Search for ancestors of 17th Century Flushing

Can you trace your ancestry back to the 17th Century?
The Bowne House Historical Society is looking for descendants of the 30 signers of the Flushing Remonstrance dated December 27, 1657.
The historic document is one of the earliest petitions found in American history and helped to ease a climate of injustice at the time. It is considered a predecessor to the principles modeled in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which mandates religious and political liberty for all.
The Flushing Remonstrance addresses Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of colonial New York, known as New Netherland at the time. Stuyvesant had criminalized the rights of Quakers to assemble and worship or for any citizen to host any such meetings. Lawbreakers were subject to a fine and arrest.
John Bowne, an English landowner of Flushing, allowed members of the Quaker faith to gather and worship on his property in defiance of the ban. Stuyvesant subsequently had him imprisoned and banished to Holland in 1662. There Bowne appealed the decree before the Dutch West India Company in 1663 and won their favor. The governing body then issued the petition or Flushing Remonstrance to Stuyvesant “to allow everyone to have his own belief, as long as he behaves quietly.”
In honor of the relic’s 350th anniversary, Borough President Helen Marshall has created the Education Committee of the Flushing Remonstrance. In addition to searching for the descendants of participants, the committee aims to spread public awareness, establish a public school curriculum in the near future and to stage a major event to commemorate the importance of the document to the Constitution of the United States.
Those believed to be descendants can send in their information to Flushing Remonstrance c/o Bowne House Historical Society, 37-01 Bowne Street, Flushing, New York, 11354 or by e-mail to dcartelli@bownehouse.org.