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, April 8, 2006

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

EASTERN NEW YORK TIMELINE - 1792

1792

January

George Gardner and James Hill buy Lansingburgh, New York’s Tiffany Recorder  from Silvester Tiffany, begin publishing it as the Lansingburgh Recorder.

Jan 9                 

Newly-arrived Scottish land agent Charles Williamson is sworn in as a U. S. citizen, in Philadelphia.

Jan 10

Great Tract No. 4 - 450,000 acres of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Antwerp and Jefferson counties, Great Tract No. 5  and 6 (26,250 acres and 74,400 acres) in Jefferson Lewis, Oswego and Herkimer counties) and the remainder of the Great Purchase lands (1,368,300 acres), is sold to Donald McCormick.

Feb 14                 

The Albany Library is incorporated.

Apr 29                          

Brewer and college founder Matthew Vassar is born in East Dereham, England, to farmers and religious dissenters James and Ann Bennett Vassar.

Mar 7                 

The Saratoga County town of Milton is formed from the Town of Ballston.

Mar 14                 

New York State authorizes a loan of $500,000, to be apportioned amongst it's twenty counties.

Mar 30                 

The Western Inland Lock Navigation Company is incorporated by General Philip Schuyler and merchant Elkanah Watson, to build a three-mile Little Falls, New York, canal and another linking the Mohawk River with Wood Creek. Financier Robert Morris will soon be brought on board.    **    New York's Northern Inland Lock Navigation Company is organized, for the purpose of building a canal between the Hudson River and Lake Champlain. Work will begin on it but it will never be completed.

Apr 10                 

The Town of Fairfield is established in Warren County.    **    The Delaware County town of Colchester is formed from Middletown.    **    Otsego County’s Town of Unadilla is formed from the Town of Otsego.

August                 

Lansingburgh publisher Silvester Tiffany takes on William W. Wands as a partner, forming the firm of Tiffany and Wands.

December

Wands takes over the operation of­ Tiffany and Wands.

Dec 18                 

The Boylston Tract, 817,155 acres of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Jefferson, Lewis, and Oswego counties, comprising 13 towns, is sold to Samuel Ward.

Dec 29                 

The 25,335-acre fifteenth Chenango Township is granted to Leonard M. Cutting.

State

Cortland is founded.    **    John Wells is admitted to the New York Supreme Court.    **    George Clinton defeats John Jay to become governor. 585 Cooperstown residents vote for Jay. Judge William Cooper feels that there would have been many more but that a number of people were off looking for a child lost in the woods near the Burlington neighborhood.  Irregularities in voting are used as an excuse to discount the votes from Otsego, Clinton and Tioga counties. The Board of Canvassers reject all protests.    **    A group of French settlers move into the future site of Chenango County's village of Greene. Most move on when their title to the land is later invalidated.    **    The approximate date Matthew Aldgate and his sons settle the Essex County town of Chesterfield.    **    Enoch Stowell and Jonathan Bates of Vermont pioneer the Madison County town of Lebanon.    **     Speculator Alexander Macomb buys 4,000,000 acres of Adirondacks land.    **    Gideon Tripp's Van Rennselaer Manor farm is leased out after a survey is run.    **     Senator Nicholas Gilman discovers Saratoga's Congress Spring.    **     Four-year-old Samuel Griffin dies in Cooperstown - the oldest known grave in Christ Churchyard.    **    A store opens at Ferry and Front streets in Schenectady (Arthur’s Market in 2000).    **    Vermont trapper Nathaniel “Nat” Foster settles in the future Adirondack town of Salisbury.   **    Canadian lumbermen from Montréál arrive at the future site of Massena to build a dam and mill on the Grasse River.    **     This year and next Massachusetts officially transfers 3,600,000 acres of its Hartford Convention lands to the Boston Ten Town tracts - in Broome and Tioga counties - to settlers.    **    Nathaniel W. Howell, after conducting an academy in Montgomery, leaves to study law.    ** A Northern Inland Navigation Company is formed to construct waterways, but fails to raise sufficient funds.    **     D. Ingraham travels from Boston to Albany, then proceeds to set out across New York to Niagara, via Schenectady, Whitestown, Clinton, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Geneva, the Jemima Wilkinson settlement, Canandaigua, the Genesee River, and ending up at Fort Niagara, then crossing over to visit the planned future site of  the British fort.

Oneida County

Barnabas Mitchell starts a settlement at Port Woodhull, in the town of Remsen. George A. Smith begins the settlement of Staceys Basin, in the town of Verona.   **    Settler Francis Van der Kemp reports seeing a pike in Oneida Lake three-feet-six-inches in length as well as two catfish weighing ten and twenty-four pounds.

