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by Roxy Triebel
treebz65@hotmail.com
Some of the following information originally came from my grandmother's book, "Tangled Roots and Twisted Branches" (published 1987). This book is known to contain some errors. If you have any corrections or additions, please contact me.
Much additional information and several family photographs have been very generously contributed by relatives.
I recently received the following email and was given permission to post it here. Freedom Plains is apparently just east of the city of Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County, New York.
I purchased a photo in a Vermont antique shop. The photo is 2" by 4" of a young child, and is labeled Albie O. Van Kleeck Freedom Plains Dutchess Co. NY. I would like to get the photo to a family member interested in genealogy.
Jenny Fritsch
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
[email protected]
Palentown Cemetery in Ulster County, New York with the Catskill Mountains in the distance. Several of this Van Kleeck line are buried here. These photos were taken in October 1990.
The above headshot photo of Jeremiah and Sally is a large tinted ferrotype (or "tintype") about 6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches. Since tintypes are positives and therefore mirror images, I flipped it digitally. I also brightened it up a little as the original is a bit murky.
The smaller photo of them on the left belongs to another descendant and is apparently the original photo from which the larger portrait was copied. There are better and more recent photos of the grave stones below at Find-A-Grave memorials 19653164 and 19653171.
Information about Jeremiah from "Tangled Roots and Twisted Branches":
OUR JEREMIAH VAN KLEECK, born 1805, paid $300 cash on 15 June 1847 for 25 acres more or less bound by tract formerly owned by Robert Beatty called "SUEBATTY LAND". This is the property where they lived in Samsonville at the foot of HIGH POINT Mountain. Jeremiah was a farmer and a blacksmith. The 1850 census lists him living in a log house [sic - this is the 1855 New York state census, not the 1850 national one]. He died 6 December 1885 and Sally died 1872, and both are buried in Palentown Cemetery in Samsonville.Jeremiah and Sally Van Kleeck had the following ten children: Jacob, William, Francis, Miriam, Rosetta, David, Jeremiah, Eliza Catherine, Uriah, and Sara Marie. I am descended from David Van Kleeck.Jeremiah Van Kleeck, near his 80th birthday, with wintergreen he had gathered, walked to Kingston and sold it at a drug store. That evening, he went to the Bijou Theater and won $10 dancing a jig in an amateur contest.
His grandson, Abram Van Kleeck, remembers that his grandpa, Jeremiah, cured Abram and his brother, Henry, of fighting - at least in Grandpa's presence. One day when the boys had been doing a lot of disagreeing, Grandpa went out and cut a switch. Whenever there was a lull in the arguments, Grandpa got his switch and made the boys go back at it, even though they wanted PEACE. After that, they were very careful not to have any arguments in Grandpa's hearing...
Irving R. Van Kleeck married second in 1950 to Anne Madeline Kelly (1918 - 1995). Their children are still living. Irving and his second wife are both buried in Saint Peters Cemetery in Kingston, New York.
A close friend of the family remembers Irving:
"�after the service he gave in WWII, Irving became a Golden Glove Boxer and he was very good. He would horse around with [Irving's son's name removed for privacy] and me ... and he would give us a little whack to the arm and as 15 year olders it felt like a horse kicked you. So much for the man who was a gifted Golden Glove Boxer. He was just a man made of Gold!"
According to "Tangled Roots and Twisted Branches": "some of this family removed to Amsterdam, New York when the Rifton carpet mills closed at Dashville".
Jeremiah "Jerry" Van Kleeck (1856 - 1936) married in 1885 to Stella or Estella Fredenburg (1868 - 1945). He moved his family to Lynn Haven, Bay County, Florida sometime in the early 1910s and ran a hardware store and draying business. He and his wife are both buried in Lynn Haven Cemetery, Lynn Haven, Bay County, Florida.
Aaron William Van Kleeck with his grandson Carl Francis Van Kleeck. Photo taken ca. 1930-1931 at the family home on the New Paltz to Kingston road (Ulster County, New York).
Left to right: Joseph August Van Kleeck, Carl Francis Van Kleeck, William Thomas Van Kleeck. Photo taken ca. 1930-1931 at the family home on the New Paltz to Kingston road (Ulster County, New York).
A cousin visited Andersonville National Historic Site in 2003 and took many photos. Click the photo of Francis' grave stone to see them. I hope to be able to visit someday myself.
Grandma's book, "Tangled Roots and Twisted Branches", says the following of Francis: "He enlisted 11 Feb 1864 in Civil War; served in 5th Art., wounded at Piedmont, taken prisoner, and died." (Andersonville death records say he was captured at Staunton, Virginia on June 12, 1864). Death date is given as September 15, 1864. He married Mary Elizabeth Merrihew and had the following three children:
All photos and pension documents related to David's Civil War service are now on his own page. Click his photo above to see his page.
A tintype tentatively identified as David Van Kleeck. It certainly looks like him, but is he the right age to be in a tintype? Then again, some photographers were shooting tintypes up into the 20th century.
Rachel's father Abram P. Osterhoudt/Osterhout (b. 1813 - listed as "Abraham Osterhoudt/Osterhout" in some documents. "Abram P. Osterhoudt" is from his daughter Isabel's baptism record.) Abram was married to Nancy Van Keuren and they lived in Sawkill, NY. Click the photo to see a larger image. For more information on this line, see my Osterhout page.
David and Rachel (Osterhout) Van Kleeck had five children:
Three family portraits (circa 1915, 1928 and 1933 - files are over 200k) of Abram and Bertha Van Kleeck with their children and grandchildren with labels added. Names of living individuals have been left off. One or two of the grandchildren depicted in the two later photos are now deceased, but I couldn't remember which ones, so I left the names off all the grandkids just to be on the safe side.
