On my father's side, we can trace our first ancestor in the "New World" to "The muster of the inhabitants the Colledge land in Virginia taken the 23rd January 1624/25." Sisley (often more often spelled as Cicely) Jordan was born in 1600, arrived in Jamestown, VA in 1610. She survived until about 1660.
On my mother's side, we can trace my Maternal Great Great grand mother arriving in NYC in 1857. She later served as a nurse in Union Army hospitals during the Civil War. My paternal grand parents.... My great Grand father was born in Austria, on December 2, 1860. He, his wife and daughter emigrated to New York in 1888. He became a Naturalized Citizen in 1920. He died on July 18, 1933. Great grand father was a pottery worker in Brooklyn, until he purchased a 65 acre farm up in Breesport, NY in 1907. The family began a new life as farmers. No electricity, no indoor plumbing. After Prohibition was enacted in 1919, great grand father added a new line... Bootlegger. He and my great grand mother distilled a significant amount of white lightning, and organized dances on their farm. It earned them a respectable income, as they had the money to install a carbide gas lighting system in the farmhouse (electricity didn't come out to the farm before the house burned down during WWII).
Great grand mother was born Frances Koudelka in Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic) near Prague on July 26, 1866. She died May 8th, 1932.
