Why Don't We Know More Family History?
[This is an excerpt from the book HISTORY OF THE KUYKENDALL FAMILY, 1919, by George Benson Kuykendall]
When the family began to swarm out from the ancient home in the Minisink region, on the Delaware river, there were no newspapers there to publish notice of arrivals of new comers or the moving out of old settlers or tell where they were going, how many were leaving, or anything about the movement.
In the very early days, bills of sale and deeds were seldom recorded, and accounts of transfers of property were in this way lost, so that there was little or nothing left to show when citizens sold out and moved away, or where they went. All was left to the fickle memories of contemporary neighbors and friends. For that reason the search of the old records has often been a sore disappointment, because of the meager findings. Occasionally an old paper is found that discloses enough to make us wish, and wish again, that the writer had told us more. When people moved out of a settlement or neighborhood, those who remained spoke from time to time about those who had gone, but soon these things ceased to be mentioned, and passed out of mind.
Page 622In the settlements made in distant regions, by those who migrated from the valley, the friends left behind were frequently mentioned, but in time the older ones died and left their children with very little information in regard to their forefathers, and soon that little was mostly forgotten.
Another reason we have so little account of the colonial times, written by the common people, is the fact of the very scant opportunities they had for education. Any one who has made much search of the old colonial records, and the period following, must have been struck with the frequency with which deeds, wills and other documents were signed by the individual making his mark. This was just as true of the eastern colonies, and was as common in New York and Massachusetts, as in Virginia and the Carolinas. Our Kuykendalls were certainly not behind their neighbors in this respect.
Only a short time ago, I had occasion to write to the county recorder of one of the counties of North Carolina, in regard to early records of the Kuykendalls there. After answering my enquiries the recorder wrote, "I noticed that the Kuykendalls could write their names, which is a little unusual among the older records of the county."
The foregoing facts certainly partly help us to understand why families of the present day, generally know so little of their ancestors.
My investigations have convinced me that by far the larger part of the people of all this country have very little knowledge of their ancestry or family history. I have to confess that this fact was a little consoling to me, since it shows that our family is not alone in this respect. While perhaps it is not very creditable to human nature, we know that as a rule, people derive a crumb of comfort from the fact that the shortcomings of others are as great as their own. A story of the old pioneer days illustrates this trait of human nature.
An old lady of the olden time had always prided herself upon her fine garden patch every year, and was noted in this respect. One day a neighbor said, "Mrs. Armstrong, you don't seem to have much of a garden this year." "No," said she, "everything has dried up and done no good, but thank the Lord my neighbors are all in the same fix. There ain't one of them got any better!"
In early days our forefathers were kept too busy clearing the forests, fighting Indians, trying to protect and support their families and struggling against adverse environments, to find time to write diaries of their doings.
When men and women are in the midst of imminent peril, when dangers surround, when the wolf of hunger howls at the door and life is a constant struggle with hard environments, men do not care much who their great grandfathers and mothers were, where they lived, or what they did. When beset by savage Indian foes, wild beasts, and dread of impending ills, these environments are not calculated to stimulate ancestry research or the recording of adventures, for the pleasure or instruction of coming generations. When we come to understand the conditions and environments of our forefathers, we wonder that they did not lose all tradition of the past.
In these days, when the whole land is flooded with books, magazines and daily papers, when we have all the modern processes of making and preserving pictures by photography and other ways, and remember that none of these were in existence, in the times of our early forefathers, we cease to wonder why they left so little to tell of their lives, labors, and of the events passing around them.
Our earliest forefathers knew little of English and whatever diaries were written, were in the Dutch language, and were by the younger generations thrown aside, and in many instances were even burned as rubbish. If we had these old writings today, they would throw a flood of light upon obscurities that we now try in vain to clear up. The use of the old Dutch language was continued much longer among those of our forcfathers who remained in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, than among those who left the old home and went west further. Our forefathers were intensely loyal to the American cause and everything American. They wanted to be American, and the younger generations were very anxious to learn to speak English, because it was the language of their adopted country. There was among the English settlers a sort of prejudice against German and Dutch inhabitants, in some sections of the country. There was a common saying among the English of New York, "Keep crowding the Dutch." History shows that the crowding policy was kept up, and the Dutch were crowded wherever possible, and their rights and authority were usurped. When the English population increased, there came English schools, English school books and English school teachers. The young German and Dutch children who attended these, were frequently taunted with being "Dutchmen." This incited them to make strenuous efforts to acquire the English language, and even to conceal their ancestry.
We thus see that their environments and associations tended to make them try to forget the language of their fathers. This has reference to the younger generations only, for the older ones naturally clung to their mother tongue, both for sentimental reasons, and because they could not easily learn a new language after they had passed their younger days.
In several counties of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania the Dutch language was in quite general use, until as late as 1830, and in parts of Pennsylvania much later.
I happen to have a letter, received some time ago, showing the late use of Dutch in New York. This letter is from a descendant of Wilhelmus Kuykendall, son of Peter, and tells of the moving of the family from Mamakating Hollow, to near Windham, Pennsylvania.
Page 624There is an account of a long, hard journey and the settling of the family, and starting the children to school for the first time, where there was an English teacher, and of the difficulties the little Kuykendalls had in mastering English spelling and pronunciation. This showed clearly that at Mamakating, the family had been accustomed to use the Dutch language only.
In very early days of the colonial settlements, the Dutch and German population were called indiscriminately "Dutch," and the Dutch were classed as high Dutch and low Dutch, so called from the part of the old country they came from. Americans, after a time, came to think of the term high and low, as being applied as descriptive of the character of the people. Hence folks of Holland origin did not like the idea of being mentioned as low Dutch. This all tended to make a prejudice in the minds of the younger people of our forefathers against anything pertaining to Dutch, and on this account, old Dutch Bibles, histories, psalm books, and various old records, received scant courtesy, and were discarded, after the death of the old people, who alone could appreciate them.
The preceding pages explain why a more complete history of our forefathers has not come down to us, and also help to illustrate some of the phases of our forefathers' lives that are too seldom called to memory in these busy, rushing, dollar-chasing days of modern progress." (written in 1919)
