Ep 29 - Sleepy Hollow: Family, Folklore and the Headless Horseman.

Join us as we dive into the captivating history of Sleepy Hollow, New York, on this special podcast episode.  We are preparing to explore the rich history of this enchanting village that's steeped in legends and folklore - to include the Old Dutch Church and cemetery, where our ancestors rest.  We realized there is so much to learn from this village,  we can't wait to share it all with you. 

https://sleepyhollowcountry.com/

https://reformedchurchtarrytowns.org/

https://reformedchurchtarrytowns.org/old-dutch-church/

Transcript

Kim: 0:03

Hello, and welcome back to Chasing Hazel's Tales, a family history podcast presented to you by two registered nurses, all around family historians, and sisters. If you've got family history, we want to talk about it. I'm Kim McLaughlin.

Laura: 0:17

And I'm Laura Ireland.

Kim: 0:19

And

Laura: 0:20

just to carry on the weather tradition of our great grandmother, Georgia Laing, can talk about the weather.

Kim: 0:28

We have to talk about

Laura: 0:29

the weather. Right. We survived two tropical storms in the past two weeks here in Maine. And, nothing, nothing too drastic here, but we don't usually get tropical storms up here.

Kim: 0:42

Not normally,

Laura: 0:43

Yep, and just a huge amount of rain and all that, just a pain in the neck, really, at least for our area, thankfully, it's really not too much to talk about other than we got a lot of rain, I guess, and it, and it knocked my lemon tree over, but I'm not bitter about that at all.

Kim: 0:59

Laura has a lemon tree that is taking over her life. It's huge. And it's almost time for her to bring it indoors for the winter.

Laura: 1:09

Yeah, I've got to repot it and bring it back inside and this knocking it over business didn't help me any, so. But it is October and it's going to get frosty here, so I've got to bring it inside. It's as

Kim: 1:21

big, it's bigger than you, isn't it?

Laura: 1:23

Well, yeah, it's, we've got to prune it before we bring it back in because it's taller than my ceilings now. This summer, it really took off. It's now over a little over three years old. I planted it early in the pandemic. So my first pictures of it as a little teeny tiny seedling in a, you know, just emerging from the soil are in, I think, July of 2020. There you go. And now here we are, it's so big I have to cut it to bring it back, but I do, I want to, I just want to keep trying to see where it goes until I can't do it anymore.

Kim: 2:03

I just, I just find it so humorous that this lemon tree just loves Laura's house and it just takes off, it takes over the whole

Laura: 2:10

house. Well, if I had been smart, I would have done something with a miniature lemon tree.

Kim: 2:17

We're growing big up here. We've got lots of rain this year. That's right.

Laura: 2:21

That's right. It apparently likes it. So, so that's what I'm

Kim: 2:25

doing. Saving the lemons. So first things first so here we are in Maine and it's a great day to have a cup of tea. And having said that, I need to ask, am I turning into Aunt Hattie?

Laura: 2:40

My first reaction is no.

Kim: 2:44

And the reason I say that is because I'm getting my tea so I can do my podcast and I just remember Aunt Hattie, when we would go to restaurants, she would be very upset if her tea water cooled at all, any. It had to be scalding hot all the time. And my mother, she would always just go, it's hot enough, but no, it had to be scalding hot. And she would,

Laura: 3:05

what would she do? She'd have to get a new cup of tea. I mean, she'd want

Kim: 3:08

more hot water brought to the table.

Laura: 3:11

So you just keep pouring hot water, just diluting the same cup of tea? I,

Kim: 3:15

I'm not sure. All I know is she would scold waitresses if they didn't bring that hot water right over because if it wasn't scalding, she was not happy. And so today was my, my tea was cooling off. I'm going, Oh my God, this is awful.

Laura: 3:28

And you thought, oh no, this is the first step down the Hattie slope.

Kim: 3:35

I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna, I will, I promise never to scold anybody for my tea, I promise, I promise.

Laura: 3:43

But anyway, so. Well, we'll keep you in line.

