Provost's Early Settlers of Bushwick | New York Genealogical & Biographical Society

Author

Andrew Jackson Provost, Jr. (1867-1963) was a civil engineer with a lifelong interest in genealogy. His Biographical and Genealogical Notes of the Provost Family was published in book form in 1895 when he was only 28, but the genealogies he completed later in life are typescripts, copies of which he placed in selected libraries including the NYG&B Collection now at the New York Public Library.

Among his works, perhaps the best known is Early Settlers of Bushwick, Long Island, New York, and Their Descendants, four volumes with a total of some 522 pages of text plus separate indexes for each volume. The NYGB Collection copies at NYPL are kept offsite and must be requested in advance, because they are more easily accessed at Ancestry.com and HeritageQuest Online. Also, genealogyCDs.com offers all four volumes on an inexpensive disc. The Family History Library has the four volumes on microfiche 6081347 (16 fiches).

Following is a list of the families covered in each volume. In each case he traces the first few generations in America. As with most of Provost's work, these compilations must be used cautiously, as he sometimes drew erroneous conclusions from his data. Nevertheless, for some of these families, Provost's genealogy is the only one available. As noted below, some of the families have been treated by other genealogists, whose accounts may be superior to those of Provost. However, Provost's work on those families should still be examined, as he may include information omitted by the other authors, or offer clues that the other authors did not pursue.

Volume 1

Published in 1949, covers:

Christina Cappoens and Her Descendants
Van Zandt Family (descendants of Adam Wensel; see also article by Howard S. F. Randolph, FASG, The NYG&B Record vol. 61 [1930])
Bennet Family (descendants of Willem Adriaensz; see Wilson Ledley's more extensive genealogy of this family, Record vols. 93-95 [1962-1964])
Meserole Family (descendants of Jean)
Pieter Praa and Descendants (see also vol. 3; John R. Totten's "Praa-Bennet Notes" in the Record vols. 65-66 [1934-1935] deals with Praa and several other of these families)
Dirck Volckertszen and His Descendants (see also vol. 4)

Volume 2

Published in 1953, covers:

Calyer Family (descendants of Jochem; see also Herbert F. Seversmith, FASG, Colonial Families of Long Island, New York, and Connecticut; and the account of Jochem's origin by Harry Macy, Jr. in the Record vol. 121 [1990])
De Witt Family (descendants of Pieter Jansz)
Springsteen Family (descendants of Casper)

Volume 3

Published in 1955, covers:

Lequier Family (descendants of Jean)
Verschuer Family (descendants of Gysbert Teunisz; see also Harry Macy, Jr.'s article on this family in the Record vols. 124-125 [1993-1994])
Flaesbeek Family (descendants of Barent Gerritsz van Zwol)
Lydecker Family (descendants of Ryck)
Colonial Bushwick and adjacent towns.
Fonteyn Family (descendants of Charles/Carel; see also article on this family by Donald L. Jacobus, FASG, Record vol. 99 [1968]; the surname was later written as Van Tine)
Stockholm Family (descendants of Juriaen Andreissen through his son Andries Juriaensen and grandson Arent Andriessen)
Molenaer Family (descendants of Joost Adriaensz)
Addenda to vol. 1, Pieter Praa

Volume 4

Published in 1963, covers:

Woertman Family (descendants of Dirck Jansz; see Barbara A. Barth's genealogy of this family, Record vols. 132-133 [2001-2002])
Nagel Family (descendants of Jan)
Losee Family (descendants of Jan Cornelisz; see also Seversmith, Colonial Families, cited above)
Supplement to vol. 1: Dirck Volckertszen Family

Each volume also contains errata discovered after the originals had been typed. These volumes do not include all of the earliest families of Bushwick, and Provost may have planned to cover others, but he was 96 when the last volume was completed.

Provost also compiled genealogies of the Calyer, Hendrickson and Titus families which are available at the NYG&B Collection and elsewhere. As with the Bushwick genealogies, these works must be used with some caution.

Andrew Jackson Provost, Jr., was born 7 November 1867, the son of Andrew Sr. and Harriet Titus. He graduated from Columbia College in 1889 with a degree in civil engineering and lived in Brooklyn and later in Darien, Connecticut. He married Ada B. Balston. Provost died in Sarasota, Florida, 30 December 1965 at age 98, and his body was returned to Brooklyn for burial. He was survived by a son and two daughters. (Data from his 1895 Provost genealogy cited above, p. 85, and The New York Times, 4 January 1966, p. 27.)

by Harry Macy Jr., FASG, FGBS

Originally published in The NYG&B Newsletter, Winter 2006

Updated June 2011