974.726 P
Proceedings of the
bi -centennial
2324475
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Reference use only
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LIBRARY
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ST. GEORGE LiBRARY CENTER
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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION'
OF
RICHMOND COUNTY,
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STATEN ISLAND
NEW YORK.
NOVEMBER IST, 1883.
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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 ; i<i the third, five,
:and in the .fourth, none. These so called Congresses
appear to be but another name for Assemblies, (the last
<of which was held in 1775), but with a larger represen-
tation. (Appendix B.)
19
THE TAXES AND PROPERTY 200 YEARS AGO,
Taxes, from time immemorial, have been the causes
of conflict and the source of more than half the wars
of Europe. They caused the war with England and
forced the independence of the United States. In the
form of tariffs and rates they are the one chief cause of
contention all over our land and all over the world.
But two hundred years ago upon this Island the tax was
just one bushel of wheat for each eigfhtv acres of land
Cj *
and on Long Island one penny in the pound " for the
County's charges."
The State papers tell us that at the first court, two
overseers and one constable were here in 1665, and that
the Island v/as exempt from the county's charge because,
as we read :
i
" Staten Island is comprehended in the West Riding of Long
Island, (and both Islands as one, in 1665, were called Yorkshire) but
payeth noe tax, being enjoined by their Patents to pay a bushel of
good winter wheate, but never paid any yet because (as they say) it
hath not been demanded ! "
When and where, indeed, have the people, singly or
otherwise, been voluntary taxpayers ?
NEW YORK CITY'S CLAIM TO LOW WATER MARK.
The Earl of Clarendon to Gov. HUNTER of New
York, July ye 3ist, 1710, writes as follows on certain
land grants :
"Lands between high water and low water mark on Staten
Island lately granted to the city of New York for ^300, being the
lands lately in possession 6f several inhabitants of that Island, iho'
now covered with the sea, the land being washed away."
In 1651 the boundaries of New Netherland are
named, and Staten Island is placed upon the North
River.
In a memoir of M. D'CHERVILLE on Boston and its
dependencies, written in 1701, is the following:
"Staten Island, which is fully seven leagues in circumference (
may have 450 effective men, most oi" whom are Dutchmen and Wal-
loons, with a few English."
20
In 1883, with more than forty thousand people, the
Island has no military company of her own, but to its
credit there are now a score or more of worthy citizens
who belong to the State National Guard.
THE WEST INDIA COMPANY AND ITS AGENTS.
One order and complaint of the West India Com-
pany, in 1650, was to HENDRICK VAN DYCK, a so-called
fiscal, who had not kept a strict watch at Staten Island
on the night on which he, C. MELYN, went over, as that
was "the place where you could fall in with all the con-
traband goods that he hath run on shore there during
the night and at unseasonable times."
This HEXDRICK VAN DYCK, fiscal, is declared as
" leading a dissolute life with dissolute conversation,
with passing his time in drunkeness," and yet with all
these sharp imputations, in one brief letter he is three
times called "Honorable,"" Beloved," "Valiant "and
" Faithful ! "
In the year 1663-4, a real Dutch grievance was named
as " the neglect of Staten Island by abandoning the
Block House with more men to defend the Island than
the number of English who came and took it," and the
answer of Ex-Director STUYVESANT, in 1666, was ad-
dressed to " the High and Mighty Lords States General
of the United Netherlands ! "
PAST AND PRESENT NAMES.
Most of the present homesteads at Port Richmond,
Long Neck, the Fresh Kills and along what is known
as the Kill von Kull, in the trying times of the early
settlements, were made into block houses and stockades
for protection against the Indians. The names and
homesteads of families living here more than two hun-
dred years ago now hold the lands occupied by their
ancestors. Among those may be named the CONNERS,
BODINES, CROCHERONS, DISOSWAYS, MORGANS, SEGUINES,
SYMES, TYSONS, POILLONS and VAN PELTS. All of these
names figure in the present as in the past times of the
Island. Conspicuous among those whose estates were
21
confiscated here were PETER and JEREMIAH VAN DER
BELT, JACQUES and ISAAC CORTELYOU, WILLIAM and
BARENT JANSEN, JOHN VAN DYNE, NICHOLAS BRITTON
RICHARD CORSEN, RICHARD, THOMAS, SAMUEL and NICH-
OLAS STILLWELL, TUNIS VAN WAGENER, THOMAS and
DANIEL WANDEL, FRANCISCO MARTINO, CHRISTOPHER
BILLOP, WILLIAM NORWOOD (who fled to the West Indies
to escape execution), PETER LAKEMAN, THOMAS EGBERT,
ABRAHAM LUTINE, CHARLES CODDINGTON, THOMAS WAL-
TON.
FROM THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION.
No reading can be more interesting to the students
of Revolutionary history than the events which trans-
pired in and around Staten Island. Recent years in the
lives of millions of our present countrymen taught them
both the cause and effect of civil war. The domestic strife
from 1861 to 1865 found a million of men in arms at
the close of the war, and another million killed, dis-
abled or injured for life during the war. But these vast
battle fields in territory were distant from us. In the
War of the Revolution, as the records show, on this
Island and in close neighborhood to it, the population
counted at most but a few thousands. Near neighbors
and dear friends \vere, if possible, in arms against each
other more in 1776 than 1861-65. The King's ships
surrounded the Island and all the city beyond it. Even
little Bedloe's Island was held by malcontent Ameri-
cans, who were nursed, fed and protected by the British,
and when the Island was visited by a band ot patriots
they were fired upon and compelled to retreat, but not
until, as Gov. TRYON informed Lord GEORGE GERMAIN,
" they (the patriots) had killed a number of poultry
which His Excellency had reserved for some choice
meal for General HOWE'S expected arrival." This was
in April, '76, when the Governor also tells us he had
seized a prize vessel one of the many taken elsewhere
from Staten Island docks.
Here, too, after consulting with Sir JOHN JOHNSON on
the Mohawk, who gave the largest aid and comfort to
22
the enemy, having had three Indians for his guides and
130 Highlanders for his followers and 120 tories for
companions, all en route to Canada, the Deputy Com-
missary, GUMERSALL, writes from Staten Island, August
26, 1776, of his safe return from a most treasonable
journey to encourage the Indians to join the British
forces.
The month before, arriving June 2pth, General HOWE
had disembarked his troops (July, 1776,) on Staten
Island, and Gov. TRYON writes four days later that :
"The inhabitants of the Island came down to welcome their de-
liverers and have since afforded the army every supply and accommo-
dation in their power."
In the same letter he adds :
"On Saturday last I rec'd the Militia of the Island at Rich-
mond town, where near 400 appeared, who cheerfully, on my recom-
mendation, took the oath of allegiance and fidelity to his Majesty."
The day following came another muster for the en-
listment of volunteers to form a Provincial Corps for
defence of the Island, " as the General finds it an im-
portant quarter to hold against the Rebels."
And this unwise Governor writes, further on, in most
glorious hope, that :
"This loyalty to his Majesty and attachment to his Gov't upon
the Island will be general through the Province as soon as the
King's Army gets the main body of the Rebels between them and
the sea ! "
The next month came Lord DUNMORE and Mr.
CAMPBELL, passengers in a fleet of twenty-five sail from
the South ; and Lord GEORGE GERMAIN, a week later,
writes from St. James, that :
"The steady loyalty of the people of Siaten Island cannot be
too much commended and their affectionate reception of the troops
under Gen. HOWE cannot fail to recommend them to the particular
favor of the Gov't," * * * and to " His Majesty's very great sat-
isfaction in their conduct," and " His Majesty's paternal Regard and
Constant Protection ! "
A year later TRYON also writes to his Lordship that :
"The inhabitants of Staten Island have raised ^500 for the com-
fort and encouragement of the Provincial forces raised in this Pro-
vince."
