The book of Daniel Drew

Front matter

THE BOOK OF

DANIEL DREW

A Glimpse of the Fisk-Gould-Tweed Regime from the Inside

Contents

Page

I. Jay Gould's "History" 3

II. A Militiaman in the War of 18 12 7

II

JAY wrote his history about Delaware County in York State. My story — the first part — will have to be about Putnam County, on the other side of the Hudson. For I was born there — in 1797. It was in Carmel, on a farm above the Lake, on the "Pond Hill Road," alongside of Whangtown Brook. Follow up that brook until you come to a hill on the left as steep as a meeting-house roof. Climb to the top. And there, just at the fork of the road where it turns to go to Farmer's Mills, is where the house stood. There were locust trees in the front yard, and a well of cool water alongside the house, in the back yard. My father's name was Gilbert Drew. He was of English extraction. My mother was a Catherine Muckelworth, of Scotch blood, as you could guess by the name. She was a master-hand in sickness, and kept in the house a store of roots and herbs. There was boneset and pennyroyal, smartweed, catnip, skunk cabbage, sarsaparilla, wild turnip, and such like. In those days it was a good thing to have a parent that knew something about medicine. Because the saddle-bag doctor was hard to locate just when you wanted him. He wasn't always very knowing either. "Old Bleed'em, Puke'em, and Purge'em," was what we used to call him — "Old BUsters" was another name.

I didn't get much schooling — somehow never took to it. In fact there wasn't much book-learning to take to in those days. Carmel then wasn't built up around where the village now stands. What there was of the village nestled around Old Gilead Meeting-house, at the other end of the Lake from us. Old Gilead was near Mt. Pisgah, and a good two miles from my home. It was a different kind of a place from Brimstone Hollow, a mile or two beyond. Old Gilead used to be known only as "Gregory's Parish," until he preached — Parson Nathan Gregory, I mean — that wonderful sermon of his from the text, "Is there no balm in Gilead .?'* whereby the entire meeting was so set on fire with godliness that they named the church "Gilead Meeting-house" from that day. Carmel was settled by people from Barnstable County^ on Cape Cod, and had lots of religion even in its earliest days.

Well, as I started to say, in my day the preacher used to have both parishes, Gilead and another, called Red Mills, a few miles away. He would take turns, living for a spell at one place and then for a spell at the other. During his stays at Gilead i he kept a school in his house. So that I got a little education. But it was only in snatches, so to speak. When you've got to walk three miles for it, the amount of book-learning you're going to bring back with you isn't going to be very hefty. Of course, there were the spelling-bees. But I had never got much beyond the "b-a, baker," in school; and so I always got spelled down the very first time round. But I never minded that very much. I never did care two pins what people thought of me. I'd take my place in any spell-down, no matter how many people were looking on.

Then, too, even when there was a parson-teacher at Gilead, there was no end to the things that used to pop up and keep me from school. Whangtown Brook used to have some of the biggest trout you ever saw. And when a boy brings home a good string of fish for the table, his ma isn't going to scold him much for playing hookey from school. And I was needed a good deal around the farm. Not that we were poor. For those days we were comfortably well off — that is, compared to the rest of the people. We had a farm of nigh on to a hundred acres, and that was what lots of people didn't have. In those days nobody up in our part of the state had any great store of this world's goods. For this was, as everybody knows, just after the Revolutionary War. In the war, our part of York State was what was known as the Debated Country. The Red Coats were stationed down in New York City, the patriot lo THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW

troops up in the neighbourhood of Albany. This left Putnam and Westchester Counties between the two, like a grain of wheat between the upper and nether mill-stones, as Scripture says. The region was well nigh ground to pieces. First the Red Coats would overrun the county. Then the Patriots would take a turn at it. Until, by the time they both got through, the farms looked about as handsome as a skinned rabbit.

