I £2. B41 S^WPSI TdW jWwm - it." ^awS ^v/o',^ j ^,Aai -i;i-v - -i" , r v v iilawi-j ^' '^mM LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Wffin PRESENTED BY UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. T T Bli ilSiJPf ffl*VuV)i\ ll^ft •|^i VVW'yy^, ' Kgv\A iKy#^, v ikw*; Rounders of JN e w Y o p v K ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE SAINT NICHOLAS SOCIETY OF TOE CITY OF NT-W YORK BY JAMES W. BEEKMAN SATURDAY DECEMBER 4 1 809 PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY M DCCCLXX 4*\ ALBANY JOEL MUNSELL PRINTER Extract from the Minutes of the St. Nicholas Society. "At a special meeting held at the rooms of the Historical Society, on the 4th day of December, 1869, after the delivery of an Address by the Hon. Jas. W. Beekman, It was resolved, " That the thanks of the Saint Nicholas Society be presented to the Hon. James W. Beekman, for the interesting and instruct- ive Address delivered by him, at the request of the Society, and that a copy of the Address be requested for publication. " Attest. A. R. Macdonough, Secretary." FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. Brothers of St. Nicholas: "When the Turkish sultan, Amurath m, heard some foreigners describe the protracted and obstinate con- flicts between the Spaniards and the Hollanders in the sixteenth century, he called for a map, and seeing how small a space was covered by the United Provinces, be quietly remarked : " If the business were mine, I would send my pioneers, and make them shovel such an insig- nificant corner of the earth into the sea." This corner of the earth, bowever, has given to the world the print- ing press, the telescope, and free schools ; and by these three mighty agencies, has developed modern civiliza- tion. Preserving her identity by her language, Holland has imparted her spirit to those English-speaking nations which have become great by Dutch example. As children who have thriven in the world by the help of tbe wise teachings of good parents, love to visit the old homestead, even if it be no larger or more stately than when it was built, so let us go for a while, to the fatherland. Let us see what is going on there now, and compare the fortunes of those of the family who have staid at home, with the condition of the wanderers who went west. b TIIE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. The founders of New York were Netherlander. The seven united provinces in 1609, covered nearly the same territory which now is known as the Kingdom of the Netherlands ; a little kingdom about two hundred Eng- lish miles long, and one hundred and ten miles wide. Its surface is less than one-fourth of the extent of the state of New York, and its population in 1863 was three and a half millions. Numerous colonies containing many millions of men, are subject to the Dutch flag. In the east, are Java, Madura, Banca, Ternate, Am- boyna, Banda, Timor, extensive possessions in Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes and New Guinea, with a population, ten years ago, of sixteen millions and a half. In America, Dutch governors control the colonies of Sur- inam, Curacao, St. Eustatia, St. Martin's, Saba, and Aruba, aud in Africa there is Guinea, containing over one hundred thousand souls. Listen to an account of our fatherland as it now is: The sea is kept out by dykes that have cost fifteen hun- dred millions, reckoned in our American dollars, and these dykes require to keep them in repair, the yearly expenditure of two millions. Ninety lakes have been drained, and within thirty years the Harlem sea has been pumped dry. By this triumph of Dutch engineering more than seventy square miles of good land have been reclaimed, and where large vessels were sailing, now stands a thriving town of over five thousand inhabitants. A vast ship canal, seventeen miles long, from Am- sterdam to the North sea, is on the point of being opened THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. / to commerce. The port by which this canal enters the ocean, is deep enough for the Great Eastern steamship, and is built of blocks of artificial stone formed out of the sand of the beach. The walls jut out a mile into the sea, and enclose a harbor two hundred acres in ex- tent. The Zuider Zee, is also soon to be partly dried, for the surveys are complete, and the money is ready for the execution of a vast engineering work by which more than seven hundred scmare miles of dry land will be added to the main shore. The ship canal of the Holder, for many years in use by the East India mer- chantmen, is fifty-one miles long. The eloquent Saurin said that Holland, created in the midst of marshes, has no solid foundation except in the wisdom of her rulers and the untiring industry of her people. We have been hearing of their industry; let us turn now, for a moment, to their wisdom. The Dutch make a duty of systematic benevolence. They have a Society for the Public Good, as it is well named, having two hundred and twenty branches, and fourteen thousand members, who meet once a fortnight and consider the best means of promoting schools, asylums and hospitals. The discussion of politics and religious doctrines is pro- hibited. The measures agreed on, are carried out in concert by the members. More than seven thousand four hundred charitable societies, four hundred and ninety-four hospitals, one hundred and thirty-eight asy- lums, forty establishments to procure work for poor workmen out of employ, make up part of the inventory 8 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. of Dutch good works. There are pauper colonies on waste sandy plains, which were drifting barrens. A million of guilders are annually spent upon these re- formatories, where the labor of the poor whom the com- munity must care for, reclaims useless lands, and almost pays for the maintenance of the colonists. The yearly incomes of all the charities of Holland exceed four mil- lions of dollars. But what shall we say about the four thousand schools, with their four hundred and sixty-six thousand scholars, one-eighth of the entire population. Surely they constitute the crowning glory of our father- land, and the perfect religious freedom which every- where prevails, is their natural result. Of the commerce of the Netherlands it will be suffi- cient to remind you that in 1861, the imports were two hundred millions, the exports seventeen hundred millions, and the tonnage afloat was over seventeen hundred thousand tons. " The people," says a very recent American traveler, " are much the reverse of the types made familiar to us by Diederick Knickerbocker." " The men are shrewd and honest; — enterprise and activity are in operation all over the land." ' As to the government of the country, the limited monarchy which now rules the Low Countries, is but the executive of the people, whose states-general, in their wholesome and moderate method of voting and of representation might be imitated by other free nations 'New York Tribune, Nov. 4th, 1869. THE POUNDERS OF NEW YORK. \> with advantage. There are two houses in the Dutch Legislature; the upper house consists of thirty-nine members elected for nine years, one-third retiring every third year, and is made up of the largest tax-payers, who are returned by the different states or provinces. The lower house contains seventy-two members chosen for four years, from thirty-eight electoral districts, one for every forty-five thousand inhabitants. Elections •occur every second year. Every voter must be twenty- three years old, and must be a tax-payer to the amount of at least eight dollars a year. Each province fixes its own local rate of qualification for voters, which in some districts is as high as sixty-five dollars, yearly tax. The members receive a salary of eight hundred and fifty dol- lars and traveling expenses, and the sessions must, by law, continue not less than twenty days. With this picture of the fatherland of to-day in your memories, go back with me now two hundred years of history, and let us compare our own American home at that time, with the Netherlands as they then were: "The two hundred and eight walled cities, many of them among the most stately in Christendom, the one hundred aud fifty chartered towns and sixty-three hun- dred villages, the sixty fortresses of surprising strength," which made up the United Provinces in 1550, had passed through a century of war and religions persecu- tion. I'>nt the Hollanders hail been battling with a new weapon in their hands — Laurence Roster's types had in 1 123, made it possible to produce a Bible tor five crowns, which before Eoster's invention couldnot b< ■ had 10 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. for five hundred. More than a century of free printing had produced generations of thinking soldiers, who cul- tivated letters and the arts in the midst of battles and sieges. Eighty years of fighting seemed only to enrich a laud which its enemies vainly hoped to wear out. Almost two centuries had elapsed since printed books were given to the people, before our Butch forefathers made their settlements in America. In 1609, when ITendrik Hudson first landed on the island of Man- hatas, free schools and freedom of religious creeds had long been established and undisputed things in the fatherland. Emerging triumphantly from their long contest with Spain, the United Provinces then saw their pah uiest days. There were then, as now, but three and a half millions of people, who dwelt upon a territory that covered but fourteen thousand square miles; "yet," says Motley, "the Dutch republic was the first free nation to put a girdle of empire round the earth. It had courage, enterprise, intelligence, perseverance, faith in itself; the instinct of self-government and self- help, hatred of tyranny, the love of science, of liberty and of money. It had one great defect; it had no country." "When New York was founded, this " nation without a country," had nearly one hundred thousand sailors, who manned more than three thousand ships. Eight hundred smaller vessels carried on the famous herring fishery, while swarms of river craft and canal barges were employed in a vast inland trade. Commerce was mainly free. Thus, without natural resources, by sheer THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 11 force of intellectual power awl intelligent courage, Hol- land, with freedom and common schools as her instru- ments, unlocked and gathered for herself- the wealth of the world; while Spain, with a vast territory, abound- ing in every means of riches and prosperity , was sinking into ruin, under a government of ecclesiastics, which punished heresy with death, and education with torture. In those triumphant days of the fatherland she laid the foundations of this metropolis, and of these United States of America. Her influence and character, if not her language, pervades them now. In the year 1670, there appeared in London, A brief Character of the Low Countries under the States, written long since, being three weeks Observation of the Vices and Virtues of the Inhabitants. The author was Owen Feltham, an Eng- lish gentleman of liberal culture, to the ninth edition of whose admirable Resolves these Observations appear as an appendix. " "lis indeed," says he, "hut a bridge of swimming earth, or a flag, somewhat thicker than ordinary, * * * almost all of them (the Dutch) are seamen born. They have not of their own, materials to compile one ship, yet how many nations do they furnish? * * * Where have you under heaven such impreg- nable fortifications? The conies find rocks, and they make them. For war they are grasshoppers, and with- out a king, go forth in bands to conquer kings. " Their merchants are at this day the greatest in the universe. Even among us they shame us with their industry — they win our drowned grounds which we cannot recover, and chase hack Neptune to his own old banks. 