2 3
New York, Queens and Suffolk, I may add, were
even more ready in this work of profit and honor to
their British enemies.
The Governor, TRYON, who thus figures so conspicu-
ously for this Island, at the instance of Sir WILLIAM
HOWE, was placed in command of all the loyal Ameri-
can levies as a compensation for his zeal.
In the Autumn before, November n, 1775, he writes
to the Earl of Dartmouth, from off the Island, as follows :
" It is certain that within this fortnight the spirit of Rebellion
within this Province, especially in this city, has greatly abated, and
we wait now for only 5,000 Regulars to open our Commerce and re T
store our valuable Constitution ! The Counties of Westchester,
Dutchess, King, Queen and Richmond\iz.& the bulk of their inhabit-
ants well affected to the Gov't, and some friends in all the other
Counties."
Here too is a characteristic local epistle :
GOV. TRYON TO LORD GEORGE GERMAIN.
" SHIP DUCHESS OF GORDON,
" Below the Narrows,
"N. Y., i$th April, 1776.
"Mv LORD: On the 7th inst. I fell down the River to the
Phoenix, but before we reached the ship we were alarmed by heavy
Platoon Firings from the Staten Island shore, which, by the help of
a spy-glass, we discovered to be the enemy firing upon the seamen
landed for water at the watering place under cover of the Savage
Sloop of War. The Savage began a cannonade, which was kept up
for some hours and until called off by a signal from the Phenix."
And this loyal Gov. TRYON notes "the grief and
horror which this insult meant to the King's flag." It
is pleasant to recall the fact that Gov. TRYON found at
least some men upon the Island who were true to their
own manhood and to the principles of free Government
set forth in the Declaration of Independence.
From September, 1778, to February, 1779, this same
Governor writes that 142 vessels, valued at 200,000,
were brought into this port (all passing this Island)
under letters of marque ; but TRYON reckoned without
his host when he closed with these words :
" This campaign will effect the much sought for reconcilation.''
24
THE OLD BILLOP HOUSE
or homestead near Tottenville once covered a patent for
921 acres of land, and later on was increased to 1,600, re-
mains as one of the memorial and historical places of
the war; indeed it is one hundred years older than the
Declaration of Independence and one of the two oldest
upon the Island. Here were the headquarters of Lord
HOWE, and here, by his invitation to Congress after the
sad disasters on Long Island, came old JOHN ADAMS,
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN and EDWARD RUTLEDGE, Commis-
sioners named by the Continental Congress to confer
with the British Commander-in-Chief. No event of the
war was more significant than this, every word of which
sparkles with fire and life. It foreshadowed in the
beginning what would be the end of the war. The in-
terview was one of high loyal courtesy and of true
Republican simplicity. A court of the most refined
sovereigns of Europe could not be more dignified or
polite. Submission was asked for in the name of the
King of England upon the one side, and with all the pro-
mises and advances that the kingly office could attach to
submission ; and upon the other side separation and in-
dependence was asked for and demanded in the name of
the whole American people. The three Commissioners
left the Island surrounded by long lines of British troops
with Lord HOWE for an escort in person. His Lordship
placed his visitors upon his own barge with kindly
words and with sad regrets that the mission which he
had asked for had failed.
WASHINGTON was at this time encamped at Morris-
town, New Jersey, from whence the British were unable
to dislodge his little army. Battle was 'more than once
invited by a strong, well led and skillful British army.
But WASHINGTON watched his opportunities and bided
his time. He knew, and this was one of the chief rea-
sons of his success, both his own weakness and his own
strength. It was too soon for him to measure swords
against a trained army. Like FABIUS MAXIMUS, who
kept HANNIBAL in check without coming to an engage-
ment, he made haste slowly, holding that patience was
2 5
the very essence of true valor. He remembered the
Roman example and followed it through the war.
BILLOP'S house, where he met the American Commis-
sioners, was not only Lord HOWE'S headquarters but the
owner thereof was a devotee of the Duke of York.
