974.726 P Proceedings of the bi -centennial 2324475 THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY Reference use only DO NOT REMOVE FROM THE LIBRARY c n r 3 3333 i oQO ST. GEORGE LiBRARY CENTER REFERENCE NOT TO BE TAKEN FROM ROOM s CVI O PROCEEDINGS OF THE BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION' OF RICHMOND COUNTY, . ' > . > STATEN ISLAND NEW YORK. NOVEMBER IST, 1883. > ' t < , I I t . " * I , ,,\) CL 78 - "AQUEHONGA." r^^^ .,''- . . ' : > THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRA CIRCULATION DEPARTS. LNT TOTTENVILLE BliANCK, 743U AMdOY KOAD 1683. "AQUEHONGA." 1883. GOVERNMENT. 1683. CHARLES II., King of England. THOMAS DUNGAN, Colonial Governor. 1783. CONTINENTAL CONGRESS. GEORGE CLINTON, Governor State of New York. 1883. CHESTER A. ARTHUR President of United States. GROVER CLEVELAN D, Governor State of New York. PERRY BELMONT Representative in Congress. JOHN G. BOYD, State Senator. ERASTUS BROOKS, Member of Assembly. STEPHEN D. STEPHENS Judge and Surrogate. CORNELIUS A. HART, County Clerk. BENJAMIN BROWN Sheriff. JAMES TULLY, County Treasurer. GEORGE GALLAGHER, District Attorney. THEODORE FREAN, .School Commissioner. Supervisors. ROBERT MOORE, Castleton. JESSE OAKLEY, Westfield. GEORGE BECHTEL, Middleton. NATHANIEL MARSH, Southfield. ABRAM CROCHERON, Northfield. THEO. C. VERMILYE, Counsel CLARENCE M. JOHNSON, Clerk. Superintendents of Ioor. SAMUEL LEWIS, WM. REARDON, CLARENCE T. BARRETT, JAMES O'NEIL, JOHN J. VAUGHN. WM. S. HORNFAGER, Counsel. Coroners. ISAAC LEA, E. A. HERVEY, JOHN K. AMBROSE, JOHN A. HOLT. To Mr. ROBERT MOORE, Supervisor of the Town of Castleton, is due the credit of being the first to suggest the celebration of the Bi-Centennial organization of Richmond County, and from suggestions made by him the Board of Supervisors called a meeting of the citizens to co-operate with them in perfecting the plans for a grand celebration of the event. The first meeting of citizens was held September 22d, '1883, at which Hon. ERASTUS BROOKS was chosen Presi- dent ; Hon. GEO. WM. CURTIS, Louis DE.JONGE, ERASTUS WIMAN and Dr. EPHRAIM CLARK, Vice-Presidents ; GEO. H. DALEY, Recording Secretary, and CHARLES ARTHUR HOLLICK, Corresponding Secretary. At this meeting the subject was fully discussed, and the result was the authorizing the Supervisors to ap- point a committee of four citizens from each Town, in conjunction with themselves, to act as a Committee of Arrangements. This Committee was afterwards in- creased to nine from each Town, which, together with the Supervisors, was to be known as the Citizens' Com- mitee of Fifty. At this meeting, on motion of Dr. EPHRAIM CLARK, Hon. ERASTUS BROOKS was unanimous- ly chosen to prepare and deliver an historical address, and he accepted the same. At a subsequent meeting of this Committee, Professor ANTON G. METHFESSEL was chosen Chairman, and THEO. C. VERMILYE, Secretary. A sub-committee of four from each Town, in con- junction with the Supervisors, was appointed by the Chairman, to be known as the Executive Committee, and to them was referred the whole subject to report a plan for the celebration, &c. The Executive Committee organized with FREDERICK WHITE as Chairman and DUNCAN R. NORVELL as Secretary, and after consider- able discussion, a parade was decided upon, and full particulars of same reported to the full Committee of Fifty, which, with a few amendments, was adopted, and the matter referred back to the Executive Committee, with full power to consummate such arrangements as in their judgment would be best to make a perfect success. COMMITTEE OF FIFTY. SUPERVISOR MOORE, AQUILA RICH, LIVINGSTON SATERLEE, Castleton. ERASTUS WIMAN, REED BENEDICT, GEO. WM. CURTIS, JAMES TULLY. D. R. NORVELL, R. B. WHITTEMORE, GEO. H. WOOSTER, SUPERVISOR MARSH, FRED. BACHMANN, BENJ. BROWN, C. A. HART, D. J. TYSEN, GEO. S. SCOFIELD, JR., HON. S. D. STEPHENS, J. H. F. MAYO, E. P. BARTON, T. E. BUTLER. SUPERVISOR BECHTEL, Louis DEJONGE, FRED'K WHITE, Mid.d.1 etoTrn. PHILIP WOLFF, GEN'L JOURDAN, M. S. TYNAN, E. A. MOORE. GEO. H. DALEY, A. G. METHFESSEL, THEO. FREAN, ]Vortliflelcl. SUPERVISOR CROCHERON, C. E. GRIFFITH, C. D. VAN NAME, R. C. LATOURETTE, M. E. WYGANT, H. S. KNEIP, J. H. VAN CLIEF, SR., DE WITT STAFFORD, W. H. VAN NAME, JOSEPH PIERCE. SUPERVSIOR OAKLEY, J. K. MORRIS, M. CONKLIN, Westfleld. C C. KRIESCHER, J. RUSSELL, S. W. BENEDICT, H. H. SEGUINNE. R. H. GOLDER, B. H. WARFORD, P. G. ULLMAN, Executive Committee. GEORGE BETCHEL, FRED'K WHITE, PHILIP WOLFF, A. G. METHFESSEL, NATHANIEL MARSH, BENJ. BROWN, C. A. HART, FRED'K WHITE, Chairman. D. J. TYSKN, ABRAM CROCHERON, DEWITT STAFFORD, ROBERT MOORE, D. R. NORVELL, R. B. WHITTEMORE, READ BENEDICT, DUNCAN R. NORVELL, Secretary. JESSE OAKLEY, B. H. WARFORD, M. CONKLIN, P. G. ULLMAN, J. H. VAN CLIEF, Sr. WM. RICARD. The Chairman of the Executive appointed the follow- ing Committees, and the whole Executive Committee was constituted a Financial Committee to solicit sub- criptions to defray expenses. The Chairman was ap- pointed Treasurer of the fund. 8 Parade. BENJAMIN BROWN, Chairman. PHILLIP WOLFF, WM. RICARD. B. H. WARFORD, ROBERT MOORE. Speakers . PERCIVAL G. ULLMAN, Chairman. DAVID J. TYSEN. Fir e wor k K . NATHANIEL MARSH, Chairman. ABRAM CROCHERON, C. A. HART. Tents and. Platform. M. CON KLIN, Chairman. PHILLIP WOLFF, J. H. VAN CLIEF, Sr. A. G. METHFESSEL, Chairman. GEORGE BECHTEL. BENJAMIN BROWN. Printing. DUNCAN R. NORVELL, Chairman. C. A. HART, R. B. WHITTEMORE. Several subsequent meetings of the Executive Com- mittee were held, and finally the following Order of Exercises, Parade, &c., &c., was decided upon. HISTORICAL RECORDS OF STATEN ISLAND, (Jentennial - d Jji-Centennial, FOR TWO HUNDRED YEARS AND MORE. DELIVERED AT STATEN ISLAND, NOVEMBER IST, 1883, BY HON. ERASTUS BROOKS. ' Guttenberg, without knowing it, was the mechanist of the new world. In creating the communication of ideas, he has assured tJie independence of reason. Every letter of his alphabet which left his fingers contained in it more power tJian the armies of kings or the thunders of pontiffs. It was mind which he furnished with language." Lamartine's History of the Girondists. PROPERTY CITY OF NEW YORK HISTORICAL RECORDS. Fellow Citizens of S tat en Island: THE proper orator for an occasion like the present would be some descendant of one either born upon the soil or descended from some one of its inhabit- ants one who by heroism, influence or action had made a part of its early history. Two hundred years of time, long as it may seem to American citizens, is but a small period in the history of countries like England, Ger- many, Austria or France, the old nations of Europe, each of which count their years of settlement by more than eleven centuries of time. Russia counts her exist- ence by less than a third of this period, or in a period beginning about the time when, as in 1523, VERRAZANI sailed along our shores. The people who are here now, and those who pre- ceded them, belong to almost all the nations of the earth. We know but little of the pre-Revolutionary history of Staten Island, and not all we would like to know of its Revolutionary history, and there are some things we do know we wish not to remember or desire to forget. In this respect, however, most of our predecessors were in no sense a peculiar people. Whether in old New England or present New England, or on to the Hudson, the Potomac, the Savannah, and beyond as far as the Colonies went east or west, north or south, there were devotees of Great Britain, who from the beginning of the first sign of the separation from the mother country dreaded the act itself. The foremost men who took part in the war, when it came, were perhaps as timid as those who saw the end from the beginning, were of this class. It was what is sometimes called destiny, but what we may more wisely call Providence, or the ways of God to man, that pointed and paved the way of independence. Step by step, the end came from the day when HENDRICK HUDSON first named the Island in honor of "the Island of the States" of Holland, and as far as we know, made it his first landing place or station, which it was once erroneously suggested was the origin of the name we bear. " Aquehonga Man- ac/mong" was at least one of the aboriginal names of the Island. "ggenahous"\he. place of bad woods, was another local name. Here was one of the first Dutch settlements in the New World. Here, or very near here, 242 years ago, the Dutch Colony was attempted or planted. And even then HUDSON had been so long dead that his first voyage of discovery, as well as his sad ending by treachery upon the sea was almost forgotten. No one knows the resting place of either VERRAZANI or HUDSON. The first immigrants who landed here from old Hol- land were disabled and sick with fevers. Even in the spring time the voyage continued for 122 days, and we read, that like Alexander the Great, "they were much put out and annoyed by the angry waves." The first home site upon this Island was selected for its close proximity to the sea, for its surrounding uplands, and for the general beauty of the scenery. This grandeur of highland and forest, of ocean and inland views over sea and land, has never left our island homes. We may speak of it indeed almost in the graphic language of COLUMBUS to FERDINAND and ISABELLA, when, of his discoveries, he wrote home that "this country exceeds all others as far as the day exceeds the night in splendor." Later on, September i5th, 