Alice Morse Earle

“ About twelve years ago, while driving through Flatlands and New Lots one beautiful day in May, I met a group of young men driving from door to door of the farm-houses, in wagons gayly dressed with branches of dogwood blossoms, and entering each house for a short visit. I asked whether a wedding or a festival were being held in the town, and was answered that it was an old Dutch custom to make visits that week. I tried to learn whence this observance came, but no one knew its reason for being, or what holiday was observed. Poor Pinkster! ”

“ Occasionally an entry which tells of temporary division or infelicity can be unearthed from the dingy pages of some old court-record, thereby disclosing a scene and actors so remote, so shadowy, so dimmed with the dust of centuries, that the incident often bears no semblance of having happened to real living folk, but seems rather to pertain to a group of inanimate puppets. One of these featureless, colorless, stiff Dutch marionettes is Anneke, the daughter of boisterous old Domine Schaets, the first minister at Fort Orange. ”

“ In New Amsterdam the town’s cow-herd was Gabriel Carpsey; and when his day’s work was done, he walked at sunset through the narrow lanes and streets of the little settlement, sounding at each dooryard Gabriel’s horn, a warning note of safe return and milking-time.
Until mid-November did the morning cow-horn waken the burghers and their vrouws at sunrise; and when with cold winter the horn lay silent, they must have sorely missed their unfailing eye-opener. ”

“ The beauty of the windmills probably was not so endearing to the settlers as their homelikeness. They made the new strange land and the new little towns seem like the Fatherland. The Indians greatly feared them; as one chronicler states, “they durst not come near their long arms and big teeth biting the corn in pieces.” Last, and not least in the minds of the thrifty Dutch, the windmills helped to turn to profit the rich harvests of grain which were the true foundation of the colony’s prosperity,—not the rich peltries of beaver, as was at first boastfully vaunted by the fur-traders. ”

“ There is no doubt that the Dutch colonists were very valiant trenchermen; more avid, perhaps, of quantity and frequency in their food than exacting of variety. Cardinal Bentivoglio (the diplomatist and historian) writing at the time of the first emigration to New Netherland, says that the greatest pleasures of the Hollanders were those of the table. This love of eating made them provident and lavish of food-stores in emigration; and the accounts of scant supplies, poor fare, and dire starvation which are recorded of other colonies, never have been told of the vol-gevoedt Dutch. ”

“ What fishing was to the goodman of the [Pg 5] house, knitting was to the goodwife,—a soothing, monotonous occupation, ever at hand, ever welcome, ever useful. Why, the family could scarce be clothed in comfort without these clicking needles! A goodly supply of well-knit, carefully dyed stockings was the housekeeper’s pride; and well they might be, for little were they hidden. The full knee-breeches of father and son displayed above the buckled shoes a long expanse of sturdy hosiery, and the short petticoats of mother and daughter did not hide the scarlet clocks of their own making. ”

“ This fashion of marriage-knots still exists in parts of Holland. Sometimes the knot bears a motto; one reads when translated, “Being in love does no harm if love finds its recompense in love; but if love has ceased, all labor is in vain. Praise God.”
Though second and third marriages were common enough among the early settlers of New Netherland, I find that usually attempts at restraint of the wife were made through wills ordering sequent loss of property if she married again. Nearly all the wills are more favorable to the children than to the wife. ”

“ The court records of any period in our American history are an unfailing source of profit and delight to the historian. In the town or state whose colonial records still exist there can ever be drawn a picture not only of the crimes and punishments, but of the manners, occupations, and ways of our ancestors and a knowledge can be gained of the social ethics, the morality, the modes of thought, the intelligence of dead-and-gone citizens. ”

“ Though to the Dutch is ascribed the invention of the thimble, I never think of the Dutch women as excelling in fine needlework; and I note that the teachers of intricate and novel embroidery-stitches are always Englishwomen; but in turn the English goodwives must yield to the Dutch the palm of comfortable, attractive housewifery, as well as shrewd, untiring business capacity. ”

“ DUTCH FARMHOUSES
The old Dutch homestead of colonial times fitted the place and the race for which it was built. There was plenty of solid level earth for it to stand on,—so it spread out, sunny and long. The men who built it had never climbed hills or lived on mountain-tops, nor did they mean to climb many stairs in their houses. The ceilings were low, the stairs short and steep, and the stories few; a story and a half were enough for nearly every one. The heavy roof, curving slightly inward, often stretched out in front at the eaves to form a shelter for the front stoop. ”

“ In the palmiest days of New Year’s calling, New York City appeared one great family reunion. Every wheeled vehicle in the town seemed to be loaded with visitors going from house to house. Great four and six horse stages packed with hilarious mobs of men went to the house of every acquaintance of every one in the stage. Target companies had processions; political bodies called on families whose head was well known in political life. ”

