USA > New York > New York City > Prominent families of New York; being an account in biographical form of individuals and families distinguished as representatives of the social, professional and civic life of New York city > Part 99
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Mr. Warner Van Norden was born in New York City in 1841, and after completing his education, and while still a mere youth, was sent to New Orleans as the representative of a large New York mercantile house. At a very early age, he developed great force of character as well as marked executive ability, and embarking in business for himself became a successful man of affairs in the Crescent City, and president of one of its banks. In 1876, he, however, returned to New York and engaged in business as a private banker, and also took part, successfully, in the manage- ment of railroad and other undertakings. In 1891, he became president of the National Bank of North America, of this city. He is a director of the Home Insurance Company and other financial and business institutions, and is a member of the Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Van Norden is a man of active habits, both in mind and body, and has traveled extensively, both in European countries and in America. His residence, at 16 West Forty-eighth Street, contains a fine collection of paintings and statuary and a large library, to the gathering of which he has devoted much attention, and in which he finds relaxation. He is a member of the
Metropolitan, Union League and Lawyers' clubs. His Dutch ancestry is shown in his active participation in the Holland Society, of which he is a leading member and its ex-president.
In philanthropy and church work, Mr. Van Norden takes an earnest and practical share. He is a director of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, a trustee of the Presby- terian Synod and was for many years president of the Presbyterian Union of New York City, while he has served as a member of the Church Extension Committee and as a member of the Board of Foreign Missions and a director of the American Tract Society.
In 1867, Mr. Van Norden married Martha Philips, of this city, and has two sons and two daughters. The older son, the Reverend Theodore L. Van Norden, is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at South Salem, N. Y. The younger, Warner M. Van Norden, is connected with his father in the banking business.
589
CORTLANDT SCHUYLER VAN RENSSELAER
T HREE great New York families are recalled by the names borne by the subject of this sketch, the Van Rensselaers, the Van Cortlandts and the Schuylers, whose beginning in this country was coincident with the founding of New Netherland. Kiliaen Van Rens- selaer, the paternal ancestor of Mr. Cortlandt Schuyler Van Rensselaer, was one of the wealthiest directors of the Dutch West India Company. He was descended from a long line of honorable ancestors, and married Anna Van Wely. His eldest son by this marriage, Jeremias Van Rensselaer, the founder of the American family to which the present Mr. Van Rensselaer belongs, married Maria Van Cortlandt, daughter of Oloff Stevense Van Cortlandt.
A great-grandson of Jeremias Van Rensselaer and his wife, Maria, was James Van Rensselaer, who married Elsie Schuyler, and was the great-grandfather of Mr. Cortlandt Schuyler Van Rensselaer. His son, Philip Schuyler Van Rensselaer, who was born in 1797, married Henrietta Ann Schuyler, and his grandson, Gratz Van Rensselaer, who was born in 1834, married Catharine Van Cortlandt Van Rensselaer. He was therefore in the sixth generation of descent froin the first patroon of Rensselaerwyck, whose great estates comprised the larger part of what is now the counties of Albany, Rensselaer, Delaware, Greene and Columbia. James Van Rensselaer, the grandfather of Gratz Van Rensselaer, was an officer during the Revolutionary War, with rank of Major, serving without pay, part of the time on the staff of General Montgomery.
On the female side of this house, Mr. Van Rensselaer is descended through several lines of ancestry from the Schuyler family. His grandmother, Henrietta Ann Schuyler, who married Philip Schuyler Van Rensselaer, belonged to that famous race. Her father was John H. Schuyler, and her mother, her father's first wife, was the youngest daughter of Hendrick and Henrietta Ann Fort. Her paternal grandparents were Harmanus Schuyler and Christiana Ten Broeck. Harmanus Schuyler was the son of Nicholas Schuyler and Elsie Wendell, the grandson of Philip Schuyler and Elizabeth De Meyer, and the great-grandson of Philip Piertersen Schuyler and Margeritta Van Slichtenhorst, the remote ancestors of the American Schuyler family.
Harmanus Schuyler was the father of Elsie Schuyler, who became the wife of Major James Van Rensselaer. He belonged to the Schenectady branch of the family, and settled in Albany before the middle of the eighteenth century. He was an assistant alderman there in 1759, and sheriff, 1761-70. In 1776, he was assistant deputy commissary-general of the Northern Depart- ment, stationed at Lake George. His wife, Christiana Ten Broeck, was the daughter of Samuel Ten Broeck, and granddaughter of Dirck Wesselse Ten Broeck, who came to America with Governor Peter Minuet. The mother of Christiana Ten Broeck was Maria Van Rensselaer, daughter of Hendrick Van Rensselaer and his wife, Catharine Van Brugh, and a granddaughter of Annetje Jans.
