Stories about my Mother 9
Henry Hudson led the first European expedition up the river that, in time, would come to be named for him. He was English and had already twice failed to find a northwestern route to the Indies during the two previous warm seasons. Both those times he had been hired by a private English company. This time, for his third voyage in 1609, he had been hired by the Dutch East India Company.
The Dutch East India Company (or VOC) was formed in 1602, two years after the British East India Company began. The British company had obtained a warrant guaranteeing that it would be the sole English trading entity in that part of the world. That financial monopoly allowed it to start eclipsing the Dutch efforts. In Holland, every man (or company) was out for himself meaning that they ended up competing against each other rather than working together to maximize profits. Seeing how effective the British had become, the VOC obtained a similar warrant for themselves. As the now sole Dutch trading entity, they soon rose above their British competitors. Far, far above. To this day the VOC holds the claim to being the single wealthiest corporation in human history. At its peak in 1679, its assets in modern terms were somewhere between seven and nine trillion dollars.
It's worth mentioning, I think, that during the beginning years of the 17th century, the single most sought-after commodity that all of Europe was fighting so hard to get, which gave rise to all the global exploration for new trading routes, caused so much death, destruction, and conflict, and ultimately engendered this dragon’s hoard of looted treasure, was pepper.
There is a three-quarters-full pepper shaker on the table in the diner where I’m eating dinner tonight, that in 1600, I could have traded with somebody for several horses. Eventually, of course, the market flooded, and the price dropped dramatically. Traders started looking for other things like nutmeg and cinnamon. For a minute there, though, pepper was everything.
On his third voyage, Hudson got up the Hudson River as far as where present-day Albany now sits. The Mohican people were living there. They called the area Pem-po-tu-wuth-it which roughly translates to mean “the place of the council fire.” The Iroquois were there as well. They called it Sche-negh-ta-da which means something like “through the tall pine woods.”
Not being able to go any further upriver, Hudson turned around and sailed back to Europe. When he docked in London, the English authorities intercepted his ship, the Half Moon, to try and find out what he’d discovered. Technically it wasn’t any of the government’s business. The companies initiating these journeys were all privately funded. They needed the permission of their governments to operate but got little or no assistance from them to operate. Nonetheless, the respective Crowns made small fortunes taxing whatever goods returned and forcing the corporations into giving them loans. To avoid the British, Hudson had to sneak the information back to the Netherlands using couriers.
Five years later, using what they’d learned from the expedition, the Dutch returned and built Fort Nassau which became their first settlement in North America. The land it was on was prone to flooding so a few years later in 1624 they constructed Fort Orange about two miles away to the north. Settlers started arriving from the Netherlands. Many started hunting beavers. Europe was in the midst of a mini-ice age and there was a great demand for beaver pelts to make warm, water-repellent coats. Eventually, a village grew up around the fort called Beverwyck.
The Dutch never asked anybody for permission to build the forts in Albany, they just did it. The Mohican people tolerated them being there. To keep them feeling that way, they were given the usual blankets and trinkets when the occasion seemed to demand it. As the town expanded, more formal agreements between the Tribes and the Europeans began to happen.
The Dutch started dividing up the land into large estates, each one controlled by a kind of feudal lord called a patroon. The patroon would then hire laborers, over which he had complete control, to work the land.
In 1631, just seven years after Fort Orange had been built, Cornelis Maessen Van Buren signed a three-year contract with a patroon to work as a farm laborer and sailed from the Netherlands to New York. He was 19. Cornelis is one of my 9th great-grandfathers.
After his three-year term was up, he sailed back home where in 1635, he married Catalyntje Martense Van Alstyne in Utrecht. She was 17. He was now 23. Utrecht is where we did the Dutch production of Jersey Boys.
The following year, Cornelis signed a new contract with the same patroon. He, his wife, and a servant named Cornelis Teunisz made the long trip back over. During the voyage, Catalyntje gave birth to a son that they named Hendrick. The estate that the Van Burens would spend the rest of their lives on and where my 8th great-grandfather Marten would soon be born was on Papscanee Island just south of Beverwyck. Papscanee juts out into the Hudson River but isn’t technically an island. This is another case of my current family being drawn back to where our ancestors lived. Castleton-on-Hudson, the town where Michael grew up, is about a two-hour walk away from Papscanee.
