Another Brick in the Wall

Frans Schulze
(1880 Amsterdam 1952)

Voor de Nederlandse tekst, zie na de Engelse tekst.
Also Pink Floyd realized that brick walls are there to be torn down. Before being accused of vandalism, I am talking about the brick walls in genealogy. We all seem to have these ancestral questions of which the answers remain hidden in the dark clouds of the past. And no matter what we try... Well, here's another one. Maybe you can help me see the light.
The picture that you see here is that of Frans Schulze. He was born in Amsterdam on April 4, 1880. His birth certificate (see below) says that his mother was domiciled in Semarang. That city is situated on the Indonesian island of Java, a former Dutch colony. The certificate does not mention a father and there may be a good reason for that. His mother's name is Maria Johanna Francisca Schulze. So Frans carries the surname of his mother. Certainly in those days having a child from an unknown (Indian?) father and not being married, must have been a social problem, to say the least. It seems to have been sufficient reason to travel back to Holland and have the baby there.

Shortly after the delivery Maria disappeared from the scene leaving her son in Amsterdam. Assuming she went back to the then Dutch East Indies I checked many relevant records. But also Dutch archives have been scrutinized, all in vain. She vanished from the face of the earth. And that is my brick wall.
Fortunately there is more detail to be told. Little Frans stayed behind under the care of what turned out to be his foster parents. They were the couple where Maria lived during her stay in the Amsterdam Marnixstreet. Their names are Gerrit Box and Hendrika Scheeffer. The reason why Maria ended up in their house is unknown.

Registration of the birth of Frans Schulze

Fortunately certain other facts are known. Around the turn of the century the Box-Scheeffer couple moved to a place called Bussum in the Gooi region. Possibly by that time husband Gerrit passed away already. When Hendrika died in 1904 she left the house to Frans. She was buried in Bussum in a grave that later became the Schulze family tomb.
Both these facts are an indication of an apparent fine relationship between foster parent and foster son. They can hardly be explained otherwise. But possibly there is another option.
I decided to have a further look at the Box-Scheeffer couple. They do not appear to have had any children. Their marriage took place in Amsterdam on April 19, 1877. For both it was not their first marriage. At the time Gerrit was approx. 48 and Hendrika 36 years old. When looking at Hendrika's parents, there is a little surprise. 
Her father is Hendrikus Martinus Scheeffer, her mother's name is Catriena Josepha Schultze. And that last name comes very close to Frans' surname Schulze! 

In those days, when oral transfer of information was the norm when registering a child, it was not unusual that names were written down incorrectly. In this case the physician present during the delivery of Frans had the child registered at the City Hall. So it may very well be that when he said the last name was Schultze the civil servant understood and wrote down Schulze. But so far this is just an assumption. However, it would explain why Maria went to the Marnixstreet to have her child there.

So basically I have two questions. The first is where has Maria Johanna Francisca Schulze gone? The second one relates to Catriena Josepha Schultze. Is she in one way or another related to Maria? The fact that Catriena was born in Munster (Germany) in approx. 1803 doesn't make investigations any easier.
Any clue or suggestion will be appreciated! You may find more information about my brick wall on this Dutch genealogy forum.

Nederlandse tekst 
Misschien eerst een beetje uitleg over de titel van dit blog. Een brick wall is naast een stenen muur ook in overdrachtelijke zin iets dat een onoverkomelijk probleem vormt, iets waar je niet doorheen kunt komen. En dat is precies dit genealogische probleempje.

De kern van het "probleem" is ene Maria Johanna Francisca Schulze. Zij krijgt op 4 april 1880 in Amsterdam een zoon Frans genaamd. Bij de geboorteaangifte op 6 april krijgt Frans de achternaam Schulze, gelijk dus aan die van de moeder. Van een vader is geen sprake.
Alweer volgens die inschrijving in de Burgerlijke Stand is Maria woonachtig in Semarang in Nederlands Oost Indië. Waarom zij haar kind in Nederland heeft gekregen is niet bekend. Maar het ontbreken van een echtgenoot zou heel wel de oorzaak kunnen zijn. Aannemende dat Maria van Nederlandse/Duitse/Europese oorsprong is, is het waarschijnlijk dat de vader Indisch bloed heeft gehad. De foto van Frans, helemaal bovenaan, is hier voldoende indicatie van. Zeker aan het eind van de 19e eeuw was ongehuwd moederschap nou niet bepaald een geaccepteerd iets. Haar komst naar Nederland zou daardoor verklaard kunnen worden.
In ieder geval is het zo dat van Maria geen spoor meer te vinden is, noch hier in Nederland noch in Indië.

