Sara Harsen Graverat

Sara Harsen was born in 1765 and christened in the Albany Dutch church on May 15. She was the daughter of Jacob and Alida Groesbeck Harsen - Albany natives who moved their family to the Great Lakes region sometime after Sara's birth. By the late 1770s, this Harsen family was settled on an island in the St. Clair River while other kin remained behind in Albany.

By the 1790s, she had become the wife of Gerrit Graverat - also an Albany native who had come to what became Michigan to practice the silversmith's trade in association with the Harsens. He was twenty years older than Sara. The marriage is said to have produced a daughter and three sons. Sara and her children stayed with her father on "Harsen's Island" after the death of Gerrit Graverat - probably about 1790.

In August 1802, Sara and her brother, Bernard Harsen, were killed when a keg of gunpowder accidentally exploded.

Sources: The life of Sara Harsen Graverat is CAP biography number 8353. This sketch is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources.