Chapter I

ORIGIN OF THE SETTLEMENT OF ALBANY

IT

Tis well known that the province of New York, 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, 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.

ings, some of which were much admired by acknowledged judges. Of these the subjects were generally taken from sacred history.

I do not recollect the exact time, but think it was during the last years of Charles the Second, that a settlement we then possessed at Surinam was exchanged for the extensive (indeed at that time boundless) province of Munhattoes,' which, in compliment to the then heir apparent, was called New York. Of the part of that country then explored, the most fertile and beautiful was situated far inland, on the banks of the Hudson river. This copious and majestic stream is navigable one hundred and seventy miles from its mouth for vessels of sixty or seventy tons burden.2 Near the head of it, as a kind of barrier against the natives, and a central resort for traders, the foundation was laid of a town called

1 Surinam was awarded to the Dutch at the peace of Westminster, after various reverses, while New York, for which it was exchanged, remained quietly in the hands of the English. The two nations however continued for more than a century to make Guiana a point of attack in time of war.

2 The tonnage of the ancient sloops has been somewhat increased. The sloop in which Capt. Stewart Dean sailed from Albany to China in 1785, was 80 tons. The government made improvements in the navigation of the river after Albany became a port of entry, so that schooners of 200 tons were enabled to reach the city, and the Rochester steam boat, the largest vessel licensed at this port in 1836, of nearly 500 tons, made trips at low water. At a later day the Isaac Newton of 1400 tons was put on the river, and renewed efforts to increase the upward flow of the tide, in 1866, added nearly two feet to the surface. The altitude of Albany being but six or eight feet above that of New York, there are at all times three tides in the river, so great is the distance they have to ascend before reaching their utmost limit.

Oranienburgh, and afterwards, by the British, Albany.

After the necessary precaution of erecting a small stockaded fort for security, a church was built in the centre of the intended town, which served in different respects as a kind of land-mark. A gentleman of the name of Van Rensselaer was considered as in a manner lord paramount of this city, a preeminence which his successor still enjoys, both with regard to the town and the lands adjacent. The original proprietor having obtained from the high and mighty states a grant of lands, which, beginning at the church, was twenty-four by forty-eight miles in size, forming a magnificent manor, including lands not only of the best quality of any in the province, but the most happily situated both for the purpose of commerce and agriculture. This great proprietor was looked up to as much as republicans in a new country could be supposed to look up to any one. He was called the patroon, a designation tantamount to lord of the manor. Yet in the distribution of these lands, the sturdy Belgian spirit of independence set limits to the power and profits of this lord of the forests, as he might then be called. None of these lands were either sold or alienated. The more wealthy settlers, as the

1 It does not appear what name the Dutch may have given the locality. It was often alluded to as the Fuyck. Oranje is Dutch, but Fort Orange is English. I have not seen it elsewhere called Oranienburgh, although that would be a proper name - the city or fortress of Orange.