Tag: van der Fluit

52W Mark III – Week 33: Favourite Discovery

While the prompt for this week’s 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Favourite Discovery”, I’m hard pressed to choose just one. Rather, what immediately comes to mind is my Favourite Exploration, when I visited the farmhouse where my father was born, Waarland, North Holland. At the time it was part of Gemeente Harenkarspel (Municipality of Harenkarspel), but now Waarland is part of Gemeente Schagen.

Waarland’s location in the Netherlands

The first time I visited the Netherlands was part of a post-university backpacking tour through Europe with one of my friends. In the Netherlands, we stayed with one of my grandmother’s sisters and her husband, Tante Anny and Ome Nic, who lived in Zuid-Scharwoude, Gemeente Langedijk (which is now part of Dijk en Waard). It’s only a few kilometers from Waarland. Near the end of our stay in Langedijk, Ome Nic and I went for a bicycle ride to Waarland so I could meet my grandfather’s (van der Fluit) side of the family.

Waarland

Once in Waarland, we went to the home of my grandfather’s oldest brother and his wife, Ome Jan and Tante Marie. Their house is less than two kilometers due south of the house where my father was born. Ome Jan’s house was also the place where he and and my grandfather were both born. Many of Jan and Marie’s children and grandchildren were there for our visit.

One of Jan and Marie’s children (my father’s cousin), Pieter, took me on a short bike ride up the road to the house where my dad was born. Not only that, he knew the current owner, so we were able to go inside. That was incredibly special. I was even in the room where my father was born!

The house where my father was born, the first time I visited Waarland

Many many years later, in 2017, my parents planned to take a cruise that departed out of Amsterdam, so they went early so they could spend time with our family in Noord Holland. I had always wanted to visit the Netherlands with my father, so I made the trip over there.

With my father outside the house here he was born. He’s more than happy to say, yes, he was born in a barn.

Of course, the trip would not have been complete without a visit to Waarland. After a short visit with one of my father’s cousins, we made our way to the house where my father was born. It looked as if the place had not been well maintained by its current owners. It looked quite run down since the last time I was there. I also had to tease my father by asking him whether he remembered the skateboard halfpipe that was in the back yard.

We then made our way to Ome Jan’s and Tante Marie’s house. Ome Jan had passed away in 2011 and Tante Marie died in 2013, so the house had a new owner. In fact, it was an entirely new house. The old one had been demolished, but the new one that replaced it looked almost identical. 

The rebuilt version of my great grandparents’ house, where my grandfather was born.

We also passed by the church where my father was baptized. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to go inside. As well, we stopped by a 450-year-old windmill that has been a museum since 1920, where I suppose I did make a surprising discovery – llamas! They were grazing on the property immediately adjacent to the windmill.

52W Mark III – Week 30: Boats

Like many immigrants, my father came to Canada on a boat; in his case, the M.S. Sibajak.

My father holding a Delft tile of the Sibajak, the ship on which he immigrated to Canada in 1954. This one is actually a replacement, as the original one I gave him had chipped. I was lucky to find this, as these tiles are no longer available.

The Sibajak was named after a volcano in Sumatra. it was built for Koninklijke Rotterdamsche Lloyd (Royal Rotterdam Lloyd) at the De Schelde shipyards in Vlissingen, Zeeland. Construction began in 1926 and completed in 1927. Royal Rotterdam Lloyd received the Sibajak in January 1928. At launch, it could carry 527 passengers and had a crew of just over 200. It departed on its maiden voyage on February 8, 1928, leaving Rotterdam for Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia).

The M.S. Sibajak when it launched in 1927.

During World War II, the Sibajak ended up in Liverpool after the Dutch fell to the Nazis at home and to the Japanese in the East Indies. The Dutch government in exile seized the ship, which was re-registered in Curaçao. The British navy took control of the Sibajak, but its Dutch and Indonesian crew continued to operate the ship. After modifications were made in Singapore, the Sibajak served as a troop ship during the war. It was capable of carrying up to 2,300 troops. The British returned control of the ship back to the Dutch in 1946.

