Anthony and Andrew Westbrook: a Fascinating Narrative of Disunity
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Anthony and Andrew Westbrook: A Fascinating Narrative of Disunity Doug Massey With special thanks to Gavin K. Watt, John Mahler, Patte Frato and The Minisink Valley Historical Society Copyright©2015 by Doug Massey All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, Doug Massey. 1 Two Fires “I am going to set this house on fire”, the tall man said as the firewood he was carrying crashed down on the floorboards.1 “Boys, you have just fifteen minutes to plunder my premises; after that I give them to the flames”.2 What sounds like one instance of arson, is, in fact, two very separate occurrences: The first happened in the Minisink area of Orange County New York, and the second in Upper Canada, hundreds of kilometres away and some thirty-six years later. It gets stranger. Both arsonists were destroying their own property. And both were members of the Westbrook family. Father and son! On April 20, 1779, Anthony Westbrook set fire to the fortified house of Major Johannes Decker Jr., which housed his confiscated property. Branded a “traitor to his country” by both neighbours and kin in the area, Anthony now returned for revenge with the much- feared Joseph Brant. If Anthony Westbrook could not enjoy his furniture, then the hated rebels would certainly not either. On January 31/Feb. 1, 1814, son Andrew, equally a traitor in British eyes because he had taken up the American cause in the War of 1812, razed his own house, mill, barns and storage buildings in Delaware Township, Middlesex County. His chattels also would bring no comfort to the enemy. Vindictive? Impetuous? Yes! Both father and son could be that way. But there was much more to both Anthony and Andrew than this. The civil war that divided and decimated families, like the Westbrooks, started in earnest with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and did not come to an end until at least the Treaty of Ghent in 1815. Anthony’s decision to fight for the King during the American Revolution horrified his family in the Minisink region of New York. Similarly, son Andrew’s early support for the United States and republicanism in the War of 1812 shocked his relations in South-Western Upper Canada. Surprisingly, the decisions of both father and son, so diametrically opposed, shared some significant similarities. Both were made by Americans - strong, independent products of the frontier. Both decisions, once made, were never unmade. Both were equally fateful. And both were linked: Anthony’s stand in 1777 set the stage for that of his son in 1812. To understand this connection we must consider the interplay of personality and external events for both father and son. To fathom why Anthony’s bones ended up buried in Upper Canada and Andrew’s in Michigan, one must understand that while Anthony’s early, formative years were spent in abundance in Minisink, those same years for Andrew were surrounded by want in Upper Canada. Both father and son grew up to be “who they were when”. That needs some explaining. Worldwide, the years in the early part of the 18th Century were relatively kind to farmers. Rains came pretty much when needed, the climate was milder, and the sun shone on cue. Harvests were plentiful in the fertile Minisink region of Orange County New York, and the people were well fed and prosperous. Born in 1738, Anthony grew up in the midst of all this. Johannes, Anthony’s great-grandfather had been one of the thirteen “ancient owners” or first settlers of Minisink. And the Westbrooks, intermarrying with the other influential, pioneering families, had for years played a prominent role in the running of the settlement. Witnessing Anthony’s baptism in the Mackhackemack Dutch Reformed 2 Church on October 31, 1738, were his grandmother Altje Van Oetten, and his grandfather, “Anthonie”, an elder of the church and a justice of the peace.3 His father, Johannes had been a major in the militia and his brother Johannes, a captain. Anthony grew up in that church of his forebears, as did his wife Sara Dekker, the daughter of another large, prominent, local family. Three of their children would be baptized at Mackhackemeck. But one of those three, Johannes, would die as a child. Further puncturing their bliss would be the French Indian Wars of 1755 – 1760 and the Pontiac Conspiracy. But let us concentrate on yet a more profound element. This was a decades long, bitter, religious feud within the larger Dutch Reformed Church that morphed into a political crisis called the American Revolution. Taken together, this interconnected warring severely tested Dutch Americans such as Anthony Westbrook and his family. Think of two fires. The first was this spiritual conflagration whose embers still glowed hot after 1771. The second, a civil war