He had sailed around Staten Island to prove that the
Island belonged to New York, the Duke having decided
that all islands lying in or near the harbor which could be
circumnavigated in twenty-four hours belonged to his
New York jurisdiction, and otherwise to New Jersey.
For this and like services, earlier and later in Europe
and in America, the Crown bestowed upon BILLOP, in
1674, near Tottenville, 1,163 <icres of land, and these acres
were known as the BILLOP plantation. The owner w;is
also made lieutenant of a company of one hundred men
raised upon the Island, and three years later, by Gov.
ANDROS, the successer of LOVELACE, a commander and
a rate collector. We are told that he soon " miscon-
ducted " by making " extravagant speeches in public,"
and as a consequence lost his commission and retired to
his plantation. The last we hear of BILLOP was his own
charges made in turn against ANDROS, who was suc-
ceeded by BROCKHOLST.
Another famous place was the British fort on Rich-
mond Hill and near the present Court House, now cov-
ered with trees and embankments and entangled with
masses of briars. There is barely room now for two
guns without limbers, and the old fort is seldom trodden
by the foot of man. Here, for a long time, Lord HOWE
and his imposing chiefs of staff made their plans of battle.
Here, commanded by the vicious and bloody SIMCOE,
one of the staff, the Queen's Rangers were mustered
into service. Here KNYPHAUSEN, the chief of his Hes-
sian troops, drilled his hireling forces. Here came
Major ANDRE, but not now as a spy to forfeit his
life, but as an officer to assist his commander-in-chief.
Here too came Sir HENRY CLINTON, watching the move-
ments of the army of "rebels" and consulting through
many anxious days the probable consequences of rebel-
lion against King GEORGE and the motherland.
26
The British, July 4th, 1776, took possession of Staten
Island amidst the solemnity if not gloom of most of
the inhabitants, a majority of whom were not English
either by birth, inheritance or interest, yet dreading the
war. From 1776 to 1783 the city beyond us, Long
Island and this Island were without any representation
in the counsels of the Province. When old Cambridge
and old Boston had been relieved by WASHINGTON of
their aspiring taskmasters, the British fleet, which found
no rest in Boston Harbor, came filled with troops to
New York for rest, and they found it here in successful
possession to the hour of their final exit. That depar-
ture was to all true men as eyes to the blind, speech to
the deaf and health to the infirm. The heart of one
who looked upon this glad scene thus leaps within him
in his expressions of joy:
" We stood on the heights at the Narrows, looked down upon
the decks of their ships ; were very boisterous in our demonstrations-
of joy. We shouted, clapped our hands, waved our hats, sprang
into the air. Some fired a feu de joie ; others, in the exuberance of
their gladness, indulged in gestures which, though very expressive,.
were neither wise nor judicious. The British resented the insult, and
a large 74 fired and struck the bank a few feet from the spot where the
shouts went forth, but as there was no cannon to answer the shot the-
crowd ran off as fast as the)' could. Another group which looked
out upon the passing ships gazed upon the scene with tears in their
e}'es,"
The clouds which for seven years, like the curtains,
of a night without moon or stars, had hung over the
land were now lifted from our little Island, and to the
joy of all the sun of day rested upon its shores and peo-
ple. Among those who left were faithless lovers and
false husbands who had won confiding hearts in Ameri-
can homes, and among those who remained were many
who were tired of fighting for pay, for glory and for
Britain. Here upon virgin soil were the promises and
rewards of peaceful labor. Here was part of the land
which by " turf and twig " had been purchased, and
which the Duke of York had pronounced " the most
commodiouest seate and richest land in America ! "
2 7
We may not now say this of the material value of
this Island, but if there is real wealth in one of the
fairest spots of earth, with the sea and bay for its out-
ward borders and within uplands that for two score of
miles overlook the surrounding country, and forests
that in their Autumn glory reflect all the colorings of
the sky and all the beauties of nature, then indeed this
little island " remains the richest land in America ! " See
Appendix D.
