Journey Through the Hull Branch

Yesterday I wrote about my 3x great grandparents, John William Hull (1810-1881) & his wife, Sophia C. Kelley (1815-?), in an attempt to manage my research on the Hull Family. JW Hull was the son of William Little Hull (1786-1836) and the third child of seven siblings. His mother was Lydia Packard (1788-1870)

William Little Hull [4th great grandfather] was born on February 2, 1786 in Willington, Connecticut. On December 29,1805 he married Lydia Packard [4th great grandmother] in a service by the Reverend Stephen Gano in Rhode Island. They had seven children:

• William Sterry (1806-1843)
• Joseph Augustus (1808-1852)
• John William (1810-1881)
• Cornelia Augusta (1812-1851)
• Charlotte (1814-?)
• Harriett (1822-1885)
• Alexander (1824-1884)

 William and Lydia moved at some point to the Rochester, NY area and he died when he was 50. He is buried at the Brighton Cemetery in Monroe County. Lydia had moved in with her son Alexander in Brooklyn by the 1855 NYS census and she was also living in Brooklyn in the 1865 census at her daughter Cornelia's home. Cornelia [4th great aunt] was married to Washington Van Zandt (1809-1868). She died in 1870 and was buried with her husband at the Brighton Cemetery.

I came across some interesting information regarding the Reverend Washington Van Zandt. He and Cornelia lived in upstate Rochester, New York. According to several books, Van Zandt, rector of St. Paul's Church, was the subject of a trial involving the seduction of 16 year-old Sophia Murdock in 1941. He was found guilty and assessed with damages of $3000. A very hefty fine in those days. It was quite scandalous for the era and was covered by many newspapers across the region. Van Zandt maintained and protested his innocence and there were several articles in the following years regarding appeals. He was dismissed from ministry by the Episcopal Bishop Delaney in 1848. A disgraced Washington & Cornelia were residents of Syracuse during the 1850 census and had moved to Brooklyn by 1865.

Portrait of Cornelia Augusta Hull Van Zandt

By 1856 Washington Van Zandt had become a newspaper editor of The Daily Star. There was a scathing column against him in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle which states, "That a creature with a character so foul and leprous; whose deeds have been recorded in the genial columns of The Police Gazette ; whose transition from the ministry to the purlieus of a three-cent grog cellar was in accordance with the natural gravitation of his character, should invite the lash of personalities by attacking others is a mystery which can only be explained by acknowledging the truth of the quotation, "Quem deus vult perdere prius dementat" ("Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad"). Quite the wordsmiths over in Brooklyn!

According to a Brooklyn Daily Eagle article from 1937, there is a portrait of Rev. Washington Van Zandt at the Zion Episcopal Church of Douglaston-Little Neck. It was unveiled at their 107th Anniversary. It turns out that Washington was the 11th son of Wynant Van Zandt who founded the church in 1830.