Eight Miles West — a family's four centuries in America

A family's four centuries in America — from New Amsterdam to the Pacific, one document at a time

by Michael V. Krewson

A hand-drawn colour map of the southern tip of Manhattan in 1660: the fort at the bottom, a wall across the top, streets and garden plots between, and the East River shore lined with small houses — The Castello Plan — New Amsterdam in 1660, drawn by Jacques Cortelyou, the year Garret Croesen landed across the river at Breuckelen. The fort at the foot of the island, the wall that became Wall Street across the top, and between them the garden plots and house lots of about 1,500 people, several of them in this book. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This is the story of one family becoming American, read from the documents it left behind. It begins with a cooper from Winschoten who landed across the river from New Amsterdam around 1660 and married a girl born in the colony, and it follows their descendants — Croesen, Kroesen, Kroessen, Kreuso, Cruse, Krewson, a dozen spellings of one name — across the Kill to Staten Island, into Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on to Ohio and Iowa and the Pacific coast, and into the twentieth century's wars. Every chapter says which of its sentences rest on a document, which are inferred, and which are family legend.

19 chapters published so far · About the book and its sources

"Seems like the whole Krewson line all the way back to the 1600s had these problems with rifts over disagreements… but no one was talking about what they were."

— Alfred G. M. Krewson to his nephew, 20 January 2005

Part I

Two Homelands, Two Flags

1605 – 1709

New Amsterdam, Breuckelen, Staten Island. The colony changes hands twice around a family that never moves.

Part II

The X on the Will

1709 – 1798

Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The surname becomes Krewson in a legal document. A family buys its freedom by instalment. The Revolution passes ten miles away.

Part III

Ohio, Iowa, Oregon

1788 – 1935

The frontier chain: four generations, one photograph, and a century the record barely sees.

Part IV

The Year the Family Broke Apart

1935 – 1971

Los Angeles, Tulsa, Dublin, Berlin, the North Atlantic, Vietnam.

Part V

The People Who Kept This

1915 – today

Who wrote it down — and why a four-star general and a machinist's grandson ended up looking for the same cooper.