Schermerhorn

Sometime around 1200 years ago in the northern part of Holland, prospectors followed a small river inland to a vast area of peat for digging. Being in the peat lands of the Netherlands, the river often flooded in storms, forming a wide shallow like from time to time. This earned it the name "Skir mere" which means "bright lake." This name was eventually shortened to "Schermer," which also became the name of the area around the the river's flood basin.

By the year 1250, the removal of peat and the repeated river flooding connected the Schermer river to the Zuiderzee, thus allowing for trade all the way to the North Sea. The people there settled a small village where the Schermer met another river, and they called it Schermerhorn.

Even today, the village of Schermerhorn is home to less than 900 people. Yet those bearing Schermerhorn as a surname have spread across the Netherlands and around the world. There were Schermerhorns among the original Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, and they rose to be among the earliest aristocrats of the New World. For generations the Schermerhorn name was passed down through the wealthy Dutch of New York and Brooklyn.

It was a Schermerhorn who, married into the Astor family, created the Astor hotel to rival a competing family member's Waldorf Hotel. These hotels were later merged into the famous Waldorf-Astoria. (This same Schermerhorn, Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, had a 39-foot-tall cenotaph erected for her grave at Trinity Church, not far from where I live now.)

The Schermerhorn farm, across the river in Brooklyn, had been divided and subdivided as the small village of Brooklyn grew into the second-largest city in the US. By the time of Caroline's reign over New York society, all that remained was a street running through Brooklyn (later called Brooklyn Heights): Schermerhorn Street.

Lynn and I have found an apartment, we're moving to Schermerhorn Street.