Archive for the ‘My Story’ Category
How far is far away?
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
Interior of a towing barge in 1760.
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
The other day I hopped in the car with my husband and kids to pay a visit to grandpa and grandma in Holland’s southernmost province of Limburg. The trip took us two hours on a smooth, well-lit highway. During the drive, my thoughts wandered off to my ancestors, as they regularly do. I wondered how they would have experienced this trip?
My ancestors from the 1700s probably never made such a trip. They lived, married, and died in Amsterdam, possibly without ever setting a foot outside the city. Traveling to the south of Limburg at that time would have been a huge undertaking, especially if you lacked the money to get yourself a carriage, a horse, or a ticket on a “trekschuit” (horse-drawn barge). If you had to walk the 215 km (135 miles) from Amsterdam to Heerlen, it would take you at least a week. On horseback or by barge you could do it in two or three days.
Moreover, it would have been an expensive trip. You needed to pay for a carriage, a horse, or a barge. And even if you just walked, you would have to pay several nights lodging and food. Going by barge would have been the most comfortable, although you would have to change barges several times. Going by road was a dusty or muddy business, depending on the season. On top of that, it could be dangerous with bandits lurking in the woods to rob you of your money. Last but not least, you would not be earning any money for the duration of your trip.
I tried to image what trip today would cost me at least a week, a lot of money and could be potentially dangerous. Going cross-country on a mountain bike from my home to Bavaria (700 km, 430 miles). Or maybe a one week hike through the Blue Mountains or Yosemite National Park. And that would not even get seriously dangerous.
So if going to the south of my country felt like a cross-country trip of a week, then what most my sailing ancestors have felt when they set sail for months to the Dutch East Indies, facing storms and pirates? I guess it would be like going to the moon knowing that there were evil aliens along the way that could attack your spaceship. That thought gave me a glimpse of how brave my ancestors captains Rutger and Henri Grivel must have been. And that made me extremely proud of them…
The Toko In Semarang
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
A Toko in Semarang
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
When researching my own tree I stumbled upon an ancestor named Henri Francois Grivel that seemed to have disappeared into thin air after his birth. I could not find any records on him except for his birth certificate. I had the rest of his family complete. I knew the fate of his parents and his siblings. But nothing on him, and that was nagging me…
Then, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Dutch Library) came to the rescue. They had only just completed scanning and indexing over a million newspaper pages starting in 1640, and put it all online! When I searched for “Grivel” literally dozens of hits turned up for an Indonesian newspaper from the mid 1800s. Intrigued, I clicked on the hits and to my amazement, they were newspaper ads, placed by my ancestor Henri to promote his shop in Semarang.
He sold furniture, books, baby clothing, rain boots, photo cameras, tools, candles and a myriad of other things a Dutch colonist would need to deal with life in the tropics. Suddenly Henri had come to life…
Ever since, I have frequently used the site of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek to put real-life flesh on the bones of my clients’ family trees. Sometimes it doesn’t yields anything, but other times, it provides fascinating clues to people’s daily life.
Go ahead and have a go at it yourself. You can feed any Dutch texts you find to Google Translate to get a grasp of what it says.
The Tale Of The Mirror: Looking For Facts Behind Family Myths
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Photograph © Translimits
When I got married my dear mother had arranged for a very special bridal gift: a large antique mirror that had been passed on from mother to daughter for generations. The mirror came with a family myth. It had once belonged to my great grandmother Anne–Co who received it as a bridal gift from her father who was a carpenter.
The marriage between Anne–Co and Frederic was said to be a bit unusual. It was a marriage “by proxy”, meaning that the groom was not present at the ceremony. This was common practice with soldiers and other government officials stationed in one of the Dutch colonies, as was the groom. After the marriage in 1909 she sailed for Atjeh, Indonesia, on her own taking the mirror with her.
The Family Myth
The story goes that her first child was not her own but that she was the result of an affair between Frederic and an Indonesian beauty before he married Anne–Co. Her second child –my grandmother– was born in Indonesia and her younger sister saw the light on board the ship when the family headed back for Holland in 1919. As did the mirror.