Kim: 3:47

We'll do that. Hattie, stop that.

Laura: 3:52

There's nothing else needs to be said, right? That's

Kim: 3:54

right. Nothing. Just say, Hattie.

Laura: 3:58

Hattie, stay in your lane.

Kim: 4:03

Oh, geez. Oh, so today's just been a day. So anyway, here we are, we're in October. it's not just because it's my birthday month, but it is truly, truly my favorite time of the year. I went for a walk this morning, I was happy, and we have cool breezes today, there was sunshine, fall colors, yeah,

Laura: 4:22

it's beautiful. It's a perfect time of year. Sweater weather. Sweater, sweater weather.

Kim: 4:27

Sweater, sweater weather, you gotta say it, there you go. Yeah, so anyway, I just want to be

Laura: 4:32

happy, happy. And it's also the best time of year because it is good apple season. Right. And so many months of the year, it's what do we call it? Sad apple season. Nobody

Kim: 4:44

wants a sad apple. So in October and May you get the best good apples, they're yummy. Mm hmm. So, now we're the opposite of sad apple

Laura: 4:54

season. That's right. And we are all happy campers. That's right. So this week we're going to chat about the new DNA ethnicity estimate updates and Sleepy Hollow country.

Kim: 5:07

Yes, and when we discuss, just, just for the record, when we discuss our DNA results, we are referencing, Laura and I are anyway, Ancestry. com, as that's basically our native platform. That's where we hold our primary DNA and, but I've placed my raw DNA. That means the data from Ancestry. I've uploaded it to other databases and the concepts are basically the same for each database. And the database I have, my results are in are 23andMe. family tree DNA, MyHeritage, and living DNA. And Ancestry's recent ethnicity update was prefaced by saying, we've added three regions in Asia and one in Europe, and we've made big improvements in Hawaii and New Zealand. So that's. You know, that didn't seem to really apply, I don't think, but.

Laura: 5:55

Yeah, not too much for us, but, you know, they describe the process for assigning the ethnicities as this. To figure out your ethnicity regions, we compare your DNA to a reference panel made up of DNA groups from people who have deep roots in one region. We look at a thousand and one. 1,001. That's a funny number. Mm-hmm. 1,001 sections of your D n A and assign each section to the ethnicity region it looks most like. Then we turn those results into the percentages you see in your estimate. Your genetic link to these ethnicities can go back hundreds of years or even more so. The reference panel for Ancestry includes 71,306. DNA samples that divide the world into 88 overlapping regions and groups.

Kim: 6:48

Right. And that it used to be fewer, a lot fewer groups. Now it's. More. I mean, so they keep refining. And I just wonder, are we in the reference group? Don't you think we should be in a reference group somewhere? Okay, I want to be. I want them to tell me that I am a reference sample, but I don't think I am.

Laura: 7:07

But I still think, I think as Americans of such mixed ethnicities, we're probably not. That's what I'm

Kim: 7:15

guessing.

Laura: 7:15

But did you see much change for yourself in this in this update? No,

Kim: 7:19

not really. Not really. I went from being most Scottish where I had Scotland at 33 and Ireland at 32 and then all of a sudden it swapped. Now Ireland is my most with 32 and Scotland is 26, but my England ancestry went up by from 5 percent to 10%, but it's nothing, nothing major, nothing that shocks me. I just think they leveled out the Scottish DNA a little bit.

Laura: 7:46

Yeah, and for me I actually my German category is what dropped. I think I didn't I didn't write down what mine was previously, but I think I was around 26 or 28 percent before, and that's now down to 15, My Scottish went up to 33 percent and my Swedish went up to 10%. But everything else was pretty much the same and I'm just a, a mixed European.

Kim: 8:14

We both, yeah, we both are pretty mixed. The only thing where you and I kind of differ is I get Eastern European and Russia, and you don't. Right,

Laura: 8:22

and I get Wales. Yeah,

Kim: 8:24

and I don't. Yeah, so, you know, that's, that's common for siblings, but.

