OUR NEIGHBOR— OLD COMMUNIPAW.* 



SEVERAL YEARS AGO I was permitted to visit the garret of an old Staten 

 Island dwelling, which had long been unoccupied and was rapidly tumb- 

 ling into complete decay. There stood the old, well-worn spinning-wheel, 

 half hidden in cob-webs and dust; clocks, large and small, long since 

 removed from duty; faded paintings of ancesters, long ago "gathered 

 to the fathers;" and innumerable other objects calculated to occupy 

 the space of a house-top catch-all. Books and papers, worn and mu- 

 tilated, rested in half-filled barrels, or were scattered about the floor, and had 

 long furnished cosy nesting-places for mice, or food for the destructive moth 

 or worm. It was a grand treat to speud almost a day alone among those 

 crumbling ruins— if I may be permitted to use the almost meaningless term 

 alone to describe my position. How the hours flew away as I foraged among 

 the relic heaps, now and then adding an old, stained paper to my pile of musty 

 treasure. It was not until the dim rays of the setting sun stole in through the 

 little paneless window that I gave a thought to retracing my steps. Dizzy and 

 cramped, I at last arose, and as I gathered my "plunder" and began to 

 grope my way through the half -darkened and deserted room, I recalled with 

 all the vividness that such a scene might awaken the haunted stories of boy- 

 hood. Many a page of local history has been written from the " material " 

 gathered on that Autumn day. It was then and there that the following 

 article was found, and which will no doubt be of interest to the readers of 

 The Staten Island Magazine. I think it must have been written about the 

 year 1830. Ira K. Morris. 



"We love, when visiting New York, to explore the antiquated by- 

 places in the environs ; haunts where the primal traits of the New 

 Netherlanclers still flourish in immortal youth. Looking from the 

 Castle Garden, you observe from the Jersey margin of the bay, a 

 group of low-lying houses, on which the beams of the sun, or the 

 shadows of a cloud, rest w r ith tranquility. In Summer a sleepy haze 

 lies over that region, and it nestles lovingly in the midst, much like 



* 15 is generally, but erroneously, bel'eved that the word "Coinmnnipaw " is of Indian origin. 

 Its hisior/ is tliis : T'ae Dutch "Patroous," who were the first great landed proprietors in New Neth- 

 erland. were Samuel Godyn, Sa nuel B'.oemart, Killian Van Rennselaer arjd Michael rauw. The 

 records prove that the two first sett ed in Delaware near the middle of the seventeenth century. Van 

 RenDslaer got possession of a large tract in tiie vicinity of Albany and Troy, and " Pauw became the 

 proprietor of a'l the country extending from Hoboken southward along the bay and Staten Island 

 Sound, taeu called Achter Kull, including Staten Island. This grant was made to him by the Direc- 

 tors in 1G30. At the same time the country was purchased from the natives for ' certain cargoes or 

 parcels of goods,' aad called Pavonia. The name of this proprietor still attaches to a part of his 

 possessions in the locality known as Communipaw— the Commune of Pauw." 



