Walter's son. A natural supposition is that they were brothers of his, and met the Benham girls while visiting his home.
As is well known, the Dutch rarely bore a permanent surname, but went by a patronymic derived from the father's Christian name. Thus, Lambert Johnson and Jacob Johnson were simply Lambert and Jacob, sons of John or Jan; but before 1700 the Dutch in America had begun to retain the father's patronymic after the English fashion, so it need not surprise us to find in the Staten Island records that Lambert and Jacob Johnson were sometimes known as Lambert and Jacob Wouters. This implies that they were sons of a certain Jan Wouters (John son of Walter), and that they sometimes retained the Wouters and sometimes called themselves Jansen after their father's Christian name. This makes it all the more likely that Walter Johnson was their brother, for, as the son of Jan Wouters, he would be named after his grandfather Walter or Wouter.
Consequently, it is necessary to locate a Jan Wouters who could have been father of Walter, Lambert, and Jacob. And what is our amazement to learn that Jacob Johnson, son of John Wouters, was born in Branford, Conn., December 31, 1672 (Branford Records, Vol. 1, p. 174). Here is a Dutch Jacob Johnson who, learning the English tongue in his infancy, would be most eligible to marry an English girl. That he is identical with the Jacob of Staten Island is proved by the father's name; and his wife, Sarah Benham, was born four years later, September 6, 1676. According to Savage, Jan Wouters lived at Branford from 1667 to 1673; and, when we come to search for his antecedents we find that in 1667 he owned salt meadows in Flatbush, L. I., the very place where Walter Johnson, undoubtedly his son, married his second wife. From Branford he returned to Flatbush, where in 1678 he hired out his son Ruth (Rutgert) to his brother-in-law Laurens Jurianse. He was living in 1695, when he calls himself of New York.
Jan Wouters is by no means an uncommon name, and it will therefore require some evidence to prove that our man of that name, who was a master-shoemake by trade, was identical with Jan Wouters Van der Bosch, whose name appears in the Flatbush Church Records of this period. On May 12, 1678, were baptized