This is the coat of arms of the (unrelated?) huguenot Van der Voort family from Amsterdam, who were from Flanders originally. It is very similar to the coat of arms on the sealing rings my great-grandfather Asuerus van der Voort had made for himself on the 12th of August 1872. He believed to be a descendant of this family, or at least wanted others to believe this. The picture was kindly sent to me by Walter Leonard ("Len") Vandivere, USA. The founding father of the US branch of this family was Michael Pauluszen Vandervoort, who was born in Dendermonde, Flanders, about 1615. Michael emigrated from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam, New Netherlands (now New York) in the 1630s. Interestingly, Len Vandivere writes that according to his sources, this coat of arms also belonged to the Van der Voort of "Bois-de-Duc, Belgium," and that it is also identical to the one registered for "Van der Voort van Deuren of Schiedam, Netherlands." Bois-le-Duc is of course the French name for 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands - where according to my great-grandfather the archive, which he said would have proved his descendancy from this family, was lost in a fire.

Han's Homepage
(Back home)
(Back to Chapter Genealogy)