Joseph H. Durkee, a Shipwreck, and Noblesse américaine

S.S. La Bourgogne, accessed via Ancestry.ca

As we have seen, Mary Amelia Hart and her husband Harrison Durkee had four children, Richard P.H., Elizabeth A., Augustus White, and Joseph H. Among the sons, Richard was a lawyer, Augustus was a businessman and broker in the tradition of his father, and Joseph was a broker and a gentleman of leisure. Elizabeth married Jonathan Crane late in life, and as of yet I have found no indication that any of the Durkee children produced any offspring.

The youngest child, Joseph Hart Durkee, born January 20, 1862, is of interest to us for a few different reasons, including his love of travel, his collection of rare Indian and Roman coins, his death aboard the ill-fated S.S. La Bourgogne, and his intriguing wife, Alice. During his life, his travels seem to have taken him to places such as India and Europe. He and Alice, born Alida Lebourgeois, were living in Paris for several years before his death. According to a newspaper account, Alice was from a wealthy Louisiana family of Creole descent. On July 4, 1898 Joseph was returning to Paris to join Alice on the S.S. La Bourgogne when it collided with another ship in the fog. The initial impact was felt as slight by many of the passengers, but the ship took at most an hour to sink. Quite the opposite to the Titanic, none of the passengers in first class survived, possibly because they were reassured that all was well, and many who were not already sleeping did nothing to prepare themselves. One assumes that Joseph would have been travelling first class.

In his will he bequeathed his collection of rare Indian and Roman coins, worth twenty-five thousand dollars at the time, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can view some of the coins on the museum’s website. The rest of his estate seems to have gone to his wife Alice.

What is notable about her is that she claimed to be the author of several works, including the novels Noblesse américaine and Eve victorieuse, under the nom de plume, Pierre de Coulevain, and that she was made a member of the French Academy for writing them. Noblesse américaine is about the adventures of a New York heiress in France. Her wealth and beauty are the objects of desire for the local nobility whose families are in desperate need an influx of American cash. The novel was first published in French in Paris in 1898, the year of Joseph’s death. I am currently reading the English version, American Nobility, translated by an “Alys Hallard”, possibly another pseudonym. I must say that as a writer about America in the Gilded Age, Alice/Pierre is certainly no Henry James or Edith Wharton, but she certainly engages the reader. (The Portrait of a Lady by James has always been one of my favourite novels). De Coulevain’s writings have been attributed to a French woman, Helene Favre de Coulevain, but I would say that the novel seems to reveal a familiarity with society life in both New York and Paris, which would indicate that the author is intimately acquainted with both from both sides of the Atlantic, such as an American expatriate would be. I also strongly suspect that “Alys Hallard”, the translator, is Alice Durkee herself, as the the novel seems less a translation than an original work, particularly as the humour is so fresh and seems effortlessly integral to the text. I would have to read both the English and French versions in their entirety to be a better judge. So far, I have identified two specific clues that the writer was Alice, which I believe she deliberately placed there, and they are from the same sentence of the novel. On page 23, referring to the heroine she writes, "as she came of age on the 20th of January, she had taken her ticket on the Bourgogne, which set sail on the 25th". Here, she uses her husband Joseph's birthday, and the ship upon which he died.

Perhaps she wrote the original novel in French under a pen name and had it published in Paris because she did use people she knew as models, but her ego did not allow her to stay completely anonymous, hence the clues and newspaper claims. There was a reported meeting of Mrs. Durkee and Mlle. Favre, the other reputed writer of the novel, at a reception in Paris hosted by the Countess de Tobriand, "when the affair came to a crisis". Mlle. Favre supposedly expressed her outrage at Alice's claims of authorship. I believe this may well have been staged, if it happened at all, as a way for Alice to at once reveal herself as the author and also to maintain some doubt about it. It may have also led to the sale of more of her books.

