Of the 4 Wendel grandparents, (see Wendel Pedigree Chart) the last one I started researching was Mary Louise Hegeman. I don't know why, maybe because I never met her. All I knew about her was what my father-in-law Fred had told us when showing us the family Bible - she was the youngest of 11 children, most of whom had died as babies, and her parents had weird names. And of course, she was from Brooklyn.
She was actually very simple to find. Born in 1904 in Flatbush, a part of Brooklyn, to Euphemia and Horatio Seymour Hegeman, and the youngest of 5 children spread far apart in years, she fit the bill perfectly. Indeed, in 1910, Effie, as she called herself, had told the census taker that she was the mother of 11 children and 5 were living. In cities in 1900, the infant mortality rate matched Effie's, about 50%, due to crowded conditions, poor sanitation, and incurable diseases that we now vaccinate against. I think after the 3rd or 4th baby died, I would have been catatonic, or at least told my husband to stay away from me. Effie, however, seemed determined to have a child who lived. She got pregnant every year, and that tells us that her baby died every year. I don't know, but I think maybe that much pregnancy contributed to poor maternal/baby health.
Birth patterns before 1900 look like a pattern of counting by twos, using either odd or even numbers. Breast feeding decreases fertility, and breast feeding a baby for a year or two usually meant that there were 2 years between births. At the beginning of the marriage, when the parents are either more fertile or less tired, babies often come every year, and at the end of the child-bearing stretch, the parents are either less fertile or too tired to do anything in bed besides sleep, so the babies can be 3 to 5 years apart. Other than that, if you don't see an every-other-year pattern, it's because a child died or the father went to fight in the Civil War or something. Having a baby every year often means that the mother wasn't breast-feeding and that would mean the baby died.
Mary was the third Mary Louise in her family, named after Seymour's mother Mary Lewis. I found out that when Seymour, as he called himself, was born in 1855, Horatio Seymour was the governor of New York. That explains the crazy name. His cousin, born the same year, was named Seymore Horatio Hegeman. That must have been confusing!
Effie was born in Prince Edward Island, Canada, and named after her grandmother Euphemia. Oddly, her parents had immigrated to Brooklyn, had 2 children, returned to PEI, baptized their 3-month-old son, had Effie, and then went back to Brooklyn to have 3 more children. I cannot imagine why. It takes a lot for me to go from NY to Canada 150 years later!
630 miles distance between Brooklyn and Prince Edward IslandMary was so Catholic she had a cousin who was a nun, and I assumed that Hegeman was a German Catholic name, and I assumed they came here in the mid-1800s with all the other Germans. I could not be more wrong. (I think the Catholic came from Effie Murray's Scottish parents).
The clue that there is something unusual and important about this family comes from Mary's childhood, when a blind man lived with them named Rem or Rom or Roman or Ramon Hegeman. What kind of a name was that? Who was he? How did he go blind?
I can answer the first two - he was Seymour's twin brother, and he went blind somewhere between the ages of 15 and 25. Scarlet fever? Kicked in the head by a horse? Don't know.
But his name was Rem Hegeman, and that was a very popular name. My mother-in-law remembers a cousin named Rem, Rem had a cousin named Rem, and that Rem was the son of Remsen R. Hegeman, Sr. Rem Jr. fought in the Civil War, and Rem Hegeman Sr. was the justice of the peace in Flatbush.
Rem Hegeman. The way it bounces off the tongue -- all the same vowel sound, one-syllable first name, the accent on the first two syllables -- he sounds like a superhero. "Rem. Rem Hegeman" sounds as manly as "Bond. James Bond." Generations of sons were named after an original Rem Hegeman - who was this Great Man?
I knew Mary's family came from Flatbush, but every census brought me back another 10 years -- still in Flatbush. Every person's parent was born in New York, and I was back in the 1700s already. Clearly they were not typical immigrants.
Flatbush 1842. J Hegeman owns the land above the word TOWN, and another Hegeman lives at the intersection of Fulton Ave and the road to BedfordThose were the two pieces that were so intriguing - the New York ancestors going far back into the past, and Rem Hegeman, Superhero.
I decided to skip to the founding of Flatbush. Did you know New York used to be Dutch? Vlat bos, Midwout, Breucklyn, Heemstede, all on Lang Eylandt. The Dutch arrived in 1624, and stayed even after the British took over and changed New Amsterdam to New York.
Incredibly, I found that Catharina Margits Hegeman and her husband Adriaen immigrated to Flatbush around 1650 with their three little boys, Joseph Adrianenszen, Hendricus, and Jacobus. They were Dutch. Once here, they had 5 more sons and a daughter. 8 Hegeman sons in Flatbush almost 400 years ago. But where was the famous Rem?
first public school in Flatbush, 1658, Adrian Hegeman, teacher
While looking through North America Family Histories, I found a Remsen family. Are the Remsens all sons of a Rem? They are! And this Rem's daughter, Femmetje, married a Hegeman! Is this the famous Rem? It is. Femmetje and her Hegeman husband, Joseph, named a child Rem, and he named his son Rem, and there it began.
What was so great about the original Rem, whose last name was actually Van der Beeck? He was an immigrant from Holland, born in 1617. He must have arrived before 1642, when he married Jannetje Jorise Rapalje. Jannetje came from a famous family - her older sister was the first child of European descent born in New York. Jannetje's parents were on the very first ship of Dutch settlers here. (that's for another post).
Nieuw Amsterdam by painter Hugo Allard, 1674
Jannetje and Rem had 17 children. (Manhattan wasn't always a death trap for babies, not when it was still farms and woods). Rem was an official in Flatbush and a magistrate in New Amsterdam, but his power lay in his personality - physically imposing and strong, he had a gentle nature and liked to laugh - one of those people who "never met a stranger" - friends with everyone. His huge funeral lasted for a full week, and all 15 of their living children attended, with their spouses and families, which was remarkable at the time. After that, not only his sons but also his daughters, who would have used Remsen or Remse as a middle name, took Remsen as their surname, dropping the Van der Beeck.
I still can't find a link from Femmetje Remsen and Joseph Hegeman on down to Seymour and Mary, but it must be there. Why else would we have 300 years of Rem Hegemans?
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