Chapter VIII: Kings County During the Revolution (3)

The Provincial Convention having instituted the office of auditor-general, for the purpose of settling certain accounts, the appointment to this office was given to Comfort Sands, July 24, 1776, who held the place until March 23, 1782, when he resigned. In 1797 the office was abolished, and that of comptroller was instituted in its place. Comfort Sands, who filled the important position of auditor, deserves more than a passing notice. During his life he took a deep interest in Brooklyn affairs, and owned considerable property in the village. He purchased a part of the property belonging to John Rapalje, whose wife, we have seen, sent her negro servant to apprise General Howe of the premeditated retreat from Brooklyn on the 29th of August, 1776. Rapalje's property extended along the water front from the Ferry to the Navy Yard. He was an influential man, and during colonial times had frequently been a member of the Assembly. When the war commenced in earnest, his family became identified with the Tory element. A bill of attainder was passed against him October 27, 1779, and he was banished. When the British occupied Long Island, he returned to his home, remaining until 1783, when, with his family, he removed to England. His estates having been confiscated, Comfort and Joshua Sands, on the 13th of July, 1784, purchased 160 acres of them, bordering on the East River, for, £12,450, paid in state scrip.

It might be well to state here that John Rapalje was clerk of Kings County in 1775, and continued in that office during the British control. His successor, Jacob Sharp, Jr., did not assume the office until 1784. When Rapalje removed to England, he carried with him the town records. These documents were very valuable.

A few years after the declaration of peace Rapalje's granddaughter visited America, hoping to regain possession of her father's land, upon the technical point that the confiscation had taken place subsequent to the treaty of peace. The advice of counsel was taken, whose opinions were adverse to her claim, and she abandoned the effort and returned to Europe. When Mrs. Weldon, the granddaughter, came to America, she brought with her the missing records, and sought to sell and dispose of them for $10,000. The inhabitants looked upon the price as fabulous, and refused to accept the offer. Had they been wise, they would have asserted their rights, and by legal proceedings secured the property, which belonged to the town. By reason of the abstraction of these documents a hiatus has been created in the history, and much valuable information lost. The documents were taken back to England. Even at this late date they probably might be secured from the descendants of the family.

Comfort Sands, who by this purchase became interested in Brooklyn, was born at Sands Point, L. I., in 1748. After serving a clerkship he went into business on his own account in 1769. When he resigned his position as auditor, he resumed business in New York. Having served in the Provincial Congress, at the close of the war he was again called into service. He was a member of the Assembly in 1784-85, 1788, and 1789.

Egbert Benson, of Queens County, was appointed attorney-general by an ordinance of the Constitutional Convention, May 8, 1777. The council of appointment afterwards ratified the act, and on the 15th of January, 1778, granted and issued to him a commission. He filled this responsible trust until May 14, 1789. Egbert Benson was a man of culture. He graduated at Columbia College in 1765. He was a classmate of Robert R. Livingston, with whom he was ever on intimate terms. They served together in the different conventions for the common cause. He was subsequently judge of the New York Supreme Court, and justice of the United States Circuit Court, New York.

The treaty of peace between the American and British commissioners was signed on September 3, 1783. On November 25, following, the British troops formally evacuated New York and Brooklyn, and the flagstaff of the Pierrepont mansion on the Heights, which had been used for signaling during the battle of Brooklyn, once more floated the American flag.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See appendix in second volume for explanation of system of Dutch family names.

[2] _American Ancestry_, vol. v., 1890.

[3] _A History of Long Island, from its First Settlement by Europeans, to the year 1845, with Special Reference to its Ecclesiastical Concerns._ By Nathaniel S. Prime. 1845.

[4] Richard M. Bayles, in _Long Island Magazine_, September, 1893.

[5] At the time of the discovery the Iroquois, or League of the Five Nations, claimed to have subdued and mastered all the Indian tribes from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. The Iroquois occupied in particular the middle and upper region of New York State. The earliest of the general histories of this remarkable confederacy was written by Cadwallader Colden, who died on Long Island in 1776.

[6] _New York Historical Society's Collections_, vol. iii. p. 324.

[7] _Antiquities of Long Island_, p. 29.

[8] Among Brooklyn's manufactures in recent years rope-making has taken a prominent place.

[9] _A History of the City of Brooklyn, including the Old Town and Village of Brooklyn, the Town of Bushwick, and the Village and City of Williamsburgh._ By Henry R. Stiles. 1867.

