The Moorings: Commodore Matthew C. Perry's Hudson River Valley port against the storm

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry is shown in a print from the United States Military Magazine by Huddy & Duval c. 1840, the period when he established

The Moorings and was named Commandant of the New York Navy Yard

(later Brooklyn NavyYard). (Public domain)

Before the Gilded Age, before the railroad snaked its tracks along the eastern shore of the Hudson in 1849 separating it from the great estates that lay along it, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry established his stone country home The Moorings on a 120-acre farm in what was called Scarborough at the time.

Today the area is just west of U.S. Route 9, also known as North Broadway and Albany Post Road, from the hamlet of Archville in the Town of Mount Pleasant between the villages of Sleepy Hollow and Briarcliff Manor to the south and north, respectively.

The commodore was one of the most famous people to establish a country retreat in the area north of Dobbs Ferry and south of Ossining and reachable only by horse, carriage or boat from New York City at the time.

Perry was the son of Continental and later U.S. Navy captain and Revolutionary War veteran Christopher Raymond Perry and the younger brother of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. He entered the Navy in 1809 at age 15 as a midshipman – lowest officer’s rank in the Navy – on the 1806-built schooner Oliver commanded, USS Revenge.

Matthew Perry was best known as the commander of the fleet that compelled the closed, feudal realm of Japan’s Tokugawa Shogunate by 1854 to open itself to Western contact and influence in an overwhelming display of gunboat diplomacy. The shogunate, effectively a military dictatorship paying lip service to an emperor in name only, was weakened and replaced by Emperor Meiji in 1868. The so-called Meiji Restoration led to the emergence of modern Japan.

It also resulted in the move of the Japanese capital from Kyoto to Edo, renamed Tokyo (Eastern Capital), when the emperor established his residence there.

The steam-powered USS Fulton (pictured) was built in 1837 and commanded by Capt. Matthew Perry from 1838 to 1840 in connection with experiments in steam navigation. Perry was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard from 1833 to 1837 to oversee the construction of Fulton, the Navy’s first steam-powered warship at the Navy Yard. (Artist S.W. Stanton, public domain)

Perry was also famous as the Father of America’s Steam Navy, for realizing the potential of steam power in the development of naval strength in the 19th century and overseeing its deployment in the U.S. Navy, most directly during his three-year run (1841-43) as Commandant of the New York Navy Yard (known later as the Brooklyn Navy Yard).

When he was named commandant in June 1840 (he wouldn't actually take the post until 1841), he was awarded the honorific rank commodore by James Kirke Paulding, President Martin Van Buren’s Secretary of the Navy. Perry very likely knew Paulding well since he had a Hudson home at Hyde Park and was good friends with author Washington Irving, a close friend of Perry's, too. All three men would write major published works. The familiarity might have overcome misgivings by Paulding who was an outspoken opponent of the use of steam power in the Navy.

Quarters A of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, home to Commodore Matthew Perry from 1841 to 1843 while he served as commandant, is shown on Nov. 12, 1904 as it underwent a two-story addition, the foundation of which is visible on the right side of the house. A two-story addition at the rear of the house (right of the power pole) was made earlier, likely 1860. Otherwise the main body of the house including the front porches, appears to be about the same as it was when Perry lived there. His country retreat during that period was at The Moorings. Quarters A housed Navy Yard commandants from about 1806 until 1966 when the yard closed. It was sold in the 1970s and remains in private hands today. The National Historic Landmark is at 24 Evans Street in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. (National Archives, Washington, D.C.)

Commodore was the highest rank given in the U.S. Navy until July 16, 1862 when Congress approved the appointment of nine rear admirals. One of those nine, David Farragut, became the nation’s first full admiral in 1866.

The parlor in the Quarters A of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, home to Navy Yard commandants from about 1806 to 1966 including Commodore Matthew Perry from 1841 to 1843, is shown on Nov. 25, 1904. Many of the room’s architectural elements, including the mantel and mirror, are likely the same as in Perry’s time.The Moorings was his country estate at the time. (National .Archives, Washington, D.C.)

