Part 5

Although Van Curler was attracted thus early by this beautiful land, it was long before he could realize his purposes. He married the Widow Bronck and continued the care of his uncle’s interest in the manor of Rensselaerswyck. But despite the success of his management the longer he stayed the more he saw and deplored the evils inherent in the feudal system. To his enlarged and benevolent mind the system itself was essentially one of serfdom.

The patroon was lord of the manor, the owner of all the land and of a fixed share of all the produce of his subjects or tenants, with the right of a pre-emption of all the surplus beyond what was necessary for their support. They took an oath of allegiance to him: they could not hunt or fish or trade or leave the manor without his consent or that of his representative. If they sold their tenant right and improvements, a part of the price was his. His will was the law, for his subjects renounced their right of appeal to the provincial government from his decrees or those of his magistrates. He was an absentee, and measured the merit of his agents by the amount of their remittances. The government of the province as administered at Fort Orange or at Manhattan was as good as could be expected from a trading company, but was odious to men of Van Curler’s enlarged understanding.

The firearms of white men at Beverwyck and in Rensselaerswyck began to impair the value of the hunting grounds in their vicinity, and Van Curler learned that the Indians might consent to sell their lands at Schenectady. He looked about for associates in the purchase of the lands and their settlement, and sifted out fourteen. He applied to the Director General or Governor of the province, Peter Stuyvesant—whose real qualities and worth and those of his good subjects the pen of Irving has replaced with the genial travesties of his enduring caricature,—and obtained his reluctant consent to the purchase. He then applied to the Indian chiefs. They too were reluctant. Schonowe was the site of one of their most ancient castles. It had long been their favorite home. Their traditions covered many generations, but no tradition reached back to their first coming. Still they well remembered that Hiawatha had lived here, two centuries or more before.

[Illustration: GLEN-SANDERS MANSION, ERECTED 1714.]

Hiawatha, the chief, of whom the Great Spirit was an ancestor, and whose wisdom, goodness and valor far surpassed that of other men, was the founder of the confederacy of the Five Nations. He devoted his long life to the good of his people, teaching them to live nobler and better, and finally was borne in the flesh to the Happy Hunting Grounds. Longfellow sings of Hiawatha with no stint of poetic license, but his harmonious numbers do not surpass the Indian estimate of his qualities. No doubt there was such a man, of exceptional wisdom, valor and influence, and that he disappeared without being known to have died. Around his memory tradition, employing the figurative language of the Indians, accumulated myths and magnified them.[16]

Van Curler was persistent, and in the end the Indians could not find it in their hearts to deny their “very good friend,” and the deed was formally executed and delivered at Fort Orange, July 2, 1661.

The founders entered into possession. The Indians bade them welcome, and began to move their wigwams up the valley. It was their first step in the many stages of their unreturning journey toward the setting sun. Their own sun thus passed its zenith, but they did not know it.

The colonists fixed their home or village lots upon the land above the sweep of the river floods, occupying for this purpose that part of the city west of the present Ferry Street. They assigned to each proprietor a village lot, two hundred feet square; a larger lot for a garden just south of the village, and a farm upon the bottom-lands beyond, with privileges in the outlying woodlands. Other settlers joined them. They sold them village lots and farm and garden lands, until the farm lands of the Van Curler grant were disposed of. Those who came still later bought village lots, but they had to buy farms of the Indians from lands outside of the Van Curler grant. Mechanics, traders and workmen came who did not want land, or lacked the means to buy it. Many of the proprietors were rich enough to own slaves, which—or shall I say whom?—they brought with them. Very soon by dint of industry their houses were built of the lumber sawed at their own mills, their farms were promising abundant crops, their gardens were blossoming, while their cattle were grazing in more distant pastures.

In this little republic the freeholders were the source of authority. By them and of them five trustees were elected “for maintaining good order and advancing their settlement.” The “Reformed Nether Dutch Church” was early established with its elders and deacons, and later, with its settled domine, maintained a guardianship over the people and especially the widows, orphans, and the poor. The community was under the titular jurisdiction of the province; the laws of Holland were in force with respect to contracts, property rights, and domestic relations, and were observed as a matter of course. The governor appointed the trustees or their nominees, _schepens_ or justices of the peace, and they appointed a _schout_ or constable, with large executive powers. This official, conscious of his power, and arrayed in a garb denoting it, solemnly pointed his pipe stem and sometimes even shook his sword, at the wayward. If any were so refractory as not to mend their ways after such an admonition, he haled them before the schepen. This magistrate, as his commission was construed, had the right so to supply the defects in the Dutch laws and the ordinances of “Their High Mightinesses, the noble Dutch West India Company,” as to “make the punishment fit the crime.” This meant that he could impose such a fine as the schout thought collectible, or such other punishment as he would undertake to inflict. Causes of great gravity, such as complaints by the traders at Beverwyck that the accused had infringed upon their monopolies, were brought before that jurisdiction, but the records disclose no practical benefits to the complainants.

