Zephaniah Platt descendent's slaves forged ties across New England
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Oct. 9—BASIN HARBOR — Basin Harbor's breathtaking vistas land, water and sky enthrall visitors today as it did when Platt Rogers first settled there.
"Platt Rogers came from Fishkill, NY at the end of the 18th century and settled at Basin Harbor in Ferrisburgh and brought with him an enslaved family of five," Jane Williamson, a Vermont Humanities speaker and former director of the Rokeby Museum, said.
"In the 1790 census, there are five Black people in his household. And I take that to be Primus and Pemelia Storms and three of their children. He ended up buying land and settling in Basin Harbor."
VERMONT CLUB
The first and second generation of Storms remained in Basin Harbor.
"That land, they would borrow against it," Williamson said.
"It gave them financial security that propped them up over the generations at different times."
But the third generation moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, where descendants such as Chief of Nipmuc Nation and the Head of Elders Council Cheryll Toney Holley live today.
"They went, as did Sheriff Stephen Bates' children, to Worcester," Williamson said.
"Cheryll tells me there was a social club in Worcester called the Vermont Club, and it was a Black club. So many Blacks had moved from Vermont to Worcester. I don't know what was going on in Worcester. It was toward the end of the 19th century.
"Families that you could have traced a few decades through the census were starting to disappear, and that's where a lot of them went including Fred Bates, Stephen's son, and his daughter also, Rose Schuyler."
CROSS LAKE CONNECTIONS
Since there were so few Black families in Vermont, Williamson is not surprised of the cross-lake romances between Lafayette and Mary Mason's daughters — Frances, Orphia and Thirza — who married, respectively, Sheriff Stephen Bates, Jonathan Robert Storms and Eugene Storms.
Beekmantown resident Hannah Tankard married Norman Storms, Jonathan Robert Storms' younger brother, in Burlington, Vt, according to author Guadalupe Vanderhorst Rodriguez's "Tan Americans of Clinton County, New York."
"A lot of people, they just stop and they don't go any further, and they just say, 'Oh, well,'" Rodriguez said of doing genealogical research.
"But it's not, 'Oh, well.' My whole intention in doing it was to give people a place in history because no one ever discusses it.
"Some are like, we can't talk about that. Yes, we can. I'm not really selfish with my things because I think people have to share what they have."
FISHKILL ORIGINS
Born in 1729, Platt Rogers married Ida Wiltsie, also of Fishkill.
Their children included Thomas, Annais, Mary (m. Daniel Hoffstead and Jared Pond), Phoebe, Seytie, Platt Jr., Ida (m. James Winans) and Jacob.
Bob Beach Jr., a fourth generation host at Basin Harbor, lives with the Rogers and Storms everyday.
"Platt Rogers had the Storms family with him," Beach said.
"When he died, he gave them free landhold rights. The deeds in the Town Clerk's Office in Ferrisburgh, the town that we're in, the deeds are like a half page long.
"When you go to the Storms family, which was roughly about 1806, the deed was a page and half long."
The deed has 20 signatures from surrounding neighbors.
"My family's farm was abutting," Beach said.
"My family moved to Ferrisburgh in 1800. They were abutting neighbors to this derogatory term that was used where the orchard was."
ROLLING ON THE RIVER
The Storms married across color lines.
"They worked for many of the steamboats," Beach said.
"There was a Daniels Steamboat Line in Vergennes run by the only woman north of the Mississippi, Philomène ("Captain Phil") Daniels Some of them were working for them."
Beach received a file on the Storms' progeny from a Ferrisburgh resident.
"There was a very large Black population in Addison County, and then they seemed to have just vanished," he said.
TRAILBLAZER
Platt Rogers' original homestead burned in 1817.
"We think that a portion of that is still that stone building," Beach said.
"I've tried to find out more about Platt Rogers coming out of Rombout, but have kind of run into a block.
"It looks like the historical records got spread out around a bunch of towns around Poughkeepsie."
Platt Rogers, a land surveyor, built Route 9 and the first bridge over the Bouquet River.
"His son surveyed the first town of Westport, Bessboro," Beach said.
"Platt owned from Button Bay to Otter Creek. He owned 2,000 acres."
Today, Basin Harbor is a 700-acre resort with the same arresting view that drew settlers like Rogers, who granted the Storms 120 acres.
"Theoretically, Cheryll has found the Storms' house in the orchard," Beach said.
"There was this old guy named Walter Yattaw, who used to own that property.
"In the '80s, I went over and talked to him before he died. I asked him, 'Do you ever remember these old orchards, these apple trees around?'
"He said, 'Yeah, I remember some old apple trees.' I've never seen it, but a woman who worked for me, she found the land that the family named Hardy owns."
COMMON GROUND
The Storms and their descendants and Rogers and his descendants are buried in one cemetery at Basin Harbor.
"Platt Rogers, he had a couple of daughters," Beach said.
"One of them married in the Winans family, who built the first steamboat (The Vermont) on the lake. Another one of them married Jared Pond, who fought in the Battle of Plattsburgh."
In Rogers' day, Lake Champlain was a major highway.
"The people were so much more connected on both sides of the lake because of the transportation route," Beach said.
"It's really true."
Email Robin Caudell:
Twitter:@RobinCaudell
