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William Vierdag
This is my great-great-grandfather Willem Vierdag. He lived from around 1829 until 1916. He had a textile shop in Enschede in the east of the Netherlands. he had ten children. His sixth child Bernard grew up to be a baker, and when he had a daughter of one year old, his wife died. He had a business to run, so he brought the child (the mother of my mother) to his father Willem.
"O well, we had ten already, another one won't be a problem" I guess he must have thought. And the youngest aunt of my grandmother, Mina, loved the small baby. My grandmother was spoilt in a nice way with the loveliest dresses from Willem's shop, and spoilt in an even better way by the love of her new found family.
Bernard however never spent time on his daughter. He married the sister of his late wife and got two more children, of which he called one exactly the same as my grandmother. The message couldn't be misunderstood: he didn't want to think of his first daughter.
When Bernard died, my grandmother refused her share of the inheritance. "I don't want money from a father that never loved me," she told her half-sisters, "you can keep it."
Onno - dec 8, 2003, 22:34 - 4 comments
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