Scandinavian Autosomal DNA Matches of My Lage Landen Autosomal DNA Matches

A Search for Common Ancestors

Preface

This post is under long-term construction and is not yet in its final form. Researching this has been a long and often tedious process that has been interrupted several times. I've decided to post what I've written as a draft rather than waiting until it's complete, for fear that it will never be complete. Thus, I'll post it even though I don't consider it complete and may have many mistakes.

This research has produced some interesting information, and even if a reader isn't interested in all of it, key terms such as surnames can be easily searched.

The first half of this is the most recent and probably most coherent.

The most annoying thing about the Blogger platform is that when I transfer my Open Office Word document to Bogger the formatting is usually screwed up and I have to tediously go through it to reformat it. I'll try to get around to doing this after uploading graphics.

Introduction

Most of my Dutch DNA matches have several Scandinavian matches that they share with me. And although many of my Dutch DNA matches have Scandinavian ancestry (as determined by MyHeritage), few if any of the family trees of those Dutch matches show any Scandinavaian ancestors at all as far back as those trees go. So what does this all mean?

Regarding the Scandinavian ancestry, much of that ancestry may go back 30 or more generations and can be considered “background” Scandinavian ancestry in which the Scandinavian DNA has become “fixed” or semi-fixed in a population that is relatively endogamous. But some may be from more recent Scandinavian ancestry that is unknown to the Dutch DNA matches.

The reason for having DNA matches who are Scandinavians living in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and, in a few cases, Iceland, is due to a different reason. First, we need to define what is a DNA match. All DNA matches who aren't your immediate family are cousins, and a cousin is defined as a person with whom you both inherited a common segement of DNA from a common ancestor. This is important to remember. With a 1^st cousin is extremely likely that you'll share not only one, but several segments of DNA from your common ancestor (a grandparent). The same may be true to a lesser degree with 2^nd cousins and possibly 3^rd cousins, but as the common ancestor goes further back in time, the less it's likely that you will inherit DNA from that ancestor, and the odds are much less likely that you and any particular paper cousin will both inherit DNA from that distant ancestor. But on the other hand, the further back in time was that common ancestor, the greater the number of cousins there are likely to be with whom you share a DNA segment. The problem with these distant cousins, however, is that your shared DNA segments with them will tend to be smaller than those you share with closer cousin, and as the DNA segments grow smaller, the odds of a DNA company property matching you and your cousin also grow smaller.

When we have a pair of DNA matches, we know those DNA matches share at least one common ancestor. If one DNA match lives in the Netherlands and one lives in Scandinavia, and their common ancestor was not recent, then there are three possible ways that one descendant of the commn ancestor ended up in the Netherlands and the othe rin Scandinavia. The first way is that the common ancestor lived in Scandinavia and a descendant moved to the Netherlands (this is the only case in which the cousin from the Netherlands would have inherited “Scandinavian” DNA from the common ancestor). The second way is that if the common ancestor lived in the Netherlands and a descendant moved to Scandinavia. The third way is if the common ancestor lived in a third country and one descendant moved to the Netherlands and another descendant moved to Scandinavia (in this case, the shared DNA would be characterized as DNA from the third country that the ancestor had lived in).

As you'll see in a chart below, there seems to be little correlation between how much Scandinavian DNA one of my Dutch matches supposedly has and how many man Scandinavian DNA matches he shares with me. This could be because the supposed Scandinavia DNA isn't truly Scandinvian DNA, or because although the supposed Scandinavian DNA is truly Scandinavian DNA, the Scandinavian ancestors weren't the same ancestors as those of you and your DNA match cousins.

In fact, I'll show that this latter possibility is probably true for most of the Scandinavian DNA matches I share with my Dutch DNA matches. For many of these Scandinavian DNA matches I can determine the actual common ancestor, or at least one possible ancestor from a small group of related common ancestors.

And in most cases, the common ancesor lived in the Netherlands or Belgium and moved to Sweden or Norway, rather than lhe opposite. In this post I'm going to call people who live or lived in the geographical regions encompassed by today's Netherlands and Belgium and some adjacent regions of France as Dutch. I know that's not technically correct and strictly applies to those from Holland, and that some of them from today's Wallonia and France didn't even speak Dutch, but rather spoke French. In fact, many of the New Netherland colonists also natively spoke French rather than Dutch, and visitors there commented on that. But for the same of simplicity I'll often call anyone from this region as Dutch and not worry about the technical definition of the term.

My Bifurcated Low Countries Ancestry 

I've stated in previous posts that all of my Dutch ancestry comes through my New Netherland ancestors. This turns out to be wrong, and I should have known this much sooner. The problem was that in my mind I had categorized my Dutch ancesors as having come from my father's ancestors and not my mother's ancestors, and it took awhile before I realized that there could be some serious crossovers from one side to the other.

In brief, my paternal line of course started with Thys Barentsen and his son Anthony in Staten Island, and with Anthony's son Cornelius my paternal line went to New Jersey and remained there until my father moved to the West Coast in the 1950's. Through the generations, female lines that married into the male line came from Holland, New Sweden , England, Scotland, Wales, Germany and Ireland. There were only a few New Sweden ancestors, some Swedish and some Finnish, and one probable Finn came from the county of Värmland in Sweden not too far from where many of my mother's ancestors came from. So this was a bit of crossover of countries, but the chances low that I would have any DNA from any of these New Sweden colonists.

My mother's ancestors came from Sweden, Norway and Ireland, all of them immigrants in the late 1800's to the first two or three years of the 1900's. On paper my mother would have been a quarter Norwegian and a quarter Irish from her father and 100% Swedish from her mother. However, the Swedish from her mother in fact include Finnish from “Forest Finns” living in Värmland, some Norwegians who moved over from Norway, and a few percentage of Icelandic from her father's Norwegian ancestor.

Also, as we'll see, my mother's “Swedish” ancestry also included some ancestors from Liege, Brbant, Limburg and Germany who emigrated to Sweden/Finaland in the 1500's and 1600's, due to religious difficulties at home and growing Swedish power who desired immigrants who had skills in weapons-making, mining, and naval warfare.

These emigrants from Liege, Brabant, Limburg and Holland were the common ancestors of many of my Dutch DNA matches and myself—and they came through my mother's Swedish ancestors rather than through my father's New Netherland ancestors. This is true not for all of my Dutch DNA matches, but probably for the majority. This helps to explain the phenomenon that I mentioned in an earlier post, of how few of my Dutch DNA matches had surnames that were the same as those of my New Netherland ancestors.

It's quite fortunate that by coincidence my father and mother met and married, because without that happenstance much of the mystery of the Scandinavian DNA matches of my Dutch DNA matches probably would have remained a secret forever. I haven't seen a single Dutch DNA match with a tree who included one of the common ancestors of those Dutch matches, their Scandinavian cousins, and myself. This is no doubt because the records for most of the emigrants to Sweden exist in Sweden and not in the Netherlands or Belgium. Once an emigrant leavea a country he leaves no more trace of himself in any documentation, so it is as if he had died so far as records show. On the other hand, in the new country there may well be evidence of his continued existence, in the form of church records, censuses, or if he had accomplished something of note. As you'll see, a number of the emigrants to Sweden/Finland were ennobled in their new country and thus records were kept of them, including some usually vague notions of their previous lives in Liege, Limburg, Brabant, etc. Thus, in researching my Swedish ancestors I came across these records, and even though I can't find Dutch records on most of them, at some point I realized that tese ancestors must be the source of many if not most of the Scandinavian DNA matches of my Dutch DNA matches.

Even with this realization, there was still the problem of proving the common ancestry of my Dutch DNA matches and myself. I solved this problem with a “matches of matches” (“cousins of cousins”) aprroach, which I'll describe later, but in brief means that if I have a Scandinavian cousin who has a cousin that is also a cousin to a Dutch DNA match, then the most reasonable explantion for this chain of DNA matches is that all four matches (the Dutch match, the Scandinavian match, the third Scandinavian match, and myself) are related to each other through a common ancestor. And if the Scandinavian match has the same surname as a known immgrant from the Netherlands or Belgium (or who has someone with that surname as an ancestor in his family tree), then that immgirant is likely to be the common ancestor of all four (or five0 DNA matches. I haven't seen anyone else ever apply this approach to DNA matches, but I can think of no logical reason why it shouldn't work. It probably wouldn't work for matches within the same country because in that case there would be too much common shared DNA, but between two different and relatively distant countries it should work quite well, because people from, e.g., the Netherlands and Sweden won't share very much if any recent DNA.

Dutch DNA

In this post when I use the word Dutch I'm usualy using it in the broadest possible sense, meaning anyone who lived in and had ancestry in Low Countries (Lage Landen). Essentially this means anyone within the region today encompassed within the borders of Netherlands and Belgium, with some extension into the borders of northern France and western Germany. Sometimes I'll use the word Dutch more specifically to mean Dutch speakers, especially when distinguishing them from the French-Speaking Walloons.

This map from the Wikipedia article “Low Franconian” shows the language groups that probably in the earlier days paralleled the genetic groups that comprised the speakers of the Dutch and closely-related languages:

By Verbreitungsgebiet_der_heutigen_niederdeutschen_Mundarten.PNG: Postmann MichaelEurope.svg: CIA World Factbook; uploaded by Sanaoderivative work: Alphathon /'æl.f'æ.ðɒn/ (talk) - Verbreitungsgebiet_der_heutigen_niederdeutschen_Mundarten.PNGEurope.svg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13150759

Based on this map it appears that the Dutch language flowed down the coast from northern Saxony down through Flanders, where it bumped into the Romanized Celts to the south who spoke French. Language divides are usually cultural and genetic divides as well, and this is true of the Dutch/French divide. From what I've seen, nobles often paid little attention to this divide when finding a marriage partner, no doubt considering degree of nobility and wealth as much more important than language and genetics.

Although there may be much more Walloon influence in the ancestry of my Low Country ancestors than I first thought when I first wrote this short section on Dutch DNA, I'll keep it here athough it applies moe to Dutch speakers than to Wallons.

For an interesting discussion of this, go to the article “What Dutch DNA Looks Like – 2020 Edition” by Yvette Hoitink on her website dutchgenealogy.nl ( What Dutch DNA Looks Like – 2020 Edition (dutchgenealogy.nl). Briefly, the author tested her DNA at 5 DNA testing companies (Ancestry, 23&Me, FamilyTreeDNA, MyHeritage, LivingDNA). The author's father's ancestors were from “Gelderland near the German border” and her mother's ancestors were from “Noord-Brabant and Zealand, near the Belgian border.” The author says that based on her family tree she “should be >99% Dutch, with a bit of German and French.”

Here's what the DNA testing agencies estimated her ethnic breakdown to be (in rounded figures):

Hoitink also says that Ancestry predicted that she belonged to the “Netherlands” genetic community, and that 23&Me selected the Netherlands to be the most likely country of origin for her ancestors and narrowed that down to both Gelderland and Noord-Brabant.

The author wrote this article before MyHeritage debuted its “Genetic Groups” estimates, in which they narrow down estimates to more specific regions.

It's clear from these tests that DNA from the British Isles and Germany is quite closely related, and that there's nothing highly unique about Dutch DNA that makes it easy to identify. However, clearly Ancestry and 23&Me did identify the Netherlands elsewhere than in their primary breakdown, so they must be using some DNA pattern to identify it.

For this post my primary interest is in Scandinavian DNA among the Dutch, and in this regard the results are very mixed. Only 3 of the 5 comopanies detected Scandinavian DNA, at rates of 2%, 4.2%, and 12.4%. MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA didn't detect it at all.

But let's suppose that the 3 DNA companies that detected Scandinavian DNA are more accurate than the others, and that the author did have some Scandinavian DNA. Where could that have come from? It appears that Scandinavians didn't participate to a large degree in the “Migration Period” that occurred among the German tribes that caused and followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire, except perhaps for the Goths, who may have come from Sweden. However, by the time any of that Gothic DNA might have arrived in the Netherlands, it had probably been too diluted to be identifiable as Scandinavian DNA.

However, in subsequent centuries there was contact between Scandinavia and Netherlands, in the form of both peaceful trade and and violent Viking raids. Much of the peaceful trade in the 700's and 800's went through Dorestad and included trade with the Norwegian town of Kaupang near Larvik in Vestfold, and the Swedish town of Birka near Stockholm. Dorestad, today's Wijk bij Duurstede, is located about 14 miles from Leerdam, and so was quite close to the Land of Arkel and Utrecht. At times in the 800's there were many Vikings both attacking Dorestad and living (under the rule of Rorik, a Dane).

In the late 800's the Danes were also in Limburg—in fact, their camp was supposedly located in Asselt, located less than two miles from Swalmen. In 1882 the Carolingian Emperor Charles the Fat led a siege upon the Viking camp of Godfrid at Asselt, seeking to dislodge the Vikings from the empire. The matter was settled peacefully, Charles giving Godfrid Kennemerland in fief and paying Danegeld (a bribe) to another Viking leader named Sigifrid. It isn't clear whether some of these Vikings settled down in the region or if they all left, but even if they all left they may have left behind children. Godfrid wasn't lord of Kennemereland for long, however, as he was murdered by Frisian and Saxon nobles in 1885. It's apparently unknown what happened to his fellow Vikings living in Kennemerland.

hus, although Scandinavians must have contributed some DNA to the Dutch gene pool, it isn't likely it was a large amount. However, any such contribution would likely have been more concentrated in the regions in which the Vikings were known to have dwelled or raided. These areas would include the Land of Arkel and the region around Asselt in Limburg, and possibly the region around Haarlem.

But is DNA from this long ago still likely to be found in the descendants of any of the Vikings now living in the Dutch population? Apparently it is, as I noted in my October 2021 “Addendum” to my September 2021 post on “Autosomal Arkels.” I quoted from a scientific paper that stated that a 10cM segment of DNA shared by any two individuals in the United Kingdom are likely to have come from 32 to 52 generations in the past. In any two individuals from Italy that figure is 60 generations in the past. Thirty-two generations is about 800 years (1200 AD); 52 is 1,300 years (700 AD); 60 is 1,500 years (500 AD). Thus, it's quite possible, even likely, that small segments of Scandinavian DNA in living Dutch people do come from Viking DNA.

Scandinavian Ancestry in My Dutch DNA Matches

In my post “How Dutch Am I?”, I listed the the surnames of my 104 Dutch DNA matches. Here I'll give a list of six matches, the first four random, the last two chosen:

I included the last two DNA matches because they have extensive trees and because both have an ancestor from Leerdam in the 1600's, both having the surname Kool. These two belong to the core Land of Arkel group represented in the van Os-Vroegh tree that I discussed in a previous post. Both also have substantially higher claimed Scandinavian ancestry than was true for Yvette Hoitink.

The first three matches have 3%, 4%, 5%, and 0% supposed Scandinavian DNA. They also may be more peripheral to the core Land of Arkel group, and this might not be a coincidence, although I don't have enough data to prove that.

Four of these matches supposedly belong to the Genetic Group indicating some family members had lived in Java. This doesn't necessarily mean that anyone in the family trees of these people went to Java, but it might mean that some of their collateral ancestors did. However, this depends on the accuracy of the Genetic Groups prediction, which is a complete unknown.

Percentage of MH-Defined Scandinavian DNA in My Dutch DNA Matches

Here's a chart of 80 of my Dutch DNA matches with MyHeritage's estimate of Scandinavian DNA and Finnish DNA:

Thus, my Dutch DNA matches average just over 2/3 of the amount of DNA that I have, and I have 3 of 8 great-grandparents who were born in either Sweden or Norway in the 1800's! How is this possible, when none of these matches who has a family tree shows any Scandinavian ancestry at all?

The first question is how accurate is MyHeritage's estimates of Scandinavian ancestry. I only have myself to use to determine that question, and in the end I can't actually answer it at all because of gaps in my genealogy regarding a great-grandfather named Schultz who would presumably be German, although in fact he may have had substantial Norwegian ancestry because most of the people by that name who appear in the family trees of my European matches are Norwegian rather than German (with some being Swedish and Finnish). But if Schultz was not Scandinavian, then MyHeritage's estimate of my Scandinavian ancestry would be pretty accurate—possibly a few percentage points lower than what my famly tree indicates. But even if MyHeritage's estimates of Scandinavian ancestry are slightly off, they're off inthe direction of being lower than the paper genealogy claims, rather than higher, for both Hoitink and me. Considering everything, MyHeritage's Scandinavian estimates for my Dutch DNA matches is probably fairly accurate.

But it's quite odd that 27 of my Dutch DNA matches would have more Scandinavian DNA than I do, when 3 of my 8 great-grandfathers were primarly Scandinavian, while not a single ancestors identifiable as a Scandinavian appears in the family trees of any of my Dutch matches. soome of them credibly going back to the 1400's. Is Boersma genetically even really Dutch, if his DNA is 87% Scandinavian? Boersma's paternal great-grandfather goes back to Leeuwarden in the early 1900's, and the rest of his ancestry appears equally Frisian back at east 8 generations.

But perhaps the first three matches really do have some recent Scandinavian ancestry, which is possible because of the incompleteness of their trees. But let's look at Westerduin, with 60.8% Scandinavian ancestry. Her tree has 622 people, Two lines go back only 3 generations but the other lines go back at least 5 generations, with most going beyond that. There are no identifiable Scandinavians. But it's intersting that her mother's side of the family appears to be mostly or all Frisian, and it does seem that those with Frisian ancestry seem to have higher amounts of Scandinavian ancestry as well. But her father's side is mostly from Scheveingen and Katwijk aan Zee, and it must have large amounts of Scandinavian DNA also.

Background Scandinavian DNA

What we must be looking at with these Dutch DNA matches is a background level of Scandinavian ancestry that for generations has been circulating within a particular gene pool that is fairly endogamous. In other words, there must be a sub-population within the Netherlands that began with substantial Scandinavian genetic input, and through fixation or semi-fixation of those Scandinavian alleles and allele relaationships, those Scandinavian alles survived in that moderaely or highly endogamous gene pool to this day. This is just a hypothesis, however; it would take a lot more research to determine if this is true, and that research will probably never be done.

This gene pool is probably comprised of the lower nobility of Holland, Gelderland probably including Limburg and Germany between the Rhine and Maas, and the northern parts of Brabant. The Scandinavian DNA probably came through contact with Vikings in Dorestad, possibly from contact with Vikings in Limburg along the Maas, and possibly through some diffusion of Frisian DNA that was high in Scandinavian DNA through contact with Viking traders and raiders on the Frisian coast. There may have also been low-level but long-lived diffusion of genes as a side effect of trade between the Dutch and Scandinavians in Kaupang, Birka, and other trading towns.

Much of this contact may have occurred in the 800's with Danish Vikings and traders, some of whose descendants later moved into Sweden and Finland. Depending on the accuracy of the Geni.com crowdsource family tree and other trees, I probably have several lines of Swedes and Norwegians that originated in Denmark. At various times in history Norway, Sweden and Denmark have been united with each other, and for centuries Sweden and Finland were politically one nation, with many Swedes colonizing parts of Finland (and vice versa, as with the Forest Finns of Finnskogen (Solør in Norway and Värmland in Sweden)).

Once again, this is just a hypothesis, but I can't think of anything else to explain the relatively high levels of Scandinanvian DNA in my Dutch matches. Even if these levels occur in the general population of the more northerly parts of the Netherlands, the process would probably be the same. It's also possible that some or much of the Scandinavian DNA came from a few hundred years earlier during the chaotic period after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, if a substantial number of Danes, Swedes, or Norwegians had found its way into the Netherlands.

If the reader is still skeptical that the DNA designed by MyHeritage is truly Scandinavian DNA, you might be convinced of that in the next section regard my Scandinavian shared matches with my Dutch matches. In brief, the majority of my Dutch matches and I have cousins in common who live in the Scandinavian countries and Finland. This fact has puzzled me for a few years before I really gave it much thought, but there are only two ways that this is likely on such a large scale rather than as an individual fluke. One way is if Scandinavian DNA found its way into the Netherlands, and this would give rise to Dutch people showing Scandinavian DNA on DNA tests. This is what we've been talking about thus far.

However, the other way that a Dutch match and I could share DNA in common with a third match in Scandinavia is if Dutch DNA found its way into Scandinavia. This DNA of course would not show up as Scandinavian DNA in a test of a Dutch person, but would show up as Dutch DNA in a test of a Scandinavian (presuming it could be identified as Dutch DNA, which, as I've shown, is dubious).

Usually in genetic genealogy a person will work with the DNA matches provided by the testing company who are the most closely related to him and therefore have the largest amounts of DNA measured by centimorgans (cM). The less-closely related matches are usually ignored unless they have a particular surname being researched, in large part because it's difficult to place these distant matches and their appearance as matches is often confusing.

Shared matches of matches, however, even when those matches and shared matches only have small amounts of DNA, can be very useful in certain situations. This might be particularly true for one of the purposes of this post, which is to try to determine the origin of the Scandinavian DNA in my Dutch matches, but also to try to determine why so many of my Dutch matches have shared matches who are Scandinavians. I had the idea of making lists of these shared matches and then examining any available family trees of these Scandinavian shared matches to find any connections to the Netherlands.

Because of my mother's Scandinavian ancestry it's to be expected that I might have some shared matches with relatively larger amounts of DNA in common with a shared match than does the Dutch match I'm comparing with. This is because my Scandinavian ancestry through my mother is much more recent than any Scandinavian ancestry that I've seen in the family trees of my Dutch matches who have family trees. And this is usually true, but not always. This is because if the most recent common ancestor of my Dutch match, myself, and our shared match lived far enough in the past, then I won't necessarily have any more DNA in common with the shared match than does the Dutch match. In many cases, the Dutch match will have more DNA in common with the Scandinavian shared match than do I.

Part II

Shared Matches

As I stated previously, for each DNA match that MyHeritage (MH) provides to a client, it also provides that client with a list of shared matches. A shared match is a match to both the client and to the match the client is looking at. For each shared match, MH also indicates whether or not the 3 matches (theh client, the client's match and the client's shared match) are triangulated. Triangulation means that all 3 of the shared matches have inherited from a common ancestor a section of DNA. Thus, triangulated matches definitely descend from a common ancestor.

If the shared DNA is not triangulated, then it is uncertain whether or not the three matches share common ancestors. Each pair share a common ancestor, but the third may hare a common ancestor with one but not the other. Ino ther words, with non-triangulated DNA all 3 of you share DNA with each other, but not the same segment of DNA. In the example below, A is the client, B is the match the client is looking at, and C is the triangulated match; X and Y are different segments of DNA.

Triangulated matches: A shares X with B

A shares X with C

B shares X with C

Non-triangulated matches: A shares X with B

A shares X with C

C shares X with A

C shares Y with B

In both cases, all three are cousins, but with non-triangulated DNA the shared match is a cousin to each through different segments of DNA. Those different segments of DNA could have come from a common ancestor, but could also have come from someone not related to A except through marriage (or an extramarital relationship).

When I distinguish “match” from “shared match,” the only difference is one of temporary perspective. When a client looks at match B's MyHeritage page, match C is a shared match. But if the client is looking at match C on his MyHeritage page, then match B is the shared match. Both are equally cousins.

Scandinavian Shared Matches

If a shared match is not triangulated, this means that the three of you do not share a common segment of DNA. In this case, the shared match shares one or more segments of DNA with you but not with your match, and another segment or segments with your match but not with you. The three of you might or might not share a common ancestor. If you do not share a common ancestor then one or more of your DNA connections must be through marriage. However, you always share a common ancestor with both your match and shared match, so even if there isn't a common ancestor between the three of you, there must be some geographical connection somehow because obviously to be a match, the mother and father of your MRCA had to be at the exact same place at the exact same time (ignoring the relatively recent issue of sperm donation).

In fact, a non-triangulated match can indicate a closer relationship with a match than a non-triangulated match, because one DNA segment can be spread far and wide throughout the world from an MRCA who lived very long ago, whereas a relationship tends to be closer (both genetically and geographically) the more DNA that exists between two people.

As a practical matter in studying shared matches whose common ancestor likely lived in Europe,, the chances that you, your match, and your shared match all shared a common ancestor must increase with increasing geographical distance between the three of you. This is particularly true before about the year 1900, when travel was more difficult because automobiles and airplanes didn't exist, and even more so before about the year 1850 when trains and steamships first began being used to any large extent. The reason for this is that, once again, to produce a child requires geographical proximiy.

For instance, in this blog I'm exploring the nexus between Dutch DNA and Scandinavian DNA. Today it's a simple matter to hop onto a train or plane and move from one place to another. All within a day a man from Utrecht could hop onto a plane, meet someone in Oslo or Stockholm, participate in the act that leads to the creation of a child, and go back to his home to Utrecht to eat dinner with his family. But this wasn't possible before the early 1900's, and before the development of a train network in mid-1800's travel was very slow and often dangerous. Travel between Utrecht and Oslo (named Christiania between 1624 and 1925) or Stockholm would have taken days or weeks, would have been expensive, and would have involved an element of risk higher than exists today.

Because of this, we can pretty much assume that when I have a DNA match who lives in the Netherlands and a non-triangulated Scandinavian shared match with that Dutch match, it's highly likely that the three of us did in fact share a common ancestor within the last 50 generations (about 800 AD)--and probably much more recently.

Of course there are various scenarios that could occur that are exceptions to this general rule, but we're going with the odds.

Finnish Shared Matches

Finland is technically not a Scandinavian country because it doesn't speak a Scandinavian language and because Finnish DNA is distinct from Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch and Icelandic DNA. However, Finland was politically controlled by Sweden from 1323-1809, and many Swedes historically had moved to Finland and Finns to Sweden (and Norway), so for the purposes of this post I'm considering Finns to be Scandinavians. During the 1500's and 1600's, the period of most interest to this post, Sweden and Finland were one country.

Of my Dutch DNA matches with Finnish ancestry, most of the Finnish ancestry probably came from the 1500's and later, rather than from earlier, because few of the Vikings or other Scandinavians who earlier raided in traded in Europe were likely to have had much Finnish ancestry. Some probably did, but Finnish DNA in the Vikings was probably relatively rare.

About 16 of Fmy Dutch DNA matches are estimated by MyHeritage to have Finnish ancestry. Thirteen of these have more Finnish ancestry than MyHeritage estimates that I have (1.2%). However, MyHeritage's estimate is low in comparison to the other DNA testing platforms I've tested with, and this is probably because MyHeritage has characterized some of my Finnish as “Baltic;” MyHeritage is the only platform that claims I have Baltic heritage. MyHeritage defines “Baltic” as the countries Estonia, Latvia, Lithuana and the northwestern part of Belarus. I probably do have a few Baltic ancestors because at one time Sweden controlled much of the Baltic area, but I think that MyHeritage is confusing some Finnish DNA as being Baltic. This wouldn't be surprising, because researchers found an “unexpectedly high levels of individual [genetic] connectedness between Estonians and Finns for the last eight centuries....” (Patterns of genetic connectedness between modern and medieval Estonian genomes reveal the origins of a major ancestry component of the Finnish population - ScienceDirect) I have 18 DNA matches who live in Estonia, 6 who living in Latvia and another 6 who live in Lithania, whereas I have about 2,050 who live in Finland; thus, it's probable that MyHeritage mischaracterized most of my Finnish DNA as “Baltic” DNA. If we assume that the 3.7% of my DNA that MyHeritage characcterized as “Baltic” is actually Finnish, then my Finnish ancestry would be 4.9%. This is more in line with the estimates from the other DNA platforms.

Since my own Finnish DNA came from Finnish immigrants to Sweden in the late 1500's through the 1600's, and since my Finnish DNA is roughly the same or less percentage of my geneome than several of my Dutch DNA matches, we can estimate that those Dutch matches had a 100% Finnish ancestor who lived around the 1500's-1700's rather than earlier. However, that the person or people who brought the Finnish ancestry to the Netherlands wasn't necessarily himself Finnish but rather mixed Swedish-Finnish. This is just a guess, but this person or persons might have been a descendant of a migrant from Liege-Limbur-Brabant-Holland to Sweden-Finland, and then re-migrated back to the Netherlands.

I don't know how many Finnish matches my Dutch matches have because I can only see the matches we share in common. But remember that Dutch matches can have Finnish DNA matches even if they don't have estimated Finnish ancestry, through an ancestor(s) who emigrated from the Netherlands to Sweden-Finland. For example, Weening is estimated to have 6.1% Finnish ancestry and we share 18 Finnish DNA matches. But Exalto is estimated to have no Finnish ancestry yet we share 12 Finnish matches. And van der Oost is estimated to have 6.5% Finnish ancestry yet he and I share only 5 or 6 Finnish matches. Thus, there seems to be little correlation between estimated Finnish ancestry and number of shared Finnish matches. But again, many or most of these Dutch matches may have many more Finnish matches that they don't share with me.

Again, autosomal DNA inheritance from distant ancestors is a matter of chance. A person will have no identifiable DNA at all from most of his more distant ancestors.

Shared Matches of Matches (Cousins of Cousins) Analysis

The technique I'm using in this post is to analyze the DNA and family trees of shared DNA matches of DNA matches, as opposed to simply the DNA and familly trees of the DNA matches themselves. I don't know if this has been done before systematically because genetic genealogy is a relatively new activity and as far as I know is only pursued at the amateur level, other than forensicallly and occasionally for anthropological study. Historians should be diving into geneatic genealogy at full speed, if for no other reason than that millions of genes must be lost from various populations wtih every generaton, which otherwise might shed light on the history of those populations. Such systematic studies could turn up very interesting information, as they wouldn't be as hampered as I am by only having my own matches and shared matches to look at, with limited inforamation on the DNA of those matches.

Even so, in using shared match analysis for the Scandinavian shared matches of my Dutch matches, I've been able to ucover some interesting information on the history of the Dutch sub-population that my own Dutch ancestry came from. Although previously I've shown that many of my Dutch DNA matches appear to be related to what I called the Land of Arkel genepool, many of my common ancestorsI with those Dutch matches probably actually came from Liege, Limburg, and Brabant although their later ancestors must have later moved to the Land of Arkel and Holland (specifically Rotterda, if MyHeritage's Genetic Groups feature is accurate).

Part III

Ancestors in Common with the Scandinavian Cousins of my Dutch Cousins

I've identified several people from Liege-Limburg-Brabant and from Holland who were probably the common ancestors of most of my DNA matches. As a reminder, a DNA matche is a cousin, and a cousin is a person with whom you share a common ancestor. The common ancestors of all of my Dutch DNA matches were likely born before about 1650 including both those who emigrated to America and those who emigrated to Scandinavia.

The common ancestors of a few of my Dutch matches might be from well before thistime and ight have been German rather than Dutch.

I'll start with what I believe accounts for the largest group of ancestors common to both my Dutch DNA matches, me, and our shared Scandinavian matches. In this group I am myself probably a Scandinavian match. That is, my ancestry came through my mother's Scandinavian ancestry rather than throught my father's Dutch ancestry, although this distinction is in a sense meaningless because the outcome is the same.

The de Besceh/de Geer Group from Liege

(Frumerie, Garencher, Pemer, Snoyens, Zibrechts, Alewyns, van Wissen Borah, de Besche, de Montage, de Richelle)

It's now clear to me that most of my Dutch DNA matches are not related to me throuogh my New Netherland ancestors, but rather through my Swedish ancestry. It took me a long time for me to understand this concept because I do have a few dozen ancestors who did immigrate to the New Netherland colony, including my paternal line. Those of my Dutch DNA matches who don't have any or only a few Scandinavian shared matches may be matches who came through my New Netherland ancestry, but the majority of my matches clearly came through my Swedish ancestry.

Walloons Emigrate to Sweden

What I didn't understand until recently was how many people from today's Netherlands and particularly from today's Belgium emigrated to Sweden in the late 1500's and early-to-mid 1600's. It wasn't a handful of people, but a large-scale emigration over decades from Flanders and from the French-speaking southern part of today's Belgium now called Walloon. The reason for the emigration was both economic and religious, both from the perspective of the emigrants and from the perspective of the Swedish government that allowed and in fact encouraged the immigration.

The following are passages from the paper “Innovations through Migration: The Settlements of Calvinistic Netherlanders in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Central and Western Europe” by Heinz Schilling 1983 (admin,+hssh16n31_schilling.pdf ):

“The migration from the Habsburg Netherlands—modern Belgium and Holland—was part of the great migrattion movement resulting from the confessionalization of European states and societies during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The banishing of religiousminorities, though not unknown in Protestant territories, was most typical of Catholic governments and their counter-reformation activities.” (p. 8).

“Estimates of the size of the emigration range, in the historical literature, fromo fifty thousand to half a million. It seems realistic to speak of just under one hundred thousand people who left their homes, temporarily or forever. The main area of emigration was from the southern Netherlands, recaptured and recatholicized in the 1570s and 1580s by Alexander Farnese who took Antwep, the last stronghold of the protestants in the south, in 1585. The inhabitants of the northern provinces—now Holland—took part only in the early waves, and most of them returned after their home provinces had become strongholds of William the Silent and of the Protestant “Sea Beggars”. Areas of immigration were parts of northern France, Engand, Germany, Poland, the Scandinavian kingdoms—mainly Sweden—and, during the last two decades of the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, the newly founded Dutch Republic. In Holland as in most other places the refugees formed two different though closely interacting communities: one for the French-speaking Walloons and one for the Flemings and the Dutch-speading Nederduits....” The motives and character of the emigration—whether it was mainly religious or predominantly economic—havebeen disputed vehemently....Further, the relative importance of both factors varied over time and with regard to different social classes. Religion was the dominant motive in the early migration of poor craftsmen, bu the importance of economic motives increased as well-to-do merchants and entrepreneurs emigrated in increasing numbers in the 1580's....It is important to emphasize that the social structure of the respective waves of emigrants differed considerably. The migration in the first half of the century—Anabaptist as wel as Calvinistic—was dominated by smaller merchants, craftsmen and journeymen, mainly from the textile sector. The proportion of well-to-do merchants, involved for instance in the Baltic grain trade, and of entrepreneurs and financiers increased during the 1560s and reached its peak in the 1580s, when Farnese recaptured the great commercial and industrial centers of the south—Brussels, Ghent and especially Antwerp. The treaty accompanying the second surrender of Antwerp in 1585 allowed inhabitants who desired to emigrate a delay of three years to terminate their business affairs. In consequence, this wave of emigrants took on the character of a business transfer. Nevertheless, the migrating businessman of the 1580s was often as ardent a Protestant as the craftsman of the preceding waves.....“Whether it was primarilly religious or economic in origin, there is no doubt that the sixteenth-century immigration of Netherlanders was of the greatest iportance to all the host societies. This was not only a question of quatitative gains in manower. It was primarily the quality of the technical know-how and skill of the craftsmen, and the world-wide business relations of the merchants and financiers, that gave a powerful and long-lasting impulse to the eceonomic development of European towns and regions hitherto relatively backward in comparision to the Netherlands. Since the late Middle Ages, the Burgundian provinces—especially Flanders, Artois, Hainault and Brabant—had been the most prosperous and furtherst developed part of Europe outside of Italy. Certain provinces showed features of social modernity, for instance in lieracy, division of labour and the structure of town-country relations.” (p. 10-11)

“[The Netherland refugees] also controlled the lucrative commerce in brass products, especially brass guns, which was so important for the equipment of transatlantic sailors and of European armies in the Dutch-Spanish Eighty Years' War, the struggle over the Baltic Sea, and the Thirty Years' War. Elisas Trip and Louis de Geer, two of the most amous businessmen during the first decades of the Republic, were refugees from the south who built up and emporium of European dimension centred at Amsterdam.....A prominent field for thei economic activities was Sweden. This Scandinavian kingdom under Gustavus Adolphus was in the first rank of European powers. Sweden's political and military expansion was based on the economic transformation of iron and brass production from a primitive medieval to an early modern capitalistic form with features of the factory system. The promoters of this shift came from the southern Netherlands, partly by secondary migration and mainly from Aix-la-Chapelle [Aachen] and Amsterdam. The leading role was played by Louis de Geer.”(p. 13).

The paper cited from above was primarily interested in the Walloon and Flemish emigration to Germany rather than to Sweden.The Wikipedia article “Walloon immitration to Sweden” is specific to Sweden and starts by saying “The history of Walloon immigration to Sweden begins with industrialists Guillaume de Beche (Willem de Besche; 1573-1629) and Louis De Geer (1587-1652), known as “the father of the Swedish steel industry”. Five to ten thousand Walloons emigrated to Sweden, mainly working in the steel industry.”

The Wikipedia article goes on to say: “During the 16^th century, forging techniques were improved in the area around Liege...which had developed into the captital of European steel production. The Walloons' reputation for steel production became widespread, and was also noted in Sweden. Encouraged by Gustav II Adolf, many Walloons began to emigrate to Sweden during the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries. They came from two main areas located around the cities of Sedan and Liege. At first, most of the Walloons settled in Godegård, Finspång and Norrköping, where the Walloon entrepreneur Louis De Geer was able to lease land. Although it was traditionally explained, and it is often assumed, that the Walloons and De Geer fled from their homeland due to religious persecution, nowadays it has been established that the Walloons fled from eceonomic pressures due to widespread unemployment....In Sweden, De Geer met Willem de Besche, with whom he had already had contacts, and who managed the Finspång ironworks until 1618. De Besche, who was also from Liege, had been active in Sweden since 1595, and had participated in the modernization of the Sweedish royal ironworks and, especially, in arms production. He is noted for having introduced new ironwork techniques in Sweden, but was not an independent entrepreneur as De Geer, being rather an employee of the king. De Besche was the first to recruit Walloons to Sweden. He settled in Nykoping in 1597, and thanks to his enlisting of Walloons, a Walloonn community was established in Södermanland during the years after his arrival. After acting as De Besche's guarantor in 1618 when he leased the Finspång manufacturing plant, from the beginning of the 1620's De Geer completely took over the business of the mill in Finspång. Recruitment took place in such a way that agents were sent out to the smaller mills to recruit the desired professional directly on the spot. But just as often, unempployed Walloons came to the larger towns to seek employment in Sweden at the recruitment offices established there. De Besche was initially responsible for recruitig workforce via De Geer. Since the 1620s, it became the sole responsibility of De Geer, who dispatched his agents from his offices in Lige, Namur, Chimay and Verviers. They would then go about picking the qualified personnel from among the unemployed Walloons....It appears that the cooperation between De Geer and De Besche ceased in the early 17^th century, with the latter working on his own iron mill in Forsmark, Uppland.”

