3000 Acres

So exactly where was Coldenham? There are old maps with dates of 1749, 1755 and of course Cadawaller’s own map dated 1760, that have Coldenham clearly marked but give no indication of the boundaries for the 3000 acre patent granted to Cadawallader. I asked Joe Devine from Montgomery what’s known about the property lines and he said this is a question the Coldenham Preservation and Historical Society is trying to answer.

More recently I came upon a map created by Claude Joseph Sauthier that was published in 1779. This means that the map was being created in the years shortly after Cadawallader Sr. sold the entire property to his son. This map differs from its’ predecessors in that it is very detailed and focuses on property boundaries. Coldenham and its’ neighbors are identified, as are geographic details and the roads of that time period. Tin Brook can again be clearly seen and the east/west road running through the property probably closely follows present day Route 17K. I think the road running to the south is what is now named Maple St. seeing as it is the road closest to the site of the original Colden home. All this seemed really helpful until I started comparing the 1779 map to our satellite map and began to see how the proportions don’t match which makes sense given early mapping methods but is disappointing none the less.

I gave up the idea that I would be able to trace the property lines from an old to new map and decided the boundaries would slowly reveal themselves as I found more locations known to be part of the original property. I’ve marked what I currently know. The single red square shows the site of the Cadwallader Jr. mansion ruins and the pair of squares shows the family cemetery and my best guess at the location of the original Colden home.

No. 93

The Jane Colden manuscript containing her over 300 descriptions and drawings of Hudson Valley plants is held in the collection of the British Natural History Museum. In 1963 the Garden Clubs of Dutchess and Orange counties in New York published a reproduction of Jane’s manuscript with a selection of her original entries. It’s wonderful that we have this for reference and it enables us to read her detailed entries for the approximately 60 plants selected. Unfortunately the reproductions are somewhat crude and show none of the subtlety described by Dr. Karen Reeds, a Linnaeus expert, who spent an afternoon comparing the original with the facsimile. According to Dr. Reeds the original displays a delicate line quality and watercolor washes that have been lost in the reproduction. Fortunately Jane’s text is reproduced both in her original handwriting and in transcription, allowing her careful observation and powers of description to shine through. Her entry for Pokeweed concludes with the following:

The flowers grow in Spickes upon the top, of small naked bran-

ches, set opposite to the Leaves, each flower upon a Foot Stalk

set alternately of with two or three small colour’d Leaves, set

upon the foot Stalks. They are white at first opening, and

likewise their foot Stalks & the Stalk of the spike, but

as the fruit ripens, they all turn a dark red.

Flower in July

The Phytolacca Root is very useful in the use of cancirs

some curious persons in England have endeavoured to propogate this

plant by the Seed braigth from America, but could not produce

any plant from the Seed.

The propagation from this plant is maket in America in the

Dung of birds. For this reason it may be necessary, to give

in Europe the berries to birds, & to plant the Seeds with

the Dung of the fowls, through which they pass intire

Jane’s handwriting is beautiful and the handwritten pages permit me to imagine her at work carefully recording her observations. Unfortunately, the harshness of the 1963 reproductions prevent me from following this flight of imagination very far so, using her handwritten entries, I have made new pages for Jane’s manuscript. The page here is entry No. 93. Phytolacca decandra Poke Weed.

At Home

The American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the perfect place to look at colonial American furnishings. Besides the period rooms, there is open storage that translates into rows of glass cases filled with multiple examples of household furnishings. The computer banks allow for specific searches and when asked for what was made prior to 1800 came up with lots of examples of silver tankards and spoons, pewter plates and porrigers, all produced in New York City. There is also a decent sampling of Chinese import plates and platters and English porcelain that I would imagine Jane’s parents, being Scottish and also Royalist, might favor.

I was struck with how beautiful the objects are and realized I was responding not to the design but to the materials. Everything was metal, glass, wood, ceramic, or natural fibers. The computers were the only plastic objects to be seen.

Father Daughter Botany

Jane began identifying and describing plants at the request of her father who himself had been involved in botanical study before abandoning it for other projects. When he returned to the field in his sixties, he felt he was too old and eyesight too poor to continue and he turned to Jane to carry out the work. While it seems Cadwallader’s goals in pursuing botany had at least partly to do with securing himself a name in intellectual circles, Jane’s goals are less easy to define. Initially she seems reluctant and in her first year only described 12 plants, primarily common ones easily found nearby. This seems a weak attempt to perhaps please her ambitious father. In 1753, however, she described 140 plants, all but 8 in extensive detail and then continued to collect in swamps, woods and thickets through 1756 when the Seven Year War made in unsafe to continue. She mastered the Linnaean system and proved to have remarkable powers of observation and description surpassing her father’s efforts in both quantity and detail. In a period when gentlewomen were expected to be conversant about the new sciences primarily to provide an attentive audience, Jane took on the actual work of scientific enquiry and from all evidence, found that work thrilling.

