New York State History

Thomas Chambers, Esopus Indian Wars, Hermanns Blom, The Provincial Congress, Council of Safety, Legislature.

It is about six miles into Kingston, but it will not take as long to reach there on paper as it did on foot. I pre-empted somebody's stone wall for a lunch table and dawdled along the way to no very good purpose, for either there was something the matter with me or with the landscape. We did not agree one with the other, and there is little to be said of it. To be sure, it was an inviting bit around the mouth of the Saw Kill, not the Sawkill of Saugerties, the road leading west among the hills looking as though it should be followed up. It was at the mouth of this same Saw Kill that the old King's Road forded the Esopus.

Kingston is called the birthplace of constitutional government in the state. It was here that the first state constitution was adopted and the state government organized in 1777.

It might be well, however, to go back a bit and start at the beginning, if we can find it, for there is some dispute as to just when was the beginning. Some say 1614, but Mr. B. M. Brink says this is rushing things at too fast a pace. His idea is that the claim that a small redoubt was built at the mouth of Rondout Creek in 1614 is based on a misunderstanding of the statement made by the Dutch commissioners when disputing the English seizure of the New Netherlands in 1668, when they said that for fifty years the Dutch had owned the forts at Albany and Sopus. There was a fort at the latter place when the statement was made, and he thinks that what they really meant was that they had controlled the country for that length of time, as the fort at Albany was fifty years old. Those who argue for 1614 point to the same document and are equally positive that their view of the situation is the correct one. And there you are.

Now we shall have to start again, this time with Thomas Chambers. He was a fact that no one disputes. An Englishman by birth and a carpenter by trade, he appears to have first squatted on the Van Rensselaer domain, but his landlord not being to his liking he again migrated, this time down the river to Esopus, where he made himself solid with the Indians and received from them a deed for the flats at Atharhacton, as the Indians called these "Great Meadows". This deed is dated June 5, 1652, but the Indians claimed that Chambers had not paid the price, and it was seventeen years before this charge was investigated and disproved and the deed duly confirmed by the English authorities, and shortly after, October 16, 1672, his lands were erected into a manor by patent and he became Lord of the Manor of Fox Hall, which lay to the north of the present city of Kingston, but extended to Rondout, where he was buried. His gravestone is imbedded in the foundation wall of the house that now covers the site of his family vault, and "The Old Pear Tree of Thomas Chambers" stands close by. Chambers died April 8, 1694, and this tree is claimed to have been of his day and generation.

To the Indians this region was Atharhacton or Great Meadows. This soon became Atkarkarton, but the place was generally know as Esopus or Sopus, the "place of small rivers". When in 1661 Peter Stuyvesant laid out the palisaded village he named it Wiltwyck, the "village of the wild". Then came the English who directed that the "Town formerly called Sopez be named Kingston", presumably after the home town of the then Governor, Lord Lovelace. During the short period of Dutch reoccupation, 1673-4, they renamed the place Swaenen-bergh, but upon the return of the English it again became Kingston, and has so continued even unto this day.

The great local historic events here were the first and second Esopus wars, the organization of the state government and the burning of Kingston by the British.

About 1657-8 some drunken Indians killed a white man and fired one or two houses. This led to a visit from Governor Stuyvesant with a strong guard which overawed the hostiles. This conference with the Indians induced a temporary peace and the selection, on May 31, 1658, of a site for Stuyvesant's proposed palisaded village. This was bounded by the present North Front, Green and Main Streets and Clinton Avenue (formerly East Front Street). No buildings were allowed next to the stockade, hence these streets. By June 2oth the stockade was completed, and the buildings removed from the farms within the inclosure.

In August, 1659, Hermanus Blom, the first minister in the Esopus, visited the settlement and held services. He proving satisfactory was sent by the people to Holland to be ordained, and in due time became their pastor.
On the night of September 19, 1659, a party of drunken Indians, who had been doing nothing worse than making Rome howl, was attacked while sleeping off their debauch by certain valiant settlers, and so the First Esopus War was inaugurated.

The stockade which hard-headed Peter Stuyvesant had compelled the inhabitants to build was now to prove his wisdom, for in less than forty-eight hours the settlement was invested by about five hundred Indian warriors who managed to set several fires by their fire-arrows, but small damage was done, however, during the seventeen days siege beyond the destruction of farm property outside the fort.

