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History of Orange County
Town of Montgomery
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Gov. Moore came, being appointed in 1765, and, by the advice of his counsel, he did not execute the law. He died in 1769, and the government again devolved upon Lieutenant Governor Colden for the third time. He continued to act till 1770, when he was superseded by John Lord Dunmore, who governed till 1771, when William Tryon, the last of the legal Governors, was appointed, and governed till exiled by the force of the principles which produced, and finally most gloriously achieved, the American Revolution.
The character of Mr. Colden as a statesman and politician, is found in his writings and correspondence with the ministry of Great Britain, at the critical times of which we have been speaking, and when he administered the colonial government. In opposition to the views of his masters at home, he is said to have predicted the certain consequences of the measures they were pursuing against the country. But while he condemned those, he did not approve of the course of the opposite party. Like many other great and good men of his day, he shrank from the idea of an independent government; not that it could not be achieved, but that it would not he maintained. In this opinion he was in error, and is proved to have been so by the experience of more than half a century. Mr. Golden, like all men high in office, had his enemies, but all admitted the purity of his motives, and the honesty and integrity of his character. He died at Spring Hill, his country seat near Flushing, in Queens county, Long Island, on the 20th of September, 1776, aged 88 years. He was buried in a private cemetery on a farm attached to Spring Hill. Alice Christie, his wife, was born January 6, 1690, and died at Fort George, in the city of New York, in March, 1762.
They had five sons and five daughters, who are particularly mentioned in a letter of Cadwallader Colden, the third sons, which we place before the reader, as containing the family record, and for the good sense, kind feeling and pleasant humor which run throughout the epistle. We commend it as a choice sample of familiar and friendly correspondence which too generally assumes a formality and stiffness which belong to essay writing.
To do justice to this gentleman, there is another point of view in which he must be presented to the reader;—for he was eminently a literary man, considering the time and circumstances in which he lived. To estimate the scientific and literary character of Mr. Colden, we must have respect to the peculiar circumstances in which we find him. When he came to this country and located in Philadelphia, he was but about 22 years of age—literature unknown, and its influence unfelt—except in few places and with a very limited number of individuals. Her votaries were few indeed, and the means of acquiring knowledge, difficult and restricted.— Unless an individual had an ardent thirst, or new born desire to obtain it—which the condition of things was well calculated to repress—he would, most probably, have struggled on in obscurity and shaken his ambition in blighted hopes. In addition to this, it must be recollected that Mr. Colden was almost all his life occupied in the momentous and diversified affairs of high official station, pursuing a laborious profession and settling a patent of new and wild land; and yet we find him, by versatility and force of genius, with acquirements sufficient to stand beside and bear comparison with the learned scholars of Europe. Besides possessing genius he must have been wonderfully industrious, seizing and availing himself of every moment of leisure time. His circle, of practice is said to have been respectable, and his professional services performed with a sagacious judgment and great benevolence of heart. He was a man of intelligent observation, understood and drew knowledge from all he saw. His character bore an inflexible stamp, and his public duties were performed with great purity of motive. In private life he was highly esteemed for his politeness, intelligence and general urbanity of manner. He was an example of conjugal and parental affection. “In person Lieutenant Governor Colden was rather below the middle stature and of a dignified aspect: of a strong conformation of body and a vigorous constitution.”
His first literary production was the “History of the Five Indian Nations depending on the Province of New York, in America.”
The work was dedicated to his patron and friend, Governor Burnit, and printed by Bradford in New York, 1727. He continued the Indian History, and in 1747 published a new edition, enlarged and improved. It made its appearance in London the same year, and the publisher there, by the name of Osborne, was guilty of the mean and cringing trick of changing the dedication from Burnit to General Oglethorpe, and of adding chapters of crude accounts of other Indian tribes and nations. A third edition was published in London in 1755. The truthfulness and accuracy of this work have never been questioned. The information contained in it is curious and valuable.
