Vanished in Manhattan
Was Missing American Founder John Lansing, Jr. Murdered or Did He Commit Suicide? An Old Newspaper Account and New Clues Could Indicate the Latter
In the Spring of 1830 the badly decomposed body of an elderly man washed in the waters off Lower Manhattan’s Cortlandt Street pier. The man had no identification - only a horn box, pocketbook, the clothes on his back and the shape of his head and teeth - the latter said to resemble one of the city’s most prominent missing persons.
On a stormy December evening in 1829 John Lansing, Jr. - a colleague of Alexander Hamilton at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, who refused a nomination to run for Governor of New York in 1804 - walked out of the City Hotel on Broadway to mail a letter on the steamboat to Albany and vanished.
An examination of the man’s clothing - a red flannel shirt, black coat (the button on its right lapel worn out), worsted stockings and calf skin shoes - however were determined not to belong to Lansing.
New Yorkers would have wait another three decades for a significant clue to emerge regarding Lansing’s disappearance.
In 1869 New York newspaper publisher Thurlow Weed claimed to have obtained a letter proving that Lansing had been murdered. Weed promised to reveal the identities of those responsible when they all had passed away. When Weed died in 1882 however, he took his secret to the grave. All that Weed would reveal was that those responsible had been well connected, powerful men who had murdered Lansing in connection to a legal matter.
Weed’s letter sparked a new round of speculation regarding Lansing’s disappearance. One author claimed to have incontrovertible proof that Lansing had been killed by “barkers” and his body sold to surgeons. Others believed that Lansing had been robbed, murdered and his body dumped in the Hudson. An article published in the Schenectady Star, one year after Weed’s letter first surfaced, offered the most plausible theory yet. A respected, older gentleman - who had been a personal friend of Lansing and his family - told the paper he had been told 30 years earlier, by a reliable source, that Lansing hadn’t disappeared at all - in fact he hadn’t even left his hotel room.
Distraught upon receiving the news that his home back in Albany had been seized by the sheriff and would be auctioned off, Lansing had allegedly hung himself in his hotel room. Then after dark his body was secreted away to the vault of his brother Abraham Lansing.
Shortly after it was printed however the Star retracted its original story. “Upon further investigation and a careful examination of the case we have become convinced the mystery is still unsolved,” the Star reported.
The paper’s sudden change of heart was inexplicable - especially given that their source - described by the Star as a man of “veracity and probity” - still stood behind his original story.
The paper never fully explained what made them decide to doubt the man’s story. The Star however did offer one important clue: the date when the man claimed to have learned about Lansing’s suicide.
It was the same time - 30 years prior - when a new cemetery was being organized and dedicated in Albany. The Albany Rural Cemetery became the final resting place of many - including Abraham Lansing - who had been buried at the State and Eagle Street cemeteries before being displaced due to frequent flooding.
Had the truth about Lansing’s suicide and secret burial been unearthed when Abraham’s vault was opened to move his body to the Albany Rural Cemetery?
In an interesting coincidence - if you believe in such things - among those listed as signers of a call for a meeting in December of 1840 at the Young Men’s Association, to discuss the organization of the Albany Rural Cemetery, was Thurlow Weed.
Contemporaneous newspaper accounts and private letters also substantiate the alleged motive described in the man’s story for Lansing’s suicide.
Once one of New York’s most prominent public figures, at the time of his death, Lansing was financially ruined.
The youngest in a long line of Dutch traders, farmers and mechanics - who first settled in the Mohawk Valley in the late 17th century - Lansing rose to political prominence during the Revolutionary period serving as General Philip Schuyler’s military secretary at the Battle of Saratoga, a member of the Confederation Congress, Mayor of Albany and one of New York’s three delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
Lansing also served as Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court and as a member of New York’s Court of Chancery.
By 1821 Lansing - who was being considered for the position of postmaster - was in dire financial straits however.
Having - it appears - recklessly speculated in land, the Panic of 1819 hit Lansing particularly hard. “Poor and insolvent” with no remaining “personal or family influence” according to one letter writer, Lansing’s prospects at the time appeared bleak.
Senator Martin Van Buren - who backed Lansing’s appointment as postmaster - wrote in a letter - that the position would be a way to have “an old patriot thus provided for in the evening of his days.”
