lie, falls into that [the Hudson] which passes by the Dutch, but there are many low rapids and a fall [Cohoes falls] of a short half league, where the canoe must be carried." ^ The church, which the patroon had instructed Van Curler to build in 1642, was not erected, it seems, until 1046. The commissary, writing to the patroon in June, ] 648, says : "As for the church it is not yet contracted for, not even begun. I had written to your honor that I 1 Father J ogues's description of New Netherland, written at Three Rivers in New France, August 3, 1646. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. viii. pp. 211, 218. 84 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. had a building almost ready, namely the covenanted work, which Tvould have been for Domine Megapolensis, but this house did not suit Domine Johannes ; in other respects it was adapted in every way to his wants. On this account I have laid it aside. The one which I in- tend to build this summer in the pine-grove will be thirty -four feet long by nineteen wide. It will be large enough for the first three or four years to preach in and can be used afterward as a residence by the sexton, or for a school. I hope your honor will not take this ill as it happened through good intentions." ^ When Father Jogues visited Fort Orange, in the sum- mer of 1646, Domine Megapolensis was still conducting the religious services of the settlers in his own house. The building designed for the church was already erected, and Willem Fredericksen, a carpenter, had almost finished making the furniture which was needed to com- plete it for the use of the small congregation that had been worshiping in the parsonage. The plain-built edifice with its vaulted ceiling contained a predickstool or pulpit, a seat for the magistrates, one for the deacons, nine benches and several corner-seats.^ The little church stood on a plot of ground a short distance northwest of the fort, near the line of Church Street, between Pruyn Street and Madison Avenue. ^ The wooden buildhigs forming the church- neighbor- hood stood near the bank of the river, between the fort 1 MSS. of Rensselaersvvyck. 3 In the ledger of the manor, {^groet boek de colonie Rensselaerswyck,) page 56, is the account of the carpenter, Willem Fredericksz, who under the date of 1646 is credited as follows : " Voor dat hij in de keick heeft gej.'iaacht een Predickstool het verivulf, een stoel voor de overicheyt, een ditto voor de Diaconie, een cosijn met 2 lichteji, een kriiys cosijn dicht gemaacht, een daeriii een knsje, een hoeckje nevens de stoel, jnet een banck in een winckelhaeck, en g bancken, te saemen voor 8ofi.'" About thirty -two dollars. 3 The name, Madison Avenue, was substituted for that of Lydius Street, May 20, 1867. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 85 and the patroon's trading-house, the latter being a short distance north of the former. South of the fort were several dwellings, one of which was the ferry-house, on the north side of the Bever kill. Inside the fort were the trading-house of the West India Company and a few cottages, one of which was occupied by Harmanus Myndertse van derBogaert,^ who had succeeded Sebas- tiaen Jansen Crol, the company's commissary. On the fifth kill, beyond the patroon's trading-house, was one of the grist-mills of the manor. It had been out of repair for some time and as it had been thought to be too far from the people dwelling near the fort, another mill operated by two horses was constructed during the sum- mer in the pine-grove northwest of the church,^ On the death of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, in 1646, Johan, his eldest son, became patroon. He was under age, and the management of the affairs of the colony was intrusted by the executors, Johannes van Wely and Wouter van Twiller, to Brandt Arent van Slechtenhorst of Nieukerke, Holland. While Van Slechtenhorst was preparing to remove to New Netherland, Anthonie de Hooges, the secretary of the colony, and Nicolaas Coorn the schout, had charge of the manor ; Arendt van Curler being in Holland. In March, 164Y, there was a great freshet, which almost washed away Fort Orange and the houses in the church-neighborhood. It is related that while the river 1 He sometimes wrote his name, Harmanus & Boghardij. On the seventeenth of January, 1646, the house occupied by Adriaen van der Donck was burned to the ground, and he and his wife lived in one of the cottages within the fort until his term of office as schout-fiscaal of Rensselaerswyck expired, when, in April, at the opening of navigation, he removed to Fort Amsterdam — MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 2 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Collections on the history of Albany from its discovery to the present time. By Joel Munsell, Albany, 1865- 18'71. vol iii. pp.66, 67. Albany county records translated by Professor Jonathan Pierson of Union College, Schenectady, N. Y. 88 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. overflowed its banks a number of whales ascended it, one of which was stranded on an island opposite Lansing- burgh, called afterwai'd Walvish Eylant (Whale Island), now covered by the deep water of the state-dam. " This fish was tolerably fat, and although the people of Rens- selaerswyck boiled out a great quantity of train-oil, yet the water of the river (the current being still rapid) was oily for three weeks thereafter and covered with grease."^ Petrus Stuyvesant, the successor of Director Kieft, arrived at Fort Amsterdam on the eleventh of May, 1647. His policy was one of reform. He began his administra- tion by making new laws to protect the commercial interests of the West India Company, and took steps to have them enforced in every part of New Netherland. The jurisdiction which he claimed to have over the people of Rensselaerswyck seemed to the settlers to be an unwarranted usurpation of the personal prerogatives of the patroon. When Brandt Arent van Slechtenhorst, on his arrival at Fort Orange on the twenty-second of March, 1648, entered upon the performance of his duties as director of the manor, he ignored the right of Director Stuyvesant to require obedience from the people of Rens- selaerswyck to the new laws enacted by the director and council of New Netherland, and took the first opportunity that was given him to show that he did not consider the people of the manor were subjects of the West India Company. - When the director-general shortly afterward sent a proclamation to be read in the church at Fort Orange, setting apart Wednesday, the sixth, of May, to be observed as a day of fasting and prayer by the people 1 Beschrijvinge van Nieuw Nederlant door Adriaen van der Donck. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Second series, vol. i. pp. 140, 141. 2 Van Slechtenhorst sailed from Holland Sept. 26, 1647, for Virginia. The river being frozen he did not reach Fort Orange until March 22, 164S, with his family and servants. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 87 there and in the colony of Rensselaerswyck, and ordering a sermon on penance to be preached by Domine Megapo- lensis on the first Wednesday of each month, Van Slecht - enhorst protested against the pubHcation of the proclam- ation, declaring that it was contrary to "the old order and usage," making it appear as if the director-general were the proprietor of the patroon's colony. ^ Although Van Slechtenhorst resolutely contended that the patroon was vested with the sole jurisdiction of the colony, and that his authority was not subordinate to that of the director-general of the West India Company, nevertheless he willingly conceded to the latter the right to administer the affairs of the company elsewhere in New Netherland as he deemed most conducive to the interests of its directors. When Director Stuyvesant and some of the officers of the company visited Fort Orange in midsum- mer. Van Slechtenhorst took particular pains to honor the director-general's arrival and departure with a dis- charge of cannon, and to make his visit an event of considerable local importance to the settlers. ^ After the reception-ceremonies the director- general inspected Fort Orange and its surroundings. General Stuyvesant's military experience showed him that the fort could not be successfully defended against a force of Indians, for the buildings erected near its walls would advantageously 1 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Documents relating to the colonial history of the State of New York. vol. xiv. p. 92. 2 "July, 16i8. Whereas, the council of the colony directed that the Heer General Pieter Stuyvesant should be honored, on his arrival and departure with several salutes from the Heer Patroon's three pieces of cannon, the director employed Jan Dircksen van Bremen and Hans Eencluys to clean the same, for they were filled with earth and stones, and to load them, in doing which they were engaged three days, to wit : one day in cleaning them, the second in firing, at the arrival, and the third at Stuyvesant's departure, for which Van Schlectenhorst purchased twenty pounds of powder and expended ten guilders for beer and victuals, besides having provided the Heer General at his departure with some young fowls and pork." — MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 88 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. shelter the assailants. To keep the unoccupied ground around the fort free from further obstruction, he requested the authorities of Rensselaerswyck, on the twenty-third of July, not to erect any more buildings near the fort. "We request, by virtue of our commission, the com- mandant and court of the said colony to desist and refrain from building within a cannon-shot from the fort, until further orders or advice from our sovereigns or superiors, or to present to us special consent and authority signed by our sovereigns or superiors aforesaid, for both above and below [the fort] there are equally suitable, yea better building sites." The implication that the patroon of Rensselaerswyck could not exhibit any document containing proof of his proprietorship of the ground immediately surrounding the fort, highly incensed Van Slechtenhorst, who in a protest, dated the twenty-eighth day of July, claimed that the ground belonged to the patroon, who had pur- chased it from the Indians. He also asserted that "the trading house of the patroon stood for a few years undis- turbed on the border of the moat of the fort or trading post,'' and that the land " all around the fort " had been for many years in " the quiet possession" of the patroon, who still occupied it. "Now comes General Petrus Stuyvesant," writes the irate director of the manor, "and attempts with improper means to prevent the infant patroon from improving or building on his own ground, which is over five hundred paces from the fort or trading post, within which space there are eight houses standing on the patroon's land ; and he threa(,ens to bat- ter down these buildings with forcible means. * * * Therefore do I officially assert and protest * * * that I am obstructed in the performance of my duty and business. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 89 "So far as regards the renowned fortress," remarks Van Slechtenhorst, ' ' men can go in and out of it by night as well as by day." He further asserts that he had "been more than six months in the colony and the near- est resident to the fort, and yet he had never been able to discover a single person carrying a sword, a musket or a pike, nor had he heard or seen a drum beat, except when the director-general himself visited it, with his soldiers, in July." Believing himself to be in the right in the matter of the ownership of the land around Fort Orange, Van Slechtenhorst undertook to erect a house within the range of a pistol-shot from its walls. When Director Stuy vesant learned, in September, of Van Slechtenhorst 's open disregard of his recent order, he sent from Fort Amsterdam a number of soldiers and sailors to Fort Orange "to demolish the house with the smallest loss to the owners. " He also instructed Carl van Brugge, ' the commissary of Fort Orange, that if the director of Rensselaerswyck should attempt to oppose him in the execution of the order, that he should ' ' arrest him in the most civil manner and detain him in confinement until he delivered to the commissary a copy of his commission and instruction, with a declaration that he, the com- mander" of the manor of the patroon, had "no other commission and instruction than those" he then ex- hibited. When the people of the church-neighborhood heard of the intended demolition of the building, they mani- fested their partisanship by publicly declaring that if Van Brugge should undertake to carry out the instructions of the arbitrary officer of the West India Company, that 1 Carl van Brugge was appointed commissary of Fort Orange, November 6, 1647. 90 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. they would offer an armed resistance. ''Not only the colonists but also the Indians were in a great uproar." The latter were greatly offended with ' ' Wooden Leg, " (as they designated the director-general, who wore a wooden leg for a lost limb,) because he sent his dogs to destroy the house in which they intended to sleep when at Fort Orange. It is said that Van Slechtenhorst, during the fourteen days of the stay of the seven soldiers and five sailors from Fort Amsterdam, had four times more trouble to manage the Indians than his own partisans, and that he had to tell the former that they were misin- formed, that the house should continue to stand, and that they might sleep in it whenever they came to the fort. Van Brugge, perceiving that it would be impossi- ble for him to obey the director-general with so small a body of armed men, prudently wrote to Director Stuyve- sant that his orders could not be executed without loss of Hfe and the shedding of blood. Having this information, the director-general discretely delayed taking immediate action in the matter and recalled the soldiers and sailors to Fort Amsterdam. He nevertheless sent an official order to Van Slechtenhorst to appear before him, on the fourth of April, at which time he would " be informed of the complaint against him." ^ In the summer of 1648, Domine Megapolensis, having served the people of the manor six years with Christian fidelity and pastoral love, asked for a letter of dis- mission, intending to return to Holland to settle the busi- ness of an estate in which he was interested. The mem- bers of his little congregation, however, with affectionate importunity prevailed upon him to remain with them another year. When, at last, in August, 1649, he took 1 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Albany records, vol. iv. fol 16 ; vol. v. fol. 72-83, 87-90 ; vol. vii. fol. 192-198, 204:-206, 208, 217-219. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 91 his letter of dismission from the church of Rensselaers- wyck, he was so earnestly solicited by Director Stuyve- sant to become the pastor of the congregation at Fort Amsterdam that he accepted the call. ^ He remained in charge of this pastorate until his death, twenty years later. The congregation of the church at Fort Orange, in the summer of 1650, requested the Rev. Wilhelmus Grasmeer of Grafdyck, a brother-in-law of Doraine Megapolensis, to fill the vacant pulpit. Although this clergyman had left Holland without the sanction of the classis of Alkmaar, he was nevertheless cordially received by the members of the little society, whom he zealously served, with marked acceptance, until he sailed for Holland, in 1651. ^ While Domine Grasmeer was tem- porarily performing the duties of a pastor of the people of the manor, the latter held a meeting to consider the practicability of building a school-house in the church- neighborhood. The interested colonists willingly con- tributed the money that was needed, and shortly after- ward the school-house was erected and provided with suitable furniture, Andreas Jansen, on the ninth of September, 1650, was elected teacher of the children of the patrons of the school, who, in the following year, tend- ered him a gift of twenty dollars. ^ Among the note- worthy incidents of the Christmas holy days {de lieilige dagen van kersmis,) of 1650, was the marriage of PhiHp Pietersen Schuyler and Margritta van Slechtenhorst, the daughter of the director of the manor. As the church of Rensselaerswyck was without a lawfully called minister, the legal formalities,, which constituted them 1 Correspondence of classis of Amsterdam. Letters of Megapolensis, Aug. 15, 1648. Letter of Stuyvesant, August, 1649. Albany records, vol. iv. fol. 16-23, vol. vii. fol. 229, 251-256. 2 Correspondence of classis of Amsterdam. 3 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 92 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. husband and wife, were complied with, on the twenty - second of December, at the manor-house before Anthonie de. Hooges, the secretary of the colony, in the presence of the officers of Fort Orange and Rensselaerswyck, and some of the residents of the church-neighborhood. ' In 1651, Jan Baptiste, the third son of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, arrived at Fort Orange. He found the people of the colony and the officers and the garrison of the fort still at variance respecting their rights on the land sur- rounding Fort Orange. Denied the privilege of cutting fire-wood in the adjacent woods, forbidden the liberty of hunting and fishing within the limits of the manor, per- sonally estranged and prevented from mingling with the colonists by the animosity engendered by the continued disputes respecting the jurisdiction of the governor and of the patroon, the soldiers naturally became deeply em- bittered, and often manifested their vindictiveness by secret depredations on the property of the settlers, and by scurrilous vituperations when the latter came near the fort. The colonists were also culpable, for they not only insultingly called the soldiers "Wooden Leg's dogs," but they were gratified to see the Indians manifest their contempt for them. Meanwhile Van Slechtenhorst, who was under arrest at Fort Amsterdam for his contumacy toward the governor, secreted himself on a sloop and re- turned to the manor. The escaped director, in order to make the colonists more subservient to the interests of the patroon, induced a number of them to take the 1 Philip Pietersen Schuyler came from Amsterdam to New Netherlan d in 1650. The children by this marriage were : Guysbert, Gertrude, (who - married Stephanus van Cortlandt in 1671), Alida (who first married the Rev. Nicolaas van Rensselaer, afterward Robert Livingston), Pieter, Brant, Arent, Sybilla, Philip, Johannes, and Margritta. Philip Pietersen Schuyler died at Albany March 9, 1384, and was buried two days afterward, in a vault in the Dutch church, which then stood at the intersection of the streets now called Broadway and State Street. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY, 93 burgher-oath of allegiance, in accordance with the resolu- tion of the council dated November 23, 1651 : "Resolved, that all householders and freemen of the colony shall appear on the twenty-eighth day of Novem- ber of this year, being Tuesday, at the house of the honorable director, and there take the hurgerlijke oath of allegiance." The oath was administered in the following form : " I promise and swear that I shall be true and faithful to the noble patroon and co-directors, or those who represent them here, and to the honorable director, commissioners, and council, subjecting myself to the court of the colony ; and I promise to demean myself as a good and faithful inhabitant or burgher, without exciting any opposition, tumult, or noise, but on the contrary, as a loyal inhabi- tant to maintain and support, offensively and defensively against every one, the right and the jurisdiction of the colony. And with reverence and fear of the Lord, and the uplifting of both the first fingers of the right hand, I say, So truly help me God Almighty." On the appointed day forty-five of the colonists took the required oath at the house of Director Van Slecht- enhorst. ^ 1 "Arendt van Curler, Johan Baptist van Rensselaer, Pieter Hartgers, Jan Verbeeck, Sander Leendertsz, Gysbert Cornelisz van Weesp, Willem Fred- ericksz, Jan Michelz, Rutger Jacobszen, Goosen Gerritsz, Andres Herbertsz, Cornells Cornelisz. Vos, Jan van Hoesem, Jan Thomasz, Pieter Bronck, Jacob Jansz. van Nostrandt, Harmen Bastiaensz, Teunis Cornelisz, Jacob Adriaensz Raedmacker, Teunis Jacobsz, Rutger Adriaensz, Caspar Jacobsz, Abraham Pietersz. Vosburg, Everardus Jansz, Adriaen Pietersz. van Alk- maer, Thomas Jansz, Jochim Wessels Backer, Jacob Luyersz, Thomas Sandersz Smith, Evert Pels, — Hendricksz. Verbeeck, [A name obliter- ated] — ■ van Es, Hendrick Westercamp, Thomas Keuningh, Cornells Segersz, Cornells Cornelisz. van Voorhout, Jan Ryersz, Jan Helms, Aert Jacobsz, Guysbert Cornelisz. aende Berg, Evert Jansen Kleermaker, Dirck Jansen Croon, Jacob Simonsz. Klomp, Volcker Jansz." — MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. CHAPTEE V. BEVERSWYCK. 1652-1664. While the authorities of Rensselaerswyck were en- deavoring to strengthen the partisanship of the people of the church-neighborhood, the officers and soldiers of the West India Company grew more abusive and quar- relsome. Johannes Dyckman, the vice-director of the company/ was not only rancorous, but so agressively malignant, that he became a personal terror to those who incurred his ill-will. The soldiers of the garrison meanwhile did many things to exasperate and shock the inhabitants of the manor. Permitted at night to go out- side the fort with loaded guns, they frequently congre- gated about the houses of the settlers, and loudly whooped and fired off their pieces in a manner so alarm- ing that often the people were as terrified as they would have been had their houses been surrounded by a band of revengeful savages. On the night of the first day of " the year 1652, a party of soldiers, with hideous outcries, came before the patroon's house and began to fire their muskets. A piece of burning wadding fell on the reed- roof and set it on fire. Fortunately, only a small part of 1 Johannes Dyckman was stationed at Fort Orange as vice-director of the West India Company in 1651, and held this office until July, 1655, when he was incapacitated for the administration of its duties by insanity. 94 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 95 the thatch had been consumed when the fire was discov- ered and extinguished. This hostile demonstration was the next day followed by an assault upon Van Slechten- horst's son. The soldiers ' ' not only beat him black and blue, but dragged him through the mud and mire, in the presence of Johannes Dyckman, the vice-director, who repeatedly cried out, 'Let him have it, now, and the duivel take him ! ' " Philip Pietersen Schuyler attempted to rescue his brother-in-law, but Dyckman, seeing him running toward the soldiers, intercepted him, and draw- ing his sword threatened to run it through him if he advanced a step farther. This affray caused much excite- ment. Van Slechtenhorst's partisans made threats that they would avenge the outrage. Dyckman declared that he would retaliate any harm done his soldiers, and ordered the guns of the fort to be loaded and trained toward the patroon's house. Director Stuyvesant still claimed that the patroon had no right to the ground surrounding the fort within the range of a ball fired from a cannon, or not nearer than six hundred paces. He sent a proclamation to Vice- Director Dyckman, in which it was declared that the described area of land around the fort was the property of the West India Company. To make known the order of the director-general, Dyckman with a small number of soldiers went to the manor-house where the magis- trates of the colony were in session. When Van Slecht- enhorst learned his mission, he forthwith ordered him to leave the room, telling him that he had no right to come within the limits of the patroon's jurisdiction with an armed body of men. Some days afterward, the commis- sary, with a large number of soldiers, again repaired to the manor-house to demand that the director-general's proclamation should be published to the colonists by the 96 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. officers he found there. "It shall not be done as long as we have a drop of blood in our veins," they declared, ' ' nor until we receive orders from their high mightinesses and our honored masters." Dyckraan, not to be frus- trated, ordered the patroon's bell to be rung to collect the colonists, that he might read the proclamation to them. This privilege was denied him. He then proceeded to the fort, had the bell rung three times, and then returned to the stoop of the manor-house, where he ordered his deputy to read the placard to the assembled people. When Dyckman handed the document to his subordinate. Van Slechtenhorst, who was watching the proceedings, suddenly rushed to the side of the commissary's officer and snatched the director-general's proclamation from his hands, tearing it in such a manner ' ' that the seals fell on the ground." While the exasperated commander of Fort Orange was loudly declaring that the patroon's agent should be made to suffer for this indignity, Jan Baptiste van Rensselaer sarcastically said to the laughing colonists : "Go home, good friends, it is only the wind of a cannon-ball fired six hundred paces off." When Director Stuy vesant heard how despitefully his officers had been used by Van Slechtenhorst, he was greatly enraged, and on the fifth of March, 1652, sent an order to Vice- director Dyckman, instructing him to erect, at the distance of six hundred paces or about two hundred and fifty Rhineland rods^ from the walls of Fort Orange, a number of posts, marked with the com- pany's seal, and to affix to boards nailed on them copies of his proclamation, so that no person could plead ignor- ance concerning the boundaries of the West India Com- pany's land. In obedience to this order, Dyckman 1 A Rhineland rod equalled twelve Rhineland feet, and a Rhineland foot 12 36-100 English inches. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 97 planted several posts a short distance north of the present Hne of Orange street, north of Fort Orange, and several south of it, near the present line of Gansevoort street. As soon as these posts were planted, the magis- trates of Rensselaerswyck ordered the constable of the manor to remove them, and on the same day, the nineteenth of March, wrote a remonstrance ' ' against the unbecoming pretensions and attacks of the director- general and council of New Netherland." This defiant conduct made the director-general the more pertinacious in his purpose to vindicate the company's right to the ground environing Fort Orange. He informed Vice- director Dyckman that he would shortly visit him and would personally enforce obedience to his proclamation. When it became known that Director Stuyvesant in- tended personally to take steps to have his orders respected by the authorities of Rensselaerswyck, it was rumored that Dyckman had instructions to erect a gallows on which the contumacious agent of the patroon, Van Slechtenhorst, his son, and Jan Baptiste van Renssel- aer were to pay the penalty of their rebellious disregard of the director-general's commands. When Director Stuyvesant arrived at Fort Orange about the end of March, he sent^ Sergeant Litschoe with a squad of soldiers to the director of the manor, ordering him to take down the patroon's flag, which was flying above the territory belonging to the West India Company. This Van Slechtenhorst emphatically refused to do, where- upon "fourteen soldiers, armed with loaded muskets" entered the yard of the manor-house, ' ' and after firing a volley drew down the patroon's colors. " The director- general then proclaimed that the space included within the boundaries prescribed by him was the property of 1 April 1, 1652. 98 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the West India Company, and designated this area of land surrounding the fort the Dorpe Beverswyck, (the beaver- district village) J He also erected a court of justice having jurisdiction over the people of Fort Orange, the village of Beverswyck, and the neighbor- hood. ^ He then appointed three magistrates to hear and determine civil and criminal causes. ^ Conformably to Director Stuyvesant's order the procla- mation concerning his recent acts was posted up at the court-house of Rensselaerswyck. Van Slechtenhorst, as soon as he discovered the placard there, tore it down and put another in its place declaratory of the rights of the patroon. Three days afterward, on the eighteenth of April, the defiant director was arrested by a company of soldiers and imprisoned in Fort Orange, ' ' where neither his children, his master, nor his friends, were allowed to speak to him." He was afterward taken to Fort Am- sterdam, where he was detained for some time under civil arrest. * For the site of an alms-house the director-general, on the twenty- third of April, conveyed to the inhabitants of Beverswyck the farm " bounded north by the Fuyck kilP and south by the public road, west by [land occupied by] Jacob Janssen and east by the wagon-road," with the 1 Dorp, village. Bever, beaver. Wijk or wyck, refuge,^ ward, district, parish, manor. In Dutch compound names the first noun frequently takes an s after it. 2 ' ' Gerechtsrolle van der Banck van Justitie de?- Fortrcsse Orange, Dorpe Beverswyck ende appendentie van dien, door den Eerentfesten ende Achtbaeren Heer, Myn Heeren, de Heer Direct eur Generaal en Raaden van Nieuw Neder- landt, den lo Aprilis A° i6j2, in loco synde gestelt." — Mortgage-book A. Albany County Clerk's office. Vide Gerechtsrolle der colonie Rensselaers- wyck. fol. 103—114. 3 These officers of the court were annually appointed. 4 Van Sleehtenhorst's memorial. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Albany records, vol. ix. fol. 123. 5 Fuyck kill, the hoop-net creek, emptying now into the river near the foot of Hudson Avenue. This creek was afterward called the Rutten kill. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 99 express condition and stipulation that the holders and possessors of the aforesaid farm should " acknowledge the directors of the West India Company as patroons under the sovereignty of their highnesses the States-General of the United Netherlands, and obey the director-general and his counsellors as good and faithful subjects are bound to do, and to pay all duties and taxes as ordered or to be ordered thereafter by the directors of the said company ; * * * to hold it, cultivate it, or make it productive to provide for the wants of the poor." * Jan Baptiste van Rensselaer now became the director of the manor of the patroon, ^ and Gerrit Swart was ap- pointed sellout or sheriff of the colony.^ The Rev. Gideon Schaets, on the eighth of May, accepted the call given him by the proprietors of Rensselaerswyck^ to be- come the pastor of the congregation organized by Do mine Megapolensis in 1642. ^ 1 MSS. of the Dutch Reformed church. Annals of Albany, by Joel Munsell. Albany, 1856. vol. vii. pp. 232, 233. 2 The power of attorney to Jan Baptiste van Rensselaer bears the date of May 8, 1652. 3 The commission of Gerrit Swart is dated Amsterdam, April 24, 1652, and signed by Johan van Rensselaer and by Giacomo Bissels for the co- directors. * The proprietors of the manor at this time, besides the patroon, were the co-directors Joannes de Laet, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Blommaert, Adam Bissels and Toussaint Mussart. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 6 The acceptance of the call of the Rev. Gideon Schaets is dated Am- sterdam, May 8, 1652, and is signed by him and by Johan van Rensselaer, and by Toussaint Mussart, for the co-directors. One of the stipulations of the agreement was : "He is accepted and engaged for the period of three years, commencing when his reverence shall have arrived in the colony of Rensselaerswyck, in the ship the Flower of Gelder, his passage and board being free, and he shall enjoy for his salary yearly the sum of eight hundred guilders, which shall be paid to his reverence there through the patroon's and the director's commissaries ; and in case of prolongation the salary and allowance shall be increased in such a manner as the parties there shall mutually agree upon." — MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. The Rev. Gideon Schaets was born in 1607. His children were : Reynier, who was killed in the massacre at Schenectady), Bartolomeus, and Anneke, (who married Thomas Davidtse Kikebell). 100 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. At this time Holland was about to declare war against England, for the latter had granted letters of reprisal to certain English ship-owners to capture the vessels of the Dutch found sailing on the high seas. The fleets of the two powers fought with each other in the straits of Dover on the twenty-ninth of May. The directors of the West India Company in their letter to Director Stuyvesant, dated the sixth of August, wrote : ' ' This unexpected rupture, which we have not courted, induced many merchants trading to New Netherland to solicit us to send an express to your honor, so that you and the colonists might be informed of this state of things. * ■" * We warn you not to place an un- bounded confidence in our English inhabitants, but to keep a watchful eye on them, so that you may not be deceived by a show of service through their sinister machinations, as we have before been deceived. If it happen, which we will not yet assume, that those New Englanders be inclined to take part in these broils and injure our good inhabitants, then we should advise your honor to engage the Indians in your cause, who, we are informed, are not partial to the English. ^You will em- ploy, further, all such means of defence as prudence may require for your security, paying attention that the merchants and inhabitants convey their valuable property within the forts. Treat them with kindness, so that they may be encouraged to remain there and to abandon the thought of returning here, which would cause the depopulation of the country. It is therefore advisable to surround the villages, at least the principal and most opulent, with breastworks and palisades to prevent sur- prise." ' 1 Hoi. doc. vol. vi. fol. 1(>5, 167, 176, 177, 190, 191. Albany records, vol. iv. fol. 83-86, 87, 91 ; vol. vi. fol. 76. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 101 The vessel carrying these official instructions was captured by the enemy. When the directors of the West India Company were apprised of the fact, they sent the director-general, on the thirteenth of December, a dupli- cate of their first dispatch. When the river was navi- gable in the spring of 1653, Director Stuyvesant trans- mitted copies of the dispatches received from Holland to Vice-director Dyckman, ordering him to make known to the inhabitants of Beverswyck and the colonists of Rensselaerswyck the wishes of the directors of the West India Company. Aware of their unprotected condition, the people willingly labored together in making Fort Orange defensible. This mutual co-operation of the dis- affected partisans of the West India Company and those of the patroon greatly lessened the bitter feeling which had estranged them. At the request of Arendt van Curler representing the magistrates of the manor, and Rutger Jacobsen the inhabitants of Beverswyck, the director and council of New Netherland commanded that aftei- the fort had been repaired that all the inhabitants of Fort Orange and of Beverswyck should assist those of the colony in strengthening the redoubt or block-house which the patroon had built. When the news reached the city of New Amsterdam, as the village at Fort Amsterdam was now called, on the sixteenth of July, 1654-, that peace had been declared between England and Holland, the citizens were unex- pectedly relieved from the fear of an invasion of New Netherland by the English. The director-general issued a proclamation enjoining the people of the country to observe Wednesday, the twelfth of August, as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, when they were to assemble ' ' on that day, in the forenoon, at the place where the v/ord of God" was "preached, and this being heard, to 102 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. praise the only good and merciful God, to thank him and glorify him, most of all for the desirable peace and union between the two countries as well as for God's merciful providence in protecting the inhabitants of the province." The highly delighted director exultingly said : ' ' Praise the Lord, England's Jerusalem and Nether- land's Zion, praise ye the Lord ! He hath secured your gates and blessed your possessions with peace, even here, where the threatened torch of war was lighted, where the waves reached our lips and subsided only through the power of the Almighty." ^ Although Director Stuyvesant had, in 1652, forbidden the erection of any more houses between the Bever kill and the Fuyck kill, he afterward, on the thirtieth of April, 1654, granted permission to Adriaen Jansen Appel of Leyden to build a house " near the palisades of Thomas Jansen," on the condition that it was "not to be used for a tippling house, but for a tavern or boarding- house * * * for the accommodation of freemen and passengers."^ In June, 1655, Jahannes de Decker was intrusted with the administration of the West India Company's affairs at Fort Orange. ^ At this time the duties imposed by the company on certain articles sold by the people in the fort, in Beverswyck and in Rensselaerswyck were collected, as was the custom in Holland, by speculators who pur- chased the privilege of appropriating the moneys received by paying a stipulated sum to the magistrates of the justices' court. On the twenty -third of April, Marcelus Jansen being the highest bidder at the public sale of the 1 Albany records, vol. ix. fol. 71, 132-160, 166-171, 179-183 ; vol. xi. fol. 12. New Amsterdam records. 2Albany records, vol. ix. p. 126. 3 Johannes de Decker was appointed to succeed Vice-director Dyckman June 21, 1655, and held the office until the fall of lfi56. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 103 tapsters' excise for the following twelve months, and having given bonds for the payment of two thousand and thirty guilders "in good strung zee wan " to the commissioners, was officially declared to be the collector of this particular duty. Each tapster was required by the West India Company to pay four guilders on a tun of home-brewed beer sold at retail, six guilders on one of im- ported beer, the same on a hogshead of French or Rhenish wine, and sixteen guilders on an anker of brandy^ or distilled waters, malmsey, Spanish and Canary wines. The collector of the annual slaughter excise, which in 1657 was purchased for the sum of seven hundred and tw"elve guilders, received a stuiver for every guilder of the value of the slaughtered animal sold at Fort Orange, in the village of Beverswyck and neighborhood. The col- lection of duties on peltry was also farmed out. - When Vice-director De Decker undertook the manage- ment of the company's affairs at Fort Orange, the public tapsters of the colony refused to allow the collector of the liquor-excise to guage the wine and beer in their possession. This they had been advised to do by Jan Baptiste van Rensselaer, who asserted that the West India Company had no right to impose the duty, on the ground that the money collected was not used afterward for the benefit of the people. It was proposed by the director of the manor that the matter should be left to the decision of impartial judges, but to this the director- general and the council of New Netherland would not accede, declaring their high office and quality would not permit them " to stoop so low as to enter the lists with their subjects and vassals, much less to answer 1 There were thirty-two mingles, or ten and a half gallons contained in an anker. " In 1658, 37,640 beaver-skins and 300 otter-skins were shipped from Fort Orange and its neighborhood. 104 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. their frivolous and unfounded protests with a pusillani- mous deference," and that it was their duty "to punish the offenders. " Jan Baptiste van Rensselaer having incited this opposition, the director and council ordered that he should give a bond of three thousand guilders for the personal appearance of the contumacious tapsters at New Amsterdam, or if he failed to do it, that he should be placed under civil arrest and be detained there. Shortly thereafter the tapsters personally appeared before the director-general and council, one being required to pay a fine of two hundred pounds or be banished from the province, the other eight hundred guilders. Subsequently the patroon, to fulfill the promises of Jan Baptiste van Rensselaer, paid the two fines. ' Considerable expense was incurred in removing the buildings around Fort Orange to the new site of the village between the Fuyck and Vossen kills.- This, however, was partly met by a contribution of" the willing people. The few who formed the opposition were proportionately taxed, and thus the orders of the director-general and council of New Netherland were satisfactorily executed by the magistrates of the court of Fort Orange and Beverswyck. The distance of the village from the fort and the church suggested the construction of a large block- house, which, should the Indians at any time become hostile, would be a convenient and defensible refuge, and while they were friendly could be used as a place of public worship. Moved by these considerations the people of Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck unitedly undertook to erect the desired building. The patroon and the co- 1 Albany records, vol. x. fol. 68 ; vol. xi. fol. 409, 410, 415-420, 445-447, 466-410, 488-499 ; vol. xiii. fol. 72, 221-223 ; vol. xviii. fol. 83. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Collections on the history of Albany. Munsell. vol. iii. pp. 237-243. 2 The Vossen (Fox) kill, called also the Third kill, emptied into the ri\er a little north of the present line of Columbia Street. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 105 directors of Rensselaerswyck, on the eighteenth of February, 1656, subscribed one thousand guilders to defray a part of the expenses, and the magistrates of the court of Fort Orange and Beverswyck contributed fifteen hundred more from moneys paid for fines imposed by them. On the tenth of March, the latter officers ad- dressed a letter to the director-general and council of New Netherland, in which they petitioned them "to solicit and influence the inhabitants of the city of New Amsterdam to a hberal contribution " for the building of a church, "inasmuch as on similar and other occasions, especially to the church there," they and the people of Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck had given and contrib- uted according to their ability. Recei^^ing no reply to this request, the magistrates wrote a second communication on the eighth of April to the officers of the government, in which they said : ' ' We are much surprised that no answer to our last letter, at least none on the subject of our expected collection there, has been received by us assuring good success for it. " When they contracted for the building of the "blockhouse-church," and made themselves liable for "the heavy expenses," their "ex- pectation and hope in the beginning were set very greatly " on obtaining help from the people of New Am- sterdam ; therefore, as they said, "in the event of a failure we should be very much disturbed and distressed ; even if every thing should turn out for the best, it would be very difficult to collect the remainder from the church here."^ The site selected for the building was at the intersec- tion of two roads, one of which (now State Street) was at first called Jonkers Straat, and the other, (now Broad- way,) Handelaars Straat.- On the second day of June 1 Collections on the history of Albany. Munsell. vol. iv. pp. '239, 240. 2 Jonke)\ a boy, a beau, ffandelaar, a trader. Straat, a street. 106 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the corner-stone was laid in the presence of the magis- trates of Fort Orange and Beverswyck and those of Rensselaerswyck, and a large assemblage of the inhabi- tants of the village and manor. Domine Schaets con- ducted the religious services, and Rutger Jacobsen, one of the magistrates, placed the stone in position. ^ Built like a block-house of the period, the church was loop-holed, and on it were placed three small cannon to command the three roads running northward, westward and southward from it. In 165Y, the bell presented by the directors of the Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company to the congregation was hung in the belfry. Twenty-five beaver-skins contributed to pur- chase a pulpit were sent to Holland for this purpose, but their value was insufficient to obtain the predickstoel. The directors of the Amsterdam chamber " to inspire the congregation with more ardent zeal, advanced seventy- five guilders for the pulpit, which was sent to Bevers- wyck in a vessel which sailed some time after the depar- ture of the one conveying the bell. ^ 1 "In Beverswyck, 1656, on the thirteenth of May, we the undersigned, magistrates, acknowledge that we have contracted and agreed with Jan van Aecken that we shall have the liberty to set the church so far on his smithy as the width of the door, on condition that we set up his house according to the direction of Rem Janssen, and leave a suitable lot for the bakery and re- move the large house at our own expense. Was subscribed : " Rutger Jacobsen. "Andries Herbertsen. " Jacob Janse Schermerhoorn. This is the mark H of Goosen Gerritse. " Philip Pieterse. " Dirck Janssen Croon. "This is the mark Jf7 of Jan van Aecken." Collections on the history of Albany. Munsellr vol. iv. p. 406. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 2 " In this vessel, the Gilt Mill, {Vergulde Meulen,) is sent a small bell, (klockje kc7-kje,) which had been solicited by the inhabitants. of Fort Orange and the village of Beverswyck for their newly-built little church. Whereas the twenty-five beaver-skins which were brought here by IDirck Janssen Croon were greatly damaged, which he intended to defray from their sale the payment of a pulpit, "predickstoel, and by which misfortune this sum was not sufficient, so we listened to his pursuasion and advanced him seventy THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 107 The congregation worshiping in the new ' ' preaching- house " in 1657, it is said, was almost as large as that of the church in the city of New Amsterdam. ^ Although the greater number of the inhabitants of Beverswyck, at this time, were believers of the doctrines promulgated by the synod of Dort, there were some who were governed by those contained in the Augsburg con- fession. Having no church-building, the Lutherans began to hold religious services in the houses of the different persons of their denomination. The separation of these people from the congregation of the Reformed church was looked upon as a reprehensible and unlawful proceeding by some of the members of the latter society. They appealed to Vice-director De Decker to forbid the meetings of the Lutherans. The officer of the West India Company accordingly issued an order interdicting them. But the Lutherans ignored his authority in the matter. This insubordination was punished by the imposition of the published penalties. The irrepressible Lutherans continued their congregational services. The magistrates of the court of Fort Orange and Beverswyck thinking the jurisdiction exercised by them might not commend them to the director-general and council of five guilders purposely to inspire the congregation with more ardent zeal." — Letter of the directors of the West India Company to Director Stuyvesant, April 7, 1657. Albany records, vol. iv. fol. 233. "On the tenth of August, 1657, paid by Dirk Ben Slick to Francois Boon for work on the pulpit and the bell, 32 florins." Albany records, vol. vi. p. 206. This pulpit is now in one of the rooms of the First Reformed church, on the southwest corner of North Pearl and Orange Streets. 1 Domines Megapolensis and Drisius, writing to the classis of Amsterdam from the city of New Amsterdam, on the fifth of August, 1657, say: "Last year Domine Gideon Schaats wrote to your reverences concerning the con- gregation in Rensselaerswyck and Beverswyck, as he also shall again. " The condition of the congregation there is most gratifying; it grows stronger apace, so as to be almost as strong as we are here at Manhattan. They built last year a handsome preaching-house." — Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 70. 108 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. New Netherland, wrote to the latter, on the tenth of March, 1656, saying: "This goes with a copy of a certain placard against the congregation of certain persons of the Lutheran sect, published and executed by us against the transgressors and disobedient. We will await your earliest approbation, and further request the wise counsel of your honors how we must conduct our- selves on such an occasion."^ The intolerance manifested toward the Lutherans in Beverswyck disallowed them the privilege which they had previously enjoyed in Holland. For there, although the members of the Reformed church were the only persons permitted to hold religious services in buildings specially set apart for public worship, the people of other denominations were allowed to meet in private houses and to worship Grod according to the dictates of their own consciences and rules of faith. When the aggrieved Lutherans complained to the Holland directors of the West India Company of this abridgement of their privi- leges, the latter wrote to Director Stuyvesant saying : " We should also have been better pleased had you not published our placard against the Lutherans, which was chiefly intended for your instruction, much less can we approve the excess in committing them to prison as they complain to us respecting it, for it has been our constant intention to treat them with lenity and moderation. Therefore from this time forward you will not publish any similar placards without our previous consent, but permit every one the free exercise of his religion within his own house. " ~ The exclusive privileges of citizenship {burghers recht) conferred on certain male- inhabitants of the city 1 Collections on the history of Albany. Munsell. vol. iv. p. 239. 2 Albany records, vol iv. fol. 130, 212; vol. viii. fol, 170; vol. xiii, fol. 240. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 109 of New Amsterdam were first granted under a law enacted the second of February, 1657. By it all pro- vincial, municipal, manorial, and military officers, and ministers of the gospel, and their male descendants, and all other male citizens desiring the privileges and benefits which it conferred, were recognized as great burghers on the payment of the sum of fifty guilders to the burgo- masters of the city. All native-born citizens, those who had resided in the city and had kej)t fire and light there for one year and six weeks, those who had married or should marry the native-born daughters of burghers, and those who were keepers of shops and pursued any business in the city, who paid twenty guilders, were recognized as small burghers. Those who were enrolled as great burghers were entitled to hold office and were exempt from confiscation of property and attainder when convicted for capital offences. Those who were small burghers had the liberty to trade and transact business, and were eligible for admission into guilds established for the advancement of particular mercantile and manufacturing interests. ^ After the enactment of this law not only did many of the citizens of the city of New Amsterdam avail them- selves of the privilege granted by it, but also many of the principal men of the village of Beverswyck. The fire-arms and ammunition furnished to the mur- derous Mohawks returned such large profits to those clandestinely engaged in the nefarious business that the covetous West India Company was soon tempted to provide the warriors of the tribe with muskets, powder, and lead. As early as the twenty-fifth of February, 1654, the director-general and council of New Netherland undertook to veil the company's avaricious intention by 1 Albany records, vol. vii. fol. 389-392 ; vol. xv. fol. 54. 110 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. speciously representing that their action in the matter was solely taken to avert evil. They said : ' ' The honor- able director-general and council having been informed and advised of the scarcity of powder and lead among the Maquaas nation, and of the continual demands which its people make on the inhabitants of Fort Orange, the village of Beverswyck, and the colony, and have further considered that if this ammunition were entirely and suddenly denied to the said nation, the good people of the said village and places might have to suffer some mishap, or at least that the whole trade might thereby be diverted and that the said nation might ask for ammunition from the English, our neighbors, and obtain it, a step at this critical juncture of affairs which would bring more and greater misfortune on this province ; and as the said Maquaas are now our good friends, who, wanting ammunition, are obliged to look for it among our neighbors, from whom, also, they can get a large quantity of wampum for their beavers ; * * * the con- sequence would likely be that with this loss of their trade we would also lose the friendship of the Maquaas, and thereby bring more misfortune upon us and our nation, therefore we * * * have thought and deemed it proper and highly necessary, pursuant to the order and direction of the honorable company, to accommodate the said nation with a moderate trade in ammunition, to wit, powder and lead, and to have the same sold to them for the present by Rutger Jacobsen, an official of Fort Orange and the village of Beverswyck, but as sparingly and secretly as possible, for reasons and motives which in time, if it is necessary and required, shall be commu- nicated to the honorable lord directors of the incorporated West India Company." ^ 1 Vide Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. xiii. pp. 35, 36. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Ill The aggressive belligerence of the Mohawks not in- frequently endangered the safety of their palisaded villages. In June, 1657, the fear of an assault by the vsrarriors of the Seneca nation caused the Mohawks to send a number of their sachems or chiefs to Fort Orange to ask Vice-director La Montague^ "to accommodate them with a few horses to haul palisades from the woods to repair their castles," and to shelter their wives and children in the village of Beverswyck "should they go to war with the Sinnekes. " They further desired their Dutch friends to ' ' assist each of their palisaded villages with a cannon," and to haul the cannon from the fort to the flats, "a distance of eight miles," for, as was said by the chiefs, the three villages belonged to the same tribe, and they were bound to help one another in time of need, which could be done only with difficulty if they had no cannon to alarm them in time of distress. The answer of the magistrates to the first request of the Mohawk chiefs was ' ' that they had no horses of their own, but if they wished to hire a number of horses then the court would try to induce some of the inhabitants to help them." They also told them that they were willing to take care of their wives and children for the sake of their old friendship, but hoped that it would not be necessary. In answer to the request for cannon, the officers of the court informed the sachems "that the cannon did not belong to them, but to their chief," who had given them for the defense of the fort, so that they could not give them away nor lend them without his consent, but that they would write to the director-general and await his answer. "^ The Mohawks in their predatory forays along the 1 Johannes de la Montagne was appointed vice-director September 28, 1656, and held this office until October, 1664. 2 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. xiii. pp. 72, 73. 112 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. borders of Canada had so often reduced to ashes the dweUings and barns of the toihng settlers and had so repeatedly massacred and subjected to cruel captivities the unprotected inhabitants of the wide territory, that the French determined to revenge themselves upon their crafty, ruthless, and bloody-minded enemy. Early in the fall of 1659 the Mohawks began to be alarmed by the intimations that the maltreated French intended to invade their country. Aware of the exposed condition of their villages they sent a delegation of their chiefs to Fort Orange again to ask their Dutch friends to assist the tribe in planting palisades and to mend the unservice- able muskets of their warriors. In the conference of the Mohawk chiefs ^ith the magistrates of the courts of Fort Orange and Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck, the Indian orator said : ' ' The Dutch call us brothers and declare that we and they are joined together with chains, but that lasts only as long as we have beavers ; after that no attention is paid us. "'■ " "'• We have heard of the coming of our enemies, the French. If we drink too much liquor we cannot fight. We therefore desire you not to sell any brandy to our people, but to put the bung in our casks. ^' "^ * When we go away now, we shall take away a considerable quantity of brandy, and after that no more, for we will burn our kegs. * * * We desire that the smiths should repair our things, even when our people have no money, or let them have much or little wampum. * - "" We ask that the gunmakers shall hurry making the guns and not let us wait so long and lose time. When we come from the country and the muskets are all repaired, we have no powder. You must therefore give us some powder, and when the enemy comes you must be willing to help us. You are too timid. Send fifty or sixty men to assist us. * * * Look at THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. IIB the French and see what they do for their savages when they are in distress. Do as they do and help us to repair our paUsades. * * * Come to us with thirty men and with horses to chop and carry wood to our stockades and assist in repairing them. The Dutch can drag their wood- sleds into the country. " This appeal was accompanied with gifts of peltry, beaver-coats, and wampum, for which the anxious solicitants said they wished no presents in return. Fifty guilders in wampum were nevertheless distributed among the indigent Mohawks by the discreet magistrates. The importuning chiefs were told by the Dutch officials that they could not take any action in answer to their requests until the same were made known to the director-general. After the Wilden had departed it was determined that a number of the principal men of Beverswyck and Renssel- aerswyck should visit the disquieted Mohawks, at their first village, called Kaghnuwage, about forty miles west of Fort Orange, on Cayadutta creek, near its confluence with the Mohawk river. Twenty-five men were there- fore delegated to go on horseback to the village and to enter into a new treaty with the alarmed Mohawks while such favorable circumstances existed to ratify one. Among the persons comj)osing the deputation were Jeremias van Rensselaer, ^ Arendt van Curler, Phihp Pieterse Schuyler, Volckert Jansen,^ Francois Boon, Dirck Jansen Croon, Johannes Provoost, ^ Adrian Gerrit- sen, Andries Herbertsen, and Jan Tomassen. On the 1 Jeremias van Rensselaer, the second son of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, succeeded his brother, Jan Baptiste, as director of the manor in 1658. 2 Volckert Jansen Douw settled in Rensselaerswyck about the year 1638. At a very early date he purchased the plot of ground, then the southwest corner of Jonker and Handelaar Streets, now that of Broadway and State Street, which property is still in the possession of his descendants. 3Johannes Provoost was a clerk at Fort Orange during Vice-director Johannes de la Montagne's term of office. 114 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. twenty -fourth of September the chiefs of the three Mohawk villages lighted a council-fire and gathered around it to hsten to the words of the Dutch delegates. The speaker said : ' ' Brothers, we have come here only to renew our old friendship and brotherhood. You must tell it to your children. Ours will know it for all time to come, and will be reminded of it by the writings which we shall bequeath to them. We shall die, but these will remain, and from them they will learn that we have lived with our brothers in peace. "Brothers, we could not bring any cloth, for we could not get men to carry it. Merchandise cannot buy friendship. Our heart has always been good and still continues to be. If that is of no value to you, then we come not to purchase friendship even if the land were full of merchandise and beavers. * * * ' ' Brothers, sixteen years have passed since you and the Dutch made the first treaty of friendship and broth- erhood that joined us together with an iron chain. ^ Since that time it has not been broken either by us or by our brothers, and we have no fear that it will be broken by either of us. We will, therefore, not speak of it any more, but will always live as if we had one heart. * * * "Brothers, eighteen days ago you were with us and made your proposals to your Dutch brothers. We did not give you a definite answer then for we were expect- ing Chief Stuyvesant and we promised to inform you when he should have arrived. He is now sick and can not come. What we now say is ordered by Chief Stuyvesant, by all the other chiefs, and by all the Dutch and their children. * * * 1 Evidently the treaty made by Director Kieft, in July, 1645, at Fort Orange. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 115 ' ' Brothers, we speak for this and all future time, in our own behalf and in behalf of all the Dutch now in the country or who may yet come, and in behalf of all the children, for we cannot come here every day, as the roads are very bad for traveling. Hereafter you must have no doubt of our remaining always brothers. When- ever some tribe or any savages, whoever they be, come to incite you to war and say that the Dutch intend to fight against you, do not regard them, do not believe them, but tell them they lie. We shall say the same of you if they tell the same of our brothers. We shall not believe any prattlers, neither shall we fight against you, nor will we leave you in distress if we are able to help you. But we cannot compel our smiths and gunmakers to repair the muskets of our brothers without pay, for the gunsmiths must earn food for their wives and chil- dren, who otherwise would perish from hunger. If the smiths were to receive no wampum for their work they would remove from our country, and then we and our brothers would be much embarrassed. * * * "Brothers, eighteen days ago you requested us not to sell brandy to your people and to bung our casks. Brothers, do not allow your people to come to us for brandy and none shall be sold them. Only two days ago we met twenty to thirty kegs on the road all going to obtain brandy. Our chiefs are very angry because the Dutch sell brandy to your people, and always forbid our people to do it. Now forbid your people to buy brandy. If' you desire that we should take the brandy and the kegs containing it from your people, say it before all these people, and if we afterward do it you must not be angry. * * * ' ' Brothers, we now give you a present of powder and lead, which you must not waste if you want to attack 116 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. your enemies. Rightly use it and divide it among your young men. " * * "Brothers, we see that you are very busy cutting v^ood to build your fort. You asked us for horses to haul wood, but horses cannot do it, for the hills are too high and steep, and your Dutch brothers cannot carry the wood because they have become too weak in marching to this place, as you may perceive by looking at them. * * * Inasmuch as our brothers sometimes break their axes in cutting wood, we now present you with fifteen axes. "Brothers, as some of your people and some Mahi- canders and Sinnekus sometimes kiU our horses, cows, pigs and goats, we ask our brothers to forbid their people to do it." The gifts presented to the Mohawk chiefs were eleven boxes of wampum, seventy-five i3ounds of powder, one hundred of lead, fifteen axes, and some knives valued at two beaver-skins. The friendly declarations of the dele- gates accompanied with these valuable presents were gratefully received by the needy sachems, who consented that the brandy -kegs in their villages should be taken from them by their Dutch brothers. At the close of the conference a letter was received from Vice-director La Montague, informing the commis- sioners that some of the River Indians had attacked the settlers at Esopus, and had burned their dwellings, barns, and grain. When this information was given to the Mohawks they with one accord declared that should any of the Esopus or other River Indians come to them with presents and ask them to fight against the Dutch that they would kick them and say : ' ' Begone you beasts, you pigs, depart from us, we will have nothing to do with you." Satisfied that the Mohawks would faith- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 117 fully honor their renewed covenants of friendship and amity, the delegates returned to Fort Orange on the twenty-fifth of September. ^ The hostile attitude of the River Indians filled the minds of the people of Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck with many disturbing apprehensions of impending evil. Ignorant of the designs of the savages the inhabitants of Beverswyck determined to inclose the village with a fence of planks and palisades. The alarmed people vigorously prosecuted this undertaking, and in the spring of 1660 completed the defensive works (deffentie). The fence according to present metes and bounds extended northwardly along the bank of the river from the foot of Hudson Avenue to the site of the passenger- depot of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's railroad. Thence it ran westwardly to the southwest corner of the Delavan House. Slightly de- flected it passed to a point in North Pearl Street, about one hundi'ed and ninety-two feet north of Maiden Lane. Its extension up the hill terminated at a point on State Street, near Lodge Street. Descending, the fence reached a point on South Pearl Street, near Beaver Street, thence it extended to Green Street, about seventy-five feet north of Hudson Avenue, thence to the intersection of Broadway and Hudson Avenue, and thence to the bank of the river, near the mouth of the Fuyck kiU. Gates were placed at the ends of the different streets and a number of guard-houses built outside them. The expense incurred in the erection of these defenses was partly 1 The following memoranda form a part of the history of the treaty with the Mohawks : " For the hire of a horse for Johannes Provoost, the com- pany's servant, 25 florins. Spent by the committee for French wine when they departed and returned, 15 florins. To Rutger Jacobsen, for nine cans of brandy to be delivered to the delegates as presents to the savages, 36 florins. For presents to the Maquaas, 656,10 florins." — MSS. of Rensselaers- wyck. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. xiii. pp. 112, 113. 118 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. liquidated by an annual tax of three guilders on each chimney in the village. ' When summer came the fears of the settlers respect- ing an attack from the River Indians were quieted by a treaty of peace made on the fifteenth of July, at E^opus, with the chiefs of the disaffected savages. The active competition to obtain peltry from the Indians led many of the traders and settlers to employ a class of middle-men called boschloopers (wood-runners) to frequent the trails and villages of the Wilden. These unscrupulous agents used all the means at their command to induce the Indians to sell their peltry to them. Watched, intercepted, importuned, pulled about and maltreated, the harrassed Indians began to complain to the Dutch authorities, declaring that whenever any one of their number was seen with a beaver-skin he was im- mediately surrounded by ten or twelve runners, each of whom did his best to get him into his possession by taking hold of him and saying, "Come with me, that and that person has nothing to buy furs with," and that at such times they were often kicked, cuffed and thrown down by the contending competitors. The court, therefore, published a placard prohibiting the employment of run- ners and forbidding the settlers to lure Indians having peltry to their houses. On the publication of this order eighty of the inhabitants of Beverswyck petitioned the magistrates to rescind it, asserting that those who favored it were *'a few individuals who, swayed by an inordi- nate love of money and jealousy in trade, imagined to improve it in this manner," and wished, by using "a frivolous pretext, to appropriate under this cloak the whole trade to themselves." The petitioners, therefore, 1 Fort Orange Ordinance, July 25. 1660. Fide Laws and ordinances uf New Netherland, 1638-16'74. By E. B. O'Callaghan, Albany, 1868. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 119 requested that everyone might "be permitted to exert himself to the utmost, through the agency of Christians or savages, to save themselves and enable them to pay to every one his due, to love their neighbors and promote their own eternal happiness." The magistrates complied and rescinded the restrictive resolution, "protesting meanwhile to be innocent of any calamities " that might befall the people, ' ' since some of the petitioners had declared that it was their determina- tion to do what they had asked whether or not it were granted them." The action of the vacillating magistrates was annulled shortly afterward by Director Stuyvesant. The attention of the director-general was called to the evil consequences likely to result from the reprehen- sible practices of the wood- runners not only by some of the less mercenary inhabitants of Beverswyck, but also by the Seneca Indians in their conference with him, at Fort Orange, on the twenty-fifth of July, 1660. The latter made a special request that they might be pro- tected from the rough usage of the boschloopers. Their interpreter said : ' ' They request that they may barter their beavers at pleasure and may not be locked up by the Dutch, but may go with their beavers where they please, without being beaten. They say : ' When we are sometimes in a trader's house and wish to go to another's to buy goods which suit us, then we get a good beating, so that we do not know where our eyes are. This conduct ought not to continue ; each ought to be allowed to go where he pleases and where the goods suit him best.' They say : ' The Dutch send so many brokers into the woods from one house that they do not know where to go with their beavers. Each trader ought to have some of their peltry.' " The director-general in reply to these complaints of 120 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. the Senecas said : ' ' Our brothers inform us that their beavers are locked up when they come into the houses. We forbade our people to do so three days ago, and our brothers may go with their beavers where they please. "Brothers, if any Dutchman beats you, come to the sachems and make a complaint ; and if any Dutch trader keeps or locks up your beavers they will see that you get them back. ' ' Brothers, it is well that each one goes now with his beavers where he likes, and no brokers shall henceforth be sent into the woods. * * -^ You need not listen any longer to these runners, but beat them on the head until it can no longer be seen where their eyes were."^ The possession of fire-arms had given the Mohawks an acknowledged dominance over many of the other Indian tribes of New Netherland. This acquired power made the former very arrogant. The tribal imperious- ness of the Mohawks did not escape the observation of the Dutch. When the directors of the West India Company suggested the use of the Mohawk warriors to punish and reduce the Esopus Indians, Director Stuyve- sant wrote them that it would be a dangerous experi- ment, for the Maquaas were " a vain-glorious, proud and bold tribe, made quite haughty by their continued victories and advantages over the French themselves and the French Indians in Canada. If we were to ask them to aid us and they consented and success followed, they would exalt themselves to our belittlement in the eyes of the other Indians ; and if we did not afterward reward them in a manner satisfactory to their greedy appetites and did not continue our gifts, we would hear ourselves constantly upbraided ; and if we retorted, it might lead 1 Albany records, vol. vi. fol. 236-238, 254. 257-261, 270-283 ; vol. xxiv. fol. 348-352. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 121 to an embroilment. For these and many other considera- tions," said the sagacious director, "it is best to stand as long as possible on our own feet and to pray the good God for a happy deliverance." ^ In the spring of 1662, about three hundred Mohawks made a foray along the upper waters of the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers. At Fort Penobscot they surprised a party of Albenaquis, and afterward killed a number of cattle belonging to the English and committed other depredations. The governors of Boston and Nova Scotia in August sent two commissioners to Fort Orange, who in the presence of Director Stuy vesant held a conference with some of the chiefs of the Mohawks. When the latter were asked why their warriors had broken the covenants which the English had made the previous year with the tribe, they answered that they had not entered into any treaty with the Northern Indians, and that they were wilUng to pay the English for the property des- troyed. The Mohawks, having made these answers with considerable surliness, huffishly left the room, and after- ward, in conversation with some of the inhabitants of Beverswyck, declared that the English commissioners were no better than hogs, and that they did not care for the English, and if they did not at once accept their overtures that "they would in three weeks go to the frontier plantations of Connecticut and pillage them, and dividing themselves into companies of ten, or twelve, rove through the country setting fire to remote houses and destroying what they could. " At the afternoon con- ference the Mohawk chiefs were more tractable, and agreed to indemnify the English for their losses, to treat with the Northern Indians, and to take into consideration the release of the captured Albenaquis. 1 Albany records, vol. iv. fol. 331 ; vol. xvi. fol. 101, 103, 105, 107 ; vol. viii. fol. 54-60, 69, 102, 103. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 122 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. It was about this time that three Frenchmen escaped from a war-party of Mohawks and Oneidas, who had attacked an outpost near Montreal, and killed fourteen French soldiers and eighty Indians. The three famished Frenchmen, having had no other food for nine days than the bark of trees and wild vegetables, reached Bevers- wyck, where they were kindly cared for, secreted for a number of days, and then sent in a vessel to Canada. ^ A number of the inhabitants of Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck conceiving that they would be more advantageously situated, as farmers and traders, were they to occupy the Groote Vlachte (Great Flat), as the site of Schenectady was then called by the Dutch, dele- gated Arendt van Curler to obtain from the West India Company the privilege of purchasing the tract from the Indian owners and of settling upon it. Van Curler went to New Amsterdam and presented to the director-general and council of New Netherland the petition. On the twenty -third of June, 1661, the request of the petitioners was formally granted, on the condition that the land when purchased should be transferred and conveyed, as was customary, to the director-general and council repre- senting the directors of the West India Company, and that whatever the petitioners should pay for the land should ' ' in due time be refunded to them or be credited to them against the taxes. " Willing to comply with this provision, the petitioners, with Arendt van Curler, pur- chased on the twenty -seventh of July, at Fort Orange, the parcel of land which the Indians called Schonowe.^ 1 True relation of the Maques coming to Penobscot fort. Albany records, vol. XX. fol. 178, 184-189, 191-194, Hoi. doc. vol. xi. fol. 211. Relation 1660-1665. 2 Three of the Mohawk chiefs conveying the land to Arendt van Curler (Sieur Arent van Corlear, as it is written in the instrument), respectively drew the figures of a bear, a turtle, and a wolf, as their marks to the docu- ment, to designate the particular family to which they severally belonged. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 123 The fur traders of Beverswyck and of Renssselaers- wyck perceiving that the people of the new settle- ment intended to intercept the Indians coming from the west with peltries, petitioned, in 1662, the director- general and council not to allow the settlers of the Groote Vlachte to trade with the Indians. To protect not only the interests of the petitioners but also those of the fur factors of the West India Company stationed at Fort Orange, the director-general and council required the people of the Great Flat "to bind themselves and to promise not to carry on any trade with the Wilden under whatever name or pretext it might be, neither directly nor indirectly." To enforce the requirements of this order, Jacques Corteljon, the company's engineer, was instructed in 1663 not to survey any land for the settlers who would not subscribe their names to the following pledge: "We, the undersigned, proprietors of land on the flat, * * * promise herewith that we will have no dealings with the savages, whatever name they may have, on the said flat or thereabouts, nor will we permit such trade under any pretext whatsoever, neither directly nor indirectly, under the penalty that if we or any of us should hereafter happen to forget this, our promise, we shall pay as a fine, without any resistance whatever, the first time fifty beavers, the second time one hundred, and the third time forfeit the land allotted to and ob- tained by us on the aforesaid flat. This we confirm by our signatures at Fort Orange, the "-^ * - year 1663." The people of the Great Flat formally refused to pledge this obedience, saying : ' ' We bought the land with our own money for the company (to be repaid at a convenient time), took possession of it with much expense, erected buildings on it, and stocked it with horses and cattle. If the proprietors are to be treated in a different manner or 124 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. with less consideration than the other inhabitants, then all their labor has been unrewarded and they are com- pletely ruined. -^ * * Inasmuch as the surveyor is now here, but has no order to survey the land unless this pledge is signed, we request that the surveyor be author- ized to survey the land in order to prevent differences and disputes among us, else we shall be compelled to help ourselves as best we can."^ To this communication the director- general and council, on the eighteenth of June, L663, replied, that they must be obeyed for they did not intend to further the interests of one place and ruin those of another. To enforce their commands, they ordered that no Indian goods or any merchandise should be con- veyed to ' ' Schanechtade, " much less bartered there, on pain of forfeiting the Indian goods and merchandises, ' ' one-half to be given to the informer, the other half to the officer, either of Fort Orange or the colony of Eens- selaerswyck, by whom the complaint shall be instituted." They also commanded that the commissary of the West India Company and the magistrates of the court of Fort Orange and of Beverswyck " should repair to the newly- begun settlement of Schanechtade and there take up the goods and merchandises already carried there, contrary to the act of concession " of the sixth of April, 1662. ^ ^It was in Beverswyck on the twenty- ninth of January, 1663, that Anneke Janse Bogardus made her last will and testament, which more than a century and 1 The paper was signed and marked by "A. van Curlaer, Philipp Hen- dricksen Sander Leendertsen Glen, the mark of Simon Volckertsen, Pieter Sogemacklie, the mark of Teunis Cornelissen, the mark of Martin Cornelis- sen, Willem Teller, Gerret Bancker, Bastian de Winter for the widow of Arent Andriesen, Pieter Jacobsen Borsboom, Pieter Danielsen van Olinda, the mark of Jan Barentsen Wemp, and the mark of Jacques Cornelis. 2 Albany records, vol. xix. fol. 179, 180; vol vi. fol. 345 ; vol. xxi, fol. 135, 137, 139 ; vol xxii, fol. 169, 234. Papieren rackende Schaenhectady. Albany County Clerk's office. 1680-1685, fol. 297-301. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. xiii. pp. 202, 203, 204, 215. 216, 219, 244, 253, 254. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 125 a half thereafter became famous in the suit to recover a part of the property in the city of New York that her heirs, on the ninth of March, 1671, had conveyed to Lieutenant-governor Lovelace. Her personal history is traceable to the year 1630, when she with her first Holland, to become colonists of Rensselaerswyck. In husband, Roelofl Jansen, emigrated from Maesterlandt, 1636, Roelofl Jansen, having removed from Rensselaers- wyck fco the city of New Amsterdam, obtained, by letters- patent from Director-general Van Twiller, thirty-one morgens, or sixty-two acres of farm-land, lying north of the city, along the Hudson. After the death of her first husband, she married, about the year 1638, the Rev. Everhardus Bogardus, the pastor of the First Reformed church of New Amsterdam. After the latter's death in 1647, she purchased a house in Beverswyck, on the north side of Jonker Street, where now is the northeast corner of James and State streets, where she lived until she died in 1663. A short time before her death, while sick in bed, Dirk van Schelluyne, a notary-public of the village, wrote her last will and testament, which she signed in the presence of Rutger Jacobsen and Evert Janse Wendell. The land sold by her heirs in 1671, was first known as the Duke's farm, then as the King's, and then as the Queen's. The tract, described as bounded on the east partly by the street called Broadway, partly by the com- mon, partly by the swamp, and on the west by the Hudson, its southern and northern limits being respect- ively near the present lines of Warren and Christopher streets, was conveyed on the twenty -third of November, 1705, by letters-patent from Queen Anne to the corpora- tion of Trinity church, New York. The property was peaceably held by the church until the close of the revolutionary war, when Cornehus Bogardus claimed a 126 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. sixth part of the farm under the plea that his right and title had never been transferred to the possessors of the land. He thereupon took possession of a house on the farm, and inclosed some of the land with a fence. The church-officers asserted the corporation's ownership of the land, and Cornelius Bogardus was evicted. In 1830, John Bogardus brought an action against the corporation of Trinity church to recover one-fifth part of one-sixth of the sixty -two acres of land belonging to the farm. This descendant of Anneke Janse Bogardus "alleged that the undivided sixth part of the premises belonged to Cornelius Bogardus, the ancestor of the complainant, at the time of his death, in 1707, and was held by him as tenant in common with the corporation of Trinity church ; that upon his death that sixth descended to his eldest son, the grandfather of the com- plainant, who had died in 1759 intestate ; that on the death of the latter, it descended to the father of the com- plainant, who had died intestate in 1794, leaving the com- plainant and his four brothers and sisters his heirs at law ; hence as it was claimed, the complainant became entitled to one-fifth of that undivided sixth as tenant in common with his brothers and sisters and the corporation." When the court rendered its judgment against the complainant, the chancellor closed his opinion with these words : " Were it not for the uncommon magnitude of the claim, the apparent sincerity and zeal of the counsel who supported it, and the fact (of which I have been often- times admonished, by personal applications on their behalf), that the descendants of Anneke Janse at this day are hundreds, if not thousands, in number, I should not have deemed it necessary to deliver a written judgment. * * * But the law on these claims is well settled ; and it must be sustained, in favor of religious THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 127 corporations as well as of priva,te individuals. Indeed, it would be monstrous, if, after a possession such as has been proved in this case, for a period of nearly a century and a half, open, notorious, and within sight of the temple of justice, the successive claimants, save one, being men of full age, and the courts open to them all the time (except for seven years of war and revolution); the title to lands were to be litigated successfully, upon a claim which has been suspended for five generations. Few titles in this country would be secure under such an administration of the law ; and its adoption would lead to scenes of fraud, corruption, foul injustice, and legal rapine, far worse in their consequences upon the peace, good order, and happiness of society than external war or domestic insurrection." ^ The massacre of the settlers at Esopus, fifty-five miles south of Beverswyck, at noon, on the seventh of June, 1663, caused the alarmed inhabitants of the dorpe and colonie to take such steps as were necessary to render Fort Orange defensible. ^ Director Stuyvesant wrote the following week to the magistrates of Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck, saying : "As we are informed that Fort Orange is bared of soldiers and destitute of the proper means of defense and hard to repair, we would consider it advisable that the company's stone-building only be fortified and all the wretched huts be removed with the least expense and the utmost expedition, which we leave to your honors' better experience and discretion. Your honors will have been taught, I trust, by the occurrence at Esopus, not to put faith in the Indians nor let them enter your houses in large numbers, much less provide them with strong liquor or ammunition, except 1 Paige's reports, vol. iv. Sandford's chancery reports, vol. iv. Collections on the history of Albany. Munsell. vol. iii. pp. 459-469. 2 Twenty-one persons were killed and forty-two taken prisoners . 128 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. for saving the captive women and children, to do which the greatest effort must be made. Hereafter no yacht must sail up or down the river by itself unless well- manned." Four days later he again wrote to the magis- trates of the two courts to send to New Amsterdam, "at the first opportunity, three or four of the lightest cannon" to be used "at distant outlying places," where they were much needed. Councilor Johannes de Decker was also sent to Fort Orange to obtain a number of resolute men, to be paid eight or ten guilders a month at the usual rate of sixteen pieces of wampuni for a stiver, to serve as soldiers at Esopus, and if the magistrates thought it advisable ' ' to induce the Maquaas or Senecas to capture some of the Esopus savages," who might be exchanged for the Dutch prisoners held by these savages. De Decker was also instructed " to request the courts, or, with the help of the deputies of the same, to ask some merchant to advance [the government] a sum of three or four thousand guilders, half in goods, half in wampum, either in the form of a loan, or at a fair rate of interest" if the. money could not be returned within a year, for which the director-general and council of New Nether- land offered ' ' to give as security not only the company's property, but their own." Vice-director La Montague, in a letter dated the twenty-third of June, wrote as follows to the officers of the government respecting Fort Orange : "It ought to be repaired and put in a defensible condition in a short time. * ■" * The courts * * '^ have with me con- cluded to let the old houses and huts stand, and to repair only the bastions at the least expense and with the utmost expedition, for it would hardly be convenient for all the occupants to pull down their houses now and to move elsewhere. It would also be disadvantageous to the hon- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 129 orable company, for the people would have to be indem- nified, while my hands, to which the business would be intrusted, are, to my regret, closed. Now the people are deriding the honorable company for the condition of the fort. This ridicule cannot be tolerated any longer. Therefore I have undertaken to make a beginning, for the posts and the outside covering are ready and the burghers have offered to furnish daily eight or ten men. But plank for platforms, sills, rails for anchors, spikes, and especially two carpenters, are still needed." On the twenty-ninth he wrote : " The ordnance for which your honor calls is ready at your honor's pleasure, but I have no men to put it aboard a vessel nor money to pay the laborers. I pray your honor will consider that there are not more than eight cannon on the four bastions, besides a twelve-pounder that has never been mounted in my time. Mr. Rensselaer claims three of these pieces, and demands them immediately to place them in a little fort or fortifi- cation at Greenbush that they have built there, and if your honor takes four from those remaining not more than two would be left us. It is true that there are still three light pieces which the magistrates brought from Mr. Rensselaer's place in 1656, and placed on the church. These, the magistrates say, his honor had given them to use in the defense of the plank-enclosure. I dare not take these away from there without his honor's express order." Meanwhile the settlers of Rensselaerswyck living on the east side of the river had erected at Greenbush a small block-house called Fort Cralo, which was garris- oned for a short time by a number of colonists appointed by the officers of the manor to guard the settlement there. ^ 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. viii. pp. 155, 156, 250, 254-256, 258, 264. MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. 130 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. At this time the affairs of New Netherland were in so deplorable a condition that the people determined to complain to the Holland directors of the West India Company. A colonial assembly {landts vergaderinge) was convoked. As it was too late in the year to secure the attendance of delegates from Esopus, Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck, the convention, which began its sessions on the first day of November, in the city of New Amsterdam, was composed only of delegates from the settlements of Amersfoort, Bergen, Boswyck, Breucklen, Haerlem, Midwout, New Amsterdam and New Utrecht. The representatives of the people addressed a remon- strance to the Holland directors of the West India Com- pany, in which they reminded them of the promises made by them in the charter of privileges and exemptions of 1629 : " By the exemptions which your honors granted and published, encouraging the people to leave their dearly beloved Fatherland and to emigrate to this country, you publicly bound yourselves to keep your remonstrants in the peaceable possession of their prop- erty and of the lands they selected, settled, and occupied, and to protect them and the other inhabitants against all civil or foreign war, usurpation, and open force. To ac- complish this your honors were bound to obtain from their high mightinesses, the States-G-eneral, our supreme sovereigns, commissions and patents in proper form,' substantiating and justifying your actual and legitimate jurisdiction over this province and its territory, so far as it extended." They further asserted that "the English, to conceal their plans, now declare that there is no proof, no legal instrument or patent from their high mightinesses to substantiate and justify our rights and claims to the pos- session of this province, and insinuate that by the delay THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 131 of their high mightinesses to grant such patent, you seemingly intended to place the people here on slippery ice, giving them lands to which your honors had no right whatever ; that this is, indeed, the real cause of our being kept continually in a labyrinth, and the reason why the well-intentioned English settled under your government are at a loss how to perform the obligations of their oaths." They also accused the directors of failing to protect and defend New Netherland "with a sufficient number of good soldiers and the other necessary means which constitute the chief and entire foundation on which, other than God, peaceably repose the tranquility, safety, and security of this province and its people. * * * So that the good people are thereby reduced to a state nearly as deplorable as a flock without a shepherd, a prey to every one who will make use of the opportunity and attack them." " There is no doubt then, at least the apprehension is very strong, that we must expect the loss of the whole of this province ; or that it will be circumscribed with such narrow limits that it will resemble only a useless carcass, devoid of limbs and form, deprived of all its internal parts, its head separated from its trunk, and your remonstrants, consequently, so closely cooped up, if not entirely crushed, that they at last will be compelled, to their irreparable ruin, to abandon this country in despair, and become outcasts with their families. " They further declared that if the directors did not apply, ' ' in the shortest way, the most efficacious means " to relieve them from their " calamitous and distressing condition" that they would, "by an imperative neces- sity," be compelled, in order to save themselves and 182 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. families, to address the college of deputies of the respective departments, through whom they would make application to their high mightinesses, the Lords States- General, for speedy and effectual aid. This urgent remonstrance was at once forwarded to the directors of the West India Company, at Amsterdam, where Jeremias van Rensselaer and Jacob Baker were to prevail upon the corporation to give immediate atten- tion to the matters set forth in it. ^ While the people of the southern part of New Nether- land were discussing the probable action of the West India Company to redress the grievances of which they complained, the settlers of Beverswyck and Rensselaers- wyck were in great dismay on account of the rapid ravages of the small-pox. Vaccination was unknown, and the epidemic was wide-spread. In Beverswyck every family was afflicted with the " foul, putrid disease." The block-house church bell daily tolled the death of the victims of the virulent infection. A thousand Indians of the tribes of the northern part of New Netherland died with the loathsome disease. ^ During the winter of 1663-64, the condition of the affairs of the province became more alarming, and a second general assembly was therefore convened on the enth of April, 1664, in the city hall of New Amsterdam. Jan Verbeck and Gerrit van Slechtenhorst were delegates 1 Albany records, vol. xxi. fol. 3.51-355, 357, 361, 369-376. Hoi. doc. vol. xii. fol. 291, 363. 8 Vice-director La Montagne thus speaks of the virulent disease, in a letter dated Fort Orange, November 4, 1663 : "You have heard, no doubt, of the doleful situation of this place as respects the small-pox, which is still daily increasing. I learned yesterday that on the hill fifteen persons were so affected by the disease that they could not afford any relief to one another. At Willem Teller's seven are afflicted with it, and six in my family, my negro being the last. Twelve persons have died within eight days, chiefly children. The Lord God help us and stop its farther progress, and save you all from such a foul, putrid disease." — Albany records, vol. vi. fol. 409. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 133 from Fort Orange and Beverswyck ; and Jeremias van Rensselaer and Dirk van Schelluyne from Rensselaers- wyck. ^ As Rensselaerswyck was the oldest colony in New Netherland, Jeremias van Rensselaer was chosen to preside during the deliberations of the assembly. After debating certain measures to protect the country and to defeat the machinations of "the malignant English" and the hostile Indians, the assembly adjourned for a week's recess. When it again convened dispatches had been received from Holland informing the director- general and council of New Netherland that the Lords- States General had reaffirmed on the twenty-third of January, 1664, the validity of the charter given by their high mightinesses to the West India Company on the third of June, 162], and had more definitely defined the boundaries of New Netherland conformably to the agreement made and concluded at Hartford, on the nineteenth of September, 1650, and ratified by them on the twenty-second of February, 1656. ^ Director Stuyve- sant at the same time received instructions from the directors of the West India Company to exterminate the 1 "April 3, 1664. On the summons of the lords director and council of New Netherland for a general assembly, dated March 19, to be held on the tenth of this month of April, their honors of the court of this colony have thereunto deputed Mr. Jeremias van Rensselaer, director, and Dirck van Schelluyne, secretary of the said colony, to advance the contents of the letter of credence placed in their hands to the advantage of this colony and the country, as they shall find necessary." — Resolutie boek van de Gecom- mitterde der Colonye Rensselaerswyck. 2 "1. That vpon long Island a lyne Runne from the Westermost part of the Oyster bay soe and in a straight and directe lyne to the Sea Shal be the bounds betwixt the English and Dutch there, the Easterly part to belong to the English the Westermost part to the Dutch. "2. The bounds vpon the mayne to begin at the West side of Green- widge bay being about 4 miles from Stanford and soe to runne a Northerly lyne twenty miles vp into the Country and after as it shal bee agreed by the two governments of the Dutch and of Newhaven provided the said lyne com not within 10 miles of Hudsons River." — Articles of agreement made and concluded at Hartford, September 19th, 1650. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soe. vol. 1. p. 236. 134 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Indians who had taken part in the massacre of the people at Esopus, and to oppose with force the aggressive English. The assembly after considering these advices concluded that it would be useless to attempt to take up arras against the English settlers as they " were as six to one, and with aid from Hartford could easily overcome and massacre the few Dutch soldiers that could be brought against them." With the hostile Indians it was deemed best that a treaty of peace should be concluded without loss of time as it was learned that the English of Connecticut were tampering with them. When the assembly adjourned, Director Stuyvesant at once made the necessary overtures to the belligerent Indians, and on the sixteenth of May concluded a treaty of peace and amity, at Fort Amsterdam, with the chiefs of the Eiver Indians. This event was celebrated by a general thanks- giving, the fourth of June being observed by the people of New Netherland conformably to the proclamation of the director-general and council, dated May 31, 1664.^ 1 Albany records, vol. xxi. fol. 351-355, 357, 361, 369-376: vol. xxii. fol. 78-90, 105, 106, 145-167, 179-182 ; vol. iv. fol. 454-i56, 459-463, 465; vol. xxii, fol. 182 ; vol. xviii. fol. 238-240; vol. xxii. fol. 119—180 227. 214-226, 245. Hoi. doc. vol. xii. fol. 291, 363. Jeremias van Rensse- laer's letter to his brother Jan Baptiste, April 25, 1664. CHAPTEE VI. ALBANY. 1664-1674. New Netherland had been coveted for a long time by the Enghsh. They had early claimed its territory by the right of its assumed discovery by the. Cabots. They affirmed that it was a part of the country granted in 1584 to Sir Walter Raleigh by Queen Elizabeth. They asserted that it was included in the domain conveyed by letters- patent to the English companies in 1606. They alleged that the Hollanders were interlopers, that the latter had taken possession of the region called by them New Neth- erland without any right or title whatever. They further declared that the Netherlanders had been formally warned by the people of the Plymouth colony to forbear trading on the " Manahata River,'' and not to make any settle- ments there as the territory belonged to the king of England, that the Datch had replied " with proude and contumacious answers, (saying they had commission to fight against such as should disturbe their settlement,)" that they persisted in planting colonies and trading there, "vilefying" the English colonists in the hearing of the Indians, and "extolling their owne people and countrye of Holland. " ^ Therefore it was not strange that Charles 11. king of England was influenced by such arguments 1 John Mason's letter to Secretary Coke, April 2, 1682. Doc. colonial hist. N. Y, vol. iii. pp. 16, 17. 