TOWN LIFE
The earlier towns in New Netherland gathered usually closely around
a fort, both for protection and companionship. In New Amsterdam, as
in Albany, this fort was an intended refuge against possible Indian
attacks, and also in New Amsterdam the established quarters in the new
world of the Dutch West India Company. As the settlement increased,
roads were laid out in the little settlement leading from the fort to
any other desired point on the lower part of the island. Thus Heere
Straat, the Breede Weg, or Broadway, led from the fort of New Amsterdam
to the common pasture-lands. Hoogh Straat, now Stone Street, was
evolved from part of the road which led down to the much-used Ferry
to Long Island, at what is now Peck Slip. Whitehall Street was the
shortest way to the East River. In front of the fort was the Bowling
Green. Other streets were laid out, or rather grew, as needs increased.
They were irregular in width and wandering in direction. They were not
paved nor kept in good order, and at night were scarcely lighted.
In December, 1697, city lamps were ordered in New York “in the dark
time of the moon, for the ease of the inhabitants.” Every seventh
house was to cause a lanthorn and candle to be hung out on a pole, the
expense to be equally shared by the seven neighbors, and a penalty of
ninepence was decreed for every default. And perhaps the watch called
out in New York, as did the watch in Old York, in London and other
English cities, “Lanthorne, and a whole candell-light! Hang out your
lights here.” An old chap-book has a watchman’s rhyme beginning,--
“A light here! maids, hang out your light,
And see your horns be clear and bright
That so your candle clear may shine,” etc.
Broad Street was in early days a canal or inlet of the sea, and was
called De Heere Graft, and extended from the East River to Wall Street.
Its waters, as far as Exchange Place, rose and fell with the tide.
It was crossed by several foot-bridges and a broader bridge at Hoogh
Straat, or Stone Street, which bridge became a general meeting-place,
a centre of trade. And when the burghers and merchants decided to
meet regularly at this bridge every Friday morning, they thus and
then and there established the first Exchange in New York City. It
is pleasant to note, in spite of the many miles of city growth, how
closely the exchange centres have remained near their first home. In
1660 the walks on the banks of the Graft were paved, and soon it was
bordered by the dwellings of good citizens; much favored on account
of the homelikeness, so Mr. Janvier suggests, of having a good,
strong-smelling canal constantly under one’s nose, and ever-present
the pleasant familiar sight of squat sailor-men and squat craft before
one’s eyes. In 1676, when simple and primitive ways of trade were
vanishing and the watercourse was no longer useful or needful, the
Heere Graft was filled in--reluctantly, we can believe--and became
Broad Street.
The first mention of street-cleaning was in 1695, when Mr.
Vanderspiegle undertook the job for thirty pounds a year. By 1701
considerable pains was taken to clean the city, and to remove
obstructions in the public ways. Every Friday dirt was swept by each
citizen in a heap in front of his or her house, and afterwards carted
away by public cartmen, who had threepence a load if the citizen
shovelled the dirt into the cart, sixpence if the cartman loaded his
cart himself. Broad Street was cleaned by a public scavenger at a
salary of $40 per annum paid by the city; for the dirt from other
streets was constantly washed into it by rains, and it was felt that
Broad Street residents should not be held responsible for other
people’s dirt. Dumping-places were established. Regard was paid from an
early date to preserving “the Commons.” It was ordered that lime should
not be burnt thereon; that no hoopsticks or saplings growing thereon
should be cut; no timber taken to make into charcoal; no turfs or sods
carried away therefrom; no holes dug therein; no rubbish be deposited
thereon.
Within the city walls all was orderly and quiet. “All persons who enter
y^e gates of y^e citty with slees, carts and horses, horseback, not
to ride faster than foot-tap.” The carters were forced to dismount
and walk at their horses’ heads. All moved slowly in the town streets.
Living in a fortified town, they still were not annoyed by discharge
of guns, for the idle “fyring of pistells and gunns” was prohibited on
account of “ill-conveniants.”
The first houses were framed and clap-boarded; the roofs were thatched
with reeds; the chimneys were catted, made of logs of wood filled and
covered with clay; sometimes even of reeds and mortar,--for there were,
of course, at first no bricks. Hayricks stood in the public streets.
Hence fires were frequent in the town, breaking out in the wooden
catted chimneys; and the destruction of the inflammable chimneys was
decreed by the magistrates. In 1648 it was ordered in New Amsterdam
that no “wooden or platted chimney” should be built south of the
Fresh-water Pond. Fire-wardens--_brandt-meesters_--were appointed, who
searched constantly and pryingly for “foul chimney-harts,” and fined
careless housekeepers therefor when they found them.
