WOOING AND WEDDING
The domestic life of the Dutch settlers flowed on in a smooth-running
and rather dull stream, varying little through either honor-bearing or
discreditable incident from day to day. Any turbulence of dissension
or divorce between husband and wife was apparently little known and
certainly little noted. Occasionally an entry which tells of temporary
division or infelicity can be unearthed from the dingy pages of some
old court-record, thereby disclosing a scene and actors so remote,
so shadowy, so dimmed with the dust of centuries, that the incident
often bears no semblance of having happened to real living folk, but
seems rather to pertain to a group of inanimate puppets. One of these
featureless, colorless, stiff Dutch marionettes is Anneke, the daughter
of boisterous old Domine Schaets, the first minister at Fort Orange.
A fleeting glimpse of her marital infelicity is disclosed through the
record of her presence in Albany under the shadow of some unexplained
and now forgotten scandal. To satisfy her father’s virtuous and severe
congregation, she refrained from contaminating attendance at Communion.
The domine resented this condition of affairs, and refused to appear
before the Consistory though summoned four times by the _bode_. He
persisted in irritatingly “ripping up new differences and offences;”
and he disregarded with equal scorn the summons of a magistrate to
appear before the Court; and he was therefore suspended from his
clerical office. All was at last “arranged in love and friendship,”
leaving out the dispute about “Universal Grace,” which I suppose
could not be settled; but daughter Anneke was ordered off to New York
to her husband, “with a letter of recommendation; and as she was so
headstrong, and would not depart without the Sheriff’s and Constable’s
interference, her disobedience was annexed to the letter.” It is
pleasing to know, from the record of an “Extraordinary Court holden in
Albany” a month later,--in July, 1681,--of a very satisfactory result
in the affairs of the young couple.
“Tho: Davidtse promisses to conduct himself well and honorably towards
his wife Anneke Schaets, to Love and never neglect her, but faithfully
and properly to maintain and support her with her children according
to his means, hereby making null and void all questions that have
occurred and transpired between them both, never to repeat them,
but are entirely reconciled: and for better assurance of his real
Intention and good Resolution to observe the same, he requests that
two good men be named to oversee his conduct at New York towards his
said wife, being entirely disposed and inclined to live honorably and
well with her as a Christian man ought, subjecting himself willingly
to the rule and censure of the said men. On the other hand his wife
Anneke Schaets, promisses also to conduct herself quietly and well and
to accompany him to New York with her children and property, not to
leave him any more, but to serve and help him and with him to share
the sweets and the sours as becomes a Christian spouse: Requesting all
differences which had ever existed between them both may be hereby
quashed and brought no more to light or cast up, as she on her side
is heartily disposed to. Their Worship of the Court Recommend parties
on both Sides to observe strictly their Reconciliation now made, and
the gentleman at New York will be informed that the matter is so far
arranged.”
We can certainly add the profound hope, after all this quarrelling
and making up, after all those good promises, that Anneke’s home was
no longer “unregulated and poorly kept,” as was told of her by the
Labadist travellers during their visit to Albany at that time. The
appointing of “two good men” as arbitrators or overseers of conduct was
very usual in such cases; thereby public adjustment in open court of
such quarrels was avoided.
Tender parents could not unduly shelter a daughter who had left her
husband’s bed and board. He could promptly apply to the court for an
order for her return to him, and an injunction to her parents against
harboring her. It has been plain to see in all such cases which I have
chanced upon in colonial records that the Court had a strong leaning
towards the husband’s side of the case; perhaps thinking, like Anneke
Schaets, that the wife should “share the sweets and the sours like a
Christian spouse.”
In 1697 Daniel Vanolinda petitioned that his wife be “ordyred to go
and live with him where he thinks convenient.” The wife’s father was
promptly notified by the Albany magistrates that he was “discharged to
shelter her in his house or elsewhere, upon Penalty as he will answer
at his Perill;” and she returned to her husband.
