Van_Schoonhoven surnames

Question

There are a few merges proposed for one of the Schoonover patriarchs - Hendrick Claessen van Schoonhoven, and more should follow soon for his children. Some have also been proposed for Niclaes. I intend to work on getting this family cleaned up a bit. Does anyone have a problem with these proposals?

VanSchoonhoven records should always be merged into Van_Schoonhoven.

Surnames for later generations will follow the conventiones found in marriage and baptism records. For example, Schoonhoven-38 should be merged into Van_Schoonhoven-23. If you look at the baptism registers, you will see that for the baptism of Niclaas's first child, he is listed as "Van Schoonhoven" but for his other children it is just "Schoonhoven." Therefore, his LNAB and profile should be "Van_Schoonhoven" while the Current Last Name should show Schoonhoven as he appeared to go by that later in life.

Transcriptions of Schoonhoven/Van Schoonhoven ancestors can be found here:

• https://sites.google.com/site/schoonoversinamerica/index/kingston
• https://sites.google.com/site/schoonoversinamerica/minisink

Comments

Please follow the NNP-guidelines and do not just merge without the consent of the rest of the project team. What you are suggesting on doing is what created this mess in the first place, and not every source on the internet is reliable.

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Totally with you on the reliability of Internet sources - the proliferation of bad information on the Internet and Ancestry in particular makes for a lot of challenges. The links I put are transcriptions directly from the original church records and quite reliable. I am also not merging without discussing - that is the point of this post.

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Thanks Jeremy, the sources are handy!

Answer 1

New Netherland Settlers guidelines now are to use the version of the LNAB from the earliest record, so the Church Records from after the emigration or preferred and if possible of course a Baptism or Birth or other records from before the emigration. 

The 'van Schoonhoven' for the earliest ones just is saying they were from the place or area Schoonhoven. 

Patronymics are not so hard, the only thing that is important in a Patronymic is the first name of the father (or mother Metronymic), the ending or way how it was written could vary:

1. Due to the inconsistency in writing those days (they wrote phonetical, so how a name was understood by a clerk it was written) 

2. The ending of the patronymics mostly depended on place and time, but the ending always is in fact just an abbreviation and only saying the child was a son (from early to later it's abt. - heer Janssoen, soon or sone, -soon, -soen, -s, -sz, -z, -ss, -sse,-zoon, -zn, -szn, -z, -sen) or daughter (-heer Jansdoghter or dochter, -doghter, -dochter, -dr, -s, -ssen, -sse, -sen and sometimes for daughters it also just could say -sz, or -z) of a man named for example Claes (Claes was the older spelling, Claas or Klaas the more modern one). So the ending is not really the most important part of a patronymic, it's the first name of the father (or mother-Metronymic) or the farm or any other type of original and most early last name, that is important see: Naming tradition Farm names Dutch Roots Naming Convention

The risk of using  later (backwards projected) last names, is that the original first name of the father (mother) or the most early and original last name (farm, etc) is somewhere down the line going to be lost. 

Why we try so hard to preserve these original first names of parents (Patronymics) or the earliest and most original version of a name (first name of father, farm or any other type of last name) and why preserving and protecting those is so important, is because it often is the only thing we have that can help us all to trace them back and (hopefully) find their even deeper ancestors. 

Hmm just noticed this was an old thread, but well ;) 

Answer 2

Exactly my point Jeremy. If the LNAB is patronymic, that field should be patronymic. If there is any 'van' (etc.) involved it should be AKA'd. If there there is a 'van' in the LNAB at birth, that should be LNAB. But if (in the case of New Netherlands) the LNAB is "VanSchoonhoven' (even if it is a baptismal exception), the LNAB must be "VanSchoonhoven' with a note in the bio pointing out the exception. Otherwise genealogists will not only be confused, but be historically misled. If you search n the surname box above 'Andriesz', you'll find the story of my own surname (Andriesz-6).

