My grandmother was born a century ago

One hundred years ago, on February 19th, 1918, in the small village of Nederhorst den Berg my grandmother was born as Ida de Jong. Her parents, Gerardus de Jong and Johanna Spijker, married exactly nine month before, on May 18th 1917. My mother often told us that she and her sister used to tease her grandma with that.

It was common in these days that the oldest daughter was named after the grandmothers from father’s side, and so it came that this daughter was named after her grandmother, Ida Maalderink, who was 60 years of age at that moment. Ida’s mother was 29 years old when her first child was born. Nowadays in the Netherlands, that is the average age a woman gives birth to her first child. I see this a lot in my genealogy. So it is not always the case that women had their children when they were a lot younger in the old days.

Ida’s granddad from her father’s side was also still alive, but would die one and a half years later. On her mother’s side her grandmother was still living, Lijsje Manten, and she was 57 years old at the time. Eventually, she would be 87 years of age. The grandfather from mother’s side, Jan Spijker, died ten years before Ida was born, he only became 50 years old.

Ida had a younger brother and two younger sisters, Jan, Lijsje and Johanna. Jan was given a good education, because he was the only son and he had a good job in the building sector. He and his wife lived in Utrecht, they never had children, which they both regretted very much.