
Greetings to all of my Van Wagenen, Van Wagoner, Van Wagner, and Van Wagnen relatives, even those who have managed to spell your last name incorrectly for the past two-hundred years. I will be making periodic changes as research demands and I invite you to return now and then to see what's new, and perhaps make a comment if you wish. There will be some links at the bottom of this page to direct e-mail to me at Carlvanwagenen@gmai.com

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For those who may be accessing my website for the first time, I will introduce myself to you. I was born in 1935 in Hudson, NY, only about 25 miles from where I now live in Saugerties, NY, on the western shore of the Hudson River. In 1994 I published a book entitled "Jacob Aertsen Van Wagenen of Wageningen, Holland" which contains all of the family connections that I have discovered over these past 33 years. As can be easily seen, this is a steep learning curve for me and it will take some time to figure out how to configure my website. Have patience. Carl ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not sure of your heritage? Don't know who your grandparents were or whether you are of Dutch or German descent? It won't cost you a nickle to find out if you'll send me an email and make the inquiry. I'll let you know one way or the other and you may just find yourself on a wonderful journey of family discovery. When I began my research I knew the names of my grandparents and nothing more. I was under the impression that my family had come to America sometime in the late 1800's. There were lots of Van Wagenen's in the local telephone directory, but my father assured me that we were not related. I had no idea that when I was attending highschool in Kingston, NY, in the early 1950's, that my ancestors had lived there inside a wooden stockade that was erected to protect them from the hostile indians. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are some interesting names associated with the Van Wagenen's: Sojourner Truth was born Isabelle Hardenburgh, a slave in Ulster County, and she was sold several times before whe ran away and sought help from Isaac and Maria Van Wagenen who had anti-slavery ideals and took her in and refused to return her to her "master" who came for her. Isaac paid him $20 for Isabelle and $5 for her child who accompanied her. Any number of books have been written about Sojourner and you need only to search on line to find all about her. James Hubert Van Wagenen was born on November 8, 1881 at Corning, Iowa and graduated with an engineering degree from the University of Missouri. He was in charge of field parties in Montana, North Dakota, and Minnisota until 1915, and then, during the administration of Presdident Warren G. Harding he was Chief Engineer in charge of Boundary work between Alaska and Canada, and a member of the Board of Surveys and Maps for the Federal Government. As a reward for his work with the Boundry Commission, Mt. Van Wagenen, located at 135 derees West and just below 60 degrees North in the Yukon Territory in an area known as Chilcoot Pass, was named for him. The mountain is desolate and usually cloud shrouded and difficult to access. Murray Delos "Pat" Van Wagoner was born on March 18, 1899 at Tuscola County, Michigan. He became the Democratic Governor of Michigan in 1941 and served until 1942. President Harry S. Truman appointed him US Military Governor of Bavaria from 1948 to 1949, and he later served as a civil governor of the West German State. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As you can see, my website has undergone some changes which occurred when my previous hosting provider for reasons unclear to me, deleted the entire content of my previous website, leaving me with no choice but to begin all over again and get myself back on line and in full operation. Let me begin by showing you who the Van Wagenen's are and where they came from. THE VAN WAGENEN D.N.A. In July of 2009, I participated in a DNA testing program that was conducted by the website “Ancestry.com”. The results of that test are as follows: The Van Wagenen’s belong to the Stonemasons, haplogroup I, which is about 30,000 years old. The Stonemasons are best known for crafting pointed stone blades, known as Gravette Points, to hunt bison, horse, reindeer and mammoths. Stone played both a functional and religious role for the Stonemasons, who crafted voluptuous Venus figurines, possibly out of steatite, calcite, limestone or other soft stone. Although the exact significance of the figurines is not known, they may represent fertility or the Earth Mother goddess, a concept which prevails in many cultural mythologies. The Stonemasons could have regarded the Earth Mother as a symbol of security or as a deity who enabled plentiful harvests and and numerous offspring. The Ice Age probably shaped the story of the Stonemasons. An ice shelf formed during the final stages of the Ice Age moved as far as southern Ireland, mid England and northern Germany, covering all of Scandinavia, where the Stonemasons lived. Northern Spain and contintental Europe were covered in tundra during these climatic shifts. As the Stonemasons moved their homes south to hunt game below the tree line, they settled primarily in the Balkans, southern France, Iberia (present day Spain and Portugal) and Italy. As they migrated, the Stonemasons played a possible role in developing the distinct difference in the languages of eastern and western Europe. When the Ice Age ended, many of the Stonemasons returned to their northern homes and repopulated Scandinavia, Iceland, and northwest Europe. Based on my DNA test, they predict that I (and consequently, any male Van Wagenen who appears in this genealogy) belong to a subgroup of the Stonemasons, haplogroup I1. This group may have participated in a coastal migration route about 10,000 