Just a note I have a DNA match to Alberti, although it is a low probability match. Five percent of my DNA was low probability matches to various countries. Here is his story:
Excerpts from "Long Island's First Italian, 1639-Peter Caesar Alberti By Berne A. Pyrke"
On May 28, 1635, in the evening, the ship de Coninck David, Captain David
Pietersen de Vries, skipper, mounting fourteen guns and with a crew of
five and twenty men, dropped anchor far down the bay into which the
River of the Prince Mauritius poured its water, gathered in the far
mountains. Two days later a boat was lowered, into which clambered
Captain de Vries and five of the crew. Without an inkling of the fate in
store for them, the oarsmen bent to the task of propelling the heavy
boat to Fort Amsterdam, five Dutch miles away. No one of the boatload
other than the skipper himself was destined ever again to tread the deck
of the de Coninck David or of any other vessel. We may guess the reason
for this labored method of approaching the fort. Two years before,
de Vries had had an unpleasant experience with Wouter Van Twiller, the
director general, which still rankled. Van Twiller had searched his
ship, confiscated a few beaver skins, charged de Vries with violation of a
regulation of the colony, and at one point in the controversy, had
ordered the guns of the fort trained on de Vries' vessel, and threatened
its destruction. This was bitter medicine to be swallowed by the
proud-spirited de Vries, outstanding navigator of the Netherlands and
co-founder of the ill-fated Swanendael of the South River, the more
unpalatable coming from Van Twiller, just risen from a clerkship in the
office of the Company in Amsterdam. De Vries had lodged a complaint in
the home office and Van Twiller had learned of it from Kiliaen Van
Rensellaer, his uncle. Under the circumstances, it was prudent for
de Vries to feel out the situation before bringing his ship within gun range of the fort. There
was urgency, however, in the call. The de Coninck David was leaking
dangerously, and facilities for repair being lacking in the Virginias,
de Vries was forced to make the unplanned run up the coast to New
Amsterdam in search of assistance. On arrival at the fort, de Vries found
Van Twiller still holding forth, but weighted down with troubles and in a
mellow and co-operative mood. Shortly before, he had sent an armed
force to the South River to suppress an attempt at colonization by a
band of Englishmen from Point Comfort, Virginia, who had seized the site
of abandoned Fort Nassau. He had captured the intruders and brought them
to New Amsterdam, but was a wit's end to dispose of his troublesome
guests. In addition, the English were again becoming aggressive at the
Fresh River. All in all, he welcomed the opportunity to consult the
experienced de Vries, who was well versed in the ways of the English and
had established cordial relations with the settlers in the Virginias. De Vries,
deep in conference with Van Twiller, and not indifferent to Van
Twiller's unexpected hospitality, decided to remain at the fort while he
sent his crew back to the ship. Providentially for him, as it
developed, he had found at the fort, one Flips Jansz, an experienced
pilot formerly in his employ, and he engaged Flips to accompany the crew
and to bring in the ship. To the decision to remain at the fort de Vries
owed his life.
With the return journey nearly completed and the de Coninck
David but a mile or two away, a violent thunderstorm arose which the
small boat found difficult in weathering. Filling with water it went
entirely out of control. Two of the panic-stricken crew, Frenchmen, went
overboard in a desperate attempt to swim to the ship and were drowned.
Towards nightfall two more jumped into the water in a hopeless effort to
swim to shore and were seen no more. This left Flips Jansz and de Vries'
boatswain alone in the boat. For two days and three nights, the boat was
tossed back and forth, the plaything of the maddened waves. In the
afternoon of the third day the boatswain announced that he would abandon
the boat. Flips' resignation to Providence brought reward. Within a
quarter of an hour of the disappearance of the boatswain the boat was
cast through the heavy surf to the shore of Long Island. Mustering his
remaining strength, Flips dragged himself five or six paces from the
water and fell exhausted. Friendly Indians found him, carried him to
their habitations, and brought word of the tragedy to the anxious
de Vries. Earlier, de Vries, mystified by the failure of the ship to
arrive, sent one of the company's yachts to bring in the vessel, and
without further untoward incident this was accomplished.
When the
de Coninck David made contact with the wharf, one of the crew, without
ceremony leaped ashore, and with quickening pace moved into its shadow.
