Fancestor

“Of his [James Freeman’s] brothers and sisters two only survive, and one of the has for twelve years past been a wandering lunatic; one of those that died, a sister, was, for many years immediately preceding her death, insane.” -The Report of the trial of William Freeman      I don’t know how crazy my family was, but I can’t deny how good they had it in America. Yet, there’s a little of each of these characters (related or not) in all of us. An old friend and I laughed about the trend in ancestry.com circles to concentrate on sketchy relationships to distant royalty, or celebrity. We wondered why nobody ever talked about being related to drunken janitors, insane junkies, or petty thieves. We had our share of all those, but for the most part, neither royalty nor celebrity, my family was just too inconsequential to be noticed. They seemed to like it that way. Most still do.           My maternal grandfather Raymond Van Kleck (Van Vliet) ...

“After I saw you the thought of my Saviour (sic) vanished from my mind, and I did not know you, but your countenance seemed familiar”- Jack Hodges, Black Jacob, A Monument of Grace by Rev. Ansel D. Eddy        It wasn’t long before our young hero Austin Reed was back in custody again, also headed for Auburn State Prison. Although still a juvenile, much to   Austin Reed’s relief, he wasn’t sent back to The House of Refuge; but for the first time, Reed would experience an adult prison. He would soon wish he had been sent back with his Irish buddies on the Bowery. On May 2, 1840 seventeen year old Austin Reed boarded the canal boat “James Savage” and headed east on the Erie Canal. There, he would meet the “kindly” keeper Capt. James E. Taylor.          “While I was sitting in this deep reverie of thoughts,” Reed wrote, “I heard the heavy tramp of footsteps treading behind me, and in a moment’s time the heavy weight ...

“Marched this day at 6:00 am 2 miles to the Cayuga Castle, and Indian town of that name containing in number about 15 very large square houses. I think the building superior to any I have seen. [Here] cattle were killed and three days beef issued to the troops. The fatigue parties were sent to destroy the corn to the amount of 110 acres, though not all destroyed this day. Two other towns were discovered, one 23 1/2 miles from Seneca Lake, which we called Upper Cayuga, containing 14 large houses, the other about two miles east of the castle we called Cayuga, containing 13 houses. The troops were all employed this day in destroying corn until after dark. We found at this town apples, peaches, potatoes, turnips, onions, pumpkins, squashes and vegetables of various kinds and great plenty. ” -Thomas Grant, Sullivan/Clinton Expedition journal, Sept. 21, 1779     Although many of Sullivan’s men offered vivid descriptions of the terrain and crops, they also recorded t...

    “Monday, Aug. 30, 1779- At the request of Maj. Piatt, sent out a small party to look for some of the dead Indians….Toward noon they found them and skinned two of them from their hips down for boot legs; one pair for the Major the other for myself.”- journal of Lt. William Barton, Sullivan Expedition member      If there is a consistency in all these skinned corpses- black, white and Indian, that I’ve uncovered, it is their flawed complexities. How do I square W.H. Seward’s blindness to Indigenous issues, family slaves and servants, with his obvious positive impact on the plight of poor down-renters, indentured children or enslaved African Americans? The other amazing thing in all this grave robbing is how little I still know. Examples of extreme injustice visited upon blacks and Indians alike by my ancestors, either by design, ignorance or the consequence of their seemingly well meaning actions, are overwhelming. Why was I (and all my other relati...

    The house still wrapped in shroud of night, that old infernal cock. The rusting feathered ancient bird, shook his drooping comb. Jumping from the roof above, to waiting hemlock tree, wresting from my peaceful sleep, Awake! kir-kir-ee-kee    On September 10, 2001 I got in my car and headed into the city to meet up with a married woman I had been seeing, broken up with, and was now considering restarting the whole mess all over again. I’ve resisted exploring in print my twisted, dysfunctional relationships with women for good reason. All the drama has thankfully subsided and been left behind; replaced by a long, loving and mutually supportive run with Mrs. Osterhout. Ancient history. But as I approached  that notch in the Shawangunk ridge where Washington Irving and Martin Van Buren once stood, my love life was a disaster.     Cresting the ridge, a piece of paper hit my windshield…..then another…..and another. I looked to the left to see w...

   “That the Indians may, if they are disposed to it, be very useful, is undoubtedly true, and the way to create and preserve this disposition is to keep ‘em in a state of dependence upon the person who may from time to time want their services.”- Col. Marinus Willet, Gov. George Clinton Papers           The story continues— When I finally looked up to see those antlers tip over, I don’t think I’ve ever been so exhausted (or happy) in my life. I had hit the deer in the back of the head (not the back) killing it instantly. Some will find this callous—to be so thrilled at the death of an animal—but remember I HAD WOUNDED THIS DEER. It’s a hunter’s duty to kill (if possible) a wounded animal. Shooting from a rocking boat in a snow storm, an   inch higher and I would have missed. I tossed my empty shotgun in the bottom of the boat, grabbed the oars and rowed frantically to the deer. There was no need to hurry. Dead d eer float! How wa...

