Ancestors

Johannes Schenck

Johannes Schenck was born on 19 September 1656 in Holland, probably in the district of Kessel. A memoir of him printed in 1876 gives that date and place, and Bergen's register of the early settlers of Kings County, printed in 1881, gives the same date. He signed his name "Johannes Schenk."

He married Mary Magdalena De Haes of Middelburg, in Zeeland, before they left the Netherlands. They sailed from Middelburg about 1683. In 1684 he joined the Collegiate Reformed Dutch Church in New York, whose register styles him "Mynheer," the Dutch form of address for a gentleman. His wife joined the next year on the word of her old church at Middelburg.

Their first son, Johannes, was baptized in New York on 20 December 1684 and died young. A second Johannes was born on 30 April 1691. The other children were Susanna, Peter, Margarita and Cornelia.

The family lived first in New York City, then in Ulster County, then at Flatbush in Kings County. At Flatbush he was town clerk from 1691 to 1694 and again from 1700 to 1712. A town clerk kept the town's minutes, deeds and accounts, so for those years the written record of Flatbush passed through his hands. He was also the town's schoolmaster from 1700 to 1712. In 1703 he bought 640 acres on the Raritan River in New Jersey.

In 1712 he bought a mill and a plantation of 83 acres at Bushwick from Tunis Titus, and moved there. In 1719 he was supervisor of Bushwick, the officer who sat for the town on the county board. His wife died on 10 April 1729, at seventy. His daughter Margarita, wife of John Stryker of Flatbush, had died in 1721, and his son Peter of Newtown died before him too.

He made his will on 4 January 1745, describing himself as "Johanes Schenck, of Bushwyck, in Kings County, Gent., being in a declining condition of body." He died at Bushwick on 5 February 1747/8, and the will was proved on 28 February.

The 1876 memoir names his father as Martin Schenck van Nydeck, lieutenant bailiff of Kessel, and his mother as Maria Margaretha de Boeckhorst. That descent is carried by one printed account, a Schenck genealogy by Colonel van der Dussen of the Netherlands army, which both the memoir and a family history of 1885 follow.

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Cite: Heirology, "Johannes Schenck (1656-1747)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/johannes-schenck-1656-1747-1cd17d.