called the American Revolution, came of heaping new firewood on these still smouldering coals. The “Great Awakening” was a momentous, revival movement that rocked all church denominations in the British North American colonies, bringing both positive new energy, but also profound division. It started in the Dutch Reformed Church about the year 1727.4 Soon two warring factions were created. Embracing the “awakening” were parishioners who gloried in new teachings that emphasized free will and individual commitment. Known as the “coetus” party, they strongly supported the ordination of clergy in the colonies. Equally zealous were the “conferentie” folk, who rejoiced in tradition. Seeking to keep things in the “Dutch way”, these congregants strongly supported the education and ordination of clergy at the Classis of Amsterdam in the old country. By 1747 the issue of ordination was resolved in the favour of the “coetus”. However, the damage had been done. Throughout all of Dutch New York and New Jersey, virtually every Dutch church had been torn apart by conflict.5 Families were divided among themselves – husband against wife, parents against children, and “many indignities were heaped upon one another”.6 In some cases, individuals holding grudges against significant others, never spoke again. Congregations split, preferring to worship in separate churches. One faction literally locked the church door and kept the other faction from worship. In the Hackensack Valley of New Jersey it came to fists and clubs on the sabbath. Then just as it looked like things might settle down, the war heated up again when the “coetus” pastors announced that all children who had been baptized by “conferentie” clergy would have to be re-baptized by proper “coetus” divines. “Barbarity”, cried the “conferentie” women of the Mackhackemeck congregation. They would have none of that! A child’s very soul was at stake. Only a “conferentie” minister would do. As for the “coetus” women of the church, it had to be a “coetus” dominie or none at all. Infant baptism was a profoundly import and prickly topic. For the most part, the “conferentie”- “coetus” clash that engulfed Mackhackemeck Church and the Minisink settlement involved two pastors - Johannes Casparus Fryenmoet (1741 – 1756), and his successor Thomas Romeyn, (1760 – 1772). Both dominies were very well known to Anthony Westbrook and his family. Fryenmoet was “very popular with his people.”7 It’s just that not all the congregants of Minisink were so charmed. After 1747, in the midst of the re-baptism altercation, Fryenmoet’s fervent 3 “conferentie” affinity offended certain influential pillars of the church, who called in a “committee or Circle of the Coetus” and succeeded in having him removed in 1756.8 In 1772 the “coetus” elements acted again to expel the moderate “conferentie” Thomas Romeyn. However, Fryenmoet was far from done as we shall see later. Anthony Westbrook could not have escaped taking a side in this bitter, internecine feud over child baptism. But just exactly where did he stand? The whole baptism controversy at Mackhackemeck heated up in the 1760’s as indicated by the chaotic nature of the baptismal records during that period.9 It was during those turbulent years, 1764 – 1769, that three of Anthony’s and Sara’s children were baptized by the moderate “conferentie” Dominie Thomas Romeyn.10 But there is no record of their three later children, Johannes, Andrew and Haggai, being baptized at Mackhackemeck at all! Nevertheless, it is easier to see Anthony and Sara as being a moderate “conferentie” rather than “coetus” in the religious crisis. And if Anthony were “conferentie”, this would go a long way to explain why he fought for King George. From his careful study of Dutch Reformed Church records for Bergen County in nearby New Jersey, Adrian Leiby came to the conclusion that Bergen County Dutch who were “conferentie” almost without exception supported the British cause, and often very actively, (my emphasis) in the Revolution, while “coetus” people, almost without exception supported independence.11 Leiby’s impressive work is supported by similar correlations from secular data done by Alice Kenney on the Dutch in Albany County, New York.12 And records of the Pougkeepsie and Kingston Dutch Churches do not conflict with this model of Dutch Reformed life.13 Given this “definite pattern” that surrounded the Mackhackemeck congregation on all sides, there is merit in applying it also to Anthony Westbrook, who was, beyond a doubt, a very active supporter of the British cause in the American Revolution. As we will see, he served tirelessly with Joseph Brant throughout the war at great cost to himself and family. It very well could have been personality or a need to get revenge that motivated Anthony Westbrook, but then he may very well have been a Loyalist out of conviction.