American Pie

Among my ancestors, first on my mother's side, then my father's, are a Mohawk Indian chief and the burgermeister of a northern German village. Thayendanegea, aka Joseph Brant, fought valiantly against the Americans in the Revolutionary War. He died in 1807, and a Canadian general hospital in Burlington, Ontario carries his name today. I never learned the burgermeister's name. As a boy growing up in western Pennsylvania my grandparents explained to me that he had been shot to death in 1935, ...