I was in my late teens or early twenties when I learned that a branch of my Dutch ancestors had the surname “Gomes”. I grew up in a town with a large number of Portuguese families, so naturally I wondered if some errant Portuguese sailor – or even a pirate! – had ended up in the Netherlands and married into the family. It made sense, since Texel, the largest of the Wadden Sea Islands that stretch from the Netherlands to Denmark, has a centuries-long naval history.
Sadly, no. It seems that the origin of the surname Gomes, at least on Texel, is Germanic in origin, originating in the genitive case of the noun “man”. Alternatively, it has its origins in the Latin word for rooms, “camere”, working its way from “Come” to Gomes”. The only thing that seems to be certain is that there is no Iberian connection. Wat jammer.
My Great x 4 Grandmother, Maartje Klaas (Maria) Gomes, was born in June 1791 on Texel. She was the eldest of 10 children born to Klaas Cornelisz Gomes and Annaatje Klaas de Rijk. Klaas spent his whole life working as a sailor and harbour pilot. As Oudeschild was the only harbour and only village on the coastline of Texel, Maartje and her siblings were most likely born there.
From the book of baptisms for the Catholic community of Texel. “12 June 1791. Maria, daughter of Claas Gomes and Annatje Rijk. Witness/Godparent Reijer Gomes.”
While there was a twenty-year age gap between Maartje and her youngest sibling, Maartje had the longest lifespan and outlived most of her brothers and sisters. Only three of Maartje’s siblings outlived her, and none by more than two years.
Maartje’s Tesselaar roots run deep along her paternal line, dating back to the late 15th century. What I found interesting, however, is that the surname Gomes does not run directly along Maartje’s paternal line.
Rather, Maartje’s great grandfather, Jan Cornelisz Gomes (1685-1758), did not take his last name from his father. Rather, he (like all but one of his siblings) took his surname from his mother, Aagje Jans Gomes. Jan’s father was Cornelis Claasz Bakker. Typical of Dutch naming customs, as the second-born male, Jan took his maternal grandfather’s first name as his first name and his father’s first name as his patronymic, which appears to us as a middle name. However, in some records like water leases, Jan was identified as “Jan Cornelisz Backer”. Jan and his wife Jannetje Jans Rans were innkeepers operating “‘t Bonte Paerd” in Oudeschild.
Apparently the entire Gomes family on Texel descends from Jan and Jannetje. The surname Gomes traces back from Aagje to her Great x3 Grandfather, Jan Gomes, who was born sometime around 1500.
Maartje married Reijer Jansz Ran in Oudeschild on November 26, 1813. That was only twelve days after French rule collapsed in the Netherlands. The French military had evacuated Amsterdam on November 14, 1813 and left the city in the control of the National Guard, a militia force. On November 15, 1813, a popular uprising led by a Dutch naval officer, overthrew French authority. At the same time, an uprising in The Hague took control there. Despite that, at the local level, the remnants of the French administration still managed day to day life, as evidenced by the fact Maartje and Reijer’s marriage registration bears a stamp of Imperial France.
Maartje and Reijer’s marriage from the civil register. One of my favourite things about these old records is seeing the signatures of my ancestors. Not only can you see Maartje and Reijer’s signatures, their parents’ signatures are clearly visible as well. Not the stamp of the French Empire in the top corner.
Maartje and Reijer had eleven children, five girls and six boys. The lifespan of Maartje’s eldest child, Annaatje, emulated her mother’s. There was a 23-year age gap between Annaatje and her youngest sibling, and she outlived all her brothers and sisters.
Around 1840, a few years after Maartje’s youngest child was born, the family moved from Texel to Den Helder, where Reijer took up work as a channel pilot. It’s my understanding that in the 19th century, many sailors and workers in nautical-based occupations relocated from Texel to Den Helder. After French rule, the Netherlands stationed its navy in Den Helder. In the 1820s, the North Holland Canal connected Den Helder to Amsterdam, which resulted in significant growth in the city and its emergence as an industrial port.
Maartje, who outlived her husband by 18 years, spent the rest of her life in Den Helder.
Since I was a kid, I always thought that “Teunisz de Waard” was one of the coolest names in my family tree, such as my Gx4 Grandfather, Jan Teunisz de Waard, and his father, Teunis Arisz de Waard. Of the two, I think my Gx5 Grandfather had the cooler name.
Jan de Waard was born on February 7, 1787 in Oudeschild, Texel, Noord Holland, to Teunis de Waard and Guurtje Cornelis Buijsekool. Jan was the middle of five children.
