The Family Ridge-a-way

Oh, I will sing a saga 'bout our country's early day,
and the settling in the new land of the family, Ridge-a-way.
It all began with Richard, three hundred years ago,
and where it all will ever end, no man can ever know.

Richard was a tailor, who, in Berkshire, England dwelt,
close kinsman of nobility, and of an Earl, as well.
But, there was unrest at that time in their society,
and just across the ocean was a land to set them free.

Richard planned the journey with Elizabeth, his wife,
to the new land, where there family could realize new life.
They bid farewell to kith and kin on their embarking day.
The Jacob and Mary of London, brought them safely on their way.

Arriving in the Delaware, they found land undefiled
in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where they sojourned for awhile.
Settling near Penn's Manor, Richard's family thrived and grew,
but when New Jersey beckoned, they picked up to start anew.

In Burlington County Courthouse, he was judge for nineteen years,
serving early settlers and esteemed among his peers.
The land along the coast was still a wilderness those years;
take pride that it was tamed by our ancestral pioneers.

Richard's heirs were preachers, lawmen and proprietors of goods.
They took their livings from the land, the waters and the woods.
Richard's grandson, Timothy, in seventeen twenty nine
married Sarah Cranmer of Barnegat - their sons kept up our line.

Three centuries have passed now, since Richard came this way,
and his descendants are in numbers, as the shells along the bay.

-Lillian Arnold Lopez "Pineylore"

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