The visitor to Pittsburgh to-day will find on Fourth street, midway between the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, a little block-house, more correctly a redoubt, sixteen by fifteen feet in lateral dimensions and twenty-two feet high. The structure is constructed of brick covered with clapboards and with a layer of double logs, and contains thirty-six port-holes in two layers. This little block-house is all that remains to-day of Fort Pitt. It was built by Colonel Boquet in 1764 and was purchased by private parties in the early days of Pittsburgh. In 1894 the property was deeded by its owner of that generation, Mrs. Mary E. Schenley, of London, to the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and is maintained by this organization to-day for the benefit of the public.
The situation of Fort Pitt and its predecessor, Fort Duquesne, was of immense strategic importance in the early days of the American nation, the considerations which gave it value having operated in the field of commerce in late years to make Pittsburgh notable as a manufacturing and distributing centre. It stood at the gateway to the Ohio River and the rich country which the Ohio waters, and since it commanded the Ohio it commanded the key to the West.
These considerations were appreciated by the Colonial Virginians, and in 1754 Captain William Trent was commissioned by Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, to erect a fort at the juncture of the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers at the expense of the Ohio Company. Captain Trent commenced his work in February, 1754, but in April, 1754, surrendered to a detachment of French under Le Mercier.
The French then commenced the erection of a fort of their own on the extreme neck of land between the rivers. They finished their work in the summer of that year and named it Fort Duquesne in honor of Governor-General Duquesne, of Canada.
In the same year a force of English colonists, about 150 strong, made a tentative advance against the work under the leadership of our own George Washington, then a young man. Washington found the post too strong for attack and became himself the object of hostile attention from the French, being forced to fall back to Great Meadows and to erect a temporary triangular earth fortification there which he named Fort Necessity.
In 1755 it was the plan of the British ministry to concentrate its forces in the colonies in three directions of attack against the French. One blow was to be struck at Acadia; a second blow was to be struck at Crown Point, and a third, under General Braddock, an English-born officer of wide Continental experience, at Fort Duquesne.
Braddock’s unfortunate march began May 27, 1755, from Fort Cumberland, Maryland (Cumberland, to-day), and of the details of that disastrous journey little need be told in these pages as the story is already familiar. Braddock had the bravery of his calling and the arrogance and presumption of the European brought into contact with provincials. He did not believe that anything very good could come out of the colonies and did not hesitate to show this attitude of mind. On the line of march he scorned to send out scouts ahead as was necessary in fighting Indians. He insisted on sending his Continental troops in solid order against an enemy who fought behind trees and stumps in any kind of order that suited his purpose. He committed all of the stupidities that vanity and overweening self-confidence could dictate, and, when the French in a despairing last-minute effort against overwhelming numbers had found easy victory, gave up his life on the field of battle. He was buried beneath the feet of the retreating troops so that their steps should obliterate from the fiendish enemy the location of his last resting place.
The English loss in this battle was 714 men killed and a shattering of their military prestige with all of the Indian people of the borderland. The French loss was 3 white men killed and 27 Indians. The access to their influence amongst the savage tribes because of their unexpected victory was much.
Fort Duquesne fell to the English in 1758 when 7,000 men under Brigadier General John Forbes slowly and circumspectly proceeded against it. The French deserted the post after attempting to destroy it and the English took possession November 25 of that year. A new fort was commenced under Forbes which stood on the Monongahela side of the city at the south end of the present West Street and between West and Liberty Streets. It was occupied in 1760 and was completely finished in the summer of 1761. The stone bomb-proof magazine stood until 1852 when the Pennsylvania Railroad built its freight terminal here.
Of the remainder of the line of French forts along the Ohio River there are no relics left, though memorials have been established at several points. The first of this Ohio River chain was Presque Isle on Lake Erie, now the little city of Erie, Pennsylvania. For some years after French domain in the New World Presque Isle was of importance and, indeed, for some years after the Revolution.
The post was taken by the English in 1759, and in 1763 fell a victim to Indian attack as a corollary to the Pontiac conspiracy which had as its object the complete extinction of English life in the West. The fort, a rectangle of earth and wooden palisades, stood on the west bank of Mill Creek and at the intersection with the shore of the lake. Here the veteran Indian fighter, General Wayne, died in 1796. In 1876 the State of Pennsylvania erected a block-house on the site of the old fort as a memorial. This block-house is now included in the grounds of the Pennsylvania Sailors and Soldiers’ Home.
