The Ghost of Peg-Leg Peter and Other Folk Tales of Old New York

If you're ever standing on the shore of Long Island Sound during a storm, you may spot an old sailing ship riding the waves with a full crew and passengers on board. The ship is engulfed in flames and has a screaming white horse chained to the fiery mast. The sailors and passengers on board are not people at all, they're ghosts. You are seeing the legendary phantom fire ship that haunts the Long Island Sound.

"The Phantom Fire Ship" is told by the American folklorist M. A. Jagendorf in his The Ghost of Peg-Leg Peter and Other Folk Tales of Old New York. Jagendorf's stories capture the history, myths, and motifs with which New Yorkers identify themselves. The fourteen stories' settings range from New York's early Dutch colonial days to the twentieth century. Like other American tall tales, they explain the origins of geographic features and place names in the New York City landscape. They celebrate New York ideals such as the freedom of religion and conscience, capitalistic progress and wealth-building, egalitarianism and the self-made man, and the fast pace of life of New York. These are all big words and big ideas about a big city. But the stories, of course, are written for children. This book makes the reflective adult reader consider the ways in which children's literature can transmit the values and origin myths that adults attach to a place from one generation to the next.

"The Tale of the Three Footsteps" explains why there are more rocks in the Bronx than there are in Queens on Long Island. In a battle over ownership of Westchester County and Bronx, the Indians chase the Devil with tomahawks and arrows out to the end of Throg's Neck. In his escape, the Devil jumps across the water to Long Island. Upon landing there, the Devil picks up all the rocks lying around him and throws them back at his antagonists. That is why there are few rocks on Long Island.

Peter Stuyvesant
(From: Wikipedia)

"The Ghost of Peg-Leg Peter" is a story that occurs after the death of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Director-General of the New Netherland colony. Stuyvesant had a silver-tipped peg in place of one of his legs. He lost his leg to a cannonball during a 1644 battle against the Spanish in the Caribbean Sea. Stuyvesant spent the last few years of his life in retirement on a sixty-two acre farm in the area of the present East Village. On that farm, he had a family chapel that was on the current site of the St. Mark's in-the-Bowery church. After Stuyvesant's death, he was entombed in the chapel. In the story, his ghost haunts the area of the chapel, observing the city's rapid expansion northward. Unhappy to be losing his farm, his ghost angrily rings the chapel bell one night, waking nearby New Yorkers from their beds. However, when they rush to the chapel, they find only half of the bell rope. They find the other half lying outside his tomb. Stuyvesant is still buried at the chapel site, now under St. Mark's church.

Passing from the supernatural to historical, Jagendorf next tells "The Courageous Quaker of Flushing," a biographical story of the Quaker John Bowne. The Quakers were a pacifist religious sect

John Bowne answering to Peter Stuyvesant.
(From: Scribner's Magazine, now on Wikipedia)

that were harassed almost everywhere they lived during the seventeenth century, from Anglican England to Puritan New England. John Bowne was arrested in 1662 by Stuyvesant for his hosting of Quaker meetings in his Long Island home. Bowne was sent to the Netherlands for trial by the Dutch West India Company, who decided in favor of religious liberty for their colony. Bowne returned to New Netherland in 1664, just as it became an English colony. Jagendorf relates all these facts plus a bear story. Bowne apparently pinned a bear against a tree by pressing a walking stick to its neck. This story illustrates Bowne's pacifistic beliefs--he was not carrying a weapon when he encountered the bear. Jagendorf's telling of Bowne's story is mostly verified by the historical record. But, while believable, I could not verify the bear story. That may be in Bowne's unpublished journal, owned by the New York Historical Society.

Anthony is dragged to down into the creek.
The best illustration in the book!
The illustrator was Lino S. Lipinsky.

