The Verveelens

      The earliest member of the family for whom we have a record was Carel ver Veelen, identified in records in Köln (Cologne), Rhineland, Germany, as having come from the Flemish Port City of Antwerp, in the Spanish Netherlands, now Belgium. His son, Hans Verveelen, was born about 1568 in Köln, and married Catharina Jans Oliviers, of Antwerp. Hans departed Koeln with Catherina and their children, including our ancestor, Daniel, for Amsterdam, the Netherlands, arriving about 1612. Their grandson, Johannes, in turn, sailed for New Netherland in 1657, having been preceded there five years earlier by his son, Daniel.

Fellow Settlers: Schaets and Moens

      When the first Verveelen, young Daniel born in Amsterdam in 1635, arrived in New Netherland in 1652, he came with Gideon and Agnietje Moens (Moriaens) Schaets. And, he subsequently married their daughter, Alida (Aletta). Gideon Schaets was a minister (Dominie) in the Dutch Reformed Church, as had been his father. He had also been a schoolmaster and tutor at The Hague and at Brielle in the Netherlands. Agnietje was a governess whose family had previously been in the service of the Dukes of Burgundy for generations and were high government officials at The Hague.

      The Schaets name is derived from the Norse word "skeatse" meaning warior or sharp-shooter. The Schaets and Moens families, both of Viking descent and long allied, settled prior to 1400 in the Netherlands city of Tongeren, on the Meuse River, now part of Belgium. It was an area of Germanic tribes that early on resisted the incursion of the Romans.

      The Dominie's grandmother was Janne Schagen, a descendant of the minor noble house of Schagen in North Holland. The first Lord Van Schagen (died 1473) is believed to have been the brother of William VI, Count of Holland, and the illegitimate son of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria, who presented the Schagen family with a coat of arms.