"Jeremiah, the pioneer and trapper, whose dug-out haunted the marshes of Huron. He died March 12, 1856, toward the end of a long severe winter; ice and snow still lingered, and both wagons and sleighs figured in the dreary cortege. He was buried at Berlin Heights.""
So remembered a cousin, who wrote the family history from NY in 1907 (William Henry Van Benschoten). He spoke to children and grandchildren, found ancestors' old church and land records and graveyards. then wrote charmingly of Jeremiah, but spoke of the sins, the slave-owning, as well. To all this, we can add details from county histories written in the 1860s and 1870s, the earliest, articles written by one of Jeremiah's sons, William, plus US government censuses, together with Ohio records and old maps. Like most families back then, they had largely been farmers, often living outside the towns where their records were kept. Thus, Poughkeepsie merely pinpoints the early Dutch Reformed church keeping his baptismal record, need not have been the town where his parents had their house or farm.
In progress, being double-checked...
Moving from the Dutch side of New York to the lakeshore frontier of Ohio, Jeremiah took his family first to the Rock River area nearer Cleveland, about 1810, then went further west in 1811. They bought a well-located property on the east side of the Huron River. His daughter Delia and family would live there later, his sons Daniel and Curtis would farm locally on other land he had held in Berlin Twp., carved out of a once larger Vermilion Township.
They were in the area called the Fire Lands; his son William would write history articles on the area for the "Fire Lands Annals". His son Ensign became a physician, did not like his first name, so called himself "Dr. E.". Death stopped son Milo from farming, creating orphans who went to live with son Curtis.
Selling the Huron River property to Jeremiah in 1811 was a tavern owner/store keeper who had become that parcel's first settler in 1810 . He was a busy man who had built a ship alongside his house, and managed to get the big river's east side surveyed for the first main road, doubling its location advantages. Warring with the British would stop development plans, however, forcing conversion of the "house" (more of cabin? or dugout?) into a fortified place that these people from the Dutch end of New York called "blockhouse", but which the Puritans to their east in New England might call a garrison. Their blockhouse had space to accommodate all seven families in the local hamlet. The British would not attack directly. Instead, they sent those native tribes they had treated well, but whom other settlers elsewhere had abused, guaranteeing they wished to assist the British. A bigger incentive? The British commanders promised to pay a fee per scalp returned. This was told in the 1907 family book, by the Bunschoter/Benschoter family historian, with some modern historians adding that scalping seemed not to be a custom original to the natives, but was introduced by British commanders wishing to rule by terror when persuasion failed. (Think Braveheart here?)
1) YOUTH. When Jeremiah was still small, back in upstate NY, New Jersey not far, as they were in the corner on rural NY near Delaware and Pennsylvania, 70 miles above NYC and Manhattan. Before ending there (along the Neversink River), Jeremiah's parents moved several times, after beginning in Dutchess County with his grandparents, perhaps sharing a household headed by grandfather Isaac Van Benschoten.
His father Aaron was not just a farmer, but a teamster. In that day, this meant a driver of teams of horses and oxen, not trucks. Aaron and sometimes his teams were asked to serve in the Revolution in different ways as he moved the young family. Aaron served under George Washington at West Point and also escaped from fallen Fort Montgomery, according to pension testimony for him presented late in Ohio, when he was quite elderly, described in the 1907 book.
Aaron finally would find, buy, and work rough farmland near the Neversink River, inside what was called the Beekman Patent. His parents were not alone nor was Jeremiah without cousins to play with, as two married siblings of Aaron went, too (Gerrit/Garret Van Benschoten and Catrina/Catherine, married to Jacob Conklin/Konklin).
How to locate their old NY land on a map? Their part of the Neversink basin lay inside a multi-county swath called the Shawanagunk country, causing the name Shawanagunk to be on the baptismal records of Jeremiah's younger siblings, not referring to the much smaller modern town. The large region of Shawanagunk was named for the Mountains standing guard southward. The mountains' long ridge limited easy contact with NYC 70 miles further south. No simple passes led through the mountains or across their long ridgetop forcing strangers, friendly or attacking, to come in by river water or on riverside trails.
His father Aaron stayed near the Neversink River long enough for some of his children to mature and marry there. Dramas yet to unfold would push them out.
Only Aaron's brother Gerrit would stay, his son's stone, refreshed by being remade as a Civil War monument, perhaps the only one still standing with the name Van Benschoten. Older stones perhaps lie under waters of the reservoir created in the 1940s to send drinking water to NYC. Thus, the old original town of Neversink did, in that way, sink, but the late-blooming land drama a hundred and fifty years earlier would cause Gerrit to move upland first, Aaron said to move to the inferior land there, too, but just temporarily.
It's not clear whether Jeremiah met and married the mother of his children in the Neversink region or elsewhere, later. Her family of origin is unclear
While slavery was mainly a southern phenomenon, there were pockets of slavery in the old North, and this was one. Yet, in the 1790 census count, it seemed that up to a third of their neighbors in Sullivan County had slaves, even though his father Aaron's household was listed with none. The immigrating ancestor bringing their surname to America had had a number of slaves (Teunis, son of Elias, from Benschoten, 20 to 30 miles east of Amsterdam). He wrote their names and family groups, some tribal, inside his Dutch-language family bible. Printing presses were not yet capable of mass production, so such books were rare and expensive. The bible and slave ownership showed Teunis as a person of means.
Those seeing the sin in slavery were in a growing majority. Yet, NY would not make owning slaves illegal until later, in 1827. Was it a a surprise to Jeremiah in 1810-1811 when he took the slaves he had acquired to Ohio and found slavery was already illegal there?
Jeremiah did not become belligerent. He did not ask Congress to change Ohio rules as some southerners would do later. Nor did he threaten to secede. He simply gave up his slaves.
The family historian publishing in 1907 said that when "the family" back in NY complied, the freed heads of households were given 20-30 acres of land. Others, still single, were given cash and maybe a horse, so they could "make their way in the world".
The 1907 historian gave no details of Jeremiah's slave-freeing in Ohio, but other history sources indicate a population descended of freed slaves has long been in Sandusky town, to their Northwest. An"underground railroad" of sorts was well-documented as running through Sandusky town, pre-Civil War, to help escaped slaves coming though from the south reach safety in Canada.
Two of his daughters married men from slave-owning regions in the upper-south, Mary Ann to Mr. Paxton from Virginia, his family known to have been sizeable slave owners, and Delia, to Mr. Stapleton from Maryland. Yet, no attempt was made to return south and own slaves once again. When the Civil War began about five years after Jeremiah's death, Jeremiah's daughter Delia, three times a widow, would send several of her sons to fight. An especially young son, by her second spouse, Mr. Ells, was wounded in battle at Franklin in Tenn., then died. An older son, described as George S. Akins the junior, by her first husband, was tasked with taking Confederate prisoners kept at Johnson Island south, to exchange them. At one point he was struck with measles while standing guard over them in a cold rain. The measles attack was so severe , he expected to die, was only ninety pounds when taken back home, but recovered. Delia's cousin Oliver, while widowed and freshly remarried,out in Kossuth County, Iowa, would likewise send a son named George to the war, but his George was one of those who died of his disease..
2) OFF TO WESTERN NY. Jeremiah had already left his parent's home in Sullivan County before the 1800 Census. Many Rev. War buyers found that Beekman land they had bought and "worked" for years deemed imperfect in title, so had less to transfer to their maturing sons ready for marriage and family.
There was a murder, a shooting of the "ultra-landlord" who benefited from the defect in the Beekman titles. The landlord, Gross Hardenburgh, negotiated at first, to give upland in compensation for the richer ground to be given up. already paid for, money paid not to be returned in an era of no title insurance . He then began evicting everyone. In a pattern seen elsewhere , he was shot while out riding his horse. The man's killer was not described, but hints were made that rumors about the killer were facts, witnesses of connected events would not say anything further.
Jeremiah, after leaving, would buy land , circa Sept. 1794 on the latest frontier, past Syracuse, on the edge of the Finger Lakes area of NY If not yet 20 in 1794, did he have family connections to welcome him? For example, ghe Catrina Van Benschoten who had married Jacob Conklin would move out there, a sister to Jeremiah's father Aaron.
Jeremiah obtained certificates of title to over 1000 acres total. Think of a mile square, plus a rectangle a half-mile by one-mile. All was initially in one county (old Onondaga). According to the source below, the land would split later into several counties. He and the Conklins were based in Sempronius inold Onondaga County, in that part to be called Niles later, with a new county, Cayuga , to be created some decades to hold the future courthouse, those changes happening after he and his family left.
We know only what he owned, not the outcome of owning so much. Was the idea to diversify against crop diseases? To grab multiple" good store corners" or hotel or mill locations before population thickened? To "flip"to new buyers, then use the cash to buy better land further west, once Ohio opened up to settlers? To instead keep it and then divide the large acreage later across multiple heirs?
How many heirs? People back then had large families, never sure how many would die before adulthood. Wife Sarah Wetherlow bore 13 children, eight living to adulthood.
