The Quest For The Perfect Clock
January 11th, 2012
For long sundials were the best way to measure time.
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
As I was watching the countdown towards the New Year on my TV my thoughts wandered off to my ancestors who did not have (nor needed, perhaps) such exact timing available to them.
In fact, for centuries the only way to tell the time more or less accurately was using a sundial. The only problem with sundials is that you need, well, the sun. So what to do on cloudy days and at night? To solve this issue people used water clocks. This is a system that uses a regulated flow of water from one basin to another to measure time. During the Middle Ages church bells were used to communicate time measured by the church with sundials and water clocks to the congregation. In a time where the pace of life did not require any time measuring more accurate than telling the hours, this sufficed. After all, what medieval peasant would worry about milking her cows at 6:00 or 6:10 in the morning?
However, during the Renaissance, measuring time precisely became an obsessive quest, not because peasants demanded to be able to milk their cows at 6:10 exactly, but because it was instrumental in determining one’s exact position at sea. Up until the 1400s people had sailed the seas mostly along the cost. Not only because they were afraid to sail off the world as they thought it to be flat, but also because of the fear of seriously getting lost. After all, there was no way of telling how far the coast was once the land was out of sight.
Already in the 1300s some mechanical clocks were constructed, but they were hopelessly inaccurate and needed daily fine tuning with a sundial. It was the Dutchman Christiaan Huygens, who came up with the first pendulum clock in 1656. The pendulum clock proved to stay accurate for several days in a row, a huge achievement at the time. He perfected his clocks with inventions such as the balance wheel. That it was a Dutchman who came up with an accurate clock is not surprising. At the time, the Dutch Republic was in fierce competition with the English to control the sea routes to the East Indies. Any technology that would give either party a way to measure the longitude at sea would be instrumental in beating the competition. No wonder huge prizes were offered to anyone that could build such a seaworthy clock. However, Huygens never managed to get his clocks to work properly at sea where the rough movements of the ship would mess up the pendulum system easily. It was the Englishman John Harrison who eventually did so in 1736.
For the ordinary people, though, measuring time exactly did not become an issue until the arrival of the railway. In the Netherlands, the railway had spread countrywide around the 1850s. Only then it became apparent that towns in the East of the country were using a different time. At first, extensive timetables were used to inform passengers of the several local times involved. Since this still did not solve all the confusion and inventions such as the telegraph made time differences even more annoying, it was decided in 1909 to introduce a national standard time that became known as Amsterdam Time, which was UTC+00:20.
In 1940, the Nazi regime that occupied the Netherlands introduced Berlin Time, which is UTC+01:00. They also introduced daylight saving time. After the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945, the time was not set back to Amsterdam Time. So even today the Netherlands is still on Berlin Time, and still uses daylight saving time, although the debate about the latter is increasing over the last couple of years.
However much comfort this exact measuring of time has given us, I sometimes wonder if our ancestors were not privileged after all to not have a demanding agenda and an unrelenting exact clock determining their every move. Perhaps a good idea for the new year is to toss our clock and agenda out of the window once a month and live a day at the pace of our ancestors. Happy 2012!
A Farm Name As Surname
July 1st, 2011
Typical farm from the eastern Netherlands
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
Inspired by a family tree I recently completed for a client, I’d like to share with you a special kind of surname you may come across and that is both a blessing and a curse: surnames based on farm names. If you have been researching your roots for some time, then you may be familiar with the shift from “fixed surnames” to “patronymics”, usually as you step back from the 1800s into the 1700s. All of a sudden —it seems— your ancestors shift surnames with each generation. In the Netherlands, after 1811, all Dutch adopted a fixed surname, as imposed by Napoleon in that year. Before that, many people were named after their father. And so Pieter, son of Willem was called Pieter Willems and Jan, son of Pieter Jan Pieters, etcetera. A bit confusing when first researching such patronymics, once you get the hang of it they are pretty straightforward and often a great tool when doing research in a time when records are less informative.
However, in certain parts of the Netherlands, especially in what is now called Twente and the Achterhoek (the easternmost parts of the provinces of Overijssel and Gelderland), people preferred farm names over patronymics. This means that people were not named after their father, but after the farm they were somehow associated with. “Somehow associated with” sounds a bit vague, and thas is exactly what it is. People adopted the name of the farm they were born at, worked at, married into, owned, used to own, founded, or whatever other plausible association you can think of. Moreover, people used to changes surnames upon a change of farm and so changed surnames several times during their lifetime.
