Invite an Ancestor for Christmas Dinner: #7 Hendrick Vrooman, Killed at Schenectady

1664 Letter from Hendrick Vrooman

I invite all of you to join me in coming up with an ancestor guest list for your Christmas Dinner. If you don't celebrate Christmas, feel free to choose a different holiday. 

Each day between now and December 25 I am going to invite one of my ancestors to join our family to celebrate with a traditional Turkey Dinner. 

Please think about who you want to invite and tell us why you want to have them at your table. Would you have a gift for them under the tree? What would it be? 

Hendrick Meesen Vrooman is another ancestor I'd like to meet. Hendrick Bartholomeus (Meesen)  and five children ages 15, 13, 11, 7 and 5 years old are on the passenger list of D'Eendracht (The Concord) arriving in New Amsterdam New York in April 1664. 

In the total of 60 people killed at the Schenectady Massacre in 1690 were Hendrick, his son Bartholomew aka Bartol, and two black slaves who were killed by Indians. Hendrick's grandsons Barent and Wouter were taken captive to Canada but later recovered. Hendrick's son Adam escaped with his three children Peter, Christina and Hendrick.

The report of the investigating party sent out from Albany states:

Hend. Meese Vrooman and Bartholomeus Vrooman kild & burnt....Item 2 Negroes of Hend Meese ye same death....Engel the wife of Adam Vrooman shot & burnt, her childe the brains dashed out against ye wall....

It's pretty gruesome but I want to hear what happened that frigid snowy night. Maybe he knows where my ancestor Jacques Van Slyke was that night. He should have been in Schenectady but he wasn't. Did he know ahead of time that an attack was imminent? 

The October 1664 letter Hendrick wrote to his brother Jacob shortly after arriving in the Colony is fascinating and I'd like to chat more about his impressions and experiences.

I can't give Hendrick a modern gun to protect himself and others, as that would change the timeline and too many future lives would be affected.  It was a harsh environment for my early Dutch settlers in New Netherland (present day New York) and I know from the records of another ancestor that candles and other essential items were in short supply. I'm going to give Hendrick a box of candles, several bars of soap and chocolates as a treat. 

Image credit: http://brievenalsbuit.inl.nl/zeebrieven/page/article?doc=883&query=[word%3D%22%28%3Fi%29vrooman%22]
 

Invite an Ancestor for Christmas Dinner: #6 on my Guest List

Today I invite all of you to join me in coming up with an ancestor guest list for your Christmas Dinner. If you don't celebrate Christmas, feel free to choose a different holiday. 

Each day between now and December 25 I am going to invite one of my ancestors to join our family to celebrate with a traditional Turkey Dinner. 

Please think about who you want to invite and tell us why you want to have them at your table. Would you have a gift for them under the tree? What would it be? 

My 6th guest will be David Uziele (Usiele), my 9th great-grandfather. David was born in France circa 1635 and fled religious persecution some time after 1660 to come to New York. He died in Poughkeepsie circa 1686. I'd love to know more about his beliefs, what it was like for the Huguenots and Walloons in France during that time and whether or not he found the religious freedom he sought once in New York. 

My gift to David will be a small family Bible which I hope he will treasure as I do. 

Invite an Ancestor for Christmas Dinner: #5 on my Guest List

Today I invite all of you to join me in coming up with an ancestor guest list for your Christmas Dinner. If you don't celebrate Christmas, feel free to choose a different holiday. 

Each day between now and December 25 I am going to invite one of my ancestors to join our family to celebrate with a traditional Turkey Dinner. 

Please think about who you want to invite and tell us why you want to have them at your table. Would you have a gift for them under the tree? What would it be? 

So far I have invited 2 male ancestors (Joseph McGinnis and David Simpson) and 2 female (Ots-Toch and Anna Kuhn). I desperately want to chat with my great-grandfather Stephen Peer because he was attacked by an axe-weilding neighbour in 1895 and seems to have been a bit of a scrapper his entire life. 

I'm also curious about Great-Grandpa's brother Harmon P. Peer who became famous for his base-jumping at Niagara and in the USA in the 1870s. To add to my fascination is Great-Grandpa's cousin Stephen Peer who walked Niagara Falls on a tightrope and has the dubious distinction of being the only tightrope walker to die while on his tightrope. Imagine the conversation that we'll have about his daredevil family!

I guess it wouldn't be considered humorous for me to give Great-Grandpa a safety helmet for his Christmas gift? But he sure could use one as that axe fracturing his skull no doubt led to his death not long afterwards. 