12 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. " Their merchandise amounted in Guicciardini's time to fourteen millions per annum, whereas England, which is in compass almost as large again, and hath the ocean as a ring about her, made not above six millions yearly. " They are in some sort gods, for they set bounds to the sea, and when they list, they let it pass them. Even their dwelling is a miracle. They live lower than the fishes in the very lap of the floods. They are a glass in which kings may see that the desire of being too abso- lute is to walk upon pinnacles and the tops of pyramids, that liberty in man is as the skin to the body not to be put off but together with life. * * * 'Tis an uni- versity of all religions, which grow here confusedly. You may here try all, and take at last what you like best." Charles II, of England, who knew Holland well, used to say that he believed Providence would preserve Am- sterdam, if it were only for the great charity its people have for their poor. There is a curious description of Holland given by old Peter Heylin, who about the very time that Captain Cornells Jacobsen Mey brought over his welcome com- pany of colonists to Manhattan, in 1623, speaks of Amsterdam as " a very fair haven towne where divers times at one tyde, a thousand ships of all sorts have been seene to goe out and in." "The women," says he, "are all laborious in making stuffes, nay, you can scarce find a hoy of four years of age, which cannot earn his own meat." THE FOUNDERS OF NEW FORK. 13 In the beginning of the seventeenth century when the fatherland was thus prosperous, New Netherland in America was occupied but by a few small trading posts, like those of the Hudson's Bay Company in later times. Our own ideal Dutchman, as pictured in Valentine's Corporation Manual, and made familiar to us as the Knickerbocker {child's marble baker) of Washington Erring, is merely a laughable caricature of the rough emigrant who came over as the factor and servant of th'e great trading companies of that period. He presents as just a picture of the Hollander, as Samuel Slick, the clockmaker, affords of the New Englander, or Don Quixote, of the Castilian gentleman. 1 .Manhattan island, two hundred years ago, was but a barbarous country. In a recent special report made to 1 Th ■ ridicule which a few English writers have cast upon the Dutch lias given us a false notion of their merit. We begin with our school Readers, we confirm our prejudices with Goldsmith's Train Ui r, and esta- blish our faith in the stupidity of Netherlander, out of the veracious history of Washington Irving. D'Israeli, the elder, in his Curiosities of Literature, quotes approvingly tin- poet Churchill, who earned from the same critic, by his licentiousness and laziness, the severe comment "thai Churchill was a spendthrift of fame, posterity owes him little, and pays him nothing." Churchill, (who wrote about 1762), finely, according to D'Israeli, says of Genius, that it is independent of situation "And may hereafter, i Di n m Holland, rise." Oliver Goldsmith, in l~6o, after describing Holland, in his admirable I m. The Tram Uer, as '■ A land of tyrants, anil a dm of Blavee ; " speaks of the Dutch, as being " Dull as their lakes thai Binmber In the storm." These flings at the rival nation, wore political. Thetories, offended at the revolution of 1688, which brought a Dutch sovereign into Eng- 14 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. the legislature of New York, on the present state of education in the United States and in other countries, by V. M. Rice, superintendent of public instruction, he says : " That part of New York above Canal street was infested by Indians, and it was necessary, much later, to provide means of defence against them. The colo- nists subsisted principally by fisheries and the fur trade, together with a little agriculture. Their largest town was no greater than a small village of the present time, having but fifteen hundred inhabitants. Albany was not half as large, and besides these, there were no other villages larger than a country cross road of to-day, with ten or a dozen houses. Brooklyn, the third city of the land, ridiculed the foreigners, yet with discretion. Butler in Hudibras, who could not have loved the Calvinism of Holland, is respectful, for he wrote before the national offence was given. Shakespeare nowhere says any thing worse of the Dutch, than that they were " bluff Hol- landers." It was only in later days that the ridicule began, which we have imported into America. DeFoe satirized without mercy this English fashion of abusing William III, and his nation, in his " True-born Englishman." " These are the heroes who despise the Dutch, And rail at new come foreigners so much. Forgetting that themselves are all derived From the most scoundrel race that ever lived : A horrid crowd of rambling thieves and drones, Who ransacked kingdoms and dispeopled towns. The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot, By hunger, theft and rapine hither brought, Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes, Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains, Who joined with Norman French, composed the breed From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed." The literary reputation of the Dutch, may be safely left to the judg- ment of Hallam, who in his introduction to the Literary History of Europe, pronounces Holland " the peealiaiiy learned State of Em-ope through the 17th century." THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 15 United States in 1860, was half tilled by a few farmers, who took the best land and let the other run to waste. Yet with this scanty population, they kept six clergy- men employed and paid. Three public schools, besides the Latin one, were kept going, and there was a score of private schools." "No great attention," says Super- intendent Rice, "was paid, by the English, to educa- tion." In an earlier portion of his report, he pays this just tribute to our fatherland : " At a time when persecution was tbe rule throughout Europe, the Low Countries