The area which was the home of the Van Deursen family is a small village called Deurne in The Netherlands, a province of Brabant commonly called North Brabant. The area was named by the Romans for the large moor as Palus (moor) from which the name "Peel land" is derived. After the Roman Empire fell apart, the Franks conquered the country in the fifth century. The nobility in this region (family Deursen included) had pure Germanic, Frankish roots. In the Carolingian times (800 A.D.), this...