The New York and Albany Post Road Part 5

Between Staatsburg and Greenbush, a matter of fifty-six miles, we find only five towns on the river's edge, while back, along the Post Road, or in its immediate vicinity, are some twenty villages both great and small.

[Sidenote: _KINDERHOOK._]

Kinderhook--Children's Corner--as musical and attractive a name as one could ask. It is said that a Dutchman once lived hereabouts whose progeny was so numerous as to attract attention, even in the days of large families, and so the place came by its name as a matter of course.

Being a stranger in a strange land, I early sought out the good Dr.

C., who did not at first seem as genial as antic.i.p.ation had pictured, but finding, as the purpose of the call was explained, how truly harmless was the intent, he suggested a tour of the village in his company, confiding as we reached the outer air that he was so glad it was not a book agent who had called; that he was delighted to do all he could, and so it proved, for he could do and did all and more than most would feel called upon to do for the casual stranger.

[Sidenote: _MARTIN VAN BUREN._]

Abraham Van Buren, father of Martin, was one of the early tavern keepers of Kinderhook, and here the son was born and educated to the law. His dwelling place is pointed out, and it is truly the site but not the substance, as the old building has fallen victim to the march of improvement.

Elson says of Martin Van Buren:--

"He was a man of greater individuality and ability than is generally put to his credit by historians.... In the Cabinet of Jackson he was by no means a figurehead even there, for it was largely due to his skill that Jackson made the two brilliant strokes in his foreign policy.... Van Buren has been p.r.o.nounced the cleverest political manager in American history, and no other man has held so many high political offices. He was small of stature, had a round, red face and quick, searching eyes. He was subtle, courteous and smooth in conversation."

[Sidenote: _PARSONAGE-FORT._]

As early as 1670 Hollanders settled here. The first interesting house one meets on entering the village from the south is the old Dutch parsonage which, being of brick, was a tower of strength against the Indians as well as the Devil. The Indians raided this region in 1755 and visited the neighborhood of Kinderhook at a time when the men were away, but their stout-hearted wives and daughters were equal to the occasion; for, donning such male attire as they could find and shouldering the family arms, they made such a brave show in and about the fort that the Indians retired without attempting its capture. A short distance east of this stands another old parsonage-fort, but little or nothing seems to be known concerning its history, though legend mentions its cellar door as bearing the marks of Indian tomahawks. It is said to be a fact that the heavy timbers in some of these old houses were imported from Holland to these heavily wooded banks of the Hudson.

[Sidenote: _CENTENNIAL MANSION._]

On the pleasantest street of the village stands the Centennial Mansion, opposite the Dutch Church, erected in 1774 by Daniel Van Schaack. The house has been the social centre of the town for more than a hundred years. One of its earliest a.s.sociations concerns the visit of General Richard Montgomery, when on his way to take command of the army against Canada. Henry Van Schaack, a brother of Daniel, was an intimate friend of the General, they having been thrown together while in the Seventeenth Regiment in the war of 1755.

In October, 1777, General Burgoyne, a prisoner of war, was quartered here for a short time, and during the following years a long list of prominent men pa.s.sed through its hospitable portals: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Philip Schuyler, Chancellor Kent and others.

After the Van Schaack regime had pa.s.sed came the Hon. Cornelius P. Van Ness, who in due time became chief justice of the Supreme Court of Vermont, then its Governor, and later was minister to Spain.

Washington Irving arouses the ire of the local historian by stating that the Van Ness ancestors came by their name because they were "valiant robbers of birds' nests." The next owner was a merry gentleman whose ghost is said to still haunt the sideboard.

Then came Dr. John P. Beekman, whose first wife was a Van Schaack. He added the two wings which adorn either end of the building; and again its doors are opened wide, sharing, with Lindenwald, the honor of entertaining the nation's notables, many of them introduced by Van Buren. Such names as Henry Clay, Washington Irving, Thomas H. Benton, David Wilmot and Charles Sumner head the list. David Wilmot was a notably corpulent gentleman; his introduction by Van Buren to the lady of the house is said to have been put thus wise: "Mrs. Beekman, you have heard of the Wilmot Proviso--Here he is in the body."

The house is now occupied by the widow of Aaron J. Vanderpoel, a Van Schaack grand-daughter.

From the "Reminiscences" of a Kinderhooker we learn that there were two or three stage lines whose coaches pa.s.sed through the village daily, and that the merits of their various steeds were the cause of much local controversy around the tavern stove. The drivers "were mainly farmers' sons, many of them well to do, selected with special reference to sobriety as well as in handling the ribbons;" and the heart of every lad in the village was fired with the hope that some day he might be selected to fill that high office.

