Johannes Lourense Opdyck
Johannes Lourense Opdyck
m. 1669 (Newton, Queens, New York)
d. 3 Mar 1729 (Hopewell, New Jersey)
Parents:
Louris Jansen Opdyck and Christine Stenclia
Grandparents:
Johan Lourensen Opdycke and Catherine Smith
Christine's lineage is unknown
Siblings:
Mette Opdyck
Peter Opdyck
Pam Opdyck
Otto Opdyck
Johannes Lourense Opdyck
Mette Opdyck
Agnes Opdyck
Aunts & Uncles:
Via Father:
Via Mother:
Unknown
Catherine Trintye
Children:
Tryntie Opdyck
Engeltie Opdyck
Lawrence Opdyck (Updike)
Annetje Opdyck
Albert Opdyck
John Opdyck
Bartholomew Opdyck
Elizabeth Opdyck
Agnes Opdyck
Grandchildren:
NOTE:
Historical Info.:
from:
THE Op DYCK GENEALOGY,
CONTAINING THE
OPDYCK- OPDYCKE - OPDYKE- UPDIKE
AMERICAN DESCENDANTS
OF THE
WESEL AND HOLLAND FAMILIES,
By
CHARLES WILSON OPDYKE,
WITH AN INVESTIGATION INTO THEIR OP DEN DYCK ANCESTORS IN EUROPE,
THE Op DYCK GENEALOGY,
CONTAINING THE
OPDYCK- OPDYCKE - OPDYKE- UPDIKE
AMERICAN DESCENDANTS
OF THE
WESEL AND HOLLAND FAMILIES,
By
CHARLES WILSON OPDYKE,
WITH AN INVESTIGATION INTO THEIR OP DEN DYCK ANCESTORS IN EUROPE,
By LEONARD ECKSTEIN OPDYCKE.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land.
PRINTED FOR
CHARLES W. OPDYKE, LEONARD E. OPDYCKE AND WILLIAM S. OPDYKE,
NEW YORK, 1889,
BY WEED, PARSONS & CO., ALBANY, N. Y.
Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land.
PRINTED FOR
CHARLES W. OPDYKE, LEONARD E. OPDYCKE AND WILLIAM S. OPDYKE,
NEW YORK, 1889,
BY WEED, PARSONS & CO., ALBANY, N. Y.
JOHANNES OPDYCK
(Son of Louris, p. 136.)
[Father of Lawrence Updike (Opdyck)]
[Grandfather of John Updike]
(Son of Louris, p. 136.)
[Father of Lawrence Updike (Opdyck)]
[Grandfather of John Updike]
Born 1651 ; died 1729; married Catherine - ; was a planter at Dutch Kills, Long Island, and in Maidenhead and Hopewell, N. J.
Johannes Lourense Opdyck Signatures
His home, during all the years he remained in Newtown, was on the old Brutnell patent, which covered 100 acres on the east side of Dutch gills at the hook or point of entrance into Mespat Kill. Two miles east of him was Maspeth or English gills, the old ruined settlement of Richard Smith and his Taunton friends, broken up 20 years before by the savages. Three miles still further east was the more recent New England settlement, begun 12 years before under the name of Middelburg, a violently seditious colony, the leader of the English villages of Long Island in seceding to Connecticut and proclaiming allegiance to Charles II, whereupon it called itself Hastings. At the English capture, the Duke of York named Long Island "Yorkshire," changed the name of Hastings to "Newtown," in the West Riding of Yorkshire, "and gave it jurisdiction of Maspeth and Dutch Kills." The records of the town from 1659 are preserved in the Clerk's office at, Newtown ; they contain the minutes of the town court to 1688, land titles to the Revolution, and town meetings until now. It was always an intensely English town, with an English Independent preacher, church and parsonage ; in 1660, out of 35 males all were English but one Swede.
Johannes' home, as we have said, was five miles west, among a few Dutch farms planted 24 years before,–when the primeval forest was disturbed only by Indians, wild beasts and fowl, deer, beavers, and innumerable plumed songsters. The neighborhood could tell its own stories of dangers. Pieter Andriessen had been carried away captive by the savages nine years before, and the tale must have often been told by the young Andersons while courting Johannes' three daughters. Only five years before, three Indians had come to the house of another Dutch settler at the Kills, and learning, while picking and boiling pigeons by the fire, that he had 80 guilders worth of wampum in the house, had that night murdered him, his wife and two men. The Dutch farmers had concentrated for safety. On Smith's Island (now Maspeth Island), which they called Aernhem after the capital of Guelderland ; but their village had been broken up by order of the Council, that it might not hinder the growth of Bushwick, and the cottages had been removed. If any one now wishes to find Johannes' farm ; let him cross the East River to Hunters Point and follow one mile up the: North bank of Newtown Creek until he crosses the north branch ; it is the tract between the east bank of this branch and the main creek, and runs eastward toward Calvary Cemetery. It is now a part of Long Island City' and adjoins Brooklyn.
Johannes' first 50 acres here, "bounded westerly by Burger's Creek," acquired when he was not yet 21 years old, may have been a gift of affection, for we find him the next year witnessing another deed of land at the gills, to his brother Otto, from the step-father. Johannes' manhood was recognized two years later, when he signed a certificate of the election at Newtown of two deputies to wait upon the Commanders of the Dutch war ships. This is memorable as his first autograph so far found, but far more memorable as being made upon an occasion of great Dutch rejoicing. Holland and England had been at war, and two Dutch Commodores, returning from the West Indies, quietly sailed their fleet up New York Bay, anchored under the fort, and summoned the English garrison to surrender, which it did without a shot. How joyfully the news must have flown from house to house at the Kills: "The Dutch have captured New York!" The English towns on Long Island hastened to send their delegates to surrender the staff of office and English colors to their Dutch conquerors. As the Newtown deputies were Englishmen, it is believed that Johannes had the pleasure of acting as interpreter on this occasion. The next year a peace between England and Holland returned the province to the English, in exchange for Surinam yielded to the Dutch.
