Part 7

Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson is interesting from many points of view. It is beautiful in itself, with a touch of that ripe, old-world beauty which is the rich deposit of a long association of man with nature; a beauty which reveals its depth in the fulness of foliage, the girth of ancient trees, the texture of the grass, and that atmosphere of ancient and familiar use which, although invisible and impalpable, lends a peculiar charm to settled towns and countries. For Tarrytown has a long history—as history is reckoned in this new world—and an ancient date. It wears the air of a locality which was in full life in Colonial times. The old houses are few, but the modern village is embowered in a landscape which has known human companionship and care these two centuries and more. A road may show the latest skill in road-making, but if it was once a highway along which coaches ran in the brave days of the old inns and the ancient whips and hostlers, there is always the suggestion of long use about it. It has been for so many decades a part of the landscape that nature seems to have had a hand in its making. The grass grows down to it and the earth slopes away from it as if these things had always been as they are. No one can walk through Tarrytown along its chief thoroughfare, without recognizing on every hand the signs of the old highway on which coach horns were once heard, and later the bugles rang as redcoats flashed through the trees or marched along the ancient way.

[Illustration: BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF TARRYTOWN.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]

The village rises from the water’s edge to the summit of the low hill which runs parallel with the eastern shore of the Hudson for many miles; it has one main thoroughfare, bisected by many cross streets of a later date; it is, for the most part, carefully kept, as befits its age, its intelligence, and its wealth; and, looked at from the river, it is almost buried in a wealth of foliage. It has at all times an air of repose, as if it had done long ago with the hard work of settlement and organization, and had earned exemption from the rush and turmoil which characterize new communities. In this country a town which has passed its bicentennial has a right to conduct life with a certain dignity and repose. It is doubtful if Tarrytown ever knew any great bustle or uproar; from the beginning it is probable that its inhabitants did not suffer themselves to be driven into undue energy of mood or habit. A placid temper, a disposition to keep on easy terms with life and neither give nor ask more than becomes a man of a quiet habit of mind, have left their impress on the community. It is a place in which history is preserved rather than made, although when it had occasion to make history, the work was done with picturesque effectiveness.

When Hendrik Hudson broke the quiet waters of the Tappan Zee for the first time, in September, 1609, with the keel of the _Half-Moon_, he saw along the eastern shore of the noble river which was to bear his name an unbroken forest. The region was singularly beautiful, with a stillness which it has not wholly lost; for rivers carrying deep currents always convey an impression of stillness. Mr. Curtis has spoken of the lyrical beauty of the Rhine and the epical beauty of the Hudson; the first passing, with rapid movement, through a long series of striking and romantic localities, the second flowing sedately through a landscape of larger compass, of more massive composition, of a beauty sustained through a hundred and fifty miles of noble scenery. It is, of course, a matter of pure fancy; but there seems to have been some kinship between the men who settled the continent and the localities they chose for their homes. The hardy French adventurers were peculiarly at home along the St. Lawrence and the trails from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi; the stern soil of New England would not have given its rare smile to men of a temper less strenuous than that of the Puritan and Pilgrim; the waterways of the James, the Potomac, and the Chesapeake lent themselves readily to the habits and occupations of English gentlemen in the new world; Florida and Louisiana seemed to find their elect explorers and settlers in the Spanish adventurers and gold-seekers; while the quiet of the Hudson was hardly broken when the Dutch settlers began to till the land north of Manhattan Island and to build their substantial homes. They could be voluble and noisy when occasion required, but they were of a phlegmatic temper and leisurely by habit.

The reports sent abroad by Hudson’s men when they found themselves once more in Holland in the late autumn of 1609, were repeated and passed from town to town among merchants who were as eager for trade as they were stolid in manner. Small ships were soon plying westward, bent upon trade with the well disposed Indians whom Hudson found scattered from Manhattan Island to the place where Albany now stands. The possibilities of profit in the fur trade were quickly discovered by these shrewd merchants; the nucleus of a settlement was made on the island, and rude huts hastily put together were the beginnings of one of the greatest of modern cities. The traders bought furs, tobacco, and corn in exchange for trinkets and rum; they hunted, fished, and lived after the manner of their time and kind, but for the most part on good terms with their Indian neighbors; at long intervals tiny ships from the old world crept into the harbor, and went back again laden with the skins of the beaver, the otter, and the sable. In 1621 the West India Company received a charter from the States-General of Holland, with the monopoly of the American trade, and a grant of the vast territory discovered by Hudson, which was called the New Netherlands. The great trading company, one of a small group of commercial organizations of almost sovereign powers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drew its profits not only from barter with Indians, but from the sacking of cities on the Spanish Main and the capture of Spanish treasure-ships.

