Old Taverns of New York. Bayles William Harrison
vote of the Director and Council. Those who had been tapsters could continue as such for four years at least, but in the meantime, should seek some other means of livelihood, so as not to be dependent on it. Orders as to closing at nine o’clock every night and on Sundays were repeated. Tapsters were to report all fights or disorderly conduct in their places, and physicians were to report all cases where they were called on to dress wounds received in such disturbances. This does not necessarily indicate that New Amsterdam was at this time a disorderly place, for like New York of the present day, it was a cosmopolitan city. The population at that time was not over five hundred souls, and it has been declared that eighteen different languages were spoken by the inhabitants.
Some time previous to the year 1648 Daniel Litschoe established an inn on what is now Pearl Street in the outskirts of the town, which became the resort of the country people coming in from Long Island. Litschoe came out to New Amsterdam with the earliest settlers as ensign in the military service of the Dutch. He was with Stuyvesant at Beverwyck and on his order hauled down the lord’s colors. He also went out with Stuyvesant in the expedition against the Swedes on the Delaware as lieutenant.
The tavern seems to have been a good-sized building, for it is spoken of as “the great house,” but this is to be taken as in comparison with its neighbors. It had at least a quarter of an acre of ground attached to it, and stood back some little distance from the street. A part of the lot is now covered by No. 125 Pearl Street. In the spring of 1651, Litschoe leased this house to Andries Jochemsen, who kept it as a tavern or ale house for many years and had lots of trouble with the authorities. He would tap on Sundays and after nine o’clock, and his house was the resort of disorderly persons. After keeping tavern for some years in a house which he had built just outside the city wall, Litschoe purchased a lot inside the wall between it and the house he had resided in some years before, and here he, and after his death in 1662, his wife, Annetje, kept a tavern for many years.
When Sir Henry Moody came from Virginia in 1660 to exchange ratifications of the treaty to regulate commerce between that colony and New Netherland he was received with all the usual diplomatic honors. Two members of the council, under escort of halberdiers, were sent “to compliment him in his lodgings,” and Moody, appearing in the fort, presented his credentials. He resided a considerable time at the house of Daniel Litschoe and when he left the city he failed to settle his score, for which his library left at the house was sold. More people came into the city over the river road from the Long Island ferry than from any other direction, and Litschoe’s tavern near the city gate was an inviting resting place. It was one of the stations where fire-buckets were kept for use in cases of emergency.
The city wall, above mentioned, was a line of palisades straight across the island along the northerly side of the present Wall Street, passing through the present Trinity Churchyard. On the inside of the palisades was an embankment and a ditch. It was built in the year 1653, when England and Holland were at war and New Amsterdam was threatened by the New England colonists. Through this line of defence there were two gates, the land-gate at the present junction of Broadway and Wall Street and the water-gate at the river road or present Pearl Street.
Peter Cock added much to the piquancy of the gossip of the taverns and the town when, in 1653, probably no longer a soldier, he brought suit against Annetje Cornelissen Van Vorst, claiming the fulfillment of a promise of marriage. The case occupied the time and attention of the Court of Burgomasters and Schepens at a great many sessions, statements and counter-statements being presented to the Court, who, considering the case too large for them, sent it, with the papers, to the Director and Council for their decision. It was sent back to the Court of Burgomasters and Schepens, with a recommendation to appoint a committee to examine the papers and report. The final decision, pronounced May 18, 1654, was that the promise was a binding contract. From this decision Annetje appealed, but it was confirmed. In some way Annetje obtained a release, at any rate, she married November 11, 1656, Claes Jansen Van Purmerendt, a tobacco planter of Paulus Hook. Peter consoled himself with another Annetje, for on June 13, 1657, he married Annetje Dirks, of Amsterdam.
In 1661 Annetje Cock was a widow and in control of the tavern which Peter Cock had left. She asked permission to build a new house on the southeast corner of the lot, which request was refused, as it would be too near the fort. Her husband had contracted for the building of a house on the lot, which she claimed was voided by his death, and wished to make a new contract with others, but the court decided that the old contract was binding. A new house was built which was kept by her as a tavern for many years.
The taverns of New Amsterdam were probably modeled somewhat after those of Holland, for the Dutch were a people who stuck to the customs of the fatherland. The description of a Dutch tavern, from the journal of one of our citizens who visited a part of the Netherlands where customs have not changed for centuries is here given.
“It was the business of the good vrow or her maid to show up the traveller, and open the doors in the smooth partition of the box which was to receive his weary limbs for the night, and which otherwise he might not be able to discover, and after he crept into it, to come back again and blow out the candle, and in the morning to draw the curtains of the windows at the hour he fixed to rise. There was generally one room in which all the guests were received, and where there was a pleasant reunion in the evening, and all the visitors ate, drank and smoked. It had, in one corner, a closet, which, when opened (and, honestly, it was not unfrequently opened), disclosed sundry decanters, glasses and black bottles; and, on one side of the room, a rack in which were suspended by their bowls a score or two of very long pipes, each one inscribed with the name of a neighbor or owner. This was the room of Mynheer the landlord. He had no care beyond this; mevrow was the head of the house; she attended to all the wants of the guests, and gave them the information which they might desire. She was always on the spot as when, with a ‘wet te rusten,’ like a good mother, she bade you good night, and when, with a ‘hoo-y-reis,’ like an old friend, she bade you good-by.”
In the contract for building the ferry house on the Long Island side of the East River for Egbert Van Borsum in 1655, provision was made for bedsteads to be built in the walls as described above. Thus an apartment could be made to accommodate several travellers at night and yet, in day time, present a neat appearance and be used as a public room. Provision was also made for the closet or pantry, for it was a source of profit.
A few years later the Ferry Tavern of Van Borsum had acquired such a reputation, to which the culinary art of Annetje, his wife, greatly contributed, that it became the resort of the best citizens when they wished for something extra good, and of the officials of government, as we find that a bill rendered by Van Borsum in February, 1658, for wine and liquor furnished the Director and other officers was ordered to be paid.
When, in 1658, Captain Beaulieu wished to give a fine dinner to his friends, he did not go to the tavern of the Worshipful Burgomaster Martin Crigier nor to that of Lieutenant Litschoe, who entertained the English Ambassador a few years later, nor yet to the popular tavern of Metje Wessels; but was influenced, for some good reason, to go to the house of Egbert Van Borsum, the Ferry Tavern on the Long Island side of the river. Here the Captain and his thirteen friends sat down to a dinner for which Van Borsum, if the record is correct, charged him three hundred and ten florins, or at the rate of nine dollars per plate; and it appears that it was worth the price, for although Beaulieu was sued by Van Borsum for the bill, his defence was that he was to pay only one-half of the expense, the other half to be paid by a few of the other guests. No complaint was made that the amount charged was excessive. Annetje Van Borsum testified before the Court that she made the arrangement and bargain with Beaulieu alone and looked to him for payment. The Court took this view and gave a verdict against Beaulieu for the full amount. Annetje Van Borsum must certainly have been a fine cook, and the dinner must have been served with some expensive accessories, of the nature of which we can hardly surmise. It serves to show that New Amsterdam, even at this early period, was not entirely devoid of expensive luxuries (for such must have been the case). After the death of Egbert Van Borsum, his widow, Annetje, continued the business for several years, she herself managing the tavern, and her son, Hermanus, attending to the ferry. In her declining years she retired to the city of New Amsterdam where she died at a green old age.
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