The American story of the Van Wie family begins with an act of courage and enterprise: a transatlantic voyage. Hendrick Gerritse Van Wie, born in the Netherlands around 1646, was the patriarch who first brought his family name to the shores of North America. He sailed from Holland aboard the ship de Endracht (The Unity or Concord) on April 17, 1664, arriving in the colony of New Netherland by summer.1 His arrival was timed at a moment of profound transition; within months, the English would seize control of the colony from the Dutch, renaming its capital from New Amsterdam to New York. Hendrick Gerritse stepped ashore not merely into a new land, but into a new political reality.
Upon his arrival, Hendrick settled in the region of Beverwyck, the Dutch fur-trading post that the English would rename Albany. It was here that he laid the literal and figurative foundation for his family's future. After working on various farms, he began renting a tract of land known as Domine's Hoeck (the Minister's Corner) as early as 1672. By 1679, he had purchased the land and built a house on a prominent spot along the Hudson River. This location would become the anchor of the Van Wie family's identity for the next 150 years, so intrinsically linked to them that it became known to all as "Van Wie's Point". The establishment of this homestead marked the family's transition from landless immigrants to landed proprietors. The name "Van Wie" itself was likely adopted around this time to distinguish Hendrick's family from the many other families in the region who used the patronymic "Gerritse" (son of Gerrit). The land gave them not just a home, but a unique identity.
Around 1675, he married Eytje Ariaansz, and together they had a large family of at least nine children, including Gerrit, Jannetje, Jan, and Hendrick Jr. During King William's War, he served as a volunteer in a colonial expedition against the French in Canada. In the summer of 1691, during an assault on Fort La Prairie near Montreal, he was "desperately wounded". He was brought back to Albany but died from his injuries soon after. He had filed a will in 1690, leaving his estate to his wife Eytje on the condition that she raise their children; she remarried in 1692.

Jan Hendrickse Van Wie, born in Albany on August 18, 1686. His life illustrates the family's successful transition from Dutch newcomers to established members of the English colonial gentry in the Hudson Valley.
The most telling evidence of this ascent is found in the colonial records of the era. In documents from 1720 and 1742, Jan Van Wie is listed as a "freeholder" of Rensselaerswyck. Unlike his father, who began his life in America as a tenant farmer renting land, a freeholder owned his property outright. This ownership conferred not only financial stability but also significant social standing and, crucially, the right to vote.
Jan's married Catharina Huyck around 1708 and raised a large family in the Albany area, with seven children baptized in the local Reformed Dutch Church between 1709 and 1723. Among them was a son named Andries, baptized on November 20, 1720. Jan Hendrickse Van Wie died on September 3, 1748, leaving behind a legacy far more secure than the one he had inherited.

The son of Jan Van Wie and Catharina Huyck, Andries continued the family tradition of strengthening local ties through marriage. In 1745, he wed Helena Van Arnhem, a member of another prominent Dutch family in the region, and together they raised at least five children, including their son Abraham, born in 1753. For the first five decades of his life, Andries lived as a farmer and subject of the British Crown.
When the conflict with Great Britain erupted into war, Andries, then in his mid-fifties, answered the call to arms. He served as a Private in the 5th Regiment of the Albany County Militia. The Albany County Militia played a strategically vital role in the American Revolution. Its primary mission was to defend the Hudson Valley, a critical artery that, if captured by the British, could have severed New England from the other colonies and doomed the Patriot cause. The citizen-soldiers of this militia, men like Andries Van Wie, were the frontline defenders against British invasions from Canada, Tory insurrections, and raids by allied Native American forces. His service, documented in military rolls and recognized by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).
Andries's military record also helps clarify a point of genealogical confusion. While some family trees suggest he died as early as 1757, DAR records confirm his service in the militia and list his death as occurring sometime after March 4, 1780, firmly placing him within the revolutionary generation. He lived to see the tide of the war turn in the Patriots' favor, much of it happening in his own backyard during the Saratoga Campaign of 1777.

