Humphrey Bogart
his quintuple cousinship with Jean Margaret (Kennedy) Mitchelson through the Rapalje family
|
Humphrey Bogart’s highly-inbred New Jersey paternal ancestry includes — almost certainly — five lines of descent from the Rapalje family of Long Island, making him and Jean Margaret (Kennedy) Mitchelson quintuple 8th cousins once removed. He was also related to her in yet a fourth way through his mother’s Howland descent, not shown here. Bogart, through the Bergen family, was rather closely related to New York Governor DeWitt Clinton; and through the Brokaw family he was a fifth cousin once removed of news anchor Tom Brokaw (see note below). |
Joris Jansen Rapalje = Catalyntje Trico
(1604-1663) | (ca. 1605-1689)
______________________|___________
| |
Daniel Rapalje Sara Jorisse Rapalje (1625-ca. 1685)
(1650-1725), = (1) Hans Hansen Bergen = (2) Theunis Gysbertse
of Brooklyn, N.Y. | of the Wallabout, L.I. | Bogaert
= Sara Clock | (d. ca. 1654) | (1625-1667+),
(1651-1731) | | of Brooklyn
| ___|____________ ___|______________
| | | | |
Sara Rapalje (Lt.) Michiel Jacob Hansen Gysbert Theun. Catalyntje
(1687-1773) Hansen Bergen Bergen Bogaert (1668-), Bogaert
= Pieter Corn. (1646-1731+), (1653-1738+), of Fresh Kills, = Jan
Luyster of Brooklyn of Flatbush Staten Island, Theuniszen
(1687-1759) = Femmetje & Brooklyn & Flatlands, L.I., Denys,
of Newtown, Theunisse = Elsje = Jannetje Symonse brother of
L.I., N.Y. Denyse Frederijcks van Arsdalen Femmetje
| | | (d. 1732) (left)
| | | | |
Sara Luyster Femmetje Bergen Marritje ==== Gysbert Sara Teunisse
(1714-1767) (1673-1752) Bergen | (Gysbertszen) van Middlesworth
= Isaac Lent = Jan Cornelisz (ca. 1695-?) | Bogaert = Jan Brokaw
(1707-1771), Vanderveer | (ca. 1695/97-1768) |
of Fishkill, (d. 1732), | of Solebury, |
Dutchess Co., supervisor of | Bucks Co., Pa., |
N.Y. Flatbush | and Raritan, N.J. |
| | _____/ | /___________________|___
| | | |______ |
| (?) | | |
Catharina Lent Hendrick Jan Brokaw Dr. Jacob Bogart Bergoon
(say 1743-1767+) Vanderveer Jr. (1723-1777), Brokaw/Bragaw
= Francis Harris (say 1708-1781) = Maria of Bridgewater Tp., (1712-ca. 1798)
(1740-1816), of Somerset Co., van Cleef Somerset Co., of Raritan, N.J.
of Sandy Cove, N.J. | N.J. = Metje van Winkle
Digby Tp., = Antje | | [i.e. Wickelen]
Annapolis Co., van Siclen | | |
N.S. ______| __| |____ |
| | | | |
Catherine Harris Maria === (1) John Brokaw Guisbert (1) ======= Metje
(1767-1846) Vanderveer | (1735/6- (or Gilbert) | Brokaw
= John Comfort (1741/2-?) | ca.1779), Bogart | /Bragaw
(ca. 1755-1830), | of German Town, (ca.1748-1779), | (d. 1772)
of Clinton Tp., | Pennsylvania of Bucks Co., Pa., |
Lincoln Co., | and of |
Upper Canada | Hillsborough Tp., |
| | Somerset Co., N.J., |
| | ___________|
| | |
Francis Comfort Mary Brokaw ========= Dr. Jacob Bogart
(1800-1880), (1776-1862) | (1772-1823),
of Beamsville, | of Somerville,
Clinton Tp., Lincoln Co. | Bridgewater Tp.,
= Jemima Wilcox | Somerset Co., N.J.
