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Henry Onderdonk papers

Call Number

ARC.045

Date

1729-1895, inclusive

Creator

Onderdonk, Henry

Extent

10 Linear Feet in 8 manuscript boxes and 4 flat boxes

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Abstract

Henry Onderdonk (1804-1886) of Queens County, Long Island, New York, was an educator at Union Hall Academy, and an historian and author of many works based on his research among local records. The Onderdonk papers include manuscript versions of Onderdonk's historical works; notes and transcriptions taken by Onderdonk from private journals, church and local government records, and newspapers; correspondence from historians, genealogists and others often conveying information requested by Onderdonk; and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings covering the 1820s to 1868, with some earlier and later dated material. The bulk of the material concerns the geographic area encompassing present day Queens and Nassau counties, though the other two counties on Long Island, Kings and Suffolk, are also represented. The historical manuscripts, notes and extensive correspondence in the collection tend to center around Onderdonk's research into the American Revolution, Quakers, churches, agriculture/animal husbandry, and genealogies, all with a focus on Long Island. Perhaps the most prominent correspondent is James Fenimore Cooper, whose three letters concern Loyalist Oliver de Lancey. Among the many other correspondents are historians George Bancroft, E. F. Ellet, E. B. O'Callaghan, Jeptha Root Simms, and Jared Sparks. The several scrapbooks in the collection, also with a Long Island focus, concern a number of subjects, principally electoral and partisan politics, agriculture, temperance, announcements and public notices for a wide variety of events, such as school openings, church dedications, auctions, cultural talks, etc., crimes and accidents, court proceedings, Civil War recruitments and drafts, and railroad developments, among other matters.

Biographical / Historical

Henry Onderdonk (1804-1886) was an educator and historian, a collector of Long Island antiquities, and the author of many works based on his findings among local records. Later, he became a founder (1863) and councilor (1868-1886) of the Long Island Historical Society (now the Brooklyn Historical Society), and a contributor to the Society's library and manuscript collections upon their formation.

Henry Onderdonk was born June 11, 1804, at Manhasset, NY, the son of Joseph Onderdonck, a farmer, and Dorothy Monfoort. Henry commonly rendered his name with a "Jr."; it is supposed that he did so to distinguish his name from that of his eminent relative, Henry Ustick Onderdonk (1789-1858), the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania. Onderdonk graduated from Columbia College in 1827 and received an A.B. degree from Harvard in 1828. He married Maria Hegeman Onderdonk (1801-1875), daughter of George Onderdonk and Sarah Rapalije in 1828, and had two children, Elizabeth (1829-fl. 1909) and Adrian (1831-1888). Henry took up teaching, becoming principal of Union Hall Academy at Jamaica from 1832 to 1865, after which he devoted himself to literary pursuits. He was also a director of the Long Island Bible Society. Onderdonk died at Jamaica on June 22, 1886 and is buried in Monfort Cemetery in Port Washington, NY.

Onderdonk's career in historical and genealogical study may have been inspired by his father's tales as a young witness to the Revolutionary war period on Long Island and in New York City. Joseph Onderdonck, born in 1766, saw his father, Andries, a Deputy Chairman of the Whig Committee, taken prisoner by the British, 21 September 1776. After experiencing many scenes of the British military occupation of Long Island, Joseph was present at the Federal procession in New York (23 July 1788) and at the inauguration of George Washington as President of the U. S. (30 April 1789), and later often saw Washington around town.

Henry Onderdonk's first published works focused on local events during the American Revolution, and relied on eye-witness accounts; these early writings included Documents and letters intended to illustrate the revolutionary incidents of Queens County, N.Y. (1846), The capture and death of Brig. Gen. Nath'l Woodhull: In a series of letters addressed to J. Fenimore Cooper Esq (1848) and Revolutionary incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties: With an account of the Battle of Long Island and the British prisons and prison-ships at New York (1849). Onderdonk's later works included writings about various Long Island churches, the Society of Friends (Quakers), and agriculture. While Onderdonk became a prolific writer of local and religious histories, he is perhaps most notable as a collector, compiler, and preservationist of official and military papers, diaries, old newspapers, oral histories, and many early records of Long Island towns and churches.

Because so much of Onderdonk's work concerns a geographic area called Queens County, it is helpful to recall that the Queens County of Onderdonk's time differed from that of today. Until 1899, Queens County consisted not only of the present-day county and New York City borough of the same name, but also all of what is now Nassau County. Some Queens County towns (e.g., Jamaica, Flushing) were consolidated into New York City in 1898, while others were not. Those not consolidated (e.g., Hempstead, Oyster Bay) were removed from Queens County in 1899 to form the new Nassau County. Accordingly, all references in this guide, and in the collection, to Queens County can be taken to include Nassau County as well.

(The above was based on a biographical note written in 2005 by Jonathan W. Montgomery. Additional sources: Genealogy of the Onderdonk family in America, edited by Andrew Joseph Onderdonk and Florence Evelyn Pratt Youngs; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monfort_Cemetery; http://www.nassaucountyny.gov/website/EN/facts_stats_maps/history_of_NC.html.)

Arrangement

The Onderdonk papers are organized in four series:

Series 1: Historical Manuscripts and Notes

Series 2: Correspondence

Series 3: Miscellaneous

Series 4: Scrapbooks

Scope and Contents

The Henry Onderdonk papers include manuscript versions of Onderdonk's historical works; notes and transcriptions taken by Onderdonk from various historical sources; correspondence from historians, genealogists and others often conveying information requested by Onderdonk; and scrapbooks of newspaper clippings covering the 1820s to 1868, with some earlier and later dated material. The bulk of the material concerns Queens County, New York, which in Onderdonk's time also included present-day Nassau County. The other two counties on Long Island, Kings and Suffolk, are also represented in the collection, though not to the extent of Queens.

