Six months ago, I published a post about the surprising results of my ancestral DNA test. You can find it by clicking here. At that time, I expressed surprise about my significant Swedish/Danish ancestry and the lesser but still unexpected Norwegian ancestry. Although those two regions only accounted for 8% of me, it was much more Scandinavia than I was expecting. But the remaining 92% was also a surprise. I certainly wasn’t expecting it to be far more “Northwestern Europe/England” than “Germanic Europe”.
View from the Christiansborg (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Well, DNA knowledge and technology changes quickly. A mere month after posting those results, I learned that there had been substantial changes. My DNA hadn’t changed, but there had been refinements in assigning regional ancestry in several parts of Europe. As a result, I learned that my original results were no longer accurate. Just when I was getting used to my distant past, I had to deal with another new reality!
Tivoli Gardens (Copenhagen, Denmark)
So while I likely still have some Norwegian DNA kicking around, it is now too small to be significant. However, my Swedish/Danish ancestry has remained at the same level. To acknowledge that, I have illustrated this post with images from my 2016 trip to Denmark. I felt at home there too…so maybe those are my true Scandinavian roots?
You can’t have too many pictures of Nyhavn in Copenhagen!
As for the even larger (now around 94%) remainder of my ancestry, the majority of it is now in fact Germanic Europe. A slightly smaller, but still significant, portion is traceable to “Northwest Europe and England”.
The Wish Tree Garden on Papirøen, Copenhagen (my collaboration with Yoko Ono)
As some other friends and family members have tried this testing too, I have also learned just how random this DNA business can be. Even siblings can have significantly different outcomes. You almost certainly won’t get the same 50% from each parent that your brother or sister did. And of course 50% is lost with each generation.
The Fish Kiss Spa in downtown Copenhagen
What now? I will certainly be checking in from time to time, to see if my results have been refined further. I now know there are some other regions in my family’s past, and I’m curious to see if they will appear for me too.
Today’s post is a little different, but still very much in the spirit of travel.
Although I had been thinking about it for a while, I finally got around to requesting an “Ancestry DNA” test this spring. And the results have now arrived.
Getting caught by the waves at the same beach where my father played as a child (‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands)
On the surface, the expectation was simple. With one Swiss parent and one Dutch parent, one would expect the results to be 50% from each country. But I also heard some other distant echoes from the past.
My ancestors lived in Maassluis, the Netherlands, many centuries ago
Over time, family stories become almost accepted as fact. And one of my family stories was that we had some Spanish ancestry, due to the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands in the 16th century. With respect to the Swiss side of my family, I wondered if there might be some Italian influence, given the fairly close proximity of Italy to my ancestral place of origin. And I also wondered what other interesting connections may have been forgotten in the mists of time.
A church in Lenk (Switzerland) – I wonder what important family events took place here?
I was pretty excited when the results finally arrived. When I clicked on the link, I discovered something very interesting. Switzerland and the Netherlands each belong to the same two broader groups: “Germanic Europe” and “England and Northwestern Europe”. And I had almost complete (92%) ancestry in those two regions.
Lots of choices, high above Lenk and Adelboden (Switzerland)
I found the “England and Northwestern Europe” region interesting. Consisting mostly of England, Belgium, the southern Netherlands, Northeast France and Switzerland, I had never really considered that DNA from England would be connected to both of my countries of origin. This region even contributed more to me than the anticipated “Germanic Europe” region.
Mårten Trotzigs gränd – the narrowest street in Sweden (Stockholm)
And what about the other 8%? The stories and guesses were, in a word, wrong. No Italy. No Spain. As it turns out, most of my other ancestry was from Sweden/Denmark, with a smaller part from Norway. I had always been looking south, but it appears that I should have been looking north.
Terminus of the railway to Flam (Norway)
I know that these tests are not 100% accurate, and of course some ancestry is lost with each passing generation. But way back in 2012, I felt very comfortable in Stockholm (see photo at the very top of this post). I thought it was a place in which I could live. It makes you wonder why I had that feeling.
Today’s genealogical post is a little different…but there is still a travel element.
I had long assumed that I was the first and only “Pierre Vanderhout” in the world, as our family’s genealogy has been documented in book form back to the mid-1500s and there wasn’t any other Vanderhout (usually written as “van der Hout” in Dutch) named Pierre. However, it appears that I am not the first person to bear this name.
On February 26, 1678, Guillaume van der Hout was christened in Leiden, the Netherlands. The parents were Pierre van der Hout and Caterine Pierre. The witnesses were Elizabeth van Danne and Gregoire Cresson. This event was recorded by the “RK Kerk de Zon” in Leiden; the document can be found here (the relevant entry is numbered “9005”).