1609, HENDRICK HUDSON from just beyond our island, in a more utilitarean spirit, wrote home from the Half Moon, "Of all the lands in which I ever set my foot this is the best for tillage." And this discernment is as true to-day of the capacities of this island as it was 274 years since. There were mineral attractions that won the eyes and ears of those beyond the sea. But what they took for gold was sand, and these sand banks were the first in the country to be used for making a kind of glass which was declared to be for " highly useful and ornamental purposes." Even the iron pyrites with which the Indians painted their faces, was pronounced to be gold until 1645, when the Amsterdam Company tested its value in the crucible of common science and common sense. The iron is still here with, I fear on the whole, much more of labor and enterprise than of profit, but such was the old time value placed upon the ore that the Government was petitioned to protect the gold seekers and other miners from the incursion of the Raritan Indians. The grant of land which included what is now known as Staten Island and the Arthur Kull, came from the West India Company, was made to the two Patroons, KILLIAN VAN RENSELLAER and MICHAEL PAUW in 1630. This land grant extended from Troy and Albany to the Sound. Staten Island fell to the lot of PAUW, whose possessions extended from Hoboken to our ocean bord- ers. Communipaw was named from PAUW, and simply meant the Commune-of-Pauw, the word Commune hav- ing a very different meaning in 1630 and in 1883. In the former case it meant simply a vast tract of land in the possession of one man. HISTORICAL OLD-TIME PLACES. One of these is Toadt Hill, since called Iron Hill, on account of the iron pyrites found along upon the eleva- vations. In the Revolutionary War the hill was a look- out station from land to the sea. The old elm tree Beacon at the foot of New Dorp Lane, and overlooking all the surrounding country, was also a British signal station. British vessels of war covered Bay and harbor alike. The Whale's Back was the name of another of the old-time stations. At old Fort Tompkins, now Fort Wads worth, was a block house, built for a defense against the Indians, just two hundred years ago, with only two small cannon as a protection against all kinds of foes. From 1776 to 1783, the British had their principal signal station near the present fort, and in the war of 1812-15, tne same station was used by the Americans, with Dr. CLARK,father of the present Senior Dr. CLARK, in command. The old Guion Homestead, near the .sea, the present residence of Dr. EPHRAIM CLARK, is one of the old landmarks if not the oldest building upon the Island. I have recently seen the deed of the farm signed by Gov. ANDROS in 1675, as the agent and representative of the Duke of York; the net rent of this land, some two or three hundred acres in all, and still a good farm, was payable yearly in eight bushels of good winter wheat; the receipts by payment are still preserved. (See Ap- pendix A.) No British footsteps have trodden upon our shores since November, 1783. The little fort, though useless for defence now, in the second war with England was equal to the occasion. In the civil war of 1861-65 when an old rebel iron clad off Norfolk sunk two of our best frigates, we had our panic of what might happen here, but a Staten Island Engineer, ALFRED STIMERS, under Capt. WORDEN, just in the nick of time for the public safety, drove off the enemy and most providentially pro- tected the coast from rebel invasion. I propose, under three heads, to consider some of the chief events which have inspired the commemoration in which, as citizens, we are to-day engaged, and in a brief appendix to name some of the habits and customs of Indian life upon the Island, adding to this a brief record of its material resources and values. OUR PRE-REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY Is almost purely local, except as this Island shared in events of special history to the whole Province. The past events recall subjects of 'general interest to men who care to know who they are, from whence they came, and what they owe to the land of their birth and adoption. Our Irish, German and British born citizens through the lands which gave them birth, one and all, have some connection in the subjects and facts which I shall name. I shall be made happy if the hour proves one of instruc- tion or pleasure to those who hear me. Where Manhattan Island was once, and finally, sold for a barter value at $24, this Island, under LOVELACE, was bought April 13, 1670, of the "true owners and lawful Indians," at the following price, the right to sell being Indian as stated in the indenture, because the land " was devised to them by their ancestors." Nine Sachem s signed the deed, and the sale reads as follows: "The payment agreed upon for ye purchase of Staten Island, conveyed this day by ye Indian Sachems property is, viz.: 1. Four hundred fathoms of wampum. 2. Thirty match boots. 3. Eight coates of Durens made up. 4. Thirty shirts. 5. Thirty kettles. 6. Twenty gunnes. 7. A firkin of powder. 8. Sixty barres of lead. 9. Thirty axes. 10. Thirty horns. 11. Fifty knives." Later on CORNELIS MELYN sold, as Patroon, his own limited interest in the Island for $600. Another sale of the Island by the Indians was for "certain cargoes or parcels of goods." The sale of PAUW brought 26,000 guilders " for his purchases upon the Island and Continent." The West India Company, in all cases, insisted that the four Commissioners, acting as Patroons, should ex- tinguish all Indian titles before their own ownership could be confirmed. The sale of Staten Island under Gov. DONGAN, which was but one of many sales, included "all the messuages, tenements, fencings, orchards, gardens, pastures, mead- ows, marshes, woods, underwoods, trees, timbers, quar- ries, rivers, brooks, ponds, lakes, streams, creeks, harbors, beaches, fishing, hawking, fowling, mines, (silver and gold mines excepted), mills, mill dams," &c. 8 All this was to be called " the Lordship and Manor of Cassiltowne," and there was more than ordinary diplomacy in the conveyance. Gov. DONGAN conveyed all of the above land, woodland and water, to one PALMER, both his lawyer and his judge, because he could not legally hold it himself ; but two weeks after DONGAN'S conveyance, or on the i6th of April, 1687, JOHN PALMER and SARAH, his wife, transferred all these possessions to THOMAS DONGAN, kinsman of the Governor. To Gov. DONGAN, whose home, castle and hunting lodge on the Kills and on the Manor road, the present State is indebted for some of its existing records and laws. By instructions dated May 29, 1686, he was directed to issue marriage licenses, and this authority was continued up to the period of the Revolution. The " General Entry " and the " Order in Council," official books, are filled with these entries from 1686 to 1775. The separate register of marriage was made by the Secretary before license could be granted. A bond was also required, and 40 bound volumes at the State Capitol contain most of these bonds and licenses. The Quakers dissented from these requirements, and as not unfre- quently before and since, when Quakers deliberately make up their minds to a conclusion, they disobeyed the law and recorded their own marriages only in their own church registers. These State records in various forms and upon vari- ous subjects, make up twenty-one volumes of the Dutch Government of the Province of New York, and all in all they contain the very essence of our earliest European civilization in all that relates to schools, churches and courts of law. Then, as so often since, the law was in advance of its administration. In one of these volumes are the acts of the first Assembly of New York, from 1683-84. These are called " the Dongan Laws." UNDER THE DONGAN LAWS. Gov. DONGAN came to the Province of New York as its Governor in 1682, and was here known as Lord of the Manor. He was a firm believer in the religious and po- litical faith of JAMES II., whether as Duke of York or as King, except that DONGAN was far more tolerant, and hated the French, under whom he had once served as a military officer. He knew his friends and his foes, and how to govern each class of them upon this island, where he had his hunting lodge far up the present Manor road, and his Manor, called the Castle, erected in 1688, on the north shore, in a full square of land, which extended from Bodine and Dongan Streets to the waters of the Kill von Kull. He was as fond of land as any of his ancestors or successors in the land which gave him birth. To JOHN PALME*, fresh from Barbadoes, just two hundred years ago, he gave what is known as the " Dongan " or " Palmer " patent. The stream separates Northfield from Castleton, and on its borders is the source of the spring water brought to many of your doors, and known as "Palmer's Run." The Governor made this man the first Judge of the first Court of Oyer and Terminer,andtheTreasurer of the Province. PALMER was his land agent and the " Palmer Patent " meant DON- CAN'S lands, and covered large tracts in different parts of the Island and included the salt meadows. No one man figures more prominently in our Pro- vincial history, and no one upon the Island as conspic- uously as that of THOMAS DONGAN, from the date of his commission as the first Royal Governor. His first service was under the Duke of York. Later on he was ordered to proclaim