I am finding American Nobility a joy to read from a family history perspective, especially in her descriptions of the personalities and mores of her turn of the century New Yorkers and how they are perceived abroad. One imagines that her writing may be informed by her acquaintance with Joseph and his family, and that some of the details are closely inspired by them. I wonder if the following passage, in which she describes one of the heroine’s suitors, also applies to Joseph in some way: “She had a secret preference for Frank Barnett. He was handsome, distinguished, and then he talked in an agreeable way. As he was wealthy, he had never been compelled to choose any profession and his long visits to Europe had added a certain refinement to his conversation and general education. For the last three years he had been Annie’s knight. He had kept her supplied with the rarest flowers and had always reserved the best place on his mail-coach and his yacht for her. For all this, he had been repaid, at least, by very sincere friendship. The idea that Frank might some day become her husband had often occurred to her and was not at all displeasing to her either”.

Alice remains a mystery. 

[Please see my next blogpost, Alice Alida Lebourgeois Jaquet Durkee Hardy-The Continued].

Mary Amelia Hart, Harrison Durkee, and Commodore Vanderbilt

Mary Amelia Hart, the eldest child of Betsey Amelia and Richard Philip Hart, was born  on November 17, 1816 in Troy, New York, ten months after her parents’ marriage, and when her mother was still just seventeen years old. She, like most of her sisters, attended Emma Hart Willard’s Troy Female Seminary, and her biography under her maiden name appears in Emma Willard and Her Pupils.  She was a student there from 1826 to 1831. She married Harrison Durkee on April 28, 1837 in New York City, and they had four children, Richard P.H., Elizabeth A., Augustus White,  and Joseph H.

Her father, Richard, was her husband Harrison’s mentor in business during his early years in Troy, which led to his becoming one of the earliest members of the New York Stock Exchange in the year of his marriage.  He also became the manager of the Howard Trust and Banking Company in Troy, which belonged to his wife’s grandfather, William Howard. The Durkees relocated to New York City in 1851 to allow Harrison to attend better to his business interests. Harrison apparently was an “intimate” of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, and an associate of his in business.  (One imagines that this means that a Hart woman was part of the Vanderbilt social circle of the time, which seems quite fitting when you think about it). Harrison was vice president of the Western Union Telegraph Company for many years, and was also the director of the Erie Railway.

There are several newspaper articles pertaining to the race horses he possessed, including the famous horse, Dictator. He apparently owned a tract of land near Flushing, Long Island, which he converted into a breeding farm. There is an article from the New York Herald, dated March 15, 1896, by Hamilton Busbey, an associate of Harrison’s, about Harrison’s horses, titled Trotters and Racers of Bygone Days. In it, he includes some remembrances of Durkee, including the following vignette:

He also writes regarding Durkee’s culinary pursuits:

And finally, a story from the end of his life:

Harrison Durkee died at his home at 714 Fifth Avenue, of nephritis and heart disease on August 4, 1886, at the age of seventy-four, his wife Mary Amelia having predeceased him two years earlier on  December 19, 1884. They are both buried in the Oakwood Cemetery at Troy, New York.

Betsey Amelia Hart: A "Solid Man" of Troy

Hart-Cluett House
CC-BY-SA-3.0/Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia

Betsey Amelia Howard, wife of Richard Philip Hart, was the daughter of William Howard, and granddaughter of Phebe Hart, who was the sister of Jeremiah and Philip Hart. As mentioned before, Betsey was born on December 9, 1798 in Dutchess County, and was the first cousin once removed of her husband. Her father, William Henry Howard, appears to have been even wealthier than her husband Richard. He was the president of the Union Bank in New York City in 1811 at its incorporation, and was either its trustee or president until 1840. He and his family seemed to have lived in Manhattan for many years until his death in 1845, two years after the death of Betsey’s husband, Richard. Betsey and Richard received the Hart mansion in Troy, New York, as a gift from from her father in 1827 to provide room for their burgeoning family.

Betsey was either an only child, or was a de facto only child, as her reported brothers moved away from New York. In 1845, Betsey was now the inheritor of two fortunes, that of her husband and that of her father. She must have been a wise manager of money, and a tycoon in her own right, as when she died in 1886 about forty years after her husband and father, she was reported as “the richest woman in America”, her estate valued somewhere between seven and ten million. This was all accomplished in nineteenth century America by a mother of fourteen children. She was named in in an article published in several newspapers in various parts of the country in 1865, as one of the “solid men of Troy” due to her high income. She was the only person mentioned from an original list of several individuals, likely because it was so unusual for a woman to be so wealthy, and because she was listed as a man.

