On January 20, 1642, Abram Staes published his wedding banns with Trijntgen Jochemse.  Trijntgen’s sister, Nelletje, and a Jan Jacobs, who carried a note from Trijntgen’s mother, Trijntgen Gerrits, giving permission for her daughter to marry, both witnessed the banns.⁹  Abram reported that both of his parents, Isaac Staes and Sara Lauwers, were deceased and that Dirk Janzs, his “uncle and a surgeon,” was a witness for him.  In this document, Staes stated that his age was twenty-four and that he was a surgeon; Trijntgen reported that her age was eighteen.¹⁰  In his 1642 contract with Kiliaen van Rensselaer, Abram also stated that he was twenty-four years old.¹¹  Abram, however, was born in January 1620 and Trijntgen Joachimse in 1622, making Abram twenty-two at the time of the marriage and Trijntgen twenty years old in February 1642.¹² Why Abram’s age is misstated in the contract and both his and his bride’s ages are misstated in the banns is unknown. One possible explanation, however, is that the age of majority in seventeenth-century Holland was twenty-five for males and twenty for females.¹³  Abram married without a guardian’s permission.

  The marriage banns raised another question regarding the relation between Dirck Janzs., the uncle who witnessed the marriage, and Abram.  Previous genealogies did not mention Dirck. A review of the wedding banns, however, clearly shows that Jansz. was both an uncle and a surgeon, but the exact manner in which he was related to Abram was unknown. Communication with Janny Venema, author of Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier 1652-1664, provided a clue.¹⁴ A query was subsequently sent to the Amsterdam City Archives asking if Jan Dircksen Brum, the surgeon who recommended Abram to Kiliaen van Rennselaer, was the father of, or related to, Dirck. This question was raised because the Dutch patronymic system created the possibility that Jan Dircksen Brumer might be Dirck’s father.  Amsterdam records proved that there was no family link between Brumer and Dirck.¹⁵Instead, further archival investigation revealed that Dirck had married Margeriet (or Gretchen) Staes, the fifth child of Hans Staes, Abram’s grandfather.  Gretchen was a daughter from the second marriage of Hans Staes to Elisabet Honckelboer.¹⁶

  Amsterdam domine Reverend Jacobus Laurentius married Abram and Trijntgen.  It was also Laurentius who recommended Johannes Megapolensis as the first Reformed minister at Rensselaerswijck-Fort Orange to Kiliaen van Rensselaer.  Megapolensis traveled to New Netherland aboard the same ship, den Houttuyn, as Abram Staes.¹⁷  Laurentius, coincidentally, also married Joachim Gijsen and Trijntgen Gerritsz, Trijntgen Jochemse’s parents.¹⁸

9 Wedding Banns, January 9, 1642, DTB 457, p. 149, GAA.
10 Ibid.; DTB Marriages 990/158, October 26, 1642, Nieuwe Kirk, GAA.
11 VRBM, 678.
12 DTB 40 folio 160 (1622), GAA.
13 Sir Johannes Wilhelmus Wessels, History of the Roman-Dutch Law (Grahamstown, Cape Colony, 1908), 419–20.
14 Communication with Dr. Janny Venema, August 20, 2009.
15 Communication with Dr. Jan E. A. Boomgaard, October 28, 2009.
16 Wedding Banns of Hans Staes and Elisabet Honckelboer, August 9, 1605, DTB 431, p. 168 NK & ACA NOT ARCH 21-M fol. 7, GAA.
17 VBRM, 606-608, 609.
18 Wedding Banns of Gijsen and Gerritzs DTB 416 folio 228 and DTB 411 page 411 (1605), GAA.