43 From Rycken's Island to Ricker's Island: My Ancestor's Footprint on New York City

 Abraham Rycken Van Lent – My Maternal 8th Great Grandfather

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 43 – October 21, 2025

Prompt: Urban

New Amsterdam Becomes New York City

New Amsterdam (Nieuw-Amsterdam) was a 17th-century Dutch Colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland before it became New York City.

Located just outside Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, the colony was established by the Dutch West India Company to protect its fur-trade interests along the Hudson River.

On August 27, 1664, four English frigates entered the harbor and demanded surrender. Director-General Peter Stuyvesant reluctantly ceded control, and by 1665 the city was officially incorporated under English law and renamed New York in honor of the Duke of York — the future King James II.

Abraham Rycken Van Lent and the Birth of an Urban Legacy

Among the Dutch settlers who helped build that early city was my maternal 8th great-grandfather, Abraham Rycken Van Lent (1619–1689). Born in Lent, Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, he arrived in New Amsterdam around 1638 and received a land grant from Governor Kieft in 1640.

The Lent Family History describes those early days:

“A friendship was established between the Dutch and the Indians… and by the assistance of the Indians the Dutch moved their goods on shore and began the settlement of the place.”

The Dutch purchased land from the Native people in 1643, paying with goods rather than money:

“8 guns, 9 blankets, 5 coats, 14 fathoms of duffel cloth, 14 kettles, 40 fathoms of black cloth… 50 pounds of powder, 30 bars of lead, 18 hatchets, 18 hoes, 14 knives…”

In return, they received seven thousand acres of land. Among these early settlers, “Richard Abrahamson afterwards took the name of ‘van Lent,’ the ‘van’ signifying ‘of’ or ‘from’ the land of Lent in Holland.”

The Rycken Homestead and Riker’s Island

Abraham became a prominent farmer and landholder in what is now Queens, New York.

The Rycken family homestead still stands today — a timber and fieldstone house built around 1656 along an old colonial trail in northern Queens. Over time, the family name evolved through spellings like Ryck, Rycken, and eventually Riker.

Adjacent to the house lies the Riker Family Cemetery, containing some of Queens’ oldest burials, including Abraham’s descendants — one who served at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War.

In 1664, Abraham Rycken received title to a small offshore island from Peter Stuyvesant — an island that would one day bear the family name: Riker’s Island.

What was once a pastoral tract on the edge of New Amsterdam has become one of the most notorious urban sites in America — home to New York City’s Department of Corrections since 1935.

Rycken House: A timber and fieldstone dwelling built on a colonial trail in what would become northern Queens County in about 1656. 

Ricker's Island today. 

Today Rikers Island is a 413-acre prison island in the East River in the Bronx, New York,  that contains New York City's largest jail.

Named after Abraham Rycken, who took possession of the island in 1664, the island was originally under 100 acres in size, but has since grown to more than 400 acres. The first stages of expansion were accomplished largely by convict labor hauling in ashes for landfill. The island is politically part of the Bronx, with a bridge being the only access available from Queens. It is part of Queens Community Board 1 and uses an East Elmhurst, Queens, ZIP Code of 11370 for mail.

From Farm to Metropolis

It’s hard to imagine the quiet fields and trading posts of Abraham Rycken’s world beneath the planes and traffic of modern New York City. Yet his footprint remains visible in the very fabric of the city — from Riker’s Island to the centuries-old stone walls of the Queens farmhouse that still stands.

Family Connection

Abraham Rycken Van Lent was my maternal 8th great-grandfather.

His line continued through his son Ryck Abrahamson Van Lent, then through Abraham Rycke Lent, Isaac Van Lent, John Luyster Lent I, John Lent II, Jacob Lent II, John Moes Lent, Elizabeth Lent, Lucinda Jane Crull, Elizabeth Moore, and Margaret Ella Nolen — my mother.

Closing Reflection

Four centuries ago, Abraham Rycken Van Lent helped build a city on a harbor that would one day become a global metropolis.

From a farmer’s fields to skyscrapers, his land and his legacy have endured beneath the concrete and steel of New York.

His story reminds me that urban history is family history — built one generation at a time.

42 Our Vacation Went Up In Smoke

 

My Wallis Family – Parents and Siblings

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 42 – October 14, 2025

Prompt: Fire

When I was growing up, our family vacations always included two things: miniature golf and banana splits. One thing we didn’t expect was a hotel fire.