In the year 1665 a New Amsterdammer named Lantsman and his wife,
Beletje, were sorely estranged, and went to the courts for settlement
of these differences. The Court gave the matter into the hands of
two of the Dutch ministers, who were often assigned the place of
peacemakers. As usual, they ordered the parents of Beletje to cease
from harboring or abetting her. The husband promised to treat her well,
but she answered that he always broke his promises to her. He was
determined and assiduous to retrieve her, and finally was successful;
thus they were not made “an example to other evil housekeepers.”
A curious feature of this marriage quarrel is the fact that this
Lantsman, who was so determined to retain his wife, had been more
than recreant about marrying her. The banns had been published, the
wedding-day set, but Bridegroom Lantsman did not appear. Upon being
hauled up and reprimanded, his only proffered excuse was the very
simple one that his clothes were not ready.
When Anniatje Fabritius requested an order of court for her husband
to vacate her house with a view of final separation from him, it was
decided by the arbitrators that no legal steps should be taken, but
that “the parties comport themselves as they ought, in order that they
win back each other’s affections, leaving each other in meanwhile
unmolested”--which was very sensible advice. Another married pair
having “met with great discouragement” (which is certainly a most
polite expression to employ on such a subject), agreed each to go his
and her way, after an exact halving of all their possessions.
Nicasius de Sille, magistrate of New Utrecht and poet of New
Netherland, separated his life from that of his wife because--so he
said--she spent too much money. It is very hard for me to think of a
Dutch woman as “expensefull,” to use Pepys’ word. He also said she was
too fond of schnapps,--which her respected later life did not confirm.
Perhaps he spoke with poetic extravagance, or the nervous irritability
and exaggeration of genius. Albert Andriese and his wife were divorced
in Albany in 1670, “because strife and difference hath arisen between
them.” Daniel Denton was divorced from his wife in Jamaica, and she was
permitted to marry again, by the new provincial law of divorce of 1672.
These few examples break the felicitous calm of colonial matrimony,
and have a few companions during the years 1670-72; but Chancellor
Kent says “for more than one hundred years preceding the Revolution no
divorce took place in the colony of New York;” and there was no way of
dissolving a marriage save by special act of Legislature.
Occasionally breach-of-promise suits were brought. In 1654 Greetje
Waemans produced a marriage ring and two letters, promissory of
marriage, and requested that on that evidence Daniel de Silla be
“condemned to legally marry her.” He vainly pleaded his unfortunate
habit of some days drinking too much, and that on those days he
did much which he regretted; among other things, his bacchanalian
love-making of Greetje. François Soleil, the New Amsterdam gunsmith,
another recreant lover, swore he would rather go away and live with the
Indians (a terrible threat) than marry the fair Rose whom he had left
to droop neglected--and unmarried.
One curious law-case is shown by the injunction to Pieter Kock and
Anna van Voorst. They had entered into an agreement of marriage, and
then had been unwilling to be wedded. The burgomasters and _schepens_
decided that the promise should remain in force, and that neither
should marry any other person without the permission of the other and
the Court; but Anna did marry very calmly (when she got ready) another
more desirable and desired man without asking any one’s permission.
It certainly gives us a great sense of the simplicity of living in
those days to read the account of the suit of the patroon of Staten
Island in 1642 against the parents of a fair young Elsje for loss
of services through her marriage. She had been bound out to him as
a servant, and had married secretly before her time of service had
expired. The bride told the worshipful magistrates that she did not
know the young man when her mother and another fetched him to see
her; that she refused his suit several times, but finally married
him willingly enough,--in fact, eloped with him in a sail-boat.
She demurely offered to return to the Court, as compensation and
mollification, the pocket-handkerchief which was her husband’s
wedding-gift to her. Two years later, Elsje (already a widow) appeared
as plaintiff in a breach-of-promise suit; and offered, as proof of
her troth-plight, a shilling-piece which was her second lover’s not
more magnificent gift. Though not so stated in the chronicle, this
handkerchief was doubtless given in a “marriage-knot,”--a handkerchief
in which was tied a gift of money. If the girl to whom it was given
untied the knot, it was a sign of consent to be speedily married. This
fashion of marriage-knots still exists in parts of Holland. Sometimes
the knot bears a motto; one reads when translated, “Being in love does
no harm if love finds its recompense in love; but if love has ceased,
all labor is in vain. Praise God.”
