History, Genealogy and the Trumpour Family
(by Mark Trumpour)

September 2019

The following article is reprinted, with permission of the author, from Historic Kingston, No. 18, pp36-44 (Kingston Historical Society, March 1970). It has been lightly edited for length.

Genealogy is a very intriguing sort of hobby, intriguing because you are really “discovering” people, places, and events, learning to view them from different perspectives than might ordinarily be taken. It has been said that personal experience is the best teacher. If this is so, then genealogy must certainly be an excellent way of learning history. I say this because genealogy is very much a personal experience. The amateur genealogist, more often than not, is writing a history of his own family, and because of this can very easily become deeply involved in the characters and times he is researching. This personal involvement in history is one aspect of genealogy which particularly appeals to me.

Exactly how I first got interested in genealogy I am not sure, but some of the credit must go to my father, who always showed a lively interest in family history. My grandfather on my mother’s side helped as well, for he was, and is, an historian, and full of stories of his own forebears. I also consider myself to have been fortunate in having known Dr. H. C. Burleigh, the genealogist for the U.E.L. Association, who [lived] just up the lane from our summer cottage. He was always able to offer new suggestions to me, and has been a most valuable source of information and inspiration.

In the course of my academic ramblings through books, records, dusty documents, and the odd overgrown graveyard, I have accumulated quite a volume of notes, family trees, and errata from both sides of my family, maternal as well as paternal. This story will be limited to the Trumpour family itself, and a few of its closely related strains, the Bogarts, Dorlands, and Campbells as these have more relevance to local history. My hope is that by describing the times in which these people lived, they will themselves become more than mere names.

My story begins early in the 1700s in the Rhenish Palatinate, along the Rhine River, with a family of the surname Trombauer. Translated literally, the name would mean “strong farmer”, a translation which, as we shall see, reflects quite accurately the stock from which the family was drawn. The Palatinate at this time was still suffering from the terrible ravages of the Thirty Years War (which, it is estimated, killed off almost one-third of the population of central Europe), and the region now found itself further devastated by the French, under Louis XIV. Then, on top of this and burdensome taxation by petty feudal rulers, the winter of 1708-1709 brought bitter cold, killing fruit trees and vines. The peasants, in their distress, were encouraged to leave the land which had brought them so much grief by attractive offers of land from colonial proprietors, supported by a co-operative British government.

Therefore, in the spring of 1709, some 13,000 Palatines moved down the Rhine to Rotterdam, in spite of the efforts of the Elector Palatine, John William, to keep his subjects from leaving. From Rotterdam, they were embarked for London in six groups. Niclaus Trombauer, with his wife, son, and two daughters was in the first group of 852, arriving in London on May 3, 1709. According to the records, Niclaus was only about 33 at the time. His son Paulus was the eldest child, and he was only six; of the two girls, one was three, and the other less than a year old.

Most of the emigrants were farmers, and Niclaus no exception, for he is listed among the husbandmen and vinedressers. The role of religion in the emigration is not altogether clear, but it appears that religious persecution as such was not a cause; the emigrants were divided about evenly between Lutheran, Reformed, and Roman Catholic. The Trombauers fell into the last category. However, the British stipulated that all become Protestants before coming to the New World, so they subsequently became members of the Lutheran Church, and later of the Dutch Reformed Church.

It is easy to imagine the effect that depositing 13,000 people in the city would have, in any city, in such a short space of time, and of course London at the time was not the mammoth city it is today. The “poor Palatines”, as they were referred to, were lodged in warehouses, tents, and almost anywhere else available. Naturally, they became quite a centre of attraction and so, capitalizing on this, they made cheap toys to sell to curiosity-seekers. Their novelty soon wore off, however, and the Londoners became more hostile. At one point, a mob of some 2,000 Englishmen attacked the Palatine encampment with axes, scythes, and hammers, complaining that the Palatines were taking jobs from them and lowering wages.

