Welcome to the project! My name is Philip Vanheessen. In 2017, after eight years of traditional genealogical research on the West Flemish families Van Eessen, Vaneessen en Vanheessen, I started this DNA project in hopes of connecting loose ends, finding common paternal ancestry with other families of similar surnames, this way trying to reveal some details of the recent 1000 years or so of my ancestors, and finally of course, from there, connecting to the big patrilineal evolutionary tree of humanity.

The families VAN EESSEN/VANEESSEN/VANHEESSEN can trace back their patriline to their most distant known ancestor Nicolaas van Eessen (1610-1669). Nicolaas lived in Slijpe, a parish in the polders at the Flemish North Sea coast, back then part of the Camerlinckx shire (Camerlinckx-Ambacht) in the Franc of Bruges (in the historical map (*) in the project banner above it is mentioned as Slype). In some of the older 17th century records for Slijpe the surname is also referred to as van Eessensuene, with the -suene suffix meaning 'son of'.

The toponymic surname van Eessen is and always has been rather uncommon. It is an ancient Flemish surname and refers to the village of Esen near Diksmuide (Dixmude), not that far from Slijpe, a town on the Yser river in the Belgian province of West Flanders. The name appears a first time in written records in 1088 as the byname of a nobleman. Ingelram van Eessen (in English texts referred to as Ingran of Esen) was a prominent member of a very ancient and powerful Flemish noble family, dubbed the noble House of Menen by Ernest Warlop in his well known historical study The Flemish Nobility before 1300. Quite some historically significant people stem from this noble stock and during the rule of Robert II, Count of Flanders, and his wife Countess Clemence, four of them - all brothers - held the influential castellanies of Diksmuide, Veurne, Saint-Omer and Bergues. Ingelram was one of the four brothers. His byname van Eessen suggests that he probably already was the hereditary sheriff of the ancient shire of Esen (Esen-Ambacht), when by 1088 the Count of Flanders also appointed him the first castellan (or viscount) of Diksmuide, which had previously been a subordinate parish of Esen. He had three sons (Thierry, Richard and Rodulph) and a daughter, who lived in Oudenburg. His eldest son Thierry (Diederik) succeeded him as castellan of Diksmuide. Richard earned fame as standard-bearer of William Clito, the grandson of William the Conqueror, who had become Count of Flanders after the murder on Charles the Good, during the war with Thierry of Alsace. Rodulph probably inherited the office of sheriff of Esen together with the byname van Eessen, and his son Ingelram van Eessen, the younger, played a role in the murder of Count Charles the Good in 1127.

About one century and a half later, as of 1267, the name van Eessen, now a real surname, reappears in the records. This time it is a noble family of schepenen (magistrates or aldermen) of the Franc of Bruges. These nobles - all knights - continued leaving their marks until the end of the 15th century. So far there is no hard evidence that they descend from the Ingelram van Eessen mentioned above, although the relatively short time gap between the two periods and the fact that both families are noble and clearly related to Esen near Diksmuide makes it tempting to believe they are related.

Where does Nicolaas, the most distant known ancestor of the Van Eessen/Vaneessen/Vanheessen families, fit in? Nicolaas settled in Slijpe in the 1620s as a child with his parents. Where did they come from? A possible clue is that in the oldest parish registers there is another van Eessene family that lived in Reninge and the nearby parishes throughout the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century. Reninge is in the south of West Flanders near the border with France at Hondschote and not so far from Esen. We don't know if this family descends from the family of magistrates of the Franc of Bruges. It is not impossible at all, given the rarity of the surname and the geographic concentration of both families. But there certainly is a very good chance that Nicolaas is related to this family. The way to confirm that would be to find male patrilineal descendants of the Reninge branch and have their Y-DNA tested. Unfortunately the family seems to have 'daughtered out' along the Belgian family lines. However, one member of the Reninge branch, Joannes van Eessene (born in 1600 in Reninge) emigrated to Leiden in the Netherlands around 1620 to go and work there in the booming textile industry, where Flemish serge workers from the vicinity of Hondschote were in hot demand. Joannes married twice in Leiden, and had male and female descendants from each marriage. So far I have unfortunately not been able to work down the pedigree from Joannes' grandchildren all the way to the present time or to find Dutch genealogists researching this family. Besides Joannes, there is also a certain Harman de Heese, who married in Leiden in 1592 with Jannetje Honts. Both came from Hondschote in French Flanders, on the border with West Flanders and near Reninge. The first generations of their pedigree can be found here. This family could also well be related and have living male patrilineal descendants.

In the Netherlands the spelling of these immigrants' surnames could of course easily have changed a lot over the years leading to many potential related surname variants existing today. There is only one way to find out which ones are related to the Reninge and Hondschote branches: convince as many as possible men with surname variants from the Netherlands and more specifically from Leiden and surroundings to have their Y-DNA tested and participate in this project. If these people can trace their Dutch paper trail to one of these Flemish immigrants and their Y-DNA matches with the Y-DNA of the Van Eessen/Vaneessen/Vanheessen family that would be a magnificent step forward for the project and the genealogy of our families.

There is also a blog - vaneessendna.blogspot.ru - that accompanies the above research project, where you can find extra information, news and updates.

Of course, my own family research above is just the start for the broader DNA project and the project will not restrict itself to families that trace their origin to the former County of Flanders. As mentioned before, we explicitly invite all men with any of the many possible surname variants (see tab 'Surnames' for an incomplete/non-exhaustive list) to test their Y-DNA and participate in the project. All these variants are toponymic surnames referring to a settlement or other location that long ago received a name that seems to be associated with woodland, sometimes more specifically forest undergrowth or beech forest and also a couple of times with a pre-medieval hydronym, suggesting an old water course, which probably was close to woodland as well, as in the case of Esen, near Diksmuide.

As a consequence, we expect this project to eventually identify multiple geographically spread clusters of people with similar surnames who are all - within a cluster - genetically related in a genealogical timeframe. Hopefully we will be able to find clusters that are mutually related as well through a common paternal ancestor.

As you can see, this is all quite ambitious. But the first hurdle to overcome is to convince as many as possible male namesakes to test their Y-DNA and join the project. So, please, don't be shy and join, I am sure you will not regret it!

Thank you very much!

Sincerely yours,

Philip Vanheessen
Project admin

(*) Fragment of the historical map Carte Particuliere Des Environs De Bruges, Ostend, Damme, L'Ecluse et Autres by Jean Covens & Cornelis Mortier, Amsterdam, ca. 1730.