Two years after his first introduction to New York, the Common Council
of the city voted to him "the freedom of the city," from which one
gathers some idea of his standing in public favour! And in another
year,--of course,--he got married, and to one of the prettiest girls
in the town, Susanna de Lancey!
Janvier says that the marriage did not take place until 1744, but
other authorities place it at thirteen years earlier. It is much more
probable that Peter got married at twenty-eight than at forty-one; I
scarcely think that he could have escaped so long!
Susanna's father was Monsieur Etienne de Lancey, a Huguenot refugee,
who had fled from Catholic France to the more liberal Colonies, and
settled here. He soon changed the Etienne to Stephen, married the
daughter of one of the old Dutch houses (Van Cortlandt) and went into
business. Just what his occupation was is not clear, but later he
acted as agent for Captain Warren in the disposal of his war prizes.
His sons, James and Oliver, were intimate friends of Peter's through
life, and, as will be seen, they worked together most zestfully when
in later years the captain's boundless energies took a turn at
politics.
So gallant Irish-English Peter and lovely French-Dutch Susanna were
married and, we believe, lived happily ever after. They lived in New
York town proper, but I conceive that, like other young lovers, they
made many a trip out into the country, and that it was their dream to
live there one day when they should be rich. Certain it is that as
soon as our hero did get a little money at last he could hardly wait
to buy the farm land far out of town on the river. But that time was
not yet.
Needless to say, Peter's married life, happy as it was, could not keep
him long on shore. We keep finding his name and the names of his ships
in the delicious old newspapers of his day: Captain Warren has just
arrived; Captain Warren's ship has "gone upon the careen" (i.e., is
being repaired); Captain Warren is sailing next week, and so on, and
so on. The New York _Gazette_ for May 31, 1736, states that: "On
Saturday last, Captain Warren in His Majesty's ship the Squirrel
arrived here in eight weeks from England." One perceives that this was
record time, and worth a journalistic paragraph!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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