JAMES II. king, to assist at the con- ference between Lord EFFINGHAM and the Five Nations, and in causing the king's arms to be set up through all the villages of the Five Nations, and to place arms in their hands. Among his many summary measures, all probably by royal authority, was one proposing to an- nex Pemaquid to Boston, and the less modest one of annexing New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island to 10 New York. Another order was to establish in the Prov- ince a colony of Indian Catholics. Constant claims of authority were asserted over the Senecas, Onondagas, Mohawks and Iroquois, and to make an alliance of the latter tribe with the Eastern Indians, and instigate them against the French. The French and English were as crafty in their Indian diplomacy as they were desperate in their merciless ventures against each other, and especially was this true in all their intercourse with the Indians. Only one ex- ample of this joint correspondence is added as a speci- men record of scores of letters. EXTRACTS FROM DOCUMENTARY LETTERS IN 1686-87. MR. DENONVILLE, Sept. 29, 1686 : * * * "Think you, sir, that religion will progress whilst your merchants supply, as they do, eau de v& in abundance, which con- verts the savages, as you ought to know, into demons and their cabins into counterparts and theatres of hell?" And DONGAN, later on, Dec. nth, answers: " Certainly our rum doth as little hurt as your brandy, and in the opinion of Christians is much more wholesome, * * * to pro- hibit them all strong liquors seems a little hard and very Turkish." The Governor's name remained upon the Island in his kinsmen for a century and more after his forced retirement, but long ago the family disappeared. The last of the original name and immediate family, the State records tell us, reduced himself by vice to be a sergeant of foot or marines in 1798-99. The tombstone of WALTER DONGAN, and of RUTH his wife, was made in 1749 in the graveyard of St. Andrews Church. Another WALTER DONGAN died at the age of 93, and this one was the owner of a large property at the Four Corners. Another, known by the not very dignified title of "JACKY DONGAN," the Surrogate in 1733, was known as a free liver, a fast man, and several times " Member of Assembly ! >: Being what is called a fast liver and a Member of Assembly, your present speaker almost ventures to trust makes no really necessary association in either life, service or practice ; but who II can tell ? All experience proves that the bad name in public service is not easily prevented. You may serve party and people with fidelity, but no man can serve God and mammon, at least with success, in any public place or body. AMONG OTHER NOVELTIES IN THE STATE DOCUMENTARY HISTORY is the memorable report of Gov. DONGAN, covering forty octavo printed pages, dated February 22d, 1687, and ad- dressed to the Foreign Committee of Trade. The Gov- ernor is meeting the several queries of their Lordships, and to the loth inquiry he answers as follows : " I believe for these seven years last past there has not come over into this province twenty English, Scotch or Irish familys. But on the contrary on Long Island the people increase so fast that they complain for want of land and many remove from thence into the neighboring province." In another paragraph of this report their Lordships are, first by Sir EDMUND ANDROS and then by Gov. DONGAN, told that the Province of New York will fail to supply the needed revenue unless His Majesty will be graciously pleased to add " the Colony of Connecti- cut to the province of New York," which is " the Centre of all his Dominions in America ! " Sir JOHN WERDEN, in a letter to the Governor, dated St. James, in Nov. 1684, writes that " Staten Island without doubt belongs to ye Duke, for if SIR GEORGE CARTERETT had had right to it that would have been long since determined, and those who broach such fancyes as may dis- turbe the quiett of possessions in ye Island are certainly very in- jurious to ye Duke, and we thinke have noe color for such pre- tences ! " In a letter to the Earl of Perth, Feb. 13, 1684-5, tne Governor also declared that : " The Island had been in the possession of his R'll Highss above 20 years (except ye little time ye Dutch had it) purchased by Gov. LOVELACK from ye Indyans in ye time of Sir GEORGE CARTERET without any pretences 'till ye agents made claime to it ; it is peopled with above two hundred ffamilyes." 12 In the same letter we read that * " The Quakers are making continued pretences to Staten Island, which disturbs the people, and one reason given for holding it is that if his Royal Highness cannot retrieve East Jersey it will do well to secure Hudson's River and take away all claim to Staten Island ! " THE FIRST DUTCH COLONISTS came to America in 1623, and the first white child, it is believed, born in the country was of the RAPELYE family first settled upon this Island. The want of food, for a brief time, took the parents to the extreme Southern point of Manhattan Island. The first settlement of this New York Province, Island and State, was inspired by the landing of the Pilgrims. While the first voyage was merely one for discovery and venture, forty-one years later came the first General Assembly based upon popular representa- tion, convened by request of burgomasters and sche- pens. It was at this period that CHARLES II. seized the Dutch settlements for the Duke of York, and with them the block house on Staten Island. And with the seizure came the order that every third man, " with spade, shovel and wheelbarrow," is required to work on the city defences. The brewers were forbidden to malt any more grain. Fort Amsterdam just then, 1644, became Fort James, and the great city received its first christen- ing as " New York," which it has since retained. FOR A HUNDRED YEARS AT LEAST the Island was in a constant state of strife or warfare with the Indians, and then as ever since the native sons of the forest, I do not hesitate to say, were more sinned against than sinful. The Dutch in all New York were at times even harder masters than the English in New England or in New York. Staten Island had its open traitors in the person of MELYN and his chief, one KURTER, both of whom the Attorney-General pronounced worthy of death. Banishments and fines Avere made and compro- mises agreed upon for these offences. Old Governor STUYVESANT stood in double hostility to the Indians and to the English, and was a severe ruler over all his officials. Having with them neither nominal nor real authority, MELYN called Staten Island his colonies, and in a second strife STUYVESANT was summoned to answer charges of armed hostility and to appear before him. MELYN then fortified himself upon the Island, and here, as Patroon, occupied what he called his Manorial Court. As a consequence of this contention the houses and lands of MELYN in New Amsterdam were confiscated and sold. In one of the many tragedies growing out of con- ilicts with the Indians, 64 canoes and from 1,500 to 1,900 savages suddenly appeared before New Amsterdam, and later invaded Staten Island, where every white person was killed or captured. The captives in time, after fraud and barter, were returned in exchange for what was called an equivalent in powder to be used against the people at large. In one of these conflicts, in the present New York, the Indians killed one hundred whites, took 150 prisoners, and destroyed in 1655, $80,000 worth of property. And the sole cause of all this strife may be traced to the shooting of a squaw whose offence was stealing a few peaches in his garden, by HENDRICK VAN DYCK, once Attorney-General. The killing was instantaneous, but the revenge was pro- longed in time and in ferocity, and ever since the Indians have been taught to be just as unsparing in the work of retaliation as their assailants. For a long time there was between the Dutch, Eng- lish and Indians constant deaths by violence in the struggle for supreme power. Both the Walloons and Huguenots were here in considerable numbers, and de- voted to a faith for which so many in Europe had sac- rificed their homes, their lives and their fortunes. Like the Pilgrims they fled to the New World for liberty of conscience, but too many of them when in power, the honored name of ROGER WILLIAMS always excepted, practiced the very persecutions from which they fled. 14 RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES. Governor DONGAN'S brief government was conspicu- for a fierce controversy between citizens of an opposite religious faith. He could not, or would not, and this was to his credit, follow the extreme views of the Duke of York either as Prince or King. He not only hated the French in Canada and everywhere with a true Eng- lish repugnance, but the authority which appointed him and the faith in which he believed and the men whom he appointed to office caused a panic upon the Island in 1689. The Protestant people in their terror for a time fled to the forest by day and to their boats for con- cealment by night, and those who fled seemed to believe that fire and sword were to be the consequences of their religious faith. On either side, however, but with most impressive exceptions, the religion of the land was not one of peace and good will, but rather a religon based upon terror, fear, flight and strife. The State papers tell us that the Government had a religious Governor, and established its church at New York and Staten Island, with a salary for the rectors of 100 per annum for the town and 50 per annum for the Island, to be raised from the people. The Society added 50. If the Government sent a minister he must be chosen by the people and inducted by order of the Gov- ernor, and this Island, we read, resisted one payment because " the person inducted had not received the Societies' leave to remove." GROWTH OF THE PROVINCE AND NATION. The Nation of which we arecitzens through all time has been peculiar in its birth, growth and destiny. Read the Preamble to the Federal Constitution, and further back, as the very basis of this fundamental law, the Declaration of Independence ; later again, Washing- ton's Farewell Address, which has always impressed me as a political inspiration in the form of a great paternal prayer and warning from one long called and known as the " Father of his Country." I use the word as the 15 Saviour of Men expressed a still higher thought when he said : " One is your Father and all ye are brethern ! " And most of all read, as the beginning of the end, the bold, noble, manly record put forth in this province just two hundred years ago, and then and there styled "the Charter of Liberties." The " order " which Gov. DONGAN brought to this Colony was in advance of all that had gone before and has hardly been eclipsed since but it has taken two hundred years to win the prize and requires constant warfare to maintain and hold it. Gov. DONGAN came, in 1682, "with instructions first of all to convoke a free Legislature." This assembly numbered seventeen members and never exceeded twenty-seven. On the i7th of October, 1683, seventy years after Manhattan was first occupied, and thirty after the Dutch had demanded a popular Convention, the representatives met in assembly and established a Charter of Liberties, which placed New York side by side with Massachusetts and Virginia. This Charter gave supreme legislative power to Governor, Council and people met in General Assembly, and it is worthy of our time and any land. (B, Appendix.) Let me quote two or three sentences only as a type of the whole : " No freemen shall be punished but by judgment of his peers ; all trials shall be by a jury of twelve men. No tax shall be assessed on any pretence whatever but by the consent of the Assembly. No seaman or soldier shall be quartered on the inhabitants against their will. No martial law shall exist. No person professing faith in GOD by JESUS CHRIST shall at any time be in any way disquieted or ques- tioned for any difference of opinion." All this is grand, and worthy of any State or nation, but neither under King JAMES nor any other king did this record become the law of the land, and not here, until the Constitution made free and independent States, were the people in any sense supreme in author- ity. Too long a local priesthood and partisan civil power combined to govern the State, and each party ruled in the spirit of what they were pleased to call " Divine authority," but the divinity which shaped their ends was simply the combination of Church and State. i6 The king's ministers were the people's masters. The real State and the nominal Church were supreme. The Crown and Parliament, where the Parliament represents the people, were as distinct as the will and inheritance of the most unbridled one man power can be from a government of a Democracy or from Repub- lican power delegated by the people. As late as 1697, the Crown instructed the Earl of Bellemont, as Governor of the Province of New York, to appoint judges, create courts, prorogue Assemblies, disperse revenues, and to direct all acts of legislation in his own name and person. The Bishop of London alone could license the school masters of New York. No person could keep any print- ing press, nor print anything without the special leave and consent of the Governor. The verdicts of juries were set aside by order of the king even in 1765. This w r as the kind of royal power which the people both re- sented and rebuked, and which, not until 100 years later, culminated, first, in the Declaration of Independence, then in the War of the Revolution, and finally in the Federal Constitution. It required not alone the one hundred, but the full two hundred years to-day cele- brated, to secure freedom alike for the people of New York and for the citizens of the United States. Indeed, this side of the millenium there can never be any cessa- tion in the struggles for conscience over error, right over wrong, for truly liberty before license, whether in the State, the temptations of business or in our own personal lives. With GROTIUS dead and almost forgotten, BARNEVELDT also dead, popular right nowhere esteemed, the thirty year's contests concluded, rather without than with concessions for the claims which caused the war; with civil war in England; CHARLES I. beheaded; JAMES, King of England, openly resisting the Charter I have read, and which declared that justice and right may be equally done to all persons, not respected, Massa- chusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire denied all civil liberty; the Charter of Connecticut hidden in the oak at New Haven, and New York and New Jersey included in "the New Dominion," it is not strange that I? it was not until 1691 that the General Assembly passed the original charter of liberty, which the king repealed in 1697. As one of the incidents of these early times, just 210 years since from the date of the yth of last August, a Dutch fleet of twenty-three ships, needing wood and water, anchored in the Bay close to the Island. The only armed defenders of the Island at that time were Captain JOHN MANNING, who communicated with the Commodores EVERTSON and BENCKES upon the weakness of his defense, and in three days New Netherlands was under the control of the Dutch. To the great honor of the English, however, their possession was very brief, for in the March following, by the terms of the West- minster treaty, Major EDMUND ANDROS, in the name of His Majesty, the King of England, was in full posses- sion of all that MANNING had surrendered. Disgrace followed the surrender. THE EFFORT TO SECURE SELF-GOVERNMENT In the Province of New York, and which, in one form or another, the little County of Richmond at times took its part, may be traced back to 1649. The Dutch settlers here demanded as much liberty as was enjoyed in Hol- land, and in 1653, under orders to STUYVESANT, sometimes known as Director and sometimes as Governor, there was a schout or sheriff, two burgomasters and five schep- ens as successors to " the Nine Men," who had long been the chief rulers of the city of New Amsterdam. What is called monopoly was then in full force as ever since that time. The first Convention ever held in the 1 Prov^ ince, undertook to regulate the price of provisions and of most kinds of merchandise. The first Convention met in 1653, then in 1663 and 1664, when Staten Island took part with Rensslaaerwyck, Fort Orange, New Amsterdam, Wiltwyck, Harlem, New Utrecht, Brooklyn, Bushwick, Flatlands and Flatbush in a General Assembly of the whole State. This Island, then had two representatives in the persons of DAVID> DE MAREST and PIERRE BELLOU of the entire 21 members i8 of the Assembly. Ten Counties in 1664 represented the present New York. Under the first apportionment of 1771, Richmond County had two members of Assembly, and from 1791 on but one. In 1683, of the then twelve counties, two, Dukes and Cornwall, became a part of Massachusetts. The representatives of the Colonial As- sembly from 1691 to 1769 numbered but thirty-one mem- bers ; without Dukes and Cornwall, but 27 on to 1796. In each of these public meetings, Richmond County had at least two members. Kings, Queens, Ulster, Duchess and Albany, as the rule, had no more. In the ist, 3d, 4th, 8th, i7th, 25th and 26th Colonial Assemblies, this County had three members. The nine counties of 1691 only increased to 16 (of the present sixty counties) as late as 1761. In the first Assembly, JOHN STACKWELL, Quaker, of Richmond, was dismissed for refusing to take the oath, and also NATHANIEL PEARSALL of Queens. JOHN TALLMAN, of Albany, was dismissed for presenting a paper "writ in barbarous English!" HUMPHREY UN- DERHILL was excluded for refusing to attend " before he had his money." Another member was expelled for a little honest opposition to the Council and Assembly, and another in 1715 for a printed speech "made to the General Assembly, without leave of the House," in which we read " many false and scandalous reflections upon the Governor of this Province." Not many of the mem. bers in these Colonial Assemblies, rested upon beds of roses. In 1713-14, one body was dissolved by the death of Queen ANNE, who gave the silver service to the St. Andrew's Church at Richmond, and another in August, 1727, by the death of GEORGE I., and another, March, 3761, by the death of GEORGE II. Gov. DONGAN was the first Royal Chief Magistrate who permitted the people to elect their members of As- sembly.