Van Valkenburg Castle

If you fly right on over to Holland/ Belgium

You could find Castles  if you are a descendant of the Van Valkenburg you would be thrilled to go and see where these ancestors came from.

My Van Valkenburg is from Dorothy Hainer daughter of Albert Hainer & Catherine Vollick.  Dorothy was born in Ontario.  She married David Putman in Niagara, Ontario

Present day Ariel view of Castle Van Valkenburg

It's so fun to find out my Family History!!!









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"How the Castle
Came to Ruin

The story starts in the year 1648, when Holland became an independent nation, after being a Spanish colony. The southern provincies (now Belgium) however, remained Spanish soil. The borders were unclear which resulted into many struggles and battles.
The Spanish presence was weak (too far away from the homeland), so there was pressure from Holland and from France to conquer those provinces.
The French king Louis XIV was successful as he pushed north and conquered Valkenburg. Maastricht (the province capital) remained a strong Dutch bastion, but now under threat from the Valkenburg fortress.
Stadtholder Willem III (in Maastricht) sent "commandos" to Valkenburg and captured the city for a special mission:
On December 6th, 1672, the castle was blown up with gunpowder and explosives. Willem III decided not to conquer the town and to use the castle as a fortress, but simply to destroy and leave. This was effective, because the French were no now longer interested. With Valkenburg eliminated as a stronghold the town became a quiet village with little strategic importance for centuries to come. Stadtholder Willem III later went on to become King William III of England."

from  http://www.navvf.org/

"Valkenburg

There are actually three Valkenburg towns in the Netherlands: Valkenburg aan de Geul (Valkenburg on the Geul River), Oud Valkenburg (Old Valkenburg), both in the Limburg Province in the southeast of the Netherlands, near Maastricht.

See vvv South Limburg and http://www.visitvalkenburg.nl (in Dutch)


There is also Valkenburg, Zuid-Holland (Valkenburg South Holland) on the Rijn river not too far from Leiden, which is noted for having a big Royal Navy - NATO airbase and which had a large archeaological dig of ancient Roman hill-forts during the 1980s. "




All information came from www.navvf.org