Introduction

The Vanderhoof Project brings together genealogical information and sources related to the surname Vanderhoof and its spelling variations.

The Project has a considerable amount of material contributed by Vanderhoof researchers about individual family lines. We also have access to a number of valuable primary and secondary sources and to the 1959 and 1969 versions of Wilson Ledley's research on the Vanderhoof family.

Currently available research indicates that everyone with the Vanderhoof name is descended from a single family who arrived in New Amsterdam aboard the ship De Bever on 29 July 1661. De Bever left the Netherlands shortly after 9 May 1661 and took about eleven weeks to complete the journey across the Atlantic.

Origins

This original family consisted of Geertje Cornelis and her six children from the town of Beesd in the province of Gelderland, Netherlands. Geertje was the widow of Cornelis Gijsbertsen Van Der Hoeven , a farmer and alderman of Beesd who had died several years earlier. Several other families from Beesd were also passengers on De Bever, including Geertje's sister, Adriaentje, and Huijgh Barentsz de Cleijn who had organised the group.

Geertje was a descendant of the Van Vulpen family who originated near the town of Doorn, Province of Utrecht and who had become tenants of the Marienwaerdt Estate in the 1580's.

America

After arriving in New Netherland, Geertje and her children probably settled near Albany and bought land in Kinderhook, where her sons farmed and worked until the 1680's. After that, the family is recorded may times in the Albany records.

Geertje remarried to Steven Jansen Conick and seems to have remained near Albany for the rest of her life. She left a will dated 1684 which mentions her surviving children.

 The three sons of Geertje, Gijsbert, Cornelis and Jan adopted the family name 'Van Der Hoeven' which their father had used back in the Netherlands. Gradually, this name changed into several phonetic variations, the most common of which were Vanderhoof and Vanderhoef.

Geertje's Children

As far as we are aware, the eldest son, Gijsbert Cornelis had no children and no definite reference to him is found after 1671.

Cornelis Cornelis Van Der Hoeven, the second son of the family, died in January 1688 and his widow and children moved to Brooklyn. They became the ancestors of the branches of the Vanderhoef family in Bedford, New York and Monmouth and Middlesex Counties, New Jersey.

Elizabeth van der Hoeven married Jurien Calyer about 1667 and they lived in Kinderhook for several years before moving to Brooklyn. Neeltje van Der Hoeven lived in Albany and was at her mother's home in 1684. Little is known of her after that date.

In the late 1690's, the youngest son, Jan Cornelis, moved to Bergen, New Jersey with a large family. Jan lived until at least 1705 and his sons are recorded in the Hackensack and Aquackanonck in subsequent years. By the 1730s three of Jan's sons, Gijsbert, Jacob and Isaac are living near Horseneck, Essex County and in Lower Montvile, Morris County.

Jan's descendants became the most numerous branch of the Vanderhoofs, moving gradually westward through New Jersey to settle in Bergen, Essex, Morris and Passaic Counties. After 1800, branches of this family began to spread into other areas, notably Upstate New York, Vermont, Michigan ,Illinois and Pennsylvania.

DNA Project

Analysis of the Y-Chromosome DNA of modern Vanderhoof descendants has revealed that men of a number of different lines have very similar Y-DNA patterns. From these results it has been possible to propose a Y-DNA pattern for our common ancestor.

There is a Vanderhoof Y-DNA project with Family Tree DNA which can be joined here