formed an honorable exception. No man was perse- cuted for adherence to Arminianism or Catholicism, to Luther or to Loyola. At the same time, they provided for the intellectual progress of the children by establish- ing the first system of common schools in Europe." This is testimony from a quarter not likely to be prejudiced. "We have a very early, but imperfect account of Man- hattan, two hundred and forty years ago, in the letter of Domine Michaelius, written on the 11th of August, 1628, at Manhatas, and addressed to "Domine Adrian Smoutius, dwelling upon the Heerengracht, not far from the house of the "West India Company, in Amster- dam." This letter has been preserved and translated by Henry C. Murphy, the eminent Dutch scholar, to whom we owe so much of our knowledge of the litera- ture of Holland and of ISTew Netherland. " The people here," says Michaelius, "for the most part are all free, somewhat rough and loose, but I find in most all of them both love and respect towards me. We had at the 16 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. first administration of the Lord's supper, full fifty com- municants. They fell much wood here to cany to fatherland, and are making a windmill to saw wood. We have also a grist mill. They hake brick, but it is very poor." » New York, as lately as in 1673, when it was called New-Orange, contained not more than three hundred houses, and as many thousand inhabitants. The whole province held no more than six thousand people of European origin, nearly all of them Hollanders. The entire wealth of the city as assessed in 1675, amounted to two hundred and twenty-six'thousand dollars. With the removal of the restraints which were inseparable from colonial government, the growth of New York began. Notwithstanding the disasters of three wars, two with England, and the recent civil struggle whose vast proportions we cannot ourselves yet understand, wars which extended at intervals over more than four- teen years, our city has, within two centuries, increased in wealth three thousand times, and in population almost four hundred fold. This extraordinary progress is due to commerce supported by free institutions and univer- sal education. We shall see how large a share Holland had in producing and developing them. 1 There is a journal of a voyage to Xew York in 1679- 1680, by Jaspar Dankers and Peter Sluyter, two mem- bers of a religious sect called Labadists, who came to America to look for a suitable place for a colony of their 1 Memoir* of tlie Long Island Historical Society, volume i. THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 17 community. On Saturday, September 23d, 1679, they landed at the foot of Broad street, and speak with amaze- ment of the excellence and abundance of the peaches and apples. They went, after a few days spent in making- some acquaintance with the settlers, up the Broadway, over the Vliet or fresh water, to Harlem, about three hours travel, just as old Harlem is three hours from old Amsterdam. After returning from a journey to Maryland and Virginia, the Labadists were summoned before Mayor Rombouts, and formally for- bidden to carry on trade, or to travel, especially to Albany, without permission in writing; and they after- wards took a passport, when they went up the Hudson river. "The governor forbade any flour to be bolted, except in the city, aud would not permit even Madam Rensselaer at Albany, to use her own flour mill. He fi ill mile the tanning of leather; ordered hides to be sent to Europe unmanufactured, and compelled the shoe- makers to import shoes. This governor was a merchant himself, severe because he was avaricious." "No money," says Sluyter, "circulates among the people of this New York, who are almost all traders in small wares. They pay each other in wares, and are constantly defrauding one another." This was in 1680, under the English rulers of what had been New Nether- land. At that time there were but two little hamlets upon Manhattan island, called New York and Harlem; beta een them lay a wilderness, full of game, of Indians, and even of wolves, as is shown by the following official document, a proclamation issued by * Governor Dongan : 18 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 1 "Upon the many complaints of the great mischief done by wolves on this Island of Manhatans, and at the request and desire of severall of the Inhabitants of the said Island that they may have liberty and lycense to hunt and distroy the same, these may certifye that Liberty & Lycense is hereby granted to any of the In- habitants of the said Island to hunt and distroy the s d wolves, on Thursday next after the date hereof. " Given under my hand, at Fort James, this 1 st day of August, 1685. " Thomas Dongan. " Pass'd the office J. E. Spragg, See*." What can have transformed this desolate island, within two hundred years, into the metropolis of/to- day? Was it English thrift, or French vivacity; orwas it the cosmopolitan instinct of Hollanders? Our fatherland in the fullness of its power, had begun to develop itself along the borders of the New World, when European politics caused the transfer of the Dutch colonies to England before they were half a century old. They had, however, enough of Dutch blood and of the training of adversity, to make them the founders of a great city, and the builders of a powerful republic. The thirteen colonies of the American revolutionary war, scum free and independent states, were peopled by men of Holland, and of those eastern shires of the Bri- 1 New York Cvloniitl Manuscripts, Dongan, 1080 ; vol. xxxm, page lis. Secretary's office, Alrjany. THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. L9 tish island which had been, for ages, Largely settled by emigrants from the Low Countries. Those men knew how to take care of themselves. They have moulded, !