Brooklyn's first Italian!

Pietro Cesare Alberti arrived in NY (still known as New Amsterdam) in the late spring of 1635. Other Italian explorers arrived earlier, but Alberti was the first Italian to settle in New York. A Venetian (and possibly a descendant of the great Renaissance architect, Leon Battista Alberti), Pietro was baptized on June 20, 1608 in the Chiesa San Luca, Venice. He sailed to the new world on the Dutch ship King David; he was a crew member and the only Italian on board. The ship arrived in New Amsterdam on June 2, 1635, after sailing along the west coast of Africa past the mouth of the Congo, across the Atlantic ocean to Brazil, Guyana, to the West Indies and then Virginia. It is said that a dispute over unpaid wages caused the ship's captain to threaten to land Alberti in Guyana, but Alberti remained until the final port of New Amsterdam. He later sued the captain and eventually received the unpaid wages.

As the only Italian in America at the time, Pietro Cesare Alberti's name was misunderstood by the public, Dutch officials in New Amsterdam. Spellings of his name in public records include Cicero Piere, Cicero Alberto, Peter the Italian, Caesar Albertus, and Pieter Mallenmook. In the course of several generations, his descendants were generally called by the surname Albertus, finally Burtus and Burtis, which was finally Anglicized to Albertis.

In 1639, 4 years after his arrival, Peter Caesar negotiated a land lease from Pieter Montfoort, a large tobacco landowner. The location was at Wallabout, on Long Island, within the present boundaries of Brooklyn. Four years later Alberti secured a deed of ownership for the land from the Director General and Council of New Amsterdam; he later acquired more adjacent land from the Dutch West India Company. Ultimately, Alberti owned the equivalent of a 100-acre farm in what is now Fort Greene, around the Brooklyn Navy Yard (perhaps around the current Steiner Studios site). Pictured above is the site in 1880s when a large market built in a Dutch style stood there.

In 1642 Alberti married Judith Magnee, a member of a large family of Flemish settlers. Thanks to the marriage, Alberti was gifted a large home alongside a canal that once ran through present-day Broad Street in Lower Manhattan. The couple left the home for their Brooklyn plantation only 4 years later, perhaps because of the space needs of their quickly growing family. In all, they had 7 offspring, although one died as an infant. The Albertis' lived in a rough and tumble era: Peter Caesar and his wife were killed in 1655 in Indian raid (consider it a radical response to rapid gentrification).

The history of Pietro Caesare Alberti is little known, but his pioneering life in Brooklyn was to pave the way for countless Italian immigrants who continued to follow in his footsteps.