updated 5-6-22, 5-22-22

   

                                            Otto Geritsz van Oist:                                                         Probable Father of Gerrit and Willem Ottens                                                        and Progenitor of the                                                                   den Hartog Line in the Netherlands                                                          and the Swaim Line in America

Introduction

H. den Hertog, who in 1986 reconstructed the genealogy of the den Hartogs of the Land of Arkel (or, if you prefer, the Vijfheerenlanden), named the unknown father of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens “Ot”, as a sort of placeholder name based on the presumption that he'd be named Otto (or Otte) based on the patronymic “Ottens”. GENEALOGIE VAN DE FAMILIE HERTOCH, HARTOCH, DEVENTER UIT DE VIJFHEERENLANDEN.pdf

We can actually further reconstruct Ot's probable name based on the convention of the Dutch patronymic naming system that a first-born son is named after his father's father. If this convention was followed, Ot's name should be Otto Gerritsz, since Ot's first-born son is presumed to be Gerrit Ottens.

Based on this simple premise I've been searching for documentary etnries for anyone named Otto Gerrits who lived in or around the Land of Arkel during the time period of roughly 1425-1450, which provides some leeway for H. den Hertog's estimate that Gerrit Ottens was born around 1435 and Willem Ottens around 1440.

I didn't find many people named Otto Gerrits; in fact, I don't think I found any until recently. Particularly in Gelderland Otto was a popullar given name at this time, though that appears to much less true in Holland in the region of Den Hague, Rotterdam, Leiden, etc.

Why was Ot so hard to find? Possibly his name never was Otto Gerrits; many people at this time seemed to have an alias, many of the multiple aliases, and this was true in the Swaim/den Hartog family specifically with at least Adriaan Willems, who went by de Backer, den Hartoch, and van Megen. So it's possible that there never was an Otto. It's also possible that Gerrit and Willem were Illegitimate and that they'd taken their mother's name Otte rather than their father's name. However, people at this time weren't shy about calling a bastard a bastard, so that seemed a bit unlikely. I also thought an alias was possible because I had the sense that Ot was difficult to find because he was possibly hiding and didn't want to be found—perhaps from some involvement in the Hook and Cod disputes or for some other involvement in politics; and this hypothesis was strengthened in my mind because some of the people living in Lang Nieuwland, where Gerrit and Willem and their children owned some land, had been strong supporters of Jan van Arkel in his war with the dukes of Holland.

It was a reasonable hypothesis that Ot might be Otto van Arkel. The problem with this hypothesis was that there was no documentary proof that even suggested that this was true. However, it was a romantic hypothesis and so several den Hartogs in the Netherlands plugged Otto van Arkel into their family tree, and when I connected the Swaim line with the den Hartog line two years ago, I copied that unproved assumption believing that it must have been based on some evidence that I hadn't seen (although in fact I always did remain skeptical of its truth).

I'd had some communication with Berend van Dooren, the writer of the Ons Voorbeschlact article “Het Popperiaanse Zweyn,” and, as he indicated in that article, he said that there was no evidence that Otto van Arkel was the father of Gerrit and Willem Ottens. He said that H. den Hartog, who is still alive, still doesn't believe that was true, either. Regardless of what these two genealogists think about me and some of the speculative things I've written about, I respect their opinions and so after the publication of van Dooren's article I decided to look more deeply into the problem and discover just who Ot really was.

And I finally have.

Well, maybe.

I placed a question mark after the title of this post because at this time I can't prove that Otto Gerritsz van Oist was Ot. I don't have evidence that ties his to any of the land later owned by his descendants and I don't have any evidence that he'd actually ever lived in the Land of Arkel. But after months of going through various leenkamer entries for Holland and  Leenaktenboek entries for Gelre (REGISTER OP DE LEENAKTENBOEKEN VAN HET VORSTENDOM GELRE EN GRAAFSCHAP ZUTPHEN. HET KWARTIER VAN NYMEGEN, compiled by Mr. J. J. S. Baron 8LOET, Dr. J. S. VAN VEEN EN Jhr. Mr. A. H. MARTENS VAN SEVENHOVEN and published in Arnhem in 1924 (Register op de leenaktenboeken van het Vorstendom Gelre en Graafschap Zutphen / J.J.S. Sloet (kb.nl)), I never had the impression that I'd actually discovered Ot's identity until I found Otto Gerritsz van Oist and did a Google search of van Oist. When the search came up with a family related to the van Swalmen/van Broekhuysen families in Limburg, I knew that Otto Gerritsz van Oist had to be Ot. This hunch obviously wasn't scientific, but I'm convinced it's true and I think the circumstantial evidence is at least enough to place van Oist at the top of the probability list.

In this post I'm going to lay out that circumstantial evidence, and in the near future I'm going to present some other information about the Swaim/den Hartog family based on clues from H. den Hertog's 1986 genealogy that haven't been properly investigated. This other information isn't about Ot himself, but other than Ot we also want to know the identity of Ot's wife—the mother of Gerrit and Willem Ottens—and more about the identities of Gerrit Ottens's wife, Willem Otten's wife, and the wives of some of his children.

H. den Hertog wrote about Claes Otten Willems that “he belonged to the wealthy peasantry” (“Claes behoort tot de gegoede boerenstand”). To me this characterization never seemed quite true, because the family had owned too much land, Jan Sweym had been wealthy and had worked for a Brederode, and his marriage to a van Aefferen/van Aefferden seemed a little too upscale for the family to have been mere peasantry. In the 1400's almost all the land was owned by nobles, and although it's possible that some in the growing middle class in the cities may have been able to buy some land, there was no evidence that Gerrit or Willem Ottens were wealthy traders or anything similar—so how had this peasant family come to own substantial amounts of land in the Land of Arkel? My impression was that the family was in fact a branch of some noble family and that either the branch or the entire family had fallen on hard times. This seemed the likeliest way for the family to have owned land in the 1400's.

I think that an analysis of some of the names of in-laws from H. den Hertog's genealogy actually indicates that the Swaim/den Hartog line must have been from a noble family. These names include Pollen, van Malsen, and Aefferen/Aefferden. Also, Gerrit Ottens had apparently been involved in some politics with a Klaas van Haaften, who was certain from the noble van Haaften family.

I'll explore those relationships in a future post.

Otto Gerritsz van Oist

The one and only reference that I've found to Otto Gerritsz van Oist comes from Abraham Kemp's Leven Doorluchtige Heeren van Arkel, Ende Jaar-Beschriving der Stad Gorinchem (1656)(Kemp Leven_der_doorluchtige_heeren_van_Arkel.pdf ). Part of the book is, as the title states, devoted to a year-by-year chronicle of the history of Gorinchem, providing the names of the schepens of Gorinchem, of various other officials, and providing some historical incidents that occurred in Gorinchem as well as a general historical background of the various rulers of Gorinchem and Arkel.

For the year 1436 Kemp described an incident that occurred, which was an armed expedition led by “Johan van Arkel, de 8. Heer van Heukelem”. This expedition was formed for the purpose of an attack on Utrecht, for reasons that remain unclear to me. The expedition failed and at least some of Heukelem's men were captured and then later let go. Kemp gave the names of 16 men and states that 4 other were captured. There are no other details. Here are the names on Kemp's list:

Johan van Grootenveld

Dirk van Grootenveld

Wouter van Grootenveld

Steven van Grootenveld

Roever van Bolk

Jan Roever van Bolk

Alard van Wese

Gelis Dirksz van Meerten

Wouter Jan Remersz

Johan Gijsbertsz

Johan Dirksz Gevert die Buyn

Otto Geritsz van Oist

Remkijn die Weert

Willem van Hamme

Gerit Krauwel

Gerit Stevensz

So here's Kemp's one and only mention of Otto Geritsz van Oist. I haven't seen any other mention of him anywhere, but with luck his name might be found in some other archive entry some day. The name as written in Kemp's book appears not actually to be spelled as Oist, because what I've transcribed as the letter “s” is actually represented in the text in a particular way that might possibly have been meant to be an “sz” or something similar. Here's a copy of the entire passage from Kemp's book, and a blowup of Otto Geritsz' name showing this peculiar character used, as well as providing the entire short text of the incident:

As one can see in th name Geritsz, this font represents the letter "s" as a kind of oversized "f", while the letter in Oist looks more like a lower-case "s" with a hook connecting the top of the "s" to the "t" folowing the "s". This isn't the usual symbol for the German double-s sound, which in German still exists as a separate character that has apparently been eliminated in Dutch. For our purposes this peculiar s-like character probably isn't of any importance because it's pretty clear that it was meant to indicate some form of the “s” sound. Also, Kemp's book was obviously not the original document itself (which I don't have access to), which would have been handwritten; the spelling of the name in the handwritten document would take precedence over the spelling in Kemp's book, since whoever transcribed the book from the document may have misinterpreted or only approximated the handwritten name. None of this probably matters much because when the original document was written in the early 1400's there was no standardization of the spelling of names, and Oist was apparently written with many spelling variations. 

I was excited when I first saw the name Otto Geritsz, because I had been searching through (modern transcriptions) of old documents specifically for that name, and this was the first time I'd found it. And not only did this entry have this specific name, but it was from within the narrow 5-year range of dates in which Gerrit Ottens (1435) and Willem Ottens (1440) had supposedly been born, and was in relation to an event that had obviously been planned somewhere in the Land of Arkel, probably Heukelom, and that event had been organized by a member of the Heukelom branch of the Arkel family, the same family that Willem Ottens' son Claes later had at least one interaction with. 

I had not, however, ever come across the surname van Oist, or more correctly I couldn't remember having come across it (I actually had come across it previously because it was there in a website entry devoted to the van Swalmen family of Limburg, but I that had been soome time previously and I hadn't remembered it when I first saw Kemp's entry). 

My first impression on seeing the name van Oist was that it might have been a shortened form of the name of the town Oosterwijk, located just north of Heukelum, which would make sense because it was after all the Lord of Heukelum who'd led the ill-fated invasion of Utrecht. This Oosterwijk may have been occasionally spelled as Oisterwijk. Or perhaps the surname was from Oisterwijk in Brabant, east of Tilburg, as I have a few DNA matches who had ancestors in the Tilburg-'s-Hertogenbosch area.

But an intenet search turned up a site by the German Hans Karl König:  Van Broeckhuysen - Van Swalmen - Van Oest (regis-net.de). This is the site at which I'd previously seen the name van Oist, but had not remembered it. The reason I'd visited the site previously is that since the year 2020, when I first began researching the Swaim paternal line, I'd had the suspicion that the surname Swaim had derived from the name of the town Swalmen in Limburg, which in turn had probably been named after the river of the same name, which in modern German was spelled Schwaam. I had though it possible that the name had derived more specifically from the lords of Swalmen, and I had thought that the the Rijswijk Sweyms were possibly from that lineage. The problem was that I had never been able to find a connection between the lords of Swalmen (the van Swalmen line) and the Rijswijk Sweyms or to the Swaim/den Hartog line of the Land of Arkel. 

However, König's website, which is a single document, is entitled "VAN BROECKHUYSEN - VAN SWALMEN - VAN OEST", which implies a relationship between those three families, and clearly van Oest could simply be a variant spelling of van Oist. Which it was, as later in the document the heading for this family was listed as "VAN OEST/OOST/OIST". Later research showed other alternate spellings for the same family were VAN OYST and VAN OIJST.

König's paper also said that in 1381 a Henrick (Didderich/Didderick/Dirk) van Oest/Oost bought various estates in Swalmen (including the estate later known as Burg Oudburg and Naborch) from Robijn van Swalmen, and that he was probably the builder (between 1381-1392) of the castle Hillenraad). He also says that van Oest was the rechtburger of Roermond from (or sometime between) 1300-1348 and that van Oest by 1300 had already owned estates in Swalmen. 

So there it was. An Otto Geritsz who had been in the Land of Arkel at the approximate time of the birth of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens, and who was very possibly born in the town of Swalmen.  

And, as I knew from other sources, the town of Swalmen was pronounced in the local dialect very similar to the name Swaim. So there was everything I'd been looking for: Otto Geritsz van Oist who may also have been called, in the standard Dutch of that time, van Sweym.

This had to be the father of Willem Ottens.

Kemp's entry isn't proof that Otto Geritsz van Oist was the father of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens, because for now we lack a direct connection between Otto Geritsz van Oist and Gerrit Ottens and/or Willem Ottens, perhaps through common property owned by Otto Geritsz and one of his presumed sons. But lacking that, in my opinion we have strong enough evidence that the presumption is now that Otto Geritsz van Oist was in fact "Ot," and that the burden of proof has now been shifted such that it lies on those who claim that Otto Geritsz was not "Ot." Even if it can never be proved that Otto Geritsz was "Ot," the progenitor of the Swaim and den Hartog lineages, the evidence is strong enough that I, at least, am finished looking for "Ot." 

           If Otto Geritsz van Oist was Ot, what happened to the surname van Oist?

As far as we know, neither of the sons of Ot--Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens--ever used a surname, but rather used only the traditional patronymic. 

Furthermore, none of the descendants of Gerrit Ottens or Willem Ottens ever used the surname van Oist/van Oest/van Oost.

One son of Willem Ottens used the surname Zweym, and four generations later the name was used at least once in Holland by Willem Ottens' 3x great-grandson Thys Barentsen. Thereafter the name name Swaim was used in various forms by most of Thys Barentsen's descendants in America. 

Other sons of Willem Ottens used other surnames:

Adriaen Willems used de Backer, den Hartoch, and van Megen

Claes Willem Ottens used the double patronym Willem Ottens and also the alias Wyntgen van Deventer.

Of these surnames, den Hartoch, van Megen, and Deventer were used by family member of succeeding generations. The origin of these surnames is unknown but most may have come from families that Adriaen Willems and Claes Willem Ottens married into, or from Otto Geritsz' wife, whose identity is unknown. Den Hartoch/Hartog/Hertog probably didn't come from another family name, but was probably created by Adriaen Willems to claim descent from some duke of Gelderland, Holland, Brabant, or Limburg, or was used as a political statement of support in one of the incessant wars between the various dukes of the region.

But what happened to the surname van Oist, and why was the name Sweym preserved? The answer is that we don't know. We can speculate that Otto Geritsz van Oist's participation in the attack on Utrecht was considered shameful and that the family wanted to bury the surname van Oist to bury the connection between the family and that event. This could explain why neither Gerrit Ottens nor Willem Ottens used a surname; in their adulthood people were still living who were alive during that event, and thus it was best to just use the patronymic rather than a surname that might remind people of the event. But by the time the children of Willem Ottens were adults, the event was just a memory and any sense of family shame over the event may have lessened, but not enough that any family member wanted to use the name. However, any van Oist after 1381 from the family of Dirk van Oist may have used the surname Sweym because the van Oist family by then were in fact the lords of Swalmen and also lived in Swalmen. 

It's also possible that it wasn't shame that motivated the family avoid association with Otto Geritsz' role in the attack on Utrecht, but rather simply the desire to avoid involvement in the prolonged and disruptive Hook-and-Cod conflict, and in the associated conflict between Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy and Utrecht and Overijssel (which was then controlled by the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht. Interwined with these events was a conflict involving Utrecht between 1423-1449, the Utrecht Schism, over who was the legitimate Prince-Bishop of Utrecht, which also involved the Pope in Rome. I don't pretend to understand the events, parties, and motivations involved in these complicated conflicts, but this also led to an antipope (Felix V) in 1439 being elected in opposition to Pope Eugenius IV.

Thus, Jan van Arkel Heukelom's military assault on Utrecht in 1436 had political and religious implications that were international in scope, perhaps even inviting ecclesiatical punshiments such as potential excommunication from the Church. Whatever Arkel and his group was trying to accomplish, they were interfering in events that involved powers far greater than their own, and in the aftermath of the affair it's possible that Otto Geritsz van Oist regretted his involvement and wanted to live the rest of his life simply and avoid politics altogether. H. den Hertog noted that the den Hertog family were never involved in politics at a level higher than simple dike-wardens and such, and perhaps this was why.

(One of the events that occurred later as a lingering part of these conflicts was the 1456 Siege of Deventer, which occurred when Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (who was also Count of Holland) came into conflict with the powers that ruled Utrecht when he appointed his son David of Burgunday as bishop of Utrecht on the death of the Bishop Rudolf von Diepholt; Utrecht appointed instead their candidate, Gijsbert van Brederode. Philip the Good beseiged Deventer, which was part of the Sticht Utrecht in Overijssel. After five weeks Deventer gave in and accepted Philip the Good's candidate. If Willem Ottens, who would have been about 16 years old during the Siege of Deventer, supported Utrecht and its candidate Brederode in this conflict, it's possible his son Claes later used the surname Deventer to show support for Utrecht against Philip the Good (even though that battle had been long lost). Willem Ottens' son Jan Zweym Willems did work with the Brederode family, so this wouldn't be particularly surprising. It's even possible that the family had intermarried into the Brederode family, although this is mere speculation.)

Another possibility is that Otto Geritsz' true name was not van Oist at all, but Sweym. If Otto Geritsz was a "Rijswijk Sweym," and the Rijswijk Sweyms did in fact descend from the van Swalmen family of Limburg, then they would be related as cousins to the van Oist family, but they had probably not ever been van Oists themselves. Otto Geritsz may have used the name van Oist to protect his true Sweym surname from blowback from the invasion of Utrecht.

But this is all sheer speculation and may or may not be true. What is true is that Otto Geritsz van Oist was in the land of Arkel in 1436 and that the van Oist family by then had been the lords of Swalmen for at least 55 years (~2 generations), and that descendants of Willem Ottens used the surname Zweym/Swaim, which is pronounced very similarly to the Limburgs dialect pronunciation of Swalmen. This step-by-step linkage between the name van Oist and Swaim, along with Otto Geritsz' given and patronumic name, gives us strong circumstantial evidence that Otto Geritsz van Oist was indeed Ot. We have no similar chain of circumstantial evidence to support the hypothesis that Otto van Arkel was Ot.

     Why No Genealogist has Previously Connected Otto Geritsz van Oist with Ot

Abraham Kemp's book is in the Netherlands probably quite well known to genealogists, and I have no doubt that at least people over the last several decades who had been investigating the genealogy of the den Hartog family had seen this entry from 1436 and had seen the name Otto Geritsz van Oist and had wondered if perhaps he was Ot, and had delved into the background of the van Oist family, but had subsequently given up this lead as a dead end. If that's true, why had they failed to understand the significance of the name yet I had understood it almost immediately?

The major impediment to understanding a possible connection between Otto Geritsz van Oist and Ot was no doubt that until 2020 nobody understood the connection between the den Hartog family in the Netherlands and the Swaim family in America. It was true that Willem Otten's son Jan had used the surname that was generally transcribed as Zwijnen and that this sounded somewhat like Sweym, but didn't sound much like Swalmen sounded like in the Dutch language. Thus, one might connect the van Oist family with the with van Swalmen family, or even know that the van Oist family became the lords of Swalmen in the late 1300's, but still that could be just a coincidence of sounds. 

In early 2020 I proved through Y chromosome DNA matching that the Swaim paternal lineage was closely related to the den Hartog paternal lineage. I also connected the two genealogies together by tracing den Hartog genealogies to Mathijs Barentsen (Thys Barentsen), the New Netherland immigrant who was the progenitor of the Swaim families in America (mostly in the USA but also with branches in Canada who go by the surnames Swim/Swims/Swimm and whose ancestors fled to Canada after the Revolutionary War, having sided with the British rather than the victorious Americans).  

In fact, it would have actually been possible for an astute genealogist to have connected the Swaim family to the den Hartog family through documentary genealogy alone, without the use of Y-DNA evidence. This could have been done by paying closer attention to the document labelled "folio #41" dated May 27, 1661. This document very strong evidence, approaching proof, that Thys Barentsen came from a line that had recently branched off the den Hartog line. Then this hypothetical genealogist could have noticed that the majority of Thys Barentsen's descendants after 1700 used some variation of the surname Swaim, and that Thys Barentsen himself had used that name once in Holland, and that this name is similar to that used by Thys Barentsen's great-great-granduncle Jan Swijnen Willems.

Still, apparently no one had made that connection, and in any case the Y-DNA evidence doesn't merely confirm the genealogical evidence connecting the Swaim and den Hartog lines, it proves it conclusively with no room for argument or doubt.

In early 2021 the Netherlands genealogist Berend van Dooren published an article providing strong eivdence that the name from documents generally transcribed as Zweynen or Zwijnen should in fact properly be transcribed as Zweym. Thus, we now understand that Jan Willems' surname was Zweym/Sweym rather than Zwijnen or Zweynen, which of course brings it much closer in sound to Swaim.

Another piece of the puzzle is in understanding the relationship of the name Swalmen to that of Swaim or Zweym/Sweym. Swalmen has a "l" right in its middle and ends with an "n" rather than an "m". Thus, it sounds as if the name should be pronounced "Swal-men", which is too far from Swaim for comfort. And, in fact, if you check the Wikipedia.nl article "Swalmen," you'll find a recorded pronunciation for the name which does in fact pronounce it "Sval-men". 

This, however, is not the end of the matter. From this same Wikipedia article we learn several interesting things about the name Swalmen.

First, the name of the town was derived from the name of the river on which it lies, the Swalm. The town has the added suffix -en as an old grammatical case form indicating that it's a place. In the 1000's - 1100's the name was listed as Sualmo, at about 1200 as Sualmum, and in 1239 as Swalmene. The lords of Swalmen of course took their name from the name of the town.

Second, the article provides us with several alternative spellings of the name. The name Swalmen and its pronunciation are the standard Dutch spelling and pronunciation, but they are not the spellings and pronunciations in the local dialect of Limburgs (Limburgish) and of the even more local dialect of Swalms. In Limburgs the name is spelled Zjwame. The name of the local Swalms (Swalmish) dialect is spelled Zhwaams; thus, Zhwaam. The article gives a third spelling of the name in Swalms; this comes from a yearly music festival called Sjwaampop; thus, Sjwaam.

We can also see from looking at old maps that the name was locally pronounced differently than today's standard Dutch pronunciation. The name spelled on the maps was likely spelled phonetically based on the local pronunciation that the mapmaker had heard it called while he was actually in the locality. This spelling on various maps was Zuamme, Suamme,  Swamme, Zwamme.

And, as I mentioned in my previous post, one leenkamer entry in Holland spelled the "Rijswijk Sweym" name as Zueme.

Furthermore, although in modern German the name of the river (which begins in Germany) is the Schwalm, a German town on that river, located 12 miles from Swalmen, is called "Schwaam".

Thus, although today the standard Dutch spelling of the name of the town is Swalmen, and the pronunciation includes the "l" sound and the suffix "-en", we see that locally in Limburg the name has through the centuries consistently been spelled and pronounced without the "l" and "-en" sounds. Thus, it has always been pronounced very much like the name Swaim/Sweym/Zweym. The name probably had a vowel sound between the "Z" (or "S") and the "w" this is only a slight change in the sound of the name and may have sounded more like a prolongation of the Z/S sound than a separate vowel.

Without knowing the true local pronunciation of the name Swalmen, it would have been difficult to connect the name to that of Sweym/Swaim. If someone had investigated Otto Geritsz van Oist, he would have found a connection to Swalmen and to the van Swalmen family, but this would have meant little even if he'd known of Jan Zweynen Willems or of Thys Barentsen's Swaim descendants, because Zweynen and Swaim don't really sound that close to Swalmen as pronounced in standard Dutch.

                

So what we have with Otto Geritsz van Oist is:

A man named Otto Geritsz, which is the expected name of "Ot" based on patronymic conventions for a first child....

Who had a strong connection with the Land of Arkel, as evidenced by his misadventure with Jan van Arkel-Heukelum....

Who had a reason to keep a low profile as a result of that same misadventure....

And whose family was closely related the van Swalmen family, pronounced Sweym, which was a recurring surname in the Swain/den Hartog line.

This is my argument for Otto Geritsz van Oist being "Ot." He's the only Otto Gerritsz that I've seen, and although his name must come from the town just south of Maastricht, the van Oist family owned land in Swalmen, including Hillenraed Castle, which they'd built. The van Oist family very well have called themselves van Swalmen, since they were in fact at this point from Swalmen, and also they had intermarried with the van Swalmen family. In other words, if Otto Geritsz was in fact a van Oist from Limburg, he was probably as much a van Swalmen as a van Oist: thus, he was also Otto Geritsz van Swalmen (pronounced Sweym).

The major challenge to this hypothesis is that we don't have any evidence that Otto Geritsz van Oist settled in the Middelkoop-Leerbroek area; all we can say is that he was present in this general area in 1436. However, to have found someone with the name Otto Geritsz who was also from Swalmen is strong enough evidence to essentially shift the burden of proof onto the sceptic to prove this was not "Ot."

Further evidence comes from H. den Hertog mention that in 1519 Claes Willem Ottens litigated against “My Joncker van Hoikelem,” who den Hartog says might be “Geryt van Arckel, Heer tot Heukelem.” Apparently van Heukelem regarded one of Claes' parcels of land in Middelkoop as his fief, meaning that van Heukelem would be the true owner of the land and Claes only a lessee, though probably with various rights. 

Claes won that case, but this dispute is interesting for us because it may possibly have had its origin in the invasion of Utrecht in 1436. According to the Geni.com tree it should have been Walraven van Heukelom who was lord of Heukelom in1519 However, Walraven had a brother named Gerard; Gerrit is the Dutch form of Gerard, so this was probably the Geryt mentioned by H. den Hertog, or perhaps in fact it was Walraven who Claes litigated against. Either way, their grandfather was Jan (Johan) van Arkel van Heukelom (1390-1465), so this would have been the Jan van Heukelom who led the military expedition to Utrecht that included Otto Geritsz van Oist. We can speculate that Otto Geritsz van Oist obtained ownership of the land from Jan van Heukelom in payment of his military service on that expedition, and then his grandson Gerard or Walraven tried to renege on the transfer by claiming that it was a loan rather than a sale. Regardless of the the dispute, this potentially shows a connection between Claes and Otto Geritsz van Oist through that parcel of land, and a fruitful line of research might be to look for a record of the transfer of land.

(6-2-22 Note: t seems that I understood this issue incorrectly when I wrote my first version of this post. This parcel of land in question is the 21-morgen parcel in the “Leecheijndt van Middelkoop” that was later held by the Claes Willem Ottens' descendants. I had thought that this parcel was already owned by Willem Ottens at the time of the dispute with the van Arkel, but in fact it appears to have been owned by Joost Aelbertsen and Dirck Tyn Willemsen at that time, and it was Claes Willem Ottens who was buying it from them. It was apparently this transaction that the “jonker van Heukelum” had objected to because he'd believed that he owned it. This contradicts my hypothesis that Otto Gerrits van Oist may have obtained that land from Johan van Arkel-Heukelom and that their grandsons had later ceontended over the title of that land, which I believed was an argument in support of Otto Gerrits van Oist being “Ot.” Therefore it appears that this dispute isn't evidence one way or the other regarding the question of Ot's identity.

It's puzzling, however, why it was Claes Willem Ottens who pursued the case against the van Arkel rather than the owners of the land, unless the deed or lease they'd sold him was similar to a quit-claim deed that makes no warranties about ownership of the property. But perhaps the lawsuit had in fact been brought by Joost Albertsen and Dirck Tyn Willemsen and Claes had joined them as an interested party. It also isn't clear what the van Arkel was asserting—was he saying that the sale/lease done without his permission and that it invalided the loan altogether, triggering its reversion back to him, or was he demanding a payment of “tribute” for the transfer?)

Another interesting point about this dispute is that the mother of Gerard and Walraven van Heukelom was supposedly Walravina van Broekhuysen, lady of Waardenburg and Ammerzoden. This would mean that if Otto Geritsz van Oist was in fact a Limburg van Oist, then Claes Willem Ottens would have been a cousin of some degree to Gerard and Walraven van Heukkelom, and it's likely that he would have known that (although that certainly doesn't mean that there necessarily would be any fellowship between the two of them). This might well be true as well if Otto Gerritsz van Oist was a Rijswijk Sweym, because it seems likely (to me, at least) that those Sweyms were a branch of the van Swalmen family, which itself was a branch of the Broekhuysen family. The most recent common ancestors of the van Broekhuysen and van Swalmen lines were Johan I van Broekhuysen (1195- ) and Jutta Praet von Randerode von Randerath (1198-1247); these were Walravina's 7th great-grandparents).

If Otto Geritsz van Oist indeed was Ot, why did Gerrit and Willem Ottens apparently never use the surname van Oist? Possibly it was to not draw undue attention to themselves while people were still alive who might bear a grudge against them for their father's misadventure in Utrecht (e.g., if the expedition had killed anyone who might want to seek vengeance). H. den Hertog noted that “It should be mentioned as a remarkable fact that they [members of the den Hartog family] did not hold the office of schepen or schout. This makes it difficult to find a coat of arms for the family. They do though hold offices in the functions that belonged to the so-called lower authorities, such as waarsman and heemrad” (“Als merkwaardigheid moet wel vermeld worden dat ze geen schepen- of schout#ambt bekleed hebben. Dit bemoeilijkt het vinden van een familiewapen van dit geslacht. De functies die behoorden tot de zgn. lagere overheden, zoals waarsman en heemraad, vervulden ze echter wel”). Possibly the reason for this is that, as a condition of his release from Utrecht captivity, Otto Gerritsz was required not to be active in politics; or perhaps he just decided it was time to settle down and raise a family and quit being a pawn in van Arkel's dangerous games.

Here's the coat of arms for van Oist, according to the German website:

So that should be the den Hartog and Swaim coat of arms, if Otto Geritsz van Oist truly was Ot.

Here's what is supposedly the van Swalmen coat of arms:

If Otto Geritsz van Oist was born in Limburg, how did he come to be in the Land of Arkel? Perhaps he originally came in support of Jan van Arkel in his dispute with the counts of Holland. The Duke of Guelders supported Jan van Arkel and many of Arkel's supporters were from Guelders. Otto Geritsz van Oist may have been a younger brother who would not inherit a lordship and so he went off on his own looking for adventure.

                         Was Otto Geritsz van Oist a "Rijswijk Sweym"?

Although I can't prove it and there may be no documentation to ever prove it, my hunch is that the answer to this question is yes. The most parsimonious explanation for his presence in the Land of Arkel is that he was drawn there in the aftermath of the Arkel War, although it's likely he was too young to have actually participated in it. He may have been born in the Land of Arkel, possibly as a son of the brother Jan and Jacob van de Werve, who in 1417 (?) participated in a raid on Gorinchem with Otto van Arkel, the illegitimate son of Jan van Arkel, in which Bronis Wouters was killed (I'm going off memory here, but the story can be found in Pauw's history of Arkel). Or he may have been born in Rijswijk or in that general area as a younger brother, son, or cousin of the Rijswijk Sweyms mentioned in the previous post.

For this to be true, however, the Rijswijk Sweyms would have to have been a branch of the van Swalmen family, which hasn't been proven. But I also believe that likely is the origin of the Sweym line. This would also explain why most of the extended Swaim/den Hartog Y-DNA matches have German names rather than Dutch: this area was as much German as Dutch in the 1400's and before. 

So my guess is that Otto Geritsz was possibly a "Rijswijk Sweym" and used the name van Oist as a nom de guerre for the raid on Utrecht. That name would probably not be a lie because the two families had intermarried at least once, and probably more often than the records indicate. And yet it wasn't quite the truth, either, if his family in Rijswijk had been using the name Sweym for a few generations. As discussed in the last post, there was a Gerard/Gerrit Sweym who died in 1390 and may have been born around 1315-1325. If Gerard had a grandson also named Gerard/Gerrit, this could have been Otto Geritsz' father. Here's a hypothetical chronology with hypothetical but plausible years of birth:

Gijsbert Sweym (b. 1285)      Rijswijk      Wife: Clementia van Foreest

Gerard Sweym (b. 1317)

Gijsbert Sweym (b. 1349)

Gerard (Gerrit) Sweym (b. 1381)    Possibly participated in Arkel Wars and relocated to Land of Arkel?                                                          Nom de Guerre Gerrit de Hoge?

Otto Geritsz (van Oist) (b. 1410)    Would be around age 26 in 1436

Again, this genealogy is hypothetical only and I have no evidence for it. I also have no evidence that Gerrit de Hoge had anything to do with anyone in the Swaim line. He's listed as a 1406 "friend" of Jan van Arkel, and his supposed surname "die Hoge" ("the High") sounds like an alias. But perhaps that was his true name and/or his true identity is already known. (7-28-2022 note: In a large genealogy on Ancestry.com there's a Gouwe Gerrits De Hoghe listed who probably was born in Hoogblokland around 1430-1440 and who's probably the daughter of this Gerrit de oge. Gouwe Gerrits de Hoghe married Floris Holl and they had a daughter Lijsken, who married Jan Peters van Muilwijck (1466-1532 Hoogblokland. This doesn't prove or disprove the identity of Gerrits de Hoghe, but my hypothesis that he might hae been a Sweym is very weak to begin with). In any case, there were probably many more Rijswijk Sweym family members living in the 1300's and 1400's than were ever recorded on a document, and it would not be particularly surprising to find one of them in the Land of Arkel. The Rijswijk Sweyms appear to have been related in some way to the van de Werve family, and we know that at least two members of that family were fought for the Arkel side in the Arkel War (and sometime in the 1400's a line of the Antwerp van de Werve family somehow became lords of Giessen (Giessen-Oudekerk) located about 6 miles west of Gorinchem).

As I mentioned in the December 2021 post on the Rijswijk Sweyms, a family named Bokel owned Bulgerstyn Castle in Rotterdam just before the Visscher family owned the castle, and both families may have been related to the Sweym family since a Sweym was apparently living in Bulgerstyn in 1390. There is a village named Boukoul located in Limburg a couple miles south of Swalmen, so it's possible that the Bokel family (which was spelled various ways) came from Boukoul and the Sweym family from Swalmen, both moving to Holland at roughly the same time. 

In the same 2021 post I also discussed Amelis uten Weerde, who in 1309 helped Gijsbert Sweym purchase the "de Werve" house in Rijswijk from Floris van de Werve. "uten Weerde" means "oug of Weerde." One Weerd that he might have been from was Weerd across the Maas from Heel, which is located 8 miles southwest of Swalmen and is a kind of river peninsula, which is relevant because in Latin Amelis uten Weerde was called Amelis miles (knight) de insula (island). A peninsula isn't an island, but of course several hundred years ago Weerd may have in fact been an island, and possibly was at various times throughout history as the river course shifted. There are/were two castles located on Weerd: Kasteel Heysterum and Kasteel Ravensberg. I haven't seen much information on Ravensberg, but Heysterum, which was built about 1740, was built on the foundations of a medieval castle. Heysterum Castle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia It's possible that the uten Weerd family, too, emigrated to Holland from Limburg along with the Boukoul, and van Swalmen families. This is just speculation, but woth investigating.

Seigneurie d'Oost (Lordship of Oost)                       (Dahlem-comte - Oost, Limburg - Wikipedia)

                                                   Or was Otto Born in Limburg?

Or maybe Otto Geritsz truly did come from Limburg, although if he did it's likely he came from the town of Swalmen where the family had moved to from Oost inabout 1380. He could have moved from Swalmen for any of a number of reasons. Here's one of them.

In 1421 Duke Jan van Beyere (Bavaria), who was also count of Holland, appointed Willem van Isendoorn as slotvoogd (castellan) of Leerdam, the lands of Lede, and of Schoonrewoerd (Groot charterboek der graaven van Holland, van Zeeland en heeren van Vriesland (googleusercontent.com). This appointment didn't last long, apparently due to suspicions that Willem van Isendoornn was stealing from the Duke, but it does place Willem van Isendoorn in Leerdam at this time. Actually, "Willem van IJzendoorn" is listed as one of the "ridders en knapen" that stood with Jan van Arkel in Gorinchem in 1402, so we know that he was already very familiar with the Land of Arkel. This is relevant for us because Willem van Isendoorn's sister Arnolda was married to Seger van Swalmen, who owned Burg Laurensburg (also called Siegersberg Castle and Schwalmersberg Castle after him) near Aachen, Germany. I haven't seen anything to indicate that Seger van Swalmen had ever visited the Land of Arkel, Leerdam, but given his brother-in-law's connection with the region and the Arkels, it is not improbable that he had gone there in 1421 with his brother-in-law and had brought along his young kinsman Otto Geritsz van Oist, who then remained there. There is no evidence for this, but I'm pointing out that there may be more connections between the Swalmens/van Oists and the Land of Arkel than we realize.

We should remember that the van Broekhuysen family was also intimately related to the van Swalmen and van Oist families, and the Broekhuysens owned a great deal of land in Gelderland, and were lords of Waardenburg, Ammerzoden, and Oijen (apparently both the Oijen in Limburg and the Oijen that was near or in the small County of Megen).

The Surname

I've spelled Otto Geritsz' name as van Oist because that's how Kemp wrote it in his book, although again the odd character that I'm translating as an "s" might in fact being something somewhat different, perhaps being a kind of guttural 's'. Also, the name given for the van Oist count of arms on the German website was spelled van Oyst. I've also seen it spelled van Oijst, which is probably essentially the same as van Oyst. Often, however, it seems to be spelled as van Oest and van Oost.

The Netherlands Wikipedia article “Oost-Maarland” explains: "As far as the origin of the name "East" is concerned, it is true that it has no geographical significance whatsoever. The village is not east, but north of Eijsden and also not east of Maarland; on the contrary, Maarland is located east of Oost. The current name is a corruption of the original, which according to documents from 870 read "Augskirche". (Saint Augusta was the patron saint of the church at the time.) Mainly due to Walloon influences, this name was corrupted in the course of time to "Oystkerken", "Awost", "de Oies" (in letters from 1163), the Hoies (1183), and Oes (1237)."

