The Grasmaand Boze Geest: 17th Century Albany’s Springtime Demon

by Ian Mumpton

***The article that follows was written as Schuyler Mansion's annual April Fools post. Unfortunately, the Grasmaand Boze Geest is the product of the author's overactive imagination and experience as a story teller specializing in Adirondack Tall Tales. Thank you to everyone who played along!***

Albany has always been a community with rich cultural traditions and festivities. Often these are a time of celebration, from Pinkster and Twelfth Night in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, to Tulip Fest and the numerous cultural and musical festivals that bring color and fun to our community. But not all of Albany’s traditions are as light-hearted. For Dutch colonists of the 17^th century and their descendants, the night of April 1^st was a night of darkness and terror, for on that dark eve, even as the weather turned kind once again, the Grasmaand Boze Geest, the April Devil, stalked the forests, fields, and even the very streets of the community.

The earliest identified Dutch reference to the April Devil comes from 1631, when Evart Pachter reported an attack on his sheep as his court defense for disrupting the peace,

Evart Pachter of this place charged with disrupting the peace and the unlawful discharge of a fire arm on or about 3 April of, attests that on or about the night of 3 April he heard a wild noise from where his sheep grazed outside the walls of the Fort[-] that he went out with musket and sidearm there saw an unholy beast of great size[,] terrible to describe[,] devouring a ewe. He discharged his musket, which caused it no apparent harm but the noise of it so disrupted it that it grabbed up another ewe and a new lamb and leaping a great distance did go into the night and was seen no more. When the guard arrived they smelled a great stink of brimstone which all attested was so foul as to have come from Hell itself.

In Pachter’s case, the court found that he had acted wrongly in discharging his musket, asserting that the proper course of action was to have informed the guard and had them respond to the situation. This is the only legal document involving the creature, but it soon entered the folklore of the Dutch community. Over the next one two hundred years, tales of the “Grasmaand Boze Geest” were repeated and embellished by each generation.

By the early 18^th century, the legend had given rise to a tradition called Grasmaand Nacht. Abbe Julien Sainte-Jean Couperin described the observance during a visit to Albany in 1739.

The Dutch of Albany, who are very plentiful and still hold much of the land as they did before the English came, maintain that on the night between the first and second day of April, a fiend of Hell comes amongst them, taking sheep from their flocks or, should the Winter have been cruel and few lambs born, will carry off an unfaithful man, woman, or child from their home and sate its devilish appetite upon wayward Christian flesh. It is said to seek out lambs especially, just as the Devil seeks to undo the blessing of the Lamb of God to the faithful.

Couperin described the creature as, “A beast larger in every way than a man, with the face and claws of a fierce tiger, long ears, the legs of an eagle, and covered all over with scales and fur. It is accompanied by a terrible stink of sulphur." A number of traditions grew up around the legend as well. According to Couperin, "To protect themselves, no Dutchman goes abroad on this night, but sends his servants, if he has them, to tend the sheep. Every family prepares a bowl of grain, fish, and entrails, soaked in milk, which they leave upon their stoop- a propitiation to blunt the creature’s appetite should it seek to enter. On the Sunday before, it is considered especially bad luck not to be seen in the church.”

"The Grasmaand Boze Geest", as depicted by Joseph Valsenaam, from The Complete and Honest History of the New York Colony under the Dutch, by Edward Thomas Nash, 1775

The description of the creature sounds bizarre, and contemporary illustrations are even more so. A 1775 publication included an image by Albany-based print-maker Joseph Valsenaam that closely matches the description given by Couperin. Historians and folklorists have speculated that the appearance of the creature reflected the colonists' fears of a world new and unknown to them, where strange, potentially dangerous beasts dwelt in the unending forests. It is likely that Native American and African traditions of supernatural beasts also contributed to the growth of the legend.

