Eleanor (Denise) Maxwell
Mrs. Maxwell came from sterling stock, her mother being Anna Conover, the latter name being a corruption of Cowenhoven. On the maternal side she is a direct lineal descendant of Wolfert Garretson von Cowenhoven, who came to America from Amersfoort, in the Province Utrecht, Holland, in 1630, with the colonists who settled Rensselaerwick, now Albany, N.Y., afterward removing to Manhattan Island, where he laid the foundation of a family, the ramifications of which permeated New York and New Jersey, and eventually reached many other States.
On her paternal side she was a Denise, the second daughter of Sidney Denise, who migrated in 1808 from New Jersey to Montgomery County, then known as the Miami country, in this State, making settlement near the present site of Franklin, on the west side of the Miami. Her paternal ancestor was Teunis (Nysen) De Nyse, a French Huguenot, who came to this country from Holland in 1660, and whose descendants, alike with the Van Cowenhovens, with whom they intermarried, made important contributions to the population of New Jersey and New York., where under other names as well as the original, much of the old blood remains.
Extract from obituary that appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune on July 26, 1898 -
She was in all respects an unusual person, being of pure Huguenot and Dutch blood, which was discernible in all qualities of her strong personality. She was the daughter of Sidney and Anna Conover Denise and on the side of the former was a lineal descendant of Teunis Nyssen (De Nyse) who emigrated to this country from the province of Utrecht in Holland about 1638, settling at Nieu Amsterdam and subsequently removing to Long Island; while on her mother’s side she was a descendant of Wolfert Garretson Von Couwenhoven, who came in 1630 from Ameersfort in the same province and settled at Rennselaerwick near Albany, and finally to what is now Flatlands, Long Island, where he died. She belongs to a line that has contributed some of the most prominent families of the country, among them those of Vice President Hobart and the original Cornelius Vanderbilt. Her parents emigrated from New Jersey to the Miami country, as it was then called, in 1808, settling in the wilderness in Montgomery County on the west side of the Great Miami River, about two miles north of Franklin.
Contributed by Ray W. Justus