Grandma's Granny's Family Album

I assumed my great-grandparents Gertrude and Theodore Zoeller were partners.  His life was remarkably successful.  Arriving in 1845 as a teenage farmer responsible for 2 younger siblings shell-shocked by the recent death of their mother onboard ship, he became a prosperous business owner and politician.  From at least 1857 to 1859, he rented a store for his cabinet-making.  It appears he specialized in elaborate furniture of mahogany carved with deer and fruit, representing the plenty that newly rich immigrants could afford.  Theodore owned a $100 watch ($2000 in today's money) and a $200 piano - during the Civil War when the government needed money, they got $3 by taxing both. $3 could pay for a far sadder thing than piano taxes - an infant's grave at Calvary Catholic Cemetery. In Queens, Calvary was an easy ferry ride away from the 17th Ward of Manhattan, where most immigrants lived.  A contemporary wrote that funeral processions were constantly going up ...

 Since we now know that Esther Crank and her husband John Acker were from Philipsburgh, and their oldest 2 children were born in New York, we turn our attention to the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow, then known as Philipsburgh Manor, in Westchester County, just north of New York City. (see Acker Pedigree Chart, see Parts 1, 2, 3 of Acker Series) Old Dutch Church, when we visited, June 2024

 I wrote this history of her family for my mother-in-law in 2020.  Eva May Sorenson was her mother, and Maud Van Wart was her grandmother. Van Wart – Schaffner Family History On April 25, 1861, an eager and enthusiastic Edwin Forrest Van Wart, only 20, either very patriotic or very bored with his cap cutting job, answered President Lincoln’s call to arms to suppress the rebellion.  New York was required to send 17 regiments of men who appeared to be over 18 and under 45 and in physical strength and vigor.   To circumvent this problem, Edwin claimed to be 21, and his father, William Van Wart, claimed to be 40 instead of 44 when he signed up to join his son on muster day, May 9, at Fort Schuyler, for 2 years.  As a police officer, William must have thought he was in perfect shape to be a soldier. Colonel Abram Duryee had been asked to raise the regiment.  He must have given stirring rousing speeches because he raised the regiment in less than a week.  Ed...