Greenwich Village | Page 3

(or Sandy Hill)
Trail lay a certain waste tract of land. It was flanked by the sand
mounds,--part of the Zantberg, or long range of sand hills,--haunted by
wild fowl, and utterly aloof from even that primitive civilisation. The
brook flowed from the upper part of the Zantberg Hills to the Hudson
River, and emptied itself into that great channel at a point somewhere
near Charlton Street. The name Minetta came from the Dutch
root,--min,--minute, diminutive. With the popular suffix tje (the Dutch
could no more resist that than the French can resist ette!) it became
Mintje,--the little one,--to distinguish it from the Groote Kill or large
creek a mile away. It was also sometimes called Bestavaar's Killetje, or
Grandfather's Little Creek, but Mintje persisted, and soon became
Minetta.
Minetta was a fine fishing brook, and the adjacent region was full of
wild duck; so, take it all in all, it was a game preserve such as
sportsmen love. It seems that the old Dutch settlers were fond of
hunting and fishing, for they came here to shoot and angle, as we
would go into--let us say--the Adirondacks or the Maine woods!
"A high range of sand hills traversed a part of the island, from Varick
and Charlton to Eighth and Green streets," says Mary L. Booth, in her
history. "To the north of these lay a valley through which ran a brook,
which formed the outlet of the springy marshes of Washington
Square...."
And here, on the self-same ground of those "springy marshes," is
Washington Square today.
The lonely Zantberg,--the wind-blown range of sand hills; the cries of
the wild birds breaking the stillness; the quietly rippling stream
winding downward from the higher ground in the north, and now and
then, in the spring of the year, overflowing its bed in a wilderness of

brambles and rushes;--do these things make you realise more plainly
the sylvan remoteness of that part of New York which we now know as
Downtown?
A glance at Bernard Ratzer's map--made in the beginning of the last
half of the eighteenth century for the English governor, Sir. Henry
Moore--shows the only important holdings in the neighbourhood at that
time: the Warren place, the Herrin (Haring or Harring) farm, the Eliot
estate, etc. The site of the Square, in fact, was originally composed of
two separate tracts and had two sources of title, divided by Minetta
Brook, which crossed the land about sixty feet west of where Fifth
Avenue starts today. Westward lay that rather small portion of the land
which belonged to the huge holdings of Sir. Peter Warren, of whom
more anon.
The eastern part was originally the property of the Herrings, Harrings
or Herrins,--a family prominent among the early Dutch settlers and
later distinguished for patriotic services to the new republic. They
appear to have been directly descended from that intrepid Hollander,
Jan Hareng of the city of Hoorn, who is said to have held the narrow
point of a dike against a thousand Spaniards, and performed other
prodigious feats of valour. In the genealogical book I read, it was
suggested that the name Hareng originated in some amazingly large
herring catch which (I quote verbatim from that learned book)
"astonished the city of Hoorn,"--and henceforth attached itself to the
redoubtable fisherman!
The earliest of the family in this city was one Jan Pietersen Haring, and
his descendants worked unceasingly for the liberty of the republic and
against the Tory party. In 1748, Elbert Haring received a grant of land
which was undoubtedly the farm shown in the Ratzer map. A tract of it
was sold by the Harring (Herring) family to Cornelius Roosevelt; it
passed next into Jacob Sebor's hands, and in 1795 was bought by Col.
William S. Smith, a brilliant officer in Washington's army, and holder
of various posts of public office.
There was a Potter's Field, a cemetery for the poor and friendless, far
out in the country,--i.e., somewhere near Madison Square,--but it was

neither big enough nor accessible enough. In 1789, the city decided to
have another one. The tract of land threaded by Minetta Water, half
marsh and half sand, was just about what was wanted. It was retired,
the right distance from town and excellently adapted to the purposes of
a burying ground. The ground, popular historians to the contrary, was
by no means uniformly swampy. When filled in, it would, indeed, be
dry and sandy,--the sandy soil of Greenwich extends, in some places, to
a depth of fifty feet. Accordingly, the city bought the land from the
Herrings and made a Potter's Field. Eight years later, by the bye, they
bought Colonel Smith's tract too, to add to the field. The entire plot was
ninety lots,--eight lots to an acre,--and comprised nearly the entire site
of the