Post here to join us in the New Netherland Settlers Project

Question

Post here to join us in the New Netherland Settlers Project

12.6k views

WikiTree's New Netherland Settlers Project is our collaborative effort to develop and maintain high-quality genealogy information for the people of New Netherland and their descendants.

New Netherland was the 17th-century Dutch colony in eastern North America (mostly in the modern states of New York and New Jersey) controlled by the Dutch West India Company. Many New Netherland settlers were Dutch, but quite a few of them came from other European places such as Germany, Scandinavia, France, England, Scotland, and the Mediterranean region; some were enslaved Africans; and indigenous Native Americans were part of their community. The scope of the New Netherland Settlers Project currently includes New Netherland descendants born as late as 1776, if they were part of a community where the Dutch culture of New Netherland was prevalent.

If you are interested in participating with this project, please answer this post to join us. In your answer, please tell us about why you are interested in New Netherland (include names of any specific ancestors or New Netherland surnames you are interested in) and tell us how you expect to contribute to the project.

Project members will receive the New Netherland Settlers Project badge on their profiles.

This project is only for WikiTree members. If you are not yet a member of WikiTree, please join the WikiTree community before requesting membership here. See Help:How to Use WikiTree to get started.

Also, we ask project members to:

Add new_netherland to your followed tags.
After you have been accepted into the project, request to join our Google Group, and include your name and Wikitree ID in your request.
Add the category [[Category:New_Netherland_Settlers_Project]] including the brackets, to your biography.

If you have questions about New Netherland or the project, you may find answers on the FAQ page or the New Netherland Settlers Project page. See our advice on reliable sources on the New Netherland Settlers Reliable Sources page and see additional project resources and sourcing advice on our New Netherland Genealogy Resources category. You may even find your ancestors on our Progenitors and Immigrants of the New Netherlands Settlers (though it is quite incomplete!)

PS - Please ANSWER in this G2G thread.

WikiTree profile: New Netherland Settlers WikiTree

asked Apr 7, 2019 in Requests for Project Volunteers by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
edited Apr 7, 2019 by Ellen Smith

Show 24 previous comments

Hello! I would like to join. My New Netherland family that I am researching currently are: Burghardt, Van Hoesen, Van Wie, Van Valkenburg, Klauw, Slingerland, Santvoord, Middaugh, Bergen, and Rapalje. I would like to contribute in helping research not only my families but others as well. I love tying things together and digging into things to solve mysteries and make connections. I am a mom, so I research in bits here and there, but I do love focusing on chunks at a time and am working hard to go back through my chart and document and re-verify everything that I have found or have been given by the previous generation of researchers in my family. I also recently found a New Netherlands connection in my husband's family. ~Sharman Rice (Lutz-3115)

commented Feb 6, 2021 by Sharman Rice G2G1 (1.3k points)

414 Answers

Page:

« prev
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
...
21
next »

Answer 1 · 2019-07-17T17:21:11+0000

Hi, Andrew. Thank you for joining this project.

You face some challenges in finding reliable sources for your New Netherland genealogy. I climbed up your ancestral lines back to the earliest generations of ancestors on Staten Island, and I felt like I was venturing into a dark and mysterious forest of unsourced profiles. (The profiles do identify sources, but too many of those sources are unsourced online family trees or vague entries like "ancestry.com.") Unlike the early church records from New Amsterdam/New York, Albany, Kingston, and some other New Netherland places, not many of the early Staten Island records are readily available on free websites. I have, however, seen many Staten Island records online, mostly on subscription sources.

I did a bit of searching (not comprehensive) and found a thoroughly researched article series on the Fontyn-Fonteyn-Fountain-Vantine-Vantyne family in New Netherland Connections vols. 14 and 15 (2009 and 2010). That journal is on the NEHGS website (paid subscription required), and the installment in vol. 15 starts at https://www.americanancestors.org/DB203/i/12602/1/24378372 . The Early Bergen Families collection (see the linked page to download the files for free) includes notes on that family (file BCfam-Fonteyn.pdf).

