52 Ancestors 2025 – Page 9 – A Deck of Ancestors

52W Mark IV – Week 20: Card K7 Maartje Mettes

Merry Christmas and happy birthday!

Like one of our children, my Gx3 Grandmother, Maartje Mettes, was a Christmas baby. I can’t say how significant that was to Maartje or her family. My understanding is that in the Netherlands, historically, greater emphasis was placed on the religious aspect of Christmas. Maartje’s family was Roman Catholic, so it was more likely they had a nativity scene on display than a Christmas tree. As well, there is also the related celebration of Sinterklaas on December 6, which involves greater emphasis on the gift giving and festive nature of celebration. However, I don’t think Sinterklaas was as significant during Maartje’s childhood as it was later in the 19th century, or celebrated in the same way.

Maartje lived most of her life in small towns in Noord Holland, where she raised two families and experienced multiple relocations.

I do not have much information about Maartje’s childhood or early years, but by 1841 she was working as a domestic servant in Hensbroek. That same year, on April 29, she married Klaas Buur, a domestic servant from nearby Heerhugowaard. Klaas was born around 1814 in Oude Niedorp. At the time of their marriage, Klaas was working as a labourer in Hensbroek, an occupation he carried out until his death on May 8, 1847.

Part of Maartje and Klaas’s marriage registration

Maartje and Klaas’s short six-year marriage was marked by both joy and sorrow. Their first son, Pieter, was born in April 1842 in Heerhugowaard but died just two months later. A second son, also named Pieter, followed in 1843 and survived. A third son, Jan was born in 1844. A daughter, Pietertje, came in 1846 but died before her first birthday. With Klaas’s early death at age 33, Maartje was left a widow at age 29 with two young sons.

After four years on her own, Maartje married again. On May 2, 1851, she wed Cornelis Komen in Heerhugowaard. Cornelis, born in 1812 in Zuid-Scharwoude, had worked as both a farmer and a labourer, moving from Oterleek to Heerhugowaard and later Zuid-Scharwoude. Together, Maartje and Cornelis made a home that would remain steady for decades.

Some interesting trivia: when Maartje married Cornelis, she also had a brother-in-law named Cornelis Komen through her older sister, Neeltje Mettes. The two Cornelises were first cousins once removed. It appears Neeltje’s husband went by “Crelis”, a diminutive of Cornelis that was less common than the more frequently seen “Kees”.

Maartje and Cornelis had two sons, my Gx2 Grandfather Nicolaas (“Klaas”) in 1852 and Adrianus (“Arie”) in 1853. Both Klaas and Arie lived long lives, into their mid-70s. By 1854, the family was living at House 149 in the hamlet of Pannekeet, adjacent to Langedijk. They later moved to Zuid-Scharwoude in Langedijk, and eventually back to Heerhugowaard in the final years of their lives. Of course, in addition to Klaas and Arie, Maartje’s sons from her first marriage lived with the family until their adulthood. It is likely that Klaas’s son, Jan, from his first marriage, was living with the family for some period of time. As well, in the 1890s, Maartje’s teenage granddaughter, Maartje Buur, was living with Maartje and Klaas.

The Bevolkingsregister (“Population Register”) of Zuid-Scharwoude for 1850-1860 showing Cornelis and Maartje, along with their blended family.

Cornelis died in 1893 at age 81. Maartje outlived him by three years, passing away in Heerhugowaard on June 15, 1896, at the age of 78. Maartje’s death registration is not entirely accurate, likely because the declarants were neighbours rather than family members. Among other things, her age at death was listed as 80, and the identities of her parents were unknown.

The *Schager Courant*, July 5, 1896, page 3. “Maartje Mettes, widow of Cornelis Komen, previously widow of Klaas Buwe (sic), aged 80 years.”

52W Mark IV – Week 19: Card K6 Cornelis Komen

Egad, this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is already on Week 22, and here I am still trying to finish Week 19. I’ve never fallen this far behind in four years of participating in the challenge, but I’m not giving up. As they say, better late than never!

