New Netherland Ancestors

The Netherlands Ancestry of the Swaim Family
As Revealed Through Y-Chromosome DNA Analysis

Stephen Swain

March 30, 2020 (with later updates)

This is a somewhat disorganized and not well-edited draft of my research into the origins of the Swaim line. I'd intended to publish this work only when I found the time to polish it a great deal more, but because, unexpectedly, a few days ago I actually discovered who Thys Barentsen's parents actually were, and how the line linked to the den Hartog line and ultimately (probably) to the van Arkel line. Since Thys Barentsen's ancestry has been a subject of speculation for years, I decided to go ahead and publish what I've already written rather than to put it off for some months simply to polish it up a bit. I welcome any comments, criticism, and questions,

Despite the spelling of my surname, my paternal ancestry derives from the New Netherland Swaim family whose ancestry lies in the Netherlands, rather than the New England Swain family with ancestry in England. The surname change occurred with my grandfather, who was born in 1906. Before that, on whatever documents I've seen, the name had always been spelled with a terminal “m.” My “Swaim” immigrant ancestors were Thys Barentsen and his son Anthony. It is now clear that all of the New Netherland Swaim branches ultimately derive from Thys Barentsen, who immigrated to New Netherland in 1661 and settled on Staten Island.

This seems generally to be accepted as true by most of the Swaims who've written anything about the Swaim ancestry, but the picture has been much murkier when it comes to Thys Barentsen's ancestors in the Netherlands. A good discussion of this can be found in Jack Stuart Swaim's book “The Swaim Family of Indiana and Oklahoma,” which is available online at http://www.jswaim.com/family/Swaim_Genealogy.pdf. Jack Stuart Swaim is skeptical but open-minded about the common beliefs that Thys Barentsen's mother was named Sibilla Verwaaijen, that his grandparents were “Barent van Rottmer” and “Geesje Barents,” and that both Barent van Rottmer and Geesje Barents were born in areas that are now in what is now northern Germany. After doing my own researchi using information obtained from Y-DNA matching, I don't believe that any of this purported ancestry of Thys Barentsen is true.

Rather, I now believe that Thys Barentsen's mother was named Pietertje Willems, that his father was name Barend Mathijs, and that his paternal grandparents were Mathijs Anthonissen/Teunisse and Lijsbet Barends. All of these ancestors were born and lived in or near Middelkoop, which is located very close to Leerdam in the general area known as the Vijfheerenlanden and historically as the Land of Arkel. The Land of Arkel was rule by the Lords of Arkel for a few hundred years until the early 1400's. It is likely that the Swaim line descends from the van Arkel line, although like most things that far back in the past, there is some uncertainty. In any case, however, the paternal Swaim line definitely comes from this region of the Netherlands from at least the 1400's in the male line, and probably for much longer.

The breakthrough in discovering Thys Barentsen's ancestry came through Y chromosome DNA analysis. I won't offer my understanding of Y-DNA at this point, except to say that for genealogical purposes the part of Y-DNA that is most useful is called STRs (Short Tandem Repeats). A handful of companies offer STR analysis, but the company with the largest Y-DNA database is Family Tree DNA (FTDNA), and since the whole point of Y-DNA analysis is to compare your DNA with other men's DNA to find mathces, FTDNA is by default the only company right now worth using for genealogical purposes. FTDNA today offers testing at 3 different levels of STRs, with each higher level testing a greater number of STRs: STR37, STR67, and STR111. They used to offer testing at STR12 and STR25, but as I'll show in the longer version of this work, those lower levels, while interesting, are not highly useful for genealogical purposes (FTDNA still does provide a list of matches for those two lower levels).

About 30 Swaims had already had their Y-DNA tested on FTDNA before I mine tested in January of 2020. The motivation for many of these people was probably the “Swaim Project” that had been organized more than a decade ago by Laraine Clark and Lloyd Swaim for the purpose of determining whether or not the Swaims had descended from the van Pelts. The answer to that question was conclusively proved be “no,” but the “Swaim Project” is still today very valuable as it has provided us with a relatively large database of “Swaims” (by which term I mean all those who descend from Thys Barentsen, most of whom have a recognizable variation of the surname, such as “Swim,” “Swimm,” “Swain,” etc. Vestal is alo a Swaim, through a known surname change event).

I first tested at the STR37 level because my only goal when I first tested was to make certain that I was in fact a Swaim and not an English “Swain.” My family tree and autosomal DNA pointed very firmly to that conclusion, but I wanted to be certain of it. But when I got my results, I found the results so interesting that I almost immediately upgraded to the STR111 level to confirm the results at the STR37 level. What I found so interesting was that two of my closest matches at the STR37 level were not surnamed Swaim, but were instead surnamed “DenHartog” and “Den Hertog.” These surnames were obviously just variations on the same name, and which in fact has other spelling variations such as Hertoch, Hertich, etc., and which may or may not use the “den” prefix. Also, at the STR67 level, which DenHartog but not Den Hertog has tested at, DenHartog remained a close match—closer than most of the Swaims! This was certainly a clue to Swaim ancestry that needed further investigation.

Information that the two “den Hartogs” provided to FTDNA showed that Den Hertog lived in the Netherlands and that DenHartog lived in the United States. A bit of research showed that Den Hartog family trees were available online at FamilySearch.org and at Geni.com. These showed that DenHartog was a descendant of a Den Hartog who immigrated to Pella, Iowa in 1847 as part of an organized religious immigration of hundreds of Netherlanders, and also that his parents had come from Leerdam (or Hei- en Boeicop, which is a couple miles from Leerdam).

There are two primary conclusions that can be immediately drawn from this information. First, the Swaims and the den Hartogs are two branches of the same tree, and are relatively closely related. Second, that Swaim/den Hartog tree grows in the soil in or near Leerdam, in the Netherlands. How deep its roots were remained to be determined, however.

Once I knew that the Swaims were related to the den Hartogs and that the den Hartog tree was available online, I decided to search for the last common ancestor between the Swaims and den Hartogs by going backwards. That is, by starting from the earlier generations and coming back toward the present, instead of the usual way in genealogy by starting from one's parents and moving backward in time. That way, I wouldn't get bogged down looking for van Rottmers and Verwaaijens, which would have been dead ends anyway. What I did was to look at the sons of each generation and follow each son as far as possible for clues as to whether he might be the progenitor of the Swaim line. This ended up being useful for other reasons, as I found interesting things along the way that I might not have even looked for if I'd proceeded from bottom to top. I discovered a possible explanation for why a Miller shows up on FTDNA as a Swaim relation, and I discovered what I think might be the origin of the Swaim name.

FTDNA provides a feature called a TiP calculator which is a tool to estimate how many generations in the past the common ancestor existed for you and your match. This tool provides a percentage estimate for each generation and also provides a refined estimate for that can be used if “traditional genealogical records indicate that a common ancestor between you and your match could not have lived in a certain number of past generations.” Since Thys Barentsen lived 11 generations back from me, and since it is very unlikely that either den Hartog could be my ancestor, I would enter the number “11” into the generator for a “refined” result. Here are the estimates provided by the TiP calculator:

DenHartog:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 9 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 15 generations

Refined result 90% probability 17 generations

Refined result 99% probability 22 generations

Den Hertog:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 9 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 15 generations

Refined result 90% probability 17 generations

Refined result 99% probability 22 generations

You can see that the refined result pushes back the number of generations, and although FTDNA gives an explantion for this I haven't bothered to read it. The refined results looked wrong to me from the beginning, and in the end did prove to be wrong. Because I was at a closer “Genetic Distance” to the den Hartogs than to most of the Swaims, and because the unrefined results showed a 90% proability that the Swaims and the den Hartogs shared a common ancestor only 9 generations ago, I thought it was logical to assume that that common ancestor lived not too many generations before Thys Barentsen emigrated to New Netherland. Therefore, I went forward with the assumpton that this common ancestor probably lived within the last 12-17 generations. I could focus my investigation on those six generations.

(In the end, the last common ancestor in fact occurred at Generation 15, which is exactly the generation predicted by the TiP calculator for the unrefined result at 99% probability.)

However, I got bogged down in first dealing with the older generations because they were the Lords of Arkel who had a fascinating history that I wanted to explore. The family tree for the DenHartog Y-DNA match showed him as a direct descendant of the Lords of Arkel, which of course had to mean that the Swaims were also the direct descendants of the Lords of Arkel, assuming that the family tree was substantially correct. And we probably are, but there is some question as to the truth of that, which hinges upon whether or not our lineage derived from that of Willem Ottens (1440-1494), the son of Otto (the Bastard) van Arkel, or whether it derived from another Willem Ottens who seems to have lived in the same area at the same time. This is a question that is discussed in Dutch online genealogy forums, and the general conclusion is that it is likely that the den Hartogs do descend from the son of Otto van Arkel the Bastard, but that the evidence is circumstantial and uncertain rather than direct and conclusive.

However, my goal was to discover how the Swaims were related to the den Hartogs, rather than to determine whether we were related to the van Arkels. The question of whether the Swaims are related to the van Arkels can only can only be determined by exhuming the remains of one of the van Arkels and testing its Y-DNA. This is a practical project from a scientific standpoint, but probably less so from a social and political standpoint, as it would require someone with the financial resources and the personal drive to pursue it, who would be willing to negotiate his or her way through a great deal of "red tape." If it is ever done it is likely to be done as part of some larger project initiated by a consortium of universities involving the widespread testing of both ancient remains and living men throughout the Netherlands to determine the Y-DNA history of the country or of Europe as a whole. I think such a project is quite plausible, and hope that it does sometime occur (hopefully within my lifetime).

Another possibility is that there is some uncontested male-line descendant of the van Arkel line who will at some point test his Y-DNA. If he exists and he does this at FTDNA (or if there is by then some pooled database of all Y-DNA results) and his Y-DNA matches with Swaim and den Hartog Y-DNA, then this also will answer the question. The van Arkels had many male children over the generations, so there are undoubtedly many paternal-line descendants living today in the Netherlands. Some may be using the van Arkel surname but others may be using surnames such as van Ochten, van Dalem, van Sterkenberg, van Slingelandt, van Voorne, van Virneberg, de Gruijter, de Hoghe, van Nyenstein, Ravenstein, de Bar, etc. Some of these lines may have branched off from the Swaim/den Hartog line enough generations ago that there are enough mutations accumulated that they won't show as matches on FTDNA because they fall just outside of FTDNA's "Genetic Distance" requirements for displaying them as matches. Some of these may already be in the FTDNA database but don't show as matches for that reason. It is too bad that FTDNA doesn't have the option to look at matches outside the range of what it currently allows, for this and other reasons. That they don't is probably more for commercial reasons than for reasons of privacy, since the only personal information they reveal is the name of the match and any other personal information that the match chooses voluntarily to disclose.

I've checked the "Netherlands Project" and the "New Netherland Project" in FTDNA's geographical projects for men who might be matches at a slightly greater genetic distance than FTDNA's cutoff for matches. The closest match I found was a man surnamed Losee, whose listed ancestor is Simeon Losee (1754-1806). His genetic distance from me is 30 at the level of 67 tested STRs. This is too distant for our last common ancestor to have been a van Arkel, but it is still an interesting relationship. Since "D Swim" is at a genetic distance from me of 6 (at STR67) and my last common ancestor with D Swim was 11 generations ago (Thys Barentsen), then Losee at a genetic distance of 30 would be 5 times as distant. This means that the last common ancestor of Losee and me would have existed approximately 55 generations ago. Assuming an average generation is 25-30 years, this would me our last common ancestor lived from 1,375 to 1,650 years ago, or sometime between 370 A.D. and 645 A.D. This is a long time ago, but it is within the historical era. At the outside, it's only 145 years before Heijman van Arkel (790-856) is supposed to have been born, and it's well within the time period when Ritzard I van Friesland (535- ), a supposed ancestor of van Egmond and van Buren lines, who ruled in Friesland in the north of Holland, is supposed to have existed. The Wikipedia entry "400" states that in this year "The Franks establish themselves in the North of the Netherlands," and it would be interesting to see if any of these lines could be definitely traced this far back to Friesland and to the Franks. I'm well aware that Heijan van Arkel and Ritzard I van Friesland might not ever have existed, or if they did, might not be proven to be related to the van Arkels or to the van Burens, but with the power of Y-DNA to establish relationships hundreds and thousands of years in the past, I do think that in not too many years in the future we will be able to build a very accurate web of relationships extending into the distant past that we may be able to accurately relate to historical names and places. This may be easier to do with the E-V13 haplotype than with the more common R and I haplotypes, since the E-V13 haplotype is much less common in Western Europe.

Generations 18 Through 15 of the den Hartog Genealogy

The following is a summary of my investigation of Generations 18 through 15 of the den Hartog genealogy. I set Generaton 11 as the particular den Hartog who was born at about the same time as Thys Barentsen, under the assumption that Thys Barentsen was born in 1621 (this date comes from which date , which is a date calculated from a later statement by Thys Barentsen in New Netherland). The den Hartog at this generation is Claes Geerloffsz Hartogh (1624-1699, born in Schoonrewoerd). Claes Geerloffsz Hartogh was about the same age as Thys Barentsen and probably lived within a few miles of him. Claes and Thys were 3^rd cousins and probably knew each other as such, given the lineage's long residence in the area.

When I originally wrote these paragraphs, I had not yet discovered the person who I am now almost certain is Thys Barentsen. Therefore, I wrote them as if I was still searching for him, because I was. Rather than change the paragraphs to reflect the fact that we now know the probable identity of Thys Barentsen, I will leave them as I wrote them. Even though most of these people are not the progenitors of the Swaim line, they are nonetheless cousins, and in time some of their descendants will surely show up as Y-DNA matches.

2022 Note: After more research and consideration, I no longer believe that it is likely that the Swaim/den Hartog paternal line descended from the Arkel line. The evidence is too thin to support a claim of descent and the Dutch and now American genealogies claiming this descent cannot be considered accurate until they can support the claim with actual documentation. I now believe that the father of Willem Ottens (1440-1494) was probably the man listed in 1436 as Otto Geritsz van Oist rather than Otto van Arkel--but as of now I don't have enough evidence to elevate this belief to a genealogical certainty

Before I get into a more detailed analysis, here's what I believe is the Swaim and den Hartog paternal lineages, starting with Generation 18, Jan V Van Arkel:

Gen den Hartog Line Swaim Line

G18 Jan V, Heer van Arkel (1362-1428) Jan V, Heer van Arkel (1362-1428)

G17 Otto van Arkel (1400-1475) Otto van Arkel (1400-1475)

G16 Willem Ottenszn (Deventer) (1440-1494) Willem Ottenszn (Deventer) (1440-1494)

G15 Claes Willemsz Ottens (Deventer) (1475-1538) Claes Willemsz Ottens (Deventer) (1475-1538)

G14 Willem Claess den Hertoch (De Jonge)(1518-1575) Anthonis Claessen (1516-1568)

G13 Adriaen Willemsz van Deventer Hertoch (1560-1627) Mathijs Antonissen (1545-1595)

G12 Geerloff Ariensz Hartogh (den Hartog)(1589-1665) Barend Mathijs (1590- 1661?)

G11 Claes Geerloffsz Hartogh (den Hartog) (1624-1699) Matijs Barents (Thys Barentsen)(1621-1682)

Here's the Swaim line by itself:

Jan V van Arkel (1362-1428)

Otto van Arkel (1396-1475)

Willem Ottens van Arkel (1440-1493)

Claas Willems van Deventer (1475-1540)

Anthonis Claessen (1516-1568)

Mathijs Antonissen (1545-1595)

Barend Mathijs (1590 - )

Thys Barentsen (1621-1682)

Generation 18: Jan V, Heer van Arkel (1362-1428)

Sons:

Willem van Arkel (1385 – 1415 Gorinchem) by wife Johanna van Jülich

Maria (1415- ) married John II, Count of Egmond

Otto van Arkel (below) (Illegitimate – mother's surname possibly ten Haghe)

Dirk (Illegitimate)

Henneke (Illegitimate)

Weynand (1420- ) Goldsmith

Jan V van Arkel was the last of the Lords of Arkel. He lost the Arkel war to the Count of Holland and the Land of Arkel was divided among Holland and Gelderand. Jan's only legitimate son, Willem, died childless fighting to regain the van Arkel lands and power by force.

Apparently almost nothing is known about Dirk except that he was illegitimate and that he and his brother or half-brother Otto murdered Bronis Wouters “the Traitor of Gorinchem” for betraying their father Jan V van Arkel during the Van Arkel War. I don't know what year Dirk was born in and I don't know if Dirk and Otto had the same mother or different mothers. Obviously Dirk is potential the progenitor of the Swaim/den Hartog line, but there is no evidence for that one way or the other.

Jan V's son Willem reacted to the van Arkel loss of power by trying to regain it by force. Sons Otto and Dirk apparently bided their time and took revenge on at least one enemy after a couple decades had passed. I came across an interesting adage about how some of the van Arkels had apparently reacted to their loss of power:

“Alas—it went from bad to worse, as the Arkels are nicknamed “Jeneverkruiken” (gin-jars), as they love jenever, especially “ouwe klare” - which is the real good (bad) stuff.” (https://fotw.info/flags/nl-zh_ak.html; citation to “Dirk van der Heide's “Groot Schimpnamenboek van Nederland” 1998. Google Translate says that “schimpnamen” means “taunt names,” for what that's worth.).

So some of the van Arkels drowned their sorrows in gin. Unfortunatly I don't know specifically to which Arkels this adage refers.

In this analysis I'm mostly ignoring the daughters because they are irrelevant to Y-DNA analysis. I'm including a bit of information about Jan V's daughter, Maria, because much is known about her and because she survived the collapse of her family's power with much greater ease than did her brothers. She did this because she was married to Jan II van Egmond, the Duke of Gelre (Guelders, Gelderland), who was a powerful lord who was related to other powerful noble families. Maria's children with Jan II van Egmond were Arnold (duke of Guelders and Lord of Egmond) and Wilhelm (Lord of Egmond and Leerdam). Wilhelm's children included Johann (Graf van Egmond and Governor of Holland) and Friedrich (Graf of Buren and Leerdam). Thus, this line of the family continued to be powerful and influential in both Leerdam and in the Netherlands in general for at least a few more generations. If the Swaims do in fact descend from the van Arkel line, then Maria's descendants will be our distant cousins, but autosomal DNA from this far back might be too attenuated to be useful for purposes of genetic genealogy.

Generation 17: Otto van Arkel “the Bastard” (1400-1475)

Wife: Elisabeth Jacobje Molenaar

Sons:

Gherit Otten (1435-1516)
Willem Ottens Deventer
Dirk Ottens van Arkel (1440-1518)

Jan Ottens (1441-1504)

Peter Ottens van Arkel (1442-1518)
Otto Ottens (Illegitimate)

Otto van Arkel was born in Hagestein, between Leerdam and Ijsselstein, and died in Utrecht. He probably owned land, possibly a good deal of it, south of the Lek in the heart of the old Land van Arkel, but whether he went there often or at all appears to be unknown. Otto married Jacobje Molenaar (1405-1475), who was born in Leerbroek. Not much else seems to be known about Jacobje Molenaar, and there is some disagreement about what little does seem to be known. Some sources list her name as Elisabeth, some as both Elisabeth and Jacobje, and some add to her last name “de Bar-Pierrepont” or “de Bar-Pierremont,” apparently indicating that she was of high social status. However, these sources may be confusing her with Otto's grandfather (also named Otto), who married Elisabeth de Bar-Pierrepont (1335-1411).

