IPAS lea Ieee 109 
the leader of the “ Duzine,” that is of the twelve who purchased 
a great tract of land from the Esopus Indians and founded the 
community of New Paltz. 
On May 9, 1661, Pierre and his wife and four younger children 
embarked at old Amsterdam in the St. John the Baptist. They 
arrived in New Amsterdam on the 6th of August following. 
Pierre and Francoise had four daughters born to them at Leyden. 
The eldest, Marie, was baptized in the Walloon church in 1650. 
She was my five times great-grandmother and she was betrothed 
and married at Wiltwyck, June 3, 1670, to Arendt Jansen Prall von 
Nardy (Naarden), as it is written in the Dutch records at Kings- 
ton, with the approval of her uncle, Louis du Bois. 
On August 22, 1661, we read in the Documents relating to the 
Colonial History of the State of New York (13: 206) there ap- 
peared before the Honorable Director and the Honorable Members 
of the Council at New Amsterdam Pierre Billiou and Walraven 
Luten. They stated for themselves, as well as for some others 
who had arrived in the last ships, that the locality of Staten Island 
suited them well, and they requested therefore that some land on 
said Staten Island might be given them as property for farm land, 
meadow, and pasture, and that lots for houses and gardens might 
be laid out in a convenient place. 
The Director General and Council granted this petition and re- 
solved to look up a convenient place on Staten Island and lay 
it out for a village, which was done. 
The persons who signed this petition, beside Billiou and Luten, 
were seventeen in number, but as only a few of them settled on 
the island, the names of the majority do not interest us here. 
The question may be asked: why were no attempts made to 
colonize Staten Island before this time? And the answer is that 
several attempts were made. Clute in his Annals of Staten Island 
(p. 15) says that “a number of the Walloons who came in the 
‘Nieuw Netherlandt’ in 1624 made a settlement on the Island, 
but that they did not occupy it long, for annoyed by the constant 
intrusion of the Indians, they removed to Long Island, and settled 
