Comments on Dirk VanDerKarre

Question

looking for input on LNAB for an early American of Dutch descent - is there a preference between "van der Kar" or "VanDerKar" see below

On 9 May 2023 Mary Baker wrote on VanDerKarre-2:

I am looking to add a profile for Engeltje connecting her and this line to my ancestry. I was planning on using the LNAB as "van der Kar", using lowercase and spacing between the prepositions and before "Kar" . Is there a preference that I use something else (i.e. VanDerKar). It looks like there is a space between the prepositions based on the registrars image for her son's and granddaughters baptism at Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/3575235?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a223355764f6756613235372b544a6f4a6254645466443946694f6c634a41766c2f7250656a62796b783332413d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227d) and https://www.ancestry.com/sharing/3575254?mark=7b22746f6b656e223a22447272342f67594f47684c39386c7671566f32336c5a784b52764b4d7a6f347a6d65366a3465557a7962413d222c22746f6b656e5f76657273696f6e223a225632227dm I've done many native Dutch profiles. There the policy is never to concatenate or capitalize the prepositions. I'm not clear on whether there is a policy for the early descendants of immigrants to America.

Answer 1

Hi Mary, 

this depends in which country the person is officially registered. Here you will find an extensive explanation on the subject: Dutch and Flemish Name Fields

Mvg Joop

Comments

In principle, the name is spelled as written in the baptismal or birth record, if it is not available, another official document. Since this person was born in New York, Vanderkar may be correct. His father, however, was born in the Netherlands and his LNAB should be "van der Kar". After emigration his Current Last name good be Vanderkar or written as in his immigration document or death certificate.

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Note that the New Netherland project has its own naming conventions on our project page.

Answer 2

I have responded on the profile page, and Engeltje now has a profile with the LNAB of van der Karre.

This discussion mentioned her grandfather, who was named Dirk. One of his profiles (he has two profiles at the moment!) confidently asserts that he immigrated from Utrecht in 1685, while the other profile indicates that he was born in New Netherland. That arrival from Utrecht in 1685 is just one of many unsourced "facts" listed on the profile (and it seems unusual to me because very few people went from the Netherlands to New Netherland after 1674, when permanent British control was established over New Netherland. 

Does anyone happen to know  where the "fact" collection on the Van_Der_Kar-6 profile came from?

I did a quick search for the name "van der Kar" on Wie Was Wie and I didn't find any records from the relevant time period (in the 1600s). (I did find records from later centuries, but I didn't notice any for Utrecht.) Are there pre-1700 Dutch records for this name that I failed to find?

Comments

This is the only thing about one Dirck van der Kar that I can find on Archieven.nl from that period. The funeral of a stillborn child.

Begraafinschrijving N.n. N.n. son of Dirck van der Kar, Rotterdam 10-04-1691

Maybe something can be found in Utrecht church books via Familysearch. That takes time because you have to leaf through them and decipher the old handwriting. Maybe there are indexes, I'll check it out...

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Thanks for checking, Joop.

This Dirk van der Karre married in 1687 in New Netherland, and had 12 children baptized there over the next 14 years, so there is no chance that he had a stillborn child buried in Rotterdam in 1691.

With your hint, I looked for Utrecht records on FamilySearch. Search results on FamilySearch sent me to record images on https://www.openarch.nl. There was one indexed record from Utrecht for the marriage in 1669 of a man named van der Kaer. That at least establishes that there was one person with a similar surname living in Utrecht in the 1600s.

There are no Albany church records from  earlier than 1683. I have a hunch that some of the claims made for the origin of Dirk van der Kar who lived in New Netherland might be based on sources such as notarial records or court records. The claims are more specific than we would typically see in a profile based solely on family stories.

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I found some indexes via FamilySearch-catalogus Church records indexes Utrecht (city) In addition, the baptismal books are also accessible via this site.

This concerns the churches in the city of Utrecht. Dirck's bio states that he was born in the province of Utrecht. That is a much larger search area with cities such as Amersfoort, Zeist, etc. and a large number of smaller towns and villages. Unfortunately, the church books in the Netherlands are partially digitized and we are limited in terms of quick search functions. What remains are photocopies of church books and, if available, church registers that Familysearch makes available. To search through all of them.... that takes a lot of time. 

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Thanks for the pointer to the Utrecht province records! That could be very useful when we have more specific clues than "Utrecht province, 1600s."

Searching decades of records from different cities and different churches would be a huge project. I would not undertake the search if this was my own ancestor, and I'm definitely not inclined to do it to resolve the uncertainty about the vague and unsourced information in this profile.

I have posted a request to the member who added "Utrecht province" and other facts to the van der Kar-6 profile. I hope he can give us some information about his sources.

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The member who posted "Utrecht province" and other facts to the van der Kar-6 profile says he got the content from https://www.familysearch.org/photos/artifacts/73789726?p=21577725 (an unsourced "Public Memory" linked to a FamilySearch tree profile). I have found good sources that generally confirm two of the facts in that "Memory" (but there are differences in details), so I think there may be some validity to the rest of the contents, but I wouldn't depend on it.

I have sent a message via FamilySearch for the FS member who contributed the "Memory."

