A Discovery in the Netherlands

My 23andme test had connections made to a few countries one particularly being the Netherlands. A further look revealed the match was considered highly likely and was the only of its kind on the test. This was definitely surprising to me as I did not have any previous knowledge of a Dutch ancestor only of a Belgian ancestor, Leonard Van Lanen. I even had been told he was born in Belgium.

I decided I was look further into that Leonard to see if my beliefs had been false and turns out they were. Quite quickly I found a Find A Grave page for Leonard searching only his name and De Pere as that is were I assumed he was from. 

leonard-van_lanen 

Listed on his birthplace was De Pere which didn't seem to be that far from what I had thought because it may have been that his parents were both from Belgium. I entered both his information and his wife's information into Ancestry. 

Shortly after I received a notification for a possible mother and father match. I ended up matching these matches to the tree of a second cousin on MyHeritage which proved that it was in fact correct. At this point, ancestry was connecti
ng to a tree of a relative so I kept adding any matches it would give me for this branch. What I stumbled upon was a long line of strictly Dutch ancestors going back to the 1550s. A mere two were outside of the Netherlands and they were only from England and Holland!