200 



RECREATION 



Van Linkles in the Great West, and I 

 had accordingly advertised in all the 

 Western papers for heirs to the vast 

 estate of this family ; but as yet had re- 

 ceived no reliable information. 



Still I was far from discouraged, for 

 the parties for whom I was searching 

 might not live in the settled dis- 

 tricts and consequently never see the 

 papers. 



It is a well-known fact that a body 

 of emigrants invariably leave some 

 stragglers whenever they cross a bar- 

 rier like a mountain range, and the 

 Appalachian Mountains are to-day 

 peopled with the descendants , of the 

 emigrants who were left there by the 

 stream of hardy pioneers which poured 

 over those mountains into the rich val- 

 leys of Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. 



Hence I decided that the Rocky 

 Mountains would offer me the most 

 promising field for my search for the 

 lost heirs. 



I felt little doubt of my ability to 

 identify a male Van Linkle, because 

 this Dutch-American family had a 

 unique custom of tattooing all the boy 

 babies between their shoulders with a 

 blue goose, the family crest. This 

 bird was in fact their totem mark, and 

 the ceremony of tattooing it on the 

 children was probably borrowed from 

 the Indians in early days. 



But whatever the origin of the sav- 

 age custom might be, all the known 

 male heirs were on record as having 

 had the token of the blue grass goose 

 between their shoulders, and the decora- 

 tion was frequently referred ,to in the 

 old wills and other legal documents of 

 the family. 



Failing in the quest of Bob Van 

 Linkle's possible heirs, there was still 

 another clew equally as romantic, 

 equally as indefinite, and that was Bob's 

 sister's heirs, for Robert Van Linkle 

 had a most charming and attractive sis- 

 ter who, after a romantic courtship, 

 was won and married to Col. Ozias 

 Carter, a dashing officer in the Ameri- 



can Revolution, and also a noted Indian 

 fighter, a friend of Daniel Boone and 

 Simon Kenton. Col. Ozias was so 

 much enamored with the wonderful 

 fertility of the soil and the abundance 

 of game in Kentucky that he took his 

 young Knickerbocker wife to his old 

 haunts on the "dark and bloody 

 grounds" and settled in what is now 

 known as the blue grass regions. Every 

 lawyer who has had occasion to look 

 up land titles in Kentucky knows that 

 the ancient surveys are an intermin- 

 able tangle. In early days this caused 

 many bitter disputes, and the colonel 

 becoming involved in law suits regard- 

 ing his land claims he became indignant, 

 threw up his claim and loading his 

 wagons with all the most modern im- 

 proved farm implements, firearms and 

 vast quantities of ammunition, garden 

 seeds and a small but most carefully 

 selected library of valuable books, the 

 irate Colonel bid good-bye to all his 

 friends and started for the West with 

 the intention of reaching a point where 

 land agents and boundary disputes 

 would not bother him. All trace of the 

 expedition was lost after it crossed the 

 Mississippi. There seemed to be little 

 doubt that the whole outfit fell into the 

 hands of the Indians and the Colonel 

 and his family furnished their scalps as 

 human hair ornaments for the redskins. 

 From the Carters I had small hopes of 

 finding a stray heir, but I still had 

 strong hopes of my advertisements 

 catching the eye of some possible de- 

 cendant of Robert Van Linkle, for he 

 was a very well known character in his 

 time, and so great a favorite among all 

 the Indians that even in times of war 

 he had been known to pass and repass 

 among them unmolested. 



The history of this old Dutch family 

 would be interesting, but for our gen- 

 eral reader it is not worth while to res- 

 urrect the family skeletons involved in 

 this Knickerbocker story. However, 

 we will give them the quaint legend of 

 the Van Linkles. 



