You’ve heard of those essay questions that begin, “Compare and contrast [this and that]”? Well, I thought I’d do something along those lines with my paternal grandfather and maternal grandmother’s families, circa 1880. The former group was better documented, with lengthy obituaries and such (not that those did anything to dent the brick wall behind them), while the latter relies more on stories from my mom. Before we begin, I should mention that, according to my father, his grandfather wasn’t very fond of his relatives, so I haven’t got any photos available; my mother’s extended family were close, though I don’t have photos of the specific branch relevant to today’s story. I’ll just have to fill in the details as best I can …
The Way Back Machine first lands in Jersey City, New Jersey in February 1877 at the Bergen Dutch Reformed Church, site of the recent funeral of my great-great-great grandmother Eleanor Jane (Thorpe) Speer. Her husband Abe’s obituary described her as a “Belleville girl”, which didn’t necessarily mean Belleville itself, but the northeast part of Essex County north of Newark. I had sent for the LDS film containing the inventory of her estate, to see whether there were any genealogical clues contained therein; there weren’t. I did not make a copy of, nor transcribe, the details; however, I was struck that she’d left a fair amount of money in her name, as well as a rather pricey Japanese silk suit among the items listed. My third cousin agreed that she, too, would like to have seen a detailed description, if not a photo, of that garment. Under state law, half went to Abe, and the rest split among the four children. It didn’t occur to me until later to wonder whether the money had been given her by him, or inherited from her family. Her death record indicates her parents as Garret and Eleanor Thorpe (Mrs. Speer apparently went by “Jane”), from England; on the other hand, Garrett is a Dutch name, that part of New Jersey was heavily Dutch-American, and Thorpe was sometimes an Anglicization of New Netherlands “Throop” … something to look into another day.
Abe’s father died when he was quite young, leaving a widow and several children, so he headed off to Jersey City to work as the sexton of the Reformed Church, giving that up later to start his own cemetery. I had felt sorry for the kids when he died intestate in 1892, leaving them to share half all over again, this time with their stepmother, widow Sarah (van Buskirk) van Riper. However, in researching this diary I learned that his estate was actually in debt, forcing her to sell the marital home to satisfy creditors, although she did collect his Civil War pension until her death in 1909. Before we leave this gaggle of Hollanders, Abe’s inventory included a note that Sarah stipulated a few minor items that could go to the children uncontested … including their father’s chamber pot!
Rhoda Rachel (Crowell) MacKinnon, my great-great-great grandmother, I doubt owned any silk suits, Japanese or otherwise. Born to Edward Crowell and Elsie Earl in Nova Scotia around 1819, she married Robert MacKinnon III around 1840; his family of seafarers had come from the Isle of Skye after the Bonnie Prince Charlie debacle of the mid-1700’s. They were to have 10 children - 9 boys and a girl (Deborah). The photo above is of the Chebogue Point Cemetery near Yarmouth, NS where Rachel and several of her children rest, though not her husband and three oldest sons, who were presumed drowned in an 1862 shipwreck; as it turned out, she was pregnant when the guys left for that final voyage, naming the child Charles Loran MacKinnon for two of his lost brothers. I am descended through her son Frank, whose son Frank, Jr. was raised by his grandmother after Frank’s wife died of tuberculosis when the boy was an infant
(c. 1880). Rhoda Rachel also had the care of her grandson Hiram, Jr., his parents having both died about that time as well. Presumably, she was living on remittances from seaman Frank, along with help from her other surviving children. In 1909, Frank was murdered on the docks in NYC; my grandmother mentioned that no one knew for quite a while, until his shore leave was up, and they began looking into unidentified corpses.
In his book Downtown: My Manhattan, Pete Hamill mentions that only .2% (that’s two-tenths of one percent) of all Americans today claim Dutch-American as their primary ethnic background, though he may have meant New Netherlands origin only, rather than those who came later, primarily to Michigan and the Midwest. At any rate, the Dutch West India Company flag above was certainly in force when many of my paternal ancestors set foot in the new world. Moreover, after the English acquisition of the colony in 1664, those Netherlanders pretty much stayed put – no significant “Westward-Ho! stuff for them! Growing up in New Jersey three centuries later, surnames such as Voorhees, Cadmus, Ten Eyck, Doremus, etc. were quite common. I had always known that Abe’s daughter-in-law was a Brinkerhoff (her father’s family), though only later when I started with genealogy did I realize she was also a Vreeland (via her mother), a large political family back home, descended from Michael Jansen Vreeland, who arrived in 1638.
Well … it seems some of those Dutchmen did migrate, though not west.
A couple of years ago, I was contacted by my mother’s sister’s husband to ask if I knew whether, and how, my parents were related? This threw me completely, so I sent back a reply of, “My mother’s family are all from New England and Nova Scotia, how could they be related?” Back came the specifics: “That’s generally true. However, some of Rhoda Crowell’s ancestors migrated to Nova Scotia from New Jersey, when formerly French land became available after 1763.” My uncle supplied details of his findings, including a line back to Michael Jansen Vreeland, via his son Enoch; my father is descended by another son, Hartman.
So -- my folks are 8th cousins. Welcome to the Point Zero Zero Two, Mom!