Of more immediate interest, some sources say that Otto van Arkel sometimes used the name “Ot de Molenaar.” If so, he possibly used that name to avoid using the van Arkel name, which perhaps he was not entitled to use because he was a bastard or because the line of van Arkel was dead. But what is interesting is that this provides us with a strong explanation as to why there is a Swaim Y-DNA match with the surname “Miller.” “Molenaar” is in fact the Dutch word for “miller,” so if a male line descending from “Ot de Molenaar” used the name “Molenaar” and then at some point emigrated to America, that line in America might very well change its surname to its English equivalent “Miller.”

Generation 16: Willem Ottens (1440-1503)

Although some genealogies place the surname Deventer after Willem Ottens's name, this may be an anachronism.

Sons:

Otto Willems van Deventer (1465-1529) (possibly illegitimate)

Adriaen Willems den Hartog (also spelled Hertogh. Hertoch) (1467-1536)

Jan Willems Zweynen (1470-1542)

Claes Willem Ottens Deventer (AKA Claes Willem Ottens de Backer) (1475-1538)

Jacob Willem Ottensz (Deventer)(1475-1541)

Willem Ottens Deventer married Marigen Everitsen/Everts (1444-1491). Sometimes the name “de la Tombe” is added to her patronymic name Everitsen. La Tombe is a place in the Ile-de-France region southeast of Paris, so it's possible she or her family was from that place, but there seems to be no information to support this.

Some Ancestry trees claim that an alternate surname for Willem Ottens (Deventer) is “van Velpen." There is a town of Velp in Gelderland just east of Arnhem and another Velp in Brabant a few miles southwest of Nijmegen and just south of the river Maas. Neither the Swaim line nor the Arkel line seem to have been closely associated with the Arnhem area, but the Arkel line was closely associated with the region around Velp in Brabant. At this time I don't have any details about this, but a "bastaardzoon" of Otto van Arkel (1330-1396) was named Jan van Ravenstein (Ravenstein being located on the Maas just a few miles north of Velp), and Jan I van Arkel (~990-1034) married Elisabeth van Cuijck (Cuijck being located on the Maas a few miles south of Velp). Thus, the "van Velpen" surname might make sense if the Swain/Hartog line was in fact an extension of the Arkel line.

October 2023 Note: There's a town named Velpen located 35 miles northeast of Brussels in today's Belgium. This was controlled in the Middle Ages by the Lords of Velpen who were fiefs of the Duke of Brabant. This is probably the Velpen referred to as a surname, but the connection to Velpen is unknown.

This appears to be the first generation the surname Deventer was used. The origin of that name seems to be a mystery. No one in the van Arkel/Deventer/Den Hartog/Swaim line seems to have been born or resided in the city of Deventer. Otto van Arkel (1330) was married to Elisabeth de Bar-Pierrepont in Deventer in 1360, but how this would give rise to the use of the name Deventer or van Deventer as a surname by their descendants is unknown.

This also seems to be the first generation in which the surname den Hartog was used, in this case by Adriaen Willems (Egon Vennik, stamboomvennik.nl). The name is also spelled Hertogh, Hertoch, Hartoch, Hartigh, and other variations on the name. (GENEALOGIE HERTOCH VAN DE FAMILIE (den hertog).pdf). It's interesting to note that although it was apparently Adriaen Willems who first used the name den Hartog, the descendants of his brother Claes also later used that name. A Dutch person writing in a genealogy forum wrote (as translated by Google Translate): “Does Hartog come from Hertog? [hertog in Dutch means duke]. Wikipedia states the following: From the 16^th century, the title duke was also awarded in a personal capacity to generals and high dignitaries. Although the title was always linked to a whole set of privileges and land tenure, he [Jan V van Arkel?] was then already stripped of almost all territorial and legal authority. It could be that they called themselves [Hartog] because of the land and wealth (or in view of their origin?)”

I couldn't find any information on Otto or Adriaen. I found a reference to a “Jacob Willem Otten” who was probably this Jacob Willems Otten, which will be mentioned near the end of the next section on Jan Zweynen Willems since it involves an incident with one of the Middach family who later ended up with some of Jan's property through his son Cornelis' wife's second husband.

Jan Willems Zweynen (1470-1542)

Jan Willems apparently commonly went by the name Jan Zweynen Willems or just Jan Zweynen. This new name was supposedly adopted by Jan Willems from the surname of his wife, Adriaantje Dircks Zweynen. The surname is more often spelled "Zwijnen" in Dutch genealogies, but this is possibly anachronistic to the spelling of the 1400's and 1500's. The name is also occasionally spelled "Sweynen." Obviously this surname in any of its forms looks(and would have sounded) a lot like “Swain,” and this similarity increases when we consider this statement from the Wikipedia article “Dutch Phonology:” “In many areas the final 'n' of the ending -en...is pronounced only when a word is being individually stressed; this makes -en words homophonous with otherwise identical forms ending in -e alone....” In other words, in most cases, the -en is not pronounced, so that the Zweynen was probably pronounced as if it were spelled Zweyne (or Zweyn, if the terminal e was silent after an n in 1400-1500's Dutch). Furthermore, the Zw- sound in Dutch is essentially pronounced as Sw- since the Z- is at the onset of the syllable. Thus, the pronunciation of the word must have been close to how we would today say Sweyn. Depending on how the vowels were pronounced, this is either exactly the same as my own surname or it's very close. I suspect it's only very close, because the dutch word zwijn in fact means swine and is probably pronounced that way. However, vowel sounds are much more subject to change over time than consonants, in English and presumably in Dutch, which is very closely related to English (“The consonant system survived the Middle English period virtually without modification...However, the vowel system changed massively” Thomas Berg, Linguistic Structure and Change, 1998) As for the name being spelled sometimes Zweynen and sometimes Zwijnen, in Dutch the letters y and ij are more or less the same sound.

It's true that the terminal -n of Zweyn is a different sound than the terminal -m of Swaim, but since we know that two lines of Swaims had changed their surname to Swain after Swaim had been adopted by Thys Barentsen's children, there is no reason to think that the opposite change could not have occurred either before Thys Barentsen's generation or with his children. His children might have chosen to change the -n to -m in an attempt to avoid confusion with the English family of Swains then living in Newtown, Long Island (one of whom—Francis Swain—was apparently married to my 9^th great-grandmother Martha Cornish, although it seems they had no children together).

(Since I last wrote the above paragraph, Jack Stuart Swaim has found a archive entry in which Mathijs Barentsen while in Holland was referred to by the surname "Swijn" or "Swijm" (the archive had of course been originally written by hand, and presumably the editor of the archive was unsure whether the ending letter was an "n" or an "m".) This is very interesting, as it's the first time anyone has found evidence that the surname was being used in the Netherlands by anyone in the Swaim line. My guess is still that the ending letter was an "n" and had been derived from Jan Zweynen/Zwijnen. If this is true, then the terminal letter was changed to an "m" in America by Thys Barentsen's sons. Possibly this was to avoid confusion with the English surname "Swain," which was already in New York in the 1600's.)

Clearly, Jan Willem's use of his wife's surname Zweynen is quite possibly the origin of the surname Swaim that was later adopted by Thys Barentsen's descendants, and Jan Willems Zweynen is quite possibly Thys Barentsen's great-grandfather and the point at which the Swaim line diverged from the Deventer/den Hartog line (although it appears that the name Hartog/Hertog was not yet being used by the line at this time). Jan Zweynen's father, Willem Ottens Deventer (1440) would in this case be the last common ancestor of the Swaims and the den Hartogs. As Willem Ottens Deventer is 18 generations up from my own generation, this fits in very well with FTDNA's TiP calculator's estimate of 12-22 generations.

[Of course, I now believe that Jan Willems Zweynen is NOT directly in the Swaim line of descent, but is rather a collateral ancestor. I do still believe that the Swaim surname may have derived from him, however.]

Jan Willems married Adriaantje Dircks Zweynen and had 7 children with her:

Willem Zwijnen (1500- )

Dirk Zwijnen (1502- )

Meijintje Zweynen (1505- )

Maria Zwijnen (1507- )

Margriet Zweynen (1510-1546)

Cornelis Zwijnen (1512-1546)

Claasje Zwijnen (1515- )

There could, of course, be other sons that we don't know about, either with Adriaantje or with another woman. Given the propensity of Jan Willem's ancestors (including his father) for producing illegitimate children, this wouldn't be surprising.

The daughters of course wouldn't carry Y-DNA, so their descendants will not have Swaim Y-DNA.

Cornelis Zwijnen is recorded as havingn one daughter (by his wife Barbara Korst Jansdr van Meerkerk), but no sons by her or anyone else. However, again, it is possible that he did have sons that we don't know about, including illegitimate sons.

This leaves Willem Zwijnen and Dirk Zwijnen, the two oldest children and sons of Jan Zweynen. I haven't found anything information on Dirk other than the year of his birth, but it appears that Willem lived at least to 1542 because he and his younger brother Cornelis were involved in managing the estate of their father and mother, both of whom died in the same year. On the page for “Jan Willems Zwijnen” in the genealogy section of his website, Oscar den Uijl wrote:

Tenslotte blijkt op 23-10-1542 Jan en zijn vrouw te zijn overleden; want 'Willem Zweynen ende Cornelis Zweynen gebroeders maeken machtiqh Cornelis Cornelissen ende Hendrik Florissen omme heurlieder schulden renten pachten ende andersinqs te innen'. Hun zwaqers mochten dus hun zaken regelen.

Google Translate rendered this as:

Finally on 23-10-1542 Jan and his wife appear to have died; for "Willem Zweynen and the Cornelis Zweynen brothers maeken Machtiqh Cornelis Cornelissen and the Hendrik Florissen to lease debtors and to collect the other debt. So their swabs were allowed to arrange their affairs.

Google translated “zwaqers” as “swabs,” but clearly that makes no sense. The word “zwager,” however, means brother-in-law; this is the correct translation, since Hendrik Florissen is in fact the name of Margriet Zweynen's husband and is thus the brother-in-law of Cornelis and Willem. Therefore this statement means something like "The brothers Willem and Cornelis have given authority to their brothers-in-law Cornelis Cornelissen and Hendrik Florissen to collect lease money and other debts owed to Jan Zweynen's estate." Since Maria Zwijnen's husband was named Hendrik Herberts, Cornelis Cornelissen must be the husband of the oldest sister, Meigntje. But for our current purposes, the importance of this statement is that it indicates that that Willem Zweynen, the oldest son of Jan, was alive in 1542. He would then have been 42 years old in 1542 and it is very possible that he was married and had sons.

Of course it is also possible that Dirk had sons as well.

The following information on Jan Zweynen probably won't help to determine if he was the Swaim progenitor, but is interesting and also tends to help establish that this line was descended from the van Arkel line. Much of this information was taken from Dutch genealogy forums and is probably mostly reliable but also unverifiable. References are sometimes given, but I don't have access to these so I couldn't verify their accuracy. Also, the forums were in Dutch and were translated through Google Translate, which often gives a funhouse mirror reflection of the Dutch original.

Jan Willemsz Zweyen was “quite rich, not only does he pay bills for the City of Utrecht, he is also sent to settle disputes for Mr. van Bredenrode.” The forum writer doesn't explain who this van Bredenrode is, but he was obviously a powerful person and, from what the forum writer says later, he must have been a descendant of the powerful Brederode family. There is a rhyme that is quoted in Batavia Illustrata that mentions 4 of the powerful families at the time when the van Arkels were still lords:

Brederode the noblest,

Wassenaar the oldest,

Egmond the richest,

Arkel the boldest

The forum writer makes another point about another aspect of this collaboration between van Brederode and Zweynen (who, remember, was possibly a great-grandson of Jan V van Arkel and a second cousin to the van Egmonds through Jan V's daughter Maria): “The special thing is of course that the van Arkels and the Brederodes could not stand each other a little less than 100 years earlier.” So the forum writer is saying that it is ironic that now the van Arkel descendants are allied in some way with the van Brederodes, when previously they were rivals. But of course, the van Arkel descendants had by now lost all of their political power except perhaps locally, and perhaps for whatever sympathy the van Egmond family might have for them as the descendants of Maria van Arkel.

The animosity between the van Arkels and the Brederodes dated at least to 1402, when Walraven I van Brederode, who had recently become Lord of Brederode, participated in the siege of Gorinchem on the side of Albert, the Count of Holland. Albert was at war with Jan V, Lord of Arkel, and laid siege to the town of Gorinchem (and Arkel stronghold) and also the castle of Arkel. Gorinchem was heavily walled, with ten high and thick towers, and the castle was adjacent. The siege lasted for 12 weeks, during which time the tower of the castle was destroyed by bombardment by siege engines. There was a mediated settlement, but in 1404 Count Albert died and was succeeded by William VI as count of Holland in 1405, and William joined with the bishop of Utrecht to lay siege to 3 of Arkel's castles. By blockading the castles with forts and bombarding the castles with siege engines, Holland and Utrecht were able to force Arkel to surrender. Jan V van Arkel apparently retained his power, however, and in 1407 the Arkel forces recaptured Gorinchem by a nighttime raid in which some men climbed a tower and opened a gate. However, in the end Arkel lost the war and Jan V was imprisoned in 1412 and spent the rest of his life (another 16 years) as a prisoner of the count of Holland in Gouda and Leerdam. The castle of Gorinchem was destroyed in 1413, although the count of Holland built a new one nearby (he could have simply used the already-existing castle, but apparently because he hated Jan V Arkel so much he destroyed the castle instead).

Walraven I van Brederode had been taken captive by the Arkel forces in 1402 at the original siege of Gorinchem, and had apparently been held as a captive until he escaped captivity in 1409. He then joined William, Count of Holland, in again fighting the Arkels. In 1417 William van Arkel, the son of the captive Jan V van Arkel, initiated a new siege of Gorinchem in an attempt to regain power for the Arkels. He was killed, ending the power of the Arkels forever, but Walraven I was also killed during the attack on Gorinchem, having been shot by an arrow.

The Arkels had lost their power, their wealth, and their (untitled) nobility, and their descendants sank into obscurity, while the Brederodes retained their political power and wealth into the 1500's. It seems the Brederodes lost their power in the late 1500's, during the turbulent Protestant Reformation. The Wikipedia article on “Van Brederode” states: “During the Protestant Reformation the van Brederode family left Holland and their properties were confiscated by the government. Their descendants sued the government, but when the decision came in their favor the family line had died out (the last known descendant lived in the 17^th Century). The debt to the unknown heirs is still on the Netherlands State Budget...in 1967 the sum was said to be around 3,000 million Dutch guilders.” Three billion guilders is more than a billion and a half United States dollars, and of course by 2020 that figure has probably doubled or tripled. Who says there aren't job opportunities for genetic genealogists?

Jan Zweynen died in 1542, so during his life the Brederodes still retained their power. One forum writer hypothesizes that the name "Zweynen" actually came from Jan Zweynen's employment or collaboration with van Brederode. He quotes from a museum website regarding a painting: “The Dutch flag with the [coat of] arms of the Van Brederodes is flying in the main mast and a flag with the swine head [Zwijnskop] on the stern: the emblem of the Van Brederodes.” The forum writer is thus suggesting that the name Zweynen/Zwijnen was used by Jan Zweynen specifically to align himself (or curry favor) with this powerful man van Brederode, whose symbol was a swine's head. If this is true, then the competing hypothesis (that the name cam from the surname of Jan's wife) isn't likely to be true. Like most information from this time period, the truth is elusive and not easily discovered. Most information surviving from this far in the past comes from brief entries in church records regarding baptisms and marriages, or from archives concerned primarily with recording land transactions and other finances. This type of information is probably pretty accurate, but information coming from other sources can't be assumed to be as accurate.

Another forum writer said about Zweynen, as well as about Willem's other sons (in Google translation): “Willem's sons were very successful, and we can draw some evidence [inference] from this, Jan Zweynen was particullary successful, he was a very successful merchant who had contacts with the high council of Mechelen and Antwerp (Jan van Arkel was lord of Mechelen and had land at Antwerp), he lends money to many people (including nobility) and acts as a diplomat in a trade dispute between the cities of Utrecht, Dordrecht, Gorinchem and Mechelen.” This is interesting bit of information on its own, but was meant as an argument that Willem and his offspring were descended from the van Arkel line.

There isn't much information about Jan Zweynen's descendants. One source mentioned a property that Jan Zweyenen at “later came into possession of the Middach family through inheritance.” Another source states about a man named Cornelis Aert Middach, born in 1598 in Middelkoop: “Aert lives in Heicop and later in the Laageind of Middelkoop, in the 'Jan Zweynen Weer” on his parental farm.” (“Weer” in this context probably means “weir,” which is a type of dam for water control, so this probably means that this particular lot of land had a weir on it. The translation probably should be not that Aert lives “in” the Jan Zweynen Weer, but “near” it). So this would seem to imply either that this line of the Zweynens died out or that they changed their name to Middach. In fact, the Ancestry crowdsourced tree gives enough information to speculate on how Jan Zweynen's land came into the possession of the Middachs.

The Ancestry crowdsourced tree has little information on most of Jan Zweynen's children. He had two sons: Dirk Zwijnen (1502- ) and Cornelis Zwijnen (1512-1546). There seems to be no information on the first son, but there's a little on Cornelis. Cornelis married Barbara van Meerkerk (1515-1550) and had one daughter with her: Marigje Zwijnen (1540- ). Cornelis died in 1546 and Barbara Meerkerk remarried to Anthonis Middach (1520-1580), and they had a son named Gerrit Middach (1550- ). Barbara Meerkerk died in 1550 (perhaps in giving birth to Gerrit), and Gerrit went on to have at least 2 children. It is unknown if Cornelis Zwijnen's daughter Marigje had any children. If Cornelis inherited the “Jan Zweyen Weer” from his father and left it to Barbara Meerkerk, she may then have left it to her son Gerrit, even though he wasn't a son by blood of Cornelis. There are other possibilities, but with this information it's easy to see how the Middach/Middagh family ended up with some of Jan Zweyen's property even if the Middaghs are not genetically closely related to the Deventers/den Hartogs/Swains.

There is also the possibility that a male Swaim borrowed the name Middach as his surname, and that this branch of the Middachs is actually part of the Swaim Y-DNA tree. No Middach/Middagh showed up as a Y-DNA match on FTDNA, but of course one would show up only if they had actually tested their Y-DNA. There is in fact a Middaugh surname project on FTDNA with 22 members with various spellings of the surname. The results are not viewable, however, so no conclusions can be drawn from this one way or he other. There is really no evidence that a Swaim ever took the Middach name, and my hunch is that the Middachs who inherited the “Jan Zweynen Weer” are not paternally related to the Swaim line.