From Presque Isle there was a portage to Fort Le Bœuf, now the little city of Waterford, Pennsylvania. Fort Le Bœuf stood at High and Water Streets, Waterford, though there is at this point no sign of its existence. It was erected in 1753 and fell before Pontiac’s far-reaching conspiracy in 1763.
Venango, the next of the French line of forts east of Pittsburgh (Duquesne), was the fore-runner of Franklin, Pennsylvania, and stood at Elk and Eighth Streets. Of Venango, too, no sign remains. It fell to the Indians in 1763.
South of Pittsburgh the English had a post at Brownsville, on the Ohio River, Pennsylvania, built in 1754, and known as Redstone Old Fort. The French had Fort Massac to which about one thousand troopers retired after the evacuation of Fort Duquesne. Later years also saw small fortifications developed on the Ohio River, some holding the potentialities of future greatness such as that at the falls of the Ohio River, which was to be the nucleus of the settlement of the present-day city of Louisville, Kentucky.
At the south end of Lake Erie during the French occupancy of the West stood Fort Sandusky which has given its name to the City of Sandusky of to-day. On the Maumee River, Indiana, was Fort Miamis, Miami of to-day.
In the early days of the French there had been a trading post at the site of the future great city of Chicago, but it remained for the United States, in 1803, to establish a formal fortification here, Fort Dearborn, of bloody memory. Fort Dearborn, as every good Chicagoan knows, or ought to know, stood at the southern approach to the Rush Street bridge and extended a little across Michigan Avenue and somewhat into the river, as it now is. The ground rose into a little mound yielding a fine view of the surrounding flat prairie land. Here the pioneer soldiers erected a rude stockade of logs fifteen feet in height and enclosing a space sufficiently large to contain a small parade ground, officers’ quarters, troop barracks, guard house, magazines and two block-houses, one at the northwest and the other at the southeast corner of the palisade. This rude structure with its small garrison was the seed of the present-day great city.
Upon the outbreak of the War of 1812 General Hull, who was commanding the American army of the border, ordered the evacuation of Fort Dearborn, as the place was too remote to be adequately defended and as its possession meant no access of strength to the United States. There were at this time in the garrison four officers and fifty-four non-commissioned officers and privates under the leadership of Captain Nathan Heald. The wives of the two senior officers were with them and a number of the privates had, also, their families, so that the stockade contained twelve women and twenty children.
Though an experienced soldier, Captain Heald seems to have misjudged the temper of the hostile Indians surrounding his post and to have too easily accepted their assurances of non-interference with the garrison as it left the fort. At all events, on August 15, 1812, Captain Heald evacuated his fort, and though the Indians allowed the little company—a long cavalcade—to proceed as far as the end of present-day Eighteenth Street without molestation, they then fell upon men, women and children indiscriminately. Of the company of Americans only a handful survived.
In 1816 Fort Dearborn was rebuilt and regarrisoned but after the Black Hawk war fell into disuse, and in 1837 was abandoned by the army. It was used for various purposes by different departments of the Federal government until 1857, when it was torn down except a small building which stood until the great fire of 1871. A commercial building now occupies the site which is commemorated by a small bronze tablet set into the wall by the Chicago Historical Society in 1880.
At the foot of Eighteenth Street at the point where the attack upon the devoted column commenced, a beautiful bronze monument has been erected depicting a scene from the massacre.
Fort Gage, Illinois, memorable as the first objective of George Rogers Clark in 1778, stood at the historic little village Kaskaskia, of French foundation, on the Kaskaskia River near the confluence of that stream with the Mississippi. In shape an oblong, 280 feet by 251 feet, constructed of squared timbers founded upon heavy earthwork, Fort Gage was never heavily garrisoned. It was the point to which the British retired when the crumbling walls of Fort Chartres would no longer hold them. In 1772 the garrison consisted of one officer and twenty soldiers. In 1778 when Clark reached the spot there was not a British soldier on duty and the fort was in command of a Frenchman.
Fort Clark, Illinois, was erected in 1813 on the site of the future city of Peoria, Illinois, and about where the Rock Island depot now stands. For several years it gave its name to the locality and was a post of importance garrisoned by rangers and United States troops. At one time it sustained a severe Indian attack.
The foundation of Cincinnati, Ohio, was Fort Washington, which was in existence until after the War of 1812.
