Governor Morris published his commission_Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 5 (of 8) The English and French in North America 1689-1763

August, 1738; at Burlington a few days later. The council, with the

assembly, expressed the thanks and joy of the people in unmeasured

terms, prophetically seeing trade and commerce flourish and justice

more duly and speedily administered under the new rule. The pleasant

relations between the governor and the representatives of the people

which these expressions of satisfaction seemed to foreshadow were not

to be of long duration. “There is so much insincerity and ignorance

among the people, ... and so strong an inclination in the meanest

of the people to have the sole direction of all the affairs of the

government,” writes Morris to his friend Sir Charles Wager, one of

the treasury lords, May 10, 1739, “that it requires much more temper,

skill, and constancy to overcome these difficulties than fall to every

man’s share.” Under these influences, Morris, the former leader of the

popular party, betrayed them, and tried to obey his instructions to the

very letter. Following the example set by Cosby, of New York, in regard

to the salary of an absent governor and a present lieutenant-governor

or president of the council, he began to quarrel with John Hamilton,

who as president had temporarily acted as governor. Fortunately

for Morris’s reputation, this case did not grow into such a public

scandal as the Cosby-Van Dam case, mentioned above, and was quietly

settled in the proper way. The assembly, having early discovered that

Morris was not an easy man to deal with, tried to discipline him by

interfering with the disposal of the revenue granted for the support

of the government, and finally refused to pass supply bills unless the

governor disobeyed his instructions and assented to bills enacted by

them. The wheels of the governmental machinery threatened to come to

a standstill for want of money, when Morris, after an illness of some

weeks, died at Trenton on the 21st of May, 1746, leaving the government

of the province to his whilom adversary. John Hamilton, as president of

the council, who was then already suffering from ill health, prorogued

the assembly, then sitting at Trenton, and reconvened them at Perth

Amboy, his own home. Relieved of their political enemy, Morris, the

assembly became more amenable to reason, and during Hamilton’s brief

administration “chearfully made provision for raising 500 men” for the

Canada expedition, and lent the government £10,000 to arm and equip

the New Jersey contingent. Hamilton soon succumbed to his disease, and

died June 17, 1747. When John Reading, another member of the council,

succeeded to power, his administration of a few months was mainly

signalized by riots at Perth Amboy,—in which Reading was roughly

handled. These disturbances were caused by an act to vacate and annul

grants of land and to divest owners of property which had been bought

some years before from the Indians.

Jonathan Belcher, after being removed in 1741[489] from the executive

office of Massachusetts, had gone to England, where, with the

assistance of his brother-in-law, Richard Partridge, the agent at

court for New Jersey, he obtained the appointment of governor of this

province. When he first met the council and assembly of New Jersey, on

the 20th of August, 1747, he said to them, “I shall strictly conform

myself to the king’s commands and to the powers granted me therein,

as also to the additional authorities contained in the king’s royal

orders to me, and from these things I think you will not desire me

to deviate.” Belcher had not yet had occasion to arouse the anger of

the assembly, when the latter, at their first session, of unusual

long duration (fourteen weeks), already showed their distrust of him

by voting his salary for one year only, and not “a penny more” than

to the late governor, who had “harast and plagued them sufficiently.”

Belcher was too well inured to colonial politics openly to manifest his

anger at such treatment, or to tell the assembly that he considered

them “very stingy,” as he called them in a letter to Partridge. His

administration gave evidence of his ability to yield gracefully up to

the limits of his instructions; but when a conflict with his assembly

could not be avoided, he faced it stubbornly. On the whole, his rule

resulted in a much-needed quiet for the province, which was only

briefly disturbed by the riots already mentioned, which had begun

before Belcher’s arrival. The members of the assembly, who depended

largely for their election on the votes of these rioters, sympathized

with the lawless element in Essex and other counties; but in the end

wiser counsels prevailed, and the disturbances ceased.

In another part of the province the dispute over the boundary line

with New York, as it affected titles of land, was also a source

of agitation, which in Belcher’s time was the cause of constant

remonstrance and appeal and of legislative intervention, but he left

the question unsettled, a legacy of disturbance for later composition.

Age and a paralytic disorder, which even the electrical apparatus

that Franklin sent to Belcher could not remove, ended Belcher’s life

on the 31st of August, 1757, leaving the government in the hands of

Thomas Pownall, who, on account of Belcher’s age and infirmity, had

been appointed lieutenant-governor in 1755. Pownall was at the time of

Belcher’s death also governor of Massachusetts. After a short visit to

New Jersey he found “that the necessity of his majesty’s service in the

government of the Massachusetts Bay” required his return to Boston, and

his absence brought the active duties of the executive once more upon

Reading, as senior counsellor, who, through age and illness, was little

disposed towards the burden.

The arrival, on the 15th of June, 1758, of Francis Bernard, bearing

a commission as governor, relieved Reading of his irksome duties.

Bernard had, during his short term, the satisfaction of pacifying the

Indians by a treaty made at Easton in October, 1758. The otherwise

uneventful term of his administration was soon ended by his transfer

to Massachusetts. His successor, Thomas Boone, after an equally short

and uneventful term, was replaced by Josiah Hardy, and the latter by

William Franklin, the son of the great philosopher. The latter had

secured his appointment through Lord Bute, but nothing can be said in

this chapter of his administration, which, beginning in 1762, belongs

to another volume.[490]

* * * * *

The possible injury which a development of the manufacturing interests

in the colonies might inflict on like interests in Great Britain

agitated the mind of the English manufacturer at an early date.

Already in Dutch times this question of manufactures in the province

of New Netherland had been settled rather peremptorily by an order

of the Assembly of the Nineteen, which made it a felony to engage

in the making of any woollen, linen, or cotton cloth. The English

Parliament, perhaps influenced by the manufacturers among their

constituents, or not willing to appear as legislating in the interest

of money, declared, in 1719, “that the erecting of manufactories in

the colonies tends to lessen their dependence on Great Britain,” and

a prohibition similar to that of the Dutch authorities was enacted.