I could find several  references to her generosity to charities and serving as their trustee, including educational institutions such as the Troy Female Seminary, Troy University, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and children’s charities such as the Troy Orphan Asylum, Young Men’s Association, and the Day Home.

Her husband had been instrumental in bringing the Troy Female Seminary to the city of Troy, a school which was the first in the country to provide women with the same quality of education given to men. Most of their daughters attended this school, operated by Emma Hart Willard, the famous nineteenth century educator. Emma’s school was visited twice by the Marquis de Lafayette during his 1824/1825 visit to the United States, two years before any of the Hart daughters were to attend. However, it is likely that members of the Hart family saw the aging general during his sojourn in their city as it was a grand event.

Betsey was still living in her mansion when she died on August 23, 1886. Her fortune was dispersed among her children and grandchildren, and seeded their prosperity for decades to come. Her white marble mansion, after being sold to the Cluett family, and having been in their hands for many years, became the home of the Rensselaer Historical Society, and still stands as a rare example of this type of architecture in the late Federal style. Betsey’s bedroom with its Duncan Phyfe furniture has been decorated to appear as it was when she lived there. It is definitely going to be on my itinerary for my next family history road trip to New York State.

Mayor Richard P. Hart and the 1837 St. Patrick's Day Riot of Troy, New York

Richard P. Hart
from History of Rensselaer County

Richard Philip Hart, the second child of Philip and Susannah (Akin) Hart was born in Hart's Village, Dutchess County, New York on February 11, 1780. He went to work for his brother-in-law, Jacob Merritt, husband of his sister Mary, in Troy, New York. From there, he became a business man in his own right, making a great deal of money selling supplies to the U.S. Army and Navy during the War of 1812. This was in the tradition of his father Philip supplying the blue cloth for the uniforms of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War.  Richard went on to amass a fortune in banking, railroad, real estate, and other industries. Interestingly, Richard P. (as he was always known), was elected to the New York State Assembly for the 1820 to 1821 session as the representative for Rensselaer County. His first cousin, and my three times great grandfather, Stephen Hart, was also elected to the New York State Assembly for the same term, but from Lewis County. This was the only term either man ever served in state government. As Richard benefited commercially from the construction of the Erie Canal, the terminus of which was close to Troy, I imagine that he was likely of the same party as the governor of New York State, Dewitt Clinton, the driving force behind the canal's construction. Richard's brothers Philip Hart Jr., Jacob Akin Hart, William Hart, and Isaac B. Hart, were also a part of the political and economic development of the City of Troy, but none to the extent of Richard.

Richard P. Hart first married Phebe Bloom on January 10, 1800, and had a daughter Phebe Bloom Hart, born in 1800, who died at the age of twelve. The mother passed away on May 9, 1801. He then married Delia Maria Dole on February 10, 1805, who died five months later of tuberculosis. His marital fortunes were to change when he married his first cousin once removed, Betsey Amelia Howard, on February 10, 1816, daughter of his first cousin William Howard and Rebecca French (White) Howard. (William was the son of Richard's aunt Phebe Hart Howard). Betsey was born December 9, 1798 in Dutchess County. They had fourteen children: Mary Amelia, Harriette Howard, Phebe Bloom, William Howard, Elizabeth H., Jane Rebecca, Richard, Joseph Moss, Susan, Caroline, Julia Ann, Frances, Sarah Wool, and Austin Spencer.

Richard and Amelia lived in a mansion in the city of Troy, which was built for them in 1827 as a wedding gift from her father to the couple. It still stands today, referred to as the Hart-Cluett House, and is the home of the Rensselaer County Historical Society and museum.

Richard was the mayor of the city of Troy from 1836 to 1838. In 1837 he helped quell the St. Patrick’s Day Riot in that city, which had started with a group of men hanging St. Patrick in effigy to insult the local Irish people. He went to the scene of the riot and ordered the crowd to disperse. He later ordered in the Citizens’ Corps, the local militia. Their entry into the fray “caused the participants to retire without compulsion”. One newspaper account described how the “Mayor and Recorder” “acted with great decision—were personally in the midst of the disturbances—and in several instances seized and handed over to the watchmen with their own hands, those who were turbulent, insolent or riotage”.