Jan is unusual amongst my direct Dutch ancestors. Almost all of them were Roman Catholic, but Jan and his parents were Dutch Reformed. Even more unusual for my tree, recently I was going page-by-page through what I thought was the baptism register for the Dutch Reformed church on Texel trying to find the entry for Jan, but it turned out it was the register for the Mennonite community on the island. I was gobsmacked to discover another of my Gx4 Grandparents, Cornelis Dirksz Bakker, was listed there. As well, Cornelis’s parents’ marriage was in the same register. I had no idea I had any Mennonite ancestors. I don’t know how my very Catholic grandmother would have received that piece of information. Anyhow, more on Cornelis later, as he will be the subject of Week 28.
Extract from the Baptism Register of the Reformed Congregation for Texel, showing the entry for Jan, baptized on February 8, 1787.
While Jan was Protestant, his wife, Cornelia Kooij, was Roman Catholic. While such a mixed marriage is not a big deal in any way these days, I have to wonder how socially controversial their union might have been. The Netherlands has always had significant Catholic and Protestant populations, but relations were always tense. In the mid to late 19th century, the “pillarization” of Dutch society occurred, resulting in the growth of separate institutions for each religious group. This meant there were separate schools, hospitals, newspapers, shops, banks, trade unions, political parties, social clubs, sporting clubs, and a host of other organizations and associations for Catholics and Protestants. Social interaction between each pillar was discouraged or frowned upon. The social separation did not begin to break down until the 1960s.
Huwelijksafkondiging (Civil Marriage Announcement, similar to a Banns of Marriage, for Jan and Cornelia. The excerpt at the top shows the Imperial French administrative division that included Texel, being the Department of Zuyderzée, Arrondissement Alkmaar. Notice that the title page was in French but the entry was in Dutch.
I don’t know if Jan and Cornelia were married in a Catholic or Protestant church. They were married on October 10, 1813 – two years after civil registration was introduced into the Netherlands and in the final month of French rule under Napoleon. At the time, the government made all the churches turn in their birth, marriage, and death registers, which formed the foundation of the new system. Since then, the only legal form of marriage in the Netherlands is one conducted by a civil registrar. If you want to have a church marriage, by law you have to have the civil ceremony first. Thus it’s common for a couple to have two wedding dates, but the anniversary is generally marked by the date of the civil ceremony.
This means that the only records I have been able to find for Jan and Cornelia’s marriage are the ones in the civil register. The 1830 census showed that Jan was Protestant and Cornelia was Catholic. All their children, except the eldest, were recorded as Catholic. The bevolkingsregister (population register) for Texel for 1840 shows that Jan was still Protestant while Cornelia and all the children were Catholic. However, the bevolkingsregister for 1850-1859 states that he was Catholic. Whether or not Jan actually converted, I cannot say.
Jan lived his entire life in Oudeschild. In his twenties and thirties, he worked as a labourer. However, by 1830, he had become a shopkeeper. It was the occupation he held until he died on April 18, 1863.
Death registration for Jan de Waard
TIL: So I discovered why my images almost never centre even when I set the alignment to centre. Turns out it’s a feature, not a bug. I learned that the template I’ve been using for the last four and a half years is designed with a left-aligned content column and a right sidebar. Images are centred within the content column, but the content column itself is offset to the left to make room for the sidebar. As a result, large images don’t appear centred across the entire page, they’re centred only within the main content area. I can change the template, which fixes the centering problem, but it causes other formatting problems to arise. So I’m going to leave things as they are for now. Maybe someday I’ll find a template that works, but it’s hardly a (Word)pressing matter for now.
With Cornelia Pieters Kooij (sometimes spelled “Kooi”), I begin the paternal set of my Great x4 Grandparents. We’ll be hanging out with the Dutch for the rest of this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge.
Cornelia was born sometime in early December 1787, in Den Burg, a village on the island of Texel. It’s the westernmost and largest of the Wadden Sea Islands (or Frisian Islands) that stretch from the Netherlands to Denmark. She was the youngest of two children born to Pieter Jans Kooij and Elisabeth Jansz “Liesbeth” Boerse.
Cornelia was born eight months after her father died, on April 13, 1787. I have spent a lot of time trying to discover the reason for Pieter’s death. Living on an island, many of its inhabitants had jobs on the water. I have a lot of Texel ancestors who were harbour pilots and sailors – dangerous work. However, I have no idea what Pieter’s occupation was, as not all of my Texel ancestors worked on the water. While I have several records for Pieter, none included his occupation. More importantly, none of them indicate his cause of death.
