Part 2 (1/2)
I suspect, however, that the evening hours of these tenants at Rensselaerswyck were spent in anxious keeping of accounts with a wholesome fear of the patroon before the eyes of the accountants. Life on the _bouweries_ was by no means inexpensive, even according to modern standards. Bearing in mind that a stiver was equivalent to two cents of {43} our currency and a florin to forty cents, it is easy to calculate the cost of living in the decade between 1630 and 1640 as set down in the accounts of Rensselaerswyck. A blanket cost eight florins, a hat ten florins, an iron anvil one hundred florins, a musket and cartouche box nineteen florins, a copper sheep's bell one florin and six stivers. On the other hand all domestic produce was cheap, because the tenant and patroon preferred to dispose of it in the settlements rather than by transporting it to New Amsterdam. We learn with envy that b.u.t.ter was only eight stivers or sixteen cents per pound, a pair of fowl two florins, a beaver twenty-five florins.
How hard were the terms on which the tenants held their leases is apparent from a report written by the guardians and tutors of Jan Van Rensselaer, a later patroon of Rensselaerswyck. The patroon reserved to himself the tenth of all grains, fruits, and other products raised on the _bouwerie_. The tenant was bound, in addition to his rent of five hundred guilders or two hundred dollars, to keep up the roads, repair the buildings, cut ten pieces of oak or fir wood, and bring the same to the sh.o.r.e; he must also every year give to the patroon three days' service with his horses and wagon; {44} each year he was to cut, split, and bring to the waterside two fathoms of firewood; and he was further to deliver yearly to the Director as quit-rent two bushels of wheat, twenty-five pounds of b.u.t.ter, and two pairs of fowls.
It was the difficult task of the agent of the colony to harmonize the constant hostilities between the patroon and his ”people.” Van Curler's letter to Kiliaen Van Rensselaer begins: ”Laus Deo! At the Manhattans this 16th June, 1643, Most honorable, wise, powerful, and right discreet Lord, my Lord Patroon--.” After which propitiatory beginning it embarks at once on a reply to the reproaches which the honorable, wise, and powerful Lord has heaped upon his obedient servant. Van Curler admits that the accounts and books have not been forwarded to Holland as they should have been; but he pleads the difficulty of securing returns from the tenants, whom he finds slippery in their accounting. ”Everything they have laid out on account of the Lord Patroon they well know how to specify for what was expended. But what has been laid out for their private use, that they know nothing about.”
If the patroon's relations with his tenants were th.o.r.n.y, he had no less trouble in his dealings with {45} the Director-General at New Amsterdam. It is true, Peter Minuit, the first important Director, was removed in 1632 by the Company for unduly favoring the patroons, and Van Twiller, another Director and a nephew of Van Rensselaer by marriage, was not disposed to antagonize his relative; but when Van Twiller was replaced by Kieft, and he in turn by Stuyvesant, the horizon at Rensselaerswyck grew stormy. In 1643 the patroon ordered Nicholas Coorn to fortify Beeren or Bears Island, and to demand a toll of each s.h.i.+p, except those of the West India Company, that pa.s.sed up and down the river. He also required that the colors on every s.h.i.+p be lowered in pa.s.sing Rensselaer's Stein or Castle Rensselaer, as the fort on the steep little island was named.
Govert Loockermans, sailing down the river one day on the s.h.i.+p _Good Hope_, failed to salute the flag, whereupon a lively dialogue ensued to the following effect, and not, we may be a.s.sured, carried on in low or amicable tones:
_Coorn_: ”Lower your colors!”
_Loockermans_: ”For whom should I?”
_Coorn_: ”For the staple-right of Rensselaerswyck.”
_Loockermans_: ”I lower my colors for no one {46} except the Prince of Orange and the Lords my masters.”
The practical result of this interchange of amenities was a shot which tore the mainsail of the _Good Hope_, ”perforated the princely flag,”
and so enraged the skipper that on his arrival at New Amsterdam he hastened to lay his grievance before the Council, who thereupon ordered Coorn to behave with more civility.
The patroon system was from the beginning doomed to failure. As we study the old doc.u.ments we find a sullen tenantry, an obsequious and careworn agent, a dissatisfied patroon, an impatient company, a bewildered government--and all this in a new and promising country where the natives were friendly, the transportation easy, the land fertile, the conditions favorable to that conservation of human happiness which is and should be the aim of civilization. The reason for the discontent which prevailed is not far to seek, and all cla.s.ses were responsible for it, for they combined in planting an anachronistic feudalism in a new country, which was dedicated by its very physical conditions to liberty and democracy. The settlers came from a nation which had battled {47} through long years in the cause of freedom.
They found themselves in a colony adjoining those of Englishmen who had braved the perils of the wilderness to establish the same principles of liberty and democracy. No sane mind could have expected the Dutch colonists to return without protest to a medieval system of government.