135 136 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. as these and by other considerations to grant, on the twelfth of March, 1664, to his brother James, duke of York and Albany, all the territory of New England and "all that Island or Islands commonly called by the sev- eral name or names of Matowacks or Long Island," and the "River called Hudson's River, and all the land from the West side of Connectticut to the east side of Delaware Bay ; " nor was it unnatural for Charles II. to provide his brother with four men-of-war and a force of four hun- dred and fifty men under the command of Colonel Rich- ard NicoUs to take possession of the territory of New Netherland. ^ The first information received by the director-general and council of New Netherland respecting the fitting out and sailing of the English fleet was brought from Boston. Orders were at once given to put Fort Amsterdam in a defensible condition, and spies were sent to different places to gather further intelligence of the designs of the English. As soon as Director Stuyvesant conceived that the city of New Amsterdam would likely be the flrst place to be attacked, he wrote, on the eighth of July, to Vice- director La Montague and Jeremias van Rensselaer, saying : "These few lines only serve to communicate the information furnished to-day by different persons con- cerning the English frigates that have so long been spoken of. That they have already put to sea and are manned and armed as was admitted and confirmed is beyond a doubt, but their destination is still mere report as the inclosed information implies, yet from the circum- stances it may be presumed without difficulty that they might indeed come directly here to this river. We have thought it necessary to give your honor and those of the 1 Book of patents, vol. i. fol. 109-121. Hoi. doc. vol. x. fol. 149. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 137 colony of Rensselaerswyck speedy notice and knowledge thereof, to the end that you and we may be on our guard and prepare for all possible resistance, and as it is apparent that this place may bear the first and the severest shock, and if lost, little hope would remain for the rest, we would therefore earnestly recommend you, with all possible speed, according to the promise given at the general assembly, to furnish such assistance, especially powder and lead, as circumstances may in any way permit, the sooner the better, for the need is pressing. "At the same time we would recommend and pray you to negotiate a loan of five or six thousand guilders in wampum for the honorable company, and to send it down by the first opportunity to pay the laboring people. The obligations you may be assured will be repaid satisfac- torily, either in negroes or other commodities, in case the gracious God, as we hope and wish, will grant a favora- ble result." ^ Meanwhile the bloody tide of Indian warfare was deepening around Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck. In June a number of Mohawks had been treacherously murdered by a party of Abenaquis. On the twelfth of July, several chiefs of the River Indians informed the authorities at Fort Orange that this massacre of the Maquaas had been instigated by the English. One of them said : "Brothers, we will conceal nothing from you since you have lived among us a very long time and have had your wives and children among us, and you understand our language quite well. The English told and com- manded the savages to fight and kill the Maquaas and 1 Albany records, vol. xx. fol. B11 ; vol. xxii. fol. 2'71-2'73, 276. Hoi. doc. vol. xi. fol. 219, 221, 236-239; vol. xii. 92-96, 11'7-119. 138 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. the Dutch ; and the EngKsh threatened, that if they did not do it, to kill them. They further told that forty vessels are coming from Europe to wage war and demand the surrender of the country, and if we decUne to surrender that they will kill us to the last man, and then the English will fight against the Dutch." The Mohegans, or Mahikanders as they were called by the Dutch, seemingly followed the instructions of the English, for they became quite hostile. The magistrates of Beverswyck and Eensselaerswyck in their answer of the fourteenth of July to the letter of Director Stuyve- sant, adverted to the massacre of the Mohawk chiefs, remarking : "It has also followed that the Mahikanders who appear to have some knowledge of the affair, have fled from the Mohawks, and the next consequence was that, on last Monday, the seventh [of July, 1664,], the Indians of the colony, at one onslaught, killed nine head of cattle * * * on Director Rensselaer's farm, at G-reen- bush ; afterward, on another, in the manor, three head of cattle exclusive of those that are missing and some which are wounded. ' ' There are also reliable reports that the Indians burnt, on last Friday, the dwelling house on Mr. Abraham Staet's farm, also the farmer. His wife and one negro have not yet been found. The people of Mr. Abraham's wife have sent a canoe there to-day. Our cowherd has also been threatened by the Indians. * * * In fine, we are in great trouble, peril, and perplexity. " Now in reply to your honor's letter of the eighth of July, handed us this day by G-errit Virbeeck, respecting what you have been pleased to communicate to us con- cerning the frigates, we have scarcely any doubt of the probability of their coming to attack us as appears from THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 139 the reports of the Indians and the declarations made here to the court, according to the papers accompanying this communication. "Wherefore we request your honors to aid us with your wise counsel. * * * Respecting the supply of powder and lead which your honors have been pleased to request, the director and council will be so good as to consider that in this emergency we have the greatest need of what is very scarce here." ^ When this communication was received by the direc- tor-general and council their apprehensions respecting the warlike intentions of the English had been allayed by later dispatches from the directors of the Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company. They were told that soon there would be an amicable adjustment of the differences so long existing between the English and the Dutch concerning the boundary lines of the province, and that the king of Great Britain "being disposed to bring all of his dominions under one form of government, both in church and in state," was about to send commis- sioners to New England "to establish the episcopal gov- ernment as in Old England." This change, they said, would so effect the English settlers in New Netherland, that "they will not give us hereafter so much trouble but prefer rather to live free under us, at peace with their consciences, than to trouble themselves to get rid of our authority and then to fall again under a government from which they had formerly fled." Persuaded that there were no legitimate grounds for the alarming reports that had been circulated among the people of New Netherland, the director-general, on the last day of July, went on board of a vessel and sailed for 1 MSS. of Rensselaerswyck. Albany records, vol. vi. fol. 431. Hoi. doc, vol. xi. fol. 238. 140 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Fort Orange. ^ Several weeks afterward the citizens of New Amsterdam in great amazement heard that a part of the Enghsh fleet had arrived at Boston, and that their city would soon be in the possession of the duke of York and Albany. All business was at once suspended. The excited people loudly censured the director-general for leaving the city. A messenger was immediately sent to Fort Orange to inform him of the direful condition of affairs in New Amsterdam. On Friday, the twenty-ninth of August, four days after his return to the seat of gov- ernment, Director Stuyvesant wrote to the authorities of Fort Orange and of Rensselaerswyck : " My leaving you was painful on account of my indisposition ; more pain- ful and troublesome were my return and arrival here on last Monday, on account of the report respecting the four English frigates, one of which showed herself, the next day, Tuesday, in the bay, near Sandy Hook. "Yesterday, being Thursday, three more arrived and sailed up into Najack [Nyack] bay, where they are still at anchor. * * * Evidently it is to be inferred that they will endeavor to reduce not only this capital but also the whole province to obedience to England. ' ' The naval and military force from Old England is estimated at seventeen hundred ; some say two thousand men, in addition to the crowd daily expected from New England. "You can easily imagine in what a state of embar- rassment aiid anxiety we find ourselves without the hope of any relief. Therefore this serves chiefly to warn your honors and ail friends particularly and mainly not to send down any beavers nor peltries for fear of their falling into the hands of the English. 1 Albany records, vol. xx. fol. 377 ; vol. xxii. fol. 271-273, 276. Hoi. doc. vol. xi. fol. 219, 221, 286-239; vol. xii. fol. 92-96. 117-119. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 141 "It is desired, and, indeed, it is most necessary that your honors should assist us with some aid in men and powder, in case any hope or means remain of transport- ing and bringing them here in season and safety." Vice-director La Montague and Jeremias van Rens- selaer in reply, wrote as follows, on the twenty-ninth of August : ' ' Right honorable general : " We are pleased to learn from your honor's letter of the twenty-ninth of August, of your arrival, but the un- expected hostile appearance of the English and the threatening concourse of evil-disposed neighbors belong- ing to their nation in this country are strange occur- rences to us. ' ' We have done our duty comf ormably to your hon- or's letters, the particulars of which we dare not commit to writing before and until we have further and more re- liable information concerning what has happened. To our surprise we do not find the inclosure of which your honor wrote. "Meanwhile, at the request of some travelers, whose homes are at the Manhattans, we have consented to their departure in a sloop from this place thither. And here- with hoping for every thing we shall conclude, and after hearty greeting commend your honor to God's mercy." On the thirtieth of August, Colonel Richard Nicolls, commanding the English fleet, at anchor in Nyack Bay, demanded the surrender of New Amsterdam. After a futile attempt to convince the British officer in a written protest that England had no right to the possession of New Netherland, Director Stuyvesant finally but reluct- antly signed, on the eighth of September, the articles of surrender, drawn up and signed by the Dutch and Eng- lish commissioners, on Saturday, the sixth of September, 142 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. As soon as the articles^ received the signatures of Col- onel NicoUs and the director-general and council of New Netherland, Johannes de Decker took passage in a vessel sailing to Fort Orange, where, on his arrival, he under- 1 " I. We consent that the States General, or the West India company, shall freely injoy all farms and houses (except such as are in the forts), and that within six months, they shall have free liberty to transport all such arms ■ and ammunition as now does belong to them, or else they shall be paid for them. " II. All publique houses shall continue for the uses which they are for. "III. All people shall still continue free denizens, and shall injoy their lands, goods, wheresoever they are within this country, and dispose of them as they please. " IV. If any inhabitant have a mind to remove himself, he shall have a year and six weeks from this day to remove himself, wife, children, ser- vants, goods, and to dispose of his lands here. "V. If any officer of state, or publique minister of state, have a mind to go for England, they shall be transported fraught free, in his Majesty's frigotts, when these frigotts shall return thither. "VI. It is consented to, that any people may freely come from the Netherlands and plant in this colony, and that Dutch vessels may freely come hither, and any of the Dutch may freely return home, or send any sort of merchandise home, in vessels of their own country. "VII. All ships from the Netherlands, or any other place and goods therein, shall be received here, and sent hence, after the manner which for- merly they were before our coming hither, for six months next ensuing. "VIII. The Dutch here shall injoy the liberty of their consciences in divine worship and church discipline. " IX. No Dutchman here, or Dutch ship here, shall upon any occasion, be pressed to serve in war against any nation whatsoever. " X. That the townsmen of the Manhattans shall not have any soldiers quartered upon them, without being satisfied and paid for them by their oflScers, and that at this present, if the fort be not capable of lodging all the soldiers, then the Burgomasters, by their officers, shall appoint some houses capable to receive them. " XI. The Dutch here shall injoy their own customs concerning their in- heritances. " XII. All publique writings and records, which concern the inheritances of any people, or the reglement of the church or poor, or orphans, shall be carefully kept by those in whose hands now they are, and such writings as particularly concern the States General, may at any time be sent to them. "XIII. No judgment that has passed any judicature here, shall be called in question, but if any conceive that he hath not had justice done him, if he apply himself to the States General, the other party shall be bound to answer for the supposed injury. " XIV. If any Dutch living here shall at any time desire to travaile or traflSque into England, qr any place, or plantation, in obedience to his THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 143 took to incite the garrison and the people of Beverswyck and Rensselaerswyck to resist the English when they came to demand the surrender of the fort. After taking possession of the city of New Amsterdam and Fort Am- sterdam, on Monday the eighth of September, and respect- ively calling them New York and Fort James, Governor NicoUs sent, on the following Wednesday. Colonel Majesty of England, or with the Indians, he shall have (upon his request to the govenor) a certificate that he is a free denizen of this place, and liberty to do so. " XV. If it do appear, that there is a publique engagement of debt, by the town of Manhatoes, and a way agreed on for the satisfying of that en- gagement, it is agreed, that the same way proposed shall go on, and that the engagement shall be satisfied. " XVI. All inferior civil officers and magistrates shall continue as now they are (if they please), till the customary time of new elections, and then new ones to be chosen by themselves, provided that such new chosen magis- trates shall take the oath of allegiance to his Majesty of England before they enter upon their office. " XVII. All differences of contracts and bargains made before this day, by any in this country, shall be determined according to the manner of the Dutch. " XVIII. If it do appeare that the West India company of Amsterdam do really owe any sums of money to any persons here, it is agreed that re- cognition and other duties payable by ships going for the Netherlands, be continued for six months longer. " XIX. The officers military and soldiers shall march out with their arms, drums beating, and colours flying, and lighted matches ; and if any of them will plant, they shall have fifty acres of land set ou.t for them ; if any of them will serve as servants, they shall continue with all safety, and be- come free denizens afterwards. "XX. If, at any time hereafter, the King of Great Britain and the States of the Netherland do agree that this place and country be re-delivered into the hands of the said States, whensoever his Majestic will send his com- mands to re-deliver it, it shall immediately be done. "XXI. That the town of Manhattans shall choose deputyes, and those deputyes shall have free voyces in all publique affairs, as much as any other deputyes. " XXII. Those who have any property in any houses in the fort of Aurania, shall (if they please) slight the fortifications there, and then in joy all their houses as all people do where there is no fort. " XXIII. If there be any soldiers that will go into Holland, and if the company of West India in Amsterdam, or any private persons here will transport them into Holland, then they shall have a safe passport from Colonel Richard NicoUs, deputy governor under his Royal Highness, and the other commissioners, to defend the ships that shall transport such soldiers, 144 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. George Cartwright, Captains John Manning and Daniel Brodhead, with a small body of soldiers to Fort Orange. Colonel Cartwright carried with him the following letter addressed ' ' To the present Deputy-Governor, or the mag- istrates and inhabitants of ffort Aurania :"^ " These are to will and require you and every of you to bee ayding and assisting to Col. George Cartwright in the prosecution of his Majesty's interest against all such of what nation soever as shall oppose the peaceable sur- render and quiet possession of the ffort Aurania, and to obey him the said Col. George Cartwright according to such instructions as I have given him in case the Mo- hawks or other Indyans shall attempt any thing against the lives, goods or chattells of those who are now under the protection and obedience of his Majesty of Great Brit- taine ; wherefore you nor any of you are to f ayle as you will answer che contrary at your utmost perills. "Given under my hand and seale att ffort James in New Yorke on Manhattans Island, this tenth day of Sep- tember, 1664. "R. NiCOLLS." t Auratztia, (Latin,) orange, and all the goods in them, from any surprizal or acts of hostility, to be done by any of his Majesty's ships or subjects. That the copies of the King's grant to his Royal Highness, and the copy of his Royal Highness's commis- sion to Colonel Richard NicoUs, testified by two commissioners more, and Mr. Winthrop, to be true copies, shall be delivered to the Honourable Mr. Stuyvesant, the present governor, on Monday next, by eight of the clock in the morning, at the Old Mtln, and these articles consented to, and signed by Colonel Richard NicoUs, deputy governor to his Royal Highness, and that within two hours after the fort and town called New Amsterdam, upon the isle of Manhotoes, shall be delivered into the hands of the said Colonel Richard Nicolls, by the service of such as shall be by him thereunto deputed, by his hand and seal. John De Decker, Robert Carr, NiCH. Varleth, Geo. Cartwright, Sam. Megapolensis, John Winthrop, CoRNELis Steenwyck, Sam. Willys, Jacques Cousseau, John Pinchon, Oloffe. S. Van Kortlandt, Thomas Clarke." Colonial hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp. 250, 253. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 145 Vice-director La Montague, when the order of Gover- nor NicoUs was presented to him, quietly surrendered Fort Orange to Colonel Cartwright on the twenty-fourth of September. In honor of the lord-proprietor of the pro- vince, the name of the village of Beverswyck and that of the fort were changed to Albany. ^ Captain Manning- was given command of the English soldiers garrisoning Fort Albany. Dirk van Schelluyne, a notary public of Beverswyck was appointed clerk of the court of Albany. - The inhabitants of Albany and of Rensselaerswyck were allowed by Governor NichoUs the same privileges as were granted in the articles of capitulation to the people of the city of New Amsterdam. Jeremias van Rensselaer, the director of Rensselaerswyck, having taken the oath of allegiance to King Charles II. and the duke of York, was granted " such priviledges and authority within the limits of Renzluerswicke as he did injoy and execute be- fore the surrender of New York into his majesties obedi- ence," provided "that within the space of one yeare," after the eighteenth of October, 1664, he obtained "a dif- ferent pattent for the colony from his royal highnesse, and in the meane time that all the inhabitants " of the manor took "the oath to his majesty and the present govern- 1 " Albany or Albainn, an ancient name for the Highlands of Scotland, and retained in some degree of use down to our day. * * * it may, in- deed, be pretty safely assumed that Albion or Albany was the original name of Britain among its Celtic population ; and that it only became restricted to the northwest provinces of Scotland, when the Celts had for the most part become confined to the same region. * * * The modern use of the name of Albany may be said to have taken its rise in an act of a Scottish council held at Scone in June 1398, when the title of Duke of Albany was conferred on the brother of King Robert III., then acting as regent of the kingdom. The title being forfeited in the son of the first holder, was afterwards con- ferred on Alexander, second son of King James II., in the person of whose son, John, it become extinct in 1536. Subsequently it was onferred in suc- cession on Henry Lord Darnley, on Charles I., in infancy, on James II., in infancy."— Chambers' Encyclopaedia. 2 This office he held until the middle of August, 1668. 10 146 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ment." ^ While Colonel Cartwright was at Fort Albany a number of Mohawk and Seneca chiefs formally entered into the treaty of peace with the officers of the new gov- ernment. The Indians were told that they were not to be deprived of any of the privileges and gifts which had been given them by the Dutch. Few changes were made at Albany by the English. The courts continued to exercise the same jurisdiction as they had previously done according to the Dutch forms of procedure, and the officers retained their old designa- tions. Captain Manning commanding Fort Albany was commissioned schout or , sheriff. In the latter part of August, 1665, Governor NicoUs visited Albany. He re- lieved Captain Manning, and made Captain John Baker chief officer of the post. He instructed the latter ' ' to keep a constant guard in ye fort," and as there was "no evident danger of force or suprisall," the soldiers were to be permitted "the liberty to advance themselves by worke or trade." In his written instructions to the com- mander of Fort Albany he further said : " You are to keepe good order and discipline with ye souldiers not lending to easy an eare to their complaints against their land lords [the persons with whom the soldiers boarded]. But where you find the complaints reasonable you are to make it known to ye comissaryes yr who are empowered to give redresse therein against their land lords or any other inhabitants who shall offer violence or injury to the souldiers." "If any of ye inhabitants make a just complaint against a souldier the punishment of ye souldier belongs only to your selfe." 1 Albany records, vol. xx. fol. 30*7, 385 ; vol. xviii. fol. 312-315, 324, 326. Hoi. doc. vol. X. fol. 129. Book of general entries, vol. i. pp. 22, 26, 32. 34, 35, 55, 141, 36-50. The history of the province of New York. By William Smith. London, ns^. pp. 11-22. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 147 "In matters caj)itall or treatyes with ye Indians you are to sit in ye fort with ye shout and coniissaryes as ye upper court whereof you are to bee president and upon equall division of voices to have the castinge & decisive voice. But in the ordinary courts for civill affaires you have nothing to doe." ' ' You are to keepe a f aire correspondence with ye commissaryes and towarde all the inhabitants & en- deavor to live as brothers together, avoiding all occa- sion of pubiick controversy or falling out. But if you have any greevance make it knowne calmly without heate or passion to ye court. And if they do not give redresse you are to remitt ye matter to mee as it was delivered to ye court," "Lett not your eares bee abused with private story es of ye Dutch being disaffected to ye English, for gen- erally wee can not expect they love us. But when you have any sufficient testimony against any Dutchman of words or actions tending to ye breach of peace or scandalous defamcon deliver over the testimonyes to the comisaryes from whom I expect justice shall bee done." " You are to cause the guard house to be repaired, as also other necessarye repaires to bee made, with as little expence as is possible, knowing the narrowness of our present condition." "If it shall at any time happen that ye Indyans comitt any violence at or neare Albany, you are to joyne in councell with ye comissaryes what is best to bee done till my further directions can bee knowne. " ^ In order that the children of the Dutch inhabitants of Albany might be taught to speak, read, and write English correctly, he granted the following license : 1 Book of patents, vol. 1. pp. 20, 155, 15V, 158, 161-164. Orders, warrants, letters, vol. ii. pp. 3-5, lY, 229. 148 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "Whereas the teaching of the Enghsh Tongue is necessary in this Grovernment ; I have, therefore, thought fitt to give License to John Shutte to bee the Enghsh Schoohnaster at Albany : And upon condition that the said John Shutte shall not demand any more wages from each SchoUar than is given by the Dutch to their Dutch Schoolmasters. I have further granted to A- the said John Shutte that hee shall bee the only English Schoolmaster at Albany." ^ The governor also licensed Jan Jurrianse Becker to teach the children of the inhabi- tants in the Dutch language. Early in January, 1666, three hundred French soldiers and two hundred armed Canadians, under .the command of Daniel de Remy de Courcelles, were marching south- ward toward Lake Champlain, on their way to the Mo- hawk country, to avenge the bloody deeds of the warriors of their savage enemy. Burdened with heavy quantities of food and ammunition, they trudged on cumbersome snow-shoes through the intervening wilderness, hoping to surprise the Mohawks in their castles and reduce their cruel foes to a humiliated and peaceable condition. The courageous French unfortunately were ambuscaded by the wary Mohawks in the vicinity of Schenectady, and failed to accomplish the object of their bold undertaking. When the news of the presence of this large French force near Schenectady was brought, on the nineteenth of February, to Fort Albany, ' ' three of the principle inhab- itants " of Albany were sent the next day to the French commander to inquire why he had brought "a body of armed men into the dominions of his Ma^i^ of G-reat Brittaine." He replied "that he came to seek out and de- stroy his Enemy es, the Mohaukes," and that he had not heard of the reduction of New Netherland by the king 1 Given at Fort James, Oct. 12, 1665. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 149 of England, and that he had no ' ' intention of visiting their plantations," nor of molesting any of his majesty's subjects. He desired that he and his soldiers "might bee supplied with provisions for their money, and that his wounded men Diight be sucoured " and cared for in Al- bany. The delegation from Albany "freely consented made a small but acceptable present of wine and pro- visions to him, further offering the best accommodations ye poore village afforded." The French officer heartily thanking his hospitable visitors for their kind services, accepted their humane proffers to take care of his seven wounded men, but declined to quarter " his weary & half- starv'd soldiers within the smell of a chimney-corner," knowing that it would be impossible for him thereafter to retain command of them. He asked many questions respecting the garrison and the strength of Fort Albany. He was told that there were ' ' a Captain and 60 English soldyers with 9 peece of ordinance " in it, and that the commander, " Cap"^ Baker had sent for 20 men from another Garrison" of the king's at Esopus who probably had already arrived at Albany. Having been provided with provisions, and having ' ' made a shew of march- ing" toward the Mohawk villages, he with " great sylence & dilligence return'd towards Cannada." ^ Jeremias van Rensselaer, desiring to obtain from Gov- ernor Nicolls an official recognition that the village of Albany lay within the limits of Rensselaerswyck, in a letter addressed to the English governor, dated October 25, 1666, implied that the place was a part of the manor, and that therefore it was under the jurisdiction of the court of the colony. The governor seemingly displeased with the contents of the letter, frankly advised him not to claim too much territory : "By the date of yr letter 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 118, 1) 150 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. from Renzelaei'wicke, in Albany, the 25th, I perceive that you conclude the Towne of Albany to be part of Renzelaerwicke. I give you friendly advice not to grasp at too much authority, and you may probably obtaine the post more to yr profitt. * * * If you imagine there is pleasure in titles of Government I wish that I could serve your appetite, for I have found onely trouble. You seeme to plead for a succession to yr brother Baptista as of right belonging to you. '" * * Sett y heart therefore at rest to be contented v^ith the profitt not the government of a Colony till we heare from His Royall Highness." Conformably to the expressed wishes of the duke of York, Grovernor Nicolls permitted the Lutherans in the provnice to assemble together and to hold religious services according to the prescribed rules of their church. When Sir Richard Lovelace succeeded Governor Nicolls, on the twenty-eighth of August, 1668, the same tolerant spirit was manifested by the new administration. The office of clerk of the court of Albany was given to Ludo- vicus Cobes. In February, 1669, the Reverend Jacobus Fabricius, from Germany, was officially permitted by Governor Lovelace to serve the Lutherans of the prov- ince as a preacher and a pastor. This zealous clergy- man, while at Albany, in April, infringed upon the rights of the officers of the court, who complained to the governor, whereupon the latter "thought good to suspend his ministeriaU function at Albany, untill either by fetters or the mediation of friends he should be reconciled to ye Magistrates there. "^ Governor Love- 1 He "unhappily engaged in controversy with the magistrates of that place, who had authorized the ' consummation of a marriage ' between Helmer Otten and Adriantze Arentz, 'his wife according to the law of the land.' For this offence Fabricius fined Mr. Otten 1,000 Rix-dollars, and the Governour suspended Mr. Fabricius." History of New York. By William Dunlap. vol. 1. pp. 126. 127. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 151 lace, having afterward received instructions from Eng- land not to favor any denominational intolerance toward the Lutherans, wrote on the thirteenth of October as follows to the magistrates at Albany: " I have lately received Letters from ye Duke wherein it is particularly signified unto me that his Royall Highness doth approve of ye Toleration given to ye Lutheran Church in these partes, I doe therefore Expect that you live friendly & peaceably with those of that profession giving them no disturbance in ye Exercise of their Religion as they shall receive noe Countenance in, but on ye Contrary strictly Answer any disturbance they shall presume to give unto any of you in your divine Worship."^ Although granted the privilege of assembling together in a public place and of hearing the discourses of a clergyman of their own denomination, the Lutherans were nevertheless taxed to pay the salary of the minister of the Reformed church. Governor Lovelace, in his written instructions to the two commissioners sent by him in April, 1670, to confer with the magistrates of Albany, desired them to give the latter the following message : "To acquaint ye Magistrates that I look upon that Church & Ministry as the parochiall Church of Albany (for it was found Establisht by my predecessors & my- self) & leave ye supportation of it to ye discretion of ye magistrates to maintaine a minister either by way of Taxe or otherwise & that no Inhabitant of what opinion soever be Exempt but bear his proportion & that they give me an Account of their transactions in this par- ticular." The Rev. Jacobus Fabricius, who had been serving the 1 General entries, vol. i. p. 71. Orders, warrants and letters, vol. ii. pp. 335 394, 423. Annals of Albany. Munsell. vol. iv. pp. 13, 14. 152 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY Lutheran congregation in New York, was permitted, by Governor Lovelace, on the eleventh of August, 1671, to preach his farewell sermon to the society, and to in- stall the recently arrived Lutheran minister, Bernardus Arensius. The latter, not long afterward, visited Albany, and preached to the Lutheran congregation organized by his predecessor. On the eighteenth of October, 1672, he received a pass from Governor Lovelace, in New York, to go to Albany for the winter. This clergyman possessed "a gentle personage," and commended himself by his "very agreeable behaviour." It was about this time that the first Lutheran church was erected on the plot of ground, now the site of the City Building, on the south- west corner of Howard and South Pearl Streets. ^ 1 Court of Assizes, vol. ii. pp. 500, 503, 702, 725. General entries, vol. iv. pp. 15-17, 19, 304. Annals of Albany. Munsell. vol. i. pp. 123, 124. vol. iv. pp. 12, 13. Collections on the history of Albany. Munsell. vol. iv. p. 205. vol. iii. p. 100. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 242, 245. CHAPTER VII. WILLEMSTADT. 1672-1674. The amicable relations existing between Great Britain and the United Netherlands, following the peace of Breda, July 31, 1667, were terminated, on the seventeenth of March, 1672, by Charles II. of England, who declared war against the Dutch provinces. In May, 1673, intelli- gence reached New York that a Dutch fleet in the West Indies intended to sail northward, doubtless to demand the surrender of Fort James. Lieutenant Sylvester, who had succeeded Captain Baker, July 13, 1670, as com- mander of the garrison of Fort Albany, was ordered to report for duty at Fort James with the utmost expe- dition. Governor Lovelace, believing that the reports brought to him concerning the movements of the Dutch squadron were more fictitious than real, permitted Lieu- tenant Salisbury and his soldiers to return to Fort Albany, Leaving Captain Manning in charge of Fort James, the incautious governor went to New Haven. On the twenty-eighth of July, the Dutch fleet of twenty-three vessels, carrying sixteen hundred men, made its appearance at Sandy Hook, and on the follow- ing day anchored in the lower bay. The Dutch commo- dores, Cornells Evertsen and Jacob Binckes, demanded the surrender of Fort James. Captain Manning having 153 154 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. delayed giving an immediate answer to this peremptory order, a storming party under the command of Captain Anthony Colve was landed on the island. The English no longer hesitated but readily capitulated. At sunset Fort James was in the possession of the Dutch, and the flag of the Netherlands was again floating above the ramparts of the old fortification. The province was again called New Netherland. The name New Orange was given to the city of New York and that of Willem Hendrick to the fort. On the second of August, Captain Anthony Colve was made governor-general of New Netherland by Commodores Evertsen and Binckes. Three days afterward Lieuten- ant Salisbury surrendered Fort Albany. On the first of September, Governor Colve and Com- modores Evertsen and Binckes, sitting as a council of war, gave audience to a number of delegates from Al- bany, who presented certain requests "for the mainten- ance and preservation of the rights of the village of Beverswyck and Fort Orange." "First. Earnestly requesting that the officers and justices of Fort Orange and Beverswyck may be the trusted protectors of the true Reformed religion accord- ing to the laws of beloved Fatherland. "Second. That conscience shall not be subjected to any constraint, as there are some here of different opin- ions who have intermarried, but that every one shall be at liberty to go where he pleases to hear the word of God preached." In a fourth request it was asserted that ' ' a reasonable present " ought to be made ' ' to our neighbors, the In- dians, especially at this critical period, in order to prevent the designs and undertakings of our enemies, the French, which present would require a sum of a thousand Hoi- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 155 land florins for the five nations, consisting of ten castles, namely, the Mohawks, Oneidas, Nondages, Cayugas and Sinnedowane." " Fifth. That the people of Schanhectede were not to have any further privileges, for the land was solely granted them by the late General Stuy vesant that they should devote themselves to agriculture, with the ex- pressed condition not to trade w^ith the Indians, which grant and condition was confirmed by the English governor Nicolls, according to his proclamation still in existence." Having considered these requests, the council ordered that Fort Albany should "be called Fort Nassau and the village of Beverswyck, Willemstadt ; " — that the com- mandant of Fort Nassau should be instructed particularly to protect the Reformed Christian religion, and failing so to do, the petitioners should address themselves to the governor ; that the magistrates should be persons belong- ing to, or, at least, well affected toward the Reformed church ; and that the petitioners should enjoy the same privileges as they did in the time of the former Dutch government. Jeremias van Rensselaer was granted the same immunities for a year as had been previously granted him as director of the colony of Rensselaerswyck, meanwhile he was to obtain another confirmation of the rights of the patroon from the Lords States General. Lieutenant Andries Draeyer, on the twenty-sixth of September, was commissioned to take command of Fort Nassau, and to act as schout (sheriff) of Willemstadt and Rensselaerswyck. On the sixth of October, Gover- nor Colve sent these instructions to him : "Whereas, I have considered it ncessary for the greater advantage and welfare of the town of Willemstadt and the colony of Rensselaerswyck to change the form of government there, 156 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and to reestablish it according to the esteemed custom of our Fatherland, therefore I have thought proper to commission and qualify, as I do hereby commission and qualify, Andries Draeyer, commander of Fort Nassau, to be schout over the said town of Willemstadt and colony of Rensselaerswyck, and further from the nominations exhibited by the inhabitants of Willemstadt, I have selected and qualified for schepens (magistrates) for the ensuing year as follows : Gerrit van Slechtenhorst, Cor- nelis van Dyck, David Schuyler, and Peter Bogardus, "And further, on the selection made by Sir Jeremias van Rensselaer, I have approved and qualified as schepens for the colony of Rensselaerswyck : Martin Gerritsen, Pieter Vounen and Hendrick van Nes. And finally, for secretary of the court, Johannes Provoost." ^ The governor further instructed the schout and the schepens to see that the Reformed Christian religion conformable to the teachings of the synod of Dort were maintained without permitting any other sects to militate against it. The governor having officially designated the Reformed church as ' ' the head church {de hooft kercke) of New Netherland, the Lutherans in Willemstadt peti- tioned that they might be permitted to continue their congregational meetings. The request of Myndert Fred- ricksen, Jan Heinderik Bruyns, Volckert Jansen, Hans Hendriksen and Hans Dreper, "in their own and in the name of the congregation of the Augsburg confession at Willemstadt" was granted by the Dutch governor, on the 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp, 593, 594, 595, 618, 627, 628. Accompanying these instructions, the following regulations for issuing rations to the soldiers of the garrison were found : "For each man, per week, 1 lbs. of beef or 4 lbs of pork ; 6 lbs. of bread ; }4, lb. of butter or the value thereof, 2 Holland stivers. For each man, per month, l}4 peck pease. For seven men, per week, }4 barrel small beer. For each man, for three months, 1 peck of salt. The sergeants shall receive lj4 rations each, and the corporals 1^ each." Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp. 627, 628. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 157 condition that they comported themselves "peaceably and quietly without giving any offense to the congrega- tion of the Reformed church." Although the restricted Lutherans endeavored to comport themselves in the required manner, they soon found themselves in a per- plexing dilemma. As stated in their petition to Governor Colve, they were ' 'ordered to pay the sexton (aanspreecker) of the Reformed church for the burial of their dead," although they had a sexton of their own. They also adverted to the fact that they had paid "all taxes, assessments, excise, and all other levies," and had endeavored to jJiay the expenses of the care of their poor. As they thought that they ought not to be made answer- able for the payment of the exactions of the officers of the Reformed church, but " ought to enjoy their religion and divine service free and unrestrained," they requested that they might employ a sexton of their own selection to bury their dead. The petition was signed by the Rev. Bernardus Arensius, Jan Heinderik Bruyns, Jochem Backer and Hans Hendriksen. ^ Governor Colve ordered that the sessions of the court of Willemstadt should "be held in the house [on the plot of ground now the northeast corner of Hudson Avenue and Broadway] formerly appropriated for that purpose by the English government," but when "affairs of government" were to be discussed, the schout and schepens were to "hold their meetings in Fort Nassau." The United Netherlands being at war with France, the commander of Fort Nassau was instructed to "stop all correspondence with the Jesuits and Frenchmen from Canada," and to exercise such military precautions as were necessary for the safety of the port and the province. - 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp. 653, 654 61*7. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 525. 2 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp. 652, 653, 654, 659 662. 6*76. 158 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. While Governor Colve was strengthening the differ- ent forts in New Netherland to resist the attacks of all enemies, the treaty of Westminster was signed on the nineteenth of February, 1674, in which it was stipulated that "all lands, islands, cities, havens, castles, and fort- resses " taken by the United Netherlands from Great Britain during the war were to be restored to the latter power. By a new patent from King Charles II. of Eng- land, James the duke of York and Albany became again the lord proprietor of the territory of New Netherland. On the tenth of November, 1674, Governor Colve sur- rendered the province to his English successor, Major Edmund Andros. ^ Ensign Caesar Knapton was ordered to go to Willemstadt with Sergeant Thomas Sharpe and eighteen men to receive the surrender of Fort Nassau. Michael Siston was appointed sheriff of Albany and Rens- selaerswyck, and Richard Pretty, excise collector. " 1 Major Edmund Andros was commissioned governor of New York by James, duke of York and Albany, at Windsor, July 1, 16Y4. 2 General entries, vol. iv. pp. 300-304. Warrants, orders and passes, vol. iii. pp. 2-8, 38. 39. Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 51, 525. CHAPTEE VIII. . ALBANY. 1HY4-1685. After the occupation of Fort Nassau, the surrender of Willemstadt to the officers of James, the duke of York and Albany, was accompanied with but a few other changes. The place was again named Albany. The late magistrates of the court of Willemstadt were re-ap- pointed by Governor Andros, and Johannes Provoost was retained as clerk. The governor espoused the cause of the persecuted Lutherans, and gave an open letter to Domine Bernardus Arensius, permitting him to remove his house- hold goods from New York to Albany, and "to officiate there as pastor of the Augustine or Lutheran congrega- tion, as formerly under the English government, without any manner of Lett [delay], hindrance or molestacon whatsoever." ^ The heirs of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, desiring to obtain possession of the land on which the village of Albany had been erected, petitioned the duke of York and Al- bany to command Governor Andros to recognize their claims to it. They also solicited the Lords States Gen- eral of the United Netherlands to corroborate their state- ments "with favorable letters of recommendation" to 1 The document was sealed and signed by the governor, on the sixth of November, 1674. N. Y. general entries, iv. Vide Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 525. 159 160 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. his royal highness, the king of Great Britain. In their memorial to the Dutch government, the petitioners said that after Kiliaen van Rensselaer had purchased the land in 1630 from the Indians, that "he had planted a consid- erable colony there at his great cost, and from time to time had so improved it that a village or hamlet was founded there, which was at first called de Fuyck, after- ward Beverswyck, and recently Willemstadt. Although James, the duke of York and Albany, on the twenty- third of July, 1674, referred the matter to Governor Andros, no action was taken in it for several years there- after. The French to secure the friendship of the Mohawks sent to their villages a number of Jesuit priests to teach them the religion of the Roman church. The Mohawks influenced by their loyalty to the Dutch inhabitants of Albany informed the latter of the designs of the French. This information the magistrates communicated to Gov- ernor Andros. In August, 1675, the governor visited Albany, and made a new treaty with the Mohawks, who reiterated their former promises of fealty to the duke of York and Albany. While at Albany the governor instituted a general court consisting of the commander of the fort, five or more of the magistrates of Albany and the manor of Rensselaerswyck, and two or more of the magistrates of Schenectady. The court was ordered to meet and sit once a year and to begin its sessions on the first Wednes- day in June, and to determine all cases under five hun- dred guilders. The court w^as empowered to choose yearly two magistrates of Albany and Rensselaerswyck and one of Schenectady, to go to New York and to assist at the general court of assizes held there. Robert Liv- 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp. 549, 550 ; vol. iii. pp. 224, 225. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 161 ingston was appointed clerk of the court of Albany and one of the members of the Albany board of Indian com- missioners, formed at this time by Governor Andros. ^ The ministers and members of the Reformed churches in New York and Albany were much aggrieved when, in compliance with the request of King Charles II., G-over- nor Andros made the Rev. Nicolaas van Rensselaer, who had been ordained a deacon of the Church of England, the colleague of the Rev. Gideon Schaets in Albany. They alleged that a person who had not been inducted into the office of a minister of the Reformed Church as prescribed by the laws of their denomination was unqualified to per- form the duties of that office. Although the Rev. Van Rensselaer complained to the governor of the opposition of the offended people to his serving them as minister. Governor Andros took no steps to vindicate the assumed rights of the unpopular clergyman until the Rev. Wilhel- mus van Nieuwenhuysen, the Dutch pastor of the Re- formed church in New York, forbid the Rev. Van Rens- selaer to baptize the children of some of the members of the former's congregation. ^ The governor forthwith sum- moned the Rev. Van Nieuwenhuysen to appear before the provincial council to answer the charges presented by Domine Van Rensselaer. When the Dutch minister ap- peared before the council, on the twenty-fifth of Septem- ber, 1675, he made no denial of the allegations of the Rev. Van Rensselaer, but maintained that no one who had re- 1 Robert Livingston was born at Ancram, Scotland, December 13, 1654. He emigrated to America in 16*74, and settled at Albany. The minutes of the Albany board of Indian commissioners from 1675, were bound in 1751 in four large folios. Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. xiii. pp. 483, 485, 486 ; vol. iii. pp. 254-257. 2 The Rev. Nicolaas van Rensselaer had been ordained a deacon by the Right Rev. Earle, bishop of Sarum, and had preached in England to the Dutch congregation at Westminster, and had been chaplain to the Dutch embassador residing in London. U 162 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ceived ordination as a deacon from the Church of England had sufficient authority to be admitted a minister in a Reformed church in the province to administer the sacra- ments without a certificate from one of the classes of the Reformed Church. The council was unable at this meeting to determine what action should be taken in the matter, and ordered that the Rev. Van Nieuwenhuysen should present a writ- ten answer, "particularly whether the Ordination of ye Church of England be not sufficient qualification for a Minister comporting himself e accordingly, to be admitted to officiate & administer ye Sacraments, according to ye Constitucons of ye reformed Churches of Holland." The Rev. Van Nieuwenhuysen, on the first of October, gave the following answer, which the council accepted as satisfactory : "A minister according to the order of the Church of England lawfully called, is sufficiently quali- fied to be admitted to serve and administer the sacraments in a Dutch church within his majesty's dominions, who had promised to conduct himself in his ministrations con- formable to the constitution of the Reformed Church of Holland."^ Although the Dutch inhabitants of Albany possessed the friendship of the Mohawks and the Indians living farther westward, they were nevertheless often appre- hensive that the River Indians and those of New England might do them some evil. The direful details of the burning of Northfield, Deerfield, Hadley, and Springfield, in Massachusetts, during the summer and fall of 1675, by the New England tribes under the leadership of the fa- mous Indian chief, King Philip, were heard with no little alarm by the settlers in Albany and Rensselaerswyck. 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 526-527. Historical Magazine, vol. 10. pp. 351-354. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 16a To allay the increasing fears of the people, Governor An- dres, in October, sent Captain Anthony BrockhoUs with more recuits to relieve Ensign Knapton of the command of Fort Albany. The provincial council ordered that no powder and lead should be sold "to any Indians whatso- ever at Albany " except to the Mohawks and Senecas, "under the penalty of one hundred guilders beaver for each quarter of a pound and so proportionally for more or less, or corporal punishent, extending to life as the case " might " require." The commander of Fort Albany however, was allowed to furnish powder, " under his hand to some adjacent Mahicander [Mohegan] Indian, well known to him or the magistrates," but not more than "one-quarter of a pound for the present hunting," and to provide "some few such Indians," whom he knew desired ammunition for beaver- hunting, one pound of powder, with lead in proportion. This prohibition was to continue for six months after the date of its publication. About this time the people of Massachusetts Bay charged the Dutch settlers of Albany with selling powder and lead to the Indians under King Philip. When this accusation reached the ears of the burghers of Albany, they were highly incensed and undertook to discover who were the authors of this harmful report. They caused Nehemiah Pierce and James Pennyman to be ar- rested and sent to New York for "writing false storeys to Boston." In December, Philip with about a thousand Indians was reported to be forty miles distant from Albany. The Hudson being frozen, the people were greatly frightened. Runners were sent with dispatches to New York to ac- quaint Governor Andros of the approach of the New England Indians. As no troops could be conveyed from New York to aid in the defense of the place, Captaiu 164 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY BrockhoUs, in January, enlisted the Mohawks into his service and sent them against Phihp. While the Mo- hawk warriors were absent from their villages, their old sachems, wives, and children remained in Albany. The river opening unexpectedly about the beginning of Febru- ary, 1676, Governor Andros availed himself of the oppor- tunity to go to Albany, taking with him ' ' an additional force," arms, and ammunition on six sloops. On his arrival he found about three hundred Mohawk warriors in the village, who had returned the previous evening from the pursuit of Philip. They had attacked a party of about five hundred New England Indians under King Philip, killing many and taking a number of prisoners. The fears of the people having abated, Governor An- dros, in March, returned to New York, leaving Fort Albany in command of Sergeant Sharpe. The dilapi- dated condition of the old fort was so apparent to Gover- nor Andros that soon after his return to New York he gave orders for a new stockade-fort to be built on the hill, at the western end of Jonkers Straat, [now State Street,] near the present site of St. Peter's church, "to defend and command the whole town of Albany." The four bastions of the fort were constructed that each might afford room for six guns. ^ When the new fort was built in June, Ensign Sylvester Salisbury was placed in command of it. Captain Goosen Gerritsen van Schaick, Lieutenants Martin Gerritsen and Jan Jansen Bleecker, were at this time the officers of the local militia. After the trial of the Rev. Wilhelmus van Nieuwen huysen in New York, the Rev. Nicolaas van Rensselaer was very unpopular with the members of the Reformed church in Albany. On Sunday, the thirteenth of Au- gust, 1676, he preached a sermon in Albany in which he 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 238, 242, :254-258, 266, 267 ; vol xiii. pp.491, 492. Philip's war. Hough. 120-142. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 166 made some ambiguous declarations respecting doctrines. Domine Schaets called them heretical, and wrote a letter to the consistory of New York expressing his opinion of the misleading statements made by his colleague. Domine Van Rensselaer was summoned before the church-council, (kerkenraad,) which found him guilty of preaching- heresy. The matter was then brought before the magis- trates of the court of Albany on charges prepared by Jacob Leisler, a German deacon of the Reformed church of New York, and by Jacob Milburne, an Englishman, living in Albany. A hearing was given the Rev. Van Rensselaer who, failing to exonerate himself from these charges, was imprisoned. The incarcerated clergyman appealed to the governor and council of New York. The latter imraedia,tely ordered his release from confinement, and the appearance of the parties before them. At the trial Stephanus van Cortlandt appeared for the Rev. Van Rensselaer, Upon the reading of all the evidence and papers in the case before the governor and council of the province, the mayor, the aldermen, and the ministers of the city of New York, it was resolved, that if all the parties were willing to abide by the judgment of the ker- kenraad of the Reformed church in Albany, and the de- cision of the governor and council respecting the pay- ment of the costs, that the matter should have this adju- dication. Conformably to the orders of the governor and coun- cil of New York, an "extraordinary court" was held in Albany, on the twenty-eighth of September, and the case was tried before Captain Silvester Salisbury, commandant of the fort. Captain Thomas Delavall, Captain Philip Schuyler, Richard Pretty, Dirck Wessells, Pieter Winne, Andries Teller, Jan Thoraase, Maarten G-erritse, and Michael Siston, sheriff. The decision of the court is thus 166 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. recorded : "Resolved unanimously and by [a] plurality of votes, that [the] Parties, [the Rev. Gideon Schaets and the Rev. Nicolaas van Rensselaer,] shall both forgive & forget as it become Preachers of the Reformed Religion to do ; also that all previous variances, church differences, and disagreements, & provocations shall be consumed in the fire of Love ; a perpetual silence and forbearance being imposed on each respectively ; to live together as Brothers for an example to the worthy Congregation, for edifica- tion to the Reformed Religion, and further for the removal and banishment of all scandals. And in case hereafter any difference may occur or happen between them, they shall seek redress from the Consistory, to be heard there ; but [the] parties not being content with its award, the Consistory shall then state to the Governor who is in fault, who shall then be punished according to the exigency of the case. In like manner each was warned not to repeat or renew any more former differences or variances, under a penalty to be fixed by their worships of the Court. " ''The governor and council of New York, having re- ceived this return of the court, ordered that Jacob Leisler and Jacob Milburne should pay all the costs as they gave " the first Occasion of the Difference," and that Domine Van Rensselaer ^ should be free "from bearing any part thereof." ^ In March, 16TY, Governor Andros was solicited by the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut to per- mit their commissioners to treat in Alban)^ with the Mohawks to make peace with the New England Indians. This request was readily granted. In April, John Pynchon from Massachusetts and James Richards from Connecti- 1 In 16'7'7, Governor Andros deposed the Rev. Van Rensselaer from his office as a minister. In 16*78, he died, and his widow, Alida Schuyler, in 1683, became the wife of Robert Livingston. 2 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 527-530. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 167 cut made a treaty in Albany with the sachems of the Mohawks, who promised that their warriors should not " go a fighting '■ in New England any more. The aggressive character of the Indians of Central New York was such that their forays had as early as 1672 extended as far south as Maryland and Virginia. Launch- ing their canoes upon the head-waters of the Susque- hanna River, the bold rovers proceeded southwardly on this long water-way into Pennsylvania, and thence to the wide expanse of the Chesapeake Bay, more than three hundred miles from their palisaded villages along the Mohawk and its tributaries. ^ The prowess of these ex- pert users of fire-arms became famous among the differ- ent tribes of Indians whom they conquered and put under tribute while on these summer excursions. The savage rapacity of the invaders often led them to kill the cattle and plunder the dwellings of the settlers ; and not infre- quently, to avenge some conceived wrong done the mem- bers of their tribes, they murdered the isolated people of the frontier farms. To relieve the fears of the Indians and settlers of Vir- ginia and Maryland from further hostile acts of the New York tribes, Colonels Henry Goursey and Philemon Lloyd were sent by Lieutenant-governor Notley of Mary- land to Albany to ma^ke a league of friendship with the Mohawks, Onondagas, Oneidas, Cayugas, and Senecas. On the third, fourth, and fifth days of August, the Mary- land commissioners, having Gerrit van Slechtenhorst and 1 " It is one day's Journey from the Mohawk Castles to the Lake whence the Susquehanna River rises. * * * [It is] one day and a half's journey by land from Oneida to the kill which falls into the Susquehanna River, and one day from the kill unto the Susquehanna River. * * * [It is] half a day's journey by land and one by Water from Onnondage before we arrive at the River. * * * From Cayuga [it is] one day and a half by Land and by water before arriving at the River. * * * From [the] Senekes' four Castles [it is] three days by Land and two days by water ere arriving at the River." Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. 1. p. 259. 168 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Arnout Cornelissen Viele and Akus Cornelis, an Indian, as inteipreters, held conferences in the court-house and court-yard with a number of the sachems of these tribes. A treaty was made which the Indian chiefs promised their warriors would ' ' perform and observe, " or as an Oneida sachem declared : "We do make the covenant chain fast and clear like gold by which Corlaer ^ [Gov- ernor Andros] and they of Maryland and Virginia and we are linked, and we shall keep it untarnished." ^ In 1678, the province contained about twenty-three towns and villages besides the city of New York. The courts were denominated petty courts, courts of sessions, and a general court of assizes. The petty courts had cognizance of actions of debt and trespass under the value of five pounds, and were in every town, village or parish in the province. The courts of sessions were held in different precincts of the province, one of which was Albany. The general court of assizes, composed of the governor and council and all the justices and magistrates, was held once a year in New York. The duke's laws, the first published on the first of March, 1664, at Hemp- stead, Long Island, and afterward altered and amended by the court of assizes held in New York, were the pre- scribed rules regulating the affairs of the province. The chief power of making and executing the laws was vested in the governor and council of New York. A pillory or whipping-post and a pair of stocks for the punishment of light offences were erected in all the towns. Burglars and robbers were branded on their foreheads for their first offences and put to death for their third transgres- sions of the law. 1 Governor Andros was called "Corlaer" by the Indians, who told him that it was the name of " a man [Arendt van Curler], who was of a good disposition, and highly esteemed by them." 2 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. o'21-S28, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 169 Every male inhabitant between sixteen and sixty years of age, except justices, sheriffs, constables, ministers, school-masters, physicians, surgeons, sick and deformed persons, was enrolled as a militia-man, who was required to possess a good serviceable gun, one pound of powder, twenty-four bullets, four flints, and certain accouter- ments. Every year there were four training days for the drill of the local militia, and once a year a general training of the militia of all the towns within the court- districts, or ridings as they were called. Besides the in- fantry-militia, there were also companies of troopers or cavalry. About two thousand able-bodied men composed the militia force, of which number about one hundred and fifty were horsemen. The fifth day of November was ordered to be annu- ally observed "for the great deliverance from the gun- powder-treason " of Guy Fawkes and his companions, who had in 1605, attempted to blow up the parliament- house in London. The thirtieth day of January was designated as a day of fasting and prayer "to shew a hearty and Serious Repentance and Detestation of that Barbarous Murther committed upon the Person " of the late King Charles I. of England. The twenty-ninth day of May was set apart for the celebration of the birth and restoration of Charles II. then king. Every minister in the province was enjoined to pray and preach on these days and all other persons were ordered to abstain from their ordinary employments and to observe these anni- versaries as prescribed by law. A merchant worth five hundred or a thousand pounds was considered "a good substantial " man, and a farmer possessing half these amounts in property was deemed rich. In the province there were about twenty churches or meeting-houses, but the scarcity of ministers left 170 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. about one-half of the pulpits vacant. Among the re- ligious denominations in the province, the Presbyterians and Independents were said to be "the most numerous and substantial." Albany is described as having at this time "a smale long stockadoed forte with foure bastions in it, 12 gunns, sufficient agt Indians. " ^ On the seventh of June, 1678, Grovernor Andros was ordered to issue a jDatent to the heirs of Kiliaen van Rens- selaer by which they were granted the possession of the manor of Rensselaerswyck with such privileges and im- munities as they formerly had enjoyed, (except the possession of Fort Orange and its outworks, and the lands upon which they were). The houses which had been erected "on some part of the premises " since 1652, were to remain in the possession of the persons owning them, who were ordered to pay to the patroon during the term of thirty-one years, beginning at the time when the letters-patent were issued, a yearly rent, which was not to exceed the value of two beaver-skins for the large houses, one beaver-skin for the "middle sort," and the half of a beaver-skin for the smallest buildings. At the end of the thirty-one years, the rent of the houses was to be agreed upon by the two parties. ^ The Lutherans, who had erected a church on the plot of ground now the site of the City Building, on the west side of South Pearl Street, between Howard and Beaver streets, purchased the lot from Captain Abram Staets, on the twenty-eighth of March, 1680, the ground being conveyed to Albert Bratt, Myndert Frederikse, Anthony Lispenard, and Carsten Frederikse, elders and deacons of the Lutheran church. "The lot was described as 1 Answers of Governor Andros to inquiries about New York in 1678. London doc. iii. Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 260-262. 2 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 269, 2*70. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. lYl being bounded on the east by the pubhc highway, 12 rods 11 feet ; on the south by the first kill and the com- mon road, 21 rods 1 foot ; on the west by the little kill, {cleyn killitje,) 6 rods 4 feet ; and on the north by the old road, belonging to Mr. [Richard] Pretty, Jacob Sanders, Johannes Wendell, Myndert Harmense, and Hendrick Cuyler, 23 rods 5 feet Ryland [Rhineland] measure." ^ In the spring of 1680, Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter, two Labadist missionaries from Friesland, Hol- land, visited Albany. Their observations of the people and of the village furnish some very valuable as well as interesting information. In their journal, under the date of Friday, the nineteenth of April, they thus speak of their passage up the Hudson : "We left New York about three o'clock in the after- noon with a southerly wind, in company with about twenty passengers of all classes, young and old, who made great noise and bluster in a boat not so large as a com- mon ferry-boat in Holland ; and as these people live in the interior of the country somewhat nearer the Indians they are more wild and untamed, reckless, unrestrained, haughty, and more addicted to misusing the blessed name of God and to cursing and swearing. * * * They put on board some tons of oysters, which are not to be found at Fort Albany or away from salt-water. We made rapid progress, but with the night the wind slackened, and we were compelled to come to anchor in order to stem the tide. * * * ' '■ We had again this morning [Monday] a southerly breeze, which carried us slowly along until noon, when we came to anchor before the Fuyck and Fort Albany or Orange. Every one stepped ashore at once, but we did not know where to go. We first thought of taking lodg- 1 Annals of Albany. Munsell. 1850. vol. i. pp. 123, 124. 1^2 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ings with our skipper, [Thomas Davidse Kikebell, the son-in-law of Domine Schaets,] but we had been warned that his house was unregulated and poorly kept. Mons. van Cleif, wishing to do us a kindness, had given us a letter of recommendation to Mr. Robert Sanders, ^ and M. de la Grange had also presented us to the same friend. We went ashore [on Sunday] just as preaching was over, to deliver our letter. This person as soon as he saw us at his house was pleased, and received us with every at- tention, and so did all his family, giving us a chamber for our accommodation. We did not remain his debtors but heartily served him in what was necessary, whether by instruction, admonition, or reproof, which he always received kindly as it seemed, promising himself as well as all his family to reform, which was quite necessary. "Mr. Sanders having provided us with horses, [on Tuesday, the twenty -third,] we rode out about nine o'clock, to visit the Cahoos which is the falls of the great Maquas kill, [Mohawk River]. * * * " On our return we stopped at the house of our guide, whom we had taken on the way up, where there were some families of Indians living. Seeing us, they said to each other, ' Look, these are certainly real Dutchmen, actual Hollanders.' Robert Sanders asked them how they knew it. 'We see it,' they said, 'in their faces and in their dress.' 'Yes,' said one, 'they have the clothes of real Hollanders ; they look like brothers.' They brought us some ground-nuts, but although the Dutch call them so, they were in fact potatoes, for of ground-nuts, or 7nice with tails [pea-nuts] there are also 1 Robert Sanders, or Saunders, was a resident of Albany, and engaged in the fur trade. His knowledge of the languages of the Mohawk and River Indians was so extensive that he often acted as an interpreter between them and the English governors. Governor Francis Lovelace, September 1, 16*70, gave him letters-patent to the tract of land called by the Indians Tascam- catick, now the site of Lansingburgh. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 173 plenty. They cooked them, and gave us some to eat, which we did. There was a canoe made of the bark of trees, and the Indians have many of them for the pur- pose of making their journeys. It was fifteen or sixteen feet or more in length. It was so light that two men could easily carry it, as the Indians do in going from one stream or lake to another. They come in such canoes from Canada, and from places so distant we know not where. Four or five of them stepped into this one and rowed lustily through the water with great speed, and when they came back with the current they seemed to fly. They did this to amuse us at the request of Mr. Sanders. * * * On our arriving home in the evening, the house was full of people, attracted there out of curi- osity, as is usually the case in small towns where every one in particular knows what happens in the whole place. * * * " The horses were got ready, [on Wednesday] and we left about eight o'clock for Schoonechtendeel, a place lying about twenty-four miles west or northwest of Albany towards the country of the Maquas [Mohawks]. We rode over a fine, sandy cart-road through a wood of nothing but beautiful evergreens or fir-trees, but a light and barren soil. * -' * The village proper of Schen- ectady, is a square, set off by palisades. There may be about thirty houses which are situated on the side of the Maquas kill, a stream they cannot use for carrying goods up or down in yachts or boats. There are no fish in it except trout, sun-fish and other kinds peculiar to rivers, because the Cahoos stops the ascent of others, which is a great inconvenience for the menange and for bringing down the produce. - * * "We went [on Saturday, the twenty-seventh], to call upon a certain Madam Rentselaer, widow of Heer Rentse- m THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. laer, son of the founder of the colony of Rentselaers- wyck, comprising twelve miles square from Fort Orange, that is, twenty-four miles square in all. She is in pos- session of the place, and administers it as patronesse, un- til one Richard van Rentselaer, residing at Amsterdam, shall arrive in the country, whom she expected in the summer, when he would assume the management of it himself. This lady was polite, quite well-informed, and of good life and disposition. * ^^ * The breaking up of the ice had once carried away her mansion, and every thing connected with it. * * * She treated us kindly, * * * We went to look at several of her mills at work, which she had there on an ever-running stream, grist-mills, saw-mills, and others. One of the grist-mills can grind 120 schepels of meal in twenty -four hours, that is five an hour. Returning to the house, we politely took our leave. Her residence is about a quarter of an hour from Albany up the river. * * * "We went to church in the morning, [Sunday, April 28], and heard Domine Schaets preach, who, although he is a poor, old, ignorant person, and besides is not of good life, yet had to give utterance to his passion, having for his text, ' whatever is taken upon us,' e^ cet., at which many of his auditors, who knew us better, were not well pleased, and in order to show their condemnation of it, laughed and derided him, which we corrected. In the afternoon, we took a walk to an island upon the end of which there is a fort built, they say, by the Spaniards. That a fort has been there is evident enough from the earth thrown up, but it is not to be supjDOsed that the Spaniards came so far inland to build forts, when there are no monuments of them to be seen down on the sea- coasts, where, however, they have been according to the traditions of the Indians. This spot is a short THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 1T5 hour's distance below Albany, on the west side of the river. * * ^ "We were invited to the fort [Fort Albany] by the Heer commandant, who wished to see us, but left it to our convenience. We went there [on Monday] with Robert Sanders, who interpreted for us. That gentle- man received us politely. * * * If he was not a Scotchman, he seemed, nevertheless, to be a good Eng- lishman, and, as we thought, a Presbyterian. We soon took a friendly leave and returned home. * * * "Before we quit Albany, we must say a word about the place. It was formerly named the Fuyck by the Hollanders, who first settled there on account of two rows of houses standing there, opposite to each other, which being wide enough apart in the beginning, finally ran quite together like a/w?/cfc, * and therefore, they gave it this name, which, although the place is built up, it still bears [this name] with many, especially the Dutch and Indians living about there. It is nearly square, and lies against a hill, with several good streets, on which there may be about eighty or ninety houses. Fort Orange, constructed by the Dutch, lies below on the bank of the river, and is set off with palisades, filled in with earth on the inside. It is now abandoned by the English, who have built a similar one back of the town, high up on the declivity of the hill, from which it commands the place. From the other side of this fort, the inhabitants have brought a spring of water, under the fort and under the ground into the town, where they have in several places fountains always of clear, fresh, cool water. " The town is surrounded by paUsades, and has several gates corresponding to the streets. It has a Dutch Re- formed, and a Lutheran church. The Lutheran minis- t A long net expanded on hoops which decrease in size toward the closed end. ne THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ter lives up here in the winter and down in New York in the summer. There is no EngHsh church, or place of meeting, to my knowledge. As this is the principal trading fort with the Indians, and as the privilege of trading is granted to certain merchants, there are houses or lodges erected on both sides of the town, where the Indians, who come from the far interior to trade, live during the time they are there. This time of trading with the Indians is at its height in the month of June and July, and also in August, when it falls off ; because it is then the best time for them to make their journeys there and back, as well as for the Hollanders, on ac- count of their harvests." ^ In the fall of 1680, the large and brilliant comet known as Newton's appeared in the southwestern sky. Its nearest approach to the sun was made on the eight- eenth of December. In the spring of 1681, the comet became visible. Its appearance caused many supersti- tious people to believe that the streaming-star portended extraordinary calamities. The magistrates of Albany as well as the inhabitants of the village were in great perplexity respecting the mission of the mysteriously moving body. The former, on the first of January, 1681, wrote to Captain Anthony Brockholls in New York, saying : "Wee doubt not but yow have seen ye DreadfuU Comett Starr wh appeared in ye southwest, on ye 9th of Decembi" Last, about 2 a clock in ye afternoon, fair sunn- shyne wether, a little above ye Sonn, w^h takes its course more Northerly, and was seen the Sunday night after, about Twy-Light with a very f yery Tail or Streemer in ye West To ye great astoneshment of all Spectators, & 1 Journal of a voyage to New York and a tour in several of the American colonies in 16*79 and 1680, by Jasper Bankers and Peter Sluyter. Translated by Henry C. Murphy. Memoirs of Long Island Hist. Soc. 1867. vol. i. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 177 is now seen every Mght wt Clear weather. Undoubt- edly God Threatens us wh Dreadf uU Punishments if wee doe not Repent. Wee would have Caused ye Domine Pro- claim a Day of fasting and humiliation to-morrow to be kept on Weddensday ye 12 Jany in ye Town of Albany & Dependencies — if we thought our Power & authority did extend so farr, and would have been well Resented by Yourself, for all Persons ought to humble Themselves in such a Time, and Pray to God to Withdraw his Right- eous Jugements from us, as he did to Nineve. Therefore if you would be pleased to grant your approbation wee would willingly cause a day of fasting & humiliation to be kept, if it were monthly." Captain Brockholls, whom Governor Andros had ap- pointed his deputy during the latter's absence from the province while visiting England, wrote to the alarmed magistrates saying : ' ' Wee haue seen the Comett not att the time you mention only in the Evening The Streame being very large but know not its predicts or Events, and as they Certainly threaten Gods Vengence and Judgments and are prmonitors to us Soe I Doubt not of yor and each of yo^ performance of yr Duty by prayer &c. as becomes good Christians Especially at this time. * * * The Governor went hence the 7th and sailed from Sandy point [Sandy Hook] the Eleventh Instant."^ The age and disability of the Rev. Gideon Schaets caused the magistrates of Albany at the request of the membership of the Reformed church to ask the classis of Amsterdam to send the congregation an assistant pastor. The Rev. Godefridus Dellius was selected for the office. On the second of August, 1683, he arrived at Albany. For his salary, '' it was resolved [by the magis- 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 352. 12 178 THE HISTORY OF ALBAJSIY. trates] that [the] said De Delhus shall enjoy yearly the sum of nine hundred guilders Holland currency payable in pieces of eight ^ at forty stivers each, or in merchant- able beavers counted at two pieces of eight each, and his reverence shall receive his money quarterly on condition that if De Schaets should grow feeble or die, Dom. Del- lius shall perform the whole duty.''^* "His reverence is further told that if the magistrates should agree with the inhabitants of Schinnectady re- garding divine service to be performed there, either once a month or once in six weeks, [the] said Dellius shall ' A Spanish dollar called a "piece of eight," having the value of eight reals. 2 The following burghers of the congregation contributed the respective sums opposite their . names for the salary of Domine Dellius for one year : " Peter Schuyler 6, [pieces of eight,] Cornells van Dyck 6, Dirck Wessels 6, David Schuyler 6, Marte Gerritse, Ands. Teller 6, Gert. Swart 2,. Jan J. Bleker 6, Hend. van Ness 4, Pr. Winne 3, Johannes Provoost 3, Richd. Pretty 4, Joh. Wendell 6, Jan Lansingh 4, Gabriel Thompson 4, Johannes Wandelaer 2, Albt. Rykman 4, Lawrence van Ale 2, Evert Wendell, junf 4, Harme Basteanse 2, Pr. Davitse Skuyler 2, Melgert Wynantse 2, Jan Becker, senr 2, Wynant Gerritse 2, Turck Harmense 1, Hendk. Bries 2, Jacob Abrahamse 2, Jan And. Cuyper 2, Myndt. Harmense 6, Gert Harden- bergh 4, Cornel van Skelluyne 1, Jacob Sanderse 4, Wm. Kettelheyn 2, Jan Byvank 3, Jan Nack 2, Johannes Ross 2, Cobus Turk 1, Wouter Al- bertse 2, Takel Dirkse 1, Jan Salomonse 1, Hend. Martense 1, Johannes V. S'ante 1, Pieter Lookermans 1, Cobus Gerritse 1, Evert Wendell, senr 2, Wm. Gerritse 1, Johannes Martense Smitt 2, Jan Cornelise Vanderhoef 1, Jacob Voss 1, Jacob Meesen 2, Paulus Martense Ij^, Pr. Bogardus 3, Gert Lansingh 3, Hendn. Lansingh 2, Jan van Haegen 3, Joseph Yetts ^, Jacob Ten Eyck 2, Claes Ripse 2, Claes Jacobse 2, Johannes Cuyler 3, Robt. Livingston 5, Adriaen Gert V. Papendorp 6, Marte Cregier 4, Lambt. van Valkenburgh 1, Jurean Teunise 1}^, Jacob Staets 2, Barent Myndertse 2, Arnout Cornelise [Viele] 2, Annetje van Schayk 6, Jochim Staets 3, Gert Banken 3, Philip Schuyler's widow 8, Hend. Cuyler 6, Johannes Thomase 2, Teunis Slingerlunt 2, Harme d'Browef 2, Hend. Abelse 1, Jean Rosie 1, Wm. Claese 2, Gysbt. Marcelis 2, Bastiaen Harmense 1, Hend Hausen 1, Matthys Meesen 2, Robt. Sanderse 6, Joh. Roseboom 3, Joh. Abeel & sister 3, Eghbert Teunise 5, Jan Gow 2, Jan Gilbert lyi, Gert van Ness 2, Joh. Oothout, junr- 1, Pr. Meuse 1, John White 2. " These reside beyond the north gate and were spoken to by D. Wessels & J. Bleker : Antho Barentse 2, Wonter Aretse 2, Jan d'Noorman 1, Gerrit Ryerse 1, Claes van Bockhoven 1^, Pr. Quackenboss 2, Wouter Pieterse 1, Jan Pieterse 1, Reynier Pieterse 1, Dowe Funda 1, Marte Janse 1, Adam THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 179 take his turn with Dom. Schaets to edify [the] said con- gregation, without being paid additional for it." ^ In September, 1682, Colonel Thomas Dongan was commissioned by James, the duke of York and Albany, to be the governor of the province and its dependencies. Governor Dongan, reached New York, on the twenty- fifth of August, 1683. Early in the fall of 1683, the agents of William Penn made overtures to the sachems of the Indian tribes of New York for the purchase of the land lying along the headwaters of the Susquehanna River belonging to the savages. The magistrates of Albany as well as the burghers were greatly disturbed when they learned that the Indians were inclined to part with the desired terri- tory. When Governor DOngan visited Albany at the beginning of September, the magistrates informed him of what they had heard. He ordered them to obtain at once trustworthy information concerning the proposals of Penn's agents and the disposition of the Indians respecting them. On the twenty-fourth of September, 1683, the magis- trates wrote as follows to Governor Dongan : ' ' Last night Arnout [Cornelissen Viele] ye Interpreter arrived here from ye Indians Westward and brings us news Winne 1, Jacob Solomonse "2, Teunis van der Poel 6, Luykes Pieterse 1, Antho. van Schayk 4, Ands. d'Backer 2, Meus Hoogeboom l}/^, Roelof Ger- ritse 1, Harme Lievese 8, Jan Grutterse 2, Jan van Ness 2, Bart Alb. Bratt 4, Gert Hendrix [and] Ands. Carstense '2)4, Gert Lubbertse 2. "Farmers below: Jacob Janse Gardinier 4, Jeronemus Hausen 1, Wm. van Slyk 2, Gert Gysbertse 4, Frederick d'Drent 2, Hend. Maesen 2 Hen. van Wie 1, Ryk. Machielse 1, Onnocre, the Frenchman 1, Jan Hen- dricxe 2, Mart Cornelise 3, Jurian Callier 1, Claes van Petten 2, Cornelise Teunise 2, Abraham van Bremen 1, Melgert Abrahamse 2, Jan Thomase — , Cobus Janse 1, Johannes Janse 1, Albert Cato 2, Manus Borgerse 1, Geer- truy Vosburgh 2, Jacob Vorsburgh \j4, Jacob Claese 1. 350 pieces of 8." — Albany records. Fide Annals of Albany. Munsell. vol. vi. pp. 78, 19, 80. 1 Albany records. Fide Annals of Albany. Munsell. vol. vi. pp. 78 83 Doc. hist. N. Y, vol. iii. pp. 535, 537. 180 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. yt ye four nations vizt Cajouges, Onondages, Oneydes & Maquase are upon there way hither and may be expected here to-morrow. Wee are credibly Inform'd of there willingness to dispose of ye Susquehanne River, being verry glad to hear off Christians intending to come and live there, it being much nearer them then this place and much easier to get thither with there bever. The River being navigable w^ Canoes till hard by there Castles, soe yt if W^ Penn buys said River, it will tend to ye utter Ruine off ye Bevr [Beaver] Trade, as ye Indians themselfs doe acknowlege and Conse- quently to ye great Prejudice off his Roy all highnesse Revenues and his whole Territoryes in general, all which we doe humbly offer to your hon^s serious Consideracon. Wee presume that there hath not any thing Ever been mooved or agitated from ye first settleing of these Parts, more Prejudicial! to his Royal highnesse Interest, and ye Inhabitants of this his governt then this businesse of ye Susquehanne River. The french its true have endevoured to take away our trade by Peace mealls but this will cutt it all off at once. The day after your hour departed, wee sent a draught of ye River and how near there Castles lie to it, drawne by our Secri" [Robert Livingston] as near as ye Indians could deskribe." Two days after a delegation of Cayuga and Onnon- daga sachems held a conference with the magistrates in the court-house. One of the Indian orators said : "I have slept but little through the night though I con- stantly tried, and think that the land cannot be sold without Corlaer's [the governor's] order, for we trans- ferred it to this government four years ago. Therefore we shall do nothing in the sale without Corlaer [Gov- ernor Dongan] or his order or those who represent him. " That land belongs to us Cayugas and Onnondagas THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 181 alone ; the other three nations namely, the Sinnekes, Oneydes, and Maquaas have nothing to do with it. * * * We now convey and transport it again and give it to the governor-general or those who now repre- sent him." As tokens of the ratification of this agreement the magistrates presented to the Indian sachems a piece of duffel-cloth, two blankets, two guns, three kettles, four coats, fifty pounds of lead, and twenty-five of powder. ^ The notable change in the form of the government of the province, whereby the voice of the freeholders was to be substituted for the wiU of the lord-proprietor, had its consummation on the seventeenth of October, 1683, when the first General Assembly of New York, began its sessions in Fort James, in the city of New York. Eighteen representatives were elected as ordered by Governor Dongan on the thirteenth of September, each of the three ridings of Long Island selecting two, Staten Island one, Pamaquid one, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket one. New York and Haerlem four, Eso- pus two, Albany and Rensselaerswyck two, and Sche- nectady one. On the thirtieth of October, the General Assembly passed '^The charter of libertys and priviledges, granted by his royal highness to the inhabitants of New York and its dependencies." By it " the supreme legislative authority under his majesty and royal highness, James the duke of Albany and York," was intrusted to the governor, the council, and the people of the province. The governor was to exercise "the chief magistracy and administration of the government," assisted by a couil- cil. The sessions of the General Assembly were to be held once in three years at least, "according to the usage, 1 Dutch records. P'ide Doc. history of N. Y. vol. i. pp. 260, 261. 182 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. custom, and practice of the realm of England." The freeholders and freemen of the province were to have votes in electing representatives, and all elections were to be made by "the majority of voices." On the first of November the law was passed to divide the province and its dependencies into shires and counties. By the act, the province was divided into twelve counties : New York, Westchester, Ulster, Albany, Duchess's, Orange, Richmond, King's, Queen's, Suffolk, Duke's, and Cornwall. As enacted, ''The county of Albany [was] to con- teyne the towne of Albany, the colony of Renslaers- wyck, Schonechteda, and all the villages, neighbour- hoods, and Christian plantacons on the east side of Hud- son's River, from Roelef Jansen's Creeke, [about twelve miles south of the city of Hudson,] and on the west side [of the Hudson River], from Sawyer's Creeke [Sauger- ties] to the Saraaghtoga [Saratoga] " ^ The companies of militia organized in Albany were put under the commands of Jan Janse Bleecker and Johannes Wendell, who were appointed captains of in- fantry on the fifteenth of December, 1684r. Pieter Schuy- ler, on the same day, was made a lieutenant of ' ' a troop of horse." By the death of Charles 11. on the sixth of February, 1684, and the succession of James the duke of York and Albany to the throne, the province of New York devolved upon his royal majesty and was annexed to the other dominions of the British crown. An event of no little importance to the people of the village, was the arrival of several commissioners from Virginia, in August, 1685, with a number of the sachems 1 Passed November .1, 1683. Jldc Annals of Albany. Munsell. vol. 4, pp. :-i9. THE HISTORY OF ALBAJ^Y. J 83 of the Pamiinkey, Ohickahominy, Matapony, and Pow- hatan Indians to renew a treaty of peace with the Mo- hawks, Senecas, Oneidas, Onondagas, and Cayugas. One of the Mohawk orators, speaking of Albany as the place where they made their covenant-chains, called it the ''House of Peace." CHAPTER IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, 1685. The appearance of the village of Albany in 1685 was peculiar. Surrounded as it was by a fence of thick planks and heavy posts, thirteen feet long and planted upright in the ground, there was not much to be seen inside the stockade from the north and south roads that ran to the narrow gate- ways. The most conspicuous object that fell in the field of view from these points was Fort Albany with its gun-mounted bastions fenced with palisades. East of the fort, the roof and belfry of the Reformed church were in high relief. The houses in the village, about one hundred in num- ber, were mostly structures of logs, or of framed timber, weather-boarded. There were some that were built of brick. The few stone-buildings were of very rough masonry. Many of the houses were thatched with reeds, some were covered with shingles, and others were roofed with glazed tiles. Very few of the steej) gable- roofs had eave-troughs, hence the occasional use of the descriptive phraseology "free drip" in the early con- veyances. Frequently small square dormer-windows were set in the roofs to admit light to the garrets, which were commonly used as sleeping-rooms. The chimneys were mostly built on the outside of the houses, at their 184 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY, 185 gable ends, and were made wide and deep at the bottom for large fire-places. For warmth in winter long and thick pieces of wood were burned on these ample hearths, particularly in the kitchens, which in cold weather were usually the only rooms that had fire in them. Wide arched brick bake-ovens were often built at the back sides of these spacious kitchen fire-places, and the part projecting into the house-yard was generally covered with a shed-roof. The house-doors were mounted with long iron hinges set on strong iron staples. Frequently they were made in two horizontal sections, the upper one being opened in summer to admit light and air. The windows con- tained one or more sashes filled with small panes of glass set in grooves of lead. A door and one or two windows were the chief architectural features of the fronts of the plain buildings. Stoops, low wooden platforms with backed benches, were generally placed before the front doors. These porches on fair summer evenings were the favorite out-door sitting places of the villagers. In the best rooms of the wealthiest burghers' homes were bedsteads with high posts that almost touched the ceiling. They supported a cloth-canopy, from the frame of which long curtains hung down that nearly reached to the fioor. The lower part of the bedstead, below the bedding, was draped with a short curtain called a val- ance. The quality and quantity of the furnishing of these best beds were matters of grave concern to the Dutch housewives. The feather-bed was enormously large. To get properly on it required considerable effort. Another feather-bed of less size was often used in winter for covering, a custom which originated the expression, "sleeping between feathers." In winter to give the lower bedding an agreeable warmth, a covered pan, made 186 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. of copper or of brass, having a long wooden handle and containing live coals, was sometimes, just before bed- time, carefully passed over it. Bare floors and unadorned walls were common in all the houses of the new settlement. By the side of the beds pieces of cloth lay commonly on the floor. Not infrequently clean sand was evenly spread over the uncarjDeted floors, and the sand marked with fanciful designs. Besides the great bedstead, the furniture of the best room generally included a number of chairs and a small table. If the room had a fire-place, the small mantle above it sometimes gave shelf -room to a framed calendar, a pair of copper or brass candlesticks, and an hour-glass. The kitchen was the living-room of the family, especially in winter. In the spacious flre-place was a horizontal iron bar from which, by means of iron-hooks, the various kettles used in cooking were suspended. A large plate of iron, called the fire-pliate, was frequently incased in the wall of the kitchen-chimney to protect the brick or stone-work from the crumbling effects of the large masses of burning coals. The heating of the bake- oven, the withdrawal of the coals, the swabbing of its ashy floor, the deft use of the peel or shovel on which the hemispherical masses of dough were deposited in the oven, the steaming kettles, the coal-covered, '"Dutch ovens " in which meats were baked, the fowls hung up to roast, the dexterous basting, the delivery of the browned cakes from' the long-handled waflie-tongs, the various skillets, the tall spiders, the covered pans, and other serviceable utensils, would be a strange sight to the accomplished cooks and housekeepers of the nine- teenth century. The dresser with its display of porce- lain, pewter, and wooden ware, the loom in the corner THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 187 upon which the wife and daughters wove the hnen and woolen fabrics for the use of the household, the small and the large spinning wheels, the baby's crib, the rows of flat-irons on the mantle-piece ; the hams, the flitches of bacon, the cases of puddings and sausages, the pieces of jerked meat, the strings of red pepper pods, the bunches of dried herbs, the yellow ears of corn, all hanging from the heavy beams overhead ; the wooden trays and trenches, the high-backed settle, the long table, these and many other things gave a very unique and comfortable appearance to the kitchens of the first fami- lies of Albany. Here also were kept the curved piece of steel, the fire-stones {viersieenen) or fiints, the box of scorched linen, and the splinters of pine with sulphurous points to kindle fire. Occasionally in these kitchens, the friendly Mohawks, with their squaws and papooses found shelter from the weather of a winter's night, and saw the hospit- able Dutchmen dandling their little children on their knees while their busy wives sat at their looms casting the thread-bearing shuttles through the warps of some de- sired cloths. And while the whistling wind drew great tongues of flame from the crackling wood on the kitchen hearths, the silent Wilden often heard the Dutch fathers sing this old nursery-song of the Fatherland to their -wakef ul babies : '' Trip a troup a tronjes, De varkens in de boonjes, De koejen in de klaver, De paarden in de haver, De kalven in de lang gras De eenden in de water plas Zo groot mijn klein poppetje was." ^ 1 See note on page 188. 188 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. When the bell of the Reformed church rang the cur- few, at eight o'clock at night, the people of the village carefully covered the coals on the kitchen-hearths with ashes and went to bed. About sunrise, tall columns of smoke began to ascend from the chimneys, and shortly afterward the risen families were eating their morning meals of plain but substantial food. In lieu of coffee beer was the common table-beverage. In winter many of the men of the village went into the hill-side forest to fell trees that were afterward sawed into plank, hewed into shape for house-timbers, split into fence- rails, cut into proper lengths for palisades, or chop- ped into fire-wood. From the hill-side came the sounds of the vigorously wielded axes, from the grain-strewed barn-floors the cadenced beat of flying flails, and from blacksmiths' anvils the musical verberation of ringing hammers. In the early part of the morning, in other seasons of the year, here and there along the streets of the viUage, cows with tinkling bells were waiting to be driven to pasture by the public herder. ^ 1 " Trip a troup a tronjes" The pigs in the beans, The cows in the clover, The horses in the oats, The calves in the long grass, The ducks in the water-place. So great (happy) was my little poppet. 2 " Conditions and proposals according to which certain burghers of Albany are minded to employ a herder for their cattle. First, the herder shall be holden to guard the cattle at his own expense, also to keep a proper youngster with him to watch the cattle, and shall begin to go out with them on the twentieth of April, 166*7, (iteiu style), and not leave off before the sixteenth of November. Second, the herder, every morning before or with the rising of the sun, shall three times blow with his horn, and then with the youngster and cattle go out where they can best get feed for the cattle, or where the masters (the undersigned) shall order, and about a quarter of an hour before the sun goes down, he shall deliver the cattle at the church. Third, if the animal or animals shall receive injuries through the neglect of THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 189 The interiors of the shops were unattractive. Few of the goods in them were exposed to view. The shelves were fiUed with cases, packages, and jars. Barrels and boxes inconveniently occupied the floors. The merchants vended silks, Haarlem damasks, bombazines, serges, red, white, and blue kersey, duffel-cloth, calico, Osnabruck and Flemish linens, thread, buttons, hooks and eyes, boots, shoes, Iceland and Friesland stockings, sugar, molasses, (si^rop,) spices, drugs, hardware, crockery, brandy, wine, rum, tobacco, guns, ammunition, and general produce. Outside the inns hung square sign-boards, on which were the names of the landlords and of the houses, and the painted representations of some such objects as a sickle and a barley-sheaf, a beaver and a lodge, or a green tree with wide-spreading branches. These pictures often became the common designations for the taverns. The beer, wine, and strong water sold in them were care- fully measured by the farmer of the liquor-excise, who derived considerable profits from his exclusive privilege to collect certain fixed rates on the quantity of liquor sold by each tapster and innkeeper. The patroon's brewery supplied the tap-rooms of the village with most of the beer drank in them. ^ The local ordinances regu- the herder, then the herder shall be held to make full recompense for the animal or animals (according to value). Fourth, if the herder shall be found sitting and drinking in any tavern, he shall each time forfeit ten guilders zeewan. If an animal or any animals happen to die or run away within the [first] half of the aforesaid time, then not more than half of the herder's recompense shall be paid, and that punctually at that time. In like manner also, shall all those who have their cattle herded be held. * * * " On the aforesaid condition Uldrick Kleyn accepted the contract and for his pains is to receive twenty guilders in zeewan for every large animal, or for two heifers in place of a large animal, and shall acknowledge and obey Juriaen Theunisse and Arnout Cornelisse [Viele] as his superiors for his masters. * * * For the confirmation of the same, ihey have subscribed with their own hands this paper, without craft or guile, this 2 of April, 1661." Vide Albany county records. Collections on the history of Albany. Munsell. vol. iv. p. 430. 