Notes |
- 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.
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.
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.
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