Laura: 8:29

Right, and I think I get the whales from mom's side, and I think it must, dad must have, must have had the Eastern Europe and Russia. Probably. Cause I don't think mom had it. Yeah, I think so too. But yeah, I like the numbers. I'm just going to throw that out there. I don't know if anybody knew that,

Kim: 8:49

but I think they seem, I know you're the numbers girl, but I think they seem to match what we have on paper. So you know, it's not far off and it seems to make sense. And we'll go through many, probably many more updates, but it is interesting to find out.

Laura: 9:03

Right. Right. I think that for many European Americans, I hear them report numbers that have settled pretty well, similar to what we're talking about. Right. Meaning that the numbers aren't straying too far from the paper trails at this point. But if you have ancestry from other areas of the world, it's probable that your estimates might change more than ones like ours will. Right.

Kim: 9:30

I believe that's, that's true. But who knows? It's, it's evolving. But I also want to mention that if you have a lot of English and Irish DNA, there's a company that really dives into that area into those ethnicity estimates. And it's called Living DNA. So I have one of those profiles, and I'm going to put it on social media because it breaks it way down so much. And the numbers are not that big a deal, but I like the way that they break them down. So for example, my DNA my DNA from England is broken down into these areas because I'm like 98 percent European is what it says. So it breaks down to these areas. Central England, Ireland, Devon, Northumbria, South Central England, North West Scotland, North Yorkshire, South England, Cornwall, and South East England. So, I mean, that's the, and they're broken down, most of them are like 2%, 4%, or something like that, but they do break it down, and there's a map that shows, where you're from, but,

Laura: 10:30

so that's pretty much all of England, is that what it's saying? Pretty

Kim: 10:33

much, there's not many that are missing. It's, but it's kind of fun to see, and I've been looking for matches, but I think it is interesting what they're trying to do, and I do like to, to keep up on what they're doing, so.

Laura: 10:46

Yeah, interesting. Mm hmm. I like it. And the other thing on our agenda for today, we're, we're ramping up our plans to go to Sleepy Hollow, New York at the end of the month. We're going to be traveling, traveling there to the area where so many of our ancestors came from. You know, and it's a good time of the year to go there. It's I mean, I'm not that much of a person to, I'm really not that into Halloween or anything like that. But, you

Kim: 11:16

know, I never have, but all of a sudden I'm excited to

Laura: 11:19

go. Yeah,

Kim: 11:20

it'll be fun. It's a different kind of. Celebration,

Laura: 11:24

But if there is any sort of headless horseman, I'm out. If there's an actual...

Kim: 11:31

Oh, running around you mean? Yes,

Laura: 11:34

if there's a, if I see an actual headless horseman, I'm out. Okay. I'm in the car and I'm coming

Kim: 11:39

home. You're coming home. 95 all the way home, yeah. Yes, that's right.

Laura: 11:45

But, I mean, we'll do the things we like to do. Head into the cemeteries. I understand they're very revered there, they take good care of them, and, of course, it's the home Old Dutch Church. The Old Dutch Church, where they had all the great records and all that, and so it only seems natural that the, they would take great care of the cemeteries and all that

Kim: 12:05

as well. So much, there's a lot of history going on there, a ton. Yeah. hundreds of years.

Laura: 12:13

Right, hundreds of years ago, and all the names from our family tree that hail from Westchester County, New York and look like they would belong to the Dutch branch of the family tree.

Kim: 12:26

They are Dutch.

Laura: 12:28

Names, I'm going to mangle these names just for the record.

Kim: 12:32

I'm going to laugh at you, but the truth is, I can't say them either, so. Alright. I'm letting her say them so that I can laugh.

Laura: 12:40

Well, some of them are easy. Okay. Some of them, not so much. Purdy, that

Kim: 12:44

one's alright. And that's spelled P U R D Y, which is, it just sounds funny. Anyway. Yerxa.

Laura: 12:52

I think that's how you say it. All right. Van Tassel. Mm hmm. Classic. Yep.