During the whole colonial period this feeling of jealousy interfered

with the development of industries and delayed their growth. Whatever

England could not produce was expected to be made here, such as naval

stores, pearlash and potash, and silks; but the English manufacturer

strenuously set himself in opposition to any colonial enterprise which

affected his own profits.

Shipbuilding and the saw-mill had early sprung from the domestic

necessities of the people. The Dutch had made the windmill a striking

feature in the landscape of New York. The people of Pennsylvania had

been the earliest in the middle colonies to establish a press, and it

had brought the paper-mill in its train, though after a long interval;

for it was not till 1697 that the manufacture of paper began near

Philadelphia, and not till thirty years later (1728) was the second

mill established at Elizabethtown in New Jersey. The Dutch had begun

the making of glass in New York city, near what is now Hanover Square,

and in Philadelphia it was becoming an industry as early as 1683;

though if one may judge from the use of oiled paper in the first houses

of Germantown, the manufacture of window-glass began later. Wistar,

a palatine, erected a glass-house near Salem, in West New Jersey, in

1740, and Governor Moore, of New York, in 1767, says of a bankrupt

glass-maker in New York that his ill success had come of his imported

workmen deserting him after he had brought them over from Europe at

great cost.

The presence of iron ore in the hills along the Hudson had been known

to the Dutch, but they had made no attempt to work the mines, relying

probably to some extent upon Massachusetts, where “a good store of

iron” was manufactured from an early date. Towards the end of the

seventeenth century, when the ore was tried, the founders discovered

the iron to be too brittle to encourage its use. Lieutenant-Governor

Clarke tried to arouse interest for the iron industry in 1737,

and induced the general assembly to consider the advisability of

encouraging proprietors of iron-works; but the movement came to

nothing, and Parliament did what it could to thwart all such purposes

by enacting a law “to encourage the importation of pig and bar iron

from his Majesty’s Colonies in America, and to prevent the erection

of any Mill or other Engine for Slitting or Rolling of Iron; or any

plating Forge to work with a Tilt Hammer; or any Furnace for making

Steel in any of the said Colonies.” When this act was passed in 1750

only a single plating-forge existed in the province of New York, at

Wawayanda, Orange County, which had been built about 1745, and was

not in use at the time. Two furnaces and several blomaries had been

established about the same time in the manor of Cortland, Westchester

County, but a few years had sufficed to bring their business to a

disastrous end.

In 1757 the province could show only one iron-work at Ancram, which

produced nothing but pig and bar iron. At this same establishment,

owned by the Livingstons, in the present Columbia County, many a cannon

was cast some years later to help in the defence of American liberties.

In 1766 we find a little foundry established in New York for making

small iron pots, but its operations had not yet become very extensive.

The first iron-works in New Jersey seem to have been opened by an

Englishman, James Grover, who had become dissatisfied with the rule

of the Dutch and the West India Company, and had removed from Long

Island to Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where he and some iron-workers from

Massachusetts set up one of the first forges in the province.

In 1676 the Morris family, which later became so prominent in colonial

politics, was granted a large tract of land near the Raritan River,

with the right “to dig, delve, and carry away all such mines for iron

as they shall find” in that tract. The smelting-furnace and forge

mentioned in an account of the province by the proprietors of East

New Jersey, in 1682, employing both whites and blacks, was probably

on the Morris estate. The mineral treasures of the province, however,

remained on the whole undiscovered at the end of the century; but in

the following century several blomary forges and one charcoal-furnace

were erected in Warren County, the latter of which was still running

twenty-five years ago. Penn had early learned of the richness of his

province in iron and copper, though no attempt was made to mine them

till 1698. At this early period Gabriel Thomas mentions the discovery

of mineral ores, which were probably found in the Chester County of

that day, and the first iron-works in the province were built in that

region. Governor Keith owned iron-works in New Castle County (Delaware)

between 1720 and 1730, and had such good opinion of the iron industry

in the colonies that he considered them capable of supplying, if

sufficiently encouraged, the mother country with all the pig and bar

iron needed.

In 1718 we read of iron-works forty miles up the Schuylkill River,

probably the Coventry forge, on French Creek, in Chester County; also

of a forge in Berks or Montgomery County, which in 1728 became the

scene of an Indian attack. The mineral wealth of Lancaster County

soon attracted the attention of the thrifty Germans who had settled

there. In 1728 this county had two or more furnaces in blast, and the

number of them in the province increased rapidly up to the time of the

Revolution.

Upon the Delaware, the Dutch and Swedes seem to have neglected the ores

of silver, copper, iron, and other minerals, which they did not fail to

discover existed in that region; but an Englishman, Charles Pickering,

who lived in Charlestown, Chester County, Pennsylvania, appears to

have been the earliest to mine copper, and was on trial in 1683 on the

charge of uttering base coin. A letter written by Governor Morris, of

New Jersey, to Thomas Penn in 1755, speaks of a copper-mine at the Gap

in Lancaster County, which had been discovered twenty years previous by

a German miner.

It was New Jersey, however, which led in the working of copper ore.

Arent Schuyler, belonging to a Dutch family of Albany, New York,

prominent in politics and in other matters, had removed in 1710 to

a farm purchased at New Barbadoes Neck, on the Passaic River, near

Newark. There one of his negroes re-discovered a copper-mine, known

to the Dutch and probably worked before by them, asking as a reward

for it all the tobacco he could smoke, and the permission “to live

with massa till I die.” The ore taken from this mine proved to be so

very rich in metal, copper and silver, that Parliament placed it on

the list of enumerated articles, in order to secure it for the British

market. Arent Schuyler’s son John introduced into the middle colonies

the first steam-engine, requiring it to keep his copper-mine free from

water. The copper-mining industry found another adherent about 1750

in Elias Boudinot, who opened a pit near New Brunswick, and erected

there a stamping-mill, the products of which were sent to England and

highly valued there. When Governor Hunter, in a letter to the Lords

of Trade, November 12, 1715, speaks of “a copper mine here brought to

perfection,” he undoubtedly refers to a New Jersey or Pennsylvania

undertaking, for five years later he answers the question, “What mines

are in the province of New York?” with, “Iron enough, copper but rare,

lead at a great distance in the Indian settlement, coal mines on Long

Island, but not yet wrought.” The coal mines, which have added so much

to the wealth of Pennsylvania during the present century, had not been

discovered during the period preceding the Revolution.

It has been said above that the colonies were expected to engage in

the production of potash and pearlash. This was an industry already

recommended as profitable by the secretary of New Netherland in 1650.

The dearness of labor, however, interfered with its development, for

“the woods were infinite,” and supplied all the necessary material.

The attempt, about 1700, to employ Indians at this work failed, for

“the Indians are so proud and lazy.” About 1710 a potash factory was

established in the province of New York at the expense of an English

capitalist, who found it, however, a losing investment. Not discouraged

by previous failures, John Keble, of New Jersey, proposed to set up a

manufacture of potash. He petitioned for authority to do so, and from

his statements we learn that in 1704 Pennsylvania alone of the middle

colonies exported potash, and only to the amount of 630 pounds a year.

There is no information as to Keble’s success, but a memorial of London

merchants to the Lords of Trade in 1729, asking that the manufacture of

this important staple in the colonies might be encouraged, drew forth

the opinion that not enough was thought of this industry to “draw the

people from employing that part of their time (winter) in working up

both Wooling and Linen Cloth.”

Tradition points to many a house, in the region originally settled by

the Dutch, as having been built with bricks imported from Holland. That

such was not the rule, but only an exception, in the days of the West

India Company’s rule, is proved by the frequent allusion to brick-kilns

on the Hudson, near Albany and Esopus, and on the Lower Delaware. For

the convenience of transportation, the trade has centred in these

localities to this day.

The making of salt, either by the solar process or by other means, was

a necessity which appealed to the colonists at an early period. The

Onondaga salt-springs had been discovered by a Jesuit about 1654, but,

being then in the heart of the Indian country, they could not be worked

by the French or Dutch. Coney Island had been selected in 1661 as a

proper place for salt-works, but the political dissensions of the day

did not allow operations to go on there. The Navigation Act of 1663,

prohibiting the importation into the colonies of any manufactures of

Europe except through British ports, made an exception in favor of

salt. The result was that this industry was carried on in the middle

colonies during the colonial period only in a few small establishments,

furnishing not enough for local consumption.

When the palatines began to emigrate, and there was fear that they

would carry with them the art of making woollens, Parliament in 1709

forbade such manufactures in the colonies. In 1715 the towns-people

of New York and Albany, probably also of Perth Amboy, Burlington, and

Philadelphia, are reported as wearing English cloth, while the poor

planters are satisfied with a coarse textile of their own make. Nearly

two thirds of such fabrics used in the colonies were made there, and

the Lords of Trade were afraid that, if such manufacture was not

stopped, “it will be of great prejudice to the trade of this kingdom.”

Governor Hunter very sensibly opposed any legislation which would

force the people to wear English cloth, as it would be equivalent to

compelling them to go naked. A report of the Board of Trade, made in

1732, tells us that “they had no manufactures in the province of New

York that deserve mentioning;... no manufactures in New Jersey that

deserve mentioning.” “The deputy-governor of Pennsylvania does not know

of any trade in that province that can be considered injurious to this

kingdom. They do not export any woollen or linen manufactures; all that

they make, which are of a coarse sort, being for their own use.”

The statements embodied in reports of this kind were made upon

information acquired with difficulty, for the crown officers in the

colonies interrogated an unwilling people, who saw no virtue in

affording the grounds of their own business repression, and concealed

or disguised the truth without much compunction of conscience; and in

Massachusetts the legislative assembly had gone so far as to call to

account a crown officer who had divulged to the House of Commons the

facts respecting the exportation of beaver hats.

An address of the British House of Commons to the king, presented on

the 27th of March, 1766, called forth a description of the textile

manufactures in the province of New York at the close of the period of

which this chapter treats. The Society of Arts and Agriculture of New

York City had about this date established a small manufactory of linen,

with fourteen looms, to give employment to several poor families,

hitherto a charge upon the community. No broadcloth was then made

in the province, and some poor weavers from Yorkshire, who had come

over in the expectation of finding remunerative work, had been sadly

disappointed. But coarse woollen goods were extensively made. One of

these native textile fabrics, called linsey-woolsey, and made of linen

warp and woollen woof, became a political sign during the Stamp Act

excitement. People “desirous of distinguishing themselves as American

patriots” would wear nothing else. The manufacture of these coarse

woollens became an ordinary household occupation, and what was made in

excess of family needs found its way to market. Governor Moore says,

“This I had an opportunity of seeing during my late tour;... every

house swarms with children, who are set to work as soon as they are

able to spin and card; and as every family is furnished with a loom,

the itinerant weavers, who travel about the country, put the finishing

hand to the work.”

The making of beaver hats was an industry in which the colonial

competition with the English hatters led to most oppressive legislation

in Parliament. The middle colonies, particularly from their connection

with the beaver-hunting Indians, had carried the art to a degree which

produced a cheaper if not a better covering for the head than was

made in England, and they found it easy to market them in the West

Indies, where they excluded the English-made article. Accordingly the

export of hats from England fell off so perceptibly that in 1731 the

“Master Wardens and Assistants of the Company of Feltmakers of London”

petitioned the Lords of Trade to order that the inhabitants of the

colonies should wear no hats but such as were made in Great Britain.