Also check out BCfam-Poillon.pdf and the files for Simonsen and Simmons.

commented Jul 20, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)
edited Jul 20, 2019 by Ellen Smith

Answer 2 · 2019-07-25T19:31:41+0000

I would like to join this group as I believe I had several ancestors in New Amsterdam. I'm fairly certain that Philippe Du Trieux (or Du Truy in some documents) and Susanne Du Chesne were my 10th great-grandparents. They were Walloons who came from Holland in 1624 on the ship New Netherlands. My surname at birth was Truax. Using documents gathered in Ancestry.com as well as from the site Association of Philippe du Trieux Descendants, I can research straight to Philippe and Susanne. Another 10th great-grandfather in New Amsterdam was Lodewyck Pos. He was one of the 93 signers of the remonstrance given to Stuyvesant urging him to surrender New Amsterdam to the English in September 1664. Lodewyck's daughter Lysbeth married Philippe's youngest son Jacob du Trieux, thus making them my 9th great-grandparents. I'm not sure about Nicolas Stillwell. On dozens of trees, including on this site Nicolas's presumed great-granddaughter, Rebecca Abigail Stillwell married Philippe's great-grandson LaRue Jacob Truax (making them my 7th great-grandparents). Yet, there is great disagreement on whether Rebecca Stillwell was the daughter of Elias Stillwell, who died at approximately aged 30. Therefore is difficult to be definitive about whether Nicolas Stillwell is an ancestor. I've read a few books on New Amsterdam and read several pieces of research, and would like to join this group. Thank you.

Answer 3 · 2019-08-09T05:40:49+0000

Hi, Eric. Glad to know of your interest in this project! However, currently you are a Guest Member of WikiTree. Before you can formally join a WikiTree project, you need to complete the registration process and become a full member here. You should see instructions on your WikiTree Nav Home Page.

I am also a Lansing descendant, and some time after I joined WikiTree I learned (from other members) that (1) the ancestor of the American Lansings was Gerrit Gerritsen Lansing (not Gerrit Frederickse), and (2) he didn't immigrate to America because he died in the Netherlands; his widow Elizabeth Hendrickse and their children emigrated after he died. See the linked profiles and https://www.wikitree.com/g2g/165717/gerrit-lansing-appears-to-have-never-emigrated for more information.

commented Aug 16, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 4 · 2019-08-15T18:08:38+0000

I would like to join this project. My direct ancestors were the founders of Crolius pottery in New York. [[Crolius-27|Johan Wilhelm Crolius]] was the first settler of the family and his wife was the daughter of [[Corcelius-4|George Corcelius]] one of the first stoneware makers in New York City.

Answer 5 · 2019-08-15T18:14:15+0000

Hi, Alan. Welcome to this project!

As you've probably noticed, I looked up your Crolius and Corcelius ancestors here in WikiTree and did some editing, followed by more editing by you and Thomas Randolph. These are families I wasn't familiar with. As it happens, they don't fit within our official definition for the New Netherland Settlers Project because the earliest immigrant family members arrived in America after 1700. They did live among New Netherland descendants in New York and New Jersey, so they are of interest to the New Netherland project, and I think we can collaborate productively, but they don't qualify for most of our New Netherland project boxes and categories. These families came from Germany, and they seem to have arrived in the approximate time frame of the first Palatine German immigrants. It's possible that they were among the Palatines who shipped to the Hudson Valley in 1710, but it's also very possible that they were brought to New York as craftsmen to satisfy New Yorkers' taste for fine pottery.

Anyway, your Newkirks (and probably other relations) fall squarely in the scope of this project.

A few notes on the idiosyncrasies of genealogy (at least WikiTree genealogy) for this time and place:

We think it's important to document the full details of each of the various church baptism and marriage records for a person. These can be invaluable for working out family relationships.
Related to that, this project has a strict interpretation of the convention for LNABs (see the project page for details).
To support searching, it's important to record all of the various name spellings in the profile data fields.
According to Dutch custom, New Netherland women didn't use their husbands' last names. That custom did change gradually over time. For New Netherland descendants and others in the "New Netherland Community" during the pre-1776 period, we don't put a woman's husband's name in the Current Last Name field unless there's documentation that she was called by that name.
The fact that you can find a person's baptism or marriage info in a Dutch website such as WieWasWie is not necessarily an indication that the event occurred in the Netherlands or under Dutch jurisdiction. Many of the New York records that were transcribed and published in New York over a century ago have been incorporated into Dutch databases, but the versions of the records that were published in New York are the authoritative ones.

Here's hoping WikiTreers' combined efforts can get this interesting family of yours sorted out!

commented Aug 29, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 6 · 2019-08-16T19:59:21+0000

While working on my Father's matriarchal line, I stumbled on the Lounsburys from Rye Westminster New York. I had recently been in touch by email with William McDonald who had written an impressive lineage which was posted on an "official" Lounsbury Family Tree. After a couple of days of email exchanges he sent me a file full of amazing information on the Lounsburys which I have included in the family's various biographies. I'm fairly new to Wikitree and though I've had my family up on Ancestry.com for years, it's obvious that much of the impressive research here in Wikitree is over my head so I've been avoiding the New Netherland project. After finally landing on Richard Lounsbury [Lounsbury-68] and his wife Elizabeth Pennoyer [Pennoyer-4] for the billionth time, I've decided hiding my head in the sand is foolish and will offer my services to maintaining this file as well as learn better research methods. Thank you for your consideration.