  

Invite an Ancestor for Christmas Dinner: #4 Anna Kuhn, Bad Girl or Misunderstood?

Today I invite all of you to join me in coming up with an ancestor guest list for your Christmas Dinner. If you don't celebrate Christmas, feel free to choose a different holiday. 

Each day between now and December 25 I am going to invite one of my ancestors to join our family to celebrate with a traditional Turkey Dinner. 

Please think about who you want to invite and tell us why you want to have them at your table. Would you have a gift for them under the tree? What would it be? 

My fourth guest at the dinner table is going to be my 8th great-grandmother Anna Kuhn.

Anna  was born about 1659 in Germany. Married to one man at age 15, Anna bore another man two children before the church allowed her divorce from her first husband. She married for the second time in 1685. After fleeing Germany for New York in 1709, she ran off with her second husband's nephew. I want to know if she was a strong woman who had a lot of bad luck or was a willful selfish person who didn't care about anyone else. I know she had a hard life and I'll be able to get a sense of who she was after chatting with her and seeing her interactions with my other guests. 

Her gift from me will be a beautiful scarf. I know that may sound odd but I think Anna needs something pretty and frivolous in her life. I'm also going to wrap up a small bottle of perfume and some scented soaps.

Invite an Ancestor for Christmas Dinner: #3 on my Guest List

Today I invite all of you to join me in coming up with an ancestor guest list for your Christmas Dinner. If you don't celebrate Christmas, feel free to choose a different holiday. 

Each day between now and December 25 I am going to invite one of my ancestors to join our family to celebrate with a traditional Turkey Dinner. 

Please think about who you want to invite and tell us why you want to have them at your table. Would you have a gift for them under the tree? What would it be? 

I am going to invite my French-Mohawk ancestor Ots-Toch as my third guest. That should be an interesting dinner guest! Ots-Toch was born ca 1640 in what is now New York, and she married the Dutchman Cornelis Van Slyke. I want to talk to her about the new colony, and about her life in the Mohawk village. Naturally I'm going to ask who the heck her mother was! Her father was Jacques Hertel, interpreter to Samuel de Champlain but there is no record of her mother's name, only that she was a respected Mohawk woman. 

Boy do I have a ton of questions for Ots-Toch! It's difficult to think of a gift she might like but I have a very nice necklace of a turtle carved out of white bone, held by a piece of rawhide. The rumour is that she was from the Turtle Clan so I would like her to have it.

 

Invite an Ancestor for Christmas Dinner: #2 on my Guest List

Today I invite all of you to join me in coming up with an ancestor guest list for your Christmas Dinner. If you don't celebrate Christmas, feel free to choose a different holiday. 

Each day between now and December 25 I am going to invite one of my ancestors to join our family to celebrate with a traditional Turkey Dinner. We will all sit down together on December 26th. That should be interesting!

Please think about who you want to invite and tell us why you want to have them at your table. Would you have a gift for them under the tree? What would it be? 

#2 on my Guest list is my great-grandpa David George Simpson. David was born in Ramsgate England in 1861. He suffered from Epilepsy and my grandmother told me an intriguing story about him. It seems that he drove a horse and cart to deliver coal and often would have what his family called an "episode". His horse would carry on with the usual route, his customers would come out and help themselves to their allotment of coal, check that David was okay and send the horse on its way. Eventually the horse ended up at home and David's wife would come out and help him into the house. 

I got the impression from my grandmother that David was a kind, gentle man and I would love to chat with him. As for a gift under the tree, I would like to give him some medication for his epilepsy. 

Happy Hallowe'en!

Hallowe'en through the years... I always made my sons' costumes out of whatever I could find in the house. Here's a few of their growing up years and a few of my grandchildren's.

Happy Hallowe'en everyone! Remember to drive carefully and watch for children

My New Descendant is Here!

Last night at 11:35 pm my newest grandson arrived. Baby boy Schulze weighed in at 6lb 5oz. Mommy and baby are fine, Daddy is exhausted.

I asked for photos but my son told me they were tired after the labour and wanted to go to sleep. I reminded him that my daughter-in-law was in labour, not him!

Good son that I have, he did send a picture a few minutes later but I promised I wouldn't share it. I suspect they want to show him to family and friends before I do.  But he's adorable and a very welcome addition to their existing family of three beautiful children.

Lucky me - I now have 10 grandchildren (plus 4 step-grandchildren). Surely at least one of them will inherit the genealogy gene?

