The tree so far

The frontier

The name points to Bunschoten, but the line itself stops at the water. Theunis Eliasen Van Bunschoten — Tim's 8th-great-grandfather — was in the New World by about 1671, with his first child baptized in 1676 at Bergen, New Jersey, and afterward held the choice farmland of the Esopus flats at Kingston, New York. His parentage and origin back in the Netherlands were never found, even by a genealogist's exhaustive search in 1907. That blank is the oldest thing in the tree.

A second frontier

The maternal Reed line runs cleanly back to William Reed (b. 1786, Wallingford, Connecticut) and his father John Read (b. about 1755) — and there, newly, a clue. The Wallingford probate court recorded the estate of "John Read, a foreigner," who died about 1802. In the legal language of the day a foreigner was an alien: foreign-born, never naturalized. He may be the father of the line — which would make the family's old half-memory of a "foreign" Read ancestor true after all, one generation up. The link isn't proven yet. But it's the first crack in a wall that had no door.

Across the water — the Doig line

On the maternal grandfather's side, the Doig line now runs back into Angus, Scotland — the parishes of Monikie, Carmyllie and Monifieth — to Alexander Doig and Marjory Peddie, married in 1803. Their descendants were linen handloom weavers and estate gamekeepers, and David Batchelor Doig and Mary Scott's sons emigrated to Montana in the 1890s. The 1862 marriage of David to Mary names her parents, Thomas Scott and Lilias Law — and Lilias's maiden name likely echoes in "David Lawson Doig." Alexander's own parents are the next wall, waiting on a Scottish register page.

A Schuyler branch — resolved

For years the Schuyler line stopped at a question mark. It's now answered. Catrina Schuyler — wife of Eginas Du Mond of Kingston and a 7th-great-grandmother — was baptized at Albany on 19 December 1703, daughter of David Davidse Schuyler, Mayor of Albany, and Elsje Rutgers. The proof is in the Dutch church registers themselves: at her own children's baptisms the sponsors are her parents (David Schuyler & Elsje Rutgers) and her brothers Meyndert and Anthony. That places her in the David Pieterse Schuyler branch of the Albany dynasty — David being the brother of the famous patriarch Philip Pieterse — which makes the family a cousin, not a descendant, of Gen. Philip Schuyler of the Revolution (Alexander Hamilton's father-in-law). An earlier guess that ran the line through Philip's son was wrong, and has been corrected. The personal twist still holds: Schuyler is Tim's own middle name — a coincidence the family didn't knowingly take from her.

Down to the Southern Netherlands — the de Hooges line

Beside the Schuylers, another Amsterdam thread just reached further back. Anthony de Hooges — secretary of the Rensselaerswyck colony on the Hudson and a 10th-great-grandfather — was the youngest of eight children of Johannes de Hooges and Maria Tijron. Their Amsterdam marriage banns of 21 March 1608, read from the register page itself, record the groom as "van Mechelen" and the bride as "van Antwerpen": Calvinist refugees who had left the Spanish-ruled Southern Netherlands — today's Belgium — for the tolerant Dutch Republic. Each was given away by a widowed mother, so the line gains two more names with them: Catharina de Druyper of Mechelen and Catharina Daniels of Antwerp. The Schuyler progenitors a few lines over — Pieter Tjercks the Emden baker and Geertruyt "van Schuylder" — keep their secret: their 1627 banns name no parents, and the van Schuylder origin stays a wall.