New York a Little City

While with Robert Bowne, young Astor was making acquaintance not only with hunters, trappers, and fur-gatherers from up country, but also with shippers to foreign ports, and with the rising men of New York. Life was forming itself about the young immigrant in recognizable shape. The Quaker shippers and men of standing in the Society, naturally came under his observation in this Quaker stronghold.

John and Robert Murray were among the most noted of these men. The two brothers had owned more ships before the Revolutionary War than any other men in the country. Robert Murray had also been singled out as one of the five persons wealthy enough to own a coach, which in order to avoid an appearance of undue pride, he called "my leather conveniency." John Murray, the elder, had died soon after the war, but Robert had a son John, and a second son, Lindley, the grammarian. All the Murrays were deeply interested in philanthropy. The elder John had a country home out by the old Powder House and Sunfish Pond, near Twentieth Street, very far up town, while Robert owned the whole of Murray Hill, which was named after him.

John Jacob Astor was becoming acquainted with his surroundings even as distant as the Murray home.

Perhaps the most significant fact connected with the Murrays, was a society of which John Murray, Jr., was treasurer. Events dated back with the New Yorkers of that day, to before, or after the war. As early as the Revolutionary War, "The Society for Promoting the Manumission of the Slaves, and Protecting Such of Them as have been Liberated," had been formed, and met at the Coffee House, with John Jay as President. Its committees were formed largely of Quakers—the names of Samuel Franklin, John Keese, Willett and Jacob Seaman and William Shotwell being among the number. So early did abolition societies begin in the new world! Fresh arrivals to American shores found much to consider here, besides a chance to get on in the world.

The old Quaker Meeting House stood at this time in Liberty Street, that is, the building stood forty feet back, with a long yard in front. New York did not count her square feet of land as carefully then as now, and there were gardens both in front and rear of many homes,—cheerful gardens full of flowers, that spoke of the native lands of the occupants of the houses attached. The sending of flower seeds over the seas, was a trace of sentiment that traveled in the holds of the ships, that touched the shores of both the new and the old world. There were vegetable gardens, too, planted after Dutch and German, Scotch and Huguenot, English and Welsh fashion.

The Dutch housewives leaned over their doors which were cut through the middle, and watched the comings and goings of their neighbors in restful moments, or spoke a friendly word to a passer-by, when not engaged in household duties, while their husbands smoked their pipes in peace on their own front stoops in the cool of the evening.

In 1786 the city only counted twenty-three thousand inhabitants and was a neighborly place. Everyone knew the man or woman who passed him on the street, and even at the Battery, the favorite walk of pedestrians, one was familiar not only with "the Battery walkers," but with the children who played on the grass as well.

While young Astor was meeting many new people, there were those nearer to him by ties of blood and native country, who held his interest, and others to be found for the effort.

His brother Henry was prospering in these days. The beautiful young wife whom he had married, he, as well as others according to Katie Bininger, delighted to call "de pink of de Bowery." His pride in his young wife caused him to bring her home many presents of gay dresses and ribbons, so that she rivalled even the unquestioned charm of a clove pink. The young matron was industrious as well as beautiful, and found ways to help her husband in his business. They continued to live in good old Dutch fashion over their shop.

Henry Astor had conceived the idea of driving out of town, fifteen or twenty miles, and purchasing droves of cattle on their way to the city; later selling the animals to less enterprising butchers at an advanced price. In this way, and by other avenues of trade, his fortune was increasing, and seemed likely to eclipse that of his younger brother.

The German Reformed Church,—an offshoot from the Reformed Dutch Collegiate Church of New York,— of which the youthful Rev. John Gabriel Gebhard had become pastor, while John Jacob Astor was yet watching for a way to open for his own coming to America, still stood on Nassau Street between John Street and Maiden Lane. "While opposing sentiments were growing hot in the city before the war, the young Domine had expressed himself frankly and loyally, from his pulpit, as on the side of the Colonies. In a city invested by the British, such sentiments were not favored in private, much less from the public desk, so the young man, after a two-years' pastorate in New York, had been among the loyal third of the inhabitants, who left this British stronghold for a purer and more patriotic air.

He had gone with his little family to Kingston, and a short time afterward became the pastor of the Reformed Dutch Church at Claverack, New York, in the Lower Van Rensselaer Manor. The German Reformed Church, in common with many others, had been closed during the war, though in this case through the influence of the Hessians in command, the church had not met the indignity of being turned into a riding school or prison by the British, but was preserved in an exceptionally good condition.

After the war was over, the intrepid young Domine was called back to his old charge, but being settled by this time in his new home, in one of the most charming sections along the Hudson River, he declined the call, and John Jacob Astor did not find his fellow townsman in the German Church in New York.

He did find an earnest young minister by the name of the Rev. John Daniel Gross, and heard preaching in his own mother tongue, as well as the singing of German hymns, which moved his music-loving soul.

He also found Baron Steuben among the members of this church—a man of whom all German-Americans were proud. He was a prominent figure in the city at this time, in both public and social life. Among other positions of honor which he held, was that of Vice President of the Society of the Cincinnati.