SATURDAY'S SAVE OUR SEAPORT MEETING

Saturday, October 5th, 2pm. Meet at the corner of Fulton and Water Streets, by the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse.



We'll have music and guest speakers and we willmake a stand for saving our historic district, our museum, our market, our waterfront.

Our current (growing!) list of guest speakers:

Gale Brewer (City Council, candidate for Manhattan Borough President)
Simeon Bankoff (Historic Districts Council)
Peter Stanford (Founding President, South Street Seaport Museum)
Roland Lewis (Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance)
Robert LaValva (New Amsterdam Market)
Jenifer Rajkumar (Democratic District Leader)
Paul Hovitz (Community Board 1)
Nelson Chin (Volunteer, Sailor)
Paul Greenberg (Author, Journalist)

Music will be provided by:

Theresa Danks
Art Baron

SAVE OUR SEAPORT UPDATE

The City’s hand-over of the Seaport continues… Our next meeting is this Thursday, September 26

Posted on September 24, 2013 by saveourseaport

The City’s hand-over of the Seaport continues, and it’s up to all of us to do something about it.

The next public meeting of Save Our Seaport is this Thursday, September 26th, 6:30pm, in the library at St Margaret’s House, 49 Fulton Street. (Map)

We will brainstorm and discuss plans for our upcoming Rally (October 5th!), report on last week’s Community Board meeting, talk about the latest news from inside Pier 17, and more.

Please join us!

EASTERN NEW YORK TIMELINE - 1794

1794

January                 

New York governor George Clinton addresses the

state legislature, 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.    

Jan 5                 

Erie Canal engineer and surveyor Holmes 

Hutchinson is born in Port Dickinson to

highways commissioner and former army

paymaster Amaziah/Amassa Hutchinson

and Elizabeth A. Mack Hutchinson.

February        

New York Indian agent General Israel Chapin,

noticing desertions from local reservations and

fearing trouble from his charges, meets with

them at Buffalo Creek and stay close to them

on through this year and into the next.    

Mar 5                 

Onondaga County is carved out of Herkimer

County. The town of Manlius is formed, with

Comfort Tyler as Justice of the Peace.   

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.

Apr 16                 

The 28,245-acre second Chenango Township

is granted to William Smith, who is also

granted the third (24,624 acres), fourth

(24,400) and fifth (26,200) townships.   **

The 25,780-acre eighth Chenango Township

is granted to William S. Smith. The 

24,200-acre ninth Chenango Township is

also granted to William S. Smith. The

24,186-acre twelfth Chenango Township,

is granted to William Matlack, Sr.

Albany

Simeon DeWitt publishes a map of the

Albany area.    **   The Bayard Land

Company is formed.

State

County boundaries are surveyed in the

Military Tract.    **    Judge William Cooper

is elected to Congress.    **   Connewango

pioneer Sarah Ash (Metcalf) is born in

Rennsselaer County.    **     A group of settlers

on the banks of Esopus Creek petition the

governor for pasture and firewood land in

the Catskill region. Traders Jacob Rutsen

and Johannis Hardenbergh take notice.    **

The legislature authorizes the surveying of a

road between Utica and the Genesee River.

**     Joseph Lothrop and A. Mead are the first

to settle at the future site of Chenango County's

North Norwich.    **    The first church services

in the Oneida County town of Augusta are held

in the Fairbanks home.    **    The population of

Herkimer County is 1500; Otsego County 12000.

**    The Fabius area is settled.    **    Jason Parker

of Utica and several partners establish a stage

line to Albany.    **    After a subscription of 200

shares is taken up by the state, work on the stalled

Western Inland Navigation Company canal at 

Little Falls is resumed.    **    Medina horse trader

Richard Gordineer is born to Jacob Gordineer,

a Dutch settler in the Mohawk Valley, and a

slave woman. He and his mother will be sold

to Joseph Grant when he is two months old.

**    The approximate date Utica merchant

Peter Smith acquires proprietary rights for close

to 50,000 acres from the Oneida Indians, the

land stretching from Syracuse to the Oneida

County town of Augusta.

©  2013            David Minor                        Eagles Byte

SAVE OUR SEAPORT WEEK'S EVENTS

The Pier 17 shopping mall closes after today, with demolition to follow.

The SOS Seaport Watch continues… more hands are needed!

Tuesday, September 10th (that's tomorrow!) at 1:30pm, meet outside Key Food at 55 Fulton Street, from there we’ll move on to The Blue School on Water Street, for an hour or two of leaflets, talking with our neighbors, and bringing people on board for the fight to Save Our Seaport!

The next evening, Wednesday, September 11th at 6:30pm we will have a Save Our Seaport public meeting in the meeting room at St. Margaret’s Center (Map).

