Longevity ~ Pietertje Hoogmoed (96) in Middelharnis

Pietertje Hoogmoed was 96 years, 10 months and 1 week old when she died on 23 June 1916 around 7:30 A.M. in Middelharnis in Holland. She was survived by 4 of her 5 children. 

Pietertje Hoogmoed died at the age of 96

Pietertje Hoogmoed was born on 16 August 1819 in Dirksland in Holland. Her parents are Cornelis Hoogmoed (1780-1843) and Geertruij Borstlap (1787-1849). Pietertje had 5 surviving siblings, including a brother Paulus, born on 14 October 1817 in Dirksland.
At the age of 28, on 5 May 1848 in Middelharnis, Pietertje married Adrianus Vroegindeweij. He was born on 30 April 1823 in Middelharnis. His parents are Dammis Vroegindeweij (1795-1876) and Paulina Nagtegaal (1791-1859).

Middelharnis

Adrianus Vroegindeweij and Pietertje Hoogmoed are the parents of

1. Dammis Vroegindeweij was born on 7 October 1848 in Middelharnis. He married Trijntje Faasse (1847-1889) on 17 June 1869 in Sommelsdijk and had several children. Dammis died on 30 January 1941 in Middelharnis, aged 92.
2. Geertrui Vroegindeweij was born on 7 December 1850 in Middelharnis. She died on 11 January 1936 in Sommelsdijk at the age of 85.
3. Paulina Vroegindeweij was born on 29 November 1852. She married Thomas de Waard and Jan Schellevis. Paulina died on 20 July 1938 in Middelharnis, aged 85.
4. Cornelis Vroegindeweij was born on 1 February 1856 in Middelharnis. He married Elizabeth de Waard (1858-1933) and had children. Cornelis died, at the age of 49, on 9 October 1905 in Middelharnis.
5. Adriaantje Vroegindeweij was born on 28 November 1859 in Middelharnis. There she married on 21 October 1879 Aren Springvloed (1856-1945). They had several children. Adriaantje died in Sommelsdijk on 17 June 1922, aged 62.

Adrianus Vroegindeweij died at the age of 69 on 28 January 1893 in Middelharnis. His widow Pietertje Hoogmoed survived him for 13 years. In 1907, on 6 March, Pietertje's brother Paulus Hoogmoed died in Rotterdam at the age of 89. Pietertje survived all her siblings.

Sources: WieWasWie.nl, FamilySearch.org. 

The 4 marriages of Cornelis Kootkar (1842-1914)

The Cornelis Kootkar in this story was born on 5 April 1842 in Schalkwijk, south of Utrecht. His parents are Aaltje van Amerongen (1803-1851) and Arie Kootkar (1811-1890), and his grandparents are Hendrika de Jong and Johannis Kootkar (1785-1816). Cornelis' great-grandfather is Hermanus Kootkar of Meppen in Germany.
Cornelis' father Arie, when widowed for 8 months, remarried Heiltje Tukker (1809-1885). Arie Kootkar also survived his second wife, and died on 6 December 1890 in Schalkwijk, aged 79.
Cornelis Kootkar was 9 years old when his mother died, and 10 years old when he acquired a stepmother. His younger brother Hendrikus died at the age of 16 in 1862. Their half-sister Gerdina Kootkar remained unmarried, and died at the age of 46 in 1899.

At the age of 26, on 22 April 1868 in Utrecht Cornelis Kootkar married his first wife, 20-year-old Antoinetta Louisa Maria Vreeswijk. Antoinetta was born in Utrecht on 23-10-1847 as daughter of Gloudi Vreeswijk and Wilhelmina Tieson. Just two months after the marriage, Antoinetta gave birth to a son. In 1871 a daughter was born, but the baby died that same year.

At the request of Antoinetta, a divorce was registered on 12 December 1875 in Rotterdam, and on 18 February 1876 in Zutphen in Gelderland. At that time the residence of Cornelis Kootkar was unknown. His estranged wife was living in Doesburg in Gelderland.

Zutphensche Courant, 26-2-1876: the 1st divorce

On 18 September 1878 in Rotterdam  Cornelis Kootkar (36) married Gommaria Maria Johanna Mathot (27). She was born in Middelburg on 2-11-1850 as daughter of Bernardus Adrianus Mathot en Julia Catharina Bourdeau. At the age of 19, Gommaria had married Jacobus Johannes Baljé, who originated in Vlissingen. Gommaria's divorce had been registered on 11-10-1876 in Middelburg. In 1872 her only child had lived for only 4 weeks.
Gommaria died in Rotterdam on 14 May 1883, aged 31.