Mr. Cortlandt Schuyler Van Rensselaer, son of Gratz Van Rensselaer, was born in Albany, but was brought up in New York, whither his parents came soon after his birth. He was graduated from Hobart College, and afterwards pursued a course of study in the Law School of Columbia College. Subsequently removing to Eau Claire, Wis., he was admitted to the bar. Returning to New York in 1884, he became an assistant United States District Attorney under Elihu Root, retaining that position under William Dorsheimer, Stephen A. Walker and Edward Mitchell. He has taken an interest in political matters, has been frequently a delegate to Republican conventions, and was once a candidate for Congress. Since 1891, he has been counsel for the American Surety Company, and is also a large real estate owner. In 1891, Mr. Van Rensselaer married Horace Macaulay, daughter of William Macaulay, of a well-known family distinguished for literary ability. She is also descended on the maternal side from Captain John Underhill. They reside at 40 East Sixty- first Street. Mr. Van Rensselaer is a member of the Metropolitan, St. Nicholas, Church, University and Country clubs, the Bar Association, Sons of the Revolution, Huguenot Society, St. Nicholas Society, Society of Colonial Wars, of which he is a governor, and the Colonial Order, of which he is vice-president.
590
KILIAEN VAN RENSSELAER
T HE Colony of Rensselaerwyck was the most successful attempt to plant feudal customs in the New World. In 1630, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a rich merchant of Amsterdam, obtained from the Dutch West India Company and their High Mightiness, the States General of the United Provinces, an enormous grant of land in the New Netherland. The tract included nearly all the present counties of Albany and Rensselaer, and in it the patroon ruled as a lord over his subjects. Settlers were sent out from Holland, who, in all respects, were bound by a feudal tenure to the lord of the Colony. The grant of the manor was confirmed after the English occupation of the New Netherland, and by the Legislature of the State of New York, and its possession continued uninterruptedly in a line of patroons, descendants from the first grantee. The original patroon never visited his transatlantic possession, and died, in 1647, in Holland. His sons, however, came to this country, and one of them, Jeremias, married Maria Van Courtlandt, and had a son, Kiliaen, who wedded a maternal cousin, also named Maria Van Courtlandt. The son of the latter couple, Stephen, succeeded his elder brother, Jeremias, as a lord of the manor. Stephen Van Rensselaer, first of the name, died in 1747, and was succeeded as patroon by a son, Stephen, died 1769, whose wife was Catherine Livingston. The last of the number was General Stephen Van Rensselaer, third of the name, the " Old Patroon," as he was known, who died in 1830, whereupon the manor was for the first time divided among the heirs, and ceased to exist as an almost independent division of the State.
The father of the present Mr. Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was William P. Van Rensselaer. His mother was Sarah Rogers, of a well-known New York family, allied with the Bayards and other prominent names in the Colonial and Revolutionary history of the State. His paternal grandfather was General Stephen Van Rensselaer, the fifth and last patroon, whose mother was Catherine Livingston, above referred to, a daughter of Philip Livingston, signer of the Declaration of Independ- ence, whose wife was Margaret, daughter of General Philip Schuyler.
The patroon at the time of the Revolution, despite his large possessions, was an ardent patriot, and his son, Stephen Van Rensselaer, inherited the same quality, served as Major- General of the United States Army in the War of 1812, and commanded the forces on the Niagara frontier during a part of the war. He was later Lieutenant-Governor of the State and Member of Congress, while the foundation of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at Troy, is a testimonial of his far-sighted philanthropy, few institutions in the country having been productive of so much real benefit to the people of the United States.
Mr. Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was born at Albany, in 1845, and was educated in this city. A youth at the outbreak of the war between the States, he, nevertheless, entered the army before the close of the conflict, and, becoming a Captain in the Thirty-Ninth New York Volunteers, served under Generals Grant and Hancock, and took part in some fourteen different engagements. After the close of the war, he traveled abroad extensively, engaged in business in New York, and, in 1870, married Olivia Atterbury, of New York. Mrs. Van Rensselaer is a granddaughter of Anson G. Phelps, the merchant and philanthropist. Her great-great-uncle was Elias Boudinot, the first president of the Congress of the United States. The Atterbury family descends from the celebrated Bishop Atterbury, of England. The issue of this marriage is five children, Olive Atterbury, Sarah Elizabeth, Katharine Boudinot, Kiliaen, Jr., and William Stephen Van Rensselaer.