The name of this ex-sailor, for he was to be a lands-man henceforth, was
Pietro Caesar Alberto. A native of Malamocco, Republic of Venice, the
first of the Italian race to become a settler in New Netherlands, and
probably in all of North America, and the progenitor-to- be of all in
America of the name Alburtis of Burtis, names once very common on Long Island. This
informal and unplanned entrance into New Netherlands of Alberto is
veiled heavily in mystery. He had been tentatively identified, by Louis
P. De Boer, a Specialist in Old World antecedents of early American
settlers, as Guilo Caesare Alberti. He had been baptized in the parish
church of San Luca on June 20, 1608, as the son of Andrea Alberti, Secretary
of the Ducal Treasury of Venice, and Lady Veronica, his wife. An older
son, Pietro, it seems, had died previously, and later, when another son
was born, he was also named Pietro, but to avoid an ill omen, was
baptized Guilo. Skepticism is in order when high birth is imputed to
early settlers in New Amsterdam.
In 1635 life was hard and drab, and the
rewards of effort meager. In that feeble community, struggling to
complete its first decade of existence. In fact, it was without doubt
one of the last spots on the planet, where one should have searched for a
scion of the proud House of Alberti. A notable family of Gothic or
Lombardic origin, widely spread in the south of Europe in the disturbed
days of the Holy Roman Empire. The New Amsterdam of 1635 was badly and
arbitrarily governed, and largely neglected by its sponsor, the Dutch
West India Company. Hedged about with savages of uncertain disposition
and unpredictable behavior, and already feeling the uncomfortable
pressure of the expanding and land-hungry Yankees to the north, they
were also forced to meet an occasional aggression from the English well to the south.
It
was in that precise year that the New England Council granted to
William, Earl of Stirling, all of Long Island, under the name of the
Isle of Stirling, and accompanied the grant with a stern denunciation of
the Dutch settlers as intruders. This may have seemed, at the time, as
little more than an un-neighborly gesture, but it was deeply portentous of
things to come. In a score and a half of years, Colonel Nicholls, an
Englishman, with an ample fleet at his back; would, with one daft,
utterly lawless, though bloodless strike, sponge all of New Netherlands
from the map. Making effective the regal gift of other people's property
to the Duke of York and Albany, at the hands of his delightfully
generous brother, Charles II.
It is conceivable that Albert's engagement as a crew member on the
de Coninck David was animated by a spirit of adventure and that his
impulsive decision to throw in his fortune with New Amsterdam was an
escape from unhappy, perhaps intolerable, relations with de Vries, who
seemingly lacked enthusiasm for Italians. Once in a description of the Indians, de Vries remarked, "They are very vengeful, resembling the Italians." Thirst
for adventure was an inborn quality of the Venetians, exemplified in
its most bizarre form in the fabulous journeys of Marco Polo into the
vastness of Asia, resulting in discoveries fully as momentous as those a
little later in the New World of his fellow Italian, Columbus. In truth
it was the enchanting tales of Polo, of the riches and wonders of
distant China, which fired the imagination of the people of Europe and
led indirectly to the discovery of America. The voyage of Captain de Vries
in 1634 to South America was calculated to appeal to a spirit of
adventure. The fourteen guns gleaming on the deck of the de Coninck David
testified pointedly that this was not to be a pleasure cruise. The
Thirty Years' War was in full swing and to the natural perils of a
trans-Atlantic voyage of that day, were the added hazards of seas haunted by vessels of war, privateers, and pirates.
