details mainly as the go-befores and embryons of "Leaves of Grass."
Very good; you shall have at least some specimens of them all. I
have often thought of the meaning of such things--that one can only
encompass and complete matters of that kind by 'exploring behind,
perhaps very far behind, themselves directly, and so into their
genesis, antecedents, and cumulative stages. Then as luck would have
it, I lately whiled away the tedium of a week's half-sickness
and confinement, by collating these very items for another (yet
unfulfilled, probably abandon'd,) purpose; and if you will be
satisfied with them, authentic in date-occurrence and fact simply, and
told my own way, garrulous-like, here they are. I shall not hesitate
to make extracts, for I catch at anything to save labor; but those
will be the best versions of what I want to convey.


GENEALOGY--VAN VELSOR AND WHITMAN

The later years of the last century found the Van Velsor family, my
mother's side, living on their own farm at Cold Spring, Long Island,
New York State, near the eastern edge of Queen's county, about a mile
from the harbor.[2] My father's side--probably the fifth generation
from the first English arrivals in New England--were at the same time
farmers on their own land--(and a fine domain it was, 500 acres, all
good soil, gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth woods,
plenty of grand old trees,) two or three miles off, at West Hills,
Suffolk county. The Whitman name in the Eastern States, and so branch
and South, starts undoubtedly from one John Whitman, born 1602, in Old
England, where he grew up, married, and his eldest son was born in
1629. He came over in the "True Love" in 1640 to America, and lived
in Weymouth, Mass., which place became the mother-hive of the