1 In 1649, three hundred and thirty tuns of beer were made in the patroon's brewery. 190 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. lating the frequenting of the village tap-rooms were strictly enforced. Fines were imposed on persons found in them after the ringing of the curfew-bell, and the proprietors were mulcted for permitting men to be in them during sermon-time on Sundays. For the diver- sion of their customers some of the tapsters had trock- fables in their bar-rooms. The shape of these tables was somewhat similar to that of pool-tables. From the sur- face of the table, near one end of it, projected a small arch of wire, under which an ivory ball was placed be- fore it was struck with a cue to roll into one of the pockets at the corners of the table. The most noticeable structure in the village was Fort Albany surrounded with pine-palisades fifteen feet high. Another one was the Reformed church standing at the opposite end of Broad (State) street, at its intersec- tion with Handelaar street. Its block-house architecture gave it a very unique appearance. The interior of the building was plainly furnished with benches. The small pedestal-pulpit with its flight of narrow steps and curved balustrade, purchased in Holland in 1657, occu- pied a small space at the end of the centre aisle. ^ From the vaulted ceiling hung a chandelier on the branches of which were oil lamps. Sconces containing candles pro- jected from the walls near the lines of seats. The gal- leries contained sittings for a considerable number of persons. ^ The Sunday services in the church in early summer were attended by a large number of the people of the 1 The pulpit is about four feet in height and about three in diameter. It has eight sides, one of which is hinged, being the pulpit-door. Its small panels, mouldings, and other wood-work are of oak. 3 In 1682, when a new gallery was made on the north side of the church, twenty-four persons were given seats on it for their contributions for its erection. Robert Livingston, who obtained the contributions, was rewarded with a seat on it for himself and his posterity. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 191 manor. In the village, the mornings of the holy days began with a restful and enjoyable quietude. Save the tinkle of the copper-bells upon the cows going to pas- ture, the croAving of the cocks, and the barking of the dogs, but few other week-day noises disturbed the Sab- batic repose of the place. About nine o'clock the bell was rung to announce to the villagers the dressing-time for church. Before the ringing of the second bell, an hour later, the church-going country-people were on the roads leading to the village-gates. Many of the farmers who rode horses seated their wives behind them on pillions or cushions attached to the saddles, and in like manner the farmers' sons rode with their sisters. Near the church were long sheds in which the horses of the country people attending church were stalled. About them and the church, the early-arrived farm- ers gathered in groups to talk and detail the news of the manor. When the second bell began to ring the people of the village left their homes and decorously bent their steps toward the church. At the church-door the assembling villagers met their relations and friends liv- ing in the manor with brief greetings and interrogations. Whatever consideration was bestowed upon dress by the people of Albany and Rensselaerswyck, little pride was expressed by diversities of style and material. Durability but not fineness, simplicity but not pretti- ness, propriety but not oddness were the manifest dis- tinctions in the clothing of the settlers. The men com- monly wore peaked, broad-brimmed felt-hats or small circular woolen caps, jackets extending over the hips, waistcoats, short breeches, long stockings, buckled shoes, cravats or wide-spreading linen collars. Ruffs, frilled shirt-bosoms and cuffs, embroidered waistcoats, velvet coats, and" top-boots were the exceptional habil- 192 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. iments of state-dignitaries and wealthy men. Leather- breeches and leggins, deer-skin coats, and fur caps were not infrequently worn by farmers and other out-door working-men. The matrons and maidens made more noticeable displays of clothing. Many of their dresses were sleeveless. To give contour to waist and bust, some wore stomachers and bodices. Tastefully made caps, hoods, wide white ruffs, pretty laces, colored petticoats were attractive articles of female apparel. In winter the women wore mantles, cloaks, and other outer gar- ments, some of which were decorated with fur. The church-services were conducted by the minister and the voorlezer. The latter read the lessons and led the singing. The long sermon was timed by the falling sand of an hour-glass placed at the side of the pulpit- desk. The deacons collected the contributions of the congregation, going along the aisles and passing small bags hung at the ends of long, slender rods, in front of the seated people. At one time a little bell was concealed in the taSsel of the money-sack, the tinkle of which inti- mated to the contributors the approach of the collectors. Pewter and silver-plates were also used at one time in taking contributions. Christmas-day {Kersdag), Easter-day (Paaschdag), Ascension-day {Hemelvaartsdag) and Whitsuntide {Pings- terdag), were observed with a religious enthusiasm peculiar to the people of Holland. Absence from church on these particular festival days, except by sickness, in- firmity, and accident, was regarded as discreditable to communicants. The magistrates of the court and the officers of the church were honored with prominent seats in front of the congregation. The duty of attending the regulat services of the THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 193 church was deemed to be so obhgatory that in the coldest weather large congregations compliantly assembled and sat in the unhealed building. Personal comfort often caused Domines Schaets and Dellius to preach with their woolen caps on their heads and thick gloves on their hands. The men in the congregation wore their hats and caps, and many brought muffs in which they kept their hands. Some of the women sat with their feet on small stoves conveyed to the church filled with live coals. The church records contain considerable information respecting the affairs of the society. ^ They not only disclose much that is interesting to those who are now members of the Reformed church, but they furnish many important facts relating to the early history of the village. 1 The annual accounts of the different deacons generally begin with such prefatory paragraphs as the following: "Honor be to God in Albany and the colony of Rensselaerwyck, {Eere sij Godt Jii Albanie en Colonic Rensselaers Wyck)" The contents of the treasury-chests, described by the deacons who took charge of it at the beginning of each year, were peculiar to the period. On the first of January, 1665, the church-chest con- tained loose zeewan (los sewaeni) valued at three hundred and thirty guilders and four stivers, ($132.08,) strung zeewan {ga-egent sewani) valued at two hundred and twenty-eight guilders and six stivers, ($91.32,) sixteen obliga- tions {obligasse) amounting to two thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine guilders and thirteen stivers, ($1131.86,) four guilders and twelve stivers ($1.84,) in silver money {seelver gelt), making a total of thirteen hundred and fifty-seven dollars and ten cents. There were also in the church strong-box fifty-one ells of Flemish linen and nine pairs of Friesland stockings. Gener- ally the contributions of the people exceeded the current expenses of the church, and the officers frequently loaned its money to the members of the congregation at high rates of interest. Eight per cent, was sometimes paid for the use of such money. The zeewan or shell-money that formed a part of the contributions to the church was often sold at a premium. In 1683, Pieter Schuyler, the deacon keeping the accounts of the church, enters upon the account-book the loan of four thousand eight hundred guilders to Jacob Meuse, by the advice of the consistory. The expenses of the church on the thirtieth of January, observed as a day of fasting and prayer " to divert God's heavy judgment from falling" on the English nation for the execution of Charles I. of England, were seventeen guilders. In April, the Paasch day collections amounted to one hundred and ninety-one guilders and ten stivers 13 194 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY When a death was announced by the slow ringing of the church-bell, the aanspreeker (the inviter), attired in black clothing, wearing a black hat around which a long projecting piece of crape of the same color was bounds visited the relatives and friends of the deceased person and requested them to attend the funeral. Before the burial of the corpse, a number of persons were selected to watch the body at night to detect any signs of life that might be manifested. The watcfhers, as was the custom, were liberally provided with various liquors, a number of pipes, a quantity of tobacco, some newly - baked cakes, and other refreshments. The funeral on the third or fourth day after the death of the person about to be buried vv^as usually attended by a large con- course of people. The coffin, covered with a fringed black cloth, with corner-tassels, called the dood-kleed, (the dead-cover,) was borne to the grave-yard ^ on a wooden bier either resting on the shoulders of the bearers, or by the projecting arms of the frame- work grasped in the ($76 60). Five gallons of wine were used in the administration of the holy sacrament. Myndert Frederickse in August was paid four guilders ($1.60), for a ring for the collection bag and Jan Vinhagel received two guilders for making a new bag. In November, Maese Cornelissen was paid thirty-six guilders for seventeen candlesticks to be used in the church during the evening services. Twelve guilders was the price of a new Psalm-book for the pulpit. In December, six guilders and five stivers were disbursed for one and a half ankers (fifteen gallons) of beer for a pauper. For setting the communion-table during the year, Hendrick Roseboom was paid thirty guilders. Among the things for which he was accountable, the deacon transferred to his successor a silver goblet, pawned for two hundred guilders and thir- teen and a half stivers, containing sixteen pieces of foreign money. From his custody was also transferred one new pall, two old ones, two communion- table cloths and seven napkins, two silver cups, one earthen can with a silver lid, a pewter can, an earthen one. two pewter basins and a large pewter plate, one cobweb-brush, and a scrubbing brush. 1 The grave-yard of the Reformed church was a plot of ground between Beaver Street and Hudson Avenue, Green and South Pearl Streets. The burial-ground of the Lutherans was on the west side of South Pearl Street, between Howard and Beaver Streets. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 195 right or left hands of the carriers. After the burial the attending people returned to the house from which the corpse had been taken, where they were generously served with various refreshments of which liquors formed the greater part. In the church accounts for the year 1682, one hundred and fifty guilders and eleven stivers are entered as the burial expenses of a church-pauper, of which amount twelve guilders were expended for five cans of rum, two pieces of eight and twenty-four guild- ers for the services of the bearers, twenty-four guilders and four stivers for fifteen gallons of beer. Collections for the church -poor were frequently taken at marriage-services and at wedding-parties. When Stephanus van Cortlandt and Gertrude Schuyler were married in the Reformed church, on the third of October, 1671, thirteen guilders and six stivers were contributed to the poor-fund, and at the reception-party on the fol- lowing day, fifteen guilders and nineteen stivers were collected. The change of government from that of the West India Company to that of the lord-proprietor, James, the duke of York and Albany, put in force a number of peculiar laws : ' ' If any person within this Government shall by direct exprest, impious or presumptuous ways, deny the true God and his Attributes, he shall be put to death." "If any Child or Children, above sixteen years of age and of Sufficient understanding, shall smite their Natural Father or Mother, unless thereunto provoked and forct for their selfe preservation from Death or Mayming, at the Complaint of the said Father and Mother, and not otherwise, they being Sufficient wit- nesses thereof, that Child or those Children so offending shall be put to Death." 196 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "Ministers are to Marry Persons after legal publica- tion or Sufficient Lycence." "Legal publication shall be so esteemed when the persons to be married are three Several Days asked in the Church, or have a Special License." "Where no Church or Meeting place shall happen to bee, a publication in writing shall be first fourteen Days before Marriage upon three doors of each parish whereof the party es Inhabit (viz.) one on the Consta- bles the other two upon any two Doors of the Overseers of the Parish unless they produce a Lycence from the Governour." CHAPTER X. THE CITY OF ALBANY. 1686-1688. In May, 1686, when Governor Dongan was in Albany, a number of the pnncipal men of the village solicited him to execute letters-patent under the seal of the j)rovince by which the place should be made a city with larger boundaries and particular privileges. The property-own- ers desired better and more satisfactory titles to what was possessed by them than had been given by the magis- trates of Beverswyck, by those of Albany after the sur- render of the province to the English in 1664, by those of Willemstadt, and by those appointed by Grovernors An- dres and Dongan. The governor was also asked to set apart the stadt- house or court-house, the Reformed church, the grave- yard near the palisades, at the south side of the village, and the watch-house, for the use and benefit of the in- habitants. He was also requested to give the people the land commonly known as ''the past are," on the south side of the palisades, belonging to Martin Garretson, and also that of Caspar Jacobse. He was also begged to in- clude with the former the several pastures north of them, owned and occupied by Robert Sanders, Mindert Harmense, and Evert Wandall, and the several gardens possessed by Direck Wessels, Abraham Staets and Kihaen 197 198 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. van Rensselaer. He was also requested to give to the people the ferry from the village to Grreenbush. Willing to comply with the request of the people of Albany, Governor Dongan took steps to obtain from the Van Rensselaer-heirs a relinquishment of their claims to the territory that was to become a part of the city. In his explanations to King James's privy council, he thus speaks of the Van Rensselaer-claim to the land near the site of Fort Orange : ' ' It [the pasture] was never yet in the King's hands, but hee that was the commander [of the fort] took some Profits of it, which was a great grievance to the people it having been patented by Governor NicoUs to several people & by them built upon, whose Buildings have been since carried away by the overflowing of the River. It does not contain above fifteen or sixteen acres. "■' * * "The Town of Albany lyes within the Ranslaers Colony. And to say the truth the Ranslaers had the right to it, for it was they settled the place, and upon a peti- tion of one of them to our present King [King James II.] about Albany the Petitioner was referred to his Ma^ys Council at Law, who upon perusal of the Ranslaers Papers, made their return that it was their opinion that it did belong to them. Upon which there was an order sent over to S^ Edmund Andros that the Ranslaers should be put in possession of Albany, & that every house should pay some two Beavers, some more, "some less, according to their dimensions, P"" annum, for thirty years & afterwards the Ranslaers to put what rent upon them they could agree for. — What reason Sir Edmund Andros has given for not putting these orders into execution I know not. " The Ranslaers came & brought mee the same orders which I thought not convenient to execute, judging it not for his Ma^ys Interest that the second Town of the THE mSTOEY OF ALBANY. 199 Government & which brings his Maty soe great a Reve- nue, should bee in the hands of any particular men. The town of itself is upon a barren sandy spot of Land, & the Inhabitants live wholy upon Trade with the Indians. By the meanes of Mr James Graham, Judge [John] Palmer & M^ [Stephanus van] Cortlandt that have great influence on that people, I got the Ranslaers to release their pretence to the Town and sixteen miles into the Country for Commons to the King, with liberty to cut firewood within the Colony for one & twenty years. Af- ter I had obtained this release of the Ranslaers I passed the Patent for Albany, wherein was included the afore- mentioned Pasture, to which the People apprehended they had so good a right that they expressed themselves discontented at my reserving a small spot of it for a gar- den for the use of the Garrison. ' ' That the people of Albany has given mee seven hun- dred pounds is untrue. I am but promised three hundred pounds which is not near my P^ quisits, viz. ten shillings for every house & the like for every hundred acres patent- ed by mee." ^ The charter by which the village of Albany became a city was signed by Governor Dongan on the twenty- second day of July, 1686. The territory of the city was limited by the following described boundaries : " On the cast by Hudsons River, so farr as low water mark ; " on " the south, by a line * * * drawne from the south- ermost end of the Pasture at the north end of * * "^ Martin Garetsons Island, runneing back into the woods sixteen English miles due Northwest to a certain kill or Creek called the Sand-kill ; on the North" by " a line * Tf * drawne from the post that was sett by Governor 1 Report of Gov. Dongan, Feb. 22, 168Y. Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 410, 411. 200 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Stuy vesant near Hudsons river, runneing likewise North- west sixteen English miles ; and on the West by a straight line ■* " * drawne from the points of the said South and North lines." The municipal officers were to be a mayor, a recorder, a chamberlain or treasurer, six aldermen, six assistant aldermen, a town-clerk, a sheriff, a coroner, a clerk of the market, a high constable, three sub-constables, and a marshal or " sergeant-at-mace." The mayor, the recorder, the aldermen and their assistants were during their terms of office to be " One Body corporate and Politick, in deed ffact, and name," to be known by "the name of the mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the city of Albany." The governor named and constituted the following per- sons the first officers of the city : Peter Schuyler, mayor, Isaac Swinton, recorder, Robert Livingston, town-clerk, Direck Wessells, Jan Jans Bleeker, David Schuyler, Johannes WendeU, Levinus Van Schaick, and Adrian Geritse, aldermen ; Joachim Staets, John Lansing, Isaac Verplanck, Lawrence van Ale, Albert Ryckman, and Melgert Wynantse, assistant aldermen ; Jan Becker, chamberlain, Richard Pretty, sheriff, James Parker, mar- shal. The mayor and the sheriff of the city were to be annually nominated " upon the ffeast day of St. Michael, the Archangel," [September 29th,] by the lieutenant-gov- ernor of the province. The recorder and town-clerk were also to be appointed by the lieutenant-governor, but no specified time was designated for their terms of office. The other officers except the chamberlain were to be elected by the majority of the voices of the inhabitants, annually on St. Michael's day. The chamberlain was to be chosen yearly on the same day by the mayor and three or more aldermen of each class. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 201 The mayor was given the sole power and authority to issue Ucenses under the seal of the city. He was to per- form the duties of the office of the clerk of the market and of those of the coroner. Once every fortnight, on Tuesdays, a court of common pleas was to be held, at which the mayor or the recorder, and two aldermen were to hear and determine pleas and actions. The mayor, the recorder, and the aldermen were to be justices of the peace and were to sit at the courts of sessions, or the county courts, and the courts of oyer and terminer, one of whom was to preside at such county courts. The mayor or any three or more of the aldermen had "full power and authority under the comon seale to make free cittizens of the said citty and libertyes thereof; and no person or persons whatsoever other than such ffree cittizens" could exercise "any Art, Trade, mystery or manuall occupacion within the said citty, libertyes, and precincts thereof, saveing in the tymes of ffayres." To obtain such freedom of the city, the person desir- ing to pursue the business of a merchant or a trader was required to pay a sum not exceeding three pounds twelve shillings, and one wishing to engage in some some handicraft was to pay the sum of thirty-six shillings. Wednesday and Saturday in each week v/ere to be the city market-days. The mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the city were granted ' ' full liberty and lycense att their j)leasure to purchase from the Indians, the quantjrty of ffive Hun- dred Acres of Low or Meadow Land lyeing att a certeyne place called or knowne by the name of Schaihtecogue, " and also "the quantity of one Thousand Acres of Low or Meadow Land, lyeing att a certeyn place called or known by the name of Tionondorogue, " paying annually to his majesty's officer or receiver, in Albany, on the L>02 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. twenty-fifth day of March, a quit-rent of one beaver-skin. The mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the city were also granted forever by the charter "the sole and onely management of the trade with the Indians, as well within thiss whole County [of Albany] as without the same, to the Eastward, Northward, and Westward thereof as farrashis Majestyes Dominion " extended, " to bee managed and Transacted onely by the ffreemen, be- ing actuall Inhabitants within the said citty and within the now walls or stockadoes thereof, and not elsewhere.-' And ' ' all and every the Inhabitants of the sayd Province of New York, (the Inhabitants of the said citty of Albany onely excepted) " were prohibited "to trade or traffique with any of the ffive Nations of Indians called the Sini- caes, Caijugaes, Onondagues, Oneides, & Maques, who live to the westward, or with any other Indian or Indians whatsoever within the county of Albany, or to the East- ward, Northward or Westward thereof, so far as his * * * Majestyes Dominions" extended, " or to have or keepe in their houses or elsewhere any Indian goods or Merchandize, upon the payne and penalty of the ffor- feiture and confiscation of such Indian comodityes, whether the same be Be vers. Peltry, or other Indian comodityes whatsoever, (Except Indian corne. Venison, and dressed deer-skins)." The mayor, recorder, aldermen and the assistant aldermen, or the mayor and any three or more of the as- sistant aldermen were to be called the common council of the city, and they or the greater part of them had full power and authority to call and hold common council within the common council-houss or city hall, and there to make laws, orders, ordinances, and constitutions in writing for the good rule, oversight, correction, and gov- ernment of the city. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 208 The charter provided that his majesty, his heirs, suc- cessors, assigns, commanders in chief, heutenants, gov_ ernors, and the officers under them were not to be deprived of any rights and privileges which they had in Fort Albany and in the city,^ The following record discloses the action of the magis- trates and people on the reception of the charter at Albany : " In nomine Domini Jesu Christi. Amen. " Att a meeting of ye Justices of ye peace for ye county of Albany, ye 26th day of July, A. D., 1686. " Pieter Schuyler, gent, and Rob^ Livingston, gent,, who were commissionated by ye towne of Albanie to goe to New Yorke and procure ye Charter for this citty w^ was agreed upon between ye magistrates and ye right honi Col. Tho, Dongan, Gov. GenH who accordingly have brought the same along with them, and was pub- lished with all ye joy and acclamations imaginable ; and ye said two gent™ received ye thanks of ye magistrates and burgesses for their diligence and care in obtaining ye same." Pieter Schuyler, "appointed and commissionated to be mayor and clerk of ye market and coroner of ye citty of Albany, as also coroner for ye s^ county," took the oath, which was administered by one of the magistrates, and entered upon the duties of his office. The ordained alder- men were also sworn, as also w^ere Robert Livingston, town-clerk, Richard Pretty, sheriff, and James Parker, marshal. The following minute of the mayor's court, held on the thirty-first of August, 1686, discloses the manner in vv^hich the laws were executed by the city officers : ' ' The 1 The parchments on which the charter was engrossed are in the office of the city clerk. 204 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. court of [the] mayor and aldermen having considered ye case of ye negroe of Myndert Frederikse called Her- cules, who hath stole a chest of wampum belonging to ye poor of ye Lutheran parich out of ye house of his mas- ter, where he went in a night throw ye window, all which he confesseth, and considering how evil consequence it is and how bad example it is for ye negers, the court have ordered ye s^ neger Hercules to be whipt throw ye towne att ye cart tale by ye hands of ye hangman forthwith, for an example to oys, [others], and his master to pay ye costts. " It would seem that some of the city officers were tardy in attending the meetings of the common council, for it was ordered on the eleventh of September that any mem- ber that should "be absent at ye second ringing of ye bell, being in town, at any common council day." should "forfeit six shillings, toties quoties.''^ The city, for lack of water, being exposed to the dangers of fire, the common council took measures on the fourteenth of September to increase the supply. "Whereas it hath been found by experience that ye bringing in of ye fountain from ye hill into ye city hath not only been of great use to ye inhabitants for water butt the only means, under God, of ye quenching of ye late fyre, wht' oyr wise by all probability had consumed ye whole towne ; and whereas ye spouts y*^ [that] convey ye water to the wells in some places are gone to decay or at least so leaky that ye wells are quite useless, the mayor, alder- men and commonalty of ye city have therefore thought convenient to appoint and order ye high constable, Isaak Verplank, forthwith to cause ye said spouts and wells to be repaired that they may be of like use as formerly, and to keep an exact account of what ye charge is, which shall be forthwith ordered to be paid ; and all laboring THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 205 persons are hereby strictly charged to assist toward ye sd work as they will answer ye contrary att j^ [their] perills ; and if the said high constable be found negligent yt he doth not hys duty herein, and yt ye work be not and all ye wells and spouts compleated in ye space of a fortnight, he shall forfeit forty shillings." To defray the expenses of the county, the assessors were directed " to rate the county for the sum of 1600 guilders beaver, or £120 ; " and to defray those of the city, "£30, or 400 guilders beaver." For the better regulation of the trade with the Indians, the common council, on the fourteenth of September, 1686, made a number of rules and orders to govern it. "No person or persons whatsoever," in the city "upon ye arrivall of any Indian or Indians" were allowed "to addresse themselves or speake to them of and concerning Trade," nor "to entice y™ (them) either within or with- out ye gates of ye * * * Citty, by Signs or oyrwise howsoever, to trade with themselves or any other Per- sones." No person or persons were "to send out or make use of any Broakers, whether Christians or Indians, in ye management of ye Indian Trade ; " nor were they to "trade for or receive any Bevers, Peltry or other Indian " commodity " from any Indian or Indians after ye ringing of ye Bell " at eight "of ye Clock on ye night ; " nor were they to "trade or trafiqe with, or by any means whatsoever directly or indirectly entice any Indians soe to do upon ye Sabbath day." It was also " ordered that for the future no person or persons whatsoever " were to ' ' give any present or gift to any Indian or Indians," nor were they to "transport or cause to be transported any Wampum, Wampum pipes, Indian Jewells, or money " out of the city and county, 206 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. nor to ' ' dispose of such money, Wampum or Jewells to any stranger or person whatsoever, who should carry them out of" the "Government." It was also ordered "that no Indian Trader whatso- ever" should, on and after the twenty-fifth of March, 1687, "directly or indirectly in his own name, or in ye name of any other persons living in or Import from Eng- land or any oyf part of Europe or ye West Indies into " the city or its liberties any Indian goods or merchan- dises such as ' ' duff ells, rom, strouds, blanketts, plains, half-thicks, woolen stockings, white ozenbridge, ketles, hatchetts, hoes, red lead, vermillion, cotton, red kersey Indian haberdashery, or any oyr Indian goods." As the selling of certain small Indian wares afforded "a com- fortable livelyhood to severall people " in the city, "whose mean stocks " or small means did not permit their " deale- ing in Commodities of greater value," and as these per- sons had been ' ' obstructed by ye constant resort of y e Indians to such persones as sell all sorts of goods," the common council to protect the small dealers and to make "a more equall distribucon of ye Indian Trade amongst ye Inhabitants " of the city, ordered that no Trader, who sold "Duff ells, Strouds, Blanketts, and other Indian goods of value," should sell such small wares as " Knives, Looking Glasses, Painting stuff. Boxes, Aules, Tobacco Pipes, Tobacco, Tobacco Boxes, flints. Steels, Sizers, [scissors '^] Wire of any sort, Ribboning, Bottles, Thread, Salt, Sugar, Prunes, Apples, Razins, Juiseharps, Bells, Thimbles, Beedes, Indian Combs, and Needles." It was also ordered that no Indian trader should in- duce by words or presents any Indian or Indians to take their guns to particular gunsmiths and gun-stock makers to be mended. The person or persons who should transgress any of THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. k()7 these orders, rules and regulations made by the common council were to be subject to various penalties, such as fines and forfeitures. To defray the expenses "in obtaining ye charter," the common council meeting in "ye Citty Hall," resolved on the twenty-sixth of October, 1686, "to dispose off and sell some lotts of grounde upon ye Plain lying on ye south side of ye citty for gardens, as also ye land lying on both sides of [the] Ruttenkill for two pastures," and appointed Gerrit Ryerse and Luykas Gerritse, assistant aldermen together with Claes Riper and Jacob Meese, carpenters, "to lay out ye same in lotts, and to number them," which lots were to be sold " at a publike vendu or outcry in ye city hall on Wednesday ye first day of December. " The town-clerk was ordered to "put up bills at ye citty hall door and ye church to give notice to all persones that they may come at ye day appointed." The common council at this meeting nominated and appointed Dirk Wessells, the recorder, and Robert Living- ston, "gentlemen," to go "with two other fitt persons " to view the " tract of land above Schinnechtady, upon ye Maquaas river, of a thousand acres, called Tiononder- oga, and ye other land thereunto adjoining, * '^ * in order to purchase ye same of 3^e Indians." The common council at this meeting "ordered that ye fyremasters goe about and visite each respective house in ye citty to see if there chimneys and fyrehearths be sufficient, and also that care be taken that ye ladders and fyre hooks be upon there places and in repare." At the next meeting of the common council, it was ordered that no person whatsoever should "for ye future reuse clothes or throw water or any sort of filth in or near any of the wells or fountains" in the city, ''nor water any horses out of ye pale " that hung ' ' at ye same, 208 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. or draw water with any fowle or dirty pale, upon pain of forfeiture of ye somme of 12s. for each offence." Some of the cartmen and other persons in the city had taken so much sand away from the top of the hill, at " ye old burying place," that the coffins were exposed to view. To protect the graves from such public invasion, the common council further ordered that "no carman or other person " should thereafter " fetch or digg any sand on ye north side of ye Shennechtady path." Some of the regulations made for the city were appar- ently exacting : " That if any stranger or strangers what- soever shall att any tyme hereafter come into any wards and divisions of this Citty and Libertyes thereof and shall there Reside and Inhabit by the space of fforty days and a list or account of his [or] their names shall not be- fore that time be given to the Mayor or Eldest Alder- man * * * By the Constable of such ward or divis- ion and any charges doe fall on this Citty thereby, such charges shall bee particularly borne and defrayed By that ward or division wherein such stranger or strangers shall so Reside and Inhabit as aforesaid. And the Constable for his neglect shall f orf eitt and pay the sum of Twenty shillings." " That all and everye keeper of publique houses, tapp houses or ordinaryes * * * that shall Receive any person or persons to Lodge or Sojourn In their houses above two days shall before the third day after his or their coraeing thither give knowledge to the Constable of the ward or division where such person or persons shall bee so Received of the name, surname, dwelling place, profession, and trade of life and place of service of all such person or persons, and for what cause hee or they came to Reside tbere." "That the [five] Carmen appoynted for this Citty THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 209 shall " * ■^'' fill up, amend and repair the breaches in the streets and highways in and about this Cittv when Required by the Mayor, gratis. That the said Carmen shall '" * * on every Saturday In the afternoon carry and carte the dirte out of all the streets and lanes within the Citty and Convey the same to some convenient place where the same shall be appointed to be layed," " That noe Negroe or other Slave [shall] * * * drive any carte within this Citty under the penaltye of Twenty Shillings to be paid by the owner of such slave for each offence." " All persons within this Citty are on Every Saturday morning when the season of the year and the Weather will permit to clean the streets and sweepe ye dirte before their houses Into heaps and cause the same to be Loaden and putt Into the Cartes which are appoynted to carry away the same." " That if any person shall suffer his Chimney to be on ffire he shall pay the summe of 15 shillings," ' ' That no person or persons * * ^- [shall] harbour, entertayne or countenance any Negro or Indian slave In their houses or otherwyse, or sell or dely ver to them any wine, Rumm, or other strong Liquor without Leave from the master or Receave or take from them any money or other goods on any other acco" whatsoever." ' ' That noe person or persons * * * [shall] be per- mitted to exercise any handicraft, trade or other imploy- ment untill he shall have served as an apprentice to some burger of this citty of such respective employment for and during the term of ffour whole years unless such person or persons shall have otherwayes been sufficiently qualified." ^ On the twenty- fourth of February, 1687, as it was 1 City Records, 1686. 14 210 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. " very requisite y^ "* " * f yre- wood " should be " rid to ye indian houses for ye indians accommodation " as the traders were ' ' f ounde iieghgent in rideing ye same according to former custome," the high constable was ordered "to charge and command all ye indian traders of" the "citty, that in ye space of 14 days they [should] ride wood according to ye list wh " should "be made by John Johnse Bleeker, Jan Lansing, Robt. Sanders, and Arent Schuyler." ^ Governor Dongan, in February 1687, in his explana- tions to the Privy Council, thus adverted to the efforts of the French to obtain the control of the Indian tribes of jSTorthern New York : " They have fathers [priests] still among the five Nations, * ^ ^ the Maquaes, the Sinicaes, Cayouges, Oneides, and Onondagues, and have converted many of them to the Christian Faith and doe their utmost to draw them to Canada, to which place there are already 6 or 700 retired and more like to doe, to the Great prejudice of this Government if not pre- vented. I have done my endeavors and have gone so far in it that I have prevailed with the Indians to consent to come back from Canada on condition that I procure for them a peace of Land called Serachtague lying upon Hudsons river above 10 miles above Albany and there furnish them with Priests. "Thereupon and upon a petition of the people of Albany to mee setting forth the reasonableness and con- veniency of granting to the Indians their requests, I have procured the land for them, altho it has been formerly patented to people at Albany, and have promised the In- dians that they shall have Priests & that I will build them a Church & have assured the people of Albany that I would address to his Maty as to youi- Lops [Lordships] 1 City Records, 1687. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 211 that care may bee taken to send over by the first five or six, it being a matter of great consequence. "These Indians have about ten or twelve castles (as they term them) & those at a great distance one from an- other, soe that there is an absolute necessity of having soe many priests, that there bee three always travelling from Castle to Castle, & the rest to live with those that are Christians. By that means the French Priests will bee obliged to retire to Canada, whereby the French will bee divested of their pretence to ye Country & then wee shall enjoy that trade without any fear of being di- verted. * * "■ "The great difference between us is about the Beaver Trade, and in truth they have the advantage of us in it & that by noe other meanes than by their Industry in making discoveries in ye Country before us. " Before my coming hither noe man of our Governmt ever went beyond the Sinicaes Country. Last year some of our people went a trading among the farr Indians called the Ottowais, inhabiting about three months' journey to the West & W. N. W. [west north-west] of Albany from whence they brought a good many Beavers. They found their people more inclined to trade with them than the French, the French not being able to protect them from the arms of our Indians with whom they have had a continued warr, soe that our Indians brought away this very last year a great many prisoners. " Last week I sent for some of our Indians to New York, where when they came I obtained a promise from them that some of themselves would goe along with such of our people as goe from Albany and Esopus to these far Nations, and carry with them the captives they have prisoners in order to the restoring them to their hberty & bury their Hatchetts with those of their enemys. 212 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. by which means a path may bee opened for these far Indians to come with safety to Trade at Albany, our people goe thither without any let or disturbance." " The five Indian Nations are the most warlike people in America, & are a bulwark between us & the French & all other Indians. They goe as far as the South Sea [Gulf of Mexico], the North- West Passage [Mississippi River], & Florida to Warr. New England in their last Warr with the Indians had been ruined, had not S^ Ed- mund Andros sent some of those Nations to their assis- tance. And indeed they are soe considerable that all the Indians in these parts of America are Tributareys to them. I suffer noe Christians to converse with them any where but at Albany and that not without my licence. " Governor Dongan also, in these explanations to the Privy Council, speaks of the buildings in Albany, and says they ' ' are generally of Stone & brick. In the Coun- try the houses are mostly new built, having two or three rooms on a floor." ^ While he was in Albany, as he further relates, he made ' ' Robert Livingstone Collector and Receiver, with order to acct w^h [with] & pay into M^ Santem^ wt money he sho'd receive, for which he was to have Is P^ Pound of all such monys as should pass through his hands, & alsoe made him Clerk of the Town, that both places to- gether might afford him a competent maintenance." ^ Early in the month of September, 1687, information was brought to Albany that the French were making preparations to invade the province of New York to ex- terminate the Mohawks and the other Indians of the five nations. When this news was communicated to the gov- ernor and council, they, on the ninth of September, com- 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 393, 394, 395. 2 Lucas Santem, the collector of his majesty's revenues in the province. 3 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 491. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 213 manded that the mayor and magistrates should send orders ' ' to the five Nations to bring Down [to Albany] their Wives, Children and old men least ye ffrench come uppon them in the Winter " and that none should ' ' stay in the Castles but ye young men." They also ordered that the Indians who left their villages should be settled tem- porarily at Catskill, Livingston's land, and along the river, where they could be near assistance should they need help. The Indians were also ordered to bring with them all the corn except that which was needed by the young warriors remaining in the castles. The people of Albany are described as being ' ' in great Consternation thro ap- prehension that ye ffrench'" would "come down uppon them.'' To defend Albany, the government forthwith ordered that " Every tenth man of all ye Militia troupes & Com- pany s within the Province Except those who were out ye last yeare a whaling be Drawn out to go up thither." The governor, attended by the Rev. Alexander Innis, of the Church of England, chaplain of the garrison of Fort James, in the city of New York, and Father Henry Har- rison, an English Jesuit, went to Albany, in October, to take command of the troops quartered there. The authorities, to preserve the peace of the city dur- ing its occupation by the military forces of the province, prohibited the sale of ' ' any strong drink, beer, syder, or other Uquor to any person whatever after ye Taptoo." The governor, writing from Albany, on the nineteenth of February, 1688, to the earl of Sutherland, president of his majesty's privy council, says : "I have been here all this winter with foure hundred foote and fifty horse and Eight hundred Indians ; the French nor there Indians have [not] done, us any hurt as yett ; wee are at great chardges, ''^ ''^ * not to reckon this Extraordinarij 214 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Expense, and when I come to N. Yorke to impose an- other Tax upon ye people, I am afraid they will desert the Province and goe to other Plantations." The extraordinary expense referred to by the governor, was the disbursement £2,067 6s. 4d., from August 11, 1637, to June 1, 1688, by Robert Livingston, for the sup- port and pay of the troops, for gifts to the Indians, and the needs of the French prisoners. The city and county of Albany were assessed for £240 of this expenditure. In March, Governor Dongan returned to New York. By the annexation of the colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut, and the province of New York, and the Jerseys to the other English provinces and colonies, on the fifth of April, 1688, by James II., the province of New York became a part of the territory called New Eng- land placed under the governorship of Sir Edmund An- dros. On the eleventh of August, Governor Andros came to New York, and received the seal of the province from Governor Dongan. On the thirtieth of August, Governor Andros with a number of his counselors and a company of soldiers embarked for Albany. On the eighteenth of September, at the conference with the sachems of the five Indian nations, the governor was thus addressed by Sindachsegie, a Mohawk chief : "Brother Gorlaer, we are come from all the five nations, * * * to bid you welcome in this place, not only you but your council likewise, and we return thanks to the magistrates of Albany who acquainted us of your coming hither, and that you were governor-general of all these territories, and the same person which did us the kindness to be called Corlaer when you were formerly governor. Thereupon we resolved not to come slowly but to run with all speed to see and bid you welcome. " ^ 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 558. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 215 The governor-general, having placed Captain Jervis Baxter in command of Fort Albany, returned to New York about the end of September. Having made Boston the seat of the government of New England, Governor Andros shortly afterward proceeded thither, taking with him some of the records of New York. The city authorities, having been complained to by some of the inhabitants that the bakers sold wheat-bread at "dear rates, notwithstanding ye cheapness of ye corn," it was ordered, in December, 1688, that the bakers and other persons who sold bread should " take no more than one penny, half -penny or five stuy vers zewant for a loaf of fine wheat-bread, which " should " weigh one pound English weight" and of the "same fineness as hitherto." Those persons who should "presume to cutt down any of ye townes old stockadoes till ye spring when new ones" were "to be putt in ye room," were to pay a fine of ten shillings. Divers persons having assumed ' ' to themselves ye lib- erty to make use of ye towne ladders for their owne occa- sion * * * so much that verry few" were "to be found in their places, where they were first ordained," it was ordered by ' ' the mayor and aldermen yt ye fyremas- ters " should ' ' inspect into ye condition of s^ ladders and fyrehooks yt they" were "in good condition and repaire, and y t in some convenient place of each ward there " were " at least 2 good ladders of 25 foot, and 2 of 15 foot with iron hooks fast to ye ladders, and 2 fyrehooks, which " would " make 12 ladders and 6 hooks for ye 3 respective wards. Whatever ladders or hooks " should ' ' be f ounde over and above ye s^ number, ye fy remasters" were "to take care that they " were " hung at ye church." ^ 1 City records. 1688. CHAPTEE XI. FRENCH HOSTILITIES. 1689-1692. The unsuccessful attempt of King James II. of Eng- land to make the Roman Catholic Church dominant in his dominions and his subsequent flight to France, on the eleventh of December, 1688, were followed by a series of events peculiarly disturbing to the people of the English provinces in America. The French, having for a long time contemplated the project of obtaining possession of the territory of New York, now began to consider the most feasible way of accomplishing the undertaking. Sieur Chevalier Hector de Callieres Bon- nevue, the governor of Montreal, wrote as follows to the Marquis de Seignelay, in January, 1689 : "The plan is to go directly to Orange, [Albany], the most advanced town of New York, one hundred leagues from Montreal, ' Avhich I would undertake to get pos- session of and to proceed thence to seize Manathe, [New York City,] the capital of that colony situated on the sea-coast ; on condition of being furnished with supplies necessary for the success of the expedition. " I demand for that only the troops at present main- tained by his majesty in Canada. * * "^ These troops number thirty-five companies which, at fifty men each, 1 Montreal is about two hundred and thirty m'les from Albany. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 217 ought to give seventeen hundred and fifty. * * * j propose '''■ * * to select the best of them to the number of fourteen hundred and to add to these the choice men of the mihtia to the number of six hundred. * * * I propose to embark the two thousand men with the supphes necessary for their subsistence in a sufficient number of canoes and flat boats. '- * * My design is to conduct them by the Richeheu River to Lake Champlain as far as the carrying place, which is within three leagues of the Albany [Hudson] River that runs to Orange. I shall conceal this expedition, which must be kept very secret, by saying that the king has commanded me to proceed at the head of his troops and militia to the Iroquois country to dictate peace to the Iroquois on the condition it has pleased his majesty to grant them without the interference of the English, in- asmuch as the Iroquois are his true subjects, without letting any one know our intention of attacking the English until we have arrived at the point whence I shall send to tell the Iroquois by some of their nation that I am not come to wage war against them but only to reduce the English. * - -^^ ' ' As the batteaux cannot proceed farther than the carrying place, my intention is to erect there a small log-fort, which I shall build in three days, and to leave two hundred men in it to guard the batteaux ; thence to march direct to Orange, embarking our supplies on the [ Hudson ] River in canoes ; which we shall bring and which can be convoyed by land, we marching with the troops along the river as an escort. "I hope to seize in passing some English villages and settlements where I shall find provisions and the con- veniences for attacking the town of Orange. ' ' This town is about as large as Montreal, surrounded 218 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. by pickets, at one end of which is a fort of earth de- fended by pahsades, and has four bastions. There is a garrison of one hundred and fifty men of three com- panies in the fort and some pieces of cannon. The town of Orange may contain about one hundred and fifty houses and three hundred inhabitants capable of bear- ing arms, the majority of whom are Dutch, besides a number of French refugees and some English people. "After having invested the town and summoned it to surrender with the promise not to pillage it, if it capitulate, I propose in case of resistance to cut or burn the palisades, in order to afiord an opening, and enter there sword in hand and seize the fort. These palisades, which are only about fourteen feet high, can easily be scaled by means of the conveniences we shall find when masters of the town, or [ the place may be entered] by blowing in the gate with a few petards or two small field - pieces which may be of use to me and which I shall find the means of conveying there. * * '^ " After I shall have become master of the town and the fort of Orange, which I expect to accomplish before the English can furnish it any succor, my intention is to leave a garrison of two hundred men in the fort with sufficient supplies which I shall find in the city, and to disarm all the inhabitants, granting, at his majesty's pleasure, pardon to the French deserters and inhabitants I shall find there, that they may follow me. " I shall seize all the vessels, batteaux, and canoes that are at Orange to embark my force on the river which is navigable down to Manathe, and I shall forward with the troops the necessary provisions and ammunition, and some pieces of cannon taken from Fort Orange to serve on the attack on Manathe. * * * "It is necessary for the success of this expedition THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 219 that his majesty shall give orders to two of the ships of war destined this year to escort the merchantmen going to Canada and Acadie, or the fishermen going for cod to the Great Bank, that after having convoyed the merchantmen to come toward the end of August into the bay of Manathe and cruise there during the month of September, as well to prevent succor from Europe which may arrive from England or Boston, as to enter the harbor when on my arrival I shall give the signal agreed upon, so as t«o aid us in capturing the fort, which may be cannonaded from aboard the ships while I attack it on land. * * * "After we shall have become masters of the city and the fort of Manathe, I shall cause the inhabitants to be disarmed and shall send my Canadians back to Orange by the Albany River on their way to their batteaux." ^ Meanwhile the Protestants of the provinces in America were much concerned for the continuance of their relig- ious privileges. When it was learned that Prince Wil- liam of Orange, the stadtholder of theUnited Netherlands, had landed, on the fifth of November, 1688, at Torbay, in Devonshire, England, ' ' to maintain the Protestant re- ligion and the liberties of England," the alarmed Pro- testants in America at once dismissed their fears and secretly began to devise plans to free themselves from the authority of the officers appointed by King James. These rebelHous premeditations were soon manifested in the action of the disaffected people. On the eighteenth of April, Governor Andros was asked by a delegation of the citizens of Boston to ' ' surrender and deliver up the government " of New England. Unwilling to comply with this unwarranted demand, Governor Andros was forthwith imprisoned by the presumptions leaders of the 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. ix. pp. 401-408. 220 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. excited people. When the inteUigence of the uprising in Boston reached New York, on the twenty-sixth of April, it caused no little alarm among the officers of the government. The next day the report that France had declared war against England increased the excitement so that there was '' a great fret and tumult " in the city. Lieutenant-governor Francis Nicholson, who had com- mand of Fort James, conferred with the officers of the militia respecting the protection of the city. It was de- termined that Fort James should be guarded thereafter by the soldiers of the garrison and by daily details from the five companies of the militia then under the com- mand of Colonel Nicholas Bayard. On the thirtieth of April, instructions were sent to the authorities of Albany ' ' recommending them to keep the people in peace" and the militia ''well exercised and equipped.-' The report that Governor Andros had given per- mission to the French authorities of Canada to extirpate the Indians of the five nations made the members of the tribes apprehensive of some act of treachery on the part of the officers of James II. Pieter Schuyler, the mayor of Albany, wrote to Lieutenant-governor Nicholson that '' the Indians were veiy jealous," and if their suspicions were not soon removed that they would ' ' cause great mischief. " The lieutenant-governor immediately replied to the mayor's letter, saying that the report ' ' was utterly false " that his excellency the governor of New England " had made an agreement with the French to cut them off." He therefore advised that the city officers should ' ' endeavour to hinder the Indians going to Canada, " to assure them of the friendship of the officers of the English government, ' ' and to present each nation with a barrel of powder. " The general ignorance of the people of Albany re- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 221 specting- the progress of the revolution in England and the immediate purposes of the French government in the prosecution of the war caused them much uneasi- ness of mind. Aware that the French would make the period of hostilities an occasion to dispossess them of the friendship and trade of the Indians of the five na- tions, the burghers were much concerned respecting the consequences of King James's sudden abdication of the throne of England. Some intolerant Protestants also began to regard Major Jervis Baxter, who was a Roman Catholic, as a very dangerous person to have command of Fort Albany. Therefore they manifested in various ways their mistrust of his fealty to the prince of Orange should he become king of England. This was the condition of affairs when Cai3tain Jona- than Bull of Connecticut arrived in Albany, on Satur- day, the eighteenth of May, 1689. This officer with several commissioners from Boston had been sent there to join with the people of Albany in making a league with the Indians of the five nations. Captain Bull, in his report to Colonel John AUyn, secretary of the gen- eral court of Connecticut, speaks of the disquietude of the people, and of the anxiety of the city officers to learn the news of the progress of the revolution in Eng- land. He immediately on his arrival was invited to meet the magistrates and the aldermen who were in- quisitive for the news. However, as Major Baxter was present, whom he knew to be a Roman Catholic, he did not disclose to them the latest intelligence contained in the newspapers, ' ' both as to f oren nues and tranceactions at Boston." He afterward showed the papers to Captain Jan Jansen Bleecker, who did not agree with the mayor in withholding the news from the people. Pieter Schuy- ler, he says, thought that if the people should learn the 222 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. news of the day, that "it wolde make them run all madd." "I answered y^ [that] I thought he did not consult his owne interest in goeing about to hide y^^ from the people, yt was so publick, for y^^ it must needs worke in them a gelosie of his faithfuUness to them ; and also of them yt were active with him in so doing ; in j^ it was very proper yt all good Christians protistants should be acquainted with these things ; to which he answered litle, but seemingly went away satisfied. ' ' The next day being the Saboth, the mayor sent to me for the papers which I readyly sent to him, & in the evening discorsing with diners gentlemen of the citty, who being earnest for nues, I tolde them I sholde not be wanting to impart w^ [what] neus I had to them, but the papers yt I brought [I] had lent * * * to the mayor. One of them reply'd yt he inquire'd of the mayor since noone & he said he had not heard nor seen any papers, & y^ there was none com, whereupon they concluded they sholde neauer see them. I informed them the substance as neer as I colde, & and also yt they sholde have a sight of them to morrow, at which they seemed much tranceported, and vowed there shold be no Roman Catholick in the Castle [fort] twelve hours longer ; their zeall gro^ng higher and higher for purge- ing all places of & disarming all Papists. Major Bax- ter hearing of this gaue out yt he wolde [would] be gon in 3 or 4 days, and accordingly did ; after which som of the miletary officers informed me yt now thay had taken charg of the castle & all the keys into their owne hands, and kept 25 men of the towne to watch & ward in the Fourt, day and night, att which the people were much satisfied. " I was then speaking of returning home, but the THE HISTORY OF ALBAJSTY. 223 mayor & diuers others aduised me to stay and hear the result of the Makques sachems of their buysnes, whome they ecspected eauery day." Captain Bull then describes the conference with the Indians. He says : " The Maquaes were ready to make their propositions in the Court house, with a present of Beavers and other furs, as I judged to the value of twenty pounds or more, which they brought and layed doune in the house, and haueing chose their speaker, he began, riseing up with two or thre beaver in his hands, the rest all silent, not one word to be heard fro them all the while. The speaker spoke as foloweth, being the 24th May, 1689: ''1. Breatheren, we are now com as our grandfathers used to doe, to renew our unity & friendship and cou- enant made between us & you. "2. We desier yt this house being the covenant & proposition house, may be kept clean, yt is, yt we may keep a clean, single, not a double heart. "3. We do renue the former covenant or chain j^ has been made between us & you, yt is to say. New England, Vergenia, Mereland, & all these parts of America, y*^ it may be kept bright on eauery side, yt it may not rust nor be forgot. * -5^- * ' ' When the sachems heard, " says Captain Bull, ' ' how maters were circumstanced, & wt nues was com to hand, they seem to be glad & re Joyce at wt thay heard & wholly layd aside their intended meeting [at Onondaga,] promising nether to speak with the French nor hear the French speak to them," ^ As related by Captain Bull, the disaffection of the people of Albany caused Major Baxter to quit the place 1 Captain Jonathan Bull's report from Albany. The public records of the colony of Connecticut. May, 1678, — June, 1689. Hartford, 1859. pp. 460-463. 224 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and go to New York, where he received permission from Lieutenant-governor Nicholson to leave the province. It would seem that the action of the people of Albany in obtaining possession of the fort incited some of the "factious and rebellious" inhabitants of New York City to conspire together to dispossess Lieutenant-governor Nicholson of the command of Fort James, for, on the afternoon of the thirty-first of May, he was informed that most of the city-militia were in rebellion and that they would neither obey his orders nor those of their com- manding officer. Colonel Bayard. On the night of the second of June, the malcontents with noisy demonstra- tions gathered in front of the house of Jacob Leisler, the captain of one of the militia-companies, and led by him, marched with beating drums to Fort James and took possession of it. The next day, Captain Leisler published a declaration in which he asserted that his intention in taking com- mand of the garrison was only for " the preservation of the Protestant religion and the fort," and that he would retain command of the fortification until the arrival of ships from England with orders from the prince of Orange for the government of the country. In the after- noon copies of the English papers were received from London containing the news of the elevation of Prince William and the Princess Mary to the throne of England, on the thirteenth of February, and the proclamation that they were king and queen of England and Ireland. When Captain Leisler's declaration was received and read by the disaffected people of Connecticut, the G-erman leader's conduct was enthusiastically approved by them. John AUyn, the secretary of the General Court of Con- necticut, wrote from Hartford, on the thirteenth of June, to Captain Leisler and his partisans, saying : THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 225 "Considering what you have don, we doe advise that you keep the forte tenable and well manned for the de- fence of the protestant religion," and "that you suffer no Roman CathoUcke to enter the same, armed or with- out armes, and that no Romish CathoUck be suffered to keep armes wthin that government or Citty, and that those who shall be betrusted with the government or command of your forte be trusty persons whom you may confide in. " And that we may know your prsent state and what may be necessary for us to contribute towards your wel- fare, we have appointed the Hon^d Major Nathan Gold and Capt. James Fitch Esqrs to give you a vissit, and to give their best advice to you in any thing wherein they may be helpful! to you." On the twenty -first of June, the two delegates from Connecticut arrived in New York City, bringing with them some English newspapers in which was the procla- mation to proclaim King William and Queen Mary sovereigns of England and Ireland. When Captain Leis- ler the next day saw the proclamation, he "had the drum beaten and the king and queen proclaimed in the forenoon " in Fort William, as Fort James was called by him, and in the afternoon, at the town-hall, in the city. The unwillingness of the city officials to take part in these demonstrations of loyalty greatly incensed Captain Leisler and his supporters, who called the mayor, Stephanus Van Courtlandt, a traitor and a papist. Later in the day, while Captain Leisler was with Major Gold and Captain Fitch in Fort Wilham, the turret of the church inside the fortification was discovered to be on fire in three places, and as the magazine near by con- tained about six thousand pounds of powder, there was the wildest excitement until the flames were extin- 15 226 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. guished. Whether an incendiary act or not, the cause of the fire was declared to be " a papistical design," "helUshly wicked and cruel," to destroy Captain Leis- ler, the garrison, and the delegates from Connecticut. The latter, before returning home, advised Captain Leis- ler not to permit any papist to enter the fort, and re- minded him of the warning he had of the ill-will of the Eoman Catholics when "ye terrett in ye fort was fyred in three places," on the day King William and Queen Mary were proclaimed. In their written advice to Cap- tain Leisler and his officers, dated the twenty-sixth of June, the Connecticut emissaries added these concluding words : ' ' Your friends pray God to encourage yo^ hearts and strengthen yo^ hands and patiently waite for ye dis- pose, [disposition,] orders, and commands of yo^s & our most gracious, never equalled, commended, & admired King Willyam, ye very best this lower world knowes, whome God preserve long to Reign." ^ The rancor of Leisler and his followers became more malignant toward the mayor and the members of the common council when the latter met on the twenty- fourth of June, and ordered the proclamation of King William and Queen Mary to be read to the citizens in front of the town-hall, which directed that all sheriffs, justices, collectors, in office, on the first of December, 1688, were to continue in the discharge of their respect- ive duties. The officers of the city government, however, did not carry out these orders, but deposed Matthew Plowman, the collector, who was a Roman Catholic, and appointed as commissioners of the customs. Colonel Nicholas Bayard, Paulus Richards, Thomas Wenham, and John Haynes. When they undertook to discharge the duties of their office. Captain Leisler proceeded to the 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp. 5, 6, 10, 11. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 227 custom-house with a number of soldiers and forcibly ejected them, and installed Peter de la Noy as collector. Colonel Bayard to protect himself from personal injury was compelled to depart from the city in a boat with the utmost secrecy and to make Albany his home for a time. The accession of Prince William and the Princess Mary to the throne of England occasioned great joy in Albany. The following record discloses the action of the people on the first of July, 1689, when they learned that these distinguished personages had been made king and queen : " The Proclamation for Proclaiming there Majs King William and Queen Mary King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland &c., being brought hither from N. Yorke Imediately upon ye Receit thereof ye May & Recorder caused ye Court of Aldermen and Common Council to assemble who attended accordingly and having considered of ye greatest Solemnity j^ could be used in so short a Time, appointed ye Citizens to be in arms about 12 oclock which having done they went in ordr from ye City Hall up to there Majts Fort where there Maj^s were proclaimed in solemn manner in English and dutch, ye gunns fyreing from ye fort & volley of small arms, ye People with Loude acclamations crying God Save King Wm. & Queen Mary, afterwards they marched doune to ye City hall where there Majts were again Proclaimed, ye night Concluding wth ye Ringing of ye Bell, Bone- fyres, fyreworks, and all oyr Demonstrations of joy." Unwilling to acknowledge Jacob Leisler's assumed government of the province, the municipal officers, the justices of the peace, the military officers of the city and county of Albany assembled in convention on the first of August, and resolved that "all public affairs for the preservation of their majesties' interest " should be man- / 228 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. aged by the mayor, the aldermen, the justices of the peace, and the other commissioners of the city and the county, until orders should be received from King Wil- liam and Queen Mary. It was also resolved, the news of war between England and France having been received, that each person in the convention should ' ' bring a gunn with ^ lb of Pouder and Bale equivalent to be hung up in ye church in ye space of three days & y"^ ye Traders and oy Inhabitants be Persuaded to doe ye same to make up ye number of 50 to be made use off upon oc- casion." ^ A few days afterward, when it was learned that a number of persons having heard that the French were about to invade the province were making preparations to leave the county, a proclamation was published that no person or persons (except masters of vessels), fit and able to bear arms should be allowed to go away without a written permit from one of the justices of the peace. Meanwhile Louis XIV., king of France, had instructed Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac, an old lieutenant- general in the French army, to proceed to Canada and to carry out the plans submitted by ChevaUer de Callieres. This officer, on the seventh of June, 1689, was ordered by the king ' ' to act as far as possible in such a manner " that the people of Albany might ''not be advised of his march, so that he" might "surprise this first post" and afterward "secure the number of vessels" required "to descend on Manathe." Although Captain Leisler had made several attempts to obtain from the authorities of the city of Albany an official recognition of his right to administer the govern- ment of the province, they evinced their disapprobation of his acts by a cautious reserve and an unexplained 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. ii. pp. 11-13, 46-50. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 229 silence. However, they resolved in a convention held in the city-hall on the fourth of September, that such was the " eminent danger threatened by the French of Canada and their praying Indians " who were about to come into Albany county "to kill and destroy their majesties' subjects," that an express should immediately be sent to Captain Leisler and the rest of the militia- officers of the city and county officers of New York for one hundred or more men to protect their majesties' fort and the frontier plantations in the county , and also for money and munitions of war. The messenger sent to New York returned and re- ported to the convention, on the seventh day of Septem- ber, that Captain Leisler had said that he had nothing to do with the civil power and had sent a letter to Cap- tains Johannes Wendell and Jan Jansen Bleecker. When the communication was read, it was found to contain the information that Leisler had sent them four small guns, some forty pounds of match from their majesties' stores and two hundred pounds of powder be- longing to certain merchants of Albany. He desired the two captains of the Albany militia to induce the common people to send two men to New York to repre- sent them in the government. He also wrote that he and his council had not received any public moneys and that it was not in their power to send them troops, alleg- ing that the ill-treatment which the people of New York had received from the officials of Albany had made them unwilling to send the requested assistance. He sug- gested that the people of Albany should send representa- tives to consult with his council, which could then de- termine what should be done for the public good. The convention then resolved that as no assistance was to be expected from New York nor sufficient money 230 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. could be raised to obtain men to defend the city and the frontier that letters should be addressed to the governor and convention of Boston and also to the governor and general assembly of Connecticut for. two hundred soldiers to defend the city and frontier during the win- ter. Lieutenant Sharpe and the soldiers in the fort, having taken the oath of allegiance to King William and Queen Mary on the nineteenth of October, the command of the garrison was given to the former, who was to obey such orders and instructions as he should from time to time receive from the convention of the city and county of Albany, until the commands of their majesties should be known. When it was learned that Jacob Leisler had been de- clared commander in chief of the province by his follow- ers and that Jacob Milborne was to be sent to Albany with a company of soldiers to take possession of the fort, the convention on the twenty-sixth of October, took the fol- lowing action : '' Resolved, since we are informed by Persons coming from New Yorke, that Captain Jacob Leisler is designed to send up a Company of armed Men, upon Pretence to assist us in this County, who intend to make themselves Master of their Majesties fort and this City, and carry divers Persons and chief Officers of this City Prisoners to New York, and so disquiet and disturb their Majesties liege People, that a Letter be writ to Alderman Levinus van Schaic, now at New York, and Lieutenant Jochim Staets, to make narrow Enquiry of the Business, and to signify to the said Leisler, that we have received such information ; and withal acquaint him, that notwith- standing we have the Assistance of ninety-five Men from our Neighbors of New England, who are now gone for, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 231 and one hundred Men upon Occasion, to command, from the County of Ulster, which we think will be sufficient this Winter, yet we will willingly accept any such As- sistance as they- shall be pleased to send for the Defence of their Majesties County of Albany : Provided, they be obedient to, and obey such Orders and Commands, as they shall, from Time to Time, receive from the Conven- tion ; and that by no means they will be admitted, to have the Command of their Majesties Fort or this City ; which we intend by Cod's Assistance, to Keep and pre- serve for the Behoof of their Majesties, William and Mary, King and Queen of England, as we hitherto have done since their Proclamation ; and if you hear, that they persevere with such Intention, so to disturb the In- habitants of this County, that you then, in the Name and Behalf of the Convention and Inhabitants of the City and County of Albany, protest against the said Leisler, and aU such Persons that shall make Attempt, for all Losses, Damages, Blood-shed, or whatsoever Mis- chiefs may ensue thereon ; which you are to communi- cate with all Speed, as you perceive their Design." ^ The messenger sent to New York returned and re- ported that he had heard Captain Leisler say among other things, that the authorities of Albany should bring their charter to New York, and that Lieutenant Sharpe and Rogers were papists. On the eighth of November, it was deemed expedient "to prevent all jealousies and animosities," that Pieter Schuyler, the mayor, should be placed in command of the fort, and that Lieutenant Sharpe should be his subordinate officer. "This being Published by Bell-Ringing ye members of ye Convention went to ye Mayers house, and told him 1 The history of the province of New York. By William Smith. London, 1151. p. 62. 232 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. they were come to waite upon him and Conduct him up to ye fort, being accompanied with some of ye Principle Burgers went up and [took] Possession of s^ fort after ye usuall Ceremonies was Dehvered, & ye s^ May^" with all cheerfuUness [was] Received by ye ofl&cers and sould- iers of there Majes garrison." Captain Leisler, having failed in his first attempts to extend his authority over the people of the city and county of Albany, sent Jacob Milborne with a force of soldiers to Albany to garrison the fort and to secure a recognition of his claims as commander in chief of the province. When on the ninth of November three sloops were seen coming up the river, the members of the con- vention in the city assembled at the city-hall, and dele- gated Captain Wendell, Captain Bleecker, Johannes Cuyler, and Reynier Barents to go aboard the vessels and to inquire of the person in command of them his object in coming to the city. This they did and learned from Jacob Milborne that it was his purpose to obtain possession of the fort. The latter, having been invited by the committee to the city-hall, when he per- ceived the large assemblage of people collected there, instead of addressing his words to those in author- ity at once began to speak to the ' ' Common People in a long oration with a high Stile & Language, telling them That now it was in there powr to free themself s from yt Yoke of arbitrary Power and Government under which they had Lyen so long in ye Reign of yt Illegall king James, who was a Papist, Declareing all Illegall whatever was done & past in his time, yea the Charter of this Citty was null & void Since it was graunted by a Popish kings governour & that now ye Power was in the People to choose both new Civill and Military officers as they Pleased." THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 233 Dirck Wessells, the recorder, replied to this seditious emissary, saying that he liad " addessed his Discourse to ye wrong People Since there were no arbitrary Power here ; God had Dehvered them from that yoke by there Majesties now upon ye throne, to whom we had taken ye oath of allegiance, for we acted not in King James name but in King William & queen Marys & were there Subjects." "Jacob Milborne Desyred that ye Mayr Might be Present in ye Convention who was Twice Sent for, but answered y"^ he could not leave his Post which was to keep good watch in there Maj^s fort, Referring ye s^ Mil- borne to ye Gent" that were Conveined together and j^ he would call ye Convention together to morrow after ye 2d Sermon when they would Discourse the Case further with him, this was Communicated to Jacob Milborne who answered that ye Record^" Represented ye Mayr in his absence, and Dehvered ye Convention a letter Signed by 25 Persones which was Read." This communication, dated "ye 28 Octobr 1689," was signed by Jacob Leisler and his principal partisans, who spoke of themselves as the ' ' Committee or members chosen by ye free and open Elections of ye freemen in ye Respective Counties of this Province and Councill of warr." They wrote that they had '' given full Power" to their "Trusty and Beloved friende, Jacob Milborne gent", to treat with, Consult, order, doe, and Performe all things that" should "be Requisite for his Majes Ser- vice " and the safety of the people of Albany, who, as they desired, should give him credence and should treat him amicably so that the enemy should not scandalize them or take any advantage of the disputes and differ- ence between them and the people of Albany. After the letter had been read, Dirck Wessells, the 234 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. recorder, asked Jacob Milborne if he wanted to have the troops aboard the sloops quartered that night in the city. He answered that he did not but that he would accept of some provisions, which were given him. The special mission of Milborne in coming to Albany is disclosed by the following manifesto sent by him to Schenectady, a copy of which was obtained by Pieter Schuyler, on the tenth of November : "Whereas I am authorized by the Hon^e Delegates or Members elected at a Free and Public Election of the Freemen and Respective counties of the Province of N. York and Military Council thereof to arrange and settle the affairs of the City and County of Albany according to the Constitution of the other Counties of the Province aforesaid pursuant to the interest of His Majesty our Sovereign Lord & King and the Welfare of the Inhabit- ants of Said Counties. "These are to advise and require all the Inhabitants of Schinnectady and adjoining places to repair forthwith to the aforesaid City of Albany to receive their Rights and Privileges & Liberties in such manner as if the Gov- ernment of King James the 2d had never existed or any of his arbitrary Commissions or any of his Gov- ernors illegal acts had never been executed or done.'' The true import of this document is made more ap- parent in this postscript to a letter written by Hendrick Cuyler, one of the members of Leisler's council of war, to the people of Schenectady : P. S. — "We earnestly request the aid and diligence of the Noble gentlemen there [Schenectady] for the promo- tion of the Public Good in assisting those whom we now Send up at Albany's request being to the number of 50 men, of whom Jochim Staets is Commander ; not doubt- ing but the gentlemen of Shennechtady will be preferred THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 235 to those of Albany in the approaching New Government as we pledge ourselves to speak in favor of your Dih- gence. * * * "We have this day resolved that you shall have no less Privileges than those of Albany in Trading and Bolting which M^ Milborne will explain to you. We therefore request that you will exhibit all Dilligence in repairing together to Albany to welcome said Milborne." On Sunday afternoon, the tenth of November, the members of the convention assembled in the city-hall. When Milborne came^, he was asked at whose expense the fifty-one men had been brought to Albany. He re- plied at the expense of the people of Albany, each man having been hired at twenty-five shillings a month. The recorder, Dirck Wessells, replied, " That that was Repugnant to there Resolution and letter sent to N. Yorke ye 4th of Sei^tembr Last, which y^ s^ Milborne Perruseing f ounde to be soe, & askd all y^ People Stand- ing by if they thougt y^ County of albany would be able to pay yt [that] Charge, who all unanimously an- swered no ; upon which ye s"^ Milborne said. Then we shall f ynde a way for it, and showed ye Convention his Commission Signed and Sealed. * * * "The Record^ told him that Such a Commission granted by a Company of Private men was of no force " in Albany, "and that he [Milborne] had no Power to doe or order any affaires in albany, but if he could shew a Commission'' from their majesties. King William and Queen Mary, then the people of the city were willing to respect it. " The S!■ -;:- * rpj^g massacre lasted two hours. The remainder of the night was spent in placing sentinels, and in taking some repose. * "''" * In order to occupy the savages, who would otherwise have taken to drink and thus ren- dered themselves incapable for defence, the houses had already been set on fire." Two dwellings were not burned. "All the rest were consumed. The lives of between fifty and sixty persons, old men, women, and children, were spared, they having escaped the first fury of the attack. - '^ * There were upward of eighty well-built and well-furnished houses in the town. 2U THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ' ' The return march began with thirty prisoners. * * * rpj^g French lost but twenty-one men, namely four Indians and seventeen Frenchmen. Only one In- dian and one Frenchman were killed at the capture of the town. The others were lost on the road." These paragraphs are a part of a French account of the attack on Schenectady. The following account of the reception of the news at Albany of this horrifying occurrence appears in the re- cords under the date of Sunday, the ninth of February : ' ' This morning about 5 a Clock ye alarm was brought by Symon Schermerhoorn who was shott threw his Thigh, yt [that] ye freneh and Indians had murthered ye People of Skinnechtady ; haveing got into ye Towne about 11 or 12 a Clock, there being no Watch Kept (ye Inhabitants being so negligent and Refractory) and yt he had much adoe to Escape they being very numerous. "' -^ * ' ' The alarm being given all People Repared to there Post, ye fort fyred severall gunns to give ye alarm to ye farmers but few heard, there being such an Extream Snow above Knee Deep, Severall ye people haveing Escaped ye Cruelty of ye freneh and there Indians came Running here & told us y^ Village was a fyre and yt they had much adoe to Escape for all ye Streets were full of freneh and Indians, & yt many People were murthered, and yt ye enemy were marching hither, which news was Con- tinually Confirmed till afternoon. * "" * Some horse- men [were] sent out to Discover ye Enemies force and there march but were forced to Return ye snow being so deep. * * * This night we gott a letter from Skin- nechtady Informing us yt the Enemy yt had done y t Mis- chieffe there, were about- one hundred and fifty or 200 men but that there were 1400 men in all ; One army for Albany & anoyr for Sopus which hindred much ye THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 245 marching of any force out of ye Citty fearing yt ye enemy might watch such an opportunity." The horrors of the night-attack upon Schenectady are thus depicted, by Pieter Schuyler, the mayor of Albany, in a letter, dated the fifteenth of February : '' No tongue can express the Cruelties that were committed. The whole Village was instantly in a Blaze. Women with Child [were] riped open, and their Infants cast into the Flames, or dashed against the Posts of the Doors. Sixty Persons perished in the Massacre, and twenty-seven were carried into Captivity. The rest fled naked towards Al- bany, thro' a deep Snow which fell that very Night in a terrible Storm ; and twenty-five of these Fugitives lost their Limbs in the Flight, thro' the Severity of the Frost." On Monday, Captain Bull, taking with him a detail of soldiers from the different companies in Albany, pro- ceeded to the burned village to succor the suffering peo- ple and to bury the dead. He was instructed, if he found any friendly Indians there, to take them and to pursue the retreating enemy and to ' ' use all means Imaginable to Rescue ye Prisoners." When the Connecticut officer undertook his depressing task of interring the bloody, blackened, frozen bodies that lay in the ashes of the con- sumed buildings, he found those of Lieutenant Enos Talmadge, Sergeant Church, and the other members of his company who had been killed while gallantly de- fending the palisaded fort, which the French soldiers under Lieutenant Daillebout de Mantet first assailed. Fearful that the French might again invade the pro- vince, it was resolved by the convention of Albany to persuade the Mohawks to move to Schenectady and build a castle there, and also to solicit the " Indians of Skach- kook to come & five & Plant upon Marte gerritse Island " [now Van Rensselaer Island]. 246 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. On the second of March, the convention comiuissioned Robert Livingston and Captain Gerret Teunise to go to the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut and to treat and consult with their governors and councils respecting such things as were " Requisite for there Majes King William & Queen Maryes Service & ye Safety of there subjects " in the city and county of Albany, and to show the officers the " necessity of joyning all forces * * "■'" to invade * * '^ Canida by Sea & Land." These commissioners were also instructed ' ' to desyre such assistance & supply from them " as were needed. Two days thereafter, Jacob Leisler and his council commissioned Johannes de Bruyn, Johannes Provoost, and Jacob Milborne to proceed to Albany with one hun- dred and sixty soldiers and to obtain possession of Fort Orange, as Fort Albany was then called, and to superin- tend, order and control the affairs of King William's gov- ernment. When these commissioners arrived in Albany and made known their mission to the convention, its members were so divided in opinion respecting the pro- priety of recognizing Leisler s assumed authority as lieu- tenant-governor of the province that they, after much discussion, determined that if Milborne and his associates would agree to perform certain stipulations that they would consent to grant what the former demanded. Robert Livingston, writing to Sir Edmund Andros, from Hartford, Consiecticut, on the fourteenth of April, 1690, speaks of the manner in which Leisler's delegates observed the articles of capitulation, signed by them on the twentieth of March : "I had letters last week from home. "" * * They have surrendered ye fort to Leis- ler's party ; for this CoUony [Connecticut] drew off ye Company yt [that] was there as soon as ye N. Yorke forces * * * came up, and [Connecticut] advised THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 24T them to submit to Leysler as also did Boston, calling him Leift. Governor, and [said] yt we could not expect any assistance till we had submitted, for every one of our neighbors drew back there hands." The disheartened official relates that the New York commissioners failed to pay the English soldiers garrisoning Fort Orange and ejected them, except thirteen, "among ye rest poor Sharpe," who was lame, "being wounded with a great gunn yt splitt when ye alarm came of Shinnectady. " " They of Albany" he writes, "agree wel enough with ye New Yorke Commissioners concerning ye carying on ye war. Albany furnishes 140 men, Sopus 60, N. Yorke 200, yt goe out in a months time against ye enemy with ye 5 nations towards Canida. "'^ * * ' ' As soon as ' Leisler ' heard of my goeing from Al- bany to these Colonies, he sends to this Colony and Bos- ton to apprehend me, writeing warrants, conts [contain- ing] many false and pernicious lyes, yt I should have spoke, this and that, against ye Prince of Orange, think- ing by yt means to render me odious to these Colonies, yt they should not send supplyes, and then he could manage Albany at his pleasure," In this letter to Grovernor Andros, the persecuted Al- banian further remarks: "I have noe more to add but pray your Excell. to be mindfull of my concerns about ye Albany expedition, yt His Majesty may send orders to settle and pay all these arrears, else I am undone ; for there is about 400 £ I am out, besides what I have ye mortgage for, and I have since these revolutions advanced considerable expecting every day a settlemt. Brother Cortlant and I have maintained ye Kings souldiers at Al- bany till ye 12 of March 16f§ exclus: and now they turn them out like doggs, and tell them, ' let ye Convention pay yow,' who administred ^ * * ye oath of alle- 248 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. gience to them for King William and Q. Marj, for none elce were admitted to stay but them that took yt oath, because they should have nothing to object against us." ^ Leisler, having at last obtained from the authorities of Albany a recognition of his claim to administer the government of the province, permitted Pieter Schuyler to retain the office of mayor. Johannes Cuyler was ap- pointed town-clerk in the place of Robert Livingston, and Captain Jochim Staets given the command of Fort Orange, then garrisoned with sixty men. The proposed expedition against Canada being favored by Leisler, a council of war was held in New York, on the first of May, 1690 In July about five hundred sol- diers and a number of Indians were concentrated at Albany. Fitzjohn Winthrop of Connecticut, having re- ceived from ihe governor of that colony a commission "to command the forces designed against Canada," reached Albany with some soldiers from Connecticut in the latter part of the month. Robert Livingston came from Hartford with these troops, and gave his house to the Connecticut officer for his headquarters. Shortly after his arrival, the latter was commissioned by Leisler as major-general of the army of invasion. About the be- ginning of August, Major-general Winthrop marched his forces to Wood Creek, at the south end of Lake Cham- plain. Unprovided with canoes and provisions, the httle army was compelled to return and went into camp at Greenbush, on the twenty-first of August. Other than a foray conducted by Captain John Schuyler, nothing of importance was accomplished by the expedition of 1690. Leisler became so exasperated by the sudden, incon- sequential termination of it, that he hastened to Albany and imprisoned General Winthrop and a number of other 1 Doc, colonial hist. N. Y., vol iii. pp. YOS-YlO, THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 249 officers. This arbitrary act at once caused a great tumult. The vindictive usurper unable to quell the menacing sol- diers and Indians quickly released the officers. The in- censed government of Connecticut severely censured the pretentious demagogue for this unlawful exercise of power, and told him "that a prison is not a catholicon for all state maladies." On the tenth of October, Leisler appointed Jochim Staets, Johannes Wendell, Jan Janse Bleecker, Pieter Bogardus, and Eyer Jacobse Schermerhorn to superin- tend, direct, and control the affairs of the government of the city and county of Albany. The disturbed condition of the province under the government of Leisler and his associates, and the constant apprehension of a descent upon the city by the French continued to disquiet the people of Albany during the winter of 1690 and 1691. The arrival of Governor Henry Sloughter in New York, on the nineteenth of March, 1691, and the im- prisonment of Jacob Leisler on the next day, ended the period of revolt in the province. On the ninth of April, the Assembly convened in the city of New York. Dirck Wessels and Levinus van Schaick were representatives from Albany county, and Kiliaen van Eensselaer from Eensselaerswyck. Several important acts relating to Albany were passed. One directed that a court of ses- sions should be held for the city and county of Albany, in the city -hall, on the first Tuesdays in June, October, and February of each year, for " the increase of virtue and discouraging of evil doers ; " the sessions of which court were to ' ' continue for the space and time of two dayes and no longer." A court of common pleas was also ordered to be held in the city-hall ; beginning the next day after the termination of the court of sessions 250 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and continuing two days, one judge and three justices occupying the bench, ' ' to hear, try, and determine all things triable at the common law." An act was also passed for the defence of the frontiers of the province in the county of Albany. The governor was empowered to raise ' ' one company to consist of one hundred fuzileers, with their proper officers, which shall remain in the said county, for the defence thereof one whole year, to commence on the twenty-eighth day of March now last past." Of the sum of £2000 to be raised by the province to pay the expenses of this body of sol- diers, the city and county of Albany were to be assessed £180. When Governor Sloughter, in the latter part of May, visited Albany and Schenectady, he held a number of conferences with the sachems of the five nations assem- bled in the city-hall in Albany. One of the Indian orators referred to the past troubles in the province, and said : " We have a tree of peace and tranquility in this place, which tree has shook and moved much of late. We make that tree firm and strong so that in the future it may not waver but be immovable. " The governor writing, in New York, on the eleventh of July, 1691, to the governors of the neighboring provinces, speaks of his visit, saying : " I re- turned to this place from Albany on the 27th past, where I left all things in a very good posture and with much dif- ficulty have secured our Indians. I found that place in great disorder, our plantations and Schenectady almost ruined and destroyed by the enemys dureing the time of the late confusion here. I have garrisoned Schenectady and the Halfe Moon with some of the hundred fusileers raised by our Assembly for the defence of the frontier at Albany; the remainder with one of the King's companys are posted at Albany. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 251 "By the Indians propositions herewith sent you, you will perceive their sentiments and what apprehensions they have concerning your government and the rest of the adjacent colonys, and how farr they think you [are] obliged (being in the same chaine of Covenant with them) to aid and assist us against the French our com- mon enemy. * '■ * I need not relate unto you of how great import the preservacon of this place [Albany] is, being the only bulwark and safeguard of all Their Majes- ty s plantacons on the main [coast] of America, and if, for want of strength, the French should assault and gain Albany, how farr your Government and all the English Colonys on both sides of us would be endangered, you can easily judge. For we have nothing but that place that keeps our Indians steady to us, and the loss of that must be the loss of all the Kings interest on this Continent." ^ Meanwhile Major Pieter Schuyler, the mayor of the city, had marched from Albany on the twenty-first of June, with a small body of soldiers and Indians, and on the first of August, fell upon the French settlement of La Prairie de la Madeleine, near Montreal, and killed about two hundred of the enemy's people and Indians, losing only twenty- one men and twenty-two Mohawks and River Indians. After the sudden death of Governor Sloughter on the twenty-third of July, Major Richard Ingoldsby ad- ministered the government of the province until the arrival of Governor Benjamin Fletcher, in New York, on the twenty-ninth of August, 1692. 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. '784, '785. CHAPTEE XII. INDIAN AFFAIRS. 1693 -noo. The persistence of the French in their attempts to obtain possession of the province of New York kept the people of Albany in a state of constant disquietude. The vigilance of the tribes of the five nations of Indians to preserve themselves from subjection by the French greatly affected the fur trade on v^hich the welfare of inhabitants of the city mainly depended. The exigencies of this period of war drew to the city for its defence various bodies of soldiers, who were either billeted in the dwellings of the people, quartered in Fort Orange, or camped on Martin Gerretson's Island. Houses were built outside the palisades to lodge the Indians, who took part in the protection of the city and made frequent recon- noiters along the frontier to discover the movements of the enemy. Details of soldiers were stationed at Sche- nectady, at Niskayuna, and at Half Moon, (Waterford,) to guard the fording places in the Mohawk Eiver. The French, in January, 1693, invaded the province of New York to attack the palisaded villages of the Mo- hawks whose frequent forays along the borders of Cana- da had checked the settlement of that country and had prevented Louis IV. from obtaining the possession of the territory lying between Montreal and the Ohio River. 353 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 253 About three hundred and fifty soldiers and two hundred Indians, provided with rackets to prevent their feet from sinking into the snow and hght sledges drawn by dogs to transport provisions, reached the first Mohawk village, near Schenectady, on the eighth of February. The absence of the resident warriors permitted the French to destroy it. The undefended second village w^as also burnt. In the third, which was called Tionondage, were forty warriors, who, when the French entered it un- perceived, resisted their assailants and killed thirty of the enemy. Its brave defenders, however, were slain, and the French force with three hundred prisoners, men, women, and children, retreated towards Canada, pur- sued by Major Pieter Schuyler, who had the command of about three hundred soldiers and militiamen and about the same number of Indians. The companies of fusileers, militia, foot and horse, were respectively commanded by Captains Peter Mathews, Arent Schuyler, Benjamin Phipps, Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Thomas Carton, and Lieutenant John Schuyler. The pursuit of the French was continued for several days, during which time, between thkty and forty of the enemy's men were killed and about forty prisoners rescued. When Major Schuyler returned to Schenectady, he found Governor Fletcher there with a reinforcement of nearly three hundred men brought from New York, from which he had sailed with three sIoojds late in the afternoon of the fourteenth of February, and arrived at Albany, about nine o'clock, on the morning of the seven- teenth. The promptitude with which the governor had hastened to aid the Indians obtained from them their hearty thanks, and they thereafter called him Cajen- quiragoe, Lord of the Great Swift Arrow. Vv^hile Governor Fletcher was in Albany, the muni- 254 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. cipal officers presented him with an address, in which they adverted to his dihgence in hastening with troops to the defence of the frontier and the city: " Wee therefore out of a deep sence of yo^ Excell, unparelled affection to &care for us, cannot but esteem our selves highly obhdged to yo^ Excellency and begg of you to accept our unfeigned thanks, assuring yo^ Excell. as wee shall never forgett yo'^ extraordinary care of us, soe wee shall ever admire and beg the continuence of yo^ Excellency s benign gov- ernment over us. And since the Maquase nation is wholly dispersed by the enemyes late burning all their Castles & our farmers live straggling up and down the country in great danger to be cutt off by sculking Indians, wee pray that yor Excellency in yor wisdom will be pleased to order some convenient place where the remnant of the said Nation may be convened together & fortified against any attaque of the enemy, & that the farmers may be ordered to fortify themselves in Comps together that, the enemy may not have an advantage of them." ^ By Governor Fletcher's appointment, Pieter Schuyler became a member of the provincial council, Eobert Livingston was made a sub-collector of customs at Al- bany, and William Shaw, ganger. As municipal officers, Pieter Schuyler was appointed mayor, Dirck Wessells recorder, Robert Livingston town-clerk, and John Apell sheriff. Major Richard Ingoldsby, commanding Fort Or- ange, was made president and Robert Livingston judge- advocate of the court-martial, who with the captains of the companies in the city, had power to exercise martial law. The militia of the county of Albany, embracing five companies of foot soldiers and one company of dragoons, the whole numbering three hundred and fifty- nine men, was under the command of Major Pieter Schuyler. 