The Orchard

The Colden family cemetery once sat in an extensive orchard located to the east of the original Colden house. According to the letters and papers of Jane’s father the orchard produced cherries, pears, nectarines, peaches and later grew plum and apricot trees that were a gift from John Bartram. The apple varieties included Spitzenberghs, Newtown Pippins, Golden Russets, Pomroy, Golden Rennet and Kentish Codlings. The full name of the Spitzenbergh was probably Esopus Spitzenbergh, an apple that was found in the early 18^th century in the Ulster County town of Esopus not very far north of Coldengham and very close to where I live.

Apple trees are grown either from seeds or by grafting. Seedlings often stray widely from their genetic origins producing an array of apple types often unusable for much besides cider of which American settlers drank a good deal. Sometimes, however, a seedling grows that produces a superior apple and that tree would be grafted to others to produce the now sought after apple. Esopus Spitzenberghs were such a type and it’s said to have been the favorite apple of Thomas Jefferson. Where this information comes from I’m not sure, but I do see the trees listed, amongst others, in his farm and garden diaries. The Colden family obtained both seedlings and apple scions for grafting from their Hudson Valley neighbors and ate the apples fresh, dried for winter, and turned into hard cider.

You won’t find Esopus Spitzenburgh or other evocatively named old varieties in your grocery store. Most commercial apples come from the same small group of parents making for uniformity in both genes and taste. This makes apples particularly vulnerable to attack, similar to the attack on the potato in Ireland in the 1840’s and eliminates the variety of tastes available from a diverse apple crop. Fortunately, there is a sea change taking place in the way we think about food and how it’s grown and distributed. In fact this sea change in many ways returns us to the way food was grown and eaten during Jane Colden’s life; producing diverse crops that are appropriate to the local climate and consuming it not far from it’s source.

It’s now possible to buy heirloom variety fruit trees in nurseries. In current nursery catalogues and foody websites the Esopus Spitzenburgh is described as aromatic, spicy and crisp, or having floral notes and hints of peach and perhaps pineapple. Sounds delicious. I wonder if Jane, having eaten this apple, would agree.

Mapping

A deed dated September 7, 1771 states “The honorable Cadwallader Colden, Esq, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of New York to his son Cadwallader Colden Junior, for natural love and affection and five shillings (description of land given)…excepting and reserving out of the same, the grave yard of four rods square, which is in the orchard to the east of the old mansion house…”

Joe Devine, a Montgomery resident and author of various articles about the Colden family, found this deed documenting Cadwallader Colden’s sale of Coldengham to his son. The deed also describes the original Colden home as being west of the cemetery. A contemporary satellite map shows the still existing walled cemetery, now located on Pimm Farm in Montgomery, NY. It also shows Tin Brook and the curve where the brook shifts from east to north. A 1760 map places Coldengham to the west of the Colden Cemetery where Tin Brook Creek makes its’ turn.

Finding the location where Jane grew up and lived until her early 30’s feels like progress towards finding Jane. While the land has been tilled and altered since the mid 1700’s, it is remarkably, still a farm. Tin Brook still follows its’ natural path much as it did during her lifetime and if Jane were to walk here she might recognize this as the place she called home. This is even more remarkable if you consider our two methods of mapping. The map produced in Jane’s time is hand drawn, one-of-a-kind, and is based on slow observation and experience; the other is produced by a satellite located far above the earth and is available to anyone on the internet. 250 years has made for enormous progress in imaging which is amazing but perhaps to be expected. Unexpected to me was finding Pimm Farm and seeing Tin Brook make it’s turn through the property.

A Proper Education

In 1728 Jane’s parents Cadwallader and Alice moved their household to Coldengham. There are various reasons given for the move including the desire to raise their children away from the temptations of the port city of New York, the need to develop the farm to help support the growing family and because of Cadwallader’s on again/off again career in politics.

According to the recent biography of Jane written by Paula Ivaska Robbins, transportation to Coldengham was difficult, depending upon the sloops that travelled the Hudson River between Albany and New York. All mail and supplies made the journey up the river and overland to Coldengham. In the winter all communication ceased. In spite of this isolation the Coldens provided a proper education for their children. Jane, and the seven siblings who survived past early childhood, learned from their parents the basic subjects of reading, writing and mathematics. In addition, books were imported from England and Europe to form a small library. The sons were groomed towards their eventual positions in government, business and the management of the family farm. The daughters were trained in the habits of virtue and economy, directed towards their futures as wives, mothers and household managers.

Jane apparently was a capable domestic manager. Her notes concerning the dairy, which was a major source of food and additional income, include detailed instructions for cheese making and a record of activities and sales. Walter Rutherfurd, a Scottish visitor wrote in 1758, “She makes the best cheese I ever ate in America.”