Individual sections for the children of Abram and Bertha Van Kleeck. I have several more photos of these people, which I will upload as I can get time. Abram and Bertha and most of their children resided in and around Kingston, Ulster Co., NY, but their son Freeman moved his family to Florida in the 1940s.
My grandmother remembers her father, Abram, and her older brothers Everett and Freeman working as laborers on the Gilboa Dam project. This photo may also be connected to Grandma's uncle Lester Personeus as he may have worked on that dam.
David Van Kleeck (1839 - 1902) and his second wife Adaline Van Leuven (1851 - 1928), daughter of Daniel Van Leuvan and Phebe/Phoebe Althiser/Altheiser. David and Adaline were married August 13, 1874 and had four children. Click the photo to see a larger image. There is a photo of Adaline with some of her family at the Samsonville farm in the family farm section at the bottom of this page. Adaline is buried in Palentown Cemetery in the same plot with David, his first wife, some children who died young, and David and Adaline's son George and his wife (see below).
Adaline had a daughter named Lilly May from before she married David. David legally adopted Lilly May and gave her his name. She died in childhood and is buried in Palentown Cemetery. Lilly May's name is listed under David's first wife Rachel on the family monument along with Rachel's children who died young (no dates put with any names on this face of the stone - see entry for David and first wife Rachel) and this has apparently caused some confusion.
Adaline must have been a good mother and grandmother to all the Van Kleeck kids as my grandmother had only good memories of her. The following were probably birthday photos. All appear to have been taken on the Van Kleeck family farm in Samsonville.
Adaline in 1921 |
Adaline in 1924. |
Adaline on August 22, 1925 |
A relative has generously submitted some photos of the Van Leuvan family (Adaline's mother and sisters).
Scan of a photocopy of some sort of pension-related questionnaire giving dates for both marriages and names and birthdates of his surviving children as of May 4, 1898. The marriages seem to have been filled out in reverse order on this form.
Jeremiah David, Phoebe, and Roena Van Kleeck as children.
Roena and Phoebe Van Kleeck in later life.
We are fairly sure that the man on the left is Roena (Van Kleeck) Barringer's husband Arthur Barringer (1874 - 1950). The man on the right is definitely Abram Van Kleeck (1871 - 1954, see above). We have two copies of this photo. One copy has written on the back, in Bertha (Barringer) Van Kleeck's handwriting:
"Uncle Arthur Barringer
Grandpa Van Kleeck"
Arthur Barringer was the brother of Julia (Barringer) Van Kleeck (1877-1963, see the Phoenicia photo in the Barringer section). They were second cousins of Bertha (Barringer) Van Kleeck (see above).
The other copy of this photo has written on the back in a different handwriting "Abram and Will Van Kleeck", but we know of no "Will" Van Kleecks in the right age range.
For more information and photos of Arthur and Roena's children, see my Barringer page.
Alfred and Phoebe at Mohonk Mountain House, where they may have both worked at the time. The photo had to be enlarged to allow their faces to be seen, so this is a large file (2.78 MB).
Phoebe (VK) Lawrence, her son Raymond, and Mystery Woman. Nobody seems to know the identity of the woman on the right side in this photo. Another relative remembers that Phoebe did have a close friend who might be the lady shown here, but does not remember her name.
Both were married, but their spouses may still survive, so I leave them off to protect their privacy.
George and Clara are buried in the Van Kleeck family plot in Palentown Cemetery. I find it interesting and unusual to see dates as late as 1978 and 1980 on a stone as old as 1874.
Jerry was also in the Civil War - Grandma's book says "20th Regt., Co. B". The book also says that they moved to the Black Hills of Dakota and later settled in Carey, Ohio. They had a daughter (possibly adopted). The photo in the center shows Jeremiah in his Civil War uniform. The photo on the right is a scan of a photocopy from my grandmother's book of Jeremiah with his wife Irene (seated on the right) and daughter, probably taken in Ohio. There is a better scan of an original of this photo at the LeViness web site mentioned above along with other photos of Jerry and Irene and members of Irene's family. Click the photos to see a larger image.
We have so far been able to find very little trace of this Jeremiah between the end of the Civil War and his burial in Pennsylvania other than a Civil War pension filed from Ohio in 1896 (which confirms that he was in the 20th NY State Militia - also known as the 80th NY Volunteer Infantry). Records of that unit indicate that he was one of the 90-day volunteers in 1861. According to these records, Jeremiah was in Company C.
UPDATE: A descendant of Jerry's sister Eliza (see below) remembers family stories of Etta (Merrihew) Gorsline (Eliza's daughter) remembering spending the summers with her Uncle Jerry on his riverboat on the St. Lawrence River. This is a great lead - I hope I can dig up more on this.
A descendant generously provides the family photo on the left (click photo for details) and the others in this section as well as the following information on her family: Eliza married first to Truman Merrihew (1842 - 1878), with whom she had six children.
Truman Merrihew (1842 - 1878) was in the 5th N.Y. Heavy Artillery during the Civil War - the same unit as Eliza's older brother Francis (see above). Truman eventually died of illness related to his war duty.
After Truman's death, Eliza married Lorenzo Conner (1846 - 1938).
My grandmother remembers:
I remember being very amused when in my early teens Eliza Catherine and her husband visited our house from Pennsylvania. She said she would be so happy to get back to Pennsylvania where they really knew how to fix mashed potatoes - called them "cream smashed potatoes" - but also noticed that she ate a full share of the type we had.Eliza Van Kleeck and Truman Merrihew had six children:
Etta Merrihew (also see the photo below) and her younger brother Jeremiah.
VAN KLEECK documents
Back to "Tangled Roots and Twisted Branches" Table of Contents
© 1987 by Dorothy E. Smith and 2001 by Roxy Triebel or the original contributor.
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