Hastings in 1790, The Year of the First Census

The 1790 census: a page showing the numbers for Yonkers and Greenburgh.

The census you and I have just completed is the twenty-third national population count. Since the Constitution directs that a census be taken every ten years, it does not take very higher math to determine the date of the first census: 1790. Representatives to the first official Congress of the United States, which met in New York in 1789, were apportioned to the thirteen original states based on an estimate of their populations. But since the democratic ideal of the new government was representation based on exact numbers, the people had to be counted. All of them.

This job was assigned to the U.S. Marshals, the new law enforcement branch of the judiciary. The marshals of each district were empowered to hire assistants, who would be paid at the rate of $1 for each 150 persons counted in the open country, or $1 for each 300 if the assistant worked in a city. It was not a simple head count. Since the number of representatives for a state would be calculated based on the number of free citizens (not including Native Americans) plus three-fifths of the number of “others” (that is slaves), it was necessary to have separate counts for free people and for slaves. The 1790 census also enumerates males and females, and breaks free white men into two categories—those under 16 and those over 16. Historians theorize that the First Congress was trying to determine the size of the country’s workforce, and its military strength. Questions were raised immediately about the accuracy of the 1790 census. President Washington himself believed that the U.S. contained more than the reported 3.9 million people. But even so, the 1790 census is a fascinating source of information on early America, and Americans.

Hastings was not incorporated as a separate entity until 1879. The area that would later become our village appears on the 1790 census as part of the town of Greenburgh, which included everything from Hastings to Tarrytown, and as far east as the Bronx River. Greenburgh, as you can see here in a tabulation of its 1790 census information, had only 215 households, and a total population of about 1,400. This included 300 free white males over 16 years (208 were heads of their households) and 323 free white males under sixteen. Free white females numbered 616. In addition, there were 122 slaves, a little shy of New York’s average, which amounted to 12% of the population.

Detail of an 1880 copy of the 1785 map drawn up by the Commissioners of Forfeiture for New York showing how Philipse Manor was divided and to whom it was sold. In 1880 the map was redrawn and "updated" from supposedly more accurate records. The text in small caps has been added, including the word "Hastings", and possibly also the position of the "school house" and the streets marked out in the center of the village.

The 1790 census does not record the name of every individual, only the heads of households. And there is no indication of where in Greenburgh each family resided, so we don’t know for sure who lived in our area. But several of the names on the census have a strong Hastings connection. Peter Post, keeper of the tavern at Five Corners and hero of a local skirmish with Hessian soldiers during the war, headed a household that included two boys under 16, six women, and four slaves. The other Hastings innkeeper, Evert Brown, whose tavern was on Broadway near the Yonkers border, had an even larger household of 19. This included seven slaves, making him the third largest slaveholder in Greenburgh.

Five years before the census had been taken, the state of New York had seized the property of loyalist Frederick Philipse, a manor that reached from Spuyten Duyvil to the Croton River. They sold the land off in lots, giving preference to those who lived on the land at the time. A map drawn up in 1785 gives the names of the purchasers. In the Hastings area, one of these plots went to Post, and the plot directly over the line into Yonkers went to Brown. Another was purchased by Jacobus Dyckman. Judging by the map, Dyckman owned a house on Broadway near Washington Avenue. His name also appears on the census as head of a household including seven men, three women, and three slaves.

George Fisher, who purchased the southernmost plot in Hastings, does not have a house with his name attached to it on the map, and is not even mentioned on the 1790 census. He appears to have sold his property relatively quickly to Adrian Leforge and James Fargee, both variations on the familiar Hastings name of Lefurgy. The northernmost plot in Hastings, running over the border into Dobbs Ferry, was bought by a man listed on the map as James De Clarke and on the census as Jacobus D. Clarke. A house with his name next to it can be seen on the map on what is now North Broadway. A slew of other familiar names appear on the 1790 census: Odells, Van Tassels, Van Warts, and also Abraham Dobbs, head of the family that ran the ferry crossing the Hudson to the north of us.

It is hard from these bare bones to get a feeling for what Westchester was like in the 1790s. In maps of Westchester from the time of the Revolution, our area was represented as nothing more than a roadway interrupted by two taverns. Much of Philipsburg Manor had been farming country, and the area continued to be largely agricultural into the 19th century. But if we follow the fortunes of the Lefurgy family, we can see hints of the changes that were to come for the Hudson valley. The Lefurgys were tenant farmers under the Philipses, landowners after the Revolution, and by the late 1790s they had become involved in shipping and the sloops, the maneuverable single-masted ships that carried furs, timber, fish, and passengers up and down the Hudson, encouraging local industry and paving the way for the future domination of steam and rail.

