In Defense of the Pool Tribe: Thomas Morgan Discusses Outcast Communities

Bradford County

 

Editor's Note: In recent weeks I've published two articles pertaining to the infamous "Pool Tribe" of Bradford County. These blog posts relied heavily on newspaper articles of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which painted the members of this colorful family-- which includes the Vanderpools, Johnsons, Heemans, Ackleys and other families related through blood or marriage-- as unsavory "degenerates" who purportedly committed numerous acts of violence and debauchery throughout the region. The newspaper articles used as source material for these blog posts, I must confess, contained several factual errors.

In response to these blog posts, I received an email from Thomas Morgan, who has spent many years researching the Vanderpools, Johnsons and other members of this family. The "Pool Tribe", as they were referred to by newspapers of the era, is an example of  what researchers call an "isolate community". Prior to railroads and automobiles, intermarriage between families was a routine occurrence in rural areas, and, naturally, led to an unfair stigmatization by those who lived in more "civilized" areas. As a result, many of these isolate communities became fodder for wild rumors and served as the basis of sensationalized stories, many of which are best taken with a grain of salt. 

While the "Pool Tribe" produced its fair share of black sheep, it's important to remember that everyone has ancestors who have run afoul of the law, or have made headlines for all the wrong reasons. In this sense, the Johnsons and Vanderpools of Bradford County are no better or worse than any other family. For every distant uncle we can find who was a war hero, or upstanding pillar of the community, we can also find one who was a horse thief or a drunkard. At any rate, I found Mr. Morgan's email to be so fascinating and informative that I asked for his permission to reprint it, which he has graciously given.

My primary area of research regards the outcast communities from the Colonial Period through the present. In the 1790s the first newspapers appeared in America. Along with them came the forces of yellow journalism which went to work stigmatizing these people with their best pejorative vernacular. Typical themes included illegitimate origin; use of disparaging appellations by society; reputation for drunkenness, violence and crimes of passion within their groups; a reputation for laziness, illiteracy, poverty and inbreeding; a relegation to settlement in hilly, sandy, swampy and general "backwoods" locations-- and a preference to withdraw from public attention. Since the 1940s, serious researchers have corrected the record and this form of “journalism” died out in the 1960s.

So, on the Pools, let me enlighten you:

This so-called “tribe” began with Anthony Vanderpool, who was born to Anthony “Teunis” Van der Poel and Jacomyntie Van Seyl in Newark NJ in 1754, after which, the family moved to Columbia County, NY to be with the many other Van der Poels there. When young, Anthony became acquainted with the local Mohican tribe at the Esquatak (Schodack) “castle”. Wanting to marry one of the young native girls (which was unacceptable for an aristocratic family), in 1776 he left his family and married Elizabeth Janssen (Jansen/Johnson). Four of his friends did the same, marrying Elizabeth’s four sisters. They were Isaac Wheeler, Henry Cornelius, Johnathan Heeman and Ambrose Vincent. Later, Isaac Wheeler’s brother Richard, married another of Elizabeth’s sisters. And so started the rumor that “brothers married sisters”!

Elizabeth was of mixed race (Mohican, African and Dutch) as were many of the natives by this time. Elizabeth Janssen’s family was large, with many bearing that name. From the time of their marriage, they all had children and led productive lives (Anthony & friends served honorably in the Revolutionary War for one year) but lived in seclusion to avoid family. Because they spoke multiple languages (Mahican, Dutch and English), they developed their own dialect and were highly misunderstood by other locals and were blamed for everything from theft to assault which was all unfounded. 

Around 1790, they took their families (along with a few male Janssens) and first moved to Oquaga (present day Windsor, NY) and found work reconstructing a destroyed village. Because of this work, Anthony became an accomplished carpenter and millwright. Looking for a place to settle their families, they continued on to French Town, Pennsylvania where they found more work and their families grew. It was at this time that Van der Poel became Vanderpool (often times just “Pool”)  and Janssen became Johnson.

