It's Time For A Very Historic Podcast Episode

On today's episode, I’m making a house call to one of the oldest – and most mysterious – homes in the Hudson Valley. The Van Housen-Marriott House on Route 66 has stood for centuries, witnessing the full weight of American history. It was a site of Dutch colonial settlement, a place of enslavement, and, possibly, a stop on the Underground Railroad. But now, this house is falling apart, and efforts to save it are racing against time.

As part of a project with the African American Archive of Columbia County, I speak with Ed Klingler, Brenda Shufelt, Lisa Fludd-Smith, and historian Fergus Bordewich to unpack the house’s past and explore what it truly means to preserve history.

Could this weathered Dutch home have once sheltered freedom seekers? And what does it take to save a piece of history before it disappears? It's all here on this very historic podcast episode.

To learn more about the African American Archive of Columbia County, visit: https://www.afamarchivecc.org

To find the Cozy Map Of Comfy Places, visit: https://thejiffy.xyz/are-you-looking-for-the-cozy-map-of-comfy-places

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04: 0:03

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast, a podcast about upstate New York that really takes you places. I don't know if you caught that at the beginning, but we started off with a different opening song. That was our special episode song because we have a special episode for you today. In addition to writing all of my 150-something blurbs from my cozy map of comfy places, which is out now at thejiffy.xyz, you can check it out. I've also been working on a project with the African American Archive of Columbia County and endangered House of History. Let me set the scene. There is a house on Route 66 here in Klaverick, near the Hudson City limits. Right now, it's behind a chain-link fence right on a perch overlooking a trailer home park called Dutch Village. This is known as the Van Hoesen House, and it's one of the oldest surviving examples of Dutch colonial architecture in the United States. They say it was built around the 1720s or so, and it's got all the telltale signs of Dutch houses. H-shaped frame, steeply pitched roof, bricks, a chimney on both sides, sides. And it's right on the floodplain near Claverick Creek. And we all know the Dutch love their access to water. And speaking of water, the Von Husens also owned land right on the Hudson River at Claverick Landing that they sold to some newcomers in the 1700s, a group of whaling families from New England known as the Proprietors. Then they moved in and gave Hudson its current name. And we're going to look into all that history in an upcoming episode. So stay tuned for that. But back to this house. The house is connected to all this history, right? There's There's all of the Dutch history. But there's also a good chance that it's an even rarer example of a house that was not just a site of enslavement, because the Dutch of early America were certainly enslavers. But as you'll soon hear, it could be a site of abolitionism as well, because there's good reason to think the Van Heusen House, or as we're now calling it, the Van Heusen Marriott House, is also a stop on the Underground Railroad. And if that proves to be true, then this would be a house that's really rare. It represents so much of U.S. history, the Dutch colonialism encroachment on indigenous lands, the persistence of Dutch culture under British rule, the beginnings of capitalism here and its dependence on the system of enslavement, not just in the U.S., but specifically in the Hudson Valley, which I've learned was the epicenter of enslavement in New York, if you can believe it. But we think it is also a house that became a shelter for freedom seekers along the Underground Railroad. Isn't that something? A dual site. The house is falling apart. It's been in need of rescue for decades. It was named by the Preservation League of New York State as one of the seven places to save back in 2009. And for the past 20 years or so, it's been mainly under the care of a solitary man, a carpenter named Ed Klingler. He's volunteered his time and devoted nearly every weekend for years to fixing this house up and keeping it standing. Ed is one of the many people I've interviewed for this project with the African American Archive of Columbia County, which is unearthing some really fascinating history about the Hudson Valley. We'll hear more from them in a moment, but first I wanted to share some of my interview with Ed. Recently, he took me on a tour of the house and talked with me about its history. Ed, hey, thanks for having me. What are we looking at here?

SPEAKER_02: 3:25

It actually would be nice to start in the hall if we can. Let's do it. All right. Well, today our tour will begin inside the house. Unlike most tours that those who have come have seen, an exterior, but I think it might be nice to actually start in the center hall of the house, which in and of itself is a unique feature for a Dutch house of this age. Most of the houses that were built during that second quarter were still based on an earlier, what they call a two-room plan, much like the Lucas and Allen house, the Kinderhook, where you basically have two rooms, each with an outside door and a window in the facade. This house actually has a rather large center hall, which is a Georgian feature. I think it's indicative of, again, having a grandson's house of a fairly well-off patentee. Enabled them to do that. Maybe... One of the first examples of a new style coming in, but it's my understanding. Okay, let

SPEAKER_04: 4:26

me describe what we're looking at. It's about 10 o'clock on a bright November morning and the south-facing windows fill the room in this full golden light. You can see dust particles floating through the air. The wallpaper is peeling away, revealing plaster in some areas or bare brick in others. The original creaky wide wooden floorboards are still there and original doors with unique Dutch hinges too. But there's light blue paint on the ceiling from the federal era. This lead paint is flaking off, and these flakes are scattered all around on a rose-patterned sewn carpet that was installed sometime in the 1900s. All these changes to the original house, all these layers on layers that represent the generations of people who've lived here over time, well, that's what Ed's been working to preserve.

