A source:

The Swaim-Tysen Family of Staten Island, New York, New Jersey, and Southern States compiled by Joseph F. Mullane, Lloyd B. Swaim, and Marjorie Decker Johnson. Vol. I copyright 1984. Vol. II copyright 1987.

(I'm related ... Why does this keep happening?)

Inbredding?

http://capiesvideo.sytes.net/THE%20COMPLETE%20SWAIM-TYSEN%20FAMILY.pdf:
The names "SWAIM-TYSEN," or any derivation in spelling, are all of the family "SWAIM," having descended
from the Dutch immigrant named Thys Barentsen of Leerdam, Holland in 1661. In the course of our research we
found a reference in which it was stated that the translation of the name means "Dweller at the sign of the Swan."
Some earlier historians have said that the Swaim Family is the most interesting instance of a Dutch name inversion,
variation and total submersion of Dutch Patronymics imaginable. For the benefit of the reader who might not
understand the meaning of "patronymics," we will do our best to explain. Thys Barentsen's name is a prime example
of patronymics in that in translation it means he is "Thys," son of Barent, thus becoming "Thys Barentsen." The last
name will also be found to be written as "Barentsz," the "sz" in Dutch meaning "son of." The name of Thys, Tys,
etc., is Dutch for Matthew. It also has another meaning that we have not been able to uncover, for we have found
sons named "Ties and Matthias" in a family. Through the use of patronymics the name "Tysen-Tyson came into
being, i.e. Johannis Tysen, the Tysen having been carried forward by one branch of the family. It is apparent, in
reading the 1706 Census of Staten Island, that the British, in requiring a surname, the family name of Swaim/Sweem
was given as was written as "SWAM" and in one instance as "SWAIN."

The only minor quibble i have with the above post is that Thys is not Dutch for Matthew, Matthias is Dutch for Matthew and Thys is but one of several diminutive forms of the name.

There is no evidence that Thys Barentsen ever used "van Leerdam" as his surname. It was used in the ship record and in the baptism in the sense that he was "from Leerdam" and although some Netherlands immigrants did choose to go by a "van" name, there's no evidence that his family did. In fact, since none of his descendants ever used it, that's evidence that they never considered themselves to have that as a surname. They used their patronymic names until they began to use variant spellings of the name Swaim. A record from Holland before Thys Barentsen's immigration to America in fact shows that he used a variation of that surname in Holland, so it must have been used by the family among themselves in America from the time of immigration, and in Holland possibly even generations before that of Thys Barentsen. The name he used in Holland was either "Swijm" or "Swijn"--the handwriting is ambiguous as to the "m" or "n"

In Dutch archival records his name was written as "Matijs Barents" (fol 41, May 27 1661). His father's name was written as "Bernt Mathijss" (fol 88/89, June 19, 1595) and "Bernt Thijssen" (nr 79, June 8, 1623). This information was complied by Oscar den Uijl and can be found at https://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/5/121293.htm.

I connected Thys Barentsen with the genealogy of Oscar den Uijl in early 2020 after using Y-DNA evidence to prove that the Swaim line is closely related to the "den Hartog/Hertog/Deventer" line from the Land of Arkel in Holland (Arkel, Gorinchem, Leerdam, Etc). This information is not my opinion, but is backed by Y-DNA evidence and archived records from the Leerdam and Gorinchem archives.

In my opinion his correct name should be his patronymic name at birth, "Matthijs Barentsen." The name "van Leerdam" was never used by the family as a surname, so it was never a surname but simply a description of where he had last lived in Holland. Since a variation of "Swaim" had been used in Holland in reference to him (Swijm or Swijn) it might be appropriate to use that name, but it doesn't seem that name was ever written down in American in reference to him, so his name should probably be just "Matthis Barentsen"

I have been waiting for a male Swaim descendant to add this information to Geni ever since I joined Geni several years ago.
I am aware of the study/studies but there are so many broken links online and I have not been able to find much of what I read back when folks first started doing DNA. I have been able to do some work on these lines but not much and am so grateful for the curated profiles and locked fields.
It would be great to get my 8th great grandfather's profile correct as pertains to his parents' names (someone has removed many names a generation above-- please check?: https://www.geni.com/family-tree/index/6000000051257639838 )
Stephen Swain I sent you an invite to manage this profile. What that means is you will receive notifications and such. More importantly, it will give weight to the accuracy of the line...
Please do connect to him. Presently it shows no bloodline to you. Also, once the DNA connectivity issue is resolved, it would be wonderful to see his projected/proven Y and mito

Alex Moes and Erica Howton thank you so much for your expertise in this area of the tree! And Private User thank you for being the curator on record.

Erica Howton will you please add the name Swijm somewhere in the name field as per Stephen Swain 's notation?

This makes me sooooo happy.
Research and DNA and on two continents

Erica Howton understandable...
Thank you for working on this.

Stephen Swain, thank you so much for your hard work and for sharing the information you have shared including links. Even the link I shared in this conversation/Discussion in 2018 has broken.

I use Geni to tree build but I also use it as my MAIN tree. I trust the collaborative and public aspect so much so that I update my private personal DNA tree from here and I have been doing genealogy since I was a teenager in the 70's.

Thank you, all.

Alex, I tagged you. And three years ago, I ignored your inbreeding comment lol

“After cleaning up it should be merged with the profile "Matthijs Barentsen.”

Can someone tag this profile?

https://newnetherlandancestors.blogspot.com/2020/03/

Monday, March 30, 2020
The Netherlands Ancestry of the Swaim Family
As Revealed Through Y-Chromosome DNA Analysis

Stephen Swain
March 30, 2020 (with later updates)

This is a somewhat disorganized and not well-edited draft of my research into the origins of the Swaim line. I'd intended to publish this work only when I found the time to polish it a great deal more, but because, unexpectedly, a few days ago I actually discovered who Thys Barentsen's parents actually were, and how the line linked to the den Hartog line and ultimately (probably) to the van Arkel line. Since Thys Barentsen's ancestry has been a subject of speculation for years, I decided to go ahead and publish what I've already written rather than to put it off for some months simply to polish it up a bit. I welcome any comments, criticism, and questions,

Despite the spelling of my surname, my paternal ancestry derives from the New Netherland Swaim family whose ancestry lies in the Netherlands, rather than the New England Swain family with ancestry in England. The surname change occurred with my grandfather, who was born in 1906. Before that, on whatever documents I've seen, the name had always been spelled with a terminal “m.” My “Swaim” immigrant ancestors were Thys Barentsen and his son Anthony. It is now clear that all of the New Netherland Swaim branches ultimately derive from Thys Barentsen, who immigrated to New Netherland in 1661 and settled on Staten Island.

This seems generally to be accepted as true by most of the Swaims who've written anything about the Swaim ancestry, but the picture has been much murkier when it comes to Thys Barentsen's ancestors in the Netherlands. A good discussion of this can be found in Jack Stuart Swaim's book “The Swaim Family of Indiana and Oklahoma,” which is available online at http://www.jswaim.com/family/Swaim_Genealogy.pdf. Jack Stuart Swaim is skeptical but open-minded about the common beliefs that Thys Barentsen's mother was named Sibilla Verwaaijen, that his grandparents were “Barent van Rottmer” and “Geesje Barents,” and that both Barent van Rottmer and Geesje Barents were born in areas that are now in what is now northern Germany. After doing my own researchi using information obtained from Y-DNA matching, I don't believe that any of this purported ancestry of Thys Barentsen is true.

Rather, I now believe that Thys Barentsen's mother was named Pietertje Willems, that his father was name Barend Mathijs, and that his paternal grandparents were Mathijs Anthonissen/Teunisse and Lijsbet Barends. All of these ancestors were born and lived in or near Middelkoop, which is located very close to Leerdam in the general area known as the Vijfheerenlanden and historically as the Land of Arkel. The Land of Arkel was rule by the Lords of Arkel for a few hundred years until the early 1400's. It is likely that the Swaim line descends from the van Arkel line, although like most things that far back in the past, there is some uncertainty. In any case, however, the paternal Swaim line definitely comes from this region of the Netherlands from at least the 1400's in the male line, and probably for much longer.

The breakthrough in discovering Thys Barentsen's ancestry came through Y chromosome DNA analysis. I won't offer my understanding of Y-DNA at this point, except to say that for genealogical purposes the part of Y-DNA that is most useful is called STRs (Short Tandem Repeats). A handful of companies offer STR analysis, but the company with the largest Y-DNA database is Family Tree DNA (FTDNA), and since the whole point of Y-DNA analysis is to compare your DNA with other men's DNA to find mathces, FTDNA is by default the only company right now worth using for genealogical purposes. FTDNA today offers testing at 3 different levels of STRs, with each higher level testing a greater number of STRs: STR37, STR67, and STR111. They used to offer testing at STR12 and STR25, but as I'll show in the longer version of this work, those lower levels, while interesting, are not highly useful for genealogical purposes (FTDNA still does provide a list of matches for those two lower levels).

About 30 Swaims had already had their Y-DNA tested on FTDNA before I mine tested in January of 2020. The motivation for many of these people was probably the “Swaim Project” that had been organized more than a decade ago by Laraine Clark and Lloyd Swaim for the purpose of determining whether or not the Swaims had descended from the van Pelts. The answer to that question was conclusively proved be “no,” but the “Swaim Project” is still today very valuable as it has provided us with a relatively large database of “Swaims” (by which term I mean all those who descend from Thys Barentsen, most of whom have a recognizable variation of the surname, such as “Swim,” “Swimm,” “Swain,” etc. Vestal is alo a Swaim, through a known surname change event).

I first tested at the STR37 level because my only goal when I first tested was to make certain that I was in fact a Swaim and not an English “Swain.” My family tree and autosomal DNA pointed very firmly to that conclusion, but I wanted to be certain of it. But when I got my results, I found the results so interesting that I almost immediately upgraded to the STR111 level to confirm the results at the STR37 level. What I found so interesting was that two of my closest matches at the STR37 level were not surnamed Swaim, but were instead surnamed “DenHartog” and “Den Hertog.” These surnames were obviously just variations on the same name, and which in fact has other spelling variations such as Hertoch, Hertich, etc., and which may or may not use the “den” prefix. Also, at the STR67 level, which DenHartog but not Den Hertog has tested at, DenHartog remained a close match—closer than most of the Swaims! This was certainly a clue to Swaim ancestry that needed further investigation.

Information that the two “den Hartogs” provided to FTDNA showed that Den Hertog lived in the Netherlands and that DenHartog lived in the United States. A bit of research showed that Den Hartog family trees were available online at FamilySearch.org and at Geni.com. These showed that DenHartog was a descendant of a Den Hartog who immigrated to Pella, Iowa in 1847 as part of an organized religious immigration of hundreds of Netherlanders, and also that his parents had come from Leerdam (or Hei- en Boeicop, which is a couple miles from Leerdam).

There are two primary conclusions that can be immediately drawn from this information. First, the Swaims and the den Hartogs are two branches of the same tree, and are relatively closely related. Second, that Swaim/den Hartog tree grows in the soil in or near Leerdam, in the Netherlands. How deep its roots were remained to be determined, however.

Once I knew that the Swaims were related to the den Hartogs and that the den Hartog tree was available online, I decided to search for the last common ancestor between the Swaims and den Hartogs by going backwards. That is, by starting from the earlier generations and coming back toward the present, instead of the usual way in genealogy by starting from one's parents and moving backward in time. That way, I wouldn't get bogged down looking for van Rottmers and Verwaaijens, which would have been dead ends anyway. What I did was to look at the sons of each generation and follow each son as far as possible for clues as to whether he might be the progenitor of the Swaim line. This ended up being useful for other reasons, as I found interesting things along the way that I might not have even looked for if I'd proceeded from bottom to top. I discovered a possible explanation for why a Miller shows up on FTDNA as a Swaim relation, and I discovered what I think might be the origin of the Swaim name.

FTDNA provides a feature called a TiP calculator which is a tool to estimate how many generations in the past the common ancestor existed for you and your match. This tool provides a percentage estimate for each generation and also provides a refined estimate for that can be used if “traditional genealogical records indicate that a common ancestor between you and your match could not have lived in a certain number of past generations.” Since Thys Barentsen lived 11 generations back from me, and since it is very unlikely that either den Hartog could be my ancestor, I would enter the number “11” into the generator for a “refined” result. Here are the estimates provided by the TiP calculator:

DenHartog:
Unrefined result 90% probability: 9 generations
Unrefined result 99% probability: 15 generations
Refined result 90% probability 17 generations
Refined result 99% probability 22 generations

Den Hertog:
Unrefined result 90% probability: 9 generations
Unrefined result 99% probability: 15 generations
Refined result 90% probability 17 generations
Refined result 99% probability 22 generations

You can see that the refined result pushes back the number of generations, and although FTDNA gives an explantion for this I haven't bothered to read it. The refined results looked wrong to me from the beginning, and in the end did prove to be wrong. Because I was at a closer “Genetic Distance” to the den Hartogs than to most of the Swaims, and because the unrefined results showed a 90% proability that the Swaims and the den Hartogs shared a common ancestor only 9 generations ago, I thought it was logical to assume that that common ancestor lived not too many generations before Thys Barentsen emigrated to New Netherland. Therefore, I went forward with the assumpton that this common ancestor probably lived within the last 12-17 generations. I could focus my investigation on those six generations.

(In the end, the last common ancestor in fact occurred at Generation 15, which is exactly the generation predicted by the TiP calculator for the unrefined result at 99% probability.)

However, I got bogged down in first dealing with the older generations because they were the Lords of Arkel who had a fascinating history that I wanted to explore. The family tree for the DenHartog Y-DNA match showed him as a direct descendant of the Lords of Arkel, which of course had to mean that the Swaims were also the direct descendants of the Lords of Arkel, assuming that the family tree was substantially correct. And we probably are, but there is some question as to the truth of that, which hinges upon whether or not our lineage derived from that of Willem Ottens (1440-1494), the son of Otto (the Bastard) van Arkel, or whether it derived from another Willem Ottens who seems to have lived in the same area at the same time. This is a question that is discussed in Dutch online genealogy forums, and the general conclusion is that it is likely that the den Hartogs do descend from the son of Otto van Arkel the Bastard, but that the evidence is circumstantial and uncertain rather than direct and conclusive.

However, my goal was to discover how the Swaims were related to the den Hartogs, rather than to determine whether we were related to the van Arkels. The question of whether the Swaims are related to the van Arkels can only can only be determined by exhuming the remains of one of the van Arkels and testing its Y-DNA. This is a practical project from a scientific standpoint, but probably less so from a social and political standpoint, as it would require someone with the financial resources and the personal drive to pursue it, who would be willing to negotiate his or her way through a great deal of "red tape." If it is ever done it is likely to be done as part of some larger project initiated by a consortium of universities involving the widespread testing of both ancient remains and living men throughout the Netherlands to determine the Y-DNA history of the country or of Europe as a whole. I think such a project is quite plausible, and hope that it does sometime occur (hopefully within my lifetime).

Another possibility is that there is some uncontested male-line descendant of the van Arkel line who will at some point test his Y-DNA. If he exists and he does this at FTDNA (or if there is by then some pooled database of all Y-DNA results) and his Y-DNA matches with Swaim and den Hartog Y-DNA, then this also will answer the question. The van Arkels had many male children over the generations, so there are undoubtedly many paternal-line descendants living today in the Netherlands. Some may be using the van Arkel surname but others may be using surnames such as van Ochten, van Dalem, van Sterkenberg, van Slingelandt, van Voorne, van Virneberg, de Gruijter, de Hoghe, van Nyenstein, Ravenstein, de Bar, etc. Some of these lines may have branched off from the Swaim/den Hartog line enough generations ago that there are enough mutations accumulated that they won't show as matches on FTDNA because they fall just outside of FTDNA's "Genetic Distance" requirements for displaying them as matches. Some of these may already be in the FTDNA database but don't show as matches for that reason. It is too bad that FTDNA doesn't have the option to look at matches outside the range of what it currently allows, for this and other reasons. That they don't is probably more for commercial reasons than for reasons of privacy, since the only personal information they reveal is the name of the match and any other personal information that the match chooses voluntarily to disclose.

I've checked the "Netherlands Project" and the "New Netherland Project" in FTDNA's geographical projects for men who might be matches at a slightly greater genetic distance than FTDNA's cutoff for matches. The closest match I found was a man surnamed Losee, whose listed ancestor is Simeon Losee (1754-1806). His genetic distance from me is 30 at the level of 67 tested STRs. This is too distant for our last common ancestor to have been a van Arkel, but it is still an interesting relationship. Since "D Swim" is at a genetic distance from me of 6 (at STR67) and my last common ancestor with D Swim was 11 generations ago (Thys Barentsen), then Losee at a genetic distance of 30 would be 5 times as distant. This means that the last common ancestor of Losee and me would have existed approximately 55 generations ago. Assuming an average generation is 25-30 years, this would me our last common ancestor lived from 1,375 to 1,650 years ago, or sometime between 370 A.D. and 645 A.D. This is a long time ago, but it is within the historical era. At the outside, it's only 145 years before Heijman van Arkel (790-856) is supposed to have been born, and it's well within the time period when Ritzard I van Friesland (535- ), a supposed ancestor of van Egmond and van Buren lines, who ruled in Friesland in the north of Holland, is supposed to have existed. The Wikipedia entry "400" states that in this year "The Franks establish themselves in the North of the Netherlands," and it would be interesting to see if any of these lines could be definitely traced this far back to Friesland and to the Franks. I'm well aware that Heijan van Arkel and Ritzard I van Friesland might not ever have existed, or if they did, might not be proven to be related to the van Arkels or to the van Burens, but with the power of Y-DNA to establish relationships hundreds and thousands of years in the past, I do think that in not too many years in the future we will be able to build a very accurate web of relationships extending into the distant past that we may be able to accurately relate to historical names and places. This may be easier to do with the E-V13 haplotype than with the more common R and I haplotypes, since the E-V13 haplotype is much less common in Western Europe.

Generations 18 Through 15 of the den Hartog Genealogy

The following is a summary of my investigation of Generations 18 through 15 of the den Hartog genealogy. I set Generaton 11 as the particular den Hartog who was born at about the same time as Thys Barentsen, under the assumption that Thys Barentsen was born in 1621 (this date comes from which date , which is a date calculated from a later statement by Thys Barentsen in New Netherland). The den Hartog at this generation is Claes Geerloffsz Hartogh (1624-1699, born in Schoonrewoerd). Claes Geerloffsz Hartogh was about the same age as Thys Barentsen and probably lived within a few miles of him. Claes and Thys were 3rd cousins and probably knew each other as such, given the lineage's long residence in the area.

When I originally wrote these paragraphs, I had not yet discovered the person who I am now almost certain is Thys Barentsen. Therefore, I wrote them as if I was still searching for him, because I was. Rather than change the paragraphs to reflect the fact that we now know the probable identity of Thys Barentsen, I will leave them as I wrote them. Even though most of these people are not the progenitors of the Swaim line, they are nonetheless cousins, and in time some of their descendants will surely show up as Y-DNA matches.

Before I get into a more detailed analysis, here's what I believe is the Swaim and den Hartog paternal lineages, starting with Generation 18, Jan V Van Arkel:

Gen den Hartog Line Swaim Line

G18 Jan V, Heer van Arkel (1362-1428) Jan V, Heer van Arkel (1362-1428)
G17 Otto van Arkel (1400-1475) Otto van Arkel (1400-1475)
G16 Willem Ottenszn (Deventer) (1440-1494) Willem Ottenszn (Deventer) (1440-1494)
G15 Claes Willemsz Ottens (Deventer) (1475-1538) Claes Willemsz Ottens (Deventer) (1475-1538)

G14 Willem Claess den Hertoch (De Jonge)(1518-1575) Anthonis Claessen (1516-1568)
G13 Adriaen Willemsz van Deventer Hertoch (1560-1627) Mathijs Antonissen (1545-1595)
G12 Geerloff Ariensz Hartogh (den Hartog)(1589-1665) Barend Mathijs (1590- 1661?)
G11 Claes Geerloffsz Hartogh (den Hartog) (1624-1699) Matijs Barents (Thys Barentsen)(1621-1682)

Here's the Swaim line by itself:

Jan V van Arkel (1362-1428)
Otto van Arkel (1396-1475)
Willem Ottens van Arkel (1440-1493)
Claas Willems van Deventer (1475-1540)
Anthonis Claessen (1516-1568)
Mathijs Antonissen (1545-1595)
Barend Mathijs (1590 - )
Thys Barentsen (1621-1682)

Generation 18: Jan V, Heer van Arkel (1362-1428)

Sons:

Willem van Arkel (1385 – 1415 Gorinchem) by wife Johanna van Jülich
Maria (1415- ) married John II, Count of Egmond
Otto van Arkel (below) (Illegitimate – mother's surname possibly ten Haghe)
Dirk (Illegitimate)
Henneke (Illegitimate)
Weynand (1420- ) Goldsmith

Jan V van Arkel was the last of the Lords of Arkel. He lost the Arkel war to the Count of Holland and the Land of Arkel was divided among Holland and Gelderand. Jan's only legitimate son, Willem, died childless fighting to regain the van Arkel lands and power by force.