3) LIFE IN OHIO. He had many children maturing and of record once in Ohio. If typical, Jeremiah arrived before his wife and children. Men went first to find good land, then would wait until spring to clear a bit for garden or crop acres, maybe taking some older children along to help clear and plant, to carry and dig and hoe, also to "keep company". The rest could come when it was certain they would not spend a winter starving,as seen in settlements were urban people attempted to farm, not knowing how changes of season could kill if unprepared.
Once in Ohio, just as done in NY, he had more than one parcel. He seems to have had at least two. Both were in the part of old Huron County that split off to become Erie County. His earliest place , on the east side of the Huron River, was described as purchased in 1811, from a business-minded man who had been its first occupant in 1810. Two daughters were said to share it by 1879, when a local history of the Fire Lands by WW Williams described them there, named only as "Widow Stapleton" and "Mrs. James Paxton". The second part went to his son Curtis.
His daughter Delia/Cordelia had married Joseph Ells, then, widowed, re-married J. Stapleton, a Maryland-born man. In 1880, she was widowed and living in Huron Twp. in Erie County, close in time to the 1879 book saying she lived on his old property. Two of her children lived next-door, daughter Elizabeth Ells, who would die locally. elderly and single. The other was son Curtis Stapleton, named for Delia's brother. Maybe all three were on the land from her father..
The farm that went to her brother, Jeremiah's son Curtis, must have been in that part of Vermillion Twp. where Jeremiah was taxed in 1815. This presumably was his location when elected to office in 1818, after this part of Vermillion had separated as the new Eldridge Twp. (Eldridge was renamed later as Berlin Twp. It contained Berlinville and Berlin Heights, recalling Berlin, Germany, much as nearby Milan Twp. recalled Milan, Italy.)
4) RE-UNITED. Jeremiah's father Aaron left Sullivan County in NY, to join Jeremiah in Ohio, but did so later.He had been given some wilderness "upland" in NY as compensation for 20 years of improvements made on the land taken from him, so turned that over to his next eldest son John, who stayed behind.
Aaron and his wife, Margaret Hoffman, both long-lived, began arriving with the rest in 1816. The local group included two of Jeremiah's younger brothers (William and Daniel Hoffman Van Benschoter) and their growing families. Four of Aaron and Margaret's sons were seen in Ohio, the other being Cornelius, elsewhere in the state. William would die while some of his children were still too young to rate as adults (reached at 12 for girls, 14 for boys). Placed elsewhere, when relatives could not take him caused Jeremiah's young nephew Almon Benschoter to have an abusive experience as an indentured apprentice, then run-away. Parallel to this, Jeremiah's son Milo would die leaving two young orphans, Burgess and Hammond. They were taken in by Jeremiah's youngest son Curtis and had a better outcome.
Jeremiah had one more brother Cornelius , the one closest to Jeremiah in age. He instead went to Seneca County. The 1850 Census thus found them both in Ohio in nearby counties. It would be Jeremiah's last, no obvious Van Benschoten relatives in his house, but with possible boarders named Root. Jeremiah died before Cornelius, who was next polled for the 1860 Census, but out in Delaware County, Iowa. That was a place barely across the Mississippi from Illinois and Wisconsin, hilly, unglaciated, scenic, multi-ethnic, beautiful. The presumed wife and youngest son, of Cornelius, "Dian" and Oliver, seen in 1850, were gone. An older son of Cornelius, Alex, single in 1850, bt 1860 would head the Iowa house. He had married and had two daughters. When widowed "too early", Alex married his first wife's cousin, giving his daughters a stepmother they knew.
4) NAME CONFUSIONS. Jeremiah also had a son named Jeremiah, who, difficult to prove, was the Jeremiah of the right age to work at the Marblehead Lighthouse after the prior keeper and his son caught cholera late in 1832 from a body cast-off in to the rough water that then came ashore by the lighthouse . The keeper's widow, Rachel Miller Woolcot, took over the lighthouse operation for two years, before marrying Jerry "Van Benschoter" in 1834. She died before the 1860 Census was done, but is no easy to find in the 1850 Census when this Jeremiah, also called Jerry, lived wifeless.
It's not clear which Jeremiah was elected as an "Overseer of the Poor" in 1818. However, the prejudices of the time perhaps did not let the landless hold office, which the son would have been until any deeds were transferred.
ENSIGN. Some of the children were highly educated so could earn a living without working farm land. This may have been his son Ensign, taxed in 1830 on his medical practice in Portland Twp., which swallowed up later by what would become Sandusky city. Ensign apparently moved away before cholera struck. The long-term local MD, a Dr. Anderson, was among its victims, by 1834. If there in that time, Ensign survived. Did he change his name to Dr. E, so people would not think he was in the military? His stone is hard to find, due to not using the name Ensign.
MARY ANN. People back then were trained under British rules to try to sound out the surname rather than to ask how to spell it. A survivor tried to recall daughter Mary Ann's maiden name for a death record. Mary Ann had married James Paxton. Perhaps as there were too many Marys, she apparently went by Ann, reported by her survivor for her death record as Ann Paxton. Her maiden name is then seen as "Benscout". These and other inventions making it hard to find his children in records, despite having had so many.
5) GATEWAYS TO THE HEREAFTER. It was a time of religious experimenting, once away from his ancestors' Dutch Reformed churche. The British-descendeds in his area had come out of Puritan territory in New England. If no longer Calvinist or Methodist/Episcopal, some proselytized their newest choices. There were many to pick from beginning in the 1820s and 1830s-- Christian Science, Campbellites, LDS, Adventist, and more. Some others did not survive. Cleveland had had a short-lived group calling itself Halcyon, what some sociologists would call a sect/cult instead of an organized denomination.
Often the wife's choice decided the family's religion, so marriage brought a change in faith. His son Curtis had joined or married into the Baptist faith. His father Aaron was said to have adopted "primitive Methodism", after beginning as Dutch Reformed.
Jeremiah was said to be attracted to the Friends (Quakers), not clear if they were his own choice or his wife's heritage. They had fewer records linking parents to children, but might keep other records in quite good detail, at the local "Friends meeting" level. (These local notebooks were sometimes moved to a central or big city "Friends meeting", as small areas depopulated, once farm machinery and city jobs replaced rural labor.)
By his death, Jeremiah was said to have found the newly emerging Spiritualists. A chapter was known to organize itself in nearby Berlin Heights. Some historians said people attracted to it often had experienced lots of losses, due to long-distance moving and epidemics of new diseases and warrings and so forth, so longed to reconnect with their dead, whether children and parents, or spouses and siblings.
6) ODD SURNAME HINTS AT DISTANT PAST.
Their spelling is not the oldest spelling. Did Aaron's generation change Bun in Bunschoten to Ben, making Benschoten, perhaps to avoid jokes about food or body when encountering the British neighbors who moved in to NY later than the Dutch?
The Van Benschoten's first immigrant was Teunis, son of Elias (no inherited surname for either man).
"Van"means "from". Teunis, son of Elias, reported coming from/van a waterside place called Bunschoten. Thus, both he and his father and and brothers might also have been Van Bunschoten. The town survives, but once was walled for defense. Surrounding farmers presumably came inside a fortified town's walls for market fairs, to attend church, and to avoid attacks from outside, ranging from pirates on viking trips, to returned crusaders turned into mercenaries working for envious cousins of the local nobility.
Judging from maps, a wide and long canal (channelized river?) connected Benschoten to other places. Amsterdam was easterly, with its port and ships to America, maybe 20-30 miles downstream.
Their location was well-situated for merchants involved in the old north Germanic Hanseatic League, accounting for Scandinavian influences. For example, Teunis used Eliasen as his temporary last name. The "-sen" ending is the Danish way to say "son of". At some point, it became just one of the several Dutch ways, "-se" being another. Also, the Bergen region of NJ was the first place at which Teunis left records in Dutch Reformed churches, before going upriver to rural NY. Eastern Jersey's Bergen had been given a name matching a much older place. Bergen, Norway was an old Hanseatic city, like Bruges and Berlin and Riga and Krakow and others.
WARNING, BIRTH NOT SAME AS BAPTISM. Jeremiah was the eldest son of Aaron Von Benschoten, aka Arie Benschoter, and Margaret/Margriete Hoffman. Jeremiah's baptismal date was Nov. 17, 1776.
Birth records were not yet regarded as proof of identity, so were not kept. His birth would have been earlier, maybe by only a few weeks or months, possibly a few years if he was the eldest and no ministers were nearby. Thus, perhaps he was over 20 when going to Sempronius.
We use 1776, hit at being imprecise by leaving out the day and month. This puts him in the right birth order among his siblings.
NY LAND SOURCE. His Sempronius land was in old Onondaga County, town and county larger then than they are now. Townships holding his land include Tully and Fabius, not just Sempronius . They were to spin off and become parts of new counties, specifically Cortland and Cayuga Counties. Jeremiah would stay 14-15 years before moving his maturing children to the Fire Lands region of Ohio, pre-War of 1812.
The list of his land "certificates" is found in an old book, "Calendar of N.Y. colonial manuscripts", issued later, in 1864, by the New York (State) Secretary's Office, (page 952, regarding volume LVIII, "Land papers"). The granting date of 1794, Sept. 4, makes it clear he was a young man, said elsewhere to be newly wed, not yet with children.
