Technically this post should be about the father of Jans Pieterse Meet, Pieter Jansen Meet. However, what little I know of Pieter Jansen Meet can be written in two or three sentences. He married Styntje Jacobs in Amersfoort, Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1654 and came to New Netherlands in 1663 with their four children, ranging in age from 19 to 3, and died in 1695 in Hackensack, New Jersey. So far that is what I know of the immigrant father, although I'll be looking for more information about him.
Jans Pieterse Meet (somehow some of the family became Meads) was just three years old when the family came to New Amsterdam on the ship "Rose Tree" in 1663. It may or may not have been a surprise to the family that about a year later, they were no longer living in a Dutch colony, as England took it over in 1664. Still, although the government was now English, the colony and all the settlements around it were composed of Dutch immigrants, and the family would have found friends and possibly relatives already here. There were people to "show them the ropes" of how to live in the New World.
We don't know what trade or occupation Pieter Jansen practiced, but his son Jans Pieterse was a weaver. He may have learned this from his father, or he may have been apprenticed in some fashion to another tradesman. Of course, he also acquired land as he matured. On May 11,1687, he was married to Grietje Mandeville, the daughter of Gilles Jansen de Mandeville and Elsie Hendricks on Manhattan Island. He was listed as a "poll" at Bushwick but by 1692 the new family was living at Flatbush, which appears to be a different location, although both are part of what is now the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
The record of where he lived and when is a bit confusing. He purchased property in 1695, 500 acres in what is now Mountain View, New Jersey. He joined the Dutch Reformed church in Hackensack in 1699. Yet in 1703 he was reported as living in New York City There were at least 6 children born to this couple-Maretje, Jan Janse, Jacob Janse, Christina, Elsje, and Gilles, but it's not clear where each was born. On October 7, 1710 he and three other men purchased 1000 acres in Morris County, N.J. He's believed to have died in New Jersey.
He wrote his will on November 1, 1709 and is thought to have died about 1714. I haven't yet located a copy of the will, but reports are that it wasn't probated until April 27, 1745, if that last date isn't a typographical error. I'd love to find the will, and an inventory, and if the 1745 date is correct, try to figure out why it took almost 30 years for this to go to probate. But for now, that part of the story is a mystery.
The Beeks family has so many interesting lines in it, from German to Dutch to English to French, but for some reason the Dutch lines particularly intrigue me. I'm glad to know this much about this family, even though I wish I knew more! Most of the information in this post came from the information on Geni, a Rootsweb post, and the Mills-Burkholder genealogy. I'd like to find more!
The line of descent is
Jans Pieterse Meet-Grietje Mandeville
Maretje Meet-Peter Demarest
Lea Demarest-Samuel David Demarest
Sarah Demarest-Benjamin Slot
William Lock-Elizabeth Teague
Sally Lock-Jeremiah Folsom
Leah Folsom-Darlington Aldridge
Harvey Aldridge-Margaret Catherine Dunham
Cleo Aldridge-Wilbur Beeks
Mary Margaret Beeks-Cleveland Harshbarger
Their descendants
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