Margaret Greitjen Pieters (abt. 1620 - 1683)

Born about 1620 in Krefeld, Grafschaft Moers, Heiliges Römisches Reich

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 11 Nov 1683 at about age 63 in Germantown, Pennsylvania

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Biography

Margaret Greitjen Pieters was a an early settler of William Penn's Pennsylvania Settlers community. Join: William Penn and Early Pennsylvania Settlers Project Discuss: penn

Margaret Greitjen Pieters has roots in the region now known as Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

Greitjen was born around 1620 to a Mennonite family in the Lower Rhine area of the Holy Roman Empire. The Low German her community spoke had as much in common with Dutch as High German. She married Isaak Herman Op den Graeff and they had three sons and two daughters. Their sons were all weavers.

By the late 1670s, the Op den Graeffs were part of a thriving Mennonite community in Krefeld, not far from the Dutch border. Like many others in the community, they were drawn to the ideas promoted by missionaries for the Society of Friends and converted to Quakerism. They found themselves no longer as happily tolerated in Krefeld as they had been previously.

Greitjen was widowed in 1679 and her sons and various other families in the community were drawn towards the opportunity of a new life in a new province with complete religious freedom. This was being offered by another Quaker, William Penn. The father-in-law of one of her sons purchased land directly from Penn, and the three Op den Graeff brothers all agreed to invest and emigrate as settlers of the new land.

In the summer of 1683, Greitjen joined her daughter, her three sons and their wives, and ten other Mennonite/Quaker families from Krefeld on a journey initially to England. There they had arranged (through their contact Franz Pastorius) passage on a ship contracted by James Claypoole, another Quaker who had purchased land from Penn.

Despite arriving a little later than planned, they were able to embark the schooner "Concord" at Gravesend. ^[1][2][3][4] After a 75-day journey, the ship arrived in Philadelphia in October, 1683.

The op den Graeff family was one of the original 13 families which settled Germantown, Pennsylvania on the land purchased from Penn, just to the north of Philadelphia, and played an important role in the settlement's management and governance.^[5], ^[6]

Sadly, Greitjen passed away in November 1683 barely a month after arriving. Three years later, with the settlement thriving and growing, her children were joined by their sister Maria and her family in Germantown.

Name

Name: Greitjen /Pieters/^[7]

"However, the actual source is the 1681 Krefeld Quaker wedding certificate, which both Hull and Niepoth use as their principal source documents in analyzing the relationships between the Krefeld emigrants; they both appear unaware that the Scheuten manuscripts exist. Grietjen signed the wedding certificate of her brother in law and his bride along with her husband; "Grietjen Peters". ^[8]

Christening

Education

Immigration

1683 - ^[9]

Event

Event:

Type: Arrival

Date: 1683

Place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania^[10]

Marriage

^[11]

Census Records

Greitjen passed away before the first US census occurred in 1790.

Obituary

XXX
Date:

Death

1683 - ^[12], ^[13]

Burial

~dd November 1683 - ^[12]
xxx Cemetery
city, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, USA
Plot: .
Find A Grave Memorial# ### ^[14]
Billion Graves

Sources

• Source: S-1950044272 Repository: #R-1957927527 Title: Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s Author: Gale Research Publication: Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc, 2010.Original data - Filby, P. William, ed. Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s. Farmington Hills, MI, USA: Gale Research, 2010.Original data: Filby, P. William, ed. Passenge Note: APID: 1,7486::0

No REPO record found with id R-1957927527.

