April 13th, 2011

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Tuesday April 12 Friesland

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

This morning I stood in the home and the adjoining mastmakers shop where my great-great-grandparents lived from 1846 and where my grandfather was born in 1876 in de Lemmer. Jelle de Jong now runs his architectural partnership in the former family home. The exterior has been skilfully restored and preserved. The coincidence has it that Jelle has a new task at hand to restore and preserve the home and mastmakers shop on the Polderdijk where our mother was raised and lived till 1927. ( see details on my blog of June 26 2010 https://cometosea.us/?p=1357 ).

This is good news for me and relatives that the building’s preservation will be in excellent hands. The mastmaker v/d Neut, who bought the premises on the Polderdijk in 1927,  closed the shop last year. It will now become part of the neighbors bed and breakfast “Veerschip”.

Jelle made me a copy of a postcard picture of the Polderdijk taken around 1905, when I turned the postcard over I discovered that this postcard had been sent by our grandfather’s sister to a lady in Apeldoorn, and somehow found it’s way back to de Lemmer and into Jelle’s collection.

I had made an appointment with the archivarian in the small town of IJlst where the militairy records are kept from the time of Napoleon. According to family history, my grandfather’s great grandfather Sybolt Ottes de Vries went to war around 1811 and I was anxious to see any specifics of his service records. Most likely he was one of the lucky (chance of 1 outof 10) survivors of Napoleon’s march on Moscow in 1812. But unfortunately the records did not go back quite that far and Sybolt Ottes did not assume his last name, de Vries, till 1811. But I was able to find and copy the militairy records of inscription of his son Jan Sybolts (after whom my twin brother is  named), who was born during the French occupation, in 1807.

I came through the town of IJlst last June and when I crossed the bridge this afternoon, the bridge tender still remembered the American “Fleetwood” putting his one Euro into the wooden shoe.  

I am practically finished with my boat maintenance shopping list. I found a paint specialist shop in nearby Sneek to mix the brown hull color. Over $500 worth of paint, just for the topsides, house, cockpit and interior paint and primer…..still need to buy anti fouling paint and epoxy. And another $100 to fill the gas tank. Ouch!! The dollar keeps dropping

This evening I will be hearing Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion in the Concertgebouw.