Thus we see that two men, Willem de Besche and Louis de Geer, were responsible for recruiting Walloons from Liege, Hainaut, Brabant, and perhaps some Flemings and Dutch as well, to Sweden in the late 1500's and early 1600's. As I'll show, some of these emigrants to Sweden were my own ancestors, and many of those emigrants descended from ancestors further back in time who were the common ancestors of my Dutch matches and myself. It might not be possible to determine the exact identities of the common ancestors of my Dutch DNA matches and myself, but I'm going to provide what I consider to be proof or at least very strong evidence that many (perhaps most) of my Dutch matches descend from such ancestors. The proof will be found in the Swedish and other Scandinvian DNA matches that I share with my Dutch DNA matches.

Identifying Dutch matches with Cousins who emigrated to Sweden

I'm going to show this by using DNA match information from MyHeritage.com. I'll do this by searching my Scandinavian DNA matches to find those whose family trees indicate that they are descendants from various of the Walloon (or Dutch-speaking) immigrants to Sweden or the other Scandinavian countries.

It's important to understand that I only have access to Swedes who I am related to through DNA—in other words, those with whom I share a common ancestor, whether ethnically Swedish or ethnically Dutch or Walloon or German. In many cases I won't know the identity of that common ancestor, and anyway in most cases we'll share more than one common ancestor.

After I identify my Swedish DNA matches who have a Walloon or Dutch ancestor in their family trees, I'll then examine our shared DNA matches of my Dutch matches and myself. For each of my Dutch matches, MyHeritage provides me with a list of cousins (matches) of those Dutch matches who are also cousins of myself. For each Dutch DNA matche I've complied a list of shaed cousins, excepting those from America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand since ancestry from those former colonies is too intermixed with English and other immgrants to untangle probable DNA paths.

When I find a Scandinavian shared match who is one of those with an ancestor who emigrated from today's Belgium or Holland, then it is extremely likely that this immigrant ancestor is the link between that Dutch match and myself. This is because it is very unlikely that I would have a DNA match from Scandinavia who is also a cousin to a Dutch cousin, unless we both share DNA that I received through an immigrant to Sweden from Belgium (Flanders, Liege, Limburg, Brabant, Hainaut) or the Netherlands (Holland, Zeeland, Gelderland, Friesland, Utrecht, etc.). The immigrant ancestor that identify as the probable link between my Dutch match and I is not likely to be the actual common ancestor of my Dutch match and I, but he or she will almost certainly be the carrier of the common DNA that passed down to me from the common ancestor of my Dutch match and myself.

However, there's a problem with this method. This problem is that although I do have a few of such Scandinavian shared matches who are cousins to both a Dutch match and to me, I don't have very many of them. This is to be expected because any ancestor I share with a person living in Holland or Belgium almost certainly was born before the 1700's at the latest. This being the case, it is statistically unlikely that I would share an identifiable segment of autosomal DNA with a cousin of any particular Dutch match. The odds of sharing any identifiable autosomal DNA with any particular Dutch person are already very high, and thus the odds of a third person inheriting the same segment of DNA (or even a different segment of DNA between two of the parties) are small.

However, I came up with a workaround for this problem that I call cousins-of-cousins matching. That is, although the odds are small of any one particular Scandinavian cousin having inherited DNA form a Dutch immigrant from the 1600's or before are small, the odds are much better of finding a cousin of a cousin with DNA from that Scaninavian immgrant. In other words, this technique is a DNA force-multiplier that should help to identify the Dutch immigrant ancestor to Sweden whose DNA I share with a particular Dutch match. This is because even though a Scandinavian cousin of a Scandinavian sousin of a Dutch match doesn't have listed in his/her family tree a Dutch/Walloon immigrant, that person undoubtedly should be in their tree because otherwise why would they be a cousin to a person from the Netherlands or Belgium? This technique probably wouldn't work in most cases with other Dutch matches to Dutch matches, or even to German matches of Dutch matches, because in those cases it would be impossible to untangle thee relationships because procreation would be too likely between various Dutch or even Germans. But procreation requires extreme geographical proximity, so it would be unlikely for me to share with a Dutch match a Scandinaivan cousin of a Scandinavian cousin with a Dutch immigrant in their family tree unless that Dutch immigrant should also be in the family tree of the cousin of the cousin.

This is probably as confusing to understand as it was to write, but I don't know of a simpler way of explaining it. In essence, every single one of my Scandinavian DNA matches who is also a DNA match to a Dutch match probably comes from one of the 5,000 to 10,000 Walloon or Dutch emigrants to Sweden during the 1500's and 1600's (which, by the way, is only slightly earlier on average than the Dutch emigration to the New Netherland colony). A few of the Scandinavian shared matches may have come through a different pathway, and I'll discuss this possibility later.

My Walloon Ancestors in Sweden

Here's a few screenshots showing my Walloon ancestors in my Ancestry.com family tree:

The relevant names here are  Brita Frumerie and Maria du Rietz, whose paternal lines were non-Swedish. Both were my 6th great-grandmothers. I have not confirmed this part of my family tree through primary documents but these lines have been well-researched by Swedes and I have 6 DNA matches who have the surname Sahlstöm, 14 DNA matches with a Sahlström in their family tree, and 33 DNA matches with a Lundell in their family tree. Thus, there is little doubt of the correctness of this family tree. 

In the next screenshot I've skipped forward to the ancestry of Brita Frumerie's grandfather Johan:

The Walloon and Dutch families shown here are du Sar, Thiebau, Garencher, Snoyens and Alewijns. There is also the German from Augsburg named Pemer.

Now we'll move on to the ancestry of the grandparents of Maria du Rietz, Carl du Rietz and Eva Klingstedt:

The Walloon and Dutch families shown here are du Rietz, d'Habarag, Radou and de Besche. Wulf is probably German and Faler is half German, half Swedish.

Helena de Besche, one of my 10^th great-grandmothers, is the sister of Willem Gillius de Besche, who was mentioned in the article above as the recruiter of for the king of Sweden of Walloons to work the mines and mills in Sweden, and partner of de Geer.

Du Rietz's known ancestors are named de Fresnoy, de Crispin, de Mory, de Bontey and de Monts. Little appears to be known about these people other than their names. Most of these appear to be from France and may or may not be related to my Dutch DNA matches.

Klingius is of some interest because he was 100% Icelandic, with at least all of his great-grandparents having been born in Iceland, and of the lines that go further back, all were also from Iceland (a few lines go back to the early 1400's). This is important to note for later, because a few of my Dutch DNA matches and I share a couple Icelandic DNA matches and that Icelandic DNA probably comes through Klingius. However, I do have Icelandic ancestors more recent than this (5th great-grandparents) through my Norwegian line, so it's possible this was the true common line. 

The following screenshot shows the ancestry of Helena de Besche:

So now we also have the Walloon names de Richelle, de Roxelle and de Montagne.

(If we go up one or two generations, there's supposedly a Walthier de Besche (born ~1375) from Liege and married to Johanna de Borne (b. 1410 Netherlands). This information came from the Geni.com tree and it looks like some secondary sources were cited although I haven't investigated this. This is interesting because Johanna de Borne could possibly be from Born in Limburg, located just north of Elsloo; we know for certain from a 1272 document that Seger van Swalmen was at least acquainted with the knight Goswijn van Born. Furthermore, if we follow the unique given name Steppo back from Steppo van Viggezele (as I'll discuss in a future post), we go to Steppo van Brussels and then back to a Steppo van Maffe, supposedly a brother of Theobald van Voeren (who was also lord of Valkenburg). The town Oost (Oist) was in fact a detached part of Voeren (Voeren was later called Dalheim and was later incorporated into Brabant under the lords of Leuven (who also owned Brussels). I'll publish a post on this sometime in the future, but the relevance for now is that supposedly the lords of Elsloo were descended from the lords of Voeren, and later the van Borns were lords of Elsloo. I don't want to get tangled up in all this here, but it does point to the possibility that the Swaim/den Hartog paternal line came from Voeren, which was located just north of Liege and very close to Oupeye and Oost.)

So I have as ancestors these immigrants to Sweden from Liege and the Netherlands:

De Besche (1400's Liege)

Radou/Radus (1580 Liege)

Frumerie (1560 Leiden)

du Rietz (1550 Artois)

d'Habarag (1570 France)

Garencher (1593 Leiden)

Alewyns (1502 Antwerp)

Snoyens (1560 Antwerp)

Zibrechts (1500 Antwerp)

de Borne (?) (1410 Limburg?)

Pemer (1500 Augsberg)

Of this group, all but Alewyns, Snoyens and de Borne have French srnames and are likely either Walloons or French. The parents of those form Leiden had probably migrated there from further south as Spain took control of that region.

How reliable is this ancestry? I haven't actually performed a true genealogy by following records bac to each of these people, but I did do that for the line leading to them as far back as Karl Johan Karlsson. Up to that point the line is certain, but I'm confident that the Swedish genealogies of Karl Johan Karlsson's ancestors, from which I've borrowed, is also accurete back to these ancestors. My confidence is based on two factors. The first factor is that Swedes in general are interested in genealogy and most seem pretty meticulous about it; and Swedish church records provide an accurate written record of relationships that go back to at least 1686 for the entire population as Sweden had only one state church that every Swede was a member of. The second factor is that my DNA matches are extremely conistent with this genealogy, including many surnames that can only be explained by this genealogy (e.g., I have a DNA match on FTDNA named von Schantz, who can only be explained through the marriage of Christina Wilhelmina von Schantz (1787-1829) to Johan Fredrick du Rietz (1781-1857; the du Rietz line came from Walloon or French ancestors and had early married into the de Besche line). Also, as we'll see, my Walloon/Dutch ancestry through Sweden is definitely the link to most of my Dutch DNA matches rather than through my New Netherland ancestry.

De Geer is not an ancestor of mine, but as his daughter Ida (1616-1682) married Carl de Besche (1612-1681) (son of Willem de Besche), their descendants would be cousins. In any case, the point of this post is not my family tree, but rather to discover the earliest connections between my Dutch matches and me and hopefully to get some idea of who were possibly the common ancestors of my Dutch matches and me. All of my Dutch matches and myself may have only one common ancestor, or I may have several common ancesstors, each one the common ancestor to some of my matches but not others.

The emigrants from Liege, Limbur, Brabant, Flanders, Holland, etc. are not likely to be the common ancestors to any of my Dutch matches but rather descendants form one or more common ancestors. They are descendantss who emigrated to Scandinavia whose descandants include me and other Scandinvaians while other descedants remained in Liege, Limburg, Holland, etc. whose descendants are my Dutch DNA matches.

In most cases, the actual common ancestor may never be identified because of incompleteness of genealogical information. But even if none of them are identified, still in this post I'm identifying several of the emigrants who went to Sweden or the other countries.

For several of the Walloon/Dutch emigrants to Sweden, a good deal of information is available on the website adelsvapen.com. “Adelsvapen” means something like “noble coats of arms,” and the emigrants are listed on this website because many of them were ennobled in Sweden for their service to that country. Many were nobles in their original countries as well. Being ennobled in Sweden wasn't just a social formality, but also had privileges attached to it that could open certain economic opportunities.

Dutch Immigrant #1: De Geer

The adelsvapen website says of de Geer: “An ancient Brabantic family, branched out into the houses of Hamal, de Brialmont, and de Geer. The connection between these families, and the Swedish family De Geer's descent from the House of Hamal, as shown below according to the old pedigrees on the genealogies of the House of Nobility, cannot be corroborated and should be doubted. The first who can be established with somoe degree of certainty as the progenitor of the Swedish family is the following Lambert De Geer de Chainee, died 1399” (“De Geer No. 291” De Geer No. 291 - Coat of Arms of Nobility Wiki (adelsvapen.com) ).

The website then lists the following supposed ancestors of de Geer:

Adelsvapen has this to say about Louis de Geer: “lord of Finspångs bruk in Risinge parish and Godegåds bruk in the same parish both in Östergötland county...buried in the Walloon chruch in Dordrecht...Louis De Geer extended King Gustaf II Adolf considerable sums of money and other neccessities to the execution of he war against the enemies of the Reich. First introduced to the kingdom the correct art of casting pieces iron, etc. Incorporated and populated several towns and their mills with all sorts of foreign craftsmen especially in 1643 and 1650 a whole set of masons, smelters, coaters, hammersmiths and builders form the Walloon counry in Flanders. The kingdom earned special merit through the so-called Louis De Geer fleet, which he acquired in 1644 and which consisted of twenty-one Dutch merchant ships and which contributed to the great naval victory at Femmern. Stood in the esteem that chancellor Axel Oxtenstierna used his advice at the conclusion of the Brömsebro peace. Accused in 1648 by the bishop of Lindköping having held Calvinist services in his house in Norrköping, but such services were left without further charge....”

As the adelswapen site explained, the early ancestry of de Geer is uncertain. The genealogy given on the adelsvapen site is different in some places than that of the Geni.com tree, but both agree that his paternal line descended from the Hamal line. The Geni.com tree shows one of his lines as de Haneffe de Warfusee, going back to Eustache de Dammartin (1195-1229) and Berthe de Hochstaden, so that again the Wickrath-Hochstaden-von Ahr shows up as it did in the van Swalmen line (and also in the van Voeren line, which I haven't yet posted). The parents of Eustache de Dammartin were Otto de Dammartin (1145-1220) and Hazeca de Momalle (1155-). This couple was supposedly also the 5th-great-grandparents of Felicite d'Oupeye, making her and de Geer cousins. Also, one of de Geer's ancestors was supposedly Louis, Count of Loon (1107-1171); this was also supposedly an ancestor of Oda Berthout van Grimbergen (wife of Siger van Gent). None of this is impossible, but can probably never be proven.

Cousins of Descendants of Louis de Geer

I have one Swedish DNA match with a de Geer in his family tree as an ancestor. This Swedish DNA match s Leufvenmark 10.0, and he shows descent from Louis de Geer III (1622-1695) and Jeanne Parmentier (1634-1710),. Parmentier and her fathe rwere born in Utrecht and her family was possibly originally from Mons in Hainaut.

(With my Scandinavians DNA matches I include the number that is the total length of DNA I share with that match, such that with Leufvenmark 10.0 means that Leufvenmark and I share 10.0 cM of DNA. I do this only to provide a unique identifier for each of the hundreds of matches, since the Swedes used patronymics through the 1800's and there large numbers of surnames such as Olsson, Andersson, Jonsson, Eriksson, etc. This way there's little doubt that I have the correct person.)

Once again, to clarify. Leufvenmark is a DNA match to me and thus he is my (distant) cousin. This means that we share a common ancestor.

If the common ancestor that I share with Leufvenmark 10.0 wa Swedish, then it's quite unlikely that Leufvenmark 10.0 would share any Dutch matches with me. Furthermore, few if any of Leufvenmark's ancestors come from Värmland, so it's less likely that our common ancestor was Swedish.

Leufvenmark 10.0 is not herself a DNA match to any of my Dutch matches. As I've said, that's no surprise because even if two people share a common ancestor who was born in the 1500's or 1600's the odds are low that those two particular people would both share DNA from that common ancestor.

However, Leufvenmark 10.0 does have Scandinavian cousins who are also cousins to Scandinavian cousins to Dutch matches. What I did was went through all of Leufvenmark's Scandinvian shared matches and compared each one of those to the Scandinavian shared matches of each of my Dutch DNA matches. If the same Scandinavian match was on both Leufvenmark' list and the list of a Ducth matcch, then that was a cousin of a cousin match. Such a cousin-of-cousin match establishes a short, direct DNA link between Leufvenmark 10.0 and the Dutch match (and me). This limk implies a shared common ancestor for everyone involved, even if the amtches aren't triangulated.

With perfect genealogies for all of these people and to me it would probably be possible to identify our common ancestor, but perfect genealogies don't exist and that common ancestor probably lived quite far back in time. As it is, it's difficult to find a commonality between these Dutch matches. Swanpeoel is South African; his paternal line is Flemish. Beernaert is Belgian. The others are Dutch with various backgrounds and most have some German ancestry.

Another question to ask is who is the common ancestor between Leufvenmark and me? It can't be de Geer because I have no de Geer ancestors. It also can be de Besche or any of the other emigratnts to Sweden previously mentioned because none of them show as ancestors to the de Geers in Leufvenmark's family tree. But it must have been some immigrant to Sweden from either the Netherlands or Germany, and that person would likely have been a ancestor to the most recent of the de Geer line (because de Geer is the common factor of all the Dutch matches).

Here's a list of such potential ancestors of the most recent de Geer, Beata Sofia De Geer (1755-1787)) in Leufvenmark's family tree:

von Friesendorff Bremen, Germany 1500's

Kock Issigau, Germany 1620

de la Fosse Liege 1560

de Vivien Belgium 1521

de Malapert Mons, Hainaut 1480

de Glarges NA

Paul van Assendelft Den Haag 1654

Malapert

Malapert can be found in the Geni.com tree as well as in Leufvenmark's tree. In the Geni tree Malapert's ancestors include several generations of de Guines, going back to Arnould I de Guines (1095-1169), whose father was Wenemar I, Burggraf de Gent (1065-1120) and Gisela de Guines, daughter of Count Baudoin de Guines (1038-1094). With Arnould I, the Counts of Guines were thus van Gents (Wenemar and Gisela were Siger van Gent's 3^rd great-grandparents). Baldwin VI, Count of Flanders and Hainaut (1030-1070) and the counts before him are also in the Geni tree as ancestors.

De Glarges

The de Glarges in Leufvenmark's tree is not in the Geni.com tree, but a Gilles de Glarges (b. 1559 in Den Haag) is in the Geni.com tree and might be related. The mother of Gilles de Glarges was Hester Stael van Uitwijk (-1622), granddaughter of Jan van Schoonhoven (-1503) and Sophia van Uuytwijck) (Uitwijk). Schoonhoven is located 11 miles northwest of Arkel; Uitwijk is located just over a mile from the Brabant Rijswijk and Giessen; I've mentioned these in my post on the den Hartog families mentioned in H. den Hertog's genealogy. I've also mentioned Uitwijk in my post on NN van Beeck, wife of Seger Vosken van Swalmen when I hypothesized that Seger Vosken van Swalmen must have been married to a daughter of Sizeo van Beeck and Mette van Uitwijk. I've also hypothesized that the van Swalmen family descended from Siger van Gent and Oda Berthout van Grimbergen.

De la Fosse

The de la Fosse in Leufvenmark's tree is probably not in the Geni.com tree, but there is a Antoine de la Fosse, seigneur de Givency (-1550). De la Fosse's tree is not extensive, but nonetheless includes Lambrecht, Burggraf van Gent (1000-1034) and Hermengarde van Flanders, the daughter of Baldwin IV of Flanders (980-1035). This couple was supposedly Siger van Gent's 6^th great-grandparents. It also includes Baldwin IV, Count of Flanders and his mother Rozala of Italy (who are also in Malapert's tree). Also Boudiwijn I van Gent, heer van Aalst (1042-1092). Also Oda Berthout van Grimbergen's ancesttors Gerard II Berthout van Grimbergen and his van Grimbergen and van Loon ancestors (as with Assendelft below).

van Assendelft

The most recent van Assendelft in Leufvenmark's family tree is Jacqueline van Assendelft (1682-1754) who married Johan Jacob de Geer (1666-1738). Thus, any of Jacqueline van Assendelft's ancestors could have potentially passed down DNA to Leufvenmark. Jacqueline van Assendelft is in the Geni.com family tree and her family tree there is more extensive than in Leufvenmark's family tree.

The following potentially relevant individuals were in the Geni tree as ancestors of Jacqueline van Assendelft:

Bertha Jansdr van Zijderveld (~1600?). I only included her because of the close geographical proximity of Zijderveld to Middelkoop (5.5 miles) and Hei- en Boeicop (4.5 miles), the hometowns of many of the Swaim/den Hartog family.

Jan Willem van Gent (1260 Capelle-after 1290 Strijen) and descendants who used the name van der Zijdwinden. I mentioned this “Zijdewind van Gent” line in my 24 January 2023 post as one I know essentially nothing about.

Arnould van Gand, heer van Guines (1124-1169).

Goswin I van Born (1113-1167)

Cysoing/Peteghem, de Mortagne (1003-). I mention this because this de Montagne might be related to Maria de Montagne (1440 Liege – 1550) married to Hendrik de Besche (1445 Liege), grandparents of Willem de Besche.

Lodewijk Praet van Randerode, lord of Boxtel (1204-)

Ogier van Cralingen (1278-1299. Dirk de Visscher was possibly the father of Jan Sweyn Dircx who in 1390 lived in Bulgersteyn castle in Rotterdam. Dirk de Visscher's second marriage was to a woman named Hildegond, which Moquette believed was the daughter of Ogier van Cralingen. The Ogier van Cralingen (1278-1299) here was the grandfather of the Ogier van Cralingen (1332-1398) who was the father of Hildegonde. Dirk and Hildegonde's daufhter was Rikarde de Visscher. See 24 December 2021 post.

Jacob III van Mirlaer (155-1309): Grandfather of Jacob van Mirlaer who was husband of Guda van Swalmen.

Wouter I Berthout van Grimbergen (1054-): Oda Berthout van Grimbergen's 4^th great-grandfather.

Cornelia Spronck van der Leede, the wife of Hendrik Claes Persijn (1423-1473). “Spronck” is not a given name but part of the full surname. I can't determine if Spronk van der Leede is rrelated to Spronck van den Werve, but it's possible. What little information exists on Spronck van der Leede indicates that the family live in 's-Gravenzande, which is less than 9 miles from Rijswijk in Holland, where Spronck van de Werve

Conclusion of Cousins-of-Cousins Matches of de Geer Descendant Leufvenmark

Leufvenmark 10.0 from Sweden is a direct descendant of Louis de Geer. Leufvenmark 10.0 is my cousin, but she isn't a cousin of any of my Dutch DNA matches. However, 10 of my Dutch matches are cousins to Scandinavians who are cousins to Leufvenmark 10.0. Given the distance to Scandinavia from the Netherlands and the time, effort and expense travel between the two countries took in the 1600's and before, the only plausible way that my Dutch DNA matches would have cousins who are also cousins to Leufvenmark is if a common ancestor of Leufvenmark, the Scandinavian shared matches, and the Dutch matches would be if that common ancestor (or more likely a descendant of that common ancestor) had emigrated from Holland, Flanders, Liege, Hainaut, etc. and relocated in Sweden (in this case, a later descendant must have moved to Norway as 4 of the 10 shared matches live in Norway).

Louis de Geer himself didn't move permanently to Sweden, but some members of the de Geer line did, and it's possible that these are the source of the shared DNA. For example, if it's true that de Geer and Felicite d'Oupeye shared common ancestors in Otto de Dammartin de Warfusee and Hazeca de Momalle, it's possible that the common DNA is form one of them.

But it's also possible that the common DNA is from one of the Dutch or Walloon ancestors of the Beata Sofia de Geer, the most recent de Geer in Leufvenmark's family tree. Of the 4 of those ancestors we looked at, 3 have ancestors who were from the van Gent family and two had ancestors linked with the van Swalmen family. My intention regarding this post was never to look for evidence of any of my hypotheses regarding the origin of the Swaim/den Hartog paternal line, but as we'll see, Leufvenmark is not the only potential connection to the van Gent family to come from this research. However, this study of the Scandinavian cousins of my Dutch DNA matches shouldn't be confused with my research into the origin of the Swaim/den Hartog paternal lineage. These are two different things and are not necessarily related as that paternal line is just one of many potential lines that may have been the common ancestors of my Dutch matches, myself, and our common Scandinavian matches.

Dutch Immigrant (group) #2:

Snoyens, Zibrechts, Alewyns, van Wissenborch

One of my 9^th great-grandmothers was Sara Margareta Pemer (1641-1689), born in Lindesberg Sweden. Her husband (and my 8^th great-grandfather) was Jean Frumerie (1634-1689), mayor of Lindesberg but born in Leiden. The Frumerie family also has a branch in the Netherlands spelled Fremery, and I'll discuss that in the next section. However, Sara Pemer herself had ancestors from Antwerp and her siblings had ancestors named van Gent, so we need to analyze that group as possible descendants of the common ancestors of the Dutch matches and Scandinavian matches.

Sara Pemer's parents were Nicolaus Pamer [III] (1608-1687) and Christina Erichsdotter. Nicolaus Pemer [III] immigrated to Sweden from Augsburg, Germany.

Nicolaus Pemer [III]'s father was Daniel Pemer (1569 Augsburg -1632 Augsburg) and his mother was Sara Snoyens (1573-1620) who was born in Antwerp and died in Augsburg. All four of Sara Snoyens' grandparents were born in Antwerp in the early 1500's before the rise of Protestantism in the region and the subsequent mass migrations consequential to that, and so we can assume her earlier ancestry was probably strongly from Antwerp. Nicolaus Pemer [III]'s grandparents were:

Willem Snoyen Antwerp 1500

Elisabeth Zibrecht Antwerp 1500

Cornelia Alewyns Antwerp 1502

Cornelia van Wissenborch Antwerp 1510 

As usual, there are variations on the above names and dates, and I can't find any citation to a primary source for any of these people, so this information is tentative.

Nicolaus Pemer [III] emigrated to Sweden, working first as a mill manager and then in Arboga (90 miles west of Stockholm) as a merchant. He had children by two wives:

(1) Christina Erichsdotter

Elisabeth (1640-1703). Married to (1) Peter van Gent (-1682) (2) Johan Ahlmann

Sara (1641-1689). Married Jean de Frumerie, mayor of Nora and Lindesberg (my 9^th GGM)

Nicolaus [IV] (1642-1698). Married (1) Christina Dreglich (8 children) (2) Brita Mickelsdotter Lindberg (5 children)

(2) Euphrosina Welamsdotter Petre

Johan

Euphrosina Christina

Robert (1674-1706)

There appears to be no information on his first wife, Christina Erichsdotter. Her father was named Erich or Erik, so he could have been either Swedish or German.

His second wife, Euphrosius Welamsdotter Petre, was Scottish on her father's side.

We'll first look at the descendants of Nicolaus Pemer and Christina Erichsdotter

Descendants of Nicolaus Pemer [III] and Christina Erichsdotter

Sara Pemer (1641-1689)

Sara Pemer was my 9^th great-grandmother. She married Jean de Frumerie, an emigrant from Leiden, Holland. The adelsvapen website (De Frumerie nr 1568 - Coat of arms Wiki (adelsvapen.com)) says that Jean Frumerie's father Martin “Lived from at least 1616 in Leiden (Leyden) in what is now the Netherlands, where he is mentioned in church records interchangeably with the name forms Fremery, Framerie, de la Framerie and Delaframerie. Contracted 19/7 1635 by Louis de Geer as a Reformed preacher and schoolteacher at Finspång's mill for the Walloon mill population, and then signed his name with the spelling Frumerie, which for the Swedish family has always been considered the correct one (the name is pronounced by the family itself since long Frumm'eri, ie with emphasis on the first syllable).” The adelsvapen website also says that Sara's half brother Abraham may hae remained in Leiden while the rest of the family moved to Sweden.

Thus it appears that the Frumerie family in Sweden is a branch of the de Fremery family in the Netherlands. The name of the family indicates that it was originally Walloon or French, probably from the city of Fremery in France, which is located 23 miles southeast of Metz and 37 miles southwest of Saarbrücken).

Interestingly, in 1849 James de Fremery (1826-1899) of the Netherlands branch must have emigrated to San Francisco, California, during the “Gold Rush” where he was a merchant and founder of the Savings Union Bank of San Francisco, which later became the bank Wells Fargo. It's not likely that there was a second de Fremery family in Holland, so James de Fremery was probably related to the Swedish Frumerie family. 

I'm going to discuss the Frumerie family in its own section, but it should be remembered that since since Jean Frumerie married Sara Pemer, their descendants would be descendants of the Snoyens Antwerp families as well as probably having cousins in the Netherlands through the Frumerie-de Fremery connection.

Elisabeth Pemer (1640-1703)

Although Elisabeth Pemer was married twice, neither the adelsvapen website nor the Geni.com family tree shows that she had any children. Both of her husbands are described in the adelvapen site as being merchantss in Arboga. Elisabeth Pemer's first husbant was Peter van Gent (-1652 and her second husband was Johan Ahlmann. Her first husband, Peter van Gent, was obviously Dutch rather than Swedish or German, but because it appears that he and Elisabeth Pemer had no children, for genealogical purposes their marriage is unimportant.

Nicolaus [IV] Pemer (1642-1698)

Nicolaus Pemer, son of Nicolaus Pemer, was a mill manager in Ljusnarsberg, Sweden. He was married twice and had children by both marriages:

The children listed in bold type are those who are shown of the Geni.com website to have had children and who therefore potentially have descendants living today who potentially have DNA from Nicolaus [IV] Pemer's grandmother Sarah Snoyens from Antwerp.

However, besides Snoyens there is also another potential source of DNA from Holland/Flanders in the descendants of Nicolaus Pemer's 2^nd wife Brita Mickelsdotter Lindberg. The father of Brita Mickelsdotter Lindberg is described by the adelsvapen website as a “mountain man” nicknamed “Laxbro-Mickel,” his true name being Mickel Hindersson Lindberg. He was probably ethnically Swedish, but his wife (and Brita Mickelsdotter Lindberg's mother) was Maria van Gent (1642-1712), the sister of the Peter van Gent who was married to Nicolaus' sister Elisabeth.

Peter and Maria van Gent

Although I've known for a few years that Frumerie and Pemer were my ancestors through my mother's Swedish ancestry, I didn't know about this van Gent connection until just recently. These van Gents are not my direct ancestors, but their descendants are cousins and could thus be the common ancestors of some of my Dutch matches and me--but only if I have van Gent ancestry on my father's side (since I'm pretty certain I don't have it on my mother's side). At this point this is just speculation, and it certainly supports my pet hypotheses regarding the Swaim/den Hartog paternal ancestry. But, again, this post isn't about the Swaim/den Hartog paternal line except to the extent that it turns out that the van Gent line were ancestors to both my Dutch DNA matches and myself. I don't know that for certain, so at this point the van Gent line is just another possible source of common ancestry.  

The adelsvapen website has no information on the ancestry of Peter and Maria van Gent of Arboga, but the Geni.com website does show an ancestry for them. No primary source is cited, and the one secondary source provided for Johan, the father of Peter and Maria, is a family tree without primary source citations, so this ancestry is questionable. Keeping that in mind, the following is taken from this unsourced family tree.

No place or date of birth for Peter van Gent is provided. His sister Maria was born 1642 in Ljusnarberg in Örebro county and died 1712 in Stockholm. It's probable that Peter van Gent was also born in Sweden, but if he was older than Maria it's possible that he was born in Holland.

The father of Peter and Maria was Jan (Johan) van Gent, born 1604 in Amsterdam and died 1645 presumably in Sweden. In the “Overview” tab of his Geni entry someone in 2022 added a comment in Finnish that Google Translate translated as “Started building a blast furnace on the Ålshult estate in Småland in 1634, after his death his widow is said to have continued to run the factory.” The source of this information is not cited but probably comes from Swedish documents and is probably accurate. If so, then Johan van Gent and probably his wife had moved to Sweden by at least 1634 and their children were probably born in Sweden.

Johan van Gent's wife (and the mother of Peter and Maria van Gent) was Bartha Jacobs de Cocq, date of birth unknown, place of birth Amsterdam. She died in 1679 in Arboga, which was about 34 years after Johan had died. The Geni tree says that she had also been married to a man named Christopher Klatt, which marriage was presumably after her marriage to van Gent. A brief note in Finnish was added to Bartha's Geni page: “Bartha had one of the farms owned by Axel Oxenstierna in Småland in 1647. In 1656 she is mentioned as a widow and the owner of the (Klockhammar) ironworks in Närke Kil.” This information also appears genuine and is interesting because it indicates that Bartha van Gent may have known Louis de Geer, whose Wikipedia page indicates that de Geer was quite familiar with Axel Oxensiterna. According to the Wikipedia entry “Axel Oxenstierna”, Oxenstierna was Count of Södermöre and a Swedish statesman who was a member of the Swedish Privy Council, High Chancellor of Sweden, and confidant of King Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina. “Oxenstierna is widely considered as one of the most influential people in Swedish history.”

Johan van Gent's parents are given as Arent van Gent (1568 Amsterdam-1625 Amsterdam) and Maria Jansdr van Binckhorst (1578 Leiden-).

Binckhorst is a neighborhood in Den Haag about 3 miles from Rijswijk and was named after the Castle Binkhorst. The Castel Binckhorst was owned by various families after its founding at least by 1308. The Wikipedia article on Binckhorst Castle says that “The longest inhabited period is from 1563-1678, when the Flemish knight Willem Snouckaert and his descendants lived there. Willem Snouckaert (1518-1565) was Council-extraordinaris (unpaid councillor) at the Court of Holland and administrator of the imperial Library of Emperor Charles V. After the death of William Snouckaert, Martin Snourckaert van Schauberg came into the possession of De Binckhorst in 1565. In 1565 he donated the knight's court town to his brother Jacob Snouckaert van Binckhorst. With him begins the branch Snouckaert van Binckhorst. After his death, De Binckhorst passed to his son Jacob Snouckaert van Binckhorst (1548-1617)....The line then passed to his son Jacob and then to two more successive Jacobs from the same branch (1575-1678).” (Binckhorst Castle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ).

Maria Jans van Binckhorst, the wife of Arent van Gent, was born in 1578, when Binckhorst was owned by the first Jacob Snouckaert van Binckhorst. Probably her father Jan was a brother of Jacob. The Geni.com family tree says that the “Martin Snouckaert van Schauberg” who owned Binckhorst from 1565 was the son of another Maarten and that Willem was his brother. This other Maarten is named as “Maarten Waerschoot, Hansbeke, en van Zomerghem (1486-1533), married to Livine Bennings (1510-). Waerschoot, Hansbeke and Zomerghem are all located just west of Ghent, Hansbeke being 10 miles from Ghent. Thus both of Johan van Gent's parents were not only from Flanders, but from the immediate region of Ghent.

Arent van Gent's parents were Hendrik van Gent (1543 Amsterdam-) and Meijnsje Foppes (1547-) daughter of Capitayn Poppa (or Foppe) Zybrantsz (~1520?-) and Reysink Jans de Wael (-1567). Jan de Wael was supposedly born in Amsterdam, which probably would have been in the late 1400's or very early 1500's.

Hendrik van Gent's father was Arent Huijsman, who was married to Lysbeth van Gent, the daughter of Pieter Switters Ghent (about 1537) and Griet NN. Thus, if this genealogy is accurate, the paternal line of Peter and Maria van Gent from Arboga Sweden is not van Gent, but Huijsman; it appears that Arent Huijsman's son went by the surname van Gent in preference to Huijsman, probably because that name's cachet. Descendants would of course still have autosomal van Gent DNA through Hendrik's wife Lysbeth van Gent.

The paternal line doesn't go beyond Arent Huijsman, but the maternal line goes a couple more generation to Pieter Ghent, born about 1400. It's possible that Pieter Ghent was simply from Ghent rather than being from the noble family of that name. However, considering the social standing of the families with which his descendants intermarried, it seems likely that he was from the noble van Gents. That paternal line since the 1100's had actually been the "van Viggzele" line. Since then, the van Gent paternal line established by Steppo van Viggezele; previously to that it had been the Folkard van Gent line, of which Steppo's wife Alix was a member. 

Judith Sweers Redux

Interestingly, according to the Geni.com family tree there's a connection between the van Binckhorst family and the family of Judith Sweers from Holland who emigrated to Norway and who according to the Geni.com family tree was a descendant of Dirck van Oist and Felicite d'Oupeye (as discussed in my 24 January 2023 post). A son of the just-mentioned Maarten, himself also named Maarten Snouckaert van Schauberg (1568-1635), married Susanna Jacobsdr Hoefnagel. One of Susanna's sisters, Catharina Hoefnagel (1556-), married Jacob Phillip Sweerts (1550-1629).

Jacob Phillip Sweerts was a 1^st cousin of Jan Sweers (1540-) (through their grandparents Phillipus Sweers (1465-1515) and Marie Phillips van Geldrop (1475-1544)), and Jan Sweerrs was the great-grandfather of Judith Sweers (1633-1669). Judith Sweers married Ahasverus de Crequi dit la Roche (1620-1678). Judith Sweers was born in Amsterdam and emigrated to Norway. Ahasverus de Crequi di la Roche was born in Den Haag and died in Marstrand, Sweden.

Also, if the Geni.com tree is correct, Ahasverus de Crequi dit la Roche was a descendant of Wouter III van Berthout Mechelen Grimbergen (1118-1201) and Sophie van Loon (1124-1180), which if true would have made him a distant cousin of Oda van Grimbergen.

The connection between Judith Sweers and Peter van Gent is social (through marriage) rather than genetic, but it indicates at least that the families were on the same social level at that time and would most likely have at least been aware of the existence of each other.

One of Judith Sweers' first cousins was named Catharina Sweers (1663-1745)(daughter of Salomon Sweers (1611-1674) and Elisabeth Bicker (1631-1666). One of Catharina Sweers' two husbands was Jacobus de Fremery (1697-1765); they had 2 sons, but the Geni tree doesn't go farther down than that. The tree does go up a few generations to Pierre de Fremery (1555 Valenciennes, Nord, France -) but doesn't show a connection to the de Frumerie line that emigrated to Sweden.

Descendants of Maria van Gent and Mickel Hindersson Lindberg: Cousins-of-Cousins

All of the descendants of Maria van Gent will of course have had, or in later generations potentially have had, van Gent DNA from Maria van Gent's family. Since Maria van Gent's daughter Brita married Nicolaus Pemer IV, their children would have had both van Gent DNA and DNA from the Snoyens Antwerp group through the Pemer line. We'll look at their descendants later.