In 1624 families arrived on the island and community life began in New Amsterdam; two years later the first governor of the Colony arrived with a company who brought their wives, children, cattle, and household goods of all kinds with them and, by giving these hostages to fortune, committed themselves irrevocably to the new world and its destinies. Manhattan Island was bought from the Indians for twenty-four dollars, and the name of New Amsterdam reminded the settlers of their blood and their history. It was not, however, until Peter Stuyvesant took up the reins of government with a firm hand and in a somewhat choleric temper that the little community ceased to be a trading-post and became a Dutch colonial town. The first comers were largely penniless; the later comers were men of position and substance. Many races were soon represented in the new town, but the Dutch remained for many years the ruling class. In 1664 the Colony passed into English hands and New Amsterdam became New York.

The territory north of the island early attracted attention, and energetic and far-seeing men set about acquiring title and adding acre to acre until great estates were created. In Westchester County, which then bounded the city of New York on the north, six manors, including the greater part of its territory, were granted; that of Fordham leading the way in 1671. The largest of these manors were Phillipsburgh and Cortlandt, and Tarrytown became the residence of a great landowner who secured manorial rights in 1693. This territorial magnate, a true lord of the manor so far as greatness of estate was concerned, was a man of humble birth, and a carpenter by trade. He came to New Amsterdam in 1647, and being a man of sagacity and foresight, soon found his chance in the opportunities of the new world, became a fur trader, married a rich widow, and in course of time became probably the richest man in the Colony. Vredryk Flypse, or Frederick Philips,[25] knew how to take occasion by the hand when English rule was established in New York. He foresaw the increased value of the lands along the Hudson, and in 1680, by the first of a series of grants, pieced out by various purchases, he became the owner of a noble domain, stretching from Spuyten Duyvil to the old Kill of Kitchawong, or Croton, and from the Hudson to the Bronx.

The Dutch settlers in the new world were less adventurous than their fellows of English and French blood, but they had early established trading-posts as far north on the Hudson as the present site of Albany, and they had crept quietly up the eastern shore of the river, and small farms were beginning to break the long line of forest. The beginnings of Tarrytown probably date back as far as 1645, but of its earliest history no authentic records remain. In 1683, when Frederick Philips began the building of a manor-house on the quiet Pocantico, he found a small community of farmers, living in a quiet, frugal way, and carrying on the business of life with thrift and industry but in a spirit of great tranquillity. The broad waters of Tappan Zee could hardly have caught the reflection of the primitive farm-houses hidden among the trees. These houses were unpretentious in dimension and appearance, but they had a substantial air. There was nothing provisional in the aspect of the scattered settlement; it struck tenacious roots into the soil from the very start.

“In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson,” writes Irving, in his vein of quiet humor, “at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known as Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days.”

This derivation of the name of the delightful town which Irving loved so well, has probably as much authority behind it as many derivations which have come to be unquestioned; but if Irving’s genial humor leaves some sceptics dissatisfied, they may take refuge in an alternative derivation, which traces the modern name to the more credible legend that one Terry was the earliest settler, whose name became fastened upon the little hamlet first as Terry’s town, which afterwards was naturally metamorphosed into Tarrytown. Be this as it may, a spirit of peace seems to have reigned in the region from the beginning, and the sturdy Dutch farmers kept the peace with their Indian neighbors. There are no traditions of midnight alarms in the early story of the community. Indian canoes were seen for many a year on Tappan Zee, and it is said that Indian hands assisted in raising the walls of the quaint and venerable church which still keeps watch over its earliest worshippers in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. These pioneer settlers had few wants, and supplied them with home-made articles or hand-woven fabrics. Manhattan Island was too distant in time to be accessible for daily supplies; shops were still to come; and the peddler, with whose figure and habits Cooper was subsequently to make the whole world acquainted, distributed finery and small wares through the section.

[Illustration: THE POCANTICO RIVER.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.]

