NEW YORK CITY: 1804-1808

1804

July

Aaron Burr departs from Manhattan, travels to Albany. He will soon move on to Amboy, New Jersey, and then further south.

Jul 12

Alexander Hamilton, mortally wounded yesterday in his duel with Aaron Burr in Weehawken, New Jersey, is brought to Manhattan where he dies at the home of his banker friend Robert Bayard near today's Greenwich Village.

Oct 18

Future lawyer Eugene Kateltas is born to a wealthy and respected family in Manhattan.

New York City

Wealthy merchant Jonas Wood builds a house at 314 Washington Street.    **    John Jacob Astor purchases a plot of land at 133 LaGrange Terrace (Colonade Row).    **    Young ship's mate Dennison Wood, working on a vessel bringing sugar to the city, marries 17-year-old Lydia McKildo.    **    The approximate date Connecticut shoemaker Benjamin de Forest comes to Manhattan and opens a shop - Benjamin de Forest and Company - in the harbor area at 31 Peck Slip.

1805

New York City
Construction begins on the Commandant's House at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the East River, in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood. It will be completed next year.

1806

New York City

Population: 60,000.

1807

Apr 3

A New York City act is issued under the title Remarks of the Commissioners for Laying Out Street and Roads in the City of New York.

New York City

The Orphan Asylum Society of New-York is founded by Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (wife of Alexander), the city's first private orphanage, at West End Avenue and 73rd and 74th streets.    

1808

Apr 25

Brooklyn municipal official and U.S. Representative James Samuel Thomas (S.T.) Stranahan is born in Peterboro, New York, to Samuel Stranahan and his wife Lynda Josselyn Stranahan.    

May 28

Minstrel show producer Thomas Dartmouth "Daddy" Rice is born in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Aug 8

Merchant and real estate operator Henry Evelyn "E." Pierrepont is born in Brooklyn to Hezekiah B. Pierrepont and his wife Anna M. Constable Pierrepont.

New York City

Grace Church is organized at Broadway and Rector Street.    **    Visiting free Ethiopian seamen and African-American parishioners, protesting racially restricted seating, leave the First Baptist Church at Broadway and West 79th Street. Next year they will found the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the third oldest Baptist Church in America.

©  2015 David Minor Eagles Byte

460 - BURY THEM NOT

Apart from the stone water tower, few major

construction projects were under way but, as

usual, the layout of lower Manhattan was

undergoing constant change. Settlement of the

affairs of the late (29 years ago) property owner

Captain Robert Richard Randall finally drew

to a close when the U. S. Supreme Court cleared

his land title to the area around today’s

Washington Square. The original will, by the

way, had been drawn up by no other than

Alexander Hamilton. The freed funds will be

used to purchase land on Staten Island for

construction of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, a

retirement home for, “aged, decrepit, and 

worn-out sailors”, and to provide for its

maintenance.

As for the Square itself, it had at one time

been a potter’s field, where the city’s poor

were buried in unmarked graves. Which

made it a handy repository for criminals

hanged on a nearby gibbet. But in New York,

real estate rules and over the last four years

the poor were reburied elsewhere and

expensive homes constructed around the

perimeter. New graveyards, especially for the 

poor, will, of necessity have to be located away

from lower Manhattan as the Common Council

this year bans them from all land south of Canal

Street. Meanwhile street construction goes on

between 13th Street and Canal Street. Eleventh

Street is laid out except for the two-block section

between Broadway and the Bowery, construction

there blocked by the apple orchard of council

member Henry Brevoort, a buddy of Washington

Irving’s. The second incarnation of Grace Church

will rise on the site in 1843. Four blocks to the

south, on lower Third Avenue one of the city’s

many public markets will be laid out this year

and named for the previous owner of the land,

the late former governor and U. S. vice-president

Daniel D. Tompkins. More changes to the city’s

infrastructure are in the works this year as

incorporation papers are filed for the Manhattan

Gas Light Company, which will soon be

providing gas street lights for the new

neighborhoods.

Part of the impetus for the move of old money

further uptown is the deteriorating condition

of the area known as Five Points on the east

side of the city a few short blocks northeast of

City Hall. Here, where Park and Baxter streets

intersect and Anthony Street thrusts its way

into the crossing, buildings erected on formerly

filled-in swamp land, the old Collect Pond,

have begun to collapse in on themselves, driving

out all but the most destitute. And there are over

13,000 of these unfortunates, existing in streets

of flop houses and taverns, precursor of the

tenements of the Lower East Side and the Bowery

of future decades. Letters are beginning to appear

in the New York Sun, complaining that these 

slums are not being demolished.

Across town (in today’s Triangle Below Canal

Street, or Tribeca neighborhood), sits St. John’s

Park, one of the city’s more exclusive

neighborhoods. Now, in 1830, the residents

have erected an iron replacement for the wooden

fence that had surrounded the park they all face.

