How can we sort out the tangle of Hendrick Van Tassel and the Buys family?

Question

Hi everyone,

I am working on my direct ancestors, and have come to protestant dutch ancestors and other french huguenot ancestors. I am unexperienced in colonial new york research, and am primarily experienced in european/latin american research, so this isn't my wheelhouse.

I have found a big tangle in profiles that are likely duplicated, but the lack of sources is very confusing.

According to the periodical sources I have from cousins who published in the NYGB, Hendrick Van Tassel married Beeltje Buys.

There are three Hendricks on the world tree, who all appear to be the same person. The issue is that some of them have different parents, so they might be different people, or all the same person with incorrect parents.

Van_Tassel-134

Van_Tassel-146

Van_Tassel-227

There is also a lot of overlap/duplication in the wives of these profiles.

Two profiles for wife Beeltje:

Buys-541

Buys-655

Is Catherina here the same as Beeltje?

Buys-289

Based on the biography available it seems that she may be connected to the wrong Van Tassel?

There is also the issue of Krankheyt-12 who may also be attatched to the wrong Van Tassel, but thats another can of worms.

I appreciate any input, thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, there is a tangle here. Some of these profiles are heavily reliant on Other People's Online Family Trees and similarly poor "sources."

Sourcing issues aside, we often encounter similar name confusion among New Netherland descendants in the 1700s. People had adopted family surnames (this had been required by the British), so their records seldom included their patronymic names, and because they followed the Dutch custom of naming children for their grandparents, there often were several cousins of similar age with the same first and last name living in the same community. There are no central repositories for the vital records that were created and maintained by local churches, so for vital records we need to seek out the local church and hope that the church has surviving records that we can access. This page is the WikiTree New Netherland Project's compilation of resources for finding church records.

These Van Tassel and Buys families crossed paths (and often married each other) in or near Philipsburgh Manor and Tarrytown, New York. The single best source for their primary vital records is Cole, David. First Record Book of the "Old Dutch Church of Sleepy Hollow," Organized in 1697 and Now the First Reformed Church of Tarrytown, N.Y. (Yonkers, New York: Yonkers Historical and Library Association, 1901). (click on the hyperlink to access the WikiTree Source page that includes links to free online sources for this book).

Several of these people were recorded at marriage as having been born at Acquackenonk (which is now known as Passaic, New Jersey); there are many Acquackenonk church records on Ancestry.com, but not necessarily for these people.

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I've done a little investigation to improve some of these profiles and attempt to sort them out.

I am confident that Hendrick van Tassel-227 is not the man who married Belitje Buys in 1730, for the simple reason that he was only 14 years old in 1730.

That leaves two Hendrick van Tassel profiles representing the man who was born about 1704-1706 and married Belitje in 1730. Hendrick Van Tassel-134 born in 1704, son of Cornelis van Texel and Antje Storm, was recorded at Tarrytown, but he is not in the list of children in a family record of this same Cornelis van Texel published in the NYGBR in 1989. The NYGBR article indicates that the children's births were added as a group later; the omission of Hendrick from the family list makes me wonder whether this Hendrick might have died young.

From secondary sources I get the impression that the Hendrick who married Belitje Buys is thought to be the son of Jacob van Texel and Aaltje Storm who was baptized in March 1706. That corresponds to https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Van_Tassel-146 .

I will feel much better about drawing conclusions on these people when the complete families are documented with good sources (church records, wills, and that Cornelis van Texel record), so we can readily observe the patterns in given names and baptismal witnesses that often help us to confirm parent-child-sibling connections.  If I were you, I would start going through the Cole book and copying out the records you find for these people, to create "Church Records" compilations similar to the ones at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hop-92 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Hoppe-728 .

I agree that those two Beeltje Buys profiles need to be merged. (Also, she needs more and better sources.)

I see no reason to think that Beeltje and "Catherina" are the same person. Their given names are entirely different. Beeltje Buys married Hendrick van Tassel and Catharina Buys married Johannis van Tassel.