Sugar was very high. We used maple sugar a good deal. Father also would drive over to Fishkill on the Hudson, and get of the store-keeper a molasses barrel after the molasses had been drawn out. In the bottom of an empty molasses barrel is a whole lot of caked molasses that makes as fine sugar as a man ever put in his mouth. But even with these shifts, sugar and sweetening were scarce things. Sometimes, when we were to have company and sweetening was scarce, mother in making a pie would sweeten only one end of it. She would place it on the table in such a way that the company would get the sweet end; and we boys, Tom and I (Tom was my brother, a little older than rne), would have to steer for the sour end. Molasses was good for medicine also. Because the itch was almost everywhere in those days. It was well nigh the most bothersome complaint we had. Lice are not so serious. After you get used to them they don't bother you much. But the itch is a pestersome

THE BOOK OF DANIEL DREW ii

thing. Unless you keep it down with a powerful hand it will break out all over you. And molassesand-sulphur was a sovereign remedy.

Tom and I had to work hard, often during school term. Father was old, mother being his second wife. And our farm, besides, was almighty rough and hilly. Some parts of it were as steep as the shingles on a house. Then there were the stones and rocks to clear away. How sick I got of prying those rocks out of the fields, with an old axle for a crowbar, and stone-boating them over to the boundaries to make fences of.

The woods were so plentiful that the farm was not of much use except for stock-raising. And stock-raising means work pretty nigh all the time. Because there were always poor spots in the fences. And, trust me, there is no critter like a heifer or a bull calf for finding weak spots in a fence, particularly if it's a line fence. And when your cattle get over into the other fellow's field, you have to get after them mighty quick. Also our pasture lots were for the most part woods. We had earmarks in those days by which we could tell our cattle if they got mixed up with others. For example, the left ear would be notched on the top with the right ear cropped off square and a hole in the middle. So that if we found a critter with a notch in the right ear instead of the left, we knew he belonged to somebody else. When you have to look through the woods for your milch cows, to bring them home at night for milking, with nothing to go by but the sound of the bell dingling from the cow's neck, and sometimes not even that, they would be so far off; why, it means that you've got work on your hands. When there was nothing out in the fields to do, the chores had to be looked after. And then, just like as not, mother would say, "Dan, I need a new broom." That would mean that I'd have to look up a straight birch sapling from the woods, and with a sharp jackknife cut one end of it into splints and bind them around, so as to make a new broom. We had to cart our farm truck, or young calves, eighteen miles across country to Peekskill-on-the-Hudson. From there a sloop ran to New York, for carrying passengers and freight. Later on, a line of market wagons went through Carmel to Peekskill twice a week, and gathered up the produce of the farms. But in the early days, each farmer had to do his own marketing.

So I reached the age of fifteen without much book-learning. Then came the War of i8 12. And the school-teacher wasn't heard of any more. The farms, as I said, had been left so spoiled by the Revolutionary War as hardly to make grazing for a goose. And now, just when the farmers were getting on their feet again, along comes the War of 18 12 and knocks things gaily west once more. We knew in Putnam County that a war was on, even though there wasn't any fighting in our section. Because we used to get news regular, although it would be sometimes a little late in coming. There was the Red Bird line of stages from Albany to New York. They changed horses at Luddington's Tavern, in Carmel — these stages ran only in winter, because in summer travel from New York to Albany was by sloop. In the summertime, also, when the boats were sailing on the river, there was another ^ine of stages, running from Carmel to Peekskill, by the turnpike which went just south of the Fishkill Mountains across Peekskill hollow. We got our news from the stage-driver, as he drove up to Carmel in the great stage that was & painted bright red, and with the bells jingling on the four horses. These stages would come once a day on their way through Somers, to Carmel, to Luddingtonville, and so on up north. (It took four days for the stage to make the trip from New York to Stockbridge, Mass., and Bennington, Vt., through Dingle Ridge.) There were also postriders, who came into the town every Saturday afternoon on horseback with newspapers from Hartford and Poughkeepsie.

Then, too, we used to learn the news in a general way when the cobbler came to the house once a year to make up the year's supply of boots and shoes for the household. "Whipping the cat" used to be what we called his visit — I guess likely from his

I always driving the cat away from his work bench, for she seemed possessed to hang around and get his waxed ends jummixed up. This visit of the cobbler was quite an event each year. Father would prepare for it by swapping a pair of cattle or a load of potatoes down at Foster's tan-yard, a mile the other side of Luddington's Tavern, for a few sides of leather. Then the cobbler would come for a week or so and make the leather up into foot-wear. So when the news he brought was about a war, and about the goings-on in the great world outside, a boy of fifteen was going to listen with both ears. When the cobbler came it was the boy's work to whittle out the pegs for him. A boy would really get more news from the cobbler than any other member of the family, since he would be nearer to him.