So remembered a cousin, who wrote the family history from NY in 1907 (William Henry Van Benschoten). He spoke to children and grandchildren, found ancestors' old church and land records and graveyards. then wrote charmingly of Jeremiah, but spoke of the sins, the slave-owning, as well. To all this, we can add details from county histories written in the 1860s and 1870s, the earliest, articles written by one of Jeremiah's sons, William, plus US government censuses, together with Ohio records and old maps. Like most families back then, they had largely been farmers, often living outside the towns where their records were kept. Thus, Poughkeepsie merely pinpoints the early Dutch Reformed church keeping his baptismal record, need not have been the town where his parents had their house or farm.
In progress, being double-checked...
Moving from the Dutch side of New York to the lakeshore frontier of Ohio, Jeremiah took his family first to the Rock River area nearer Cleveland, about 1810, then went further west in 1811. They bought a well-located property on the east side of the Huron River. His daughter Delia and family would live there later, his sons Daniel and Curtis would farm locally on other land he had held in Berlin Twp., carved out of a once larger Vermilion Township.
They were in the area called the Fire Lands; his son William would write history articles on the area for the "Fire Lands Annals". His son Ensign became a physician, did not like his first name, so called himself "Dr. E.". Death stopped son Milo from farming, creating orphans who went to live with son Curtis.
Selling the Huron River property to Jeremiah in 1811 was a tavern owner/store keeper who had become that parcel's first settler in 1810 . He was a busy man who had built a ship alongside his house, and managed to get the big river's east side surveyed for the first main road, doubling its location advantages. Warring with the British would stop development plans, however, forcing conversion of the "house" (more of cabin? or dugout?) into a fortified place that these people from the Dutch end of New York called "blockhouse", but which the Puritans to their east in New England might call a garrison. Their blockhouse had space to accommodate all seven families in the local hamlet. The British would not attack directly. Instead, they sent those native tribes they had treated well, but whom other settlers elsewhere had abused, guaranteeing they wished to assist the British. A bigger incentive? The British commanders promised to pay a fee per scalp returned. This was told in the 1907 family book, by the Bunschoter/Benschoter family historian, with some modern historians adding that scalping seemed not to be a custom original to the natives, but was introduced by British commanders wishing to rule by terror when persuasion failed. (Think Braveheart here?)
1) YOUTH. When Jeremiah was still small, back in upstate NY, New Jersey not far, as they were in the corner on rural NY near Delaware and Pennsylvania, 70 miles above NYC and Manhattan. Before ending there (along the Neversink River), Jeremiah's parents moved several times, after beginning in Dutchess County with his grandparents, perhaps sharing a household headed by grandfather Isaac Van Benschoten.
His father Aaron was not just a farmer, but a teamster. In that day, this meant a driver of teams of horses and oxen, not trucks. Aaron and sometimes his teams were asked to serve in the Revolution in different ways as he moved the young family. Aaron served under George Washington at West Point and also escaped from fallen Fort Montgomery, according to pension testimony for him presented late in Ohio, when he was quite elderly, described in the 1907 book.
Aaron finally would find, buy, and work rough farmland near the Neversink River, inside what was called the Beekman Patent. His parents were not alone nor was Jeremiah without cousins to play with, as two married siblings of Aaron went, too (Gerrit/Garret Van Benschoten and Catrina/Catherine, married to Jacob Conklin/Konklin).
How to locate their old NY land on a map? Their part of the Neversink basin lay inside a multi-county swath called the Shawanagunk country, causing the name Shawanagunk to be on the baptismal records of Jeremiah's younger siblings, not referring to the much smaller modern town. The large region of Shawanagunk was named for the Mountains standing guard southward. The mountains' long ridge limited easy contact with NYC 70 miles further south. No simple passes led through the mountains or across their long ridgetop forcing strangers, friendly or attacking, to come in by river water or on riverside trails.
His father Aaron stayed near the Neversink River long enough for some of his children to mature and marry there. Dramas yet to unfold would push them out.
Only Aaron's brother Gerrit would stay, his son's stone, refreshed by being remade as a Civil War monument, perhaps the only one still standing with the name Van Benschoten. Older stones perhaps lie under waters of the reservoir created in the 1940s to send drinking water to NYC. Thus, the old original town of Neversink did, in that way, sink, but the late-blooming land drama a hundred and fifty years earlier would cause Gerrit to move upland first, Aaron said to move to the inferior land there, too, but just temporarily.
It's not clear whether Jeremiah met and married the mother of his children in the Neversink region or elsewhere, later. Her family of origin is unclear
While slavery was mainly a southern phenomenon, there were pockets of slavery in the old North, and this was one. Yet, in the 1790 census count, it seemed that up to a third of their neighbors in Sullivan County had slaves, even though his father Aaron's household was listed with none. The immigrating ancestor bringing their surname to America had had a number of slaves (Teunis, son of Elias, from Benschoten, 20 to 30 miles east of Amsterdam). He wrote their names and family groups, some tribal, inside his Dutch-language family bible. Printing presses were not yet capable of mass production, so such books were rare and expensive. The bible and slave ownership showed Teunis as a person of means.
Those seeing the sin in slavery were in a growing majority. Yet, NY would not make owning slaves illegal until later, in 1827. Was it a a surprise to Jeremiah in 1810-1811 when he took the slaves he had acquired to Ohio and found slavery was already illegal there?
Jeremiah did not become belligerent. He did not ask Congress to change Ohio rules as some southerners would do later. Nor did he threaten to secede. He simply gave up his slaves.
The family historian publishing in 1907 said that when "the family" back in NY complied, the freed heads of households were given 20-30 acres of land. Others, still single, were given cash and maybe a horse, so they could "make their way in the world".
The 1907 historian gave no details of Jeremiah's slave-freeing in Ohio, but other history sources indicate a population descended of freed slaves has long been in Sandusky town, to their Northwest. An"underground railroad" of sorts was well-documented as running through Sandusky town, pre-Civil War, to help escaped slaves coming though from the south reach safety in Canada.
Two of his daughters married men from slave-owning regions in the upper-south, Mary Ann to Mr. Paxton from Virginia, his family known to have been sizeable slave owners, and Delia, to Mr. Stapleton from Maryland. Yet, no attempt was made to return south and own slaves once again. When the Civil War began about five years after Jeremiah's death, Jeremiah's daughter Delia, three times a widow, would send several of her sons to fight. An especially young son, by her second spouse, Mr. Ells, was wounded in battle at Franklin in Tenn., then died. An older son, described as George S. Akins the junior, by her first husband, was tasked with taking Confederate prisoners kept at Johnson Island south, to exchange them. At one point he was struck with measles while standing guard over them in a cold rain. The measles attack was so severe , he expected to die, was only ninety pounds when taken back home, but recovered. Delia's cousin Oliver, while widowed and freshly remarried,out in Kossuth County, Iowa, would likewise send a son named George to the war, but his George was one of those who died of his disease..
2) OFF TO WESTERN NY. Jeremiah had already left his parent's home in Sullivan County before the 1800 Census. Many Rev. War buyers found that Beekman land they had bought and "worked" for years deemed imperfect in title, so had less to transfer to their maturing sons ready for marriage and family.
There was a murder, a shooting of the "ultra-landlord" who benefited from the defect in the Beekman titles. The landlord, Gross Hardenburgh, negotiated at first, to give upland in compensation for the richer ground to be given up. already paid for, money paid not to be returned in an era of no title insurance . He then began evicting everyone. In a pattern seen elsewhere , he was shot while out riding his horse. The man's killer was not described, but hints were made that rumors about the killer were facts, witnesses of connected events would not say anything further.
Jeremiah, after leaving, would buy land , circa Sept. 1794 on the latest frontier, past Syracuse, on the edge of the Finger Lakes area of NY If not yet 20 in 1794, did he have family connections to welcome him? For example, ghe Catrina Van Benschoten who had married Jacob Conklin would move out there, a sister to Jeremiah's father Aaron.
Jeremiah obtained certificates of title to over 1000 acres total. Think of a mile square, plus a rectangle a half-mile by one-mile. All was initially in one county (old Onondaga). According to the source below, the land would split later into several counties. He and the Conklins were based in Sempronius inold Onondaga County, in that part to be called Niles later, with a new county, Cayuga , to be created some decades to hold the future courthouse, those changes happening after he and his family left.
We know only what he owned, not the outcome of owning so much. Was the idea to diversify against crop diseases? To grab multiple" good store corners" or hotel or mill locations before population thickened? To "flip"to new buyers, then use the cash to buy better land further west, once Ohio opened up to settlers? To instead keep it and then divide the large acreage later across multiple heirs?
How many heirs? People back then had large families, never sure how many would die before adulthood. Wife Sarah Wetherlow bore 13 children, eight living to adulthood.
3) LIFE IN OHIO. He had many children maturing and of record once in Ohio. If typical, Jeremiah arrived before his wife and children. Men went first to find good land, then would wait until spring to clear a bit for garden or crop acres, maybe taking some older children along to help clear and plant, to carry and dig and hoe, also to "keep company". The rest could come when it was certain they would not spend a winter starving,as seen in settlements were urban people attempted to farm, not knowing how changes of season could kill if unprepared.