Finally, he was an executive officer on warships in three wars: War of 1812 (1812-1815); Second Barbary War (1815-16) and Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

The former Quarters A or Commandant’s Quarters of the Brooklyn Navy Yard, pictured in an aerial photo c. 2010, is located some four blocks south of the East River on a 3-acre gated property at 24 Evans Street to the north and Hudson and West streets to the west and east, respectively, in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. The site is four blocks east of the Manhattan Bridge (which opened in 1909) linking Brooklyn and Manhattan over the East River. (Wikimedia Commons)

Outside of wartime, Perry twice commanded warships (1819-20 USS Cyane, 1821-25 USS Shark) off the coast of West Africa charged with suppressing the slave trade and establishing a pseudo American colony, Liberia, to which some 15,000 freed and free-born African-Americans and some 3,200 Afro-Caribbeans were returned by the private Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America (after 1837 the American Colonization Society). Slaves being transported on slave ships – primarily Portuguese — and captured by British, French and American vessels were released in Liberia as well, not their places of origin, to prevent their recapture and resale into slavery by African native rulers.

In Mexico on June 15-16, 1847, Perry was commanding the U.S. Home Fleet when he assembled a smaller, nimbler Mosquito Fleet to move upriver and attack the fort and city at Villahermosa (then known of San Juan Bautista), capital of Tabasco State. His fleet bombarded the target city and fort and he then personally led some 1,200 sailors and Marines ashore to take both targets successfully.

Commodore Matthew C. Perry and a combined force of 1,200 Marines and sailors storm the banks of the Tabasco River (now the Grijalva River) on June 16, 1847 during the Second Battle of Tabasco, won by the U.S. in the 1846-48 Mexican-American War. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.; painted by Lt. H. Walke, U.S. Navy; lithograph by Sarony & Major, Manhattan, N.Y., c. 1848)

Perry was nicknamed "Old Bruin" by his crews for his voice's ability to cut through the more deafening gales on the open sea. His relationship with his sailors was a mixed bag. On one hand he was fiercely protective of their health, feeding them a tonic consisting of five gallons of whiskey, 15 gallons of water, two gallons of lime juice and 20 pounds of sugar to ward off scurfvy.

On the other, he was a strict disciplinarian, a trait that was extremely important on long voyages such as his 16,000 mile round-trip voyage on his Japanese expedition (1852-1854). On long voyages, the fleet had to put in often to refill its coal reserves. During these stops, sailors were tempted to desert.Perry was extremely frustrated by the fact that Congress took away one anti-desertion tool: it had banned flogging with the vicious cat-o'-nine tails in Sept. 28, 1850. Flogging had been and integral part of the Navy for 75 years. Not until 1855 did Congress enact a replacement punishment, the court martial.

A contemporary description of Perry by the New York Times newspaper as a "rather crotchety old Yankee sea dog" gives perhaps a candid glance of how he was viewed. 

From July 1843 to April 1844, Perry returned to West Africa, this time commanding the Navy’s Africa Squadron, again in suppression of the slave trade.

Perry and his wife of 25 years, Jane Slidell Perry, purchased their Hudson Valley property in 1839. He rapidly improved the rustic farm and built a stone house he named “The Moorings,” located just east of the site of a later boathouse and dock a few hundred yards northwest of William Rockefeller’s Rockwood Hall home, the second largest private home in America at the time.

This bell hung in the belfry of the Catholic Church “Iglesia de la Virgen de la Concepción” in Villahermosa, Mexico. The church was destroyed by American naval guns under command of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in June 1847 during the Second Battle of Tabasco. Perry personally led 1,200 sailors and Marines in storming a nearby fort and taking the city, grabbing the bell from the church rubble as a prize of war as was common practice in that period. Perry, one of the founding members of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church near The Moorings, presented the bell to the church on his return and had it inscribed: “Captured At Tobasco (sic) 1847, Presented by Commodore M.C. Perry, Recast.” The bronze bell is 20 inches tall and has a diameter of 18 inches at the bottom end. The bell was replaced in November 1910 with a new larger bell and plaque by Perry’s son-in-law, August Belmont, and the original was placed on an outside corner of St Mary’s to the left of the main entrance. (2020 cropped photo by Howard Dale; for more, please see Mr. Dale's Photography, Images and Cameras blog)

The property is part of Rockefeller State Park Preserve today and lies just north of Phelps Hospital, west of Route 9.

The Moorings had unobstructed access to the east bank of the Hudson River until the railroad cut it off. After purchasing Perry’s former property from business partner Edwin Bartlett in 1860, wealthy maritime merchant William Henry Aspinwall built a dock on levees of fill material in the river itself.

Aspinwall would go on to dock his yacht, Firefly, an 1854-built steamwheeler at the site. It was America’s first privately owned steam yacht and used it to commute to and from Manhattan.

By 1913, The Moorings stone house had been razed and Rockefeller was building a 150-foot iron bridge over the railroad tracks several hundred yards northwest of Rockwood Hall to reach his boat house and dock on the river. Perry’s house had stood in the footprint of the landward footings of Rockefeller’s bridge.

