Beginnings - 2021

It's finally here! 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks for 2021! Week 1 is all about "Beginnings." Who inspired your first search? 

Cees had very fond memories of holidays with uncle Derk and his wife, Dieuwke, in Amsterdam, in 1933-1934, when the Blomberg family spent some time in the Netherlands, on leave from the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).  Derk and Dieuwke had no children and delighted in spoiling the little Blombergs. 

Oom Dirk as the children called him was a retired school teacher and he drew up the Stamlijst van de familie Blomberg (Blomberg Family Tree) in April 1934. This family tree was a very helpful beginning for Cees Blomberg when he started his genealogy research in 2004. The original Stamlijst is now with me in Australia and I am continuing the family history. 

It is beautifully written and as Oom Dirk was a schoolteacher, it wouldn't surprise me if it was actually his handwriting. I remember from my own school days many, many years ago now that the teachers wrote on large blackboards and their handwriting was always very clear, regular, uniform, calligraphic. 

A copy hangs in my office, but to write this post I pulled out the original and took a closer look. It is torn along one of the folds, but I can see that at one time it was pinned to a notice board. The thick paper is watermarked Rembrandt in the bottom right corner. Rembrandt paper is acid free artist quality paper produced by Dutch art product company Talens.

It seems that the information was mostly first-hand knowledge. Derk was the seventh child in a family of eleven children. His eldest brother, Jan, was the grandfather of the little Blombergs. He did not need to search out archival records, nevertheless there were some errors and gaps in vital details. Some corrections and amendments were made by his nephew Albert Appelo in 1975, who signed off on it. 

Derk Blomberg was born in Zwartsluis, Overijssel, Netherlands, on 22 October 1868, to Johannes Blomberg, Skipper and Hendrika Lamberts Klein. By the time he married Dieuwke Fennema in 1899, in Menaldumadeel, Friesland, he was the Hoofd Onderwijzer (Head Teacher) at a school in Amsterdam. 

His father was a river barge skipper and was away from home when Derk was born, so it was up to the local doctor to register his birth. 

This stamlijst did not have his date of death, and Cees Blomberg could only remember that by the time he returned to the Netherlands in 1946, he was deceased. I began to explore some of the search facilities of my genealogy software and found it in Family Search records. Derk Blomberg died on 18 December 1936 in Amsterdam, only two years after he finished this family tree. 

This also led me to the Historische Vereniging Zwartsluis website, which has filed on One Drive BMD records not available elsewhere. This is how I found Derk Blomberg's birth registration, which gave that extra little detail of his father being away from home.