Henry Onderdonk papers

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 American 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.