This was the end of the Dutch sovereignty in North America. But the city which they founded has become the commercial centre of the continent, and the whole province still retains many of the features of its original settlers. Our Christmas merry-makings and gifts, New Year calls with their cakes and punch, Santa Claus with his tiny reindeer, Mayday movings and Easter eggs, are traditions and customs which we owe to our Holland ancestors.
One year later, Johannes appears upon the Newtown census of 1675, as having ten acres under tillage and five head of cattle. We must recollect that the settlers enclosed only so much of their land as they kept in a high state of cultivation, pasture being free upon the common lands of the town. These common lands were allotted to the settlers from time to time, and Johannes soon receives ten acres as his share. By this time he is married to Tryntie (Catherine), and has named his first daughter Tryntie. He has been diligent and is now a prosperous farmer, able to buy the farm of his step-father, (50 acres of the Brutnell patent,) with the dwelling house and farm buildings, oxen and farming utensils " and a 12 gallon copper kettle," for all of which he pays 1,000 guilders down and 1,500 more before two years have expired, "paid in tobacco, wheat and peese," according to agreement. This year, 1678, he has 20 acres under tillage, three horses, two oxen and nine head of cattle. He receives another allotment of 10 acres of town land, and sells his first 50 acres to Humphrey Clay who has been running a ferry over Maspeth Creek and wishes a farm convenient to his boat-landing. The next year Johannes buys 17 more acres; and the following year he purchases 20 additional of the Brutnell patent, valuable land already under cultivation. Then he sells 27 acres he has acquired of the town land.
The court records of Newtown, as in all other early colonies, are an amusing history of local disputes. Men bring suit against their neighbors for poor fences, for trespasses of cattle, for every little ground of quarrel ; then there is a return suit for slander ; and soon all are good friends again.
Johannes is a party to twelve suits brought to a decision, of which he wins eight ; others are settled by mutual agreement, or compromise in his favor. He found it necessary to maintain his rights perhaps the more frequently, for the reason that he was a Dutchman among Englishmen.
He evidently has a very strong sense of right and wrong. When his stock gets into Buckhout's pasture he "will not pay a stiver" to take his horse out of the pound, the fault probably being in Buckhout's fence. He has sharp words with Thomas Wandell about the encroachment of the latter's fence, and carries the matter to court, and Wandell is forced to make a just partition. An unnecessary suit is brought against him for a borrowed saddle, which he has lost but intends to replace; he sues the officious witness in this case for slander, and punishes him in damages. He himself is often a witness, amusing the court with a story of how the threatened lawsuit of Dr. Greenfield has been already settled by a kiss of the lovely widow Roelofsen, who, we are not surprised to find, soon marries again. At another time, he testifies "that he heard Edward Stevenson say he was to give John Bull ten shillings for to trim his orchard, but he had better given him some pounds to let it alone, for he had cut half the trees off it." He enjoys a game of cards, and, following the practice of all ranks of society at that day, he is not unwilling to play for a little money with honest men. But when he finds that his antagonist has cheated, he refuses payment and prosecutes the swindler relentlessly until he convicts him of the crime before judge and jury in the Mayor's Court of New York. He lacks the bump of veneration and tells the Newtown Justice that "he would do justice to some and not to others," whereupon of course he has to make his submission to the outraged majesty of the Court. Again, believing an allotment of town lands to be unfair, he declares in righteous indignation that the town records are false, and is made to retract by the land-grabbers who were always in a majority at Newtown.
But this is not the business of his life. He cares for his farm, and appears again upon the census in 1683 as a large cultivator. He is careful to record the ear-mark of his stock; he buys "a ball face horse with one white foot behind," "at an outcry;" he is interested in orchards, where the far famed Newtown pippin originated; he has his last purchases of land surveyed; he is one of the grantees under the Dongan patent; he joins with his old antagonist Wandell and another in an agreement to purchase 88 more acres; he receives another town lot; he is 12 times a witness to the deeds of others, and has become an authority in real estate even with his old court antagonists, from one of whom as godfather the son of Johannes receives a bequest by will.
Nor did Johannes forget that he was only four miles distant by water from New York, whither an hour's tide or a light oar would carry him on the then quiet river, past grassy banks under primeval forest trees. He bought a lot on Gold Street, by deed duly recorded at the time on the New York City records, as can be seen now at the recorder's office. No doubt he and his family often paid a social visit to their Dutch friends in that flourishing little town, who would in turn row up the river on a visit to the gills for a rubber of whist. We are satisfied that on such occasions no more attempts at cheating were tried upon Johannes. If the guests lingered and their return home was delayed until after the nine o'clock city bell, their way through the streets of New York would still be lighted by the lanterns hung by poles from every seventh house.
On his farm Johannes raised wheat, peas, rye, corn, flax, and especially tobacco. His orchard produced in abundance apples, pears and peaches. As he cleared new land, he made the wood into pine-staves, a common article of export, for which Newtown elected two inspectors. There was also a town inspector of meat and fish barrelled for exportation; and Johannes' residence on the creek, near the river islands and Hellegat, would " supply him with fish before he could leave off the recreation." His eldest son Lawrence, (named in true Dutch style for the grandfather), could easily bring down with his gun a fat deer. The second son, Albert, could furnish the house with stores, of wild fowl, or amuse himself with spearing and trapping the valuable beaver. The daughters, Tryntie, Engeltie and Annetie, would readily find in the woods an oversupply of strawberries, raspberries, mulberries, huckleberries, cranberries, plums and grapes for the table. The garden furnished melons and any vegetable one chose to plant, with all the fruitfulness of a virgin soil." You shall scarce see a house but the south side is begirt with hives of bees which increase after an incredible manner," wrote Denton in 1670.