Answer 7 · 2019-08-29T02:59:45+0000

Hello, Keith. I believe you are talking about Govert Loockermans, ca. 1616-1671, and his daughter Maritje (1641-1686), who married Balthazar Bayard. Govert's father was named Jacob, so Govert's patronymic name would have been Jacobsz or Jacobszn or something similar. (Links point to WikiTree profiles.)

I commend you to the article "Govert Loockermans (1617?-1671?) and His Relatives: How an Adolescent from Turnhout Worked His Way up in the New World" which is online at http://www.newnetherlandinstitute.org/files/7114/5506/8078/Loockermans_narrative_and_genealogy_revised_version_January_7_2016.pdf . Govert isn't my direct ancestor, but I have read that article with interest to learn about other members of the Loockermans family. If you are focused on Govert you will learn a great deal!

Welcome to this project. I think we can look forward to some interesting collaborations. For general background on the sources we use, see our Reliable Sources page and the other pages linked from it.

commented Aug 29, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 8 · 2019-08-30T02:07:40+0000

Thank you for joining us, Gordon. We're not like a lineage society, so you don't need a certified New Netherland ancestor to join us. I do see multiple New Netherlanders in your ancestry (and you'll note that you have more than you did yesterday -- after looking at your ancestry earlier today, I connected the father's profile to the profile of Annetje Aersen). And we always appreciate members who want to collaborate on researching New Netherland and its people and writing profiles for New Netherlanders.

Please read up on this project's policies, protocols, and proclivities on our New Netherland Settlers project page, particularly including the project's naming convention. You'll find that we do some things differently from the Magna Carta project, due in no small part to the unusual cultural situation of New Netherland. I also recommend the New Netherland Settlers Project Reliable Sources page and the various pages linked from it, with information on topics like where to find primary sources and church records.

commented Aug 30, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 9 · 2019-08-31T19:45:50+0000

Thanks for joining us, Beth! New Netherland genealogy can be a challenging adventure, but New Netherland is a fascinating time and place to know about.

You'll find Niclaas Schoonhoven and Wyntje Quick at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schoonhoven-38 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Quik-4 , respectively. Niclaas was born about 1685; the man born in 1652 was his nominal father, Hendrick Claassen. Navarro Mariott has been working on the Schoonhoven family and probably would be very pleased to make your acquaintance.

I cringed when I found the profile for Catherine van Dyke at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Van_Dyke-231, because the profile is in rough shape (a diverse variety of content from Ancestry gedcoms and other sources has been concatenated there without "curation") and there are several other profiles that appear to be intended to represent her (VanDyke-15, VanDyke-76, and possibly also Vandyck-42; there could be others, too...). Research attention will be needed to identify reliable sources for her biography, identify her LNAB in accordance with New Netherland project naming conventions (see the project page), and resolve the discrepancies regarding her mother's name, life dates, etc. And editing attention will be needed to generate a nice biography.

commented Aug 31, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 10 · 2019-09-03T11:31:51+0000

Hi, Trinity. I'm glad to welcome you to this project.

It looks like you've identified Reynier Arents -- https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Arentson-4 -- as an immigrant ancestor in this line. His father's first name would have been named Arent (or a variant of that name, such as Aert). What evidence do you have that he was Arent Theunissen? I found a profile for an Aert Theuniszen who was about the right age and who died in hostilities between Indians and settlers, but he seems not to have had any sons and the he died about a decade before the Peach Tree War.

FYI: Because New Netherland names can be so challenging, this project has some pretty strong rules about how we record names. Our criteria for identifying a person's LNAB are in the "Naming Conventions" section of the project page. And to aid in searches, I always urge people to include all recorded spelling variations in the "Other Nicknames" and "Other Last Names" data fields in the profile.

commented Sep 18, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 11 · 2019-09-07T09:55:18+0000

I am on the trail of my Decker/Dekker ancestry. Genetic matches increasingly suggest I'm descended from Jan Gerritsen Decker (1662-1740) of Gelderland but the picture is fragmented and the jury is still out. My brick wall is my Gx2 Grandfather, James H. Decker. He fathered my Ggrandfather, John H. Decker, out of wedlock in 1869 with Dorinda Odell in Warwick, Orange county, NY. Several candidates for James H's identity and patrimony, but none with paternal information linking them up to my genetic matches. I was born in Springfield MA and live in the Netherlands these days, so have the opportunity to visit the very buildings my ancestors walked, could I but find the thread! Among the Dutch names that appear commonly among my matches that I am actively investigating: Hornbeek, Tietsoort, Van Etten, Oosterhout, Roosa, Ten Eyck, & Terwilliger.