There is another interesting ancecdote about the relationship between the Deventer/Hartog family and the Middach family. According to one source, in 1518 a man named Jacob Willem Otten stabbed to death Scalck Thoenis Middach, the great uncle of Anthonis Middach (1520-1580). This Jacob Willem Otten was almost certainly the brother of Jan Zweynen, since Jacob Willem Otten was born in Middelkoop, as was Scalck Thoenis Middach. There doesn't seem to be any more information about this homicide, so we don't know whether the authorities considered it to be justified, or, if not, whether Jacob Willem Otten was punished for it. If the killing was not justified, then it seems that that the Middach family eventually got some compensation for it when it inherited some of Jan Zweynen's land. Perhaps the inheritance in fact was meant to be such compensation, or perhaps it just worked out the way it did through circumstance. (http://home.planet.nl/~midda012/parenteelvanmiddag.htm).

Interestingly, I do have 9 autosomal DNA matches on Ancestry, and 1 on MyHeritage, with a Middagh in the family tree. Some of these trees are relatively extensive and go back to a Teunis Middagh born in 1600 in Heicop, Vianen, very close to Leerdam. At least some of this Middagh family emigrated to New Netherland in the 1600's. One of the Middaghs married a granddaughter of my 10^th great-grandparents Joris Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico, and it is likely that common DNA between my DNA matches and me is actually “Rapalje” or “Trico” DNA rather than "Middagh" DNA.

Generation 15: Claes Willem Ottens (1475-1538)

Willem Ottensz Deventer's final son to consider is Claes Willem Ottens (1518). Claes had the following children:

Illegitimate by his "'tjonge wijff" (maid) Cornelia Cornelisdr (1476-1504)
Adriaan Claas Ottens (1497-)

By Maria Hendriksdr (1480-1511)(married 9 March 1504):

Willem (de Oude) Claas (1505-)

Cornelis Claas (1507-)

Mary Claasdr (1509)(she married Joost Claassen (1514-) in 1534)

By Margriet Cornelisdr van Aefferen (1485-1532)(married 1 Feb 1615 Leerdam):

Anthonis Claas Ottens (1516-1588)

Willem Claes den Hertoch (de Jonge) Deventer (AKA Wyntgen van Deventer) (1518-1575)

Marijken Classdr Ottens (1521-)

Sebastiaan Claass Ottens (1523-1598)

Adriaan Claass Ottens (1525-)

Cornelia Claasdr Ottens (1527-)

Unsubstantiated sons:

Geerloff Claassen Hartig (1528-1572)

Peter (?-?) (according to one unsubstantiated source)

Marriage to Maria Hendricks

There was a prenuptual agreement to this marriage regarding the division of property upon the death of a spouse.

Claes brought to the marriage: 7 hont of land in “den lande van de Lede”

6 morgen of land in “den land van de Lede.” (bastard son Adraien

Claas eventually gets this 6 morgens of land)

The rent on the above 6 morgen of land

100 stilden

If there were no children of the marriage, this property was to remain in his family

Maria Hendricks property: A hofstad (homestead) along with pastureland in the Kerckweer

3 cows

A bed with accessories

Maria Hendricks died in 1511, leaving Claas with 3 young children (Willem de Oude, Cornelis, Mary). Claes Voss acted as guardian for the children in the division of Maria Hendrick's estate.

Claas inherited: Debts, movable property, half of the house and farmland

Claas' bastard son Adraian Claas inherited: 2 morgen of land on the Lancweer

Willem, Cornelis, and Mary inherited: The other half of the farmlands. Claes was also required to feed, clothe, and otherwise provide for the children until they became adults. At adulthood, Claes was to give them 100 stilden in money (possibly 100 to each child, but this isn't clear).

One stipulation, however, was that during Claes lifetime he has the right to use the inheritance of the children to pay for any property damage due to war. (It isn't stated what war was contemplated, but since this agreement was made at the time of marriage in 1504, it was probably the Guelders Wars, which began in 1502. At this time, there was no nation called the Netherlands. Middelkoop and the rest of the Land of Arkel was located in the County of Holland, which, along with Brabant, Flanders and Hainaut, was controlled by the Duke of Burgundy. Guelders (essentially Gelderland), along with Groningen and Frisia, was controlled by Charles, Duke of Guelders. These two rulers duked it out between 1502 and 1543, until eventually the Duke of Burgundy won the war. The Wikipedia entry on these wars states: "The conflicts were characterized by the absence of large battles between the armies of both parties. Instead small hit and run actions, raids and ambushes were common practices. Regardless, the impact on civilians was large with hostilities and incidents occurring throughout the Low Countries. The river Linge defined the border between Holland and Guelders from Arkel east to Leerdam, at which point the border turned north up the Diefdijk. This meant that the border between these two warring countries abutted Leerdam on both its east and south side. Middelkoop was a bit further north and west, but was probably still vulnerable to pillaging armies. Also, it should be pointed out that the end of the Guelders wars was not the end of war for the Low Countries. In 1504 nearly everyone in the Netherlands was Catholic. The outcome of the Guelders Wars was to place the Low Countries under the control of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. When much of the Netherlands converted to Protestantism in the 1500's, Holland, Guelders, and much of the northern Low Countries revolted against Catholic Spanish rule, and the Eighty Years' War began in 1566, bringing many more years of misery for the average person living in these countries. Thus there were only 23 years of peace in the Low Countries between the Guelders War and the Eighty Years' War.

The war clause may also have been contemplating the possible resumption of the "Hook and Cod Wars," which was a series of battles that took place in the County of Holland from 1350 to 1490. This long-running conflict was fought over control of Holland among various claimants, and was what eventually led to the downfall of the Lords of Arkel as political force. Although we can look back and say that the these conflicts ended in 1490, it may not have been so clear to people in 1504 that the issues had truly been settled.)

In 1516 Claes Willem Ottens married Margriet Cornelis van Aefferen. Her father was Cornelis Jansen van Aefferen. There was a prenuptial agreement for this marriage, also.

Claes brought to the marriage: Half of 16 morgens (undivided with his first children) in the van der Lede country

Margriet brought to the marriage: 100 stilden of 14 stuyvers

Each also was to get half the remaining goods that the other owned at death.

Claes and Margriet van Aefferen had six children:

Anthonis Claas Ottens (1516-1588) (Progenitor of the "Swaim" line)

Willem Claes den Hertoch (de Jonge) Deventer (1518-1575)(AKA "Wyntgen van Deventer"). Willem Claes den Hertoch Deventer is the progenitor of the "den Hartog" line that emigrated to America in 1847, to the "den Hertog" line in Utrecht that tested at FTDNA, and to

numerous other Hartog, Hartogh, Hertog, Hartigh, etc. lines in the Netherlands and USA.

Marijken Classdr Ottens (1521-)

Sebastiaan Claass Ottens (1523-1598)

Adriaan Claass Ottens (1525-)

Cornelia Claesdr Ottens (1527-)

In 1528 there was a "war" with the people from what was apparently still called the Land of Arkel against the “Geldersen,” undoubtedly meaning people from the County of Guelders (Leerdam bordered Guelders). This "war" occurred after a feast or party of some kind at which one of the Geldersen was killed with a sword when he refused to drink to the health of someone (probably a man from Arkel). After the "war" was resolved, the “notables” of the cities and countryside of Arkel were required to pay 1550 golden guilders to Mijnheer van Bockhove, drossaard of Gorinchem (probably in repayment of what he spent in pursuing the "war.") Twelve people were listed as “notables,” including Claes Willem Ottensen. These notables were required to collect the money from the citizens, but specifically not by looting, blackmailing or ransoming. Although this seems to have been a local event, it may in some sense have been a part of the larger Guelders Wars, as the Land of Arkel was located in the county of Holland and the "Geldersen" in the duchy of Guelders.

Margriet died before Claes, in 1532. Her property was distributed with the consent of her brothers Jan Cornelissen van Aefferen and Wijnan Cornelis van Aefferen. At the time she died Anthonis was the only child who was an adult. The property disposition at her death was:

Claes got all debts
Claes got all movable and immovable property except certain land in which the children have an interest (bedeylt syn, whatever that means)
Claes was required to feed and clothe and otherwise take care of the children until the youngest reached adulthood or married.
Claes was required to pay each child 42 karolus guilders when the child became an adult
The children got 15 morgen land in the Land of Arkel and in the van der Leede and in the land of Vianen

In 1534 Claes Willem Ottensen was listed as the gezworenen of Middelkoop. This appears to be some type of official perhaps dealing with legal matters.

On his death in 1538, Claes owned about 50 morgens of land, divided between 't Leecheijndt van Middelkoop, Hoocheijndt van Middelkoop, Recht van der Leede, Leerbroek and Heicop.

Sebastiaen, Adriaen, and Cornelia, the three youngest children, together receive 325 Carolus guilders:

125 from Adriaen Hagen

100 from Jacop Willem Ottensen (their uncle)

100 from Beernt Jansen

Den Uijl ends his page of "Claas Willem Ottoz" by saying (in translation): "All in all, Claes Willem Ottenson is someone who has not been particularly poor."

Most of the above information is from https://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/2/121249.htm.

Adriaen Claes Ottens (1497 - )

Adriaan Claas Ottens (1497-) appears to have only had one child, a daughter. If this is true, then the Swaim Y-DNA line cannot have come through him. However, his daughter had several children and any living descendants would be genealogically related to the Swaims, and might possibly share some detectable autosomal DNA with some Swaims.

Willem Claes (de Oude) (1505-1543)

"De Oude" was obviously used to distinguish this first Willem Claes by Maria Hendricks from his younger half-brother of the same name by Margriet van Aefferen. Willem de Oude appears to have had only one daughter and no sons and therefore "daughtered out" and cannot be the progenitor of the Swaim line. As always, however, it is possible that there was a son who is unknown because he was not recorded in any documents.

Cornelis Claes (1507- )

No information is available for Cornelis Claas (1507-).

Generation 14 (Swaim Branch): Anthonis (Theunis) Claess (Ottens) (1516-1588)

Anthonis Claess lived in 't Leecheijnd of Middelkoop on what was called the "21 Mergen" between the "Leerbroekse lande" and the "Hubertse Wetering." "Leecheijnd" means "low end," meaning at a lower elevation. The "21 Mergen" was a plot of land, undoubtedly polder land, that was simply named after the fact that it measured 21 morgen in area, which would be about 44 acres in size. This land was obtained by Anthonis Claessen's father, Claes Willem Ottens, and not without some difficulty. A wetering seems to be a small canal or ditch, which, being prominent features, seem to have often been used to define the boundaries of a property. The Hubertse Wetering is no doubt the same wetering thant can be seen on maps today paralleling the Huibertweg road north of Middelkoop. Leerbroek is located south of Middelkoop, so the "21 Mergen" would seem to be a long, thin plot of land generally aligned south to north. For a good overview of what this area looks like today see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Gem-Leerdam-OpenTopo.jpg. This is a map of the Leerdam gemeen and the areas outside of that gemeen are unfortunately dimmed, but it still provides a good look at Middelkoop. Middelkoop is still lightly populated, so the area around Middelkoop today probably looks much as it did in the 1600's and 1700's.

There is an explanation of how Anthony inherited his house, and the conditions upon which he inherited it (https://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/6/249158.htm), but the Dutch is difficult to translate. My impression is that he may have a life estate in the house, but that in exchange he must pay various sums of money to each of his brothers and sisters, must take care of his younger brother Adriaen until he reaches the age of 22, and must also once a year provide food and drink for each of his brothers and sisters. Anthony is perhaps thusly privileged because he is the oldest son of Claes and Margriet van Aefferen, but this leaves unexplained the position of the half-siblings from Claes' marriage with Maria Hendricks and also that of Adriaan, who was the firstborn but also illegitimate.

(A family tree on a Dutch genealogy website (Anthoniss Claess (1516-1587) » Genealogie Van der Voet-Hooning » Genealogy Online (genealogieonline.nl) states parenthetically in relation to this testamentary condition "Een oud joods-Portugees gebruik wat hedentendage nog plaatsvindt in het Midden-Oosten," which can be translated as "An old Judeo-Portuguese custom that still takes place today in the Middle East." Thus, the author of the famly tree seems to be implying that the den Hartog/Swaim line has some connection to the Portuguese Jewish community. Although it is clear that at least one ancient Swaim line was Jewish, and also that this line was probably Iberian, this parenthetical comment would seem to imply a much more recent Jewish connection than what I've seen. Thus, for now I remain skeptical that the Swaim line has this recent of a Jewish connection.)

Anthonis Claessen (1516-1588) may have married Anna Claes Dirczdr (according to a tree in FamilySearch.org) or he may have married Neeltgen van der Ameijden (1523-1590)(according to a tree in Ancestry.com). Other family trees show her as unknown. (Neeltgen van der Ameijden is my 5^th cousin 16x removed from a separate line that goes down to immigrant Cornelius Lambertsz Cool (1590-1643) who immigrated to New Netherland in 1639. He was from Doorn but some of the family remained closer to Leerdam, as his uncle Anthonis lived in Schoonrewoerd. This line merged with my line of the Swaim family when descendant Elizabeth Miller (Müller, from Zweibrücken in what is today Germany)(1829-1894) married Joseph S. Swaim (1796-1854)).

Anthonis Claessen appears to have had the following children:

Claes Anthoniss (1540 - )

Mathijs Anthoniss (1545-1595)

Jacob Anthoniss

Marijke Anthonisdr

Neelke Anthonisdr

Anthonis Claessen apparently died in 1588, but there may be no record regarding the disposition of his estate. However, a the document "fol 88/89 6/19/1595" seems to state that in 1595 the children of Anthonis inherited property from "Margretha and Anneke Anthonisdochteren." I'm not sure who Margretha and Anneke are, or whether their last names indicate that they are daughters of Anthonis Claessen. Perhaps they were older daughters who were acting in some capacity as guardians, or who held a life estate. The document also seems to imply that the property being distributed was bequeathed by Anthonis Cleassen, so it's a bit confusing. This is also the year that Mathijs Anthoniss died, but it cannot be his property that is being distributed. In any case, here is the property that each Matchild inherited:

Claes Anthonis: - 1.5 morgen of land in Leerbroek (apparently partial ownership shared with Peter Janss van Muijlwijck, Sebastiaen Claess, and the heirs of Cornelis Adriaen Geritss. Sebastiaen Claess was probably their uncle, the son of Claes Willem Ottens. The others are unknown).

- 4.5 morgens of land in "Claes Thonis Weer" and "Deventers Weer." I don't know if the Claes Thonis Weer was named after Claes Anthonis himself, or someone else, perhaps an uncle or great uncle named Anthonis. I also don't know who Deventer's Weer was named after, but at least this is solid evidence that the name Deventer was in fact likely to have been used by some of the family.

Jacob Anthonis: - 10 hont of land in "de Weterincx Camp."

- 1 morgen of land in "'t smalweer"

Marijke Anthonisdr - 4.5 morgen in "'t Smaelweer"

- 7 morgen owned in common with Jacob Anthonis.

Neelke Antonisdr - 14 hont land in the "kaeijkamp" in back of the "Willem Otten Huis Weer;" this is apparently and undvided interest shared with "the orphans of Mathijs Anthoniss and Goevert Vinck Anthoniss." Willem Otten was, of course, the great- grandfather of Anthonis Claes' children. Goevert Vinck Anthoniss is another mystery with the patronymic "Anthoniss." "The orphans of Mathijs Anthoniss" were Anthonis Mathijss and Bernt (Barent) Mathijs. who were taking the inheritance that belonged to their father, Mathijs Anthoniss, who was obviously deceased by the time this property was being distributed (6/19/1595).

- Half interest in 8.5 hont in land in the "Kwaeckernaack gemeen" with her brother Jacob Anhonis and Marijke Anthonisdr.

The Orphans (Anthonis Mathijs and Bernt Mathijs, taking in the place of their father Mathijs):

- 2 morgens of land in the "Willem Otten Dam," apparently shared with their uncle Claes Anthonissn and with a man named Lambert Peterss.

Jacob Anthonis

Nothing seems to be known about Jacob Anthonis, including the dates of his birth and death. However, if he had any male sons, it is possible that today there are living males descended from him who share Swaim/den Hartog Y-DNA.

Claes Anthoniss (1540)

Little seems to be known about Claes Anthoniss. At least one tree in the Ancestry crowdsource tree indicates that Claes had a daughter named Hilletgen (1595-1652) who married a Douw Jillese (Gillese) Fonda (1580-1641). This family emigrated to the Rennselaerswick settlement near what is today Albany, New York, and their descendants include the Fonda acting family (Henry Jaynes Fonda (1905) and his children Jane Fonda (1937) and Peter Fonda (1940)). In the 1400's the Fonda family lived in Kollum, Friesland, and the surname may have originally been written Foyngha.

I don't know if this tree is accurate, but I'm not discounting it because I do have 16 autosomal DNA matches who include Fondas from this line in the Fonda family tree. It is possible that the autosomal DNA that we share is "Swaim" DNA from Claes Anthonis that has survived intact through the generations. This is more likely because I can't find any other person in the Fonda line that I might be otherwise related to. However, I do have several different lines of ancestors from New Netherlands, so it is possible that the shared DNA actually comes from one of them. In any case, the Fondas will not have "Swaim" Y-DNA because it was a female "Swaim" who married a male Fonda.

Generation 13: Mathijs Anthonissen (Tuenisse) (1545-1595)

Mathijs Anthonissen (Teunisse) (1545-1595) married Lijsbeth Barends (1565- ). When I was searching for Thys Barentsen's ancestors, her patronymic name "Barends" caught my attention immediately because this was the first time I'd seen the name Barend/Barent in the den Hartog line or a branch off that line. This was exciting, because she was also in the correct generation to be the grandmother of Thys Barentsen. Since it was common for a second son to be named after the mother's father, Lijsbeth Barentss could have a son named Barend Mathijs, and then sons of Barend Mathijs would have the patronymic "surname" Barend/Barent, which could also be called Barentsen. In fact, this turned out to be true.

Mathijs Anthoniss and Lijsbeth Barends had two sons:

Antonis Matthijs (? - ?)

Barend Mathijs (1590- )

Because it was traditional to name the first son after the paternal grandfather, Antonis was probably the first son. There doesn't seem to be any information about Antonis, but if left male line descendants that would have "Swaim" Y-DNA.

Generation 12: Barend Matthijs (1590- )

Barend Mathijs married Pietertje (or Peterke) Willems. Very little seems to be known about either Barend Matthijs or Pietertje Willems, except the names of their children and the location of some of the land they owned. They had the following children, all of whom were alive at least to May 27, 1661:

Willem Barents

Floris Barents

Aelbert Barents

Matijs Barents

Lijsbet Barents (married Aert Jans)

Willem Barents (?)

Willem Barents was apparently known as Willem Barents van Leerdam in his younger days and later as Willem Barents Middelkoop. However, moved from Middelkoop to Dirksland on Goeree-Overflakee Island in what is today South Holland. He married Esther Aertsdr van Dale (1625 - 1674/1681) and had at least one child by her, Bernardus Willemsz (born 23 Mar 1661). He then married Sijntje Teunisdr Breesnee (1645- ) on 25 Oct 1681) and by her had at least one child, Bernardus Willemsz Middelkoop (born 1681in Middelharnis near Dirksland ). Willem's sister Lisbet was Bernardus' godmother at his christening. (This information was found by Jack Swaim after my first draft of this post).

