A MEMORABLE SCENE.
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From what has been left on record it would seem that in the hall of the old Stadt House in New York, one day two hundred and twenty years ago, there was an assemblage of men whose meeting was one of the most important events connected with founding the settlements in what is now Monmouth County. It must have been a scene well worthy the efforts of the painter, both for the importance of the object and principles these men had met to decide upon and for the striking contrasts in the appearance of the different parties present. The leading person in this meeting was the new British governor of New York, Colonel Nicholls, who we may presume was attended by his staff, and arrayed in the uniform of the British officer of his time. Then there were men in broad brimmed hats, knee breeches and shad-bellied coats, giving evidence of their Quaker faith. Some few were probably dressed in the then usual style of the Dutch citizen of New Amsterdam, a style so graphically described by Diedrick Knickerbocker in his history of New York. Others interested in the proceedings were probably in the usual fashion of the Pilgrim fathers of that day. But most striking of all was the appearance of a number of Indian chiefs, the sachems of the section now known as Monmouth county. Some of these had probably so far adopted the fashion of the whites as to wear coats- the coarse, loose woolen "match coat," to which the Indians took a fancy, but it was many years before they took to pantaloons; "Indian's legs stand cold like white man's face," said one of them. When these Indians appeared before Colonel Nicholls in 1665, no white men lived in Monmouth, but certain residents of Gravesend, Long Island, had visited it and found it "a good land to fall in with" and a desirable land to settle upon. They had interviewed the Indians and secured their friendship and made treaties which were signed by the sachems, and they had paid them to their full satisfaction for their land. But before taking possession or commencing settlements, they desired also to obtain a title from the representative of the British crown. So these conscientious men had sailed from Gravesend across to the shores of Monmouth and gathered together the sachems and took them in their vessel across the bay, and up to New York, and then to the State House to call on the Governor. Colonel Nicholls was already aware that these Gravesend men wished to obtain a patent for the land, but the object of this assembly was to have the Governor receive the personal assurances of the sachems themselves that their land had been paid for to their full satisfaction, and that they desired these men to settle on it. The governor at this meeting receiving from the chiefs themselves these assurances, decided to grant the patent; but the Gravesend men wished that this instrument should not only show that the lands had been honorably purchased of the Indians, but they also insisted that in it should be put a pledge of unrestricted religious toleration for settlers under it. The result was the issuing the celebrated document known as the Monmouth Patent, with its declaration that the land had been honorably purchased of the Indians, and with it its guarantee of unrestricted religious toleration. This patent was recorded in the office of the Recorder of New York, November 8th, 1665, it was also the first instrument recorded in the archives of the State at Trenton and in the County records at Freehold.
Some seventeen years later, William Penn made his celebrated treaty with the Indians, and how his praises have been sounded for paying them for their land! Our Monmouth ancestors had done the same thing without boast or assumption of superior justice long before William Penn came to America or had even turned Quaker. The year that the Indian sachems of Monmouth appeared before Governor Nicholls was the same year that William Penn, armed and equipped as a soldier, took part in the siege of a town in Ireland. The fact of Penn's making a treaty with the Indians and paying them for their land has been thought so remarkable that pictures of the scene may be found in books in every school in the land, but that scene in New York when the sachems pointed to the founders of Monmouth, saying in substance, "These men have paid us for our land- give them a patent," has a prior right to be commemorated.