Children of Izak van Gorkom and Ingetje Maria van der Hoek (generation X-i53)
Izak was son of Izak van Gorkom and Louisa Roä (IX-i18) and grandson of Isaak van Gorkom and Johanna Gerarda van Sandwijk (VIII-i91).
At the end of the nineteenth century the family of Izak and Ingetje lived outside the old city in a decent little house with a little garden at number 18 in a little court, called Frederikshofje (Frederik's little court), along the Gruttersdijk (Grocers dyke) and a canal called Ooststroom (East stream). It looked out on an impressive windmill and lots of meadows, as the Vogelenbuurt (Birds area) was only build after 1905. So they had much more sun and fresh clean air then they would have had within the city, which was still a filthy place to be a hundred years ago. As the mother came from Charlois near Rotterdam, so from a village, it will have been her idea to move to this spot. It wasn't that far anyway. In some ten minutes or so you can walk in a straight line from the former Frederikshofje to the Neude, which is a wellknown square in the middle of the centre, close to Dom Tower and Oude Gracht.
In 1898 though disaster came down on the family heavily. The little house at the Frederikshofje burned down completely in the night of 28 to 29 August. Many details about this fire are mentioned on the page about generation X-i53. Two children died: Arie who was six and his older brother Johannes who was 17. Suddenly there were only three boys instead of five: Louis, 19 years old, Evert Dirk who was 15 then and Izak, 12, being the youngest from now on.
Here follow the five sons of Izak van Gorkom and Ingetje Maria van den Hoek.
XI-l78. Louis
Louis was born in Utrecht on 1 November 1878 at seven in the morning. On the birth record the family address is Nicolaasweg I. 334. At the time the house must have been new as it is located in an area called Oudwijk, nowadays a rather posh place to live. Louis married Wilhelmina Tollenaar in Utrecht on 25 September 1901. She was born in Utrecht on 6 February 1878 as daughter of Johannes Tollenaar and Everarda Troost. Wilhelmina's father Johannes was son of Gerardus Tollenaar and Anna Wilhelmina van Hazendonk and therefore brother of Antonia Tollenaar (Anthoniae), the wife of Gerrit van Gorkom in the section about generation IX-g37. This must have been pure coincidence, as one has to go back to David van Gorkom and Willemijn Tibing (generation V-dh95, approx. 1700) to find the ancestors shared by Gerrit and Louis van Gorkom.
According to the marriage record Louis was a carpenter. Later on in life he became a telephone mechanic, which must have been a quite cool job in those days, something like working in ICT nowadays. As far as we know they had four children, who are mentioned on the page about generation XII. The birth records of the children and other records reveal a life of being continuously on the move. Louis and Wilhelmina had married in Utrecht in 1901. In 1903, 1906 and 1907 three children were born in 's-Hertogenbosch in the south of the country. In 1914 the youngest daughter was born in Terneuzen in the far south west of the Netherlands and in 1917 the eldest daughter died in Terneuzen. In 1922 the family was registered as residents in Weesp, near Amsterdam. They came from Harlingen, which is in the far north of the country. In 1925 the family moved to Alkmaar in the north west of the country. As the family moved to all corners of the country you may wonder whether it had something to do with Louis' profession.
The family lived in Weesp from 10 July 1922 till 31 March 1925 at the address Singel 27, in a brand new little house that overlooked the meadows south of Weesp. In Alkmaar the first address of the family was Anjelierstraat 11. On 4 May 1938 they moved from Varnebroek 27b to Rembrandtstraat 19. Somewhere during this period father Louis was promoted to chief mechanic at the State telegraph company (named PTT from 1928 on). The mentioning of Terneuzen is intriguing. Izak, the younger brother of Louis, met his future wife in Terneuzen.
XI-j80. Johannes
Johannes was born in Utrecht on 1 December 1880 at half past nine in the morning. The family lived at the address Nieuwe Gracht, at area number A.917. Nowadays this would be a very fancy place to live. Johannes died at one o'clock in the morning on 28 August 1898, 17 years old, in the fire that destroyed the home of the family. According to the newspaper report he was studying for schoolteacher.
