Abstract
Ann Elizabeth Staats Schuyler was the wife of a prominent eighteenth-century New York City merchant, the mother of his children, then his young widow, and, ultimately, herself a successful merchant. Among her ventures was the development of a water lot on the 175 Water Street block in Lower Manhattan where she interacted with her fellow water lot grantees to enhance their collective money-making capabilities. Excavations on the block documented the land-making activities of this elite merchant group as it suggested her place within it. What is known about her suggest that Elizabeth Ann Staats Schuyler was a force to be reckoned with: an eighteenth-century woman who literally helped shape Manhattan. Indeed, a prototypical woman of our time.
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Notes
- 1.
A review of eighteenth-century Water Lot Grantees listed in the Water Grants Location Index (1900) indicated that 27 of 408 individual grantees (or 6.6%) were women. This suggests that Ann Elizabeth Schuyler’s role in the city’s land filling history, while far from the norm, may not have been unique.
- 2.
It should be noted that according to information found in a family bible (Isaac Gouveneur cited in Schuyler 1885:428), he would then have been only 7 years old.
- 3.
Aspects of Samuel Staats’ life, like so much early data, are often ambiguous or contradictory, and, in his case, even fanciful. For example, it is unclear if he was born in or near Albany or in New Amsterdam and if he married his Albany-born wife in the New World or in the Netherlands. As for the fanciful, some sources say he married an East Indian princess after being sent to India by the Prince of Orange sometime before his return to New York (this tale is cited and refuted in Ellsworth 1992:24 as well as in Schuyler 1885:172).
- 4.
As noted by Florence Christoph, the acknowledged expert on Schuyler genealogy, the confusion may reflect the fact that an Ann Elizabeth Staats of Albany was married to a John (Johannes) Schuyler of the same place (Florence Christoph 2004:pers. com.), but, according to her will, this Ann Elizabeth Staats Schuyler was considerably older than the subject of this chapter and predeceased her by about 30 years (Christoph 1987:20).
- 5.
I am indebted to Meta Janowitz for making me aware of the Schuyler account book in the Manuscript Division of the New York Historical Society.
- 6.
Of 748 names entered in the account book, 111, or 14.8%, are women.
- 7.
- 8.
Although eight of the block’s nine water lot grants were issued between June and August 1737, the Minutes of the Common Council for May 1736 indicate that a petition for these grants by the potential water lot grantees, all of whom owned the previously reclaimed land to the west, was favorably received by the Council the year before, that is, on May 5, 1736 (MCC IV 1905:373–375). The remaining water lot (No. 9), which adjoined Burling Slip, was not granted until 1749 (Grants of Land Under Water Index 1900).
- 9.
Until 1752, the English used the Julian calendar where March 25, Annunciation Day (exactly 9 months before Christmas Day), was the first day of the new year at home and throughout the colonies. Hence, its designation as “Lady” or “Lady’s” Day, and the day when rents, etc. were often collected (Delmarva Roots 2000).
- 10.
Various versions of this map indicate disparate development on the block. A copy in the Library of Congress, considered the most accurate, is illustrated in Fig. 7.2.
- 11.
More recently, Anne-Marie Cantwell and Diana Wall, in their book Unearthing Gotham, address this issue, noting that land was made where real estate was considered most valuable, that is, along the East River shore (Cantwell and Wall 2001:224).
- 12.
Charles C. Mann, in his book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005), makes the case that the extensive forests encountered by European settlers were not pristine. Instead, he believes they represent forest regrowth after formerly large native populations that had manipulated their environment were decimated by the European diseases that preceded actual settlement. Whether they were pristine or reinstated forests, the European settlers who came to the New World found a forest resource long unavailable in their native lands.
- 13.
See Geismar 1983:694–700 for detailed descriptions of the primary landfill levels documented during the 175 Water Street excavations.
- 14.
See Reiss and Smith in Geismar 1983:738–818 for details of the ship’s excavation and analysis.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Meta Janowitz and Diane Dallal, co-chairs of the “New York Stories” session at the 2005 York SHA Annual Meeting where this chapter was initiated. Also, Shelly Spritzer, for reading the manuscript and for her contribution to the research, and Jeanne Kispert, for taking the time to read at least one version of this chapter and for her keen eye. I am particularly grateful to Paul Huey who generously provided comments.
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Geismar, J.H. (2013). Ann Elizabeth Staats Schuyler, an Eighteenth-Century Woman Who Helped Shape Manhattan. In: Janowitz, M., Dallal, D. (eds) Tales of Gotham, Historical Archaeology, Ethnohistory and Microhistory of New York City. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5272-0_7
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