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[Illustration]
My Friends at Brook Farm
by John Van Der Zee Sears
TO MY FRIEND
JOSEPH HORNOR COATES, Esq.
OF PHILADELPHIA
Contents
Chapter I. THE OLD COLONIE
Chapter II. FRIEND GREELEY
Chapter III. A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
Chapter IV. A BAD BEGINNING
Chapter V. A GOOD ENDING
Chapter VI. ENTERTAINMENTS
Chapter VII. THE SCHOOL
Chapter VIII. ODDMENTS
Chapter IX. FOURIER AND THE FARMERS
Chapter X. UNTO THIS LAST
ILLUSTRATIONS
JOHN VAN DER ZEE SEARS
HORACE GREELEY
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
“THE HIVE”
CHARLES A. DANA
THE PAGEANT
A PIONEER KINDERGARTEN
NATANIEL HAWTHORNE
[Illustration: Portrait of the Author: John Van Der Zee Sears]
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD COLONIE
In May, 1624, the Dutch packet New Netherlands sailed up the Hudson
River to the head of navigation, bringing a company of eighteen
families under the leadership of Adrian Joris. The immigrants landed at
a little trading post called Beaverwick kept by one Tice Oesterhout, a
pioneer hunter, married to a Mohawk Squaw. In a few days a party of
Indians, probably Mohawks, waited on the newcomers and politely made
inquiry as to their object in entering upon Indian lands without notice
or permission; Tice Oesterhout and his wife acting as interpreters.
Joris replied that they came in peace and hoped to abide in peace on
friendly terms with the Indians. He was told that he and his people
would be welcome if they joined the universal peace union of the
Iroquois, and not otherwise. This proposition the settlers agreed to by
acclamation. In due course the General Council of the Five Nations
accepted the Colony as a member of the Iroquois Federation. Joris was
recognized as the Civil Chief of the little community, and, as he was a
Walloon, his people became the Walloon Nation of the Great Peace
Alliance. The Great Peace was the treaty forming the basis of the
Iroquois Federation. The Colonists, instead of making a treaty with the
Indians, gave their adhesion to one already made, thereby securing
safety and a practical monopoly of the fur trade on the upper Hudson.
They sent annual presents to the Iroquois General Council, which were
doubtless received as tribute in recognition of sovereignty, but the
Walloon Nation did not seem to care very much about the sovereignty
business so long as the fur business continued to prosper, as it did
for the next half century.
Two score or so of Walloons did not constitute a very formidable nation
but the men were reinforced by the women who had an equal voice not
only in local affairs but in the General Council of the Federation.
The settlers built their houses on the Indian trail leading Westward to
which they gave the name of Beaver street—their grand boulevard which
must have been two or three squares long. Beaver Street was the main
highway of the Walloon Nation and was the center of the “Old Colonie”
as the Dutch neighborhood was subsequently called. Under English rule,
the “Old Colonie” or Beaverwick was merged with Fort Orange and
Rensselaerwick, these, collectively, being named Albany in honor of the
Duke of York, Albany being one of his titles.
The Dutch of the “Old Colonie” did not take kindly to the supremacy of
the English. They obeyed the laws and the constituted authorities but
they stubbornly maintained their autonomy as far as practicable,
holding aloof from their English neighbors, keeping to their own
language, their own manners and customs, and their own habits of life,
generation after generation. As the “Old Colonie” extended its borders
and new elements were added to its population, these Dutch
characteristics were gradually modified and finally disappeared
altogether, but they resisted modern influences many years and as late
as the middle of the nineteenth century, evidences of Dutch ancestry
were still to be noticed among the people of the “Old Colonie.”
My father’s house, where I was born, stood on the south side of Beaver
street next to that of the Ostranders where the last Walloon Civil
Chief was said to have lived. As a child I heard Dutch spoken in the
street, in the stores and the market. We spoke Dutch, more or less, at
home, and no other language at my grandfather’s farm. The Sears family
came from Cape Cod, but my mother was a Van Der Zee, and although the
first Van Der Zee came from Holland in 1642, the family was as Dutch as
ever in 1842, two centuries later. Mother learned English, at school
but spoke it very little until after her marriage, and then crooned
nursery rhymes in Dutch to her children; “Trip a trop a tronches,” “Wat
zegt Mynhur Papa,” etc.