Kim: 12:58

William, Willems. It says Willems, I think, and then I think that morphed into Williams. Yeah.

Laura: 13:05

Mm hmm. And Storm, Derevier. Oh, that's a good one. All right. I mean, if you want to pronounce it a little bit French, I don't know. Okay. Flewelling, Griffin, Jewel.

Kim: 13:19

Mm hmm, that's a good one.

Laura: 13:23

Kortenbosch, Bosch, Kortenbosch, I don't know how to pronounce

Kim: 13:25

that one. I don't know, it's like B O S C H, is that like the same thing as like Bosch appliances? I don't know. Carry on.

Laura: 13:35

That's what it looked like to me. Van Montfort. Van Dyck. De

Kim: 13:46

Planken. That's a weird one I didn't know. That one just popped up today and I said, oh yeah, well there you go.

Laura: 13:51

And maybe Bellier.

Kim: 13:53

Right. I think they say that Bellier is a derivative of Boullier from France.

Laura: 14:01

I was gonna say, sounds very Francais

Kim: 14:03

to me. Yeah, and they tried, but they, but it, I'm not sure, depends on who you ask, but to me, it was, I think, a derivative of Boullier from France, but they were in the United States. Isn't that

Laura: 14:13

Priscilla Presley's maiden name? Is it? I don't know that. I'm thinking, I'm thinking. Okay. I think it is. Alright. Or it's close to it, if not. All right. And you said you're Andy, your husband. Yeah. Has

Kim: 14:31

orcers. Right. That's they were from. And that's how I figured when I saw them in the Dutch colony. And then I said, Oh, wait a minute. That's Andrew's family from New Brunswick. And you said, Oh, oh, here we go. Here we go. And so yeah, we're related. Yeah, which is kind of fun. But the orcers originally their name was A E R S E. We can play with that one if you want to it's almost like ours.

Laura: 15:01

That one might get us in

Kim: 15:02

trouble. Right. I mean, I'm just doing that because then I can tease Andrew not because the name is funny, but because they do they do morph into a more Americanized or Canadian name. So I think it was A E R S E and then some other things as well. But it's kind of funny. I want to make fun of him.

Laura: 15:19

And that family came from

15:21

where?

Kim: 15:22

That's also from, that's Dutch. They were in, they were in Sleepy Hollow area, Westchester County, then went to Canada, and that's where they married into Andrew's family.

Laura: 15:32

Ah, all right. So, so we connected to the Dutch because our two times great grandfather, Jared William Smith, married a Dutch descendant named Jemima Bellier in 1860s in New Brunswick, Canada. Or some records have her listed as Jemmy. I like Jemmy. I do

Kim: 15:57

too. I kind of, I never gave that much thought until, when you're reading through your old records, you see names that you like better than your own. It's like, oh, I could have, I could have been called Jemmy. No one decided to call

Laura: 16:09

me Jemmy. Yeah. So her parents were Stephen Bellier and Elizabeth Flewelling. And it goes from there to Hendrick Bellier, our five times great grandfather that married. And that's a good luck with that name. Engelt Storm. A descendant? What's that?

Kim: 16:32

I think Engelte, or something, however they say it. I'm only pronouncing it with all the letters. But I think that transforms into Angela, or something like that, after a while. Takes a while. A few generations and next thing you know you've got Angela.

Laura: 16:48

Alright. But she's a descendant of old Dirkstorm. Right. And you may remember that he, he was back in one of our earlier episodes, we discussed him and his book detailing the family and the emigration to the new world from Holland in 1624.

Kim: 17:06

Yes. And also this just in Priscilla Presley was Priscilla Ann Presley. Formerly Bollier and born in 1945. So I don't know if that was... It looks like maybe she was married a couple of times, or maybe her name changed, I don't know, but Bullyer is in there.

Laura: 17:25

There are many useless facts inside of my head.

Kim: 17:29

There's one! That was a good one. Yep, there's

Laura: 17:30

one. I'm glad I got that one out. Okay.

