FARM-HOUSE OF JAN JANSEN DAMEN FRONTING "WAGON ROAD," BETWEEN PINE AND CEDAR STREETS, 1646. [Then.]

they were determined to accomplish. The winter following was one of the darkest and most disheartening ever known to the colonists. There was no help near, food was scarce, and the people who had escaped from their burning homes were without winter clothing or shoes. Indians prowled about the town committing thefts every night, often killing men less than a thousand paces from the fort. As the spring opened in 1644, Governor Kieft ordered the brush fence built across the island.

Jan Jansen Damen probably secured through his loyalty to the gov ernor the fine tract of rich rolling land which formed his farm, and when peace was established-soon after the brush fence appeared-he proceeded to remove the timber and underbrush, and plow the stubble in, preparatory to cultivation. He selected the highest and most picturesque point for a homestead, between what is now Pine and Cedar streets, fronting Broadway a little back from the road, and erected there an

exceedingly comfortable and substantial stone house. This, it should be remembered, was forty-seven years before Pine and Cedar streets were opened. A narrow lane on the line of Cedar street led from the wagon road (Broadway) to an orchard, which Damen planted in the vicinity of the present Nassau street. He also built a brewery a short distance from his house. He must have worked with vigor, for we find he had quite an extensive garden in a flourishing condition by the time his house was finished, in which were beautiful flowers as well as fine vegetables-white and red roses, tulips, violets, marigolds, red and yellow lilies, and sun-flowers. The latter were of native growth, but most of the others named were imported. His fields yielded good crops of grain, and he experimented in the raising of tobacco. He removed his family to this pretty country home, outside the city, and resided here some five years prior to his death, in 1651, entertaining the notables of the province with remarkable frequency. Kieft came here every day until he was superseded by Governor Stuyvesant, after which he was Damen's permanent guest until he sailed for Holland. It was through Damen's loyalty and cleverness that the new gov ernor was made acquainted with certain facts which led him to judge Kieft more leniently than he had anticipated, and to take alarm at the dangerous precedent of" allowing subjects to judge rulers." These two governors met at Damen's house and drank wine together at his table. Could they have peered into the future as we now glance backward two hundred and forty or more years, what would they have thought of the present granite production on the site of the little rural homestead? Nearly an acre-the entire block between Pine and Cedar street, from Broadway to Nassau excepting the Clearing House at the corner of Pine and Nassau-is at present covered by the monster Equitable building with its four entrances, on each of the four streets-a stirring city within itself.

The contrast between the two scenes is impressive, and even without following the successive steps in the interval has the effect of a supreme, inexplicable, glorious miracle in human history.

The military training of Governor Stuyvesant tended to make him. imperious, and his instructions from the West India Company were explicit in giving him arbitrary power. But he nevertheless soon recognized to a limited extent the principle of " taxation only by consent," not so much from the pressure of public sentiment in the new province as from the difficulty of collecting the revenues, and the "Nine Men" were elected to aid him in his perplexing work. But he was quickly in a wrangle with his counselors, who proceeded to act as legislators with decided opinions of their own. The secretary of their board was the able

and influential Van der Donck, of whom Kieft had borrowed large sums of money and then granted him the fine lands in the locality of Yonkers. Van der Donck was the guest of Damen, where Stuyvesant, like his predecessor, continued to be a familiar visitor. As quarrels multiplied between the governor and the "Nine Men," Damen sided with the governor, and when the "Nine Men" resolved to send a delegation to Holland with complaints, he was one of the minority in that body to firmly object. Stuyvesant was kept informed of proceedings, and one day in the absence of Van der Donck sent to Damen's house and seized the official journals and papers of the secretary of the "Nine Men," and afterwards arrested and imprisoned Van der Donck himself. Great excitement followed. Van der Donck came to trial and was released, but shorn of all his offices; the "Nine Men" then appointed him with two others to proceed as delegates to The Hague with a memorial of grievances in their behalf. Governor Stuyvesant was by this act compelled at once to send delegates to represent him to the West India Company, and for this mission he chose Jan Jansen Damen and Secretary Van Tienhoven. The West India Company after a long and tedious examination sustained their governor, and the notoriety of the matter put the idea into the heads of thousands of persons in Europe to migrate and settle in the new world. Thus New York was singularly benefited. Damen died on his return, and leaving no children of his own his wife succeeded to his estate, and at her death it was divided among her children.

One of Mrs. Damen's daughters, Maria Vinjé, married Abraham Verplanck, the ancestor of the Verplanck family of New York. Another daughter, Christina Vinjé, married Dirck Volkersten. Rachel Vinjé, as before mentioned, was the wife of Van Tienhoven, who had an estate of his own, granted him by Governor Kieft about the same date as the Damen grant, situated northerly from Maiden Lane. He cultivated very little of it, but he built a house on the hill overlooking the East river, called "Gouwenberg," or Golden Hill, reached by a lane from the water on the line of John street. He was the most unpopular man in New York affairs under Dutch rule; and when dismissed from office for disreputable conduct, in 1656, he absconded. His hat and cane were found floating on the river, and his property was administered upon as if he were dead. His plantation, divided and sold, was known in after years as the "Shoemaker's Pasture" and the "Van der Cliff Estate." About five acres of the Damen farm west of Broadway was sold in the early part of Stuyvesant's administration to George Ryerson. After Ryerson's death his widow married Teunis Dey, and the property descended to her heirs.

Dirck Dey became the owner of a large portion of the property, and Dey street was laid out in his time through its centre and named for him. Next south of this was a strip of land inherited by Mrs. Van Tienhoven from the Damen property, nearly two hundred and fifty feet on Broadway, which was sold by her executors in 1669 to Oloff Stevensen Van Cortlandt, and remained in that family for generations. In 1733 the heirs laid out Cortlandt street forty feet wide near the middle of this tract.

Mrs. Damen had only one son, John Vinjé, the first male child born in New York of European parents, about 1614, who resided in a little farmhouse on the Damen estate at about the present corner of Liberty and William streets. The old ferry road through the valley at Maiden Lane was a short distance north of his house, reached by a lane. He was a brewer as well as a farmer, and kept a huge windmill constantly at work on the high ground near by. In the year 1656 (according to the court records) John Vinjé instituted several suits for damages done his pea-vines and cabbages by school boys running through them. The sisters of John Vinjé, Mrs. Verplanck and Mrs. Volkersten, had farm-houses and gardens side by side in the section along the East river between Smith's valley, Wall street, and Maiden Lane. The brush fence was superseded by a great wooden wall on the line of Wall street in 1653. But however successful this famous fortification with its feint of strength in keeping strangers out, it earned no distinction for keeping light-fingered gentry within the city: we find among the curious records that one Messack Martens, having been arrested, confessed to having climbed over the Wall and stolen five or six cabbages from a garden. He was examined by torture before an august tribunal to discover if possible some further offense, and his sentence was "that he be brought to the usual place of execution, to stand in the pillory with cabbages on his head, and be banished five years from the jurisdiction of the city, with costs and mises of justice." The stone house of Damen, with about three hundred and eighty feet front of land on Broadway extending east nearly to Pearl street, was bought from the heirs in 1661 by Augustine Heermans, a merchant, who was also New York's first map-maker.

Real estate hereabouts was beginning to rise in value. Yet as late as 1678 the bears of the forest had not abandoned the haunts of their ancestors. The graphic description of a bear-hunt in an orchard which had been recently purchased by an Englishman of wealth, Mr. John Robinson-situated between what is now Cedar street and Maiden Lane-is handed along to us in the interesting journal of Rev. Charles Wolley, chaplain to the British forces in New York. This clerical gentleman was