CHAPTER X.

VISITING SPONSORS.

Pages 83-91    

[Page 84]

     Two thoroughfares carried the traveler north and south past the Livingston and Lower Van Rensselaer Manors, and one of these passed the church and parsonage doors. 

     Sloops sailed up and down the Hudson, stopping at Clermont, and Claverack Landing, only four miles from the settlement of Claverack.  These sloops brought and carried passengers and merchandise, and the larger vessels sailed away to the Indies and distant ports on commercial errands, called "ventures" in those days.  The "venture" might turn out to be one of financial success to all who engaged in it, or through adverse winds and storms at sea, a loss of both lives and cargoes, and the ship itself.  These "ventures" were often as interesting to the women of the family, as to the men of their households, for with the cargoes of merchandise of a practical nature, came many a [page 84] wedding dress and tea-set, which were eagerly watched for in the homes of Clover-reach.

     The first mail-stages began running after the Revolution in this part of the country, and mails were delivered at Claverack as late as 1790 for the city of Hudson.  The travelers on the post-road risked none of the dangers of the deep, but stage-coach traveling had many drawbacks, as well as a charm wholly lost in these days of rapid transit by steam and electricity.  However these obstacles to a comfortable journey did not affect a group of Seminary boys going home for vacation.  Winter or summer in vacation time, the stage that stopped at the stage-house, where the post-road intersected the Columbia turnpike, dropped the weary and traveled-stained occupants who had come a long distance and with a change of horses took into its capacious interior all the boys who could not bundle up on top, and went on its way with a happy rollicking crowd of human freight.

     Pea-shooting was a form of youthful entertainment indulged in at the time, and the number and variety of targets to be discovered along a country road by a fertile brain, then as now, was not suggestive of brain [page 84] fag.  The boys who left the stage first, carried with them a sense of miniature battle, and themselves in the thick of the fight.

     The stage brought many travelers to Claverack beside the Seminary boys.  Some of these stood high in the counsels of the nation, or had served as officers in the patriot cause.  Others were friends who had braved the dangers and discomforts of a long coach journey to met old friends and family relatives.  No one thought then, as we are apt to forget to-day, that the Seminary boys on the top of the stage, with their infectious laughter and pea-shooters, and hair trunks packed with the varied miscellany that only a boy knows how to collect, were the future representatives of the new Republic.  So the country-side watched those who emerged from the stages, rather than those departing, and their scrutiny was not in vain.

     Perhaps no one event was the occasion of bringing so many strangers into the town as the baptizing of the babies.  Since, as the yeas rolled by , this continued to be one of the Dominie's most constant duties, and a common event at the Sunday morning service, and since the god-fathers and god-mothers who stood up [page 86] with the children, were many times those for whom they were named, the church services came to have a special pleasure outside of the sermon and the singing of the long-metre psalms.  More than once, when some little Catherine Van Rensselaer was to be baptized, or a Philip Schuyler, in the Van Rensselaer canopied pew sat General Philip Schuyler and his Claverack wife, Catherine Van Rennselaer, Colonel Johannes' daughter. [picture of]

     General Schuyler had won great fame since he married "sweet Kitty Van Rensselaer," and "sweet Kitty" herself had grown into a comely matron, with the dignified air of a woman who had seen much of life, and managed a household, and dispensed hospitality to even a large world than that of the country Manor.  There were those in the congregation who had been guests at her wedding twenty years before at Fort Crailo, and the whole country-side had heard of its grandeur.  Dominie Freilinghusen of the Reformed church of Albany had performed the marriage ceremony, and Claverack had never ceased to feel the keenest interest in Kitty Van Rensselaer and her young husband, and his increasing military honors.  The birth [page 87] of her children and their prospects in life, and their various personalities, for the Schuyler children often visited their grandfather at the Lower Manor, were matters of neighborhood gossip.

      Their mother had been beautiful as a girl, when she won the name of "The Morning Star."  Her own daughters inherited her beauty.  All this was an old but never wearisome story, but when General Schuyler and his wife came to the Lower Manor and served as sponsors for the nephews and nieces after the war, there was an added element of interest, for Mrs. Schuyler had not only proved herself a most courageous and capable General's wife, but she had been a heroine as well.