First we'll look at the descendants of Maria van Gent's daughter Beata Mickelsdotter Lindberg. Beata was Brita's sister, but her descendants wouldn't have DNA from the Snoyens Antwerp group because she had no genetic connection to Nicolaus Pemer, who was her brother-in-law.

The Geni.com family tree has an extensive descendancy for Maria van Gent and Mickel Hindersson Lindberg (in the Geni tree he's called Mikael Hindersson (1620-1689). One of the lines from Maria van Gent though her daughter Beata went as follows:

Maria van Gent m. Mikael Hindersson (Lindberg)

Beata Michelsdotter Lindberg (1660-1694) m. Claes Wije (-1716)

Maria Wije (1680-1705) m. Sven Svensson Westerman (1673-1716)

Beata Westerman (1702-1761) m. Nils Gabrielsson Kekonius (1695-1768)(Finland)

Lars Abraham Nilsson Kekonius (1727-1789) m. Hedvig Forsen (1746-1782)

Nils Gabrielsson Kekonius was Finnish, and this line moved from Sweden to Finland with the marriage of Beata Westerman to Kekonius. 

When I searched on MyHeritage for DNA matches with the name Kekonius in their family trees, I had one result, a Finn with the surname Härkönen (Härkönen 13.7). In his family tree Härkönen has Lars Abraham Nilsson Kekonius and Hedvig Forsen as 3^rd great-grandparents. This means that Härkönen is a descendant of maria van Gent and potentially has van Gent DNA.

If any of my Dutch DNA matches (cousins) are also cousins to c, then our common ancestor must be a member of one of the Pemer/de Frumerie lines we've just looked at, possibly Maria van Gent or one of her ancestors. But as it turns out, none of my Dutch DNA matches are matches to Härkönen. This isn't surprising, as four centuries have passed since Maria van Gent's birth, or about 16 generations, and her autosomal DNA would have been cut roughly in half at each generation. leaving very few segments for her present-day descendants. There will still likely be many of her descendants with identifiable DNA they inherited from her, but the probability is low at any single descendant will have any identifiable DNA from her.

The cousins-of-cousins method can be used to identify some of those descendants who did inherit DNA from Maria van Gent (or from whoever was the actual common ancestor). Although none of my Dutch DNA matches (cousins) is a match to Härkönen, some of their cousins might be matches to him. And if a Scandinavian DNA match of mine is also a match to Härkönen, it is likely that it was through the "Maria van Gent" connection because I likely have no connection to Härkönen except through a descendant of "Maria van Gent." 

So what I did was to check hundreds of cousins I have in common with Härkönen, most of whom have Finnish names, and identified those who were also cousins to one or more of my Dutch DNA matches. 

Here are the cousins of cousins that I've found for Härkönen and the Dutch DNA match listed (as well as of myself):

Here's an alphabetical list of the above Dutch matches who have cousins who are cousins to Härkönen:

The names in bold are Dutch matches with Finnish ancestry. Out of 20 Dutch matches, only 5 have Finnish ancestry. This means that he other 15 Dutch matches are probably cousins to (mostly) Finnish matches through some ancestor from the Low Countries who emigrated to Scandinavia.

Descedants of Nicholaus Pemer's Antwerp Ancestors

To review, Nicolaus Pemer [III] emigrated to Sweden from Augsburg and had children by two wives:

We haven't yet examined descendants of Pemer, but rather only descendants of Catharina Mickelsdotter Lindberg, the sister of Nicolaus Pemer's 2^nd wife Brita Mickelsdotter Lindberg. We looked at Catharina Lindberg's descendants because her mother was Maria van Gent, but although both Peter van Gent and Maria van Gent had married Pemers, neither apparently had children by them.

We still need to look at Sara Pemer, who married Jean de Frumerie, whose descendants would therefore have both Pemer (and thus Antwerp) and de Frumerie DNA.

We also still need to look at the descendants of Nicolaus Pemer [III] and his 2^nd wife Euphorsina Welamsdotter Petre. The ancestry of Euphrosina Welmsdotter Petre is not provided in the adelswapen website but the Geni.com family tree shows a Wilhelm Petrie (Petre) (1598-1665) who was almost certainly her father. Wilhelm was born in Montrose, Angus, Scotland, son of George Petrie, mayor of Montrose. In the Geni tree Wilhelm Petrie's place of death is not given, but the name Wilhelm indicates that it was probably in Scandinavia. This is supported by the fact that the children of his brother George Petre are all shown to have died in Sweden and were married to Swedes (the name Petrie appears in Sweden to be spelled as Petre). Another brother of Wilhem and George was Robert Petrie, who is shown to have died in Arboga Sweden, and his children were married to Swedes and died in Sweden. Since Arboga is the known location of the Pemer family, it seems certain that Euphrosina Welamsdotter Petre was a member of this family and most likely a daughter of William Petrie. Wiliam's brother Robert also had a daughter named “Euphrosyne,” so the fact that this unusual name was also used elsewhere in this family also supports the identity of this family as the correct family.

Pemers in the Family Trees of My Swedish DNA Matches

I have two Swedish DNA matches with the Pemer line in their trees:

(1) Bergström 24.9

(2) Dalberg 14.4

Bergström 24.9

The person named as “<private> PEMER” is Nicolaus Pemer III (1608-1687). Bergström's tree agrees with the Geni.com tree in that it shows Pemer's mother's grandparents were Willem Snoyen, Elisabeth Zibrechts, Jan Alewijns and Cornelia van Wissen Borah.

I have no Dutch DNA matches who are also DNA matches to Bergström 24.9 herself.

However, there are many Dtuch DNA matches who are also cousins to Scandinavian cousins of Bergström:

Presented in alphabetical order, these 24 unique Dutch matches are:

However, this list is not comprehensive as time constraints prevented me from checking every Scandinavian DNA match of Bergström.

Dahlberg 14.4

The Pemer line in Dahlberg's family tree goes back only to Robert Pemer (1674-1706). However, we know from the adelswapen website that Robert Pemer was a son of Nicolaus Pemer, but through his second wife Euphrosina Welamsdotter Petre rather than through his first wife Christina Erichsdotter.

There are no Dutch matches who are matches to Dahlberg 14.4 himself.

The following Dutch matches are cousins to Scandinavian cousins of Dahlberg 14.4:

The Dutch DNA matches here are:

Again, his list not comprehensive.

Here's a combined list of my Dutch DNA matches who are also matches to Bergström 24.9 or Dahlberg 14.4, both of whom are descendants of Pemer:

This is 30 Dutch matches out of the approximately 100 Dutch matches I included in this research.

                                                          Snoyen/Snoy/Sonoy

 Presumably the common ancestors of these Dutch matches and the Scandinavian matches and myself are one or more of Pemer's ancestors Willem Snoyen, Elisabeth Zibrecht, Jan Alewyns and Cornelia Wissenborch (however, we can't exclude the possibility that this is actually tracking some other common ancestor such as Maria van Gent of Arboga, as her descendants would also be descendants of Pemer). 

There is no information on Ancestry, Geni or the adelsvapen websites on the ancestry of these four Antwerp great-grandparents of Pemer through his mother Sara Snoyens. At first it seemed as if there was nothing on any of them, but then I came across a reference in a website from the Zwolle archives to the knight Gerard Snoyen, mentioned in 1337-1338 in reference to tthe Hof te Fleringen apparently owned by the van Vlederingen family. But Fleringen is near Tubbergen in Overijsssel, nowhere near Antwerp (Archieven.nl - 1. History of the havezate Herinckhave (Collection Overijssel location Zwolle) ).

Still, I searched the Geni.com tree and then found in the Dutch Wikipedia site the article “Snoy” about “a noble Belgian family.” But, as it turns out, the Snoy family actually came from the Sticht Utrecht, and historically Overijssel was part of the Utrecht Oversticht, which was the huge area to the east owned by Utrecht, including Fleringen. I don't know if the 1337 knight Gerard Snoyen was an ancestor of this Snoy family, but my guess is that he was.

The Wikipedia article says that Renier Snoy (1490-1534) was ambassador of Charles V to Scotland and Denmark.” So already we have a connection to both Scotland and to Denmark, which until 1523 was part of the Kalmar Union that united all of the Scandinavian countries. Recall that Nicolaus Pemer [III] had emigrated to Sweden by 1634 and that his second wife was Euphrosina Petre, who was almost certainly from the Scottish Petre family.

Then during the Eighty Years' War the Snoy family was divided in their political/religious loyalties. There were two brothers, Diederick (Dirk) Snoy and Josse Snoy: Dirk Snoy became a Calvinist and Water Geuzen (Sea Beggar) fighting Spanish rule in the Netherlands while Josse Snoy remained a Catholic and moved to Mechelen in Brabant.

Dirk Snoy, also spelled Sonoy, “was a son of Lambrecht Snoy (1485-1529)...and of Emerantiana Pauw van Darthuizen (1510-1550.” (Diederik Sonoy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ). Dirk Snoy was “bequeathed the estate Sniddelaar in Leusden”; Leusden is just southeast of Amersfoort. Snoy was stadholder of Enkhuizen and governor of the Noordkwartier, and in 1573 with the sea beggars flooded the surroundings of Alkmaar, ending the Spanish siege of Alkmaar. He also “conducted a reign of terror against Catholics in which he was responsible for the deaths of, among others, the martyrs of Alkmaar and the martyrs of Ransdorp.”

Meanwhile the Catholic branch of the Snoy family were in the 1600's knighted and then made barons, and Josse Snoy's son Phillips was lord of Poederlee and Oppuurs. Oppuurs is “a village in the Belgian province of Antwerp,” and is located 3 miles south of Bornem; Bornem had been for a few generations the possession of the van Gent family, including Steppo van Viggezele. This could be a coincidence, but if so consider the further coincidence that Sara Snoyen, married to Daniel Pemer, had a granddaughter who married Peter van Gent and a grandson who married the daughter of Maria van Gent.

The Snoyen line leading to Sara Snoyen starts with Willem Snoyen, born about 1500 in Antwerp. He married Elisabeth Zibrechts and they're shown with one child named Guillelm Snoyen (-1579). Guillelm married Cornelia Alewyn(s) and their one child was Sara Snoyen. This looks like a partial line as it has 3 generations with one one child each generation, which is unlikely. This partial line is not reflected in the Geni.com family tree, but that tree may also be partial as it shows that Diederik van Snoyen (Snoede/Sonoy) (-1507) and his wife Margareta van Drakenburg (-1546) had only one child named Lambrecht van Sonoye van Sniddelaer (~1485-1529).

When I first looked at the family in the Geni.com tree I wasn't convinced that this Snoy family was the same family as the Snoyen lline that married into the Pemer line in Sweden. However, the family did have one branch in or near Antwerp, from which Sara Snoyens supposedy came, and one branch in Utrecht. I just demonstrated through the cousins-of-cousins connections that a large percentage of my Dutch DNA matches have Scandinavian cousins who are cousins to two Swedes who are descendants of Sara Snoyen. Thus, many of these Dutch DNA matches could be related to the Utrecht Snoy line, while Sara Snoyen came from the Antwerp Snoy line.

The Dirk van Snoy/Sonoy (the “Sea Beggar”) mentioned above had married and had children with Maria van Malsen (1535-1584). As it turns out, Maria van Malsen's father was Otto van Malsen (1494-1558) and her mother was Margaretha Splinter. Otto van Malsen's parents were Adam van Malsen and Josina van de Poll.

This is extremely interesting because in my post of 5 May 2022 I'd discussed this Adam van Malsen as being the same Adam van Malssen who inherited property along with Jacob Willem Ottens, son of Willem Ottens, progenitor of the Swaim/den Hartog lineage. And now here it turns out that the granddaughter of Adam van Malsen had married Dirk Snoy, a person whom I found by looking for one my “Swedish” 10^th great-grandmothers! Such an unexpected coincidence is probably not a coincidence.

And it gets even more interesting because when we go to the Antwerp side of the family, to Josse/Joost van Snoy who remained Catholic, we find that he had married a woman named Walburg van der Aa (-1621). Walburg van der Aa had a second husband named Simon II van de Werve, Marquis de Antwerpen (-1621). And who were the great grandparents of Simon II van de Werve: Pieter van de Werve (-1505) and Catharina d'Herbais (1435-). And the parents of Catharina d'Herbais were Simon IV Dammartin d'Herbais (1400-1478) and Catharina de Hertoghe, Vrouwe van Duyst (1410-1467).

In my 24 February 2023 post I speculated that Catharina de Hertoghe was the wife of Otto Gerrits van Oist, and that they were the parents of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens, Willem Ottens being the progenitor of the Swaim/den Hartog lineage.

So now we have yet another connection from Snoy/Snoyen to another family group that I'd speculated was related to the Swaim/den Hartog line.

There are problems with this connection, however. First, there's no indication that the Pemer's Snoyen ancestors were actually from the Snoy family. The information on the Snoyen line from Ancestry.com come from Swedish users who didn't document their sources. Assuming the correctness of the information, the first known Snoyen, Willem Snoyen, came from Antwerp in 1500. But the Snoy family doesn't seem to have had ties with Antwerp until after the rise of Calvinism and the splitting of the family between the Calvinist branch that remained in Holland/Utreecht (Dirk Snoy b. 1529) and the Catholic branch that moved south into Brabant (Joost/Josse Snoy, b. ?). However, it's quite possible that the Ancestry.com information is simply wrong, and that there was a third brother named Willem who moved to Brabant/Antwerp with his brother Joost, and that his granddaughter Sara chose Protestantism. Sara Snoyen married Daniel Pemer in Augsburg, but what was she doing in Augsburg? Augsburg since 1276 been a free imperial city, and since 1530 had been Lutheran, and since 1555 the majority Lutherans and minority Catholics had lived at peace in Augusburg. Augsburg at this time was also one of Germany's most important cities a major international trading city. Antwerp was also a major trading city and it's likely that Sara Snoyen ended up in Augsburg because her father had moved there for business reasons—although this is just a guess. But once there she married Daniel Pemer and perhaps then converted to Lutheranism. When Daniel Pemer and Sara Snoyen were young, Augusburg suffered plague epidemics followed by inflation and “brutal witch hunts in urban areas.” (Wikipedia “Augsburg”). Then the brutal Thirty Years' War again threw Augsburg into chaos. In 1632 the Lutheran Swedish army occupied Augsburg, but was defeated two years later in 01634, although the Swedish army refused to surrender Augsburg and Catholic troops beseiged the city. During the winter siege the population of Augsburg fell from 70,000 to about 16,000 as the result of disease and starvation. Sara Snoyen had supposedly died in 1620 and Daniel Pemer in 1632. It's unknown when Daniel Pemer's son Nicolaus left Augsburg and moved to Sweden, but it was probably after his father's death but before the siege of Augsburg.

Because both Catharina de Hertoghe's descendants and the descendants of Adam van Malsen (somehow related to Jacob Willem Ottens) do connect to the Snoy family, this does increase the chances that the Snoyen family of Antwerp was in fact related to the Snoy family of Utrecht and Brabant (both Poederlee and Oppuurs lare today within the Belgian province of Antewrp and may have been part of Antwerp in the 1600's). If the two names Snoy and Snoyen are simply coincidental and unconnected, then it's a huge coincidence that two lines potentially connected with the Swaim/den Hartog paternal line led down to Snoy.

But even though these two lines lead down to Snoy, neither appears to be genetically connected to Snoy. This could be due to the family trees being incomplete or incorrect, but even if it's true it still shows a social (marital) connection between the lines.

Van Malsen Connection

H. den Hertog (GENEALOGIE HERTOCH VAN DE FAMILIE (den hertog) (3).pdf ) provided the details of the division of property in an inheritance provided by the will of Odt Pollen on either his death or the death of his wife Mari NN. The land involved was four parcels of land totaling just over 30 morgen of land; the land was located in the Middelkoop-Leerbroek ara.

There were two parties to the inheritance:

Party 1: Odt van Malsen and Adam van Malsen

Party 2: Hugh Willemsen, Jacop Willemsen, and the mninor children the deceased Tylman             Janssen.

In the division of land, the van Malsen family received half the land, the Willemsens received 2/3 or the remaining half, and the children of Tylman Janssen received 1/3 of the remaining half. Alternatively, it might have meant that the two Willemsens received half of this half and Tylman Janssen's children the other half.

(H. den Hertog is saying that Jacop Willemsen here is Jacob Willem Ottens, which makes sense because his “official” or traditional patronym would be “Willemsen” rather than the double patronym “Willem Ottens” favored by Jacob and his brother Claes. But who is Hugh Willemsen? Hugh/Huych Willemsen is mentioned a few times in H. den Hertog's genealogy but H. den Hertog apparently doesn't consider him a son of Willem Ottens, although I think he must be since in this inheritance his's listed with Jacob Willemsen (Willem Ottens).)

Adam van Malsen's father and a son were both named Odt, but the Odt mentioned in this inheritance has to be the son. Half the inheritance went to Adam and his son, and the other half was divided between two Willemsens and Tyleman Janssen (but since Tyleman is dead, to his children).

H. den Hertog speculates that Jacob Willem Ottens' first marriage was to a daughter of Odt Pollen (Gijsbertsen) and Mari. This would explain why 2/3 (or ½) of half the estate went to the Willemsens.

But why did half the estate go to Adam van Malsen? My guess is that Odt Pollen and Mari had daughters and no sons, probably 3 or 4 daughters, and that they were married to Adam van Malsen, Jacob Willems, possibly Hugh Willems, and Tyleman Janssen. The oldest daughter was married to Adam van Malsen and received the largest share.

If the above situation was true, at least in that both Adam van Malsen and Jacob Willem Ottens had married a daughter of Odt Pollen and Mari, then their chilren would be first cousins through Pollen and Mari. This would mean that their descendants in the early generations would certainly inherit some “Pollen” and/or “Mari” DNA, in descendants in later generations might inherit that DNA down to the present day. That “Pollen” and “Mari” DNA would include that of their recent ancestors and potentially that of their more distant ancestors, but of course since we don't know who they were we can't look for their DNA in anyone alive today.

Unfortunately the identities of Odt Pollen and Mari are not clear. With only the name Mari, her ancestry is simply unknown. For Odt Pollen we have a bit more information. “De Navorscher” 1868 says that Adam van Malsen had married Josina van de Poll. Thus, it appears that Odt Pollen was probably the father of Josina van de Poll, meaning that his surname may actually or alternatively been van de Poll rather than Pollen (as I've shown in my 22 May 2022 post the name of a Poll family from Venlo was variously spelled Pol, Polle, Pollart, Pollen; thus, all these variations must have been seen as essentially equivalent).

We can guess at the ancestry of Odt Pollen but in the end, without more information, it's only a guess. But what we can say is that if Jacob Willem Ottens really did marry one of Odt Pollen's daughters, then the descendants of Jacob Willem Ottens may have inherited DNA from Odt Pollen, and this includes the descendants of Dirk Snoy/Sonoy (the branch that remained in Holland/Utrecht).

Here's how this descendancy would go (bold is DNA path):

Odt Pollen m. Mari NN

NN daughter of Pollen & Mari m. Jacob Willem Ottens

Descendants of Willem Ottens

NN daughter of Pollen (Josina van de Poll?) m. Adam van Malsen

Otto van Malsen (1494-1558) m. Margaretha Splinter

Maria van Malsen m. Dirk Snoy (1529-1597)

Descendants of Dirk Snoy & Maria van Malsen

De Hertoghe-van de Werve Connection

We don't know if Catharina de Hertoghe () was actually Willem Ottens' mother, or that Otto Gerrits van Oist was actually Willem Ottens' father; those are merely my hypotheses. But regardless of this, Catharina de Hertoghe had a connection to the Snoy family:

The connection here to Snoy is that Walburg van der Aa had also married Joost/Josse Snoy, the Snoy brother who remianed Catholic and settled in Brabant. Thus this is a social conneciton rather than a genetic connection, and Joost Snoy's descendants will not have van de Werve DNA from Catharina de Hertoghe. But social connections are important in genealogy as marriages almost alwayss occurred from people in the same general social circle.

All these descendants also have van de Werve DNA through Catharina de Hertoghe's daughter's husband Pieter van de Werve. The Rijswijk Sweym line from the late 1200's or early 1300's was somehow closely related to the van de Werve family as shown by the leenkamer entry in which in 1309 Gijsbert Sweym bought the “de Werve” estate in Rijswijk.

Sarah Pemer & Frumerie-Garencher-Thiebeau

As I've already mentioned, Sarah Pemer (1641 Lindesberg Sweden-1659), daughter of Nicolaus [III} Pemer, married Jean Martinsson Frumerie (1634 Leiden-1689 Lindesberg Sweden). It appears that the Frumerie line in Sweden was called in Holland de Fremery and was probably Walloon displaced from Liege or elsewhere, and that some of the line remained in Holland with the name de Fremery. Thus, the Swedish Frumerie and Dutch de Fremery lines are cousin lines that split from each othe in the late 1500's or early 1600's.

Unfortunately the connection between the Dutch de Fremery/Fremerij and Swedish de Frumerie lines is uncertain. The Adelsvapen website says that the first Swedish Frumerie, Martin, was first mentioned in Leiden in 1616. He was contracted in 1635 by Louis de Geer “as a reformed preacher and schoolteacher at Finspång's mill for the Walloon mill population....” (De Frumerie nr 1568 - Coat of arms Wiki (adelsvapen.com).

The Geni.com family tree shows a Jacob de Fremery (1589 Aachen Germany-1661 Naarden Holland) who's the father of Herman de Fremery (1622-1673); probably Martin Frumerie was Herman's brother and Jacob's son, and few if any records in Holland exist because he moved to Sweden. The fathe of Jacob de Fremery was Pierre de Fremery, born 1555 in Valenciennes, France. Pierre had probably moved to Aachen because it was at that time one of the magnets for Protestant Walloons seeking safety from persecution.

Thus Jacob de Fremery was probably the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of the Dutch and Swedish de Fremerey/Frumerie cousin lines. The adelsvapen website says that Martin Frumerie's son Abraham may have remained in Leiden, so he may also have been another source of the de Fremery line in Holland.

The de Fremery line also emigrated to California in America through the brothers Jacobus Petrus de Fremery (1826-1899) and Willem Cornelis Bastiaan de Fremery (1833-1922). These brothers emigrated to San Francisco in 1849 (during the “gold rush”). Jacobus, who was apparently known in America a James de Fremery (James de Fremery - Oakland - LocalWiki ), was a merchant and married to another weathy Dutch merchant (Herckenrath), and started the bank that later became known as Wells Fargo.

Also, as I previously mentioned, a son of Herman de Fremery of Leiden named Jacobus de Fremery (1660-1736) married Catharina de Sweers (1663-1745) who was a 1^st cousin of the Judith Sweers married to Ahusvers de Crequi dit la Roche who moved to Norway. Both Catharina and Judith de Sweers are shown in the Geni.com tree to have descendantd from Adam d'Oupeye, son of Lambert IV d'Oupeye (1310-1376); Lambert d'Oupeye was also the father of Felicite d'Oupeye and Adam was thus Felicitie's brother and Dirk van Oist's brother-in-law. As with de Geer, d'Oupeye was supposedly a descendant of Otto de Dammartin (1145-1220) and Hazeca de Momalle (1155-).

Garencher and Thiebeau

The adelsvapen website says that Martin Frumerie married Elisabeth Sariasen Garencher (married 1631-1665). The Geni.com family tree says that Elisabeth Garencher (or Garazier) was born in 1614 in Leiden, and that her father Saria Garencher was born 1293 in Leiden and died 1656 in Finspång Sweden. Saria's wife and Elisabeth's mother was Cateline Thiebeau (1590 Leiden-1665 Finspång). Based on the names the Garencher and Thiebeau families were also Walloon or French, and probably Saria Garencher's parents and Cateline Theibeau's parents were Calvinists who had fled to Leiden for safety.

DNA Matches to Frumerie

I have 4 DNA matches whose family trees shows them to be descendants of Martin Frumerie.

(1) Molander 12.1

(2) Wallin 14.9 (also descendant of the du Rietz group)

(3) Åsberg 15.7

(4) Åslund 17.4

And one DNA match who has a Frumerie in their family tree, probably as an ancestor but as the family tree is private, I have no way to determine this:

Bilic 9.0

(Note: I have not yet researched these matches)

Dutch Immigrant #4: De Besche and his Ancestors

The nl.wikipedia article “De Geer (genus) says that “De Geer isa family of entrepenurs and politicians with branches belonging to the Dutch and Swedish nobillity.....The oldest known ancestor is Lambier de Geer, who was weatlhy near Liege, mentioned in 1393 and died in 1399. The name means “of Geer” in French and thus comes from the place with that name, located in the current province of Liege, Belgium. A descendant, Louys de Geer (1535-1602) fled to Aachen and later to Dordrecht for religious reasons. His son, Louis de Geer (1587-1652), from Liege, settled in Sweden as an arms dealer. He was raised to the peerage there in 1641. Both branches of the family have produced prominent personalities for centuries. In 1814 and 1815, members of the Dutch branches were incorporated into the Dutch nobility.”

De Besche

Gillis de Besche (1579-1648) and his wife Sara Pedersdotter Dionysia (1586-1668) are my 12^th great-grandparents. Both were said to have been born in “Liege, Belgium” and both died in Nyköping, Sweden. But when it's said that they'd been born in “Liege,” that could mean either the city of Liege or it could mean the Prince-Bishopric of Liege, and those are two very different things. The Prince-Bishopric of Liege was much larger than the namesake city, as this map of the region in 1648 shows:

            By en:User:Fresheneesz - en:Image:The Low Countries.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1785585

The Bishopric of Liege, shown on this map in lavender, ecompassed a large portion of Limburg and Brabant, and an arm of it extends up to Thorn and almost to Swalmen. Thus, it isn't highly helpful to say that de Besche and Dionysia were born in Liege without specifying where in Liege. But that information is apparently unknown.

When I do a MH search on “Besche” MH shows that I have 7 DNA matches with that name in their family tree. All of these matches show this de Besche family, indicating that this part of my family tree is correct (numerous other matches also essentially prove this).

Dutch match Huijer shares with me the Swedish shared match Wallin 14.9, who is one of the 7 with a de Besche in their family tree. This is a pretty strong indication that de Besche or Dionysia is the source of Huijer's 4 Scandinavian shared matches (2 Norwegian, 2 Swedish). Although Huijer is the only Dutch match who has any of the 7 DNA matches to “Besche,” this isn't true if we compare the Scandinavian shared matches of those 7 Swedish matches with de Besche/Dionysia in their trees to the Dutch matches (i.e., those Scandinavian shared matches of the Swedish de Besche matches are also triangulated to the Dutch match and to me).

Here are the 7 DNA matches with a Besche in their trees:

• Söderman 39.1
• Söderman 12.7
• Sundberg 22.4
• Romlin 16.5
• Wallin 14.9
• Ek 14.1
• Andersson 12.3

Essentially, I'm using these 7 Swedish matches as proxies for de Besche, since they are all descendants of de Besche (as am I). We're looking for DNA matches to these Swedish matches who are also DNA matches to one or more of my Dutch DNA matches. Thus, for each of these 7 matches I've compared all of the Scandinavian shared matches for each of these 7 Swedish matches against the Scandinavian shared matches of most of my Dutch DNA matches. When the Swedish match and a Dutch match has the same Scandinavian shared match, I'll write that down along with the shared match and of the Dutch match.

Andersson 12.3

Söderman 39.1

Sundberg 22.4

Romlin 16.5

Wolffenbuttel     is a match to Myllyniemi 23.0 

Visser                is a match to Kristensson 18.8

Wallin 14.9

Versraeten Boman1 87.0

Kruiger Hoaglund 49.0

Ek 14.1

These lists are not comprehensive, but the point is made that the connection between many of my Dutch matches and our Scandinavian shared matches must be through de Besche or his wife Dionysia/Dionysius. I don't think we can yet claim that one of them is the MRCA of the Dutch and many of the Scandinavian shared matches, but I think it's likely.

Here are the Dutch matches from the lists above, in alphabetical order:

1. Baan                        Rotterdam GG, Germany GG
2. Badde                      Germany GG, Belgium GG
3. Bakker                    Limburg GG, Cologne & Düsseldorf GG
4. Bellekom                Rotterdam GG
5. Boer                        Rotterdam GG
6. Boersma                 Rotterdam GG
7. Booiman
8. Bol                            Rotterdam GG
9. Bosma
10. Brok
11. de Groote                 Rotterdam GG, Flanders & Zeeland GG
12. de Ruiter                   Rotterdam GG
13. Dijkstra
14. Exalto
15. Fial
16. Gits                          Rotterdam GG
17. Hendriks
18. Henger                     Rotterdam GG
19. Hennissen              Limburg in tree, Limburg GG, Flanders GG, Rotterdam, Köln/Düsseldorf                                  
20. Hoogendoorn
21. Honselaar               Rotterdam GG, Antwerp GG
22. Hougee
23. Juffer                       Rotterdam GG
24. Kruiger
25. Laan
26. Naastepad
27. Oste
28. Patrick
29. Postma                   Rotterdam GG
30. Ras
31. Remery
32. Schobbe                 Limburg GG, Cologne & Düsseldorf GG
33. Slot                        Rotterdam GG
34. Spies                      Rotterdam GG
35. Stelling                   Rotterdam GG
36. Stuijt
37. Swanepoel
38. Tak                        Rotterdam GG
39. Turksema               Rotterdam GG
40. van den Broek      Rotterdam GG
41. van der Oost          Rotterdam GG, the Hague GG
42. van der Schoor         Rotterdam GG
43. van der Veen          Rotterdam GG
44. van Keuk              Rotterdam GG, Germany GG
45. van Malsen
46. van Rosmalen
47. Verstraeten              Limburg in tree, Limburg GG
48. Visser                      Rotterdam GG
49. Weening                  Rotterdam GG
50. Wolffenbuttel

This is just under half of my Dutch DNA matches. 

So what does this mean? How do so many of my Dutch matches possibly come from someone named de Besche or Dinonysia, when neither of those surnames appear in the family trees of any of the Dutch matches? Nor do these names appear as surnames in Smith's van Os-Vroegh family tree.

The answer is probably that the Swaim/den Hartog line (or some other line that ended up in the Land of Arkel gene pool) was a close relative of de Besche or Dionysius but that we don't know that because of incomplete or inaccurate genealogies. This person could have been a van Oist, a d'Oupeye, a van Swalmen, or someone else. We don't know anything about the van Oist line before Dirck van Oist, so for now that's a dead-end. However, there is some evidence for two other possible candidates:

de Besche

de Geer

It's also theoreticallly possible that the Swaim/den Hartog line inherited common DNA with the de Geer line from a common ancestor. According to the adelsvapen de Geer entry, three different de Geers married three different de Besches, 2 of which produced children:

Ida de Geer (1616-1682) married Carl de Besche (1612-1681). Children were born in Amsterdam but DNA would be half Swedish.

Johan Carl de Geer (1706-1750) married Althea Maria de Besche (1707-1764). Children were born in Sweden and DNA would be half Dutch.

The various branches of the de Geer family lived variously in Sweden or the Netherands, and many appear to have traveled back inforth between the two. Thus, the de Geer line is obviously a potential source of Swedish DNA in my Dutch cousins, without resorting to a more ancient Viking ineage as its source.

Becaue the de Geer and de Besche lines intermarried twice, 400 and 300 years ago (12-16 generations ago), many de Besche descendants are likely to also have de Geer DNA. If the Swaim/den Hartog line, or some other line with a major presence in the Land of Arkell gene pool, had de Geer DNA either through a distant connection or through marriage to a de Geer-de Besche descendant, some of these Scandinavian shared matches could be through de Geer DNA.

In Smith's van Os-Vroegh family tree, there is a line surnamed Vergeer, the earliest member being Gerrit Vergeer b. 1550 in Oudewater, Utrecht. I don't know if this has anything to do with the de Geer family originally from Liege, but it might. A study of the genealogies of the de Geer families in the Netherlands might also show soom relationships to people in the Land of Arkel gene pool. I haven't investigated such genealogies, but here's something about the ancestry of Louis de Geer.

According to Geni.com, the lineage of Louis de Geer (1622-1695) leads to a set of 11^th great-grandparents: Otto de Dammartin, Seigneur de Warfusee (1145-1220) and his wife Hazeca de Momalle (1155-).

Another descendant of Otto de Dammartin de Warfusee and Hazeca de Momalle is none other than Felicite d'Oupeye, the wife of Dirck van Oist: Otto de Dammartin was her paternal 5^th greatp-grandfather, and Momalle of course his wife.

(A third descedant of this pair is supposedly myself; they are supposedly my 24^th great-grandparents through the Schecnk van Nydeggen line. I don't claim that this genealogy is accurate, however.)

Thus, Louis de Geer and Felicite d'Oupeye were distant cousins, both of them potentially sharing Warfusee and/or Momalle DNA. Assuming that Otto Gerrits van Oist was a descendant of d'Oupeye (i.e., a grandson), and assuming that Otto Gerrits van Oist was the father of Willem Ottens, then it's possible that this DNA can be found in the Land of Arkel gene pool. However, this is conditional upon many uncertainties, including the accuracy of the Geni.com family tree. Also, DNA from this far back would likely be small in size, and would probably be one of the triangulated segments of DNA. I don't know of any way to track DNA back to this Warfusee and Momalle, and I doubt that any of the DNA that we're looking at is DNA from this couple.

For those who believe that Otto van Arkel was the father of Willem Ottens and thus the progenitor of the Swaim/van Arkel lineage, here's the Geni.com relationship path showing that Louis de Geer is my 11^th cousin 13x removed through Gerhard van Loon (1136-1191) or his wife Adelheid van Gelre (1140-1190), through their sons Gerard III van Loon and Arnold III van Loon. As I've mentioned before, I don't believe this is correct, but the Geni.com tree shows that Otto van Arkel was the father of Willem Ottens.

But I will point out that de Geer DNA could still have entered the Land of Arkel gene pool through this connection (assuming it's accurate), even if not through Otto van Arkel. Various Arkels had many children, including many illegitimate children not necessarily appearing in any documents or genealogies.

However, I don't think any of these remote connections, even if real, is the source of many (or any) of the Dutch-Scandinavian connections we're looking at. I haven't found any solid connection to de Geer at all. But some of my Dutch matches might have connections to de Geer that I don't, so this is something to look into. The de Geer family is large and apparently still exists in both Sweden and the Netherlands, so it wouldn't be surprising to find some connection between one of my Dutch matches and a de Geer. Since the de Geer family seems to have moved freely between the two countries over the centuries, it is possibly the source of much of the Swedish DNA that MyHeritage claims that many of my Dutch matches have. I have no evidence for this, but here's

, for example, is a potetential connection between the Swaim/den Hartog and de Geer family that exists on paper, although I've seen no DNA evidence for it.

The adelsvapen.com entry for “De Geer No. 291” states that Jean Jacques de Geer (1714-1781) married Theodora Anna van Haeften van Wadenoyen (1721-1801). Theodora Anna van Haeften's 7^th great-grandfather was Otto I de Cock van Haeften van Rhenoy (1421-1473), who, as I mentioned in my post of .... 2022 was the great-grandfather of Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk (1475-15--) in 1527 took a perpetual interest note from Jacop Willem Ottens that had been issued by Jan Zweym Willems (son of Willem Ottens). I speculated that the fact that Adriana Glimmer Jan van Rijswijk had ended up with the note probably meant that she was in some way related to the Swaim/den Hartog family. If so, then van Haeften DNA could be in many Swaim/den Hartog descendants, and/or Swaim/den Hartog DNA could be in many van Haeften descendants, perhaps including those of Theodora Anna van Haeften and her husband Jean Jacques de Geer (AKA Johan Jacob de Geer).

Jean Jacques de Geer's father was Jean Jacques de Geer (1666-1738), whose father was Louise de Geer (1622) and mother was Jaqueline Cornelia van Assendelft (1682-1754). The 1^st Jean Jacques was married to Jeanne Parmentier, daughter of Antony Carel Parmentier van Heeswyck and Brabanter Elisabet de Buvegnies. One of the daughters of this 1^st Jean Jacques (and thus a sister of the 2^nd Jeane Jacques), named Isabella Peteronella, died in “Gorkum” in 1728, so the familly may have had a presence in the Land of Arkel. However, i'ts unlikely with these parents and grandparents that Jean Jeacques de Geer had any Scandinavian DNA.

The But someone interested might want to look through the de Geer genealogy to find an early de Geer who married a Swede and lived and had children in the Netherlands, as this would have brought Scandinavian DNA into the Netherlands.

Dutch match has a Scandinavian shared match with Swain who is also a shared match with Blomqvist 8.5. In other words, the Scandinavian shared match is a match with the Dutch match, Swain, and Blomqvist 8.5. Blomqvist 8.5 has Reuterskiöld ancestry: her 3x great-grandmother was Constance Wilhelmina Reuterskiöld (1815-1839) of Finland, who is found in the adelsvapen.com “Reuterskiöld No. 377” genealogy (Reuterskiöld No. 377 - Noble Arms-Wiki (adelsvapen.com) ).

“The family [Reuterskiöld] is considered to have come from Holland in the later half of the 1500's.””Knighted with the name Lagersparre 1719-05-11.”

I have no Reuterskiöld or Lagersparre in my family tree, nor I do have a DNA matche from Finland named Blomqvist who hs a Reuterskiöld/Lagersparre as her 3^rd great-grandmother, with the earliest Reuterskiöld/Lagersparre in her family tree as “Axel D. Lagersparre, sedan Reuterskiöld” (1714-1786).

I'm a DNA match with a Blomqvist 8.5 from Finland. I share one DNA segment with Blomqvist on chromosome 2 (

On of Blomqvist's 3^rd great-grandmothers was Constance Reuterskiöld (1815-1839), and the earliest Reuterskiöld in her tree is Constance's great-grandfather “Axel D. Lagersparre, sedan Reuterskiöld” (1714-1786).