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. 14-20. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 255 In June, 1693, Governor Fletcher, learning that the French were endeavoring to make a treaty of peace with the Indians of the five nations, visited Albany, and held conferences with the savages. In one of his speeches he said: " I have received information as if some of the breth- ren were wavering and inclined to a peace with the com- mon enemy. I desire to know the truth of the matter and am assured that such thoughts must only arise from the instigation of the Jesuit Milet whom some of the breth- ren have so long suffered to live among them, and whose practice is to delude and betray them. Let me therefore advise you to remove this bad person from among you." He then gave them the following presents, which he told them were brought from the king and queen " to renew and confirm the ancient covenant not only in behalf of this province but those of New England, Virginia, Mary- land and Pennsylvania," and which were also an ex- pression of their majesties' esteem : 86 guns, 146 bags of powder, 800 bars of lead, 1000 flints, 87 hatchets, 4 gross of knives, 5 pieces of duffel- cloth, )26 shirts, oO rolls of tobacco, 5^ gross of pipes, 9 dozen pairs of stock- ings, 30 kegs of rum, 200 loaves of bread, 4 casks of beer, 2 fat bulls, besides salt, and 24 brass-kettles. To certain chiefs or sachems he gave 8 laced coats, 8 laced hats, 24 shirts, 4 guns, 6 kegs of rum and 1 dozen pairs of stock- ings. One of the Indian orators, who was delegated to ex- press the thanks of the recipients of these gifts, said : "We are extremely glad, and roll and tumble in joy that our great king and queen have been pleased to en- large their favors to us in our great necessities. " ^ In September, 1693, an allotment was made for the delivery of five hundred and sixty new palisades at Fort 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. 25, 26, 28, 29 ; 38-4'7. 256 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Orange by the inhabitants of the county of Albany. The sum of fifteen pounds had been authorized by the gov- ernment to be expended for new pahsades, so that the persons dehvering them at the fort received 6f pence for each pahsade. Some were to be twenty feet long and some nineteen, and all twelve inches thick at the smallest end, "of good smooth-barked pyne, not of your black- barked pyne," and were to "be sett up against the old stockadoes in a month's time." The people of the city of Albany were to ride or bring 200, the inhabitants of Rensselaerswyck 100, those of Schenectady 90, those of Kinderhook 85, those of Catskill and " Coxhacky " 35, and those of Claverack 30. The duty of opening and shutting the gates of the city devolved upon the city porter and town cryer. Pieter Schuyler, who had been mayor of the city for more than eight years, was succeeded by John Abeel, who was appointed to the office by Governor Fletcher, on the fourth of October, 1694. The Rev. John Miller, describing Albany in 1695, says : "It is in circumference about six furlongs, and hath therein about 200 houses, a fourth part of what there is reckoned to be in New York. The form of it is septan- gular, and the longest line [is] that which huts upon the river running from north to south. On the west angle is the fort, quadrangular, strongly stockadoed and ditched round, having in it twenty-one pieces of ordnance mounted. On the northwest side are two block-houses, and on the southwest as many : on the southeast angle stands one block-house ; in the middle of the line from thence northward is a horned work, and on the northeast angle a mount. The whole city is well stockadoed round, and in the several fortifications named are about thirty guns. Dependent on this city, and about twenty miles THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 257 distance to the northward from it, is the Fort of Scanec- tade, quadrangular, with a treble stockado, a new block- house at every angle, and in each blockhouse two great guns ; and Nestigayune, and Half -moon ; places, formerly of some account, but now deserted. On this city also depends the Fort at the Flats, four miles from Albany, belonging to the River Indians, who are about sixty families ; it is stockadoed round, has a block-house and a mount, but no great guns. There are in it five Indian wigwams, and a house or two serving in case of necessity for the soldiers, in number twenty-four, who are the guard there," ^ The diagram of the city of Albany contained in the Rev. John Miller's " Description of the province and city of New York : with plans of the city and several forts as they existed in the year 1695," ^ is no doubt a correct representation of the place and its suburbs. The ex- planation of it is given in foot-notes, as is also that of the diagram of the fort. ^ During the years 1696 and 1697, until the publication of the peace of Ryswick, ^ the people of Albany were fre- quently alarmed by the appearance of bands of Canadian Indians near the city, who massacred a number of the 1 " By the Rev. John Miller. London, printed and published for the enlightment of such as would desire information anent the New-Found- Land of America." 2 Explanation of diagram of Albany. "1. The fort of Albany. 2. The Dutch Calvinist church. 3. The Dutch Lutheran church. 4. The burying place. 5. The Dutch Calvinist burying place. 7. 7. The block houses. 8. The Stadt-house. 9. A great gun to clear a galley. 10. 10. The stock- ado. 11. 11. The gates of the city, six in all." Explanation of the fort of Albany. " 1. The governor of Albany's house. 2. The officers' lodgings. 3. The soldiers' lodgings. 4. The fiag-staff and mount. 5. The magazine. 6. The Dial mount. 7. The Town mount. 8. The well. 9. 9. The centry boxes. 11. The Sally port. 12. 12. The ditch fortified with stakes. 13. 13. The gardens. 14. The stockado. 15. The fort gate." 3 Signed at Ryswick, Holland, September 21, 1697. 17 258 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. inhabitants of the county, burned their dwelhngs and barns, and killed their cattle. On the third of May, 169Y, Governor Fletcher ordered that a report should be ren- dered him of the number of persons who had left the city and county during the war and of the number killed and taken prisoners ; and also a similar report respecting the Indians of the five nations. On the nineteenth of April 1698, a return was made which disclosed that in 1 689 the inhabitants of the county were 662 men, 340 women, and 1014 children ; and in 1698, they were 382 men, 262 women, and 805 children. There were also 23 negroes in the county in 1698, The number of the Indians in 1689 was : Mohawks 270, Oneidas 180, Onondagas 500, Cayougas 300, Senecas 1300, and River Indians 250, making a total at the beginning of the war of 2800. In 1698 there were 110 Mohawks, 70 Oneidas, 250 Onondagas, 200 Cayougas, 600 Senecas, and 90 River Indians, in all 132^>. The report further showed that 142 men, 68 women and 209 children had left the city and county during the period of hostilities, that 16 men had been taken prisoners, 84 had been killed and 38 had died. ^ On the second of April, 1698, Richard Coote, the earl of Bellomont, the new governor of the province, arrived in New York. In July, he visited Albany, and had several conferences with the sachems of the five nations. Writ- ing to the commissioners of the Council of Trade, in September, the governor thus speaks of some of the incidents of his visit: " My journey to Albany in July last was very unfortunate to me in respect to my health, for having appointed the Five Nations of Indians to meet there at a day certain, I resolved to keep touch with them a,s near as I could, tho' to the hazard of my life, and I imbarked * * * in the midst of a fit of the gout, by 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. 337, 338. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 259 which * * * and a cold taken upon Hudson's River ; I had hke to have dyed when I came to Albany. How- ever, in the weak, condition I was, I made a shift to manage a conference with the Indians. " I must confess I was strangely surprised and dis- couraged at the behaviour of those people the first two or three days conference ; for I found them so sullen and cold in their carriage that I thought we had quite lost their affections, but some of the Sachims coming to some of the honest Magistrates of that town, discovered to them they had been tamper'd with by Mr. Dellius, the Dutch Minister, to whom with three others, viz^ : Colonel Peter Schuyler, Major Dyrk Wessells, mayor of that Town, and one Banker \ Colonel Fletcher had committed the whole management of all the Indian affairs ; so that Dellius, to serve the interest and designe of Colonel Fletcher in creating me all the difficulty and disturbance in that part of my administrations, had possessed the Indians (as these Sachims confessed) that their power, vizt : that of Dellius and the other three before mentioned persons, was equall to mine, and did insinuate, as if it did more peculiarly belong to them, to take congnizance of the Indians and their affairs, and to treat with and succor them at all times then it did me. Besides, Dellius did iiiculcate that by no means they must impeach Colonel Fletcher of any neglect of them or our frontiers during the late warr. ' ' These practices of DeUius were the true reasons I afterward discovered of the cold behaviour and dogged- ness of the Indians to me, but they being a people who have naturally a great quickness of understanding, in- formed themselves of severall of the most substantial and honest people of that town that I was the King's 1 Evert Banker. 260 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Governour and that Dellius had deluded and abused them ; they found out their error, and became more free in declaring their grievances to me. * * * ' ' I shall observe this to your Lordships that tho' the beginning of my treaty with our Indians was very melan- choly to me and all those that were present and wished ■well to the King's government, there having been all the marks that can be imagined of discontent and disaffection in the countenances and carriages of those people ; yet to my unspeakable satisfaction I managed them with that patience and gentleness and made them so good a present, that I quite retrieved their affections to the King's govern- ment, and by the acknowledgement of all the Magistrates and traders at Albany, they were never known to part with any Governor in so good humour as they did with me. It does happen to be a little more expensive to the country this journey of mine, then usuall, it amounting to about twelve hundred pounds of this country money; but then it must be considered that aU those commodities which are useful and acceptable to the Indians happened to be dearer at the time of my going up to Albany 50 per cent then they were ever known to be during the whole course of the last warr. * * * ' ' Dellius, the Dutch Minister, was the more industri- ous to amuse the Indians and make them reserved to me, that they might not complain of the notorious fraud and circumvention put upon the Mohack Indians by himself chiefly, and the other three before mentioned persons, in obtaining a grant from Colonel Fletcher of their whole country. The villany of this Dellius will appear to your Lordships upon the perusall of that part of the conference which is in manuscript and which relates wholly to that fraudulent bargain transacted between Dellius and six or eight Mohack Indians, wherein tho' he makes the Indians THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 261 believe the land was only to be conveyed to them by himself and the other three persons in trust for the use of them and their posterity, and to hinder the said land being disposed of to other hands, that would probably dispossesse them thereof ; yet he with the other three persons together with M^ Pinhorne ^ (whom I lately re- moved from the Council and his Judges place) obtained an absolute grant of all the said Mohacks land from Colonel Fletcher. -^ - - ''The next thing observable in the said Addresse [of the magistrates of Albany] is their giveing me thanks for restoring the management of the Indians and their affairs, to all the Magistrates of that town, which I thought was the fair and honest way for the advantage both of the Indians & Inhabitants of Albany ; for I could by no means approve of the private management Colonel Fletcher had confined the Indians affairs and trade to, vizt : under the direction of Mr DelUus, the Minister, Colonel Peter Schuyler, Major Wessells and Mr Banker, wherein those four persons found their Account ; but that town and the whole Province suffered prejudice in the trade with the Indians." ^ The land granted to the Rev. Godefridus Dellius by the Indians, on the third of September, 1696, was about seventy miles in length and about twelve in breadth, and extended from the Batten kill, in Washington County, the north bounds of the Saratoga patent, to the site of Vergennes, Vermont. The land granted by the Indians to William Pinhorn, Pieter Schuyler, the Rev. Godefridus Dellius, Dirck WesseUs and Evert Banker was about fifty miles long and two miles wide, and lay on each side of the Mohawk River, immediately west of the site of 1 William Pinhorn, a member of the provincial council and a justice of the Supreme Court. 8 Doc. colonial hist- N. Y. vol. iv. pp, 362-3QV. 262 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Amsterdam, in Montgomery County. These patents were annulled by the Assembly, in May, 1699, as was recommended by the governor ; and the Rev. Gode- fridus Dellius, by the act, was deprived of his "benefice at Albany." The pastorship of the Reformed church was then given to the Rev. Johannes Petrus Nucella, who was succeeded, on the twentieth of July, 1700, by the Rev. Johannes Lydius, who on the following day preached his introductory sermon. The dictatorial power of royalty and the blind obedi- ence of subjects in the seventeenth century are con- spicuously exhibited in the following oath, test and association which were taken and signed by the mayor, Hendrick Hanse, the recorder, Jan Janse Bleecker, the aldermen, the Rev. Grodefridus Dellius, and one hundred and sixty-six of the other citizens of Albany, on the fourth of January, 1699 : iij^ * * * (Jq hereby Promise and Swear yt I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to his majesty, King William, so help me God. i <■ j^ * * * ^ (Jq swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest and abjure as Impious and Heretical, yt damnable Doctrine and Position, yt Princes Excom- municated or Deprived by ye Pope or any authority of ye See of Rome, may be deposed or murthered by their subjects or any other whatsoever. "And I doe declare yt no foreign Prince, Person, Prelate, State or Potentate, hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction, Power, Superiority, Preeminence or Au- thority, Ecclesiasticale or Spirituall within this Realm, So help me God." THE TEST. "We underwritten do solemnly and sincerely, in ye presence of God, profess and declare y^ wee doe believe THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 263 yt in ye Sacrament of ye Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of ye Elements of Bread and Wine into ye body and blood of Christ, or after- ye Consecration thereof by any person whatsoever, and yt ye Invocation or Adoration of ye Virgin Mary and ye Sacrifice of ye Mass, as they are nov7 used in ye Church of Rome, are Superstitious and Idolatrous, and we do Solemnly in ye presence of G-od, Profess, Testify and Declare yt we do make this declaration and every part thereof in ye plain and ordinary Sense of ye words now read unto us as they are commonly understood by English Prodistants without any Evasion, Equivocation or Mental Reservation whatsoever, and without any Dispensation already granted for ye purpose by ye Pope or any other authority or person whatsoever, or without any hope of any such Dispensation from any person or authority whatsoever, or without thinking yt we are or can be acquitted before God or Man, or absolved of this Declaration ck any part thereof, although ye Pope or any other person or persons or power w^hatsoever should dispense with or annull ye same, or declare that it was null and void from ye begin- ning." THE ASSOCIATION. " Whereas there has been a horrid and detestable conspiracy formed and carried on by Papists and other wicked and trayterous persons for Assassinating his Majesties Royal Person in order to Incourage an Invasion from ffiance to Subvert our Religion, Laws and Liberties, we whose names are underwritten do heartily, sincerely and solemnly profess, testify, and declare yt his present Majesty, King William is rightful and lawful king of these Realms, and we do mutually promise and engage to stand by and assist each other to ye utmost of our power in ye Support and Defence of his Majesties most 264 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. sacred person and government against ye late King James j^ pretended Prince of Wales and all theire ad- herents, and in case his Majesty come to any violent or untimely death (which God forbid) we do hereby freely and unanimously oblige ourselves to unite, associate, and stand by each other in Revenging ye same upon his enemies and all their adherents, and in ye supporting and defending ye succession of ye Crown according to an act in ye first year of ye Reign of King William and Queen Mary, instituted an act declaring ye Rights and Liberties of ye Subject, and settling ye succession of ye Crown. "^ In order to lessen the expenses of the city during this period of peace, the fourteen soldiers who were oc- cupying the block-house near the south gate of the city, were by a resolution of the common council, on the tAventy-ninth of November, 1699, to be lodged in the fort. At the same time, John Ratcliffe and Robert Barrett were appointed to perform the duties of the rattle-watch (Ratehvagh), for one year. They were to patrol the city every night from ten o'clock until day- light, with rattles and lanterns. Their round was or- dered to begin at the main guard-house near the south gate of the city and to extend along Brower (Broadway) Street to the bridge over the Rutten kill at Colonel Schuyler's house, thence through Jonker (State) Street to the corner where Johannes de Wandelaer lived, on the hill, near the fort, thence along the hill to the house of Alderman Johannes Roseboom's house, on the east side of Parrel (Pearl) Street, north of Rom Street, (Maiden Lane,) thence along Parrel Street to Gysbert Marselis's house, on the northeast corner of Parrel and Rom Streets, and thence along Rom Street to the house of Hendrick Bries, and thence to the guard-house. 1 Albany City records, vol, iv. p. 362, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 265 Whenever they saw a burning building, or thieves, they were instructed to raise an alarm. For their services during the year they were both to receive £22 16s. The condition of the soldiers in Fort Orange was in 1700 a matter of much commisseration to the people of Albany. The governor, writing from New York to the lords of trade on the twenty-sixth of July, adverts to this fact: "Some of the Inhabitants of Albany who are now here, tell me the Soldiers there in Garrison are in that shameful! and miserable condition for the want of cloaths that the like was never seen. * * ^ This sad condition of the Soldiers does us great hurt with the Indians, whose chief est resort being to that town, & they being a very observing people, measure the greatness of our King, and the conduct of affars by the shame- full ill plight of the Soldiers. These persons assure me that some of the old crafty Sachems of the Five Nations have ask'd 'em, whether they thought 'em such f ooles as to believe our King could protect 'em from the French, when he was not able to keep his Soldiers in a condition as those in Canada are kept." The governor relates in a postscript to his letter the following incredible stories which were then current among the people of Albany: " Decannissore, one of the Sachems of the Onondagas, married one of the praying Indians in Canada, (by praying Indians is meant such as are instructed by the Jesuits,) this woman was taught to poison as well as to pray. The Jesuits had furnish'd her with so subtill a poison, and taught her a leger de main in using it ; so that whoever she had a mind to poison she would drink to 'em a cup of water, and let drop the poison from under her nail (which are always very long, for the Indians never pare 'em) into the cup. "This woman was so true a disciple of the Jesuits, 266 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. that she has poison'd a multitude of our Five Nations that were best affected to us. She lately coming from Canada in company with some of our Indians, who went to visit their relations in that Country who have taken sides with the French, And their being among others a Protestant Mohack, (a proper goodly young man) him this woman poison'd so that he died two days journey short of Albany, and the Magistrates of that town sent for his body and gave it a Christian burial. The woman comes to Albany, where some of the Mohacks happening to be, and among 'em a young man nearly related to the man that had been poison'd, who espying the woman, cries out with great horror, that there was that beastly woman that had poison'd so many of their friends, and 't was not fit she should live any longer in the world to do more mischief ; and so made up to her, and with a clubb beat out her brains." "Aquendero the Chief Sachem of the Onondage Nation, who was Prolocutor [speaker] for all the Five Nations at the Conference I had two years ago at Al- bany, has been forc'd to fly from thence, and come and live on Coll. Schuyler's Land near Albany. Aquendero's son is poyson'd and languishes, and there is a sore broke out on one of his sides, out of which there comes hand- fulls of hair, so that they reckon he has been bewitch'd, as well as poyson'd." ' In his letter of the seventeenth of October, ITOO, to the Board of Trade, the earl speaks of his visit to Albany in August : "I cannot express the melancholy I was in after I got to Albany, for the Indians whom I feared would have been there before me, made me wait a fort- night for their coming ; so that truly I concluded them entirely lost to us. Some peopled fancied they were 1 Doc colonial hist. N- Y. vol iv. pp. 687, 689. ' THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 267 tamper'd with by some of the angry party at Albany. The Interpreter who was sent to hasten the Sachems re- ported that their minds were so possess'd with a jealousy of my intending them mischief as the French had sug- gested to them, that they were all that while deliberat- ing whether to venture to meet me at Albany. My con- ference with the Indians * * * lasted seven or eight days, and was the greatest fatigue I ever underwent in my whole life. I was shut up in a close chamber with 50 Sachems, who besides the stink of bear's grease with which they plentifully dawb'd themselves were con- tinually either smoaking tobacco or drinking drams of rum. They seem'd sullen and out of humour at first, but by degrees I brought 'em to perfect good temper. I am told there never appeared so many Sachems at any conference as at this. There were above 200 men, women, and children, and 't was with some difficulty we could find 'em in victuals. * * * "I am in hopes of bringing the Eastern Indians to come and settle at and about Schackhook with our River Indians ; 't is a project I have formerly acquainted your Lordships with, which if I can accomplish will be of very great use to strengthen our Five Nations and annoy the French whenever we have a war with France. Your Lordships will find our River Indians make me an overture to that purpose. * * -^^ Our Schackhook or River Indians were of those Eastern Indians, but were driven from that country by the people of New England 26 years ago, in the war call'd King Philips war. Those Eastern Indians and our river Indians still retain their friendship and intermarry with each other. "The Penicook and Eastern Indians were cunning enough to send ten or twelve of their people to be pre- sent at our conferences at Albany, to watch and observe 268 THE mSTOEY OF ALBANY. whether the Five Nations were in good intelligence with me. One of 'em I remember'd to have seen in Boston ; he speaks good English and I discours'd him long. He told me the Jesuits made him and the rest of the In- dians his neighours believe the Five Nations were re- solved to decline meeting me at Albany this time, and would revolt to the Govern our of" Canada. I was glad to hear the Mohacks tell those Eastern Indians that if they liv'd not Peaceably with the English in New Eng- land, they would look on 'em as their enemies and cut 'em off. And indeed that is an unanswerable reason for the King's uniting the Province of the Massachusetts and New York always under the same Governor ; for otherwise the Five Nations can never be so manag'd as to suppress the rebellions of the Eastern Indians. I gave the Eastern Indians presents and they seem'd well pleased. * * ^ "I had the two Companies at Albany, vizt. Major Ingoldesby's and Capt. Weemes's muster'd before me there. * * * I never in my life saw so moving a sight as that of the Companies at Albany, half the men were without breeches, shoes, and stockins when they muster'd. I thought it shameful to the last degree to see English soldiers so abus'd. They had like to have mutinied. * * * "I was in great hopes your Lordships would have directed me to fall immediately upon fortifying at Al- bany and Schenectady ; those forts are not only scanda- lously weak, but do us unspeakable mischeif with our Indians, who conceive a proportionable idea of the Kings power & greatness. The inhabitants came all about me at my leaving Albany and told me in plain terms that if the King would not build a Fort there to protect 'em they would on the very first news of a war THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 269 between England and France desert that place and fly to New York rather then they would stay there to have their throats cut. * * ^ ' ' There are half a dozen [persons] at Albany who have competent estates, but all the rest are miserable poor. * * * "Since I finish'd (as I thought) this letter, I have re- ceived from Albany the good news of the Eastern In- dians submission to the five nations. " * "" This is a most lucky thing, and the people of New England have reason to bless God that they are for ever hereafter secure and safe from a people that have been cruell thornes in their sides." ^ In a return made of the number of the militia of the province of New York, in 1700, which embraced three thousand one hundred and eighty -two men, the city and county of Albany furnished three hundred and seventy- one militiamen. ^ 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. 1U, 115, 716. 718, 726. 2 The regiment of the city and county militia was commanded by Colonel Pieter Schuyler, of which Dirck Wessells was major. The first foot-company of the city had the following persons for its officers : Johannes Bleecker, captain ; Johannes Roseboom, lieutenant ; Abraham Cuyler, ensign. The second foot-company : Albert Janse Ryckman, captain ; Wessel Ten Broeck, lieutenant ; Johannes Thomasse, ensign. The officers of the first foot-company of the county were : Martain Cornelisse, captain ; Andries Douw, lieutenant ; Andries Coeymans, ensign. Those of the second foot- company were : Gerrit Teunisse, captain ; Jonas Douw and Jochim Lam- erse, lieutenants ; Volkert van Hoesen and Abraham Hanse, ensigns. The oflScers of the troop of horse were : Kiliaen van Renssalaer, captain ; Johannes Schuyler, lieutenant ; Bennony van Corlaer, cornet, and Anthony Bries, quartermaster. The foot company of Schenectady had for its officers: Johannes Sanderse Glen, captain ; Adam Vroman, lieutenant, and Harmen van Slyck, ensign. — Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. 807, 811. CHAPTER XIII. ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS. 1701-1721. In the first year of Queen Anne's reign, 1702, on the third of May, Edward Hyde, Lord Viscount Cornbury, began his administration as governor of the province of New York. Early in July he visited Albany, when he found that Colonel Wolfgang William Eomer, her maj- esty's engineer, had made preparations to build a new fort, and had provided about four hundred loads of stone and one hundred tons of lime for its construction. The garrison, commanded by Major Ingoldsby, was composed of one hundred and seventy-six soldiers besides officers. The governor was surprised to find the soldiers so scantily clad that many of them had nothing "wherewithal to cover their nakedness," and that they were "eight weeks in arrears of subsistance." The governor in his report to the Lords of Trade, on the twenty-fourth of Septem- ber, 1702, speaks of the defenses of Albany and the frontier, saying : " The fort is in a miserable condition. It is a stock- adoed fort about one hundred and twenty foot long and seventy foot wide, the stockadoes are almost all roten to that degree that I can with ease push them down. There is but three and twenty guns in the fort, most of them un- serviceable, the carryages * * * so honey-combed, that they cannot be fired without danger. * * * 270 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 271 "Schenectady is twenty miles from Albany upon another river by which the french must come if they attempt anything on Albany. This is an open Village. It was formerly stockadoed round but since the peace no care having been taken to repair the stockadoes they are all down. There is a Stockadoed Fort but indeed it is more like a pound than a fort. There is eight Guns in it, not above three fit for service, no Garrison in it when I came, but a Serjeant and twelve men, no powder nor shot, neither great nor small, nor no place to put it into. The half moon [Waterford] is a place fourteen miles above Albany upon Hudsons River. There was [here] formerly a Stockadoed Fort made in Coll. Fletch- ers time. Nustigione [Niskayuna] is another place four- teen miles from Albany in the Woods where there was a pretty large Stockadoed Fort. But these two last for want of looking after are quite gone to ruine by which Albany is left naked upon those two sides. * * * "As for the Militia that is in as bad a condition as the rest, for they have never been once muster'd since Coll. Fletcher went from here. * * * Indeed by Coll. Schuyler's car^ the Regiment of the Militia of the County of Albany is in pretty good condition but that is perfectly owning to his care. * * * What remains upon this head is to acquaint your Lordship what we are doing in relation to our defence. In order thereto I must begin by acquainting you that Coll. [Romer] hav- ing been a year and a half (as he himself told me) pro- viding materials for building a Stone Fort at Albany was the week before I landed [on the third of May] gone to that place [Albany]. * * * It seems he has been very intent upon some Fortifications at Boston ; For when he came to me to York he was very desirous to go to Boston, Saying he had given the necessary orders 272 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. for all things to be prepared at Albany against next Spring, and that then he would begin to build but that nothing could be done there till then. * * * '' On the 5th of July I got to Albany, but Mr. Romer was not come [as he had promised], nor no news to be heard of him. I went the next day to view the ground he had marked out. But I found that for the sake of having his Gate " to open on ''the broadest Street in the Town he had carryed the Point of his South West Bas- tion into a bottom that was near the old Fort, where " he would have to raise the " foundation of Stone five or six and thirty foot high before it would have been even with the surface of the ground where the Fort must stand. By computation that corner would have cost 500£, however I was unwilling to alter any thing of his projection till he came, expecting every day he would come, till at last on the 8th of August a letter came to a man he had intrusted to take care to provide Matei'ials for the fort, dated the 29th of June, from Boston, telling him that he " should "not be at Albany till September, which is a time which every body here knows to be too late for building because of the cold weather. Having seen this letter and being informed by some of the In- dians that the french were making great preparations at Montreal which can be designed against no place but Albany or Schenectady, And seeing I was not like to have Mr. Romer's Assistance this fall, I thought that it was to much time to loose I therefore made another draught of my own fort of which I herewith send your Lordships a Copy. "By this draught I have removed the fort 40 feet from the bottom before mentioned, by which I shall save that vast expense which the point of this Bastion would have cost, and I have extended the Fort more North- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 2Y3 wards, By which means I shall entirely cover the West side of the Town which is that which lies most exposed to danger. As soon as I had made my draught I in- quired for Masons and found eight which I set to worke. On Saturday the 15th of August * -^ * I laid the first stone of Fort Anne and in 11 days they worked up all the materials that Mr. Romer had been a year and a half preparing, besides three hundred load of Stone that I had prepared while I was waiting for Coll. Romers coming. Thus we were busyed when Mr. Romer ar- rived at Albany, which was on the 19th day of August, by which time I had laid the foundation of two thirds of the Fort. And I do well hope that before the frost it will be five feet high, which will be a good Breast Work till next spring." For the want of money, how- ever, the building of the new fort was not prosecuted in the following year. In 1704, the old fort was stockaded with new palisades as was also the city. ^ The board of aldermen, by a resolution offered by the mayor, Johannes Schuyler, voted, on the thirtieth of May, 1704, that a market-house should be erected in the middle of Jonker [State] Street, ''opposite to ye lane between ye house of Maj. Dirk Wessel's and Evert Wendel, Senr. at ye Citty's charges." The residences of the persons mentioned in the resolution were on the first and second plats of ground immediately west of James Street. The building was a wooden structure, open on all sides, containing a number of ^butchers' stalls and several heavy tables for the use of persons selling but- ter, eggs, vegetables, and other produce. The market was held on Saturdays. The common council, on the fifth of September, 1704, ordered the property-holders in the city to lay pavements eight feet wide before their 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. 967-971 ; 1128. 18 2Y4 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. houses and lots, ' ' upon penalty of forfeiting the summe of 15s for ye Behooffe of ye sheriff e," who was to sue for that amount. As a number of negroes had obtained their freedom by escaping to Canada, which was regarded as a " very pernicious consequence to the whole province," the jus- tices of the peace of the city and county of Albany, at a court of sessions held in the city-hall, on the fifth of June, 1705, solicited the representatives of the city and county to lay before the assembly of the province then convened, the necessity of passing a law to protect the slave-owners from such loss of property. The request was made known, and the assembly enacted ' ' that all and every negro slave or slaves belonging to any of the inhabitants of the city and county of Albany, who shall from and after the first day of August of this present year of our Lord, 1T05, be found traveling forty miles above the city of Albany, at or above a certain place called Sarachtoge, unless in company of his, her, or their master, mistress, or such employed by them, or either of them, and be thereof convicted by the oaths of two or more credible witnesses before the court of sessions of the peace of this city and county '^ * * shall suffer the pains of death as in cases of felony." The right granted the city in the charter to purchase from the Indians five hundred acres of land at ' ' Schaihte- cogue " was exercised on the twenty-eighth day of Feb- ruary, 1707. The land is described as situated on the east side of the Hudson River; above the Half -moon, and bounded on the west by the river, and on the south by the lands of Egbert Teunise and Barent Albertse Bratt, and extending northward two miles along the river from Schaghticoke creek. Thence it extended "into the woods by an east line twelve miles and on the south THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 275 side by a southeast line fourteen miles, or so much farther that the line on the east side " included the third carrying place on the creek. A part of the first pay- ment included two blankets, twelve duffel-cloth coats, twenty shirts, two gunns, twelve pounds of powder, thirty-six pounds of lead, eight gallons of rum, two casks of beer, two rolls of tobacco, ten gallons of Ma- deira wine, and a number of pipes. The Indian proprie- tors were also to receive annually for ten years in the month of October, one blanket, one shirt, one pair of stockings, one lap or apron, one keg of rum, three pounds of powder, six pounds of lead, and twelve pounds of tobacco. Twelve acres of this tract were to be fenced by the city and set apart for the use of the Indians sell ing the land. In 1Y08, the land was surveyed and di- vided into farms, and some of them leased to a number of settlers. Among the latter was Johannes Knicker- backer, ^ a miller, who, on the thirteenth of October, 1709, for the sum of sixteen pounds and ten shillings obtained a lease of thirty morgens of land, in two parcels. He and each of the other lessees were to pay "the yearly acknowledgement of thirty-seven & one-half bushels [of] good merchandable winter wheat unto the mayor, aldermen & comonalty in the months of January and February every year forever after the first day of May, 1715." 2 Lord Cornbury, in his report to the Board of Trade, in 1708, speaks thus of certain Indians who came to the city from the Far West : " During my stay at Albany, 12 of the far nations of Indians came to trade with our 1 Johannes Knickerbacker was the oldest of the seven children of Her- man Jansen Knickerbacker, who, it is said, was the first member of the Knickerbacker family that emigrated to America. The name " Knicker- bocker " was made notable by Washington Irving, who was a frequent guest of the Knickerbackers of Schaghticoke. 2 Albany records. 1708, 1*709. 276 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. people. There are two nations of them who are called Twigtwicks and Dionondadees ; the nearest of their castles is eight hundred miles from Albany. I have been these five years endeavoring to get these nations to trade with our people, but the French have always dissuaded them from coming till this year. And this year goods being very scarce, they came to Albany, where our people have supplied them with goods much cheaper than ever the French did, and they have prom- ised to return in the spring with a much greater number of their nations, which will be a very great advantage to this province."^ In the early part of the summer of 1709, a large number of soldiers and Indians was concentrated at Albany to invade Canada. The command of the provin- cial forces was given to Francis Nicholson. After advancing northward as far as Wood Creek, where three forts were built, the expedition was abandoned. It is said that there was not a man in the province, "who had more extended views of the importance of driving the French out of Canada than Colonel Schuyler," nor "did any person more heartily engage in the late expedition" than he. Although greatly chagrined when the undertaking was relinquished on account of the failure of the naval forces to cooperate with the troops that marched from Albany, Colonel Schuyler did not dismiss from his thoughts the necessity of immediate action to accomplish the subjection of Canada to the English crown. Taking with him five Indians, he sailed to England to urge the British ministry to favor another expedition. It is related that the arrival of the Indians in Eng- land in 1710 " made a great bruit thro' the whole king- 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. v. pp. 64, 65. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 277 dom. The mob followed wherever they went, and small cuts of them were sold among the people. * * * Sir Charles Cotterel conducted them in two coaches to St. James's ; and the lord chamberlain introduced them into the royal presence " of Queen Anne. Colonel Schuyler succeeded in accomplishing the ob- ject of his visit. Five thousand troops from England and Flanders were sent to aid the provinces in another attempt to reduce Canada. On the thirtieth of July, 1711, a fleet of twelve men of war and forty-six small vessels sailed from Boston to the St. Lawrence River. About two thousand men and eight hundred Indians were assembled at Albany. At the end of August, Lieu- tenant-general Nicholson, having the command of this army, moved toward Lake Champlain. The fleet with which he was to co-operate in the attack on Montreal, having entered the St. Lawrence River, was driven during a thick fog upon some rocks. The loss of eight transports and eight hundred men caused the com- mander of the fleet to order its departure to England. When the news of this humiliating termination of the naval expedition reach the army at Fort George under the command of Lieutenant-general Nicholson, orders for an immediate retreat were issued. Thus ended the expedition of 1711. ^ The Church of England with directive zeal sent the Rev. Thoroughgood Moor, in 1704, to the province to reside among the Mohawk Indians to teach them the Christian religion. The fur traders, thinking that his teaching might be detrimental to their interests, per- sonally exerted their influence to such an extent that the members of the nation became adverse to his recep- tion into their castles. Having remained ' ' near a twelve- 1 Poc, colonial liist. N, Y. vol, y. pp. 252 5§§. 2Y8 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. month " in Albany vainly trying to ingratiate himself into the favor of the Indians, he, in 1705, returned to New York. In 1T08, the Eev. Thomas Barclay, the chaplain of Fort Anne, began to read the service of the Church of England and to preach in Dutch to some of the people of Albany. In a letter written by him to the secretary of the society for the propagation of the gospel in for- eign parts, dated the twenty-sixth of September, 1710, he speaks of the field of his missionary work in these words : " As I did begin from my first coming to Albany, so I go on to catechise the youth, and it hath pleased God to bless my weak endeavors that way, for a great many Dutch children, who at my first arrival were altogether ignorant of the English tongue, can distinctly say our catechism, and make the responses at prayers. Every Sunday, after the second lesson at evening prayer, I explain some part of the catechism in as plain and familiar a manner as I can, shunning all controversies, teaching them such fundamental doctrines as are neces- sary and tend most to promote piety and a good life. I have taught the scholars the prayers appointed for charity schools, and I have used all possible methods to engage the children to their duty, both by the giving of small presents to the most forward and diligent, and by frequently visiting their schools ; and for encouraging the school-masters, I give them what charity is collected in our church, obliging them to bring their scholars to pub- lic prayers. ' 'At Schenectady, I preach once a month, where there is a garrison of forty soldiers, besides about sixteen Eng- lish and about one hundred Dutch families ; they are all of them my constant hearers. I have this summer got THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 279 an English school erected amongst them, and in a short time, I hope, their children will be fit for catechising. Schenectady is a village situated upon a pleasant river, twenty English miles above Albany, and the first castle of the Indians is twenty-four miles above Schenectady. In this village there has been no Dutch minister these five years and there is no possibility of any being settled among them. There is a convenient and well built church which they freely give me the use of. I have taken pains to shew them the agreement of the articles of our church with theirs. I hope in some time to bring them not only to be constant hearers, but communi- cants. "Mr. Lydius, the minister of the Dutch congregation at Albany, died the 1st day of March last. He was a good pious man, and lived in entire friendship with me ; sent his own children to be catechised. At present there is no Dutch minister at Albany, neither is any expected 'till next summer ; and from New York to the utmost bounds of my parish, there is no minister but myself ; most of the inhabitants are Dutch, the garrison except- ed, which consists of three companies, each company one hundred men. In the city and county of Albany there are about three thousand souls, besides the gar- rison ; in the meantime some of the Dutch children I have baptized, and married several, and other parts of the service I have performed in the Dutch tongue, and more of them would accept my ministry : but that Mr. De Bois, a minister of the Dutch congregation of New York, comes sometimes to Albany ; he is a hot man, and an enemy to our church, but a friend to his purse, for he has large contributions from this place. As for myself I take no money, and have no kind of perquisite. I have used all moderation towards dissenters in this 280 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. country. There is none but those of the Dutch church, and I found two only not baptized, the one born in West Jersey ^ and bred a Quaker, him I have brought over to our church, and christened him the first day of this year ; the other is an Old England man, but of a loose life ; so soon as I can bring him off from his wicked courses, I design to baptize him. "Since the death of Mr. Lydius, the Indians have no ministers ; there are about thirty communicants, and of the Dutch church, but so ignorant and scandalous, that they can scarce be reputed Christians. "The sachems of the five nations, viz : of the Mas- que, Oneydas, Onnondages, Cayougas, and Senekas, at a meeting with our govenor, Col. Hunter, - at Albany, the 10th [of] August last, when his excellency in his speech to them asked them if they were of the same mind with those four Indians that had been over with Col. Schuyler in desiring missionaries to be sent and they answered they were, and desired to have forts built among them and a church, and that Mr. Freeman,^ present minister of the Dutch congregation at Flatbush, near New York, be one of those missionaries which the queen promised to send them. This Mr. Freeman, five years ago was minister of Schenectady, and converted several of the Indians ; he has acquired more skill in their language than any Dutch minister that has been in this country, and Mr. Dellius is not so well skilled in that tongue, a great part of our liturgy he has translated into the Indian tongue, in particular [the] morning and [the] evening prayer, the litany, the creed of St. Athana- 1 The province of New Jersey, by a deed of partition, had been divided into East and West Jersey. 3 Colonel Robert Hunter was commissioned governor of the province of New York, October 19, 1709. 3 The Rey. Bernardus Freeman, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 281 sius, &c., besides several places of the Old and New Testament. He told me when he read them the litany, they were mightily affected with it. He is a gentleman of a good temper, and well affected to our church, and if there were a bishop in this part of the world, would be persuaded to take Episcopal ordination. I often en- treat him to go over to England, but he is afraid of the danger of the voyage, and his wife will not consent to live among the Indians ; he has promised to give me his manuscripts, and what he has done into the Indian tongue. ''I am sorry to tell you, sir, that I am afraid the missionaries that are coming over, will find hard work of it, and if the commander of that fort be not a person of singular piety and virtue, all their endeavours will be ineffectual ; these, here, that trade with them, are loath that any religion [should] get any footing among them ; besides, these savages are so given to drinking of that nasty liquor, rum, that they are lost to all that is good. "I must tell you that the Masque, of whom one of the four that were lately in England was a Sachem, have not above fifty men. All the five nations cannot make two thousand, and of these, in number, the Sene- kas are near one thousand, and most of them are in the French interest. Hendrick, the great prince that was so honoured in England, can not command ten men ; the other three were not Sachems. How far her majesty and the society have been imposed upon, I leave it to you to judge. "I beg leave to tell you, that the missionaries that are sent over must have an honorable allowance and large presents to give, otherwise they will have but few proselytes ; and great care must be taken that they be 282 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. well used, otherwise their mission will prove ineffectual as Mr. Moor's, and how he defeated the designs of his mission, Col. Schuyler best knows. "I have now worried you with a long letter, and shall only add, that I shall be always ready to follow the directions of the society, and to endeavour all that in me lieth to propagate religion where it is not, and cultivate it where it is established." ^ By the treaty of Utrecht, made on the thirty-first of March, 1713, France and England concluded a peace ; the former power engaging not to hinder nor molest the five nations of Indians who were subject to the govern- ment of Great Britain. As the common council thought that it was "very necessary and convenient " that a bellman should hourly patrol the streets of the city from ten till four o'clock each night and to cry the hours and the state of the weather, Robert Barret was appointed city-bell- man for one year, from the thirty-first of October, 1713, and given a salary of twenty-one pounds current money. The bellman, according to the resolution of the common council, was to be provided during the winter with sixtyloads of wood and two candles every night. The congregation of the Reformed church, after the removal of Domine DeUius, was without a pastor until 1712 when the Rev. Petrus van Driessen was called to take charge of it. The church, which had been "built of timber and boards " in 1656, was so much decayed that the pastor, the elders, and the deacons presented, in 1714, a petition to Governor Hunter, in which they alleged that they found themselves "under the necessity of building a new one in its place," and asked him "to 1 Doc hist. N. Y. vol, iii. pp. 540-542. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 283 approve and encourage this pious work." ^ The gover- nor, on the eighteenth of June, approved of what was desired in the petition and recommended the same to all who were concerned. In 1715 the work of huilding the stone walls of the new edifice was begun. Meanwhile services were held in the old building. When, in October, the wood- work of the old structure was to be removed they were discontinued for two weeks. On the thirtieth of October, the first services were held in the new church. The building was consecrated on the thirteenth of November, when a large sum of money was con- tributed to liquidate the debt incurred for its construc- tion. On the tenth of August, 1Y20, when Colonel Pieter Schuyler was president of the provincial council, the society was incorporated under the name of the minis- ters, elders and deacons of the Reformed Protestant Dutch church in the city of Albany. The sittings in the church were sold for thirty shill- ings. When the first occupant died, if he were a man, the seat descended to his son or the eldest of his sons ; if he had no son, to his son-in-law or to one of his sons-in- law ; and if he had no son-in-law, then to his brother or to one of his brothers. When a transfer was made, the successor to the seat was required to pay fifteen shillings 1 The site of the chureh was thus described in December, 1714 : " The Dutch Church Scituate, lying, and being in the said City of Albany, in the high street otherwise called the yonkers street nigh the bridge [over the Rutten kill] Containing in length on the South side seaven Rodd three foot four inches, on the North Side seaven Rood three foot one Inch Rynland measure, in breadth on the East and West Side Sixty-one foot and five Inches, wood measure." The lot as it was released to the officers of the church by the common council in December, 1714, is also described as forty- five feet distant from the house of Goose van Schaick, on the east side of Handelaars street "to the northeast of ye said ground ; " fifty-five feet from the dwelling of Luycas Wyngaert, to the southeast, "both English meas- ure ; " the southwest and the northwest corners of the lot being equally dis- tant from the house of John van Alen, "on ye south side" of Jonkers street, and that of Anna Maria Carstense, "on ye north side" of Jonkers street. — City records. 1714. 284 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. for it. If the first occupant of a seat were a woman, it descended to her nearest female relative. Every seat- holder was required to contribute according to his or her means to the support of the minister. Sittings in the church were only sold to persons residing in the county of Albany. When a seat was not claimed by a successor of the former occupant it reverted to the church. ^ The missionary work of the Eev. Thomas Barclay was so successfully prosecuted that he was enabled to organize a church. The need of a suitable building for the use of the society was so urgent that he and his ward- ens, Peter Mathews and John Dunbar, in May, 1714, peti- tioned Governor Hunter to permit them ' ' to collect and receive the charity and benevolence of all good Chris- tians within the province towards the building of a church or chappel for divine service in the center of the broad street called Yonkers street, leading from the ffort to the water-side, between the end of pearl street & the small street [South Pearl Street] that leads to the Lutheran Church, not exceeding sixty feet in length and fourty- five foot in breadth." They mentioned in their petition that they had been " necessitated to make use of a small old Chappel" belonging to the Lutheran congregation "at unseasonable hours," which building was "worn out & decayed." The governor willing granted them the necessary license on the thirty-first of May. Being sub- sequently advised that a more suitable site for the edifice should be selected farther up the street, they on the seventh of October requested the governor to permit them 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. p. 546. Albany records. 1*714. Coll. on the his- tory of Albany. Munsell. vol. i. pp. 56, 57, 61, 18. The officers of the Reformed Protestant church obtained from the city, on the sixteenth of November, 1715, "a release for eight feet of ground in breadth on the south of the great door of the church and so much in length eastward " as was "thought convenient for a porch to be built thereon,"^ Albany records, 1715, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 285 to build the chapel nearer to the fort where the street was wider, and to make use of a space ninety feet long and sixty wide, " between the houses of Stephanus Groes- beck, on the north side, and the house of Abraham Cuyler, on the south side, not to extend further east than the east end of [the] sd houses and thence to stretch westerly Ninety foot in the same breadth of sixty foot equally distant from [the] s^ houses." A part of this plot of ground was to be used for a cemetery. Governor Hunter consented, and by letters-patent granted the use of the described plot for these purposes, on the twenty-first of October, 1714. When the members of the common council were in- formed, on the eighth of November, that the Rev. Thomas Barclay, Colonel Peter Mathews, and John Dun- bar had that day ' ' layd out some ground on y^ west end of ye Jonker street * * * for erecting & building a church without haveing any title " from the city, they re- solved that the former persons should be advised to delay the building of the church until the mayor, Robert Liv- ingston, jr. , should return to the city. This action of the board of aldermen appears to have been taken to ascertain whether or not the ground granted by Governor Hunter was not the property of the city. Although the clergy- man and his vestrymen were notified to suspend the laying of the foundation of the projected building, it seems that they did not comply with the request of the common council but permitted the work to be continued. Perceiving that it was not delayed, the board of aldermen resolved on the third of March, 1715, that a letter should be written to the governor respecting the city's title to the ground. In their communication, the members of the common council adverted to the fact that the ground in question belonged to the city and was included in the 286 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. charter. "It seems to us, on their side, either as an in- croachment on ye rights of ye s^ city or a disregard to ye Comonalty, however to shew that we are not against that pious design but reather to promite we have offered them a more conveinent lott, and are still willing to grant the same altho' they have refused to accept it ; now to prevent any further trouble we apply to your Excellency that your Excellency will be pleased to signify to them such remedy whereby the matter may be reasonably ac- commodated." Apparently the governor could not be induced to ab- rogate the grant to the officers of the English church, and therefore the common council resolved, on the eighth of April, to maintain and defend the rights and liberties of the city and to prosecute the Rev. Thomas Barclay, Colonel Peter Matthews, and John Dunbar as far as the law would permit, for occupying and encroaching upon ground belonging to the city. The men laying the foun- dation were enjoined from proceeding with the work, but they disregarded the prohibition and were arrested for trespassing on land owned by the city, However, having procured the required bail, they continued their work on the foundation of the edifice. This public dis- regard of the rights of the city caused the common coun- cil to resolve to send a messenger by express in a canoe to New York "for advice from two attorneys at law concerning ye trespass * * * committed by several persons in laying a foundation on a certain lott of ground on ye west end of ye Joncker street." The attempt of the city authorities to retain possession of the space in Jonker street, granted to the officers of the English church by Governor Hunter, was ineffectual, and the zealous clergyman and his earnest co-workers were permitted to accomplish the building of the edifice THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 287 in 1Y16, which was a stone structure fifty-eight feet long and forty-two wide. In November, the first services in the church were attended by a large number of the officers and soldiers of Fort Anne and many people of the city, besides those who were communicants of the society. ^ In 1T14 there were living in the three wards of the city eleven hundred and thirty-six people. Of this num- ber four hundred and ninety-five were white males, five hundred and twenty-eight white females, forty-seven male slaves, and sixty-six female slaves. The inhabi- tants of the county of Albany numbered three thousand and twenty-nine, four hundred and fifty-eight of whom were slaves. In J 723 the number of the inhabitants of the county had increased to six thousand five hundred and one. The need of a school-teacher to instruct the children in the city is thus expressed in a resolution of the com- mon council of the eighth of April, 1721 : "Whereas it is very requisite & necessary that a fitt and able school master settle in this city for teaching and instructing of the youth in speling, reading, writeing and cyfifering and Mr. Johannis Glandorf haveing offered his service to setle here and keep a school if reasonably encourage by y^ Corporation, it is therefore Resolved by this Comonalty and they do hereby oblidge themselves and their succes- sors to give and procure unto y^ said Johan's Glandorf free house rent for the term of seaven years next ensue - ing for keeping a good and commendable school as be- comes a diligent Schoolmaster." 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 546, 54*7. Albany records. 1714, 1715. Coll. on hist, of Albany. Munsell. vol. i. pp. 388, 389. CHAPTER XIV. THE TRADE OF THE FRONTIER. 1Y22-1Y53. None of the governors of the province had so much personal sympathy for the degraded hquor-drinking In- dians of the five nations as Governor WiUiam Burnet. ^ In his conference with the Mahikanders or River In- dians at Albany, on the thirtieth of August, 1722, he spoke to them of the evil effects of rum-drinking, say- ing : ''I need not tell you how destructive your intemper- ance has proved and how much your people are dimin- ished by excessive drinking of rum, the women as well as the men being guilty of being often drunk ; let me advise you to be more sober for the future, and not to spend what you get by Hunting on strong drink, but lay it out on clothing and other necessaries for your support, and above all [do] not squander your Indian Corn for Rum which you ought to keep for your subsis- tence all the year." The Indians palliated their love of strong liquor, say- ing : "We are sensible that you are much in the right that rum does a great deal of harm. We approve of all that you said on that point, but the truth is this : When 1 He began his administration as governor of the province on the seven- teenth of September, 1720. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 289 our people come from hunting to the town or to the plantations and acquaint the traders and people that we want powder, shot, and clothing, they first give us a large cup of rum, and after we get the taste of it we crave for more so that at last all the beaver and peltry we have hunted goes for drink, and we are left destitute either of clothing or ammunition ; therefore we desire our father to order the tap or crane to be shut and to prohibit the selling of rum, for as long as the Christians will sell rum, our people will drink it. * - * "We acknowledge that our father is very much in the right to tell us that we squander away our Indian corn which should subsist our wives and children, but one great cause of it is that many of our people are obhged to hire land of the Christians at a very dear rate and to give half the corn for rent, and the other half they are tempted by rum to sell, and the corn goes so that the poor women and children are left to shift as well as they can, '^ * * "We have no more land. The Christians when they buy a small spot of land ask us if we have no more land. When we say yes, they wish to know the name of it, and take a greater quantity than was to be sold to them, and the Indians not understanding what is writ- ten in the deed or bill of sale, sign it and are thus de- prived of part of their lands." ^ Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia, and Sir William Keith, governor of Pennsylvania, also in the latter part of August and in the beginning of Septem- ber, 1722, held conferences with the sachems of the five nations, in Albany, and renewed the former covenants made with the chiefs of their tribes. Writing to the Lords of Trade on the twenty-fifth of 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. v. pp. 662, 663. 19 290 THE HISTOBY OF ALBANY. June, 1723, Governor Burnet thus speaks of the success attending his efforts to induce the Indians of the far west to come to Albany with their peltry: " Last spring there came about twenty far Indians to Albany, and this month about eighty, besides women and children, which they commonly bring with them where ever they go. I have sent your Lordships a minute of all their Proceedings at Albany, by which it appears that they are now incorporated with the five nations, who had before admitted the Tuskarores [Tuscaroras] to make a sixth nation, and now this far Nation has been received as a seventh. They are come above a thous- and miles to Albany from Mislimakenak, [or Michili- mackinac,] which lyes between Lac Superieur and Lac Huron. ^ * * * "I have since intelligence of forty or fifty more far Indians who are coming to Albany to trade, and thus I find the fruits of the Act restraining the Trade to Canada and of the Company whom I have kept in the Sinnekees Country whose business it has been to persuade all the Indians that pass by to come rather to trade at Albany than at Montreal, and as the Indians that come from the remote Lakes to go to Canada are commonly in want of Provisions when they come below the falls of Niagara, they are obliged to supply themselves in the Sinnekees Country where our people are and then they may take their choice where they will go and trade, which considering the experience they have now had of the cheapness of Goods in this Province, we need not fear will be universally in our favor, and I now flatter myself that the most difficult part is over, since the very Traders of Albany who were fond of Trading to Canada, 1 Michilimackinac, now Mackinaw, on an island in the strait of Mac- kinaw connecting lakes Michigan and Huron. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 291 generally confess their error and that since the remote Indians will come to them they ought not to have that Trade with the French, which they may keep wholly to themselves." ^ To protect the Indians, coming to Albany to sell their peltry, from the traders who gave them liquor to obtain their furs at low prices, Grovernor Burnet proposed to the municipal authorities the building of a number of houses outside the palisades for the use of the Indians. The buildings were erected conformable to the gov- ernor's suggestion, and an act was passed by the pro- vincial assembly for paying the charges for their con- struction. The governor, in his letter to the Lords of Trade, dated the sixteenth of December, 1723, thus ad- verts to the passage of the act for the liquidation of the debt contracted for the erection of these wooden houses : ' ' This is a conveniency for the Indians that is newly made and is very useful to prevent their being cheated as they often are when traders get them privately into their houses and by the power of liquor persuade them to part with their furs for little or nothing. But when the Indians come to themselves, they grow very angry at their usage, and this often makes them very unruly and frequently endangers their good understanding with us. "To prevent this, these houses are built, where they trade publickly and so are more equally dealt with." In another letter, written on the twenty-first of No- vember, 1724, the governor observes "that By the near- est computation there were from the year 1Y16 to 1720 but 30 canoes of far Indians that came " to Schenectady on their way to Albany, "and from 1720 to 1724 there are come 323, which is above ten times the number." ^ 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. v. pp. 684, 685. 3 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. v. pp. 701, 789. 292 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. The following description of the situation of the vil- lages and lands of the Indians of the six nations in 1Y24 shows how advantageously Albany was located to con- trol the fur trade : " The Mohawks, ( called Annies by the French,) one of the Five Nations, live on the South Side of a Branch of Hudson's River, (not on the North Side as they are placed in the French Maps,) and but forty Miles directly West from Albany, and within the English settlements ; some of the English Farms upon the same River being thirty Miles further West. The Oneydas (the next of the Five Nations), lie likewise West from Albany, near the Head of the Mohawks River, about one hundred Miles from Albany. The Onondagas lie about one hundred and thirty Miles West from Albany ; and the Tuscaroras •^' live partly with the Oneydas and partly with the Onondagas. The Cayugas are about one hundred and sixty Miles from Albany ; and the Senecas (the furthest of all these Nations, are not above two hundred and forty Miles from Albany, as may appear from Mr. De L'Isle's Map of Louisania, ^ who lays down the Five Nations under the Name of Iroquois."^ The population of Albany County, which in 1723 was six thousand five hundred and one, was in 1Y31 eight thousand seven hundred and three. During this period the number of slaves had increased from eight hundred and eight to twelve hundred and twenty- two. In June 1Y31, by a resolution of the common council, the inhabitants of the first and second wards were per- mitted to erect a market-house in each of them. On the sixth of November, 1731, the municipal authorities published an ordinance, which appears to be 1 The Tuscaroras had come in 1722 from the Upper Potomac in Virginia. 2 Map of Louisiana by M. de L'Isle. Paris, 1*718. 3 History of N. Y. Smith, p. 151. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 293 the first step taken to organize a fire-department for the city. The following persons were designated as fire- masters : Isaac Fryer and Egbert Egbertse, in the first ward ; Matheys van der Heyden and Frans Pruyn, in the second ward ; Wilhelmus van den Berg and Matheys de Garmo, in the third ward. At a meeting of the com- mon council on the twenty-second of December, the pur- chase of a fire engine was discussed. It was then re- solved "that an Enguin or Water Spuyt be sent for to England per the first oppertunity in the Spring." On the twenty-ninth of February 1732, it was further de- termined that a letter should be written to Stephen D. Lancey, a merchant of New York, requesting him to procure a suction water-engine " of the fifth sort," made by Richard Newsham, and a sucking pipe six feet long, besides forty feet of leather hose with brass screws. On the delivery of the engine at New York, the board of aldermen promised to pay Stephen D. Lancey or his order the same sum that the corporation of the city of New York had "paid for their Engines, (that is to say) at the rate of 12 per cent, on the foot of the Invoice including the prime cost." When the engine was de- livered to the authorities and placed in a building in the central part of the city, they advertised that the key of the engine-house could be obtained from Henry Cuyler, who resided near by it. ^ "The quantity of one Thousand Acres of Low or Meadow Land, lyeing att a certeyn place called or known by the name of Tionondorogue, " granted to the city in the charter of 1686, was in 1730 still in possession of the Indians. To make good the city's title to it, the common council, on the tenth of October, resolved that John de Peyster, mayor, Dirck Ten Broeck, re- 1 Albany records, 1731, 1732, 1734. 2U THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. corder, Ryer Gerritse, Jacob Lansing, and Cornelius Cuyler, aldermen, and John Vischer, jr., an assistant alderman, should go as a committee to the Mohawk country and have full power to act and agree with the Indian proprietors for the purchase of the said land. The committee performed this duty and obtained from the Indians, a deed, bearing the date of the twelfth of October, 1730, " f or the flatts on both sides of Tinnon- doroges Creek or River." ^ It appears that the Indians did not understand at that time that the conveyance which they had been induced to sign deprived them forever of their proprietor- ship of the land. When they at last became aware of their misconception they sought a conference with Governor Cosby, in Albany, in September, 1733, to obtain " redress of a gross deceit and injury done them by the Corporation of Albany." The interview of the Mohawk sachems the governor describes in a letter written by him to the Lords of Trade, on the fifteenth of December, 1733. ^ "I gave them to understand that I was ready to hear, and to relieve them. They then said that they were the natural owners and proprietors of that part of the Mohock's Country where they lived, '^' ^ '^ that * * * the Mayor and some others of the corporation of Albany did about a year or two ago, insinuate to them that Gov Montgomerie had in his lifetime an intention to take their lands from them and that possibly some future Govr might pursue the same intentions, that there was but one way to secure their lands to them from such attempts, which was to make them over to the Corporation in trust for them, and that then the 1 Schoharie Creek, in Montgomery County. 2 William Cosby began his administration as governor of the provinces of New York and New Jersey, August 1, ITB'I. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 295 Corporation would withstand all such attempts, and preserve their lands to them so long as they thought fit to continue them their trustees, that being thus pos- sessed with the fear of loseing their lands they did con- sent to make them over to the Corporation in trust for such time only, as they should think fit, and accordingly executed a deed to that, effect as they supposed and were told that the Corporation promised them a counterpart or copy of that deed but never gave it them ; that some time after the execution of that deed they were informed that it was not a deed of trust but an absolute conveyance of a thousand acres of low or meadow- ground at a place called Tiononderoga, being their best planting ground. Full of resentment at the fraud they resolved to apply themselves to me and earnestly de- sired that the Mayor might be ordered to bring the deed, and that it might be read and interpreted to them. "1 sent for the Mayor, desiring him to bring the deed, he did so, and it being read and interpreted to the Sachims, they cryed out with one voice that they were cheated and that the deed was imposed upon them for a deed of trust and vowed that as long as there should be one Mohock living, the people of Albany should never have a foot of that land, declaring that if they had no redress they would leave their Country, and go over to the French, and begged to have the deed delivered up to them. " I inquired if the Corporation had paid or given the Mohocks any consideration in money or goods for it, * * * but not finding that they [ the people of Al- bany] had given them any thing, the Mohocks persisting strenuously in their demand of having the deed delivered up to them, and the fraud being too evident, I gave the deed into the hands of the Sachims, who first with great 296 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. rage tore it in pieces and then threw it into the fire, de- claring again that as long as one Mohock lived the peo- ple of Albany should never have a foot of that land, and then thanked me for the justice I did them." ^ The arbitrary act of Governor Cosby in giving to the Indians the document that he had promised should be safely returned to the person from whom he had ob- tained it made the people of the city very indignant toward the governor. The board of aldermen, acting under the advice of several attorneys-at-law, gave a deed to Peter Brower in November, 1734, for a tract of land, which was a part of that granted to the city by Gover- nor Dongan in 1686, lying on the south side of the Mo- hawk River, at Fort Hunter, and on both sides of Schoharie Creek, or Tinnondoroges Creek, as it was then called. The work on the stone-fort, the foundation of which Lord Cornbury had laid in 1703, was resumed in 1735, ■ and prosecuted with such enterprise that it was soon completed. The congregation of the English church, unable to re- tain the Rev. Thomas Barclay after the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts withdrew its allowance for his support shortly after the erection of the chapel, was without a pastor until 1728, when the Rev. Mr. Miln took charge of it. In 1738, the Rev. Henry Barclay, the son of the Rev. Thomas Barclay, a native of Albany, and a graduate of Yale College, became his successor. The Rev. Petrus van Driessen continued to serve the members of the Reformed Protestant church until his death about the first 'of February, 1738, when the Rev. Cornells van Schie, who had been his colleague since 1 Doc, colonial hist, N. Y. vol, v. pp. 960, 911. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 297 1733, succeeded him as pastor of its large congrega- tion. The pecuhar geographical position of the city of Al- bany gave it many advantages by which it could com- mand the Indian trade of the greater part of the country from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. Cadwal- lader Golden, the surveyor-general of the province, thus pertinently spoke of the different water-ways from it, in 1738 : ' ' From the Eastern Branch [of the Hudson River] there is only [a] land Garriage of Sixteen miles to the Wood Greek, or to Lake St. Sacrament, [Lake George,] both of which fall into Lake Ghamplain, from whence Goods are transported to Quebec. But the Ghief advantages are from the western Branch of Hudson's River. At 50 miles from Albany, the Land Garriage from the Mohawks river to a lake from whence the Northern Branch of [the] Susquehana takes its rise, does not exceed 14 miles. Goods may be carried from this lake in Battoes [bateux] or flatt bottomed Vessels through Pennsylvania, to Maryland & Virginia, the cur- rent of the river running every where easy, without any cataract in all that large space. In going down this River two large branches of the same River are met, which come from the westward, & issue from the long ridge of mountains, which stretch along behind Penn- sylvania, Maryland, Virginia & Garolina, commonly called the Apalachy Mountains. By either of these Bran- ches Goods may be carried to the Mountain, & I am told that the passage through the Mountains to the Branches of the Misissippi, which issue from the West side of these Mountains, is neither long nor difficult ; by which means an Inland Navigation may be made to the Bay of Mexico. " From the Head of the Mohawks River there is like- 298 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. wise a short land Carriage of four miles only, to a Creek of the Oneida lake, which empties itself into Cadarackui [Ontario] Lake at Oswego ; and the Cadarackui Lake, being truely an Inland Sea, of greater breadth than can be seen by the eye, communicates with Lake Erie, the Lake of the Hurons, Lake Michigan, and the Upper lake, [Lake Superior,] all of them Inland Seas. By means of these Lakes, & the Rivers which fall into them. Commerce may be carried from New York, through a vast Tract of Land, more easily than from any other Maritime Town in North America." ^ The common council on the thirteenth of May, 1740, ordered an engine-house to be built. In 1743, Robert Lansingh, Bernardus Hartsen and Michael Basset, were appointed by the common council to take charge of the fire-engine in case of fire, and always to be ready upon any occasion that the engine might be wanted. They were each to make a key to open the lock of the shed in which the engine stood and to place the keys in some parts of their houses where the keys might be found when they were absent. For their services, they were each to receive annually six schepels of wheat. In 1741, an act was passed by the assembly to enable the city and county of Albany to build a new court- house and gaol. In the three wards of the city in 1742 there were two hundred and four freeholders. In 1743, the common council contracted with Anthony Bratt to remove the block-house, near the city-hall, to where the powder-house stood on the plain, on the south side of the city. He was " to put it up there, to find all the materials necessary, to mason the stone of the foundation above the ground with lime, to put a new roof of squared white pine boards " on the building, 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. 112. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 299 ' ' to mason the pipe of the chimney above the house with hme and to make it of hard bricks, and to make draws before the port-holes below, and to finish it all compleat," for thirteen pounds four shillings. ^ The news of the declaration of war between England and France was received, in June, 1744, by the people of Albany with no little apprehension that the frontier would again become the scene of many ruthless acts of savage warfare. Grovernor George Clinton, in his con- ference with the sachems of the six nations, on the eighteenth of June, recommended them to be wary of the treacherous French, and reminded them of the evils that had befallen them when their enemy burnt their castles and carried their people into captivity. Writing to the Lords of Trade in November 1745, the governor adverts to a project he had laid before the provincial assembly : "I have been endeavoring to set on foot a scheme and to engage the Province therein for the reduction of a Fort at Crown point possessed by the Freijch in the Indian Country, which is a very great an- noyance to our Frontiers, and had in pursuance thereof sent up to Albany six pieces of Cannon of 18 pounders with carriages, and a proportion of powder, Ball, Match and other Implements. It is well they are gone, for to my great concern (and what I have represented to the Assembly would be our Fate), I received an Account the 19th inst., by express from Albany, that a party of French and their Indians had cut off a settlement in this province called Saratoge, about fifty miles from Albany, and that about twenty houses with a Fort, (which the publick would not repair) were burned to ashes, thirty persons killed and scalped, and about sixty taken prisoners. * * * 1 Albany records, 1740, 1*741, 1*742, 1743. 300 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "In the mean time I have done everything in my power for His Majesty's [George II.] service, and have detached two of His Majty's Company's of Fuzileers to Albany, and given orders to march detachments of the Mihtia as a further security to that City. I have also given orders to the Six Nations of Indians to take up the hatchet against the Enemy immediately." The terrifying deeds of the enemy filled Albany with refugees. The people living in the vicinity of the burned settlement at old Saratoga (now Schuylerville) left their homes and passed the winter in the city. To lodge the soldiers quartered in the city for its defence the three market-houses were converted into barracks, each hav- ing "double chimneys in the middle." Governor Clinton, to retain the Indians of the six nations in the service of Great Britain, held several con- ferences with their sachems in August and September 1Y46. At this time, Colonel William Johnson held the office of Indian agent. William Dunlap, in his history of New York, describing the arrival of the Indians at Albany, says : " 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 run- ning 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 manoeuvering with the individual sachems was found necessary to make them declare for war with France before a public council was held. After the governor's speech was ar- ranged, he fell ill ; and to prevent delay, Mr. Golden was appointed to speak. * * * THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 301 " The Iroquois took to the 23d of the month for de- liberation, and then answered, — the governor being present. They agreed to join in the war generally against the French ; and add, that they take in the Messesagues ^ as a seventh nation. — These, I call the Mackinaws, from their situation. * * * The Indians being sick ^ and expensive, Clinton dismissed them, ordering Johnson to send out parties from Schenectady, and from his own settlement, near the lower Mohawk castle, to harrass the French of Canada." "On the fifth of September, a party of sixty Sus- quehanna Indians came to Albany, and had a conference with Governor Chnton. A sergeant of one of the mili- tary companies having been killed near the city by a member of an Indian scouting party from Canada, the Susquehanna Indians and a number of soldiers were sent out to discover the force of the enemy. The latter were not overtaken and the reconnoitering party re- turned to the city. So many of the Indians were at- tacked with the prevailing malignant disease and so many of them died, that those who were well could not be induced to engage actively in an attack upon the settlements along the border of Canada. It is related that when the Mohawks were solicited by Colonel 1 "There is a nation called the Messissagas whose delegates are here present. They consist of five castles containing eight hundred men who are all determined and do agree to join us in this common cause against our enemies the French and their Indians." Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. p. 323. 8 The epidemic which spread among the people of Albany, the soldiers, and the Indians was thought by some to be yellow fever. It is said that "the bodies of some of the patients were yellow — the crisis of the disease was the ninth day ; if the patient survived that day he had a good chance of recovery. The disease left many in a state of imbecility of mind, approach- ing to childishness or idiocy ; others were afterwards troubled with swelled legs. The disease began in August and ended with frost, carried off forty- five inhabitants, mostly men of robust bodies." Albany annals. Munsell. vol. iii. p. 204. 302 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. Johnson to go with him on a scouting expedition, one of them said : " You seem to think that we are brutes, that we have no sense of the loss of our dearest relations, and some of them the bravest we had in our nation. You must allow ^s to go home to bewail our misfor- tunes." ^ In September, five companies of soldiers were sent to Albany by the governor for its defence during the winter. These soldiers were for the most part quartered in the eight block-houses. The common council ordered that "in case of any alarm in the night," that all the house-holders should set candles in their windows to give light to the men repairing to their posts. While the frontier in 1747 was guarded by detachments from companies of soldiers from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the other provinces, considerable disaffection existed among the troops on account of their not receiving any pay for their services. Some of the companies mani- fested such a mutinous spirit that it was with difficulty that they were kept from disbanding. Governor Clin- ton, in a letter to the duke of Newcastle, written on the twenty-third of July, frorii New York, adverts to the disaffection among the soldiers, saying : " I am this day arrived from Albany. '^ * * I was in great hopes the 4:0s advance, and 20s a month each man, would have satisfied them, as was expected ; but Coll. Schuyler, who commands the New Jersey forces, having paid his men their whole pay then due them, & the people of Albany, some out of a malicious spirit, others in hopes of the profit they would receive by the men receiving their pay while they remained at that place, instigated them to mutiny unless they had their whole pay ; and for that purpose insinuated to them, ' Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 288, 317-326. Albany records, 1745. History of New York. Dunlap. vol. i. pp. 358, 359, 360. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 303 that I, or their officers had received money for their whole pay, & that they were defrauded of it. Upon this the mutiny became almost universal. As these troops had been kept on the frontiers for the defence of it, the Province must inevitably be exposed to the greatest dangers from the enemy if these troops should be suf- fered to disband, as well as to plunderings & other mis- chiefs from mutinous soldiers. I apply ed to the Assem- bly for assistance on this occasion ; but what an indecent refusal I received from them will appear from their an- swer. * * * I was then reduced to draw bills for the whole payment of the forces at Albany. * * * ' ' Coll. Johnson, whom I have employed as Chief Manager of the Indian War and Colonel over all the In- dians, by their own approbation, has sent several parties of Indians into Canada, & brought back at several times prisoners & scalps, but the expedition being laid aside last year, the Indians were discouraged and began to entertain jealousies, by which a new expence became necessary to remove those jealousies & to bring them, back to their former tempers ; but unless some enter- prize be undertaken which may keep up their spirits, Mve may again lose them." ^ The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in October, 1748, brought peace to the disheartened and impoverished people of the city. The disapperance of the clouds of war permitted them to return to their former occupa- tions with renewed zeal and hope. The resumed activi- ties of the people are graphically portrayed by Peter Kalm, a Swedish naturalist, who, in 1749, visited Al- bany to collect seeds and plants for the university of Upsala, Sweden. The following excerpta from his jour- nal present, no doubt, some very authoritative informa- 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 35*7, 358. 304: THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. tion respecting the character and manners of the people of Albany, of whose personal traits and modes of life he seems to have been a close observer : " At noon [the tenth of June], we left New York, and sailed up the Eiver Hudson, in a yacht bound for Albany. All this afternoon we saw a whole fleet of little boats returning from New York, whither they had brought provisions and other goods for sale. * * * All the yachts which ply between Albany and New York, belong to Albany. * * * They bring from Albany boards or planks, and all sorts of timber, flour, pease, and furs, which they get from the Indians or which are smuggled from the French. They come home almost empty, and only bring a few merchandises with them, among which rum is the chief. ^ * * The yachts are pretty large, and have a good cabin, in which the passengers can be very commodiously lodged. They are commonly built of red cedar, or of white oak. * -J^- * ''The canoes, which the yachts have along with them, are made with a single piece of wood, hollowed out ; they are sharp on both ends, frequently three or four fathoms long, ^ and as broad as the thickness of the wood will allow. The people in it do not row sit- ting, but commonly a fellow stands at one end, with a short oar in his hand, with which he governs and brings the canoe forward. Those which are made here at Albany are commonly of white pine : they can do ser- vice for eight or twelve years, especially if they be tarred and painted. * * * There are no seats in the canoes ; for if they had any, they would be more liable to be overset, as one could not keep the equilibrium so well. "Battoes are another kind of boats, which are much in use at Albany. They are made of boards of white 1 A fathom is a measure of six feet. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 305 pine. The bottom is flat, that they may row the better in shallow water : they are sharp at both ends, and somewhat higher towards the end than in the middle. They have seats in them, and are rowed as common boats. They are long, yet not all alike : commonly three, and sometimes four fathoms long. The height from the bottom to the top of the board (for the sides stand almost perpendicular), is from twenty inches to two feet, and the breadth in the middle about a yard and six inches. They are chiefly made use of for carrying goods, by means of the rivers to the Indians ; that is, when those rivers are open enough for the battoes to pass through, and when they need not be carried by land a great way. * * * " They sow wheat in the neighborhood of Albany with great a-dvantage. From one bushel they get twelve sometimes : if the soil be good they get twenty bushels. If their crop amounts only to ten bushels from one, they think it very trifling. * * * The wheat-flour from Albany is reckoned the best in all North America, except that from Sopus or Kingston, a place between Albany and New York. All the bread in Albany is made of wheat. At New York they pay the Albany flour with several shillings more per hundred weight than that from other places. " They are unacquainted with stoves, and their chim- neys are so wide that one could drive [through] them with a cart and horses. The water of several wells in this town was very cool about this time, but had a kind of acid taste which was not very agreeable. * * * j think this water is not very wholesome for people who are not used to it, though the inhabitants of Albany who drink it every day, say that they do not feel the least inconven- ience from it. * ■"' "'•" Almost every house in Albany 20 306 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. has its well, the water of which is applied to common use ; but for tea, brewing, and washing, they commonly take the water of the river. * * * ' ' There are two churches in Albany, an English one and a Dutch one. The Dutch church stands at some distance from the river, on the east side of the market. It is built of stone ; and in the middle it has a small steeple, with a bell. It has but one minister, who preaches twice every Sunday. The English church is situated on the hill, at the west end of the market, di- rectly under the fort. It is likewise built of stone, but has no steeple. There was no service at this time because they had no minister ; and all the people understood Dutch, the garrison excepted. The minister of this church has a settled income of one hundred pounds ster- ling, which he gets from England. The town-hall lies to the southward of the Dutch church, close by the river- side. It is a fine building of stone, three stories high. It has a small tower or steeple v^ith a bell, and a gilt ball and vane at the top of it. ' ' The houses in this town are very neat, and partly built with stones covered with shingles of the White Pine. Some are slated with tiles from Holland, because the clay of this neighborhood is not reckoned fit for tiles. Most of the houses are built in the old way, with the gable-end towards the street ; a few excepted, which were lately built in the manner now used. A great number of houses were built like those of New Bruns wick, [New Jersey], which I have described ; the gable- end being built towards the streets of brick and all the other walls of planks. * * * The gutters on the roofs reach almost to the middle of the street. This preserves the walls from being damaged by the rain ; but is ex- tremely disagreeable in rainy weather for the people in THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 307 the streets, there being hardly any means of avoiding the water from the gutters. ' ' The street-doors are generally in the middle of the houses ; and on both sides are seats, on which, during fair weather, the. people spend almost the whole day, es- pecially on those which are in the shadow of the houses. In the evening these seats are covered with people of both sexes ; but this is rather troublesome, as those who pass by are obliged to greet every body, unless they will shock the politeness of the inhabitants of this town. The streets are broad, and some of them are paved ; in some parts they are lined with trees : the long streets are almost parallel to the river, and the others intersect them at right angles. The street which goes between the two churches is five times broader than the others, and serves as a market-place. The streets upon the whole are very dirty, because the people leave their cattle in them during the summer nights. There are two market-places in the town, to which the country people resort twice a week. "The fort lies higher than any other building, on a high steep hill on the west side of the town. It is a great building of stone, surrounded with high and thick waUs. Its situation is very bad, as it can only serve to keep off plundering parties, without being able to sustain a seige. There are numerous high hills to the west of the fort, which command it, and from whence one may see all that is done within it. There is commonly an officer and a number of soldiers quartered in it. They say the fort contains a spring of water. "The situation of Albany is very advantageous in regard to trade. The river Hudson, which flows close by it, is from twelve to twenty feet deep. There is not yet any quay made for the better lading of the yachts, 308 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. because the people feared it would suffer greatly or be entirely carried away in spring by the ice, which then comes down the river. The vessels which are in use here, may come pretty near the shore in order to be laden, and heavy goods are brought to them upon canoes tied to- gether. * * * "There is not a place in all the British colonies, the Hudson's Bay settlement excepted, where such quantities of furs and skins are bought of the Indians as at Albany. Most of the merchants in this town send a clerk or agent to Oswego, an English trading town upon the lake Ontario, to which the Indians resort with their furs. * * * The merchants from Albany spend the whole summer at Oswego, and trade with many tribes of In- dians who come to them with their goods. Many people have assured me that the Indians are frequently cheated in disposing of their goods, especially when they are in liquor ; and that sometimes they do not get one half, or even one tenth of the value of their goods. I have been a witness to several transactions of this kind. The merchants of Albany glory in tliese tricks, and are highly pleased when they have given a poor Indian a greater portion of brandy than he can bear, and w^hen they can after that get all his goods for mere trifles. The Indians often find, when they are sober again, that they have been cheated : they grumble somewhat, but are soon satisfied when they reflect that they have for once drank as much as they are able of a liquor which they value beyond any thing else in the whole world ; and they are quite insensible to their loss, if they again get a draught of this nectar. ' ' Besides this trade at Oswego, a number of Indians come to Albany from several parts, especially from Canada ; but fi'om this latter place they hardly bring THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 309 any thing but beaver skins. There is a great penalty in Canada for carrying furs to the Enghsh, that trade be- longing to the French West India Company ; notwith- standing which the French merchants in Canada carry on a considerable smuggling trade. They send their furs by means of the Indians to their correspondents at Al- bany, who purchase them at the price which they have fixed upon with the French merchants. The Indians take in return several kinds of cloth and other goods, which may be got here at a lower rate than those which are sent to Canada from France. ' ' The greater part of the merchants at Albany have extensive estates in the country and a great deal of wood. If their estates have a little brook, they do not fail to erect a saw-mill upon it for sawing boards and planks, with which commodity many yachts go during the whole summer to New York, having scarce any other lading than boards. "Many people at Albany make the wampum of the Indians, which is their ornament and their money, by grinding some kinds of shells and muscles : this is a con- siderable profit to the inhabitants. '-" * * The exten- sive trade which the inhabitants of Albany carry on, and their sparing manner of life, in the Dutch way, contribute to the considerable wealth which many of them acquire. "The inhabitants of Albany and its environs are al- most all Dutchmen. They speak Dutch, have Dutch preachers, and divine service is performed in that lan- guage : their manners are likewise Dutch ; their dress is, however, like that of the English. * * * "The avarice and selfish of the inhabitants of Albany are very well known throughout all North America, by the English, by the French, and even by the Dutch in the lower part of New York province. If a Jew, who 310 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. understands the art of getting forward pretty well, should settle amongst them, they would not fail to ruin him. For this reason, nobody comes to this place without the most pressing necessity ; and therefore I was asked, in several places, what induced me to go to it two years one after another. I likewise found that the judgment, which people formed of them, was not without founda- tion. For though they seldom see any strangers (except those who go from the British colonies to Canada and back again), and one might therefore expect to find vic- tuals and accommodation for travelers cheaper than in places where travelers always resort to; yet I experienced the contrary. I was here obliged to pay for every thing twice, thrice, and four times as dear as in any part of North America which I have passed through. If I wanted their assistance, I was obliged to pay them very well for it ; and when I wanted to purchase any thing, or to be helped in some case or other, I could presently see what kind of blood ran in their veins ; for they either fixed exorbitant prices for their services, or were very backward to assist me. Such was this people in general. However, there were some among them who equaled any in North America, or any where else in politeness, equity, goodness, and readiness to serve and oblige ; but their number fell short of that of the former. * * ^ ' ' The inhabitants of Albany are much more sparing than the English. The meat which is served up is often insufficient to satisfy the stomach, and the bowl does not circulate so freely as amongst the English. The women are perfectly well acquainted with economy ; they rise early, go to sleep very late, and are almost over nice and cleanly in regard to the floor, which is frequently scoured several times in the week. The servants in the town are chiefly negroes. Some of the inhabitants wear THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 311 their own hair, but it is very short, without a bag or queue,, which are looked upon as the characteristics of Frenchmen ; and as I wore my hair in a bag the first day I came here from Canada, I was surrounded with child- ren, who called me Frenchman and some of the boldest offered to pull at my French dress. ' ' Their meat and manner of dressing it is very differ- ent from that of the English. Their breakfast is tea, commonly without milk. About thirty or forty years ago, tea was unknown to them, and they breakfasted either upon bread and butter or bread and milk. They never put sugar into the cup, but take a small bit of it into their mouths whilst they drink. Along with the tea they eat bread and butter, with slices of hung beef. Coffee is not usual here : they breakfast generally about seven. Their dinner is buttermilk and bread, to which they sometimes add sugar, and then it is a delicious dish for them ; or fresh milk and bread ; or boiled or roasted flesh. They sometimes make use of butter-milk instead of fresh milk to boil a thin kind of porridge with, which tastes very sour, but not disagreeable in hot weather. To each dinner they have a great salad, prepared with abundance of vinegar and very little or no oil. They frequently eat butter-milk, bread and salad, one mouth- ful after another. Their supper is generally bread and butter, and milk and bread. They sometimes eat cheese at breakfast and at dinner : it is not in slices, but scraped or rasped, so as to resemble course flour, which they pretend adds to the good taste of cheese. They commonly drink very small beer or pure water." ^ The number of the inhabitants of Albany County, in 1749, was ten thousand six hundred and thirty-four ; a decrease of forty seven of the number in 1737. The bell, ^ Annals of Albany. Muns^ll. vol. i, pp. 262-'774. 