Episode 30

Join us on this episode as we delve into the fascinating history of Sleepy Hollow and its connections to our family tree. We explore the research we've been conducting, discovering a surprising link to the Native American Sachem, Catoneras, as well as insights into Dutch settlers, the Headless Horseman. Our cousin, Robert Van Tassel, provides invaluable insights and anecdotes, making for an eye-opening and captivating discussion. We're off to explore Sleepy Hollow in person, so stay tuned for updates on our adventures.

Transcript

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Kim 0:02

Hello and welcome back to Chasing Hazel's Tales, a family history podcast presented to you by two registered nurses, all around family historians, and sisters. If you've got family history, we want to talk about it. I'm Kim

Laura 0:15

McLaughlin. And I'm Laura Ireland. We are still in Sleepy Hollow mode because we have a trip coming up. That's right. So we're just going to talk about a few more tidbits about that and we've been researching the family in Sleepy Hollow and it's been pretty fun and very fruitful. I've I've learned a lot and gone down a few rabbit holes. I don't know about you, Kim.

Kim 0:38

Yeah, many, too many. There's not enough time for all the rabbit holes that we have. Yeah,

Laura 0:44

probably break an ankle or something in some of those rabbit holes. But the history there is never ending, whether you are into family history or spooky folklore. You could spend your whole life researching that area. And,

Kim 0:57

and I, that's... The truth is we may never get her out of there. Yeah. I'm going to look for property while I'm there. Kim, come back to the light. No, no, I see my people. So, you know, we've discussed before that we discovered many Dutch names and very large families that are intermarried. And it might be good to mention here that this community is almost a very definition of endogamy, or at least the community that was there in the early 1600s, 1700s. So endogamy is a genealogy term and it refers to the custom of marrying only within the limits of a local community, clan, or tribe. And do you

Laura 1:40

think that might have been true in Like, not just here in our country, but probably around the world.

Kim 1:47

Right, historically, there are quite a few communities that you would call endogamous. And, let's see, I think I have a few. I don't like that word. It's not, it's not a very good word, but it, you know, it kind of takes away the sting of saying incest or something like that, because that's a I

Laura 2:03

mean, endogamy is. extended relatives.

Kim 2:09

Right, but they could be first cousins.

Laura 2:11

Oh,

Kim 2:12

I don't even want to hear that. Yeah, there are first cousins, but there are some groups which include, according to Wikipedia Jewish Polynesians. Low German Mennonites, Amish, Acadians, or Cajuns as they're called, French Canadians, and many people from Arab countries, and people from Newfoundland, they say but usually if you have an island group it's hard, families would have large families, eight, ten people. And it wouldn't be unusual for brothers and sisters to marry the brothers and sisters of other groups and of other families. I mean, it's almost hard to avoid.

Laura 2:48

And hard to find people that aren't related.

Kim 2:50

Right. And they also, they choose to do that sometimes just because of sometimes religion and they, people have the same customs and things and they prefer to be with their own group of people. But so anyway, we would certainly find that in. Sleepy Hollow, because once I started getting the tree back enough, I'm going, oh, oh, that one, those two brothers married, those two sisters, and now we have cousins that are marrying each other, and but it, you know, it doesn't have the same ring but it is called endogamy. So some of the names that we have that are from the Dutch group from the Westchester County. In New York are the Storm family, the Willems, or the Williams. We have the Van Tassels, the Orsers, which is from my husband's family, the Eckers, E C K E R, DeGroot, Van Cortenbush, and it goes on. Did I miss any that you can think of right off? Just the Van Waart. Oh, the Van Waart. Cause that's a, that's big in our family as well. Van Waart. So,

Laura 3:51

the biggest name that sticks out to me when you go through that list is the Van Tassel family. That catches most people's attention due to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving that was written in 1820 and of course over the weekend we had a really nice chat with Robert Van Tassel who lives in the area he's a very distant cousin. I'm sure he wouldn't even match on... No

Kim 4:18

no way. We wouldn't find him on a

Laura 4:20

DNA spectrum anywhere. Yeah, no, on Ancestry he wouldn't, we wouldn't even show up. No. But he's very knowledgeable about the family in Westchester County. He was, he can just zip those names right off. He can go all the way back all the way to the same, the area where... We have common ancestors in the 1700s, right? And

Kim 4:40

he could spout them off by memory. Right. Which I, which I cannot. Well, sometimes I can, but not this far back, but.