Unsuccessful in their attack the Indians proceeded to torture nine prisoners of a group of fourteen that were captured on the first day. Of these Thomas Chambers was one, but he managed to kill five of the six warriors who had him in charge and escape. Still another one of the prisoners escaped, two more were ransomed and one took unto himself a dusky wife and was adopted into the tribe, but the others ran the gauntlet and were finally burned alive in the most approved Indian style.

By the time Stuyvesant and a small force arrived to raise the siege the Indians had become tired and departed of their own accord. Then came heavy rains and a freshet which covered the lowlands with five feet of water, which rendered pursuit impossible. Then Stuyvesant declared war, and the energetic Ensign Dirck Smit, who had held the fort those seventeen days, proceeded to keep the savages on the jump, now and then killing a few or capturing more. He discovered a fort, somewhere near Rosendale, which he destroyed, capturing many peltries and much maize and beans, and in due time a temporary peace was patched up-on July 15, 1660.

But Stuyvesant had sent some of the captured Indians into slavery in the West Indies, and refused to return them when peace was made. This rankled. Each side was suspicious of the other, and the former friendly feeling was not renewed, while various small insults and outrages aroused a feeling of resentment on the part of the Indians which finally culminated, on June 7, 1663, in the surprising of the unsuspecting stay-at-homes in the stockade while the men were at work on the farms outside. And the Second Esopus Indian War was on.

Here is Dominie Blom's description of the massacre, which is interesting both for matter and manner:-

"Revd. Wise, right learned and pious:
"The state and condition of my Church, situate in the village of Wiltwyck, in the Esopus country, in New Netherland, since my three years' residence there is somewhat prosperous, through God's blessing and mercy, as well in members, which have increased from 16 to 60, as in hearers, and all was well ordered in church matters and consistory, so that everything is placed on a good footing. I have also laid a good foundation, both by private and public Instruction of Catechists, both within and without my house, as also by the explanation of the Catechism, so that this newly rising community began to grow and to bloom right worthily, when a cruel blow overtook it and the Heathens fell on, and right sorely treated our Church and Commonality, and under the guise of friendship murdered and also captured many; they intended to destroy this Church altogether, and to devour it alive, had not the Lord our God wonderfully protected it, and they fled, having taken a fright in their heart, when no person drove them away. So that we escaped with the most part of the inhabitants, and have still retained the place. The Lord only be thanked therefor, not men-for men's help was far from us; for the soldiers whom we had before were discharged and sent to Holland. There lay the burnt and slaughtered bodies, together with those wounded by bullets and axes. The last agonies and the moans and lamentations of many were dreadful to hear. I have been in their midst, and have gone into the houses, and along the roads, to speak a word in season, and that not without danger of being shot by the Indians; but I went on my mission, and considered not my life mine own. I may say with Jeremiah, 'I am he who hath seen mercy in the day of the wrath of the Lord'.

"Consider well, worthy colleagues, how manifold is the suffering and lamentation amongst us, of our wounded who fled for refuge to my house, and of others who yielded up the ghost near me.

"I encouraged our people as much as possible out of God's word, and particularly in prayer to God who hath rescued us. We must behold God's flock taken away into captivity by the Heathen, and Death come in unexpectedly by the windows, and cut off the children from the highways, and the young men from the street; so that I might exclaim r O! my Bowels-my Bowels! I am pained at my very heart!' and with Jeremiah, 'O that mine head were water, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep for the slain of my people; for the dead lay as sheaves behind the mower'.

"The burnt bodies were most frightful to behold. The houses were converted into heaps of stones, so that I might say with Micah, 'We are made desolate', and with Jeremiah, 'A piteous wail may go forth in his distress'. But in all this my request to our brethren is to remember us and our suffering Church in their prayers. With Paul I say, 'Brothers, pray for us'.

