Notes for MARAGRIETA "PEGGE" VAN VELSOR:

Daughter ? and ?.
Born: Unknown in Unknown.
Died: About May 24, 1774 in Unknown.
Cause of Death: May have died in childbirth.
Married:

NOTES:
For example, we think we've proved that Walt Whitman's grandmother was Maragrieta "Pegge" Rider, not Mary Kossabone. Whitman writes in his memoirs that his grandfather was Garret Van Velsor and his grandmother was Mary Kossabone. None of our research confirms that. Quite the opposite. When you go into the Oyster Bay Baptist Church records, it comes out Maragrieta Rider and there is no history of any Kossabone in Oyster Bay at that time. So you can see even the great American Poet may have been given some erroneous information about his own Great Grandmother.

Maragrieta "Pegge" as she was known, was the second wife of Garret Van Velsor, the great grandfather of Walt Whitman. Also the birth records of the Dutch Church in Oyster Bay show her as "Peekke" Ryder. According to Walt Whitman: "Our great grandmother, Garret's wife, was a superior woman, much beloved, she died quite suddenly - she was about going for some things to New York complained of pain in her head, but continued talking about the things, went & sat down on a bed in the room, spoke of the severity of the pain in her head, & in a few minutes it was evident she was in a dying condition." - Walt Whitman Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts, page 15.
(Source Clay Sigg.)