The Von Toodleburgs / Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family

Not more than a mile from the brisk little town of Nyack, on the Hudson river, and near where the road makes a sharp turn and winds up into the mountain, there lived, in the year 1803, an honest old farmer of the name of Hanz Toodleburg. Hanz was held in high esteem by his neighbors, many of whom persisted in pronouncing his name Toodlebug, and also electing him hog-reef every year, an honor he would invariably decline. He did this, he said, out of respect to the rights of the man last married in the neighborhood. It mattered not to Hanz how his name was pronounced; nor did it ever occur to him that some of his more ambitious descendants might be called on in a court of law to explain the circumstances under which their name was changed. I speak now of things as they were when the old settlers around Nyack were honest and unsuspecting, before Fulton had astonished them with his steamboat, or those extravagant New Yorkers had invaded the town, building castles overlooking the Tappan Zee, and school-houses where the heads of honest Dutch children were filled with wicked thoughts.