Satanstoe | Page 4

that
Satanstoe is a corruption introduced by the Dutch, from Devil's Town;
which, in its turn, was a corruption from Dibbleston; the family from
which my grandfather's father-in-law purchased having been, as he says,
of the name of Dibblee. He has got half-a-dozen of the more
sentimental part of our society to call the neck Dibbleton; but the
attempt is not likely to succeed in the long run, as we are not a people
much given to altering the language, any more than the customs of our
ancestors. Besides, my Dutch ancestors did not purchase from any
Dibblee, no such family ever owning the place, that being a bold
assumption of the Yankee to make out his case the more readily.
Satanstoe, as it is little more than a good farm in extent, so it is little
more than a particularly good farm in cultivation and embellishment.
All the buildings are of stone, even to the hog-sties and sheds, with
well-pointed joints, and field walls that would do credit to a fortified

place. The house is generally esteemed one of the best in the Colony,
with the exception of a few of the new school. It is of only a story and a
half in elevation, I admit; but the rooms under the roof are as good as
any of that description with which I am acquainted, and their finish is
such as would do no discredit to the upper rooms of even a York
dwelling. The building is in the shape of an L, or two sides of a
parallelogram, one of which shows a front of seventy-five, and the
other of fifty feet. Twenty-six feet make the depth, from outside to
outside of the walls. The best room had a carpet, that covered
two-thirds of the entire dimensions of the floor, even in my boyhood,
and there were oil-cloths in most of the better passages. The buffet in
the dining-room, or smallest parlour, was particularly admired; and I
question if there be, at this hour, a handsomer in the county. The rooms
were well-sized, and of fair dimensions, the larger parlours embracing
the whole depth of the house, with proportionate widths, while the
ceilings were higher than common, being eleven feet, if we except the
places occupied by the larger beams of the chamber floors.
As there was money in the family, besides the Neck, and the
Littlepages had held the king's commissions, my father having once
been an ensign, and my grandfather a captain, in the regular army, each
in the earlier portion of his life, we always ranked among the gentry of
the county. We happened to be in a part of Westchester in which were
none of the very large estates, and Satanstoe passed for property of a
certain degree of importance. It is true, the Morrises were at Morrisania,
and the Felipses, or Philipses, as these Bohemian counts were then
called, had a manor on the Hudson, that extended within a dozen miles
of us, and a younger branch of the de Lanceys had established itself
even much nearer, while the Van Cortlandts, or a branch of them, too,
dwelt near Kingsbridge; but these were all people who were at the head
of the Colony, and with whom none of the minor gentry attempted to
vie. As it was, therefore, the Littlepages held a very respectable
position between the higher class of the yeomanry and those who, by
their estates, education, connections, official rank, and hereditary
consideration, formed what might be justly called the aristocracy of the
Colony. Both my father and grandfather had sat in the Assembly, in
their time, and, as I have heard elderly people say, with credit, too. As

for my father, on one occasion, he made a speech that occupied eleven
minutes in the delivery,--a proof that he had something to say, and
which was a source of great, but, I trust, humble felicitation in the
family, down to the day of his death, and even afterwards.
Then the military services of the family stood us in for a great deal, in
that day it was something to be an ensign even in the militia, and a far
greater thing to have the same rank in a regular regiment. It is true,
neither of my predecessors served very long with the King's troops, my
father in particular selling out at the end of his second campaign; but
the military experience, and I may add the military glory each acquired
in youth, did them good service for all the rest of their days. Both were
commissioned in the militia, and my father actually rose as high as
major in that branch of the service, that being the rank he held, and the
title he bore, for the last fifteen years of his