52 Ancestors Challenge 2019 Week 1 (Jan 1-7) First - Lodewijk Knoops

This first prompt for the 2019 challenge is about the first ancestor I 'met' -  Lodewijk Knoops. His portrait hung on the wall in my grandparents living room beside the grand writing desk.  I was about nine years old when I first enquired who that man was. He's family, I was told.

It was a classic oil painted portrait, with a gold painted frame and a little larger than an A4 notebook in size. It shows Lodewijk Knoops, seated at his desk with quill in hand, poised as if about to write something important with three very large heavy books stacked by his elbow. Behind him we can see a large well stocked book case.

He is wearing the typical 18th century male attire for the middle class; the frilly lace cuffs at the wrists, a patterned waist coat, the long coat in a dark neutral colour and the powdered wig. He was a slim man probably not very tall, unsmiling, but with regular features, pale complexion, small mouth, thin lips, straight nose, brown eyes, not unattractive.

The inclusion of so many books - though none of them show a clear title - indicate that Lodewijk Knoops wanted to be seen as an educated man. This image of a learned man was painted on a copper plate by the artist F Hoorn in 1776 as is inscribed on the back of the painting. Lodewijk would have been nineteen years old at the time. It seems a bit young to have a formal portrait painted.

He was born in 1757, in Velp, province of Gelderland, Netherlands and christened on 6 March,  the youngest child in a family of four. His father was Johann Heinrich Knoops, who was the Rentmeester  (Steward) of Rosendael Castle, Velp. His mother was Johanna Reyers, born in Arnhem.

His grandfather, Heinrich Gijsbert Knoops came from Sonsbeck in the Rhineland province West Phalia, Germany and he was a woodcutter.

Lodewijk married Anna Hendrika Viervant on 23 January 1784  in Arnhem. A note in the margin of the marriage record states that he had been appointed as vicar to the Dutch Reformed Church in Ellecom and would take up his post on 8 February 1784. He was nearly twenty seven years old.

Looking at the portrait again I wonder if it is possible a mistake was made in the notation of the year - 1776. Might it be his father, the Rentmeester Johann Heinrich Knoops, who is depicted here, I wonder? No, it can't be, he died in 1760.

Lodewijk died on the morning of 15th March 1795 after twelve days of illness that was the consequence of severe exhaustion and discomfort he suffered during the winter as described by his wife in the family advertisement announcing his death.  He was only thirty seven  years old and left behind three small children. The youngest was Hendrik Knoops whose daughter Anna Hendrika Knoops would marry her cousin Jan Peelen, my direct ancestors.