John Van Salee DeGras

John Van Salee DeGras (1825-1868) was a medical doctor born in New York. He was the youngest son of Count George DeGras and Marie Van Salee DeGras, and the grandson of the French Count Francois Joseph Paul DeGras. He took some academic courses at a college in France, studied medicine with Dr. Samuel R. Childs in New York City in 1845, and finished his studies at Bowdoin College in May 1849, where he passed the required exams and received a Doctor in Medicine degree. In 1849, DeGras toured hospitals in France, England, Italy, and Switzerland.

DeGras married Cordelia L. Howard on August 5, 1852 in Boston and, two years later, established a medical practice there. When he was elected to membership in the Massachusetts Medical Society on August 24, 1854, he became the first African American to belong to a medical association in that state. He was the first African American medical officer in the U.S. Army. He was mustered in on May 18, 1863 and served as an assistant surgeon for the 35th Regiment of the U. S. Colored Infantry (the First Regiment, North Carolina, Colored Volunteers). He and his wife had one daughter, Georgiana Cordelia DeGras, born December 5, 1855. He died in Boston on November 25, 1868.

Anthony and Abraham van Salee were the ancestors of the Vanderbilts, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Humphrey Bogart. They were among the earliest arrivals to 17th century New Amsterdam. In a number of documents dating back to this period, they are both described as "mulatto". From what scholars have been able to piece together about their background, they appear to have been the sons of a Dutch seafarer by the name of Jan Jansen who had "turned Turk" and become an admiral in the Moroccan navy. America's Van Salees With the Port of Salee as the base from which it harried European shipping, references to the fleet he commanded are salted away in the old English sea shanties that are still sung about the Salee Rovers. The mother of his two sons was probably a concubine he had while trading in this part of the world before his conversion to Islam.

As a result of the anti-social behavior of his white wife, Anthony van Salee was induced to leave the city precincts of lower Manhattan and move across the river, thus becoming the first settler of Brooklyn. Since Coney Island abutted his property, it was, until sometime in the last century, also referred to as "Turk's Island"; the word, "Turk", being a designation of his which the records used interchangeably with, "mulatto". According to the documentation that people like Professor Leo Hershkowitz of Queens University have sifted through, it would seem that Anthony van Salee never converted to Christianity. His Koran, in fact, was in a descendant's possession until about fifty years ago when, ignorant of its relevance to his family's history, he offered it for sale at auction.

Both Professor Hershkowitz, and Tim Beard, former head of the Genealogical Department of the New York Public Library related this incident regarding van Salee genealogy. At the time the Kennedy administration began implementing its civil rights agenda, the New York Genealogical and Historical Society approached Mrs. Kennedy hoping to discuss the opportunity her African ancestry, through the Van Salees, could have in possibly assisting her husband to realize his social goals regarding race relations. Mrs. Kennedy insisted on referring to the Van Salees as 'Jewish,' and the New York Genealogical Society did not push the subject further.

Sources: DeGras-Howard Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society; PBS Frontline: The Blurred Racial Lines of Famous Families