The question then, is did the Schuyler family observe Grasmaand Nacht with the rest of Dutch Albany? Philip Schuyler was both a faithful member of the Dutch Reformed Congregation, and a man of Science. This was not a contradictory position for him, as he merged both aspects of his life on a regular basis, developing a mathematical proof of God and demonstrating the necessity of human mortality by calculating how much space each person would have if no one had died since Adam and Eve. But what of matters of supernatural demons?

From what little evidence we have, it seems that Philip did take part, though whether this was out of belief in evil spirits or because he was simply participating in a community ritual is unclear. On March 31^st, 1780 he wrote to his friend, Abraham Ten Broeck, that, “Cuff and Tone I will send over the day after tomorrow, but Tom I cannot as Schermerhorn has hired him of me to keep watch on his lambs all night tomorrow until dawn as is the custom.” Here we see that the tradition of sending enslaved servants to watch over the sheep on the night of April 1^st continued well into the 18^th century. Even more solid is the evidence provided by a note in Philip’s account book from 1781 that details, “2 sh 6p to S[arah] Pemberton for milk, grain, and offal for Grozemaand, she is paid in full”.

Whether Philip truly believed, or was simply playing the part in a long-standing local tradition may be unclear, but we do know that not everyone in the Schuyler family put stock in the “holiday”. Washington Morton, who married Cornelia Schuyler (in what proved to be the third of four elopements in the family), wrote to his friend Elijah McMaster in New Jersey to say,

Washington Morton (depicted here in a portrait by
Thomas Sully), put no stock in legends of
the Grasmaand Boze Geest

Our stay with Mrs. Morton’s parent’s has, as usual, been a most tedious affair, with her father giving off at once both sullen looks for me and a pained façade of paternal anguish for his dear daughter, deluded by such a rogue as I- as if any force upon this earth could have made her mind other than it was to be my beloved and wife! Having had my fill of his glowering and sermonizing, I had resolved to take a stroll that evening rather than dine in such company, when he hobbled his way into the hall and bade me stop, for it was the night they call Grazmand, when a devil is supposed to haunt all of Albany taking the wicked (amongst whom he no doubt counts me). I laughed, and offered to absolve it with my cane should it appear before me, and took my ease that night with our friends in the town.

The legend of the April Devil seems to have died out by the middle of the 19^th century, but in the two hundred years that it lasted, it left quite the mark on the community, and can still chill us to this day. The last reference to the Grasmaand Boze Geest comes from an anonymous poem written sometime around 1830:

                                  When lambs are born, and Winter gives way
                                            Prepare your soul at least,
                                 For in the dark of Grasmaand Night
                                         Beware the Grasmaand beast!

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Happy April Fools! Unfortunately, Albany was never haunted by a creature called the Grasmaan Boze Geest (but wouldn't that be an awesome tradition?!). While the article was fake, there was some real history worked in. The 17th century Dutch community did pass regulations against discharging firearms in the town (including specific rules against shooting at weather vanes of all things).

Sheep farming was an important part of agrarian life, and at lambing time, many farmers would spend the night in the fields with their sheep so as to be on hand in case of complications.

Philip Schuyler was fascinated by mathematics, and really did attempt the mathematical computations mentioned in the article. Philip was both a man of Science, and a Man of Faith, who easily combined both aspects of his life. He also managed to retain many Dutch customs and traditions, even while Anglicizing his home and life.

While the letter was a fabrication, the tense relationship described between Philip Schuyler and his son-in-law, Washington Morton, is an accurate depiction of the two men's thoughts about the other. Philip ranted in letters about Morton avoiding spending time with the rest of the family, whereas Morton considered Philip to be equally obnoxious.

Even the image of the beast itself was real, but not created by a Joseph Valsenaam (translated: Joe Fake-Name). It's actually taken from a 1775 book on demonology, titled "Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros" The anonymous author claimed that it dated to the 11th century, but that itself seems to have been... shall we say, less than truthful.

The Grasmaan Boze Geest may not have haunted Albany's streets, but strange mysteries have generated some awesome folklore over the years. Feel free to share your favorite stories and myths in the comments below!