Person:Geertruid Pieters (1)

Be wary of information about her picked up from family trees

There seems to be very little official record of William Rittenhouse's wife. The only published/official mention I could find of her was in Mennonite Vital Records^[1] which states that William Rittenhouse married Gertrut Peters in 1691 (assuming 1691 means the year of their marriage and not the year of her death - the format of the card is open to some interpretation). There is also a record of a Greitjen Pieters (possibly the same person) who immigrated to Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania in 1683^[2].

Find A Grave^[3] and many trees claim various facts about her, but the citations I looked at are weak. For example, Find A Grave cites "The Ahnentafel of Heath Vogel" - in other words, someone's (probably unpublished) research.

Find A Grave says she was born abt 1642 (or 1646) in Eerbeek, Netherlands and died 18 Feb 1708 in Germantown, and that her parents were Pieter Kersten (Pieters) and Claerke Everets. The death date given by Find A Grave (18 Feb 1708) is also the date most trees (and Find A Grave) say her husband died (published sources I found online only give the year of his death). The date was likely originally in someone's records as "bef 18 Feb 1708" or "aft 18 Feb 1708" (depending on whether or not a wife was mentioned in the settlement of William's estate - he died without a will), and is thus completely unreliable.

On the other hand, Find A Grave says they were married the first week of June 1665 at Loenen, near Apeldoorn, Gelderland, Holland (no citation) - which has the ring of being based on an actual church record (unless it is a fabrication), so is worth following up. If Rittenhouse married Gertrud Pieters in 1691 as the Mennonite records seem to say, the June 1665 record might be for his first marriage.

It might be worth noting that a Sons of the American Revolution application from 1949^[4] lists William Rittenhouse and his son Garrett Rittenhouse, and says that Williams's wife (Garrett's mother) was unknown.

I should note that I spent less than 3 hours researching this family, so this is hardly definitive. However, information provided in many trees and at Find A Grave (and in the U.S. and International Marriage Records^[5], which is based on family trees not official records) should be treated with suspicion. Original records and/or publications citing original records should be sought out to improve this information.--DataAnalyst 20:38, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

1. ↑ Rittenhouse, Wm., in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States. Mennonite Vital Records, 1750-2014.

   "born near Mülheim an der Ruhr, 1644, Germantown, Pa. 1708
   Immigrated from Netherlands to NY. ; then to Phila. in 1687 or 1688; colonial papermaker
   m 1691 Gertrut Peters"

2. ↑ Greitjen Pieters, in Passenger and immigration lists index, 1500s-1900s : CD# 354. (TLC Productivity Properties, c2001).

   arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1683
   citing Ulle, Robert F. "The Original Germantown Families." In Mennonite Family History, vol. 2:2 (Apr. 1983), pp. 48-51.

3. ↑ Geertruid Kersten “Gertrude” Pieters Rittenhouse, in Find A Grave.
4. ↑ [1], in National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. U.S., Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970.
5. ↑ Wilhelm Rittinghausen and Geertruid Pieters, in Yates Publishing. U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900: [database online] (not considered a reliable primary source). (Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2004).