^ In the Provincial Congress the county had five representatives; in the second, two ; il food. The health of the people was marvellously good, and disease was rarely known among them. Blindness, lameness and cramps, and what we call rheumatism, were ailments quite unknown. The description of these Indian men and women, as handed down to us by WASSENAER, (Amsterdam, 1631-32), is that they were a well-fashioned people, strong in constitution of body, well-propor- tioned, and without blemish. In a certain sense, all were astrono- mers. The Sun, Moon and Stars inspired their awe if not their reverence, and the light of the Moon following its February and 36 August appearance, was made a season' of rejoicing with a feast of game and fish, and for a marvel, after the intercourse with the white people, the drink was pure water. THE INDIAN CURRENCY OR LEGAL TENDER MONEY Was 3S simple as the leather money of ancient Greece. For 118 years, both for New Netherlands and New England, the basis of all money was clamshells, and the beds of these shells, found on Long and Staten Islands, were the real money mints of the aborigines. The single white wampum bead had the value of an English penny, and the black wampum beads had less value. Both were placed upon strings, just as the Chinese fasten their pennies. The Indian wam- pum was as much a manufacture as money coined in the U. S. mints, and the value put upon it was no more arbitrary than our present coined dollars, the value of which is but 15 per cent, of real value. The thin part of the clam shell was split off with a light hammer, ground into forms an inch long and half an inch thick. The pieces were bored longitudinally, strung upon hemp thread or the dried sinews of the beasts of the forests, and then sold by the chief. The wampum belts were the beads thus strung together The Indians spurned the silver dollar, and knew nothing of gold values. They clung to their shell money, and 200 years ago the schoolmaster re- ceived his pay in wheat of wampum values, and the parents paid 12 stuyvers in wampum for each baptism. The ferriage between New York and Brooklyn ten years later, 1693, was equal to eight stuyvers, or a silver two-pence, payable in wampum, and the same kind of money was used between the Island and New York. INDIANS AS LAND SPECULATORS. The Island had a double sale of its land from the Indians. One MATTANO, Chief Indian and land speculator, was an example quite beyond the modern school. The land sold by him in 1651 was resold by him in 1664, and the last sale included Elizabethtown and stretched from the Raritan River to the Bay of New York. Essex County, N. J., was included in this tract, and the whole was sold for thirty-six pounds and fourteen shillings, or at the rate of ten acres for one cent. The Indian names appended to this sale are MATTANO, MARIAWOME and CONASCOMON. More than one tribe or set of Chiefs claimed to be the owners or masters of the Island. Later on the Dutch, the English, the Quakers in 1684 under WILLIAM PENN, New Jersey and New Netherlands, Kings CHARLES and JAMES, DONGAN and ANDROS, and finally the States of New York and New Jersey, have all laid claim to Staten Isiand, and the latter State adhered to this claim from 1807 to 1833, when the contest was closed by compromise. This ended a controversy of almost 220 years as to the true ownership. In 1670 it was purchased for King JAMES. In 1688 it was adjudged to belong to New York. In 1693 it was under a Dutch schout and two schepens. In 1681 Lady CARTERET claimed the Island as a part of East Jersey, by virtue of a grant from " His 37 Royal Highness," dated 1669, and the Duke of York claimed it as a purchase from the savages made in 1670. REVOLUTIONARY RELICS. The four chief Revolutionary posts upon the Island were at Fort Hill, Richmond Hill, Pavilion Hill, Herpicks' Observatory, and all around bayonets, balls and flint locks and other evidences of war have been found in great abundance. APPEDNIX D. t GENERAL NOTES UPON STATEN ISLAND. I am indebted to ARTHUR HALLECK, Esq., and others, for the following combination of facts upon Indian and revolutionary relics, geology, mineralogy, coast lines, botany, &c., of the Island, received in reply to a request for this information : ARCHAEOLOGY. There are two marked locations where the ab- origines used to congregate. One at Watchogue or Bloomfleld, in Northfield, and the other near the BILLOP House, Tottenville, and Princes Bay in Westfield. Hundreds of stone implements (pestles, mortars, hatchets, sink- ers, arrowheads, beads, &c.) have been found mixed up with the shells. Indian burying grounds have been discovered near Tottenville, and isolated remains at other points, notably near the old forts of Revolutionary times. In these grounds the skeletons were always accompanied by arrow heads, tomahawks, &c. In one of them imple- ments resembling knitting needles, and stone beads were used as ornaments. At Watchogue the heap of chips and broken implements were evidently dropped in the manufacture of ornaments or wampum. The majority of arrow heads found in these shell heaps are hunt- ing arrows showing that the Indians were on peaceful expeditions- The war arrows were found in the burying grounds or near the old forts. GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. There are five geological forma- tions on the island : The primitive granite, whose only outcrop is seen just below Nautilus Hall at Tompkinsville. The archean ser- pentine, forming the " backbone " of the Island from Brighton Point to Richmond, is represented by hills of soapstone and serpentine. The triassic is represented by red shales and the trap dyke or "granite" ridge of Graniteville, extending from Port Richmond to Linoleumville. The cretaceous, consisting of clays and sands at Tottenville and Kreischerville, and finally a diifl covers all but a small portion near the extreme southern and western part of the 38 Island. Many of these formations are of great economic value. The trap rock at Graniteville, erroneously called "granite," is used for macadam and paving. The clays at Kreischerville make the very best fire brick. Tue drift clays at Elm Park and Green Ridge make fine building brick. The gravel beds of the drift yield the best building sand for mortar. " Asbestos" from the soapstone hills has been used, when mixed with other substances, as a valuable anti- friction compoumd. On top of the serpentine there are local de- posits of "limonite" or bog iron ore, which has been very exten- sively worked. It is very rich, easily worked, but not in large quantities. THE ISLAND COAST LINES. People now living have seen 200 feet of the beach carried away near New Dorp, and what was once salt meadow is far out below low water mark. The old meadow turf and the stumps of cedar trees are still seen. This material thus borne down the beach has extended the long spit of sand at the mouth of Great Kills, near Giffords. A considerable deposit of mag- netic sand is noticed at South Beach, near New Dorp, and from time to time projects for utilizing it have been entertained. This is a part of the iron washed by the river current, and in this drift is seen speci- mens of nearly all the rocks between New Dorp and Canada, just as they were transported by the continental glacier whose southern limit in this part of the United States was across the Southern end of Staten Island. This line of glacial deposits is unmistakeable, and the bluff at Princes Bay is one of its boldest features. Among these specimens are found granite from the Canadian Highlands, boulders of limestone from the upper Hudson River, containing fossils, and stray pieces of lead and iron ore from the deposits of New York or New England. OUR ISLAND BOTANY. No section of the country east of the Mississippi, of an equal area, is as rich in plant life as Staten Island. Local botanists have recorded about 1,300 plants apart from those grown by cultivation. This is due to the great diversity in phy- siographic conditions. Salt and fresh water, woods, dry hills and swamps are all here about. These and the different geological foi- mations give rise to a great variety in the flora. Fifty of these species are found in no other county in the State, and these are mostly found on the little piece of cretacea near Tottenville, which is a continuation of the Amboy clay beds. Twenty-two species new to the State of New York have been been found within the last three years. The 'trailing arbutus" or " May flower" is gathered here by basketfuls every spring, as it is the nearest point to New York where it is known to grow. It is likely to be exterminated in a lew years. The "salt hay" here is a species of rush found upon our salt meadows. Water cress is grown extensively in streams on the west side. The original plants were probably native here. 39 Our forest growth is an important factor in our prosperity, or will be a few years hence, if we expect to obtain our water supply from the Island. The water courses, now only full of water when it rains, were formerly constant running brooks. Old springs :irc dried up, and ponds which used to overflow continually by a running stream have become either muddy pools., stagnant swamps, or are obliterated. THE SANITARY ASPECT OF THE ISLAND. Living springs and running water do not produce malaria, but swamps and stagnant pools are a real danger, and assist in breeding mosquitos. ZOOLOGY AND ORNITHOLOGY. Formerly deer, foxes and many other large animals are known to have lived and bred here. Now we only have squirrels, rabbits, skunks, muskrats, and other small rodents, with perhaps a few weasels. With the disappearance of the woods the game leaves us. A few quail and woodcock are still to be found and some wild pi- geon. Snipe are occasionally plentiful. Stray ducks find their way here. In severe winters an eagle is sometimes seen. The patient fisherman can even yet hook a trout in some of our streams and ponds. Seals visit us and would remain if not disturbed. Congressman PERRY BELMONT, upon being intro- duced, said : I hope you will pardon me if I find myself utterly unable to address you as 1 wished and had intended Perhaps it would have been better had I not attempted to have come here at all, feeling unwell as I do, but I preferred to be with you to-day even under these cir- cumstances. I could not be indifferent to the rehearsal of Staten Island's past, not alone because I can never approach its shores without a feeling of gratitude and affection for the friendliness which I have always found here, but no American can ignore these patriotic ob- servances. I trust you will accept my excuse, and believe how sincere are my regrets that I can contribute so little to the pleasure and glories of this day. (Applause.) 