My Mother About 1920
Wednesday, June 28th, 2017
Born 1900 in Spring Valley, Illinois of first generation immigrant parents from Poland. She had no idea what was ahead of her.
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My New York Ancestors
Sunday, October 23rd, 2005In the beginning of this country, the New England colonies were being settled by the Puritans who endeavored to spread their intolerant “purist” religion across much of rest of the country. But from the time the Dutch West India Company sent Henry Hudson in 1609 to form New Amsterdam, Manhattan has been a rough and tumble place attracting the flotsam and jetsam of the rest of the world. New Amsterdam only occupied the tip of Manhattan and the “wall” along Wall St. was meant to keep both English and Indian raiders out of town. When the English showed up in in battleships in New Amsterdam in 1664 , Governor Stuyesant surrendered without a shot. King Charles II promptly renamed the colony after his brother the Duke of York.
Later, the Reverend John Moore whose descendents include my son Josh’s eighth great grandfather in his fraternal ancestral line, moved to the newly formed Newtown in Long Island in 1652 and became the first minister in the village. In the winter of 1655-56, he returned to England, probably to receive ordination. Moore returned to America in 1657, and died in September of that year. Moore, described as an educated man and excellent preacher, had descendants who were prominent and influential in the town and church, including two bishops of the Episcopal Church, two presidents of Columbia College, and Clement Clark Moore, the author of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. The Moore family developed the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan. The Moores’s ancient home in Newtown was torn down a few decades ago. A park off Broadway marks its location. See what comes of genealogy research? You never know where your ancestors will turn up.
Our family’s fraternal Hunt line also began in New York beginning with Ralph Hunt of Newton Long Island…one of the Hunt’s marrying into the Moore line. After moving from Long Island to Trenton New Jersey with his father Jesse, George Hunt, Josh’s GGG Grandfather, accompanied Capt. Moore, his brother-in-law, to Clermont County Ohio. “George and Sallie Moore Hunt emigrated the fall after their son, John Moore Hunt’s birth in 1816 to Batavia in Clermont County Ohio where George followed the profession of school teaching, and was the first schoolmaster in Batavia and subsequently taught two years at Columbia (Ohio). He returned to Batavia and settled on a nearby farm where he died in his sixty-eighth year. A History of Clermont County reads: “The oldest teacher remembered in the village [Batavia} was George Hunt, an old-time pedagogue, but withal an excellent teacher, with a discipline equal to military rule, who taught from near 1819 to 1822.” Ref: “History of Clermont County-1880” By Lewis Everts.
John Moore Hunt’s son, Charles Moore Hunt, Josh’s GG grandfather, fought for Ohio in the Civil War and spent 11 months in the Andersonville Prison…surviving to move to a farm in Klamath County Oregon.
Josh’s maternal ancestors, the Johann Mroczynski’s immigrated from Poland, through NY in 1892.
Ancestral Village In Poland
Tuesday, August 31st, 2004
We take local electric trains three hours north from Warsaw to Ostroda where we book into the Park Hotel on a lovely lake that caters to German-speaking tourists many of whom are ... [Continue reading this entry] Polish Ancestors
Thursday, August 26th, 2004
I am looking forward to visiting my grandfather's little village in the north. Seven generations of his ancestors were farmers and lived in the same little village of Szczepankowo. In ... [Continue reading this entry] 
Zoe