The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Samuel Van Wyck, 28 May 1879
Date: May 28, 1879
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00753
Source: The Trent Collection of Walt Whitman Manuscripts, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3:157. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Grace Thomas, Eder Jaramillo, and Kevin McMullen
1309 Fifth av: near 86th Street1
May 28 '79
My dear Sir
Yours of May 23d has reach'd me here—I am unable to give you any information on the genealogic points you speak of—wish I could—I have an idea there are town records or documents at Huntington, that are accessible, & that might throw light on the Van Wyck and Whitman families—I have seen such records alluded to, & printed extracts from them—where they are, or what office, in Huntington I think, or who keeps them, I can not say—Yes I was born at West Hills—my father Walter Whitman—I trace the Whitmans there four generations—my grandmother (father's mother) was Hannah Brush2
I am here on a visit—go back, last of next week, to Camden New Jersey, my regular p o address.
Walt Whitman
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Sam'l Van Wyck | 65 New York Avenue | Brooklyn | N Y. It is postmarked: New York | May 28 | 5 PM | 79. [back]
2. See Gay Wilson Allen's The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1955), 595. [back]