Ralph, Libby, Storm and Dave playing miniature golf. 

In the summer of 1960, my parents and two brothers, Dave and Storm, took a family vacation to the Gulf Coast in a 1960 Chevy station wagon—red with a white top. I was six; my brothers were thirteen and twelve.

Home base was Gulfport, Mississippi. We stayed at the Sea Isles Hotel Court. Our unit had a living room and at least two bedrooms (I probably slept on a roll-away bed in the living room). We were right across the street from the beach.

Storm, Dave, and Libby at the pool. See the Gulf waves breaking in the background. 

Storm, Libby and Dave. I had to wear my leotard as a bathing suit to protect my shoulders from sunburn. 

One of our day trips was to Bellingrath Gardens in Theodore,  Alabama near Mobile.

Another day trip was an excursion to Ship Island aboard the tour boat Pan American. The island is home to Fort Massachusetts, a beautifully preserved brick fort from the Civil War.

A storm was brewing, and after a short time on the island, we heard the captain sounding the horn to return to the boat. The wind was blowing the sand so hard it felt like needles on our skin. On the way back, Dave got to stay up on the open-air top deck “with all the drunks.” The rest of us hunkered down inside, hoping the boat and the beer-scented passengers made it safely to shore.

Pan American boat to Ship Island

Pan American boat returning from Ship Island. 

But that was not to be the most exciting part of the trip.

One afternoon Daddy stayed at the motel to take a nap while Mom and us kids went across the street to the beach. Suddenly, we heard a fire truck and saw it turn into our motel. We gathered our towels and scrambled across the street to see smoke billowing from the rooms on the back side of the complex. Our unit was on the front side—safe from the flames, but heavy with smoke.

Storm ran inside and grabbed my “Cathy Doll,” the Madame Alexander baby doll I’d had since I was a baby. Daddy was beaming with pride when he said, “Look, honey—I got our suitcases out!” Unbeknownst to him, Mom had unpacked them earlier. Everything we’d brought on the trip was ruined with smoke damage, except what we were wearing—which, for Mom and the kids, meant nothing but bathing suits. Daddy was the only one with a shirt and shoes.

Even a jar of Noxzema was covered with soot—inside the jar. Mom sent Daddy to a local store to buy her a “house dress” and shoes so she could go shopping for replacements for the rest of us.

---

Closing Reflection

Looking back, the fire might have been the most memorable souvenir of that vacation. We lost our clothes but kept our sense of humor—and my Cathy Doll.

Every family trip has its mishaps, but this one taught me something about the kind of people my parents were. They laughed instead of cried, found dinner in bathing suits and borrowed shoes, and turned disaster into one more family story that still warms me today.

Sometimes “fire” doesn’t just destroy—it forges the memories that last.

A vintage postcard of our vacation home. 

41 Ships, Pins, and Promises: Uncle Frank and the Waterways of War

 Ships, Pins, and Promises: Uncle Frank and the Waterways of War

Frank Francis Coon – My Maternal Great Uncle

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 41 – October 8, 2025

Prompt: Water

When I was little, my mother told me about the letters she used to write to her Uncle Frank. One of them came back, stamped “Undeliverable — No Forwarding Address.” I still have that envelope, postmarked January 18, 1946, and addressed simply to Frank Coon, General Delivery, Portland, Oregon.

Frank had gone west to help build ships during World War II, but by the time her letter reached Portland, he had already moved on. She told me he used to send home pins — one for each ship completed — small tokens of pride from a man whose life had once taken a very different course.

Frank Coon, my maternal great uncle. 

Frank Coon holding his great nephew, David Wallis, June 1945.

A Boy in Trouble

Frank Francis Coon was born February 29, 1893, in Springfield, Missouri, the oldest son of Josiah Coon (also known as Joe Moore) and Lucinda Crull. The family lived in Tulsa, Indian Territory as early as 1900, but life was not easy.

In 1910, thirteen-year-old Frank made the local headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Sapulpa Evening Light called him “the first Tulsa County youth to be sentenced to the new reform school at Pauls Valley.” His crime? The “purloining of a roll of lawn hose.” The paper described him as troublesome, an incorrigible boy who would spend the next eight years learning a trade — a harsh sentence for a child who’d already seen too much loss.

Eight years later, in 1918, the Tulsa Daily World ran another story under the headline “Does Some Tulsan Wish a President?” The tone was different this time. Frank was described as bright, manly, and ambitious — “anxious to make good.” He was first in his class at the State Industrial School, and the superintendent wrote that he’d become “a boy any man would be proud to have.”

