Tag: Johannis Albertus van der Fluit

52W Mark IV – Week 3: Card V3 Maartje Veldman

I have photos of thirteen of my sixteen great great grandparents. Maartje Veldman (1862-1904) is one of three for whom I don’t.

Maartje Veldman was the mother of Johannis Albertus van der Fluit and my father’s great grandmother. She was also the second wife of Jan Dirksz van der Fluit. Maartje was born on December 22, 1862 in Nieuwe Niedorp, Noord Holland, the third child of Jan Veldman and Trintje Stoop.

Like many unmarried Dutch women of her social status, and several of my other female ancestors, Maartje worked as a dienstbode (domestic servant) before she was married. Fortunately for genealogists, many gemeenten (plural of gemeente, a form of municipality usually comprised of several communities) kept a Dienstboderegister as part of their Burgerlijke Standregisters (Civil Registration Registers). This was due, in part, because many domestic servants lived with the families they served.

What caught my eye about Maartje’s registration is that she started work as a domestic servant much younger than my other ancestors. She was 14 years old when she began her first job on June 7, 1877. Her family was resident in Barsingerhorn, but her work was for a family that lived about 7.5 kilometers south, in Oude Niedorp. Maartje remained with that family until February 5, 1879, a couple months after she turned 16.

Another thing that caught my eye was that two weeks before Maartje left Oude Niedorp, her older sister Elizabeth (1861-1935), moved to Oude Niedorp to work as a domestic servant. Elizabeth is directly below Maartje in the Dienstboderegister. Elizabeth was 17 years old at the time. Elizabeth remained there until January 23, 1882, when she returned home to Barsingerhorn. Elizabeth married her first husband, Arie Zut, three months later, on April 21, 1882.

Maartje and Elizabeth in the Oude Niedorp Dienstboderegister (Servant Register) 1860-1889.

I haven’t found any indication that Elizabeth had worked as a domestic servant prior to this posting. What seemed odd is that the younger sister left home for work before the elder sister.

Coming and going. The top line is Maartje, the one below is Elizabeth.

There was no rest for Maartje when she left Oude Niedorp and returned home to Barsingerhorn. She immediately began work for a new family that was also resident in Barsingerhorn, which meant that Maartje was able to live at home with her parents during this job.

The Dienstboderegister does not indicate how long Maartje worked as a domestic servant in Barsingerhorn. All I know is that she was no longer working when she married Jan.

Top of the entry for the registration of Jan and Maartje’s marriage.

Jan and Maartje had seven children together, but the first two died shortly after birth. The rest survived to adulthood and married. The youngest child, a daughter named Brigettha Maria, was born on July 4, 1904. Maartje died one month later, on August 5, 1904, in Oude Niedorp. She was 41 years old. While I do not have a cause of death, I cannot help but wonder if it had been related to childbirth.

The signatures of Jan, Maartje, and the witnesses on the marriage registration.

UPDATE!

February 15, 2025: Eureka, I’ve found a photo of Maartje!

It’s Maartje Veldman!

52W Mark IV – Week 1 (Part Two): Card V1 Johannes van der Fluit and Teetje Pater

Theresia “Teetje” Pater (1894 – 1947)
Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894 – 1932)

Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894-1932) and Theresia “Teetje” Pater (1894-1947) were my father’s paternal grandparents. Teetje was two months older than Johannis. She was born on February 15 and he was born on April 14. My father never met either of them as they both died before he was born.

Johannis was born in ‘t Veld, North Holland. He was an agricultural worker most of his short life. Teetje was born in Waarland, North Holland, the same village where my father was born. Johannis and Teetje were third cousins. They were both direct descendants of Cornelis Klaasz de Groot and Geertje Jans de Wit, their great great grandparents and my Gx5 grandparents. Teetje is descended from their eldest son, Jan, while Johannis is descended from their youngest daughter, Elisabeth. This makes me my own sixth cousin!