Though second and third marriages were common enough among the early
settlers of New Netherland, I find that usually attempts at restraint
of the wife were made through wills ordering sequent loss of property
if she married again. Nearly all the wills are more favorable to the
children than to the wife. Old Cornelius Van Catts, of Bushwick, who
died in 1726, devised his estate to his wife Annetje with this gruff
condition: “If she happen to marry again, then I geff her nothing of my
estate, real or personal. But my wife can be master of all by bringing
up to good learning my two children. But if she comes to marry again,
then her husband can take her away from the farm.” John Burroughs, of
Newtown, Long Island, in his will dated 1678 expressed the general
feeling of husbands towards their prospective widows when he said, “If
my wife marry again, then her husband must provide for her as I have.”
Often joint-wills were made by husband and wife, each with equal rights
if survivor. This was peculiarly a Dutch fashion. In Fordham in 1670
and 1673, Claude de Maistre and his wife Hester du Bois, Pierre Cresson
and his wife Rachel Cloos, Gabriel Carboosie and Brieta Wolferts,
all made joint-wills. The last-named husband in his half of the will
enjoined loss of property if Brieta married again. Perhaps he thought
there had been enough marrying and giving in marriage already in that
family, for Brieta had had three husbands,--a Dane, a Frieslander, and
a German,--and his first wife had had four, and he--well, several, I
guess; and there were a number of children; and you couldn’t expect any
poor Dutchman to find it easy to make a will in all that confusion. In
Albany may be found several joint-wills, among them two dated 1663 and
1676; others in the Schuyler family. There is something very touching
in the thought of those simple-minded husbands and wives, in mutual
confidence and affection, going, as we find, before the notary together
and signing their will together, “out of love and special nuptial
affection, not thereto misled or sinisterly persuaded,” she bequeathing
her dower or her father’s legacy or perhaps her own little earnings,
and he his hard-won guilders. It was an act significant and emblematic
of the ideal unison of interests and purposes which existed as a rule
in the married life of these New York colonists.
Mrs. Grant adds abundant testimony to the domestic happiness and the
marital affection of residents of Albany a century later. She states:--
“Inconstancy or even indifference among married couples was unheard
of, even where there happened to be a considerable disparity in point
of intellect. The extreme affection they bore their mutual offspring
was a bond that forever endeared them to each other. Marriage in this
colony was always early, very often happy, and very seldom indeed
interested. When a man had no son, there was nothing to be expected
with a daughter but a well brought-up female slave, and the furniture
of the best bed-chamber. At the death of her father she obtained
another division of his effects, such as he thought she needed or
deserved, for there was no rule in these cases.
“Such was the manner in which those colonists began life; nor must
it be thought that those were mean or uninformed persons. Patriots,
magistrates, generals, those who were afterwards wealthy, powerful,
and distinguished, all, except a few elder brothers, occupied by their
possessions at home, set out in the same manner; and in after life,
even in the most prosperous circumstances, they delighted to recount
the ‘humble toils and destiny obscure’ of their early years.”
Weddings usually took place at the house of the bride’s parents. There
are some records of marriages in church in Albany in the seventeenth
century, one being celebrated on Sunday. But certainly throughout the
eighteenth century few marriages were within the church doors. Mrs.
Vanderbilt says no Flatbush marriages took place in the church till
within the past thirty or forty years. In some towns written permission
of the parents of the groom, as well as the bride, was required by
the domine before he would perform the marriage ceremony. In the
Guelderland the express consent of father and mother must be obtained
before the marriage; and doubtless that custom of the Fatherland caused
its adoption here in some localities. The minister also in some cases
gave a certificate of permission for marriage; here is one given by “ye
minister at Flatbush,”--
Isaac Hasselburg and Elizabeth Baylis have had their proclamation in
our church as commonly our manner and custom is, and no opposition or
hindrance came against them, so as that they may be confirmed in y^e
banns of Matrimony, whereto we wish them blessing. Midwout y^e March
17th, 1689.
