Saturday and Sunday were spent in Flemington, NJ in the company of my 82-year-old uncle, George Schaefer, Jr. On Sunday, we drove down to PA to visit Genny Schaefer who is (I believe) 87 years old and the wife of Uncle George's cousin "Charlie-boy". We had a very long lunch together with Genny's daughter Patti, and we learned alot by hearing Genny and Uncle George talk about the old days in Brooklyn and Long Island. It's fun to connect the dots at last.
This morning I took off back to Goshen, NY as I had received a call from one of the volunteers at OCGS that the courthouse would be re-opened this week. Sadly, after a two-hour drive in LOTS of traffic, I arrived only to be turned away again - apparently a vandal had gotten into the courthouse again and now it will be closed all week. I can hardly believe my bad luck about this as I had pinned a great many hopes on breaking down our Gillespie-Greer brick walls by some clue that is buried in Goshen. There are just no good words for how sad I am about this not working out.
So there was really no choice but to head for Long Island. If there is a lucky thing, I was coming from the north and crossed the Hudson at the Tappan Zee (fun name!) bridge near Tarrytown. And because it was early in the day, the traffic was light and I found myself on Long Island by 12:30 and so decided I had plenty of time to go to Brooklyn, which was a mistake as "normal" traffic there is a stop-and-go parking lot, right? I pushed forward to the Most Holy Trinity Cemetery where I discovered only a security guard and no office, so I had to call them and they seemed to be alarmed that I was in that cemetery by myself. (I can't get my head around the idea that a Catholic cemetery is a dangerous place to be.) So because they were worried about me I think, they did the look-up on the phone. Adam Vierling and his family are indeed buried there, but my hope upon hopes that Maria Magdalena Vierling, my Schaefer gg-grandmother, would be buried with them was dashed. There were many Mary Schaefer's buried there, but none within the time frame 1900-1905, so if Maria is there: a) I have the dates wrong or b) she remarried possibly and is buried under another name or c) she is not buried in MHT cemetery and maybe even not in NY. There is just no way to know. Another disappointment.
The traffic back to LIE (Long Island Expressway) looked so terrible, that I reset the GPS to go down the Southern State Parkway, which was quite pleasant and went past Seaford which is where my Uncle Tom used to live and I was remembering visiting him there when I was a kid. I then went to St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale to visit Uncle Tom's grave and to look up some other relations, who were indeed there! Both of my grandfather's siblings and their spouses are there: Charles F. and Frances Witt Schaefer, and William and Ruth Schaefer Falkenthal. St. Charles, like most cemeteries on Long Island, is massive - the grounds have to be at least one square mile. Luckily the office was very good at directing me as I would never have found them on my own. I took pictures and will post them to the family tree at some point.
So I'm off to cousin Carol's for the evening, and tomorrow - supposedly - I am venturing into Manhattan to visit the Municpal Archives. We'll see if my luck takes a turn for the better - sure hope so!
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