Laura 4:48

Yeah, and that's where our family lines do connect. At the Sergeant Isaac Van Tassel line. Yeah, that person was born in 1745, and the Van Tassel family was one of the earliest families to settle in New

Kim 5:05

York. Right. they have a very large family, still some family there, and it's really nice to talk to him, because there's a lot of history there.

5:15

Yeah,

Laura 5:15

stuff I never would have... No. I didn't even know we had Dutch... ancestry going back that far. I

Kim 5:22

kind of, and I also kind of thought it was from our German line, but it's not. It's from the other line. And so, yeah, there's a whole new world of information that I have yet to go through, but we have some pretty interesting tidbits today. But and so the Katrina Van Tassel, which is mentioned in Washington Irving's book we are going to be heading to that cemetery because The muse, if you want to call it that, for that character in his book was from the Van Tassel family, and from that area. So we're heading to that cemetery, and most historians will think that Eleanor Van Tassel was probably the real life embodiment of Katrina Van Tassel in the book.

6:05

Right,

Laura 6:05

because Washington Irving actually did stay with the Van Tassel family. Right. Sleepy Hollow, which I think at the time was even called North Tarrytown. Right. Like it didn't have. Right. Sleepy Hollow is really just an area. Right. Almost. So he lived there and he knew the Van Tassel family, and so he would probably draw from the, these. People, the knowledge of these people to make his

Kim 6:32

characters. He's also buried, Washington Irvin is also buried in Sleepy Hollow. So there's a character, Eleanor Van Tassel, and her aunt, Eleanor's aunt, is Katrina. Van Tassel. So those two people together, we think, are a combination, which is how he got that character. He used the name of one, but the embodiment of the other, because the, his description of the, of Katharina was more like Eleanor. So that's what historians think. You're making someone up. You just put two people together. But I want to check out Katharina's grave is in the old Dutch church. buried ground. Right, I wonder

Laura 7:12

how well you can see, you know, the inscriptions on the headstones. So I've looked on

Kim 7:18

Find a Grave, which is a website that all the graves are, put on there, and the pictures of her stone look pretty bad. it might be the quality of the photo. So for you and I, we have to go check it out ourselves is what we got to do. Yes, we will need to go and look. Yeah, not that we'll do anything to it, but you know, we want to but maybe, maybe people take care of it and repair it as time goes on. I don't know.

Laura 7:40

Right. So, as I was doing a little bit of research here, looking at the characters, it it just kind of makes you a little angry when they describe the Katrina Van Tassel character as, you know, she actually has no speaking, no voice in the story, no she's only described as a prize to be won in the, Typical, typical of like 19th century literature, I guess that she is a prize heifer, a prize heifer. Yeah, basically she's described, she's manipulative and spoiled and uses herself, her charms to manipulate. And just she's merely a prop, and her voice is only, she has no voice, she's only seen through the lens of the male characters. Right,

Kim 8:33

that want to win her over and win her father's estate.

Laura 8:38

Right, right, because of course she can't inherit it. Right, so

Kim 8:42

she has to get married and some man's gonna have to come and take care of that for her,

Laura 8:46

so yeah. So in today's world, it's kind of a rough... Thing to, to read, but you know, different, different time. But anyway, it'll be interesting to go and see all of that stuff. And and it was just a story, so I guess I'll get over it.

Kim 9:05

I'm not sure. It's sounding pretty rough right now. But it did

Laura 9:09

reflect the times. It used to be that way. Yes. And the other thing I found in researching it was that the The Van Tassels did have a connection to the actual headless horseman. The Yes. Do tell the, the, the Hessian, the, the person that they think the headless Horseman is kind of based on was a Hessian soldier. Mm-hmm. who did get his head blown off by Cannonball. Right. By a cannonball, yeah, and that soldier had previously helped out the Van Tassel family when there was a fire or something and they, he had taken the baby and wrapped it up and put it in a shed somewhere where there wasn't fire and actually saved the baby's life. And Cornelius and Elizabeth Van Tassel were very grateful to that Hessian soldier for saving their baby's life.

Kim 10:01

Right, so the Hessians were fighting for the British, right? Yes. And the Van Tassels loyalties were with the British, so they wouldn't have crossed paths. Right, probably. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. Good story. Weird little tidbit. Yep.

Laura 10:17

All right, so then also the Van Wart family are, in some places, it, I guess it's pronounced that way, but some places it's spelled Van Wert. Right. Two

Kim 10:26

E's. I think there's many iterations

Laura 10:29

of it. Oh, all these names were mangled. Yeah, many

Kim 10:32

times. We're gonna call it all

Laura 10:35

we got. Yep a big takeaway from our research is the fact that our six time great grandfather, Jacob Van Waart, owned one enslaved person, as noted in the 1790 census, and we discussed the heavy slave trade last week, and of course, one is one too many, and we did look on the entire sheet that this was on, and other families owned them as well, including more relatives. There was a David Storm, a Nicholas Storm, and the most any one family owned on that sheet was six. Most of them were one enslaved person per family, but just a comparison to see how common it was at the time, and it's just, it's a very sad finding.

