Marleen Van Horne, The future is here - DNA. What you wrote is not only interesting and informative, most importantly, you did a good job of explaining it to someone with little to no knowledge of DNA. Thank you. I have Mathyjs Cornelissen, second husband of Fytje Brouwer, with two sons, Cornelis and Abram, both baptized in the Brooklyn DRCh. Who did the sons marry and how many children did they have? Thanks again, Ethel Kay Konight =========== In a message dated 9/2/2010 [email protected] writes: For the last three hundred years or so, the descendants of Cornelius and Abraham Van Horne, the sons of Matthys Cornelissen, have thought their immigrant ancestor was Dutch. This was a perfectly reasonable assumption, Matthys Cornelissen was believed to have been a resident of New Netherlands and the surname adopted by his sons was in the Dutch form, Van Horne / Van Horn. Matthys Cornelissen's oldest grandchild was born in 1720, by which time Matthys had probably died. Cornelius Van Horen married three times, all of his wives came from families of English origin. Cornelius died in 1744, leaving six children under the age of 10. Abraham Van Horn and Annetje Covenhoven had seven children over a 20 year period. Of the two sons and their wives, the only person who was actually of Dutch descent was Annetje. None of Matthys Cornelissen's grandchildren were born before his death, so they never knew him. It seems very likely, that once Cornelius and Abraham had died, none of their children had any idea of where their paternal grandfather came from. In the case of Abraham's children, their Dutch mother would have had an opportunity to give them some sense of their Dutch ancestry from her line. All of the published genealogies on this family from the first in the late 1800s to the April 1976, DeHalve Maen article, Stories derived from the 1722 Conveyance, by Paul E. Van Horn, asserted that Matthys Cornelissen was Dutch, from Hoorn, North Holland. In the bibliography for his article, Mr. Van Horn lists the 1892, Holland Society transcription of Dutch Reformed Church marriage records as the source for the marriage information of Matthys Cornelissen and Fytie Adam Brouwer. The problem with these transcription is that they only list the name of the bride and groom, and give the date. The original record included identifying facts about the bride and groom. Betrothed 20 February (1692) Matys Cornelisen van Jutlandt, young man, with Fytie Adam Brouwer, widow of Evert Hendricks, both residing at Brooklyn. Until the late 1990s, it is doubtful that most researchers of this family ever saw the original text of the marriage record. In the 1600s, as now, Jutland formed a large part of the country of Denmark. On Jutland, there are two small towns named Horne, one in Hjorring and one in Ribe. So, the surname Van Horne, could be a reference to either of these towns. The Van Horne yDNA Project at Family Tree DNA, has just received the 67 marker yDNA test results of a descendant of Niels Christensen, who was born 14 October 1873 in Copenhagen, Denmark and immigrated to Oakland, California in 1905. These test results match the six descendants of Abraham Van Horn who are already participating in the Van Horne project with a genetic distance of 3 to 5 generations. This basically means that Matthys Cornelissen and Niels Christiansen had a common ancestor who lived at least 233 years ago and confirms the Danish origin of Matthys Cornelissen. To see the test results of Niels Christiansen as compared to the descendants of Matthys Cornelissen go to: www.familytreedna.com/public/VanHorne and click on yResults. Marleen Van Horne