My new book, a historical novel/family saga, LAND SO FAIR, is set in Bergen County in the 18th century. I am posting the FOREWORD here, which describes how LAND SO FAIR came about and the sources I used to write it. It can be ordered thru local bookstores or on line at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (Sorry, the formatting and enhancements did not come thru!)
Foreword
Land So Fair is an outgrowth of my historical poem A Catch of Grandmothers (2004), which in turn is based on my book A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 (1991), a history of the first five generations of the Haring Family in New York and New Jersey.
The novel is a hybrid of fiction and fact, but the basic biographical details about the characters are accurate (with some exceptions necessary for the action), and the historical details come from the same sources and public records that inform both A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies and A Catch of Grandmothers. Likewise, although the details have been rinsed in the river of imagination, the land disputes are based on published historical records, as are the church troubles, slavery, the material culture, particular historical persons, and the Revolution and its run-up and aftermath.
I have taken certain liberties with the historical record. The French army did not march through Tappan on its way to Yorktown. I have, and without calling attention to it, occasionally put the recorded words of one public figure in another figure’s mouth. (It was not Major Clough who made the remark about petticoats, but Governor William Livingston.) I have often appropriated statements of a public figure for a character to utter. Here and there, I altered the chronology of actual events to suit the narrative. I have telescoped events, and I have changed the birth dates of Margrietie Cosyns and her second husband Jan Pietersen Haring in order to allow four generations to interact with each other over the time span of the action, 1737-1800. Their actual birth dates are given on page ix. hey had three daughters together, in addition to their four sons. The cause of Haring's death and those of his three partners remains a mystery.
I have indulged in pure invention. Caesar is fictional, but his experiences in 1741 at the time of the “great slave conspiracy” are those of the documented Caesar. The feelings of Margaret Blauvelt for George Washington are imagined. If she ever saw him, or he her, there is no record, but it is not credible that she would not have been in the crowds that came out to see him on those four highly charged occasions when he was in Tappan. I have entirely imagined that she was in his presence on another occasion (on Broadway, in New York City, as he was en route to Boston in June of 1775).
And, of course, I have imagined everything to do with the characters’ daily lives and thoughts. The public record reveals only the bare bones of their existences: the dates of their baptisms, marriages, childbirths, deaths, the property they owned, the houses where they lived, the household goods and possessions inventoried at their deaths, and the times in which they lived. Secondary sources fill out and interpret the historical and cultural context of those times. All else is invention.
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Those secondary sources were vital to the telling of the story. Particular works that I consulted are, for the land disputes, George H. Budke, “The History of the Tappan Patent,” George H. Budke, “The Controversy Between the Proprietors of the Tappan Patent and McEvers and Symes,” and Rev. David D. Cole, History of Rockland County, New York.
For slavery and the “Great Negro Plot” in colonial New York, the following works were essential reading: Thomas J. Davis, A Rumor of Revolt, Graham Russell Hodges, Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863, Graham Russell Hodges, Slavery and Freedom in the Rural North, Daniel Horsmanden, The New-York Conspiracy, or A History of the Negro Plot with the Journal of the Proceedings Against the Conspirators at New-York in the Years 1741-2, in the Detection of the Conspiracy, Edgar J. McManus, A History of Negro Slavery in New York, and for Pinkster, A. J. William-Myers, “Pinkster Carnival,” in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, and Shane White, “Pinkster in Albany, 1803: A Contemporary Description,” in New York History. Jill Lapore’s New York Burning was published in 2005 after I had finished the first draft of the manuscript, but I read it with great interest to confirm that I had “gotten it right.” She certainly did.
For the church troubles, I consulted The Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York, particularly volume IV, Rev. David D. Cole, History of the Reformed Church of Tappan, 1694-1894, and Adrian C. Leiby, The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley: The Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground, 1775-1783.
For the Revolution, these works were central: George Athan Billias, ed., George Washington’s Generals, George H. Budke, Rockland Record, American Revolution, James Thomas Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy: Benedict Arnold and John Andre, David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing, Larry R. Gerlach, ed., New Jersey in the American Revolution, 1763-1783: A Documentary History, Adrian C. Leiby, The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley: The Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground, 1775-1783, Craig Mitchell, “Bergen Summer 1779, The Enterprise Against Paulus Hook,” Barbara J. Mitnick, ed., New Jersey in the American Revolution, Frank Moore, A Diary of the American Revolution, New-York Historical Society, Narratives of the Revolution in New York, Kevin Phillips, The Cousins’ War: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America, Barnet Schechter, The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution, and John Evangelist Walsh, The Execution of Major Andre.
For George Washington, I consulted Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency George Washington, James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man, John P. Kaminski and Jill Adair McCaughan, A Great and Good Man, George Washington in the Eyes of His Contemporaries, Isabelle K. Savell, Wine and Bitters, and the works cited above for the Revolution.
For social background and material culture, I turned to Donna R. Barnes and Jane ten Brink Goldsmith, Street Scenes: Leonard Bramer’s Drawings of 17th-Century Dutch Daily Life, Linda Baumgarden, What Clothes Reveal, Roderic H. Blackburn, Dutch Colonial Homes in America, Roderic H. Blackburn and Ruth Piwonka, Remembrance of Patria: Dutch Arts and Culture in Colonial America, 1609-1776, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, David Steven Cohen, The Dutch-American Farm, John Duffy, A History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866, John A. Kouwenhoven, The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York, Peter G. Rose, trans. and ed., The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and the New World, Kevin L. Stayton, Dutch by Design: Tradition and Change in Two Historic Brooklyn Houses, George Sturt, The Wheelwright’s Shop, Wilfred B. Talman, How Things Began . . . in Rockland County and Places Nearby, William E. Woodward, The Way Our People Lived: An Intimate American History, and various articles and essays in de Halve Maen, the quarterly of The Holland Society of New York, South of the Mountains, the quarterly of the Historical Society of Rockland County, and the newsletter of the Bergen County Historical Society.
For the works of all of these authors and editors, living or not, I am greatly appreciative. They were indispensable in developing the background of Land So Fair.
