Part 7

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

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

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

NEWBURGH, May 22d, 1782.

COLONEL LEWIS NICOLA,

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

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

Your most obedient servant,

G. WASHINGTON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I cannot tell what you say, green leaves, I cannot tell what you say; But I know that in you a spirit doth live And a message to me this day.”

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

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

TARRYTOWN-ON-HUDSON

ITS HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS AND LEGENDARY LORE

BY HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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