| In The Family and our Rivers I
showed how intense the relation is between the Kolff family
and the big rivers in our country (the Netherlands [Ed.]).
This applies mainly to the period 1600-1740, although this
connection has stayed with some family members up to the present
day. Whichever way one looks at them, as boatsmen or vicars,
ar rheir marriages, or at the places where they settled themselves:
all of these years Kolffs lived from Nijmegen up to the Dutch
estuaries. Facing the waters and earning their daily bread,
directly or indirectly, thanks to inland navigation and sweet
water fishing.
Pieter Nouwt, MA, who does historical research on assignment
for the Kolff family, has recently found much material that
illustrates, even confronts us with this aspect of the family
history. Not many families will be researching the toll registers
of the big rivers in which - if they were not lost - all the
movements of freight ships can be followed. For us the registers
of the tolls on the river Waal at Nijmegen, Tiel, and Zaltbommel
add a lot to understand the lives of Wolter
Woltersz. Kolff (approx. 1579-1635), his widow Peterken
van Niedecke (approx. 1585-1649) and their son Wouter
Kolff (1610-1654). All three of them managed shipping
companies. Father Wouter (or Wolter, both names are used)
had worked on a warship until the year 1600, its base being
Geertruidenberg. In those years there was still a lot of fighting
going on about the navigation rights on the rivers Maas and
Waal.
|
 However
in that very year 1600 Prince Maurits conquered the fortresses
of Crèvecoeur and St. Andries. Both fortresses very
strategically positioned between the two rivers, at the place
where the Land van Maas en Waal and the Bommelerwaard almost
touched each other (1). The result
of Maurits' successes was that the river Waal became safely
navigable from Nijmegen, via Tiel and Zaltbommel, up to Gorinchem.
Wouter made use of that. In april
1601 he married at Nijmegen and ten days later he was registered
as citizen of that city. For a boatsman - for that was what
he then probably already was - citizenship was of crucial
importance. Nijmegen citizens, after all, did not have to
pay tolls sailing the river for freight that was their property.
Only in case they took on freight from non-citizens they were
charged.
Business went well. In 1617 Wouter had become one of "the
fourteen", likely something as the board of the guild
of boatsmen. Wouter and Peterken exchanged their 'caeghschuyt'
for a true carvel, which they bought from an Arnhem skipper. |
Image: Carvel - Note
1: A.Th. van Deursen, Maurits van Nassau 1567-1625, Amsterdam
2000, 100, 114, 173.
* Sub-title of this contribution at De Colve is: "1600-1740,
and some till date; how Kolff's earned their living." |