The
outward voyage of two months to Guinea was commonplace enough for the
circumstances of the period. The thirty planters were landed in their
new home and set to work. After a month spent in organizing his new
colony, which like the earlier one at Swanendael, was destined to a short
life, de Vries sailed for Virginia in the expectation of recouping the
cost of his voyage by exchanging the merchandise of his cargo for good
Virginia tobacco leaf. Barely had he started when tidings came of
dangers ahead. A refugee told of his escape from the Spaniards, "who had
killed between 500 and 600 Englishmen". A little later, off the West
Coast of Spain, de Vries encountered a fishing boat with a wood sloop in
tow, filled with English refugees who had fled from the island of
Tortuga to escape Spanish vengeance. The boats were so laden with human
freight that they could not move and de Vries was importuned to take
fifty of the unfortunates to a place of safety. De Vries was willing but
his crew objected that in such a time it was dangerous to take on board
so many strangers, outnumbering the crew two to one. After a long
"discourse" in which de Vries sought to quiet the fears of the crew by
pointing out that the strangers were not seamen but planters who would
not run away with the ship, the views of the skipper prevailed and the
Englishmen were taken on board. The reluctance of the crew is
understandable in a time when piracy thinly disguised as privateering
was one of the most popular, as well as rewarding, forms of patriotic
enterprise.
It is possible that Alberto may have been one of the leading
insurgents in this attempt to flout the captain's authority, and the
incident may have been the deciding factor in Alberto's determination to
break the bond with de Vries. The event determined that de Vries'
judgement was sound, as the refugees were safely landed in Virginia,
where de Vries unloaded his cargo and after a month's delay pointed for
New Amsterdam for repairs to his leaky vessel.
Whether Pietro Alberto was
patrician or plebian, the story of his subsequent life in New
Amsterdam, as it can be reconstructed in broken outline from the sparse
records that have survived three centuries, has interest. There is no way
of knowing the reception which Alberto was accorded when he suddenly
injected himself into the life of New Amsterdam which is described as
containing "a roving waterside population of sailors, longshoremen and
traders, including many rough and shiftless characters". But if there was
any lifting of eyebrows at the appearance of this unusual type of
"foreigner", Alberto could have retorted, in the words of St. Paul, "I
am a citizen of no mean city". For Malamocco had for centuries been one
of the great powers of Europe, despite its small territory and a
permanent population never exceeding 200,000. Dubbed the "Mistress of
the Adriatic", it was much more than that. It dominated the carrying
trade of the Mediterranean and was an important factor in the coastal
trade along the Atlantic seaboard, and its mariners had no superiors
anywhere.
Alberto's first years in New Amsterdam are enshrouded in
mystery. Nothing is known beyond the fact that he followed a humble but
useful occupation to win his daily bread. We first hear of him in 1639
and in an interesting connection. De Vries was back in New Amsterdam,
this time not on his own ship but in a trading vessel of the Company.
Again he was bent on founding a colony, this time a patron-ship on
Staten Island. Alberto was planning a reception for him, but not in the
modern Grover Whalen manner. In January of 1639 Alberto jailed de Vries
to compel payment of wages remaining unpaid from the 1635 voyage.
De Vries, always belligerent, defended the suit on the ground that Alberto
had deserted the ship - as indeed he had - and thereby forfeited the
balance unpaid. Alberto was able to produce a witness to show
justification for leaving, in that de Vries and twice on the voyage
threatened to set Alberto ashore, once in Cayenne and later in Virginia.
The court awarded Alberto ten guilders.
In the same year there is
evidence that Alberto had moved up a rung or two in the economic ladder,
for on December 15, 1639, he entered a contract with Pieter Montfoort
to make a plantation and build a house at the Waal-Bogt "Bay of the
Foreigners". It was not until a year and a half later that Alberto
secured a patent for the land from the Director General and council of
New Amsterdam. Four years subsequently he received a second patent for
an adjoining parcel. It is plain that Albert took possession before
acquiring formal title. He may have entered into possession under an
Indian purchase, but more likely as a squatter, counting upon securing a
confirmatory grant form the Dutch authorities in due season. The two
farms had a river frontage of about 700 feet, and with the land of
Michael Picet, comprised the area now laying between Claremont and
Hampden Avenues in modern Brooklyn.
