"My dad, D. B. Van Valkenburgh, came back from the Indianapolis meeting with an article mentioning that there were supposed to be some gravesites in Jacksonville of some Van Valkenburghs. The article mentioned the old St. Nicholas graveyard.

"I moved to Jacksonville about 3 years ago and thought it would be a nice adventure for a sunny day to find the graveyard. No one had ever heard of the graveyard. But there is a neighbor-hood that is called the St. Nicholas area. The Nicholas graveyard is a black graveyard. Not a likely choice for us, and it is huge. But, there on the map was a little green square near the river. Being that older neighborhoods were closer to the water, we went tracking down the green square.

"There was a small graveyard with the sign Old St. Nicholas Graveyard. It was locked, but there was a telephone nearby to call. Called the number. The man who answered said his grandmother started the graveyard in 1839. He told me where we could get a key. Got the key, went to take pictures. Decided to figure out who this VV was------Used the old set of books I had and when researching, found out that Jacob VV was my father's grand-father's brother. WOW!

"There is the gravestone of Jacob VV, born Kinderhook, NY, 1794, died March 3, 1879. There is the gravestone of Robert B. Van Valkenburgh, born, Prattsburg, NY, Sept. 20, 1821. Died Aug. 1, 1888. Soldier, Statesman, Jurist.

"Then there is the gravestone of Annie Simpson, Wife of Robert B. Van Valkenburgh. Born Londonderry, Ireland 1827, Died Sept. 5, 1887."

This is exciting--received a call this morning from WILLIAM BRANDON of Michigan. Learned of NAVVF through the Internet. He is a descendant of #492,663, but nothing further of his branch in our volumes. HOWEVER, he will be able to add A LOT to the 492,66 family. He IS a Van Valkenburg, but his great-grandfather changed his name from Van Valkenburg to Brandon (along with several other "aliases"!) Bill and his brother have found Van Valkenburg stones in a Fla. cemetery, and he has a lot of other stories of his family that he is anxious to share. He said he would be joining NAVVF right away, and he knew we would be hearing from a 'SLEW' of his families.

The 492,66 branch is carried through just one of the 5 sons, and that is 492,662--but only daughters are born to thereon. Bill mentioned that one of the offspring in the 492,66l, 2, 3, 4, & 5 sons had NINE sons--so hopefully maybe some of our UNKNOWNS will fit in there. Bill and his brother have accumulated a significant amount of genealogical info of this branch, NONE of which do we have recorded. I hope we hear a lot more from that family