Though Melville was too ironic a genius ever to have been guilty of the ill-breeding that makes an ostentation of ancestry, still he looked back upon his descent with self-conscious pride: a pride drawn by childhood absorption from his parents who, by resting on the achievements of their forebears, added several cubits to their stature. Lacking the prophetic vision to glory in being ancestors, they chose the more comfortable rôle of parading as descendants. Melville’s father, Allan, was sufficiently absorbed in his genealogy to compile, in 1818, an elaborately branching family tree that sent its master root back to one Sir Richard de Melvill, del Compte de Fife, a worthy of the thirteenth century. And at the proud conclusion of his labours he inscribed the Melville motto, _Denique Coelum_--“Heaven at last.” Melville’s mother, Maria Gansevoort, though too absorbed in domesticity to compete with Allan in drawing up a parallel document, still sat opposite her spouse with a stiff spine, conscious that she could counter his ancestry, grandfather for grandfather. It is true, she had no thirteenth century count to fall back upon; and though her line lost itself in a cluster of breweries, they were very substantial breweries, and owned by a race of stalwart and affluent and uncompromising burghers. Her ancestor, Harmen Harmense Van Gansevoort, was brewing in Beverwyck as early as 1660, and with sufficient success to acquire such extended investments in land that he bequeathed to his heirs a baronial inheritance. During the centuries following his death his name crossed itself with that of the Van Rensselaers, the Ten Broeks, the Douws, the Van Schaicks,--with the proudest names that descended from the earlier Colonial Dutch families. Melville’s mother, Maria, is remembered as a cold, proud woman, arrogant in the sense of her name, her blood, and the affluence of her forebears.
She was the only daughter and oldest child in a family of six, of General Peter Gansevoort and Catharine Van Schaick. Her father, born in Albany, New York, July 17, 1749, was among the outstanding patriots of the American Revolution. He was among the troops which accompanied Schuyler, in 1775, in his advance towards Canada. In December of the same year he was with Montgomery, as Major, in the unfortunate assault upon Quebec. In the summer of 1777, when Burgoyne’s semi-barbarous invading army was slowly advancing down Lake Champlain and the Hudson, he was Colonel in command of Fort Stanwix. By his obstinate and gallant defence of Fort Stanwix in August, 1777, he prevented the juncture of St. Leger with Burgoyne, and so changed the course of the whole subsequent campaign. Washington keenly and warmly recognised this, and Congress passed a vote of thanks to Colonel Gansevoort. Peter Gansevoort did other brilliant service in the Revolutionary War, and in 1809, when the War of 1812 was approaching, he was made brigadier general in the United States army. He was sheriff of Albany County from 1790 to 1792, and regent of the University of New York from 1808 until his death in 1812.