In these ways, little by little, we learned about the victory of Commodore Perry on Lake Erie, and the big doings of our navy out on the high seas. But it seems that these victories on water hadn't done much good; because the military campaign along the entire northern frontier of our country was going against us. The English were pushing in on every side. It looked as though New York might be taken. The President had issued a draft for troops to defend the country. And men were paying as high as a hundred dollars for a substitute. That hundred dollars looked big to me. It seemed an easy way to earn a large lump of money. Times were getting harder and harder out on our hillside farm; for banks all over the country were stopping specie payment, and silver was getting as scarce as hens' teeth. So when, on top of it all, my father died, I decided that the time had come. I made up my mind to leave the farm in charge of my brother Tom (he being the oldest, he was by rights the one to stay home and take care of things), and go out and see the world, and make money as a substitute in the army. First along mother didn't exactly take to the idea. But I showed her I was sure to make big money. I was to get one hundred dollars out of hand; and as my board in the army wouldn't cost me anything, the money would be clear gain. It was a powerful argument, because she was thrifty. A hundred dollars all in a lump looked pretty nigh as big to her as it did to me. But just then she happened to think of another thing. For mother was old-fashioned.

"See here, Danny," said she; "you're under age, and to get into the service you'd have to tell a lie. And besides, you might get killed; and then where would the hundred dollars be.?" I answered that I would agree to leave the hundred dollars with her to keep for me, before I started. As to my being under age, I told her not to bother herself about that point. I would take care of that. Women, anyhow, are apt to be squeamish about business transactions. Men are more sensible — they know that if a cat would eat fish she must be wiUing to wet her feet. And I told mother that I would take care of the age limit. I calculated that, for a fellow as tall for his years as I was, I could fix my age all right.

And I did. The Government was hard pressed for men. So the recruiting sergeant didn't narrow me down very close when I told him I was of age. I got my hundred dollars, handed it over to mother to keep for me, and in full regimentals of the State Militia, with knapsack on back and musket over my shoulder, I set out for Peekskill. There I found a sloop going to New York, and got aboard. These sloops were big affairs. They carried people, live stock and freight, all huddled together. When the wind and tide were contrary, or when the wind died down altogether, they anchored, and you would be out all night just in making the trip to New York. In that case you'd have to sleep the best way you could. But you could find a good berth on the hay or straw which usually formed a part of the boat's cargo. As long as it didn't rain, you could pass a night very comfortable.

It was a great event in my life, this trip to New York. When finally we came to where the Harlem River empties out into the North River, the man at the helm pointed it out to the passengers, and said, "there was the island, and the city was at the lower end of it." Another hour of sailing brought us to where the city lay. We landed at a wharf alongside where the Washington Market now stands. (The shore at that point has been filled in a good deal since that day. Back in those days, boats of light draft could sail right in and land pretty near to the market.) They marched me off along with the rest, and took me across the North River to Fort Gainesvort, opposite New York City. It was near Paulus Hook (which is now Jersey City). There my company was stationed, I suppose to protect New York.

And now my good luck in enlisting showed itself. For my company didn't have to do a smitch of fighting. I just lived there in the camp, without it costing me a cent for food or lodging; and at the end of three months, on a February's day, a British sloop-of-war from Europe sailed into New York Harbour with the news that our Peace Commissioners at Ghent had succeeded in making a treaty. The war was over.

It was mighty good news for everybody. That winter had been one of the hardest New York City had ever seen. The weather was so severe, the North River froze over to Paulus Hook. Hickory wood sold in New York that winter for $20 a cord, and hogs fetched ^11 a hundred. (That price for butcher's meat set me thinking, as w^U be seen a little later.) Milk was a shilhng a quart. And the President, when the news came, had been just on the point of calHng for 75,000 more militia. I was as glad as the rest. Perhaps a httle more so.

I never was cut out to be a soldier. Not that I worried much about the hardships of life in camp. When a fellow has been reared on a hill-side farm, his cradle a sap-trough, and has been brought up to eat from wooden plates, he's used to pot-luck, and life in an army camp doesn't seem hard at all. Still I was glad when the news came of peace. In a battle there's always a danger from bullets and bayonets, and from cannon balls. I'm by nature a peaceable man. And I had cleaned up a hundred dollars in the space of three months. It was a good stroke of business.

