We can trace our family line back to the late 15^th century. The first was Jan Huich zoon, occasionally spelled Huigzoon and later as Huygen. Most people didn’t have surnames, so they added their father’s name to tell them apart. Jan Huigzoon means, Jan, son of Huig.

In the next generation a son Huig was born who was called Huig Janz. However, there was another Huich Janszoon so they called him de Jonge Huig Janse. In the following generation a Jan was born who became Jan Huigzoon but from there on de Jong was behind the name instead of in front and became the family name. De Jong in Dutch means young. Not too much is known about the first generations. It is notable that many families were very large, that many babies died young and people didn’t become as old as now. Not many people reached the age of 70 and very few made it to their 80s.”

At that time the family lived in the Krimpenerwaard, about ten or twelve kilometers from Stolwijk where we grew up. There was another farmer in Lekkerkerk who was also named Huich Jans. Since he was older, to avoid confusion, they called him the Oude Huich Jans (the old Huich Jans), and our forebear for several generations was called the jonge Huich Jans (the young Huig Jans), and that is how eventually the surname of our family became de Jong.

The first son, Jan Huygen, married Marrichje Hendriks Nobel. They had five sons, Huig, Jan, Thijs, Hendrik and Maarten. Only the birth dates of the last two are known, Hendrik on June 4, 1651 and Maarten’s birth date is listed as February 30, 1653 so a mistake about the day. There is a record of a baptism of Thijs’ daughter in 1668 so he must have been quite a bit older and his grandfather, Huig Jans, with whom we started, must have been born between 1570 and 1590. They were farmers and also members of the board that regulated dike building and canals which is where some information was found.

They were dairy farmers who also grew quite a bit of Hemp sometimes called Kennip. They grew this for the making of ropes. Most of this rope was used for sailing ships. The hemp is the same plant known today as marijuana. Hemp had two different plants, male and female plants. The female plants were most valuable as they had to be thinned out and most male plants taken out. This is the same as Stocks which we grow now as cut flowers which also have male and female plants and the female plants are more valuable. Several other products were made beside rope and almost every part of the plant had some use. It was very labour intensive but a lot of this work could be done in winter when there was no field work. Hemp took a lot out of the ground and as there was no fertilizer in those days, all the manure went to the hemp and resulted in the rest of the fields becoming very poor. One of the extra products was hemp seed which was used for oil and was quite valuable. Through this hemp seed the bird population had built up over the years to an extreme high level. In the seventeen hundreds hemp was also imported from the Scandinavian countries and rope was also made from manilla and sisal. Over time hemp growing became less valuable and many stopped growing it altogether or on a smaller scale. The large bird populations also shrank and then the damage caused by the birds became so high that they almost all were forced to stop. Not only did the birds take almost all the seeds, but they also broke the plant.

The first known forebear of our family is Jonge Huich Jans, probably born between 1570 and 1590. Second is his son, Jon Huygen de Jong, born 1610 and third, Maarten Jans de Jong, born 1653. This ends the first section of genealogy and picks up again several generations later.

I will start writing about the 7^th generation since there is very little information about earlier generations. Johannes (Hannes) de Jong was my great-grandfather. He was born June 19, 1771, as the eighth child of Maarten de Jong and Chila Alberts. One of those 8 children died as a baby and 2 more were born later. Hannes married with Johanna de Jong, who was not related to him. They had two children, Maarten born May 15, 1820 and Johannes Ary born November 13, 1822. It was a very difficult birth and they thought that she was dying so they named the baby after his mother and after a grandfather. Chila lived another ten days after the birth of Johannes Ary, who was deaf, blind and intellectually disabled. However he could see just enough to go for walks and knew how to count out money. Later he learned a little writing and could write his name and was permitted to be a witness at a sister’s wedding. He lived with unmarried brothers and sisters of his mother so he was a half brother to my grandfather and an uncle of my dad. My dad was seven years old when his uncle died and I heard this story from him.

The de Jongs were a very well to do farmers family. Johannes Ary went through life with the nickname Rijke Ary (Rich Ary) since he had inherited a lot of money. He died February 21, 1902 at the age of 80 years. According to some papers he was 81 years old. When he died he left an inheritance of 58,706,33 guilders to be divided between his half brother and half sister. This amount would have been worth close to half a million dollars today.

More than two years after Chila died, Johannes remarried with Margje Ooms who was born October 19, 1802. He was 32 and she was 21, and 16 more children were born in this second marriage.

1. Giela, born 19 March 1825
2. Adam, born October 3, 1826. He died when he was about 4 months old.
3. Adam, born October 5, 1827, named after his brother
4. Jan, born April 6, 1829
5. Annigje, born May 24, 1831. Then on August 31, 1831, Maarten, the oldest child of the first marriage died when he was 11 years of age.
6. On April 24, 1833 another Maarten was born, named after his half-brother.
7. Johanna, born May 1, 1835. In July 1835 an epidemic broke out, likely cholera, and in nine days three of their children died. Maarten who was two, on July 27, the next day Jan who was 6, and on August 5, Adam who was 8. Likely the other children suffered from this disease as well. That must have been very hard for those parents who now had only four children out of the nine. Ary who was 13, Giela who was 10, Annigje who was 4 and the 3-month-old baby, Johanna.
8. On December 16, 1836 another baby was born and named Adam after his brother. This was my grandfather.
9. Maarten Jan, born December 28, 1837, likely named after his grandfather.
10. Jannigje, born December 24, 1838.
11. Bertha, born April 4, 1840
12. Marrigje, born June 26, 1841. She died when she was 7 weeks old.
13. Jan, born March 19, 1843.
14. Teunis, born December 22, 1844.
15. Marrigje, born May 8, 1846
16. Anna, born July 16, 1847. She died when she was 5 weeks old.

It is hard to understand that this was possible especially for a woman. After 23 years of marriage she had given birth to 16 children so she must have been pregnant more than half of her married life and in that time she also lost six children.

Johannes (Hannes) died May 6, 1861 and was almost 70 years old, leaving behind his wife and nine children who were between 16 and 31 years of age.

His wife Margje Ooms, my great-grandmother, died July 28, 1878. She was 75 years old and left behind 75,328,28 guilders leaving each child with 8369,82. It was mentioned that my grandfather received a Russian investment certificate worth 755 guilders. This must have been quite common at the time as my father had several Russian investment certificates in his cabinet. They were worthless once communism was imposed but they had been saved in the hope that some day they would be valuable again, which never happened. This was largely kept secret and not talked about, but I remember my dad showed them to me one day.