Generations and Cousins at Dyckman: Broadening Our Chances for Genetic Refreshment

*The Dyckman Family Farmhouse perched above Broadway at 204th Street, New York City. The Dutch Colonial style farmhouse was built on this site by c. 1784. Opened as a museum in 1916, today it is nestled in a small garden.

 Profiled in The New York Times on 6/27/15, as Two Reasons to Visit Inwood: Dyckman Farmhouse Museum and Darling Coffee 

By Julia Sneden

My eldest son, a public school teacher, called me the other night with an odd request. The principal of his school, for one of those team-building exercises teachers must endure during the week before the children show up in the classroom, had asked that each faculty member come to the first faculty meeting prepared to tell something that no one else knew about them.

“I’ve taught with most of these people for so long a time that it’s hard to think of much that they don’t know about me,” John said, “but I doubt anyone knows that I am my own 8^th cousin. Could Dad write down for me how my brothers and I are related to each other beyond being brothers?”

It pays to have a father with good academic credentials, a man who absolutely loves doing research of any kind. Genealogy is just one of his sidelines, but it is probably the one that has drawn the most attention from the rest of the family. He long ago became Mr. Go-To for all questions of who lived where and when and with whom, and how are we related to them. And if he couldn’t find the answers in his charts and files, he knew which library to check, or which great uncle or aunt to query.

It didn’t take him ten minutes to supply son John with the graphics for his 8^th cousinship (although I seem to have been needed as typist/intermediary). That 8^th cousinship dates back to the 1700’s, when one Jacob Dyckman had, among his many children, a son named William, and a daughter named Margaret. William grew up to marry a woman named Mary Tourneur, and Margaret married a man named Captain Jonathan Odell.

The couples each had many children, who were, of course, first cousins. Among these were a William Dyckman Jr., and an Abraham Odell. Our sons’ line descends from them, through the eight generations, as follows:

Dyckman line                                                     COUSINS                                                        Odell line

Son Wm Dyckman Jr. m. Marie Smith             (1^st )                   Son Abraham married. Ann Mandeville

Son Evert B. Dyckman m. Harriet Hinckley   (2^nd)                    Son William Odell m. Rebecca Stymes

Dau. Prudence Dyckman m. Samuel Cobb      (3^rd)                    Dau. Ann Janette Odell m. Daniel B. Leach

Dau. Carra Cobb m. Henry W. Barnhart          (4^th)                     Dau. Sara Jane Leach m. John E. Aitken    

Dau. Prudence Barnhart m. E.D. Brown         (5^th)                     Dau. Ann Janette Aitken m.Rob’t N. Sneden

Son Orrin Henry Brown m. Mary E. Kelsey    (6^th)                     Son John A. Sneden Sr. m. Jean Mackey

Dau. Julia C. Brown m. John A. Sneden, Jr.    (7^th)                    Son John A. Sneden Jr. m. Julia C. Brown

                Our sons John III, William, and Robert are thus their own 8^th cousins /

As you may have guessed, telling this short tale brought several wisecracks from Johnny’s peers, who maintain that the inbreeding explains many aspects of his personality, intelligence, etc. Fortunately, such remarks don’t dent his self-esteem one bit, since he has, you may be sure, heard them all from his brothers, and handed out the same to them.