Typical intersection in Delft, the Netherlands
This was only the beginning of an unusual story. I couldn’t find any other genealogical information on these names: there was nothing on the direct descendants of Guillaume van der Hout nor on the direct ancestors of this other Pierre van der Hout. All I had to go on was the name of the church. “Kerk” means “church” in Dutch, while “de Zon” means “the sun”. I didn’t pay much attention to the “RK”; I had assumed it was a reference to the Reformed Church (a Protestant church that is quite prominent in the Netherlands).
However, some further research revealed an unusual twist. “RK” was actually a short form for “Rooms Katholiek”, the Dutch words for “Roman Catholic”. So, the “Sun Church” in Leiden was actually a Catholic church. That was a surprise, as the genealogy suggested that the first few centuries of van der Houts were all Protestant.
“De Spaansche Vloot” (The Spanish Fleet), a nearly 400-year-old restaurant in ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands
When we were in the Netherlands last summer, we visited some churches that dated back 800 years. I decided to find out if the “Sun Church” was still around, as it would be interesting on a future visit to see where this other Pierre van der Hout had once been. This led to another surprise: the Kerk de Zon was a secret church!
While the Netherlands was a tolerant country even in the 17th century (attracting persecuted religious groups from all over Europe), tolerance was a relative concept. Non-Protestants were free to practice their own religion as long as they did not draw too much attention to themselves. This meant that their places of worship could not be outwardly identifiable as such; they also could not enter and leave en masse.
Nearly deserted beach near ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands
So, was the 17th-century Pierre van der Hout somehow written out of the family tree because of religion? The multiple French names in the records of the Kerk de Zon provide a more likely answer.
Pierre van der Hout (or his ancestors) probably came from a French-speaking part of Europe and had a different surname. However, as they continued living in the Netherlands, it was common to adopt a Dutch surname to help assimilate into Dutch society.
Pierre’s family may have picked “van der Hout” simply because it was a common surname in that part of the Netherlands. However, picking a new name was often very literal. As “van der Hout” means “from the forest”, Pierre’s original French surname may well have been something like Desbois or LaForest.
Distant view of Grote Kerk in Maassluis, the Netherlands. This is the church where my ancestor Isaack Adriaensz van der Hout (born in 1580) placed the keystone
While I could not find any other references to the 17th-century Pierre or Guillaume van der Hout, I suspect that the family’s descendants were around for a long time. Why? I managed to find a person named “Guillaume Pierre Johann van der Hout” – he was born in 1874 in Delft, the Netherlands (see photo at the top of this post) and is the only other “Guillaume van der Hout” I could locate.
Here, finally, is the travel angle…the only record I could find for Guillaume Pierre Johann van der Hout was an immigration record kept by the police of Antwerp, Belgium. For reasons unknown, he left Delft to live in another country. On this page, at number 97.416, you can see how this unusual story continued into at least the late 19th-century. I hope to investigate this further; in the meantime, it seems that anybody with my name is destined to move around!
[The photos in today’s post are all close to where my namesakes lived in the Netherlands.]
…you can’t take Holland out of the boy. It’s a cliché that could apply to any place, but I found it to be true over the past couple of weeks.
I’ve had a pretty good success rate with my travel year so far. I’ve enjoyed practically every place I’ve visited and the inevitable setbacks (cancelled flight to Memphis, missing baggage in Paris, etc.) have been overcome without too much difficulty. However, I think the just-completed trip to the Netherlands will become one of those “legacy” trips that enjoys a special place in my heart.
Getting caught by the waves at the same beach where my father played as a child (‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands)
We saw some very interesting things on this trip, but I think the best part was reconnecting with my Dutch relatives. Without exception, my cousins were all thrilled to see us and it made everything more vivid and meaningful. It was cool to see my family name on a church from the early 1600s, but even cooler to be shown it by a cousin who still attends that very church. It was great to see a professional soccer game in Holland, but even greater to be taken there (and to an exciting pre-game meal!) by a cousin who belongs to the home team’s fan club. And it was wonderful to see the very distinct northern extremities of the Netherlands, but even more wonderful to be shown around by a cousin who lives there and could explain the places that are connected to my family.
Keystone placed by (and naming) my ancestor Isaack Adriaensz van der Hout (born in 1580) – at the “Grote Kerk” in Maassluis, the Netherlands
All of which is a long way of saying that great travel experiences are not just about the places you visit…but about the people who are there. I’ve had similar experiences with my Swiss relatives (eating at a mountain restaurant whose owner/chef was my mother’s cousin, and skiing with my uncle in my “ancestral valley” in the Berner Oberland, to name just two) and the memories last much longer than places you’ve passed through without any real personal connection.
