American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [12]
In deference to the edible treasures that could be found in the waters surrounding the sandy outcrop, European colonists named the tiny island in the harbor Little Oyster Island, while its larger neighbor was dubbed Great Oyster Island.
Little Oyster Island would figure into a small piece of early New Amsterdam history. In 1653, Peter Stuyvesant, the director general of the West India Company and de facto ruler of New Amsterdam, was ordered by his bosses to create a municipal government. In February 1653, the new city government met in Fort Amsterdam.
One of the first orders of business that day was a complaint from Joost Goderis, the twenty-something son of a minor Dutch painter. In late January, Goderis had gone in a canoe with a boy “for oysters and pleasure” at Oyster Island. Goderis was interrupted and accosted by Isaack Bedloo and Jacob Buys, who taunted Goderis by shouting: “You cuckold and horned beast, Allard Antony has had your wife down on her back.” Another man, Guliam d’Wys, taunted Goderis that he should let d’Wys have a “sexual connection” with Goderis’s wife, since Antony already had done so. When Goderis, whom one historian had deemed “excitable” and “ill-balanced,” confronted Bedloo at his house, he slapped him. In turn, Bedloo drew a knife and cut Goderis on the neck.
Goderis decided to take his case before the new local government to restore the good name of his wife and the pride of his family. He also hauled in a number of other men, friends of the defendants, who reportedly had witnessed the incident. The witnesses refused to cooperate against their friends and the case dragged on for weeks. One of the men hearing the case was none other than Allard Antony, the alleged cuckolder himself.
Goderis and the others have vanished into history, but Isaack Bedloo lives on. He became a wealthy merchant and later joined other prominent leaders of New Amsterdam in 1664 to convince Stuyvesant to turn over control of New Amsterdam to England. It was a purely business decision. In return, Bedloo received political patronage in the new British colony and was able to purchase Great Oyster Island. Bedloo, like other Dutch settlers under British rule, Anglicized his name to “Bedlow,” which later generations corrupted to “Bedloe,” the name that would eventually attach itself to the island that in 1886 became home to the Statue of Liberty.
Little Oyster Island would also become known as Dyre Island and then Bucking Island in the eighteenth century. Ownership of the island from the late 1690s until 1785 was unclear. In that latter year, an advertisement appeared in a local newspaper offering for sale “that pleasant situated Island, called Oyster Island, lying in York Bay, near Powles’ Hook, together with all its improvements, which are considerable.” In addition to the island, the seller offered two lots in Manhattan, a “few barrels of excellent shad and herrings,” “a quantity of twine,” and “a large Pleasure Sleigh, almost new.”
The seller was Samuel Ellis, a farmer and merchant who resided at 1 Greenwich Street. It is not known when Ellis bought the island, though a notice was found in a 1778 newspaper publicizing the fact that a boat had been found adrift at “Mr. Ellis’s Island.”
Ellis died in 1794, still in possession of his island. His daughter, Catherine Westervelt, was pregnant at the time and Samuel’s will made clear that if she had a boy, it was his wish “that the boy may be baptized by the name of Samuel Ellis.” Ellis was clearly interested in his posterity. With three daughters, he most likely feared his name would not live on past his death, and having a grandson named Samuel Ellis Westervelt was the next best thing. His plans were tragically thwarted. Though Catherine’s child