years ago, during the time period archaeologists call the Holocene Epoch. The I1 Stonemasons primarily occupied Norway, Sweden and Denmark, as well as parts of Finland settled by the Laplanders. From what is known about those regions and their traditions, it’s possible that our ancestors worshipped the god Woden, also known as Odin. When Christianity replaced paganism, Woden was retained in the culture’s folklore as a historical king. Tales about Woden describe him as leading a wild hunt in the sky with a group of spectral horseman. In a practical sense, this myth may have been used to explain thunderstorms. Woden is also reflected in mondern languages – “Wednesday” is named after that god. In order to determine our (my) genetic profile, they took a look at several scientifically established DNA “locations” in my Y-Chromosome test. Haplotype is the scientific term for this kind of genetic profile, and they call that, going forward. My haplotype can help me find new genetic cousins and learn about my ancient ancestors. Imagine that the DNA locations they tested are like different destinations with specific addresses on the long ribbon that is your chromosomal DNA. When they do the test, they travel down that ribbon and pull up to each address and write down what they find. That numeric value is always unique to (my) DNA, and the combination of the different values makes up the unique numbers of (my) haplotype. The haplotype table on my certificate has two rows. The top row, labled “location” indicates the names of the defined markers for each of the locations. They fill in the numberic value for (me) at each of thse locations, which can be seen in the second row of a chart labled “value”. My DNA haplotype results are useful only for their (Ancestry.com’s) database to match me with possible genetic cousins and tell me about my ancient ancestors. My test results don’t tell me (or them) anything about my hair color or other personal characteristics. The way they use DNA is very different from what you seen on police television programs or have heard about in the past. Ancestry’s database automatically compares my results with all other participants and lets me know about possible matches. Even if I have only a few close matches now, they automatically compare my results against each new entry in their growing database. My list of matches starts with participants who are most closely related to me. I am able to view the general home locations on a map that they have supplied. They also supply an estimate of the Most Recent Common Ancestors (MRCA) that I share with my matches. My MRCA is an approximate number of years since I had a direct ancestor in common. An ancestor match of “approximately 550 years ago” could men that I shared a great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather. Ancestry determines my haplogroup based on my haplotype. My haplogroup then gives me clues about the life and times of my ancient ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago. Starting from the point in human history when many ancient ancestral groups migrated out of Africa, discrete populations began to settle in different parts of the world. Over generations, as they adapted to their unique environments, each population's genes became slightly different from the original African group. Some of these differences were randon, while others provided genes for characteristics which let groups thrive in their enviroments. Taken together, these genetic differences define haplogroups. The numbers that make up my (our) test results are a lot like looking at the whorls on the pad of your finger tip, or the intricate pattern of a snowflake undeer a microscope. But it's a special bit of information that may hold the answers to some of my (our) ancestral myrsteries. Everyone has 46 chromosomes, grouped into 23 pairs. One pair is the sex chromosomes, which, among other things, detemine the gender. All women have a pair of X chromosomes (one from each parent). And all men have an X chromosome from mother, and a Y chromosome that passes essentially unchanged from father to son, making it ideal for tracing paternal lineage. In many cultures, the surname is also passed from father to son, a fortunate coincidence that makes tracing your paternal lineage through genetic similarities so powerful for genealogy. Imagine your DNA as a long set of Morse Code instructions. Just like one "short" signal and one "long" signal give a Morse code value (A), your DNA repeats its "signal" in unique ways. My haplotype has different values based on the number of times my DNA repeats its code in the different locations. The numeric value given for each location represents a count of repeating sequences of DNA building blocks called bases. DNA is comprised of fourt bases: Adenine (A), Cytosine (C), Guanine (G), and Thymine (T). Those four bases line up to creatg a code, much like the kind of code computer programers use. Note: Based upon what I have learned of "ancient ancestry", I belived that all of the Van Wagenen's, Van Wagoner's, Van Wagner's, and Van Wagnen's within this genealogy all fall within the same haplogroup as do I, further cementing the fact that we had one common ancestor at some point several thousands of years ago. Whether or not we will ever learn exactly how we came to be in "Wageningen, Holland" and who we were prior to the 1630's-1650 time frame remains to be seen. As nearly as I have been able to determine in my thirty three years of family research, there is no written history of our family in Holland. The community known as Wageningen was plundered and burned on at least four occasions over the centuries and it is an estblished fact that our ancestors had no surname as we know surnames today. Hence, no earlier family history and most assuredly no family "Coat of Arms".
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