RUDOLPH VARRICK, _Minister_.
This was probably to permit and authorize the marriage in another
parish.
Marriage fees were not very high in colonial days, nor were they
apparently always retained by the minister; for in one of Domine
Selyns’s accounts of the year 1662, we find him paying over to the
Consistory the sum of seventy-eight guilders and ten stuyvers for
fourteen marriage fees received by him. The expenses of being married
were soon increased by the issuing of marriage licenses. During the
century dating from the domination of the British to the Revolutionary
War nearly all the marriages of genteel folk were performed by special
permission, by Governor’s license, the payment for which (a half-guinea
each, so Kalm said) proved through the large numbers a very welcome
addition to the magistrates’ incomes. It was in fact deemed most
plebeian, almost vulgar, to be married by publication of the banns for
three Sundays in church, or posting them according to the law, as was
the universal and fashionable custom in New England. This notice from a
New York newspaper, dated December 13, 1765, will show how widespread
had been the aversion to the publication of banns:--
“We are creditly informed that there was married last Sunday evening,
by the Rev. Mr. Auchmuty, a very respectable couple that had published
three different times in Trinity Church. A laudable example and worthy
to be followed. If this decent and for many reasons proper method
of publication was once generally to take place, we should have no
more of clandestine marriages; and save the expense of licenses, no
inconsiderable sum these hard and depressing times.”
Another reason for “crying the banns” was given in Holt’s “New York
Gazette and Postboy” for December 6, 1765.
“As no Licenses for Marriage could be obtained since the first of
November for Want of Stamped Paper, we can assure the Publick several
Genteel Couple were publish’d in the different Churches of this
City last Week; and we hear that the young Ladies of this Place are
determined to Join Hands with none but such as will to the utmost
endeavour to abolish the Custom of marrying with License which Amounts
to many Hundred per annum which might be saved.”
Severe penalties were imposed upon clergymen who violated the law
requiring license or publication ere marriage. The Lutheran minister
performed such a marriage, and the _schout’s_ “conclusion” as to the
matter was that the offending minister be flogged and banished. But as
he was old, and of former good services, he was at last only suspended
a year from power of preaching.
Rev. Mr. Miller, an English clergyman writing in 1695, complains that
many marriages were by justices of the peace. This was made lawful by
the States-General of Holland from the year 1590, and thus was a law in
New Netherland. By the Duke’s Laws, 1664, it was also made legal. This
has never been altered, and is to-day the law of the State.
Of highly colored romance in the life of the Dutch colonists there
was little. Sometimes a lover was seized by the Indians, and his fair
betrothed mourned him through a long life. In one case she died after
a few years of grief and waiting, and on the very day of his return
from his savage prison to his old Long Island home he met the sad
little funeral procession bearing her to the grave. Another humbler
romance of Gravesend was when a sorrowing widower fell in love with a
modest milkmaid at first sight as she milked her father’s cows; ere the
milking was finished he told his love, rode to town on a fast horse for
a governor’s license, and married and carried off his fair Grietje. A
century later a fair Quakeress of Flushing won in like manner, when
milking, the attention and affection of Walter Franklin of New York.
Another and more strange meeting of lovers was when young Livingstone,
the first of the name in New York, poor and unknown, came to the
bedside of a dying Van Rensselaer in Albany to draw up a will. The
dying man, with a jealousy stronger than death, said to his beautiful
wife, Alida Schuyler, “Send him away, he will be your second husband;”
and he was,--perhaps the thought provoked the deed.