So this article is saying that the word August morphed into Augst and then into Oost and finally through French influence also into Oist. The most common variants I've seen thus far are van Oost, van Oest, van Oist, van Oijst, van Oyst. In a record from October 18, 1381, the name is spelled Oijss and also Oyss. (in this same record, "Didderich van Oijss, ridder" is called the neef of Robijn van Swalmen; neef could mean cousin or nephew (either way, they would share a common grandfather). If the Wikipedia explanation above is correct, then there is also Oies and Oes, which then brings up the issue of whether the village of Oijen in Limburg and the Oijen near Megen and north of Oss, both apparently owned by the van Broekhuysen family, were named after van Oyst. I have no information that this is true, however, but chasing down every name that sounds similar to this (or to Oost) would probably be a tedious undertaking.

(10-28-2022 NOTE: Willem van Oy, knight, apparently died in 1423, survived by his wife Gertrude van Byland. Gertrude and Johan van Oest disputed her rights to a house in Millingen (probably Millingen aan de Rijn near Byland)(Roermond archive entries for October 27 and 28, 1423 from loegiessen.com). Why would Johan van Oest feel he had any rights to this house owned by Willem van Oy? A cryptic archive entry from March 26, 1427 seems to imply that Johan van Oest's wife, Wilhelmina van Bellinghhoven, was the daughter of Willem van Oy--which, if true, would explain why Johan van Oest disputed Gertrude van Byland's rights as against his wife's rights to the house. However, the previous entry ("before March 26, 1427," states clearly that Wilhelmina's father was Thomas van Bellinghoven (also, incidentally, that Wilhelmina's sister Aleidis, was the wife of Winold Schenck von Nydeggen. As I've mentioned previously, Winold's brother Hendrick's grandson Arnold Schenck van Nydeggen, later married Isabella van Oest, the last of this main line of the van Oest/Oist family in Swalmen). So, for me at least, this issue of the relationship between the van Oy family and the van Oist family still isn't clear. There's a Geni.com entry for a "Gertruida van Bylandt, van Oyen" (cirica 1400-1474) who is probably this Gertrude van Oy (nee Bylant). The entry says that her husband was Ridder Johan van Benthem van Heeswijk Dinther (1390-1437) and doesn't state that she'd had a previous husband. However, her title "van Oyen" is inexplicable unless it came from a previous marriage to a van Oyen, who was probably Willem van Oy. Biland is located just across the Waal from Millengen aan de Rijn (both very close to the Cleves/German border), so the "house millingen" was no doubt located in Millingen aan the Rijn. This town is located about 28 miles east of Oijen near Megen. Even if the name van Oy or van Oyen (van Oij, van Oijen) wasn't derived from Oist, Oyst, Oest, there still must have been some familial connection between Willem van Oy and Johan van Oest. And there probably is, according to the Geni.com tree for the van Broeckhuysen line. In that tree Willem I van Broeckhuysen (1240-1290) had 2 sons: Johan II van Broeckhuysen (1270-1321) and Seger I van Broeckhuysen van Ooijen (1272- ). So the older son got the primary inheritance and Seger I got lordship or owership of Ooijen, which would have been the Ooijen located just north of Broeckhuizenvorst and just north of Arcen. The Ooijen just west of Megen was probably also owned by the Broeckhuysens. Since the Swalmen line is also a branch of the Broeckhuysen line, and since the van Oist line was related to the Swalmen line, there is a connection between Oist and Oyen--but not a strong enough one to support Johan van Oest's dispute with Gertrude van Bylant/van Oyen.)

I've decided for now to use van Oist rather than van Oost because that was the name given in whatever source Kemp used, and also because the other most common name, van Oost, means "east" and is often used in names of both people and places and may therefore cause confusion (e.g., when I Google-translated the Wikipedia article explaining that Oost wasn't derived from east. it included the translation "Maarland is located east of East.") The name van Oest might also be a compromise for those who don't like van Oist or van Oyst. 

Relationship Between Van Oist and Van Swalmen and Otto Geritsz' Potential Parents

(edited 5-27-2022)

Before he moved to Swalmen, Dirk van Oest lived in Castle Oost, 4-5 miles south of Maastricht on the east side of the Maas (the town of Oost-Maarland retains the name of Oost after its merger with Maarland). Dirk van Oest was married to Felicitas van Uppey/Oupeye.

Dirk van Oest was also a cousin or nephew to Robijn van Swalmen, the then-current lord of Swalmen and Asselt. Robijn van Swalmen aslo had a brother Werner Vosken van Swalmen (married to Berta van Gelenkirken) and a sister Guda van Swalmen (married to Jacob van Mirlaer, heer van Millendonck). The father of the van Swalmen siblings was the knight Seger van Swalmen, and Seger's father was Willem van Broeckhuysen, heer van Swalmen. The names of the wives of Seger and his father Willem appear to be unknown, but the implication of the cousin-or-nephew relationship between Robijn van Swalmen and Dirk van Oist is that either she was a van Oist or Willem had a brother who was married to a van Oist. Either way, these van Swalmens and Dirk van Oist were closely related.

(A 1378 archive entry said that Seger Vosken van Swalmen, the father of Robijn van Swalmen, was the neef (nephew or cousin) of the knight Seger van Kessel. If these two Segers were first cousins, then this means that Seger Vosken van Swalmen's grandfather, Seger Broekhuysen, heer van Swalmen, was married to a van Kessel.)

In 1380 or 1381 (the records are conflicting), Dirk van Oest and Felicitas bought Dirk's cousin Robijn van Swalmen the castle called of Swalmen called Rathem. Rathem was located on the river Schwalm just west of the town of Swalmen; the castle was later called variously Ouborg and Naborch, and on Google Maps is called “Kasteelruine Ouborb. According to castles.nl (Castles.nl - Ouborgh Castle) Rathem had probably been built by Seger Vosken van Swalmen, probably meaning Robijn van Swalmen's father.

The sale of Castle Rathem almost certainly included the lordship of Swalmen and Asselt, so from this point on Dirk van Oest was the lord of Swalmen. Thus, the van Oests could certainly have called themselves “van Swalmen.”

Robijn was Swalmen was Canon of Sint Servas te Maastricht, so perhaps he sold the lordship of Swalmen to his cousin/nephew to better devote himself to his religious duties. But this is just a guess, and possibly the archives might prove this wrong.

Even before 1380 Dirk van Oest was involved in the affairs of Swalmen, as his name was on a list of witnesses in a document drawn in 1379 regarding the rights of Swalmen and Assel(t). Other witnesses included:

Lord van Bronckhorst

Lord Johan van Broekhuysen

Lord Wilhalm van Broekhuysen

Lord Johan van Kessel

Lord Mathijs van Kessel

Lord Godert van Flodrop, voogt te Ruremondt

Lord Heinrich van der Straten

Sieger van Broekhuysen

Johan en Mathijs van Kessel

In 1381 Dirk van Oest sold possessions he owned in Baarlo (north of Swalmen), and in 1382 he sold goods in Oost and in Breust (just south of Maastricht). With that done, they probably left Oost forever and lived in Swalmen.

Later apparently Dirk van Oest and Felicitas de Oupeye moved into Hillenraad Castle about two miles southwest of Rathem. They apparently built Hillenraad, but I'm unsure of the exact sequence of how and when they bought Hillenraad.

Loegiessen.nl says that the owner of Hillenraad after Dirk van Oest was Johan van Oest. Presumbaly Johan was the oldest son of Dirk, but that isn't specifically stated. Johan van Oest was first mentioned in 1423. A 1427 entry states that Johan's wife was Wilhelmina van Bellinghoven. Further information about the Bellinghovens and others was provided in another 1427 entry, which the following is a translation of (this part of the entry was in German rather than Dutch):

In the farming community of Rottum (Rothe, Rothem) between Weeze and Goch, the Xanten monastery owned an important farm at an early stage with many dependent estates, for which a separate office was set up in Weeze. The Wisseler Stift also had a farm there with several estates; the Latentag was held on the Day of the Innocents and made known in the church at Calcar. Among other things, the estate ter Heyden and Borbecs Gut in Hildesom (Helsum) belonged to this Wisseler Hof. At the turn of the 14th century Thomas von Bellinghoven and his daughters Wilhelma, who were Johann v. Oest married, and Aleidis, wife of Winold Schenck von Nydeggen, and after them the named Wilhelma, her son Diedrich Oest and Diedrich Schenck, son of Winold, thus for 171/2 pfennigs a year, the Sundays before S. Victor in Arnold's house Wonder to Calcar were payable [...]. The named knight Thomas v. Bellinghoven retired from the S. Nikolai vicarage that he and his siblings Johann and Katharina had donated in Weeze, the owners of which had to say mass every Sunday, weekday and Thursday [...]. In addition, Thomas gave the vicarage a farm of 36 to 40 small acres (240 rods each), the Gun, Gunne, also called Gunde, Genne, which cut through the Helsumerfeld from south to north. Already before 1400 he had divided this farm into 3 equal parts and then on June 5, 1406 he leased each part for 3 pairs of grain. The first part went to the Klein-Elve farm in Helsum (one of the three farms), the second to the Klein-Hamdick farm, and the third was further subdivided. The Gunne itself lay west of Weeze, north of the path that turned off the Heerstrasse to the farm in gen Horst from Marienwater Abbey, and north-east on land of the S. Sebastiansvikaria in Weeze

Thus, Johan van Oest's sister-in-law was Aleidis van Bellinghoven, and Aleidis' husband was Winold (Wynand) Schenck van Nydeggen. One of Wynand's brothers was Henrick Schenck van Nydeggen. One of Henrick's sons was Johan Schenck von Nydeggen, and one of Johan's sons was Arnold Schenck von Nydeggen. Arnold Schenk von Nydeggen married Isabella van Oest (the Hillenrath associated with her name was of course a form of Hillenrade). It was with this marriage that Hillenraad came into the Shenck van Nydeggen family. This was because it appears that Isabella's father had no sons and Isabella was the oldest daughter.

If Otto Geritsz van Oist was a member Dirk van Oest's family, it's likely that he would have been the son of a younger brother of Dirk rather than the grandson of Dirk. This is because Otto Geritsz' father of couse was named Gerrit, so Dirk wasn't his father and was too young to have been his grandfather, since Otto Geritsz was likely born between 1400 and 1410. But it Dirk had had a younger brother named Gerrit, the timing of Otto Geritsz birth would be about right. Or Ottos Geritsz could have been a cousin. We just don't know because there appear to be no records listing the names of any siblings, of which there very well have been several. When looking at some genealogies based on documents, it appears that each generation only had one son, but this is likely only an artifact of fact that often only the oldest son was mentioned in a document because he inherited the family home.

Another possibility is that Otto Geritsz van Oist was actually a van Swalmen from Robijn van Swalmen's family. and that he used the name van Oist when he was captured in Utrecht to avoid association with the name Sweym, which would have been well-known in Holland then. There was in fact a Gerhard Vosken van Swalmen; Gerhard is the German form of Gerard, which in Dutch is Gerrit. Not much is known about Gerhard, though the German website notes (with an exclamation mark to indicate surprise) that Gerhard Vosken van Swalmen might actually be the same person as Seger Vosken van Swalmen. Gerhard Vosken and Seger Vosken (or Gerhard-Seger Vosken) were alive in the mid-1300's so neither is likely be Otto Geritsz' father, but one of them could be his grandfather.

The exact genealogy is unclear but the main point is that even if Otto Geritsz was a van Oist, he was also probably a van Swalmen, so this would be why Jan Zweym Willems and Thys Barentsen used that name. For purposes of Y-DNA it would matter whether the relationship between the two families was through a male or female. If Otto Geritsz van Oist's father was or descended from Robijn van Swalmen's family, then he would have different Y-DNA than if his father was or descended from Dirk van Oest's family (unless in fact the two families had previously branched off from a common male ancestors, but there is no evidence for this).

A short history of the descendants of Dirk and Felicitasvan Oist family can be found here: Hillenraad Castle (loegiesen.nl. I'm not going to repeat what's written there, but it has a lot of information about the van Oist line that remained in Limburg.

                                                       Schenk van Nydeggen

I should also point out that Isabella van Oist/Oest (~1485 - >1502) married Arnold/Dirk Schenk van Nydeggen, son of Johann Schenk van Nydeggen. The Schenk van Nydeggen family were the lords of Afferden. This was the Afferden located to the east of the Maas and just east of Boxmeer (and 13 miles north of Broekhuizen). On page 21 of his genealogy, H. den Hertog says that Claes Willem Ottens' second wife was Margriet Cornelisdr van Aefferen, and he explains parenthetically that “there is a town named Afferden aan de Waal near Druten in Gelderland.” And so there is, but there is also the Afferden near Boxmeer that was the home of the Schenck van Nydeggen family. Claes was a contemporary of Isabella van Oist, so it would be quite a coincidence that both of these van Oists would marry someone from Afferden, probably within a few years of each other. According to the Geni.com tree, the family of the Afferden that Claues married had been living in Leerbroek for at least 3 generations, as Margriet's grandfather Jan Pietersz van Afferden had supposedly been born in Leerbroek in 1420 (but died in Geldern, Germany, 18 miles southeast of Afferden near Boxtel). But still, they had come from a town named Afferden. Was the Aefferen family related to the Schenk von Nydeggen family? Why had they relocated to Leerbroek? I don't know the answer to these questions.

According to the Geni.com family tree, one of the brothers of Johann Schenk van Nydeggen (husband of Isabella van Oist/Oest) was Diederick Schenk van Nydeggen (1499- ), married to Johanna van der Donck (1470-1554). Their daughter, Aleida Schenk van Nydeggen, married Reinier I van Gelre, Heer van Grunsfort (1476-1522). Reinier I was a son of Adolf van Egmont, Duke of Guelders (1438-1477) and Catherine de Bourbon (1442-1469) (she was the daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon (1401-1456) and Agnes de Bourgogne (1407-1476); Agnes was in turn the daughter of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy (1371-1419) and Margarethe von Bayern-Straubing (1363-1423); Margarethe was the daughter of Albrecht I, Duke of Bavaria (1336-1404) and Margaret of Silesia-Brieg).

Since Johann Schenk van Nydeggen and Aleida Schenk van Nydeggen were first cousins, all descendants of Reinier I van Gelre and Aleida Schenk van Nydeggen would be cousins of Isabella van Oist, related by their common Schenk van Nydeggen "blood" (DNA). Furthermore, since Isabella van Oist would have been closely related to Otto Geritsz van Oist if he truly was a van Oist (or even a Swaim), this means that descendants of Geritsz van Oist would also be cousins of Reiniers I van Gelre's descendants, although of course further removed. This might be the origin of the "den Hartog" surname, the duke being Adolf van Egmont, duke of Guelders (whose grandmother was Maria van Arkel, daughter of Jan V van Arkel). If this is the case, the connection is real and descendants of Otto Geritsz van Oist (the Swaim/den Hartog line) would be cousins to the descendants of Adolf van Egmont, but they would not have "van Egmont" DNA--although, again, both lines would share "Schenk van Nydeggen" DNA. 

May 11 2022 Note: Actually, as it turns out, and assuming the correctness of the Geni.com family tree, if Otto Geritsz was truly a van Oist and if his parents were the Dietrich (Dirk) van Oest and Felictas van Oupey mentioned above, who moved to Swalmen and bought Ouburgh/Naborch from Robijn van Swalmen, then Isabelle von Oest zu Hillenraad (who married Arnold Schenk van Nydeggen) was actually Otto Geritsz' grandniece--and Claes Willem Ottens' 2nd cousin. However, their relationship was probably not that close because, as I mentioned earlier, it's unlikely that Otto Geritsz' father was Dirk. However, he could have been a nephew or cousin to Dirk. It's possible that we'll never know the exact relationship because documentation is so sparse.

Also, according to the Geni.com family tree, d'Oupey's ancestors had a good number of ancestors with French names: Warfusee, Dammartin, Momalle, etc. This is interesting because the family of the extended Y-DNA match Pennebaker, whose ancestors lived in Gorinchem in the 1500's, has a "family legend" that the family moved from "Gaul" to Gorinchem in the mid 1300's to avoid plague and war. "Gaul" probably was meant to include what is today French-speaking Belgium as well as France, so it is quite possible that his family came from this region around Liege, perhaps a generation or two before Otto Gijsbertsz van Oist moved to the area around Gorinchem. 

(May 27, 2022 Note: When I had previously entered the name of my New Netherland immigrant ancestor Roeloff Martense Schenck (1616-1704) into my Geni.com tree, the system automatically connected that ancestor to the line of the Schenck van Nydeggen family, a noble family who had been the lords of Afferden. Whether or not the connection between the immigrant Schenck and the Schenck van Nydeggen family is correct has been a matter of dispute for decades, and there is apparently no documentary evidence to prove this connection. I have not looked into this connection in any detail, but I've always assumed that the connection was probably not correct, but rather another example of a spurious connection to a noble ancestor. However, now that it appears that the Swaim/den Hartog line might in fact be descended from the van Oist/Oest line, this possible connection to the Schenck van Nydeggen family takes on new meaning. 

If the connection is true, then one of my 14^th great-grandfathers was Dederick Schenck van Nydeggen (1413-1487). This Dederick was the uncle of the Arnold Schenck van Nydeggen who had married Isabella van Oest. With this marriage Hillenraad Castle and presumably the lordship of Swalmen passed into the Schenck van Nydeggen family, a member of which would have been the lord of Swalmen. If my Schenck ancestors were truly Schenck van Nydeggens, then when my ancestor Elisabeth Miller (1829-1924) married my paternal line ancestor Joseph E Swaim (1824-1916), both possibly would have been descendants of the van Oist/Oest family (although their common ancestor woulld have been several generations in their pasts). If this was true, they probably never realized it.)

                                       Potential Autosomal DNA Match

On MyHeritage.com I have match with the surname van der Oost:

This shows some information about van der Oost's DNA. The other two people are the other Netherlands matches with whom both Van der Oost and I share DNA. The three of us don't share a common DNA segment, but van der Oost and I are share common DNA separately with Brok and Visser. 

Neither van der Oost nor Visser have useful family trees, but Brok's family tree indicates that her ancestry comes primarily from locations in Brabant such as Uden, Boxtel, s'-Hertogenbosch, Nuland, Drunen, and so on. None of the surnames in the tree is van Oist/Oest, but one of them is Kessel and this could be significant because Kessel is located on 6 miles from Swalmen, and the van Kessel and van Swalmen families had intermarried. 

Thus, while without more information we can't say that van der Oost is from the same family as van Oost/van Oist, the fact that our shared match Brok's ancestry is from Brabant and that one of her ancestors was named Kessel does make it much more likely that van der Oost is in fact from the Swalmen van der Oist family.