That Bostonians are thankful people truly appreciating their public blessings is amply proved by the way in which they turn out to Fort Independence, Castle Island, now a part of the Marine Park of their city, for the fresh air and unexciting recreation it offers. Other citizens of other cities create parks from their historic places and, then, content to know that they have them when they want them, allot the day and night watchmen entire seclusion in these domains. With Bostonians it is different: On any bright and cheering day throngs can be found at the old fort, of various classes and of widely sundered poles of thought; but joined together in one great common heritage, a capacity for making use of that which they have and of taking their pleasure in a devout and noiseless manner not to be seen amongst the habitants of any other great American city.
It is a pleasant place, Castle Island, and the air there on a sunny day sweeping in from the great reaches of Boston’s environing waters is a true elixir. The views in various directions are entrancing, showing, in one direction, wide expanses of blue with dim islands in the distance and cottony clouds overhead; in another, the shipping and sky-line of Boston harbor and the jumbled city. Geographically stated, Castle Island is a body of hard, rocky land, most of which is occupied by the historic old fort, and it is situated three miles from the head of Boston Harbor and two hundred yards from City Point, South Boston, to which it is connected by a wooden causeway. On the mainland, close at hand, lies Boston’s famous Aquarium, where the flying fishes play!
Viewed from the head of the causeway, the fort is a very gay and martial figure though in sober earnest it has never fired a shot in anger in its life. Structurally speaking, it is a pentagonal, five-bastioned enclosure whose granite walls occupy all of the crest of the eminence which makes up the island. To the right, from this stand-point, one sees running off a long thin shallow strip of gravelly sand, which geologists assert has been a gift from the sea since the erection of the fort. Originally, they say, the main portion of the island was larger than it is now; so what was taken from one place seems to have been added on to another.
Passing over the causeway one sees to the left hand, across a ribbon of water, the island which Fort Winthrop crowns in a very modest and inconspicuous fashion. Passing over a draw-bridge one enters the reservation and finds one’s self beneath the shadow of the walls of the fort and on the historic ground which its predecessors and itself have held in fief for many, many years. Benches may be found here and there for the rest-seeking wayfarer, but if one is inspired to wander around the walls he will find many interesting sights, and will be increasingly struck by the strength and formidableness of the abandoned military work, highly suggestive of the time when this island was the seat of military power of his Majesty, the King of England, in his colonies in America.
Historically speaking, Fort Independence is one of the oldest fortified spots in America and it was of exceeding great dignity in the early days of this country. But four years subsequent to the incorporation of the town of Boston, an interesting event which took place in 1630, Governor Winthrop and a party of his Puritans visited the island and, we are told, were detained by the ice without shelter for a day and a night. Nevertheless so well able were they all to detach themselves from their personal petty feelings that they each subscribed five pounds sterling of Great Britain from their own pockets in order to raise the place to the dignity of a fortified point. Two “Platforms” and a fort were to be erected, these platforms being in the nature of bateaux with guns mounted upon them. In the July following their adventure, which had taken place in early spring, they induced the legislature to consent to fortifying the place. The first fort has been described as a “castle with mud walls.” The masonry was of lime made from oyster shells.
In 1644 the arrival of a French man-of-war in the harbor of Boston so alarmed the citizens of the province that the fort which had gone into decay was rebuilt at the expense of six neighboring towns. It was now constructed of pine trees, stone and earth, was 50 feet square inside and had walls 10 feet thick.
In 1665 the fort was repaired and enlarged,—the spirit of military preparedness which had been awakened by the Frenchman’s arrival having evidently been kept up. A small castle was added with brick walls and three stories in height. There was a dwelling-room on the first floor of this “castle”; a lodging-room above; a gun-room over the latter furnished with “six very good saker guns” and three lesser guns were mounted upon the roof. In this same year occurred an event which gave rise to much curious speculation at the time and is retained in legend. On the 15th of July a stroke of lightning entered one of the rooms of the fort, killed Captain Richard Davenport, the commanding officer, and did not enter the magazine, only a step away, beyond a thin partition, where there was stored enough gunpowder to have blown the fort beyond the seas.
Still the spirit of fire had its due, for in 1673 the fort was burned to the ground. In the year following a new fort of stone was erected. It had four bastions, mounted thirty-eight guns and sixteen culverins, in addition to a water battery of six guns, and was a very imposing work indeed.