100 Marnixstraat, Amsterdam more than a century later
(Source: Google Street View)

Zoon Frans blijft achter op het adres waar hij in Amsterdam geboren is: Marnixstraat 100. Hij verblijft daar bij het echtpaar Scheeffer-Box. Zij treden op als zijn pleegouders. Waarom Maria bij dat echtpaar terecht is gekomen, is niet bekend. In ieder geval lijkt er een goede relatie te zijn geweest tussen het echtpaar en Frans. Wanneer ze rond 1900 verhuizen van Amsterdam naar de Bussumse Gooilaan, gaat Frans mee. Mogelijk is de man, Hendrikus Martinus Scheeffer, dan al overleden. Zijn vrouw overlijdt op 10 augustus 1904. Wat dan opvalt is dat zij wordt begraven in wat later het familiegraf van de fam. Schulze zal blijken te zijn. Zo ook het feit dat zij het huis aan de Gooilaan aan Frans na laat. Beide feiten suggereren tenminste een goede band.

E.e.a. was reden genoeg om de huwelijksakte van het echtpaar Box-Scheeffer eens nader te bekijken. Daarin niet veel opzienbarends aangetroffen met uitzondering van het gegeven dat de moeder van Hendrika Scheeffer de naam draagt van Catriena Josepha Schultze. En die achternaam is maar een lettertje anders dan de achternaam van Maria: Schulze.

Marriage certificate Box-Scheeffer, April 19, 1877

Dat kan natuurlijk toeval zijn, zo bijzonder zijn die namen niet, maar Maria's naam kan wel een verschrijving zijn van de meer voorkomende naam Schultze. Mijn hypothese is dat dat gebeurd zou kunnen zijn bij de geboorteaangifte van Frans. Immers, die aangifte is door de dokter gedaan die waarschijnlijk bij de bevalling aanwezig is geweest en Maria (uit Semarang) ook niet erg goed kende. Die heeft mondeling van de moeder gehoord welke naam hij moest aangeven. De ambtenaar van de Burgerlijke Stand heeft vervolgens de naam als Schulze verstaan én opgeschreven. Het zou zomaar kunnen.

Dit alles gaat van de veronderstelling uit dat Maria en Catriena "ergens" familie van elkaar zijn geweest. De vraag is dan hoe die relatie dan wel in elkaar heeft gezeten. Het zou ook een verklaring kunnen zijn waarom Maria bij het echtpaar Box-Scheeffer in de Marnixstraat terecht is gekomen.

Wanneer iemand in die tijd onroerend goed erfde, dan is daar een Memorie van Successie van opgemaakt. Daarin staan een aantal zaken beschreven, o.a. de familierelatie tussen de erflater en de erfgenamen. Dus binnenkort richten mijn schreden zich naar het Noord-Hollands Archief. Daar liggen stukken uit Bussum opgeslagen. Maar wie mij in de tussentijd nog van suggesties kan voorzien, hij/zij is welkom!
Mocht je behoefte hebben aan meer achtergrond gegevens en archieven/bestanden die al geraadpleegd zijn, zie een discussie op het Stamboomvragenforum.

Photo Frans Schulze courtesy Mrs. E. Stam-Schulze.

There ís a place like home

If you look at the lyrics of this "bird song" you can do nothing but conclude that if ever a text was confusing, it is this one. It says that there is no place like home but everyone reads it as that there is such a place. Well, beats me, language is a complicated thing. Or is our brain fooling us? In any case, this is going to be the fourth and last post showing the homes where I live(d). If you want to see the previous ones, please look here for number one, two and three.
Post #3 ended with our house on the Rembrandtweg in Amstelveen. We moved to the southern part of the same village on February 1, 1988. There we bought half of a socalled 'two-under-one-roof'. 

32 De Zon, Amstelveen

We lived there very happily for a little over 20 years. In case you want to see the inside and the garden, please see the very first blog I ever wrote, in 2008. That was when we wanted to sell the house. Unfortunately the asking price that you see there is not the price for which it was sold eventually. 
Already for a number of years it was our intention to move to a quieter part of the country, preferably near the beach. So in 2007 we found a condo in Castricum, just 3 miles from the coast line. We moved there on November 17, 2008.

Triade, Castricum

We live in the red apartment building just below the center of the picture. Ours has an impressive 270 degrees view from almost the east to the north. On a clear day we can see the cranes in the Amsterdam Africa docks in the south east and Krommenie in the east. And on a not so clear day the steel mill (formerly known as the Hoogovens) in Velzen (south west) as well. Castricum is a lot smaller than Amstelveen. It has some 20,000 inhabitants. In case you are wondering whether such a small village has all the facilities one needs, there is a home for elderly people to the north of our apartment complex and a cemetery immediately adjacent to us. What more can two retired people want?

