Have you ever wondered about your ancestral origins? My journey to uncover my family history started in Rotterdam and Doesburg, revealing roots in Kampen and Dalfsen, Netherlands. Discover how my Bakker and Neervoort families navigated wage labour and crisis eras. From Belgian soldier ancestors to mysterious name origins, explore this fascinating family history mystery.
Have you ever wondered aloud, “Where do I actually come from?” or have you ever been curious about it? A few years ago, I asked myself the same question, and I started a search for where my ancestors were and where they originally came from. My search started in the metropolis of Rotterdam and in Doesburg, the Gelderland mustard city.
Do you know where your grandfathers and grandmothers were born?
Just like you, I have two grandfathers and grandmothers, two on my mother’s side, the Neervoort family, and two on my father’s side, the Bakker family. Due to the reasons mentioned earlier in my previous stories, I had little contact with my family as a child and now also as an adult. In retrospect, I would have liked to get to know them, but my giftedness, high sensitivity, and my other physical complaints unfortunately prevented this contact from being established. Another fact that may have contributed to this was the fact that three of my grandparents had died before I was born. I never had the pleasure of knowing Willem Bakker (1874-1948) and his wife Cornelia Maria van Eijk (1890-1956) and my maternal grandmother Martha Catharina Johanna Houtzeel (1887-1956).
Did you know that there were also employment agencies in the past?
Unfortunately, I am not quite sure whether I should call my maternal grandfather, Willem Neervoort (1887-1973), a temporary worker or a small self-employed person, but according to the records I know, he was a “wage labourer” in his time. From my knowledge, I think this was a worker that “farmers” could hire per day. If you know more about this, I would like to hear from you. Grandpa Neervoort is the only grandparent I was allowed to know until I was twelve years old. I remember him as a quiet man. In my memory, he always sat on the right corner of the couch in the room with my uncle Anton and aunt Marietje in Doesburg, where he lived in later life. When I sat next to him on the couch and wasn’t paying attention, he always secretly grabbed me by the ear, which startled me.
Were Doesburg and Rotterdam original residences of my family?
By rooting around in the origins of my family, I found out that we originally came from other places in the Netherlands. At the Bakker family, I found the Dutch town of Kampen (Province of Overijssel) as the place of origin in the Netherlands. At the Neervoort family, I ended up in Dalfsen (Province of Overijssel, Het Vecht dal). As you can see, both sides of my family came from the same province in the Netherlands. The city of Kampen and the village of Dalfsen are about thirty-six kilometres apart, as the crow flies, in the same Dutch province of Overijssel. The Bakkers were land/wage labourers on Kampereiland, a piece of land on which, according to traditional stories, the workers were exploited considerably at the time. At the Neervoorts there is a story going around that my grandfather was not allowed to work due to a government rule in the time of crisis; it would be about the number of working people per family. Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to find the source of this.
Was the city of Kampen the origin of the Bakker family?
I can say that for me a large part of the origin of the Bakker family in the Netherlands stems from the city of Kampen, but this is not entirely the truth. When I further researched this branch of my family, I suddenly ended up with a Belgian soldier from the Brussels area. This soldier, Jean-Louis Albert (1899-1935), got into a relationship with Johanna Bakker (1895-1935) around 1800. This Johanna already had a daughter before this relationship: “Alijda Sofija van Dijk” (1819-(?). Together, according to my sources, they had two more children, David Guilliame Bakker or Albert, and Grada Federika Bakker, our Albert, and Grada Federika Bakker, our Albert. According to my sources, both parents were never married, but did Jean Louis accept the daughter, Alijda Sofija, as his own? Alijda was an only child, and the family name Bakker should have ended here.
Do you also have any riddles in your family history?
According to my sources, Alijda was the daughter of a certain Berend van Dijk (1786-1836). Whether Alijda’s actual parents were ever married? In any case, the family name Bakker hung here on a “silk” thread. But as I wrote before, her foster father has never been married to her mother, and the foster father and her mother have had two more children. (David Guilliame Bakker, or Albert, and Grada Federika Bakker, our Albert.) It is also funny that the name Bakker was still written as Backker at that time. It becomes even more confusing when it turns out that at a later stage “brother and sister,” David Guilliame Bakker, or Albert and Alijda Sofija van Dijk, got into a relationship, and this produced five children, including my great-grandfather Berend Jan Bakker (1846–1903).
Do you also not know why and how exactly your family name came about?
Can you still follow me? The name Albert thus disappeared like “snow” in the sun from the family history. Why, I have no idea yet. A story I have read is that Jean Louis Albert was a soldier and died at the age of thirty-five. Another story tells me that this soldier left his family at the age of thirty-five to fight again in Africa, this time in Senegal. Also, very confusing for me is that at the beginning of 1795, French troops led by Charles Pichegru and patriots led by Hendrik Willem Daendels invaded the Netherlands en masse over the then frozen rivers. On January 19, 1795, a day after the flight of William V, they proclaimed the Batavian Republic in the town hall of Amsterdam. The question is, am I originally a Belgian, a Batavian, or a Dutchman? Do you know the answer?
