Tag: France

52W Mark V – Week 21: Cornelia Pieters Kooij

Cornelia Pieters Kooij (1787-1850)

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 1727 under 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.

Cornelia died on June 19, 1850 in Oudeschild.

Cornelia’s death registration.

52W Mark V – Week 1: Klara Stumpf and Michael Loran

Klara Stumpf (1822-1854) – Michael Loran (1819-?)

With my Great x4 Grandparents, Klara Stumpf and Michael Loran, I continue on where I left off at the end of the 2025 iteration of the  52 Ancestors Challenge, with my Germans from Russia ancestry.

Both Klara and Michael were born in German colonies located in the Beresan district of Ukraine, which was then part of the Russian Empire. Klara was born in Speier colony, likely about 1822, while Michael was born in Karlsruhe colony, sometime about 1819.

Both Klara and Michael’s parents were born in what is now south-west Germany. In fact, pretty much all my Germans from Russia ancestry originates in this part of Germany. A few, as indicated on this map, hail from Alsace, which is now part of France, but for much of its history it moved back and forth between German and French control.

Klara was the fifth of seven children born to Jakob Stumpf (1788-after 1840) and Elisabetha Berk (or Burck) (1786-1830). Jakob was born in Riedseltz, in what is now France, very close to the border with Germany. Elisabetha was born in Pforzheim, which is in the modern German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is most likely that the two met in the Beresan, given that Jakob and Elisabetha were born about 50 kilometers apart. They both settled in the Beresan in 1809 and their eldest child was born in Speier in 1810.

As for Michael, he was the second of seven children born to Heinrich Loran (1786-1840) and Eva Maria Horter (1788-1861). Heinrich and Eva were born in Queichheim and Morlheim, respectively. The are both villages that are now part or suburbs of Landau in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. I don’t know when they married, but they both emigrated to the Karlsruhe colony in Beresan in 1809. All seven of Heinrich and Eva’s children were born there.

Klara and Michael married sometime around 1839. Given that the two were born in different colonies, I don’t know how or where the two met. I also don’t know where they married, although it might be more likely that they married in Karlsruhe, because that is where all five of their children were born.

Klara passed away in 1854 in Karlsruhe, at the age of 32, about a year after her last child was born. Michael remarried about two years later, probably in 1856, to Maria-Elisabetha Kitzel. Together they had four children, two boys and two girls. The boys were born about 1857 and 1860, in Karlsruhe. I don’t know when the girls were born; I assume they were also born in Karlsruhe. Maria-Elisabetha died in Karlsruhe in June 1884.

Sometime after Maria-Elisabetha died, Michael relocated to Felsenburg, which had been established in the Beresan in 1860 and was a daughter colony of Waterloo. Michael died there on June 1, 1898.

Unfortunately, I have found few records other than those that provide the vital statistics about Klara and Michael, so it has not been possible so far to add more detail about their lives. This is typical of many of my German-Russian ancestors.