Yesterday I decided to head for the Surrogate Court in Jamaica, Queens, NY. I waited until after rush hour and then headed out with my trusty GPS. The traffic was fine but once I got there, the only apparent place to park was in a private lot. After much haggling with the lot owners, who sounded to my ear like they were speaking Greek, they "allowed" me to keep my car key and park for $24. It turned out I only needed to be there 45 minutes rather than all day, but there was no way to know that ahead of time so I bought myself an expensive parking space.
My goal in going to the Surrogate Court was to find records pertaining to g-grandfather Charles Schaefer who died in 1929. He was the sickly guy who was a chauffeur on Wall Street, but I knew that he had also purchased a house in Amenia, NY which was later sold by my grandfather, George Schaefer. But once again, I came up empty - there were no records on file for either Charles Schaefer or his wife who died three years after Charles, Marie "Mary" Klein Schaefer. So if the Amenia house did not pass through the probate court after Charles' death, I can only think that he gave or sold it to his son before he died. Bummer.
So I headed back in the direction of cousin Carol's house and found the local library where I spent the afternoon. All of Carols' kids were off school because of the Jewish holiday. In fact, I'm told that's why I got along on the Expressway as well as I did because alot of people are off work as well. Happy New Year.
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