II

THE INTEREST OF ITS LOCALITY

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The region of the old house is of considerable antiquarian interest. Near its site was in earliest days a large Indian village. Even to-day Indian relics “ turn up " not infrequently. The Creek which formed a loop a few hundred yards north of the house, was a favorite fishing ground, famous, by the way, for striped bass, and in it were natural oyster-beds of great fertility. Shellheaps marking camp sites are abundant, and in them have been found arrow points, sinkers for fish-nets, and the various odds and ends of aboriginal life. Cold Spring, which a few rods farther on bubbled up in great volume under the lee of "Cock Hill," was famous in Indian and Colonial times. Around the old house Indians camped, and from the shell beds and fire pits in the neighborhood many pieces of pottery have been obtained, some of which, of large size and extraordinary preservation, are exhibited in the American Museum of Natural History. The Indians remained in this neighborhood until well into the nineteenth century. The last of their race lived near the west end of the cutting" for the ship canal as late as 1835. Their stock, however, as on long Island and elsewhere, had changed, having intermarried with negro slaves; and it is to be noted that in the neighboring Indian graveyards, where burials were made in the characteristic primitive fashion the body bent and lying on its side on ashes and oyster shells, sometimes with a dog placed nearby there are also found negro skeletons with which appear coffin nails and buttons. Quite close to the old house there were two Indian cemeteries one east of the house and one almost south the latter still used in the memory of Mr. Isaac Michael Dyckman as the burial ground for negro servants. Of these there were many on the farm, some of them the descendants of slaves, most of them in part of Indian stock.

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During the Revolution the region of Kingsbridge probably witnessed more of the actual doings of war than any other part of the revolted Colonies. For six years or more it sheltered armies whose goings and comings were every-day matters. Early in the war it

was occupied by the Continental Army, probably as many as ten thousand troops, after the affair of Harlem Heights. It was evacuated just before the battle of White Plains and the local bridges (including a bridge of boats) destroyed, though the Americans still held Fort Washington, Cock Hill Fort (Inwood Hill), and Fort Independence on Kingsbridge Heights, the last two of these to be abandoned the day after White Plains (i. e., October 29, 1776), the first to be captured less than a month later. At this particular time the Dyckman farm swarmed with the enemy's troops. General Knyphausen and his Hessians advanced to attack the fort from Kingsbridge by the way of the "gorge," which is not far from the site of the present Broadway, beginning near Dyckman street. After the fall of Fort Washington, when some twenty-three hundred American troops were captured, the Kingsbridge region became for seven years the actual outer defense of the British holding New York. And we learn much of the happenings there during later years through the serious memoirs (published 1798) of the American General Health, and through the gossipy diary of a German soldier of fortune, von Krafft by name (published 1882, in Collections New York Historical Society), who gives, by the way, a topographical sketch of this region taken from the ledge of Laurel Hill (Fort George). And many details of this long occupation of the British here have lately been published by Mr. Reginald Pelham Bolton ("Relics of the Revolution," 1916). Thus we know where large camps were located, American, Hessian, Hanoverian, Highlander, Loyalist, and British Regular. Especially interesting is the information which has been discovered regading the large camp or cantonment which was sheltered by the hillside a few hundred feet west of the Dyckman house, where log cabins were built, perhaps several hundred in number. Here Mr. Bolton and his associates, Messrs. Calver, Hall, Dunsmore, Thurston, and Barck, have labored for months, even years, digging up the ancient works and studying with antiquarian devotion the relics which were unearthed. In this connection we record gratefully Mr. Bolton's labor of love in supervising for us the reconstruction of an officer's hut, which will long remain as an interesting relic of the Revolution in the little Dyckman Park. This hut is composed of

materials (excepting wooden parts) taken from an actual hut in the neighboring hillside, and each stone is replaced in almost exact relation to its neighbors (Plate 12).