Floris Barents ( - after May 27, 1661)

I have no information on Floris Barents except that he was alive on May 27, 1661.

Aelbert Barents

I have no information on Aelbert Barents except that he was alive on May 27, 1661.

Generation 11: Mathijs Barents

The name "Thys Barentsen" is another from of the the name "Mathijs Barents." Thys is an abbreviation for Matijs, and Barents is an abbreviated form of Barentsen or Barentszoon.

Our search for the progenitor of the Swaim line is almost certainly at an end, because there is little doubt that Mathijs Barents, son of Barend Matthijs, son of Anthonis Claessen, son of Claas Willem Ottensz, is the same person as the Thys Barentsen who immigrated to America aboard the St. Jan Baptist in 1661. This near-certainty derives firstly from the fact that he descends from a branch of the den Hartog family tree, which branched off at precisely the generation predicted by FTDNA's TiP Calculator (at the 99% probability for an "unrefined" result), and secondly from a remarkable passage in a document regarding the disposition of the estate of Barend Mathijs and/or his wife Pietertje Willems.

I found a transcription of this document on the genealogical web page of Oscar den Uijl (ttps://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/5/121293.htm). I haven't yet been able to find a copy of the document itself, but there is little doubt that the document does exist. A separate person in the "Contact" (forum) page of another Dutch website, "Middelkoop Project," also quoted from this same document. This document is "fol 41 27/5/1661," which probably means that it is folio or volume number 41 from a group of other documents, and refers to an event occurring on the date of May 27, 1661. Here's the relevant section of the document:

Willem Barents, Floris Barents, Aelbert Barents, Aert Jans X Lijsbet Barents, mtsgdrs Aelbert Jansen proc hebb v/d uitlandige Matijs Barents (schep Acqoij 7-4-1661), tesamen erfganamen van Barent Matijs X Peterke Willems, en tr aan Anneke Pieters X Cornelis Cornelis za won in 't laageind van Middelcoop en tuijnweer groot 3 m 3½ h gelegen in 't laageind van Middelcoop, bov Cornelis Cornelis en ben Wouter Jacobs cum suis, strekk v/d Leerbroekse kijlspit af t/d halve dwarssloot van Cornelis Cornelis toe.

Here's the Google Translate English translation of the document:

Willem Barents, Floris Barents, Aelbert Barents, Aert Jans X Lijsbet Barents, mtsgdrs Aelbert Jansen proc heb v / d uitlandige Matijs Barents (ships Acqoij 7-4-1661), together heir names of Barent Matijs X Peterke Willems, and married Anneke Pieters X Cornelis Cornelis sat won in the t-end of Middelcoop and tuijnweer large 3 m 3½ h located in the t-end of Middelcoop, above Cornelis Cornelis and ben Wouter Jacobs cum suis, stretch of the Leerbroekse Kijlspit off to the half transverse ditch of Cornelis Cornelis.

This document is clearly related to the disposition of land owned by Barent Matijs and Peterke Willems upon the death of the last of them, which we may assume probably occurred sometime within the few months previous to May 27, 1661. The document seems to be the chronicle of an actual meeting of heirs that occurred, rather than merely a list of those heirs, and those heirs were:
- Willem Barents
- Floris Barents
- Aelbert Barents
- Lijsbet Barents and Aert Jans, who is probably her husband
- Matijs Barents, who cannot be present because he is "uitlandige," which literally means "outland" and almost certainly means that he is outside of the country of the Netherlands. "Mtsgdrs" Aelbert Jansen is presumably representing Matijs in this matter in his absence, and is probably either a close friend or some time of lawyer or other advocate.

Cornelis Cornelis and Anneke Pieters, presumably husband and wife, are also present, but it isn't clear that they are either family or heirs. Cornelis Cornelis seems to co-own land with Wouter Jacobs and other people (cum suis is Latin for "and associates"), and this land is adjacent to the land owned by Barend Mathijs and Peterke Willems. Perhaps Cornelis Cornelis has some interest in land being transferred, or perhaps he is only present to protect his interest in his adjacent land. The last half of this short document is a description of the land itself, and as was usual in the days before modern surveying, the description was rather vague and imprecise. My own translation of the land description is: "Farmland [tuijn] set in the low end of Middelkoop, measuring 3 morgens and 3.5 honts, located above the land owned by Cornelis Cornelis and Ben Wouters and associates, near Cornelis' half cross-ditch [dwarssloot] water channel [kijlspit]." Presumably locals would understand generally the boundaries of this land, but it is so vague that it would be no surprise that an adjacent landowner would want to be present at the transfer of this land, to insure that his own land is not being encroached upon. Also, it is possible that he was legally required to be present, since his own name is part of the land description.

(Regarding the size of the land that Matijs Barents inherited an interest in, I've assumed that "m" meant "morgen" and "h" meant "hont." A morgen was a measure of land roughly equaling a bit more than 2 acres. A hont was roughly a third of an acre. If my calculations are correct, the inherited land totaled about 7.6 acres. If the land was divided evenly between the five siblings, then each would have inherited about 1.5 acres of land. How much purchasing power the value of this 1.5 acres of land might have represented in 1661 is something I won't speculate on. However, this was farmland and possibly quite fertile, so its value may have been substantial. Possibly Thys Barentsen used his share of the inheritance to fund his family's relocation to New Netherland, but that is mere speculation.)

Now we move on to the most important information (for our purposes) in this brief document. This is located in the sentence fragment:

“...mtsgdrs Aelbert Jansen proc hebb v/d uitlandige Matijs Barents (schep Acqoij 7-4-1661)...”

As previously discussed, this probably means that Aelbert Jansen was acting as Matijs Barents' agent in the matter of this land transfer, because Matijs Barents was "uitlandige." The Google Translate translation didn't give a translation for "uitlandige," but simply left the Dutch intact. A Google Translate of that word by itself yields the word "outlandish," but that is obviously incorrect in the modern meaning of that word in English. The correct translation is most likely that Matijs Barents was "out of the country."

The key element that truly connects Matijs Barents with Thys Barentsen is located with the parenthetical explanation following the statement that Matijs Barents was out of the country. This explanation states that he "schep Acqoij 7-4-1661." First we need to understand the plain meaning of this, and after that the implications of it.

Acqoij is a village located about 4 miles southeast of Leerdam. Today Acquoy is located on a dead-end spur of the river Linge, but in 1661 it was located directly on the river itself, before the course of the river shifted to its current configuraton. At least one old map spells the town as "Akoy."

The word "Schep" can mean various things, but clearly here it must be a form of the verb "verschepen" or "inschepen," which have the meanings to "ship," "convey," or "embark."

The date "7-4-1661" definitely means April 7, 1661 rather than July 4, 1661. Although the convention in America in writing numerical dates is to place the month before the day, in Europe the convention has long been to place the day before the month: day/month/year. Thus, the document itself is dated as "27-5-1661" rather than "5-27-1661." But also, the parenthetical statement itself only makes sense if the month was April rather than July, since the meeting of the heirs had occurred in May, and Mathijs Barent would not have needed an agent to handle his affairs if he was still in the country in May and didn't leave until July. Also, the document clearly states that Matijs Barent was outside the country at the time of the meeting, which had to have been in May ("5") since there obviously is no 27th month of the year.

Thus, the best translation of this sentence fragment is probably something like:

"Aelbert Jansen is acting as the agent for Matijs Barents, who is out of the country (he embarked from Acquoy by boat on April 7, 1661)."

April 7, 1661 was about a month and three weeks before the meeting of the heirs. More importantly, it was about a month before the date that De St. Jan Baptist set sail from the Island of Texel, carrying aboard as passengers Thys Barentsen and his family. In other words, if Matijs Barents was in fact the same person as Thys Barentsen, then the timing for his departure from his home in Middelkoop or Leerdam as chronicled in this document dovetails very nicely with the time probably required to travel from his home in Middelkoop to the island of Texel from which the St. Jan Baptist set sail. In other words, this document provides very strong circumstantial evidence that Matijs Barents was in fact Thys Barentsen. It seems very unlikely that there would be two people of the same name, both living in the same lightly-populated Leerdam-Middelkoop area, who left the Netherlands for any reason at the same general time. Most of the people living in this area were farmers who probably never traveled more than a few miles from their homes in their entire lives, let alone outside the country. Therefore, the most reasonable inference is that the Matijs Barents who left Acquoy on April 7, 1661, was in fact the same Thys Barentsen "van Leerdam" who sailed on De St. Jan Baptist on May 9, 1661.

The overland distance from Acquoy to Texel is about 164 kilometers, or just about 100 miles. The distance by ship would be longer, but in the 1600's might have been both easier and safer than travel by land. If the word "schepen" implies travel by water, then it is likely that Matijs Barents left Acquoy by boat. He possibly sailed southwestward on the Linge to its confluence with the Waal (known at this point westwards as the Merwede) near Gorinchem. He possibly sailed down the Merwede to the open sea by one of several routes, and then up he coast to Texel. I don't know how long travel took within the Netherlands in the 1600's, but one month seems like ample time to make this journey, even while traveling with a family that included small children, as Thys Barentsen's did.

We don't know why Matijs Barents/Thys Barentsen would have left from Acquoy rather than Leerdam. Both were located on the Linge, and Leerdam was larger than Acquoy and must certainly have had a port. There could be many possible reasons for choosing Acquoy rather than Leerdam which we know nothing about. However, we can speculate that one reason might have been because Acquoy was located between Leerdam and the town of Beesd, and was therefore chosen as the departure location to accommodate travelers from both Leerdam and Beesd who were emigrating to New Netherland from Texel, and who had desired to travel together to Texel. The ship that Thys Barentsen and his family too to New Netherland, De St. Jan Baptist, had a companion ship, De Bever, which left Texel together and were meant to travel together to New Netherland. The two ships became permanently separated during a storm near the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, but before they left port at Texel the families and other emigrants were allocated to one or the other of the ships. In other words, the people on the two ships were essentially one group that were divided among the two ships. Thys Barentsen, Scytie Cornelis, their 3 children, and a family of four headed by Cornelis Dircksen Vos ended up on the De St. Jan Baptist. On the De Bever were 37 emigrants from the town of Beesd, led by a man named Huigh Barents de Kleijn. Also on De Bever was a man named Aert Teunissen Middagh, and although no place of residence was given for him, it is likely he was descended from the Middaghs mentioned earlier. Also on De Bever was a Jacob Bastiaensen from Heycop (Heicop). There is no documentary evidence that indicates that these people knew each other, but as Beesd is only 9 miles from Middelkoop, and as the population of both areas was not large, it is quite likely that most of these people knew each other in passing, or at least by reputation. It is possible they were all members of the same church in Leerdam, in which case they may have known each other quite well. It is quite likely that everyone in their communities knew who was emigrating, and that the various families and groups would have joined together for the journey to Texel, for safety and companionship. It is even possible that many or all of the passengers on the two ships were part of an organized emigration undertaken for either economic or religious reasons, or both.

Less than 200 years later, more emigrants from the Leerdam joined in a large, organized emigration effort that included people from all over the Netherlands, under the leadership of Hendrik Peter Scholte. As mentioned earlier, among these emigrants was the family of Dirk den Hartog, ancestor to one of the Swaim Y-DNA matches. Another den Hartog family. led by Cornelis den Hartog and Neeltje, from Leerbroek, was also part of this emigration. Cornelis den Hartog was very likely another relative, and he a son named Willem/William who also had a son named William, but the younger William appears to only have had 2 daughters and no sons, so it seems unlikely that there will be any living male descendants from this line with den Hartog/Swaim Y-DNA. I haven't studied this emigration in any detail, but it appears that several other families did come from Leerdam, Asperen, and other nearby towns.

Interestingly, Acquoy was the birthplace of Cornelius Jansen (AKA Jansenius), who was the founder of the Catholic religious movement known as Jansenism. Jansen died in 1638, when Thys Barentsen was about 17, but I have no idea whether Jansen's ideas had any following in the Leerdam area. It is likely that they didn't, since most people living there were probably protestants, but it might be an interesting topic to research if Jansen's ideas, or any religious ideas at all, played a part in motivating Thys Barentsen and his family to emigrate to New Netherland. I'm not aware of any evidence of this, but it is certainly possible.

This document, "fol 41 27/5/1661" is possibly the only source of information that exists, other than the passenger list of De St. Jan Baptist, that gives us any information about Thys Barentsen or his family when they lived in the Netherlands. Although brief, it gives us a surprising amount of information. It tells us:
- The names of Thys Barentsen's father, mother, three brothers, sister, and the name of his sister's husband.
- The approximate time of death of the last surviving parent of Thys Barentsen.
- The date that Thys Barentsen left home with his family to emigrate to New Netherland, and the place from which he left.
- The fact that Thys Barentsen's parents owned land.
- The likely place that Thys Barentsen lived (Middelkoop).

Summary of Evidence that Matijs Barents, Son of Barend Mathijs, is Thys Barentsen

1. I found Matijs Barents not by working my way up from Thys Barentsen, but by working my way down the den Hartog family tree because the Y-DNA results proved that the den Hartogs are closely related to the Swaims (that is, closely related within a Y-DNA time scale). I did not accidentally find Matijs Barents by fishing around in the Linge river; rather, I found him after methodically discovering everything I could about each of the sons of the men in the den Hartog family tree, starting with Otto van Arkel (1400-1475) and including Willem Ottens Deventer (1440-1494) and Claes Willemsz Ottens Deventer (1475-1538). I started with Otto van Arkel because he was 17 generations up from my own generation, and the Y-DNA evidence was telling me that the last common ancestors of the Swaims and den Hartogs was likely to have existed 15-17 generations up. For several days before I even found Matijs Barents, I suspected that Claes Willemsz Ottens Deventer's son Anthonis might be the progenitor of the "Swaim" line because his name and the name of his first son (Mathijs) are recurring family names in Thys Barentsen's line, and also because I'd discovered that Mathijs had married a woman with the surname Barentsdr, and furthermore because autosomal DNA evidence was hinting that I was related to the Fonda family, who also descend from Anthonis. It seems quite unlikely that with all this evidence pointing me to Anthonis Claessen's line, that I would happen to find a man with the same name as Thys Barentsen, living in the same small geographical area, who also happened to leave the Netherlands at just the right time to catch Thys Barentsen's ship across the ocean, unless that person was in fact Thys Barentsen himself.

2. The "fol 41 27/5/1661" document indicates that Mathijs Barentsen had left the country from Acquoy just a month before Thys Barentsen's ship left Texel for New Amsterdam. It also provides a reason for why Thys Barentsen would have chosen to leave at this particular time; it occurred not long after the death of the last of his parents. This evidence, alone, although circumstantial, is enough to make it highly likely that Matijs Barents is Thys Barentsen. It really doesn't even matter that we are not able to examine this document itself, because the odds must be very small that someone living in the Netherlands and probably having no idea who Thys Barentsen is, could make up a document that fits so well into what we know of Thys Barentsen's biography.

3. That some random Matijs Barentsen would happen to have an uncle who bore a surname that sounds a great deal like "Swaim" seems fairly improbable. This is the weakest evidence, but I don't think that it should be discounted. No entirely credible hypothesis for the origin of the name has ever been proposed, which is actually based on facts from Thys Barentsen's family. If Matijs Barents is Thys Barentsen, then we do now have an actual reason why his family might have chosen the name "Swaim:" the borrowed it from a collateral ancestor who was wealthy and perhaps a family legend.

For these reasons, I believe that Matijs Barents is indeed the same person as Thys Barentsen.

The van Burens and the van Arkels

Recall that Barend Mathijs' father Mathijs Antonissen had a brother named Jacob Antonisse, and that Jacob Antonissen had a wife named Marijke Wouters Hagen. Marijke's parents were Wouter Ariens Hagen (1570- ) and Maria Cornelisse van Buren (1570). It may be a significant fact that Mathijs' uncle married a woman surnamed van Buren, as it appears that Mathijs' son Matijs Barents/Thys Barentsen (1621) also married a van Buren. Scytie Cornelis was the daughter of Cornelis Maasen, and in many family trees they are given the surname van Buren. This could simply mean that they were people who resided in the town of Buren, but it could also mean what many trees also show, that they descended from the line of the Lords of van Buren. That line had married into other noble families including the van Rantzau family and, interestingly, the von Kleve family, which the van Arkel family had also married into (Jan IV Herbaren van Arkel (1314-1360) had married Irmgard von Kleve, while Otto van Buren (1464-1520) had married Hedwig von Kleve, one of Johan II Hertog van Kleef's 63 (!) illegitimate children). Apparently by the time Thys Barentsen married Scytie Cornelis, the van Buren family had lost its political power just as the van Arkel family had, but if both families still considered themselves socially as existing on some level above that of ordinary farmers and tradesmen by virtue of their descent, it would not be surprising that the families would intermarry over the generations.

It is also interesting to note that if Thys Barentsen's line did in fact descend from the van Arkel line, and if Scytie Cornelis' line did in fact descend from the noble van Buren line, the line had also intermarried long in the past, assuming that the Ancestry crowdsource tree is accurate this far back (which, of course, is a huge assumption). The van Buren line had branched off the van Egmond line with Allard I van Buren (1190-1243), the son of Allart van Egmond (1120-1168). Several generations before this, Tekla van Egmond (840- ), daughter of Wolbrandus van Egmond (840-869), had married Heyman van Arkel (832-883). If this is true, then Heyman van Arkel would be my 32^nd great-grandfather through the paternal Arkel line and Tekla van Egmond would be my 29^th great-aunt through the van Buren line. Also, Otto II van Heukelom (1260-1344), grandson of Herbaren II van der Lede, married uknown-first-name Allardsdr van Buren (1268- ). And Maria van Arkel (1389-1415) married Jan II van Egmond, so if Jan II van Egmond was descended from the van Egmond line that the van Burens branched from, then this is yet another example of intermarriage between the two families.

These connections are all very speculative and probably can't be proved with documentation, but might in fact be provable by Y-DNA evidence (and possibly mitochondrial DNA evidence) at some point in the future. However, that would require a massive effort to obtain and analyze a huge amount of Y-DNA data, and thus may never occur.

Flag of van Buren (Wikipedia "County of Buren"

Van Buren Coat of Arms (Wikipedia "County of Buren"

Arkel Coat of Arms

Origin of the Swaim Surname

I think that it is likely that the Swaim surname derived from family memories of Thys Barentsen's great-great-great-great uncle Jan Zweynen. However, there are competing hypotheses that I won't repeat, as most of them can be viewed online at at http://www.jswaim.com/family/_archive/Swaim_Genealogy%2020190908.pdf

However, I'll add my information to the "Swan" hypothesis, and present a new "Swaam van der Swalm" hypothesis.