On his new property, gentleman farmer Perry planted trees and cultivated gardens that would provide him with at least a dozen varieties of vegetables as well as assorted berries. Biographers say that when at The Moorings, Perry did much of the farm labor himself, waking well before dawn and working until taking a late breakfast.

His neighbors and closest friends near The Moorings included his brother-in-law Alexander Slidell Mackenzie (born Alexander Slidell, Mackenzie was added in adulthood in tribute to a wealthy uncle), author Washington Irving, Hudson River shipping magnate Jacob Storm and newspaper publisher and prominent Whig Party politician James Watson Webb.

This portrait of Commodore Matthew C. Perry was taken by photographer

Mathew B. Brady no more than a couple of years before his March 4, 1858

death.(Mathew B. Brady, Metropolitan Museum of Art) 

Slidell Mackenzie in 1840 built the first home on the site that would eventually become Rockwood Hall under Rockefeller. Watson Webb built Pokahoe on what is the Sleepy Hollow Manor subdivision today, just south of The Moorings, in 1848. A scaled down version of Pokahoe remains at 7 Pokakoe Drive today. Storm, who lived in the main house at Philipsburg Manor, captained the sloop William A. Hart which he docked nearby. Irving lived six miles south of The Moorings at Woolfert’s Roost, today’s Sunnyside, on the Tarrytown/Irvington border.

Perry and Irving regularly accompanied Captain Storm on the Hart as they commuted from their New York residences to their country estates.

Slidell Mackenzie was the first of the friends to depart, dying at his home overlooking the Hudson on Sept. 13, 1848. Businessman Edwin Bartlett, partner of Aspinwall, bought Slidell Mackenzie’s property and in 1849 began building what would be recognized as Rockwood Hall.

The paddle steamship USS Mississippi (pictured) served as Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s flagship at the start of  his 1852-1854 mission to Japan as commander of the East Indies Squadron. He later used the USS Susquehanna, another paddle steamship, as his flagship, while maintaining the Mississippi as the No. 2 ship in his fleet. The Mississippi was briefly retired but returned to active duty at the start of the Civil War. It is shown here c. 1863. Both Mississippi and Susquehanna were built at the New York (later Brooklyn) Navy Yard, of which Perry was once commandant. (Photographer McPherson & Oliver, Baton Rouge, La., public domain)

In March 1852, President Millard Fillmore, who had been elevated from the vice presidency after the 1850 death of President Zachary Taylor, chose Perry to lead an expedition to the Far East to convince Japan to end more than 200 years of isolation. Fillmore was a lame duck (he had lost the Whig nomination in 1852 to General Winfield Scott, who lost to Democrat Franklin Pierce in November 1852) when Perry's fleet of six steam-powered vessels and three warships under sail left Norfolk, Va., carrying a letter from Fillmore to the emperor of Japan outlining U.S. demands and goals.

Perry arrived near Uraga at the entrance to Edo (now Tokyo) Bay on July 8, 1853 and ordered his four ships to aim at the town and fire a salvo of blanks from their 73 Paixhans guns, the first naval guns to fire exploding shells.The shogun and his troops, victims of their own isolation insistence and carrying weapons dating to the 17th century, were cowed by Perry's campaign of shock and awe.

(Interestingly, Perry later claimed the guns volley was just part of the fleet's Independence Day celebrations, albeit four days late.)

The American expedition under Commodore Matthew C. Perry makes its first landing at Edo (now Toyko) Bay on July 14, 1853. This lithograph was captioned by Bayard Taylor: “The officers comprising the Commodore's escort formed a double line from the jetty, and as he passed between them, fell into the proper order behind him. He was received with the customary honors, and the procession immediately started for the place of reception. A stalwart boatswain's mate was selected to bear the broad pennant of the Commodore, supported by two very tall and powerful [African-American] seamen completely armed. Behind these followed two sailor boys bearing the letter of the President (Millard Fillmore, no longer in office) and the Commodore's letter of credence …, then came the Commodore himself, with his staff and escort of officers. The Marine force … led the way, and the corps of seamen from all the ships brought up the rear." (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.; lithograph and print by Hatch & Severyn, 140 Fulton St., Manhattan, N.Y.) 

Six days later, Perry and his forces were allowed to land and presented the Fillmore letter to Japanese diplomats. Perry's force departed on July 17, but vowed to return, allowing the Japanese time to ponder their fate if they failed to accept Fillmore's terms.