The original plans for the Sibajak.
Pier 21 in Halifax, which is now a museum that I have visited twice.

The Sibajak was converted back into a passenger ship in 1950. It had the capacity to carry 956 passengers. Its first voyage after the retrofit was in April 1950, transporting Dutch emigrants departing from Rotterdam for Melbourne, Australia. It also served to repatriate Dutch citizens after Indonesia’s independence. In 1952, the Sibajak also carried passengers to New Zealand, Canada, and the United States.

In 1959, Royal Rotterdam Lloyd sold the Sibajak to a company in Hong Kong. The Sibajak’s last voyage as a passenger ship ended in July 1959, travelling from Rotterdam to Melbourne via Curaçao, the Panama Canal, Wellington, New Zealand and Sydney, Australia. In August 1959, the new owners transported the ship to Hong Kong, where it was stripped of all salvageable materials and scrapped. My understanding was that the remains were scuttled somewhere in the waters around Hong Kong. When I visited the city in 1996, I wondered how close I had come to it on the many different boats and ferries I rode on at the time.

This hangs on the wall in front of the seating area in Pier 21 where immigrants waited to be interviewed by immigration officials.

My father and his family departed Rotterdam on May 5, 1954 and arrived at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia on May 13, 1954. Pier 21 is analogous to Ellis Island in the United States. My father’s aunt and uncle came over four months earlier, in January 1954 on the Groote Beer, while another aunt and uncle followed in late May 1954, on board the Castel Felice.

My father with my grandparents and his sisters at the Rotterdam pier on the day of their departure for Canada aboard the Sibajak. My father is standing in the centre, in front of my grandfather. The couple on the right are family friends who drove my family to the pier. At the time, my grandmother was two months pregnant with my father’s youngest brother!
My grandmother, my father, and his two sisters seated on the deck of the Sibajak somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean between the Netherlands and Canada.

From Halifax the family took the train from Halifax to Alberta. On often-told story recounts my grandmother becoming separated from the family and lost during a stop in Montreal. Happily, she found her way back to the train before departure. he train went through Maine, U.S.A., and through Montreal. My grandfather originally planned on settling in Manitoba. However, his sister encouraged him to continue on to Alberta, where she and my great uncle had settled.

They made it!

In the late 1990s, my parents went on an Alaskan cruise on a Holland America ship. During the trip, my father, who loves to talk to people, fell into a conversation with one of the older hands on deck. My father mentioned having come to Canada on the Sibajak. After a few questions from the crew member, my dad learned that the man had been on the Sibajak during my father’s trip, in his first year or two of service.

This is a fascinating short documentary about a voyage the Sibajak made to Australia carrying Dutch emigrants. The video is in Dutch, but the images convey a lot of meaning. My father recognized many of the scenes in this video.

52W Mark III – Week 24: Hard Times

It was through hard times that my grandfather came to own his first dog.

My grandfather, Adrianus “Arie” van der Fluit (1923 – 2002), loved dogs. When he was a teen in the Netherlands, he supplemented his income training dogs. After moving to Canada, in the 1950s and 1960s, he even trained dogs for the police. As long as I can remember, my grandfather always had at least one dog, usually a German shepherd. My favourite was Sheba, the first dog of his that I’m able to remember. He had dogs until the day he died at age 79, still training them even after he lost his foot due to complications associated with diabetes.

My grandfather with Sheba, sometime around 1970.

While I would have thought he had a dog ever since he was little, he told me that he did not have one until he was fifteen. It came to be during, and because of, hard times – the Great Depression. However, based on the story he told me, my grandfather could have gotten his first dog anytime after he was eight to when he was in his late teens.