The Swan Hypothesis

Before wrapping up the hypotheses on the origin of the Swaim name, however, I'll briefly discuss one more hypothesis. In “The Complete Swaim-Tysen Family” by Mullane, Swaim and Johnson (file:///C:/Users/Steve/Pictures/THE%20COMPLETE%20SWAIM-TYSEN%20FAMILY.pdf), Mullane wrote, “In the course of our research we found a reference in which it was stated that the translation of the name means “Dweller at the Sign of the Swan.” Furthermore, quoting a “Mr. Brown of Holland:” “The real spelling of this name in Dutch would normally be Swaen: It is a variation of the name Swaan which is 'Swan' in English. Modern day spelling in Dutch is 'zwan'”

When I first read this a few years ago I thought: well, maybe. But what swan? Where's the swan? I wanted to see some connection between Thys Barentsen's family and swans. Sure, Leerdam was situated on the river Linge, but water is hardly in short supply in the Netherlands. There could be swans everywhere.

But after I took my Y chromosome STR test and discovered that the Swaims were related to the den Hartogs, and that the den Hartogs were possibly descended from the Lords of Arkel. And that the Arkels were also the Lords of Ter Lede, and that Lede was sometimes spelled, and probably pronounced, “Leda.” And that Leda was a Greek mythological figure raped by a swan that was actually Zeus in disguise. So was that a swan connection?

And then I stumbled onto a website called FOTW.info (Flags of the World). The flag for Leerdam was the van Arkel double red horizontal stripes embattled both ways on a yellow background:

The coat of arms for Leerdam was two standing lions with shields bearing the van Arkel stripes and a castle. Nothing to do with swans. But the flag of the town of Asperen, just across the Linge from Leerdam, was a rather strange flag that had the back half of a ship and the front head of a...black swan! Now, these flags are relatively new, but they are intended to symbolize the history of the town they represent, and part of the explanation for the swan was that “The arms are from the van Arkel family....a black swan was adopted...the swan was important for the van Arkel family: c. 690 one Jan van Arkel returned to his tribal home, guided by a swan, which flew ahead of him. There he settled definitively.” So there we have it: the sign of the swan.

(

Once I knew what to look for, van Arkel swans were everywhere:

So is this truly the origin of the name Swaim? Possibly, but I still favor the Jan Zweynen hypothesis. It is possible and not unreasonable to imagine that members of Anthonis' branch of the family borrowed the Zweynen/Zwijnen, Anthonis' and Willem's uncle Jan Zweynen. After all, Anthonis' brother Willem borrowed the name den Hartog from Jan Zweynen's older brother Adriaen (1467). Also, Jan Zweynen had been wealthy and influential at least locally, so perhaps Anthonis and his descendants considered the name Zweynen as talismanic or simply wanted to be associated with him.

The Swaam van der Swalme Hypothesis

Also on De St. Jan Baptist was a man named Gerrit Hendricksen from Swoll. Swoll is Zwolle, which is a city in Overijssel. This is my 10^th great-grandfather in another line, and it is likely that his son Barent Gerritsen was also with him on this voyage. His son in New Amsterdam/New York later took the name Flaesbeeck, but according to one or more trees in the Ancestry crowdsourced tree both of these men were also known by the surname “Swaim van der Swalme.” It is certain that members of this family used the names “van Swol” and “van der Swalme' and “van de Swalme,” but the only evidence I can find that they used the name Swaim is from two different records from Ancestry.com of what appears to be summaries of a baptism record for Barent Garritsen's daughter Femmetie. In both of these summaries there are two or three alternative names listed for her, apparently meant as interpretations of the handwritten name. One of these summaries has her listed alternatively as “Femmetie Swaim” and the other as “Femmetje Gerritsen Swaim” The person who first input her name into the Ancestry.com crowdsourced tree might simply have stuck together the alternate surnames of “Swaim” and “Van Swalme.” And “Swaim” might simply be a misreading of “Swalme,” which in handwriting can easily be misread as “Swaim.” However, it is also possible that he or she actually had access to some document in which members of this family were actually called “Swaim van der Swalme.”

Also, in looking into this, I found that there is in fact a short river with headwaters in Germany that joins the river Maas in the Netherlands. The river is called in German the “Schwaam,” and in Dutch the “Swaam.” And on that river in Germany, a few miles from the Netherlands border, is a town called “Schwalm,” which in Dutch would be called “Swalm.” So this town was very possibly called in Dutch “Swaam van der Swalm.” Not only that, but not far from there is another stream called the “Beeckfliess,” which sounds very much like the alias “Flaesbeeck.” This all might be a coincidence, but it's also interesting to note that this part of what is now Germany was in Thys Barentsen's time the Duchy of Jülich, or possibly the combined Duchies of Jülich and Kleef, and that Jan V van Arkel (1362) married Johanna van Jülich, the daughter of the Duke of Jülich, so it is possible that some of the descendants of the van Arkels in the 1600's might have some interests there.

(April 2021 Note: Based on a 1645 map by Joan Blau of the Bishopric of Liege with 't Land van Loen (Loon AKA Looz)(which can be found in the Wikikpedia article "County of Loon), it appears that Schwaam would in fact be in the County of Gelderland (Geldriae on the map) rather than Jülich. I have also learned that an Arkel was lord of a land located about 37 miles west of Schwaam (which, as I've said, would probably have beeen spelled Swaam since it was then Dutch rather than German). This was Robrecht van Arkel (1345-1396), also known as Robrecht van Gravenbroek and as Robrecht van Renswoude, and as the Lord of Hamont and Achel. Gravenbroek, Hamont and Achel were all located in the northeast of the County of Loon, which is now part of Belgium. It is possible that a traveler from Gravenbroek/Hamont might have traveled through Swaam on the way to Jülich, and Robrecht of Gravenbroek was a contemporary of Jan V van Arkel and they certainly would have known each other as they were first cousins once removed (Jan III Herbaren van Arkel was Robrecht's grandfather and Jan V's great-grandfather). Thus, the Arkels may very well have been familiar with Swaam on the Swalmen, and if the Swaim line does descend from the van Arkel line, then it is possible that Thys Barentsen was also familiar with Swaam. Thys Barentsen lived 300 years after Jan V and Robrecht, but it is possible that Arkels owned some land still in this general area, either through Robrecht or through Johanna van Jülich. Although Jan V lost the Land of Arkel to the Count of Holland in the early 1400's, this doesn't necessarily mean that Robrecht lost his lands in the County of Loon or that some Arkel didn't own some land in Jülich.)

(April 23 2021 addition: I've found more Arkel ties to the area of Schwaam/Swaam. Herbaren II van Arkel van der Lede (~1196-1264) married Bertha van Wickerode, whose father was Otto von Ahr, Lord of Wickrath. The Lordship of Wickrath was located about 10 miles southeast of today's town of Schwaam, although I have no idea when Schwaam itself was founded. Another Arkel, an unnamed daughter that the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy website (fmg.ac) says was possibly the daughter of Jan I "de Sterke," married (sometime after 1215) Thierry de Neufchateau, one of who's great-grandfathers was the father of the previously mentioned Otto, Lord of Wickrath. Thus, the Arkel line had a presence in Wickrath by the 1200's, which may have continued long afterward. The Lordship of Wickrath changed hands in 1488-1502 and then again in 1502-1794 to the Quadt-Wickrath family. At this time I don't know anything about the Quadt-Wickrath family, but it is highly likely that they're a branch of the Arkel family, as the Wikipedia page on "Lordship of Wickrath" gives the following coat of arms as that of the Quadt-Wickrath family:

This COA is essentially the Arkel COA but with the colors reversed. The von Ahr Wickrath family also has in their ancestry Lords of Wassenberg, and Wassenberg is located close to Schwaam also, although to the southwest rather than southeast:

The following is a map of the region by Christian Sgrothen, made sometime before 1573, from the Wikipedia article "Erkelenz" (Erkelenz was an independent state first mentioned in a 966 AD document by Otto I, and the name, which obviously sounds very similar to "Arkel," apparently derives from the word "Herculentius," so here is another potential origination of the word "Arkel," and one that is located very close to the town of Swaam. On this map Erkelenz is written as "Erkelant," obviously meaning Arkel-land):

On the above map Wickenrath is located in the middle right-hand side, spelled "Wyckrayd." It is shown on that map as just a city, but is shown on the following map (from the Wikipedia article "Lordship of Wickrath") as a larger area (the yellow area marked "H. Wickrath"):

Thus, we see that the Arkel line did have a presence in the Schwalm region, and thus that the Swaim line would also have had that presence if it did indded descend from the Arkel line.)

January 2023 Note: Ironically, the Wikipedia article on "Lordship of Wickrath" states that Wickrath "was ruled by the Lords of Broichhausen" and has a rendering of "The arms of the Lords of Broichhausen who ruled Wickrath until 1488." At the time I wrote this post I had no idea that the Broichhausen (Broeckhuysen) family was a branch of the van Swalmen family, which I now believe is the paternal line that the Swaim/den Hartog line probably descends from. The first van Broeckhuysen to rule Wickrath (Wickrade) was Johan van Broeckhuysen van Wickrade, mentioned 1352-1375), married to Elisabeth van Engelsdorp. He was lord of Widrath from 1364-1375.

This is all highly speculative, but nonetheless there are interesting connections between the Arkels and areas near Swaam and also to Swaims and areas near Swaam. The Swaim connection is through the van Pelt family. Cornelis Swaim (1685-1762), the son of Anthony Swaim, the son of Thys Barentsen, married Elizabeth van Pelt (1685-1718). The van Pelt family came from Overpelt in Belgium, which is located 9 miles from Hamont, and even closer to other parts of Gravenbroek, which was run by Robrecht van Arkel and, as I mentioned, located less than 40 miles from Swaam. Not only this, but Cornelis Swaim's son Matthias (1707-1793) is the Swaim who married Sarah van Roome (1711-1751), whose great-grandfather was Barent Gerrittsen Swaim van der Swalme (AKA Flaesbeeck/van Swol). So this is a possible connection to Swaam, although it's entirely possible that none of this has anything to do with Thys Barentsen's choice of the surname "Swaim."

In the end, I think that all of this is in fact just coincidence, and that the origin of the Swaim name began with Jan Zweynen.

The van Burens and the Swaims

Recall that Barend Mathijs' father Mathijs Antonissen had a brother named Jacob Antonisse, and that Jacob Antonissen had a wife named Marijke Wouters Hagen. Marijke's parents were Wouter Ariens Hagen (1570- ) and Maria Cornelisse van Buren (1570). It may be a significant fact that Mathijs' uncle married a woman surnamed van Buren, as it appears that Mathijs' hypothetical son Thys Barentsen (1621) also married a van Buren. Scytie Cornelis was the daughter of Cornelis Maasen, and in many trees they are given the surname van Buren. This could simply mean that they were simple people who resided in the town of Buren, but it could also mean what many trees also show, that they descended from the line of the Lords of van Buren. That line had married into other noble families including the van Rantzau family and, interestingly, the von Kleve family, which the van Arkel family had also married into (Jan IV Herbaren van Arkel (1314-1360) had married Irmgard von Kleve, while Otto van Buren (1464-1520) had married Hedwig von Kleve, one of Johan II Hertog van Kleef's 63 (!) illegitimate children). Apparently by the time Thys Barentsen married Scytie Cornelis, the van Buren family had lost its political power just as had the the van Arkel family; but if both families still considered themselves socially as on some level above that of ordinary farmers and tradesmen by virtue of their family histories, it would not be surprising that the families would intermarry over the generations. Even if it turns out not to be true that either family was actually descended from the van Arkels or the noble van Burens, still it is interesting to see that the two families might have intermarried more than once.

It is also interesting to note that if Thys Barentsen's line did in fact descend from the van Arkel line, and if Scytie Cornelis' line did in fact descend from the noble van Buren line, the line had intermarried at least once before (assuming the family trees are correct going this far back). The van Buren line had branched off the van Egmond line with Allard I van Buren (1190-1243), the son of Allart van Egmond (1120-1168). Several generations before this, Tekla van Egmond (840- ), daughter of Wolbrandus van Egmond (840-869), had married Heyman van Arkel (832-883). If this is true, then Heyman van Arkel would be my 32^nd great-grandfather through the paternal Arkel line and Tekla van Egmond would be my 29^th great-aunt through the van Buren line. Also, Otto II van Heukelom (1260-1344), grandson of Herbaren II van der Lede, married uknown-first-name Allardsdr van Buren (1268- ). And Maria van Arkel (1389-1415) married Jan II van Egmond, so if Jan II van Egmond was descended from the van Egmond line that the van Burens branched from, then this is yet another example of intermarriage between the two families.

These connections are all very speculative and certainly can't be proven to be related to the Swaims, but since in this blog I'm erring on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion, and since I find them inersting, I'm mentioning them.

A More Complete Swaim Genealogy
Including Hypothetical van Arkel

Heijman van Arkel (790-856)

Sons:

Jan van Arkel (below)

Jan van Arkel (811-)

Sons:

Heijman van Arkel (below)

Heijman van Arkel (832-883)

Tekla Wollebrand van Egmond

Sons:

Jan van Arkel (below)

Jan van Arkel (856? -)

(d. Ingelheim am Rhein)

Sons:

Heiman van Arkel (below)

Heijman van Arkel (880-915)

Sons:

Fop Heimansz van Arkel (below)

Fop Heimansz van Arkel (900-935)

(d. Lorraine, France)

Sons:

Heijman van Arkel (below)

Heijman van Arkel (van Hongarije) (940-980 or 990)

(Hungary – Arkel, Giessenlanden, Zuid-Holland)

Sons:

Foppe van Arkel van Heukolom (below)

Foppe van Arkel van Heukelom (970-1008)

(Arkel, Giessenlanden, Zuid-Holland)

Wife: Gella Silla Thielmans (Tielmans)

Sons:

Jan I van Arkel (below)

Jan I van Arkel, Heer van Arkel, Heukelom and Polsbroek (990-1034)

(Arkel, Gisseenlanden, Zuid-Holland – Syria)

Wife: Elisabeth Willemsdr van Cuyck

Sons:

Jan II, Heer van Arkel (below)

Jan II, Heer van Arkel (1032-1077)

(d. Ijsselmonde, Rotterdam)

Wife: Margaretha van Altena

Sons:

Jan III van Arkel (below)

Jan III van Arkel, de Kruisvaarder (1080-1117)

(Straatsburg, Bas-Rhin, Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine, France)

Wife: Aleid van Heusen (1060-1143)

Sons:

Jan Van Arkel IV (1085 Arkel – 1143 Grimbergen, Vlaams-Brabant)

Hugo Botterman van Arkel (1105 Heusden – 1143 Grimbergen, Vlaams-Brabant)

Folpert van Arkel Van der Lede (below)

Folpert van Arkel van der Lede, Heer van Lede (1110-1140)

(Leede, Netherlands – Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, Alsace-Champagne-Ardenne-Lorraine, France)

Sons:

Herbaren I van Arkel van der Lede (below)

Herbaren I van Arkel van der Lede (1140-1200)

(Langerak)

Sons:

Floris Herbaren van der Lede van Arkel (below)

Floris Herbaren van der Lede van Arkel (1175-1207)

“Florentius de Leda”

(Langerak, Molenwaard, ZH – Bergambacht, ZH)

Wife: Asekijn Hugo Bottersdr Botter and Unkown van der Are

Sons:

Jan I, Heer van der Lede en Schoonhoven (1205-1258)(Mother = Botter)

Willem van der Lede (Mother = Botter)

Herbaren II van der Lede (below)(Mother = Botter)

Floris van der Lede (Mother = Botter)

Samson van der Lede (Illegitimate)

Herbaren II van der Lede, Heer van der Lede (1168 -1248)

(Arkel)

Wife: Unknown Sweersdr van Zuylen, Uknown, Bertha van Wickerode

Sons:

Herbaren, Heer van den Berghe (1220-1254)

Otto I, Herbarensz van Wickerode van der Lede Arkel Heukelom Asperen,

Heer van Asperen Heukelom en Hagestein (1225-1283)

Jan I “de Sterke,” Heer van Arkel (below)

Hugo Botter van Schoonhoven (1247-1284)

Jan I “de Sterke,” Heer van Arkel (1232-1272)

(Arkel)

Wife: Yda van Andel, Bertha Ricoldsdr van Ochten

Sons:

Jan II, Heer van Arkel (below)(Mother = Bertha van Ochten)

Arnold van Arkel, Heer van Dalem (1260-1307)

Isebrant van Arkel (1275)

Jan II, Heer van Arkel (1259-1297)

(Arkel, Zuid-Holland – Vronen, West Friesland)

Wife: Bertrade Gerardsdr van Sterkenberg

Sons:

Jan III, Heer van Arkel (below)

Herbaren van Arkel van Slingelandt (1275-1326)

Nicolaes van Arkel, Heer van Emmikhoven (1285-1325)

Jan III, Heer van Arkel (1273-1324)

“Heer Herbaren Jan III Johansz van Arkel”

(Arkel – Gorinchem)

Wife: Dochter Dirck Alrasdr van Haestrecht, Mabelia van Voorne, Cuningunde van Virneburg

Sons:

Heer Dirck Alras van Arkel (1315-1338)(Mother = van Haestrecht)

Jan IV Herbaren van Arkel (below)(Mother = Mabelia van Voorne)

Robrecht van Arkel (1314-1347 Utrecht)(Mother = van Virneburg)

Bisschop Jan van der Lede van Arkel (1314-1378)(Mother = van Virneburg)

Jan de Gruijter van Arkel (?)(“Bastaard, stamvader van een geslacht “de Gruijter”)

Jan IV Herbaren van Arkel (1314-1360)

(Gorinchem)

Wife: Ermgard Petersdr van der Lede and Irmgard von Kleve (van Kleef)

Sons:

Robbert van Arkel (1326 Leerdam)

Arnoud van Arkel (1332 Leerdam - 1378)

Otto van Arkel (below)

Arend van Arkel (1334 Leerdam)

Herbaren van Arkel, Heer van Slingeland (1338 Leerdam – 1352 Dordrecht)

Jan V van Arkel (1350-1420)

Willem van Arkel (1342 Leerdam -)

Goedeken de Hoghe (1358 – Mother Unknown)

Otto van Arkel, Heer van Arkel en Leerdam (1330-1396)

(Leerdam – Gorinchem)

Wife: Elisabeth (Isabelle) de Bar-Pierrepont (1335-1411)

Sons:

Jan V, Heer van Arkel (below)

Hendrik van Nyenstein (Illegitimate)

John, Bastard of Arkel ( - 1405) (Illegitimate)

John of Ravenstein (Illegitimate)

Jan V, Heer van Arkel (1362-1428)

AKA Johan van Arkel de XII

Lord of Arkel, Haastrecht and Hagensein and Stadtholder of Holland,

Zeeland and West Frisia

Jan van Arkel, Seigneur de PierrePont

(Gorinchem, Zuid-Holland – Leerdam, Zuid-Holland)

Wife: Johanna van Jülich (son Willem), Unknown Mistress ten Haghe (son Otto)

Willem van Arkel (1385 – 1417 Gorinchem)

Otto van Arkel (below)

Dirk? (killd Bronis Wouters for betraying Gorinchem in the Arkel War)

Otto van Arkel (1400-1475)

“Bastaardzoon van Jan van Arkel”

(Den Haag, Zuid-Holland – Utrecht, Utrecht)

Wife: Elisabeth Jacobje Molenaar

Sons:

Willem Ottensz Deventer (below)

Otto (Illegitimate)

Barbara Ottendr

Willem Ottenszn (Deventer) (1440-1494)

(Arkel, Giessenlandedn, Zuid-Holland)

Wife: Marigjen Everitsdr Zus de Bar

Sons:

Claes Willemsz Ottens (Deventer) (below)

Jan Willemsz Zweynen (Deventer) (1470-1542)

(married Adriaantje Dirks Zweynen

Children: Willem Jans Zwijnen +5 others

Otto Willemson van Deventer (1465-1529)

Adriaen Willemsz den Hartog (1472-1529)

Jacob Willemsz van Deventer (1477-1541)

Claes Willemsz Ottens (Deventer) (1475-1538)

(Leerbroek, Zederik, Zuid-Holland)

Wife: Maria Hendricks
Margriet Cornelisdr van Afferden (Aefferen)

Sons:

Willem Claessen den Hertoch (Die Jonge)(Deventer) (below)

Anthoniss Claess Ottens (1516-1587)

Matthijs Teunisse (1540-1595)

Claas Teunnisse (1541-)

Jacob Teunisse (1560-1595)

Sebastiaen Claess Ottens (1523-)

Adriaen Claess Ottens (1525)

Anthonis Claessen (1516-1568)

Mathijs Antonissen (1545-1595)

Barend Mathijs (1590 - )

Mathijs (Thys) Barentsen (1621-1682)

Leerdam

In Thys Barentsen's time, Leerdam was located within the province of Holland, within the country called the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands (Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden).