Kim 11:19

Yeah you know, we watch, we watch finding your Finding your roots. That's our favorite thing. And the thing with Dr. Gates is he always tends to find some family that has, oh, did you know, you have a slave in your family or whatever. It's, it's all, there's a slave census or whatever. we never consider ourselves that way because we're here in Maine, way up in Maine. And I don't recall. If there were slaves, I've never heard of them. but...

Laura 11:47

Right, and you don't think, like, if you don't come from money... Right. And you think, how would your people have... Yep. Owned any slaves or anything, so, we didn't have

Kim 11:57

big farming... Right. You know, areas per se. Anyway so, it, you know, for me, I never even gave it a thought. I gave much a thought, so now all of a sudden it's like, well... You know, yep, we're in that group too. So pretend I'm Dr. Gates. I'm gonna say, yeah, how do you feel about that? What's it like knowing your family had slaves and like all of a sudden we're in that chair like, wow, we knew we

Laura 12:23

just like them. It's very sobering.

Kim 12:25

It's very sobering and yeah, so we were discussing, that last week, and so here we are, we, our family, several, several members of our family, and it was very common, like you said, during that time period to have that. So, one thing I wanted to mention for clarification from, so last week we did talk about the slave trade and how the Philipsburg Manor, which was right there in Sleepy Hollow was used as a port, the family was in the slave trade. So. They just said that it had a very large impact on slavery in American colonies. The Philipsburg Proclamation is when Sir Henry Clinton made this proclamation because he was staying at the Philipsburg Manor. He took it over during the Revolutionary War and he made a proclamation. And what I said last week was very confusing to me and to Laura because I had taken it out of context, I guess. And we confuse ourselves often because, you know, they use big words. And you know, so I had to stop and think about it and I looked it up, but so what basically the Phillipsburg Proclamation did, and Sir Henry Clinton ordered, so to speak, was that if there are any Negroes That are, that's what they called them in the proclamation was negroes. If there are any negroes that are fighting, what, if you're fighting for the patriots, then if we find you, we're going to sell you. But if you, if you escape and come to, come to the British side, we will set you free. We will give you your emancipation. That is what the Philipsburg Proclamation came down to. That makes more sense. So what they're trying to do is to get the Negroes to leave the Patriots so it would just reduce their forces and it would give the Negroes a reason to defect and to come to the other side. So that, now that makes more sense to me. Does that make

Laura 14:13

sense to you? It does. It does.

Kim 14:15

come to the british and we'll we'll set you free if we win yeah put that in parentheses if we win but anyway so you know that was what that was all about and that was happening right in the very area that our family was living and so they did have They did have slaves there. And so, did they fight for the British? I don't know. I bet there's research done on that somewhere. And so, and while I was doing all this online, next thing you know, I get a thing on, on my, on my phone, a ding. Oh, by the way, so FamilySearch. com, which is the Mormon website, I subscribe to that. And I have a family tree on that. They said, Hey, we've got a lot more revolutionary war records for you. Come see us. So they must have known I was researching stuff and said, come back. We've got more for you. So yeah, they know what I'm doing.

Laura 15:02

Well, good. Okay. So and we also have found we, I mean, we've really kind of discovered a lot this week, I would say all of this stuff with. New York has been very interesting and there's the connection to the Native American sachem catenares. I think I'm saying that right. I think you

Kim 15:21

are too. I think it's yeah. Yay!

Laura 15:24

Yay me! From Long Island, New York. She was born in the early 1600s and we got this lead from our conversation with Robert Van Tassel and had to follow up because of course where our ancestry with him meets in the 1700s and then. So then we have common ancestors before that, right? So she was the only daughter of the leader of the Montauk tribe, and she was held in very high esteem. And the role of sachem, which is loosely defined as chief, was often passed on by a deceased husband or father. And of course, the Native Americans were smart enough to pass that on to their daughters as well as their sons.

Kim 16:03

They, they honored, they honored their women. They, you know, they, they did. They were in an honor. I think they did. That's the sense I get. That's another research project all together. I'm going to roll with

Laura 16:14

it anyway, And it's thought that she obtained her sachem from

Kim 16:18

her father. And didn't, so our mother went to school in Old Town High School, and wasn't their yearbook called the sachem?

