Colonial days in old New York

by Alice Morse Earle

As the punishments accorded for crimes were not severe for the notions of the times, it is almost amusing to read some fierce ordinances,—though there is no record of any executions in accordance with them. For instance, in January, 1659, by the Director-General and Council with the advice of the burgomasters and schepens it was enacted that “No person shall strip the fences of posts or rails under penalty for the first offence of being whipped and branded, and for the second, of punishment with the cord until death ensues.” It is really astonishing to think of these kindly Dutch gentlemen calmly ordering hanging for stealing fence-rails, though of course the matter reached further than at first appeared: there was danger of a scarcity of grain; and if the fences were stolen, the cattle would trample down and destroy the grain. Later orders as to fences were given which appear eminently calculated to be mischief-making. “Persons thinking their neighbors’ fences not good, first to request them to repair; failing which to report to the overseers.” In 1674 all persons were forbidden to leave the city except by city-gate, under penalty of death; this was of course when war threatened.

The crime of suicide was not without punishment. Suicides were denied ordinary burial rites. In Dutch days when one Smitt of New York committed suicide, the schout asked that his body be drawn on a hurdle and buried with a stake in his heart. This order was not executed; he was buried at night and his estates confiscated. When Sir Danvers Osborne—the Governor for a day—was found dead by his own act, he was “decently interred in Trinity churchyard.”

Women in New York sometimes made their appearance in New York courts, as in those of other colonies, in another rôle than that of witness or criminal; they sometimes sat on juries. In the year 1701, six good Albany wives served on a jury: Tryntje Roseboom, Catheren Gysbertse, Angeneutt Jacobse, Marritje Dirkse, Elsje Lansing, and Susanna Bratt. They were, of course, empanelled for a special duty, not to serve on the entire evidence of the case for which they were engaged.

Many old records are found which employ quaint metaphors or legal expressions; I give one which refers to a custom which seems at one time to have been literally performed. It occurs in a commission granted to the trustees of an estate of which the debts exceeded the assets. Any widow in Holland or New Netherland could be relieved of all demands or claims of her husband’s creditors by relinquishing all right of inheritance. This widow took this privilege; it is recorded thus:—

“Whereas, Harman Jacobsen Bamboes has been lately shot dead, murdered by the Indians, and whereas the estate left by him has been kicked away with the foot by his wife who has laid the key on the coffin, it is therefore necessary to authorize and qualify some persons to regulate the same.”

There was a well-known Dutch saying which referred to this privilege, Den Sleutel op het graf leggen, and simply meant not to pay the debts of the deceased.

This legal term and custom is of ancient origin. In Davies’ “History of Holland” we read of a similar form being gone through with in Holland in 1404, according to the law of Rhynland. The widow of a great nobleman immediately after his death desired to renounce all claim on his estate and responsibility for his debts. She chose a guardian, and, advancing with him to the door of the Court (where the body of the dead Count had been placed on a bier), announced that she was dressed wholly in borrowed clothing; she then formally gave a straw to her guardian, who threw it on the dead body, saying he renounced for her all right of dower, and abjured all debts. This was derived from a still more ancient custom of the Franks, who renounced all alliances by the symbolic breaking and throwing away a straw.

In other states of the Netherlands the widow gave up dower and debts by laying a key and purse on the coffin. This immunity was claimed by persons in high rank, one being the widow of the Count of Flanders.

In New England (as I have told at length in my book, “Customs and Fashions in Old New England,”) the widow who wished to renounce her husband’s debts was married in her shift, often at the cross-roads, at midnight. These shift-marriages took place in Massachusetts as late as 1836; I have a copy of a court record of that date.

I know of but one instance of the odious and degrading English custom of wife-trading taking place in New York. Laurens Duyts, an agent for Anneke Jans in some of her business transactions, was in the year 1663 sentenced to be flogged and have his right ear cut off for selling his wife, Mistress Duyts, to one Jansen. Possibly the severity of the punishment may have prevented the recurrence of the crime.