The Lefferts family is a wealthy and influential Dutch family that lived in the Flatbush are of Brooklyn. The first family member to arrive in American was Pieter Janse Hagewout (1650-1704), a farmer and shoemaker who emigrated from Holland with his family in 1660. 

By the 1680s, Leffert Pieterse (1645-1704), Pieter's oldest son, had become one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Flatbush. By his death in 1704, he had amassed land in Kings County, Queens County, Staten Island, and New Jersey. His children went on to establish different “branches” of the Lefferts family: his son Peter Lefferts (1680-1774) inherited the family homestead in Flatbush, while his son Jacobus Lefferts (1686-1768) lived on family land in Bedford Corners. Other Leffertses settled as far away as Pennsylvania.