I did with Blomqvist 8.5 what I did with the 7 Swedish matches who had de Besche ancestry: I compared shared matches with Blomqvist and me to shared matches with my Dutch matches. Here's the list of Dutch matches that I derived from ths method, although this time I haven't listed the Scandinavian shared matches:

• Artz Rotterdam GG
• Badde
• Bellekom
• Birkhof Rotterdam GG
• Exalto
• Hendriks
• Hennissen
• Jongman Rotterdam GG
• Juffer
• Kiers Rotterdam GG
• Pieters Rotterdam GG
• Remery
• Slot
• Steenbergen
• van Altena
• van der Veen
• van Keuk
• van Rosmalen
• Visser
• Weening
• Westerduin

So there are 21 Dutch matches here, 13 of which appear on the previous list for de Besche. The 8 names in bold are the names that do not appear on the de Besche list. I believe that the reason for such a large overlap between the two lists is that the two lines had intermarried at an early date. According the adelsvapen.com entry for “Reuterskiöld No. 377”, in 1755 Frederika Sofia Lagersparre (Reuterskiöld) (1727-1761) married Vilhelm Gustaf de Besche ( -1789). Although the adelsvapen website doesn't list their offspring, their genealogy can be found on the Geni.com website and they had many descendants. After a brief look at a few of the surnames in this genealogy and a surname search on MH, I was able to find 3 Finnish matches with the surname Aschan in their tree, with one match having an MRCA to the Geni.com tree. These 3 matches, who I previously had no idea how they connected to me, were thus revealed as connecting to me through both Reuterskiöld and de Besche.

According to the adelsvapen.com website, the family of Reuterskiöld.Lagersparre “is considered to have arrived from Holland in the latter half of the 1500's.” This tells us too little to probably be able to identify an individual, but it seems pretty obvious that the family name must have been some variation of Reuter or Reuters. I have a Dutch match de Ruiter (a de Besche match) and another match Ruyters, so possibly the unknown Reuter is a paternal ancestor of theirs, although this is simply a guess. De Ruiter's family tree shows the paternal line going back to Jan de Ruiter born in 1555, but has no other information about him or his family.

Gyldenår/Gyldenaar

There was also a family called Gyldenår (adelsvapen 388). The adelsvapen website says that this family was “considered to be descended from Spain or Germany,” but the Wikipedia ariticle “Gyldenår family” says it was “from either Germany or the Netherlands.” Much of the Netherlands was “Spanish” between 1556-1714 when the Netherlands was controlled by by Spanish branch of the HabsburgsSo this is also a possibility.

(downloads) ..........spanish netherlands

Spanish Netherlands in gray, year 1700. Note that Venlo, Roermond and Swalmen (not shown, but between the two on the east ban of the Maas) were located in an island controlled by the Habsburgs. Also note the size of the Bishopric of Liege. Map from Wikipedia “Spanish Netherlands” created by Rebel Redcoat.

I spposedly have a 10^th great-grandfather from the Stor-Ree farm in Stange in Norway who supposedly was named Mogens Eivendsen Gyldenaar (1580-1630) but his ancestry appears to be all Norwegeian, so I don't known how he would have had the name Gyldenaar, and there's no source for this that I've seen. One of my Norwegian matches, named Tveithaug 14.3, also has this person in his family tree, but none of my Dutch matches is also a match to Haargaard. 

However, there are two things to says about this. First, the supposed Gyldenaar ancestor comes to me through Peter Spangen (1758-) husband of my 4th great-grandmother Holmfrithur Bjarnadottir from Iceland, who is the most likely source of the Icelandic matches I share with three of my Dutch DNA matches. I don't know how that Icelandeic DNA ended up in these 3 Dutch matches, but as I share these matches it must be through some Scandinvian with de Besche/Kulyenstierna, etc. ancestry who emigrated (back) to the Netherlands.

Second, several of the Scandinavian shared matches of my Dutch matches are also Scandinavian shared matches of Tveithaug (and of me), so this clearly indicates some connection between Tveithaug and those Dutch matches. Here are some of the matches:

Tveithaug 14.3 has Gyldenår in his Family Tree. The following Dutch matches share the following Scandinavian matches with Tveithaug and me:

• Oskarsson 48.3 is match to Dutch match Weening
• 
  
• Nordli 20.1 is match to Dutch match Hougee
• 
  
• Solbergnes 11.0 is match to Dutch match van der Oost
• 
  
• Wulff 34.3 is a match to Dutch match van Altena
• 
  
• Østby 28.1 is a match to Dutch match Kuipers
• 
  
• Forsberg 27.0 is match to Dutch match Boomsma
• 
  
• Hansen 28.5 is match to Dutch match Henger
• 
  
• Skogsberg 8.0 is a match to Dutch match Hack
• 
  
• Sagulin 25.1 is a match to Dutch match Waslander
• 
  
• Haargaard 28.3 is match to Dutch match Hack
• 
  
• Weea 15.0 is match to Dutch match van Altena
• 
  
• Enkvist 24.3 is match to Dutch match Artz
• 
  
• Anthonsen-Røn 25.7 is match to Dutch match Juffer
• 
  
• Eskola 30.2 is match to Dutch match Laan
• 
  
• Larsen 9.5 is match to Dutch match Spies
• 
  
• Norum 20.7 is match to Dutch match Ras
• 
  
• Olsen 9.1 is a match to Dutch match Hennissen
• 
  
• Lundqvist 8.7 is match to Dutch match Badde
• 
  
• Holmström 11.0 is match to Dutch match de Ruiter
• 
  
• Koponen 8.3 is match to Dutch match Colijn
• 
  
• Leppinen 8.3 is match to Dutch match Pieters
• 
  
• Ohlsson 12.2 is match to Dutch match Oste
• 
  
• Wing 12.6 is match to Dutch match Hougee

The Dutch matches are:

1. Artz
2. Badde
3. Boomsma
4. Colijn
5. de Ruiter
6. Hack
7. Henger
8. Hennissen
9. Hougee
10. Juffer
11. Kuipers
12. Laan
13. Oste
14. Pieters
15. Ras
16. Spies
17. van Altena
18. van der Oost
19. Waslander

Fourteen of these 19 matches overlap those of Reuterskiöld and de Besche, with the names in bold being the non-overlapping matches. This is a puzzle, since Tveithaug 14.3 is Norwegian, not Swedish, and I don't see a connection to de Geer's group of Dutch recruits to Sweden. If Gyldenår was part of that group, then de Geer must have recruited him from from Norway rather than Spain, Germany, or the Netherlands, which are the places the adelsvapen website and Wikipedia website say her probably came from.

There is one possibility based on Tveithaug's family tree. Tveithaug's father's mother's line goes back to German ancestors who immigrated in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Most of these Germans came from Elberfeld, Lüdenscheid, and Waldeck east of Düsseldorf, but one line came from Wismar east of Lübeck. Surnames included Blemenrath, Schroeder, Schulte, Kückelhaus, Scmidt and Blume. It's possible that one of these people was related to de Besche or Reuterskiöld and since the 1600's had moved to one of the towns east of Düsseldorf, or even to Wismar in Mecklenburg. But for now it remains a mystery.

Brække 8.9

Gyldenaar in Tree

Has Gydenaar in tree (also has Weea matches)(Arpad)(Grude-Garmann)also Throlief Thorvaldsen so through Store-Ree Gyldenaar

• Kjellin 9.4 is match to Dutch match Truksema (T)
• 
  
• Frändberg 9.4 is match to Dutch match Wolffenbuttel
• 
  
• Eklind 10.6 is match to Dutch match Jongman
• 
  
• Eriksson 10.5 is match to Dutch match van der Veen
• 
  
• Undbekken 12.2 is match to Dutch match Slot
• 
  
• Rønning 8.4 is match to Dutch match Tak
• 
  
• Larsson 10.6 is match to Dutch match Ewals
• 
  
• Holth 8.4 is match to Dutch match Badde
• 
  
• Karlsson 15.1 is match to Dutch match Booiman
• 
  
• Paukku 10.6 is match to Dutch match Badde
• 
  
• Tveit 11.9 is match to Dutch match Hoogendoorn
• 
  
• Sævold 15.2 is match to Dutch match Muilwijk
• 
  
• Warg 8.2 is match to Dutch match Kiers
• 
  
• Nilsson 17.2 is match to Dutch match van Keuk
• 
  
• Holberg 14.6 is match to Dutch match de Groote (T)
• 
  
• Sandström 16.5 is match to Dutch match Versraeten
• 
  
• Sundin 12.6 is match to Dutch match Wink
• 
  
• Lehmus 13.9 is match to Dutch match Bol
• 
  
• Myren 12.4 is match to Dutch match Naastepad
• 
  
• Eriksson 18.5 is match to Dutch match AMA Jansen
• 
  
• Jevnesveen 11.8 is match to Dutch match van der Schoor (T)
• 
  
• Kristensen 15.1 is match to Dutch match van der Veen
• 
  
• Sundin 20.1 is match to Dutch match Birkhof
• 
  
• Rolander 16.0 is match to Dutch match Visser
• 
  
• Wallster 25.0 is match to Dutch match van der Oost
• 
  
• Andersen 8.7 is match to Dutch match Muilwijk
• 
  
• Aasvold 13.5 is match to Dutch match Westerduin
• 
  
• Schei 22.7 is match to Dutch match Pieters

jo

List of de Besche, Reuterskiöld & Gyldenaar Dutch Matches

Here's a list of Dutch matches taken from the 3 above lists:

1. Artz
2. Baan Rotterdam GG, Germany GG
3. Badde Germany GG, Belgium GG
4. Bakker Limburg GG, Cologne & Düsseldorf GG
5. Bellekom Rotterdam GG
6. Birkhof
7. Boer Rotterdam GG
8. Boersma Rotterdam GG
9. Booiman
10. Bol Rotterdam GG
11. Bosma
12. Brok
13. Colijn
14. de Groote Rotterdam GG, Flanders & Zeeland GG
15. de Ruiter Rotterdam GG
16. Dijkstra
17. Exalto
18. Fial
19. Gits Rotterdam GG
20. Hack
21. Hendriks
22. Henger Rotterdam GG
23. Hennissen Limburg in tree, Limburg GG, Flanders GG, Köln/Düsseldorf, Rotterdam GG
24. Hoogendoorn
25. Honselaar Rotterdam GG, Antwerp GG
26. Hougee
27. Jongman
28. Juffer Rotterdam GG
29. Kruiger
30. Kuipers
31. Laan
32. Naastepad
33. Oste
34. Patrick
35. Postma Rotterdam GG
36. Ras
37. Remery
38. Schobbe Limburg GG, Cologne & Düsseldorf GG
39. Slot Rotterdam GG
40. Spies Rotterdam GG
41. Steenbergen
42. Stelling Rotterdam GG
43. Stuijt
44. Swanepoel
45. Tak Rotterdam GG
46. Turksema Rotterdam GG
47. van Altena
48. van den Broek Rotterdam GG
49. van der Oost Rotterdam GG, the Hague GG
50. van der Schoor Rotterdam GG
51. van der Veen Rotterdam GG
52. van Keuk Rotterdam GG, Germany GG
53. van Malsen
54. van Rosmalen
55. Verstraeten Limburg in tree, Limburg GG
56. Visser Rotterdam GG
57. Waslander
58. Westerduin
59. Weening Rotterdam GG
60. Wolffenbuttel

This is a total of 60 of my Dutch matches out of a total of 104, or 58%

Dutch Match Verstraeten

Now I'm going to use the Dutch match Verstraeten as an example of how I approach a Dutch match with Scandinavian shared matches.

Verstraeten lives in the part of Limburg that today is politically part of Belgium. However, many or most of her ancestors lived in what is today Holland rather than Belgium, and probably many of them identified culturally as Limburgers rather than by whatever country or Duke claimed to own them.

MH estimates that Verstraeten has no Scandinavian DNA. Rather, MH estimates that she's 60.0% “North and West European” and 40.0% English. It's doubtful that she has any English ancestry at all, but to MH her DNA looks English. In reality, the opposite is probably true because there was much more population flow into England from the continent than from England to the continent. What MH is defining as “English” DNA probably actually comes from some smallish population group who, before the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the late 400's, lived somewhere along the coastline between today's Denmark and Holland, or a bit inland.

MH further assigns Verstraeten to 5 different “Genetic Groups” that it's determined that her DNA matches. These are:

Netherlands (South Holland, North Holland, Gelderland, and Utrecht)

Netherlands (Limburg and North Brabant), Belgium (Limburg) and Germany (Cologne and Düsseldorf)

Netherlands (North Brabant)

Netherlands and Indonesia (Java)

Netherlands (Rotterdam)

Given Verstraeten's ancestry goes back to at least her grandparents (except for her father's mother's line) and only includes areas in Limburg, it makes sense that her DNA would match that of the population of Limburg (Netherlands and Belgium) and North Brabant. However, how do we explain that her DNA looks like the DNA of people from Holland, Gelderland, and Utrect, and also specifically Rotterdam? This could mean that some ancestor had moved from Rotterdam or elsewhere in souther Holland, but more likely it means that some of her family had left Limburg and moved to Holland.

Verstraeten's father's mother's surname was van Mierlo. There's a town called Mierlo located just east of Eindhoven, but there's a smaller Meerlo located about 3.5 miles west of Ooijen (on the Maas) and 4.5 miles northwest of Broekhuizen, and I suspect it's the latter Meerlo that was meant. According to my speculative Ancestry family tree, a Henrick van Mierlo (1520-1592) was born in Mierlo and probably moved to Schoonrewoerd, since his son Heijman Henricks van Mierlo was supposedly born there in 1558 by an unknown mother. Heijman's son Huibert (1608-1674) had a daughter Neeltje Huibertse van Mierloo (1643 Schoonrewoerd) who married Arien Geerloffsz Hartogh (1643 Schoonrewoerd). Arien Geerloffsz Hartogh was of course a descendant of Willem Ottens and of Claes Willem Ottens (1475 Middelkoop), so descendants from the marriage of Mierloo and Hartogh would have Mierlo DNA and could match Verstraeten if her Mierlo ancestors were related to Henrick van Mierlo. However, this can't explain how I could be related to Verstraeten because she wouldn't have an Swaim/den Hartog DNA and I woldn't have and van Mierlo DNA from this connection.

The only van Mierlo ancestor that I potentially have is Ermegard van Mierlo van Wickenrode (1210- ). According to the Ancestry.com crowd-source family tree, she's an ancestor of my New Netherland immigrant ancestor Neetje Jans (1584-1658), the wife of immigrant Wolfer Gerritz van Couwenhoven (1579-1662). I have no idea how accurate this genealogy is, but here it is in part. Neetlje Jans' great-great grandfather was supposedly Pieter Willlemsz Gerrits Cranendonck (1500-1557). His great-grandfather was supposedly Roelof Cranendonck van Emmickhoven (-1388 Cranendonck, Duchy of Brabant). Roelof was supposedly married to Ronilda Lodewicks van der Ghiessen (1410 Ridderkerk). Roelof Cranendonck's grandfather was supposedly Willem II van Horne, heer van Cranendonck en Eindhoven (1275 Maarheeze, Brabant – 1321 Maathe rheeze). Willem II van Crenendonck's wife was Elisabeth van Steyn, whose maternal grandparents were supposedly Diederick II von Kleeve (1221 Sittard, Limburg) and Bertha van Limburg (1225 Monschau)(who's mother was Elisabeth de Bar). Willem I van Horne's mother was Ermgard van Mierlo (1210-Thi).

Willem II van Horne's father was Willem I van Horne, whose wife was Katharina van Kessel (1232-1306), the daughter of Wilhelm, Count of Kessel (1225-1262). This Kessel was in fact the Kessel located just across the Maas from Swalmen. According the Netherlands Wikipedia article “County of Kessel,” the County of Kessel morphed out of part of the old Maasgauw administrative unit of the Frankish kingdoms, which disintegrated in the year 840. The County of Kessel was located in today's Dutch Limburg west of the Maas and the German North Rhine-Westphalia. The map below shows the county:

screenshot 2591

Map by Hans Erren, from County of Kessel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On this map Swalmen would be located about 5.5 miles due south of Kessel, across the Maas, somwhere just east of the “M” in the word “Maas.” Meerlo would be southwest of Venray, probably outside of the county. Broekhuizen would probably be just above the small area of the county near Lottum. The counts of Kessel lived in the Castle of Kessel. The name of Kessel was probably derived from the Roman Casallum. The larger area that later became known as the Land of Kessel included the County of Kessel and smaller areas of apparently allodial estates not part of Guelders or Jülich. During the later 1200's and 1300's the Counts of Guelders and Jülich started consolidating the smaller holdings in this area and incorporating them into their larger county and duchy. Most villages in the region belonged to the County of Kessel, but Venray and Geijsteren belong to the County of Guelders, Ooijen and other possessions belonged to the Lords of Cuijck, Grubbenvorst belonged to the Lords of Millen, and Broekhuizenn to the Lords of Broekhuysen.

In 950 King Otto I (later Holy Roman Emperor Otto I) granted Cassalum to Ansfried in fief, and his son Balderik succeeded him as Count of Kessel. The County of Kessel lasted until 1279 when the last count, Henry V, facing money problems, sold his possessions in the Land of Kessel to Reinald I of Guelders and soon after most of the former County of Kessel east of the Maas ended up as part of the County of Jülich.

Throughout the 1300's and early 1400's the Dukes of Guelders acquired the remaining lordships in the Land of Kessel. The Lord of Cuijck sold Maasbree and Ooijen to Guelders in about 1400, and in 1434 the allodial castle and land of Broekhuizen was sold to Duke Arnold of Egmond. This means that the Broekhuysen family gave up free ownership of their land to become a fief of the Duke of Guelders, which might seem unwise, but in fact because they had done exchange this the Broekhuysen family became wealthier and more powerful because in exchange they had the duke's favor and were given even more land land in other parts of Guelderland, including Waardenburg and Ammerzoden.

screenshot 2593

Land of Kessel

Hans Erren. Land of Kessel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

add 't land van kessel (downloads)

Map from 1664 (right is north, top is east, right is south, bottom is west). Kessel is in the bottom right of the map. Swalmen would be across the Maas and a bit south of “Beselen” (Beesel). Meerlo is at the bottom left of the map written as “Mierle.” Broekhuizen (“Broechhuy”) is above (east) of Meerlo.

This was a long digression, but I included it because if the father of Willem Ottens was truly Otto Gerrits van Oist, then this is the region he would have come from, and he would likely have been related to the van Swalmen family, which itself was a branch of the van Broeckhuysen family. It also helps to show that Verstraeten's Mierlo ancestors might have been from today's Meerlo rather than the Eindhoven Mierlo. On the map Meerlo by the Maas is spelled “Mierle,” so the spelling of either can't be considered a clue.

The female line of Verstraeten's Mierlo grandmother came from Helden, located 4 miles fromo Kessel and 8 from Swalmen (Mathias Degens 1615, Maria van Oyen d. 1665, Thomasje Meijelkens 1657, Petrus Timmermans 1639; from Sevenum, located 15 miles from Swalmen and 10 miles from Meerlo (Jacobus Schreurs 1692, Agnes Gieskes 1697); Heythuisen, located 8 miles from Swalmen (surname Pleunis); Thorn, located adjacent to Pol, which I speculated was the origin of the van Pol/Pollen line, and 20 miels from Swalmen (Gerardus Vogels 1643, Helena Vossen 1670); Roggel, 7 miles from Swalmen (Joannes van Horn d. 1725); Montfort, 10 miles from Swalmen (Cornelia Rossums d. 1749).

I'll also show later that my Dutch DNA matches Goedhart, Brok, Cerson, and Hack have a German shared match named Schellartz who has ancestors who lived in the German town of Waldfeucht at least back into the 1500's. Waldfeucht is located 5 miles from Montfort and 12 miles from Thorn.

Thus, Verstraeteen's ancestral background is consistent with the hypothesis that Otto Gerritss van Oist was the progenitor of the Swaim/den Hartog line; our common DNA could have come to me through Otto Gerrits van Oist, who had moved to the Land of Arkel, while her DNA came through an ancestor who remained in Limburg and was part of the paternal line or a female line feeding into the paternal line (such as, e.g., d'Oupeye).

However, I think it's equally or more likely that I'm not connected to Verstraeten though Otto Gerrits van Oist, although it may well still have been through my paternal line or someone feeding into my paternal line. Rather, I think that a descendant of our unknown common ancestor emigrated to Sweden in the late 1500's or early 1600's and that person was my link to Verstraeten through my Swedish ancestry. The common ancestor may still have been a part of my paternal line, but alternatively might have been a part of some other line (e.g., possibly an ancestor or descendant of Catharina de Hertoghe if she was the wife of Otto Girrits van Oist, or of Felicite d'Oupeye, or some other line such as van Pelt, etc.).

Let's look now at a list I've made of all of the shared matches of Verstraeten and me:

This is 18 matches: 7 from Sweden, 2 from the Netherlands, 1 from the UK, and 8 from the \\\United States.

By country the match count is:

• Sweden           7
• Netherlands    2
• England          1
• USA               8

Generally, for Dutch matches I ignore any matches from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Although the Dutch colonies and America and South Africa were originally Dutch, they were conquered by the English, and the remaining colonies were English from the outset (the first European to discover Australia was actually a Dutch person named person named Willem Janszoon in 1606, followed by the first to actually leave a plaque there to prove it; this second Dutch person had the interesting name of Dirk Hartog (Diereck Hartochszch) (1580-1621). Also interesting is that Dirk Hartog, who was employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), captained the ship De Eendracht, which was also the name of the ship used during the first colonization voyage to New Netherland (1624). The Wikipedia article “Eendracht (1615)” says that Hartog's Eendracht was recorded as having been wrecked and lost in May 1622 off the coast of Ambon Island in the Moluccas. If this is true then Hartog's Eendracht can't be the same Eendracht that was used from at east 1624 to 1631 by the VC for service to and from New Netherland; the VOC probably recycled the name for reuse.) When looking at a shared DNA match from one of the former English colonies, if a Dutch line moved there and subsequently intemarried with non-Dutch lines, I don't use that match when researching Dutch matches because I have both English and Dutch ancestry and it's usually impossible to separate the two once they're mixed. However, this doesn't apply to triangulated DNA because every match with a segment of triangulated DNA came from one specific ancestor and every match with that specific segment of DNA has to be related though that specific ancestor; thus, if most matches with the specific segment of triangulated DNA comes from a specific country, then the ancestor who passed down that DNA likely came from that country also. This is a very useful trait of triangulated autosomal DNA that cannot be used for non-triangulated DNA.

Standifird is American but his DNA with Verstraeten (and me) is triangulated. This means it came from an ancestor common to the three of us. Since Verstraten's ancestry as far as it goes comes almost exclusively from Limburg, it's likely that Standifird and I descend from some ancestor who lived in Limburg. This isn't necessarily true, of course, because Verstraeten's family tree isn't perfect, but it's a good guess. However, my Belgian match de Clerck has a few Versstraetens in his mostly Flemish family tree. One of these Verstraetens was Barbara Verstraeten, daughter born 1778 in Kallo, Belgium; Barbara Verstraten's husband was Jean Dominique van Grimbergen; their great-granddaughter married Theodore Michiel de Roover (b. 1834 Kieldrecht), whose mother was Joanna Cornelia van Ranst (b. 1793 Doel). A different and earlier Barbara Verstraeten was in the 1500's to a man surnamed de Ruysschere, a surname I've seen in connection to Bruges in Belgium. So Verstraeten's paternal ancestors may actually have come from Belgium, and specifically from near Antwerp.

Standiifird is Verstraeten's only triangulated match with me. As triangulated matches we definitely share a common ancestor. I share 49.8 cM of DNA with Standifird in 3 segments. The largest of these segments is 29.4 cM on chromosome 4, genomic position 41820257-82382526. This is the triangulated segment, although with Verstraeten I share a much smaller segment of it: 6.5 cM, genomic position 48394450-574539. Verstraeten and Sandifird share 12.6 cM but since I don't have access to their accounts I don't know if this is all one segment on chromosome 4, although the probability is high that it is.Since Verstraeten's ancestry is from Limburg and possible Flanders, and since I have Dutch ancestry, it is likely that our common ancestor came from somewhere near Limburg or Flanders. Now let's see if Standifird's family tree supports this hypothesis.

Standifird's tree is unfortunaely rather small, having 430 people, most of whom have English names. Howver there are a few German or Swiss names:

John Valentine House, b. 1680 Baden, Germany

match named Mosley: is a match to Booiman (x2) from Stolberg (E. Aachen)

Michal Pick, b. 1805 Prussia, Germany

John Englehart, b. 1830 Bayern, Germany

Fanny Englehart, b. 1833 Switzerland

Normally my search would end here because I can't chase down every potential clue, but I had remembered that a few years ago I'd done some research on John Valentine House, although I couldn't (and can't) remember in what context (possibly it was simply because John Valentine House had married an Indian woman whose father was named Chief Cornstalk, and that had stuck in my memory). Since Standifird's tree ended with John Valentine House, I turned to Geni.com and House's ancestry was (purportedly) extended far back into the past. I'll return to what I found in the Geni tree later.

The other matches I shared with Standifird I also looked at the shared matches of Standifird and me, but only those who shared the triangulated chromosome 4 segment because non-triangulated segments from an American DNA match can be from anywhere and are therefore mostly useless. Many of these shared matches had German ancestry, and at least one was a German living in Germany. So clearly there was a German-Dutch nexus. For two matches, however, there was something very interesting. These matches were Americans with the surnames Covert and Bultemeier. When dealing with autosomal DNA, surnames for an American match mean nothing unless they're the exact name you're looking for, for the reason I mentioned earlier, and this was probably the case here. Covert is English and Bultemeier is German, but in itself that means nothing. What was interesting about these two matches is that they both had ancestors with the surname van Pelt (Vanpelt in Bultemeier's tree).

In my recent post “How Dutch Am I?” I provided a list of my New Netherland immmigrant ancestors and included one named Teunis Jansen Laenen van Pelt (1622 Overpelt, Limburg). My 7^th great-grandfather, Cornelius Tysen Swaim (1685-1762)(son of Anthony, son of Thys Barentsen) was supposedly married to Elizabeth Ann van Pelt (1688-1719), supposedly the granddaughter of Teunis Jansen van Pelt. I don't know the origin of this information and haven't researched it—I simply borrowed if from the Ancestry.com tree, which means that someone had entered that relationship but the accuracy of the information is totally unknown. It's certainly credible that this relationship was true—on Ancestry.com I have 25 DNA matches with a van Pelt in their family tree, and one of them actually has the surname van Pelt. .

But what we have here is something different. Although Verstraeten doesn't have an van Pelt in her tree, three of her triangulated matches on chromosome 4 do have a van Pelt in their tree: Covert, Bultemeier, and me. Even though I share one other segment of DNA with Covert and two other unrelated segments with Bultemeier, the odds that van Pelt is not the connection between the three of us seems highly unlikely. However, right now I can think of no way to actually prove that van Pelt is the link.

Verstraeten's family tree has no van Pelt in it, but Overpelt is located 18 miles from Molenbeersel, the town in which Verstraeten's ancestor Godfried van Mierlo (1881-1954) was born. Geistingen, the town in which Renier Verstraeten (1846-1910) was born, is 21 miles from Overpelt. Thorn, previously mentioned, is 23 miles.

Verstraeten's Dutch Shared Matches

Verstraeten shares with me two non-triangulated Dutch matches: Pieters and Hennissen.

Pieters' ancestry is mostly Frisian, but one line is from North Brabant near Eindhoven, with one couple having lived in Maarheeze. Maarheeze is located 15 miles from Meijel, from which some of Verstraeten's ancestor came, so this is possible the connection between Verstraeten and Pieters. Maarheeze is also located 15 miles from Overpelt. Maarheeze was also the home of Willem II van Horne, my purported 19^th great-grandfather in the line leading to a van Mierlo, as I mentioned above.

I'll discuss Hennissen in more detail later, but his family tree is limited to his parents and grandparents and thus I could find no connection to Verstraeten.

Verstraten's Scandinavian Shared Matches

So we've seen that Verstraeten can credibly be linked to van Pelt by DNA combined with genealogy as well as by geographical proximity, and possible to Swaim/den Hartog by geographical proximity if Otto Gerrits van Oist is ever definitely proven to be the father of Willem Ottens, or if otherwise the Swaim name can be proven to have come from Swalmen.

But how do the Swedish matches that Verstraten shares with me fit into our genealogies? These Swedish matches are my cousins through my mother's Swedish ancestry, but why does she have any Swedish cousins at all, and why are these Swedish cousins also my cousins?

In review, there are three ways a Dutch person can have a Swedish cousin. The first way is that the DNA traveled from the Netherlands to Sweden, the second wa is that the DNA traveled from Sweden to the Netherlands, the third is if an ancestor from anywhere had at least one descendant that ended up in the Netherlands and one that ended up in Sweden. In other words, it isn't necessary that Verstraeten ever had any ancestors in Sweden. A Dutch cousin or ancestor carrying Verstraeten's DNA could have moved to Sweden, and that Dutch cousin's descendants could then inherit Verstraeten's DNA. Or the common ancestor of Verstraeten and a Swedish cousin could have lived in Germany or Denmark, with one of Verstraeten's ancestors moving to the Netherlands and one of the Swedish cousin's ancestors moving to Sweden.

In order to discover the link between Verstraeten and her Swedish cousins we'll need to examine the family trees of the Swedish cousins. But first let's look at the names of the Swedish cousins. Of the 7 Swedish matches, 5 have the surname Boman. In reality these 5 people don't share the same surname, but this is the surname of the one with whom I share the largest amount of DNA, which is 87.0 cM., from which MH estimates our relationship to range from at closest being a 1^st cousin twice removed to a 4^th cousin.

A few years ago when I first started doing genealogy, I knew almost nothing about my Swedish ancestry and I contact Boman1 because of our close genetic relationship. He helped me work with Swedish records and we found one MRCA, but in truth I'm related to Boman1 by at least two different pathways, one through his father and one through his mother. MH estimates that I'm related to his mother by 104.5 cM of DNA in 4 segments, but in reality I'm evenr more closely related to her through another 34.9 cM of DNA on the X chromosome (MH doesn't test the chromosome; FTDNA does, but oddly they didn't count the X chromosome DNA in the total matching DNA). However, my Boman shared matches with Verstreaten are all from Boman1's paternal side rather than his maternal side.

My Boman cousins and I have deep roots in the region of Sunne, Värmland, Sweden, an area that in the past appears to have had a somewhat endogamous population such that most people there were related to each other through more than one line. Unfortunately, I don't have a complete family tree for any of the Bomans, so that although I'm certain about certain lines I share in common with them, I'm not certain of the others.

My assumption when researching my Dutch DNA matches is that I'm related to all them exclusively through my father's line leading back to New Netherland; in other words, that the DNA that I share with the Dutch matches came from New Netherlanders. However, the presence of these relatively close Swedish ancestors as shared matches with Verstraeten and with at least 6 other Dutch matches with at least one Boman shared match has forced me to consider the possibility that for these particular Dutch matches the DNA might actually have come from my Swedish ancestors on my mother's side rather than from my Dutch ancestors on my father's side.

I'm not certain right now how to prove this one way or the other, but either way there's obviously a relatively recent DNA “crosssover” from my paternal side to my maternal, or vice versa. For each of the Boman matches you can see that I share more DNA with the Boman than than Verstraeten shares with the Boman, which in general means that my MRCA with the Boman is more recent than my MRCA with Verstraeten. And Verstraeten shares more DNA with the two netherlands matches than I do, meaning that the Verstraeten-Hennissen and the Verstraeten-Pieters MRCA should be more recnt than the Swain-Hennissen and the Swain-Pieters MRCAs.

Verstraeten and Boman1 share 16.6 cM of DNA, and Verstraeten and Boman2 share 15.3 cM of DNA. Of the list of Dutch matches that I post in my October 2022 post, I shared more than 15.3 cM of DNA with only 21 of them, and less than 15.3 cM of DNA with 82 of them. This means Verstraeten is at least somewhat more related to these 2 Boman matches than I'm related to about 80% of my Dutch matches.

The average shared DNA with my Dutch matches is xxx . Since all of my Dutch ancestors came from New Netherland stock, the most recent MRCA for any Dutch ancestor must be earlier than 1600. The largest amount of cM that I shared with a Dutch match is 28.1 cM, with greater than 20.0 cM for 9 Dutch matches. This means that 28.1 cM of DNA is about the maximum amount of cM that I share with a Dutch match with an MRCA whose MRCA could have been born in the year 1600 at the most recently. This was bout 350 years before my birth, so we see that for my Dutch matches, 28 cM of DNA can be passed down to a descendant born 350 years (12-14 generations) later. Does this mean that 14 cM of DNA implies an MRCA date of 700 years (1250 AD)? And 7 cM a date of 1400 years ago (550 AD)?

Another way to approach the issue of trying to get a rough estimate of the age of an MRCA is to consider the number of DNA segments that I share with my Dutch matches. All of my Dutch ancestry comes from immigrants to the New Netherland colony in the 1600's, and of my 104 Dutch matches, I have 1 match with whom I share 4 segments of DNA, 9 matches with whom I share 3 segments of DNA, and 35 mates with whom I share 2 segments of DNA. Thus, I share at least 2 DNA segments with about 43% of my Dutch matches, all of whom share MRCAs with me who were born at least by the early 1600's, and possibly well before that. This means that after about 350 years 43% matching descendants shared 2 or 3 segments of DNA. If we roughly estimate from this a halving of 2-segment descendants every 300 years, and we can calculate that it takes about 7 halvings from 100% reach less than 1%, can see that it's possible that two DNA-matching descendants from an MRCA to still share 2 segments of DNA after 2,100 years, although the likelihood is only 25% after 600 years and 12.5% after 900 years. Thus, it would seem most likely that the most recent common ancestor between Verstraeten, Boman, and I was born sometime after 1350 AD but definitely before 1600 AD.

These figures would just be averages, and there may be other factors that make such linear calculations incorrect. But for now it's all we have, and both methods seem to correlate failry well. Thus, by both of these very rough estimates, it would appear that we are looking for an MRCA who was born sometime between between 1350 AD and 1600 AD.

That would be just an average, and there may be other factors that make such linear calculations incorrect. It might only apply to triangulated DNA, and it doesn't take into account the number of DNA segments, which might be an even more important factor. With the Dutch match Verstraeten I share 2 DNA segments; with Boman1 I share 5 segments and with Boman2 I share 4 DNA segments. With the Dutch matche “polleke” I share 4 DNA segments (27.1 cM). With 10 other Dutch matches I share 3 DNA segments; the shared cM for 8 of these is over 20, and for the other 2 it's 18.9 and 19.6. The longest single segment I share is 21.5 cM with Goedhart, with whom I share a total of 27.7 cM (2 segments). The next-longest single segment is 14.2 cM. I don't know if anyone has attempted to turn autosomal genetic genealogy into a science rather than an amateur endeavor, but if they did they would devise some formula to convert DNA amount, segment numbers, and size of longest segment into years into a factor that could be used to determine probable distance in the past of an MRCA. Something similar to this is done for Y-DNA, but Y-DNA has more practical value than autosomal DNA for the field of forensics and anthropology, whereas autsomal DNA seems to be less well studied.

In my 2021 post “Autosomal Arkels” I quoted from a paper in a journal that researchers determined that for the United Kingdom, the MRCA of a pair of matches with a 10 cM segment of DNA lived from between 32-52 generations in the past, If we average this to 42 generations and assume that a generation is 25 years, we get a figure of 1,050 years in the past. For me this would be about the year 900 AD; for some a couple generations youger it would be about 960 AD. Since 31 of my 104 Dutch matches have a cM of less than 9, it's not unreasonable to believe that the MRCA of some (if not most) of these matches goes back to the Viking era, and that the paternal ancestors of these matches were in fact Danish and perhaps Norwegian Vikings (I say the paternal line, because despite the girl-power “shield maiden” warriors portrayed in the popular series “The Vikings,” the evidence shows that Vikings were almost exclusively male. Yes, I'm aware that the remains of such a “shield maiden” was recently discovered in Norway which was “exciting news, especially for researchers trying to overturn the centuries-old assumption that Viking warriors were exclusively men....” Battle-Scarred Viking Shield-Maiden Gets Facial Reconstruction for First Time | Live Science This assumption, or “sterotype,” is of course based on the obvious physical differences between men and women, and the idea that even a woman of superior strength could have defeated a Viking in combat is a fantasy, and is the same reason no woman has ever entered the boxing ring or MMA octagon to fight a heavyweight male fighter. Note that this find was the “first evidence” of a “shield maiden” and that she died at the age of 18-19 with a serious sword cut to her head.).

Verstraeten-Boman-Swaim MRCA

So who was the MRCA for Verstraten, me, and our Boman (and Sundstrøm and Nilsson) matches? Because the Boman1 and Boman2 matches shared 16.6 and 15.3 cM of DNA with Verstraeten, I doubt the MRCA lived earlier than 1400 AD. I also think it's highly likely that all ov Verstraten's matches descend from the same common ancestor who lived sometime after 1400.

Because I lack a full family tree for any of these Swedish matches, I wasn't able to determine the Versraeten-Boman-Swaim MRCA. However, I do have a couple of probabilities that I'll discuss later. Briefly, it was possibly either Porkka or another Dutch person who emigrated probably in the 1500's to Sweden from somewhere in today's Netherlands or Belgium.

Before we leave Verstraeten for now, however, I want return to the triangulated match Standifird to explore another possible common ancestors between Verstraeten, Standifird, and me.

Verstraetein-House-Mieszko III the Old-Couwenhoven-Swaim

If we follow the paternal line of the family tree for the Standifird triangulated match up to William Standifird (1804), we see that he married Rebecca Broshar (1809). Rebecca's mother was named Sara House (1783) and Sara House's great-grandfather John Valentine House 1680-1752) was an immigrant from Baden, Germany to Maryland. This line of Standifird's tree ends with Johan Valentine House (the Geni tree however doesn't trace the descent from House to the match Standifird).

If we click on the Geni relationship pathway, we find that Geni believes that I'm related to Johan Valentine House as a 17^th cousin 5x removed:

screenshot 2603

In this relationship path, the first 11 generations above me were born in America, with Gerret Wolpherston van Couwenhoven and his father Wolfer Gerrets van Couwenhoven being immigrants to New Netherland. The MRCA of House and me was one of the parents of the sisters Elisabeth van Altena Isenberg and Agnes van Altena. These parents were Friedrich II, Graf von Altena und Isenberg und Limburg (1182 Altena – 1226 Cologne) and Sophia van Limburg (1192 Limburg -1227 Cologne), the daughter of Walram III, Duke of Limburg and Cunegunde of Lotharingia. This Altena was the County of Altena (formerly part of the County of Berg) in Germany, not the Land of Altena in Brabant.