It is really surprising as well as amusing to see how the citizens
resented this effort for their safety, this espionage over their
hearthstones; and especially the wives resented the snooping in
their kitchens. They abused the poor _schout_ who inspected the
chimney-hearths, calling him “a little cock, booted and spurred,” and
other demeaning names. In 1658 Maddaleen Dirck, as she passed the door
of the fire-warden, called out tantalizingly to him, “There is the
chimney-sweep at his door,--his chimney is always well-swept.” She
must have been well scared and truly repentant at the enormity of her
offence when she was brought up before the magistrates and accused of
having “insulted the worshipful fire-warden on the highway, and incited
a riot.”
In spite of vigilance and in spite of laws, foul chimneys were
constantly found. We hear of the town authorities “reciting that they
have long since condemned flag-roofs, and wooden and platted chimneys,
but their orders have been neglected, and several fires have occurred;
therefore they amplify their former orders as follows: All flag-roofs,
wooden chimneys, hay-barracks, and hay-stacks shall be taken down
within four months, in the penalty of twenty-five guilders.”
The magistrates further equipped the town against conflagration by
demanding payment of a beaver skin from each house, to purchase with
the collected sum two hundred and fifty leather fire-buckets from the
Fatherland. But delays were frequent in ocean transportation, and the
shoemakers in town finally made the fire-buckets. They were placed
in ten groups in various houses throughout the town. For their good
order and renewal, each chimney was thereafter taxed a guilder a year.
By 1738, two engines with small, solid wooden wheels or rollers were
imported from England, and cared for with much pride.
In Albany similar wooden chimneys at first were built; we find
contractors delivering reeds for roofs and chimneys. “Fire-leathes” and
buckets were ordered. Buckets were owned by individuals and the town;
were marked with initials for identification. Many stood a century of
use, and still exist as cherished relics. The manner of bucket-service
was this: As soon as an alarm of fire was given by shouts or
bell-ringing, all citizens of all classes at once ran to the scene of
the conflagration. All who owned buckets carried them, and from open
windows other fire-buckets were flung out on the streets by persons
who were delayed for a few moments by any cause. The running crowd
seized the buckets, and on reaching the fire a double line was made
from the fire to the river. The buckets filled with water were passed
up the line to the fire, the empty buckets down. Any one who attempted
to break the line was promptly soused with a bucket of water. When all
was over, the fire-warden took charge of the buckets, and as soon as
possible the owners appeared, and each claimed and carried home his own
buckets.
There was a police department in New Amsterdam as well as a fire
department. In 1658 the burgomasters and _schepens_ appointed a
_ratel-wacht_, or rattle-watch, of ten watchmen, of whom Lodewyck Pos
was Captain. Their wages were high,--twenty-four stuyvers (about fifty
cents) each a night, and plenty of firewood. The Captain collected
fifty stuyvers a month from each house,--not as has since been
collected in like manner for the private bribing of the police, but
as a legalized method of paying expenses. The rules for the watch are
amusing, but cannot be given in full. They sometimes slept on duty,
as they do now, and paid a fine of ten stuyvers for each offence. They
could not swear, nor fight, nor be “unreasonable;” and “when they
receive their quarter-money, they shall not hold any gathering for
drink nor any club meeting.”
Attention is called to one rule then in force: “If a watchman receive
any sum of money as a fee, he shall give the same to the Captain; and
this fee so brought in shall be paid to the City Treasurer”--oh the
good old times!
The presence of a considerable force of troops was a feature of life in
some towns. The soldiers were well cared for when quartered within the
fort, sleeping on good, soft, goose-feather beds, with warm homespun
blankets and even with linen sheets, all hired from the Dutch _vrouws_;
and supplied during the winter with plentiful loads of firewood,
several hundred, through levy on the inhabitants; good hard wood,
too,--“no watte Pyn wood, willige, oly noote, nor Lindewood” (which was
intended for English, but needs translation into “white pine, willow,
butternut, nor linden”).
No doubt the soldiers came to be felt a great burden, for often they
were billeted in private houses. We find one citizen writing seriously
what reads amusingly like modern slang,--that “they made him weary.”
Another would furnish bedding, provisions, anything, if he need not
have any soldier-boarders assigned to him. One of the twenty-three
clauses of the “Articles of Surrender” of the Dutch was that the
“townsmen of Manhattans shall not have any soldiers quartered upon
them without being satisfied and paid for them by their officers.”