[Illustration: FIRST REFORMED (DUTCH) CHURCH.]

In 1664, two years after the first settlement, the province and its government passed by conquest from the Dutch to the English. This made but little change at Schenectady. The system of government already begun was continued. The manor of Rensselaerswyck was confirmed to the patroon with some change in the sovereignty, but none in his property rights. Beverwyck became Albany, the county of Albany was established, and embraced Schenectady. The court at Albany took jurisdiction of such larger causes as the “Duke’s Laws,” conferred upon it, and the minor ones remained as before within the jurisdiction of the local magistrates. There were but few ministers of the gospel in the province, and it was not until 1684 that the Reverend Petrus Thesschenmaecher, a graduate of the University of Utrecht, was installed as their first resident pastor or domine. It was a memorable day, when that pious man, in his black silken robe, ascended the high pulpit of the church edifice which, loopholed for musketry together with his dwelling-house, awaited his coming, and in the deep solemn guttural of his Nether Dutch speech, led the worship of his dutiful flock. These Dutch Protestants did not agonize about God’s wrath like the Puritans; they assumed His loving care, as a child does its father’s. The ordinances and forms of worship prescribed by the Church were regarded as duties to be observed as well as privileges to be enjoyed, and the higher the social or official state of the individual, the more prominent and circumspect must he be in his religious observances. One of the documents of that day opens in these words: “We, the justices, consistory, together with the common people of Schanegtade, conceive ourselves in duty bound to take care of our reverend minister.” It is signed by the justices, elders, deacons and many others who, we must assume, were “common people.” There remains a marriage contract in which a widower and a widow recite how much property each brings to the marriage state; the widow enumerating among other property three slaves, for whose freedom upon her decease, however, she provides. No doubt the justices, the consistory, the freeholders and the common people observed this order of precedence on this and all like occasions; the widow being preceded by a slave bearing a warming-box for her feet, a metrical version of the Psalms, and the book of devotion containing the liturgy, the _Heidelberg Catechism_, the _Confession of Faith_ and the canons of the Church, as all these had been approved by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619.

Long before this learned graduate of the University of Utrecht was secured, the Rev. Gideon Schaets, minister at Albany, was permitted by his Church to visit Schenectady at least four times a year, upon a week day (“since it would be unjust to let the community be without preaching”—so the record at Albany recites), and administer the Lord’s Supper, baptize the children and officiate at marriages. Marriage, however, was a civil function over which a magistrate was competent to preside. As early as 1681 the Church had an investment for the support of the poor of 3,000 guilders, which had reached 4,000 guilders in 1690, when the Church perished in the destruction and massacre of that year.

[Illustration: ELLIS HOSPITAL.]

The inhabitants of this frontier village, who welcomed with open hands and glad hearts their first domine, might well be pardoned if there was a leaven of worldly pride in their greeting. Where else in all the provinces was there a more prosperous, more generous, more intelligent and better ordered people? There was no lack of substantial plenty. Who more than they were entitled to establish a Church and have a domine of their own? In October, 1683, the first legislative assembly chosen by the freeholders was summoned to convene in New York, to frame laws for the province. By the governor’s proclamation Schenectady had been accorded a representative, and thus its importance in the body politic was recognized. The village was the frontier bulwark of civilization, where the white man and the Mohawk Indian, by keeping faith with each other, kept bright the chain of friendship which made the Five Nations the allies of the Province of New York. To guard against French and Indian incursions, a stockade had been built around the village. This was a high fence made of three rows of posts set together firmly in the ground. There was a gate upon the north and south sides, and a fort within the stockade at each gate. Although often alarmed, it was not until the war between England and her allies and France, which was soon declared after James II. abdicated the crown of England in the revolution of 1688 and William and Mary came to the throne, that this frontier village was seriously threatened. Jacob Leisler, a Dutch trader and captain of a military company, of great zeal but of small ability, seized the government in the name of William and Mary and brought confusion among the people by his presumption. The common people favored Leisler. They “blessed the great God of Heaven and Earth for deliverance from Tyranny, Popery, and Slavery.” The aristocracy opposed him, and complained that “Fort James was seized by the rabble, that hardly one person of sense and estate does countenance.” Their wisest leader, Van Curler, had long been dead;[17] and the people of Schenectady became hopelessly divided. Warnings were frequent, but vigilance was relaxed, and at last the blow fell upon a defenceless people.

[Illustration: EDISON HOTEL.]