When the English took possession of New Netherland in 1664, the old patroons.h.i.+ps were confirmed as manorial grants from England. As time went on, many new manors were erected until, when the province was finally added to England in 1674, ”The Lords of the Manor” along the Hudson had taken on the proportions of a landed aristocracy. On the lower reaches of the river lay the Van Cortlandt and Philipse Manors, the first containing 85,000 acres and a house so firmly built that it is still standing with its walls of freestone, three feet thick. The Philipse Manor, at Tarrytown, represented the remarkable achievement of a self-made man, born in the Old World and a carpenter by trade, who rose in the New World to fortune and eminence. By dint of business ac.u.men and by marrying two heiresses in succession he achieved wealth, and built ”Castle Philipse” and the picturesque little church at Sleepy Hollow, {48} still in use. Farther up the river lay the Livingston Manor. In 1685 Robert Livingston was granted by Governor Dongan a patent of a tract half way between New York and Rensselaerswyck, across the river from the Catskills and covering many thousand acres.
But the estate of which we know most, thanks to the records left by Mrs. Grant of Laggan in her _Memoirs of an American Lady_, written in the middle of the eighteenth century, is that belonging to the Schuylers at ”the Flats” near Albany, which runs along the western bank of the Hudson for two miles and is bordered with sweeping elm trees.
The mansion consisted of two stories and an attic. Through the middle of the house ran a wide pa.s.sage from the front to the back door. At the front door was a large _stoep_, open at the sides and with seats around it. One room was open for company. The other apartments were bedrooms, a drawing-room being an unheard-of luxury. ”The house fronted the river, on the brink of which, under shades of elm and sycamore, ran the great road toward Saratoga, Stillwater, and the northern lakes.” Adjoining the orchard was a huge barn raised from the ground by beams which rested on stone and held up a ma.s.sive oak {49} floor. On one side ran a manger. Cattle and horses stood in rows with their heads toward the thres.h.i.+ng-floor. ”There was a prodigious large box or open chest in one side built up, for holding the corn after it was threshed, and the roof which was very lofty and s.p.a.cious was supported by large cross beams. From one to the other of these was stretched a great number of long poles so as to form a sort of open loft, on which the whole rich crop was laid up.”
Altogether it is an attractive picture of peace and plenty, of hospitality and simple luxury, that is drawn by this visitor to the Schuyler homestead. We see through her eyes its carpeted winter rooms, its hall covered with tiled oilcloth and hung with family portraits, its vine-covered _stoeps_, provided with ledges for the birds, and affording ”pleasant views of the winding river and the distant hills.”
Such a picture relieves pleasantly the arid waste of historical statistics.
But the reader who dwells too long on the picturesque aspects of manors and patroons.h.i.+ps is likely to forget that New Netherland was peopled for the most part by colonists who were neither patroons nor lords of manors. It was the small proprietors who eventually predominated on western {50} Long Island, on Staten Island, and along the Hudson. ”In the end,” it has been well said, ”this form of grant played a more important part in the development of the province than did the larger fiefs for which such detailed provision was made.”
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CHAPTER IV
THE DIRECTORS
The first Director-General of the colony, Captain Cornelis May, was removed by only a generation from those ”Beggars of the Sea” whom the Spaniard held in such contempt; but this mendicant had begged to such advantage that the sea granted him a n.o.ble river to explore and a cape at its mouth to preserve his name to posterity. It is upon his discoveries along the South River, later called the Delaware, and not upon his record as Director of New Netherland, that his t.i.tle to fame must rest. a.s.sociated with him was Tienpont, who appears to have been a.s.signed to the North River while May a.s.sumed personal supervision of the South. May acted as the agent of the West India Company for one year only (1624-1625), and was followed in office by Verhulst (1625-1626), who bequeathed his name to Verhulsten Island, in the Delaware River, and then quietly pa.s.sed out of history.
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Neither of these officials left any permanent impress on the history of the colony. It was therefore a day of vast importance to the dwellers on the North River, and especially to the little group of settlers on Manhattan Island, when the _Meeuwken_ dropped her anchor in the harbor in May, 1626, and her small boat landed Peter Minuit, Director-General of New Netherland, a Governor who had come to govern. Minuit, though registered as ”of Wesel,” Germany, was of Huguenot ancestry, and is reported to have spoken French, Dutch, German, and English. He proved a tactful and efficient ruler, and the new system of government took form under the Director and Council, the _koopman_, who was commercial agent and secretary, and a _schout_ who performed the duties of sheriff and public prosecutor.
Van Wa.s.senaer, the son of a _domine_ in Amsterdam, gives us a report of the colony as it existed under Minuit. He writes of a counting-house built of stone and thatched with reeds, of thirty ordinary houses on the east side of the river, and a horse-mill yet unfinished over which is to be constructed a s.p.a.cious room to serve as a temporary church and to be decorated with bells captured at the sack of San Juan de Porto Rico in 1625 by the Dutch fleet. {53} According to this chronicler, every one in New Netherland who fills no public office is busy with his own affairs. One trades, one builds houses, another plants farms.
Each farmer pastures the cows under his charge on the _bouwerie_ of the Company, which also owns the cattle; but the milk is the property of the farmer, who sells it to the settlers. ”The houses of settlers,” he says, ”are now outside the fort; but when that is finished they will all remove within, in order to garrison it and be safe from sudden attack.”