In Governor Nicholl’s written instructions to the commander at Fort
Albany, he urges him not to lend “too easey an eare” to the soldiers’
complaints against their land-lords.
Since in the year 1658 the soldiers of New Amsterdam paid but twenty
cents a week for quarters when lodged with a citizen, it is not
surprising that their presence was not desired. A soldier’s pay was
four dollars a month.
They were lawless fellows, too lazy to chop wood for their fires; they
had to be punished for burning up for firewood the stockades they
were enlisted to protect. Their duties were slight,--a drill in the
morning, no sentry work during the day, a watch over the city gates at
night, and cutting wood. The military code of the day reveals a very
lax condition of discipline; it wasn’t really much of an army in Dutch
days. And as for the Fort and the Battery in the town of New Amsterdam,
read Mr. Janvier’s papers thereon to learn fully their innocuous
pretence of warlikeness.
There was very irregular foreign and in-land mail service. It is with a
retrospectively pitying shiver that we read a notice, as late as 1730,
that “whoever inclines to perform the foot-post to Albany this winter
may make application to the Post-Master.” Later we find the postmaster
leisurely collecting the mail during several weeks for “the first post
to Albany this winter.” Of course this foot-post was only made when
the river was frozen over; swift sloops carried the summer mail up the
river in two or three weeks,--sometimes in only ten days from New York
to Albany. I can fancy the lonesome post journeying alone up the solemn
river, under the awe-full shadow of old Cro’nest, sometimes climbing
the icy Indian paths with _ys-sporen_, oftener, I hope, skating
swiftly along, as a good son of a Hollander should, and longing every
inch of the way for spring and the “breaking-up” of the river.
In 1672, “Indian posts” carried the Albany winter mail; trustworthy
redmen, whose endurance and honesty were at the service of their white
friends.
The first regular mail started by mounted post from New York for
Boston on January 1, 1673. His “portmantles” were crammed with letters
and “small portable goods” and “divers bags.” He was “active, stout,
indefatigable, and honest.” He could not change horses till he reached
Hartford. He was ordered to keep an eye out for the best ways through
forests, and accommodations at fords, ferries, etc., and to watch for
all fugitive soldiers and servants, and to be kind to all persons
journeying in his company. While he was gone eastward a locked box
stood in the office of the Colonial Secretary at New York to collect
the month’s mail. The mail the post brought in return, being prepaid,
was carried to the “coffee-house,” put on a table, well thumbed over by
all who cared to examine it, and gradually distributed, two or three
weeks’ delay not making much difference any way.
As in all plantations in a new land, there was for a time in New
Netherland a lack of servants. Complaints were sent in 1649 to the
States-General of “the fewness of boors and farm-servants.” Domestic
servants were not found in many households; the capable wife and
daughters performed the housework and dairy work. As soon as servants
were desired they were speedily procured from Africa. The Dutch brought
the first negro slaves to America. In the beginning these slaves in
New Netherland were the property of the Dutch West India Company,
which rented their services. The company owned slaves from the year
1625, when it first established its authority, and promised to each
patroon twelve black men and women from ships taken as prizes. In 1644
it manumitted twelve of the negroes who had worked faithfully nearly
a score of years in servitude. In 1652 the Government in Holland
consented to the exportation of slaves to the colony for sale. In
1664 Governor Stuyvesant writes of an auction of negroes that they
brought good prices, and were a great relief to the garrison in
supplying funds to purchase food. Thus did the colony taste the ease of
ill-gotten wealth. Though the Duke of York and his governors attempted
to check the slave-trade, by the end of the century the negroes had
increased much in numbers in the colony. In the Kip family were twelve
negro house-servants. Rip van Dam had five; Colonel de Peyster and the
Widow Van Courtlandt had each seven adult servants. Colonel Bayard,
William Beeckman, David Provoost, and Madam Van Schaick each had three.
On Long Island slaves abounded. It is the universal testimony that
they were kindly treated by the Dutch,--too kindly, our English lady
thought, who rented out her slaves. Masters were under some bonds
to the public. They could not, under Dutch rule, whip their slaves
without authorization from the government. The letters in the Lloyd
Collection in regard to the slave Obium are striking examples of kindly
consideration, and of constant care and thought for his comfort and
happiness.
The wages of a hired servant-girl in New York in 1655 were three
dollars and a half a month, which was very good pay when we
consider the purchasing power of money at that time. It is not till
the eighteenth century that we read of the beginning of our vast
servant-supply of Irish servants.