As in a latter-day Gramercy Park, the gates are

kept locked, the property owners all having their

own keys. After the U. S. Civil War our budding

millionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt will knock

down the fence, level the park’s greenery and

convert the area into a stable for new toys, the 

iron steeds of his New York Central & Hudson

River Rail Road.

Broadcast on WXXI-FM / Simon Pontin's Salmagundi - April 2006

© 2006  David Minor / Eagles Byte

NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1798

1798

January

The New Theatre - designed by French architect Marc Isambard Brunel and brothers Joseph-François and Charles Mangin and later known as the Park Theatre - opens at 23 Park Row.

Jan 13

Lower Manhattan's 1767 John Street Theatre closes. Part-owner Lewis Hallam, Jr.  Hallam sells it for £115 to neighboring grain and hay store. The acting company moves to the New Theatre.

February

Isaac Mann, Jr., Stillwater, New York, supplier of logs to New York City for its water system pipes during the Colles project, petitions the city for payment of the balance due. Records cannot be found for the contract and the council suggests Mann sue for his money.

Mar 2

A correspondent for the New York Gazette & General Advertiser estimates that the average cost of Tea Water is $15 per family, suggests an annual tax to raise money for a public waterworks. Nothing will come of the suggestion.

May

John Beddoe, his wife Catherine, and his cousin David Morse arrive in New York City from England, set out for the Finger Lakes region.

May 13

Manhattan's  original Rutgers Presbyterian Church, built on ground donated by Colonel Henry Rutgers, at what would become Henry Street at the intersection of Rutgers Street, is dedicated.

July

Surveyor Melancton Smith dies of yellow fever in New York City, the first death in a summer-long epidemic in the city that will claim 2,086 lives. As the summer passes coffins will be sold on street corners.

Jul 2

Westchester County, New York, doctor Joseph Browne, Aaron Burr's brother-in-law, writes that the health of a city depends more on the quality of its water than any other comestibles. He proposes supplying New York City from the Bronx River.

August

Yellow fever has claimed close to 100 New York City lives by the early part of the month. A carpenter sends around a wagon loaded with coffins to be sold in the streets.    **    New York's City Council appoint a temporary health committee to aid the indigent though the epidemic. They will spend $5,000 over the next three months.

September

1,000 New Yorkers die of yellow fever, including the family of doctor Alexander Anderson. He will later turn to engraving.

Sep 1

U.S. Military Academy superintendent Richard Delafield is born in Manhattan.

Sep 2

New York doctor Elihu Smith writes that new cases of yellow fever are dwindling, due to the small number of people remaining in the city.

Sep 13

63 New Yorkers die of yellow fever, including the father of a future mayor, 17-year-old Philip Hone.

Sep 17

Doctor Elihu Smith contracts yellow fever.

Sep 18

Hone's mother dies of yellow fever.

Sep 19

Elihu Smith dies of the fever.

October

New York's yellow fever death toll tops 400.    **    New York City museum owner Gardiner Baker dies in Boston in his mid-thirties. His Tammany Museum collection is sold.

November

Over 2000 New Yorkers are now dead from yellow fever. Colder weather ends the epidemic.

Nov 15

John Jacob Astor advertises in the New York Gazette and General Advertiser that he has 24 cannons and other military supplies for sale.

December

Nicholas Roosevelt revives his proposals for supplying water to New York City. Judge William Cooper proposes a plan to lay water pipes there.

Dec 17

A New York City committee chosen to evaluate water supply proposals - John Bogert, John B. Coles, Jacob de la Montagnie, and Gabriel Furman - reports that the Bronx River is the best source, but that a few alterations need to made to Joseph Browne's plans.

City

Population: 4,000 households.    **    A residence is built at 207 Front Street.    **    John Stevens conducts steamboat experiments on Collect Pond for the third year in a row.    **    Three health commissioners requested by the city and appointed under the state "Act to provide against infectious and pestilential Diseases" are empowered to enforce the city's health regulations. Dr. Richard Bayley is named head of the Health Office.    **    Coles' bridge across the Harlem River is completed but his mill works at the site is still unfinished.   **    The Tammany Society moves from its usual Barden's Tavern meeting spot at Broadway near Bowling Green to new quarters at Brom Martling's Tavern at Nassau and Spruce. The new place is nicknamed the Wigwam.    **    The state legislature recognizes The Corporation for the Relief of Widows and Children of Clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York as a separate entity from a three-state umbrella organization.   **    The United Insurance Company and the New-York Insurance Company for Maritime Insurance are chartered.    **    Upstate land speculator James Wadsworth arrives, back from a stay in England.    **    The city orders a survey of the area along the Bronx River, with an eye to eventually obtaining a drinking water supply from its waters.    **    The Bank of New York establishes a branch on eight lots in Greenwich Village. The street where the lots are located will become Bank Street.    **    The city begins grading and paving South Street. Structures along it are built back from the wharves to accommodate the bowsprits of ships moored along the docks.    **    This year - after the fort in lower Manhattan was torn down in 1790 - the need for new fortifications leads to guns being placed in temporary fortifications close to Government House. 