It is a certainty that Alberto was
one of the first occupants of land on the Long Island Shore of the East
River, and he may well have been the first producer of tobacco on Long
Island. It is a pleasing fancy that he derived his idea of becoming a
tobacco grower and his understanding of the appropriate cultural
practices during the month that the de Coninck David was berthed in the
Virginias. The first patent for a "tobacco plantation" in New Netherlands
was granted to Thomas Besher on November 28, 1639, a few weeks before
Alberto made the contract with Montfoort to make a plantation and build a
house. Besher's land was "on the beach of Long Island", probably at
Gowanus. There is no way of determining whether Alberto or Besher was the
first to make a tobacco crop, but surely Alberto was among the first
planters of tobacco on Long Island. Three years before, Jacobus Van
Curler was the patentee of an extensive area which became New Amersfoort
and later Flatlands, but there is nothing at had to indicate that
tobacco was a crop there. The next glimpse we get of Alberto was when he
embarked on his greatest adventure, marrying a wife. Among the early
marriage records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam is the
following entry:1642 den 24 August, Peter Petro Albert, j.m. Van Venetian en Judith Jans, j.d. Van Amsterdam.
The
bride was the daughter of Jan Manje and his wife, Martha Chambart. The
Manjes were probably Walloons, that ancient and interesting race of
French-speaking provinces of southern Netherlands, many of whom having
fled into the northern Netherlands to escape religious persecution were
ready immigrants to New Netherlands. They constituted the first farmer
element in the new province. Jan Manje has some claim on fame because of
being one of the very few casualties of Kieft's insensate Indian War
whose identity can be definitely established. As he lay dying from
wounds received at the battle of Stamfor, Connecticut (1644), he availed
himself of a soldier's privilege of making a nuncupative (oral) will by
declaring his testamentary intentions to Councilor La Montage. La
Montage, a distinguished physician, while opposed to the war, led the
Dutch forces and was Manje's commander, and the appropriate person to
receive, and later confirm in court, the dying man's last wishes. Both
de Vries and La Montage had protested but without avail when Kieft had
declared earlier his intention "to wipe the mouths of the savages".
In
the twelve years following the marriage of Pietro and Judith, seven
children were born to them. All were properly baptized in the New
Amsterdam Dutch Church and given mainly Dutch names - Jan, Marles, Aert,
Marritje, Francytie, Willem and Francyn. In selecting names for their
offspring Pietro and Judith followed the Dutch custom in naming their
first and second-born, Jan and Marles (Martha) for the maternal
grandparents. If the practice was adhered to in the naming of the
children later born, it may be inferred that the name of the Father of
Pietro was Arturo or Gugliermo, rather than Andrea as suggested by
De Boer. Of the seven children, Francytie died in infancy and Marles
probably did not reach maturity. The early home of the Albertos was on
the Heere Graft (Broad Street), from which they moved prior to 1643.
This street in early days was "the favorite dwelling place of the
quality", but it is not intended to suggest that the Albertos were of
that rank. Both Pietro and Judith died shortly before November, 1655.
From an allusion in the records to the "stewards of the Deat (dead) and
of the Indian sufferers" in connection with the guardianship of the
children, an inference has been drawn that they lost their lives in an
Indian raid, to which their location on Waal-Bogt might have exposed
them. There is no record of how the orphaned group were held together in
their precarious situation, following the deaths of both parents.
Fifteen years or more later, the records show that the daughters have
married and the sons have moved from the Waal-Bogt up Newton Creek and
become established at Maspat Kills. Contact with that English community
has Anglicized the Dutch given names: Jan has become John, Aert Arthur,
and Willem William. John, married Elizabeth, daughter of John Scudder,
and early became a substantial property owner and a citizen of
recognized standing. Alburtus Avenue in Queens is a present day reminder
of the rank of the family in Newtown two and a half centuries ago. Arthur,
married Elizabeth, daughter of James Way, a favorably known
English-born Quaker, settled in the Foster's Meadows section of
Hempstead about 1690 and became the progenitor of the Burtises who for
decades were numerous in Hempstead and Oyster Bay. William, whose wife was Mehitabel, moved, about 1701, from Newtown to New Jersey, and eventually became lost to view.
The
evolution of the family named Alberto, to the present day style Burtis,
is not lacking in interest. The Dutch of the New Netherlands did not
generally use surnames. When Pietro Caesar Alberto appeared among them,
his full name, especially the cognomen, Alberto, gave them difficulty,
and never received complete acceptance. In the records he is described in
more than a score of styles, ranging from Pietro Malamocco to Peter
Schoorsteenveger, the first indicative of his place of origin, and the
second descriptive of his early vocation in New Amsterdam. These
variations arose not from uncertainty on the part of Alberto as to his
true name, but generally from the language predilection of the clerk, or
sometimes the dominie, preparing the document or entering the record.
