Do you live in the same area as your ancestors? Or, are you like me and moved away from your ancestral home? My husband and I moved to northeast Kansas when we took teaching jobs. Neither of us have close relatives in the county.
However, I share several surnames with the early settlers of the county: Wells, Crandall, Thompson and of course, Smith. Those surnames are too common for me to expect to find a relationship. However, there is another surname in the local cemetery that I have claimed as my relative: Ostrander.
Charles Ostrander, his second wife, Carrie, and two of his children are buried in the Seneca City Cemetery. His Find a Grave memorial indicates he was born in 1837 in Albany County, New York, the son of Petrus and Margaret (Strafford) Ostrander. Since I recently found a copy of the book, Ostrander: A Genealogical Record 1660-1995 on archive.org, I think I can figure out his heritage.
Unfortunately, the book and FamilySearch have an 1845 birthdate for Charles Ostrander. Other details in the book support the information on the Find A Grave site.
page 44
581 Charles Ostrander b 25 Dec 1845 Albany NY d 27 Aug 1921 Kansas City Mo ur Seneca KS cem m(1) 4 Jul 1860 Kankakee IL Louisa Gay b 4 Dec 844 Kankakee IL d 7 Jan 1931 Millersburg Il bur Millersburg cem, d/o James Gay and _ Children:
1315 Charles Burton b 9 Sep 1861Charles m (2) 1872 Carrie Edwards b Jun 1849 McLean City IL bur Seneca KS cem res Pawnee City Ne, d/o William Edwards and _ _ Children:
1316 Getrude D. b Feb 1873 d Kansas City Mo bur Seneca cem
1317 Jessie dy bur Seneca Cem
If the Charles Ostrander buried in Seneca is #581 Charles Ostrander in the book, then his ancestry goes back to Pieter Pieterzen (Ostrander) and Rebecca Traphagen, oldest son of Pieter Pieterzen and Tryntje an de Lande.
page 5
Pieter
In his youth, Pieter would have been known as Pieter Pieterzen but by the time of his marriage in 1704 to Rachel Dingman, his name as bridgegroom was registered in the Dutch church at Kingston, New York, as Pieter Ostrander, marking the first appearance of the surname in the spelling as it is now commonly accepted. the wedding took place not at Kingston but in the home of the bride’s parents in Kinderhook, across the river from Albany, and perhaps as a forecast of the many spelling variants that would be used until well into the nineteenth century, the name of the bridegroom was registered in the Albany Dutch Reformed Church on 31 May 1704, five days earlier than in Kingston, as “Pieter Van Oostrant”.
Rachel Dingman was the fourth of seven children born to Adam Dingman and Aeltie Gardenier. Adam Dingman had immigrated at an unknown date from Harlem, Holland, and by 1663 was living in Greenbush, New York. In 1669, the year of his marriage to Aeltie Gardenier, Adam bought a house and farm he was renting in Kinderhook from his father-in-law, Jacob Janse Gardenier, known in his younger years as Jacob Janse Flodder. this man, Rachel Dingman’s grandfather, had done very well for himself since immigrating in 1638 as a servant or helper from Kampen, Overysselpage 6
province, Holland. Four years later he was appointed as contract carpenter at Rensselawerwyck, and from there he went on to become an operator of grist and saw mills in Greenbush and Bethlehem, builder and owner of a mill at nearby Firth Kill, owner of land near the water gate in Albany, owner of property on the north side of wall Street in Albany which he parceled off and sold as lots, and owner of a sloop that carried mail and merchandise up and down the Hudson. Gardenier was one of the early settlers of Kinderhook, having bought land there from Mohican Indians in 1667. At the time of his death in 1688, Jacob Janse Gardenier owned approximately a thousand acres of land.
In 1684 Adam Dingman and Aeltie Gardenier bought from Jacob Janse Gardenier another fenced property and house, this one on the south and east sides of Kinderhook hill, and in 1684 they made another land purchase in Kinderhook from Maas Cornelisse Van Bloemendaal, the husband of Aeltie’s half sister, Jacomyntje. In 1675 and 1676 when local inhabitants built and maintained their own roads. Adam Dingman served as roadmaster of Kinderhook. In April 1679 he commenced a year’s service as deputy sheriff.
Pieter Ostrander Jr and Rachel Dingman made their home in Hurley, three miles west of Kingston in Ulster County, New York. In 1714 his name appeared as a Hurley inhabitant owning property assessed at twenty pounds sterling, while on the same list his father, Pieter Ostrander Sr. is shown as a freeholder with property assessed at eighty five pounds. A freeholder was a person whose income from land amounted to at least forty shillings a years, and with that distinction came the right to vote and exercise a voice in government. Anyone with less income was listed as an inhabitant only without voting privileges.
