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This site contains several thousand names of persons who are connected to the extended family groups named above. The common characteristic of all three is that many related members lived in th community of Worcester, Otsego County, New York, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The Delongs in this country date to the Dutch baker Arie Fransen, who arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam in 1659. Descendants appeared in Dutchess County, New York, later in that century, and then in Vermont and Otsego County in the 1700s.
Ralph Smythe arrived from England by 1633, with Smith family members appearing in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and then in Greene County, New York. Descendants purchased land in Otsego County in the early twentieth century.
The Petro family origins are Slovak-American. Peter Petro, Sr. was born in the Galicia region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of western Ukraine, in the nineteenth century, and eventually settled near Cleveland. Many descendants remain in Ohio, but others have relocated to California.This extended family has included many extraordinary and remarkable people – pioneers, patriots, soldiers, statesmen, entrepreneurs and educators, among others. Yet the family itself, far from being extraordinary, is instead the typical stuff of the great American panorama. Its story invokes the full colorful fabric of the United States' own life and history. Its ancestral lines include immigrants from nearly every European nation and the occasional Native American mix. Its members are of a wide variety of religious, political and economic backgrounds. And they have the usual picaresque sprinkling of adventurers, horse thieves, train robbers, traitors, wild characters, ne'er-do-wells, and nasty types.
The DeLongs, Smiths, Petros and all their associated families hope that this site brings its viewers understanding, enjoyment, enrichment, and an eagerness to discover more.
Some surnames that appear commonly on this site include Albert, Arnold, Axtell, Babcock, Beekman, Belden, Beseau, Bonney, Bonville, Boughton, Burgess, Butler, Cattell, Chase, Chesebro, Cornell, Cornwell, Crippen, Dauley, DePan, Eckler, Flynn, Foote, France, Golden, Griswold, Hewitt, Hoye, Hubbard, Huson, Johnson, Jolls, LaForest, LaMoure, LaRue, LaSalle, Mackey, Mantz, Manzer, Mead, Meister, Mudge, Neal, Ostrom, Petersen, Platt, Pula, Putnam, Raide, Roberts, Russ, Shires, Snyder, Southard, Spooner, Sutherland, VanOrden, VanVliet,Wilbur, Wright and Zimmer.