| John's Research |
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(via Walter MILLIS) Harmen Jansen Knickerbocker, the first bearer of that name in America, came from Holland about 1683 and lived for a time at and near Albany. Late in the sixteen hundreds he, with associates, acquired large tracts of land in the northwest corner of Dutchess County and removed there and took up residence at what is now Tivoli, formerly Red Hook Landing. This pioneer was accompanied by a considerable family group - sons, daughters and in-laws and the first definite record of a Millis1 (then spelled Melius) is in connection with the Knickerbocker family in old tax lists and church records of marriages, witnesses and sponsors at births and so on. These are practically all in the early records of Lutheran and Dutch Reform Churches and would indicate that those pioneers had a higher and more generally prevalent regard for their Church than prevails at the present time among the generality of people who claim to be Protestants. Probably within a few years after the settlement at Tivoli, the Millis group and some of the Knickerbockers moved on to near the present village of Pine Plains in the north east corner of Dutchess County, some twenty miles back from the Hudson River. Here at least three generations before my grandfather passed their lives. My grandfather, John William Millis, married Christina Knickerbocker who was a direct descendent of the first pioneer bearing that name in the fourth generation after him. My grandfather Millis lived for a short time about 20-25 miles north of Pine Plains in Colombia County township of Taghkanick and my father, Walter Millis, was born there in 1819. All the other Millis ancestry after the original one who is believed to have come over contemporaneously with the first Knickerbocker were probably born in or near Pine Plains as my grandfather and his father and grandfather quite certainly were. I have identified and made photographs2 of four of the ancestral dwellings in the Pine Plains region. I also made a picture of the site of a fifth, now faintly recognizable by the windows of a cellar. The oldest of these is now something over 200 years of age. All are still standing except the one at the cellar site. That would be over a century old -- the youngest of the group. I found some of its timbers utilized in the frame of a barn. My grandfather with his family removed from Pine Plains to Monroe County, New York, a few miles west of Rochester when my father was five years old. From there, the family went to Yates, Orchard County, where both grandparents passed the remainder of their lives. My father was living there when he married my mother and the young couple went at once to Wheatland township, Hillsdale County, in Michigan. Both passed their remaining periods of life there on the original3 farm homestead. And that was my birthplace; also the birthplace of my two brothers and one sister. In Dutchess County, the early Hollanders came in contract with the pioneer Germans who came from the Palatinate on the Rhine -- mostly Protestant refugees who were first located at and about what is now Germantown in Columbia County, not very distant from Hudson. The natural result was intermarriages and sometimes perplexities for the genealogical student, since both Hollanders and Germans were often regarded as "Dutchmen" without any clear distinction as to origins. And not always even a recognition of distinctions in family names between these groups. Then, to add to the confusion, there was a considerable group in this general region that had a Belgian origin -- and some Huguenots. My father's line includes a Dings4 from the Palatine German pioneers. And my grandfather's mother was a Devel (Devol) who came from Massachusetts and was probably from a Huguenot family. My grandfather's grandmother was Silvernail (Silberbernagle), a Palatinate German by origin. My study of the ancestry of my mother, Jane Clark Carlow Millis, has been no less interesting. I will consider first her mother's family as that is the easier part and the records are quite clear and complete. My grandmother on that side was Salome Clark. The original John Clark in this line came from Great Missinden in Hertfordshire, northeast of London. He was one of the company that was led by the Reverend Thomas Hooker, a "dissenter" from the Church of England. This bunch came over about 1636, remained a short period at Cambridge near Boston, then moved on to Hartford, Connecticut and eventually Clark drifted down the Connecticut River and anchored at Saybrook, at the mouth, where the Clarks became quite nabobs and large land owners. The name John appears frequently in this line (as also in my father's), so I have well founded claims to my own name.5 In my early service I surveyed the Connecticut River for a system of "port lights", the first established for aiding the steamboats that then ran from New York to Hartford and back. In the ancient cemetery at Saybrook, I saw the tombstone of Lady Fenwick , wife of an early English governor, and possibly that first aroused my interest in the local history. Later I found the tombstone of John Clark, an