The Netherlands used to have mandatory military service, although in practice most conscripts never really served; rather, it was more like a reserve militia or national guard. Johannis was conscripted in January 1914, when he was 19 years old. Johannis was assigned to the 21st Infantry Regiment based out of Den Helder. On my understanding of the militia register, Johannis remained enlisted until he died in 1932, at age 37. The militia register also shows that Johannis was 171 cm (5’6″), which today seems rather short for a Dutch man. He would certainly have been dwarfed by my father, my brothers, and me!

Johannis and Teetje’s engagement and marriage. Heldersche Courant August 8, 1917 page 4

Johannis and Teetje married in Harenkarspel, North Holland, on July 20, 1917. The witnesses were Jacob Smit, “brievengaarder” (an official charged with receiving or issuing mail at a location where there was no post office; their home served as an auxiliary post office), age 31, and Simon Brommer, [occupation illegible], age 61, both resident in Harenkarspel.

Marriage registration for Johannis and Teetje. The signatures on the left are Johannis, Teetje, Jan van der Fluit (Johannis’s father), and Jan Pater (Teetje’s mother). I’m uncertain about the one on the bottom, “T. Bleeker”, because Teetje’s mother was named Adriana. Adriana was still alive at the time and Teetje did not have any immediate family whose initial was “T”.

The Oude Niedorp Bevolkingsregister (“population register”) for 1910-1930 shows that in 1917 Johannis was working there as a hired worker. Johannis and Teetje relocated to Harenkarspel on November 13, 1919. According to the Harenkarspel Bevolkingsregister for 1920-1939, Johannis was a labourer in the employ of others when he moved into the gemeentje (municipality), but later became a self-employed farmer.

Apparently, Johannis sustained some sort of head injury after an accidental blow to the head. My belief is that this occurred sometime in or after 1930, when Johannis and Teetje’s youngest child, Anny, was born. My records also show that Johannis was still working as of 1930. In fact, the Bevolkingsregister for Harenkarspel shows that Johannis had lived there until January 19, 1932, when he relocated to Heiloo, where he died eight days later, on January 27, 1932. This timeline suggests that Johannis’s head injury may have occurred shortly before he was placed in the sanitorium.

Since Johannis died so young, I do not know many people who knew him. He died when my grandfather, Adrianus “Arie” van der Fluit (1923-2002) was eight years old. I only heard passing mentions of Johannis a long time ago, most likely second-hand because I don’t recall my grandfather ever talking to me about his father.

After his injury, Johannis began to exhibit strange behavior and suffered from delusions, which were very unsettling to him. Most likely he had developed a mental disorder. One account I heard was that during a delusional episode it took my grandfather’s two older brothers and some neighbours to restrain Johannis.

At some point in time, Johannis was placed in a sanitorium, where he continued to suffer from delerium. It is most likely the sanitorium was in Heiloo, the town where Johannis died. I know that Heiloo had a sanitorium at the time.

Sometime shortly before his death, Johannis experienced a period of rational thought. Teetje was summoned to see him, which occurred close to the time Johannis died. Teetje was 37 when she was widowed and was left to raise eight children on her own, the youngest of whom was one year old at the time.

Sometime after Johannis died, Teetje’s younger brother Johannes “Jan” Pater (1900 – 1948) moved in with Teetje and her children. Jan, who had a hunched back, had never married. Presumably he moved in with Teetje to help her after Johannis died.

Teetje died on May 27, 1947, after a long illness. She was buried at St. Wulfram’s Roman Catholic Church in Waarland, which I believe is the same place where Johannis was buried. Anny, their youngest child, was 17 when Teetje passed away.

Bidprentjes (prayer cards) for Johannis and Teetje.

52 Weeks – Week 44: Shadows

This week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge theme is a difficult one: “Shadows”. It has taken me a while to think of anything relating to this theme. If only I had an ancestor who was a spy. Or maybe I do, and don’t know it, they were that good!

