It's been said that you can tell a lot about a community by observing how they treat the elderly, children and their cemeteries.
On the northern boundary of Sleepy Hollow Apartments, adjacent to athletic fields of Monticello High School, there sits a small, abandoned cemetery. Located inside a dilapidated split rail fence are several graves, with at least two visible tombstones. One marks the final resting place of Daniel Litts. The stone has been knocked over and lies flat on the ground, its lettering is barely legible. Next to it is an unmarked block which may memorialize Danie's wife Metje (Martha), who reportedly died on November 4, 1859 in Forestburgh. Metje was christened 7 April 1776 in Shawangunk, Ulster County, making her 82 years old at the time of her death.
The tract on which Monticello High School and Sleepy Hollow Apartments are today situated, in the southwestern section of what is now the Village of Monticello, was once owned by Ezekiel I. Masten. A portion described as being "on the road from Mamakating Hollow to Kinnebrook" was granted by Johannes Masten and Magdalena (or Madleen) Swart, who was born about 1756, to their sons-in-law Daniel Litts and Evert Terwilliger who moved there in February 1797.
In 2001, on the website Saving Graves: Endangered Cemetery Report, William Kitz described the Litts cemetery as being in danger of destruction due to commercial encroachment (referring to the neighboring apartment complex) and apathy.
Submissions to the Mormon Family History Archive in Salt Lake City indicate Daniel Litts was christened on 7 January 1772 in Shawangunk, Ulster, New York; married Metje Masten of Wawarsing, reportedly on 5 October 1795. The LDS database lists three children: (1) Lea LITZ, christened 26 January 1796 in Wawarsing, Ulster County; Johannis LITZ, christened 6 August 1798 in Wawarsing; and Isaac LITZ, christened 11 February 1815 in Wurtsboro, Sullivan County. 1
The Masten family figures in James Eldridge Quinlan's History of Sullivan County, published in 1873:
"The first white settlers of Mamakating farms buried their dead in an orchard near Deven's block-house. Manuel Gonsalus was laid to rest there on 18 April 1758. Nearby are three Masten family graves -- Mary Masten, 11 December 1794; John Masten, 24 December 1794; and Lea Masten, 24 December 1794. It is tempting to think that these are Hansie Masten's parents -- Johannes would have been 88 years old and Marytje Van Keuren would have been 78 years old -- and Hansie's daughter 'Leah', who would have been only 21. It must have been a dismal Christmas for the Mastens in 1794." 2
Manuel Gonsalus is said to have the "oldest known non-Indian grave" in Sullivan County, located at the entrance to the Wurtsboro airport. The late local historian Bert Feldman wrote, "Badly neglected, you can still read the brief inscription on the reddish stone: “Manuel -- Gonsalus -- is -- Gestorvan -- DE 18 April -- Anno 1752.” Bert Feldman disagrees with Quinlan's description of Gonsalus as being of Spanish descent, suggesting instead that he may have been a Portuguese Jew.3
Asked if he had any corrections or additions to the content of this article, Sullivan County Historian John Conway offered the following: "The one story I remember most about Daniel Litts and his family is the anecdote Quinlan relates about their great strength and the time a professional wrestler from New York City came to town to challenge one of Litts’ sons. Calling on the Litts home, he finds only the daughter there, and when he tells her what he wants she laughs and finally goads him into wrestling her, and of course she beats him silly. She is one of the very few women Quinlan writes about."4
Quinlan (pp. 420-422) provides this additional insight on the family of Johannes Masten and Magdalena Swart:
"Johannes Masten came to Wurtsborough sometime during or soon after the French War [The French and Indian War was from 1755 to 1763], and bought 1,000 acres of land of Elias and Moses Miller... He was a native of Kingston, of Dutch and French ancestry, and a man of large means... At the time Masten came to the valley (according to a statement of Mrs. Daniel Litts, his daughter) the Hollow was a dense wilderness, except where Jacobys Devens and Manuel Gonsalus and his sons lived... She says that Devens' "fort" was built around his house and that soldiers were stationed there during the revolution to watch the Indians."
Ezekiel Masten entered service of United States in the summer of 1776 as a volunteer in the New York Militia under command Capt. Matthias Jansen. The regiment to which he belonged was commanded by Johannis Jansen a brother of Capt. Jansen. Ezekiel Masten served until end of the revolutionary war. 5
These families seem to have been associated with the Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Thompson Ridge, which at the time was part of Orange County. 6 In 1797, Mrs. Terwilliger was 41 years old and her sister Martha Litts was 22 years. Earlier generations were Huguenots.
A passage from The Monticello Republican was republished in The New York Times:
A LONG-LIVED FAMILY.
From the Monticello Republican.