The close of the Revolution saw many changes in the neighborhood of Kingsbridge. The camps were swept away, the huts were filled in or burned, the timber in part carried away for use in the upbuilding of ruined farmhouses, outbuildings and fences. New roads were established, notably Broadway, which arose during the war as a short cut from the forts below to the northern end of the island. And the period of "reconstruction" saw new houses established near it, like the present Dyckman house, the planting of new farm land, and the blossoming out of new orchards the older ones having been cut down to form a barricade between the two defenses to the south, Fort George and Fort Tryon. There was then in the air everywhere a feeling of confidence and of approaching national prosperity. In a letter of States Morris Dyckman, dated 1789, to a friend in England, he notes the "change which has taken place in the disposition of the people-prosperity is at hand and the change is decidedly for the better they already show the effects of a good and permanent government." Commerce began to flourish. Stages multiplied, and many private coaches and equestrians passed in front of the present house, and not a few stopped there for a chat with Mr. Jacobus Dyckman, who was widely known. The road was travelled by such personages as Washington, Hamilton, Schuyler, Lafayette, Chancellor Livingston, Burr, and Clinton. From that time until within a relatively few years the region of the old house has changed but little. As late as 1896 the quail were calling in Mr. Isaac Michael Dyckman's fields (near the present car shed of 218th street) - just as they had near the same place when the last wild deer were shot a century and a half earlier.

III

THE BUILDER AND HIS FAMILY

William Dyckman, who built the present house, was a grandson of Jan Dyckman, who came to New Amsterdam from Bentheim, Westphalia, toward the close of the Dutch occupation of New York (1660), settled in Harlem, and became one of the leading men of the new community. He is mentioned in the troubles with the Indians, when he was corporal of his company, and he is often referred to in the subsequent development of the uppermost part of Manhattan Island. With his associate, Jan Nagel, he was awarded a part of the present Dyckman tract about 1677, a portion of which land it is interesting to note remained in the hands of his descendants up to the present year, (1916) nearly two hundred and forty years later, when Mrs. Dean and Mrs. Welch exchanged two of the original lots for the adjacent two northern lots of the present little park. Jan Dyckman, it appeared, was an unusually energetic and far-sighted person. He it was who devised a means of inducing tenants to develop his land by offering leases of long standing on practically nominal terms. One of them gave his tenant the use of valuable property for seven years for a rental of a hen a year. It was, moreover, his plan to select particular pieces of property of great fertility, insuring profitable development, and his success and he was notably successful in his day was due in no little measure to this kind of business judgment. It may be noted that his talent in this direction was hereditary. Each generation of Dyckmans added desirable land to the ancient farm. The family, in fact, early became conspicuous as investors in real estate, until at last their holdings stretched from the top of Fort George throughout the "Dyckman Tract," northward beyond 230th street, eastward to the Harlem River, and westward to Broadway, in part to Spuyten Duyvil Creek and Tibbit"s Brook.*

*At one time (1868) their farm included about 400 acres, which is one of the largest in the history of Manhattan Island. We learn through the kindness of Judge James P. Davenport that its only rivals were the early farms of Petrus Stuyvesant (1805), James de Lancey (1785), and Teunis Eidesse Van Huyse (1720).

It became a family tradition that the Kingsbridge lands should be held in single hands and not sub-divided among many children. The property was never entailed, still there was the understanding that the member of the younger generation who best exhibited the family trait should be the holder of the family estate, and be looked upon as the head of the family. The remaining children received their shares in money which ultimately came from the profits of the paternal farm.

Thus William Dyckman, mentioned above, was himself a third son when he inherited the estate from his father in 1773; his home was then near the Harlem river, on the north side of 210th street, about 350 feet east of Ninth avenue and near the old Century House, which was the early home of his cousins, the Nagels. This house we believe he built at the time of his marriage; his father's and grandfather's house, which was probably a larger and better one, was south and west of it (208th-209th streets, between Ninth and Tenth avenues. But he did not long enjoy this family homestead. The Revolution came and Kingsbridge, as the headquarters of an army, was no longer a place of safety for his family, especially when his sympathies were with the Americans. So his home was abandoned and for the remainder of the war he lived with his cousins near Peekskill. He was then beyond the military age, and he appears to have taken no active part in the war. But four of his sons were soldiers, and of these two were given the rank of Lieutenant and were chosen to serve among the famous Westchester County Guides. They are mentioned by General Heath in his memoirs as experts in this dangerous service. One of them, Michael Dyckman, learning the countersign of the Loyalists' camp in Fordham (just below the present buildings of New York University, and in sight of the old house before the apartment houses appeared), led his party right into Emerich's cantonment and killed or captured forty refugees. Another time, and in the same region, his brother, Abraham Dyckman, followed by thirteen volunteer horsemen, took five prisoners of de Lancey's corps, and on their return, when attacked by the enemy's cavalry, "faced about, charged vigorously, took one man prisoner with his horse and put the rest to flight." Abraham it was, too, who penetrated