“ Sometimes he “cried” the funeral through the town with a hand-bell. In New York the fashion was purely of Dutch derivation. In Holland the aanspreecker was an official appointed by government, and authorized to invite for the funerals of persons of all faiths and denominations who chanced to die in his parish.
In New York, ever bent on fashions new, the aanspreecker, on mournful mission intent, no longer walks our city avenues nor even our country lanes or village streets; but in Holland he still is a familiar form. ”

“ Rosenboom, for many years the voor-leeser and dood-graver and aanspreecker in Albany, sent in a bill of twelve guilders for delivering invitations to the funeral,—which bill was rejected by the deacons as exorbitant. But the invitations were delivered just the same, for even colonial paupers had friends, and her coffin was not made of green wood held together with wooden pegs, which some poor bodies had to endure; and the one hundred and fifty doed-koecks and Madeira for the women very evenly balanced the plentiful beer and wine and tobacco for the men. ”

“ It is to be deplored that we have no fashion-plates of past centuries to show to us in exact presentment the varying modes worn by New York dames from year to year; that method of fashion-conveying has been adopted but a century. ”

“ Smith, the historian of New York, writing at the same time, calls the houses of all the towns, “built of brick in Dutch taste.” Daniel Denton, writing as early as 1670, tells of the “red and black tile (of New York) giving at a distance a pleasing aspect to the Spectators.” All the old sketches of the town which exist, crude as they are, certainly do present a pleasing aspect.
The chief peculiarity of these houses were the high roofs; some were extraordinarily steep and thus afforded a garret, a loft, and a cock-loft. There was reason and economy in this form of roof. ”

“ In New Amsterdam the wooden horse stood between Paerel Street and the Fort, and was twelve feet high. Garret Segersen, for stealing chickens, rode the wooden horse for three days from two o’clock to close of parade with a fifty-pound weight tied to each foot. At other times a musket was tied to each foot of the disgraced man. One culprit rode with an empty scabbard in one hand and a pitcher in the other to show his inordinate love for John Barleycorn. Jan Alleman, a Dutch officer, challenged Jan de Fries, who was bedridden; for this cruel and meaningless insult he too rode the wooden horse. ”

“ In Albany may be found several joint-wills, among them two dated 1663 and 1676; others in the Schuyler family. There is something very touching in the thought of those simple-minded husbands and wives, in mutual confidence and affection, going, as we find, before the notary together and signing their will together, “out of love and special nuptial affection, not thereto misled or sinisterly persuaded,” she bequeathing her dower or her father’s legacy or perhaps her own little earnings, and he his hard-won guilders. ”

“ In whatever depended on the use of “a flourit pen,” posterity is neither richer nor wiser for the Dutch settlers having lived. Nor were their English successors much fonder of literary composition. Nothing but formal records of churches, of courts, of business life, offer to us any pages for study and drawing of inference. ”

“ New Year’s calling was a new fashion to General Washington when he came to New York to live for a short time, but he adopted it with approval; and his New Year’s Receptions were imposing functions.
For a long time the New Year was ushered in, in country towns, with great noise as well as rejoicing. All through the day groups of men would go from house to house firing [Pg 187] salutes, and gathering gradually into large parties by recruits from each house until the end of the day was spent in firing at a mark. ”

“ He lay drunk for a month at a time, and was incorrigibly lazy,—so aggravated Albanians wrote of him. But any one was good enough to teach school. Neither Jan nor Adam was, however, a convicted and banished felon, as were many Virginian schoolmasters.
This drunken schoolmaster was only the first of many. Until this century, the bane of pedagogy in New York was rum. A chorus of colonial schoolmasters could sing, in the words of Goldsmith,—
“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains
With grammar and nonsense and learning;
Good liquor I stoutly maintain
Gives genius a better discerning.” ”

“ In studying the history of the province, I am impressed with the debt New Yorkers of Dutch descent owe, not to their forefathers, but to their foremothers; the conspicuous decorum of life of these women and their great purity of morals were equalled by their good sense and their wonderful capacity in both domestic and public affairs. They were as good patriots as they were good business women ”

“ A very shrewd woman-observer, writing in the middle of the eighteenth century of the Dutch, gives what seems to me a very just estimate and good description of one of their traits. She says: “Though they have no vivacity, they are smarter, a great deal smarter, than the English, that is, more uptaking.” ”

“ From all the hints and facts which I have obtained, through letters, diaries, church and court records, of child-life in any of the colonies or provinces among English, German, Swedish, or Dutch settlers, I am sure these Albany young folk were the most favored of their time. ”

“ There are, however, few women-criminals named in the old Dutch and early English records, and these few were not prosecuted for any very great crimes or viciousness; the chief number were brought up for defamation of character and slander, though men-slanderers were more plentiful than women. The close intimacy, the ideal neighborliness of the Dutch communities of New York made the settlers deeply abhor all violations of the law of social kindness. ”