Under the royal grant and license which authorized Frederick Philips to acquire certain tracts of land in Westchester County, says an old chronicler, the grantee agreed “to let any one settle on said land free, for certain stipulated years, in order that it should as soon as possible be cultivated and settled.” These terms seem to have been accepted by the few settlers already on the ground, and by others who were attracted by the impulse which the lord of the manor (for such Philips was in influence and authority) gave to local industry. The great estate was not secured in a day; it was consolidated by a series of purchases covering a period of years, and among these purchases was the site of the present village of Tarrytown, which was paid for in rum, cloth, tobacco, and hardware. The great proprietor laid the foundations of permanent community life by building, within a comparatively short time, a mill, a manor-house, and a church. The Pocantico flows into the Hudson just beyond the northern boundary of the Tarrytown of to-day; and on the shores of the quiet bay which puts in at that point, protected by a long and heavily wooded promontory which extends well into the river, Philips chose a sheltered and beautiful site for his home. His own ships brought building materials from Holland and unloaded them on the wharf built on the premises. The architecture of the manor-house was of the Dutch order so familiar along the Hudson; the heavy walls were of stone; the roof was spread on great hand-hewn rafters; the doors were divided into upper and lower sections, and swung on ponderous hinges; from the end of the wide hall, stairs ascended by easy rises to the upper floor. Through openings in the foundation walls on the southwest side small howitzers commanded the approach by land or water. A mill was quite as essential as a house, and the substantial structure which still resists the assaults of time in placid old age, bears witness to the thoroughness with which Philips did whatever fell to his hand. Beside its ancient pond the venerable mill still witnesses to a past which cannot be wholly lost while the little group of buildings remains.

[Illustration: OLD MANOR-HOUSE (“FLYPSE’S CASTLE”) AND MILL, TARRYTOWN.

FROM A DRAWING BY EDGAR MAHEW BACON.]

[Illustration: THE OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW.

FROM A DRAWING BY W. J. WILSON.]

To complete this interesting group, which Tarrytown ought to preserve with pious care, and at no great distance from the manor-house, stands the old Dutch church, one of the most quaint and best preserved monuments of early history on the continent. He would be a bold man who would venture to state definitely the date at which the building of this ancient edifice was begun; on that point a wide latitude must be permitted and discreet silence preserved. It answers all purposes of intelligent curiosity to be told that the foundations were probably laid as early as 1684, and that the building was completed, probably, not later than 1697. The bell which still hangs in the little steeple and which may be heard on quiet Sunday afternoons in the late summer or early autumn, when services are held in the ancient structure, was cast in 1685, and bears the inscription, “Si Deus pro nobis quis contra nos.” The church was built with characteristic solidity, the walls being more than two feet thick; a great pulpit with a sounding-board projected from the eastern end; the benches on which the congregation sat were without backs; and the doctrine expounded from the sacred desk was of a kindred soundness of fibre. Some concession to human weakness was shown to the lord of the manor, in the comfortable and imposing arrangement of the large pews on the right and left of the minister. The farmers filled the body of the little church, while slaves, redemptioners, and other obscure persons, with the choir, sat in the tiny gallery. In 1697, the Rev. Guiliam Bertholf began a kind of visitorial ministry in the new church, coming three or four times a year to preach and administer the sacraments. He was a native of Sluis, in Holland, emigrated to the new world in 1684, and became a preacher nine years later. His ability and zeal gave him wide influence, and he was instrumental in organizing a number of churches of the Reformed faith and order. From this initial ministry until the present time, although the congregation has moved to a larger and modern edifice, the succession of faithful preachers has never been broken, and the historic pulpit of Tarrytown has never been more thoroughly identified with generous devotion, high character, and unusual gifts of nature and speech than during the last twenty-five years. During the stormy years of the Revolution the church was frequently closed; and at the close of the struggle the trappings which had distinguished the pews of the lord of the manor were torn down, and elders and deacons sitting in the seats once set apart for the local aristocracy emphasized the triumph of the democratic idea in Church and State. Not long afterwards another innovation was made by the substitution of English for Dutch in the services.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW, PRIOR TO ITS RESTORATION IN 1897.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]

In October, 1897, the two hundredth anniversary of the church was celebrated with services which recalled, with unusual completeness, the varied and instructive history of the old building and of the community.

