Cemetery Articles

On 6 April, 1663, little Lea de Kouter walked with her mother to the cabin of a ship on the roadstead of the Cape of Good Hope. A girl with the beautiful name Virena would be baptized that morning. ^[i] The vicar who was to baptize the child, Balthasar de Meter, had just arrived from Holland and was due to sail on to the Indies. She had just arrived from the Indies and was going to travel through to Holland, a unknown country to her. Would they have consciously seen each other? Would Lea remember him when, years later, she arrived at Cochin and found his tombstone in the church, not aware that they would soon be buried together in the same church forever?

By

Valentine Wikaart 2023-03-09

The funerary monument of the Wolff family does not provide many clues about who is buried here. No first names and even the surname of the woman is not known with certainty, nor the place where they were born. Despite the fact that they are buried in the Dutch cemetery, the name could just as well indicate an English, Belgian or German origin.

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-12-04

Adriaan Poolvliet was born before 1736 in Cananor and died on 10 September 1799 in Kochi. His parents were the surgeon François Poolvliet van Cochin^[i] and Francina Danzer.

Adriaan lost his mother early on. In 1736 his father François had to deposit all the maternal inheritance in the orphanage for his young sons Adriaan and Johannes.^[ii] As far as we know, his father has not remarried. Because Adriaan still had his grandmother in the house for a while, it is not inconceivable that this Ina Ringenkamp, also a young widow of François Poolvliet Sr., already lived in the house with her son. Because Francois Jr. spent a large part of his life in Cananor, this partly escapes the administration of Kochi.

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-12-01

On 11 August 1646, the Heren XVII took the decision to do something about the shortage of clergymen in Asia with the coming outgoing fleet. Six ministers, not Germans, but only educated men, would be sent out. The chambers Amsterdam and Zeeland would each take care of 2 ministers and the Zuider- and Noorderkwartier each for one minister.^[i]

By

Valentine Wikaart 2023-02-04

Jacob Kraus van Edenburg, captain-lieutenant and commander of the artillery, was born on 13 February 1735 in Edenburg and died 26 January 1787 in Kochi. He was married to Klara Elisabeth Schaak. Maria Elisabeth de Rode was born 22 October 1771 and died on 10 January 1798 in Tranquebar. She was married to Johan Casper Kautz and adopted daughter of Jacob Krantz and Klara Elisabeth Schaak.

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-12-03

Johannes van Blankenberg was born on May 18, 1749 in Nieuwvliet in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen as son of Johanna Boone and Jannis van Blankenberg. In India he probably married in 1779, aged 30, the fourteen-year-old Anna Helena Daimichen, daughter of Johan Andreas Daimichen and Pasquelle Lucas Smit. They had a daughter, Johanna Susanna, baptized in Kochi in July 1786.

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-12-01

In the wall of the St. Francis church in Kochi is the tombstone that Lucas van der Dussen had made in memory of his Sara. Sara was given the dubious honor of being the first Dutch woman to die in Kochi and her stone is the oldest known Dutch tombstone in this area on the Malabar coast.

By

Valentine Wikaart 2023-02-04

Daniel van der Sloot was the youngest of ten children of Abraham van der Sloot and Maria Weijns. An exact date of birth or baptism is unknown, but he must have been born in Kochi around 1737 and was buried there in July 1807.

Abraham Abrahamszn van der Sloot was baptized on 10 March 1690 in Amsterdam and came in 1711 as a soldier with the Wateringen to Batavia (modern day Jakarta, Indonesia). Once arrived, he was able to show that he had more to offer. In 1716 he was appointed as a schoolmaster in Kochi and was later also appointed as a sexton.^[i] He married Maria Weijns around 1716, who was probably born in Batavia. The six sons and four daughters of this marriage all received a good education and were good at reading, arithmetic and writing. They all reached adulthood and most of them married partners who in almost all cases also came from VOC families. An extensive network was created from which they will all have benefited for a number of generations.^[ii]

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-12-03

Dorothea's date of birth and death is only known from her tombstone at the Dutch cemetery in Kochi. She was born 6 November 1774 and died 10 November 1800. She was only 26 years and 4 days old at the time. From the fragmentary preserved baptism and marriage records of Kochi we know that she was baptized in November 1774 as the daughter of Jeremias Zeijsig^[i] and Cornelia Elisabeth van der Weijden. The baptismal witnesses were Jan Lambertus van Spall and Maria Margaretha Prins. Dorothea had an older sister named Cornelia Ernestina. She was born and baptized in November or December 1770.^[ii]

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-12-01

Over the past 130 years, several inventories have been carried out at the Dutch Cemetery, of which Cotton's List of inscriptions on tomb and monuments in Madras (1905/1945) is the most famous. However, Cotton did not identify all monuments as Dutch, which were recognized in later inventories. Some monuments, on the other hand, have disappeared or their text plate is no longer legible. The table below offers an overview of several inventories of the Dutch Cemetery. And presented here is an visual overview of grave monuments found in 2020 by the joint team of Dodenakkers.nl (René ten Dam) and the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (Leon Bok and Nanette de Jong). Also are mentioned the two monuments previously recorded by Cotton and the one by Singh, which all three not found by the 2020-team. 

By

Rene ten Dam 2022-12-05

Jacob Bernhard Weinsheimer was born on 25 November 1745 in Solsenheim, Germany and he died on 1 March 1790 in Kochi. He left on 19 May 1763 as a soldier with the Vrouwe Petronella of the Enkhuizen chamber as Jacob Bernard Weijns Heijmer van Sassenheim for Colombo.^[i] He made a career in Ceylon and in January 1781 he was transferred to Kochi. He was in the prime of his life and got to know Wilhelmina van Harn. At first sight an attractive match, because she was the daughter of Reinier van Harn, titular chief merchant, ‘secunde’ and principal administrator of Mallabaar.^[ii] There was one blemish about this young lady, however, and that was that her parents never married. Her mother was the free woman Elizabeth van der Werff.

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-12-03

The German Johan Daimichen had already made a long journey before he arrived in Amsterdam from Lubeck and probably fell into the hands of crimps of the VOC. With a debt of 150 guilders to a certain M. Meijers, he was registered as Johan Andreas Deijmiche on 28 April 1751 by the bookkeeper of the VOC.

By

Valentine Wikaart 2022-11-29