Starting again on the Post Road toward the north, we come to the one-time Kinderhook Academy, celebrated in its day, but its day has pa.s.sed, and on the outskirts of the town pa.s.s the old cemetery where Martin Van Buren and Jesse Merwin lie with the forefathers of the neighborhood.

[Sidenote: _WE LEAVE THE POST ROAD._]

Here we part from the old Post Road, which continues on through Valatie, Niverville and South Schodack to Schodack Centre, where it joins company with the Boston Road, and together they travel through East Greenbush to Greenbush where once was the ferry at Crawlier.

The way I took through Muitzeskill and Castleton to Greenbush, is marked with New York and Albany guide posts, but none of the old mile-stones adorn its path.

Ever since Rhinebeck the Catskills have been marching along the western horizon, and while generally the river is too far away to be a part of the picture, the country, the beautiful country, makes one continually wonder, not that the painters of a past generation grew to love the region and to revel in its seductive delights, but rather that they could ever stop its delineation. The effect of the changing light and shade and varying atmospheric conditions lend the same enchantment that lies in the ever-changing sea.

[Sidenote: _THE DISTANT HILLS._]

About where that mystery, the county line, crosses the road, one stands on a gentle ridge that extends the view both east and west.

Toward the latter, on this Indian Summer day were the ghosts of mountains that in brighter times are the Catskills, while to the east are the low-lying hills of the Taghkanic range, whose far slopes roll down to meet the advances of the Berkshires. Beautiful undulating farm lands lead the eye up to the distant hills on either hand, fields of every warm tint with sentinel oaks or walnuts, and here and there the wood-lot of the farmer. The soft browns and greens of the distant corn stubble, or the winter barley fields with the blaze of the Frost King's robes mellowed by the golden sun complete a picture common enough in this wonderful valley of the Hudson, but always a well-spring of delight for the traveler.

[Sidenote: _MUITZESKILL._]

After crossing into Rensselaer County the first village one comes in contact with is Muitzeskill, whose burial ground is old enough to be interesting to the searcher for curious epitaphs. All country places have their odd characters, and this region is no exception. Among the elegant extracts quoted as dropping from the lips of its citizens is the remark of a certain Michael Younghans, hotel keeper, who declaiming about certain improvements he was thinking of, said that he was "A-going to get carpenters to impair his house, firiquelly it in front, open pizarro all round, up-an-dicular posts on a new destruction." What was to happen after that no man knoweth.

[Sidenote: _FIREPLACE OF THE NATION._]

This rolling country was once the council seat of the Mohicans, this fact being commemorated in the name of Schodack, a Dutch rendering of the Indian word Esquatak, "the fireplace of the nation." The Mohicans had been pretty thoroughly "pacified" by the Mohawks about the time that Hudson ascended the river, and this region is full of legends of fights and ambuscades.

It seems that Burgoyne's captured army was marched south over this road, and some three miles out of Castleton, so the story goes, one Jacob Jahn, a Hessian prisoner, escaped to the woods and later, building a log house on the exact spot where he effected his escape, he settled down, after taking unto himself a wife, and became a good citizen.

The road follows the level table land almost to the Hudson, when it dips down a steep incline, crosses the Muitzes Kill and joins the river road. Once upon a time, as history records, as an excitable Dutch vrouw was wending her way along the banks of this brook, a sudden gust of wind caught up her cap, the pride of her heart, and whisked it into the water beyond reach, whereupon she set up an outcry, "Die muts is in die kill! Die muts is in die kill!" and so it is even unto this day. What kind of a name the stream might now be murmuring under, had this adventure befallen her good man is fearful to think on.

[Sidenote: _CASTLETON._]

It is Castleton because the Indians once had a castle on the crest of the hill back of the village. The town is comparatively new, having been incorporated as late as 1827, and appears to have taken no important or interesting part in the days when history was making; but there was a ship yard here, and home-built sloops competed for the New York trade before the railroad changed things.

It is told of a certain foolish citizen, a pa.s.senger on one of the village sloops anch.o.r.ed for the night somewhere in the Highlands, that, being requested by the wag of the party to steer the stationary boat while the others took needed rest, he faithfully performed his task until relieved the next morning. When asked by his shipmates how they had got on during the night he replied that they had got along a good ways by the water, but not far by the land.

