October birthday

October, Jan van de Velde (II) 1618

October was not a good month for birthdays amongst my ancestors. Hunting through the family tree, only one comes up in the direct family line. This is my great grandfather six generations back. He was born October 19 1746 in Hoogeveen Drenthe, The Netherlands. His name was Jansen (Hendriks) Bloemberg. Bloemberg means flower hill literally. By the time his great-grandson Johannes is born in 1828 the surname has changed to Blomberg. Don't know why, or when, perhaps it happened when the Dutch were under French rule and Napoleon decreed in 1811 that everyone should have a surname.
He came from a large family, at first count it looks like 7 siblings and he had a large family himself.

I have no details of his occupation or work. He lived his life in Hoogeveen, a small town in Drenthe, which dates its history back to 1625 when Roelof van Echten bought the land to harvest the peat, which was its main industry. So it is fair to assume that he would have been a peat worker.

One old map of the period describes Hoogeveen as a deserted impenetrable area of many swamps.
The official council website tells us that Hoogeveen was for centuries the main source for peat which kept the home fires burning in the Netherlands and that it was also an important producer of honey as well as an important river port.  So quite a bustling town!

The Council website lists digital archive of addresses and in the listing for 1812 I find Jacob Jansen Bloemberg, occupation "schipper" - ships captain. In fact this occupation was very common at the time,  underscoring the importance of the town to the river trade. Jacob was Jansen (Hendriks) son. So if he was a schipper then perhaps his father was too?

This is as far as I can get with this ancestor and the end of my post for 52 ancestors.