J. P. De Wint

John Peter De Windt Jr., known as J. P. De Windt (1787–1870) created the Long Wharf, later known as the Long Dock, in Beacon, New York, in 1815 and owned an enormous estate in Dutchess County, which was eventually broken up into the streets of Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, or present-day Beacon. He was a manufacturer and investor in steamboats and railroads during the immense boom in transportation in the mid 1800s along the Hudson which linked New York City to the rest of the country. He was married to the granddaughter of John and Abigail Adams. Biography In 1814, he married Caroline-Amelia Smith, a granddaughter of second U.S. President John Adams (and niece of sixth U.S. President John Quincy Adams). The family name was Americanized from the earlier Dutch spelling DeWindt, and had roots in the Dutch Colonial Island of Saint Eustatius. Ten children out of eleven from their marriage survived to adulthood, including seven daughters, and their home, called Cedar Grove, which burned to the ground in 1857, was remembered as a center of culture in the Mid-Hudson Valley, through which traveled the Marquis de Lafayette, and celebrated artists, poets, and political leaders of the day. Four of the DeWindt daughters married important figures in the arts. In June 1838, their oldest child, Caroline-Elizabeth, married Newburgh-native, A. J. Downing, who is considered as a founder of American landscape architecture. Her younger sister, Elizabeth, married the minister, poet, and painter Christopher Pearse Cranch in 1843. In the 1850’s, sister Louisa married writer and art critic Clarence Cook and Emily Augusta married Frederick Clarke Withers, the architect.