In 1689 the people of Boston, favoring the Cromwellians in England, seized the royal governor, Edmund Andros, and placed him in confinement. They took possession of the castle and appointed Mr. John Fairweather commander to succeed Captain John Pipon.
But all dissension is smoothed down by the hand of Time. Under the administration of Sir Williams Phipps, an appointee of King William, the fort was named Castle William and the Crown donated a large sum of money toward the erection of a stronger structure. The ordnance then became 24 nine-pounders, 12 twenty-four pounders, 18 thirty-two pounders, and 18 forty-eight pounders; and the bastions became known by the names of the “Crown,” the “Rose,” the “Royal,” and the “Elizabeth.” This augmentation of strength was the more necessary as a French invasion of the New England colonies was apprehended.
And so we run on through the years: In 1716 Lieutenant Governor William Dummer, a well-known name in the history of Massachusetts, assumed command of Castle William, agreeable to orders from the Crown, and thereby incurred the ill-feeling of the general court of the province which heretofore had had prerogative in the appointment of a commandant. In 1740 the fort was repaired in anticipation of war with France and a new bastion mounting 20 forty-two pounders was created and named Shirley bastion.
Ordnance presented by the King arrived in 1744; a second magazine was built in 1747; and a third added during Shirley’s administration. In 1747 a riot occurred in Boston and the governor took refuge at the Castle. Upon assurance that his authority would be sustained the governor returned to the city two days after his flight.
On the 15th of August, 1757, Governor Pownal arrived to assume the government of the province. Sir William Pepperell, conqueror of Louisburg, held command of Castle William. In accordance with custom Sir William surrendered the key of the castle to the new executive and said, “Sir, I hand you the key of the province.” Not outdone at all, Governor Pownal replied, “Sir, the interests of the province are in your heart. I shall always be glad, therefore, to see the key of the province in your hands.” Thus the doughty old warrior was maintained in his command until his death in 1759.
In this same year died Captain Lieutenant John Larrabee, who had lived for fifty years on the island in the service of the Crown. In 1764 the Castle was used as an inoculation station during the ravages of a plague of smallpox which swept the little city.
It was about this time that the fort began to take part in the events with which Boston is associated before the outbreak of the American Revolution. Stamps by which revenue was expected to be raised from the colonies were brought to Boston in 1765 and for security were lodged in Castle William. Vigorous opposition in America caused the repealment of the act of which they were intended to be the tokens of enforcement and they were taken back to England at the expiration of not many months. These, it will be seen, were not the stamps which figured in the famous Boston Tea Party, but they were of the same nature. The maintenance of a large force of military at Castle William by the Crown in the years immediately following this was a source of irritation to the patriots of the day, and had an influence in determining the events which brought about the separation from the Mother Country.
Captain Sir Thomas Adams, who died on board the frigate Romney, was buried on Castle Island October 8, 1772, and his obsequies were conducted with great pomp. In removing earth to Fort Independence thirty years later his corpse, enclosed in a double coffin highly ornamented, but upon which the inscription had become illegible, was dug out, and, no one discovering at the time whose remains the coffin contained, it was committed to the common burying ground at the south point of the island where its resting-place was soon not to be distinguished from that of the common soldiers which surrounded it.
With this coffin necessarily others were removed, and one was favored with an inscription which betrayed, we may assume, either native simplicity or British sarcasm. It read: “Here lies the body of John, aged fifty years, a faithful soldier and a Desperate Good Gardner”!
It does not appear that the force quartered on the island was engaged in the first two battles of the Revolution. The commandant of the castle had been sent in February, 1776, to seize powder and other military stores at Salem; but he was delayed at the ferry by the militia until the objects of the depredation had been moved beyond his reach. He returned peaceably to the island. The same officer was ordered from Castle William at this time with five hundred men to draw the Americans, by a false attack, from their posts at Roxbury. The attack did not succeed and the burning of five or six houses in Dorchester was the only result.
In the meantime a formidable force of Americans was concentrated in the vicinity of Boston under Washington; so General Howe, the successor of General Gage, evacuated the town March 17, and the British fleet dropped below the Castle. The embarkation had been a scene of confusion and distress, it being the 27th of March before the transports were able to put to sea. At their departure the British troops threw into the water iron balls and shot, broke off the trunnions of the ordnance given to Castle William in 1740, destroyed the military stores and battery apparatus which they could not take with them and finally blew up the citadel, leaving the island a mass of ruins. Part of the British fleet lay in the lower harbor until June, when it was harassed by American troops under General Lincoln and raised the blockade of Boston Harbor after the exact duration of two years. With the British troops the seat of the war was removed from Massachusetts, and Castle Island was thenceforth, unmolested, in American possession.
