Welcome

Welcome to The van Eessen DNA blog! The starting point for this blog is my own paper trail genealogical research that traces my direct paternal lineage back to the polder village of Slijpe, now part of Middelkerke at the Flemish North Sea coast, where the parish registers of 1634 provide the earliest known record so far of Nicolaas van Eessen(seune). Nicolaas is the most distant known paternal ancestor (MDKA) of all currently living Flemish people with the surnames Van Eessen, Vaneessen en Vanheessen.

Within a genealogical timeframe, this blog will therefore - until further research breakthroughs - only be able to provide meaningful information to direct descendants of Nicolaas. However, between 1088 and 1634 there are plenty of mentions of the surname van Eessen (and variants) in diverse records. One of the challenges is to understand how these relate to our Nicolaas.

Beyond the genealogical timeframe, another important goal of this blog is to:

• bring together and inform all people with one of the many variants of the van Eessen surname, regardless of their country of origin (e.g. Van Eessen, Vaneessen, Vanheessen, Vanes(s)che, Van Essche, Vanhessche, Van Hessche, Van Hese, Vanhese, Van Essen, Vanhessen, ... in Flanders; van Heesen, van Heezen, van Hees, van Essen, van Hessen, van Hesse, ... in the Netherlands; other variants in other countries, possibly unknown to me at present); 
• eventually reveal or disprove possible kinship between these different namesakes (which can be done using genetic genealogy, a quickly developing and very promising approach to try to move beyond the brick wall of classical genealogy), something for which a Surname DNA Project can be set up;
• understand how the different surname variant groups fit into the big patrilineal human family tree;
• develop a broader one-name study of the different surname variants.

Although most people with a variant of the surname presumably live in the Low Countries and therefore speak native Dutch, I have decided to keep this blog in English in order to maximise the odds of reaching and involving all relevant people. 

The site is currently very much 'under construction' and I intend to feed it with regular updates. I hope you'll find something of interest. Feel free to engage, comment, ask questions, get in touch!