Thursday, November 13, 2014

Tangled Interrelationships in Utrecht

In my previous posting, I commented that I didn't expect to find many tangled interrelationships in Utrecht. After all, in a city like Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, people have a much greater choice when looking for a mate than those living in isolated rural areas. However, even before I wrote that last epistle, I saw hints of some interrelationships. I noticed the name "van den Hoeven" in a couple of records, and I wondered if they were related. It turned out that they were.
Let's start with Hendrik Vink (1826-1906) and my distant cousin Everarda Houpst (1838-1905). This couple also appears in the drop chart in my last posting. But here, we look at the offspring of a different child, Casper Cornelis Vink (1861-1942) and his wife Elisabeth Maria Rijnders (1855-1902). All together, they had eight children. However, two were still-born, and three more died shortly after birth. The remaining three reached adulthood and married.

Hendrik Vink (born 1890) and his sister Elisabeth Maria Vink (born 1893) married two siblings, respectively, Wijntje Spierenburg (born 1891) and Barend Spierenburg (born 1893). The remaining Vink sibling, Aletta Gesina Vink (1886-1925) married Willem Franciscus van den Hoeven (born 1871). Willem Franciscus was a half first cousin to Wijntje and Barend Spierenburg. That is, all three Vink siblings married a grand-child of Jan van den Hoeven (1807-1882).

So although the cities are not fertile ground when searching for tangled interrelationships, they still can be found there.




Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Another Link Between Two Ancestral Lines

In a previous blog posting, I described a rather complex set of tangled interrelationships connecting two of my ancestral lines. In that post, the van de Beerenkamp family provided a link between my Moll and van Coot lines. In this post, I uncover another, albeit less complicated connection.

Lately, I've been recording distant cousins who lived in the province of Utrecht, either in the city of Utrecht or in Amersfoort. In such large communities, I don't expect to find much in the way of tangled interrelationships. And to a great extent, that's exactly what I found. No cousins marrying, no double cousins, etc.


However, when coming across a new family name, I still do a search to check if I've seen that name before. I traced my distant Utrecht cousins down to Gerrit Vink, born 1885 in Utrecht. He married (for a second time) in 1926 to Derkje Dorland, born 1901 in Rheden. I checked the name Dorland in my database, and turned up a few others, including Jacob Dorland. Jacob was a witness to the marriage of his brother Johann Christoffel Dorland and Berendina Moll, in 1884.

(In the above chart, red indicates ancestors, and blue indicates other blood relatives.)

A bit of research revealed that Jacob Dorland was the father of Derkje Dorland. So the Dorland family had a connection to two of my ancestral lines. First to my Moll ancestors, and secondly to my Laseur ancestors, through their Vink descendants. Evert Moll and Geertrui van Donselaar were my 4th great grandparents. Herman Laseur and Bellitje (Peters) Birckhoud were my 6th great grandparents. These two lines converge with my grandparents, Gerrit Moll and Johanna Maria van de Bunt.

So it always pays off to check your database to see if you've come across a particular family before. Likewise, it always pays off to add witnesses of events to your database.