The name was Vermasen — later Vermaesen, then van Blerick, and eventually Van Blerk. Across four centuries and the name's several changes, one heraldic device has stayed remarkably consistent: a red shield bearing three white herons, each standing with a stone held in a raised claw.
That consistency isn't assumed. It's demonstrated by two independent, centuries-old physical sources, found decades and countries apart from each other, that show the same design.
The Window
In 1719, a memorial stained-glass window was installed at the Sint-Joriskerk in Venlo for Hendrick Vermasen and his late wife, Margaretha Moorees — “Hendrick Vermasen zaliger en Margarita Mooret gewesene egte luyden.” The window survived a World War II bombardment and was restored between 1946 and 1957. It has since been photographed and catalogued by the Forschungsstelle Glasmalerei des 20. Jahrhunderts.
The surviving photograph is badly weathered, but the heraldic birds are still visible in the upper panels. A 1898 article in De Maasgouw independently described the memorial's blazon in detail: a gold field bearing three white long-beaked birds, arranged two-and-one, each grasping a round stone in its right foot. Working from that description, an AI reconstruction was produced alongside the original photograph — not as a claim of what the window definitely looked like, but as a way of visualising the documented blazon next to the weathered original.
The Stone
Independent of the Venlo window, a carved gravestone survives for Johannes Schonken, who died 10 September 1702, and his wife Mechteldus Vermaesen. The stone bears a two-part shield: on one side a chevron with three flowers, and on the other, three cranes, each standing on a round stone held beneath its foot — the same device, carved in a different city, on a different kind of monument, for a different generation of the family.
Two sources, seventeen years and roughly 100km apart — a stained-glass memorial in Venlo and a carved gravestone in Nijmegen — showing the same three birds, each with a stone in its claw. That's not a coincidence; it's a family device that was still being used, recognisably, across multiple branches and generations of the Vermaesen name.
The crest at the top of this page brings that device forward under the family's present name — Van Blerk, with Vermasen kept alongside it as a reminder of where the line began. The full story of how the name travelled from Vermasen, through van Blerick, to Van Blerk at the Cape is told in the book.