Comments

There is a need to account for at least one more Hendrick van Texel (or van Tassel): the one who married Mettie Krankheyt in 1731 -- and was having children in the same time period as Hendrick and Belitje.

The Hendrick baptized in 1716 would be too young to marry in 1731, but the boys of this name born in 1704 and 1706 would be the right age to marry in 1731.

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Daniel Van Tassel (research posted online at https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~vantasselfamilyhistoryhomepage/genealogy/DanielVT/DanielVanTassel.pdf) had Mettie Krancheyt as the wife of the Hendrick born in 1704, and Beeltje Buys as the wife of Hendrick born in 1706.  ADDED: Daniel Van Tassel has no mention of Hendrick born 1716 beyond his baptism. (No wife, no children, no other mentions.)

Daniel Van Tassel's research (undated typescript) appears to be fairly well respected by serious genealogists, although more recently discovered records have disproved some of his conclusions.

Answer 2

This is indeed a tangled web. I am not familiar with the area, so I cannot point you to any sources or anything, but I can give you some tips on methodology. I actually just watched a webinar with Elizabeth Show Mills on pulling apart same-named men.

I would first see if there are indeed three different men born named Hendrick Van Tassel. You have three parent couples & birth dates and places:

1. Cornelius Van Texel & wife Antje have a son Hendrick, born on 7 August 1704 in Elmsford, Westchester County, Province of New York.

2. Jacob Van Tassel & Antje Storm have a son, born on 25 March 1706 in Westchester Country, New York.

3. Johannis Van Texel and Caharina have a son Hendrick, baptized on 18 April 1716 in Sleepy Hollow (at least, his baptism is recorded in this village's baptismal record), in New York...Westchester County, I think?

Analyzing just this data (which is not always properly sourced) shows 2 couples without maiden names for the wives and 1 with (which is highly suspect given the type of source, location and time period). Honestly, I think none of the original birth records give maiden names for the mothers. Two of the records give a male with the Van Texel last name - of which Van Tassel is a very phonetic spelling, so I can see a later in life name change/spelling change based on that. We also see 3 birth dates, of which #3 is a lot later than 1 and 2.

This could very well be 3 different men. This is not taking into account all of the other information in the profiles yet, which could belong to the Hendrick in the profile, a different Hendrick profile, or none of these Hendrick's at all!

The best way to start is to track your Hendrick from the known information you have. Then work backwards in time to see if you can place him with his parents. That way, you know which Hendrick is your Hendrick and you can clean up his profile.

What you can also do to untangle these three profiles (if that is what you want to do) is to look for the original record of all three Hendricks and then trace all three of them forward in time. Make a list of all of the information in the profiles & timelines for each of the three Hendricks and see how far you get with untangling that mess.

However, I would be very, very careful of claiming these three men are the same. Has information or family relationships been assigned to the wrong Hendrick - probably. But it could very well be a family cluster that uses naming patterns, causing 3 Hendricks to exist with the same name in similar places. It can even happen when these families are not related! So unless you can prove one of these men didn't exist, I would not merge them as 1 person.

I hope this helps. It's honestly a fun problem to try and untangle, but depending on your exact goal here, the process is a bit different. And honestly, even if you just want to have a correct profile for your direct ancestor, you might have to fully research all three of these men in order to do that anyway.

Comments

Baptismal records may not list the wife's maiden name, but they do list sponsors, who are usually relatives. So, for example, the Cornelius Van Texel and wife Antje who had twins baptized at Tarrytown March 25, 1706, had as sponsors Ester Storm, and Aeltje Van Texel. This suggests some likelihood that Antje was a Storm. (Baptismal records of First Reformed Church, Terrytown.)

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Note that the mother's last name of Storm does not by itself help disambiguate Hendrick van Tassel-134 born 1704 from Hendrick van Tassel-146 born 1706. Their mothers were sisters, both named Storm. Cornelis van Tassel (father of Van Tassel-134) married Antje Storm and Jacob van Tassel (father of Van Tassel-146) married Aeltje Storm. Antje and Aeltje are different names (but both names have multiple spellings).