Hendrick Hendricksen Obe

Hendrick Hendricksen Obe (Hendricksen)
Also Known As:	"Hendrick Obee", "Hendrick Obbe", "Hendrick Tamboer"
Birthdate:	circa 1625
Birthplace:	Øby, Denmark
Death:	after July 08, 1693 New Amsterdam, Kings, New York, United States
Immediate Family:	Husband of Aeltje Obe and Marritje Jans Father of Hendrick Obee; Lydia Hendricks Obee; Margaret Hendrickse Dally; Claes Obee; André Aubé dit Langlois and 4 others

Managed by:	N. A. Aubé
Last Updated:	today

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Immediate Family

About Hendrick Hendricksen Obe

Hendrick Hendricksen Obe, aka. Hendrick Tamboer and Hendrick Hendricksen van Middelburgh.

• The parents of Hendrick Hendricksen Obe are NOT identified. The only thing that can be assumed is that his father's first name was Hendrick since the Dutch and Danes used patronymics.

• It has become popular, on the Internet, to use the spelling Obee rather than Obe. The reason for this is not clear. There were spelling variants to the name Obe, but the spelling "Obe" is by far the most common in the published translations and transcripts of primary sources.

• Hendrick Hendrickszen Obe, the drummer, is NOT the son of Marritje (Jans) Obe and another man called Hendrick Hendricksen. Marritje Jans is the drummer's second wife, not his mother, and most importantly, he is not his own father. This is old news. The latter parent-child relationship is claimed on other genealogy Web sites and probably in member trees on subscription-based platforms. No source is provided for that claim since no such source exists. Hendrick has no father or mother on record in colonial New York. There is simply no hint anywhere of anything like that. Moreover, this Geni contributor (the writer) happens to know about primary sources that will be revealed in future publications. These primary sources confirm that Hendrick Obe was married first to Aeltje Claes and second to Marritje Jans. It is already proven (see sources below), and it will be corroborated some more in the future in publications that will, of course, be protected by copyright.

Please note that names like Marritje, Jannetie, Jans, Hendrick, Jans(en), Hendricks(en), etc., were exceedingly common in that time and place. Moreover, Dutch genealogy in colonial New York is particularly difficult and requires reading many guides. Video tutorials are also available. In genealogy, the burden of proof lies with the person who makes a claim of parentage. Unsourced (and unprovable) claims of descent from people with names such as Hendrick Hendricksen and Marritje Jans (the Dutch equivalents of John Smith and Mary Jones) only serve the purpose of sending genealogists on wild-goose chases. Luckily, the name Obe is unique. The case of Hendrick Hendricksen Obe is therefore not an impossible one to solve. This Hendrick just has a lot of "name twins" who can mascarade as him in the records.

Do your own due diligence. Go read. Go forth. You can start with the sources below.

• Hendrick Obe is listed as a settler of Long Island by Teunis G. Bergen (Register in Alphabetical Order, of the Early Settlers of Kings County, Long Island, N.Y., 1881, p. 217). Bergen gives Hendrick and Aeltje two children.

• Lorine McGinnis Schulze and Chris Brooks, “Origins of the Pier Family in the Netherlands and an Update of Their Connection to the Ostrander Family,” New York Genealogical and Biographical Record 131 (July 2000): 170-172. The Record is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, which specializes in New York genealogy. Christopher Brooks (one of the authors) was a member of the editorial board in 2019. ($ Access to this article requires a FindMyPast subscription.)

• Unlike what a database that shall not be named claims, Hendrick Obe does NOT appear on any passenger list. See the Holland Society Yearbook of 1896, pp. 124-129, 141-158. The Holland Society of New York is a lineage society.

• He may have been a Dane from Øby according to John O. Evjen (Scandinavian Immigrants in New York, 1630-1674, 1916, p. 292).

• Isaac Newton Phelps-Stokes identified Hendrick Obe as Hendrick Hendricksen, the city drummer, in The iconography of Manhattan Island, 1915, vol. 2, p. 273. Stokes meticulously studied and described the inhabitants of lots within the Castello Plan in 1660. On Pearl Street, in 1660, Hendrick Obe owned the property between the lots of Claes Claessen Bordingh (partner of Pieter Jacobsen Marius) and Claes Jansen (a baker). At the time, the next lot was owned by Isaac Grevenraet.

