Cadwallader Colden (17 page)

Figure 11. Cadwallader Colden and his grandson, Warren Delancey. Matthew Pratt, painted in 1771–1772. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

That year a description of Colden's appearance indicated that “the Governor is the best real Picture of an Old Man that I ever saw. He is 87 years old, has his hearing & sences [sic] as well as ever he had without marks of Age, except in his Eyes which are grown dim & his Head covered with strong white hair. His mind is excellent
and he is no churl, indeed he pushed me so hard that I was obliged to shear off.”
¹³

Tryon departed for England on April 7, 1774, and once again Colden became the acting governor. On April 19, a shipment of tea reached the New York harbor. Three days later, a group dressed as Mohawks boarded the
London
and threw the tea overboard. A second ship bearing tea turned about before anchoring and returned to England. In May the Committee of Fifty One was formed by the Assembly in protest of the Tea Act. That committee became the first public body to suggest a continental Congress.
¹⁴
The first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia from September 5 to October 26, 1774. The eight representatives from New York had specific instructions to pursue a resolution with Great Britain. They did sign the Congress's resolution that prohibited importation from Great Britain. On January 20, 1775, the New York Assembly created a committee to protest the Tea Act. In May a Committee of Sixty, which had replaced the Committee of Fifty One, was, in turn, replaced by the Committee of One Hundred. The members expressed loyalty to the Crown but opposition to parliamentary laws that were established without colonial representation.

While Colden remained in charge of provincial affairs, he received “A Circumstantial Account of an Attack that happened on the 19
^th
of April, 1775” from Thomas Gage, detailing the battle that took place near Lexington, Massachusetts.
¹⁵
Colden met with his Council on May 1 consequent to receipt of the information. In response to the Earl of Dartmouth's letter on March 3 calling for compliance on the part of the Assembly and restoration of public tranquility,
¹⁶
the Council indicated that the recent acts of hostility precluded any immediate efforts toward reconciliation.
¹⁷
The Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. Eleven representatives from New York attended. The Congress issued a petition of grievances and right to the king.

On May 18, Colden retired to Spring Hill, never to return
to New York City. On May 27, he wrote to Captain Vandeput of the
Asia
: “When Congress and Committees had taken the entire direction of the Government, it is extremely disagreeable to me to remain a spectator of the Proceedings and confusions in town which I had it not in my power to prevent: I have therefore retired to this place on Long Island where I shall be very happy to see you whenever you can make it agreeable to yourself.”
¹⁸

On June 14, the Continental Army was established and, a day later, George Washington was named commander-in-chief. On June 17, the Battle of Bunker Hill energized the colonial movement toward independence. Tryon arrived back in New York on June 25. Ironically, he was obliged to share the city's official welcome on that date with a welcome for George Washington, who was passing through the city en route to Boston. Colden's last published letter on the affairs of the province was addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth on July 3, 1775, informing him that Washington had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.
¹⁹

While in retirement at Spring Hill, Colden would have learned that, on July 9, 1776, after the Declaration of Independence was read to Washington's troops at the current site of the New York City Hall, the equestrian statue of King George III was torn down and destroyed. On August 27, at the Battle of Long Island at Brooklyn Heights, on the same island where Colden resided, Washington and the Continental Army were emphatically defeated by British troops. On August 29 and 30, the nine thousand American troops evacuated to Manhattan. Colden died on September 20, 1776, at the age of eighty-eight years and seven months. He was buried in a private cemetery attached to his Spring Hill farm.

Colden affixed his signature to his will on May 20, 1775. It was admitted to probate on March 15, 1779. The will stated that Colden's rights to a sixth part of the minerals and ores in a tract of 1,200 acres of land on the Mohawk River that he formerly held with James Alexander and Lewis Morris and others, and a sixth part of minerals and ores in several tracts of land on the west side of the Catskill Mountains were granted to his grandson Richard Nicolls Colden and his heirs. Colden's son David was to receive Colden's “negro slaves, Horses, Oxen & stock and cattle of all sorts, together with all Carts and Waggons and other implements of Husbandry and likewise all my Household and Table Furniture…. I give all my manuscript and printed Books to my son David.” Colden excused the debts owed him, by his sons Alexander and Cadwallader provided they made no demands on the estate. The estates' money, bonds, and notes were divided into five parts, equally between his sons Cadwallader and David, and his daughter, Elizabeth Delancey, the children of his deceased son, Alexander, and the children of his deceased daughter, Alice Willet.

