Holland was the motherland of our Buis/Buice/Bise/Buys/Buijs ancestors. They lived in the town of Brielle, (Den Briel in Dutch). Brielle is about 13 miles west of rotterdam on the northeast coast of Voorne Island. Originally a fortress town, it protected the mouth of the Brielsche Maas River.

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During the reign of Charles of the Netherlands, about 1520, Holland was under the rule of Spain. The year 1566 saw the beginning of anti-catholic, anti-Spanish movements. City after city renounced its allegiance to Spain during 1572 to 1573 with Brielle being the first town taken from the Spaniards in 1572.
There has been something special about the Dutch since the dawn of history. There had to be. Who else would have chosen to live in a vast swamp by the edge of a steadily encroaching sea? Who else would have had the courage and determination to eke out a precarious existence on the fringe of Europe where land merged into water? The Dutch have an old saying that "God made heaven and earth, but Holland is the work of man."

A little should be said at this point regarding the Dutch system of naming, (it will drive you crazy). This is properly referred to as a Patronymic Naming System, meaning that children were named after their fathers. For example, if a Jan were to have a child named Willem that child would be Willem Jansen, Janse, or Jans (meaning son of Jan). Females follow the same rule. Now Willem Jansen in turn has a child named Hendrick Willemsen, and so on. We do not really find the Dutch sticking to one particular surname for generations until about 1687.

The same person could appear under different names, as with occupation names or locality names. Arent of Long Island could be Arent Willemsen showing that his father was Willem -or Arent de Ramaacker showing his occupation as a wheelmaker -or Arent Oostrander showing he came from the east bank, (of somewhere). Also, we have the occasional use of an alias, generally for inheritance situation. Use of an alias was not all uncommon and did not mean the person was hiding from the law, although one never really rules anything out. The word alias with another surname was used where a man added his mothers surname or the name of some benefactor. The mothers or even in some cases the wife's surname would be added to his where she was an heiress.
We have an ancestor with an alias ---Jan Cornelis Buys, generation III.

Once the English people in America demanded that members of the same family use the same last name, these "frozen" surnames could be one of the above mentioned or a combination of the naming systems. Or, in a good number of cases, a surname was chosen that seemed to have no relationship to what is known of the family. Hopefully all members of a family would ultimately wind up with the same surname. This was the exception instead of the rule.

It has been said that tracing Dutch familes of this period "is like trying to pick up mercury with your fingers."