Sunday March 29th

This last week has been a bust other than posting what we did in New York. Both my wife and I caught a really bad cold virus which has kept us quiet for the week. It is still not over. I did my volunteer work with the Friends of the Library and Archives Canada on Tuesday and then did almost nothing the rest of the week except cough, sit, rest and read.

I read a book called Ex Libris by Ross King. Sort of a mystery odyssey set in the 17th Century. A good read with lots of historical facts etc.!

Saturday we turned the lights off for Earth Hour.

Also on Saturday I ventured out for a few hours to attend one lecture at the Gene-O-Rama Conference. This is a genealogy conference put on by the Ottawa Branch Ontario Genealogical Society, of which I am a member. I have been involved in the organization of Gene-O-Rama for over 10 years and I was sorry to miss most of it because of the bad cold virus. www.ogsottawa.on.ca.

It looked like a success again this year with over 200 registrants.

Monday March 16th Manhattan

This was our last day in Manhattan before heading home. I wanted to look at a book which was located in the Butler Library at Columbia University at 116th Street and Broadway. So again this required a ride on the LIRR and the subway. When we arrived we discovered it was school break week at Columbia University and they said the library was closed to outside people for the week. We prevailed and they finally told us how we could get a pass. We followed their direction and were soon able to access the stacks which are open stacks. This required that we visit the branch of the New York Public Library which was two blocks away and use our NYPL Access cards to get a permission paper which we took back to Columbia and they gave us one day passes.

The book I wanted to see was “Index to Abstracts of the Title to The Kip’s Bay Farm by John J. Post of the New York Bar. New York. 1896.” While this book appears to be held by many libraries, they usually only have the first 15 to 20 pages which contain family genealogy. The book itself was prepared as a sort of semi-legal document outlining all of the land transfers and sales between about 1671 and about 1850. There are lots of relationships mentioned and someday it may be useful to read through the three volume set and make and index of names.

After the library we walked a few blocks and visited Grant’s Tomb which is run by the United States Federal Parks Service. We then walked through part of Riverside Park on our way to Broadway and 112th Street to see Tom’s Restaurant (Seinfeld Series).

After that we took the subway to lower Manhattan at Fulton Street. We walked one block to John Street and visited the John Street Methodist Church which is a historic site relating the beginnings of Methodism in the Untied States through Philip Embury and Barbara Heck. They have an interesting museum with some old artifacts.

From there we walked by St. Paul’s Chapel, The World Trade Center site, which is under construction and then walked through Trinity Church graveyard which happened to be open to the public. A couple of famous people buried there are Alexander Hamilton and Robert Fulton.

We then walked to the end of the island near Battery Park and took a free ride on the Staten Island Ferry. We had a good look at the Statue of Liberty in the daylight for a change. That made a full day so we headed back to Long Island to relax and pack the next day for our trip home. The next day we took a 1o and one half hour drive back to Canada.

Friday March 13th Manhattan Kip's Bay Brewery

This was another Manhattan day for my wife and I. We took the LIRR to Penn Station and then walked along 34th Street to 1st Avenue. My quest was to locate the location of the Kip’s Bay Brewery. I had found a website called Forgotten New York which said the building was at 1 st Avenue between 37 and 38 Street. The building on the block would seem to be from the mid to late 1800s time period. It almost looks like there are two slightly different buildings attached. Not sure which is the correct one or maybe both are. Anyways this is the location which I had read about from several sources. There are no plaques on the building and there are several business located there.

We also walked by 2nd Avenue and 35th Street, which is the location of the Kip house before it was demolished about 1851.

For the remainder of the day we walked further to 42nd Street and 5th Avenue to visit the New York Public Library and have lunch in Bryant Park. It was a bit cool that day but we ate lunch and enjoyed the sun with a few others. We did a few hours of family research in the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy. We took a few images also with our digital cameras.

