My Friends at Brook Farm

by John Van der Zee Sears

My mother did not always attend the May Conventions, but whenever she went, she took one of us children with her. My first visit to New York was made as an unqualified member of the Albany delegation to something or other, I forget what. One thing I do not forget, however, and that is hearing Horace Greeley make an address, and afterward being puffed up with pride when the orator chatted familiarly with his small admirer at dinner in our hotel on Barclay Street.

When my mother was absent from home, the family was left in charge of our courtesy Aunt Catholina Van Olinda who kept the house with my elder sister Althea, while I was dispatched for the time to my grandfather’s farm. I was very much at home on the farm and spent many happy days there in early childhood, being regarded as a sort of heir apparent by the principal personages there, namely, my grandfather, John Van Der Zee the elder, and Tone and Cleo. The last named, Antony and Cleopatra, to speak properly, were ancient negroes born and brought up on the farm and rarely leaving it in all their long lives. They were slaves, inasmuch as they disdained to be emancipated, and “free niggers” they looked down on with contempt. They belonged to the Van Der Zee place and the place belonged to them, and not to belong to anybody or to any place was, to their apprehension, very like being a houseless and homeless pauper. As I was John Van Zee the younger, according to their genealogy the natural successor of Baas Hans, they extended to me assurances of their most distinguished consideration. My father, Charles Sears, was not in the line of succession, he being English or in other words a foreigner. They tolerated him, partly because he spoke to them in Dutch, the only language they knew or cared anything about, and partly because he was, after all, a member of the family by marriage. As he always brought a book in hand when visiting the farm, they made sure he was a drukker—that is, a printer or bookseller or something of that vain and frivolous description. Cleo attained great age, overrunning the century mark. In her later years she came by inheritance to my mother, and so rather curiously, it happened that while my father openly professed anti-slavery sentiments, my mother was a slaveholder, presumably one of the last of that class in the state of New York.

One of our neighbors in the Old Colonie was Thurlow Weed, the Boss of the Whig party in the Empire State, and the founder, proprietor and editor of the Albany Evening Journal, one of the most influential papers in the country. Father was on terms of near-intimacy with Mr. Weed, and this brought him in touch with Horace Greeley. Father, though never a politician, was interested in party affairs and in constant communication with the Old Line Whigs of the Henry Clay following, and I am under the impression that the consultations of the political firm of Seward, Weed and Greeley were sometimes held in father’s library. When he was editing the “Log Cabin” the party paper in the first Harrison campaign, Mr. Greeley was often a guest at our house, and at that period, he and father formed a warm friendship which continued during the remainder of their lives.

Having referred to Mr. Weed as the Boss of the Whig party in New York State, I think it due to the memory of an honorable man to state my belief that he never made one dollar out of politics. He gave a great deal of service and a great deal of money to the promotion of his political ideas, but never received a penny in return. He was a Boss indeed, directing party affairs with the strong hand of a Dictator, but he sought no profit and gained none, not even the thanks of those he served. So far from bettering his fortunes, his public activities involved constant demands upon his private purse. Not only party friends but party enemies called on Thurlow Weed for help when in distress, knowing that his hands would be open and his lips closed. Closed they were, but it was generally understood in the Old Colonie that the many seedy and needy applicants coming to his door must have made serious inroads on his income.

One noticeable case was that of a saloon-keeper, a Whig politician in a small way, who was supposed to control the “canal vote,” that is the vote of the floating population in the canal basin, among whom were boatmen ready to cast their ballots either way for a price. Mr. Weed did not approve of this man or of his methods, and the fellow went over to the Locofocos, bag and baggage. He took with him an ugly grudge against the Whig Boss and vented his spite in lies, slanders and defamations of the foulest kind. For years he made all the trouble he possibly could, but being a drinking man, he meanwhile drifted down hill, deviously but without a stop. When he had reached the bottom, in utter destitution, he came to Mr. Weed begging for aid—and he got it. More than that, after his death his children were supported until they could take care of themselves, and the costs, as we could not help knowing, were paid by our Beaver Street neighbor.

A final memory of Mr. Weed lingers in my mind, to the discredit of those who should have been his grateful friends. The last time I called on him was when he was living in New York with his daughter, I think in Broome Street. On greeting him I noted that he was much disturbed by some annoyance which he could neither conceal nor throw off with his old-time buoyancy of spirit.

His agitation was so evident and so unusual that I ventured to inquire as to the trouble which so vexed his serene temper. In reply he took up a copy of a prominent New York morning paper and pointed to a sub-editorial in which he was referred to by name as “a veteran lagging superfluous on the stage.”

That was the most unkindest cut of all. Mr. Weed was at that time living in retirement, but he still contributed vigorous and timely articles to the editorial columns of this same journal. He was grievously hurt by the gratuitous affront to which he had been so rudely subjected, but all he said was, “I may be superfluous, but no one can truthfully say I ever was a laggard.”

I believe the management of the paper apologized privately for the stupid insult, ascribing the sub-editorial to one of the juniors, and expressing regret that it should have been inadvertently printed. All the same, Thurlow Weed never wrote another editorial, the untoward incident putting an end to the labor of a long and arduous journalistic career.

Across the way from Mr. Weed’s residence in the Old Colonie was the Van Antwerp house, bearing the date 1640 in iron figures at the peak of the gable which fronted the street. It was built of yellow brick—or at least the gable front was so built—and the Van Antwerp legend was that these bricks were imported from Antwerp, the native town of their family. The last descendant was Juferouw Cornelia Van Antwerp who kept a little school in the basement of her dwelling, the family fortune having dwindled until this home was about the only property left to the Juferouw. In this school my sister Althea and I were taught the three r’s and not much else. The ancient Dutch spinster was a lady, well-bred, dignified and courteous, who held a high place in the elect circle or Old Colonie society, and was not the less esteemed because of her straitened circumstances. Her walk and conversation were no doubt edifying, but the curriculum of her scholastic institute possibly left something to be desired in the departments of higher education. She had one available qualification for her position, however,—being an expert in making and mending quill pens. She spent much of her time during school hours in shaping these writing instruments, and I imagine she eked out her slender income by supplying pens to the neighbors.