So I was researching the family of my second cousin five times removed Geurt Kets (1799-1881), who lived in the village of Rozendaal, near Arnhem. I have some ancestors from that village, and it’s been a long time since I’ve looked at those books. As I was adding marriage events for Geurt’s kids, one in-law family caught my interest.
One of Geurt’s daughters, Wilhelmina Cornelia Kets (1827-1895), married Johannes Willem Urselinus Avelingh (1829-1881). His mother was Elsje de Ridder (1797-1823). I saw that surname before, Geurt Kets was married to Aletta de Ridder (1801-1862). If you’ve read my genealogy posts before, you know I just have to investigate to see if there’s a connection.
The first issue was geography. Elsje lived in the village of Amerongen (Utrecht). While Aletta was born in the nearby village of Rhenen, her father Dirk Leksius de Ridder (1771-1871) was born further away in Schalkwijk (Utrecht). However, Dirk’s father Dirk de Ridder (1745-1832) was born in Amerongen, so the possibility of a connection was still very much a possibility. The rest of this post involves people who lived in Amerongen.
Going back through Elsje’s ancestry, I found a couple of interesting things. First, her parents both had surname de Ridder. Could her parents Tieleman de Ridder (1760-1842) and Johanna Wilhelmina Urselina de Ridder (1763-1838) be related?
Second, look at that the names of Elsje’s grandparents. Could Frederik de Ridder (*1730) be related to Otto de Ridder (1736-1820)? And could Elsje Haefkens (*1736) be related to Johanna Arendina Haefkens (*1738)? If they were two pairs of siblings, I would have my second case of a marriage between double first cousins! (You can read about my first case here.)
When I go through the Dutch civil registrations, I sometimes get bored. The indexes (like WieWasWie) are so good, and the information in the records is so detailed, that the research can be too easy sometimes. However, by now I was well into the 18th Century church books of Amerongen, where research can be much more challenging. Those records contain much less information than the civil registration, spelling of names can vary considerably, and the older hand-writing scripts can take some getting used to. As you go further back into the 17th Century records, things get worse.
However, the church records for Amerongen aren’t the worst I’ve seen. It’s not a large place, so you don’t have to read through a lot of pages of records. And to make things easier, there’s an index for baptisms for the years 1655 through 1713. It’s grouped by year, but names are ordered alphabetically within each year.
Still, it took a while to find all the baptisms I was looking for, even after scanning through the expected range of records multiple times. At one point, I resorted to Google searches to try to find the information in secondary on-line sources. Eventually, I did find the records I was looking for. Sometimes it can be easy to miss something even if it’s staring you in the face.
Back to the research, Elsje and Johanna Arendina Haefkens were indeed sisters. Frederik and Otto de Ritter, however, were not brothers, but rather, first cousins. And so the married couple Tieleman De Ridder and Johanna Wilhelmina Urselina de Ridder were double cousins, first cousins maternally, but second cousins paternally.
I’m not done with this in-law family yet, though. I have other people with surname Avelingh in my database. Perhaps I can find additional connections with the family of Hendrikus Avelingh?
Cheers! Hans