Arie’s father, Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894 – 1932) died when my grandfather was eight years old. His mother, Theresia “Teetje” Pater was left a widow. Sometime after Johannis died, Teetje’s younger brother Johannes “Jan” Pater (1900 – 1948) moved in with the family. I always understood it was soon after Johannis died, which would make sense. Teetje was left a widow at age 37, with eight children. I am sure it would have been of great help if Jan moved in with his sister as soon as her need arose.

My grandfather in the Netherlands, a few months before he married my grandmother.

Jan had a dog, but Arie’s mother detested dogs. She insisted the dog go. However, because of the depression, it was difficult to even give a pet away as it was too expensive to keep one fed. Jan decided to drown the dog. Arie witnessed this. He swore to himself that no dog would suffer with him around, so he even got himself one.

This, of course, caused a conflict with Arie’s mother. She refused to allow a dog in her household, so Arie moved out. As his two older brothers were out of the house, and the other children were too young, Arie was the primary breadwinner for the household. Faced with the loss of the family’s main income, after a few weeks Arie’s mother relented and allowed the dog in the house.

Needless to say, the timeline is a bit problematic. If Jan moved in with his sister’s family shortly after Johannis died, my grandfather’s story would have taken place before he was ten years old. The most apparent way to reconcile the chronology is if Jan moved in with his sister when Arie was 15, around 1938. I don’t know much about Jan and I don’t know of any life events that would have caused him to move in with Teetje other than the death of her husband. Jan never married, so I can rule out him becoming widowed as a catalyst for change. The depression was still causing hard times – with harder times shortly over the horizon – so that part of the story still works.

My grandfather in Raymond, Alberta, in September 1999, age 76, with Dekker, along with my brother Trevor.

52 Weeks Mark III – Week 13: Worship

Wow, we are now one-quarter of the way through this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge!!

In the Netherlands, there has not been much of a tradition of preparing and publishing obituaries of deceased persons. Deaths were once noted in local newspapers in regular reports of recent entries of births, marriages, and deaths taken from the local civil registry (“burgerlijke stand”). What is more common to see in newspapers are “familieberichten” (“family notices”). These are all secular forms of announcing and commemorating the death of a person.

For Roman Catholics, another common form of remembrance is a “bidprentje” (“prayer card”). In Germany, they are known as a “totenzettel”. These are usually given out at funerals and commemorate a deceased person. They usually consist of a short prayer or biblical verse along with the name of the deceased. However, bidprentjes can be used to mark other religious milestones, such as baptisms, first communions, confirmations, marriages, and ordinations into the priesthood. While they originated as a Roman Catholic tradition, in recent decades the practice of making these cards has occurred within other religious traditions.

Bidprentjes are a fantastic source of genealogical information. In addition to the name of the deceased they usually include the dates and places of their birth and death and the name of the deceased’s spouse. They also often have details of the date and place of the funeral and interment. Older bidprentjes are quite beautiful as they were adorned with religious art and iconography. In more recent years, they are more likely to include the name of the deceased’s children. In that regard, they now appear quite similar to familieberichten.

Bidprentje for my great grandfather, Johannis Albertus van der Fluit (1894-1932)
Bidprentje for my great grandmother, Teresia (“Teetje”) Pater (1894-1947)
Bidprentje for my great great grandfather, Jan Dirksz van der Fluit (1846 – 1935). It notes that at the time he died he was the widower of Agatha Rood and that he had been previously married to Maria Veldman (my great great grandmother) and before Maria he was married to Brigetta Tak. Jan had outlived all three of his wives.

Neither bidprentjes nor familieberichten are government documents. They are private documents created, distributed, and published by the family. This means a primary source of bidprentjes would be the family of the deceased. There are also genealogical societies that have collections of bidprentjes. The Centrum Voor Familiegeschiedenis (“Centre for Family History” or “Central Bureau for Genealogy”) also has a collection of bidprentjes. While you can search the collection, you must be a member to view and download the document. Familieberichten can be found at Online Familieberichten and Mensenlinq.