This connects me to John Valentine House and to the DNA shared match Standifird and thus somehow to Dutch DNA match Verstreaten, but doesn't connect us to Scandinavia. However, if the MRCA was Sophia of Limburg, one of her great-great grandfathers through her mother was Boleslaw III Piast Wrymouth of Krakow, Poland (1086-1138), and according to the Geni.com tree does connect to Sweden (through my Swedish ancestors to me):

In this scenario, the chromosome 4 DNA would originate with Boleslaw III, descend down to my Värmland, Swedish ancestor to me through his daughter Ryka as shown above, and down into Germany and the Netherlands through his son Mieszko III and Sophia of Limburg and then to the unknown common ancestor of Verstraeten, Standifird, and me.

This is a nice scenario, and it's possibly correct, but it depends on the accuracy of every link in a long genealogical chain with Sweden at one end, Poland in the middle, and Netherlands at the other end. One broken link would destroy the chain completly—and yet it does explain a connection to Sweden. The Swedish matches don't share the triangulated chromosome 4 segment, but interestingly Boman1, Boman2, Boman3 and I are all triangulated on another section of chromosome 4 that could have been part of one long stretch of DNA from one ancestor further back.And the Boman shared matches with Verstraeten and me are non-triangulated, so this is possible.

But the problem with this scenario is that the triangulated DNA that I share with Standifird is 29.4 cM long. This is probably too long a segment to have survived intact through 25-30 generatons. Of course it's possible, but I think it's unlikely, and also I share with Standifird another, smaller, 7.4 cM segment of DNA; both of these segments might have once been part of a much larger segment of DNA that likely wouldn't go back as far as the 1100's.

But as I said, even if this particular segment was not from Boleslaw III of Poland, it's still possible that it comes from one of his descendants who ended up as the MRCA of Verstraeten, Standifird and me. I'll say a few more things about Boleslaw III, my presumed ancestor.

First, FamilyTreeDNA estimates that I have 2.7% “West Slavic” ancestry, which it defines to include Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and much of Hungary. I have no ancestors within the last 15 or more generations that I know about who come from this region. It's likely that any such ancestry would come through Sweden or Finland, and thus possibly from Boleslaw III, although more likely from someone more recent (e.g., from some Pomeranian or other ancestor whose line in the 1500's – 1600's moved to Denmark and later to Sweden or Norway).

Second, Boleslaw III's mother was Judith of Bohemia; in Swedish “Bohemian,” meaning a person from Bohemia, is written as “Böhmen.” As this line descends to my Vörmalnd ancestors and thus probably to the Boman line as well, it's possible that this is the origin of the Boman surname. This is just free-floating speculation; I have absolutely no evidence this is true.

But one thing I haven't yet mentioned about Boman1 is that his Y-DNA is E-V13, which is as rare in Sweden as it is in the Netherlands. Swaim/den Hartog Y-DNA is also E-V13, as I've written about extensively in previous posts. However, Boman's DNA isn't in the narrower sub-clace E-FGC11450, and I've calculated that Boman's paternal line would have split from Swaim/den Hartog Y-DNA hundreds of years B.C. But both would have originated in the southern Balkans—Greece or what are today Albania, Kosovo, or Bulgaria—but it could have migrated from the Balkans to Sweden through Bohemia. It also would likely have done so along with other Y-DNA lineages related to each other in various degrees. Boleslaw III lived in Krakow, which is in southern Poland 60-100 miles from the Slovakian border, and Slovakia has a rate of E-V13 of about 8%, which is 2-3 times higher than in the edges of western Europe such as the Low Countries and western Germany.

(Oddly enough, my research into these Scandinavian shared matches with my Dutch matches uncovered another theme that I don't understand the meaning of, which is that of the location in Norway called Norderhov. I have Scandinavian ancestors from Norderhov and the vicinity, several branches supposedly going back to early Norwegian kings who lived near there in the ancient kingdom of Ringerike. What makes this interesting in the context of my Dutch ancestors is that why several of our Scandinavian shared matches would be from this area. Even more odd is that one of my Yfull.com Y-DNA SNP matches is a Norwegian whose earliest known ancestor comes from Norderhove. This is to say, a Swaim/den Hartog Y-DNA match's paternal ancestors lived in Norderhov, and Norderhov keeps popping up as a location for ancestors in the family trees of my Dutch DNA matches' Scandinavian shared matches. This Norderhov match is not close enough that our paternal ancestors would likely have split from each other in Norway, but it is of course possible they could have traveled together to Norway from the Balkans. I'm not saying this is true; I'm just sayng it's possible. This is something I'm going to explore further and report in a future post on Swaim/den Hartog Y-DNA, which needs updating anyway due to a couple new matches that came up in the last year.)x`

Third, I'm going to provide some DNA evidence that this part of my family tree is not merely fantasy. There's always the danger that when a crowd-source family tree connection shows that your ancestors were nobles, that the connection is spurious and was made without enough evidence to establish it as a probabillity rather than just a possibility (when going back beyond the 1300's it's amost impossibe to prove or disprove a connection as a an absolute certainty, except through using Y-DNA. For this reason these distant connections usually can't be considered true genealogical connections, but even so, that doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, either). This evidence is going to come through my definite DNA connection to the von Wachenfeldt family in Sweden, which was definitely a noble family, although I have no idea whether or not my von Wachenfeldt DNA connections are considered today to be noble (which is irrelevant for our current purposes).

As I've mentnioned in my 2021 post “Autosomal Arkels,” in FamilyTreeDNA.com I have DNA matches with the surname von Wachenfeldt. This surname is part of the Swedish nobility and according to the adelsvapen.com webisite, the line originated from the German town of Wachenhausen near Northeim south of Hannover. The first known Wachenfeldt was Henrik Christian Wachenhusen (1642-1717), born in Granzin, Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The line moved to Sweden and in the 1700's at least one line established its home in Värmland. However, this family lived south of where my Värmland ancestors lived, and for a long time I was uncertain about how I was related to the von Wachenfeldts.

I recently decided to find our MRCA, althoug with autosomal DNA when you trace two lines to where they merge it will usually be to a common xth great-grandfather and xth great-grandmother, so that it's uncertain as to which common parent was the MRCA (with any particular segment it can only be one of them). I found one such common MRCA pair: Arvid Knutsson Sparre af Stjärne (AKA Arvid Knutsson Drake af Intorp (1445-1497) and his wife Anna Gustafsdotter Stenbock (1452-1508), who are supposedly my 15^th great-grandparents.

But then I found another common ancestors who was more recent, so he's likely the MRC: Nils Knutsson Ribbing af Svansö (1505-1579). In this case he has to be the MRCA and not his wife, because he had one wife who bore the son who led to the von Wachenfeldt line and another wife who bore the daughter who led to my line.

The point of find the MRCA between von Wachenfeldt and me is as evidence that the family tree in this part of my ancestry is likely to be fairly accurate. My DNA connection to the von Wachefeldt line is absolutely proven by DNA matching, and the von Wachenfeldts were (maybe still are) Swedish nobility. If I can connect the von Wachenfeldt ancestry to my own ancestry by our MRCA thourgh the crowd-source family trees, then this is good evidence that those family trees are substantially accurate. This is important in general, but is also specifically imporant regarding the lineage just presented showing that Boleslaw III of Krakow was my 25^th great-grandfather. That line of descent leads through the Roos of Hjelmsäter family, and that family later merged with the Ribbing family that led to both the von Wachenfeldt line and my line.

Returning to the Verstraeten match Standifird, it turns out that when checking the shared matches of my Swedish matches who had a de Besche in their family trees, that Standifird showed up as a match to the Swedish match Sundberg 22.4. Thus, we have Verstraeten matching Standifird and me, and Sundberg 22.4 matching de Besche and me. Verstraeten's roots are in Limburg, and de Besche came from “Liege,” most likely meaning the Bishopric of Liege rather than the city of Liege, and the Bishopric of Liege extended well up into what is considered Limbug. We also have the fact that two of the shared matches of Standifird and me have a van Pelt in their family tree, and that the van Pelts came from Overpelt in Belgian Limburg. All of these connections point to de Besche or Dionysia/us being the nexus between the Dutch and Swedish matches, and de Besche or Dionysius may have been closely related to the van Pelt family. I'm probably related to the van Pelt (Laenen) family that emigrated to New Netherland, and there are 104 Pelt/van Pelt individuals int the van Os-Vroegh tree that's centered in the Land of Arkel.

In this scenario, the de Besche or Dionysius emigrants to Sweden had a common ancestor with the van Pelt family and these two families also had a common ancestor with the Verstraeten family. This common ancestor probably lived somewhere in today's Belgian Limburg. Verstraten's ancestors remained in Limburg. De Besche's or Dionysius' ancestors emigrated to Sweden, this being arranged by de Geer. The van Pelt family left Limburg, some ending up in or around the Land of Arkel and some emigrating to New Netherland in America.

But this scenario isn't certain, and van Pelt may not have been related. But as we'll see, many of my Dutch matches are very likely to have been related to either de Besche or to Dionysius, so whichever it was must have had a strong presence in the Land of Arkel. The true nexus between de Besche/Dionysius and the Swedes and my Dutch matches and me might in fact be the Swaim/den Hartog line, if that line did in fact originate in Limburg through Otto Gerritsz van Oist. I'll make the case for this after discussing in more detail the emigrants to Sweden from “Liege” through the organized emigration orchestrated by

Dutch Immigrants from Liege to Sweden

(Including a Potential Connection to Otto Gerrits van Oist)

Other than the Boman shared matches, there's the Nilsson share match, but his family tree isn't extensive enough to be of much use except that it indicates that at least some of his family lived in Värmland in the 1800's.

All of these Sunne matches are of course related to each other. Sunne2 is a sister of Sunne1. Sunne3 is a son of Sunne1. Sunne4 is the father of Sunne1. I don't know Sunne5's relationship to Sunne1, but it could be an uncle.

I'm related to Boman1 through both his father (28 cM) and mother (109 cM). His mother, however, is not on this list of shared matches, which means that this triangulated shared DNA comes through his father's side of the family and not his mother's. This is useful information because it narrows down the family tree search to just the father's branch of the tree.

There's a problem, however. The publicly available Boman family trees don't go far enough back in time to be very useful, since it's likely that with these small amounts of DNA that the MRCA for the the Dutch match, the Scandinavian match, and me would have been born in the 1600's or before—perhaps centuries before.

However, there's a solution to this problem. All of these Boman matches are also matches with a match named Sahlström, and I'm also related to Sahlström through my mother's mother's mother's father (this relationship was something I didn't know for some time after I started working on this part of my genealogy. After considering the problem of having many Swedish DNA matches that I couldn't place in my family tree, I found in the Swedish church records that my great-grandmother was listed as oäkta, which means illegitimate or bastard. Thus, the person listed on all the genealogies as her father was actually not her biological father. I worked out the identity of her biological father by assuming that it was most likely that the man she'd had an affair had probably lived either in her village of Overbyn (within the Torsby area) or nearby. I looked through family trees which had unexplained DNA matches, including that of Sahlström, and found a man 6 years younger than her who lived in the town of Utterbyn about 9 miles distant from Overbyn. This was Karl Johan Karlsson, and when I plugged him into my family tree all the unexplained DNA matches were now explained. Furthermore, this matched the amount of DNA in cM that I had with my DNA matches who I now knew were half-cousins rather than full cousins. Finally, I communicated with an American Sahlstrom who had compiled a large Sahlström genealogy and he told me that his records indeed showed hat my great-grandmother Ingeborg Andersdotter had indeed fathered a child by Karl Johan Karlsson, whose maternal grandmother was Maria Sahlström. Maria was married a person named Lundell (one of my 4^th great-grandfathers), so my Boman matches would also be related to Lundell and possibly are descendants of him or another Lundell.

This is important because now we can finally get to the interesting part of this process, which is listing some of the non-Swedish ancestors in my Sahlström-Lundell line (which appears to be well-researched):

Bertrand du Sar (1593 Leiden, Holland – 1656 Finnspång, Sweden)

Cateline Thiebeau (1585 Leiden, Holland – 1665 Finnspång, Sweden)

Saria Garazier/Garencher (1593 Leiden, Holland – 1656 Finnspång, Sweden)

Guillelm Snoyens (Antwerp, Belgium – 1579 Antwerp, Belgium)

Jan Alewyns, handelsman (1502 Antwerp (1502 – 1584 Antwerp)

Cornelia Alewyns Aleweijns (1550 Holland)

Cornelia van Wissen Borah (1510 Antwerp, Belgium – 1584 Gendt, Gelderland)

Elisabeth Zibrechts (1500 Antwerp - )

Jakob Radou (1580 Redoute, Liege, Belgium – 1640 Stockholm)

“Jacob Reddugh is the oldest spelling of the progenitor's name. He arrived in the country [Sweden] in 1608 in connection with Wellam de Besche's recruitment trip to his home districts in the Liège area. Immediately after his arrival he is allowed to do a short service at the Salberget under the direction of Wellam's brother Gillius de Besche. Jacob marries a sister of Master Wellam, Helena de Besche, and initially works as a brass smelter. To Lasse Päderson at the lathe Jacob Messingzmakare to receive Two Oxen, and Eight pieces of foal for his Wedding, and it shall then be settled uthi his order. Of Stockholm on 25 July 1609 (National Registry 1609). In the years 1616--26 he is active in Stockholm as a brewer. He has business contacts with several mills mainly in Södermanland and is still alive in 1640. I would think that Helena was born around SEK 1615. I think that she will otherwise be quite old when the last child, Carl, is born. The statement that the family came to Sweden via Scotland is incorrect, where is it now taken from. It most likely comes from the Liège area.” (Geni - Jakob de Radou, Mässingsmältare-Immigrant 1608 (1580-1640)

Gillius Wilhemus de Besche (1540 Liege, Belgium – 1610 Sweden)

“Gillius was active as an architect and merchant first in Liège (Belgium) and then in Antwerp. From there he went with his wife Helena and 2 daughters to Sweden, due to religious persecution. His sons had already moved to Sweden at different times.
He first came to Nyköping and on 1606-07-03 received an open letter at the town's customs mill. Builder at Skeppsholmen in Stockholm 1608-07-23 and builder after his son Vilhelm at Nyköping Castle 1609-06-11. (From the book "Svenska Adelns Ättartavlor page 173-175 / Gustaf Älgenstierna). According to tradition within the family, he should have been ennobled by Emperor Ferdinand III. Five sons also immigrated to Sweden, at least the two oldest before the father. At first in Sweden, the brothers called themselves only by the patronymic GILLIUSSON, but later adopted the family name de Besche. The family already branched out strongly during the 17th century, when all five brothers left behind sons. Gillius' wife Helena also came from the De Besche family.” Geni - Gilius W Wilhelmsson de Besche, dä (c.1540-1610)- Nyköping

Johanna de Borne (1410 Netherlands - )

Maria Richelle (1523-1570)

Peter Dyonisius (1553-1604) (his daughter Sara Dionysia (1583-1668) married Gillis de Besche (1579-1648), son of Gillius de Besche discussed above).

Elisabeth Rochette (1560-1623)

Margareta von Emersen (1614 Hamburg DE – 1694 Stockholm SE)

Maria Piett/Piette (1593 Dordrecht – 1637 Forsmark, Sweden)

Johan Piett/Piette (1580 “Netherlands” - 1636 Sweden)

“Mast master and blast furnace builder 1626-37 at Åker's mill”

So here we have several possibilities for the MRCA of Verstraeten, Boman, and me. I haven't done any real research on any of these people, so they remain unknowns. But not only to Verstraeten, but also to other of my Dutch DNA matches who share a Boman with me as a Swedish shared match:

• AMA Jansen                          Boman6
• 
  
• “Polleke”                                  Boman7 (Björk)
• 
  
• Stuijt                                       Boman8,          Boman9
• 
  
• Bosma                                   Boman8, Boman9
• 
  
• Brok                                      Boman9

I haven't done extensive research into any of the above people from Liege, Belgium and Holland, most of whom are my direct ancestors, although a few are collaterals. Most of these people emigrated to Sweden to work in the mines in the Bergslagen mining district; obviously Swedish mine owners (which included the kings and nobles) used the Low Countries as a source for skilled workers and engineers. Many of these Dutch workers may have been more inclined to emigrate because of the massive population dislocations and social disruptions that occurred during the Eighty Years' War.

Liege

When a genealogical entry says that someone was born in “Liege” without further clarification, this could mean that this person was born in the city of Liege, but it could also mean that this person was born in the much larger regin called the Prince-Bishopric of Liege. Here's a map of the Prince-Bishopric of Liege during the period of 1556-1664:

Screenshot 2608

(map of Liege 1556-1646) The Low Countries - Prince-Bishopric of Liège - Wikipedia

Map created by en:User:Fresheneesz - en:Image:The Low Countries.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1785585

So we see that the territory controlled by Liege and therefore consider to be Liege extended far up north, almost to Venlo in Limburg, and including Thorn and other places where Verstraeten's ancestors lived. I don't believe that Swalmen was ever part of Liege, but Oost might have been (though I don't know this for certain). Maastricht was apparently for a long time under the joint jurisdiction of Liege and Brabant.

Today in Belgium there's a province of Liege that consists of a large part of the former Prince-Bishopric of Liege.

Possible Connection to Otto Gerrits van Oist

This connection is based only on geographical proximity and requires further research, but in my opinion it's promising.

As noted above, Gillius Wilhelmus de Besche emigrated to Sweden at least by 1606. Gillius was one of my 11^th great-grandfathers through my Swedish line. According to the Geni.com family tree his mother was Maria Richelle (1523-1570). The person who added the Geni entr for Maria Richelle is Swedish (she's my 10^th cousin 2x removed), but I have no idea where she came by her information. A different Swede (another 10^th cousin 2x removed) added the entry for Wilhelmus de Besche, and the “About” section of that entry states that Gillius de Besche was born in Liege but later moved to Antwerp and then to Sweden to avoid religious persecution (Liege was Catholic so de Besche must ahve been Protestant, and Sweden was by then Protestant). Thus, we can be pretty certain that Maria Richelle was born in Liege.

There is in fact a village named Richelle located in what was the Principality of Liege at the time that Richelle was born. I don't know if Maria Richelle was born in Richelle, but it's likely that she or her ancestors were. And Richelle is located about 3 miles east of the town of Oupeye, which is obviously a place associated with Felicite d'Oupeye, the wife of Dirk van Oist, who was born in Oost before he he bought the lordship of Swalmen and the Castle Hilllenraad from his cousin or uncle Robijn van Swalmen. And Dirk van Oist might be the grandfather or other close relative of Otto Gerrits van Oist (d. 1436), who I believe is likely the father of Willem Ottens and thus the progenitor of the Swaim/den Hartog line in the Land of Arkel.

Screenshot 2615

Richelle is a short walk across the Meuse from the Castle Oupeye

If all these things are true, then this is hypothetically the DNA might have flowed to Holland and to Sweden. I haven't looked extensively for any family trees for Maria Richelle, but even if no Richelle had ever married an ancestor of Felicite d'Oupeye, I've seen enough genealogy to know that extra-marital births were common, apparently especially among the upper classes. So at some point a child was born from one parent who was a d'Oupeye and one who was a Richelle. Perhaps the male d'Oupeyes were in the habit of crossing the Muese and walking up the hill to Richelle for an affair with one or more of the women there, or perhaps there was a marriage. In any case, this could have occurred a number of generations before the time of Maria Richellle, and either before or after the birth of Felicite d'Oupeye. Maria Richelle therefore carried d'Oupeye DNA.

Maria Richelle married married Willem Hindrich de Besche and their child Gillius Willemsz (Wilhelmson) de Besche would have d'Oupeye DNA. Gillius was a Protestant in a Catholic land at a time when that was dangerous, and so he traveled to Antwerp and perhaps then to Holland, but in any case he and some of his family said goodbye to the tumultuous low countries and emigrated to Sweden; more of his family followed, and many probably also carried d'Oupeye DNA that made its way to Värmland to, among others, varous Bomans and also to me.

Felicite d'Oupeye also of course carried d'Oupeye DNA and when she married and had children with Dirk van Oist, his children also would have had d'Oupeye DNA. If we posit that Otto Gerrits van Oist was Dirk van Oist's grandson, then he would have been born in Swalmen and when he moved down the Maas into Holland and fathered Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens, the earlier descendants of the Ottens brothers would also have d'Oupeye DNA and many of their later descendants up through today would likely have small amounts of d'Oupeye DNA.

Thus, d'Oupeye DNA ended up in Holland, Sweden, and finally in America.

To be clear, I'm not saying this is what did happen, but that it's a possible scenario. It's possible that Richellle didn't live in the Richelle located 3 miles from Oupeye. Or that she did, but that her line had never had contact with the d'Oupeye family and that their proximity to each other is just coincidental.

Brief d'Oupeye Digression

This really has nothing to do with the topic of this post, which is the relationship of my Dutch DNA matches with our common Scandinavian shared matches, but since I came across this while looking into this potential d'Oupeye-Richelle connection, I'll throw it in here.

My only interest in d'Oupeye is of course the possible connection of that family to my Dutch ancestors. of which I thought there was none unnless Otto Gerrits van Oist was the father of Willem Ottens. In that case, d'Oupeye DNA might be floating around in the Land of Arkel gene pool through her marriage Dirck van Oist.

However, that could be incorrect because there might be other ways through which the d'Oupeye DNA might have made its way to Holland from Limburg/Liege. Here's a screenshot from a Geni.com relationship pathway that leasd from me to Felicite d'Oupeye:

screenshot 2616

For this pathway to be true, it would have to be true that my Schenck ancestors were actually Schenck van Nydeggen descendants, and I haven't done the research to have an opinion as to whether or not that's true. In any case, even if this is a false pathway because my Shenck ancestors were peasant farmers or merchants rather than descendants of a disintegrated noble family, it's still possible that d'Oupeye DNA could have made its way through Holland through the true Schenck van Nydeggen family. This is also a good illustration of how how closely related the lower nobility was to each other because of selective marriage in which lower nobles married other lower nobles regardless of geography (and higher nobles if they were lucky), and someone from the lower classes married someone else from the lower classes, usually related very much to the geographical proximity. This started to break apart as society opened up to new ideas and new ways of making money that ended the Middle Ages, but as we'll see at least with the Swedish nobility that even very recently and no doubt today, the nobility still marries each other even though the whole concept of nobility now seems like a silly game from the past.

Part II

Porkka

   

The problem with the Porkka story that I'm about to relate is that there seems to be no real documentation to back it up. The story had to come from somewhere, but that source is very elusive. Here's a link to a discussion of the Porkka line that has some secondary references and discussion of the family: Ancestors of Peder Pedersson Porkka (grue.ca) (author unknown).

In the end, the truth is that I haven't seen any reference to any actual archived record or old book that supports the Porkka family story, and as for true genealogy that's the end of the Porkka story.

However, in researching the Scandinavian shared matches of Dutch matches, I kept bumping into the Porkka line in Scandinavian family trees, so it's difficult to believe that the Porkka story isn't based in a true story. I'll get to these matches soon, but first here's the Porkka story as found in internet genealogies of uncertain accuracy.

My most recent Porkka ancestor is supposed to be Ingeborg Eriksdotter Porka, born 1650 in Tjustersby, Sweden. Ingeborg is supposed to be one of my 9^th great-grandmothers. Tjustersby is a hamlet located in Sunne parish. Ingeborg's father was Erik Persson Porkka, born 1604 in Siikijoki, Finland. Erik's fathe rwas Peder Clement Pedersson Porkka, born 1575 in Siikijoki, Finland, died in Stormörtsjön, Sweden. Peder's father was Peter Petersen Porkka, born 1535 in Siikijoki, Finland. And Peter's father was Peter Burk, born 1500 in Burg, Hainaut, Belgium, date and place of death unknown.

So if this is close to the truth, this could explain some of the Scandinvian shared matches between my Dutch DNA matches and me. Peter Burk emigrated from Belgium, leaving behind family with Burk DNA, some descendants of whom ended up in the Land of Arkel. Meanwhile, Peter Burk's descedants in Finland, now known by the Finnishized surname Porkka (because there's no “B” sound in Finnish), ended up in Finland and at least some as Forest Finns in Värmland, Sweden (and some also as Forest Finns in Grue, Norway).

But is this story likely? Because of the lack of documentation of this story, I was always skeptical of its truth, and this skepticism is mirrored by the unknown author of the paper on the website referenced above. However, based on the number Scandinavian shared matches I've discovered recently in this investigation of Scandinavian shared matches who have a Porkka in their family trees, I now have to say that the basic elements of the story are almost certainly true. This is an example of DNA evidence strongly supporting documentary genealogical evidence.

Documentary details of Peter Burk's life in Belgium might be very difficult to find, however, even if any exist. It's likely that his surname was something like Burk, although if he was actually from Hainaut it was more likely “Bergen”, which which was the Dutch name for Mons (mons is Latin for mountain, and berg is Dutch for mountain). In 1500 there was of course no country called Belgium, and Hainaut was an ancient French-speaking county that had since 1299 become closely associated with Holland (and Zeeland) when John II, Count of Hainaut, also became Count of Holland on the death of his cousin John I. Several succeeding counts of Holland were also Counts of Hainaut (and Zeeland), and Count William I and his son William II brought in many soldiers from Hainaut to fight against Jan van Arkel in the Arkel War. At least some of these remained in Holland, probably given land by William I, so one of of these could have been related to Peter Burk if Peter Burk had actually come from Mons. By 1500 Hainaut and Holland were ruled by Philip I of Castile, Duke of Burgundy, of the House of Habsburg.

Peter Burk was supposedly a gunsmith who moved to Sweden in the 1530's to ply his trade in Viborg. Viborg is today located in Russia (about 90 miles from Saint Petersburg), but in the 1500's was part of the region called Ingria, which was contested over by Sweden and Spain, but had been long populated most by Finns (Finland was controlled by Sweden from 1303-1809). The Swedes had establish Viborg (also spelled Vyborg) in the 1300's to counter Russian ambitions in the region, Finally by the early 1600's Sweden lost control of Ingria forever to Russia. Thus, when Peter Burk moved to Viborg in the 1500's his skills as a gunsmith were no doubt highly valued. 

The details of Peter Burk's life are unknown, including the place and time of his death, but the story goes that after some time in Viborg he moved his family along with the very specific number of 147 other families to Siikajoki in the north of Finland. This was probably part of some effort by the government of Sweden to settle Swedes in Finland, but this is just my guess. The unknown author of the paper referenced previously refers to Siikajoki as being in Ostrobothnia, but Siikajoki is actually north of the region that's traditionally known as Ostrobothnia (the city of Vaasa, which I'll mention later, is located in Ostrobothnia, and the Wikipedia article “Ostrobothnia (region)” states that “Ostrobothnia is one of two Finnish regions with a Swedish-speaking majority”).

Peter Burk supposedly had a brother named Anders who was a blacksmith and ended up living in Västergötland in Sweden, which is located just south of Värmland. I'm not going to try to trace the various places members of this family ended up in, but Peter Burk's descendants supposedly moved to the region known as Finnskogen (“Forest of the Finns”), which is partly in Norway and partly in Sweden just west of where much of my Swedish ancestry is from. Descendants are also likely to exist in Finland, and descendants of Anders Burk might still live in Västergötland.

One of my Dutch matches apparently has an ancestor surnamed Bergenhenegouwen, or Bergen Henegouwen (I won't identify this match because it appears that she's deleted some of the information formerly available on her MyHeritage page, probably for privacy reasons, and I want to respect that). Henegouwen is the Dutch name for Hainaut, so this surname would indicate that this family had moved to Holland from Mons in Hainaut. The Geni.com tree indicates that a Claes Claesz van Bergen Henegouwen was born in Mons, Hainaut, sometime after his approximate birth year of 1583. However, it shows that his father Claes Claesz (1560-1616) was born in Rijswijk, Holland (not the one in Brabant) which, as I've previously discussed at length in a previous post, was the home of the Rijswijk Sweym family in the 1300's and 1400's. The line ends with Claes Claesz, but the name must mean that the family had moved at some time from Mons to Rijswijk. Possibly he was one of the soldiers fighting for Count William I or II against Arkel, but that's just speculation.

I'm not saying that the Bergenhengouwen line is related to the Burk/Porkka line, but I am saying that it's a possibility given that both came from Mons and both show up in trees of DNA matches.

Scandinavian Shared Matches of Dutch Matches with Porkka in their Trees

The follow Scandinavian shared matches also probably have a Porkka in their ancestry because of their relationship to me and because of the relationship of Boman8 and Boman9 to the Dutch match Bosma:

So we have 9 of my Dutch matches who have at least 1 Scandinavian shared match with a Porkka in their family tree:

• Bosma
• Stuijt
• van Malsen
• Brok
• “polleke”
• Huijer
• Ras
• Hoogendoorn
• Kruiger

And 2 more Dutch matches who might have a Scandinavian shared match in their tree:

• AMA Jansen
• Brok

It's clear that the triangulated segment of chromosome 2 that shared by Bosma, Stuijt, van Malsen, Brok and myself does come from Porkka. This segment of DNA is less than 8 cM long among all of us, but of unknown length in the Scandinavian shared matches. Here's a chromosome comparison from MyHeritage showing that we all share the same triangulated chromosome:

Unfortunately Microsoft Windows recently did what it often does by forcing its updates on my computer, and these updates are often downgrades, such as removing its media player app, or here by removing some of its useful photo editing functionality, so that I can no longer easily edit a screenshot to remove the first names from DNA matches, which I always do to help preserve the privacy of the match. This is why the names of the matches aren't in the screenshot above, but the first match (red) is Bosma, the second (brown) is Brok, the third (yellow) is Stuijt, the fourth (green) is van Malsen, and the fifth (lbue) is Boman 9.

Here are the sizes of the chromosome 2 DNA segments for these matches:

Match cM

Bosma 8.8 Netherlands

Brok 8.9 Netherlands

Stuijt 8.4 Netherlands

van Malsen 8.4 Netherlands

Swain 8.0 ?

Skoglund 14.0 6.1 Sweden

Boman9 7.1 Sweden

Boman8 7.1 Sweden

Sjöqvist 37.2 7.1 Sweden

Etell 15.8 8.0 Sweden

Hellström 28.7 8.6 Sweden

Wikströ 8.6 8.6 Sweden

Südow 8.4 8.4 Sweden

Larsson 16.6 8.0 Sweden

Dalefur 17.3 9.0 Sweden

Hansen 13.9 6.8 Norway

Hansen 19.0 8.4 Norway

Hansen 9.7 9.7 Norway

Foseid 9.2 9.2 Norway

Brovold 8.4 8.1 Norway

Haugaard 8.0 Denmark

Jaeger 8.9 Denmark

Egelwolf 8.0 Germany

Hippler 8.8 Germany

Schellartz

Yuo can see that the Dutch matches have retained a longer segment of DNA than the Swedish match, and that my own segment is more comparable to the Swedish match than to the Dutch matches. This probably means that my chromosome 2 segment came through my Swedish ancestry rather than though my Dutch ancestry, although this isn't really enough data to actually prove that. But this does tend to indicate that for these Dutch DNA matches, at least, I'm actually a Scandinavian match to them rather than a Dutch match. In other words, I only match to them through my mother's Swedish ancestry and not through my father's New Netherland Dutch ancestry.

As I've mentioned earlier, the thought that this might be true had occurred to me many months ago, but I could think of no way to find evidence for this. It's possible that this is true for most or all of my Dutch DNA matches with whom I share only 1 segment of DNA. This is much less likely for the Dutch DNA matches with whom I share more than 1 segment, because it's unlikely that such crossover would occur with more than 1 segment. If this is true, then I actually have only about 50 Dutch DNA matches whose DNA I inherited from my New Netherland matches, and about 54 Dutch DNA matches whose DNA I actually match to through my Scandinavian cousins. This is a bizarre coincidence that is probably unique unless there are other New Netherland descendants who also have a large amount of Scandinavian (probably specifically Värmland) ancestry. But because of this coincidence, I'm uniquely situated to discoveer the links between the DNA from the Netherlands and from Scandinavia because I have access to a broad spectrum of the Scandinavian DNA data that the Dutch don't have, and to the Dutch DNA data that the Scandinavians don't have.

Returning to Porkka, I think the data that I've shown doesn't just suggest the essential truth of the story of Peter Burk/Porkka, but actually proves it. This is a demonstration of the ability of genetic genealogy to uncover relationships that are hidden from traditional paper genealogy, and to actually prove some of them in a way that documenatation can't. However, with each generation half of the available genetic evidence (autosomal DNA) disappears forever, so there's also a race agains time to preserve DNA evidence (there's also the major problem that this DNA evidence is controlled by varous commercial interests that can—and have—destroyed it without a second thought when they thought they couldn't make a profit from it).

Part III

Kuylenstierna

van Kuyl - Kuylenstierna

and van Egmond

From the Swedish Adels Vapen (Noble Coats of Arms) website we find that the family Kuylenstierna is listed therein as number 1304. (Kuylenstierna No. 1304 - Coat of arms of the nobility-Wiki (adelsvapen.com) )

The adelsvapen website sthat that Jan Jacobsson Kuyl was “summoned to Sweden in 1641” where he was employed as a foreman and slussmästare (sluice master) at the Gothenburg fortifications. This makes sense, because then as now, the Dutch were the foremost experts on hydraulic engineering then as now, so this makes sense. Jan died by accident in 1661.

It appears unknown how many children Jan had, but he had at least one son named Wilhelm Jansen Kuyl, who in 1657 was an admiralty captain in the Swedish “service.” It's unclear to me whether or not this means he was in the navy, but in any case in 1658 he was involved in a battle on the side of Sweden (see “Battle of the Sound” in Wikipedia). The adelsvapen website says that the name of his ship was the Rosen, and the Wikipedia article says that the Swedish ship Rose was a “merchantman,” so it appears Kuyl's ship was privately owned. This battle was started by Sweden against Denmark as part of the Second Northern War. Sweden had Denmark under siege, and this battle was for control of the sound between Denmark and Sweden just north of Copenhagen, as whoever controlled the sound controlled access to the Baltic Sea.

As it turned out, the Dutch had allied with Denmark and the sea battle that ensued was primarly between Swedish and Dutch ships (the Dutch squadron under the leadership of Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam). The battle ended in a draw, but the Swedes had 439 men killed, 269 captured, and more than 650 wounded. The Rose was captured by the Dutch and William Kuyl was injured badly wounded but survived, and for his valiant actions in the battle the Swedish King Carl X Gustaf rewarded him with a sword, some money, and probably a promise of nobility. Unfortunately for Kuyl, King Carl died a little more than a year later without fulfilling that promise of nobility.

In 1655 in Gothenburg Wilhelm Kuyl had married Maria te Letter (1634-1388) from Middelburg, Zeeland, supposedly from a Spanish noble family. It's possible that the family was “Spanish” on in that it lived in the so-called “Spanish Netherlands” controlled by Philip of Spain, or perhaps it had lived in Spain but fled to the Netherlands because they were Protestants. There's a town called Letter in Hanover, Germany, so possibly her paternal ancestors had coome from there, but this is just speculation.

Although Wilhellm Kuyl never got his knighthood, his son Johan Kuyl (1662-1740), a sea captain, did, and thereafter the family went by the noble name Kulyenstierna.

Another son of Wilhelm Kuyl, Henry Kuyl, was also a sea captain, but in his case ended up in the Turkish navy, became a muslim, and commanded the Turkish fleet in the Black Sea, using his new name Ali Pascha. Henry Kuyl had two sons, Mustafa and Achmed, and this branch of the family appears to have survived at least to the early 1800's. If anyone from the Netherlands or America has any unexplained Turkish DNA matches, this may be the reason for it.

A daughter of Henry Kuyl, Wilhem Kuyl's son, was named Cornelia Kuyl, and in Sweden she supposedly married Antony van Egmont (1645 Kristine, Götenburg – 1724). Information on this Swedish van Egmont/Egmond family is thin and uncertain, but this line may have moved to Sweden from Holland in the late 1500's or ealy 1600's in the person of Dirck van Egmond (?). This would make sense because in the mid- to late-1500's the Netherlands became embroiled in the Eighty Years' War, and in fact the most famous van Egmond of that time, Lamoral, Count of Egmond, was executed by beheading on the order the Spainish King Philip II (in 1568). Lamoral van Egmond was a devout Catholic but had been trying to persuade King Philip to let the Dutch be Protestant if they wished, but in the wake of the Beeldenstorm, King Philip saw that as heresy and had van Egmond executed, which shocked the Dutch speaking world and helped ignite the massively disruptive Eighty Years' War.

So here we have two families from the Netherlands that went to Sweden, both of which undoubtedly left behind many relatives in the Netherlands who may have ended up in the Land of Arkel gene pool that the Swaim/den Hartog family was part of. This could easily explain many of the Swedish shared matches that I have with my Dutch DNA matches.

The van Egmond family in Sweden appears not to have been ennobled into the Swedish nobility. I haven't spent much time researching this issue and with just a cursory search I wasn't able to find any Swedish line that survived to today, but of course there may be many. The van Egmond family in the Netherlands is another matter. This family was very old and van Egmond DNA is probably widely distributed througout the population of Holland.

The Kuylenstierna family, on the other hand, grew very large and today has many members. But what was its origin in the Netherlands?

When I first built my speculative family tree on Ancestry.com, some of my Kool/Cool line's ancestors were listed alternatively as “van Kuyl” or “van der Cuyl,” and variations of that. I have no way of knowing if some of the Cool family was at some times and places called by “van Kuyl”, but if so it would be likely that many members of the Land of Arkel gene pool would be related to the Swedish Kuylenstierna family.

Even if the van Kuyl family in the Netherlands was an entirely unrelated family to the Kool family that was so prevalent in the Land of Arkel gene pool, there is definite proof that at least one van Kuyl family lived in the Land of Arkel.

