Duel with the Devil (31 page)

  
1
By September 11, 1799
: Laight, Diaries, September 1799 entries.

  
2
“Rumor of Yellow Fever”
: Ibid., 3 July 1799.

  
3
“Dog days begin”
: Ibid., 29 July 1799.

  
4
“A shower in the night”
: Ibid., 10 August 1799.

  
5
“Oh, oh!”
: Ibid., 11 September 1799.

  
6
“near 1/3 of the inhabitants”
: Ibid., 27 August 1799.

  
7
“Autumn Residences” of those “removed for the sickly season”
:
NYG
, 14 September 1799.

  
8
“As soon as this dreadful scourge”
: Janvier,
In Old New York
, 140.

  
9
firing off muskets and cannons
: Powell,
Bring Out Your Dead
, 51.

10
kill a little girl
: Bleecker, Diary, 24 September 1799.

11
Lee’s True and Genuine Bilious Pills
:
NYMA
, 30 July 1799.

12
Four Herb Pills
:
NYWM
, 10 July 1799, 4.

13
New York Anti-Bilious Pills
:
NYCA
, 16 September 1799.

14
Laight had closely allied
: Bank of the Manhattan Company,
Act of Incorporation of the Manhattan Company
, 7.

15
landlady hadn’t stayed around
: Hardie,
Impartial Account of the Trial
, 11.

16
flour mill he’d tried
:
GNDA
, 19 February 1794.

17
a mechanic and an inventor
:
Aurora General Advertiser
(Philadelphia), 23 February 1798.

18
running a general store
:
Longworth’s American Almanack
(1798), n.p.

19
running a millinery
: Kleiger,
Trial of Levi Weeks
, 2.

20
apprentice, William Anderson
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 46.

21
recently immigrated English merchant
: Ibid., 43.

22
Dapper and beginning to gray:
Alexandria (Va.) Expositor
, 22 July 1803.

23
as he approached the age of forty
:
Philadelphia Gazette
, 10 July 1800.

24
his tall and thin form
:
Alexandria (Va.) Expositor
, 22 July 1803.

25
another boarder, named Margaret Clark
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 19.

26
a
roomer
but not a
boarder
:
Ibid., 43.

27
Humbert’s bread and Aunt Roach’s pies
: Morhouse, “Boy’s Reminiscences,” 337.

28
stall placarded
JEW
’
S MEAT
:
Ibid., 336.

29
Girls went barefoot
: “Journal of Joshua Brookes,” 579.

30
“Our streets are filled with straggling fellows”
:
NYDA
, 19 September 1799.

31
found his Pearl Street shop broken into
: Ibid., 17 September 1799.

32
Flood and Tracey grocery shop was raided
:
NYG
, 19 September 1799.

33
thieves robbing him of fifty vests
:
NYMA
, 3 October 1799.

34
208 Greenwich
: Kleiger,
Trial of Levi Weeks
, 1. Although court transcripts note that the boardinghouse was on Greenwich, Kleiger appears to be the first to specify the address, noting that there is a listing for Elias Ring at 208 Greenwich in the 1798
Longworth’s American Almanack
. I note that the presumably adjoining address 209 Greenwich is also given by Ring in his waterwheel ads from 1799.
   The address would place them at or near the corner of Greenwich and Barclay Streets; that this was also the location of the boardinghouse, and not just Ring’s business, can be confirmed from the testimony of Margaret Miller in the trial transcript of Richard David Croucher (5). She testifies that the Ring boardinghouse was “almost by Rhinelander’s brew house.” Advertisements by Rhinelander from this period (for example,
Albany Gazette
, 23 January 1800) specify it as “at the corner of Barclay and Greenwich Streets.”

35
Elias Ring wrote to his wife
: Hardie,
Impartial Account of the Trial
11.

36
“Cassie, our neighbor”
: Laight, Diaries, 27 September 1799.

37
laborer … and a cart driver
:
NYDA
, 4 October 1799.

38
tenant died at a boardinghouse
:
NYCA
, 7 October 1799.

39
“In this pestilential period”
:
GNDA
, 1 August 1799.

40
Hosack confidently presented a sweating cure
: Sherk, “David Hosack, M.D., and Rutgers,” 20.

41
“draw off the noxious electrical fluid”
: Young,
Toadstool Millionaires
, 25.

42
“Having obtained from various experiments”
:
NYCA
, 30 July 1799.

43
“To pour buckets of cold water”
: Ibid., 18 October 1799.

44
“First frost
”: Laight, Diaries, 18 October 1799.

45
“General movement back”
: Ibid., 26 October 1799.

