Author: Van Dame, Bartholomew
Biography:
VAN DAME, Bartholomew (c. 1808-72: findmypast.com)
In the US Census of 1870, not long before his death, using the spelling Vandame, Van Dame gave his year of birth as 1808 and the country as Germany. A newspaper report of 1852 identifies him as “a Dutchman,” however, and while that might be a variant of Deutsch or German, his naturalization papers of 1847 clearly state that his place of birth was the Kingdom of Holland. The Dover NH newspaper tells his story. He arrived in the US at the age of 11 as a servant in a merchant ship from which, after a few more years of ill-treatment, he escaped at Portsmouth NH, saying that he would rather die than go back. An illiterate immigrant, he settled with a farmer at Epping in Rockingham County and took the first steps towards the education that led eventually to his vocation as a minister and the presidency of the Nottingham (NH) Union Institute (later the Kimball Union Institute), a training school for ministers. He produced the collection of hymns included in this bibliography some time before he began his own training at the Theological Seminary of Gilmanton NH: he was in the Junior Year in 1838. The only other work listed as his in WorldCat is a scrapbook of anti-slavery clippings and ms notes of 1843-4, but the 1852 article maintains that during a prolonged illness from “spinal disease” he went through the Greek New Testament six times and compiled both a lexicon and a concordance (possibly for his own use and unpublished). He died unmarried at Nottingham on 3 Apr. 1872 and was buried in the Dow cemetery in Epping. (findmypast.com 6 Apr. 2024; ancestry.com 6 Apr. 2024; WorldCat; Catalogue of the Officers and Students of the Theological Seminary, Gilmanton, NH [1838]; Dover Enquirer 13 July 1852) HJ
Other Names:
- B. Van Dame