Dutch Australian Genealogy Group

25/11/2025

20/11/2025

It began with a storm — and ended with the birth of a nation. 🌊⚰️

On the night of November 18, 1421, the St. Elizabeth’s Flood struck the Low Countries with terrifying force. A violent North Sea storm smashed through the dikes of Holland and Zeeland, drowning entire towns and turning farmland into open water. Over 2,000 people were killed, and 72 villages vanished beneath the waves. Only rooftops and church towers remained — ghostly islands in a new inland sea. 🇳🇱💧

Among the drowned lands was the Groote Waard, once a fertile region of farms and trade. When the waters finally calmed, much of it was gone forever — transformed into a vast estuary that would later become the Biesbosch wetlands. Yet out of this devastation came something extraordinary: the Dutch realization that survival would depend not on faith or fortune, but on engineering.

The flood became a turning point in Dutch history — the moment the people decided to take control of their water rather than fear it. Communities rebuilt, joining together to raise stronger dikes, manage rivers, and form the first water boards (waterschappen) — the democratic institutions still responsible today for keeping the Netherlands dry.

From tragedy rose innovation, unity, and a national identity forged in water and resilience. The Dutch learned that their greatest enemy could also be their greatest teacher.

The St. Elizabeth’s Flood didn’t just reshape the land — it shaped the Dutch spirit itself. 🇳🇱🌊

20/11/2025

Bij de familie van Jacobus van den Broek (1857-1917) en Anna Cornelia Severijns (1863-1918) kun je zeker spreken van een bevoorrecht gezin. In 1912 stond deze familiefoto in het tijdschrift De Katholieke Illustratie. Niet alleen kregen Jacobus en Anna samen vijftien kinderen, ook het feit dat alle kinderen de volwassen leeftijd bereikten –in een tijd waarin kindersterfte geregeld voorkwam – was bijzonder. Met behulp van WieWasWie is het leven van dit echtpaar eenvoudig te reconstrueren.

Op 11 oktober 1887 treedt de 29-jarige Jacobus in Chaam in het huwelijk met de vijf jaar jongere Anna. Een jaar na het huwelijk wordt de tweeling Johannes Cornelis en Maria Elisabeth geboren. Hierna volgen met tussenpozen van iets meer dan een jaar nog zes jongens en zeven meisjes. In 1906 komt Franciscus Nicolaas ter wereld, de benjamin van het stel. Op het moment dat de foto wordt genomen, is hij 6 jaar oud en de tweeling 24. In 1912 vieren hun ouders tevens hun 25-jarig huwelijksjubileum. Vijf jaar later overlijdt Jacobus op zestigjarige leeftijd, zijn vrouw Anna volgt hem een maand later.

Afb: Jacobus van den Broek en Anna Cornelia Severijns met hun vijftien kinderen, 1912. CBG Verzamelingen, fotocollectie Veenhuijzen.

19/11/2025

He was one of the most inventive minds of the early Enlightenment: Pieter van Musschenbroek, a Dutch physicist whose experiments helped shape the foundations of modern science. Born in Leiden in 1692, he became a leading figure in laboratory innovation, instrument design, and experimental physics at a time when Europe was unlocking the secrets of nature step by step.

Van Musschenbroek became world-famous for his work on electricity through the development of the Leyden jar, the first device capable of storing an electric charge. This breakthrough allowed scientists everywhere to perform controlled experiments with electricity for the very first time. His work didn’t end there — he also created precise laboratory instruments to study heat and the expansion of metals, improving scientific accuracy in a way no scholar before him had achieved. These tools became the ancestors of later measurement technologies used in physics and engineering.

He wasn’t simply a thinker; he was a hands-on experimentalist. In his laboratory, theory and craftsmanship met, showing that science progresses not only through ideas, but through the tools that allow us to test them. His instruments, teaching, and published works travelled far beyond the Dutch Republic, influencing research across Europe.

From Leiden’s lecture halls to the pages of scientific history, his legacy remains a reminder that innovation often begins with curiosity — and the courage to build what does not yet exist.

19/11/2025

In the heart of Amsterdam’s Golden Age stood one of the most unexpected symbols of faith — a complete Catholic church hidden inside an attic, known today as Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (“Our Lord in the Attic”).
While the city was famous for trade, tolerance, and global wealth, not every belief could be practiced openly. After the Reformation, Catholicism wasn’t officially banned, but public worship was forbidden. So instead of grand cathedrals, believers gathered in secret sanctuaries, tucked away behind ordinary doors and merchant façades.

Inside this 17th-century canal house, you wouldn’t find a small prayer room — you’d step into a full three-floor hidden church, complete with altars, pews, artwork, and sacred objects. Families risked punishment to protect it, priests preached in whispers, and worshippers entered quietly through side staircases pretending to visit a private home.

It stood hidden for more than 200 years, not as a symbol of fear, but of quiet resilience.
It didn’t survive because it was invisible —
It survived because people refused to let faith, identity, and tradition disappear.

Today, you can walk inside, climb the same narrow stairs, and stand where generations once prayed in silence…
Proof that belief sometimes needs no cathedral — only courage.

