Henry Spingler

~• Read his story here

and here.

• After age 5, when he arrived in NY with his parents, half brother & full sister, Henry was brought up as a butcher's son in and around Chatham Square. Father & son worked in large open air markets as butchers.

• Married twice

1. to the widowJane Reed née Sloo of NYC (May 18, 1767 at the Old Swamp Church, Frankfort & William Streets) ~ no known issue ~ stone in St.Paul's P.E. cem., Manhattan
2. to Mary Bonsall of England (1791) ~ one surviving daughter, another who seems to have died between age ten and eighteen.

(click on Media to see maps of his farm that spread west from what is now Union Square) After the Revolution Henry acquired a 22 acre farm well out the Bowery (modern Union Square.) An excellent description of the general area is written up at The Physical Evolution of New York City. As the city was not developed north of Washington Square before Henry's death in 1817, he did not live to see the urban development of his farm. His 2nd wife Mary (Bonsall) and (only child) daughter Eliza presided over the farm in those early years. Later, his grand daughter Mary S.F. van Beuren married and was left in charge of the estate with her husband, Col. Michael M. van Beuren.

see: Growth of the City of New York through 1836 If you look carefully, most of the Spingler real estate lay outside New York City proper in 1836 (!)

• Background for Henry's rise to becoming an owner of a 22 acre property:

(V) Henry (2) Brevoort, son of Henry (i) and Catherine (De la Mater) Brevoort, was born in New York City, October 19 and baptized October 29, 1747, died in 1841. He resided on the Brevoort estate, which at that time was beyond the northern limits of the city, although at Tenth street. In 1762, the portion of the farm north of Sixteenth street was sold to Mr. Dawson, and contained about twenty-three acres. The portion between Fourteenth and Sixteenth streets contained about twenty-two acres, and was conveyed about the same time by Elias Brevoort to John Smith, whose executors sold it to Henry Spingler, in 1788.'

At that time (1788) Henry Spingler was married to his 1st wife, Jane Sloo. "Mrs. Spingler was Jane Sloo, half sister of Mrs. Adam Todd and sister of Mrs. James Duffie. (Jane died in 1790) The Spingler homestead (with a house that Henry had built for him) was located at the southeast corner of Fourteenth street and University place." The significance of the 'Mrs. Adam Todd' connection is the Mrs. Todd's daughter married John Jacob Astor, renowned for becoming America's first multi-millionaire. in that era.

See: THE ICONOGRAPHY OF MANHATTAN ISLAND VOLUME SIX (search on Brevoort, Congo, & Spingler)

See also: The Freedmen of New Amsterdam (search on Congo... as in Simon Congo)

In Summary: Henry married to Jane Reed (née Sloo) before his 2nd marriage to Mary Bonsall. Jane died in September 1790 and was buried in the St. Paul's Chapel cemetery of Trinity Church. A tombstone still existed there in 2013. Jane Spingler tombstone Date of death: 09/14/1790.

•Henry remained a widower for a year.

• In the meantime Henry completed a new house on the farm. The progress with its construction can be traced by a look at his pocket account book that is preserved at the NYPL. While it was being built the 1790 census took place. It shows a household of eight people: six adult whites, two slaves.

Henry and Mary's only surviving child was born 11/28/1792 (Elizabeth "Eliza" Murray Spingler)

Here is a colorful but flawed account account given of Henry Spingler in a piece in the New York Times, 1 Feb. 1902, p. 9: "Henry Spingler was a market gardener. He lived at the end of the eighteenth century on the Bowery, at the corner of that thoroughfare and Broadway, now Fifteenth Street and Union Square (sic), and owned a vast tract (22 acres) of land that now is covered with splendid business buildings. The house was a quaintly built Dutch structure. It was said that he had inherited the house and lands, or, rather, acquired them, from being the steward of another man (John Smith), { ed this part is to be doubted } who had given them into his keeping and who had gone to Europe and never returned (said to be a loyalist) {ed. the following seems to be right}. He was, however, shrewd and industrious, and improved and increased the estate. He died in 1814 and left two children, one of whom married Lieut. James Fonerden, son of the famous Baltimore Abolitionist. The daughter of this union was Mary Spingler Fonerden. She married Michael Murray van Beuren. It was a love match. The young man had been a mechanic.(ie. a laborer) and lived further downtown near the West Washington market. They removed in 1833 to a house built on (actually, near) the site of the present one [21 W. 14th St.] which stands in the centre of the Spingler estate, the boundaries extending to Seventh Avenue on one side, and to Union Square on the other."