Once in Ohio, just as done in NY, he had more than one parcel. He seems to have had at least two. Both were in the part of old Huron County that split off to become Erie County. His earliest place , on the east side of the Huron River, was described as purchased in 1811, from a business-minded man who had been its first occupant in 1810. Two daughters were said to share it by 1879, when a local history of the Fire Lands by WW Williams described them there, named only as "Widow Stapleton" and "Mrs. James Paxton". The second part went to his son Curtis.
His daughter Delia/Cordelia had married Joseph Ells, then, widowed, re-married J. Stapleton, a Maryland-born man. In 1880, she was widowed and living in Huron Twp. in Erie County, close in time to the 1879 book saying she lived on his old property. Two of her children lived next-door, daughter Elizabeth Ells, who would die locally. elderly and single. The other was son Curtis Stapleton, named for Delia's brother. Maybe all three were on the land from her father..
The farm that went to her brother, Jeremiah's son Curtis, must have been in that part of Vermillion Twp. where Jeremiah was taxed in 1815. This presumably was his location when elected to office in 1818, after this part of Vermillion had separated as the new Eldridge Twp. (Eldridge was renamed later as Berlin Twp. It contained Berlinville and Berlin Heights, recalling Berlin, Germany, much as nearby Milan Twp. recalled Milan, Italy.)
4) RE-UNITED. Jeremiah's father Aaron left Sullivan County in NY, to join Jeremiah in Ohio, but did so later.He had been given some wilderness "upland" in NY as compensation for 20 years of improvements made on the land taken from him, so turned that over to his next eldest son John, who stayed behind.
Aaron and his wife, Margaret Hoffman, both long-lived, began arriving with the rest in 1816. The local group included two of Jeremiah's younger brothers (William and Daniel Hoffman Van Benschoter) and their growing families. Four of Aaron and Margaret's sons were seen in Ohio, the other being Cornelius, elsewhere in the state. William would die while some of his children were still too young to rate as adults (reached at 12 for girls, 14 for boys). Placed elsewhere, when relatives could not take him caused Jeremiah's young nephew Almon Benschoter to have an abusive experience as an indentured apprentice, then run-away. Parallel to this, Jeremiah's son Milo would die leaving two young orphans, Burgess and Hammond. They were taken in by Jeremiah's youngest son Curtis and had a better outcome.
Jeremiah had one more brother Cornelius , the one closest to Jeremiah in age. He instead went to Seneca County. The 1850 Census thus found them both in Ohio in nearby counties. It would be Jeremiah's last, no obvious Van Benschoten relatives in his house, but with possible boarders named Root. Jeremiah died before Cornelius, who was next polled for the 1860 Census, but out in Delaware County, Iowa. That was a place barely across the Mississippi from Illinois and Wisconsin, hilly, unglaciated, scenic, multi-ethnic, beautiful. The presumed wife and youngest son, of Cornelius, "Dian" and Oliver, seen in 1850, were gone. An older son of Cornelius, Alex, single in 1850, bt 1860 would head the Iowa house. He had married and had two daughters. When widowed "too early", Alex married his first wife's cousin, giving his daughters a stepmother they knew.
4) NAME CONFUSIONS. Jeremiah also had a son named Jeremiah, who, difficult to prove, was the Jeremiah of the right age to work at the Marblehead Lighthouse after the prior keeper and his son caught cholera late in 1832 from a body cast-off in to the rough water that then came ashore by the lighthouse . The keeper's widow, Rachel Miller Woolcot, took over the lighthouse operation for two years, before marrying Jerry "Van Benschoter" in 1834. She died before the 1860 Census was done, but is no easy to find in the 1850 Census when this Jeremiah, also called Jerry, lived wifeless.
It's not clear which Jeremiah was elected as an "Overseer of the Poor" in 1818. However, the prejudices of the time perhaps did not let the landless hold office, which the son would have been until any deeds were transferred.
ENSIGN. Some of the children were highly educated so could earn a living without working farm land. This may have been his son Ensign, taxed in 1830 on his medical practice in Portland Twp., which swallowed up later by what would become Sandusky city. Ensign apparently moved away before cholera struck. The long-term local MD, a Dr. Anderson, was among its victims, by 1834. If there in that time, Ensign survived. Did he change his name to Dr. E, so people would not think he was in the military? His stone is hard to find, due to not using the name Ensign.
MARY ANN. People back then were trained under British rules to try to sound out the surname rather than to ask how to spell it. A survivor tried to recall daughter Mary Ann's maiden name for a death record. Mary Ann had married James Paxton. Perhaps as there were too many Marys, she apparently went by Ann, reported by her survivor for her death record as Ann Paxton. Her maiden name is then seen as "Benscout". These and other inventions making it hard to find his children in records, despite having had so many.
5) GATEWAYS TO THE HEREAFTER. It was a time of religious experimenting, once away from his ancestors' Dutch Reformed churche. The British-descendeds in his area had come out of Puritan territory in New England. If no longer Calvinist or Methodist/Episcopal, some proselytized their newest choices. There were many to pick from beginning in the 1820s and 1830s-- Christian Science, Campbellites, LDS, Adventist, and more. Some others did not survive. Cleveland had had a short-lived group calling itself Halcyon, what some sociologists would call a sect/cult instead of an organized denomination.
Often the wife's choice decided the family's religion, so marriage brought a change in faith. His son Curtis had joined or married into the Baptist faith. His father Aaron was said to have adopted "primitive Methodism", after beginning as Dutch Reformed.
Jeremiah was said to be attracted to the Friends (Quakers), not clear if they were his own choice or his wife's heritage. They had fewer records linking parents to children, but might keep other records in quite good detail, at the local "Friends meeting" level. (These local notebooks were sometimes moved to a central or big city "Friends meeting", as small areas depopulated, once farm machinery and city jobs replaced rural labor.)
By his death, Jeremiah was said to have found the newly emerging Spiritualists. A chapter was known to organize itself in nearby Berlin Heights. Some historians said people attracted to it often had experienced lots of losses, due to long-distance moving and epidemics of new diseases and warrings and so forth, so longed to reconnect with their dead, whether children and parents, or spouses and siblings.
6) ODD SURNAME HINTS AT DISTANT PAST.
Their spelling is not the oldest spelling. Did Aaron's generation change Bun in Bunschoten to Ben, making Benschoten, perhaps to avoid jokes about food or body when encountering the British neighbors who moved in to NY later than the Dutch?
The Van Benschoten's first immigrant was Teunis, son of Elias (no inherited surname for either man).
"Van"means "from". Teunis, son of Elias, reported coming from/van a waterside place called Bunschoten. Thus, both he and his father and and brothers might also have been Van Bunschoten. The town survives, but once was walled for defense. Surrounding farmers presumably came inside a fortified town's walls for market fairs, to attend church, and to avoid attacks from outside, ranging from pirates on viking trips, to returned crusaders turned into mercenaries working for envious cousins of the local nobility.
Judging from maps, a wide and long canal (channelized river?) connected Benschoten to other places. Amsterdam was easterly, with its port and ships to America, maybe 20-30 miles downstream.
Their location was well-situated for merchants involved in the old north Germanic Hanseatic League, accounting for Scandinavian influences. For example, Teunis used Eliasen as his temporary last name. The "-sen" ending is the Danish way to say "son of". At some point, it became just one of the several Dutch ways, "-se" being another. Also, the Bergen region of NJ was the first place at which Teunis left records in Dutch Reformed churches, before going upriver to rural NY. Eastern Jersey's Bergen had been given a name matching a much older place. Bergen, Norway was an old Hanseatic city, like Bruges and Berlin and Riga and Krakow and others.
WARNING, BIRTH NOT SAME AS BAPTISM. Jeremiah was the eldest son of Aaron Von Benschoten, aka Arie Benschoter, and Margaret/Margriete Hoffman. Jeremiah's baptismal date was Nov. 17, 1776.
Birth records were not yet regarded as proof of identity, so were not kept. His birth would have been earlier, maybe by only a few weeks or months, possibly a few years if he was the eldest and no ministers were nearby. Thus, perhaps he was over 20 when going to Sempronius.
We use 1776, hit at being imprecise by leaving out the day and month. This puts him in the right birth order among his siblings.
NY LAND SOURCE. His Sempronius land was in old Onondaga County, town and county larger then than they are now. Townships holding his land include Tully and Fabius, not just Sempronius . They were to spin off and become parts of new counties, specifically Cortland and Cayuga Counties. Jeremiah would stay 14-15 years before moving his maturing children to the Fire Lands region of Ohio, pre-War of 1812.
The list of his land "certificates" is found in an old book, "Calendar of N.Y. colonial manuscripts", issued later, in 1864, by the New York (State) Secretary's Office, (page 952, regarding volume LVIII, "Land papers"). The granting date of 1794, Sept. 4, makes it clear he was a young man, said elsewhere to be newly wed, not yet with children.
