From Historic Houses of New Jersey by W. Jay Mills, 1902
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002
THE next residence to the cottage
of Madame Scribblerus in antiquity and interest is the venerable dwelling so well loved by
all old Amboy residents as the
abode of the Smith family, after
whom Smith Street is named.
This old house has a large
share of romantic interest in being the home of the
queer and eccentric Thomas Bartow, a gentleman of
wealth and culture, whose friendship for the youthful
William Dunlap in the days before the Revolution is
said to have laid the foundation of the artistic knowledge
which eventually made him one of New York City's
most famous theatrical managers and art-critics.
Thomas Bartow at that time, just before the Revolution, was a very old man. Dunlap himself in after years
described him as "a small, thin old man, with straight
gray hair hanging in comely guise on each side of his
pale face." Tradition says that owing to some mystery
in connection with the wrong he had done a woman
in youth he lived in strict seclusion, no females but his
relatives and a black woman as venerable as himself ever
crossing his threshold. But perhaps his relatives made
amends for the rest of the fair sex, for he had many, and
interesting ones.
|
First of all in the white light of history
stands his lovely niece, Theodosia Prevost, afterwards
Mrs. Aaron Burr. She was the daughter of his brother,
Theodosius Bartow, who married Ann Stilwell. He was
a lawyer and native of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, and
it was there that the woman whose charm excelled that
of every other member of her sex, according to Burr,
passed her early youth until she was wooed and won by
Captain Frederick Prevost, a relative of Lieutenant-General Sir George Prevost, Baronet.
|
Theodosius Bartow died shortly before the birth of his child, whom
he wished named after himself ; but as she was a female, she was called
Theodosia. His widow married Philip de Visme, of a noble French
family, and the two families, De Visme and Provost, resided during the
Revolution in the "Little Hermitage" at Hokokus, New Jersey. There
Lieutenant-Colonel Burr became acquainted with them while stationed in
the vicinity. He married Theodosia Provost, then in the height of her
charms, in the Dutch Church, a mile or so distant.
|
|
She must have
often visited the old gentleman with her mother, Mrs.
Philip de Visme, for he left her in his will "one hundred pounds in Spanish mill'd dollars, at eight shillings
each, for the use of her children," which was a large
legacy. Then there were the five daughters of his
brother Theophilus, who resided in Westchester County,
New York, and his sister, Margaret Pell, besides all his
little grandnieces.
In his house, large for one solitary man, he lived a
quiet life in the midst of a treasure collection of books
and prints, added to on the arrival of every one of those
old-time English and French merchantmen which put in
at Amboy. It is not hard to realize how the bright-faced
boy who dwelt close by at first attracted him as his little
nankeen-clad figure passed his windows or looked longingly into his garden, and then, as he grew to know him,
crept into his heart. There in that old garden, still beautiful in summer, under the many shading fruit-trees and
surrounded by bright flowers, they together used to
look over the plays of Otway, Foote, Banks, Farquhar,
and many other dramatists of the time. Gladly the
youthful Dunlap would listen to the tales of the London
world Bartow had once known, of Drury Lane and the
great actresses, the fair Mrs. Pope as Cleopatra, and
the great Mrs. Siddons as Isabella in " Measure for
Measure," and very often he tried to sketch a copy
of some copper-plate the work of Hogarth or a later
master.
|
Among the bequests in his will are the following:
"To William Dunlap, son of Saml. Dunlap of Perth Amboy the
sum of fifty pounds – towards placing of him to a merchant, or such
other calling as his parents or guardians think fit.
"To William Burnet – a gold ring for a remembrance, of the value
of a guinea.
"All my household goods, furniture utensils and other things
which I left, and my desk at Thomas Potter's on the sea shore,
to the daughters of my brother Theophilus, to be divided among
them in such manner and proportions as their mother shall think
fit."
"To my sister Margaret Pell two silver table spoons, six tea spoons,
and a tea-tongs; with tea chests and cannisters."
|
Dunlap, in writing a chapter on his life in the " History of the Arts of Design in the United States," says
of these visits:
It is not irrelevant to dwell upon my visits to this good old gentle-
man. The happy hours passed with him in his garden, or in walking
with him, or in our rides might be omitted, but when I found him on
that Sunday morning when the parson, a regimental chaplain who was
engaged to bestow his spare time on the Episcopalians at Woodbridge
and Amboy, was absent from the latter place, when I was received and
placed by the side of the old gentleman at the stand or table where he
sat with his books, when after going up-stairs to the book-closet and
bringing down such volumes as struck my fancy, I received his explana-
tions of the pictures on the pages ; if these were passed over I should
omit the happiest moments of my childhood, and of hours which expanded
my intellect and laid the foundation of my love for books and pictures.
