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ON THE ANCESTRY OF

MAJOR WM. ROE VAN VOORHIS,

OF

FISHKILL, DUCHESS COUNTY, NEW YORK.

BY HIS GRANDSON,
ELIAS W. VAN VOORHIS,
OF NEW YORK CITY.

FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION ONLY.

1881.

Cs 71 1591 1881

INTRODUCTION.

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THE signification of the name Van Voorhis, formerly written Van Voorhies and Van Voorhees, the date of emigration to this country, and the line of descent of the family down to the year 1730, when Johannes Coerte Van Voorhees settled at Fishkill, Duchess County, N. Y., from Long Island, have been investigated and recorded by that able historian of our early Dutch settlers, Hon. Teunis G. Bergen, in his work entitled "The History of the Bergen Family, with Notes upon some of the Branches of the Couenhoven, Voorhies, Eldert, and other Long Island families," and the following record of one generation in Holland and the first two generations in this country are taken—with his kind permission-from that interesting volume. Mr. Bergen does not continue the line of Johannes Coerte Van Voorhees after his settlement at Fishkill; but the writer, through searches made in the Surrogates' and Registers' offices of both New York and Poughkeepsie, the records of the Dutch Churches of Poughkeepsie, Fishkill, Hopewell, and New Hackensack, tombstone inscriptions in churchyards, records in family Bibles, unrecorded papers in the

possession of families, extracts from county and local histories, etc., has been enabled to connect the family of Johannes Coerte Van Voorhees with that of his descendant, William Roe Van Voorhis...

In the early part of his work, in speaking of the difficulty in tracing Dutch genealogies, Mr. Bergen says: "Of the private letters which passed between the early Dutch settlers and their European relatives which might have thrown light upon their previous history, very few remain. The writer has in his possession several letters written by the relatives of the Van Voorhies family in the Fatherland to their friends in this country, and they are the only ones he has discovered in his examinations of old papers and documents among the descendants of the Netherlanders in Kings County."

STEVEN COERTE of Voorhies, or Steven Koers, as written by himself, who emigrated to this country from Holland in the year 1660, was a son of Coert Alberts of Voorhies, who resided in front of the village of Hees, or Hies, near the town of Ruinen, in the province of Drenthe, in the Netherlands, the word "voor" meaning in English "before" or "in front of."

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In regard to the arms of the family, published herewith, the writer, while in London in 1872, caused a search to be made by the St. James Heraldry Office for arms belonging to the Holland family of Van Voorhies, and on the return of the search obtained the accompanying arms with a

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