DUTCH & OTHER ANCESTRY

John Skinner McCreary and Margaret Williamson were wed on December 22, 1852, at Bethany, Liberty Township, Butler County, Ohio. These were great-great grandparents of Gary Muffley, and were the parents of Emma Jane McCreary Muffley.

Margaret’s ancestry was mostly Dutch. Margaret Williamson (b. May 29, 1835) was a daughter of Johannes Williamson (Willemse in Dutch) & Christiana “Tina” Brewer (Brouwer in Dutch). I have visited the graves of John & Christiana at Mound Cemetery, Monroe, Lemon Township, Butler County, Ohio. My wife Anne & I were in Indiana en route to southwest Ohio on 9/11/2001 when we heard on the car radio of the terrorist attacks.

Johannes/John & Tina Brewer Williamson appear on page 497 of “The Van Voorhees Family in America: The First Six Generation”. Most of the research so far on this ancestry was already done for us by the large Van Voorhees Association & associated persons. www.vanvoorhees.org  Migration routes of the Dutch ancestors of our Margaret Williamson McCreary include locations in New York State, New Jersey, Conewago Colony Pennsylvania, Mercer County Kentucky, & southwest Ohio. 

Tina Brewer (b. 1798, Mercer County, Kentucky; d. 1843, Butler County Ohio) was a daughter of Daniel Brewer Jr. & Maria Voorhees. Maria Voorhees Brewer (b. 1765, New Jersey; d. 1840, Warren County, Ohio) was a daughter of Stephen Voorhees (b. 1737/38) & Margareta Van Dyke. Stephen presumably would have carried the basic yDNA pattern down from his ancestor Steven Coerts Van Voorhees (b. 1599-1600, Hees Farm, Drenthe Province, Netherlands; d. 1683/84, Flatlands, Kings County, New York). The yDNA project is still small in 2011, & results are not publicly displayed.

Steven Coerts Van Voorhees & family left the Netherlands, & took ship in 1660 to New Amsterdam. He arrived aboard De Bonte Koe (The Spotted Cow).  His name was spelled Steeven Koorts on the passenger list at www.olivetreegenealogy.com/ships/nnship22.shtml

Steven attended the Flatbush Reformed Protestant Dutch Church in Brooklyn. www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Newspaper/BSU/Anniversary/1928.Flatbush.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatbush,_Brooklyn

The Brewer/Brouwer ancestry has some interesting aspects. Tina Brewer Williamson’s 3^rd great-grandfather, Adam Brouwer Berkhoven (b. Jan. 18, 1620/21 in Cologne, Germany), was a soldier for the Dutch West India Company in Brazil. He migrated to New Amsterdam about 1642, thus establishing our Dutch ancestry in New York before the 1660 Van Voorhees immigration. His history:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~brouwergenealogydata/Research/new%20insight%20into%20the%20origins%20of%20adam%20brouwer%20final.pdf  and

www.greenapple.com/~cshart/ROOTVIEW/HTML/i1663nt.htm

Adam operated the first grist mill at Gowanus, Long Island. Some of his male Brewer-surnamed descendants show yDNA Haplogroup E1b1b1a, unusual in Germany. This may represent a late migration into Europe out of Africa & the Near East. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E1b1b1a

Margaret Williamson McCreary’s maternal Van Dyke ancestry (she also had paternal Van Dyke ancestry) is intriguing. In 1639, Dutch Admiral Maarten Tromp defeated a Spanish fleet off Dover, thus preventing the Spanish from retaking the Dutch Netherlands. More importantly that year, our ancestor Janse Tomasse Van Dyke was born at Reusel de Mierden, North Brabant, Netherlands (near the Belgian border). Janse was just 13 when he migrated to future New York in 1652, according to a Van Dyke tree at Ancestry.com

Janse’s son Tierck (Dirk) Thomasse Van De Kraats Van Dyke (b. 1671, New Amsterdam on Long Island) married Pieternella Van Arsdalen in 1688. They were reportedly the 5^th great-grandparents of Emma Jane McCreary Muffley. Down the line from Dirk & Pieternella Van Dyke, Margareta Van Dyke married Stephen Voorhees, & their daughter Maria Voorhees married Daniel Brewer Jr. (a descendant of Adam Brouwer, b. 1620, Cologne, Germany).