For a genealogy of the John Smith family visit ancestry.com - http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/77101378/family

De Voe's Book search on Spingler

Another colorful but inaccurate exposition of the Splngler family rise to riches is in McClure's:

McClure Volume 39, page 128

This map shows many early farms of lower Manhattan < look at #57 to see the Spingler farm.

• (another variation of the Henry Spingler story) SPINGLER FARMHOUSE.

Shown on the Damage Map of 14th Street (1828) as standing about in the centre of the street.

Near its site now stands (once stood) the old van Beuren house which in turn was replaced by 21 W. 14th Street.

Story: At 14th Street and Fifth Avenue was the Spingler market garden

farm of about twenty-two acres. Long before New York had stretched  and ran above City Hall Park, '''John Smith''' .... bought of  Elias Brevoort, in '''1762''', part of the Brevoort farm about 14th Street  Estates ^^^ Fifth Avenue. On the choicest site, now the centre of 14th Street,  just west of Fifth Avenue, he built his country residence.{  < this contention is false,John Smith (the father) did  not live long enough to have built the property under his ownership} (continuing>) " His widow  continued to live in it until 1788. James Duane, Mayor of the  City, and others, executors of Smith's will, sold the estate to Henry  Spingler for about $4,750. Here Spingler lived until his death in 1813.  (actually 1814) His barn stood on the southwest corner of 14th Street and Fifth  Avenue. Most of the property was (a generation later)  inherited by  Mrs. Mary S. Van  Beuren, Spingler's granddaughter. She built the van Beuren brownstone front house on 14th Street and lived there for years, maintaining a little garden, with flowers and vegetables, a cow and chickens. 

(note: A name such as "John Smith" is hard to research (!)

• the New York Spingler family descends from (Johann) Balthasar Spengler (Spingler) of Neckartenzlingen in Wurtemberg, Germany s/o “the baker and justiciary” later Burgomeister Spengler of Jux (Spiegelberg)”

son (By 1st wife: (Anna) Rosina Stotz): Johann Jacob b. 2 Oct. 1736

by his second wife: (Rosina Moessner) he had at least two children: 1) (the subject of this profile) HENRY aka CHRISTOPH HEINRICH, b. 22 Nov. 1747 &

2) Catharina Barbara, b. 29 Jun 1750

who married John Triglar...

(note from the creator of this profile, for van Beuren family interest ) This “Christoph Henrich” Henry Spingler is a vanBeuren direct ancestor…. Henry had only one living daughter and that daughter bore only one living daughter who married Col. Michael M. van Beuren.

Henry Spingler had a butcher's stall in the Fly Market near the area later known at the South Street the Fish Market (Pearl Street) {drawing attached to this profile under Media} and, in early life, lived on Chatham Street.

Emigrated from Germany Iconography

all the above by Mike van Beuren (1952- )..... last update July 2021

see Cornelius Mitchell genealogy of Henry Spingler: https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE9234 (in which we read: ) "• Henry Spingler died January 29, 1814 (Spingler Bible.) He is buried in the Spingler Vault on the east side of St. Mark's Church In The Bouwerie, 10th Street and Second Avenue. By his will he left all of his personalty to his wife. His real estate he left in trust for his wife for life then to his daughter for life or until the death of her husband. His wife Mary died April 17, 1842. One of the Spingler heir-looms is a grandfather's clock with wooden whistles instead of chimes. It is now the property of Mrs. Louise D. Van Beuren Bayne."

Of the eventual use of the name "Spingler" in development around Union Square: http://www.14to42.net/15street0.4.html lots of photo links! “This 1878 Spingler Building, then, would have been replaced by the present Spingler Building in 1896”

“Tiffany & Co., which moved here from Broadway and Broome Street in 1870, occupying a site upon which formerly had stood the Spingler Institute.” “The Spingler House Hotel referred to in Jenkins dated from approximately 1864 to 1878”

task: to find his date and place of marriage to Jane Sloo. She is buried at St. Paul's (Trinity Church yard) perhaps they were married there too? The Sloo family included WIlliam Sloo, constable connected with the management of Bridewell prison/workhouse (near Chatham Sq. where Henry grew up)

Answer: The baptisms, marriages, and burials for Trinity Church in New York City are conveniently online. Search online at:

http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/files/history/registers/registry.php

more research needed too on FIlken: Honorable Francis Filkins