Fancestor

  “The effect of these unfriendly proceedings, on the part of Jennings, was highly injurious to Teed, who was soon reduced to great perplexity in his pecuniary concerns.”- The Report of the Trials of the Murderers of Richard Jennings.       Late nineteenth century tomahawk and gunpowder history (more agenda than fact) by Sullivan County’s James E. Quinlan, has been my go-to for much of the color and parochial context.  Stephen Crane mined and fictionalized Quinlan for Red Badge of Courage and Sullivan County Tales and Sketches. I’m doing the same. Quinlan’s tale tales were hazy, propagandistic and sensational, but fact was there, hidden deep within the musty pages and footnotes. I’ve tried to avoid the patriotic picture book style of James Fenimore Cooper, or Crane’s wordy romanticism. I didn’t want to glorify these familial accounts, turning them into a Daughters of the American Revolution pastiche, or wallow in a misplaced sense of collective wh...

JENNINGS, MARY ETHEL ``GG'' THE HARTFORD COURANT JENNINGS, Mary Ethel "GG" Mary Ethel "GG" Jennings, 105, of North Granby, wife of the late Raymond V.K. Jennings, died at home, Monday, (December 8, 2003) surrounded by four generations of family and love. She was born June 24, 1898 in Coldenham, NY daughter of the late Alanson and Mary (Ross) Cole and had lived in East Granby, Simsbury and Montgomery, NY prior to moving to her granddaughter's, Susan and John Sojka's home in North Granby. Ethel loved to knit, read and spend time with her family. She was the oldest recipient of a second pacemaker. A special thanks to Dr. Steven Cohen and the Saint Francis Medical Center, Dorann Seltzer, the Farmington Valley VNA and the Granby Volunteer Ambulance. She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Barbara J. and Richard A. Osterhout of East Granby; ten grandchildren, 16 great grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren. She was predec...

  “In order to procure the money that he needed to extricate himself from poverty, James Teed’s mother, who was the sister of Richard Jennings, agreed to release her interest in the fifty acre lot to him, that he might be at liberty to mortgage the same, to answer his necessities. Jennings understanding the plan that was agitated, interfered and prevailed upon his sister to withhold the release by his deceitful arts.” -The Report of the Trials of the Murderers of Richard Jennings     Although my father and mother said many times how their generation were the lucky ones, probably the last to know the small town wilds of Orange County, I could say the same thing. Progress has thankfully been slow in coming to this part of the country. Our 1950’s two story, white, colonial house (now painted a sky blue) is still there, but not much else has appeared on the horizon. Some of the open expanse of corn and hay fields is fouled by development, and many of...

“The die is about to be cast which will probably determine my future happiness or misery of my life….I have always anticipated the event with a degree of solemnity almost equal to that which will terminate my present existence.”- Howard Zinn quoting “one girl” upon her marriage in 1791.    An 1892 item in James E. Quinlan’s Monticello Republican Watchman told of Joseph Osterhout “attending the evening services at the church.” He was, as the article noted, in his “usual health” and had been extremely busy throughout the day, working around his little place, putting things in order for the frosts of the coming winter. “After the liturgical exercises, the pastor, Rev. Mr. Phillips, extended a general invitation to speak of the faith they professed. Mr. Osterhout was the first to respond, and spoke for about two minutes. He had uttered the words: “I know that my Redeemer liveth and…”- and sank backward to his seat…..Mr. Osterhout was placed in a recumbent post...

 “May it please your excellency, I would recommend to your mercey and clemency Amy Auger as a pure under witted Creater and a propper Object of mercey……as to Claudius Smith and James Gordon I shall take pleasure in seeing them executed.”- Sheriff Isaac Nicoll, Goshen gaol Jan. 7, 1779      One of the few times that being a woman was to one’s advantage in Goshen was while facing the hangman. In the historical record of executions of NY State there’s more than one instance of a woman being pardoned at the gallows’ steps. The sheriff always seemed to play it out right to the bitter end. The poor “under witted” creature Amy Auger, resigned to her fate, ready to meet her maker, walked away alive, but definitely rattled and confused. She hadn’t planned for another day on this mundane plane.       Left on stage were Claudius Smith and James Gordon, the leaders of a notorious band of outlaws known as The Cowboys. I’m not making this up. Wh...