It's my 10-Year blogiversary !

On 17 January 2013, I published my 1st post for this blog, so today is my  10th  blogiversary !

In those years the months with the most posts (5) were January and August 2018 and October 2019. But it’s not about quantity but quality, and that's for you to determine. The most popular blog posts in 2022 were those explaining where and how to find genealogy information, so I've added a list of blog posts with genealogy tips below.

The downside of 10 years of blogging is that it has become harder to find new topics to blog about. I skipped the month of December to be able to plan some blog posts in the first months of 2023. I may skip more holiday months in the future, because blogging should remain a hobby, and not an obligation.

The most common surnames among my known ancestors are Van Driel, Oerlemans, Spruijt, Brand and Bos. On this blog the most common surnames in my posts are Bos and De Jong, which are the surnames of my parents.
My ancestors with the most children are Cornelis Bos (1813-1888) and Otto van Driel (1756-1832); both had 17 children with 2 wives. In the 17th century Arij Peijnsz. Hogerwaert and his wife Trijntje Willems had 16 children together.
Ancestors Gerrit Korver and Neeltjen Bloet (±1640-1727) were married for over 66 years. When my ancestor Jan Pieterse Vasen died on 11-8-1702 in Ottoland, Holland, he was "around 100 years old and had been blind for 3 or 4 years".

To celebrate this 10-year milestone, I've updated - in addition to the statistics above - my list featuring interesting genealogy posts from this and other blogs.

Tips & Tricks

• Check for improbable dates
• Was your ancestor married more than once?
• Dutch Genealogy Research Tips
• The Netherlands Links at Cindi's List
• Dutch Naming Traditions by @DutchGen
• Researching Unusual Last Names for Genealogy by David
• How to Find Your Dutch Ancestor’s Occupation by @DutchGen
• Find European Ancestors on the Internet
• Checklist for starting Research in the Country of Origin by @DutchGen
• Passenger lists of the Holland-America Line
• Ships Passenger Lists to New York 1624-64 by Lorene
• Castle Garden Immigration Before Ellis Island by FamilySearch
• Search for Napoleon's Soldiers
• Searching the Soundtoll Registers for shipmasters sailing the Baltic Sea
• Mind the Chronology of a Population Register by @DutchGen
• Find relevant genealogy results in Google by using key search commands by @MarianBWood
• Ancestors With Unusual Names - Weird, Cool, or Historical? by Mercedes
• Tips for finding Brick-Wall Ancestors by Family Tree Magazine
• Sources for images to illustrate your Dutch family tree by @DutchGen
• Add an image to your blog post
• DNA and Inheritance explained by Marc
• Marriage Impediments for Catholics 
• Latin Abbreviations when doing Genealogy
• Extracts of emigration cards of Dutch people in Australia 1946-1991

‘Black Sheep’ Sources

• Historical U.S. Prison Records Online
• Prisons, Prisoners & Outlaws at Cindi's List
• Criminal Ancestor Records at Family History Daily
• Prisoners in Brabant
• Prison Record Index for Zeeland
• Dutch Prison Record Examples by @DutchGen
• Inhabitants of the Dutch colonies of the Society of Benevolence
  
• Black Sheep Ancestors Sources (USA & Canada)
• Insane Asylums Search (USA)
  
• Scottish Asylum Archives and more on Scottish ‘Lunatics’

Sons of Emile Jean Hubert Wolters in Uppsala and Bloomfield

Emile Jean Hubert Wolters was born in Venlo, The Netherlands, on 2 September 1864. His parents are Josephina Gertrudis Hubertina van Meijel (1841-1906) and Jean Louis Hubert Wolters (1836-1900). Emile's paternal grandparents are Jean Gerard Hubert Wolters (1810-1889) and Maria Gertrudis Custers (1808-1894). They are also ancestors of the Beltman family in Amersfoort.

The obituary advertisement for Emile's widow mentions descendants in the Southeastern part of The Netherlands, in Uppsala in Sweden, and also in Bloomfield in the U.S.A. Emile's eldest son, Jan Laurent Wolters, was born on 4 March 1896 in Venlo. He lived for a while in Heerlen. In 1920 he moved to Rotterdam where he earned a living as a soap merchant. For a while he lived in Cologne (Köln) in Germany. Early 1926 is the first time Jan Wolters and his wife Martha Böhm were mentioned in the U.S.A. They were then living in Amityville in Suffolk County.
Martha Böhm (1894-1991) had travelled from New York to Europe in 1915 with the ship "Noordam" I. On 1 March 1916 she left Rotterdam again for the U.S.A. with the same ship.