The prayer was denied, but Parliament was induced, in 1732, to forbid

the exportation of hats from American ports.

But most trades in the colonies failed of the natural protection which

arises from cheap labor, while the opportunities of acquiring lands

and establishing homes with ample acres about them served further to

increase the difficulties of competition with the Old World, in that

artisans were attracted by lures of this kind to the new settlements,

and away from the shops of the towns.

* * * * *

The commerce of the colonies easily fell into four different channels:

one took produce to England, or to such foreign lands as the navigation

laws permitted; the second bound the colonies one with the other in the

bonds of reciprocal trade; a third was opened with the Indians; and

the fourth embraced all that surreptitious venture which was known as

smuggling.

The ports of New York and Philadelphia absorbed the foreign and

transatlantic trade of the middle colonies, notwithstanding the efforts

which New Jersey made to draw a share of it to Perth Amboy. Before

Governor Dongan’s time, ships coming to Amboy had to make entry at New

York, as it was feared that goods brought to the New Jersey port and

not paying New York duties might be smuggled to New York by way of

Staten Island. “Two or three ships came in there [at Amboy] last year,”

writes Governor Dongan in 1687, “with goods, and I am sure that country

cannot, even with West Jersey, consume £1,000 in goods in 2 years, so

that the rest must have been run into this colony.” Some years later

the Lords of Trade decided that the charter did not give to either West

or East Jersey the right to a port of entry, but she, nevertheless, in

due time obtained the right to open such ports at Amboy and Burlington.

The displeasure of the New York authorities was manifest in the refusal

of their governor to make proclamation of such decree, and the larger

province was strong enough occasionally to seize a vessel bound for

Amboy. New Jersey could protest; but her indignation was in vain, and

she never succeeded in establishing a lucrative commerce. How steadily

the commerce of her neighbor increased is shown in the record that in

1737 New York had 53 ships with an aggregate of 3,215 tons; in 1747,

there were 99 ships of 4,313 tons; and in 1749, 157 with a capacity

of 6,406 tons. The records of the New York custom-house show that the

articles imported from abroad or from the other British colonies on

this continent and from the West Indies were principally rum, madeira

wine, cocoa, European goods, and occasionally a negro slave,[491] while

the exports of the colonies were fish and provisions.

New Jersey had little Atlantic trade, since New York and Philadelphia

could import for her all the European and West India goods which she

needed. In intercolonial trade, however, she had a large share, and she

supplied her neighbors with cereals, beef, and horses. New York, on

the contrary, was sometimes pressed to prevent certain exportations,

when she needed all her productions herself, as was sometimes the case

with cereals. This intercolonial trade naturally grew in the main out

of the products of the several colonies; while for their Indian trade,

they were compelled to use what the avidity of the natives called

for,—blankets, weapons, rum, and the trinkets with which the Indian

was fond of adorning his person, and for all which he paid almost

entirely in furs. The nature of this traffic was such, particularly in

respect to the sale of arms and spirits, that legislation was often

interposed to regulate it in the interest of peace and justice.

As respects the illegal or last class of commercial channels, we find

that before Bellomont’s time there had grown up, as he found, “a

lycencious trade with pyrats, Scotland and Curaçao,” out of which no

customs revenue was obtained. As a consequence, the city and province

of New York “grew rich, but the customes, they decreased.” Certain Long

Island harbors became “a great Receptacle for Pirates.” The enforcement

of the law gave Bellomont a chance to say, in 1700, that an examination

of the entries in New York and Boston had shown him that the trade of

the former port was almost half as much as that of the other, while New

Hampshire ports had not the tenth part of New York, except in lumber

and fish. The Philadelphia Quakers objected to fight the West Indian

enemies of the crown; but they had little objection to trade with them,

and to grow rich on such more peaceful intercourse.

Towards the end of the period spoken of in this chapter, a “pernicious

trade with Holland” had sprung up, which the colonial governors found

hard to suppress, but which was successfully checked in 1764 by the

English cruisers; but shortly before the War of Independence it began

again to flourish.

A diversity of trade brought in its train a great variety in the

coin, which was its medium, and a generation now living can remember

when the great influx of Spanish coin poured into the colonies in the

last century was still in great measure a circulating medium. The

indebtedness to the mother country which colonists always start with

continued for a long while to drain the colonies of its specie in

payment of interest and principal. As soon as their productions were

allowed to find openly or clandestinely a market in the Spanish main

and the West Indies, the return came in the pieces of eight, the Rix

dollars, and all the other varieties of Spanish or Mexican coinage

which passed current in the tropics. So far as these went to pay debts

in Europe, the colonies were forced to preserve primitive habits of

barter in wampum, beaver, and tobacco. By the time of Andros, foreign

trade and the increasing disuse of these articles of barter had begun

to familiarize the people with coin of French and Spanish mintage,

and at that time pieces of eight went for six shillings, double reals

for eighteen pence, pistoles for twenty-four shillings. Soon after

this the metal currency began to be very much diminished in intrinsic

value by the practice of clipping. Both heavy and light pieces were

indiscriminately subjected to this treatment, and the price of the

heavier pieces of eight advanced in consequence, so that in 1693 a

standard of weight had to be established, and it was determined by

a proclamation that “whole pieces of eight of the coins of Sevill,

Mexico, and Pillar pieces of 15 pennyweight not plugg’d” should pass at

the rate of 6 shillings; pieces of more weight to increase or lose in

value 4-1/2 pence for each pennyweight more or less. Pieces of eight

of Peru were made current at fourpence for each pennyweight, and Dog

dollars at five shillings sixpence. English coin was of course current

in the colonies, and the emigrants of that day brought their little

hoard in the mintage of their European homes, instead of buying, as

to-day, letters of exchange or drafts payable in a currency unknown

to them. In 1753 it became necessary to enact, in New York, a law to

prevent the passing of counterfeit English half-pence and farthings,

and in the second half of the last century the coins mostly current,

besides English ones, were the gold Johannis of eighteen pennyweight,

six grains; Moidores of six pennyweight, eighteen grains; Carolines

of six pennyweight, eight grains; Double Loons (Doubloons) or four

Pistoles of seventeen pennyweight, eight grains; double and single

Pistoles; French Guineas (louis d’ors) of five pennyweight, four

grains; and Arabian Chequins of two pennyweight, four grains.