“My duty is indeed delicate, painful and important; but yours is much more so.”- Henry G. Wisner addressing the jury in the Jack Hodges trial.       I don’t have any pictures of my great grandfather Andrew Osterhout. This 1895, vernacular photo of a man, boy and his dog fishing above the woolen mill, shows the spot where my grandfather Wray and his brothers and sisters grew up. This is what the Wallkill river looked like five years before Wray Osterhout was born. It hasn’t changed much. Fifteen years later on a 1910 census form my great grandfather’s occupation is listed as a “seamster at the woolen mill.” Under the column “whether able to read or write,” “no" was written twice. As far as my Osterhout branch goes, I am only two generations removed from illiteracy.      It is a powerful connection to be from such a large family stuck in one place for so long. I grew up across the river from the exact spot where the threesome in the photo were fi...

“The thought, therefore, that Wisner might be torn to pieces while yet alive seemed to him even more savage cruelty. Under the distressing circumstances and considerations, the chief argued with himself that true humanity required a speedy termination of his sufferings. Having formed this conclusion, the next point was to compass his death without inflicting additional tortures upon his feelings. With this in view, he engaged Wisner in conversation and while diverting his attention struck him in an instant and unperceived with his hatchet.” -The Wisners in America by G. Franklin Wisner 1918      This particular portrait of Joseph Brant (Thayendanega) was not painted by Charles Wilson Peale, but a member of his very talented family in the style of their father’s original. In 2005, the copy hung in the dining room of the residence of then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. Poor Joseph Brant. He remained a silent witness to the white man...

“When I do speak to you I shall put the largest Buck-Horns on your head, that all the world may know I have spoken to you.”- Teedyuscung, King of the Delaware          Charles Wilson Peale was a straggler at the tail end of the American Age of Enlightenment. Like his friend, NYC mayor Cadwallader D. Colden, he was a renaissance man. Honing his painting skills while fighting the British during the revolution, studying under the artist John Hesselius (Gustavus’ son), he founded the Philadelphia Museum and also had a keen interest in Natural History. In 1801, the same year that Mary Jennings Seward would give birth to a son, Colden sent word to Peale that a strange skeleton had been discovered down the turnpike from his grandfather’s estate. Oozing out of a wet bog on the Barber farm, just outside the village of Ward’s Bridge (Montgomery), giant, lime covered bones were making their way to daylight. Peale caught the next stage north.    ...

“Our bodies must always be wherever that struggle and the moment we forget that, the moment we become lazy, the moment we sit back, then the evil ones do their ordained tasks to us.”- William Kunstler, 1995   Sworn: Jack Penney (jailer) By Atty. Gen. Martin Van Buren: Q. "Mr. Penney are you often scolded regarding you duties at the jail?" A. "Seems I can't do nothing right." By Mr. Duer:   Q. How long has Jack been in the lower gaol? A. Eight or ten days. Q. Has he had any bed to sleep on there? A. He has. Q. What part of the time? A. I gave him a bed at the request of the sheriff night before last. Ainzi Ball sworn By Mr. Duer: Q. Did not Jack request you remove him from the room where Dunning was confined? A. He did. He said that he was so harassed by him that he had no time for reflection.           This is not a who done it. Not exactly. The crucial question in evidence was not of guilt or innoce...