Castleton is one long street which wanders out into the open country at either end, and lonely country it is if one proceeds north as the early twilight of a cool November evening is closing around. The wayfarer, if he be of a fearful temperament and has read the story of the Murder Place, is apt to quicken his steps as he pa.s.ses into the shadows of the trees that gloom the crossing of the stream marking the northern boundary of the village, and known as the h.e.l.l Hole. On the right are abrupt little hills, wooded and awesome, while off toward the west stretch the flats left by the river, with now and then a silent pool to reflect the dying embers of the burned-out day. No light gleams from a friendly window, only the shadowy form of a hay rake left out by some farmer suggests human companionship. With eight miles of such traveling ahead, it is small wonder if the wayfarer hastens.

[Sidenote: _"CITIZEN" GENET._]

About half-way, where one pa.s.ses a schoolhouse overlooking the flats and the guide board says 3-1/2 miles to Castleton, once lived "Citizen" Genet, and his house still stands a quarter of a mile back on Prospect Hill, facing the cross road to East Greenbush. Edmond Charles Genet was sent out to this country in the Spring of 1793 by the new French Republic. Things moved rapidly in France in those days, and Genet's friends were soon removed and he, fearing the guillotine, became an American citizen, "a scientific farmer and an ornament to New York society." In 1810 he moved to Greenbush, where he died in 1834. His tombstone in the burial ground of the Dutch Church in East Greenbush tells us that "His heart was love and friendship's sun."

His house was once the home of Gen. Hendrick K. Van Rensselaer, whose bravery at Fort Ann saved the American army in 1777.

Part of the flat lands we have been skirting go to make up the long island of Paps Knee, which was early selected as a place of refuge.

Here a fort was built and farms were laid out, but in 1666 a flood swept away houses and cattle, and since then the farmers have lived on the higher main land; only one brick house, the fort, escaped and that still stands, bearing its two hundred and seventy-five years with the grace of long practice.

Where the road works down to meet the river comes Douw's Point, once the head of steamboat navigation; pa.s.sengers for Albany and beyond going forward in stages after crossing the river in a horse ferryboat.

It is whispered that a few rods below the point Captain Kidd buried treasures. Old Volkert P. Douw was so staunch a patriot that he refused to hold office under the English, and gave his money and his time to the American cause.

[Sidenote: _FORT CRALO._]

[Sidenote: _YANKEE DOODLE._]

In the lower edge of the village of Greenbush and on the River Road which we are following stands the most interesting building of the region, old Fort Cralo, built in 1642 for protection against the Indians. Its white oak beams are said to be eighteen inches square and its walls two to three feet thick. Some of its portholes still remain as reminders of the times of the war whoop and scalp dance. It is said there were once secret pa.s.sages to the river, which is just across the road. During the last of the French and Indian wars Major-General James Abercrombie had his headquarters here--1758; and it was here that Yankee Doodle came into being. Among the Colonial regiments which joined the regulars at this point were some from Connecticut whose appearance became a by-word among the well-kept British troops. The song was composed by a surgeon attached to the army, as a satire on these ragged provincials; less than twenty years later the captured soldiers of Burgoyne marched between the lines of the victorious Yankees to the same tune.

It is but a step to the trolley, and in a brief five minutes we are across "The Great River of the Mountains" as Hudson called it, and at our journey's end.

[Sidenote: _SCHUYLER--VAN RENSSELAER._]

The man who can rise superior to feelings of personal grievance, or even just anger, is the man we all admire. Such, history says, was Gen. Philip Schuyler who, when Burgoyne had wantonly burned his country seat near Saratoga, entertained that same Burgoyne after his capture in his town house, which still stands at the head of Schuyler Street, Albany, in so hospitable a fashion that the British General, struck with the American's generosity, said to him: "You show me great kindness though I have done you much injury," whereupon Schuyler returned: "That was the fate of war; let us say no more about it."

This house was erected about 1765, and General Schuyler lived here with his family for nearly forty years, dispensing such notable hospitality as to call down the blessings of many a traveler to and from Canada or the West.

The Van Rensselaer Manor House stood on the river bank, but nothing is now left of it but the little old brick office, which stands disconsolate along the street, watching through half-closed blinds the great woodworking plant which occupies the site of the old home of the Patroon.

One other reminder of the days gone by still survives in the Peter Schuyler house in the northern limits of Albany, at the Flats. Lossing says of this: "It is famous in Colonial history as the residence of Col. Peter Schuyler, of the Flats, the first mayor of Albany, and who, as Indian Commissioner in after years took four kings or sachems of the Mohawks to England and presented them at the court of Queen Anne."

[Sidenote: _IT IS FINISHED._]