Feito Ruardi emerges out of the mediaeval mists some time around 1520, a full half millennium ago. The records name a father yet, born 30 years earlier, but no details and nothing else of the generations that stretch back still further through the labyrinth that is my family tree. For Feito is my direct ancestor, twelve generations back.

There are altogether 4,094 people who can claim to be my direct ancestors at the 12th generation line. But I know (so far) only a few of them. Feito lived in Friesland and Groningen — northern, coastal provinces in what is now the Netherlands. I have a sensitive nose for Dutch names, and this one seemed off. My first guess was that he had come in from Italy to pursue his vocation. But no, the Ruardi name is most common in The Netherlands, and My Heritage indicates quite clearly that Feito was born in Friesland.

The Reformation, begun by Martin Luther just three years prior to Feito’s birth, reached Holland a generation later, so when Feito (perhaps in his teens) took holy orders and became a priest, Calvinism was just emerging. What possessed Feito to embark on and persist in his faith journey, we do not know, but it was strong enough to make him an influential, even renowned figure. He may have been especially gifted (perhaps also privileged), but his beliefs were also carried high on the crest of an immense cultural wave.

Reformed lineage begins

Fortunately for me, Feito followed the standard practice of reforming priests, casting celibacy aside and marrying Grietje in 1550 at the still reasonably young age of 30. (Without this marriage I would not be me). By that time, the evangelically minded Father Ruardi was moonlighting as Pastor Ruardi, having laid the foundations for a Reformed Church in Groningen, developed in secret and meeting at night.

Feito and Grietje brought one daughter, Klasske, into the world in 1560. This was only five years after Emperor Charles V had abdicated the low countries (and Spain) to Philip II, and a year after William the Silent was appointed governor of much of Holland. Klasske’s childhood coincided with William’s slow transition from faithful Roman Catholic, Spanish ally to exiled, freedom-fighting Calvinist in 1573, and with tremendous unrest and rebellion in the Netherlands, culminating in a declaration of independence in 1581, Klaaske’s 21st year. Most of the Eighty Years’ War to consolidate that independence (1568 – 1648) was still to come.

In the midst of Spanish domination and occupation, and the intermittent persecution of Calvinists, life went on and Klaaske married Harmen Kolde, a fledgling pastor and perhaps protégé of Ruardi. They were both but eighteen, and within a year had their first child (1579). By the 90s, Kolde was one of four prestigious pastors in Leeuwarden, where Ruardi had also served, and where more children, including Grietje (1590), were born .

Grietje

Grietje was twelve when grandfather Feito died. By that time Ds. Ruardi had served the first provincial Synod at Groningen in 1577, attended the synod at Rolde in 1598 and, that same year, co-designed the Drentsche Church Order, probably in cooperation with son-in-law Harmen Kolde, who had been sent by Count William Louis to do church planting in Drenthe. William Louis had, just a few years earlier (1594), with the help of English and Scottish troops, executed a successful siege of Groningen to oust the Spanish. As a result, Catholicism was all but eliminated, Calvinism became unhindered and Groningen joined the Dutch Republic entering into its golden age.

Grietje (II) did not marry till she was 33, perhaps waiting for the younger (by ten years)  Hermanus Reneman to come of age. One of the middle Reneman boys, Hermanus became a cloth merchant. The boys’ father, Karst, had  been mayor of Leeuwarden from 1602 till his death in 1605. But most notably, when Grietje married, she came to have two more grandfathers who were pastors; Ds. Hermanus Karstens Reneman and Ds. Wilhelmus Bras, both born in 1540. And among her Reneman uncles were Cornelius Reneman, another pastor, and Johan Hermanus Reneman, a military commissioner.

Grietje and Hermanus had fourteen children in their 16 years of marriage, cut short in 1639, when it seems Grietje died in childbirth. From among these children, Herman Hermanus (1633) and Daniël Hermanus (1636) also became pastors. The first of these, Herman, is my direct ancestor, so also that of my father Herman. His was the third shot at continuing the family name. The first two Hermanus sons lived only for one and six years.

Relocation

The 113 year, four generation long line of pastors stopped with Herman, but not before he grandfathered in a few more by marrying Janke Hilarius at the age of 21. Janke’s father was Ds. Johannes Hilarius, and her mother’s father and brother were, respectively, Ds. Johannes Papma and Ds. Franciscus Papma. Herman and Janke had only a few children, one of whom, Johannes Hermanus (1657) had more than a few wives. Preachers, then as now, tend to move around, so Johannes was born in Anjum on the north coast. Johannes did go to university, but there’s no record of his occupation. My guess is he was a bit of a PK wandering rebel.

Johannes’ first two wives died young, so in 1700 he married Ytje Lieuwes Amminga and had four more children to add to the first three. Perhaps Ytje was an islander by birth but, for whatever reason, the Reneman family settled in Nes, just across the Waddenzee on the island of Ameland, where Johannes and Ytje lie buried. Of their four children, Antje Johannes (1702) carried on my family line by marrying Gerke Cornelis Bakker.

