Person:Gerritje Gerrits (1)

The birth and parentage of Gerrit je Gerrits have been sought in the church records far and wide but to no avail; nothing has been learned. As a sponsor at the baptism of her first-born at Bergen stood a Gerrit Tysen with his wife Hermtje Hermans. He was from Amsterdam; and it is barely possible that he was Gerritje's father by an earlier wife in Holland since when in 1664 he is married in New York to Hermtje Hermans he is not designated as a "young man," after the Dutch custom when such, and so he may have been a widower. None of the after sponsors at Kingston proved to be relatives. There seemed to fall a glimmer of light on Gerritje from domestic sources, for in an old note-book from the New Hackensack branch of our family I find her name mentioned as "Gerritje Gerritse Van den Bergh or Van Vredenburgh;" records, though, fail to bear out either claim.
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Gerritje is last seen in the church records on July 21, 1700, when she and Teunis stand as sponsors for their little grandson Johannes Van Steenbergen.

It is found in the marriage register of the first Dutch Re­formed Church of Bergen, New Jersey, center of the original Dutch settlement of the Communipaw, across the bay from New
York City, that Theunis Eliasz Van Bunschoten and Geritje Gerrit, were married there February 27, 1674. She gave her resi­dence as New York, but her birthplace is not stated. Among the witnesses were Gerrit Thyssen and Hermantje Heermans, reason­ably well identified respectively as her father and stepmother.