At our last meeting, we resolved to increase our activity in the District, plan regular SOS meetings, announce a “Seaport Watch” to take part in (see above), and a rally at the end of the month.

There is much to talk about. We will certainly discuss the disturbing information in this Downtown Express article.

Important meeting dates:

• Our next SOS meeting, September 11, 6:30pm, St. Margaret’s (Map).
• Community Board 1 Seaport meeting on September 17 (Details to follow).

Please join us!

P.S. If you don’t already follow us on Twitter (@SaveOurSeaport) and Like us on Facebook (facebook.com/SaveOurSeaport), please do – these are the best ways to keep up with the latest developments!

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

EASTERN NEW YORK TIMELINE - 1793

1793

Jan 13                 

The 24,200-acre tenth Chenango Township is granted to James Talmadge.

Jan 28

The 24,186-acre eleventh Chenango Township, is granted to Leonard M. Cutting.

Jan 31                 

The 24,186-acre seventh Chenango Township is granted to Robert C.

Livingston.

Feb 14                 

The boundary of Rennsselaer County's Town of Pittstown is changed.    **    The 18,713-acre sixteenth and the 18,068-acre seventeenth Chenango townships are granted to John Taylor.

Feb 20                 

Lawyer and land speculator James Wadsworth writes from New York City to his cousin Jeremiah Wadsworth in Connecticut, suggesting he buy a particular tract of land in the Genesee Valley.    **    The Brantingham Tract, 74,400 acres of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Lewis County, is sold to William Inman. The Inman’s Tract, 25,000 acres in Lewis County’s Leyden and Lewis towns, is sold to William Inman.

Mar 2

Congress appropriates $20,000 to build a lighthouse at Montauk, Long Island.    **    The U. S. revenue Collection District at Plattsburgh is established, with satellite offices at Burke, Centerville, Champlain, Chateaugay, Fort Covington, Hogansburgh, Malone, Mooers, Perrysville, Rouses Point, Trout River, Westville, and Whitehall.    **    The 24,384-acre sixth Chenango Township, is granted to Thomas Ludlow, Jr.. The 24,218-acre 13th Township is granted to Thomas Ludlow and J. Shipperly

Mar 12                 

The Fulton County towns of Mayfield (later Broadalbain and Johnstown) and Amsterdam are formed from Caughnawaga.

Apr 12                 

The Chassanis Tract, 210,000 acres of the 1787 Macomb Great Purchase of New York lands in Lewis and Jefferson counties, is sold to Pierre Chassanis & Company.

May 3                 

The 22,565-acre eighteenth, the 20,750-acre nineteenth, and the 24,856-acre twentieth Chenango townships are granted to John J. Morgan.   

Jun 1                 

The 26,030-acre fourteenth Chenango Township is granted to Leonard M. Cutting.

Jun 14                 

The 27,187-acre first Chenango Township is granted to Alexander Webster.   

Jun 15                 

Pro-French New Yorkers display a Cap of Liberty on a pole in front of the Tontine Coffee House at Wall and Water streets.

Jul 31

Harriet Weld, future wife of businessman Erastus Corning, is born in Troy.

Nov 25                 

An insurrection of slaves in Albany is put down after a number of buildings have been burned.

State

The state’s Council of Appointments, a Federalist-controlled body, now controls every political appointment in the state.    **    A pioneer named Gunn first settles the Oneida County village of Oriskany Falls.    **    West Bloomfield’s first church services are held.    **   Construction begins on the Little Falls Canal. A shortage of funds will delay the work until next year.    **    Massachusetts farmer Cornelius Treat arrives on foot in the Town of Mendon by way of the new Mendon-Iona Road, builds an elm bark cabin, then returns to New England to bring his family here.    **    Ezekiel Gilbert of Hudson is elected to Congress.    **    Putnam County resident Samuel Morehouse moves to the Peaceful Valley area of the Adirondacks (his settlement will later be named Sodom, for disputed reasons).    **    William Aulls and his son Thomas settle in Steuben County’s Pleasant Valley.    **    Suffolk County sheriff Silas Halsey moves upstate, settles in Lodi, and establishes a grist mill.    **    Wood Creek is cleaned out and the channel connecting Schenectady and Fort Stanwix is shortened seven miles by the cutting of 13 isthmuses. The trip that used to take larger boats two weeks is greatly shortened.    **    A school opens in Clifton. In 1812 it will be chartered as Hamilton College.

Albany

A fire destroys several downtown blocks.    **    The Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures is incorporated.

Utica

The United Society of Whitestown and Old Fort Schuyler is formed, presided over by the Reverend Bethuel Dodd.

Maryland

Slave and future freedman and Hudson River valley gardener James F. Brown is born.

© 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