The Things Family Don't Know

Last week I joined my brother and nephew and families for a dinner out. During the evening I showed them a booklet I was creating for our McGinnis family ancestry.

My nephew expressed surprise that my mother and father (his grandparents) had been married in a double wedding ceremony with my mother's sister. This was news to him!

This may seem like a small thing but I was startled. That double wedding was something I heard about as a young child. I have the wedding invitation. I have newspaper articles about the two sisters in Guelph who were to be married in a double ceremony.

I have articles about their showers, their trousseau teas, their wedding and their honeymoon plans. I have a photo of my mom and dad standing on the steps of the church on their Wedding Day. I have a group photo of the Wedding party.

So for me, this is old news and something I know as if it happened to me. I figured everyone in the family knew. It never occured to me that my nieces or nephews might never have heard of it.

Didn't my brother ever mention it? Did he know? I suddenly feel quite a bit of pressure to spread the word! To share the stories and the facts I've known for so many years.

I think it's time for me to put together a little booklet with all the events in my parents' and grandparents' lives that I've known about for years. Maybe I'm the only one who knows and boy that worries me. I made an error by assuming everyone in the family knew of this special day. What else don't they know (that I do).

I grew up hearing stories. My mother, grandmother and aunt all told me stories of their childhood and their lives. I asked for the stories over and over again. They showed me clippings from newspapers. My mom had a scrapbook (which may actually have been my grandmother's, my memory is fuzzy on that) which she eventually gave me and that is where all the newspaper clippings, the wedding invitation, etc were.

Maybe that's why I am a genealogist. I love hearing the stories, learning about the people living their daily lives. It's not about the names or dates or going back the furthest in time. For me it's all about the people - who were they, what events did they experience, what emotions did they feel, how did they live their lives... these are important to me and finding the answers to those questions make my ancestors alive for me.

So, I'm having my brother and nephew to my house this Thursday. They're getting a copy of the booklet I made (plus more pages including that all important Double Wedding information complete with copies of the newspaper articles, wedding invitation and the rest of the goodies I have on it)

It's one small step but it's a start.

Christmas Memories

Yesterday I spent 3 hours sorting and organizing Christmas decorations. I have hundreds, probably enough to decorate 10 trees. I even have a few of the old Santa decorations from the tree we had when I was young. And every year I buy more.

That's me on the left (many years ago!) in front of a little tree. See the red Santas with the twisted legs? They were one of my favourites when I was a kid. Those long legs that could be twisted around in every direction really tickled me. Santa was tall and skinny instead of rotund, another fact I loved as a kid. I managed to save a couple of those Santas and they've gone with me through many years and many moves.

So yesterday was a lot of fun. I even found my old Christmas Eve Stocking from 1969! Each decoration I found, unwrapped and held, reminded me of something - an event from the past, a tree put up 10 years ago that looked like a Charlie Brown Christmas, a friend, a relative who gave me the ornament as a gift, or family Christmases of long ago.

I organized the ornaments by colour and by theme, because my sister-in-law comes every year to decorate two trees for us. Not with us - for us. She does a beautiful job and all I have to do is agree on a colour scheme and find the decorations for it. My husband helps her and I sit back, sip coffee and enjoy watching them. All she asks is that we try to keep the decorations somewhat organized so that her job is a bit easier. As it is, she is here for almost 8 hours decorating!

Because I love my labeller and buying storage tubs (which I've talked about before on this blog) I decided this year that the time had come. There are enough decorations not including the 40 or so new ones I just bought last week, to deserve some organization. What fun I had!

This year's tree is going to be done in sage green and ivory with burgundy as a splash of colour contrast. I can't wait to start sipping my Tim Horton's while hubby and his sister do the work. I know how impressed my sister-in-law will be with my organization, and it just might spur me on to buy even more decorations after Christmas when they go on sale.

I ended up with 3 huge tubs, one for purple, one for green, one for the neutrals (ivory, white, grey, silver and gold) and several smaller tubs - one for red decorations, one for "must put on tree each year" which are decorations from my childhood or made by my children or gifts from friends and family, one for kids decorations for their little tree, one for miscellaneous sets in assorted colours, and one labelled "winged creatures" which are birds, dragonflies, butterflies - you get the idea - anything with wings.

Then I sorted all the garlands and ribbons and so on and put them all in a tub. Next came tags and wrapping paper and ribbons for presents - that took 2 more tubs. By the time I finished, I had a total of 9 large tubs representing Christmas memories.

Now if only I had somewhere to store them....