Jan van Batenburg was born around 1495, the illegitimate son of nobleman Dirk van Batenburg from Gelderland, and became mayor of a town in the Oversticht, present-day Dutch province of Overijssel.
During the early 1530s, Van Batenburg converted to Anabaptism and found himself the leader of a large number of his co-religionists in Friesland and Groningen.