From Cornelis van Zomeren's Bescryving der Stadt Gorinchem en Landen van Arkel (1775)(Beschryvinge der stadt Gorinchem, en landen van Arkel, benevens der aloude en adelyke geslagten der doorlugtige Heeren van Arkel, zynde een nauwkeurige en uytvoerige verhandeling van deszelfs opkomst, benaming, bevolking, gelegentheid, pragtige gebouwen, en zeltzaamheden, nevens der zelver voorregten, handvesten, previlegien, en regerings vorm alles t'zamengestelt en getrokken uit oude handschriften, memorien, brieven, en egte bewysstukken, eertyds by een verzamelt door de Heer en Mr. Cornelis van Zomeren, en nu in order gebragt door Z.H.H.T. , Gorinchem (archeologiegorinchem.com) we find two van Kuyls in the Land of Arkel:

Adriaan van Kuyl Florisz, Schout of Gorinchem 1561, 1567-1579, 1581-1583

Maarten van Kuyl Franckensz, schepen of Gorinchem 1631, 1633, 1637

Abraham Kemp in his Leven der Doorluchtige Heeren van Arkel (1656) mentions:

Adriaen van Kuyl, schout of Gorinchem 1566, 1568

Marten van Kuyl Francois as schepen of Gorinchem 1631, 1633, 1637

Of course, there were probably at least several other van Kuyl members around the area at that time as well as these two. Thus, many of the Scandinavian shared matches with my Dutch DNA matches may have come from this van Kuyl connection alone.

So we see that in the later 1500's and early 1600's there was a family or families named van Kuyl living in the Land of Arkel, so this can explain van Kuyl DNA in the “Land of Arkel gene pool” that explains van Kuyl DNA in my Dutch matches. The problem is that it can't explain how I also have van Kuyl DNA, since I don't have a van Kuyl as an ancestor in my family tree on the Dutch branch, or a Kulyenstierna as an ancestor on my Swedish or Norwegian branches.

However, this problem is solved if we can prove that Kuyl is simply a variation of the name Kool/Cool. That name is quite common in the Land of Arkel gene pool; the van Os-Vroegh family tree, discussed in my October 31 2022 post “How Dutch Am I?,” has about 1,300 individual Cool family members in it. Furthermore, in my New Netherland Dutch ancestry I have line of Cools, represented by a 10^th great-grandmother who was named Aeltje Cornelis Cool (1615-1683), married to Garret Wolphertsen van Couwenhoven (1610-1645). Both of these are in fact my 10^th great-grandparents 3 times over (through their son Willem van Couwenhoven, and through their daughter Neeltje van Couwenhoven twice over (once through Neeltje's daughter Janetje Schenk (1665-1747) and once through Neeltje's son Garret Schenk (1670-1745)). Since Cool and Couwenhoven are the only Dutch lines that are duplicates like this, I should have a three-times higher probability of having Cool DNA and of van Couwehonven DNA than I do of any other Dutch ancestor. Thus, it wouldn't be surprising that I match at least some of my Dutch matches through Cool DNA.

Of course Kuyl is written and probably sounded much like Kool or Cool, so this also makes it likely that Kuyl=Cool.

But why would I even think that some of my Dutch matches and I might share Cool DNA? If I do a “kuyl” search in MyHeritage for all of my matches, I get no hits at all from any of my Dutch matches. But what prompted me to investigate this now was that I remembered from my early genealogy research from about three years ago when I was preliminarily researching my Cool ancestry that on the Ancestry.com crowd-source tree someone had given alternative Cool names as Kool, Cuyl, and Kuyl. I didn't find the source of those alternative spellings, so I don't know if they were guesses or if they hadactually been found on some documents either in America or in Holland. But I did find somewhere (probably on Geni.com) that there was a van Kuyl who had emigrated to Sweden and had been ennobled with the name Kuylenstierna (-stierna is a suffix that appears to be used with some Swedish noble names; Google Transalte says it mean “the paths,” so it probably has the meaning something like “lineage,” although “lineage” itself is translated as “härstamning”).

And then recently when I did the MH search on “kuyl,” although no Dutch matches showed up with that surname, two Swedish matches did show up with the surname Kuylenstierna. However, no Dutch matches showed on a search for “cool” and only 2 mtaches (Spies and Jansen) showed on search for “kool”. So I wasn't confident that I'd find anything interesting.

However, I could see from the van Os-Vroegh family tree that many Cools/Koos were in fact in that tree, and therefore that a fair amount of Cool DNA was likely floating around in the the Land of Arkel gene pool, along with den Hartog DNA, de Jong DNA, Bogart DNA, and so on. So many of my Dutch matches might have Cool DNA whether or not they knew it. They could only know it if their family trees extended far enough back in time, and in fact most of my Dutch matches don't have extensive family trees.

So there was a very real chance that my Dutch matches did have Cool/Kuylenstierna DNA, if I could find some way to find evidence for that. But how?

Swedish Matches with Kuylenstierna in Their Family Trees

After considering it for awhile, I had the idea to go to thos 2 Swedish DNA matches that had a Kuylenstierna in their family trees and to compare their Scandinavian shared matches (with me) to the Scandinavian shared matches of my Dutch DNA matches. If a shared DNA match appeared in both a Dutch DNA match and in one of those Swedish DNA matches with Kuylenstierna in their family tree, then the chances would be very high that Cool/Kuylenstiera was the nexus between the Dutch DNA match and me. This is because those 2 Swedish DNA matches with a Kuylenstierna in their trees were not a match with any Dutch DNA matches. Since they were not a match to any Dutch DNA matches but only to me and to other Scandinavian matches (and a few German), then it would be unlikely that any of their shared matches with me would be found as shared matches of my Dutch matches. The chances against that would be very high.

This is especially true since I can find no other way that I'm related to either of those two Swedish matches. Neither of them had extensive (or any) Värmland ancestry, or any other shared ancestry that I could easily discover. Of course there's always the chance that I could be related to them through some other connection, but that seemed fairly unlikely given our different ancestry in general, and certainly to have a Kuylenstierna in their family trees was quite intersting, given that I knew that the Kuylenstierna line had come from Holland and was possibly a branch of the Cool family.

Since I already had a list of many of my Dutch matches with their Scandinavian shared matches, all I had to do was to go through the shared matches of each ot the 3 Swedish matches with Kuylenstierna in their tree and compare the names of those Scandinavian shared matches agains the names on the list of the Scandinavian shared matches of the Dutch DNA matches. If any shared match of a Swedish match with a Kuylenstierna in it was also one of the Scandinavian shared matches of my Dutch matches and me, this was strong evidence that the Swedish match and I were in fact related to those Dutch matches through Cool DNA.

The two Swedish matches with Kuylenstierna lines in their family trees are surnamed Stare and Rehnlund. Here's a list of Scandinavian matches that I shared with Stare and Rehnlund that I also share with a Dutch match:

Stare (chr 4,12,15)

Scandinavian Shared Match Dutch Shared Match

Kokkonen 8.5 chr 9 van der Oost

Rajala 8.1 Perquin

Lunden 13.8 van der Loeff

Furuberg 14.6 chr 6 Remery

Waldenström 12.2 Postma

Paukku 10.6 chr 12 Badde

Ayllynmaki 7.3 Exalto

Hamaloja 13.9 Boomsma

Sillenpaa 21.8 AMA Jansen

Sillenpaa 21.8 Baan

Sillenpaa 21.8 Badde

Moilannen 21.4 Badde

Karmitsa 9.3 Exalto

Rehnlund (chr 13,20)

Kainlauri 20.7 Oste

Kainlauri 20.7 Schobbe

Mattila 9.0 Mohnsen

Riika 25.6 Weening

Reponen 17.6 Badde

Torkelli 25.0 Weening

Lohilahti 17.7 Badde

Maijala 11.7 Korte

Peiponen 15.9 Ewals

Ruotsaleinen 8.5 Badde

Engström 14.5 Spies

Maijala 11.7 Korte

Pedersen 13.2 Kruiger

Åyhynmäki 9.3 Exalto

Niclassen 15.4 Tak

Niclassen 15.4 Gits

Niclassen 15.4 Naastepad

Laitamma 11.9 Bakker

Nilsson 11.2 Artz

Kollarunt 13.1 Hoogendoorn

Lunden 13.8 van der Loeff

Emma 13.8 van Rosmalen

Kiviranta 8.8 van der Lans

Pippuri 10.0 Exalto

Wallin 14.9 Huijer

So there it is. Not just one shared shared match that can be wrtten off as a coincidence, but several—far too many to likely be coincidences. Remember, however, that this technique of teasingn out Cool matches though this method is just something that I came up with; it's not a proved, establish method so far as I know (I'm not sure that anyone else is even doing anything remotely like this, at least not systematically). But the logic of this technique seems to me solid. It's also very strong evidence that I'm connected to these particular Dutch DNA matches through my Dutch DNA that had traveled to Scandinavia, rather than through any Scandinavian DNA that had traveled to the Netherlands. This is because I have no Kuylenstierna ancestors in my Scandinavian ancestry, but I do have Cool ancestors in my Dutch ancestry. Thus, if I'm related to a Dutch DNA match who has Scandinavian matches though Kuylenstierna, I can only be related to those Dutch matches though Cool DNA from the Netherlands.

What these results must mean is that when Jan Jacobsen van Kuyl left the Netherlands for Sweden, he introduced his DNA to Sweden, but of course he also left family back in the Netherlands. The DNA in cM to the right of the Swedish (Finnish) matches is van Kuyl DNA that the Swedish matches inherited from their Kuylenstierna ancestors, which matches to they DNA that the Dutch matches inherited form their van Kuyl ancestors. The MRCA from all of this DNA is Jan Jocobsen van Kuyl's father or one of his father's ancestors, or his mother or one of his mother's ancestors. It's possible that the MRCA and DNA is from the Jan Jacobsen van Kuyl's wife (te Letter), but this is very unlikely as there's undoubtedly more van Kuyl DNA in the Land of Arkel gene pool than te Letter DNA).

It's also intersting that most of these shared shared matches are Finnish rather than Swedish (only Wikström is Swedish and Furuberg is Norwegian). This must indicate that various of the Kuylenstiernas had had children by Finnish wives or non-marital partners, and in fact some of the Kuylenstiernas had in fact lived in Finland. Unlike my own Finnish ancestry, which is completely “Forest Finn” ancestry in Sweden, these Finnish matches unlikely to be Swedish “orest Finn matches because most Swedish Foreset Finns now use Swedish surnames and also because the Kuylenstierna line seems to mostly married into other noble lines. Also, few if any of the Scandinavian shared matches who are Finnish have surnames that are also found among my Finnish ancestors. Furthermore, most of these Finns seem to be actually living in Finland and not in Sweden.

Vilhelm Kuylenstierna 91693-1799), a son of Johan Jacob van Kuyl, did in fact have a residence in Lautkangar, Finland (Sauvo parish), and at least three of his sons were born there. Since the 1300's Finland had been controlled by Sweden and many Swedes lived in Finland, so this was common. However, ethnic Swedes usually married other ethnic Swedes, although my impression is that this was a tendency rather than a strict rule. However, there may very well been a high level of premarital and extramarital intercourse, and this might explain these results. Otherwise I can't explain these results, but at least this (along with Porkka) goes far toward explaining why so many of the Scandinavian shared matches are Finnish.

According to MyHeritage, the Swedish match Stare is 12.8% Finnish and the Swedish atch Rehnlund is 15.9% Finnish. Of the Dutch matches here, van der Oost is supposedly 6.5% Finnish, Badde is 5% Finnish, Weening is 6.1% Finnish, and the others have no Finnish DNA. But remember that Dutch matches can't have gotten any Finnish DNA from a Kuylenstierna (or a Porkka) unless a Kuylenstierna (or a Porkka) returned back to the Netherlands. This is certainly possible, but would have to be proved. Otherwise, I can't explain how any Dutch matches have any Finnish DNA.

A Technique to Uncover Cool/Kuylentierna Matches

After confirming though the above technique that many of my Dutch DNA matches likely come through Cool DNA, I wanted to think of another method that I might use to discover this.

When looking at a shared DNA match of one of my Dutch DNA matches, we are looking at a person who lives in Scandinavia and is a cousin to both a person living in the Netherlands and a person living in Scandinavia (by proxy). That Scandinavian cousin is somehow a link between the Dutch cousin and the Scandinavian cousin. If the three matchs are triagulated, it is certain that they shared an MRCA. If the three matches are not triangulated, there is at least an MRCA between the Dutch cousin and Scandinavian cousin and an MRCA between the Scandinvian cousin and the Scandinavian cousin by proxy (me); but in all likelihood there there is an MRCA for all three of the matches also, because of the geographical distance between the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries. In the case of Kuyl/Kulyenstierna we know that the Dutch Kuyl emigrated to Sweden/Finland and took the name Kuylentierna. Thus, the MRCA for the Dutch match, the Scandinavian shared match, and me should be a Kuylenstierna.

However, I have not found any Kuylenstierna in any famlily tree of a Scandinavian shared match with a Dutch Match. If my Dutch match and I have a Scandinavian shared match and our connection is through Kuylsenstierna, then the Dutch match must have Kuylenstierna DNA to match the Dutch match's Kuyl DNA. Excpet when the shared match is triangulated, I don't have to match the Scandinavian shared match though that shared match's Kuylenstierna DNA, but still that shared match must have Kuylenstierna DNA or Kuyl/Kuylenstierna DNA can't be the nexus between the three matches. So am I wrong to believe that Kuyl/Kuylenstierna is the nexus?

As I just showed, several of the Scandinavian shared matches of the Dutch matches are also matches to the two Scandinavian matches that do have a Kuylenstierna in their family trees. Those two Scandinavian matches are only matches to me and not to the Dutch matches, so why are several of the Scandinavian shared matches between those two Scandinavian matches and me also shared matches between me and a Dutch match? The only reasonable explanation is that those shared matches are matches to the Dutch match and to the Scandinavian match through Kuyl/Kuylenstierna DNA.

This being the case, it must be true that for those Dutch matches that I've identified as having a Scandinavian shared match with both me and with one or both of those Scandinavians who are a match to me but not to them, those shared matches must have a Kuylentierna in their family tree. But then why can't I find one?

In the first place, the great majority of all my Scandinavian matches that I share with the Dutch matches don't have a very large family tree at all. And even those that do have a large family often have large gaps in the tree. It's also possible that many of the Scandinavian shared matches are descendants of an “illegitimate” relationship between a male Kuylenstierna and a female who never revealed who the father was, or whose family subsequently covered up this irregularity, perhaps by passing a step-father for the child's biological father.

In such a case, however, it might be possible to detect the possible presence of Kuylenstierna DNA by using a third person as a proxy for that Kuylenstierna DNA. This coulld be done by making a list of the families that a female Kuylenstiernas had married into, and if a later member of one of those families shows up in the family tree of a Scandinavian shared match, then that shared match could have Kuylenstierna DNA and the DNA in common between the Dutch match and the Scandinavian shared match could be Kuylenstierna DNA. This method is far from ideal because there's no way to know for certain that the shared DNA is in fact Kuylenstierna DNA, but the odds woud seem to be in favor that it is, because what other Scandinavian in that family tree would a Dutch match likely to be a cousin to?

I used the Kuylenstierna genealogy provided in the advelsvapen.se

\

Kuylensteirna Matches Based on Kulyenstierna Spouse Surname in Tree

Name Chromosome # MH Genetic Group

Birkhoff 1, 18, 20 Rotterdam

Buwalda 3, 7 Rotterdam

Huijer 2, 8, 15 Rotterdam

Henger 3, 18 Rotterdam

Honselaar ` 2, 15 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Korte 5, 15 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Ras 18 Rotterdam

Hoogerwerf 9, 12 Rotterdam

Kiers 22 Rotterdam

van der Loeff ? 2 segments, unknown chromosomes

Muilwijk? 1, 18 Rotterdam

van Keuk 2, 18 Rotterdam

Remery 2 Rotterdam

Spies 10 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Kruidhof 3 Rotterdam

Colijn 12 Rotterdam

Hendriks 9 Rotterdam, Limburg, Indonesia

Oste 2 Rotterdam, Zeeland

Schobbe 2,4,17

Fial 15

Slot 2,13 Rotterdam

Waslander 18 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Meindertsma 5,13 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Kulystierna Matches Based on Being a Match to Swedish Matches Stare or Rehnlund With Kulyenstierna in Their Trees

Postma 2, 16 Rotterdam

Perquin 3 Rotterdam, Limburg

van der Oost 11, 12 Rotterdam, The Hague, Indonesia

Badde 1, 18

Exalto 2 Rotterdam

Boomsma 13, 15, 18 Rotterdam, The Hague, Indonesia

AMA Jansen 17, 18 Rotterdam, The Hague, Indonesia

Baan 3, 18 Rotterdam

Weening 13 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Ewals 14 Rotterdam

Korte 5, 15

Kruiger 3 Rotterdam

Exalto 2 Rotterdam

Tak 3, 9 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Gits 3, 22 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Naastepad 3 Rotterdam

Bakker 12. 22 Rotterdam, Limburg

Artz 1, 18 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Hoogendoorn 3 Rotterdam

van Rosmalen 17 Rotterdam, Curacao

van der Lans 5, 8, 17 Rotterdam, Indonesia

Thus, 44 unique matches (of 104) who probably have Scandinavian shared matches through shareing Kuylenstierna DNA. These Dutch matches must share DNA with me through my Dutch side rather than Scandinavian because since the DNA they share with their Scandinvian matches is Kuylenstierna DNA and not Scandinavian DNA, and because I have no Kuylenstierna Scandinavian ancestors.

Furthermore, of these 31 matches, 18 share more than 1 DNA segemnts with me: 3 segements for 4 matches, 2 segments for 14 matches (in every case on a different chromosome). This means that the match can't be too distant in the past—beyond a certain number of generations the odds of more than one segment surviving from a particuar ancestor approaches zero (I don't know if anyone's calculated this, however).

Also, we see that 28 of the 31 matches have been identified by MyHeritage as having the genetic signatures that indicates Rotterdam ancestry. Assuming the accuracy of this identification, we can presume that Jan Jakobsson Kuyl (or his wife if she was Dutch) also had ancestry, perhaps for several generations, in Rotterdam.

So here's likely what happened:

Jan Jakobsson Kuyl probably lived in Rotterdam and at least some of his ancestors had probably lived in Rotterdam for at least a few generations. Since Kuyl emigrated to Sweden in 1641, we can assume that he was probably between the ages of 21-51, meaning that he was likely born between 1571 and 1621.

Since the evidence I've presented above indicates that I'm related to Kuyl, I also must have had Kuyl ancestors, and our MRCA would have had to have been born sometime before 1700, and likely before 1600. This Kuyl DNA ended up in New Netherland and then in me.

Once in Sweden, the Kuylenstierna lines married into various Swedish lines and, of course, their descendants had (or could have, for the later lines) Kuyl DNA.

Thus, a Dutch DNA tester with Kuyl DNA will be a match to Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegina matches with Kuylenstierna DNA.

Since I don't have any Kuylenstierna ancestors, on my Swedish side I won't have any Kuylenstierna DNA. Thus, when I match to a Dutch match who's also a match to a Scandinavian with Kuylenstierna DNA, I'm matching to that Dutch match through the Kuyl DNA (but possibly also to non-Kuyl DNA if we share more than one segment).

It appears that I match with about a third of my Dutch matches through Kuyl DNA, and the percentage might be much higher. Also, of the Dutch matches that I've identified as probably matching through Kuyl/Kuylenstierna, we match on 18 of the 22 chromosomes in the autosome. But why would I have so many Dutch DNA matches with Kuyl DNA? There are probably two main reasons for this. The first is that by chance I inherited Kuyl DNA that remained intact throught the generational DNA recombination process; but also this might not be just by chance, if I inherited more of Kuyl DNA than I inherited of other Netherands DNA (which, as I will show, is likely the case). Second, this DNA may have survived in the Land of Arkel gene pool for longer than would usually be the case because that gene pool is fairly endogamous (in-bred).

In my October 31 2022 post I noted that in the large van Os-Vroegh family tree, which encompasses much of what I call the “Land of Arke gene pool,” that the Cool/Kool line is very prevalent in that family tree—there are about 1,346 separate individuals surnamed Cool present in that tree. Thus, there is likely to be a great deal of Cool DNA floating around in that gene pool.

Thus, if Kuyl=Cool/Kool, then on both my end and on the Dutch end, conditions are optimal for having several Cool matches. In both America and in Holland, the Swaim/den Hartog line intermarried with the Cool line multiple times. So while I haven't proved that Kuyl=Cool, I've shown that it's likely.

Rotterdam Cool

What we need now is documentary proof connecting my Cool line with that of the one in the Land of Arkel. I haven't been able to connect the two lines, although I haven't spent much time on trying to solve it. My Cool ancestors supposedly emigrated from Amsterdam and/or Doorn (Utrecht), but before that supposedly lived for at least 4 generations in Dordrecht, which is 14 miles southeast of Rotterdam.

The reason I'm potentially associating the Cool line with Rotterdam is because in the Middle Ages, before Rotterdam grew and swallowed all the surrounding countryside, just to the west of Rotterdam was the Land of Cool, shown on the map below as the Cool Polder, just east of the Ambacht of Schoonreloo.

nl.wikipedia.org article “Schoonderloo”

Here's another part of the map a bit further west. To the east, Cool is in orange. The river, barely visible on this section of the maps, is labelled De Merwede, which apparently then would have been the primarly outlet of the Waal, although today it is known as the Nieuwe Maas. The town to the west is is Delf's Haven (Delft's Harbor), which was controlled by the town of Delft located further to the north; the town and the canal connecting it to Delft, the Delfshavense Schie, was built in 1389 to provide Delft an outlet to the Merwede and the sea. To the west of Cool, wrapping around Delfshaven from the Merwede to Cool is Het Ambacht Schoonreloo, and a bit furher west, Het Ambacht van Buekels Dyck wraps around Schoonreloo from the Merwede to West Blommer Dyck north of Cool.

Bulgerstyen, which on these maps would be located just inside of Rotterdam adjacent to Cool, was in in the 1200's located outside of the borders of Rotterdam and was owned in 1261 by Reijnier Boeckels, the surname Boeckels being spelled variously as Bokel, Buekel, and so on. I've discussed Bulgersteyn and the Bokel family in my post of December 24 2021 so I'll revisit it here only briefly. According to H.C.H. Moquette, Reijnier Boeckels was “heer van Bokelsdijk, Blommerskijk, Weena, en de landen van Cool” and also the “ambachtsheer of Berkel and Bleiswijck.” (story.pdf (x-cago.com) ) So the Bokel family owned a great deal of land and, most important for this post, were the lords of Cool at this early time.

At some point in either the late 1200's or early 1300's the Bulgersteyn property ended up in the hands of the Visscher family; Moquette believes this possilby occurred through the marriage of Floris de Visscher to a sister of Dirk Bokel. The Visschers had apparently moved to Rotterdam from Veere in Zeeland. In my previous post I mentioned that C. Hoek in his leenkamer transcription for “REPERTORIUM OP DE GRAFELIJKE LENEN TE BLEISWIJK, HILLEGERSBERG, KRALINGEN, OVERSCHIE, ROTTERDAM, SCHIEBROEK, SCHOONDERLOO EN ZEVENHUIZEN, 1200-1648” (Eerder gepubliceerd in ‘Ons Voorgeslacht’, jrg (hogenda.nl) ) notes that in 1390 Bulgersteyn was “inhabited by Jan Sweyn Dircxsz.” Then entry itself states that in 1333 the property went to “Diederic die Vischer, with the permission of his eldest son Florens, his wife jonkvrouwe Hildegonde....” In 1390 Bulgersteyn went to “Jonkvrouwe Rikaerde” living in Delft, though apparently only as a life estate, with the ownership going to “Dirck die Visscher Floris die Visschersz.” In 1391 Bulgersteyn went to “Oudzier Gherit Boyenz.”

Who was Jan Sweyn Dircxsz. and what was he doing living in Bulgersteyn? He was likely the son of the Diederic (Dirck) die Vischer who owned Bulgersteyn in 1333. I also noted that another source noted that a “Jan Sweym Dirxzoen” owned a house in Rotterdam in 1367. As is abundantly clear by now, the name Sweym is soometimes spelled with an -n at the end rather than an -m; this is a multi-century recurring theme for this surname of which I myself am a recent example. In America this mistake is more confusing than in Holland because of the prevelance of the English surname Swain, which is from a different (and Scandinavian) origin than Swaim, and much more common than Swaim. I think it's likely that the same person is meant by “Jan Sweyn Dircxsz.” who lived in Bulgersteyn and “Jan Sweym Dirxzoen” who lived in Rotterdam.

So already we have a connection between a Sweym and the land of Cool, as Bulgersteyn was located adjacent to Cool and as the Visscher family who owned Bulgersteyn had obtained it from the Bokel/Bueckel family who were the lords of Cool. I'm not saying that the Cool family of Barendrecht who were supposedly my ancestors were themselves Sweyms, but I think it's possible that they were related, and also that they were related to the Cools who lived in the Land of Arkel. I can't prove that on paper, but the DNA evidence is pretty compelling that this is a strong possibility.

There is also the fact that adjacent to the 28-morgen property in Lang Nieuwland owned by the van Arkel family until their loss of the Arkel War was a property owned by “Dirk Visser of Rotterdam (named 's-Kosters farm. Thus, this potentially places the Dirk Visscher family of Bulgersteyn right at the heart of the known origin of the Swaim/den Hartog family. Interestingly, Moqutte provides a passage that might support that the Dirk Visser of Rotter in Lang Nieuwland was part of the Bulgersteyn Dirck Visscher family. This is because in discussing the later owners of Bulgersteyn, Moquette says that in 1479 Bulgersteyn was owned by “Jan de Witte van Bulgersteyn.” Moquette says that in 1452 de Witte bought a house in Crooswijk (in Rotterdam) from a descendant of Dirk de Visscher and that de Witte was “gegoed” (well off, well-to-do) in “Cool, in Capelle and the estates in Gorkum, Naaldwijk and Wateringen....” So since Jan de Witte bought Bulgersteyn and the Crooswijk house from the descendants of Dirk de Visscher, it's possible that the mentioned estate in Gorkum (Gorinchem) that he owed had also been bought from Dirck de Visscherj's descendants and was the 's-Kosters farm proper adjacent to the Arkel's 28-morgen estate.

Furthermore, there is strangely enough a Bulgersteyn connection to the van Couwenhoven family as well. Recall that my New Netherland immigrant ancestor Aeltije Cornelis Cool had married my New Netherland immigrant ancestor Gerret Wolphertsen van Couwenhoven. Here in translation is what Moquette said about the van Couwenhoven connection: “”After Hildegonde's death [Hildegonde was the Dirck die Visscher's 2^nd wife] Bulgersteyn fell to her daughter Rikarde, whose descendants we find after her. Geryt Boye Ywein Heyensoen give his wife a life estate on 7 Nov 1352, among other things, the smallest half of 6 morgen of land in Couwenhoven near Delft, to which lands the family later derived its name. Perhaps there was a relationship with Willem van Couwenhoven schepen of Couwenhoven, who died on 24 Jan 1309, and with Lady Catharina van Couwenhoven, a widowed noble who in 1351, who at the same time as Geertruyt van Oosten, lived on the Bagijnhof of Delft [?]...Ogier van Couwenhoven and Vranke van Couwenhoven followed Gerrit in fief...and thus may therefore be regarded as his sons, while a daughter is named Hasekijn.”

So we have a web of connections between the Bokel family, the Visscher family, the Sweym family, and the van Couwenhoven family, while the Bokel family were the lords of Cool. There's no proof that this van Couwenhoven family is the same as my ancestor van Couwenhoven family, or that my Cool ancestors came from Cool in Rotterdam, but this is very strange conjunction of these families that appears to possibly have been recapitulated in America with my ancestors and also in the Land of Arkel among the den Hartogs and Cools (although the only Couwenhoevens in the van Os-Vroegh family tree had emigrated to America). The passage from Moqutte even refers to a “Geertryt van Oosten” from Delft, but I won't go so far as to say that she might be related to the van Oist/van Oost family that I hypothesize is related to the Swaim/den Hartog family.

I also have to note here that 1.5 miles south of Swalmen in Limburg is located the village of Boukoul. Of course this Boukoul might only coincidentally be similar to the Bokel/Bueke name in Rotterdam. There's also a Weerde located just south of Roermond, about 9-10 miles from Swalmen and Boukoul, and in my December 2021 post I mentioned that Amelis uten Weerde was acting as an agent for Gijsbert Sweym in Sweym's 1309 purchase of the “de Werve” house in Rijswijk (Holland). I don't want to place too much emphasis on the names of these towns in Limburg, as they might just be coincidentally similar, but it's something to be investigated further.

This web of connections in Rotterdam is circumstantial evidence that could only rise to proof with further documentation, but I think in the light of all this circumstantial evidence that it's possible that the Cool families of the Land of Arkel and of America were closely related and may have come from the Land of Cool and were possibly descendants of the Bokel or Visscher families.

According to entry #28 in the leenkamer previously mentioned, the “ambacht in which lord Ghisebrecht Bokel lives” which “includes the ambacht of Coele” was held “by the children of Florens, the brother of Ghisebrecht Bokel.” Apparently by 1367 the ambacht was limited to only Bloemersdijk and the Rodesant, by 1447 only the ambacht of Bloemersdijk, and by 1596 “East and West Blommersdijck called Cool.” It would appear, then, that if the Cool family indeed derived from the land of Cool, they could be descended from Bokel or could simply be from some family that lived in the land of Cool, perhaps as farmers.

From the list of Dutch matches whose Scandinavian DNA matches probably come through Kuyl/Kuylenstierna DNA, the majority are listed by MyHeritage as being in the Rotterdam “genetic group” (among others). This would mean that they have some deep ancestry in Rotterdam, with further supports this Land of Cool hyothesis for the origin of the name Cool/Kool/Kuyl/Kuylensiterna.

Culemborg

If the name Cool wasn't derived from the place near Rotterdam, then the next most likely place it came from was from the name of the town of Culemborg. According to the Netherlands Wikipedia article “Culemborg,” in 1281 the town was called Culenburgh, in 1305 Kulenborch, in 1353 Culenborgh, 1363 Colemborch, in 1472 Culemborch. However, I've seen the name spelled in surnames and maps as “Cuylemborg.” Culemburg is located 9 miles from Leerdam and 10 miles from Middelkoop, so the geographical proximity exists, but from what I've studied about the Swaim/den Hartog family I don't recall that there was much interaction with Culemborg, for whatever reasons. Even thoug Culemborg is located much closer than Rotterdam to the Land of Arkel, I just haven't seen much of a connection to Culemborg.

Indonesia

According to MyHeritage's “Genetic Groups” feature, 13 of the 44 matches had DNA that was similar to DNA from the Dutch in Indonesia. This might imply that Cool ancestors had been among the Indonesian settlers. The website RoosjeRoos.nl specializes in research on the Dutch in the East Indies, and includes a searchable list of the civil registration of the Dutch East Indies complied by the Dutch government. Zoekscherm – Roosje Roos On searching the list for names related to Cool, I received the following numbers of results:

• Kool    134
• Cool        6
• Kuyl      10
• Cuyl        0
• Hartog 289
• Hertog   68
• Hartogh   5
• Hartoch  3

hese results include variants with prefixes such as “van” and “den.” Some of these entries are duplicate people and I didn't try to work out the number of unique individuals as I only wanted to get a general idea if Cools and den Hartogs had been to Indonesia, and obviously many of each had.

Swedish Shared Match Lagercrantz

Dutch Matches Hoogerwerf, Waslander

German Shared Match Fiene

Dutch matches Hoogerwerf and Waslander share with me the Swedish match Lagercrantz. Lagercrantz' tree is small, but it contains enough information that I'm able to determine my relationship to him. Lagercrantz' 5x great-grandmother was Inga Christina Hård af Segerstad (1731-1810). According to Geni.com Inga Hård's 4x great-grandfather was Lars Pedersson Hård, till Segerstad (1512-1563). In my Ancestry family tree, Lars Pedersson Hård is one of my 12^th great-grandfathers, so this Hård or one of his ancestors, or Lars Pedersson Hård's wife Brita Nilsdotter Ribbing (1530-1592) or one of her ancestors, is likely a the MRCA of Hoogerwerf, Waslander and me. The question is, how did this Hård or Ribbing DNA get to the Netherlands from Sweden, or Netherlands DNA to Sweden?

As it turns out, the father of Inga Christina Hård af Segerstad (from Langerdrantz' tree) was Jesper Abraham Hård af Segerstad, brother of Brita Christina Hård af Segerstad (1691-1741). Thus, both brother and sister were direct descendants of the Hård in my family tree. And the connection to the Netherlands is that Brita Christina Hård married Johan Ulrik Kuylenstierna (1698-1741). grandson of Wilhem Jansen van Kuyl of the Netherlands. Johan Ulrik Kuylentierna had also married Marte Elisabet Ahelefeldt (1712-1795) and he had children by both of these wives.

Thus, Kuylenstierna DNA would potentially (and almost certainly) be in present-day descendants of both of these marriages, and those descendants would also have family trees that show Hård, Ribbing, von Rantzau, and vo Ahlefeldt ancestors. People living today in the Netherlands with van Kuyl DNA, obviously including several of my DNA matches, would show as DNA match cousins of these Kuylenstierna descednats.

Because Lagercrntz' ancestor Inga Christina Hård was the brother of Brita Christina Hård (who married Kuylenstierna), Inga Christina Hård's descendants couldn't have Kuylenstiern DNA from Brita Christina's marriage. This is a problem, but presumably Kuylenstierna DNA entered into that line sometime later. Lagercrantz' family tree is small and I'm not going to try to figure out exactly how he inherited Kuylenstierna DNA, but the connection to the Dutch matches is probably through Kuylenstierna or otherwise this would be quite a coincidence.

South African Matches

Swanepoel, Bestbier, du Preez, de Jager, Mons, van der Merwe

Chromosome 4 (118034145-129483448)

Swedish shared match Bergholm 64.0

These South Africa Dutch matches share a small triangulated segment on chromosome 4, centering around the genomic position noted above (the position varies with each match).

Swanepoel and I share 5 non-triangulated Swedish shared matches. One of these is Bergholm 64.0, who has a small tree. Bergholm is related to me through her mother's father, who lived in Sunne, Värmland, with that line's MRCA being Erik Olsson (1759-1836). According to my Ancestry speculative family tree, one line of Erik Olsson's ancestors include a line that includes Lars Pedersson Hård of Segerstad (1520-1563) married to Brita Nilsdotter Ribbing (1530-1592). This is the same couple as discussed above with the Swedish shared match Lagercrantz and the Dutch matches Hoogerwerf and Waslander, and who is related to Kuylenstierna/Kuyl through the Hård-Kuylenstierna marriage. Thus, the triangulated chromosome 4 DNA segment shared by these South African matches probably comes from the Dutch van Kuyl line, one member of which emigrated to Sweden.

I am probably related to Berholm 64.0 through her father's line as well as her mother's line. This relationship is more distant. Bergholm's father's mother's line came from Anundsjö in Västernorrland, Sweden, and one ancestor was named Beata Jonsdotter Linneria (Linnerius) (1590-1635). This line of the tree ends with her and she's not a common ancestor with me, but in my tree I have a Katarina Jonsdotter Linneria (1616-1657) whose grandparents were born in Anundsjö, and who died in Nätra, located 26 miles from Anundjö, so there's little doubt that Katarina and Beata were related, probably as sisters. The relevance of this is that Katarian Linneria was married to Jakob Stenklyft (1620-1687), who was the grandson of Johannes Laurentius Bureus (1548-1603) and Kerstin Zynthia (1550-1595). As I'll discuss in relation to the Dutchs match Scobbe and the Swedish shared match Wikström, DNA from Bureus or Zynthia could be related to German DNA that might be the nexus between my Dutch matches and our shared Scandinavian matches.

However, although the German matches (which I'll list later) might be the DNA nexus, it's also possible (likely?) that it goes back again to Kuylenstierna. This is because in this line there's another Hård- Ribbing pair who are ancestors to Brita Christina Hård (1691) who married Johan Kuylenstierna (1698-1775). This couple were Carl Hård, till Lunagården (1455-1525) and Catharina Knutsdotter Ribbing af Svansö (1507-1561). I haven't dtermined the exact relationship of Carl Hård to Brita Cristina Hård, but there's little doubt they shared an ancestor a few generatons up from Carl. However, the relationship of Catharina Knutsdotter Ribbing is known; she was a 4^th great-grandmother of Brita Christina Hård through Brita's mother. This was Knut Pedersen Ribbing af Svansö (1458-1518), who's mother was Märta Bosdotter Natt och Dag (1428-1526). (Knut Pedersson Ribbing is also my 12^th great-grandmother and his mother my 13^th great-grandmother).

There's a further Kuylenstierna connection that could be thee source of this DNA, which is the marriage of Claes Samuel Zakarias Kuylenstierna (1822-1898) to Hedvig Catharina Smerling (1825-1870). Claes Samuel Kuylenstierna was the Erik Magnus Kuylenstierna (1789), son of Carl Jespers Kuylenstierna (1744), son of Johan Kuylenstierna (this is the same Johan Kuylenstierna who married Christina Hård (1691) as his 2nd wife, and also Marta Elisabet Ahlefelt (1712) as his 3d wife).

Ras-Norum-Swaim

Dutch DNA match Ras and I share the Swedish match Nilsson who has a Porkka from Värmland in her tree. I only share one small segment of DNA with Ras, so I can only be related to him through one ancestor, and that ancestor is probably a Porkka/Burk. However, Ras and I share also share a Norwegian match named Norum who has an ancestor who was Dutch. In Norum's tree the most distant person of this line is Laurens van Valkenier, no dates or places, who had a son named Rochert van Valckenier/Faichner, wo was married in Nederland and who died in 1586. Other family trees in MyHeritage fill in further details on this family.. Laurens van Valckenier (1435-1513) was born in Kampen, Overijseel. His father was named Jan and his father's year of birth was given as 1420, but it was likely at least a few years earlier. Laurens had at least 5 brothers, including Gillis and Jan. He had at least 2 sons, one named Rockert. Laurens was by trade a handelsman, or merchant.