Richard was also a patron of the arts and sciences in the city of Troy. He was a founding trustee of both the Troy Polytechnic Institute, the Troy Female Seminary, and the Troy Lyceum of Natural History. He was also a lover of literature and attending many lectures. His charitable interests also included the Troy Orphan Asylum.

While Betsey and the children were travelling in Europe, Richard was the victim of a terrible accident. He had been home with a bad cold, and was taking a “vapor bath”, when apparently the curtain around the bath caught on fire. A newspaper story states that a servant threw some liquid on him, thinking it was water, which turned out to be alcohol. He died related to his burns on December 27, 1843.

Philip Hart and George Washington's Blue Coats

Philip Hart portrait from the Millbrook Round Table Apr 18, 1902
Accessed via Fulton Postcards

Sometimes when I investigate the siblings of people on my direct lines I find information which helps illuminate the lives of my ancestors, and sometimes I also find fascinating stories about the sibling him or herself. This is certainly the case with Philip Hart, my fourth great grand uncle, and the brother of my four times great grandfather Jeremiah Hart, one of my five Revolutionary War ancestors.

Philip was the youngest of Richard and Mary (nee Taber) Hart’s ten children, born three years after Jeremiah, on January 12, 1749 in Little Compton, Rhode Island. Philip and his brother Jeremiah left Little Compton in about 1769 for Dutchess County, New York, in an area which was to be called “Hart’s Village” after their family. Their brothers John and Richard had moved there about fourteen years earlier, and possibly also his sister Phebe. Philip, Jeremiah and Richard were to own land in common there. Jeremiah left there permanently for Stillwater, Saratoga, New York in about 1775, and Richard likely moved to Orange County, New York. In 1786 and later Philip bought out his stepmother’s and brothers’ portions of the family farm.

Philip also appropriated the grist mill originally established by his older brother John, and possibly also Richard. (I am thinking that they may have learned about operating grist mills through working at the grist mill established by their kinsman Philip Taber in Adamsville, Little Compton, which my sister and I visited this summer. See my blogpost, Grist for the Mill: Harts and Tabers in Little Compton, Rhode Island). It is stated that John and his son John were loyal to the Crown during the Revolutionary War, and finding records about them is challenging. It is said that other members of the Hart extended family also moved to the Hart’s Village area, and I am working on discovering who they all were.

Philip was a young unmarried man when he came to Dutchess County, and likely also a Quaker. There is a story that Philip, at the age of twenty-five, fell in love with Susannah Akin, born November 7, 1759, a woman ten years his junior, but that her parents forbade their marriage, ostensibly due to the age difference. On December 18, 1774 the couple eloped on horseback to the next town while the rest of her family were attending a Quaker meeting or sleeping, and were married by a magistrate. It looks as though they were taking quite a risk of being shunned by the church by doing so.  It seems that Philip adored his wife his whole life, referring to her in his will as “my beloved bosom friend Susanna, the wife of my youth and constant companion of every waking hour”.

It appears that Philip was already prospering when he married Susannah, and had in addition to the grist mill a fulling mill, where wool was processed and made into cloth. Family lore is that Philip was a solider in the Revolutionary War, despite his Quaker roots, and there is evidence that he was a private in the Sixth Regiment. The story is that George Washington and his army came through the Hart’s Village area at one time, and that the village of Washington in the area was named after him because of this. Apparently, he “furloughed” Philip so that he could produce blue wool cloth for the uniforms of the officers of the Continental Army. Washington apparently also gave him permission to utilize the labour of prisoners of war to do this work. This all suggests that Washington and Philip could have met and conversed. Further evidence that Philip was a solider in the war is that he apparently was granted bounty land after the war, which was normally reserved for soldiers.

Philip went on to acquire large real estate holdings, and it is said that there were few deeds written in the area in his lifetime which did not have his name on them. At one point, after the war, he was able to acquire a great deal of land at bargain prices. There is a story that he bought a parcel of two hundred acres from a man for the price of “a suit of clothes”. His wealth increased when prices later rose. With real estate, farming, and his grist and fulling mill businesses, he was a well-to-do man. He built a house for his family, which still stands. It is said that his wife Susannah allowed him to be as decorative as he liked with the outside as long as the inside remained plain, reflecting her Quaker values.

