THE SECOND GENERATION
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The most impressive of the Captain’s six children was his eldest son, Nelson Kirkman, born March 2, 1853 and raised in Little Neck. A picture of Nelson taken when he was in in his 60s, shows a lean, white haired, no-nonsense Scandinavian of medium height wearing an early 20th century business suit. Family legend indicates he was a stern father who ruled his family with strict Victorian morality. Nelson apparently studied law but never became an |
CWK II & FAMILY, ALBANY 1911 |
attorney. Instead, for many years he was chief |
| accountant and bookkeeper for Dahl & Still, brokers at
Manhattan’s sprawling Fulton Fish Market. Nelson apparently was the most trusted
employee of George Moore Still and he named his sixth child, George Moore Still Kirkman,
for his benefactor. Nelson spent most of his life in Little Neck with the 1860 census counting him with his parents, and the 1900 census showing him owning a home on Little Neck Road (formerly Old House Landing Rd.)
In the late 1870s, Nelson married Sarah Mott, daughter of a Long Island potato farmer who resided in the central Long Island area that now is Levittown, the post World War II suburban boom town. Nelson and Sarah are the Kirkmans’ champion fertile turtles, producing 14 children between 1880 and 1902. Eleven survived to maturity: eight boys (Christian William II, Richard Frederick Nelson, George Moore Still, Samuel, Washington, Adam, James and Albert), and three girls (Bertha, Sarah and Mary). Nelson’s wife Sarah died in 1903 (age 43) and Nelson married again to a woman the 1920 census identifies as Annie, 35 years old, and it’s believed she and Nelson had three children. Which means Nelson fathered 17 children by two wives. Nelson moved to midtown Manhattan in the mid or late 1900s (two blocks west of Central Park), and died there on Dec. 2, 1924 (age 71). He was buried near his father in the graveyard of Zion Episcopal Church, Douglaston, NY.
There’s only limited information about the Captain’s second and third children with Bertha Olsdatter Kirkman. Their second child, Frederick A. Kirkman, born March 4, 1857 in Little Neck, was raised there and moved to nearby, Flushing, eight miles east of Manhattan. Records show he married a Mary Jane Sugden on June 10, 1883, but they did not have children.
The Captain and Bertha’s third child, Emma, was born April 14, 1860 in Little Neck and apparently spent her entire life in the small Long Island village. She married a Little Necker named Everett A. Reeve in February 1881, had two children, and died in March 1913. Emma was buried alongside her mother Bertha in the church yard of Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, NY. |
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