Colonel John Turnbull was the officer sent by General Washington to take possession of the island after the evacuation. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere was stationed on the island from 1777 to 1779.
At the conclusion of the Revolution it was enacted by the legislature of Massachusetts that all criminals of the State under sentence of confinement should be removed to Castle Island. Pursuant to this law convicts were sent to the island, and though their number never exceeded ninety their audacity taxed the vigilance of the garrison; they made several bold, fruitless efforts to escape, and in their mutinies some were killed and some wounded. Others met their death while endeavoring to form subterranean passages. Stephen Burroughs, whose extensive forgeries gave him great notoriety, here learned the art of a nailer, and in his published memoirs has publicly boasted of his Castle Island exploits.
It was with reluctance that the legislature of Massachusetts could bring itself to the cession of the Castle to the United States government, but the State was nevertheless willing to sacrifice the partial advantage to the public good and, October, 1798, passed an act by which the transfer was accomplished.
In 1799 President Adams visited the fort and was received with due honors. It was at this time that the name was changed to Independence. With regard to this, Captain Nehemiah Freeman wrote: “The baptism was not indecorous and the godfather (President Adams) is certainly unexceptionable; but Fort Independence must count some years before he can entirely divest his elder brother of his birthright; and though the mess of pottage might have been sold in 1776 yet the title of ‘The Castle’ is rather endearing to the inhabitants of Massachusetts and is still bestowed by the greater part as the only proper appellation.”
A new fort was now planned and constructed under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Toussard, who was inspector of all of the posts of the Eastern seaboard. The first stone was laid May 7, 1801, and the whole superstructure was raised from an original design not influenced by the structure standing hitherto. On the 23d of June, 1802, the national colors were first displayed at the new fort. The work was a barbette fortification and was not materially different from the present-day structure.
The five bastions of the fort were named, in 1805, as follows: First, “Winthrop” after Governor Winthrop, under whose auspices the first fort was built; second, “Shirley,” who repaired Castle William, erected other works and made it the strongest fortified point in British America; third, “Hancock,” after the first governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, under whose administration new works were thrown up; fourth, “Adams,” after John Adams, who bestowed its present name upon the fort and collected materials for its construction; fifth, “Dearborn,” after General Dearborn, Secretary of War, under whose auspices Fort Independence was actually rebuilt.
In 1833 the garrison was withdrawn and the post given over to the Engineers Department for constructing a new work, in effect a modernification and improved edition of the former structure. Work was prosecuted at intervals during the succeeding eighteen years. The post was regarrisoned July 4, 1851. The garrison was finally withdrawn November 25, 1879, and Fort Independence went out of service.
Not long after that the island was deeded to the city by the Federal War Department for use as a public park. That it could ever be of service as a fighting man now in its old age is extremely improbable. The defence of Boston depends upon batteries located at a far greater distance from the city.
To the north from Fort Independence can be seen the island upon which Fort Winthrop is situated and in the distance at the mouth of the harbor can be seen dimly the site of Fort Warren. Both of these posts have reached a dignified age, but neither has years or historical importance approximating that of their big brother.
Even Governor’s Island, once a smiling garden, appertaining to the sovereigns of the province, was now covered with fortifications, inclosing a tremendous block-house,—so that this once peaceful island resembled a fierce little warrior in a big cocked hat, breathing gunpowder and defiance to the world!—Washington Irving, “Knickerbocker’s New York.”
The graceful little island of Washington Irving is described in a recent publication of the government printing office at Washington after the following eloquent fashion: “Irregular in form but approaches nearly the segment of an oblate spheroid, its longest diameter being from north to south, and about 800 yards in length. The transverse diameter is about 500 yards. It has an elevation above high-water mark of 20 feet, and its face is smooth and green, with a rich carpet of grass.”
On the top of the highest feature of this smooth, green face with its rich carpet of grass is Fort Columbus, more properly known by its ancient name of Fort Jay.