Anthony went to Durell Creek and built a mill then eventually to Ellis Hill where the families built homes and barns and farmed the land. Anthony and his friends all paid taxes and lived upstanding lives, but still crippled by the strange dialect they developed over the years. Their children married and other names entered the pictured such as Benjamin and Ackley. But the rumors of inbreeding followed them and the newspapers were all too were happy to make sales based on fabricated back-stories.

I can tell you about a great many other isolate communities along the east coast that were treated the same. The Basket Makers of Taghkonic, NY (“Pondshiners”), the Sloughters (rhymes with chowder) of Schoharie NY, The Jackson Whites of Ramapo Mountain in NY & NJ… and from PA there is The Basketmakers of York (Bullfrog Alley), the Gouldtowners, Karthus Half-Breeds, Keating Mountain Group, Nigger-Hill People and on and on. I can show you denigrating newspaper articles about one group that was copied nearly word-for-word by another paper then applied to another group elsewhere!

This was the same for the Pools of Towanda. During the 1940's and 1950's John Whitthoft, Pennsylvania State Archaeologist, came to the Towanda area to conduct excavations. As an anthropologist he developed a lifelong interest in this undefined group and he did a bit of writing, debunking the false "legends" which had grown in the area. There was also Terry Vanderpool and Richard McCracken (former Regional Conservation Archaeologist, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA) who both spent years studying this group, also debunking a great many stories.

For example, while the Bigler murder story was true on its face, many “facts” written around the family were not and the authors simply sensationalized/invented most of it. The same goes for the inbreeding, arrests and murders that were attributed to the Pools while actually being committed by unrelated people and groups living elsewhere, but having similar names. In the Chapter “Other Ethnic Groups,” Volume 15 (Northeast), Encyclopedia of the North American Indian, published in the 1980's by the Smithsonian Institute, there is a scholarly treatment of this group of pioneers as well as others throughout the eastern seaboard who have been similarly stigmatized.

Because of false attributions over many years, they were deprived of economic opportunities and many became poor, but most lived an honest, hard-working life with their own farms and mills. Further, there were nearly 140 Pool-affiliated family that served in the Civil War. Thirteen died as a result of battle, and 3 died at Andersonville Prison as captives. There were only 3 desertions, which was far below the national average of the time. Nobody writes about the positive stories in any newspaper because “good news” doesn’t sell.

They arrived in Bradford county around 1796, and had no familial relationship to Sir William Johnson. A daughter of President Martin Van Buren indeed married a distant cousin of Anthony Vanderpool in 1810, he was not Martin’s uncle. Genealogical research in Bradford County shows that, while some of the folks married 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th cousins (not illegal anywhere), there is no documented proof of widespread inbreeding, nor signs of the physical abnormalities that come with direct-relation inbreeding.

To be a historian is far more than copying and pasting form 19^th and 20^th century newspapers; it takes time and a great degree of research. I have been personally studying isolate groups for 15 years and I’m far from done. The living descendants, of which there are a great many, do not deserve to have these old stories perpetuated.

If you made it this far I hope you learned a thing or two. I leave you with a quote from a Daniel Webster speech from 1845:

"They cleared up these stony lands; they reared their houses; raised their families and were the commencement of all that exist to-day. It is no great stretch of the imagination to view the aspect of the town in those times - the forests, the swamps, the rocky surface. If our people could go back and view it all and be required to commence anew, they would stand appalled.

"Lessons can be learned as well from the small as from the great. We claim for our ancestors no particular exemption from human frailty and vices incident to all conditions. Like all others they were good and bad character, but they were largely of the good and virtuous class. If on trying to trace back and counting them up we find the positively bad, they are not to be thrown aside on that account with the hope of covering up their errors lest the chain of descent be broken. It is our business to learn from them all and be ever thankful that we are descended from so sturdy and worthy a race.

"In our reflections upon the character and conduct of our forefathers, there is much that is personal and agreeable to the feelings. We own and adopt them as members of the family, think and speak of them as nearly allied to us, though not one drop of their blood deepens the color of our own. We share their respect and renown, and glory in their fame. We appropriate them to ourselves and make them ours. We feel as they felt, pity and weep over their hardships and misfortunes."