>y their wisdom, the growth of these United States into the firm consistency of a mighty nation; while Canada, cared for and cultivated by English statesmanship remains still, colonial Canada, having nothing of Do- minion, but the name. England learned free govern- ment, popular education, how to print, and how to tolerate, from our fatherland. "Holland," said the eloquent Michelet, "was the bulwark, the universal refuge, and salvation, humanly speaking, of the human race." The Dutch Northman taught the Saxon, liberty, and from the earliest times practised its rites at home. But whence came these Dutch Northmen ? Far back in the misty days of tradition, a brave eon- quern* race of hardy pagans are said to have come from the distant east, into the marshy countries about the mouth of the Rhine. Next, they are heard of as fusing, after a while, into leagues of tribes. These Normans were part of those Aryan races, whose descent points directly to the Scriptural history of the dispersion of the nations, in the plains of Shinar. Expelled by re- peated overflowijags of the sea. men from marshy regions, came in open boats without sails, to the coasts of England. Then the Coranians, coming from a land called by the Romans the land of marshes, swarmed along the hanks of the river Dumber and upon tin' fenny low- lands adjacent. Before the beginning of our Christian era, these people had settled thickly the eastern coast 20 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. of Britain, and they welcomed and assisted Csesar when he landed in Kent, A. D. 55. In the beginning of the ninth century the Low Countries were invaded by North- men who overran the country, and absorbing and inter- marrying with the Menapians they found there, re- mained masters of the land. Heriold, a Danish viking, reigned in Walkeren, A. D. 841. Three Norman chiefs, Roland, Eggard, and Eoruc, were the first three counts of Zeeland, and henceforth their Norman followers be- came the Hollanders of history. " Two centuries later," says old Peter Heylin, " Flan- ders was so overflown, in the time of Henry H, about A. D. 1170, that many thousands of people, whose dwellings the sea had devoured, came over into Eng- land. There had already been a swarming over into Yorkshire and Northumberland in the year eleven hundred and eleven. Many had settled in Ross and Pembrokeshire, but most of these refugees sought the marshy country near the Dumber." In Lincolnshire, the south-east division, or third, is still called HbUand, and its name furnished the title of Baron Holland given in 1763, to Henry Eox, brother of Charles James Fox. The fens of Lincolnshire were dyked and drained by Dutch emigrants from a land which they had been accustomed to protect from the ocean by dykes, and to render fit for tillage by the same methods which they afterwards practised in the eastern part of England. It is then, a matter of established history, that suc- cessive colonies of Netherlanders had taken refuge, in early days, on the eastern coasts of Britain. They pene- THE FOUNDERS OF NEW FORK. 21 trated far inland into Huntingdon and Essex. Weshall Bee that the minds which have directed the growth of English freedom, both religious and civil, had their origin in the eastern shires of England, and were, therefore, formed and nerved by their Hollandish parentage. 1 John Bwnyan, horn in 1628, lived and wrote in Bed- ford, uot far from Bedford level, that fenny region of four hundred thousand acres which Dutch industry had long been reclaiming. Bedford level includes that por- tion of Lincoln still called Holland. In Bedford jail, where with the Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs for his only library, John Bunyan lay twelve years, that im- mortal allegory, the Pilgrim's Progress, was written. John Foxe, too, the author of that Book of Martyrs, whence Bunyan drew so much of his inspiration, and whence so many arguments for freedom have been derived, was horn in 1 ."> 1 7 , at Boston in Lincolnshire; ' John Hampden, although born in London, was the sun of Elizabeth Cromwell, of Huntingdon, sister of Oliver. Fairfax, was born in 1611, at Denton in Yorkshire. Ireton, who married Oliver Cromwell's daughter, was born in Not- tinghamshire, near Lincolnshire, in 1610. sir Harry Vane, who visited New England, represented Kingston upon Hull in parliament in 1640, and was beheaded; Jini" 14, 1662, was born in 1612, at Hadlow in Kent. Lord William Russell, the martyr of English liberty, was born at Bedford in 1639, represented Bedfordshire in Parliament, and was beheaded by Charles II, in 16s:;. Algernon Sidney, of the blood of Sir Philip Sidney, one of the noblest of English patriots and statesmen, who was beheaded, like Lord Russell, for liberty's sake, blameless of crime, and noble in every sense, was also a native of tbe eastern roasts of England, Penshurst in Event, born in 1622, tbe second son of Robert Karl of Leicester. 22 TUE FOUNDERS OF NEAV YOUK. the very seat and centre both of the early Dutch settle- ments in Britain, and of the nonconformist agitations which resulted in the colonization of Boston in New England. Oliver Cromwell, born at Huntingdon, in 1599, in the same north-eastern quarter of England, comes first into notice as a country gentleman opposing certain illegal and oppressive schemes of the king, for draining the fens, with which, on account of his long residence at Ely, on the southerly part of Bedford level, he was familiar. At Norwich, also near the eastern shores of Britain, Robert Brown, in 1580, formed a Congregational church, on democratic principles, but was soon forced by re- peated arrests, at the instance of Dr. Freake, bishop of Norwich, to take refuge in Holland. Returning in 1589, he became the founder of the Brownists, who un- der the name of Independents, soon grew into a very numerous and influential body of protestant Christians. Queen Elizabeth brought over four thousand immi- grants from the Low Countries into Norwich, aboul the year 1580. In the famous Domesday Book, which is an inventory of all taxable men and things in England, made by William the Conqueror, in the year 1086, there occur in the eastern