Genessee Genesis, Pt. 1

Upon review, my previous post seems rather curt, and I would like to rectify my reputation on this blog through an injection of gravitas. As I mentioned in "Bleecker Street Blues," my family originally hails from Utica. We date back to days of the great Dutch migration to the New World. Those days of yore, when Peter Stuyvesant was regent of New Amsterdam and the Fondas established a proto-cinematic settlement under the grey hues of upstate New York. In the following years, Vernon De Freets was to capture the metaphysical torment and spiritual chaos that, in a perpetual ebb and flow, ran through the oft-seeming monotonous landscapes that crawled out from the primordial basin of the Mowhawk river.

My earliest relative in the colonies, Jacobus van der Hoeken, was disowned for marrying a sexually precocious Seneca girl (perhaps representative of the strain that this foreign soil would have on his nerves). Exiled from the burgeoning Dutch community, Jacobus adopted the name Genesee (a Seneca word meaning "pleasant valley") and then changed it to Genessee (adding the extra "s" in order to pass as British). He converted to Calvinism, but lost his faith when his dear wife (her name unknown to this day) departed for Montreal with a Quebecois fur trapper with a lisp as noticeable as his aversion to effete Old-World-ism. A rugged man for sure, but certainly a troublesome rake, who, if we are to believe the records at the Montreal city hall, drowned himself with the Molson Ice Expedition Company in Newfoundland. His soul, according to the subtext of that document, was as likely to flourish in city-life as Jonas Salk was as likely to find a cure for the clap (which never happened--an addendum that the self-conscious historiographer must always attach).

Isolated, alienated, abandoned for a drink-sodden frog from Montreal, Jacobus fell into effeminancy. The land...too tiresome. The soil...too rocky. Prospects...bluish-green. Yet, his basket-weaving and innovations in textile would eventually elevate him to a higher stratum where his family would reside until a disastrous financial decision during the War of 1812.