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Relevant, what is the source or indication that he comes from the province of Utrecht. I find it a bit strange. In general, you state your place of birth and country of origin to an official body, possibly the province for the sake of completeness. The duplicate profile, awaiting merge, states that he was born in Kinderhook. Perhaps a strange thought of mine: the father of his wife Nicholas Van Schaick was born in Houten in the province of Utrecht. Perhaps this is where the idea originated, wild guess, that his father came from the province of Utrecht. Anyway, this proves that you should have good sources before making any claims. Referring to other family trees as a source is incorrect and should be stated under the heading Leads or Indirect sources.

Maybe it would be better to empty the place of birth and mention in the bio the possible locations of birth.

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Joop, I'm sorry that I wasn't clear in describing the situation. There is far less certainty in that profile than you might have thought. The words in the profile were definitely not my words; I now know that they are the words of an anonymous author whose content was pasted into WikiTree.

The van der Kar-6 profile has a bunch of good sources (marriages and baptisms), but the narrative biography in the profile was completely unsourced. This is a problem we frequently have for New Netherland, where numerous profiles were created (sometimes we had many profiles for the same person, needing to be merged in spite of conflicting information) by people who often didn't understand sourcing (even many well-researched published genealogies of the past don't cite sources because the authors thought sources detracted from readability. These members eagerly contributed their received family trees (or someone else's online family tree) or text copied from a source that isn't identified. For a variety of reasons we don't simply discard this content (sometimes the content is valid, and even if it isn't, we try to respect the good intentions of the contributors). Instead of discarding their content we try to find reliable sources that confirm, disprove, or supplement the contributed content. The  unsourced narrative in this particular profile looked like it might come from good sources (although it cited no sources, it described the types of information we often find in reliable sources). I asked "Does anyone happen to know  where the "fact" collection on the Van_Der_Kar-6 profile came from?" simply because I was hoping that someone would know where the unsourced text originated. (I'm still hoping to learn more...) The bit about Utrecht Province is just one of the unsourced facts in the profile; I wondered if there was a credible basis for associating the name "van der Kar" (in any spelling) with Utrecht Province in the 1600s. This man's origin is mysterious because he first appears in records in 1687 with no mention of him or his family before then. Very few Dutch people came to New Netherland after 1674, so either he was born there but not documented until 1687, or he arrived later for some unusual reason.  The firm statement that he arrived in 1685 from Utrecht province gave me the impression that someone had solid information about his arrival (maybe a contract for him to work  for somebody). Sometimes the name(s) reported for a New Netherland family can be confirmed as having been abundant in the area the family supposedly came from. Thus, even if we can't find records for the individual, we can say that the claimed place of origin could be true. I think I've seen enough about the name to confirm that more than a few Dutch people in that part of the Netherlands used names like van der Kar, but that doesn't tell me where this man came from or when he arrived. With as little information as we have, it would not be productive to look for birth records for him.

As for when he arrived, there are very, very few passenger lists for ships that arrived in New Netherland. There was no  modern-style organized government keeping records of immigrants. Our information on people's origins and arrival dates comes from marriage records that identify the person's place of origin, as well as letters, contracts, deeds, estate records, court minutes, church records, tax lists, etc., that record a person in a particular place on a particular date or show a New Netherlander's relationship to their Netherlands family. Even when we have something called a ship's list, that list may have been assembled from researching those other types of records.

As for emptying the data fields due to uncertainty, WikiTree doesn't like empty data fields. Because of the way data are handled, it is better to have a location that is labeled as "uncertain." We have been advised to name the country or continent when we cannot name the specific place, but with New Netherland people we may be more certain about specific places than we are about country and continent (maybe we are choosing between Amsterdam, Nederland; New Amsterdam, New Netherland; and Pernambuco, Brazil).

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Your comment about the father-in-law led me to look more carefully at another connection for Dirk van der Karre that turns out to be associated with Utrecht Province.

Dirk is named in the 1688 will of a man named Adriaen Gerritsen whose name is almost always notated as "Adriaen Geritsen [Papendorp}", Adriaen Gerritsen van Papendorp, or similar. Adriaen Gerritsen Papendorp was a magistrate at Albany in New Netherland who appears to have been well connected to the colony's elite. Being named in his will suggests a family relationship -- and Papendorp is (or was) a hamlet near the city of Utrecht. 

Maybe there is a document somewhere that shows Dirk being called to the Albany-Kinderhook area of New York (former New Netherland) for some purpose related to his childless relative Adriaen Gerritsen. (????)

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I don't know if you know this site Achternamen Nederland (Lastnames Netherlands) regarding explanation and the distribution of Surnames in the Netherlands. I searched for "van de Kar", the result for the current distribution of this surname can be seen when you click on the link. You will find more information on the tabs next to it. It is obviously not an overview of the 17th century, but can be an indication. In our case it does not help us much except that the name "van der Kar" does indeed occur in the province of Utrecht.

Well, and what also happens, which you also noticed, is that in some deeds a person's surname is not mentioned, but only his patronymic.

 As for my comment about adding sources, that was not meant personally but a general comment with the background thought that we who are serious about this are faced with poorly or undocumented profiles being uploaded by different people. It is unfortunately the case and we try to deal with it as best as possible.