40 Hon. ALGERNON S. SULLIVAN was next introduced, and spoke as follows : Citizens of Staten Island. I would have very little sense of the propriety of the hour if I did not recognize that the sun, nearly at the horizon, commands us to be very brief. Mr. BROOKS has left nothing to be said in his review of the important historical events that would interest not only you but every American. I have listened to his review, perfect and interesting as it has been, until I almost forgot the actual scenes around me, and I could see the blue haze as it hung over the same hills that are before us two hundred years ago to-day, when, amidst the Indian summer, the county seat ot Richmond was established at Stoney Brook ; when I can almost hear to-day the rustling of the same tinted leaves as the winds blew them about on that first of November, 1683, when he alluded to the possible necessities by gov- ernment of enforcing obedience to law against those who may come to this country, and yet be refractory. I re- member that, which for some reason he did not chose to mention, that on that starting day of Richmond County your first and only building at Stoney Brook was a jail (laughter). I was exceedingly interested as he ran over the list of the old names. 1 was glad to know that you have many who can record themselves as lineal descen- dants of those who gave to your beautiful Island its social distinguishing characteristics. I was very happy that after the diligent hunt, which I supposed he had made of all baptismal records, that he was not able to record in the line of descent any of the residents, and those who are present to-day, whose parentage through two generations he traced back to the first in- habitant of that county jail (laughter). I have not the slightest idea that Mr. BROOKS, with his impartial devo- tion to the truth of history, would have omitted, no matter which one of these gentlemen upon the stand it struck, to have gone back to the jail books and have pointed the historic finger at them (laughter). But, gentlemen, whether these memorial days have become so frequent in this last decade that they themselves are taking their places in history, and their own history and their own iniluence is to be considered and to be re- corded, one thought occurs to me, that the time has come to ask each one of these memorial celebrations : Of what use are you? What are you for? What do you do ? What pulse do you awaken ? What facts do you record? What names do you perpetuate? What sentiments do you honor, and thus what sentiments do you educate in yourselves? I told you I was thinking, as that interesting series of facts passed in review, that I fear we are in danger of enkindling one serious peril in all these commemorative exercises. We are in danger of looking only at one line of facts. We are in danger of building up a spirit of self-complaisance, of self-conceit, self-glorification, and over-dressing certain facts and certain incidents, and we delude ourselves with the notion of our unexceptional progress and present secure position ; we delude our- selves and hide some things that we ought not to forget, so that we may come to think after we have one of these interesting celebrations to commemorate certain things, we must have another to mention with less complaisance things which are allowed on that day to be forgotten. For instance, in the very, very few minutes in which I will speak, let me recur to that same incident with which I opened my few remarks as an illustration. The sea- sons have come and gone through twice a hundred years. Those same leaves have rustled down Stoney Brook. No notice has been taken of them, and the generations have sunk like them into unrecorded graves. Society has gone on and wealth has accumulated, and all the signs of luxury have multiplied and population has increased, but you have a jail still. You have crime ; you have poverty. We have with all our progress. You have not got very far. I say you none of us have in this coun- try on the path of solving the great problems that underlie and make the condition of a really happy and good community. The problems of labor and property, the problems of crime, the problem of social evil, and 42 all that really goes behind the question of civil liberty. What progress have these people who occupy the Senti- nel Island of New York what progess have they made ? I ask it now because the thought crowded upon me again and again as I listened to this eloquent review by Mr. BROOKS. Has this series of celebrations, centennial and otherwise, in the State of New York ? Is it to end without this decade being constituted by wise, reflect- ing, and honest people, with the starting point for the next century, wherein the effort shall be not only to lay the foundation for material prosperity, to provide means for common schools for education, not merely to perpet- uate and carry out in a general application the broad principles of the Declaration of Independence in respect to free and equal rights, .but shall we recognize the op- portunity, which always begets obligation and duty, the opportunity to work out under conditions more favor- able than humanity has ever known before, some of these problems that will change the unequal conditions of men ; that will put into the power of the larger propor- tion of people the means of making them not only barely able to subsist, but make them rise in the scale of humanity, to develop his finer side an honest man- hood and finer womanhood, which is worth more than all the conditions and all considerations of property and of wealth ? Are we going to address ourselves to solving some of those problems is the question which at this late hour is the one I would put here as constituting a worthy and fitting inquiry as belonging to and legiti- mately coming out as the fruit and blossom from such a celebration as that we have had to-day. One thing more. I hoped Mr. BROOKS would have continued his extensive review, as I hope he has with his pen, by re- calling to our recollection that when Richmond was constituted a county it was at a time when the history of the world was being illuminated as perhaps it never was before by n : en, in the chamber of whose souls had passed the angel of genius, and of wisdom, and of reli- gion. I hoped he would have found time to mention that it was in that age that JOHN BUNYAN had lived, and 43 RICHARD BAXTER and JOHN DRYDEN had lived, and all of that host of worthies without whose names the litera- ture and religion and politics- of our race would be under an eclipse. I remember when he was talking about the maxims of civil liberty, how much this coun- try owed in respect of its civil institutions and its liberty foundation to the writings of one political martyr, which was almost coincident with the foundation of the Coun- ty. I refer to him whose name I almost cherish ALGERNON SIDNEY, whose writings I know were again and again the holy words and political ten command- ments of those who were framing the Constitution. (Applause.) Hon. HENRY J. SCUDDER was then introduced and spoke as follows : Mr. Chairman, and Citizens of Richmond County. I shall occupy but a few moments of your time for the day has well nigh gone and devote myself briefly to the consideration of an event preceding by a single day that of the establishment of your County; an event of far greater value than the simple act of changing the name of Staten Island to Richmond County, for except that a High Sheriff instead of a Deputy was conferred upon this Island by the Act of Nov. ist, 1683, there was no other change effected in it as a political portion of the Province of New York than the change of name and title. Your County embraced and still embraces the same area as that conveyed to LOVELACE by the true owners and Sachems of Staten Island in 1670. This vast and intelligent assemblage is gathered for some higher purpose than the celebration of a change in name. It is hereto commemorate the establishment of the principle of political representation, of the right of the the people to participate in the government controlling their liberties and property, and both tnese great prin- ciples were embodied in the Act of the Assembly of 1683, and confirmed by the Provincial Governor on the 3oth October in that year. To the securement of these, 44 the Dutch inhabitants of the Province contributed less than the colonists upon the eastern end of Long Island, for the very obvious reasons that the Dutch stqod in re- lation to the English as a conquered people, and those of Staten Island were within easy reach of the power of the Colonial Government seated at