                                                          

In my opinion it's very likely that the Sweyms from Rijswijk and elsewhere in Holland originated in Swalmen (and probably knew the van Foreest family well, as they came from somewhere near Aachen, which is very close to Limburg). Dirk van Oist was Robijn van Swalmen's cousin (or nephew), so Otto Geritsz van Oist, whatever his relationship to Dirk van Oist, was also related to the van Swalmen family (but probably had different Y-DNA). Once Dirk van Oist bought Hillenraad from his cousin Robijn van Swalmen, Dirk would have been the new lord of Swalmen.

                                         Summary and Conclusion

The identity of the father of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens has been unknown. His reconstructed name, based on the names of his sons and the Dutch naming conventions, should be Otto Gerritsz. This is because the father of a person surnamed Ottens should be Otto (or some variation of that) and this Otto's own patronym “surname” should be Gerritsz if Gerrit was his first son because the convention was to name the first son after the father's father; thus, Otto's father should be named Gerrit.

This hypothetical Otto Gerritsz should have lived somewhere near the area in which Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens lived, or at least have had some substantial connection to it. Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens and their sons lived in Lang Nieuwland, Middelkoop, and Leerbroek, which are all located within a few mile radius of each other. Therefore, their father must have had some substantial connection with this area. He was at least likely to have been present somewhere in the Land of Arkel.

The hypothetical Otto Gerritsz should also have been present in that location at least during the general time period bounded by the estimated years of birth of Gerrit and Willem Ottens. Gerrit Ottens was estimated to have been born in 1435 and Willem Ottens in 1440.

Three of the children and later descendants of Willem Ottens used surnames such as de Baker, den Hartoch (and variations), Deventer, and Zweym. As surnames generally in Europe were then (when used) and are now passed down from father to children, it is possible that one of these surnames was used by the father of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens (or at least by the father of Willem Ottens, if Gerrit and Willem Ottens had the same mother but different fathers).

In a book on the history of Gorinchem, I located an individual named Otto Geritsz van Oist who was mentioned for the year 1436 in relation to a presumably small military expedition led by Jan van Arkel-Heukelom, who was lord of Heukelum. Heukelum is located two to four miles from Lang Nieuwland, depending on the path taken.

Therefore, this Otto Geritsz van Oist without further research fulfills three of the conditions for identifying the father of Gerrit and Willem Ottens:

1- He is named Otto Geritsz

2- He was present in small region in which Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens lived

3- He was present in that region within the time period of 1435-1440, the estimated birth years of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens

Research shows that the surname van Oist derives from a family that in 1436 lived in the town of Swalmen in Limburg and were intermarried with the van Swalmen family who were the lords of Swalmen. It isn't known whether the paternal line of descendants from this intermarriage would be called van Swalmen or van Oist, but surname usage was quite loose at this time and a descendant of the family might use either surname as he chose (if he used any surname at all rather than just his patronymic name).

Swalmen in the local Limburg language is pronounced very much like the surname Zweyn that was used by one of the sons of Willem Ottens and that was later used by the descendants of another son (Claes) of Willem Ottens. Therefore, the surname of Otto Geritsz van Oist also fulfills the condition for identifying the father of Willem Ottens, as it connects him directly to the family that used the name essentially pronounced “van Sweym.”

Two further incidents strengthen the ties between Otto Geritsz van Oist to the family of Gerrit and Willem Ottens. The first is the incident in in the early 1500's in which Claes Willem Ottens sued a van Arkel-Heukelum to clarify the ownership status of a parcel of land. As the van Arkel family in the very early 1400's and for a century or two before that (at least) were the lords of Arkel and owned huge amounts of land, we can assume that this land had once been owned by the van Arkel family, and apparently specifically by the Heukelum branch of the family, and that the family had at some point transferred the land to Gerrit and Willem Ottens' family. The dispute was apparently whether the land had been transferred as a loan (in fief) or in fee simple.

In the 1436 incident in which Jan van Arkel-Heukelum led an armed expedition to Utrecht, Otto Geritsz van Oist was one of van Arkel's followers. He was captured and later released. This incident was probably the origin of the van Oist's family's ownership of the disputed parcel of land: we can speculate that the land (and perhaps other parcels) was given to van Oist by Jan van Arkel-Heukelum in repayment for his service in the expedition and as compensation for his imprisonment. Then, two generations later, grandsons of both parties engage in a legal dispute about the nature of the transfer of that land.

The other incident that strengthens the case that Otto Geritsz van Oist was the father of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens is that Claes Willem Ottens had married a woman named van Aefferen whose family name had probably come from one of the two towns in Gelderland named Afferden. A van Oist woman who was a contemporary of Claes Willem Ottens also married someone from one of the towns of Afferden, who was in fact the lord of that town. This is probably not a coincidence but instead probably indicates a strong van Oist connection with the town of Afferden near Boxmeer.

Further evidence of a connection between the van Oist family and the Swaim/den Hartog family comes from DNA matching, which shows that I have a distant cousin living in the Netherlands with the name van der Oost. This van der Oost had no family tree available, but one of the two people he and I are also both related to does have a family tree, most of the members of which lived in Brabant, and one of those family members was named Kessel, and Kessel is a town located very close to Swalmen. This evidence by itself is pretty weak, but if someone was able to examine DNA matches from several other Swaims and den Hartogs, the cumulative evidence could rise to a much stronger level of probability.

In conclusion, I believe that the evidence is sufficient to reasonably believe that we now know the identity of the father of Gerrit and Willem Ottens, and that he is the person named in Abraham Kemp's book on the history of Gorinchem as Otto Geritsz van Oist.

Note: This post is really just a preliminary study of Otto Geritsz van Oist and his hypothetical identity as Ot, the father of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens. More research needs to be done, including a reexamination  of archived documents for the surname van Oist and variants, and probably a study of the van Swalmen and van Oist coats of arms to discover the potential ancestries of those lines.

I'm not very interested in heraldry, but as it was taken seriously by families in the past it does provide a field of research for the genealogist. In the supposed van Oist coat of arms, there is a goat's head crest which must either have had symbolic meaning or at least might indicated some relation to some related family. After a brief search I haven't found another coat of arms that uses a goat-s head as a crest.

The shield of the van Oist coat of arms has seven diamonds divided by a white bend (slanted bar) dexter (as opposed to sinister) into two sets of four and three, all of which is on a red background. This, too, must have some meaning.

The van Swalmen coat of arms has a shield vert (green) topped by an ermine chief with nine ermine tails. Imposed over the ermine chief is a red label with four points (vertical lines dropping from the horizontal line). A label was used as a mark of difference (cadency), indicating that it's a junior (cadet) branch of a family. In this case, it means that the van Swalmens were a junior branch of the van Broekhuysen family. The number of points of a label sometimes had a meaning that isn't worth discussing here. 

But in truth we don't really know if Otto Geritsz van Oist's paternal line was truly van Oist or if it was van Swalmen. whether or not Otto Geritsz' true paternal line name was van Oist or van Swalmen. Otto Geritsz may have felt free to use either one as there was no strict standardization of surnames at that time nor, in fact, the necessity to have a surname at all, as the patronymic name was sufficient at that time. Otto Geritsz may have had a strategic reason to use the van Oist surname at the time of this campaign or upon his capture; perhaps a study of Kemp's original sources might shed further light on this issue.

                                         Digression: The Schwalm/Swalm River

In Germany this river is known as the Schwalm; in the Netherlands the Swalm.

The Swalm river is about 28 miles long, its headwaters originally located in a wetland near the town of Wegberg in Germany that stood at an altitude of 85 meters. This wetland is no longer the source of the river, due to mining activity; the source of the water now actually comes from the waste pits of a coal mine. 

From its source the river flows north and west, crossing into the Netherlands after about 20 miles and merging with the Maas/Meuse river near Swalmen, which is 12 meters in altitude.

Schwalm (Meuse) - Wikipedia

The name of the river Schwaam may have come from the Old High German Swam, meaning "flood, washed up land." The Dutch word Swalmen has much the same meaning: swalmen in Dutch means swallow or engulf. Thus, when the river was originally named it was probably particularly prone to seasonal flooding, though flooding was hardly uncommon in lower Germany and in the Netherlands.

There's also a river in Hesse called the Schwalm that's a tributary of the Eder and is about twice the length of the Limburg Schwalm. The headwaters of this Schwalm are located in the Vogelsberg mountains, draining mountains more than 700 meters high. The Schwalm merges with the Eder near Felsberg in Hesse, which is located at an elevation of 162 meters.

This Hesse Schwalm is located 43 miles north of Geiselbach, which itself is about 25 miles east of Frankfurt. Geiselbach is the location of the earliest known ancestor of one of the extended Y-DNA matches (Heilman) that I've tentatively identified as having one of the earliest "most recent common ancestors" of the Swaim/den Hartog line in western Europe.  (somtime between 240-380 AD. Before this time the Swaim line lived in the southern Balkans, probably Greece). A scenario can be envisioned in which the early Swaim line at some point lived near the Hesse Schwalm river and then a member later moved to near the Limburg Swalm river and gave the Limburg river the same name as the Hesse river in a geographic name translocation. This might make sense if the name Schwalm does derive from a meaning related to flooding, since the Limburg Schwalm has a vertical descent from headwaters to its confluence with the Maas of only 73 meters, or 2.6 meters per mile, whereas the Hesse Schwalm has a vertical descent from its headwaters to the Eder of around 600 meters, or about 10 meters per mile. Thus, the Hesse Schwalm has a much steeper overall rate of descent than the Limburg Scwalm and would likely be more prone to flooding and therefore deserving of the name Schwalm. This is admittedly very speculative, however. It's more likely that Schwalm is just a natural name to give to a river, and therefore its name will appear independently in multiple locations.

There's a third Zwalm, this one located in Dutch-speaking Flanders in today's Belgium. This Zwalm is ony about 11 miles long from its headwaters near Brakel to its confluence with the Scheldt near Osebeek. Information on this stream is difficult to easily find, but it probably descends from an elevation of about 20 meters at its headwaters to about 8 meters at the Scheldt, for a descent of about 1 meter per mile. Thus, the flow of the Zwalm should be relatively slow and probably not highly prone to flooding, and its name not truly characteristic of its behavior. I have no idea whether or not this name was translocated from a different Zwalm/Swalm, but it wouldn't be surprising, as the name of many towns in Belgium are the same as towns in the Netherlands; Brakel itself, for example, has a counterpart in North Brabant, located 7 miles east/south of Gorinchem. 

                                        

New Post 5-22-22

Floerken Sywen

Floerken Sywen is a person mentioned three times in the Gelre Leenaktenbook, all three times merely as a boundary reference to the “fishery of Brakel” on the Waal river near Herwijnen. The first two entries that mentions Floerken Sywen are undated but occur before an entry dated 1439, so assuming that the fishery would not be owned by a minor, Floerken Sywen was born sometime before 1419, and probably before 1400. In both of these entries the name is spelled Floerken Sywen. The third entry occurred in 1594 and the name was spelled Floerkens Zyven.

(It's interesting to note that in the earlier entries two parties mentioned in relation to the fishery of Braker were Otto van Asperen, lord of Vorst and Keppel, and Arnt Pieck Gijsbertssoon. In the entry of 1594, at least 155 years later, two parties mentioned were Peter van Asperen and Van Vuren and Derek Pieck. I'm not interested enough to work out the relationships between these men and each other and their ancestors/descendants, but it's striking that the fishery rights were kept within these families for at least this century-and-a-half. This must mean that the fishery was a lucrative source of income.)

One of the two first mentions of he fishery of Brakel in relation to Floerken Sywen was in relation to the gericht of Hellu, which at that time included fishing rights to the fishery of Brakel on the Waal. Hellu is no doubt today's Hellouw, which is located about five miles to the east of Brakel. The boundaries of the fishery of Brakel was defined as “van den gericht van Herwinen tot Floerken Sywen toe.” In English, “from the jurisdiction of Herwijnen to Floerken Sywen.”

This description no doubt had meaning to the interested parties alive at that place in the early 1400's, but today is quite vague. It's not even clear whether Floerken Sywan was a place or a person, but as Floerken was in fact a given name, in the context that the name was used it no doubt referred to a person who owned fishing rights probably at the time the first two entries were written, but who obviousy would have been dead by the time the last entry was written at least 170 years after the first; thus, it appears that the name Floerken Sywen had over time also become the name of the fishery itself. This is similar to the parcel of land in Middelkoop mentioned by H. den Hertog, in which that parcel was still called the “Jan Zweynen weer” apparently for generations after the death of Jan Sweym Willems. So it appears that we can say that Floerken Sywen was both the name of a person and of the fishery he owned, and that his name survived his death as the name of the fishery.

We don't have a definition of the boundaries of the Foerken Sywen fishery, other than that it was adjacent to the fishery of Brakel. And although we know that one end of the fishery of Brakel began somewhere near Herwijnen, we don't know whether the Floerken Sywen fishery was to the west or east of Herwijnen. About 4 miles to the west of Herwijnen is Vuren on the north side of the Wall, then 2 miles further is Dalem also on the north side of the Waal as well as Woudrichem on the south side. Gorinchem is another mile or two further west, on the north side of the Waal. About 4 miles to the east of Herwijnen is Haaften on the north side of the Waal and Gameren on the south side. Another 1-2 miles east is Tuil on the north side of the Waal and Zaltbommel (often written in early records as simply Bommel) on the south side. Another mile or so east is Waardenburg on the north side of the Waal.

I searched on Google for Sywen and Zyven and came up with nothing relevant, only that Sywen is a character in the popular World of Warcraft MMORPG and that Zyven is the trade name of an SSRI/SNRI antidepressant.

I'm going to standardize the name in this post to Sywen since that was the first spelling and the later spelling ws long after Floerken's death. In any case, the “s” and “z” sound must have sounded essentially similar in Dutch at this time, since many words that began with that sound were spelled inerchangeably with either letter (including the word Sweym and Zweym).

I think the reason Sywen is not found in a search as a Dutch name is because it was simply a variant spelling by a clerk at one place and one time of the name Swalmen. Although one wants to pronounce Swalmen with two syllables (swal-men), it's clear that this was not actually how the word was pronounced, at least not in Limburg. Rather, the ending “en” was elided, not pronounced. This is clear from how the name was written on some old Dutch maps, and also it can be seen in the name of the German town Schwaam, which lies on the river Schwalm which, after it crosses the border into the Netherlands is called the Swalm (at least on Mapcarta).

The name still might be pronounced as two syllables or perhaps somewhere ambiguously between one and two syllables, depending on whether the “w” is pronounced more as a consonant or as a vowel. In Englishe the name for the letter “w” literally means “double u” (uu), and if the more vowel-like “w” is used, the name can be pronounced something like Su-ame rather than the one-syllable Swame. On some old maps it was in fact written with a “u” rather than a “w”.

In one leenkamer entry it was also spelled with a “u” rather than a “w”:

Zueme

(Microsoft Word - 1982-129Lek en Polanen.doc (hogenda.nl) )

In some of the old maps, a few of which I posted in my September 6, 2021 post, it was spelled:

Zuamme

Suamme

And the Dutch Wikipedia article “Swalmen” states that in “Limburgish and town dialect” the phonetic spelling is:

Zywame

(Swalmen - Wikipedia )

So we can see that perhaps originally the name Swalm was pronounced more as a two-syllable name than as a one-syllable name, and that the break was after the first two letters, and that the ending “en” was elided.

Thus, it is now easy to see how the spoken word Swalmen could have been transcribed as Sywen rather than as Sweym.

The terminal “n” versus “m” has clearly been a problem since the name was first written, and has remained one in America, but in both the Netherlands and America this may have been as much a problem of improper interpretation of the handwritten documents when they were transliterated into print as it was a problem of misspelling or of mistranscription of the “m” sound.

To me, at least, it's now quite clear that the origin of the name Zweym/Swaim in the Swaim/den Hartog line does derive from the name van Swalmen, which in turn derives from the town of that name. I've considered this likely for quite some time, and in my first post in 2020 I mentioned the German town Schwaam as a likely source of the name. However, I wasn't able to find a connection of the Swaim/den Hartog line to the Limburg region, and without such a connection my hypothesis had to be suspended. But once I finally found an Otto Geritsz in the right place and time to have been “Ot,” and who had the surname van Oist, which family actually lived in Swalmen since at least 1300, my hypothesis was finally vindicated. Almost certainly the surname Zweym/Swaim from the land of Arkel, and probably Sweym from Rijswijk, derive from van Swalmen. It isn't clear why the preposition van was dropped from the name, but perhaps that was simply a matter of taste or the current convention.

As to the etymology of the word Swalmen, the name of the town probably derives from the name of the river. There's another river in Germany (Hesse) also named Schwalm, and there's the river in Belgium that I've previously mentioned named Zwalm. The river ;probably derived from the German word schwalm, meaning swallow; the cognate word in Dutch is Zwalm. The word swallow was perhaps a descriptive word for the periodic flooding of an uncontrolled river, which will “swallow” the surround lands. An interesting question is whether the three rivers by this name derived their names independently or if each was named after the other as, for example, if one tribe or family moved successively westward. For example, Zwalm in today's Belgium could have been named at some early time after a branch of the van Swalmen family (or someone else from the region) moved from Limburg to Flanders and named the Flemish river after the Limburgish. But as it also makes sense that a river might be called Swallow just because it's a characteristic of rivers in general, it isn't necessarily true that one Swallow was named after the other.

Floerken

The given name Floerken, like the surname Sywen, was and is rare. The Meertens Institute's “Dutch First Name Database” indicates that nobody today in the Netherlands is named Floerken or Floerkens. An internet search shows a few Germans who had the surname Floerken, and there's a Monika Floerken apparently alive today, so perhaps originally the name was a surname that came to be used as a given name in a particular family but that eventually it died as a given name.

The only reference to Floerken as a given name that I've found was to a man named Floerken Roffert (at least once once spelled Roffart). Interestingly enough, Floerken Roffert came from Limburg and very close to Swalmen. There were three entries for him, one from Kessel, one from Venlo, one from Nederhoeven. Kessel is located about 5 miles from Swalmen, Venlo about 12 miles, Nederhoeven about 5 miles (Necerhoeven was a farm located somewhere near Offenbeek and Reuver (Van Kessel named Roffaert - Genealogy Limburg Wiki (genwiki-nl.translate.goog).

Here are the relevant selections (in translation) from the archive entries that mention Floerken Roffert:

Otober 13, 1364: Kessel: Matthies van Kessel Sybrechtssoen, Mathies van Kessel Gadertssoen, Floerken Roffert and Gadert van den Oever guarantee the payment and declare that in the event of default they weill go into the city of Roermond or in front of the house in Millen in an in lesiting.

October 23, 1366: Venlo: Johan van Kessel, knight, Floerken Roffart, Henric Spede and the brothers Johan and Wyntken van Eyke....

September 21, 1369: Bezel [Beesel]: Floreken Roffert viii lb........(Nederhoeven)

The last entry is part of a list apparently of those who paid money to Edward, Duke of Guelders; Floerken Roffert paid 8 pounds. Eight pounds appears to have been the maximum amount required, and as the amount was probably based on social status, it probably means that Roffert was from one of the area's more socially important families. And, in fact, he was because the Roffert family was “a branch of the van Kessel family” (Van Kessel named Roffaert - Genealogy Limburg Wiki (genwiki-nl.translate.goog).

