The following article is excerpted from the Introduction to By Faith Alone, One Family’s Epic Journey through 400 Years of American Protestantism (Harmony Books, 2007)

THIS JOURNEY OF MINE BEGAN WHERE ALL JOURNEYS END, IN A GRAVEYARD.

One Sunday afternoon I persuaded my wife, Cindy, and our teenaged children, Chad and Carlee, to take a drive from our home in New Jersey to the far reaches of northern Westchester County, New York, because I had evidence that suggested we might have ancestors buried there. We were looking for members of the Woolsey family (Woolsey had been my grandmother Griffeth’s maiden name).

Eventually we ended up in Bedford Hills, a town forty miles north of New York City, where residents are as likely to ride horses as to drive cars. After several twists and turns on dirt roads that took us past a number of horse ranches, we came upon an old cemetery in a clearing of trees. The sign at the front gate said Bedford Union Cemetery, and roughly twenty yards behind it we could see a large stone monument with WOOLSEY carved into it. (Excerpt from New England Ancestors Magazine, published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society.)

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