“ De Vries tells of an abundant supply of game in the colony; deer (as fat as any Holland deer can be) ; great wild turkeys, beautiful birds of golden bronze (one that he shot weighed thirty pounds) ; partridges and pigeons (in such great flocks that the sky was darkened) . Domine Megapolensis says the plentiful wild turkeys and deer came to the hogpens of the Albany colonists to feed; fat Dutch swine and graceful red deer must have seemed strange trough companions. A stag was sold readily by an Indian for a jack-knife. ”

“ Suicides were denied ordinary burial rites. In Dutch days when one Smitt of New York committed suicide, the schout asked that his body be drawn on a hurdle and buried with a stake in his heart. This order was not executed; he was buried at night and his estates confiscated. When Sir Danvers Osborne—the Governor for a day—was found dead by his own act, he was “decently interred in Trinity churchyard.”
Women in New York sometimes made their appearance in New York courts, as in those of other colonies, in another rôle than that of witness or criminal; they sometimes sat on juries. ”

“ There is much evidence to show that the women of Dutch descent of the early years of New Netherland and New York had other traits than those of domestic housewifery; they partook frequently of the shrewdness and business sagacity and capacity of their Dutch husbands. Widows felt no hesitation and experienced no difficulty in carrying on the business affairs of their dead partners; wives having capable, active husbands boldly engaged in independent business operations of their own ”

“ In spite, however, of all wariness and watchfulness and patience, the inevitable fretfulness engendered in petty natures by a narrow and confined life showed in neighborhood disputes and suits for defamation of character, few of them of great seriousness and most of them easily adjusted by the phlegmatic and somewhat dictatorial Dutch magistrates. In a community so given to nicknaming it seems strange to find such extreme touchiness about being called names. ”

“ This public school, maintained with such difficulty and so many rebuffs through these early days, was successfully continued by the Collegiate Dutch Church after the English possession of New York; and it still exists and flourishes, as does the church. This should be a matter of civic pride to every New Yorker. The history of that school has been carefully written, and is most interesting to read.
Many other teachers were licensed to give private lessons, but these public and private schools did not satisfy ambitious New Yorkers. A strong longing was felt in New Amsterdam for a Latin School. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I think this water is not very wholesome for people who are not used to it. Nearly every house in Albany has its well, the water of which is applied to common use; but for tea, brewing, and washing they commonly take the water of the river.”
What can be the other “common use” to which well-water was applied, except putting out fires,—which is an infrequent use?
In New York City the water was equally poor. The famous Tea-water Pump supplied in barrels for many years the more fastidious portion of the community. ”

“ Miller, an English clergyman writing in 1695, complains that many marriages were by justices of the peace. This was made lawful by the States-General of Holland from the year 1590, and thus was a law in New Netherland. By the Duke’s Laws, 1664, it was also made legal. This has never been altered, and is to-day the law of the State.
Of highly colored romance in the life of the Dutch colonists there was little. Sometimes a lover was seized by the Indians, and his fair betrothed mourned him through a long life. ”

“ We have, however, scant sources from which to learn of the life of children in colonial New York. No diarist of Pepysian minuteness tells of the children of New Netherland as does the faithful Samuel Sewall of those of New England; no collections of letters such as the Winthrop Papers and others recount the various items of domestic life. There are none of the pious and garrulous [Pg 18] writings of ministers such as Cotton Mather, who in diary and various literary compositions give another side of their life. We have no such messages from the colonial Dutch. ”

“ In the village as in the city the stoop was an important feature of the house and of home life. Through the summer months the family gathered on this out-door sitting-room at the close of day. The neighbors talked politics as they [Pg 117] smoked their evening pipes, and the young folk did some mild visiting and courting. As the evening and pipes waned, little negro slaves brought comfortiers, or open metal dishes of living coals, to start the smouldering tobacco afresh in the long Dutch pipes. ”

“ When the government left the Dutch control and became English, the Calvinistic sternness of laws as to obedience to parents in maturer years which was seen in New England was also found in New York.
“If any Child or Children, above sixteen years of age, and of Sufficient understanding, shall smite their Natural Father or Mother, unless provoked and forct for their selfe preservation from Death or Mayming, at the Complaint of the said Father or Mother, and not otherwise, they being Sufficient witness thereof, that Child, or those Children so offending shall be put to Death.” ”

“ Before the burial took place, in olden times, a number of persons, usually intimate friends of the dead, watched the body throughout the night. Liberally supplied with various bodily comforts, such as abundant strong drink, plentiful tobacco and pipes, and newly baked cakes, these watchers were not wholly gloomy, nor did the midnight hours lag unsolaced. The great kamer in which the body lay, the state-room of the house, was an apartment so rarely used on other occasions than a funeral that in many households it was known as the doed-kamer, or dead-room. ”