Surplus products he exchanged by barter, for currency was scarce; we find-one man buying a house and farm with "600 lbs. of tobacco, 1,000 clapboards and half a fat of strong beer;" another exchanging "a negro boy" for land. Prices were: beef 2d, pork 3d, butter 6d per pound; wheat 5s, rye 2s 6d, corn 2s per bushel; victuals 6d per meal, labor 2s 6d per day, lodgings 2d per night, board 5s per week, beer 2d per mug.
His stock gave him little trouble. He sent the swine to the meadows on the south side of Long Island that they might live upon the shell-fish on the beach and not injure his corn fields. His cattle and young horses had grass knee-high on the town commons in summer, and his own meadows furnished them in winter the salt hay which was found necessary for their health.
Wolves were his worst enemies. It is related that one of the Newtown farmers, going at dusk to turn loose his horses, was beset by a number of these beasts from a neighboring swamp, and drove them off only by springing upon a stump and lashing them lustily with the halters. The place still called Wolf Swamp is on the east side of the Narrow Passage. As we find Johannes mentioned 1679 and 1690 as having owned ten acres adjoining "the Narrow Passage," he may have been the farmer who fought wolves, with halters. For their destruction the town offered a bounty of twenty shillings a head, to be paid by the constable, who nailed the heads over his door. They were caught by the Indians in traps, or killed with powder and shot which the whites allowed for this purpose. The Indians had in 1666 sold their last hunting grounds, and few remained at Newtown. Their stone axes and arrow heads are still ploughed up; extensive deposits of burnt shells, the remains of their clam roasts, have been used to fertilize the farms ; the marks of their burial places are at this day obliterated, but the localities are known.
The neighborhood was given another serious alarm in 1675 by the Indian war in New England. Through the advice of the Governor, the English of Newtown surrounded their meeting house with a stockade for a refuge, kept a "double and strict watch," and seized all the canoes on the north shore. But the defeat of the savages in New England and the death of King Philip put an end to their fears. The Dutch farmers at the distant; Kills must have fortified their homes, or built a fort of their own, we are told that Bushwick and other villages were surrounded by palisades until 1720..:
Johannes had to attend militia drill four days every year, and one day the general training of the Riding. We picture to ourselves a strong, solid, determined figure, with brown hair, blue eyes and Opdyke features, carrying "a good serviceable gunn, a good sword, bandoleers or horne, a worme, a scowerer, a priming wire, shot bag and charger; one pound of good powder, four pounds of pistol bullets, or 24 bullets fitted to the gunn, four fathom of serviceable match for match-lock gunn, or four good flints fitted for a fire-lock gunn." Thus equipped he would repair on horseback to Newtown to be instructed "in all postures of warre, watching and warding." If he failed to attend, he must pay a fine, which went to furnish the company with halberds or battle-axes, drums and colors. Disorder conduct on parade was punished with the " stocks, riding wooden horse," &c. The drill was begun and ended with public prayer, and followed by a town meeting where laws were enacted that settlers must maintain fences, grub the highway, and remove stumps in front of their lots. On such occasions the character of new-comers was investigated before they were allowed to settle ; a new clergyman was called and given fifty acres for his support. Johannes must have voted for the town-meeting declaration which abolished the compulsory tax to maintain the Independent Church; substituting "a free-will offering, what every man will give." He doubtless dropped down the river in his skiff to attend the Dutch Church at New York, or drove his stout farm team and wagon to Brooklyn or over the hills to Flatbush. Unfortunately a great part of the old church records of Brooklyn and Flatbush are now lost.
The census of 1683 showed, that Johannes had more cultivated acres and stock than the average of his fellow townsmen. Newtown then contained about 500 population, one eighth as many as New York, for that now mighty city could boast that year only 4,000 people.
In 1687 the Newtown militia mustered 125 men. In 1692 its first fulling-mill was erected. It always encouraged honest craftsmen to settle, by giving them land. The distant little neighborhood at Dutch Kills formed an independent community, where every farmer practiced some useful mechanical branch.
Thatched roofs were passing away. Toil had brought comfort, but no luxuries. Carpets were yet unknown. Furniture was of heavy oak. The table was still set with pewter platters and plain earthenware. Few families used table forks, for it was the universal fashion to eat with the fingers. The usual dress was of homespun linsey-woolsey. For a prosperous farmer the dress suit was a black or grey coat of this material, tight breeches of deerskin fastened with huge buckles at the knee, long hose, stout shoes with brass or silver-plated buckles, and a large beaver hat. We suspect however that Johannes retained the Dutch belted doublet, easy short clothes, and tapering hat. Neighbors showed more friendship than now ; if needed, they assisted in harvest, or brought their teams to help cart home the winter store of wood when cut. Wives and daughters came to the corn-husking and the spinning-frolic, plying their wheels at the latter until the flax or wool of the hostess was converted into thread. We doubt if any could show a neater house or whiter yarn than Catherine and her girls.
The time arrives when Johannes is blessed with a large family of children; two of his daughters are married, and three infantile voices call him grandfather. Dutch Kills are too small for his household and herds. His sons and sons-in-law want more room. Restless spirits are talking of the Jerseys as a very paradise for climate and soil, how its government is liberal, taxes low, land plentiful and cheap. Letters are read, and experienced men are quoted, that between the Raritan and the Delaware is a rich rolling country where clear streams are crossed with every mile of travel, where you shall meet with no inhabitants but a few friendly Indians, where there are stately oaks whose broad-branched tops have no other use but to keep off the sun's heat from the wild beasts of the wilderness, where is grass as high as a man's middle, that serves for no other end except to maintain the elks and deer, who never devour a hundredth part of it, then to be burnt every Spring to make way for new." Can we wonder that Johannes and his family longed to settle upon those broad acres? We imagine these keen resolute men and courageous women thoughtfully discussing the matter by the winter fireside, while the plan was encouraged by the unanimous voice of the children, fired with the spirit of adventure.
