When did Pieter Claesz become Pieter Classen Wyckoff?

Question

Moved to G2G from profile comments.  

I know that the English take control of New Netherland in 1687 and this prompted the adoption of surnames, thus Pieter adopts Wyckoff as his surname.  

I am interested in knowing more detail about this process.  Did he have to sign something in 1687 affirming loyalty to the English King and is this recorded somewhere?   Can we document the first use of the new surname?  What about his adult sons living at that time, did they all adopt the same surname and go through the same loyalty process? How much of this can we document?

On 21 Aug 2022 Michael Stills wrote on Claesz-4:

Can anyone provide a reference as to when Pieter Claesz (Classen, etc) becomes Pieter Wyckoff? Is this formally recorded somewhere when the English take control?

Answer 1

This is purely my intuition, not based on concrete evidence or knowledge, but my understanding is that Dutch patronymic names changed with any various encounters in English speaking realms. Napoleon made family names legally compulsory, but prior to that, in 1600's the Dutch had thriving businesses and in the order of things individuals would have to be identified in some regular fashion for bookkeeping. So the answer I would give to your question is that the new name has been adopted on the first document where one finds it, where some clerk had to write a name for whatever reason.

We have similar problems identifying enslaved people, who had to adopt surnames for bureaucracy.

Comments

Furthermore in pondering your query, I can look to my own surname, which is traced to a single forefather, Epke Jacobse. He emigrated from Friesland (Netherlands) to New York in 1659, and there are numerous documents which give his signature Epke Jacobs, yet somehow all of his offspring came to be known as Banta.

---

Thank you L A, since Pieter signed with his Mark, I assume we will be looking for documents who wrote his surname for him.  Good Point.

---

He does rise to prominance later in life, so I presume I can find something, I just need to look.

Answer 2

Hi, Michael:

Is there a record that shows that Pieter Claesz ever used the surname? In my experience, in the Dutch-to-English transition, men didn't add a surname during their adulthood, but descendants of a later generation took a surname, often all the same, but sometimes not. If Pieter is never recorded as Wyckoff, I suspect he never used the surname.

I know of no collective records that document switches to surnames. It happened eventually in every family I know of, but the timing varied.

Chris

Comments

Thanks Christopher,

Pieter is credited with being the one who chose the surname at the time the English required fixed surnames.  Then suposedly all his sons adopted it as well.  I am looking for any documents around this time to support this event.

---

If the person who credited Pieter with doing the choosing didn't give a source or evidence, it may be a case of misinterpretation.

---

I concur with Christopher. Apparently, New Netherlanders were supposed to adopt family names after the English took over, but that didn't necessarily happen. Some adopted their patronymic name as the family name for themselves and their descendants. Some continued to use their patronymic name for a while, but later were recorded with another family last name. Some switched back and forth between different names. There are men who died after 1700 who never were recorded with the family names that their descendants later adopted.

Rather than making assumptions, our New Netherland project naming conventions tell us to look at contemporary records to see how the person was recorded, and document the name(s) we see in the records.

---

Pieter's profile has been rife with assumptions.  Thus the search for documentation around those assumptions.  There being none, helps expose the assumption.

---

Christopher,  you asked, "Is there a record that shows that Pieter Claesz ever used the surname?"

That is my question as well, "Can we document the first use of the new surname?"

---

Also, "Did he have to sign something in 1687 affirming loyalty to the English King and is this recorded somewhere?"  I am not familar with the process in New Netherland.  But I have seen loyatly oaths required by the English elsewhere.  Was this process required in New Netherland when the English took over?  If so, then possibly this would be once such instance where he used the surname.  

---

Actually, I am overlooking the fact that Pieter was illiterate and generally signed with his Mark.  So maybe not a viable approach.

---

That Pieter adopted the surname Wyckoff is known.  Why he chose that surname has been the course of wide speculation and study, see M. William Wykoff's work, "What's in a name? History and Meaning of Wyckoff."  Interestingly, he does not appear to address the When other than to restate the tradition followed by the Dutch in New Netherland at the time the English take control.

Morton Wagman's "The Rise of Pieter Claessen Wyckoff." uses the same tradition and dates it at about 1867 [p.22].  He cites O'Callaghan, ed., Doc. Hist. N.Y., I, 661." Which I will be tracking down next.

---

It has been awhile since I last read these through, so I may have missed something.

---

Peter's profile is a mess because of the history of the Gustave Anjou fraud and because the bones of the profile are still the work of the numerous enthusiastic Gedcom-equipped contributors who created numerous duplicate profiles for him (I believe there were at least 14 duplicates) that were merged by concatenating the miscellaneous parts. The profile needs focused attention by someone who is sufficiently interested in this man and his family to devote the needed time and effort.

Note that the page Wyckoff Family was created a few years ago by a couple of members who I think were hoping to clarify some issues regarding this man and his family. However, it appears to consist largely of text copied from various published accounts of the family, and concatenated.

---

Yes, Gustov created quite the mess indeed!

I have been following and working this profile since Liz and Steven were working NNS.  They did yeoman's work trying to sort out the mess and keep others from messing it up futher.

It was really quite the mess back then.  Bea came along and did quite a clean up on it and that page may be where she removed a lot of bad information from the profile but had not been able to completely review everything,  Who could it was a huge mess!

I have been attempting to get in better shape over the years and had a few battles over it, but the ghost of Gustave is hard to kill.

I rest easy knowing you are on guard now Ellen.  Thank you.

---

Yes, Michael, you argubly have been the most faithful participant in efforts to improve this profile. It's a heavy lift. This is one of more than a few profiles where I have gotten exhausted from merely trying to clean up span tags and citations to dreadful Ancestry databases -- all while trying to avoid losing the paper trail for footnotes that appear in the profile.