(It turns out that the van den Oever family is also a branch of the van Kessel family, so that Gadert van den Oever mentioned in the 1364 entry was closely related to both the van Kessels and Floerken Roffert. Van Kessel genaamd Van den Oever - Genealogie Limburg Wiki (genwiki.nl) )

The genwiki-nl website entry “Van Kessel genaamd Roffaert” lists several other Roffaerts and says this about Floerken:

Floerken van Kessel called Roffaert, POSSIBLY son of I [Godfried van Kessel, who was mentioned as being present at a meeting with Wilhelm van Swalmen]. In 1364, he was surety for Mathijs van Kessel and his son Johan. In 1366 he was counted among the family and friends of Willem van Wisschel. Floerken Roffert was assessed under Beesel at a pound estimate in 1369 for the maximum amount of eight pounds; this was probably because of the farm called Nederhoeven, the later Onderste Hof located under Reuver-Offenbeek. tr. with NN. From this marriage: Godart van Kessel, follows.

There's nothing in this brief biography of Floerken Roffert to indicate any relationship with Floerken Sywen, but because these are the only two instances of the given name Floerken, it seems likely that Floerken Sywen was related by blood to the Rofferts family, and thus also the van Kessel, Swalmen, van Oist, and van Broekhuysen families. Thus, it seems quite likely that the surname Sywen was in fact intended to mean Swalmen. Added to this is the the fact that the fishery at Brakel would have been close to to Waardenburg if it had extended eastward from Herwijnen, and that the van Broekhuysen family during the 1400's owned Waardenburg.

Johan and Wyntken van Eyke

The 1366 entry mentions Johan van Eyke and Wyntken van Eyke, who were probably brothers or father and son. This is relevant to us because the name Wyntgen van Deventer was used as an alias by Willem Clases de Jonge, son of Claes Willem Ottens, and because H. den Hertog couldn't determine the origin of this alias. Rather, H. de Hertog suggested that it might have something to do with a political figure named Wijnand Augustijnsen van Deventer, or perhaps after his mother's uncle Wijnand Cornelissen van Aefferen. However, den Hertog said these were just the guesses. He also stated that Wyntgen could also be a woman's name.

I don't know if Wyntgen is also a woman's name, but after searching the internet for Wyntgens and Wyntkens (obviously just a spelling variant), I can say that a lot of men did have that name, and that it appears to have been more common in Limburg, eastern Brabant, and eastern Gelderland than farther west.

I now believe that Wyntgen/Wyntken possibly came to the Swaim/den Hartog line as a name sometimes used in the family with its origins in Limburg. There's no evidence that the van Eycke family intermarried with the Swalmen or van Oist families; I merely used the presence of the name in the entry as a springboard from which to dive into the issue of the alias Wyntgen van Deventer. (July 2022 note: Actually, as I stated in my 5-22-22 post "Clues from H. den Hertog's Genealogy of the Family Hartoch", Dirck van Eck Panthaleon in 1518 married Gertruid van Malsen, who appears to have been the daughter of Adam van Malsen, who was related in some way to Jacob Willem Ottens since they both inherited property from Odt Pollen and his wife Mari. Thus, there was at least one connection to a van Eck, although this was a more than a century later than the 1366 entry).

I didn't find any definite connections, but the most interesting Wyntgen I found was Wyntken Verhaegh, born in Boxmeer in about 1522, which would make him about the same age as “Wyntgen van Deventer.” Boxmeer is only about 3 miles from Afferden, possibly the town his mother's surname derived from. My Verstraeten DNA match has a lineage in it named Verhaegh who lived in Helden, about 25 miles south of Boxmeer; I don't know if this is the same or a different family. However, Helden is located only about 3 miles from Kessel and 8 from Swalmen. 

I got the information about Wyntken Verhaegh from a genealogy of a family called Meer whose name came from the town of Mheer in Limburg that is located 5 miles east of Oost, the town from which the name van Oost/Oest/Oist/Oyst derivew. This family is apparently not related to the Verhaegh family; the reference to Wyntken Verhaegh occurs because a Meer lived in Boxmeer at that time and Wyntken Verhaegh had claimed to be an eyewitness to the “Heilig Bloedwonder van Boxmeer”, in which the wine in the chalice at mass literally turned into blood and bubbled over, three drops landing on the linen (perhaps if this linen still exists the DNA from the bloodstain could be matched against the DNA from the Shroud of Turin).

In this Meer genealogy there are two people listed as witnesses in 1627 to the marriage of a Melchior van Meer, named Arnold Lemmens Oest and Ann Oest. These two Oests no doubt lived in Oest but this doesn't necessarily mean that they were part of the van Oist/Oest/Oost family related to the van Swalmens; they could simply have lived in Oest and were therefore "van" Oest. It appears that the van Oist family related to the van Swalmen family had left Oost in the 14^th century when they moved to Swalmen, and it is unknown whether anyone from the family remained in Oost. (stichtingvanmeer.nl)

Back to van den Oever

On page 435 of his history of Gorinchem, Abraham Kemp provides a list of the surnames of the “fairest” (honest/loyal/brave/gallant) powers in Gorinchem during the 1400's, and among these are included:

van Gellinchem

van den Werve

Knobbout van Os

van Loenresloot

Vink

van de Giessen

van den Oever

I've selected these surnames from Kemp's list because these are all names I've discussed previously either in this post or others, as potential having some relationship to the Swaim//den Hartog line. The exception to this is van den Oever, and I'm including it now only because it shows up in the above Roermond archive entry and was used as a name by one branch of the van Kessel family (who were, you will recall, related to the van Swalmen family).

Kemp also states that “Gerid van den Oever” was a schepen in Gorinchem in 1441, 1444, 1450, 1454 (and he states parenthetically after the 1441 entry that Gerid van den Oever was “named also among the learned men of Gorinchem.")

But is this van den Oever one of the Kessel van den Oevers or was it someone else coincidentally named van den Oever? Van den Oever means “from the beach/shore,” and so it could have been used many times to describe someone who had lived by a river beach or an ocean beach. Thus we can't be certain that that this van den Oever line was the van Kessel line. Kemp mentions a Johan van Kessel once, for the year 1376, among a list of men of Duke Willem of Gulik and Gelre. But this isn't evidence that Gerid van den Oever was a van Kessel.

Floerken Sywen Conclusion

It's probably not possible to prove that Floerken Sywen was a van Swalmen/Sweym, but the circumstantial evidence seems strong enough that I think it to be likely.

New Post 5-22-22 

Some Updates Nov 1, 2022 (in bold type)

Clues from H. den Hertog's Genealogy of the Family Hartoch

GENEALOGIE VAN DE FAMILIE HERTOCH, HARTOCH, DEVENTER UIT DE VIJFHEERENLANDEN.pdf

There's really no evidence that “Ot,” the father of Gerrit and Willem Ottens, was Otto van Arkel, the illegitimate son of Jan V van Arkel. Otto van Arkel did have a son named Willem who was named in a leenkamer entry, but Willem was a very common name and there's no evidence that Otto van Arkel had a son named Gerrit. In some Dutch genealogical discussion boards various people have supported their assertion that Otto van Arkel was “Ot” by pointing out that Jan Zweym Willems worked with a Brederode, that Claes Willem Ottens married an Afferden, and so on, such that it is unlikely that they were merely peasant farmers. They also owned a good deal of property and had some early members were burghers of Utrecht and Gorinchem. In my opinion this is in fact good evidence that the family had its origins in the nobility rather than the peasantry, but that it is no evidence at all that therefore Otto van Arkel must have been “Ot.”

After months of researching various families in Holland and Gelderland, and having more carefully read H. den Hartog's genealogy of the den Hartog family, I was surprised at how many names provided clues that pointed by association to the family as having originated in the nobility.

If the family originated as peasantry, how had they accumulated the land and wealth that they had? In the 1400's the economy was still feudal and there were few routes to significant wealth for the peasantry. I don't pretend to know much about this subject, but still in the 1400's most land ownership flowed from a higher lord to a lower lord, and nobody was giving away land to their peasant farmer-tenants. I don't know how carefully anyone's looked into how Gerrit and Willem Ottens' land originally came into the family's possession, but it probably came to “Ot” through service to some lord.

If “Ot” was Otto Geritsz van Oist, as I believe he was, then this issue may be complicated because we can't be certain whether he was born in Holland or Gelderland. The van Oist/van Swalmen/van Broekhuysen family came from Limburg and was ruled by Gelderland, yet if the “Rijswijk Sweyms” came from van Swalmen, they did own land in Holland they'd obtained from one of the counts of Holland. The Land of Arkel was part of Holland, and yet in the aftermath of the Arkel Wars some of that land was controlled for some time by the Duke of Gelre before being returned to Holland, so land may have come to the family during this interim time.

However, I think some or all of their land may have been given to the famly by Johan van Arkel-Heukelom, perhaps as service for Otto Geritsz van Oist's service in the ill-fated Utrecht military expedition. The ownership of this land was later in 1519 contested by Jan van Arkel-Heukelom's grandson (“Mijn Joncker van Hoickelem”), so this seems to be decent evidence for this hypothesis.

It's actually surprising that nobody seems to have tried to unravel some of the clues provided in H. den Hertog's genealogy. For example, den Hertog notes that in 1518 Jacob Willemson (son of Willem Ottens) inherited a bit of land and that the surname of two other of those who inherited this land was “van Malssen.” Surely some people must have known that the van Malsen family was an old noble family from Gelderland who during the 1400's owned a castle in the village of Well, which was located a mile and a half from from the Castle Ammerzoyen that was owned by the van Broekhuysen family (and by the 1500's was owned by the van Arkel-Heukelom family throught marriage). If Jacob Willemson shared an inhertance with van Malsen family members, then surely this must mean that Swaim/den Hartog line at that time was of equally high social status.

In this post I'm going to look at some of the people mentioned in H. den Hartog's genealogy to see who they were and how they might shed some light on the early Swaim/den Hartog family. Most of this information was written before I'd discovered Otto Geritsz van Oist, so there are references to who might and might not have been Ot. Rather than rewrite everything I'm going to leave most of that speculation as written, because although I believe I've now identified Ot, there are still female ancestors who are not fully identified: Ot's wife, Gerrit Ottens' wife, Willem Ottens' wife, and so on. Some of these probably do belong to some of the families discussed here.

Jan Zweym's Note to Brother Jacob is Sold to Adriaentgen Jan Glymmersen

On page 16 of his genealogy, H. den Hertog says (in translation) that “On 7/29/1527 Jan Zweynen Willems gives his brother Jacop Willem Ottensen a perpetual interest note of 7 scilden (to be collected with Jan's house as collateral). This interest letter is taken over on 14-12-1527 by the widow Adriaentgen Jan Glymmersen. The interest appears to have been paid on 6/24/1657, which is 130 years later.”

This is a multigenerational loan that today would probably be settled on the death of the original owner and upon the subsequent transfer of the house, but it would be interesting to know who owned the house and paid the interest on the note for those 130 years. A more relevant question for our purposes is how the note ended up being owned by “the widow Adriaentgen Jan Glymmersen,” and what was her connection to the Swaim/den Hartog family? Unless there was an open market for financial instruments such as this, it seems likely that Adriaentgen Jan Glymmersen was related in some way to Jan Sweym and his brother Jacob. So who was she?

In all likelihood she was the same person as “Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk”, an entry for whom can be found in the Geni.com family tree (Geni - Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijck (c.1474-1524) ). Not only is her name essentially the same as the person mentioned in H den Hertog's genealogy, but she also fits chronologically and, most importantly, her mother's surname (van Haeften) and her father's mother's surname (van Malsen) also appear elsewhere in H. den Hertog's genealogy (van Haeften as being associated with Gerrit Ottens in a Hook-and-Cod incident, van Malsen sharing an inheritance with Jacob Willem Ottens).

Adriana's father was Glimmer Jan Glimmer van Rijswijk (1445-1524). However, this was not the Rijswijk in Holland adjacent to the Hague, but is rather a second Rijswijk located in the Land van Heusden en Altena in today's North Brabant, situated just north of Giessen and south of Woudrichem.

Glimmer Jan Glimmer van Rijswijk's father was of course named Jan Glimmersz van Rijswijk (died 1485). He was married to Otte Nicolaes van Malsen (1409-1472).

The van Malsen family was an old noble family from Gelderland who had probably been lords of Cuyk.

According to the Geni.com tree Adriana died in 1524, and if that 's true she couldn't have been the same person as Adriaentgen Jan Glymmersen who bought Jan Sweym's note in 1527, but the reliability of dates from this long ago in genealogies is always suspect as such dates are often estimates. In this case, it's suspicious that her husband also died in 1524, and I suspect what happened is that her husbands' year of death was recorded in some document and is accurate, but that her year of death was not recorded in a document and someone simply assigned her the same year of death as her husband rather than leaving it blank. She may well have lived much longer than 1524 (though obviously not to 1657!).

As we'll see next, there was a definite relationship between the van Malsen family and the Swaim/den Hartog family, although the exact nature of that relationship hasn't been established. I have autosomal DNA matches with the surnames van Malsen and van Keuk which, although it proves nothing, certainly helps the plausibility of the hypothesis that there was a van Malsen in the family. It's also interesting to note that Adriana's brother Jan Glimmersz van Rijswijk (1485-1516), who married Geertruid Jan Otto van Heukelom (1490-), had a grandson named Hertog van Rijswijk (1535-1612), and that one of his sons was also named Hartoch van Rijswijk (1575-). The den Hartog line's use of the surname “den Hartog/den Hertog” began with Adriaen Willemsen (AKA de Backer, den Hartoch, and van Megen), who died in 1536. It's possible that Hertog van Rijswijk was named after Adriaen Willemsen.

Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk's name was the one she was born with rather than her husband's name. Her husband was Hendrik Godfried Bertram van Hedel (1435- abt. 1500), who was born and died in 's-Hertogenbosch in Brabant. Apparently not much is known about this family, and “Hedel” could refer to either the village just east of Ammerzoden and north of 's-Hertogenbosch (across the Maas in Guelders) or to a village further south in Brabant between Tilburg and Eindhoven.

If the Hedel referred to in his surname was the Hedel next to Ammerzoden, then Hendrik van Hedel would have been they would have been neighbors of the van Broekhuysens, who were the lords of Ammerzoden, and would probably have known Otto IV van Arkel-Heukelom, who was a contemporary and had married Walravina van Broekhuysen. The genealogy below also indicates that a brother of Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk, Jan, married a van Heukelom, presumably and Arkel, although I couldn't find any information on her.

The leenkamer entries for the Hofstede Altena showing the ownership history of the estate of the van Rijswijck family can be found at: Microsoft Word - GTMWB 1995-082Altena.doc (hogenda.nl)

Jan Glimmersz van Rijswijk (~1485)                                    Otte Nicolaes van Malsen (1400-1472)

Glimmer Jan Glimmersz van Rijswijk (1445-1524)

X

Margaretha Gijsbert Otto van Haeften (1457- )

Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk (1475-1524)         Jan Glimmersz van Rijswijk (1475-1516)

                                X                                                                                X

Hendrik Godfried Bertram van Hedel (1435-1500)        Geertruid Jan Otto van Heukelom (1490- )

Jacob Willem Ottens Inherits Property from Odt Pollen Gijsbertsen and his Wife Mari

At the beginning of his section on Jacob (Jacop) Willem Ottens (ca. 1475 - ), son of Willem Ottens, H. den Hertog states that the first wife of Jacob Willem Ottens was a daughter of “Odt Pollen Gijsbertsen en Mari.” Later he modifies this by saying that Odt Pollen and his wife Mari may (“kunnen”) have been the parents of Jacob's first wife. The use of the word “kunnen” must mean that this relationship was inferred rather than certain. I'm making this distinction because I believe it's possible that the connection to the Pollen and van Malsen families comes through Willem Ottens rather than through Jacob's wife.

The passages from H. den Hertog involve a property that Jacob Willem Ottens inherited from Odt Pollen and his wife Mari. Mari is apparently also called Mari Tylmans Janssen and “Mari Jan Jacobss. Here's a translation of these passages regarding this inheritance:

On 15-3-1518 it appears that Jacop Willemsen is heir in a division of 30 morgen and 1½ hont land (consisting of 4 plots) owned by Odt Ghijs Pollen and his wife Mari. These may have been the parents of his first wife.

Odt van Malssen and Adam van Malssen are one party in this division [and the other party consists of] Hugh Willemsen [probably Janssen]. Jacop Willemsen, and Goessen die Inde as guardian of the underage children of Tylman Janssen and Adriaen Tylmansse, Gijsbert Tylmanssen, Cornelia Tylman's daughter, Ganda Tylman's daughter, and Tylken Tylmansdatter.

At the division Adam van Malssen gets 15 morgen and 1 hont of land located in two parcels in the Leecheijndt of Middelkoop.

The others get the remaining 15 morgen; namely: 12 morgen land located in the 'Leecheijndt van Middelcoop between Evert Beerntsen on one side and Cornelis Beerntsen on another, stretching from the Hubertsche weteringe toward Leerbroecxscher land; and 3 more morgen in a weir land of 14 merges located in the Leecheijndt van Middelkoop, subdividee with Jan Peterssen, between widow Mari Odt Gijssen's property on one side and Meus Aertssen's peropert on the other, stretching from the Hubertscher weteringe all the way to Lerbroecxscher Land.

So what we have here is Jacob Willem Ottens inherited property together with Adam van Malsen (who inherited half the property), Odt van Malsen, Hugh Willemsen, and several children of a man named Tylman. Thus, the van Malsens were in some way related to Jacob Willem Ottens, although the exact nature of the relationship wasn't clarified in the document.

However, an online genealogy (“Genealogy Richard Remme, The Hague, Netherlands”) provides a genealogy that includes Adam van Malsen and Otto van Malsen, and also a Josina van de Poll who is probably a close relative of Odt Pollen (Adam van Malsen (± 1450-1519) » Genealogy Richard Remmé, The Hague, Netherlands » Genealogy Online (genealogieonline.nl)) To Remme's genealogy I've added Geertruid van Malsen, her husband Dirck van Eck, and their daughter (De Navorscher, P. Leendertz 1868 18-1868 DE NAVORSCHER (heraldry-wiki.com)):

Otto van Malsen (1450-)    X      NN van Polanen            Conrad van de Poll (1430-)    X    Arnolda van Hemert (1435-)

Adam [or Gerrit] van Malsen (1460-)                         X                                      Josina van de Poll (1460-)

                        Otto van Malsen (1490-1543)                            Geertruid van Malsen (married 1518)

                                        X                                                                                         X

                          Margriet Splinter (1500-)                                   Dirck van Eck (Panthaleon)(Ridderschap van Nijmegen)

Josina van Malsen (1530-1584)     Maria van Malsen                                 Gerrit van Eck te Hien (married 1555)

                    Otto van Malsen (?)                                                                                                            X

                                                                                                         Adriana van Ommeren

Another genealogy shows a Conrad van Malsen (-1549) as another son of Adam van Malsen and Josina van de Poll (Josina van de POLL (1465-????) » Stamboom Oving » Genealogy Online (genealogieonline.nl) ). We can speculate that Conrad van Malsen was named after his grandfather Conrad van de Poll.

