Complete Prose Works of Walt Whitman | Page 5

hundred years old; there the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way off
even the well-kept remains of the dwelling of my great-grandfather (1750-'60) still
standing, with its mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall,
vigorous black-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of
black-walnuts during or before 1776. On the other side of the road spread the famous
apple orchard, over twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the grave
(my uncle Jesse's,) but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual
blossoms and fruit yet.
I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century since at least) on
the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations. Fifty or more graves are quite
plainly traceable, and as many more decay'd out of all form--depress'd mounds, crumbled
and broken stones, cover'd with moss--the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts
outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is always the deepest
eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island
has so many; so what must this one have been to me? My whole family history, with its
succession of links, from the first settlement down to date, told here--three centuries
concentrate on this sterile acre.
The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if possible was still more
penetrated and impress'd. I write this paragraph on the burial hul of the Van Velsors, near
Cold Spring, the most significant depository of the dead that could be imagin'd, without
the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of
half an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods bordering all
around, very primi-tive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drive here, you have to
bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two or three-score graves quite plain; as
many more almost rubb'd out. My grandfather Cornelius and my grandmother Amy
(Naomi) and numerous relatives nearer or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here.
The scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of the woods, a slightly drizzling
rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, and the inferr'd reminiscences, were fitting
accompaniments.
THE MATERNAL HOMESTEAD
I went down from this ancient grave place eighty or ninety rods to the site of the Van
Velsor homestead, where my mother was born (1795,) and where every spot had been
familiar to me as a child and youth (1825-'40.) Then stood there a long rambling,
dark-gray, shingle-sided house, with sheds, pens, a great barn, and much open road-space.
Now of all those not a vestige left; all had been pull'd down, erased, and the plough and
harrow pass'd over foundations, road-spaces and everything, for many summers; fenced

in at present, and grain and clover growing like any other fine fields. Only a big hole
from the cellar, with some little heaps of broken stone, green with grass and weeds,
identified the place. Even the copious old brook and spring seem'd to have mostly
dwindled away. The whole scene, with what it arous'd, memories of my young days there
half a century ago, the vast kitchen and ample fireplace and the sitting-room adjoining,
the plain furniture, the meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's
sweet old face in its Quaker cap, my grandfather "the Major," jovial, red, stout, with
sonorous voice and characteristic physiognomy, with the actual sights themselves, made
the most pronounc'd half-day's experience of my whole jaunt.
For there with all those wooded, hilly, healthy surroundings, my dearest mother, Louisa
Van Velsor, grew up--(her mother, Amy Williams, of the Friends' or Quakers'
denomination--the Williams family, seven sisters and one brother--the father and brother
sailors, both of whom met their deaths at sea.) The Van Velsor people were noted for fine
horses, which the men bred and train'd from blooded stock. My mother, as a young
woman, was a daily and daring rider. As to the head of the family himself, the old race of
the Netherlands, so deeply grafted on Manhattan island and in Kings and Queens counties,
never yielded a more mark'd and full Americanized specimen than Major Cornelius Van
Velsor.
TWO OLD FAMILY INTERIORS
Of the domestic and inside life of the middle of Long Island, at and just before that time,
here are two samples:
"The Whitmans, at the beginning of the present century, lived in a long story-and-a-half
farm-house, hugely timber'd, which is still standing. A great smoke-canopied kitchen,
with vast hearth and chimney, form'd one end of the house. The existence of slavery in
New York at that time, and