In Memory of JACOBUS STOUTENBURGH Born 1696 Died 1772 who in 1742 became the first white resident of record on the Flatts, south of Crum Elbow Creek, where subsequently the village of Hyde Park was built and who owned many acres of land in Dutchess County under the Patent of the Great Nine Partners. He married May 25th, 1717 MARGARET TELLER of Teller's Point, Westchester Co. Born 1696 Died 1789

As another year’s annual newsletter is on its way to our members, look to your mailboxes for your issue.

Thanks once again to my lifelong friend Lynnea Jones for chauffeuring me to the FDR Library and Museum last October 2008. Among other items, the library houses files pertaining to Maud Stoutenburgh Eliot, a founding member of our Association, and a priceless collection of Hudson River Valley maps and antique documents bearing red wax seals, handwritten in India ink.

I also photographed many items from the collection at the William Stoutenburgh house.

The Dutch Reformed Church in Hyde Park still houses the memorial plaque, dedicated to Jacobus by FDR, preserved on the wall behind plexiglass. The Post Office mural collection funded by FDR shows in vibrant detail the artist’s concept of Jacobus’ people clearing the land.

At town hall a magnificent mosaic heads the conference room and the clerks there were very helpful gathering information from their records.

This year our contacts have increased at our growing website inviting praise and criticism. The internet is infinite in its potential to inform and misinform. We are wise to be cautious and continue to research and verify sources as we collect items of historical interest.

Please provide alternate means to reach you by mail and telephone as well as e-mail when you contact us. When contacting us through the website, please check your e-mail junk (also known as spam and bulk) folders for replies which you may be missing.

Thank you for the honor of the title of Family Historian.

Ila Malloy

Crest of the Town of Hyde Park, New York

During the 2008 visit, a girlhood friend accompanied me making all of our travel arrangements. In New York City at La Guardia airport, she rented a car at her own expense and drove me upstate to Hyde Park. On our return, she insisted I make stops at points of interest in an effort to collect new photographs for our website. I had balked at this suggestion, concerned we’d become lost or mugged or worse as you read in the newspapers or see in the movies when you take a wrong turn. Fortunately, I was overruled and for this persistence on her part we have much for which she should be thanked.

One stop was at Hyde Park Town Hall where I inquired about the crest, or seal, of Hyde Park, a marvelous mosaic created by local students. The crest is a "marriage" between the Roosevelt and Stoutenburgh family crests. The helpful receptionist indicated it could be found in the conference room, where a morning exercise class was in session. She peeked her head in and asked if the ladies would mind if I crept in to click off some photos.

The morning group was very friendly and recognized our family name. It was a unique experience. I was so overcome that I forgot to retrieve my purse from among the collection of articles on the table holding the ladies’ belongings. I wasn’t too far down the road when I realized my return flight ticket wasn’t among my possessions and we hastened back to recover it.

The ladies in the exercise group laughed, and I laughed and waved to the staff as I took my second exit. Nearly to the rental car, I heard a voice from behind calling "Miss Stoutenburgh! Miss Stoutenburgh!" I turned to find the receptionist waving a small sheaf of papers, trotting along in her nicely heeled feet. "I found this in a file. You may have a copy."

I thanked the helpful lady and realized that had I not forgotten my purse, I’d have missed the town’s contribution to our family’s history. Thank you to the Town of Hyde Park for your acknowledgements and contributions.

Numerous articles about our family have been published by the Poughkeepsie Journal over the years. Please do not overlook these resources in your search to learn more about our heritage.

A Personal Journey:

View from Wilderstein

As a child I knew little of my father except that he gave me the name Stoutenburg.

When this name was announced at roll call on the first day of school, the other children would look around to see who would answer, and I always claimed it proudly with a wave–”Here!”

I felt it was the best thing I owned.

After my children were born I became melancholy, mourning the grandfather who had passed on. He would never bounce them on his knee or sing them an old cowboy song. I could remember him lifting three of us children onto the back of the old sorrel horse Pal, and then leading us through the golden wheat of upstate Washington. Stuck in the middle, my bare feet tickled by the kerneled heads, I’d lift my face to the hot sun and squeeze my eyes shut, never wanting it to end. Daddy wasn’t home much. Missing him terribly, I realized how little I knew about him. Like many World War II veterans, he never entirely returned home.

Then, suddenly, the question sprang: Where were his family?

Believe it or not, I picked up the kitchen telephone and dialed 4-1-1. At the operator’s query I answered “Give me the Stoutenburgs, please.” To my amazement she did. That day I learned of two uncles living, and with some trepidation my shaking finger dialed the number in California.

The voice that answered “Hello?” caused me to drop the telephone, for it seemed my father, nearly eight years gone, surely was on the other end of this line.

Trembling, I recovered the receiver. “Daddy?” my strangled voice asked.

“Who is this?” a beloved voice spoke again, this time with a slightly different timbre.

Hesitantly, I began to explain to the suspicious man that I was looking for my father’s family. I was interrupted by a hearty, booming exclamation: “The lost kids!” I had found my father’s biggest fan, his youngest brother. An excited commotion in the background celebrated our reunion.

This was the beginning of the path that led me to Hyde Park, New York where our Family Association has its roots.

Between the West Coast and the East Coast lies more than distance–it is a vastly different culture.
California is edgy, on the brink of it all, still very much a frontier-prodding, risk-taking adventurer, probably stamped upon us by the vision of “Gold!” in our history. We are still new and eager, as though to say “By God, we’ll make it so!” and “Don’t tell me I can’t!”

In 2007, I had my first visual feast upon the Hudson Valley during our Wilderstein visit. My eyes roved over the rolling green miles toward Hyde Park and I felt what rich is. Rich is the land with the pride of centuries. Rich is the preservation of what has come before with its sense of establishment. It is the determination to hold on, as we realize we are connected to our past and our future, and our children’s future. Rich is the bond with community, with its desire for peace and prosperity. Rich is the active pursuit of happiness in activity by taking hold of it with the work of our hands.

Rich were my eyes that glorious October day overlooking the Hudson River from Wilderstein.

There is a world wide with history between northern California’s rugged mountains–wearing grand forests cut by plunging torrents ridden by kayaking mountain men (yes, they really exist)–and upstate New York’s lush fields contentedly grazed by flocks of sheep, its street markets ripe with harvests, brought to bear by gentile folk and farmers living in pre-Revolutionary mansions.

As I traveled Route 9 last October 2008 in a procession toward our family meeting with my distant cousins, I had a sense of my family line, and it brought home the passage of progress since 1609 as though superimposed in time over these past four hundred years.

Really, Henry Hudson had found the right place to grow a nation.

IMS Malloy
Family Historian