Cadwallader, Jr., was heir to the lands at Coldengham; David was the recipient of the lands at Spring Hill, Flushing, Long Island. The remaining lands that Colden owned were to be divided and distributed into the same five equal parts as the money, bonds, and notes. The instructions to the executors were that they divide these allocations as soon as possible, selling some parcels, if necessary to ensure equitable
shares. Alice's children were to receive their shares on their twenty-first birthday or on the day of their marriage, whichever came first. Lastly, Colden willed that “my Body be interred in a private manner with as little expense as with common Decency may be.” His sons Cadwallader, Jr., and David and his daughter, Elizabeth Delancey, were made executors of the will.
¹

Nothing remains of the Colden Estate at Spring Hill. The farm, which had been leased by Colden on May 12, 1761, from John and Thomas Willet, had been sold to “Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden” on May 12, 1772, for £2,000. Reservation was made in the deed for “a certain
ancient
burying Place, fenced in with a stone fence or stone Ditch (where the family of the Willets have hitherto been interred) to and for the use of the family of said Willets to bury and deposit their dead from henceforth forever.”
²

David Colden, Cadwallader's son who inherited the Spring Hill estate, remained loyal to the Crown during the American Revolution. As a consequence, the property was confiscated in 1779 and purchased on July 30, 1784, by William Conwell of Flushing, Long Island. As the property passed by sale from one owner to the next, the name “Spring Hill” was supplanted by the sequential owners' names. When viewed by Edwin R. Purple in 1873, the house stood on a small elevation on the west side of the farm near the public highway. About one hundred yards northeast of the house, the old cemetery and grave of Cadwallader Colden was located. No sign designated the precise location of Colden's grave.
³

In 1924, Alexander J. Wall, the librarian of the New York Historical Society, visited the area, and noted that the house was still standing (see
fig. 9
, on p. 134) and was being used as the office of the Cedar Grove Cemetery. It was known as the “Colden House.” The foundations consisted of solid thick walls and the largest of the beams were hand-hewn. The hall and rooms were spacious with high ceilings. There were four chimneys and the doors were hung with H-hinges.
⁴

Wall chronicled the history of the Spring Hill homestead. Colden entertained the members of the Council in 1764 and General Gage in 1765 at the house. Soldiers from the artillery often dined there. In 1768, Reverend Samuel Auchmuty, rector of Trinity Church in New York City, visited. Between the time the confiscated estate was sold to William Cromwell in 1784 and April 1804 when it was purchased by the Cedar Grove Cemetery Association, the estate passed through fifteen owners.
⁵

The Coldengham estate, like Spring Hill, no longer exists. In 1767, Cadwallader transferred the property to his son, Cadwallader, Jr. A live descendant of the Colden's possesses a manuscript tracing of an original map of the estate (
fig. 12
). The tracing was made January 4, 1811. The map's written legend indicates that it is “A Map of Coldenham comprehending 2000 acres granted in the year 1719 by Letters Patent To Cadwallader Colden Esq…. Also 1000 acres of Land…released by his Excellency Gov
^r
Burnet to the said Cadwallader Colden by Indenture bearing the date 9
^th
day of April 1728…and also 720 acres of Land granted by letters Patent to Cadw
^ld
Colden Jun
^r
& David Colden in the year 1761.” The map depicts plots allocated to Cadwallader's children: Alexander, Cadwallader, Jr, and Alice Colden, and others. It also indicated areas that had been sold off.

The house in which Cadwallader Colden and his family lived for four decades, was replaced by a stone mansion by Cadwallader, Jr. Over the centuries, the elegant structure gradually disintegrated. The remaining stone elements at the junction of Route 17K and Stone Castle Road between the town of Montgomery and the city of Newburgh, New York, are identified by a sign that reads “SITE OF COLDEN MANSION/ BUILT OF STONE IN 1767/ BY CADWALLADER COLDEN JR./ ESTATE ESTABLISHED IN 1727/ AREA SINCE, COLDENHAM.” In the vicinity, in front of the elementary school, another historical marker was erected in 1998. It states, “JANE COLDEN/ 1724–1766. BOTANIST. HER/ RESEARCH, ILLUSTRATIONS AND/ MANUSCRIPT AT THE BRITISH/ MUSEUM ARE INVALUABLE TO HORTICULTURISTS TODAY.”