Kim: 17:34

And the Bollier family does have a very interesting story that I got out of another genealogy about how they created a fairly large business in New York or New Jersey or something. But that's another day, but it was a really great story about a very hardworking, industrious person. And they, the Belliers were part of it. So it was, it was interesting. It's, it's nice

Laura: 17:54

to find. I feel like hardworking has to describe almost every generation before us. Right. Don't you feel like, just to survive. Yep. Right. You know, up until a generation or two ago, like, if you weren't hardworking, you didn't survive. I just don't. I don't know. Yeah, I guess that's just my

Kim: 18:17

own. things were sure different. That's, that's, you know,

Laura: 18:20

if you didn't work hard, you didn't eat, or you didn't have clothes to put on your back, or you didn't, you know,

Kim: 18:27

anyway. So there and when I found out about Old Dirk, that's when I got hooked on that whole area, because I found out about Dirk Storm and Sleepy Hollow and Manhattan. You know, the whole family, they, the church was there and I think Dirk we could do a whole show on Dirk. We could do a whole show on Dirk. So he was very industrious as well. But we're not going to do that today. We're just going to Go over our connections to Sleepy Hollow, because that's where we're going. First things, we want to say, as I was doing this, there are a lot of areas and places that sound alike. So, it's like we have to be very careful when we speak, so it's confusing. There are two cemeteries that are famous in Sleepy Hollow. One is the Old Dutch Church Burying Ground. Or cemetery, as they call it. So the one belonging to the Old Dutch Church, and that one is right beside the church. And then there's the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery which is adjacent so it's right beside it, so when you say one, you might mean the other, or both, and so it can be very confusing, but it, you need to know which is which when you want to know who's buried there, I think, are going to be worth us going and visiting. So for Lara and I, our people are in the Old Dutch Church Cemetery. So that's the one directly beside the church. And the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, which is just, past that, because they've got all the famous people there, they have all the Fords, the Chryslers, the Astors, the Rockefellers, Carnegie's, Elizabeth Arden, she's buried there. And some guy named Thomas Watson, who I had no idea who it was, so I had to look it up. Well, he created IBM. So we don't belong in that cemetery. We belong in the other cemetery. That's where our people are from. So just keep in mind there are two, two separate cemeteries. One belongs to the church and one is the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. So why

Laura: 20:22

are all these famous people buried in Sleepy Hollow?

Kim: 20:25

Because they lived all through Westchester County. Just north, north of New York City. So there was a lot of industrial magnets, let's call it that. People who, like Rockefeller like I said, Carnegie, and the Fords, all those people, there's tons of them, and they all kind of migrated north to Westchester County, and were buried in Sleepy Hollow. Okay. Is this going to be cool or what? From what I understand, of course they were so wealthy that when they had a gravestone, it was a, I mean, they, Well,

Laura: 21:05

I will be curious to see what kind of money they're... will be put into their gravestones, but I will be more interested in our historical gravestones. what we can see of ours, then, then the rich folks. Right, well, right, and

Kim: 21:19

Dirks is there, and he was here in 1600s.

Laura: 21:23

And will we be able to read what's on it?

Kim: 21:25

I believe we can from the pictures online, but I can't tell until we get there. We'll have to report live from the, from the cemetery. We could read it. We'd be looking on Facebook live because we'll be there.

Laura: 21:40

That's right. That's right. So, just to talk a little bit about Sleepy Hollow, it's a village in Westchester County, New York, and it is located on the east bank of the Hudson River, and it's about 30 miles north of New York City, just to the south of it is the village, Tarrytown, and to the north and the east are, unincorporated parts of Mount Pleasant. And as of 2020, the population of Sleepy Hollow was just under 10, 000. That's

Kim: 22:13

a good size little

Laura: 22:14

spot. Yeah, that's a nice... I think so. I bet in late October it's it's a lot, they get the influx of

Kim: 22:21

tourists. I

Laura: 22:21

Yeah, right. Like, like Salem, Mass,

Kim: 22:23

you know. And that's another thing, I wonder how it differs. Salem, Mass is more, a lot about the witch trials, whereas this, I don't, they have the headless horsemen. So I'm just, I'm just interested.