ancestor, who in early colonial days was a militia officer and at one time was in command of the little fort at the mouth of the river. Adjoining the old cemetery is a small yard or open park that was the original site of Yale College. A big boulder bearing a bronze tablet records that fact. My mother's grandmother, then the widow of Asahel [!] Clark, moved from Saybrook to De Ruyter in Madison County, NY several miles southeast of Syracuse and there one of her daughters6 met and married my mother's father, Ruben [!] K. Carlow. My mother was born there and I have found and photographed the foundations of the little old house that was her birthplace. This brings me to my maternal grandfather, Ruben K. Carlow and he has caused me about as much study as all of the others together, The name Carlow is even more rare and elusive in the country than Millis. At first, it seemed easy. Since there is a County Carlow in Ireland, I naturally began there to look for a source -- and I met with something of a surprise. While Carlow is found in the titles in the Irish nobility (like the Earl of Carlow) there evidently all have only a geographical significance, as do most of the British titles in Burkes. I have searched many Irish lists of various kinds and books on Irish names over and over again and have never come across a simple instance of Carlow as a family or surname in Ireland. I have, however, found a very few Carlows in both England and Scotland. The earliest Carlows in this country I have been able to locate were in Scituate, Massachusetts, not far from Boston, as shown on tombstones and church records but I was unable definitely to follow any descendants. There is a family tradition, partly confirmed, that my mother's great grandfather, Stephen Carlow, originally lived on Cape Cod, that he with other early residents was forced to leave there by the early Indian wars and that he came to New York City. Here he was left an orphan by the death of his parents in an epidemic in the city of cholera or yellow fever and was taken by another family fleeing from the epidemic to Washington County, not far from Saratoga. His record history began there. As a child I was somewhat thrilled by the family story that my mother's great grandfather was a soldier of the Revolution though there was then not a scrap of record evidence to confirm this. Another story, handed down by word of mouth only, was that my mother's grandfather, Stephen Carlow Jr., remembered seeing Washington when a child and that Washington spoke to him! This latter always seemed to me as something to be taken with the traditional saline dilution! - But I have been able partially to confirm both of these traditions. I searched the records of revolutionary soldiers in the State library at Albany. Several years ago there was a fire in the State Capitol building that destroyed many valuable historical documents. I found an old-muster-and-pay-roll that had come through the fire, but much damaged. About half of it I should say was burned away and the remaining fragment was scorched or smoked and discolored. It was a list of names of soldiers of a militia regiment at Albany that was "called out" in the service of the Colonies in the latter part of the revolution to repel raids by Indians and Tories on what was then the frontier in the Mohawk Valley. The very last legible name on the damaged muster-roll was "Stephen Carlow, private"! On this evidence, my brother7 became a member of the Sons of the Revolution. I never so utilized it. The other story was not so definitely confirmed but the circumstantial evidence to support it is strong. Soon after the close of the revolution, Washington was residing at Newburgh, in the old Hasbronck house , still standing. While living there, he made a tour of inspection to several places at and about Albany. He visited the place then called Saratoga (now Schuylerville) and the scene of Burgoyne's surrender. And he reviewed a regiment of New Hampshire troops then stationed there. Stephen Carlow Senior was then living in Greenwich, a town some five miles or so back from the river, east, opposite to the Saratoga battlefield. It would be obviously probable that people from that short distance away came to see such an unusual event as a personal visit by the great national hero and a military parade. My mother's grandfather, Stephen Carlow Jr., was then about two and a half years old. His father, an ex-soldier in the patriot cause, might have presented with fatherly pride his baby, then the only one, I believe. And with these assumptions it follows that Washington would very naturally notice the young child and so no doubt "spoke" to him. But what he said, tradition does not disclose and I doubt if the incident impressed Washington or any other adult as permanently as it seems to have remained in the mind the young off-spring. There is no doubt about the detailed facts and date of Washington's visit to the Saratoga battlefield. These are shown by authoritative records thought not by Washington's diary or journal. There was a gap in his personal journal which embraces this period. Not long ago, I communicated with the New Hampshire state