Better enjoy 2020, cause we might not have many more new years to celebrate, what with the end of the world coming soon.

On that note — to round out this year of research I thought I would share a couple of fun facts.

Thanks to my current holiday vacation, I have been able to spend a little more time doing clean up and data collection on my Dutch ancestors in my Dad’s line. This would be the Roosa/Rosa line. During this research, a couple of interesting items have came to light.

One of the surnames that can be found in our Rosa line is ‘van der Kerr’. Seen variously as Van Der Karr/Kerre/Karre, etc. This line became part of ours in 1753, when Annette Becker married Gerrit Rosa in Albany, New York. Annette’s mother was a van der Kerr, who was a daughter of Dirk van der Kerr, the immigrant.

In my quest to try and find out more about the van der Kerrs, I ran into the following post on a forum:

Does anyone have information on members of the Scottish Carr (Kerr) family living in the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries? An early American ancestor of mine, Dirk van der Kerr, was always presumed Dutch — he had a Dutch wife and lived in the Dutch colony in New York in the mid 1600s. But recent DNA tests show matches with the Scottish Carr (Kerr) family. Looks like some of the Carrs left Scotland for Holland.

https://www.ancestry.com/boards/localities.weurope.netherlands.general/18803/mb.ashx?pnt=1  Message Boards > Localities > Western Europe > Netherlands > General > Carr (Kerr) Family in the Netherlands. drheldridge Posted: 13 Sep 2014 04:23PM. 

So Dad, it looks like you have a little Scottish in you too!

The other interesting item I can share regards my research on the van Boerums. I was looking over my data for Jan Roosa and his wife Hillegont van Barren who were married about 1670 in Albany, and came to find out that her surname was actually ‘van Boerum’. Hillegont’s family arrived in New Netherlands in 1649, when William van Boerum and his wife Greitje van Gogh, along with a couple of kids, stepped foot in New Amsterdam. If you missed it, the interesting bit is his wife’s surname:

Goch (Gogh) is a town in Germany next to the Dutch border…However, this area was part of the Netherlands province of Gelderland until 1715… the painter Vincent Van Gogh’s surname derives from the same place.

It looks like Vincent just might be a cousin.

Have a great year! Don’t worry I’ll still be posting.