There was much binding out of children and young folk for terms of
service. In Stuyvesant’s time several invoices of Dutch children from
the almshouses were sent to America to be put to service, and the
official letters concerning them show much kindliness of thought and
intent towards these little waifs and strays. Early in the next century
a sad little band of Palatines was bound out in New York families.
It may prove of interest to give one of the bonds of indenture of a
house-servant in Albany.
“THIS INDENTURE witnesseth that Aulkey Hubertse, Daughter of John
Hubertse, of the Colony of Rensselaerwyck deceased hath bound herself
as a Meniall Servant, and by these presents doth voluntary and of her
own free will and accord bind herself as a Meniall Servant unto John
Delemont of the City of Albany, weaver, by and with the consent of
the Deacons of the Reformed Dutch Church in the Citty of Albany, who
are as overseers in the disposal of the said Aulkey Hubertse to serve
from the date of these present Indentures unto the full end and term
of time that the said Aulkey Hubertse shall come to Age, all which
time fully to be Compleat and ended, during all which term the said
servant her said Master faithfully shall serve, his secrets keep, his
lawful commands gladly everywhere obey, she shall do no Damage to her
said Master nor see it to be done by others without letting or giving
notice thereof to her said Master: she shall not waste her Master’s
goods or lend them unlawfully to any. At Cards, Dice, or any unlawful
Game she shall not play whereby her said Master may have Damage: with
her own goods or the goods of others during the said Term, without
License from her said Master she shall neither buy or sell: she shall
not absent herself day or night from her Master’s service without
his Leave, nor haunt Ale-houses, Taverns, or Play-houses, but in all
things as a faithful servant, she shall behave herself towards her
said Master and all his during the said Term. And the said Master
during the said Term, shall find and provide sufficient Wholesome and
compleat meat and drink, washing, lodging, and apparell and all other
Necessarys fit for such a servant: and it is further agreed between
the said Master and Servant in case the said Aulkey Hubertse should
contract Matrimony before she shall come to Age then the said Servant
is to be free from her said Master’s service by virtue thereof:
and at the expiration of her said servitude, her said Master John
Delemont shall find provide for and deliver unto his said servant
double apparell, that is to say, apparell fit for to have and to wear
as well on the Lords Day as working days, both linning and woolen
stockings and shoes and other Necessarys meet for such a servant to
have and to wear, and for the true performance of all and every of
said Covenant and Agreements the said parties bind themselves unto
each other by these presents.”
This indenture was signed and sealed in the year 1710, and varied
little from those of previous years. Sometimes the apparel was fully
described, and was always good and substantial--and Sunday attire was
usually furnished. Sarah Davis, bound out in Albany in 1684, was to be
taught to read and knit stockings; was to have silk hoods and a silk
scarf for church wear, and substantial petticoats and waistcoats, some
of homespun, some of “jersey-spun,” others of “carsoway,” which was
kersey.
“Redemptioners,” bound for a term of service as domestic and farm
servants, also came from the various European States; and good servants
often did they prove, and good citizens, too, when their terms of
service expired. There also opened in this emigration of redemptioners
a vast opportunity for adventure. In the “New York Gazette” of March
15, 1736, we read of one servant-girl adventurer:--
“We hear that about two years ago a certain Irish gentlewoman was
brought into this province a servant, but she pretended to be a great
fortune worth some thousands (was called the Irish Beauty). Her master
confirming the same a certain young man (Mr. S***ds), courted her; and
she seemingly shy, her master for a certain sum of money makes up the
match, and they were married and go to their country-seat; but she
not pleased with that pursuades her husband to remove to the city of
New York and set up a great tavern. They did so. Next she pursuades
her husband to embark for Ireland to get her great portion. When he
comes there he finds her mother a weeder of gardens to get bread. In
his absence Madam becomes acquainted with one Davis, and they sell and
pack up her husband’s effects, which were considerable, and embark for
North Carolina. When they come there they pass for man and wife, and
he first sells the negroes and other effects, then sells her clothes
and at last he sells her for a servant, and with the produce returns
to his wife in Rhode Island, he having made a very good voyage.”
They were constantly eloping with their masters’ or mistresses’
wardrobes, sometimes with portions of both, and setting up as
gentlefolk on their own account. We find one Jersey girl running a fine
rig: dressed in a velvet coat and scarlet knee-breeches, with a sword,
cocked hat, periwig, and silken hose, she had a gay carouse in New York
tap-houses and tea-gardens, as long as her stolen twenty pounds lasted;
but with an empty stomach, she ceased to play the lad, and went sadly
to the stone ketch. I turn regretfully from the redemptioners; they
were the most picturesque and romance-bearing element of the community.
