Grijpskerk, Netherlands

The following is taken an email from a distant relative, Tymen Wierstra, who currently lives in Grijpskerk (where many of our dutch relative are from) and whose wife is a descendent of Cornelis Pieters:

 

 

The Netherlands is divided in twelve provinces, although the government recently decided to combine these twelve into bigger provinces, e.g. Noord-Holland, Utrecht and Flevoland into a new one. The provincies are divided into municipalities, but the same development is going on on this lower level to combine the municipalties into bigger ones. At the moment the village of Grijpskerk with 2.800+ inhabitants is part of the municipality of Zuidhorn, which again is lying in the province of Groningen in the northeast part of the Netherlands. Contrary to the "Randstad" which is the most crowded and busy part of the Netherlands with cities like Rotterdam, The Hague and Amsterdam, the province of Groningen is a rural quiet province with the city of Groningen (almost 190.000 inhabitants) as capital. Groningen has a university and the university hospital. I worked for both organisations as a computer specialist. You could take a view with Google Earth or Streetview to see more about Groningen and Grijpskerk.

All the family heads in the Netherlands with no surname were compelled to take a surname in 1811/1812, though some already had a surname, especially in the western provinces.You can find an instance of this in the Van der Ploeg genealogy. One son of Cornelis Pieters, called Pieter, married in 1797 in Westzaandam (near Amsterdam) with Dina Arends and then already he called himself Van der Ploeg. So more than a decade before 1811/1812. The other two sons (Geert and Mattheus) took the same surname in the province of Groningen in 1811.

In 1811/1812 the Netherlands were occupied by the French (Napoleon) and then the French law was in effect and that's the reason the surnames were introduced here.

You can see the division of the Van der Ploeg surname bearers on thje following link:

www.meertens.knaw.nl/nfb/detail_naam.php?info=kaart2007&t=abs&zw=cs&gba_naam=van%20der%20Ploeg&nfd_naam=Ploeg,%20van%20de%20/%20der&operator=eq&taal=#kaartweergave

I hope this is enough for now.

Tymen