What do we really known about the Van den Berg family in New Netherland?

Question

I hate to stop progress of merging duplicates, but I am postponing a proposed merge of VanDerBergh-5 and Vandenberg-4 (Gerrit Gysbertse Vandenberg) because I don't believe that either of the LNABs is an appropriate choice for this New Netherland settler. Before these profiles are merged, let's be sure we have a decent choice for the LNAB.

If this is truly his last name, in the 1600s it would have been rendered as van den Berg or Van den Bergh, not with one word like "Vandenberg". Also, I think he probably used a patronymic name. The sources I've found for his son Huybert indicate that Huybert was called by a patronym (e.g., Gerritsz) in his marriage record and perhaps later than that. If the son used a patronym, it seems likely that his father did, too.

Does anybody have any records (not unsourced Ancestry Family Trees, but a record or a decent secondary source) that substantiate the last name of Gerrit Gysbertse (Vandenberg)?

And while I'm on the subject, would anyone object if I change son Huybert's LNAB to Gerritsz?

Comments

I would not have postponed the merge. Seems to me that even if ''Vandenbergh'' is not the correct LNAB, it has the better spelling of the two - VanDerBergh-5 seems to be just wrong - both with compacted capitalised suffixes and a "Der" where there most probably would have been and ''den'' ...

Answer 1

"The van den Berghs in America" compiled by D. Wade Stockman spells it van den Bergh.

Sally Shreeve

Answer 2

His father : Gysbert Cornelisz van=from Wesep (Weesp)  arrived in the colony of Rensselaerwyck in 1645 (according Bowier Manuscripts 1639 at new Amsterdam and fall 1644 in the colony Rensselaerswyck)  (was already or married after the immigration (?) Lijsebet Van Voorhout daughter of Claas Cornelis Segers Van Voorhout and Brechtje Jacobs) and lived on a farm called Hoogeberch “= High Mountain,” lying on the east side of the river. 

Later: Gijsbert Cornelisz, from Breuckelen (near Utrecht), was a farmer on the farm called de Hoogeberch; than he was often referred to as Gijsbert Cornelisz van den Hoogenberch, op den Hoogenberch, or aen den Berch as well. (So I think this Breuckelen and Utrecht not in the Netherlands but New Netherland)= see Bowier Manuscripts pg 837

Son : Gerret Van den Bergh, m. Teuntje

But here Bowier Manuscripts pg 833 and 834 it says something different about his father (Gijsbert Cornelisz ), it says he was a tavern keeper so he also was referred to as waert or weert  it says + he already appeares at New Amsterdam as early as 1639 , so he immigrated earlier . (there's also a lot of info for Lijsebet and her parents and siblings)  

 

Comments

Hmm... Following up on your sources, I find indications that there were two different men named Gysbert Cornelisz in New Netherland. For example, Bielinski distinguished them as separate, and this webpage (which has extensive excerpts from its sources) also identifies two different men. They are:

1. Gysbert Cornelisz van den Hoogenberch - Thiis is the man whose family came to be known as Van den Berg (which has essentially the same meaning as van den Hoogenberch).
2. Gysbert Cornelisz de weert - Married Lysbeth Cornelis (van Vourhoudt). Apears to have come from Weesp.

Note that "van den Hoogenberch" and "de weert" were not parts of these men's names, but rather were identifiers that were appended to their names to help distinguish them.

Answer 3

I've created profiles for Jan van den Berg's (whatever LNAB spelling is settled on) children--and he had a lot of them. The profiles for Jan, his wife, Arentje (Ida), and his children are orphaned, as they are not in my family line, and would be better served with a profile manager with an interest in Immigrants to the United States from South Holland. These van den Bergs settled in Michigan, in Kalamazoo and Ottawa County, and intermarried with other Dutch families there.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Van_den_Berg-1432

Comments

Hi, Susan. You may be relieved to know that WikiTree does not impose a standard family name on all members of a family. We determine the person's correct name(s) based on information that indicates what name(s) the person was called by during their lifetime. In case you have not seen it already, check out Help:Name Fields#Use their conventions instead of ours. (Additionally, the New Netherland Project application of the naming convention was revised after I posted the question here in 2016.)

Naming issues aside, the Jan van den Berg you researched was born almost 2 centuries after the man I was asking about (my 8G grandfather). Although the two families share the same surname of van den Berg it looks like there is only a small chance that they are related. Your Jan van den Berg is documented as being from Ouddorp in South Holland. On the other hand, Gijsbert Cornelisz, the father of the man I asked about, immigrated from Weesp (or more specifically Ouwerkerck, or Oudekerk, a few miles west of Weest) in North Holland.

The name van den Berg is basically a toponymic name, although, but it is nonspecific, in that Berg presumably could refer to any mountain. But now I am wondering: How many geographic features does the Netherlands have that could be called mountains?!?

Is the Michigan van den Berg family you researched related to the U.S. Air Force General Vandenberg who is the namesake of Vandenberg  Air Force Base? (He does not have a profile here.)

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Actually, they aren't "my" van den Berg" profiles; I merely created them as part of the Integrators project, so I have no investment in them. I didn't create profiles for all of the children and their spouses' families.

Often, I create a new G2G question when looking for someone to adopt profiles not in my family line and created from the "Needs Profiles Created" category, but there seems to be less clutter when answering or replying to a current post. Juries' still out on that though.Thanks for reaching out, and happy sourcing.

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Hi, Susan. Thanks for explaining, and thanks for your efforts!

As a G2G Moderator, I pay more attention to how G2G posts get shown to members than most folks do. If you want people to notice your requests for interest in a newly created profile or group of profiles, I recommend that you start a new thread by posting a question. New questions get more prominence in G2G than do new answers to old questions. Also, if your question and tags contain information specifically relevant to the family you have worked on, the question is more likely to get a look from the family than if the recognize the question as one about some other person with the same name.