Besides membership in the Loyal Legion and the G. A. R., as well as of the Holland, St. Nicholas and Huguenot societies, Mr. Van Rensselaer is an active and prominent figure in many organizations of a religious and philanthropic character. He is, among others, a director of the American Tract Society, of the City Missions, president of the Grand Army Mission, and of the Sanitary Aid Society, and an elder of the New York Presbyterian Church, in which he takes great interest, in addition to which he gives much of his time and active labors in the cause of other organizations of the same type.
591
ABRAHAM VAN WYCK VAN VECHTEN
T EUNIS DIRCKSEN VAN VECHTEN was a native of Vechten, near Utrecht, Holland. With his wife, child and servants, he came to Beaverwyck, or Fort Orange, in the ship Arms of Norway, in 1638. In 1648, he was the owner of land near Greenbush, N. Y., which remains in the possession of his descendants. The eldest son of Teunis Dircksen Van Vechten was Dirk Teunisse Van Vechten, who was born at Vechten, in 1634, and died in 1702 at the place in Catskill purchased in 1681 and confirmed to him by Governor Dongan in 1686, part of which is still in the family, together with the old house built in 1690. He married Jannetje Vreelant, daughter of Michiel Jansen and Fytje (Hartman) Vreelant, of Communipaw. His son, Teunis Van Vechten, 1668-1707, married Cathlyntje Van Petten, daughter of Claas Frederickse Van Petten, of Schenectady.
In the next generation, Teunis Van Vechten, 1707-1785, married Judiky Ten Broeck, daughter of Jacob Ten Broeck. He was an officer in the Colonial militia, and was present at Braddock's defeat. Samuel Van Vechten, the son of Teunis Van Vechten, 1742-1813, was born in Catskill, was an officer in the Revolution, a county judge and a large land owner. His wife was Sarah Van Orden, sister of Jacob Van Orden, of Catskill. One of his sons was the Reverend Dr. Jacob Van Vechten, long pastor at Schenectady.
Samuel Van Vechten, the father of the subject of this sketch, was born in 1796, the son of Samuel Van Vechten. He was graduated from Union College in 1818, and from Rutgers Theologi- cal Seminary in 1822. He was the second pastor of the Bloomingburgh Reformed Dutch Church, 1824-41, and was afterwards at Fort Plain; dying at Fishkill, November 3d, 1882. Other distin- guished members of the family were Teunis Van Vechten, Mayor of Albany in 1837; Abraham Van Vechten, Attorney-General in 1810; Abraham Van Vechten, City Attorney of Albany in 1843, and Acting Adjutant-General in 1852; and Colonel Cornelius Van Vechten, who in 1757 married Annetje Knickerbocker, of Albany. Anthony Van Vechten was prominent in Revolutionary times and married Margaret Fonda, daughter of Jelles Fonda, who founded the town of Fonda. Michiel Van Vechten, oldest son of Dirck Teunis Van Vechten, removed in 1685 to Raritan, N. J., and established an important family. His Dutch family Bible, dated 1603, inherited from his father and grandfather, is in the collection of the American Bible Society, and is an interesting relic of the eighty years war of the Netherlands for religious freedom. In Brooklyn Claes Arentse Van Vechten built at Gowanus, in 1699, a large house, which has but recently disappeared.
The mother of Mr. Abraham Van Wyck Van Vechten was Louisa, second daughter of General Abraham Van Wyck, of Fishkill. She was the granddaughter of Theodorus Van Wyck, a member of the second and third Provincial Congresses, a great-granddaughter of Theodorus Van Wyck, one of the first settlers of Fishkill, and in the fifth generation of descent from Cornelius Barentse Van Wyck, who came to Flatbush, Long Island, in 1659. The American Van Wycks are descended from Jacob Van Asch Van Wyck, one of the first presidents of the University of Utrecht.
Mr. Abraham Van Wyck Van Vechten was born in Bloomingburgh, New York, March 24th, 1828. He was educated in the Poughkeepsie Collegiate School, and graduated from Williams College in 1847. He then came to New York, studied law with Horace Holden, was admitted to the bar and has been in practice for nearly half a century. In 1853, Mr. Van Vechten married Mary Van Zandt Lane, great-granddaughter of Peter Praa Van Zandt, a merchant who came to New Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. He had a substantial city house, at the corner of Water Street and Burling Slip, and his country place was near Beekman Hill. Mrs. Van Vechten died in 1864. Mr. Van Vechten has a country home at the family homestead in Catskill. He is a member of the University Club, Bar Association, St. Nicholas Society, Sons of the Revolution, Society of Colonial Wars, Holland Society, Genealogical and Biographical Society, Historical Society, Clinton Hall Association and Society of the War of 1812. He has two daughters, Effe, wife of Charles H. Knox, and Marie, wife of Samuel Van Vechten Huntington.
592
ROBERT ANDERSON VAN WYCK
C ORNELIUS BARENTS VAN WYCK, who came from the town of Wyck, in Holland, in 1650, was the ancestor of all the American Van Wycks who boast of a Colonial descent. His wife, whom he married at Flatbush, in Kings County, soon after his arrival in the Colony, was Ann Polhemus, daughter of the Reverend Johannes Theodorus Polhemus, the first Dutch Reformed minister in that portion of the Colony, and the ancestor of many families of note in New York.
The Van Wyck family was of aristocratic origin in their parent country. Its members in Holland use, to the present day, exactly the same coat-of-arms that was brought to this country by the representatives of their name two centuries ago. While not a numerous family-less so, indeed, than the average race of the Holland descent-the American branch of the Van Wycks has furnished to the State and to the country many individual members prominent in the professions and the public service, while intermarriages have connected it by ties of relationship with almost all the old representative family names of New York, such as Van Rensselaer, Van Cortlandt, Beek- man, Gardiner, Van Vechten, Livingston and Hamilton, to designate only a few of the many with which it is related.
Judge Van Wyck, who was born in New York, in 1849, is a son of William Van Wyck and his wife, Lydia Anderson Maverick. His descent on the paternal side is from Samuel Van Wyck, grandson of the original Colonist of the name. Samuel Van Wyck married Hannah Hewlett, and had two sons, Captain Abraham Van Wyck and Samuel Van Wyck. The latter married Mary Thorn, and was the father of an Abraham Van Wyck and Samuel Van Wyck, born at Huntington, Long Island, in 1767. His uncle, Abraham Van Wyck, was an officer of the Revolutionary Army, married Elizabeth Wright, and had a daughter, Zernah Van Wyck, who married her cousin Abraham, and thus united the two branches of the family. The offspring of this marriage was William Van Wyck, born in 1803, at Huntington, Long Island, who, as already mentioned, was the Honorable Robert A. Van Wyck's father.
On his mother's side, Judge Van Wyck's ancestors were descended from prominent families of the State of South Carolina. His own Christian names were given for his maternal great-grand- father, General Robert Anderson, a distinguished soldier in the war of the Revolution, and a public officer of the State for over thirty years. The County of Anderson, in South Carolina, was named in his honor by the Legislature. Elizabeth Anderson, his daughter, born at Pendleton, Anderson County, married Samuel Maverick, born at Charleston, S. C., in 1772, their daughter, Lydia Anderson Maverick, born in 1814, at Charleston, becoming the wife of William Van Wyck. Her son is a descendant in the seventh generation from John Maverick, who was among the earliest settlers of Charleston, and whose brother, Samuel Maverick, came to Boston in 1630, members of the family having also been very prominent in the affairs of New York when it passed into the possession of the Duke of York, the Southern branch of the same family having been extremely prominent in several States.
In 1872, Judge Van Wyck graduated from Columbia College and was valedictorian of his class. He studied law, was admitted to the bar and practiced his profession until 1889. In that year he was elected a Judge of the City Court, and became presiding Judge of the court. In November, 1897, he was elected Mayor of the enlarged city at the first election held under the charter creating the Greater New York. It is certainly a notable fact that this honor should fall to the direct descendant of one of the New Netherland's founders. The Honorable Robert Anderson Van Wyck is unmarried. His clubs are the Manhattan and St. Nicholas, and he was one of the founders of the Holland Society. His brother, the Honorable Augustus Van Wyck, of Brooklyn, also has had a distinguished career at the bar, and some years ago was elected a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York in the Second, or Kings County, Judicial District. He is a member of the Holland Society.
593
JAMES M. VARNUM
F IRST of the Varnum name recorded in the annals of American history, was George Varnum, who was born about 1593 in the hamlet of Draycot, England. He came to this country about 1634 and settled in Ipswich, Mass. With him came his married son, Samuel, born in Draycot in 1619. The elder Varnum died in Ipswich in 1649, and Samuel was one of the founders of the town of Dracut, now part of the city of Lowell, and named it after his old home in England; there two of his sons were killed by the Indians, and there he died about 1673. His fifth son, Joseph Varnum, 1672-1749, was a Colonel in the Massachusetts militia and a member of the Massachusetts Colonial Legislature. Samuel Varnum, the third son of Joseph, was a Major in the Massachusetts militia, and his sons were conspicuous figures of the Revolutionary period, particularly Major-General James M. Varnum and Major-General Joseph B. Varnum. The elder brother, James M. Varnum, born in Dracut, December 17th, 1748, was graduated from Brown University in 1769, admitted to the bar in 1771, and settled in Greenwich, R. I. When the war began, he was commissioned as a Colonel of a Rhode Island regiment of infantry, and in 1777 became a Brigadier-General in the Continental Army. He was at Valley Forge and in many engagements in New Jersey and Rhode Island, and retired from the service in 1779. But he was again on duty from 1779 to 1788, as a Major-General of the Rhode Island militia, and was a Member of the Continental Congress from Rhode Island, 1780-82 and 1786-87. He was later appointed a United States Judge for the Northwestern Territory. He was one of the original members of the Society of the Cincinnati, and was only forty years of age when he died.
Joseph B. Varnum, 1750-1821, had a career longer and even more brilliant than that of his brother. During the Revolution he served as a Captain in the Massachusetts militia, was a State Senator, 1785-95, and in 1817-18, and 1820-21, Sheriff of Middlesex County, Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and Chief Justice of the Court of General Sessions of the same county, and a member of the Massachusetts State Convention that ratified the Federal Constitution. In 1787, he was Colonel of the Seventh Regiment of Massachusetts militia, in 1802 was promoted to be Brigadier-General, and in 1805 was made a Major-General. From 1795 to 1811, he was a repre- sentative from Massachusetts to the National Congress and Speaker of the House during the tenth and eleventh Congresses. He was United States Senator, 1811-17, and during that time was President pro tempore of the Senate and Acting Vice-President of the United States from December 6th, 1813, to April 17th, 1814.
The third son of the Honorable Joseph B. Varnum, James M. Varnum, 1786-1821, was a Captain in the War of 1812, and married a niece of Postmaster-General Gideon Granger; their son, Joseph B. Varnum, born in 1818, was graduated from Yale in 1838 and studied law in Baltimore. He settled in New York and became a well-known lawyer. He was a member of the Assembly of New York State, 1849-51, being Speaker the latter year. In 1852, he was a Whig candidate for Congress, and in 1857 was returned to the Assembly again. He wrote much for publication, being a contributor to newspapers and magazines and the author of several works.
General James M. Varnum is the son of the Honorable Joseph B. Varnum, last named. He was born in New York City, June 29th, 1848, and educated in Yale College, taking the degree of B. A. in 1868 and the degree of LL. B. from Columbia College in 1871. He has since been engaged in the active practice of the law in New York City. He was a member of the Assembly of New York State, 1879-80; Republican candidate for Attorney-General of the State in 1889; permanent chairman of the Republican State Convention in 1891 and candidate of the Republican and anti-Tammany Democrats for Judge of the Superior Court in 1890. Taking an active interest in the affairs of the National Guard, he was senior aide-de-camp to Governor Cornell from 1880 to 1883, with the rank of Colonel, and was subsequently appointed by Governor Morton, in 1895, as Paymaster-General of the State, with the rank of Brigadier-General. He is a member of the Tuxedo, Metropolitan, Union and other clubs.
594
JOHN DAVIS VERMEULE
A MONG the ancestors of Mr. John Davis Vermeule were members of several of the first Dutch families that settled in New York and New Jersey, in the early years of the seventeenth century. The American branch of the Vermeule family sprang from John Cornelissen Vermeule, who was a prominent citizen of Vlissengen, in Zeeland, being a town officer and church elder. His son, Adrian Vermeule, was the American ancestor of the family, coming to this coun- try in 1699. He had no intention of settling here, but came out to visit friends, who were among the residents of the town of Harlem. It happened at that time that the Reformed Church of Harlem had fallen into difficulties, principally through disagreements between its members, and Adrian Vermeule, who was an educated man, was engaged temporarily to fill the position of town clerk and voorleser, or lecturer, that had just been vacated by John Tiebout. This opening led him to a decision to remain permanently in the Colony, and for eight years he served the town of Harlem and the Reformed Church acceptably. At the end of that time the people of Bergen, N. J., invited him to that village to become voorleser of their church.
After he had settled in Bergen, Adrian Vermeule married Christina Cadmus, descended from Thomas Fredericksen Cadmus and Andries Hopper, who were among the earliest Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam. Andries Hopper came to America in 1652, and acquired large real estate pos- sessions, principally upon Manhattan Island. His descendants of one branch of the family moved to New Jersey and became prominent in the early development of that Colony. Descendants of Thomas Fredericksen Cadmus also moved from New Amsterdam to New Jersey in the early part of the eighteenth century, and members of the family married with the Vermeules, Vreelands, Run- yons, Van Buskirks and others who were prominent in that Province.
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