The Last Hicks, Death of the Widow of Rear Admiral Stringham.
The Last Hicks,
Death of the Widow of
Rear Admiral Stringham.

THE LAST HICKS.

Death of the Widow of Rear Admiral Stringham--A Leaf from the Ancient History of Brooklyn--The Deceased Lived to a Ripe Old Age, Like Many of Her Family.

    STRINGHAM--At Morristown, N. J., Thursday, October 18, HENRIETTA HICKS, wife of the late Rear Admiral S. H. Stringham, U. S. N.
    Funeral services will be held at the residence of her son in law, William M. Richards, 131 Hicks St. Brooklyn Heights, Saturday, October 20, at 2 o'clock. Relatives and friends are invited to attend.

    The lady whose death is announced above is the last of the famous Hicks family, who were among the very oldest of Brooklyn's settlers. Her father was Jacob Hicks and her early days were spent in the old Hicks homestead, a stone farm house which stood in the fields not far from what is now the junction of Hicks and Fulton streets. Jacob Hick's father, whose name also was Jacob Hicks, is thus described in Stiles's History of Kings County:
    "Wood" Hicks as he was called, the better to distinguish him from several others of the same name, was a clever, jolly old man, with a horse laugh that might be heard a mile off, always carrying a cane in his hand, the measuring stick with which he measured his stock in trade. He had two children, Charles and John M., who inherited the ample fortune which their father's industry had secured.
    The writer of the above evidently makes a mistake as to the names of the sons of old Jacob Hicks. Mrs. Stringham's father was Jacob M. Hicks, who married a Miss Wynkoop. His brother was John M. Hicks.
    This Jacob Hicks, the lumber dealer, married a Middagh, and at the close of the Revolutionary War his property covered most of the ground now called the Heights. This is what Stiles says of the matter:
    Across the then narrow mouth of Hicks street (near its junction with Fulton), was an ancient, roomy, low roofed house of stone, roughly plastered over and shaded by two immense willow trees. This was the Hicks mansion, in which resided the brothers John M. and Jacob M. Hicks, who had inherited, through their mother, a fine portion of the original Middagh estate. Exempted by the possession of ample means from the necessity of engaging in business or active labor, they passed their lives in a quiet, leisurely manner which gained for them, from their less fortunate neighbors, the appellation (distinguishing them from others of the same name in the village) of "the gentlemen Hicks." John M. (known as "Milk" Hicks, from the fact that he sold milk) resided in the small frame house, still standing on the southwest corner of Hicks and Doughty streets. Jacob M. (generally called "spitter" Hicks, from the habit he had of constantly expectorating), resided in the old mansion above referred to, which was leveled when Hicks street was finally opened to Fulton street. The Hicks estate comprised most of Clover Hill, as the Heights were then called. Some years before the incorporation of the village, and in consequence of a dispute between the Hickses and their neighbor Aert Middagh as to the boundary line between their respective properties, the two estates were surveyed by Mr. Jeremiah Lott, of Flatbush, then the leading if not the only surveyor in Kings County. * * * At first the Hickses poohpoohed Mr. H. B. Pierrepont's visionary plan of laying out the streets on the Heights, but when in due course of time they saw the superior class of purchasers which his property secured and the many advantages it presented they appreciated his foresight and were candid enough to say so. Moreover they abandoned the old stone house which they had so long occupied, and moving up Hicks street, near Clark, built three handsome houses for themselves on the line of their old estate, and where they could enjoy the pleasanter surroundings due to their Yankee neighbor's wider streets. Tradition says that the whole of this hill between Poplar, Hicks, Furman and Orange streets was used during the Revolutionary War as a burying ground for British soldiers and sailors, and was thickly covered with graves which were all leveled off when the Hickses took possession at the close of the war.
    Jacob M. Hicks, Jr., son of the lumber dealer, married a Miss Wynkoop in the year 1796 and had three children. His brother, John M., died without issue. The three children of Jacob M. were Edwin, Henrietta and Edwina. Edwin and Edwina are long since dead, and Henrietta, the subject of this sketch, died at Morristown, N. J., at the age of 83, yesterday. The Hickses were long lived. Jacob M. lived to the age of 93, and his wife was 84 when she died.
    In 1820 Henrietta Hicks married young Naval Lieutenant Stringham, who had won his spurs as a little midshipman fighting against the British on the great lakes in the War of 1812. The marriage took place in the old stone farm cottage, near Fulton Ferry, and all the notables of Brooklyn Village attended it. Shortly afterward, in their desire to live up to their circumstances, the wealthy young couple, into whose hands the property of the Hicks family had passed, built a handsome frame house and laid out fine lawns and gardens about it. That house, which the deceased always spoke of as her "home," now stands at the corner of Pineappple and Hicks streets. It is a grocery store at present. Admiral Stringham, then a captain, took part in transporting troops to the scene of war during the embroglio with Mexico, and in 1861. When the war with the South broke out he was commodore in command of the flagship Minnesota in first naval engagement with the rebels when the land and sea forces of the Union attacked the Southern defenders of Fort Hatteras and gained a complete victory, the rebel commodore surrendering his sword to Commodore Stringham. After this engagement the Government at Washington, casting about for men upon whom it could depend and hardly knowing whom to trust, felt greatly relieved when it hit upon Stringham to take for the time being the office of Secretary of the Navy. He straightened matters out in his department at the capital and earned the gratitude of Lincoln by his energy and zeal. Afterward he resumed active service. He came out of the war a rear admiral, covered with distinction.
    The Stringhams went to live then in the fine new stone mansion they had built at the corner of Hicks and Clark streets. They lived there till the death of the old rear admiral, about thirteen years ago. His widow then leased the mansion to the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and it is known to all Brooklynites as the house in which he died. She herself went to live with her eldest daughter, Mrs. W. M. Richards, of 131 Hicks street, in another fine old stone mansion nearly opposite the Beecher residence.
    Miss Richards, a grown up granddaughter of the last of the Hickses, said to-day: "Our family history was never written, but I have heard grandmamma say that there were five generations of the Hicks family in this country before her. Her father, Jacob Hicks, was wealthy and lived on his means. All the Hicks family estates had passed into his hands, and by his father's marriage with a Middagh a portion of the Middagh property was added. Henrietta Stringham, my grandmother, had a brother Edwin, who married and died without children, and a sister Edwina who left one child. The Hickses originally came from England. It must have been early in the Seventeenth Century they crossed over."
    The last of the Hickses lived in full possession of all her faculties up to the time of her death. She was of a very sunny, hopeful, cheery disposition and no one ever heard her complain. She had passed out of view as a personage in Brooklyn society fully twenty years ago and was only known in a few of the oldest families, but those who knew her well speak lovingly of her memory. The only public place in which she could be seen of late years was the old Presbyterian Church in Henry street, of which the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Hall is the pastor. She was the oldest member and communicant of that church. Dr. Hall will conduct the funeral services at the house of her daughter, Mrs. Richards, and the interment will take place in the family plot in Greenwood. The body will be brought on from Morristown this afternoon. The deceased had four daughters, three of whom are Mrs. W. M. Richards, Mrs. B. W. Howe and Mrs. Commodore J. B. Creighton. After the death of Mrs. Creighton the widower married her younger sister, so that two of the daughters possessed the name of Mrs. J. B. Creighton. She leaves fourteen grandchildren and sixteen great-grandchildren.