The two Pieters, father and son, were the only Ostranders on the 1714 list, but in a 1728 sheriff’s list of 380 Ulster County names, Pieter Jr and his younger brothers Arent, Theunis and Hendrick were all shown as freeholders. Pieter Ostrander Sr their father was not listed, indicating perhaps that he had distributed some of his landholdings among his sons. It is noteworthy that four years previously, in 1724, Pieter Sr. then seventy one years old, had refused to pay his taxes. The matter was laid before th Ulster County supervisors but before action was taken, the third son in the family, Arent, came forward with the money on his father’s behalf.
In 1717, a year of uneasy peace, Pieter Ostrander Jr. thirty seven years old and with seven children, served as a private in the Ulster County militia company of Captain Wessel ten Brock.
Pieter Pieterzen b 1652 in Holland m 19 Jan 1679 Rebecca Traphagen in Kingston, New York5 Pieter Ostrander b ca 1680 Ulster Co NY m 4 Jun 1704 RDC Kingston, Ulster CO Rachel Dingman b ca 1683 Kinderhook, Columbia Co NY d/o Adam Dingman and Aeltic Gardenier
Children
18 Rebecca bpt 13 Jan 1706 RDC Albany, Albany Co NY
19 Adam bpt 12 Jan 1707
20 Petrus bpt 6 Feb 1709 RDC Albany
21 Catrina bpt 4 Feb 171
22 Alida bpt 21 Mar 1714 RDC Kingston
23 Willem bpt 12 Jun 1715 DC Kingston
24 Jacob bpt 24 Mar 1717
25 Johannes bpt 6 Dec 1719 RDC Kingston
26 Alia / Alida bpt 23 Sep 1722
27 Isaac bpt 30 May 1725
28 Sarah bpt 25 Feb 1728 RDC Kingstonpage 7
24 Jacob Ostrander bpt 24 Mar 1717 RDC Kingston, Ulster Co NY m17 Apr 1740 Rhinebeck Flats RDC Rhinebeck, Dutchess Co NY Jacomyntje Ostrander bpt 20 Dec 1719 RDC Kinston d/o Arrent Ostrander and Geertruy Maasen an Bloemendaal
Children:
42 Petrus bpt 6 Jul 1740
43 Johannes bpt 19 Apr 1742
44 Isaac bpt 12 Octr 1746
45 Cornelius Mas bpt 4 Jan 1749
46 Sarah b 4 Sep 1750
47 Leah bpt 27 Mar 1754 m Jonathan Ostrander of the Arent branch bpt 13 Jan 1748
48 Hendrick b 24 Sep 1756
49 Gerrit b 26 May 1760 bpt 1 Jun 1760 Rhinebeck Flats RDC, Rhinebeck d before 1787.page 9
42 Petrus Ostrander bpt 6 Jul 1740 RDC Kingston, Ulster Co NY d Jun 1815 Bern Albany Co NY m Albany NY Catharina Ehring d/o Karel/Carl Ehring and Catharine _
Children
90 Jacob b 19 Jun 1773
91 Charles b ca 1773
92 Wilem b ca 1775
93 Petrus b 14 Apr 1777 bpt 19 May 1777 RDC Albany, Albany Co
94 Catharine b 24 Jul 1779
95 Hendrick b 15 Apr 1781 bpt 7 May 1781 GIlead Lutheran Church Center Brunswick, Rensselear Co NY
96 Marta
97 Samuel b 2 Jul 1785
98 Christian b 15 Jan 1787 bpt 3 Apr 787 Trinity Lutheran Church West Sand Lake Rensseleaer Co NY d 16 Nov 1872 New Salem RDC Albany Co m 26 Jan 1811 Helena Van Aerman b ca 1790 d 14 Dec 1863 bur Fairview cem Guilderland NY d/o Isaac Van Aernam and
99 Jemima b 4 Oct 1787page 13
97 Samuel Ostrander b 2 Jul 1785 bpt 17 Jul 1785 Trinity Lutheran Church, West Sand Lake, Rensselaer Co NY d Apr 1855 Duanesburg Schnenctady Co NY bur Princetown RDC Duanesburg m Catharien Westvall/Westfall b 1786 d Oct 1869 bur Princetown RDC Children
page 14 – children continued
197 Petrus b 2 Nov 1805
198 Barbara N
199 Catharine M _ Leiws 200 Samuel Jr b 1818 201 John b Oct 1829 202 Mary b 1831 res Cobleskill NY m _ Fullerpage 22
197 Petrus Ostrander b 2 Nov 1805 bpt 6 Apr 1806 Helderbergh Reformed Dutch Church, Guilderland NY d 1868 Kankaer IL es 1850 Iroquois Co Il m Margaret Strafford b 1811 NY d 1855 Shawnee KS bur Shawnee d/o Charles and _
Ostrander: A Genealogical Record 1660-1995 on Archive.org
children:
577 Samuel b 1837 NY
578 John b 1840 NY
579 Peter b 1842 NY
580 Martin b 1844 NY
581 Charles b 25 Dec 1845
582 Ira b 1846 NY
583 Ellen b 1852 IL
If this is the correct lineage, then Charles Ostrander of Seneca, Kansas would be my 5th cousin 3 times removed.