Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts. A Tale of the Colony — John Shaqi
Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts. A Tale of the ColonyCooper, James Fenimore
General
Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts. A Tale of the Colony
Cooper, James Fenimore
Antirent War, N.Y., 1839-1846 -- Fiction
Satanstoe, as it is little more than a good farm in extent, so it is little
more than a particularly good farm in cultivation and embellishment.
All the buildings are of stone, even to the hog-sties and sheds, with
well-pointed joints, and field walls that would do credit to a fortified
place. The house is generally esteemed one of the best in the Colony, with
the exception of a few of the new school. It is of only a story and a half
in elevation, I admit; but the rooms under the roof are as good as any of
that description with which I am acquainted, and their finish is such as
would do no discredit to the upper rooms of even a York dwelling. The
building is in the shape of an L, or two sides of a parallelogram, one
of which shows a front of seventy-five, and the other of fifty feet.
Twenty-six feet make the depth, from outside to outside of the walls. The
best room had a carpet, that covered two-thirds of the entire dimensions
of the floor, even in my boyhood, and there were oil-cloths in most of the
better passages. The buffet in the dining-room, or smallest parlour, was
particularly admired; and I question if there be, at this hour, a handsomer
in the county. The rooms were well-sized, and of fair dimensions, the
larger parlours embracing the whole depth of the house, with proportionate
widths, while the ceilings were higher than common, being eleven feet, if
we except the places occupied by the larger beams of the chamber floors.
As there was money in the family, besides the Neck, and the Littlepages had
held the king's commissions, my father having once been an ensign, and my
grandfather a captain, in the regular army, each in the earlier portion of
his life, we always ranked among the gentry of the county. We happened to
be in a part of Westchester in which were none of the very large estates,
and Satanstoe passed for property of a certain degree of importance. It is
true, the Morrises were at Morrisania, and the Felipses, or Philipses, as
these Bohemian counts were then called, had a manor on the Hudson, that
extended within a dozen miles of us, and a younger branch of the de Lanceys
had established itself even much nearer, while the Van Cortlandts, or a
branch of them, too, dwelt near Kingsbridge; but these were all people who
were at the head of the Colony, and with whom none of the minor gentry
attempted to vie. As it was, therefore, the Littlepages held a very
respectable position between the higher class of the yeomanry and those
who, by their estates, education, connections, official rank, and
hereditary consideration, formed what might be justly called the
aristocracy of the Colony. Both my father and grandfather had sat in the
Assembly, in their time, and, as I have heard elderly people say, with
credit, too. As for my father, on one occasion, he made a speech that
occupied eleven minutes in the delivery,--a proof that he had something to
say, and which was a source of great, but, I trust, humble felicitation in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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