officials at Concord and verified that a regiment of militia or troops from that state was at Schuylerville at the time of Washington's visit. There are many stories of very early recollections by young children of events of importance. Stephen Carlow 2nd lived to an advanced age. I never saw him but according to family recollections, he was a man with full mental vigor throughout his life and the story of his remembering a notable event of which he was an eye-witness at the age of two and a half years is not to be dismissed as wholly fantastic. It could not have originated without some color of a real foundation, although, of course, it is possible that the witness might have derived the belief that he remembered the incident from hearing his father or others repeat the story. In any case, the tradition is interesting and, with my recollection of it, bridges a gap of a century and a half back to a personal contact with George Washington. With no claims to being a prodigy, I distinctly remember one or two events that transpired in 1861 in the first summer of the Civil War. I retain a perfectly clear mental picture of a United States flag, waving in a breeze and the bright sunlight that my father put up on a pole on the newly erected frame of our large barn. I was then two years and a half old -- just about the age of my great grandfather when Washington "spoke" to him. My maternal grandfather, the above Stephen Carlow 2nd, went - when a young man - from Greenwich, Washington County - to De Ruyter, Madison County NY where he met and married Salome Clark whose origins and antecedents I have explained. My mother was the first child, born in 1828. When my mother was three or four years old, the family moved to Brighton, a village in the southern outskirts of Rochester (now absorbed in that city). They lived in three other places in that general vicinity -- which I have also trailed -- and when my mother had almost reached young womanhood, the family moved to the township of Ridgewood in the eastern edge of Niagara County where my grandfather became a land-holder on a modest scale. This was not far from the estate of my father's father, John W. Millis which was in Yates. Orleans County. Here my father and mother met and they were married and went immediately to Michigan as already related. I will note a few interesting items of history and geography that have come within my cognizance as a result of family researches. Most of these I probably would not have become aware of but for these studies. While the name Knickerbocker is widely known, especially in New York State and City, and has been extensively paraded and commercialized in all sorts of ways for many years, it is a little strange how very few people having that family name have been outstanding in any form of worth-while achievement. Of course it is well known that very many men of eminent distinction have come from the "Old Knickerbocker Families" and "Father Knickerbocker" as a symbol or pseudonym for the greatest city in the world is almost as well known as Uncle Sam himself. But in the histories and Who's Whos, Knickerbockers are neither very numerous nor very prominent. The first Knickerbocker immigrant of about 1683 became a land-owner in the vicinity of Albany. His oldest son, John, settled at a place called Schaticoke, some distance north east of Albany in what is now Rensselaer County. An old mansion house of the family and a cemetery with tombstones bearing the family name still exist at Schaticoke. It is generally believed that Washington Irving got the suggestion for his famous - but mythical - character Diedrich Knickerbocker from a member of this branch who at one time was a representative in Congress of the United States. Schaticoke has sometimes been regarded as the ancestral stamping ground and radiant for this family in America after the sojourn at Albany but this is a misconception. The original head of the family with all of his sons except the senior John, probably both of his two daughters and their respective husbands and wives of these offspring, as well as his own wife, removed to the estate that was jointly purchased with other investors in Dutchess County and the residence of this group was at or near Tivoli. There is good reason to believe that both the original Knickerbocker and his wife died there and were buried in an ancient burial lot at the top of the hill or bluff on the east bank of the Hudson back of the rail-road station at Tivoli. In this burial lot there was until quite recently a tombstone bearing the name of Lawrence Knickerbocker, the second son of the pioneer. Lawrence K. - Cornelius K. - John K. - Christina K. - was the line of descent to my father's mother. The present boundary line between Columbia County and Dutchess County originated as the southern boundary of the great Livingston Manor. This was the northern boundary of the extensive Knickerbocker tract and east of that came the "Little Nine Partners" grant extending eastward to the Connecticut line. The mansion house of Chancellor Livingston was in the extreme southwest corner of the Livingston grant, on the high east bank of the Hudson, very near to