These genealogies don't show Odt Pollen, but it's likely that Pollen and van de Poll are variations of the same surname and that Odt Pollen was closely related to Josina van de Poll, perhaps being his brother.

The connection to Dirck van Eck might have given rise to the name “den Hertog” because Dirck van Eck's great-great grandmother was “Elisabeth nat. d'. van Reinoud graaf van Gelre” (the natural daughter of Reinoud IV, Duke of Gelre).

(November 1, 2022 NOTE: The great-grandmother of Dirck van Eck was the wife of his great-grandfather Gerard van Eck, the line going back from Dirck --> Bartholomeus --> Johan/Jan -->Bartholomeus/Barthold --> Gerard/Gerhard.

However, the Geni.com family tree doesn't show that Dirck van Eck's great-grandmother was Elisabeth, daughter of Reinoud I, Count of Guelders, but rather shows that this great-grandmother was Emilia van Heeckeren. The entry for Gerard van Eck, the husband of both Elisabeth van Guelder and Emilia van Heeckern includes a short biography that says, in part (in Google translation): “He was in Nov. 1306 Married Elisabeth van Gelder (died 1320), natural daughter of Reinald I, Count of Gelder, who bore him six sons and one daughter. From his second marriage to Emilia, daughter of Johan van Hekeren, he had eight sons and four daughters. His eldest son from the second marriage: Barthold (2) comes first. [1] ECK (Gerard Lord of Eck), died. Hannut to 21 July 1347, son of Barthold (1) (which is) and Walburgis of Maurick....See J. Anspach, Sketch origin and history of the ancient glory Eck and Wiel in Heraldic Library N. R. I (1879), 118-120; P. Nijhoff, Memories, etc. II, 22. Sources ↑ See: J. Anspach, Sketch of the origin and history of the ancient lordship Eck and Wiel in Heraldic Library N.R. I (1879), 118-120; P. Nijhoff, Memories, etc. II, 22. Huygens New Dutch Biographical Dictionary (NNBW) pg 119 genealogie-rene-martens.nl Counts and Dukes of Gelre [edit]”

So on the one hand the Navorscher source states that Gerard van Eck's son Barthold had Elisabeth van Guelder as his mother, while at least one of these sources above states that she had Emilia van Heeckeren as his mother. Barthold appears to have been born the same year Elisabeth van Guelder died (1320), which if true would seem to indicate that he was probably her son and that she'd died giving him birth. Otherwise, in order for Barthold to have been born in 1320, Elisabeth would have had to have died in either January, February, or March, and that Gerard remarried Emilia van Heeckeren very quickly and that she got pregnant with Barthold before the end of March 1320. This is possible, and certainly with 8 sons and 4 daughters from Elisabeth, Gerard would have wanted to remarry relatively quickly, but even if Elisabeth had died in early January, could the match have been made and the wedding been performed and consumed before the end of March? It seems somewhat unlikely. But on the other hand, perhaps Barthold had actually been born in 1321.

Iny any case, without further research this issue will remain unresolved. If Dirk van Eck didn't descend from Elisabeth of Guelders it seems unlikely that the name "den Hertog" would have come through this connection.

Also, it turns out (according to Geni.com) that Dirck van Eck also descended from the van Swalmen family in Limburg. As just discussed above, Dirck van Eck's great-grandfather was Barthold van Eck (b. 1320). Although the identity of Barthold's mother might be uncertain, that of his wife apparently was not, and she was Catherine van Alphen. Catherine's other was Lucardis van Mirlaer (1385), and Lucardi's mother was Guda van Swalmen (1341-1378). Guda was a daughter of the knight Seger van Swalmen, son of Willem van Broeckhuysen, heer van Swalmen. Guda's husband was the knight Jakob van Mirlaer, heer van Millendonk, and their marriage was probematic because they were related in the fourth degree, which meant that they were probably firsts cousins once removed—and they knew this relationship existed. A marriage this closely related was disallowed by the Church, so the couple was excommunicated from the Church. The couple petitioned the Archbishop of Cologne, who then petitioned Pope Urban V in Avignon for a dispensation; the Pope “calls on the Archbishop to absolve the now divorced spouses of excommunication, to dispense them for renewed marriage, and to declare their present and future descedants legal.” (Roermond archives, entry of May 18, 1365).  Jakob van Mirlaer and Guda van Swalmen stated that the reason that they had married despite knowing their relationship was for the “repurchase of the lordship of Wikerode and other heritages, which were wrongly reserved by Guda, with the help of her husband.”

Exactly how Guda van Swalmen and Jakob van Mirlaer were related is unclear due to incomplete genealogies, but is probably through Jacob's mother's mother's mother, who was Catharina van Roermond (1246-1297), whose mother was Margaretha van Asselt (1210-). Since Asselt is adjacent to Swalmen, it's possible that Margaretha's father was a van Swalmen, although her parentage is unknown in the Geni.com genealogy. Catharina van Roermond was married to Gerard van Uitwijk (1264-), whose father was Reinier van Vlodrop (1208-1290), which illustrates that closeness of the van Swalmen and van Vlodrop lines, assuming that Catharina van Roermond was indeed a van Swalmen.)

There are various families mentioned in leenkamers and in genealogies with the name van de Poll, van Polle, and Pollen, and without more information it's difficult to determine if these all belong to one family or different families. There is one Poll/Polle/Pollen family that I think is probably the one that Odt Pollen belongs to the family by that name that came from Pol near Roermond in Limburg. This could explain the connection between the Polle family and the Swaim/den Hartog line, if Otto Gijsbertz van Oist was in fact Ot.

Information on the early Polle family from Pol near Roermond is too sparse to prove a connection, but here are the reference to the family that I could find in selections from the Roermond archive (ResGestea4 Jan.def (archiefroermond.nl):

1422 Henrick Pollart, Pol, Polle van Venlo

1455 Johan van Polle (son of Jan), Jacob van Polle

1456 Johan van Polle

1461 Jan van Polle, named Jannes Dries

1472 Agnes van Polle (Maria Weide monastery Venlo)

1495 Henrick Voegels van Poll, de hof van Poll

1513 Hendrik Voegels van Polle died, Lenart van Bossmolen, hof van Polle

524 Polle-goed (Polle Estate), Lenart van Bossmolen contra jonker Willem van Vlodrop

1525 Hof te Pol, called Pollenguet (Pollen Estate)

From these entries one can see that the family's surname is variously spelled Poll, Polle, and Pollen. Also, a van Vlodrop was mentioned in relation the Polle/Pollen family, although I haven't tried to work out that relationship.

(November 1, 2022 Note: The Vlodrop line was originally from Limburg and the Vlodrops for generations were well acquainted with the van Oist, van Swalmen, van Kessel, van Broeckhuysen, van Buren, and the other noble lines in Limburg (as a quick example, the Roermond archive for August 1, 1325 states that Willem van Vlodrop, governor of Roermond, certified that the Duke of Guelders-Jülich gave Johan van Oyst several units of land in Zwalmen--proving that Vlodrop was well aware of the van Oyst amily (as well as that the van Oyst family was favored by the Duke of Guelders-Jülich))).

This genealogy unfortunately only extends in the past to the mid-1700's, so I can't tie it in to Odt Pollen. However, Roermond is located less than five miles from the town of Swalmen, which is locally pronounced much like “Swaim” and which I believe might be the origin of the that surname. In the Geni.com genealogy a Leonard Jacobus Hubert Pollen (1815-1879) married Joanna Timmermans (1820-1892). I have a DNA match named Verstraeten who has in her family tree a Petrus Timmermans (1639-1708) who lived in Hedel, which is located about 12 miles north of Roermond. I can't connect these trees, but it's likely they're from the same family, and if that could be proved then there would be a genetic link between a family named Pollen and the Swaim/den Hartog line, which was also located just a few miles from Swalmen. Of course, such a link isn't surprising because we already know that Jacob Willem Ottens must have been related to Odt Pollen. Geni Tree - Johanna Hendrina Odilia Timmermans

There's another Pollen family from Geni.com, that in in the early 1800's moved from Nettatal, Germany to Venlo, Limburg. Those towns are seven miles apart, and both are about 14 miles from Swalmen.

Without further information I can't definitely place Jacob Willem Ottens into this genealogy. Possibly Odt Pollen was Jacob's father-in-law through his first wife, but it's also possible that Jacob's grandfather “Ot” (presumably Otto Geritsz van Oist) was married to a van Malsen or a Polle/Pollen.

I couldn't find anything on Arnolda van Hemert, but the van Hemert family appears to have come from Nederhemert, located about 8 mies southeast of the North Brabant Rijswijk.

Splinter is a connection that I'll develop more fully later in regard to the connection between the Limburg van Swalmen and Leerdam. This involves a connection between van Swalmen, Splinter van Loenersloot, and Willem Yssendoorn/IJsendoorn, the latter of whom was briefly the castellan of Leerdam Castle.

According to Richard Remme's genealogy, Margriet Splinter's father was Jan Claaszn Splinter (1470-1541) and her mother was Maria van Bleiswijck (1470-). Jan Claaszn Splinters father was Nicolaas (Waar/Weerd/van de Camp) Splinter and his mother was NN Teilingen. Maria van Bleiswijck's father was Jacob van Bleiswijck (1440-) and his mother was NN van Ameijden (1440-).

Odt Pollen and his wife Mari left half their Middelcoop property to Adam van Malsen, who only survived about a year after he inherited this property. The other half of the estate was divided among several people, apparently including Adam van Malsen's son Otto van Malsen, Jacob Willemsen (Jacob Willem Ottens), Hugh Willemsen (a brother of Jacob and his brothers?), and several children of a man named Tylman Janssen.

I've already mentioned that H. den Hertog believes that Jacob Willem Ottens married a daughter of Odt Pollen and Mari. If so, the Adam van Malsen would probably have been an uncle and Otto van Malsen a cousin. However, as I've also mentioned, it's possible that the connection to the Pollens and Malsens is not only through Jacob, but more generally to all of the Swaim/den Hartog line. The exact relationships here will need further clarification if that's possible.

One of the “Friends of Jan van Arkel, May 1406” was a Gillis van Malsen. Willem van IJsendorn, whom I just briefly mentioned, was one of those who “stood with Arkel” at Gorinchem in 1402. Jan van de Werve, Jacob van de Werve, and several Knobbouts were also allied with the Arkels. All of these men were either definitely or possibly related to the Swaim/den Hartog line.

Did "Ot” Marry a van Malsen?

I have a DNA match from the Netherlands with the surname van Malsen. Unfortunately this match didn't include a family tree or any other information about his genealogy, so there's no way to confirm he's from the same van Malsen family (although it seems likely since in 2007 there were only 591 people by that name living in the Netherlands (Nederlandse Familienamenbank (cbgfamilienamen.nl), and also because “Malsen” itself is not the name of a town or city but rather apparently derives from “Buurmalsen” or perhaps “Geldermalsen).

The connection between Jacob Willem Ottens is enough to explain this DNA connection to a van Malsen. Since I now believe that Ot was Otto Geritsz van Oist, I don't beleive that Ot was a van Malsen. However, Ot's wife, the mother of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens, could have been a van Malsen.

I'm not going to speculate here who that might have been, but here's a bit of genealogical history of the van Malsen line (presuming the general accuracy of the genealogies that are floating around the internet. Research using these genealogies can't be considered accurate unless the genealogies are based on property records and other documentation, and often it's impossible to determine if this is true, but in general my impression is that much of the online genealogies are accurate, although caution is always necessary. Even though I cautioned the Geni.com moderators that there's no proof that Otto van Arkel was the father of Gerrit and Willem Ottens, the link between the two is still there, although at least for Willem Ottens they've included my statement that “The parentage of Willem Ottens is unknown and it is not proven that his father was Otto van Arkel. There is no document that establishes the relationship and no convincing circumstantial evidence.” And although the entries for Willem Ottens and Otto van Arkel claim that I'm a manager, I'm not actively involved in managing the entries and don't know how to manage them. If I actually did manage them, I'd remove the unproven parent-child relationship.)

In the 1200's the van Malsen line had married into the van Buren line and the van Arkel line, and Otto van Malsen, Nicolaas' father, had married van Voorne van Vianen (1355-1400), one of whose grandfathers was Jan I, Count of Egmond and Duke (Hertog) of Gelre (which could thus account for the use of the surname “den Hertog/den Hartog” by some of Willem Ottens' descendants). One of Jan I van Egmond's grandfathers was Dirk van Brederode, so the van Malsens were related to that ine as well.

The town/castle Well is also located just a mile from Ammerzoden (and not much father from Hedel). Ammerzoden in late 1300's was owned by the son of the Duke of Gelderland, who sold it in 1425 to Johan van Broekhuysen. Johan van Broekhuysen's great-great-great grandfather was Willem I van Broekhuysen. Johan van Broekhuysen's line came from Willem I's son Johan II, while the van Swalmen line of Broekhuysens came from Willem I's son Seger II. How much interaction these two line had with each other after a separation of 5 generations is anyone's guess. By the early 1400's the van Swalmen male line may have died out, unless the Rijswijk and Bulgersteyn Sweyms were indeed a branch of it. In the mid-1300's Guda van Swalmen married Jacob van Mirlaer, Heer van Millendonck, and descendants of that line were still around a hundred years later (including one line that had married into the van Eck line which supposedly controlled the “Ridderschap van Nijmegen”). Another van Swalmen line had survived under that name to Seger van Swalmen who married Arnolda van Isendoorn, whose daughter Fulsgina van Swalmen (1419-1470) married Johann van Palant (1410-1476); that line seems to have left descendants under the surnames Palant (Pallandt) and Merode. Arnolda van Isendoorn was a sister of Willem van Isendoorn, who I mentioned ealrier was briefly castellan of Leerdam Castle.

Roloffs Pollen

Since I have no information on whether the name Pollen has any relation to van de Poll or van Polle, I haven't looked carefully into those lines. In the Gelre Leenakentenboek (REGISTER OP DE LEENAKTENBOEKEN VAN HET VORSTENDOM GELRE EN GRAAFSCHAP ZUTPHEN. HET KWARTIER VAN NYMEGEN, compiled by Mr. J. J. S. Baron 8LOET, Dr. J. S. VAN VEEN EN Jhr. Mr. A. H. MARTENS VAN SEVENHOVEN and published in Arnhem in 1924 (Register op de leenaktenboeken van het Vorstendom Gelre en Graafschap Zutphen / J.J.S. Sloet (kb.nl))p. 601, #269 ) there's one reference to a Pollen: Roloffs Pollen, who owned a 24-morgen property in Roemde, which is probably the town of Rome located a mile southwest of Rossum. In 1403 this property was owned by Wijnand van Haeften. The van Haeften family was also known as “de Cock” and were supposedly the lords of Waardenburg (Weerdenburg) from at least the 1200's. Apparently by 1433 this 24-morgen property was owned by Gijsbert van Haeften, probably a son of Wijnand, because in an entry of that year states that Gijsbert van Haeften “transporteert 12 morgen lants, gelegen in de gerichte van Roemde op der Weyden lant....” It's odd that the entry didn't say to whom he transferred the land, but in any case Roloffs Pollen is listed as owning an adjacent property to this 12-morgen land, which must have been part of the original 24-morgen land.

Roloffs Pollen's name is only mentioned in relation to owning an adjacent property, and even at that the mention was of the “erffgenamen Roloffs Pollen,” meaning the heirs of Roloffs Pollen, so by 1433 Roloffs Pollen was dead. But although this brief mention tells us very little about Roloffs Pollen, it might imply something about his social status by reference to the other owners of adjacent land to the 24-morgen land. These are the owners of land adjacent to thhat 24-morgen property (and thus adjacent or very close to the property owned by Roloffs Pollen):

Gijsbert van Haeften

The duke of Gelre and his “bastardkinder” Gerrits van Leyenberg

The Marienweerde Convent

Alert van Haeften

Willem van Gellinchem

Henrick Royens soon

Hubert the bastard of Culenborch (Culemborg)

Van Haeften

As I mentioned earlier, the mother of Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk was Margaretha Gisjbert Otto van Haeften (1457-). Margaretha's father was Gijsbert van Haeften (1439-), but he's not likely to be the same Gijsbert van Haeften mentioned in relation to the land near Roloffs Pollen because that Gijsbert was mentioned in 1433, whereas Margareth's father was supposedly been born in 1439. Gijsbert van Haeften's father was Otto I de Cock van Haeften van Rhenoy, who was married to Jutte Pieck, vrouwe van Gameren (1425-1509).

H. den Hertog mentions that Klaas van Haeften in 1479 was involved with Gerrit Ottens in a negotiation of some kind involving the dispute between the Cods and Hooks. So we know that Gerrit Ottens knew the van Haeftens well. Did Gerrit, his brother Willem, or any of their children marry with any of the van Haeftens? Was their father Ot or their mother a van Haeften? There was in fact an Otto van Haeften mentioned in the Gelre Leenaktenboek in 1402, 1415, 1424, 1437, and 1447. This van Haeften owned property in Haeften, Herwijnen, and possibly Enspyck. The following map shows these locations in relation to each other and to Leerdam, Achterdijk (very near to Lang Nieuwland), Gorinchem, and Arkel:

I'm not certain of the identity of the Klaas van Haeften mentioned by H. den Hertog, but possibly he was he was a son, brother, or cousin of Walraven Otto Nicolaas van Haeften (1407-1478)(Klaas/Claes is a nickname for Nicolaas). The Geni.com tree doesn't show such a son, or a different Klaas that could potentially be H. den Hertog's Klaas, but clearly this person did exist.

Although there's no van Haeften listed as a “friend” or “ally” of Jan van Arkel in the Arkel War, Walraven Otto Nicolaas van Haeften's daughter Henrietta married a Hendrik van Ranst (1430-1497), and “Van Ranst and his son” was listed as among the Knights and squires who stood with Arkel in Gorinchem in 1402. The van Ranst family was from Ranst, east of Antwerp, and had married into the van de Werve family.

If Walraven Otto Nicolaas van Haeften was the Klaas van Haeften who was an ally of Gerrit Ottens (brother of Willem Ottens), then he was the great-uncle of Margaretha Gijsbert Otto van Haeften.

Walraven Otto Nicolaas van Haeften was a contemporary of “Ot”'/Otto Geritsz van Oist. Walraven Otto Nicolaas van Haeften's given name was Walraven, but he used the double patronym “Otto Nicolaas,” which were the names of his father (Otto) and grandfather (Nicolaas). His son Jan Walraven Otto apparently also used a double patronym, that of his father and grandfather: “Walraven Otto.” This is relatively unusual and is noteworthy because, as H. den Hertog points out, Willem Otten's sons Jacob Willem Ottens and Claes Willem Ottens used a double patronymic. Margaretha Gijsbert Otto van Haeften, the wife of Glimmer Jan van Glimmer van Rijswijk, also used the double patronymic “Gijsbert Otto.”

