|
BIOGRAPHY OF
THE SICKLES FAMILY.
THE SICKLES FAMILY had much to do with the early settlement
of Hudson and Bergen Counties. Zacharias Sickles, the common
American ancestor of the family, was a native of the City of
Vienna, Austria, who soon after reaching manhood drifted to Amsterdam,
Holland, where he entered the military service and was sent with
a fleet on a cruise to Curacoa, where he remained until 1655.
In the service he attained the rank of Adelborst or Cadet. In
1655 Governor Stuyvesant paid a visit to the island where Sickles
was on duty. The latter accompanied the Governor to New Amsterdam
and soon after attached himself to the garrison of Fort Orange
(Albany). In 1658 he became a tapster of New Amsterdam and upon
the surrender by the Dutch to the British in 1664 he married
Anna, daughter of Lambert Van Vaelkenburgh, and went to work
to gain a livelihood as a carpenter. In 1676 he was elected "town
herder," which office he held for thirteen years on a salary
of 18 gelders a head for the season. He was appointed rattle-watch,
so called from the rattle used to give warning in making his
nightly rounds. He was also for some time crier to call the people
together on needed occasions, and porter or keeper of the city
gates, to close them at night and open them in the morning.
In 1669 he purchased a lot of land in Bergen, N. J., on which
his eldest son, Robert, settled. The children of this son scattered
through Bergen County, where many of Zacharias's descendants
still reside. He had nine children, the eldest of whom was Robert,
who married Gertrude Reddenhause and located at Bergen, where
he was a prominent resident, and left a large family. His son
William, born in October, 1704, married Elizabeth Cooper, and
removed to Rockland County, N. Y., from which locality his numerous
descendants spread south into Bergen County, where their descendants
are still found.
Source: Genealogical History of Hudson and Bergen Counties,
New Jersey, Editor, Cornelius Burnham Harvey, The New Jersey
Genealogical Publishing Company, 1900, page 179-180.
|