[10] Van Twiller.

[11] _Address before Long Island Historical Society_, 1880.

[12] "The Ladye Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt with by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church of Salem (whereof she was a member); but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch against the advice of her friends."--_Governor Winthrop's Journal._

[13] Also described as a Council of Eight.

[14] The function of the schepen resembled that of the squire or petty justice, particularly in communities so small as not to have a burgomaster.

[15] By the wording of contracts dated November 22, 1646 (New York Col. MSS. ii. 152), it appears that Teunissen was called "Schout of Breuckelen" before this date.

[16] As we have seen, Rapalje, who made one of the earliest purchases (1636), did not begin living on his Wallabout farm until probably 1655.

[17] "No other figure of Dutch, nor indeed of Colonial days is so well remembered; none other has left so deep an impress on Manhattan history and tradition as this whimsical and obstinate, but brave and gallant old fellow, the kindly tyrant of the little colony. To this day he stands in a certain sense as the typical father of the city."--Theodore Roosevelt, _New York_, p. 26.

[18] Bayard Tuckerman, _Peter Stuyvesant_, p. 62.

[19] Stiles, _History of Brooklyn_, vol. i. p. 229.

[20] "Among the Dutch settlers the art of stone-cutting does not appear to have been used until within comparatively a few years, with but few exceptions, and their old burying-grounds are strewn with rough head-stones which bear no inscriptions; whereas the English people, immediately on their settlement, introduced the practice of perpetuating the memories of their friends by inscribed stones. Another reason for not finding any very old tombstones in the Dutch settlements is that they early adopted the practice of having family burying-places on their farms, without monuments, and not unfrequently private burials, both of which the Governor and Colonial Legislature, in 1664 and 1684, deemed of sufficient importance to merit legislative interference, and declared that all persons should be publicly buried in some parish burial-place."--Furman, _Antiquities of Long Island_, p. 155.

[21] _New York_, p. 29.

[22] A Dutch war-ship sold twenty negroes into the colony of Virginia in August, 1619.

[23] The call of the Breuckelen Church to Dominie Selyns was by him accepted, and approved by the Classis of Amsterdam, February 16, 1660(-61).--_Brooklyn Church Records._

[24] Mr. Campbell and other recent writers, actuated doubtless by some resentment toward the complacency of New England, have unquestionably exaggerated in certain respects the essential position of Holland in educational advancement, and offered a somewhat stronger plea for the leadership of the Dutch in popular education on this continent than a strictly judicial examination of the case seems to justify; but there can be no reasonable doubt in the minds of impartial students that serious misconceptions have existed, and that these justify the championship of the Dutch, of which Mr. Campbell's _The Puritan in Holland, England, and America_ is so brilliant an example. The early claims for English and for Puritan educational traditions not only ignored but excluded the Dutch, and it was inevitable that the effort to do justice to Holland's remarkable services for popular education should result in occasional overstatement.

[25] _Democracy in Europe_, vol. ii. pp. 67-72.

[26] _Public School Pioneering in New York and Massachusetts._

[27] _New York Colonial Documents_, vol. i. p. 112.

[28] The river farm, which included the "Kiekout" bluff, is first found in the possession of Jean Meserole, who came from Picardy, France, in 1663, and from whom is descended Gen. Jeremiah V. Meserole, President of the Williamsburgh Savings Bank, first colonel of the Forty-seventh Regiment, N. G. S. N. Y.

[29] So named from Dirck Volckertsen, surnamed "the Norman," to whom was granted in 1645 land on the East River between Bushwick Creek and Newtown Creek, now within the seventeenth ward of the city of Brooklyn, and still known as Greenpoint. Volckertsen lived in a stone house on the northerly side of Bushwick Creek near the East River. The house was standing until after the middle of the present century.

[30] Early section names within the township of Breuckelen were Gowanus, Red Hook (lying west of the Ferry), the Ferry, Wallabout, Bedford, Cripplebush. All of these, save the last, have survived as designations of regions in the present city.

