In researching my Great x4 Grandmother, Magdalina van Dam, I spent a lot of time reseaching her name – both her first name and surname.
“Magdalena” only occurs in the registration of her baptism and again in her registration of marriage. “Magdalena” probably appears on the marriage registration only because one of the supporting documents provided by the couple when they registered was an extract of Leentje’s baptism registration. Otherwise, “Leentje” appears on the birth registrations for almost all her children, with one exception where she is identified as “Helena”, and in her death registration. While Magdalena and Helena are unrelated names, “Leentje” can be a short form of both in the Netherlands.
“May 10 [1785] Baptized: Magdalena. Father: Hendrik van Dam. Mother: Antje Jans Hollenberg. Witness: Marijtje Jans Hollenberg. Noorddijk.” (Noorddijk – the place of birth – is part of Ursem, where Leentje was born. Antje was Leentje’s aunt.)
Another odd problem involves her surname. In some trees, Leentje is identified as “Magdalina Sneekes van Dam”. “Sneekes” is actually the surname of one of her daughters-in-law. Leentje’s eldest son and first born, Cornelis, married a woman named Niesje Sneekes. However, the misnomer doesn’t come from any record I found for Cornelis. It’s found in the death registration for her son Jacob, who never married. While Jacob’s birth registration clearly identifies his mother as “Leentje van Dam”, in his death registration she was identified as “Leentje Sneekes.” I have no idea how that error occurred.
The birth registration for Jacob Smit, born June 22, 1822, (top), showing his mother as “Leentje van Dam, and the registration of his death, died December 9, 1891, (bottom), showing his mother as “Leentje Sneekes”. His father is identified in both records as Jan Smit.
On the topic of Cornelis’s marriage to Niesje, I found some interesting bits of information in the registration of their marriage, which occurred on May 22, 1841, eight months before Leentje passed away. Listed amongst the documents the couple provided in support of their registration (e.g. extracts of birth registrations, proof of the groom’s military service, etc.) was an “attest onvermogen der komparanten” (“certificate of incapacity” of the couple). My first thought was that this might have been something relating to the couple’s inability to legally consent to the marriage. It could not have been that they were minors, because Cornelis was 27 and Niesje was 24 at the time. However, with a bit of research I learned that it meant the couple did not have the financial means to pay the costs or fees of the marriage, which were waived as a result.
I also thought the occupations of the witnesses were interesting and unusual for my Dutch ancestors. Many were labourers and farm workers. For my coastal ancestors, there were also sailors and longshore workers. Veldwachter (a type of rural constable) was also quite common. However, for Cornelis and Niesje, their witnesses were a school teacher, an innkeeper, and a “chirurgijn” (surgeon-barber).
Returning to Leenjte, she was born in 1785 in Ursem, Noord Holland, the second of four children born to to Hendrik van Dam and Antje Hollenberg. Leentje’s parents seem to have moved several times after getting married. Their eldest child, Joannes, was born in De Rijp, Leentje was born in Ursem, and her two younger siblings were born in Berkhout. The distances were not far. De Rijp is about 10 kilometers south of Ursem, while Berkhout is about 8 kliks east of Ursem. Whether it was with her family or on her own, Leentje ultimately ended up in Heerhugowaard, which is where she married her husband, Jan Smit.
Leentje and Jan married on January 13, 1813. At the time they married, the French Empire had controlled the Netherlands for over 15 years. In March 1811, the French instituted civil registration for all births, marriages, and deaths. From that time on, those records replaced the church records for baptisms, marriages, and burials as the primary sources of vital information.
I find the civil records from the time of the French occupation to be fascinating. In particular, I find it interesting the way they vary from different parts of the Netherlands and the point in time, generally involving how much French and Dutch is used in the document. From the records I’ve looked at for my own research, it seems that the registers from what is now the southern Netherlands tend to involve more French, often with entire entries only being in French. In the north, they seem to use more Dutch, even if some of the boilerplate is French. As well, the later into the regime and the closer to the fall of the French Empire, they seem to use much more Dutch.
This is reflected in the registration of marriage for Leentje and Jan. Theirs is the first entry in the register for 1813, which was almost two years after the introduction of civil registration and ten months before the collapse of French rule in the Netherlands. The title page is entirely in French. Turn the page and the entry for Leentje and Jan is entirely handwritten in Dutch – with one intriguing exception. Written by hand in the upper right hand corner in French it says “Premier feuillet” – “First page.”
The registration of Leentjs and Jan’s marriage. The title page on the left is all in French, while the entry for the marriage (which actually takes up two pages) is all in Dutch – except for the upper right hand corner.
Leentje had eleven children with Cornelis. While that seems like a lot these days, it would not be unusual for someone who married young. However, Leentje had her first child when she was 29. She was 45 when her last child, Lijsbeth, was born. All eleven children were born in Heerhugowaard. Four – possibly five – never survived to adulthood.
Leentje spent the rest of her life in Heerhugowaard, where she died on January 23, 1842, at age 57. She was survived by Jan, who lived another ten years after Leentje’s death.