12/11/2025

The Dutch didn’t just fight the sea — they rewrote geography. 🌊➡️🌾

For centuries, the Netherlands has lived on the edge of disaster, with much of the country lying below sea level. But instead of surrendering to the tides, the Dutch decided to engineer their own survival. Through polders, dikes, canals, and windmills, they performed one of the greatest feats of human ingenuity: turning water into land. ⚙️🇳🇱

A polder is land reclaimed from the sea or lakes, surrounded by dikes and drained by pumps — first powered by windmills, later by steam and electricity. These systems didn’t just hold back floods; they created new provinces, new cities, and new futures. The Beemster Polder in the 1600s became a model for the world, followed centuries later by the Zuiderzee Works and the massive Flevoland project — an entire modern province raised from the seabed.

Every square meter was earned through struggle. Behind the beauty of tulip fields and orderly canals lies a legacy of engineering genius — and cooperation. The Dutch learned early that to hold back the sea, they had to work together, building not just dikes but communities.

Today, one in three Dutch citizens lives on reclaimed land. The Netherlands stands as the only nation on Earth that has literally created itself — proof that vision, unity, and stubborn courage can move mountains, or in this case, push back the ocean. 🌬️💪

12/11/2025

It was the flower that bloomed into madness. 🌷💰

In the 1630s, the Dutch Republic was at the height of its Golden Age — merchants ruled the seas, art flourished, and wealth flowed through Amsterdam’s canals. Amid all this prosperity, a single flower became an object of obsession: the tulip. Originally from the Ottoman Empire, tulips became a symbol of luxury, beauty, and prestige. The rarest of them all, the Semper Augustus, with its white petals streaked in deep crimson, was so prized that a single bulb sold for more than a canal house in Amsterdam. 🇳🇱⚖️

Speculators went wild. Farmers, sailors, and merchants began trading tulip bulbs like stocks, buying and selling them for fortunes that existed only on paper. The price of a single bulb could equal ten times a craftsman’s annual income. People mortgaged their homes for flowers that hadn’t even bloomed yet.

Then, in 1637, the market collapsed overnight. Buyers vanished, prices plummeted, and fortunes evaporated. The first economic bubble in history had burst — all because of a flower.

Yet even in its madness, Tulip Mania revealed something deeply human: our eternal chase for beauty, status, and hope. The tulip became both a warning and a wonder — proof that in the Dutch Golden Age, even petals could shake an empire. 🌷⚓

12/11/2025

In het fotoalbum van mijn oma trof ik een curieuze foto aan. Een jonge vrouw poseert te midden van twee grote bossen bloemen, naast haar staat een portret van een jonge man. Het bijschrift ‘Mrt. 1937. An vd Zanden’ bood weinig aanknopingspunten, maar aangezien de foto tussen een aantal verlovings- en huwelijksfoto is ingeplakt, ging ik ervan uit dat dit ook een huwelijksfoto was.

Een zoektocht in WieWasWie maakte duidelijk dat deze An een nichtje van mijn oma was, en een huwelijksakte bevestigde mijn vermoedens: op 31 maart 1937 trouwde Anna Maria van der Zanden in Leiden met Frans Meijers: https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/53512063. Althans: er vond een huwelijk plaats, maar de bruidegom zelf was niet aanwezig. Frans was op dat moment als ‘opzichter der genie’ in Bandung gestationeerd, zodat zijn vier jaar jongere broer Johannes als ‘bij authentiek acte gevolmachtigd’ plaatsvervanger optrad. Vandaar dat de jonge bruid zich op dit huwelijksportret met een foto van haar echtgenoot moest behelpen. Een maand na het huwelijk vertrok An naar Indië om zich bij Frans te voegen: https://www.wiewaswie.nl/nl/detail/94424635

Afb:An van der Zanden, maart 1937. Privécollectie

09/11/2025

Famine... in the Netherlands?! A sad, but true story
READ MORE 👉 https://links.dutchreview.com/jsGc

05/11/2025

Aan de hand van de bevolkingsregistraties kun je onderzoek doen naar de woonadressen van jouw voorouders, maar bijvoorbeeld ook naar de gezinsgrootte of hun beroepen. Omdat www.WieWasWie.nl een landelijk platform is, kun je je voorouders niet alleen in hun eigen stad of gemeente volgen maar ook buiten de regio.

Je kunt de woonadressen van je voorouders vinden in de bevolkingsregisters (1850-1920), via de gezinskaarten (1920-1939) of de woningregisters. Filter in WieWasWie je zoekresultaten met de knop 'Documenttype' op 'Bevolkingsregistraties' om deze documenten te vinden. Ook de persoonskaarten van voorouders die tussen 1939 en oktober 1994 zijn overleden kunnen uitkomst bieden: https://cbg.nl/bestellen-cbg/uittreksels-nro/uittreksels-pkpl/

Kijk voor meer informatie over het vinden van woonadressen van je voorouders op: https://cbg.nl/kennis/basiskennis/gemeentelijke-bevolkingsregistratie-als-bron/

Afb: Meubels worden naar boven getakeld bij een verhuizing, 1 januari 1932. Foto door Willem van de Poll. Nationaal Archief.