312 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. which had been rung by order of the common council at eight o'clock every night, was also rung in 1750 at noon, or at twelve o'clock. On the second of March, 1751, the exclusive right of ferrying from Greenbush to Albany, at certain rates, for one year, was sold at public vendue to Cornells van Vechten for three pounds nine- teen shillings, and the privilege of ferrying from Albany to Greenbush was sold to Jeremiah Pemberton for three pounds four shillings. At the conference held in July by Governor Clinton with the sachems of the six nations of Indians, commis- sioners were present from the provinces of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and South Carolina. The governor of South Carolina sent six Catawbas to make peace with the six nations, who had been at war with the Catawbas for many years. The tribes of the six nations and the Catawbas were the allies of the English, and a peace be- tween them had long been desired by the governors of New York and South Carolina. The usual ceremony of smoking the calumet of peace and of exchanging belts of wampum ratified the treaty between the Catawbas and the six nations. During the time of these conferences thirty-three canoes filled with French Indians, about two hundred in number, arrived at Albany, bringing a great quantity of peltry from Canada. ' The seal used by the city in 1752 bore the figure of a beaver at bay. Above it was the name Albany in capital letters, and below it the date, 1752. 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 115, 716, 717. CHAPTER XV. THE COLONIAL CONGRESS. 1754-1760. The initiative act coalescing the thought of the peo- ple of the provinces in America in a desire to confederate themselves for defence and the advancement of their general interests had its primary development in the colonial congress convened in Albany, in June, 1754. This convocation of the commissioners from the prov- inces had been called by letters addressed to the governors of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Penn- slyvania, Maryland, and Virginia, by the Lords of Trade, dated at Whitehall, the eighteenth of September, 1758. The object of the meeting is thus explained in the cir- cular : " His Majesty having been pleased to order a sum of money to be issued for presents to the Six Nations of In- dians and to direct his Governor of New York to hold an interview with them for delivering those presents, for burying the hatchet, and renewing the Covenant Chain with them, we think it our duty to acquaint you there- with, and as we find it has been usual upon former oc- casions, when an interview has been held with those In- dians, for all His Majesty's Colonies, whose interest and security are connected with & depend upon them, to join in such interview, and as the present disposition of those 313 314 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Indians & the attempts which have been made to with- draw them from the British interest appear to us to make such a general interview more particularly neces- sary at this time, we desire you will lay this matter be- fore the Council and General Assembly of the Province under your government and recommend to them forth- with to Qiake a proper provision for appointing Com- missioners to be joined with those of the other Govern- ments for renewing the Covenant Chain with the Six Nations, and for making such presents to them as has been usual upon the like occasions. And we desire that in the Choice and nomination of the Commissioners you will take care that they are men of Character, ability, and integrity, and well acquainted with Indian Affairs. " As to the time and place of meeting it is left to the Governor of New York to fix it, and he has orders to give you early notice of it." ^ As commissioners to this convention the General Court or Assembly of the province of Massachusetts Bay ap- pointed Samuel Welles, John Chandler, Thomas Hutchin- son, Oliver Partridge and John Worthington. These persons were commissioned "to represent and appear for the said Province at the Convention aforesaid for the purposes " mentioned in the letter addressed to the gov- ernor, and ' ' also for entering into Articles of Union and Confederation with the aforesaid Governments for the General Defence of his Majesty's subjects and Interests in North America as well in time of Peace as in war." The commissioners from the province of New Hamp- shire were Theodore Atkinson, Richard Wibird, Meshech Weare and Henry Sherburne, jr. They were directed "to attend at the said Interview to agree upon, consult, and conclude what " might ' ' be necessary for Establishing a I Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. p. 802, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 315 sincere and lasting Friendship and Good Harmony with the said Six Nations of Indians, and if necessary * * * to sign every thing so agreed upon and concluded, and to do, and transact all matters and things which " might "appertain to the finishing the abovesaid work." The colony of Connecticut instructed its commis- sioners, William Pitkin, Roger Wolcott, jr. and Elisha Williams, to meet with the other colonial commissioners and ' ' to consult proper Measures for the General Defence and safety of his Majesty's Subjects in said Governments and the Indians in his Alliance against the French and their Indians." Stephen Hopkins and Martin Howard, jr., the com- missioners from the colony of Rhode Island, were in- structed "to act in Conjunction with the said Commis- sioners in every thing necessary for the good of his Majesty's Subjects in those parts." Pennsylvania sent as her commissioners, John Penn, Richard Peters, Isaac Norris, and Benjamin Franklin, and instructed them to act conformably to the orders of the Board of Trade. Maryland appointed Colonel Benjamin Tasker, and Major Abraham Barnes, commissioning them to act with the representatives of the other provinces for the defence of his majesty's dominions. The commissioners of the province of New York were Joseph Murray, William Johnson, John Chambers and William Smith. ^ The sessions of the colonial congress were held in the court-house ; the first meeting on Wednesday, the nine- teenth of June. The first consideration of the commis- sioners was respecting the propositions to be made to the Indians. To avoid all disputes about the precedence of the colonies it was resolved that they should be named 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. ii, pp, 31'7-321. 316 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. in the minutes according to their situation from the north to the south. The Rev. Richard Peters, one of the commissioners from Pennsylvania, preached a sermon on Sunday, the twenty-third of June, which was ordered to be printed. At a meeting, on Monday afternoon, the twenty- fourth of June, a motion was made that the commis- sioners should give their opinions whether a union of all the colonies was not then " absolutely necessary for their security and defence. The question was accordingly put, and it passed in the affirmative unanimously. " A commit- tee was then appointed ' ' to prepare and receive plans or schemes for the union of the colonies and to digest them into one general plan " to be reported to the convention : Thomas Hutchinson, Theodore Atkinson, William Pit- kin, Stephen Hopkins, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Tasker being named as that committee. After a number of debates, a ' ' Plan of a proposed Union of the several colonies of Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Caro- lina and South Carolina, for their mutual defence and security, and for extending the British Settlements in North America" was accepted by the convention. It was proposed that an humble application should be made ' ' for an act of the Parliament of Oreat Britain, by virtue of which one general government" should "be formed in America, including all the said colonies, within and under which government each colony" might retain its "constitution, except in the particulars wherein a change " might "be directed by the said act. That the said gen- eral government [should] be administered by a president- general, to be appointed and supported by the crown, and a grand council [should] be chosen by the represen- THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 317 tatives of the people of the several colonies," meeting ' ' in their respective assemblies. That within [a certain number of] months after the passing of such act, the houses of representatives in the several assemblies that [should] happen to be sitting within that time or that ■' should "be specially for that purpose convened," might and should choose ' ' members for the grand council in the following proportions, that is to say : Massachusetts Bay 7, New Hanipshire 2, Connecticut 5, Rhode Island 2, New York 4, New Jerseys 3, Pennsylvania 6, Maryland 4, Virginia 7, North Carolina 4, South Carolina 4," being 48 members. The city of Philadelphia was designated by the plan as the place for the annual meetings of the grand council. The plan further proposed that an election of members of the grand council should be held every three years. The grand -council, it further proposed, should have power to make laws for the colonies and the Indians, to build forts, to impose duties and taxes, and to regulate trade. The laws made by the grand-council were not to ' ' be repug- nant but as near " as might " be agreeable to the laws of England," and were to be transmitted to the king in in council ' ' for approval, " and if not disapproved with- in three years after presentation " they were to remain in force. The convention resolved that the proposed plan of union should be laid by the several governments before their respective constituents for their consideration. A large number of the sachems of the six nations at- tended the conferences, with whom the commissioners made satisfactory covenants of peace and amity. ^ The plan was not acceptable to the crown of England. Nevertheless it was as sown seed w^aiting the favoring 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 851, 853-892. 318 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. influences that were to make it take root and to develop its germs not many years thereafter. The signatures of Stephen Hopkins and Benjamin FrankHn, two of the framers of the plan for the Union of Colonies, were, in 1776, affixed to the Declaration of Independence. The French, it seems, did not respect the articles of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, for a party of French Indians were permitted to invade the province of New York, who, on the twenty-eighth of August, 1754, burnt the houses and barns of some of the settlers at Hoosick. The Schaghticoke Indians, about sixty in number, men, women, and children, returned with the invading party to Canada. When Lieutenant-governor De Lancey was informed of these facts, he immediately ordered new palisades to be planted around the city of Albany and the block-houses to be repaired. He further directed that two hundred men of each regiment of the militia of the near counties should be held in readiness to march to Albany, and sent a company of soldiers there from Fort George, at New York. The renewal of hostilities between England and France led in 1Y55 to an attempt to reduce the forts of the French at Niagara, which they had built there to de- fend their line of communication between Canada and the head-waters of the Mississippi River. The attacking forces were placed under the command of Major-general William Shirley , the governor of Massachusetts, the rendez- vous of his troops being Albany. He marched to Oswego, but proceeded no farther. Leaving a garrison there, he returned with the remainder of his forces to Albany. Major-general William Johnson, then living at Mount Johnson, about forty miles west of Albany, was given the command of the troops to attack the French at Crown Point. In a letter to the Lords of Trade, dated at Lake THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 319 George, the third of September, 1755, he thus describes the difficulties he encountered in going there : " About 250 Indians have already joined me, and as small parties are every day dropping in, I expect, before I can be able to leave this place, to have 300. * * * Our Indians appear to be very sincere and zealous in our cause, and their young men can hardly be withheld from going out a scalping. * * * " I am building a Fort at this lake which the French call lake St. Sacrament, but I have given it the name of Lake George, not only in honour to His Majesty but to assertain his undoubted dominion here. " I found it a mere wilderness, not one foot cleared. I have made a good Waggon Road to it from Albany, distance about 70 miles ; never was house or Fort erected here before. We have cleared land enough to encamp 5000 Men. The Troops now under my command and the reinforcements on the way will amount to near that number. Thro' our whole march from Albany, tho' par- ties of the French have been hovering round us, we have had but one man scalped and one taken prisoner * * * I propose with a part of the Troops to proceed down the Lake, at the end whereof is an important pass called Tionderogue, about 50 miles from hence, and 15 miles from Crown point, and there endeavor to take post till the rest of the Forces join me, and then march to the attack of Crown point, all which I hope to effect in about three weeks." ^ Among the troops of the different colonies that were encamped on both sides of the river, near Albany, in June and July, was the regiment of Colonel Ephriam Williams from Massachusetts. While waiting for orders to march to join General Johnson at Lake George, Colonel 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 994, 997. 320 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Williams made his will at Albany, on the twenty-second of July, in which he made certain bequests for the es- tablishment of a free school. Williams' College, at Wil- liamstown, Massachusetts, preserves the memory of its distinguished founder in the name it bears. Colonel Williams, on the eighth of September, was attacked by the French forces under General Ludwig August Dieskau in a narrow pass, about four miles from the fortified camp of the English army. While valiantly repelling the as- sault of the enemy, Colonel Williams was killed. Having forced this small detachment to retreat. Baron Dieskau then advanced and engaged the main army commanded by Greneral Johnson. The valor of the colonial forces soon put to route the French troops and their Indian al- lies. Baron Dieskau was badly wounded in one of his legs and fell into the hands of the English. He was taken to Albany, where he had all the care he desired. Sometime afterward he was sent to New York and thence to England, where he died. In a letter, written by an artilleryman who was in the engagement, the negro- soldiers are highly praised for brave conduct: "Our Blacks behaved better than the whites," G-eneral John- son received a wound in one of his hips. The general, writing, on the sixteenth of September, thus speaks of the wants which delayed his advance on Crown Point : " Our Expedition is likely to be extreamly distressed & I fear fatally retarded for the want of Wag- gons. The People of the County of Albany & the Adja- cent Counties hide their Waggons & drive away their Horses. Most of the Waggons taken into this Service have deserted, some Horses are quite jaded, & some few [have been] killed by the Enemy & several [have] run away. Most of our Provisions are at Albany." The council of war, finding that it was impossible to THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 321 supply the army at Lake George with provisions and other things needed, by it to attack Crown Point before the beginning of winter, concluded to abandon the project and to disband the troops. ^ Having built Fort William Henry and garrisoned it with six hundred men, General Johnson returned with his other troops to Al- bany. King George II. , to reward him for his services, granted unto him and "his heirs male, the dignity of a baronet of Great Britain," and presented him with a gratuity of five hundred pounds sterling. The Rev. Samuel Chandler, chaplain of one of the Massachusetts regiments, while on his way to Fort Ed- ward, stopped several days in October, 1755, in Albany. In his journal are a number of observations respecting the city. The ferry-charge for a man and horse ferried from Greenbush, he says, was " 10 coppers." He boarded at Lottridge's, which was "called the English tavern," opposite the dwelling of the Widow Jenaverie, on the opposite corner of the street. Some of the fire- places in the houses of the Dutch people had very small jambs with three or four rows of tile, others had " no jambs at all." Along the streets were "rows of small button trees." Many of the brick-houses were curiously flowered with black bricks, and " dated with the same." The governor's house was ornamented with two black brick-hearts. The brick-houses were commonly one story high and their gable-ends were "notched like steps." They had "window-shutters" and "loop holes" in the cellars. The vanes on the house were mostly figures of horses, lions, geese, and sloops. The bells were "often ringing ;" they were rung and not tolled for funerals. ' ' The settees " in front of the doors of the houses were " kept scoured very neat." From the north gate of the 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vi. pp. 1014, 1021. 21 322 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. city to the river was a stone wall "with loopholes." The bedsteads were boxes with boarded bottoms ; each had a feather-bed, an under sheet, and a blanket -cover. There were many compactly built houses along the road from the north gate to Madam Van Rensselaer's seat, at the mills, which mansion was " pretty grand." Colonel Cuyler told him that there were about five hundred families in the city. On Sunday, the twelfth of October, Chaplain Chand- ler went up to the Flats, [ now called Port Schuyler, on the south side of West Troy,] where two or three com- panies of soldiers were encamped, and preached in Col- onel Philip Pieterse Schuyler's barn, taking for his text the first verse of the fifteenth chapter of Genesis. The colonel and the members of his family attended the ser- vices. After dining with Colonel Schu^^ler, his hospita- ble host had him conveyed in the afternoon in his chaise or chair to Albany. ^ In October, 1756, there were a number of persons in the city taken with the small pox, and the common coun- cil ordered that the people in the houses in which there were persons afflicted with it should not go abroad nor permit others to visit them. In the geographical description of the province, con- tained in Smith's history of New York, printed in Lon- don in 1T57, is the following important information con- cerning the city and county of Albany : " This County [of Albany] extends from the South Bounds of the Manor of Livingston on the East Side, and Ulster on the West Side of the Hudson's River ; on the North its Limits are not yet ascertained. * * * " The Houses [in the city of Albany] are built of Brick in the Dutch Taste, and are in Number about 350. There 1 Coll. on history of Albany. Munsell. vol. ii. pp. 374, 375. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 323 are two Churches in it. That of the Episcopahans, the only one in this large County, is a Stone Building. The Congregation is but small, almost all the Inhabitants resorting to the Dutch Church, which is a plain, square, stone Edifice. Besides these they have no other publick Buildings, except the City Hall and the Fort, the latter of which is a stone Square, with four Bastions, situated on an Eminence which overlooks the Town, but is itself commanded by higher G-round. The greatest Part of the City is fortified only by Palisades, and in some Places there are small Cannon planted in Block-houses. "Albany was incorporated by Colonel Dongan in 1686, and is under the Government of a Mayor, Recorder, six Aldermen, and as many Assistants. It has also a Sheriff, Town Clerk, Chamberlain, Clerk of the Markets, one High Constable, three Sub-Constables, and a Marshal. The Corporation is Empowered besides to hold a Mayor's Court for the Trial of civil Causes, and a Court of Gen- eral Quarter Sessions." The Hudson River is thus described : "Its Source has not, as yet, been discovered. We know, in general, that it is in the mountainous, uninhabited Country, between Lakes Ontario and Champlain. In its Course Southward it approaches the Mohawks River within a few Miles at Saucondauga. From thence it runs North and North- easterly towards Lake St. Sacrement, now called Lake George, and is not above 8 or 10 Miles distant from it. The Course then to New York is very uniform, being in the Main South 12 or 15° West. "The Distance from Albany to Lake George is com- puted at 65 Miles. The River in that Interval is naviga- ble only to BatteauB, and interrupted by Rifts, which occasion two of a half a Mile each. ^ There are three 1 " In the Passage from Albany to Fort Edward, the whole Land Car- riage is about 12 or 13 Miles." Idem. 324 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Routes from Crown Point to Hudson's River in the Way to Albany ; one through Lake George, another through a Branch of Lake Champlain, bearing a Southern Course, and terminating in a Bason, several Miles East of Lake George, called the South Bay. The third is by ascending the Wood Creek, a shallow Stream, about one hundred Feet broad, which, coming from the South-east, empties itself into the South Branch of the Lake Champlain. " The Place, where these Routes meet on the Banks of Hudson's River, is called the Carrying Place. Here Fort Lyman, ^ since called Fort Edward, is built ; but Fort William Henry, a much stronger Garrison, was erected at the South end of Lake George, after the Repulse of the French Forces under the Command of Baron Dieskau on the 8th of September, 1755. General Shirley thought it more advisable to strengthen Fort Edward in the Concurrence of three Routes than to erect the other at Lake George 17 Miles to the Northward of it ; and wrote a very pressing Letter upon that Head to Sir William Johnson, who then commanded the Provincial Troops. * * * "The Tide flows a few Miles above Albany. The Navigation is safe, and performed in Sloops of about 40 or 50 Tons burden. * * * The River is stored with a Variety of Fish, which renders a Summer's Passage to Albany exceedingly diverting to such as are fond of Angling." Adverting to the character and manners of the people of the province, the well-informed historian says : "• English is the most prevailing Language amongst us, but not a little corrupted by the Dutch Dialect, which is still so much used in some Counties that the Sheriffs find 1 Named in honor of General Phineas Lyman, the commander of the Connecticut troops under Johnson in 1755. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 325 it difficult to obtain Persons sufficiently acquainted with the English Tongue to serve as Jurors in the Courts of Law. " The Manners of the People differ as well as their Language. * * * In the City of New York, through our Intercourse with the Europeans, we follow the Lon- don Fashions ; though by the Time we adopt them they become disused in England. Our Affluence, during the late War, introduced a Degree of Luxury in Tables, Dress, and Furniture, with which we were before unacquainted. But still we are not so gay a People as our neighbors in Boston and several of the Southern Colonies. The Dutch Counties, in some measure, follow the Example of New York, but still retain many Modes peculiar to the Hol- landers. '^ * * ' ' The Fur Trade though very much impaired by the French Wiles and Encroachments, ought not to be passed over in Silence. ^ The Building of Oswego has conduced more than any Thing else to the preservation of this Trade. Peltry of all kinds is purchased with Rum, Am- munition, Blankets, Strouds, and Wampum or Conque- shell Bugles. The French Fur Trade at Albany was carried on till the Summer of 1755 by the Caghnuaga Proselytes ; and in Return for their Peltry they received Spanish Pieces of Eight, and some other Articles which the French want to complete their Assortment of Indian G-oods. For the Savages prefer the English Strouds to theirs, and the French found it to their Interest to pur- chase them of us, and transport them to the Western Indians on the Lakes Erie, Huron, and at the Streight of Misilmakinac. * * * 1 " It is computed that formerly we exported 150 Hogsheads of Beaver and other fine Furs per Afinum, and 200 Hogsheads of Indian-dressed Deer- skins, besides those carried from Albany into New England. Skins undressed are usually shiped to Holland." Idem. 326 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "The money used in this Province is Silver, Gold, British Halfpence, and bills of Credit. To counterfeit either of them is Felony without Benefit of Clergy ; but none except the latter, and Lyon Dollars are a legal Ten- der. Twelve Halfpence till lately passed for a Shilhng ; which being much beyond their Value in any of the neighboring Colonies, the Assembly, in 1753, resolved to proceed at their next Meeting, after the 1st of May ensuing, to the Consideration of a Method for ascertain- ing their Value. A Set of G-entlemen, in Number Seven- ty-two, took Advantage of the Discredit that Resolve put upon Copper Halfpence, and on the 22d of December, subscribed a Paper, engaging not to receive or pass them except at the Rate of fourteen Coppers to a Shilhng. This gave Rise to a Mob for a few Days among the lower Class of People, but some of them being imprisoned, the Scheme was Carried into Execution, and estabhshed in every Part of the Province without the Aid of a Law. * * * " Our Schools are in the lowest order ; the Instructors want Instruction, and through a long shameful Neglect of all the Arts and Sciences, our common Speech is extremely corrupt, and the Evidences of a bad Taste, both as to Thought and Language, are visible in all our Proceedings, pubhck and private * " * The People, both in Town and Country, are sober, industrious, and hospitable, though intent upon Gain. The richer Sort keep very plentiful Tables abounding with great Varieties of Flesh, Fish, Fowl, and aU kinds of Vegetables. The Common Drinks are Beer, Cyder, weak Punch, and Maderia Wine. For Desert we have Fruits in vast Plenty of different Kinds and various Species. * * * "Few Physicians amongst us are eminent for their Skill. Quacks abound like Locusts in Egypt, and too THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 327 many have recommended themselves to a full Practice and profitable Subsistence. This is the less to be won- dered at as the Profession is under no kind of Regulation. Loud as the Call is, to our Shame be it remembered, we have no Law to protect the Lives of the king's Subjects from the Malpractice of Pretenders. Any Man at his Pleasure sets up for Physician, Apothecary, and Chirur- geon. No Candidates are either examined or licensed, or even sworn to fair Practice. * * * "The Clergy of this Province are in general but in- differently supported ; it is true they live easily, but few of them leave any Thing to their Children. * * * As to the Number of our Clergymen, it is large enough at present, there being but few Settlements unsupplied with a Ministry, and some superabound. In Matters of Religion we are not so intelhgent in general as the In- habitants of the New England Colonies ; but both in Respect and good Morals we certainly have the Ad- vantage of the Southern Provinces." ^ In 1756 another attempt was made to reduce the French forts at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Again the Hudson between New York and Albany became picturesque with the numerous vessels bearing troops and the munitions of war to the head of the river's navigation. On both sides of the river near the city were camps of English soldiers and provincial militia. On the twenty- fifth of June, General James Abercrombie arrived with two regiments of regular troops. About ten thousand men were to be seen daily drilling and manoeuvering on the banks of the river in the month of July. The music of fifes and drums made the inhabitants familiar with the different notifications governing the routine of camp- 1 History of New York. Smith, pp. 197, 198, 201, 202, 210, 211, 212, 214, 216, 217, 228. 328 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. life. Hundreds of Indians in their war-paint frequented the city with their squaws and children. On the twenty- seventh of July, the Earl of London arrived and took command of the army. However, before it had accom- plished the purposes of its organization, the French had attacked Fort Oswego and had made the English com- mander surrender its garrison and stores. This success of the French in August, abruptly terminated the cam- paign of 1756. The concentration of troops at Albany in 1757 to repel the advance of the French force under Montcalm had no successful results. The latter's attack on Fort William Henry in August and the massacre of the vanquished garrison, caused the people of Albany the greatest anxiety and alarm. The city now became a place of refuge to the settlers along the frontier. During the fall and win- ter a large number of soldiers were quartered in the city. " A regiment came to town about this time," says Mrs. Anne Grant in her "Memoirs,"^ " the superior officers of which were younger, more gay, and less amenable to good counsel than those who used to command the troops which had formerly been placed on this station. * * * Those dangerously accomplished heroes made their ap- perance at a time when the English language began to be more generally understood, and when the pretensions of the merchants, commissaries," [and others,] "to the stations they occupied were no longer dubious. Those polished strangers now began to make a part of general society. * * * By this time the Anglomania was beginning to spread. A sect arose among the young people, who seemed resolved to assume a lighter style of dress and manners, and to borrow their taste in those respects from their new friends. * * * 1 She was the daughter of Duncan McVicar, and married the Rev_ James Grant in 1'7'79. Her " Memoirs " was first published in 1808. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 329 "The colonel of the regiment, who was a man of fashion and family, and possessed talents for both good and evil purposes, was young and gay, and being lodged in the house of a very wealthy citizen, who had before, in some degree, affected the newer modes of living, so captivated him with his good breeding and affability, that he was ready to humor any scheme of diversion which the colonel and his associates proposed. Under the auspices of this gallant commander, balls began to be concerted, and a degree of flutter and frivolity to take place, which was as far from elegance as it was from the honest, artless cheerfulness of the meetings usual among them. - * * " Now the very ultimatum of degeneracy, in the opin- ion of these simple good people, was approaching ; foiv now the officers, encouraged by the success of all their projects for amusement, resolved to new-fashion and en- lighten those amiable novices whom their former schemes had attracted within the sphere of their influence ; and for this purpose a private theatre was fitted up and pre- parations made for acting a play. * * * "The play * * * was acted in a barn and pretty well attended. * "■" * It was the Beaux' Stratagem, no favorable specimen of the delicacy or morality of the British theatre ; and for the wit it contained very little of that was level to the comprehension of the novices who were there first initiated into a knowledge of the magic of the scene. * * * They laughed very heartily at seeing the gay young ensigns, whom they had been used to dance with, flirting fans, displaying great hoops, and, with painted cheeks and colored eyebrows, sailing about in female habiliments. * * * " The fame of their exhibition went abroad, and opin- ions were formed of them no way favorable to the actors 330 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. or to the audience. In this region of reality, where rigid truth was always undisguised, they had not learned to distinguish between fiction and falsehood. It was said that the officers, familiar with every vice and every disguise, had not only spent a whole night in telling lies in a counterfeited place, the reality of which had never existed, but that they were themselves a lie, and had de- graded manhood and broken through an express prohibi- tion in Scripture by assuming female habits ; that they had not only told lies, but cursed and swore the whole night, and assumed the characters of knaves, fools, and robbers, which every good and wise man held in detestation, and no one would put on unless they felt themselves easy in them. Painting their faces, of all other things, seemed most to violate the Albanian ideas of decorum, and was looked upon as a most flagrant abomination. Great and loud was the outcry produced by it. Little skilled in sophistry, and strangers to all the arts Hhat make the worse appear the better reason,' the young auditors could only say ' that indeed it was very amusing, made them laugh heartily, and did harm to nobody.' So harm- less, indeed, did this entertainment appear to the new con- verts to fashion, that the Recruiting Officer was given out for another night. "^ In 175S another army was sent to reduce the fort at Ticonderoga. In the early part of the summer a number of regiments under the command of Oeneral Abercrombie encamped in the great field on the south side of the city, commonly known as the Pasture. Lord Howe was among the British officers who had tents in the camp. The unsuccessful assault upon Fort Carillon, at Ticonderoga, in July, and the subsequent retreat of Abercrombie's dis- 1 Memoirs of an American lady, with sketches of manners and scenery in America as they existed previous to the Revolution. By Mrs. [Anne] Grant. Phila., 1846. pp. 152, 153, 156, 158, 159. THE HISTORY. OF ALBANY. 331 heartened forces to Fort William Henry, greatly depressed the people of the frontier. Many of the wounded of the army were conveyed in boats to Albany. The body of Lord Howe, who had been killed at the beginning of the en- gagement with the French, was brought to the city by Captain Philip Schuyler, and buried with befitting honors. By some it is said that the corpse was interred in a vault in the English church, by others, in one in the Reformed Protestant Dutch church. After the retreat of the army to the south end of Lake George, a detachment of three thousand men under Col- onel John Bradstreet was sent by the way of Albany to reduce Fort Frontenac at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. On the twenty -seventh of August, the English were in possession of it. The two militia-companies from Albany, commanded by Captains Peter Yates and Goosen van Schaick, took part in the successful assault on Fort Frontenac. Another army, under the command of Lord Amherst, encamped in May and June, 1T59, around the city. In July it moved northward to attack Fort Carillon, at Ti- conderoga. The withdrawal of the French forces from it and from the fortifications at Crown Point, permitted the English army without opposition to take possession of the two strongholds. The fall of Quebec and Montreal and the occupation of Canada by the British, ended the war with the French which had so long disturbed and impoverished the people of the city and county of Albany. The common council, in 1758, to obtain some needed money for the use of the city, established a public lottery, and appointed a board of managers to superintend the sale of tickets. In January, 1759, a thousand pounds sterling had been raised, which were ordered to be paid to the city -treasurer. 332 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Meanwhile there had been several changes in the pas- torates of the two churches. The Rev. Cornelis van Schie, who had died in 1744, had been succeeded in 1746 by the Rev. Theodorus Frielinghuysen, who was pastor of the congregation of the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church until the fall of 1759, when he resigned and sailed to Holland. The Rev. Eilardus Westerlo, in the autumn of 1760, became his successor. After the Rev. Henry Barclay accepted the rectorship of Trinity church, New York, in 1746, the English church had no clergyman to take charge of its congregation until March, 1749, when the Rev. John Ogilvie, a graduate of Yale College, began his ministrations. While he was absent with the army on the frontier, the Rev. Thomas Brown, deputy-chaplain of the 60th regiment of Royal Americans, supplied his place from the twenty-first of December, 1760, to November, 1761. In 1764 he became the successor of the Rev. John Ogilvie, who that year was made rector of Trinity church. New York. To organize a Presbyterian church in the city, a num- ber of persons addressed a petition in 1760 to the mayor, recorder, aldermen and commonalty requesting a license to be granted them for the purpose. On the third of April, the municipal authorities complied with the re- quest of the petitioners, and promised to "do every thing in their power to encourage and promote " the under- taking, and ordered the mayor to sign the license and the clerk to affix the seal of the city to the document. The birthday of King George II., the thirtieth of October, was celebrated in Albany by the burning of a great bonfire, the wood for which cost the city three pounds sterling.^ 1 Doc. history N. Y. vol. iii. pp. 697, 698 ; vol. iv. p. 196. Coll. on the hist, of Albany. Munsell. vol. i. pp. 119, 122. CHAPTER XVI. GROWTH OF THE CITY. i76i-in3. Great Britain's possession of Canada ended the war along the northern frontier of Albany county. The im- poverished people, no longer deterred from pursuing their personal occupations, undertook them with un- usual earnestness and application. The municipal au- thorities, to increase the city's revenues, resolved that no freedom or permission to do business in the city should be given to a merchant without the payment of three pounds twelve shillings, or to any person to manufacture without the payment of one pound sixteen shillings. The mayor was to receive from these sums "twelve shillings for his own use," and the clerk one shilling for affixing the city's seal to each freedom. Any person born in the city, having attained the age of twenty-one years, could obtain a freedom on the pay- ment of two shillings. In 1761, it appears that a town-clock was placed in one of the steeples, for six pounds sterling were to be paid to Philip Reyley for his care of it for one year. By a resolution of the common council, on the twenty- sixth of March, 1762, a new fire engine of the fifth size manufactured by Richard Newsham, was ordered to be purchased for the city through John George Liebenrood, 333 334 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. a London merchant. The engme was received in March, 1763, and on the second of April following, the sum of one hundred and fifty-eight pounds nineteen shillings and six pence was ordered to be paid for it. At this time the number of the city's firemen was thirty-one. ^ In November of the same year the common council pur- chased forty-eight leather fire-buckets and ordained that each of the aldermen and the assistants should be the keeper of four buckets on which were painted designat- ing numerals. An ordinance was published in October, 1765, by the common council, that ' ' two sufficient persons " in each ward should be appointed viewers of chimneys, hearths and places where ashes were kept, whose duty it was to inspect the same once every fortnight, and when any fire or hot ashes were unprotectedly exposed to notify the person or persons responsible for the same, and should he, she or they fail or refuse to act as instructed, the latter were to be fined forty shillings. Any person or persons permitting his, her or their chimney or chim- neys to become foul with soot and the same should catch fire, were to forfeit the sum of forty shillings. Any member of the city-guard discovering an accidental fire was entitled to a reward of three pounds. The ordinance also enjoined that householders using two fire places should possess two leather buckets ; brewers, tavern-keepers, and bakers should have three. 1 In the first ward : Volkert van Vechten, Gerrit van Zandt (Sante), jr., Jacob Roseboom, Peter Ryckman, Stephen Schuyler, Marte Myndertse (van Iveren), William Fryer, John Stevenson, John Johannes Lansingh, and Isaac Bogart, jr. In the second ward : Gerardus Lansingh, Jacob Bleecker. Isaac Verplanck, Casparus Pruyn, Volkert A. Douw, Nicholas Marselis, Peter Williams, John Marselis, Anthony Bleecker, Sander Lansingh, Corne- lius van Schelluyne, John H. Roseboom, and Gysbert G. Marselis. In the third ward : Abraham L. Fonda, Philip De Forest, Abraham Schuyler, John Ten Broeck, Abraham Cuyler, Nanning H. Vischer, Thomas Hun, and Isaac van Arnem. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 335 The buckets were to "be marked with at least the mitial letters " of the names of the owners. Any person who failed to comply with the requirements of the ordinance was to forfeit six shillings. If any person should retain for forty-eight hours a bucket belonging to another that had been used at a fire and did not return it to the owner, or if ignorant of the latter's name, to the city- hall, he was to pay a fine of ten shillings for each bucket retained by him. To impress upon all the duty of assisting in ex- tinguishing fires, the following official censure was added to the third section of the ordinance : "It seems astonishing that in a Christian country where the essen- tial principles of professed religion lay the people under an indispensible obligation to do to others as they would others should do unto them, [that some] should see their neighbors' houses on fire and not use their utmost endeavours to assist them to quench it ; notwithstanding experience shews that there are people so far abandoned as to appear, as it were, to shew their indifference, and instead of assisting, a duty required by the laws of Christ- ianity & nature, often impede and hinder others from assisting their neighbors in such casualty and distress." To remedy "such inexcusable remissness in such dangerous casualties," it was ordained that the mayor, the recorder, the first two aldermen, and the sheriff were to repair to the place where there was a fire to "have the care and direction of the people & Fire en- gines," and "all other Tools and Instruments" for the speedy extinguishment of the fire ; that the other alder- men with the assistance of the constables were "to have the ranking, placing, and directing of the people to hand water ;" and that any person, " ordered and di- rected at or about such fire "by any of these officials, 336 THE HIBTOBY OF ALBANY. neglecting or refusing to obey and perform their orders, was "to forfeit and pay for every such neglect and refusal the sum of ten shillings current money." "In case of any outcry of fire or any other alarm, riot, rout or insurrection, " it was ordained that persons dwelling in rooms fronting the streets, lanes, and alleys of the city, were immediately to ' ' illuminate and set three or more Candles " in their front windows to re- main there "illuminated until Day Light unless such fire, alarm, riot, rout, insurrection " should " sooner be extinguished or quelled." Any person who should neg- lect this duty was to forfeit three shillings. The common council to protect the business of those whom they had appointed to remove the soot from foul chimneys, also ordained that no person should "presume to cleanse any of the chimneys in the city " except the city-sweeps. ^ The society of Presbyterians, organized in 1760, re- ceived permission from Lord Amherst on the seventh of March, 1Y62, to make use of the forage-house near the main guard-house, as a "place of worship." On the sec- ond of September, the mayor, aldermen and commonalty transferred to John McComb, David Edgar, Samuel Hol- liday, Robert Henry, Abraham Lyle, and John Monro, elders of the English Presbyterian church, for ever in trust for the use of the society, the plat of ground on the northwest corner of Hudson Avenue and William Street, then described as lying in the first ward of the city, "having to the East the street that adjoyns to the Lotts of William Fryer and others, on the North, West, and and South by the commons." " As set forth in the deed, 1 Albany records, 1*761, 1762, 1763, 1765. 3 " In front along the said street one hundred and thirty-two feet, con- taining on the North side thirty feet, on the South one hundred and forty- eight feet, and on the West side one hundred and ninety-two feet, all Ryn- iand measure, according to a Map thereof made by Mr. John R. Bleecker." THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 337 the ground was given ''to erect and build a Presbyterian Meeting-house on, and to and for no other use and in- tention whatsoever. "1 The church, it appears, was shortly afterward built on it, for in October, 1766, the plat is described as the "piece of ground where the Presbyterian Meeting is erected on." The part of the hill on the south side of the fort and west of South Pearl street was at this time called Gal- lows hill. On the twenty-sixth of July, 1T62, the com- mon council resolved that the land immediately west of the fort where the gallows was then standing and the land on Gallows hill should be laid out in acre-lots and sold at public vendue for a term of twenty-one years with such restrictions as should be agreed upon there- after. The authorities in February, 1763, bought of William Brefit a bound servant, named James Nox, for the sum of nine pounds sterling, to serve the city for the remain- der of his term of service as a public whipper. Public sentiment in the eighteenth century, it would seem, had a different education than it has at present, for it was resolved by the aldermen that five tickets of the New York lottery should be j^urchased " in behalf of the cor- poration," and the mayor was ordered to take them to New York and present them on the day of drawing. On the tenth of January, 1763, Volkert P. Douw, the mayor, delivered to the city-clerk four pounds five shillings, drawn by one of the tickets, the other four having drawn blanks. " The patroon of Rensselaerswyck, Stephen van Rens- selaer, in 1765, completed the building of his attractive and commodious manor-house. The date of its erection 1 Doc. hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. Albany records, 1*760, 1'763, 1766. 2 Albany records, l^i'o'Ji. 22 338 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. in large iron numerals ornament the stately edifice still standing a short distance north of Thacher Street, in the north part of the city. Almost opposite it, on the west side of Broadway, is the one-story, brick office of the estate, containing a large number of manorial pa- pers, maps, and account-books, some of which are more than two hundred and fifty years old. It was during this period of peace that Mrs. Grant acquired her knowledge of the people of Albany, of whose habits and customs she wrote so comprehensively in her "Memoirs of an American lady." Describing a custom which she thought was peculiar to Albany until she read an account of one similar to it followed in Geneva, France, she says : ' ' The children of the town were all divided into com- panies, as they called them, from five to six years of age, till they became marriageable. How those com- panies first originated, or what were their exact regula- tions, I cannot say ; though I, belonging to none, oc- casionally mixed with several, yet always as a stranger, notwithstanding that I spoke their current language fluently. Every company contained as many boys as girls. But I do not know that there was any limited number ; only this I recollect, that a boy and girl of each company, who were older, cleverer, or had some other pre-eminence above the rest, were called heads of the company, and as such, were obeyed by the others. "" * '"" " The companies of little children had also their head. All the children of the same age were not in one com- pany ; there were at least three or four of equal ages, who had a strong rivalry with each other ; and children of different ages in the same family belonged to different companies. * " "■ Each company, at a certain time &mmssms^^sm;^ai^smmo /v-^-^ THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 339 of the year went in a body to gather a particular kind of berries to the hill. It was a sort of annual festival attended with religious punctuality. Every company had a uniform for this purpose ; that is to say, very pretty light baskets made by the Indians, with lids and handles, which hung over the arm, and were adorned with various colors. * * * ' ' The parents of these children seemed very much to encourage this manner of marshalling and dividing themselves. Every child was permitted to entertain the whole company on its birthday, and once beside, during winter and spring. The master and mistress of the family always were bound to go from home on these oc- casions, while some old domestic was left to attend and watch over them, with an ample provision of tea, choco- late, preserved and dried fruits, nuts, and cakes of various kinds, to which was added cider or a syllabub ; ^ for these young friends met at four, and did not part till nine or ten, and amused themselves with the utmost gayety and freedom in any way their fancy dictated. I speak from hearsay ; for no person that does not belong to the company is ever admitted to these meetings ; other children or young people visit occasionally, and are civilly treated, but they admit of no intimacies beyond their company. The consequence of these exclusive and early intimacies was, that [when the members were] grown up, it was reckoned a sort of apostacy to marry out of one's company, and indeed it did not often hap- pen. '^ * * Their dress of ceremony was never put on but when their company were assembled. " The observant writer relates that the people of Al- bany "were exceedingly social, and visited each other very frequently, besides the regular assembling together 1 A drink made of wine and milk. 340 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. in their porches every fine evening. Of the more sub- stantial luxuries of the table they knew little, and of the formal and ceremonious parts of good breeding still less." ''If you went to spend the day anywhere you were received in a manner we should think very cold. No one rose to welcome you ; no one wondered you had not come sooner, or apologized for any deficiency in your en- tertainment. Dinner, which was very early, was served exactly in the same manner as if there were only the family. The house indeed was so exquisitely neat and well regulated, that you could not surprise these people ; they saw each other so often and so easily, that intimates made no difference. Of strangers they were shy ; not by any means from. want of hospitality, but from a con- sciousness that people who had little to value themselves on but their knowledge of the world and ceremonies of polished life, disliked their sincerity and despised their simplicity. If you showed no insolent wonder, but easily and quietly adopted their manners, you would re- ceive from them not only very great civility but much essential kindness. * * * "After sharing this plain and unceremonious dinner, which might, by the by, chance to be a very good one, but was invariably that which was ixieant for the family, tea was served in at a very early hour. And here it was that the distinction shown to strangers commenced. Tea here was a perfect regale, being served up with various sorts of cakes unknown to us, cold pastry, and great quantities of sweetmeats and preserved fruits of various kinds, and plates of hickory and other nuts ready cracked. In all manner of confectionery and pastry these people excelled ; and having fruit in great plenty, which cost them nothing, and getting sugar home at an THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 341 easy rate, in return for their exports to the West Indies, the quantity of these articles used in famihes, other- wise plain and frugal, was astonishing. Tea was never unaccompanied with one of these petty articles ; but for strangers a great display was made. If you stayed [for] supper, you were sure of a most substantial though [a] plain one. In this meal they departed, out of com- pliment to the strangers, from their usual simplicity. Having dined between twelve and one o'clock, you were quite prepared for it. You had either game or poultry roasted, and always shell-fish in the season ; you had also fruit in abundance. All this with much neatness but no form." Of the detached Indian families, who in summer resided in the vicinity of the houses of wealthy persons living near the city, Mrs. Grant thus speaks : "They generally built a slight wigwam under shelter of the orchard-fence on the shadiest side ; and never were neighbors more harmless, peaceable, and obliging — I might truly add industrious — for in one way or other they were constantly occupied. The women and their children employed themselves in many ingenious handi- crafts, which since the introduction of European arts and manufactures, have greatly declined. Baking trays, wooden dishes, ladles and spoons, shovels and rakes ; brooms of a peculiar manufacture made by splitting a birch-block into slender but tough filaments ; baskets of all kinds and sizes, made of similar filaments, enriched with the most beautiful colors, which they alone knew how to extract from vegetable substances, and incor- porate with the wood. They made also of the birch- bark (which is here so strong and tenacious that cradles and canoes are made of it,) many receptacles for holding frait and other things, curiously adorned with embroid- 342 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ery, not inelegant, done with the sinews of deer ; and leg- gins and moccasins, a very comfortable and highly orna- mental substitute for shoes and stockings, then univer- sally used in winter among the men of our own people. "^ They had also a beautiful manufacture of deer-skin, softened to the consistence of the finest chamois leather and embroidered with beads of wampum, formed like bugles ; these, with great art and industry, they formed out of shells, which had the appearance of fine white porcelain, veined with purple. This embroidery showed both skill and taste, and was among themselves highly valued. They had belts, large embroidered garters, and many other ornaments, formed, first of deer-sinews, divided to the size of course thread, and afterwards, when they obtained worsted thread from us, of that material, formed in a manner which I could never comprehend. It was neither knitted nor wrought in the manner of net nor yet woven ; but the texture was more like that of an officer's sash than any thing I can compare it to. While the women and children were thus employed, the men sometimes assisted them in the more laborious part of their business, but oftener occu- pied themselves in fishing on the river, and drying or preserving, by means of smoke, in sheds erected for the purpose, sturgeon and large eels, which they caught in great quantities, and of an extraordinary size, for winter provision, ^- * * ' ' The summer residence of these ingenious artisans promoted a great intimacy between the females of the vicinity and the Indian women, whose sagacity and comprehension of mind were beyond belief. " It is a singular circumstance, that though they saw the negroes in every respectable family not only treated with humanity but cherished with parental kindness, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 343 they always regarded them with contempt and disHke, as an inferior race, and would have no communication with them. ^ * * " The Indian women, who, from motives of attach- ment to particular families, or for the purpose of carry- ing on the small traffic already mentioned, were wont to pass their summers near the settlers, were of detached and wandering families, who preferred this mode of living to the labor of tilling the ground, which entirely devolved upon the women among the Five Nations. * * * The little [grain] they had was maize ; this with kidney-beans and tobacco, the only plants they cul- tivated, was sown in some very pleasant fields along the Mohawk River by the women, who had no implements of tillage but the hoe and a kind of wooden spade. These fields lay around their castles, and while the women were thus employed, the men were catching and drying- fish by the rivers or on the lakes. The younger girls were much busied during the summer and autumn in gathering wild fruits, berries, and grapes, which they had a peculiar way of drying to preserve them for the winter. The great cranberry they gathered in abund- ance, which, without being dried, would last the whole winter and was much used by the settlers. These dried fruits were no luxury ; a fastidious taste would entirely reject them. Yet, besides furnishing another article of food, they had their use, as was evident. Without some antiseptic, they who lived the whole winter on animal food, without a single vegetable, or anything of the na- ture of bread, unless now and then a little maize, which they had the art of boiling down to softness by lye of wood-ashes, must have been liable to the great scourge of northern nations in their primitive state, the scurvy, had not this simple desert been a preservation against 344 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. it. Rheumatism, and sometimes agues, affected them, but no symptom of any cutaneous disease was ever seen on an Indian. " The stragglers from the confines of the orchards did not fail to join their tribes in the winter ; and were zealous, and often successful, in spreading their new opinions. * * * if you do not insult their belief, (for mode of worship they have scarce any,) they will hear you talk of yours with the greatest patience and atten- tion. Their good-breeding, in this respect, was really superlative. No Indian ever interrupted any [one, even] the most idle talker ; but when they concluded, he would deliberately, methodically, and not ungracefully answer or comment upon all they had said, in a manner which showed that not a word had escaped him. * * * " The girls in childhood had a very pleasing appear- ance ; but excepting their fine hair, eyes, and teeth, every external grace was soon banished by perpetual drudgery, carrying burdens too heavy to be borne, and other slavish employments considered beneath the dignity of the men. These walked before, erect and graceful, decked with ornaments, which set off to ad- vantage the symmetry of their well formed persons, while the poor women followed, meanly attired, bent under the weight of the children and utensils which they carried everywhere with them, and disfigured and degraded by ceaseless toils. They were early married : for a Mohawk had no other servant but his wife ; and whenever he commenced [to be a] hunter, it was requi- site that he should have some one to carry his load, cook [with] his kettle, make his moccasins, and above all, produce the young warriors who were to succeed him in his honors of the chase and of the tomahawk. " ^ 1 Memoirs of an American lady, pp.39, 40, 41, 53, 54, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 11. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 345 Great Britain to obtain a revenue from her colonies in America sufficient to defray the expenses of their government and defence, made them subject to her tax- ation by an act of parHament in 1764. Among the measures designed to raise the needed money was the Stamp act passed in March, 1765, by which the people of the colonies were required to use stamped paper sold by the British government for their bonds, deeds, notes, and other business-papers. The taxed people, being denied the right of representation in the parliament making these laws, at once denounced them as unjust and despotic. In the city of JNew York, on the first of November, 1765, when the Stamp act was to be operative, a large number of the citizens manifested their opposi- tion to it by burning an effigy of Lieutenant-governor Golden, who was at the time administrating the govern- ment of the province. This and other significant de- monstrations of hostility toward the government of Great Britain kept the city in a state of great excite- ment for a number of days thereafter. Sir William Johnston writing, on the twenty-second of November, to the Lords of Trade, from Johnson Hall, ^ adverts to the commotion caused by the im- position of the stamp act: "The late furious & au- dacious behaviour of the New Yorkers, — excited and supported by several Persons of Consequence there — are doubtless laid before yr Lordships by every faith- ful servant who dare write and is not afraid that his House shall be burned or himself massacred, amongst which small number, I beg leave to assure you, I am one, & one disinterested, acting on a principle of regard to the welfare of the Colonies, well knowing the Discords in which they would be speedily involved if 1 Its site is in Montgomery county. 346 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. they were able to effect that Democratical system which is their sole aim, and which they may hereafter compass unless a timely check is given to that spirit of Libertin- ism & Independence daily gaining ground thro' the Artifices & unaccountable conduct of a few pretended Patriots." ' "The seditious spirit," writes Lieutenant-governor Golden to Secretary Conway, on the twenty-first of Feb- ruary, 1766, "has not extended greatly into the Country. The city of Albany remained quiet till after their mem- bers returned from the Assembly. Then they excited most unaccountable riots in that place." These, it ap- pears, were not easily suppressed, for a detachment of the forty-sixth English regiment was in midsummer, 1766, sent to quell them. Some of the rioters were then arrested, but "the greater part of them," it is said, fied into the provinces of Massachusetts and Connecticut, where they were "protected by the magistrates," who ignored the requisitions sent for their apprehension. ^ The inconveniencies attending the lading and unlad- ing of vessels anchored off the river bank in front of the city were so patent and great that the common council on the fourth of March, 1766, unanimously determined to erect three stone docks ; the Assembly having pre- viously granted the corporation the right to make such use of the stone-wall built for defense on the north side of the city. The north dock, which was then constructed nearly opposite the site of the stone-wall, was eighty feet long and forty broad ; the middle one, at the foot of Maiden Lane, was eighty feet long and thirty broad ; and the south dock, nearly opposite the city-hall, was of the same dimensions as the middle, dock. The city, it seems, built a fourth dock, which with the other three 1 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vii. p. 790. 2 Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. vii. pp. 812, 849, 910. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 347 were sold at public vendue on the twenty-eighth of March, 1767, to Gysbert Marselis and John Alen, for seventy pounds, they being permitted to possess them until the first of January, 1768, and to charge wharfage for the use of them. Should any of the twenty-eight sloops belonging to the city refuse to use them and "so be free from paying dockage," a certain deduction was to be made from the said sum of money. A number of the followers of Ulric Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, having organized a society known as the German Reformed church of Albany, addressed a petition to the municipal authorities requesting the grant of a piece of ground on the Wouts Bergh, (the name of the hill north of the fort, ) where they desired to build a house of worship. The request was granted, and a deed of the plat was ordered, on the thirteenth of October, 1766, to be given to Charles Hoogstrasser, John Tilman, John James Abbet and John Freligh. The first lodge of Free and Accepted Masons constit- uted in Albany was called Union Lodge. Its organiza tion, on the twenty-first of February, 1765, was author- ized by a warrant from the provincial grand master, George Harrison, who installed Peter W. Yates as its worshipful master. On the eighteenth of October, 1766, the city gave a deed to Samuel Stringer for a plat of ground "on the Hill near the Fort adjoining the English Burying Place," on which to erect a lodge-building. The following paragraphs, taken from the by-laws of Union lodge, are noteworthy : "Every one who shall be made a Mason in this Lodge is to pay three pounds 4s for the Fund and one Dollar to the Tyler, for which he shall be entitled to the three degrees without further ex- pence. * * * The Senior warden shall every lodge- night acquaint the master when it is ten o'clock, then 348 THE HISTORY OF ALBAl^Y. ye lodge is to be closed unless in cases of extra business, and on lodge -evenings no member under a fine of one shilling shall have more drink than for six pence in the lodge-room without the Master's consent." The warrant constituting "William Gamble, Francis Joseph von Pfister, Thomas Swords, Thomas Lynott, and Richard Cartwright into a Regular Lodge of Per- fection, by the name of Ineffable," to be held in Albany, was given on the twentieth of December, 1767, by Henry Andrew Francken, deputy grand inspector general of all the superior degrees of Masons in the West Indies and North America, A procession of the members of the Union lodge, with five of the Ineffable lodge, marched through some of the streets of the city on Monday, the twenty-eighth of December, 1767 ; its order being : the tyler, musicians, apprentices, fellow-craftsmen, two deacons, masters, past masters, wardens, secretary, master, masons of the ninth degree, masons of the fourteenth degree, princes of Jerusalem, and two stewards. The members of the Ineffable lodge having sub- scribed sums o-f money for the erection of a lodge-build- ing by Union lodge on the ground conveyed by the city to Samuel Stringer iii 1766, proposed "to the Union Lodge that the Ineffable Body should have a joint Right into the Building." At this time the lodge of the latter was a room in the inn of Richard Cartwright, to whom each member paid one shilling every lodge-night for the use of it ; the cost of the candles being defrayed by the society. The lodge met on Monday nights. In winter the meetings began at six o'clock. The overtures made to Union lodge were not acceptable to that body, and at the meeting of the lodge on the twenty-third of February, 1768, "it was agreed that a proposal from Mr. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 349 Peter Sharp to Build a Lodge-house agreeably to a plan Laid before the Lodge this night should be accepted at £300 ; and Bro. Gamble, Stringer and [Jeremiah van] Rensselaer engaged to contract for the same upon the Lodge engaging to indemnify them as fast as the money toward erecting the said Building " was obtained. On the following day, Samuel Stringer purchased from the Union lodge the lot obtained in 1766 from the city, pay- ing for it four pounds sterling. On the first of April, 1768, the city conveyed to Samuel Stringer six feet on the east side of the lot, which was seventy feet in length on the north side. The erection of the building- was iminediately begun, as it was to be finished accord- ing to contract on the twenty-fourth of June. On the twelfth, the corner-stone was laid with due Masonic formality. Lodge Street derived its name from the build- ing that was shortly afterward erected on the northwest corner of it and Maiden Lane. Master's lodge, number 2, (York Rite) was organized in Albany in 1768 ; William Gramble being its first mas- ter, and Samuel Stringer and Jeremiah van Rensselaer, its first wardens. In March, 1768, the lodge made an agreement with the Ineffable lodge of Perfection to meet on Monday nights, in the new building to be erected by the latter. ^ The minister, wardens and vestry of St. Peter's church having petitioned Sir Henry Moore, the governor of the province, for "a charter for the incorporation of the said church," were granted the same on the thirteenth of July, 1768. The Rev. Thomas Brown, having moved in 1768 from Albany, was succeeded the same year by the Rev. Henry Munro, who was rector of the church until 1774. 1 A condensed history of Mount Vernon lodge No. 3, of ancient York Masons, A. L. 51(^5 to A. o8H. Coll. on hist. Albany. Munsell. vol. iii. pp. 411-424. 350 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. The governor having permitted the theatrical com- pany playing in New York to act " for one month only " in Albany, the hospital on Pine Street, near the site of the Lutheran Church, was fitted up with a stage and seats, in June 1769, and the play "Venice Preserved" was announced for the first night, the third of July. The leading players of the company were Lewis Hallam, jr., John Henry, Mr. Woolls, and Miss Cheer. Voyages to the West Indies and to European ports by vessels owned by Albany capitalists were common in the last half of the eighteenth century. The exports were generally flour, fish, lumber, horses, and fruit ; the imports were principally rum and sugar from the West Indies, and dry goods, queen's-ware and hardware from England and Holland. In lYYl the city-streets were lighted with twenty oil- lamps. Milestones were also placed this year along the Schenectady road as far as the half -way -house ; the west side of the Dutch church being the point from which the measurement of the first mile was made. The market-house between the two churches was moved this year to the one standing on the north side of the Dutch church. The population of Albany county, which in 1749 was ten thousand six hundred and thirty-four, had increased to forty-two thousand seven hundred and six in 1771. In the preamble of the act "to divide the county of Albany into three counties," passed the twelfth of March, 1772, the following statement is made respecting the object in view : ' ' Whereas the Lands within the County of Albany are more extensive than all the other counties of this Colony taken together ; and altho' the Inhab- tants thereof are already very numerous and continue to increase, yet it is conceived that the settlement of the THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 351 County would proceed with much greater rapidity (to the vast augmentation of his majesty's revenue and the benefit of the Colony) if a suitable partition was made of the lands, and new counties erected ; the number of Inhabitants, and their great distance from each other rendering the administration of justice extremely difficult and burdensome ; many people, as County officers, Jury Men, Suitors, and Witnesses being obliged to travel nearly two hundred miles to the city of Albany, where the County Gaol is and where the Courts of Com- mon Pleas, Sessions of the Peace, Oyer and Terminer, and General Gaol Delivery are held. The county was therefore divided and the counties of Tryon and Charlotte erected by the division of its territory. ' Charlotte County lay north of Albany Coun- ty, between it and Canada. By an act of Assembly, passed November 11, 1692, two fairs were to be held annually in the city and county of Albany. The one in the city was to begin on the third Tuesday of July and to end on the following Friday. The county fair, to be held at Crawlier, in Rensselaers- wyck, was to begin on the third Tuesday in October and to end on the following Friday. Each was to be superin- tended by a ruler appointed by the governor, and that 1 The county of Albany was thus bounded in 1772: " On the South and on the West Side of Hudson's River, by the County of Ulster. * * * On the West by Delaware River [in Delaware County] and the West Branch thereof, as far up as a certain small lake called Utsaantho ; [Lake Utsayanthe, in the town of Jefferson, Schoharie County;] and thence by a line north twenty- five degrees east, until it be intersected by a West line drawn from the north- west corner of the old Schoharie patent ; thence east to the northeast corner of the said Schoharie patent ; thence to the northwest corner of the township of Duanesburgh ; [the western part of Schenectady County;] thence along the north bounds thereof to the northeast corner of the same ; thence on the same course with the said north bounds of Duanesburgh to the Mohawk River ; thence North until it intersects a West line drawn from Fort George, near Lake George ; thence East until it intersects a North line drawn from that, nigh [the] Falls on Hudson's river, which lays next above Fort Edward ; 352 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. official was to have the direction of every thing connected with the fair. As recited in the act, these fairs were to be "holden together with a Court of Pypowder, and with all the liberties and free customs to such fairs ap- pertaining, or which ought or may appertain according to the usage and customs of fairs holden in their Majes- ties realm of England." As explained by Blackstone, "the lowest and at the same time the most expeditious court of justice known to the law of England is the court of piepoudre, curia pedis pulverizati : so called from the dusty feet of the suitors ; or, according to Sir Edward Coke, because jus- tice is there done as speedily as dust can fall from the foot. Upon the same principle that justice among the Jews was administered in the gate of the city, that the proceedings might be more speedy as well as public. But the etymology given us by a learned modern writer is much more ingenious and satisfactory ; it be derived, according to him, from pied puldreaux, (a pedlar, in old French,) and therefore signifying the court of such petty chapmen as resort to fairs or markets. It is a court of record, incident to every fair and market, of which the steward' of him who has or owns the toll of the mar- ket is the judge, and its jurisdiction extends to ad- thence South to the said Falls ; thence along the East Bank of Hudson's river to a certain Creek called Stoney Creek ; [on the east side of Hudson River, opposite Fort Miller;] thence East Five Hundred and ten chains ; thence South to the North bank of Batten Creek ; thence up along the North bank of said creek until the said creek intersects the South bounds of Prince- Town ; [now in Vermont,] thence along the same to the southeast corner thereof, thence East to the West bounds of the County of Cumberland, [now in Vermont ;] thence Southerly and Easterly along the West and South bounds thereof to Connecticut river ; thence along the said river to the North bounds of the Colonic of Connecticut ; thence along the North and West bounds of the same to the County of Dutchess ; thence along the North bounds of the said County of Dutchess to Hudson's river ; and thence by a straight line to the Northeast corner of the County of Ulster, on Hudson's river." — Laws of New York. vol. i. pp. 658, 659. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 358 minister justice for all commercial injuries done in that very fair or market, and not in any preceding one. " In 1773 the time of holding the fair at Crawlier in the manor of Rensselaerswyck was changed. Thence- forth it was to ' ' be kept on the Tuesday next after the tenth day of November annually," and was to "continue to the evening of Saturday next ensuing." It does not appear that such fairs were held in Albany County until the year 1774, when, on the seventh of November, the common council directed the high constable to appoint two constables to attend the ferry during the fair. 28 CHAPTER XVII. THE REVOLUTION. 1774-1783. The aggrieved people of the province of New York beheving that the government of Great Britain had not the right to impose taxes on the colonies without their consent readily complied with resolution of the Conti- nental Congress, which, having met in September, 1774, in Philadelphia, recommended the appointment of com- mittees to consider and perform such things as were most urgent and protective while the political welfare of the colonies was imperiled by the oppressive acts of the British ministry. The resolute freemen and freeholders of the city therefore held a meeting in November and appointed a committee of superintendance and corres- pondence. John Barclay, an influential and patriotic citizen, was chosen its chairman, which important position he held nearly three years. The people of the county of Albany also constituted committees in their respective districts. On the twenty-first of March, 1775, at a meeting of the committees of the city and county of Albany, in the inn of Richard Cartwright, Colonel Philip Schuyler, Abraham Yates, jr.. Colonel Abraham Ten Broeck, Wal- ter Livingston, and Colonel Peter R. Livingston, were , selected as deputies to represent the city and county at the 364 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 355 intended Provincial Congress in New York to be con- vened on the twentieth of April for the purpose of ap- pointing delegates to represent the province at the next Continental Congress in May, in Philadelphia. Colonel Philip Schuyler was among the delegates selected to rep- resent the province of New York in the Continental Con- gress. When the exciting news of the engagement at Lex- ington, on the nineteenth of April, reached the city, the sub-committee of correspondence met at the inn of John J. Lansing and resolved " that the following advertise- ment should be published through the town : " ' ' Whereas the various accounts that have been re- ceived of the extraordinary Commotions both in the Province of Massachusetts Bay and at New York make it indispensably necessary that the sense of the Citizens should be taken on the line ^of Conduct they propose to hold in this Critical Juncture, every Person therefore is most earnestly intreated to attend at the market-House in the third Ward ^ at four o'clock this afternoon [the tirst of May,] to give his Sentiments. It is expected that no Person whatever able to attend will be absent. "Secondly. Resolved That the Chairman [Abraham Yates, jr.,] sign the several Papers relative to this Day's Transaction. "Thirdly. Resolved That the following Proposals be read to the Citizens at their intended meeting this after- noon : "Are you willing to cooperate with our Brethren in New York and the several Colonies on the Continent in their opposition to the Ministerial Plan now prosecuting against us ? 1 The market-house was in Market street, now Broadway, a short dis- tance north of the Dutch church. 356 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "Are you willing to appoint Persons to be Conjointly with others to be appointed by the Several Districts in this County a Committee of Safety, Protection, and Cor- respondence, with full Power to Transact all such matters as they shall conceive may tend to the weal of the American Cause ? "If yea, who are the Persons you chuse to appoint V To acquaint the citizens with the important nature of this meeting, Lucas Cassiday was sent through the dif- ferent streets beating a drum, and at the time appointed for the assembling of the people, John Ostrander went about the city ringing a bell to notify them to repair to the market-house. The great concourse of enthusiastic citizens that crowded the market-house and the street around the building enthusiastically shouted yea to the several questions of the committee. A committee of safety, protection, and correspondence was then constituted by the appointment of the following citizens : Jacob C. Ten Eyck, Henry I. Bogart, Peter Silvester, Henry Wen- dell, Volkert P. Douw, John Bay, and Gysbert Marselis, in the first ward ; John R. Bleecker, Jacob Lansing, jr. , Jacob Cuyler, Henry Bleecker, Robert Yates, Stephen De Lancey, and Abraham Cuyler, in the second ward ; John H. Ten Eyck, Abraham Ten Broeck, Gerrit Lan- singh, jr., Anthony E. Bratt, Samuel Stringer, Abraham Yates, jr., and CorneUs van Santvoordt, in the third ward. On the same day, the corresponding committee wrote as follows to the Boston committee : " Gentlemen : — While we lament the mournful event which has caused the Blood of our Brethren in the Massachusetts Bay to flow, we feel that satisfaction which every honest American must experience at the THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 357 glorious stand you have made, [and] we have an ad- ditional satisfaction from the consequences which we trust will [follow] in uniting every American in Senti- ments and Bonds which we hope will be indissoluble to our Enemies. " This afternoon the Inhabitants of this City convened and unanimously renewed their former agreement that they would cooperate with our Brethren in New York and in the several Colonies on the Continent in their op- position to the Ministerial Plan now prosecuting against us, and also unanimously appointed a Committee of Safety, Protection, and Correspondence, with full power to transact all such matters as they shall conceive may tend to promote the weal of the American Cause. We have the fullest Confidence that every District in this ex- tensive County will follow our Example. " On the twenty- second Instant a Provincial Congress will meet when we have not the least doubt but such effectual aids will be afforded you, as will teach Tyrants and their Minions that as we were born free, we will live and die so, and transmit that inestimable Blessing to Posterity. Be assured Gentlemen that nothing on our Parts shall be wanting to evince that we are deeply im- pressed with a sense of the necessity of Unanimity, and that we mean to Cooperate with you in this arduous struggle for Liberty to the utmost of our Power." The patriotic determination of the people to assert their rights by taking up arms to resist the attempts of Great Britain to coerce them into a compliance with the plans of its ministry was further manifested on the fourth of May when a large number of the citizens as- sembled in the afternoon and formed themselves into companies of fifty-one persons ; each company besides having this number of privates, had one captain, two 358 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. lieutenants, one ensign, four sergeants, four corporals, and one drummer. Of the first company of the first ward, the following i^ersons were officers : John Barclay captain, John Price and Stephen van Schaick lieutenants, and Abraham I. Yates ensign. The officers of the second company were : John Williams captain, Henry Staats and Barent van Alen lieutenants, and Henry Hogen ensign. Those of the third company were : Thomas Bassett cap- tain, Abraham Eights and Mattheus Visscher lieutenants, and John Hooghkerk ensign. In the third ward the fol- lowing persons were officers of the two companies that were formed : John Beeckman and Harmanus Wendell captains, Isaac De Freest, Abraham Ten Eyck, William Hun, and Peter Gansevoort, jr. lieutenants, and Cornelis Wendell and Teunis T. van Vechten ensigns. The people in the county were earnestly requested to form themselves into similar companies to be properly equipped and disciplined with all despatch, and to make reports through their respective district committees of their condition to the chairman of the general committee of safety, protection, and correspondence. In May, many of the people of the city and county signed the following compact : " A General Association agreed to and subscribed by the Members of the Several Committees of the City and County of Albany. "Persuaded that the Salvation of the Rights and Liberties of America depends under God on the firm Union of its Inhabitants in a vigorous prosecution of the Measures necessary for its Safety ; and convinced of the necessity of preventing Anarchy and Confusion which at- tend a Dissolution of the Powers of Government, We, the Freemen, Freeholders, and Inhabitants of the City and County of Albany, being greatly alarmed at the avowed THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 359 Design of the Ministry to raise a Revenue in America ; and shocked by the bloody scene now acting in the Massachusetts Bay, Do in the most Solemn Manner re- solve never to become Slaves ; and do associate under all the Ties of Religion, Honor and Love to our Country, to adopt and endeavour to carry into Execution whatever Measures may be recommended by the Continental Con- gress, or resolved upon by our Provincial Convention for the purpose of preserving our Constitution, and opposing the Execution of the several arbitrary and oppressive Acts of the British Parliament until a Reconciliation be- tween Great Britain and America on Constitutional Principles (which we most ardently desire) can be ob- tained : And that we will in all things follow the Advice of our General Committee respecting the purposes afore- said, the preservation of Peace and good order and the safety of Individuals and private Property."^ The surrender of the British fort at Ticonderoga, on the morning of the tenth of May, to Ethan Allen and his one hundred and fifty undisciplined men, gave great hope of the success of the cause which had inspirited the at- tempt to vindicate the rights of the aggrieved people. To retain possession of the large number of cannon and the military stores found in the fortress, two companies of volunteers were sent to Ticonderoga from Albany. The Provincial Congress, sitting in New York, on the seventh of June, unanimously resolved to recommend Colonel Philip Schuyler as ' ' the most proper person " in the colony to be appointed a major-general. On this recommendation the Continental Congress on the nine- teenth of June appointed him the third major-general in the armies of the United Colonies. On the twenty-fifth 1 Proceedings of the Albany committee of correspondence, lYYS-lYVS. MS. in the State library, Albany. 360 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. of the month, Major-general Schuyler arrived at New York to take command of the northern department. William Try on, appointed governor of the province of New York by the British government, wrote as fol- lows from the city of New York, on the fourth of July, 1775, to the Earl of Dartmouth: "I arrived in the government the 25th of last month with apparent satisfaction to the inhabitants of this city, and received the next morning the Great Seal of the Province and the diminished authority the Lieutenant Governor had trans- ferred to me. ' ' The general revolt that has taken place in the Colonies has put his Majesty's civil Governors in the most degraded situation, [being] left in the exercise of such feeble executive Powers as suit the present conveniences of the Country, and this dependant on the caprice of a moment. To attempt coercive measures by the civil aid would hold up [the] Government to additional contempt by the exposure of the weakness of the executive and civil Branches. * * * "The communications through the Province, and, I understand, through the Continent are stopt. Every traveller must have a Pass from some Committee or some Congress."* To keep the Indians of the six nations from taking a part in the hostilities between the colonies and Great Britain was a matter of no little diplomacy. To obtain from them a promise to withhold themselves as neu- trals during the continuance of the war, the Continental Congress appointed Major-general Schuyler, Major Joseph Hawley, Turbot Francis, Oliver Walcott and Volkert P. Douw to treat with the Indians "■ to preserve peace and friendship " with the people of the provinces. In the 1 Doc. colonial hist. N, Y, vol. viii. pp. 589, 590. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 361 latter part of August, the Indian commissioners of the northeni department held conferences in Albany with the sachems of the different tribes. Speaking for the Continental Congress, the orator of the commissioners said : "Brothers, sachems and warriors of the six united nations, we, the delegates from the twelve united prov- inces now sitting in general congress at Philadelphia, send this speech to you, our brothers. We are sixty -five in number and have been appointed by the people through- out all these provinces and colonies to meet and set to- gether in one great council to consult together for the common good of this land, and to speak and act for them. ■"■ ■'-■ * " We will now tell you of the quarrel between the counselors of King George and the inhabitants and colo- nies of America. Many of his counselors are proud and wicked men. They persuaded the king to break the covenant chain and not to send us any more good speeches. A considerable number have prevailed upon him to enter into a new covenant against us, and have torn asunder and cast behind their backs the good old cove- nant which their ancestors and ours entered into. * * * ' ' They tell us now that they will slip their hands into our pockets without asking, as if they were their own pockets, and will take at their pleasure from us our charters, ^' " ^' our plantations, our houses and goods, whenever tliey please, without asking our per- mission. * * * " We desire that you will hear and receive what w^e have already told you, and that you will now open a good ear and listen to what we shall further say to you. This is a family quarrel between us and Old England. You Indians are not concerned in it. We do not want 362 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. you to take up the hatchet against the king's troops. We desire that you remain at home and join neither party, but keep the hatchet deeply buried. - * * ' ' We are now twelve colonies united as one man. We have but one heart and one hand. Brothers, this is our union belt. By this belt we, the twelve united colo- nies, renew the old covenant chain by which our fore- fathers in their great wisdom thought proper to bind us and you our brothers of the six nations together when they first landed at this place. If any of the links of this great chain should have received any rust, we now brighten it, and make it shine like silver. As Grod has put it into our hearts to love the six nations and their allies, we now make the chain of friendship so strong that nothing but an evil spirit can or will attempt to break it. But we hope through the favor and the mercy of the Good Spirit that it will remain strong and bright while the sun shines and the water runs."^ These conferences, which were sometimes held in the Dutch church and sometimes in the Presbyterian meet- ing-house, satisfied the commissioners that the Indians could not easily be made the allies of Great Britain. While the Indians and the commissioners were engaged in making the covenant-chain strong and bright, the streets of the city were becoming more thronged with soldiers daily arriving to be incorporated in the army of the northern department, commanded by General Philip Schuyler. Lieutenant-colonel Philip van Cortland, of the fourth New York (Dutchess County) regiment, writing from Albany on the twenty-eighth of August, 1775, thus describes the needy condition of the Continental troops that had taken up arms to maintain the rights of the United Colonies. t Doc. colonial hist. N. Y. vol. viii. pp. tjl6-619. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 363 "Dear Sir : — Agreeable to verbal orders received from Col [James] Holmes [of the fourth regiment], when last in New York, I made all the dispatch in my power to this place, where I arrived the 26th inst. , finding Capt. Henry B. Livingston with his company in a small house in town. He wants many things — such as shoes, stockings, shirts, under cloths, haversacks and cash, having ad- vanced all himself that has been paid his men as yet. The day I arrived came up the following captains with their companies : Capt. Herrick, Capt. Palmer, Capt. Horton and Capt. Mills — all without blankets, excepting Capt. David Palmer — many of the men wanting shirts, shoes, stockings, under cloths, and in short without any thing fit for a soldier, except a uniform coat, and not more than thirty guns with four companies fit foi- service. "They are now on board of the small boats that brought them up, having no place for them to go into, as there is not one tent that I can find for our battalion ; and three companies without blankets, and none to be had at this place. I do not know how to act, or what to do with them. They began to ask for cash and better lodgings, being much crowded in the small boats in which I am obliged to keep them. ' ' I this morning made application to the committee of Albany, who will do all in their power for me, which I believe, is but very little. "I shall be much obliged to the Honorable Congress to send me with all convenient speed, arms, blankets, tents, shoes, stockings, haversacks, and cash by all means. I want to be going forward, where, by what 1 can learn, we shall be wanting if we can go soon, or not at all. "The men say, 'give us guns, blankets, tents, &c., and we'll fight the devil himself, but do not keep us here iM'A THK HTSTOEY OF ALBANY. ill itiarkrt boats, as though \vt^ woio a pari'ol oi' shiH>p ov oalvos.' In short uothiiiL:,- oau i;i\o nio \\\i^\c ploasiirt* tlian tho airival of iho aforosaid ai'tiolos, until whioh 1 shall do all in my powor to ktH^p t ho nion in as ^ood ordor as t'hihs and oanos oan koo|> tlioni, without arms to koo|> a iMv^juM' i^nard : as 1 lia\o ordors from tho i;onoi'al to oolloot all iho aims tOi;-otluM. and soiid as many mon off (Uivotly to 'ri(,\M\doroi;a, uuid that without iouts\ which will not bo a full oompany. nnloss 1 oan |)ui'ohaso souie anus horo.*' This lottor was soiit by tho \!i>any ooiumilt<\,^ tho noxt day to Potor \"an lMUi;h Liviui^stitn, tho pi'osidiMil of tho Proviuoial C'ougross, sitting in Now York. 'Vhc ohairman of tho oonuuittoo thusadvorts to tlu> assistaiuc^ givon to tho uoody troops : "Wo ox]>oot(Hl whoii flu' army was owco ov'j^nwl/.od, wo should not bo so fro(|uont ly tallod upon about mattors not in our provuu(>. Rut tho situation of Col. Wan C\>rtlaudt. and tho nuai undor his oiMum.iiul, in a moasurt^ obligos us to gi\o him all tho assistauoi* in our pow(>r not, hvuvovor, that it is to bo niado a [X'lHHHUMit of. Tlu^ iMiolosod lotti'r from C'oi. \'an Coi'tlandt will show you tho i)osturo ho is in. and tlu> nooossity of a spoody ridit^f. Wo loar wo shall bo ablt> t*> atlord him but littlo assist- aiioo. 'VUo hospital and tho barraoks mv tillod with In- dians attonding tho congress ; tho bai'us about tlu^ town loadod with tho i rops of the season, and tho oity crowded continually with a nunua'ous ooncourst^ of |)(H)pK\ 'V]\o fornuM' and tr(H|uout applications for auuuuuitiou have drained us in short of almost evei-ythiug of that sort." Tolonel Ciooso van Schaick, conuuauding the second New York i^ Albany County) I'egimeni thus describes the wants of the soldiers at Albany in a letter written the same day to the Provincial Congress : "1 am at pr(>sent T\\\<] HISTOIJY OK ALI'.ANY. :',(;5 staiioii(!(l in Alhaiiy hy ((IcM.Scliiiylcr lo loivvjitd (lie hoops IJi;il ;M'fi vc licrc i(» TicoiKlcr'o^;!,, ;ui(l ii ^ivcH tnc ();iiii i.o in I'ofni yon l,[i;i,L ( !ol. | J;i,ni(^Hl ( 'linion Iconnnnndin^ Ux; iliird N(^w York ((Ilsi(!i- ( !oiniiy) r(!^itn(Mi<,| arrived licic, willi \,\\(' olJicr (i<^l(l oClicci'S Jind six companies of liis l»ai(,aJion, live of wliirli arc a,rnM;(J, hnl, | ilic^ir }j;inis| in had repair. 'riicty have been Hup|>lie(] wilh l)lank(;iK id IJiis phuM; oI.Iku' n(^c(iHHaiieK a,r'<; wa-nied. * '■' "^' " I slionhl ('V(!r a,r,(tns(^ niyscH' oC inlniinaniiy and wa,ni of love to my (■onnirv slionid I he backwai'd in ^ivinj^- yon a, irnc; acconni, of" l,li<; siinaiion and (bsirc^ss of I,Im!H(! companies, when I <:onsider how nmch they are waid;i that pur- pose wrote b) Mr. .Jonathan Tnirnbnll, jr., who, I am in- forine(b '^ appoinbnl deputy -paymasbir-gejHjral. ■ ' ^ " I am V(H'y }iap|)y, howciver, to infoi-m yon that notwithstanding the cJamors and dlHContents of my ummi at first, there are at pr(;s THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. afterward greatly lessened the numerical strength of their tribes. This fatal disease the agents of King George made them believe was a scourge of the Great Spirit who was angry with them for not taking up the hatchet for the king, for had not the colonists taught them "to fear God and to honor the king." By such de- ceptive arts were many of the tribes of the six nations induced to become the allies of Great Britian during the revolution. In September, General Schuyler having received in- structions to invade Canada, moved with the army of the northern department to the Isle au Noix near the confluence of the River Chambly and the Grande Riviere du Sud, north of Lake Champlain. Here becoming ex- tremely ill, he was compelled to intrust the command of the army to General James Montgomery, who captured the forts at St. Johns and Chambly, and in Novem- ber, took possession of Montreal. After the return of General Schuyler to Albany and his convalescence, he received orders to proceed to Johnson Hall in Tryon County and to disarm the tories under Sir John Johnson, and to obtain possession of all the military stores that he might find there. This mission General Schuyler suc- cessfully accomplished in January, 1TY6, with a force of about two thousand militia. In March, the Continental Congress ordered him to make Albany his headquarters, and to forward to Canada such supplies as were needed there by the army under General Montgomery. In June, Colonel Goose Van Schaick, who was then in command of the fifth New York regiment, as designated in the re- cent re-organization of the provincial troops, had detach- ments of his battalion at different points between Albany and Lake Champlain. It would seem that the municipal officers, who, on THE HISTOI^Y OF ALBANY. 