Roelof Cornelissen van Houten 1618 to 1672

Abstracted from: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cornelissen-2

See also: https://www.geni.com/people/Roelof-Van-Houten/6000000000436483432

Roelof Cornelissen van Houten was born on 25 Jun 1618 in Houten, Utrecht, Netherlands. Roelof was the son of Cornelis van Houten and Adriana van Bruechysen.

Roelof sailed on 08 October 1636 and arrived in New Amsterdam on March 4, 1637. His brother, Crijn Cornelisz, sailed with him.

Roelof Cornelissen van Houten is the progenitor of the van Houten family in America. He is first found in New Netherland in 1638, when he is mentioned among the immigrants of that year to Rensselaerswyck.

“Roelof Cornelisz, from Houten, [near Utrecht]; brother of Crijn Cornelisz, from Houten, is charged with supplies furnished to him in 1638.”

He worked with wood and thatching roofs of houses in 1638.

Roelof resided at Rensselaerswyck in 1641.

Roelof married Gerritje van Ness, daughter of Cornelius Hendrick van Ness and Maycke Hendricksdr van der Burchgraeff, in 1643 at Rensselaerswyck, New York.

Roelof Cornelissen van Houten was rented horses, cows, and land in 1646.

He was a soldier in New Amsterdam in 1648. At that time, he wounded the corporal, and was obliged to ride the wooden horse, two hours a day for three days, with a ten-pound weight fastened to each foot, and to pay the surgeon’s bill besides forfeiting six months wages.

On May 23, 1659, Roelof Cornelissen (and his wife, Gerritje van Ness), obtained a patent for twenty-five morgens of land near New Amersfoort. [Beginning in 1636, a handful of New Amsterdam residents bought large tracts of farmland in an area of western Long Island, called New Amersfoort, in which the soil was unusually fertile. (New Amersfoort is now a part of Brooklyn.)]

Roelof Cornelissen died on 14 Jun 1672; and he was buried on 16 Jun 1672 in the Old Bergen Churchyard in Communipaw, Bergen, New Jersey.