The Dutch Connection
The Line:
.Barent Baltus {van der LIPPSTADT} & Mayken Laurens de QUIJTERS -
..Baltus Barent VAN KLEECK & Tryntje Jans BUYS -
...Barent VAN KLEECK & Antoinette PARMENTIER -
....Ahasuerus VAN KLEECK & Jannetje FREER -
.....Hugh(Hugo) VAN KLEECK & Ariantje PARMENTIER -
......Simon(Simeon) VAN KLEECK & Emily WASHBURN -
.......Elizabeth VAN KLEECK & Charles Henry BLANCHARD -
When the search for the ancestors of my g.g.grandmother Elizabeth began, I was advised by several of my contacts that "all the VAN KLEECKS in America came from the same source" and soon discovered that many of them migrated from New Netherland to Dutchess Co., NY and vicinity before spreading out to other locations. Brief notes left by my parents suggested that Elizabeth was born in Greenfield Center, Saratoga, NY but various record searches did not yield much information about her or her parents nor was she found among the VAN KLEECKs buried in other locations in Saratoga Co. and vicinity.
An Internet contact, Christine VAN KLEECK of Walton, Delaware, NY, graciously shared with me the successful tracing of her line through ten generations to the progenitor of the line that came to New Netherland in the mid 1600s. From Christine and references in the Montgomery Co., Dept. of History & Archives in Fonda, NY, I learned of Col. Robert VAN KLEECK of Ukiah, CA who had been working on the history of the VAN KLEECKs for more than 15 years. Robert in turn led me to William T. VAN KLEECK of Seattle, WA who
had concentrated more on the genealogy of this family for over 30 years. William and Christine alerted me to The VAN KLEEK Genealogy by E.(Edwin) R. VAN KLEECK, a copy of which can be found in the New York State Library in Albany, NY. William's brief outline of the connection of Elizabeth to the Dutchess Co. lines was confirmed and expanded with the information found in the E. R. VAN KLEECK publication and the 'Dutch Connection' was finally established. In the course of this investigation, several other VAN KLEECK descendants were located, mostly by e-mail, and it is now believed that there are VAN KLEECK lines with other than this particular New Netherland beginning.
Barent Baltus {van der LIPPSTADT} was born prior to 1610, possibly in Lippstadt
in what is now Westphalia, Germany. He is thought to have come with his parents to Haarlem, Holland where he appears in tax records for 1628 and married his first wife,
Sarah Pieters in 1631. There was one child from this marriage, Pieter Barentsen,
who is believed to have stayed in Holland. Barent married 2nd, Mayken Laurens
de QUIJTERS in Haarlem in 1636 and they had seven children. In 1647, Barent
married 3rd, Aechtie(Agatha) Pouwels at Ouderkerk on the Amstel in Amsterdam
and there were no children from this marriage.
The sixth of seven children of Baltus and Mayken(Maria) was Baltus Barent
(Balthazar Barents) born in Haarlem in 1645 and at that time, "the family
was living in a house called Bogaert (now #26) on Grote Houtstraet in Haarlem".
Map of Haarlem from Blaeu's Toonneell der Steden, 1652
Barent Baltus seems to have been a 'jack of all trades' having been identified
at one time or another as a tailor, a ribbon-weaver, a tobacco merchant, and a
coachman or drayman. With his first six children of his second marriage (the
seventh is presumed to have died young since there is no record after the birth
in 1647, the year that Mayken died), he came to Flatbush (now Brooklyn) New Netherland
about 1652. While living there, he may have been involved with a shipping or
maritime business. It was thought that the first appearance of the name 'VAN KLEECK' was in early records some time about 1683, when the name was associated with some of his children and was carried on by subsequent generations.
I recently had the good fortune to meet Laurence van KLEEK from Buckingham, Buck. England, on the Internet and learned that it was he who uncovered many of the wonderful records that are reported in this document and many others that trace the 'vk' name. Because of the variations in the spelling of the surname, I'd like to adopt Laurence's notation of 'vk' to include all the variations such as Van Kleeck, van Kleek, VanKleeck, etc. Some especially important bits of information that Laurence has confirmed is the marriage of Pieter Barentsen, only child of Barent Baltus vk and first wife Sara Pieters, to Abigail JAMES, in Ouderkerk in 1651 and the baptism of their son, Pieter, in Amsterdam in 1652. Pieter Van Kleeck was the name that appeared on both of these records thus establishing that the origin of the 'Van Kleeck' name was probably European and not 'New World'.
Barent Baltus was a member of the Reformed Dutch Church of Flatbush where he died prior to November 19, 1659, based on a suit brought against his widow by Jacob Paen for the
payment of masters' wages amounting to six guilders.
The origin of the name VAN KLEECK is unknown. It is not a familiar surname
in Holland and does not appear to be associated with any town, village, diocese
or locality as might be expected. E. R. VAN KLEECK proposed that "the original
name may have been Van Kleve (pronounced with "a" as in ache) or Van Kleef
(Cleef). Kleve (Clave) is in present Germany not far from the Dutch-German
boundary and just east of Nijemegen in the Dutch province of Gelderland. ....
no evidence of relationship can be found in New Netherland between Barent Baltus
and Jan Van KLEEF, the progenitor of the latter family in America". E. R. also
suggests: "In Killiaen's sixteenth century Dutch-Latin dictionary 'kleeck' is
given as meaning a crack or klick, a slap or blow. It may possiby have some
association with a crack in a dike but this is purely surmise".
Another important chapter can be added to this little family history when the
origin of the VAN KLEECK name has been discovered. Assistance has been sought
in Belgium and the Netherlands and many vk descendants in other parts of the world are interested in the search. A posting some time ago to soc.genealogy.benelux did not produce any results; neither has recent faithful reading of postings to the mail list GEN-BENELUX-L@rootsweb.com . I have not found an Internet mail list for the 'vk' surname so here is a project that might interest someone. I'd like to do it myself but find that much of my 'spare' time goes into managing the BLANCHARD-L List at RootsWeb.
We'll explore some of the other theories for the origin of 'vk' name and report them on this page. If any reader of this page has an interest in this project or has information that might be useful, we would appreciate hearing from you.
Thanks to all those people who have helped in this adventure and have shared their research. All data represented by this and other pages are offered freely with the hope that you will find these pages to be of interest and value in your family history searches. F.B.