On the night of the 8th of February, 1690, one hundred and fourteen Frenchmen and ninety-six Indians, sent by Frontenac, Governor General of Canada, after a twenty-two days’ march from Montreal, through the snow and the wilderness, stole in through the open gates of the stockade, massacred sixty of the inhabitants, plundered and burned about sixty houses—leaving only six—and carried away thirty captives. The survivors, who were fortunate enough in the confusion to escape either by accident or flight, numbered about two hundred and fifty. Their distress cannot be described. They buried their dead, their beloved pastor being among the slain. They made what provision they could against the severity of the winter and then took thought of the future. Should they abandon the place where for a quarter of a century they had lived in peace and plenty, and seek safety elsewhere? Help and counsel came to them from Albany, Esopus and New York, from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and not least from the friendly Mohawks, all encouraging them to stay. Indeed, there was no place of assured safety in the whole province. The war threatened all the English colonies. The colonies sent their delegates to New York, where they concerted measures for the common defence. This was the first general American Congress. To abandon Schenectady would be to encourage the enemy, to endanger the whole province by discouraging its allies, the Iroquois or Five Nations, causing them to distrust the valor and prowess of the English arms, and possibly to embrace the oft proffered alliance of the French. Schenectady must be held, cost what it might. The survivors finally concluded to stay. Twenty-four of the freeholders subscribed to a paper, stating:

“In the first place, it is agreed to resort to the North Fort to secure our bodies and defend them.

“Secondly, that the crops or fruits of the earth—that is, the winter grain, shall be in common for the use of all, and all the mowing lands for this year.

“Thirdly, the widows shall draw their just due and portions.

“If any one will voluntarily depart or draw up for Canada, he shall yet have his full share and the benefits.

“Every one that shall stand to these articles shall obey the orders of their officers, on the penalty of such punishment as shall be seasonable, without expecting any favor, grace or dissimulation.”

The survivors began the work of reconstruction and defence. Every able-bodied man became both citizen and soldier, ready for service at home or on scout or picket or skirmish duty, wherever the approach of the enemy was to be feared. Schenectady became a military camp where the provincial troops, reinforced by detachments from New England and by their Iroquois allies, made good the safety of Schenectady and thus kept watch and ward over the English dominion in North America. They recognized Governor Leisler’s authority and sent a representative to the two sessions of his Assembly held in April and October, 1690.[18]

The warlike state of things existed from 1690 until after the peace of Ryswyck in 1697. Upon the return of peace, Schenectady began to resume its former state and prosperity. The people rebuilt their church and called the Rev. Bernardus Freerman as their pastor. How dear he became to them the many children named in his honor attest. The Dutch population was sprinkled with a few English-speaking soldiers who chose to make it their home. Its importance increased as a centre of trade, not only with the Indians, but with those hardy pioneers, who, attracted by the fertile lands, or the desire to join the friendly Indians in their hunting expeditions, pushed farther up the valley. The traders at Albany protested against this invasion of their monopoly, and also against the exercise of milling, weaving and tanning privileges, but in a famous law-suit in the Supreme Court of the province, the Albany monopolists were beaten, and Schenectady’s full right to freedom of trade and manufacture was established. Then came Queen Anne’s War with the French, lasting from 1701 to 1713, and Schenectady was again in peril, and again garrisoned, for the same reason and much in the same way as before; but, the Iroquois having made a treaty of peace with Canada, the brunt of the war fell upon New England and Schenectady passed safely through it.

From the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 to the “Old French War,” 1744-48, peace prevailed. In the latter war many inhabitants of the village were killed in skirmishes or cut down by skulking Indians in the service of the French. In one skirmish, or rather massacre, at Beukendal, three miles northwest of Schenectady, twenty men were killed and thirteen captured and carried away. Then came the last French war, from 1753 to 1763. The English now had posts at Fort Hunter, Fort Schuyler, Fort Johnson and Oswego on the west, at Fort Ann and Fort Edward on the north. Sir William Johnson and others had established settlements up the Mohawk Valley. Sir William was general superintendent of Indian affairs and a Major-General in the English service. His influence over the Iroquois was commanding; his early victory at Lake George was important; the English carried the war into the French territory. Schenectady enjoyed immunity from attack, and was enabled, besides maintaining a garrison in its fort, to send its quotas of troops to distant service, one company assisting in the English siege and capture of Havana in 1762.

