Wynkoop, which used to be also Wynckoop, Winckoop, Winkoop, Wincop and Wincob, is supposed to be a contraction of wyn-kooper, a wine buyer or vintner. Little is known of the family before it left Holland for America. It had emigrated to England, and also to Java. There is a bay on the southern shore of that island, near the eastern end, named Wynkoop bay; but there is a tradition in Java and in Holland that the family of Wynkoops who went to Java and for whom the bay was named, eventually returned to Holland.

    A private record in Amsterdam states that two men, Peter and Cornelius Wynkoop, left Holland for New Amsterdam early in the seventeenth century. And the same two names are met with early in the history of Albany, the former in 1639 and the latter in 1655. It is not known what relation these two men bore each other; they may have been brothers. Peter is lost track of after a few years; either he died young, or else returned to Holland. Cornelius remained and established the family in this country.

    Cornelius Wynkoop, who was born in Holland, is first mentioned at Albany in 1655. He married Maria Janze Langedyk, and between 1664 and 1667 moved his family to Esopus, now part of Kingston, New York. He had already a grant of some 26 acres of land there. From 1669 to 1671 he was commissary of Kingston, and held some other positions in the government of the place. In 1675 he began to manufacture brick; but he died the following year. His wife outlived him only ten or twelve months.

    Cornelius and Maria left seven children. Johannes, the oldest, was bound to a blacksmith to learn the trade. Later he became a magistrate of the town court of Kingston, and 1712 he was made president of the court of magistrates. He married twice and left many children. His sister Maria, named for her mother, married Moses Du Puis and had 11 children. The four whose marriages are recorded all married into the Schoonmaker family; the three sons marrying Margried, Elizabeth and Sara, and the daughter marrying Benjamin Schoonmaker. Benjamin Wynkoop, another son of Cornelius, had a slave named London, a Spanish Indian, who was indicted in 1741, with others, for conspiring to burn the city of New York.

    The Wynkoop family distinguished itself in the Revolution.

    Another of Cornelius' great-great-grandsons was Captain Jacobus, who served with distinction in the battle of Ticonderoga. Still another was Maj. William Wynkoop. He served through the war, especially distinguishing himself in the battle of Stillwater. In 1783 he took his family with him and settled in Pennsylvania. From Esopus, where they had lived, the family went by wagon through the wilderness. Then they went by flatboat more than 100 miles up the north branch of the Susquehanna to Tioga Point, now Athens, where they met with 2,000 Indians making a treaty with the white settlers. From there they took canoes up the Chemung, and settled at the place of the same name in Pennsylvania. They were in the midst of a wilderness; but fortunately the Indians were friendly and game was plentiful, so they were comfortable. When their wheat was ready to make into flour they would load it into canoes and go down the river to Wilkesbarre, more than 100 miles away; so the year after they settled there, Maj. William Wynkoop built a mill; and after that the settlers from miles away used to come to grind their wheat.

    Now the family spreads pretty well over the whole country, and, as some of its members say, there is no member of whom the others need be ashamed. It seems to be the thing, if you are a Wynkoop, to be happy. On some of the old family plate is engraved this motto: Virtutem Hilaritate Colere, which translated is: Cultivate Virtue with Cheerfulness.

    The arms are blazoned: in first and fourth quarters azure a rock argent projecting from a sea argent, two five pointed stars in the first and fourth quarters, in the second and third quarters azure a lion argent with a crown or.

Source:

Spruance Library
Bucks County Historical Society
84 South Pine Street
Doylestown, PA 18901

Collection of the Joseph Henry Beatty Family
MSS 445
Folder 3

    This newspaper article is undated and unsourced, although it is probably from a Bucks County, Pennsylvania newspaper from the early 1900s, considering its age and the emphasis placed on Maj. William Wynkoop.