shires, bordering upon the North sea, many names familiar in Puritan annals — such as, Pipe- rell, Pomerei, Marshall, Baldwin, Gotham, Warrene, Riviere, Draiton,'Coggeshall, and the like. At the end of almost every line in Domesday Book relating to Lin- THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 23 coin, Huntingdon and Cambridge shires, there occurs tlic explanatory word, marcx, mersc, mora, that is to say, marsh or fen, and the rent in that part of the country is chiefly reserved to lie paid in eels. Lincoln, Huntingdon and Cambridge shires adjoin Yorkshire and Nottingham, and lie together upon the North sea, and along the banks of the rivers Humber and Ouse, which drain the north-eastern part of the British island. Here Bancroft fixes the birth place and origin of the Puritans, and tells us that their secret place of meeting was an unfrequented heath in Lincoln- shire, near the mouth of the Humber, whence in 1608, they fled to Holland. The pilgrim fathers were then children of those Netherlandish Northmen, 1 who had gone over to eastern Britain; the same Northmen with whom, as we have seen, the native Menapians in the Low Countries had combined and intermingled so as i o E irm one race. The independent courage which led the Puritans to forsake all for the sake of enjoying the liberty of unforced conscience, came not, therefore, from the Anglo-Saxon spirit — a spirit which Hume, himself a Saxon, calls abject — the Puritan daring and enterprise were rather the old Viking tire. The Nor- man race, moulded by the steady industry which con- stant strife against the encroachments of the sea, made aecessary to those who dwelt in the Netherlands, "'TotheHollandish .■lenient we must trace an exploit whose glories are all appropriated by the Puritans of our New England Boston; yes, it was Hollandish resolution which threw overboard the tea in Boston harbor."— J. Watts eU Peyster. 24 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. became plodding and industrious; they ceased, after a while, to rove; instead of piratical galleys, Northmen in Holland began to build Dutch galliots. In the lapse of generations, as Dutchmen, they have become that remarkable nation whose children have planted letters, liberty and the arts around the habitable earth. Da Costa, an accomplished student of the sagas and litera- ture of the Northmen, denies that we ought to be proud of our Saxon inheritance. To the Northmen he refers that vital energy, freedom of thought, and strength of speech that belong to us. 1 Long ago, in the marshy lands of the Low countries among the homes of the men that formed the free state of the Forest People, as they loved to call themselves, fourteen centuries before our times, Northmen, as we have seen, laid the foundations of Holland. These Northmen were not Franks, but were Scandinavian in their origin — a brilliant and vigorous race which con- quered the Franks, and next overcame the English. But to the Northmen we Americans owe more than we have been accustomed to believe; for, nine hundred years ago, out of Iceland came Eric, who in the year 935, visited Greenland. Li the year of our Lord, 1000, 1 The Northmen. — The world looks upon the English as the most perfect types of the Anglo-Saxon race. The Netherlanders exhibit a much finer combination of the Saxon and Scandinavian or Norman. — llistori/ of tin M, nojiii. p. 35, by Gen. J. Watts de Peyster. It is impossible to admire too highly the ardent patriotism with which Gen. de Peyster, has gathered facts bearing upon the honor of the old fatherland, or to praise sufficiently the admirable learning with which, in his Garausiua, Mienapii, Dutch at the North Pole, and in many other treatises, he has made good his positions. THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 25 Leif, sou of Eric, entered Mount Hope bay, and spent some time in what is now the state of Rhode Island, — so the Icelandic sagas tell us, and their narratives are (•(in tinned and repeated by the Domesday Book of Ice- land, called Landnama Bok. Landnama Bb'k contains the names of three thousand persons and fourteen hun- dred places: gives an account of the genealogy of the first Icelandic settlers, with brief notices of their history and achievements, and extends from A. D. 1067 to A. D. 1334. It is of the same character and authority as the English Domesday. Palfrey, in bis History of New England, says of these Icelandic records, that their an- tiquity and genuineness appear to be well established. Humboldt admits their authenticity. There are monu- uments, too, bearing Runic words still intelligible, which have been found in Greenland, and which curiously preserve the memory of the Northmen. One remarkable stone was found by Captain Parry, the English arctic voyager, in the island of Kingiktorsoak, in 1824. Copies of the inscription found upon this Btone, were sent to three eminent Danish scholars, Finn Magnusson, Professor Rask, and Dr. Bryniulfson who, without conferring together, separately gave this translation: "Erling Sighvatson, and Biorn Thordar- son, andEindrid Oddsou, on Saturday before Ascension week, raised these marks, and cleared ground, 1135.'" Some interesting corrections of received history have been made necessary by the chronology of the Icelandic 1 Da Costa's /'/•<-' 'olumbian Dis&m ry of . I rm Hut by TSTorthmt a. 4 26 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. aimals. It has been claimed, for example, that the first bishop who ever trod the soil of the United States of America, was Fr: Juan Xuarez, who had been conse- crated a bishop at the time of the expedition of Pam- philo de Narvaez to Florida, in 1527. But three distinct series of Icelandic annals relate that Bishop Eric, bishop of Greenland, visited Mount Hope bay in Rhode Island in the year 1121, four hundred years earlier than Fr: Juan Xuarez. In a miscellaneous collection of Icelandic manu- scripts, called Gripla, there is a geography. After men- tioning Norway and other countries, the