Full Name Steven Coerte Other names Coert Stevense Name Steven Voorhees | Nationality Dutch Occupation Farmer, brewer Children Coert Van Voorhees | |
Spouse(s) Aaltjen Wessels (d. 1675), Willempie Roelofse Suebering (b.1619-d.1690) Died February 16, 1684, Flatlands, New York City, New York, United States | ||
Steven Coertse van Voorhees (1600 – 16 February 1684) was an early Dutch settler in America and the patriarch of the Voorhees family line and namesakes. In 1664, he was a magistrate and founder of the Dutch Reformed Church in present day Flatlands, Brooklyn.
Contents
Name
The name "Voorhees" is the anglicised form of "van voor Hees" which means "before" or "in front of" Hees, a small village a quarter or a mile south of Ruinen of about nine houses and fifty inhabitants. Steven Van Voorhees' paternal grandfather Coert van voor Hees resided near the front of the village of Hees.
Biography
Steven Van Voorhees was born in 1600 in Hees, a village in Drenthe, The Netherlands. He was the son of Coert Albertse van Voorhees, of Hees, and the eldest of seven children. He married his first wife circa 1645. Van Voorhees left the Netherlands in April, 1660, along with his wife and eight of his ten children. Records indicate that the family emigrated the Netherlands on either the ship "Borelekre," or translated, the "Spotted Cone," or the "Bonte Koe," which means the "Spotted Cow." The two children, both daughters, who stayed behind would later come to America. Some sources indicate that the name of his first wive is unknown, though others have specified that it was Aaltjen Wessels, who died circa 1675.
Van Voorhees migrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherlands (present-day New York) in 1660, settling in Nieuw Amersfoort (present-day Flatlands), Long Island. He purchased a tract of land on 29 November 1660, from Cornelius Deriksen Hoogland for three thousand guilders. Of the nine morgen of corn land, seven morgen of salt meadow, seven morgen of woodland and ten morgen of plain land, the plot included a house and house plot, as well as brewery, which he operated. In addition to being a farmer, Van Voorhees acted one of the magistrates of the Flatlands in 1664. His name appears on a 1664 and a 1667 land patent, and he and his second wife were members of the Dutch Reformed Church in Flatlands, one which he founded. His will is dated 25 August 1677, which has been called a "lengthy, odd document" in which he bequeaths his entire estate to his five surviving children. In 1683, he was manager of taxes in Flatlands. Steven Van Voorhees died 16 February 1684.
Legacy
The Van Voorhees have a family coat of arms, which was first published in America in 1880 by Elias W. Van Voorhees.
Steven van Voorhees is considered the patriarch of a "pioneer family of Bergen County," and is considered the "founder," as well as the first American representative of the well-known Voorhees family line. Among his namesakes are a street in Brooklyn, Voorhies Avenue.