• Hendrick Obe was a tavern keeper according to Eugene P. McParland. See: "Colonial Taverns And Tavern Keepers Of British New York City" in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, vol. 105 (1974), no. 4, p. 219-220. ($ Access to this article requires a FindMyPast subscription.)

• He signed the Remonstrance that convinced Stuyvesant to surrender New Netherland to the English in 1664.

• In Early Bergen County Families, file BCFam-O.pdf (2012), Patricia A. Wardell wrote that the Obes probably had six children. Those are the same six children as the ones listed by Lessard.

• In English Captives & Prisoners Remaining in New France (2015), Roger W. Lawrence gives the Obes six children (see page 14), but they are not all the same children as the ones listed by Lessard and Wardell. ($)

• Hendrick Obe and Aeltje Claes had seven children according to Isaac Horner (2008) and Simon Parker-Galbreath (page not dated; this research appears to have been published between 2015 and 2018). In 2019, the Brouwer Genealogy Database only gave Hendrick Hendricksz Obee and Aeltje Claes three children.

• Lines of descent in the United States are published in a few genealogies: David Cole's (1876) was recommended by William Nelson; the quality of Alvin Seaward Van Benthuysen's work (1953) is much lower, but it is a starting point. See also Josephine C. Frost's Wickham-Billard Genealogy (1935) and Stuyvesant Fish's Anthon Genealogy (1930).

• The first person to think that the captive André Ôbé/Aubé could be the son of Hendrick Hendricksen Obe and Aeltje Claes was a Catholic priest from New Brunswick, who passed away in 2009. He was a historian as well as a genealogist. His research collection is preserved for posterity by the provincial archives. His published research and final conclusions about André Aubé can be found in the book Beredsford. See: Donat Robichaud, Beredsford : le petit Nipisiguit (Beresford, New Brunswick, Canada: Donat Robichaud, 1984), 196-200.

Note: Since a number of French Canadians are interested in Hendrick Obe as the probable (not yet proven) father of our captive ancestor André Ôbé/Aubé, a brief explanation about American genealogy is required. American parish records are not as complete and detailed as Canadian Catholic records. This is why some authors only give a few children to this couple. They are naming the ones that are easy to prove and staying neutral about the rest. As for the authors and genealogists who give the couple as many as seven children, they are basing themselves on the sequence of births. The dates line up in a logical way, so they are including all children who look probable or possible. Such a comprehensive list is not a list of proven children: it is a list of possibilities. Since a number of records are ambiguous, more analysis and evidence are required to actually prove these births. Hendrick Hendricksen was unfortunately a VERY common name.

The following is not a complete list of these homonymous individuals. They are just the best known. See, for instance: Hendrick Hendricksen Kipp, Sr., Hendrick Hendricksen Kipp, Jr., and Hendrick Hendricksen van Doesburg.

There are even some genealogists who claim that the two children of a Hendrick Hendricksen and a Annetje Jans could belong to the Obes. It is absurd. Aeltje Claes is not Annetje Jans. Dutch names have variants, but they do not change that way. Aeltje is one of the Dutch equivalents of Adelaide. Annetje corresponds to Anna in English. As for the patronymics Claes (daughter of Claes, i.e. Nicholas) and Jans (daughter of Jan, i.e. John), they are not interchangeable. Those are two different women.

Comment to French Canadians: That kind of nonsensical suggestion (Aeltje Claes = Annetje Jans) is either coming from someone who did not take the time to learn about the principles of Dutch genealogy, or it is a passive-agressive way of misleading you in order to mess with you. Americans have a different relationship to genealogy. It is very difficult compared to ours because of their large number of missing and ambiguous records. Naturally, this means that there is a learning curve, and that mistakes are bound to happen. Unfortunately, there also seems to be a lot of dishonest actors who enjoy making the task even more difficult for researchers by hiding information, which they know exists, purposefully making false claims to discourage you, introducing falsehoods in their own research to make others jump through hoops while trying to verify its validity, etc. Ignore these people, stay the course, and go find quality guides written by authorities instead.

