The story of my Great x4 Grandfather, Johannes Puinbroek, is a bewildering conundrum. I alluded to this during Week 2 of the 2024 edition of the 52 Ancestors Challenge, when I wrote, “stay tuned.” Since then I’ve expanded on Johanne’s story, but this is the first time I’ve written a post entirely focused on him. This also gives me the opportunity to correct some errors I made in previous narratives.
The puzzle begins with Johannes’s birth. I don’t have an actual birth record for him, or a baptism record either, for that matter. Information about Johanne’s birth comes from records created much later in his life and after his death.
Johannes’ death registration says that he was born in Hulst, Zeeland, Netherlands, but the registration of his marriage to his second legal wife, Cornelia Bakker (more about her later!), says that he was born in Vrasene, Beveren, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium. At the time Johannes was born, Belgium was part of the Austrian Netherlands, under the rule of the Habsburgs. Vrasene is about five kilometers east of Hulst. I have taken Vrasene as the birthplace, as it was recorded during Johannes’ lifetime and likely came directly from him, unlike the information in his death registration, which would have come from another person.
With later research, I discovered the marriage registration of Johannes and his first legal wife, Johanna van Haeven (more about her later!). It also listed Johannes’ birthplace as Vrasene. Moreover, it indicates that he was born in 1786, which is consistent with his age as recorded in the birth registration of his first child with Maria Letens, who was never his legal wife (more about her later!). Later records, particularly Johannes’s death registration, suggest a year of birth of 1791 or 1792, but those dates were obviously provided by individuals other than Johannes.
For these reasons, in my genealogy database I’ve entered Johannes’s birth as having occurred in 1786 in Vrasene, Beveren, Oost-Vlaanderen, Austrian Netherlands. His parents were Thomas van Puijnbroek and Ommelberg Kouwenberg (or van Cauwenberg), about whom I know very little.
After Johannes’s birth, his life appears to have progressed in a manner that might be expected. By 1810, he was living in Sint Jansteen, Hulst, Zeeland, Netherlands, where he was working as a day labourer. Hulst is about eleven kilometers from Vrasene, in present-day Zeeland. There he married Johanna van Haever (1786-1823) on June 11, 1810. Seven months later Johanna gave birth to their first child, a son named Dominique. Together Johannes and Johanna had six children. It is shortly before the birth of their youngest child, Joseph, in 1822, that Johannes’s story begins to take a turn for the unusual.
Sometime around 1821, Johannes entered into a relationship with Maria Letens (1802-1848), my Great x4 Grandmother. While Johannes and Johanna Judoca were the same age, Johannes was about 16 years older than Maria. Johannes was still married to Johanna at the time. Sometime in late 1821 or very early 1822, Maria conceived a child with Johannes. At the time, Johanna was pregnant with her sixth child with Johannes. Johanna gave birth to Joseph on April 2, 1822, who died three months later, on July 4, 1822.
A month after Joseph died, on August 2, 1822 in Heinkenzand, Zeeland, Maria gave birth to her first child with Johannes, who they named Johanna Adriana, my Great x3 Grandmother. While this fits with the traditional convention of naming the first-born daughter after her maternal grandmother, Joanna van Riet, it hasn’t escaped me that it was also the name of Johannes’s wife, to whom he was still married. Moreover, it complicates the storytelling, as I now have two Johannas to discuss!
According to the birth registration for Johanna Adriana, Johannes was living and working in Vrasene at the time. By then, Vrasene was part of the Netherlands, because until 1830 Belgium formed part of the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Maria was living in Heinkenzand, where Johanna was born, and Johanna Judoca was still in Sint Jansteen.
Heinkenzand is a village on Walcheren, a former island that is now a peninsula in the province of Zeeland. Walcheren is on the north side of the Scheldt Estuary, which is a few kilometers wide at this point, while Vrasene and Sint Jansteen are on the other side. Heinkenzand is about 40 kilometers from Vrasene and just under 30 kilometers from Sint Jansteen. Thus, it appears that Johannes was not living with or near either of his partners in 1822.
Of course, this means that Johannes and Maria were not married when Johanna Adriana was born. In fact, Johannes and Maria never married but were together for about 25 years.
Sometime around 1823, Maria, Johannes, and Johanna Adriana moved to Den Helder, almost 200 kilometers away in Noord Holland, on the northwest tip of the Netherlands. In a country where it seems that travel to the next town is still a major undertaking for the locals, literally moving from one end of the country to another in the early 19th century seems quite amazing. I’m largely speculating, but I suspect the move might have been more a result Maria and Johannes’s personal circumstances than anything to do with what was happening in Zeeland, which was in economic decline at the time.
In making the move, Johannes left behind Johanna Judoca and the children he had with her. However, it appears that only two of Johannes and Johanna Judoca’s children survived childhood. They would have been 12 and 9 when their mother died and their father moved north. Moreover, Johanna Judoca died in Sint Jansteen on April 13, 1823, so it is possible Johannes and Maria moved after Johanna Judoca passed away.
In any event, Johannes and Johanna Judoca’s children remained behind in Zeeland when their father moved north. I have no idea as to who raised them after their father left for Den Helder. In fact, I doubt they ever saw their father again. When Johannes and Johanna Judoca’s eldest son, Dominique, married in Sint Jansteen in 1838, he attested that he did not know if his father was alive and that he did not know his father’s last residence. It would follow that Dominique likely had no idea about Johanna Adriana or his other half siblings.
In Den Helder, Johannes and Maria had four more children. The first of these four, Frederika, was born on February 23, 1824, but she did not survive the day. Their last child, Willem, was born in 1834. As of 1840, the family was still living together in Den Helder, although Johannes and Maria remained unmarried.
It’s a mystery to me why Johannes and Maria never married. Since Johanna Judoca had passed away early in Johannes and Maria’s relationship, I cannot find any impediment to them marrying – to each other or anyone else.
In fact, 25 years after they began their relationship, Johannes and Maria each got married: Maria to Jacob Pel (1816-1848) on August 14, 1845 and Johannes to Cornelia Bakker (1804-1859) on April 2, 1846. Both marriages took place in Den Helder. Both Johannes and Maria were the elder partners in their new relationships. Johannes was 18 years older than Cornelia, while Maria was 14 years older than Jacob.
The registration and marriage supplements for Johannes and Cornelia’s marriage did not include any mention of Maria (e.g. divorce, etc.). Likewise, I have not found any mention of Johannes in the records for Maria’s marriage to Jacob. Johannes’s death registration mentioned his late wives Johanna Judoca and Cornelia, but made no mention of Maria, mother to five of Johannes’s children. This further supports the conclusion that Johannes and Maria were never legally married.
For most of his time in Den Helder, Johannes worked as a labourer. However, in 1830 he was working as a tapper (i.e. barman), while in 1847 he was a karrijder (someone who drives an animal-drawn vehicle). I don’t know how long Johannes worked at either of those two occupations.
After Johannes married Cornelia, the odd trajectory of his life appears to have settled. Not surprising, because Cornelia was 42 when she married Johannes, they never had any children that I know of. Johannes passed away in Den Helder on January 1, 1865, having outlived both Maria and Cornelia by many years.