Mr. Colden had scarcely landed in Philadelphia before he began to inspect and examine the plants of the country; and when removed to Coldenham, and the works of Linuaeus, met his view—being then recently published—he gave them a thorough reading, and devoted much of his time to the botany in his vicinity. Having collected with great care the plants about Coldenham, he arranged and drew up his little botanical work of some twenty or thirty pages, containing a catalogue of 140 plants; and which Governor Seward, in his celebrated introduction to the Geological Survey of the State, magnified into two folio volumes. This work was sent to a friend in England, who forwarded it to Linnaeus at Upsal in Sweden, who, out of respect and admiration of the work and author, had it published in Latin and inserted in the Acta Upsalinsia for 1743. This catalogue was increased to 257 plants. Linnaeus honored Mr. Colden with a genus and called it “Coldenia." The name of this work, certainly the first written in the country, was—” Planta Coldenhamiae in Provincea Nove-Borancensi spontae crescentes quas ad methodum Linnai Sexualem."
The taste of Dr. Colden seems to have been inherited by
his daughter, Miss Jane Colden, who was the first botanist of her sex in this country; and as the Doctor thought the ladies well capacitated for the study, we quote for their benefit a paragraph or two:
“Botany is an amusement which may be made agreeable to the ladies, who are often at a loss to fill up their time. Their natural curiosity and the pleasure they take in the beauty and variety of dress, seem to fit them for it, etc.
“I have a daughter, who has an inclination to reading and a curiosity for Natural Philosophy or Natural History and a sufficient curiosity for attaining a competent knowledge. I took the pains to explain Linnaeus’ system, and to put it into an English form for her use, by freeing it from technical terms, which was easily done, by using two or three words in the place of one. She is now grown very fond of the study, and has made such a progress in it as, I believe, would please you, if you saw her performance.-—Though she could not have been persuaded to learn the terms at first, she now understands, in some degree, Linnaeus’s characters—notwithstanding she does not understand Latin. She has already a pretty large volume in writing of the description of plants. She has shewn a method of taking the impression of the leaves on paper with printer’s ink, by a simple kind of rolling press, which is of use in distinguishing the species. No description, in words alone, can give so clear an idea, as when assisted with a picture. She has the impression of three hundred plants in the manner you'll see by the samples. That you may have some conception of her performance, and her manner of describing, I propose to inclose some samples in her own writing, some of which I think are new genera.”
His medical works were of a high character and much esteemed; and his talents of observation contributed to make them truthful. In 1742 the city was visited with the yellow fever, and Dr. Colden drew up an account of the disease, in which he pointed out the local circumstances which would increase its spread and malignity, and recommended their treatment and removal. He received the public thanks of the corporation on this subject: he held a long correspondence with Dr. John Mitchell, F. R. S. concerning the same disease, which had appeared in Virginia. This correspondence is said to have been able and worth the attention of the medical student. He published a "Treatise on the cure of Cancer;"—a paper on the "Virtues of the Great Water Dock;"—remarks on the “ Efficacy of Tar Water,” then a fashionable article of the material medica. He also published “Observations on the Climate and Diseases of New York.” In hostility to the opinions of several writers, he maintained that an amelioration in temperature had taken place in a regular ratio with settlement and improvements. He also wrote on the “Small Pox,” and enforced the cooling regimen in that and other febrile disorders.
But his great work was ‘‘ A Dissertation on the First Principles in Physics, and on AEther and Gravitation,” published in New York in 1745. This was enlarged and published in London in 1751, and excited the attention of European philosophers; and he was thought to have proceeded much farther toward an explanation of the phenomena of gravitation and the motion of the planets than any other physical writer.
He also wrote an “Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions.”
But we close further enumeration to say that his correspondence with the learned men of his day was extensive.— It was maintained with Linnaeus, Gronovius of Leyden, Drs. Porterfield and Whytte of Edinburgh, Dr. Fothergill, Peter Collinson, F. R. S., and the Earl of Macclefield:—in America, with John Bartram, Dr. Douglas, James Alexander, Dr. John Mitchell, President Samuel Johnson, Dr. Gardner, Dr. John Baid and Dr. Franklin. “I hope,” says Dr. Franklin in a MS. letter, October, 1753, to Mr. Colden, “to find time to finish my hypothesis of thunder and lightning, which I shall immediately communicate to you.” These two great a men, last named, were among the first members of the American Philosophical Society, established in March, 1743.