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Is your family name Beerling, Beerlink or Berling?
Check my family tree and genealogy, maybe we are related ...
Our branch of the Beerling family tree is located in The Netherlands (a.k.a. Holland) and originates in the German Emsland, the north western part of Germany, next to the Dutch-German border.
Around 1820 members of the German Berling family crossed the border and migrated as 'colonists' to the uninhabited moors of the Dutch province of Drenthe. Together with other Emslanders they founded the village Nieuw-Schoonebeek (New Schoonebeek, some miles from the allready existing village of Schoonebeek).
This migration from one side of the border to the other doesn't sound like a big thing. But still, they moved to a completely different country, with a different dominant religion (Protestant versus Catholic) and with a completely different history. With, for example, a war of independence against Spain, unification as one of the first European republics, later a kingdom under Napoleon and independence again under the House of Orange. A very different country from the still fragmented Germany of the early 1800s with all its smaller and larger competing principalities and kingdoms.
The reasons for this German migration to the Netherlands were diverse: overpopulation, decades of war and poverty, lack of farmland for all the sons of farming families, declining opportunities for traditional seasonal work in the Netherlands, etc. The drying up of swamps and moors and the sale of common grounds in bits and pieces gave these former landless peasants from Germany the chance for a new start in the Netherlands.
After their arrival in Drenthe the Berling family changed its name to Beerling. This one extra letter didn't make much difference to the pronunciation of the family name. Both names sound almost identical in German and in Dutch. And in the on both sides of the border shared lower-saxon dialect the names sound identical.
One of the sons of the Berling family was mistakenly registered as Beerlink instead of Beerling. So the family branch with that name also descends directly from the original settler family in Nieuw-Schoonebeek.
For english speaking members of the Beerling family tree: the original German/Dutch pronunciation sounds more like Bearling (as in grizzly bear) and not Beerling (as in the alcoholic beverage).
During the mid 19th century members of the Dutch and German Beerling/Berling family tree, like many other Emslanders also migrated to more far away countries. A third wave of migration took place in the mid 20th century. Descendants of the Berling / Beerling / Beerlink family can now be found in countries like Australia, Canada and the USA.
The link to the Beerling surname in the UK is still unclear. Perhaps an earlier branch in the family tree, migrated from Germany or Holland in the 1600s - 1700s. Or even earlier from Scandinavia. Recent DNA research for our branch in the family tree shows an ancestry of more than 70% in Scandinavia.
Viking blood, so to say. We never knew...
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