[5] It seems rather strange that some architect has not taken this façade or some portion of it (as, e. g., the east or west end) as a design for the front of one of the palaces that are now springing up throughout the land.
[6] “Old Merchants of New York City,” vol. II, p. 318.
[7] Before and after the Revolution, the Hall of Records lately removed was used as the debtors’ prison. There were usually about one hundred and fifty prisoners. It is said that they were allowed only bread and water by the State and depended largely on the kindness of benevolent people to relieve their wants.
[8] “Lamb’s History of the City of New York,” II, p. 735.
[9] “The Old Merchants of New York,” vol. II, p. 319.
[11] “Domett’s History of the Bank of New York.”
[12] Robert Emmet, member of an old English family that settled in Ireland during Cromwell’s time, was one of the purest and most disinterested of rebels. He is now believed by his family, and with very good reason, to have been instigated to rebellion by a secret emissary of Pitt in Paris, where he had resided since leaving college, as part of an evil scheme to withdraw attention from the disordered condition of English politics at the time. (_Vide_ “Ireland under English Rule, or A Plea for the Plaintiff,” by Thomas Addis Emmet, 1903.)
[13] Richard Montgomery, son of Thomas Montgomery, of Convoy House, Donegal, had been a captain in the British army in the French and Indian War. “On his return to England he is said to have formed friendships with Fox, Burke, and Barre, and became strongly imbued with their ideas about the rights of the colonies, and when he was superseded and disappointed in the purchase of a majority, he left England forever.” When in America it had happened that on their way to a distant post, he had come on shore with all the officers of his company at Clermont, the Livingston place on the North River, and there met Janet Livingston for the first time, and on his return, with the full approbation of her parents, he married her in July, 1773. Soon after his arrival he bought a farm at Kingsbridge, near New York, but after his marriage he arranged to build a house at Barrytown-on-the-Hudson on the Livingston property.