"How the Duyvil Gave New Amsterdam to the British" is part history, part legend. It explains how the colorfully named Spuyten Duyvil Creek got its name. There are many different opinions to be found on this topic. Wikipedia notes that a literal translation from the Dutch is "Spouting Devil," an apparent reference to the strong tidal currents in the narrow waterway. But Jagendorf relates another explanation in a tale that was originally told by Washington Irving. In 1644, with English ships on their way to wrest control of New Amsterdam from the Dutch, Peter Stuyvesant, so the story goes, was reluctant to give up the colony. Hoping for assistance from nearby Dutch villages in warding off the English, Stuyvesant sends garrison trumpeter Anthony Corlear northward to garner support. Anthony arrives at the northern tip of Manhattan in the middle of a storm and calls for a ferry to cross the creek. But finding none, he determines to cross the creek "en spuyt den Duyvil" [in spite of the Devil], and begins wading across. The Devil hears his declaration while lurking at the bottom of the Hudson River in the form of a moss bunker fish. The Devil angrily grabs Anthony's leg and drags him down to the creek bottom. Anthony blows one last blast of his trumpet before going under. Thus, legend states that on stormy nights, one can hear a loud trumpet sounding on Spuyten Duyvil Creek.


Washington Irving's version of the story is so close to Jagendorf's that I have to question the decision to rewrite Irving's well-written tale. Why would you try to rewrite a classic storyteller's work? A correspondent of Westchester County historian Frederic Shonnard states that Irving was the earliest source of the story. Whatever the origin, one has to laugh at the wonderful absurdity of this story. Imagine, a devil fish in the Hudson River! The hilarity is only increased when one discovers that a moss bunker fish (or menhaden) is usually less than fifteen inches long.

From: Frederic Shonnard, A History of Westchester County, Westchester, N.Y.: New York History Company, 1900: 147. (accessed 14 March 2015 in Google Books)

"Clever Mistress Murray" is based on historical events following the Battle of Brooklyn in August 1776. The Continental Army was routed by the British in Brooklyn on August 27th. With their backs against the water, General George Washington managed to ferry his army across the East River under the cover of night. Washington did not believe that he could defend Manhattan against the powerful British navy. Therefore, with the British on their heels, his army retreated northward. Some British troops traveled by boat up the East River to Kips Bay, an inlet in the area of the present-day 30th to 35th Streets. Their intention was to cut off and trap retreating Continental forces that were still located south of Kips Bay.

Mrs. Robert Murray entertaining British officers while
Putnam escapes. (From: NYPL Digital Library)

At this point, Mary Lindley Murray, wife of the wealthy merchant Robert Murray, comes into the picture. She shrewdly persuades General William Howe and some other British officers to stop at her house (in what is now the Murray Hill neighborhood) for a rest, providing the Continental Army with an escape from the trap. As Jagendorf tells the story, they were enticed by the fact that Mr. Murray (a Loyalist, but away on business at the time) and General Howe were friends, as well as by the Murrays' beautiful daughters. In this story, Mrs. Murray is a patriotic heroine who saves the fledgling Continental Army from destruction. But historians debate Mrs. Murray's motives in hosting the British officers. Was she cleverly ensuring the respect of both the British and Americans with an action subject to multiple interpretations? The majority of New Yorkers were Loyalist at that time. Was she securing her social status in New York by inviting her prominent guests? Or was she guaranteeing patriotic fame by thwarting the British plan to trap the Americans?

Despite the historical basis of the story, Jagendorf reports a fantastic and absurdly comical dialogue between Mrs. Murray and George Washington--who dines with her earlier on the same day as Howe's visit. "'The British are on the march,' said Mistress Murray. [Washington replies] 'I know that well, madame. But we'll escape and we'll win. At the moment we need just a few more hours. Old Putnam and his men are hard on the march to join the army that's up on the shores of the Hudson River. When he joins them, all will be safe.' [Murray responds] 'True indeed, General. Thee knowest well, he who fights and retreats a way, lives to fight another day.' They all laughed.' [my italics]" They all laughed? They all laughed!?! First, I highly doubt that Washington took the time to visit with Murray that day as his army frantically retreated. Second, Washington was extremely angry about the poor discipline of his army during the battle and retreat. This was hardly a moment to relax for a spell of polite conversation and light jokes.

Cornelius Vanderbilt
(From: National Portrait Gallery)

"Commodore Vanderbilt's First Boat" is a mostly true story that takes on mythical proportions because its themes of entrepreneurship and the self-made man form part of New Yorkers' self-identity. Jagendorf tells the story of how Cornelius Vanderbilt, the teenage son of a Dutch farmer, bought his first boat. He borrowed $100 from his mother on the condition that he plow and sow an eight-acre plot of land owned by his father within three weeks time. Vanderbilt convinced his friends to help him with the work by promising them rides in his boat. When he buys the boat, he begins a ferry service from Port Richmond on Staten Island. Through hard work in ferrying passengers to Manhattan, he earns enough money to pay his mother back with $1000 added on to the original sum. Vanderbilt eventually became a wealthy man by expanding his shipping business.