Double patronymics:

Walraven Otto Nicolaas van Haeften (~1407 -)

Jan Walraven Otto van Haeften (~1425 -)

Margaretha Gjisbert Otto van Haeften (~1457 -)

Jacob Willem Ottens (~1475 -)

Claes Willem Ottens (~1475 -)

The use of the odd double patronymic “[Father's Firstname] Otto” by two members of the van Haeften family in the same generation, and the double patronym “[Father's Firstname] Ottens” by two sons of Willem Ottens of the next generation, might very well be more than coincidence.

The problem is that I don't know where the information came from that these van Haeftens supposedly used double patronymics. I haven't yet seen this in the Gelre Leekaktenboek or in any other record, but then again I don't claim to have made a thorough study of it, and probably couldn't unless I had access to other archives. However, the information from Geni.com did come from somewhere, even if those sources weren't documented. It'd be a strange coincidence for someone to have fabricated a double patronymic for these particular van Haeftens that just happens to be similar to the double patronymic used by that two sons of Willem Ottens. Or perhaps that was just the naming convention at that time and places.

According to the Geni.com tree, Gerard van Vlodrop (1435-1475) married Elisabeth de Cock van Haeften (1435-1504). Gerard van Vlodrop's father was Willem van Vlodrop, “Ridder en Erfvoogd van Roermond.” Willem's father was also voogd of Roermond and “Heer van Wijnandsrade,” Wijnandsrade being a region a few miles northeast of Maastricht. Before that the line appears to have been called “van Karken,” Karken being a town now in Germany just north of Heinsberg and near the town of Vlodrop. Families that the Vlodrop line married into during the 1400's-1500's include van Groesbeek and von Mirlaer. This is potentially relevant because, of course, it is likely that Otto Geritsz van Oist was from Limburg as well.

As previously mentioned, Gerard van Vlodrop married Elisabeth de Cock van Haeften. Elisabeth was married to two other men (Willem van Aeswijn (1410-), Johan Gerritsz van Broekhuysen, lord of Waardenburg (-1470)), and according to the Geni.com tree also had an illegitimate child with Adolf van Egmond, the Duke of Guelders. This child was Jan van Gelre (1470-1518), and he supposedly had five children. If “Ot” was a van Haeften, then he may have been the father or grandfather of Elisabeth and thus the “den Hartog” surname adopted by some of Willem Otten's descendants may have derived from this family relationship with Jan van Gelre. This is of course highly speculative.

Elisabeth de Cock van Haeften had at least three children with Johan Gerritsz van Broekhuysen, one of them being Walravina van Broekhuysen (~1465), who married Herman van Wachtendonk and Otto van Arkel van Heukelom (~1440). Van Wachtendonk is another family originally from the Limburg region, some of them in the 1100's supposedly coming from the town of Vlodrop and using that name; the town of Wachtendonk itself is located just 20 miles northeast of Swalmen.

It was Johan Gerritsz van Broekhuysen who bought the castle and gerichten of Ammersoyen from Willem van Wachtendonk in 1425 (Gelre Leenaktenboek p. 703, #318). Apparently Walravina van Broekhuysen didn't have any children by Herman van Wachtendonk; she also married Alheid Schenk van Nydeggen (~1490-), with whom she did have children. Ammersoyen Castle ended up in the van Arkel family through Walravina's marriage to Otto van Arkel van Heukelom, and it remained in the Arkel family until the late 1600's with the death of the childless Walraven van Arkel. The Geni.com tree, however, indicates that Walraven van Arkel was in fact not childless but had a son named Thomas van Arkell by a woman named Mary Willetts, and that this Arkell line now lived in Gloucesterwhire in England. I've seen no evidence that indicates that the English Arkell line does in fact derive from Walraven van Arkell and therefore I suspect it's not true but probably originated with someone falsely connecting the two lines. Of course it could be true, but honest genealogy requires some kind of evidence beyond mere desire and coincidence of surnames.

We thus have the following families associated witht he Limburg region:

van Broekhuysen

van Swalmen

Vlodrop

Wachtendonk

Pollen (possibly)

Duke of Gelre and his Illegitimate son Gerrits van Leyenberg

In 1433 the Duke of Guelders/Gelre was Arnold van Egmond (1410-1473), who was the father of Adolf who had the illegitmate child Jan van Gelre with Elisabeth de Cock van Haefen. He was also the father of Mary, who married James II, King of Scots. Arnold's mother was Maria van Arkel, the daughter of Jan V van Arkel.

Adolf was probably too young to have been the father of Gerrits van Leyenberg, so his father Arnold or Reinoud IV van Gelre This would have made Gerrits van Leyenberg either the uncle or great-uncle of Jan van Gelre.

Neither Wikipedia.com nor Geni.com indicate that Arnold van Egmond had any illegitimate children.

The English language Wikipedia article on “Reinald IV, Duke of Guelders and Julich” states that “Reginald died childless....” yet the Dutch-language Wikipedia article Reinoud IV van Gelre” provides a list of six illegitimate children. This illustrates why any given article in Wikipedia must be checked against other sources (including against versions of the same article in other languages). It also illustrates the difficulty in researching illegitimate children, who were often ignored by historians as if they didn't exist, merely because their legal status regarding inheritance was qualified. But illegitimacy is a social construct, whereas DNA and genetic relatedness is a biological reality.

Neither the Dutch nor English language Wikipedia articles on Arnold van Egmond list any illegitimate children by him, but of course they could wrong.

None of the illegitimate children listed for Reinould IV were named Gerrits, so we're left without knowing who Gerrits van Leyenber's father was. Since Reinoud had several othr illegitimate children and Arnold van Egmond possibly none, it seems more likely that Gerrits would have been a son of Reinoud IV rather than Arnold van Egmond.

“Van Leyenberg” was a surname that had been used by certain members of the van Arkel family, but this doesn't help us in determining Gerrits van Leyenberg's father because the Arkels had married into both the van Julich and van Egmond families: Jan V van Arkel's wife was Joanna van Julich, and Jan V van Arkel's daughter Maria married Arnold van Egmond's father Jan II. Thus, the name “van Leyenberg” could have been given to Gerrits by either Duke.

Arnold van Egmond supposed had a legitimate son named Willem who was born in 1434 and who, according to Wikipedia, “died young.” So we have both a Gerrit and a Willem who were sons of Anrold van Egmond and who were born about the same time as Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens. Could Arnold be the father of Gerrit and Willem Ottens? If Willem was illegitimate and “died young” was a euphemism for wisked away to a backwater area of Holland to avoid embarassment, and if these were children of a woman named Otte, then this could explain the “den Hartoch” surname and also the “Ottens” patronym (in this case actually a matronym). If the mother “Otte” was a Sweym, then this could explain the use of that name; or, as previously mentioned, it could have been Jan Sweym Willems who had married a Sweym.

This could also explain the Y-DNA match Tudhope, who branched off the Swaim and den Hartog lines within a few generations of the time of Willem Ottens. Tudhope, which appears to be a Scottish name, could be a name adopted somewhere down the line by a male family member of the van Egmonds who might have accompanied Mary van Arkel to Scotland as she took her place there as queen.

I doubt that this is true, but it's possible.

Otherwise I don't know anything about Gerrits van Leyenberg.

The Marienweerde Convent and Alert van Haeften

The Marienweerde Convent and Alert van Haeften apparently co-owned one of the properties adjacent to that of Roloffs Pollen.

The Marienweerde Convent referred to here is possibly the Marienwaerdt Klooster that was located just east of Beesd, built in 1129, now buried under house built in the 1700's. About Mariënwaerdt | Estate Heerlijkheid Mariënwaerdt (marienwaerdt.nl) This klooster was located about 12 miles from Rome in Gelderland. However, the catalog of monasteries from the Vrije Univeriteit Amsterdam lists this monastery as a male monastery, in which case it presumably wouldn't have been called a convent.

However, there was a monastery specifically for “Beguines and Common Sisters” called Mariaweide (literally “Maria meadow”, but called Our Lady's Meadow). This convent was located in Venlo in Limburg, so besides not being called exactly Marienweerde, this convent was quite far from Roemde/Rome. However, Mariaweide is mentioned in conjunction with Roloffs Pollen, and so it's possible that if Roloffs Pollen was indeed from the van Poll/Pollen family of Limburg, that he had owned the land in Roemde and had donated it to the Mariaweide convent in Venlo in his family's region of origin. It isn't mere conjecture that the van Poll family had a connection to the Mariaweide convent in Venlo, becuase in an entry from 1435 we see that “Johan van Poll, de zoon van Peter, Jacob en Johan van Poll, broers, zonen van Johan, en zijn zwager Johan van Beringe” acted as arbitrators in a transaction on behalf of Peter van Lit when Peter van Lit's sister Merrie donated all of her property to “he klooster Maria Weide” (ResGestea4 Jan.def (archiefroermond.nl)).

Although the transcribed entry in the Gelre Leenaktenboek clearly states that the monastery was 't convent van Marienweerde, as always such documents must be critically examined. Marienweerde and Mariaweide are obviously quite similar and it's easy to see how the original writer could have confused one for the other, particularly if he was familiar with Marienweerde but not with Mariaweide. This kind of mistake would be difficult if not impossible to ever clarify, but it's also possible that a mistake was made in transcribing the original document to the typewritten form that I have access to. If the original document were to be reexamined, perhaps it would be seen that what was written was actually Marieweide rather than Marienweerde. In that case, the mistake might be easy to rectify.

Or perhaps there was no mistake and perhaps the owner of the Roemde property was in fact the Marienweerde monastery in Beesd.

A third possibility is that the monastery mentioned in the entry was actually the Monastert Marienwerder located in the northwest part of Hanover, Germany. This monastery was founded in 1196 by Count Konrad I von Roden (Konrad I von Ripen, Count of Roden-Limmer (1160-1200)). From 1216 the Marienweerde monastery was inhabited by Augustinian nuns, so this is why in the Leenaktenboek it would be called a convent. Marienwerder Monastery (second.wiki). This monastery was located about 225 miles from Rome, so it's much less likely that this was the “Marienweerde Convent” that the leenkamer referred to.

However, we can't exclude the Hannover convent from our consideration, as there might be a connection if the Pollen family was a branch of the Everstein-Polle family that descended from Otto X, count of Everstein-Polle-Ohsen (1329-1373). The towns of Polle and Everstein are located about 60 miles south of the Marienwerder monastery, so the possibility of a connection exists. Agnes von Everstein-Polle, a daughter of Otto X, married Heinrich III von Solms-Ottenstein (1363-1424), whose daughter Agnes married Otto von Bronckhorst, heer van Borculo (1394-1458)(the town of Bronkhorst is located less than 20 miles south of Deventer; Borculo is located about 22 miles from Deventer). If Roloffs Pollen was related to this Agnes, this could be the connection to the Marienweerde convent.

Although H. den Hertog mentions nothing about a connection to any member of the Bronckhorst family, in looking for connections between people with names potentially relevant to the early Swaim/den Hartog line, the best interconnection centered on the Bronckhorst family (even though when I'd made this genealogy I hadn't even considered a connection to the Bronckhorst family). The Bronchkhorst family had connections to the Polle family, and to a family called Proening van Deventer, and to a family named van Aebinga, one member of which appears to have been connected to the van Megan branch of the Swaim/den Hartog line, who were the descendants of Adriaan Willems, the son of Willem Ottens.

This web of relationships centering on the van Bronckhorst family might be a false lead, but even so I'll discuss it briefly. Other than being connected possibly with Pollen, and definitely with a family named Deventer and the Aebinga family, there is also a connection to a duke, and of course we're looking for such a potential connection because the name “den Hartog” might mean that some family members were claiming a connection to a duke.

Another possible but very speculative connection to van Bronckhorst might also explain the Tudhope Y-DNA match, which remains a mystery.

There was a man named Arnold Bronckorst/van Bronckhorst who was a Flemish or Dutch painter who around 1565-1583 was a court painter to James VI of Scotland. Little is known about this painter and “it is unclear if he was a member of the Dutch noble family of van Bronckhorst.” (Arnold Bronckorst – Wikipedia). If Otto van Bronckhorst was Ot and Arnold van Bronckhorst was in fact related to him, this could explain the existence of the Tudhope Y-DNA match. As I mentioned in earlier posts, Tudhope Y-DNA is essentially the same as Swaim and den Hartog Y-DNA and would have split off from both of those lines at about the same time they split off from each other (within a few generations either way). Tudhope is a Scottish name, and the most likely explanation for this surname is that a member of the Swaim/den Hartog line moved the low countries to Scotland sometime in during the 1500's or perhaps 1400's. If the Swaims and den Hartogs are actually van Bronckhorsts, then Arnold van Bronckhorst could have left behind one or more male children that he was uninterested in raising, and who were raised under the mother's surname or adopted the mother's husband's surname. This is simply speculation, but is definitely possible.

Here's a graph of STR data placing Tudhope definitely within the Swaim/den Hartog line:

There's also the interesting fact that there's a hamlet called Bronkhorst about two miles south of the North Brabant Rijswijk (inbetween Rijswijk and Bronkhorst is the village of Giessen, which we'll refer to later). I have no information on the hamlet of Bronkhorst; it's not the original home of the van Bronkhorst family, which is located in Gelderland south of Zutphen. Possibly a member of the Bronkhorst family kept a house in this location in North Brabant, and the locality became known as Bronkhorst.

Here's a brief genealogy of Otto van Bronkhorst (1394-1458) from the Geni.com tree:

Link to Polle (Pollen?)

Otto van Bronckhorst married Agnes von Solms-Ottenstein. Agnes' fater was Otto X von Everstein-Polle; thus, any descendants of Otto would have the name Polle as well.

Link to van Deventer

Otto van Bronkhort's brother was Willem van Bronkhorst (1390 - ). Willem had a son Jacob, who in turn had a son Jacob, who in turn had a son Willem, who in turn had a son Adries van Bronckhorst, heer van Stad aan 't Haringvliet (1483-1555) (Stad aan 't Haringvliet is on the island of Goeree-Overflakkee, which is separated from Voorne-Putten by the body of water called the Haringvliet).

Andries had a daughter named Mechtilde who married Francois van de Werve, heer van Giessen (1480-1541). Francois' sister Anne had a daughter Agnes van Nederveen (1510-1557) who married Hendrik Proening van Deventer (1490-1558).

Link to Aebinga

Andries van Bronkhorst also had a son named Gijsbrecht (1522-1576) who had a son named Lamert van Bronkhorst (1558-). Lambert had a son named Willem (1594) who married Juliana Catharina van Aebinga (1617-). Lambert also had a daughter named Andriesa Lucia van Bronkhorst (1604-1666) who married Schelte van Aebinga (1588-1666).

The link to Aebinga is relevant because there was an Aebinga somehow related to Adriaan van Megen, as we'll see.

Link to Hertog van Gelre

Otto van Bronkhorst's grandfather Willem IV van Bronkhorst (1343-1410) had a brother named Derick III van Bronkhorst (1339-1407). Derick married Elisabeth Utenhoven and they had a child named Gijsbert VII van Bronckhorst, heer van Batenburg en Anholt (Batenburg is located about 4 miles from Megen, the captial of the former small County of Megen). Gijsbert's daughter Hermana van Bronkhorst married Willem van Gulik, heer van Ammerzoden (1385-1440), who was the son of Hertog Reinoud IV of Gulik and Gelre.

The Gelre Leenaktenboek shows that the castle and gericht of Ammersoyen (Ammerzoden) was in 1425 owned by “Willem heer tot Wachtendonck.” This was Willem van Gulik, son of Duke Reinoud IV, who had married Joanna van Wachetendonk, daughter of Arnold X van Wachtendonk (1350-1381), and apparently took the name Wachtendonk from her.

The next entry after this lists the owner as “Johan heer to Broichusen en de Weerdenborch” upon transfer from Willem. This entry is undated but must be either 1425 or 1426, as the next dated entry is 1426.

The sale of the castle and lordship of Ammersoyen must have been subject to the superior claim of a Johan Stecke and to his daughter Meralde, because both of these are listed as owners after Willem Wachtendonck. But who was Johan Stecke and how did obtain the lorship of Ammersoyen? A family tree shows his father as being Wolter Stecke (1328-1395), born in Recklinghausen, Germany, and his mother as being Richarde Loefsdochter von Dollendorf (Wolter STECKE : Family tree by L'Ascendance TERLINDEN-de POTESTA (lard) – Geneanet). The Geni.com tree shows a Gerlach II van Dollendorf ( -1325) being married to Richardis von Kleve Saarbrücken (1260-1326); Richardis' father was Dietrich von Kleeve, Count of Saarbrücken, one of whose nephews was Reinoud I, Count of Gelre (1255-1326), who was the grandfather of Reinoud IV, Duke of Gulik and Gelre—so Ammersozen might well have passed to Johan Stecke through this connection to Reinoud IV.

In any case, in 1442 “Gerrit heer to Broichusen” took ownership of the lordship of Ammerzoyen. By 1495 Ammerzoyen was owned by Walrave van Broekhuysen and her husband Otto van Arkel, Lord of Heukelom.

Link to van Oist 

There is a strong and definite link between the van Oist family and the Bronckhorst family that I found after writing the above. This link is proved by the archive entry dated November 17, 1492, which states:

Voor Johan van Oist, leenstadhouder van Jonker Hendrik van Bronkhorst-Batenburg te Gronsveld, en leenmannen aldaar verklaren personen aan Willem van Vlodrop, ridder, heer te Leut, Dalenbroek en Ryckelt....

Translated into English:

For Johan van Oist, feudal governor of esquire Hendrik van Bronkhorst-Batenburg in Gronsveld, and vassals there, persons declare to Willem van Vlodrop, knight, lord of Leut, Dalenbroek and Ryckelt....

The particular transaction that this entry mentions isn't of interest to us here, only the relationship of the various parties. This entry states that Johan van Oist was an official (leenstadhouder) for Hendrik van Bronkhorst-Batenburg, so there is no doubt that the van Oist family was closely associated with the van Bronkhorst family, as I had predicted based on the genealogical relationships from the Geni.com family tree.

Hendrik van Bronkhorst-Batenburg was “te Gronsveld;” Gronsveld is located only 2 miles from Oost, so of course the two families would have known each other quite well if some members of the van Oost/Oist family had remained in Oost. According to the information from Hans Karl König, Diderick van Oest and his wife Felicitas van Oupey (d'Oupeye) moved to Swalmen from Oost in the late 1300's. Other family members may have remained in Oost, or even if not, they perhaps retained the lordship of Oost or otherwise maintained a constant presence in Oost. It's also possible that this 1492 van Oist is from some other family that took that name, although by this time among the nobility surnames seem to have solidified and it's likely that this Johan van Oist was in fact related to Otto Geritsz van Oist.

