A centennarian with ten years to spare, died at Lansingburgh yesterday. Susan Hornbeck, better known as “Aunt Susan,” was her name. She had attained the age of one hundred and ten years. The deceased was a colored woman—born a slave in Saugerties [Ulster County], and held by the family of John Brown in Lansingburgh for many years—only being released when New York became a Free State.
Schenectady Daily Evening Star and Times. April 9, 1864: 3 col 2.
Albany Morning Express. April 11, 1864: 3 col 3.
While her age was probably overstated, she was doubtless a remarkably long-lived woman – though finding any further information is proving difficult. She ought to be on multiple US and NYS censuses. It is likewise proving to be difficult to identify who the Lansingburgh John Brown was. Can anyone assist?
There was a James Hornbeck (b. abt 1800) who lived in Troy who was involved with the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church and who had at least a couple children buried next to the Thomas Mando family in the Schaghticoke Hill Methodist Cemetery. Their headstones could be among the ones glimpsed through the white picket fence in the old photos of the no-longer-extant schoolhouse at Schaghticoke Hill at the Town of Schaghticoke Local Government Historian’s blog, as that is roughly the location where the two known headstones for Hornbecks are. It’s not impossible that James Horbeck and his wife Susannah (b. abt 1801 in Rhode Island) are there too, lacking headstones or their headstones long since disappeared from sight. Susan Hornbeck could have been James Hornbeck’s mother – even his grandmother, potentially.