(1801-1876) | and Owasco, Victoria Tp.,
| | Cayuga Co., N.Y.
| |
Margaret Comfort Peter Brokaw Bogart
(1833-1916) (1793-1843),
= John Kennedy (IV) of Owasco
(1832-1897), = Agnes Welty
of St. Anns, (1809-1879)
Gainsborough Tp., |
Lincoln Co. |
| |
John Kennedy (V) Adam Welty Bogart
(1862-1939), (1829-1869+),
of Melita, Manitoba, of Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Canada = Julia A. ----
= Susanna Samantha (-1868)
Helena Young |
(1882-1937) |
| |
Jean Margaret Kennedy Dr. Belmont DeForest Bogart
(1917-2000) (1866-1934),
= Richard Harry of Manhattan, surgeon
Mitchelson, Jr. = Maud Humphrey
(1914-1998), (1866-1940)
of Winnipeg, Manitoba |
(my natural |
grandparents) |
Humphrey DeForest Bogart
(1899-1957).
His fourth wife was the actress
Lauren Bacall.
Sources:
Bogart’s male line is given in its entirety in John Albert Bogart, The Bogart family: Tunis Gysbert Bogaert and his descendants (Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1959), pp. 147-49, 153-54, 158-159, 161, 165-66, 169, 171-72 (although the preposterous ancestry of Joris Jansen Rapalje given in p. 91, an uncharacteristic blemish in a mostly very good work, should be ignored). The reconstuction of the female lines was helped by the LDS Ancestral File and various materials found on the World wide Web, particularly John H. Camp, Notable descendants of Yellis Janszen Mandeville (http://users.crocker.com/~jcamp/ymfam.html), and Jo Ann Ramseyer, Van Arsdale Genealogy (http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/r/a/m/Jo-A-Ramseyer/). Since this page first appeared under the title “Humphrey Bogart: his triple cousinship with Jean Margaret (Kennedy) Mitchelson,” another online study of Bogart’s ancestry has been published by John H. Camp, The New Netherland Ancestors of Humphrey Bogart, at
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~nnnotables/zhubo.html. Surprisingly, Mr. Camp, who cites several sources unavailable to us, discovered two more Rapalje descents for his subject, which we have subsequently incorporated here.
A number of the eighteenth-century records relating to this family spell the name Bogert. The birthdate of 1793 for Peter Brokaw Bogart is confirmed by his baptism on 10 Nov. of that year in the First Reformed Church, Raritan (Somerville); see Somerset County Historical Quarterly, 4 (1919): 152.
We have already given most of references for the Rapalje family in the Clinton chart. Working from the top downward, other published secondary sources bearing on Bogart’s ancestral lines presented here include:
- Armida Sharpin, Rapelje Rasters: a genealogy (1994), pp. 17-18, 19, 112-13, 162.
- “Sarah de Rapaelje” (sic), in Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 6 vols. (1887-89), which however requires correction in light of later research.
- The Rev. Charles Marr, “First White Girl in Dutch America,” State Service 7 (1923): 160-62 (on Sara Rapalje).
- Teunis G. Bergen, The Bergen Family; or, the descendants of Hans Hansen Bergen, one of the early settlers of New York and Brooklyn, L.I. [2nd ed.] (Albany, 1876), pp. 15-32, 38-79 (on Hans Bergen), 98-117 (on Michiel), 126-36 (on Jacob), 217-18 (on Femmetje, but not showing a son Hendrick), and 549 (on Marritje).
- Frank L. Van Wagnen, The ancestry of Garret Conrad Van Wagnen in the five collateral [sic] lines of Pelts, Elting, Van Den Berg, Ten Eyck, and Bogart… (Buffalo, N.Y.: the author, 1946), 65-77 (Rapalje), 88-94 (Bergen), 51-60 (Bogart), showing the line given here down to Jacob Bogart (b. 1723).
- John A. Bogart, The Seven Bogert-Bogart Families in Canada, whose ancestors were among the early Dutch Settlers of New Netherland (1962), pp. 86, 88-89.
- S.V. Talcott, Genealogical notes of New York and New England families (Albany, 1883), 22-63 passim.
