Save the South Street Seaport Museum

There are lots of opportunities to get involved coming up. Let’s do this chronologically…

• Saturday June 25. Collecting petitions at Brooklyn Bridge Park. We’ll be doing two shifts. Please meet David at the foot of Atlantic Avenue (Pier 6) in Brooklyn at 10:30am or 1:30pm. Call him at 212-864-2069 to let him know you’re available.

• Sunday June 26. Collecting petitions at New Amsterdam Market and Fulton Stall Market. Meet at 10:45am at either location (South St. just north of Fulton, on either side of South). Please email us to let us know your availability.

Alternatively, if you plan to be at the Wooden Boat Show in Mystic this weekend, why not pick up a few (thousand) signatures there? Email us and we’ll get you a clipboard and some supplies!

• Tuesday June 28. Community Board 1 Full Meeting. 6pm at New York Law School, 185 West Broadway (Map). We need to show up in force again to demonstrate our passion and to see how the resolution is coming along.

• Thursday June 30. Save Our Seaport Meeting. We will meet at 6:30pm at the St. Margaret’s Meeting Room, 49 Fulton St. (Map) We have a great deal to discuss and much to plan. Please attend!

• Saturday July 16. City Of Water Day! This will be a big event for us, and a lot of fun. There are several ways to get involved.

We will have tables set up at Liberty State Park and on Governors Island. It would be great to have a lot of help, so we can take shifts and everyone will get a chance to enjoy the day. Please email usyour availability so we can plan ahead.

Also, Maggie Flanagan, Port Captain for the event, needs volunteer dockhands on Governors Island to help with the many ships that will be involved in the event.

Click here to download a flyer with all the details about getting involved.

If you’ve made it this far, you can see we all have a lot on our plates! We need YOU to pitch in any way you can.

Don’t forget that you can download petition pageshere and pass them around your office or your neighborhood. We also now have an online petition that you can sign and share with your friends who are too far away to sign our paper petitions.

Have a great weekend!

Script No. 458

(Continued from May 23, 2011)

New Year’s Eve Bash

It had been mid-summer back in 1828 when Scottish traveler James Stuart first arrived in New York City. His timing was such that he had missed the city’s New Year’s Day celebrations by a good eight months. Perhaps fortunately for him. He might have been callithumped. There are a number of possible origins of the obscure word ‘Callithumpian’. Whatever the source, it’s described in “Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words” as, “a noisy demonstration”. The whole thing was a British import, as described by historian Stephen Nissenbaum's The Battle for Christmas. “By beating on tin pans, blowing horns, groaning and shouting catcalls, the music was performed as a gesture of deliberate mockery . . . the callithumpians . . . directed their 'rough music' against those who seemed to be claiming too much dignity or abusing their power."

On January 1, 1828, the entire cacophonous shivaree got out of hand. It had begun up in the theater district along the Bowery, when a contingent of middle-class revelers, armed with all sorts of noisemakers and well fortified with liquid refreshments started tossing limes (don’t ask me where they found limes in early Manhattan during the winter) through the windows of one of the local bars. Then they made their boisterous way over to the City Hotel on Broadway (where the Stuarts would put up in the coming summer). After roughing up attendees at a fancy ball there, they turned next to a nearby African-American church, bursting through the street door, smashing windows, breaking up the pews, and physically assaulting the congregation who were gathered to see in the new year. Heading down Broadway they looted shops all the way down to the Battery Park, where they tore down its iron fence and tossed assorted missiles through windows surrounding the park where the city’s elite had their town houses. Then they presumably scattered, stumbling off to nearby gutters to lie down and make their resolutions.

We don’t hear of repeat performances in the immediately following years. Certainly now, in 1830, the Stuarts apparently enjoyed a much more sedate celebration, since he makes no mention of any merrymaking at all. The sun rose on a quite mellow January 1st; the Stuart party caught a steamboat out of Hoboken and headed off to Brooklyn Heights to watch the various sailing packet boats headed for and returning from Europe. Stuart reports, “I never witnessed a more animating scene. On our return through New York we were surprised to observe the streets more crowded than at any former period . . . it is usual for people of all descriptions to call at each other's houses, were it but for a moment, on the first day of the year. Cold meat, cake, confectionaries, and wines, are laid out upon a table, that all who call may partake; and it seems the general understanding, that such a one's friends as do not call upon him on the first day of the year are not very anxious to continue his acquaintance.”

