The Beckwith line begins with Alex's great-great-grandmother "Jennie Belle" Beckwith (1866-1942), who married George Robert Sutherland (1868-1943); Helen Sutherland was their daughter. There are several distinct stories about the history of the Beckwith line. The shortest involves the Civil War; the largest involves Scottish immigration; and the longest involves the Dutch American colony of New Netherland.
The seal of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Public domain.
The shortest and the largest stories are those of Jennie Belle's parents, John Beckwith (1829-1913) and Elizabeth Nicoll (1827-1893).
The largest story, meaning it affects the largest chunk of the family tree, is that of Elizabeth Nicoll (1827-1893), Jennie Belle's mother. Elizabeth was born in Kinrossshire, Scotland. She and her parents and siblings immigrated to New York about 1840, in a very similar situation to that of the Sutherlands. The families even settled in the same area of Delaware County.
The shortest story comes from John Beckwith (1829-1913), Jennie Belle's father. His own father, Joseph Beckwith (1801-1865), was born in New Bern, North Carolina, but by about age 25 had moved to Andes, in Delaware County, where he would marry, have children, and live out the rest of his life. Possibly because of records disruption in the Civil War, no other information is yet available on Joseph Beckwith's early life, siblings, or parents, and the Beckwith name line (that we know of) ends with him.
John Beckwith's father's line is the shortest story, but his mother's line is the longest story. Anna Ostrander (1800-1890) came from a long line of residents of Ulster County, New York, who had lived there since long before the Revolution -- long enough ago that the place was still called Esopus and was under the colonial control of the Dutch.
In the 1660s, ancestors of Anna Ostrander's paternal grandfather settled in Esopus. The earliest Ostrander was named Pieter Pieterzen Ostrander, Sr (1630-1663), Alex's 9x great-grandfather. Other ancestors had names like Tryntje Van de Lande, Joosje Willemsen Noortryk, and Hendrick Van Bommel. At about the same time, ancestors of Anna Ostrander's paternal grandmother settled in areas of New Netherland like Kings County, New York, and Bergen County, New Jersey. These ancestors have names like Geertje Denyce Dircksedr, Nicolaas Jansen "Claes" Romeyn, and Lammetie Bongaert. Most records from this period are well-preserved church records, but are actually in Dutch, frustrating this English-speaking researcher to no end.
The colony of New Netherland was established in 1614 as a private business venture to take advantage of the North American fur trade, hence the beaver on the colonial seal. It was settled slowly at first, in conflict with its neighbors New Sweden, New England, and the Native Americans, but its population grew quickly after the 1650s. Citizens of New Netherland enjoyed a larger degree of religious tolerance and more civil liberties than their New English neighbors. The value of New Netherland's location, its fur trade, and its growing port city of New York meant that other colonial powers -- England especially -- looked at it with envy. Alex's Ostrander ancestors would have been affected by the loss of Fort Amsterdam (and thus the whole Dutch colony) to England in 1667; they would have been aware of the Second Anglo-Dutch War that led to the Dutch re-taking New Netherland in 1673, and probably disappointed by the final relinquishment of the area to England that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1674.
A century after the Anglo-Dutch wars, Anna Ostrander's father and Alex's 5x great-grandfather, Petrus (Peter) Gideon Ostrander (1768-1843), fought in at least one and probably two more of them. Petrus did have a common name, so there is no guarantee that he is one of the multiple Peter Ostranders on the New York Revolutionary muster rolls, especially since he was only fifteen at the time. However, during the War of 1812, Peter Ostrander appears on the New York State Militia payroll as a private in Captain Van Voorhis's company, Colonel Carver's regiment. We have also found a military equipment claim that ties directly to Peter Gideon Ostrander after the war, leading us to accept that despite his common name, the Peter Ostrander on the militia payroll was probably Alex's Peter Ostrander.