walking on a river half frozen that betrays your footing every moment. By these repulsive artifices no person of real discernment is for a moment imposed upon. You do not know exactly which part of the narrative is false; but you are sure it is not all true, and therefore distrust what is genuine, where it occurs. For this reason a fiction, happily told, takes a greater hold of the mind than a narrative of facts, evidently embellished and interwoven with inventions.

I do not mean to discredit my own veracity. I certainly have no intention to relate anything that is not true. Yet in the dim distance of near forty years,' unassisted by written memorials, shall I not mistake dates, misplace facts, and omit circumstances that form essential links in the chain of narration? Thirty years since, when I expressed a wish to do what I am now about to attempt, how differently should I have executed it. A warm heart, a vivid imagination, and a tenacious memory, were then all filled with a theme which I could not touch without kindling into an enthusiasm, sacred at once to virtue and to friendship. Venerated friend of my youth, my guide, and my instructress, are then the dregs of an enfeebled mind, the worn affections of a wounded heart, the imperfect efforts of a decaying

1 It will have been seen by the Memoir that Mrs. Grant was born in 1755, came to America in 1757, and returned to Scotland in 1768, at the age of 13; and that she wrote this work in 1808, at the age

of 53.

memory, all that remain to consecrate thy remembrance, to make known thy worth, and to lay on thy tomb the offering of gratitude?

My friend's life, besides being mostly passed in unruffled peace and prosperity, affords few of those vicissitudes which astonish and amuse. It is from her relations, to those with whom her active benevolence connected her, that the chief interest of her story (if story it may be called) arises. This includes that of many persons, obscure indeed but for the light which her regard and beneficence reflected upon them. Yet without those subordinate persons in the drama, the action of human life, especially such a life as hers, cannot be carried on. Those can neither appear with grace, nor be omitted with propriety. Then, remote and retired as her situation was, the variety of nations and characters, of tongues and of complexions, with which her public spirit and private benevolence connected her, might appear wonderful to those unacquainted with the country and the times in which she lived; without a pretty distinct view of which my narrative would be unintelligible. I must be excused, too, for dwelling, at times, on the recollection of a state of society so peculiar, so utterly dissimilar to any other that I have heard, or read of, that it exhibits human nature in a new aspect, and is so far an object of rational curiosity, as well as a kind of phenomenon in the history of colonization. I forewarn the reader not to look for lucid order in the narration, or intimate

connection between its parts. I have no authorities to refer to, no coeval witnesses of facts to consult. In regard to the companions of my youth, I sit like the "Voice of Cona," alone on the heath; and, like him too, must muse in silence, till at intervals the "light of my soul arises," before I can call attention to "a tale of other times," in which several particulars relative to my friend's ancestry must necessarily be included.

Chapter I

ORIGIN OF THE SETTLEMENT OF ALBANY

Tis well known that the province of New York,

IT

anciently called Munhattoes' by the Indians, was originally settled by a Dutch colony, which came from Holland, I think, in the time of Charles the Second. Finding the country to their liking, they were followed by others more wealthy and better informed. Indeed some of the early emigrants appear to have been people respectable both from their family and character. Of these the principal were the Cuylers, the Schuylers, the Rensselaers, the DeLanceys, the Cortlandts, the Timbrooks,2 and

1 It is not designed to notice for the purpose of rectifying or explaining all the discrepancies of nomenclature, chronology, and other matters, which Mrs. Grant, as she fears on the previous page she might, has fallen into in these pages. Not a few of them were common to the time she describes, but more recent investigations and discoveries have gradually developed a more correct knowledge.

The island of Manhattan, we learn from the Albany Records, was so called after the ancient name of the tribe of savages among whom the Dutch first settled themselves, but the appellation did not extend to the province.

2 Dirk Wesselse Ten Broeck, the first of the name mentioned in the records, was known in public life as Dirk Wessels. He was the first acting Recorder under the charter of Albany, mayor 1696-97, and for many years a leading man in the colony. He died in 1717. His grandson, Dirk Ten Broeck, was mayor 1746-47, Abraham, a son of the last, was mayor 1779-83, and again 1796-98, and a general

the Beekmans, who have all of them been since distinguished in the late civil wars, either as persecuted loyalists or triumphant patriots. I do not precisely recollect the motives assigned for the voluntary exile of persons who were evidently in circumstances that might admit of their living in comfort at home, but am apt to think that the early settlers were those who adhered to the interest of the stadtholder's family, a party which, during the minority of King William, was almost persecuted by the high republicans. They who came over at a later period probably belonged to the party which opposed the stadtholder, and which was then in its turn depressed. These persons afterwards distinguished themselves by an aversion, almost amounting to antipathy, to the British army, and indeed to all the British colonists. Their notions were mean and contracted; their manners blunt and austere; and their habits sordid and parsimonious; as the settlement began to extend they retired, and formed new establishments, afterwards called Fishkill, Esopus, etc.

To the Schuylers, Cuylers, De Lanceys, Van Cortlandts, and a few others, this description did by no means apply. Yet they too bore about them the tokens of former affluence and respectability, such as family plate, portraits of their ancestors executed in a superior style, and great numbers of original paint

of brigade in the Revolutionary War. His wife was Elizabeth, the only daughter of the sixth patroon of Rensselaerwyck, and aunt of the last, Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer.