Genealogy - VanDerVeer surname of Long Island New York

  My paternal lineage traces back in America to my 9th great-grandfather Cornelius Janse VanDerVeer 1623-1702 from The Netherlands. He arrived Feb 1659 in Midwout, what is now Flatbush on Long Island in New York, as a contract farmer for the West Indies Company. After the English took possession and renamed it New York, he remained on Long Island, raising his family having acquired approxiately 200 acres of land located just east of what is now Brooklyn College. The family became of some status and the VanDerVeer name can still be found on streets and buildings. In 1906, Dr John Charles VanDerveer, the last holder of the original property, sold the last of it off and moved to Nassau Co, New York. Many of the Vanderveer families moved on into New Jersey and established a large presence there before migrating westward in the late 1700's.

  My earliest ancestor born in America is my 10th great-grandmother, Sarah Rapalje 1625-1695, who was born in Fort Orange in New Amsterdam, now Albany, New York. Sarah has the distinction being the first European born in New Netherlands.

 The Vanderveer name derives from van der Veer, meaning as being from Veere in The Netherlands, the Veere Tower and harbor shown on the right. The Dutch did not use surnames per se before the 1800's instead using a variation of the the father's name + se, appended to the given name. Cornelius Janse being son of Jan sans a surname. Considering that got confusing with folks coming in from all over (there was 17 languages spoken in New Netherlands), most of the West Indies employees adopted a surname in some form of where they were from and Cornelius most likely adopted VanDerVeer as Veere was a major sea port at the time and he was born a short distance away in Wemeldinge. Cornelius also used Cornelius Janse De Zeeuw, meaning he was from Zeeland, a province in southwest Netherlands . There are several spelling variations of the Long Island VanDerVeers, including Van Der Veer, Vanderveer, VanDerveer, and Vandivier. My spelling of Vandiver starts with my 3rd great-father, whose name was shorten by an English family who adopted him after the death of his mother. Other than this one line, not many of the Long Island Vanderveer descendants use the spelling Vandiver but it does pop up on occasion.

  I have been actively researching genealogy for a little over 30 years, after picking up interest from my dad's uncle, Bill Vandiver, who had researched the Vandiver family for over 20 years. Currently I research several areas of personal interest and maintain a database of about 188,000 individuals. I maintain an online database, sans folks born after 1940 because of privacy concerns. Feel free to browse and make recommendations or ask questions.

  Genealogy research is about making contacts and sharing info, someone has that one piece of information you need, and you have that one piece they need. Besides it is great fun discovering your family roots and relatives you didn't know you had, sometimes finding shady characters and sometimes folks are you proud to be related to.

 My genealogy database can be found here