Helmus Bogart

The Bogarts, my father's mother's ancestors and the neighbors who married into the family arrived in New Amsterdam from 1623 to 1660 and the family lived on Long Island till about 1820 when my great-grandfather, Helmus Bogart, who spoke only Dutch till he was seven years old, drove a team to Cincinnati and with his family settled there.

After the birth of their second son (Peter), Helmus and Sarah removed to New York, where they joined the Dutch Church in 1810. They returned to East Woods after the birth of a daughter Annetje, in 1813, and on June 15, 1815, were admitted to membership in Wolver Hollow Dutch Church, where Helmus's father had been deacon and his grandfather an elder. Helmus himself became a deacon October 22, 1815, and served till 1820.

Both Helmus and Sarah are buried in Miami Town, Ohio, in Miami Town Cemetery (not to be confused with Miami Township, which is across the river). There's a Little Miami River and a Greater Miami River; the Bogarts seem to have settled in Greater Miami River area, near Cincinnati.

My mother has a copy of Helmus Bogart's will, from the Cincinnati courthouse. While looking for the Bogart graves, Mom found a woman, a former schoolteacher, who had a book that had been published of people buried in the cemetery---Mom had seen it in a library too. The book listed the locations of Helmus and Sarah's graves. Not surprisingly, they're in the older part of the cemetery. The graves are in an area that has been at times a potter's field; it hasn't been consistently well maintained. Sarah's grave is probably there, but the headstone must have been removed, as Mom could find no marker. Helmus's grave is there,, and marked (see picture below). Helmus Bogart's son is buried close by with his wife and kids.

Mom also saw where Helmus's house once stood, out in somewhat more rural Hamilton County, up on a ridge, but it burned down a few years ago. With perfect timing, she ran into the grandchildren of the woman who used to live in the house, and they had a picture of what it looked like before it burned down. The house was in Miami Township (?) across the river from Miami Town. Dent, another place Mom has heard people refer to in family history, is further away from Cincinnati than Miami Town (further west). Dent has an old schoolhouse that's been preserved, but it's from the 1890s, so it would not have been the schoolhouse in which our ancestors went to class.