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before 1870: my great-grandmother and her sisters

These girls were the daughters of Engbertus Engberts (1798 - 1871) and Serafina Hennerika Smelt (1808 - 1873). They lived in Vriezenveen and were part of the group of merchants there whose families had struck it rich trading with czarist Russia.

 

The daughters from left:

Hendrika Johanna (1846-1898),

Gerharda Johanna (1848-1894),

Egberta (1853-1936)

Johanna Hendrika (1837-1916).

 

Both Hendrika Johanna and Egberta married brothers Keppel Hesselink; the first one married Willem Frederik while Egberta married his brother Cornelis Dasse in 1877 and thus became my great-grandmother! After a 25-year marriage they got divorced in 1902, a highly unusual procedure in those times and circles, which may well have had something to do with family secrets and scandals that took place a few years earlier...

 

Of course all this information (and indeed the photograph itself) has come to me from my genealogist cousin Gijs and his blog

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Uploaded on December 1, 2005