But little is known of the early practice of medicine in New
Netherland, less than of the other American colonies, and that little
is not of much importance. It must be remembered that the times were
what Lowell has felicitously termed the twilight through which alchemy
was passing into chemistry, and the science of medicine partook of
mysticism. Astrology and alchemy were not yet things of the past. From
the beginning of the settlement the West India Company paid a surgeon
(Jacob Varravanger was the name of one) to live in New Amsterdam and
care for the health of the Company’s “servants.” But soon so many
“freemen” came--that is, not in the pay of the Company--that some
doubts arose in the minds of the Council whether it would not be
better to save the salary, by trusting to independent practitioners.
There were three such in New Amsterdam in 1652. They made pills and a
terrible dose of rhubarb, senna, and port-wine, called “Vienna Drink.”
But folk were discouragingly healthy in the little town in spite of
poor water, and lack of drainage, and filth in the streets, and the
Graft. Van der Donck said, “Galens have meagre soup in that country;”
and soon the poor doctors, to add to their income, petitioned the
Director that none but surgeons should be allowed to shave people. This
was a weighty matter, and after profound consideration, the Council
gave the following answer:--
“That shaving doth not appertain exclusively to _chirugery_, but is
only an appanage thereof. That no man can be prevented from operating
herein upon _himself_, or doing another this friendly act, provided
that it be through _courtesy_, and that he do not receive any money
for it, and do not keep an open-shop of that sort, which is hereby
forbidden, declaring in regard to the last request, this act to belong
to _chirugery_ and the health of man.”
And the surgeons on shore were protected against the ship barbers,
who landed and who made some pretty grave mistakes when attempting to
doctor in the town. In 1658 Dr. Varravanger, somewhat disgusted at the
treatment of the sick, who, if they had no families, had to trust to
the care of strangers, established the first New York Hospital, which
was, after all, only a clean and suitable house with fire and wood and
one good woman to act as matron.
There was no lack of physicians,--half a dozen by 1650. A century
later, the historian of the province pronounced the towns to be
swarming with quacks.
One tribute to old-time medicine and New York medical men we owe
still. The well-known Kiersted Ointment manufactured and sold in New
York to-day is made from a receipt of old Dr. Hans Kiersted’s, the
best colonial physician of his day, who came to New York in 1638. The
manufacture of this ointment is a closely guarded family secret. He
married the daughter of the famous Anneke Jans; and, in the centuries
that have passed, the descendants have had more profit from the
ointment than from the real estate. There were plenty of “wise women”
to care for the increase of the populace; the New Amsterdam midwife
had a house built for her by the government. It was a much respected
calling. The mother of Anneke Jans was a midwife. They were licensed to
practise. Here is an appointment by the Governor in 1670:--
“Whereas I am given to understand that Tryntje Meljers ye wife of
Wynant Vander pool a sworn and approved midwife at Albany in which
Imployment she hath Continued for y^e span of fourteen years past
in good reputation not refusing her assistance but on y^e contrary
affording her best help to y^e poorer sorte of people out of Christian
Charity, as well as to ye richer sorte for reward, and there being
severall other less skilfull women who upon occasion will pretend to
be midwives where they can gain by it but refuse their helpe to y^e
poore. These presents Certifye That I doe allow of y^e said Tryntje
Meljers to be one of y^e profest sworne midwives at Albany, and that
she and one more skilfull woman be only admitted to Undertake ye same
there except upon Extraordinary occasions. They continuing their
Charitable assistance to y^e poore & a diligent attendance on their
calling.”
The small number of settlers, the exigencies and hardships of a
planter’s life, the absence of luxuries, as well as the simplicity of
social manners among the Dutch, prohibited anything during the rule
of the Dutch in New Netherland which might, by a long and liberal
stretch of phraseology or idealization of a revered ancestry, be termed
fashionable life.
They occasionally had a merry dinner. Captain Beaulieu, a gay Frenchman
who brought a prize into port, gave a costly one for fourteen persons;
and as he did not pay for it, it has passed into history. Governor
Stuyvesant had a fine dinner given to him on the eve of one of his
“gallant departures.” De Vries has left us an amusing account of a
quarrelsome feast given by the gunner of the Fort. Eating and drinking
were ever the Dutchman’s pleasures.