Extract from the Roman Catholic Baptism Book of the Official Municipality and the Island of Texel, Beginning in the Year 1727under the Honourable Hermannus Berna Schutten, Pastor Page 187, December 16, 1787: “Cornelia ‘Posthuma’, from Den Burg. Parents Pieter Kooijman and Liesbeth Boerse. Witnesses Jan Bruin and Maartje Boerse.” “Posthuma” means Cornelia was born after the death of her father.
While Cornelia only had her mother and older brother, Jan Pietersz, growing up, I do not know what kind of family support Liesbeth had raising her children. While I know the names of all four of Cordelia’s grandparents, I have no idea if they were still alive when Cordelia was a child. Cordelia also had aunts and uncles on both sides of her family, so maybe they provided support. However, I’ve gone page-by-page through some of the registers for Texel trying, to find other information, but “Kooij” and “Boerse” were surnames that I rarely spotted.
Cornelia’s brother died in July 1812, when she was 24. A year later, on October 13, 1813, Cornelia married Jan Teunisz de Waard. According to the registration of their marriage, Cornelia’s mother was still alive at the time. That is the last mention of Liesbeth Boerse that I have seen in any record.
Stamp on Cornelia and Jan’s marriage registration
An interesting thing about Cornelia and Jan’s marriage was that it occurred a month before a popular uprising forced the French out of the Netherlands and ended Napoleonic rule in the country. The marriage register, along with the documents in their huwelijksbijlage (“marriage supplement”, a set of documents a couple had to provide in order to marry, such as birth extracts and other vital records) bear stamps of the French Empire.
This is an extract from the baptism register Cornelia provided as part of the huwelijksbijlage required for her marriage. It shows that at the time, the island of Texel was part of the Department of Zuyderzée, Arrondissement Alkmaar, Canton Texel. The stamp in the upper left is of the French Empire and the one on the bottom by the signature is for Texel.
Together, Cornelia and Jan had nine children over a 23 year period, all of whom were most likely born in the village of Oudeschild on Texel. Strangely enough for an island, Oudeschild was the only village on the coast of Texel at the time. There is now a ferry terminal at the southermost point of Texel, but it was constructed long after Cornelia’s time.
With William Burgess, Sr., we reach the last of my maternal Great x4 Grandparents. William was born in Putnam, Washington County, New York on May 20, 1794, the fourth of eight children born to Chris John Burgess and Hannah Newland.
Chris John was born Johann Christian Borges, who was born in Fischbach, Hesse Nassau. Johann was a Hessian mercenary who initially fought for the British in the American Revolution, but later switched sides.
Johann was a member of the Second Hessian Division, under the command of Lt. General von Knyphausen, which mustered near Bremen in June 1776. His regiment then sailed for England. In July they set sail for the colonies. In August 1778, he and two others deserted, with Johann ending up in Rhode Island. After doing so, Johann set himself up as a weaver, an occupation he may have had in Hesse. As well, the legend is that Johann changed his name during this time in order to fit in with the colonials.
On March 19, 1782, Johann enlisted with the Rhode Island Regiment and served for nine months. Johann served with a fellow named Jabez Newland, whose sister was Hannah Newland. Johann and Hannah married in Providence, Rhode Island in 1786.
Hannah had deep roots in colonial Massachusetts, with both sides of her family having arrived there in the early to mid 17th century. In fact, Hannah is most likely a direct descendant of Francis Eaton, one of the passengers on the Mayflower, although there is one link in her lineage that I haven’t quite confirmed.
Five years before marrying Johann, Hannah had been engaged to a man named John Watterman, who was also a Hessian mercenary who deserted to serve with the rebels. In February 1777, Hannah and John declared their intention to marry, but the Selectmen of Norton, Massachusetts denied them permission to do so. One account is that John had a “questionable” German background. That is somewhat ironic, given that Hannah ultimately ended up marrying another former Hessian mercenary.
The more likely reason is that Hannah and John had conceived a child out of wedlock. Hannah was fined five shillings for “fornication and having had a bastard child born of her body”, as well as paying the cost of the prosecution. John was in attendance at the court proceeding and acknowledged paternity. The court ordered John to pay for the maintenance of the child. It appears from the court record that the order was less for social welfare purposes and more to prevent the town from bearing the cost of supporting an unwed mother.
After Johann and Hannah married, they moved to New York and settled at Fort William on the shore of Lake George. From there the family moved to Putnam, where they had their first five children. The family moved to Bolton, New York sometime around 1797, where Hannah gave birth to three more children.
