Grandma's Granny's Family Album

When I was 15, I went looking for my Grandfather Sulzbach's hometown in Germany. When I was 60, I found it. (I wrote this to celebrate the glorious find.  It contains pieces of other posts, so it may sound familiar.) Growing up, I heard the story of How-our-Family-got-to-America many times from my cousin Ann Smith. Exuberance and familial feeling were her strong points; accuracy was not. However, as a kid, I had no reason to doubt her, especially because the story was consistent down to the exact wording. It goes this way: "Our family, the Sulzbachs, came from the town of Sulzbach in Germany. Our grandfather Pop Jake's father was a  teacher, a musician, and a dreamer,  who had no head for business. Pop Jake's mother came from a wealthy family, and her father had been a burgermeister of Frankfurt, where Pop Jake was born. (A burgermeister is the equivalent of mayor). Pop Jake's father lost all his wife's considerable money on bad investments. When she found out,...

  Massacre at Pines Bridge Since our ancestor Jeremiah Rushton   enlisted in the Westchester Refugees in March 1781, I will describe a raid in which he likely took part in May that year that became known as the Massacre at Pines Bridge. A monument to the American soldiers killed there now stands at Yorktown Heights, New York. 26    (see Revolutionary War Cowboy post) https://warrensculpture.com/project/battle-of-pines-bridge-monument/

  Jeremiah Rushton was a Cowboy.  And by that I don't mean that he was riding the western plains on horseback and lassoing longhorns while singing "Home on the Range."  I mean that he stole cows.  (see Rushton Pedigree Chart) 

I have the prettiest name…21 Rose Avenue. If you add my village, I am even more lovely…Valley Stream. I am a really nice house, if I do say so myself. I have a living room and a dining room! My kitchen is big enough for a stove, ice box, a really big sink with hot and cold running water, and a bunch of cupboards. I have a table with drawers that’s big enough to roll out dough and the family to sit around for supper. 1 I’ve got a little bedroom off my kitchen. 2 Upstairs I have 4 bedrooms and an indoor bathroom with a modern bathtub. Plus a big front porch, a yard big enough for a garden, lots of grass, and a garage in the back! 3

Have you heard of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow? I was looking at church records from Philipsburgh Manor in Westchester County, NY, since that is where our ancestor John B. Acker said he was from ( see Parts 1 and 2 in Acker Series, see Acker Pedigree Chart ).  The records are partially written in Dutch, which is actually pretty easy to read, once you know that  Kind  means child and gedoopt means baptized. The records collection is called both  Record Book of the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow and  Dutch Reformed Church Records of First Tarrytown Church .  I remembered that the Headless Horseman chased Ichabod Crane thru the graveyard of the Old Dutch Church, so I looked to see how many Dutch churches there were in Westchester County, and how far Philipsburgh, Tarrytown, and Sleepy Hollow are from each other. The Headless Horseman is good for the tourist trade Come to find out, there is only one Dutch church, and it is old, having been built ...