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Ryer Hermance
Born Aug 7, 1749 Died Nov 1, 1804
St. John’s Reformed Church Cemetery, Upper Red Hook; Marble tablet behind the church in the old section, not far from the road with a Revolutionary War bronze marker to its left.
Ryer Hermance was baptized in Rhinebeck to Gerret Heermanse and Gerretje Schermerhoren in August of 1749. Gerret was born in Kingston where the Heermans family had made their home for a few generations and Gerretje was from “The Manor Livingston” in Dutchess County when they were married at the Dutch Church in Kingston in 1748. His family had arrived in New Netherland just before the transition to English rule from the province of Drenthe in the northeast of the Netherlands.
Ryer married Maretje Swart in 1772 and they had many children including Garret 1774, Mally c. 1776, Neeltjen c.1779, Cornelius Ryer 1781, Catherine 1788, John Ryer 1792, Gerretje 1794, and Mary 1795. It’s possible that Mally and Neeltjen did not survive to adulthood.
When American colonists banded together to fight the British for their right to self-rule, Ryer, who resided with his family in nearby Northeast Precinct (which at the time encompassed Northeast, Pine Plains, and Milan) served the patriotic cause in Col. Morris Graham’s regiment of militia. He started as a private, but made his way to lieutenant in Captain John Clum’s company of that regiment, fighting alongside friends, family, and neighbors, including his brother Andrew who is also buried in this cemetery.
Revolutionary War payroll for Captain John Clum’s company in 1777.
Ryer and his brother both wagered their lives for a better future, a country governed by its citizens in which he and his fellow white landowners could be free of the oppressive yoke of the English crown. At the time of the American Revolution slavery was not only legal in New York State, but deemed acceptable in most of colonial society. The British, in a desperate effort to stymie their rebel colonist foes, proclaimed an offer of freedom to not only enslaved soldiers fighting with the American, but to any slaves held by rebels. Thousands fled on this promise, so many in fact that the British general who issued the proclamation found he had to send many of them back to their masters.
When Ryer Hermance and his family were recorded in the 1790 census of the Town of Northeast, Ryer was shown to have owned three slaves. By the time he published his will in 1804, there were four of them listed in his household, Jude, Hannah, Sarah, and Philip. Ryer would die a few months after putting his bequests to paper at the age of 55. When he passed, Jude was to be given to his wife Maretje for as long as she was a widow, but if she remarried, Jude would go to her sons. Hannah and Sarah, referred to as ‘girls’ in the will, were given to Ryer’s daughters Garretje and Catherine. Philip went to his sons John and Cornelius until Philip turned 20 in October of 1809, then he was to be manumitted “provided he procures the necessary certificates which may then be necessary to indemnify my heirs in case of the said Philip being chargeable to the town”.
Though efforts were made by legislators following the Revolution to emancipate those held in New York, freedom for all enslaved people in the state did not come until 1827. Slavery was so endemic, acceptable, and deemed necessary in colonial society, that even some of our ancestors who risked their lives to free themselves from English tyranny found it difficult to free the people they themselves held in bondage.
Sources
1790 Federal Census of Town of Northeast, Dutchess County
Bible belonging to Ella Herrick Freeman, granddaughter of Garret Heermance. Per Ft. Washington Chapter NSDAR records
Brown, Christopher Leslie (2006). Arming Slaves: From Classical Times to the Modern Age. Yale University Press. pp. 190.
Dann, Norman K. (2011). Whatever It Takes. The Antislavery Movement and the Tactics of Gerrit Smith. Hamilton, New York: Log Cabin Books. p. 41.
Davis, David Brion (2006). Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. Oxford University Press. p. 150.
Hunter, Carol (1993). To Set the Captives Free: Reverend Jermain Wesley Loguen and the Struggle for Freedom in Central New York, 1835-1872. Garland. p. 81.
Landmarks of Rensselaer County P380 George Baker Anderson, The Troy Press, Syracuse, NY D. Mason & Company, Publishers 1897
New York, U.S., Marriage Index, 1600-1784 vol XIX page 120
NY In the Revolution - Levies & Militia P279
Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. United States: The Society, 1863.
Sinha, Manisha (2016-02-23). The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition. Yale University Press. p. 201.
The Philipsburg Proclamation - 30 June 1779
U.S., Compiled Revolutionary War Military Service Records, 1775-1783
U.S., Dutch Reformed Church Records in Selected States, 1639-1989 for Gerhard Heermans 3 Jul 1774 Ryn Beeck (now Red Hook). Book 40
U.S., Dutch Reformed Church Records in Selected States, 1639-1989 Rhinebeck, Poughkeepsie, and The Flats, Book 39 Records of the Reformed Dutch Church of the Flats near Nether Rhinebeck
U.S., Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783
Will of Ryer Hermance, Town of Northeast 18 May 1804