A 



LITERATURE ON STATEN ISLAND. 



BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 



NEW LITERARY VENTURE upon Staten Island naturally won- 

 ders whether it has had local predecessors, or whether it be 



"the first that ever burst 

 Into that silent sea." 



It is probably the first of its kind, and as much without a forerunner 

 as Hendrik Hudson when his Half Moon first appeared upon our sea- 

 ward horizon. Men of letters have lived upon the Island but their 

 labors were not especially identified with it and we are not aware that 

 any of its local traditions have been commemorated in song or story. 

 Our pleasant Herodotus of the last generation, Gabriel P. Disosway, 

 used to write chapters of local lore in the Island newspapers, which 

 the wise reader transferred to his scrap book. But although he men- 

 tioned no hold upon literature taken by the genius of the Island his 

 own reminiscences belonged to a very agreeable branch of literature. 



Mr. John J. Clute devoted much of his time and diligence of the 

 Staten Island kind to the exploration of old official books and docu- 

 ments, and he embodied the result in his Annals which is a treasury 

 of information. But while he also gives us no clue to the literary 

 achievements of Staten Island, his book is itself a local product and 

 it was the most important literary work wholly devoted to Island 

 interests, until the appearance of Mr. Richard M. Bayles's History of 

 Richmond County, which practically absorbs Clute's Annals and is 

 enriched by the notes of Professor Anthon and by later personal 

 recollections. These works, however, are less literature than the rev- 

 elation of the local material and opportunity of literature. 



Charles Mackay, when he lived upon the Island in 1865, wrote a 

 poem upon "A Home in Staten Island," which must not be forgotten 

 in any effort to recall our local literature. There are more than a 

 dozen lightly tripping stanzas, which recount a colloquy between her 

 "truo love" and the poet. The allusions are familiar: 