Of the middle colonies, New Jersey was the first to follow

Massachusetts in issuing paper money, which she did by authorizing the

issue of £3,000 in bills for the expedition against Canada in 1709.

* * * * *

The people of the Netherlands and the Belgic provinces had profited

as little under religious persecution as the puritans and separatists

of New England, to become tolerant of other faiths when in the New

World they had the power of control. The laws of New Netherland were

favorable only to the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church, although Swedes

and Finns, who had come to New Sweden on the Delaware, were allowed to

worship according to the Lutheran ritual. The directors of the West

India Company, the supreme authority, did not approve of any religious

intolerance, and expressed themselves forcibly to that effect when

Stuyvesant tried to prosecute members of the Society of Friends. When

New York and New Jersey became English provinces, complete freedom

of religion was granted to them. This drew to them members of all

established churches and of nearly every religious sect of Europe,

the latter class largely increased by such as fled to New York from

Massachusetts to enjoy religious toleration. In 1686, in New York at

least, “the most prevailing opinion was that of the Dutch Calvinists.”

How the Roman Catholics were treated has been shown above. The same

reasons which had led to their proscription tried to impose upon the

colonies the Church of England, by directing the governors not to

prefer any minister to an ecclesiastical benefice unless he was of this

order. This royal command to the governors of New York and New Jersey

produced results which its originators probably did not contemplate.

It led to the incorporation of Trinity Church in New York, with the

celebrated and ever-reviving Anneke Jans trials growing out of it as

a fungus, and to the creating a demand for ministers of the Anglican

or Episcopal church which necessitated a school to educate them. This

was the King’s College, known to us of the present day as Columbia

College, chartered in 1754. The non-Episcopalians saw in this movement

the fulfillment of their fears, first aroused by the Ministry Act under

Governor Fletcher in 1693, tending towards the establishment of a

state church. Out of this dread and out of the difficulty in obtaining

ministers for the Dutch Reformed Church grew another educational

institution, the Queen’s College, now known as Rutgers College, in New

Brunswick, N. J. Another institution preceded it, the College of New

Jersey at Princeton. This was first founded by charter from President

Hamilton in 1746, and enlarged by Governor Belcher in 1747, who left,

by will, to its library a considerable number of books. The proprietors

of Pennsylvania, always thoughtful of the weal of their subjects, gave,

in 1753, $15,000 to a charitable school and academy, founded four

years before in Philadelphia by public subscription. Two years later,

in 1755, it grew into the “College, Academy, and Charitable School

of Philadelphia,” by an act of incorporation, and to-day it is the

“University of Pennsylvania.”

Urged thereto by the founder of the independence of the Netherlands,

William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the states-general had adopted

in the sixteenth century the system of universal education, which, in

our days, the New England States claim as their creation. Hence we find

schools mentioned and schoolmasters at work from the beginning of the

New Netherland; and though at first no classics were taught, even at so

early a date as 1663 we read of a government schoolmaster who taught

Greek and Latin. The assembly of New York passed, in 1702, an act for

the encouragement of a free grammar school, and favored generally the

primary education of the children of their constituents. New Jersey

did not lag in the good work. In 1765 she had 192 churches of all

denominations except the Roman Catholic, and we may safely suppose

that a school was connected with nearly every church. The Moravians of

Pennsylvania imitated the example set to them at home, and established

boarding-schools at Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Litiz. The small number

of schools among the “Dissenters,” as the Rev. Samuel Johnson calls

all non-Episcopalians, induced him, however, to say, in 1759, that

“ministers and schools are much wanted in Pennsylvania.”

CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

I. THE MANUSCRIPT SOURCES OF NEW YORK HISTORY. (_By Mr. Fernow._)—New

York has taken the lead among the American States in the extent of the

printed records of her history.[492] In the archives at Albany there

are certain manuscript documents illustrating the period now under

consideration deserving mention.

“When first his Royall Highnesse, the Duke of York, took possession of

this Province [New York], he ... gave him [Gov^r Nicolls] certain Laws,

by which the Province was to be governed.” Several copies of these,

_Duke’s Laws_ (1674), were made, and they were sent to the different

districts, Long Island, Delaware, the Esopus, and Albany, into which

the province was then divided.[493]

The so-called _Dongan’s Laws_ (1683 and 1684) make a manuscript

volume, containing the laws enacted by the first general assembly of

the province during the years 1683 and 1684. It has upon its original

parchment cover a second title, evidently written at a later date: “The

Duke of York’s Charter of Liberty & Priviledges to the Inhabitants of

New York, anno 1683, with Acts of Assembly of that year & the year

1684.” The laws are mainly a reënactment of the Duke’s Laws, and are

now deposited in the State library. They have never been printed.

The _Original Colonial Laws_ (1684-1775) make nineteen volumes of

manuscripts, now in the office of the secretary of state at Albany, of

which such as had not in the mean time expired by their own limitation

were printed in 1694,[494] 1710, and 1726, by William Bradford; in 1719

by Baskett; in 1762 by Livingston and Smith; in 1768 by Parker, and in

1773 by Van Schaack. The Bradford edition of 1710 contains also the

journal of the general assembly, etc.