To clarify this, a little example. Let’s say you have an ancestor Hendrik who was born on a farm called “Boerhoeve”. At his birth, he will be registered as Hendrik Boerhoeve. Little Hendrik grows up and gets his first job as a farm hand at the “Dennenhoeve”. He meets a nice girl called Greetje and they marry. On the marriage record he is registered as Hendrik Dennenhoeve. Greetje was the daughter of a wealthy farmer without sons that owned the “Eikenhoeve”. Hendrik and Greetje move in with Greetje’s parents. When their first child is born, Hendrik is registered on the birth record as Hendrik Eikenhoeve and their son as Jan Eikenhoeve. Greetje’s parents die and Hendrik inherits the farm. However, he decides to sell it and found his own farm which he calls “Hendrikshoeve”. By the time their son Jan gets married Hendrik is registered on the marriage record as Hendrik Hendrikshoeve. Hendrik becomes a wealthy man and when Napoleon summons him to choose a fixed surname he boldly decides to call himself “Rijkman” (lit. “rich man”). When Hendrik dies, he is registered on his death record as Hendrik Rijkman. All his descendants will be called Rijkman from this point on. However, if they wish to trace their roots back they will have to search for the names Boerhoeve, Dennenhoeve, Eikenhoeve and Hendrikshoeve as well. To add to the confusion, not all people called after these farms are necessarily related, the only thing they obviously share is that at some point in time they were associated with those farms in one way or another.
Though farm names may seem a pain at first glance (and they are!) they also provide invaluable information about the whereabouts of these ancestors. Before the 1850s, addresses were not –or only sporadically– kept in the Netherlands. Unless your ancestors had property to sell or inherit, or they show up in one of the early censuses, it is unlikely that you will be able to pinpoint exactly where they lived. With farm names, however, you can. Most farms in the Twente and Achterhoek areas can be found on old maps. Furthermore, as most farms were leased, some lease contracts survived and can still be found in the notarial archives. And if you get really lucky, there may be pictures of the farm, or it might even still be standing where it stood 300 years ago!
Further reading:
Finding old maps on Watwaswaar.nl: http://magazine.dutchancestrycoach.com/wat-was-waar-what-was-where-in-the-netherlands.
On the origin of Dutch surnames: http://magazine.dutchancestrycoach.com/making-sense-o…-dutch-surname.
Got stuck with your own research? Ask for help here: http://magazine.dutchancestrycoach.com/free-help.php.
Dutch Sayings: Water And Sea
May 10th, 2011
Looking out to sea, George Hitchcock
Photograph Wikimedia Commons
The Dutch are famous because of their relationship with the sea and water in general. We reclaimed land from the sea, used water to drive our economy, sailed the seven seas, and conquered nations far away. Nowadays, we are still fighting the flood every day by keeping our dikes up-to-date. A people that intertwined with the sea and water cannot but reveal that special bond in its language. Today I’ll share with you some of the literally hundreds of Dutch sayings involving water.
Water bij de wijn doen (to add water to the wine): lowering demands to accomplish a compromise.
Een storm in een glas water (a storm in a glass of water): much to do about nothing, not as severe as it seemed at first.
Stille wateren hebben diepe gronden (still waters have deep grounds): he who does not talk much often has deep thoughts, there is more to this person than meets the eye.
Ze zijn als water en vuur (they are as water and fire): they cannot stand each other.
Het hoofd boven water houden (keeping one’s head above the water): barely getting by, financially.
Een steek onder water (a punch below the water): insulting someone with a smile, using indirect speech.
Het water loopt altijd naar de zee (water always flows towards the sea): the rich always get richer.
Met hoog water lopen (walking with high water): wearing trousers that have legs that are too short.
Zo vlug als water (as quick as water): very quick, very keen.
Kijken alsof men water ziet branden (to look as if there was water on fire): looking very surprised.
Het kind met het badwater weggooien (to throw out the baby along with the bathing water): taking such ill measures to solve a problem that you end up ruining everything, including that what you wanted to solve.
De boot missen (to miss the boat): being too late to participate in something lucrative or favorable.
Dat is geen man over boord (no-one fell overboard): that is no problem.
In troebel water is het goed vissen (murky waters make good fishing): one can benefit from the problems of others.
Recht door zee (straight through the sea): being honest (or as some non-Dutch experience this : being blunt).
Onder zeil gaan (going underneath the sail): going to bed/sleep.
Water naar de zee dragen (to carry water to the sea) : a pointless business, measures that do not solve a thing.
Als de koeien op het ijs dansen en het warm water regent (when the cows dance on the ice and it rains warm water) : never.
Er zal nog heel wat water door de Rijn stromen, eer dat gebeurt (a lot of water will flow through the Rhine before that happens): it will take a long time for that to happen.
Het water loopt over de dijk (the water flows over the dike) : to cry.
Spijkers op laag water zoeken (searching for nails at low tide): nitpicking.
De zon niet in het water kunnen zien schijnen (not being able to see the sun shine in the water) : to be jealous.
Want to know more about Dutch sayings an proverbs? Read this book:
Dictionary of 1000 Dutch Proverbs (Hippocrene Bilingual Proverbs)
