By mentioning that your surname is Werry , elderly people in Kerkrade would ask: "From which Werrys? The Spekholzerheide Werrys?"
(Spekholzerheide is a certain area of Kerkrade).
Mostly they mean the Werrys from the "Pleinstraat" (straat=street), because those people ran a bakery in the past. Or they mean the Werrys from the "Drievogelstraat", for they used to be auto mechanics.
As they all were tradespeople from Spekholzerheide, they were well known. Sorry to say, but we are not descendants of those Werrys and so we are not well known.

Although we would appreciate people spelling our surname correctly (Werrij in our case), this name is probably written in the English linguistic area only one way: as Werry. The reason why the name Werry in the Netherlands is written in so many different ways is because in the past, it simply depended on the person who wrote it down (a priest or later a registrar of births, marriages and deaths). Most people could not write themselves, so the clerk wrote down what he thought he heard.
If you want to be sure about the correct spelling of your ancestors surname, you'll have to consult our family tree later.

All the Werrys that we found in our search can simply be subdivided into two, or actually three main branches:

Our common ancestor Claes Werry, had two sons, who had children themselves:
the oldest son - Petrus Aegidius - lived at Spekholzerheide and he is the one who could be held responsible for the existence of all the Werrys from Kerkrade;
the second son - Michael - moved and settled down at Simpelveld, a small village approximately 4 kilometres from Spekholzerheide. He also had children, but that line probably became extinct. We are still investigating about that…

Petrus Aegidius had several sons and unfortunately some of them could not be tracked. They possibly moved to the German area. At the moment, the surname Werry happens to be rather current in the border area of Kerkrade (Aachen / Herzogenrath and environment). We have not yet been able to investigate about them, as it is not easy for an amateur genealogist to get access to German archives, because of the "Datenschutz" (legislation concerning the protection of someone's privacy). So, we are asking our German namesakes to provide us with dates and other information that could be of use in our search.

However, the most important sons in our family tree are:
Laurentius (born 1759) and Joannes Nicolaus (born 1774).

I
From Laurentius the Werrys from the Pleinstraat are the descendants (the Werry-Krekels family).

The descendants of Joannes Nicolaus can again be subdivided into two branches of the Werry family tree:

II
Firstly, the descendants of Jean Mathieu (born 1807):
He had six sons, but only one of them - the youngest one - stayed at Kerkrade. About the others we know that some of them left for the German area. The rest could not be tracked.
From the youngest son, Kaspar Lodewijk (born 1849) - also mentioned as the line Werry-Hoffmans - descended the Werrys from the Drievogelstraat (the Werry-Knubben family), just like the Werrys who moved to Liege (Belgium) and Lourdes (France).

III
Secondly, the four sons of Peter Joseph (born 1815):
they all were shoemakers by profession and they settled down at the respective places of Kerkrade (the Werry-Hinskens and the Werry-Rosenbom families), Herzogenrath (the Werry-Jansen family) and Eygelshoven (the Werry-Thevissen family).

Hugo Werry, one of the sons from the Werry-Hinskens family, immigrated in 1904 to Canada where he married a Dutch girl, Josephine Savelberg from Heerlen. Their descendants live all over Canada and the United States.

As a matter of fact, we as well belong to the descendants of the Werry-Hinskens family.

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