No doubt you will find it hard to visualize the importance of Fort Jay. It is the head-quarters of the Department of the East of the army of the United States, you may be told. Yes, you will answer indifferently, it is a quiet little place, not nearly so noisy as the roaring forties of Broadway; it keeps to itself and is a sort of annex to the foot of the city to prevent the sea-ward view from the Battery being without variety! Yet once on a time, not much more than a hundred years ago, Fort Jay was of so great importance to the city that the citizens all, rich men, poor men, beggarmen, and thieves (then, too), turned out in a body to build up the place overnight.
The first point of land ever occupied in New York by the Dutch was Governor’s Island, we are told on the excellent authority of Joseph Dankers and Sluyter, of Wueward, in Frusland, in “A Voyage to The American Colonies in 1679–80”: “In its mouth (East River) before the city, between the city and Red Hook on Long Island, lies Noten Island (Governor’s Island) opposite the fort, the first place the Hollanders ever occupied in the bay. It is now only a farm with a house and a place upon it where the governor keeps a parcel of sheep.”
The fort here referred to was not Jay but Fort Amsterdam, later Fort George, of historic memory, which stood on Manhattan where the Customs House of New York City now is. “Red Hook on Long Island” later was fortified, too, forming one of the line of defences captured by the British from the Americans in their descent upon New York in the early days of the Revolution. The Indian name for Governor’s Island was Pagganck, and Noten—as above written,—or Nutten, or Nooten, came about from the abundance of nuts which could be found on the island.
In 1637, the redoubtable Wouter Van Twiner, first governor of the colony under the New Amsterdam company of which he had been a director, secured for his personal use the island. It is fair to look at this gentleman inquisitively. “The renowned Wouter (or Walter) Van Twiller was descended from a long line of Dutch Burgomasters,” says Washington Irving, “who had successively dozed away their lives, and grown fat upon the bench of magistracy in Rotterdam; and who had comported themselves with such singular wisdom and propriety that they were never either heard or talked of—which, next to being universally applauded, should be the object of ambition of all magistrates and rulers ... many a dunderpate, like the owl, the stupidest of birds, comes to be considered the very type of wisdom. This, by the way, is a casual remark which I would not for the universe have it thought I apply to Governor Van Twiller. It is true he was a man shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence, that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after much explanation, the joke was made as plain as a pike-staff, he would continue to smoke his pipe in silence and at length, knocking out the ashes, would exclaim, ‘Well, I see nothing in all that to laugh about.’
“The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumference. His head was a perfect sphere and of such stupendous dimensions that Dame Nature with all her sex’s ingenuity would have been puzzled to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between the shoulders. His body was oblong and particularly capacious at bottom; which was wisely ordained by Providence, seeing that he was a man of sedentary habits and very averse to the idle labor of walking. His legs were short but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain; so that when erect he had not a little the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids. His face, that infallible index of the mind, presented a vast expanse unfurrowed by any of those lines and angles which disfigure the human countenance with what is termed expression. Two small gray eyes twinkled feebly in the midst, like two stars of lesser magnitude in a hazy firmament, and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red, like a Spitzenberg apple.”
After the seizure of the colony by the British in 1664, the island became a perquisite of the governor’s office, a sort of retreat from care for the occupant of that harassed position, and was developed into a smiling garden. At this time it became known as Governor’s Island, the name that has become its official designation on the charts of the present day.
The first immigrants to New York under the English were assigned by the council to Nutten Island for detention until the presence or non-presence of contagious disease in their ranks could be proved. These immigrants were about fifty Palatines who had been driven from their home land by the war between Louis XIV and Holland and Austria. Subsequently 10,000 followed these first fifty unfortunate exiles. The island thus became the first quarantine station of the city of New York.
During the wars of the Spanish Succession until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 the people of the colonies of British North America were in constant dread of attack by the French navy and during this time it was urged continually that Governor’s Island should be changed from a garden to a fortified spot. Notwithstanding this fact the successive executives Slaughter, Fletcher and Cornbury did nothing toward carrying out the desires of their subjects.
It was a happy-go-lucky, careless era. Indeed when one looks back upon the perils of the early colonies and how they were survived it is like looking back upon the perils of childhood and wondering how one ever managed to get through. The colonies “just growed,” which is true of a variety of things in this world, no doubt.
During Governor Cornbury’s administration, fifteen thousand pounds (a value in present day terms of far beyond seventy-five thousand dollars) was appropriated for building a fort upon Governor’s Island, but Governor Cornbury used the money to build a pleasure house instead, to which he and succeeding governors might retire from press of business.
