August 29, 1797 — to Philip Van Cortlandt
ASB_VOL3.PDF, PDF page 200
The New York Public Library has two originals of Asbury’s letters. This is one of them. The other is addressed on the envelope to Major Van Cortlandt. They are in the Van Cortlandt collection, and some have taken them for letters written to the man who was lieutenant governor of New York State for eighteen years and called “Governor.” Asbury paid tributes to him on several occasions. Lieutenant Governor Van Cortlandt resided in the old Manor House on the Croton in New York. He was very rich. He entertained distinguished guests, among them Washington, Lafayette, Franklin, and Whitefield. Whitefield preached there. The Methodist preachers stopped at his house. Pierre Van Cortlandt was the first lieutenant governor of New York. He was president of the convention that adopted the constitution of the state of New York. The “governor” became a Methodist and gave the land for a church and burying ground. He lived to be ninety-three years of age and died on May 1, 1814. Henry Boehm has given an extended account of Van Cortlandt in his Reminiscence. However, this letter was evidently written to Philip Van Cortlandt, the elder son of “Governor” Van Cortlandt.
——[N.Y.]1
August 29, 1797
[TO PHILIP VAN CORTLANDT]2
My much respected friend:
I have a serious leisure to write to my friends, but mental and body powers are weak. I am greatly obliged to you for the remembrance of me and earnest wish to see me at your mansion.3 It is upwards of twelve years since I began the wreck of my constitution, when I became more immediately the superintendent of our community in America. We have been assisted to spread our Gospel from friends, and sometimes through the Western United States, the Northwest Territory, Upper Canada and the other British Provinces. Altho we do not number yet, we may calculate upon one hundred thousand that stand in the above named states in friendship and are in some degree of fellowship with us and perhaps ten hundred thousand that are our regular hearers. Thus both the Lord wrought for and by us his ministers and people: if we may even dare to call ourselves so. Many of our preachers have suffered want, hunger labour, lodging, rocks, rivers, mountains, wilderness, preaching in the Southern States, night and day, the people forceing [them] to their lodgings. Whenever a preacher is in the settlement, the tribes of poor slaves coming in the night, that cannot come in the day, the unhealthy climates: many young men that have seldom wrought in hard labour and tenderly brought up where they have had servants to do the drudgery of the plantations, these have had little life except the clash of arms and [company] encampments; many of the hardships of the American war that you have known something of; their zeal and indefatigable labors wrecking their slender systems. A rehearsal of the things to Dr. Joseph Ramsey in Charleston astonished him, and that for the poor pittance of $64,4 the half or one third, this made the doctor offer and continue to our ministers his medicine and service gratis.
Of myself I may speak as a fool, if my Journals can pass the press [and] will satisfy the candid within. I have been labouring or loitering within, I have been resting on beds of roses or suffering night and [day], I stand astonished at myself and the goodness of God that I have been kept alive and moving. During my ten months indisposition I have rode upon horseback above two thousand miles in the worst of weather and country south and west and yet after all I am an unprofitable servant. I have not done my duty.
My dear friend I feel a great tenderness for you and your whole family for your distinguished kindness to our people when they were few in member. You are blessed with a goodly mother5 as I am also. You have a gracious sister6 whose soul with mine longeth for the salvation of your soul and the soul of your brother. But how hardly shall they that not only have much of this world, but are in connection with the policy and interests of this world.7 My dear friend you hear, you feel the gospel, do you pray and strive? Early guidance being called, and [you] are a child of a mother’s prayers and tears. Jesus hath bled for you. From a child God hath been at work on your heart. Probably in war and trouble saved, and perhaps you promised God if He would spare you, you would seek Him. When the Methodists8 came along at the first you had perhaps awful and palpable conviction, you could not hide it. You cannot keep away from Methodist preaching, you would feel a great disappointment and from rest to come to hear, you cannot be happy in a worldly enjoyment, you love some of the ministry as your own soul, yea perhaps more than your own soul if yet you do not love God. I should be happy to see you and to see you love Jesus. I have been forbid reading, writing and such exercises. Elder Wells9 that attends me writeth my letters in general, but I would trust none with this, but myself, if even I see you again may it be in Jesus, farewell, Most affectionately yours
F. ASBURY
P.S. Excuse me I am in the country and want paper. With great respect remember me to the family.
New York Public Library
Notes (9)
- The place is not given. Asbury was in New York State, where he had been ill. ↩
- Philip Van Cortlandt was the elder son of Pierre Van Cortlandt. He lived until 1831. He was in the Revolution and engaged in some of Washington’s most hazardous enterprises. He had continuous contacts with the French forces. He became a brigadier general in 1783. He lived at the Manor House at Croton. (Arthur Bruce Moss.) ↩
- The mansion must have fallen to Philip as he was the elder of the two sons. ↩
- The preacher’s salary. ↩
- Mrs. Van Cortlandt, wife of “Governor” Van Cortlandt, was Joanna Livingston, daughter of Gilbert Livingston. She was a deeply religious person like her husband. Whitefield had preached from the portico of their house to a multitude of friends and tenants of the governor. She was a relative of Freeborn Garrettson’s wife. Her husband gave the land for the church at Croton. (Arthur Bruce Moss.) ↩
- Governor and Mrs. Van Cortlandt had two sons, Philip and Pierre, Jr., and three daughters, Catherine, later widow of Abram Van Wyck, who lived at Croton with her parents; Mrs. Cornelia Beekman, who lived at the Peekskill Van Cortlandt residence; and Mrs. Ann Van Rennsalear, who lived at Albany. The reference here is evidently to Catherine, who lived at Croton with her parents and Philip. (Arthur Bruce Moss.) ↩
- Asbury evidently refers to salvation. He shows his deep interest in Philip’s soul. ↩
- Reference to Garrettson, Henry Boehm, and even perhaps to George Whitefield. ↩
- Joshua Wells was one of three preachers appointed to New York, the others being George Roberts and William Beauchamp. (See Minutes of 1797.) ↩