32 AUGUST 2018 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
Legends
COMING OF AGE
As with individuals, a commu-nity
follows a process of birth,
growth, and maturity into adult-hood.
Our 400-year history neatly fol-lows
this pattern with the center point,
the decade around 1820, as the begin-ning
of the modern era, if you will, of
our community’s adulthood. The story of
DeWitt Clinton and wife Maria Franklin,
residents in a spacious mansion off
Newtown Creek, illustrates the break
from our community’s past – and the
beginning of our eternal future.
Maria’s family, with names like Un-derhill,
Bowne, Seaman and Pearsall
are listed among the first settlers of
Long Island. They remained prominent
in local social, political and business
circles throughout the colonial period.
Her parents rented their townhouse
to the American government as the
nation’s first Executive Mansion during
the presidency of George Washington.
Although her husband DeWitt was
also born into an equally illustrious
family – who were prominent in the
political and social world of colonial
New York – his life was quite differ-ent
from his wife’s: it revolved around
developing institutions and ideas for
the new republic’s future.
It would be safe to say that no pub-lic
official, past or present, has held
as many offices, some concurrently:
Mayor of New York, Lieutenant Gover-nor
(and Governor) of New York State,
and United States Senator. He ran for
president in 1812 nearly beating James
Madison. His interests carried over
into the cultural (founder of the New-
York Historical Society, reorganized
the Academy of Fine Arts, elected a
member of the American Antiquarian
Society,) educational (Regent of the
University of the State of New York)
and scientific (New York Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences.)
Although any one of the items listed
would have earned him a strong “Wiki”
entry, his crowning achievement was
in linking New York to the continent’s
heartland by spearheading the devel-opment
of the Erie Canal. The “Great
Ditch” as some called it, forever tied
New York City (via the Hudson River)
to the Great Lakes.
In opening the American mid-west
– as far as Chicago (with its cattle
and wheat/corn) and Minnesota (with
its timber and ores) – the “Inland
Empire” was linked to the “Empire
City.” The crossroads of the colonies
was now the entrepôt to a continent.
The workshop and port of the nation
were now at Clinton’s (and our) com-munity’s
doorstep. It was the dawn
of today.
Perhaps his greatest legacy is a
philosophy he held on life, like a bot-tomless
well, words that never seem
to run out of the ability to quench our
thirst for meaning. They define the spirit
upon which our national social ethic
was founded:
Pleasure is a shadow, wealth is vani-ty,
and power a pageant; but knowledge
is ecstatic in enjoyment, perennial in
fame, unlimited in space, and indefinite
in duration: DeWitt Clinton.
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