The modern village lies to the south of the church, which is hidden beneath ancient trees, and is still enveloped in an atmosphere of old-time silence and repose. The Pocantico flows beside it, almost unseen when the midsummer foliage is spread over it; while to the north, climbing a gentle slope and sinking softly down to the brook, is the ancient burying-ground, in which the first interments were made about 1645. The place is singularly peaceful and of a rare and gentle beauty; the gradual slope dotted with ancient graves, protected on the east by wooded heights, overhung with old trees, and commanding on the west glimpses of the broad expanse of the Tappan Zee, and, from its higher levels, the tree-embowered village, the long line of shining water, and the distant front of the Palisades. There is probably no other locality in America, taking into account history, tradition, the old church, the manor-house, and the mill, which so entirely conserves the form and spirit of Dutch civilization in the new world. This group of buildings ranks in historic interest, if not in historic importance, with Faneuil Hall, Independence Hall, the ruined church tower at Jamestown, the old gateway at St. Augustine, and the Spanish cabildo on Jackson Square in New Orleans; and the time will come when pilgrimages will be made to this ancient and beautiful home of some of those ideals and habits of life which have given form and structure to American civilization.

It was the misfortune of Tarrytown to lie in the path of both armies for many dreary months during the Revolution; and no section of the country felt the uncertainty and terrors of war more keenly. When Cooper looked about for an American subject for his second novel, his interest in the history of Westchester County, in the lower part of which he was for a number of years a resident, led him to a fortunate choice, and _The Spy_ remains not only one of the best of American novels of incident, but a vivid report of the suspense and misery of the country between the Highlands of the Hudson, held by the American forces, and the city of New York in the hands of the British. That section was mercilessly harried by friend and foe. The few families which made the little hamlet of Tarrytown, never knew whether the Skinners or the Cowboys would appear next; the only certainty in the situation seems to have been that, sooner or later, whatever was portable and valuable would be carried off. There was much quiet courage in the form of patient endurance in those years when church and school were closed, crops gathered by hands that had not sown, houses burned in the dead of night, and all normal community life at an end. Caught in the centre of the storm of war, Tarrytown not only suffered severely but bore her losses with conspicuous fortitude and courage. In many sudden forays, as well as in the larger movements of the American forces, the men of Tarrytown played their parts with notable pluck and daring.

[Illustration: MONUMENT TO THE CAPTORS OF ANDRÉ.

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]

The devotion of a majority of the people of the place to the American cause had its reward in the lasting association of the town with the most romantic and tragic episode of the war; and the incorruptible patriotism of three Westchester County men not only averted what might have been a crushing calamity, but immortalized the scene of their resistance to temptation. On the 24th day of September, 1780, Major André, bearing dispatches of a treasonable nature from General Benedict Arnold, then in command of the American forces at West Point, was captured on the highway at a place now marked by a monument, by John Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. These obscure militiamen, soon to become famous, were watching the road, when a horseman appeared riding toward the south. He was promptly challenged, ordered to dismount, and examined as to his business and destination. His answers to the questions put to him by his captors confirmed their suspicion that something of unusual importance was in the air. The determination to search the unfortunate young officer more thoroughly was met with offers of a large sum of money; but the militiamen were not to be bribed, and to their fidelity is due the discovery of the plot to place West Point in British hands. The moral effect of Arnold’s fall was counteracted in large measure by the incorruptibility of André’s captors, and the monument which marks this historic site commemorates the integrity of the American militiamen quite as much as the dramatic episode which ended the careers of Arnold and André.

[Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING.]

[Illustration: “SUNNYSIDE.”

THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING.]

Tarrytown has had the double good fortune to be the scene of the most striking act of the drama of Arnold’s treason, and to be the custodian of one of the few American legends. In his youth, Washington Irving knew the region intimately. He was given to solitary walks, for he was a dreamer by nature and habit. Wolfert’s Roost was even then an old farm-house, built close to the water’s edge, where the glen broadens to the river. It had colonial and revolutionary associations, and, above all, it had the charm of a situation of singular beauty. Irving seems early to have fallen under the spell of the shaded waterside and the romantic glen. In 1835, after an absence of seventeen years in Europe and an extensive journey through the South and West, which bore fruit in _A Tour on the Prairies_, the recollections and affections of his youth drew him to Sunnyside, now about a mile and a half south of the railway station of Tarrytown, and he became the possessor of a home which will always be associated with our early literary history. The house was enlarged, and began to take on that air of ripe and reposeful beauty which made it an ideal home for a man of letters. Under this roof his later books were written, and here he was sought by the most interesting men of his time.

[Illustration: THE JACOB MOTT HOUSE WHERE KATRINA VAN TASSEL WAS MARRIED.