Later Years & Family
Impressions of John and his family can be drawn from other documents as well. Receipts show that John subscribed not just to a local paper, but also the Christian Intelligencer, published in New York City by the Association of Members of the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church. Records of the Reformed Church of New Paltz show John and his daughter as members. John and Sarah’s marriage was sanctified on November 17, 1859 and they were later both baptized as adults, as was daughter Margaret.[1] Fragments from letters drafted by John in the summer of 1864 to his daughter Margaret report on the family’s health and a celebration in the community:
Dear daughter I take the oportuenity once more to Let you know how we are[.] I am as uesal whel[.] … You mother[,] Almira and Sarah whent to the Selabration[.] it was very full of colard folks[.] Dinah Bogardus was their[.] …
Letter to Margaret, 1864. HHHC, Elting Library. Click on the image to see the letter in detail.
The celebration was undoubtedly the “4th of July Celebration and Festival” held at Locust Lawn by the grandson of Josiah Hasbrouck. The New Paltz Times promoted the event a few days earlier, announcing there would be speakers and a performance of the Star-Spangled Banner by the local brass band. A floor was being laid and “pleasant” dance music would be furnished by Wetmore’s Cotillion Band of Poughkeepsie. Refreshment booths and supper tables would be provided.[2] What was it like for Sarah and her daughters to attend this festive event on the property where Sarah is said to have been enslaved? Is that why John stayed home? Perhaps Lincoln’s issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation the year before stirred more positive emotions for the family.
The Hasbroucks were apparently a close-knit family. Census records show John, his wife Sarah, and their children living together continuously, except when Margaret worked for a wealthy family named Fairchild in the city of Hudson for some time, perhaps as a result of an introduction made by her cousin Garret Deyo, the successful barber and business owner. Margaret married Samuel E. Clow, as mentioned earlier. Samuel’s name is mentioned once in John’s second account book, carefully spelled out on a seemingly random page, perhaps as John contemplated it the first time he heard it. Some years later, Margaret returned to New Paltz, eventually purchasing land on Huguenot Street and hiring Black builder Jacob Wynkoop to build a home, where her siblings Philip and Sarah Jane would join her. Sadly, Almira spent her last decades at the state psychiatric hospital in Poughkeepsie.[3]
Margaret was a renowned cook and appears to have worked for the pastor of the Reformed Church, who, according to one chronicler, “sang her praises loud and far.” The result was that Margaret “was sought for and landed up in Albany, in the Executive Mansion, as a cook for the late Governor Charles Evans.” She also worked as a nanny in New Paltz and was fondly remembered for her loyalty by her charge, Jesse Elting DuBois.[4]
Margaret Hasbrouck Clow holding Jesse Elting DuBois, ca. 1900. HHS Archives, gift of Dina DuBois. Click on image to see in detail.
Philip Hasbrouck, a.k.a. Flip Murphy, no date. Image reproduced from the New Paltz News, Nov. 1, 1972. Courtesy of HHHC, Elting Library.
In the 1870s, John and the family started using the last name of Murphy. Philip, or “Flip Murphy,” as he became known, was admired as a dancer and musician, playing instruments including fiddle and trombone, while entertaining at local parties and events. Flip was also revered as a “powerful, hardworking, light hearted soul, whose wit and humor sparkled.”[5] Perhaps Flip inherited some of these attributes, at least in part, from his father John. Photographs of Margaret and Flip exist—she with penetrating eyes and he smiling warmly—and again we wonder what attributes they inherited and who resembled their father the most.
John and his family certainly had their trials, but both John and his daughter were able to buy property and have their own homes, a significant indicator of their relative security as compared to other Blacks in this period. Yet these and other achievements were surely hard won. Flip was once quoted saying, “We buy land and got stones, Meat and got bones.” Their lives were no doubt full of inequities as African Americans living in the 19th-century rural community of New Paltz.
John Hasbrouck Account Book 1. HHS Archives.
“If life coud be bought,” John Hasbrouck once wrote in the back of one account book, “the rich whod live long.” John Hasbrouck died July 30, 1879 at the age of seventy-three and was buried at the New Paltz Rural Cemetery in an area set aside for African Americans, as was the practice throughout the United States at that time. His obituary in the New Paltz Independent read: “New Paltz loses a most estimable citizen in the death of Mr. John Hasbrouck, colored, usually called John Murphy. … He was a man of quiet demeanor, good sense, and christian character.”[6] The New Paltz Times (the town’s Democratic newspaper) shared a more extensive obituary, mentioning a few biographical notes, as well as praise:
Another honest and upright citizen of our town has left us … As a citizen [John] was much respected and no word of reproach could with truth be uttered against his character. The funeral services were held in the Ref. Dutch Church on Friday last, Rev. Dr. Peltz using for his text the first chapter of St. John, 47th verse: “Behold here is an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” And it well applied in this case.[7]
Reverend Philip Peltz’s funeral notes in the Reformed Church records read similarly, "A man greatly esteemed, a faithful Christian. Services in Church, attended by many friends."[8]
New Paltz Times, August 7, 1879.
John Hasbrouck's headstone shared with his wife and four children. Inscriptions on the stone include John 6:37, "Him that commeth unto me, I will in no wise cast out" and John 4:8, "God is love." New Paltz Rural Cemetery.
Notes
[1] Records of the Reformed Church of New Paltz, vol. 9: John’s daughter Margaret was baptized first, on August 29, 1858 (image 107-108), and John was baptized on November 25, 1859 (image 109-110). Volume 9 also lists the marriage of John and “Sally” Hasbrouck (image 157). According to Heidgerd’s Black History Part 2, 10: Sarah Hasbrouck was baptized September 11, 1884 (their daughter Sarah Jane is consistently listed as Sarah Jane or Sarah J. in other records, so the baptismal entry is believed to be the mother).
[2] New Paltz Times, July 1, 1864.
[3] 1870 US Census for Hudson, New York for Margaret’s residence with the Fairchilds. Samuel’s name appears in Hasbrouck Account Book 2, image 68. Regarding Margaret’s house, see New Paltz Independent, November 18, 1982 and 1910 U.S. Federal Census for New Paltz. For Almira, see 1900 and 1910 US Censuses and 1915 New York State Census for the Hudson River State Hospital, Poughkeepsie, New York. See also the 1875 New York State Census for the New York State Homeopathic Hospital for the Insane for Town of Wallkill, Orange County, New York.
[4] According to the Peter Harp article cited earlier, Almira had been a cook for New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes, who served in that role between 1907 and 1910. Considering the extent of her stays in psychiatric hospitals, Harp seems to have confused Almira’s name with Margaret’s. In fact, in a different “Horse and Buggy Days” article, in the New Paltz News dated November 22, 1968, Harp wrote that Margaret had worked for the governor. Jesse Elting DuBois remembered Margaret with a note on the back of a photo of him as a child with her, ca. 1900, belonging to Dina DuBois. A second copy of the photograph was gifted to HHS by Dina DuBois in 2017.
[5] Harp article dated November 1, 1972, cited earlier.
[6] New Paltz Independent, August 7, 1879.
[7] New Paltz Times, August 7, 1879, cited earlier.
[8] Records of the Reformed Church of New Paltz, vol. 9, image 218.