Another Van Dyke line also stems from Reusel village: The ancestry of comedian & actor Dick Van Dyke (b. 1925). Details are found at the Van Dyke & Yates tree at Ancestry.com. The author of that tree is a near cousin of Dick Van Dyke. According to that tree, their immigrating Van Dyke ancestor was Thomas Jansen Van Dyke (b. 1580, Reusel de Mierden). Some time ago, a Van Dyke researcher ventured the opinion that every Van Dyke descendant in America comes from the one line. Perhaps a future Van Dyke yDNA will eventually confirm this. Also see, http://minerdescent.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/thomas-jansen-van-dyke/ According to that URL, some Van Dyke persons arrived on the ship De Bonte Kou; a ship by the same name carried my Van Voorhees ancestors to America in a different year. Some of these Van Dyke persons reportedly held land near Coney Island.

We also get Van Dyke ancestry a second way, but that ancestry has not been traced back as far. Margaret Williamson McCreary’s paternal grandmother was Maria Van Dyke Williamson. Maria Van Dyke (b. 1767) married David Willemse (b. 1764) in 1787. Notation of the March 20, 1790, baptism of their son Johannes appears in records of the Dutch Conowago Colony (near Gettysburg) records in Pennsylvania. www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kymercer/LowDutch/Conewago6.html

There was a Dutch migration route from Somerset County, New Jersey, to the Pennsylvania Conewago Colony (esp. 1771), and on to Mercer County, Kentucky. Our Johannes Willemse/Williamson (b. 1790, Conowago Colony) then went on to Butler County in southwest Ohio, where he married Christiana “Tina” Brewer in 1817. Our Margaret Williamson McCreary was a daughter of Johannes and Tina.

Now to some Vanderveer/Vandiver ancestry. Emma Jane McCreary Muffley (wife of Joe Muffley) was a 3^rd great-granddaughter of Maritije Vanderveer Van Dyke. Maritije’s paternal grandfather was Cornelius Janse Vanderveer. According to www.stipak.com/vanderveer/maria/bios/2.HTM he was christened on March 3, 1623, at Wemeldinge, South Beveland, Zeeland, Netherlands. He immigrated in 1659 from Alkmaar, North Holland, on the ship De Otter & lived in Flatbush. Also see www.veerhuis.org/genealogy/hoffman.htm which is a scholarly examination of the Van Der Veer family in America, & discounts the myth that this family derives from the feudal lords of Veere (this notion still is to be found on the Internet, complete with coat-of-arms). A Vandiver surname yDNA project is as of 2011 still small and without lineage groupings.  www.familytreedna.com/public/Vandiver/default.aspx?section=yresults

The lives of the siblings of Margaret Williamson McCreary are not well known to me. She reportedly had 6 siblings: David B. Williamson, Silas “Squire” Williamson, Mary Ann Williamson Conover, Jane Williamson Moore, John T. Williamson, & George Washington Williamson.

We have a photo of Margaret’s sister Jane Williamson Moore. This is from the photo album of Jane’s niece Emma Jane McCreary Muffley. Jane Williamson married Abraham C. Moore in 1845 in Butler County, Ohio, a few years before Margaret married John Skinner McCreary (m. 1852). Abraham and Jane Williamson Moore farmed initially in Butler County, Ohio, and then moved to Fulton County, Illinois, in the fall of 1854. A.C. Moore’s livestock included hogs & horses. At one time his farm consisted of 460 acres & was worth $30,000 in the 1870 census. The A.C. Moore family lived in Canton, Fulton County, Illinois, when the J.S. McCreary family moved to Canton from Springfield, Illinois. John Skinner McCreary had an ongoing interest in livestock, & his brother-in-law A.C. Moore raised hogs. J.S. McCreary was mayor of Canton for a time. In April, 1868, in Canton, Abraham Lincoln McCreary was born to John & Margaret Williamson McCreary. In the fall of the same year Margaret’s sister’s family moved from Canton to the farm on Section 32, Canton Township. The A.C. Moore family appear in the 1870 census for Fulton County, but not the J.S. McCreary family (although J.S. was elected Canton mayor on April 4, 1870, as well as on April 5, 1869). See www.illinoisancestors.org/fulton/1871_canton/pages95_126.html#porkpacking for multiple references to J.S. McCreary & A.C. Moore.

By 1880, the J.S. McCreary family were in Quincy, Adams County, Illinois, & J.S. was a stock dealer. It was during the Quincy years that Emma Jane McCreary met and married Joseph Pierce Muffley.

In 1873, the Moore family ranches in Fulton County, Illinois, hosted the wedding of Matthias William Baker and Margaret “Maggie” Jane Moore. Maggie was the daughter of Jane Williamson Moore. I wonder if the wedding was attended by Margaret Williamson McCreary & family. Maggie appears in the Baker/Farnham Tree at Ancestry.com.  The photo of Maggie at that site strongly resembles our photo of her mother.