Cornelis Komen was born on September 2, 1812 in Zuid-Scharwoude, Noord Holland, Netherlands. He was the eldest child of Nicolaas Cornelisz “Klaas” Komen, a watermill worker, and Vrouwtje Hilbert Hilberts, who had been a domestic servant up until her marriage. Cornelis was the eldest of six children. While one of Cornelis’s siblings died in childhood, he and his other siblings lived long lives. He and a brother lived into their 80s, another brother lived until age 77.

Cornelis spent most of his life working as a farmer and day labourer in Noord Holland. While he moved several times throughout his life, he never lived much further than a few kilometers from where he was born. In the early 1830s, he worked as a farmer in Oterleek, which is a bit south of Heerhugowaard. By 1840, he was living and working in Heerhugowaard, which is a stone’s throw from Zuid-Scharwoude.

In February 1839, Cornelis married for the first time, to Marijtje Olijkan. Marijtje was born on May 9, 1815 in Opmeer. Cornelis and Marijtje’s marriage registration noted that both were farmers at the time. The marriage also occurred in Opmeer, almost nine kilometers from Heerhugowaard. Considering how Cornelis did not move very far afield* during his life, I don’t know how he came to be married to someone who lived so relatively far from the tiny domain that he inhabited.

Nevertheless, after the wedding Cornelis and Marijtje lived in Heerhugowaard. The couple had two children, both born in Heerhugowaard: Jan, born in 1839, and Trijntje, born in 1840. Sadly, Marijtje passed away on August 23, 1841, less than three weeks after giving birth. She was only 25. Trijntje died ten days after her mother, on September 3, 1840. Jan, on the other hand, lived to be 82.

Cornelis continued to live and work as a labourer in Heerhugowaard after he was widowed. Then, on May 2, 1851, over a decade after Marijtje’s death, Cornelis remarried. His second wife was Maartje Mettes, my Gx3 Grandmother, who was born in Hensbroek on December 25, 1817. Maartje was the daughter of Pieter Ariensz Mettes and Grietje Cornelis Poland. This was also Maartje’s second marriage. She had been previously married for ten years to Klaas Buur, with whom she had four sons. The eldest and the youngest of their children both passed away before Klaas died, in 1847.

By marrying Maartje Mettes, Cornelis Komen became the brother-in-law of…Cornelis Komen! Maartje’s older sister, Neeltje, was also married to a man named Cornelis Komen. The two Cornelises were first cousins once removed. There also may not have been much confusion between the names, because it appears that the other Cornelis more likely went by the variant “Crelis”.

For the first few years after their marriage, Cornelis and Maartje continued to live in Heerhugowaard, where they had two sons: Nicolaas “Klaas” (my Gx2 Grandfather born 1852) and Adrianus “Arie” (born 1853). Sometime shortly after Arie’s birth, the family moved to Zuid-Scharwoude, where Cornelis worked as a day labourer. In 1854 they were living in Pannekeet, on the outskirts of Zuid-Scharwoude, along with Maartje’s sons from her previous marriage and his sons with Maartje.

Cornelis and Maartje, along with Arie, were still living in Zuid-Scharwoude as late as the 1870s, where Cornelis continued to work as a labourer. Cornelis and Maartje relocated to Heerhugowaard by the 1880s. By then, all their children were adults, but Maartje’s granddaughter, through the children she had with Klaas Buur, was living with Cornelis and Maartje.

The family was still in Heerhugowaard at the time Cornelis died, on November 13, 1893. He was survived by Maartje, who lived until 1896.

Cornelis’s death registration, which notes his marriages to Maartje Olijkan and Maartje Mettes.

*All puns are intended. Intend your puns!

52W Mark IV – Week 18: Card K5 Christina Ran

My Gx2 Grandmother Christina Ran was born on February 13, 1858, in Den Helder, Noord Holland. She was the third of seven children and third of five daughters born to Cornelis Ran and Elisabeth de Waard.

Christina’s birth recorded in the Den Helder civil register.

Like many Dutch parents of the time, Cornelis and Elisabeth followed the traditional naming conventions for their children. With their third daughter, they had a bit more freedom in naming Christina. I don’t know what inspired the name, I haven’t found any previous Christinas earlier in her tree. It also doesn’t seem to be a particularly common name over the last 200 years. With the family being Catholic, maybe it was inspired by Saint Christina the Astonishing, who lived in what is now Limburg Province, Belgium. Or, like my mother will often suggest, “maybe they just liked the name.”