New York. The Puritans, fleeing from England to escape the rigor of laws designed to suppress the exercise of con- science in matters of religious faith and worship, came to the new world with convictions respecting liberty in the Church and State that no despotism could overcome or impair. Such of them as established colonies upon Long Island were beyond the control of the West India Company, and without the charters to which the settle- ments in New England looked for authority in the regu- lation of their public affairs. They established small democracies, and were independent of all other control than that of their own choice until the conquest of New Amsterdam in 1664, by NICOLLS, commissioned by the Duke of York, connected them, under the royal patent of the Duke, with the Province of New York. Their devotion to the cause of civil liberty could be abated neither by promise or threat, and their demands for recognition in legislation through popular assem- blies continued under the harsh impositions of LOVE- LACE and ANDROS. These demands, and the constant resistance to personal authority emanating from the Duke, so far embarrassed his Royal Highness' revenue from the Province that he seriously contemplated the surrender of his territory to the Crown. WILLIAM PENN, called to his private closet for advice, urged conces- sion to the people of the Province, and out of these two sources, the dread of financial distress in the privy purse and faith in the wisdom of PENN, came the resolu- tion of the Duke to grant the petition for representative government. The Assembly of 1683, the Charter of Liberties and Privileges, the establishment of Rich- mond County, the acknowledgment of the people as a power in legislation were consequences so fruitful of important political results, so pregnant with tendencies 45 to a better and larger civilization, that you gather in thousands upon this two hundredth Anniversary to render your earnest and grateful homage and reverence for the grand blessings flowing from the Acts, of which our friend, Mr. BROOKS, has eloquently informed us. Commemorating the cause and mindful of the effects, will you not bear from this meeting to your firesides some resolution to advance civilization beyond the limits it achieved under the Charter and during the two cen- turies ended? You encounter to-day questions as momentous as those our ancestors met in colonial times ; questions as closely concerning the welfare of the State and virtue of the citizen as those menacing the civil liberty of the subjects of CHARLES or JAMES. You should be as well equipped for their solution. Our great civil struggle for the preservation of the Union embedded in our people respect for authority. While the epaulette symbolized authority we yielded deference to military sentiment. When the soldier sank into the community as an ordinary citizen, there came an easy and natural transfer of respect from the armed officer to the commissioned office holder. A re- ciprocal consideration of relative positions exalted the civil incumbent into leadership, and the office holder assumed the tenure of office as of personal right, rather than delegated service. Leaderships in public affairs presented the airs of inheritance, and forgot that the people were masters. This sentiment is to be overcome, and the representative of the people, in whatever ca- pacity, relegated to his true position in political station as the agent or servant, and no longer the investment of power to be transmitted by him to successors ot his choice. Another question of the times is the appropriate disposition of woman in the distribution of political and social powers in the community. The forms of social organizations are varying with a rapidity that empha- sizes the intense activity of present thought. There are phases opening where woman seems necessary to 46 the complete moral development, but where she is im- potent unless encouraged by the State. More serious still is the adjustment of two forces moving in the relation of sovereign and subject, creator and creature. These are the State and Federal pow- ers and the corporations they have instituted. The consideration of the limits essential to the preservation of judicious control over these institutions, without impairing the comforts and profitable conveniences they afford the citizen, presents difficulties that impress us with the importance of the subject. It must soon be solved, if we hope to escape the sad effects of com- bined individual power of talent and wealth extend- ing so far as to measure forces with the State. Civiliza- tion is greatly menaced when a handful of men, en- trenched under a statute conferring upon them limited franchises, can defy the State that conferred them. Other subjects will engage your patriotic thoughts as you move homeward this evening. I have called your attention to some out of the assured belief you would hasten to apply the relief. JEFFERSON patriot, scholar, thinker, witnessing the frenzy of the Parisian mob, wrote to his friend here, "Educate the people." It was a cry from his heart. It should go to your hearts. " Educate the people ! " The clear way to future welfare for citizen or State lies in that injunction. Applying it, we may preserve the institutions happily framed for us, we may enlarge the civilization sheltered under those institutions, and to all times and peoples we may offer them, and the nation with its genius and policy, as " Rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." Hon. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS was introduced, and spoke as follows: Fellow Citizens of Staten Island. There remains but one word to say. It is a happy day for this County, and the great work has been well done. Our friend, Mr. SULLIVAN, fears that this day will teach us to be unduly 47 vain and will breed a conceit in the breasts of all who took part in it. I say to him, upon your behalf, that when he came to Staten Island he came to the. County which is distinguished for the most humble and most modest population in the State of New York (applause). That after to-day, fellow citizens, I say to him also and in your behalf, that every man of us and every woman upon the Island will be a hundred-fold prouder than ever before that they may call themselves Staten Island- ers (applause). Long ago, as Mr. BROOKS has told us in his eloquent review, long ago the last soldier of foreign power and force passed down the bay and disappeared. The last official document of English power within the domain of the United States was penned within gun- shot of the place where you stand. The last shot of the Revolution was fired, as he told us, at Staten Island, and that was the parting benediction upon this County of the foe we had vanquished. Yet remember that from the first day that HUDSON saw this County, when he, an Englishman, surrounded by a crew of mingled Dutch- men and Englishmen, saw this property first from that day to this the supreme dominion over all this territory has been assumed by the Dutch and English race. Fifty years of Dutch, more than a hundred of English since the Revolution. The Dutch and English planted in America, and if in more recent years that power has been contested by the men of other lands and of other races, they, too, found, as they became also Americans, that they were constrained ; they, too, were moulded by the great constitutional treatise of the Dutch and of the English, civil and religious liberty, the common school as the foundation of the State and an unswerving liberty to law. And although, fellow citizens, it be true, as the orators have told us, that the great Charter of Privileges came with DONGAN, never forget that that charter was simply the will of the Royal Duke, and that the princi- ples of that charter, true and eternal as they are, were not planted in the government of this County, of this State, of this country by any superior or any supreme will, for American liberty does not rest upon the will of 4 8 any despot, but was asserted and maintained by the American people only against the embattled might of royal power (applause). Now, then, one word from a Staten Islander to Staten Islanders. From the time that the British fleet disappeared beyond Sandy Hook ; long after the Confederation failed; long after the Union sprang out from the brains of the men who framed it, like Minerva from the brain of Jove ; long after all was passed, the prosperity of Staten Island still languished. As we believe, who live here, the fairest and most con- venient it is to the great city of New York, a silver re- tirement soothed by the breath of the ocean, yet close to the heart of the great metropolis, Staten Island should have been the seat of a great, of a prosperous, of a pro- gressive community, and long ago it should have been the model county upon which all the counties of the Imperial State might have been framed (applause). But what slumberous spell has held this County fast? Ever since then the solitary traveller in the interior of the Island might well have expected to meet some belated and straying mariner from HUDSON'S Half Moon. He might well have expected to be greeted, as two hundred years ago, by some grimy soldier of the Thirty Years War, of William of Orange, or of any great commander of the time, who would have welcomed him to his soli- tary home, have shot deer for him from his window as for those men there was shot and served for his break- fast wild turkey that abounded qn this Island. I think if RIP VAN WINKLE had fallen into his long nap upon Staten Island instead of the Kaaterskill Mountains, when he recovered and opened his eyes he would have ex- claimed as he gazed: " Donner wetter, tausand teufels." This is the same old place that it was twenty years ago (applause and laughter). Well, fellow citizens, I believe that this day shows that a RIP VAN WINKEL is no longer the genius of Staten Island (applause). This day shows us all that the slumberous spell is broken. Whatever in any community fosters local pride and stimulates local interest develops that public spirit which is the mainspring of prosperity and of progress in every State. 