In the summer of 2003 I visited my friend Al Witte from Hawthorne, NJ. I was back east with Mina, my wife and 2 neices Roxanne and Kelsey James all of us from Redding, California. Al and I visited some of our haunts as we went to Wayne High School class of '54. We went to the high school, the Dey Mansion where Washington had his Headquarters in 1781. We went to an old restaurant back of our high school called the..... Then we went to the historic Schuyler-Colfax House which is near the edge of Wayne Township. We were sad to see it was closed o the public at the time as renovations were being planned in waiting of funds. I took many digital photos while we were there and we walked around the grounds and up to the family graveyard where Hester Schuyler and her husband William Colfax are buried. I had decided at that very time that I would write a book about Hester Schuyler and her family and this historic house. I told Al of my interest at the time there. I think he may have suggested that we go out to the Van Riper-Hopper House, another historic house out near Berdan Avenue where he had lived nearby on a farm. So we wen here and me Carol D'Allesandro, the Director of Wayne Township's Histoic Programs. I made my interest known to Carol and she said that there was no book of that type she knew of written yet. She helped me get started and suggested I read UNDER THE SIGN OF THE EAGLE and printed out some materials for my start in research for the story of Hester Schuyler and her family. She said she would email me other information from time to time as I was involved in the research for the book on Hester Schuyler. She took Al and I upstairs to see the Colfax and Schuyler family trees. I took digital photos of both for further research. Carol said she would put me in touch with Dr. Jane Colfax De Nike who owned the Schuyler-Colfax House and recently sold it to Wayne Township. She was the last member of the Schuyler Colfax family to live in the house and was now living in North Carolina. I began researching in earnest and bought a few books at the Van Riper-Hopper House that I thought would get me into the process. That Fall after I got back from my family visit to Wayne, New Jersey, I began reading UNDER THE SIGN OF THE EAGLE and researching on the internet. I wanted to find out all I could from the net as well. There was quite a bit of information on the Schuyler family as hey were a prominant and very patriotic family of the Colonies.