Foreword

Curiously enough, in the last half of the nineteenth century there was little or no knowledge of the history of the Van Vleck family among those bearing the name. Van Vlecks meeting in the Middle or Far West of this country wondered whether they were related and if so how. When my father, Professor Van Vleck of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, became interested in the family genealogy, he expected to find, as was the general belief that all the Van Vlecks and Van Vlacks were of a common origin. The smallness of the entire group and the similarity of the two names seemed to warrant that supposition. His re searches, however, soon proved that this assumption did not hold, and that, quite to the contrary, there were three distinct families, unrelated in so far as the early records would indicate.

Of these three groups, one traced its origin in America to Dutchess County, another to Albany or Schenectady, all in New York State, and the third to New Amsterdam, now New York City. From the study of records, largely those of marriages and baptisms in churches of the Dutch Reformed faith, it appeared that the first two groups were of Scandinavian origin, coming from Fleckeroy, an island off the southern coast of Norway. Surnames, it will be remembered, were creeping into general use in the Dutch colonies in America during the latter part of the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth, although their adoption was somewhat earlier in Europe. Before their introduction, a person used his patronymic, or father’s name, as his family name; thus, to illustrate with a hypothetical case, Pieter, the son of Jans, would be known as Pieter Jansen, and Pieter’s son Willem, in turn, as Willem Pietersen. The two most common sources of surnames were the village or region from which a man came and his occupation or trade. In the early polyglot settlements of this country the spelling of surnames, as they were adopted seemed to be governed by the rule: each for himself. So “van V(F)leckero” -- i.e., “from Fleckero”-- easily became “van Vleckeren,” then, in the case of the Albany family, “van Vleck” and in that of the Dutchess County family, “van Vlack.” This “van Vleck” family of Albany or Schenectady was headed by Benjamin Van Vleck who rarely appears by the name of van Vleckeren or by any patronymic, although his descent can be traced back two generations by the patronymic’s which his father and grandfather used. While the writer is chiefly concerned with the third group -that from New Amsterdam, to which she belongs - she early found it necessary to investigate the Albany and Dutchess County groups and to construct genealogical tables for them in order to Clarify her own family record. She gladly gives elsewhere skeleton data on these other families with the hope that some member will feel inspired to correct errors and carry on the research.

The Van Vlack family, which, as earlier stated, the writer’s father had expected to find of the same origin as his own, proved difficult to untangle. The difficulty was made all the greater because one group -- the descendants of Abraham C. Van Vleck, who, through a misapprehension, had changed his name from Van Vlack to Van Vleck -t his group should trace its origin to Marinus Roelofse Van Vleckeren. It was after much laborious effort that Professor Van Vleck unsnarled the skeins of this tangle to his satisfaction.

His main sources of information were two: first, the library of the Holland Society New York, which contains copies of most of the Dutch Reformed Church records which existed in New York and New Jersey prior to 1800; second, the records of the later generations of Van Vlecks and Van Vlacks gathered by the Van Vleck Association for Genealogical Research, which was organized by jasper Van Vleck in 1894. Unfortunately his untimely death ended the activities of the Association, but in the three or four years of its existence he, with the aid of his very efficient secretary, Elizabeth Van S. Van Vleck, accumulated a large amount of valuable information, especially concerning the later genealogy of the Van Vlack family. Years afterward she very kindly sent to Professor VanVleck, upon his request, a résumé of all the information gathered. The result of his researches follows.

The Van Vlack family is undoubtedly of Scandinavian (probably Norwegian) origin, like Benjamin and his descendants. In the earlier New York records it appears under the name of Van Vleckeren. Later, about mid-eighteenth century, its members are recorded in Dutchess County under various spellings of the name-Van Vleckeren, Van Vlekkeren, Van Vlackeren, Van Vlackera, and eventually Van Vlack. This last change came about gradually and by the simple process of shortening the longer form.

The first recorded use of Van Vleckeren as a surname in New York was by a person otherwise known by his patronymic (or father’s first name), Jan Roelofs or Roeloffsen. As a passenger in the ship De Statyn which sailed from Amsterdam for New Amsterdam on September 27, 1663, he is listed as “Jan Roeloffsen, from Norway[i], Next we have his marriage, recorded in the Dutch Church of New York thus:

1665. Aug. 23. Jan Roelofs, j.m., Van Vlecher in Noord Wegen en Tytje Lippes, Wed’. Van Laurens Laurenszen.

A slightly later reference to him is found in a New York County deed, by which the estate of Rachel Van Tienhoven conveyed land to “Jan Roelofsen van Vleckeren.”[ii] No documentary evidence has been found showing that any children were born to this man, but the recurrence of his adopted surname suggests some relationship to others who bore it.