In the stories of the ancient capital there are other
pictures of Bartow and his young friend. It is said
that the old gentleman was a frequent visitor to the
mineral spring, situated a few miles out of town, and
whose waters were credited with the medicinal qualities
of the German Spa. Rude seats had been built around
it, and there aristocrats of Amboy came by chair or on
foot in the summer-time. Bartow must have often been
rudely startled by the appearance of some aristocratic
dowager, sent there by a tactful physician, or a bevy of
fair girls on a pleasure excursion ; and no doubt he took
to his heels on many an occasion. We can see him
hurrying away in the riding-chair he left in his will to
Bathsheba, " the widow of my brother Theopilus," with
little Dunlap, who would rather have remained to see the
new arrivals, and on the way homeward over the King's
Highway meeting a party of huntsmen with "Heards hounds," famous in Amboy and Woodbridge. Of Heard
himself Dunlap has left us a description, calling him "a
dignified and venerable personage in a scarlet coat, black
jockey-cap, broad leather belt, and hunting-horn."
Many other tales could the old house tell of aged
Bartow and his young friend. How the boy, urged on
by him, went to the great Franklin Palace at the end of
the street to sketch the comely lady of the last royal
governor. Of the handsome young officers who sometimes laughingly sat for him in those sombre days after
the battles of Trenton and Princeton, when Amboy was
filled to overflowing with the flower and pick of the
British army. Of the consolation the old man was to
him when he endured the great affliction of losing one
of his eyes, the result of some boyish sport. Of the
letter he wrote to his friend from Rocky Hill after the
great conqueror, Washington, permitted him to begin a
picture of him; and, last of all, the final glimpse of old
Bartow and his weeping servants, Robert Fitzharding, a
bound boy, and his old negress, saying good-by to the
house they loved so well. The precious books and
prints are on their way to the Moravian town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where it is said an expectant and
unacknowledged family awaited him.
|
The Revolution is over, bringing its cruel knowledge
to many a Royalist household, and yet the birds of
Amboy sing gayly and the sun shines as brightly as
ever on good Plenty and her golden horn on the knocker
of the old homestead as Bartow in his chaise turns the
corner and obtains the last glimpse of his Jersey home.
The next owner of the Bartow House was James
Hude Kearny. It is with his name, a corner-stone in
Amboy history, and that of his daughter, Gertrude
Parker Kearny, who married Charles McKnight Smith,
that the old house is linked in the minds of the few old
Amboy families now left.
|
Thomas Bartow, in his will, made May 12, 1779, gave his house
in Perth Amboy to his son Thomas, a resident in Philadelphia. This
son Thomas married Sarah Benezet, the daughter of Daniel Benezet
(not Anthony, his brother, as Mr. Whitehead has it). His wife's
grandfather was John Stephen Benezet, and the family was very rich and
distinguished. He threw open his large house for Count Zinzindorf
when he came to America to preach, and greatly aided in establishing
the Moravian Church in Philadelphia.
|
Charles McKnight Smith, who was a great-grandson
of William Smith, the first Yale graduate to practise
law in America, was a physician. A physician in a
country town before the fifties had to endure more hardships than his brethren of to-day ever dream of. There
were no steam-engines to facilitate travel then, and the
doctor and his gig on the highways and lanes of the
surrounding country, under sun and stars, summer winds
or the chill blasts of winter, was a heroic figure, but an
unappreciated one. In the drawing-room of the Bartow
House, with its old furniture and mellow-tinted rugs, is
a beautiful portrait of him. He is wearing a great-coat
and a high white stock, and his eyes seem to be gazing out of the room's many windows on the trees
which guard the quiet streets he knew so well. Streets
somewhat changed since he hurried over them on his
errands of mercy, a true physician of the old school.
Across the room from him hangs the likeness of the sweet-faced lady who was his wife. She was a lover of every
inch of Amboy and all its traditions, and it was with her help that William Whitehead, the historian, whose great
help that William Whitehead, the historian, whose great
work for New Jersey can never be estimated, prepared
his history of Perth Amboy. In her room, where
years before Bartow sometimes entertained the youthful Dunlap, and which echoed to that silvery voice
of Theodosia Provost, there are preserved her ancient
curtained bed, the Franklin stove, the empty candlestick, the old gold watch, sent as a present to her father from
the old gold watch, sent as a present to her father from
England in the eighteenth century, and all the many
accessories of a lady of yesterday.
The quaint panelled dining-room still speaks of her
presence. The sunbeams that steal in through its little
casements over the Delft jars filled with growing geranium plants light up one of the most interesting rooms
in America. The spindle-legged chairs and tables are
of a design first made famous by Chippendale. The
massive iron dogs before the blue-tiled fireplace bear the date 1669, and the pieces of plate on the sideboards are
date 1669, and the pieces of plate on the sideboards are
almost their match in age, many of them having been
made during the reign of Queen Anne.
On the green by the house, where the geese of the neighborhood used to wander, her husband's little office still stands. No more can those mute pictures gaze out at
borhood used to wander, her husband's little office still stands. No more can those mute pictures gaze out at
stands. No more can those mute pictures gaze out at
the patients coming there. The timorous ladies in short
skirts and tarletans and turbans and sun-bonnets of Paris straw, followed by their black girls, almost the way the
straw, followed by their black girls, almost the way the
great Mrs. Pepsys used to walk abroad in her London
of one hundred and fifty years earlier. The door of the
little house is shut forever, and the gentle ladies of the long ago have joined the silent company by St. Peter's.
long ago have joined the silent company by St. Peter's.