Those _Bills which failed to become Laws_ (1685-1732) make three

volumes of manuscript, and though the measures proposed never became

operative they show the drift of public opinion during the period

covered by them. Several of these bills have been bound into the

volumes of laws.

The student of colonial commerce and finances will find much to

interest him in other manuscript volumes, now in the State library at

Albany, to wit: _Accounts of the Treasurer of the Province_, under

various titles, and covering the period from 1702 to 1776, eight

volumes, and _Manifest Books and Entry Books of the New York Custom

House_, 1728 to 1774, forty-three volumes. Much information coveted by

the genealogist is hidden in the _Indentures of Palatine Children_,

1710 and 1711, two volumes; in forty volumes of _Marriage Bonds_, 1752

to 1783, of which an index was published in 1860 under the title _New

York Marriages_; and in the records kept in the office of the clerk

of the Court of Appeals,—_Files of Wills_, from 1694 to 1800, and of

_Inventories_, 1727 to 1798.

Out of the 28 volumes of _Council Minutes_, 1668 to 1783, everything

relating to the legislative business before the council has been

published by the State of New York in the _Journal of the Provincial

Council_. The unpublished parts of these records—the seven volumes of

“Warrants of Survey, Licenses to Purchase Indian Lands,” 1721 to 1766,

the fourteen “Books of Patents,” 1664 to 1770, the nineteen “Books of

Deeds,” 1659 to 1774, and the thirty-four volumes of “Land Papers,”

from 1643 to 1775—give as complete a history of the way in which the

colony of New York gained its population as at this day it is possible

to obtain without following the many private histories of real estate.

The above-mentioned “Books of Deeds” contain papers of miscellaneous

character, widely differing from deeds, such as commissions, letters

of denization, licenses of schoolmasters, etc. Of the “Land Papers” a

_Calendar_ was published by the State in 1864.[495]

A public-spirited citizen of Albany, General John Tayler Cooper,

enriched in 1850 the State library with twenty-two volumes of

manuscripts, containing the correspondence of Sir William Johnson, the

Indian commissioner. This correspondence covers the period from 1738 to

1774, and is important for the political, Indian, social, and religious

history of New York. Extracts from it appeared in Dr. O’Callaghan’s

_Documentary History of New York_ (vol. ii.).[496]

Less important for the period treated of in this chapter are the

_Clinton Papers_, especially the later series; but of the first

importance in the study of the French wars are the _Letters of Colonel

John Bradstreet_, deputy quartermaster-general, and _The Letters of

General Sir Jeffrey Amherst_, commander-in-chief in America, dated New

York, Albany, etc., from 1755 to 1771, a manuscript volume presented to

the State library by the Rev. Wm. B. Sprague, D. D.[497]

An _Abridgment of the Records of Indian Affairs, transacted in the

Colony of New York from 1678 to 1751_, with a preface by the compiler,

is the work of Peter Wraxall, secretary for Indian affairs. It is a

manuscript of 224 pages, dated at New York, May 10, 1754.[498] It is to

be regretted that Wraxall’s complete record of these transactions has

not been preserved, as the few extracts of them handed down to us in

the _Council Minutes_ and in the _Documents relating to the Colonial

History of New York_ give us a great deal of curious and interesting

information.[499]

The religious life in the colony of New York during the early part of

the eighteenth century, as seen from the Episcopal point of view, is

well depicted in a manuscript volume (107 pp. folio), _Extracts from

Correspondence of the Venerable Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel in Foreign Parts with the Missionaries T. Payer, S. Seabury, and

others, from 1704 to 1709_.[500] The history of trade and business is

likewise illustrated in the _Commercial Letters_ of the firm P. & R.

Livingston, New York and Albany, from 1733 to 1738, and of Boston and

Philadelphia merchants during the same period, giving us a picture of

mercantile transactions at that time which a number of account-books

of N. De Peyster, treasurer of the colony and merchant in the city

of New York, and of the firm of Beverley Robinson & Morrison Malcom,

in Fredericksburg, now Patterson, Putnam County, N. Y., help to fill

out.[501]

II. CARTOGRAPHY AND BOUNDARIES OF THE MIDDLE COLONIES. (_By Mr. Fernow

and the Editor._)—The following enumeration of maps includes, among

others, those of a general character, as covering the several middle

colonies jointly, and they run parallel in good part with the sequence

named in an earlier section[502] on the “Cartography of Louisiana and

the Mississippi Basin under the French Domination,” so that many of the

maps mentioned there may be passed over or merely referred to here.[503]

There was little definite knowledge of American geography manifested by

the popular gazetteers of the early part of the last century,[504] to

say nothing of the strange misconceptions of some of the map-makers of

the same period.[505]

A German geographer, well known in the early years of the eighteenth

century, was Johann Baptist Homann, who, having been a monk, turned

Protestant and cartographer, and at nearly forty years of age set up,

in 1702, as a draftsman and publisher of maps at Nuremberg,[506] giving

his name till his death, in 1724, to about two hundred maps.[507]

Homann’s career was a successful one; he became, in 1715, a member of

the Academy of Science at Berlin, and was made the official geographer

of the Emperor Charles of Germany and of Peter the Great of Russia. A

son succeeded to the business in 1724, and, on his death in 1730, the

imprint of the family was continued by “the heirs of Homann,” at the

hands of some university friends of the son. Under this authority we

find a map, _Die Gross Britannischen Colonial Laender in Nord-America

in Special Mappen_ (_Homannsche Erben_, Nuremberg), in which nearly the

whole of New York is called “Gens Iroquois,” or “Irokensium.”

