Captain Adrian Crijnen Post

 

 

The Dutch word for seagull is “pos” and this seems to have been the correct way of recording the surname of the Post family. My 9th great-grandfather Adriaen Crijnen (possibly Quirijnen) Post was most likely from The Hague, Netherlands. He and his wife Clara or Claartje Moockers, resided in Brazil in the West India Company’s colony. Adriaen’s daughter Maria was baptised in Recife, Brazil in June 1649. By the time Brazil fell to the Portuguese in 1654, the family had left for the Netherlands. On 30 June 1650 the ship “New Netherland’s Fortune” sailed, arriving in New Netherland on 19 December 1650. Adriaen and his family were on Staten Island by 1655. Adriaen was a representative of Baron Hendrick van der Capellen, the owner of one-third of Staten Island. As the superintendent of a group of twenty people who were to farm Staten Island, Adriaen set up a colony which flourished

In the summer of 1655 the Peach Tree War began over Hendrick Van Dyke’s shooting of a native woman stealing peaches from his trees in his orchard in Manhattan. As a result, the settlements on the lower Hudson River and around New York were destroyed by Iroquois attackers. On 15 September 1655, the colony on Staten Island was burned to the ground by the natives from Hackensack. Twenty-three people were killed and sixty-seven taken prisoner, among them Adrien, his wife, five children, and two servants. In October 1655, Adriaen was released by the Hackensack chief Penneckeck to bargain with the Director General of the New Netherland Colony, Petrus Stuyvesant for the release of prisoners. Adriaen made the journey between Manhattan and the native headquarters at Paulus Hook, New Jersey several times before an agreement was reached. Fifty-six captives were released in exchange for powder, lead, guns, blankets, and wampum. Among those freed were Adrian’s wife and children.

Returning to Staten Island Adrian was ordered by Van der Capellan to gather survivors and erect a fort. Trying to keep the group fed, he found a few cattle that the natives had overlooked roaming in the woods That winter Adrian and his family camped in the company of some soldiers in the burnt-out settlement. They butchered some of the cattle they had found and obtained milk from others. Stuyvessant recommended to Post that he and “his people” and cattle move to the stockade on Long Island , but Adrian stayed. By spring of 1656 Adrian was ill and unable to perform his duties, so Clara Moockers Post requested that someone else be appointed as van der Capellen’s agent. In April of 1656 Clara petitioned Stuyvesant asking that the soldiers be allowed to stay, but Stuyvesant decided that since there were only six or seven people on the island, a garrison was not required and they should all move to Long Island.

Adrian regained his health and between 1657 and 1663 he had three children baptized at the Reformed Dutch Church. He was in the New Amsterdam courts often, being sued by creditors of Van Der Cappellen. He eventually left Staten Island and settled on the mainland of present-day Bergen, New Jersey. adapted from Olive Tree Genealogy