Some Descendants of Hendrick Hegeman, of Flatbush and New Lots, Kings County, Long Island, New York
http://library.uwinnipeg.ca/people/dobson/genealogy/ff/Hegeman-Hendrick.cfm
Few families have been more badly confused in print than that of Hegeman. The immigrant Adriaen Hegeman, of Midwout (later Flatbush), Schout Fiscal of the three Dutch towns on Long Island, and his wife Catharina Margetts, had seven sons and one daughter. In the succeeding generation, at least six Hegeman grandsons were named Adriaen for him, and at least three were named Joseph after Catharins father, Joseph Margetts. Consequently as for other families such as Bloetgoet, Haff, Kranckheyt, and Lott, which produced large numbers of sons in the first few generations and repeated the same few forenames in diverging branches the problem of distinguishing cousins of the same name soon presents enormous difficulties.
With the single exception of Richard W. Cooks admirable treatment of Denys2 Hegeman, we have not seen a published account of any of Adriaens sons which is free of serious error. The root of all the confusion is the Hegeman entry in Teunis G. Bergens Register of the early settlers of Kings County (1881), pp. 134-9, which teems with conflations, repetitions and chronological impossibilities, and in which at least three of the heads of families are assigned erroneous parentages. Bergen was followed too credulously by Henry A. Stoutenburgh in his Documentary History of the Dutch Congregation of Oyster Bay (1902), pp. 243-59, who however at least recognized in his account of Joseph Hegeman (the only member of the second generation whom he had occasion to treat directly) that he could hardly have been the father of a Peter Hegeman who died in 1770. William A. Eardeley, in his Chronology and Ancestry of Chauncey M. Depew (1918), added some new material but in ill-digested form; he flauts Stoutenburghs correction on p. 189, yet accepts it on p. 191, so that Peter is bifurcated into two different people. The industrious but chaotic Hegeman typescript by the late Laurence La Tourette Driggs (1876-1945) at NYG&BS has furnished some useful particulars, but its author accepted most of Bergens assertions without any attempt at analysis, and committed many additional errors which evidently owe their existence to poor note-taking.
Joseph2 Hegeman, Justice of Kings County, the only one of Adriaens seven sons to follow his father into public office, and whose wifes coveted Rapalje and Trico ancestry has been much publicized in recent years, has predictably been credited with far more children than contemporary records would allow. Bergen and Eardeley each assign him eleven, crowded into a period of about fifteen years! But the 1698 census of Flatbush gives him only four children, so admitting the possibility that his eldest daughter Jannetje had by then married and left her fathers household, there are only four others who verifiably survived infancy. In addition to an alleged Peter, whose probable date of birth (as Stoutenburgh recognized) makes him far too young to have belonged to his family, Joseph has been rather arbitrarily credited with daughters Neeltje (wife of Coert van Voorhees) and Catharina (wife of Teunis Bogaert), who on onomastic grounds were more likely daughters of Isaac Hegeman, though this is a question beyond the scope of the present essay. Bergens account of Josephs son Joseph Jr. on p. 138 is a conflation of at least two and probably three different men of the same name, one of whom was really the son of Hendrick Hegeman.
Furthermore, we can definitely refute one son claimed for Joseph, who, we believe, had not been previously questioned when the present page first appeared; for (contrary to Bergen, Stoutenburgh, Eardeley, and Driggs) this man was not the father of Frans Hegeman (Sr.) of Poughkeepsie, as we feel confident the discussion below will prove. It is scarcely necessary to comment on the absurdity with which this person is multiplied by Bergen and Eardeley into two sons named Frans and Francis.
Rather, as we hope to prove, Joseph Hegeman (husband of Sara van der Vliet) and Frans Hegeman belonged to the family of Josephs brother Hendrick2 Hegeman, of whose three demonstrable sons only Adriaen Hegeman has been correctly described by any of the writers we have mentioned. Hendrick is sorely neglected in the literature, evidently because he has been perceived as a genealogical dead-end. In actuality, he was the progenitor of a flourishing branch of the family, by no means inferior to that of his brother Joseph in interest or extent.
In fact, in a very recent development (May 2000), another authentic child can now be added to the family of Hendrick Hegeman and Adriaentje Bloetgoet. This is Judicke Hegeman, evidence for whose identity which had been proposed in an entry in the LDS Ancestral File which we had overlooked was kindly brought to our attention by Lynn Dielman, of San Diego, California, and is further developed here.
Because such heavy use is here made of church registers, it would have swelled this essay greatly to have included precise citations in every case. Instead, except for the most important references, or those whose interpretation is open to some doubt, we refer the reader to A Note on the Church Records at the end, listing the editions used. As they are all chronologically arranged or equipt with indexes, their use should present no special difficulty. For abbreviations used in the endnotes, please see Abbreviations used in the Genealogy Homepage of John Blythe Dobson.
My research on the Hegemans grew out of a suggestion from my grandmothers cousin, the late Cecelia (Coon) Botting (1905-1994), of Tucson, Arizona, who kindly supplied some starting references and encouragement. I must also record my gratitude to Dorothy A. Koenig, of Berkeley, California, who has (as on several previous occasions) provided discussion of various points and generously supplied materials, and to Harry Macy and Henry B. Hoff, the editor and consulting editor of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, who have furnished valuable comments on sources used in previous writings, from which I continue to benefit. Since this page d(c) buted on the Web, Mrs. Margaret (Hagerman) Hunter has furnished valuable help with the difficult problem of the Dutchess County Hegemans, and very generously supplied a complete copy of the manuscript Hegeman genealogy by Driggs, mentioned above.
Mrs. Muriel (Albright) Frincke has supplied information on the Parmentier family, Kay Staub, of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, sent an important correction concerning the family of Hendrick4 (Adriaen3, Hendrick2, Adriaen1) Hegeman, Terry Wanamaker supplied information on the Vanderburgh family, and Charles M. Cook, of Houma, Louisiana, sent an important correction on the identification of Adriaen3 (Hendrick2, Adriaen1) Hegeman. Carol (Roach) Murray, of Surrey, B.C., sent material on the family of Hendrick Lott. Jeff Carr, of Palmyra, Virginia, offered helpful comments on some of the Waldron connections. None of these persons should, however, be held responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation.