The history of the Jerseys was more familiar then than it is now. The Dutch West India Company had never successfully settled "Achter Kol," as they sometimes called it, excepting along the Hudson. On the Delaware River the Indians had murdered the first Dutch colonists at Gloucester and Fort Nassau, the Dutch and Swedes had joined in driving off an English colony from Salem, and the Dutch fleet had captured and shipped back to Europe the Swedish colonists between Camden and Cape May. In 1664 there were a few small settlements on the Hudson and Delaware, containing not 500 people in all. The interior lay buried in mystery, unsettled and unexplored. Some paths led the Indians from the mountains to gather stores of shell and fish at the seashore. Two old Indian trails kept open the communication between New York and the forts on the Delaware, and the infrequent intercourse was maintained by letters and packages carried from tribe to tribe by Indian runners. Charles II granted the territory to his brother the Duke of York who sold it to his friends Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, naming it after the island of Jersey which Carteret had held for Charles against the Parliament. Berkeley sold West Jersey for £1,000 to Fenwick and Byllinge, who transferred it in 1674 to William Penn and other Quakers. The West Jersey Constitution and Laws, adopted at Burlington, gave more religious and political freedom than was then elsewhere known; it was far more the cradle of liberty in America than the boasted Rhode Island, Maryland, or Pennsylvania. East Jersey was bought at auction by Penn and his Quaker friends in 1682 for £3,400 and the Jerseys were then united in one government under an Assembly meeting at Elizabeth Town, which had been named for the wife of Sir George Carteret. The West Jersey Proprietors continued to conduct land sales at their office in Burlington, where their surveys are preserved to this day by their Surveyor General. The new settlers of the Jerseys were at first largely the persecuted, Quakers and Baptists from England and New England, Covenanters from Scotland, and Huguenots from France. Shiploads came from England, direct from imprisonment for religion's sake. A few Dutch and English from Long Island settled in Monmouth County or were scattered along the Raritan. There were not 2,000 males over 16 years of age in the Jerseys in 1697, when Johannes made a journey of investigation, saw the land that it was good, and bought in April 250 acres above the Falls of the Delaware."
In May or June the whole family moved from Dutch Kills in wagons, and in carts, with horses and oxen, furniture and farming utensils,-their herds of stock in the rear doubtless driven by a negro slave or two, who formed part of the establishment of every prosperous planter in those days. Their route lay through Flatbush to a ferry at the Narrows, across Staten Island, and up the Raritan to its lowest fording-place, Inian's Ferry. Here they were perhaps joined by the women and children who had come in the easier way by boat on the Bay. Thence they followed the old Indian trail, then called "the King's highway," across the State,-in recent days the turnpike from New Brunswick through Princeton to Trenton, none of which towns were even contemplated at the period we are describing. In the party were Enoch, Joshua and Cornelius Anderson, husbands of Tryntie, Engeltie and Annetie. We can faintly imagine the delight of all at the far rolling views, the ever-varying scenery of hill and dale, the richness of the vegetation, and the beauty of the babbling brooks by whose sides they encamped and ate of the fish, game and fruit of the untrodden forest.
The letters of the first West Jersey settlers read as though they could scarcely find words to express their enthusiasm. "It is a country that produceth all things for the support and sustenance of man in a plentiful manner. If it were not so, I should be ashamed of what I had written before." "I have travelled throughout most of the places that are settled and some that are not, and in every place I find the country very apt to answer the expectations of the diligent." "I have seen and known this summer forty bushels of wheat of one bushel sown, and many more such instances I could bring which would be too tedious to mention." "The country is a brave country." "As good a country as any man need to dwell in." "As good as any in England." The Delaware was universally described as "a goodly and noble river," the soil was rich and fertile. "The air," wrote Gabriel Themes in 1698, "is very delicate, pleasant and wholesome, the heavens serene, rarely overcast, bearing mighty resemblance to the better part of France." They found the country good; "so good," wrote one, "that I do not see how reasonably it can be found fault with. The country and air seem very agreeable to our bodies, I do believe this river of Delaware is as good a river as most in the world."
On went Johannes and his family across Millstone River and Stony Brook, to the Eight Mile Run of the Assanpink, six miles east of the Delaware river, close to what is now Lawrenceville of Lawrence township in Mercer County. It was then Burlington County of West Jersey, up to the New York State line; and the whole unsettled country north of the Assanpink, from the Delaware to the old province line, was called Maidenhead after a castle in England. From it three years later was set off Hopewell township; and it was not until 1714 that Maidenhead, Hopewell, and all north of them were set off as Hunterdon County.
Johannes had chosen well, and his locality was soon settled by the most enterprising of his old neighbors of Newtown. Most of the names which we find on the records belonging to Maidenhead are those which we have found for 50 years previous at Newtown. No better men ever settled in the wilderness. They made the land blossom as a garden, and 'their names are now borne in all parts of our country by deserving descendants, who have however forgotten their worthy ancestors at Maidenhead. But these pioneers have left their mark, and Lawrence township is now filled, with fine old farm mansions surrounded by grand shade trees and richly; cultivated fields. The stranger recognizes at once the presence of long continued prosperity and historical associations. The author passed through it on horseback, from Princeton to Trenton, before he knew its history or its connection with his ancestors, and he was much struck by it even then.
There is a well-preserved tradition among the descendants that the carts, of the Opdyck settlers were turned up at night to shelter the women and children until a few days work with axes and stout arms had prepared the first log-houses, into which the family moved with sensations of which perhaps we in our days have no conception.