©  2013    David Minor / Eagles Byte

IT JUST DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER

Continued from May 23, 2012

[1829]

Mr. and Mrs. James Stuart continue their exploration of 1829 Troy, New York, climbing toward the summit of Mount Ida (most locals call it Ida Hill). He commends the view of the city, river and countryside, commenting that the land, covered in pine and cedar, was considered until recently to be infertile, but similar land nearby in Kinderhook has proved to be quite productive when managed well and manured properly.

Partway to the top their climb is interrupted by a fence, so they head for a cottage to request permission to continue further. The tenants prove to be fellow Scots who, like Stuart, arrived last year, but several months earlier. The Stuarts chat for a while with the Craigs, who had found work superintending the farm on the hillside for the owner shortly after their arrival here. It can't be an easy job, since the hill is mainly formed of clay - although Stuart doesn't mention the latter fact - but the Craigs are making a go of it. Later in the century the unstable clay will result in several landslides, reducing the overall size of the hill somewhats.

Sometime before exploring the hill, excuse me, mountain, and heading north to Lansingburgh, our Scotsman has made a few real estate inquiries and discovered that a 65 x 25-foot tenement building has recently sold for $4,000. Untempted, he and his wife climb back into their carriage and, after short ride, cross the Hudson on the twenty-year-old Union Bridge, an 800-foot covered wooden affair that had originally cost $20,000. Later it would also be known as the Waterford Bridge. They head inland a few miles to view the falls at Cohoes, which they missed seeing last year during their brief ride on the Erie Canal. He mentions seven locks in three-and-a-half miles and he should know - they had convinced him then that canal travel wasn't for James Stuart.

On his visit to Albany last year Stuart found the rooms at the Eagle Hotel to be rather meagrely funished, so he decides on a change, putting up at the boarding house run by Leverett Cruttenden, further uphill on Capitol Sqaure, where Lafayette had stayed five years earlier. Good enough for a marquis it proved equally satisfying to Stuart, who mentioned, "comfortable accommodation . . . and as good a tea and supper as we had seen anywhere." Best of all, "I was asked . . . for the first time in the United States, whether we preferred to sleep on a mattrass or feather bed."

Cruttenden stops by to chat with Stuart, who describes his host as, "a frank, John Bull-looking personage, very fond of Scotch songs and of Burns's poetry." Like the good Scotsmen they are, they discuss local prices, "A goose sometimes to be had for a shilling Sterling, and a turkey for two shillings."

The next morning Stuart - probably with future publication of his travels in mind - has a quest to take up again, his current holy grail, this year's annual report on Auburn Prison. Following the Ossining bookseller's suggestion he pays call on the office of the state's secretary of state. The great man (whom Staurt neglects to identify by name) is apparently not there, but a clerk fields Stuart's request. Albany's reputation for complicating the simplest of matters is not unearned; Stuart is told that all the copies have been given away. We'll follow up on his mission next time.

© 2012  David Minor / Eagles Byte

BARRISTERS AND BOOKS

Continued from April 23, 2012
[1829]

After being legally deprived of some sleep (chatty lawyers nearby in the hotel) the Stuarts arose early the next morning and plowed ahead, breaking their fast at Lewis's Hotel in Kinderhook, lunching fourteen miles further on, at Richardson's Hotel across from Albany, then making Troy by evening, where they checked into Troy House, a hotel near the river on First Street, run by Platt Titus. Stage lines to Albany had been departing from in front of Troy House since the early days of the century, so the Stuarts were staying right in one of the main hubs of activity. He briefly describes Troy, "a considerable city, and the greatest erected upon the alluvial banks of the Hudson, — in fact, it is not above eight or ten feet above the level of high water-mark about six miles above Albany. The population has increased from 3000 or 4000 in 1810, to 11,000 or 12,000 at the present time." He also mentions Mount Ida, rising to the east above the city to a height of about 400 feet.

Stuart considers the Titus establishment well-run and adds, "for the first time, since we left New York, we found bells in the house — which are a positive annoyance to those for some time unaccustomed to their noise." Meaning himself, we presume. "There are also male waiters here." And he hadn't escaped voluble night-owl lawyers either, circuit court having followed him here to Troy. In spite of bells and briefs pushers he seemed to manage to sleep well enough this time. At seven the following morning the Stuarts had breakfast in the dining room, surrounded by, "those engaged in the business, judges, clerks, lawyers. . . .  I had no conversation with any of the lawyers at breakfast; but in the course of the forenoon I looked into the court. Three judges were upon the bench; and a proof was taking in presence of a jury respecting a mill-dam. As soon as I was observed in the interior of the court, though merely as a stranger, one of the clerks, or other officers of the court, beckoned to me, and then rose and insisted I should have a seat close to the table. He explained to me the particulars of the case, which were not sufficiently interesting to detain me long." Us either. He does insert a little treatise on court procedures, the main difference between here and Scotland being the use of civilians in New York rather than other lawyers, as assistant-advisers to the judges. In both countries the juries still make the final determination. He mentions that the court building is old and quite run down but that construction is under way on a new one. Building had begun last year but completion was still some months off.