Thursday March 12th Manhattan

Today we visited the Morgan Library and Museum at 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street. This collection was started by Pierpont Morgan, one of the greatest financiers of America in the late 1890s and early 1900s. The collection includes drawing, prints, printed books and bindings, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts, music manuscripts and Ancient near Eastern Seals and tablets. We did a quick tour and took the guided tour of his library. My daughter and I are both librarians and my wife is interested in books. If allowed we could have spent days looking over the collection!

We then walked over to the UN complex at 1st Avenue between 42nd and 46th Streets. We made it in time to get into the building but missed out on the guided tour. While there we saw an exhibit on the Holocaust. Just across thes treet is the Swords into Plughshares Monument.

Wednesday March 11th Garden City, Long Island

Today we decided to stay on Long Island. We visited the Cradle of Aviation Museum located in Garden City. This is an excellent aviation museum. It exposes one of the best kept secrets of Long Island and that is that there was a huge industry related to aviation on the Island for most of the 1900s. This is where Charles Lindbergh took off from on his momentous flight across the Atlantic. Many airplane manufacturers set up shop here. A lot of the manufacturing of the early space capsules and landing vehicles was also done here. The old Roosevelt Field is now located under a huge shopping mall of the same name.

We also watched an I-Max moved on Dinosaurs. This was very good and the animations were a bit scary at times.

Monday March 9th Manhattan again!

Monday we headed into Manhattan to see the American Museum of Natural History and the Rose Center for Earth and Space. At the latter we saw the presentation Cosmic Collisions in the Planetary Theatre. This was great! Had a short walk through Central Park on the way to the subway.

Saturday March 7th Manhattan

This day we took the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan. We then took the subway from Penn Station at 34th Street to 190 Street where we got off and walked several blocks to The Cloisters. The Cloisters is a division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and it is located in Fort Tryon Park. The park looks like a great walking park and is probably very busy on summer weekends.

The Cloisters is devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe with items arranged in roughly chronological order from the Romanesque period (ca. AD 1000 to about 1150) and continues through the Gothic era about 1150 and ending with the last flowering of this style about 1520. The Cloisters was built about 1938. If you are ever in NYC this is worth seeing.
Our admission fee included access to the main Metropolitan Museum of Art at 5th Avenue and 82nd Street. We have been there at least twice before. This time we decided to see the section devoted to European paintings. The Dutch and French paintings were very interesting. The Italian paintings were mostly religious but well done. I didn’t like the Spanish paintings at all. The day was sunny and the temperature was about 60 F. Had to remove and carry my winter coat. Many New Yorkers were out in their shirt sleeves.

Friday March 6th Vacation

We have been away for two weeks and I have decided to provide an update on what we did.

March 5th we headed south to Long Island to visit our daughter who is teaching Library Science courses at Long Island University. On Friday the 6th we took a break and drove out to Jones Beach on the south shore of Long Island. This is a super beach with miles of sand, facing out onto the Atlantic. There are always waves present with a minimum wave height of about 1 foot.

We did the 2 mile boardwalk health walk round trip. That is 4 mile or about 6.6 km.

March 1, 2009

I have just finished going through the following book:

Ancestors of American Presidents, by Gary Boyd Roberts. 2009 Edition. New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Mass. 2009.

If you have any New England ancestry, chances are you will have one or more ancestors in common with American Presidents. I find I now have ancestors in common with 15 American Presidents: Washington, Van Buren, Fillmore, Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Cleveland, Taft, Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, Nixon, Ford, Bush I and Bush II. All of these connections are from my mother’s side of the family.

The latest issue of the Record has two Kip(p) references (pages 38 and 59), both of which I have added to my Kip/Kipp genealogy. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol. 140, No. 1, Jan, 2009. Marriages Recorded in the Register of the English Lutheran Church, New York City, 1794-1810 and Marriages from the Ladies’ Monitor and The Weekly Visitor or Ladies’ Miscellany, New York City, 1801-1803.

Work on the Kip/(p) genealogy has been slow lately. Probably I will not be updating the file until May or June of this year. Web site: ca.geocities.com/ekipp@rogers.com. On World Connect my Kip(p) stuff is identified with edwkipp8.