Abraham Van Wie was Born on November 18, 1753. In February 1777, he married Jacomyntje Burhans, a woman from another established Hudson Valley family. That same year, the British launched the Saratoga Campaign, a massive invasion from Canada aimed at capturing Albany and seizing control of the Hudson. The American victory at Saratoga in the autumn of 1777, a battle fought just north of Abraham's home, was the turning point of the war.
While his father's generation fought the war, Abraham's generation was tasked with building the peace and constructing a new society. The first federal census, taken in 1790, places Abraham and his growing family in the town of Watervliet, Albany County. The town of Watervliet had been newly created from the vast lands of the former Manor of Rensselaerswyck, a semi-feudal estate where tenants had owed service and rent to a single landlord, the patroon. The hierarchical, aristocratic world of the Dutch and English colonial systems was giving way to the more egalitarian, republican structures of the new nation.
Abraham's life was dedicated to the fundamental work of this new republic: raising a family and establishing a livelihood in a country finding its footing. He and Jacomyntje had seven children, including a son they named Andries, born on December 5, 1777, in the very midst of the war. Abraham lived until 1828, long enough to see the United States firmly established and expanding westward.

Andries A. Van Wie, was born on December 5, 1777, to Abraham Van Wie and Jacomyntje Burhans. His birth makes him one of the first children in the lineage born a citizen of a new, independent nation rather than a subject of a distant king.
It is at this point in the family's history, however, that the documentary trail becomes complex, presenting a challenge common in genealogical research.

The earliest confirmed ancestor in this line is George Donald MacKay. Born in the rugged, wind-swept parish of Eddrachillis in the County of Sutherland, Scotland, his life coincided with the "Year of the Sheep" and the beginning of the Highland Clearances. As the traditional clan lands were sold and partitioned, the opportunities for military service or cattle droving vanished, forcing him to exist on the margins of a changing economy.

George married Christina Morrison, a descendant of a smaller clan traditionally allied with the Mackays. Records indicate that he died in 1862, likely in Caithness on the east coast of Scotland. This movement from the west coast to Caithness was a common pattern for displaced tenants, serving as a staging ground for the inevitable crossing of the Atlantic. While George may have died in Scotland, he raised the generation that would take the family name to the New World.

Andrew Van Wie was born in 1816. After nearly 150 years rooted in the Albany area, Andrew's generation moved westward into Montgomery County, a region that was, in the early 19th century, part of New York's rapidly developing frontier.
Andrew's generation was the "Erie Canal Generation." The completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 was a monumental event in American history, transforming the Mohawk Valley, where Montgomery County is located, from a relatively remote area into a bustling corridor of commerce, migration, and agriculture. The canal created a water highway connecting the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, opening up vast new markets for farmers and making westward settlement more accessible than ever before.
Just as Hendrick Gerritse had established the family in the new world of Albany, Andrew's generation established the family in the new world of the Mohawk Valley. A crucial step in putting down roots in this new community would have been Andrew's marriage to Julia Ann Clute. The Clute family was also present in the Montgomery County region, and such a marriage would have integrated the newly arrived Van Wies into the existing social and kinship networks of their new home. Andrew Van Wie's life embodies the spirit of internal migration and the relentless pursuit of opportunity that defined 19th-century America.

The pivotal figure in the establishment of the family in Canada is Robert McKay. Born in Sutherland, he emigrated to Canada between 1842 and 1855, driven by a hunger for land ownership that was denied to him in Scotland. He settled in Kincardine Township, Bruce County, Ontario—an area known at the time as the "Queen's Bush," a vast territory of dense hardwood forest.

Robert married Catherine Gunn, a union that was historically significant. In Scotland, the McKays and Gunns had a history of bitter feuding, but in the context of the Canadian frontier, these old rivalries evaporated. Life in the Queen's Bush was grueling; the family lived in a log shanty while Robert cleared the massive timber, producing potash from the ashes as their primary cash crop. By the time of his death in 1870 at the age of 51, he had successfully transitioned from a pioneer in a shanty to an established farmer in a frame house, leaving a foothold for his children in the New World.

David Carl Van Wie, son of Andrew and Anna. In 1860, he and three of his brothers, William, Daniel, and John, joined the Union Army to fight in the Civil War. David enlisted in Company G, 16th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, and served until he fell ill in July 1863. After recuperating at home in Kilbourn (now Wisconsin Dells), he re-enlisted in February 1864, this time with his brother William in the famed Company K, "Iron Brigade" 6th Regiment Wisconsin Infantry. He fought in numerous major battles, including Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor, and was present at Appomattox Courthouse when General Lee surrendered.
After the war, he was known as "Captain Dave". He worked as a logger and a steamboat pilot on the Wisconsin River. In the early 1880s, he and his wife, Jennie, bought Cold Water Canyon, where they built a home, a restaurant, and a boarding house. He passed away there at the age of 60.

