What this is, where it comes from, and the rules it keeps.
What it is
A family history, written as narrative non-fiction and published one chapter at a
time. The family is the one that landed at Breuckelen (Brooklyn) around 1660 as
Croesen and has been spelled Kroesen, Kroessen, Kreuso, Cruse and
Krewson since — the author's own. It is written by Michael V. Krewson, a
tenth-generation descendant of the cooper, and published under his name; the rest of
this domain is kept as Mr. Librarian, and the two are the same person. The book follows it from the Dutch colony
through the English takeover, into Pennsylvania, across the frontier to Ohio and Iowa,
and into the wars and breakages of the twentieth century. It is written to be read
here first, in order, and compiled into a printed book when it is done.
The working title is Eight Miles West: the family's first move, in 1677, was
a boat ride across the Kill from Gowanus to Staten Island, and every generation after
went further in the same direction.
Where it comes from
Warren D. Cruise, The Croesen Families of America, Vol. I (Gateway
Press, Baltimore, 1998) — the family's own published genealogy of the 1600s, drawn from
the Manhattan and Brooklyn church books, the New Amsterdam court minutes, the Staten
Island patents and the Bucks County wills, most of them transcribed in full. Quoted
throughout, with page numbers; not reproduced. Among its credited contributors is
General Frederick J. Kroesen (1923–2020), who researched his branch of the family
for forty years, some of it in the Netherlands while commanding the United States Army
in Europe.
The colonial record itself — the Reformed Dutch Church baptisms and marriages
(Collections of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society), the Court Minutes
of New Amsterdam, the Esopus journals of Martin Cregier (in Documents Relative to the
Colonial History of the State of New York), the Labadist travellers' journal of
1679–80.
Family papers — the letters of Alfred G. M. Krewson, the family's own
genealogist, written 2000–2005; certificates, wills and photographs in the family's
keeping; an annotated photograph of ten people, c. 1890.
The rules it keeps
Documented, inferred, or legend — every chapter says which. A date from a
church book is stated as fact. A date worked back from someone's age is stated as an
inference. The Cherokee (or Blackfoot) great-grandmother is stated as what it is: a
story the family told, which the family's own genealogist could not resolve.
Sources at the foot of every chapter. The build refuses a chapter without
them. A reader must be able to check the document behind a claim.
The hard parts stay in. A father who took his mother-in-law's money and left
four children in Tulsa; a will that priced a family's freedom at eighty pounds; a
twenty-nine-year quarrel between two brothers over a burned will. The family's own
genealogist, asked in 2005 why the family had never built up land or wealth like others
of its vintage, answered that the same rifts reached "all the way back to the 1600s."
That answer is the book's thesis and it is not softened.
Living people are written about with their knowledge.
If this is your family too
If you are a Croesen, Kroesen, Kroessen, Cruse or Krewson — or a Staats, Nevius,
Cregier, Bergen, Van Artsdalen or Stickler — some of these people are your ancestors as
well, and you may hold a document, a photograph or a story this book does not have.
Write in. Corrections are the most useful thing anyone sends.