Stuart and his wife wander off to do a bit of exploring. No more able to stay out of a bookstore than I am, he heads across the street from the hotel and down a few doors to pay a visit to Parker and Bliss's establishment, enters and stops to chat with William Parker. The co-proprietor is an agent of New York City's G. & C. Carvill company, publisher of the Library of Useful Knowledge. When Parker learns his visitor is British (How did he tell?) he asks about Henry Peter Brougham, English abolitionist and one of the reference works' chief authors. Stuart would not have known Brougham but is flattered for his countryman that Parker considers the Englishman's works the finest in the language, second only to the Bible (he IS a salesman, after all). The work has sold close to 10,000 copies in New York, Stuart's told. A number probably can be found here in Troy, what with Parker's zeal and the city's Willard Female Seminary, Rensselaer School (later RPI) and Lyceum of Natural History. We'll continue our Trojan education next time.

© 2012  David Minor / Eagles Byte

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

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

Full Steam Ahead (once again)

NOTE: The following is a continuation of a series of New York City and State essays last published in the print edition of the Crooked Lake Review in 2006. You can find the earlier essays on that site

http://www.crookedlakereview.blogspot.com/

Partway down the left side of the opening screen you’ll see the link

“Author Index”

click on my name and you’ll find the essays listed for previous years.

I’ll resume putting this series out here around once a month. When the focus changes to the part of the state west of Syracuse I’ll switch them over to the Crooked Lake Review blog.

Script No, 456

Full Steam Ahead

“The situation is most convenient, in a charming spot in the country, with the finest walks conceivable at our door, and it is in our power at any time to be in the heart of New York in twenty minutes.”

James Stuart and his wife, our Scots travelers, in mid-December of 1829, had moved from their boarding house in New Rochelle, New York; as it was closing for the winter. While they made their plans for upcoming travels they had settled temporarily in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Their boarding house is run by a Mr. and Mrs. Van Boskerck, a couple in their sixties, who live there with their two maiden daughters, who actually manage the business. Only one other boarder is in residence at the time. Leaving the operations to his daughters, Mr. Van Boskerck makes several trips a week over to Manhattan to drum up trade. Stuart will be paying a number of visits to the city as well. They most likely made their commutes on a steam ferry owned by elderly inventor and Revolutionary War veteran Colonel John Stevens, rather than aboard a rival vessel belonging to young Staten Island native Cornelius Vanderbilt. At the close of the revolution Stevens bought extensive land along three miles of lower Hudson River property confiscated from the estate of Loyalist William Bayard. Over the past ten years he’s begun making improvements to the property. The stretch of marshy New Jersey land had cost Stevens today’s equivalent of $90,000 (which will buy you almost a fifth of a condominium there today) and he’d chosen to name the site Hoboken, after the Dutch name Hoebuck, or High Bluff. Today it’s the site of the Stevens Institute of Technology.

It was at one end of this property that the Van Boskerck house stood, so his loyalties would have been to his neighbor’s fleet of steam vessels. In addition to four steamboats making runs between New York and Albany, Stevens and his four sons operate a number of other boats between here and Manhattan and to Philadelphia, as well as stage coaches across much of New Jersey. In the upcoming year Vanderbilt will become an increasingly large thorn in the sides of the five Stevenses, decreasing his fares to the point of unprofitability, eventually forcing them to buy him out at a cost of $100,000 plus ten annual payments of $5,000. The Commodore didn’t mess around.

Both Stuart and Van Boskerck had an easy commute. An eight minute walk to the Stevens dock down by the water, where the family manufactured their own vessels, and a ten-minute crossing in one of the four ferries, all of which can accommodate entire stagecoaches, which the passengers needn’t get out of. You have your choice of two landing sites, the foots of Barclay and Canal streets. All of this for a whopping sixpence sterling (only threepence during the summer months).

The Stevens family has other sources of income besides their basic transportation business. Spaces on the boats are rented out to concessionaires, who sell, “liquor, fruit, confectionaries, &c.” They also lease out their own hotel here on the New Jersey side. They charge pedestrians nothing for the privilege of strolling along public walks they laid out along the river. They do all right what with all those three- and sixpence fares to get there, thank you.

© 2006 David Minor / Eagles Byte