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...

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 ...

This is the saddest thing I have ever read. "They tied people up and beat them, even hanged them, as they pressed them for money.  If the people didn't have any, they smashed the windows, ovens, and everything in the houses, or took with them everything that the farmers hadn't been able to hide."  The trauma these poor people endured!  And it went on  for 30 years .  I think what added to the trauma was that it came fairly suddenly and had no rhyme or reason.  You didn't know which people were enemies, and it would seem to stop and get better only to suddenly start all over again.  How many times would your house burn down before you stop trying to rebuild it? We're fairly used to seeing lists of dead people: the Vietnam War Memorial, Officers Down Memorial Page, monuments to hometown sons killed in the World Wars.  But the 30 Years' War was so devastating, when it was over, they published the names of people who  survived. I have been "readi...