Relevant

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, a number of primary and secondary sources and access 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 travelled from the Netherlands to America in the summer of 1661 aboard the ship De Bever. De Bever and another vessel, the 'St Jan Baptist', left the island of Texel on 12 May 1661 and took the 'Northern Route' to America via the Orkney Islands and North Atlantic. After a difficult time in storms near the coast of Scotland, the ship completed the journey in 79 days and arrived at Manhattan on 29 July 1661. De Bever was greeted with a salute from the guns of the fort of New Amsterdam.

'Manhattan 1660' by Len Tantillo. Prints of this and other New Netherland subjects are available on Len Tantillo's website

Voorstraat and Reformed Church, Beesd

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. Cornelis Gijsbertsen used a personal seal on documents in the local court. Other families from Beesd were also passengers on De Bever, including Geertje's sister, Adriaentje, Huijgh Barents de Kleijn, a fellow alderman who had organised the group. Gideon Schaets, a former schoolmaster in Beesd, had been minister at the Albany church since 1652.

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.

Soon after arriving in New Netherland, Geertje and her children settled near Albany and bought land in Kinderhook, where some of her sons farmed and worked until the 1680's. They also worked in local transportation and shipping on the Hudson. The family is recorded may times in the Albany records until the 1690's.

Geertje married Steven Jansen Conick before 1673 although they were estranged sometime before the making of her will in 1684 which mentions her surviving children and her home opposite Castle Island.

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.

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, lived in Albany and was an official carter and the master of a sloop trading between Albany and New York. He 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.

Fairfield (Gansegaat) Dutch Reformed Church, Essex Co NJ

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 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.

The sixth child remains a mystery. She may have been Jantgen, daughter of Cornelis Gijsbertsen, mentioned in the register of members of the Beesd Church in 1659 or, as Ledley suggests, Hadduwina(Edwina?) Vanderhoven who witnessed a baptism at the New York DRC in 1684.

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