My name is Dave Twyver and I am descended from van Twuijvers in The Netherlands. I created this website to collect information about my ancestors in Noord Holland and their descendants in North America.
My grandfather, Jacob van Twuyver, immigrated to Canada in 1911 with his wife and newborn daughter. His sister Trijntje had come two years earlier. He left behind a brother, Cornelis, and another sister, Marijtje. I began searching for their descendants in Holland as a retirement project in early 2006. The return address on an old postcard to my grandfather after WWII was the clue that let me find them. In April of that year I took a trip with cousin Dennis to Holland to meet our achterneven (second cousins). You can read my journal of our trip here.
Cousin Linda organized a reunion at my house on Vancouver Island in September, 2006 for our extended Canadian van Twuyver family. I returned to Holland in 2010 with my sister and brother and some of our children to introduce them to my Dutch cousins and to celebrate the restoration of our family windmill.
Much of the genealogical data on this website is extracted from a booklet by J.H. Geertzenwijk of Delft who researched a number of Noord Holland families 25 years ago. Other information has been contributed by current van Twuyvers from across Canada and the US.
Our name has been spelled various ways over the centuries: van het Weiver, van 't Wuiver, van Twuijver (most common in Holland), van Twuyver and van Twyver. "Wuiver" is an archaic Dutch word for pond or swamp. So the name literally translates as "from the swamp". Netherlands means "low lands" and much of the country was once underwater and swamp land. One of my ancestors, Klaas Pieterzsn van Twuijver (1720-1781) and his sons operated the Ooster-N windmill for almost 100 years to drain the swamps in the Zijpe area and create "polders" or fields. He is also the ancestor of many of the van Twuyvers in the US.
If you have any questions or comments about the information on this site, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.
