My granny's life

Granny, that was my great-grandmother. I was lucky enough to have known her, she lived to be 94 years old! I was eleven years old when she died. She was demented and I never knew her before that illness. She was very lucky that she lived in her own house until she died, a daughter who never married took care of her until her death.

Johanna Spijker was born on July 28th 1887 in Loosdrecht, as the second child of Jan Spijker and Lijsje Manten. After her three brothers and two sisters were born. Her father was a lantern lighter, I think he also had a daytime job. There was a tradition that all lantern lighters came to eat at the family Spijkers' house on January first. They ate a vegetable mash of beans and potatoes. Her father died on May 1st, 1908, just 50 years old. That must have been a disaster for the family. My mother thinks she remembers he, her grandfather, drowned. Johanna, or Na, as her nickname was, was twenty years old at the time, but her youngest brother was not even three years old! A few of the older children already had jobs, they helped the family financially probably. 

Johanna worked as a housemaid, probably in a big house with other servants. My mother knows a story of there being a parrot in that house where Johanna worked. When the lady of the house was away once, the 'girls', or servants wanted to get a candy and they put a black cloth over the parrot, because it could talk and would betray them. Well, the parrot did that anyway. It could tell the lady about 'darkness' and hearing eating sounds. 

Johanna married late, in 1917, on May 18th, just before her thirtieth birthday. Her brother married a week earlier. They were the first to leave the family, quite late! It might have had to do with their feeling of responsibility for the finances. The youngest brother was twelve years old at this time, and could go to work.