Food was abundant; it was from the mouth of the Assanpink that Mahlon Stacy wrote a short time before: "I have seen peaches in such plenty that some people took their carts a peach gathering. I could not but smile at the conceit of it. They are a very delicate fruit and hang almost like onions that are tied on ropes. My brother Robert had as many cherries this year as would have loaded several carts. It is my judgment by what I have observed, that fruit trees in this countr destroy themselves by the very weight of their fruit. As for venison and owls we have great great plenty. We have brought home to our houses by the Indians seven or eight fat bucks of a day; and sometimes put by as many, having no occasion for them and fish in their season very plenteous. * * * There is plenty of beef and pork and good sheep, and cheap. * * * The common grass of the country feeds beef very fat. * * * In Burlington there are eight or nine fat oxen and cows in a market day and very fat. * * *
There are plenty of most sorts of fish ever seen in England besides new ones not known there; * * * and fowls plenty, as ducks, geese, turkeys, pheasants, partridges and many others. * * * I live as well to my content and in as great plenty as I ever did, and in a far more likely way to get an estate."
Meanwhile Johannes himself, exploring further, has on July 12th bough four miles to the northwest, 1050 acres (in fact 1300 acres) extending 1 3/8 miles north and south, 2 miles east and west, and including the site of the present village of Pennington, the largest single purchase in Hopewell. Four months later he buys 200 acres more, adjoining the "land laid out for the town's use." All of these are deeded to Johannes Louwrensen op Dyck; and in this name he records at Burlington his same old ear-mark of stock. Early in the next year he appears third on the list of 33 male inhabitants of Maidenhead who take a deed of 100 acres in trust, "for ye Erecting of a Meeting House and for Burying Ground and School House, the list includes his son Lawrence and his three Anderson sons-in-law. Then, during three years, he is a member of the Grand Jury at Burlington. He seems to have owned a tract on Stony Brook within Maidenhead," according to a deed in 1701 from Ralph Hunt to Wm. Alburtus. He sells his large purchase of what is now Pennington for £200, double what it cost him. In the Supreme Court at Burlington he defends a suit which is with-drawn the following year. He buys 12 acres in what is now Trenton and sells it to his son-in-law Epoch; who becomes later one of the founders of that city, and is already Judge of Common Pleas of the Court held at Burlington. In 1708 Johannes writes with his own hand the certificate signed by Ralph Hunt and himself, and quoted later. Four years later he joins in a Town Meeting where he, his son Lawrence, and two of his sons-in-law, are among the largest subscribers to the expenses of setting off Hunterdon County. The next year "Johannes Opdyck of Maidenhead" gives a quitclaim deed for the 50 acres on Dutch gills which he received from his step-father in 1670 and sold in 1678 to Humphrey Clay.
The New Jersey records from 1697 to 1713 describe him as of Maidenhead. In 1714 he is mentioned in a deed as adjoining Alexander Lockhart and Captain Hallet, upon Stony Brook in Hopewell; this may be the date of his removal to the new township where he owned several tracts of land.It was in Hopewell that his son Albert was one of the founders of the Baptist Church, and that Annetie's husband Cornelius Anderson had a mill near a school-house, was tax-collector and one of the founders of the first Presbyterian church (at Ewing), as was also Tryntie's husband Enoch Anderson, who owned a large part of Trenton, then in Hopewell. Trenton then "contained scarcely a house;" and in a private dwelling there (perhaps Epoch's) was held the new Hunterdon County Court from 1714 to 1719, and alternately at the church meeting-house in Maidenhead. In 1721 Johannes was 70 years of age, yet some evil-doer in Hunterdon County stood in such terror of the old man's physical vigor as to apply to the Court for protection. The early records of Hopewell township are lost, as are those of the Presbyterian churches of Maidenhead and Hopewell. A Dutch Clergyman from Bucks County, Pa., baptised in Hopewell six children of Annetie, Tryntie, and Engeltie in 1710 and 1712; Lawrence baptised a son in the Dutch church of the Raritan in 1704. The records of the Dutch churches are in the language of Holland, as was their preaching; we know therefore that Johannes and his children still clung to the Dutch religion and language even in the Jersey wilderness.
It would seem from mentions in deeds for adjoining land that Johannes must have owned yet other tracts than those above described. The two large volumes at Trenton, called Bass and Revel's Books, contain chiefly deeds from the West Jersey proprietors, and are written so fine as to strain the eyes to read even with a magnifying glass. Conveyances from individuals were not usually recorded but were preserved only in private chests and attics. It is only from another conveyance forty years later that we learn that Johannes, a few years before his death, sold or gave to his son-in-law Enoch 150 acres of his first purchase. He no doubt followed the old custom and while still living divided the bulk of his property among his children.
During the 32 years of Johannes' life in West Jersey, the country was a sparsely settled frontier. Trenton was just started, Princeton and Pennington were not yet begun. The only thing like a village, in all of West Jersey north of Burlington, was this settlement now called Lawrenceville, where his son Lawrence and son-in-law Joshua Anderson remained and were prominent. The trading was done at Burlington, which in those days was a rival of Philadelphia. In 1715 there were only four or five houses along the King's Highway between New Brunswick and the "Falls of the Delaware " (Trenton), but in 1730 it was described with pride as "a continual lane of fences and good farm-houses," and eighteen years later as the best peopled place in America outside of the towns.
When we imagine Johannes' Jersey home, we think of no high-posted and canopied bedstead, tall clock or tiled fire-place. We picture a long log-house, with half doors; and chimney wide enough to hold the family and smoke the venison, with great logs hauled in by oxen through the opposite doors. The floor is carpeted with white sand from the seashore. On the walls are deer-skin suits and fur coats; from the beams hang guns, powder horns and nets. Above in the garret is stored a heavy heap of grain. No bolt is on the door; with true Dutch hospitality, rum, sugar, and molasses, or the barrel of cider, stand ever ready for the guest. Outside the house are nailed wolf and panther heads. In the rear are the oven the forge, the carpenter's shop, the wooden ploughs and the sickles. On the front stoop, beneath the shadows of giant forest trees, sits Johannes watching his great-grandchildren swinging on grape-vines from boughs one hundred feet above, while his sleek horses and large Holstein cattle lie in the tall grass of the meadow on the Run, and the yellow grain waves its forty-fold increase in the newly cleared fields.