The Palatines were not Britain’s only problem at that time, for the country was currently at war, and experiencing some trouble in getting naval supplies, mainly tar and pitch. Sweden exercised a monopoly in this area, and had begun to charge exorbitant prices for this commodity. It is not quite certain just where the idea came from, but nevertheless, it was decided to ship the Palatines over to the colonies, where they were to produce supplies for the navy, thus repaying the government.

Finally in January, 1710, almost 3,000 out of the 13,000 left for New York. In crowded ships with inadequate food, almost 500 died. By August, nearly eight months later, the last ship had arrived in New York. Incidentally, not all the Palatines went to New York; some wound up in North Carolina, and some in Pennsylvania, where they are sometimes referred to as the Pennsylvania “Dutch”, which of course they are not.

Two months after arriving, the movement up the Hudson River began, and the Trombauers settled at West Camp, one of the villages set up for the Palatines. Unfortunately, the scheme for making tar went awry. Tar comes from a particular type of pine tree, the pitch pine, and there is a particular way to go about extracting it. As it turned out, very few men knew how to do it, including the man supervising the work, and so the whole plan collapsed, almost bankrupting the unfortunate Governor Hunter of New York, and causing hardship and discontent among the Palatines. Somehow, the Trombauers found their way, by curious coincidence, to Kingston, New York. The family finally came to rest in 1735 on a piece of land on the west side of the old King’s Road from Kingston to Albany, in a little place called Katsbaan, near the Reformed Church there.

In 1719, a few years after arriving in the New World, another son was born to the Trombauers, this one named Johannes. Large families were very much in fashion then; Johannes, who was my ancestor, was the eighth of nine children, and later he himself had a family which numbered nine. Johannes took up residence on his father’s homestead in Katsbaan where he acquired large tracts of land. Although records tend to be scant and dry, they do add some detail to this. Beginning in 1761, Johannes was involved in a legal fight with the city of Kingston, New York. Johannes and another man petitioned the governor for a grant of 2000 acres of land, as recompense for running the line between Albany and Ulster Counties. A few months later, the Corporation of Kingston, for some reason, filed a complaint against the grant. The two men answered it, and in return, the Corporation of Kingston filed a new petition. However, it does appear that they got the grant, for Johannes is later reported as owning lands in the area for which he was petitioning.

As in so many rural areas, the farmers of the Hudson Valley did not go very far afield when it came to marrying. Johannes’ wife was Christina Fiere, whose father Valentin owned a farm just north of Katsbaan where the Trombauers lived. After such an unsettled beginning, the relatively peaceful farm life must have come as a real blessing.

Having concluded happily this fascinating and extraordinary episode of history, let us look for a minute at the ways my other ancestral families arrived on the continent. While the Trumpours arrived in 1710, others had come even earlier, under the Dutch. The Bogart family, for example,set sail from Amsterdam in 1663 on a ship called the “Spotted Cow”, to settle on Long Island.

Jan Louwe Bogart took up residence in the town of New Harlem, where he was one of the thirty original patentees, named as a member of the Corporation of the Town of New Harlem. He was chosen as a magistrate in 1675. Shortly after his arrival in New Amsterdam, the colony passed into British hands, to become New York. Later on, the family moved a short way up the Hudson River to the little town of Tappan. Similarly the Dorlands, represented by Jan Gerritz Dorlant, arrived even earlier, in 1652, when the well-known Peter Stuyvessant was still the governor of the colony. Jan Dorlant took up residence in the town of Brooklyn, then spelled “Breucklijn”.

The Scottish side of the family was the last to arrive. The Campbells came from the Hebrides Islands off the west coast of Scotland, and spoke only Gaelic. In 1738, a group of about 300 Scots, with my ancestor Duncan Campbell among them, sailed for New York. Unfortunate circumstances led to a delay in obtaining their land grant, so as a result it was over 25 years before the poor Scots received their promised land in what is now Washington County, New York State. There they remained until life was again interrupted, this time by the American Revolution.