SPEAKER_02: 5:12

Now, for this room, you can look at a 1900s carpet and arts and crafts paper hanging on the wall, but at the same time, you've got Some Victorian wainscot in here. You've got a federal period mantle. Still have original baseboards, though. And that's pretty much the story of this house. Every room you enter, there's always something different. You walk around the outside, you see evidence of the original house. You see subtle changes. You see bits and pieces reused. And... So often you lose that, both in either restorations or just the house being remodeled year after year. And that's never happened here.

SPEAKER_04: 5:56

Okay, now I want to bring in Brenda Schufelt. You know, we met her earlier here on the podcast, briefly in the episode on land acknowledgement statements. That's because Brenda is the history room coordinator at the Hudson Area Library. The history room is a great place to find a lot of secrets about this area. And there's a group of citizen researchers who hang out there and sift through papers and records and make all sorts of discoveries. One of them, Joe D'Onofrio, found an interesting connection between the Von Hosen house and a man named Charles Mary I

SPEAKER_00: 6:26

learned about the Marriott connection from one of our History Room researchers, Joe D'Onofrio, who was very interested in the Underground Railroad in this area. And we're always hearing, oh, there's a cabinet inside the pantry, so we must have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. There's a cave in the riverfront where, you know, in the cliff where people, probably a tunnel. You know, there's all kinds of things like that. And for the most part, we could say it's definitely not true. And it just doesn't make sense for this particular area. But then to think about what does make sense. So in terms of the Van Heusen house, we do know that Charles Marriott lived there with his sister. I think her name was Margaret Marriott, if I'm not mistaken. And I believe he died there. She owned the home. He lived there for several years. He's very connected with the Rokabi farm where a lot of runaways came as they were on the Underground Railroad. And he was a big abolitionist. And you can see that in the obituaries about him. He was very public about it, which a lot of people were not. And they mention it in the obituaries as one of the main things about him and his life. So... If he lived there during the time of slavery, it's only natural to think that that could have had something to do with the Underground Railroad.

SPEAKER_03: 8:04

The Marriott House. I'm going to call it the Marriott House because Marriott's my man, so to speak. And it's his history that led me to finding the house and helping to put together the Underground Route. Oh, that's

SPEAKER_04: 8:20

Fergus Mordewig there. He's a historian and author of many books of U.S. history, but specifically for this episode, he wrote a book titled Bound for Canaan, the Epic Story of the Underground Railroad, what Fergus calls America's first civil rights movement. In the preface to the paperback edition, He writes, the response to the hardcover edition has been enthusiastic, in part no doubt reflecting the simple fact that it is the first national history of the Underground Railroad to be published in more than a century. Isn't that something? Bound for Canaan was published in 2005, and in it, Fergus quotes from letters written by Charles Marriott to Isaac Hopper, who Fergus describes as the father of the Underground Railroad. Here's what Fergus wrote about Marriott in his book. In November 1838, Charles Marriott, a gentleman farmer and close friend of Isaac Hopper, wrote matter-of-factly from his home near the small city of Hudson to their mutual friend, Roland T. Robinson, in Vermont. The letter reads, Many fugitives from the South effect their escape. Three passed through my hands last week. Now, my question is, was Marriott writing about this very von Hosen Marriott house that we've been talking about all episode long? And more broadly, why? Who was Charles Marriott, a Quaker abolitionist, gentleman farmer, and operator on the Underground Railroad?

SPEAKER_03: 9:38

Okay, I think we're still waiting for a good biography of Charles Marriott, who deserves much more attention, I think. He's a tantalizing figure. His real home is New York City. He's a Quaker. And he is connected in New York City with radical Quakers, most notably Isaac Tatum Hopper. who was a Quaker originally from Philadelphia and who was the key figure. I've sometimes referred to him as the father of the Underground Railroad. I wouldn't cast that label in concrete, but he is the earliest individual I was able to find who was actively involved in organizing the Underground as we know it to have been. He systematically worked out routes, safe houses, disguises, He was one bold Quaker. So Marriott is involved from early on with Hopper and certain other men in the city. Marriott has property up in Claverack, Hudson area. He has orchards, especially when steamboats are plying the river. There was a very, very profitable business in shipping fruit, especially apples. Still is, actually, down to New York City. So this is what Marriott's engaged in. And he has several properties near Hudson, New York. And it's impossible to say at this point how early Marriott began personally assisting fugitive slaves. Undoubtedly, he was involved in it in New York City with collaborating with Hopper and others, other Quakers, in seeing that freedom seekers were dispatched up the Hudson River. I'm pretty sure on steamboats. by that time. I can't prove it. It's a surmise. But the House embodies the entire history of slavery and anti-slavery in the United States. It's embedded in that property. It's embedded in the bricks, even, so to speak, and in the earth that surrounds it. Yes, there were people enslaved there. New York was a slave state. New York was a slave state. The Hudson Valley was an epicenter of slavery in New York State. And the Hudson Valley, some farmers in the Hudson Valley clung to slavery longer than almost any other New Yorkers

