Have you ever seen a Facebook post mentioning one of your family surnames that leads to a conversation in the comments? I recently had such a conversation when another genealogist posted a surname roll-call. In the responses to that post, another Facebook user posted the OSTRANDER surname. In that conversation, I was asked if I had seen the ‘Big Ostrander’ book. Since I haven’t done a lot of research on my Ostrander line, I decided to see if I could find the ‘Big Ostrander’ book. Thus, I searched various sites that have digital copies of books.

I was able to find the book, Ostrander: A Genealogical Record 1660-1995, on Archive.org. I was able to ‘check out’ the book for an hour at a time to locate information about my Ostrander ancestry. This book traces the descendants of Pieter Pieterzeen who married Rebecca Traphagen in Kingston, New York in 1679. According to the book, his son Pieter was the first to use the Ostrander surname in New York.

His name as bridgegroom was registered in the Dutch church at Kingston, New York, as Pieter Ostrander

I was able to find my Ostrander lineage from my great-great grandmother, Mary Foster Crawford back to Jacob Ostrander (bpt 1706), son of Pieter Ierterzen and Rebecca Traphagen.

• 15961 – Mary Foster Crawford (1842-1929)
• 15800 – Caroline Ostrander Foster (1814-1871)
• 15704 – Evert / Edward Ostrander (1769-1835)
• 15680 – Harmanus Ostrander (1729-1802)
• 13 – Jacob Ostrander (bpt 1706)
• Pieter Pierterzen and Rebecca Traphagen

Below is what I’ve transcribed for my line of this Dutch family.

page 586

At one time in the past suggestion was made that Jacob was the Jacob Ostrander who was listed as a fence viewer and pound master in Ballston, Saratoga County, when that community was organized as a town in 1788. There is no evidence to corroborate this assumption, and Jacob would have reached eighty two years of age at this time, a lifetime of unusual longevity in the colonial period. Indications are that he lived his entire adult life in Ulster County.
It is more likely that the 1788 Ballston fence viewer and pound baster was Jacob’s son, Jacobus, born in 1731, whose name appears in records as Jacob, Jacobz and Jacobus. Jacobus was an early resident of the Ballston area before Saratoga County was organized and possibly as early as before the American Revolution. He moved from Shawangunk in Ulster County and appeared in records of the Reformed Dutch Church at Schaghticoke at Renssselaerwyck in Rensselaer County before the Revolution.
It was not often that the names Jacob and Jacobus were used interchangeably. A man named Jacobus might shorten his name to Cobus or anglicize it to James, while the name Jacob remained unchanged in both Dutch and English. On the other hand, Jacobus and his brother Jacob were the exception. Jacobus recorded himself as Jacob Ostrander when he appeared with his wife, Elizabeth Andrew, at the baptism of their daughter Rachel at the Schaghticoke church 12 Oct 1768. In reverse, Jacob recorded himself as Jacobus Ostrander when he and his wife Martha Bishop recorded the 11 Feb 1770 birth of their daughter Marytie in the Shawangunk Reformed Dutch Church.

13 Jacob Ostrander b Hurley, Ulster Co NY bpt 13 Jan 1706 Albany RDC Albany Co NY m 11 Nov 1726 DC Kingston Ulster Co, Maritje Roosa bpt 8 Sep 1706 DC Kingston, d/o Evert Roosa and Tietje Van Etten. Children.

15679 Catrina bpt 10 Sep 1727
15680 Harmanus bpt 22 Jun 1729
15681 Jacobs b 1731
15682 Evert bpt 30 Sep 1733 DC Kingston. On 24 Jun 1755 at Schenectady, New York. Evert was enrolled for service in the French and Indian War as a private in Captain William McGinnis’ company of militia. Eight companies of a hundred men each were raised specifically “to build one or more forts nigh Crown Point.” Each private received a bounty of twenty three shillings and sixpence for enlisting and pay at the rate of one shilling three pence per day. His outfit was “a blanket, a good Lappeld coat, a Felt hat, one Shirt, two pairs Ozanbrige Trousers, one pair shoes, one pair of Stockings”. These recruits might have been part of the colonial troops under Sir William Johnson that defeated French and Indian forces under Baron Dieskau at Lake George in New York on 8 sep 1755

15683 Abraham bpt 7 Dec 1735 DC Kingston
15684 Helena bpt 31 Mar 1738
15685 Rachel bpt 25 May 1740
15686 Johannes bpt 21 Sep 1742
15687 Mareitje bpt 12 May 1745
15688 Jacob bpt 27 Mar 1748

15680 Harmanus Ostrander b 22 Jun 1729 DC Kingston, Ulster Co NY d 3 Apr 1802 res Wallkill NY m 25 Dec 1751 RDC Shawangunk Ulster Co. Barbara Terwilliger b Shawangunk d 29 Nov 1800/1806. Children:

15697 Jacob b 2 Sep 1753
15698 Georgius Wilhelmus bpt 24 Aug 1755
15699 Annetje bpt 13 Feb 1757
15700 Evert bpt 21 Nov 1759 RDC Shwawangunk dy.
15701 Marytje bpt 8 Mar 1761
15702 Catharine bpt 21 Nov 1762

page 587
15703 Sarah bpt 31 May 1767 RDC New Paltz NY d Jan 1832
15704 Evert/Edward bpt 22 Nov 1769
15705 Jacobus bpt 30 Aug 1771
15706 Jane
During the Revolution, Harmanus served as a private in Colonel Johannes Jansens’ 4th Ulster militia regiment. Nearly fifty years old at the time, he would have been at the upper age limit for militia service.

page 589

15704 Evert / Edward Ostrander b 22 Nov 1769 Troy, Rensselaer CO NY bpt 24 Dec 1769 RDC Shawangunk Ulster Co NY d 24 May 1835 Kingston Ross Co OH bur Crouse Cem. Green Twp Ross Co m (1) 11 May 1796 New York City Presb Ch. Margaret Forbes b 30 May 1772 d 8 Aug 1824 Kinston bur Crouse Cem Children;

15792 Graham b 7 Mar 1797 bpt 26 Mar 1797 RDC Schaghticoke Rensselaer Co.
15793 Sara b 28 Nov 1798
15794 Eliza Ann b 19 Jun 1800 bpt 13 Jul 1800 RDC Schaghticoke m _ Davis
15795 Maria Fort b 3 Jan 1802
15796 Anthony Miller b 9 Oct 1803
15797 Jemima b 28 Mar 1805 d 1880 res Indiana m Samuel Brand
15798 Edward b 16 Feb 1807 bpt First Presb Ch Troy
15799 George Graham b 4 Feb 1810 First Presb Ch Troy
15800 Caroline b 23 Mar 1814
15801 Harriet b 25 Jun 1816

Evert/Edward m (2) 14 Mar 1827 Margery Sharp, d/o John Sharp and Elizabeth Denny. After Evert/Edward’s death, Margery married James McLee 22 Oct 1844
In 1813 Dr. Evert/Edward settled on the McCoy farm near Mt. Pleasant Church at Kingston, Ross County Ohio. The first physician to settle in the township, he continued in active practice until his death. Dr. Evert/Edward was instrumental in building a rough log school-house, near the old Mt. Pleasant Church, in about 1815. It was a subscription school, each scholar being assessed two and a half dollars.

page 595
15800 Caroline Ostrander b 23 Mar 1814 Kingston, Ross Co Oh d 3 Jun 1871 Warren Co IN bur Redwood Cem Steuben Twp., Warren Co IN m 14 Feb 1833 Zebulon Foster b 19 Aug 1808 Pike CO OH d 5 Sep 1889 Steuben Twp bur Redwood Cem.
Children:
15958 Edward Foster b 20 Nov 1833 Warren Co d 6 Jan 1908 bur Armstrong IL m 24 Aug 1856 Vermilion Co IL, Sarah Ann Tillotson b 15 Jan 1835 Warren Co d 5 Aug 1907 bur Armstrong
15959 Rachel Foster b 20 May 1837 Warren Co m (1) 22 Oct 1856 William B Creider b 10 Apr 1829 Montgomery Co OH Rachel m (2) Joel C. Briggs
15960 Elizabeth W. Foster b 1840 res West Lebanon, Warren Co m 13 Feb 1854 George T. Bell.
15961 Mary Foster b 28 Aug 1842 d 21 Jan 1929 KS res Dodge City, Ford Co KS m 4 Mar 1860 Washington M. Crawford
15962 William Foster b 25 Jun 1846 d 23 Nov 1907 Danville IL bur West Lebanon m Laura __ d 1899
15963 Harriet Foster b 14 Oct 1848
Caroline raised her sister’s three orphaned children. After Caroline’s death, Zebulon married Mrs. Juliet Fleming Russell on 31 Aug 1876.

Emmet Ostrander Vinton Ostrander and Collin Ostrander, Ostrander: A Genealogical Record 1660-1995 (Marceline, Missouri: Wallsworth Publishing Company, n.d.), page 586, 587, 589, 595; digital images, Archive.org, http://www.archive.org viewed online 3 February 2023.

This book of Ostrander family information could be compared to a family tree. While I will need to locate sourcing to support (or disprove) all of this information, it provides dates and places to look for sourcing.

Another piece of vital information in this book was found in the appendix: a list of the various spellings of the family names.

Whether I’ve found the ‘big book’ of Ostrander information or not, I’ve found a valuable tool that I likely would not have found without the Facebook comments prompting me to look.

NOTE: In order to get a screenshot of the appendix, I learned to use the developer tools in Google Chrome to take a screenshot. Every other method I tried was distorted. To do this I followed the directions on the site, “How to take a screenshot in Chrome without an extension“