American Dreaming

By Bob Ferris

Three feet from where I write sits a nondescript, rectangular cardboard box.  It was shipped to me by my late father a few years before he passed.  It was done with little fanfare and was not insured or bubble-wrapped.  But in it rests nearly two dozen volumes many of which are from James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales—a collection of first or second editions owned by my ancestor Col. John De Peyster Douw (1812-1901) and in our family for five generations.  I do not display them as they have fire-blackened spines and resemble more crinkly, late-fall leaves than fully functioning books.   But they are there still for me to occasionally contemplate if not actually read and hold.  They are a heart of sorts, unseen but functioning.

These books come to mind now for two reasons.  The first is that I recently had a conversation with my wife Carlene about Jane Austen.  Which caused me to think about Cooper because the one catalyzed the other in that Cooper’s writing career is rumored to have come out of a spousal challenge when James’ wife Susan was critical of Jane Austen.   The end result of my conversation was that my wife and I agreed that both Austen and Cooper were first and foremost trying to shape culture.  Austen was attempting to point those of a certain social standing in England towards an enlightened view of themselves and Cooper was trying to tell a young country how it should be.

It is important in this to understand that Cooper was wholly American having been born the same year the US Constitution was ratified in his eventual home of New York State. And Baby James was just ten days old when the Bill of Rights was adopted.  Cooper’s early breaths were essentially drawn from the same air that dried the ink on these documents.  He was truly and purely “Born in the USA” nearly two centuries before Bruce Springsteen wrote his iconic song.  Interestingly, Cooper and Springsteen were both born in New Jersey150 years to the month apart.  And “The Boss” was delivered to us in Monmouth County an area named for my Morris ancestors' Welsh homelands which brings me to reason two for my thinking of these books (see also Penelope Van Princis Stout).  

The second reason has to do with my ancestor Lewis Morris III and his half-brother Gouverneur Morris.  Lewis signed the Declaration of Independence and Gouverneur word-smithed much of the US Constitution including the Preamble.  Gouverneur reportedly coined the words "We, the People" in response to states not playing well in the developing political sandbox first sketched in pencil by the Articles of Confederation.  My position in that particular realm is that the younger Morris was not so much describing America in the Preamble but offering up a vision statement of what America should be.  Its preferred state not the current one.

Although the US Constitution has been criticized because it initially allowed abuses inconsistent with its verbiage and Cooper’s writings discounted as they are somewhat mythical rather than truly reflective or accurate, I think those critics might miss the point.  My sense is that Morris and Cooper were both trying to give hints about how American should be.  In this I get mentally whipsawed by attempting to differentiate between myth and dream.  I tend to gravitate more toward these being dreams pulling us along a path to a bright future as opposed to myths which seem more like anchors.

Much is made in these literary critiques about the myth of American Exceptionalism (1,2,3).  How Cooper somehow wanted to create this myth in these books.  A bit of literary manipulation.  I wonder where the sin is in this?  Who doesn't want to encourage the young and just-forming on to greatness. The fault, if there is fault, might be more with us for not living up to the promise of our young selves, particularly now.  But these are analyses for those more keen on this topic and better trained in this arena.   

"The Wolvenhoeck house was surrounded by a circular stockade. It stood twelve feet high, and was made of oak posts which had been pointed and bolted to transverse timbers, having a gate, pointed on both the upper and lower sides, which was raised by weights in a gallows frame. Many Indian treaties were executed inside this little stockade, and at such times the chiefs and their squaws slept on their buffalo robes inside the limits, while their band found shelter under the trees along the river bank."  See here for more complete description.  

Back to this collection of books and who owned and read them.  Col. John De Peyster Douw was an interesting fellow who descended from several prominent Dutch families that came early to the New World.  His father of the same name served in the Revolutionary War participating in the Clinton-Sullivan Campaign of 1779 after graduating from Yale in 1776.  John Sr. was a friend of General Lafayette’s and as a result his near-teen-aged son was for a time part of the Lafayette’s body guard during the Frenchman’s last visit to the United States (1824-1825). John Sr. was the son of Volkert Douw who also served during the Revolution in various capacities and grew up on an estate known as Wolvenhoeck (Wolf Point) often visited by wolves and Indians. 

DeWitt Clinton Locomotive circa 1831. 

After attending Albany Academy, Flushing Military Academy on Long Island and the Chittenago Polytechnic  Institute, young John worked for a year as an engineer on the Albany-Schenectady Railroad before traveling to Europe.  Upon his return he studied law like his father and became a Judge Advocate with the New State Militia eventually serving in the administration of Governor William H. Seward who went on to be Lincoln's Secretary of State.  He seemed to retire from these activities in the mid-1840s.

Fort Crailo the home of Hendrick and Catherina Van Rensselaer named for the Van Rensselaer ancestral estate in Holland and purportedly the site where the ditty "Yankee Doddle" was written. 

Col. John was a man of means who had real no need of a profession. His grandmother was a Van Rensselaer, the original founders of the Dutch colony in the New World, and at the time of his birth his family had been in North America nearly two centuries.   I will note that it is not easy dealing with Van Rensselaer genealogy as they tended to marry within the family often choosing first cousins once removed for mates.  In this case, Col. John descended from two children of Hendrick and Catherina Van Rensselaer: Anna and Killiaen. But he also descends from two children of Petrus and Anna Douw (Maria and Volkert) who also descend from Hendrick and Catherina making Maria Douw both his grandmother and great-aunt.  It must work on some level because Petrus and Anna are also the great-great grandparents of Herman Melville of Moby Dick fame.   

From biography of Herman Melville.  Maria in this case was Herman's mother and Gansevoort is Herman's elder brother. 

In light of the above it is not surprising that Col. John married first his cousin Margaret Schuyler Van Rensselaer in 1837.  They had two children before divorcing or separating in 1851 (Melville biographer Hershel Parker mentioned that a relative called De Peyster's second marriage "dubious" pp. 204).  

Marianna Chandler Lanman Douw

Given his family's innate predilection for grabbing what was close and related it is hard to imagine how he and his second wife Marianna Chandler Lanman who was living in Connecticut came together to have five children, but they did.   Marianna who was born in Monroe, Michigan in 1826 was the daughter of a woman who survived the infamous Frenchtown Massacre during the War of 1812.  Whew.

Inside the cover of Col. John's copy of the Spy we find these clippings which indicate that this book passed through the hands of his daughter Mary Lanman Douw Ferris who was notorious for pasting clippings on everything (see here for more on Cornelius Van Wyck).   

The Douws before Col. John and beyond seemed to spread rather than migrate and nearly all that time they sat near the center of commerce and in places of power.  All this presupposes that his library was the result of accumulation and likely extensive. John and his relatives were astute people familiar with war, wildlife, Indians, America’s history and things of a pioneer nature. But they bought, read and collected these books including some of Cooper's non-fiction works talking about the nature of America.  Then they passed them on. Why?  These were not people who needed to be told about the American experience.  They lived it.  Yet they were clearly Cooper fans of a type.  Part of this could be that Cooper told thinly-veiled histories of their own stories, but I think too that they were interested in thinking about the dream and their part in it.