What is known of his ancestry * :* Tjerck was born in 1619-1620 in Groothalt en Zunderlandt (probably
located in what is now East Friesland, the Netherlands), according to his
marriage certificate
* His parents were Nicholas and Tjaatje.
* Their birthdates and birthplaces are not known.
* The names of their parents are not known
Likely sources for finding out more:
* Much speculation, and some evidence, suggests that
Nicholas' father was Jan DeWitt, a member of the DeWitt family of
Dordrecht, Holland. That family documents an unbroken
line back to the 1200s. I have a copy of a genealogy
taken (by Robert DeWitt of Cincinnati) from a book at a library in
the Hague, written in Dutch, for that family which shows a Nicolaas,
born 1597, son of Jan, but which indicates he had no children.
Inconvenient for Tjerck. Perhaps this is a mistake on the part of the
compilers. Anyway, here is what the chart (based
upon the genealogy referred to above) might look like.One possible source for data is the Central Bureau for Genealogy at
the Hague. The URL for their website is: http://www.cbg.nl/There is also supposedly a different genealogy in a book in the
"Royal Library" at the Hague, the Geschlacten Von
Dordrich.One more reference to possible sources for linking Nicholas
DeWitt with the Dordrecht DeWitt family is provided in a footnote
in a biography of Johann (Jan) DeWitt:"Summary of genealogy of DeWitt family, drawn up for John de Witt, Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Staten van Holland voor 1795, Coll. 'De Witt (Beyerman),' no. 1. (Materials in the Algemeen Rijksarchief are numbered by file and sometimes by box; a file number is given without any preceding letter, a box number with a preceding capital letter.)"
Was the Jan DeWitt who is reportedly Tjerck's grandfather the same Jan DeWitt who was captain of the ship "Vos" on its 1614 year long voyage to the Hudson river area?Although we don't know that Claess's father's name was Jan, the is good reason to suppose that it might be. The strongest basis for this is can be seen in the Dutch family naming patterns of that period. As I understand it, it wasn't unusual for the oldest male child to be named after the mother's father; the next after the father's father, and the next after the father's grandfather or some other male relative. So: Nicholas (Claess) had two sons that we know of - Tjerck and Jan. It's likely that one or the other was named for the father. Next, Tjerck's first three sons were Andries, named after Barbara's father; Klaes, after Tjerck's father; and Jan, who likely was named after Tjerck's grandfather.
To take it one step farther: That would give us Tjerck Claessen, Claess Janse/Janz, and Jan DeWitt. This is where the ship captain thing comes in. Tjerck was known to have owned a 50' sloop, the St. Barbara, and given that occupations were often the same among members of different generations, it's likely that his father and grandfather were ship captains as well. That's where the following information comes in. Records indicate that a Claess Janz DeWitt was captain of the ship Liefte (Love), which made at least one trip to New Amsterdam in 1660. And it is well documented that a Jan DeWitt was captain of the Vos (Fox) on its return from the Hudson river exploration in 1614. (The original captain, Pieter Fransz. and two others had been killed by locals.)
The hypothesis to be supported or rejected is that those two were Tjerck's father and grandfather. The few Dutch voyages, from Hudson's 1609 trip through those in 1613-1614, leading to the formation of the New Netherland Company in 1614, are fairly well documented.* This might, or might not, yield something about Jan DeWitt that links him to Claess and/or Tjerck. Just another lead to pursue, but it could be a productive one.
* See, for example:
Hart, Simon (1959), The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company: Amsterdam Notarial Records of the First Dutch Voyages to the Hudson. City of Amsterdam Press.
I found Hart's book in the UC Berkeley library. It identifies a number of primary sources for the events that it covers. Here are three sources from footnotes to the sections referring to the 1613-1614 voyage captained by Pieter Fransz. and Jan DeWitt, as well as the 1611-12 voyage of the Vos, on which Pieter Fransz. served as First Mate to Capt. Jan Cornelisz. May. It's not improbable that Jan DeWitt was on this crew as well:
S. Muller Fz., de reis van Jan Cornelisz. May naar de IJszee en de Amerikaansche kust 1611-1612, (Werken Linschoten Vereeniging, The Hague, 1909), I.
S. Muller Fz. Geschiedenis der Nordsche Compagnie, pp. 64-67, 367-369.
City Archives Amsterdam, Notarial Archives 198. Pp. 113v-115v, July 23, 1614; pp. 99-101v, July 24, 1614; pp. 116-116v, July 25, 1614.
*
An excellent website created by Doug Bradley containing most of the known information and misinformation about Tjerck and his family, with an account of a 1998 trip to East Friesland to research Tjerck's background, and a photo of the remains of the house he built around 1670, can be found here:
Doug has returned from a 2000 trip to Ostfriesland and will be posting his new findings soon. For now, he provides this new lead:
"A good book to hunt for (the New York Public Library has it, or you can
get it directly from Ostfriesland somewhere, or it must be in some other
collections): the book of dike taxes in Ostfriesland, all the way back to
the 1500s. The plots of land in Ostfriesland are clearly marked and
numbered on old maps that go at least that far back. The notations in the
dike tax book indicate who paid taxes on which plot of land. The
identical plots of land are in use today, and in fact air pilots say if
you're over the coastal areas of Ostfriesland, you could use the old map
to navigate--it shows every ditch and house and property division, going
back to the 1500s.So any DeWitt property would be clearly (more or less) noted in the book
of dike taxes. The book is in German, in two volumes, and it's got the
word Weinkaufsprotokolle in it--search for it at www.nypl.org, and you
should be able to find all the pertinent info on it. I had a chance to poke through it a bit before I left New York, but I hadn't covered all the possible leads yet before I left. When I get around to it, I'd like to explore it further. I have photographic prints
that show the old map (which corresponds with the parcel numbers from the
book) in excruciating detail."
Heres some new info from Stephen Aderholdt (loungeleviathan@hotmail.com):I just located the wife of Gerard deWitte, father of Goord Godschalk deWitte who marr. a Van Houweningen. On www.familysearch.org, by typing in just "Goord Witte", I located a record of Goord Goschalk DeWitte, IGI record, b.1336 Dordrecht, son of Gerard DeWitte and Catharina Van der Does; also of Goord Goschalck DeWitte marr.c1374 (Dordrecht), unknown.
Gerard D.W. b.c1300 Dord;Gerard marr. c1325 Catharina Van der Does. Next I located a documented file on a Van der Does family by typing in Dutch first names and Does as the surname. Found some in Leiderdorp,S.Holland going back to the 1200s-the name was originally DeCroiselles, of Cambrai, FR, changed to Van der Does c1300. Catharina is not listed but was probably a member. Needs more research.