THE ATTAINDER OF TREASON
was in many cases here a costly offence to those who
indulged in disobedience to authority. In 1783 or
'84 the Commissioners of Forfeiture of rebel estates
compelled the sale of the Manor of BENTLEY of 850^/2
acres and 350 acres of other land belonging to CHRIS-
TOPHER BILLOP, and 370 acres belonging to BCNJAMIN
SEAMAN. These two island estates placed about $23,000
in the treasury. Twenty-four other pieces of tory prop-
erty confiscated I find of record, but for nearly a cen-
tury and a half all important local records of the
county are missing.
On this subject of rebellion I am sorry to say that
WASHINGTON felt compelled in one of his letters to
speak not only of the " disaffection of the people of Am-
boy," but of "the treachery of those of Staten Island,
who, after the fairest professions, have shown themselves
our inveterate enemies ! ' And as a consequence he
ordered that " all persons of known enmity and doubt-
ful character should be removed from these places."
Whether WASHINGTON ever landed upon Staten Island is
disputed, but among his bills of charges is the following :
" 1776, April 25th.
"To the exps. of myself and party rec'tg sevl. landing
places on State*n Island, ^ Io - Io - -"
Gen. HOWE in his letter to Lord GERMAIN, dated
Staten Island, July 18, 1776, speaks of landing his
Grenadiers and Light Infantry upon the Island, to "the
great joy of a most loyal and long suffering people."
These loyal tory people were, if not as to any very large
numbers, without much long suffering, and the last record
28
was a creature of the imagination rather than a fact in real
life. There were rebels enough, however, to give a bad
name to the Island. The Provincial Congress and the
prompt action of the Commander-in-Chief soon silenced
all open expressions of treason, and compelled respect,
if not obedience, to all prescribed public duties. That
the rebuke of WASHINGTON became necessary is proved
by the sending of three tories to the Provincial As-
sembly to represent the County. Their names are BEN.
j. SEAMAN, his son-in-law CHRISTOPHER BILLOP, and
ABRAHAM JONES.
The truth of history compels us to see and say that
the controlling majority of this Island people were
not in the beginning friends of civil liberty nor ready to
separate themselves from the mother country. Too
many of them literally gave aid and comfort to the
enemy. If, however, we are inclined to be too critical
at the present time upon the men of the past, it is
always a wise rule to put yourself in the place of the
man you censure.
Recently there came before me the following letter
from General WASHINGTON, written in a very clear hand
103 years ago, to Capt. JUDAH ALDEN, commanding
officer at Dobb's Ferry, which as a record of local his-
tory must be preserved :
HEADQUARTERS, 23d Novem., 1780.
SIR : I impart to you in confidence that I intend to execute an
enterprise against Staten Island to-morrow night, for which reason I
am desirous of cutting off all intercourse with the enemy on the
east side of the river. You will therefore to-morrow at retreat beat-
ing set a guard upon any boats which may be at the flat or neck, and
not suffer any to go out on any pretense whatever until next
morning. Toward evening you will send a small party down to the
Closter landing, and if the}' find any boats there you will give orders
to have them scuttled in such a manner that they cannot be imme-
diately used, but to prevent a possibility of it the party may remain
there until toward daylight but are not to make fires or discover them-
selves and then return to your post. I depend upon the punctual
observation of this order, and that you will keep this motive a secret.
Acknowledge the rec't of this, that I may be sure you have got it.
I am, Sir, Yr. Most obt. Servt.,
GEO. WASHINGTON.
2 9
As misery loves company, we must remember that
there were, if possible, worse evils than this local dis-
affection. Staten Island more than once had twenty
thousand British troops on its shores and inland, while
all along its borders were the British fleet. Within and
without the enemy were in great force. Even personal
aid and comfort to the enemy seemed a mild offence
compared with the startling mutiny of the unpaid troops
of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, when, in January,.
