Historic Boys: Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times

by Elbridge S. Brooks

The good dominie's "seventhly" came to a sudden stop as the tinkle of the deacon's collection-bell fell upon the ears of the slumbering congregation. In the big Van Rensselaer pew it roused Stephanus, the boy patroon, from a delightful dream of a ten-pound twaalf, or striped bass, which he thought he had just hooked at the mouth of Bloemert's Kill; and, rather guiltily, as one who has been "caught napping," he dropped his two "half-joes" into the deacon's "fish-net"—for so the boys irreverently called the knitted bag which, stuck on one end of a long pole, was always passed around for contributions right in the middle of the sermon. Then the good dominie went back to his "seventhly," and the congregation to their slumbers, while the restless young Stephanus traced with his finger-nail upon the cover of his psalm-book the profile of his highly respected guardian, General Ten Broek, nodding solemnly in the magistrate's pew. At last, the sands in the hour-glass, that stood on the queer, one-legged, eight-sided pulpit, stopped running, and so did the dominie's "noble Dutch"; the congregation filed out of church, and the Sunday service was over. And so, too, was the Sunday quiet. For scarcely had the people passed the porch, when, down from the city barrier at the Colonie Gate, clattered a hurrying horseman.

"From General Schuyler, sir," he said, as he reined up before General Ten Broek, and handed him an order to muster the militia at once and repair to the camp at Fort Edward. St. Clair, so said the despatch, had been defeated, Ticonderoga was captured, Burgoyne was marching to the Hudson, the Indians were on the war-path, and help was needed at once if they would check Burgoyne and save Albany from pillage.

The news fell with a sudden shock upon the little city of the Dutchmen. Ticonderoga fallen, and the Indians on the war-path! Even the most stolid of the Albany burghers felt his heart beating faster, while many a mother looked anxiously at her little ones and called to mind the terrible tales of Indian cruelty and pillage. But the young Van Rensselaer, pressing close to the side of fair Mistress Margarita Schuyler, said soberly: "These be sad tidings, Margery; would it not be wiser for you all to come up to the manor-house for safety?"

"For safety?" echoed high-spirited Mistress Margery. "Why, what need, Stephanus? Is not my father in command at Fort Edward? and not for Burgoyne and all his Indians need we fear while he is there! So, many thanks, my lord patroon," she continued, with a mock courtesy; "but I'm just as safe under the Schuyler gables as I could be in the Van Rensselaer manor-house, even with the brave young patroon himself as my defender."

The lad looked a little crestfallen; for he regarded himself as the natural protector of this brave little lady, whose father was facing the British invaders on the shores of the Northern lakes. Had it not been one, almost, of the unwritten laws of the colonie, since the day of the first patroon, that a Van Rensselaer should wed a Schuyler? Who, then, should care for a daughter of the house of Schuyler in times of trouble but a son of the house of Rensselaer?

"Well, at any rate, I shall look out for you if danger does come," he said, as he turned toward the manor-house. "You'll surely not object to that, will you, Margery?"

"Why, how can I?" laughed the girl. "I certainly may not prevent a gallant youth from keeping his eyes in my direction. So, thanks for your promise, my lord patroon, and when you see the flash of the tomahawk, summon your vassals like a noble knight and charge through the Colonie Gate to the rescue of the beleaguered maiden of the Fuyck.[AL] Why, it will be as good as one of Dominie Westerlo's Northland saga-tales, won't it, Stephanus?" And, with a stately good-by to the little lord of seven hundred thousand acres, the girl hastened homeward to the Schuyler mansion, while the boy rode in the opposite direction to the great brick manor-house by the creek.

Twenty-four miles east and west, by forty-eight miles north and south, covering forest and river, valley and hill, stretched the broad colonie of the patroons of Rensselaerswyck, embracing the present counties of Albany, Rensselaer, and Columbia, in the State of New York; and over all this domain, since the days of the Heer Killian Van Rensselaer, first of the lord patroons, father and son, in direct descent, had held sway after the manner of the old feudal barons of Europe. They alone owned the land, and their hundreds of tenants held their farms on rentals or leases, subject to the will of the "patroons," as they were called,—a Dutch adaptation of the old Roman patronus, meaning patrician or patron.

Only the town-lands of Beverwyck, or Albany, were free from this feudal right—a territory stretching thirteen miles north-west, by one mile wide along the river front, and forced from an earlier boy patroon by the doughty Peter Stuyvesant, and secured by later English governors; and at the time of our story, though the old feudal laws were no longer in force, and the rentals were less exacting than in the earlier days, the tenantry of Rensselaerswyck respected the authority and manorial rights of Stephen Van Rensselaer, their boy patroon, who, with his widowed mother and his brothers and sisters, lived in the big brick manor-house near the swift mill creek and the tumbling falls in the green vale of Tivoli, a mile north of the city gate.

And now had come the Revolution. Thanks to the teaching of his tender mother, of his gallant guardian, and of the good Dominie Westerlo, young Stephen knew what the great struggle meant—a protest against tyranny, a blow for human rights, a defence of the grand doctrine of the immortal Declaration that "All men are created free and equal." And he had been told, too, that the success of the Republic would be the death-blow to all the feudal rights to which he, the last of the patroons, had succeeded.