Answer 12 · 2019-09-07T11:12:32+0000

Please sign me up! Have a few New Netherland ancestors. My main interest is in the Newkirk/Nieuwkerk family in Kingston, Ulster County, New York.

P.S. I joined the New Netherland Project back in 2018--is this a "New" New Netherland Project?

Answer 13 · 2019-09-14T21:23:23+0000

Hello, Richard. Welcome to this project.

I guess Schamp is one of the many names that has multiple origins. Some Schamps seem to be German, but the Schamps associated with New Netherland are thought to be Huguenots named des Champs whose name got transformed into Schamp. Do you know which variety of Schamps your family is?

FindAGrave is a great resource for gravestone photos and it can be a good place to find the family tree information that other people have compiled, but I caution you that much of the text content on FindAGrave is user-contributed content that lacks any indication of its source(s). For people who died relatively recently (for example, in the 20th century) the content often was posted by a family member who knew the deceased, but we can't make that assumption for people who died 200 or 300 years ago. Accordingly, FindAGrave is not an acceptable basis for creating new New Netherland profiles (see https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:New_Netherland_Settlers_Project_Reliable_Sources for information about reliable sources for New Netherland profiles). If FindAGrave has a gravestone image or another valid source, it may add value to an existing New Netherland profile, but we prefer not to cite WikiTree pages where somebody inserted family tree data from an unidentified source. However, pages in FindAGrave often have the information we need in order to track down the family's "reliable source" records in church registers, censuses, etc.

commented Sep 21, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 14 · 2019-09-19T01:43:21+0000

Hi, RIchard. Welcome to this project.

If you are descended from people named Vanatta who were in Pennsylvania in the 1700s, It seems likely that they were descendants of the Van Etten family of New Netherland. Because Etten is a place in the Netherlands that likely is part of some modern Dutch surnames, I can imagine that there are also American some Van Ettens or Vanattas arising from the wave of emigration from the Netherlands in the 19th century, but it appears (from the profiles you've worked on) that the people you are interested in were in America much earlier than that. Also, given the large number of German immigrants to Pennsylvania (often called "Pennsylvania Dutch"), it does seem likely that people whose ancestors came from the Netherlands would have been assumed to be German. (Similarly, I've observed that German families in upstate New York were assumed to be Dutch.)

I hope that the combined efforts of WikiTreers can help you connect your Vanati/Vanatta ancestors back to New Netherland forebears. To support collaboration, it's important to provide full documentation of your information sources -- particularly primary records, including inline citations or footnotes to identify the sources of specific pieces of information.

Also, please note that in this collaborative environment (where any member can edit an Open profile and many of us share the same ancestors), we should not use first-person pronouns (I, we, my, etc.) in profile text unless it's in a signed research note. (To sign and date a note, after the note enter a dash followed by 4 tildes, like -~~~~. The 4 tildes will automatically create a dated signature.)

commented Sep 21, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 15 · 2019-09-21T19:19:14+0000

Hi, Barbara. Thank you for offering to join this project. I'm pleased to welcome you.

We usually ask new members to explain their interest in New Netherland (to be friendly and promote collaboration), but since you also sent me a private message I can tell other project members that you are very interested in the family name "Huff" and you are admin for the Hough Hoff Huff project at FTDNA. This is a name family with many origins. AFAICT, the name appeared in New Netherland (as Hof or Hoff) among some children and grandchildren of Paulus Dircksen; also, the name Huff is associated with a mysterious man named Engelbert Huff. As is typical of New Netherland families, many other New Netherland family lines are represented among people with the surname of Hoff or Huff.

I'm happy to see that you and other Hoffs and Huffs have been doing cleanup on, and adding content to, profiles for this family -- some of which were created as minimal stubs back in the early days of WikiTree and had little or no attention since then (including not being marked as New Netherlanders). I hope we can collaborate to upgrade the sourcing on these profiles, determine LNABs according to the naming conventions of WikiTree and this project (see our project page for the details of how we apply the conventions for New Netherland) and correct LNABs as needed, merge duplicates, etc. (Will it ever end?)

commented Sep 22, 2019 by Ellen Smith G2G Astronaut (1.5m points)

Answer 16 · 2019-09-23T06:57:43+0000

I'd like to join. I'm a descendant of Jacob de Truax [De_Truax-1] in the New Netherlands project and of Johannes Huffman [Huffman-94] in the Germanna, Virginia One Place Study. Getting the people sorted out and keeping the groups straight is requiring new effort on my part.

While I'm reading documentation for this group and learning name formats, I'll work on some basic edits mentioned in connection with the five star cleanups.

Jo

Categories

Post here to join us in the New Netherland Settlers Project

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to answer this question.

414 Answers

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Please log in or register to add a comment.

Related questions