Now, Gerke was a skipper and probably first laid eyes on Antje while out and about, docked in the harbour of Nes, and then must have courted for a while by boat before marrying Antje Johannes Reneman in 1729 and bringing her home. This is where the family finally comes to roost in familiar territory, for Gerke Bakker was born in West-Terschelling, where my grandfather, Hinne de Jong, was born some 192 years later, and where, in due time, Gerke and Antje acquired a son-in-law by the name of Cornelis Annes de Jong

Terschelling

Any confluence of cultures is as intriguing as it is productive. Antje, with the Reneman name and some idea at least of the city life, religious and scholarly erudition and high social standing of her forebears, and then husband Gerke with son-in-law Cornelis, who were probably some time ship-mates, and whose families had lived simply on the island of Terschelling for generations. I can imagine this contrast being keenly felt when opportunities for family visits brought islanders onto the city streets of Harlingen and Leeuwarden, and city folk to the island’s dunes and wide beaches.

Terschelling itself had long been riven by its own division; those who worked the land and those who set to sea. Amongst the far-ranging sailors there can be no assumption of provincial attitudes. Cornelis’ father was also a skipper, and his great-grandfather, Anne Cornelis de Jong (1620 – 1696), had been captain of the ship “De Blauwe Leeuw” in the navy of Willem III (King of England, Scotland and The Netherlands), possibly in the Nine Years’ War. Indeed, Anne Cornelis was worldly enough to have been mayor of West-Terschelling.

The de Jongs did turn to agriculture in the three generations between Cornelis and my grandfather Hinne, but they likely kept their sea legs and perspective. One of my grandfather’s brothers, Pieter, went to sea at the age of 13, served in the Royal Dutch Navy in WW I, became a merchant ship captain in 1921, and then captain of several ships in WW II, the first of which was sunk by German dive bombers. I was privileged to meet and sit on the beach with Oom Piet in 1974, as a lad of eighteen.

My grandfather, Hinne, elected to work with horses as a World War I conscript and left the island for work afterwards, quickly becoming a supervisor of land reclamations and maintenance. When they retired, my grandparents came full circle back to Groningen, where Feito Ruardi, ten generations ago, had planted the first Reformed Church.

Radical Shift

By then, the closed loop of family provenance and cultural continuity had already shattered. For four hundred years my ancestors circulated in an area the size of the Niagara Peninsula, simply keeping in step with gradually changing times. But post-war emigration, peaking in 1953, combined with the ever afterwards increasing rate of technological and cultural change, threw my family tree far off the beaten path.

In the midst of such a radical shift you can see family members hanging on for dear life. My parents, coming to Canada at ages 21 and 19, could never get the old country out of their minds. Within their large diaspora, they busily transplanted churches, schools and community onto the new soil, preserving ties and traditions as best they could. But, even back ‘home’, the old ways were no match for the march of progress, and visits there found things increasingly less familiar.

So much has changed between 1520 and 2020, most of it in the last seventy years. The milieu that gave breath to ten generations, has melted down into some puddles on our North American parking lot crowded with cultural relics and flashy, new attractions. Some things endure — the rhythm of eating, sleeping and working, the preparation and satisfaction of a tasty stamppot, the feeling of family familiarity — but the landscape seems almost unrecognizable.

Faith

What’s remarkable to me then, through all of this, is the persistence of faith. I can’t be sure of its traction with any one of my early ancestors, other than with a peculiarly large clutch of pastors. For all I know, Cornelis Annes de Jong may have been a scofflaw, feet held to the fire by the piety of his wife, Neeke. But it does not seem wise to adopt the cynical, secular assumption that all religious belief is an unenlightened ignorance.

So, I will go with what I know, personally and historically – the deep, articulate faith of my grandparents and parents, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins – and the indubitable strength of a 500 year Reformed tradition radiating from the Netherlands into the world.  This faith of my ancestors transcends religion and denomination. It courses unhindered through the Roman Catholic Church, the Hervormde Kerk, the Gereformeerde Kerk, the Christian Reformed Church, and a mélange of mutations.

Faith is undoubtedly carried by community when it wavers, and may even seem swamped, for a time. But the sparks that keep it alive are unquenchable and we see it burning brightly again and again. Thirteen generations after Feito Ruardi became the first pastor in my family line, that Reformed lineage reaches past me to a descendant accepting the same call, and preaching with the same eloquence, the same message. I have no doubt that the two of them would understand each other, profoundly, if they could meet.

The times have changed, but in the essence of who we are, I see that Feito’s faith has come full circle. The too quick revolutions of lives – born to birth and die – can seem quite dizzying, but in God’s grand corral, where the generations have been held loosely on a longe line, even while the ground is shifting, the grand arc is clear to see.