The Van Dusens of New AmsterdamBy ALISON LEIGH COWANTHE project earned him an easy A.“I was in seventh or eighth grade, and we were asked to do a little genealogy,” recalled Andrew Van Dusen, now a 47-year-old real estate broker specializing in Brownstone Brooklyn. “My dad handed me his file, and it was stunning.Mr. Van Dusen learned that he was a 12th-generation descendant of one of Manhattan’s first few hundred settlers, the operator of a windmill where the Dutch ground grain, and he has...

New York colonial documents state that Abraham Pietersen, of Haarlem took possession, in 1636, for the Dutch West India Company, of the Island of Quentensis in front of Sloops Bay (now known as Dutch Island). In another place [the island] is described as the Island of Queteurs in front of Sloops Bay and Pequator's River and in 1664 they speak of the special possession of Abraham Pietersen, of Haarlem, still living on the Island of Quetenesse, in the Narricanese Bay near Rhode Island and also...