There are strange hurdles to overcome in New York research. For instance, the first volume of land-title deeds for New Amsterdam is not in chronological order. The pages are out of sequence in such a way that they look like they were shuffled... like cards! They might have been dropped on the floor instead, but it is very odd.

Hendrick Hendricksen Obe is a particularly difficult settler to research, even according to New Netherland standards, so Obe genealogists really don't need the obstructionism and obfuscation.

The following is basic information taken from the source: Marie-Pierre Lessard, Hendrick Hendricksen Obe, the Drummer: A Biography with Critical Notes on the Dally, Hoppe, Kip, and Grevenraet Genealogies; Also Discussing Hendrick Hendricksen van Eerlant and Aeltje Claes of Kingston, New York (Denmark: Marie-Pierre Lessard, 2020). ($)

• The Obes had six children who can be proven according to the Genealogical Proof Standard. Catharina is not one of them.

• There were about 20 Hendrick Hendricksens who could be conflated (confused) with Hendrick Obe or each other. Hendrick Hendricksen van Doesburg is not the drummer. Errors were also found in Kip genealogies since researchers have apparently never systematically researched and organized records pertaining to the various Hendrick Hendricksens before... This means that the genealogies published prior to 2020 about the better-known Hendrick Hendricksens almost all have serious errors in them.

It is not possible to associate all records with a particular man. Some of these Hendricks did not leave much of a trace in the surviving records. Making assumptions and not taking the time to research all men of the same name, including the low-profile ones, lead to mistaken identities. In this type of situation, it is unconscionable to claim that two men with different trades, different places of origin or residence, etc., must be the same man. It is also unconscionable to make up fictitious parents like "Hendrick Hendricksen and Marritje Jans," who just happen to have the same names as the subject (Hendrick Obe) and his second wife. (Right!) Saying "should" or "I think" just isn't enough. Genealogists need to prove their claims with original sources (i.e. primary sources or at least transcripts and translations), not unsourced and copied-and-pasted wild guesses. Assuming that there were only a few of those Hendricks and, therefore, that records A and B must belong to H1 or H2 is not a scientifically valid conclusion, and it is unlikely to be true.

With about 20 Hendricks to sort out in New Netherland, genealogists can imagine how much work that represents. Hopefully, Hendrick Hendricksen Obe, the Drummer: A Biography with Critical Notes (2020) does not contain too many errors. Considering the complexity of the endeavour, the author invites you to flag them if you find any!

• This Hendrick Hendricksen, the drummer, was first identified as Hendrick Hendricksen Obe in 1650-1651. Obe can be proven to be a geographical cognomen (nickname). Moreover, it can be proven to be a place of origin, and there are also strong reasons to believe that this location is in Denmark and not anywhere else in Scandinavia. The two first facts can be simply found by conducting a reasonably exhaustive research. The last two assertions require correlating information found in different records. The first assertion (it is a place of origin) is easier to prove than the second (it is almost certainly a village in Denmark).

• The original deeds of land (in Dutch) were all found in spite of the shuffled mess.

It is worth noting that similar names appear among the witnesses to this couple's baptisms, and the couples for whom Hendrick Hendricksen Obe and Aeltje Claes acted as sponsors.

Baptisms of their children:

1652 Jul 28; Hendrick Hendrickszen; Lysbeth; Kempen Barentszen, Aeltie Schryvers
1654 Jan 07; Hendrick Hendrickszen; Hendrick; Willem Vestius, Aeltje Schryvers
1657 Apr 15; Hendrick Tamboer, Aeltje Claes; Claes; Pieter Couwenhoven, Hester Simons
1658 Jun 05; Hendrick Obee, Aeltje Claes; Lydia; Cornelis Vanlangevelt, Susanna Lees
1659 Aug 17; Hendrick Hendrickszen Obee, Aeltje Claes; Grietie; Laurens Corneliszen, Susanna Bording
1661 May 01; Hendrick Hendrickszen, Aeltie Hendricks; Claes; Anthony de Mill, Hester Couwenhoven