After a couple generationsn in Trondheim one branch of the family moved to Herøy in Nordland, and in the 1600's one of the descendants married a Scottish merchant from Dundee named Peiter Pittersen Don Dass/Dundas (1600-1652), born in Dundee, Scotland. Dundas was a merchant, which probably explains what he was doing in Nordland. I included this part of the family because it's one of the examples of the Scottish theme that I'd noticed.

So here with the Norwegian shared match Norum we have a second connection to the Netherlands with Falckenier (on whom I have done any research). Since I share only one section of DNA with Ras, my DNA connection I share with him can only be from one common ancestor, who might be Porkka or Falckenier, or possibly with someone else unknown. Since this is non-triangulated DNA, I have no way of knowing which chromosome Ras shared with either Norum or Nilsson.

However, here's something else to consider. For now, ignore Ras' connection to me and consider only his connections to Scandinavia. MyHeritage estimates that Ras has 44.5% Scandinavian DNA. Ras has 3 Norwegian matches, 3 Swedish matches, 1 Dnaish match, and 1 Finnish match (and he might have more, but I have no way of knowing that). Are these matches likely to be totally unrelated to each other, or are they likely to be connected in some way? If they're not connected to each other, then how are they all also connected to me? Isn't it likely that Ras and I are connected through only 1 MRCA, and that the 7 Scandinavians and 1 Finn that we share are in fact all actually related to each other?

And yet MyHeritage estimates that Ras has 44.5% Scandinavian DNA. Assuming the accury of MyHeritage, that's a high percentage of Scandinavian DNA. Ras' genealogy, which in most lines goes back into the 1700's and some into the 1600's, shows no Scandinavian ancestry; thus, his high supposed amount of Scandinavian DNA must come from an older pool of Scandinavian DNA fixed in the population he comes from (he does have substantial Groningen ancestry, so this is something to note, athough I have no idea whether Scandinavian DNA is more prevalent in Groningen than elsewhere in the Netherlands). So maybe his Scandinavian matches aren't closely related, but just random bits of DNA he received from random members of that old gene pool. The DNA I share with Ras is 1 segment with a length of 8.6 cM. Ras' Finnish, Danish, 1 Swedish and 1 Norwegian match all also have cM lengths of 8.x. These segments of DNA could be from an MRCA 50-60 or more generations ago. We could in fact be related through some Viking MRCA from the 800's. On the other hand, none of this DNA is triangulated, so this means that for each of these Scandinavians with these smaller amounts of DNA, there are at least 2 segments of DNA: 1 shared with Ras and another shared with me. This might mean that the MRCA isn't as old as might otherwise be the case—or it might just mean that endogamy was enough to preserve more than one segments of DNA from this one ancestor or ancestors, even from many generations ago.

The DNA Ras and I share with Norum is a bit longer: 20.7 cM for me, 13.4 cM for Ras. This is probably more recent than with the 8.x cM matches. If one of the Falckenier family in Kampen was the MRCA, then the MRCA was from about 600 years ago, or 24 generations ago (at 25 years per autosomal generation). Ras shares 14.4 cM with Nilsson (Porkka), so that could be more or less the same MRCA date.

Hansen 19.0

Stuijt, Bosma, Brok, van Malsen

Wiggers

Stuijt, Bosma, Brok, van Malsen and I are related to each other through only one small 7.6 cM segment of DNA on chromosome 2, at genomic position 169660770-174538452. This is a triangulated match, meaning that all five of us descended from one common ancestor at some time in the past. Since this is such a small segment and is triangulated, this ancestor may have lived 50 or more generations ago. On the other hand, he/she may have lived much more recently than that; there's no way to tell with just this information.

I've already shown that Stuijt, Bosma, Brok and van Malsen are all matches with a Boman and with a Sjöqvist, who are actually also Bomans. This means that this small shared DNA segment was also inherited by the Bomans from that same ancestor (MRCA).

But each of these Dutch matches is also related by this DNA to several other Norwegian and Swedish matches, through one Danish match named Haugaard, and through two German matches named Ledermann and Hippler.

Stuijt, Bosma and van Malsen have estimated Scandinavian ancestry, but Brok doesn't.

Although it's true that the Sjöqvist shared matches show a Porkka in their trees, this doesn't mean that Porkka was necessarily the common ancestor that this DNA came from. It may be, but the other Dutch matches with potential Porkka ancestry were non-triangulated, and “Porkka” DNA may have nothing to do with this 7.6 cM segment of triangulated DNA. In fact, my guess is that this DNA doesn't come from Porkka and may just be incidentally associated with Porkka. I say this because of the Danish and German shared matches, which would be difficult to explain if the DNA came through Porkka, since there's no evidence that any Porkka descendants ever ended up in Denmark or Germany.

However, one of the Norwegian matches (Hansen 19.0) who's triangulated with all four of these Dutch matches, shows an interesting series of migrations from Holland that could account for matches in Germany, Denmark, and Norway. This ancestor was unknown first name Wiggers (1600-1650), who was born and died in Amsterdam. He had married a woman apparently named Giertrud Beets born 1625 in Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, died 1672 Christiana (Oslo), Norway. The Wiggers had a daughter named Adelgunde Wiggers ( -1720) who married a lieutenant colonel named Poul Christian Halcke, born at an unknown date in Denmark, died 1717 possibly in Norway, since this couple had a daughter born 1690 in Norway. What likely happened is that Adelgunde Wiggers married Halcke and when Adelgunde's husband died, she went with her daughter when her military husband was stationed in Oslo. At this time Denmark and Norway and Schleswig-Holstein were all part of the same country called Denmark-Norway (until 1814).

Their daughter Barbara Margarethe Halcke (1690-1764) married Major General Jens Heinrich Emahus (1688 Rissa, Norway – 1752 Trondheim, Norway), and they had a daughter Adelgunde (1710-1779), who married a Council of Justice member and War Commissioner Jens Gjertsen (1695-1761). They had a daughter Barbro Margarethe (1740-1799) who married Hans Petrus Pedersen Bruun, a priest from Gildeskål, Nordland, Norway. I mentioned these later descendants because they both went to Trondheim and then to Nordland.

Hansen 19.0

Stuijt, Bosma, Brok, van Malsen

Jürgen Jürgensohn Name Unknown (1570 Amsterdam - )

This is another person from the family tree of Hansen 19.0. A Jürgen Jürgensohn (possibly originally Joris Jorisz?) was suposedly born in Amsterdam in 1570. THis wife is unknown. Jürgen had a son named Heinrich Jürgens who was possibly a royal attorney and a merchant who in 1600 went to Itzehoe in Schleswig-Holstein (then part of Denmark), just north of Hamburg. His wife was Catharina Früchtnichts, born 1584 in Itzehoe, died 1675 in Copenhagen, Denmark. One of their sons, Johannes Jürgens, was born 1613 in Itzehoe and died 1659 in Röros, Norway. This line of the family thereafter resided in Norway, some under the name Irgens.

Remery – Olsen 14.2 - Swaim

de Crequi dit la Roche & Rengers

Remery is a Dutch DNA match who has the Dutch shared matches with me of Bol, Kooistra, Slot, Boertien, Beernaert, Straijer, Kooyenga, Frederiks, Oste, and Exalto. I share with herj one 11.4 cM DNA segment on chromosome 2. However, it appears that Remery is the only Dutch shared match with Olsen 14.2 and me.

Remery is related to Olsen 14.2 by 31.0 cM of DNA, whereas I'm related to Olsen by less than half that. This 31 cM of DNA is one of the largest segment(s) of DNA shared by one of my Dutch matches with a shared Scandinavian match and indicates that the MRCA of Remery and Olsen 14.2 was not in the far distant past. Remery's connection with Olsen 14.2 is somewhat surprising in that all of Remery's great-grandparents seem to have lived in Friesland, in the region just north of today's Flevoland (Flevoland didn't exist in the 1800's, as almost all of Flevoland is land “reclaimed” from the Zuiderzee).

Olsen's family has lived for generations in Rogaland, Norway, in and around Stavanger. I have a line of ancestors that comes from this region, so it's no suprise that I'm related to Olsen. But how is Remery related to Olsen?

Remery's family tree gives us not clues, but Olsen's family tree does show a connection to the Netherlands, specifically to Den Haag but by implication also to Amsterdam and to Voorthuysen, Germany.

This connection Jean de Crequi dit la Roches (1585-1647), born and died in Den Haag, and his wife Gjertrud de Lays Rengers (1590-1654), born and died in Den Haag.

Olsen's family tree shows that the son of Jean and Gjertrud, Ahasverus de Crequi dit la Roche (1617 - ), born in Den Haag, must have emigrated to Stavanger, Norway, between 1654 (the birth of his daughter Karen in Amersterfam) and 1661 (the birth of his son in Stavanger). Ahasverus' wife ws Mette Volquartsdatter Riisbrich. Mette Riisbrichs parents are not given in Olsen's family tree, but the Geni.com tree says they were Volquart Brodersen Riisbrich ( ) and Karen Johane Nielsdatter Lem (1616 Larvik, Norway – 1663 Bergen, Norway). Karen Lem's father was Niels Pedersen Lem (1585 Ghent, Belgium – 1638 Larvik, Norway, and Niels' father was Peder Lem, born 1550 in Ghent, Belgium, died 1610 in Bergen, Norway. So here was have a connection to Belgium.

Returning to Olsen's family tree, the daughter of Ahasverus de Roche and Mette Riisbrich was Ahaseverus II of Stavanger Rogaland, and his son was Salomon of Kvitsøy, Rogaland. Salomon's son was Anna Mettine Ahasverusdatter, who married Ola Asgautson (1736-1799) of Avaldsnes, Norway. The reason I mention this marriage is because this is possibly how I'm related to Olsen. Ola Asgautsson's father and grandfather apparently lived on the island of Bjergøy in the 1600's-1700's, the same several of my ancestors lived on the neighboring islands of Sjernarøy and Finnøy. These islands are quite small and close to each other, so these people certainly knew each other.

Returning to Olsen's family tree supplemented with further information from Geni.com, we have the following Netherlands lines leading down to Olsen, from whom Olsen might have inherited DNA:

Jean de Crequi, dit la Roches (1585-1647) Den Haag, Holland

Gjertrud de Leys Rengers (1590-1654): Den Haag, Holland

Rengers Rengersson (??) (father of Gjertrud) Den Haag, Holland (presumed)

NN van Voorthuijsen (1545 - )(mother of Gjertrud: Voorthuysen

NN Olderingh (1510 - ) (FF grandmother Gjert): Unknown

Peder Lem (1550-1610) (GGF of Ahasverus): Ghent, Belgium

So any of these, or their ancestors, could be the MRCA of Olsen and Remery. I should point that this isn't a triangulated match, so Remery and I don't necessarily share the same MRCA with Olsen. I should also point out the possibility that the DNA that I share with Remery might be through my Norwegian ancestry rather than through my Dutch ancestry (this is a question regarding all of Dutch matches, but since in and around the Land of Arkel seems to be the geographical epicenter of the majority of my matches, this seems unlikely).

Rengers Rengersen's husband (and Gjertrud Rengers' father) was married to NN van Voorthuijsen. The surname van Voorthuijsen could refer to either Voorthuizen, Guelders, a few miles east of Amersfoort, or Voorthuysen, Germany, located north of Kleve near the tip of the “peninsula” of Germany that juts into the eastern border of the Netherlands on both sides of the Rhine.

I don't know which Voorthuijsen/Voorthuizen Gertrud Rengers' mother might have come from. Either townn is possible, so this would have to be researched. It can't be assumed to be the Voorthuizen in Gelderland, because the Voorthuysen in Germany is quite close to a lot of the locations in the Netherlands that were possibly associated with the Swaim/den Hartog line, including Gendt, Nijmegen, and Millingen aan de Rijn. Millingen aan de Rijn, located 9 miles west of Voorthuysen, the location of a castle nherited in 1427 by Johan van Oest's wife Willem van Bellinghoven (as I mentioned in my last post).

One last thing about this family in Olsen's tree that I want to point out. According to the Geni.com tree, one of Salomon Ahasverus de Crequi dit la Roche's grandmothers was named Christine Brockdorff; Christine's father was Ditlev Iversen Brockdorff ( - 1674) and Christine's mother was Christine von Ahlefeldt. As Brockdorff and Ahelefeldt were direct ancestors of the shared match Olsen, it's also possible that the shared DNA came from either Brockdorff or Ahlefeldt. We'll see more about this just below.

van Altena

Van Altena is a Dutch match of 8.5 cM on chromosome 18. MyHeritage estimates her Scandinavian and Finnish ancestry as 0%. Van Altena, however, does have two Scandinavian matches, surnamed Wulff and Weea.

Wulff

Wulff's ancestry is mostly Swedish, but his paternal line is from Trondheim from the 1700's. His family tree isn't large, but in one Swedish line it extends to the 1500's to a Hans Stockhaus, born 1560 in Münster, Germany, died 1593 in Öebro, Sweden, and his wife Margit Gevert from Orebro. Hans Stockhaus is in my family tree, though as an in-law: one of my 10^th great-grandmothers, Katarina von Lorenz (born 1585 in Stralslund in today's Prussia, died 1670 in Frysande Parish, Värmland) had a daughter Kerstin who married Lukas Stockhaus, a grandson of Hans Stockhaus.

Although I don't have a Stockhaus ancestor, my MRCA with Wulff is probably a German immigrant to Örebro in the 1500's, of which I have several in the Swedish side of my family tree. The paternal surname Wulff also likely derives from one of these immigrants. Örebro is a county located in the Bergslagen mining district of Sweden that attracted German mining experts in the 1500's, many of whom remained in Sweden and many of whom later relocated to Värmland. So even though I can't make a connection to Wulff's tree, it's probably found somewhere in the group of German miners or one of their Värmland descendants.

However, this doesn't explain van Altena's connection to Wulff, and there's not enough evidence to speculate as to that connection.

Weea

It's pretty remarkable that the Weea family tree on Geni.com has as his ancestors Rutger van Beeck, lord of Beeck and Wegburg (1210 - ) and Gerard van Uitwijk (1264-1295), both of whom ........... married to Seger Vosken van Swalmen.

It's reasonable to doubt the accuracy of the supposed ancestors of DNA match Weea's family tree that go back to the 1200's and 1100's, but here we have a genetic link between Weea and van Altena and me, with a Dutch ancestor of the three of us in Weea's family tree. This is strong evidence that Weea's family tree is accurate in at least this line because there's no other reasonable explanation for why van Altena would be a cousin to Weea.

It's rare that such a clear connection between That Dutch DNA match van Altena is a DNA match to Norwegian match Weea

The shared match Weea is more interesting as it has a connection to the Remery-Olsen 14.2 DNA match just discussed above. It should also be noted that the Remery-Olsen 14.2 match is on chromosome 2, whereas this van Altena-Weea match is on chromosome 18.

Weea is Norwegian. I have four matches with this surname, and as they are all related to each other they can be considered one match, although van Altena only has Weea 15.0 as a matchs. Weea's tree on MyHeritage is private, but fortunately this Weea genealogy is also available on Geni.com. Weea's paternal line is from Liberec in today's Czechia; Johannes Joseph Frantze emigrated from Liberec sometime between his birth in 1780 to his death in Løten, Norway, in 1848.

Weea's family tree is large and goes back in some cases to the 1200's, and there's a line of Dutch matches in Weea's family tree that goes further back in time than what we've seen this far for the other Dutch matches in Scandinavian trees. These are:

Christine van Mirlaer ( -1381) and all her lines further back in time, including the following from the the first five generations back from her:

Jacob IV van Mirlaer, lord of Meerlo and Horst (1290 Meerlo, Limburg – 1360)

Arnoldus I van Straelen, lord of Geysteren (1191-1251)(Geysteren is near Broeckhuysen)

Mechtildis van Wachtendonk (1155- )

Hendrik III van Cuyck, lord of Cuijck (1200 Cuijck, Brabant – 1250)

Aleida Persijn (? Putten – 1243 Heusden)

Rutger van Beeck, lord of Beeck and Wegburg (1210 - )

Reinier van Vlodrop (1208-1290)

Arnold IV van Wachtendonk Flodrop (~1140? Vlodrop, Limburg – 1170)

Gerard van Uitwijk (1264-1295)

Godart van Roermond (1205 - )

Margaretha van Asselt (1210 - )

Godfrid I van Malsen (1100-1157)

Father: Hendrick I van Cuijk, viscount of Utrect

Of course I have no idea of the accuracy of this genealogy, but it's quite interesting to see this group from in and around Limburg in the family tree of this Norwegian shared match of the Dutch Altena match and me (a Dutch Swaim match). Here's a screenshot of some of the towns from the names of the above Weea ancestors:

screenshot 2568

I've also added Swalmen for perspective. Asselt doesn't show on this map, but it's essentially in Swalmen's back yard.

I didn't include Uitwijk in on the map because it's an outlier, but of course Uitwijk is very interesting in this context because it's a village located in the Land of Altena, today the municipality of Altena, and of course the Dutch match we're now discussing is surnamed van Altena. Of course it could just be a coincidence that one of the two of van Altena's Scandinavian matches supposedly has an ancestor from the heart of Altena, and was married to a woman named van Roermond, when Roermond is located close to Swalmen, the geographical source of the name I propose as the origin of the Swaim name. There are two other placed named Altena, one located on the mainland part of Zeeand north of Ghent, the other located in Germany east of Dusseldorf, and I'm not certain which Altena might have given rise to this match's surname, but given the history of the Swaim/den Hartog line it's most likely that the name derives from the Brabant Altena.

Another very itneresting point about Uitwijk is that it's located a 25-minute walk (1.2 miles) from the Rijswijk in Brabant and a 35-minute walk (1.8 miles) from Giessen. These are both places I've proposed in my 5-22-22 post (“Clues from H. Den Hertog's Genealogy of the Family Hartoch”) as locations of Swaim/den Hartog ancestors. This, however, might simply be a coincidence because these connections to the Land of Altena occurred much later, in the 1500's. On the other hand, some of the older families from the Land of Altena appear to have originally come from Limburg, so perhaps this isn't a coincidence after all.

Here's how Christine van Mirlaer's DNA might have made it's way to the Weea family from Løten, Norway. Christine van Mirlaer would would have inherited DNA from all of the above listed people, and could have inherited DNA from any of the ancestors more distant to them (those more distant ancestors are interesting in their own right, and which the reader can access on the Geni.com website). The following list is the parent-child chain from Christine van Mirlaer to Weea. The reader can skip this, except that I want to point out the 5^th and 6^th names in this line with the surname Ahlefeldt, and the 8^th with the surname Rantzau.

Christine van Mirlaer (married Teutonic Knight Rollman von Sinzig zu Ahrenthal)

Heinrich II Rollman von Sinzig und Ahrenthal (1380-1428)

Margarethe von Sinzig (1365-1430)

Anna von Wiltberg (1405-1478) born in Denmark

Claus von Ahlefeldt (1425-1486) possibly born in Lehmkuhlen, Plön, Denmark (today in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany)

Catharine von Ahlefeldt, til Nordsee (1457-1530) born in Kiel

Anna, daughter of Markvard VI Wulfsen Breide, til Clausdorf (1465-1551) Bülck

Anna Ottesdatter Rantzau, til Bülck (1470-) Denmark

Hans Pogwisch, til Farve (1485-1560) b. Farve d. Maasleben (!) (AKA Maslev) Schleswig

Margarethe von Pogwisch (1560-) Maasleben

Agethe von Oertzen (1583-1604)

Margrethe, daughter of Curt von der Lühe (1590-1667) Mecklenburg

Johan Brockenhuus, greve til Sebberkloster (1614-1673) Slet, Denmark – Copenhagen

Margrethe Johansdatter Brockenhuus ( - 1745) b. Roskilde d. Buskerud, Norway

married to Eilert Jørgen Christof von Hadeln (1660-1714) b. Tøten

Anne Eilertsdatter von Hadeln (1686-1742) Løten, Norway

Eilert Jørgen von Hadeln Ramm (1720-1793) Løten, Norway

Eilert Valdemar Preben Ramm (1769-1837) b. Furnes, Norway d. Vang, Norway

Peronella Eilertsdatter Ramm (1794-1887) Løten, Norway

Ole Pedersen 1837-1863) Løten, Norway

Anne Olsdatter Johansen Vemstad (1863-1909) Løten Norway

married Johan Lauritz Johansen (1854-1941)

Ole Weea (1895- ) Løten, Hedmark, Norway

So this is the line leading from the Limburg ancestors to the shared DNA match Weea, who must be a granddaughre or great-granddaughter of Ole Weea.The name Weea probably came from Norwegian custom of taking the name of the farm on which you lived as a quasi-surname (this makes genealogical research for Norwegians much easier than for Swedes, who in the 1800's and before almost all used patronyms only, except for the nobility). In the names above, Ramm and Vemstad are names of farms in Løten; there's also a farm named Vea, so this farm is probably the Weea's traditional home (Løten Parish, Hedmark, Norway Genealogy • FamilySearch).

To recap, Weea is a DNA match to the Dutch match van Altena, Weea is also a DNA match to me (a Swaim), and van Altena is also a DNA match to me. The DNA is not triangulated, meaning it isn't the same section of DNA that we all share. I share a different segement of DNA with Weea than I share with v

an Altena. I don't know what segment van Altena shares with Weea. These different segments of DNA might be, but aren't necessarily, from the saame individual. The DNA I share with Weea might very well be from one of my Norwegian ancestors, and since I had a line that lived in Løten throughout the 1700's this wouldn't be surprising. In fact, I can say it's likely, because I match one of my four Weea matches at 23.2 cM of DNA in 3 segments, and any Swaim-Weea DNA is likely to have come from about the 1700's, which is more recent than any other possibility. However, it's possible that it came from some other source such as Ahlefeldt, because even though any connection I have to them would be older, those lines are highly interbred with each other, which would concentrate their DNA.

I'm related to van Altena through one 8.5 cM segment of DNA. When I first discovered this link between van Altena and Weea I hadn't yet made the discovery that Seger van Broeckhuysen was probably Siger van Swalmen, and that Seger's unknown wife was proably Oda Berthout van Grimbergen. Oda Berthout van Grimbergen's mother was Sophie van Altena, the daughter of Boudewijn I van Altena (1142-1200). Assuming that Siger van Gent and Oda Berthout van Grimbergen were the progenitors of the van Broeckhuysen-van Swalmen line, and that the Swaim/den Hartogs are descendants of the van Swalmen line, then the Swaim/den Hartogs could in fact have van Altena DNA through Oda Berthout van Grimbergen. So this explains my relationship to the DNA match van Altena.

But the other part of the equation is Christine van Mirlaer. Is the van Altena or the Swaim/den Hartog line related to the van Mirlaer line? It's certainly possible, given the geographic proximity of Meerlo to Broeckhuizen (< 5 miles)(but remember, this would be true only if the Swaim/den Hartog line descended from the van Swalmen line).

In fact, we do know that a van Swalmen married a van Mirlaer, a marriage that I've discussed in previous posts. This was the marriage of Jakob van Mirlaer to “Guda de Sualmis [Swalmen], daughter of the late knight Seger van Swalmen” sometime on or before 1365. Through this marriage, descendants of Guda van Swalmen would have Mirlaer DNA. However, I'm not a descendant of Guda, and neither was Christine van Mirlaer. And this could be a problem, because this can't explain how DNA match van Altena is related to the Norwegian Weea. Christine van Altena would need to have van Altena DNA for this to be true. We've established that van Swalmens possibly/probably have van Altena DNA through Oda Berthout van Grimbergen, but we haven't established than Christine van Mirlaer has van Swalmen DNA.

If we had a perfect family tree for the van Mirlaer line, then we would know if Christine van Mirlaer had van Swalmen DNA. But we don't have a perfect family tree, and although we know who Christine's mother, father, and three of her grandparents were, we don't know the identify of the wife of her grandfather Jakob III van Mirlaer (1255-1309).

The family tree for the van Swalmen line is even less complete. Althoug we know who her father and her father's father was, we don't know the identify of her mother or her mothers parents.

But through a stroke of good luck we can prove that Christine van Mirlaer did in fact have van Swalmen DNA. WAt least according to the Geni.com tree, we don't knoWe don't know who As it turns out, Christine van Mirlaer was the sister of Jakob van Mirlaer, but in terms of Christine's own DNA this of course means nothing in itself, as obviously she can't have inherited van Swalmen DNA through her sister-in-law. But we happen to know something peculiar about the marriage of Jakob van Mirlaer and Guda van Swalmen that proves that Christine did have van Swalmen DNA.

The peculiar thing about the marriage of Jakob van Mirlaer and Guda van Swalmen is that it was incestuous, according to the law of the Catholic Church. It was incestuous because “they knew they were related in the fourth degree.” (Roermond archive entry dated 18 May 1365; Regesten 1300-1399 Loe Giesen ). The exact relationship of Jakob and Guda wasn't stated in the entry, but a fourth-degree relationship includes:

A person and a great-great grandcild/parent

A person and a grandniece/nephew

A person and a great aunt/uncle

A person and a first cousin

Of these relationships, we can probably assume that it was the latter and that Jakob van Mirlaer and Guda van Swalmen were first cousins. The other relationships are too bizarre to be credible, and it's doubtful that a dispensation would have been granted for, e.g., a man marrying his great-great grandchild. The Wikipedia article “Cousin Marriage” says: “Eventually, the [European] nobility became to interrelated to marry easily as the local pool of unrelated prospective spouses became smaller; increasingly, large payments to the church were required for exemptions (“dispensations”), or retrospective legitimizations of children.” It seems likely the the practical issue with first-cousin marriages for the nobility was that of inheritance laws. If the child of a noble was illegitimate, then that child couldn't inherit the titles or real property. Since a first cousin marriage was illegitimate, for a child from such a marriage to inherit, the marriage would have to be retroactively legitimized by paying the church for a dispensation—a nice source of revenue for the Church, but obviously cynnical an hypocritical.

But for our purposes here what it means that Jakob van Mirlaer's marriage to Guda van Swalmen was a cousin marriage means that they shared the same grandparents. This means that one of those grandparents must have been a van Swalmen. And this means that Christine van Mirlaer, who was the sister of Jakob van Mirlaer, had a van Swalmen grandparent.

In the 1365 entry, Guda van Swalmen was named as the daughter of the knight Seger van Swalmen. But which Seger? Here's how Guda's lineage went:

Siger van Broeckhuysen (Siger van Gent) m. Oda Berthout van Grimbergen

Johan van Broeckhuysen m. NN

Seger [II] van Swalmen m. NN

Willem van Swlamen m. NN

Seger [iii]van Swalmen m. NN

Guda van Swalmen

Since we know that Jacob van Mirlaer was Guda's first cousin, we know that one of Jakob's four granparents was married to one of Guda's four grandparents.

Jakob van Mirlaer's four grandparents were:

Jakob [III] van Mirlaer (1255-1309) m. (1) NN (2) NN

Sizo van Beeck (1272-1314) m. Mette van Uitwijk, uit Roermond (1280-1380)(Vlodrop)

Guda van Swalmen's four grandparents were:

Willem van Swalmen m. Christina (?) NN

NN m. NN

In the Geni.com tree the wife of Willem van Swalmen's is said to be Christina, with non last name given. There's no source for this, so it might be right but might be wrong.

But in the end it doesn't matter because we know for a near-certainty that the grandparents of Guda van Swalmen and Jakob van Mirlaer had to be either Willem van Swalmen and a sister (or, less likely, a daughter) of Jakob III van Mirlaer or Jakob III van Mirlaer and his second wife, who was either a sister (or, less likely, a daughter) of Willem van Swalmen. These are the only two combinations that would make Jakob van Mirlaer and Guda van Swalmen first cousins.

Jakob III van Mirlaer had a sister named Elisabeth, but she was married to Jan III van Heusden van Drongelen (1238-1308) with no indication that she had a second husband, and a brother named Pieter, but the Geni tree doesn't show another sister, named Christina or otherwise. Of course this means nothing, since most people, and especially women, were never named in a document.

their grandparents had to have been a van Swalmen and one had to have been a van Mirlaer. Since we know that Guda's grandfather was Willem van Swalmen, we know that

A first cousin marriage wasn't particularly uncommon in the past, being legal in all of the states of the United States before the Civil War, and even today such marriages are legal in 19 states and conditionally legal in another 7.

bit too creepy to grant

In the Geni.com family tree, there's no indication that the van Swalmen or van Broeckhuysen line,

I can't determine our Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) without a genealogy for van Altena. However, the most likely MRCA is someone who lived in either the Land of Altena or the Land of Arkel, and was probably someone in the Swaim/den Hartog line or the Cool line, or possibly the van Buren line if Scytie Cornelis was truly a van Buren from the noble van Buren line.

Van Altena is related to Weea through at least one segment of DNA 12.8 cM long. My relationship to van Altena is no surprise, but exactly how is van Altena related to some Norwegian named Weea? In other words, who is the MRCA of van Altena and Weea? Once again, this is impossible to determine without knowing van Altena's ancestry, but obviously the Weea ancestry provided above gives us some clues.

Many of the descendants (or descendants of cousins) from the Limburg group of Weea ancestors had probably made their way into Holland, Gelderland, and northwestern Brabant, and the MRCA could be one of these ancestors, the one line going to Norway and the other to the Land of Arkel or somewhere near there. And ancestor of Gerard van Uitwijk could be the MRCA, with Gerard's DNA going to Norway and e.g., some of his father's DNA remaining in Uitwijk and from there making its way into van Altena. For that matter, a van Uitwijk could be the MRCA of Weea and me also, through, e.g., a Brabant Rijswijk ancestor.

von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau

But it's also possible that the common ancestor of van Altena, Weea, and Swain was not from Christine van Mirlaer, but from someone else in the line from van Mirlaer to Weea. This person would be Claus von Ahlefeldt (or one of his ancestors, including a von Rantza; as I'll discuss later, the von Ahlefeldt family and von Rantzau family was highly interbred, and both also intermarried with the Pogwisch family).

We've already seen how Weea could have ended up with Mirlaer DNA, and since von Ahlefeldt is in that same line, the same ancestry applies to how Weea could have ended up with von Ahlefeldt DNA.

But we still need to show how van Altena might have ended up with von Ahlefeldt DNA, and how I might have ended up with von Ahlefeldt DNA.

Since I don't have a van Altena family tree, I can't say whether or not van Altena had a von Ahlefelt-von Rantzau ancestor (March 2023 note: Now that I've determined that Seger van Broeckhuysen was actually Siger van Gent, and that Siger van Gent's wife was Oda Berthout van Grimbergen, the statement that I don't have a van Altena in my family tree is likely no longer valid. Oda Berthout van Grimbergen's mother was Sophie van Altena, the daughter of Boudewijn I van Altena (1142-1200). However, one possibility of how von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau DNA might have ended up generally into the Land of Arkel gene pool, which might include van Altena, was through the van Buren line. My speculative family tree shows that Bartolome van Buren (1540 Buren, Gelderland) married Anna von Rantzau (1544-1568), and that Anna von Rantzaau's grandmother was Anna von Ahlefeldt (1485-1570). If this is true, and if this van Buren line intermarried intot he Lanf of Arkel gene pool, then it could have von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau DNA. The van Os-Vroegh family tree, which I disucssed in a previous post, has 364 van Buuren/van Burens int it, so this isn't unlikely. The town of Buren is located only 12 miles from Leerdam.

This same Bartolome van Buren-Anna von Ahlefeldt marriage is in my speculative family tree because in that tree they are supposed the grandparents of Cornelis Maes van Buren, the immigrant to New Netherland, and supposedly the father of Syctie Cornelis, the wife of Thys Barentsen and the female progenitor of the Swaim line in America. However, I'm not certain that any of this part of this family tree is true, and it hasn't been established that Scytie Cornelis was the daughter of Cornelis Maes van Buren. Some believe this to be impossible because Scytie was born in the Netherlands after Cornelis Maes van Buren had already been in the Rennselaerswyck colonly in New Netherland for several years, but in fact there's evidence that he had returned to the Netherlands at least once, and that he was probably in the Netherlands when Scytie Cornelis was born. Thus, it's possible that I and most other Swaims had received von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau DNA through her. However, this is still all very speculative.

But as it turns out, I also have von Ahlefelds and von Rantzaus in the Scandinavian side of my family tree. As it turns out, one of these connections leads down from a von Rantzau in the 1300's down to one of my 4^th great-grandfathers, Peder Pedersen Spangen (1758 - ) of Løten, Hedmark, Norway. Recall that the Weea line (Ramm) also lived in Løten, Hedmark, Norway in the 1700's. Here's how the line to Spangen went:

screenshot 2574

Is this genealogy accurate? I don't know. Every genealogy this old is suspect, but on the other hand the names von Rantzau and von Ahlefeldt keep appearing in association with my shared Scandinavian matches of my shared Dutch matches, so it's possible.

I also want to point out that the wife of my 4^th great-grandfather Peder Pedersen Spangen was Hólmfríður Bjarnadóttir (1765 Hrafnseyri, Iceland – 1800 Kristiania (Oslo) Norway). I'll return to this when discussing the Dutch match Kruidhof.

von Ahlefeldt & Brockdorff

In the section on Remery there was a pair in the family tree of Olsen 14.2 Ditlev Iversen Brockdorff ( - 1674) married to Christine von Ahlefeldt. In the Weea tree, in a separate line from the von Ahlefeldt-van Rantzau line just mentioned, there were also von Rantzaus, von Ahlefedts, and Brockdorffs:

Ditleve Sivertsen Brockdorff (1479 Windeby, Schleswig-Holstein – 1538 Sønderborg Castle, Sønderborg, Denmark)

Married to Margrethe Rantzau (?)

Not surprisingly, Margrethe's maternal grandmother was Catharine von Ahlefeldt (1457-1530) of Kiel.

A great-grandson of Brockdorff and Rantzau (Frederik von Roepstorff 1595-1615) married Sophie Eleonora von Ahlefeldt (?), and Sophie's mother was Beata Rantzau (1590-1657). On Sophie's father's side, a great grandmother was Margarethe Rantzau, who this time was married to Bendix von Ahlefeldt rather (1506-1587) rather than her other husband Ditlev Brockdorff.

A bit further back there Diedrik VII Blome (1425 Mecklenburg – 1493), whose mother was Anna von Rantzau, married Abel van Brockdorff (1445-1490). Abel von Rantzau's great-grandmother was Abel von Brockdorff (1445-1490).

There's more, but I'll stop there. The point is that this is more endogamy in the von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau line, also involving Brockdorffs (and Buchwalds, as well).

Hennissen - Olsen 9.1 – Swain

This is an non-triangulated match.

Olsen matches with me 9.1 cM on chromosome 7.

Hennissen matches with me 6.4 cM on chromosomes 3 and 6.6 cM on chromosome 6.

Hennissen matches with Olsen 8.9 cM on an unknown chromosome.

Hennissen is estimated by MyHeritage to be 18.9% Scandinavian.

Because all of the segments of DNA here are small, they are possibly quite old. But because the DNA between us is not triangulaged, Hennissen doesn't share the same segment of DNA with me that he does with Olsen. Thus, the three of us don't necessarily descend from one common ancestor. However, in my opinion it's likely that we do have a common MRCA because otherwise how is Hennissen connected with the same Norwegian tha I'm connected to?

Hennissen's family tree is small but shows that his paternal grandfather died in Neeritter, which borders Belgium in Limburg near the river Maas, very close to Thorn, Heel, Pol and Weerd, just south of Roermond and just over 13 miles from Swalmen. The locations of his mother or grandparents isn't stated, but the only person I found in Geni.com with the same surname as his maternal grandfather came from Thorn, Limburg, so given these facts we can assume that all of Hennissen's recent heritage is from this local region of Limburg, which of course supports my hypothesis of the origin of the Swaim/den Hartog family (it also supports the accuracy of MyHeritage's “Genetic Groups” estimate, which placed him in a “Limburg” group).

Hennissen and I have only 22 share matches, which is quite small. Olsen is our only shared Scandinavian match, although of course he may have other Scandinavian matches that I don't share with him.

Hennissen's shared Dutch matches with me are Verstraeten, van der Lans, and Buwalda.

The Verstraeten match is unsurprising as her heritage is from the same region of Limburg as Hennissen, including Heel. Hennissen also has a few German matches and some matches that indicate possible Volga German ancestors.

One of Hennissen's shared American matches includes a line named Kofoed from Denmark (Kruidhof shares this match). Uusually I ignore the American matches, but this is a name from my wife's ancestry, so I've encountered it before. This shared' match's Kofoed came to America in the late 1800's or early 1900's. My wife's earliest Kofoed ancestor was a great-great grandmother, the mother of a Danish physician who moved to Sweden in the 1800's to help with a plague, and whose son became a sea captain and ended up as a naval officer in the American Civil War as part of the Northern blockade of the South (and then lived in Hawaii for some time before settling down in San Francisco, California).

But it's interesting that I have 7 MyHeritage matches with Koefoeds in their family trees, including this shared match with Hennissen. Five of these matches are from Norway and one is from Sweden, and one of the Norwegian matches is one which I'll mention later in connection with the Norwegian village of Norderhov, and as we'll soon see, Olsen also has a connection to Norderhov. Norderhov is a place that keeps popping up in my research of these Scandinavian shared matches with my Dutch matches, and as it turns out it also has a ancient connection to a Y-DNA match in the Swaim/den Hartog paternal line, as I'll later discuss. So this is why I'm mentioning this Kofoed connection, along with the fact that Kofoed is Hennissen's only other connection to Scandinavia.

Although I call this shared Norwegian match by the surname Olsen, his name is listed at MyHeritage by a surname that I'd assumed was an alias taken from American fantasy novels of a sword by that name. However, it appears from a brief internet search that he and his family actually do go by that name I'd assumed to be an alias (which I won't mention to protect his privacy). So it appears that he's changed his name to that alias. But since his Olsen was the surname of both his father and grandfather, I'm using Olsen as his name. Olsen's paternal side of his tree ends with his two grandparents, who he only lists as living in Norway.

