These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I
made not long since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burial
grounds of my ancestry, both sides. I extract from notes of that
visit, written there and then:
Note:
[2] Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch from
Holland, then on the east end by the English--the dividing line of the
two nationalities being a little west of Huntington where my father's
folks lived, and where I was born.
THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES
_July 29, 1881_.--After more than forty years' absence, (except a
brief visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he
died,) went down Long Island on a week' s jaunt to the place where
I was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old
familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them,
every-thing coming back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on
the upland and took a view eastward, inclining south, over the broad
and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather (1780,) and my father.
There was the new house (1810,) the big oak a hundred and fifty or two
hundred years old; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and
a little way off even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my
great-grandfather (1750-'60) still standing, with its mighty timbers
and low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorous
black-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no
doubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776.
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