Name Peter Alberti | Died 1655 | |
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Pietro Cesare Alberti (1608–1655) — later Peter Caesar Alburtus — was a Venetian immigrant to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, commonly regarded as the first Italian American settler in what is now New York State.
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Background
Pietro Alberti was born on the island of Malamocco in 1608 at the height of Venice's commercial power. There is no evidence for the former assertion that Pietro was the son of the Secretary of the Ducal Treasury, Andrea Alberti and his wife, Lady Veronica Cremona, but his family were apparently a Venetian branch of the powerful Florentine Alberti family and were attested as members of the Church of San Luca from 1326. The family was influential throughout the Italian peninsula and also had a branch in Genoa. Pietro's paternal relatives may have included the famed Italian polymath and statesman Leon Battista Alberti.
Immigration
During the Thirty Years' War troops from the Netherlands were stationed in Malamocco, a narrow inlet in the Venetian Lagoon. These troops carried with them a particularly virulent strain of bubonic plague. The plague spread rapidly, killing 46,000 of the city's 140,000 residents. The immense decline in Venice's population led to a similar decline in its commercial power. Because the Albertis' power was derived from the success of Venetian traders, Pietro decided at the age of 27 to seek a new life in the New World. At some point, Alberti had also converted to Protestantism. He sailed from Texel aboard the Dutch ship De Coninck David (King David), arriving in New Amsterdam on June 2, 1635.
Alberti acclimated well in New Amsterdam's cosmopolitan environment. In 1642 he married a Walloon woman named Judith Manje (also spelled Magnee) in the Dutch Reformed Church. The couple had seven children from 1642 to 1655, including one who died in infancy. The Albertis lived in a home on Broad Street until 1646 when Pietro applied for a land grant from the Dutch. The Albertis farmed 100 acres in Brooklyn until Pietro and Judith were killed in an Indian raid in 1655.
Legacy
Alberti was the first of millions of Italian Americans who would later form part of American culture. A small stone in New York City's Battery Park, near the bronze statue of Giovanni da Verrazzano, commemorates Pietro Alberti's arrival and declares June 2 to be "Alberti Day".
Over the centuries, the family name Alberti had variations in spelling like Albertis, Alburtus, Alburtis and Burtis. Indeed, nearly every American bearing the surnames Burtis and Alburtis can trace their ancestry back to Peter Caesar Alberti.