Watercolor of Philipsburg Manor and the Lower Mill at Yonkers, painted in 1784 based on sketches taken during the Revolution, one of the few images of any kind that gives us a feel for the rural character of Westchester in the late 18th century. (This watercolor is in the collection of Historic Hudson Valley, Tarrytown.)

Houdon in Hastings: The Life Mask of George Washington

As soon as we had finished writing the previous week’s post on Jean-Antoine Houdon’s bust of Robert Fulton in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we realized that that eminent French sculptor is actually represented in Hastings, in our own collection.

In our small but select library, in a glass case, is a copy of the life mask that Houdon made of George Washington in 1785. At the time, Houdon was working on a commission for the Virginia Legislature. Two years previously, America, France, and England had signed the peace treaty that finally ended the Revolutionary War, and General George Washington had retired as commander of the Continental Army and returned to private life. The Virginia Legislature decided to honor Washington for his courage and patriotism with a full-length marble statue that would stand in the capitol building in Richmond. The governor asked Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, the United States’ ambassadors in Paris, to suggest the best artist for the commission. They both recommended Houdon. “I find that a Monsieur Houdon of this place possesses the reputation of being the first statuary in the world,” wrote Jefferson, using a term for a ‘sculptor’ that has since gone out of fashion.

Houdon was delighted with the commission, which he considered the most important of his career. The American artist Charles Wilson Peale painted a portrait of Washington and this was sent to Houdon as a guide for his work. But Houdon insisted on taking Washington’s image from life. He accompanied Franklin back to the United States and arrived at Washington’s Mount Vernon residence in October of 1785. During his two-week stay, Houdon followed Washington around, observing his posture and expression. He also took detailed measurements of his body and created the life mask to serve as a model for Washington’s face. He applied grease to Washington’s skin, put quills in his nostrils so he could breathe, and then covered his face with wet plaster. This impression created a mould that, once dried, could itself be filled with plaster to create a positive image of Washington’s face. Because Washington necessarily had his eyes closed, Houdon had to hollow out the pupils of the plaster mask to give the face a life-like expression.


Houdon took the mask back to Paris with him and used it to create the likeness of the final statue, which was erected in Richmond in 1796. Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette, and many of Washington’s relatives praised the statue as the most lifelike representation of Washington that had ever been made. By 1796, General Washington had become President Washington, and was just finishing his second term. He had become, if possible, even more famous than he had been in the 1780s, and Houdon’s statue drew national attention.

The mask itself was prized as the most authentic likeness of America’s first president. In order to make the positive mask, the mould had to be broken, so only one mask was ever made from the original mould. This mask is now in the collection of the Morgan Library in New York City, most likely purchased by financier and art collector J.P. Morgan on one of his many trips to Europe.

Ours is but a humble copy, made at least a century later. It was on display here in the Draper Observatory Cottage in the 1950s when the cottage housed a public reading room, but it certainly may have been purchased long before, probably by one of the Draper family. The round plaster pedestal that is part of the mask is unusual and may someday help us identify when and where our copy was made. Masks and busts of famous men and women were popular library accessories at the turn of the century, and there are many copies of Washington’s mask in libraries around the United States. In fact, you can still buy one today -- on eBay.

The Draper Reading Room as it appeared ca. 1950. Washington's mask is not visible in the picture. It may have been where it is now, in the Transit Room, which you can see through the doorway in the center of the photograph.

The 18th-Century Sloop “Nancy”

The “Clearwater” and the “Sojourner Truth” ca. 1980. The “Clearwater,” birthed in Poughkeepsie, was built in 1969 by Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. as a teaching tool for environmental education.

Here at the Historical Society, it sometimes feels like “history” begins in the 19th century. Aside from a few Indian arrowheads, our earliest artifacts, our earliest maps, and our earliest photographs are all from the 1840s or '50s. But there are a handful of items in the collection from 18th century. The earliest are probably the three documents related to the ship called the “Nancy.”

To get some idea of what the “Nancy” looked like, go down to the Hudson River and watch for the “Clearwater.” The “Clearwater” and the “Nancy” are both sloops – single-masted sailing vessels with sails aligned along the length of the ship. Sloops were the workhorses of the Hudson River from the time of the earliest European settlers to the growth of the railroads in the 19th century. They were maneuverable ships that could handle the Hudson’s strong tides, variable winds, and sometimes shallow waters, and required only a small crew. The Dutch used them to connect their early settlements in Fort Orange (now called Albany) and New Amsterdam (now Manhattan). In those days, the cargo was often trading goods – furs and grain, or flour from the local mills. By the 1790s, the sloops were carrying fish, lumber, straw, mail, and passengers.