"Jeremiah, the pioneer and trapper, whose dug-out haunted the marshes of Huron. He died March 12, 1856, toward the end of a long severe winter; ice and snow still lingered, and both wagons and sleighs figured in the dreary cortege. He was buried at Berlin Heights.""
So remembered a cousin, who wrote the family history from NY in 1907 (William Henry Van Benschoten). He spoke to children and grandchildren, found ancestors' old church and land records and graveyards. then wrote charmingly of Jeremiah, but spoke of the sins, the slave-owning, as well. To all this, we can add details from county histories written in the 1860s and 1870s, the earliest, articles written by one of Jeremiah's sons, William, plus US government censuses, together with Ohio records and old maps. Like most families back then, they had largely been farmers, often living outside the towns where their records were kept. Thus, Poughkeepsie merely pinpoints the early Dutch Reformed church keeping his baptismal record, need not have been the town where his parents had their house or farm.
In progress, being double-checked...
Moving from the Dutch side of New York to the lakeshore frontier of Ohio, Jeremiah took his family first to the Rock River area nearer Cleveland, about 1810, then went further west in 1811. They bought a well-located property on the east side of the Huron River. His daughter Delia and family would live there later, his sons Daniel and Curtis would farm locally on other land he had held in Berlin Twp., carved out of a once larger Vermilion Township.
They were in the area called the Fire Lands; his son William would write history articles on the area for the "Fire Lands Annals". His son Ensign became a physician, did not like his first name, so called himself "Dr. E.". Death stopped son Milo from farming, creating orphans who went to live with son Curtis.
Selling the Huron River property to Jeremiah in 1811 was a tavern owner/store keeper who had become that parcel's first settler in 1810 . He was a busy man who had built a ship alongside his house, and managed to get the big river's east side surveyed for the first main road, doubling its location advantages. Warring with the British would stop development plans, however, forcing conversion of the "house" (more of cabin? or dugout?) into a fortified place that these people from the Dutch end of New York called "blockhouse", but which the Puritans to their east in New England might call a garrison. Their blockhouse had space to accommodate all seven families in the local hamlet. The British would not attack directly. Instead, they sent those native tribes they had treated well, but whom other settlers elsewhere had abused, guaranteeing they wished to assist the British. A bigger incentive? The British commanders promised to pay a fee per scalp returned. This was told in the 1907 family book, by the Bunschoter/Benschoter family historian, with some modern historians adding that scalping seemed not to be a custom original to the natives, but was introduced by British commanders wishing to rule by terror when persuasion failed. (Think Braveheart here?)
1) YOUTH. When Jeremiah was still small, back in upstate NY, New Jersey not far, as they were in the corner on rural NY near Delaware and Pennsylvania, 70 miles above NYC and Manhattan. Before ending there (along the Neversink River), Jeremiah's parents moved several times, after beginning in Dutchess County with his grandparents, perhaps sharing a household headed by grandfather Isaac Van Benschoten.
His father Aaron was not just a farmer, but a teamster. In that day, this meant a driver of teams of horses and oxen, not trucks. Aaron and sometimes his teams were asked to serve in the Revolution in different ways as he moved the young family. Aaron served under George Washington at West Point and also escaped from fallen Fort Montgomery, according to pension testimony for him presented late in Ohio, when he was quite elderly, described in the 1907 book.
Aaron finally would find, buy, and work rough farmland near the Neversink River, inside what was called the Beekman Patent. His parents were not alone nor was Jeremiah without cousins to play with, as two married siblings of Aaron went, too (Gerrit/Garret Van Benschoten and Catrina/Catherine, married to Jacob Conklin/Konklin).
How to locate their old NY land on a map? Their part of the Neversink basin lay inside a multi-county swath called the Shawanagunk country, causing the name Shawanagunk to be on the baptismal records of Jeremiah's younger siblings, not referring to the much smaller modern town. The large region of Shawanagunk was named for the Mountains standing guard southward. The mountains' long ridge limited easy contact with NYC 70 miles further south. No simple passes led through the mountains or across their long ridgetop forcing strangers, friendly or attacking, to come in by river water or on riverside trails.
His father Aaron stayed near the Neversink River long enough for some of his children to mature and marry there. Dramas yet to unfold would push them out.
Only Aaron's brother Gerrit would stay, his son's stone, refreshed by being remade as a Civil War monument, perhaps the only one still standing with the name Van Benschoten. Older stones perhaps lie under waters of the reservoir created in the 1940s to send drinking water to NYC. Thus, the old original town of Neversink did, in that way, sink, but the late-blooming land drama a hundred and fifty years earlier would cause Gerrit to move upland first, Aaron said to move to the inferior land there, too, but just temporarily.
It's not clear whether Jeremiah met and married the mother of his children in the Neversink region or elsewhere, later. Her family of origin is unclear
While slavery was mainly a southern phenomenon, there were pockets of slavery in the old North, and this was one. Yet, in the 1790 census count, it seemed that up to a third of their neighbors in Sullivan County had slaves, even though his father Aaron's household was listed with none. The immigrating ancestor bringing their surname to America had had a number of slaves (Teunis, son of Elias, from Benschoten, 20 to 30 miles east of Amsterdam). He wrote their names and family groups, some tribal, inside his Dutch-language family bible. Printing presses were not yet capable of mass production, so such books were rare and expensive. The bible and slave ownership showed Teunis as a person of means.
Those seeing the sin in slavery were in a growing majority. Yet, NY would not make owning slaves illegal until later, in 1827. Was it a a surprise to Jeremiah in 1810-1811 when he took the slaves he had acquired to Ohio and found slavery was already illegal there?
Jeremiah did not become belligerent. He did not ask Congress to change Ohio rules as some southerners would do later. Nor did he threaten to secede. He simply gave up his slaves.
The family historian publishing in 1907 said that when "the family" back in NY complied, the freed heads of households were given 20-30 acres of land. Others, still single, were given cash and maybe a horse, so they could "make their way in the world".
The 1907 historian gave no details of Jeremiah's slave-freeing in Ohio, but other history sources indicate a population descended of freed slaves has long been in Sandusky town, to their Northwest. An"underground railroad" of sorts was well-documented as running through Sandusky town, pre-Civil War, to help escaped slaves coming though from the south reach safety in Canada.
Two of his daughters married men from slave-owning regions in the upper-south, Mary Ann to Mr. Paxton from Virginia, his family known to have been sizeable slave owners, and Delia, to Mr. Stapleton from Maryland. Yet, no attempt was made to return south and own slaves once again. When the Civil War began about five years after Jeremiah's death, Jeremiah's daughter Delia, three times a widow, would send several of her sons to fight. An especially young son, by her second spouse, Mr. Ells, was wounded in battle at Franklin in Tenn., then died. An older son, described as George S. Akins the junior, by her first husband, was tasked with taking Confederate prisoners kept at Johnson Island south, to exchange them. At one point he was struck with measles while standing guard over them in a cold rain. The measles attack was so severe , he expected to die, was only ninety pounds when taken back home, but recovered. Delia's cousin Oliver, while widowed and freshly remarried,out in Kossuth County, Iowa, would likewise send a son named George to the war, but his George was one of those who died of his disease..
2) OFF TO WESTERN NY. Jeremiah had already left his parent's home in Sullivan County before the 1800 Census. Many Rev. War buyers found that Beekman land they had bought and "worked" for years deemed imperfect in title, so had less to transfer to their maturing sons ready for marriage and family.
There was a murder, a shooting of the "ultra-landlord" who benefited from the defect in the Beekman titles. The landlord, Gross Hardenburgh, negotiated at first, to give upland in compensation for the richer ground to be given up. already paid for, money paid not to be returned in an era of no title insurance . He then began evicting everyone. In a pattern seen elsewhere , he was shot while out riding his horse. The man's killer was not described, but hints were made that rumors about the killer were facts, witnesses of connected events would not say anything further.
Jeremiah, after leaving, would buy land , circa Sept. 1794 on the latest frontier, past Syracuse, on the edge of the Finger Lakes area of NY If not yet 20 in 1794, did he have family connections to welcome him? For example, ghe Catrina Van Benschoten who had married Jacob Conklin would move out there, a sister to Jeremiah's father Aaron.
Jeremiah obtained certificates of title to over 1000 acres total. Think of a mile square, plus a rectangle a half-mile by one-mile. All was initially in one county (old Onondaga). According to the source below, the land would split later into several counties. He and the Conklins were based in Sempronius inold Onondaga County, in that part to be called Niles later, with a new county, Cayuga , to be created some decades to hold the future courthouse, those changes happening after he and his family left.
We know only what he owned, not the outcome of owning so much. Was the idea to diversify against crop diseases? To grab multiple" good store corners" or hotel or mill locations before population thickened? To "flip"to new buyers, then use the cash to buy better land further west, once Ohio opened up to settlers? To instead keep it and then divide the large acreage later across multiple heirs?
How many heirs? People back then had large families, never sure how many would die before adulthood. Wife Sarah Wetherlow bore 13 children, eight living to adulthood.