Laura: 22:35

Anyway. And I've not been to Salem Mass, but Sarah and Whitney have. Yeah. So it'll be fun to see kind of a comparison. It's just kind of, like you said, not really, they're not the same thing. So I guess. But just different experiences. So anyway, so Sleepy Hollow is also the home of the Phillipsburg Manor House. It's mentioned many times in the records we've seen from our family. And it dates from 1693 when the wealthy merchant Frederick Phillips was granted a charter for 52, 000 acres along the Hudson River by the

Kim: 23:11

British Crown. Right, so you side with the British, poof, here's some land. 52, 000 acres.

Laura: 23:16

Yep. Pays to have friends.

Kim: 23:18

Right. Well, we'll see.

Laura: 23:22

Well, turns out he was on the wrong side, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. He built a facility at the confluence of the Poco.

Kim: 23:31

when we go down there, we're gonna learn how to say this. The

Laura: 23:35

Pocantico and Hudson Rivers as a provisioning depot for the family Atlantic sea trade and as headquarters for a worldwide shipping operation. And so for more than 30 years, Frederick and his wife, Margaret, and later son, Adolf shipped hundreds of African men, women, and children as slaves across the Atlantic. And by the mid 18th century, the Phillips family had one of the largest slave holdings in the colonial north. Well, that's not very nice, is it? No, but I, I thought

Kim: 24:05

about, you know, this is a very important, it's a fact that people always just skip over. And I was thinking, I had, I didn't have any knowledge, I had no idea that the slave trade in. New York was that vast.

Laura: 24:20

Right. Well, you think of it as a southern thing.

Kim: 24:23

Exactly. Virginia, yeah. South Carolina or something like that. Georgia, Georgia. Yeah. Okay. But I didn't think New York at all. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not so sure if it's part of our family history or not. I think I have seen one. Census report, and it was the type of census, I forget the year, I didn't get it out, but like 17, let's just say 1790, 1790, and it says, you know, the family member like Joe Brown, and then it goes right along, so I don't know which family member it is, which, which Joe Brown was it, which, whatever, and it did say that they owned one slave, so if it was the correct family member that I was thinking about, if it was correct, then yes, our family was a slaveholder. But I don't, I never could determine at that time, and I just have it on my list of things to do, whether or not, I mean, whether or not they did or not, it doesn't matter, they lived amongst slaves, is what our ancestors did. If they didn't own them, they lived amongst them. So so the manor was tenanted by farmers of various European backgrounds, and those I think were our people. So those were our family relatives. They were farmers and they operated certain plots of land and for this manor. And, but they were operated by enslaved Africans. I would hazard a guess that many people with colonial ancestry can find that their family had enslaved Africans. working for them. I don't think it was that odd or that strange at that time. So, anybody who had family there, you probably were around it or owned some slaves. But at the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, the Phillipses supported the British, and their land holdings were seized and auctioned off. And here's an interesting tidbit, which I read, and I just thought, okay, this. Kind of, I can't quite put, you're going to have to do some commentary because I can't quite figure it out. So the manor house was used during the war, but most notably by the British general Sir Henry Clinton during military activities 1779. So we're talking Revolutionary War. So it was there that he wrote the Phillipsburg Proclamation, which declared that all patriot owned slaves were to be free. Okay, that's good, right? I mean, so if they were, Patriot owned slaves to be free, and that the Blacks taken prisoner while serving in Patriot forces, so anyone captured, any Black person captured by the British, right, would be sold into slavery. Well, that just doesn't

Laura: 26:52

make any sense.

Kim: 26:54

Well, and that's exactly what was written.