manuscript gives this recital, which is in some degree interesting to the St. Nicholas Society: "From Biarme-land lie desert places, all Northward to the land which is called Greenland. Gardar, the Bishop's seat, is at the bot- tom of Eric's fiord. There, is a church consecrated to Holy Nicholas. There are twelve churches in the Eastern settlements, and four in the Western." From these annals it is ascertained that the church at Gar- dar, the cathedral or bishop's seat, was established by Arnold, successor of Bishop Eric Gnupson, in the \ ea r 1126. Seventeen bishops succeeded him, and the last, Bishop Andrew, went thither in 1408, and was never heard of afterwards. The first Christian church, in this western world was, therefore, dedicated to the patron saint of Holland, our good Saint Nicholas. It is fair, also, to claim for Northmen, the honor of having discovered and explored the shores of New England, more than three centuries before Columbus saw theBahama islands. THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 27 We have compared the fatherland of 1609 with the feeble beginnings of her colonies here at the same period. We have, also, fresh in our memories the present con- dition of the Netherlands. We are conscious of our own national vigor. Perhaps the quick yet solid pro- sperity of this new world, had some root and cause in the example and influence of Holland. The commerce of New York that began with a single sloop, the little Onrust, has come, within two hundred and fifty years, to be reckoned by thousands of tons. The price once paid for the fee of all Manhattan island (twenty-four dollars), now represents in the number 24 very nearly the number of millions we raise as a yearly tax. McCormick brings the wheat of all the prairies, by his labor-saving reapers, within reach of our seaboard market. Howe gives cheap clothing to millions of peo- ple, by his sewing machines. The iron railway, after piercing the isthmus of Darien, has crossed the undis- cs of Holland had not guarded, in the farthest island of Europe, the asylum of human thought, you would have had neither Shakxpntrc nor Bacon, nor THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 29 tion to meridian instruments lias made navigation accurate, and its power over the starry heavens has added a new faculty to the astronomer. Janssens, too, devised for naturalists the microscope, that marvellous application of optics to common things which promises to elevate medicine from an art to the dignity of a science, and imparls confidence and certainty to what had heen merely the conjectures of physiology. Such are a few of the wonderful benefits which the little grammar of Laurence Koster through the comnu m schools created by printing, has bestowed upon the human race. Let us always remember that Holland established the first national schools and has continued to the present hour to develop and improve them, until they hold under instruction one-eighth of the entire population of the country. No narrow sectarianism ever invaded the educational institutions of our father- land. 1 No weak mistakes about parochial schools, under the exclusive management of religious ministers, and maintained at the expense of the state, were made there. Our founders went further; they followed the counsel of the great reformer, and rendered the teaching of children compulsory. "Ah!" said Luther, in 1554, Harvey nor Des Cartn our forefathers in their little home, forbidding, and full of hard work, but dear to them because won and kept by honest toil. From Amsterdam has grown Manhattan ; from the seven United Provinces have come our own thirty-six United States of America. In the words of Horace, married to verse no less immortal, by our English Milton : The power that did create, can change the scene Of things, make mean of great, and great of mean ; The brightest glory can eclipse with night, And place the most obscure in dazzling light. Having now given some attention to one of the con- stitutional duties of our society, which is "to collect and preserve information respecting the history, man- ners, etc., of the city of New York," in the enquiries we have just made as to the founders of New York, we ought not to forget to look into the early practices of our forefathers, in the way of festive meetings. The Dutch- THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. 33 men of Manhattan were in the habit of honoring our patron saint, long before the St. Nicholas Society was formed. The first notable gathering on record, is com- memorated in Rivington's Gazetteer of Thursday, Decem- ber 23d, 1773, in the following paragraph : "New York, December 23d. — Last Monday the anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise called Santa, Clans, was celebrated at Protestant Hall, at Mr. "Wal- dron's; where a great number of the sons of that ancient saint celebrated the day with great joy and festivity." Waldron's, was a noted ferry-house, or tavern, on the Brooklyn side, where New Yorkers were wont to re- sort for good cheer, in those days, and where great doings took place in honor of the repeal of the stamp act. In Bivington's Gazetteer of Thursday December 8th, 1774, is a notice, that "Monday next, being the anni- versary of St. Nicholas, will be celebrated by the descendants of the ancient Dutch families." The Ga- zetteer for the next week is unfortunately missing from the file in the Society library, nor is there any report of die dinner of 1774, extant. If these worthy descend- ants of the Dutch, celebrated the 6th of December as their festival day, as we do, it is difficult to understand how the Gazetteer of Thursday, December 8th, 1774, could speak of Monday next, which would be December 12th, as the anniversary of St. Nicholas. But probably Bivington did not pay much attention to chronology, and inserted snob notices whenever he had enough of them to make n[> a column, and not sooner. 