Monday, October 31, 2022
My condolences from the Netherlands for the deceased Jack Nielissen.
In the early fifties many people from the Netherlands emigrated to Canada or other countries for a better future than that in a destroyed country. The father and mother of Jack lived in Velden (now a part of Venlo) in the province Limburg, just a few kilometer from the Dutch-German border. In some families just there, there was some understanding for the German – read Nazi – thought.
Given the desperate state of the housing and the lack of farmland and the search for labourers from the Old Continent, Martin Nielissen and his wife Gerda van den Bisen moved to Canada. Their names appeared in the magazine Boer en tuinder; weekblad van den KNBTB, jrg 4, 1950, no 182, 01-07-1950 » 01 jul 1950 - Pag. 6 | Delpher where we read that they were passenger on the steamship Volendam that left for Canada on May 16, 1950.
The surname Theelen appeared together with that of Nielissen, and I tried to follow the steps of the Nielissen-Theelen and Nielissen-Akkermans couples. The parents Nielissen-Akkermans and the four children moved separately from each other between 1950 and 1955 to Canada, two first to New-Zealand. But they all came together in Kingston, as I later learned. From this point I do not know anything on parents and children.
My special interest has the family Akkermans, originally from the village Houthem, but later living in Arcen en Velden, Beesel and Wijnandsrade, all very small agricultural villages, two directly along the Maas-river. This is also the cradle of the Theelen-family.
The pater familias in the first half of the 20th century was Josef Akkermans, married with Maria Anna Genders. They had 12 children, the oldest was the girl Maria Catharina Akkermans, who married Nielissen. But the marriage did not take place in 1925, as you can read everywhere, and the birth of Martin was not in 1926, but when, where and how exactly remains unknown. For some reasons they tried to hide the exact situation around these events, but it is sure that Martin is a child of one of the parents, not of them both. His brother Joe was in reality the illegitimate child of the youngest daughter Tinie of the Akkermans-family, and his father, her own father, Josef Akkermans.
This Josef Akkermans seems to be a “difficult” person in the sense that all happened as he wanted, without much consideration for the feelings of others.
He did not show much consideration for his wife and children either, it seems. Probably there were many more ‘dark’ sides in his behaviour.
But he must have been smart or better said sly. In any case he bought smaller parcels of farmland in the South of Limburg. When he died in 1946 it took 2 years to sell all farmland, and maybe there are some left, orphaned. Land consolidation took place from 1900 to circa 2000.
The money raised with the selling of his belongings were divided over circa 15 persons, children and grandchildren Akkermans. The real mother Tinie of Joe Nielissen became a nun, living in Belgian Congo at that time. Because the father (thus Josef Akkermans) was unknown officially, Joe did not inherit of his father/grandfather.
The documents and photographs relating to Akkermans and Nielissen moved to Canada, in the Netherlands nothing is left. It would be nice when the readers could locate those documents.
Leopoldus J.C. Theelen l.theelen@on.nl
