The Progenitors of the family who adopted the Ostrander Surname in America
Pieter² Pietersen (PP²) of Amsterdam who married Rebecca³ Traphagen (Willem², Johannes¹) on or about 19 January 1679 in Kingston, Ulster County, NY was the son of Pieter¹ Carstensen of Husum (or Nordstrand) and his second wife Geesje Jans of Norden. Pieter² Pietersen was baptized in the Amsterdam Lutheran Church 3 July 1657 and his father died c1659 in the East Indies (present day Indonesia). He was the only son of his father’s second marriage and the only male member of his immediate family line to come to New Netherland (colonial New York). Consequently, Pieter² Pietersen and Rebecca³ Traphagen are the progenitors of the family that adopted the Ostrander surname around the beginning of the 18th century.
Pieter² Pietersen’s widowed mother remarried in Amsterdam 31 October 1660 to Arent Teunisen, now stepfather to PP² was a blacksmith who was contracted in Amsterdam. In April 1661, they sail on the Dutch ship De St. Jan Baptist to New Amsterdam. Arent Teunissen was to select a site near Gravesende [Brooklyn] on Long Island to build and operate a salt kettle with Evert Pietersz for Dirck de Wolfe, a major investor in the New Netherland colony.
Their Journey
De St. Jan Baptist set sail from Amsterdam after 9 May 1661, under the command of Captain Jan Bergen, with settlers and supplies for the Dutch colonies along the Hudson River in North America and arrived in New Amsterdam 6 August 1661. Among the 49 passengers on board the vessel was 4-year old Pieter² Pietersen who was accompanied by his mother (Geesje Jans), older sister (Tryntje² Pieters) and stepfather Arent Teunissen (PIER).
89 days at sea
Four days after their arrival his mother and stepfather presented a son Herman for baptism at the Reformed Dutch Church of New Amsterdam on 10 August 1661 and the witness was Mr. Evert Pieterszen.
The family soon settled on Coney Island [Brooklyn] near the village of Gravesende, where Arent Teunissen began to build a salt refinery on land that was used, predominantly by the British, as a common meadow for grazing their cattle and sheep. Opposition, harassment led to sabotage of the salt kettle venture by English villagers and the refinery was ultimately abandoned after a period of about two years. Escaping Coney Island, allied families, Cartsensen-Pietersen (OSTRANDER) and Teunissen- Arentsen (PIER) relocate to Wildwyck (a.k.a. Wiltwyck, later Kingston) from 1663/64 to 1669/70 and in Hurley from 1670 to 1677/78. The family settled in Wildwyck about six months or so after the village was attacked during the Second Esopus War in June 1663.
According to the record of his marriage in early 1679, our ancestor and family patriarch Pieter² Pietersen was a resident of Westquansengh, a tract of farmland in Foxhall which was then a 330-acre manorial estate (Fox Hall Manor), located just north of Kingston. His sister Tryntje² Pieters, then married to Hendrick Albertse[n] [PLOEG], was also an inhabitant of Westquansengh in 1679 as was his bride Rebecca.
Sometime after their marriage Pieter² Pietersen and Rebecca³ Traphagen removed southwest to the nearby Village of Hurley and one of the first records of his residency in this Dutch settlement was recorded September 1st, 1687 when he was one of several villagers who appeared before Major Thomas Chambers of Foxhall to take an Oath of Allegiance. While Pieter² Pietersen was certainly Dutch by birth, language, custom and culture, his father’s origin appears to have been Danish or Frisian as Pieter¹ Cartsensen was first reported to be “of Husum” in 1623 and of the island “of Nordstrand” in 1654. Both communities are now part of Germany but in the 17th century they were part of the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein in the Kingdom of Denmark.
When Pieter² Pietersen arrived in Wildwyck (later Kingston) at the end of 1663 he was six years old and his family consisted of his mother Geesje Jans, nine year old sister Tryntje Pieters, three year old half-brother Herman Arentsen (PIER) and stepfather Arent Teunissen. Both of his half-sisters were born in Wildwyck – Jannetje Arents (PIER) in 1664 and Gepje Arents (PIER).