Roelof Cornelisz, from Houten (hence "van Houten") in the province of Utrecht, the Netherlands, was charged for supplies furnished to him in Killiaen van Rensselaer's patroonship of Rensselaerswyck on June 11, 1638, and may have arrived in the Dutch colony of New Netherland (modern New York and New Jersey) with his brother Crijn Cornellisz on the ship Rensselaerswyck in 1637.

Roelof married Gerritje van Nes, and the couple had three known children who lived to adulthood: Helmigh, Cornelis and Theunis. Helmigh and Cornelis were baptized in the New Amsterdam (modern New York City) Reformed Church. A baptismal record for Theunis has not survived, but his marriage record states that he was born in New Amersfoort (now the Flatlands section of Brooklyn.)

Roelof died in 1672, and was buried in the Bergen Reformed Church churchyard in what was then the village of Bergen, and is now part of Jersey City. His sons initially were known by the patronymic Roelofs, but eventually they and their descendants adopted the loconymic surname Van Houten or some variant of that. Most American Van Houtens are descended from Roelof and his three sons, but some are descended from later immigrants from the Netherlands and Belgium.