The treaty of Paris in 1763, by which the French yielded the dominion of North America to the English, seemed to promise a lasting peace. But the War of the Revolution came on. Our Indian allies, the Iroquois, remained faithful to their long allegiance to the English Crown, and became our enemies under the leadership of Sir John Johnson, who, succeeding to the estate and title of his father, Sir William, adhered to the Crown, under which both became ennobled. Schenectady was again threatened, from the side of Canada, but by its former friends and allies. Aside from its contribution of six companies to the patriot cause, its position made it the base from which those who adhered to the English cause sought to send aid and comfort to the enemy. General Washington came here early in the struggle, and made arrangements for the frontier defence.[19]

The Schenectady patriots appointed a committee of vigilance and safety, who, as the one hundred and sixty-two written pages of their records show, repressed with strong hand and scant ceremony the slightest evasions of the orders of Congress and of the military authorities, and all attempts at treasonable intercourse with the enemy. Finally American independence was won, and Schenectady, after nearly a century of unrest, enjoyed the blessing of permanent peace. The forts and stockade soon disappeared.

[Illustration: UNION COLLEGE, 1795.]

Meantime the little village had steadily grown, becoming a chartered borough in 1765, and advancing to the dignity of a city in 1798. Schenectady received its first officially carried mail on the 3d day of April, 1763,—Benjamin Franklin being the colonial postmaster-general,—founded the Schenectady Academy in 1784, which became Union College in 1795, and read its first newspaper, _The Schenectady Gazette_, January 6, 1799.

[Illustration: STATUE, SITE OF “OLD FORT.”]

The military occupation and the increasing importance of the frontier trade added largely to the English population. As early as 1710, the Rev. Thomas Barclay, the English chaplain to the fort in Albany, preached once a month at Schenectady, where, as he writes, “there is a garrison of forty soldiers, besides about sixteen English and about one hundred Dutch families.” At that time the Dutch had no pastor. Mr. Barclay writes, “There is a convenient and well built church which they freely give me the use of.” It was not, however, until 1759, when there were three hundred houses in the village, that the English population undertook the erection of a separate church. They “purchased a glebe lot and by subscription chiefly among themselves erected a neat stone church,” and called it St. George’s. This stone church, with its subsequent additions, is the handsome St. George’s of to-day. Its site had previously been covered by the English barracks. There is a tradition that the Presbyterians assisted in the erection of St. George’s with the understanding that the Anglicans were to go in at the west door and the Presbyterians at the south door, but that the Anglicans managed to get the church consecrated unknown to the Presbyterians. The latter, upon finding it out, were so indignant that they set about building a church for themselves. Be this as it may, the Presbyterians commenced building their church in 1770, and finished it with bell and steeple, the latter surmounted by a leaden ball gilded with “six books of gold leaf.”

In 1767 the Methodist movement began here under the lead of Captain Thomas Webb, a local preacher bearing the license of John Wesley. The movement was favored and advanced by the preaching of that great orator, George Whitefield, then making his last American tour. The society, however, waited until 1809 before building its first church edifice. In the same year Schenectady County was carved out of Albany County.

All this while the English speech was gaining over the Dutch. Children of Dutch parents, despite the teaching of the nursery, would acquire and use the English idiom. Finally some of the members of the Dutch Church ventured to suggest the propriety of having service now and then in the English tongue. The staid burghers were shocked. But, the question once raised, the younger generation grew bolder, and the elder began to listen. Domine Romeyn, a graduate of Princeton College, a fluent master of both languages, and eminent for his varied learning and as the founder of Union College, was pastor of the Church from 1784 to 1804. He so far yielded to the new demand as to preach in English upon occasions of which he was careful to give previous notice. It was not until 1794 that the leading members of the Church represented to its consistory the necessity of increasing the services in English,[20] “to the end that the church be not scattered.” Ten years later, at the close of Domine Romeyn’s long ministry, the Dutch language ceased to be heard from the pulpit of the church. But there are still surviving a few—very few—inhabitants to whom the Dutch is their mother tongue. One of them informs the writer that when he visited Holland he conversed with ease with the people, but that he sometimes used words not familiar to them and afterwards learned that these words were of Indian origin.

[Illustration: “THE BROOK THAT BOUNDS THRO’ UNION’S GROUNDS.”

UNION COLLEGE.]

As Schenectady is two hundred feet above tide-water at Albany, it early became the headquarters of the western trade, goods being carried to and from the West upon canoes, bateaux, and the “Schenectady Durham boats.” The trade developed into large proportions, and during the hundred years closing with the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, many traders made fortunes which were considered large in those days. Upon the completion of the canal the commercial prosperity of the city declined. The decline seemed to be confirmed by the era of railroads, notwithstanding the “Mohawk and Hudson” was the first railroad built in the State, its first passenger train arriving in Schenectady from Albany, September 12, 1831, and on the second railroad, the “Saratoga and Schenectady,” the first train left Schenectady for Saratoga, July 12, 1832.

[Illustration: ELIPHALET NOTT, PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE FOR SIXTY YEARS.]