So far I have very much enjoyed reading about all the native
New Yorkers -- and would like to add several from Columbia
County.  I am in total awe of the four below named, especially
Cornelis VA Van Dyck.

Elizabeth Freeman, aka Mumbet, b c1743  (Claverack NY) - 1829
(Stockbridge MA).  She was born a slave in the Hogeboom family
of Claverack and either given or sold by the Hogeboom father to
his daughter and son-in-law Hannah and John Ashley of
Sheffield.  In their kitchen, she balked at Hannah's brutality
and ran away to Theodore Sedgewick's in Stockbridge.  Sedgewick
and Tapping Reeve (of Litchfield CT) took her case to court,
where it is heralded as a first test of the constitutionality
of slavery.

Peter Van Schaack 1747 (Kinderhook) - 1832 (Kinderhook).  The
intellectual loyalist returned to Kinderhook after his
Revolutionary era banishment and established in his house a law
school where a number of future NY politicians and lawyers were
trained.  His grandson, Henry C. Van Schaack, compiled much of
his correspondence, shaping it into a the first biography of an
American Loyalist in 1842.  Peter was a wonderful writer and
thinker ... and is always a great pleasure to read.

Benjamin Franklin Butler.  1795 (in what is now Stuyvesant NY)
d 1858 in Paris).  He was a colleague of Martin Van Buren's
from about 1808 through 1839, starting in Hudson NY, where he
first clerked under an Buren.  He was a member of the NY State
Assembly 1827-1833 and part of the Albany Regency; was a
leading member of the committee that revised the laws of NYS
c1827.  He went to Washington in 1833 to serve as US Attorney
General, first in Jackson's cabinet and then in Van Buren's
until 1838.  Then he started NYU Law School, and distinguished
himself here by introducing the case method of teaching law.

Cornelius Van Alen Van Dyck l8l8 (Kinderhook, NY) - l895
(Beirut, Lebanon) for his unique and loving comprehension of
another culture.  He trained in the United States as a
physician and minister and then went to Beirut, Palestine,
where he became affiliated with The American University at
Beirut during its early years.  Although, not its founder,
Cornelius Van Dyck was its premiere teacher.  He translated the
bulk of the Bible into Arabic, designed the first moveable type
for Arabic.  Once designed, he went to Germany to have it made,
and then returned to the United States to raise funds to cover
the costs.  In addition to the Bible, he translated all major
Western medical texts into Arabic, and then he set about to
record and publish all Arabic oral literature, science, and
folk lore for the first time.  Ousted from the ministry because
he cared so much for Arabic culture, he really didn't care that
he had been 'expelled'.  As recalled by his family, he loved
the West, the East, and above all he loved God, who had, after
all was said and done, had made the controversy.  Abu-Ghazaleh,
author of American Missions in Syria wrote that: " ... he
represents the contribution of a foreigner, who managed to
acquire an astonishing proficiency in the Arabic tongue, which
enabled him to speak and write it with the ease of a cultured
Arab ...  As far as the power of example went, his was the most
valuable and effective single influence ever exerted by a
foreigner in the cultural development of the country."


There are more ... but that does it for me for now.

Ruth Piwonka