1836 painting by Hastings resident George Harvey showing a sloop docked at the Hastings waterfront, printed on a Historical Society notecard from 1983. (The original painting is in the collection of the New-York Historical Society.)

One of these hard-working sloops was the “Nancy.” The three documents in our collection give us a great deal of information about her. She was about half the size of the “Clearwater” -- 44 feet long and 14 feet 9 inches wide, and weighed 35 tons. She was built in Albany in 1794. In March of 1796, her owner leased her to Philip Forgey and Corbus Lefergy for “one hundred and four pounds current money of the state of New York.”

The two later documents in our collection, dated 1796 and 1797, are operating licenses issued by the U.S. Government and bearing the embossed seals of both the New York Customs House and the Naval Office of the District City of New York. Apparently, licenses had to be renewed annually, since each one permits the owner to carry on the “coasting trade” for “One Year from the date hereof, and no longer.” Her original title was “the Nancy of New York,” but on these two documents she is rechristened “the Nancy of Greenburgh.” (Hastings, as you will recall, was not incorporated as a village until 1879.)

Lease and one of the two licenses for the sloop "Nancy." These documents have been digitized by the Westchester Historical Society. Click on the documents to view them on the Historical Treasures of Westchester County web site. Click on the word "next" at the top of the window to cycle through the pages of the documents.

Forgey and Lefergey are only two of the many variations of the familiar Hastings family name of Lefurgy. The Lefurgys are some of the earliest identifiable residents of Hastings, having been tenant farmers under Frederick Philipse before the Revolution. Lefurgys married into many prominent local families, including the Dobbs, the Snedens, the Browns, the Pulvers, and the Posts.

While we haven’t yet been able to trace Philip Forgey, “Corbus” may have been Jacobus (also known as James) Lefurgy, who was born in Hastings in 1761 and died here in 1826. Further research in the extensive collections of Lefurgy papers given to the Society by Margaret Lane and Clarence Parker may reveal more about the “Nancy” and her cargo and help us fill in the details of Hastings’ early history.

John P. Davies’ Historical Map of Westchester

Every generation of Hastings residents has its history buffs. One such was civil engineer John Percival Davies. Being a mapmaker, Davies came up with the idea of a map that would visually encapsulate the entire history of Westchester County – or at least the period from the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609 to the completion of the railroad lines in the 19th century.

Davies was born in South Wales in the UK, but lived much of his life in Hastings. He built his own house at 169 Edgars Lane, and had Margaret Sanger and Lewis W. Hine as neighbors. Hastings oldtimers remember Davies as the first captain of Hastings’ World War I Home Guard, from which he resigned to enter the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1918.

Captain John P. Davies of the Hastings Home Guard in 1917. (Click the photograph to see the entire Home Guard group.)

But by 1932, Davies was working in the city on 40th Street. He seems to have been an expert mapmaker, because our collection includes a number of maps that Davies drew up for the village of Hastings – street maps, an Air Raid Protection Service map, and a sociological map for Superintendent John Hopkins dissertation on the Hastings public school system. Davies’ office was right around the corner from the New York Public Library, and it was there that he did the research for his historical map.

The final product was printed on buff paper and hand colored in pale washes of blue and red, giving it all the romance of an antique. Among the wealth of details are tiny drawings of Patriots and Redcoats, trains and horses, and the proud coats of arms of Westchester’s earliest European settlers.

Sigges Rock on the Andrus Property

Needless to say, the map includes several important Hastings landmarks. One is Sigges Rock. Today this huge boulder on Andrus property on the east side of Broadway straddles the official line between Hastings and Yonkers, but it is said to have marked the boundary between the Weckquaeskeck in Dobbs Ferry and the Manhattes in Yonkers in Indian times. The name itself means boundary stone in the Algonquin language. Another landmark on the map is the neutral forge that served both sides during the Revolution, and was later incorporated into the house that is today called Forge Cottage at 383 Broadway. The third Hastings landmark is marked by crossed swords—it is the spot on Broadway at Edgar’s Lane where, in 1777, the Hessians soldiers and the American troops under Colonel Richard Butler clashed.

383 Broadway ca. 1900, said to have been a neutral forge during the American Revolution

It is a good-sized map, 17 x 23 inches, and far too large to fit on our scanner bed. But when Katie Hite, president of the Westchester County Historical Society, was looking for pieces to include on their “Historical Treasures of Westchester County” web site, she scooped up this map and took it away with her to scan at the Westchester County facilities. Thanks to Katie and Patricia Dohrenwend, Director of the County Archives and Records Center, we have not only an excellent digital image of the map, but also a wonderful collection of Hastings masterpieces on the web.