36t the fourteenth of October, 1775, had taken the " oaths of supremecy and allegiance " to King George III. , and had subscribed their names to "the test," were deposed from their official position in the latter part of March, 1776. It is related that the mayor, Abraham C. Cuyler, and a number of other citizens honored King George III., on his birthday, the fourth of June, in 1776, by assembling in the dining-room of Cartwright's inn, and partaking of a banquet prepared at their expense. While these Tories were singing "God save the king," a number of provincial patriots entered the room and forcibly ejected the partisans of George III. Some of these de- fiant Tories it is said were arrested by the orders of the committee of safety and lodged in the jail already crowded with other aiders and abettors of those uphold- ing the authority of Great Britain. On the ninth of July, the Provincial Congress of the colony of New York, began its sessions at White Plains. Having approved the Declaration of Independence, ^ the congress ordered it to be published throughout the prov- ince. On the fourteenth of July, Abraham Yates, jr., Robert Yates, and Matthew^ Adgate sent a copy of the im- portant document to the Albany committee of corres- pondence. On the afternoon of the eighteenth of July, the day after its reception, the committee, sitting in the city-hall, took the following action : "Resolved that the Declaration of Independence be published and declared in this City to-morrow at Eleven O'clock at this place, and that Col. Van Schaick be re- quested to order the Continental Troops in this City to appear under arms at the place aforesaid, and Farther that the Captains of the several Militia Companies in this 1 Philip Livingston, who signed the Declaration of Independence, was born in Albany, January 15, 1*716. The residence of the Livingston family was on the northwest corner of State and North Pearl street. 368 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. City be requested to warn the Persons belonging to their respective Companies to appear at the place aforesaid." On Friday morning, the nineteenth of July, at the ap- pointed hour, a great throng of citizens and soldiers filled the streets, now Hudson Avenue and Broadway, at their intersection at the city-hall, a three-story stone building, occupying the site of the Commercial Building. ^ The memorable event has this brief mention in the minutes of the committee : "Pursuant to a Resolution of yester- day, 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. " ' ' The Provincial Congress of the colony of New York " after the reception of the Declaration of Independence changed the name of the body to the ' ' Convention of the representatives of the state of New York, " and on the first of August appointed a committee to report a constitution for the state." On the twelfth of March, 17^7, the com- mittee presented a draft of a constitution, which on the twentieth of April was adopted by the convention. Under the new constitution, Brigadier-general Oeorge Clinton was elected, on the third of July, governor of the state. The invasion of the state by the British commander, General John Burgoyne, from Canada, with an army of 1 The Assembly on the twenty-ninth of October, 1740, passed " an act to enable the mayor, recorder and aldermen of the city of Albany and the justices of the peace of the said city and county to build a new court-house and gaol for the said city and county." On the twenty-ninth of April, 1743, another act was passed to enable the officers named in the former act " to raise £'iW) to finish and complete " the buildings. From these acts it would seem that the city-hall was erected in 1741, 1742, and 1743. 2 The persons composing the committee were : John Jay, John Sloss Hobart, William Smith, William Duer, Gouverneur Morris, Robert R. Liv- ingston, John Broome, John Morin Scott, Abraham Yates, jr., Henry Wis- ner, sr. , Samuel Townsend, Charles DeWitt, and Robert Yates. James Duane was afterwards added to the committee. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 369 about eight thousand toops, which force was afterward augmented by about four hundred Indians of the six nations, spread great alarm among the people of the northern frontier. General Schuyler, having retreated to Saratoga, wrote, on the first of August, to the committee of safety, saying : "I have been on horseback all day, reconnoitering the country for a place to encamp on, that will give us a chance of stopping the enemy's career. I have not yet been able to find a spot that has the least prospect of answering the purpose, and I believe you will soon learn that we are retired still farther south." At this time General Burgoyne had his headquarters at Fort Edward. He had been ordered, when he left Canada, to form a junction with that part of the British army commanded by Sir William Howe ; five thousand men under Sir Henry Clinton being stationed in and around the city of New York. Gen Burgoyne, confident that the Continental troops could not successfully oppose the progress of his large army, informed General Howe, in his report of the sixth of August, that he was " well forward," "impatient to gain the mouth of the Mo- hawk," but not likely "to be in possession of Albany," before "the 22d or 23d " of the month. General Schuyler, having retreated from Saratoga to Stillwater, wrote to General Washington, on the fifth of August, to acquaint him with the weak condition of the army of the northern department : " By the unanimous advice of all the general officers, I have moved the army to this place Here we propose to fortify a camp, in ex- pectation that reinforcements will enable us to keep the ground and prevent the enemy from penetrating further into the country ; but if it should be asked from whence I expect these reinforcements, I should be at a loss for an answer, not having heard a word from Massachusetts on 24 3Y0 THE mSTOEY OF ALBANY. my repeated application, nor am I certain that Connecti- cut will afford us any success. "Our Continental force is daily decreasing by deser- tion, sickness, and loss in skirmishes with the enemy, and not a man of the militia now with me will remain above one week longer, and while our force is diminish- ing that of the enemy augments by a constant acquisition of tories ; but if, by any means, we could be put in a situation for attacking the enemy and giving them a re- pulse, their retreat would be extremely difficult, that in all probability they would lose the greater part of their army."^ Greneral Burgoyne to supply his army with the means of transportation and provisions, sent Lieutenant-colonel Baum, on the eleventh of August, to Bennington, where he had been informed that the Americans had collected a large number of horses, wagons, and stores of all kinds for the use of the Continental troops. He instructed Baum to proceed along the Connecticut River as far as 1 On "a return of a brigade of militia of the county of Albany, whereof Abraham Ten Broeck, esq., is brigadier-general," dated Fort Edward, July 18, 1777, the following named regiments and the number of the men in them appears : Col. Jacob Lansing's regiment, rank and file, - - - 62 Abraham Wimple's " " - - - 13'2 Francis Nicholl's " " - - - - 69 Killian van Rensselaer's " " - - - 90 Gerrit Van den bergh's " " - - - - 42 Stephen J. Schuyler's " " - - - 161 Robert van Rensselaer's " " - - - -109 Abraham van Alstyne's " " - - - 36 Peter van Ness's " " . . . . 223 Peter R. Livingston's " " - - - 100 Anthony van Borgen's " " - - - - 62 Jacobus van Schoonhoven's " " - . . 118 John McCrea's " " . - - - 150 Johannes Knickerbacker's " " - - - 97 Peter Vrooman's " " . . 57 William B. Whiting's " " - - 257 Total, - - - . 1.755 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 371 Brattleborough, and return by the great road to Albany, where he would meet him with the main army. Lieuten- ant-colonel St. Leger, who had been sent from Canada to invade the valley of the Mohawk by way of Oswego, and to get in the I'ear of the forces under Oeneral Schuyler, was then laying siege to Port Stanwix, on the site of the village of Rome. On the thirteenth of August, General Benedict Arnold was ordered by General Schuyler to hasten to the relief of Fort Stanwix with about eight hundred militiamen. The same day General Schuyler wrote to General Washington, saying : " We are obliged to give way and retreat before a vastly superior force daily increasing in numbers, and which will be doubled if Gen. Burgoyne reaches Albany, which I apprehend will be very soon." The next day, the despondent general with his small force retreated on the old road on the west bank of the Hudson to the mouths of the Mohawk, and encamped his men upon Haver and Van Schaick islands. General Schuyler's retreat to the islands at the con- fluence of the Mohawk with the Hudson was interpreted by many as evidence of his inefficiency and want of cour- age. But this assumption had nothing to substantiate it. The truth was his army was short of ammunition, numerically weak, and daily reduced by sickness and desertions. A paragraph from a letter written in July by General Schuyler to Colonel Lewis, deputy-quartermaster general, in Albany, discloses an important fact respecting a pressing want that was not easily supplied : " The citizens of Albany only can supply our immedi- ate exigencies ; recourse must therefore be had to the committee, begging their interposition to collect such lead as is in the city ; the lead windows and weights may, perhaps, afford a supply for the present. As soon 372 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. as it is collected, Mr. Rensselaer will have it made into ball, and send it up without a moment's delay. Should a wagon be sent off with one box, as soon as it is ready- it must be pushed off ; also all the buck shot. " Writing about the same time to General Washington, he says : ' ' Desertion prevails and disease gains ground ; nor is it to be wondered it, for we have neither tents, houses, barns, boards, or any shelter except a little brush; every rain that falls, and we have it in great abundance almost every day, wets the men to the skin. We are be- sides in great want of every kind of necessaries, provisions excepted. Camp kettles we have so few, that we cannot afford one to 20 men." Aware of his inability to oppose the advance of the British army, he therefore determined to retreat from the immediate front of the enemy, and to move his troops nearer to his base of supplies, where he could more ad- vantageously watch the movements of Lieutenant-colonel St. Leger, and, perhaps, defeat the plans of the sanguine commander of the main body of English and Hessian soldiery. Immediately upon his occupation of Haver and Van Schaick's islands. General Schuyler gave orders for the construction of a formidable line of earth-works along the northeastern and northwestern sides of Haver Is- land, to defend the approaches to the fords at Half Moon Point, as the site of the present village of Waterford was then called. The chief engineer of the army of the northern department was the brave Pole, Thaddeus Kosciusko. Under his superintendence and direction the soldiers, both white and black, diligently dug and shovelled during the hot days of August to construct the line of earth- works which still remain as monuments to remind those who inspect them of the arduous toil of the defenders of Albany in the summer of 1777. THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. 3Y3 Meanwhile the city was a place of refuge for the peo- ple of the country overrun by the invading army. The fleeing farmers who with their frightened households and driven cattle hastened to Albany, brought daily to its inhabitants direful accounts of the vandal acts and inhuman cruelties of the British troops and the Indian allies. The committee of safety to provide pasture for the cattle of the country-people sojourning in the city, ordered on the fourth of August that the ' ' large Tract of Pasture Ground," belonging to certain Tories who had joined the army of the enemy, should be used for the grazing of the cattle of the refugees. To silence the clamor of those who deemed General Schuyler unfit to have the command of the army of the northern department, the congress of the United States appointed Major-general Horatio Gates to be com- mander-in- chief of it. Three days after taking command of the army, General Gates wrote from his headquarters in the Van Schaick homestead, on Van Schaick Island, the following letter to General Washington : '* Headquarters, Aug. 22, 1777. — Sir : Upon my ar- rival in this department I found the main body of the army encamped upon Van Schaick's Island, which is made by the sprouts of the Mohawk River joining with Hudson River, nine miles north of Albany. A brigade under Gen. Poor encamped at Loudon's ferry, on the south bank of the Mohawk River, five miles from hence ; a brigade under Gen. Lincoln had joined Gen. Stark at Bennington, and a brigade under Arnold marched the ^5th inst, to join the militia of Tryon County, to raise the siege of Fort Stanwix. ' ' Upon leaving Philadelphia, the prospect this way appeared very gloomy ; but the severe checks the enemy have met with at Bennington and Tryon County have 3T4 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. given a more pleasing view to public affairs. Particular accounts of the signal victory gained by Gen. Stark, and the severe blow Gen. Herkimer gave Sir John Johnson and the scalpers under his command, have been trans- mitted to your excellency by Gen. Schuyler. I anxiously expect the arrival of an express from Gen. Arnold, with an account of the total defeat of the enemy in that quar- ter. By my calculation he reached Fort Staiiwix the day before yesterday. Cols. [Henry BeekmanJ Livingston's [the fourth New York] and [Philip van] Courtlandt's [the second New York] regiments arrived yesterday, and immediately joined Gen. Poor's division. I shall also order General Arnold, upon his return, to march to that post. " I cannot sufficiently thank your excellency for send- ing Col, Morgan's corps to this army. They will be of the greatest service to it, for until the late successes this way, I am told the army was quite panic-struck by the Indians and their tory and Canadian assassins in Indian dresses. Horrible, indeed, have been the cruelties they have wantonly committed upon many of the miserable in- habitants, insomuch that it is now fair for Gen. Bur- goyne even if the bloody hatchet he has so barbarously used should find its way into his own head. "Gov. Clinton will be here to-day. Upon his arrival I shall consult with him and Gen. Lincoln upon the best plan to distress, and I hope finally to defeat the enemy. * * * "My scouts and spies inform me that the enemy's headquarters and main body are at Saratoga, [Schuyler- ville,] and that they have lately been repairing the bridges between that place and Stillwater. " The rifle-corps of Colonel Daniel Morgan arrived at Van Schaick's Island a few days thereafter. The army, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 375 by these and other accessions, was at the beginning of September an effective force of about six thousand men. Having obtained some needed munitions, General Gates moved north with it on the eighth of September, and on the following day arrived at Stillwater. To comply with the urgent demand of General Gates for bullets, the committee of safety on the eighteenth of September "resolved that the Quarter Master and the Committee appointed to take the Lead out of the Win- dows do immediately enter upon that necessary busi- ness." The engagement at Bemus's Heights, and the subsequent surrender of Burgoyne, at Saratoga, now Schuylerville, on the seventeenth of October, unexpect- edly defeated the plans of Great Britain of ending the war by getting possession of the cities of Albany and New York. The news of the surrender of General Burgoyne was received with the wildest demonstrations of joy by the anxious citizens who had heard the sounds of the cannon fired at Saratoga. The event was celebrated by a pro- cession, the firing of cannon, the ringing of bells, the roasting of an ox, and at night by an illumination of the windows of the houses and a great bonfire on Gallows hill. Although by General Burgoyne's orders General Schuyler had lost by fire his dwelling-house, store- bouses, and saw-mills at Saratoga, nevertheless, with marked courtesy, when introduced to the British officer after the signing of the papers of capitulation, he told the distinguished commander, who then expressed his regrets for having caused the destruction of the property, "to think no more of it, and that the occasion justified it according to the principles and rules of war." Gen- eral Burgoyne, in his speech to the House of Commons, 376 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. in 1778, adverted to this remarkable evidence of General Schuyler's magnanimity, and said: "He did more, he sent an aid-de-camp to conduct me to Albany, in order, as he expressed it, to procure better quarters than a stranger might be able to find. That gentleman con- ducted me to a very elegant house, and, to my great surprise, presented me to Mrs. Schuyler and her family. In that house I remained during my whole stay in Al- bany, with a table with more than twenty covers for me and my friends, and every other possible demonstration of hospitality." Not to subject himself to any invidious aspersions, General Schuyler, while General Burgoyne was a guest in his house in Albany, remained at Sara- toga, The Schuyler mansion, in which the British officer was entertained, is still standing at the head of Schuyler Street, on the southwest corner of Clinton and Catharine streets. It is related that when General Burgoyne with the officers of his staff, arrived on horse back in Albany that a great crowd of boys gathered round them and cried out, "Make elbow room there," which phrase, the chronicler explains, was "the Eejoycing Word." The municipal government having lost the power of its perpetuity by the institution of the committee of safety, protection and correspondence in 1775, the people of the city were empowered by the legislature, on the seventeenth of February, 1778, to re-organize it con- formable to "an act to remove doubts concerning the corporation of the city of Albany. "" On the seventeenth of April, 1778, John Barclay, having a commission under the great seal of the state of New York appointing him mayor, clerk of the markets and coroner of the city ; and Abraham Yates, jr., having a commission under the seal of the state appointing him recorder of the city ; and THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 377 Matthew Visscher, having also a commission appointing him town-clerk, also clerk of the Mayor's Court, and of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas for the city and county of Albany, and also clerk of the Peace and of the Court of Sessions of the Peace and for the said city and county ; and John Price and John Roorbach, having been elected aldermen, and Abraham I. Yates and Mat- thew Visscher assistant aldermen, in the first ward ; and Jacob Lansing, jr., and Abraham Cuyler having been elected aldermen, and Isaac D. Fonda and Jacob Bleecker, assistant aldermen, in the second ward ; and John M. Beeckman and Harmanus Wendell, having been elected aldermen, and Cornelius Swits and Abraham Schuyler, assistant aldermen, in the third ward, all these officers, except Harmanus Wendell, being present in the city-hall, took the oath of allegiance to the state of New York as prescribed by law, and also their respective oaths of office as prescribed by the charter of the city. On the twenty -first of April, Thomas Seegerwas appointed mar- shal, and on the twenty-third, Henry Bleecker chamber- lain of the city. Harmanus Wendell having refused to accept the ofltice of alderman, Docto]" Samuel Stringer, who had been surgeon -general under General Schuyler, was elected in May to fill the vacancy. In the ordinance for regulating tavern-keepers in the city made by the connnon council on the twenty-fifth of April, the following rates and prices were established for the taverns, ale-houses, victualing houses, inns, and ordinaries : ' ' Good West India Rum, genuine French brandy, Holland Geneva, Lisbon, Sherry, Port, red and white Mountain French Claret, common sort, French white Wine, Spanish red Wine, Rhenish, at ten shillings per quart, and one shilling and four pence per gill. Ameri- can madeWhiskey, four shillings and four pence per quart 378 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and seven cents per gill. Good New England Rum, Brandy, Geneva, common Cordials and all other Spirit- uous Liquors not herein mentioned, at six shillings and nine pence per quart, and one shilling per gill. Good Toddy of West India Rum, French Bi-andy, or Holland Geneva, sweetened with Loaf Sugar, at three shillings per quart Bowl and so in proportion. Good Toddy of other Liquors (whiskey excepted), at two shillings per quart Bowl and so in proportion. Strong Beer and Cyder, brewed or made in the state, one shilling per quart. ' ' For a Breakfast of comfortable and nourishing Victuals, two shillings per Meal ; for Dinner equally suitable, three shillings and six pence per Dinner. For twenty-four hours or one Night good Hay and Stabling for a Horse, two shillings ; for Oats four pence per quart. Corn per quart six pence, and other Grain in proportion. For a good clean Bed and Bedding one Night, one shil- ling," General Abraham Ten Broeck, having received a letter from Brigadier- general Stark, informing him that the troops in the city were ordered to Fishkill, the board of aldermen thus wrote on the twentieth of May, 1778, to the latter officer : ' ' The Conniion Council beg leave to observe that they consider themselves in duty bound to inform you that from the weakness of the Militia in this City, owing to the Number in pubhc Service, it will not be safe to leave the Stores, Provisions, Hospital, Sloops and Vessels, the Regular and other Prisoners, the latter exceeding one hundred, besides the disaffected in and about the City, to so small a number as one hundred and fifty, the whole number of Militia that are subject to military duty. For should an accident happen by means of the disaffected in destroying the Stores or in discharging the Prisoners, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 379 ten whereof are now under Sentence of Death, it would distress not only the City but the Service of the Conti- nent in general. " "' * ' ' The Common Council farther beg leave to observe that in case your Honour cannot detain one of the Regi- ments stationed here that at least one huhdred and fifty men ought to be detained." A letter was also addressed to Major-general Gates on the same subject, in which the board of aldermen made this statement : "TheConnnon Council would further beg leave to observe that the many Robberies and Murders daily com- mitted on the Inhabitants of this County by Deserters and Prisoners from Burgoyne's Army and the disaffected, who are drove to desperation, render it indispensably necessary to have a Body of Troops to go in quest of the Villians, for unless the Militia can remain this year at home and properly manage their Summer crops little or no support of Flour can the Continent derive from this part, last year more than one half [was] destroyed and not more than half the usual quantity sowed. * * * "If the British Prisoners could be moved to another place it would break up the connection which is now ap- prehended is kept up between them, the Tories, and Negroes. " The request of the common council could not be com- plied with, and all the Continental troops, were transported in June to Fishkill. When in September the authorities learned that it was reported that two thousand troops were to be stationed in the city during the winter, the board of aldermen wrote to Governor Clinton explaining to him the motives of the members desiring that the city might not be put to the expense of providing for so large a number of soldiers. 380 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "From this state of Facts we beg leave to inform your Excellency that however willing we have always been and still are to risk our all in supporting the Free- dom and Independence of our blessed Country, yet it is our earnest request (and we deem it no more than reas- onable) that in the distribution of the Troops for Winter Quarters, due respect may be had to the former distresses and present sufferings of the Inhabitants of Albany and its Suburbs. And as there are Barracks in this place which may contain about four hundred troops exclusive of an Hospital which will contain eight hundred, tho' we pre- sume the latter will be appropriated for the use of the sick, we would deem it equitable that no more troops may be allotted to us than the Barracks and Hospital (if not used as such) may contain," A number of the inhabitants of the city and county of Albany desiring to have their children receive a higher education than that obtainable in the schools that were then in Albany, petitioned the common council, in April, 1779, that they might be permitted to establish in the city a Seminary to be under the protection, direction, and care of the board of aldermen. The authorities willingly complied and letters were written to George Merchant of Philadelphia, offering him the position of principal of the institution. He accepted the offer and the academy was opened by him for the reception of scholars, on Monday, the sixteenth of November, in the peculiar- ly-built house historically known as the "Vanderhey- den Palace," near the southwest corner of North Pearl Street and Maiden Lane, now the site of the Perry build- ing. A few weeks thereafter Suel Chapin was given the position of "usher or second master in the Semi- nary." In 1797, the building, which had been used for almost a score of years for educational purposes, was THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 381 then occupied as a residence by its owner, Jacob van der Hey den. The legislature of the state of New York was first convened at Kingston in 1777 ; the assembly beginning its sessions on the first day of September, and the senate on the ninth day of that month. The capture of Fort Montgomery by the British, and their advance up the Hudson caused the legislature to adjourn in the beginning of October.^ In January, 1778, the legislature convened at Poughkeepsie, and completed the organization of the state government. In August, 1779, it again assembled at Kingston. The first meeting of the legislature in Albany was in accordance with a joint resolution of the senate and as- sembly, passed at Kingston, on the twenty-fifth of October, 1779. On the first day of December, Grovernor Clinton, in a proclamation, designated the fourth day of January, 1780, for the senate and the assembly to meet in the city, but on account of " a deep fall of snow " and the inclemency of the weather, the two bodies did not assemble until the twenty-seventh day of January. A number of the rooms in the court-house, or city-hall , on the northeast corner of Hudson and Court streets,^ were suitably furnished for the use of the legislature, which adjourned on the fourteenth of March, On the seven- teenth of January, 1781, it again convened in Albany, and held its sessions in the city-hall until the thirty-first of March, the day of its adjournment. The legislature did not meet again in the city until the sixth of July, 1 The assembly began its sessions on the first of September and ad- journed on the first of October. The senate met on the ninth of September and adjourned on the seventh of October. Kingston was burned by the British, on the fifteenth of October. 2 Court Street was that part of Broadway which extends from State Street to the Steamboat-landing. 382 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 1T89, when after a session of ten days it resolved to to adjourn. The current rumor, in the fall of lYSl, that the British designed to burn the city caused the municipal authori- ties to exercise extreme caution in the admission of strangers into it. It is also related that a large reward was offered for the capture of the members of the- com- mittee of safety, and that several unsuccessful attempts were made to secure the persons of G-eneral Schuyler, Colonel Philip van Rensselaer, Colonel Peter Gansevoort, and of other prominent men, who were to be carried to Canada to be held as prisoners of war. The publication of the first newspaper printed in the city was begun in November, 1771, by Alexander and James Robertson, who had moved from the city of New York and established a printing-office in Albany. The publishers of the small quarto-sheet named the paper the Albany Gazette, a few copies of which are in the library of the Albany Institute. It is not known when the publication of the paper was discontinued, but, as the publishers of it were named among the Royalists in the city of New York in 1776, it has been conjectured that the printing of the paper ceased about the beginning of the revolution. The second newspaper published in Albany was The New York Gazetteer, or. Northern Intelligencer. Solomon Balentine and Charles R. Webster, under the firm-name of Balentine and Webster, began its publication on the third of June, 1782. The dimensions of the pages of the little folio are nine and one half by fourteen inches. A number of copies of the paper are in the library of the Albany Institute. In 1783, Charles R. Webster withdrew from the partnership and moved to New Yoi'k. The pub- lication of the paper, it is supposed, ceased in May, 1781. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 883 General Washington's visit to Albany, on Thursday, the twenty-seventh of June 1782, was an occasion of no little joy to the people. At six o'clock in the evening, the city authorities waited on his excellency, and after the delivery of a short address of welcome, presented him with the freedom of the city, the document being con- tained in a gold-box. The bells of all the churches were then rung until eight o'clock when a salute of thirteen guns was fired at fort. At night the city was illumi- nated. The news of the signing of the provisional articles of peace, between Great Britain and the United States of America, on the thirteenth of November, 1782, was re- ceived in the city, on the twenty-seventh of March, 1783. The board of aldermen to communicate the exciting in- telligence to the citizens immediately ordered the public cryer to notify them to convene at the city-hall to hear the contents of the letter read. The municipal authori- ties also ordered that the messenger who brought it should ' ' be presented with five pounds as a reward for his assiduity and dispatch." When it was learned, on the eighteenth of July, that General Washington and Governor Clinton would be in city on the following day, the common council appointed Peter W. Yates and Matthew Visscher, aldermen of the first ward, to prepare addresses to be delivered to their excellencies. Abraham Schuyler and Leonard Ganse- voort of the third ward were appointed "to repair to the Hogebergh and there wait the arrival " of the distin- guished personages, and afterward to inform the board of the time designated for the reception of the city's guests. The invitation by the common council to Gen- eral Washington and to Governor Clinton to a public dinner was accepted. At eleven o'clock, on the morning 384 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. of the nineteenth of July, the city-officers went in a body to the inn of Hugh Denniston, where the following address was presented to the commander-in-chief of the United States army : "We, the Mayor, Aldermen and Commonalty of the City of Albany, with the sincerest pleasure avail our- selves of this opportunity to offer your Excellency our most cordial Congratulations on the formal Eecognition of the Independence of the United States by that Power which has so long anxiously laboured to subvert it. The Citizens of America and their Posterity will ever have abundant reason to commemorate the day when your Excellency was appointed to the Chief Command of her Forces, in the faithful discharge of which you have sac- rificed your private ease and interest to the public weal and evinced to the world that you have been the faithful guardian of the Liberties of your Country. " Under the Smiles of Providence, with a brave and victorious Army, aided by a great and generous Ally, you have saved America from Bondage, restored to her the peaceable enjoyment of her civil Eights and laid a solid Foundation for the Freedom and Independence of the United States. Eeceive, Sir, our sincere wish that you may in the Bosom of your Country enjoy the Tran- quility which your Toils have purchased and look forward with patriotic Pleasure to those ages of Prosperity which we may reasonably hope will be confirmed in endless succession by the Wisdom and Harmony of her Councils.'' His excellency was pleased to return the following answer to the address : "To the Mayor, Aldermen and Commonalty of the City of Albany, " Gentlemen : I accept with heartfelt satisfaction your affectionate congratulations on the restoration of THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 3S5 Peace and the formal recognition of the Independence of the United States. We may indeed ascribe these most happy and glorious Events to the smiles of Providence and the virtue of our Citizens and the bravery of our Troops aided by the povrerful interposition of our mag- nanimous and illustrious ally. ' ' For the favorable sentiments you are pleased to express of my agency in this Revolution and for your benevolent wishes for my personal felicity, I intreat you, Oentlemen, to receive my warmest acknowledgments. ' ' While I contemplate with irrepressible pleasure the future tranquility and glory of our common Country, I cannot but take a particular interest in the anticipation of the increase in prosperity and greatness of this antient and respectable City of Albany, from whose Citizens I have received such distinguished tokens of their appro- bation and affection, "1 1 Albany records, 1*782, 1783. 25 CHAPTER XVIII. THE TRADE OF ALBANY. 1784-1Y96. The impoverished condition in which the revolution- ary war left the people of the thirteen states was not so disheartening as to repress the quickening spirit of the industry and thrift of those who had so recently ob- tained a political independence that was to make them famous throughout the world. The people of Albany, diligent and acquisitive, actively engaged in merchan- dizing and commerce. The merchants with judicious enterprise stocked their stores with large and saleable assortments of goods and wares. For these they often received grain and other productions from their country customers, which articles they shipped to foreign mar- kets, whence the}^ imported such commodities as were readily sold by them. Many of the dry -goods vended by these enterprising merchants were designated by strange names now sel- dom seen. Advertisements of them usually began with such announcements as the following : ' ' Robinson and Hale, on the north corner opposite the Dutch church, in Albany, have just imported in the ship Vigilant, from London, a large and general assortment of European and East India Goods." " Jacob van Schaick, in Water Street, near the middle dock, has just imported in the 380 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 387 Triumph, Captain Stout, from London, a quantity of goods." Under such paragraphs were columns of names designating the recently received dry -goods : " First and middling f agathees, " ' ' moreens, " ' ' durants, " ' ' tam- mies," " callimancoes, " "camblets," "ratteens," "Irish frize," "penniston," "striped duffels," "fustians," "barnegore romals," "striped and plain shags," "mil- linet," "figured duroys," " puUicat, bandanc, and lun- ger silk." In the same stores were also found " tafte and ribbands," buckram, wafers, quills, ink-powder, snuff of the first quality, smoothing-irons, frying-pans, queen's ware, scythes and sickles, musket-balls, Jamaica spirits. West India and common rum. Muscovado sugar, German, blistered and Crawley's steel, refined and blooming bar-iron, pot, fool's-cap, and post paper, and London hair-powder and pomatum. The loss of the fur trade had its compensation in the more remunerative grain-business which for many years made Albany a noted market for the sale and purchase of wheat and other cereals. In winter the farmers of the surrounding country brought their grain in sleds to the city and sold it to the competitive mer- chants to be stored in their ample granaries until navigation opened in the spring, when it was transferred to the holds of sloops to be transported to New York and other seaports. One of the effective means used to enlarge the trade of Albany was " The Albany Gazette, " a news- paper printed by Charles R. Webster, the first number of which was published on the twenty-eighth day of May, 1784 ; a small folio having pages ten by sixteen inches. ' 1 The editor of the Gazette, in an advertisement, in the first number, in- forms the public that " His paper will in future, be published every Thurs- 388 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. In the spring of 17 84-, the city authorities began the demoUtion of the fort at the head of State Street, using the stone for pubhc improvements, and permitting parts of its waUs to be appropriated by the officers of the different churches for building purposes. The fire engines, which had been kept in another part of the city until 1773, were now housed in a building on the north side of St. Peter's church. The board of aldermen, on the nineteenth of March, 1785, ap- pointed a committee to report proper names to be as- signed to the different streets in the city and a plan for the numbering of the houses along them. The com- mittee, on the ninth of April, made a report which was received and a map of the city was ordered to be made on which the name assigned to each street should appear. By an act of the legislature, passed the fourth of April, 1785, Isaac van Wyck, Talmage Hall, and John Kinney were granted the exclusive privilege of running a line of stages between the city of Albany and New York for a period of ten years. They were to provide at least two good and properly covered coaches, drawn by four able horses, and were not to charge more than four pence per mile for the conveyance of a passenger, who was to be allowed the free transportation of four- teen pounds of baggage. The stages were to depart once each week from the two cities unless prevented by the bad condition of the roads, or some unavoidable ac- day morning at nine o'clock, during the Summer — and on Friday at ten o'clock in the Winter. " The price will be twelve shillings, per annum, six shillings to be paid on receiving the first paper, the other at the end of six months. "Advertisements of no more length than breadth, will be inserted three weeks for one dollar, and in the same proportion for every continuance." On the eighth of November, 1784, Webster's Calendar, or the Albany Almanac, for the year 1785, was issued from the office. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 389 cident. The fare, in the summer of 1794, from Albany to New York, was $7.25; m the folio whig whiter, $8. The price in the winter of 1796 was increased to $10, but in the following spring it was reduced to $6. Letters to persons living northward and southward of the city, were sent to the Albany post-office, which had been established, it seems, during the revolution. A number of towns, south and east of the city, also ob- tained their letters at Albany. Post-riders, compensated by the people whom they served along their routes through the surrounding country, distributed each week to their patrons the letters and newspapers addressed to them at Albany. There was a mail each week from New York, and one from Springfield, Massachusetts. In January, 1786, arrangements were perfected for the transmission of the mails twice each week between the cities of New York and Albany. A company of actors, having petitioned the board of aldermen for permission to give a number of theatrical performances in the hospital in the city, during the win- ter, were duly granted the privilege. The opening play was advertised in the supplement of the Gazette of the fifth of December. "By authority. On Friday Eve- ning, the 9th December, 1785, The Theatre in the City of Albany, will be opened with an Occasional Prologue, by Mr. Allen. After which will be presented, A Comedy in Two Acts call'd Cross Purposes. * * * ' ' After the comedy. An Eulogy on Free Masonry, by Brother Moore. To be followed by a Dance called La Polonese, by Mr. Bellair. To conclude with a Comedy of Three Acts written by Shakespeare, call'd Catharine and Petruchio, or, The Taming of the Shrew. * * * ' ' Doors to be opened at Five o'Clock and the perfor- mance to begin precisely at Six. 390 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY "Tickets (without which no person can be admitted) to be had at Mr. Lewis's Tavern — as no money will be received at the door. "Box 8s. Gallery -is. " No person to be admitted behind the scenes. "N. B. Stoves are provided for the boxes, to render the house warm and comfortable." The following paragraph appeared on the same day in a supplement of the Gazette : "We have the pleasure to inform the public, that a number of Carpenters for these some days have been employed fitting uj), with the greatest expedition, the Hospital in this City as a Theatre ; under the direction of the Managers of the Company of Comedians, who have entertained the inhabitants of New York for some months past, with so much satisfaction to the pub- lic and reputation to themselves. Their continuance amongst us will be but for a very short time, it is there- fore to be wished, that all Lovers of the Drama, in this city and its neighborhood, would exert themselves in encouraging these ingenious Sons and Daughters of Thalia and Melpomene ; as it is universally acknowl- edged that Theatrical Representations are, of all others, the best calculated to eradicate vulgar prejudices and rusticity of manners, improve the understanding and enlarge the ideas." The advertisement of the play and commendation of the editor it seems, gave offence to a number of the citizens, and a petition was signed and sent to the municipal authorities requesting them to rescind the resolution permitting the company to play in the city: "To the worshipful the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen and Commonalty of the city of Albany — This Petition Humbly Sheweth : THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 391 ' ' That your petitioners having observed in the Sup- plement to the Albany Gazette, of the 5th inst. an ad- vertisement in the following manner, "' By Authority, On Friday Evening, the 9th De- cember, the Theatre in the city of Albany, will be opened,' &c. beg leave humbly to represent to your worshipful Board, the present state and situation of this city — Though in the same paper the inhabitants are suspected of rusticity and want of politeness, they have so much common sense, we trust, as to judge and to declare, that we stand in no need of plays and play- actors to be instructed in our duty or good manners ; being already provided with other and much better means to obtain a sufficient knowledge and improve- ment in both — But the pressing necessities and wants of many families, after a long continued and distressing war — the debts still due to the public, for the safety and convenience of the state, and this city ; as well as the many objects of pity and charity (not to mention the gratitude we owe to God) call upon us to request an impartial reconsideration of your resolution, by which that authority was given, and to make such amend- ments as are consistent with your wisdom and prudence ; to acquaint your citizens, that the intent and meaning thereof, was not publicly to authorize, and thereby to applaud and encourage the theatrical exhibitions of those persons ; who, having left another more populous city, pretend to stay but a short time among us, prob- ably to support themselves on the way to another place, where they expect to meet with better friends and political connections : But, in reality, will drain us of our money, if not instil into the minds of the imprudent, principles incompatable with that virtue which is the true basis of republican liberty and happiness." 392 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. This paper it is said, bore the signatures of about seventy citizens. The opposition it is also said, "was raised and conducted by a few persons, very remarkable for a close and studied attention to the formalities of religion who, by their applications," had " procured the names of some of the most respectable" of the "elder citizens, to join them in a petition to the corporation." They also "it is further declared, publicly threatened to raise a party to destroy by violence the building in- tended to be occupied as a theatre, provided it was opened for that purpose." Meanwhile the work of fitting up the hospital was progressing, but not rapidly enough to permit the com- pany to give the first performance on the night already announced for the opening of the theatre. In an ad- vertisement, in the Gazette, the managers informed the public that they found it ' ' absolutely necessary to defer the exhibitions until Tuesday Evening," the thirteenth of December. When, on the twelfth of December, the board of aldermen, voted on the motion ' ' that the comedians have not the liberty to exhibit their theatrical perform- ances in the hospital, " the motion was lost by a vote of nine to four. The board then affirmed its former decision by the following resolutions : ""Resolved that in the Opinion of this Board, they have not a Legal Right to prohibit the Company of Come- dians in this City from exhibiting their Theatrical per- formances. " Resolved that as a Formal application was made by the said Company of Comedians to this Board for leave to occupy two Rooms in the Hospital for this pur- pose, and as this application was notorious and not THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 393 Hastily Granted, so that sufficient time was afforded the Inhabitants to Express their Sentiments, and altho' the permission was Granted in formahty by a Majority of Members Composing the Corporation, they Conceive that it would be unjust at this time and forfeit their Honour to Deprive the said Company of Comedians of the use of the said Eooms, and Subject them to useless Expense." This action of the board of aldermen was thus commented on, by a correspondent in the Gazette, a few weeks afterward : "It would be doing injustice to our Magistrates, not to mention here, that though it was not in their power to prohibit, yet they have never ex- tended their authority so far, as publicly to license the opening of the Theatre ; and if common fame can be credited, none of them have countenanced the Comedians, by attending their exhibitions— An example worthy the imitation of all ranks. ' ' When we find this darling vice encouraged in the first, and patronized in the second city of the state, and rearing its ensigns in each corner thereof, is it not high time for considerate inhabitants, to step forth and op- pose the increasing evil with firmness and resolution, ere it be too late." The comedians remained in the city until the twen- tieth of February, 1786, when they departed for- Mon- treal, having given two performances each week during their stay. "In justice to the Company" says the edi- tor of the Gazette, "we cannot omit mentioning, that their conduct has been such as to meet with the appro- bation of the city in general." In 1786, Albany was the sixth largest city in the United States. It contained five hundred and fifty houses, and it was estimated that it had three thousand 394 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and fifty inhabitants. ^ To celebrate the centennial an- niversary of the incorporation of the city, the board of aldermen on the fifteenth of July appointed Philip van Rensselaer, Peter W. Yates, aldermen, John W. Wendell, Richard Lush, and Jillis Winne, assistant aldermen, a committee to report a suitable way to com- memorate the event. As entered in the minutes of the meeting of the common council, on the eighteenth of July, the following report was presented respecting the celebration : "The Committee to whom was Referred the Mode of Celebrating the 22nd of July Instant, Being the Cen- tury anniversary of this City, do Report, that in their Opinion, The Common Council Convene in the forenoon of that day, at Ten O'Clock, at the City Hall, and from thence proceed in procession to the Hill westward of the City, attended by such Citizens as shall Chuse ; That during the Procession all the Bells of the several Churches in this City shall Ring, and at the arrival at the place assigned for the Purpose on the Hill, Thirteen Toasts and one for the Charter, [be offered] under the Discharge of Fourteen Cannon. ' ' That the Order of Procession be as follows, vizt : 1 The High Sheriff. 2 The Under Sheriffs. 3 The Con- stables with their Staffs. 4 The Mayor and Recorder. 5 The Aldermen. 6 The Common Council. 7 The Chamber- lain and Clerks. 8 The Marshal. 9 The Corporations of the several Churches. 10 The Judges of the several Courts. 11 The Justices of the Peace. 12 The Members of Legislature & Attorneys at Law. 13 The Militia Officers. 1 The number of houses in different cities at this time were thus given : Philadelphia 4600, New York 3500, Boston 2100, Baltimore 1900, Charles- ton, S. C. 1540, Albany 550, New Haven 400, Hartford 300, Wilmington 400, Annapolis 260, Fredericktown, Md. 400, Alexandria, Va. 300, .Rich- mond 280, Petersburgh 290, Williamsburgh 230. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 395 IJ: The Engine & Fire Company. 15 The Citizens at Large." Having heard the report, the common council then " Eesolved that the former Committee be a Com- mittee to prepare and superintend the said business, who are to purchase a Barrel of Good Spirits for the purpose. ' ' Resolved that the members of this Board have a Supper at Mr. Lewis' Tavern at 6 O'Clock in the after- noon." The editor of the Gazette, in his account of the cele- bration, says : ' ' The countenance of the inhabitants bespoke great satisfaction on the occasion ; and many wished that they might be blessed with the opportunity of celebrating the next Charter-Jubilee in like manner. " In the evening, the Corporation partook of an ele- gant supper, at the City-Tavern." In September men were employed by the city to remove the embankments of earth on the site of the fort for the purpose of widening State Street. By an act of legislature, on the twenty-first of March, 1787, the election of aldermen, assistant aldermen and chamberlain was to be held thereafter "on the last Tuesday of September in every year." The Lutherans, who for a number of years had been worshipping with the Episcopalians, "because the brethren of the English church [had] pulled down the edifice" built by the former, and who had paid £50 a year as their share for the support "of the common minister," held their religious meetings after the revo- lution in a dwelKng-house near the site of their first church. On the 26th of August, 1784, Johann George Hillebrand, Carl Newman, and Christian Ering were elected trustees of the Lutheran church. The congrega- 396 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. tion, having no pastor, on the seventh of September, extended a call to the Rev. Heinrich Moeller, who ac- cepted it, receiving an annual salary of fifty pounds sterling, and as much fire-wood as he needed. By agreement, he was permitted to serve at the same time the Low Dutch congregation at Loonenburgh. The minister, elders, and deacons of the church in March, 1786, petitioned the common council to be grant- ed the liberty to collect money in the city to build a house of worship. This request being granted, they immediately began to solicit subscriptions. To construct the foundation of the building, the municipal authorities permitted the officers of the church to take from the walls of the dismantled fort at the head of State Street, one hundred loads of stone for which the city was to receive seventy dollars. Having erected the church, the officers requested the board of aldermen in February, 1Y8Y, to permit them to continue ''their application for donations " to enable them to complete their work. The common council, knowing that they had ' ' erected a con- venient church for the public worship and convinced that their resources " were inadequate to effect their purposes, ' ' recommended them to the attention of all Christian people." The subscriptions received for the erection of the church, in 1787 amounted to £552 12s. 2d. The new building occupied the site of the first church, on the north side of the Rutten kill, on the west side of Washington (South Pearl) Street, between Beaver and Nail streets. Not long after the erection of the church edifice, the Rev. Heinrich Moeller resigned his pastorship of the congregation. In June, 1794, the Rev. Anthon Theodore Braun became its pastor. About the year 1797, a bell, weighing two-hundred and eighty- eight pounds, at oiae time used as an alarm-bell on a r THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 397 British man-of-war, was purchased, for £55, and "with the blessing of God," was "put into the stippel of Ebenezer church." After the organization of the Presbyterian church of Albany in 1760, the Rev. William Hanna accepted the pastorate of the society, which he served for two years. He was succeeded by the Rev. Andrew Bay, who had the pastoral charge of the congregation for five years. During the revolution it appears that the church was without a minister. On the twelfth of July, 1785, the Rev. John McDonald was called to serve the society, and having accepted the pastorship, was ordained and in- stalled on the eighth of November. The building of a house of worship of brick was undertaken in 1794. The new church was erected on the plat of ground on the east side of Washington (South Pearl) Street, between Beaver Street and Store Lane, (Norton Street,) and was opened for service on the twentieth of November, 1796. The dimensions of the commodious building were sixty- four by seventy-six feet. The adoption of the constitution of the United States by the different states created two political parties, the federal and the anti-federal, the former favoring and the latter opposing its adoption. The ratification of the constitution of the United States by New York, in July, 1788, caused great joy, and the event was commemorated by the federalists with processions and barbecues. On Monday, the twenty-eighth of July, 1788, a num- ber of the citizens of Albany having met together to consider the propriety of celebrating the ratification of the constitution for the government of the United States by the convention of the state of New York, determined to request the people of the city "to partake in a public rejoicing, and to join in a federal procession, on Friday, 898 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the 8th day of August," which day's celebration was " to be concluded with a decent American repast." The invitation was complied with, and "on the day ap- pointed, at sunrise, a gun was fired to announce the day. "At ten o'clock, A. M., 11 guns were fired to assemble to the fields near Water- Vliet ; "At half after ten, one gun for forming the Pro- cession ; ' ' At eleven, the Procession was formed, when the whole line on the march saluted the Constitution ; " Immediately after the salute, the Procession moved in the following order : " The Albany Troop of Light-Horse, commanded by Captain Gansevoort, the officers and men in complete uniform. "Music. ' ' The Constitution, neatly engrossed on parchment, suspended on a decorative staff, and borne by Major- General Schuyler, on horseback. ' ' Standard of the United States, carried by Colonel John H. Wendell. "Eleven ancient Citizens, each representing a state that had ratified the Constitution, bearing a scroll of parchment, with the name of the state endorsed in capitals. "Axe-Men, ornamented with garlands of laurels. "An elegant Plough, guided by Stephen van Rens- selaer, Esq.; " Sowers, JohnCuyler, Esq. andCapt. Jacob Lansing. "A neat Harrow, guided by Francis Nicoll, Esq. "Farmers, neatly dressed, with various implements of husbandry, emblematically decorated. ' ' The Farmers' Flag carried by Mr. Gerrit Witbeck, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 399 green silk, a sheaf of wheat, motto, God speed the Plough. "Brewers, preceded by a dray, carrymg a butt — Master van Rensselaer, in the character of Bacchus, astride, with a silver beaker in his hand." These were followed by carpenters, gold and silversmiths, boat builders, tin-men and pewterers, block and pump makers, blacksmiths, clock and watch- makers, sail makers, barbers, bakers, nailers, clothers, carmen, ship-joiners and ship-wrights, riggers, inspectors of flour, millers and weavers, appropriately dressed, and either carrying the implements of their trades or having their work-shops on decorated wagons, driven by two, four, or six horses. Then ' ' Printers, preceded by Apprentices decorated with blue sashes, carrying volumes of Newspapers, &c. "A white silk flag, carried by Mr. Charles R. Web- ster ; in an escutcheon, the Bible, the Constitution, Sept. 17, 1Y8Y, Ratification of the State of New York, July 26, 1Y88 — on a wreath, a hand holding a composing-stick properly ; motto. Our Freedom is secured." Then followed painters and glaziers, tailors, coach - makers and wheel- wrights, turners, masons and brick- layers, saddlers and harness-makers, tanners and curriers, brass founders, coopers, butchers, cord-wainers, and glass-makers. Then " a batteau, elegantly painted and decorated, on a carriage, drawn by 2 grey horses, neatly caparisoned, loaded with goods proper for the Indian Trade ; navi- gated by a proper number of batteaumen, furnished with setting poles, paddles, &c., which were used with great skill during the procession, Mr. Gerardus Lansing, in the character of a trader, and an Indian, properly dressed and ornamented, sitting in the stern." 400 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. This representation was followed by captains of ves- sels, merchants, traders, clerks, "the corporations of the Dutch, Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches, pre- ceded by the Clergy. Sheriff and Deputies, with white wands. Constables with their stars," grand jurors, mem- bers of the corporation, judges and justices of the court of Common Pleas, the chancellor, gentlemen of the bar in gowns, followed by their students, school-masters followed by their scholars, the surveyor-general, the adjutant-general, and the officers of the militia in com- plete uniform, physicians and students, and a detachment of artillery, commanded by Captain Hale. " The Procession moved, with the greatest regularity, through Water- Vleit-street, Market-street and State- street, to the Federal Bower ; which the van reached at half past twelve o'clock, announced by the firing of a gun. " This edifice made an highly elegant appearance. It was erected on the most advantageous parts of the hights west of Fort-Frederic ; commanding the most extended prospect of any situation near the city ; and when the flags of the respective divisions were displayed on its battlements, that of the United States on the centre, that of the State on the right, and the Farmers' on the left, the coup d ' oeil was extremely pleasing. "The edifice was 154 feet in length and 44 in breadth, and was raised upon 4 rows of pillars, 15 feet in height, which were close wreathed with foliage, and composed eleven arches in front. From the architrave, which was clothed with verdant branches, festoons of foliage were suspended, which crossed the arches ; above the centre of which, were white oval medallions, with the name of a ratifying State on each. The centre medallion of which was inscribed New York, projected some feet THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 401 above the rest, and with an elegantly finished pediment formed a graceful portico to the building. * * * "When the procession had drawn up in a line, at the rear of the bower, the company marched off, in regular divisions, to the tables, which were plentifully covered with substantial American cheer ; handsomely arranged under the direction of Mr. William Van Ingen. And, though the tables which were eleven in number, placed across the colonnade, in a line with the arches, were by no means sufficient for the company, which in its num- ber far exceeded the expectations of the warmest favor- ers of the procession, yet, so lively was the pleasurable spirit of accommodation, so general the wish to diffuse satisfaction, that no inconvenience was felt or com- plained of by any." After dinner the thirteen ''toasts were drank, each honored with the discharge of eleven guns." ' ' A gun was then fired, as a signal for again forming the Procession, which was done with the utmost regu- larity and dispatch. The route then taken, was down State-street into Pearl-street, and through it, Columbia- street, Market-street and Court-street, into the spacious pasture south of Fort Orange ; where the whole form'd a semicircle. After eleven guns had been fired from the Fort, answered by three cheers from the whole, the respective divisions marched off, at intervals, and, as they passed the Fort, received the salute of a single gun, which they returned with three cheers. Thus the whole dispersed, by degrees in such order and quiet, that had a stranger arrived in the city before six o'clock, his observation could never have suggested to him, that there had been any public meeting, however trifling."' In the American geography, a work by Jedidiah 1 The Albany Gazette. August 28, 1788. 26 +(>.» THE Hlv^TORY OF ALBANY. Moi^e, priuttHi in 1TS0> the citv oi Albany is thus de«cril>eii : ** It contaii\s about (HH> housfe^ built mostly by trading iHH>ple on the niai'gin of the river. The houses stand chiefly ujH^n Pearl, ]klarket and Water streets, and six other sti>?ets or lanes which cross theiu nearly at right augies. They ai'e built in the Old Dutch Crothic style, with the gable end to the street, which custom the tii*st settlei^ bnuight with them fi\>ni Hol- land. The gable end is commonly of brick, with the heavy mouldeii oruameut of slautiiig with notches, like stall's, and an irou house, for a weather cock, ou the top. Theix? is one little api>endage to their houses?, which the i>eople. blind to the inconveniences of it, still continue, and that is the water gutters or s^xiut*? which pivject fnnn every house, I'endering it almost daug-erous to walk the sti'eetsi in a miny day, ' Their houses are seldom more than one story and a half high, and have but little convenience, and less ele- gance : but they aiv kept very neat, being rubbed with a mop almost every day, and scoui^ed every week . The same neatness. lun\ ever, is not observeii in the sti>eets, which aiv very muddy most of the year, except those which ai'e pavetl : and these ai-e seldom swept and very i\>ugh. *' The city of All>any contains about -Uh^O inhabitants, collected fi\>m almost all i^i^rts of the northern world. As gi^eat a variety of languag-es are s^H^ken in Alkuiy as in any town in the United States. Adventuivi^. in pui'suit of wealth, ai'e led here by the ad\"jintag\^s of trade which this place affoixis. Situateil on one of tJ\e tinest rivei^ in the world, at the head of sUxip navig-ation. surix^unded with a rich and ext*M\sive l>iick country, and the stoiv house of the tmdc ti> and fwm Canada, and the Li^kes. it must flourish, and the inhabitants cannot but irrtnv rich. ""' '■' ^' Til 10 (IIS'r()|:.Y Ml'' ALI',Ai\Y, 40)5 "Alh.'i.tiy is m;u(I 1,0 !)•■ ;i,ii inrux'i.il |)l;ir,c. 'rin;; i: ii;i,hiia,lly \.<> !)(■ (!X|)(!(;I,(!(J. A lic,|,r-,i(>/^cii(!(>iiK collf^cUoii of |M!()|»lc, iiiv(;st(, c\\K:<;\, \,(, '•iijoy IJie pJeaHiirc/', of HorinJ ititer- coiirHc or (,Im^ kw^miIh of ;i,ii iiil.Itri;i(,<' ;iii(l (('(iiic*) (ri'tKl Hliip. "A ^(itil-lcin.-Mi of (»l)H<'rv;i,(,i(>ii ;i,ii(l (liwrcrntncnl,, wfio r(!Hi(l(^(l HoiiKil/iinc in All>;i,iiy, Ii;i,m itiadc- Uic (ollrtwin^' ()()H<'.fv;i,(,i(>iii-!, wliich, IJiou^^li of general ;i.(»|»li':;i,t, ion, I fxjg l(v'i,voHHeHH in favor of our own, and against the nianrujr.s of another place or ii;i,tioii ; H(!Conm 'Irink to 404 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. intoxication, unless in company, or on public occasions, when it is thought to be no disgrace. ' ' They seldom admit many spectators to their mar- riages ; but the day after, the groom prepares a cold collation, with punch, wine, &c., to partake of which, he expects all his friends will come, at 11 o'clock with- out any invitation. A dictator, with absolute power, is then appointed to preside at each table, or in each room, and it seldoms happens that any are suffered to leave the house, until the whole circle exhibits a shock- ing specimen of human depravity. ''Their funeral ceremonies are equally singular. None attend them without a previous invitation. At the appointed hour they meet at the neighboring houses or stoops, until the corpse is brought out. Ten or twelve persons are appointed to take the bier all to- gether, and are not relieved. The clerk then desires the gentlemen (for ladies never walk to the grave, nor even attend the funeral, unless a near relation) to fall into the procession. They go to the grave, and return to the house of mourning in the same order. Here the tables are handsomely set and furnished with cold and spiced wine, tobacco and pipes, and candles, paper, &c., to light them. The conversation turns upon promis- cuous subjects, however improper, and unsuitable to the solemnity of the occasion, and the house of mourn- ing is soon converted into a house of feasting. "The best families live extremely well, enjo3ang all the conveniences and luxuries of life ; but the poor have scarcely the- necessaries of subsistence. • ' The ground covered by the city charter is of a poor soil. In the river before the city is a beautiful little island, which, were it properly cultivated would afford a faint resemblance to Paradise, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 405 "The well water in this city is extremely bad, scarcely drinkable by those who are not accustomed to it. Indeed all the water for cooking is brought from the river, and many families use it to drink. * * '^' "The public buildings are a Low Dutch church, one for Presbyterians, one for Germans or High Dutch, one for EjDiscopalians — a hospital and the City Hall.'" A writer thus speaks of the city in 1789 : " We have a prospect, ere another year shall transpire, of seeing the principal streets not only comfortably, but elegant- ly paved. In addition to which, the wharves have been repaired and enlarged, and the city adorned with several new private buildings, which would not disgrace some of the principal cities in Europe, and would ornament any in America," Seven or eight years ago, "a competent English teach- er was scarcely to be found. We now have an academy, which flourishes under the direction of Mr. Merchant, a gentleman who has always given such proofs of his abil- ities, as to render encomium entirely superfluous. ' ' At that period [that is seven or eight years ago] not more than seventy, at the utmost calculation, shops and stores were kept in this city. Now we behold Market and State streets crowded with stores, and rents in those streets enhanced to such a degree as to put houses out of the reach of inconsiderable traders. Nor had we manu- factories of any kind, but depended on importation en- tirely for every manufactured article. Now we see the citizens, stimulated by motives of public spirit, daily pro- moting them. Messrs. Stevenson, Douw & Ten Eyck have erected a nail manufactory, in which nails of every description are raanfactured as cheap, and pronounced to be superior to any imported. ' iln IISI, a nail manufactory was established " in Orange street, near the High Dutch [German Reformed] Church," by Gerrit Witbeck. 406 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "Much praise is also due to James Caldwell, of this city, merchant, for his spirited exertions in promoting the manufacture of tobacco of every description, snuff, mustard and chocolate, for which purpose he has, at great expense, erected mills which are ranked among the first in America. ^ -^ "''' * ' ' And I flatter myself I am not too sanguine, when I indulge the idea, that I shall live to see the day when this city, adorned with every necessary public building, and other improvements, will become the fixed seat of government of the Legislature ; shipping of considerable bulk, owned by our own merchants, opening their canvas before our wharves, and wafting the produce of our country to distant quarters of the globe.'' Ananias Piatt, a Lansingburgh inn-keeper, on Tues- day, the twenty-first of April, 1789, began to run a stage daily from his inn to Robert Lewis's tavern, in Albany. Passengers were charged four shillings for the round trip. The legislature, on the first of February, granted the proprietor of the line the exclusive right to ran stages between Albany and Lansingburgh. In 1T96, twenty coaches were running daily on this route, the river being- crossed at the ferry at Troy. On Monday, the twenty- fifth of May, 1789, the Al- bany Gazette began to be published on every Monday and Thursday of each week. The publication of the Albany Journal, or, Montgomery, Washington & Colum- bia Intelligencer, which had been begun in connection with the Gazette, on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of i These mills are described as " situated about one mile from the centre of the city, and 400 yards west from the mansion house of Stephen Van Rensselaer, Esq., at the entrance of a delightful valley, through which a never failing stream passes, that turns a number of other mills within sight of each other." On the twelfth of July, 1794, Caldwell's mills were burned ; the loss was estimated at ;^lo,noO. The mills were shortly afterwards re- built. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 407 January, 1788, being issued on Mondays and Saturdays, was discontinued after the twenty-fifth of May, 1789. Charles R. and George Webster & Company were its pubhshers. The Albany Register, first issued in May, 1788, was published by Robert Barber. To obtain a plat of ground more suitable for the burial of the dead than the grave-yards in the city, the common council, in 1789, appointed Thomas Hun and T. V. W. Graham a committee to select a common burying-ground for the city. At this time the Episcopal grave-yard ex- tended from State Street across Maiden Lane ; the Lu- theran was at the intersection of Washington and Beaver streets, south of the church ; the Presbyterian near the corner of Hudson and Grand streets, on the east side of the church ; the new burying-ground of the Reformed Protestant Dutch church was on the south side of Beaver Street, a short distance west of Green Street ; the Ger- man Reformed was near the church, west of Pearl Street, near the north bounds of the city. On the nineteenth of September, the committee reported that a suitable five- acre lot for a common burial place was on the east side of the plat of ground which had been the site of the barracks which had been burned and on which a burial- vault had been constructed. They suggested that the most eastern acre should be granted to the corporation of the Presbyterian church, the next one on the west side to the Episcopal church, the next to the Lutheran church, and the east half of the third acre to the Reformed High Dutch (the German Reformed) church, and the most western acre and the remaining half-acre to the Dutch church. On the map of the plan of the city made in 1794, this burial-ground is conspicuously delineated. The Protestant Episcopal Church had become inde- pendent of the established church of England, and the 408 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. congregation of St. Peter's church, which had, under the seal of the province of New York, on the twenty-fifth of April, 1TH9, been erected into a corporation by the name of ' ' the Rector and Inhabitants of the City of Albany, in the county of Albany, in communion of the church of England," petitioned the legislature to change this to ' ' the Eector and Inhabitants of the City of Albany, in communion of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York." Conformable to this prayer, an act to enable the corporation of St. Peter's church to assume this name was passed on the third of March, 1789. The patent of 1714, granted by Governor Hunter, and the charter of 1769, granted by Governor Moore, are preserved in the vault of the church. The silver communion-service, two chalices, two flagons, and two patens, and an alms basin, which, in 1710, were intended by Queen Anne as a present to the congregation that was to be organized among the Onondagas but never was, are now the property of St. Peter's church. The plate bears this inscription : " The gift of Her Majesty Ann, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and of Her Planta- tions, in North America, Queen, to Her Indian Chappel of the Onondawgus." Within the encircling inscriptions are the royal ensignia and the letters, A. R. Although the society was without a rector during the revolutionary war services were from time to time conducted in the church. Lieutenant Ebenezer Elmer, who passed through Albany on his way to Canada, "attended the English church in the forenoon," on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of May, 1776. On the first of May, 1787, the Rev. Thomas Ellison was appointed rector of St Peter's church. About the year 1789, a small number of Miuhodists organized a society in Albany, holding their meetings in THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 409 the dwellings of the members. In 1790, this congrega- tion was included in the circuit of the Rev. James Camp- bell. Shortly afterward the society erected a chapel on the southeast corner of Orange and Pearl streets. In the little building, on the twenty-second of June, 1792, John Blood- good, Abraham Ellison, Isaac Lawson, Elisha Johnson, William Fredenbourgh, Nathanael Arms, and Calvin Chisman were elected trustees of the Methodist Episco- pal church of the city and county of Albany. To establish a public library in the city, a number of the citizens, in December, 1791, formed an association, and petitioned the legislature to be made a corporate body known by the name of " The trustees of the Al- bany Library. " An act was passed on the twenty-fourth of February, 1792, incorporating the trustees of the Albany Library ; Abraham Ten Broeck, John Lansing, jr., Philip Schuyler, Stephen van Rensselaer, Jeremiah van Rensselaer, Thomas Ellison, John McDonald, James Fairlie, Daniel Hale, Hunloke Woodruff, Groldsbrow Banyar, and Stephen Lush, being constituted the first trustees. Abraham Ten Broeck was named by the act the president of the association, and James van Ingen, treasurer and librarian. "As the bank-fever has passed itself in this country of an epedemic nature," wrote a citizen of Albany, in the Gazette of Thursday, the second of February, 1792, ' ' and as it rages with the greatest violence in the city of New York, it is shrewdly suspected the contagion has reached this northern part of the state ; which is strongly indicated by some evident symptoms which have lately been discovered among several of our fellow citizens." In the same number of the Gazette, the following paragraph appears: "The establishment of a bank, 410 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. having been the subject of conversation for some time past in this city, and as there are many who think that such an institution will be proper ; all those who are of that opinion are requested to meet at Lewis's, at 4 o'clock, to-morrow afternoon, to consider the subject." This invitation as it will be seen in the following information, contained in the Gazette, on Monday, the sixth of February, induced a number of capitalists, in- terested in the establishment of a bank, to assemble at the inn of Robert Lewis, on the southeast corner of Washington and State streets : ' 'A respectable number of gentlemen collected at the city -tavern on Friday evening last, agreeable to notification, to discuss the important sub- ject of establishing a bank in this city — and we are happy to add', there appeared an unanimous wish to forward the establishment. Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, esq., being placed in the chair, a candid and impartial investigation of the subject took place ; after which a committee was chosen for the purpose of reporting a plan for the establish- ment of a bank in this city, to be laid before a meeting of the citizens, on Friday evening next, at the city tav- ern, to which time the meeting stands adjourned. A punctual and general attendance is requested at 5 o'clock P. M. on that day. The gentlemen who compose the committee are Cornelius Glen, John Tayler, Daniel Hale, Gerrit W. Van Schaick, Abraham Van Vechten, esqrs. " The committee, at the next meeting at the city-tavern, reported a plan for the establishment of a bank in the city. The institution was to be called ''The Albany Bank," the capital to be seventy-five thousand dollars, to be divided into five hundred shares of one hundred and fifty dollars each. Jeremiah van Rensselaer, Jacob van der Hey den and Barent Bleecker were appointed a com- mittee to open the books at the city-tavern on Friday, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 411 the seventeenth of February, at two o'clock, and to re- ceive subscriptions with deposits of fifteen doHars on each share. The committee, on the sixteenth of February, inserted the following notification in the Gazette : " All persons intending to become stockholders to the bank of Albany, are hereby notified, that a subsciiption will be opened at the city-tavern, precisely at S o'clock to-morrow, to re- main open till 5 o'clock ; at which time the books will be closed. Should the number of shares exceed 500, such excess to be reduced to that number, in equal proportions. And on Tuesday following, between the hours of 10 and J 2 o'clock, and from 3 to 5, we shall meet at the store of Messrs. Glen and Bleeckers, for the sole purpose of re- ceiving 15 dollars on each share subscribed, and deliver- ing receipts for the same." Under the heading "Albany Bank Script," in the Gazette of Monday, the twentieth of February, the fol- lowing paragraphs appear : ' ' On Friday last, the subscriptions to the bank, in this city, were over-run, in less than three hours, by which means the association is now completely organized, and will go immediately into operation." Stock was ' ' sold on Friday, after the books were closed, at 10 per cent, advance ; and on Saturday, at 100 per cent, in cash, " Stockholders are advised, notwithstanding the pre- sent advanced price of Script not to sell out — as every measure has been taken to obtain an incorporation & the number of shares being small their value will necessarily increase." At a meeting of the stockholders, held on Monday, the twenty-seventh of February, Philip Schuyler, Abra- ham Ten Broeck, Stephen van Rensselaer, Goldsbrow 412 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Banyar, Jeremiah van Rensselaer, Cornelius Glen, Daniel Hale, John Maley, James Caldwell, John Stevenson, Stephen Lush, Albert Pawling, and John Sanders were elected directors. A petition having been presented to the legislature on Saturda3^ the twenty-fifth of February for the incor- poration of the stockholders of the Bank of Albany, an act was passed on the tenth of April, 1792, incorporating all such persons as were or should thereafter be stock- holders of the bank under the name of ' ' The president, directors, and company of the Bank of Albany.'' The act designated the persons previously elected as the first directors of the institution, who were to hold their offices until the second Tuesday of May following, and thereafter annually on that day thirteen directors were to be chosen. The stock, estate, and property, were never to exceed in value the sum of two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. A share in the stock of the said bank was to ' * be four hundred Spanish milled dollars, or the equivalent thereof in specie;" the share not to exceed at any time six hundred, exclusive of anj share that the state might subscribe. The directors were required to make half-yearly dividends of the profits of the bank, and not to demand more than six per cent, for discounts. The following persons were elected directors of the bank on the twelfth of June : Abraham Ten Broeck, Cornelius Glen, Stephen van Rensselaer, John Maley, Jeremiah van Rensselaer, Abraham van Vechten, Henry Cuyler, John Stevenson, James Caldwell, Jacob van der Hayden, Goldsbrow Banyar, Daniel Hale, and Elkanah Watson. Al^raham Ten Broeck was elected president. On the sixteenth of July, the bank began business, in a building on the east side of Pearl Street, now numbered 7 6- 9 10 Tfi*' Court Jrou-f^ • &isrtrum^XmAffran " THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 413 11 ; Gerrit W. van Schaick being cashier. The new banking-house, on the west side of Market Street, the sixth building north of State Street, was first opened for business on the twentieth of July, 1795. On the third of February, 1810, the bank was removed to a building on the site of the Government Building, on the northeast corner of Broadway and State Street. One of the largest conflagrations that ever occurred in the city was the great fire of Sunday night, the seven- teenth of November, 1793. About half past ten o'clock that night the stable of Leonard Oansevoort, in Middle Lane, as James Street was then called, was discovered to be on fire. The breeze soon carried the fire to the ad- jacent structures, and in a short time, the buildings on the west side of Market Street, from Maiden Lane to the building on the northwest corner of Market and State streets, were burned to the ground. On the north side of State Street, east of Middle Lane, six buildings were con- sumed. All the stables and barns on Middle Lane, between State Street and Maiden Lane, were burned, and two buildings in Maiden Lane. The Gazette printing office. No. 3H State Street, was also burned. The property destroyed was highly valued. In December, 179:^, the project of running a line of stages between Albany and Whitestown, in Oneida County, one hundred miles west of the cit}^ was favored by a number of capitalists. ''Such an idea a few years ago," says the editor of the Gazette, ''would have been ridiculed ; but from the great intercourse with the west through this city, we have every reason to suppose it will answer a valuable purpose, both to the public and the proprietors ; especially if the proprietors should succeed in contracting for the mail, of which there can be little doubt." In May, 1793, Moses Beal "erected a stage" to -tU THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. carry passengers from Albany to Schenectady, Johns- town, and Canajoharie, once a week. The coach left the city on Friday mornings and returned on Tuesdays. The fare was three cents a mile. A line of stages began to run in November, 1793, between Albany and North- ampton, Massachusetts. A stage departed on Tuesdays and Fridays from each of these two places and arrived in the evenings of those days at Pittstield. In the adver- tisement of the enterprise, "the proprietors of this new line beg leave to observe that the difficulty of extending a line of stages from Northhampton to Albany (across the mountains), has heretofore been supposed insur- mountable — but considering this establishment forms an expeditious and sure communication from Portland in the province of Maine through a rich and flourishing country to Whitestown, in the western part of the State of New York, a distance of upwards of four hundred miles, they have determined to make the experiment.'" The fare was four pence a mile. In January, 1796, John Clark and Reuben King advertised that they had con- tracted to carry the mail by a line of stages to run twice a week between Albany and Boston. At a meeting of the mechanics in the city on the tenth of January, 1793, a committee was appointed to prepare a constitution of an association for the laudable purpose of protecting and supporting such of their brethren who by sickness or accident might need assis- tance, and of relieving the widows and orphans of the menabers who might die in indigent circumstances, and also of providing the means of instruction for their children. The first officers of the society were : John W. Wendell, president, Charles R. Webster, first vice- president, Bernardus Evertsen, second, Isaac Hutton, treasurer, and John Barber, secretary. It was incor- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 415 porated the sixth of March, 1801, to continue an organi- zation until the twenty-fifth of JNovember, 1823. Reviewing the business-transactions of the eighth of February, 1794, the editor of the Gazette thus refers to what had been done in the city on that day : " On a moderate estimate it is presumed the purchases and sales of produce and merchandise exceeded $50,000. Of the article of wheat, between 25 and 30,000 bushels were brought to this market ; a quantity far exceeding the receipts of any one day since the settlement of this coun- try. The price of wheat rose during the day from Ts. 2d. to 8s. , or the highest price between this and the first of March. This last mode of purchase is truly novel, and must be convincing to the farmer that the merchants of this city are too independent to form combinations. " The tide of emigration toward the western part of the state apparently was at its greatest height in February, 1795. Winter it seems was a more favorable season for travelling than any other part of the year. The rough roads, frozen and covered with snow, were more easily passed over with sleds than with heavy wagons, which only a few possessed ; and it was more advantageous for the settlers to reach the land they were to cultivate, be- fore spring-time, when their labor was to be wholly bestowed upon the tillage of the virgin soil. A citizen of Albany, counted one day, from sun-rise to sun-set, five hundred sleighs of emigrants going through the city. It was estimated that twelve hundred sleighs burdened with families and household goods had passed through the streets in three days, coming from the New England towns and going to the fertile valley of the Genesee River. Upon one of the sledges a printing press was seen, an indispensable instrument for the cultivation of ennobling enterprise and industry. 416 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Ill the summer of 1795, the eminent French officer, Francois Alexandre Frederic, due de la Rochefoucault- Liancourt, dsited Albany, and gave the following des- cription of the city in his work, Voyage dans les Etats- Unis : " It is seated one- hundred and fifty miles from New York, has a harbor, and a very extensive trade. Ships of eighty tons burthen sail up to the town ; and the trade is carried on in vessels of this size. A sort of sand-bank, [the Overslaugh,] three miles below Al- bany, renders the navigation rather difficult ; yet it is easily cleared with the assistance of pilots acquainted with it, and no ship arrives without one of them on board. This impediment, it is asserted, might easily be removed at a triffing expense ; and ships of a much larger size might then anchor near the city. The navigation of the river from the north country is open from the middle of April until the middle of November. " The trade of Albany is chiefly carried on with the produce of the Mohawk country, and extends eastward as far as cultivated lands expand. The State of Vermont, and a part of New Hampshire furnish also many articles of trade ; and the exports chiefly consist in timber and lumber of every sort and description, potatoes, potash and pearl ashes, all species of grain, and lastly in manu- factured goods. These articles are, most of them, trans- ported to Albany in winter on sledges, housed by the merchants, and by them successivelly transmitted to New York, where they are either sold for bills on Eng- land, or exchanged for English goods, which are in re- turn sent from Albany to the provinces, whence the articles for transportation were drawn. Business is, therefore, carried on entirely with ready money, and especially in regard to pot-ash ; not even the most substantial bills are accepted in payment. THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. 417 •' The trade of Albany is carried on in ninety vessels, forty -five of which belong to the inhabitants of the town, and the rest to New York or other places. They are in in general of seventy tons burthen, and make upon the average ten voyages a year, which on computing the freights outwards and homewards, produce a total of one hundred and twenty-six thousands tons of shipping for the trade of Albany. Every ship is navigated by four men ; the master is paid twenty dollars a month, if he have no share in the ship, the mate fifteen and a sea- man nine. There is generally a cabin-boy on board, or more frequently a cook, as few ships have less than eight passengers on board, either coming up or going down. The freight of goods is usually one shilling a hundred weight ; but this varies according to their value, or the room they occupy. " The trade of Albany is very safe, but seems not to be very profitable. The net proceeds of a voyage amount upon an average to about one hundred dollars, which make for the whole year one thousand dollars for a ship, a profit by no means considerable. If you add to this the money paid by passengers for their passage, which amounts to ten shillings a head, making from seventeen to twenty dollars a voyage, and from one hundred and seventy to two hundred dollars for the ten voyages, which are made in the course of the year, the whole yields but a very moderate profit, which is however in- creased by the sale of goods. This is as yet the usual way in which trade is carried on by this city ; it deprives the merchants of Albany of a considerable profit, and throws it into the hands of those of New York. Some of the former undertake indeed voyages to England, Holland and other countries ; but, for this purpose, they charter New York vessels. These are the bolder people ; 27 418 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and are called men of the new notions, but their number is small. "The ancient customs and confined views of the timid yet covetous Dutchmen, have carefully been pre- served in this city. No ship sails from Albany directly to Europe ; and yet provision is sent thither from this place. It is evident that, if the inhabitants would take themselves the trouble of exporting their produce, they would save useless interest, the return freight, and double commission, and would obtain employment for their ships during the time when the navigation to the north is shut up by ice. Ideas of this complexion begin to dawn upon the minds of some merchants, and will, no doubt, produce advantageous changes. From the same habitual apathy, the merchants of Albany relinquish the trade in horses and mules, great numbers of which are reared in the neighborhood, to the Connecticut mer- chants, who purchase and export them with considerable profit, to the Antilles. " The building of ships costs in Albany about twenty- seven dollars and a half per ton. The ships are all fir- built, and last about ten years. Experiments have been made, which prove, that ships built of dry and well- seasoned timber, last thirty years and upwards. The trade of Albany grows daily more extensive ; and the number of shops and ships is increasing fast. " Two new towns, built five or six years ago, a few miles above Albany, on the northern [eastern ?] bank of the river, share in this trade. These two towns, which have rapidly raised themselves to a considerable degree of importance, and are but three or four miles distant from each other, carry on the same trade as Albany with about twenty- five or thirty vessels, which belong to them, drawn from the back country the productions of these THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 419 fruitful provinces, transmit them to New York, take in return European goods, and supply with them those parts, which were formerly supplied from Albany. The greater distance, however, and less depth of water, are circumstances unfavorable to these new towns. The freight thence to Albany is two pence per barrel ; their largest ships are only of sixty tons burthen, and generally can not take on board more than half their cargo, the remainder of which they receive from lighters, which at- tend them for that purpose in the vicinity of Albany. Yet, they continue their trade, increase daily, and will probably animate Albany to greater boldness and ac- tivity. New City ^ [Lansingburgh] contains aboyt sixty or seventy stores or shops, and Troy fifty or sixty. These new-settled merchants all prosper, and their number is daily increasing. * * * "Albany contains six thousand inhabitants, two thousand of whom are slaves, as the laws of the State of New York permit slavery. The old houses are built in the Dutch style, with the gable-end to the street ; the pyramidal part rising in steps, and terminating in a chimney decorated with figures, or in some iron puppets. All the buildings, which have been erected within these last ten years, are constructed of bricks in the English style, wide and large. " The revenue of the city amounts to about thirty- five thousand dollars a year. It possesses a great quan- tity of land in the neighboring country, and also sells the quays on the river at two dollars and a half per foot, and a ground-rent of one shilling, which is irredeemable. This revenue is partly owing to the economy of the ad- ministrators, who have hitherto endeavored rather to enrich the city than to embellish it, and render it more 1 The Dutch designated Albany as de onde stad, the old city, and Lansing- burgh, which was first named New City, de nieuwe stad, the new city. 4^0 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. convenient. The senate [or common conncil | is, at present, composed of young men, who promise to take care of these articles. But, from the ignorance, apathy, and antiquated ideas, which prevail in this city, it is much to be apprehended, lest the results of their exer- tions should prove but very trifling for a long time to come. I almost incline to think that young people here are old born. "A bank, which was instituted here four years ago, promotes the trade of Albany ; it consists of six hundred shares of four hundred dollars each, only half of which have hitherto been paid. The yearly dividend is nine per cent, besides what is deducted for the expense of the building in which the bank is kept. " There is in Albany a Dutch Lutheran church of a Gothic and very peculiar construction ; the Episco- palians, Presbyterians, German Protestants, and Metho- dists, possess also churches in this town. " The price of land, in the vicinity of Albany, is from sixty-three to seventy-five dollars per acre. Some lands near the river are still dearer. * * * "Some manufactories have been established at a small distance from the town, among which is a glass house, in which both window-glass and bottles are made. ^ The former is pretty smooth, and the manufactory is carried on with much activity. Mr. Caldhowell [Cald- well] possesses also near the town extensive works, where tobacco, mustard, starch, and cocoa mills, are turned by water, and even every necessary labour is per- formed by the aid of water machinery. The tobacco mill is the most important part of these works ; about one hun- 1 The glass manufactory was owned by the firm of McCallen, McGregor & Co., the company being James Caldwell and Christopher Batterman. It was eight miles west of the city, and its site was familiarly known as the Glass House. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 421 dredand fifty thousand pounds are yearly manufactured. Last summer [July, 1794:] a complete set of similar works having been consumed by fire, Mr. Caldwell's friends immediately opened a loan of twenty thousand pounds at the bank, and the legislative body of New York re- solved also last session to assist him with a suui of the same amount. I am to add in honour of Mr. Caldwell with whom I am not acquainted, that nearly all the labouring people in the city, in consequence of this un- fortunate accident subscribed several days' labour, as a voluntary contribution to the reconstruction of these works, which are truly grand and beautiful. They give employment and subsistence to fifty persons, some of whom receive one hundred dollars a year ; children, nine years old, can earn from six shillings to one dollar a week. Tan -yards, corn, oil, paper, fulling-mills, have also been erected in the surrounding country ; and labourers are found in abundance. The wages of com- mon-day labourers amount to four shillings and six pence a day, and to seven shillings in harvest. "Hospitality to strangers seems not to be a prominent feature in the character of the inhabitants of Albany, the few, with whom we got acquainted, looked extremely duU and melancholy. They live retired in their houses with their wives, who sometimes are pretty, but I'ather awkward in their manners ; and with whom their husbands scarcely exchange thirty words a day, although they never address them but with the introductory ap- pellation of ' My Love. ' Exceptions, undoubtedly, exist in regard to the charms of the ladies, as well as to the conduct and conversation of the husbands ; but, it is asserted, they are very few."* 1 Travels through the United States of America, in the years 1795, 1796 and 1797. By the Duke de la Rochefoucault-Liancourt. London, 1799. vol. i. pp. 368-378. 422 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. By a legislative act of the twenty-sixth of March, 1796, Philip Schuyler, Abraham Ten Broeck, Daniel Hale, Jeremiah van Rensselaer, and Tennis T. van Vechten were appointed a board of commissioners to build a state- prison in Albany county. In July, they purchased six acres of land lying on the north side of the city, between the main road and the river, three fourths of a mile from the city-hall. In 1797, the power conferred on the com- missioners was annulled, and the work of erecting the building was not undertaken. In the early summer of 1796, a number of Roman Catholics, who had been attending at different times the ministrations of officiating priests in the houses of Margaret Cassidy and William Duffy, undertook to solicit the means for the erection of a suitable building for a church. The undertaking received the generous en- couragement of the citizens. " With great pleasure " the editor of the Gazette observes, "we have noticed the success of the subscription, opened a few days since for erecting a Roman Catholic chapel in this city. It be- speaks the tolerant and liberal disposition of the country, to find our citizens of every persuasion emulous in assisting their Roman Catholic brethren with the means of building here a temple to the God of heaven, in which they can worship according to the dictates of their own consciences. The corporation unanimously resolved to present them with a piece of ground for the site of their church." The city gave the society a plat of ground on Pine Street, between Barrack and Lodge streets. The fol- lowing persons were elected trustees of the church at the house of James Robichaux, on the sixth of October, 1796 : Thomas Barry, Louis Le Coulteaux, Daniel McEvers, Terrence O'Donnell, Jeremiah Driscoll, Michael Bagley, James Robichaux, William Donovan, and Philip Fari^ell. p -SO o (5) ZiO o 30 ©0 O THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 423 On the thirteenth of September, 1797, the corner-stone of the chapel was laid by Thomas Barry, one of the trustees. A marble tablet was placed in the front wall of the building, having the representation of a human skull in the right upper corner, and of two crossed bones in the left, and the following inscription: "I. H. S. Thomas Barry, Louis Le Coulteaux, founders. E. C. Quinn, master-builder. A. D. 1798. The edifice, which was finished in 1807, was a brick building, about fifty feet square, fronting on Pine Street. An enumeration of the buildings in the city was made in December, 1796, which showed that within its limits were seven hundred and one dwelling-houses ; one hun- dred and thirty-one stores, sixty-eight store-houses, and one hundred and ninety-three stables. The Court-House or City-Hall in 1796. 