1781, LAFAYETTE was banished from their presence
while pleading for obedience and order, and 500 guns
were aimed at Gen. WAYNE for raising a pistol against
disloyal troops. Even the loved name and presence of
WASHINGTON and a large body of troops were necessary
to cojnpel the fidelity of the Jersey troops. But to the
honor of these tempted and misled soldiers, when
Sir HENRY CLINTON sent three American tories to bribe
and buy them with British gold they were hung upon
the spot, and there was no more mutiny during the war.
PROBLEMS SOLVED BY TIME IN AMERICA.
First, let me say in conclusion, and I shall recite but
a few of the many thoughts suggested from this record,
is the fact that people may be gathered in one country
from all the civilizations of the world, and there mingle
together in harmony. As drops of water come from the
uplands into the rivers and from the rivers into the sea r
so separate peoples, states and nations, as we have seen
in America, may become united, prosperous and happy.
This we have seen from the first advanced steps taken
and maintained in the march for free government in
the early settlements of America. I need not say how
much we owe to the civilizations which first pointed the
way to America ; to the Printing Press born in Ger-
many, and there and elsewhere lifting the learning of
all previous times from the monasteries and sepulchres
where it had been so long concealed to that Anglo-
Saxon race and life which secured freedom of worship
to the Church and personal freedom to the State, with
" right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness " for
3
all mankind. The first real triumph in America was
seen in religious toleration when the Pilgrims were
practically banished from one country and the Wald-
enses and Hugnenots from another; but, alas, even this
victory lost half of its moral force when, for a season,
those who fled from the old world to secure toleration
in the new failed to grant to others what they had de-
manded themselves.
SECOND : The other problem solved, and one in
sympathy with the one I have named is that America
is the home of the banished, exiled and voluntary
escaping peoples of the crowded nations of Europe.
We count about four millions of our people as immi-
grants from the old world, with probably as many more
millions of their children born upon the soil. We are
often alarmed at this rush across the seas, numbering, as
they do at times, five, six and even seven hundred thous-
and in single years of time, and some of these multi-
tudes are of the very ignorant, the very poor, and too
many of the vicious classes. For these unwelcome
classes there is but one relief, and that relief is the best
possible education in all those solid branches of learn-
ing which teach first of all the ways of moral and
material self support ; and next to this, or rather as a
part of this, the kind of education which makes honest
and intelligent men and women. On this strong foun-
dation you may build the best possible citizenship. No
intelligent foreign born citizen, whatever his religious
or political faith, will complain when I say that all who
come to our shores for homes or for permanent trade,
for living and dying, for the gains of prosperity or to
endure the trials of adversity, should be thoroughly
Americanized, and first of all in our schools and semin-
aries of learning and then in the letter and spirit of our
liberal form of Government. Where these fail the dis-
cipline of authorized legal punishment must do the rest.
THIRD: Another problem solved is that Republics
may have a long life and ample provisions for the
common defense without large standing armies. A
true Republic knows how to establish justice, secure
the general welfare, with civil and religious liberty ;
how to be free from all entangling alliances with foreign
nations; how to preserve all federal authority which
belongs to the General Government without infringing
upon the powers which, by common consent, belong to
the several States. Popular Government and Republi-
can Government have nowhere seen in the world an ex-
ample like this, and the root and branch of all such
success rests upon self-restraint, self-government and
self-preservation.
FOURTH : Another problem solved has been the rise
and fall of domestic slavery. The end came by the
sword, when the sword alone could cut the knot which
held freedom and slavery in the same bond of- political
union. As the States grew in numbers and people the
slaves increased to millions, and had the end not come
when it did, and probably as it did, there would have
been to-day six millions of slaves in thirteen of the
thirty-eight States of the Union. Nothing but the
terrible medicine of cannon, infantry and artillery,
served at times by two millions of men, was equal to
the crisis. The South invited Emancipation when it
asked for Disunion, and the East, North and West ac-
cepted the invitation. When, after long delay and great
provocation, President LINCOLN proclaimed Emancipa-
tion, it was for a time a life and death struggle, and
freedom conquered in the end and with as much real
advantage to the South as to the North.