Governor Cornbury, we may believe, was an edifying addition to the staid burgher circles of old New York. He was a small, shrimpish man, we are told, and inordinately vain. Being a cousin to her most Christian Majesty, Queen Anne, to which circumstance he owed his appointment, and having been assured that he resembled her hugely in appearance, he was in the habit of dressing himself like a woman and posing upon the balcony of his home—that New Yorkers might be thrilled by a reflection of royalty. Despite his royal connections his household was most impecunious and his wife gained a reputation for borrowing things which she had no intention of ever giving back. Whenever the executive coach would be seen going the round of the streets on social duties bent, the good wives who might expect visits from her ladyship would say, it is said, “Quick, put away that fancy work and that vase” (or this and that), “Kathrine! Her ladyship is about to call upon us.”
Father Time strolled on through the terms of the various royal governors noting their idiosyncrasies and continually hearing the cry that Governor’s Island should be fortified, but not by any of these gentlemen did he discover action taken. It was not until after the Continental Congress, October 6, 1775, directed that means should be immediately devised to make New York defensible that the little city one morning woke up to find that there were rudimentary fortifications on Governor’s Island. Of course these fortifications were supplementary to the fort on the main island upon which the city chiefly depended, Fort George. This was the name the English had given to Fort Amsterdam’s successor, an enlarged and strengthened edition of its original.
Of little avail did all of these works prove, however, for the English, after the battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, were easily masters of the Americans in that part of the world. On August 30th, Admiral Howe sailed up New York Bay and anchored near the island, and the city of New York passed into British possession, not to be surrendered until the close of the war.
The little force of men on Governor’s Island under the command of Colonel Prescott abandoned the place on the approach of the British. One man was injured by a bullet in the arm as they were pulling away from the island. The place was garrisoned by the British during their occupancy of New York and was fortified more extensively than it ever had been before.
The site of all of these works was the site of present-day Fort Columbus or Fort Jay.
After the Revolution the value of Governor’s Island as a place of fortification was not taken advantage of and the works were allowed to fall into decay. In 1784 Governor Clinton leased the spot to a certain Dr. Price as the site for a hotel and race course. This course was open during 1785 and 1786 and had staged upon it many exciting trials of speed.
We have seen Governor’s Island as a flowery retreat for the governors of New York from the cares of office, and we have looked in upon it in the charge of the rough soldiery of England. We now see it as the scene of the dissipations of the rabble and the lusty young sports of the old city. Yet another day is in store for the historic spot.
After the retirement of Washington from the presidency the irritation between France and this country became intense, and fears were entertained of conflict between the European nation and its young former protégé. Agitation began once more in New York for the building up of the defensive works on Governor’s Island. Pressing recommendations were made to the federal authorities. The story may be taken up and carried on here in the words of a government report:
“The Secretary of War reported, December 19, 1794, that one bastion commanding two low batteries had been undertaken and was in a considerable state of forwardness, but observed that the works being only sodded would not stand very long. On January 18, 1796, the Secretary reported to the Senate that Governor’s Island had been fortified with a fort made of earth and two batteries, under its protection, partly lined with brick masonry; that there had been erected two hot air furnaces, a large powder magazine and a barracks for the garrison; on February 10, 1797, that no alterations had been made since January 1796, except in the repairs and such additions as could he made to the garrison. During this time there had been expended by the general government on the fortifications of the island as follows: 1794, $1,327; in 1795, $6,866.54; in 1796, $1,124.
“But now the apprehension of a French invasion caused such clamor for protection among the people that immediate attention by the general government was bestowed upon properly fortifying Governor’s Island. Thirty thousand one hundred and seventeen dollars was at once appropriated to be expended upon the fort, which now became known as Fort Jay. Such was the fervor of the day that the professors and students of Columbia College went in a body to Governor’s Island and worked on the fortifications with shovels and wheelbarrows.
“Liberal appropriations were made by Congress in the three succeeding years for completing and improving the fort. In 1799, Congress appropriated $30,116.18; in 1800, $20,124; in 1801, $10,338.05. No further improvements were made until 1806, when Fort Jay with the whole of its buildings was demolished except the walled counterscarp, the gate, the sally-port, the magazine, and two barracks; all the rest was removed to give place for a work of durable materials. On the site of the old fort a new one, Fort Columbus, was erected, an inclosed pentagonal work with four bastions of masonry, calculated for one hundred guns, being of the same shape on three sides as Fort Jay, with the addition of fourteen feet on each side, and on the north side of a ravelin, with two retired casemates. Such was Fort Columbus when it was completed in 1809.”
