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      BERNARD HART

       Bret Harte’s Grandfather

      One of Bernard Hart’s sons by the Hebrew wife was named Henry. He was born in 1817, and died of consumption in his father’s house in White Street on November 16, 1850. He was unmarried. Bernard Hart himself died in 1855, at the age of ninety-one. His wife was then living at the age of seventy-nine.

      None of his descendants on the Hebrew side knew of his marriage to Catharine Brett or of the existence of his son, the first Henry Hart, until some years after Bret Harte’s death. It seems almost incredible that this Hebrew merchant, prominent as he was in business and social life, in clubs and societies, in the militia and the synagogue, should have been able to keep the fact of his first marriage so secret that it remained a secret for a hundred years; it seems very unlikely that a woman of good English birth and family should in that era have married a Jew; it is highly improbable that a father should give to a son by a second marriage the same name already given to his son by a former marriage. And yet all these things are indisputable facts. There are members of Bret Harte’s family still living who remember Bernard Hart, and his occasional visits to the family of Henry Hart, his son by Catharine Brett, whom he assisted with money and advice so long as he lived. Bret Harte himself remembered being taken to the New York Stock Exchange by his father, who there pointed out to him his grandfather, Bernard Hart. It may be added that between the descendants of Bernard Hart and Catharine Brett and those of Bernard Hart and Zipporah Seixas there is a marked resemblance.

      How far was the venerable Jew from suspecting that the one fact in his life which he was so anxious to conceal was the very fact which would rescue his name from oblivion, and preserve it so long as English literature shall exist! Even if the marriage to Catharine Brett, a Christian woman, had been known it would not, according to Jewish law, have invalidated the second marriage, but it would doubtless have prevented that marriage. What rendered the long concealment possible was, of course, the deep gulf which then separated Jew from Gentile. Catharine Brett had been warned by her father that he would cast her off if she married the Jew; and this threat was fulfilled. Thenceforth, she lived a lonely and secluded life, supported, it is believed, by her husband, but having no other relation with him. The marriage was so improbable, so ill-assorted, so productive of unhappiness, and yet so splendid in its ultimate results, that it seems almost atheistic to ascribe it to chance. Is the world governed in that haphazard manner!

      But who was this unfortunate Catharine Brett? She was a granddaughter of Roger Brett, an Englishman, and, it is supposed, a lieutenant in the British Navy, who first appears in New York, about the year 1700, as a friend of Lord Cornbury, then Governor of the Province. The coat of arms which Roger Brett brought over, and which is still preserved on a pewter placque, is identical with that borne by Judge, Sir Balliol Brett, before his elevation to the peerage as Viscount Esher. Roger Brett was a vestryman of Trinity Church from 1703 to 1706. In November, 1703, he married Catharyna Rombout, daughter of Francis Rombout, who was one of the early and successful merchants in the city of New York. Her mother, Helena Teller, daughter of William Teller, a captain in the Indian wars, was married three times, Francis Rombout being her third husband. Schuyler Colfax, once Vice-President of the United States, was descended from her. Francis Rombout was born at Hasselt in Belgium, and came to New Amsterdam while it still belonged to the Dutch. He was an elder in the Dutch Church, served as lieutenant in an expedition against the Swedes, was Schepen under the Dutch municipal government, alderman under the reorganized British government, and, in 1679, became the twelfth Mayor of New York.

      Francis Rombout left to his daughter, Roger Brett’s wife, an immense estate on the Hudson River, which included the Fishkills, and consisted chiefly of forest land. There, in 1709, the young couple built for their home a manor house, which is still standing and is occupied by a descendant of Roger Brett, to whom it has come down in direct line through the female branch. A few years later, at least before 1720, Roger Brett was drowned at the mouth of Fishkill Creek in the Hudson River. Catharyna, his widow, survived him for many years. She was a woman of marked character and ability, known through all that region as Madame Brett. She administered her large estate, leased and sold much land to settlers, controlled the Indians who were numerous, superintended a mill to which both Dutchess County and Orange County sent their grist, owned the sloops which were the only carriers between this outpost of the Colony and the city of New York, and was one of the founders of the Fishkill Dutch Church. In that church, a tablet to her memory was recently erected by the Rombout-Brett Association, formed a few years ago by her descendants. The tablet is inscribed as follows:—

      In memory of Catharyna Brett, widow of Lieutenant Roger Brett, R.N., and daughter of Francis Rombout, a grantee of Rombout patent, born in the city of New York 1687, died in Rombout Precinct, Fishkill, 1764. To this church she was a liberal contributor, and underneath its pulpit her body is interred. This tablet was erected by her descendants and others interested in the Colonial history of Fishkill, AD 1904.

      Roger Brett had four sons, of whom two died young and unmarried, and two, Francis and Robert, married, and left many children. Whether the Catharine Brett who married Bernard Hart was descended from Francis or from Robert is not certainly known. Francis Brett’s wife was a descendant of Cornelius Van Wyck, one of the earliest settlers on Long Island. Robert Brett’s wife was a Miss Dubois.

      Such was the ancestry of Bret Harte’s paternal grandmother. Her son, Henry Hart,[2] lived with her until, on May 5, 1817, he entered Union College, Schenectady, as a member of the class of 1820. He remained in college until the end of his Senior year, and passed all his examinations for graduation, but failed to receive his degree because a college bill amounting to ninety dollars had not been paid. The previous bills were paid by his mother, “Catharine Hart.” Alas! the non-payment of this bill was an omen of the future. Henry Hart and his illustrious son were both the reverse of thrifty or economical. Money seemed to fly away from them; they had no capacity for keeping it, and no discretion in spending it. Unpaid bills were the bane of their existence. Henry Hart’s improvidence is ascribed, in part, by those who knew him, to the irregular manner in which his father supplied him with money, Bernard Hart being sometimes very lavish and sometimes very parsimonious with his son.

      Henry Hart was a well-built, athletic-looking man, with rather large features, and dark hair and complexion. His height was five feet ten inches, and his weight one hundred and seventy pounds. He was an accomplished scholar, speaking French, Spanish and Italian, and being well versed in Greek and Latin. He passed his short life as school-teacher, tutor, lecturer and translator.

      On May 16, 1830, he married Elizabeth Rebecca, daughter of Henry Philip Ostrander, an “upstate” surveyor and farmer, who belonged to a prominent Dutch family which settled at Kingston on the Hudson in 1659. It will be remembered that the hero of Bret Harte’s story, Two Americans, is Major Philip Ostrander. The mother of Elizabeth Ostrander, Henry Hart’s wife, was Abigail Truesdale, of English descent. Henry Hart was brought up by his mother in the Dutch Reformed faith, but soon after leaving college, owing to what influence is unknown, he became a Catholic, and remained such until his death. His wife was an Episcopalian, and his children were of that, if of any persuasion.

      In

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