After pondering the theme for a while, I began to consider that what often lies in the shadows are those skeletons in the closet and other parts of family histories that people don’t want to talk about. These things are not always misdeeds or scandals or salacious affairs. Sometimes they are things out of our control that have a cultural or societal stigma, such as mental health. The stories, or even existence, of family members afflicted with mental health problems were often deliberately kept in the shadows.

Two ancestors of mine who most likely had some form of psychological condition come to mind. While the fact they may have had a mental health condition was not entirely kept hidden, I have very little information about their circumstances because their stories came to me second or third hand, with little detail. From the accounts, it seems clear that the lack of detail is due to the hushed nature of the way their circumstances were recounted by those who knew them best.

Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894-1932)

I will start with my great grandfather, Johannis Albertus van der Fluit. He died when my grandfather was eight years old. I really never had any contact with anyone else who knew Johannis personally or was old enough to remember him. However, over the years I heard passing references to his mental health and related problems.

I do know that my grandfather could recall some of the circumstances of his father’s mental health. Apparently, Johannis sustained some sort of head injury after an accidental blow to the head and began to exhibit strange behavior afterward. He suffered from delusions, which were very unsettling to him. According to one account of a delusional episode, it took my grandfather’s two older brothers and some neighbours to restrain him. From what I know of the story, Johannis was placed in a sanitorium, where he continued to suffer from delerium. However, shortly before his death, he experienced a period of rational thought. At that time, my great grandmother was summoned to see him, which occurred close to the time Johannis died.

Heronimus Michael “Jerome” Lerner (1895-1954)

Another ancestor who, I believe may have had mental health problems was my mother’s maternal grandfather, Heronimus Michael “Jerome” Lerner. This is based upon things some of my relatives mentioned, briefly, over time. My mother never knew him; her grandparents separated long before she was born. However, my mother believes, based on what she heard from her mother, that Jerome had some sort of mental health condition.

Apparently Jerome’s mental health was a significant factor in the breakdown of his marriage. My mother says that a rift developed between the Lerners and my great grandmother over the separation. It seems there was some sort of expectation that my great grandmother should have remained with Jerome despite his troubles.

Whatever mental health problems my great grandfather may have had, I do not know what they were or how long they persisted. I know Jerome was farming in the 1940s. When my grandmother’s younger sister was in her teens, she went to live with her father on his farm for some time. As well, the record of his death noted that he was a farmer at the time of his death; it also made no mention of any mental health conditions. I spoke to my great aunt at length about her time living with her father, but she never really spoke of his mental health.

Finally, a mental health problem that may have affected a number of my female ancestors was postpartum depression. Again, I have no solid evidence of this. Rather, brief and cryptic conversations and speculation about the circumstances of some ancestors’ experience after childbirth certainly sounds consistent with what was likely postpartum depression.

In recent years, the stigma around mental health has diminished, although it still may be a difficult thing to talk about. Fortunately, there are now many more resources available for people who need help. In Canada, one can start with this “Get Help” resource page.

52 Weeks – Week 31: Help

The greatest genealogical help I received began 26 years ago this summer. It started with a simple invitation I spotted on a message board. Someone was planning a visit to a Dutch archive later in the week and was offering to do a lookup for anyone who might be interested.

The National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague.

Two things immediately came to mind when I saw this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge theme, “Help”. First was the earworm that has resulted in the Beatles’ song bouncing around in my head all day. Second was my friend Nol, who over the years has provided me with an incredible amount of help in researching the Dutch side of my family.

Back in the early days of online research in the 1990s, there wasn’t the variety or depth of resources that we now enjoy today. One source I found said that as of 1996, there were only 10 million users of the internet world-wide. While many libraries, archives, and genealogical societies had begun to stake out a presence, they weren’t yet able to provide the scope of digital materials that are so easily accessible today. It was still often necessary to obtain documents the old-fashioned way, by using the mail. Bulletin boards and Usenet were still a common way of connecting with other genealogists.

Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894 – 1932), the subject of my first query to Nol.

While I know it was sometime in early September 1996, I can’t remember where I first saw the original post I saw by Nol (short for “Arnoldus”), or whether it was a message board or something else. It was just a brief statement saying that he was going into a local archive the next day and asking whether he could look anything up for anyone while he was there. I contacted him and asked him if he’d be willing to look up one name for me, my great grandfather Johannis Albertus van der Fluit.

Nol emailed me the next day, telling me that the information I needed was held in the Noord Holland Archives in Haarlem (Noord-Hollands Archief). To my good fortune, Nol lives in Haarlem. He said he would be going into the archive sometime later in the week and he would get back to me.

My first email from Nol after we moved off the message boards. Later in our correspondence, I learned that the family line of Nol’s wife intersected with mine.

Nol followed up less than a week later. Not only had he looked up my great grandfather, but he looked up all four of my father’s paternal great grandparents (my great great grandparents). Furthermore, Nol took it further and looked up several of my great great great grandparents. The email he sent me set out a summary of the birth records for each of them, including the record numbers, dates and places of birth, each person’s parents’ names, the names of the witnesses, and the occupations of the persons named in the records.

While I had some prior knowledge, my early exchanges with Nol provided a significant introduction to the nomenclature with which I am now so familiar, including the types civil institutions and records sources (such as the “Burgerlijke Stand” – civil register), the municipal system of local governance (“gemeente”), population registers, and the Dutch words and phrases associated with genealogical research. So not only has Nol been a mentor in Dutch genealogy, I have often relied upon him as a language coach as I tried to teach myself Dutch. No Duolingo back then!

Over the next two years and over fifty emails, Nol provided me with countless records summaries: births, marriages, and deaths of ancestors and cousins from all over Noord Holland. I still have a copy of each and every one of them. I originally converted each email into a WordPerfect document. Over the years I have updated the format in which they’re saved and made sure that they remain accessible. I still go back to them often. One time several years ago I went through them again, one by one from the beginning, to ensure that I squeezed them for every drop of information I could gather.

The timing during which our paths crossed online resulted in a much longer and deeper relationship than what might have resulted had we met online nowadays. Dutch archives are amazing in how much they’ve scanned and made available online for free. Nowadays, over the course of a week I could probably find scanned online images of everything Nol found for me over that two-year period of in-person archival visits. In fact, over the last many years, I pretty much have found and downloaded digital images of all those records. So while we might still have become acquainted online, I would not have been as reliant on Nol as I might have been in the present.

Unfortunately, I’ve been unable to reciprocate Nol’s incredible kindness. He needs more Canadian relatives! Despite that, what makes me particularly happy is that our connection has evolved into much more of a friendship, particularly given that he and I connected in the early days of Facebook. Our connection has reached a point that I often forget the genealogical origins of our relationship.

My only regret is that in the 26 years I have known Nol, we have never met in person. Pre-COVID, he often visited the United States, but his travels mainly took him to the east coast. From where I am on the west coast of Canada, the eastern seaboard of the United States is about as far as Baghdad is from Amsterdam. Not exactly a trip down the street. It’s also why I don’t know your cousin in Toronto. 😂

This is why my Dutch relatives and I have such different points of view about long road trips.

I have only been to the Netherlands twice. The first time was before I met Nol. My last trip there occurred in 2017. I had hoped that I could meet Nol at that time, as I was literally going to be in Haarlem during part of my trip. Unfortunately, at the same time I was in the Netherlands, Nol was in the United States. Wat jammer, as you might say in Dutch.

I am still hoping that one day our paths might cross in real life. Nevertheless, I am grateful for all the help, mentoring, and friendship Nol has provided to me over the years. The depth of my gratitude is profound. Dank je wel, Nol!