Today Leerdam is located within the province of Utrecht, within the country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

From 1840 to 2019 Leerdam was located within the province of South Holland (Zuid-Holland).

At all these times, it is likely that most people, citizens and foreigners alike, simply called this country "The Netherlands."

When Thys Barentsen was alive, Leerdam probably only referred to the city itself, although of course people who lived in the surrounding area probably told strangers they were from Leerdam even though that was technically untrue, simply because it was more likely that a stranger would know where Leerdam was rather than, say, Middelkoop. At some point the concept of the Gemeente, or municipality, came into being. A gemmente is an administrative entity that usually encompasses more than one geographically nearby towns or other population centers. Until 2019, Leerdam was a municipality as well as a city, which included Leerdam, Schoonrewoerd, Kedichem, and Oosterwijk. Thus, someone from any of these places might say they were from Leerdam. In 2019 the system of municipalities was reorganized and the municipality of Leerdam was combined with that of Vianen and Zederik and named the municipality of Vijfheerenlanden. Vijfheerenlanden literally means “Five Lords Land,” those five lords being the Lords of Arkel, the Lords of Ter Lede, the Lords of Hagestein, the Lords of Everdingen, the Noble family of the van Brederodes, and the dike builders from Haaften. These five groups (I doubt that the Haaften dike builders were “lords”) apparently cooperated in 1284 in building a system of dikes, canals, and so on, to protect the area from intrusion of water. This particularly important in this region of the Netherlands, which is a major part of the Rhine drainage basin. The Waal and the Lek, which more or less form the southern and northern boundaries of the Vijfheerenlanden region, are major arms of the Rhine.

As part of the municipality reorganization, Leerdam was moved from the province of South Holland (Zuid-Holland) to that of Utrecht. Most genealogical sources place Leerdam in Zuid-Holland, although this is an anachronism, since Holland was not divided into North Holland and South Holland until 1840.

Middelkoop today is also part of the Vijfheerenland gemeente in the province of Utrecht. In Thys Barentsen's time, Middelkoop was located within the province of Holland.

A Word on Reusel-de Mierden and Y, Somme, Picardie, France

Here's another bit of information that's off-topic but that might be of interest. You do not have any ancestors who ever lived in Reusel-de Mierden, Noord-Brabant! When making a family tree with a crowdsourced program such as Ancestry, some (or many) of the people from the Netherlands that you borrow from the tree may have a place of birth or place of death listed as Reusel-de Mierden, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. More than a million family trees have this place listed as a place of birth, residence, or death Almost all of these listings are a mistake, however; Reusel is a village with a small population and Reusel-de Mierden is a municipality that didn't even exist until 1849. What happened is that, in the past, when entering the word “Holland” as a location in the program FamilyTreeMaker, the program defaulted to the village of Reusel in Noord Brabant apparently because it had a street named 't Holland. The problem has been corrected, but the legacy of this mistake is that a lot of online family trees still have this incorrect information listed, and these mistakes are copied by others borrowing from those online family trees. (http://www.dutchgenealogy.nl/ancestors-in-reusel-de-mierden-noord-brabant/).

(I suspect something similar to this occurred with the placed called “Y, Somme, Picardie, France.” I've seen several ancestors with this place listed as their place of death, with no reason for them to be there. This is a village in northern France that in 2016 had a population of 93 and is notable only for its abbreviated name (Y). Perhaps this place shows up when a user inadvertently hits the “Y” key (perhaps reaching for the “U” key just to the right to begin writing “Unknown”?) and then “Enter” key, and the user doesn't correct the automatic entry for “Y, Somme, Picardie, France,” perhaps believing the family tree progam somehow magically knew where this person had been died (or resided). In any case, the presence of this town in anyone's family tree must be regarded as an almost certain error.)

Incredibly, just after I'd typed the last paragraph I came across a name in Ancestry that contained both of these places, Reusel as the place of birth and Y as the place of death:

The Swaim Y-DNA Haplotype

E-M35 (AKA E1b1b1)

E-V13

E-CTS5856

Y-DNA haplotypes can only be conclusively determined by SNP analysis, but can be predicted by STR analysis. I did not have my SNPs tested by FTDNA, but one or more Y-DNA SNPs were tested by 23andMe to provide me with my haplotype at some level. FTDNA STR analysis determined that my predicted Y-DNA haplotype was E-M35, ad this was confirmed by the determination by 23andMe that my Y-DNA haplotype was E-V13. 23andMe is undoubtedly correct, as almost all Europeans (and descendants) who are of haplotye “E” are E-V13 (as well as its subclade, E-CTS5856). E-CTS5856 has several subclades which you can test for at FTDNA if you choose. At this time, however, there is no genealogical value in knowing your "terminal subclade."

E-V13 is found in every country in Europe, although in comprises less than 10% of Y-DNA haplotypes. In the Netherlands it constitutes about 2.9% of Y-DNA, in England 3%, Denmark 2.9%, Norway 1%, Germany 6.2%, France 8%. In some of the Balkan countries it almost reaches 50%.

According the Eupedia.com article "Haplogroup E1b1b," "all the modern members of E-V13 descend from a common ancestor who lived approximately 5,500 years ago, and all of them descend also descend from a later common ancestor who carried the CTS5856 mutation. That ancestor would have lived about 4,100 years ago, during the Bronze Age. Almost immediately afterward, CTS5856 split into six subclades, then branched off into even more subclades in the space of a few generations. In just a few centuries, that very minor E-V13 lineage had started an expansion process that would turn it into one of Europe's most widespread paternal lineages...." And, "data suggests that the fate of E-V13 was linked to the elite dominance of Bronze Age society. The geographic distribution of the six main branches show that E-V13 quickly spread to all parts of Europe...The only Bronze Age migration that could account for such a fast and far-reaching dispersal is that of the Proto-Indo-Europeans [i.e., the "Aryans]. At present the most consistent explanation is that E-V13 developed from E-M78 in Central or Eastern Europe during the Neolithic period, and was assimilated by the R1a and R1b Proto-Indo-Europeans around the time they were leaving the Pontic Steppe to invade the rest of Europe."

An earlier and competing hypothesis is that E-V13 come to Europe from the Middle East, bringing agriculture with it. They concentrated in the Baltics and then spread throughout Europe along the river systems. The Eupedia article, however, points out flaws in this hypothesis.

2022 Note: The refined Y-DNA haplotype is now E-FT388654. According to Family Tree DNA, this is a sub-branch of E-FT389281, which is a sub-branch of E-FGC11450. This refined haplotype occurred when another man tested to E-FT388654. Unfortunately this new man has kept his identity private. I calculated the Genetic Distance between us as 19, which would mean that our lines diverged from each other in about 600 AD. This is so long ago that he is very unlikely to have the Swaim surname (or Oist surname, if van Oist was truly our progenitor). It's unfortunately thatt he didn't at least allow his nationality to be known, as that would be useful to us without giving away any personal information.

My Y-DNA STR Test Results

Family Tree DNA allows you to test either 37, 67 or 111 STRs. Previously they allowed testing at 12 and 25 STRs, and still provide you with the results at those two levels when you test at any one of the higher levels. It is best to test at the highest level, 111 STR, but because of expense most people test at a lower level. The 37 STR level is the most common because it can be found on “sale” for around $100. This is in fact a good level to choose because it provides you with enough information to decide if you should test at an even higher level. You can choose to test at a higher level at any time, and usually you do not have to provide another DNA sample.

I took the Y-DNA test primarily to confirm that I was, in fact, a descendant of Thys Barentsen rather than a Swain of British origin. Through genealogy and autosomal DNA matches I was already certain that I was in fact a descendant of Thys Barentsen, but I thought it was worth $100 to confirm it. I probably would not have taken the test except that I knew there was a “Swaim Project” on the Family Tree DNA website that had Y-DNA STR results for several Swaims. The Swaim Project was initiated to resolve a question regarding the genetic relationship between Swaims and van Pelts. The project successfully resolved that issue, but I think the project still has value as a focal point for collecting Swaim Y-DNA STR data.

I bought the test, submitted my sample, and within about three weeks received my results. After receiving the results I upgraded to the 111 STR level, so that I now have results for all of the following levels: 12, 25, 37, 67 and 111 STRs.

There are many more STRs than 111, and in fact you can spend a lot of money on Family Tree DNA's “Big 700” test and have 700 STRs tested and also a lot of SNPs. However, apparently the 111 STRs were not chosen randomly, but rather because they are the STRs that mutate the most rapidly and that are therefore the most useful for genealogical research. Thus, testing more STRs will not necessarily provide you with more information that is useful for genealogical purposes.

I'll share my STR match results at each of the tested levels. However, to preserve the privacy of these matches, I'll only provide surnames (and, when necessary to distinguish one from another of the same surname, initials). I'll also provide the “genetic distance” of each match from me. Genetic distance here means the number of difference in STR values between a match's STRs and my STRs. A perfect match is a genetic distance of 0, which means that the two sets of STRs matched perfectly. The lower the value of the genetic distance, the closer the relationship. I'll also include some of the data that the DNA test takers included about their oldest known paternal line ancestor.

Y-DNA 12 STR Markers

46 Matches

Name Genetic Y-DNA Highest Tested

Distance Haplotype STR Level FTDNA Note

Alvarez 0 E-M35 111

Rios 0 E-M35 37

Shurtz 0 E-M35 111

Carranza 0 E-Z827 67

Schoen 0 E-M35 12

Diaz 0 E-M35 12

Mahmoud Alhammadi 1 E-Y140167 111

Chartier 1 E-M35 111

Pectol 1 E-M35 68

Vestal 1 E-M35 37

JS Swaim 1 E-M35 37

Pennebaker 1 E-M35 37

GD Swaim 1 E-M35 37

Styles 1 E-V12 37

Taylor 1 E-BY5438 111 England 1855

Guillen 1 E-PF6751 12

P Beghtol 1 E-M35 111

E Beghtol 1 E-M35 67

LB Swaim 1 E-L117 37

DC Swims 1 E-M35 37

WJ Swaim 1 E-M35 67

SL Swaim 1 E-M35 37

Tudhope 1 E-M35 37

KR Swimm 1 E-M35 37

T Swaim 1 E-M35 37

J Swaim 1 E-M35 12

Zhukov 1 E-M35 111

KM Swaim 1 E-M35 37

Perez 1 E-M35 37

Hollis 1 E-V13 37 Isle of Wight, England

JR Swim 1 E-M35 37

SLE Swaim 1 E-M35 37

VAC Swimm 1 E-M35 12

TH Swaim 1 E-M35 37

LJ Swaim 1 E-M35 12

Pinto 1 E-M35 67

Wolanski 1 E-L17 67

RJ Swaim 1 E-M35 25

L Swaim37 1 E-M35 37

Fioto 1 E-Z17264 37

JA Swaim 1 E-M35 37

Diprose 1 E-BY15912 111 Biddenden, Kent

Vogt 1 E-M35 67

Sidaway 1 E-M35 67 Newcastle Upon Tyne

Evdokimov 1 E-V13 Diakonovo. Russia

Den Hertog 1 E-M35 37 Utrecht, Netherlands

So what the heck is going on here? Who are these people?

The 19 Swaims make sense. By Swaims I mean anyone with a name beginning with an “Sw-” and ending with an “-m” or “-n,” regardless of the vowels in the middle. In this list there is Swaim, Swain, Swim, Swims, Swimm. I also include Vestal as a Swaim because I know from my genealogical research that in th early 1800's a son of a Michael Swaim took the surname Vestal. I know a little bit about the ancestry of a couple other names on the list because a couple of them have written books on Swaim family history which are available online.

All of the Swaims are descendants of Thys Barentsen and belong on this list of matches.

But who are the other 27 matches?

None of these non-Swaims have surnames that I can remember encountering in my genealogical research in the Swaim line or any other line. Just based on the probable geographic locations of many of these matches, it is difficult to construct a plausible scenario which could explain them true Y-DNA matches whose ancestors branched of the “Swaim” line within some kind of genealogical time frame. More likely, they are related to the “Swaim” line in the remote past and they only show as matches through the phenomenon of “convergence” which, as I understand it, simply means coincidence. That is, they match “Swaim” Y-DNA for these 11 STRs not because we all descend from a relatively recent common ancestor, but because through the operation of chance, their Y-DNA mutations simply happen to have ended up with the same combination of these 11 STRs as “Swaim” DNA. This would be more likely to happen with fewer numbers of tested STRs rather than more numbers of tested STRs, and so it is likely that those who are in fact convergence matches will not be matches on the other levels of tested STRs.

It might also be possible to determine that some of these matches are almost certainly convergence matches by looking at their predicted Y-DNA haplogroup. Every match is in Y-DNA haplogroup E, but not everyone is E-M35 and E-V13 and E-CTS5856. Anyone who is not at least E-V13 and probably E-CTS5856 are on some other branch of E and cannot be closely related to “Swaim” Y-DNA.

Matches Not E-M35/E-V13

Carranza is E-Z827. This is a sub-clade (subhaplotype) of E-M81 and is not part of the E-V13 branch. Therefore the last common ancestor between Carranza and Swaim is too far remote in time to have any genealogical relevance. This match is definitely a result of convergence rather than relatively recent ancestry.

Alhammadi is E-Y140167. This is a sub-clade of E-M123 and is not within the E-V13 branch and is so a convergence match.

Styles is E-V12. This, too, is outside the E-V13 branch and is a convergence match.

Taylor is E-BY5438. This is a sub-clade of E-V13, but is too far from E-FGC11450 to share a common ancestor within the time period we are interested in. This is a convergence match.

Guillen is E-PF6751. This is a sub-clade of E-M132 and is a convergence match.

LB Swaim is E-L117. This seems to be simply another name for E-M35, which is also called E1b1b1. LB Swaim is clearly a descendant of Thys Barentsen and, in fact, is probably more closely related to me genealogically than any of the other Swaim matches as he descends (as I do) from Thys Barentsen's son Anthony and Anthony's son Cornelius.

Wolanski is E-L17. This is not the same as E-L117 discussed above, and it is located on a different branch of E-V13 than is Swaim Y-DNA. This match therefore is due to convergence.

Diprose is E-BY15912. This is a subclade of E-V12 and is therefore not E-V13 and is a convergence match.

E-M35/E-V13 Matches

Fioto is E-Z17264. This line branches from the Swaim line after the SNP E-BY3880. Fioto's line branches to E-Z5017 whereas the Swaim line branches to E-Z5018. This divergence of lines would have occurred more than 3,000 years ago and therefore well before the Swaim line is likely to have immigrated to the Rhine/Meuse area. (May 2021 revision)

Original 2020 text:

However, Fioto has a family tree on FTDNA that provides us with some interesting information. His great-grandfather emigrated from Sorrento, Napoli, Italy to Brooklyn at some time between his birth in 1851 and his death in 1936 (this great-grandfather's mother was Bridget McNamara, born in 1813 in Cork, Ireland. By an odd coincidence, I have a 3^rd great-grandmother named Bridget McNamara who was born in 1835 in Cork, Ireland). Fioto's mother's father's surname was Spano, and that branch of the family also came from Italy. However, Fioto's mother's surname was Buitekant (in earlier generations spelled Buijtekant), and this branch of the family is from the Netherlands and, based on many of their names (Cohen, Levy, etc.) is definitely Jewish. Most of the family was from Amsterdam, but one member, Sarah “David” van Nijmegen (born 1710) was from Nijmegen in Gelderland. Recurring names within the family include Barend (as a surname), Hartog (as a given first name for one male, and a given second name for at least 3 females). One person, born in the mid- to late-1700's was named Golda Hartog Zwaan: this conjunction of Hartog with Zwaan (because it sounds so much like "Swaim") is an amazing coincidence. However, it is just a coincidence, because his haplotype is too far distant from the Swaim haplotype to be closely related. According to the Wikipedia entry for “Hartog,” Hartog is a common given name for Jews living in the Netherlands. One branch of this family moved from the Netherlands to England in the mid-1800's, marrying into the Buitekant branch which moved to New York probably in the later 1800's. So we have in this one family the names Barent, Hartog, and Zwaan, all from the Netherlands, and yet it seems unlikely that there is any close relationship to the Swaims. One last oddity about this family is that one of its Netherlands Jewish ancestors, Jesaya Alexander Moses Regensburg, was born in 1672 in the city of Bielefeld in what is now Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. What makes this an oddity is that the city of Bielefeld doesn't exist! (see the Wikipedia entry for “Bielefeld Conspiracy” ).

(May 2021 Note: The above coincidences are in fact nothing more than coincidences because the Swaim and Fioto lines we are not closely enough related to have shared a common ancestor who lived in the Rhine/Meuse area.)

Pinto lists his earliest known ancestor as Yehiya Pinto born 1900. Pinto also belongs to FTDNA's “Jewish DNA Project,” at which he gives the birthplace of this ancestor as Morocco. I don't know what to make of this, but it is interesting that 2 of these STR12 matches are Jewish. There was a Jewish de Pinto family that lived in Tulpenburg, Amstelveen, Netherlands, who in 1748 lent money to William IV, Prince of Orange, to fight the French who were threatening to invade the Netherlands, but whether or not Y-DNA Pinto is any relation to this family is unknown.

Hispanic E-M35 Matches: Alvarez, Rios, Diaz, Perez. There is very little information on FTDNA for these matches. Alvarez has a minimal family tree indicating that both of his parents died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so he probably lives in America. His mitochondrial DNA is B2b, which is Native American and is therefore consistent with mixed Spanish/Native American ancestry. There's not enough information on the other 3 matches to determine if they live in Spain or in the Americas. All of these matches are probably examples of convergence, since they all disappear at the higher levels of STR testing.