Laura 16:29

It was, because their mascot was the Indian. Right,

Kim 16:32

which it isn't anymore. Do

Laura 16:34

you recall, she told us that as a child she was insulted by her sisters? Right. Because she had skin that browned up really good in the summer. She had really dark skin. Yeah, she, she tanned so well, and they would call her Indian, and it was an insult at the time, unfortunately. At the time, yeah, and

Kim 16:55

relationships have not, relationships with natives have always been up and down, up and down, and at the time my mother was like, I'm not an Indian. You know. Yeah. It turns out she probably was. That's another story. Another

Laura 17:10

story, but yeah, at the time in the 1940s, early 50s or whatever it was it was considered an insult. And anyway, but

Kim 17:21

that's how they would, they would just

Laura 17:23

tease and right, like sisters do and siblings or whatever.

Kim 17:28

Yep. But anyway, let's get back to Catanaris from Long Island. So, for the most part back early 1600s, it was frowned upon for the Dutch settlers to mix with the natives. And they, and by saying frowned upon, that's putting it mildly. So scholars have found the horrible accounts of the treatment of the offspring of these relationships. So most times the children would be raised by the tribe because the Dutch had big problems taking in mixed race children. And it was probably pretty obvious if you think about it. If you think about Dutch, they were pretty light colored, I would think. And then, yeah, yeah. They did not take the mixed race children in. And there were accounts of Dutch soldiers killing their own children rather than raising them in shame. So, so for the most part the tribes would raise these children. So the, you know, the native ladies would become, with child, and they would raise their own children without. The Dutch help. Or, you know, and there was probably no marriages to begin with. So, and then so I did get this information from a website and it was from Stony Brook College, and it was called, yeah, so it's a really, Whitney almost went there. Is that right? Really great, really great website. And so I got, that's where I got a lot of this information. And so they did say, The norm when the Dutch and the Native Americans, they, they were in the same lands and they met and they mingled, but they didn't. Admit to it, put it that way. But there were exceptions, and one was talking. Yeah, that's right. So yeah, the Facebook stalked. Yeah. But there were exceptions. And this, this article went on to say that that was Catanaris, because she was the sachem of the Montauk tribe. And she was very well known. And so people would would know about her having relationship.

Laura 19:23

Okay. Yeah. So yes, she had the son with the Dutch settler, right, named Cornelius. Johnson, Van Texel, or Van Tassel, the son, Jan Cornelissen, yeah, I can mangle names all day long. He was raised in a Dutch household, but it does not appear that Katerinaris married Cornelius, nor is there any evidence that she lived with him in the Dutch settlement. Because right, she was buried on Indian land or Native American land.

Kim 19:56

Yup, in a, Native American Burial ground. Yeah. And I even found it on Findergrave. I don't know if there's a stone there. I don't feel like going to Long Island this weekend, but you know, I won't. You know, I don't feel like going this weekend, but that doesn't mean I don't want to our driver. But they do say that she is there but I'm not, and Robert Van Tassel this weekend said he wasn't sure if there was a stone there or not, but,

Laura 20:22

yeah, it, that, from that picture it's hard to tell that it looks like there are small stones, but you don't know if they're engraved or

Kim 20:30

their customs probably of having gravestones is probably totally different,

Laura 20:33

and these are different practices, right,

Kim 20:36

And so this is really just interesting because, for me, because everybody says they have a Native American princess in their tree. Everybody. You ask anybody, oh yeah, well, we had an Indian princess that, one of my grandmothers. And it might be true, but there's a bunch of scholars who say probably not, you didn't have a princess. But so, but the research that was done on this, and which is which is listed in this article, it, that I will put a, a link to. It seems pretty legit. what the article does say is the Van Tass So I can buy a

Laura 21:09

crown? Is that what you're saying?

Kim 21:11

Well, it's probably not a crown. It's probably something more like... a headdress of some sort. Oh, unless you're talking about the English crown. Well, yeah. So they, it's the Van Tassel family, they said, historically, who has spearheaded most of this research because it does involve their family, there is written documentation about these people and about, and you'd have to read the whole thing to get into it, but it makes me feel like this could be illegit. You know, inference that we probably do have catenaris on our family tree.

Laura 21:47

And is that in that Dutch society?

Kim 21:51

Nope, it would be.

Laura 21:53

Is it the Holland, what was that thing

Kim 21:55

called? It's called, well no, not the Holland Society, it would be the website that I just used was called, and there might be stuff on there called the, from the Holland Society that talks about this, but where I got my information was a website called the Long Island History Journal. Oh, so

Laura 22:11

that goes about as far back as American history goes. It does. You know, the written history. Right.

