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| 1. | Introduction | The family van Dort from The Netherlands is probably not one family. It is more likely that several families moved away from Dordrecht, also called Dordt, at a certain period of time. When they settled down in a new city they were called van Dort, which could mean from Dordt or from Dordrecht. A genealogist, who looked into the family Schot, a family which is closely related to the family van Dort in Bergen op Zoom, claims to have found evidence that the family van Dort from Bergen op Zoom, originally came from Dordrecht. We didn't find evidence in Bergen op Zoom to support this theory yet, but it is very well possible.
In The Netherlands of the 17th century people with the name van Dort could be found in various cities: Bergen op Zoom, Gorinchem, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Schoorl, Zwolle and Arnhem, The Hague, Delft and Rijswijk, 's Hertogenbosch and Muiden. The people from Dordrecht and Rotterdam were originally from Bergen op Zoom. There is no connection yet established between the people in the other cities. In the 18th and 19th century people with the name van Dort were spread all over The Netherlands, Brazil and Sri Lanka. And in the 19th and 20th century people with the name van Dort were spread over the whole world: the US, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Germany, England and Belgium.
The following pages contain the stories of the different families van Dort. The stories are based upon information from the genealogy research of my father and me and all the information provided by people from the families van Dort, whom we had the pleasure to write and talk to. You'll notice that some parts are more detailed than others. We welcome all help to fill in the missing gaps, for instants in the area of the unsolved puzzle of the various coats of arms.
I wish you a lot of pleasure reading the pages. Please leave a message in the guestbook and don't forget to check out the news. Thank you and Tot ziens! |
| 2. | Koos van Dort as Dutch Lord | There is a anecdote attached to the way Koos van Dort came in posession of the coat of arms of Constantia and Lijsbet. He came into the posession of this armorial when he was on holidays in the UK. He visited a heraldry shop because they wanted to have a tablet made for their legion. When they stumbled across a list of family surnames Koos declared: "If my surname is in there, I'm a lord". To his utter surprise his surname was on the list. Because they didn't believe it to be true, one of his friends asked the shop keeper about the origins and made a phone call to London to a heraldic association. This association confirmed the authenticity of the shield, so Koos decided to order this arm. However his friends hadn't forgotten that he had said to be a lord. Because they were in army uniforms, they now declared to be body guards of the Dutch lord van Dort. They cleared the stairs for him and also the coffeeshop. People had to leave because "the Dutch lord wanted to drink coffee". Even his wife was not allowed to approach him without having her bag searched. He and his english friends had a lot of fun that afternoon. A tablet with this arm is hanging in his living room.21) |
| 3. | Leopold Emanuel Jacob van Dort | Ca 1720 – 1730 Dordrecht
Birth of Leopold Emanuel Jacob van Dort probably in Dordrecht. Since in both Jewish custom and in Dutch custom in that era it was customary to put the father’s name before the surname in the registers, and since he uses the name Immanuel Jacob van Dart in his Hebrew writings , he is probably born as Mendel b Jacob van Dort, a possible son of Jacob b Salomon van Dorth from Dordrecht and Belia b Levinus Sluis from Husse in ‘t land van Cleef (married 2 February 1724 in Amsterdam). They were Jewish and they lived in Dordrecht where their first child is recorded as Isaac b Jacob van Dorth in 1730 . This could fit, because the notarial act founding and regulating the Jewish community of Dordrecht is from 25 December 1728 , meaning that Leopold could have been born between beginning 1724 and end 1728.
5 December 1745 - Aachen
Leopold Emanuel Jakob von Dort converts together with his brother Bernhard Wilhelm von Dort from Jewish to the catholic faith in Aachen, Kapuzinerkirche . Because of the laws at time in Aachen, requiring a special permission of the duke of Jülich and large payments, this conversion could have been for practical reasons .
January 1746 – October 1747 – Kaldenkirchen and Venlo
Both Leopold and Wilhelm lived temporarily in Kaldenkirchen and Venlo, working as bankers, 4 and working on their plans for opening a magazine printing business, receiving permission from the Kaiser to print 4 magazines a week, 2 German and 2 French on 9 January 1747 . During the first half of the eighteenth century newspapers and magazines start appearing all over the world. Leopold and Wilhelm intend to bring this innovation to Aachen.