     Their home at Saratoga had been in the path of the British army.  The cruel murder of Jenny McCrea was in every one's mouth, but Catherine Schuyler determined to save what she could of the things which were dear to her at her country home.  Leaving Albany in her coach, in spite of persuasions to the contrary, she started with only one armed escort on her perilous journey.  On the road she met with fugitives who urged her to turn back, but her answer had been, [page 88] "A General's wife should know no fear."

     At Saratoga the summer harvest was ripe.  The fields presented a beautiful sight of waving grain.  General Schuyler had warned her not to let anything of value fall into the hands of the advancing army.  With a pang at her heart she gave directions to the tenants to fire their fields, and then went with her negro servant through the broad expanse of the home farm.  It is said that the negro was afraid to set torch to the fields, and gathering all her strength Mrs. Schuyler threw the burning torches herself into her own grain at different points, and in a short time the fields lay shorn of their beauty, a charred and smouldering stretch of country.

     With such valuables as she could carry, she returned to Albany where she arrived safely.  Her fearlessness in this exploit and her ability to obey her superior in command in the face of great danger, won for her many encomiums, and the congregation at Claverack felt a special proprietorship in her bravery.

     At times it was the Dominie's pew which was the center of attraction at the opening of the service, and when the time for baptism came, the Dominie's wife [page 89] held in her arms a little son, while at her side stood the baby's Uncle John Roush of Philadelphia for whom he was named, or at a littler later date Mr. Charles Seitz and his wife Charlotte Carver, also among the early settlers of Philadelphia, had come the same distance to be present at the baptism of another of their sister's children, this child also being named for a Philadelphia uncle.  The beautiful christening robes with their vines and wreaths and flowers of the finest embroidery, the blankets to be wrapped about the baby in the cold church, the little caps, yellow with age, with their inset lace and many shir-strings, and the most exquisite of all the fine needlework of the day,--which have come down to us, almost picture the dimpling babies within their folds, and tell stories of the long country afternoons, with the sound of bees and rustling leaves, the odor of orchards and flower gardens, the prattle of children playing in the hay, and cows coming home through the meadows.  What a wealth of life experiences went into the fashioning of the little garments, from the first stitch to the christening day, and with what heart-throes were they laid in the cedar chests, to wait for the grandchildren!

    [page 90] The procession of babies moved on week by week, and year by year, till Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler's eldest daughter, Angelica Schuyler, and her English husband John Barker Church, came down in Henry I. Van Rensselaer's sloop, the "Angelica" or their chariot, on a hazy September day, to Claverack Manor, and on the following Sunday stood up with little Angelica Van Rensselaer, the infant daughter of Robert Van Rensselaer and Cornelia Rutsen.  It probably did not detract from the attraction of this young Albany couple in the eyes of the country youths and maidens, that they had been the principal actors in a notable elopement, in which they had evaded even the stern eye of General Schuyler, until the nuptial knot was tied at the house of the young Patroon of the Van Rensselaer Manor at Albany.  Morrises and Van Cortlandts, De Peysters and Pattersons, Bayards, and Nichols, Gouverneurs and LeRoys and Alexanders all came from the outer world of cities and affairs, to stand up with the Claverack babies as the years went by, while the Dominie pronounced the blessing of the convenant over the heads of the baptized children, and the sponsors promised with their parents, to see that the [page 91] children were "piously and religiously educated."

     These baptism days were also festival occasions, and only second to the wedding days of the congregation.  The gathering of friends from far and near witnessed wonders of culinary skill in great house and farm house alike, and the feasts spread before the visitors were long remembered by the departing guests, as the incoming tide of story and adventure, public affairs and family news, were valued by the host and hostess, and their growing families of boys and girls.

     A tangible sign which has come down from these happy reunions, is the baptism spoon which was presented to the baby by the god-parent, in honor of the name the child bore.  The baptism spoons were smaller, but carried a greater charm in their shallow bowls, than the larger funeral spoons or the rings which were presented to the bearers at funerals in those days.

     It has been said of these times, that "marriages, baptisms and funerals were celebrated with great care and formality, and no more serious offense could be given than to neglect to invite to them anyone entitled to come, or a neglect of the invitation."    

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