Family Information

This particular branch of the Verhoeven family is a union between the Kuykendall family (maternal branch) of the USA and the Verhoeven Family (paternal branch) of Europe.  What makes us a little different from so many other families is not that the family is the result of a cross-Atlantic marriage but because the two main family lines (Verhoeven and Kuykendall) originated in The Netherlands within 50 kilometers of each other some 400 years ago.  The Verhoevens stayed put in the United Provinces while the Kuykendalls emigrated to the New World in the early part of the 1600s to become one of the first families to settle and prosper there.

The Verhoeven branch of the family tree is pretty European.  On the paternal side the family is, essentially, 100% Dutch (with a small helping of Flemish blood early on) while on the maternal side of the tree it is 50% Danish and 50% Sudeten German.

The Kuykendall family is uniquely American, having intermarried over the past 11 generations with individuals whose families originated from many northern European countries.  The family name is purely American and does not exist in The Netherlands.  Back in the early 1600s family names were extremely rare and individuals took on their father’s name as their second name (patronymics) and family identifier.  In short, Jacob’s son Luur would be known as Luur Jacobszen while his son Jacob would be known as Jacob Luurszen and so on.  The “zsen” or “sen” addition to the father’s first name (i.e. Jacob) meant as much as “son of Jacob” so that Luur Jacobzsen was Luur son of Jacob.

When the initial immigrants arrived in the New World they, like so many other Dutch families at the time, took on either their trade or geographic origin as their family name.  In the Kuykendall case they started off as van Wageningen and van Kuykendall, indicating that they were from – van – the city of Wageningen or Cuyk (Cuyk ‘n daal meaning Cuyk in the – Maas - valley).

Why the brothers left Cuyk for the new world is not recorded but given the location of Cuyk – on the Maas River – and the political situation at the start of the 1600s (the 80 years war was raging across Europe and around Cuyk) we can well imagine that they left to avoid the war and find opportunity elsewhere.

Today the family tree and all the branches and roots stretch into pretty much all the European countries, across North America and into a couple of ex-colonial areas.  While there have been no really famous people on either side of the tree there have also not been any really notorious ones.  Like all families there were a couple of illegitimate births here and there and a couple of scandals.

The only individuals of historical significance were the van Coppenolle brothers (Jan and Frans) who were beheaded on the Friday Market in Gent on June 16, 1492 for leading the rebellion against Maximillian I, Holy Roman Emperor.  The families of the executed were banished from the Empire and sent north to the United Provinces in exile.  This is where the Flemish root of the family came from.

For more details on the various families please take a look at the family histories below.  Given that there are some 42,000 + individuals and thousands of family names I have only provided histories of the more interesting ones and the main lines.  The families are listed in alphabetical order.

 

Family Histories

The Bijl Family

The Bijl family is mainly found in the area south of Rotterdam

 

The  Grimm Family

The Grimm family originated in and around the town Eger in what is now often referred to as the Sudetenland.  The Sudetenland is a “modern” term for the German settlement area of the Bohemian Lands (Bohemia, Moravia, Austrian Silesia) which was used only sporadically before 1918.  The area had originally been settled by Germanic tribes back in Roman times.  Over the next several centuries Germanic and Slavic tribes regularly occupy and abandon the area as a result of both migration and wars.  Records show that from around 845 the Bohemian and German nobility maintain close ties and that the area of Boehmen (Bohemia), Maehren (Moravia) and Silesia are inhabited primarily by Germans.  By the beginning of the 20th century, the German ethnic group in Bohemian Lands had grown to about 3.5 million individuals.  The Bohemian Lands were, until 1918, part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.  In 1918 the Sudetenland was given to Czechoslovakia as part of the peace agreement and remained so until 1938.  After the "Münchner Abkommen" (The Munich Agreement) of 1938, Sudetenland became the official name for the Reichsgau Sudetenland.  At the end of WWII Sudetenland was again reintegrated into Czechoslovakia and its German ethnic group was expelled (Vertreibung) by the Slavic population at great loss of civilian life.

The direct Grimm ancestors in our family tree did not, fortunately, have to endure the “Vertreibung” as they had left earlier to seek employment outside of the area.  Large parts of the family did however remain behind and suffered terribly during this horrific event.

As mentioned earlier, the Grimm family root is in the Sudentenland area and

 

The Jelsgaard/Jensen Family

This is a very Danish family with no links –as far as we can tell so far – to families outside of the Kingdom.  The family is of peasant stock

 

The Koppenol Family

This families claim to fame is the execution (beheading) of two of their ancestors (Jan and Frans van Coppenolle) on June 16, 1492 on the Friday Market in Gent for leading a rebellion against Maximillian I, Holy Roman Emperor.  The brothers were originally from

The Kruidenier Family

The Kruideniers

 

The Kuykendall Family

The first records we have of the Kuykendall family

 

The Verhoeven Family

As indicated above, this branch of the Verhoeven family trances it’s paternal roots in an unbroken line back to 16th century Netherlands while the maternal line is 50/50 Danish (Jelsgaard/Jensen) and German (Grimm).

Over the past 500 years

The family or