3) LIFE IN OHIO. He had many children maturing and of record once in Ohio. If typical, Jeremiah arrived before his wife and children. Men went first to find good land, then would wait until spring to clear a bit for garden or crop acres, maybe taking some older children along to help clear and plant, to carry and dig and hoe, also to "keep company". The rest could come when it was certain they would not spend a winter starving,as seen in settlements were urban people attempted to farm, not knowing how changes of season could kill if unprepared.
Once in Ohio, just as done in NY, he had more than one parcel. He seems to have had at least two. Both were in the part of old Huron County that split off to become Erie County. His earliest place , on the east side of the Huron River, was described as purchased in 1811, from a business-minded man who had been its first occupant in 1810. Two daughters were said to share it by 1879, when a local history of the Fire Lands by WW Williams described them there, named only as "Widow Stapleton" and "Mrs. James Paxton". The second part went to his son Curtis.
His daughter Delia/Cordelia had married Joseph Ells, then, widowed, re-married J. Stapleton, a Maryland-born man. In 1880, she was widowed and living in Huron Twp. in Erie County, close in time to the 1879 book saying she lived on his old property. Two of her children lived next-door, daughter Elizabeth Ells, who would die locally. elderly and single. The other was son Curtis Stapleton, named for Delia's brother. Maybe all three were on the land from her father..
The farm that went to her brother, Jeremiah's son Curtis, must have been in that part of Vermillion Twp. where Jeremiah was taxed in 1815. This presumably was his location when elected to office in 1818, after this part of Vermillion had separated as the new Eldridge Twp. (Eldridge was renamed later as Berlin Twp. It contained Berlinville and Berlin Heights, recalling Berlin, Germany, much as nearby Milan Twp. recalled Milan, Italy.)
4) RE-UNITED. Jeremiah's father Aaron left Sullivan County in NY, to join Jeremiah in Ohio, but did so later.He had been given some wilderness "upland" in NY as compensation for 20 years of improvements made on the land taken from him, so turned that over to his next eldest son John, who stayed behind.
Aaron and his wife, Margaret Hoffman, both long-lived, began arriving with the rest in 1816. The local group included two of Jeremiah's younger brothers (William and Daniel Hoffman Van Benschoter) and their growing families. Four of Aaron and Margaret's sons were seen in Ohio, the other being Cornelius, elsewhere in the state. William would die while some of his children were still too young to rate as adults (reached at 12 for girls, 14 for boys). Placed elsewhere, when relatives could not take him caused Jeremiah's young nephew Almon Benschoter to have an abusive experience as an indentured apprentice, then run-away. Parallel to this, Jeremiah's son Milo would die leaving two young orphans, Burgess and Hammond. They were taken in by Jeremiah's youngest son Curtis and had a better outcome.
Jeremiah had one more brother Cornelius , the one closest to Jeremiah in age. He instead went to Seneca County. The 1850 Census thus found them both in Ohio in nearby counties. It would be Jeremiah's last, no obvious Van Benschoten relatives in his house, but with possible boarders named Root. Jeremiah died before Cornelius, who was next polled for the 1860 Census, but out in Delaware County, Iowa. That was a place barely across the Mississippi from Illinois and Wisconsin, hilly, unglaciated, scenic, multi-ethnic, beautiful. The presumed wife and youngest son, of Cornelius, "Dian" and Oliver, seen in 1850, were gone. An older son of Cornelius, Alex, single in 1850, bt 1860 would head the Iowa house. He had married and had two daughters. When widowed "too early", Alex married his first wife's cousin, giving his daughters a stepmother they knew.
4) NAME CONFUSIONS. Jeremiah also had a son named Jeremiah, who, difficult to prove, was the Jeremiah of the right age to work at the Marblehead Lighthouse after the prior keeper and his son caught cholera late in 1832 from a body cast-off in to the rough water that then came ashore by the lighthouse . The keeper's widow, Rachel Miller Woolcot, took over the lighthouse operation for two years, before marrying Jerry "Van Benschoter" in 1834. She died before the 1860 Census was done, but is no easy to find in the 1850 Census when this Jeremiah, also called Jerry, lived wifeless.
It's not clear which Jeremiah was elected as an "Overseer of the Poor" in 1818. However, the prejudices of the time perhaps did not let the landless hold office, which the son would have been until any deeds were transferred.
ENSIGN. Some of the children were highly educated so could earn a living without working farm land. This may have been his son Ensign, taxed in 1830 on his medical practice in Portland Twp., which swallowed up later by what would become Sandusky city. Ensign apparently moved away before cholera struck. The long-term local MD, a Dr. Anderson, was among its victims, by 1834. If there in that time, Ensign survived. Did he change his name to Dr. E, so people would not think he was in the military? His stone is hard to find, due to not using the name Ensign.
MARY ANN. People back then were trained under British rules to try to sound out the surname rather than to ask how to spell it. A survivor tried to recall daughter Mary Ann's maiden name for a death record. Mary Ann had married James Paxton. Perhaps as there were too many Marys, she apparently went by Ann, reported by her survivor for her death record as Ann Paxton. Her maiden name is then seen as "Benscout". These and other inventions making it hard to find his children in records, despite having had so many.
5) GATEWAYS TO THE HEREAFTER. It was a time of religious experimenting, once away from his ancestors' Dutch Reformed churche. The British-descendeds in his area had come out of Puritan territory in New England. If no longer Calvinist or Methodist/Episcopal, some proselytized their newest choices. There were many to pick from beginning in the 1820s and 1830s-- Christian Science, Campbellites, LDS, Adventist, and more. Some others did not survive. Cleveland had had a short-lived group calling itself Halcyon, what some sociologists would call a sect/cult instead of an organized denomination.
Often the wife's choice decided the family's religion, so marriage brought a change in faith. His son Curtis had joined or married into the Baptist faith. His father Aaron was said to have adopted "primitive Methodism", after beginning as Dutch Reformed.
Jeremiah was said to be attracted to the Friends (Quakers), not clear if they were his own choice or his wife's heritage. They had fewer records linking parents to children, but might keep other records in quite good detail, at the local "Friends meeting" level. (These local notebooks were sometimes moved to a central or big city "Friends meeting", as small areas depopulated, once farm machinery and city jobs replaced rural labor.)
By his death, Jeremiah was said to have found the newly emerging Spiritualists. A chapter was known to organize itself in nearby Berlin Heights. Some historians said people attracted to it often had experienced lots of losses, due to long-distance moving and epidemics of new diseases and warrings and so forth, so longed to reconnect with their dead, whether children and parents, or spouses and siblings.
6) ODD SURNAME HINTS AT DISTANT PAST.
Their spelling is not the oldest spelling. Did Aaron's generation change Bun in Bunschoten to Ben, making Benschoten, perhaps to avoid jokes about food or body when encountering the British neighbors who moved in to NY later than the Dutch?
The Van Benschoten's first immigrant was Teunis, son of Elias (no inherited surname for either man).
"Van"means "from". Teunis, son of Elias, reported coming from/van a waterside place called Bunschoten. Thus, both he and his father and and brothers might also have been Van Bunschoten. The town survives, but once was walled for defense. Surrounding farmers presumably came inside a fortified town's walls for market fairs, to attend church, and to avoid attacks from outside, ranging from pirates on viking trips, to returned crusaders turned into mercenaries working for envious cousins of the local nobility.
Judging from maps, a wide and long canal (channelized river?) connected Benschoten to other places. Amsterdam was easterly, with its port and ships to America, maybe 20-30 miles downstream.
Their location was well-situated for merchants involved in the old north Germanic Hanseatic League, accounting for Scandinavian influences. For example, Teunis used Eliasen as his temporary last name. The "-sen" ending is the Danish way to say "son of". At some point, it became just one of the several Dutch ways, "-se" being another. Also, the Bergen region of NJ was the first place at which Teunis left records in Dutch Reformed churches, before going upriver to rural NY. Eastern Jersey's Bergen had been given a name matching a much older place. Bergen, Norway was an old Hanseatic city, like Bruges and Berlin and Riga and Krakow and others.
WARNING, BIRTH NOT SAME AS BAPTISM. Jeremiah was the eldest son of Aaron Von Benschoten, aka Arie Benschoter, and Margaret/Margriete Hoffman. Jeremiah's baptismal date was Nov. 17, 1776.
Birth records were not yet regarded as proof of identity, so were not kept. His birth would have been earlier, maybe by only a few weeks or months, possibly a few years if he was the eldest and no ministers were nearby. Thus, perhaps he was over 20 when going to Sempronius.
We use 1776, hit at being imprecise by leaving out the day and month. This puts him in the right birth order among his siblings.
NY LAND SOURCE. His Sempronius land was in old Onondaga County, town and county larger then than they are now. Townships holding his land include Tully and Fabius, not just Sempronius . They were to spin off and become parts of new counties, specifically Cortland and Cayuga Counties. Jeremiah would stay 14-15 years before moving his maturing children to the Fire Lands region of Ohio, pre-War of 1812.
The list of his land "certificates" is found in an old book, "Calendar of N.Y. colonial manuscripts", issued later, in 1864, by the New York (State) Secretary's Office, (page 952, regarding volume LVIII, "Land papers"). The granting date of 1794, Sept. 4, makes it clear he was a young man, said elsewhere to be newly wed, not yet with children.