Even if there were few startling or picturesque romances or brilliant
matches, there was plenty of ever-pleasant wooing. New Amsterdam was
celebrated, just before its cession to the English, for its young
and marriageable folk and its betrothals. This is easily explained;
nearly all the first emigrants were young married people, and the years
assigned to one generation had passed, and their children had grown
up and come to mating-time. Shrewd travellers, who knew where to get
good capable wives, wooed and won their brides among the Dutch-American
fair ones. Mr. Valentine says: “Several of the daughters of wealthy
burghers were mated to young Englishmen whose first occasions were
of a temporary character.” The beautiful surroundings of the little
town tempted all to love-making, and the unchaperoned simplicity of
society aided early “matching.” The Locust-Trees, a charming grove on
a bluff elevation on the North River a little south of the present
Trinity Churchyard, was a famous courting-place; or tender lovers could
stroll down the “Maiden’s Path;” or, for still longer walks, to the
beautiful and baleful “Kolck,” or “Collect,” or “Fresh Water,” as it
was sequentially called; and I cannot imagine any young and susceptible
hearts ever passing without some access of sentiment through any green
field so sweetly named as the “Clover Waytie.”
There were some curious marriage customs,--some Dutch, some English.
One very pretty piece of folk-lore, of bride-honoring, was brought to
my notice through the records of a lawsuit in the infant town of New
Harlem in 1663, as well as an amusing local pendant to the celebration
of the custom. It seems that a certain young Harlem couple were honored
in the pleasant fashion of the Fatherland, by having a “May-tree” set
up in front of their dwelling-place. But certain gay young sparks
of the neighborhood, to anger the groom and cast ridicule on his
marriage, came with unseemly noise of blowing of horns, and hung the
lovely May-tree during the night with ragged stockings. We never shall
know precisely what special taunt or insult was offered or signified by
this over-ripe crop of worn-out hosiery; but it evidently answered its
tantalizing purpose, for on the morrow, at break of day, the bridegroom
properly resented the “mockery and insult,” cut down the hateful
tree, and committed other acts of great wrath; which, being returned
in kind (for thrice was the stocking-full tree set up), developed a
small riot, and thus the whole affair was recorded. Among the State
Papers at Albany are several letters relating to another insulting
“stocking-tree” set up in Albany at about the same date, and also
fiercely resented.
Collections for the church poor were sometimes taken at weddings, as
was the universal custom for centuries in Holland. When Stephanus
Van Cortlandt and Gertrude Schuyler were married in Albany, in 1671,
thirteen guilders six stuyvers were contributed at the wedding, and
fifteen guilders at the reception the following day. At the wedding
of Martin Kreiger, the same year, eleven guilders were collected; at
another wedding the same amount. When the daughter of Domine Bogardus
was married, it was deemed a very favorable time and opportunity to
take up a subscription for building the first stone church in New
Amsterdam. When the wedding-guests were all mellow with wedding-cheer,
“after the fourth or fifth round of drinking,” says the chronicle,
and, hence generous, each vied with the other in good-humored and
pious liberality, they subscribed “richly.” A few days later, so
the chronicle records, some wished to reconsider the expensive and
expansive transaction at the wedding-feast, and “well repented it.”
But Director Kieft stiffly held them to their contracts, and “nothing
availed to excuse.”
It is said that the English drink of posset was served at weddings.
From the “New York Gazette” of February 13, 1744, I copy this receipt
for its manufacture:--
“A Receipt for all young Ladies that are going to be Married. To Make a
SACK-POSSET.
From famed Barbadoes on the Western Main
Fetch sugar half a pound; fetch sack from Spain
A pint; and from the Eastern Indian Coast
Nutmeg, the glory of our Northern toast.
O’er flaming coals together let them heat
Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet.
O’er such another fire set eggs, twice ten,
New born from crowing cock and speckled hen;
Stir them with steady hand, and conscience pricking
To see the untimely fate of twenty chicken.
From shining shelf take down your brazen skillet,
A quart of milk from gentle cow will fill it.
When boiled and cooked, put milk and sack to egg,
Unite them firmly like the triple League.
