More About the Tytus Name Change

Soon after I published my recent post about the name change of Robert Davies Tytus to Robb dePeyster Tytus I made another effort to find out where and when this change was accomplished.   Thinking I have pretty much ruled out his state of birth (North Carolina) and the state he and his mother were residing in (Connecticut), I searched online to find out about how New York state handles such a thing.  I discovered that the New York State Library was a possible repository for records of such old activities of the New York State General Assembly, and that it looked like the General Assembly was the place an act to change an individual minor’s name would have been done.  I filled out a contact form on the website for the State Library with as much information as I could and sent it out just before Christmas.  To my surprise I got a response that evening from someone in Reference Services, confirming that session laws would have included such name changes and that he had searched the bound volumes from 1883-1889.  Unfortunately, he found no Tytus in the indexes, but said these indexes were not perfect and that they would look a little harder in the coming days and let me know.   And that is where the matter stands at this point.

I am encouraged that these bound volumes exist and hope that when travel to on-site locations is fully do-able again I can go to Albany and look at them for myself.  In the meantime, I went back to a couple of newspaper articles about Robb Tytus and found that at least one article¹ reported that Robb’s wealth came from both his father’s family who had extensive real estate holdings in the Asheville North Carolina area, and on his mother’s side the de Peysters wealth came from their international banking houses headquartered in the Netherlands.    This article also posited that it was de Peyster connections in Egypt that allowed Robb’s explorations.  As a Sunday newspaper magazine article none of these statements was referenced.  I have found that there are some other statements made that are not accurate (for example, the timing of Robb’s marriage and buying property in western Massachusetts).

So far I have not found the Tytus family owning property in North Carolina, although I have not searched extensively.  Robb’s Tytus grandparents and great grandparents were in Butler County, Ohio by 1831.  I think His great grandfather was born in Pennsylvania and his great grandmother in Virginia.  His mother, Charlotte Davies Tytus came from English stock on her father’s side, but her mother may be a possibility for the dePeyster connection.  Charlotte’s mother was Alice Sophia Hopper, and the Hopper family may have been originally from the Netherlands.  My current plan is to work at building back the family for Robb dePeyster Tytus, and to look more closely at trees for dePeysters (especially those who were in New York during Charlotte’s and Robb’s lifetimes.  Perhaps I can come at the question from either side and figure something out.