Kim 22:17

So they're saying that there's evidence that Catanaris left land that was hers on Long Island to her son, the Dutch son. I think she may have only had maybe one son. I'm not sure. But so, and they put a lot of this information to the academic test, and it seems possible. To me, it's more possible than General Johnny, put it that way. There

Laura 22:40

must be so many descendants. Yeah. I mean, this is from early 1600s.

Kim 22:45

Right, right. And can you imagine? I mean, all the Van Tassels. We're not even a band tassel. We descend from them, but I mean, Robert and all his cousins, and you

Laura 22:55

know, I mean, we are, but, but it was the female, you know what I mean?

Kim 23:00

Yeah, we married out. Yeah. So it's, it's. It was just an unexpected finding. And we thank Robert Van Tassel for, you know, he kind of had mentioned it before, but I just didn't put a lot of effort into it at the time because I was doing other things. But you know, so I'm wondering if Andrew is related then. I'm not sure. But I am certainly now going to go and Finish this line so that we can have and we can have her in our tree fully and with some documentation along the way. Right now, it's just a research line, but I want to put it out there that, you know, she was one of our grandmothers and guess how many grandmothers she is from us. Did I show you earlier?

Laura 23:44

You, you might have shown, I don't know, eight?

Kim 23:48

Ten. She's our tenth time great grandmother. Catanaris. I don't even have a long last name for her. I'm calling her Catanaris Montauk. I mean, she's from

Laura 23:58

Montauk. Well, did Native Americans have? I mean, they didn't have. I guess not. Their naming was different.

Kim 24:03

Right. So, that was

Laura 24:06

the biggest one. I'm still blown away by the fact that on mom's side, both Somebody drove the Mayflower and somebody was on Long Island in the

Kim 24:19

1600s. Between Native and Dutch. That's crazy. That only lends credence to our Ancestry. com DNA findings. So if you go and look for your roots, where our settlements were in the United States. Yes, our communities. They are right there. That, so that was our big finding in doing, just look, all we wanted to know was how the Headless Horseman was doing, or, you know, you know, or, I was, I was interested in Dirk Storm, you know, that kind of thing. And I got into the Van Tassels, and now it's it's just really quite interesting and digs you right in, right into the middle of the history of that whole area, between the slaves, between the Dutch, between the natives, between all of that, it is eye opening. Very eye opening. Yep. I'm not sure how we can top that, but we're going to try this weekend. Yes. We're showing up. Things are going to get real.

Laura 25:19

Going to walk around Sleepy Hollow. Do you know who I

Kim 25:22

am? Oh, I bet they do. Anyway, so, I mean, we so want to thank Robert, he was so, and he's not much into computer work as far as, you know, documenting it this way, but he's got it all up in his head and he can just spit it out. And he's so knowledgeable. And we, you know, we, we appreciate everything that he did for us this weekend and just giving us a chat and it was, it was fun.

Laura 25:52

Yep. We had a good

Kim 25:53

time chatting with him. So we're not going to be here next week because we got, we got things to do. We're not recording unless something really, really fun. And maybe we will next Monday night or something. But until then, you know, we'll let you know. And you'll be watching on social media because we'll put some...

Laura 26:11

Yeah, we'll probably put some little clips up or something. We'll put pictures and let you know what we're doing,

Kim 26:17

what we see. It's supposed to be a nice weekend. Especially

Laura 26:21

if we see a headless

Kim 26:23

horseman. I'm going to show you Laura running down the street, screaming.

Laura 26:27

With my foot in a

Kim 26:28

boot, running.

Laura 26:33

With my broken foot.

Kim 26:34

Laura, just so you know, Laura has a broken

Laura 26:36

foot. Yes, so I'll be

26:37

hobbling.

Kim 26:38

Yeah, she'll be helping. She, she's not running from any hood, the Headless Horseman. I will be, and you know, the fastest one wins. I'm gonna lose. That's right. I'm gonna lose. Okay.

Laura 26:49

All right. I'll sacrifice myself.

Kim 26:53

You darn tootin That's right.

Laura 26:56

Well, until next time, please rate, review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform, we also invite you to reach out to us by email at chasinghazelstales at gmail. com. Tell us your tales or share what you've learned or found interesting about your family. Let us know if you've shaken your family tree and had a few nuts fall out. But if you haven't seen any nuts fall out of the tree, you might just be the nut in your family. You can also follow us or contact us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. Until next time, bye bye. See

Kim 27:27

you later.