Evdokimov lists his earliest known ancestor as “Stephan, abt. 1670 – bef. 1763, Diakonovo, Russia.” Google maps can't locate Diakonovo, but apparently it is a village in the Pskov region, which is close to the southern border of Estonia.

Zhukov is closely related to Evdokimov. Zhukov's earliest known ancestor is listed as “Stepan, Abt. 1670 – Bef. 1763.” Both are listed just above/below each other in FTDNA's “Russia DNA Project” because of the closeness of their Y-DNA, which appears to have a genetic distance of only 2 at the STR111 level. Zhukov has a family tree on FTDNA, which shows his earliest paternal ancestor as a man surnamed Zhukov who lived in the village of Sergeevka in the province of Ryazan, and who died in 1901. Sergeevka is located about 120 miles southeast of Moscow.

Zhukov, and therefore also Evdokimov, is E-FGC11447, which is a bit downstream of the Swaim haplotype E-FGC11450. This is relatively close in terms of Y-DNA, but his line probably branched from the Swaim line a couple thousand years ago. His GD from me is 21 out of 614 STRs, but this is from the Big Y-700 test I don't have a good enough grasp of the meaning of this yet to place this into context. Neither Zhukov nor Evdokimov appears at the higher STR levels (STR 25, 37, 67, 111), so neither are related closely enough to be of genealogical relevance.

October 31, 2021 Note: A new E-FGC11447 match (just downstream of E-FGC11450) recently appeared on my Yfull.com list of SNP matches. None of these matches is related closely enough to be a descendant of the Swaim migrant ancestor from Greece, but all are related at an earlier level. The earliest known ancestor of this new match was named Timofei Kobyzev (1642-), and although no other information was provided, the Wikipedia entry “Kobuzev family” states that Kobyzev is a variant spelling of Kobuzev and that the family “is an ancient Russian noble family descended from Ryazanian boyar scions.” What's interesting about this distant match is that the earliest known ancestor of the Zhukov match also came from the Ryazan region. There's no other evidence that the two matches are related, although since both are in haplogroup E-FGC11447 with a TMRCA for this haplogroup of 3,000 years, they are definitely related within at least that time frame.

P Beghtol, L Beghtol, and Pectol are probably related to each other. These two surnames are probably variant spellings of the German Bechtel. E Beghtol's family tree shows his earliest paternal ancestor as John Beghtol born 1785 in Pennsylvania and died in Schuyler, Illinois. I do have 2 Ancestry autosomal matches with ancestors in their trees named Pectol, but the trees are too fragmentary for any real analysis. I also have several Bechtels, but the chance that any of them are in any way related to the Swaim Y-DNA line are remote. My Pectol/Bechtel DNA probably comes from those more recent German ancestors rather than from the "Swaim" line. Their presence on my list is due to convergence.
*Since I wrote this paragraph on Beghtol, I've done a bit more investigating, including actually comparing both Beghtol STRs against my STRs. E Beghtol tested to the 67 STR level and is related to me at a Genetic Distance of 28. P Beghtol tested to the 111 STR level and is related to me at a Genetic Distance of 44/111. For both individuals this is pretty remote ancestry, perhaps going back some 60 generations, or about 1.900 years to the year 100 A.D.

Den Hertog's surname is obviously of Dutch derivation, and as the email suffix on his FTDNA profile is “.nl”, he most likely lives in the Netherlands. In his profile's “Ancestral Surnames” section, he has written “Den Hertog (Nieuwer-ter-Aa, Utrecht, Holland).” As he, like Thys Barentsen, is from the Netherlands, it is quite possible that he is a true match who shares a relatively recent ancestor with the Swaim line. Furthermore, Nieuwer-ter-Aa is located only about 30 miles north of Leerdam, so both his ancestors and the Swaim line lived in the same general area. However, the Netherlands is a small and densely populated country, so it is not the same as if the two had lived 30 miles apart in a large country such as Spain, France, or Russia. (This was written at the beginning of my research into the Swaim line. Because den Hertog Y-DNA and Swaim Y-DNA are so closely related at the STR37 level, there is no doubt at all the the Swaim line and den Hertog line separated within a handful of generations above that of Thys Barentsen's generation).

Although Diprose has a Genetic Distance of 1 for 12 STRs, this low GD for these STRs is a statistical fluke, because he has a GD of 15 for 37 STRs, 23 for 67 STRs, and 43 for 111 STRs. He does not show up at these higher levels of STRs because these GDs are all well over FTDNA's cutoff points for displaying matches. The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for Diprose and me probably lived about 90 generations ago, or about 2,800 years ago.

Thys Barentsen immigrated to America in 1661, long before surnames were commonly used. Thys Barentsen's own name is a patronymic name and there is no evidence that Thys Barentsen ever used a true surname, even in America. Since the Dutch now use true surnames, it is to be expected that the descendants of the last common ancestor of the Swaims in America and the proto-Swaims in the Netherlands would have different surnames. They might not if the Swaims had chosen their surname because it had been a true surname or quasi-surname in the Netherlands in the 1600's, but we have no evidence that this is true. In fact, it is quite likely that the various branches of the proto-Swaim line in the Netherlands have several different surnames, since by 1810 when surnames were officially required to be adopted, there would have been many branchings-off from the Swaim Y-DNA line in the Netherlands, and it is unlikely that every branch wold have chosen the same surname. Many of the more distant cousins might not now even know they are cousins, especially for those lines that moved farther away from Leerdam, assuming Leerdam was in the ancestral homeland of the line.

Now we'll move on to the match results for 25 STR markers. Most if not all of the random convergence matches should be eliminated at this level, since of course the odds for a convergence match will become higher for every STR marker added to the test.

Y-DNA25 STR Markers

33 Matches

Name Genetic Distance Y-DNA Haplogroup (If Not E-M35)

DenHartog 1

LB Swaim 1 E-L117

DC Swims 1

WJ Swaim 1

SL Swaim 1

Taylor 1 E-BY5438

Schultz 1

Vestal 1

SLE Swaim 1

TH Swaim 1

RJ Swaim 1

L37 Swaim 1

JA Swaim 1

KR Swimm 1

Miller 1

KM Swaim 1

Robinson (nee Bloomfield) 1

Den Hertog 1

JS Swaim 2

GD Swaim 2

S R 2

Snell 2

L111 Swaim 2 E-CTS5856

Tudhope 2

M Swaim 2

AD Swim 2

DS Swaim 2

DD Swim 2

T Swaim 2

JL Swaim 2

JR Swim 2

Ms. Baker (Swim) 2

Skinner 2

Adding 13 more STR markers had the following effect on my matches:

22 former non-Swaim matches dropped off the list:
- Alvarez, Rios, Shurtz, Carranza, Schoen, Diaz, Alhammadi, Chartier, Pectol, Pennebaker, Styles, Guillen, Beghtol, Beghtol, Zhukov, Perez, Hollis, Pinto, Wolanski, Fioto, Diprose, Vogt, Sidaway, Evdokimov
3 Swaim matches dropped off the list:
- J Swaim
- VAC Swimm
- LJ Swaim
18 Swaims remained on the list
3 other matches remained on the list:
- Den Hertog
- Taylor
- Tudhope

- 5 new Swaim matches appeared on the list:

M Swaim
AD Swim
DS Swaim
DD Swim
Baker (actually Swim from New Brunswick)

new non-Swaim matches appeared on the list:
- DenHartog
- Schultz
- Miller
- Robinson (nee Bloomfield)
- S R
- Snell
- Mrs. Baker (
- Skinner

Now let's try to make sense of these changes.

Most of the non-Swaims who disappeared off the list were probably examples of convergence. Since we are all haplogroup E, we did have a common ancestor but it could have been thousands of years ago. In these cases, DNA mutations occurred by chance in a pattern either matching 11 or all 12 of the particular markers FTDNA teste. Also possible is that for some our shared ancestor was in fact much closer in time than the others, but through chance these particular markers remained in the Swaim pattern but the other markers changed enough out of the Swaim pattern to no longer be considered closely enough related to be Swaims. Here's a spoiler: none of these 22 matches reappear at a higher level of STR testing. They're gone for good.

Three of the non-Swaims who disappeared (Schoen, Diaz, Guillen) only tested at the STR12 level, so there is the possibility that they would have remained at the STR25 level if they had tested at that level. However, it is unlikely that Guillen would have remained since his haplotype belongs to a different branch than E-V13.

The 3 Swaims who dropped off also did so because they also tested only at the STR12 level. All 3 would probably have remained as a match at any higher level they had tested at.

Three non-Swaims remained on the list: Den Hertog, Taylor, Tudhope. These are likely to not be convergence matches, but we'll see if they remain at higher levels. Den Hertog is the most interesting of these matches because, as we already know, he lives in the Netherlands, and also because of the presence of a new match at this level with a similar name: DenHartog. The two names are almost certainly just a variation of the same name, which means they probably derived from a common ancestor within the time frame that surnames existed at some level in the Netherlands. If these names remain at the STR37 level, I'll look more deeply into their origin.

I don't know what to make of Taylor and Tudhope. Both names sound English. It is possible that one or both shares a relatively recent ancestor with the Swaims. At least by the early 1000's the river Waal, wich formed the souther border of the Land of Arkel, was a trade route between Tiel (located 15 miles east of Leerdam) and the country of England (Battle of Vlaardingen 1018 (keesn.nl) This trade route probably persisted for many centuries, and thus it would have been quite easy for a Swaim male to have migrated to England from the Land of Arkel. The English switched from the patronymic naming system to the surname system long before the Netherlanders did, and any Netherlander settling in England would have been required to choose a surname, and most would likely have chosen a surname that sounded English rather than Dutch.

On the STR12 test, FTDNA only shows the names that match at the level of 12 or 11 STRs (“Genetic Distance” of 0 or 1). On the STR 25 test, FTDNA shows the names that match at the level of 25, 24, or 23 STRs (Genetic Distance of 0, 1, or 2). The reason for this is that FTDNA has determined that matches at this number of matching STRs are more likely to be true matches (meaning that they share a relatively recent common ancestors) than matches at a lower number of STRs. This explains the appearance of the 4 new Swaim names on the STR25 test that were not on the STR12 test. On the STR12 test all 3 of these matches must have shared only 10 matching STRs with my DNA, while on the STR25 test they shared 23 matching STRs (and all 4 are, in fact, at a Genetic Distance of 2 on the STR25 test, which means they did share 23/25 STRs on that test). This means that on the STR12 test they must have been at a Genetic Distance of 2, which was outside of FTDNA's range of meaningful results for that test. Meanwhile, there were more than a dozen matches that fell within FTDNA's range of meaning results that were not actually meaningful. This simply illustrates the uncertainties involved with DNA testing, which is based on probabilities rather than absolutes. To truly make sense of the results of DNA testing, the results must be compared to facts known from sources other than DNA, particularly names, dates, and geographical locations.

Of the 7 non-Swaim matches that appeared on the STR25 test, we've already discussed DenHartog. Of the remaining 6, Shultz and Snell sound German. Miller and Skinner could also be German or could be English. Neither Shultz nor Snell included any ancestry information in their profiles and neither has a family tree on FTDNA, so we really know nothing about him. Miller and Skinner both turn out to probably be English rather than German, as they've included in the “Earliest Known Ancestor” field names that have definitely English given names. David Miller's last known ancestor is Samuel Edward Miller, probably born about 1857 in Alabama. Miller will be discussed further later on. Shultz tested at the STR37 level, Snell at the STR67 level, Miller at the STR111 level, and Skinner at the STR67 level, so for all of these 4 people we'll be able to see if they remain matches at least at the STR37 level.

The other new matches at the STR25 level are more problematic.

Robinson (nee Bloomfield): It is uncertain what this name means. Typically “nee” is placed before a woman's maiden name, but as this match can't be a woman, the use of “nee” is confusing. It could mean that a man named Bloomfield was adopted by a family named Robinson, or it could possibly mean the opposite of that. Robinson (nee Bloomfield) tested at the STR37 level, so if he still remains a match at that level we'll see what we can figure out about him.

S R is a complete unknown but tested at the STR67 level, so we'll see if we see him at a higher testing level.

Ms. Baker is probably a female relative of the male who took the Y-DNA test. We don't know anything about this match and we can't assume his name is Baker. He was tested at the STR37 level, so we'll see if he's still a match at that level. (I now know that Ms. Baker represents a man with the surname Swim, whose Swaim ancestor was one of the Revolutionary War loyalists who fled to Canada at the end of the war).

Y-DNA37 STR Markers

28 Matches

Name Genetic Distance Highest Tested

STR Level

DenHartog 1 67

LB Swaim 1 37

SL Swaim 2 37

Den Hertog 2 37

KR Swimm 2 37

KM Swain 2 37

AD Swim 3 67

DS Swaim 3 67

DD Swim 3 67

Robinson (nee Bloomfield) 3 37

SL Swaim 3 37

L37 Swaim 3 37

JA Swaim 3 37

Ms. Baker (Swim) 3 37

Miller 3 111

Schultz 3 37

L111 Swaim 3 111

DC Swims 3 37

WJ Swaim 3 67

Tudhope 4 37

Vestal 4 37

JS Swaim 4 37

GD Swaim 4 37

TH Swaim 4 37

JL Swaim 4 37

JR Swim 4 37

M Swaim 4 37

T Swaim 4 37

At this STR37 level, 21 of the 28 matches have the surname Swaim in some form, or Vestal. Some of the relative positions have changed in terms of genetic distance with the results of the additional 12 STRs, but that is to be expected. One Swaim, RJ Swaim, has dropped off this list, but STR25 was the highest level he tested at. He would almost certainly have been on the STR37 list had he tested at that level.

It is interesting to note that of the non-Swaims on this list, all but Tudhope have tested at a lower Genetic Distance (and this closer genetic relationship) than 8 of the Swaims. Robinson (nee Bloomfield), Baker, Miller, and Schultz all tested at a Genetic Distance of 3, which the FTDNA “Learning Center” says means: “Related. Your degree of matching is within the range of most well-established surname lineages in Western Europe.” Of these 4 and of Tudhope, who tested at a Genetic Distance of 4, only Miller tested at a higher level (STR111). There is no way to know whether they would match at a higher level unless they choose in the future to test at a higher level.

The question that remains is how far in the past was the last common ancestor of an STR37 match to a Swaim match?

We can use FTDNA's “TiP Report” calculator for any match to get a percentage probability estimate of how many generations in the past that that match shared a common ancestor with the test taker (in this case, me). This calculator is based on the number of matching STRs as well as the mutation rate of each particular STR. The calculation can also be refined “If traditional genealogical records indicate that a common ancestor between you and your match could not have lived in a certain number of generations.” That number of generations can be entered into the calculator to adjust the resulting estimate.

Because an immigration event from Europe to America by only one male ancestor gave rise to all of the Swaims, we do know that the last common ancestor of all the Swaims was Thys Barentsen. For me, Thys Barentsen was 11 generations back. Therefore, I can enter the number “11” into the caluclator for the refined estimate.

Here are the results for 8 of the STR37 matches: L Swaim.LB Swaim, DS Swaim, JS Swaim, JR Swim, Miller, DenHartog, Den Hertog. I chose L Swaim and Miller because, like me, both of them have tested have up to the STR111 level. This enables me to test them also at the next 2 levels, assuming they're still matches at those levels. I chose LB Swaim, DS Swaim, and JS Swaim because I know how many generations back our common ancestor are (9 for LB Swaim and 11 for DS Swaim). I chose JR Swim only because he has the Swim variant surname. I chose DenHartog and Den Hertog because as they are either Dutch or of Dutch ancestry, they are more likely to be true matches than are the English matches. For each match I'll give the results at the the first generational level where the probability is at least 90% and 99%, and I'll do it both with and without and with refining the results by adding the 11-generation (or 9-generation) gap as a factor.

L Swaim:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 12 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 19 generations

Refined result 90% probability 18 generations

Refined result 99% probability 24 generations

LB Swaim:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 9 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 15 generations

Refined result 90% probability 15 generations

Refined result 99% probability 20 generations

DS Swaim:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 12 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 19 generations

Refined result 90% probability 18 generations

Refined result 99% probability 24 generations

JS Swaim:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 16 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 24 generations

Refined result 90% probability 20 generations

Refined result 99% probability >24 generations

JR Swim:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 16 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 24 generations

Refined result 90% probability 20 generations

Refined result 99% probability >24 generations

Miller:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 12 generations (18)

Unrefined result 99% probability: 20 generations (24)

Refined result 90% probability 18 generations (19)

Refined result 99% probability >24 generations (>24)

* Figures in parentheses are the figures for 111 STRs.

Tudhope:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 16 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 24 generations

Refined result 90% probability 20 generations

Refined result 99% probability >24 generations

DenHartog:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 9 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 15 generations

Refined result 90% probability 17 generations

Refined result 99% probability 22 generations

Den Hertog:

Unrefined result 90% probability: 9 generations

Unrefined result 99% probability: 15 generations

Refined result 90% probability 17 generations

Refined result 99% probability 22 generations

We can try to use the two matches with a known number of generations back to the last common ancestor to calibrate the 4 results for each match. For LB Swaim the known number of generations to the last common ancestor is 9. For DS Swaim and JS Swaim it is 11.

The calculator was exactly correct for LB Swaim for the unrefined result at 90% probability. For DS Swaim the calculator was off by just 1 generation for the unrefined result at 90% probability. These are very good results. However, for JS Swaim the unrefined result at 90% probability was off by 5 generations.

For the unrefined results at 99% probability, the calculator was off by 6 generations for LB Swaim, 8 generations for DS Swaim, and a whopping13 generations for JS Swaim. All of the refined calculations for all 3 matches were off by several generations as well.

These are not encouraging results for a genealogist because the range of possible generations for any particular Y-DNA match is so broad. That's probably just the state of the science at this point in time. In the future, more data will no doubt bring more refinement of the calculated probabilities.

But why was the estimated generations accurate at the 90% probability level for LB Swaim and DS Swaim and so far off for JS Swaim and also for JR Swim (since we know that JR Swim can be at most 11 generations distant, since Thys Barentsen was JR Swim's and my last common ancestor). This probably has to do with the mutation rate values that FTDNA assigns to each of the STRs. If some of the Swaims have a mutation in a particular STR that others don't, and if the FTDNA assigned value of that STR is erroneous, it would throw off the estimates for the Swaims with that mutation.

