The Grandfather of All the Loyalist Dykemans

The ancestry of Ouida Dykeman Siulinski (1905-1985), my Dutch Canadian grandmother, has clear roots in the Dyckman Loyalists of New York. She descended from the "Grandfather of All the Loyalist Dykemans", Garret Dyckman, who changed the original Dyckman surname to Dykeman presumably to appear less foreign in the English-dominated society of early New York. He was born on 4 Mar 1741 in White Plains, Westchester, New York. 

During the Dutch colonial era, the original Dyckmans (the ancestors of Garett) were merchants and farmers in the area called Washington Heights today in Manhattan. The area was named Nieuw Haarlem (New Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem, and was formally incorporated in 1660. Hard to imagine Manhattan as a strictly agricultural society. 

After the war, in 1783 Garret emigrated with his wife and family to the British Colony of Nova Scotia. Soon thereafter, on August 16, 1784, the Colony of New Brunswick was created by partition. On January 20, 1787, the Dykemans were granted Lot no. 9 containing 150 acres on Jemseg Creek, Parish of Waterborough, Queen's County, New Brunswick, where they settled to farm.

Yielding now to a document found in the Digital Collection at the New York Public Library, here is a brief summary of the Loyalist story:

In the American revolutionary war there were many in the then new-born Republic who either refrained from participating or took the loyalist side in the conflict. These were called “United Empire Loyalists,” for they clung to the unity of the empire and refused to ally themselves with their fellow-colonists in revolt. When the war was over, those who took up arms on the loyal side found themselves in a hopeless minority, loaded with obloquy and subjected to indignity at the hands of the victorious republicans. Rather than live under these humiliating conditions, some of the loyalists returned to England; but most of them, preferring voluntary expatriation in Western wilds to living in a country that had become independent through rebellion, sought new homes for themselves in Acadia and Canada.

Another part of the Loyalist story and of my own ancestry is the suffering after the war in the form of persecution and loss of property. I could not begin to imagine the extent of personal agony that so many of my Loyalist's ancestors endured. From the same library report in the Digital Collection, "many persons were banished and prohibited from returning to their homes. More than 12,000 left New York."

Dykeman homestead in Jemseg

Joshua Reade Dykeman and Hattie Springer, 1935

After the hardship of relocation and resettlement, life surely improved for the future generations of those early Dykeman settlers. What I recall of my grandmother's descriptions of her family in Canada were happy stories and how close they all were. These strong bonds were experienced by my father as he often described the joy of spending his childhood summers on the family farm in Jemseg, New Brunswick. The photograph above shows the parents of my grandmother, Ouida Dykeman Siulinski, poising at the family homestead.

St. John Anglican Church, Gagetown, NB

Returning to our Loyalist grandfather, Garett Dykeman married Eunice Ann Hatfield at White Plains, New York. He died on 19 Jun 1813 and is buried in St. Johns Anglican Church Cemetery in Gagetown along with his wife.

Credits:

1. Kingsbridge image

2. Church image

3. Homestead image

4. Joshua Reade Dykeman and Hattie Springer image

5. Garett Dykeman United Empire Loyalist record 

6. Reasons for Migration of Loyalists Following American Revolution document

7. The area was named Nieuw Haarlem (New Haarlem), after the Dutch city of Haarlem, and was formally incorporated in 1660: Source

8. Following the Revolutionary War, in 1783 Garret emigrated with his wife and family to the British Colony of Nova Scotia. On April 20, 1784 they were granted Lot no. 66 in Parr Town (now Saint John, NB) etc: Source

The Famous Dyckmans

This is a story about one of the oldest Dutch families in New York City. The Dyckmans were one of those families and they prospered from farming and tending an apple orchard in a northern area of Manhattan now referred to as Inwood.     
Image source: Dyckman Farmhouse Museum brochure

Before the island became citified, farming was a thriving lifestyle for early colonists. The Dyckman’s made their livestock available to the markets of Lower Manhattan for many years. Here is a time period so far back. Try to imagine Manhattan three to four generations before the American Revolution. People in New York can do this by walking through the rooms of the Dyckman Farmhouse (built by William Dyckman c. 1784) and walking the grounds of the Dyckman homestead which is now a museum located in northern Manhattan. This home was featured in a Bob Vila televised special on the A&E network which I possess in VHS format. The Dyckman House has been an historic landmark since 1967.

Source of two house images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyckman_House

Of my four family lines, the ancestor's of my paternal grandmother (Ouida Dykeman Siulinski) heralds the most fame. The line is traced back to a man called Jan Dyckman who emigrated from Westphalia (an area in Germany) c. 1661. Our name spelling changed from Dyckman to Dykeman when a descendent of Jan, Garret Dykeman, moved his family and others to Canada in 1783. To show the link of my grandmother to the Dyckman line, the following images show the references of Ouida’s family in the book, Jan Dyckman and his Descendents. The images show the genealogy page (181) and the index page (187). Ouida (spelled "Weeda" in the book) is in the eighth generation.

A whole chapter in the Jan Dyckman book is devoted to Garret Dykeman, whose family and followers begin the Canadian line of the family. Garret’s marriage to Eunice Hatfield, niece of Capt’ Abraham Hatfield, begins his association with the Loyalists. The Loyalists (also known as Tories) were American colonists who remained loyal to the British monarchy during the American Revolution. When their cause was defeated, about 20% of the Loyalists fled or were driven out of the US to resettle in other parts of the British Empire (source: Wikipedia.org). There have been volumes written about the two sides which brought on the revolution but when it was all over, many losing-side colonists felt safer to pack it up and leave. Thousands of Loyalists boarded ships to Nova Scotia (what now consists of the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia). Land grants and other supports were offered to help in their resettlement but what they encountered in the new land was a more primitive and desolate landscape then what they had grown used to in America.

Map source: www.treasuredtimbers.com/rivers.html

Fortunately, Garret Dykeman’s group had chosen well. They decided to settle on the St. John River, a fertile area and further north were uplands which supported cattle raising (source: Jan Dyckman book, page 170). The place where he “set down his family” became Jemseg. This is the town of Ouida’s birth.
 

Ouida (Dykeman) Siulinski with sons, Jack and Adam, Jr.

End note: Research for this post came primarily from these two books:

Jan Dyckman and his Descendents by H. Dorothea Romer and Helen B. Hartman

Dutch New York: The Roots of Hudson Valley Culture edited by Roger Panetta.