In our criticisms of States where slavery was defend-
ed, in the presence of nearly four millions of slaves, we
may as well remember that once upon this little Island
there were nearly 1,000 slaves, or more than one-
fourth of its entire population. Slavery came to its end
here as much from profit as honor. We now heartily
thank God that "this irrepressible conflict" has depart-
ed for all time and that no spot of earth is trodden
by the footsteps of a slave in any State or territory of
our American Union. In 1771, in a population of 2,847,
there were 594 slaves here ; in 1790, with a population of
3,942, there were 819 slaves. "The peculiar institu-
32
tion," so-called, came to its end here only when it came
to its end elsewhere, by proper forms of law, in the
State. The first local record of slavery I can find is in
1755, when there were 59 male and 52 female slaves at-
tested to in the following statement made from this
Island to the Lt. Governor and General Assembly:
" A list of the Neagroes of my division in the North Couteny of
Staten Island. JACOB CORSSEN, /."
In the list of owners, later on, THOMAS DONGAN is
credited with seven males and three females.
The final problem I shall suggest but not discuss, is
the real age of America within and beyond the time
when HUDSON held council with the natives of this
Island. If the history of Iceland is a true record, con-
secutively, at least during each century from the year
1,000 to the year 1,400, voyages were made in all these
years before the discovery of COLUMBUS in the closing
period of the fifteenth century. But these periods be-
long not to the present occasion, and are to most of us
like an untold tale.
What we do know and understand, however, is the
political and material growth of America and of the
revolutions of time and events which make us what we
are. We have seen how true it is. in a moral sense,
that revolutions never go backward. We trace them
direct from the memorable forces of 1688 in England
to the Declaration of Independence in America, and the
fulfillment of that Declaration in the two wars with
England, and in the greater conquest of ourselves in the
final results of the civil war. The material growth we
know of has been from a Province of 10,000 people to a
State of five and a half millions ; from a metropolis of
two or three thousand to a city of 1,500,000 ; from an
Island of a score of white people to one of 40,000, and
this last has been, and for reasons you can well imagine,
the slowest growth of all.
If, in conclusion, I am asked and I am asked the
need or wisdom of this commemoration, the answer
comes, in part, in our prosperous homes, in our ma-
terial growth and wealth, in our personal freedom, and
33
in our local, State and national independence. " The
little one has become a thousand and the strong one a
great nation." Literally this comparatively small piece
of land, covering about seven by fourteen miles, one
of the smallest in the State, but' large enough to be
known all the time as the gem of the seas and the island
of beauty, has grown from a colony of hardly forty
people to a county of 40,000, and the Province of New
York, in a very limited territory, in comparison with 1683,
from twelve districts to sixty counties, and in a century ot
time from a population too small for a census to one of
5,500,000, with towns increased from about two score in
1683 to nearly 1,000, and beyond all these towns there are
now in the State twenty-four grand cities and 230 villages.
The nation has added since 1783 fifty-two millions to
its population, and to its territory, in square miles, from
820,680 in 1803 to 3,466,166 in 1883, and all these miles,
apart from the cost of war, for $58,000,000. Beyond all
these figures, I find in the presence of the large con-
course of people before me, free from all the preju-
dices of sects or parties, of persons or places, abundant
reason why, as fellow citizens, we may assemble at least
once or twice in the space of one or two hundred years
to thank God for the blessings of the past and to im-
plore their continuance for all time to come.
Finally, you in this public manner recognize the first
organization of the County of Richmond, which two
hundred years ago to-day, under the first Charter of
Liberties, granted by the Britisli Government, pro-
claimed their right to receive, possess and retain all the
privileges which belong to the citizens of a free com-
monwealth.
34
APPENDIX A.
Extract from Dr., EPHRAIM CLARK'S letter to Hon.
