Thank you Jan for your letter. I agree with Peter, be careful with the Loockermans those early generations are tricky and I have not tried to untangle them all. My article will answer your questions. Although the Sisters were of royal descent and had cousins who were no doubt wealthy -- those people then as often today did not hand out money to all their distant relatives. The sisters were most likely orphans when they married in Amsterdam and then came to America. Their father died in 1624 and after his widow Helen Livingston tried desperately to find money to support her family. The sisters were very lucky indeed to marry the merchants they did and not end up penniless spinsters as many women in their predicament surely did. Reformation ministers tended not to be wealthy although their grandfather Rev. John Duncanson did appear to make money acting as a kind of private banker lending money at interest -- he even lent money to their great grandfather Henry Livingston of Falkirk and his second wife Margaret Forrester -- all this detailed in my article. Adrian