Olsen's maternal half of his tree, however, is more interesting. Even on this side, however, only the mother's paternal side is provided. His paternal great-grandparents lived in Hole, which is a municipality in Norway about 22 miles northwest of Oslo. Hole was part of the ancient region of Ringerike, and Hole is loated on the east shore of the lake Tyrifjorden, which is the large lake on the map with four long arms. The peninsula jutting from the north of the lake is also part of Hole, and it appars that Olsen's great-grandfather came from the town of Vik on that peninsula. Four kings in the 800's-1000's ruled in Ringerike, and all of them are supposedly my direct ancestors, although this is based on the genealogy of Norwegians and Swedes whose accuracy is unknown and I have no way to evaluate this. Given the small population of Norway, particularly in the past (200,000 in the year 1000 AD), it's likely that all or most Norwegians are descended from one or more of these kings, but the real issue is whether or not such relatinships can be traced with any serious accuracy.

As I'll mention in my last section of this post on Norderhov and Y-DNA, Norderhove is also located in the ancient region of Ringerike and is located about 4 mouths north of Vik. However, Norderhov is probably not Olsen's primary connection to Hennissen or me.

Olsen's likely connection is through a von Rantzau, the surname we've just disucssed in relation to my Dutch match van Altena. The most recent von Rantzau in Olsen's family tree is Susanne Eilertsdatter Rantzow (1580-1604), married to Mads Andersen Cold of Oslo. I don't want to spend a lot of time working out the exact relationships of the von Rantzau family, but I do want to point out that the von Rantzau and von Ahlefelft famiies relentlessly interbred over the generations, such that every von Rantzau certainly had a lot of von Ahlefelt DNA, and vice versa. As a brief example I'll use Claus von Rantzau from the Olsen 14.2 shared match with van Altena and me. Claus von Ahlefeldt's mother was Drude von Rantzau. Their son Betram von Ahlefeldt, himself already half Rantzau, married Dorothea von Rantzau. And Bertram and Dorothea's son Bendix von Ahlefeldt, half von Rantzau from his father and full von Rantzau from his mother, married Øllegard von Rantzau (another son, Poul von Ahlefeldt, married Mette von Ahlefeldt). Then Bendix' and Øllegard's son Cai von Ahlefeldt married both Sophie von Rantzau and Margaretha von Rantzau. Their other Henrik von Ahlefeld married both Margarethe von Ahelfeldt (her father was Ahlefeldt) and Anna Rantzau. And this was just a random sample!

So the point is that the von Rantzau and von Ahlefeldt families, at least during the 1400's and 1500's, were very inbred. Even if the above marriages were 2^nd cousin and more distant, rather than 1^st cousin, they were still highly consanguinous. Essentially, Von Rantzau DNA is von Ahlefeldt DNA.

Given the number of times the von Rantzau and von Ahlefeldt names show up in the family trees of the Scandinavian shared matches of my Dutch matches, I think it's likely that this is the connection between Hennissen and Olsen 9.1, and possibly between Olsen 9.1 and myself, although in my case it could have alternatively come from a Norwegian ancestor. My connection to Hennissen, on the other hand, is presumably through a Dutch match—but even here, it could have ultimately come from the match between van Buren and von Rantzau, assuming that Scytie Cornelis was the daughter of Cornelis van Buren.

In his family tree, Olsen 9.1 extends the ancestry of the von Rantzau family back to Vratislaus II of Bohemia ( -1099), king of Bohemia, and Adelaide of Hungary (1039-1062), daughter of the Arpad king of Hungary Arpad I (1039-1062). Inn other words, this is supposedly a DNA connection between Norderhov and Hungary and Bohemia. In my speculative family tree Vratislaus II of Bohemia is supposed to be a 26^th great-grandfather, interesting through my ancestors in Løten, Norway (see van Altena), and further back through the same von Rantzau line as Olsen 9.1 (meaning that this might be my connection to Olsen 9.1, if true). I'm supposedly separately related to Adelaide of Hungary (a 27^th great-grandmother) through the Swedish Sahlström/Lundell line mentioned earlier.

Dutch Match Kruidhof

MyHeritage estimate's Kruidhof's heritage is 0% Scandinavian and 0% Finnish. Despite this, Kruidhof has shared matches from the following countries:

Norway 5

Sweden 3

Denmark 3

Iceland 1

Finland 1

Germany 9

One Norwegian shared match, Jakobsen 16.0, has a large tree going to the 1500's in many lines, mostly in Ostfold, Norway, but there's nothing in the tree connecting Jakobsen to Kruidhof, the Netherlands, or Belgium.

One of Kruidhof's shared German matches, Kirchhoff, actually lives in the United States, possibly a Mormon because MyHeritage places Kirchhoff in a “Mormons in Utah and Idaho” Genetic Group, but I counted her as German because all of her great-grandparents were German except for for two who were Danish. Thus, she's actually German-Danish, and thus our triangulated match is is potentially through her Danish ancestry. although there's no way of knowing this. However, the Dutch match Hennissen is a triangulated match with Kirchhoff and me, and I also have 6 other DNA matches with a Kofoed in their family trees (4 from Norway, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Denmark. This doesn't mean that I'm connected to Kruidhoff, Hennissen, or the others through Koefoed DNA, although obviously it's possible. The Kofoed family is a large one whose traditional home is the island of Bornholm, and I've known about this for several years because my wife's 2x great-grandmothers was Johanne Hansdatter Kofoed (1807-1860). I don't have a Kofoed in my own tree, however, and I likely don't have Kofoed DNA even though obviously some of my distant cousins do.

Kruidhof and I have a shared match from Iceland surnamed Jósafatsdóttir. The connection between the three of us is non-triangulated. I share with Jósafatsdóttir 22.9 cM of DNA in one segment on chromosome 2. I share 10.9 cM of DNA with Kruidhof on chromosome 3. Kruidhof shares 15.5 cM with Jósafatsdóttir on an unknown chromosome.

How did Kruidhof come be a DNA match with an Icelander? Why is he more closely related to her by DNA size than to me? And why am I also a match with this same Icelander?

Since being a DNA match with an Icelander is presumably quite uncommon for a person from the Netherlands, and since I do have Icelandic ancestors and know where they lived, this Icelandic match is probably a key to understanding how I match to Kruidhof. The problem is that I have two sets of Icelandic ancestors, one of which immigrated to Värmland, Sweden, in the 1600's and in the early 1800's married into the line that has the Porkka ancestors; the other line immigrated to Norway in the late 1700's and married straight into the line that has the Danish/Schleswig-Holstein ancestors including von Rantzau.

I have 13 Icelandic DNA matches on My Heritage. I have 3 shared segments with 2 of these matches, and 2 shared segments with 2 matches, so these Icelandic ancestors are about equally distant as my Dutch ancestors. None of these matches have extensive family trees, and Icelanders still use the patronymic naming system, so researching Icelandic DNA is confusing and difficult. Howver, by looking at the DNA that I share with Jósafatsdóttir, I might be able to determine which line she came from. There has always been at least some contact between Iceland and Denmark and Norway, so presumably a fair number of Icelanders do have a few DNA matches from those countries.

Jósafatsdóttir's has the following matches who are relevant to this post:

Myren 12.4 Norwegian. DNA match to Ducth match Naastepad

Olsen 9.1 Norwegian. DNA match to Dutch match Hennissen

Hansen 13.9 Norwegian. DNA match to Dutch matches Bosma, Brok

Tveit 11.9 Norwegian. DNA match to Dutch match Hoogendoorn

Of thse matches, I've discussed Olsen, who has Danish/Schleswig-Holsetein ancestry including a von Rantzau, and Tveit 11.9, who has a Porkka in his ancestry.

The problem is that I'm related to Tviet/Porkka through my Swedish lines, but to Olsen/Rantzau through my Norwegian line. However, my Värmland lines do have a good deal of Norwegian in them, as the part of Värmland my ancestors came from is near the border of Norway, and the Forest Finns were known to cross the borders between the two countries regularly. And since these relevant matches are all Norwegian, it seems likely that Jósafatsdóttir came from my Icelandic ancestors that settled in Norway rather than those that settled earlier in Sweden.

However, any analysis is handicapped by Kruidhof's lack of a family tree. It seems unlikely that he had any recent ancestors from Iceland, but remember that having a DNA match form a particular country doesn't mean that your ancestors ever lived in that country, but only that somoe of your cousins lived there, in this case it's almost certainly true that Kruidhof did have ancestors from Iceland. We can assume this because it seems much more likely that DNA would flow from Iceland to Norway, than from Norway to Iceland, although of course both are possible. But until the last hundred years at least, Iceland was an unpleasnt place to live, with a poor economy, bad weather, and not much to recommend to an immigrant. However, Iceland was ruled by Norway from the 1300's, and then to Denmark in 1523, and only became independent again in 1944. Thus, there was always some contact between Iceland and the other Scandinavian nations, and so DNA could always have flowed either way.

But since I'm a shared match with both Kruidhof and Jósafatsdóttir, and my only known ancestry with Iceland went from Iceland to Norway, it's likely that this is also true of Kruidhof's contact with Iceland. The problem with the concept of Kruidhof having Icelandic DNA, however, is problematic because those ancestors are relatively recent, having inone case coming to Sweden in the 1600's and in the other case to Norway in the late 1700's. This would require that either a Norwegian or Swede married into one of Kruidhof's ancestral lines sometime in the 1600's or later. This is obviously possible, but we have no evidence of it because we have no family tree for Kruidhof.

In the end we're left uncertain as to how Kruidhof is related to his Icelandic match, as well as to the 10 other Scandinavian matches he shares with me. There's one last slight hint when we examine my shared matches of Ingebrightsen 16.0, who was one of the Norwegian shared matches of Kruidho and me. This is the same thing I just did with the Icelandic shared match Jósafatsdóttir. The relevant shared matches of Ingebrigtsen and me are:

Weea 15.5 New Weea match; Mirlaer or von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau

Boman10 A new Boman on the paternal side of Boman1. Porkka or Germans.

Kruiger Dutch; Porkka ancestor

Buwalda Dutch. Unknown connection but triangulated with Hennissen who could be von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau

So how Kruidhof fits into the Scandinavian puzzle is uncertain. He has tenuous relationships with Porkka, Boman, and von Ahelfedlt-von Rantzau.

Badde – Holth 8.4 – Swain

I share 13.1 cM of DNA with Badde in two segments on chromosomes 1 and 18. MyHeritage estimates that Badde is 20.9% Scandinavian and 5.0% Finnish. She's also about half East European, but since I have little if any East European, there should be no interference due to that ancestry.

Badde's shared matches with me certainly confirm her Finnish ancestry, as we share 30 Finnish matches. My Finnish mtaches come through my Forest Finn Värmland ancestry; my guess is that Badde's Finnish matches come through her East Eruopean ancestry, assuming it's Russian, as Finland abuts Russia and many ethnic Finnis live in Russia.

Badde also has 1 Nowegian shared match with me, and 3 Swedes. Only the Norwegian match allowed for useful analysis. With Holth I share 8.4 cM of DNA on chromosome 2, which so this is obviously a nontriangulated match since I don't share any DNA with Badde on chromosome 3. Badde shares 13.7 cM of DNA with Holth.

Holth's family tree is primarily limited to her maternal ancestry. There were ancestors from Mecklenburg and Denmark:

Joachim Rubach (1728 Sülze Mecklenburg – 1800 Bergen, Norway)

Elisabeth Drewitz (~ 1780)

Anna Margaret Willer (1710 Germany – 1738 Norway)

Peder Nicolai Motzfeldt (1665 Copenhagen - )

Jørgen Axelsen Arenfeldt (1644 Denmark)

Anne Marie Eriksdatter Grubbe (1647 Tjele Denmark)

Frederic Strasborg (1668 Diepholz, Saxony)

Most of these are nobles from Mecklenburg and northern Saxony at least some of whose lines went to Denmark and then to Norway and Sweden. Although these lines in Holth's family tree end in the 1600's or 1700's, one of them, Jørgen Axelsen Arenfeldt (1644 Denmark – 1717 Rugaard, Denmark), who was married to Anne Marie Eriksdatter Grubbe (1647 Tjele Denmark), can also be found in the geni.com crowdsource tree (Geni - Anne Marie Eriksdatter Grubbe, til Gammelgaard, Tjele og Vingegaard (c.1647-d.) ). In that family tree, one of Jørgen's great-great grandmothers was Mette Bendixdatter von Rantzau (1586 Quarnback, Schleswig-Holstein – 1627 Haderslev, Denmark). Mette von Rantzau's father was of course Bendix von Rantzau (1550-1615) and her mother was Anna von Ahlefeldt (1540-1610). I'm not going to take the time to work out exactly how these two fit into their family tree, because I think the point is made that Badde's connection to the Norwegian match Holth and me is through the von Rantzau-von Ahlefeldt family.

It's again worth pointing out here the degree to which the von Rantzau and von Ahlefeldt families were interbred. Mette von Rantzau's father was a von Rantzau and her mother was a von Ahlefeldt. In a family not highly edogamous, one great-great grandfather would be a von Rantzau and one great-great grandfather would be a von Ahlefeldt. However, Mette von Rantzau had 5 great-great grandparents with the birth names von Rantzau and 3 with the birth names von Ahlefeldt (and 2 with the birth names Sehestedt, who were the same person). Thus, fully half of Mette's great-grandparents were from the same von Rantzau-von Ahlefeldt family.

This line of the von Rantzau-von Ahlefeldt family moved from Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark when Mette von Rantzau married Axel Gjordse Galt (1578 Veijle, Denmark). The family then moved to Norway with Peter Jacob von Motzfeldt (1699 Copenhagen – 1791 Inderøy, Norway), who was a general-major in the army and who was probably stationed in Norway (Norway was ruled by Denmark at this time).

mention certainty of relationship to these peopel because of DNA matches with von Wachenfeldt and von Scheele

Bakker – Dahlgren 11.9 – Swain

MyHeritage estimate's Bakkers Scandinavian ancestry at 8.5%, and places him, among regions, in the Limburg Genetic Group. Bakker doesn't have a family tree on MyHeritage. Bakker is a DNA match with Booiman, van Roy, and Korte.

Baker has one match in Sweden, one in Denmark, and two in Finland.

The Swedish shared match is Dahlgren and is non-triangulated. I haven't examined the tree closely, but the Swedish ancestry appears to be from southern Sweden and not Värmland. Bakker matches Dahlgren at a total of 11.1 cM and I match Dahlgren at 11.9 cM on chromosome 3. I match Bakker on chromosome 12 (6.6 cM) and chromosome 22 (7.7 cM).

Dahlgren's family tree is not large at 781 people, but one branch goes back to the 1400's and 1500's with Danish knights and nobles, including Bendix von Rantzau (1530-1615), married to Anna von Ahlefeldt (1522 Kliplev Denmark – 1610). This is the same Bendix von Rantzau and Anna von Ahlefeldt than I discussed in the Dutch match Badde. Thus, this is once again a connection to the von Rantzau-von Ahlefeldt family.

There are no Dutch matches in Dahlgren's tree.

As far as the Dutch match Bakker is concerned, the only Scandinavian matches that can explain his DNA connection with the Swede Dahlgren 11.9 is through the Danes in Dahlgren's family tree. These Danes migrated to southern Sweden from Denmark in the 1600's.

If I'm not related to von Ahlefedt/von Rantzau through the van Buren-von Ahlefeldt marriage, then my other supposed von Rantzau ancestors were Sophie Johansdatter Rantzau (1315 Rantzau Schleswig – 1367 Aunsbjerg, Denmark) and her father Johan von Rantzau (1280 Rantzau – 1326). This line supposedly ended up in Ringsaker, Norway, through Jørgen Clausson Walravn (1541 Øers Denmark – 1581 Ringsaker, Norway). The line went through Løten, Norway, and then to Bærum just west of Oslo in the person of my great-grandfather Hagbart Jensen Aspelund, who fled Norway after spending a year and a few months in solitary confinement in Oslo's Botsfengslet Prison. But is this part of my family tree accurate? It almost certainly is through the 1600's, but after that I don't know. But in my family tree Sophie Johansdatter Rantzau's great-grandson is Morten Jepsen Seefeld (1390-1477), whose grandfather was Mogens Seefeld (1340-1390). In Dahlgren's tree in the same branch as von Rantzau and von Ahlefeldt there is an Anne Tygesdatter Seefeld (1485-1548) of Viborg, Denmark, and her great-great grandfather was Mogens Seefeld (1340-1390). Thus, Mogens Seefeld is actually an MRCA between Dahlgren 11.9 and me. Interestingly, however, although my Seefeld line that ended up in Norway had von Rantzau ancestry, this ancestry occurred after the Seefeld line split into my Norwegian line and Dahlgren's Swedish line. Thus, his Seefeld line didn't have von Rantzau ancestry (as far as the trees show). However, the Swedish Seefeld line separately acquired von Rantzau ancestry a few generations after the time of Anne Tygesdatter Seefeld.

Here's a list of some of the other Danish nobles in this branch of Dahlgren's family tree. However, I think it's pretty clear that my tie to Dahlgren's family tree is also through von Rantzau/Ahlefeldt DNA, just as is Bakkers' tie to Dahlgren.

Chromosome 2

Segment (GP) 87m-104m

It's easier to define this cluster of relatinships by the common (section of) chromosome they share rather than by the the names of the Dutch matches and Scandinavian shared matches, because there are several of them. The list below shows two of the Scandinavian shared matches and their associated Dutch matches:

Michelsen 21.1 cM, chromosome 2

de Ruiter 7.3 cM

Slot 7.9 cM

Postma 7.6 cM

Remery 11.4 cM

Oste 8.3 cM

Eriksmoen 19.9 cM, chromosome 2

Remery 11.4 cM

Exalto 8.3 cM

Postma 7.6 cM

Michelsen is a Norwegian with extensive Swedish heritage, who is a triangulated match with de Ruiter, Slot, Postma, Remery, and Oste. Eriskmoen is a Norwegian who's a triangulated match with Remery, Exalto, and Postma. You can see that these are all located on the same section of chromosome 2, although MyHeritage says that all these matches are not not triangulated. However, each match individually triangulates with me, the Dutch match, and the Norwegian match.

screenshot 2521

1st line (red) Michelsen

2^nd line (orange) de Ruiter

3^rd line (yellow) Slot

4^th line (green) Postma

5^th line (light blue) Remery

6h line (dark blue) Oste

7^th line (purple) Eriksmoen

screenshot 2523

1^st line (green) Postma

2^nd line (light blue) Remery

3^rd line (kark blue) Oste

4^th line (red) Eriksmoen

Eriksmoen's tree is too small to be of use to us, but Michelsen's tree is extensive. Most of her ancestors in the tree lived in Norway just north of Bergen, or in the northern part of Oppland, or in various parts of Sweden. Few of these ancestors appear to be relevant to this purpose of this post, but there are two clusters that are relevant. One of these clusters lived in Denmark from about 1000 AD to the 1500's, some of whose descendants then moved at various times to Norway. The second cluster lived in German in the 1400's.

The small segment of DNA on chromosome 2 that ended up in people in Scandinavia and the Netherlands is likely to have come from one of the people in one of these clusters, but at this time I don't know which cluster or how to determine which cluster. The common DNA is about 7 cM long, so could be quite old and is plausible from 1000 AD or even older.

I share 36.9 cM of DNA with Michelsen, divided among 3 separate segments of DNA. The largest of these segments is on chromosome 2(21.1 cM), and this segment includes the smaller segments that I have in common with the Dutch matches. There's also a second segment, 8.9 cM in length, on chromosome 2, which can be seen on the first screenshot. Thse two segments were probably originally been one larger segment. The third segment is a small 7.0 cM segment on chromosome 16.

My Dutch match Postma also shares with Michelsen not only the chromosome 2 segment, but also the chromosome 16 segment. This might mean that the MRCA was more likely to be closer in the past than more distant, since it appears that these two segments were likely to have been inherited fromt he same ancestor, and because muliple segemnts from the same ancestor generally indicate a more recent MRCA. I also share this chromosome 16 segment with my Dutch DNA match van Gils, which is the only segment I share with him. So both segments of DNA are out there in the Land of Arkel gene pool and don't necessarily travel together, so it's also possible that both segements of DNA are very old and came from different MRCAs, and that Postma just randomly ended up with both of them.

German Cluster

The object of DNA matching is to compare the family tree your match with your own family tree to find a person who lived most recently who's in both those trees—the most recent common ancestor (MRCA). If both family trees go back far enough and are accurate, there will always be an MRCA, as he or she is the person from whom the two of you inherited your common DNA.

When examining shared matches of matches, the object is to find the MRCA common to all three of you. When the common DNA is triangulated, there will always be a common MRCA. When the DNA is not triangulated, there might not be a common MRCA as one of the matches could be through marriage. However, the probability of having a common MRCA should increase when the two matches live in geographically distant regions. particularly when they lived before the advent of motorized transportation. This is simply because, e.g., there weren't a large number of Dutch in Norway in the 15^th century (or Norwegians in Holland), so that when we're looking for a specific Dutch person in Norway in Norway in the 15^th century and we find one, it's much more likely that he's the person we're looking for simply because there just weren't that many Ducth people in Norway at that time.

The major problem with DNA matching is the lack of extensive and accurate family trees. On most DNA testing website platforms most DNA matches don't have useful trees, either because they don't go far enough in the past or because they were kept private by the match and are not accessible to a third party. The problem of trees that don't go back far enough in time increases the more distant the DNA match, since the MRCA will have lived further back in time with the decreasingn relatedness of you and your match.

This problem of lack of trees can sometimes be circumvented by using a crowd-sourced tree from Ancestry.com, Geni.com, FamilySearch.org and other platforms that provide such trees, often for free. For example, if you can identify a person in a MyHeritage.com family tree who is also in the Geni.com family tree, the Geni.com family tree will often provide a much more extensive genealogy than the match provided on MyHeritage.com.

The problem of the accuracy of a particular family tree is an issue that in the end is impossible to determine for individuals more distant in the past. True genealogy requires a generation-by-generaion paper link between the individuals in a lineage, and there's simply no way to do this with this type of DNA matching (i.e., genetic genealogy). For example, if someone's family tree says there was an ancestor named von Waldeck who ws born in the 1400's, there's no practical way to confirm the accuracy of that genealogy. This is the Achille's heel of genetic genealogy, and there's no getting around it. However, the advantage of genetic genealogy is that the DNA matches generated by a DNA testing platform are accurate enough as to consider them true, and these relationships can often be used to test the likelihood of the accuracy of a particular part of a genealogy. This still relies on the general accuracy of “paper” genealogies (now more likely digital), but my general impression is that especially crowd-source genealogies are often probably pretty accurate, even going back deeper into the past. Of course crowd-source genealogies aren't perfect—for example, Geni.com still lists Otto van Arkel as the father of Gerrit Ottens and Willem Ottens, whereas that relationship is definitely not been proved. There's also no way on the Geni tree to disconnect that relationship for me personally, so I'm stuck with it even though I know it isn't accurate (even if it's objectively true it's not accurate because it's objective truth hasn't been proved by evidence). However, this particular problem doesn't exist with a personal family tree, even one that borrows from crowd-sourced information such as family trees on Ancestry.com.

Another issue with older entries in large family trees is their bias toward nobles and other notable people. The question is whether that bias is accurate because in the more distant past only nobles and notables were ever mentioned in documents, or wehter the bias is inaccurate because people want to have nobles and notables in their family trees. Both biases clearly exist, an example of an innacurate bias being the supposed father-son relationship between Otto van Arkel and Willem Ottens: it's just more exciting to imagine that the father of Willem Ottens was the son of the very wealthy and powerful Jan van Arkel than someone else. Even if the true father of Willem Ottens turned out to be the son of a nobleman from Limburg, that just isn't quite as exciting.

Here are a few thoughts on nobles in older family trees. Nobles obviously did exist, and because they had health advantages because of their wealth, and because they more free to do what they wanted than were the peasantry, they often had more children than peasants did, and thus more descendants in general. As generations passed most of these descendants dropped out of the nobility and into the peasantry, or at least into some social status inbetween the two. Over generations, these descendants filtered into the general population, so that by today it's almost certain that every European has noble ancestry from the Middles Ages or before.

In my Swedish and Norwegian family trees I have several lines that supposedly go back to Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kings. I don't know the accuracy of these lines because I didn't do the genealogies that back the claims. At least for the Swedish lines, however, I do have a few DNA matches that are strong evidence for the general validity of some of these claims. These matches have the surnames von Wachenfeldt, von Schantz, von Scheele. These are German suranmes that same from Germans who immigrated to Sweden and were ennobled in Sweden. Once in Sweden they married with Swedish nobility, so they provide a good check on the accurac of a particular connection.

Despite what I said above, in this investigation we're doing something special, and so we aren't necessarily looking for the MRCA between Michelsen and me. Since I share 36.9 cM of DNA with Michelsen, our MRCA is likely to be much more recent thatn than the linkages we're looking for. The true MRCA of Michelsen and me is unkown right now but isn't important for the purposes of this post. There's only one MRCA between two matches, but there can be comman ancestors for particular lines withen an ancestry.What we're looking for in this post is not how Michelsen connects to me, but how she connects to the Dutch matches de Ruiteer, Oste, Slot, Postma, and Remery. For that purpose my own ancestry is just used for triangulation. It's also important to consider that although I may have a common ancestor with a Scandinavian match from after about 1600 AD because my Scandinavian anceestors didn't emigrate to America until the mid-1800's to 1903, and although my Dutch ancestors could have a common ancestor with my shared Scandinavian match ancestors because both remained close enough that contact was possible if improbable, I can't have a common ancestor with a Dutch match after that time becaue that's when all of my Dutch ancestors emigrated to America, thus cutting them off from further sexual contact with the Dutch poulation in Europe. This statement ignores rare scenarios in which post-1600 contact was certainly physically possible but improbable.

MRCA of Michelsen 36.9 – Swain

Fleming

My most recent known common ancestor with Michelsen is Kerstin Persdotter Fleming (1525 Norbotten Sweden – 1570 Grangarde, Dalarna, Sweden). Her father was Per Hermansson Fleming till Vilnäs (1480 Villnäs, Finland – 1532 Abo, Finland). Her mother was Elin Hansdotter Lydeke (White Dove) (1490 Alvsborg, Norbotten, Sweden – 1543).

The Fleming family is a well-known noble family with branches in Sweden and Finlandd. It's first definitely known member was Peder Fleming (1330 Denmark – 1408 Sweden). Here's a traslation of a selection from the “notes” section of the Geni.com entry for this Fleming (in modified Google translations):

Knight in Denmark and Sweden...Peder Fleming's father may possibly have been bailiff Klaus Fleming in Barth in Pomeranea, but this person may instead have been another relative other than the father...in an old family book in in the Rålamb collection in the Royal Library, he is [Klaus Fleming] said to have “come from Pomerania.” ....According to Carpelan (Finnish biographical Handbook...p 606) he came to Sweden with King Erik of Pomerania, whosse cousin he must have been, and was probably born in the king's homeland...The family is probably, as the name suggests, of Flemish (Flanders) origin, but may instead have come from the province of Fläming in Brandenburg. The alleged descent from the Flaminians of Rome must be relegated to the realm of legend. In addition to Denmark and Sweden, the name occurs simultaneously Scotland, Pomerania, Poland, and other countries, and was carried by unrelated families, bearing different coats of arms. Geni - Ritari Peder Fleming (c.1330-1406)- Stockholm

Here's information from the Swedish Wikipedia entry “Flemming (adelsätt)”:

Flemming is a reich count German noble lineage from Pomerania in Germany....This German family, which probably has a regional origin from Flanders because the name means Flemish, is known from the Ostseidlung, the immigration and colonization of the German-speaking peoples in Slavic areas of present-day northeastern Germany in the 13^th century. Among these were many Flemings who, after the fouding of the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1157, settled in the ares east of the Elbe and have given their name to the highlands of Fleming in southwestern Brandenburg and eastern Saxony-Anhalt....he first known of this Flemming family is Henricus Flemmingus zu Havelberg, who is mentioned in 1209 in a record, but the oldest known ancestor in documented genealogies is the marshal of Pomerania Thamm von Flemming mentioned in 1281, who in the early 14th century sold the Stepnitz estate on the east bank of the river Oder, and the first time the family coat of arms is depicted is when his son Konrad uses it in 1319....Their immediate descendants split into two regional branches, the Kamminer and the Wolliner, and subjugated so much land that the Kamminer Kreis was also called the Flemmingscher Kreis....From the end of the 17th century, several members held high positions within the Brandenburg nobility, including Field Marshal Heino Heinrich von Flemming (1632-1706) and his sons and close relatives were promoted to generals and marshals under King August the Strong....In the 18th century, a branch was elevated to Reich Count and spread to the Electorate of Saxony, Thuringia and Poland, and all descendants living today belong to this branch, which is called Flemming-Benz....The Flemming family owned a significant number of large estates, the most important of which were Putzkau, Schloss Lichtenwalde, Nebra, Slawentzitz Hermsdorf, Matzdorf,[1] Basenthin, Paatzig, Boeck,[2] Benz, Schnatow und Nemitz. Their oldest properties include Marthentin, Hoff and Schwirsen.

The Swedish Wikipedia entry “Fleming (släkt)”:

Fleming, or Flemming, is a Danish and Swedish noble family, considered to have Flemish ancestry. The family is first mentioned in Denmark in 1315 and branched out in Sweden with Claus Flemming to Nynäs. The family includes several knights and sheriffs, including councilors in Denmark-Norway as well as Sweden and the associated high nobility. A German bailiff in Pomerania carried the family's coat of arms in 1354, but his relationship with the other members of the family is unclear.[3] The family should not be confused with the German family Flemming

Danish family Flemming: Flemming (also spelled Fleming) is known in Denmark from 1315 and probably descended from Flemings who emigrated from Flanders in present-day Belgium. In Denmark, there have been several families who have borne the name. The noble family died out in 1545....In 1315, a Jakob Flemming is mentioned, (died after 1354). Claus Flemming mentioned in 1331 and 1343 together with a Gerhard Flemming in Barth and in 1354 was bailiff in Barth, was of this family and possible father of Mr. Peder Flemming, who in 1366 settled on the Huseby estate. In 1406, Peder Flemming was written to Huseby with his four sons, who became knights. From one of these sons descends Claus Flemming to Nynäs (died 1425), which branched off into the Swedish savior family Fleming. Another of the sons, Herman Flemming, became the chief jurist of King Erik of Pomerania and in 1401 sealed his confirmation of Queen Margareta's will. He had three sons, two of whom became knights. With Jakob Flemming, to Bavelse, the family died out after 1545 on the sword side in Denmark....The knights Herman and Nicholas Jura, who lived in the 14th century, carried a similar coat of arms.

If it's true that this Swedish noble Fleming family did in fact come from Flanders, then at least some of the Swedish and Finnish can be explained through this family. In the 1200's some of the Fleming family emigrated from Flanders to Pomerania. From Pomerania some moved to Denmark, and then to Finland and Sweden. One of the Swedish lines came down through my great-grandfather Johan Jönsson (1877 Sunne, Värmaland – 1918 Minnesota). Fleming DNA followed this path to me.

Meanwhile, some of the Fleming family in the 1200's remained in Flanders and over time one or more of the family ended up in today's Netherlands. Such movement from Flanders to Holland was common and unremarkable, especially since at various times the counts of Holland were also the counts of Flanders. Also, during the Eighty Years' War some Flemish familes who had converted to Protestatism might have moved to Holland from predominantly Catholic Flanders to avoid religious persecution. The van de Werve family from Holland originally came from Flanders, as did the van Ranst. Also, in my 2021 post on the Rijswijk Sweyms I discussed a Jan Vlaminc who might have been the same person as Jack Sweyn Dircxsz of Buldersteyn. And, of course, the river Zwalm was also in Flanders. Thus, there may have been many people who were ancestors of my Dutch DNA matches who potentially had DNA from Flanders.

Dutch Match Kruidhof

MyHeritage estimate's Kruidhof's heritage is 0% Scandinavian and 0% Finnish. Despite this, Kruidhof has shared matches from the following countries:

Norway 5

Sweden 3

Denmark 3

Iceland 1

Finland 1

Germany 9

One Norwegian shared match, Jakobsen 16.0, has a large tree going to the 1500's in many lines, mostly in Ostfold, Norway, but there's nothing in the tree connecting Jakobsen to Kruidhof, the Netherlands, or Belgium.

One of Kruidhof's shared German matches, Kirchhoff, actually lives in the United States, possibly a Mormon because MyHeritage places Kirchhoff in a “Mormons in Utah and Idaho” Genetic Group, but I counted her as German because all of her great-grandparents were German except for for two who were Danish. Thus, she's actually German-Danish, and thus our triangulated match is is potentially through her Danish ancestry. although there's no way of knowing this. However, the Dutch match Hennissen is a triangulated match with Kirchhoff and me, and I also have 6 other DNA matches with a Kofoed in their family trees (4 from Norway, 1 from Sweden, 1 from Denmark. This doesn't mean that I'm connected to Kruidhoff, Hennissen, or the others through Koefoed DNA, although obviously it's possible. The Kofoed family is a large one whose traditional home is the island of Bornholm, and I've known about this for several years because my wife's 2x great-grandmothers was Johanne Hansdatter Kofoed (1807-1860). I don't have a Kofoed in my own tree, however, and I likely don't have Kofoed DNA even though obviously some of my distant cousins do.

Kruidhof and I have a shared match from Iceland surnamed Jósafatsdóttir. The connection between the three of us is non-triangulated. I share with Jósafatsdóttir 22.9 cM of DNA in one segment on chromosome 2. I share 10.9 cM of DNA with Kruidhof on chromosome 3. Kruidhof shares 15.5 cM with Jósafatsdóttir on an unknown chromosome.

How did Kruidhof come be a DNA match with an Icelander? Why is he more closely related to her by DNA size than to me? And why am I also a match with this same Icelander?

Since being a DNA match with an Icelander is presumably quite uncommon for a person from the Netherlands, and since I do have Icelandic ancestors and know where they lived, this Icelandic match is probably a key to understanding how I match to Kruidhof. The problem is that I have two sets of Icelandic ancestors, one of which immigrated to Värmland, Sweden, in the 1600's and in the early 1800's married into the line that has the Porkka ancestors; the other line immigrated to Norway in the late 1700's and married straight into the line that has the Danish/Schleswig-Holstein ancestors including von Rantzau.

I have 13 Icelandic DNA matches on My Heritage. I have 3 shared segments with 2 of these matches, and 2 shared segments with 2 matches, so these Icelandic ancestors are about equally distant as my Dutch ancestors. None of these matches have extensive family trees, and Icelanders still use the patronymic naming system, so researching Icelandic DNA is confusing and difficult. Howver, by looking at the DNA that I share with Jósafatsdóttir, I might be able to determine which line she came from. There has always been at least some contact between Iceland and Denmark and Norway, so presumably a fair number of Icelanders do have a few DNA matches from those countries.

Jósafatsdóttir's has the following matches who are relevant to this post:

Myren 12.4 Norwegian. DNA match to Ducth match Naastepad

Olsen 9.1 Norwegian. DNA match to Dutch match Hennissen

Hansen 13.9 Norwegian. DNA match to Dutch matches Bosma, Brok

Tveit 11.9 Norwegian. DNA match to Dutch match Hoogendoorn

Of thse matches, I've discussed Olsen, who has Danish/Schleswig-Holsetein ancestry including a von Rantzau, and Tveit 11.9, who has a Porkka in his ancestry.

The problem is that I'm related to Tviet/Porkka through my Swedish lines, but to Olsen/Rantzau through my Norwegian line. However, my Värmland lines do have a good deal of Norwegian in them, as the part of Värmland my ancestors came from is near the border of Norway, and the Forest Finns were known to cross the borders between the two countries regularly. And since these relevant matches are all Norwegian, it seems likely that Jósafatsdóttir came from my Icelandic ancestors that settled in Norway rather than those that settled earlier in Sweden.

However, any analysis is handicapped by Kruidhof's lack of a family tree. It seems unlikely that he had any recent ancestors from Iceland, but remember that having a DNA match form a particular country doesn't mean that your ancestors ever lived in that country, but only that somoe of your cousins lived there, in this case it's almost certainly true that Kruidhof did have ancestors from Iceland. We can assume this because it seems much more likely that DNA would flow from Iceland to Norway, than from Norway to Iceland, although of course both are possible. But until the last hundred years at least, Iceland was an unpleasnt place to live, with a poor economy, bad weather, and not much to recommend to an immigrant. However, Iceland was ruled by Norway from the 1300's, and then to Denmark in 1523, and only became independent again in 1944. Thus, there was always some contact between Iceland and the other Scandinavian nations, and so DNA could always have flowed either way.

But since I'm a shared match with both Kruidhof and Jósafatsdóttir, and my only known ancestry with Iceland went from Iceland to Norway, it's likely that this is also true of Kruidhof's contact with Iceland. The problem with the concept of Kruidhof having Icelandic DNA, however, is problematic because those ancestors are relatively recent, having inone case coming to Sweden in the 1600's and in the other case to Norway in the late 1700's. This would require that either a Norwegian or Swede married into one of Kruidhof's ancestral lines sometime in the 1600's or later. This is obviously possible, but we have no evidence of it because we have no family tree for Kruidhof.

In the end we're left uncertain as to how Kruidhof is related to his Icelandic match, as well as to the 10 other Scandinavian matches he shares with me. There's one last slight hint when we examine my shared matches of Ingebrightsen 16.0, who was one of the Norwegian shared matches of Kruidhof and me. This is the same thing I just did with the Icelandic shared match Jósafatsdóttir. The relevant shared matches of Ingebrigtsen and me are:

Weea 15.5 New Weea match; Mirlaer or von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau

Boman10 A new Boman on the paternal side of Boman1. Porkka or Germans.

Kruiger Dutch; Porkka ancestor

Buwalda Dutch. Unknown connection but triangulated with Hennissen who could be von Ahlefeldt-von Rantzau

So how Kruidhof fits into the Scandinavian puzzle is uncertain. He has tenuous relationships with Porkka, Boman, and von Ahelfedlt-von Rantzau.