As we’ve seen repeatedly 19th century Americans really liked to pack away the vittles. Local bakers outdid themselves creating the ‘confectionaries’ Stuart mentions. During the holidays they would each advertise their grandest creations and visitors come around to gawk at the grandest, before they’re cut. One of the bakers would seem to have been going for a Guinness record, had such things existed then. His cake weighed in at 1500 pounds.

© 2006 David Minor / Eagles Byte

EASTERN NEW YORK Timeline - 1675-1679

1675

February

New York's Governor Edmund Andros convenes a Board of Indian Commissioners at Albany. Robert Livingston serves as court secretary.

Apr 2

Plum (Plumme) Island Manor, (including Gull Island), on Long Island’s North Fork, is

formally granted to Samuel Willes (Wyllys) by Governor Andros.

June

Andros appears at Saybrook, Connecticut, claiming the land west of the Connecticut River for the Duke of York.

November

The Dutch on Long Island hold their first annual Kermiss (agricultural fair).

England

Francis Lovelace, second colonial governor of New York, dies in London, in his mid-fifties.

1676

March

Work begins on a new English fort in Albany.

May

Albany resident Pieter Bogardus finds his fence has been torn down and thrown in the Hudson River. The vandalism is reported to the fort's acting commander Sergeant Thomas Sharpe.

Nov 25

Albany residents Jan Conell and Dirck Albertsz Bradt impersonate a British officer while performing an impromptu farce at the tavern of William Gysbertse.

Dec 5

Conell and Bradt go to trial for ridiculing a British officer, are released on bail to appear before a special session on the 11th.

Dec 11

The two men are found guilty, but being Dutch and presumably not overly familiar with English custom, are sentenced to an hour in the stocks and relatively moderate fines of 200 and 100 guilders respectively.

State

Andros imposes penalties in Albany for trading violations, a high levy for defense of the town, and fines for an entire street when drunken a Indian is found there. ** A Senate House is erected at Kingston.

1677

Sep 29

Royal governor Edmund Andros confirms the 1667 grant of Oyster Bay.

Nov 1

The Suffolk County town of Southampton is incorporated by patent by Governor Andros.

State

Iroquois Confederacy members friendly to the English create the Covenant Chain, a commercial and military alliance, with them, signing two treaties at Albany. The first, between the Five Nations and Connecticut and Massachusetts, ends King Philip's War (New England's Second Puritan Conquest). In the second the Iroquois and the Delaware broker an agreement between Maryland and Virginia on the one hand and the Iroquois and the Andastes (or Susquehannocks) on the other. ** French Huguenots in the Hudson Valley establish New Paltz.

1678

State

The Ulster County grant of New Paltz is occupied by Huguenots.

1679

State

Dutch missionaries Jaspar Dankers and Peter Sluyter visit the Albany area.

© 2011 David Minor / Eagles Byte

South Street Seaport Petition Drive

New York City area residents What is your weekend looking like? We spent last weekend collecting names on our petition to secure the future of the South Street Seaport Museum (500 new signatures!) and we're planning to do it again this weekend. We could use your help... Saturday: We will meet up at 10:30am in front of the model shop/work barge by Pier 15, then fan out to Piers 16 and 17 with our clipboards. If we have enough help, we might get ambitious and hit the Governor's Island Ferry line as well. Sunday: We will have tables at both of the local outdoor markets - the Market Stalls on the west side of South Street, just north of Fulton, and the New Amsterdam Market on the east side of South Street one block further north. We will meet at both locations at 10:45am. If you can lend a hand, even for a few hours, please do. Drop us a line at saveourseaport@gmail.com or leave a message at (347)6-PIER16. If you need to play it by ear, just come on down. On to next week: Our next Save Our Seaport Meeting will be Thursday June 16th at a location to be announced (soon!). The following week: The Community Board 1 Seaport/Civic Center Committee with meet on Tuesday June 21st, 6:00pm, at the Southbridge Towers Community Room, 90 Beekman Street. Seaport Museum Board Chairman Frank Sciame is expected to attend and answer questions. We need to have a massive showing. Let's overflow the room with interested parties! One more thing... Why not pass a petition around among your friends, your community group, your local businesses, etc.! Click here to download a petition. Print multiple copies and you’re ready. When it’s full, or even not full, mail it to our Post Office Box (listed at the bottom of the petition) or drop it off with the bartender at Meade’s (22 Peck Slip). Please email us and let us know your count of signatures, and that you have mailed or dropped it off. Thanks for any and all participation. More information soon. Save Our Seaport! About Us Our Mission: To save South Street’s working waterfront, beginning with our schooners Pioneer and Lettie G. Howard, then continuing inland to restore interest and life to the rest of the Museum.

Copyright © 2011 Save Our Seaport, All rights reserved.