Apparently almost nothing is known about Dirk except that he was illegitimate and that he and his brother or half-brother Otto murdered Bronis Wouters “the Traitor of Gorinchem” for betraying their father Jan V van Arkel during the Van Arkel War. I don't know what year Dirk was born in and I don't know if Dirk and Otto had the same mother or different mothers. Obviously Dirk is potential the progenitor of the Swaim/den Hartog line, but there is no evidence for that one way or the other.

Jan V's son Willem reacted to the van Arkel loss of power by trying to regain it by force. Sons Otto and Dirk apparently bided their time and took revenge on at least one enemy after a couple decades had past. I came across an interesting adage about how some of the van Arkels apparently reacted to their loss of power:
“Alas—it went from bad to worse, as the Arkels are nicknamed “Jeneverkruiken” (gin-jars), as they love jenever, especially “ouwe klare” - which is the real good (bad) stuff.” (https://fotw.info/flags/nl-zh_ak.html; citation to “Dirk van der Heide's “Groot Schimpnamenboek van Nederland” 1998. Google Translate says that “schimpnamen” means “taunt names,” for what that's worth.).
So some of the van Arkels drowned their sorrows in gin. Unfortunatly I don't know specifically to which Arkels this adage refers.

In this analysis I'm mostly ignoring the daughters because they are irrelevant to Y-DNA analysis. I'm including a bit of information about Jan V's daughter, Maria, because much is known about her and because she survived the collapse of her family's power with much greater ease than did her brothers. She did this because she was married to Jan II van Egmond, the Duke of Gelre (Guelders, Gelderland), who was a powerful lord who was related to other powerful noble families. Maria's children with Jan II van Egmond were Arnold (duke of Guelders and Lord of Egmond) and Wilhelm (Lord of Egmond and Leerdam). Wilhelm's children included Johann (Graf van Egmond and Governor of Holland) and Friedrich (Graf of Buren and Leerdam). Thus, this line of the family continued to be powerful and influential in both Leerdam and in the Netherlands in general for at least a few more generations. If the Swaims do in fact descend from the van Arkel line, then Maria's descendants will be our distant cousins, but autosomal DNA from this far back might be too attenuated to be useful for purposes of genetic genealogy.

Generation 17: Otto van Arkel “the Bastard” (1400-1475)

Wife: Elisabeth Jacobje Molenaar

Sons:

Gherit Otten (1435-1516)
Willem Ottens Deventer
Dirk Ottens van Arkel (1440-1518)
Jan Ottens (1441-1504)
Peter Ottens van Arkel (1442-1518)
Otto Ottens (Illegitimate)

Otto van Arkel was born in Hagestein, between Leerdam and Ijsselstein, and died in Utrecht. He probably owned land, possibly a good deal of it, south of the Lek in the heart of the old Land van Arkel, but whether he went there often or at all appears to be unknown. Otto married Jacobje Molenaar (1405-1475), who was born in Leerbroek. Not much else seems to be known about Jacobje Molenaar, and there is some disagreement about what little does seem to be known. Some sources list her name as Elisabeth, some as both Elisabeth and Jacobje, and some add to her last name “de Bar-Pierrepont” or “de Bar-Pierremont,” apparently indicating that she was of high social status. However, these sources may be confusing her with Otto's grandfather (also named Otto), who married Elisabeth de Bar-Pierrepont (1335-1411).

Of more immediate interest, some sources say that Otto van Arkel sometimes used the name “Ot de Molenaar.” If so, he possibly used that name to avoid using the van Arkel name, which perhaps he was not entitled to use because he was a bastard or because the line of van Arkel was dead. But what is interesting is that this provides us with a strong explanation as to why there is a Swaim Y-DNA match with the surname “Miller.” “Molenaar” is in fact the Dutch word for “miller,” so if a male line descending from “Ot de Molenaar” used the name “Molenaar” and then at some point emigrated to America, that line in America might very well change its surname to its English equivalent “Miller.”

Generation 16: Willem Ottens (1440-1503)

Although some genealogies place the surname Deventer after Willem Ottens's name, this may be an anachronism.

Sons:

Otto Willems van Deventer (1465-1529) (possibly illegitimate)
Adriaen Willems den Hartog (also spelled Hertogh. Hertoch) (1467-1536)
Jan Willems Zweynen (1470-1542)
Claes Willem Ottens Deventer (AKA Claes Willem Ottens de Backer) (1475-1538)
Jacob Willem Ottensz (Deventer)(1475-1541)

Willem Ottens Deventer married Marigen Everitsen/Everts (1444-1491). Sometimes the name “de la Tombe” is added to her patronymic name Everitsen. La Tombe is a place in the Ile-de-France region southeast of Paris, so it's possible she or her family was from that place, but there seems to be no information to support this.

Some Ancestry trees claim that an alternate surname for Willem Ottens (Deventer) is “van Velpen." There is a town of Velp in Gelderland just east of Arnhem and another Velp in Brabant a few miles southwest of Nijmegen and just south of the river Maas. Neither the Swaim line nor the Arkel line seem to have been closely associated with the Arnhem area, but the Arkel line was closely associated with the region around Velp in Brabant. At this time I don't have any details about this, but a "bastaardzoon" of Otto van Arkel (1330-1396) was named Jan van Ravenstein (Ravenstein being located on the Maas just a few miles north of Velp), and Jan I van Arkel (~990-1034) married Elisabeth van Cuijck (Cuijck being located on the Maas a few miles south of Velp). Thus, the "van Velpen" surname might make sense if the Swain/Hartog line was in fact an extension of the Arkel line.

This appears to be the first generation the surname Deventer was used. The origin of that name seems to be a mystery. No one in the van Arkel/Deventer/Den Hartog/Swaim line seems to have been born or resided in the city of Deventer. Otto van Arkel (1330) was married to Elisabeth de Bar-Pierrepont in Deventer in 1360, but how this would give rise to the use of the name Deventer or van Deventer as a surname by their descendants is unknown.

This also seems to be the first generation in which the surname den Hartog was used, in this case by Adriaen Willems (Egon Vennik, stamboomvennik.nl). The name is also spelled Hertogh, Hertoch, Hartoch, Hartigh, and other variations on the name. (GENEALOGIE HERTOCH VAN DE FAMILIE (den hertog).pdf). It's interesting to note that although it was apparently Adriaen Willems who first used the name den Hartog, the descendants of his brother Claes also later used that name. A Dutch person writing in a genealogy forum wrote (as translated by Google Translate): “Does Hartog come from Hertog? [hertog in Dutch means duke]. Wikipedia states the following: From the 16th century, the title duke was also awarded in a personal capacity to generals and high dignitaries. Although the title was always linked to a whole set of privileges and land tenure, he [Jan V van Arkel?] was then already stripped of almost all territorial and legal authority. It could be that they called themselves [Hartog] because of the land and wealth (or in view of their origin?)”

I couldn't find any information on Otto or Adriaen. I found a reference to a “Jacob Willem Otten” who was probably this Jacob Willems Otten, which will be mentioned near the end of the next section on Jan Zweynen Willems since it involves an incident with one of the Middach family who later ended up with some of Jan's property through his son Cornelis' wife's second husband.

Jan Willems Zweynen (1470-1542)

Jan Willems apparently commonly went by the name Jan Zweynen Willems or just Jan Zweynen. This new name was supposedly adopted by Jan Willems from the surname of his wife, Adriaantje Dircks Zweynen. The surname is more often spelled "Zwijnen" in Dutch genealogies, but this is possibly anachronistic to the spelling of the 1400's and 1500's. The name is also occasionally spelled "Sweynen." Obviously this surname in any of its forms looks(and would have sounded) a lot like “Swain,” and this similarity increases when we consider this statement from the Wikipedia article “Dutch Phonology:” “In many areas the final 'n' of the ending -en...is pronounced only when a word is being individually stressed; this makes -en words homophonous with otherwise identical forms ending in -e alone....” In other words, in most cases, the -en is not pronounced, so that the Zweynen was probably pronounced as if it were spelled Zweyne (or Zweyn, if the terminal e was silent after an n in 1400-1500's Dutch). Furthermore, the Zw- sound in Dutch is essentially pronounced as Sw- since the Z- is at the onset of the syllable. Thus, the pronunciation of the word must have been close to how we would today say Sweyn. Depending on how the vowels were pronounced, this is either exactly the same as my own surname or it's very close. I suspect it's only very close, because the dutch word zwijn in fact means swine and is probably pronounced that way. However, vowel sounds are much more subject to change over time than consonants, in English and presumably in Dutch, which is very closely related to English (“The consonant system survived the Middle English period virtually without modification...However, the vowel system changed massively” Thomas Berg, Linguistic Structure and Change, 1998) As for the name being spelled sometimes Zweynen and sometimes Zwijnen, in Dutch the letters y and ij are more or less the same sound.

It's true that the terminal -n of Zweyn is a different sound than the terminal -m of Swaim, but since we know that two lines of Swaims had changed their surname to Swain after Swaim had been adopted by Thys Barentsen's children, there is no reason to think that the opposite change could not have occurred either before Thys Barentsen's generation or with his children. His children might have chosen to change the -n to -m in an attempt to avoid confusion with the English family of Swains then living in Newtown, Long Island (one of whom—Francis Swain—was apparently married to my 9th great-grandmother Martha Cornish, although it seems they had no children together).

