Johannes Verveelen and Anna Jaarsvelt

     The founder and patriarch of the family in North America was Johannes Verveelen, a brewer from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1657 with his wife, Anna Jaarsvelt, daughters Anna and Maria, and his widowed mother, Anna Elkhout. His son, Daniel, had preceded him here five years earlier. His ancestors were from the Rhineland, his grandfather and father, the latter a shopkeeper, having moved to Amsterdam in 1610 to escape the oppression of Calvinists at Cologne.

      With a partner, Isaac de Forest, Johannes founded the Red Lion Brewery in New Amsterdam on what is now Beaver Street in downtown Manhattan, New York, two blocks south of Wall Street and east of Broadway. Subsequently, in 1661, he became one of the five original land grant recipients and residents of New Haarlem (now Harlem). He was the proprietor of the first inn in Harlem. He also operated ferries east across the Harlem River at what is now 125th Street and, later, across the Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the north (Map). Later he served as Harlem Constable, Magistrate, and Delegate to the General Assembly at Albany, New York.

Daniel Verveelen and Aletta Schaets

      Daniel, son of Johannes and Anna Verveelen, and then still a boy of seventeen years, arrived in New Netherland in 1652, traveling in the care of Dominie (The Reverend) Gideon and Agnietje Schaets. The Dominie had received a call to become the second pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany, known at the time as Beverwyck.

      Daniel at first became a trader in New Amsterdam and Beverwyck. About 1661, he married Aletta Schaets, daughter of the Dominie and Agnietje Schaets, settled in New Amsterdam, and joined his father in the Red Lion Brewery. He later also succeeded his father as ferrymaster in Harlem. He and Aletta moved about, living as well for a while in New Utrecht in what is now Brooklyn, New York, and finally across the Hudson River to Hackensack, New Jersey. Over the years, they raised seven children. Although the surnames changed with time (e.g., Ver Valen, Van Valen, and Van Valer), their descendants are now widely scattered across the nation from New York to Hawaii.

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