Laura: 26:56

Why would you free some people and take others into

Kim: 26:59

slavery? Do you think it was for money? Or, so

Laura: 27:02

basically, it's always the whole, the whole slavery thing was for money. So I would

Kim: 27:06

say yes. So I would say that, well, you know, we're losing, so you guys can keep your slaves, whatever, but we're, the ones that we took prisoner, we are gonna sell. Does that sound right? It's just, I read that, and so anyway, a lot of the sources today for our, this podcast is from Wikipedia, and also a couple of sites from a Sleepy Hollow, but that right there was from Wikipedia, and it just, you know, it deserves a little closer look. It's just... Just an odd thing that I found.

Laura: 27:41

It's important to look at all the aspects of history, even the ones, that we don't like. Well, we don't really

Kim: 27:47

quite understand, you know, it, I don't know, who knows? Some of our relatives could have been working for Sir Henry Clinton and being involved in this. So it's worth, it's worth going to look at, and maybe we will. You know, some light reading before we head to,

Laura: 28:06

so, originally the village was incorporated as North Tarrytown in the late 19th century, and the village adopted its current name in 1996. And it's known internationally through the legend of Sleepy Hollow, an 1820 short story about the local area and its infamous specter, the Headless Horseman, which is what I'm saying, we better not say.

Kim: 28:35

This chick is

Laura: 28:36

out. That's right, I'm out. You know, the story written by Washington Irving, who lived in Tarrytown, and he's buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. We should be finding that one as

Kim: 28:46

well. Yes. Along with every other person probably there, but that's all right. Yeah, right. We'll

Laura: 28:52

do it. Yeah, there's probably be a line. Yeah. And owing to the story, as well as the village's roots in early American history and folklore, Sleepy Hollow is considered by some to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Despite this designation, Sleepy Hollow has also been called the safest small city. Yay! Meaning under 100, 000 residents in America. I like that. Yeah. Although I thought Bucksport was supposed to be the most haunted. Nope.

Kim: 29:22

In Maine. Okay. Just in Maine. All

Laura: 29:24

right. Whatever.

Kim: 29:27

where is the most haunted place in Maine? And everybody said the Haynesville woods. Oh, okay. Remember? Remember back then when we talked about the Haynesville woods? Yes. Anyway. Yeah. But, Bucksport too.

Laura: 29:38

Bucksport's trying hard. Yeah.

Kim: 29:41

So, when we go to Sleepy Hollow, we have our ancestors church, the Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It's a 17th century stone church located on Albany Post Road in Sleepy Hollow. And it has a three acre churchyard. Which is, of course, again, featured prominently in Washington Urban Story of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And the churchyard is often confused with a contiguous, but separate, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Laura: 30:08

So that's worth repeating. And this is the church where our ancestor kept all the records,

Kim: 30:12

right? Yes. Yes, this and another one in New York, I believe. I mean, not New York, in Manhattan.

Laura: 30:20

Okay, so it's, this church is recognized as the oldest church still in existence in New York and a National Historic Landmark. The old Dutch burying ground is believed to predate the church and there were 50 burials in the area when the church was built. And there's a little excerpt from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and it says, It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust trees and lofty elms, from among which its descent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity, beaming through the shades of retirement. To look upon this grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there, at least, the dead might rest in peace.

Kim: 31:06

I thought that was nice. Yeah. He thought a lot about the site and where everything was and there was a cemetery there. I

Laura: 31:14

don't know. And you know, that's a way to describe something. It doesn't seem too wordy, but it's such a great description. It really, it's one, sometimes when people write things and it really creates a picture for you in your mind. Sometimes it's just too wordy. Sometimes it makes a nice picture. And that's what this does for me. So

Kim: 31:42

that's what we're going

Laura: 31:42

to go do. That's right. We're going to look upon the locust trees and lofty

Kim: 31:47

elms. So what they said was like we just mentioned, the church was already old when Irving first saw it. When Washington Irv Irving first got to it, it was already been there for quite some time. So he was born, Washington Irving was born 1783 in Manhattan, and he died in 1859 in Tarrytown. So he, he liked it and that's where he was. So the church itself was built. in 1685 and formally organized as Dutch Reformed in 1697. It served as the congregation's home for more than 150 years until a new building was constructed. Even now it's used for worship on summer Sundays and special holidays.