Source:

Unknown, "The Last Hicks, Death of the Widow of Rear Admiral Stringham," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn, Saturday, 20 October 1888, p. 6.


Notes:

    The "Miss Wynkoop" mentioned in the sketch above is Elizabeth Wynkoop, daughter of Captain Cornelius C. Wynkoop and Maria Catharina Roel.

    Richard Wynkoop, in the 1904 edition of the Wynkoop Genealogy in the United States of America, has this to say about her family on pages 39-41:

    65. Cornelius C. Wynkoop, Captain, (Cornelius 9, Maj. Johannes 2, Cornelius 1,) was baptized in Kingston, N. Y., November 5, 1732: died August 6, 1796. He married, April 24, 1760, Maria Catharina Roel, daughter of Gustav Martin and Maria Margaretha (Bimper) Roel. In New York Marriages, 1860, their marriage bond is indexed, April 17, 1760, with a reference to book iii., p. 112, and her name is spelled Ruehle. These bonds were given when the Secretary of the province of New York issued licenses, and the two were a substitute for the ban, or giving of notice.
    Cornelius was admitted a freeman of the city of New York, in 1770, and was described as a shop-keeper. He left New York when the British took possession of that place. He appears as Cornelius C. Wynkoop, Captain of the First Company, S. E. District of Marbletown Township, in the Third Regiment of Ulster County, with Col. Levi Pawling, Lieut.-Col. Jacob Hoornbeck, and Majors Johannis Cantine and Joseph Hasbrouck. He was commissioned, March 20, 1779, as Assistant Commissary of Issues, in the Northern Department, under the signature of James Gray, Deputy Commissary General, Albany. The commission was addressed to him as Cornelius Wynkoop, Esq., and recited that it was granted by virtue of power and authority invested [in him, Gray] by the Congress of the Thirteen United States of North America, subject to directions from time to time, from this or a future Congress, or Committee of Congress, from the Commander-in-Chief, for the time being, from the Commissary General of Issues, or from the Deputy Commissary of Issues for the Northern Department, according to the rules and discipline of war.
    His wife's mother, "Marytje Roel," married 2d, March 18, 1743, Dutch church, N. Y., George Petterson. The will of George Petterson, of the city of New York, sugar baker, dated September 12, 1764, mentions his wife Mary, and her two daughters, Maria Catharine, wife of Cornelius C. Wynkoop, and Sabrina, wife of Nicholas De Ronda.
    The children of Cornelius C. were baptized in New York City.
    Children of Cornelius C. and Maria C. Wynkoop:
205. John C.: bp. Jan. 21, 1761: m. Lydia Silvester.
206. Maria: bp. July 4, 1762: m. Henry Stanton.
207. Catharine: bp. Nov. 20, 1763: m. Jonathan Hasbrouck.
208. George Pieterson: bp. July 17, 1765: d. in infancy. It is said that he was named after a physician of Montgomery, N. Y.: but see George Petterson, above.
209. Anna Sabina: bp. July 13, 1766: m. Henry H. Schoonmaker.
210. Elizabeth: bp. Dec. 3, 1769: m. Jacob Hicks.
211. Cornelius C.: bp. May 24, 1772: died in 1808, unmarried. He was an attorney at law, and was so described in a deed to him, in 1795, and in a deed by him, in 1796. He is mentioned in the Introduction, in relation to a book-plate.
212. Henrietta: bp. Mch. 23, 1775: d. in 1860: m. Dr. Henry Van Solingen.
213. Augustus: b. Sept. 10, 1777: m. Anne Maria Silvester.

    Chris

Created March 2, 2004; Revised March 2, 2004
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