Answer 3

Contributing to the challenge for these individuals is the shocking inconsistency of the names they were given in the original records available. It's hard to say for certain which is the "right" LNAB for them. Both were born in America - Hendrick was born to an immigrant ancestor, who in the records I have seen is only ever referred to by his patronym (though with dozens of different spellings.) His name was Claes Hendricksen, and as the immigrant ancestor, I fully support having his LNAB as Hendricksen and Van Schoonhoven as an AKA. For the next 2 generations though, it's not clear which is the "correct" LNAB to use when you have this mess in primary sources. Here is how his Claes's son Hendrick appears in his marriage records and the baptismal records for his children:

• HEINDRICK CLAASSEN (1679 - marriage)
• Hendric Claasz (1685)
• Hendrick Klaes (1689)
• Henderik Schoonhoven (1691)
• Hendrick Claasen (1694)
• Hendrick Claesse Schoonhove (1696)
• Hendrick Classen (1699)
• Hendrick Claessen (1702)
• Henrik Schoonhoven (1705)
• Hendrik Claesse (1707)
• HENDRIK KLAASZ SCHOONHOOVEN (1715 - marriage)

And here is the same for Hendrick's son Niclaas:

• Niclaas (1685 - his own baptism)
• NICOLAES SCHOONHOVEN (1706 - marriage)
• Nicolaes Schoonhove (1707)
• Nicolaas van Schoonhooven (1710)
• NICLAAS SCHOONHOVEN (1713 - Marriage)
• Niclaas Schoonhoven (1714)
• Niclaas Schoonhooven (1717)
• Niclaas Schoonhoven (1719)
• Klaas Schoonhoven (1723)
• Klaas Schoonhoven (1725)
• NICLAAS SCHOONHOOVEN (1728 - marriage)
• Niclaas Schoonhoven (1729)

I propose that the most common variants to appear be used as the LNAB for the former - Hendrick Claessen (aka Schoonhoven). For the latter, since we have his FNAB, we use it - Niclaas - and use Schoonhoven as his LNAB. One could argue that it may have actually been "Niclaas Hendricsen" but there are no records of him using that last name as an adult, and his father appears as "Schoonhoven" already when Niclaas was only 6 years old.

Comments

You are right here, a perfect example of how the patronymic system of naming changed (was dropped) in just one generation. All this info should also be added into the bio of the final profiles of these names. Thanks for sharing!

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I am so happy to find this discussion! When I began my journey on the family research almost twenty years ago I was so frustrated by the multiple spelled folks I kept finding in my tree- I hope my beginners excitement and dumb disregard for verifying sources back then did not add to the bad information out there on the interwebs but I fear it may have - So glad I did not give up my habit of writing out my Family direct lines with all the vitals in books I made in binders so I have that as a skeleton to fall back on - now if I had only wrote out more of the sources instead of links (many now dead of course) I would be a much better wikiteer here - oh well just have to keep looking!

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just a note going back - there were two Nicolasses actually - the first being bastard Nick wh's father was in fact Derick Van Vleit and the second was the real Nick - let me fetch the IDS real quick here - just to clean up this old discussion (or perhaps muck it up) the real Nick was [https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schoonhoven-3]3 Schoonhoven-33- born 1694 while the original yet actually a Van Vleit was[https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Schoonhoven-38] Schoonhoven-38 born in 1685

do not confuse the two - and I come down from both these lines

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wet through all the children and added the Hoes source to the ones that did not already have it and I guess I had forgotten about this thread - so went and wrote down all those variants again and I think we need to leave it - it is good, but I propose we remove the LNAB needed as we have it -  and this thread supports it - so I guess I wasted time going through again - well I did get the kids all cited with Hoes as only half were done

As for Bastard Nick - it is what it is although I am amused that you all did not know he was not Hendrick's son back in 2014 so I would say both these profiles have their LNAB -