October 1747 – April 1749 - Aachen
Leopold and Bernhard Wilhelm settle on 6 October 1747 in Aachen as citizens to set up their book printing business, pompously announced. They lived in the house Dreifaltigkeit (Trinity) 6 on the corner of the Münsterkirchhof and Hartmannstrasse in Aachen .
In September 1747, Leopold publishes a short tragedy, a Jesuit drama, ‘Elobanus et Nebastus’, written by Karl Ludwig von Sickingen-Ebernburg, Abbot of the Reichsabtei Kornelimünster, near Aachen (1745–1764). The book is published by Leopold van Dort of the kaiser priviliged printing house .
On 23 April 1749 Leopold Emanuel Jacob van Dort is in prison (Grashaus, town hall at the Fischmarkt) in Aachen because of debts. He is freed by a crowd during a procession for St. Marcus. This seems to be premeditated because the procession normally takes another route .
On 24 February 1750 Leopold Emanuel Jacob van Dort is helped escaping out of Aachen’s prison for the third time. The recordings detail that Bernhard Wilhelm van Dort and Leopold Emanuel Jacob van Dort are not brothers according to a ‘reliable source’: One is Jewish, the other not, although both are brought up in Jewish families. The Christian person is supposedly born out of wedlock and taken into a Jewish family at birth, where a Jewish woman had a stillborn baby. Supposedly his mother is of noble background, and he went looking for his birth right together with another Jewish boy (his foster brother?). To claim his birthright he needed to convert to Christianity. It is unclear in the text who is the Jewish and who is not. From the names I would presume Bernhard Wilhelm van Dort is not from Jewish background. Both are called scoundrels. They held a lottery, sold wine, did inaccurate money exchanges and their book printing was not a success. .
October 1752 - Leipzig
Leopold publishes his own book on 23 October 1752 in Leipzig „Kurtzer Versuch Des heiligen Geistes in Matthäi Ehre zu rächen; Ueber Matth. 2, 23. De Jesu Nazareno”, ‘Short attempt to avenge the honor of the Holy Ghost in Matthew; About Matth. 2, 23. Through Jesus Christ’ .
Figure 1. Leopold’s book Jesu Nazareno (1752)
The short book contains 8 pages in both German and Hebrew and is printed by printer Christian Ehrenfried Förster (Leipzig, 1744 - ) . With this book Leopold converts from Catholicism to Evangelism (Protestantism). The book is dedicated to the deans of the theological university of Leipzig. He describes himself as a ‘to the only true Evangelic religion loyal turning rabbi Leopold Immanuel Jacob von Dort’. This time, his conversion to Evangelism seems to be based more on genuine belief than on necessity.
November 1753 - Osnabrück
Leopold writes a letter dated 5 November 1753 to Johann Michael von Loën in Lingen from Osnabrück. Leopold is a lector oriental languages at that moment in Osnabrück. In the letter he writes that a lot of Polish Jews would like to convert but do not know which Christian faith would be the right faith. He asks Mr. von Loën to help identify the right faith. According to the reference, he is a former rabbi .
May 1754 – March 1755 – Travel from Holland to Ceylon
Leopold leaves Texel (Holland) together with his wife Catharina Pauman (huijsvrouw) on the ship Elswout, headed for Batavia, on 20 May 1754 . They arrive 25 September 1754 in Cape Good Hope, where they get permission to change ship on 25 October 1754 to the ship Kievitsheuvel, so that they can continue their travels to Ceylon . They leave Cape Good Hope on 30 October 1754 and arrive on 4 March 1755 in Ceylon .
March 1755 – after October 1760 - Colombo
On 31 December 1755 he is employed in Colombo as a translator by the VOC, paid 30 guilders a month, home rent and income from sub salesmanship (onderkoopmanschap) .
In ca. 1757 Leopold Immanuel Jacob Van Dort Van Dort obtained access to Hebrew records that belonged to the Rabbi of the Jews in Cochin, whose ancestors arrived from Yemen. He made an epitome of these documents. At that same time he met Marcellus Bles of the VOC, who took interest in his epitome. Van Dort translated the epitome into Dutch for Marcellus , who kept this in his journal. More about the contents of the epitome can be found in the work of Meir Bar-Ilan .
