The Lansing Family Journey

Description

The Lansing Family Journey

This book is not available on Amazon. It can only be purchased directly through Xlibris 1-888-795-4274 or email xlibris.com

Gerrit Lansing was the progenitor of the Lansing family in America; but he never actually made it to the New Netherlands having died shortly after the birth of his sixth child in 1650. Gerrit married Elizabeth Hendrickse Ten Cate and was known by his profession as a baker.

He died at an early age leaving Elizabeth with six small children and little financial security. Shortly thereafter Elizabeth married Wouter Albertsen Van Den Uythoff in hopes of providing better stability for her family. Unfortunately, Elizabeth and Wouter had significant debts of their own but through loans and pledging her home for sale, they secured sufficient funds to seek a new life in America.

The Lansing family traveled from Holland to New York aboard the “De Gelderse Bloem” in the spring of 1655. The two five volumes of The Lansing Family Journey trace the descendants of the six children of Gerrit and Elizabeth Lansing as well as the ancestors of the early families who married into that line.

I have spent the past 20 years researching the Lansing Family (mine) and my cousins. Some of our distant relatives were quite famous; but if we claim them, we must also claim the infamous! I published this four-volume set (plus a separate volume for the index) through Xlibris back in 2009 and hard-bound copies of the original edition can be purchased by contacting them directly. In addition, I continued to track the ancestry of those major families that married into the Lansing line back to their roots in Europe. As such, I have collected a massive catalog of those relationships totaling over 10,000 names and over 1,500 photos; the e-book contains over 1,400 pages.

The entire updated book can be purchased as an electronic file by contacting me directly at bill@billlansing.com . I use Drop Box to send the files as they are quite large. I have attached sample pages of the Table of Contents, the Introduction, the Forward and the Index along with a few photos.

Those who tackle genealogy know the work is never done and I continue to find more pieces to the puzzle

 

Introduction

 

In 2001, at the age of 55, my brother and I were in the process of cleaning out the residence of my 91 year old mother’s house in Newcastle, California (Edith Virginia Henderson Lansing), when we came upon a small packet of papers (typed and hand written) that described our father’s lineage back to our Great Grandfather—John Henry Lansing. In the same pile of papers, we found a velvet covered-hand written biography book of our mother’s family (Henderson) with pictures dating back to my great great great grand father Peter Henderson. In concert, these historical points of light must have triggered something deep inside of me that urged me to seek a connection to my past. So, my journey began and it grew into a passion that I now understand is very common among amateur genealogists.
But, where should I start? Curiously, in my mother’s papers, I found a letter written to me by Diane (Mrs. Sydney) Lansing of Caldwell, Idaho. She was organizing a Lansing “gathering” and had somehow gotten my name and address. So I wrote her to find out what she knew about the Lansing family.
While Diane’s line split off from mine during the first full generation of Lansing’s in America (Her family descended from Gerrit Gerritse Lansing; mine from Hendrick Gerritse Lansing), it inspired me to move ahead.   I began reading and collecting books and other tidbits of literature on up-State New York to learn more about my family. As I worked on the Lansing history, several other Surnames kept re-surfacing Van Rensselaer, Yates, Van der Heyden, Gansevoort, Schuyler and Fonda to mention a few.
The other major resource that enabled me to fill in our Lansing line was the internet. It is truly a paradise of information. I would spend literally every waking hour, that I wasn’t working at my real job, in front of our home computer. I thank my wife Ann (Oakley Mcfalls) Lansing for patiently understanding the intense focus needed to complete the work. The hunt was on and I ordered books and purchased access to multiple web sites that carried an incredible wealth of genealogical data – census records that I studied into   the early morning hours, night after night, trying to find connections.
Pieces began to fall into place, until I tried to close a final gap in my direct ancestry back-dating from my Great Grandfather John Henry Lansing. I really wanted to prove that what I had found in my mother’s home was indeed the beginning of ancestral family tree.

I left messages on every “Lansing Forum” web site I could find; seeking help from other Lansing family members. Since my father (Alvin Eugene Lansing) was an only child and left his birth place of Rensselaer, New York at the young age of 8 ( he died in 1974—35 years ago and there was very little information left about his immediate family), there was essentially no local kin to whom I could turn.

 

Foreword

 

The Lansing family was one of the early settlers in the Hudson/Mohawk River valley in upstate New York. They came from Holland. Thirty years after Fort Orange (later to become Albany, New York) was established along the upper Hudson River, my family established itself in the emerging community of Beverwyck, just outside the walls of the fort. After Beverwyck became Albany following the British “invasion of Manhattan”, the Lansing name became synominous with the governance of the colonial city. The family spread throughout the region and settled across New York and eventually scattered throughout the United States. This book is about that family.
In 1995, Mr. Derk Westerhof wrote a pamphlet entitled “Lansing from Hasselt to America”. It was written and dedicated to the town of Colonie, New York. I have used editorial liberties to smooth out the English version as best I could without losing his meanings as follows:
The first mention of the Lansing family in Hasselt was that of Wessel Lansing. On September 9, 1509 he was appointed as a guardian of six daughters of the deceased Gheert Liseborn. He was acting as their guardian by giving the government of Hasselt the right to repurchase a yearly income of 10 Rhine guilders coming from 3 pieces of land. To be a guardian, one had to be over 21 years of age; therefore he must have been born before year 1484.

The next to be mentioned was a Peter Lansing. He had to pay a tax for his home in 1532. The house was standing in the part of Hasselt between Mill Gate and Moor Gate. This part was on the west side ofHoogstraat (High Street). He had a daughter by the name a/Katrina who died in 1541. His wife’s name was probably Mette.

 

In 1536, Mette, widow of Peter Lansing, borrowed money from the city of Hasselt. As security for the loan, she gave a golden ring. Later in 1538, she had to pay a fine to the city because of her son Hendrix got into a fight with someone.

Westerhof goes on to describe a problem with his research. Apparently in the old days, people did not use the family name. They used the Christian name of the father and added the son or daughter behind it, knowing their family name was “Lansing”. As an example, one might dine Claesson or shorter Claes, Gerritson or shorter Gerrits and Hendrikson of shorter Hendriks. This made it particularly difficult to construct a family tree back to those earlier references.
The first known name ofthisfamilytree (Lansing) must have been a Gerrit Lansing, who lived about 1600. His son was not always called Lansing but Gerrit Gerrits, with his profession – a baker.