The paper invited readers to give him a home. Perhaps someone did. Perhaps, as often happens in life, he found his own way.

Working the Land — and the Lines

When the WWI draft was registered in 1918, Frank was working as a pipe fitter for Cosden Oil Company, part of Tulsa’s booming petroleum industry. Over the years, he learned the trades that built Oklahoma: groundman and lineman for the Public Service Company, section hand for the Sand Springs Railway, and eventually, after decades of hard work and hardship, a shipbuilder.

The boy who once stole a hose to play with water now helped build the great ships that carried it — vessels that would sail far beyond his landlocked Oklahoma roots.

To the Water’s Edge

By 1946, when my mother’s letter came back from Portland, the war had ended. The Kaiser shipyards in Oregon, where men like Frank worked, were already winding down. It was a place of urgency and purpose — where thousands of Americans, men and women alike, built Liberty ships and victory vessels at a breathtaking pace.

Even if I can’t say exactly which shipyard employed him, I can imagine the scene: sparks flying from welders’ torches, cranes swinging steel plates into place, the smell of salt and oil in the air. Each launch was marked by celebration and exhaustion — another ship off to sea, another small victory for peace.

Frank Coon and his sister, Elizabeth Moore Nolen, looking at sailor boy, Leonard "Sonny" Nolen, probably Christmas 1951. 

The Man Who Stayed Ashore

Frank never went to sea, but his work sailed the world.

The pins he sent home were small reminders that even from the edge of the Pacific, his hands had touched history.

After the war, he returned to Oklahoma. In his later years, he lived quietly in Skiatook, not far from his sister Elizabeth Moore Nolen — my grandmother. He died there on November 8, 1970, at age 77, after a lifetime that had started with missteps and ended with quiet dignity.

Closing Reflection

The boy who stole a roll of hose so he could play with water grew up to build ships that crossed oceans.

He disappeared and reappeared throughout his life, leaving behind little more than newspaper clippings, a returned letter, and the story of redemption that runs like a current through generations.

Uncle Frank didn’t go to sea, but his work sailed the world. The pins he sent home were small, but each one marked a vessel that carried someone else’s brother, husband, or son across the water.

40 Rich Man, Poor Man: The Story of William Scott

William Scott, My maternal step-great grandfather

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 40 – October 1, 2025

Prompt: Cemetery

This week’s prompt, Cemetery, led me back to Oaklawn Cemetery in Tulsa, where my great-grandmother Lucinda Crull Coon Boone Scott rests. I’ve walked through these records many times, but only recently realized how many chapters of her life converge here—three husbands and two children, connections that span decades of Tulsa’s early history. It’s fitting that her final husband, William Scott, purchased the first lot in Oaklawn. Nearby lies her first husband, Josiah Coon, and second husband, Lew Boone, a horse trader whose life curiously mirrored William’s. Both William Scott and Lew Boone made their living around horses—and both now rest within sight of one another.

When I came across the obituary of William Scott, I was immediately struck by the headline: “Centenarian Dies, Riches to Rags Tale.” It could have been lifted straight from a storybook—or from the nursery rhyme that inspired my blog’s title, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The next line of that rhyme is “Rich man, poor man,” and it fits William perfectly.

His was a life that stretched from privilege to poverty, from race tracks to bottle collecting, and from early Tulsa’s rough-and-tumble days to the quiet stillness of Oaklawn Cemetery, where his story came to rest beside Lucinda.

The Rich Man

According to his obituary in the Tulsa Daily World (November 12, 1935), William Scott was born in Scotland on Christmas Day, 1832. He came to the United States as a boy and eventually found his way to the young city of Tulsa, where he became known as a wealthy horseman and one of the area’s early pioneers.

He owned and operated Tulsa’s first race track near West Second Street—a place lively enough to draw both excitement and suspicion. At one point, it was placed under martial law for illegal gambling.

Guarding the entrance to Tulsa Race Track with bayonets when it was under martial law due to illegal gambling. 

Early Tulsa harness racing, reminiscent of the days when William Scott was known as a “wealthy horseman.”

For a time, William lived well—raising fine horses, managing the track, and earning a reputation as one of Tulsa’s colorful figures. But as the city grew, fortunes changed, and so did his.