The major facts of Vanderbilt's story are accurately told by Jagendorf. However, there are a few points to clarify. Jagendorf's story is entirely set in Port Richmond. Actually, Vanderbilt's family moved away from Port Richmond to Stapleton (another village on Staten Island's north shore) when he was one year old. His first boat purchase probably occurred there, not in Port Richmond. Also, Jagendorf uses an unusual spelling for the type of ferry boat Vanderbilt bought: piragua. The more common spelling for this boat is "periauger." It is a flat-bottomed sailing boat with two masts.

A periauger. (From: Wikipedia)

In "Mornin' Mighty Mose," Jagendorf gives us New York City's version of a Paul Bunyan tall tale. Mose is a firefighter from the Bowery. He is eight feet all and can swim across the Hudson River with just "two good breast strokes." Every morning, he swims across the Hudson twenty times for exercise. One morning, he encounters a British sailing ship. Mose bellows to the ship's captain, "Out of my way with your leaky tub." When the captain confronts him, Mose threatens to sink the ship. The captain says that he'd like to see him do it. So Mose takes a deep puff on his cigar and blows smoke against the ship's sails. The boat "careened around and nearly turned a somersault, and crashed back into the water." The captain apologizes and agrees to dock his ship until Mose finishes his swim.

Mose is not Jagendorf's creation alone--there are many, many other stories of him. Mose the folk hero is based on a real person: a red-headed Bowery firefighter of the early nineteenth century named Moses Humphrey. Mose the folk hero of tall tales has hands as big as Virginia hams and can lift streetcars out of his way when rushing to a fire. Mose made an appearance in the world of children's literature in the wake of the FDNY's heroism on September 11, 2001. In 2002, Mary Pope Osborne published New York's Bravest, in which Mose rescues a baby from a burning building.

Most of Manhattan is laid out with a perfect grid of streets. This is due to the foresightedness of city planners, who surveyed the whole island from 1807 to 1811 and charted a neat arrangement of numbered streets and avenues. The city at that time covered only the lower tip of the island. But it was expanding at such a rapid pace that city planners knew it would only be a matter of time before the entire island was occupied. This is why lower Manhattan today is a confusing tangle of mostly one-way streets, but the rest of the island is much easier to find one's way around on. The city planners could easily survey future streets through uninhabited fields and forests, but they needed to respect parts of the island that already had streets and people living there, such as Greenwich Village. The irregularities of the street grid are due to houses, streets, or farms that existed before the 1800s.

The intersection of Broadway and the Bowery (site of Union Square) in 1831.
(From: ecotippingpoints.org)

Hendrick Brevoort was the owner of one old farm. His story is told in "The Bloodless Battle of the Elm." In the early 1800s, Brevoort owned a farm just south of what is now Union Square and west of Peter Stuyvesant's bouwerie. When the surveyors and street planners showed up at his farm around 1807, he greeted them, according to Jagendorf, with a gun barrell. He did not like the idea of sacrificing his farm to the city's northward progress. Due to Brevoort's resistance, Jagendorf explains, Broadway was diverted on a westward slant beginning at 10th Street.

As for the historical record, there is little doubt that street planning in the area south of Union Square was affected by Brevoort's resistance. The question is: how was it affected? Jagendorf's story states that "no street went through his farm [presumably during Brevoort's lifetime?]." Although his story title refers to a special elm tree, it does not explain the tree's impact on street-planning. But Frank Bergen Kelley, in his 1913 edition of the Historical Guide to the City of New York (see p. 106), notes that it was only Brevoort's favorite elm tree that was preserved by planners, not the whole farm. According to this guide, the tree was located between the present-day Broadway and Fourth Avenue on what would be 11th Street--only 11th Street skips this block. Traveling west to east, it ends at Broadway and continues on the other side of Fourth Avenue. This skipped block, the guide explains, was the true impact of Brevoort's resistance: his elm tree was saved! The tree was probably somewhere in the vicinity of today's Grace Church. Kelley's is the more likely explanation of Brevoort's impact. Laid out by Native Americans long before the Dutch arrived in Manhattan, Broadway predates Brevoort's farm and was not among the streets being surveyed in 1807. One can easily see on a map Broadway's curving (and imperfect) course through the Manhattan street grid today.

