The next destination on my Virtual Hike was to Charging Bull statue near Wall Street, NY.

The previous destination on my virtual hike was Sloatsburg, New York.

The virtual hike from Sloatsburg was mainly through the New Jersey suburbs west of New York City, but started out through the Ramapo pass that leads up into Upper New York from New York City.

The hike first went though areas that were not too densely populated, but the density increased as the route went south.

To make it across the Hudson River I needed to take a ferry as I would not have been allowed to cross through the tunnels or over the bridges on foot. Here is a great view of Manhattan from where the ferry crossed.

Once in Manhattan a lot of the route was along the Hudson River on promenades by the shore.

The destination for this segment of the virtual hike was the Charging Bull statue which is near wall street and is representative of Wall Street.

There was a very specific reason to choose this spot as it is right by where some of my ancestors lived in New Amsterdam.

You can see here an old map that shows where Abraham Pietersen Van Deusern owned a lot in New Amsterdam. You can see that it is right on Broadway.

Overlaid on a satellite map you can see that just across the street from their lot is the Charging Bull statue.

Abraham Pietersen Van Deusern is the immigrant ancestor of my Van Duzor line which is back through my Grandma Braman. My branch of the family moved north up into the Tappan, Sloatsburg and Cornwall areas in the 1700’s. They then moved a bit further west to south of the Finger Lakes after the Revolutionary War and on to Iowa after the Civil War.

The next destination on my Virtual Hike is to a place where I have been to before in New Jersey and where someone famous lived.

I have been setting shorter distances between destinations for better motivation for my daily walking and so far it has been working. I have been walking more each day and have made good progress on my Virtual Hike. I am still a few stops behind on my posts.

I will now be heading west and have some interesting stops planned that are both family and history related.

Steven

Images in this post are from Google Maps and Street View.