1794
January
Governor George Clinton addresses
the state legislature in Manhattan, urges strengthening defenses against the
British. They vote £30,000 for fortifying New York City and £12,000 for the
frontiers to the west and north.
Mar 22
The state legislature votes to
extend the Mohawk Valley Road west from Fort Schuyler (Utica) to the Genesee
River. The extension will be named the Main Genesee River Road.
May 27
Tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt is
born near Stapleton, Staten Island, the fourth of nine children, to farmer
Cornelius Vanderbilt and his wife Phoebe.
Sep 28
New York City tavern keeper James
Leeson dies at the age of 38. He’s buried in Manhattan’s Trinity Cemetery. His
tombstone will display Masonic symbols as well as a strange code, which will
not be deciphered until 1889.
October
French lawyer, politician and
epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, visiting New York City, leaves for a
wild turkey shoot near Hartford, Connecticut. While there he learns of a new soup invented by Boston tavern-keeper
Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat dis Julien. They swap recipes, Brillat-Savarin
teaches Julien his fondue method.
Nov 3
Journalist, New York Evening Post
editor and romantic poet William Cullen Bryant is born in Cummington,
Massachusetts, to doctor and later state legislator Peter Bryant and his wife
Sarah Snell, Bryant.
City
Designer Duncan Phyfe begins
manufacturing furniture.
** Bellevue
Hospital is created out of a pest house built to cope with the plague. ** Journeymen printers
form the Franklin Typographical Society, the city’s first permanent labor
association. ** John Jacob Astor travels to
Europe in the fall, leaving his seven-months-pregnant wife Sarah behind. ** Potter’s Field is laid out
at the junction of Bloomingdale and Post roads, the future site of Madison
Square. ** Further attempts to sell
the land in the former Collect Pond area again elicits no responses. ** City surveyor Benjamin
Taylor and others make proposals for supplying the city with water. Nothing is
done. ** Aaron Burr's wife Theodosia
dies, leaving him with a daughter, also named Theodsia. ** Colonel Marinus Willet, a
prominent member of the Tammany Society and a war veteran, is sent south to
invite Creek Indian half-breed chief Alexander McGillivray and some of his
warriors to New York to meet Washington and Secretary of War Henry Knox. The
Society acts as host to the 29 Indians and a peace treaty is signed formally
ceding the land between the Oconee and Ogeechee rivers to Georgia. ** The Bridge Café open at
Water and Dover streets. In modern times it is the city’s oldest existing
restaurant. ** Construction begins on the
City Hotel (Tontine City Tavern), on the Broadway site of the demolished City
Tavern. ** The former Kennedy mansion,
at 1 Broadway, built by Royal navy captain Archibald Kennedy, is sold by
present owner, merchant and financier Nathaniel Prime, opens as the Washington
Hotel. ** The French begins using
Bedloes Island as an isolation (quarantine) station. ** Philadelphian John Bill Ricketts brings his
circus company to perform at Broadway and Broome Street. The group will return
to the city five times. ** Peter Schermerhorn combines properties at
Beekman Slip (the future
Schermerhorn Row and Fulton Street). ** Future Manhattan businessman Ira Hawley is born
in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
1795
January
Connecticut investor William
Wadsworth drives three ox teams from New York City to Big Tree (Geneseo) escorting
six families to settle there.
Jan 11
A daughter, Dorothea Astor, is
born in New York City to John Jacob and Sarah Todd Astor.
Mar 14
John Jacob Astor writes to London
pianoforte manufacturer Tschudi & Broadwood, orders an instrument to be shipped
to his family back in New York.
Mar 24
State surveyor general Simeon De
Witt acquires Benjamin Ellicott's certified map of his Pre-emption Line survey,
by an act of the legislature.
Apr 9
The New York State Legislature
passes “An act for the encouragement of schools". $50,000 annually is
appropriated for the next five years, to establish and support common schools.
Apr 13
Publisher (Harper Brothers) and
politician James Harper is born in Newtown, Queens, to farmer, carpenter and
storekeeper Joseph Henry Harper and his wife Elizabeth Kolyer Harper.
May 12
Columbia College professor Dr.
Samuel Latham Mitchill addresses the Tammany Society of New York City on its
designated anniversary, describes a highly imaginary history of Chief Tammany.
Sep 1
New York Herald publisher James
Gordon Bennett, Sr. is born in Newmill, Scotland to a prosperous Catholic
family of French descent.
City
John Fitch experiments with a
steam-driven craft using a screw propeller, on the Collect Pond. ** Astor, back in the U. S.
and finding himself short of funds, hurries off to Montréal, writes to Peter
Smith at the settlement of Utica to obtain credit. **
Yellow fever kills close to 750 people. Half the population leaves the
city. ** For the third time since 1788, a
grand jury indicts the city for its filthy streets. Again nothing is done. ** Further proposals for the
city's water supply are made, and ignored. ** Federalist flour merchant John Coles, having
purchased rights to build a bridge across the lower Harlem River from a
discouraged Lewis Morgan, is granted the right to build a stone dam at the
site. ** The Tammany Museum is sold
to its director Gardiner Baker. He also purchases Daniel Bowen's New York and
Philadelphia waxworks and Bowen's paintings by Robert Edge Pine. ** The American Bank Note
Company is founded.
** Ferry
service begins between Catherine Street in Manhattan and and the foot of Main
Street in Brooklyn. ** French exile Moreau de St.
Mery passes through the city.
** The
City Hotel (Tontine City Tavern) on Broadway is completed; opens for business.
© David Minor Eagles Byte