To be  continued with the houses my wife lived in before we got married.

Both photo's made by myself on Jun. 2, 2008 and Apr. 27, 2012 resp.

Another home page

In the first post on this subject, Home! Sweet Home!, I told you about my motivation to show all the houses I ever lived in. In short, if I don't record my personal history my great great grandchildren certainly can't find it. The last house I told you about in the second post, was the one in The Hague-Loosduinen. It was also the last house where I lived before I got married. After our wedding party we moved to the neighboring city of Rijswijk, to the house where our son was born in 1967. Rijswijk is also the city where my mother was born. So you could say it was kind of coming home again. We lived there from October 29, 1965 to some time in June 1967.

526 Huis te Landelaan, Rijswijk (ZH)

It is the apartment on the first floor, right in the middle of the picture. It has the brown planters. Shortly before we moved there, I joined KLM Royal Dutch Airlines in The Hague. But some time in 1966 they moved their HQ from the Plesmanweg to Schiphol Airport. So we started looking for a house in that vicinity. But before going there we spent a few months in the house of my parents-in-law in Loosduinen. That was from June to August 15, 1967.

88 Pisuissestraat, Den Haag-Loosduinen

This street is also pictured in the previous post. But I took this picture almost 50 years later, the changes are evident. 

372 Rembrandtweg, Amstelveen

On August 15, 1967 we moved to Amstelveen situated just a few miles east of Schiphol. KLM was very instrumental in finding this house. It was a socalled maisonnette consisting of two floors. The lower floor (with the purple windows) was situated on the corner, right above the red car. Our daughter was born there in 1970. We lived there very happily until February 1, 1988 when we bought a house elsewhere in Amstelveen. That made this house the last one we rented. And in the beginning in 1967 it was not a cheap house. I remember that the rent amounted to over 35% of my salary then. But that was Amstelveen for you. Its image then was that of a very prosperous village, the cause probably being the circumstance that KLM pilots were all living there. But by that time that was already history. However, while the crews had moved elsewhere, the price levels were there to stay...

To  be continued

Photo dates
Huis te Landelaan, Sep. 5, 2011
Pisuissestraat, Aug. 24, 2011
Rembrandtweg, Sep. 10, 2011

More homely houses

Houses damaged by the 1953 flood

Last week I started this series about all the houses I ever lived in. It started with the house where I was born in 1944. The last one shown then, in fact it was number 6, brought us to 1953. That was the year large parts of southwest Netherlands were flooded. As a consequence thereof close to 2,000 people died during the night of February 1, 1953. During the morning of that very same day my mother told me that I would be living with a family in a place called Huizen. It is situated on the borders of the IJsselmeer in the middle of the country. 

133 Nieuw Bussumerweg, Huizen

I lived there for about a year from August 1953 to September 1954. It was a fairly large house but so was the G. family living there. It consisted of 4 boys, 3 girls and their parents of course. I remember I had a great time there but after a year my stay came to an end.

46 Mimosastraat, Den Haag

We are still talking about the period less than ten years after WW2. The housing situation in Holland was such that it was quite common for two families to share a single house. And for us this situation was no different. So my mother obtained a floor in a house owned by acquaintances, Mr. and Mrs.  Van W-D. van L. The house was situated in the part of The Hague called Bohemen. It was just a ten minute bike ride away from coastal Kijkduin where my father and grandparents lived before the war. The Mimosastraat house was our residence between September 1954 and early 1958. It is the house in the middle with the two lamps switched on. We lived on the second floor.

10 Tramstraat, Den Haag-Loosduinen

And then finally, 13 years after the war, my mother managed to get a house all to herself and to her two sons. Again this house was very close to Kijkduin and the North Sea beach. It was situated in the former village of Loosduinen, now part of The Hague. We lived in the house with the white curtains on the second floor from early 1958 until September 1963.
For me this was a very happy move because here I met the girl who is still my wife today. That memorable event took place during the first half of 1959. 

124 Pisuissestraat, Den Haag-Loosduinen

In 1963 new apartments were built just around the corner from where we lived. This opportunity was too good to be true, a new house with an acceptable rent! So we moved again. Our house is in the block to the very left and just out of sight. I lived there until the day I married on October 29, 1965. Until that same date my future bride lived  in the block that is pictured so prominently here. Her parents lived on the first floor to the very right. Together we moved to the neighboring city of Rijswijk.