ERASTUS BROOKS, dated New York October i2th, 1883.
There is but the one deed of the Guion farm,
dated March 25th, Twenty-seventh year of His Majesty's reign, Anno
Domini, 1675. The deed is 208 years old, and is signed by EDMUND
ANDROS for the British Government. The farm paid yearly, and
every year, unto His Royal Highness, as a quit rent, eight bush-
els of good winter wheat. Another deed of conveyance is dated
the 5th of May in the nth year of the reign of "our Sovereign Lord
King GEORGE the II. Later on, one in 1738, 145 years ago, and one
on February 22d, "in the 28th year of His Majesty's reign," 1775,
and this deed is 128 years old. This farm has been in the Guion
family 212 years.
APPENDIX B.
The Assembly convened by Gov. DONGAN, first met at Port
James, October 17, 1683, by authority of the Duke of York, and
under the title of "Charter of Liberties and Privileges granted by
His Royal Highness to the inhabitants of New York and its depen-
dencies." In less than two years, when the Duke was King, or in
March, 1685, the order came that " His Majesty doth not thinke it
fit to confirm."
While the Assembly of 1683 was the first popular body known
to the Island and Province, there was in 1664, a convention of dele-
gates at Flushing, in which Staten Island was represented by DAVID
DE MARKST and PIERRE BILJOU. The object of this call was " to
represent to the States General and West India Company the dis-
tressed state of the country."
November ist commemorates the date of the existence of the
Charter of Liberties, the session of the Assembly which confirmed
that charter and gave the first recognition of the rights of the people
in the Province of New York. Richmond County, by act of the As-
sembly on this date, was made one of the 12 shires or counties of the
State. It was in 1663 that Gov. DONGAN labored to extinguish the
spirit of discontent, by declaring that "no laws or rates should be
imposed for the future but by a General Assembly." In November,
1663, it was also declared that the New York County of Richmond
contains Staten Island and the adjacent islands. Ten years later,
August 15-25, PIERRE BILJOU, Schoiit, and two other Sckepens, were
the local authorities of Staten Island,
35
By order of the king, Gov. DONGAN was compelled to revoke
the order for a second Assembly of the people convened in 1683.
"You are to declare," writes King JAMES in 1686, "our will and
pleasure, that the said Bill or Charter passed by the late Assembly
of New York, be forthwith repealed and disallowed, as the same is
hereby repealed, determined and made void." The only exception
was the imposition of taxes and authority at Gov. DONGAN'S good
will and pleasure, to " permit all persons of what religions soever,
quietly to inhabit in your government without giving them any dis-
turbance or disquiet whatsoever by reason of their different opinions
in matters of religion, provided they give no disturbance to the pub-
lic peace, nor doe molest or disquiet othets in the full exercise of
their religion."
APPENDIX C.
INDIAN HISTORY, LIFE, MONEY, ETC.
The Indian life and manners of the Raritans make one of the
interesting chapters in the Island history. The aborigines had
neither knowledge of God nor of religion. They believed in good
and evil spirits, and had their medicine man or spiritual priest,
whose chief medicine was to roar like a demon to the sick and dying.
This priest was called Kitsinacka. He traveled where he chose,
made all homes his own, and his order was that only maiden hands
and elderly single women should cook his food. The dead upon
the Island, as elsewhere, were placed in the earth uncoffined, in a
sitting posture, resting upon a stone or block of wood, and clothed
in all their most costly apparel, with money in hand to pay their way
to the spirit land. Pots, kettles, platters, spoons and provisions were
near by to make the heavenly journey one of convenience and com-
fort. The Indians lived upon corn, fish and game, and clothed
themselves in the skins of the beaver, the fox and the bear, which
abounded upon the Island. Their weapons were bows and arrows,
s'harpened with fish bones or stones. The men had many wives, and
the women cultivated the soil, the product of which was chiefly corn,
beans, squashes and tobacco Turkey corn was the gener;>l 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
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