Actually, though, it appears that the STR Y-DNA of one branch of the Swaims has mutated more rapidly than the others. The information I have that leads to this tentative conclusion is based on the Genetic Distance data of 9 Swaims and 2 den Hartogs for whom I have enough genealogical data to know from which son of Thys Barentsen they descend. This data is based on the data at the STR37 level, since most matches didn't test at a higher level. Here is a table with this information:

Match Name Gen Gen Son of Grandson of Geographical Location
Dist to TB Tys Barents Thys Barents of Match (Descendant)

DenHartog 1 11 (Dirk den Hartog) n/a Iowa (Netherlands 1847)

Den Hertog 2 unk n/a n/a Netherlands

Steve Swain - 11 Anthony 1659 Cornelius 1686 New Jersey

LB Swaim 1 10 Anthony 1659 Cornelius 1686 New Jersey

K Swain 2 Anthony 1659 Matthys 1695 New Jersey

KR Swimm 2 Cornelius 1661 Albert 1691 Nova Scotia 1778

L111 Swaim 3 9 Willem 1676 Michael 1715 North Carolina 1700's

DS Swaim 3 Willem 1676 Johannes 1719 North Carolina 1700's

JS Swaim 4 10 Willem 1676 Johannes 1719 North Carolina 1700's

WJ Swaim 3 9 Willem 1676 Johannes 1719 North Carolina 1700's

Vestal 4 10 Willem 1676 Johannes 1719 North Carolina 1700's

“Gen to TB” means the number of generations from the match to Thys Barentsen (or, in the case of DenHartog, to the ancestor in the Netherlands of the same generations {born n 1624}).

Everyone on this chart except for DenHartog and Den Hertog descends from Thys Barentsen, who immigrated to America in 1661. This was 336 years before the year of my birth in 1957. Thys Barentsen is 9, 10, or 11 generations up from each of these Y-DNA matches.

The chart clearly shows that every descendant of Thys Barentsen's son Willem have a greater Genetic Distance from me than the descendants of Thys Barentsen's sons Anthony and Cornelius, and greater than DenHartog and Den Hertog who branched off the Swaim tree at either the same or an earlier generation than that of Thys Brentsen (very like 4 generations up from Thys Barentsen's generation). This is a small sample, but even so the genetic distance figures don't look random. Is there something about North Carolina (and perhaps the South in general) that causes Y-DNA to mutate faster than in New Jersey, Nova Scotia, and the Netherlands? Does the greater ionizing radiation from the sun in the Southern states cause Y-DNA to mutate faster than at more northerly latitudes? Or does exposure to radiation from the polonium-21 in tobacco induce a greater rate of mutatin (if, indeed, the Swaims in North Carolina did smoke more tobacco than the Swaims elsewhere, which would probably be impossible to determine)?

That is speculation. What is not speculation is that the DenHartogs and Den Hertogs are closely related to the Swaims, and this relationship needs investigation. Who are these DenHartogs and Den Hertogs?

But before we try to answer that question, we'll finish with the two higher levels of STR testing.

Y-DNA67 STR Markers

8 Matches

Name Genetic Distance Highest Tested

STR Level

AD Swim 4 67

DS Swaim 4 67

DenHartog 4 67

WJ Swaim 4 67

L111 Swaim 4 111

Miller 5 111

Skinner 6 67

DD Swim 6 67

First, remember that the number of matches at this level are few because most of the matches at the previous STR37 level didn't test at a higher level, not because we didn't match at this higher level. Every one of the 17 Swaims who was on the STR37 match list who is not on this STR67 match list tested only up to the STR37 level. It is likely that all 17 of these people would also match me at the STR67 level if they upgraded to it.

For the matches at this level who were also matche at the STR37 level, the Genetic Distance is greater at this level than at the STR37 level. This is because there were non-matching STRs in the 30 new STRs tested at this level. This is to be expected, and this is why FTDNA at this level shows us matches up to a Genetic Distance of 6, rather than only up to a Genetic Distance of 4 at the STR37 level.

Of the two non-Swaims from STR37 who tested at least to STR67 (DenHartog, Miller), both are matches at STR67. These two matches clearly have a common ancestor with the Swaims not too many generations above Thys Barentsen's generation.

Skinner is a new match who was not a match at the STR37 level. This must mean that his non-matching STRs werer “front-loaded” so that he had most of his non-matching STRs in the first 37 STRs tested, and few to no non-matching STRs in the last 30 STRs tested. At the previous tested levels he must have been just outside of the Genetic Distance cutoff point that FTDNA uses to try to separate the true matches from the convergence matches.It would be nice if FTDNA had a feature that allowed us to look at the matches that are close to the cutoff point but don't quite make it, at least for a match such as this that seemingly pops up out of nowhere. But they don't.

In his profile, Skinner states that he was adopted. He also provides the name “Lankford (United States)” as a paternal ancestral surname. Lankford is obviously an English-derived surname, so this match seems to be part of the presumably English small cluster of mystery matches: Miller, Robinson (Bloomfield), Tudhope. Lankford is at a Genetic Distance of 6 for 67 STRs, which is the highest level he tested at. His Genetic Distance at 111 STRs would probably be about 10 or perhaps a bit higher, so he might not show up as a match at that level. Still, it is likely that he is a descendant of the Swaim immigrant ancestor. His TiP report estimates that the MRCA of Skinner and me was between 24 (99.6%) and 15 (91.2%) generations ago. This would be between the years of about 1189 AD and 1477 AD. One of the descedants of this MRCA in Skinner's line probably migrated to England from Germany, perhaps from Langfurth or Lengfurt, which name in England morphed into Lankford.

Y-DNA111 STR Markers

2 Matches

Name Genetic Distance

L Swaim 8

Miller 9

These are the only two STR37 matches who tested at the STR111 level.

Here's what FTDNA says about STR111 matches at a Genetic Distance of 8: “Only Possibly Related. A 103/111 match indicates a distant cousinship with only a chance of a genealogical relationship. Over half of matches at this level are related as 12^th cousins or more recently. Most matches at this level are related as 18^th cousins or more recently. The connections here can be highly informative for relationships with historic groups and events.”

FTDNA says essentially the same thing for matches at a Genetic Distance of 9, except that it says that half the matches at this level are related as 13^th cousins or closer, and that most matches are related as or more recently than 20^th cousins.

It's not surprising that there are matches with surnames other than some variation of Swaim, given that Netherlands in the 1600's still used the patronymic naming system. As far as we know, Thys Barentsen did not use the surname Swaim, and his descendants only began using it around the year after the year 1700. Thus, although Thys Barentsen's descendants used the name Swaim, we cannot his ancestors to have used that name. Thus, any male ancestors in Thys Barentsen's line in any generations above his own would have living descendants probably using some other surname. However, we would expect most of those descendants to be from the Netherlands and to have Dutch surnames. So what I am surprised about is how many Y-DNA matches at the STR37 level and above have apparently English surnames (although, of course, their ancestors may have adopted English surnames if they had immigrated to America).

Below is a list of the non-Swaim surnames at the STR37, STR67, and STR111 levels. I would assume that most of the matches at the STR37 level would survive to one of the higher levels, but of course that is something we can't know without further testing:

DenHartog

Den Hertog

Robinson (nee Bloomfield)

“Ms. Baker” (Swim, so he doesn't actually belong in this section)

Miller

Shultz

Tudhope

Skinner (Lankford)

The 2 Den Hartogs are of Netherlands extraction.

Scultz is a common German name.

“Ms. Baker” has an unknown surname.

The other 4 names (Robinson/Bloomfield, Miller, Tudhope, and Lankford) appear to be of English extraction, based on their surnames or on FTDNA profile information.

The surname Bloomfield is interesting because although I don't have a Bloomfield in my large Ancestry.com hypothetical family tree, when I enter the name in Ancestry.com's and Myheritage.com's search function, I have a couple dozen autosomal DNA match relatives who have that surname as an ancestor in their family trees. This is not likely to simply be “noise,” because most of these trees show the same family of Bloomfields who emigrated from Woodbridge, Suffolk, England in the early 1600's to Massachusetts (briefly) and then settled in Woodbridge, New Jersey (they probably founded Woodbridge, New Jersey, and gave it the name of the city they left in England). Woodbridge, New Jersey is located only 17 miles from what is now Old Town, Staten Island, near where Thys Barentsen and some of his family settled, and even less than that (12 miles) from where Thys Berentsen's oldest son, Barent Thyssen, lived, in the area now called Heartland Village. If a Swaim had had an extramarital affair with the wife of a Bloomfield, or a premarital affair with an unmarried Bloomfield, the male child from this affair would carry the Swaim Y-DNA but very possibly the Bloomfield name. Seventeen miles was relatively a longer distance in the 1600's and 1700's than it is today, but it wasn't a serious obstacle for a sufficiently motivated swain. Barring the discovery of some document such as a confessional diary, such an event will probably never be provable, but if my Bloomfield Y-DNA match can trace his Bloomfield ancestors back to the Woodbridge, New Jersey Bloomfields, then this is definitely a viable hypothesis.

(Since I wrote the above, I discovered a connection that could provide an alternative hypothesis for how Bloomfield could be related to the Swaims and den Hartogs. One line of the Arkels supposedly emigrated to England in the early to mid 1600's. The van Arkel who made the move was supposedly Thomas Walraven van Arkel (1613 Ammerzoden, Netherlands - 1693 Sevenhampton, Swindon, England). Thomas Walraven supposedly married Mary Willetts of England. The van Arkel line in England dropped the "van" in their surname and spelled their surname with two ll's: Arkell. Most of the family remained in Wiltshire or Gloucestershire for several generations, possibly up to the present day. A few sources state that an Alfred J. Arkell (born about 1880, location unknown) married a woman named Alice Mary Bloomfield (born 1885 to William Bloomfield and Elizabeth Jane Kiff). There is very little information about either of these people, but assuming this story is true, one of their sons (if they had any) could have used his mother's surname instead of his own and then would have the Bloomfield surname but the van Arkell Y-DNA. This scenario, however, assumes that the Swaims are in fact descended from the van Arkels, and also that a van Arkel did emigrate to England as the progenitor of the Arkell lines there. Neither of these assumptions are rock-solid, although they are certainly possible.

I don't have anyone surnamed Lankford in my Ancestry family tree, but an autosomal Ancestry search results in 20 DNA match relatives who have a Lankford in their family tree. Most of these lived in Virginia in the 1600's and early 1700's and also in Surry, North Carolina. Thys Barentsen's son Willem/William moved with his family to Virginia and many of his descendants lived in North Carolina, so there is the possibility of a surname change caused by a premarital or extramarital event as discussed with the Bloomfield match. I also have several autosomal DNA matches that have the surname Skinner in their trees, and most of these are from a family that in the 1600's and early 1700's lived in Middlesex and Hunterdon Counties in New Jersey. Swaims from at least a couple different lines lived not far from these Skinners, so it is possible that DNA match Skinner is a descended from an extramarital union of a male Swaim and female Skinner.

I don't have a Tudhope in my Ancestry family tree, nor do I show any autosomal matches with anyone with a Tudhope in their family tree. Tudhope appears to be a Scottish name, or at least most of the American Tudhopes appear to have come from Scotland. The match Tudhope hasn't provided enough information to even know if he's American, however. The Genetic Distance at 37 STRs (the highst level at which Tudhope tested) is 4, so we can project that the GD at 111 STRs is 12, but it could easily be much more than that. If he is in fact relatively closely related to the Swaims, then the MRCA should be about 22 generations in the past. FTDNA's TiP Calculator gives an estimate of 16 generations back at the 90% level and 24 generations for 99%. If Tudhope is in fact this closely related to the Swaims, then the MRCA or one of his descendants at one time may have migrated to Scotland or America and took the name Tudhope.

The surname Schultz is too common a German surname to easily analyze, particularly for me as my paternal grandfather married a Leota Shultz. This grandmother's father's mother appears to have immigrated from Germany, but I'm not able to track the Schultz paternal line to the immigrant ancestor. It's unlikely that he descended from the Swaim/den Hartog line. When I search on Ancestry with the term “Schultz” in the “Surname in matches' trees” and also “Netherlands” in the “Birth location in matches' trees,” I have one match who has in his tree a Matthijs Schultz (1866-1931) who was born in Den Helder, North Holland. Den Helder is on the tip of the peninsula on the Dutch mainland that is just south of the island of Texel. This is an interesting, but I haven't found any other information on this person.

The surname Miller is very common, also, and not only in England; Germans immigrating to America often changed their name from Müller to Miller, and some Dutch changed their name from Molenaar to Miller, as both “müller” and “molenaar” literally mean “miller.” I will show later that a probable ancestor in the Swaim line (Otto van Arkel 1440-1475) married a woman with the surname Molenaar, who was born in Leerbroek (about 3 miles from Leerdam). If a male son of this couple had adopted the mother's surname (something not uncommon), and later a male descendant of his immigrated to America, that descendant or his descendants might very well change their name to Miller. I have several autosomal DNA matches with a Molenaar in their family trees. Most of these are from one family that emigrated from Pijnacker, South Holland, located about 50 miles west of Leerdam. The family seems to have first immigrated to New Amsterdam, then moved on to Somerset, New Jersey, and then to Frederick County, Viginia, then to Kentucky, and finally to Illinois. Along the way their name changed to Mollenauer and Miller, though the trees don't seem to indicate that there are any males that retained the Molenaar/Mollenauer/Miller surname. The Miller Y-DNA match shows in his very abbreviated family tree that his father, born in 1892, was born in Texas and died in Mississipi, so it is possible that a male Miller line from this family ended up in Texas and Mississipi. Of course, I don't know if the DNA that I share in common with these autosomal DNA matches is truly “Molenaar” DNA, but if not then it is probably DNA somehow allied to Molenaar DNA because of the number of matches that have this family in their trees is probably too many to be mere coincidence.

(I wrote the above paragraph on Miller before I knew that Otto van Arkel (1400-1475), who had married Elisabeth Jacobje Molenaar, supposedly sometimes went by the name "Ot de Molenaar." I now think it is likely that the Y-DNA match "Miller" descends from a son of Otto who retained the name Molenaar and had some descendants who immigrated to America and changed the surname to Miller. These descendants may or may not have been the family from Pijnacker mentioned above. The earliest Molenaar shown in the Pijnacker Molenaar trees is an "Adruaen Dirksen Molenaar" born 1620 Pijnacker. What is especially interesting about this tree is that it shows his son Hendrick (1670 Somerset New Jersey - 1712 Salem New Jersey) married a woman named "Cathrin Crom VanMeteren" (1650-1744). What makes this interesting is that Willem Claessen den Hertoch de Jonge (1518-1575) (the brother of probable Swaim progenitor Anthonis Claess Ottens) married a woman named Willemke Gijsberts Crom. Since some families tend to intermarry over the generations, it is possible that the "Cathrin Crom" who married "Adruaen Dirksen Molenaar" was related to Willem Claessen's wife Willemke Gijsberts Crom. That might only be coincidence, but if I were going to look for the ancestors of Y-DNA Miller, I would start with Willem Ottensz Deventer (1440-1494), son of Otto van Arkel (1400-1475). Otto van Arkel apparently had another son, Otto, who was apparently illegitimate and would therefore not be the son of Elisabeth Jacobje Molenaar, but still might have taken her surname, especially if her father had in fact used it. Otto van Arkel could also have a had another son or sons we know nothing about.

A related family, also from Pijnacker, is that of Jooste Adriansen Vermeulen, born 1640 in Pijnacker, Holland, died 1683 in Bushwick, New York. This family has a large tree on FamilySearch.org, with many family branches in Ohio and Illinois, but also several in the southern states. By the early 1700's most of this family had changed its name to Miller. Furthermore, Jooste's grandfather, Dirck Molenaer, was born in Renswoude, Utrecht, in 1590. Otto, the illegitimate son of Jan V van Arkel, probably lived in Utrecht for many years, and died there in 1475. Therefore, it is certainly plausible that he had children born in Utrecht. Thus, we have a family line named Molenaar/Vermeulen, the earliest known location of which is Utrecht, where this first known ancestor was born 115 years after the death of Otto van Arkel. The line emigrated to New Netherland in the 1600's and by the early 1700's was known by the surname Miller. In examining the family tree on FamilySearch.org, I did not find a Samuel Edward Miller born in Alabama in 1857, but it is still possible that this is David Miller's family tree.

Another possibility is that a Molenaar emigrated to America in the 1800's rather than the 1600's. One family tree that contained Adruaen Dircksen Molenaar from Pijnacker had his father as Maarten Molenaar (1600) of Lekkerkerk, Holland, and his mother Johanna van Zoest (1600), also of Lekkerkerk. Lekkerkerk is located about 33 miles west of Leerdam. In the 1850's a group of Hollanders from Noordeloos (located 8 miles from Leerdam, between Leerdam and Lekkerkerk) emigrated to America and settled in the town of South Holland, Illinois. This was a religious group, apparently related to the Scholte group but also separate from it. In 1856 a group of 34 emigrated to South Holland, Illinois, and in 1866 (after the Civil War ended) another group of 33 followed (led by Reverand H.R. Koopman). Most of these were apparently from Noordeloos, but at least one family (Gouwens) was from Lekkerkerk. It is possible that some of the Molenaar family from Lekkerker/Pijnacker remained behind in Holland during the 1600's but then emigrated to South Holland, Illinois, in the 1850's. If this occurred in the earlier group, then it is possible that one of them could have moved to Alabama and changed his name to Miller. However, that seems unlikely as very few Netherlanders ever moved to the southern states.

Another point about the Miller who is a match to the Swaims and the den Hartogs. Although I'm related to Miller with a GD of 3/37, 5/67 and 9/111, it is possible that other Swaims are related to him to an even closer degree. I was able to locate his STR list on a couple of Surname/Geographica projects on FTDNA and, in comparing it to mine, discovered that two of the mismatching STRs were in fact STRs in which I differ from most of the Swaims. These are:

STR Name STR Value Name of Test Taker
DYS389ii 32 Stephen Swain
"" 31 Miller
"" 31 Swaims (most)

CDY 31-37 Stephen Swain/L Swaim (both descended from Anthony son of Thys B)
"" 31-36 Miller
"" 31-36 Swaims (most)

So what this means is that Miller actually has the original "Swaim/den Hartog" STRs for these two STRs, and I have one-step mutations for both of them. Thus, it is quite possible that some or most of the Swaims match Miller more closely than I do, perhaps at 1/37, 3/67 and 7/111. This puts Miller essentially as closely related to the Swaims as are the den Hartogs. This pretty much means that the Swaims' Most Common Recent Ancestor (MCRA) with Miller must have been with a few generations either way of Claes Willem Ottens (1475). Otto van Arkel (1400-1475) the illegitimate son of Jan V van Arkel, who was married to Jacobje Molenaar, was only 2 generations up from Claes Willem Ottens, so in my view this strengthens the chance that this Miller's surname did originate from Jacobje Molenaar (though is Y-DNA, of course, would have come from Otto van Arkel). Establishing this for certain (or as close to that as possible) would be interesting, as it would connect the Swaim/den Hartog line with the van Arkel line.

Summary of Non-Swaim Y-DNA

It seems likely that all of these people are in fact true matches that share a common ancestors with all Swaims at some level within the last 15-20 generations. Some may be descendants of Thys Barentsen whose surname switched sometime in the last several generations, but more likely, given the Genetic Distances involved, most are probably descendants of some male ancestor of Thys Barentsen within a few generations before his generation. Most would also probably have been born in one of the towns near Leerdam, South-Holland, generally in the area called Vijfheerenlanden, bounded by the river De Lek to the north and the Waal to the south.

How most these people ended up in England or Germany or America with their surnames is something we don't know and may never know. England and Germany are both very close to the Netherlands, however, so it is not difficult to imagine male ancestors from our line migrating to one of those countries and adopting a local surname.

New Netherland Ancestors

Monday, March 30, 2020

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