Mathys Coenratsen Houghtaling

(~1639 to 1706)

From:  Year book of Holland Society of NY Vols 1906" the following variants are recognized:  Hoogtelink, Hooghtelink, Hooghteelingh, Hoogteelink, Hooghtelingh, Hooghteling, Hooghteeling, Hoogteeling, Hoogtelinck, Hoogtelink,  Hoogtieling, Hoogteling, Hoogetelink, Hooghtelinck.

Also from the source below:  The fifty or more variations in spelling, ranging from Hogdielen to Hultailen to Hoochtelink, represent a good example of phonetic recordings by Dutch, German and English clerks and ministers as this name became Anglicized and evolved into the present forms of Houghtaling, Hotaling, and Hotelling.

From:  The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol. 101 Number 4 entitled: Mathys Coenradtsen Houghtaling of Coxsackie, New York and his Descendants by Constance Ross Ulrich:

The Houghtaling families in America stem from two immigrants to New York State in the mid-seventeenth century, both of Dutch origin, but probably unrelated:  Jan Willemsen Houghtaling of Kingston, Ulster County and Mathys Coenradt Houghtaling of Coxsackie, Greene County. 

It is believed that he did not have a surname in Holland, but that he adopted the name Houghtaling about 1675, possibly twenty years after his arrival in America.  In 1667 at Wiltwyck (Kingston) he was exposed to this surname when he appeared in court before Jan Willemsen Houghtaling, one of its magistrates, who had been using the surname as early as 1661.

Mathy's Coenradtsen name first appeared on a list of boys and girls from the alshouse in Amsterdam, Holland, so were being sent to the New World to work for the Dutch West India Company and to "increase the population of New Netherland".  The list is dated May 27, 1655 and includes "Mathys Coenratsen, 16 years of age." One account of the unusual combination of names, Mathys Coenraets (the almshouse child) is probably identical with Mathys Coenraets of Albany, according to the late William J. Hoffman, an authority on early Dutch immigrants.  He notes the apparent discrepancy in their ages, (the almshouse child having been born about 1639 and the Albany settler about 1644, but adds, "Ages as given in records were notoriously incorrect and these are not far apart."

Mathys is assumed to have arrived in America about 1655.  He doesn't appear in records again until Nov. 8, 1667, when he appears in court at Kingston in a suit for wages due him from Reyn'Van Coelen. Again in 1668, he was brought into court for declaring, "Damn the King and the Devil fetch the King!" while chopping wood on a Sunday morning.

I appear to descend by two paths:

By virtue of the above; I am both 8^th and 9^th great-grandson of Mathys Coenratsen Houghtaling and my own 9^th cousin (one generation removed).  As of Feb. 2001, I show 877 descendants of Mathys [this number may includes duplicate individuals, the result of dual relationships].

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