If I might be permitted, I would like to make a slight diversion here to comment on something I find quite fascinating, and that is the evolution of names. As previously mentioned, the name Trumpour was first spelled “Trombauer”; the ending, “bauer” is German for “farmer”, while “Trom” is a fairly common prefix in German names, meaning “strong”. At a time when the vast majority of people were only semi-literate at best, one of the chief influences on the spelling of names was the nationality of the man who recorded the name. Thus, it would be very easy for an official of Dutch or English background to mis-spell an uncommon name of a different origin. Whatever the reason, the ending changed from “bauer” to “bor”, “bhor”, or “boor”. Trumpbour seems to have gradually become an accepted spelling, with some simply dropping the “b” for the sake of convenience. By this circuitous route, the name eventually arrived at its present form. It is interesting to note that there are remotely related branches of the family still living in the United States who spell their name Trumbauer. But I shall simply use the name as it is spelled now in our own family to avoid confusion.

Getting back to my story, then, Johannes had a family of nine; his fourth son, Paulus, was my ancestor. He was born in 1757, in Katsbaan, and so he was quite young when an event occurred which completely altered the face of North America, and looking back from hindsight, the history of the world; the British colonies revolted.

One of the first acts on the road to rebellion was the signing of the Articles of Association by the inhabitants of American communities in 1775, and it appears that only one of six Trumpour sons signed the Articles. The true test of loyalty, however, only came with the passing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, with its concluding phrases: “For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence,… we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.” It was clear that there could be no neutrality now, for to refuse the Declaration was to throw in one’s lot with the British.

The rebellion found Paul Trumpour a young man of about 20, living on 100 acres of land near an elder brother. New York was one of the strongest Loyalist areas in the revolution, but this varied from county to county. Ulster County, where Paul resided, was split, with both sides being quite active there. This split was reflected in the Trumpour family, as so often happens in civil strife; in the final reckoning Paul and one brother fought for the British, one fought for neither side, and three served with American forces. It is interesting that one article I have read, written by an American, notes that neither Paul nor his brother appear in any 1790 census, and concludes that they must have been living with a brother; apparently it had never occurred to him that they might have fought for the British.

When war came, Paul joined the British cavalry, holding the rank of cornet. This is a rank which has since been abolished, but was the cavalry’s equivalent to today’s sub-lieutenant, the lowest grade of commissioned officer. The cornet was responsible for carrying the colours of his troop.

In spite of his military activities, Paul found time to marry Deborah Emery, in 1780. Some two years later, they joined the other Loyalists in New York City, where apparently, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born to them. On September 8, 1783, they set out for the St. Lawrence River with a party under Captain Grass and Captain van Alstine. A month later, they reached Quebec, and after wintering at Sorel, left for Upper Canada in a fleet of bateaux. Finally, on June 16, 1784, they arrived at Adolphustown, where Paul’s name appears among the troops mustered there in October of that year.

Having gotten Paul safely to Canada, I now pick up the other families I mentioned earlier. The Campbells were peacefully established in northern New York where the war did not arrive until 1777, when General Burgoyne came through the area with an army, marching southward. Both of Duncan Campbell’s sons rode off to join him at his encampment at Fort Edward, and Duncan, their father, followed with the others later. After Burgoyne broke camp, the people returned home, but following his surrender at Saratoga, life became hard for any Loyalist, so Duncan’s son Alexander came to Canada, with his son Archibald, and settled in Adolphustown.

In the Dorland family, there were three brothers, all of whom emigrated to Canada. The Dorlands were Quakers, but Thomas and Philip fought for the British anyway, arriving in Canada in 1783. It was the third brother, John, however, who was my ancestor. In 1770 he had married Elizabeth Ricketson, but as she was not a Quaker, he was disowned by the Society of Friends for marrying outside the meeting. He was readmitted though and when the revolution came he was true to his principles, refusing to fight for anyone. Unfortunately, this was not acceptable, and he was later persecuted for not actively supporting the rebel cause. Thus he, too, came to Canada, although somewhat later than his brothers.

