Transcript
Krissy: So my family would also in this area grow. My great grandfather would have 14 children in total between two marriages. My great aunts and uncles would own many businesses from farms to insurance agencies to restaurants throughout Schoharie County. And today I’m probably related to most of the county. Hence the reason why I left the area to get married.
One of the most notable family connections that my family has, ironically enough, is to the Berne witch. So my grandfather, his first wife would pass away. And when he was living up in Huntersland, he would become friends with a man also from Bavaria. His name was George Messer. And George would also be a widow as well. His first wife, Ava Messer, known as the Berne Witch, had passed away at the age of 21. Now George and my great-grandfather were good friends and George would find a new wife. She would come also from the Bavaria by ship. And she wouldn’t travel alone. She would actually travel with her sister. And when she got to the United States, she would come up here to Huntersland and join her husband, George, and her sister, Christiana, would stay, or I’m sorry, her sister Elizabeth, would stay in New York City.
Eventually Elizabeth would make her way up here to visit her sister and she would meet my great-grandfather. So George Messer, Ava’s husband, he would become my great uncle. And his second wife, Christiana Hawk, would be my great aunt. Her sister, Elizabeth Hawk, would be my great grandmother. And my great grandfather and her would bear seven more children. One of those would be my grandfather, Andrew. He was the one who I lived on our family farm with. I was lucky enough to be the last generation to grow up on our dairy. And I would be the shadow of my grandfather listening to many of the stories of his family and what it was like growing up and living on the farm.
My grandfather would be the only one of his siblings to get a bachelor’s degree. And continuous education, but he would also be the only sibling that would stay on the farm. He would die there in 1991 at the age of 83 years old and leaving us a legacy that we’re still unraveling today. A lot of my spiritual gifts came very freely when I was young and they were never met with resistance from my grandfather. Mostly because he too experienced a lot of the same mystical things that I also experienced. And from that state, I was able to feel comfortable and confident within myself to grow up here in Schoharie County, learning how to operate in this world without resistance of other people’s thoughts and opinions. You could call me a free-spirited child. Um, others would call me hippies and most people would call me crazy, but this freedom that I experienced allowed me to overcome a lot of adversity and traumas in my life.