finally, taphophile tuesday again! i missed the past 3 times due to travels back home and sheer laziness... when i got back from my travels, late wednesday night after a long long day of traveling and having to run for my flight to boston (why is flying so much more stressful than any other mode of transportation? or at least, so i think..), it took over an hour of waiting at the boston airport to be "admitted into the country". whereas "the americans" got through passport control very quickly (there were many officers), there were only a few officers checking even more "foreigners". aaarrghhhh!! how annoyed i was! especially when you think of how the us of a was founded; by people from many different countries, many of them dutch... and now me, a dutch, had to wait this long?!!
while i thought i would have a day of rest after coming back, tim told me we were going to drive to new york right the next morning! even though i love going to new york, i was not too happy about that... but the morning came, i was awake early anyways due to jetlag and off we went..... a very hot and sunny day, and i got to choose how we would drive! jaaajjj! ever since we visited the sleepy hollow cemetery in massachusetts, i wanted to see the REAL town of sleepy hollow and its cemetery in the state of new york. it is just above new york, and sort of on our route... many wealthy dutch lived in sleepy hollow, which originally was named "slapershaven" (this translates literally into sleeper's haven, which eventually became sleepy hollow).
dirck storm, whose grave you see above, was one of the early settlers, who documented the "dutch colonial american village life" in the english-occupied new york province (this was around the time when the dutch owned "new amsterdam" got into the hands of the british, and renamed it new york). dirck storm was born in utrecht, the netherlands. in 1662, he, his wife and their 3 children emigrated to manhattan by boat. during the voyage, his wife gave birth to a daughter. only years later they moved to the little town of sleepy hollow, where they became members of the old dutch church, next to which they were later buried. according to wikipedia, dirck storm is the ancestor of many notable americans. however, they dont mention any notable americans, and i dont know any right now by the name of storm!, but apparently, many americans with the last name storm or storms can trace their lineage back to the dutch dirck storm who arrived in the us of a in 1662.....
whoops, thats a lot of writing! (and i did a whole lot more of reading about sleepy hollow, the dutch, etc etc, so i guess i should dedicate another post to that sometime later... for more taphophiles, go here!