(Since I last wrote the above paragraph, Jack Stuart Swaim has found a archive entry in which Mathijs Barentsen while in Holland was referred to by the surname "Swijn" or "Swijm" (the archive had of course been originally written by hand, and presumably the editor of the archive was unsure whether the ending letter was an "n" or an "m".) This is very interesting, as it's the first time anyone has found evidence that the surname was being used in the Netherlands by anyone in the Swaim line. My guess is still that the ending letter was an "n" and had been derived from Jan Zweynen/Zwijnen. If this is true, then the terminal letter was changed to an "m" in America by Thys Barentsen's sons. Possibly this was to avoid confusion with the English surname "Swain," which was already in New York in the 1600's.)

Clearly, Jan Willem's use of his wife's surname Zweynen is quite possibly the origin of the surname Swaim that was later adopted by Thys Barentsen's descendants, and Jan Willems Zweynen is quite possibly Thys Barentsen's great-grandfather and the point at which the Swaim line diverged from the Deventer/den Hartog line (although it appears that the name Hartog/Hertog was not yet being used by the line at this time). Jan Zweynen's father, Willem Ottens Deventer (1440) would in this case be the last common ancestor of the Swaims and the den Hartogs. As Willem Ottens Deventer is 18 generations up from my own generation, this fits in very well with FTDNA's TiP calculator's estimate of 12-22 generations.

[Of course, I now believe that Jan Willems Zweynen is NOT directly in the Swaim line of descent, but is rather a collateral ancestor. I do still believe that the Swaim surname may have derived from him, however.]

Jan Willems married Adriaantje Dircks Zweynen and had 7 children with her:

Willem Zwijnen (1500- )
Dirk Zwijnen (1502- )
Meijintje Zweynen (1505- )
Maria Zwijnen (1507- )
Margriet Zweynen (1510-1546)
Cornelis Zwijnen (1512-1546)
Claasje Zwijnen (1515- )

There could, of course, be other sons that we don't know about, either with Adriaantje or with another woman. Given the propensity of Jan Willem's ancestors (including his father) for producing illegitimate children, this wouldn't be surprising.

The daughters of course wouldn't carry Y-DNA, so their descendants will not have Swaim Y-DNA.

Cornelis Zwijnen is recorded as havingn one daughter (by his wife Barbara Korst Jansdr van Meerkerk), but no sons by her or anyone else. However, again, it is possible that he did have sons that we don't know about, including illegitimate sons.

This leaves Willem Zwijnen and Dirk Zwijnen, the two oldest children and sons of Jan Zweynen. I haven't found anything information on Dirk other than the year of his birth, but it appears that Willem lived at least to 1542 because he and his younger brother Cornelis were involved in managing the estate of their father and mother, both of whom died in the same year. On the page for “Jan Willems Zwijnen” in the genealogy section of his website, Oscar den Uijl wrote:

Tenslotte blijkt op 23-10-1542 Jan en zijn vrouw te zijn overleden; want 'Willem Zweynen ende Cornelis Zweynen gebroeders maeken machtiqh Cornelis Cornelissen ende Hendrik Florissen omme heurlieder schulden renten pachten ende andersinqs te innen'. Hun zwaqers mochten dus hun zaken regelen.

Google Translate rendered this as:

Finally on 23-10-1542 Jan and his wife appear to have died; for "Willem Zweynen and the Cornelis Zweynen brothers maeken Machtiqh Cornelis Cornelissen and the Hendrik Florissen to lease debtors and to collect the other debt. So their swabs were allowed to arrange their affairs.

Google translated “zwaqers” as “swabs,” but clearly that makes no sense. The word “zwager,” however, means brother-in-law; this is the correct translation, since Hendrik Florissen is in fact the name of Margriet Zweynen's husband and is thus the brother-in-law of Cornelis and Willem. Therefore this statement means something like "The brothers Willem and Cornelis have given authority to their brothers-in-law Cornelis Cornelissen and Hendrik Florissen to collect lease money and other debts owed to Jan Zweynen's estate." Since Maria Zwijnen's husband was named Hendrik Herberts, Cornelis Cornelissen must be the husband of the oldest sister, Meigntje. But for our current purposes, the importance of this statement is that it indicates that that Willem Zweynen, the oldest son of Jan, was alive in 1542. He would then have been 42 years old in 1542 and it is very possible that he was married and had sons.

Of course it is also possible that Dirk had sons as well.

The following information on Jan Zweynen probably won't help to determine if he was the Swaim progenitor, but is interesting and also tends to help establish that this line was descended from the van Arkel line. Much of this information was taken from Dutch genealogy forums and is probably mostly reliable but also unverifiable. References are sometimes given, but I don't have access to these so I couldn't verify their accuracy. Also, the forums were in Dutch and were translated through Google Translate, which often gives a funhouse mirror reflection of the Dutch original.

Jan Willemsz Zweyen was “quite rich, not only does he pay bills for the City of Utrecht, he is also sent to settle disputes for Mr. van Bredenrode.” The forum writer doesn't explain who this van Bredenrode is, but he was obviously a powerful person and, from what the forum writer says later, he must have been a descendant of the powerful Brederode family. There is a rhyme that is quoted in Batavia Illustrata that mentions 4 of the powerful families at the time when the van Arkels were still lords:

Brederode the noblest,
Wassenaar the oldest,
Egmond the richest,
Arkel the boldest

The forum writer makes another point about another aspect of this collaboration between van Brederode and Zweynen (who, remember, was possibly a great-grandson of Jan V van Arkel and a second cousin to the van Egmonds through Jan V's daughter Maria): “The special thing is of course that the van Arkels and the Brederodes could not stand each other a little less than 100 years earlier.” So the forum writer is saying that it is ironic that now the van Arkel descendants are allied in some way with the van Brederodes, when previously they were rivals. But of course, the van Arkel descendants had by now lost all of their political power except perhaps locally, and perhaps for whatever sympathy the van Egmond family might have for them as the descendants of Maria van Arkel.

The animosity between the van Arkels and the Brederodes dated at least to 1402, when Walraven I van Brederode, who had recently become Lord of Brederode, participated in the siege of Gorinchem on the side of Albert, the Count of Holland. Albert was at war with Jan V, Lord of Arkel, and laid siege to the town of Gorinchem (and Arkel stronghold) and also the castle of Arkel. Gorinchem was heavily walled, with ten high and thick towers, and the castle was adjacent. The siege lasted for 12 weeks, during which time the tower of the castle was destroyed by bombardment by siege engines. There was a mediated settlement, but in 1404 Count Albert died and was succeeded by William VI as count of Holland in 1405, and William joined with the bishop of Utrecht to lay siege to 3 of Arkel's castles. By blockading the castles with forts and bombarding the castles with siege engines, Holland and Utrecht were able to force Arkel to surrender. Jan V van Arkel apparently retained his power, however, and in 1407 the Arkel forces recaptured Gorinchem by a nighttime raid in which some men climbed a tower and opened a gate. However, in the end Arkel lost the war and Jan V was imprisoned in 1412 and spent the rest of his life (another 16 years) as a prisoner of the count of Holland in Gouda and Leerdam. The castle of Gorinchem was destroyed in 1413, although the count of Holland built a new one nearby (he could have simply used the already-existing castle, but apparently because he hated Jan V Arkel so much he destroyed the castle instead).

Walraven I van Brederode had been taken captive by the Arkel forces in 1402 at the original siege of Gorinchem, and had apparently been held as a captive until he escaped captivity in 1409. He then joined William, Count of Holland, in again fighting the Arkels. In 1417 William van Arkel, the son of the captive Jan V van Arkel, initiated a new siege of Gorinchem in an attempt to regain power for the Arkels. He was killed, ending the power of the Arkels forever, but Walraven I was also killed during the attack on Gorinchem, having been shot by an arrow.

The Arkels had lost their power, their wealth, and their (untitled) nobility, and their descendants sank into obscurity, while the Brederodes retained their political power and wealth into the 1500's. It seems the Brederodes lost their power in the late 1500's, during the turbulent Protestant Reformation. The Wikipedia article on “Van Brederode” states: “During the Protestant Reformation the van Brederode family left Holland and their properties were confiscated by the government. Their descendants sued the government, but when the decision came in their favor the family line had died out (the last known descendant lived in the 17th Century). The debt to the unknown heirs is still on the Netherlands State Budget...in 1967 the sum was said to be around 3,000 million Dutch guilders.” Three billion guilders is more than a billion and a half United States dollars, and of course by 2020 that figure has probably doubled or tripled. Who says there aren't job opportunities for genetic genealogists?

Jan Zweynen died in 1542, so during his life the Brederodes still retained their power. One forum writer hypothesizes that the name "Zweynen" actually came from Jan Zweynen's employment or collaboration with van Brederode. He quotes from a museum website regarding a painting: “The Dutch flag with the [coat of] arms of the Van Brederodes is flying in the main mast and a flag with the swine head [Zwijnskop] on the stern: the emblem of the Van Brederodes.” The forum writer is thus suggesting that the name Zweynen/Zwijnen was used by Jan Zweynen specifically to align himself (or curry favor) with this powerful man van Brederode, whose symbol was a swine's head. If this is true, then the competing hypothesis (that the name cam from the surname of Jan's wife) isn't likely to be true. Like most information from this time period, the truth is elusive and not easily discovered. Most information surviving from this far in the past comes from brief entries in church records regarding baptisms and marriages, or from archives concerned primarily with recording land transactions and other finances. This type of information is probably pretty accurate, but information coming from other sources can't be assumed to be as accurate.

Another forum writer said about Zweynen, as well as about Willem's other sons (in Google translation): “Willem's sons were very successful, and we can draw some evidence [inference] from this, Jan Zweynen was particullary successful, he was a very successful merchant who had contacts with the high council of Mechelen and Antwerp (Jan van Arkel was lord of Mechelen and had land at Antwerp), he lends money to many people (including nobility) and acts as a diplomat in a trade dispute between the cities of Utrecht, Dordrecht, Gorinchem and Mechelen.” This is interesting bit of information on its own, but was meant as an argument that Willem and his offspring were descended from the van Arkel line.