426 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. and after the first of June, 1798, the court of probates Hkewise should be kept there. The commissioners selected the plat of ground now on the southwest corner of State and Lodge streets for the site of the Public Building, the corner stone of which was laid by the mayor, Abraham Ten Broeck, on the thirtieth of May. The building was erected under the supervision of William Sanders, the architect, and was occupied in August, 1 798, by the government officers for whose use it had been built. Although Albany was not definitely designated in 1797 by the legislature as the permanent seat of the govern- ment of the state, still there were many manifestations that the city was to become the capital of the state of New York. This was apparent when, in the spring of 1797, the "elegant house" of James Caldwell, in State Street, No. 60, was rented for the residence of Governor John Jay. The membership of the Eeforiried Protestant Dutch church had become so large that the old meeting-house, at the intersection of State and Market streets, was too small to seat the congregation that worshipped in it. It was therefore determined in 1796 to erect another church - building, on the northwest corner of Pearl and Orange streets. On Monday afternoon, the twelfth of June, the corner-stone was laid by the Rev. John B. Johnson, in the presence of a large concourse of people. In the fall of 1798, the edifice was completed, and was described as ' ' a superb and elegant building, finished in the most modern style, with two handsome domes or steeples." It was called "the North church." On its completion, eighty-two of the pews in it were sold for $10,371, with a reservation of $418 as their annual rent. There were then seventy-seven pews that were not sold. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 427 On the fourth of August, 1797, the city was again ravaged by fire. " It broke out " says the editor of the Gazette, "at the hour of 11 o'clock on Friday evening last, in a store-house of Mrs. Bradt, near the Middle- dock — and notwithstanding the citizens flew to the fire, had water in abundance, and used every exertion to ex- tinguish it, driven by a S. E. wind, it spread with an inconceivable rapidity, and before 3 o'clock, the buildings (three houses excepted) on five entire blocks of the city were consumed. ''' * - We are informed that several gentlemen, * * * estimate the number of Dwelling Houses at Ninety-five or Ninety-six ; and the number of families burnt out at One Hundred and fifty, amounting nearly to One Thousand persons. * * * We believe ourselves within bounds when we state the loss at 250,- 000 dollars — ^some imagine it considerably more." The buildings burned were on Middle Lane, Dock, Steuben, Market, Montgomery, Columbia, Watervliet, Trump and Orange streets. The clergy of the city, convinced that the fire was "the judgment of God," and the cause of it, " the sins of the community," recommended the common council to set apart Wednesday, the sixteenth of August, " as a day of fasting and humiliation and prayer. " By a resolu- tion of the board of aldermen, the day designated was duly observed as was suggested by the ministers. Previous to the fourth of February, 1792, there were sixty persons who were recognized as the firemen of the city. On that day an act was passed by the legislature increasing the number to eighty. On the thirty-first of March, 1797, another act was passed, permitting the city to have " a number not exceeding one hundred and fifty firemen." In December, 1797, the Albany Museum was open 428 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ' ' on the corner of G-reen and Beaver streets, opposite Mr. Denniston's tavern, every day, Sundays excepted, from 9 o'clock in the morning till 9 at night." It contained "a number of Hving animals, and a great variety of other natural and artificial curiosities. " When the news of the death of George Washington reached the city, on the twenty-third of December, 1799, the bells of the churches and the city-hall were tolled from three until five o'clock in the afternoon by order of the common council, the members of which resolved to wear crape round their left arms for the space of six weeks, "as a testimony of respect to the memory of Lieut. Gen. Washington, deceased." While the bells were tolling, minute guns were fired by the United States artillery company stationed in the city, under the com- mand of Captain John McClallen. Black drapery was hung in the churches, and flags were placed at half-mast on the public buildings. On Thursday, the ninth of January, 1800, a funeral pageant passed through the principal streets in memory of the illustrious chieftain. The twenty-second day of February having been set apart as a day to commemorate the deeds of Washing- ton, the Rev. Matthew O'Brien preached a suitable ser- mon in St. Mary's Roman Catholic church at nine o'clock, on the morning of that day. At eleven o'clock a proces- sion moved from the city-hall, composed of the executive and judicial officers of the state, both houses of the legis- lature, the corporation and citizens, and proceeded through State and Pearl streets to the North church, in which the Rev. John B. Johnson, eloquently discoursed upon the life and character of Washington ; the Rev. John Bassett and the Rev. Eliphalet Nott taking part in the solem n exercises. In the afternoon. Major Michael Gabriel Houdin delivered an oration in the city- hall. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 429 At a meeting of a number of Presbyterians, at Wen- dell's tavern, on the fourth of October, 1800, who had organized themselves into a religious society, James An- gus, George Embrie, John Kirk, and Joseph Caldwell, were appointed a committee to rent a room suitable for a meeting-place for worship and to obtain a minister to take the pastoral care of the society. A call having been extended to the Rev. John McDonald, the former pastor of the First Presbyterian church, the committee reported on the sixth of January, 1801, that he had accepted it. The following persons were elected trustees of ' ' The United Presbyterian congregation of the city of Albany," on the thirty-first of January : Joseph Caldwell, James Angus, John Kirk, Alexander Cumming, Alexander Watson, John Van Ness Yates, John Grant, George Klinck, and George Pearson. The Rev, John McDonald first preached to the society in the Long room belonging to James Angus, in North Pearl Street ; subsequently in the store-room of James Caldwell, in State Street. Meanwhile the trustees had obtained from the city sufiicient ground on the corner of Fox (Canal) and Barrack (Chapel) streets for the site of a church, the corner-stone of which was laid on Wednesday morning, the fifth of October, by the Rev. John McDonald, "in the presence of the trustees and ecclesiastical officers of that congregation.'" The church was first opened foi- public worship on the first Sunday of Jan- uary, 1802. The Rev, John McDonald resigned the pas- torship of the congregation on the twenty-eighth of March, 1819. An act to incorporate the proprietors of the Albany water- works was passed on the seventeenth of February, 1802. By it, Stephen Lush, Philip S. van Rensselaer, John Tayler, and their associates were made a corporate 430 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. body by the name of ' ' the trustees and company of the Albany water- works. " The stock of the corporation was to consist of four hundred shares at one hundred dollars each. Conduits for supplying the city with water were allowed to be laid by the company through any part of Albany and Watervliet, • The contract that had been made with Benjamin Prescott for laying the conduits was not to be annulled. Shortly afterward the company declared a dividend of three per cent, on the stock for the previous six months. The religious society known as the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church was regularly organized in January, 1800. The Rev. Andrew Wilson, in April, 1802, was installed pastor of the congregations of the churches in Albany and Lansingburgh. On the twenty- fifth of May following, John Magoffin, William Mulroy, William McGill, David Bleekley, William Muir, John McMillan, and Samuel McElroy, were elected trustees of the society. The site and size of the Episcopal church in State street were so uiisuited to the convenience of the con- gregation that it was determined to raze the building and to erect another on the northwest corner of State and Barrack streets. The new edifice, completed in 1804, was consecrated on the fourth of October, by Bishop Moore. On a tablet set in the wall of the new church was the following inscription : " Griory be to the Lord for he is good — for his mercy endureth forever. Saint Peter's church formerly standing in the centre of State at its junction with Barrack street. Built A. D. mdccxv — Incorporated A. D, mdcclxix. Demolished and this edifice erected A. D. mdcccii. Thomas Ellison, rector — John Stevenson, Goldsbrow Banyer, Church Wardens. Philip Hooker, Archt." The church-bell, which had hung in the tower on the west side of the old building bearing THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 431 the inscription. "St. Peter's church, Albany, 1751, J. Ogilvie, minister, J. Stevenson, E. Colhns, wardens," was placed in the steeple of the new structure. The management of the business of the Bank of Al- bany was in certain ways unfavorable to the interests of some of the merchants and manufacturers of the city, and the organization of a new banking institution in 1803, was the natural consequence of it. The projectors of the new bank obtained no little commendation for their enterprise by a published declaration that they intended it "for a true republican institution." The founders of the bank, in February, 1803, petitioned the legislature to permit them to organize a company under the name of the New York State Bank. Their petition obtained the passage of ' ' an act to incorporate the stockholders of the New York State Bank and for other purposes," on the nineteenth of March, 1803. By it, the stockholders were made a corporate body " by the name of the president, di- rectors and company of the New York State Bank. " The comptroller of the state of New York (then Elisha Jen- kins,) together with John Tayler, Thomas Tillotson, Abraham Gr. Lansing, Peter Gansevoort, jr., Elkanah Watson, John R. Bleecker, Francis Bloodgood, John Robinson, Gilbert Stewart, John D. P. Douw, Richard Lush, and Thomas Mather were named the first directors of the bank. The capital stock, exclusive of what the state might subscribe, was not to exceed four hundred and sixty thousand dollars, a single share having the value of fifty dollars. On Friday, the twenty-fifth of March, the directors elected John Tayler, president, and John W. Yates, cashier of the bank. The first banking-house was then known as No. 53 State Street. The bank began business on Wednesday, the seventh of September ; the banking 482 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. hours being from 9 o'clock a, m. to 12 m., and from 2 to 4 P. M. The discounts were made for fifty-six days. The bank's by-laws of 1803 provide that "A com- mittee consisting of Two Directors shall be appointed Monthly whose duty it shall be to Visit the Vault, ex- amine to ^their satisfaction the Cash and Other Effects deposited therein." On the tenth of May, 1804, the bank began business in the new banking-house, now No. 69 State Street.^ In the summer of 1804, the citizens of Albany were informed by an advertisement that I. Wood had taken rooms at Mrs. Dole's, next door to the Albany Coffee House, corner of Green and Beaver streets, where he would take likenesses in profile, for one dollar ; the pro- file being called a physiognotrace. To provide a more suitable building for the use of the legislature, an act entitled "an act making provision for improving Hudson's River, below the city of Albany, and for other purposes," was passed the sixth of April, 1804. The second section of the act ended with the fol- lowing statement : " Whereas the situation of the pre- sent court-house in the city of Albany is found by ex- perience to be highly inconvenient for the transaction of public business, and the corporation of the said city having represented to the legislature that they are willing to appropriate a lot of ground on the public square of the said city, for the site of a public building for the accom- modation of the legislature, and for a new city-hall, and have prayed that the present court-house, and the lot used with the same, might be sold, and the proceeds thereof applied towards erecting and finishing such new State-house : Therefore, iThe lot was bought from Josiah Townsend. The building was erected by Smith & Boardman, superintended by Philip Hooker, architect. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 433 ' ' III. Be it further enacted, That John Tayler, Daniel Hale, Philip S. van Rensselaer, Simeon De Witt and Nicholas N. Quackenbush, be and they are hereby ap- pointed commissioners for erecting and completing a public building in the city of Albany, on a lot to be designated for such purpose, as is hereinafter mentioned, with sufficient and commodious apartments for the legislature, the council of appointment, the courts of justice, and for the common council of the said city, upon such construction and plan as by them shall be judged proper." The corporation was empowered to sell the court- house and the ground on which it was built ; the money received for them to be paid to the commissioners to be applied to the building of the new state-house. The supervisors of the city and county of Albany were to levy and collect by a tax on the free-holders and in- habitants of the county, three thousand dollars, exclusive of a similar sum to be raised by the city. The further sum of twelve thousand dollars was to be obtained by the sale of lottery tickets. The ground given by the city authorities for the erection of the new state-house, was described as ex- tending " along the west side of the public square, from Deer street on the south to Lion street on the north, which last is the main street by which the western coun- try enters the city." The Gazette of Thursday, the twenty-fourth of April, 1806, contains the following paragraph respecting the laying of the corner-stone of the building : ' ' Yesterday the Corner Stone of the New State House, to be erected in this city, was laid by the Hon. Philip S.Van Rensselaer, Esq., in the presence of the Chancellor, Judges of the Supreme Court, members of the Corporation, State House 28 i34 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Commissioners, and other respectable citizens. The site on which the edifice is to be erected is at the head of State Street, on the west side of the pubhc square. It is to be built of stone — is 100 feet by 80 — on an improved plan, embracing much elegance with great convenience and durability." The commissioners, in March, 1808, made a report that the sum of sixty-nine thousand dollars had been received by them for the erection of the building, of which they had expended sixty-seven thousand six hundred and eighty-eight dollars. They estimated that the further sum of twenty-five thousand dollars would be needed to complete the structure. The legislature therefore voted an appropriation of that amount to complete the state- house. In 1809, another appropriation of five thousand dollars was made to defray the expenses incurred in " procuring the necessary furniture for the rooms in the said house for the accommodation of the legislature, and towards furnishing of the said building." Subsequently in 1809, a similar sum was appropriated " for the com- pletion of the public building in the city of Albany, which building shall hereafter be denominated The Capitol." In 1805, the congregation of the Reformed Protestant Dutch church, worshipping in the old edifice at the in- tersection of State and Market streets, having determined to erect a new house of worship on Beaver Street, sold the old building for fiva thousand dollars to the city. In the spring of 1806, the demolition of the old church was begun. Several of the wealthy families had placed me- morial windows in the church, and parts of these were now eagerly secured as valued relics. ' The pulpit, the church Bible, the weather-vane, the sand-glass, and a 1 The Van Rensselaer window was embellished with the armorial bear- ings of the family, and contained the inscription : " Jan Baptist Van Rens- selaer, Directevr der Colonic Rensselaer Wyck 1656," That of the Schuylers THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 435 number of other articles are still preserved as curious mementos. The laying of the corner-stone of the new church was thus referred to in the Gazette of Thursday, the first of May, 1806 : "Yesterday the corner stone of the South Dutch church in this city was laid by the Rev. Mr. Brad- ford — This church, in its plan and style, is much the same as that of St. Paul's church in New York, and when finished will probably be the most elegant of any in this part of the State. It is situated upon the old cemetery, between Beaver and Hudson streets, which has a front of about 100 feet upon both. Its dimensions are 102 feet in length, including the steeple and portico, by 66 in breadth. * * * This church and the new State House now erecting, together with the removal of the old Grothic structure, which lately incommoded our streets, will in some degree show the extent and rapidity of our improvements.'" John Fitch of Bucks County, Pennsylvannia, having represented to the legislature of the state of New York that he had discovered "an easy and expeditious method of impelling boats through the water by the force of steam," was vested, on the nineteenth of March, 1T8T, with the exclusive right of "navigating all and every species of kind of boats or water-craft," that could be impelled by steam, for fourteen years, " in all creeks, rivers, bays and waters " in the state of New York. This privilege, however, was annulled by an act of the legislature, passed the twenty-seventh of March, 1798. By the latter act, Robert R. Livingston was granted the same rights that had been obtained by John Fitch, and contained those of that family and the inscription : " Filijp Pietersen Schuijler, Commissaris 1656." That of the Herbertsen family, besides the coat of arms, bore the inscription : " Andries Herbertsen, Commissaris, 165*7." 436 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the time given to Robert R. Livingston was ' ' extended for the term of twenty years from the passage of this act. In 1803, another act was passed in which the rights and privileges of the act of 1798 were to be extended to Robert R. Livingston and Robert Fulton for the term of twenty years. Under the provisions of these acts the steam-boat Clermont was constructed. It was launched from the ship -yard of Charles Brown, on the East River, in the spring of 1807. The engines were made by Boulton & Watt, in Birmingham, England. The boat was one hundred feet long, twelve wide, and seven deep. The following advertisement was inserted in the Albany Grazette, on the second of September, 1807, re- specting the navigation of the Hudson by the Clermont : " The North river steamboat will leave Pauler's Hook Ferry on Friday, the 4th of September, at 9 in the morn- ing, and arrive at Albany on Saturday, at 9 in the after- noon. Provisions, good berths, and accommodations are provided. The charge to each passenger is as fol- lows : " To Newburgh $3 00 Time, 14 hours. To Poughkeepsie 4 00 " 17 " ToEsopus 5 00 " 20 " To Hudson 5 50 " 30 " To Albany 7 00 " 36 " "For places, apply to Wm. Vandervoort, No. 48 Courtlandt Street, on the corner of Greenwich Street. Way passengers to Tarry-Town, &c., &c., will apply to the captain on board. The steamboat will leave Albany on Monday, the 7th of September, at 9 in the morning, and arrive in New York on Tuesday at 9 in the evening. She will leave New York on Wednesday morning at 9, and arrive at Albany on Thursday at 9 in the evening. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 437 She will leave Albany on Friday morning at 9, and ar- rive at New York on Saturday evening at 9 — thus per- forming two voyages from Albany and one from New York within the week. On Monday, the 14th, and on Friday, the 18th, she will leave New York at 9 in the morning, and Albany on the 16th at 9 in the morning, after which the arrangements for her departure will be announced. For passage apply at the Tontine coffee house, Stebbins's stage house, or to the captain on board, where a book will be kept to enter names." The departure of the Clermont from New York, on Friday, the fourth of September, and her arrival at Al- bany are thus spoken of by a New York newspaper and the Albany Gazette, the latter having taken the first paragraph from the former : "North Eiver Steamboat. — This morning at 6 o'clock Mr. Fulton's steamboat left the ferry stairs at Coiu-tlandt street dock for Albany. She is to make her passage in 36 hours 'from the time of her departure, touching at Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Esopus, and Hudson in her way. We understand she had 24 passengers. ' ' The steamboat arrived at Albany on Saturday fore- noon, and this morning [the seventh of September] at 9 o'clock again departed for New York with about 40 ladies and gentlemen passengers." The side-wheels of the Clermont were at first un covered. Each wheel had twelve paddles. The top of the smoke-stack was about thirty feet above the deck. The boat had two masts, fore and aft, bearing square sails when the wind was fair. Her boiler was of copper, and about eight feet long. In 1808, she was length- ened to one hundred and fifty feet, and widened eighteen, and her name changed to the North River In 1809, the Car of Neptune was built and began to 438 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. ply between New York and Albany. In 1811, the Hope, the Perseverance, and the North River were plying be- tween the two cities. In 1812, the Paragon, the Car of Neptune, and the North River were the boats running on the Fulton and Livingston line. In 1812, the steamboat Fire-fly began running between Albany and Troy ; leaving Troy at seven o'clock in the morning and at one in the afternoon. Ten o'clock in the morning and four o'clock in the afternoon were the hours of her departure from Albany. The exhibition of .a male and feaiale tiger from Asia at the Thespian hotel, in Pearl street, in November, 1808, was attended by a large number of citizens, who had been "invited to lose no time in visiting these extraordinary animals, as there never was and probably never would be exhibited animals so worthy of their attention." When in November, 1809, the bell w^as taken from the belf rey of the court-house, on the northeast corner of Court and Hudson streets, and placed in the one on the capitol, the common council, deeming that the in- habitants were ' ' in a great measure deprived of the benefit of the 12 and 8 o'clock bell, which, by ancient custom," had " been established and continued" in the city, ordered the bell in the North church to be rung at those hours, in the manner and for the same length of time as had been the custom to ring the bell of the old church formerly at the intersection of Market and State streets. A plat of ground, at the corner of Lutheran (Howard) and Eagle streets, having been selected as the site for a prison and county-jail, the work of laying the foundation was begun in the spring of 1810. On Monday, the thir- tieth of July, the mayor, Philip S. van Rensselaer, laid the corner-stone, in the presence of the common council THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 439 and a number of interested citizens. The building was to be sixty-two feet square, and three stories high. The incorporation of a third bank was the subject of considerable discussion in the newspapers in March, 1811. The projectors of the institution having petitioned the legislature to pass an act incorporating them and their associates as a company under the name of the Mechan- ics' and Farmers' Bank, the Albany Register thus speaks of their application : " Those who apply for this institution are generally mechanics and middling traders, whose wealth is the fruit of their honest industry, and whose talents and integrity in their pursuits entitle them to the patronage of an enlightened legislature. * * * To our fellow mechanics then, of the city of Albany, we recommend a cordial union in support of an institution calculated for their good, and for the fairness and liberality of whose operations they have a sufficient pledge in the integrity of those with whom the plan originated, who have brought it to its present state of maturity, and have been the first to step forward and claim for it the sanction of the legislature. It is no child of party, no offspring of mo- nopolizing speculation, but has its origin solely in a regard for the common good of those who if they did not pro- tect their own rights, will look in vain for their pro- tection from any other source." The petition of the projectors was complied with, and the legislature, on the twenty-second of March, 1811, passed "an act to incorporate the stockholders of the Mechanics' and Farmers' Bank in the city of Albany." The nanie under which the institution was to do business until the first of June, 1831, was that of " the president, directors and company of the Mechanics' and Farmers' Bank in the city of Albany." The bank was to be under 440 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. the management of thirteen directors, " a majority of whom, at least," were to "be practical mechanics." The directors were required by the act to elect one of their number annually as president of the bank, who was to be a mechanic. The capital stock, exclusive of that subscribed by the state, was not to exceed six hun- dred thousand dollars. The first directors named in the act were : Benjamin Knower, John Bryan, Elisha Dorr, Solomon Southwick, Spencer Stafford, Isaac Denniston, Benjamin van Benthuysen, William Fowler, George Merchant, Thomas Lennlngton, Giles W. Porter, Willard Walker, and Walter Weed. At a meeting, held in the Columbian hotel, on Court Street, on Monday, the first of June, 1812, all the per- sons named in the act were elected directors of the bank except Spencer Stafford and John Bryan, Peter Boyd and Isaac Hutton being elected instead of them. Im- mediately thereafter the directors elected Solomon South- wick president, and Gorham A. Worth, cashier of the bank. The banking-house near the northeast corner of Court street and Mark Lane, was known as No. 6, Court Street, and was next door north of the bank of Albany, No. 8 Court Street. The act incorporating the Albany Insurance Company was passed the eighth of March, 1811. The number of shares were not to exceed five thousand ; each share being one hundred dollars. The directors named in the act were : Elisha Jenkins, Philip S. van Rensselaer, Isaiah Townsend, Dudley Walsh, Henry Guest, jr., Charles Z. Piatt, Simeon DeWitt, Stephen Lush, Charles D. Cooper, Thomas Gould, John Woodworth, Peter Gansevoort, and Christian Miller. The Albany Lancaster School Society was incor- porated by an act of the legislature passed the twenty THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 441 sixth of May, 1812. The school was to be conducted on the plan suggested by Joseph Lancaster of England. William A. Tweed Dale was made principal of the school, which was first conducted in the upper part of the Mechanics- Society building, on the northwest corner of Chapel and Columbia streets. In 1815 the erection of a school building was begun on the southwest corner of Eagle and Tiger (Lancaster) streets. The building is now known as the Albany Medical College. It was formally opened on the fifth of April, 1817. In 1834, the school conducted in it was discontinued. On the eighth of November, 1812, when Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry passed through the city from Lake Erie, he was presented in the capitol with an elegant sword and the freedom of the city in a gold-box by the patriotic citizens. The commodore was entertained at the Eagle tavern during his brief stay in the city. On the twenty-eighth of the same month, Captain Buckley's company of Albany volunteers and Captain Walker's artillery company returned to the city, after an absence of three months on Staten Island. The citizens of Al- bany, during the war of 1812, established a fund of many thousand dollars to encourage the enlistment of men in the several companies raised in the city. The Albany regiment won considerable distinction for its achievements during the war. Lieutenant-colonel Mills, one of its brave officers, was killed in an engagement at Sackett's Harbor. For a number of years different theatrical companies had given performances in the Assembly room, known as Angus' Long room, in Pearl Street. The first edifice used especially for a theatre was erected on the west side of Green Street, near Hamilton Street, in 1812. It was built of brick ; its dimensions were fifty-six by 442 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. one hundred and ten feet. It was opened on the night of the eighteenth of January, 1813, under the manage- ment of John Bernard, a well-known English actor from Boston, the plays being The West Indian and Fortune's Frolic. The opening address, spoken by Mr. Southey, was written for the occasion by Solomon South- wick, one of the editors of the Albany Register. The long and distinguished career of the Albany Argus began on Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of January, 1813, when Jesse Buel, a professional printer and an able journalist published the first number of the paper. A bold aggressiveness in the field of politics is declared in the prospectus : " The character of the Albany Argus will be decidedly Republican. It will support with zeal the National Administration, in the arduous conflict in which it is now engaged, in support of our national rights, sovereignty and independence, against the enemy who has allied himself with the savages of America and the pirates of Algiers. It will advocate a vigorous prose- cution of the war, until the wrongs of our seamen are redressed, their rights recognized, and our commerce freed from European shackles. " The paper was ' 'printed on Tuesdays and Fridays, in Store-Lane, between Wash- ington and Green streets." The publication of the Al- bany Argus as a daily paper began on the eighteenth of August, 1825. The first Albany directory, edited and compiled by Joseph Fry, was published by Websters and Skinners, in June, 1813. It was a pamphlet of sixty pages and contained about sixteen hundred and forty names. In 1813, a second congregation of Presbyterians was formed, and the erection of a church begun on the west side of Chapel Street, between Pine Street and Maiden Lane. The Rev. William Neill laid the corner-stone on THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 443 Monday, the eleventh of October, in the presence of a large number of interested persons. The stone building was to be sixty-eight by ninety-nine feet, including the tower. The four trustees were : James Kane, John L. Winne, Nathanael Davis, Joseph Russell, and Roderick Sedgwick. On Sunday, the third of September, 1815, the church was dedicated, the Rev. William Neill preach- ing an appropriate sermon. Ninety pews were sold on the following Tuesday, from which the church obtained more than thirty-five thousand dollars. In 1813, the Methodists erected a meeting-house on Division street. The church was dedicated on the nine- teenth of December of that year. The distinguished scholar, Horatio Gates Spafford, in his Gazetteer of the state of New York, printed at No. 94, State Street, by H. C. Southwick, in 1813, thus speaks of the site, appearance, and business of the city at that time : "A low alluvial flat extends along the river, and in the rear of this rises the river-hill, abruptly, to near the height of the plain which extends to Schenectady, This flat is from 15 to 100 rods wide ; and the hill, which is composed of alternate strata of fine blue fetid clay and silicious sand, though deeply gullied by some small water-courses, rises, within ^ mile of the river in the direction of State-Street, till it gains an elevation of 153 feet ; thence, for another half mile, the ascent is about 60 ; making about 220 feet above the level of the river in the distance of 1 mile. * * * "Agreeable to the Census of 1810, the whole popu- lation of the City of Albany was 9356, of which number were 4444 white males, 4157 white females, 501 other free persons not taxed, and 254 slaves ; and the whole number of houses within the city 1450. * * * 4M THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. "There are now at Albany about 12,000 inhabitants, 1800 houses and stores, many of which are very exten- sive, large and elegant, and a large proportion of which are of brick, 10 houses for public worship, the Capitol or State-House, and another for the public Offices, an old City-Hall, an elegant new jail, the old one of brick, which is to be demolished, 3 banks, with 2 elegant bank- ing-houses, an alms-house, a mechanic hall, Uranian- hall, library-house, a powder-house belonging to the state, and one also for the city, a large state arsenal for public stores, 2 market-houses, a theatre now building, and many elegant private mansions and gentlemen's seats, with a great variety of manufactories, some of which are very extensive. " Of the shipping belonging to Albany, I am not pre- cisely informed ; but agreeable to information derived from the Dock-Master, there are 50 Albany sloops that pay wharfage by the year ; 60 belonging to Troy, Lan- singburgh and Waterford ; 26 from Tarry-Town and New York ; 70 from New Jersey and the Eastern States, including 20 schooners ; in all 206 ; — and about 150 from dfferent places have paid wharfage by the day, being engaged in different kinds of trade, during the season of 1812 : — making a total number of 356. " The quantity of wheat purchased annually in Al- bany, is immensely great ; and good judges have esti- mated it at near a million bushels. Other grain, and every article of the agricultural and other common pro- ducts of this country, nearly in the same proportion, swell the aggregate of exports from this city to an enormous amount. It will be observed that the great roads of communication between the Eastern States and the Western Country, centre more extensive intercourse at Albany, than at any other place between the Eastern THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 445 and Western sections of the Union. And it is doubted if there be a place on this continent which is daily visited by so many teams ; and Albany probably possesses greater wealth, more real capital, than any other place in the United States, containing the same population. " There are three banking companies in this city, the Bank of Albany, the New York State Bank, and the Mechanics' and Farmers' Bank, with an aggregate capi- tal of 1,380,000 dollars; and the Albany Insurance Company is incorporated with a capital of 500,000 dol- lars. The city is supplied with water by aqueducts of considerable extent ; and a new Eeservoir of hewn stone, recently erected on the hill near the Capitol, which is designed to ensure a more abundant supply, is an excellent work of the kind. This Reservoir is filled with water from a spring about 3 miles distant, which it dis- charges through smaller aqueducts to furnish a sepa- rate supply to each family. "Among the public buildings, the Capitol challenges distinguished attention. This building stands at the head of State-Street, adjoining the public square, and on an elevation of 1 30 feet above the level of the Hud- son. It is a substantial stone building, faced with free- stone taken from the brown sand-stone quarries on the Hudson below the Highlands. The east front, facing State-Street, is 90 feet in length ; the north, 115 feet ; the walls are 50 feet high, consisting of 2 stories, and a basement story of 10 feet. The east front is adorned with a portico of the Ionic order, tetrastyle ; the columns 4 in number, are each 3 feet 8 inches in diamater, 33 feet in height, exclusive of the entablature which sup- ports an angular pediment, in the tympanum of which -is to be placed the Arms of the State. The columns. 446 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. pilasters, and decorations of the door and windows are of white or grey niarhle, from Berkshire county in Massachusetts. The north and south fronts have each a pediment of 65 feet base, and the doors are decorated with columns and angular pediments of free-stone. The ascent to the hall at the east or principal front, is by 15 stone steps, 48 feet in length. — This hall is 58 feet in length, 40 feet in width, and 16 in height, the ceiling of which is supported by a double row of reeded columns ; — the doors are finished with pilasters and open pediments ; the floor vaulted, and laid with squares of Italian marble, diagonally, chequered with white and grey. From this hall, the first door on the right hand opens to the Com- mon Council Chamber of the Corporation of Albany ; opposite this, on the left, is a room for the Council of Revision. On the right, at the W. end of the hall, you enter the Assembly Chamber, which is 56 feet long, 50 wide, and 28 feet in height. The Speaker's seat is in the centre of the longest side, and the seats and tables of the members are arranged in front of it, in a semi-circular form. It has a gallery opposite the Speaker's seat, sup- ported by 8 antique fluted Ionic columns ; — the frieze, cornice, and ceiling piece, (18 feet diameter,) are richly ornamented in Stucco. — From this hall, on the left, you are conducted to the Senate Chamber, 50 feet long, 28 wide, and 28 feet high, ^ finished much in the same style as the Assembly Chamber. In the furniture of these rooms, with that of the Council of Revision, there is a liberal display of public munificence, and the American Eagle assumes an Imperial splendor. There are 2 other rooms on this floor adjoining those first mentioned, 1 " This violation of architectural proportions, is a deviation from the design of the Architect, Mr. Philip H. Hooker, of this city, whose abilities and correctness in the line of his profession are universally acknowledged." THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 447 which are occupied as lobbies to accommodate the mem- bers of the Legislature. " From the west end, in the centre of the hall, you ascend a staircase that turns to the right and left lead- ing to the Galleries of the Senate and Assembly Cham- bers, and also to the Supreme Court room, which is immediately over the hall ; its dimensions are 50 feet in length, 40 in breadth, and 22 in height. This room is handsomely ornamented in Stucco. An entresole or mezzazine [mezzanine] story, on each side of the Court room, contains 4 rooms for Jurors and the uses of the Courts. " The attic story contains a Mayor's Court room, a room for the Society of Arts, and 2 other rooms yet un- appropriated. This building is roofed with a double - hip, or pyramidal form, upon the centre of which is erected a circular cupola, 20 feet diameter, covered with a domical roof, supported by 8 insulated columns of the Ionic order, and contains a small bell for the use of the courts. The centre of the dome sustains a pedestal, on which is placed Themis, facing State-Street, a carved figure in wood of 11 feet in height, holding a sword in her right hand, and a balance in her left. The whole cost of the building, 115,000 dollars ; and I regret to say that the roof is covered with pine instead of slate, with which the state abounds, and of an excellent quality. " The house erected by the Government for the chief Officers of State, is a large substantial brick building, situated on the S. side of State-Street. The Albany Bank is a brick edifice of 3 stories on the E. corner of Market and State-Streets, opposite the Post-Office, and facing the Capitol, at the distance of 1900 feet. The New- York State Bank is situated on the N. side of State- Street, between Pearl and Market-Streots, and presents 448 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. a modestly ornamented brick front, conceived in the happiest style of ornamental elegance. Of the Churches, or houses dedicated to Religious purposes, that called the South Dutch Church, situated between Hudson and Beaver Streets, exhibits unquestionably the finest speci- ment of the arts to be found in this city, in any public building. * * * This building belongs to the Reformed Dutch Congregation, very numerous and respectable, and probably the richest m the state, next to one or two in the city of New York. The old Dutch Church that formerly stood in State-Street, was taken down in 1806, and the stone and other materials from that are em- ployed in the erection of the South Church, which is not yet quite finished. A portico, steeple, bell, and town clock are to be added, when it will have cost about 100,000 dollars. Its pews now yield an annual income of 770 dollars. The North Dutch Church, situated on the W. side of Pearl-street, has been erected some years, and belongs to the same congregation as the above. It is a large brick edifice, of good proportions, and has 2 steeples, in which are a bell and a town clock. The rent of its pews yields an annual income of 620 dollars. Whole cost of the building about 50,000 dollars. ' ' The Presbyterian Church is a plain brick edifice, and has a steeple, bell and town clock. It is a neat building in modern style, sufficiently elegant, standing at the corner of Washington and Beaver Streets. "The Episcopal Church is on the N. side of State Street, a durable stone building of good appearance, and very just proportions. Its steeple is unfinished, but it has an elegant church organ. ' ' The German Lutheran Church is a small building with a steeple, bell and organ, standing nearly opposite the Presbyterian Church, in Washington-Street. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 449 "A Roman Catholic Chapel, and a small Presbyte- rian Church, with the City Library and Mechanic Hall, are situated on the W, side of Chapel-Street. A Metho- dist Meeting-House stands on the East side of Pearl- Street, opposite the North Dutch Church ; and there is a Seceder's Church in the N. part of the city of in the Colonie. ' ' The Arsenal, is a large brick edifice, filled with military stores belonging to the State of New York and the United States, situated in the Village of Colonie. The City Powder-House, stands on the plain at the Washington Square ; and a Powder-House erected in 1811, by the state, at the expense of 3,000 dollars, stands on an eminence of the plain, near the 3 mile-stone. The Aims-House is also on the plain, near the Washington Square, the annual expense of which, with the support of the poor, is about 6,000 dollars. The Theatre, now building, at an expense of about 10,000 dolls, is situated on the W. side of Greene-Street. * * * "The usual tides at Albany are from 1 to 3 or 4 feet, but variable according to the wind, and the strength of the current of the Hudson, i -:^ * * "The city of Albany is governed by a Mayor, Re- corder, 8 Aldermen and 8 Assistant Aldermen, denomi- nated in the laws, 'the Mayor, Aldermen and Com- monalty.'' * '^ * "There are many companies of Firemen, well regu- lated, and well provided with engines and other means of effective operations. * * ^ ~ "As a manufacturing town, Albany is entitled to a very respectable rank ; and among its various establish- ments connected with manufactures, the extensive iThe mean tide is 2.46 feet higher than that at Governor's Island, in the harbor of New York ; the mean rise and fall being 2.32 feet. 29 450 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. Tobacco Works of Mr. James Caldwell, an eminent Mer- chant of this city, attract early notice. This manufac- tory is situated in the northern suburbs of Albany, about one mile from the Capitol, and in the township of Watervliet, near the mansion-house of the honorable Stephen Van Eensselaer, just at the foot of the river- hill, and on the margin of mill creek. It was first erected about 1785, and was the first considerable to- bacco-manufactory in the United States ; but it was des- troyed by fire in 1794, and immediately rebuilt — again destroyed since, and again rebuilt, by its enterprising and indefatigable founder. * * * There are other tobacco manufactories here also, but on a much smaller scale. ' ' There are 3 Air-Furnaces in this city, which fur- nish castings to a very great amount, and in an approv- ed style of excellence. The third one was erected in 1812, and stands on the plain i mile W. of the Capitol, connected with which is an extensive manufactory of machinery in wrought-iron and brass also, with black- smith's and other tools and implements of trades, hus- bandry, &c. * * * "Among those of the finer arts, we may enumerate 5 printing-offices, 2 of which are very extensive estab- lishments, and which issue semi-weekly Gazettees. * -jf * ^ manufactory of looking-glasses must not be omitted, because useful, rare in this country, produc- tive, and the work is well executed. * * * "The Museum of Mr. Trowbridge, kept in the 3d story of the old City-Hall, is a large collection of the productions of nature and art. * * * "There are now 3 Steam-Boats employed on this river, between Albany and New York, (the largest of which is 170 feet long and 28 wide, its burthen 350 tons,) THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 451 which perform their passages to Albany in the average time of 30 to 36 hours. * * ''' There is also a Steam- Boat constantly running between this city and Troy, for the accommodation of passengers, performing 4 pas- sages every 24 hours. The public stages are very nu- merous that centre in Albany ; and the facihties which these afford of travelling by land, correspond with the importance of the place and the intercourse with every part of the country. The line for Utica runs through every day ; for New York in 2 days ; for Bennington in Vermont in 2 days ; and there are stages for every part of the country, with little delay of conveyance." On the twenty-fifth of February, 1815, the legisla- ture passed ' ' an act to annex the town of Colonie to the city of Albany." As described by the act, it was that part of the town adjoining the northern limits of the city, that extended along the east bounds of the county of Albany from the city " to a red cedar post with brick around it," planted on the west bank of the river, dis- tant twenty -two chains and thirty-six links from the south-east corner of the store-house of Stephen van Rensselaer. The new city-line ran from the post to the west bounds of the town, and thence southwardly along its west side to the city limits. By " an act for the sale of the arsenal in the city and county of Albany," passed the nineteenth of April, 1815, the surveyor-general of the state was empowered to sell the arsenal and its grounds "in the late Colonie" an- nexed to the city, and to apply the money derived there- from to the purchase of a site and to the erection thereon of a new arsenal ; the site to be within five miles of the capitol. The first daily newspaper published in Albany was issued on the twenty-fifth of September, 1815. It was 452 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. the Albany Daily Advertiser, printed by John W. Walker for Theodore Dwight, at No. 95 State Street. Although the project of establishing an academy in the city was favorably discussed in 1804, yet the erection and completion of such an institution were not ac- complished until 181Y. On the thirteenth of March, 1813, the regents of the University granted a charter incorporating Stephen van Eensselaer, John Lansing, Archibald Mclntyre, Smith Thompson, Abraham van Vechten, John V. Henry, Henry Walton, the Eev. William Neill, the Eev. John M. Bradford, the Eev, John McDonald, the Eev. Timothy Clowes, the Eev. John Mc Jimpsey, the Eev. Frederick G. Mayer, Samuel Mervin, the mayor, and the recorder, ex officio, the first trustees of the Albany Academy. On Saturday afternoon, the twenty-ninth of July, 1815, at four o'clock, Philip S. van Eensselaer laid the cor- ner-stone of the building. A copper plate was deposited in the cavity of the stone on which was inscribed the fol- lowing memorial : ' ' Erected for an Academy, anno 1815, by the corporation of the city of Albany. Philip S. Van Eensselaer, Mayor. John Van Ness YateSj Ee- corder. Building Committee — Philip S. Van Eensselear, John Brinckerhoff, Chauncey Humphrey, James War- ren, and Killian K. Van Eensselaer. Seth Geer, Archi- tect. H. W. Snyder, Sculpt." The building not being completed, the school opened on Monday, the eleventh of September, in a frame building, on the southeast cor- ner of State and Lodge streets, under the superintendence of the Eev. Benjamin Allen of Union College, the principal. The Eev. Joseph Shaw was professor of languages, and Moses Chapin, tutor. On the first of September, 181Y, the academy-building was occupied by the school. Theodric Eomeyn Beck, M. D., on the THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. 453 resignation of the Rev. Benjamin Allen, was elected principal of the institution, in August, 1817, which position he held with distinguished ability until his resignation, at the close of the summer session in 1848. The building is on the northwest corner of the at- tractive pubhc square, immediately north of the grounds in front of the new capitol. It is constructed of Newark free-stone ; the main-building, which is two stories high, above the basement story, is seventy by eighty feet, and the wings, thirty by forty-five feet. About ninety thousand dollars were expended in the erection and com- pletion of the academy. The corner-stone of the Lutheran church, on the north- west corner of Lodge and Pine streets, was laid on Thurs- day, the twenty-sixth of September, 1816, by the Rev. Frederick George Mayer. The construction of the build- ing was under the superintendence of Philip Hooker, the architect. The site of the old church, bounded "on the east by South Pearl, late Washington Street ; on the south by the Rutten kill ; on the west by a small run of water, called Fort Killitie, and on the north by Howard, late Lutheran Street," was purchased by the city for thirty-two thousand dollars. The site of the new church was given the congregation by the city, on the condition that the dead should be removed by its members from their old burying-ground on Pearl Street. The corner-stone of the present church was laid on the fourteenth of August, 1869. The commercial advantages of navigable water-ways between the Hudson River and the western and north- ern lakes were considered to be so important to the state that in 1792 the Western and Northern Naviga- tion companies were incorporated ; the Western Navi- gation company to make the Mohawk navigable by the 454 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. construction of canals and by deepening the channel of the river as far as Wood creek, and from that point to make other canals and to deepen other channels to con- nect the Mohawk with lakes Ontario and Seneca. The Northern company's project was to open a navigable communication with Lake Champlain. The Western company having expended a large amount of money in the prosecution of its undertaking, abandoned it in the early part of the century. The Northern company accomplished little in the construction of its projected system of canals and dams. In 1815, after the notification of the treaty of peace between England and the United States, the project of constructing canals between lakes Erie and Champlain was considered practicable. On the seventh of February, 1816, a meeting was held by the interested citizens of Albany at the Tontine Coffee-house to discuss the im- portance of the canals to the city and the state. To secure the passage of the desired act, committees were ap- pointed to procure signatures to a memorial addressed to the legislature. On the seventeenth of April, 1816, ' ' an act to provide for the improvement of the internal navigation of this state " was passed, by which Stephen van Rensselaer, DeWitt Clinton, Samuel Young, Joseph EUicott, and Myron Holley were appointed commission- ers ' ' to consider, devise and adopt such measures " as might or should be ' ' requisite to f acilite and effect the communication, by means of canals and locks, between the navigable waters of Hudson's river and lake Erie, and the said navigable waters and lake Champlain." On the fifteenth of April, 1817, the act authorizing the construction of ' ' navigable communications between the great western and northern lakes and the Atlantic Ocean " was passed. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 455 The first exhibition of the illumination of a building in Albany by gas-light was given by Henry Trowbridge, the proprietor of the museum, on Saturday, the twenty- second of March, 1817. The one hundred and twenty burners were inspected as wonderful curiosities by the large number of people who visited the museum to see the brilliant effects of the new light. The freshet in the spring of 1818 was the greatest known in forty years. On the third of March, the horse ferry-boat was carried by the high water "about half way up to Pearl Street." The first society of Baptists in Albany was consti- tuted from a number of persons of that denomination assembhng together for rehgious worship in their differ- ent dwelhngs in the early part of the year 1810. On the twenty-third of January, 1811, the First Particular Baptist church was organized with twenty-one members. The Rev. Francis Way land was the first pastor of the congregation, which he served until 1812, when he moved to Troy. On the twelfth of May, 1818, the society purchased the ground and the building known as the Albany Theatre, on the west side of Green Street. The interior having been altered for the use of the con- gregation, the building was dedicated on the first of January, 1819, by the pastor, the Rev. Joshua Bradley. On the fifth of January, 1851, the congregation held its last service in the church, the building having been sold to the religious society, called the People's church. The "act for the establishing of a public library at the seat of government " was passed the twenty-first of April, 1818. By it the governor, the lieutenant-governor, the chancellor and the chief justice of the supreme court of the state of New York were constituted a board of trustees, who were "to cause to be fitted up some proper 456 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. room in the capitol, for the purpose of keeping therein a pubhc hbrary for the use of the government and peo- ple of this state." Three thousand dollars were appro- priated for the establishment of the library, and a further annual sum of five hundred dollars for the yearly pur- chase of books. The trustees in 1818 appointed John Cook librarian. In 1819, Benjamin Silliman, professor of chemistry in Yale college, on his way to Quebec, passed three days in Albany. In his description of the city, he says : "There is also a state library, just begun ; it does not yet contain 1,000 volumes, but they are well selected, and a fund of 500 dollars per annum is provided for its increase, besides 3,000 dollars granted by the legislature to commence the collection. * * * "Albany is the great thoroughfare and resort of the vast western regions of the state; its streets are very bustling ; it is said 2,000 wagons sometimes pass up and down State Street in a day ; it must hereafter become a great inland city. * * * "Albany has been memorable in American history. It was the rendezvous and the point of departure, for most of those armies, which, whether sent by the mother country, or, raised by the colonies themselves, for the conquest of the Gallo-American dominions, and of the savages, so often, dui-ing the middle periods of the last century, excited, and more than once, disappointed the hopes of the empire. It was scarcely less conspicuous in the same manner, during the war of the revolu- tion and during the late war with Great Britain. Few places on this side of the Atlantic, have seen more of martial array, or heard more frequently the dreadful 'note of prei3aration.'' Still (except perhaps in some of the early contests, with the aborigines), THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 457 it has never seen an enemy ; a hostile army has never encamped before it ; nor have its women and children ever seen ' the smoke of an enemy's camp. ' More than once, however has a foreign enemy, after fixing his destination for Albany, been either arrested, and turned back in his career, or visited the desired spot in captivity and disgrace."^ 1 A tour to Quebeck in the autumn of 1810. By Dr. Benjamin Silliman. London, 1822. pp. 18, 20, 21. iJir(i>f Isutfieran diRurcfi. CHAPTER XX. THE city's wealth AND PROSPERITY. 1S20-18S4. The augmentation of Albany's wealth was not only manifested in the increase of the city's trade and com- merce and in the appearance of the public buildings and private residences, but also in the large capital of the different banking institutions. To encourage the thrift of those who by manual labor earned more than their daily bread, William James, Charles R. Webster, Jesse Buel, John Townsend, and Joseph Alexander, citizens of Albany, in 1820, petitioned the legislature to be made a corporate body under the name of the Albany Savings Bank, to receive ' ' on deposit such sums of money " as might, " from time to time be offered by tradesmen, me- chanics, laborers, minors, servants, and others; " and to invest ' ' the same in government securities, or in stock of the United States, or of this State, for the use, inter- est and advantage of the said depositors and their legal representatives." "An act to incorporate the Albany Savings Bank," was passed the twenty-fourth of March, 1820. The first officers (a president, three vice-presidents and fifteen trustees) of the institution designated by the act were : Stephen van Rensselaer, president, Wil- liam James, first vice-president, Joseph Alexander, sec- 458 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 459 ond vice-president, John Townsend, third vice-president, Charles R. Wehster, Jesse Buel, Thomas Russell, Vol- kert P. Douw, William Durant, Douw Fonda, Simeon DeWitt, Peter Boyd, John Spencer, John L. Winne, William McHarg, Matthew Gill, Harmanus Bleecker, and Sylvanus P. Jermain, managers; v^ho were ''not to receive directly or indirectly any pay or emolument . for their services, " nor " directly borrow " or ''use the funds of the corporation/' At the first meeting of these officers at the " Chamber of Commei'ce Rooms " on the sixteenth of May, 1820, Sylvanus P. Jermain was ap- pointed secretary ; and at their next meeting, the fifth of June following, John W. Yates, then cashier of the New York State Bank, was appointed treasurer. Deposits were to be received every Saturday after- noon, and three trustees, appointed monthly, were with the treasurer to receive them. On the tenth of June, 1820, the first deposits were made ; the money being re- ceived at the New York State Bank, with which the Savings Bank had made an agreement for the safe keep- ing of its funds. The sums placed that day in the bank were from one dollar to two hundred dollars, and amounted to five hundred and twenty-seven dollars. Joseph T. Rice, a silversmith, was the first depositor. The Albany Savings Bank was the second incorpora- ted savings institution in the state of New York. On the fifteenth of March, 1828, a contract was made with the Commercial Bank to keep and invest the funds of the Savings Bank. On the first of July, 1871, the business of the bank was continued in the rooms pre- viously occupied by the First National Bank. The site of the new bank-building on the northwest corner of State and Chapel streets was purchased in 1873 and in 1874. The plans for the building were made by Fuller & 460 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. WooUett, architects. It was erected in 1874 and 1875. On the eleventh of May, 1875, the bank began business in it. The present officers of tlie institution are Henry H. Martin, president, J. Howard King, first vice-presi- dent, Marcus T Hun, second vice-president, Theodore Townsend, treasurer, and WiUiam Kidd, secretary. The deposits in the bank on the first of January, 1884, were $8,258,176 64; the assets $9,605,713 74. The peculiarly constructed sun-dial recently project- ing from the southeast corner of the old capitol build- ing was made - under the superintendence of James Ferguson, a native of Albany. It was modelled after a diagram on plate xxxvi, in a work, entitled ' ' Lectures on Select Subjects," by James Ferguson, an eminent Scotch astronomer. The dial was placed on the corner of the capitol in August, 1822, by the order of the com- mon council of the twenty-second of July : " Resolved, That the city superintendent be directed to put up the dial at the south-east corner of the capitol building at an expense not to exceed $15." The celebration of the passage of the first boat from the Erie Canal into the Hudson River at Albany, on Wednesday, the eighth of October, 1823, was a memora- ble event. Although the construction of the great pub- lic work was not yet completed, the people of Albany, as soon as a boat could be towed on that part of it ex- tending northward from the city, determined to in- augurate the navigation of the extensive water-way to the western lakes by passing several boats from it into the Hudson through the new lock immediately north of Colonie Street, opposite the north end of the pier. A committee of seventy-two citizens of New York had been appointed to attend the celebration, and a bottle of sea- water had been sent to the committee to THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 461 be poured into the water issuing from the canal when the lock-gate was opened for the passage of the first boat into the Hudson. Major Solomon van Rensselaer was made marshal of the day. At sunrise a national salute was fired and all the church-bells and those of the public buildings were rung. Shortly afterward the joint committee proceed to the junction of the Erie and Chamj)lain canals, north of Gibbonsville, (West Troy,) to join the canal commissioners and engineers on board the first boat that was to pass through the lock at Al- bany. When the line of boats arrived at the termina- tion of the canal at Albany the cap-stone of the lock was laid with Masonic formalities. On the pier the fol- lowing military companies under the command of Major R. I. Knowlson were in line to receive the first boat with the canal commissioners on entering the Hudson: Captains Stafford's Dragoons, Bradt's Artillery, Koon's Artillery, Durrie's Light Infantry, Dunn's National Guards, Cuyler's Grovernor's Guards, and Fowler's City Guards. A detachment of artillerymen with two twelve- pounders was posted on the hill near the mansion of the late General Ten Broeck to fire a national salute and fifty -four rounds in honor of each county in the state when the procession started to march to Capitol Square, where a pavillion had been erected and where speeches were to be made by the mayor, Charles E. Dudley, De Witt Clinton president of the board of canal commissioners, William Bayard of the New York committee, and Wil- liam James of the Albany committee. The noteworthy features of the event were thus pro- trayed by a w^riter : ''The pencil can do no justice to the scene presented on the fine autumnal morning when the Albany lock was opened. Numerous steam boats and river vessels, splendidly dressed, decorated the 462 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. beautiful amphitheatre formed by the hills which border the valley of the Hudson at this place. -' * * A line of canal boats, with colors flying, bands of music, and crowded with people, were seen coming from the north, and seemed to glide over the level grounds, which hid the waters of the canal for some distance, as if they were moved by enchantment. " The first boat that entered the lock was the DeWitt Clinton, having on board Governor Yates, the mayor and corporation of Albany, the canal commissioners and engineers, the committees and other citizens. Several other boats succeeded. One (not the least interesting object in the scene) was filled with ladies. The cap stone of the lock was laid with Masonic ceremonies by the fraternity, who appeared in great numbers and in grand costume. " The waters of the west and of the ocean were then mingled by Doctor Mitchell, [of the New York com- mittee] who pronounced an epithalamium upon the union of the river and the lakes, after which the lock gates were opened, and the DeWitt Clinton majestically sunk upon the bosom of the Hudson. " She was then towed by a long line of barges, passed the steam boats and other vessels, to a wharf at the upper end of the city, where those gentlemen who were embarked on board the canal boats landed, and joined a military and civic procession, which was conducted to a large stage, fancifully decorated, erected for the occasion in front of the capitol." "It was a great day," says another writer, "cele- brated with great pomp, a grand display of all sorts of pride and ceremonies, attended, probably, by 30,000 people."^ 1 Spafford's Gazetteer. 1823. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 463 In reviewing the growth of the city in 1823, the Daily Advertiser presents these facts : "Ten years ago and the now proud and beautiful Academic square was a barren clay bank, variegated by an occasional saw-pit, or a group of reclining cows — then the whole of the upper part of Columbia Street was a high hill unoccu- pied and impassable as a street, and the greater part of Chapel Street was in rainy weather a complete mud- hole. ' ' Ten years ago, of the whole row of handsome dwellings now standing on the south side of the Capitol square, only one was then erected ; then Daniels Street did not exist, and the whole south part of Eagle Street was a most unpromising ravine. * * * ' ' Ten years ago there were not four families in the city who used grates and burned coal fires — their winter fuel was laid in at a high price and procured at great trouble in New York. Now there is a manufactory here which turns out beautiful grates of every variety of patterns, and all kinds of coals can be bought in the city at any season of the year — consequently a great number of families consume coals, as more comfortable, safe and economical than wood." The decision of the supreme court of the second of March, 1824, respecting the free navigation of the Hud- son river, abrogated the exclusive privileges of the North River Steamboat Company, and affirmed the right of others to navigate the river from certain jDoints with vessels impelled by steam. The Bristol, Henry Eckf ord, and Olive Branch were among the first new boats that shortly afterward began to ply upon the river. The bursting of the boiler of the steamboat Constitution, plying between New York and Albany, on the twenty- first of June, 1825, when opposite Poughkeepsie, led to 464 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. the use of safety barges. In 1826, the safety barges Lady Chnton and. Lady Van Rensselaer were respec- tively towed by the steamboats Commerce and Swift- sure, each being fitted up exclusively for the transpor- tation of passengers. Besides these boats of the Steam Navigation Company, the Union Line, the North River Line, the Connecticut Line, the North River Association Line, and the Transportation Company Line had twelve boats plying on the river, carrying freight and passen- gers to and from Albany. The construction of the pier, authorized by the legislature on the fifth of April, 1823, was completed in May, 1825. It was about four thousand four hundred feet long, eighty wide and twenty high. It extended along the east side of the basin in which a thousand canal boats and fifty large vessels could harbor. On the twenty-sixth of October, 1825, the passage of the first canal boat from Buffalo into the Albany basin was announced by the successive discharge of cannon placed along the canal between lake Erie and the Hud- son, and along the Hudson, between Albany and New York. The Buffalo boat entered the basin at three minutes before eleven o'clock a. m. At five minutes be- fore twelve o'clock the sound of "the return fire from New York " reached Albany. The opening of the canal from lake Erie to the Hud- son was celebrated at Albany on the second of Novem- ber, 1825. The celebration is described by the Daily Advertiser : ' ' Wednesday last was a proud day for the citizens of Albany ; a great day to the citizens of the state of New York ; and an important day to the Union ; for then we had ocular demonstration that the great work of the age is completed, and our inland seas made accessible from the ocean. * * * THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. -I(i5 "At 10 o'clock the Seneca Chief, with the governor, heutenant-governor, the Buffalo, Western and New York committees on board, came down in fine style, and the thunder of cannon proclaimed that the work was done ! and the assembled multitudes made the welkin ring with shouts of gladness. "- * "-' "The Seneca Chief was closely followed by the Young Lion of the West, from Buffalo, richly laden with the products of the West, and having many dis- tinguished citizens on board. After passing the lock, the two boats were taken in tow by ten yawls, each having four rowers and a sloop captain as coxswain, the whole under the command of that veteran in river navi- gation, Capt. Peter Donnelly, and towed through a double line of canal boats, down the basin, and through the sloop lock into the Hudson. This sight was par- ticularly beautiful, and the repeated cheers of the throng on the wharves and bridges was an evidence of the deep feeling of joy which filled the hearts of the spectators. After the boats arrived in the river, they were towed up to the steamboat Swiftsure, on the east side of the pier, in front of the centre bridge, on board of which had assembled the members of the common council and different committees of this city. * * * At 11 o'clock a procession was formed, under the direction of Wel- come Esleeck, John Taylor, James Gibbons, jr., and Francis I. Bradt, marshals of the day. * "'* * The procession was very long and respectable." At the capitol, an ode, written for the occasion by John Augustus Stone of the Albany Theatre, was sung. Philip Hone of New York, William James of Albany, and Lieutenant-governor Tallmadge delivered addresses. The exercises were followed by a collation at the Columbia Street bridge ' ' consisting of the most choice 30 466 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. viands of our climate, with a plenty of the ' ruby bright ' wines of the best vineyards of Europe." At night the capitol and the Pearl Street theatre were brightly illumi- nated, and besides the recitation of a "" Grand Canal Ode " at the play-house, there was "a brilliant ball" at Knickerbacker Hall. The Marquis de Lafayette, on his tour through the United States, reached Albany by steamboat on the seventeenth of September, 1824, and "was received with every possible demonstration of joy and gratitude." On the following day he continued his journey. On the eleventh of June, 1825, he again visited the city, and on the following day, Sunday, attended church. On Mon- day he departed for Boston. He returned on the first of July, and was honored with a dinner given by the citizens in the capitol that afternoon. The following- toast was offered by him : ' 'Albany as I have known it, and Albany as it is now — a comparative standard be- tween royal guardianship and the self government of the people ; may this difference be more and more illustrated at home, and understood abroad." Daniel Webster, who was also present, offered this one : ' ' The ancient and hospitable city of Albany ; where Gen. Lafayette found his headquarters in 1778, and where men of his principles find good quarters at all times." After attending the play at the theatre, General Lafay- ette went on board the steamboat Bolivar and proceeded to New York. In November, 1823, a notice was published that an application to the legislature would be made for the in- corporation of the Commercial Bank of Albany, with a capital of five hundred thousand dollars. But it was not until the twelfth of April, 1825, that the desired act was passed. The capital stock was not to exceed three THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. . 4(>7 hundred thousand doUai's. Commissioners were appoint- ed by the act to receive subscriptions for the shares of the stock, each share having a value of twenty dollars. In three days the subscriptions amounted to more than one million five hundred thousand dollars. The chagrined opponents of the institution obtained an injunction stay- ing the opening of the bank. In August, 1836, it was de- cided that the bank might go into operation so far as to issue bills and discount notes, but it was prohibited to make any transfer of stock, or any loans on pledges of stock. Joseph Alexander was elected president of the institution, and Harry Barton appointed cashier. The bank began business on the fifth of September, 1826, at No. 42 State Street. The Society for the Pi'omotion of Agriculture, Arts and Manufactures, incorporated by the legislature on the twelfth of March, 1Y93, and the Albany Lyceum of Natural History, incorporated on the twenty-third of April, 1823, were, by articles of association, united on the fifth of May, 1824, and named the Albany Institute, of which Stephen van Rensselaer was the first president. By the act to incorporate the Albany Institute, passed the twenty-seventh of February, 1829, the society was constituted with three departments: the first depart- ment, physical sciences and arts ; the second depart- ment, natural history; and the third department, history and general literature. The Institute holds its meetings in the library-room of the association, in the Albany Academy building. Its library contains about six thousand books and a valuable collection of old newspapers. Its publications embrace ten volumes of Transactions and one volume of its Field-meetings. The legislature having appropriated in 1829 seven- 468 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. teen thousand five hundred dollars to purchase the city's right and interest in the capitol and its grounds, the corporation bought the site of the present city -hall, on Eagle Street, between Pine Street and Maiden Lane. The corner-stone was laid on the thirty-first of August, 182T, by the mayor, John Townsend. The building was constructed of Sing Sing marble ; $92,336 91 were expended on it. The common council held its first meeting in the building on the twenty-fifth of July, 1831. The city -hall was burned on the tenth of Febru- ary, 1880. The corner-stone of the new building was laid on the thirteenth of October, 1881. The walls are of Bragville granite, trimmed with East Long-Meadow brown stone, both taken from quarries near Springfield, Massachusetts. The building, including the tower, has a frontage of one hundred and twenty feet and a depth of one hundred and twenty-five feet. The tower is two hundred and ten feet high. The building and its furni- ture cost $325,000. The plan of the city-hall was de- signed by H. H. Richardson, architect, of Boston. The jail, immediately east of the city-hall on the north side of Maiden Lane, was erected in 1852. Criminals were confined in it for the first time on the second of June, 1853. The Albany Evening Journal, which, for more than a half -century, has enjoyed a well-deserved popularity, began its publication on the twenty-second of March, 1830. It was first published by B. D. Packard & Com- pany as an anti-masonic organ. Thurlow Weed ac- cepted the editorship of the paper and obtained for the Journal no little celebrity during the thirty-three years of his connection with the paper. The construction of a railroad from Albany was ap- parently first suggested by the publication in 1812 of a THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 469 pamphlet entitled: "Documents tending to prove the superior advantage of Rail Ways and Steam Carriages over Canal Navigation, particularly from Lake Erie to Hudson's River." By the " act to incorporate the Mo- hawk and Hudson Railroad Company, passed April 17, 1826, Stephen van Rensselaer, George William Fea- therstonhaugh and Lynde Catlin were named commis- sioners to open subscription-books in the cities of Albany and New York for three hundred thousand dollars, the capital stock of the company, at one hundred dollars a share. On the twenty -ninth of July, 1830, near Schenectady, Stephen van Rensselaer, with a silver spade, broke the ground for the construction of the road, the first railroad in the state of New York. It was nearly sixteen miles long, six of which were on a level, the remainder, ex- cept the inclined planes, at each end of it, had a gradient of about one foot to two hundred and fifty feet. The wooden sleepers, seven inches in diameter and eight feet in length, rested on blocks of stone bedded in rubble. These ties supported the wooden longitudinals on which long bars of iron were placed, three -fifths of an inch thick and half an inch wide. The DeWitt Clinton, the third railroad engine made in America, was constructed for the company at the West Point Foundry, in New York City. It was put on the road on the twenty- seventh of July, 1831. " On the 30th of July an experiment was made with the locomotive, but owing to some defect or inexperience in burning Lackawanna coal, the speed did not exceed seven miles an hour, and it was determined to substitute coke. Meantime the road, which was completed and in use from the junction of the western turnpike and Ly- dius Street, about twelve and a half miles, to the brow 470 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. of the hill at Schenectady, was operated by horse power. Besides platform cars used in the construction of the road, a number of stage coach bodies were placed upon trucks for temporary use, affording seats for fifteen or twenty passengers each. On the third of August the DeWitt Clinton made the trip in one hour and forty- five minutes, and on the 10th they ran two trains each way with coke, making a part of the trip at the rate of thirty miles an hour ! * "■' ^ ''On the 17th of September the English locomotive [one from Stephenson of England, named "John Bull,"] was on the road. Its power and weight being double that of the American engine (12,742 lbs.,) great expecta- tions were entertained of its efficiency. '''' * * Al- though the locomotive DeWitt Clinton had been placed on the road in July, and the city officials and other dig- nitaries had passed over it both by horse and steam power early in August, it was so late as the 22d of Sep- tember when the locomotive was advertised to take passenger trains. The road was still uncompleted, and used only from the junction, as it was called, two miles from the foot of State Street, from whence passengers were taken to the train by stage coaches. The other terminus of the road was still at the bluff overlooking Schenectady, where passengers were again transferred to stages. The distance traversed was less than thirteen miles. * * "'' " The precise time when the directors of the road felt prepared to crown the complete success of their labors by a grand excursion, to which were invited the state and city officials, and a number of eminent citizens of New York, was the 21:th of September, 1831. * * * In the spring of 1832 the road was completed through- out its whole line, and the inclined planes being in work- r-^ THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 471 ing order, another grand excursion was given on the 14th of May, extending from the foot of Gansevoort street into the heart of Schenectady. This event was witnessed by a large assemblage, and attended by the firing of cannon. The cars were drawn up the in- clined plane by means of a long rope attached to them and to a stationary engine at the top, the whole steadied and balanced by a car loaded with stone descending on the opposite track. * * * The same style of railroad coaches was still used. In the fall of this year a new pattern of car was built in Schenectady, more nearly like those now in use, the architecture of which was modeled from Dr. Nott's parlor stove, and was called the gothic car. * * * "In January, 1833, the company having erected in State Street [north side, between Chapel and Eagle Streets] for a hotel the building [No. 119], now [in 1875] occupied by the Free Academy, the cars were run by horse power from State Street to the junction, where they were coupled to the locomotive. * * * In 1839 the terminus at the head of State Street was aban- doned, and a depot improvised where the Taylor Brew- ery, now [in 1875] stands. Horses were used only to draw the coaches to the foot of the incline plane at Pearl Street. "^ The inclined plane was abandoned in 1844, a track extending along Patroon creek, on the north side of the city, and running thence to the depot, at the foot of Maiden Lane, having been laid that year. Trains began to run to and from the new depot on the thirteenth of September. The railroad between Oreenbush and Bos- ton having been opened in December, 1841, freight and passengers were conveyed across the river by ferry-boats 1 Paper read by Joel Munsell before the Albany Institute, April 20, 1873. 4:72 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. plying between the wharves at the termini of the two. roads. Maiden Lane, from the river to Broadway, was daily the scene of great business activity, the street being crowded with vehicles and the sidewalks with people. Stanwix Hall, on the southeast corner of Maiden Lane and Broadway, erected in 1833, now became the favorite stopping-place of a large number of travelers. In April, 1844, the old hotel on the northeast corner of Broadway and Steuben Street was demolished, and on its site E. C. Delavan erected the Delavan House, which soon acquired the popularity that this well-known hotel still possesses. In the summer of 1832 the cholera prevailed with extreme malignancy and more than four hundred per- sons died in the city with the disease. Six hundred and thirty-two cases w^ere reported in July, of which num- ber of persons afflicted two hundred and eight died. In August there were five hundred and twenty -five cases, and one hundred and ninety-three deaths from cholera. The population of the city was about twenty-six thou- sand. In August, 1834, a number of cases were again reported, but the deaths from the epidemic did not exceed thirty. The act to incorporate the City Bank of Albany was passed the thirtieth of April, 1834. Thirteen commis- sioners were appointed by the act to receive subscriptions for the capital stock of five hundred thousand dollars, divided into five thousand shares of one hundred dollars each. The subscription-books were opened on the ninth of June, and when they were closed two days there- after, the subscriptions amounted to $1,142,900. On the twenty-fourth of July thirteen directors of the institution were elected at the City Hotel. By them Erastus Corning was made president and Watts Sher- THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 4Y3 man cashier of the bank. The bank began business on the first of October, 1834, in the building then No. 38 State Street. Dr. Alden March of Massachusetts began in 1821 a course of lectures on anatomy with dissections to a class of fourteen students in a building on Montgomery street, north of Columbia street. In 1830 he delivered a public lecture on the ' ' propriety of establishing a medical col- lege and hospital in Albany." In 1835 Dr. James H. Armsby, who had attended the lectures of Dr. March, became a teacher of anatomy in the school. In May, 1838, the Lancaster School building, on the southwest corner of Lancaster and Eagle streets, was leased to the trustees of the college. The names of the following persons were reported at the meeting of the trustees in the latter part of May to compose the faculty of the institution : Alden March, professor of surgery ; James H. Armsby, anatomy and physiology ; Amos Dean, med- ical jurisprudence ; Ebenezer Emmons, chemistry and pharmacy ; Henry Greene, obstetrics and diseases of women and children, and David M. McLachlan, materia medica. Subsequently, David M. Reese was appointed professor of the theory and practice of medicine. The first course of lectures began on the third of January, 1839, in the Lancaster school building, fifty-seven students attending them. The institution was incorporated on the sixteenth of February, 1839. The degree of doctor of medicine was conferred on thirteen graduates at the com- mencement on the twenty-fourth of April, 1839. In April, 1873, the institution was constituted a part of Union University. Sixteen hundred and fifty-seven students have graduated from the college. The organization of the Albany Exchange Bank had its inception at a meeting held in Samuel Stevens' office 474 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. on the twenty-first of September, 1838. At a meeting in the American Hotel, on the twenty-fifth of October, John Q. Wilson Avas elected president of the association. The capital stock having been increased to four hundred thousand dollars, and George W. Stanton having been elected president, and Noah Lee cashier of the institu- tion, the bank began business on the sixteenth of Sep- tember, 1839, in the Exchange Building, erected in 1836 and 1837, on the northeast corner of State and Market Streets, now the site of the Government Building. In 1856 the institution was removed to the new bank-build- ing, No. 450 Broadway. On the first of April, 1834, the legislature appointed a board of trustees to purchase land in the vicinity of the capitol to erect thereon a new state-hall. The plat of ground on the east side of Eagle Street between Steuben and Pine Streets was selected for the building, the erection of which was not completed until 1842. It was built of Sing Sing marble, and cost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. When it was completed, the different apartments in it were occupied by the chancellor, the judges of the supreme court, the register of the court of chancery, the secretary of state, the comptroller, the treasurer, the attorney-general, the surveyor-general, the adjutant-general, the clerk of the supreme court, the canal-board and the canal-com- missioners. The old state-building, on the southwest corner of State and Lodge Streets, was then fitted up for the reception and disj^lay of the various specimens, maps, figures and illustrations collected and prepared by the state geological corps. In the summer of 1855, the old state -building was demolished and the present hall containing the geological and agricultural rooms was erected on its site. By an enactment of the legis- THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 475 lature in 1883 the present state-hall, when vacated by the state officers, is to become the state-museum of natural history. The Albany Morning Express, a penny daily paper, published by Stone & Henly, and edited by James Stan- ley Smith, began its first career on the thirteenth of September, 1847, with a sale of sixteen hundred copies. Four other daily newspapers were published at that time in the city. On the seventeenth of August, 1848, the most densely populated part of the city was ravaged by fire. The sj)ace on which were the six hundred buildings that were burned is described as extending "TOO feet west from the river on Herkimer Street, 350 on Dallius, running northwardly ; 900 feet on Union. Street, continuing in the same direction ; 300 feet east on Hud- son, and 1600 on Quay Street, running south." By a strong south wind the fire swept northward from the corner of Broadway and Herkimer Streets, where it began in a shed adjoining the Albion Hotel, to "the cut at the foot of Maiden Lane." The loss was estimated at $3,000,000. The imposing edifice, the cathedral of the Immacu- late Conception, built on the west side of Eagle Street, between Madison Avenue and Jefferson Street, was dedicated by Archbishop Hughes, on the twenty -first of November, 1852, who had laid its corner-stone on the second of July, 1848. The attractive building has a frontage of ninety -five feet and a depth of one hun- dred and ninety -five. The nave has a length of one hundred and twenty-five feet, and the transept ninety- six feet. The cathedral has twenty-five hundred sit- tings. About two hundred thousand dollars were expended in its construction and decoration. It is a 4T6 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. magnificent memorial of the love and liberality of the Roman Catholics of the diocese of Albany, The state library in 1854 was removed to the fii^e- proof building on the west side of the capitol, fronting on State Street, ei'ected conformably to the act of the legislature passed June IS, 1851. It was a two-story brick structure (the front and rear walls having faces of brown freestone) one hundred and fourteen feet long and forty -five wide. The large lower room contained the law library ; the upper, the general library. In the first report of the trustees of the library, made the twenty-second of June, 1819, the statement appears that the sum of $2,617.20 had been expended for the pur- chase of six hundred volumes and nine maps. In the first catalogue, made in 1820, are printed the titles of seven hundred and fifty-eight volumes, three atlases, eleven maps and one engraving. By an act, passed the fourth of May, 1811, the regents of the University of the state of New York were made the trustees of the state library. In 1855 the general library contained thirty thousand and eleven volumes, and the law library thirteen thousand six hundred and twenty-three. At the present time there are about eighty-eight thousand two hundred and fifty volumes in the general library, and thirty-five thousand seven hundred and fifty in the law library. In the months of September and October, 1883, previous to the demolition of the library -building, the books and collections in the two library rooms were removed to the new capitol, the law library into the golden corridor, and the general library into the room that was to be used by the court of appeals. When completed, the libraries will hereafter occupy rooms in the third story of the capitol, on the east side. John Cook, Calvin Pepper, James Mahar, William Cassidy, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 477 and John L. Tillinghast were successively librarians of the state library previous to its removal into the library- building in 1844. From that time to the present, the librarians have been John L. Tillinghast, appointed by the regents June 1, 1844 ; Alfred B. Street, March 1, 1848, who, from April 22, 1862, to June 8, 1868, was librarian only of the law library ; he was succeeded June 8, 1868, by Stephen B. Griswold, the present librarian of the law library. Henry A. Homes, who had been assist- ant librarian from September 11, 1851, on the twenty- second of April, 1862, became the librarian of the gen- eral library, which office he still retains. George R. Howell, the assistant librarian in the general library, was appointed to the office on the fifteenth of February, 1872. The meeting in the capitol of the American as- sociation for the advancement of science, that began on the twentieth of August, 1856, was attended by a large number of its distinguished members and by many other eniiinent men. On the twenty-seventh of August the state-geological hall was dedicated; Louis J. R. Agassiz and other members of the American association delivered addresses. On the following day the commemorative exercises of the inauguration of the Dudley Observa- tory, erected in 1853 and 1854 on a plat of high ground about three-fourths of a mile northeast of the capitol, took place beneath a large awning in Academy Square. Edward Everett of Boston delivered the dedicatory ad- dress. Mrs. Blandina Dudley, as a tribute to the memory of her husband, Charles E. Dudley, gave first a contribu- tion of twelve thousand dollars for the erection of the observatory building. To honor this tribute the trus- tees gave the institution the name of the Dudley Observa tory. This contribution and her subsequent gifts to the 4Y8 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. institution were in all one hundred and five thousand dollars. The donations of other contributors aggregate about one hundred thousand dollars. Besides the astronomical observatory, there ai^e two other buildings, the meteorological and the physical observatories. The first is built of brick and freestone, the ground plan representing a cross, eighty-four by seventy-two feet. The astronomical instruments and other apparatus are elaborate and valuable. The attractive architecture of St. Joseph's Roman Catholic church, on the corner of Ten Broeck and Sec- ond streets, makes the building one of the most ad- mired in the city. Five years were given to its erec- tion. The edifice represents the Benedictine architecture of the thirteenth century. The building was dedicated on the thirteenth of May, 1860. The reception of Abraham Lincoln, en route to Wash- ington, on the afternoon of the eighteenth of February, 1861, was made memorable by the extraordinary dis- play of the patriotism of the people of Albany. A great freshet had caused a flood, and the president-elect, his wife, and the accompanying delegations were taken in the Hudson River train the next morning on the Sara- toga railroad to Green Island where the cars crossed the bridge to Troy and thence proceeded to New York. The notable loyalty of the citizens during the war of the rebellion was expressed in innumerable ways. For the preservation of the union of the states and the main- tenance of the power of the federal government, Albany not only generously contributed a large number of brave officers and valiant soldiers to honor her fealty with the loss of their lives, but with unstinted generosity she made appropriations of great sums of money to increase the number of the defenders of the nation's flag. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 479 The humanity of her patriotic people had its manifesta- tion in countless visitations and ministrations to the sick and wounded soldiers in the hospitals within her gates. The flags presented to her departing battalions were the emblems of her devotion, and the monuments and in- scriptions over the numerous graves of her heroes the memorials of her unforgotten sacrifices. The exciting- days of the wearing of the red, white and blue cockade, the enthusiasm evoked by the departing regiments for the seat of war, the peculiar attractions of the Army Relief Bazaar erected in the Academy park, the return of the veterans after the occupation of Richmond, these and kindred incidents will ever make the period of the rebellion an interesting local epoch of historical events and personal reminiscences. About two miles northwest of the capitol and beyond the limits of the city is West Albany, where the New York Central Railroad Company has its large engine- house, shops and cattle-yards. The company first pur- chased two hundred and fifty acres of land in 1854 for the site of these buildings, and subsequently added an- other hundred acres to them. Prospect Hill and Bleecker reservoirs and the Tivoli lakes, in which are collected a part of the water distributed through mains and used by the people of Albany, lie near West Albany. These storage and distributing i-eservoirs were built by the water commissioners appointed by the act of the ninth of April, 1850, to provide for a supply of water in the city of Albany. Subsequently, the supply of water being insufficient, the commissioners determined to pump water from the Hudson into the Bleecker reser- voir. Pumping works were therefore erected in 1875, on the northwest corner of Montgomery and Quackenbush Streets. In 1878, an engine was placed at Bleecker reser- 480 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. voir to force water from it to the new reservoir, built on Prospect hill, to supply water to the people living on the highest elevations in the city. The lumber-district is that part of the city lying be- tween the Erie canal and the Hudson River extending about one mile and a quarter northward from Lawrence Street and the canal basin. Thirty-two parallel canals admit canal-boats laden with lumber to the intermediate yards. In the latter are collected large quantities of pine, spruce and hemlock lumber from Canada, Northern New York, Michigan and other western states. Schooners, sloops, and barges, loaded at the extensive wharf on the river- front of the district, transport most of it to New York and other cities. The sales in 1SS3 are said to have exceeded $10,000,000. The cars of a street railway run through the lumber-district to its northern limits. Among the most important of the many industries of Albany is the manufacture of stoves. About four thousand men are employed in the foundries. The stoves of the celebrated manufacturers of Albany are sold in every state and territory of this country and not a few in foreign countries. In 1S83 the sales of their stoves exceeded $3,000,000. The government of the city is administered by a mayor elected biennially on the second Tuesday in April. By the act passed the twenty-third of April, 1883, nine, teen members constitute the board of aldermen, one from each ward and two from the city at large, who are also , elected biennially on the second Tuesday in April. The fire department possesses eight steam fire engines. Alarms are sounded by the large bell in the tower of the city-hall and by a number of church bells and engine- house gongs connected with the signal boxes of the fire alarm telegraph. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 481 The history of the public schools of Albany evidently begins on the seventeenth of April, 18B0, when the legis- lature passed the act which provided that the members of a board of school-commissioners and also of a board of school-inspectors should be annually elected by the peo- ple; a commissioner and an inspector in each ward. The board of commissioners were empowered to appoint three trustees for each school-district, the city having nine districts. The first public school-building was erected in 1832 in State Street, and was known as district-school No. 2. By the new law of the eighth of April, 1844, the mayor, the recorder and the resident regents of the university were directed to appoint a board of nine school-commissioners, three to serve three years, three two years, and three one year, and at the end of the terms to appoint their successors. The office of inspec- tors and trustees was abolished by this law. Although the legislature in 1851 passed the law establishing free schools throughout the state, the city schools were not benefited by it until the following year. In 1855 the board of school-commissioners was changed to the board of education of the city of Albany. On the seventh of April, 1866, the legislature passed the act to create a board of public instruction in the city and to establish free schools therein. Under this law the public schools of the city are now conducted. During the school-year of 1883-1884 two hundred and forty-one teachers, twenty-two men and two hundred and nineteen women, were employed to instruct the thirteen thousand six hundred and eighteen children attending the schools in the twenty-four school-buildings in the city. Of this number of scholars, six hundred and nineteen were pu- pils in the high-school. Charles W. Cole, the present superintendent of the public schools of the city, has held 31 482 THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. the office since 1878. The educational benefits of the common school system have been greatly multiplied by the efforts of the efficient superintendents of the city- schools. One of the most attractive and enjoyable parts of the city is Washington Park, about three-fourths of a mile west of the capitol. By an enactment of the legislature on the fifth of May, 1869, the land known as the burial- ground property, the penitentiary grounds and the alms- house farm were set apart and devoted to the purposes of a public park to be named " the Washington Park of the city of Albany." The title of the property was vested in a board of trustees, who were authorized to have the grounds laid out and improved for the uses of a public park. In July, 1870, the work was begun. In 1875 the bridge across the lake and the houses on its banks were erected. The basin of the lake is sixteen hundred feet long with an average width of one hundred and forty feet. The park embraces about eighty-one acres of land, decorated with large umbrageous trees, pretty parterres of beautiful fiowers, extensive lawns, numerous walks and long drives. Henry L. King, deceased, bequeathed twenty thousand dollars to erect a handsome fountain on a suitable site in the park. The establishment, erection, maintenance and man- agement of a cathedral church in the city of Albany in accordance with the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Protestant Episcopal church in the United States was authorized by the act passed the twenty-seventh of March, 1873, to incorporate the cathedral of All Saints. The building of a cathedral church of an imposing ap- pearance and of Gothic architecture was begun in the spiring of 1884, on the east side of Swan Street between Elk and Lafayette streets, the corner-stone of which was iiniii lib i«^^^^^^^^^^^^ ■^^^^^^^^^ ;i » THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 483 laid on Tuesday afternoon, the third of June, by the Right Rev. Wilham Croswell Doane, the bishop of the diocese of Albany. The plan of the proposed cathedral was designed by Robert W. Gibson, architect, of Albany. In the summer of 1878 the noted hotel, Congress Hall, immediately north of the old capitol-building, was de- molished. In 1815, Leverett Cmttenden opened it as a boarding-house. Its name. Congress Hall, originated with William Landon, who, in June, 1831, advertised the hotel under this designation, announcing that he had " taken the establishment formerly known as the Park Place House, and kept for many years by L. Cruttenden. ir * * j^ jg situated on the Park, a few rods from the Capitol and new City Hall, about equidistant between them." In 1847 and 1849, Landon & Mitchell were the proprietors of the house. They were succeeded by James L. Mitchell. In 1866, Adam Blake succeeded the latter ; the former having leased the property from the state then owning it. Adam Blake conducted it until the time of its demolition, when he began the erection of the Kenmore hotel, on the southwest corner of North Pearl and Columbia streets, which was opened for the reception of guests in November, 1878. The grand proportions of the capitol, massive and unique, which first attract the eye of every beholder viewing the city, are those of a building, which, when completed, will be one of the most imposing, commodious and costly structures in the United States. The incep- tion of its construction had its origin in ' ' an act au- thorizing the erection of a new capitol," passed by the legislature, the first of May, 1865. As enacted, "when- ever, within three years from the passage of this bill, the city of Albany, or the citizens thereof, shall deposit with the commissioners of the land office of this state a good 48i THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. and sufficient deed conveying to the people of the state of New York, in fee simple and unencumbered, all that certain piece or parcel of land generally known as Con- gress Hall block, in the said city of Albany, and bounded as follows : northerly by Washington Avenue, easterly by Park Place, southerly by Congress Street and west- erly by Hawk Street, and furnish the proper evidence that the common council of said city of Albany has closed and discontinued that part of Park Place south of Washington Avenue, and that part of Congress (late Spring) Street, east of Hawk Street, which said common council are hereby authorized to do, and thereupon the streets so closed shall become the property of the state, and be included in, and form a part of the capitol grounds ; the governor shall nominate, and by and with the con- sent of the senate, appoint a board of three commission- ers, to be known as 'the new capitol commissioners,' for the purpose of erecting a new capitol. ""•' "" * "The said board of commissioners shall immediately proceed, in such manner as they may deem best, to pro- cure, at the expense of the city of Albany, or the citizens thereof, the requisite plans for a new capitol, and the necessary accommodations and arrangements connected therewith; and upon the approval of such plan or plans by the commissioners of the land office, shall as soon as, and not before an appropriation shall be made by law, proceed with the work in accordance with the plans and specifications approved as herein provided. " The new capitol shall be located in the city of Al- bany, upon the site of the present capitol and such grounds adjacent thereto as shall be secured for that purpose and conveyed to the state as provided in the first section of this act." The appropriation of one hundred and ninety thou tefei^-,'^i-\ iVi'^"'=di|iliil'///7~~iiiiii7=T=??,\\\ . View in the NewCopito! ." THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 485 sand dollars by the common council obtained the desired property, a deed of which conveying it to the state was given to the commissioners of the land office in 1866. Thereupon the legislature, on the twenty-second of April, 1867, passed the "act appropriating moneys for the building of a new capitol," by which two hundred and lifty thousand dollars were designated for the purpose. But as enacted, no part of the amount was to be expended until a plan of the building was adopted and approved by the commissioners and by the governor, nor was the structure "to cost more than four millions of dollars when completed." The first plan of the capitol was paid for by the city, the sum of six thousand dollars being the cost of it. The work of laying the foundation was begun on the seventh of July, 1869. On the twenty-fourth of June, 1871, the corner-stone was laid by the chief officers of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, the cere- mony being witnessed by a large concourse of people. On Tuesday morning, the seventh of January, 1879, the two houses of the state legislature met for the first time in the new capitol; the members of the assembly in their chamber, and the senators in the room that had been designed for the court of appeals. On the evening of that day, the citizens of Albany gave an opening re- ception in the new building, which was attended by many thousands of invited guests. On the tenth of March, 1881, the senate first occupied its chamber. The unfinished building has a frontage of two hundred and ninety-two feet and a depth of three hundred and seventy- seven. The height of the walls measures one hundred and eight feet from the water-table. The granite used in the construction of the outer walls is from quarries at Hallowell, Maine. The interior of the building is full of 486 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. pleasurable surprises. Its spacious halls, long corridors, wide stairways, carved- wood work, stone-sculptures, tes- sellated floors, allegorical pictures and other decorations, are attractive and artistic. On the fourth floor is the bureau of military statistics, where are preserved the eight hundred and four battle-worn flags of the various regiments of the state that served in the late civil war. Twenty-eight captured confederate flags are among the attractive collections of the department. The archi- tecture of the capitol is multifarious and ornate. More than fourteen millions of dollars have been expended in the erection, furnishing, and ornamentation of this im- posing structure. When compared with the old capitol, demolished in the summer of 1883, its size and accom modations sensibly impress one with the evidences of the advanced culture and the augmented wealth of the people of the Empire State. The future history of the city of Albany will likely be no less remarkable than its past. Conjecture cannot portray the realities of the succeeding centuries. Never- theless, it is believed, that five hundred years hence the evidences of the enterprise, culture, and wealth of the present inhabitants of the city will still be perspicuous in the activities of those forming its population and con- ducing to its greater renown. ADDENDA. HISTOEICAL SUMMARY. 1821. February 16. Act to incorporate the Female Academy passed Corner-stone of institution in Montgomery Street laid June 26. 1825. March 19. Act to incorporate the Gas Light Company of the city of Albany passed. April 20. Act to incorporate the Hudson River Steamboat Company passed. Albany fire department had ten fire engines. Besides the ten fire com- panies in 1825, there were two hook and ladder companies and one axe com- pany. 1827. May 30. Albany Exchange Association formed. 1829. May 2. Act to incorporate the president, directors and company of the Canal Bank of Albany passed. John T. Norton elected president June 24. Bank failed, July 11, 1848. Albany Orphan Asylum established in November. Opened December 1, in a frame-building on Washington Street. Incorporated March 30, 1831. Asylum erected in 1833, on Robin Street, south of Washington Avenue. 1830. December 1. Museum moved from the old city-hall to new marble building, northwest corner of State and Market (Broadway) streets. Dis- continued in 1855. 1832. April lY. Act to incorporate the New York and Albany Railroad passed. 1833. April 11. Act to incorporate the Albany Gas Light Company passed. Albany made a port of entry. William Seymour appointed collector of customs. October 8. The Burgesses Corps organized. John O. Cole, captain. "v^ First public parade of corps, July 4, 1834. 1834. Female Academy, No. 40 North Pearl Street, erected. Opened May 12. September. People's line of steamboats established. 1836. April 30. Old city-hall burned. 1839. December 2. Beginning of anti-rent war. Sheriff of Albany County with a. posse coviitatus of six hundred men proceeded to Reedsville to enforce the law against the rent-debtors. Met several hundred armed men on horseback, four miles beyond Clarksville, and forced to return to Al- bany. December 9. The sheriff with a body of military proceeded to the anti-rent district. December 10. The governor issued a proclamation for the maintenance of the law. December 15. The sheriff returned to the city with .the following companies from Albany and Troy, under the command of Major W. Bloodgood, marching twelve miles through deep snow : Albany Burgesses Corps, Capt. Bayeux ; Albany Union Guards, Capt. Brown ; Al- bany Republican Artillery, Capt. Strain ; First company Van Rensselaer 487 488 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Guards, Capt. Kearney ; Second company Van Rensselaer Guards, Capt. Berry ; Troy Artillery, Capt. Howe ; Troy Citizens Corps, Capt. Pierce ; and Troy City Guards, Capt. Wickes. 184U. August 22. Draw of bridge at foot of State Street fell crowded with people, and twenty persons drowned. 1841 March 10. Act to divide the city into ten wards passed. March 2*7. Act to incorporate the Albany Gas Light Company passed. Subscription-books opened May 25. September 9. Board of Trade organized. Castleton and West Stockbridge Railroad Company incorporated. May 5, 1834. Company changed May 5, 18:36, to Albany and West Stockbridge Railroad Company. Road leased to the Western (Massachusetts) Railroad Company, November 18, 1841. Locomotives came to Greenbush, on the road, December 19, 1841. Opening of the Western Railroad celebrated, Decem- ber 28. The Western and the Boston and Worcester railroad consolidated in the Boston and Albany railroad December 1, 1867. 1842. Steamboat-landing dock leased to Isaac Newton for three years, at $1,000 a year. 1844. February 22. Albany Washington Rifle Company organized. Re-organized March 4, 1881. First meeting to consider the project of a public cemetery December 31, 1840. Rural Cemetery Association incorporated, April 20, 1841. Grounds consecrated, October 1, 1844. First interment in them, May, 1845. State Normal School opened December 18, in the building No. 119 State Street, erected by the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad Company. School removed to new building, on northwest corner of Howard and Lodge Streets, July 30, 1849. 1845. February 1. Time of ringing the morning bell changed from 8 o'clock to sunrise. Subsequently changed to Y o'clock. Building of the Albany County penitentiary begun in the summer of 1845. South wing completed in April, 1846. November 10. Streets first lighted by gas. The fire-department in 1845 had eleven engine companies, two hook and ladder companies, one hose and one axe company, and eleven fire engines. 1848. May 15. Board of Trade began business in the rotunda of the Exchange building. November 1. Albany City Hospital, corner of Dove and Lydius streets, dedicated. Incorporated April 14, 1849. 1849. June. Cholera cases reported 41; deaths 22. July, 343 cases and 125 deaths. August, 345 cases and 150 deaths. September, 37 cases and 23 deaths. 1850. April 25. The Albany, Bennington and Rutland Railroad Com- pany organized. June 25. The O'Reilly telegraph line connected the city with New York. 1851. February 20. Act to incorporate the Albany and Northern Rail- road Company passed. Authorized to construct a railroad from Albany to Eagle Bridge, in Washington County, to connect with the Washington and Rutland Railroad. April 17. Act to incorporate the University of Albany passed. Trustees THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 489 empowered to create a department of medicine, a department of law, and such other departments as they might deem expedient. Department of medicine constituted in April, 1873, by making the Albany Medical College one of the departments. Department of law organized April "21, 1851. First course of law lectures began December 17, 1851, in the Exchange building. Law school east side of State Street, west of Swan Street. Dud- ley Observatory connected as a department in April, 1873. Department of pharmacy constituted June 21, 1881. First course of pharmacy lectures be- gan October 3, 1881, in the Medical College building. Albany College of Pharmacy incorporated, August -!7, 1881. Lecture rooms and laboratories in Albany Medical College. October 3. The Hudson River railroad opened to Greenbush. Opening of the road celebrated October 8. 1852. July 5. Green Street theatre opened. 1853. April 1. Bank of the Capitol began business. Failed, May 18, 1861. April 2. Act to authcrize the consolidation of certain railroad com- panies passed. It was enacted that "the Albany and Schenectady, Schenectady and Troy, Utica and Schenectady, Syracuse and Utica, Roch- ester and Syracuse, the Buffalo and Lockport, the Mohawk Valley, and the Syracuse and Utica direct, Buffalo and Rochester, Rochester, Lockport and Niagara Falls railroad companies, or any two or more of them " were authorized at anytime "to consolidate such companies into a single cor- poration." The directors of the consolidated railroads, thereafter known as the New York Central, elected July 7, 1853, Erastus Corning, president, and J. V. L. Pruyn, secretary and treasurer. June 30. First locomotive passed over the Albany Northern railroad. First train from Rutland arrived at Albany, November 5. 1854. March 2. Act to incorporate the New Jersey Steamboat company passed. Isaac Newton elected president of the company. Daniel Drew in 1859 ; H. B. Norton, 1868 ; Daniel Drew, 1871 ; H. B. Norton, 1876 ; W. H. Drew, 1877 ; W. W. Everett, 1878. Present People's Line of night-boats plying between Albany and New York : the St. John, the Dean Richmond and the Drew. April 17. Act to incorporate the Albany Dime Savings Bank passed. In 1855 the bank was at No. 51 State Street, up-stairs. Act to incorporate the Sixpenny Savings Bank passed. In 1S56, the bank was on the corner of State and James streets. Thomas Schuyler, president. July 4. Washington Continentals organized. In July and August the reported cases of cholera did not exceed 27U and the deaths 104. August 8. Albany City Hospital, southeast corner of Eagle and Howard streets, opened in the building formerly the jail. December 31. Charter of Bank of Albany expired. Resumed business, January 1, 1855. Bank failed May 11, 1861. 1857. July 22. Bank of the Interior began business. Capital $600, ooo. Failed May 21, 1861. 1858. New York State Arsenal, northwest corner of Eagle and Hudson streets, erected. Old arsenal, corner of Broadway and Lawrence Street, 490 THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. given to the city for the site of the former. January 1, 1882, name changed to State Armory. 1859. April 4. Commerce Insurance Company organized. June 1, began business. 1860. July. Albany Zouaves organized. 1861. April 2-2. Departure of the 25th regiment, Col. M. K. Bryan, for the seat of war. Returned, July 28. May 18. Departure of the 3d regiment, N. Y. Vols. Col. Frederick Town- send. Returned, May 15, 1863. Re-organized regiment returned Septem- ber 1, 1865. May 23. National Bank failed. June. Departure of the 30th regiment, Col. Edward Frisby. Returned May 30, 1863. September 16. Departure of the 43d regiment. Col. F. S. Vinton. October 21. Departure of the 44th or Ellsworth regiment. Returned, September 2*7. 1864. December 20. Departure of the 91st regiment. Returned, July 19, 1864. Returned from one year's service, June 15, 1865. 1862. April 15. Watervliet Turnpike and Railroad Company chartered. August 19. Departure of the 113th regiment. Col. Lewis O. Morris. 1863. June 15, 16 and lY. Strike of dock and railroad laborers. June 22. Street cars began to run from the Lumber District to South Ferry. September 24. Albany Street Railway Company organized. February 22, 1864, cars began to run on Pearl Street. December 22. Academy of Music opened in the building known as the South Pearl Street theatre, and subsequently St. Paul's church. 1864. January. Army Relief Bazaar erected in Academy Park. Opened February 22. February 22. Cars on State Street railway began to run. March 31. Steam fire-engine, built by Joseph Banks, New York, for the Beaverwyck Club, reached the city. Engine named James McQuade to honor the chief engineer of the Albany fire-department. 1865. October 12. Letter-boxes placed on lamp-posts for drop-letters. 1866. February 22. Opening of the first bridge, now known as the upper bridge. Twenty-one stone piers. Four spans 172 feet each ; 14 of 12 feet, and a draw of 257 feet ; length of bridge between the trestle-work on each side of the river 1953 feet. Cost about $750,000. The project of build- ing a bridge across the river at Albany first discussed in January 1814, but it was opposed by the citizens of Troy, Lansingburgh and Waterford. In 1831, 1835, 1836, 1841, 1854, and in 1856 similar projects were discussed, but were abortive. Act authorizing the construction of a bridge across the Hudson River at Albany by the Hudson River Bridge Company, passed April 9, 1856. On the opening of the new bridge, all the passenger trains, the Hudson River, the Harlem and the Boston trains, departed from the New York Central depot at the foot of Steuben Street. April 28. Act to incorporate the Hope Savings Bank passed. Failed, May 10, 1877. September 17. Street cars began to run from North Pearl to Van Woert Street. THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 491 ISQ'l. March 21. Roman Catholics purchased cemetery grounds south of the Rural Cemetery. St Agnes Cemetery Association incorporated May 9. Cemetery consecrated May 19. Old Guard, Burgesses Corps, organized. 1868. January 29. Academy of Music or old South Pearl Street theatre burned. August 13. Albany Jackson Corps organized. September 7. Free Academy established,and opened at No. 119 State Street. October. City building, on southwest corner of South Pearl and Howard streets, erected in 1868 and 1869, completed. Cost $200,000. November 19. Dana Natural History Society organized. December 30. Last rail on the Albany aud Susquehanna railroad laid, running from Albany to Binghamton, and connecting it with the Erie rail- road. Ground first broken for its construction, September 5, 1853. Road opened January 12, 1869. Depot on the west side of Broadway, opposite the steamboat landing. Company formed April 19, 1851. Edward C. Delavan first president. Leased to the Delaware and Hudson Canal Com- pany, February 24, 1870. In 1875, depot on the northwest corner of Quay Street and Maiden Lane first used. New building erected in 1880. 1870. April 8. Parts of the towns of Watervliet and Bethlehem added to the city. St. Agnes School founded by the Right Rev. William C. Doane for the education of girls. Act to incorporate the trustees of the Corning Founda- tion for educational and Christian work in the diocese of Albany, passed March 14, 1871. Corner-stone of school-building, north side of Elk Street, between Hawk and Swan streets, laid June 19, 1871. Building formally opened on Hallowe'en, 1872. 1871. December 28. First train crossed the iron railroad bridge at the foot of Maiden Lane. Length 1940 feet. Length of approaches 725 feet Twenty-two spans. Act authorizing the Hudson River Bridge Company, to construct the bridge passed May 10, 1869. Construction began in May, 1870. 1872. October 6. Union depot, foot of Steuben Street, opened. 1876. Erection of the High School building, on the east side of Eagle Street, between Steuben and Columbia streets, begun. Frontage 85 feet, depth on Steuben Street 135 feet, on Columbia 120. Opened May 4, 1876. Cost $140,000. July 4. Stone tablet placed by the members of the Albany Institute and the citizens' committee on the front of the Commercial building, on the northeast corner of Broadway and Hudson Avenue, unveiled by Visscher Ten Eyck, in the presence of a large concourse of people. Addresses by John V. L. Pruyn, president of the Albany Institute, Henry A. Homes, LL. D., of the Institute committee, and by Judge J. O. Cole. Inscription on the tablet : " The Declaration of Independence was first publicly read in Albany by order of the Committee of Safety, July 19, 1776, in front of the City Hall, then on this site. This memorial of the event was placed here by the citizens, July 4, 1876." 1877. June 15. Old Elm tree, on the northwest corner of State and Pearl streets, cut down to widen Pearl Street. "The rings of its growth show its age to have been 123 years." 492 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. July 23. Beginning of the railroad riots at West Albany. Ended July 28. September. Young Men's Association rooms opened in the Bleecker building, on the southwest corner of North Pearl and Steuben streets. As- sociation organized December K), 1833. Amos Dean elected president, De- cember 13. Robert Gray, first librarian. Incorporated March 12, 1835. Occupied rooms in Knickerbacker Hall, on the east side of Market Street Nos. 332 and 334, (now Nos. 451 and 453 Broadway) from 1833 to 1840. In 1840 moved to rooms in the Albany Exchange building. Occupied rooms in the Commercial Bank building from 1851 to 1870 ; in Music-hall build- ing from 1870 to 1877. Number of volumes in its library about 16,000. 1880. January 15. Death of Joel Munsell, the distinguished antiquarian, compiler, and printer. January 31. Fort Orange Club organized. The handsome club-house, No. 110, on the south side of Washington Avenue, between Swan and Dove streets, was erected in 1810, by Samuel Hill. February 28, 1880, Ephraim H. Bender, (the publisher of the History of the City of Albany) sold the building, then his residence, to Erastus Corning, Robert H. Pruyn, J. How- ard King and Dudley Olcott, who, on the eighth of May following, conveyed it to the Fort Orange Club. Club-House opened July 1. March 1. The People's Gas Light Company organized. 1881. February 11. Adelphi Club incorporated. Organized under the name of the Adelphi Literary Association, January 26, 1873. First rooms in building on South Pearl Street. In 1876 moved to Adelphi Hall, No. 83 Green Street. Building No. 101 H*udson Avenue used as a club-house in 1880. The present building, corner of South Pearl and Division streets, erected in 1881. April. Albany Electric Illuminating Company organized. June. Young Men's Christian Association reorganized. First organized February 24, 1857. Incorporated April 24, 1867. Rooms in Perry building, No. 20 North Pearl Street. 1882. January 24. Lower iron bridge at foot of Ferry Street opened. Work of construction begun in 1876. Length 1669 feet. Length of draw 400 feet. Built by the Albany and Greenbush Bridge Company. 1883. January 16. Tweddle Hall burned. July 9. The New York, West Shore and Buffalo railroad from Wee- hawken to Albany opened. January 1, 1884, opened to Buffalo. Incor- porated June 14, 1881. Broadway viaduct, at the New York Central railroad crossing, com- pleted. Work begun in 1882. December. Government building, on the northeast corner of Broadway and State street, first occupied. Construction authorized by act of Con- gress March 12, 1872 ; the site to be given to the government by the city. The Exchange building and the Mechanics' and Farmers' Bank building and their sites purchased by the city and conveyed to the L^nited States govern- ment. Demolition of buildings on its site began in December, 1875. Corner- stone laid May 7, 1879. Frontage of building on Broadway 113 feet, depth 150 feet. Cost of the granite structure about $530,000. First occupied by the post-office, January 1, 1884. CHURCHES. BAPTIST. [N. B. A few names of pastors and the dates of the terms of service of a number of them are not given. The data in the lists have been taken from newspapers, directories, and documents]. First Particular. (See page 455). Church, southeast corner of Hud- son and Philip streets, opened for service, December 26, 1852. Pastors: Francis Wayland, 1811-12; Isaac Webb, 1815-10; Joshua Bradley, 181*7-19; Lewris Leonard, 1825-26; Bartholomev^r T. Welch, 1828-34; George 3. Ide, 1834-35 ; Alanson L. Covell. 183*7 ; James Hodge, 1839-41 ; John Knox, 1842; James M. Coley, 1843-45; Asa Bronson, 1845; W. S. Clapp, 1846-49; Reuben Jeffrey, 1849-5*7; E. L. Magoon, 1838-67; George C. Lorimer, 1868-69 ; J. B. Hawthorne, 1871 ; D. M. Reeves, 1872-79 ; Thomas Rambaut, 1883 to present time. Emmanuel Baptist Church. First meeting-house, near southwest corner of Pearl Street and Maiden Lane (site of Perry building), erected in 1833. First members from the First Particular Society. Incorporated Sep- tember 7, 1833. Church first opened for worship, October 26, 1834. In 1871 the society began to worship in Emmanuel Baptist church on north side of State Street, between Swan and Dove streets. Corner-stone laid July 14, 1869. Dedicated, February 23, 1871. Built of Onondaga limestone. Cost $217,000. Sittings 1500. Pastors : Bartholomew T. Welch, 1834-48 : Luther F. Beecher, 1850-53 ; William Hague, 1854-57; T. R. Howlett, 1860 ; C. DeW. Bridgman, 1862-78; T. Harwood Pattison, 1879-81 ; Henry M. King, 1882 to present time. South Baptist Society. Meeting-house in 1842 the Scotch Presby- terian church on Westerlo Street. Incorporated, August 29, 1842. Church South Pearl Street, opposite Herkimer Street, dedicated December 25, 1843. Trinity Episcopal church, corner of Herkimer and Franklin streets, purchased by the society in 1848. Opened for service, April 8, 1849. Church on South Pearl Street sold to the Jews. Last services in it, September 28, 1851. Pastors : Stephen Wilkins, 1843-48 ; Barry, 1849 ; A. Kingsbury, 1850 ; W. G. Howard, 1850-51 ; W. W. Moore, 1852 ; Lewis Sill, 1853-54 ; Isaac N. Hill, 1854 ; Malcom Roberts, 1858-59. State STREEr Baptist Church. Meeting-house, southeast corner of State and High streets, erected in 1845. Organized, January 15, 1846. Church dedicated, January 13, 1846. Sold to Calvary Baptist church in 1865. Pastors : Jacob Knapp, 1846-47 ; Edwin R. Warner, 1847-48 ; Jabez S. Swan, 1848-49 ; W. W. Moore, 1849-51 ; Charles B. Post, 1852-54 ; William Arthur, 1858-64 ; T. W. Smith, 1865. Washington Avenue Baptist Church. Building, No. 252 Washington Avenue, purchased in 1859. Society organized, February 16, 1860. Chapel sold to Roman Catholics, January 3, 1866. Pastor : William P. Everett, 1860-64. Calvary Baptist Church. Organization originally the Washington 493 194 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Avenue Baptist Church Society. Incorporated, April 3, 1863. Name, The Calvary Baptist Church, taken February 4, 1865. In 1865, society purchased the State Street Baptist church, southeast corner of State and High streets. In 1880, edifice demolished. Present building dedicated, March 26, 1882. Pastors : J. Spencer Kennard, 1865-66 ; John Peddie, 1866-70; John Love, 1872-75 ; Joshua Day, 1876-77 ; John Humpstone, 1878-82 ; J. Wolfender, 1883 to present time. Tabernacle Baptist Church. Chapel North Pearl Street, between Wilson and Lumber (Livingston Avenue) streets, dedicated June 14, 1857. Society organized, October 1859. Incorporated under name of the Taber- nacle Baptist Church, November 10, 1859. Present edifice, northwest cor- ner of Clinton Avenue and Ten Broeck Street, dedicated February 14, 1877. Pastors : J. D. Fulton, 1859-64 ; William A. Alden, 1865-67 ; Thomas Cull, 1869-70; R. B. Kelsay, 1871-72 ; F. R.Morse, 1873-78; Albert Foster, 1879 to present time. Washington Street German Baptist Church. Building on Wash- ington Avenue, near Lark Street, dedicated, October 29, 1854. Pastors : A. Von Puttkammer, 1857-61 ; H. Feltman, 1864-69 ; William Argow, 1870-75 ; Henry Trumpp, 1877-80 ; John Jaeger, 1882 to present time. First African Baptist Church. Organized September 6, 1820, under the name of the Albany African Church Association. Meeting-house, north side of Hamilton Street, between Grand and Fulton streets, dedicated, Janu- ary 16, 1823. The name. The First African Baptist Society, taken, January 16, 1826. Property sold to the Roman Catholics in 1869. Pastors : Nathaniel Paul, 1822-30 ; Calvin C. Williams, 1831 ; Samuel Treadwell, 1832-33; Thomas Ritchie, 1834; Nathaniel Paul, 1838-39; Jonas H. Townsend, 1843 ; John Kial, 1844 ; W. Surrington, 1846 ; Wil- liam Garnett, 1849 ; J. Atkin, 1852 ; — Hansen, 1855 ; L. Black, 1859 ; T. Doughty Miller, 1860-64; John D. Bagwell, 1869. Second African Baptist Church. Organized 1870. Meeting-house Chestnut Street, near Dove. Pastors : Theodore D. Miller, 1872 ; Charles Charles, 1873 ; Henry H. Mitchell, 1879. Memorial Baptist Chapel. Building southeast corner of Madison Avenue and Partridge Street. Rev. A. W. Stockwin, missionary, 1883 to present time. CHRISTIAN. First (Christian Church. Meeting-house south side of Chestnut Street, between Lark and Dove streets. Society organized in 1881. Pastors: E. C. Abbott, 1881-84; Warren Hathaway, 1884 to present time. CONGREGATIONAL. First Congregational Church. First Presbyterian meeting-house, on corner of South Pearl and Beaver streets, purchased, December 15, 1849. Opened for services, April 7, 1850. Society incorporated, June 6, 1850. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 495 Church sold, September 10, 1867. Last services in it, February 9, 1868. Meetings thereafter held in Association Hall. Corner-stone of building, southeast corner of Eagle and Beaver streets, laid, September 22, 1868. Dedicated, October 14, 1869. Pastors : Ray Palmer, 1850-66 ; William S. Smart, 1867 to present time. Second Congregational Church. Society organized in 1862. Meet- ings held in Gibson's Hall, No. 1 Clinton Avenue, corner of Broadway. Pastor : R. B. Stratton, 1862-63. EPISCOPAL. Cathedral of All Saints. Incorporated March 27, 1873. Corner- stone of All Saints cathedral laid June 3, 1884. (See page 482.) Present chapel of the cathedral on northwest corner of Hawk and Elk streets. Right Rev. William Croswell Doane, bishop ; consecrated bishop of the diocese of Albany, February 2, 1869, in St. Peter's church. Rev. F. L. Nor- ton, dean. Rev. G, W. Dean, chancellor. Rev. E. T. Chapman, treasurer. Rev. T. B. Fulcher, minor canon. St. Peter'.s Church. (See pages 278-282, 284-287, 296, 332, 349, 407, 408, 430, 431, 448). Church erected in 1803 demolished in 1859. Corner- stone of new edifice laid June 29, 1859. Consecrated, October 4, 1860. Tower dedicated, September 29, 1876. Rectors : Thomas Barclay, 1708-171-; — Miln, 1728-37; Henry Barclay, 1738-46; John Ogilvie, 1749-64; Thomas Brown, 1764-68; Harry Munro, 1768-74; Thomas Ellison, 1787-1802; Frederick Beasley, 1803-09; Timothy Clowes, 1810-17 ; William B. Lacey, 1818-32 ; Horatio Potter, 1833-55; Thomas Clapp Pitkin, 1855-62; William F. Wilson and William Tatlock, 1862-66 ; William Croswell Doane, 1867-69; William A. Snively, 1869-74; Walton W. Battershall, 1874 to present time. St. Paul's Church. Meetings of the first members of the church held in 1827 in a building, corner of Pearl and Rensselaer streets. First wardens and vestrymen 'elected November 12, 1827. Incorporated, November 28, 1827. Corner-stone of church, erected on northwest corner of Ferry and Dallius streets, laid June 11, 1828. Consecrated, August 4, 1829. Sold to Roman Catholics in 1839. Theatre-building on South Pearl Street, between Beaver and Hudson streets, purchased shortly thereafter, refitted, and con- secrated February 22, 1840. Dudley Reformed Protestant church, south side of Lancaster Street, between Swan and Hawk streets, purchased in 1862, and used for the first time, September 21, 1862. Rectors: Richard Bury, 1827-30; William Linn Keese, 1830-33; Joseph Henry Price, 1834-37; William I. Kip, 1837-53; Thomas A. Starkey, 1854- 58; William Rudder, 1859-63; J. Livingston Reese, 1864 to present time. Trinity Church. Organized in 1839. Leased that year to the Pres- byterian (Cameronian) church, south side of Westerlo Street, between Dallius and Church streets. Incorporated, May 12, 1840. In 1841, held services in the school-house, corner of Dallius and Ferry streets. In 1842, erected a frame-building on the southeast corner of Herkimer and Franklin 49r, THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. streets. Last services held in it by the society, December :*5, 1848. Corner stone of church, west side of Broad Street, between Lydius (Madison Avenue) and Westerlo streets, laid May 18, 1848. Consecrated September 10, 1849. Rectors; Isaac Swart, 18S9-40 ; William Dowdney, 1840-41; Edward Embury, 1842-43; Edward Selkirk, 1844-84. Grace Church. First called the Episcopal Free Church. Grace church incorporated, May 25, 1846. First services in a building corner of State and Lark streets. Subsequently the congregation worshipped in a building on Spring Street. Corner-stone of church, corner of Lark and Washington Streets, laid July 8, 1850. Dedicated, December 14, 1852. Building re- moved in 1873 to northwest corner of Robin Street and Clinton Avenue. Rectors : Mansell Van Rensselaer, 1846-47 ; John Alden Spooner, 1848 ; John Radcliff Davenport, 1850-57 ; Theodore M. Bishop, 1858-61 ; Philander K. Cady, 1863-65 ; Edwin B. Russell, 1866-71 ; James Hutchings Brown, 1872 ; David Louis Schwartz, 1875 to present time. Church of the Holy Innocents. Corner-stone of edifice, southeast corner of North Pearl and Colonic streets, laid June 7, 1849. Incorporated, February 16, 1850. Consecrated, September 3, 1850. Rectors : Sylvanus Reed, 1850-61 ; William R. Johnson, 1862-63 ; Wil- liam S. Boardman, 1866-68; Royal Marshall, 1870-74; Samuel E. Smith, 1875-82 ; Ralph Wood Kenyon, 1883 to present time. St. Paul's Free Chapel. Building south side of Madison Avenue, between Green and Dailius streets. A. F. Steele, assistant rector, 1868; Walker Gwynne, 1872 ; Thomas B. Berry, 1873; W. H. Gallagher, 1875-76; Frederick O. Granniss, 1877-80; Frederick J. Bassett, 1881-82 ; Rev. J. B. Hubbs, 1883 to present time. EVANGELICAL. Church of the Evangelical (Ger.al^n) Association. Incorporated, January 1847. First meeting-house on Grand Street, between Hudson and Beaver streets. Afterward corner of Clinton and Nucella streets. Church erected in 1869, on south side of Elm Street, between Grand and Philip streets. Pastors: Jacob Wagner, 1851 ; Levi Jacobi, 1852-59 ; Augustus Spies, 1862; William Mintz, 1863-64; Henry Fischer, 1866-6S; Charles Schoepfle, 1870-71; Albert Unholtz, 1872-74; J. Siegrist, 1875-77; M. Yauch, 1878-80; A. Schlenk, 1881-83; Jacob Eberling, 1883 to present time. German Evanoelical Protestant Society. Organized in 1850. In- corporated, April 29, 1851. Church, corner of Clinton and Alexander streets. Pastors: Augustus J. Grotrian, 1852-58; Charles A. Biel, 1862; Alfred Kretschmar, 1862-64; A. J. Grotrian, 1866-68 ; M. Frankel, 1859; Oscar Kraft, 1871; W. Stroebel, 1874; J. Petersen, 1875-76; — Junegst, 1877-80; Paul L. Menzel, 1881 to present time. FRIENDS. Society of Friends. Meetings in 1829 held in a building corner of State and Lodge streets. Meeting-house erected in 1833 on south side of Plain Street, between Grand and Fulton streets. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 497 JEWISH. Beth El. Society organized in 1822. Incorporated, March 25, 1838. First synagogue in Bassett Street. The second, No. 76 Herkimer Street, dedicated, September 2, 1842. South Ferry Street Methodist Episcopal church, southwest corner of South Ferry and Franklin streets, purchased, and dedicated, January 20, 1865. Rabbis : Isaac Wise, 184*7-50; Veis Traub, 1851-53; Samson Falk, 1854; Isaac Gothold, 1863-65; H. Berkenthall, 1867-72; L. A. Son, 1873- 79; Adolph Friedmann. 1880 to present time. Beth El Jacob. Incorporated, Feburary 22, 1841. Synagogue, No. 8 Rose Street, dedicated, May 25, 1841. Corner-stone of synagogue, east side of Fulton Street, between Lydius (Madison Avenue) and Van Zandt streets, laid December 1, 1847. Consecrated, April 28, 1848. Rabbis : Julius Katzenberg, 1851-52 ; Joseph Lewin, 1883 ; I. N. Cohn, 1855-57 ; Wolf Fashbinder, 1858-59 ; — Hydeman, 1861 ; H. C. Solo- mon, 1863 ; Isaac Reiterman, 1864-66 ; S. Thanhauser, 1868-71 ; Josiah Goetz, 1872-82 ; Samuel Distillator, 1883 to present time. Anshe Emeth. Congregation first worshipped in a building, corner of Lydius (Madison Avenue) and South Pearl streets. Society incorporated, October 11, 1850. Afterward in a building in Green Street. Baptist church, on South Pearl Street, opposite Herkimer, purchased. Synagogue dedicated, October 3, 1851. Rabbis. Isaac M. Wise, 1851-54 ; Elkan Cohn, 1854-59 ; M. Mayer, 1862 ; N. Nathanson, 1863 ; M. Schlessinger, 1864 to present time. LUTHERAN. First Evangelical Lutheran. (See pages 107, 108, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157, 170, 171, 175, 176, 204, 284, 395, 396, 397, 448. 453, 457). August 26, 1784, incorporated under the title of " Der Evangelisch Lutherischen Gemeinde." Corner-stone of church laid, June 2, 1783. Present church, north-west corner of Pine and Lodge streets, dedicated January 26, 1871. Pastors: Jacobus Fabricius, 1669; Bernardus Arensius, 1671-73; William Christian Berkenmeyer, 1746 ; Heinrich Moeller, 1784-90 ; — Groetz, 1791 ; Anthon Theodore Braun, 1794-1800 ; Heinrich Moeller, 1801-06 ; Frederick George Mayer, 1807-42 ; Henry Newman Pohlman, 1843-67 ; Samuel Sprecher, 1868-72 ; Irving Magee, 1872-82 ; George W. Miller, 1884 to present time. First German Evangelical Lutheran Church. Organized in 1854. Church in 1856 on the northeast corner of Franklin and Nucella (Fourth Avenue) streets. Pastors : C. A. Rechenberg, 1854-57 ; H. G. Hennicke, 1858-60 ; E. Fischer, 1861-68 ; W. Arnst, 1869 ; Peter Seuel, 1870-75 ; William A, Frey, 1876 to present time. German Evangelical Lutheran St. John's Church. Organized in 1857. Incorporated, October 25, 1858. Corner-stone of church on Bowery, (Central Avenue), laid, January 24, 1859. Pastor : Earnest Hoffman, 1859 to present time. 33 498 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church Society organized, May 30, 1860. Incorporated July 2, 18G0. Church southeast corner of Broad and Alexander streets. Pastors: J.C.J. Petersen, 1877-80; Conrad Kuehn, 1881-83; Herman Hartwig, 1884 to present time. St. Paul's German Evangelical Lutheran Church. Organized from German members of the First Lutheran Church, August 8, 1841, and the society incorporated as the German Evangelical Church, August 10, 1841. Purchased Albany West Station Methodist church. No. 249 State Street, in .842. Dedicated, May 10, 1842. Incorporated as the Second German Evangelical Lutheran Church, September 5, 1855. Present church south side of Western Avenue, near Lexington, dedicated January 13, 1856. Pastors : George Saul, 1841-42 ; Edward Meyer, 1832-47 ; Frederick William Schmidt, 1847-55; Charles M. Wossidlo, 1856; Henry Ebsen, 1859- 61; Reinholdt Adleberg, 1862-68; Peter Eirich, 1870-80; G. F. Stutz, 1881 to present time. METHODIST. First Methodist (Hudson Avenue) Church. (See pages 402, 409, 443, 449). Society incorporated, April 3, 1811. Church on Division Street abandoned in 1844. Edifice erected in 1844 on the south side of Hudson Street, between Philip and Grand streets. First Presbyterian church, on the southwest corner of Hudson Avenue and Philip Street, purchased in 1883. Pastors: James Campbell, 1790; Joel Ketchum, 1798; Cyrus Stebbins, John Crawford, Gideon A. Knowlton, 1799-1804 ; Elias Vanderlip, 1806 ; William Phoebus, 1816; Truman Bishop, 1817; Joseph Crawford, 1818-19; Samuel Marvin, 1820: Phineas Rice, 1821-22; Tobias Spicer, 1823-24; Josiah Bowen, 1825-26 ; James Young, 1827-28 ; J. C. Green, 1829-30 ; Samuel Luckey, 1831-32; John B. Stratton, 1832-33; Charles Sherman, 1834-35; A. M. Osborn, 1836-37; Truman Seymour, 1838-40; Noah Levings, 1841-42; Henry L. Starks, 1842-43; Z. Phillips, 1844; Allen Steele, 1845-46; Andrew Witherspoon, 1847; John Clark, 1848-49; Henry L. Starks, 1850-51; Stephen Parks, 1852-53; Robert Fox, 1854-55; Stephen D. Brown, 1855-56; L. D. Stebbins, 1857-58; B. O. Meeker, 1869-60; Mark Trafton, 1861-62; C F- Burdick, 1863; Ira G. Bidwell, 1864-66; Jesse T. Peck, 1867-69; Merritt Hulburd, 1870-72 ; D. W. Dayton, 1873-75 ; Philip Krohn, 1876-77 ; W. H. Meeker, 1878; E. McChesney, 1879-81; John H. Coleman, 1882 to present time. Wesley Chapel Methodist Church. Organized May, 1834. In- corporated, October 21, 1834. First meeting-house corner Dallius and Bass (Bleecker) streets. Lot on Herkimer Street, between Franklin and South Pearl streets, purchased in 1835. Dedicated, September, 1837. Burned, April 20, 1839. Society afterward held meetings in the Universalist church on Herkimer street. Disbanded, May 22, 1842. Pastors: Hiram Meeker, 1834-35 ; F. W. Smith, 1838-39. Ash-Grove Methodist Church. Organized as the Ferry Street Metho- dist church, in the school-house on John Street, July 4, 1842. Church erected on corner of Ferry and Franklin streets dedicated, December 4, 1842. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 499 Building sold in 1864 to the Jewish society of the Beth El synagogue. Site of the Ash Grove church, southwest corner of Westerlo and Broad streets, purchased, January 11, 1864. Edifice dedicated, July 6, 1865. Incorporated, October 17, 1865. Pastors: S. Remington, 184.3; Alfred Saxe, 1844-45; Timothy Benedict, 1846-47; Lyman A. Sanford, 1848-49; John Eraser, 1850-51; A. A. Farr, 1852-53; Hiram Dunn, 1854-55; E. H. Foster, 1856-57; A. A, Farr, 1858; W. R. Brown, 1860-61; Stephen D. Brown,' 1862-63; A. A. Farr, 1864-65; W. P Abbott, 1866-68; S. McChesney, 1869-71; S. McKean, 1872-73; H. Graham, 1874-76; J. E. C. Sawyer, 1877-79; J. W. Alderman, 1880-82; Joel W. Eaton, 1883 to present time. Garrettson Station of the Methodist Church. Organized in August, 1828. Incorporated, September 28, 1829. Also incorporated Sep- tember 28,1829, as the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church. Preaching- house Mechanics' Hall, corner of Chapel and Columbia streets. In Decem- ber, 1829, the society purchased the Circus-building on North Pearl Street. Edifice dedicated in June, 1830. Demolished in 1851, and a new church erected on its site. Dedicated, January 11, 1852. Society incor- porated with that of St. Luke's Methodist church organized in 1881. Pastors: John 'J- Matthias, 1828-29; Thomas Burch, 1831-33; Noah Levings, 1834; Salmon Stebbins, 1835; Ephraim Goss, 1838; Joseph Castle, 1840; S. L. Stillman, 1843; M. L. Scudder, 1844-45; John Lindsay, 1846; E. Stover, 1847; James Caughey, 1848-49; D. M. Hall, 1849-50; J. T. Ar- nold, 1851-52; Sanford Washburn, 1853; S. P. Williams, 1854-55; John P. Newman. 1856-57; C. W. Gushing, 1858-59; N. G. Spaulding, 1860-61; J. E. Bowen, 1862-63; G. S. Chadbourne, 1864-66; Dexter E. Clapp, 1867-68; W. G. Waters, 1869-70; W. J. Heath, 1871-73; S. McLaughlin, 1874-76; J. W. Thompson, 1877-78; G. A. Barrett, 1879-81. Trinity Methodist Church. Primitive Methodist meeting-house, No. 249 State Street, near Dove Street, dedicated, December 4, 1831. So- ciety organized, March 28, 1836, as the Albany West Station of the Metho- dist Episcopal church. Corner-stone of edifice erected on corner of Wash- ington and Swan streets laid, November 9, 1841. Dedicated, May 22, 1842. Last services held in building, April 29, 1868. Transept of Trinity church, on north-west corner of Lark and Lancaster streets, dedicated, June 19, 1868. Corner-stone of church laid, October 10, 1875. Dedicated, December 28, 1876. Pastors: Nathan Watkins, 1831-33; Coles R. Wilkins, 1838; J. Leon- ard, 1840-41 ; S. L. Stillman, 1842-44 ; T. Spicer, 1845 ; P. M. Hitchcock, 1846-47 ; Thomas Armitage, 1848 ; S. D. Brown, 1849 ; John Frazer, 1850 ; J. E. Bowen, 1851-52 ; Manly Witherell. 1854-55 ; John Parker, 1856-67 ; A. J. Jutkins, 1858 ; M. Bates, 1860 ; S. M. Merrill, 1861-62 ; A. J. Jutkins, 1863 ; Bostwick Hawley, 1864-65 ; Richard Meredith, 1866 ; S. L. Stillman, 1867 ; E. Meredith, 1869 ; Charles Reynolds, 1870-72 ; W. H. Rowsom, 1873-74 ; Thomas Kelly, 1875-77 ; J. F. Clymer, 1878-79 ; S. M. Williams, 1880-81 ; D. W. Gates, 1882-84 ; F. Widmer, 1884 to present time. St. Luke's Methodist Church. Society formed in 1881, by the union of the Garrettson and Central Avenue societies. Church on northwest 500 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. corner of Clinton and Lexington avenues. Corner-stone laid, September 18, 1883. Dedicated, June 29, 1884. Pastors : G. A. Barrett, 1881 ; T. C. Potter, 1882 to present time. Central Avenue Methodist Church. Organized at No. 205 Central Avenue in 1871. Pastors : P. P. Harrower, 18*71-72 ; Charles Reynolds, 1873 ; D. R. Lowell, 1874-75 ; J. S. Bridgford, 1876 ; J. C. Russum, 1877-78 ; Rufus Wendell, 1879 ; Hiram Blanchard, 1880 ; T. C. Potter, 1882. Arbor Hill Station Methodist Church. Meeting-house on Arbor Hill, Swan Street, between Third and Lumber streets. Incorporated, June 29, 1846. United with the Broadway society to form the Grace Church society. May 3, 1869. Pastors : J. W. Belknap, 1849-50 ; Edward Noble, 1851 ; J. Leonard, 1852; Myron White, 1853; H. S. Smith, 1854-55; A. A. Farr, 1856; E. Watson, 1857-58; E. Stover, 1859; R. B. Stratton, 1860-61; R. H. Robin- son, 1862-63 ; L. Marshall, 1864 ; A. Canoll, 1865-66 ; L C. Fenton, 1867-68; J. W. Alderman, 1869. Broadway Methodist Church. First called the Broadway Mission, No. 867 Broadway. Incorporated, December 19, 1859.- United with the Arbor Hill society to form the Grace Church society, May 3, 1869. Pastors: A. A. Farr, 1860-61; S. McChesney, 1862-63; H. L. Starks, 1864-66 ; G. C. Wells, 1867-69. Wesleyan Chapel. Meeting-house, North Pearl, above Clinton Avenue. Pastors : M. Bates, 1846-47 ; John Lowrey, 1848-50 ; P M. Way, 1850-51; Samuel Salisbury, 1852-54 ; David Mason. 1859 ; Thomas Easton, 1860-61 ; Horace B. Knight, 1862 ; John P. Bethkar, 1863-64. Grace Methodist Church. Society formed by the union of the Arbor Hill and the Broadway societies, May 3, 1869. Church, northwest corner of Ten Broeck and Lumber (Livingston Avenue) streets. First meeting- house dedicated, December 19, 1869. Demolished in April, 1880. Corner- stone of the new edifice laid September 21, 1880. Pastors: J. W. Alderman, 1869-71; Homer Eaton, 1872-74; B. B. Loomis, 1875-77 ; H. C. Sexton, 1878 ; H. D. Kimball, 1879-81 ; S. V. Leech, 1882 to present time. Free Central Methodist Church. Meeting-house in 1857, on Philip Street, and on Green Street, below Hamilton. In 1858 church on the corner of Grand and Lydius (Madison Avenue) streets. Pastors : E. Goss, 1857-58; Charles H. Richmond, 1859 ; M. Witherell, 1860 ; E. Goss, 1861-62 ; S. L. Stillman, 1863 ; B. Pomeroy, 1864. Benjamin Street Methodist Church. Mission School in 1871. Ben- jamin Street, near Whitehall road. Pastors : W. O. Tower. 1883 ; G. A. Kerr, 1884 to present time. German Methodist Church. In 1853 meeting-house in Rensselaer Street. Afterward in Schuyler Street, between South Pearl and Franklin streets. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 501 Pastors: M. Lawer, 1848-50; J. Hertell. 1851; J. J. Grau, 1852; Jacob Gaber, 1853; — Schwartz, 1855; F. Dingar, 1856-58. African Methodist Episcopal Israel Church. Incorporated April 25, 1829. First church in the rear of school-house No. 2 on State Street. Purchased lot north side of Hamilton Street, bweteen Hallenbake and Philip streets, January 6, 1842. Church burned, February 28, 1845 In 1851 meetings held in a building on Jefferson Street, above Eagle. Pur- chased site of present church. No. 365 Hamilton Street, between Dove and Lark streets, September 16, 1854. Pastors: Richard M. Williams, 1831-35; Eli N. Hall, 1842-43; Jules Campbell, 1844; — Buler, 1846; Richard Robinson, 1851; James M. Wil- liams, 1852; — Ayres, 1856; C. Burch, 1857; George Wier, 1858-59; Abram Crippen, 1860; L. Patterson, 1861-62; James M. Williams, 1863; — Lynch, 1864; W. W Grimes, 1866; Francis Peck, 1867-68; W. M. Watson, 1870; H. J. Rhodes, 1871-72; J. W. Cooper. 1878; J. H. Morgan. 1879-80; W. B. Derrick, 1881-83; Horace Talbert, 1883 to present time. Wesleyan African Methodist Society. Meeting-house in 1845 in Spring Street. Incorporated, April 28, 1845. Pastors : M. Bates, 1846; John Lowery, 1848-49. Second Wesleyan African Methodist Church. Meeting-house in 1851, on Orange Street. In 8156, on Third Street, below Lark Street. Pastors: J. Sands, 1851; J. J. White, 1852-53; J. Sands, 1856-57; S. Streeter, 1859-61; J. Sands, 1866-70; Edward Matthews, 1872. Methodist Protestant Church. Organized 1831. First meetings held in the house of Christopher Heferstall in Liberty Street. Church in Hallenbake Street, between Beaver and Hudson streets, dedicated Decem- ber 7, 1834. Pastors : C. W. Denison, 1834 ; Thomas Pearson, 1838-39 ; Albert R. Speer, 1841 ; James Rawson, 1841. PRESBYTERIAN. First Presbyterian Church. (See pages 332, 336, 337, 397, 448). Second meeting-house sold December, 1849. Edifice built in 1847-49, on Hudson and Philip streets, dedicated March 10, 1850. Sold to the First Methodist Society in 1883. The present beautiful brown-stone building on the southeast corner of State and Willett streets, at Washington Park, erected in 1883-84, dedicated May 18, 1884. Pastors : William Hanna, 1763-65 ; Andrew Bay, 176 ; John Mc- Donald, 1785-95; David S. Bogart, 1796-98; Eliphalet Nott, 1798-1804; John B. Romeyn, 1804-08 ; William Neill, 1809-16 ; Arthur Joseph Stans- bury, 1817 21; Henry R. Weed, 1822-29; John N. Campbell, 1831-64; J. McC. Blayney; James M. Ludlow, 1865-68 ; Walter D. Nicholas, 1880 to present time. Second Presbyterian Church. (See pages 442, 443). Chapel on the corner of Pine and Lodge streets erected in 1865. Pastors; John Chester, 1815-28; William B. Sprague, 1829-69; Anson J. Upson, 1870-80; James H. Ecob, 1881 to present time. 502 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Third Presbyterian (Clinton Square) Church. Society organized February o, 1817, by the union of a number of the members of the First Presbyterian church and of those of the Associate Reformed church. The first meeting-house on Montgomery sold to the Bethel society in 1844. Corner-stone of edifice on Clinton Square, junction of Clinton Avenue and North Pearl Street, laid July 29, 1844. Dedicated, December 3, 1845. Pastors: Hooper Cumming, 1817-23; Joseph Huibert, 1823-24; John Alburtiss, 1825-28; William H. Williams, 1828-30; William Lochead, 1831- 33; William James, 1834-35; Ezra A. Huntington, 1837-55; Ebenezer Hal- ley, 1855-75; Horace C. Stanton, 1877 to present time. Fourth Presbyterian Church. Incorporated, December 1, 1828. Church erected in 1829, on north side of Market (Broadway) Street, be- tween Patroon and Wilson streets, and dedicated May 20, 1830. Demolished in 1865. Corner-stone of present edifice laid September 12, 1865. Dedicated September 18, 1866. Pastors: Edward N. Kirk, 1829-35 ; Edward D. Allen, 1838-42; Sam- uel Fisher, 1843-46 ; Benjamin N. Martin, 1848-49 ; H. Mandeville, 1850-54; Samuel T. Seelye, 1855-63 ; Henry Darling, 1864-81; Charles Wood, 1881 to present time. Fifth Presbyterian Church. Organized, December 5, 1831. First meetings held in the old city-hall. Pastor : Alonzo Welton, 1832. State Street Presbyterian Church. First trustees elected, October 16, 1860. Society organized March 28, 1861. Corner-stone of church, south side of State Street, between Dove and Swan streets, laid July 18, 1861. Dedicated October 12, 1862. Pastors : Alexander Twombly, 1862-66 ; George C. Heckman, 1867-70 ; John James. 1872-76 ; John McC. Holmes, 1877 to present time. Sixth Presbyterian Church. Organized December 8, 1869, in Mis- sion Chapel of the Fourth Presbyterian church. No. 142 Second Street. Church on south side of Second Street, between Lark and North Swan streets, erected in 1871. Pastors: A. H. Dean, 1870-73 ; William Durant. 1873-82; J. D. Coun- termine, 1882 to present time. United Presbyterian Church. (See page 429). Edifice on south side of Lancaster Street, west of Eagle, erected in 1860. Opened for services in January 1861. Old church building, corner of Chapel and Canal streets, sold March 5, 1861. Pastors : John McDonald, 1801-19; James Martin, 1824-42 ; R. J. Ham- mond, 1843-44 ; Samuel F. Morrow, 1846 to present time. Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. (See page 430). Pastors : Andrew Wilson, 1802-07 ; John Mcjimsey, 1810-15 ; James Christie, 1823-29. West End Presbyterian Church. House of worship, northeast cor- ner of New York Central Avenue and Third Street. Society organized June 3, 1878. Church dedicated, March 25, 1877. Pastors : Robert Ennis, 1883 ; Oliver Hemstreet, 1883 to present time. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 503 Sprague Presbyterian Chapel. Corner-stone of building, on north- west corner of State and Snipe (Lexington Avenue) streets, laid June 26, 1868. Dedicated, January 31, 1869. Reformed Presbyterian Church. Meeting-house corner of Dallius and Bass streets. Pastor : David Scott, 1837-40. REFORMED PROTESTANT. Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. (See pages 53-57, 83, 84, 90, 91, 99, 104-107. 161, 164, 165, 174, 177, 178, 179, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 262, 279, 280, 282, 284, 296, 306, 332, 426, 4.34, 435, 448.) Pastors : Johannes Megapolensis, jr., 1642-49 ; Gideon Schaets, 1652-91; Godefridus Dellius (colleague, 1683-91) 1692-99 ; Johannes Petrus Nucella, 1699-1700; Johannes Lydius, 1700-10; Petrus van Driessen, 1712-38; Cornells van Schie, (colleague 173.3-38,) 1738-44; Theodorus Frielinghuysen, 1746-59; Eilardus Westerlo, 1760-90; John Bassett, (colleague, 1787-90,) 1790-1804; (John B. Johnson, colleague 1796-1802,) John Melanchton Bradford, 1805-15; (John DeWitt, colleague, 1813-15.) May, 1815, separation of the members and the formation of the two societies known as the First and Second Re- formed Protestant Dutch churches. First Reformed Protestant (North) Dutch Church. (See pages 426, 448.) May, 1815, separated from the government of the great consistory of the original church. Pastors: John M. Bradford, 181.5-20; John Ludlow, 1823-33; Thomas E. Vermilye, 1835-39; Duncan Kennedy, 1841-55; Ebenezer P. Rogers, 1856-62; Rufus W. Clark, 1862-83. Second Reformed Protestant (South) Dutch Church. (See pages 434, 435,) May 1815, separated from the government of the great consistory of the original church. Known as the " Middle Church" after the erection of the Third Reformed church on the corner of Green and Ferry streets. Last services in the old church March 6, 1881. Edifice on northeast corner of Madison Avenue and Swan Street erected in 1881. Pastors : John DeWitt, 1815-23 ; Isaac Ferris, 1824-36 ; Isaac N. Wyck- off, 1836-65 ; Joachim Elmendorf, 1865-72 ; Dwight K. Bartlett, 1874-81 ; Wesley R. Davis, 1882 to present time. Third Reformed Protestant Dutch Church. Organized, December 19, 1834. First service held in the Reformed Presbyterian church in Wes- terlo Street, December 7, 1834. Corner-stone of edifice, on northeast corner of Green and Ferry streets, laid April 20, 1837. Building burned September 28, 1841. New church erected on its site in 1842. Pastors: Edwin Holmes, 1835-40; William H. Campbell, 1841-48; Rutgers Van Brunt, 1848-49 ; William H. Halloway, 1849-53 ; Alexander Dickson, 1853-59 ; William H. Miller, 1862-63 ; William Bailey, 1863-67 ; J. Searls, 1868-70 ; E. Van Slyke, 1872 ; D. K. Van Doren, 1873-74 ; J. B. Campbell, 1876-82 ; Edwin F. See, 1883 to present time. Fourth Reformed Protestant (German) Church. Schuyler Street, below South Pearl Street. 504 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Pastors : H. Schnellendruessler, 1858-64 ; J. F. Neef, 1866 to present time. Holland Reformed Dutch Church. Organized November 6, 1859. Building corner Orange and Chapel streets. Pastors : William A. Hubolt, 1863-64 ; P. B. Bahler, 1866 ; William A. Hubolt, 1872; A. Zwemer, 1874-76; C. Criekard, 1877-78; H. K. Boer, 1880 to present time. Dudley Reformed Protestant Church. Corner-stone of edifice erected on the south side of Lancaster Street, between Hawk and Swain streets, laid October 29, 1860. Church sold to St. Paul's Episcopal con- gregation in 1862. Pastor : Alexander Dickson, 1860-61. ROMAN CATHOLIC, Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. (See page 475). Bishops of the Roman Catholic diocese of Albany : Right Rev. John McCloskey, installed September 19, 1847, continued in charge till 1864 ; Right Rev. John J. Conroy, installed, October 15, 1865 ; Right Rev. Francis McNierney, installed, April 21, 1872. Edgar P. Wadhams, rector, 1853-71 ; John Walsh, 1882 to present time. John J. H anion and Richard H. Gahan, assistant priests, 1884. St. Mary's Church. (See pages 422 and 423). Old edifice on Pine Street, between Barrack and Lodge streets, demolished September, 1829. Corner-stone laid, October 13, 1829. Church opened for service, August 29, 1830. Building demolished, April, 1867. Corner-stone laid, August 11, 1867. Dedicated March 14, 1869. Priests : Matthew O'Brien, 1779 ; James Burke, 1808 ; Paul McQuade, 1813 ; Brennan, 1825; Savage, 1826-27 ; Charles Smith, 1829-35; J. A. Schneller, 1836-47 ; Thomas A. Kyle, 1848-49 ; Thomas Doran, 1851-66 ; C. A. Walworth, 1867 to present time. St. John's Church. Incorporated, July 23, 1838. Church on Herkimer Street in 1838. Afterward corner of Ferry and Dallius streets. Priests : John Kelly, 1838; James McDonough, 1844-47 ; P. McClosky, 1847-61 ; C. Fitzpatrick, 1862-67 : E. Bayard, 1867-73 ; John Walsh, 1874- 81 ; James Ludden, 1882 to present time. Church of the Holy Cross. (German). Corner-stone of building, on the corner of Hamilton and Philip streets, laid May 12, 1850. Dedicated, November 23, 1851. Priests : Theodore Noethen, 1850-78; Joseph Ottenhues, 1880 to present time. St. Joseph's Church. (See page 478). Edifice on corner of Ten Broeck and Second streets. Priests. John J. Conroy, 1845-65; T. M. A. Burke, 1866 to present time. St. Patrick's Church. Corner-stone of building erected on northwest corner of Bowery (Central Avenue), corner of Perry Street, laid December 2, 1866. Dedicated, August SO, 1868. The history of albany. 505 Priests: A. McGeough, 1859-64; Felix McGinn, 1865-71; P.J.Smith, 1874 to present time. St. Ann's Church. Corner-stone of building on northwest corner of Nucella (Fourth Avenue) and Franklin streets laid July 28, 1867. Dedicated, December 20, 1868. Priests: Thomas Doran, 1867-80; Edward A. Terry, 1881 to present time. Church of our Lady of Angels. (German). Corner-stone of building on northeast corner of Robin Street and Central Avenue laid November 29, 1868. Priests: Francis Neubauer, 1869-77; Pius Kotterer, 1878-79; Maurice Bierl, 1880-83; Caesar Cucchiarini, 1883 to present time. Church of the Assumption. Building on the north side of Hamilton Street, between Grand and Fulton streets, purchased from the First Baptist African Society. Dedicated, December 12, 1869. Priests: M. LaPorte, 1870-72; M. Dugas, 1873; C. M. Lesage, 1875-76; P. O. Renand, 1877; Joseph Brouillet, 1878-81. Clovis Thirbault, 1882-83; G. HulberdauU, 1883 to present time. Church of the Sacred Heart. Edifice northwest corner of Walter and North Second streets. Organized August 5, 1874. First services held in the chapel on Erie Street. Corner-stone laid August 27, 1876. Dedicated, May 23, 1880. Priest : Frank J. Maguire, 1874 to present time. Church of our Lady Help of Christians. (German). Corner-stone of church No. 72 Second Avenue, laid June 27, 1880. Priests: S. A. Preisser, 1876-83; L H. Cluever, 1883 to present time. SECOND ADVENT. Second Advent Society. Meetings in 1851 held in Blunt's building, corner of State and South Pearl streets. In 1852, in Rechabite Hall, No. 77 State Street. Pastors: J. D. Ross, 1858-59; William Wilson, 1862-64. UNITARIAN. First Unitarian Society. First services held in the capitol in 1830. Incorporated November 29, 1842. In 1843, services held in Blunt's build- ing, corner of State and South Pearl streets. Afterward in Rechabite Hall, corner of State and North Pearl streets. Society purchased Methodist church in Division Street. Sold in 1869. Pastors : W. H. Lord, 1844 ; Henry F. Harrington, 1845-47 ; Orville Dewey, 1849 ; George F. Simmons, 1853-55 ; A. D. Mayo, 1856-63 ; Charles G. Ames, 1865 ; H. C. Leonard, 1866-68. First UnIversalist Society. First meetings held in 1824 in Masonic lodge-room on Washington Street. Meeting-house erected in 1829 on Herki- mer Street, between Green and Franklin streets. Dedicated, October 11, 1829. Incorporated, March 23, 1830. Corner-stone of church, erected on Green Street, laid July 25, 1833. 506 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Pastors : W. S. Balch, 1830 ; Isaac D. Williamson, 1830-3'7 ; Stephen R. Smith, 1837-42; S. B. Britton, 1842-43; L. B. Mason, 1843-45; S. B. Britton, 1846-47 ; R. P. Amber, 1847-48 ; W. H. Waggoner, 1848-50 ; O. D. Miller, 1851 ; A. A. Thayer, 1852-54 ; J. E. Pomfret, 1858-59 ; James Pettit, 1861 ; DeForest Porter, 1862. Second Universalist Society. Meetings held in 1834 in a building on Westerlo Street. UNDENOMINATIONAL. Bethel Church. Society for watermen, organized in vestry-room of St. Peter's church, January 31, 1840. Incorporated June 16, 1840. Third Presbyterian church in Montgomery street bought in 1844 and used by the society. Pastors : T. R. Rawson, 1840 ; John H. Miles, 1843-50. NEWSPAPERS. 1771. November. The Albany Gazette. Alexander and James Robert- son, publishers. Weekly. Discontinued about 1776. 1782 Monday, June 3. The New York Gazetteer, or Northern Intelli- gencer. Weekly. Balentine & Webster, publishers. 1784. Friday, May 28. The Albany Gazette. Weekly. Charles R. Webster, publisher. 1789. May 25. Semi-weekly. Discontinued, April 14, 1845. 1788. January 26. The Albany Journal, or Montgomery, Washington & Columbia Intelligencer. Semi-weekly. Charles R. & George Webster & Company, publishers. Discontinued, May 25, 1789. L February 11. The Federal Herald. Weekly. Claxton & Babcock. The Albany Register. Weekly. Robert Barber. Revived in 1818 by Israel W. Clark. 1796. November. The Chronicle. John McDonald. Discontinued in 1799. 1797. The Albany Centinel. Loring Andrews. Afterward by Whit- ing, Backus & Whiting. November 10, 1806, discontinued. 1806. November 11. The Crisis. Isaac Mitchell. 1808. Harry Cros- well & Co. William Tucker, printer. In 1809 name changed to The Balance and New York State Journal, Croswell & Frary. Discontinued in 1811. 1807. The Guardian. By Van Benthuysen & Wood. Court Street, three doors below Hudson Street. Discontinued about 1840. 1812. April 11. The Albany Republican. Samuel R. Brown. 1813. Tuesday, January 26. The Albany Argus. Semi-weekly. Jesse Buel. 1815. June. The American Magazine. Monthly. Edited by Horatio Gates Spafford. Discontinued, May, 1816. September 25. Albany Daily Advertiser. Theodore Dwight, editor. John W. Walker, printer. Subsequently consolidated with the Albany Ga- zette. THE HISTOKY OF ALBANY. 507 1819. June 5. The Plough Boy. Henry Homespun, (Solomon South- wick,) editor. John O. Cole, printer. 1822. August 3. The Oriental Star. Weekly. Religious. Bezaleel Howe. , 1823. Religious Monitor. Chauncey Webster. National Democrat. William McDougal, publisher. Discontinued April 7, 1824. Revived April 20, by Solomon Southwick. 1825. August 8. The Albany Patriot and Daily Commercial Intelligen- cer, George Galpin. July 25. National Observer. Solomon Southwick. 1826. August 2. Daily Chronicle. Charles Galpin & M. M. Cole. Specimen copy, April 22, 1826. Also Albany Morning Chronicle. John Denio & Seth Richards, 1837. Discontinued in 1827. 1827. February 3. American Masonic Record and Albany Saturday Magazine. B. E. B. Child. American Masonic Record and Albany Lite- rary Journal, January 30, 1830. May. The Albany Christian Register. L. G. Hoffman. Christian Reg- ister and Telegraph united with the Journal (of Utica), and published by Hosford & Wait as the Journal and Telegraph, November 21, 1831. May. The Antidote. Solomon Southwick, editor. Webster & Wood, publishers. The Standard. Weekly. Matthew Cole. August 4. The Comet. Daniel McGlashan. The Albany Times and Literary Writer. Daniel Glashan, printer. 1830. January. The Albanian. Semi-monthly. Arthur N. Sherman. March 22. The Albany Evening Journal. Thurlow Weed, editor. E. D. Packard & Company. April 3. Farmers, Mechanics and Workingmen's Advocate. McPherson & McKercher. 1831. September 7. Albany Literary Gazette. John P. Jermain, editor. James D. Nicholson, publisher. November 21. Journal and Telegraph. Horsford & Wait. 1832. January 5. Daily Craftsman. Roberts & James, editors. 18:->4. March. The Cultivator. Conducted by J. Buel, J. P. Beekman & J. D. Wasson. April 5. The Daily News. Hunter & Hoffman. 1835. July 25 The Zodiac. Periodical. Erastus Perry. October 12. The Albany Transcript. C. F. Powell & Company. 1838. January 6. The Family Newspaper. Weekly. Solomon South wick. July 4. Daily Patriot. Abolition paper. J. G. Wallace. 1840. September 19. The Unionist. A daily campaign paper. C, Loveridge and others. 1841. The Albany Atlas. Vance & Wendell. 1843. September 4. Daily Knickerbocker. Hugh J. Hastings. Weekly Knickerbocker, June 8, 1851. 1844. Albany Spectator. 1845. April 9. The Albany Freeholder Weekly anti-rent paper. Thos. A. Devyr. 508 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 1846. December 8. Albany Herald. A. B. Van Olinda. December 17. Albany Morning Telegraph. District School Journal. 1847. September 13. Albany Morning Express. Penny paper. Stone & Henly. Discontinued March '22, 1856. Albany Weekly Express, February 1, 1851. 1848. The Castigator. Mortimer Smith, editor. 1849. May 15. The Albany Daily Messenger. Penny paper. B. F. Romaine, editor. June 30. Sunday Dutchman. 1850. February 16. Albany Daily Times. Heron, Furman & Thornton. Albany Evening Atlas. 1851. September 1. Albany Daily Eagle. Penny paper. John Sharts. 1852. Temperance Recorder. Albany Freie Blaetter. August Miggael. 1853. February 1. Evening Transcript. Penny paper. Cuyler& Henly. 1856. March 23. Albany Daily Statesman. April 21. Albany Morning Times. Stone & Company. September 8. Albany Evening Union. Penny paper. J. Macfarlane. 1857. Albany Microscope. Charles Galpin. Monday, May 4. Albany Morning Express. J. C. Cuyler, editor. Stone & Henly, publishers. Albany Evening Herald changed to Albany Evening Union, June 29, 1857. 1858. American Citizen. Evening Courier. 1863. January 17. Standard & Statesman. 1865. October. Albany Evening Post. Penny paper. M. & E. Griffin. 1883. Outing. Outing Publishing and Printing Company, No. 59 North Pearl Street. PRESENT NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS. The Albany Argus. (See page 442). First publication, Tuesday, Janu- ary 26, 1813. Semi-weekly. Jesse Buel, editor and proprietor. First pub- lication as a daily paper, August 18, 1825. Daily Albany Argus and Albany Evening Atlas consolidated under the name of Atlas and Argus, February 18, 1856. (Calvert) Comstock & (William) Cassidy. April 6, 1865, by Wil- liam Cassidy. The Argus, Monday, May 15, 1865. The Argus Company formed May 6, 1865. William Cassidy, editor: Daniel Manning and J. Wes- ley Smith, associates. St. Clair McKelway, present editor. Sunday issue began. May 13, 1877. Argus building on south-west corner of Broadway and Beaver Street. The Albany Evening Journal, first published March 22, 1830, by B. D. Packard & Company. (See page 468). Thurlow Weed, editor. March 17, 1884, first published by the Albany Journal Company. W. J. Arkell, presi- dent, J. W. Drexel, James Arkell, and John A. Sleicher, secretary, treasurer and editor. Printing-house, No. 61 State Street. Albany Times. First published as the Albany Morning Times, Monday, April 21, 1856. Stone & Company, (Alfred Stone, David M. Barnes, and THE HISTOEY OF ALBANY. 509 Edward H. Boyd), corner of State and Green streets. Consolidated with Evening Courier, March 1, 1861. First issued as an evening paper, Septem- ber 25, 1865. Albany Weekly Times, first issued, July 16, 18*72. Theophi- lus C. Callicott, proprietor since May, 1881. Printing-house, No. 401 Broadway. Albany Morning Express. (See page 4Y5). Second publication, Mon- day, May 4, 1857. J. C. Cuyler, editor. Stone & Henly, publishers and proprietors. Corner of State and Green streets. Albany Weekly Express first issued, August 4, 1881. Sunday edition, March 4, 1883. Albany Morning Express Company: Edward Henly, Jacob C. Cuyler, Addison A. Keyes, and Nathan D. Wendell. Printing-house southwest corner of Green and Beaver streets. Daily Press and Knickerbocker. First issue of the Sunday Press, May 15, 18*70. Daily Press first published February 26, 18*77. Daily Knicker- bocker, September 4, 1843. Daily Press and Knickerbocker consolidated, August 10, 1877. Weekly Press and Legislative Journal first issued January 8, 1873. The Press Company: John H. Farrell, Myron H. Rooker, and James Macfarlane. Printing-house, No. 18 Beaver street. EvETiNG Post. First published. October 1865, at 427 Broadway. M. & E. Griffin, proprietors; R. M. Griffin, editor. Office No. 7, Hudson Avenue. Albany Evening Union. First published, Monday, May 29, 1882, by the Union Printing and Publishing Company. Office Beaver Block, South Pearl Street. Since Monday, July 16, 1883, by John Parr, editor and pro- prietor. Establishment, No. 28 Beaver street. ■ Freie Blaetter. First published in 1852 by the present editor and pro- prietor, August Miggael, at No. 26 Beaver street. German daily paper. Der Sontagsgast, issued since 1882 as a suppliment to the Saturday's edition. Present office. No. 44 Beaver street. Taglicher Albany Herold. A German daily paper. First published, Tuesday, October 10, 1871, by Jacob Heinmiller. Began publication as Der Albany Herold, on Monday, February 11, 1869; issued on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, from office No. 346 Broadway. Hertz & Heinmiller. Present office. No. 87 Westerlo street. The Cultivator & Country Gentleman. Weekly. January 4, 1866. Luther Tucker & Son. J. J. Thomas, editor. The Cultivator, monthly, first published in March, 1834. Conducted by J. Buel, J. P. Beekman & J. D. Wasson. The Country Gentleman. Weekly. First issued, January 6, 1853. Luther Tucker & John T. Thomas, editors. The Inquirer AND Criterion. Semi-weekly. April 30, 1884. Rev. B. F. McNeil. The Criterion first issued, December 31, 1881. Weekly. Charles S. Carpenter. February 20, 1882. Burdick & Taylor. Discontinued, Jan- uary 5, 1884. Office No. 481 Broadway. The Catholic Telegraph. Weekly. First pubhshed in Albany, Jan- uary 1, 1881. Telegraph Publishing Company incorporated in June, 1883. M. J. Ludden, editor. The Guide. L O. of O. F. First published February 15, 1881. Office Nos. 394 and 396 Broadway. D. H. Turner, editor. Issued every two weeks. D. H. Turner & G. B. Powers, publishers. 510 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Albany Law Journal. Monthly. First published January 8,1870. Isaac Grant Thompson, editor. Weed, Parsons & Company, publishers. Print- ing-house, Nos. 39 and 41 Columbia street. Present editor, Irving Browne. Our Work at Home. Monthly. First published September, 1875, at the rooms of the City Tract and Missionary Society, No. 40 State Street. Charles Reynolds, editor. Present office. No. 9, North Pearl Street. Charles Reynolds and George Sanderson, jr., editors. The Voice. Monthly. First published, January, 1879, at No. 401 Broad- way. Edgar S. Werner, editor and proprietor. Office No. 59 Lancaster Street. Forest, Forge and Farm. First published in Albany, June, 1889. H. S. Quackenbush, editor. Office in Tweddle building. Poultry Monthly. First issued November, 1879. The Ferris PubUshing Company. Office No. 481 Broadway. The Medical Annals. First published, January, 1880. Committee of Albany County Medical Society. January, 188'i, by Burdick & Taylor. No. 481 Broadway. MAYORS. Peter Schuyler, 1686-1694. Johannes Abeel, 1694-1695. Evert Banker, 1695-1696. Dirk Wessels, 1696-1698. Hendrick Hansen, 1698-1699. Peter Van Brugh, 1699-1700. Jan Jans Bleecker, 1700-1701. Johannes Bleecker, 1701-1702. Albert Ryckman, 1702-1703. Johannes Schuyler, 1703-1706. David Schuyler, 1706-1707. Evert Banker, 1707-1709. Johannes Abeel, 1709-1710. Robert Livingston, jr., 1710-1710. Myndert Schuyler, 1719-1721. Peter Van Brugh, 1721-1723. Myndert Schuyler, 1723-1725. Johannes Cuyler, 1725-1726. Rutger Bleecker, 1726-1729. John DePeyster, 1729-1731. Hans Hansen, 1731-1732. John DePeyster, 1732-1733. Edward Holland, 1733-1741. John Schuyler, 1741-1742. Cornelius Schuyler, 1742-1746. Dirk Ten Broeck 1746-1748. 1 Last mayor appointed by an English 3 See page 376. Jacob C. Ten Eyck 1748-1750. Robert Sanders 1760-1754. Hans Hensen 1754-1856. Sybrant G. Van Schaick 1756-1761. , Volkert P. Douw 1761-1770. Abraham C. Cuyler, 1770-1776.1 John Barclay, 1778-1779.2 Abraham Ten Broeck, 1779-1783. John J. Beekman, 1783-1786. John Lansing, jr., 1786-1790. Abraham Yates, jr., 1790-1796, Abraham Ten Broeck, 1796-1799. Philip S. Van Rensselaer, 1799-1814. Elisha Jenkins, 1814-1819. Philip S. Van Rensselaer, 1819-1821. Charles E. Dudley, 1821-1824. Ambrose Spencer, 1824-1826. James Stevenson, 1826-1828. Charles E. Dudley, 1828-1829. John Townsend, 182y-1831. Francis Bloodgood, 1831-1834. Erastus Corning, 1834-1837. Teunis Van Vechten, 1837-1838. Jared L. Rathbone, 1838-1841. Teunis Van Vechten, 1841-1842. Barent P. Staats, 1842-1843. THE HISTORY OF ALBAJNY. 511 Friend Humphrey, 1843-1845. 'George H. Thacher, 1860-1862. John Keyes Paige, 1845-1846. Eli Perry, 1872-1866. William Parmelee, 1846-1848. George H. Thacher, 1866-1868. John Taylor, 1848-1849. Charles E. Bleecker, 1868-18'70. Friend Humphrey, 1849-1850. George H. Thacher, 18*70-1874. Franklin Townsend, 1850-1851. Edmund L. Judson, 1874-1876. Eli Perry, 1850-1854. A. Bleecker Banks, 1876-1878. William Parmelee, 1854-1856. Michael Nolan, 1878-1883. Eli Perry, 1856-1860. John Swinburne, June 25, 1883-1884. i A. Bleecker Banks, 1884 to present time. BANKS. New York State National Bank. No. 69 State Street. (See pages 431, 432). Charter expired December 31, 1850. Began business under new articles of association, January 1,1851. Became a national bank, June 1, 1865. Cap- ital, $250,000. J. Howard King, president ; J. H. Van Antwerp, vice-presi- dent ; D. W. Wemple, cashier. Mechanics and Farmers' Bank. Northeast corner of State and James streets. (See pages 439, 440). Charter expired December 31, 1852. Re- sumed business, January 1, 1853. Became a national bank, June 19, 1865. Changed to a state bank, August 4, 1868. Capital, $350,000. Dudley Olcott, president ; John J. Olcott, vice-president ; George G. Davidson, cashier. Mechanics and Farmers' Savings Bank. Incorporated, April 12, 1855. Northeast corner of State and James streets. Dudley Olcott, president ; George G. Davidson, secretary. Albany City Natioal Bank. No. 47 State Street. (See page 472) Be- came a national bank, May 15, 1865. Capital, $300,000. Erastus Corning, president, George H. Thacher, vice-president ; Amos P. Palmer, cashier. Albany City Savings Institution. No. 47 State Street. Incorporated, March 29, 1850. Erastus Corning, president ; A. P. Palmer, treasurer ; R. C. Case, secretary. National Albany Exchange Bank. (No. 450 Broadway. (See pages 473, 474). Became a national bank, January 23, 1865. Capital, $300,000. Chauncey P. Williams, president ; Lansing Merchant, vice-president ; Jonas Brooks, cashier. Albany Exchange Savings Bank. No. 450 Broadway. Incorporated, April 18, 1856. Isaac Chapman, president ; Chauncey P. Williams, treasurer. National Commercial Bank. No. 38 State Street. (See pages 466, 467). Chartered as a national bank, May 31, 1865. Began business as a national bank, August 1, 1865. Capital $300,000. Daniel Manning, president; Rob ert C. Pruyn, vice-president; Edward A. Groesbeck, cashier. Merchants' National Bank. No. 458 Broadway. Organized as the 1 Mayor elected in 1883 by decision of the Court, June 25, 1883. 612 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. Merchants' Bank of Albany, January 19, 1853. John Tweddle, president, John Sill, cashier. Capital $400,000. Began business at banking-house No. 59 State Street, April 1, 1853, Became a national bank, April 22, 1865. Present capital $200,000. J. Wilbur Tillinghast, president; N. D. Wendell, vice-president; J. Irving Wendell, cashier. Union National Bank. No. 406 Broadway. Organized as the Bank of the Union, June 2, 1853. Billings P. Learned, president; John F. Batchelder, cashier. Capital $300,000. Began business January 1, 1854, in the build- ing No. 35 State Street. Removed to present building in 1856. Became a national bank, March 9, 1864. Present capital, $250,000. Billings P. Learned, president ; James C. Cook, cashier. First National Bank. Nos. 35 and 3*7 State Street. Organized Janu- ary 26, 1846. Thomas Schuyler, president; Adam Van Allen, cashier. Capital, $200,000. Began business in the Exchange building, February 22, 1864. Moved to present building in 18*71. Charter renewed, February 22, 1883. Present capital $200,000. Adam Van Allen, president; G. A. Van Allen, vice-president; Ledyard Cogswell, cashier. Albany County Bank. No. 11 State Street. Organized February 26. IS^l. Jacob Leonard, president; John Templeton, cashier. Capital, $200, 000. Began business in Tweddle Hall, May 15, 18Y1. Moved to present building, January 16, 1883. Present capital, $200,000. B. W. Wooster, president; Francis N. Sill, vice-president; John Templeton, cashier. Albany County Savings Bank. No. 71 State Street, Jasper Van Wormer, president; John Templeton, treasurer; A. V. Bensen, secretary. National Savings Bank. No. 59 State Street. Incorporated 1868. Organized April 2*7, 1869. Began business in building No. 57 State Street, June 28, 1869. Erastus Corning, president; Albert P. Stevens, secretary and treasurer. John H. Van Antwerp, present president. Deposits in the bank, January 1, 1884. $3,345,330,66, Assets, $4,038,773,30. Home Savings Bank of Albany. No. 40 State Street. Incorporated May 10, 1871. John D. Capron, president; Edmund L. Judson, treasurer; William Lacy, secretary. Albany Savings Bank. Northwest corner of State and Chapel streets. (See pages 458-460). CHANGED NAMES OF STREETS. Barrack to Chapel. Deer to State. Bass Lane to Bleecker. Delaware Turnpike to Delaware Ave. Bone Lane to Division. Dock to Dean. Boscawen to Swan. Duck to Robin. Bowery to Central Avenue. Duke to Eagle. Broad to State. Elizabeth to Second. Brower to Market. Embargo Alley to Dennison. Buffalo to Hudson. Fox to Canal. Capitol to Park. Frielinghuysen to Franklin. Court to (South) Broadway. Gage to Swallow. Cow Lane to Union. Grass Lane to Union. THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. 513 Hallenbake to Grand. Handelaar to Market. Hare to Orange. High to Ten Broeck. Howe to Fox. Hudson to Hudson Avenue. Johnson to Lark. John to Third. Jonkers to Broad. Kilby to Hamilton. King to Lion. Lion to Washington. Lumber to Livingston Avenue. Lutheran to Howard. Lydius to Madison Avenue. Malcomb to Broad. Market to (North) Broadway. Mark Lane to Exchange. Marsh to Montgomery. Middle Lane to James. Mink to West Ferry. Monckton to Mink. Nail to Lutheran. Nucella to Fourth Avenue . Orchard to North Pearl. Otter to Elk. Otter to Wolf. Paarl to Pearl. Patroon to Clinton Avenue. Perry (a part) to Lake Avenue. Pigeon to Perry. Pitt to Otter. Prideaux to Buffalo. Prideaux to Tiger. Prince to Dean. Queen to Elk. Quiter to Buffalo. Rom to Maiden Lane. Sand to Lafayette. Schenectady to Snipe. Schoharie to Duck. Snipe to Lexington Avenue. South to Gansevoort. Sparrow to Ontario. Spring to Congress. Store Lane to Norton. Swallow to Knox. Tiger to Lancaster. Turkey to Quail. Van Driessen to Green. Van Schaick to Monroe. Van Vechten to Third Avenue. Wall to Hare. Warren to Dove. Washington to Washington Avenue. West Ferry to Myrtle Avenue. Whitehall Avenue to Second Ave. Whitehall Road to Whitehall Ave. Wolf to Lvdius. FREE AND ACCEPTED MASONS. A AND A. SCOTTISH RITE. Ineffable and Sublime Grand Lodge of Perfection. Founded, December 20, 176*7. (See page 348). Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem. Founded, December, 1*767. Rose Croix Chapter. Founded, November 16, 1824. Al- bany Sovereign Consistory. Founded, November 16, 1824. LODGES. Mount Vernon Lodge No. 3. Originally Union Lodge. Organized, Feb- ruary 21, 1765. (See pages 347-349). Present lodge received its name by warrant in 1806. Lodge incorporated, March 17, 1874. Masters' Lodge No. 5. Originally No. 2. Organized, March 5, 1768. (See page 349). Temple Lodge No. 14. Originally No. 53. Organized, November 11, 1797. Wash- ington Lodge No. 85. Organized in 1841. Ancient City Lodge No. 452. Originally Mount Moriah Lodge No. 143. Adopted name, December 17, 1873. Wadsworth Lodge No. 417. Organized in J856. Guttenberg Lodge No. 737. Organized in 1873. 33 514 THE HISTORY OF ALBANY. CHAPTERS. Temple Chapter No. 5. Capital City Chapter No. 242. COUNCIL OF R. AND S. M. DeWitt Clinton Council No. 22. COMMANDERIES. Temple Commandery No. 2. Temple Tabernacle No. 5. U. S. A. Knight Templar Priests. ORDERS. Cyprus Temple of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Knights of the Red Cross of Constantine. INDEPENDENT ORDER OF ODD FELLOWS. ' ENCAMPMENTS. New York Encampment of Patriarchs No. 1. Chartered, June 25, 1829. Reinstituted, September 23, 1846. Albany Encampment No. 58, August 23, ISTl. DEGREE LODGES. Albany City No. 11. Excelsior No. 15. Daughters of Rebecca. Degree Lodge No. 9. Chartered, March 23, 18*70. Daughters of Rebecca. Ger- man Oak No. 31. Chartered, August 24, 18*71. SUBORDINATE LODGES. Hope Lodge No. 3, now No. 2. Warrent granted, January 4, 1829. Charter surrendered, June 4, 1830. New granted, July 15, 1844. Firemen's No. 19. Warrent granted, January 1, 1838. German Colonial, No. 16. Warrent granted, March 12, 1839. American, No. 32. Warrent granted, February II, 1840. Rechartered, February 11, 1840. Phoenix, No. 4. Warrent granted, October 3, 1840. Samaritan, No. 19. " " August 4, 1843. Clinton No. 7. Warrent granted, Aug. 1, 1846. Reinstituted Aug. 26, 1846. Mount Hermon, No. 38. Warrent granted, June 18, 184*7. Schoeneghtada, No. 8*7. " " December 1, 1850. Mount Carmel, No. 76. " " December 1, 1850. Beaverwyck, No. 261. " " December 9, 1870. Mountaineer, No. 321. " " May 14, 1872. Albany City, No. 385. " " April 6, 1874. Capitol City, No. 440. " " August 5, 1876. Odd Fellows' Hall, Perry building, North Pearl Street. Dedicated, June 11, 1879. CENSUS. 1790 . 3,506. 1830 24,238. 1860 . . 62,367 1800 5,349. 1835 . . 28,109. 1865 62,613. 1810 . 9,356. 1840 33,663. 1870 . . 69,422. 1814 10,083. 1845 . . 42,139. 1875 86,013. 1820 . . 12,541. 1850 60.763. 1880 . . 90,908. 1825 . 15,974. 1865 67,333. INDEX. Academy, Albany, 452, 453. Academy of Music, 490, 491. Adelphi Club, 492. Albany, site, 4, 8, 12, 21, 22; site oc- cupied, 23, 24; named, 145; re- named, 159; charter, 19'7-203; in 1694, 256; Kalm's description, 304- 11; Chandler's, 321; Smith's 322; Morse's, 402-405 ; evidences of growth, 405, 406; in 1795, 416-421; in 1*796, 423; made seat of state- government, 424-426; in 1813, 443- 451; memorable in history, 456-457; port of entry, 487; town of Colonic annexed, 451; annexation of parts of Watervliet and Bethlehem, 491. Albany County erected, 182; popula- tion, 292, 311, 350. Albany Institute, 467. Albertsen, Hendrick, 55, 56. Alms-house farm, 98. Andros, Edmund, 158, 159, 161, 164, 166, 170, 198, 214, 219, 220. Anglomania, 328. Anker, 103. Anti-rent war, 487. Appel, Adriaen Jansen, 102. Apell, John, 254. Armsby, James H. 473. Arsenal, 449, 489. Assembly, colonial, 130. Baker, John, 132, 146, 149. Bank, Albany Dime Savings, 489. Banker, Evert, 259, 261. Bank, Hope Savings, 490. Bank, National, 490. Bank of Albany, 409-413, 489. Bank of Albany. Canal, 487. Bank of the Capitol, 489. Bank of the Interior, 489. Banks, 511-512. Bank, Sixpenny Savings, 489, Barclay, John, 354, 358, 376; Thomas, 27s. Baxter, Jervis, 215, 221, 222 Bay, John, 356. Bazaa"r, Army Relief, 479, 490. Beaver-skins, 3, 9, 25, 29, 30, 103. Beaver, the, 28, 29, 30. Becker, Jan, 200. Becker, Jan Jurrianse, 148. Beeren Island, 38, 48, 75. Bellman, 282. Bellomont, Earl of, 258. Bell-ringing, 311, 312, 438. 488. Bender, E. H. 492. Bever-kill, 56, 85, 102. Beverswyck, the dorpe, 98, 101, 104, 117, 154, 155, 160. Binckes, Jacob, 153, 154. Bleecker, Henry, 356 ; Jan Jansen, 164, 182, 200, 210, 221, 229, 232, 249; John R. 356. Board of Trade, 488. Bogaert, H. M. van der, 85. Bogardus, Anneke Janse, 124-127 ; Cornelius, 125 ; Everhardus, 125 ; John, 126, Peter, 156, 249. Bogart, Henry, I. 356. Boschloopers, 118, 119, 120. Bratt, A. E. 356. Bridge, first, 490; second, 491 ; third, 492 ; State Street, accident, 488. Broadway, viaduct, 492. Brodhead, Daniel, 144 ; J. Romeyn, 11, 12. Brockholls, Anthony, 163, 164, 176, 177. Burgerlijke oath, 93. Burghers, 178. Burghers recht, 108, 199. Bull, Jonathan, 221. 223, 245, Burial-ground, 407- Burgesses Corps, 487. Burgoyne's invasion, 368-376. Burnett, William,. 288, 290. Cabots, 3, 135. Canals : Erie and Champlain, 453- 454. 460-462, 464-466. Capitol, 432-434, 438, 445-447, 468, 483-486. Cartwright, George, 144, 145. Castle Island, 10, 12, 14, 21, 39, 40, 46, 48. Cayugas, (Caiougas, Cajouges, Cay- ougas, Cayugas), 25, 58, 155, 167, 180, 258, 292. Cemetery, Rural, 488; St. Agnes, 491. Census, 287, 514. Centennial, 394. Charter of the city, 1/^7-203. Cholera, 472, 488, 489. 515 516 INDEX. Churches: Baptist, 493, 403; Chris- tian, 494; Congregational, 494, 495; Episcopal, 495, 496 ; Evangelical, 496; Friends, 496; German Reform- ed, 347 ; Jewish, 497 ; Lutheran, 497, 498; Methodist, 498-501 ; Pres- byterian, 501-503; Reformed Prot- estant, 503, 504; Roman Catholic, 504, 5(15 ; Second Advent, 505 ; Unitarian, 505 ; Universalist, 505, 506 ; Undenominational, 506. City-building, 491. City-hall, 207, 381, 432, 468, 4«7. Clinton, George, (colonial govenor), 299-302. Clinton, George, (state -governor), 368, 383. Coal, first use, 463. Cohoes falls, 172. Colonial congress, 313-318. Colonie, 449, 451. Colve, Anthony, 154, 155, 158. Comet, 176, 177. Congress Hall, 483. Coorn, Nicolaas, 75, 78, 79. Corlaer, 168, 180, 214. Cornbury, Lord, 270, 275. Corstiaenssen, Hendrik, 13, 14. Cortereal, Caspar, 3. Cosbv, William, 294, 296. Court-house, 157, 298, 381, 432, 438. Courts, 168. Crol, Sebastian Jansen, 31, 32, 37, 38, 43, 85. Croon, Dirck Jansen, 113. (^ustoms, 184-196, 338-340. Cuyler, Abraham, 356; Hendrick,234; Jacob, 356; Johannes, 232. Dana, Natural History Society, 491. Bankers, Jasper, 13, 171. DeDecker, Johannes, ln2, 103, 107. 128, 142. Declaration of Independence, 367, 368, 491. Deforest, Jose, 18. DeHooges, Anthonie, 85, 92. DeLaet, Johannes, 7, 39, 48. DeLaet's Island, 39. DeLancey, Stephen, 356. Delavall, Thomas, 165. Delaware River, 26. Dellius, Godefridus,187,l78, 238, 259, 260, 261, 262. (Read, on page 282, for first sentence of last paragraph: The congregation of the Reformed church, after the death of Domine Lydius, called the Rev. Petrus van Driessen, in 1712, to take charge of it). Depots: Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, 491; Union, 491. Directory, first, 442. Discoveries of America, 5. Docks, 346, 347. Dongan, Thomas, 179, 197, 198, 199, 212, 214. Douw, Volckert Jansen, 113; Volkert P. 356, 360. Draeyer, Andries, 155, 156. Dudley Observatory, 8, 477, 489. Dyckman, Johannes, 94-97. East India Company 5; 6, 10, 15. Electric Illuminating Company, 492. Elkens, Jacob, 14, 15, 40, 41, 42. Elm tree, 491. Emigrants, 415. Engine-house, 298. Esopus, 116, 127, 134. Evertsen, Cornells, 158, 154. Exchange Association, Albany, 487. Excise, slaughter, 103 ; tapsters', 103. Fairs, county, 351-353. Federal procession, 397-401. Female Academy, 487. Fire department, 334, 335, 336, 427, 449, 480, 487, 488. Fire-engine, first, 293, 298; second, 333, 334; first steam, 490. Fire-masters, 207, 215. Fires, 413, 427, 475. Fletcher, Benjamin, 251, 253, 254, 255, 259. Florin, 25. Fort Albany, 145, 146,149, 158, 155, 163, 171, 175, 215, 221, 222, 256, 257, 268, 270, 296, 888. Fort Amsterdam, 31, 50, 78, 81, 98,' 101. Fort Aurania, 144. Fort Cralo, 129. Fort James, 143, 153, 154. Fort "Nassau, 12, 14, 40, 155, 156, 157, 158. Fort Orange, 24, 25, 28, 31, 32, 37, 40, 41, 48, 55, 65, 67, 69, 76. 78, 79. 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91, 96, 97, 98, 101, 104, 127, 128, 129, 140, 142, 144, 145, 154, 170, 171, 173. Fort Orange Club, 492. Fort, the stone, 271, 272. 278. Fort Willem Hendrick, 154. Forty-fourth regiment, 490. Forty-third regiment, 490. Fox kill, 104. Free Academy, 491. French chateau, 4, 10, 12, 13, 14. French invasion, 149,' 212, 216, 219, 242, 243, 252. Freshet, 455. Furs, 3, 4, 8, 10, 24, 25, 49, 50, 74, 118, 325. INDEX. 517 Fur-traders: French, 4, 10,12; Dutch, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 49, 118, 119, 123, lYH. Fur-trade, 325. Fuvck, de, 160, 171, 175. Fuyck kill, 98, 102, 104. Gallows hill, 337. Gas, illuminating, 455. Gas Light Co., of 1825, 487; of 1833, 487; of 1841, 488; People's, 492. General Assembly, 181. Geological hall, 474, 477. Gerritsen, Adrian, ll:->, 200. Gerritsen, Martin, 156, 164, 165, 197, 199. Gerrittsen, Wolfert, 38, 45. Gesmessert. 39. Glandorf, Johannes, 287. Godyn, Samuel, 39, 48. (rovernment-building, 492. Government, city, 480. Grande River, 4, 7, 10, 13, 20. Grasmeer, Wilhelmus, 91. Great Flat, 122, 123. Greenbush. 129, 138. Griswold, Stephen B. 477. Guilder, 25. Half Moon, the', 5, 7, 8, 9, 10. Herbertsen, Andries, 43, 93, 113, 435. Holidays, 192. Homes, Henry A. 477, 491. Hondius, Jodocus, 5, 6. Hospital, Albany City, 488, 489. Houten, Captain, 40, 41. Howell, George R. 477. Hudson, Henry, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Hudson, River, 4, 13, 21, 26, 83, 136. Huron, Indians, 65. Huyck, Jan, 31. Indians, 1, 2, 3, 4, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 37, 49, 50, 58, 59, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 90, 100, 118, 120, 121, 123, 137, 138, 138, 147, 163, 164, 166, 167, 179, 180, 202, 210,211, 212, 223, 238, 250, 251, 255, 258, 259, 260, 261, 266, 267, 268, 269, 275, 277, 279, 288, 289, 290, 291, 300, 301, 312, 318, 341, 342, 343, 344, 360, 361, 362. Indian traders, 202, 205, 506, 325. Ingoldsby, Richard, 251, 254, 270. Insurance Company, Albany, 440 ; Commerce. 490. Iroquois, 69, 71, 83. Jackson Corps, 491. Jacobsen, Rutger, 101, 106, lln, 117, 125. James, duke of York and Albany, 136, 158, 160, 181, 182. James II, king of England, 182, 198, 214, 216, 219, 234, Janse, Anneke, (See Bogardus). Jansen, Andreas, 91. Jansen, Jacob, 67. Jansen, Marcelus, 102. Jansen, Roeloff, 125. Jansen, Thomas, 102. Jansen, Volckert, 113, 156. Jogues, Father Isaac, 65-71, 81, 82, 84. Johnson, William, 300, 303, 318, 320, 345. Kaghnuwage, 113. Kalm, Peter, 303. Katskill, 73, 74. Kerkebuurt, 53. Kieft, Willem, 47, 79, 80, 86. Knapton, Csesar, 152, 163. Knickerbacker, Johannes, 275. Labatie, Jan, 67. Lafayette, Marquis de, 466. Lake George, 82. La Montagne, Johannes, 80, 111, 116, 136, 141, 145. Lancaster school, 440, 441. Lansing, Gerrit, 356; Jacob, 356,270; John, 200, 210. Law School, 489. Legislature, first meeting at Albany, 381. Leisler, Jacob, 165, 166, 224 242, 246- 249. Letter-boxes 490. Library, public, 409; state, 455, 456, 476, 477. Lincoln, Abraham, 478. Livingston, Peter R. 354,370; Robert, 160, 161, 200, 203, 212, 214, 246, 247, 248, 254; Walter, 354. Locke, Michael, 7. Loockermans, Govert, 78, 79. Lords States General, U, 13, 15, 16, 20, 33, 47, 48, 75, 99, 133, 159. Lottery, 331 337. Loudon, Earl of, 328. (Name on page 328 should be Loudon). Lovelace, Richard, 125, 150, 151, 152, 153. Lumber-district, 480. Lutherans, 107, 108, 150, 156. Mackerel, the yacht, 20, 21, 25. Magellan, 5. Mahakans, 57. Mahakinbas, 57. Mahakuaas, 10, 57. Mahawawa Indians, 25. Mahicans, 21, 22, 23, 27, 31. Mahikanders, 25, 138, 163. Maikans, 10 Maps; Gerard Mercator's, 3; Michael Locke's, 7; New Netherland, 11, Rensselaerswyck, 39. 518 INDEX. Maquaas, 10, 12, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 31, 58, 110, 128, 137, 173, 180, 223, 281. Manahata River, 135. Manhattan, 71. Manhattans, 56. Mannatans Island, 21. Manners, 184-196. Manning, John, 144, 145, 146, 153. Market-house, 273, 292. Marselis, Gysbert, 847, 356. Masons, 347-349, 513, 514. Maurice, Prince, 12, 24. Mauritius River, 13, 19, 21, 29, 30, 33. May, Cornelis Jacobsen, 19, 20, 21, 23, 30. Mayors, 510, 511. Mechanics' society, 414. Medical College, 473, 489. Megapolensis, Joannes, 53, 54, 55, 56. 57, 72, 81, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 99. Merchants, 386, 387. Milbourne, Jacob, 165, 166, 230-239, 246. Militia, 164, 169, 182, 254, 269, 271, 331, 370. Mingle, 103. Minuit, Pieter, 30, 41. Missionary work, 277-282. Moenemines castle, 38. Mohawk River, 4, 21, 83, 173, 297. Mohawks, 10, 12, 21, 31, 32, 33, 41, 50, 51, 57, 65, 67, 69, 82, 83, 109, 111-116, 120, 121, 122, 137, 146, 148, 155, 160, 162, 163, 167, 183, 258, 260, 261, 292, 297. Mohegans, 11, 31, 33, 57, 138, 163. Munsell, Joel, 85, 492. Murphy, Henry C, 6, 13. Museum, 427, 450, 487. Negroes, 35, 49, 137, 209, 274. Netherlands, United, 5, 11. New Amsterdam, 101, 104, 109, 132, 136, 140, 141, 143. New France, 3, 4, 11, 12. New Land, 3. New Netherland, U, 12, 13, 15, 18. 19, 25, 26, 33, 47, 48, 49, 133, 135, 136, 139, 154, 158. New Orange, 154. Newspapers, 506-510. New York: lower bay, 1; upper bay, 2, 3, 20; site, 30, 31 39; city, 143. Nicolls, Richard, 136, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 150, 155. Nieu Nederlandt, ship, 19, 20, 21. Ninety-first regiment, 490. North River, 26. 76. Odd Fellows, 514. Old Guard, Burgesses Corps, 491. One hundred and thirteenth regi- ment, 490. Oneidas, (Oneydes. Onyades), 25, 58. 122. 155, 167, 180, 258, 292. Onondagas, (Onondagos, Onnonda- ges, Nondages), 25 58, 155, 167. 180, 258, 292. Orphan Asylum, 487. Otter skins, 3 9, 25, 103. Ottowais, 211. Palisades, 117, 255, 256. Papsickenekas, 46. Parker, James, 200, 203. Park, Washington, 482. Pastors, (See Churches). Patroons, 33, 34, 35, 47, 48, 49. Peelen, Brandt, 43, 48. Pels, Evert, 55, 56, 93. Penitentiary, 488. Penn, William, 179, 180. Pharmacy, college of, 489. Philip, King, 162, 163. Physicians, 326. Pier, built, 464. Pierson, Jonathan, 85. Pillory. 168. Pinhorn, William, 261. Planck, Jacob Albertzsen, 43, 46. Population, (See Census). Post-office, 389, 492. Post-riders, 389. Pretty, Richard, 158, 165, 200, 203. Priests, (See Churches). Prince Maurice's River. Privileges and Exemptions, 33, 34, 35, 36, 47. 133. Provoost, Johannes, 113, 117, 156, 159, 246. Public building, 425, 426, 447. Pynchon, John, 166. Railroads: Mohawk & Hudson, 486, 469-472; New York & Albany, 487; Castleton & West Stockbridge, 488; Albany & West Stockbridge, 488; Western (Massachusetts), 488; Boston & Albany, 488; Albany, Bennington & Rutland, 488; Al- bany & Northern, 488, 489; Hud- son River, 489; New York Central, 489; Albany & Susquehenna, 491; New York, West Shore & Buffalo, 492. Rattle-watch, 264. Rectors, (See Churches). Reformed Church, 49, 53, 155, 156. Rensselaer's Castle, 76, 78, 79. Rensselaerswyck, 37, 39, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 53, 65, 71, 78, 81, 82, 86, 89, 94. 101, 133, 145, 149, 150, 155, 159, 170, 174, 198. 199. Revolutionary war, 364-385. Richards, James, 166. Riots, railroad, 492. INDEX. 519 River Indians, 25, 116, 117, 118, 134, 137, 162, 257, 258. Robinson, Rev. John, 15. Romer, Wolfgang William. 270-273. Ryckman, Albert, 200. Safety, committee of, 356. Salisbury, Sylvester, (After Lieuten- ant Sylvester, on page 153, read Salisbury) 153, 154, 164, 165. Sanckhagag, 37. Sanders, Robert, 172, 173, 216. Sandpunt, 20. Saratoga, (Saraaghtoge, Saratoge, Serachtogue) 182, 210, 299. Schaets, Gideon, 99, 106, 166, 174, 177. 178. Schaihtecogue land, 201, 274. Schenectady, 122, 123, 124, 148, 155, 160, 173, 178, 234, 239, 242, 245, 271, 272, 283. Schermerhorn, Ryer Jacobse, 249. School, High, 491; Lancaster, 440; St. Agnes, 491; State Normal, 488. Schools, 91, 148, 287, 826, 380, 405, 441, 481. 482. Schonowe, 122. Schutte, John, 148. Schuyler, Arent, 210; David, 156, 200 ; John, 248, 253 ; Philip, 165, 359, 354, 360, 362, 366. 360-37^3, 376 ; Philip Pietersen, 91, 92, 95, 113 ; Pieter, 182, 200, 203, 220, 221, 231, 237, 238, 245, 248, 251, 253, 254, 256. 259, 269, 271. Se and Sen, 13. Senecas, (Senecques, Sennekes, Sin- nedowane), 25, 58. Ill, 119, 128, 146, 155, 163, 258, 292. Settlers, names, 43, 44, 55, 93, 178, 179. Sharpe, Thomas, 158, 164, 230, 231, 247. Silvester, Peter, 356. Siston, Michael, 158, 165. Slaves, 35, 209, 274. Sloughter, Henry, 249, 250, 251. Sluyter, Peter, 13, 171. Smack Island, 38, 46. Small pox, 132. Smith, Captain John, 7, 9. Soldiers, condition. 265, 268. South River. 26. Southwick, Solomon, 507. Stadt-house, 157, 197. Staes or Staets, Abraham, 55, 56, 138. Staets, Joachim, 200, 234, 239, 240, Stages, 388, 406, 413, 414. Stamp act, 345. State armory, 490. State-hall, 474. State-house, 432, 433, 434. Steamboat Company, Hudson River, 487; New Jersey, 489. Steamboats, 435-438, 450, 463, 464; People's line, 487, 489. Steamboat-landing, 488. Stocks, 168. Stoves, manufacture, 480. Street-cars, Lumber-district, 490. Streets, lighted with oil, 350; with gas, 488. Streets, names, 512, 513. Street-railway, Albany, 490; North Pearl, 490;" State, 490. Strike, dock and railroad laborers, 490. Stringer, Samuel, 347, 348, 349, 356, 377. Stuyvesant, Petrus, 86, 87, 88, 89,90, 91, 92, 98, 100, 101, 102, 108, 119. 120, 121, 127, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 155. Sun-dial, 460. Superintendence and correspondence, committee, 354. Swart, Gerrit, 99. Swinton, Isaac, 200. Telegraph, 488. Teller, Andries, 165. Ten Broeck, Abraham, 354, 456, 461. Ten Eyck, Jacob C, 356; John H., 356. Thanksgiving, 81, 101, 134. Theatre, 329, 330, 350, 389-393, 441, 442, Green Street, 489. Third regiment, 490. Thirtieth regiment, 490. Tide, 449. Tionowdorogue land, 201, 293, 294, 295, 261, 262. Tobacco, manufacture, 420, 450. Tomassen, Jan, 113, 165. Tories, 367. Town-clock, 333. Townsend, Theodore, 460. Trico, Catelina, 21, 25. Tryon, William, 360. Tuscaroras, 290, 292. Tweddle Hall, burned. 492. Twenty-fifth regiment, 490. University of Albany, 488. Van Ale, Lawrence, 200. Van Brugge. Carl, 89, 90. Van Cortlandt, Stephanus, 199. 225. Van Curler, Arendt, 43, 51, 55, 56, 57, 67, 72, 73, 74, 75, 77, 83, 85, 101, 113, 122, 193. Van der Donck. Adriaen. 29, 51, 72, 73, 74, 75, 79, 85. Van Driessen, Petrus. (Read on page 282, for first sentence of last para- 2. 9 k 520 INDEX. /y graph : The congregation of the Reformed church, after the death of Domine Lydius. called the Rev. Petrus Van Driessen, in 171-, to take charge of it). 282. Van Dyck, Cornells, 156. — Van Krieckebeck, Daniel, 24, 31, o2. Van Meteren, Emanuel, V, 8. Van Nes, Hendrick, 156. Van Nieuwenhuysen,Wilhelmus,161, 162, 164. Van Rensselaer, Jan Baptiste, 37, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99, 103, 104, 150; Jere- mias, 113, 132, 133, 136, 141, 145, 149, 155, 156; Johannes, (read on second line of second paragraph on page 85, Johannes for Johan), 37, 38; Kiliaen, 37, 38. 39, 47, 48, 51. 53, 55, 72, 73, 76. 82, 85, 159, 160, 170; Kiliaen, jr., 249; Madam, 173; Rev. Nicolaas, 161, 164, 165. 166; Richard, 174; Stephen, 337. Van Santvoordt, Cornelis, 356. Van Schaick, Goosen Gerritsen. 164; Levinus, 200, 249. Van Schelluyne, Dirk, 125, 133, 145. Van Slechtenhorst, Brandt Arent. 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95; 98; Gerrit, 132, 156, 167. Van Twiller, Wouter, 41, 42. 47, 85, 125. Van Veere. Maryn Adriaensen. 43, 57, 72. Van Wely, Johannes, 85. Van Wensveen, Deick Cornelis, 42. Verbeck, Jan, 132. Verhulst, Willem, 30. Verplanck, Isaac, 200. Verrazzano, Giovanni da, (read tenth instead of eleventh, on ninth line of page 2), 2, 3. Verrazzano, sea of, 7. Virbeeck, Gerrit, 138. Virginia, 7, 8, 11, 19. Vossen kill, 104. Vounen, Peter. 156. Walloons, 18. 19, 21. Wampum, 23, 45, 61, 309. War of 1812, 441 ; rebellion, 478, 479. Wards, 480, 488. Washington Continentals, 489. Washington, George, 383, 384, 385 428. Washington Rifle Company, 488. Wassenaer, Nicholaes a, 19. Water supply, 204. Watervliet Turnpike and Railroad Company, 490. Waterworks, 204, 429, 430, 445, 479 480. Weed, Thurlow, 468. Weise, Arthur James, 5. Wendell, Evert Janse, 125 ; Johan- nes, 182, 200, 229, 232, 237, 249 Wessells, Henry, 356; Dirck, 165, 200, 207, 233, 235, 236, 249, 254, 259, 261, 269. West Albany, 479. West India Company. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26', 29, 33, 36, 40, 42, 47, 48, 49, 55, 75, 76, 85, 86, 87, 89, 94, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 106, 108, 122, 123, 130, 181, 132, 133, 139. Whale Island, 86. Wheat market, 387, 415, 444. Whipper, public, 337. Whipping-post, 168. Wijk or wyck, 39. Wilden, 22, 23, 28, 41, 51, 79, 118. Willemstadt. 155, 156, 159. William oath of allegiance to King 262, 263. William of Orange, Prince, 219. William and Mary, 224, 225, 226, 227. 228, 233. Williams, Ephraim, 319, 320. Winne, Peter, 165. Wynantse, Melgert, 200. Wyncoop, Pieter, 73, 77. Yates, Abraham, jr., 354, 356, 376 Peter W., 347 ; Robert, 356. Young Men's Association, 492. Young Men's Christian Association 492. Zeewan, 45, 51. Zouaves, Albany, 490.