Figure 12. A map of Coldengham, January 4, 1811, designating the segments allocated to Cadwallader Colden's children, Alexander, Cadwallader, Jr., Jane, Alice, Catherine, and David. Courtesy of Robin Assenza, a living relative.

The reconstruction of the stone mansion, which has received National Historical Landmark status, is currently an issue of contention. In Montgomery, the Coldengham Preservation & Historical Society, which consists of about twenty-five members, meets monthly on Sundays. The members are dedicated to sustaining a remembrance of the estate.

The family of Cadwallader and Alice Colden has been the subject of two genealogical works. In 1873, Edwin R. Purple, a member of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, had an edition of fifty copies of
Genealogical Notes of The Colden Family in America
privately printed. Recently, The Coldengham Preservation & Historical Society published online an updated genealogy of the family (
www.coldenpreservation.org
).

Alexander, known familiarly as Sandy, the oldest of the Colden children, was born on August 13, 1716, in Philadelphia. He married Elizabeth, the second daughter of Richard Nicholls of New York City. Nicholls was a distant relative of a seventeenth-century governor of the province of New York. Alexander was appointed ranger of Ulster County in 1737. At an early age, he operated a store in the area of Coldengham. Within six years, he expanded to ownership of a store in Newburgh, a wharf on the Hudson River, a fleet of sailing ships, and a mill on Quassaick Creek. He operated the first ferry from Newburgh to New York City and a ferry to Fishkill across the Hudson River. He accumulated great wealth. Following the solicitation of Governor Clinton by Cadwallader,
⁶
in 1751, Alexander was appointed joint surveyor general of New York, and he became acting surveyor general when his father became lieutenant governor in 1761. He also became postmaster of New York and a vestryman of Trinity Church. In 1773, he resigned his office of surveyor and searcher of New York in favor of his son,
Nicholls.
⁷
Alexander died on December 12, 1774; his wife had died at Spring Hill nine months previously. Both were buried in the family vault in the courtyard of Trinity Church. Two of their sons and three of their sons-in-law served with the British Forces during the American Revolution. A grandson, Richard Nicholls's son, was editor of the
U.S. Sporting Magazine
from 1835 to 1836.

The Colden's second child, who was named David, died in infancy. Their first daughter, Elizabeth, was born in New York City on February 5, 1719. On January 7, 1738, she married Peter, third son of Stephen and Ann (Van Cortland) Delancey. Peter owned an extensive estate, and represented the borough of Westchester in the New York Colonial Assembly from 1750 to 1768. Peter died on October 17, 1770. Elizabeth died in 1784. They had twelve children.

The Delancey's oldest son, Stephen, became clerk of the city and county of Albany in 1765. After the war, Stephen's family moved to Quebec. The Delancey's second son, John, represented Westchester in the New York Assembly from 1768 to 1775, when he was elected to the Provincial Congress. A third son, Peter, was a collector under the Stamp Act, but resigned under pressure from the Sons of Liberty. He was killed in a duel on August 16, 1771, in Charleston, South Carolina, by an eminent local physician, Dr. John Haley. The oldest Delancey daughter, Ann, married John Cox of Philadelphia, and had no children. Her younger sister, Alice, to whom along with Ann, Cadwallader had offered advice,
⁸
married Henry Izard of South Carolina on April 27, 1767. After living in France during the American Revolution, the family returned to America, and Mr. Izard served as a delegate from South Carolina to Congress from 1780 to 1783. He next served as a senator from that state from 1789 to 1795, and, for a brief period, was president of the Senate. One of the Izard children, George, became a major general in the Army, aide-de-camp to Alexander Hamilton, and, later, governor of the Arkansas Territory. Another of the Izard's
sons, Ralph, was a naval hero at Tripoli during the first Barbary War. A World War II ship was named in his honor.

Another of the Delancey sons, James, was high sheriff of Westchester County until the Revolutionary War began. He became a colonel in the British forces, and, after the war, moved to Nova Scotia, where he became a member of the council. His younger brother, Oliver, was an officer in the British Navy, but resigned his commission. He continued to live in Westchester, where he died. The youngest son, Warren (see
fig. 11
, p. 154), distinguished himself while fighting for the British at the Battle of White Plains as a fifteen year old, and was made a coronet. After the war, he continued to reside in Westchester.