XI-e83. Evert Dirk
Evert Dirk was born in Utrecht on 30 March 1883 at ten in the morning. He was probably named after his uncle Evert Dirk, a brother of his father. A witness when making the report of his birth to the register was his uncle Abraham
(generation X-a55). At that moment the family was still living at the Nieuwe Gracht, at no. A.917. Evert Dirk married Bertje Elisabeth de Kruijff in Utrecht on 5 August 1908. She was born on 16 November 1885 as daughter of Johannes Hendrikus de Kruiff and Anthonia Pieternella Ockeloen. On 9 March 1909, seven months after their marriage, two months before the birth of their first child, they moved to Driebergen to go and live at the Secretarislaan no. 17. Somewhere about 1925 they moved again, this time to the address Traay 109a in Driebergen.
By that time Evert Dirk had started his own business as a home decorator. Before that he was a wall decorator, just like his uncle Abraham. The shop at the address Traay 105-107, called Fa. E.D. van Gorkom, still exists in the centre of Driebergen. Uncle Dirk, as he was known to his nephews and nieces, had four children: Arie Isaak, born on 12 May 1909, Bertje Elisabeth, born on 5 April 1912, Ingetje Maria, born on 3 June 1916 and Antonia Pieternella, born on 20 July 1921. The youngest one however died on 19 June 1927, not even six years old, which will have been quite a tragedy.
Photo taken in Driebergen in th early 1930's. Standing behind the chair is Evert Dirk van Gorkom, the diamond setter from Amsterdam ( generation X-e62, born 1862). His wife Geertruida Hendrika Walther (1864) is sitting in the chair. Standing at the far right is younger Evert Dirk van Gorkom (1883) who gave his name to the shop in Driebergen. His wife Bertje is standing at the other side of his elder namesake. Judging the body language the young man at the far left must be Bertje's son Arie. If this photograph was taken in 1930, his age would be 21. The girl standing next to Evert Dirk at the right side could very well be one of the daughters, especially since her face is a perfect replica of her mother's. The old Evert Dirk from Amsterdam is an uncle of the younger Evert Dirk next to him. The photo is probably taken by Evert Dirk van Gorkom ( generation XI-e93, 1893), son of the elder Evert Dirk on the photo and recreational photographer - this copy stems from the archive of his son Rudolf Evert ( generation XII-r23).
Click here to enlarge a bit.
Arie Isaak was clearly named after the father's little brother and after his own father, the first daughter after the mother, the second daughter after the father's mother and the third daughter after the mother's mother. On 16 February 1926 Evert Dirk's parents moved from Utrecht to Driebergen to come and live with their son. At that moment Izak was 73. Ingetje Maria was already 78. Evert Dirk had just moved from the Secretarislaan 17 to Traay 109a. It is sad to realise that Dirk's parents were going to witness the death of a grandchild too, after losing two growing-up children themselves, thirty years earlier.
XI-i86. Izak
Izak was born in Utrecht on 14 April 1886 at the address Stroomkade no. 7 at half past nine in the evening. The Stroomkade is opposite the place where they lived in 1898 as mentioned on the page about generation X-i53. Despite the fire of 1898 that would ruin the home of the family, Izak went to school and learned for carpenter. His daughter Mimi told recently that he had to start as an apprentice at the age of 12, earning 25 cents a week with sweeping the floor. Later on he made a big wooden chest, which is one of the few heirlooms that are still in the family, standing in Jana's room (generation XV) nowadays. He made it to pack his personal belongings, after he had joined the KNIL, the Royal Netherlands-Indian Army, which was the Dutch army that controlled the Dutch East Indies until 1949, when it became Indonesia. He had clearly decided, consciously or not, to go as far away as you can imagine, approximately to the other side of the world. He left Utrecht in 1905 and would stay away for 22 years. He wasn't the only one though who felt that Utrecht was bad news ever since 1898. His eldest brother Louis had already left Utrecht after marrying in 1901. In 1909 the middle brother Dirk left Utrecht as well.
Entrance of the cavalry encampment, where Izak worked.