Contemporary with the elder Homann, the English geographer Herman Moll

was publishing his maps in London;[508] and of his drafting were the

maps which accompanied Thomas Salmon’s _Modern History or the State of

all Nations_, first issued between 1725 and 1739.[509] His map of New

England and the middle colonies is not carried farther west than the

Susquehanna.[510]

Mention has already been made of the great map of Henry Popple in

1732,[511] and of the maps of the contemporary French geographer

D’Anville;[512] but their phenomenal labors were long in getting

possession through the popular compends of the public mind. We find

little of their influence, for instance, in the _Gazetteer’s or

Newsman’s Interpreter, being a geographical Index of all the Empires,

Kingdoms, Islands, etc., in Africa, Asia, and America_. _By Laurence

Echard, A. M., of Christ’s College, Cambridge_ (London, 1741).[513]

In this New York is made to adjoin Maryland, and is traversed by the

Hudson, Raritan, and Delaware rivers; New Jersey lies between 39 and

40° N. L., and is bounded on the east by Hudson’s Bay; and Pennsylvania

lies between 40 and 43° N. L., but no bounds are given.

The French geographer’s drafts, however, were made the basis in

1752 of a map in Postlethwayt’s _Dictionary of Commerce_, which was

entitled _North America, performed under the patronage of Louis, Duke

of Orleans, First Prince of the Blood, by the Sieur d’Anville, greatly

improved by M. Bolton_.

The maps which, three years later (1755), grew out of the controversies

in America on the boundary claims of France and England have been

definitely classified in another place,[514] and perhaps the limit of

the English pretensions was reached in _A New and Accurate Map of the

English Empire in North America, representing their Rightful Claim,

as confirmed by Charters and the formal Surrender of their Indian

Friends, likewise the Encroachments of the French, etc. By a Society

of Anti-Gallicans. Published according to Act of Parliament, Decbr.,

1755, and sold by W^m. Herbert on London Bridge and Robert Sayer over

against Fetter Lane in Fleet Street_. This map is of some importance in

defining the location of the Indian tribes and towns.

The English influence is also apparent in a reissue of D’Anville, made

at Nuremberg by the Homann publishing house the next year: _America

Septentrionalis a Domino D’Anville in Gallia edita, nunc in Anglia

Coloniis in Inferiorem Virginiam deductis nec non Fluvii Ohio cursu

aucta, etc., Sumptibus Homanniorum Heredum, Noribergiæ, 1756_.[515] It

makes the province of New York stretch westerly to Lake Michigan.

* * * * *

Respecting the special maps of New York province, a particular interest

attaches to _The Map of the Country of the Five Nations_, printed

by Bradford in 1724, which was the first map engraved in New York.

The _Brinley Catal._ (ii. no. 3,384, 3,446) shows the map in two

states, apparently of the same year (1724). It originally accompanied

Cadwallader Colden’s _Papers relating to an Act of the Province of New

York for the encouragement of the Indian trade_. It was reëngraved from

the first state for the London ed. of Colden’s Five Nations, in 1747,

and from this plate it has been reproduced on another page (chapter

viii.).[516]

[Illustration: CADWALLADER COLDEN’S MAP OF THE MANORIAL GRANTS ALONG THE

HUDSON.]

Another of Colden’s maps, made by him as surveyor-general of the

province, exists in a mutilated state in the State library at Albany,

showing the regions bordering on the Hudson and Mohawk rivers. It

was drafted by him probably at the end of the first quarter of the

eighteenth century,[517] and fac-similes of parts of it are annexed

(pp. 236, 237).

A map of the northern parts of the province, called _Carte du Lac

Champlain depuis le Fort Chambly jusqu’au Fort St. Frédéric, levée

par le Sieur Anger, arpenteur du Roy en 1732, faite à Québec, le 10

Octobre, 1748, signé de Lery_, indicates the attempted introduction of

a feudal system of land tenure by the French. The map is reproduced in

O’Callaghan’s _Doc. Hist. of New York_.

The province of New York to its western bounds is shown in _A Map of

New England and ye Country adjacent, by a gentleman, who resided in

those parts_. _Sold by W. Owen_ (London, 1755).

The New York State library has also a manuscript _Map of part of the

province of New York on Hudson’s River, the West End of Nassau Island,

and part of New Jersey. Compiled pursuant to order of the Earl of

Loudoun, Septbr. 17, 1757_. _Drawn by Captain [Samuel J.] Holland._

This is a map called by the Lords of Trade in 1766 “a very accurate and

useful survey, ... in which the most material patents are marked and

their boundaries described.”

Something of the extension of settlements in the Mohawk Valley at this

period can be learned from a manuscript _Map of the Country between

Mohawk River and Wood Creek, with the Fortifications and buildings

thereon in 1758_, likewise preserved in the State library.[518]

A drawn map of New York province and adjacent parts (1759), from Maj.

Christie’s surveys, is noted in the _King’s Maps_ (Brit. Mus.), ii. 527.

The boundary controversy between New York and New Jersey has produced

a long discussion over the successive developments of the historical

geography of that part of the middle colonies. An important map on

the subject is a long manuscript roll (5 × 2-6/12 feet), preserved in

Harvard College library, which has been photographed by the regents

of the University of the State of New York, and entitled _A copy of

the general map, the most part compiled from actual survey by order of

the commissioners appointed to settle the partition line between the

provinces of New York and New Jersey_. 1769. _By Ber^d. Ratzer._ [New

York, 1884.] 7-5/8 × 12-3/4 in.[519]

Respecting the controversy over the New Hampshire grants, see the

present volume (ante, p. 177), and Isaac Jennings’s _Memorials of a

Century_ (Boston, 1869), chapters x. and xi.

Of the special maps of Pennsylvania, the Holme map a little antedates

the period of our survey.[520] The Gabriel Thomas map of Pennsylvania

and New Jersey appeared near the end of the century (1698), and has

already been reproduced.[521] In 1728 we find a map of the Delaware and

Chesapeake bays in the _Atlas Maritimus et Commercialis_, published

at London. In 1730 we note the map of Pennsylvania which appeared in

Humphrey’s _Historical Account of the Society for the Propagation of

the Gospel in Foreign Parts_.[522]

[Illustration]

About 1740, in a tract printed at London, _In Chancery. Breviate.