I set out for home as soon as I was mustered out. And for a few days I was glad to be back. But I soon saw that I wasn't intended for a humdrum life. I had had a smack of big things, and now the everlasting chores on the farm didn't gee with my tastes. My brother Tom was there to take care of those things. (He said, with something pretty near to cuss words, when I spoke to him on the subject, that since I was such a gadabout, somebody had to buckle down and run the farm, in order to take care of mother.)

So I made my plans. Going to mother, I said, "Mother, I want my substitute money. I'm going into business."

"Goodness sakes!" she replied; "what is it this time .'* Some new fangle, I'll bet, to waste your money on,"

"No new fangle at all/' said I; "rm going to be a drover. I'm going to buy up cattle for the city market. And I need the hundred dollars to start me off. Vm young. But that's the time to start in. Early sow, early mow."

"But are you sure, Danny," said she (for the idea began to take hold of her); "are you sure that you won't lose your money .?" I told her I'd planned the thing all out; it was going to be a money-maker. She handed the hundred dollars over to me, and I became a drover.

Not exactly a drover, either, in the full sense of the word. I became a buyer of bob calves. The laws against bob-veal weren't very strict in those days — that is, they weren't enforced. If you could get anybody to buy the stuff, the law didn't poke its nose in and stop you. And so, I would go around among the farmers and buy a calf very soon after it had been dropped. I had my troubles. Bob-calves are shaky on their legs. Then, too, there's its mother to bother you. I found it easier to get around the law objection against bob-veal than the mother objection — so to speak — that pair of wicked horns, when you go to take the calf away from its dam! But the right kind of handling would do it. And then, by hurrying the calf to market, I would get the critter off my hands before it sickened and died. I dare say that the flesh now and then was pretty soft for real good eating. Peopie used to say, "Veal bought from that young Dan Drew can be sucked through a quill/' But then, folks who said these things were jealous of me, because I worked hard and managed to get along.

Besides, with me it was a case of calves or nothing. Because I didn't have the money to go into the grown-up cattle business. You can buy calves on a small capital — yes, sometimes without capital at all. Because, a farmer who has a bull calf on his hands and doesn't want to feed it, will often let you have it on credit. Sometimes the farmer thinks that a calf is so misshapen and puny that it is going to die; and then he will be glad to get it off of his hands on any terms. But when it comes to parting with his grown-up critters, a farmer is almighty particular about whom he trusts.

Ill

THESE years of mine as a calf-drover were broken in upon a little later. I went into the circus business.

Some time after the War of 1812, the travelling circus came into fashion. The people in those days lived in little settlements. They were lonely. They didn't have much amusement. So, when times became settled once more and the farmers had recovered from the war, the Rolling Show came in and did lots of business. Only we didn't call it a show in those days, nor a circus — no siree! The people wouldn't have come near us. Because the preachers thundered against circuses and all such worldliness. To get the trade of the church people, we called it a "Menagerie" and "The Great Moral and Educational Exhibition."

Putnam and Westchester counties were headquarters for the circus business in early days, particularly Star's Ridge, in the town of South-east, and Purdy's Station, just below Croton Falls. I guess the reason for this was, because those two counties are just north of New York City. Being a beautiful farming region, with Bridgeport, Conn., and Danbury just across the State line, this region became naturally the winter quarters for the New York shows. The circuses would start out from our section each spring, and come back to us in the fall, for winter quarters. In this way all our part of the State got to talking circus. There was old HakaHah Bailey, of Somers — Somerstown Plains it was, back in my day — five miles below Carmel. He brought over the first elephant ever seen in the county. "Old Bett," he called her. In front of the tavern there in Somers — the Old Elephant Hotel they called it — you can see even yet a pedestal with an elephant carved on top of it. And Seth Howe, down at Turk's Hill, near Brewsters', when he came to make his fine summer home there, had stone animals carved and stuck around the grounds here and there. Besides, there was Gerard Crane, of Somers — everybody has heard of "Howe and Crane's Great London Circus." Then there was Turner, of Bailey and Turner, of Danbury; and later on, Phineas Barnum, from Bridgeport. Isaac Van Amberg also started his menagerie from our section. The Weekses, also well-known in the circus business, came from Carmel. The town was full of circus, back in those early days.