While his father conquered the forests of Southern Ontario, George McKay faced a new challenge: land scarcity. With the fertile lands of Bruce County fully settled, George looked northward to the "New Ontario" promoted by the government. In a secondary migration, he moved his family to the rugged Canadian Shield country of Leeburn, located in the unorganized North Algoma District.

George married Matilda Ruth Craig Service, an Irish immigrant whose Ulster-Scots heritage introduced a new cultural dimension to the family tree. Life in Leeburn was a step back into the frontier; the terrain was rocky and broken, suitable only for mixed farming. To support his family, George worked in winter logging camps and supplied produce to the copper mines at Bruce Mines. He died in 1922 and was buried in the Aberdeen Cemetery, a pioneer graveyard that holds the history of the township.

David Carl Van Wie was the only child of Captain Dave and Jennie, born in the family home at Cold Water Canyon in 1887. After leaving high school, he moved to Kenosha to enter the electrical business, and it was there that he met his wife, Alma Balsmeider. They returned to Kilbourn, where he built a stand at the canyon and worked as a plumber during the winters. He and Alma had four children: Charles, Robert Harry, Ralph Jack, and Helen. He passed away in 1941.

Robert John McKay's life spanned the maturation of the Algoma District from a raw settlement to an established rural community. He married Idabelle Maciver, a descendant of the "Lewis Settlers" who had emigrated from the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides. Through her, the family re-infused its connection to Highland culture, retaining the Gaelic language and strict Sabbatarian customs well into the 20th century.

The couple made their life in the village of Desbarats, a strategic hub located on the Canadian Pacific Railway line. By Robert John's time, the subsistence phase of the family history was over. The local economy had diversified into sawmills, creameries, and tourism. The McKays were integral to the social fabric of the village, living through the transition brought by the automobile and the telephone. Robert John died in 1972, having bridged the gap between the pioneer era and the modern age.

Ralph Jack Van Wie was born on December 13, 1922, to David Carl and Alma Van Wie. He continued the family line in the Wisconsin Dells area. He married Dorothy Bisely, and together they had six children: Bob, John, Bill, Dave, Elizabeth, and Mary.

Known as "Grant," Robert Donald Grant McKay represents the transition from the rural, agricultural roots of the family to the urban, commercial class of the late 20th century. Coming of age during World War II, he served in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), a crucible that exposed him to advanced mechanics and a wider world beyond his farming community. After the war, his entrepreneurial drive pushed him to acquire a franchise for Chrysler marine outboard motors, capitalizing on the post-war boating boom.

His success in the marine business caught the attention of the Chrysler Corporation, which recruited him as a district sales manager. This career shift precipitated the family's final migration: from Canada to the United States. After stops in Ohio and Detroit, Grant established his own legacy in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1978, he purchased Coon Rapids Chrysler Plymouth, expanding it into a significant automotive group. He married Shirley Jean Hadden, uniting two families with deep pioneer roots in Algoma. Grant passed away in 1992, a man who had traveled far from the subsistence farms of his ancestors to the center of American commerce.

John C. Van Wie was a distinguished U.S. Army veteran, a respected business leader, and a dedicated philanthropist who left an indelible mark on his community of Wisconsin Dells. His life was characterized by a deep commitment to service, both through his professional endeavors and his extensive charitable work.
For many years, John, alongside his wife Joanne, owned and operated Dells Lumber & Construction. The family business was a cornerstone of the local economy, and under his leadership, it became known for its quality and integrity. After a long and successful career, John and Joanne retired in 2010, leaving behind a legacy of hard work and community investment.
Beyond his business acumen, John was profoundly committed to giving back. He was a passionate supporter of Easterseals Wisconsin, where he served on the Board of Directors for many years, including a term as Chairman. His leadership and fundraising efforts significantly impacted the organization's ability to serve children and adults with disabilities.
In memory of their son, Gregory, John and his family established the Gregory C. Van Wie Charitable Foundation. This foundation has become a major philanthropic force in the Wisconsin Dells area, providing crucial funding to numerous community organizations and continuing the Van Wie family’s legacy of generosity.
John C. Van Wie passed away in January 2020, but his contributions as a community leader, veteran, and philanthropist continue to resonate, reflecting a life well-lived in service to others.