With the establishment of English rule there came to the town of the
Governor’s residence, in the Province of New York as in the other
provinces, a little stilted attempt at the semblance of a court.
Formal endeavors to have something of the nature of a club were made
under the English governors, to promote a social feeling in the town.
A letter of the day says, “Good correspondence is kept between the
English and Dutch; to keep it closer sixteen families (ten Dutch and
six English) have had a constant meetting at each other’s houses in
Turnes twice every week in winter and now in summer once. They meet at
six at night, and part at about eight or nine.” The exceedingly early
hours of these social functions seem to accent the simplicity of the
life of the times even more than the absence of any such meetings would
have done. The arrival of a new Governor was naturally an important
and fashionable event. When the Earl and Countess of Bellomont landed
in New York in 1698 they were, of course, greeted first with military
salutes; four barrels of gunpowder made sufficient noise of welcome.
Then a great dinner to a hundred and fifty people was given. It was
presided over by the handsomest man in town. Mayor de Peyster, and the
fare consisted of “venison, turkey, chicken, goose, pigeon, duck and
other game; mutton, beef, lamb, veal, pork, sausages; with puddings,
pastry, cakes and choicest of wines.” It was a fine welcome, but such
dinners did not come every day to the Governor; he had other and
sorrier gatherings in store. Soon we hear of him shut up eight days in
succession in Albany (as he said in his exceedingly plain English) “in
a close chamber with fifty sachems, who besides the stink of bear’s
grease with which they were plentifully bedaubed, were continually
smoking and drinking of rum,” and coming back to town in a “nasty slow
little sloop.” No wonder he fell dangerously sick with the gout.
Mrs. Grant, writing of New York society in the middle of the eighteenth
century, said:--
“At New York there was always a governor, a few troops, and a kind
of little court kept; there was a mixed, and in some degree polished
society. To this the accession of many families of French Huguenots
rather above the middling rank, contributed not a little.”
This little important circle had some fine balls. On January 22, 1734,
one was given at the Fort on the birthday of the Prince of Wales, which
lasted till four in the morning. Another was given in honor of the
King’s birthday. “The ladies made a splendant appearance. Sometimes as
many as a hundred persons were present and took part.”
Occasionally a little flash of gossiping brightness shows us a picture
of the every-day life of the times in the capital town. Such a bit of
eighteenth-century scandal is the amusing account, from Mrs. Janet
Montgomery’s unpublished Memoirs, of Lady Cornbury, wife of the
Governor, Lord Cornbury. She died in New York in 1706, much eulogized,
and most ostentatiously mourned for by her husband. Mrs. Montgomery’s
account of her is this:--
“The lady of this very just nobleman was equally a character. He had
fallen in love with her ear, which was very beautiful. The ear ceased
to please and he treated her with neglect. Her pin-money was withheld
and she had no resource but begging and stealing. She borrowed gowns
and coats and never returned them. As hers was the only carriage in
the city, the rolling of the wheels was easily distinguished, and then
the cry in the house was ‘There comes my lady; hide this, hide that,
take that away.’ Whatever she admired in her visit she was sure to
send for next day. She had a fancy to have with her eight or ten young
ladies, and make them do her sewing work, for who could refuse their
daughters to my lady.”
What a picture of the times! the fashionable though impecunious
Englishwoman and the score of industrious young Dutch-American
seamstresses sitting daily and most unwillingly in the Governor’s
parlor.
One of the most grotesque episodes in New York political history, or
indeed in the life of any public official, was the extraordinary notion
of this same Governor, Lord Cornbury, to dress in women’s clothes.
Lord Stanhope and Agnes Strickland both assert that when Cornbury was
appointed Governor and told he was to represent her Majesty Queen Anne,
he fancied he must dress as a woman. Other authorities attribute his
absurd masquerade to his fond belief that in that garb he resembled the
Queen, who was his cousin. Mrs. Montgomery said it was in consequence
of a vow, and that in a hoop and head-dress and with fan in hand he was
frequently seen in the evening on the ramparts. A portrait of him owned
by Lord Hampton shows him in the woman’s dress of the period, fan in
hand. Truly it was, as Lewis Morris wrote of him to the Secretary of
State, “a peculiar and detestable magot,” and one which must have been
most odious and trying to honest, manly New Yorkers, and especially
demoralizing to the soldiers before whom he paraded in petticoats. When
summarily deposed by his cousin from his governorship, he was promptly
thrust into a New York debtor’s prison, where he languished till the
death of his father made him third Earl of Clarendon.