Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1885 — Brewing In New York. [ARTICLE]

Brewing In New York.

f. Brewing in New Yorkbegan in 1633 in Bridge street, near Broad; seven ▼ears afterward brandy was made at the same place. Almost at once drunkenness became so fierce in the city that the authorities stopped the tapping of beer daring divine service or after 10 o’clock at night. Whoever offended lost his beer, wss fined, and could hot sell any more for three months. The phraseology of this indictment is rather curious, saying that: “Complaints are made of OhosdTwho tap beer during divine service, and use a small kipd of measure, which is in contempt of our religion and must ruin the state.” Small measure must have been the origin of the present drink, which is poured out under the barkeeper’s eye and carefully noted. The first New York tavern was put up at Coen ties slip in 1642. The first tax imposed on York city beer nearly made a revolution ; informers got one-third of a tun of the beer; the tax receiver got 5 per cent, for his salary. Numerous brewers were then in New York, and they began to howl loudly. Stone street, which runs from Broad to Whitehall, was. at that time called Brouwer straat, or Brewers’ street. This was called Stone street because it was the first in New York to he paved with stones, in the year 1657. A big stone brewery was put up in 1645 at the corner of Broad and Stone streets, and it failed. The early New York brewers were Yon Covenhoven De Forest, the two Bayards (remote uncles of the present United St tes Senator Bayard), and Van Courtiandt. Beer barrels were made here very early by Van Brcesteed, the cooper, whose name has been corrupted to Bristed. William Beekman was the richest brewer in his day, and where his brewery stood the newspaper offices about Beekman street are now planted. Beekman owned the whole swamp where leather is now dressed and sold. In short, brewing extended up the North Kiver as far as the Dutch settled, and Albany had its breweries perhaps even earlier than New York. The early Dutch were a drinking set, and old Newcastle, below Wilmington, was described by very late travelers as showing more traces of breweries and beer times. The Dutch patroons or planters generally reserved the right of manufacturing beer- themselves, but they allowed private persons to brew at home. There remains an order of one of the patroons, dated 1646, expressly forbidding Cornelius Segers “to brew or cause to be brewed or otherwise to manufacture any beer except so much as shall be required by him for his own housekeeping, on pain of forfeiting 25 Carolus guilders, besides the brewed beer,” Iu short, beer brewing at the present time on the island of New York is not as important relatively as it was in colonial days: As Virginia was kept back by the tobacco culture, which discouraged its manufacturers, New York was retarded by the fur trade, which kept the enterprising people on the run into the interior, and made half-Indians of them, where they should have civilized themselves and varied their occupations. The fur trade finally went out with John Jacob Astor. The tobacco trade in Virginia held on to the end of slavery, and then tobacco began to spread over the Northern States, making it of but little profit to grow tobacco in the old fields. Intemperance among the Indians and Dutch settlers got to be so bad about New York in 1676 that distilling was_ forbidden for periods.— Townskend, in New York Tribune.