Passaic County NJ Archives Biographies.....William S. STRYCKER, 1838 - 1900 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/nj/njfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 9, 2008, 11:21 pm Author: Mary Depue Ogden, Editor (1917) STRYCKER, Gen. William S., Soldier, Historian. The Strycker family is of most remote antiquity. Proof has been brought from Holland of the family having remained on the same estates near The Hague and near Rotterdam for full eight hundred years prior to the coming of the first member to this country in 1652. The following facts, viz.: the ducal coronet on the crest and the family being traced far back to the latter part of the eighth century, prove that the progenitors were among the great military chieftains of the Netherlands who were created dukes, counts and barons by Charles the Bald, in order to bring some form of government out of the chaos of those times long before the advent of the Dutch Republic. Many legends are told of this powerful family in those warlike days—one particularly accounting for the three boars' heads upon the shield. In 1643 the States General of the Netherlands offered a grant of land in New Amsterdam to Jan and Jacobus Strycker provided that they brought out, at their own expense, twelve other families from Holland. This grant, it does not appear, they accepted until eight years afterward, when they established the American branch of the family in and near New Amsterdam,. The old Strycker mansion at Fifty-second street and the Hudson river is the last of the old manor houses of New York City. There were few offices which these able men did not fill at different times. Jacobus was a great burgher of New Amsterdam in 1653-55-57-58-60, also one of Peter Stuyvesant's council. Jan Strycker, born in Holland, 1614, reached New Amsterdam from Rouen with his wife, two sons and four daughters, 1652, leaving behind him all the privileges and rights which might be his by descent in the old world. He was a man of ability and education, for his subsequent history proves him to be prominent in the civil and religious community in which he cast his lot. His first wife was Lambertje Seubering. After her death he married Swantje Jans, widow of Cornelis Potter, of Brooklyn. The second wife died in 1686. In March, 1687, he married a third time, Teuntje Teunis, of Flatbush. Jan Strycker remained in New Amsterdam a little over a year, and in the year 1654 he took the lead in founding a Dutch colony on Long Island at what was called Midwout; it was also called Middle-woods. The modern name is Flatbush. On the nth of December, 1653, while still in New Amsterdam, Jan Strycker joined with others in a petition of the Commonality of the New Netherlands and a remonstrance against the conduct of Director Stuyvesant. The petition recited that "they apprehended the establishment of an arbitrary government over them; that it was contrary to the genuine principles of well regulated governments that one or more men should arrogate to themselves the exclusive power to dispose at will of the life and property of any individual; that it was odious to every freeborn man, principally to those whom God has placed in a free State of newly settled lands. We humbly submit that 'tis one of our privileges that our consent, or that of our representatives, is necessarily required in the enactment of laws and orders." It is remarkable that at this early day this indictment was drawn up, this "bill of rights" was published. But these men came from the blood of the hardy Northmen and imbibed with the free air of America the determination to be truly free themselves. In the year 1654 Jan Strycker was selected as the chief magistrate of Midwout, and this office he held most of the time for twenty years. The last time we find the notice of his election was at the council of war holden in Fort William Hendrick, August 18, Anno 1673, where the delegates from the respective towns of Midwout, Bruckelen, Amersfort, Utrecht, Boswyck and Gravesend selected him as "Schepen." He was also one of the embassy from New Amsterdam and the principal Dutch towns to be sent to the Lord Mayors in Holland on account of their annoyance from the English and the Indians; they complain that they "will be driven off their lands unless reenforced from Fatherland." On April 10, 1664, he took his seat as a representative from Midwout in that great Landtdag, a general assembly called by the burgomasters, which was held at the City Hall in New Amsterdam, to take into consideration the precarious condition of the country. He was one of the representatives in the Hempstead convention in 1665, and he appears as a patentee on the celebrated Nichols patent, October 11, 1667, and again on the Dongan patent, November 12, 1685. He was elected captain of the military company at Midwout, October 25, 1673, and his brother Jacobus was given the authority to "administer the oaths and to install him into office." Captain Jan Strycker was named March 26, 1674, as a deputy to represent the town in a conference to be held at New Orange to confer with Governor Colve on the present state of the country. During the first year of his residence at Midwout he was one of the two commissioners to build the Dutch church there, the first erected on Long Island, and he was for many years an active supporter of the Dominie Johannes Theodorus Polhemus, of the Reformed Church of Holland, in that edifice. After raising a family of eight children, every one of whom lived to adult life and married, seeing his sons settled on valuable plantations and occupying positions of influence in the community, and his daughters marrying into the families of the Brinckerhoffs, the Berriens and the Bergens, living to be over eighty years of age, he died about the year 1697, full of the honors which these new towns could bestow, and with his duties as a civil officer and a free citizen of his adopted country well performed. Jacobus Gerritsen Strycker, or Jacob Strycker, as he seems to have generally written his name, was a younger brother of Jan and came from the village of Ruinen in the United Provinces, to New Amsterdam, in the year 1651. On February 11, 1653, he bought a lot of land "on west side of the Great Highway, on the cross street running from the said highway to the shore of the North River, Manhattan Island." A part of this "lot" is still in possession of the family. He was a great burgher of New Amsterdam in 1653-55-57-58-60. In the month of March, 1653, he appears as subscribing two hundred guilders to the fund for erecting a wall of earth mound and wooden palisades to surround the city of New Amsterdam to keep off the Puritan colonists of New England and unfriendly Indians. On May 27 of the same year the worshipful schepen, Jacob Strycker, is the purchaser of a lot of land ten rods square on what is now Exchange Place, east of Broad street. About the close of the year 1660 he removed to New Amersfort, Long