I haven't seen any evidence of a marriage between a van Oist and a Bronkhorst, but the Geni.com tree shows that Hendrik van Bronkhorst's maternal grandmother was Aleydis d'Oupeye ( -1447), daughter of Adam d'Oupeye. Aleydis and her father Adam must have been related in some way to the Felicitas d'Oupeye who married Dederick van Oist and moved to Swalmen, but I haven't bothered to work out the exact relationship. But this would have made the van Oists and the Bronkhorst-Batenburgs cousins to some degree through at least the d'Oupeye connection.

This connection between van Oist and van Bronkhorst doesn't prove that the Bronkhorst line is the connection between Pollen, van Deventer, Aebinga, the Rijswijk Sweyms, and now van Oist, but it at least indicates that it may be on the right track.

(January 2023 note: the Willem van Vlodrop from the archive entry was probably the same person that the Geni.com family tree shows was married to Felicitas van Oest, the sister of Dirk van Oest, owner of Hillenraad, son of Johan van Oest.) 

Willem van Gellinchem

Gellinchem no doubt refers to today's Gellicum, located very closed to Rhenoy, Rumpt, and Beesd in Gelderland (just east of Leerdam).

Jan van Gellicum was listed as a “friend" of Jan van Arkel in May, 1406.

For the year 1423 Kemp listed an Otto van Gelkom as a member of the council of Duke Arnoud. This Otto is the right age to possibly have been “Ot,” so this is something to research further.

In 1439 a “Jan van Gelkom” was a schepen of Gorinchem; this could be and probably was the same Jan van Gellicum as in 1406, although he would have been in his 60's or 70's by 1439. In 1483 an Otto van Gelkom Ottensz was a schepen in Gorinchem

The Geni.com tree has a listing for Otte Bruno Ottosdr van Heukelom (1330-) from Rumpt. She married Hendrik van Malsen and was the mother of Otto, Philips, Hendrik, Johan and Hubert van Malsen. This Geni entry stated that Otte van Malsen was “also known as...van Gellecom, van Gellinchem, van Polanen, v. Heukelom, v. Gellecom.” So here's another connection to the van Malsen family as well as to the Arkel family (through Heukelom).

I found nothing specific about Willem van Gellichem, but it's likely he's related to these other van Gellichems.

Hubert the bastard of Culenborch

Hubert's father was Johan II van Culemborg (1374-1452), lord of Culemborg and son of Teutonic Knight Gerrit van Culemborg. Hubert's half-sister Arnolda married Johan van Homoet (1410-1441), who was probably the “van Homoet” listed as a knight who stood with Jan van Arkel in 1402 in the Arkel War.

It appears that Hubert's grandmother on his father's side was Bertrade Jan Wouter Berrtha van Egmond, and Bertrade's father was Jan I Woutersz, Count of Egmond. Thus, Hubert may have been a third cousin to Gerrits van Leyenberg if Gerrits' father was Johan II van Egmond (Johan II van Egmond's grandfater was Jan I Woutersz van Egmond).

Culemborg was a Free City independent of any counties or duchies, and also had the right of asylum, which meant that those fleeing prosecution by rulers or debtors from elsewhere could find asylum in Culemborg.

Summary of Neighbors of Roloffs Pollen

All we really know about these neighbors in relation to Roloffs Pollen is that they owned properties adjacent to him. We don't know if any of these people actually lived on these properties, or if they knew each other. However, it is clear that all of these landowners were wealthy and of high birth, and this implies the likelihood that Roloffs Pollen, and the Pollen family in general, was also wealthy and of high birth. This further implies that Jacob Willem Ottens and his father must also have come from the nobility, because a Pollen (or a van Malsen) would not likely marry a peasant.

Van der Giessen

Jan Sweym Willemson (~1470 -1542) had eight children, the fourth of whom was Geertgen. Geertgen married Cornelis Cornelissen van der Giessen (the old), AKA “Peert-cooper.”

The alias “Peert-cooper” probably means “horse-trader.” The Dutch word for horse is paard, which in Flemish (and perhaps other dialects) was sometimes spelled peert ('t Vliegend Peert, Sint-Kathelijnestraat, Mechelen | Flickr ). Koopman means trader, but possibly at this time the word kooper/cooper was also used. I don't know what the social status of a horse trader would have been at this time, but it's likely that horse trading would have required capital expenditures in excess of what a peasant farmer would have been able to come up with.

Cornelis Cornelissen used the surname or quasi-surname “van der Giessen,” indicating either that he had been born in or had lived in Giessen, or that some ancestor had lived there at some time. But which Giessen?

There's a Giessen located in the Land of Heusden and Altena; this is the Giessen I mentioned earlier that lies between Rijswijk to the north and Bronkhorst to the south. But there's also a small region north of the Waal/Merwede, five or six miles west of Gorinchem, that has the villages Giessenburg and Giessen-Oudekerk. Without more information, it's impossible to determine which Giessen Cornelis Cornelisen's surname refers.

A branch of the van de Werve family were the lords of Giessen-Oudekerk, at least for some time during the 1400's and 1500's. The first van de Werve who was called a “Lord of Giesenoudekerke” appears to have been Nicolaas III (1422-1503); the last may have been Joost (died 1573).

The Rijswijk in today's North Brabant was previously mentioned in relation to Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk, the person who ended up owning Jan Sweym Willems' perpetual-interest loan. Since Cornelis Cornelissen van der Giessen married a daughter of Jan Sweym, this North Brabant Giessen may be the Giessen that Cornelis was from. On the other hand, if prepositions worked the same way in old Dutch that they do in modern English, then the van der might indicate a less specific place if the name preposition van had been used. The preposition van appears to have been used when the place one was from was a city, town or village, whereas van de, van den, or van der was used when someone was from a less specific location such as a stream or a region. In a sense a single specific location within an area is a singular location, whereas that plural area has other specific locations within it; thus, a person is said to be from the city of San Francisco, but from the San Francisco Bay Area). Because the village of Giessen in the Land of Heusden and Altena was a specific town, the preposition van would have been more appropriate to use than van der. However, the region that includes Giessen-Oudkerk and Giessenburg was in the past referred to as the Giesseland.

There's a third Giessen in Germany, between Marburg and Frankfurt. This would seem to be the least likely location to have been Cornelis Cornelisen's Giessen. However, this Giessen lies only 13 miles from Solms, which must in some way be related to Agnes von Solms-Ottenstein, the daughter of Otto X von Everstein-Polle, who, as previously mentioned, married Otto van Bronkhorst. This seems like an unlikely connection, but there it is.

Van Muylwijck

H. den Hertog mentions Rutger van Muylwijck Rutgersen three times:

1517: Joris Gerritsen (son of Gerrit Ottens) stood surety for his brother Heinrick, owing money to Rutger Muylwijck Rutgersen.

1518: Jan Sweym Wllems (son of Willem Ottens) is in some money difficulties the details of which I don't understand, but apparently regarding the city of Gorinchem, the cit of Antwerp, the city of Gornichem, and the current lord Brederode. Rutger van Muylwijck appears to have been present, perhaps as a witness, in some transaction.

1518: Ruter van Muywijck is mentioned again in relation to the issue between the cities mentioned above, apparently receiving money for Gorinchem.

Rutger Muylwijck doesn't appear to have been a Gorinchem city official in 1518, so I'm not sure of his role in the 1518 incident between the three cities mentioned, which for our purposes is important primarily because it indicates a business relationship between Jan Sweym and the van Brederode family, who at this time was powerful in this part of Holland (at this time the Lord of Brederode was Walraven II van Brederode (1455-1531).

Ruter van Muylwijck had been a schepen of Gorinchem in 1505. Herman van Muylwijk, perhaps Ruter's brother, was a Gorinchem schepen in 1499. In 1463 and 1469 Rutger Muylwijk was a Gorinchem schepen; this was probably Rutger Rutgersen's father. Mathijs (Thijs) van Muylwijk Peetersz was a Gorinchem schepen in 1510, 1514, 1516, 1519, and 1522. Jan van Muylwijck was a Gorinchem schepen in 1528 and 1532. Adam van Muylwijck Willemsz was a Gorinchem schepen in 1569 and 1571.

The van Muylwijk family was thus active in Gorinchem affairs for longer than a hundred years, and had had business transactions with with the children of both Gerrit and Willem Ottens.

But we're concerned with genealogy, so our questions is whether or not the van Muylwijk line had intermarried with the Swaim/den Hartog line. This doesn't seem to be the case, and yet I have a DNA match from the Netherlands with the surname Muilwijk with who I share two segments of DNA:

Although MyHeritage states that the match is a “Low Confidence” match, meaning that it could be in error because of the short chromosome segments we share, the fact that we share two segments on two different chromosomes in my opinion makes it almost certain that this is a true match from a relatively recent common ancestor (within about 15 generations).

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that a member of the Swaim/den Hartog line had a child with a member of the Muylwijk family in the 1400's or 1500's, or ever. But it does increase the odds that the two families lived near each other, which we already know is true.

Socially it appears that the Muilwijk family during the 1400's and 1500's was likely prosperous but not noble, holding important positions in Gorinchem but probably not outside the city. Abraham Kemp includes the family name in his list of “Family names of the ancient and honest story of Gorinchem...from the year 1400 to 1500” (Abraham_Kemps_Leven_der_doorluchtige_hee.pdf ).

Other surnames that are listed by Kemp as a schepen of Gorinchem or otherwise mentions, for whom I have a DNA match by that same surname are:

DNA Match              Kemp's List and Selected Year(s) Mentioned       # w/ Surname

van Muilwijk             van Muilwijck 1463-1471                                           1,262

de Haan                    de Haan 1424, 1434, 1439, 1442                            20,023

van Keuk                 van Kuyk 1454                                                            257

van Malsen                van Malsen 1454, 1483                                              591

Visser                         Visser 1454                                                            49,525

van der Merwe            vander Merwe                                                          865

van der Does                van der Does 1433                                                  929

van der Straaten          van Straten 1407?                                                  431

van Altena                    van Altena (van Hoorn)                                          829

van der Veen                van Veen 1492, 1496, 1502, 1503,                     18,380

This list is composed of ten DNA matches who have surnames of people known to be present in the Land of Arkel during the 1400's. Not all of these matches necessarily had ancestors who were in Gorinchem at that time, but most of them probably did.

Eight of these eleven names are now rare enough that in 2007 there were less than 2,000 people with that surname. Six of those had fewer than 1,000 people with that surname. As I indicated in the last post, the surname “Sweym/Zweym” had completely disappeared from the Netherlands by 2007, probably mostly through “daughtering out” of male lines. Thus, the surname Sweym/Swaim survives only in America, and only among the descendants of Thys Barentsen (in variations that include Swain, Swim, Swimm, and Swims as well as Swaim).

The surnames Visser, de Haah, and van der Veen are too common to allow us to draw any reliable conclusions about. The others, however, are uncommon enough that it is likely that the match in the first column is related to the person listed in the second column.

Since all of my Netherlands ancestry comes from emigrants to New Netherland, my Netherlands DNA necessarily comes from those who were born before about 1670, and thus all of my DNA matches and I share a common ancestor who was born before 1670. For this reason autosomal DNA from Americans or Canadians with Dutch DNA that comes exclusively from New Netherland ancestors will be unmixed with Netherlands DNA from after about 1670. This cannot be said of DNA from those living in the Netherlands whose ancestors lived there continuously from the Middle Ages. This means that the DNA matches of Americans whose Netherlands ancestors came exclusively from New Netherland provide a sort of fossilzed glimpse into the past that isn't possible with contemporary Netherlanders, who would find it impossible sort out their DNA matches with a common ancestor from before from 1670 from those whose common ancestor came from after 1670 (which would of course include the vast majority of their matches).

The Aebinga Connection

H. den Hartog lists only two sons for Adriaen van Megen:

Willem Adriaensen van Meghen (alias De Hertoge of Quaettale van Utrecht—an alias that was surely a joke, as I mentioned in the previous post)

Adriaen Adriaensen van Meghen, who was a burgher of Utrecht

However, leenkamer records for the 28-morgen Arkel property in Lang Nieuwland indicate that there must have been a third son named Gijsbert Adriaensen. Here's the relevant part of the leenkamer entry labeled 54D, which was a parcel split from the original 28-morgen property:

10-4-1554: Jan Knobbout van Os Jansz. bij dode van Margaretha, dochter van Hendrik Knobbout, zijn tante, bevestigd door Christina Knobbout, zijn nicht, waarna overdracht aan Adriaan van Megen de oude voor jonge Adriaan, zoon van Gijsbert, dochter van Jan van Dorssem,

10-3-1571: Adriaan van Megen te Utrecht bij dode van jonge Adriaan van Megen, zijn zoon,

0-3-1573: Willem van Megen te Utrecht bij dode van Adriaan, zijn broer,

9-4-1585: Mr. Adriaan de Jong van Dordrecht, procureur bij het Hof van Holland, voor Adolf Abinga voor Willem Gijsbertsz., diens neef, bij dode van Willem van Megen,

23-2-1600: Arnout Blommaert Arnoutsz. voor Maarten van Aalst Antonsz., zijn neef, bij overdracht door Willem Gijsbertsz. van Megen

The property ownershipt went thus:

? Hendrik Knobbout van Os (the Old)

1495 Bertrada Knobbout, the daughter of Hendrick Knobbout. Bertrada was married to Jan Rudolfsz. Bertrada also had a brother named Hendrik Knobbout (the Young)

1503 Jan Knobbout Jansz, son of Bertrada Knobbout and Jan Rudolfsz (on death of Bertrada)

? Hendrik Knobbout (the Young)?

? Margaretha Knobbout, apparently a sister of Bertrada Knobbout and Hendrik Knobbout (the Young)

1554 Jan Knobbout van Os Jansz (apparently the son of the previous Jan Knobbout Jansz)

1554 Adriaan van Megen the Old for Adriaan van Megen the Young. Adriaen the Young is the son of Gijsbert. This transfer was confirmed by Christina Knobbout, apparently the niece of Hendrik Knobbout the Young and the daughter of Jack van Dorssem.

71 Adriaan van Megen the Old keeps the property because Adriaan van Megen the Young dies.

1573 Willem van Megen of Utrecht by the death of his brother Adriaan.

1585 Willem Gijsbertsz on the death of Willem van Megen. This transfer went through Adolf Abinga, the uncle of Willem Gijsbertsz.

1600 Willem Gijsbertsz sells the property to someone apparently unrelated to the family.

The entry for another parcel, 54G, clarifies that the Willem van Megen who died in 1585 was Willem Adriaensz. This parcel went to Gerard Gijsbertsz.

Parcel 54H went to Luitge Gijsbertsdr.

So as I interpret the sequence of events, what occurred is that in 1554 Adriaen Willems van Megen, son of Willem Ottens, obtained three parcels of land. We only know that detailed transfer history of 54D, but the transfer history of parcel 54D was more complicated because its intended owner, young Adriaen, died young, possibly around 20 years of age. His siblings Willem, Gerard, and Luitge, appear to have lived into adulthood, and so the transfers of their properties was less complex.

The relationships based on these leenkamer entries are confusing and incomplete, but hopefully the following is close to the reality.

Adriaan van Megen (the older) lived in Utrecht and had a brother Willem who lived in Utrecht.

Adriaan van Megen the older had Gijsbert and at least one unnamed daughter. The daughter was married either to Adriaan de Jong van Dordrecht or to Adolf Abinga; which is not clear to me.

Adriaan's son Gijsbert had at least three sons and a daughter: Adriaan van Megen the young, Willem Gisbertsz of Utrecht, Gerard Gijsberts of Amsterdam, and Luitge Gijsbertsdr.

Adriaan the young died in 1571 and the property reverted to Adriaan van Megen the old. Adriaan van Megen the old died in 1573 and the property reverted to his brother Willem.

Adriaan's brother Willem died in 1585 and the property went to Willem Gijsbertsz, one of the grandsons of Adriaan van Megen (the older). Another parcel went to Gerard Gijsbertsz and another to Luitge Gijsbertsdr.

The issue I'm most interested in is the role of Adolf Abinga in these transfers. Was he married to Adriaaen van Megen's daughter, or was Adriaan de Jong van Dordrecht married to her? Adriaan de Jong van Dordrect was an attorney for the court of Holland, so probably he was not married to Adriaan's daughter but was mentioned only in his role in facilitating and approving the property transactions. That would mean that Adolf Abinga was married to Adriaan's daughter. This is interesting because Abinga (usually spelled Aebinga) was the surname of a noble family from Frisia. Sometime in the early 1600's Andriesa Lucia van Bronckhorst (1604-1666) married Schelte van Aebinga (1588-1666), and later Schelte's daughter Juliana van Aebinga (1617-) (from a different wife) married Willem van Bronckhorst (1594-). Thus, if the Aebinga family was socially acceptable as marriage partners to the van Bronckhorst family, what was an Abinga doing marrying a daughter of Adriaan van Megen if he came from a peasant farming family, even if he himself was prosperous? It seems unlikely.

Also in the early 1600's it appears that Hilletgen Claesdr (1595-1652) married Douw Gillese Fonda (1580-1641). Fonda was another Frisian family, although apparently not noble, and Hilletgen Claesdr was a great-grandaughter of Anthonis Claes Ottens (1516-1588), who was himself a grandson of Willem Ottens. Both Douw Fonda and Hilletgen Claesdr died in Gelderland, so their marriage occurred in the Netherlands and not in America, where at least a couple of their children emigrated to (one line leading to the Fonda acting family). I mention this not because someone might want to research whether the Fondas were related to the Aebingas, but even if not, what were the social implications, if any, of marrying a Frisian (after all, the Franks/Dutch had spent centuries slaughtering and dominating Frisians).

Conclusion

This post was meant to investigate the social relationships of the families that descended from “Ot”, who was probably Otto Geritsz van Oist. H. den Hartog characterized the Swaim/den Hartog family essentially as wealthy peasants, but based on the families that the Swaim/den Hartog family members married into, it seems more likely that they were in fact descended from a noble family rather than a peasant family. This would in fact be the case if Ot was Otto Geritsz fan Oist, who came from the noble van Broekhuysen/van Swalmen/van Oost/Oist family of Limburg. Branches of the van Broekhuysen family in the 1300's definitely moved north and west out of Limburg into central Gelderland, and my hypothesis is that likewise members of the van Swalmen family moved into Holland (Rijswijk, etc.) at this time and called themselves by the surname Sweym, which was simply a transliteration of the Limburgs pronunciation of Swalmen. Otto Geritsz van Oist may have been part of this Sweym family in Holland, or may have been a van Oist that separately made his way to Holland. The van Oist family at that time lived in Swalmen in the Hillenraad Castle and had intermarried with the van Swalmen family, so that a van Oist could certainly call himself a van Swalmen or Sweym as he wished.

Although Willem Ottens apparently never called himself by the surnames van Oist or Sweym, his son Jan Zweym Willems did. The name was not used thereafter until it was used at least once in Holland by Thys Barentsen, and later in America by Thys Barentsen's descendants. Ironically, the surname survived in America but died out in the Netherlands.