Gerard Cramer (1821-1903)

Gerard Cramer (dutch link) was born 21 Mar 1821 in Amsterdam, eldest son of Gerard Cramer and Margaretha Schindler. He is my husband’s 2nd great-grandfather.

At least I thought he was born on Mar 21. I had this piece of information from one of his Amsterdam Civil registration cards, those cards that keep track of when and where people move into, within or out of a municipality. For Americans this is an inconceivable idea; but for the Dutch it is quite logical.⁽¹⁾

In trying to dot the i’s for this blog post, I found Gerard’s birth certificate on FamilySearch, and realized he was actually born on Mar 31.⁽²⁾

So I went back to the civil registration cards (there are 10 of them, he moved around a lot, and they are arranged by address), and found that yes indeed, most of them have his birth date as Mar 31, but once his birth date is listed as Mar 21, and once as Mar 11. Clearly I was not thorough enough in my previous searches. I don’t know why I never thought of actually getting his birth certificate.

Gerard married Carolina Reuter in 1850, and they go on to have 5 children in Amsterdam. He was a wall-paperer, as was his father before him, and his son after him, but the son expanded the business into a furniture store. So many store keepers in the Broekman family.

And now I have to fix the errors in the database, and straighten out all his addresses.

(1) As a side note: when we came to the US in 1969, we tried to register at Cambridge City Hall, and were quite surprised this was not necessary. We must have looked quite amused, as some one asked us whether we had just applied for a marriage license.
(2) “Netherlands, Noord-Holland, Civil Registration, 1811-1950,” database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939D-9ZGW-Q : 22 December 2017), Amsterdam (geboorten) > Geboorten 1821 16 mrt-30 mei en 17 mrt-1 jun > image 49 of 415; Noord-Hollands Archief (Noord-Hollands Archives), Haarlem.