[31] When, in 1660, it was deemed necessary to prepare defenses for Breuckelen and New Utrecht against attacks from the Indians, De Sille was directed to make the necessary surveys. Under Stuyvesant De Sille held the important position of attorney-general. He was a man of ability and influence. The position he held under Stuyvesant demonstrated the fact that his attainments were appreciated. He was born in Arnheim. His ancestors were natives of Belgium, who fled to Holland to escape religious persecution, and whose devotion to the interests of their adopted country was manifested on many occasions in the noble stand taken by the Dutch Republic to maintain its independence against the Spanish invasion. He came to New Netherland in 1653, commissioned by the West India Company to reside at New Amsterdam, and by his counsel aid and assist the Governor in his duties. He was directed to give his advice on all subjects relating to the interests of the colony. It is said that he built the first house in New Utrecht. It was at his house that the brave General Woodhull, the hero of Long Island, who gave his life for his country, breathed his last.--S. M. O.

[32] _Journal of a Voyage to New York and a Tour in Several of the American Colonies in 1679-80._ By Jasper Dankers and Peter Sluyter of Wiewerd, in Friesland. Translated from the original manuscript in Dutch for the Long Island Historical Society, and edited by Henry C. Murphy, Foreign Corresponding Secretary of the Society. Brooklyn, 1867.

[33] "No man has been more maligned or misunderstood than Jacob Leisler. Historians have deliberately misjudged him, drawing their conclusions from the biased reports of the few aristocrats who hated or the English officials who despised him. Jacob Leisler was one of the earliest of American patriots. His brief and stormy career as Provincial Governor of New York was marked by mistakes of judgment, but his mistakes were more than overbalanced by his foresight and statesmanship. He acted as one of the people for the people. He summoned a popular convention, arranged the first mayoralty election by the people, attempted the first step toward colonial union by endeavoring to interest the several provinces in a continental congress, and sought to cripple the chief adversary of the English in America, France, by the masterly stroke of an invasion of Canada. That he failed is due to the jealousy, the timidity, and the short-sightedness of his fellow colonists. But he builded wiser than he knew; for, though he died a martyr to colonial jealousy and English injustice, his bold and patriotic measures awoke the people to a knowledge of their real power, and prepared them for that spirit of resistance to tyranny which a century later made them a free republic."--Elbridge S. Brooks, _The Story of New York_, p. 74.

[34] "The government of the colony was at once put on the basis on which it stood until the outbreak of the Revolution. There was a governor appointed by the king, and a council likewise appointed; while the assembly was elected by the freeholders. The suffrage was thus limited by a strict property qualification. Liberty of conscience was granted to all Protestant sects, but not to Catholics; and the Church of England was practically made the state church, though the Dutch and French congregations were secured in the rights guaranteed them by treaty. It was, then, essentially a class or aristocratic government,--none the less so because to European eyes the little American colony seemed both poor and rude."--Theodore Roosevelt, _New York_, p. 71.

[35] There are varying views of Kidd's character and career. Thus Berthold Fernow writes in the _Narrative and Critical History of America_ (vol. v. p. 195): "To-day that which was meted out to Kidd might hardly be called justice; for it seems questionable if he had ever been guilty of piracy."

[36] The assessment rolls of the five Dutch towns in 1675 showed the following proportions in the number of persons assessed: Breuckelen, 60; Midwout, 54; Boswyck (Bushwick) 36; Amersfoort, 35; New Utrecht, 29.

[37] The peculiar methods employed by the citizens of Brooklyn at that time in electing their officials cannot be better illustrated than by the presentation of a report of one of those town meetings as follows:--

Att a towne meeting held this 29th day of April, 1699, at
Breucklyn, by order of Justice Michael Hanssen ffor to chose
town officers ffor to order all townes business and to deffend
theire limits and bounds, and to lay out some part thereoff in
lotts, to make lawes and orders ffor the best off the
inhabitants, and to raise a small tax ffor to defray the towne
charges, now being or hereafter to come, to receive the townes
revenues, and to pay the townes debts, and that with the advice
off the justices off the said towne standing the space or time
off two years. Chosen ffor that purpose by pluralitie of votes.
Benjamin Vande Water, Joras Hanssen, Jan Garritse Dorlant.

By order off inhabitants aforesaid,
J. VANDE WATER, _Clarke_.

[38] Furman's _Notes_, p. 45.

[39] The total assessment value of real and personal estate in Brooklyn in 1706 was £3,122 12d, or about $15,610, and the tax on the same was £41 3s 7-1/2d, or about $205. The tax levied in the County of Kings was £201 16s 1-1/2d, or about $1,005.

[40] The description of this road in the records is as follows: "One common highway to begin ffrom the house of Jurian Collier to the new mill of Nicholas Brower, now sett upon Gowanus Mill neck soe called, as the way is now in use, along said neck to said mill to be of two rods wide, and that there shall be a landing place by said mill in the most convenient place ffor the transportation of goods, and the commodious passing of travellers; and said highway and landing place to be, remaine and continue forever."