Brooklyn

Shipbuilder John Jackson and his yard on East River’s Wallabout Bay - the future U. S. Navy Yard - build the 28-gun frigate John Adams for the Navy.

Technology

John Stevens conducts steamboat experiments on New York City’s Collect Pond for the third year in a row.

Ireland 

Irish insurgents are defeated by the British at the Battle of Vinegar Hill, in County Wexford. Many of the former will emigrate to the U. S. , and settle in a Brooklyn neighborhood that will become known as Vinegar Hill.

© 2013    David Minor / Eagles Byte

NEW YORK CITY TIMELINE - 1797

Feb 1

Former politician and New York mayor James Duane, 63, dies in New York City. He will be buried at Duanesburg, New York’s Christ Church.

April

Aaron Burr is elected to the New York State Assembly, the first of two terms. He moves into a manor house at Manhattan’s Richmond Hill (at Charlton and Varick). His daughter Theodosia will act as the property’s hostess.

May

Seven bidders, including Joseph Newton, Benjamin Taylor, Nicholas Roosevelt and Christopher Colles have responded to the New York City council's request earlier in the year for contractors to supply water to the city. Newton and Taylor exhibit a model of their proposed plant in front of City Hall and charge a 50¢ fee to view it. No action is taken on any of the plans.    **    Merchant and former British loyalist Charles Ward Apthorpe dies. Congressional delegate Hugh Williamson buys out nine of Althorpe’s children at a forced sale of their family home to recover a $1500 mortgage. Legal battles over ownership will last for more than a century.

June

The New York City council orders that the tanyard of  John R. Livingston (Chancellor Livingston's cousin) and other yards on Collect Pond be fenced in.

Jul 15

Five-year-old St. Claire Pollack falls off a Hudson River cliff at the future West 126th Street. His father George will bury the boy near the site of the accident and erect a marble monument dedicated to “an amiable child”. The site will later become part of Riverside Park.

September

The daily (except Sundays) Commercial Advertiser newspaper – an outgrowth of Noah Webster’s 1793 American Minerva - begins publication under its new name, with George F. Hopkins as editor.

Oct 6                 

Pickering passes word back to Liston after checking with collector of the port of New York Joshua Sands, that Jacob Astor is a fur trader and transports only enough gunpowder for his own business purposes. In reality Astor is now dealing in firearms.

Nov 28        

Newgate, New York's first state prison, opens on four-acres of ground on Greenwich Street in the Village of Greenwich.

December         

Young Washington Irving studies Latin at Jonathan Fiske’s New York City school.

City

 The city becomes the permanent seat of the state legislature (for the time being).    **    Front Street is extended between Beekman Slip (Fulton Street) and Crane's Wharf (Beekman Street).    **    John Fitch and John Stevens both experiment with steam-powered vessels on the Collect Pond for the second year in a row.    **    Philomath (almanac maker) Andrew Beers relocates to Albany.    **    Ferry service is launched between Manhattan and the Williamsburgh section of Brooklyn, near today’s Grand Street.    **    The Potter’s Field at Post and Bloomingdale roads is moved to the future Washington Square site, acquired this year by the city as a communal graveyard for yellow fever. Hangings will also be held in the park. A United States Arsenal will be built on part of the original graveyard’s cleared land.    **    Teacher Benjamin Romaine retires. His young pupil Washington Irving studies at a seminary run by theater authority Josiah Henderson.    **    Exiled French visitor La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt visits the city, comments favorably on the pump water.    **    Cornerstones are laid for the Bank of New York and a branch of the Bank of the United States, on Wall Street.    **    City surveyor Benjmin Taylor and engraver John Roberts prepare a plan of the city.    **    Philip Freneau begins publishing the periodical Time Piece.    **    John Joseph Holland paints a watercolor of Broad Street.    **    Yellow fever kills several dozen people.    **    Mr. and Mrs. John Barker Church return to the city after a sojourn in his native England, take up residence at 52 Broadway, near the Alexander Hamiltons.    **    Trinity Church sells its land in the future Tribeca neighborhood to the city. It will become Duane Park.    **    The city overtakes Philadelphia in the value of exports.    **    When the city’s second almshouse, on the site of the modern City Hall Park, is completed, to the rear of the original 1736 almshouse, the first is demolished.    **    A Methodist-Episcopal Church is built at Barley Street (Duane Street, after 1809).    **    Greenwich Street and Washington Street, built on shoreline landfill, are completed. Front Street is laid out between Beekman Wharf at Fulton Street and Crane Wharf at Beekman Street.    **    Scottish immigrant Isabella Marshll Graham founds the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children.

© 2013    David Minor / Eagles Byte

Script No. 457

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 invented.

© 2006 David Minor/Eagles Byte