In the court action against de Vries, Alberto was described as Cicero Pierre.
It was doubtless a clerk trained in French who wrote the name Pierre.
The substitution of Cicero for Caesar occurring in this instance and
once five years later when Alberto receipted for his wife's share of her
father's estate, cannot be explained except on the ground of the scrivener's confusing the names of the two classical writers, Caesar and Cicero. With
the fondness of the Dutch for nicknames, it is a certainly that Alberto
in the common speech of the community was called "Peiter the Italian",
more formally Pieter Ceser, and occasionally Pieter Mallamacque. The
Latin form "Albertus" is clearly a gift of the church through the
classically trained Dominie Everardus Bogardus. In that period men
attached to the learned professions and particularly individuals
engrossed in the classics affected Latinized name forms, of which
Everardus Bogardus is an example. Through the baptismal records of the
New Amsterdam Dutch Church the Latinizing process at work on the name
Alberto can readily be followed. At the time of his marriage, there is
no touch of the Latin in the recording of his name as Peter Petro
Alberto, but with the baptism of the first child the Latin becomes
manifest. When Jan was baptized the father is entered as Petrus Petro
Alberto. At the baptism of the second child, Marles, there is a slight
backward step, as the father becomes Cesar Alberto, alias Pieter de
Italian. Two years later Aert is baptized, and there for the first time
the Latin Albertus appears, the father being described as Caesar
Albertus. For more than thirty years thereafter and extending down to the
second generation, the form "Albertus" is consistently adhered to in
the church record. The last family entry was made on October 1, 1676,
when Judith, the child of Jan Pietersen Bandt and Marie Pieters
(Alberto) was baptized and the child's uncle was recorded as a witness
under the name of "Willem Albertus". Dominie Bogardus may have been in a
whimsical mood in applying the Latinizing technique to the Alberto
family. Conscious that not a few Dutchmen, himself included, had dubbed
themselves with Latin names, he may have concluded that it was fitting
that the only real Latin among them should, regardless of cultural
attainments, be accorded a similar dignity. The change from Albertus to
Burtis was probably not in the beginning a matter of decision by the
family. The Latin name Albertus was hard for the Dutch to handle, and at
an early date it was occasionally the shortened, even in the records to
Burtes, Burtos or Burtis. Eventually, the family conformed to the
practice of the community, and in about the fourth generation the name Burtis was in nearly universal use. Member
of the Burtis family intermarried with a considerable portion of the
early Long Island families, including Baylis, Bedell, Carman, Clowes,
de Bevois, Dorlom, Duryea, Foster, Fox, Hendrickson, Higbie, Linnington,
Mott, Remsen, Van Nosterand, Way and Wycoff. The family speedily became known as Dutch as indeed it was, reflecting the preponderance of Dutch blood through intermarriage. At
the normal rates of proliferation there should be in the United States
at the present time, upwards of three thousand persons who embody the
Alberto genes. Yet, probably not more than a score of them have
awareness of their descent from the venturous, industrious, resolute
Pietro Alberto.
Three centuries ago, finding himself, by the whim of
fate in an alien community, he adapted himself to his new environment,
as if to the manner born. He conformed to the prevailing religion of the
community, took to himself an Amsterdam wife, presented his children at
the alter of the Dutch church for baptism in Dutch names, in short,
became a Dutchman in everything but name and blood. But more important,
he established himself as a worthy prototype of the hundreds of thousands
of his countrymen. Who, in the intervening years followed his blazed
trail to our shores and through their abundant gifts of body, mind and
spirit, have contributed significantly to the development and well-being
of this, their adopted land.
Pietro Caesar Alberto, Alberti, Albertus *
(1608 - 1655)
is our 9th great grandfather
son of Pietro Caesar Alberto, Alberti, Albertus *
daughter of Jan John Albertis *
daughter of Elizabeth Alburtis *
daughter of Mary Jane Stewart *
son of Barbara Ann Reid *
daughter of John Read Long *
son of Nancy Jane Long *
daughter of Levi Springer *
daughter of Mary Mariah Springer *
son of Mary Lou Ella Stewart *
