Sunset at Gowanus Bay

Sunset at Gowanus Bay
Sunset at Gowanus Bay, Henry Gritten, 1851

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Brower Extracts: Presbyterian Church at Wappinger Creek, Dutchess Co., New York

This handwritten transcription of Brower and Brewer (and some others) found in the records of the Presbyterian Church at Wappinger Creek, Dutchess County, New York, is from the William B. Bogardus Collection, Box 7, Uncatalogued Items, no. 22.

There are fourteen pages of extracts here. I have not had the opportunity to incorporate or include them in the Brouwer Genealogy Database. That will have to be a future project. Page 12 is upside down, sorry about that, you'll just have to download the document and use your computer's tools to invert it.

The original source or sources for the extracts is not stated in the manuscript (unless I overlooked it). As the other manuscripts of extracts were taken from records filmed by the Family History Library, I suspect the source or sources to be the various filmed records of the Presbyterian Church at Wappingers Creek, found in the FHL online catalog. Users of this manuscript are of course advised to check them against the original sources.

Wappinger Creek, often written as Wappingers Creek (I believe that the spelling without the final S is technically the correct one), is in Dutchess County, New York and runs from Thompson Pond and empties in the Hudson River at New Hamburg. The first Brouwer to purchase land in the area was Nicholas Brouwer (b. 1672) son of Adam Brouwer of Gowanus, Long Island. His grandson, Nicholas Brouwer (1714-1777) established mills at Wappinger Falls, and became something of an early New York land baron by acquiring thousands of acres in scattered locations, including the areas of the present day sites of Ballston Spa, in Saratoga County, and Chenango Point, later to become the City of Binghamton in Broome County. Just prior to the Revolutionary War, Nicholas was among those who received a patent on about 75,000 acres of land in what is today, New York's Adirondack Park (I believe that the patent was voided by the new, New York State, after independence was won). Nicholas Brouwer (who will have to be profiled in a future post in more detail) had a large family of thirteen children, however, many of those found in the Presbyterian Church at Wappingers Creek records are not immediate family members.

One family, found in the records, that needs to be mentioned is that of Elias Brower (or Brewer) and Sophia Kimball. Elias was born on December 1, 1800, and is believed to be a son of William Brower and Rebecca Sprague. William Brower's ancestry is not known, and it is not known with any certainty whether this family descends from Adam Brouwer of Gowanus, L. I. or from Jan Brouwer of Flatlands, L. I. The descendants of the later have a repetition of the given name, Elias, in numerous families. What information I have collected on the families of William Brower and Elias Brower can be found on the Brouwer Genealogy Database website. Much of it is taken from secondary sources, including notes and conclusions of some earlier researchers. A lot of it needs to be verified with more acceptable sources and what you presently find on the BGD should not be considered as final.

Brower - Presbyterian Church, Wappingers Creek, New York

BGB 248

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