History Adds Flavor to Family Reunion in Yorktown

Local history was on the menu along with the more traditional hamburgers, salads and watermelon when the Lauterbach family gathered for a picnic as part of a coast-to-coast family reunion.

About 35 family members endured the heat and humidity last week at a pavilion in F.D.R. State Park in Yorktown. Attendees came from as close as Continental Village, home of Nancy Lauterbach, a key organizer of the reunion, and her husband, Larry Fleischer, and as far as southern California. Volleyball and flying discs filled in the gaps between food and conversation.

Jeff Canning, president of the Van Cortlandtville Historical Society, spoke about the history of the area, beginning with a billion years of geologic events that shaped the Hudson River Valley of today.

His fast paced overview included native peoples, Henry Hudson’s voyage of discovery in 1609, the establishment of Jan Peeck’s (or Peek’s) trading post in the 1650s, erection of the Manor of Cortlandt in 1697, the Revolutionary War, Old St. Peter’s Church and the Little Red Schoolhouse in Van Cortlandtville, President-elect Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Peekskill in 1861 and Peekskill’s connection to the yellow brick road in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Points of interest visited during the reunion have included Stony Point Battlefield State Historic Site in Rockland County, Bear Mountain State Park, Fort Montgomery, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, George Washington’s headquarters in Newburgh, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s home in Hyde Park and Lyndhurst in Tarrytown. Family members braved 104-degree heat when they visited New York City on Friday – two degrees shy of the city’s all-time high.

Family members began arriving Tuesday and headed home Sunday. Previous reunions have been held in Portland, Ore., and in the Southeast. Denver and Hawaii are prospective venues for the next gathering, Nancy Lauterbach said.