To be continued

Photo credits
'Damaged houses' taken from Wikipedia
'Pisuissestraat' has been scanned from a picture postcard I have
The color pictures have been taken by myself on April 11, 2012, Jan. 18, 2012 and Feb. 22, 2007 resp.

Home! Sweet Home!

Digging in the past may be regarded as the genealogist's core business. The older the document or the source, the better. But generally genealogists tend to forget that recording contemporary data is equally important. If you want to enable your great grandson to find out all kinds of interesting details about his great grandparents, you have to enable him to do so. In other words we have to write down our own, contemporary history. And history not only consists of stories, also material objects such as cars and houses are part of that. Therefore, in this blog I have already paid attention to e.g. the aircraft types I flew in during my professional life and the cars we owned as a family. Now I like to highlight the houses that we lived in. I'll start with my birth home and after having completed all the houses (my wife and) I lived in, there will be posts showing my wife's domiciles.
OK, here we go, back to The Hague in 1944.

661 Laan van Meerdervoort, The Hague

During WW2 there was a maternity hospital in this house. It was named Huize Margaretha (Margaretha's home). According to stories of my mother it was not a paragon of hygiene. I stayed there from Jan. 25 to approx Feb. 5, 1944. Shortly after I developed chicken-pox, a desease you are only entitled to when you are at least about 1,5-2 years old.

18 Mispelstraat, The Hague

After 10 days or so I moved to the nearby house of my grandparents. Although my father and mother lived in Apeldoorn at the time, my mother decided to have me in The Hague. We stayed there from approx Feb. 5 until some time after Mar. 26, 1944. Number 18 is the house with the horizontal brace drawn underneath it. The handwriting is my grandmother's.

6 Parkweg, Apeldoorn
The Parkweg is currently named Prof. Röntgenstraat

My father was a civil servant working for the Home Office. Earlier during the war the Germans ordered this government body, together with the Ministry of Justice, to be transferred from The Hague to Apeldoorn in the eastern part of the country. We lived in the house of two elderly ladies named Bakker. My stay there lasted from some time after Mar. 26, 1944 to the end of June 1945 when my mother and I moved back to The Hague.

18 Mispelstraat, The Hague

As a consequence of the war there was a large shortage of houses. So initially there was hardly any other possibility but to live with my grandparents again. Taking into consideration the circumstances I am sure that they did not mind this at all, to the contrary! We lived there from June 1945 until sometime prior to Sep. 27, 1946 when we were assigned a house in the Goudreinetstraat.

614 Goudreinetstraat, The Hague

Our house was the second ground floor house from the left, just after the portico. For reasons unknown to me, we went back to my grandparents house in the Mispelstraat around August 1949. So we stayed there close to 3 years. The Goudreinetstraat house was then taken by my father's sister and her family. They lived in with my grandparents from Sep. 27, 1946 until approx 1,5 year later. No doubt all this moving back and forth had to do with difficult housing situation at the time.

18 Mispelstraat, The Hague (green front door)

This time I spent some 4 years on this address, the house of my grandparents. I remember my grandmother telling us that they bought this house prior to WW2 for the impressive sum of 5,000 Dutch Guilders. Converted to euro's that was approx € 2,250 then and some € 46,000 today. Measured by today's standards, that was a cheap house. Current prices for similar houses in that part of The Hague are in the range of € 300,000. Speaking of a bubble...

To be continued

Photo credits
Home Sweet Home www.pandurohobby.de
Laan van Meerdervoort Google
Mispelstraat (1): blogger collection
Parkweg: blogger picture Sep. 23, 2011
Mispelstraat (2) Beeldbank, Den Haag
Goudreinetstraat Beeldbank, Den Haag
Mispelstraat (3) Google

Pedigree chart/kwartierstaat

Voor een Nederlandse samenvatting, zie na de Engelse tekst.
This post is not meant to show you the details of where and when my ancestors have been born etc. The idea is that I show you the pedigree chart that my genealogy software is able to produce. I am  using a Dutch software package called GensDataPro. It has been developed by the Dutch Genealogical Society (NGV). Currently it is priced at € 70.00 for non members. It is not cheap but it is very flexible and the after sales service is fine.

7 generations 145 degrees print

The chart that you see here shows seven generations. It may be extended to maximum ten generations. But then the ninth and tenth generation are hardly legible if printed on letter or A4 format. Apart from color print black and white print in various qualities is possible as well. 
In the picture above the angle of the "bottom line" is 145 degrees but it can also be printed as full circle (0 degrees).

