Grubb Family Tree

From Schermerhorn Genealogy and Family Chronicles:

How Arnout Schermerhorn and his mother escaped the Schenectady Massacre is not fully known, although an old tradition is authority for the statement that Arnout, who was then a child of four, was wrapped up in a blanket by his father, and cast in a snowdrift, out of the path of danger, after the latter had started on his ride to Albany.

He undoubtedly followed a ship-master's life from early youth in New York, and traded between Boston and New York and probably between Charleston, S. C., and New York, as did his son John. The New York Gazette of Apr. 24, 1727, gives a listing as follows: "Apr. 15, 1727 — Custom House, Boston … Entered Inwards … Schermerhorn from N. York … Outward Bound … Schermerhorn for N. York."

Arnout Schermerhorn traded largely in New York real estate, as is indicated by the city records. On Apr. 21, 1726, Apr. 3, 1729, and Feb. 10, 1730, he obtained by purchase from his father-in-law, Johannes Beekman, three parcels of land, or water lots on the south side of Queen (now Pearl) Street, between Beekman and Fulton Streets, as they have since been opened and extended. Upon a part of this land he built a wharf, which, upon James Lyne's Map of New York in 1728, is laid down as "Schermerhorn's Wharf." Adjoining it on the east appears "Cannon's Wharf." Upon these lands (or upon the upland portions of them) Johannes Beekman, Arnout Schermerhorn and John Cannon had residences or no doubt places of business. Their wharves extended towards, if not over, the present site of Fulton Market. Out of the associations of neighbors probably grew the marriage between children of Schermerhorn and Cannon.

Not long after the date of these purchases, Arnout Schermerhorn seems to have become embarrassed, judging from certain advertisements relating to a proposed (and probably forced) sale of the same property, which appeared in the New York Gazette of March 18, 1733, and the New York Weekly Journal of August 26, 1734. These apparent difficulties may have grown out of his frequent absences in the pursuit of his calling, or of undertakings elsewhere, for on Jan. 21, 1733, he executed (in Charleston, S. C.) a full power of attorney to his wife Mary, in which he is described as "late of the City of New York," but now of Charles Town, in the Province of South Carolina," and on Apr. 21, 1738, he executed a similar power to her in which he is described as "of Charlestown, S. C., Shop-Keeper." The business in which he was there engaged was probably that of Ship Chandler, afterwards maintained in New York by his descendents, continuing intimate relations with Charleston.

Whatever may have been the origin of these difficulties, the result was certainly not the loss of the property since by successive water grants, his descendants acquired, and still hold, lands on each side of Fulton Market, which they could not have so acquired had their ancestor parted with the middle upland.