Ancestors

Gerard van Densen

Gerard van Densen was born on 1 May 1803 at Blerick, in the municipality of Maasbree, in Limburg. Blerick sits on the west bank of the Maas River, facing the town of Venlo. His parents were Laurens van Densen and Joanna Ingenrijt. The clerk at Maasbree wrote the family name as van Deursen in his birth entry. A Joanna Ingenrijt of Blerick, aged 33, died there on 11 May 1803, ten days after he was born. She was very probably his mother, since his father was a widower when he died. Gerard had an older sister, Margaretha, born about 1800.

Gerard made klompen, the carved wooden shoes worn by everyone who worked the wet fields of the Maas valley. He was a klompenmaker when he married and still one in the population register of the 1860s.

On 8 May 1830 he married Gertrudis Janssen at Maasbree. He was 27. She was 29 and a dienstmeid, a servant girl. Her parents were Hendrik Janssen and Margaretha Claessen, who worked the land.

In November 1832 his father died at Meerlo, a village about twenty kilometers north, where the old man had gone to live. The next morning, 2 November, Gerard and a neighbor, the shopkeeper Jan Reinier Linskens, went before the mayor of Meerlo to report it. The clerk wrote that Gerard was a clog maker living at Blerick, "zoon van den overledenen", son of the deceased. Both men signed the act. Gerard wrote "G Van Densen".

Gerard and Gertrudis raised their family at Blerick: Joanna (1831), Laurens (1835), Peter (9 May 1838), Jacobus (3 January 1842) and Joannes (3 March 1844). In the 1860s and 1870s his son Jacobus came home with a wife and children, and three generations lived under his roof. His son Joannes married Maria Margaretha Janssen in 1872, when Gerard was described as a farmer.

Gertrudis died at Blerick on 8 June 1882, aged 81. Gerard died there on 20 November 1882, aged 79. An inventory of his estate for the inheritance tax, a memorie van successie, was filed at Maasbree that year.

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Cite: Heirology, "Gerard van Densen (1803-1882)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/gerard-van-densen-1803-1882-ca4777.