Jacob Hardenbergh moved from Ulster County, New York to New Jersey to study under Reverend John Frelinghuysen at the Dutch Reformed Church in Somerville, a parsonage he later took over. Hoping to establish the first classical and divinity school for Dutch Reformed clergy in America, Hardenbergh petitioned Royal Governor William Franklin in 1766. That same year a charter came from King George III establishing Queens College, in honor of Queen Charlotte, later Rutgers College.

Leading abolitionist Sojourner Truth was once enslaved by the Hardenbergh family in New York. She was born Isabella in 1797 to James and Elizabeth Bomefree, who were enslaved by Johannes Hardenbergh, Jr. (1670–1745) (Gerard’s great-great-great grandfather). At nine years old she was separated from her parents and sold three times. She escaped to freedom with her infant daughter in 1826 and in 1843 she renamed herself Sojourner Truth. Truth became a leading advocate for abolition, temperance, and women’s rights.

Lockwood may have been the first real exposure Hardenbergh had to ornithology. In 1877, Lockwood recalled in Popular Science Monthly that Gerard, “...became at once an enthusiast, and, with the spirit of a devotee, gave himself up to the study of birds in their native haunts. By wood and stream, in all seasons, the young artist naturalist watches his subject, learns its habitat, gets its attitudes, then shoots it, and in his study, with a knowledge of all its ‘positurae’ produces a portrait that sparkles with active life.”

Chadwick House was a well-known sportsmen’s retreat located in Chadwick Beach, just south of Mantoloking, New Jersey. It’s register contains famous visitors, including Ulysses S. Grant and George B. McClellan who were “...all drunk as owls.” A September 8, 1896 entry records, “Gerard R. Hardenbergh, Morgan Davis and George Endicott, killed 63 yellow-legs & 2-gelpers. The first good shooting of the season. Yesterday we shot 43 yellow-legs.”

One of only four salaried curators of birds in American museums at the time, Scott taught a graduate course in ornithology in the Department of Biology at the College of New Jersey (today’s Princeton University). Hardenbergh would send specimens he collected to Scott for the growing bird collection at Princeton. See a Hardenbergh-caught specimen from 1878 in the next gallery.

Besides his gallery in New Brunswick, Hardenbergh exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts throughout the 1880s.

George Endicott was a close friend of Hardenbergh. With their shared interest in hunting and painting birds, the two men spent time together along the shore and at Chadwick’s lodge. Endicott was listed on the census as an “insurance agent,” while Hardenbergh is always recorded as an “artist.”

Gerard’s sister Elizabeth studied art and was one of the partners of Byrdcliffe Pottery, active in the Byrdcliffe Arts and Crafts Colony from around 1907-28. She also belonged to the New York Watercolor Club and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. In 1904, her watercolor Geraniums was exhibited at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

Hardenbergh’s cousin was Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, the famous architect responsible for the Waldorf, the Astoria, the Plaza Hotel and the Dakota in Manhattan, as well as the Palmer Physical Laboratory at Princeton University.

Hardenbergh’s houseboat became part of local lore, one remembrance recalled “Hardenbergh’s houseboat with holes in the door to let his pet cats go in and out…” another who knew Hardenbergh as a child remembered, “Hardenbergh welcomed visits by young people who came to watch him paint or stuff birds.”

Hardenbergh’s dog Nip was his lifelong companion. A newspaper article on Nip and his owner explained that the dog in his old age spent “...most of his time on soft pillows and cushions in a Morris chair” on the Pelican.

The town of Bay Head eventually burned the abandoned Pelican. Local lore states that some of Hardenbergh’s paintings were lost in the fire.