OLD BURYING GROUND

Today's cemetery search wasn't as exciting as my past one. This one is called The OLD BURYING GROUND and is located on Oakfield Ave in Wantagh. I used to pass it every day going to and from work, wondering who was buried in there. Today I go to find out. I walked around and there were only 4 headstones visible. They were all JACKSON who were very prominent in Wantagh. They were however, not who I was looking for. I spoke with a couple of the town workers that were raking leaves in there. They said there's over 100 people buried in this burial ground but they don't have markers, other than the 4 that had stones. I took pictures for Hank (see story below) and sent them off to him. He does have a few ancestors that are buried in there though, they just aren't marked. Here's info and a listing of names of who's actually in there!

OLD BURYING GROUNDS

CREEPY IN A FUN SORT OF WAY!!

Yesterday I did something that I haven't done in a few years... I went traipsing through a cemetery! Now mind you, I NEVER go to a cemetery for actual people that I know because it just skeeves me, but for some reason, these people that have been gone for hundreds of years, well, they're just cool!

When my cousins and I were researching our family tree, a nice elderly gentleman, Mr. Smith, from the Somerset Historical Society in NJ took so much time helping us in our search. He took us to the Ten Eyck Cemetery, the family Dairy Farm, a house that belonged to an ancestor that was a Colonial in the Revolutionary War and so on. He spent countless hours discovering a lot about our family tree.

We have kept in touch throughout the years through occasional emails. Yesterday I received an email from him. He has been researching his 4 family tree lines. He just found that one of the lines had a few generations that were from WANTAGH in the 1700's through the mid 1800's !! He asked if I could email the names of old cemeteries that were in Wantagh. Well, I did more than that. I went online and found out the burial listings of the 4 oldest ones in Wantagh. His family was buried in the JERUSALEM FRIENDS CEMETERY at the Baptist Church.

Jerusalem Friends Cemetery

The funny thing about this is how things in life go in circles. Here, this man helped my cousins and I and now we find that the cemetery where his ancestors are buried is right at the end of the block that I grew up on!! I used to pick blueberries in there and the neighborhood kids and I held sayonces in there!! I used to sit under a tree across the street from the cemetery to do my homework on nice days!

I grabbed my camera and took a ride to the cemetery. I had a very hard time reading a lot of the stones because they're like 300 years old! I got stuck in the thorns (is that an omen?) of the wild bushes as I made my way into the brush to find his ancestors. Low and behold, there they were. His were so much easier to read than the others which was weird. I took lots of pictures for him. Through the pictures, he was able to add another Smith to the list as that one was never mentioned!

It was also interesting to look at the other stones. This cemetery has TONS of graves from very prominent people from Wantagh's beginning... Seamann, Powell, Hicks, Jones and Jackson.

Today I'm going to one more old cemetery on Oakfield Ave in Wantagh where a few other ancestors are buried.

For someone that has NO INTEREST in history, I thoroughly enjoyed myself!!!

VISIT MY COOKING BLOG... MAMA ZUKE COOKS

I decided to keep my cooking adventures separate from my life adventures so I will be moving the food posts to my other blog. Visit my new cooking blog where I will post family and friend favirites!
http://mamazukecooks.blogspot.com/

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee - New York City

I had so much fun tonight with Judy and Kris. We went to see

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in the city. We were all surprised at how funny, more like hysterical this play was. Too bad we won't remember any of the jokes by the time we wake up in the morning!!

Good Times!

When I told my friend Wendy about Chris's car adventures, she suggested I make a L/O for his book. Here is what I have done this morning. It still needs 'something' but I think I need to put it away and come back to it. Maybe then it will hit me!

This is what the journaling says:

January 7, 2008
Nothing good in life comes without it’s obstacles!
On your way to move back home, you had a little surprise when you were in PA! The bar holding up the running board broke off and you ran it over with your right back tire. Poof! You blew out the tire! To make things worse, the weight of that mess caused the left back tire to blow also! Lucky for you, Dad bought 2 car jacks at a garage sale so we had enough to boost both sides of the van up so we could get 2 new tires at once. Never make fun of those garage sale finds again!

IT'S SPRINGTIME OUTSIDE!!!

What a beautiful day here in NY! Today was supposed to get into the mid 60's and possibly break the temperature record of 65 degrees. It January for pete's sake!!! Chris and I decided to get out and go to one of our favorite places, Jones Beach. As usual, the senior citizens were there in droves, all sunning themselves!

First Adventure of 2008!

Yesterday was our first adventure of 2008! My son, Chris was on his way to move back home from being on his own since he got out of high school in 2001. He went off to college and stayed in northern NY. He had rented a u-haul and also has our old van. He was near Scranton, PA (about 2 hours from us) when all of a sudden the big bar that holds up the running board broke off. He ended up running it over with his back right tire. It blew out the tire. He had to maneuver it to the side as trucks were darting out of his way. As he was moving to the shoulder of the road, the weight of everything then blew out the left back tire! He made it safely to the side and called us... who else??? He didn't have his AAA card on him (?) so we gave him the # to call along with his ID #. They said that they can tow his van as part of the plan but would be about $100 to also tow the u-haul. Then they'd take him to a station to buy 2 tires. We told him we'd come to see what we can do. So we drove to Scranton and there he was, lounging in his car. What a mess the right tire was. It must have had about 10 holes in it!
People make fun of us because we tend to buy what we don't 'need' at garage sales but boy, we made the best investment this summer! My husband PJ, bought a car jack for $5. We got home and he was questioning why he didn't but the other one also. So he went back and bought the 2nd one for $5 also. So fast forward, PJ takes the 2 jacks plus the one from my car so now we had 3 jacks. He used one to jack up the front of the u-haul where it was attached to the van because it was pulling the van down. Then being that there were 2 blown tires, he jacked up both sides of the van. So we were able to get both tires off and get new tires from PJ's favorite tire chain COSTE TIRES just off the exit. We don't have any on L.I. but we've used them on many trips. They put us in front of the line and we were out of there within a half hour. We left Chris with his car because his 'worldly possessions' were in that u-haul! In the mean time, he taped up his running board with electrical tape to the inside of the van so the thing wouldn't fall off when he was driving! It was now only held on with a screw in the front and a screw on the back! We brought the tires back and PJ and Chris put them back on and off we went.The story had a happy ending and he didn't get in an accident when it happened so all worked out well. Here's a couple of pictures. YES! I brought my camera!

Finally Gave In!

I never thought that I would have a blog but here I am, finally giving in to the many people who have told me that I should create one.
I have decided to have a blog of my life adventures, and hobbies such as scrapbooking, cooking, photography and gardening. I won't be talking much about my kids because I don't want to put everything out for the world to see. Some things must remain a mystery.