Some Vanderpool researchers have advanced the theory that the Vanderpools were a family of miners during the 18th century – and possibly even before that. Certainly the areas where they lived then had mining as a common denominator, and mining thus may help to explain the migration of Abraham Vanderpool from New Jersey to North Carolina and perhaps beyond. Some background will be helpful.
The Dutch learned about ores in what they called Raritan, New Jersey – which according to their use of it could have been anywhere inland from New York harbor – as early as the 1640s. The West India Company ordered Director Stuyvesant to develop this resource. In 1659, the Company first heard about copper at "the Neversinks" and near the Esopus. The valley of Neversink, later usually called the Minisink area, runs along both sides of the Delaware river for forty miles above the Delaware Water Gap.1 This narrow valley was once thought to have been settled by "Hollanders" by the 1660s, more than twenty years before Philadelphia (at the outlet of the Delaware River) was settled, but there is now considerable doubt about this.
Here in the Minisink there were deposits of iron ore, lead, silver, and perhaps copper as well. Most of the mines extracting these metals were on the New Jersey side of the river. One was at the lower point of Paaquarry Flat where the adjacent mountain range nearly touches the water, and another was at the north foot of the same mountain about halfway between the Delaware River and the Esopus. There was also an early iron works, Union Furnace, in Hunterdon County by the early 1740s; it was located on Spruce Run about two miles west of High Bridge.
In about 1725 the Dutch built their church on the Pennsylvania side of the river, opposite Tock's Island near the present-day town of Shawnee. The later (1737) Smithfield church used the Dutch church's building. When the Dutch first entered this area, nearly 100 miles from the pockets of European civilization along the Hudson River, there had recently been a bloody conflict with the Indians. For Europeans to go so far into the wilds, there had to be a strong lure; metal deposits may have been that lure. Fortunately, peace with the Indians prevailed from 1664 to 1756, and the Dutch may have negotiated special arrangements with the Indians surrounding the Minisink area.
An intriguing aspect of this story is the key role that Roelofs Swartwout may have played in it. Realizing that the fur trade was in steep decline after the 1650s, he probably grasped the potential of developing mines. When he journeyed to Amsterdam at the end of that decade to convince the East India Company to give him authority at Wiltwyck, he may also have persuaded it to help him develop the mines: the ship that returned him to New Netherland had on board a contingent of soldiers and "agriculturists" who do not seem to have lived in Wiltwyck. Some researchers believe that they were sent, in secret, to populate the Minisink area – and to extract ore from these mines, but there is no firm evidence to support this.
There is also speculation that Adriaen Post, known since the Peach War for being a skilled negotiator with the Indians, served in a similar capacity in working out the arrangements with the Indians that permitted the mines to be developed in peace. Post was, of course, the father-in-law of Johannes de Hooges, who was the stepson of Roelofs Swartwout. What we know about Swartwout casts a different light on the incident in early 1671 (described in the de Hooges section of the text) when Swartwout and young de Hooges encountered the strange "southern" Indians partway between Wiltwyck and the Minisink area. Between these two locations ran what is known as "the old mine road." It is possible that Swartwout and young de Hooges were in transit in this area when they encountered Indians they thought might endanger their business interests.
The British conquest of New Netherland in 1664 stalled Swartwout's plans, but gradually he gained influence with the new English regime. On one occasion during the late 1680s he accompanied the usurper governor, Jacob Leisler, on a tour of the western frontier, and surely a visit to the mines would have been included. After Leisler was removed and hanged by the British in 1691, Swartwout, as one of Leisler's supporters, surely lost influence again. Whether or not he (and Johannes de Hooges) continued to be involved in the mining operations is not known, but it is noteworthy that Roelofs Swartwout died in the Minisink region, at Machackemeck (now Port Jervis).2 Nor was Swartwout the only person connected with the Vanderpools who was involved with mining. Some of the families with whom the Vanderpool family was associated, or with whom they moved to the South Branch of the Potomac River, seem to have been in the mining business.
In view of this background, it may be more than coincidence that every place Abraham Vanderpool lived after the 1720s had either mines or smelters nearby. We know that Abraham's brother Melgert was a miner, for he was described as such in the report of his fatal fall in a mine on April 2, 1743. Copper was discovered near Newark in 1719, and it may have been one of the things that caused Abraham to move there within a few years of this discovery. The central section of the northern New Jersey highlands was a center for iron production during these years and probably for the smelting of other ores as well. By 1740 Abraham and his family had relocated to Wallpack in the Minisink area, where what seemed to be copper outcroppings had been observed.3 The prospects for copper deposits of any value in New Jersey had diminished by the 1740s, though, and so it would be natural for Abraham to look elsewhere.4
The Virginia frontier where he spent the next decade and more had a number of mining areas. Just about the time the Vanderpools were relocating to Virginia, Robert "King" Carter informed Thomas, Lord Fairfax (who owned that part of Virginia) that copper and iron deposits had been reported on the upper reaches of the South Bank of the Potomac River – exactly where the Vanderpools were now living. In addition, among the numerous iron furnaces all along the mountain ranges from Pennsylvania to South Carolina, there was at least one near Winchester, where Abraham Vanderpool may have lived for a time. (It was a Dutchman named Vestal who built the first ironworks in Frederick County, Virginia, in 1742, approximately the time the Vanderpools were in the area.) The lead deposits in the New River area of Virginia (near Fort Chiswell, nine miles east of Wytheville) were discovered in 1756, and not long after that we find Abraham and other Vanderpools nearby.5
In North Carolina, too, there is a hint that the Vanderpools might have been engaged in mining activities: in a 1794 deed in Surry County in that state, the property of Abraham Vanderpool the younger (that is, the son of the man who was born in New York) seems to have adjoined an ore bank that a neighbor was intending to develop as he set up an iron works. One wonders if he might have been involved in this project.
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rev. 6/18/10
Notes
1Confusing things even more, the Neversink River was then called the Machackemeck. Return to text
2There is a lake bearing Swartwout's name not far from Port Jervis. Return to text
3The area knows as Wallpack extended along the Delaware River below Port Jervis, the western end of the old mine road. The Smithfield church was thirty or so miles south of Port Jervis.
4The green bands that looked like copper ore were in fact Kupferschiefer greens, copper's counterpart to pyrite (sometimes called fool's gold). Return to text
5South Carolina, too, had mines, and some Vanderpools went there. Return to text
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