My father’s store was “on the Pier,” which is equivalent to saying he
was a flour merchant. The Pier was a sort of bulkhead between the canal
basin and the river, and it was occupied by a single row of buildings,
all of which were flour stores. The Genesee Valley was a famous wheat
growing country in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the
grain was ground in Rochester and shipped down the Erie Canal to
Albany, the receiving and distributing center for the trade. My father
made business trips to New York, and, sometimes, as far east as Boston,
in those days a long journey. He usually arranged to go “down the
river” in the Spring, having, beside his own affairs, commissions to
fill as delegate to one or more of the May Conventions.
The May Conventions were annual gatherings of religious bodies,
philanthropic organizations, reform associations, literary
associations, educational associations and all sorts of associations
for the improvement of the human race in general and the American
people in particular. The Friends yearly Meeting, the Conference of the
American Anti-Slavery societies, the Grahamites or Vegetarians, the
Temperance advocates and other upholders of beneficent, benevolent, and
Utopian ideals assembled on these occasions, and with much eloquence,
made it clear to the meanest understanding that the universal adoption
of the principles especially professed by each would do away with all
evil in the world and bring about a return of the Golden Age.
My mother did not always attend the May Conventions, but whenever she
went, she took one of us children with her. My first visit to New York
was made as an unqualified member of the Albany delegation to something
or other, I forget what. One thing I do not forget, however, and that
is hearing Horace Greeley make an address, and afterward being puffed
up with pride when the orator chatted familiarly with his small admirer
at dinner in our hotel on Barclay Street.
When my mother was absent from home, the family was left in charge of
our courtesy Aunt Catholina Van Olinda who kept the house with my elder
sister Althea, while I was dispatched for the time to my grandfather’s
farm. I was very much at home on the farm and spent many happy days
there in early childhood, being regarded as a sort of heir apparent by
the principal personages there, namely, my grandfather, John Van Der
Zee the elder, and Tone and Cleo. The last named, Antony and Cleopatra,
to speak properly, were ancient negroes born and brought up on the farm
and rarely leaving it in all their long lives. They were slaves,
inasmuch as they disdained to be emancipated, and “free niggers” they
looked down on with contempt. They belonged to the Van Der Zee place
and the place belonged to them, and not to belong to anybody or to any
place was, to their apprehension, very like being a houseless and
homeless pauper. As I was John Van Zee the younger, according to their
genealogy the natural successor of Baas Hans, they extended to me
assurances of their most distinguished consideration. My father,
Charles Sears, was not in the line of succession, he being English or
in other words a foreigner. They tolerated him, partly because he spoke
to them in Dutch, the only language they knew or cared anything about,
and partly because he was, after all, a member of the family by
marriage. As he always brought a book in hand when visiting the farm,
they made sure he was a drukker—that is, a printer or bookseller or
something of that vain and frivolous description. Cleo attained great
age, overrunning the century mark. In her later years she came by
inheritance to my mother, and so rather curiously, it happened that
while my father openly professed anti-slavery sentiments, my mother was
a slaveholder, presumably one of the last of that class in the state of
New York.
One of our neighbors in the Old Colonie was Thurlow Weed, the Boss of
the Whig party in the Empire State, and the founder, proprietor and
editor of the _Albany Evening Journal_, one of the most influential
papers in the country. Father was on terms of near-intimacy with Mr.
Weed, and this brought him in touch with Horace Greeley. Father, though
never a politician, was interested in party affairs and in constant
communication with the Old Line Whigs of the Henry Clay following, and
I am under the impression that the consultations of the political firm
of Seward, Weed and Greeley were sometimes held in father’s library.
When he was editing the “Log Cabin” the party paper in the first
Harrison campaign, Mr. Greeley was often a guest at our house, and at
that period, he and father formed a warm friendship which continued
during the remainder of their lives.