There isn't much information about Jan Zweynen's descendants. One source mentioned a property that Jan Zweyenen at “later came into possession of the Middach family through inheritance.” Another source states about a man named Cornelis Aert Middach, born in 1598 in Middelkoop: “Aert lives in Heicop and later in the Laageind of Middelkoop, in the 'Jan Zweynen Weer” on his parental farm.” (“Weer” in this context probably means “weir,” which is a type of dam for water control, so this probably means that this particular lot of land had a weir on it. The translation probably should be not that Aert lives “in” the Jan Zweynen Weer, but “near” it). So this would seem to imply either that this line of the Zweynens died out or that they changed their name to Middach. In fact, the Ancestry crowdsourced tree gives enough information to specullate on how Jan Zweynen's land came into the possesson of the Middachs.

The Ancestry crowdsourced tree has little information on most of Jan Zweynen's children. He had two sons: Dirk Zwijnen (1502- ) and Cornelis Zwijnen (1512-1546). There seems to be no information on the first son, but there's a little on Cornelis. Cornelis married Barbara van Meerkerk (1515-1550) and had one daughter with her: Marigje Zwijnen (1540- ). Cornelis died in 1546 and Barbara Meerkerk remarried to Anthonis Middach (1520-1580), and they had a son named Gerrit Middach (1550- ). Barbara Meerkerk died in 1550 (perhaps in giving birth to Gerrit), and Gerrit went on to have at least 2 children. It is unknown if Cornelis Zwijnen's daughter Marigje had any children. If Cornelis inherited the “Jan Zweyen Weer” from his father and left it to Barbara Meerkerk, she may then have left it to her son Gerrit, even though he wasn't a son by blood of Cornelis. There are other possibilities, but with this information it's easy to see how the Middach/Middagh family ended up with some of Jan Zweyen's property even if the Middaghs are not genetically closely related to the Deventers/den Hartogs/Swains.

There is also the possibility that a male Swaim borrowed the name Middach as his surname, and that this branch of the Middachs is actually part of the Swaim Y-DNA tree. No Middach/Middagh showed up as a Y-DNA match on FTDNA, but of course one would show up only if they had actually tested their Y-DNA. There is in fact a Middaugh surname project on FTDNA with 22 members with various spellings of the surname. The results are not viewable, however, so no conclusions can be drawn from this one way or he other. There is really no evidence that a Swaim ever took the Middach name, and my hunch is that the Middachs who inherited the “Jan Zweynen Weer” are not paternally related to the Swaim line.

There is another interesting ancecdote about the relationship between the Deventer/Hartog family and the Middach family. According to one source, in 1518 a man named Jacob Willem Otten stabbed to death Scalck Thoenis Middach, the great uncle of Anthonis Middach (1520-1580). This Jacob Willem Otten was almost certainly the brother of Jan Zweynen, since Jacob Willem Otten was born in Middelkoop, as was Scalck Thoenis Middach. There doesn't seem to be any more information about this homicide, so we don't know whether the authorities considered it to be justified, or, if not, whether Jacob Willem Otten was punished for it. If the killing was not justified, then it seems that that the Middach family eventually got some compensation for it when it inherited some of Jan Zweynen's land. Perhaps the inheritance in fact was meant to be such compensation, or perhaps it just worked out the way it did through circumstance. (http://home.planet.nl/~midda012/parenteelvanmiddag.htm).

Interestingly, I do have 9 autosomal DNA matches on Ancestry, and 1 on MyHeritage, with a Middagh in the family tree. Some of these trees are relatively extensive and go back to a Teunis Middagh born in 1600 in Heicop, Vianen, very close to Leerdam. At least some of this Middagh family emigrated to New Netherland in the 1600's. One of the Middaghs married a granddaughter of my 10th great-grandaparents Joris Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico, and it is likely that common DNA between the my DNA matches and me is actually “Rapalje” or “Trico” DNA rather than Middagh DNA.

Generation 15: Claes Willem Ottens (1475-1538)

Willem Ottensz Deventer's final son to consider is Claes Willem Ottens (1518). Claes had the following children:

Illegitimate by his "'tjonge wijff" (maid) Cornelia Cornelisdr (1476-1504)
Adriaan Claas Ottens (1497-)

By Maria Hendriksdr (1480-1511)(married 9 March 1504):
Willem (de Oude) Claas (1505-)
Cornelis Claas (1507-)
Mary Claasdr (1509)(she married Joost Claassen (1514-) in 1534)

By Margriet Cornelisdr van Aefferen (1485-1532)(married 1 Feb 1615 Leerdam):
Anthonis Claas Ottens (1516-1588)
Willem Claes den Hertoch (de Jonge) Deventer (AKA Wyntgen van Deventer) (1518-1575)
Marijken Classdr Ottens (1521-)
Sebastiaan Claass Ottens (1523-1598)
Adriaan Claass Ottens (1525-)
Cornelia Claasdr Ottens (1527-)

Unsubstantiated sons:
Geerloff Claassen Hartig (1528-1572)
Peter (?-?) (according to one unsubstantiated source)

Marriage to Maria Hendricks

There was a prenuptual agreement to this marriage regarding the division of property upon the death of a spouse.

Claes brought to the marriage: 7 hont of land in “den lande van de Lede”
6 morgen of land in “den land van de Lede.” (bastard son Adraien
Claas eventually gets this 6 morgens of land)
The rent on the above 6 morgen of land
100 stilden
If there were no children of the marriage, this property was to remain in his family
Maria Hendricks property: A hofstad (homestead) along with pastureland in the Kerckweer
3 cows
A bed with accessories

Maria Hendricks died in 1511, leaving Claas with 3 young children (Willem de Oude, Cornelis, Mary). Claes Voss acted as guardian for the children in the division of Maria Hendrick's estate.
Claas inherited: Debts, movable property, half of the house and farmland
Claas' bastard son Adraian Claas inherited: 2 morgen of land on the Lancweer
Willem, Cornelis, and Mary inherited: The other half of the farmlands. Claes was also required to feed, clothe, and otherwise provide for the children until they became adults. At adulthood, Claes was to give them 100 stilden in money (possibly 100 to each child, but this isn't clear).

One stipulation, however, was that during Claes lifetime he has the right to use the inheritance of the children to pay for any property damage due to war. (It isn't stated what war was contemplated, but since this agreement was made at the time of marriage in 1504, it was probably the Guelders Wars, which began in 1502. At this time, there was no nation called the Netherlands. Middelkoop and the rest of the Land of Arkel was located in the County of Holland, which, along with Brabant, Flanders and Hainaut, was controlled by the Duke of Burgundy. Guelders (essentially Gelderland), along with Groningen and Frisia, was controlled by Charles, Duke of Guelders. These two rulers duked it out between 1502 and 1543, until eventually the Duke of Burgundy won the war. The Wikipedia entry on these wars states: "The conflicts were characterized by the absence of large battles between the armies of both parties. Instead small hit and run actions, raids and ambushes were common practices. Regardless, the impact on civilians was large with hostilities and incidents occurring throughout the Low Countries. The river Linge defined the border between Holland and Guelders from Arkel east to Leerdam, at which point the border turned north up the Diefdijk. This meant that the border between these two warring countries abutted Leerdam on both its east and south side. Middelkoop was a bit further north and west, but was probably still vulnerable to pillaging armies. Also, it should be pointed out that the end of the Guelders wars was not the end of war for the Low Countries. In 1504 nearly everyone in the Netherlands was Catholic. The outcome of the Guelders Wars was to place the Low Countries under the control of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. When much of the Netherlands converted to Protestantism in the 1500's, Holland, Guelders, and much of the northern Low Countries revolted against Catholic Spanish rule, and the Eighty Years' War began in 1566, bringing many more years of misery for the average person living in these countries. Thus there were only 23 years of peace in the Low Countries between the Guelders War and the Eighty Years' War.

The war clause may also have been contemplating the possible resumption of the "Hook and Cod Wars," which was a series of battles that took place in the County of Holland from 1350 to 1490. This long-running conflict was fought over control of Holland among various claimants, and was what eventually led to the downfall of the Lords of Arkel as political force. Although we can look back and say that the these conflicts ended in 1490, it may not have been so clear to people in 1504 that the issues had truly been settled.)

In 1516 Claes Willem Ottens married Margriet Cornelis van Aefferen. Her father was Cornelis Jansen van Aefferen. There was a prenuptial agreement for this marriage, also.
Claes brought to the marriage: Half of 16 morgens (undivided with his first children) in the van der Lede country
Margriet brought to the marriage: 100 stilden of 14 stuyvers
Each also was to get half the remaining goods that the other owned at death.

Claes and Margriet van Aefferen had six children:

Anthonis Claas Ottens (1516-1588) (Progenitor of the "Swaim" line)
Willem Claes den Hertoch (de Jonge) Deventer (1518-1575)(AKA "Wyntgen van Deventer"). Willem Claes den Hertoch Deventer is the progenitor of the "den Hartog" line that emigrated to America in 1847, to the "den Hertog" line in Utrecht that tested at FTDNA, and to
numerous other Hartog, Hartogh, Hertog, Hartigh, etc. lines in the Netherlands and USA.
Marijken Classdr Ottens (1521-)
Sebastiaan Claass Ottens (1523-1598)
Adriaan Claass Ottens (1525-)
Cornelia Claesdr Ottens (1527-)

In 1528 there was a "war" with the people from what was apparently still called the Land of Arkel against the “Geldersen,” undoubtedly meaning people from the County of Guelders (Leerdam bordered Guelders). This "war" occurred after a feast or party of some kind at which one of the Geldersen was killed with a sword when he refused to drink to the health of someone (probably a man from Arkel). After the "war" was resolved, the “notables” of the cities and countryside of Arkel were required to pay 1550 golden guilders to Mijnheer van Bockhove, drossaard of Gorinchem (probably in repayment of what he spent in pursuing the "war.") Twelve people were listed as “notables,” including Claes Willem Ottensen. These notables were required to collect the money from the citizens, but specifically not by looting, blackmailing or ransoming. Although this seems to have been a local event, it may in some sense have been a part of the larger Guelders Wars, as the Land of Arkel was located in the county of Holland and the "Geldersen" in the duchy of Guelders.

