Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman | Page 4

and preserve which is behind all Nature, authors included; second, to
symbolize two or three specimen interiors, personal and other, out of the myriads of my
time, the middle range of the Nineteenth century in the New World; a strange, unloosen'd,
wondrous time. But the book is probably without any definite purpose that can be told in
a statement.
ANSWER TO AN INSISTING FRIEND
You ask for items, details of my early life--of genealogy and parentage, particularly of
the women of my ancestry, and of its far-back Netherlands stock on the maternal side--of
the region where I was born and raised, and my mother and father before me, and theirs
before them--with a word about Brooklyn and New York cities, the times I lived there as

lad and young man. You say you want to get at these details mainly as the go-befores and
embryons of "Leaves of Grass." Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of
them all. I have often thought of the meaning of such things--that one can only
encompass and complete matters of that kind by 'exploring behind, perhaps very far
behind, themselves directly, and so into their genesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages.
Then as luck would have it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week's half-sickness and
confinement, by collating these very items for another (yet unfulfilled, probably
abandon'd,) purpose; and if you will be satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence
and fact simply, and told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesitate to
make extracts, for I catch at anything to save labor; but those will be the best versions of
what I want to convey.
GENEALOGY--VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN
The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, my mother's side, living
on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island, New York State, near the eastern edge of
Queen's county, about a mile from the harbor.[2] My father's side--probably the fifth
generation from the first English arrivals in New England--were at the same time farmers
on their own land--(and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all good soil, gently sloping east
and south, about one-tenth woods, plenty of grand old trees,) two or three miles off, at
West Hills, Suffolk county. The Whitman name in the Eastern States, and so branch and
South, starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in Old England, where he
grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in 1629. He came over in the "True Love"
in 1640 to America, and lived in Weymouth, Mass., which place became the mother-hive
of the New-Englanders of the name; he died in 1692. His brother, Rev. Zechariah
Whitman, also came over in the "True Love," either at that time or soon after, and lived at
Milford, Conn. A son of this Zechariah, named Joseph, migrated to Huntington, Long
Island, and permanently settled there. Savage's "Genealogical Dictionary" (vol. iv, p. 524)
gets the Whitman family establish'd at Huntington, per this Joseph, before 1664. It is
quite certain that from that beginning, and from Joseph, the West Hill Whitmans, and all
others in Suffolk county, have since radiated, myself among the number. John and
Zechariah both went to England and back again divers times; they had large families, and
several of their children were born in the old country. We hear of the father of John and
Zechariah, Abijah Whitman, who goes over into the 1500's, but we know little about him,
except that he also was for some time in America.
These old pedigree-reminiscences come up to me vividly from a visit I made not long
since (in my 63d year) to West Hills, and to the burial grounds of my ancestry, both sides.
I extract from notes of that visit, written there and then:
Note:
[2] Long Island was settled first on the west end by the Dutch from Holland, then on the
east end by the English--the dividing line of the two nationalities being a little west of
Huntington where my father's folks lived, and where I was born.
THE OLD WHITMAN AND VAN VELSOR CEMETERIES

July 29, 1881.--After more than forty years' absence, (except a brief visit, to take my
father there once more, two years before he died,) went down Long Island on a week' s
jaunt to the place where I was born, thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the
old familiar spots, viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them, every-thing
coming back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a view
eastward, inclining south, over the broad and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather
(1780,) and my father. There was the new house (1810,) the big oak a hundred and fifty
or two