"'Tis then soe that we see in all this the rod and Him who uses it; and with the Church of the Lord willingly bear the Lord's anger; for we have sinned against him, and I exhort my Congregation to patience and endurance; and lately, at our monthly prayer meeting, I took my text from Isaiah 42: 'Who gave Jacob for a spoil and Israel to the Robbers?' &c., v. 24, 25; and such other verses in addition. I have also every evening during a whole month offered ! prayers up with the congregation, on the four points of our fort, under the blue sky. But the Lord strengthened me | in all this. We trust and depend further on the help of our God, that he will not altogether forsake us, but vouchsafe us his mercy in the midst of his justice, and evince his power in our weakness; for mountains may depart, and hills may fall away, but His mercy shall not once depart from this feeble and infant congregation. For we lean on his mighty arm, and He shall be a wall of fire round about us, and require and avenge this blood on the heads of these murderous heathens. Already He has begun to do so. Many heathens have been slain, and full 22 of our people in captivity have been delivered out of their hands by our arms. Another expedition is about to set out. The Lord our God will again bless our arms, and grant that the Foxes who have endeavored to lay waste the vineyard of the Lord shall be destroyed.

"The Indians have slain in all 24 souls in our place, and taken 45 prisoners, of whom 13 are still in their power. About the same number of theirs are in our hands.

"The Lord our God will make all turn out to be the best for his Church, and for the peace and quiet of the whole land. The mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be and remain with you, my worthy colleagues for ever; and may this Triune God give us all together after this strife, the crown of immortal glory."
HERMANUS BLOM.
"The 18th September, 1663,
in New Amsterdam in New Netherland,
Egra manu."

Nieuw Dorp (Hurley) was also devastated, and the prisoners from both places, consisting of forty-six women and children, were carried back into the wilderness.

Then came the days of incursions into the enemies' country, negotiations which resulted in the ransoming of a few of the captives, the final destruction of the Indian fort at Shawan-gunk and of large quantities of standing corn, the killing of a large number of Indians and the liberating of all those remaining in captivity.

The tribe was practically annihilated by these raids, and the war came to an end for the want of warriors, and as the few remaining nearly starved to death the following Winter, the making of a treaty of peace was a comparatively easy matter for the Dutch.

Now came the English, 1664, and they caused a commotion by compelling our Dutchmen to clean up their village of Wilt-wyck, each being obliged to clean the street in front of his property lest "the blowings out of a tobacco pipe" set the place on fire. The village was fined fifty schepels of wheat "for not fencing the burying ground".

Then, barring the short reoccupation of the Dutch, came a hundred years of peace, which were more comfortable to live than interesting to tell about, until the momentus year of 1777 dawned.

The following, concerning "Ulster's Most Famous Spot", the courthouse in Kingston, covers the next interesting period. It is condensed from an article in "Olde Ulster" which appeared during 1906:-

The General Assembly on November i, 1683, divided the colony into counties; of these Ulster was one. An appropriation was made for a courthouse and jail, and the lot on which the present courthouse stands was set apart for the purpose, the first courthouse being erected in 1684.

The Provincial Congress moved from Fishkill to Kingston on February n, 1777, and in the building known as "The Senate House", is said to have prepared a draft of a proposed constitution of the new state; this was in the handwriting of John Jay. The convention met in the courthouse where John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, Robert R. Livingston, James Duane and others led in the debate which followed, and the constitution was adopted on April 20, 1777, and immediately a committee was appointed to report a plan for organizing and establishing the form of government. Two days later the village authorities were summoned to the courthouse, where from a platform in front of the building Robert Berrian, secretary of the convention, read the document, while the bells on the courthouse and the old Dutch church on the corner below rang out a glad hosanna to the newborn state.

After arranging for the election of various state officers and lawgivers the convention turned over the direction of affairs to a Council of Safety, and, on May isth, dissolved. Gen. George Clinton was elected both Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, and accepted the higher office. He was with the army in the Highlands of the Hudson, but rode up to Kingston where, on July 30, 1777, he took the oath of office before the Council of Safety in our historic courthouse, and again the glad bells rang out.

The Legislature which had been called to assemble at the same place on August first was adjourned twice, but finally met on September first. It is not certain just where it was organized, but probably in the courthouse. All the room here was needed, however, and the Senate met at "The Senate House", while the Assembly held its sessions at the Bogardus Inn (destroyed), at Maiden Lane and Fair Street, and the Council of Safety at the Elmendorf Inn (standing), diagonally opposite. Chief Justice John Jay opened the first session of the new court and charged the first Grand Jury in the courthouse. "Thus was the state of New York in each of its three great departments-executive, legislative and judicial-here organized and set in motion. It gives to this small area of ground, of less than fifty feet in diameter, a never-to-be-forgotten glory."