Having referred to Mr. Weed as the Boss of the Whig party in New York
State, I think it due to the memory of an honorable man to state my
belief that he never made one dollar out of politics. He gave a great
deal of service and a great deal of money to the promotion of his
political ideas, but never received a penny in return. He was a Boss
indeed, directing party affairs with the strong hand of a Dictator, but
he sought no profit and gained none, not even the thanks of those he
served. So far from bettering his fortunes, his public activities
involved constant demands upon his private purse. Not only party
friends but party enemies called on Thurlow Weed for help when in
distress, knowing that his hands would be open and his lips closed.
Closed they were, but it was generally understood in the Old Colonie
that the many seedy and needy applicants coming to his door must have
made serious inroads on his income.
One noticeable case was that of a saloon-keeper, a Whig politician in a
small way, who was supposed to control the “canal vote,” that is the
vote of the floating population in the canal basin, among whom were
boatmen ready to cast their ballots either way for a price. Mr. Weed
did not approve of this man or of his methods, and the fellow went over
to the Locofocos, bag and baggage. He took with him an ugly grudge
against the Whig Boss and vented his spite in lies, slanders and
defamations of the foulest kind. For years he made all the trouble he
possibly could, but being a drinking man, he meanwhile drifted down
hill, deviously but without a stop. When he had reached the bottom, in
utter destitution, he came to Mr. Weed begging for aid—and he got it.
More than that, after his death his children were supported until they
could take care of themselves, and the costs, as we could not help
knowing, were paid by our Beaver Street neighbor.
A final memory of Mr. Weed lingers in my mind, to the discredit of
those who should have been his grateful friends. The last time I called
on him was when he was living in New York with his daughter, I think in
Broome Street. On greeting him I noted that he was much disturbed by
some annoyance which he could neither conceal nor throw off with his
old-time buoyancy of spirit.
His agitation was so evident and so unusual that I ventured to inquire
as to the trouble which so vexed his serene temper. In reply he took up
a copy of a prominent New York morning paper and pointed to a
sub-editorial in which he was referred to by name as “a veteran lagging
superfluous on the stage.”
That was the most unkindest cut of all. Mr. Weed was at that time
living in retirement, but he still contributed vigorous and timely
articles to the editorial columns of this same journal. He was
grievously hurt by the gratuitous affront to which he had been so
rudely subjected, but all he said was, “I may be superfluous, but no
one can truthfully say I ever was a laggard.”
I believe the management of the paper apologized privately for the
stupid insult, ascribing the sub-editorial to one of the juniors, and
expressing regret that it should have been inadvertently printed. All
the same, Thurlow Weed never wrote another editorial, the untoward
incident putting an end to the labor of a long and arduous journalistic
career.
Across the way from Mr. Weed’s residence in the Old Colonie was the Van
Antwerp house, bearing the date 1640 in iron figures at the peak of the
gable which fronted the street. It was built of yellow brick—or at
least the gable front was so built—and the Van Antwerp legend was that
these bricks were imported from Antwerp, the native town of their
family. The last descendant was Juferouw Cornelia Van Antwerp who kept
a little school in the basement of her dwelling, the family fortune
having dwindled until this home was about the only property left to the
Juferouw. In this school my sister Althea and I were taught the three
r’s and not much else. The ancient Dutch spinster was a lady,
well-bred, dignified and courteous, who held a high place in the elect
circle or Old Colonie society, and was not the less esteemed because of
her straitened circumstances. Her walk and conversation were no doubt
edifying, but the curriculum of her scholastic institute possibly left
something to be desired in the departments of higher education. She had
one available qualification for her position, however,—being an expert
in making and mending quill pens. She spent much of her time during
school hours in shaping these writing instruments, and I imagine she
eked out her slender income by supplying pens to the neighbors.
The public schools were, in those days, looked upon as public
charities, and these were not attended by children whose parents or
guardians could afford to pay for private instruction which, whether
better or worse, did not at all events, suggest poverty. So it came
about, that father, on returning from one of his journeys eastward,
brought home the idea of sending Althea and myself to school at Brook
Farm.