• Source: S-1957927525 Repository: #R-1957927527 Title: Ancestry Family Trees Publication: Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com. Original data: Family Tree files submitted by Ancestry members. Note: This information comes from 1 or more individual Ancestry Family Tree files. This source citation points you to a current version of those files. Note: The owners of these tree files may have removed or changed information since this source citation was created. Page: Ancestry Family Trees Note: Data: Text: https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/25923348/family

Books

1. [B01x] Niepoth, Wilhelm. (nd). "The Ancestry of the Thirteen Krefeld Emigrants of 1683" in Egge, Marion F. (2000) Pennsylvania German Roots Across the Ocean. Philadelphia, PA: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. [1] [2]
2. [B01] Conrad, H. C. (1958). Thones Kunders and his children: Also a list of the descendants for six generations of his youngest son Henry Cunreds, of Whitpain, 1683-1891. Salt Lake City, Utah: Filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah. [3], [4]
3. [B02] Pennypacker, S. W. (1899). The settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania, and the beginning of German immigration to North America. Lancaster, Pa: The Society. [5] [6]
4. [B03] Anonymous. (1875) The Friend, Volume 48. Harvard University. p. 67 [7]
5. [B04] Herrick, C. A. (1970). White servitude in Pennsylvania: Indentured and redemption labor in colony and commonwealth. Freeport, N.Y: Books for Libraries Press. [8] [9]
6. [B05] National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the state of Pennsylvania. (1907). Register of the Pennsylvania Society of the Colonial Dames of America. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J.B. Lippincott. [10][11] [12]
7. [B06] Pennypacker, S. W. (1875). "Abraham and Dirck op den Graeff" in Friends' review: a religious, literary and miscellaneous journal' ed. Henry Hartshorne. Volume 29", 1876. [13]
8. [B07] Pennypacker, S. W. (1918). The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian. Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company. [14][15]

Note

Note: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=grooks&id=I646

http://trees.ancestry.com/rd?f=document&guid=662689e8-1dc3-4126-b8b6-a4f033c1cf01&tid=42260102&pid=564

Other Resources

1. [OR01] Dates:Two things to be aware of - Quakers didn't use the names of months, just the numbers (7 8m 1742 for example), and until 1752, "8m" would have been October, not August, since the year started in March (1m).[16]
   

See also:

• https://www.myheritage.com/research/record-1-195118401-1-500025/greitjen-op-den-graeff-in-myheritage-family-trees?s=206901051

Acknowledgements

• WikiTree profile Peiters-1 created by Larry Arnold.
• Thank you to Les Burk for creating Pieters-42
• Thank you to Judy Young for creating] Pieters-137.

Click the Changes tab for the details on contributions by Judy and others.

Thanks to x [] for Find A Grave memorial.

1. ↑ Source: #B03 Anonymous.
2. ↑ "Ship Passengers Mentioned in Merion MM Minutes; Chester County, PA," (http://files.usgwarchives.net/pa/chester/immig/merionpassengers.txt: Accessed 29 January 2015), Yvonne Prough. U.S. Genealogical Web Archives.
3. ↑ Source: #B01 Conrad, p. 6.
4. ↑ Source: #B01x Niepoth.
5. ↑ Source: wikipedia:Colonial_Germantown_Historic_District
6. ↑ Source: wikipedia:Germantown,_Philadelphia
7. ↑ Source: #S-1950044272
   Page:
   Place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
   Year: 1683;
   Page Number: .
   Note: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=pili354&h=3334457&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt
   Note:
   Data: Text: Arrival date: 1683Arrival place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania APID: 1,7486::3334457
8. ↑ Source: Greitjen PEITERS
   http://sites.rootsmagic.com/Worland/individual.php?p=1258
   Accessed March 3, 2017
9. ↑ Source: #B01x Niepoth.
10. ↑ Source: #S-1950044272
    Page:
    Place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
    Year: 1683;
    Page Number: .
    Note: http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?db=pili354&h=3334457&ti=0&indiv=try&gss=pt Note: Data: Text: Arrival date: 1683Arrival place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania APID: 1,7486::3334457
11. ↑ Source: #B01x Niepoth.
12. ↑ ^{12.0 12.1} .
13. ↑ Source: #B01x Niepoth.
14. ↑ http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=XXX

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