Despite the flurried haste of New Yorkers to have the fort completed, despite the unprecedented exertions of the Columbia students with shovels and wheelbarrows, Fort Columbus, or Jay as it has been rebaptized of recent years in military circles, has never been in active service.
Indeed, during the war of 1812, only three years after its completion, the need of a post farther out to sea than this called for the erection of that quaint little brick strong-box just off present-day Fort Hamilton known as Fort Lafayette. It was called originally Fort Diamond but was renamed in honor of the great Frenchman on his visit to this country in 1824. Overshadowed by its great modern neighbor (Fort Hamilton), the little fortification is rarely observed, but it is still in active service and might give good account of itself if called upon to do so, better account in fact than its sire nestling close to America’s greatest city.
Not far from Fort Jay on Governor’s Island is a little work whose name is not unfamiliar to New Yorkers. It is Castle Williams. Begun in 1807, it was completed in 1811 and as a military weapon has never been of service to the city which it was created to help protect. As a landmark in the harbor, however, it has acquired some little distinction solely through merit of the years, just as some men live through an entirely commonplace youth and middle age to become in their last years notable figures in their communities as classmates of Father Time.
At about the time that Castle Williams was being constructed, a similar work was in erection just off the Battery, Manhattan, on a ledge of rocks now a part of the city itself. This was Fort Clinton, which is the Castle Garden, or Aquarium, of the present day. Fort Jay and Castle Williams, Fort Clinton and the Battery were the outing places of New Yorkers before the Civil War. To the Island or the Battery did the residents of the city repair for air and recreation on holidays and Sundays. An illuminating picture of this phase of the city’s life is drawn by Abram C. Dayton in his “Last Days of Knickerbocker Life in New York.”
“Castle Garden, the legend says,” he writes, “was created to protect the city against invasion. Whether these invaders were to be New Jersey Indians armed with bows and arrows or Staten Island pirates bent upon destruction with popguns and firecrackers is not related; but it is certain a very limited force would have been required to effect an entrance through its brick walls. About the time we write of its loud-mouthed armament had been removed” (about 1860): “it had been placed by special orders from somewhere on a peace footing. It was neither a concert saloon, an opera house, nor a receptacle for needy immigrants; but the old white-washed barn was devoted to the restaurant business on a very limited scale, as ice cream, lemonade, and sponge cake constituted the list of delicacies from which to select. The ticket of admission required to pass its portcullis cost one shilling; but that was a mere form instituted to guarantee perfect decorum, for it was redeemed as cash in exchange for either of the above specified articles of refreshment. At the close of a summer day its frowning battlements were crowded with listeners eager to catch a strain of martial music wafted from Governor’s Island.
“Rabineau’s swimming bath was moored to the wooden bridge which connected the old fort with the Battery grounds; and on its roof protected by an awning might be seen, after banking hours on summer afternoons, substantial citizens comfortably seated and refreshing themselves after their bath with the sea breeze, accompanied by mint julep and sherry cobblers.”
Prior to 1852, Fort Columbus was for several different short periods of time empty of troops, but since that year it has always contained a garrison. In addition to being the head-quarters of the Department of the East, the old post is now used as a military prison and as a landing-place for the aërial branch of the army.
A visit to Governor’s Island to-day is a pleasant excursion for a stranger in new New York and the port would be a new sight for most New Yorkers, so unfamiliar are familiar places to those who are closest to them. One must have a pass from the military authorities at the island to go through the old works, but this can be secured upon written application without great difficulty by any citizen of the United States.
A fine figure of a place Fort Columbus seems to be,—rather a braggart in its way! It spreads out, girded by its “dry moat,” over the crest of the hill on which it is placed, in a truly threatening attitude. But one does not need to be told that this is hollow sham. A single shell from a modern engine of war would, no doubt, finish all of its pretensions.
Looking from its sunny interior beyond its battlemented walls one can see the airy fabric of New York’s marvellous sky-scrapers against the eastern sky, a poignant contrast to the old stronghold. Age and youth! In this comparison the fort has that advantage which always inheres in years, it has seen youth grow from infancy and it knows the quick passing of all things.