Margriet died before Claes, in 1532. Her property was distributed with the consent of her brothers Jan Cornelissen van Aefferen and Wijnan Cornelis van Aefferen. At the time she died Anthonis was the only child who was an adult. The property disposition at her death was:
Claes got all debts
Claes got all movable and immovable property except certain land in which the children have an interest (bedeylt syn, whatever that means)
Claes was required to feed and clothe and otherwise take care of the children until the youngest reached adulthood or married.
Claes was required to pay each child 42 karolus guilders when the child became an adult
The children got 15 morgen land in the Land of Arkel and in the van der Leede and in the land of Vianen

In 1534 Claes Willem Ottensen was listed as the gezworenen of Middelkoop. This appears to be some type of official perhaps dealing with legal matters.

On his death in 1538, Claes owned about 50 morgens of land, divided between 't Leecheijndt van Middelkoop, Hoocheijndt van Middelkoop, Recht van der Leede, Leerbroek and Heicop.

Sebastiaen, Adriaen, and Cornelia, the three youngest children, together receive 325 Carolus guilders:
125 from Adriaen Hagen
100 from Jacop Willem Ottensen (their uncle)
100 from Beernt Jansen

Den Uijl ends his page of "Claas Willem Ottoz" by saying (in translation): "All in all, Claes Willem Ottenson is someone who has not been particularly poor."

Most of the above information is from https://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/2/121249.htm.

Adriaen Claes Ottens (1497 - )

Adriaan Claas Ottens (1497-) appears to have only had one child, a daughter. If this is true, then the Swaim Y-DNA line cannot have come through him. However, his daughter had several children and any living descendants would be genealogically related to the Swaims, and might possibly share some detectable autosomal DNA with some Swaims.

Willem Claes (de Oude) (1505-1543)

"De Oude" was obviously used to distinguish this first Willem Claes by Maria Hendricks from his younger half-brother of the same name by Margriet van Aefferen. Willem de Oude appears to have had only one daughter and no sons and therefore "daughtered out" and cannot be the progenitor of the Swaim line. As always, however, it is possible that there was a son who is unknown because he was not recorded in any documents.

Cornelis Claes (1507- )

No information is available for Cornelis Claas (1507-).

Generation 14 (Swaim Branch): Anthonis (Theunis) Claess (Ottens) (1516-1588)

Anthonis Claess lived in 't Leecheijnd of Middelkoop on what was called the "21 Mergen" between the "Leerbroekse lande" and the "Hubertse Wetering." "Leecheijnd" means "low end," meaning at a lower elevation. The "21 Mergen" was a plot of land, undoubtedly polder land, that was simply named after the fact that it measured 21 morgen in area, which would be about 44 acres in size. This land was obtained by Anthonis Claessen's father, Claes Willem Ottens, and not without some difficulty. A wetering seems to be a small canal or ditch, which, being prominent features, seem to have often been used to define the boundaries of a property. The Hubertse Wetering is no doubt the same wetering thant can be seen on maps today paralleling the Huibertweg road north of Middelkoop. Leerbroek is located south of Middelkoop, so the "21 Mergen" would seem to be a long, thin plot of land generally aligned south to north. For a good overview of what this area looks like today see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Gem-Leerdam-Ope.... This is a map of the Leerdam gemeen and the areas outside of that gemeen are unfortunately dimmed, but it still provides a good look at Middelkoop. Middelkoop is still lightly populated, so the area around Middelkoop today probably looks much as it did in the 1600's and 1700's.

There is an explanation of how Anthony inherited his house, and the conditions upon which he inherited it (https://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/6/249158.htm), but the Dutch is difficult to translate. My impression is that he may have a life estate in the house, but that in exchange he must pay various sums of money to each of his brothers and sisters, must take care of his younger brother Adriaen until he reaches the age of 22, and must also once a year provide food and drink for each of his brothers and sisters. Anthony is perhaps thusly privileged because he is the oldest son of Claes and Margriet van Aefferen, but this leaves unexplained the position of the half-siblings from Claes' marriage with Maria Hendricks and also that of Adriaan, who was the firstborn but also illegitimate.

(A family tree on a Dutch genealogy website (Anthoniss Claess (1516-1587) » Genealogie Van der Voet-Hooning » Genealogy Online (genealogieonline.nl) states parenthetically in relation to this testamentary condition "Een oud joods-Portugees gebruik wat hedentendage nog plaatsvindt in het Midden-Oosten," which can be translated as "An old Judeo-Portuguese custom that still takes place today in the Middle East." Thus, the author of the famly tree seems to be implying that the den Hartog/Swaim line has some connection to the Portuguese Jewish community. Although it is clear that at least one ancient Swaim line was Jewish, and also that this line was probably Iberian, this parenthetical comment would seem to imply a much more recent Jewish connection than what I've seen. Thus, for now I remain skeptical that the Swaim line has this recent of a Jewish connection.)

Anthonis Claessen (1516-1588) may have married Anna Claes Dirczdr (according to a tree in FamilySearch.org) or he may have married Neeltgen van der Ameijden (1523-1590)(according to a tree in Ancestry.com). Other family trees show her as unknown. (Neeltgen van der Ameijden is my 5th cousin 16x removed from a separate line that goes down to immigrant Cornelius Lambertsz Cool (1590-1643) who immigrated to New Netherland in 1639. He was from Doorn but some of the family remained closer to Leerdam, as his uncle Anthonis lived in Schoonrewoerd. This line merged with my line of the Swaim family when descendant Elizabeth Miller (Müller, from Zweibrücken in what is today Germany)(1829-1894) married Joseph S. Swaim (1796-1854)).

Anthonis Claessen appears to have had the following children:

Claes Anthoniss (1540 - )
Mathijs Anthoniss (1545-1595)
Jacob Anthoniss
Marijke Anthonisdr
Neelke Anthonisdr

Anthonis Claessen apparently died in 1588, but there may be no record regarding the disposition of his estate. However, a the document "fol 88/89 6/19/1595" seems to state that in 1595 the children of Anthonis inherited property from "Margretha and Anneke Anthonisdochteren." I'm not sure who Margretha and Anneke are, or whether their last names indicate that they are daughters of Anthonis Claessen. Perhaps they were older daughters who were acting in some capacity as guardians, or who held a life estate. The document also seems to imply that the property being distributed was bequeathed by Anthonis Cleassen, so it's a bit confusing. This is also the year that Mathijs Anthoniss died, but it cannot be his property that is being distributed. In any case, here is the property that each Matchild inherited:
Claes Anthonis: - 1.5 morgen of land in Leerbroek (apparently partial ownership shared with Peter Janss van Muijlwijck, Sebastiaen Claess, and the heirs of Cornelis Adriaen Geritss. Sebastiaen Claess was probably their uncle, the son of Claes Willem Ottens. The others are unknown).
- 4.5 morgens of land in "Claes Thonis Weer" and "Deventers Weer." I don't know if the Claes Thonis Weer was named after Claes Anthonis himself, or someone else, perhaps an uncle or great uncle named Anthonis. I also don't know who Deventer's Weer was named after, but at least this is solid evidence that the name Deventer was in fact likely to have been used by some of the family.
Jacob Anthonis: - 10 hont of land in "de Weterincx Camp."
- 1 morgen of land in "'t smalweer"
Marijke Anthonisdr - 4.5 morgen in "'t Smaelweer"
- 7 morgen owned in common with Jacob Anthonis.
Neelke Antonisdr - 14 hont land in the "kaeijkamp" in back of the "Willem Otten Huis Weer;" this is apparently and undvided interest shared with "the orphans of Mathijs Anthoniss and Goevert Vinck Anthoniss." Willem Otten was, of course, the great- grandfather of Anthonis Claes' children. Goevert Vinck Anthoniss is another mystery with the patronymic "Anthoniss." "The orphans of Mathijs Anthoniss" were Anthonis Mathijss and Bernt (Barent) Mathijs. who were taking the inheritance that belonged to their father, Mathijs Anthoniss, who was obviously deceased by the time this property was being distributed (6/19/1595).
- Half interest in 8.5 hont in land in the "Kwaeckernaack gemeen" with her brother Jacob Anhonis and Marijke Anthonisdr.
The Orphans (Anthonis Mathijs and Bernt Mathijs, taking in the place of their father Mathijs):
- 2 morgens of land in the "Willem Otten Dam," apparently shared with their uncle Claes Anthonissn and with a man named Lambert Peterss.

Jacob Anthonis

Nothing seems to be known about Jacob Anthonis, including the dates of his birth and death. However, if he had any male sons, it is possible that today there are living males descended from him who share Swaim/den Hartog Y-DNA.

Claes Anthoniss (1540)

Little seems to be known about Claes Anthoniss. At least one tree in the Ancestry crowdsource tree indicates that Claes had a daughter named Hilletgen (1595-1652) who married a Douw Jillese (Gillese) Fonda (1580-1641). This family emigrated to the Rennselaerswick settlement near what is today Albany, New York, and their descendants include the Fonda acting family (Henry Jaynes Fonda (1905) and his children Jane Fonda (1937) and Peter Fonda (1940)). In the 1400's the Fonda family lived in Kollum, Friesland, and the surname may have originally been written Foyngha.

I don't know if this tree is accurate, but I'm not discounting it because I do have 16 autosomal DNA matches who include Fondas from this line in the Fonda family tree. It is possible that the autosomal DNA that we share is "Swaim" DNA from Claes Anthonis that has survived intact through the generations. This is more likely because I can't find any other person in the Fonda line that I might be otherwise related to. However, I do have several different lines of ancestors from New Netherlands, so it is possible that the shared DNA actually comes from one of them. In any case, the Fondas will not have "Swaim" Y-DNA because it was a female "Swaim" who married a male Fonda.

Generation 13: Mathijs Anthonissen (Tuenisse) (1545-1595)

Mathijs Anthonissen (Teunisse) (1545-1595) married Lijsbeth Barends (1565- ). When I was searching for Thys Barentsen's ancestors, her patronymic name "Barends" caught my attention immediately because this was the first time I'd seen the name Barend/Barent in the den Hartog line or a branch off that line. This was exciting, because she was also in the correct generation to be the grandmother of Thys Barentsen. Since it was common for a second son to be named after the mother's father, Lijsbeth Barentss could have a son named Barend Mathijs, and then sons of Barend Mathijs would have the patronymic "surname" Barend/Barent, which could also be called Barentsen. In fact, this turned out to be true.