The Poor Man

The obituary paints a vivid picture of William’s later years: a once-prosperous man reduced to selling bottles to make a living. He collected discarded glass for the Kerr Glass Company in nearby Sand Springs and lived “in a humble dwelling at Joe Station" with his wife, Lucinda.

Even in his nineties, William remained active. He was reportedly still walking the streets and talking to friends about the old days up until three months before his death. At 103 years old, he became the oldest patient ever treated in a Tulsa hospital.

And yet, despite the losses and hardships, there’s something quietly triumphant about his story. He lived through eras most only read about—horse-drawn wagons to motorcars, frontier trails to paved streets—and left behind more than a line in a newspaper.

Lucinda and the First Lot

In 1912, at the age of eighty, William Scott married my great-grandmother Lucinda Crull Coon Boone. She was twice widowed and resilient—a woman who had known both hardship and heartache. Their marriage, though late in life, seems to have been one of companionship and endurance.

According the obituary, William Scott purchased the first lot ever sold in the newly established cemetery in 1907. Today, that lot—Section 17, Block 516, Southwest Quarter—tells the story of the men who shaped Lucinda’s life.

In grave 1 lie William and Lucinda together.

In grave 2 rests her infant son, Baby Boone, her youngest son

In grave 3 lies Frank Coon, her oldest son 

And in grave 4, Josiah “aka Joe Moore” Coon, Lucinda’s first husband and the man long believed to be my grandmother’s father.

Not far away lies her second husband, Lew Boone, the horse trader whose path echoed William's own, 

All of them—husbands and children, connections from every chapter of her life—share the same small piece of ground that William purchased so many years ago.

Obituary of William Scott, Tulsa Daily World, November 12, 1935.

Centenarian Dies, Riches to Rags Tale

William Scott, Wealthy Once, Sold Junk for Living Lately

William Scott, native of Scotland, pioneer resident of Tulsa, during whose century of life fortune and wealth were his only to be snatched away in declining years, died today in a Tulsa hospital little more than a month short of the age of 103.

Active until only three months ago, the weight of years finally overcame the rugged endurance of Scott, who until that time had earned a living for himself and his widow, Mrs. Lucindia Scott. He was admitted to a Tulsa hospital for treatment for complications of age, the oldest patient ever to receive the institution’s ministrations. Physicians administered artificial nourishment, but attempts to prolong his life failed.

Born on Christmas day, 1832, Scott came to the United States at the age of eight years. His family settled in the east, where he spent his youth and early manhood. According to Mrs. Leonard Nolen of Sand Springs, granddaughter of Mrs. Scott, Scott had come to Tulsa in the early part of the twentieth century and was at that time wealthy.

Interested in horses and racing, he owned considerable livestock and had an interest in Tulsa’s first race track, located near West Second street. In 1912, he married Mrs. Lucindia Moore here. Before that time he had never been married, Mrs. Nolen said.

His wealth melted away during the past 20 years and for the past several years, Scott made a living for himself and wife by collecting glass and bottles, which he sold to the Kerr Glass Co. of Sand Springs. He maintained a humble dwelling at Joe Station. Besides Mrs. Scott, the only known relatives are four step-grandchildren.

Funeral rites will be held at Moore’s Funeral Home at 2 p.m. Wednesday. Burial will be in Scott’s lot in Oaklawn Cemetery, which he bought in 1907, the first lot sold in the then new cemetery.

Closing Reflection

The nursery rhyme says, “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief…” But in family history, those lines blend together. William Scott was both rich and poor, both bold and humble, both remembered and nearly forgotten.

In the quiet of Oaklawn Cemetery, stories overlap like the rings of a tree—each layer telling of hardship, endurance, and the unpredictable turns of life on the frontier. The man who bought the first lot couldn’t have known that one day, it would hold so many people his wife had loved.

Lucinda Crull Coon Boone Scott, in her later years — a woman who outlived three husbands and rests today in Oaklawn Cemetery, Tulsa.

39 Great Grandfather, George, the Gambler

George Neal, My maternal Great Grandfather

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 39 – September 24, 2025

Prompt: Disappeared (and Found)

DNA matches uncovered a new branch in my maternal grandmother’s family tree—one that led to a man who seemed to live by chance and disappear by choice. My great-grandfather, George Neal, was born in Illinois in 1864 and grew up in Sycamore, a rural community in Montgomery County, Kansas.

George Neal, photo from the collection of Betty Neal McBride Curran, shared by her daughter Shelley McBride.