So remembered a cousin, who wrote the family history from NY in 1907 (William Henry Van Benschoten). He spoke to children and grandchildren, found ancestors' old church and land records and graveyards. then wrote charmingly of Jeremiah, but spoke of the sins, the slave-owning, as well. To all this, we can add details from county histories written in the 1860s and 1870s, the earliest, articles written by one of Jeremiah's sons, William, plus US government censuses, together with Ohio records and old maps. Like most families back then, they had largely been farmers, often living outside the towns where their records were kept. Thus, Poughkeepsie merely pinpoints the early Dutch Reformed church keeping his baptismal record, need not have been the town where his parents had their house or farm.
In progress, being double-checked...
Moving from the Dutch side of New York to the lakeshore frontier of Ohio, Jeremiah took his family first to the Rock River area nearer Cleveland, about 1810, then went further west in 1811. They bought a well-located property on the east side of the Huron River. His daughter Delia and family would live there later, his sons Daniel and Curtis would farm locally on other land he had held in Berlin Twp., carved out of a once larger Vermilion Township.
They were in the area called the Fire Lands; his son William would write history articles on the area for the "Fire Lands Annals". His son Ensign became a physician, did not like his first name, so called himself "Dr. E.". Death stopped son Milo from farming, creating orphans who went to live with son Curtis.
Selling the Huron River property to Jeremiah in 1811 was a tavern owner/store keeper who had become that parcel's first settler in 1810 . He was a busy man who had built a ship alongside his house, and managed to get the big river's east side surveyed for the first main road, doubling its location advantages. Warring with the British would stop development plans, however, forcing conversion of the "house" (more of cabin? or dugout?) into a fortified place that these people from the Dutch end of New York called "blockhouse", but which the Puritans to their east in New England might call a garrison. Their blockhouse had space to accommodate all seven families in the local hamlet. The British would not attack directly. Instead, they sent those native tribes they had treated well, but whom other settlers elsewhere had abused, guaranteeing they wished to assist the British. A bigger incentive? The British commanders promised to pay a fee per scalp returned. This was told in the 1907 family book, by the Bunschoter/Benschoter family historian, with some modern historians adding that scalping seemed not to be a custom original to the natives, but was introduced by British commanders wishing to rule by terror when persuasion failed. (Think Braveheart here?)
1) YOUTH. When Jeremiah was still small, back in upstate NY, New Jersey not far, as they were in the corner on rural NY near Delaware and Pennsylvania, 70 miles above NYC and Manhattan. Before ending there (along the Neversink River), Jeremiah's parents moved several times, after beginning in Dutchess County with his grandparents, perhaps sharing a household headed by grandfather Isaac Van Benschoten.
His father Aaron was not just a farmer, but a teamster. In that day, this meant a driver of teams of horses and oxen, not trucks. Aaron and sometimes his teams were asked to serve in the Revolution in different ways as he moved the young family. Aaron served under George Washington at West Point and also escaped from fallen Fort Montgomery, according to pension testimony for him presented late in Ohio, when he was quite elderly, described in the 1907 book.
Aaron finally would find, buy, and work rough farmland near the Neversink River, inside what was called the Beekman Patent. His parents were not alone nor was Jeremiah without cousins to play with, as two married siblings of Aaron went, too (Gerrit/Garret Van Benschoten and Catrina/Catherine, married to Jacob Conklin/Konklin).
How to locate their old NY land on a map? Their part of the Neversink basin lay inside a multi-county swath called the Shawanagunk country, causing the name Shawanagunk to be on the baptismal records of Jeremiah's younger siblings, not referring to the much smaller modern town. The large region of Shawanagunk was named for the Mountains standing guard southward. The mountains' long ridge limited easy contact with NYC 70 miles further south. No simple passes led through the mountains or across their long ridgetop forcing strangers, friendly or attacking, to come in by river water or on riverside trails.
His father Aaron stayed near the Neversink River long enough for some of his children to mature and marry there. Dramas yet to unfold would push them out.
Only Aaron's brother Gerrit would stay, his son's stone, refreshed by being remade as a Civil War monument, perhaps the only one still standing with the name Van Benschoten. Older stones perhaps lie under waters of the reservoir created in the 1940s to send drinking water to NYC. Thus, the old original town of Neversink did, in that way, sink, but the late-blooming land drama a hundred and fifty years earlier would cause Gerrit to move upland first, Aaron said to move to the inferior land there, too, but just temporarily.
It's not clear whether Jeremiah met and married the mother of his children in the Neversink region or elsewhere, later. Her family of origin is unclear
While slavery was mainly a southern phenomenon, there were pockets of slavery in the old North, and this was one. Yet, in the 1790 census count, it seemed that up to a third of their neighbors in Sullivan County had slaves, even though his father Aaron's household was listed with none. The immigrating ancestor bringing their surname to America had had a number of slaves (Teunis, son of Elias, from Benschoten, 20 to 30 miles east of Amsterdam). He wrote their names and family groups, some tribal, inside his Dutch-language family bible. Printing presses were not yet capable of mass production, so such books were rare and expensive. The bible and slave ownership showed Teunis as a person of means.
Those seeing the sin in slavery were in a growing majority. Yet, NY would not make owning slaves illegal until later, in 1827. Was it a a surprise to Jeremiah in 1810-1811 when he took the slaves he had acquired to Ohio and found slavery was already illegal there?
Jeremiah did not become belligerent. He did not ask Congress to change Ohio rules as some southerners would do later. Nor did he threaten to secede. He simply gave up his slaves.
The family historian publishing in 1907 said that when "the family" back in NY complied, the freed heads of households were given 20-30 acres of land. Others, still single, were given cash and maybe a horse, so they could "make their way in the world".
The 1907 historian gave no details of Jeremiah's slave-freeing in Ohio, but other history sources indicate a population descended of freed slaves has long been in Sandusky town, to their Northwest. An"underground railroad" of sorts was well-documented as running through Sandusky town, pre-Civil War, to help escaped slaves coming though from the south reach safety in Canada.
Two of his daughters married men from slave-owning regions in the upper-south, Mary Ann to Mr. Paxton from Virginia, his family known to have been sizeable slave owners, and Delia, to Mr. Stapleton from Maryland. Yet, no attempt was made to return south and own slaves once again. When the Civil War began about five years after Jeremiah's death, Jeremiah's daughter Delia, three times a widow, would send several of her sons to fight. An especially young son, by her second spouse, Mr. Ells, was wounded in battle at Franklin in Tenn., then died. An older son, described as George S. Akins the junior, by her first husband, was tasked with taking Confederate prisoners kept at Johnson Island south, to exchange them. At one point he was struck with measles while standing guard over them in a cold rain. The measles attack was so severe , he expected to die, was only ninety pounds when taken back home, but recovered. Delia's cousin Oliver, while widowed and freshly remarried,out in Kossuth County, Iowa, would likewise send a son named George to the war, but his George was one of those who died of his disease..
2) OFF TO WESTERN NY. Jeremiah had already left his parent's home in Sullivan County before the 1800 Census. Many Rev. War buyers found that Beekman land they had bought and "worked" for years deemed imperfect in title, so had less to transfer to their maturing sons ready for marriage and family.
There was a murder, a shooting of the "ultra-landlord" who benefited from the defect in the Beekman titles. The landlord, Gross Hardenburgh, negotiated at first, to give upland in compensation for the richer ground to be given up. already paid for, money paid not to be returned in an era of no title insurance . He then began evicting everyone. In a pattern seen elsewhere , he was shot while out riding his horse. The man's killer was not described, but hints were made that rumors about the killer were facts, witnesses of connected events would not say anything further.
Jeremiah, after leaving, would buy land , circa Sept. 1794 on the latest frontier, past Syracuse, on the edge of the Finger Lakes area of NY If not yet 20 in 1794, did he have family connections to welcome him? For example, ghe Catrina Van Benschoten who had married Jacob Conklin would move out there, a sister to Jeremiah's father Aaron.
Jeremiah obtained certificates of title to over 1000 acres total. Think of a mile square, plus a rectangle a half-mile by one-mile. All was initially in one county (old Onondaga). According to the source below, the land would split later into several counties. He and the Conklins were based in Sempronius inold Onondaga County, in that part to be called Niles later, with a new county, Cayuga , to be created some decades to hold the future courthouse, those changes happening after he and his family left.
We know only what he owned, not the outcome of owning so much. Was the idea to diversify against crop diseases? To grab multiple" good store corners" or hotel or mill locations before population thickened? To "flip"to new buyers, then use the cash to buy better land further west, once Ohio opened up to settlers? To instead keep it and then divide the large acreage later across multiple heirs?
How many heirs? People back then had large families, never sure how many would die before adulthood. Wife Sarah Wetherlow bore 13 children, eight living to adulthood.
3) LIFE IN OHIO. He had many children maturing and of record once in Ohio. If typical, Jeremiah arrived before his wife and children. Men went first to find good land, then would wait until spring to clear a bit for garden or crop acres, maybe taking some older children along to help clear and plant, to carry and dig and hoe, also to "keep company". The rest could come when it was certain they would not spend a winter starving,as seen in settlements were urban people attempted to farm, not knowing how changes of season could kill if unprepared.
