| Notes |
- Some sources show his name as Corrie
Over the years, the Kennedy House in Montrose house also has been known by the names of the successive families that owned it. It has been called the Henry House, the Tate House, the Mackey House and the Johnson House.
It should properly have been called the Corne House, having been built for Peter Corne, openly a loyalist during the Revolution, probably in the 1750's. The Corne name was pronounced locally as "Cor-ney" and sometimes written with an accented final letter--the French accent aigu (?).
Born in the English port city of Hull in 1722, Corne, already "a master mariner," came to New York as a young man and entered into partnership with merchants Anthony and Isaac Van Dam. Not content with the dull routines of commerce, Corne sailed the company's ships to the West African coast. Here he bought slaves and transported them to the island of St. Eustatius in the Dutch Antilles, a center for contraband. High mortality among the workers on sugar plantations made slaves a desirable cargo. Emptied of their human freight, his ships then loaded Caribbean sugar and rum for transport to the North American colonies.
Between 1740 and 1748, during the American phase of Britain's War of the Austrian Succession, with a commission from the colony of New York, Corne became part owner of several privateers. Armed with eight cannon, his brig Nebuchadnezzar wreaked havoc on Dutch and French merchant vessels.
Peter Corne was soon wealthy. He owned town houses in New York City, a summer mansion north of the city that he called Greenwich House (it lent its name to the neighborhood) and homes on Long Island and near the King's Ferry, where he had a farm and a gristmill near Peekskill.
In 1751, he married Elizabeth Henderson, affluent in her own right. Her mother, Thysie Benson, was the daughter of Derrick Benson, a well-to-do New Jersey landowner. Her Scottish-born father, wealthy physician and merchant Dr. James Henderson, owned houses and land in New York City and extensive acreage in the Mohawk Valley.
Peter and Elizabeth Henderson Corne had three daughters. Without her father's consent, on Sunday, June 23, 1773, Letitia, the eldest, married Dennis Kennedy, "a gentleman of New York," in Manhattan's Lutheran Church. Built in 1729 on Broadway at Rector Street, the church would be gutted in the disastrous fire that consumed a third of New York after American troops evacuated he city in 1776. As the father of States Morris Dyckman's wife, Dennis Kennedy is an important figure in the Dyckman family history and the Boscobel story.
The second Corne daughter, Elizabeth, married a lieutenant of artillery and deputy quartermaster general of Hessian troops with an imposing name: Baron Charles August de Girancourt de Vourecourt. Peter Corne roundly disliked the groom. The third, Margaret, married successful New York merchant George Douglas.
A stubborn, die-hard Tory, Peter Corne's name appears frequently in records during the Revolution. British headquarters files, conspiracy committee minutes and newspapers all contain references to him, including three jail sentences served because of his "passionate allegiance to George III in the faces of Rebel committeemen."
Family legend has it that Peter Corne once took the Kennedy children to the cellar of his home. Opening a curtain covering a portrait of British King George III, he commanded them, "Down on your knees to your Master!"
His wife Elizabeth Henderson Corne died in Bushwick, Long Island, on August 30, 1780. Five years later, Peter Corne married his partner Isaac Van Dam's widow, Sara. The relationship soon soured. Toward the end of his life he promised Sara anything in return for a legal separation. Peter Corne died in New York City on July 18, 1807.
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1722 - 1807 (85 years)