Island, now called Flatlands. He must have returned for a time to New Amsterdam, for in 1663 he appears again as an alderman of the young colony there. In the year 1660 he and his wife Ytie (Ida) (Huybrechts) Strycker, whom he marrii d in Holland, and who bore him two children, a son and a daughter, appear on the records as members of the old Dutch Church of New York, and it is noted that he had removed to New Amersfort. The records of the church in the latter place shows both of them as members there in the year 1667. On August 18, 1673, he became schout or high sheriff of all the Dutch towns on Long Island, a position of influence and responsibility at that time. He was also a delegate to the convention, March 26, 1674, to confer with Governor Colve on the state of the colony. He seems to have been a gentleman of considerable means, of much official influence and of decided culture. He died, as we find from the church records kept by Dominie Casparus Van Zuuren, in October, 1687. From this date until the present time (1906) the family genealogy has accurately been traced down by General William S. Strycker, whose biography we here append, drafted and adopted by the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States Commandery of the State of Pennsylvania shortly after his death. William Scudder Strycker, son of Thomas Johnson and Hannah (Scudder) Strycker, of Trenton, New Jersey, was born in that city, June 6, 1838, died at his home in that city, October 29, 1900. He prepared for college at the Trenton Academy and was graduated from Princeton College, in the class of 1858. He read law and was admitted to the bar (Ohio), but never engaged in active practice. He responded to President Lincoln's first call for troops and enlisted as a private April 16, 1861. He was appointed major and disbursing officer and quartermaster at Camp Vredenburg, Freehold, New Jersey, July 22, 1862, by the Governor of New Jersey, and assisted much in organizing the Fourteenth New Jersey there. He was appointed paymaster of United States Volunteers, February 19, 1863, and ordered to Hilton Head, South Carolina, where, July 8, 1863, he volunteered as acting aide-de-camp to General Gillmore and participated in the capture of Morris Island, in the night attack 011 Fort Wagner, and in the siege of Charleston generally. Subsequently he was transferred to the north on account of illness and assigned to duty as senior paymaster at Columbus, Ohio, at Parole Camp, and continued in charge of that paying district (including Detroit) until 1866, when he resigned and returned to Trenton. On January 10, 1867, he was placed on the staff of the Governor of New Jersey as aide-de-camp and lieutenant-colonel, and April 12, 1867, was appointed adjutant-general of New Jersey, with the rank of brigadier-general, which office he held continuously to his decease (over thirty-three years) and the duties of which he discharged with signal ability. He was nominated brevet major-general by Governor Parker for long and meritorious service, February 9, 1874, and confirmed by the Senate unanimously. General Strycker was a wide reader and close student, especially of American history, and collected a large and valuable library, especially rich in Americana. He was noted as an author and wrote some of the best and most accurate historical monographs yet issued in America, relating particularly to New Jersey and the battles of Trenton, Princeton and Monmouth. He became so interested in the conduct of the Hessians at Trenton that he made a trip to Hesse-Cassel, Germany, and exhumed from the archives there new facts of rare value concerning them. His "Trenton One Hundred Years Ago," "The Old Barracks at Trenton, N. J.," "The New Jersey Volunteer-Loyalists," "The Battles of Trenton and Princeton," "The New Jersey Continental Line in the Virginia Campaign 1781," "Washington's Reception by the People of New Jersey in 1789," and other like monographs are authorities on these subjects, and will continue so. He also compiled, or had compiled in his office as adjutant-general, a "Register of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Revolutionary War" and a "Record of the Officers and Men of New Jersey in the Civil War 1861-1865," that abound with painstaking accuracy and care and that will forever remain as monuments both to himself and the State. In recognition of his scholarly work and worth, his alma mater justly conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws upon him in 1899. He was president of the Trenton Battle Monument Association and the life and soul of it for years and to his wise and patriotic conduct is due in large part its erection at last. He was president of the Trenton Savings Fund Society and greatly interested in its new banking house, an ornament to his native city. He was a director of the Trenton Banking Company and of the Widows' Home Association; also trustee of the First Presbyterian Church, Trenton, and of the Theological Seminary at Princeton. He was president of the New Jersey Society of the Cincinnati and of the New Jersey Historical Society, and a member of the New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, of the Grand Army of the Republic, and of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion; also a fellow of the American Geographical and Historical societies and of the Royal Historical Society of London. General Strycker traveled extensively, both at home and abroad, and dispensed a gracious hospitality to Count de Paris and others, and was everywhere recognized as an American scholar and gentleman. He was modest and unassuming beyond most men, but was an accomplished officer and Christian gentleman. In both his military and civil relations he was alike honorable and honored. "None knew him, but to love him, none named him but to praise." His abilities were of a high order, and he had a charm of manner and grace of bearing peculiarly his own. His high qualities, both of head and heart, his intellectual attainments and social elegance, marked him as one of nature's noblemen, and when he passed away one of the highest types of American soldier, citizen and gentleman was lost. He was the very soul of probity and honor. His work is done and it was well done, and his example remains an inspiration and a hope. General Strycker married, September 14, 1870, Helen Boudinot Atterbury, of New York, and their children were: Helen Boudinot, wife of John A. Montgomery, Esq.; Kathlyn Berrien and William Bradford. His wife and three children survived him. Additional Comments: Extracted from: MEMORIAL CYCLOPEDIA OF NEW JERSEY UNDER THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF MARY DEPUE OGDEN VOLUME III MEMORIAL HISTORY COMPANY NEWARK, NEW JERSEY 1917 This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/njfiles/ File size: 14.0 Kb This file is located at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/nj/passaic/bios/strycker-ws.txt