SPEAKER_04: 12:04

in the early 19th century. Slavery in the Hudson Valley. Well, that brings us to the work of the African-American Archive of Columbia County. The archive was founded in 2020-2021 when Lisa Flood Smith began looking into her family tree with her husband, Pete. They were surprised to find how connected Black families, descendants of the enslaved, are to the history of New York. And also that so many of these descendants still use the surnames of the families that enslaved them. Black people who didn't come from the Netherlands with names such as Von Ness and Von Buren. Here's Lisa.

SPEAKER_01: 12:38

We started out as a genealogical organization because we were looking into our own family history. And we kept finding all of these really interesting facts and people in the genealogy. we realized that enslavement in Columbia County was much more vast than we ever thought it was. So we started the organization to be able to record that and help other people find their own ancestors from Columbia County, from the enslaved population. Kinderhook itself, and you have to remember that what we're talking about is not the current town of Kinderhook. It is really the area that is almost the entire east side of Columbia County. It at that point was the area pretty much between Rensselaerswijk and Livingston Manor. So it was a much larger area. And it is unique in the fact that we know that it had a very large population of enslaved people. We know that some of the homes are still existing. We know that there is more research to be done to put those people in those houses to figure out who was where. And that's one of the reasons that we really want to engage more with the community because it's important to be able to have a record, to be able to share with people exactly this is what the history was.

SPEAKER_00: 13:57

I think the Van Hoosenhuis is incredibly important to our area, but also to our country. Architecturally, it represents something that's very unique in Dutch architecture at the time. Historically, Jan van Hoosen, Jan Frans van Hoosen, he was one of the first landowners. He purchased the land from the Mohican people and was a very important person in the beginning of that history, of Dutch history in our area. Also, the fact that Charles Marriott lived in that house with his sister is incredibly important. He's one of the big abolitionists abolitionists in our nation nationally. So for him to have resided there while he was an active abolitionist and associated with the Rochaby farm is incredible.

SPEAKER_03: 14:48

One of my goals with the book was to take the Underground Railroad out of the realm of myth and legend and show that it had a history. It was knowable. There was a great deal of information available, which had simply been neglected for generations. Now, why was that? Well, basically, the Underground Railroad was part of abolitionist history, obviously, and also of black African-American history, obviously. And both those spheres of American history were pretty much airbrushed out of the national story, beginning with the end of Reconstruction and through the long, long, long dark night of Jim Crow.

SPEAKER_01: 15:30

The Van Hozen Marriott House is a really unique home. There are not many buildings left from that era because a lot were built out of wood and they have gone away. But this house has stood for all of this time. So it has the history from the 1700s when it was built. Also, it has the history of being a space of enslavement. We also have the added layer of it being a house that was a location on the Underground Railroad. It is probably the only house still existing that is so important to so many different aspects of history. And it really needs to be saved.

SPEAKER_04: 16:15

It is a house of contradiction. It's so interesting to me because this house represents so much of what the United States has always been. Contradictory, complicated. Fergus Bordewijk told me that history is a story full of contradictions. People are contradictory.

SPEAKER_03: 16:31

People who participated in the Underground Railroad often were full of contradictions themselves. And I think more broadly it fits into this idea of American exceptionalism that we have often been wedded to and many people in our political realm want to celebrate, even though the truth defies that. So it fits into the way we want to think about our past. That's to make a romance at the Underground Railroad. And my own view is we don't need to do that anymore. We are grown up as a country. We don't need these fictions. They don't serve us very well. The truth will serve us better. The truth is more complicated. It's not always pretty. Our history is not absent of heroism. It's not absent of overcoming tremendous challenges. Those things are there, too. But we shouldn't be afraid of seeing the other side of things. And underneath the romance of the Underground Railroad is this story of slavery.

SPEAKER_04: 17:45

That's why I think it's important to preserve this house, this site. And we're using this project to raise awareness of this house's history and kick off a fundraising initiative. And we'll host both Ed Klingler and Fergus Bordewijk in person at a discussion in March. It'll be at the Hudson Area Library on March 9th. And we'll screen the short documentary that I've been working on here, for which these interviews were recorded. I hope you can make it. You can find more information about this event at hudsonarealibrary.org. I'll also have a link to this in the show notes of this episode. Well, that's it for this episode of the Jiffy Audio Newsletter Podcast. If you liked it, I hope you'll subscribe, share it with a friend, write a review even. I'm just glad you made it all the way to the end of the episode. Of course, there's more Jiffy at thejiffy.xyz and the Instagram feed. You can always find me at James Cave on Instagram. Thanks for listening.