And finally, the Bogarts came to Adolphustown, but their experiences were different again. Gilbert Bogart was not in the army, and so he had to file a claim before one of the various commissions set up, in order to receive his land in Canada. I was lucky enough to find a record of his claim, which describes accurately not only his activities during the revolution, but also his life before it.

Proceedings of the Loyalist Commissioners, Montreal, 1788. Claim of Gilbert Bogart, late of Orange County.

Claimant says:
He was at Sorel in ’83. Is a native of America lived at Goshen when Rebellion broke out.
Never joined the Rebels. Came to New York in 1777. Continued at New York. Served in the Engineer’s Department. Produces certificate from Alex Mercer, dated Jan., 1780, that claimant then did duty in that Department. He sometimes went out as a guide, particularly when Major Blowwett, a Rebel Major, was taken. Continued at New York until evacuation.
Now lives at Bay of Quinty.
He had 30 acres at Goshen. He bought it six or seven years before the War. He gave £300 York for it. He has paid all. Had a deed. His deed is now at home. Built two stone houses and a good barn; the whole was well improved. There were fine orchards, fine meadows.
Values it at £350. Says he could have got more.
Had 12 cattle, 4 horses, 9 hogs, furniture, clothes, utensils. Taken after he went to New York.
Produces two affadavits [sic] to his Loyalty and services as a guide, and to his having been driven from his home and coming within the Lines at New York, and serving in the Engineer’s Department.1

The Loyalists, on their arrival in Canada, possessed little but the clothes on their backs. As a start, the British government gave each family a tent, some clothing, implements and tools, and a cow, along with land grants of various sizes. Paul Trumpour, having been an officer, was entitled to receive 2,000 acres. However, it appears that he only received 6502; it looks as if the government still owes us some land! Paul’s lot was on a point of land jutting out into Hay Bay, still marked as Trumpour’s Point on maps today. Gilbert Bogart’s was right next to Paul’s, and the Dorlands and Campbells were also in the immediate area.

Nothing brings history alive better than a contemporary account, and fortunately, one was left us by Lady Simcoe, the wife of Lieutenant-Governor John Graves Simcoe, who passed through the Bay of Quinte region. She wrote:

This bay (Quinte) is about a mile across, thickly inhabited on the north side. The farms are reckoned the most productive in the province.3

This was as early as 1795, and so clearly a great deal had been accomplished since the arrival of the Loyalists just a decade before. Lady Simcoe also stopped at Paul Trumpour’s home, and left this brief account:

March 11, 1795 … We set out at 11:00, and drove 14 miles to Trumpour’s Pt., so named from a man who lives there. He was formerly in the 16th Dragoons, and lives by selling horses. His wife gave me some good Dutch cakes, as I could not wait to eat the chickens she was roasting in a kettle without water. This house commands a fine view.4

It is interesting to see Paul’s occupation stated here; the fact that he had apparently a good knowledge of horse-flesh might account for his being an officer in the cavalry. I might add here that Paul also raised some cattle, for I came across a record of his ear-mark, which was, “a crop off the right ear, with a slit on each side of the same.”5 And the cooks in the audience might recognize the reference in the diary to the Dutch oven.