Synchronicity! Klein Zwitserland (“little Switzerland”) at the dunes on Schiermonnikoog, the Netherlands
What does this mean for future travel? It may not affect the remainder of this year’s journey, but it will certainly have a future impact. As I told each of my Dutch cousins, it won’t be another 23 years before I visit again.
The not-so-busy back streets of Amsterdam
And now, as promised, here is some information about my next trip. While I have only just returned to Canada, I will be flying out again on September 4 on a very special journey. I have been trying to have more time at home between trips but I could not control the timing of this one. As time is of the essence, I’m going to give all of the clues at once:
1. The theme is sports…and as a participant, not as an observer.
2. The sports element is not just incidental; I will be participating in this sport virtually every day that I am away.
3. I will be visiting a total of 4 countries (2 of which I have never visited before), with an airport stopover in a relatively familiar 5th country.
4. Notwithstanding the location of this trip, it will have a very Canadian flavour.
5. Perhaps because of clue no. 4, the “hosts” may be thrilled if some days are unsuccessful.
More deer in Haren, the Netherlands
My itinerary on this special trip will be very busy, so I’m not sure if I will be able to blog in “real time”. I’ll be back for 4 weeks afterwards, though, so the back-up plan is to get the posts up then. At a minimum, I hope to get some status updates up on Facebook. I’m sure it’s going to be great!
On August 14, my cousin Paul arranged for us to visit some of our family’s important Dutch places. With Henk as our driver, we started the day with a quick visit to The Hague where we saw a bunch of essential Dutch landmarks: the Mauritshuis, the Peace Palace, the King’s residence, etc. While Amsterdam is officially the Dutch capital, the seat of government is actually in The Hague and the country is effectively run from here.
The Mauritshuis (The Hague, The Netherlands)
We also saw a bunch of sights in The Hague that wouldn’t mean too much to a typical tourist, but were very important to my father when he was growing up just south of here in a town called ‘s-Gravenzande. We also saw the famous casino in Scheveningen, where my parents and I enjoyed a mild (but very satisfying) victory almost 30 years ago.
From The Hague, it was only natural that we would visit ‘s-Gravenzande itself. Although it has grown since my childhood visits, it still feels like a small town. We walked around the downtown core and had lunch in a café that my parents used to visit. I took a photograph of the duplex on the Monsterseweg where my grandfather lived next door to my aunt: we always stayed here whenever we visited the Netherlands. The house is no longer in the family but it still feels like “our” house.
“Our” house on the Monsterseweg in ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands
As I visited various places around town, I found myself wondering whether I might be related to the people we met. This never happens in Canada but in the Netherlands it is a real possibility. I didn’t see any true doppelgangers but there were many very tall people: by most accounts, the Dutch are the tallest people in the world. My own height doesn’t attract any attention in this country.
Some of the greenhouses at ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands
After lunch, we walked past a sea of greenhouses and into the seaside dunes. ‘s-Gravenzande is perhaps one kilometre from the sea: the sandy beach stretches from Hoek van Holland (just south of here) north all the way around the Dutch coast. Southwestern Holland is incredibly densely populated but, on the water side of the dunes (see photo at the top of this post), the urban sprawl suddenly disappears.
Goat relaxing in the dunes on the North Sea near ‘s-Gravenzande, the Netherlands
After ‘s-Gravenzande, we visited the town of Maassluis. My cousins Paul and Ariejan both live here in very modern buildings near the Port of Rotterdam’s waterway. I haven’t seen them too much in recent years so it was great to see them again and spot the family traits I know so well in my father and sister. Maassluis itself has a small but quaint harbour with many historic buildings. The church there is about 400 years old and the keystone was laid by my ancestor Isaac van der Hout. The keystone still clearly shows my ancestor’s name.
Church built 400 years ago by one of my ancestors in Maassluis, the Netherlands
I never have this kind of opportunity at home. “Vanderhout” (or “van der Hout”, as it is written in the Netherlands) is a typical Dutch name but is far from a common name in Canada. In fact, many North American Vanderhouts are not related to me at all. Another thing I’ve noticed in the Netherlands is that I never have to spell my name for anybody – I don’t mind doing it in Canada, but it is also kind of nice not having to repeat, spell or explain the proper pronunciation of my name (it rhymes with “out” and “about”).
The harbour in Maassluis, the Netherlands
It felt good to reconnect with my cousins and the towns of my ancestors. I hope to see them again soon and ensure that the connections remain strong.
