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The Falls of the Normanskill
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The Colonial Albany website (left) is very extensive and contains information about many families that you won't easily find anywhere else online, but like most genealogy, it's not word perfect. Some of the information is outdated or a little "off." For example, Storm Vanderzee's birth at sea is presented as family tradition instead of as a documented fact. An example of a more serious error is that Jan Bratt, the husband of Maria Post, was recorded as being born in Amsterdam. Not so. He was born long after the family arrived in America. But no genealogy is absolutely perfect, and the Colonial Albany website is a handy and extensive resource for the Bradt family and many others.
The "Bradt Book" is the best single source of information about Bradt genealogy, but in later supplements the author and others made corrections to it and also added many new relatives. The supplements are listed on the BFS website.
(Below) The Normanskill looking upstream from the site of the Andriessen Bratt sawmill. The stone wall under the arch span bridge is part of an old railroad embankment. "The Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts" describe these rapids as "a powerful waterfall" that Albert should be paying higher rent for.
Relative to the image above, the picture below is just above the rapids. The primitive scene below is actually just a few feet away from the railroad embankment. It was taken in 1942, before the bridge was built. Four hundred years has its effects, even on waterfalls, but the original Bratt clan would quickly recognize this setting.