The Van Burens are interesting to me because that name traveled all the way down to my great-great-grandmother. The way we look at genealogy, however, is probably about to change. The records of people from the past will stay the same, but the records of people, as we move forward, are going to be extremely complicated to follow. Same-sex marriages, gender fluidity, and sexual equality – all of these are going to impact record keeping. Traditionally, Europeans have handed down their family names through the male line. Women, up until these current generations, have always taken their husbands’ names. Genetically, the Hester line is no more and no less a part of me than any other of my lines. It is, however, the only path, out of countless many, that my name took. It is the same with the Van Burens.
I think of my tree as having a Hester line and a McElhinny line – my father’s and my mother’s main stems. The truth of it, though, is that there are thousands of other names that contributed just as much to my genetic makeup. The names of those people didn’t come down to me, though, just their DNA.
We organize our birth and death records in an extremely sexist, male-oriented way. Because of that, my two grandfathers appear to have greater importance than my two grandmothers do, but that is obviously nonsense. Historically, there is almost always far more information to be found relating to the men in my tree than to the women. The men appear in military records, employment records, and real estate transactional records. The women rarely do. Mrs. John Smith might be as much a part of me as John Smith is, but in the historical record, she’s usually disregarded and often impossible to identify.
In contemporary times, more and more women keep their original names when they marry. Children are taking on hyphenated versions of their parents’ surnames or even having new ones created for them. People who try to do what I am doing now in three-hundred years’ time are going to lose their minds.
I will admit that I feel more of a connection to the ancestors with whom I share my last name. On my father’s side, I can trace the Hesters back to the 15th century and see how the name made its way down to me. On my mother’s side, however, the McElhinny branch, where she gets her name from, peters out a few generations back. I can only go back to the parents of my 2nd great-grandfather, John McElhinny Jr. His wife, Harriet Van Buren’s line, therefore, becomes more primary in my way of thinking because it goes back as far as my Hester one does. It’s an emotional response to my biology rather than a scientific one.
The Van Buren’s history is messy and contradictory. Like Michael’s large extended family who almost without exception each named their eldest sons, Michael, the Van Burens got stuck on several names – Marten, Barent, and Pieter. Those names are all not only in my direct line but also constantly pop up around them. One Marten will name his sons Barent and Pieter. Pieter will name his sons Marten and Barent. Barent will name his sons Marten and Pieter. They get clever and name a kid something original and then to honor his forbearers, that kid will name his offspring Marten, Barent, or Pieter. I often need to let interesting people go when I realize that I have the wrong, say, Barent. As much as I’d like to keep him, he probably didn’t get married when he was six. He must have been a cousin.
Cornelis and Catalyntje Van Buren had their son, Marten. Marten and Maritje had Pieter. Pieter and Ariaantje had Barent. Barent and Maria had Harman. Harman and Eva had Barent again. Barent and Grace had Thomas. Thomas and Betsy finally had Harriet who married John McElhinny, Jr.
Harman Van Buren, who came in the middle of all that, was born on January 7, 1736. His family was still living near Albany where Cornelis and Catalyntje first settled. Later in life, he moved somewhat further south. He and his brother, Francis, married the Van Slyk sisters, Eva and Johannah, respectively.
There was a moment during the American Revolution when British General John Burgoyne tried to divide the strength of the colonies by moving south from Quebec to take control of Albany and the Hudson Valley. In Saratoga, where he’d crossed the Hudson with his army, there were two major battles – one on September 19, 1777, and the other on October 7. The American fiercely resisted him. A week after the second battle started, on October 13, Burgoyne could see that he was losing. He met with his officers to discuss terms of surrender and on October 17, he officially surrendered to the Americans. It was a turning point in the war. It was the battle that made the British realize that they were up against far stronger and better organized and led forces than they had believed. My ancestor, Major Harman Van Buren, fought in the Battle of Saratoga. He served under Colonel Abraham Van Alstine in the 7th Albany Regiment.
