Jan Joosten van Meteren - Wrong Parents

The first incongruous aspect that struck me was that culturally Jan's mother would not have taken her husband's last name, this was not a Dutch custom and even in the Netherlands today is only optional.

I was going to delete "Van Meteran" from her name fields and revert to her birth surname, "Anneken", but this also looked odd as Anneken should either be her surname or a patronym but Anneken is a girl's name.

I checked the conflicting data and found an alternative name hidden by merging of Anneke Ariens, on consideration that her father's name is displayed as Arian Jens (possibly a variant of Adriaan Jans) this name configuration would make a lot more sense than Arience Van Meteren (Anneken).

Anneke Ariens

While considering Jan Joosten's mother's names the even more obvious error struck me:

How can a man named Jan Joost(s)en possible be the son of a man named Melchior?

There has been a parental conflict resolved previously in favour of the current parents. The About of Jan's mother includes a comment that she was married to Joost Jans van Meteren and a link to a supporting web page.

Conversely there are several MH Smart Matches on Jan Joosten's profile of which the only one that displays parents shows Melchoir as the father.

you could be right on that...think i'll do a bit of checking my self....thanks Axex.

I have found a very comprehensive study. I will post a link and rework the tree.

http://www.skeeterkitefly.com/finelineage_V2.htm

It seems like a very comprehensive and well researched site, with a lack of primary sources to rely on i dont see that we are going to find much better.

I will have to read thru it again but the short version to my reading so far is that Melchior is definitely not Jan's father. Joost Jans may be Jan Joostens father but probably isn't. We will most likely end up with no parents for Jan.

This also throws doubt on Jan's birth location. If he is from some random Van Meteren family, which had already long left Meteren, there is no way for us to know where in the Netherlands he was living prior to his emigration.

I have to refresh my memory regarding Jan's wife and her first husband as that might give some clues.