Tivoli and the ancient burial ground of the Knickerbockers. Presumably the residence of the latter was in that immediate vicinity but this has not been verified. This Chancellor Livingston was the sponsor of Robert Fulton's early steamboat adventures. His mansion, "Clermont," was burned only a few years ago. The ruined walls were still standing when I was last there. Some guides and histories say the first steamboat, the Clermont, was built on a bay a few miles below the mansion from which it got its name. This is an error. Livingston had taken an interest in steam propulsion for vessels before he met Fulton, and he did do something in the way of an experimental boat on the shore of "North Bay," near the south line of the Knickerbocker property. But this venture was not successful. After the association with Fulton began, the Clermont was built on the East River, at New York. The engine to drive it was built in England. Fulton also lived near Tivoli for a time in a house that was still standing according to the latest reference I have. but I never saw it. When it is recalled what steam propulsion for vessels grew into all over the world, these meager connections with its birth have a considerable interest. Of course, it is known that there are rival claims to originality that challenge those of Fulton and Livingston, but the fact remains that these two deserve the credit for developing the first commercially practical steamboat; though just how "practical" may be a question of some uncertainty. It is said that when the Clermont was reproduced a few years ago for the celebrations, a plan with increased beam had to be followed to insure that the replica would not roll over! The south boundary line of the Livingston Manor, now the north line of Dutchess County, has been subject to some variations. The west end where it comes to the river has been shifted southward a short distance so as to place Clermont and Livingston property all in Columbia County. A straight line would have left the mansion in Dutchess County. The eastern end of this line has also been mountainous and variable and different early surveyors did not agree. The house of my great-great-great grandfather, Johannes Jacob Melius, stood very near to this line, near Mount Ross, a few miles west of Pine Plains. The records show visits to this house by the surveyor and others during controversies over the location of the line and conferences on the ground with the Livingston who was then "Lord of the Manor." I found a note-book of the survey of the line that I believe was final in the archives at Albany. These conferences, etc., were in 1743, almost two hundred years ago, and a long lifetime before Fulton's "Clermont." Farther east, at Pine Plains and vicinity, the north line of the County was also a variable quantity with uncertainties of considerable portions of a mile or so as run by different surveyors. My grandfather believed he was born in what was then the township of Northeast, Dutchess County, but I identified the house which was his birthplace and it is a short distance over the line, north and therefore in Columbia County. The Johannes Jacob Melius house of 200 years ago still stands with two added wings as extensions and like my grandfather's birthplace is just over the line in Columbia County. Another source of confusion for the student of local history in that general region is found in the disputes over the boundary between New York and Connecticut. This is a long story and I have not the details at hand. You have noticed the peculiar square jog in the boundary line in the southwest corner of Connecticut, which places in that state an area that otherwise would be in New York if the west line between the two should run straight through north and south. There is a narrow strip along this line, still known as "the oblong," that is now in New York but that was formerly claimed by Connecticut. In the final adjustment of the controversy, New York got the "oblong" and Connecticut was compensated by what looks like a sort of excrescence in its southwest corner. In a sketch of his life which my grandfather Millis made for me many years ago, he said that his mother Deborah [!] Devel came from Dartmouth, Rhode Island, with her parents when a young child. The only recollection that she had of the trip was the fright occasioned by the passage through the swift currents in Hell Gate in a sailing vessel. This reference to Rhode Island puzzled me for many years. I could not find any Dartmouth in Rhode Island or any trace of one for a long time. There is, however, a township of Dartmouth in Massachusetts next to the Rhode Island line and here there was also an ancient boundary dispute. Rhode Island claimed a boundary some miles further east than its present location and naturally the residents in the disputed area were confused about which state they really lived in. I found the old house where the Devels lived, once owned by the father of my grandfather's mother, that still exists with an added extension, and also located another property not far away that was once owned by earlier generations of the same family. These are both a few miles east of Fall