Mathijs Anthoniss and Lijsbeth Barends had two sons:

Antonis Matthijs (? - ?)
Barend Mathijs (1590- )

Because it was traditional to name the first son after the paternal grandfather, Antonis was probably the first son. There doesn't seem to be any information about Antonis, but if left male line descendants that would have "Swaim" Y-DNA.

Generation 12: Barend Matthijs (1590- )

Barend Mathijs married Pietertje (or Peterke) Willems. Very little seems to be known about either Barend Matthijs or Pietertje Willems, except the names of their children and the location of some of the land they owned. They had the following children, all of whom were alive at least to May 27, 1661:

Willem Barents
Floris Barents
Aelbert Barents
Matijs Barents
Lijsbet Barents (married Aert Jans)

Willem Barents (?)

Willem Barents was apparently known as Willem Barents van Leerdam in his younger days and later as Willem Barents Middelkoop. However, moved from Middelkoop to Dirksland on Goeree-Overflakee Island in what is today South Holland. He married Esther Aertsdr van Dale (1625 - 1674/1681) and had at least one child by her, Bernardus Willemsz (born 23 Mar 1661). He then married Sijntje Teunisdr Breesnee (1645- ) on 25 Oct 1681) and by her had at least one child, Bernardus Willemsz Middelkoop (born 1681in Middelharnis near Dirksland ). Willem's sister Lisbet was Bernardus' godmother at his christening. (This information was found by Jack Swaim after my first draft of this post).

Floris Barents ( - after May 27, 1661)

I have no information on Floris Barents except that he was alive on May 27, 1661.

Aelbert Barents

I have no information on Aelbert Barents except that he was alive on May 27, 1661.

Generation 11: Mathijs Barents

The name "Thys Barentsen" is another from of the the name "Mathijs Barents." Thys is an abbreviation for Matijs, and Barents is an abbreviated form of Barentsen or Barentszoon.

Our search for the progenitor of the Swaim line is almost certainly at an end, because there is little doubt that Mathijs Barents, son of Barend Matthijs, son of Anthonis Claessen, son of Claas Willem Ottensz, is the same person as the Thys Barentsen who immigrated to America aboard the St. Jan Baptist in 1661. This near-certainty derives firstly from the fact that he descends from a branch of the den Hartog family tree, which branched off at precisely the generation predicted by FTDNA's TiP Calculator (at the 99% probability for an "unrefined" result), and secondly from a remarkable passage in a document regarding the disposition of the estate of Barend Mathijs and/or his wife Pietertje Willems.

I found a transcription of this document on the genealogical web page of Oscar den Uijl (ttps://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/5/121293.htm). I haven't yet been able to find a copy of the document itself, but there is little doubt that the document does exist. A separate person in the "Contact" (forum) page of another Dutch website, "Middelkoop Project," also quoted from this same document. This document is "fol 41 27/5/1661," which probably means that it is folio or volume number 41 from a group of other documents, and refers to an event occurring on the date of May 27, 1661. Here's the relevant section of the document:

Willem Barents, Floris Barents, Aelbert Barents, Aert Jans X Lijsbet Barents, mtsgdrs Aelbert Jansen proc hebb v/d uitlandige Matijs Barents (schep Acqoij 7-4-1661), tesamen erfganamen van Barent Matijs X Peterke Willems, en tr aan Anneke Pieters X Cornelis Cornelis za won in 't laageind van Middelcoop en tuijnweer groot 3 m 3½ h gelegen in 't laageind van Middelcoop, bov Cornelis Cornelis en ben Wouter Jacobs cum suis, strekk v/d Leerbroekse kijlspit af t/d halve dwarssloot van Cornelis Cornelis toe.

Here's the Google Translate English translation of the document:

Willem Barents, Floris Barents, Aelbert Barents, Aert Jans X Lijsbet Barents, mtsgdrs Aelbert Jansen proc heb v / d uitlandige Matijs Barents (ships Acqoij 7-4-1661), together heir names of Barent Matijs X Peterke Willems, and married Anneke Pieters X Cornelis Cornelis sat won in the t-end of Middelcoop and tuijnweer large 3 m 3½ h located in the t-end of Middelcoop, above Cornelis Cornelis and ben Wouter Jacobs cum suis, stretch of the Leerbroekse Kijlspit off to the half transverse ditch of Cornelis Cornelis.

This document is clearly related to the disposition of land owned by Barent Matijs and Peterke Willems upon the death of the last of them, which we may assume probably occurred sometime within the few months previous to May 27, 1661. The document seems to be the chronicle of an actual meeting of heirs that occurred, rather than merely a list of those heirs, and those heirs were:
- Willem Barents
- Floris Barents
- Aelbert Barents
- Lijsbet Barents and Aert Jans, who is probably her husband
- Matijs Barents, who cannot be present because he is "uitlandige," which literally means "outland" and almost certainly means that he is outside of the country of the Netherlands. "Mtsgdrs" Aelbert Jansen is presumably representing Matijs in this matter in his absence, and is probably either a close friend or some time of lawyer or other advocate.

Cornelis Cornelis and Anneke Pieters, presumably husband and wife, are also present, but it isn't clear that they are either family or heirs. Cornelis Cornelis seems to co-own land with Wouter Jacobs and other people (cum suis is Latin for "and associates"), and this land is adjacent to the land owned by Barend Mathijs and Peterke Willems. Perhaps Cornelis Cornelis has some interest in land being transferred, or perhaps he is only present to protect his interest in his adjacent land. The last half of this short document is a description of the land itself, and as was usual in the days before modern surveying, the description was rather vague and imprecise. My own translation of the land description is: "Farmland [tuijn] set in the low end of Middelkoop, measuring 3 morgens and 3.5 honts, located above the land owned by Cornelis Cornelis and Ben Wouters and associates, near Cornelis' half cross-ditch [dwarssloot] water channel [kijlspit]." Presumably locals would understand generally the boundaries of this land, but it is so vague that it would be no surprise that an adjacent landowner would want to be present at the transfer of this land, to insure that his own land is not being encroached upon. Also, it is possible that he was legally required to be present, since his own name is part of the land description.

(Regarding the size of the land that Matijs Barents inherited an interest in, I've assumed that "m" meant "morgen" and "h" meant "hont." A morgen was a measure of land roughly equaling a bit more than 2 acres. A hont was roughly a third of an acre. If my calculations are correct, the inherited land totaled about 7.6 acres. If the land was divided evenly between the five siblings, then each would have inherited about 1.5 acres of land. How much purchasing power the value of this 1.5 acres of land might have represented in 1661 is something I won't speculate on. However, this was farmland and possibly quite fertile, so its value may have been substantial. Possibly Thys Barentsen used his share of the inheritance to fund his family's relocation to New Netherland, but that is mere speculation.)

Now we move on to the most important information (for our purposes) in this brief document. This is located in the sentence fragment:

“...mtsgdrs Aelbert Jansen proc hebb v/d uitlandige Matijs Barents (schep Acqoij 7-4-1661)...”

As previously discussed, this probably means that Aelbert Jansen was acting as Matijs Barents' agent in the matter of this land transfer, because Matijs Barents was "uitlandige." The Google Translate translation didn't give a translation for "uitlandige," but simply left the Dutch intact. A Google Translate of that word by itself yields the word "outlandish," but that is obviously incorrect in the modern meaning of that word in English. The correct translation is most likely that Matijs Barents was "out of the country."

The key element that truly connects Matijs Barents with Thys Barentsen is located with the parenthetical explanation following the statement that Matijs Barents was out of the country. This explanation states that he "schep Acqoij 7-4-1661." First we need to understand the plain meaning of this, and after that the implications of it.

Acqoij is a village located about 4 miles southeast of Leerdam. Today Acquoy is located on a dead-end spur of the river Linge, but in 1661 it was located directly on the river itself, before the course of the river shifted to its current configuraton. At least one old map spells the town as "Akoy."

The word "Schep" can mean various things, but clearly here it must be a form of the verb "verschepen" or "inschepen," which have the meanings to "ship," "convey," or "embark."

The date "7-4-1661" definitely means April 7, 1661 rather than July 4, 1661. Although the convention in America in writing numerical dates is to place the month before the day, in Europe the convention has long been to place the day before the month: day/month/year. Thus, the document itself is dated as "27-5-1661" rather than "5-27-1661." But also, the parenthetical statement itself only makes sense if the month was April rather than July, since the meeting of the heirs had occurred in May, and Mathijs Barent would not have needed an agent to handle his affairs if he was still in the country in May and didn't leave until July. Also, the document clearly states that Matijs Barent was outside the country at the time of the meeting, which had to have been in May ("5") since there obviously is no 27th month of the year.

Thus, the best translation of this sentence fragment is probably something like:

"Aelbert Jansen is acting as the agent for Matijs Barents, who is out of the country (he embarked from Acquoy by boat on April 7, 1661)."

April 7, 1661 was about a month and three weeks before the meeting of the heirs. More importantly, it was about a month before the date that De St. Jan Baptist set sail from the Island of Texel, carrying aboard as passengers Thys Barentsen and his family. In other words, if Matijs Barents was in fact the same person as Thys Barentsen, then the timing for his departure from his home in Middelkoop or Leerdam as chronicled in this document dovetails very nicely with the time probably required to travel from his home in Middelkoop to the island of Texel from which the St. Jan Baptist set sail. In other words, this document provides very strong circumstantial evidence that Matijs Barents was in fact Thys Barentsen. It seems very unlikely that there would be two people of the same name, both living in the same lightly-populated Leerdam-Middelkoop area, who left the Netherlands for any reason at the same general time. Most of the people living in this area were farmers who probably never traveled more than a few miles from their homes in their entire lives, let alone outside the country. Therefore, the most reasonable inference is that the Matijs Barents who left Acquoy on April 7, 1661, was in fact the same Thys Barentsen "van Leerdam" who sailed on De St. Jan Baptist on May 9, 1661.

