Sunshine!

It's so beautiful outside that I find it hard to check in and add a post to my blog lately. I've been watering my yard like crazy and tending to it. I am actually getting a lawn this year. The last couple years have been awful. I don't have the money to poor into my yard, so I've got to struggle to get any lawn at all to grow. This year it's happening!

I'll tell you it's not easy living on one income. Since the birth of our third child in December I have been home. Well, I'm now looking at trying to go back to work, but finding work in the evening is very difficult as well. I don't want to work during the day because I really DO NOT want to put the kids in daycare anymore. They are so much better off with me home, and I enjoy it too. Yes, even during those moments when I just want to scream too. Plus I need to be at home during the day in order to run our business.

Speaking of daycare's I'll have to tell you about my daycare hunting experience one of these days. But I will say it is so amazing to me the conditions people will leave their children in, and the kinds of daycares that are allowed to operate. I'll have to come back to this story later.

Well this weekend is my oldest boys birthday. He'll be eight, and my hubby and I have been married for over 11 years. My nieces and nephews in California are teenagers! Okay stop it! I'm making myself feel old. Then again I have a seven month old too. Whew! Okay that feels better, I'm not so old after all, at least I don't feel old.

Yes, I'm still burred in the search for my ancestors too, although I spend fewer hours on it lately. The one part that is irritating me is our connection to Daniel Boone. I have heard all my life that I am related some how to Daniel Boone on my dad's side of the family. I have yet to make the connection. However I have discover other famous settlers and explorers that I am a descendant of. It's really interesting to find out that you are related to people in history, life Simon Sackett, one of the six original settlers sent over by the King to settle Newtown, Mass. (now Cambridge), or his grandson Cyrus Sackett who helped to blaze the way, fight the Indians (not a part I'm proud of), and settle Kentucky. I also found that my dad is a descendant of the Wycoff family. The Wycoff (the American spelling they took on in America) family were Dutch settlers who original settled the Flatlands of New York.

The Wycoff house was built about 1652 and occupied by Pieter and Grietje Wycoff about 1655. It remained the home of Wyckoff descendants for about 250 years. The Wyckoff House is the number one Landmark in New York City as well as the oldest house in New Your State It is also a National historic Landmark. In 1982, it was restored as a living museum to honor the Dutch presence in America. When the English took over New Amsterdam (renaming it New York in 1664), they made all Dutch take surnames, which had not been Dutch custom. Our Dutch ancestor chose the name "Wycoff" Most Wyckoff's (in any of the various sixty three spellings) in the U.S. today are descendants joined together and saved the origin all Wyckoff house in the Flatlands from destruction. Pieter Claesen, founder of the Wyckoff Family in America, came to Fort Orange, Province of New Netherlands, April 7, 1637, on the ship Rensselaerswick. In the log of that ship is the following: "This ship sailed from Amsterdam, Holland, 25 Sep 1636, anchored off the seaport, The Texel, 8 Oct 1636, reached New Amsterdam, New Netherland, 4 March 1637, and Tuesday 7 April 1637, about three o'clock in the morning we came to anchor before Fort Aeranien, the end of our journey upward." The Rensselaerswick was outfitted by Killian Van Rensselaer, a diamond merchant of Amsterdam, who had a speculative contract with the Est India Company for the grant of a large body of land near the headwaters of the Hudson River, under which he was required to transport men and animals to the new country. There is no complete list of the passengers on this ship, but among those named are Pieter Corneliseen from Monnickendam, North Holland; Pieter Claesen Van Norden, And Simon Walischez. These three did not remain in New Amsterdam, but went on to Fort Orange. Her Pieter Cornelissen became prominent in the affairs of the colony. He may have been an uncle of Pieter Claesen, although the two are not mentioned together in the records of the Van Rensselaer estate. These records show that Pieter Claesen was on of the thirty-eight laborers sent on the Rensselaerswick to be assigned to various farmers on the Rensselaer estate, and that under the date 3 April 1637, he was assigned to Simon Walischez. According to a scorched fragment of the records of the estate, saved from a fire in the State Library at Albany in 1911, he was to receive 50 guildres per year for the first three years and 75 guildres for the last three years. About the time when the contract matured, Simon Walischez' lease was canceled on the grounds the he was an unsatisfactory tenant and the final settlement was made by the Van Rensselaer Estate. According to the report, Pieter Claesen was 18 years old when he made his settlement with the van Rensselaer estate. Soon after this he rented a farm for himself and married Grietje van Ness, the daughter of a prominent Citizen of the colony. Their two eldest children were born in Renselaersweck, but the church in which were kept the records of their birth and the marriage of their parents, was burned and the records destroyed. With his wife and two children he went to New Amsterdam in 1649. Here he remained until 1655, when he signed a contract "to superintend the Bowery and cattle of Peter Stuyvesant in New Amersfoort" and moved into the house on Canarsie Lane in Flatlands, Brooklyn, now known as the Wyckoff Homestead. Pieter Claesen prospered and became one of the most influential citizens of the little frontier settlement. He had bought.

Okay so enough history for today. I just love history, especially when I find out it's part of my ancestory. It makes you feel like you came from something. Although with that comes the parts of history you don't want to admit you are a descendant of, such as slavery. Most of my roots are from the South, so it's a part that I'm afraid did exist in our family, I've just yet to uncover it.