In 1881, according to the South Kansas Tribune, George “went to The Nation,” referring to the Cherokee Nation in Indian Territory. Yet by the 1885 Kansas State Census, he had reappeared in Sycamore with his wife, Fannie Whiteman, and their two-month-old baby, Laura Belle.

By 1890, George was back in Indian Territory—his son Thomas Andrew Neal was born near Standpipe Hill in what is now Tulsa, according to Thomas’s granddaughter, Maria Neal Scott. Fannie died there in 1892.

When the 1900 census was taken, Laura Belle and Thomas Andrew were living with their mother’s sister and brother-in-law. George is missing from that census, but evidence suggests he remained in the Tulsa area, a widower who crossed paths with my great-grandmother, Lucendy Crull Coon Boone, herself twice widowed. Their connection resulted in the birth of my grandmother, Elizabeth Moore, and her twin brother Bill, in 1904.

Life in early Tulsa could be rough-and-tumble, and George Neal sounds like just the type of man my great-grandmother was attracted to—remembering her second husband, Lew Boone, who was shot following a horse race.

On November 13, 1906, both the Tulsa Tribune and the Tulsa Daily Democrat reported that four gamblers had been arrested. Two—including George Neal—were charged with operating a gambling house and fined $24.40 each; the other two men, fined $14.40, had simply been gambling.

Image: Tulsa Daily Democrat, November 13, 1906 — “Four Gamblers Arrested.”

The brief article that first placed George Neal in Tulsa’s early days, living by his wits and a roll of the dice.

 By 1910, George reappears in the census for Black Dog Township, Osage County, Oklahoma, about nine miles north of what is now Pogue Airport near Sand Springs. He was 47, widowed, living alone, and supporting himself as a well digger.

For years, I believed that 1910 census entry was the last trace of George Neal—that he had disappeared, at least on paper. An unsourced note on my Ancestry profile listed his death in Wekiwa (another small community near Sand Springs) in either 1908 or 1910. I couldn’t remember where that information originated—perhaps from his granddaughter Maria, or his great-grandniece Shelley McBride, who helped me figure out the DNA connection. By the way, Shelley’s mother, Betty Neal Curran, told us that George was known to have had other children. I even contacted Woodlawn Cemetery in Sand Springs to ask if George was buried there. He wasn’t.

But while creating George’s timeline for this very post, I ran another search on Newspapers.com—and found him again.

Two local papers carried the same article: the Tulsa Tribune on Tuesday, June 14, 1910, and the Tulsa Weekly Democrat on Thursday, June 16, 1910.

Transcript of the 1910 Article

George Neal

The body of George Neal, aged 50 years, who was found dead in a tent about two miles southeast of Wekiwa, was brought to Tulsa yesterday and is being held at the Mowbray Undertaking Parlors awaiting messages from his daughter Mrs. Laura Boyce of Fairfax, Okla., and his two sons and brother at Shawnee, Okla. ( The papers erred—George had only one son, and two brothers in Shawnee.)

Tulsa Tribune, June 14, 1910 - Reporting the death of George Neal. 

His death came just two weeks after my grandmother, her twin brother Bill, and sister Anna were taken to the Sand Springs Home to be cared for. Their mother, Lucendy, was living at 111 S. Phoenix, Tulsa.

For more than a century, George Neal had disappeared from the family’s story, his name unknown to us. But now, through DNA evidence and old newspaper pages, he has been found again.

I have not yet discovered the burial location for either George or Fannie.  Tulsa Genealogy Society Funeral Home Index lists George Neal, death date June 11, 1910, burial unknown, in Volume 8, covering several early Tulsa undertakers, including Winterringer Funeral Home—the one active at the time of his death. 

 

Closing Reflection

George Neal lived a life that balanced on the edge of fortune—a gambler in cards and in circumstance. He wagered on new beginnings, from Kansas to the Cherokee Nation, and ultimately disappeared from the records, leaving his story to fade into silence.

It’s no wonder, perhaps, that my great-grandmother Lucendy was drawn to him. Like her second husband, Lew Boone, who met his end after a horse race, George moved through a world of risk and restless energy. Both men lived boldly and died suddenly, leaving behind more questions than answers.

Yet more than a century later, George, the gambler, was found again. Through DNA, old newspapers, and a bit of genealogical luck, his story came full circle—reminding me that the ones who disappear often leave the richest trails for us to follow.