Feb. 12, 1729, at the age of 78 years, Johannes Opdyck made his will in Hopewell. His wife was already dead. In the touching formula and quaint spelling of the day, he left his property to be equally divided among his eight children then living, and appointed his son Lawrence and grandson Eliakim, son of Annetie, his executors. Two months later he died and the will was admitted to probate by Governor Montgomery; it is now preserved, with a few others of that period, in the vaults of the State House at Trenton. The statement of his executors is beautifully engrossed and stitched with silk cord, in a style superior to that of other similar papers there filed; we have reproduced its first page.
The burial place of Johannes and his wife is unknown. The graveyards of the old Dutch church at Harlingen and of the Presbyterian churches of Lawrenceville and Ewing contain many tombstones of sufficient antiquity, but their inscriptions are now illegible. Perhaps the aged couple were solemnly laid to rest in some private enclosure amidst the forest they loved so well, where the keenest eye may now search in vain for their levelled hillocks and gray stones.
Let us revere the name of our sturdy ancestor, who in two States met the savage, the wild beast and the wilderness, and left in their stead the farm, the mill, the school, the organization of township and county, the deter mined Dutch love of freedom under just and equal law. It was a long stride in civilization. His descendants have inherited the benefits of his life as unconsciously as they have many of the traits of his character.
LAWRENCE UPDIKE (OPDYCK)
(Son of Johannes, p. 154; son of Louris, p. 136.)
[Father of John Updike]
[Grandfather of Abraham Updike]
(Son of Johannes, p. 154; son of Louris, p. 136.)
[Father of John Updike]
[Grandfather of Abraham Updike]
Born about 1675; died, 1748; married Agnes—was a planter in Maidenhead, N. J., near what is now Lawrenceville, between Princeton and Trenton.
The record of his baptism is doubtless among the missing registers of the early Dutch church on Long Island; he must have been born about 1675, as his father was born 1651, and Lawrence acted as trustee of the Maidenhead church farm in 1698. He and his wife baptised their son William, 1704, in the Dutch church of Raritan, N. J.; the pastor probably visited Maidenhead for the purpose, as the church building near Somerville was not erected until 1721, the same that was burned by the British during the Revolution. It is perhaps this record of baptism that led Dr. Messler, in his Cent. Hist. Somerset Co., to place Lawrence Opdyke among the heads of Dutch families from Long Island who settled along the Raritan; and this probably caused the error of the late Teunis G. Bergen, printed in a Somerville historical magazine in 1873, in stating that Lawrence was descended from Gysbert Opdyck.
Lawrence joined his father and brothers-in-law in subscribing at the Maidenhead town meeting in 1712 to the expenses of setting off Hunterdon County. The township elected him Overseer of the Poor in 1719, Overseer of Roads in 1719, and Commissioner in 1726, 1727, and 1729. The County Court records show him as Overseer of the Poor for Hopewell in 1725; this leads us to believe that his homestead may have been on the line between the two townships.
Lawrence appears to have been prosperous. His father and sons were large land-holders, and there is reason to believe that he was also. He was the highest bidder at the Maidenhead town meeting in 1730 for the 100 acre town lot. The absence of recorded conveyances to or from him is explained by the fact that in those days deeds were not generally recorded, but were preserved in old chests.
Lawrence was the author of the Updike spelling in New Jersey, and was the ancestor of almost every New Jersey Updike, excepting the Virginia branch. The will of his father, Johannes Opdyck, appointing him one of the executors, spelled his name with an 0; upon the back of the will, where was written the executors oath, his name appears in a clear hand as "Lawrence Opdyck ; " but he signed this oath, "Lowrance Updick." In his own will of 1745, his name and those of his three sons are spelled "Updike," and his descendants have ever since so written their names.
Lawrence in his will mentioned a possible defect in the title to some of his lands,– "So as to be taken away By Law By Cox or any other pearson." This doubtless refers to a long and famous litigation concerning the title to all the lands in Hopewell. In the division of West Jersey into one hundred parts among the Proprietors, the tract called the "30,000 acres above the Falls of the Delaware" fell to Thomas Sadler and Edward Billinge. They sold it in 1685 to Dr. Daniel Coxe of London. This was the original township of Hopewell. The region had been fairly purchased from the Indians for Dr. Coxe by treaty of 30 Mch. 1688, for 100 fathoms of wampum, 30 guns, 20 kettles, 20 shirts, 80 hatchets, 100 knives, 300 pipes, 300 needles, and various other articles. Coxe was governor of West Jersey from 1687 to 1690, but conducted his office by deputy. In 1691 he conveyed the government to the "West Jersey Society." In 1700, "on the petition of some of the inhabitants above the Falls for a new township, to be called Hopewell," that township was set off, containing the 30,000 acres and also a 10,000 acre tract of the Society,-including what are now Ewing and Trenton townships. The West Jersey Society, through their agent Thos. Revell, had made various conveyances to settlers, when Coxe claimed that he had parted with only the jurisdiction and not the title of the land. We find that there was some agreement made in April 1703, between Coxe and those that had then purchased, which was ratified at the meeting at house of Ralph Hunt, 26 Aug. 1703, mentioned under Johannes Opdyck. Further difficulties arose, and in 1731 fifty Hopewell landholders signed an agreement binding themselves mutually to defend their rights against ejectment suits brought by Col. Coxe. The contest continued many years; the cases were removed, on account of alleged prejudice in favor of the occupants from Hunterdon to Burlington County, where they were tried by Chief Justice Hooper and a jury of Quakers, and a verdict was rendered for Coxe. The defendants made an unsuccessful appeal to the Court of Errors. This litigation was the great event of the period; the records of the case may be found in the archives of the N. J. Supreme Court. Although successful Coxe seems to have finally compromised his claims, as most of the defendants remained on their farms, some of which are still held by their descendants.
