Oldest
Week 31 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is "Oldest." Lots of ways you could go with this theme: oldest in an ancestral family, oldest document you've found, oldest ancestor you met.
For this week's topic I have chosen to look through my family tree to find the "oldest" ancestor, not in years lived, but furthest back in time.
The "oldest" ancestor that I can see in my family tree is Marke Brunke-Schwieter, with an estimated birth year of 1615. This was calculated on the basis of her age at death being recorded as 81. The source for this line in the family tree is a pedigree - Lampe Brunke Parenteel - provided by another distant cousin Ed Nicolaas to my uncle Cees Blomberg who build up the family tree I'm now working from. Lampe Brunke was Marke's father and her mother was Hilke zu Restrup.
It so happens that I have been listing and filing the contents of the two boxes of paperwork I inherited and so I knew there had already been a lot of correspondence about this family name with relatives in The Netherlands and in Menslage, Germany, their place of origin.
Coming back to Marke Brunke, a note on her card comments that her parents would have been born before the Thirty Year War, a religious conflict between Protestant and Catholic Forces fought primarily in Central Europe from 1618-1649. It still is classed as one of the most brutal wars in human history, with more than 8 million lives lost to military battles as well as the famine and disease that followed. It started with a conflict between the Protestant and Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire, but as it continued it became less about religion and more about a battle for control over Europe. (https://www.history.com/topics/reformation/thirty-years-war)
Marke's first thirty years of life would have been affected in some way by this war but they obviously survived. There is one more note in the family tree placed by Ed Nicolaas on Geneanet which states that Marke was married for ten years to Bruno Schwieter and after that for twenty three years to Peter Knarum, who is my ancestor.
Her son with Peter, Reinke, goes by the name Brunke, not Knarum (or Knors as is stated also in the family tree) as one might expect. Perhaps they never actually married.
As I trace the successive Brunke generations, there are different versions of the name - Brunken, Bruncke, Brunke and finally Bronke. Four generations on from Marke is Maria Adelheid Bronke, or Brunke, born in Menslage 28 July 1742 and died 17 April 1813 in Zaandijk, The Netherlands. Why the move, what happened?
Maria Adelheid or Maartje married wine merchant Johann Gerdt Kesse, on 6th February 1766 in Menslage. She was 23 years old and he was 38 years old. They had six children and sometime around 1785 they moved to the Netherlands and settled in the Zaan region. Why? At this point I can only speculate - family, economic reasons, political? It is food for further research.
But again there is a name change, this time by Notarial deed in 1814 in Zaandijk, whereby the official family name becomes Bronke and not Kesse Kesseszoon. The next generation therefore carries the family name Bronke. I find it curious that the mother's maiden name is adopted as the family name and not the father's. Another question to find an answer for.
Maartje Bronke's grandson, Nicolaas Bronke (1815-1901) is my great-great grandfather. He was a wine and licquor merchant in Zaandijk and going by his advertisement for Feast of St Nicolaas (5th December) also sold fine Havana cigars. I think it is fair to assume that he would have enjoyed the finer things in life.
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| Nicolaas Bronke, wholesaler of wine and licquor, advertising his suggestions for Feast of St Nicolaas gifts. |
For this week's topic I have chosen to look through my family tree to find the "oldest" ancestor, not in years lived, but furthest back in time.
The "oldest" ancestor that I can see in my family tree is Marke Brunke-Schwieter, with an estimated birth year of 1615. This was calculated on the basis of her age at death being recorded as 81. The source for this line in the family tree is a pedigree - Lampe Brunke Parenteel - provided by another distant cousin Ed Nicolaas to my uncle Cees Blomberg who build up the family tree I'm now working from. Lampe Brunke was Marke's father and her mother was Hilke zu Restrup.
It so happens that I have been listing and filing the contents of the two boxes of paperwork I inherited and so I knew there had already been a lot of correspondence about this family name with relatives in The Netherlands and in Menslage, Germany, their place of origin.
Coming back to Marke Brunke, a note on her card comments that her parents would have been born before the Thirty Year War, a religious conflict between Protestant and Catholic Forces fought primarily in Central Europe from 1618-1649. It still is classed as one of the most brutal wars in human history, with more than 8 million lives lost to military battles as well as the famine and disease that followed. It started with a conflict between the Protestant and Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire, but as it continued it became less about religion and more about a battle for control over Europe. (https://www.history.com/topics/reformation/thirty-years-war)
Marke's first thirty years of life would have been affected in some way by this war but they obviously survived. There is one more note in the family tree placed by Ed Nicolaas on Geneanet which states that Marke was married for ten years to Bruno Schwieter and after that for twenty three years to Peter Knarum, who is my ancestor.
Her son with Peter, Reinke, goes by the name Brunke, not Knarum (or Knors as is stated also in the family tree) as one might expect. Perhaps they never actually married.
As I trace the successive Brunke generations, there are different versions of the name - Brunken, Bruncke, Brunke and finally Bronke. Four generations on from Marke is Maria Adelheid Bronke, or Brunke, born in Menslage 28 July 1742 and died 17 April 1813 in Zaandijk, The Netherlands. Why the move, what happened?
Maria Adelheid or Maartje married wine merchant Johann Gerdt Kesse, on 6th February 1766 in Menslage. She was 23 years old and he was 38 years old. They had six children and sometime around 1785 they moved to the Netherlands and settled in the Zaan region. Why? At this point I can only speculate - family, economic reasons, political? It is food for further research.
But again there is a name change, this time by Notarial deed in 1814 in Zaandijk, whereby the official family name becomes Bronke and not Kesse Kesseszoon. The next generation therefore carries the family name Bronke. I find it curious that the mother's maiden name is adopted as the family name and not the father's. Another question to find an answer for.
Maartje Bronke's grandson, Nicolaas Bronke (1815-1901) is my great-great grandfather. He was a wine and licquor merchant in Zaandijk and going by his advertisement for Feast of St Nicolaas (5th December) also sold fine Havana cigars. I think it is fair to assume that he would have enjoyed the finer things in life.
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