The Portland daily press., 1881-07-07
THE PRESS.
Aaron Burr.
Gath's Picture of His Death Chamber.
IN. Y. Tribune.l

IN. L. IilDunS'1
A few moons ago took the ferryboat to the
north or rather the northwest, shore OF Staten
Island, and landed at the village Immediately
opposite Bergen Point, called Port Richmond,
so named because it is the water landing to
old Richmond Court House, at the centre of
the island. There is not more animated spot
in the water scenery of New York bay than
this. 1t shows both the Bay of New York and
Newark Bay, the latter receiving the COM
merce OF Newark City and of the Hackensack
marshes, and of the Jersey inlets as far down
as the Raritan River. They all pass out be-
tween Port Richmond and Bergen Point,
through the XIII Won Kull, which is only half
a mile wide. a sick man could sit all day
long at his window by this Sater, watching
tugs, propellers, pleasure steamers, sloops and
schooaers, oyster crafts, RATS and barge lows,
garbage fleets, yachts and excursion arks filled
with music and dancing, go past like process
sions in mirror.
1t was to Port Richmond that Colonel Burr,
ex-senator and Vice President of the United
States, ex Attorney General of New York, ex-
candidate for Governor of New York and for
Minister to France, and once almost President
VI eno OHAlSu Dldutoy WIS DiouSub OhC oey III
ea-ly June, at about this present time of the
year, upon a litter, to die. The hotel, now
called the Continental, stands nearly as it did
at that moment, right in your face as you turn
from the water at Port Richmond, and only
few hundred feet distant-a yellowish brown
hotel with gambrel roof and six tall, spare,
thick wooden columns rising to the caves and
inclosing in their piazza three stories As
cending the steps to this piazza broad door
and hall are right opposite the middle of it,
and broad flight of naked steps rises to the
second floor and similar hall there, and the
room to the left, as you look up from the
ground, is the room where Aaron Burr died.
Under it is the bar-room now. The chamber
is a square room, with little carved bits of car
pentering about the chimney side, and it is of
respectable size, quite bedroom parlor. Mr..
Burr was borne to it on a litter from the steam
boat, an old, helpless invalid prosecuted by
bodily decay and creditors, and the fear of dy-
ing in the street.
He had lost the confidence of man, woman
and child. Politics had spewed him out thirty
years before. Family circles had tried him too
often. Women had found that he would not
only kiss but tell. Clients found that he
would sell their confidence to the other side.
And yet forsaken, friendless and unpitied,
such was the mystery of this miserable little
man that half the world said the President of
the United States, then running for the office
before the people, was the son of Aaron Burr.
Inc RELIGIOUS WOrIQ remembered that the
greatest logician and theologian since Paul had
been this outcast's grandfather. The educated
class knew that the founder of Princeton Col
lege had been Aaron Burr's father. Lawyers
knew that his sisters husband had founded the
first law school in the New World Once his
daughter had led the fashion and beauty of
Washington society and married one of the
richest planters of the South. He was about
to die in sight of his birthplace at Newark and
OF his orphan home at Elizabeth, where his
father and grandfather had ministered and
whence he had entered the Revolutionary
Army. These two towns of New Jersey are in
plain sight, and Elizabeth is only about mile
distant. Fifty years before being brought to
Staten Island to die, young Burr, while on
Washington's staff, had proposed to the Gen.
erai to head an expedition against Staten
Island every lane and corner of which he
knew. having made its hills his rambling
ground from the fiat, mosquito-ridden plains of
Elizabeth. 1t was perhaps his playmate's SON,
Judge Edwards a resident of Staten Island,
who was almost his only visitor at the inn,
That island of Tories was now about to receive
the last mould and living shadow of Aaron
Burr.
A few moments after examining this room 1
fell in with an old man of one of Washington
Irving's Dutch counSenances, by the name of
John j. Clute. He was writing a local histo-
old enough to have seen Aaron Burr on this
island?"
"Sir," he replied, ''you are now talking to
the man who held the hand of Aaron Burr
when he wrote bis last signature in this
world"
i asked the particulars.
Judge Edwards, my neighbor, came to me
and said: Mr.. Clute, there is a sick man at
the Port Richmond Hotel who wishes to make
an affidavit for pension; will you take his
statement?' 1 went to the hotel with the
Judge, and found small man, mere string
OF bones, mumbling to himself in bed said:
This man is not fit to make an affidavit. l
will not administer it. WELL said Judge Ed.
wards, suppose you come around toward even
ing He gets better in the afternoons. 1 re-
turned in the afternoon, and he was just we'll
enough to get his OATH He was raised up in
bed, poor childish thing, and I filled the
quill with ink and guided his fingers. And,
sir, could not help thinking This is the
hand that killed Hamilton"