46
An abandoned flock of sheep
:
NYDA
, 23 October 1799.

47
two cannons were simply dropped
:
NYG
, 26 October 1799.

48
PEACHES, PLUMBS, GREEN GAGES
:
NYCA
, 9 October 1799.

49
English and geography
: Ibid., 21 October 1799.

50
gouging dying families
: Koeppel,
Water for Gotham
, 63.

51
speculators were now buying up local supplies of wood
:
NYMA
, 2 October 1799.

52
“I should not be afraid to drink it full”
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 32.

53
their peculiar love of Halloween … in the graveyard
: “Journal of Joshua Brookes,” 31 October 1801.

  
1
“But a few days ago our city”
:
NYMA
, 6 November 1799.

  
2
“I therefore humbly hint”
: Ibid.

  
3
Tea-Water Men
: Koeppel,
Water for Gotham
, 32.

  
4
“They pretend their water is pure”
: Ibid., 64.

  
5
a plan to pipe Manhattan
: Ibid., 39.

  
6
“Had I been brought up a hatter”
: Ibid., 36.

  
7
calls for a solution had grown louder
: Ibid., 59.

  
8
“The health of a city”
: Ibid., 65.

  
9
received five proposal bids
:
Report of the Manhattan Company
, 9.

10
operating a mill upstate
:
GNDA
, 19 February 1794.

11
run an ad in Philadelphia and New York newspapers
: e.g.,
Aurora General Advertiser
(Philadelphia), 23 February 1798; and
GNDA
, 6 December 1799.

12
“The Collect has been unjustly stigmatized”
:
Report of the Manhattan Company
, 29.

13
the pleasingly round sum
: Ibid., 36.

14
same rounds were the milk merchants
: Morhouse, “Boy’s Reminiscences,” 343.

15
stank of Long Island meadow garlic
: Monaghan and Lowenthal,
This Was New York
, 22.

16
off-putting about his sales manner
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 82.

17
accompany me to my brother’s
:
Ibid., 38.

18
on the corner of Greenwich and Harrison
:
Longworth’s American Almanack
(1799), 389.

19
“Why don’t you ask me?
”: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 38.

20
Levi still took pains to attend to her
: Ibid., 21.

21
“turtle feast”
: Janvier,
In Old New York
, 219.

22
“when one man offered to present”
: Dietz,
1913
, 120.

23
Minetta Brook … fine trout to be had from it
: Mines,
Tour Around New York
, 22.

24
Ezra Weeks had the contract
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 87.

25
white and yellow pine logs needed
:
NYMA
, 18 May 1799.

26
“People are paying the enormous fee”
:
NYDA
, 23 November 1799.

27
Do you want to go to the Charity Sermon?
:
William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 24.

28
sermon by the Bishop Prevoost … on December 8, 1799
:
NYDA
, 9 December 1799.

29
They stopped off first at Ezra’s
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 34.

30
THE YOUNG QUAKER
 … 
THE AGREEABLE SURPRISE
:
NYMA
, 30 November 1799.

31
bone-chilling lack of heat and its rather makeshift orchestra
: Monaghan and Lowenthal,
This Was New York
, 125.

32
he’d asked her to come, too
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 34.

33
carpenter had fallen off a scaffold
:
NYCA
, 16 November 1799.

34
live wolves … had broken out
:
NYG
, 19 November 1799.

35
Thanksgiving, in gratitude to God
: Ibid., 29 November 1799.

36
$138 had been collected
:
NYDA
, 9 December 1799.

37
the first snow of the year
: Bleecker, Diary, December 1, 4, and 5, 1799.

38
pelting of the house at Garden and Broad
: “The Olden Time,” 424.

39
sleigh rides northward … the Kissing Bridge
: Janvier,
In Old New York
, 252.

40
on moonlit nights like this, the city saved
: Monaghan and Lowenthal,
This Was New York
, 246–47.

41
three and a half feet underground, of piped water
:
Independent Gazetteer
(Worcester, Mass.), 7 October 1800.

42
“
NOTWITHSTANDING THE INTERVENTION OF A MALIGNANT FEVER
”:
NYMA
, 13 November 1799.

43
“the wish of every citizen”
:
NYG
, 20 November 1799.

44
“of a quality excellent”
:
NYMA
, 13 November 1799.

45
service was to be expanded another twofold
:
Independent Gazetteer
(Worcester, Mass.), 7 October 1800.

46
a primitive pump supplied by one Nicholas Roosevelt
: Ibid.

47
he’d sold Roosevelt thousands of acres
: Lamb,
History of the City of New York
, 3:382.

48
$1,500-a-year position of water superintendent
:
NYMA
, 13 June 1799.