Izak worked as a carpenter in the army. He climbed up in rank and position, finally becoming the senior officer in charge of the army's timmerwerkplaats (woodwork shop, joinery) in Weltevreden, Dutch East Indies. In the end he was granted the rank of adjudant onder-officier (warrant-officer). It was the highest rank he could obtain. According to his son Jacques his father's education didn't allow him to be promoted any further. To be an officer you needed a H.B.S.-education or gymnasium, which were the highest levels of secundary school. Woodwork was quite important in those days, as most means of transport and artillary were made of wood for a great deal.
Weltevreden was founded as an enclave just south of Batavia. Batavia is nowadays known as Djakarta, capital of Indonesia. Weltevreden literally means "very satisfied". Dutch colonials created their own area here as Batavia itself was not a very healthy place to live. Officers and warrant officers like Izak lived in luxury, all families having a number of servants. It took Izak nevertheless 16 years to start a family. He probably didn't care to be single. It is even possible that there are some Indonesian family members in Indonesia. When on leave in Holland in 1920 he got engaged with his future wife Janna Elisabeth Klaassen, then 26 years old. They married on 9 June 1920 in Terneuzen in the very south of the Province of Zeeland, the town where Janna's family originated from. They married met de handschoen, in English: "with the glove", meaning marrying by proxy as he had already returned to the Dutch Indies.
Jacques and Betsy (i.e. Izak and Janna) with, from left to right, their grandchildren Jaap, Liesbeth and Jacqueline. Photo taken in Dordrecht on Easter Sunday 29 March 1959.
On 1 September 1920 Betsie, as Janna was called, got her passport, which said that her man's name was "Gorkum", so with a "u", a remarkable example of the horror so well known to everyone in Holland called Gorkom with a "o". The English version of this error is Gorkam by the way. In the Australian birth record of John van Gorkom, grandson of Izak, this mistake was made for instance. Betsie's passport contains a stamp of British customs in Southampton with the date 3 October 1920. Southampton was the main transit harbour for Dutch people travelling to the Far East. In February 1921 the first son (generation XII-j21) was born.
Izak's stay in Holland in 1920 wasn't the first time that he returned home. The family card of his father in the Utrecht archives shows that he also dropped by in 1914. He was registered as a member of the family on 31 January 1914. It states that he is a carpenter, coming from the Dutch East Indies. Not a word about military service, so probably his contract had ended. The family was living at the address Mariaplaats 54 at the time. Just two days later though, on 2 February, he was signed out by the Utrecht register, stating that he had gone to the Prins Hendrik Kazerne (Prince Hendrik Barracks) in Nijmegen.
As tropenjaren (years in tropical colonies) counted double for his pension, Izak could retire in 1927 at the age of 41. Janna Elisabeth was not even 34. According to the passengers list of the S.S. Slamat they left the East Indies on Wednesday 30 March 1927 at noon. After staying with family in Terneuzen for some time, they moved to the Dutch city of Dordrecht, which is approximately halfway Utrecht and Zeeland. Though Jacques, as Izak was called by her, had retired, Betsie (Janna Elisabeth) thought that he should keep himself busy in some way or another. Therefore he joined the customs in the harbour of Dordrecht. Izak died after 36 years of so-called retirement in Dordrecht on 15 September 1963 at the age of 77, a year after his wife who died in Dordrecht on 31 August 1962 at the age of 68. They had four children: Jack, Cees, Mimi and Jo (generation XII). They would remember their father as a very punctual man who hardly spoke a word.
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The S.S. Slamat. In 1927 it was three years old.
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XI-a92. Arie
The youngest son was born in Utrecht on 23 February 1892 at one o'clock in the afternoon. The address was Stroomkade no. 6 this time. This house number is clearly a 6 in the record, as the number in the record of his brother Izak is clearly a 7. So it seems that they moved to the neighbouring house at some moment. Arie died on 28 August 1898, 6 years old, in the fire that destroyed the home of the family.
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It is very likely that the four children mentioned below are children of Jacob Herman van Gorkom. However, this has not been definitely proven yet by birth certificates or other official documents.
XI-j17. Johannes Antonius
XI-t98. Theodora;){kind=link}