Another Little Girl in Old New York Writes a Letter Our good friend Mrs. Charles E. Sherman of Lawrence, L. I. kindly sends us this copy of a letter written by a little seven year old girl, Lydia S. Lawrence, youngest daughter of John L. Lawrence, President of the Croton Aqueduct Board. It gives a quaint and amusing description of the great celebration which attended the formal opening of this great municipal improvement. We follow this by an equally valuable contribution on the same subject which gives a succinct history of the various attempts that preceded the final accomplishment of the introduction of running water, and a fuller description of the ceremonies attending the event. They are both valuable contemporary documents, and we were glad to get them. My Dear Brother Thursday October 12 1842. I returned home on Wensday from Mr. Tomlinsons where I have been boarding four months. Mr. and Mrs. Tomlinson came with us and spent the night here and went on to Connecticat the next morning. We remembered you in our morning and evening prayers as told us to do while we were at Bell Port and thought a great deal about you. We are all very busy, so I thought I would write you a letter because I thought they. would not get ready before the ship sailed. We have a Fountain in Union Square of the croton water, which plays every morning and afternoon from half past six to seven. We have also a Fountain in the City Hall park. I have had my hair cut off, so I thought I would send you a lock of it. Our garden looks yet quite well, althoge the flowers are all gone. The quince tree had more than three hundred quinces on this year, and Mother has been very hard to work making sweet meats. I am going to dancing school, Madame Ferrio's, with my three brothers Charles Thomas and Abraham. Brother Alfred came this morning to bid us good-bye, for he is going on a journey to the far west. Uncle Charles has got a very sore eye and is confined to bed with it. I will not write any more till after the Celebration, Saturday, October 15, 1842. The Celebration of the Fountain comenced on Friday. We went (in all five of us) Sister Anny, Thomas, Abraham, Rosanna and myself, all went into Murrays to the procesion. The soldiers looked very pretty and marched very fast. They exhibited an ox stuffed with straw and cotton. They also had a live sheep kissing the little live boy and a live calf was also exhibited. They had also a car drawn by four horses with the model steam boat of North America. They also had the printing press in wich Doctor Franklin worked, a plate of silver and gold (Alique) which were cake baskets silver spoons and now I have told you all and must bid you good bye. I remain as ever Your Affectionate sister Lydia Written by Lydia S. Lawrence, youngest daughter of John L. Lawrence, president of the Croton Aqueduct Board, being aged just seven years: it was to her brother who had lately gone to Manila in the Philippines. A Memoir of the Croton Aqueduct By Charles King At a very early day the want of a sufficient supply and a convenient distribution of good water, was felt by the citizens of New York. In 1774 and 1775, before the Declaration of Independence, considerable expenditures had been made in order to satisfy this want. The revolutionary struggle which had even then commenced and of which the City of New York felt the full effects, appears to have put an end to this enterprise for furnishing water before it had made any great progress. Scarcely, however, had peace returned, with liberty and National Independence achieved than our citizens again busied themselves about good water. In April 1785, Samuel Ogden made proposals to the Corporation for erecting and establishing Water Works to supply the city. In January 1786, proposals for a like object were presented by the Hon. R. R. Livingston and John Lawrence, Esq., and were favorably reported upon by the Committee to which they were submitted, but, in the end, failed to be carried out. So imperfect are the records of that day that there is no trace of what the plans were that were proposed by Messrs. Ogden, Livingston and Lawrence for the supply of water. Between the years 1786 and 1816 many other projects were considered, all of which failed to be put into effect, notwithstanding that during part of the intervening years the growth of the city was more rapid, and its prosperity and increase in wealth more obvious than ever before. In 1812 the causes of dissatisfaction between this country and Great Britain which had been gathering strength and irritation, having resulted in war, all local enterprises requiring credit and capital were postponed, but peace having been concluded at Ghent in December 1814, the subject of supplying the city with water was again resumed in 1816, and at a meeting of the Common Council in March 1816Jacob Radcliff being Mayor-a Committee was appointed to consider and report upon the matter. This movement also had no permanent results, and after years of fruitless resolutions, enquiry and experiments, and the discarding of numerous other schemes, in March 1829 the plan was conceived that afterward resulted in the Croton Aqueduct. The first contracts for work on this Aqueduct were made in April 1837, and it was so far completed as to permit water to be let in from the Croton dam on the 22nd of June 1842. On that date a boat prepared for the purpose called the "Croton Maid", and capable of carrying four persons, was placed in the Aqueduct, and was carried down by the current, arriving at Harlem River almost simultaneously with the first arrival of the water there on Thursday, June 23rd. On the following Monday, in the presence of the Mayor and Common Council, the Governor of the State, William H. Seward and Lieutenant Governor Bradish, etc., the water was admitted into the receiving reservoir at Yorkville, while a salute of 38 guns was fired. The "Croton Maid" which arrived soon afterward at the reservoir, was hailed by the assembled citizens with much enthusiasm as she afforded indubitable proof that a navigable river was flowing into the city for the use of its inhabitants. It was natural that so great an event as the completion of the Croton Aqueduct should be deemed by the citizens, at whose cost and through whose constancy it had been constructed, to be worthy of some public celebration, and the Joint Committee on the Aqueduct designated the 14th of October, 1842 as the date of the Celebration. Invitations were sent to distinguished citizens and representatives of foreign countries. The President of the United States, John Tyler, wrote as follows: Gentlemen : Washington, Oct. 11th, 1842. I should be most truly happy to be present at an event so interesting to your city as the celebration proposed for the 14th, and to which you invited me. Circumstances, however, deny to me the pleasure of such a visit. I heartily rejoice with the citizens of New York in the completion of a work so vastly important to the health and comfort of its inhabitants. It is justly to be classed among the first works of the age, and is honorable to the enterprise of the great centre of American trade and commerce. I tender to you, gentlemen, assurances of my high respect, John Tyler. |