Then covered close, together let them dwell
Till Miss twice sings: _You must not kiss and tell_.
Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon,
And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon.”
Many frankly simple customs prevailed. I do not know at how early a
date the fashion obtained of “coming out bride” on Sunday; that is,
the public appearance of bride and groom, and sometimes entire bridal
party in wedding-array, at church the Sunday after the marriage. It
certainly was a common custom long before Revolutionary times, in New
England as well as New York; but it always seems to me more an English
than a Dutch fashion. Mr. Gabriel Furman, in his manuscript Commonplace
Book, dated 1810, now owned by the Long Island Historical Society,
tells of one groom whom he remembered who appeared on the first
Sunday after his marriage attired in white broadcloth; on the second,
in brilliant blue and gold; on the third, in peach-bloom with pearl
buttons. The bride’s dress, wholly shadowed by all this magnificence,
is not even named. Mrs. Vanderbilt tells of a Flatbush bride of the
last century, who was married in a fawn-colored silk over a light-blue
damask petticoat. The wedding-waistcoat of the groom was made of the
same light-blue damask,--a delicate and deferential compliment. Often
it was the custom for the bridal pair to enter the church after the
service began, thus giving an opportunity for the congregation to enjoy
thoroughly the wedding-finery. Whether bride and groom were permitted
to sit together within the church, I do not know. Of course ordinarily
the seats of husband and wife were separate. It would seem but a poor
show, with the bride in a corner with a lot of old ladies, and the
groom up in the gallery.
On Long Island the gayety at the home of the bride’s parents was often
followed on the succeeding day by “open house” at the house of the
groom’s parents, when the wedding-party, bridesmaids and all, helped
to keep up the life of the wedding-day. An old letter says of weddings
in the city of New York:--
“The Gentlemen’s Parents keep Open house just in the same manner as
the Bride’s Parents. The Gentlemen go from the Bridegroom’s house to
drink Punch with and give Joy to his Father. The Bride’s visitors
go in the same manner from the Bride’s to her mother’s to pay their
compliments to her. There is so much driving about at these times
that in our narrow streets there is some danger. The Wedding-house
resembles a bee-hive. Company perpetually flying in and out.”
All this was in vogue by the middle of the last century. There was no
leaving home by bride and groom just when every one wanted them,--no
tiresome, tedious wedding-journey; all cheerfully enjoyed the presence
of the bride, and partook of the gayety the wedding brought. In the
country, up the Hudson and on Long Island, it was lengthened out by a
bride-visiting,--an entertaining of the bridal party from day to day
by various hospitable friends and relations for many miles around; and
this bride-visiting was usually made on horseback.
Let us picture a bride-visiting in spring-time on Long Island, where,
as Hendrick Hudson said, “the land was pleasant with grass and flowers
and goodly trees as ever seen, and very sweet smells came therefrom.”
The fair bride, with her happy husband; the gayly dressed bridesmaids,
in silken petticoats, and high-heeled scarlet shoes, with rolled and
powdered hair dressed with feathers and gauze, riding a-pillion behind
the groom’s young friends, in satin knee-breeches, and gay coats and
cocked hats,--all the accompanying young folk in the picturesque and
gallant dress of the times, and gay with laughter and happy voices,--a
sight pretty to see in the village streets, or, fairer still, in the
country lanes, where the woods were purely starred and gleaming with
the radiant dogwood; or roads where fence-lines were “white with
blossoming cherry-trees as if touched with lightest snow;” or where
pink apple-blossoms flushed the fields and dooryards; or, sweeter
far, where the flickering shadows fell through a bridal arch of the
pale green feathery foliage of the abundant flowering locust-trees,
whose beautiful hanging racemes of exquisite pink-flushed blossoms
cast abroad a sensuous perfume like orange blossoms, which fitted the
warmth, the glowing sunlight, the fair bride, the beginning of a new
life;--let us picture in our minds this June bride-visiting; we have
not its like to-day in quaintness, simplicity, and beauty.