Perry returned on Feb. 13, 1854, this time with eight warships, joined later by a ninth and in about six weeks time, the Japanese had conceded to almost all the Americans' demands. The Convention of Kanagawa was signed on March 31, 1854 by the new shogun (his father had died several days after Perry's departure in 1853) and Perry on behalf of Franklin Pierce in today's Yokohama.

Perry was known to have lived at The Moorings as late as 1852, but after his three-year mission to Japan began on Nov. 24, 1852, he doesn’t appear to have returned to the estate, living in lower Manhattan after his return from the Pacific. Perry was provided a $20,000 honorarium by the U.S. after his return – more than $730,000 in 2023 – and sold The Moorings to Bartlett.

This is a post-1910 map of William Rockefeller’s Rockwood Hall estate which was the site of Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s stone house and 120-acre property The Moorings from 1839 to the early 1850s. The house was razed by later owners, but originally was situated a few hundred yards northwest of Rockwood Hall (on the land side of the small outcroppings on the Hudson River shown just above the I and the V in the word RIVER on the map). The small line crossing the railroad tracks was a bridge over the tracks to the dock and boat house built on landfill in the river. The base of the bridge on the landward side is approximately where The Moorings residence was located. (G.W. Bromley & Co. publisher, New York Public Library Digital Collection)

Perry battled a variety of health issues while remaining on active duty in his later years, reportedly including cirrhosis (sources indicate he was a lifelong heavy drinker), gout and arthritis. He died on March 4, 1858 after a bout with rheumatic fever spread to his heart. He was interred on the grounds of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery at 131 East 10th Street, Manhattan, but his remains were moved to Island Cemetery in his hometown of Newport, R.I., on March 21, 1866. His widow Jane had an elaborate monument erected on his grave in 1873.

Commodore Perry’s wife, Jane

Slidell Perry, is shown in a c. 1870

image taken from a 1913 book

\about the family. (Page 134, “The Perrys

of Rhode Island, and tales of Silver

Creek,” by Calbraith Bourn Perry,

published by T.A Wright, New York 1913)

The Perrys, who married in December 1814, had 10 children, two of whom died in infancy, the rest of whom all outlived their father and six of whom outlived their mother. Two of their sons served in the military. Matthew C. Jr. was a captain in the U.S. Navy and fought in the Mexican-American War and the Civil War before dying at 52 in 1873. William Frederick served as a Marine lieutenant for two years during the Mexican-American War.

Jane Slidell Perry died at age 82 on June 14, 1879 in Newport.

U.S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, and a distant relative of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, delivers prepared remarks aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan as he accepts the surrender of Imperial Japan on Sept. 2, 1945. The Missouri, nicknamed “Mighty Mo,” was selected as the surrender venue by President Harry S Truman, a Missouri native who had christened the battleship with his daughter Margaret a year earlier at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The flag at left rear in this photo is the actual flag carried by Commodore Perry 109 years earlier when he sailed into Tokyo Bay, then known as Edo Bay, as Japan acquiesced to American demands to end well more than 200 years of isolation and open its doors to the West. Like the Missouri, Perry’s 1852-1853 East India Squadron flagship USS Mississippi was also built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard where Perry served as commandant from 1841 to 1843. The Perry flag is on permanent display at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Md., and a replica is kept on the USS Missouri Memorial in Pearl Harbor. (National Archives and Records Administration)

Perry compiled an in-depth report to the U.S. Senate on his Japan expedition that was developed later into a three-volume book written by Francis L. Hawks from the personal diaries of Perry and his officers and under Perry's direct supervision. The book "Narrative of the Expedition to the China Seas and Japan, 1852-1854 by Commodore M.C. Perry" was published in 1856 and remains in print today.

Perry therefore joined pal and neighbor Washington Irving ("The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," among many others) and brother-in-law Alexander Slidell Mackenzie as published authors. Mackenzie's two-volume "The Life of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry," with collaboration from Commondore Matthew Perry on his beloved and admired older brother, was published 10 years after Mackenzie's death by Harper & Brothers of New York.

IF YOU'D LIKE TO KNOW MORE ...

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A LOOK AT PERRY: Recommended listening (audio presentation below): Matthew C. Perry ...

A NEW LOOK AT ROCKWOOD: Recommended viewing (video below): Whatever happened to Rockwood Hall?

A LOOK AT THE PARK: Recommended viewing (video below): Best Places to Hike in New York: Rockefeller State Park Preserve ...

MEXICAN-AMERICAN WAR: Recommended viewing (video below): The Discovery of America ...

SECOND BARBARY WAR: Recommended listening (audio below) ...

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