Excerpt from Cadwallader Colden: A Representative Eighteenth Century Official

IT would be idle to affirm that patriotism depends on knowledge, or even on tradition; it would be equally idle to deny that a sense of kinship with a country's past, springing from at least a general familiarity with its development, and sustained by many visible reminders of its history, has much to do with the making of good citizens. Surely, in the face of much contrary evidence, England's storied cities have had a large share in forming the character of her people; while here in America, despite political corruption and social frivol ity, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts stand for the ideas for which their fathers fought to an extent perhaps impossible were not the old houses and halls in which these men lived and spoke still so full of their Spirit. It must therefore be regretted that New York has so few landmarks, and that, perhaps for this reason, so little is known of the men and women who made her history in the century that elapsed between Father Knickerbocker's nominal departure and the Revolution. Too cosmopolitan even then to produce a type, that fact in itself is a link with the present, and it was in the hope of suggesting that there are many more such links that this sketch of one of the predominant characters of this middle period was undertaken. So far as possible the four phases of his life here considered have been treated indepen dently of each other, the detailed account of his work as surveyor-general, for instance, being quite unnecessary to an understanding of his career.

With the exception of the printed authorities mentioned in the text, the materials for these pages have been found in the manuscript collection known as the Golden Papers, and owned by the New York Historical Society. The courtesy of the society in permitting their use is hereby gratefully acknowledged, thanks being also due, in an especial manner, to Professor H. L. Osgood, of Columbia University, without whose invaluable suggestions and advice this study could not have been completed.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.