Peter C. Van Sylke, Sr. by W. D. Ritter

PETER CORNELIUS VAN SLYKE, Sr., was not in the Revolution, but he was the first man who ever bought land intending to live on it in the vicinity of Bloomfield.

Four generations of the Van Slykes I have known who had the names of Peter and Cornelius interchanged, one before the other each generation, the last one, the oldest of the Peter VanSlyke, many of you knew, died in minority.

Cornelius was a common name in Holland, where the Van Slykes came from. Cornelius Mey was the first manager of the little fur-trading port in 1623, where New York City now stands. The Vanderbilts, who are of the same Dutch stock, still keep the name Cornelius. In 1657 Cornelius Adrian VanSlyke received a grant of land on the Hudson River, near Catskill, from the government of New Amsterdam, when Peter Stuyvesant was governor seven years later before the English took it and named it New York.

A century later finds the family on the Mohawak River in Schenectady county, New York, where our subject was born April 5, 1766, on a fine farm of river bottom and sandy upland similar to the land entered here, taking in Bloomfield and all the land to the river in sight from the cemetery mound.

This Mr. WAKE EDWARDS, of Louisianna, now sevnty-one years old, who was raised a neighbor in New York; told me while stanidn on the mond down towards the iron bridge known as the VanSlyke cemetery mound. At maturity he married MARAGRET LIGHTHALL. Mrs. JOANNA EVELIGH, who was seventy-seven years old in 1897, told me that her mother told her he was a soldier in the War of 1812. Mrs. Eveligh is his grandchild and was the first white female child born in the vicinity o Bloomfield. His daughter, Mrs. SHAW, Mrs. Eveligh’s mother, said he was a very fine looking man with his regimentals on. His height was six feet and four inches, wight at his best 250 pounds – just the same in height and weight as George Washington.

He dressed with the knee breeches, knee buckles, shoe buckles and stockings in the fashion of the time. The Mohawk Indians were numerous and he took many of heir habits. His buckskin dress with fringe round the hunting shirt and down the breeches legs were made like theirs. The Mohawks were among the finest athletes in the world.

He came to Indiana in 1816 and bought land, some of which is now the L. H. JONES farm, to which he sent his son-in-law, JOHN VAN VORST, in 1817. In 1818 he with his son CORNELIUS PETER and family moved by wagon brining his own wife and unmarried children.

His son CORNELIUS built a dug-out in the south side of the "burial mound", where there is yet a little depression which marks the spot. Mr. Van vorst had built south of there at the big spring.

The old folks built south of Van vosrt’s where they lived a few years, then built not far wesdt of where Col. A. G CAVINS now lives. At this place he built a horse mill, which was a very important thing for the people. Here they lived until old age when they went to their son Cornelius, north of the cemetery mound, to send their last days.

The first piece of money ever coined by this governrnent, a twelve and a half cents piece, was one of his cherished relics.

This with another silver coin of interesting history, which history, with that of many other of his relics I have forgotten, were kept to be placed on his eyelids to hold them shut after death. This was done. A very small child, I was held up by my father, who had made his coffin, and saw them on his eyelids there.

Many rare coins of silver and gold of many nations were in his collection The first one thousand dollar bill issued by the Old National Bank in Philadelphia he had also. This had been at one time kept so long under the house that it mostly rotted. Afoot he carried it back to Schenectady, New York, to the man he got it of, and got his affidavit of the fact, then still afoot went to the bank in Philadelphia and showed the remains of the bill with his testimony. The bank gave him a new bill in its place, after which the long tramp back home was made.

Owning about seven hundred acres of land including part of what is now Bloomfield, when Burlington was abandoned as county seat he bought fifty acres more from Samuel Gwatheny, of Jeffersonville, and gave the original town plat to the county on condition that the county seat was to be placed on it. This deed was made in 1824.

His past life has been so full of incident that in his last days he told my father he thought he would write it out for his friends, but this was not done.

On September 25, 1834, at the house of his son, CORNELIUS P., he passed to eternity, was buried on the mound by his wife, who was laid there only a few days before, where to this day no stone marks the spot where the "dust" of the man who left many thousands of dollars in money and hundreds of acres of land is resting in the long sleep of death. Since then a stone was set there, durnished by the war department, in recognition of his service as a soldier. My father was one of the men appointed by the executors to count the money. I went with him to the house of death and saw it. The silver and gold, or may be only the silver, made their fingers black like they had been handling lead – when it was hauled to JOHN INMAN’s up in town, who lived on the corner lately burnt out, where the post office was.

All this money, land and all was "entailed by will to the third "Peter", then a minor, for the name’s sake. Inman trustee and guardian. On coming of age "Peter" sued Inman for the whole amount; swept it all from him; left him in old age with no where to lay his head. Unfaithfulness in duty – not giving it over at the proper time was the cause of the entire misfortune.

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Biographical Memoirs of Greene County, Ind. With Reminiscences of Pioneer Days, Illustrated (1908, B. F. Bowen & Co. Indianapolis, Indiana) Vol. 1 Pg. 122-6