The previous year, 1876, had been the l^i-centennial anniversary of the building of what has been known niodernly as the Old vSenate House. This building, that has so deep an historic interest, is long and low, constructed of stone and supplemented at a late period of its history by a "linto," or lean-to. It was erected in 1676 by Wessel Ten Broeck, a West])halian, who, emigrating to America at an early age, was elected ScJioppcr at Esopus and was a commissioner chosen to sujjerintend the settlement of the Nieuw Dorp, including the villages of Hurley and Marbletown.

Ten Broeck 's wife was a daughter of the Rev. Laurentius \^an Gaasbeek, by whom he had eight children, who are supposed to be the ancestors of all the Ten Broecks in the country. The well-known Knickerbocker explanation of the derivation of the name of Ten Broeck was not relished by the descendants of that forceful ancestor.

Wessel's wife's name would make a telling title for a Dutch story or poem. Jacomyntie -- how it suggests flax-white hair neath' c[uoiffed under a muslin cap, a

45^ The Hudson River

well-lilled, trim stomacher laced to the top, quilted ]_)etticoats with a neat vision of blue or red yarn stockings showing between it and the polished shoe-buckles. We seem to know that as Jacomyntie Ten Broeck stood in the doorway of that goodly stone house, there was in her roimd and ])leasant face a consciousness of wellstocked larders and fruitful orchards, of cream in the dairy and butter in the crocks, and oily koeks on the ample sheh'cs of the i)antry. At a later day the old house, then one hundred and one years old, sheltered a notal:)le company. There Robert R. Livingston, Pierre Van Cortlandt, Gouverneur Morris, Colonel De Witt, Gansevoort, Scott, Ten Broeck, and others met to deliberate about the form of government to be adopted by New York State.