49
business partner from years earlier
:
NYDA
, 26 July 1793.

50
brother-in-law of the board’s president
: Koeppel,
Water for Gotham
, 69.

51
ad … had quietly been withdrawn
: I do not find any further publication of the ad after the 6 December 1799 issue of
Greenleaf’s New-York Journal
.

  
1
sodden city
: Bleecker, Diary, 19 December 1799.

  
2
“This is a day of mourning to us
”: NYDA
, 19 December 1799.

  
3
“He made his exit last night”
:
NYCA
, 20 December 1799.

  
4
Shaw had a busy wine shop
:
NYG
, 27 May 1799.

  
5
“It is a pity General Washington had not died”
: Bleecker, Diary, 27 December 1799; and Abraham Bancker to Abraham B. Bancker, 12 January 1800, Bancker Papers.

  
6
British flag over the Merchants’
:
Columbia Museum and Savannah Advisor
, 11 April 1797.

  
7
“
WASHINGTON
was our pride
”:
NYDA
, 19 December 1799.

  
8
A NEGRO MAN TO BE SOLD CHEAP
:
NYG
, 24 December 1799.

  
9
“It’s a damned lie!”
: Abraham Bancker to Abraham B. Bancker, 12 January 1800, Bancker Papers.

10
“What means this melancholy sound of Bells”
:
NYCA
, 24 December 1799.

11
he trooped over to his brother’s
: Hardie,
Impartial Account of the Trial
, 12.

12
Ezra Weeks himself hadn’t
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 86.

13
growing business on Broadway
:
NYDA
, 21 May 1799.

14
a new two-story home
:
NYEP
, 16 December 1803.

15
an order for eight doors
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 86.

16
a gash in his knee
: Ibid., 21.

17
“Levi, you won’t be able to go out”
: Ibid., 22.

18
followed him upstairs and plastered his knee
: Ibid.

19
boardinghouse beds
: Watson,
Annals and Occurrences of New York City and State
, 260.

20
he and Elma were back downstairs
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 22.

21
The theater had even canceled
:
NYCA
, 21 December 1799.

22
“Which looks best?”
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 22.

23
calico gown and a white dimity petticoat
: Ibid., 56–57.

24
“Where’s Elma?”
: Ibid., 22.

25
their cockeyed door
: Ibid., 24.

26
Elias settled into the commons room
: Ibid., 22.

27
“The clock has just struck eight”
: Ibid., 23.

28
Mrs. Ring … put her ear to the door
: Ibid., 24.

29
Levi’s apprentice … was locked out
: Ibid., 26. The remainder of this evening’s scene is drawn from this passage of Coleman’s trial transcript.

30
a cold and cloudy sky
: Bleecker, Diary, 23 December 1799.

31
expect bread, cheese, preserved apples
: Maude,
Visit to the Falls of Niagara in 1800
, 29.

32
warm beer remained the drink
: Koeppel,
Water for Gotham
, 34.

33
“Is Elma got home?”
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 27.

34
Clement, up by Lispenard’s Meadow
:
Longworth’s American Almanack
(1799), 189.

35
“I guess she has gone to be married”
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 29.

36
Gideon Washburn got caught in sin with his horse
:
NYG
, 25 September 1799.

37
guides such as
Aristotle’s Master-Piece
: Bullough, “Early American Sex Manual,” 240.

38
attributed on the title page to “The Company of Flying Stationers”
:
Aristotle’s Master-Piece
, title page.

39
“the action of the clytoris in women”
: Ibid., 58.

40
“brifk and vigorous … glafs of rofy wine”
: Ibid., 62.

41
“Married or not”
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 29. The remainder of this section is drawn from this passage in Coleman’s trial transcript.

42
“Twelve Silver tea
SPOONS
”:
NYDA
, 24 December 1799.

43
Female Humane Society
: Ibid., 11 December 1799.

44
Breakfast passed uneasily
: William Coleman,
Report of the Trial of Levi Weeks
, 29.

45
“Mrs. Ring, don’t grieve so”
: Ibid., 30.

46
German settlers down in Pennsylvania made much
: “Christmas in America,” 171.

47
“passionless immoveable countenance
”: Stone,
History of New York City
, 205.

48
“A green Christmas makes a fat Church-yard”
:
NYDA
, 29 December 1800.

49
tradition of slogging out into the swamps
: Watson,
Annals and Occurrences of New York City and State
, 123.

50
shooting on the wing, and had started a new fashion
: Ibid., 211.

51
city had tried … to end these hunts
: “Journal of Joshua Brookes,” January 1799.

52
she wore a … muff
: Bleecker, Diary, 4 January 1800.