Lansing however did not get the appointment.
By 1829 sheriffs were seizing hundreds of acres of Lansing’s land across New York state. His financial situation only worsening on December 12, 1829 Lansing traveled to New York City on business. That morning Lansing checked in and breakfasted at the City Hotel where he later dined with his brother-in-law, the wealthy banker and socialite Robert Ray.
Located on Broadway – between Cedar and Thames Streets – the City Hotel was New York’s finest. Its 100 parlors and rooms and ground level retail shops occupied an entire city block.
On Valentine’s Day every year the hotel hosted one of the most exclusive events of the season - the Bachelor’s Ball. Tickets cost ten dollars and were “printed on glazed cardboard from elaborately engraved plates.”
In 1832 the City Hotel hosted another of New York’s most magnificent dinners in honor of Washington Irving’s return to the U.S. One of the 43 men who hosted the dinner was Robert Ray’s brother Richard.
A member of the banking firm of Prime, Ward, Daniels, King and Company Robert Ray – and his brother Richard – were among the city’s most prominent figures. Richard boasted his own box at the Italian opera while Robert had one of the finest homes in the entire city on Marketfield Street. Used by British General Henry Clinton during the war, one visitor would later vividly recall the mansion’s “painted ceilings, gilded moldings, rich satin ottomans, curtains in the late Parisian taste and splendid mirrors, which reflect and multiply all the rays great and small.” Its owner - Robert Ray - hosted some of New York’s most splendid parties overseen by an army of “decorators, cooks and confectioners.”
Unfortunately there is no record of what Ray and Lansing discussed at their three o’clock dinner that afternoon in the City Hotel’s sprawling, dining room. Could they have discussed Lansing’s cratering finances? That month 20 acres of Lansing’s land in Otego would be auctioned off after being seized by the sheriff. Had Lansing asked for assistance? Was he rebuffed?
We do know that before retiring to his room Lansing agreed to join Ray at his home later that night on Marketfield Street. He then retired to his room and wrote for a short time in his hotel room.
Sometime shortly before 5 p.m. Lansing departed his room to mail a letter on the steamboat to Albany - leaving his cane and trunk behind. He was last seen – dressed in black, with his hair powdered, carrying a small carpetbag – by a hotel porter who brushed his coat before he left the hotel.
From the hotel Lansing would have made his way past the “second class” boarding houses of Cortlandt Street - where the steamboat was docked.
Reports conflict regarding whether he ever reached the steamboat. If he did and mailed his letter he next would have most likely headed toward Marketfield Street.
Described by one later writer as “a barren waste, visited by few save the homeless immigrants who sought their shelter in the barracks of Castle Garden and the lawless vagrant who prowled about,” the area around Marketfield Street was rough - eventually becoming so bad that Ray was forced to give up his mansion.
Following his disappearance Lansing’s friends published an announcement in the Evening Post seeking any information about his whereabouts. Few clues turned up.
Had Lansing been murdered? Did he fall into the river? Had he committed suicide and his body been secretly hidden in his brother’s vault?
There is one curious postscript to Lansing’s story. There have been rumors that a cenotaph (or monument to someone buried elsewhere) was erected at Albany Rural Cemetery on Lansing’s behalf. Cemetery staff however have never been able to locate any such monument.
Perhaps the monument - if it ever existed - was never located at Albany Rural Cemetery but rather the State Street Cemetery and was lost or destroyed like many of the other stones when remains were relocated to Albany Rural. Perhaps that stone was not a cenotaph at all but rather a marker - indicating to those few that knew - that indeed Lansing was buried there after all.
Sources:
Hudson Mohawk Geneological and Family Memoirs Vol. I Cuyler Reynolds Lewis Historical Publishing Co. Ny 1911 pg. 72-73
Memoirs and Letters of James Kent, William Kent, Little Brown and Company 1898 Boston pg. 281, 58
Memoir of Thurlow Weed, Thurlow Weed Barnes, Houghton, Mifflin and Company 1884 Cambridge pg. 33
History of the Bench and Bar of New York Edited by Henry McAdam Vol. I New York History Company 1837 NY pg. 111
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