From the Corpus of Given Names in the Netherlands for the name “Christina”

Christina’s daughter, Elizabeth Bakker, my great grandmother, followed the traditional naming custom. Thus my grandmother, Christina Komen, is her grandmother’s namesake.

On September 29, 1881, Christina married Cornelis Jan Bakker in Den Helder. The couple had eleven children together. While they raised their large family in the same town where she was born, married, and died, eight of Christina’s children moved to other cities or towns after leaving home. Some remained close by, still in Noord Holland; others moved further afield, to the provinces of Utrecht and Zuid Holland.

The two items on the left, reporting Cornelis and Christina’s wedding, appeared on page two of the *Nieuws- En Advertentiebode voor Den Helder* on September 30, 1881. The item on the right commemorates the celebration of Cornelis and Christina’s 25th wedding anniverary, on page two of the September 22, 1906 edition of the *Nieuws- En Advertentiebode voor Den Helder*,

Christina died on November 26, 1924, at the age of 66. She was buried at Begraafplaats Huisduinen in Den Helder.

52W Mark IV – Week 17: Card K4 Cornelis Jan Bakker

Cornelis Jan Bakker was born on April 26, 1855 in Den Helder, Noord Holland, the only son of Jan Cornelis Bakker and Johanna Adriana Puinbroek. Cornelis was only four when his father died. While Johanna remarried to a man named Pieter Dekker when Cornelis was six, the death of his father must have undoubtedly must have left a mark on his life. He remained an only child, as Johanna and Pieter never had any children that I could find.

Cornelis’s birth registration (Civil Register for Den Helder)

Cornelis spent his life in Den Helder, a port city in the north-west corner of the Netherlands and home of the Netherlands’ primary naval base for centuries. In 1875, Cornelis registered for mandatory military service in Den Helder but never served. The register shows that he was exempted from service because he was an only child.

Military Register showing Cornelis’s enrollment for mandatory military service and his exemption from service due to being an only child.

It should come as no surprise that Cornelis had a number of ancestors who were civilian sailors in Den Helder. Cornelis’ father and a maternal uncle were sailors, as were several other direct ancestors, along with his step-father and his father-in-law. In fact, Cornelis’s wife also had many sailors in her lineage.

Cornelis broke with that tradition. Around 1875, Cornelis began his work as a cobbler or a shoemaker, a trade he maintained for nearly four decades, up until his death in 1914. Three of Cornelis’s five sons became shoemakers, although one later gave up the trade to work in a bank.

On September 29, 1881, when he was 26 years old, Cornelis married Christina Ran in Den Helder. Christina was born in Den Helder on February 13, 1858 and, like Cornelis, spent her entire life in that city. Together, Cornelis and Christina had eleven children. While Cornelis and Christina remained rooted in Den Helder their entire lives, several of their children later moved further afield, including my great grandmother Elizabeth Bakker who ended up in Langedijk, about 30 kilometers to the south. Other children ended up in the provinces of Utrecht and Zuid Holland.

Cornelis died on April 6, 1914 at the age of 58 in Den Helder. He was buried in Den Helder, at the Begraafplaats Huisduinen (“Huisduinenen Cemetery”). The cemetery is now also known as Algemene Begraafplaats Den Helder (“General Cemetery of Den Helder”). Huisduinen is a village on the outskirts of Den Helder and was the original settlement centuries ago. When the harbour was built in Den Helder, its growth outpaced the original neighbouring village.

Map showing the location of Cornelis and Christina’s grave at Begraafplaats Huisduinen in Den Helder.

Graves in the Netherlands are usually leased, not purchased, and are routinely cleared after a few decades, so imagine my surprise when I discovered that Cornelis, along with his wife, is still interred in his original resting place! According to the Dutch version of Wikipedia, there are gravestones at Begraafplaats Huisduinen dating back to 1671 and that there are many centuries-old headstones. In fact, in 2023, many of the old graves and headstones were restored and renovated.

“Here rest our dear parents C. J. BAKKER (1855-1914) and CH. RAN (1858-1924)”

If I had known about this when I visited Den Helder many years ago, I would have loved to have visited the site!

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