34 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. The next festival of which there survives any account, was the remarkable one of December 6, 1810, when the Historical Society, in compliment to the original settlers of this state, selected the festival of St. Nicholas (usually pronounced Santa Claus), the tutelar saint of the Dutch for their anniversary discourse and dinner. It is worthy of remark, that the Historical Society has continued the discourse, without the dinner; and our St. Nicholas Society, during its more recent history, has adhered to the dinner without the anniversary address. The Histo- rical Society accordingly assembled on Thursday, 6th Dec, 1810, at one o'clock, in the north court room in the City Hall, where they listened to an excellent occasional discourse by Hugh Williamson, for which he received the thanks of the society, with the request of a copy for publication. At four, p. m., the society reassembled at the Washington Hotel (Kent's, 42 Broad street), where a table was most sumptuously spread for them, by Kent in his best manner, both as to choice wines and delicate viands. Seventeen toasts were duly honored; Egbert Benson presided, and a full and true account of all the proceedings has been preserved by John Pintard, then librarian of the society, which account has been repro- duced in. fac simile by Mr. George H. Moore, his excellent successor. Our St. Nicholas Society, as we have seen, formerly commemorated the day by an address, as well as by a dinner. After a long interval, we renew, t< i-day, our ancient custom. Long may the Feast of St. Nicholas live with pleasant memories among all true children of that grand old THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. ■'••» people, whose help timid Britons used to invoke against their toes, and never in vain. 1 Whether the Scots and 1'icts were to be driven back, or the Spanish armada to be kept away from England, Dutchmen were the friends in need, that saved Britain in the day of extremity. 2 The Netherlander.? have ever been the successful foe- of Romanism and of despotism. We now know, that hut for the valor and intelligence of our fore- fathers, England would have been a Spanish province, and these United States, French colonies. Therefore, the eye of every one who speaks the English tongue, should kindle with joy and pride whenever he hears 1 Augustin Thierry, History of the Norman ' 'onguest, p. 4. 2 The Spanish Armada on the 6th of August, 1.588, arrived off Calais to take on hoard its commander-in-chief, the Duke of Parma, who, with forty thousand soldiers and three hundred transport ships, had long been ready to invade England, as soon as the Hollanders would per- mit him to do it. For the Dutch navy, under Admiral Van der Does, prevented the Spaniards from coming out. Within two hours sail of Dover, the Armada lay vainly waiting many days, held by the valor of the Dutch, who kept watch between the Spanish fleet, at anchor off the land, and the flotilla of Parma in the harbors, canals and rivers behind Dunkirk and Newport. Van der Does found himself between two great Spanish armaments and suc- cessfully opposed both. On the 6th of August, 1588, there was no English army in the field, nor did Queen Elizabeth review her troops, until eleven days after- ward, when, so far from having any thing to fear from the Spanish invaders, they had been tempest-tost fugitives, for a week. On the 6th of August, says Motley, " no army had assembled, not even the body guard of the Queen. On the 6th of August, the Armada was in Calais roads, expecting Alexander Farnese to lead his troops upon London." The duke of I'anna was kept a close prisoner by the fleets of Hol- land and Zeeland, and tin' gnat storm of the 14th and loth August, at last completed the overthrow of the Spaniards. But for the valor 36 THE FOUNDERS OF NEW YORK. the name of Holland; remembering that the honest blood of the Dutch sea tamers warms the heart of many a man who ignorantly claims feebler lineage. of the Netherlanders, which delayed the operations of the Armada until the delay became a defeat, the protestant cause would have been lost. As with the Huguenots in France, the light of the reformed faith would have been put out in England, and that Puritan light to which we owe so much in America, would never have been kindled. Firmly, steadily, the Dutch mariners held on. Parma had relied upon the Invincible Armada to clear the way for him. " He is," said Admiral Drake, " as a bear robbed of her whelps." His attempts to break through the lines of Zeeland boatmen were frantic, but vain. His forlorn hope was slain to the last man, and soon that storm arose which sent the huge war ships and galleys of Medina Sidonia, " whirling round the Orkneys." The glory of saving Old England, and therefore of giving freedom of conscience to the New World belongs to Holland. APPENDIX Three remarkable lectures, on the Origin os the English Nation, by Edward A. Freeman, were read before the Literary and Philosophical Institution at Kingston-on-Hull, in January, 1870. They were thought worthy of being printed in MacmiUan's Maga- zine. MV. Freeman says : ■•That greal western migration of Low Dutch tribes to the west, which takes up the greater part of the fifth and sixth centuries, gave birth to the English nation. * * * It is the Low Dutch part of us, which o-ives us our national being; our national character, our national history. ' Our relation to the Low Dutch is one of actual brotherhood. They are our hone and our flesh; their blood is our Wood; their speech is our speech, modified only by the different influences which have, in the nature of things, affected the two severed branches of the race, during a separation of fourteen hundred years."— MacmiUan's Magazine,lSo. 1-2."). March, 1870. Macmillan & Co., 16 Bedford St., <\,vent Garden. London and Cambridge. jffiSft IKS' v v . u ^ ;w> v ^xyw ^'7 ' »iur w ■■- .-■w \ Hmurp 'V ",vO. ;.,v. •»•!/, 'iAffr ,"'v v-"^ '-~-. v -V v>: ,v VAMv K»a SfflEffl ^VV, JV, W V,V. V , , ; : . . "w«Ss»y"V»i;'~»»s«* fibs'""-.' v"^«vj; "tiyiwmwstim