7 generations full circle print

It is also possible to show the pedigree chart (or any other genealogical printout) in rectangular frames. Below you see just a part of such a print, a decendants chart. Obviously printing a full chart on letter or A4 format will not result in a legible print. It is also possible to add thumbnails to each of the frames.

Decendants chart with thumbnails

I hope this post serves a useful purpose e.g. when making comparisons with other software. To avoid any misunderstanding I am in no way connected to the makers of GensDataPro nor am I a member of the NGV. The above is shown for information purposes only.

Samenvatting
Deze blogpost heeft niet tot doel om u de details van mijn kwartierstaat te tonen. De bedoeling is om te laten zien welke mogelijkheden het programma GensDataPro heeft om die kwartierstaat grafisch weer te geven. Het programma is ontwikkeld door de Nederlandse Genealogische Vereniging (NGV) en kost € 70,00 voor niet-leden en een tientje minder voor leden. Het is zeker niet het goedkoopste programma maar het werkt prima, heeft zeer veel mogelijkheden en er is een goede helpdesk.
Het eerste plaatje laat een cirkeldiagram zien met 7 generaties. Prints tot 10 generaties zijn mogelijk maar dat gaat wel ten koste van de leesbaarheid van generaties 9 en 10. Tenminste, wanneer er op A4-formaat wordt afgedrukt. Naast kleur zijn ook zwart/wit prints mogelijk.
Het afgebeelde diagram heeft een "onderlijn" met een hoek van 145 graden. Die hoek is instelbaar en kan ook op 0 graden gezet worden waardoor er een echt cirkeldiagram ontstaat. Zie het tweede plaatje. Nadeel daarvan is wel dat de namen deels op z'n kop staan.
Kwartierstaten, genealogieën en parentelen kunnen ook worden weergegeven zoals in het derde plaatje wordt getoond. Het zal duidelijk zijn dat een afdruk van b.v. een beetje kwartierstaat op A4-formaat, nauwelijks leesbaar is. Maar afdrukken op meerdere bladzijden is natuurlijk ook mogelijk. En dan is het wel leuk dat ook z.g. thumbnails kunnen worden toegevoegd. 
Hopelijk hebt u iets aan deze informatie, b.v. wanneer u vergelijkingen maakt met andere genealogische pakketten.
Voor de goede orde, ik heb geen enkele binding met GensDataPro noch ben ik lid van de NGV. 

My coat of arms

Well, let me rephrase that. It is not my coat of arms, it belongs to the family of my maternal grandmother, Antje Doelman (1892-1984). Her ancestors can be traced back a long way. If we follow a straight line for nine generations, we meet granny's ancestor Frans Cornelisse Doelman. I presume he was born around 1650. Frans was not an unimportant man. He lived in the village of Maasland near Rotterdam. It is quite possible that he was a farmer but he was also holding the position of alderman, deacon and, on behalf of the community, he was taking care of the funds destined to support the poor (armmeester). It was not unusual for people of his status to have a coat of arms*.
Whether he was the first Doelman to have this coat of arms is doubtful. There are earlier records showing a similar coat of arms. It belonged to a Cornelis Michielsz Doelman, alderman until 1566. It is unknown how Frans is related to this Cornelis.

In 1658 a farm was built in Maasland. Ever since the early 19th century this farm was known as the Doelman's farm (Doelmanshoeve). In this farm there was, and still is a stained glass window showing a Doelman coat of arms (right). There is a great resemblance to the one shown above. The farm still exists but now as a restaurant called the De Ridderhof (The Knight's Court).
In the Armorial Général, the very impressive heraldic work by J.B. Rietstap, the Doelman coat of arms is described as you can see below.

Excerpt from the Armorial Général

The full French text reads: Doelman - Hollande D'argent au lion d'azur, armé et lampassé du champ. In English that is: Doelman - Holland Of silver (white) with lions in azure (blue), armed and langued gules.
I am not sure that this description fits both coat of arms shown in this post. I am not even certain what it means...
When the last owner of the Doelman's farm died on Dec. 4, 1916, he was buried in Maasland. His name was Adrianus Doelman and he lived to be 79 years old. It is said that his coat of arms is part of his tombstone. So I better go there before weathering makes it impossible to see how it looks like. But I trust that also there the man's face at the top of the coat of arms resembles the face of a Doelman. Because that's what Granny told me. And if ever there was a truthful woman, it was Granny!

*Contrary to popular belief a coat of arms does not automatically imply nobility. But rest assured, even today it is possible to design a coat of arms for your family and have it registered. In the Netherlands registration is possible via the services of the Central Bureau of Genealogy (CBG) or the Dutch Genealogical Society (NGV).