This is a detail of a map created by the city planners in 1828. Interestingly,
11th Street is unbroken here. (From: "Plan of the city of New York and of the
island: as laid out by the commissioners, altered and arranged to the present
time," NYPL Digital Collections)

In "The Greatest Hoax in New York City," Jagendorf describes a massive hoax played on New Yorkers by two jokers named Lozier and de Voe. One afternoon at the Centre Market (Grand & Centre Streets), they alarm a gathered crowd with the news that Manhattan Island is slowly sinking into the harbor. This is due to the weight of dense settlement of the southern tip compared to the sparse population density on the rest of the island. But, not to worry! Lozier and de Voe have a solution. Manhattan should be cut in half. The lower half should be towed out into New York Harbor, turned 180 degrees, and pushed back for reattachment to the upper half. In this way, the heaviest part of the island would be in the middle, imparting greater stability and buoyancy. But this solution requires great manpower--thousands of men. Men for sawing the island, rowers for the boats towing the island into the harbor, blacksmiths to build the heavy chain needed to keep the island from floating out into the ocean, carpenters to build houses for all the workers, farmers to provide food for the workers. Lozier and de Voe begin hiring workers for the project. But on the appointed day to begin work, neither Lozier nor de Voe can be found. Slowly it dawns on workers that they have been duped by the two jokesters.

Jagendorf was not the first to share this story. The hoax has become an urban myth, inspiring a book-length investigation by the New York historian Joel Rose. From the standpoint of historical accuracy, there are a number of problems. The earliest documentation of the hoax comes a full thirty years after the supposed event in 1823-1824. In a history of public markets in the eastern United States, The Market Book (see pp. 462-464), Thomas de Voe shares the first known account of the hoax. De Voe explains that it was told to him by his uncle. There have been no other witnesses to corroborate de Voe's story; moreover, no contemporary newspaper or media reports of the hoax exist. It is difficult to believe that the hoax actually happened, given that no other testimony of the trick ever surfaced.

R.H. Macy
(From: Wikipedia)

In confirming New York as a city for business where anyone can become wealthy through hard work and good fortune, "The Lucky Star of Herald Square" picks up where Commodore Vanderbilt left off. It tells the story of Rowland Hussey Macy, a Quaker New Englander turned New Yorker, and his famous department store. After failing at the retail business three times, Macy finally found his niche in New York. He had opened dry goods stores in Boston, Haverhill (Mass.), and California, with each one ending in failure. In 1858, he opened a "Fancy Dry Goods Shop" in Manhattan. Jagendorf explains that Macy and his wife, on their way from Boston to New York, saw the clouds in the sky part to reveal a bright star. They understood the star to be an auspicious sign for their new business. This, says Jagendorf, was the origin of the Macy's stores' signature red star.

The basic facts of Macy's biography are well-established. But there is one point of disagreement, depending on who is telling the story: the origin of the red star in the Macy's logo. You have seen Jagendorf's explanation. However, the Macy's website's history section tells another tale. When R.H. Macy was a teenager on Nantucket, he signed on as a whaling ship sailor for four years. As a sailor, he had a tattoo of a red star inked to his arm. He thought of the red star as a symbol of success. Thus, the Macy's logo might have been the result of a superstitious attachment from his youth.

Brian G. Hughes, New York jokester.
(From: The Hatching Cat)

"The Irish Luck of Brian Hughes" relates the true story of the wealthy jokester Brian G. Hughes. Playing small-scale jokes on family and friends was not good enough for Hughes. The whole city was subject to his hoaxes. For example, New Yorkers once woke up to find the steps to the Metropolitan Museum of Art strewn with empty picture frames and tools--placed there by Hughes overnight. An immediate panic arose about which paintings had been stolen. In another trick, Hughes bought an alley cat and had it expensively groomed. He called the cat Nicodemus, the "last of the Dublin Brindle breed," and entered it into the National Cat Show. The anecdotes shared by Jagendorf of Hughes's tricks are all true. Hughes was without doubt a one-of-a-kind New Yorker. In New York, everything is done on a big scale, so why not jokes too?