  “Life is at best a nebulous shadow, a vague contingency, the merest of possibilities to begin with.”   -Soledad Brother, The Prison Letters of George Lester Jackson        Lifted from their Wikipedia pages the demographics of Goshen, NY are 0.14% African American, Montgomery 0.25%, and bringing up the rear the “affluent,” village of Lenox, Mass. with 0.08% black residents. Yet, all these tiny villages had black “settlements” at some point in their histories. In fact many small northeastern communities like Goshen, Montgomery, Auburn or Lenox, Mass., contained tiny populations of just a few black families, and felt compelled to separate them into so-called settlements. They then gave these enclaves, of only few houses, names like Auburn’s “New Guinea,” or Montgomery’s “Buffalo Hill,”….or worse. The practice of framing these few black households as autonomous entities is indicative of a wider societal issue. Ghettoization has long been a mainstay...

"The pious Christian will consider these wretched convicts the proper subjects of earnest and unceasing prayer.”- The Report of…   With Jack left out in the cold, and the posse warming themselves around the roaring fire, John Curtis and Sam Wilkin grabbed both ends of a threshing table and carried it close to the hearth. A slave in the Seward kitchen whipped up some pancake batter as two of Durland’s men lifted Richard Jennings’ frozen solid corpse out of the cart and laid it face up the length of the table. One arm stuck straight out, perpendicular from the body, while the other hung loose, broken at the shoulder, slowly swinging back and forth, black finger tips gently scraping the floor. Curtis asked Sam Wilkin to lean his weight against one side of the body as he forced the other arm against Dick’s side. You could hear the muffled ice and bone crackle as the arm popped and came to rest on the edge of the table. Then it slipped off, compliantly dangling loose, matchi...

        “You have French taste; I have Indian.” – an Ottawa brave feasting on the cooked flesh of an English captive, in the company of Roubaud, a Jesuit missionary.” - Francis Parkman       Ten years after the Swedish immigrant Gustave Hesselius was hired by the Penn family to paint the Lenape chief, Tishcohan’s portrait, the 1744 Lancaster, Pa. treaty signing took place. The signing brought tribes from NY, NJ and those scattered across the vast Penn holdings to Lancaster. Weeks of drinking, dancing, whoring, formal balls, negotiating and paper signing would follow. At the end of the festivities, in return for releasing any legal claim to millions of acres, what today we know as the state of Maryland, the United Six Nations of the Iroquois and outlier Delaware Lenape tribes were offered, and accepted in goods: 200 shirts 3 duffle blankets 47 guns 1 lb. vermilion 1000 flints 4 doz. jews-harps 2 half barrels of gun powder sh...

    “Black powder burns and trauma left side of face. Deep pie shaped wound in top, front of skull, broken jaw and teeth missing. Brain: visible.” -Dr. Samuel S. Seward scrawled notes in a small journal, re: Richard Jennings autopsy             There’s a million ways to approach family history (or deny it). The meticulously obsessive, indecipherable, hand drawn “tree,” provided by Osterhout kin Walter H. Thomas and transposed by Florence and Dorothy “the girls,” at the Ulster County Genealogical Society is one way. Doc. Seward’s notebook is another. Both look like what they are genealogical abstracts, going back generations, proof positive that the family infected Indian country, killed and were killed, all within our very small franchise. With the hundreds of names inked onto the tree it’s difficult to make head nor tail. It’s as valid as a mouth swab, I guess. I feel like applying blood splatters and a few powder burns just to ke...

  $6.76- The amount that was found in Jack Hodges’ pocket when taken into custody at bridewell jail NYC.              There’s a tradition in New York (and within my own family) to award ourselves promotions, titles and ranks that we haven’t actually earned. After the Vietnam War I had an uncle who kept promoting himself until he was a Green Beret Colonel riding in a red convertible in the Veteran’s Day parade. He was in the Army, but never got higher than the rank of corporal, and was never in the Green Berets or Vietnam. He fooled everybody, even his family. Little did my uncle know that he was following an old and cherished tradition of fraud in the Empire State. After the War of 1812, out of staters joked that there were more self-appointed bird colonels in New York State than there were rattlesnakes. And these hills were infested with snakes. Nobody took the NY hillbillies seriously, but that didn’t keep the phony “officers” from br...