an historic interest, is long and low, constructed of stone and sup- plemented at a late period of its history by a "linto," or lean-to. It was erected in 1676 by Wessel Ten Broeck, a Westphalian, who, emigrating to America at an early age, was elected S chop per at Esopus and was a commissioner chosen to stiperintend the settlement of the Nieuw Dorp, including the villages of Hurley and Marbletown. Ten Broeck 's wife was a daughter of the Rev. Laur- entius Van Gaasbeek, by whom he had eight children, who are supposed to be the ancestors of all the Ten Broecks in the country. The well-known Knicker- bocker explanation of the derivation of the name of Ten Broeck was not relished by the descendants of that forceful ancestor. Wessel 's wife's name would make a telling title for a Dutch story or poem. Jacomyntie — how it suggests flax-white hair neatly quoiffed under a muslin cap, a Digitized by Microsoft® 458 The Hudson River well-filled, trim stomacher laced to the top, quilted petticoats with a neat vision of blue or red yarn stock- ings showing between it and the polished shoe-buckles. We seem to know that as Jacomyntie Ten Broeck stood in the doorway of that goodly stone house, there was in her round and pleasant face a consciousness of well- stocked larders and fruitful orchards, of cream in the dairy and butter in the crocks, and oily koeks on the ample shelves of the pantry. At a later day the old house, then one hundred and one years old, sheltered a notable company. There Robert R. Livingston, Pierre Van Cortlandt, Gou- verneur Morris, Colonel De Witt, Gansevoort, Scott, Ten Broeck, and others met to deliberate about the form of government to be adopted by New York State. There John Jay presented the draft of the constitution that was afterwards adopted at the old Bogardus Inn, at the corner of Maiden Lane and Fair Street in New York City. We quote from an article by Miss Margaret Win- slow, published in the New York Observer in 1883: Here, from time to time, have come the great men whom Kingston has either received or sent forth into pubHc life. Here General Armstrong, the boy hero of the Revolution, father-in- law of William B. Astor and ex-Secretary of War, lived in 1804, previous to his departure as Minister to the French Court, leav- ing a small marble fireplace, the first ever seen in Kingston, as a memorial of his residence; and here, last spring. General Arthur, the Republican candidate for Vice-President, bowed his tall head to escape collision with the time-honoured and smoke- begrimed rafters; and here we — the honoured Drs. Van Sant- Digitized by Microsoft® Rondout and Kingston 459 voord and Hoes, with the host and the writer — sat and discussed the history of Kingston; its first and second Indian wars, 1659 and 1661, and the burning of the fort, 1663 ; Stuyvesant's treaty of peace, 1661, at which period the wily savages ceded him the land on which the city now stands, "to grease his feet" in return for the compliment of his visit, on which occasion the renowned warrior changed the Dutch name of Esopus, or Groote Esopus, variously stated to be derived from the Latin fabulist and from a soft place, to Wiltwyck, or Wild man's village. The Dutch regained the town after its capture along with the Swedish possessions east of the Hudson in 1664, holding it, however, only for a very short time, as said one of my informants, adding thereto much of the intermediate history till its consolidation with Rondout and Wilbur into a city in 1872, and the building of the splendid new City Hall and Armory, the latter only just completed. There are many other buildings and several localities of special interest to those who love the mild antiquities of our brand-new country — the Academy, founded in 1774, in which De Witt Clin- ton and Thomas De Witt, Edward Livingston, Stephen Van Rens- selaer, and Abram Van Vechten received their early education; the stone Court House, built in 1818 upon the site of a much older one; and the First Dutch Church, organised August, 1659, by Rev. Harmanus Blom, sent from Holland as a candidate, and ordained by the Classis of Amsterdam, 1660. The fac-similes of signatures of the fifteen successors of Blom, carefully gathered by the venerable Dr. Hoes, and shown me at the close of our pleasant e veiling conversation, are sufficient guarantee that, from the first, Esopus — Wiltwyck — Kingston has been in the care of that blessed people "whose God is the Lord." William Beekman, from whom have sprung all who bear that respected name in the annals of New York, was Sheriff