New Yorkers are all always in a rush--so the myth goes. "The Clock Must Not Stop" is, Jagendorf claims, a true story of how the New York Life Insurance Company built what was at the time the tallest building in Manhattan--nine stories--and put a gigantic clock on top. Although designed and manufactured by a master clockmaker, the clock breaks one day after installation. The chief concern of the New York Life Insurance Company's president is that his company will lose the respect of the public by keeping a broken clock on the new building. The clockmaker suggests that the building superintendent sit next to the clock and turns the clock hands manually each minute until the clock machinery was repaired. The clockmaker and superintendent are heroic for their deeds in maintaining public respect for the New York Life Insurance Company.

The Former New York Life
Insurance Building, completed
in 1899. (From: Wikipedia)

Almost every detail of this story appears to contradict or lacks a foundation in the historical record--at least, so far as I have discovered it. A five-story building was constructed by the New York Life Insurance Company from 1868 to 1870 at 346 Broadway (at Leonard Street). This was several blocks north of the Broadway and Liberty Street location that Jagendorf mentions. This building did not have a clock on it. The company added on to this building from 1894 to 1899, increasing its length and making it a twelve-story building with a large clock on top. The building is a historical landmark that goes by two names: 1) the Former New York Life Insurance Company Building, or 2) the Clock Tower Building. The New York Life Insurance Company was founded in 1841. I could not find a record of where it was located prior to 1868. Could its pre-1868 location have been the building that Jagendorf speaks of? This possibility does not make sense to me. Excluding a fire or other disaster (which would likely be prominent in the historical record), why would the company abandon Jagendorf's nine-story building to build a smaller five-story tower in 1868.  

I could not verify many other details of Jagendorf's story. He names the master clockmaker in the story as Mr. Henry Abbot, "the most famous clock engineer of the city." I was unable to find any records of a clockmaker by that name. In the story, Jagendorf claims that the large clock was manufactured in Boston. The clock on the 1894-1899 building was indeed manufactured in Boston, but by E. Howard Company, not Abbot. Finally, I could not find any evidence that the 1894-1899 clock broke soon after installation. I am reluctant to attribute this story to Jagendorf's fanciful imagination. He claims to have verified the story in the archives of the New York Life Insurance Company. I could not find any contact information for the company's archivists. It is worth noting that not even a monograph history of the New York Life Insurance Company contains any record of a company building at Broadway and Liberty. Hmm... what were you thinking, Jagendorf?!

The original hope tree on Seventh Avenue.
(From: ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com)

"The Hope Tree of Harlem" is the tale of an elm tree that grew on Seventh Avenue between 131st and 132nd Streets. When I say that it grew on Seventh Avenue, I mean that the pavement of the avenue completely surrounded it. In fact, life as a tree there became an increasingly dangerous one as traffic proliferated during the 1920s. A tree in the street was an unusual sight and performers in the nearby Lafayette Theater came to believe in its positive energy. Before taking the stage, they would touch it for good luck. But city traffic and the modern city overwhelmed the tree. In 1934, the city cut it down. Pieces of the tree were sold to those who wished to remember the "hope tree." Harlem residents and theater performers were sad that the tree was gone. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, the African-American dancer and performer, was accompanied by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in dedicating a new "tree of hope" alongside Seventh Avenue in 1941--the stump of the old tree was placed next to the new one. This is as far as Jagendorf's story goes as he published his book in 1965. Since then, the 1941 tree of hope disappeared in 1972. But in 2008, a new tree of hope was planted! A large piece of the old one still sits at the edge of the stage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Performers there will rub the old tree for good luck.

The point of this book is not to recount history. Even when Jagendorf accurately chronicles history, it is in the style of a folktale. Jagendorf's folktales attempt to capture the essence and identity of New York. Isn't a story all the more powerful if it contributes to the city's mythology and is true? But clearly, not all of it is true. I enjoy Jagendorf's free mixture of fact and fiction. What fun it is to sort out! But I suspect that Jagendorf missed out on a major component of New York's identity: its incredible cultural and racial diversity from the very beginning. Couldn't some great stories be told about how many languages you hear spoken on the streets of Queens? Still, this book is thoroughly enjoyable to read. I highly recommend it for all children and adults who are interested in New York City's history and culture.