So when Nate Howe, from down Brewsters' way — he was Seth Hov^e's brother — rounded me up one day as I was on one of my calf-buying trips, and said he was looking for a smart and handy young man like me, to be a driver and an all-round man with his show, I got the fever and started in. They put me at all sorts of work. In those days the circus was a one-horse affair compared to what it has grown to now, and one man would have to help out in a dozen different kinds of work. He would be a mule-driver, canvas-man, gate-keeper and feeder of the animals, sometimes all in one day. And most like as not, now and then he would have to turn in and help out with the clown's part. The clowns in those days had speaking parts. They cracked jokes on the politicians and local celebrities in the village where the show was exhibiting, sang the ballad, "Betsy Baker," and did flipflaps. Then, too, since there wasn't much advertising in those days, when we landed in a town and while the workmen were getting the canvas up, the one of us who was acting the clown for the day would go along the street, togged out in his tom-fooleries, and with a bugler parading in front. After he had got a crowd around him he would mount a barrel-head in front of the village tavern — about the time the stage arrived, if possible — and from that stump would announce the show, tell where it was to be found, and read off the list of the animals that would be shown. I used to like the part of clown. It was fun to crack jokes and set the boys and girls to laughing.

I always did like a good joke, anyhow. Inside the canvas we used to have the animals arranged along one side, with the seats for the people along the other side. The performers' ring was in the middle, between the two. I was a good hand with the beasts, because I knew how to handle them. With the hay animals, such as deer, elk, zebu-cows and so forth, I was right at home, having been raised on a farm. Elephants were regarded in those days jl as dangersome; but my farmer training with horses and horned critters made me now a good man for handling risky beasts of all kinds. Then, when it came to the big cats, such as tigers and other bloodthirsty varmints, I knew how to get butchers' meat for them of the right kind and in the right way. Because Td been, so to speak, in the butcher's line also. Upon landing in town, if it was the day for feeding them — we used to feed the cats only every other day, so as to keep them healthy; because in their native state they don't eat much oftener than that — I would look up some butcher and get him to give me a basket of bones and scraps for the cats. I would pay him by getting the clown to make mention of the butcher's name in some flattering manner, during the performance that afternoon. Sometimes a butcher would give me all the scrap meat I needed, on condition that he wasn't to be hit by any of the jokes — this would be after I'd hinted to him that the clown was going to get off some good jokes at those merchants in the town who didn't support the show. I knew how to handle men, as well as animals. And being smart and handy at all sorts of work, I was promoted higher and higher; finally I was offered a part ownership in the show. Like as not I would have taken it. But just then something happened: I got religion. The churches were not very numerous in those days. So when a preacher wanted to get up a revival in a part of his circuit away from his meeting-house, he would use a grove, if it was summer time, or a schoolhouse, in the winter. It was good business policy for us circus people, on a Sunday, to be seen in church along with the godly; because it kind of gave respectability to our business — it helped out the "Great Moral Exhibition," on our showbills. Never shall I forget that day, or that meeting, when I first got converted. First along during the meeting I was cold as an icicle — just a looker-on. But pretty soon the religious melodies began to get hold of me. Those were hymns with an edge to them, in those days. Seems as if hymns we sing nowadays aren't anywheres near so searching powerful as those we used to hear:

"Tremble, my soul, and kiss the sun; Sinner, obey thy Saviour's call; Else your damnation hastens on.

And hell gapes wide to wait your fall."

I tell you, tunes like that don't let you forget them.

They keep ringing in your head, no matter how i| many years have passed since. In those days they didn't mince matters :

**Far in the deep, where darkness dwells, A realm of horror and despair, Justice has built a dismal hell And laid her stores of vengeance there.

"Eternal plagues and heavy chains. Tormenting racks and fiery coals, And darts to inflict immortal pains, Dyed in the blood of damned souls."

I got religion then and there. When the preacher called out, "Hasten, sinner, to be wise," I hastened. I didn't stop to ask what my old companions would think of it. (I never did care what people thought of me, anyhow.) All I thought of was to get to the mourners' bench. And so it wasn't lon^ before I was up there, in front of the whole congregation. I told them I had a fervent desire to flee from the wrath to come.