Lawrence was however more identified with Maidenhead, where he is found almost continuously during fifty years, from 1698 until his death in 1748. Barber and Howe's Hist. Coll. N. J. states that Maidenhead was settled about 1700; the many records already quoted by us show that the Opdyck family and others were settled there several years earlier. The Presbyterian church was established there in 1709, when the people of Maidenhead and Hopewell applied to the Presbytery of Philadelphia for pulpit supplies, and Mr. Smith was directed to preach in Maidenhead on his way to and from New England. Their first house of worship was erected at what is now Lawrenceville, where the earliest settlers were buried; on one stone in the churchyard can still be read 1713, but the names are mostly illegible. Rev. Jedediah Andrews administered baptism 1713-4; Robert Orr was ordained as pastor in 1715; Rev. Joseph Morgan was preaching there to the people of both townships from 1731 until 1736, when David Colwell was ordained. In 1769 Maidenhead and Hopewell were still served by one pastor, who divided his time between the church at Lawrenceville, the church at Trenton, and the old meeting-house at Ewing. There was a famous law-suit in 1778, when the trustees of the Maidenhead church successfully defended their title to the 100 acres conveyed in 1698 by the West Jersey Society to Johannes and Lawrence Opdyck, the Andersons and others, in trust for the inhabitants of Maidenhead "for ye Erecting of a Meeting House and for Burying grounds and School House." The church sold this farm in 1804; a few years later another 100 acres were devised to them by Jasper Smith for a parsonage farm, and this still serves for the residence and support of their pastor. The first Hunterdon County Court was held in Maidenhead in 1714, and from then until 1719 alternately there, and in Hopewell at a private house on what is now Front Street in Trenton. The court records at Flemington contain an entry, 5 June 1716, " Court adjourned to Meeting House, Maidenhead." The front of the present church at Lawrenceville, 45 ft. by 32 ft., was erected in 1764. Additions were built to its rear in 1833 and 1855, making the edifice as it now stands.
The growth of Maidenhead was very rapid from its first settlement till 1750, and it continually sent out settlers who colonized the northern Jersey wilderness. These pioneers are proudly claimed by their respective counties, without however the knowledge of their real place of origin. The old Maidenhead Town Book, rebound and labeled "Lawrence Town Records," has lately been deposited for safe keeping with the Mercer County Clerk at Trenton, and will be found a mine of genealogical information concerning families in all parts of the State. It has a still wider interest, for the stream of colonization in the early part of the last century seems to have flowed largely from New England and Long Island to New Jersey. The grandchildren of those that moved about 1700 to Maidenhead spread beyond the boundaries of New Jersey into the western part of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; and their children and grandchildren, in turn, have settled in Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana.
JOHN UPDIKE
(Son of Lawrence, p. 185; Son of Johannes, p. 154; Son of Louris, p. 136.)
[Father of Abraham Updike]
[Grandfather of Jacob A Updike]
(Son of Lawrence, p. 185; Son of Johannes, p. 154; Son of Louris, p. 136.)
[Father of Abraham Updike]
[Grandfather of Jacob A Updike]
Born about 1708; married 1738 Mary Bragaw of Newtown, Long Island; died 1790 ; was a farmer near Cherry Valley a few miles north of Princeton, N. J., in what was then called " the Western Precinct " or Hillsborough, later Montgomery township in Somerset County, and now Princeton township in Mercer County.
The records show : that he was the second son and executor of his father Lawrence (1748) but did not act as executor; that he brought a suit in Hunterdon in 1730 ; resided in Maidenhead township (where his father lived) in 1730, 2, 4; owned a large tract of land in Somerset Co., north of Princeton, in 1744, 1763, and 1764, through which three roads were laid out; was a landholder in Hillsborough township near Princeton in 1750, and in the same township in 1758 and 1763 ; his tract of land north of Princeton in 1765 was of sufficient importance to be a landmark in a map of the Middlesex and Somerset County Line, although not adjoining it ; he traded at Princeton in 1767-8 ; made his will in 1783 in Somerset Co., and there died in 1790.
The large tract of land, so often above mentioned, was evidently just south of Cherry Valley in Somerset Co., and near the eastern line of Maidenhead and Hopewell townships of Hunterdon Co. He therefore settled and remained almost 50 years only a few miles away from his father's home in Maidenhead, and his tract probably adjoined and possibly included the land, on Stony Brook in Maidenhead, owned by his grandfather Johannes Opdyck. In the List of Marriage Bonds issued by the Secretary of the State of N. Y., published officially, Vol. 1, 69, appears the marriage of John Updike and Mary Bragaw of Newtown, Long Island, May 11, 1738. In Riker's Annals of Newtown, L. I., we find that the Bragaw family of Newtown were descended from Bourgon Broudard, a French Huguenot exile who fled from persecution in France to Manheim and thence came with his wife Catherine Lefebre in 1675 to Bushwick, Long Island. He and his wife were among the earliest members of the French Church in New York; in 1688 they moved to Dutch gills near Newtown and purchased there a large tract of land. Their son Isaac Bragaw, born 1676, was taught the trade of a weaver, acquired considerable property at Dutch gills, bought his father's farm in 1713, was a prominent supporter of the Dutch Church, and died 1757, aged 81. His will, on record in N. Y. City Surrogate's Office, mentions his daughter Mary as the wife of "Johannes Opdyke," almost the spelling of the old Johannes Opdyck, who had formerly been a close neighbor of the Broucard or Bragaw family in Newtown, instead of the spelling which the grandson John Updike always used. Isaac Bragaw had, beside Mary, children named Isaac, Peter, Ruloff, and Bergoon ; the last was a very tall and strong man and Captain of the Newtown Militia. John Updike may have came back to his grandfather's old home at Newtown to seek a wife for his great plantation in the Jersey wilderness; or he may have met Mary at the houses of her uncles who all moved to Somerset, N. J., where their descendants are now the well-known Brokaws. It should be a subject of pride for the descendants of John Updike that they have in their veins such excellent Huguenot blood. John named his first son Lawrence for his father according to the time-honored custom; and then named four sons for his wife's brothers mentioned above.
