If there’s one home that I can consider the “Ancestral Home”, it has to be the home of Johannes van Beverhoudt and Amey McNobney. According to the St Croix Matricals, my family held that home from 1803 until 1924. That is a total of 121 years. During my trip to St Croix, one of the things I wanted to do was to see if I could locate the houses (or house sites) of as many ancestral homes as I could. I believe I located not only the site, but also remnants of what may be the actual house my ancestors occupied for so long.
Using an old Public Works map, I located the approximate area of the homestead. Of course, there are very few house numbers listed in Christiansted, so the map is the best tool for finding addresses. The map is very old and the numbers are hard to read, so I had to estimate the locations.
When I walked to the location on the map, I didn’t see a 200-year old house. I saw a brand new building. With a sign out front. The site is the new location of the Women’s Coalition of St Croix. This was actually a stroke of luck, because looking at their page on LinkedIn, I found the address for the Coalition listed as 45 Fisher St. They moved to this location in late 2011. It seems I found the correct location. Only the house was gone.