The historical manuscripts and notes in the collection tend to center around the American Revolution, Quakers, churches, agriculture/animal husbandry, and genealogies, all with a focus on Long Island. While some of these manuscripts and notes include Onderdonk's own writings, most consist of his transcriptions and extracts of private journals, church and local government records, and newspapers. The extensive correspondence in the collection centers on these themes as well, and includes much correspondence to Onderdonk from historians, genealogists, and others providing him with information in response to his inquiries in these subject areas. The correspondence includes several notable mid-nineteenth century American historians and provides insight into the conduct of their research and scholarly networks during the first generations of American historical writing. These correspondents include George Bancroft, E. F. Ellet, E. B. O'Callaghan, Jeptha Root Simms, and Jared Sparks, among many others. Perhaps the most prominent correspondent is James Fenimore Cooper; the collection includes three substantive letters from Cooper concerning General Oliver de Lancey, the Loyalist who fought for the British on Long Island during the Revolution.

The several scrapbooks in the collection concern a number of subjects, principally electoral and partisan politics, agriculture, temperance, announcements and public notices for a wide variety of events, such as school openings, church dedications, auctions, cultural talks, etc., crimes and accidents, court proceedings, Civil War recruitments and drafts, and railroad developments, among other matters. References to African-Americans, while not frequent, appear in the scrapbooks in the context of these subjects, as they do in other parts of the collection. The collection also includes various handbills, fliers, advertisements, programs, and other such material, principally for church and school events, especially in connection with Union Hall Academy of Jamaica in Queens County.

Subjects

Conditions Governing Access

Open to researchers without restriction.

Conditions Governing Use

Materials in this collection are in the public domain.

Preferred Citation

Identification of item, date (if known); Henry Onderdonk papers, ARC.045, Box and Folder number; Brooklyn Historical Society.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

The provenance of all the materials in the Onderdonk papers has not been definitively traced. Nonetheless several of the manuscripts and all the scrapbooks in the collection bear a bookplate indicating that they were presented to the Long Island Historical Society (now the Brooklyn Historical Society) by Onderdonk. There is little doubt that most of the correspondence and other manuscripts also were given by him to BHS. Some of the material was donated by Onderdonk's daughter Elizabeth in 1909; this included much of the material in the Miscellaneous series along with some correspondence and several manuscripts.

Related Materials

At Brooklyn Historical Society:

An 1854 letter from Onderdonk to Alden Spooner transmitting a book for the Atheneum and requesting others from Spooner can be found in the Spooner collection (ARC.098).

Various Onderdonk transcriptions were further transcribed in typescript by BHS librarians over time. These are on the library's shelves and can be found, along with Onderdonk's published works held by BHS, through the on-line catalog, Bobcat. Use keyword "Henry Onderdonk." Also, some of Onderdonk's transcriptions were published by BHS in the quarterly journal it produced at various times in in its history. The inventory of the journals' content is available through the on-line catablog, Emma, found under the heading Journals of Long Island History. Within the inventory, search "Onderdonk." The journals themselves are in the BHS library.

At least one of Onderdonk's manuscripts is held on the BHS library shelves rather than in the manuscript collection. This is Letters on the death of General Woodhull; also, Suffolk and Kings counties in olden times; Early Dutch ministers of Long Island; History of the Dutch church in Queens County (1866), found at call number E207.W8.O53.1866. Generally, the scrapbook is a compilation of Onderdonk's published newspaper articles. The Woodhull clippings are especially interesting as they include a published debate involving Onderdonk, James Fenimore Cooper, and Lorenzo Sabine about Oliver de Lancey; correspondence in the collection from Cooper and Sabine relates to the published articles.

BHS also holds genealogical information about the Onderdonks. See Genealogy of the Onderdonk family in America (CS71.O53.1910). Also see Edna Huntington's transcription of Onderdonk's journal, Diary or dates of marriage and deaths of my family and friends, 1779-1859, which has more substantive entries than the title suggests (CS71.O53.1934).

Outside BHS:

Queens County Library holds some Henry Onderdonk material in two collections: the Union Hall Academy records and the Joseph Onderdonk Skillman correspondence.

The New-York Historical Society holds scrapbooks of Onderdonk's writings.

The Library of Congress holds two Onderdonk items as part of its Miscellaneous Manuscripts collection (MSS 5670).

Collection processed by

Larry Weimer

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 11:19:54 +0000.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: Finding aid is written in English.

Processing Information

Processed by Larry Weimer, March 2010.

This collection combines the following 38 accessions: 1973.080, 1973.102, 1973.104, 1973.112, 1973.114, 1973.116, 1973.118, 1973.120, 1973.122, 1973.124, 1973.126, 1973.130, 1973.132, 1973.134, 1973.135, 1973.138, 1973.148, 1973.162, 1973.164, 1973.166, 1973.168, 1973.192, 1973.200, 1973.202, 1973.289, 1974.019, 1974.020, 1974.062, 1974.223, 1974.254, 1977.031, 1977.037, 1977.109, 1977.122, 1977.131, 1978.088, 1980.028, 1985.066. It also includes 3 folders from 1974.009.

Repository

Brooklyn Historical Society
Center for Brooklyn History
128 Pierrepont Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201