which runs parallel with the eastern shore of the Hudson for many miles;
it has one main thoroughfare, bisected by many cross streets of a later
date; it is, for the most part, carefully kept, as befits its age, its
intelligence, and its wealth; and, looked at from the river, it is
almost buried in a wealth of foliage. It has at all times an air of
repose, as if it had done long ago with the hard work of settlement and
organization, and had earned exemption from the rush and turmoil which
characterize new communities. In this country a town which has passed
its bicentennial has a right to conduct life with a certain dignity and
repose. It is doubtful if Tarrytown ever knew any great bustle or uproar;
from the beginning it is probable that its inhabitants did not suffer
themselves to be driven into undue energy of mood or habit. A placid
temper, a disposition to keep on easy terms with life and neither give
nor ask more than becomes a man of a quiet habit of mind, have left their
impress on the community. It is a place in which history is preserved
rather than made, although when it had occasion to make history, the work
was done with picturesque effectiveness.
When Hendrik Hudson broke the quiet waters of the Tappan Zee for the
first time, in September, 1609, with the keel of the _Half-Moon_, he
saw along the eastern shore of the noble river which was to bear his
name an unbroken forest. The region was singularly beautiful, with a
stillness which it has not wholly lost; for rivers carrying deep currents
always convey an impression of stillness. Mr. Curtis has spoken of the
lyrical beauty of the Rhine and the epical beauty of the Hudson; the
first passing, with rapid movement, through a long series of striking
and romantic localities, the second flowing sedately through a landscape
of larger compass, of more massive composition, of a beauty sustained
through a hundred and fifty miles of noble scenery. It is, of course, a
matter of pure fancy; but there seems to have been some kinship between
the men who settled the continent and the localities they chose for their
homes. The hardy French adventurers were peculiarly at home along the
St. Lawrence and the trails from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi; the
stern soil of New England would not have given its rare smile to men of a
temper less strenuous than that of the Puritan and Pilgrim; the waterways
of the James, the Potomac, and the Chesapeake lent themselves readily to
the habits and occupations of English gentlemen in the new world; Florida
and Louisiana seemed to find their elect explorers and settlers in the
Spanish adventurers and gold-seekers; while the quiet of the Hudson
was hardly broken when the Dutch settlers began to till the land north
of Manhattan Island and to build their substantial homes. They could be
voluble and noisy when occasion required, but they were of a phlegmatic
temper and leisurely by habit.
The reports sent abroad by Hudson’s men when they found themselves once
more in Holland in the late autumn of 1609, were repeated and passed from
town to town among merchants who were as eager for trade as they were
stolid in manner. Small ships were soon plying westward, bent upon trade
with the well disposed Indians whom Hudson found scattered from Manhattan
Island to the place where Albany now stands. The possibilities of profit
in the fur trade were quickly discovered by these shrewd merchants; the
nucleus of a settlement was made on the island, and rude huts hastily put
together were the beginnings of one of the greatest of modern cities.
The traders bought furs, tobacco, and corn in exchange for trinkets and
rum; they hunted, fished, and lived after the manner of their time and
kind, but for the most part on good terms with their Indian neighbors;
at long intervals tiny ships from the old world crept into the harbor,
and went back again laden with the skins of the beaver, the otter, and
the sable. In 1621 the West India Company received a charter from the
States-General of Holland, with the monopoly of the American trade, and
a grant of the vast territory discovered by Hudson, which was called
the New Netherlands. The great trading company, one of a small group of
commercial organizations of almost sovereign powers in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, drew its profits not only from barter with
Indians, but from the sacking of cities on the Spanish Main and the
capture of Spanish treasure-ships.
In 1624 families arrived on the island and community life began in New
Amsterdam; two years later the first governor of the Colony arrived
with a company who brought their wives, children, cattle, and household
goods of all kinds with them and, by giving these hostages to fortune,
committed themselves irrevocably to the new world and its destinies.
Manhattan Island was bought from the Indians for twenty-four dollars, and
the name of New Amsterdam reminded the settlers of their blood and their
history. It was not, however, until Peter Stuyvesant took up the reins
of government with a firm hand and in a somewhat choleric temper that the
little community ceased to be a trading-post and became a Dutch colonial
town. The first comers were largely penniless; the later comers were men
of position and substance. Many races were soon represented in the new
town, but the Dutch remained for many years the ruling class. In 1664 the
Colony passed into English hands and New Amsterdam became New York.
The territory north of the island early attracted attention, and
energetic and far-seeing men set about acquiring title and adding acre
to acre until great estates were created. In Westchester County, which
then bounded the city of New York on the north, six manors, including
the greater part of its territory, were granted; that of Fordham leading
the way in 1671. The largest of these manors were Phillipsburgh and
Cortlandt, and Tarrytown became the residence of a great landowner who
secured manorial rights in 1693. This territorial magnate, a true lord
of the manor so far as greatness of estate was concerned, was a man of
humble birth, and a carpenter by trade. He came to New Amsterdam in
1647, and being a man of sagacity and foresight, soon found his chance
in the opportunities of the new world, became a fur trader, married a
rich widow, and in course of time became probably the richest man in
the Colony. Vredryk Flypse, or Frederick Philips,[25] knew how to take
occasion by the hand when English rule was established in New York. He
foresaw the increased value of the lands along the Hudson, and in 1680,
by the first of a series of grants, pieced out by various purchases, he
became the owner of a noble domain, stretching from Spuyten Duyvil to the
old Kill of Kitchawong, or Croton, and from the Hudson to the Bronx.
The Dutch settlers in the new world were less adventurous than their
fellows of English and French blood, but they had early established
trading-posts as far north on the Hudson as the present site of Albany,
and they had crept quietly up the eastern shore of the river, and small
farms were beginning to break the long line of forest. The beginnings of
Tarrytown probably date back as far as 1645, but of its earliest history
no authentic records remain. In 1683, when Frederick Philips began the
building of a manor-house on the quiet Pocantico, he found a small
community of farmers, living in a quiet, frugal way, and carrying on
the business of life with thrift and industry but in a spirit of great
tranquillity. The broad waters of Tappan Zee could hardly have caught the
reflection of the primitive farm-houses hidden among the trees. These
houses were unpretentious in dimension and appearance, but they had a
substantial air. There was nothing provisional in the aspect of the
scattered settlement; it struck tenacious roots into the soil from the
very start.
“In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the
eastern shore of the Hudson,” writes Irving, in his vein of
quiet humor, “at that broad expansion of the river denominated
by the ancient Dutch navigators Tappan Zee, and where they
always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of
St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town
or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which
is more generally and properly known as Tarry Town. This name
was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives
of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of
their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market
days.”
This derivation of the name of the delightful town which Irving loved
so well, has probably as much authority behind it as many derivations
which have come to be unquestioned; but if Irving’s genial humor leaves
some sceptics dissatisfied, they may take refuge in an alternative
derivation, which traces the modern name to the more credible legend
that one Terry was the earliest settler, whose name became fastened upon
the little hamlet first as Terry’s town, which afterwards was naturally
metamorphosed into Tarrytown. Be this as it may, a spirit of peace
seems to have reigned in the region from the beginning, and the sturdy
Dutch farmers kept the peace with their Indian neighbors. There are
no traditions of midnight alarms in the early story of the community.
Indian canoes were seen for many a year on Tappan Zee, and it is said
that Indian hands assisted in raising the walls of the quaint and
venerable church which still keeps watch over its earliest worshippers
in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. These pioneer settlers had few wants, and
supplied them with home-made articles or hand-woven fabrics. Manhattan
Island was too distant in time to be accessible for daily supplies; shops
were still to come; and the peddler, with whose figure and habits Cooper
was subsequently to make the whole world acquainted, distributed finery
and small wares through the section.
[Illustration: THE POCANTICO RIVER.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.]
Under the royal grant and license which authorized Frederick Philips
to acquire certain tracts of land in Westchester County, says an old
chronicler, the grantee agreed “to let any one settle on said land free,
for certain stipulated years, in order that it should as soon as possible
be cultivated and settled.” These terms seem to have been accepted by
the few settlers already on the ground, and by others who were attracted
by the impulse which the lord of the manor (for such Philips was in
influence and authority) gave to local industry. The great estate was
not secured in a day; it was consolidated by a series of purchases
covering a period of years, and among these purchases was the site of the
present village of Tarrytown, which was paid for in rum, cloth, tobacco,
and hardware. The great proprietor laid the foundations of permanent
community life by building, within a comparatively short time, a mill,
a manor-house, and a church. The Pocantico flows into the Hudson just
beyond the northern boundary of the Tarrytown of to-day; and on the
shores of the quiet bay which puts in at that point, protected by a long
and heavily wooded promontory which extends well into the river, Philips
chose a sheltered and beautiful site for his home. His own ships brought
building materials from Holland and unloaded them on the wharf built on
the premises. The architecture of the manor-house was of the Dutch order
so familiar along the Hudson; the heavy walls were of stone; the roof was
spread on great hand-hewn rafters; the doors were divided into upper and
lower sections, and swung on ponderous hinges; from the end of the wide
hall, stairs ascended by easy rises to the upper floor. Through openings
in the foundation walls on the southwest side small howitzers commanded
the approach by land or water. A mill was quite as essential as a house,
and the substantial structure which still resists the assaults of time
in placid old age, bears witness to the thoroughness with which Philips
did whatever fell to his hand. Beside its ancient pond the venerable mill
still witnesses to a past which cannot be wholly lost while the little
group of buildings remains.
[Illustration: OLD MANOR-HOUSE (“FLYPSE’S CASTLE”) AND MILL, TARRYTOWN.
FROM A DRAWING BY EDGAR MAHEW BACON.]
[Illustration: THE OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW.
FROM A DRAWING BY W. J. WILSON.]
To complete this interesting group, which Tarrytown ought to preserve
with pious care, and at no great distance from the manor-house, stands
the old Dutch church, one of the most quaint and best preserved
monuments of early history on the continent. He would be a bold man
who would venture to state definitely the date at which the building
of this ancient edifice was begun; on that point a wide latitude must
be permitted and discreet silence preserved. It answers all purposes
of intelligent curiosity to be told that the foundations were probably
laid as early as 1684, and that the building was completed, probably,
not later than 1697. The bell which still hangs in the little steeple
and which may be heard on quiet Sunday afternoons in the late summer or
early autumn, when services are held in the ancient structure, was cast
in 1685, and bears the inscription, “Si Deus pro nobis quis contra nos.”
The church was built with characteristic solidity, the walls being more
than two feet thick; a great pulpit with a sounding-board projected from
the eastern end; the benches on which the congregation sat were without
backs; and the doctrine expounded from the sacred desk was of a kindred
soundness of fibre. Some concession to human weakness was shown to the
lord of the manor, in the comfortable and imposing arrangement of the
large pews on the right and left of the minister. The farmers filled
the body of the little church, while slaves, redemptioners, and other
obscure persons, with the choir, sat in the tiny gallery. In 1697, the
Rev. Guiliam Bertholf began a kind of visitorial ministry in the new
church, coming three or four times a year to preach and administer the
sacraments. He was a native of Sluis, in Holland, emigrated to the new
world in 1684, and became a preacher nine years later. His ability and
zeal gave him wide influence, and he was instrumental in organizing a
number of churches of the Reformed faith and order. From this initial
ministry until the present time, although the congregation has moved to a
larger and modern edifice, the succession of faithful preachers has never
been broken, and the historic pulpit of Tarrytown has never been more
thoroughly identified with generous devotion, high character, and unusual
gifts of nature and speech than during the last twenty-five years. During
the stormy years of the Revolution the church was frequently closed; and
at the close of the struggle the trappings which had distinguished the
pews of the lord of the manor were torn down, and elders and deacons
sitting in the seats once set apart for the local aristocracy emphasized
the triumph of the democratic idea in Church and State. Not long
afterwards another innovation was made by the substitution of English for
Dutch in the services.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF OLD DUTCH CHURCH, SLEEPY HOLLOW, PRIOR TO ITS
RESTORATION IN 1897.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]
In October, 1897, the two hundredth anniversary of the church was
celebrated with services which recalled, with unusual completeness, the
varied and instructive history of the old building and of the community.
The modern village lies to the south of the church, which is hidden
beneath ancient trees, and is still enveloped in an atmosphere of
old-time silence and repose. The Pocantico flows beside it, almost
unseen when the midsummer foliage is spread over it; while to the north,
climbing a gentle slope and sinking softly down to the brook, is the
ancient burying-ground, in which the first interments were made about
1645. The place is singularly peaceful and of a rare and gentle beauty;
the gradual slope dotted with ancient graves, protected on the east by
wooded heights, overhung with old trees, and commanding on the west
glimpses of the broad expanse of the Tappan Zee, and, from its higher
levels, the tree-embowered village, the long line of shining water, and
the distant front of the Palisades. There is probably no other locality
in America, taking into account history, tradition, the old church, the
manor-house, and the mill, which so entirely conserves the form and
spirit of Dutch civilization in the new world. This group of buildings
ranks in historic interest, if not in historic importance, with Faneuil
Hall, Independence Hall, the ruined church tower at Jamestown, the old
gateway at St. Augustine, and the Spanish cabildo on Jackson Square in
New Orleans; and the time will come when pilgrimages will be made to this
ancient and beautiful home of some of those ideals and habits of life
which have given form and structure to American civilization.
It was the misfortune of Tarrytown to lie in the path of both armies for
many dreary months during the Revolution; and no section of the country
felt the uncertainty and terrors of war more keenly. When Cooper looked
about for an American subject for his second novel, his interest in the
history of Westchester County, in the lower part of which he was for a
number of years a resident, led him to a fortunate choice, and _The
Spy_ remains not only one of the best of American novels of incident,
but a vivid report of the suspense and misery of the country between
the Highlands of the Hudson, held by the American forces, and the city
of New York in the hands of the British. That section was mercilessly
harried by friend and foe. The few families which made the little hamlet
of Tarrytown, never knew whether the Skinners or the Cowboys would appear
next; the only certainty in the situation seems to have been that, sooner
or later, whatever was portable and valuable would be carried off. There
was much quiet courage in the form of patient endurance in those years
when church and school were closed, crops gathered by hands that had not
sown, houses burned in the dead of night, and all normal community life
at an end. Caught in the centre of the storm of war, Tarrytown not only
suffered severely but bore her losses with conspicuous fortitude and
courage. In many sudden forays, as well as in the larger movements of the
American forces, the men of Tarrytown played their parts with notable
pluck and daring.
[Illustration: MONUMENT TO THE CAPTORS OF ANDRÉ.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY F. AHRENS.]
The devotion of a majority of the people of the place to the American
cause had its reward in the lasting association of the town with the most
romantic and tragic episode of the war; and the incorruptible patriotism
of three Westchester County men not only averted what might have been
a crushing calamity, but immortalized the scene of their resistance to
temptation. On the 24th day of September, 1780, Major André, bearing
dispatches of a treasonable nature from General Benedict Arnold, then
in command of the American forces at West Point, was captured on the
highway at a place now marked by a monument, by John Paulding, David
Williams, and Isaac Van Wart. These obscure militiamen, soon to become
famous, were watching the road, when a horseman appeared riding toward
the south. He was promptly challenged, ordered to dismount, and examined
as to his business and destination. His answers to the questions put to
him by his captors confirmed their suspicion that something of unusual
importance was in the air. The determination to search the unfortunate
young officer more thoroughly was met with offers of a large sum of
money; but the militiamen were not to be bribed, and to their fidelity is
due the discovery of the plot to place West Point in British hands. The
moral effect of Arnold’s fall was counteracted in large measure by the
incorruptibility of André’s captors, and the monument which marks this
historic site commemorates the integrity of the American militiamen quite
as much as the dramatic episode which ended the careers of Arnold and
André.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING.]
