Story
Gerrit Van der Poel, whom it has been difficult to trace his family with accuracy, is supposed by Talcott, who wrote the Van der Poel Genealogy, to have been born at Gorcum, or Gorinchem, in 1590. Gorcum is a fortified town of the Netherlands in South Holland, near the boundary of Brabant. It is on the Maas, an estuary of the Rhine, at the influx of the Linge, twenty-twomiles E. S. E. of Rotterdam. It has a college, and is the birthplace of several emminent Dutch painters. The coat of arms indicates that he was engaged in sheep raising, which was an industry largely carried on in Holland, or possibly in the manufacture of cloth. There are many indications that he was of patrician, if not noble birth, and a man of fortune and position. It was generally the rich and influential citizens whom the war with Spain forced to escape the country. The poor, having nothing to lose, did not leave their homes.
From 1572, when the revolt of the Netherlands inaugurated the struggle with the Empire of Spain for religious and political freedom until peace was secured by the recognition of the independence of Holland by Spain in January 1648. Gorcum was the scene of active operations.
Gorcum was the first city taken by the "Water Gueux," or Revolutionists, from the Spaniards, in 1572. But they sullied their victory with the murder of nineteen Catholic priests. The Anniversary of the Holy Martyrs of Gorcum is still observed in the Romish calendar. The people of Holland were principally fishermen and shepherds. The Van der Poels were landed proprietors, and may have been largely engaged in raising sheep, or in the manufacture of cloth; hence the sheep shears on the family crest.
The family had been residents for centuries of Gorcum, but the war with Spain made necessary some change in their position. It was a time when from every border town families, and individuals, were making their escape.
"The most respected and opulent of the citizens left as the Spanish armies advanced. Forth from the lower provinces went the best and wealtiest and ablest of its inhabitants, taking with them to Holland their money, their industry, and that prosperity which had made the Netherlands what they were, and Holland throve and prospered in spite of the war."--E. Everett Green.
A publication states that the Vanderpoel family were originally from Gorichem, or Gorinchem, on the Rhine. In the year 1600 they dispersed, one branch eventually settling in Amsterdam. It is said that from that branch the family in America are descended, although there seems to be no account of the emigration to this country, but they are recorded as of Dort, or, as it is usually called, Dordrecht, in Southern Holland and are supposed to have emigrated in the early part of the seventeenth century.
Teunis (Anthony) Cornelis Van der Poel was in Beverwyck (Albany) about 1660, but he seems to have had no male descendants.