My father’s mother Eunice was a proud member of The Daughters of the American Revolution. Little did any of us realize growing up that not only was my British mother also eligible to join, but her ancestor outranked my grandmother’s ancestor by a mile.
Harman’s wife Eva died in 1803 so he married again, this time to a widow named Elizabeth Veeder. She would outlive him when he died in 1819. Harman and his brother and their Van Slyk wives are all buried in a small family cemetery in a town in New York called Munsonville, technically part of Mayfield.
To his son Barent, Harman, “a certain piece of land beginning at two white pine trees marked with the letter H and from thence westerly along said line and the small creek or run of water, thence southerly along said creek to a certain bridge lying across said creek, thence easterly along the road that leads from the meadows to the Sacon Road to the place of beginning.”
Along with another similarly described plot, he wrote, “To him my eldest son the above-described pieces of land to him, his heirs and assigns forever.”
Forever.
He left his house to his son Francis but provided his second wife Elizabeth with, “the best room in my dwelling house to her own choice to be kept in good repair and order, convenient and comfortable for winter and summer.” He makes sure that Francis gives her enough food and takes care of her every need including saying that Francis, “shall carry or order to be carried my said wife, Elizabeth, on a visit to every place in a convenient carriage either in summer or winter as the case shall require.”
Just as I am being won over by the thoroughness of his concern and care for her, he continues dispersing his other belongings. “I will and bequeath unto my son, Francis, my negro boy, Cap, to him, his heirs and assigns forever. And also, I give to my said wife, Elizabeth, my negro wench, Pana, during the life of my said wife, Elizabeth… to my daughter Maria Eastern, my negro girl, Bet, and my negro boy, Leer, to her and her heirs and assigns forever.”
Cap. Pana, Bet. Leer.
It felt necessary to take their names out of that last paragraph and let them breathe on their own. As ridiculous as describing a plot of land based on trees and creeks and thinking that it will suffice as a description of it “forever,”, is as horrific as thinking about the idea of these four people being owned by somebody, “forever.”
Cap. Pana. Bet. Leer.
They likely lived out their lives enslaved, but their names need no longer belong to anyone but themselves.
Cornelis and Catalyntje died within a week of each other in April of 1648. He was 36 and she was 30. Was it the plague? Cholera? Their son Marten was only 11. They were both buried on the same day in the Papscanee Island Cemetery. There are no markers remaining. In fact, nobody is sure where the cemetery really is. It is thought to be near Teller’s Crossing in the present-day Port of Rensselaer.
The Van Buren cemetery where Harman and Eva along with their siblings Francis and Johannah are buried in Mayfield, NY, is now in the middle of a small housing development. In 1936, some well-meaning townspeople put up a plaque on a boulder marking the spot. There’s a historical marker on the street indicating where it is. Otherwise, I never would have found it. The boulder sits about ten feet away from the front door of somebody’s house. Living there, it would be the perfect thing to drape wet towels over after a day in the lake. Without the marker, in time, nobody would remember that the building sits next to a graveyard
The word, “forever,” might apply to many things, but it certainly doesn’t apply to any of us. Even the gravestones we put up over our fleshy remains wear away surprisingly quickly. A few hundred years have been long enough to erase most evidence of our pasts.
On the site of Fort Orange in Albany now stands, I kid you not, a Holiday Inn Express. And a busy freeway. I stayed here in the hotel last night. I’m writing this from the bed and hoping the Wi-Fi is good enough to be able to post it.
The fort might be gone, but there are ghosts here: The Mohicans who hunted and fished the forest, Henry Hudson and his crew who sailed up here four hundred years ago, the Dutch who planted themselves here and built their fort, the British who took over this land when the Dutch ceded it to them, the new Americans who drove the British out and took it for themselves, the developers and city planners who eventually paved the whole thing over, and... well, that’s what goes on forever.
There’s a plaque across the street pointing out where the fort used to be. The only way to read it is to cross the busy street and stand on the narrow curb in the weeds and trash. You certainly wouldn’t even notice it driving by, let alone be able to read it.
It was here, though, and, now, so am I.