Answer 3

I found this:

Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Christopher Morgan, The Documentary History of the State of New-York, Volume 1, 1849

[Begins pg. 559, 659.]

Of those who have taken the Oath of Alliegence in the King County | ... 1687.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Documentary_History_of_the_State_of/6m9SAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Pieter on p. 661.

[Edit:] this one: Pieter Claasen wijckoff 51 Jaere [5th from top of page]

[I do not know what "51 Jaere" indicates]

[Son of Pieter, Nicolaus?] Claes Pieterse wijckoff Native 

[transcription, not the original manuscript]

Comments

I am guessing that "51 Jeare" is age 51 and something akin to emigrant?

---

Ok, Jeare is Years or age, 51 Years old?

Ages given for non-natives?

If so, more work needs done about his birth year.  M. William Wykoff has some comments on that but I will wait for a better expertise of what this record is telling us.

Thank you all.

---

Also, a location is given for his group of names, can someone translate that please?

---

Aha -- that list shows that Pieter Claasen was recorded with the surname Wijckhoff, which is the correct Dutch orthography for the name that is often rendered as Wyckhoff.

The "51 Jaere" (51 years) is the length of time that he had lived in "this country." The first entry on page 659 explains this, and every man on the list is shown either as "native" (born in "this country") or a number of Jaere.

The place where he was recorded is "fflackland", which is often rendered as "Flatlands" and was one of several small settlements in the area that is now known as Brooklyn, New York. "Flatlands" is not to be confused with "Flatbush" (shown on this list as fflackbush), which was nearby. Flatlands was also called New Amersfoort. It had its own church in 1654, but there are no church records from Flatlands until 1747; apparently the vital events for the people of Flatlands were recorded at places like New Amsterdam, Flatbush, or possibly New Utrecht.

---

So it seems Pieter did adopt the surname during his lifetime, as evidenced by the 1687 oath of allegiance in King's Co. Back to your original question about the process, I don't know of a formal or uniform process, nor a time schedule. You have the 1687 benchmark, but you can't tell solely from that if that event was the catalyst for adoption or even the first use.

I don't have the William Wyckoff book, but as the name is its main topic, any other documents or clues indicating the surname adoption (such as real estate deeds, wills, court cases) should be covered in the book, unless you have reason to believe he missed something.

---

The indication that he was in the country for 51 years as of 1687 is roughly consistent with Van Laer's assertion on page 810 of the Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts book that he probably arrived in 1637.

---

Hi Christopher,

M. William's focus was different.  He is a linguist by training and was focused on the origins of the surname.  As Pieter's adopts this surname in America, it is widely assumed that he is the origin of all Wyckoff's.  While largely true in America, M. William shows us there is more to the story.

And while he brings in sound genealogical reasoning to his work, his course of eviendence stems from his background as a linguist.  It is quite good and quite convincing.   

He does not dig into Pieter's genelaogy as a genealogist might.  But he does give us another tool to examine and search for genealogical evidence.

As Ellen noted above, Gustave Anjou made a big mess of things.  Much of the actual truth was known and documented but the Myths became greater than the truth and it is a constant battle to fight.

I give Pieter what time I have, which is not enough, and pick up on things that seem lacking or could help stem the misinformation.  The expertise and support we have on WikiTree is great for fighting this misinformation and I have not see a genealogical site that can better handle and preserve Pieter's profile.   Unlike PGM, NNS do not have a Robert Charles Anderson equivalent to refer to but we do have an awesome team of NNS WikiTreer's.  And that is pretty darn great.

Answer 4

Michael, it occurs to me that you might be trying to apply a naming convention that the New Netherland Project abandoned about 5 years ago. Under the project's current naming conventions, LNABs are supposed to be names that the people themselves actually were recorded with.  The project does not  assume that patronymics were used within a certain date range, nor that they were abandoned after a certain date. Also, we do not give people patronymic surnames based on our determination of what their patronymic name should have been (for example, whether a child of Matthys was known as Matthysz or Matthyssen or Thysz). If there is no baptism record or if the father was recorded with a patronymic name at the child's baptism, we look for other records to (often a marriage record) to indicate the child's last name. It appears to me, however, that patronymic names may have been imputed as LNABs for at least some of Pieter's children.

I think that there are baptism and marriage records for at least some of Pieter's children that could be transcribed in the bodies of these profiles to show (among other things) what names the various family members were known by at a particular time.  I think that the people who have worked on this family have concluded that Pieter was never recorded with the last name of Wyckoff, but I may be wrong.

Comments

Thank you Ellen,

The last few years or so has convinced me to quit the pedigree approach to genealogy and following only the parental lines.  Family Groups bring much more detail and evidence.

I am just not comfortable with NNS profiles and patronymics, but maybe I should just get over that and learn what I need to know.

---

I've recieved a lot of bruises from working this profile, so I am a bit timid working on it.

---

Re: Children's LNAB.

Ellen,

Clarifying

If I work on his children and document marriages (or other actual documents) that show actual use of a surname, we will then use the earliest known surname used as the LNAB.

Do I have this correct?

---

Details of the Naming Conventions are on the New Netherland project page.

I have become a big fan of creating "Church Records" sections at the end of the Biography sections on profile pages, where we faithfully document the words found in records of baptisms, marriages, and church memberships. These sections are helpful in a variety of research tasks, including selection of the LNAB. Examples can be found on:

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Teerpenning-11
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Van_Ness-9
• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Albertsz-8

And once an LNAB has been determined according to the project conventions, it's helpful to put a note in "Research Notes" identifying the LNAB and explaining the basis for it.

---

I agree about the church records, Ellen.  They have been invaluable in sorting out some of the tangles I have found in various trees.  Especially when they are transcribed complete with witnesses, who often shed light on broader family and community connections.