"Nov 5. - The Litts family in this town may, we think, boast (if it be a matter for boasting) of a degree of longevity unequaled by the same number of persons in any other family in the county. The progenitors of this family came from Holland. The father, Daniel Litts, was born in New-Jersey in 1771, and his wife, whose maiden name was Martha Masten, was born in Wurtsborough when that place was a small hamlet known as Rome. The father died at the advanced age of 86 years 6 months and 2 days, and the mother was 84 years old when she departed this life. The children now living, all within a few miles of Monticello, are John Litts, aged 88 years; Benjamin Litts, aged 82 years; Conelius Litts, aged 79 years; Isaac Litts, aged 72 years; Leah Litts, aged 77 years; Sarah Litts, aged 78 years, or an aggregate of 476 years. Cornelius, to whom we are indebted for these dates, is in the enjoyment of good health, and his mental faculties appear to be as vigorous as when he was a much younger man. And, we believe, all the descendants named are in the enjoyment of a good degree of preservation of mind and body." 7
Quinlan states that Daniel Litts' father removed to Pennsylvania, but Daniel himself "returned and married a daughter of Johannes Masten, and became an early settler of Thompson." Quinlan does not name Daniel's father, but other sources indicate they may have been Johannes Lits and Leentje Imson.
He adds, "Johannes Masten paid five dollars per acre for the first land he bought in the valley, and afterwards paid as high as ten. It bore heavy burdens of wheat and Indian corn. After his return from Shawangunk, he carted seven hundred bushels of wheat to Esopus in a single year. This he had raised on his homestead, besides what was consumed by his family, slaves, and horses. He probably owned more negroes than any other resident of the county." * * *
"Mamakating at this time was emphatically a Dutch neighborhood. Dutch, with an admixture of French, was the common language, and Yankees were seldom met with. The dwellings were in the Dutch style, and constructed more for utility and comfort than beauty. Washington Irving, in his Legend of Mamakating Hollow, says they were modeled after a hen-coop. Of course, he slanders these simple and worthy people; for their houses were as good and better than their neighbors" (Quinlan, p. 422).
Legal responsibility for the care and maintenance of old family cemeteries in New York State is not clear (see Cemetery Law Manual: Laws & Regulations of the New York State Cemetery Board), but our ethical and moral responsibility is. An excellent local example of a case where this responsibility is carried out well is the Hoyt Cemetery in Bridgeville, as documented in a consent order issued July 5, 1994 in Sullivan County Supreme Court in the matter of the application of Edwin Olmstead, Petitioner, vs. the Town of Thompson Town Board, Respondent. In support of Olmstead's petition, former Monticello village historian Marge Smith testified as to the condition of the Hoyt Cemetery and led Justice Robert Williams on a site visit. Citing Town Law Sec. 291(1), the Town of Thompson accepted its responsibility to care for that abandoned cemetery and each year since has removed grass and weeds prior to Memorial Day.
Currently, no one cares for the Litts cemetery.
I would respectfully suggest that the Village of Monticello take action to clean up this small historic graveyard before it disappears, perhaps in cooperation with the owners and developers of the Sleepy Hollow Apartments and/or students from Monticello High School.
Litts Cemetery is shown in yellow.
Source: NYSEG Map, Sullivan County Clerk's office.
Reader feedback, from Town of Thompson Highway Superintendent Rich Benjamin:
From: Rich Benjamin
To: Tom Rue
Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 9:51 PM
Subject: RE: Who cares about an old cemetery?Tom,
We will trim the brush in there when we clean up all the other cemeteries. I never knew about this one and it is not on our list. Just a note, the Litts farmhouse was just torn down. It was on the site of the Monticello airport, now the Monticello race club. That property was the Litts farm. There was a dead-end road there named Litts Road. We abandoned it as it was of now longer any use.
Rich
- 1. See also The Mastens of Sullivan County in The Gardners of Cleveland County, North Carolina.
- 2. See The wives of Johannes Masten by Patricia D. Harrison, Dutch-Colonies-L Archives, June 3, 1998.
- 3. Bert Feldman, "Some unknown and unsung heroes", local history supplement to The River Reporter, Narrowsburg, New York, January 1, 1998, on the web with permission of the now late Mr. Feldman, currently at tomrue.net/history.feldman/unsung.htm.
- 4. E-mail from Sullivan County Historian John Conway to the author, April 1, 2008. See Mr. Conway's website at sullivanretrospect.com.
- 5. See Children of Johannes Masten & Magdelena Swart by William Goldstein, Dutch-Colonies-L Archives, June 3, 1998.
- 6. See Ezekiel Masten, Dutch-Colonies-L Archives, June 13, 1998, which cites The Terwilliger Family by Myron and George Terwilliger.
- 7. The New York Times, November 7, 1886, p. 2; ProQuest Historical Newspapers via New York State Library.