49 In the old Greek fable, as you remember, the sculptor carved his perfect statue, but it lay motionless and cold and dead. It waited the magic touch that should thrill it into life. Here lies our Island, fair as whAi HUDSON first beheld it, still, as the Duke called it, the pleasantest and most commodiest seat in all the land ; and to-day our beating and answering hearts are the promise that the germs of that spirit is opening its eyes an-d about to put forth its hand which shall bring the Island still nearer to the great city ; shall reclaim all its waste and watery spaces; shall cover its gentle, shining heights with cheerful and beautiful rural homes ; shall fill its air with the hum of cheerful industry, and shall justify to every Staten Islander the promise that the beauty of our Island holds to every passerby and to every stranger who lands upon our shores. And then shall it happen when we are gone, when our names are forgotten, and one hundred and two hundred years hereafter our chil- dren's children in the remotest generations come here to celebrate the fourth centennial anniversary of the Island and to pay their tribute of homage to us, long vanished old fogies of to-day, the spirit which this day, please God, shall stimulate in this County, shall make the County what long ago it should have been, in Shakes- peare's words : " This precious stone set in the silver sea, The most resplendant jewel in th' imperial crown," of the Imperial Commonwealth of New York. (Ap- plause.) Hon. L. BRADFORD PRINCE, on being introduced, spoke as follows : My good fortune brought me from the home in the far distant West, when I could be present on this historic occasion, near to my old home in the First District, of the first State in the United States, for it is one of those grand historic occasions, and so memorable that every one feels it an honor to be there, and surely to-day, as Mr. CURTIS has said, it has been well done. Staten 50 Island has honored itself in honoring its record through these two centuries of time, and in bringing back the memory of that day so long ago. Within the last four weeks it has been my fortune to be present at two great historical commemorations. One, two weeks ago, at Newburgh, at the centennial of the last event of the Revolutionary War. They were both of them great his- toric occasions. They were both of them about which clustered magnificent associations, and great efforts had been made to make them magnificent spectacles, and they were so ; but I was proud to-day, as an old citizen of this district, as one who had been among you in years past and received of you more of kindness than I. de- served, to see that this celebration fell short in no whit of those about which, perhaps, larger constituen- cies had clustered. Mr. President, at this late moment I should not have taken the floor, even for a minute, were it not that every occasion like this requires a kind of benediction. I come, sir, from the oldest of these celebrations that has ever been held on American soil, in the city in which I live, the City of Santa Fe. For six weeks this summer we had our celebration, not of a centennial, not of a bi-centennial, but of what we called our tertic-millenium, the celebration of the third in the age of the oldest town in the United States ; and as the young man, who attaining his majority, may have a celebration, and the older members of the family come to give their places on that occasion for him, so in this new community but two hundred years old, on this oc- casion, where you celebrate but two centennials of time, I come on behalf of the older civilization of the South- west ; come irom the oldest town in the United States; come from our third of a thousand years and give to you that benediction, and say to you through all the centuries to come, may God bless Staten Island. (Ap- plause.) THE ISLE OF THE BAY. BY JAMES BURKE. I. Up from the waters that come as the daughters Of NEPTUNE, the lord of the wide-spreading Main, Bringing, with pleasure, love, homage and treasure To lay on the Altar of Liberty's Fane, Rises serenely, resplendant and queenly, As far-famed Atlantis, in Hercules' day, Sweet Staten Island, of valley and highland, So fair that we name her The Pride of the Bay ! II. Summer caressing, while breathing the blessing A mother invokes on her daughter, a bride, Her miniature mountains and silver-spring fountains Are dimpled and rippled with beauty and pride. Valleys are smiling with pleasures beguiling, And terrace-like hills from her shores roll away ; Green are the meadows and cool are the shadows Of grottoes and groves in our Isle of the Bay ! III. Winter, though bringing his terrors and flinging Them down at her feet with a pitiless hand, Yet is her ardor sufficient to guard her, And laughter defies him on lake and on land. Springtime poetic and Autumn pathetic, Are seasons whose charms have a limitless sway, Yet do they chasten tlieir garments and hasten To visit their homes on our Isle of the Bay ! IV. Add to what's charming, her fishing and farming, Her soil and its products both racy and rare, Shore lines combining, by Nature's designing, A wharfage for commerce unrivalled elsewhere ; Gardens and goodlands, with wildways and woodlands, And water abundant as music in May, Then Use and Beauty unite in the duty, An Eden to make of Our Isle of the Bay ! V. History rolling its gates back, and tolling The echoes of ages receding from sight, Figures are walking and voices are talking, That show us our progress to Liberty's light ; > First the red foeman and next the Dutch yeoman, Succeeded by DONGAN'S Colonial sway ; Hanover's scepter then subjugate kept her Till WASHINGTON rescued Our Isle of the Bay ! VI. But though her story be studded with glory, And Nature hath decked her with grandeur and grace Yet are these phases less worthy of praises Than this that here Love finds a fit dwelling place. Refuge from dangers, both natives and strangers, Bla^k, white or red, or the sons of Cathay, All here abiding, in Friendship confiding, Find welcome and weal in our Isle of the Bay ! EPILOGUE. Two hundred years a beauteous isle, Two centuries of modest fame, Have passed away through Times defile, Since Richmond County had a name. Vicissitudes her story knows, But only such as temples fear. A change of masters and such woes As foreign troopers quartered here, Whose hateful presence filled the air With crime and curse and midnight row, Till fighting freemen drove elsewhere The hireling soldiers of Lord HOWE ! The march of armied hosts since then Has oft been heard within our gates ; But 'twas the tread of friendly men Who loved but these United States ! By mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, As brave as those of ancient Greece, Encouraged to devote their lives, To fight and die or conquer Peace. To all our wars in Freedom's cause, Our Staten Island sent her sons, - Defenders of the Nation's laws, They wielded swords and pointed guns. 53 And ever will they thus he found, Among the first to join the fray, While Freedom soars above the ground, Or Staten Island rides the Bay ! The S. I. Quartette Clubs sang the " Star Spangled Banner," and added greatly to the enjoyment of the occasion. The meeting then closed by offering of a resolution of thanks to the committee having the celebration in charge, the officers of the day, and the speakers who addressed the meeting, and a benediction by Rev. Mr. PALMER of Tottenville. In the evening a grand display of fireworks took place at Stapleton, and thus closed the exercises of the Bi-Centennial of Richmond County. 54 FREDERICK WHITE, Treasurer, in account with BI-CENTENNIAL EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. Dr. 1883. Nov. I. To collections as follows : CASTLETON D. R. Norvell $550 oo Robert Moore 233 oo Read Benedict 150 oo R. B. Whittemore 50 oo $983 oo MIDDUCTOWN Fred'k White 137 oo Geo. Bechtel 100 oo Philip Wolff 1 20 oo A. G. Methfessel 50 oo 407 oo SOUTHFIEI.D Benj. Brown 125 oo D. J. Tysen no oo Nath'l Marsh 50 oo C. A. Hart 2500 31000 WESTFIELD B. H. Warford 100 oo P. G. Ullman 55 oo M. Conklin 27 oo Jesse Oakley 2000 20200 NORTHFIELD J. H. Vanclief, Sr 2800 A. Crocheron 26 50 Wm. Ricard 25 oo 79 50 Total $1,981 50 Cr. 1883. Nov. i. Badges $6000 Entertainment of guests 65 oo Benjamin Brown, Music 7^4 Entertainment of Artillery and others 27 05 Stenographers 25 oo Rent of Rooms 25 oo Transportation Cars 80 oo Carriages i . 123 50 Tent and Platform, &c 134 oo Fireworks 300 oo Printing Programmes and Books of Proceedings 357 95 $1,981 50 E. & O. E. NEW YORK, Nov. 9, 1883. FREDERICK WHITE, Treasurer, : NEW v > n AT VON L The New York Public Library The Branch Libraries St. George Library Center - Reference 5 Centra] Avenue Staten Island NY 10301