This surname project is sponsored by the Prall Family Association, founded as a non-profit organization in 1986 to bring together Prall descendants and to promote the study of the ancestry of the Prall and allied families. The project is open to any and all male Pralls and alternate spellings in the world. The first known Prall immigrant to America was Arendt Jansen Prall, the ancestral father of almost all Pralls living today in the United States, probably born in the Netherlands about 1647, who spelled his name Praal. The earliest documented record of Arendt found in America is in the Old Dutch records of Kingston, New York from 1660. The name Arendt is equivalent to the English name Aaron. Arendt and his family moved down the Hudson River from Kingston to Staten Island, NY., around 1670, and there he lived until his death in 1725. In 1670 he married Maria Billiou, daughter of Pierre Billiou. Peirre's house still stands today, owned by the Staten Island Historical Society. Some of his children and descendants remained on Staten Island, and later grew hay on Prall's Island in the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey, but others bought land west of the Hudson and moved to New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and eventually throughout the country.