- Teunis G. Bergen, Register … of the early settlers of Kings County, Long Island, N.Y. (New York, 1881), pp. 33, 34 (Bergen), 324 (Vanderveer).
- John Reynolds Totten, “Jan Cornelis Buys (alias Jan Damen) and his three wives…; Teunis Nyssen (or Denyse) and his wife Phaebea Faelix…; Roelof Willemszen and his wife Willemtie Thyssen,” NYGBR 66 (1935): 225-37, at p. 235 (on Femmetje Theunisse Denyse and Jan Theuniszen Denys, who were siblings).
- Lester Dunbar Mapes, “Early generations of the Vanderveer family…,” pt. 1, NYGBR 68 (1937): 202-16, at pp. 204-6.
- Frank W. Gardner, “Central Ohio genealogical notes,” NGSQ 29 (1941): 89-91, which however gives an impossible date for the marriage of Sara Rapalje to Theunis Bogaert.
- E.Th.R. Unger, “‘Voorts weet ick niet meer te schrijven’: Brieven van Nieuw-Nederlandse Van Arsdale’s…,” Jaarboek van het Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie, 50 (1996): 179-98, at p. 190 (on Jannetje van Arsdalen).
- “Van der Veer” (query), Somerset County Historical Quarterly, 1 (1912): 79.
- Richard D. Cook, “The Van Wickelen Family,” Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey, 35 (1960): 49-53, 144, at p. 50; reprinted in Genealogies of New Jersey Families, 1:976-80.
- Gary Boyd Roberts, Notable Kin, 2 vols. (Santa Clarita, California, 1998-99), 2:117 (on Maude Humphrey, a Howland descendant, to whom Jean Margaret Kennedy was also related in her own right).
- A.M. Sperber & Eric Lax, Bogart (Morrow, 1997).
- Joe Hyams, Bogart & Bacall: a love story (New York: David McKay, 1975), which however gives a wildly incorrect age at death for Belmont DeForest Bogart on p. 35.
While these writings present a chronologically plausible and fairly coherent account of the ancestral lines for Humphrey Bogart shown above, they certainly do not supply documentary evidence for every connection, and we must point out two problems which we have been unable to resolve, and on which we are still seeking further information:
- John Albert Bogart, in his 1959 Bogart genealogy, shows Dr. Jacob Bogart (1723-1777) as a son of Gysbert Bogaert (ca. 1695/97-1768), and would accord with Jacob’s naming of his eldest son Gilbert (the English version of the name). However the evidence is perhaps less than definitive, and the very learned Van Doren Honeyman, in his Joannes Nevius … and his descendants (Plainfield, N.J., 1900), pp. 627, 593, stated that Dr. Jacob was a son of another Jacob, while in a reply to a Bogart query in Somerset County Historical Quarterly, 4 (1915): 73-4, of which he was editor, he stated that Jacob’s ancestry was “not traced.”;
- The writings of Teunis G. Bergen, which appear to be the main treatments of the family of Femmetje Bergen and Jan Cornelisz Vanderveer, do not credit them with a son Hendrick, who appears neither in the revised (1876) edition of The Bergen Family nor in Register … of the early settlers of Kings County (1881).
Even if both these descents were to be invalidated, the double descent through the Brokaw family seems indisputable.
The more senior of the two Brokaw descents is shared by news anchor Tom Brokaw, as follows:
Jan Brokaw, Jr. (1709-1804) = Maria van Cleef (1715-1789) Bergon Isaac Brokaw (1756-1813) = Jane Suydam (1760-1830) Joseph Brokaw (1782-1861) = Hannah Post (1782-?) Joseph Brokaw (1816-1897) = Sarah Patterson (1810-1880) Richard Patterson Brokaw (1843-1909) = Anna M. Hyde (1844-1901) William Loren Brokaw (1869-1943) = Elisabeth Meuer (1877-1924) Anthony Brokaw (1912-1982) = Eugenia Conley (1923-1994) Thomas John Brokaw (1940-)
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URL = cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/people/Dobson/genealogy/famous/Bogart.html
This page written 1 October 1999
Last revised 25 May 2008