[41] For comment on Brooklyn's claims, see appendix.

[42] To DeLancey belongs the honor of signing the charter of Columbia College in New York, first known as Kings College, an institution in which Brooklynites have always taken a deep interest. Among her graduates from Brooklyn may be mentioned the ex-mayor, ex-senator, and ex-minister to the Hague, Henry C. Murphy, who graduated in 1830. The Hon. Alexander McCue, of the City Court, was the valedictorian of the class of 1845. Ex-supervisor William J. Osborne, Henry C. Murphy, Jr., George I. Murphy, Richard M. De Mille, John Lockwood, of Lockwood's Academy; George W. Collard, the erudite professor of languages in the Polytechnic; Stewart L. Woodford, and Edgar M. Cullen all graduated from Columbia. Beside these might be mentioned John L. Lefferts, Van Brunt Wyckoff, ex-mayor Edward Copeland, who graduated in 1809; the late Samuel E. Johnson, ex-county judge, who graduated in 1834, and the late Rev. Stephen H. Meeker, who for fifty years was pastor of the old Bushwick Church. Among the clergy who enjoyed her academic shades might be mentioned the late Rev. Dr. Dwight, who for many years was pastor of the Joralemon Street Dutch Church; the Right Rev. Henry Ustick Onderdonk, at one time rector of St. Ann's Church and subsequently bishop of Pennsylvania; Rev. Dr. Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, formerly rector of St. John's Church; the Right Rev. Dr. George F. Seymour, formerly rector of St. John's Church and now bishop of Springfield. Of the legal profession who have graduated from her law school might be mentioned William H. Ingersoll, Edward B. Barnum, Henry Broadhead, Abel Crook, William Leggett Whiting, Philip L. Wilson, Henry S. Bellows, Merwin Rushmore, F. A. Ward, D. D. Terry, L. Bradford Prince, Daniel W. Northup, and a host of other well known members of the bar. Of the medical profession the number from Brooklyn is legion.--S. M. O.

We may now add to the roll a conspicuous name, that of ex-mayor Seth Low, now president of Columbia.

[43] Kings, Queens, and part of Suffolk.

[44] _History of the City of Brooklyn_, vol. i. p. 243.

[45] The school remained closed until 1777.

[46] Onderdonk, _Kings County_, p. 120.

[47] The wife of John Rapalje was a well-known Tory. So far did she manifest her predilections in favor of the Tory cause as at all times to boldly proclaim her sympathies for the King. At the time the act was passed prohibiting the use of tea, she, with her proverbial pertinacity and obstinacy, persisted in its use, and so continued while the American army was in the occupation of Brooklyn. On this account she became a marked woman. Her conduct caused much discussion, and drew down upon her the umbrage of the Whig militia, who fired a cannon ball into her home while she was drinking her favorite beverage. The ball passed close to her head and lodged in the wall. This action not only seriously annoyed the lady, but served to stir within her bosom the spirit of revenge, and she eagerly awaited an opportunity to gratify her spite. When she saw the preparations for the retreat of the army her heart rejoiced, for she fancied that the moment had arrived when she could mete out punishment to her enemies.--S. M. O.

[48] Force's 5th series, vol. ii. p. 107.

[49] Force, 5th series, vol. ii. p. 167.

[50] Force, 5th series, vol. ii. p. 399.

[51] Force, 5th series, vol. iii. p. 1057.

[52] _Corporation Manual of Brooklyn_, 1866.

[53] Onderdonk, _Kings County_, sec. 829.

[54] Onderdonk, _Kings County_, sec. 830.

[55] Onderdonk, _Kings County_, sec. 830.

[56] Rev. Dr. S. R. Johnson's _Memorial Discourse on General Jeremiah Johnson_.

[57] _Journal of Provincial Convention_, p. 567.

[58] So in the original _Journal of Committee of Safety_, p. 671.

[59] Onderdonk's _Revolutionary Incidents_, sec. 832.

[60] Onderdonk's _Incidents of Kings County_, p. 174.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

The "appendix" to which reference occasionally is made appears in Volume II.

"" used by Transcribers to represent actual illustrations in source book; other words in [square brackets] were printed that way in source book.

Contractions originally printed as superscripts are represented here by preceding them with the caret symbol, e.g., W^m (William).