Once in Ohio, just as done in NY, he had more than one parcel. He seems to have had at least two. Both were in the part of old Huron County that split off to become Erie County. His earliest place , on the east side of the Huron River, was described as purchased in 1811, from a business-minded man who had been its first occupant in 1810. Two daughters were said to share it by 1879, when a local history of the Fire Lands by WW Williams described them there, named only as "Widow Stapleton" and "Mrs. James Paxton". The second part went to his son Curtis.
His daughter Delia/Cordelia had married Joseph Ells, then, widowed, re-married J. Stapleton, a Maryland-born man. In 1880, she was widowed and living in Huron Twp. in Erie County, close in time to the 1879 book saying she lived on his old property. Two of her children lived next-door, daughter Elizabeth Ells, who would die locally. elderly and single. The other was son Curtis Stapleton, named for Delia's brother. Maybe all three were on the land from her father..
The farm that went to her brother, Jeremiah's son Curtis, must have been in that part of Vermillion Twp. where Jeremiah was taxed in 1815. This presumably was his location when elected to office in 1818, after this part of Vermillion had separated as the new Eldridge Twp. (Eldridge was renamed later as Berlin Twp. It contained Berlinville and Berlin Heights, recalling Berlin, Germany, much as nearby Milan Twp. recalled Milan, Italy.)
4) RE-UNITED. Jeremiah's father Aaron left Sullivan County in NY, to join Jeremiah in Ohio, but did so later.He had been given some wilderness "upland" in NY as compensation for 20 years of improvements made on the land taken from him, so turned that over to his next eldest son John, who stayed behind.
Aaron and his wife, Margaret Hoffman, both long-lived, began arriving with the rest in 1816. The local group included two of Jeremiah's younger brothers (William and Daniel Hoffman Van Benschoter) and their growing families. Four of Aaron and Margaret's sons were seen in Ohio, the other being Cornelius, elsewhere in the state. William would die while some of his children were still too young to rate as adults (reached at 12 for girls, 14 for boys). Placed elsewhere, when relatives could not take him caused Jeremiah's young nephew Almon Benschoter to have an abusive experience as an indentured apprentice, then run-away. Parallel to this, Jeremiah's son Milo would die leaving two young orphans, Burgess and Hammond. They were taken in by Jeremiah's youngest son Curtis and had a better outcome.
Jeremiah had one more brother Cornelius , the one closest to Jeremiah in age. He instead went to Seneca County. The 1850 Census thus found them both in Ohio in nearby counties. It would be Jeremiah's last, no obvious Van Benschoten relatives in his house, but with possible boarders named Root. Jeremiah died before Cornelius, who was next polled for the 1860 Census, but out in Delaware County, Iowa. That was a place barely across the Mississippi from Illinois and Wisconsin, hilly, unglaciated, scenic, multi-ethnic, beautiful. The presumed wife and youngest son, of Cornelius, "Dian" and Oliver, seen in 1850, were gone. An older son of Cornelius, Alex, single in 1850, bt 1860 would head the Iowa house. He had married and had two daughters. When widowed "too early", Alex married his first wife's cousin, giving his daughters a stepmother they knew.
4) NAME CONFUSIONS. Jeremiah also had a son named Jeremiah, who, difficult to prove, was the Jeremiah of the right age to work at the Marblehead Lighthouse after the prior keeper and his son caught cholera late in 1832 from a body cast-off in to the rough water that then came ashore by the lighthouse . The keeper's widow, Rachel Miller Woolcot, took over the lighthouse operation for two years, before marrying Jerry "Van Benschoter" in 1834. She died before the 1860 Census was done, but is no easy to find in the 1850 Census when this Jeremiah, also called Jerry, lived wifeless.
It's not clear which Jeremiah was elected as an "Overseer of the Poor" in 1818. However, the prejudices of the time perhaps did not let the landless hold office, which the son would have been until any deeds were transferred.
ENSIGN. Some of the children were highly educated so could earn a living without working farm land. This may have been his son Ensign, taxed in 1830 on his medical practice in Portland Twp., which swallowed up later by what would become Sandusky city. Ensign apparently moved away before cholera struck. The long-term local MD, a Dr. Anderson, was among its victims, by 1834. If there in that time, Ensign survived. Did he change his name to Dr. E, so people would not think he was in the military? His stone is hard to find, due to not using the name Ensign.
MARY ANN. People back then were trained under British rules to try to sound out the surname rather than to ask how to spell it. A survivor tried to recall daughter Mary Ann's maiden name for a death record. Mary Ann had married James Paxton. Perhaps as there were too many Marys, she apparently went by Ann, reported by her survivor for her death record as Ann Paxton. Her maiden name is then seen as "Benscout". These and other inventions making it hard to find his children in records, despite having had so many.
5) GATEWAYS TO THE HEREAFTER. It was a time of religious experimenting, once away from his ancestors' Dutch Reformed churche. The British-descendeds in his area had come out of Puritan territory in New England. If no longer Calvinist or Methodist/Episcopal, some proselytized their newest choices. There were many to pick from beginning in the 1820s and 1830s-- Christian Science, Campbellites, LDS, Adventist, and more. Some others did not survive. Cleveland had had a short-lived group calling itself Halcyon, what some sociologists would call a sect/cult instead of an organized denomination.
Often the wife's choice decided the family's religion, so marriage brought a change in faith. His son Curtis had joined or married into the Baptist faith. His father Aaron was said to have adopted "primitive Methodism", after beginning as Dutch Reformed.
Jeremiah was said to be attracted to the Friends (Quakers), not clear if they were his own choice or his wife's heritage. They had fewer records linking parents to children, but might keep other records in quite good detail, at the local "Friends meeting" level. (These local notebooks were sometimes moved to a central or big city "Friends meeting", as small areas depopulated, once farm machinery and city jobs replaced rural labor.)
By his death, Jeremiah was said to have found the newly emerging Spiritualists. A chapter was known to organize itself in nearby Berlin Heights. Some historians said people attracted to it often had experienced lots of losses, due to long-distance moving and epidemics of new diseases and warrings and so forth, so longed to reconnect with their dead, whether children and parents, or spouses and siblings.
6) ODD SURNAME HINTS AT DISTANT PAST.
Their spelling is not the oldest spelling. Did Aaron's generation change Bun in Bunschoten to Ben, making Benschoten, perhaps to avoid jokes about food or body when encountering the British neighbors who moved in to NY later than the Dutch?
The Van Benschoten's first immigrant was Teunis, son of Elias (no inherited surname for either man).
"Van"means "from". Teunis, son of Elias, reported coming from/van a waterside place called Bunschoten. Thus, both he and his father and and brothers might also have been Van Bunschoten. The town survives, but once was walled for defense. Surrounding farmers presumably came inside a fortified town's walls for market fairs, to attend church, and to avoid attacks from outside, ranging from pirates on viking trips, to returned crusaders turned into mercenaries working for envious cousins of the local nobility.
Judging from maps, a wide and long canal (channelized river?) connected Benschoten to other places. Amsterdam was easterly, with its port and ships to America, maybe 20-30 miles downstream.
Their location was well-situated for merchants involved in the old north Germanic Hanseatic League, accounting for Scandinavian influences. For example, Teunis used Eliasen as his temporary last name. The "-sen" ending is the Danish way to say "son of". At some point, it became just one of the several Dutch ways, "-se" being another. Also, the Bergen region of NJ was the first place at which Teunis left records in Dutch Reformed churches, before going upriver to rural NY. Eastern Jersey's Bergen had been given a name matching a much older place. Bergen, Norway was an old Hanseatic city, like Bruges and Berlin and Riga and Krakow and others.
WARNING, BIRTH NOT SAME AS BAPTISM. Jeremiah was the eldest son of Aaron Von Benschoten, aka Arie Benschoter, and Margaret/Margriete Hoffman. Jeremiah's baptismal date was Nov. 17, 1776.
Birth records were not yet regarded as proof of identity, so were not kept. His birth would have been earlier, maybe by only a few weeks or months, possibly a few years if he was the eldest and no ministers were nearby. Thus, perhaps he was over 20 when going to Sempronius.
We use 1776, hit at being imprecise by leaving out the day and month. This puts him in the right birth order among his siblings.
NY LAND SOURCE. His Sempronius land was in old Onondaga County, town and county larger then than they are now. Townships holding his land include Tully and Fabius, not just Sempronius . They were to spin off and become parts of new counties, specifically Cortland and Cayuga Counties. Jeremiah would stay 14-15 years before moving his maturing children to the Fire Lands region of Ohio, pre-War of 1812.
The list of his land "certificates" is found in an old book, "Calendar of N.Y. colonial manuscripts", issued later, in 1864, by the New York (State) Secretary's Office, (page 952, regarding volume LVIII, "Land papers"). The granting date of 1794, Sept. 4, makes it clear he was a young man, said elsewhere to be newly wed, not yet with children.
Inscription
Jeremiah, the pioneer and trapper
Died March 12, 1856
(In lieu of stone, memorial by cousin,
William Henry Van Benschoten)
Family Members
Advertisement
Explore more
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