  “Reader, these cats are made out of cat gut with a small knot made at the ends of them and wound around a small wire, then rubbed well with shoe maker’s wax and attached to a piece of rattan that has a pretty good spring to it, so when the officer strikes, it leaves a deep cut in the back, causing the tender skin to burst while the blood flows freely down the back from the cuts it leaves, leaving the back entirely stripped with red.”- Austin Reed, The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict     The story continues— Two hours later, after stealing a row boat, chasing that deer across the lake in a snow storm, the wounded, terrified animal had doubled back and was heading right for a long line of parked pick-ups and group of hunters in florescent orange, watching the show. One of the hunters had spotted some “asshole” in the middle of the lake fishing in the storm. The eagle-eyed Ray Key noted, “That asshole’s Mike. And there’s a nice buck in front of him....

Cost of the Van Nest Family funeral: Burial- $6.90, Shrouds- $3.00, Three coffins- $25.00, Tombstones- $40.00 Journal entry October 13, 2016:     It was a cool, rainy fall day, as I leafed through the horrific accounts of the murders of the Van Nest family in the old Auburn papers, at the Fenimore library in Cooperstown. My mind wandering, I looked out the library’s windows upon calm Otsego Lake. Not only were these the same waters where James Fenimore Cooper would pen his Leatherstocking series and General James Clinton would damn up and unleash on the unsuspecting Iroquois tribes downstream, during the Sullivan Expedition, it was here so many years ago, a wounded deer was chased across three mile point by a man in a boat—me.   True story:      I followed the blood drops in the fresh snow, for at least a mile, through woods, behind houses, across backyards, under those Cooperstown McMansion picture windows and swing sets, until I foun...

“And in my prayers, my sins were moved from me, and I was lightened, and I thought I could fly. I felt as though I could fly……..’Glory to God! Glory to God!” - Jack Hodges, Black Jacob   “Then what, Mike?” “Why he told me to strip off my shirt and hug the very post that Mr. Heart [Hart] tied you to. He tied me and the first blow that struck upon my poor back made me wish with streaming eyes that I didn’t go to sea…” “Did you holler, Mike?”            I know I should have footnoted as I went along. Now it’s gonna be a tough slog to academic acceptance. I really don’t care. Sue me. The preceding ital. dialog is courtesy of Austin Reed. I’ve gotten you to read this far only partly by lying, stealing or hiding my insanity. Actually I’ve had to lie or plagiarize very little. If I’m crazy you be the judge. If I did slip up, it’s either out of ignorance or laziness, not malice or any conscious attempt to mislead by artificially propelli...

   “That they cut out the tongues of horses and cattle, and left them to wander in the midst of those fields, lately so luxuriant, and now in desolation, seeming to enjoy the torments of their lingering death.”- Charles E. Stickney “A History of the Minisink Region”     After the Revolutionary War John L. Hardenbergh accompanied a New York State surveyor back into the burned out Indian villages of the Six Nations, rapturously   gazing over the acres of girdled orchards and fallow fields he had helped destroy. A few years prior, during the Sullivan/Clinton Expedition, Hardenbergh had been a dutiful Lieutenant under Maj. Gen. John Sullivan’s command. The state surveyor divided the Onondaga, Cayuga, Mohawk, and Seneca villages, “into 28 townships, containing each one hundred lots of six hundred acres.” Each soldier and non-commissioned officer from the Sullivan campaign had one lot assigned him as compensation for his service. An Osterhout or two may als...

  “They have made William Freeman what he is, a brute beast; they don’t make anything else of any of our people but brute beasts; but when we violate their laws, then they want to punish us as if we were men.” -John De Puy The Report of the Trial of William Freeman 1847         The First Nations had only fired a gun or sharpened the edge of an ax a few generations prior to the Dutch alien’s arrival on the continent. Never again would they willingly return to the gut strung bow, flint tipped arrow or clam shell hoe. But neither would they recognize the necessity of technological autonomy that was required for the sustenance of their newly acquired consumer lifestyle. This is the mystery that is so difficult to unravel.        As history has vividly illustrated it became impossible for the Indian not to adapt the basic technologies like carpentry, blacksmithing or the loom as their own. But the eastern tribes ignored this impossi...

   “I despise the looks of a novel. The cursed infernal things, I can’t bear the sight of one. They are a curse to everyone that reads one. I never could bear the looks of them. They are a pack full of lies. They are a store House of lies. I never take any comfort in reading them. Give me history of some great and good man who is laboring for the welfare of his country, like Wm. H. Seward, who is fighting against the world of enemies every day for the promotion and benefit of his country, and laboring with a strong arm to crush vice and crime and morality under feet of the world. That is such a book which I love to read. Novels are books that will bring many a young man to a gloomy cell, and many a weeping mother’s graves.”- Rob Reed, The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict copyright 2016   I couldn’t agree more with Reed. That flawed, “great and good man,” Henry Seward keeps me on track, digging in the archives, coming back for more. Resisting fictionaliza...