Batavia's Graveyard - Mike Dash [227]
“. . . like roasted pears . . .” L. Blussé, “The Caryatids of Batavia: Reproduction, Religion and Acculturation under the VOC,” Itinerario 7 (1983): 64, citing the eighteenth-century Dutch historian Valentijn.
The later life of Creesje Jans Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 63–71. A search of the surviving records of Leyden seems to confirm that Drake-Brockman was wrong in assuming Creesje and her husband went to live in the city. No burial records can be found for the couple and they have left no trace in Leyden’s church or solicitors’ records, with the exception of the two occasions on which they stood as godparents. Furthermore, Cuick’s name does not appear in the Leyden Poorterbooks, which scrupulously list every full citizen of the town. Finally, it defies belief that a couple with some money—and we know that Creesje was reasonably well-off—could have lived for more than 15 years in a city without once requiring the services of a solicitor. Had they dwelled in Leyden, in short, they would surely have left more record of their presence.
Creesje’s husband Cuick was a widower, having been the husband of Catharina Bernardi of Groningen. Drake-Brockman notes, from the records of Amsterdam’s Orphans’ Court, that Creesje may have taken a third husband between the other two—a certain Johannes Hilkes, of whom nothing else is known. No other records exist to prove the case either way, but the church records of Batavia record that when Creesje married Cuick, she did so as the widow of Boudewijn van der Mijlen and not of Johannes Hilkes. The Orphans’ Court papers may therefore be in error. If Hilkes did marry Lucretia Jans, he must have done so almost immediately after she arrived in Batavia, and died perhaps as rapidly as Judick’s Pieter van der Heuven. Even if that was the case, Lucretia could not have completed the appropriate period of mourning either for Boudewijn or Johannes before marrying Jacob van Cuick. Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 64n, 71.
Creesje Jans as godmother On the first occasion, 4 September 1637, Creesje alone stood as godparent to twins named Willem and Dirck; on the second, 3 December 1641, she and her husband both became godparents to another pair—this one a boy and a girl—who were christened Willem and Neeltje; presumably the first Willem must have died in the interim. Some years earlier, in Batavia, Jans had also stood as godmother to two other infants baptized in the Dutch Church there. Ibid. pp. 70n–71n.
It also seems worth noting that the first husband of Creesje’s sister, Sara, was called Jacob Kuyk (ibid. p. 67). The tangled interfamily relationship between the Janses, the Cuicks, and the Dircxes may thus have been even more complicated than it first appears.
Lucreseija van Kuijck GAA, burial registers 1069, fol. 38.
The further interrogation of Ariaen Jacobsz Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 46, 62–3. As has already been noted, a good deal of paperwork concerning Jacobsz’s case went missing somewhere between Batavia and the VOC record office. In its absence, it is impossible to say for certain how good or bad the evidence against the skipper was.
“The skipper was very much suspected . . .” Specx to the Gentlemen XVII, 15 Dec 1629, ARA VOC 1009 in Drake-Brockman, op. cit., p. 63.
“Jacobsz . . . is still imprisoned . . .” Van Diemen to the Gentlemen XVII, 5 June 1631, in ibid., p. 58.
The fate of Belijtgen Jacobsdr ONAH 132, fol. 157v; GAH, rood 215, burgomasters’ decisions 1628–32, fol. 94v; for the significance of the burgomasters’ memorials, see Gabrielle Dorren, “Burgers en hun besognes. Burgemeestersmemorialen en hun Bruikbaarheid als bron voor Zeventiende-Eeuws Haarlem,” Jaarboeck Haarlem (1995): 53–5; for the social status of the Cornelissteeg, see Dorren, Het Soet Vergaren: Haarlems Buurtleven in de Zeventiende Eeuw (Haarlem: Arcadia, 1998), p. 17; for the date of the arrival of the news of the Batavia mutiny in the Republic, see Roeper, op. cit., pp. 42, 47, 61.
Decomposition of the bodies and the blooming of Batavia’s Graveyard Archaeological excavation has revealed