Philip and Susannah had twelve children, eleven of whom lived to adulthood. They were: Mary, Richard Philip, Catherine, Philip, Jacob Akin, Benjamin Akin, William, Phebe, Susannah, William, Eliza and Isaac. His son Richard Philip Hart became immensely wealthy in his own right, and I hope to write about him next. Philip’s daughter Catherine married Dr. Alfred Tredway, and they lived in a house built for them next door to Philip’s. This house also still stands. In fact, it is currently an inn where you can stay. (See: Millbrook Country House). Philip’s House, as previously mentioned, still stands, and is still occupied. (See: The Philip Hart House-Sleeping Porch).

Philip was described as an “energetic business man” “who took a very active part in the church and town business”. He was also depicted as a “liberal and broad minded man”, and was known for his “hospitality to strangers”. It was said that he was of a “kind and genial nature, and always pleased to do an act of kindness for a friend”.

Susannah died at the age of sixty-nine on the 30^th of September, 1829 at Hart’s Village, and Philip passed away on August 31, 1837, also at Hart’s Village. They were both buried in the Friends Cemetery.

My Blogging Experience to Date

I have been taking a course through the National Institute for Genealogical Studies (http://www.genealogicalstudies.com/), called Google for the Wise Genealogist. I just posted my assignment for the section on blogging, and I thought I would share it with you in a modified form as it describes my experience with this blog to date:

I do have my own blog, “My Descent into Descent”, which I started last November. It is by far one of the best things I have done to enhance my family history experience, and that of others, since I began this journey. The purpose of my blog mainly is to tell stories from all over my family tree which may be of interest to other people, and which may help me to connect with others who may have more information. I find that most people are not so much interested in looking at a family tree, but they do like the stories, especially when they seem to bring their ancestors to life in some way. The narratives I have done have helped me to sharpen up the research I am doing and to find more data along the way. I have received much more interest in this blog than I initially expected, and have connected with some of the distant family members I was hoping to find. My blog led me to visit some not-so-distant cousins this summer, and they showed me photos and other items from our shared heritage. We all felt that we had known each other for a long time. Amazing. When I started, I blogged almost every day, but that has trailed off in recent months. It is my love and my passion, so I hope to blog more frequently in future. I started out more methodically, but now I mostly go with my current inspirations. I have already accomplished my original goal of getting out all the family history stories of my ancestors who came to Canada, including all the family lore I had been told over the years. I have many ideas for more blogposts. This summer, I blogged from the road using my iPad during a family history road trip to New England. Taking this course has inspired me to blog more, and to try new things with my blog, such as embedding videos from YouTube, adding more widgets,  adding screenshots of parts of my tree from Ancestry (website and app), and posting an image of my spreadsheet from the last module! I highly recommend blogging, as you can tell. If anyone is wondering how to do it, I learned step by step from Lisa Louise Cooke’s “Family History Made Easy” podcast on iTunes, and her YouTube videos, which truly made the process “easy”.

Monk Family Baptism Records From St. Johnsville, Montgomery County, New York

I recently created a spreadsheet based on the book, Records of the Dutch Reformed Church: St. John's Church in the Town of St. Johnsville, Montgomery County, N.Y., which I found on Ancestry a while back. These are the baptisms of members of the Monk family which I was able to find in its pages. (I believe there may be more, so I will update you if I find them).The data in this book allowed me to make more sense of the lives of my three times great grandfather, Jacob Monk and his family, (i.e. the Jacob Monk born in around 1781 in German Flatts, Herkimer, New York, and not his son Jacob, who was born in 1814 in Minden, Montgomery, New York). Specifically, it helped me to realize that Jacob was not the "John Monk" or "Johannes Monk" who appeared in some records. The baptism records of the Dutch Reformed Church made it clear that Jacob and John were two separate people, and I am leaning toward them being brothers. These baptism records show them being sponsors at the baptisms of each other's children on the same day. I have decided to attach the spreadsheet I made in the hopes that it will help others with their research. I apologize for the small size of the chart, as the next size up would have been too big for, the space. If you click on, it will enlarge for you.