Update: Brouwer Genealogy Database, and Introducing, Bennet Corrections

The Brouwer Genealogy Database website has been updated. Launched on July 29, 2008, the BGD now includes profiles of 33,786 individuals.

With this update we have included results from a new participant in the Brewer DNA Project. The participant is a descendant of Adam Brouwer of Gowanus, L. I. through his eldest son Pieter Brouwer. He is represented by kit #252546, and his lineage can be found on the descendants of Pieter Brouwer Chart accessible from the Adam Brouwer Group DNA Results Page. The participants data is a very valuable addition to our efforts in understanding the descendants of Adam Brouwer using Y-DNA testing, and we would like to express our thanks to the participant for agreeing to join the project. We would also like to encourage other Brouwer, Brower and Brewer descendants to join as well.

Also added is a Chart of the some of the descendants of Willem Adriaensen, whose descendants adopted the surname, BENNET. Willem Adriaensen was the second husband of Maria Badie, and their descendants are cousins to the descendants of Adam Brouwer, by virtue of the fact that Adam Brouwer's wife, Magdalena Verdon, was Maria Badie's eldest daughter by her first husband, Jacob Verdon. Through some more complicated twists and turns, it has also been found that some descendants of Willem Adriaensen and Maria Badie are also cousins of descendants of Jan Brouwer of Flatlands, L. I. Descendants of Willem Adriaensen have been covered in a published account. Wilson V. Ledley, published, "Willem Adriaense Bennet of Brooklyn, N. Y., and Some of His Descendants," in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. His series of articles ran from volume 93, no. 4 (1962) through volume 95, no. 4 (1964). Unfortunately there are many errors in Ledley's published account, some have been repeated in later published articles citing Ledley's original account. Since the past summer I have found some time to periodically consider some of these errors, and have had the opportunity to correspond with two excellent researchers, Mike Morrissey and Liz Johnson, both of whom are very familiar and experienced in researching colonial families of New Netherland, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Many of the corrections are now addressed on the BGD website, and the chart of Willem Adriaensen's descendants is intended as a convenient method for accessing complete profiles, and as a guide to my current take on the Bennet family. The chart currently covers five generations and is not complete. In the coming months I will add posts regarding some of the more critical corrections and they will have the label, "Bennet Corrections." The first post, Identifying the wife of Isaac Bennet, was published here on August 25, 2012. More will eventually follow.

In the meantime, issues that will be addressed in the coming months will start with the addition of a few more Unplaced descendants of Jan Brouwer of Flatlands, L. I.; the completion of posts focused on the remaining children of Adam Brouwer; posts on Unplaced descendants of Adam Brouwer, and posts on other Unplaced Brewers who have had descendants that participated in the Brewer DNA Project. The BGD will likely be updated again in early 2013.

Also of interest to those researching related New Netherland families would be the identification of the Father and Brother of Aucke Jans Van Nuys, by Liz Johnson and just recently published on her website, Sketches of 17th Century Hollanders. The article also includes the discovery of baptism dates for three, possibly four, of Aucke's children who were baptized in Amsterdam prior to the family's migration to New Netherland. Aucke Jans Van Nuys settled in Kings County on Long Island and his children married with members of a number of other prominent early Kings County families. Aucke's descendants are numerous, some were among the early settlers in New Jersey, and some have ties with Brouwer, Brower and Brewer families descended from both Adam Brouwer and Jan Brouwer. There are also important ties with the Bennet families mentioned above.

BGB 192