Greenwich Village

								

of two separate tracts and had two sources of title, divided by
Minetta Brook, which crossed the land about sixty feet west of where
Fifth Avenue starts today. Westward lay that rather small portion of
the land which belonged to the huge holdings of Sir. Peter Warren, of
whom more anon.
The eastern part was originally the property of the Herrings, Harrings
or Herrins,--a family prominent among the early Dutch settlers and
later distinguished for patriotic services to the new republic. They
appear to have been directly descended from that intrepid Hollander,
Jan Hareng of the city of Hoorn, who is said to have held the narrow
point of a dike against a thousand Spaniards, and performed other
prodigious feats of valour. In the genealogical book I read, it was
suggested that the name Hareng originated in some amazingly large
herring catch which (I quote verbatim from that learned book)
"astonished the city of Hoorn,"--and henceforth attached itself to the
redoubtable fisherman!
The earliest of the family in this city was one Jan Pietersen Haring,
and his descendants worked unceasingly for the liberty of the republic
and against the Tory party. In 1748, Elbert Haring received a grant of
land which was undoubtedly the farm shown in the Ratzer map. A tract
of it was sold by the Harring (Herring) family to Cornelius
Roosevelt; it passed next into Jacob Sebor's hands, and in 1795 was
bought by Col. William S. Smith, a brilliant officer in Washington's
army, and holder of various posts of public office.
There was a Potter's Field, a cemetery for the poor and friendless,
far out in the country,--i.e., somewhere near Madison Square,--but it
was neither big enough nor accessible enough. In 1789, the city
decided to have another one. The tract of land threaded by Minetta
Water, half marsh and half sand, was just about what was wanted. It
was retired, the right distance from town and excellently adapted to
the purposes of a burying ground. The ground, popular historians to
the contrary, was by no means uniformly swampy. When filled in, it
would, indeed, be dry and sandy,--the sandy soil of Greenwich extends,
in some places, to a depth of fifty feet. Accordingly, the city bought
the land from the Herrings and made a Potter's Field. Eight years
later, by the bye, they bought Colonel Smith's tract too, to add to
the field. The entire plot was ninety lots,--eight lots to an
acre,--and comprised nearly the entire site of the present square. The
extreme western part, a strip extending east of Macdougal Street to
the Brook, a scant thirty feet,--was bought from the Warren heirs.
Minetta Lane, which was close by, had a few aristocratic country
residents by that time, and everyone was quite outraged by the notion
of having a paupers' graveyard so near. Several rich people of the
countryside even offered to present the city corporation with a much
larger and more valuable plot of ground somewhere else; but the