d garden" on Manhattan
Island. (Calendar, Hist. MSS. in office of the Secretary of State,
Albany, Part I, vol. iii).

The branch of the family that was subsequently settled at Rosendale,
is traced to the year 1706, when Johannes Hardenbergh, with six
others, obtained from the crown of Great Britain a grant of land which
comprised, as computed at the time, 1,500,000 acres, located in
Northern Ulster, then including a portion of the present county of
Sullivan,--the western boundary extending to, or near the head of, the
Delaware river. The terminal syllable of the name, _bergh_, indicates
that the earlier ancestors in Holland were from the hills; and it was
quite natural that their descendants should have found permanent
location in the hilly districts of Shendaken and Shawangunk,
stretching westward from the valley of the Hudson; neither is it
surprising that they should have loved freedom and have given their
best efforts for its establishment in their adopted land.

At the outbreak of the Revolution, Col. Johannes Hardenbergh, Jr. was
placed at the head of the Committee of Safety for Ulster
County--Kingston, its chief town, being at the time the seat of the
New York Provincial Congress of which he was also a member. He had
ranked as Colonel in the English colonial service, and been active in
military affairs as early as 1748, when Sir William Johnson was in
command of the New York troops for the defence of the frontier against
the French and Indians. He was also given command by the Provincial
Congress of one of the earliest regiments raised for the immediate
defence of the Hudson above the Highlands, at the opening of the war
of Independence, and from his experience and position was enabled to
render distinguished service at that critical period. In 1786, three
years after the return of peace, he removed from his farm in Rosendale
to New Brunswick, N.J., to spend the remnant of his days with his son,
Rev. Dr. Jacob R. Hardenbergh, the first President of Rutger's
College.

Leonard Hardenbergh, a younger brother of Col. Johannes, Jr., and the
father of the subject of this sketch, died July 7, 1776, only three
days after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and as his
neighbors of the hardy yeomanry of Ulster, were leaving their harvests
ungathered and marching to the defence of Fort Montgomery, one of the
principal fortifications guarding the passes of the Hudson. In the
official returns for the same mon