1830s, Here We Come
December of 1829 had been an
unusually warm month; the following month remained so for a while. New York
harbor remained free of ice. Visitor James Stuart was able to make quite a few
visits to Manhattan from his boarding house in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he
and his wife were staying.
Quite often his fellow passengers
aboard the Stevens family steamboats were males; men did most of the marketing
in the shops and stalls of Manhattan, returning later in the day with their
produce and meats. Stuart had heard that even U. S. Chief Justice John
Marshall, who occupied his residence on Staten Island when the Supreme Court
was not in session, was often seen returning home with his dinner tucked under
his arm, even the occasional turkey.
Most New Yorkers ate quite well.
Stuart went to meet some friends for dinner once at a Manhattan boarding house.
His shoes got dusty on the trip over; he stopped at a boot black’s house on Leonard
Street for a polish, and found the man and his wife, “persons of colour”as he
described them, “at dinner, consisting of one of the fattest roast geese I had
ever seen, with potatoes, and apple-pie.”
In the several months they spent
in Hoboken, many Sundays would find the Stuarts attending divine services in
Manhattan. He mentions attending services at Episcopal, Presbyterian, Reformed
Presbyterian, Baptist and Roman Catholic churches, as well as at several
Methodist meetings. He found the various ministers to be equally impressive in
their abilities. He was a little surprised when, turning up at the Oliver
Street Baptist Church to hear the Reverend Spencer Wallace Cone, to find that
he really had to hunt to find a vacant seat. “. . . the tide of Mr Cone's
popularity was so great when I heard him, that the regular sitters were in some
degree tenacious of their rights.”
It’s not too surprising that Cone
was a popular preacher. The Princeton, New Jersey, native, had become an actor,
much to the dismay of his devout mother, when he turned twenty. It may have
been his presence during a fire that killed 72 people at the Richmond Theatre
in the Virginia capital in 1811, including the state’s new governor, that made
him decide to leave the stage. Afterwards, during a stint as a newspaper editor
and writer, he was inspired by the biography of English divine John Newton to
enter the Baptist church. Commanding a rifle company in the War of 1812, during
which he witnessed the burning of Washington and the attack on Fort McHenry, he
then moved to the nation’s capital. After preaching in the Washington and
Philadelphia areas he moved to New York City in 1823 to take up the pastorate
at the Baptist Church. Certainly Cone had a wealth of experiences to draw on,
and by the time Stuart heard him, knew well how to work up a crowd.
The Stuarts must have done a bit
of clothes shopping while they were in the area, probably in expectation of
being on the road before long. He notes that most of the work in the fashion
trade is done by women, apparently as opposed to the custom in Britain. The
visiting couple may also have been refurbishing their outfits for the New
Year’s celebrations to come at the end of the month. Well before Times Square
was imagined.
© 2006 David Minor / Eagles Byte
