Stages for the north originally started from Cortland Street; later the starting point was moved up to Broadway and Twenty-first Street, and as other means of conveyance improved and multiplied, the point for starting was moved north and further north until finally the railroad was finished through to Albany and the stage coach was a reminiscence of bygone times.
It is "159 m. from N. York" to Albany by the Post Road, as the old mile stones figure it. When they were set up, a hundred years or so ago, New York City was south of the present City Hall, and one can get some idea of the city's growth when he knows that there still exists on Manhattan Island a stone imbedded in a bordering wall along Broadway, and in about its proper place, in the neighborhood of Two Hundred and Fifteenth Street, which reads "12 miles from N. York."
KING'S BRIDGE.
This trip starts with King's Bridge, built by Frederick Philipse in 1693. That bridge—which, like Mark Twain's jackknife, that had had two new handles and six new blades, but was still the same old jackknife—still connects Manhattan Island with the main land, being supported on stone piers that are said to be the original ones used. There is but one other bridge in the entire trip to Albany that can rival its antique and aged appearance, and that crosses the Roeloff Jansen Kill in Columbia County. Just East of the King's Bridge was the "wading place" of the Indians, and later of the Dutch, where the valiant Anthony Van Corlear met his fate, and, according to Irving, gave the stream its present name.
To one who likes to speculate as to what might have been, had things been different, King's Bridge affords large opportunity for thought. It seems always to have been a favorite haunt of the human race, its encircling hills and accessibility by water no doubt being responsible for this popularity. Extensive beds of oyster shells testify to former Indian occupancy, and the Dutch appear to have shown the same preference for this quiet nook, though they finally pitched their tents at the lower end of the island which furnished larger opportunity for trade. If the city had been established here, would we to-day be taking our pleasure jaunts into the country where now is the Battery, and would our antiquarians still be discovering Indian remains in that region?
Bolton's History of Westchester County says that the site of the present village of King's Bridge was that originally selected by the Dutch for their city of New Amsterdam, it being a spot protected from the blasts of Winter by the encircling hills, and it may have been that the swamps of Mosholu Creek gave them pleasurable anticipations of dykes and ditches—a touch of home. They had but to re-name the creek and make it a real Amster Dam.
Spuyten Duyvil Hill toward the west was known to the Indians as Nipnichsen. Here they had a castle or stockade to protect them against the Sauk-hi-can-ni, the "fire workers", who dwelt on the western shore of the great river Mohican-i-tuck, and from which later came that delectable fire-water known as "Jersey lightning," against which no red man is ever known to have raised a hand. In later days three small American redoubts, known as forts Nos. 1, 2 and 3, crowned this same hill. One of these is now doing duty as the cellar walls of a dwelling. On the rise of ground to the east known as Tetard's Height, was Fort Independence, or No. 4. This series of eight small forts, which covered the upper end of Manhattan Island from the heights of the adjoining mainland, seem to have been more ornamental than useful, as they fell into British hands with little or no fighting. No. 8 overlooked Laurel Hill, on which stood Fort George.
In the early days King's Bridge appears to have been the only connecting link with the mainland, for not only did travelers for the north go this way, but it seems that those for the east also availed themselves of this approach to the mainland, as Madam Knight, on her journey from New Haven to New York, in 1704, speaks of coming to "Spiting Devil, else King's Bridge, where they pay three pence for passing over with a horse, which the man that keeps the gate set up at the end of the bridge receives."
The "Neutral Ground" came down to this point, and during the Revolution it was the borderland over which the raids of both belligerents swept. Congress, recognizing its importance, ordered in May, 1775, "That a post be immediately taken and fortified at or near King's Bridge, and that the ground be chosen with a particular view to prevent the communication between the City of New York and the country from being interrupted by land."
Here in January, 1777, Major-General Heath attacked a body of Hessians under Knyphausen and drove them within their works, but the Americans were in turn driven off, and again in 1781, in order to afford the French officers a view of the British outposts, the American Army moved down to King's Bridge when the usual skirmish followed—in fact, it was a storm centre so long as the British occupied New York.