A few years ago a coworker, Karen Schoelermann, asked me to look into a family legend of her own, that her grandmother, a Boone, may have been a descendant of frontiersman Daniel Boone. The Boone connection was quickly disproved, but researching Karen’s family tree turned up something potentially even more interesting: her great-great grandmother had been one Henrietta Huyck of Chatham, New York. Huyck is a surname found in my own family tree. I shifted my attention from the Boones to the Huycks, and it wasn’t long before I had made a connection: Karen’s 8th great-grandparents, Andries Hanse Huyck (c1645-1707) and Catrijn Lambertse Van Valkenburg (c1655-c1705) of Kinderhook, New York, were also my 9th great-grandparents.
Welcome to the family, cousin!
Karen Schoelermann is the 8th cousin once removed of Richard, James, Gary, Lisa, Carl, Jane, Bruce, Cathy, Ron, Stacey, Matt, and Sandy.