The overland distance from Acquoy to Texel is about 164 kilometers, or just about 100 miles. The distance by ship would be longer, but in the 1600's might have been both easier and safer than travel by land. If the word "schepen" implies travel by water, then it is likely that Matijs Barents left Acquoy by boat. He possibly sailed southwestward on the Linge to its confluence with the Waal (known at this point westwards as the Merwede) near Gorinchem. He possibly sailed down the Merwede to the open sea by one of several routes, and then up he coast to Texel. I don't know how long travel took within the Netherlands in the 1600's, but one month seems like ample time to make this journey, even while traveling with a family that included small children, as Thys Barentsen's did.

We don't know why Matijs Barents/Thys Barentsen would have left from Acquoy rather than Leerdam. Both were located on the Linge, and Leerdam was larger than Acquoy and must certainly have had a port. There could be many possible reasons for choosing Acquoy rather than Leerdam which we know nothing about. However, we can speculate that one reason might have been because Acquoy was located between Leerdam and the town of Beesd, and was therefore chosen as the departure location to accommodate travelers from both Leerdam and Beesd who were emigrating to New Netherland from Texel, and who had desired to travel together to Texel. The ship that Thys Barentsen and his family too to New Netherland, De St. Jan Baptist, had a companion ship, De Bever, which left Texel together and were meant to travel together to New Netherland. The two ships became permanently separated during a storm near the Orkney Islands north of Scotland, but before they left port at Texel the families and other emigrants were allocated to one or the other of the ships. In other words, the people on the two ships were essentially one group that were divided among the two ships. Thys Barentsen, Scytie Cornelis, their 3 children, and a family of four headed by Cornelis Dircksen Vos ended up on the De St. Jan Baptist. On the De Bever were 37 emigrants from the town of Beesd, led by a man named Huigh Barents de Kleijn. Also on De Bever was a man named Aert Teunissen Middagh, and although no place of residence was given for him, it is likely he was descended from the Middaghs mentioned earlier. Also on De Bever was a Jacob Bastiaensen from Heycop (Heicop). There is no documentary evidence that indicates that these people knew each other, but as Beesd is only 9 miles from Middelkoop, and as the population of both areas was not large, it is quite likely that most of these people knew each other in passing, or at least by reputation. It is possible they were all members of the same church in Leerdam, in which case they may have known each other quite well. It is quite likely that everyone in their communities knew who was emigrating, and that the various families and groups would have joined together for the journey to Texel, for safety and companionship. It is even possible that many or all of the passengers on the two ships were part of an organized emigration undertaken for either economic or religious reasons, or both.

Less than 200 years later, more emigrants from the Leerdam joined in a large, organized emigration effort that included people from all over the Netherlands, under the leadership of Hendrik Peter Scholte. As mentioned earlier, among these emigrants was the family of Dirk den Hartog, ancestor to one of the Swaim Y-DNA matches. Another den Hartog family. led by Cornelis den Hartog and Neeltje, from Leerbroek, was also part of this emigration. Cornelis den Hartog was very likely another relative, and he a son named Willem/William who also had a son named William, but the younger William appears to only have had 2 daughters and no sons, so it seems unlikely that there will be any living male descendants from this line with den Hartog/Swaim Y-DNA. I haven't studied this emigration in any detail, but it appears that several other families did come from Leerdam, Asperen, and other nearby towns.

Interestingly, Acquoy was the birthplace of Cornelius Jansen (AKA Jansenius), who was the founder of the Catholic religious movement known as Jansenism. Jansen died in 1638, when Thys Barentsen was about 17, but I have no idea whether Jansen's ideas had any following in the Leerdam area. It is likely that they didn't, since most people living there were probably protestants, but it might be an interesting topic to research if Jansen's ideas, or any religious ideas at all, played a part in motivating Thys Barentsen and his family to emigrate to New Netherland. I'm not aware of any evidence of this, but it is certainly possible.

This document, "fol 41 27/5/1661" is possibly the only source of information that exists, other than the passenger list of De St. Jan Baptist, that gives us any information about Thys Barentsen or his family when they lived in the Netherlands. Although brief, it gives us a surprising amount of information. It tells us:
- The names of Thys Barentsen's father, mother, three brothers, sister, and the name of his sister's husband.
- The approximate time of death of the last surviving parent of Thys Barentsen.
- The date that Thys Barentsen left home with his family to emigrate to New Netherland, and the place from which he left.
- The fact that Thys Barentsen's parents owned land.
- The likely place that Thys Barentsen lived (Middelkoop).

Summary of Evidence that Matijs Barents, Son of Barend Mathijs, is Thys Barentsen

1. I found Matijs Barents not by working my way up from Thys Barentsen, but by working my way down the den Hartog family tree because the Y-DNA results proved that the den Hartogs are closely related to the Swaims (that is, closely related within a Y-DNA time scale). I did not accidentally find Matijs Barents by fishing around in the Linge river; rather, I found him after methodically discovering everything I could about each of the sons of the men in the den Hartog family tree, starting with Otto van Arkel (1400-1475) and including Willem Ottens Deventer (1440-1494) and Claes Willemsz Ottens Deventer (1475-1538). I started with Otto van Arkel because he was 17 generations up from my own generation, and the Y-DNA evidence was telling me that the last common ancestors of the Swaims and den Hartogs was likely to have existed 15-17 generations up. For several days before I even found Matijs Barents, I suspected that Claes Willemsz Ottens Deventer's son Anthonis might be the progenitor of the "Swaim" line because his name and the name of his first son (Mathijs) are recurring family names in Thys Barentsen's line, and also because I'd discovered that Mathijs had married a woman with the surname Barentsdr, and furthermore because autosomal DNA evidence was hinting that I was related to the Fonda family, who also descend from Anthonis. It seems quite unlikely that with all this evidence pointing me to Anthonis Claessen's line, that I would happen to find a man with the same name as Thys Barentsen, living in the same small geographical area, who also happened to leave the Netherlands at just the right time to catch Thys Barentsen's ship across the ocean, unless that person was in fact Thys Barentsen himself.

2. The "fol 41 27/5/1661" document indicates that Mathijs Barentsen had left the country from Acquoy just a month before Thys Barentsen's ship left Texel for New Amsterdam. It also provides a reason for why Thys Barentsen would have chosen to leave at this particular time; it occurred not long after the death of the last of his parents. This evidence, alone, although circumstantial, is enough to make it highly likely that Matijs Barents is Thys Barentsen. It really doesn't even matter that we are not able to examine this document itself, because the odds must be very small that someone living in the Netherlands and probably having no idea who Thys Barentsen is, could make up a document that fits so well into what we know of Thys Barentsen's biography.

3. That some random Matijs Barentsen would happen to have an uncle who bore a surname that sounds a great deal like "Swaim" seems fairly improbable. This is the weakest evidence, but I don't think that it should be discounted. No entirely credible hypothesis for the origin of the name has ever been proposed, which is actually based on facts from Thys Barentsen's family. If Matijs Barents is Thys Barentsen, then we do now have an actual reason why his family might have chosen the name "Swaim:" the borrowed it from a collateral ancestor who was wealthy and perhaps a family legend.

For these reasons, I believe that Matijs Barents is indeed the same person as Thys Barentsen.

The van Burens and the van Arkels

Recall that Barend Mathijs' father Mathijs Antonissen had a brother named Jacob Antonisse, and that Jacob Antonissen had a wife named Marijke Wouters Hagen. Marijke's parents were Wouter Ariens Hagen (1570- ) and Maria Cornelisse van Buren (1570). It may be a significant fact that Mathijs' uncle married a woman surnamed van Buren, as it appears that Mathijs' son Matijs Barents/Thys Barentsen (1621) also married a van Buren. Scytie Cornelis was the daughter of Cornelis Maasen, and in many family trees they are given the surname van Buren. This could simply mean that they were people who resided in the town of Buren, but it could also mean what many trees also show, that they descended from the line of the Lords of van Buren. That line had married into other noble families including the van Rantzau family and, interestingly, the von Kleve family, which the van Arkel family had also married into (Jan IV Herbaren van Arkel (1314-1360) had married Irmgard von Kleve, while Otto van Buren (1464-1520) had married Hedwig von Kleve, one of Johan II Hertog van Kleef's 63 (!) illegitimate children). Apparently by the time Thys Barentsen married Scytie Cornelis, the van Buren family had lost its political power just as the van Arkel family had, but if both families still considered themselves socially as existing on some level above that of ordinary farmers and tradesmen by virtue of their descent, it would not be surprising that the families would intermarry over the generations.

It is also interesting to note that if Thys Barentsen's line did in fact descend from the van Arkel line, and if Scytie Cornelis' line did in fact descend from the noble van Buren line, the line had also intermarried long in the past, assuming that the Ancestry crowdsource tree is accurate this far back (which, of course, is a huge assumption). The van Buren line had branched off the van Egmond line with Allard I van Buren (1190-1243), the son of Allart van Egmond (1120-1168). Several generations before this, Tekla van Egmond (840- ), daughter of Wolbrandus van Egmond (840-869), had married Heyman van Arkel (832-883). If this is true, then Heyman van Arkel would be my 32nd great-grandfather through the paternal Arkel line and Tekla van Egmond would be my 29th great-aunt through the van Buren line. Also, Otto II van Heukelom (1260-1344), grandson of Herbaren II van der Lede, married uknown-first-name Allardsdr van Buren (1268- ). And Maria van Arkel (1389-1415) married Jan II van Egmond, so if Jan II van Egmond was descended from the van Egmond line that the van Burens branched from, then this is yet another example of intermarriage between the two families.

These connections are all very speculative and probably can't be proved with documentation, but might in fact be provable by Y-DNA evidence (and possibly mitochondrial DNA evidence) at some point in the future. However, that would require a massive effort to obtain and analyze a huge amount of Y-DNA data, and thus may never occur.

The pdf is over 400 pages.

I am not sure what you mean by reference? In his blog, the author (Stephen who added to this Discussion) mentions https://www.den-uijl.nl/genealogy/5/121293.htm

I think the word "believe" is just stating the conclusion is by faith. We all know so much is lost to history.
Can we come to an agreement about how to set his name?

Forgive the long post of the blog.... I just know stuff goes away or links get broken