River and now in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Rhode Island lost out when the state boundary was fixed where it now is. I found some rather obscure references to a group or colony of exiles or refugees from Scotland that were expatriated during the wars between England and Scotland, before the Union between these two parts of Great Britain. These Scotchmen were located in eastern Massachusetts and I have surmised they may have brought the name Carlow. But I have not confirmed this. During my researches in Albany, I was shown the papers that were found on Major Andre when he was captured. These papers were folded to a size and shape almost like a modern letter envelope and show evidence of the sealing wax that secured them. Andre had put them under the soles of his feet inside his stockings. I have photostat copies that the State library made for me: - descriptions of forts and batteries at West Point, lists of armament, Arnold's autograph "pass" that he gave to Andre, etc. Few people know where these papers are or of the futile efforts of Washington officials to procure them from the New York State library for deposit in the national archives at the Capitol city - to digress a little. Janet8 can look out of the back windows of her little house at Tappan and see the hill a few rods away where Andre was executed and buried. The body was removed to Westminster Abbey in London forty or fifty years alter. You have probably seen the memorial there as I have. The spot at Tappan is marked by a large square rock surrounded by an iron fence or railing. You may have heard of the famous "Arneke Jans9 Claim" to a large area of real estate in the heart of New York City, really owned under an ancient grant by the Trinity Church corporation. A somewhat similar but considerably less notorious case was the "Harlem Claims": to lands on upper Manhattan Island that dated back to early Dutch colonial times. These claims were once regarded seriously by a large number of descendants of the early Hollanders and books, with long lists of "claimants" have been printed on the subject. From examination of these, which included Knickerbockers, I discovered a very attenuated blood relationship to Theodore Roosevelt! But it is vastly thinner than the thinnest water. And here is another "claim" incident I have encountered. One of my mother's ancestors was a Rider or Ryder who was an officer of militia on Cape Cod in very early days and his name appears somewhat prominent in the Indian troubles of that distressing period. His ownership of quite a large tract of land (the boundaries were described in "miles" as the unit of measurement) led to "claims" that my mother's father and his sister were once excited about, within my recollection or slightly earlier. Nothing came of it. Upon the record of this ancestor and on that of the early Clark at Saybrook, my brother became a member of the Society of Colonial Wars. I never joined. Another name in my mother's line in Connecticut was Atwater. These were prominent people there and it is quite likely that you will also encounter it. A final illustration of the strange things that genealogy may lead to. I have proposed some kind of marker or monument at the ancient burial lot at Tivoli, to commemorate the Dutch pioneers typified by the Knickerbocker family. This idea I proposed to the Society for the Preservation of Hudson River Landmarks - or Historic Sites. (Am not just now entirely sure of their title.) I also suggested it to the Dutchess County Historical Society. Several letters were exchanged and "one word brought on another" until I received a very friendly and courteously worded personal letter, with authentic autograph signature, on stationery with the heading "Hyde Park. N. Y." [L. H. Beach10 adds here that "a letter of Dec. 9 1940 from Colonel Millis says this should be Washington, D, C."]. The letter expressed interest and disclosed a desire to help promote the Knickerbocker memorial idea. The signature was that of our most distinguished citizen of Dutch origin of the present day - Franklin D. Roosevelt. No apologies for this lengthy dissertation on intimate personal matters. It is one genealogist fan to another and may possibly embody suggestions or cross-links that will be mutually interesting and helpful. Very sincerely, John Millis --- 1 Marvin Millis has found some evidence to suggest that this first Millis in the New World may have come from Frankfurt. 2 I have most of these pictures. 3 Eventually known as Millis Corners. I have a picture of the house from 1876. 4 Spelling uncertain. Marvin Millis says it is "Dings" and has found a reference to a family of that name in that area. But in manuscript it looks more like Dingo. 5 We chose Andrew JOHN Millis's middle name after his MacKay grandfather. But it seems equally well founded in the Millis side. 6 Salome Clark 7 Wade Millis, a successful lawyer in the Detroit area. 8 His daughter and my aunt, Janet Millis Dickens. 9 Manuscript very difficult to read here, so the "Arneke" may be Anneke or similar. 10 Apparently a long time friend. ... ... [ Discovery #12, #12 A, #12 B ] For Private Use Only. Israel © 1999-2007. |