In many ways John Updike is an interesting figure. His descendants have been so numerous as to make him the ancestor of more than half the Updikes in America. He forms a midway mark in the emigration of his line to and from New Jersey. In 1697 his grandfather Johannes Opdykk came from Long Island with children and grandchildren in wagons to the richer land of the primeval forests of West Jersey, and there John was born, lived and died; almost precisely a century later, five of John's sons took up the march from New Jersey with their children and grandchildren in covered wagons back again to yet richer lands in New York State, but this time it was to the magnificent Lake Country, recently made safe for settlers by Gen. Sullivan's terrible punishment of the savages of the Five Nations during the Revolution.
Of John's nine sons there remained in New Jersey four, Lawrence, Isaac, William and Peter, and a son of his son Jacob. The descendants of these multiplied so rapidly that a road between Princeton and Hopewell, on which many of them lived, has been known for a century as the "Updike Road," and it became a byword there that twenty-four Updikes could be counted at every local gathering. About 1800, the other five sons of John moved together, or nearly so, to Tompkins County, the richest soil of New York State; and with them went one son of their brother Lawrence; there too in Tompkins County the descendants of these brothers multiplied so rapidly that their neighborhood was called the "Updike Settlement," and the graveyard of the old Log Church near Waterburg, N. Y., is filled with their tombstones. At about the time of this movement to New York State, two sons of Lawrence (the eldest of the nine brothers) moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, and from there to Indiana where they left a host of descendants. The later generations of the New Jersey, the New York, and the Indiana group, have continually sought wider fields and are now scattered over all of the Western and Pacific States. The descendants of one group occasionally meet those of another, but have no knowledge of their mutual relationship. But everywhere they have retained the same features and characteristics; they have been long lived, prolific, large, strong, honest, thrifty, and unassuming. The old records of Somerset Co., N. J., do not show a single tavern-license ever issued to an Updike, and scarcely a single Updike as ever appearing in Court proceedings.
The grave of John Updike is not known. It may be in the burial-ground on the old farm of his son William, on the "Updike Road," near Stony Brook and the boundary line of Somerset and Hunterdon Counties, where unlettered headstones mark the old graves.
John Updike's will was not mentioned in the General Index of Wills at Trenton, although referred to by his son Burgoon in a deed in 1793. The author therefore concluded that the will was destroyed with the other old records of Somerset Co. when the British and Tory raiders burned the Millstone court house during the Revolution; and he proceeded to gather all of John's children from other sources. The descendants of William; Peter, and Jacob knew that these three brothers owned farms just where the Road Book showed John's lands to have been; the Somerset Co. records confirmed this and also gave Isaac and John Jr. as adjoining owners; Lawrence, Rolif, Brogan and William served together in the Somerset Militia in the Revolution; Rulif and Abraham testified after the Revolution that Burgoon's property had been taken by British and Continental soldiers, Isaac's will showed that he was brother to Ruliph, Lawrence, Peter and William. The unusual names, of Burgoon and Roliff at least, connected them with John Updike's wife's brothers. The descendants of almost all remembered their great-uncle Burgoon Updike, and Burgoon's deed showed that he was a son of John. Still it was a great satisfaction finally to discover the lost will of John Updike in the vaults of the Secretary of State, and to find that it mentioned by name the same nine sons whom the author had ascribed to John Updike, thus verifying the accuracy of the work.
To the descendants of John Updike the early history of Somerset County must be highly interesting. There, as everywhere else in our country, the rivers were fuller in the last century than now. The Raritan was navigable up to the junction of the North and South Branches, and much of the heavy produce of the farms and mills was carried to market by water. The farmers floated their grain down stream in flat-bottomed boats to New Brunswick, rowing or towing back the next day. All the smaller streams of Somerset and Hunterdon were thickly dotted with mills. Large wagons, often drawn by six horses, passed over the Amwell road to New Brunswick, -as many as 500 vehicles in a single day. In 1748 the Raritan Landing was described as "being a market for the most plentiful wheat country for its bigness in America." New Brunswick hoped to rival New York in importance, and its lots rose to an enormous price.
New Jersey was the battle-field of the Revolution. Washington's army spent two winters at Morristown, one at Middlebrook (Bound Brook), and portions of two summers in Somerset County; the marks of its encampment at Chimney Rock are still visible, and the old houses used by him and his generals as their head-quarters during the winter of 1776-7 at Somerville and Bound Brook are yet standing, fine specimens of colonial architecture. The Jersey troops distinguished themselves on many occasions. The night after the Battle of Princeton, twenty Jersey militia drove off a British detachment of ten times their number, and captured at Kingston a valuable wagon train of woolen clothing, which was welcomed as a god-send by Washington's troops. They often captured boats on the Raritan coming with provisions for Cornwallis's forces at New Brunswick. Near Millstone, four hundred British foragers were badly routed by an equal number of Americans, largely raw Jersey militia. At Piscataway, 1,000 British troops were beaten back by 700 Americans, who were nearly all militia. At Spanktown (Rahway) the British were worsted by the Rebels in two encounters, in one of which the enemy were driven through the snow all the way back to Amboy, with a loss of one. hundred men, while we lost only fifteen. Similar encounters were of frequent occurrence during the Winter and spring of 1777. Washington wrote to Congress: "The Militia of New Jersey,-from this time forward, generally acquired high reputation, and throughout a long and tedious war conducted themselves with spirit and discipline, scarce surpassed by the regular troops." The New Jersey rolls show at least four of John Updike's sons to have been members of the militia thus so highly praised.
UpdikeFamily HooperFamily CoddingtonFamily PotterFamily GroverFamily VandervoortFamily RobbinsFamily