[Illustration: “SUNNYSIDE.”
THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING.]
Tarrytown has had the double good fortune to be the scene of the most
striking act of the drama of Arnold’s treason, and to be the custodian of
one of the few American legends. In his youth, Washington Irving knew the
region intimately. He was given to solitary walks, for he was a dreamer
by nature and habit. Wolfert’s Roost was even then an old farm-house,
built close to the water’s edge, where the glen broadens to the river.
It had colonial and revolutionary associations, and, above all, it had
the charm of a situation of singular beauty. Irving seems early to have
fallen under the spell of the shaded waterside and the romantic glen.
In 1835, after an absence of seventeen years in Europe and an extensive
journey through the South and West, which bore fruit in _A Tour on the
Prairies_, the recollections and affections of his youth drew him to
Sunnyside, now about a mile and a half south of the railway station of
Tarrytown, and he became the possessor of a home which will always be
associated with our early literary history. The house was enlarged, and
began to take on that air of ripe and reposeful beauty which made it an
ideal home for a man of letters. Under this roof his later books were
written, and here he was sought by the most interesting men of his time.
[Illustration: THE JACOB MOTT HOUSE WHERE KATRINA VAN TASSEL WAS MARRIED.
NOW OCCUPIED BY THE NEW WASHINGTON IRVING HIGH SCHOOL. FROM A DRAWING BY
EDGAR MAHEW BACON.]
Irving’s familiarity with the Hudson River and its historical
associations had already borne fruit in the _Sketch-Book_ in two original
and characteristic legends. Like his illustrious contemporary, Sir Walter
Scott, Irving was a born lover of traditions of all sorts; a man with
a genius for getting the poetry and romance out of the past. In _The
History of New York_, impersonated in Diedrich Knickerbocker, he created
a legend; in _Rip Van Winkle_ and _The Legend of Sleepy Hollow_ he gave
lasting fame to two stories full of the Dutch spirit. Sleepy Hollow lies
to the north and east of Tarrytown, within easy walking distance. It is
still secluded and quiet and the stir of modern times has not broken in
upon its ancient seclusion.
[Illustration: OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW MILL.]
“A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to
lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail, or
tapping of a woodpecker, is almost the only sound that ever
breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.... A drowsy, dreamy
influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very
atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high
German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others,
that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe,
held his pow-wows there before the country was discovered
by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still
continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a
spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk
in a continual dream.”
Since the days when these words were written the air of Sleepy Hollow has
not escaped the general stirring of a more hurried age; but on summer
afternoons the meditative visitor still finds the valley a place of
silence and peace. The master of the spell which has brought so many
pilgrims to Tarrytown sleeps in the ancient graveyard; the home which
he loved with a love deepened by years of exile, still stands, somewhat
enlarged, but not despoiled of its secluded and ivy-clad loveliness.
Great estates have been formed about Tarrytown and stately homes line
the shores of the river, but the place has kept something of its old
simplicity and repose. It has never lacked the presence of those to
whom its traditions of refined social habit and generous intellectual
life have been sacred; and its distinction is still to be found in
an atmosphere which is in no sense dependent on its later and larger
prosperity.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK CITY
THE COSMOPOLITAN CITY
BY JOSEPH B. GILDER
By comparison with London, New York is a city of the second size, lacking
some millions of the population of the modern Babylon. Even Paris, though
less populous, outranks the American metropolis in many of the elements
that go to the making of a great city. But in drawing these comparisons
it must be remembered that only three centuries ago, when the French
and English capitals had been places of importance for over a thousand
years, New York was a wooded island, criss-crossed by innumerable
streams, indented by morasses and infested by Indians and wild beasts.
European civilization was wrinkled with age long before a permanent roof
was erected on the island of Manhattan; and three lives such as that of
ex-Mayor Tiemann, who died here in his ninety-fifth year, in the summer
of 1899, would have spanned the entire history of the town from the Dutch
discovery to the reign of Richard Croker.