Laura: 32:27

So we've learned a lot about the Westchester County area and are looking forward to visiting it at the end of the month. It's really being advertised as a great Halloween event, given the haunted history. We could probably do another podcast on that, you know, and maybe we will.

Kim: 32:43

You know, it's always next week. That's right. So, what do they do that Salem doesn't do? Well, here's a few things that, I was just emailed this copy, and it says there'll be an Old Dutch Church Fest, that's what it's called, the Old Dutch Church Fest, that's running the last three weekends in October from 11 to 4, and it's being billed as a family friendly event that will surely delight all ages, and look, look, Laura, look what it says. Oh no. With a visit from the Headless Horseman. I'm going to bring some Ativan for Laura. She'll be alright, don't worry, I'll take care of her. If a flaming

Laura: 33:25

jack o lantern goes by my head, I'm gonna, you know, probably need resuscitation

Kim: 33:32

or something. We'll carry a little stuff with us, don't you worry. So this event includes, get this, they have food trucks and a beer tent, a bonfire and marshmallow roasting, souvenirs, old Dutch church open house, which that's what I want to go do, I want to go in the church. And then they have this thing that's called the Hulga show, which is. immerse yourself in the tale of Hulda, the other legend of Sleepy Hollow at the legendary old Dutch church. So that's another thing we should be, we will report on. And who's Hulda? Yeah,

Laura: 34:05

I'm in for that. We'll have

Kim: 34:07

to find out. And how does she think that she's a legend like Washington Irving's Headless Horseman? We're going to find out. We're going to let you know. So basically what, we're going to have a really good time this, what else are we doing? We're doing. They have a jack o lantern blaze event, to me, it kind of looks like the Booth Bay Botanical Gardens in the winter when they light them all up. Well, what they're doing in Sleepy Hollow is they've got a billion, at least a billion pumpkins that are all lit up and all over the place, and so it's going to be really great. We're going to that.

Laura: 34:39

And it reminds me too for many years. I lived in New Hampshire, and in New Hampshire, in Keene, they used to have every fall, every October, they would, I think, I think they had the Guinness Record, which, remember, anybody remember Guinness World Records? Of the most lit jack o lanterns in one location, so in Keene, New Hampshire, every year, they would have that as an event, and that's what this reminds me of, all these lit jack o lanterns in one location, so. And it's supposed to be set to music and there's lights and it seems like it's going to be a very fun event. I'm really looking forward to it.

Kim: 35:20

So am I. And so, again, if you guys want to come with us, they're probably still selling tickets. It's going to be fun. Oh,

Laura: 35:26

maybe we could Facebook live. You know, we

Kim: 35:30

can.

Laura: 35:31

Maybe we could do that. Maybe just a little bit just to show what some of that stuff looks like. Right. If, you know, maybe a few people are interested. It'll

Kim: 35:41

be fun. And we'll, we have production assistants that are coming with us, so we'll, we'll, we'll, they're going to earn their keep. Anyway, Come on back and we're going to go on some more about the Headless Horseman and whether or not we see him, So I did want to say so we are not being paid to advertise the old Dutch church or the old Dutch church. fast. But we want, we just think it's a really great way to explore your family history and have some good fun doing it. And, so my thought is where else could we go and do this? I mean, there must be other places that have nice celebrations in their area and that we could go. I just think everybody should maybe look into it. I think we have probably too many to count at this time, but let's make a list and let's go. That's

Laura: 36:33

right. We'll take one off the list. That's right. All right. So I think that's it for this week. What do you think, Kim?

Kim: 36:43

Okay.

Laura: 36:43

All right. So please rate, review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. We also invite you to reach out to us by email at chasing hazel's tails at gmail. com. Tell us your tales or share what you have learned or found interesting about your family. Let us know if you have shaken your family tree and had a few nuts fall out, but if you haven't seen any nuts fall out of your tree, you might just be the nut in your family. You can also follow us or contact us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. Until next time, bye bye.

Kim: 37:18

Goodbye, we'll see you next time.