Looking up Broadway 1825

Here, we are looking up Broadway from Bowling Green to Trinity Church. The first three houses on the left were owned by the Kennedy, Watts and Livingston families.

[NOTE.--Archibald Kennedy I was Receiver General and Collector of Customs in New York, and one of the prominent men of his day, and for many years was member of Council. This position he resigned a few months before his death "on account of age and other employments." He died after a few days illness June 14, 1763, aged about 78. His dwelling house was No. 3 Broadway. This belonged to Arent Schuyler, and descended to his daughter Eve, who married Peter Bayard. They sold it to Archibald Kennedy in June, 1745. He married Mary Schuyler, widow of Arent Schuyler, and she survived him about a year.

The house and lot was left to his daughter, Katharine Kennedy, who married Dr. Jonathan Mallet. He and his children, Thomas, Anne, and Catharine, went to England, and they sold the house and lot to John Watts in 1792. The lot was 40 feet wide, and on it there were two houses, in one of which Archibald Kennedy kept the Custom House. The lot No. 1 Broadway was in early times owned by Colonel William Smith, of St. George's Manor, Long Island. He left it to his daughter Martha, wife of Colonel Caleb Heathcote. She sold it to Charles Sleigh, who conveyed it to Colonel Abraham De Peyster, and he sold it August 26, 1756, to Archibald Kennedy, Jr., who was afterward Earl of Cassilis. Upon this was erected the Kennedy mansion, one of the finest houses in the city, a view of which may be found in all histories of New York. His sons, John and Robert Kennedy, of Teignmouth, England, sold it to Nathaniel Prime December 13, 1810, for $35,000.]

Archibald, 11th Earl of Cassillis distinguished himself as a naval commander and raised the seige of Lisbon in 1760 and the people of that city presented him with a handsomely engraved silver platter which is still in the possession of the present Marquess of Ailsa. After he retired from the sea, Archibald, lived in No. 1 Broadway, New York, but, on his refusal to take part in the Boston Tea Party, George Washington evicted him from his home and took possession of it for himself. The Earl married Anne Watts, daughter of John Watts of New York and part of her dowry is said to have been Long Island in New York State but the Earl lost all his American property during the War of Independence. When Glenlyon's Regiment carried out the massacre at Glencoe in September, 1692, a young ensign in the regiment refused to take part in the slaughter and he was taken back to Fort William and ignominiously discharged. Tradition has it, truth or not, that the name of the young ensign was Archibald Kennedy of Maybole.

On the death of the tenth Earl the title passed to a kinsman who had settled in America. Captain Archibald Kennedy was an officer in the Royal Navy who held estates in Hoboken in New Jersey and became the greatest property owner in New York. He tried to be neutral during the American War of Independence, and was accordingly mistrusted by both sides. Half of his New York properties were confiscated, including number 1, Broadway, which was appropriated by George Washington. His son, the twelfth Earl, was a close friend of the Duke of Clarence, who, on his coronation as William IV, created him Marquess of Ailsa. The second Marquess, Archibald Kennedy, was killed in a hunting accident in 1870. His son succeeded to the title at the age of twenty-two, and after his death in 1938 the family title was borne by each of his three sons in turn.