While the family had moved to Bolton, William appears to have ended up back in Putnam later in life, because that is where he married Violate Stockwell on May 1, 1813. Over the next ten years, William and Violate had six children, with five more after a move to adjacent Warren County.
Then William’s world changed.
Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon in March 1830. Two years later, in July 1832, William’s eldest child, Harrison, heard a Mormon missionary by the name of Simeon Carter. Harrison joined the fledgling church and was baptised in October 1832. Harrison then convinced his parents and two of his siblings to join. William, Violate, and their children Horace and Rosina were all baptized into the new church, which at the time was called the “Church of Christ”. They were all baptized on December 2, 1832 by another recent convert, William Snow, who himself had only joined the Mormon church earlier in 1832.
This makes William a ground-floor member of the church. He became an active and prominent member. William was well-known to Joseph Smith. William testified on behalf of the defence at one of Joseph Smith’s trials. As well, William’s son William Jr. lived in Joseph Smith’s residence during the time the Latter Day Saints were in Kirtland, Ohio.
In fact, the Kirtland Elders’ Certificates from the Joseph Smith Papers purport that William was ordained a deacon on April 6 1830 – the date the church was formally established. Clearly there was some backdating of his membership.
“This certifies that William Burgess has been received into the church of the Latter-Day Saints, organized on the sixth of April, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, eight hundred hundred & thirty, & has been ordained a Deacon…
Joseph Smith Jr. Chairman. F[rederick] G. Williams Clerk. Kirtland, Ohio, April 2, 1836.”
Despite the official church record, created years after the event, William and Violate’s baptism is documented in William Snow’s journal, written at the time of the event. So I place no weight on the Kirtland certificate. A copy of the diary is reproduced in last week’s post about Violate.
William and family joined the Mormon migration and their search for Zion, a New Jerusalem and holy city in the Americas that the church desired to build its community of the righteous. This was originally Kirtland, Ohio, where William and Violate’s youngest child was born in 1837.
In Kirtland, William purchased a half acre tract of land in 1834 for $50 from a John Reed. The legal description of the property was Lot No. 44, Tract 1. William was one of the chief carpenters who helped construct the church’s temple at Kirtland. Among other things, William laid out the roofing timbers. When William left Kirtland, he sold his land for $180. Not a bad return for a few years’ investment.
In 1840, William and family moved with the Saints to Nauvoo, where William’s primary occupation was farming. William was also involved in the construction of the temple in Nauvoo. The family remained in Nauvoo until the Mormons were driven out in 1846. The Burgesses were amongst the first companies to leave Nauvoo, destined for what is now Utah, but which at the time was still part of Mexico.
“Camp of Israel” was a name used to describe Winter Quarters. These are entries from William’s time there, one from 1847 and the other from 1848, when William and family left for Utah.
Due to the late and rushed start of the migration, the Mormons were forced to set up camp in Nebraska at a site known as Winter Quarters, near where Omaha came to be. William and family were at Winter Quarters for most of its existence, from 1846 to 1848. When they departed, it was with a company of 662 and arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1848.
Location of William’s home in Salt Lake City. Today that is some prime real estate.
William lived in the 16th Ward of Salt Lake City for 12 years, where he was a farmer. He also raised cattle, and had a brand recorded on February 23, 1850. The mark was a stylized number “2” (having a curled flourish at the top) with an arch above, placed on the left hip.
On December 17, 1854, William entered into a polygamous marriage with Dorcas Keeling, who was 43 years old at the time. They married in the President’s Office in Salt Lake City. Dorcas was a recently divorced mother of three. She had been married to George Dykes, who left the church after serving a mission to Great Britain and Denmark in 1852. Dorcas and her children lived in William’s household until Dorcas’s children married and moved out. In fact, two of William’s grandsons, through his son Horace, married two of Dorcas’s daughters. So the sisters were also sisters-in-law, and the brothers were brothers-in-law.
In 1861, the church directed William to move to Pine Valley, which had been established two years earlier as a logging settlement. William was instructed to establish a saw mill there. Lumber produced at William’s mill was used throughout Utah, including the temple at Salt Lake as well as its pipe organ. Lumber from the mill was also used to build the Pine Valley Chapel, the oldest Mormon chapel in continuous use. As well, William built a separate home for Dorcas, a block from where he and Violate lived. By 1870, William had real property worth $500 and personal property worth $200.
William died on November 20, 1880 in Pine Valley, only four months after his wife Violate. Dorcas survived him by a year. William is buried at the Pine Valley Cemetery.
