My great great great grandfather

I was quite moved that my g.g.g.Vlietstra was literate enough to sign his name as the entries above and below had an X and "sy merk - his mark" written next to it. See the X.

The signature of Andries Klaasen Vlietstra

The surname as it appeared in the document

 You can see that he has practised this surname as the handwriting is not very fluent.  The "n" at the end of Klaasen became an s. He has also muddled the V of Vlietstra, writing an s instead. Of course in those days spelling was often phonetic and I am sure he was quite nervous as well. He died at sea and his wife was five months pregnant at the time.So which Vlietstra am I? (for the benefit of all the Vlietstras who are reading this)

My father's brothers were Sied and Coen (settled in South Africa) and Louis (stayed in Holland). There were also 4 girls in the family.

My father, Roelof, known as Roy, was in the Royal Dutch Navy. He was recuperating after the war in England, where he met my mother, Christine Burt, who was a Wren. They married and settled in South Africa and had 6 children: Martin, (UK)  Peter, (SA) Linda, (UK) Vincent, (Australia) Patricia (UK) and Desmond (Australia).

Thank goodness our lot didn't land me with a more complicated name. As it is, because I lived in an English-speaking community I had to go on and on spelling it, and I was also always the last on the alphabetical list. Kerr is such a breeze by comparison.

 

My next screen printing project will be to screen the document I showed yesterday onto silk fabric or Roma Fabriano paper. It will be a bit bigger than A3 in size. Beautiful to frame or for cushions, book covers etc.

If you are one of my many rellies, and would like to order a copy, please e-mail me.

The e-mail button is at the top of my blog. (This is a one-off project as the screen will be washed out afterwards, so now or never!) If you are my sibling you'll be getting one for Christmas! But it will be a surprise for most of my siblings who don't read my blog!

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