Nieuwe Venlosche Courant, 12-11-1936

Emile's second son, Paul Wolters, was born on 11 January 1901 in Venlo. In 1926 he was still unmarried and living in Venlo. In 1936, however, Paul Wolters was living in Uppsala in Sweden. He had married a Swedish woman, Marthe Linquist. They had daughters Madeleine and Iona Martha Maria. Ioana Martha Maria was born on 28 August 1934, and died on 17 March 2021. She had married Stephen A. Farkas with whom she had shared 59 years of marriage. Her father, Paul Wolters, had died on 12 February 1954 in Uppsala at the age of 53.

Ancestor Score Completeness Statistics - 2023

Geneanet defines the Ancestor Score as 

“comparing the number of possible ancestors with 

the number of identified ancestors on a 10-generation report”. 

Inspired by the Ancestor Score - or “Completeness Statistics” - of other blogs and GeneaNet's definition above, I generated my first one in February 2016. Since then I haven't just been able to linearly increase my known ancestors. Instead, I had to remove a whole line of wrong ancestors in 2018.

I could only partially replace them by already existing ancestors - due to inbreeding among my ancestors. Therefore, I decided to generate a new in-between ancestor score in August 2018 to be able to continue this series of posts (and removed the wrong one of 2017). Since then I've been gradually able to increase my number ancestors.

The generation with the most known ancestors is the 13th generation with just 20,8% of the theoretically maximum number of ancestors in that generation. In the 12th generation I've found 842 ancestors so far, and that's 41.1% of the theoretical maximum (without inbreeding).

At birth, the human sex-ratio differs; slightly more boys are born than girls. The ‘natural’ sex-ratio at birth is around 103-107 boys per 100 girls. There are biological reasons for this: boys are more susceptible to birth complications, and infectious diseases.
Genealogy is actually even more male-biased, because usually the males owned the properties, so males can sometimes be traced in property records, when church records are missing. Additionally, even in old records, males are sometimes mentioned with a surname, but females not even with a patronymic, rendering it impossible to find their parents. As a result, of my ancestors found in the 13th generation 43% is female, and 57% is male. In the 16th generation it's even worse with 63% males.

My ancestors mostly originate in the provinces of South Holland and North Brabant (mostly in the part that belonged to Holland before 1800) - with a recent increase in the number of ancestors in the province of Utrecht.

Composition and Bandwidth of various Generations
Gen	Composition										Bandwidth **
	Men	Women	Total	% 2023	% 2022	% 2021	% 2020	% 2019	% 2018*	% 2016	From	Until
G 3	2	2	4	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	1892	1906
G 4	4	4	8	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	1850	1880
G 5	8	8	16	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	1804	1857
G 6	16	16	32	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	1756	1832
G 7	30	30	60	93,8	93.8	93.8	93.8	93.8	93.8	93.8	1724	1802
G 8	59	59	118	92.2	92.2	92.2	92.2	92.2	92.2	90.6	1680	1777
G 9	114	113	227	88.7	88.7	88.7	89.1	89.1	88.3	86.7	1645	1749
G 10	207	202	409	79.9	79.9	79.7	79.7	79.5	78.7	76.4	1600	1722
G 11	344	316	660	64.5	64.4	62.4	61.8	61.2	60.8	57.0	1560	1695
G 12	452	390	842	41.1	41.0	39.0	38.4	37.6	37.3	33.8	1510	1666
G 13	484	368	852	20.8	20.6	19.0	18.7	18.1	17.9	15.7	1505	1645
G 14	442	308	750	9.2	9.0	7.6	7.3	7.0	7.1	6.1	1440	1625
G 15	331	217	548	3.3	3.2	2.5	2.3	2.0	2.0	1.6	1440	1580
G 16	202	119	321	1.0	1.0	0.7	0.6	0.6	0.6	0.5	1395	1540
G 17	109	54	163	0.3	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.2	0.1	1365	1500
G 18	64	32	96	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.1	0.0	1335	1470

     *) The years 2016, 2019 and 2020 feature an ancestor score of February, 2018 has an August score, 2021 and 2022 have a January score..
   **) The Bandwidth of a generation is determined by the earliest and latest known birth or baptism date within that generation.
  ***) I have many ancestors in places like Sint Anthoniepolder, 's-Gravendeel, Wieldrecht and Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht, where pre-1800 baptism records are (mostly) missing.

Further Reading: Geneanet's Ancestor Score Definition, Equivalent Complete Generations, Identical Ancestors Point, Coefficient Of Relationship, Gender Ration, Completeness Index.