Most people were involved in the life of the young community, and in fact, Adolphustown was the first to hold town meetings. At the spring meeting in 1793, Paul was one appointed to lay out the Third Concession Road, and he held various offices off and on. Some of the problems they had sound slightly amusing today, but were very real at the time. For example, in 1798-1799, Paul was a Pathmaster, and his chief task was the control of thistles. I read from the record of 1798 town meeting: Paul Trumpour, John Dorland, Archibald Campbell, and others, were appointed “to oversee where those weeds are necessary to be subdued, and determine whether a fine of Forty Shillings shall not be laid on any person or persons who shall be found remiss or negligent in stopping the growth of thistles on their premises; it is also agreed that when any person has so many growing on his lands that it may by the pathmasters, or any one of them, thought to be bothersome for him to cut, that the pathmaster do order out all the persons, liable to do statute duty on the highways, to his assistance.”6

Life in Adolphustown was not always a serious matter however; there were diversions. One of these is recounted by the noted local historian W.S. Herrington. The “Fourth-towners”, as the Adolphustown residents were called, had the reputation of being “a good deal stuck up”, to use the words of one source. Their neighbours in the township of Marysburgh across the Bay, or the “Fifth-towners”, rather resented this, and so one day when the court was in session, they sent a challenge to the “Fourth-towners”. They were invited to pick their three best wrestlers, and have it out with three from Marysburgh, a challenge which of course was picked up. Sam Dorland, Sam Casey, and Paul Trumpour were the three chosen to do battle for the honour of Adolphustown. Mr. Herrington, quoting from Thomas W. Casey’s Old Time Records, supplies a blow by blow description of the bout:

The hour was fixed, and a near-by field was selected where hundreds were on hand to see ‘fair play’ and help decide which township had the better men …. Samuel Dorland, afterwards a Colonel in the militia and a leading official of the Methodist Church, was an expert wrestler, and used to boast, even in his old days, that he seldom if ever met a man who could lay him on his back. He soon had his man down. Samuel Casey, who afterwards became a leading military officer and a prominent justice of the peace, was one of the strongest men in the township, but not an expert wrestler. He was so powerful in the legs that his opponent, with all his skill, could not trip him up, and at last got thrown down himself. Paul Trumpour, who was the head of what is now the largest family in the township, was not so skilled in athletics; but he was a man of immense strength. He got his arms well fixed around his man and gave him such a terrible ‘bear-hug’ that the poor fellow soon cried out ‘enough’ to save his ribs from getting crushed in, and that settled it. The Fourth-town championship was not again disputed.7

The Dorland and Trumpour families became very closely related over the years. Not only did my ancestor Joseph marry a Dorland, but his brother and a sister did as well. This explains the rather large number of Trumpours with the middle initial “D”, and the number of Dorlands with the middle initial “T”. Paul’s household grew steadily over the years until it was the largest in the area, reaching a peak of 17 in 1806. This was before either of his sons had married.

Tensions between Canada and the United States had been growing in the early 1800s, and Paul’s son Joseph, my ancestor, was involved in an incident which makes very clear the feelings of many a Loyalist towards American influence. In 1810, the election of John Roblin to the Assembly was contested, through a “Petition of the Inhabitants of the United Counties of Lennox and Addington, and the County of Prince Edward”. Joseph was one of the witnesses for the petitioners, who claimed that John Roblin, Esq., “was not duly and lawfully elected and chosen.” The reason behind all this was that Roblin was a Methodist preacher, and at that time, the Methodist Church in Canada happened to be controlled from the United States. Thus, many Loyalists viewed Methodism with great suspicion, and ministers of that faith often suffered as a result. In this case, the House decided that the petitioners had “fully proved the allegations of their petition,” and Roblin was deprived of his seat.8

The tension mentioned above continued to mount, with the “hawks” like Henry Clay in the United States clamouring for war, and so in the early months of 1812, Sir Isaac Brock, as the “President administering the Province of Upper Canada” was preparing for war. One of his first moves was to arouse the people, and to secure their loyalty before the war broke out. To this end, the following order-in-council was passed:

Whereas information has been received that divers persons having recently come into this province with seditious intent to disturb the tranquility therof, and to endeavour to alienate the minds of His Majesty’s subjects from His Person and Government; I hereby require and enjoin the several persons authorized to carry into effect a certain statute – intitled “An Act for the better securing this Province against all seditious attempts or designs to disturb the tranquility thereof,” to be vigilant in the execution of their duty, and strictly to enquire into the behaviour and conduct of all such persons as may be subject to the provisions of the said Act; and I do also charge and require His Majesty’s Loyal subjects within this province to be aiding and assisting the said persons in the execution of the powers vested in them by the said Act.9

This was dated February 24, 1812. The next day, “Paul Trumpour, Esq., of Adolphustown” is recorded as among those who were to carry out the order-in-council.10 This may be because he was a magistrate; over the years, Paul had been a member of several Grand Juries, and in the Record of the Court of Quarter Sessions of January 20, 1812, his name appears as one of the magistrates.11 The United States officially declared war in June of that year, and when the call to the militia went out, Paul again enlisted, this time as a captain, in command of a company of horse at Kingston under Col. the Honorable Richard Cartwright. Not long after, in March 1813, Capt. Paul Trumpour died.

This brings us to the close of an era, one which saw the foundations of Canada laid. But in that manner so typical of history, it also brings us to the beginning of a new era, which would see these foundations built upon. To this era belong Paul’s descendants. His son Joseph, whom I have already mentioned, remained in Adolphustown, as did his brother John, and the small community continued to be the home of the Trumpour family for another generation after Joseph. These years saw the family join first with the Dorlands, and then with the Bogarts and Campbells. It was not until part way through the life of Joseph’s grandson, Mark Bogart Trumpour, that the family came to Kingston. At this point, 1 could once again branch off and tell you of Mary Lazier Bogart, the wife of the Loyalist Abraham Bogart, who lived to the ripe old age of 102. However, as with the more recent generations, I am touching her only in passing owing to the limitations of time, and because, to use a hackneyed phrase, “that is another story.”

Many people find enjoyment in speculating on what might have happened if. I myself find it much more amazing looking at what actually did happen. The fact that four families of very different backgrounds, who had previously never even been within miles of one another, should be drawn together by one great, turbulent event, and deposited in such an unlikely spot as Adolphustown, is certainly quite remarkable.

Footnotes:

1 Report of the Bureau of Archives of Ontario, v. 32 (1904) p. 1266.

2 Ibid. v. 38 (1906) p. 471.

3 Mary Quale Innis, ed., Mrs. Simcoe’s Diary, p. 154

4 Ibid.

5 Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records, v. 13, Appendix, p. 52.

6 Ibid. p. 1.

7 W. S. Herrington, History of the County of Lennox and Addington, p. 137

8 Report of the Bureau of Archives of Ontario, v. 44 (1912) pp. 355-356.

9 Original Order in Council published in Kingston Gazette, March 10, 1812.

10 Report of the Bureau of Archives of Ontario, v. 39 (1907), p. 255.

11 “Early Records of Ontario”, Queen’s Quarterly, January 1901.

Bibliography:

Bogart, Marshall C, The Bogart Family in Canada, Toronto, 1918.

“Early Records of Ontario,” Queen’s Quarterly, July 1899 – January 1901.

Flick, A.C., Loyalism in New York During the American Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1901.

Gill, Islay V. History of Washington County, New York: A History of the Argyle Patent, Washington County Historical Society, 1956.

Herrington, W.S. History of the County of Lennox and Addington, Toronto: Macmillan Co. of Canada, Ltd., 1913.

Hoffman, W.J. “Notes on Old Dutch-American Families: The First Four Generations of the Palatine Trumpbour Family of Ulster County, New York,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, New York, v. 63, No. 3, 1932.

Innis, Mary Quale, ed., Mrs. Simcoe Diary. Toronto: Macmillan, 1965.

Knittle, W.A. Early Palatine Emigration, Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co., 1937.

Ontario Historical Society Papers and Records. Toronto, v. 1.

Report of the Public Archives of Ontario, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1912.