John Penn, Thomas Penn, and Richard Penn, plaintiffs; Charles

Calvert, defendant_,[523] appeared _A map of parts of the provinces

of Pennsylvania and Maryland, with the counties of Newcastle, Kent,

and Sussex in Delaware, according to the most exact surveys yet made,

drawn in the year 1740_. The controversy over this boundary is

followed in chapter iv. of the present volume.

_A map of Philadelphia and parts adjacent, by N. Scull and G. Heap_,

was published in 1750, of which there is a fac-simile (folding) in

Scharf and Westcott’s _Philadelphia_, vol. i.

The annexed fac-simile (p. 239) is from a plate in the _London Mag._,

Dec., 1756.

A map to illustrate the Indian purchases, made by the proprietary, is

given in _An Enquiry into the Causes of the Alienation of the Delaware

and Shawanese Indians_ (London, 1759).[524]

Surpassing all previous drafts was a _Map of the Improved Part of

Pennsylvania, by Nicholas Scull, published in 1759, and sold by the

author in Second Street, Philadelphia. Engraved by Jas. Turner_. It was

reproduced in Jefferys’ _General Topography of North America_ (Nos.

40-42), and was reissued in London in 1770, and again as _A Map of

Pennsylvania, exhibiting not only the improved parts of the Province,

but also its extensive frontiers, laid down from actual surveys, and

chiefly from the late Map of N. Scull, published in 1770. Robert Sayer

& Bennett_ (London, 1775). The edition of 1770 was reëngraved in Paris

by Le Rouge.

Upon the boundary controversy between Pennsylvania and Virginia

respecting the “Pan handle,” see N. B. Craig’s _Olden Time_ (1843), and

the _St. Clair Papers_, vol. i. (_passim_).

EDITORIAL NOTES.

THE Leisler Papers constitute the first volume of the Fund Publications

of the _N. Y. Hist. Society’s Collections_, and embrace the journal

of the council from April 27 to June 6, 1689 (procured from the

English State Paper Office), with letters, etc., and a reprint of a

tract in defence of Leisler, issued at Boston in 1698, and called

_Loyalty Vindicated, being an answer to a late false, seditious, and

scandalous pamphlet, entitled “A letter from a Gent,” etc._[525] The

_Sparks Catal._ (p. 217) shows a MS. copy made of a rare tract in the

British Museum, printed in New York and reprinted in London, 1690,

called _A modest and impartial narrative of the great oppressions that

the inhabitants of their majestie’s Province of New York lye under

by the extravagant and arbitrary proceedings of Jacob Leisler and

his accomplices_. Sparks endorsed his copy as “written by a violent

enemy to Leisler; neither just, candid, nor impartial.”[526] Various

papers relating to the administration of Leisler make a large part of

the second volume of the _Documentary History of New York_, showing

the letters written by Leisler to Boston, the papers connected with

his official proceedings in New York, and his communications with the

adjacent colonies; the council minutes in Dec., 1689; proceedings

against the French and Indians; the papers relating to the transfer

of the fort and arrest of Leisler; the dying speeches of Leisler and

Milbourne; with a reprint of _A letter from a gentleman of the city

of New York to another_ (New York, 1698). There are a few original

letters of Leisler in the_ Prince Letters_ (MSS.), 1686-1700, in Mass.

Hist. Soc. cabinet.

The career of Leisler is traced in the memoir by C. F. Hoffman in

Sparks’s _Amer. Biog._, xiii. (1844), and in G. W. Schuyler’s _Colonial

New York_ (i. 337). Peleg W. Chandler examines the records of the

prosecution in his _American Criminal Trials_ (i. 255). Cf. also

_Historical Magazine_, xxi. 18, and the general histories, of which

Dunlap’s gives the best account among the earlier ones.[527]

* * * * *

The student must, of necessity, have recourse to the general histories

of New York for the successive administrations of the royal governors,

and H. B. Dawson, in his _Sons of Liberty_ (printed as manuscript,

1859), has followed the tracks of the constant struggle on their part

to preserve their prerogatives.[528] Schuyler (_Colonial New York_, i.

394-460) follows pretty closely the administration of Fletcher. The

chapter on New England (_ante_, no. ii.) will need to be parallelized

with this for the career of Bellomont.

Under Nanfan, who succeeded Bellomont temporarily, Col. Bayard, who

had brought Leisler to his doom, was in turn put on trial, and the

narrative of the proceedings throws light on the factious political

life of the time.[529]

One of the most significant acts of Cornbury’s rule (1702-1708) was the

prosecution in 1707 of Francis Mackemie, a Presbyterian minister, for

preaching without a license.[530]

J. R. Brodhead, who gives references in the case (_Hist. Mag._, Nov.,

1863), charges Cornbury with forging the clause of his instructions

under which it was attempted to convict Mackemie, and he says that

the copy of the royal instructions in the State Paper Office contains

no such paragraph. “History,” he adds, “has already exhibited Lord

Cornbury as a mean liar, a vulgar profligate, a frivolous spendthrift,

an impudent cheat, a fraudulent bankrupt, and a detestable bigot. He is

convicted of having perpetrated one of the most outrageous forgeries

ever attempted by a British nobleman.”[531]

The few months of Lovelace’s rule (1708-9) were followed by a funeral

_Sermon_ when he died, in May, 1709, preached by William Vesey (New

York, 1709), which is of enough historical interest to have been

reprinted in the _N. Y. Hist. Coll._ (1880).

During 1720-1722, the Shelburne Papers (_Hist. MSS. Commission Report_,

v. 215) reveal letters of Peter Schuyler and Gov. Burnet, with various

Governor Morris published his commission at Amboy on the 29th of