Beginning 1758 he is working as a professor in theology in Colombo, recommended by the Secretaris Consul van Vechten to Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron as knowledgeable on history of Ceylon, and said originating from the duchy of Jülich. On 22 February 1758 Leopold answers a letter of Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron in Latin offering his knowledge in history and religion of the Indian region, writing: “uti talem apparatum harum rerum possideo, qualem... in multis non reperies litteris.” - “I possess recognized as such by the use of these things, the kind of.... many people do not find in letters.” He added to his letter the Our Father in Tamil of the Coromandel Coast, and in Ceylonese, with Latin pronunciation and translation between the lines; indicating his wish to correspond in Dutch. . Abraham-Hyacinthe never wrote back.
Around this time Leopold also translates an (imprecise) Dutch translation of the Koran in Hebrew while he was in Colombo, which was copied afterwards by David Cohen. The traveler Joseph Wolff sees this document in 5 December 1831 in Meshed, Persia, where it was kept by a Jewish mullah Meshiakh Ajoon. The title of the manuscript said in Hebrew “The law of the Ishmaelites, called Koran, translated from the Arabic into French, by Durier, and from the French into Dutch, by Glosenmacher, and I, Immanuel Jacob Medart, have now translated it into the holy language, written here at Kogen, by David, the son of Isaac Cohen of Berlin.” . Myron M. Weinstein identified Immanuel Jacob Medart as Leopold Emanuel Jacob van Dort, since the Hebrew מ, pronounced ‘mem’ means ‘from’, which is ‘van’ in Dutch, making Medart ‘van Dart’ The manuscript of the Hebrew Koran currently in possession of the Library of Congress of the US could be a copy of Leopold’s translation 22. It seems interesting that Leopold did not use the name Leopold in Hebrew, possibly implying that his Jewish name was Emanuel Jacob van Dort, and that Leopold was his later Christian name. This would correspond with the fact that Leopold was not a common name in Holland, but common in Germany.
Also around this time Leopold was also involved with a letter, of which a copy is kept in the Royal Library in Copenhagen , and which is cause for debate among scholars. It is a copy of an original or fake letter from 1st century to the Jews of Rome warning them strongly for Christianity and Paul in particular. In the colophon it says: “This letter was found in the hands of a learned person who came to Cochin, formerly his name in Israel was Jacob, and now he is known as Leopold Emmanuel Jacob van Dort. And the mentioned man said that this letter was found at the library for old Hebrew books in Rome.” 19. Although the last sentence seems highly unlikely19, Leopold might have had this letter in his hands. His interest indeed ranged from Judaism, Christianity to Islam.
On 23 October 1760 Leopold attends as a lector the funeral of Robertus Cramer in Colombo .
1793 – Hasselt, Belgium
Leopold buys a house in Hasselt, Belgium, around 12 Augustus 1793, called “De Kempische Hoeywagen”, formely Demerstraat 24 in Hasselt . He calls himself Leopold Van Dort from Aken . A photo of the window from the entrance depicting a hay card or a ‘hoeywagen’ can be found in the Collectie Het Stadsmus in Hasselt .
References
1. Researches and missionary labours among the Jews, Mohammedans, and other sects. Joseph Wolff, 1835, page 126. https://books.google.nl/books?id=hCPSAAAAMAAJ
2. Genealogy of Juan Goudsmit, member of the Nederlandse Kring v Joodse Genealogie. https://goudsmit.home.xs4all.nl/LevinusJacobSluisRegisterV2/rr01/rr01_009.htm#P6109
3. Joods Leven in Dordrecht, Mieke Jansen e.a., Gemeentelijke Archiefdienst Dordrecht, 1988, nr 9.
4. Die Bürgerrechtsverleihungen in der Reichsstadt Aachen während der Jahre. 1656 bis 1794 (1797). Von Wilhelm Mummenhoff. Sonderdruck aus Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein Band 68, Aachen 1959. Page 259. http://www.aachener-geschichtsverein.de/file_download/182
5. Die Bürgerrechtsverleihungen in der Reichsstadt Aachen während der Jahre. 1656 bis 1794 (1797). Von Wilhelm Mummenhoff. Sonderdruck aus Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein Band 68, Aachen 1959. Page 194. http://www.aachener-geschichtsverein.de/file_download/182
6. Fürth, Beiträge und Material zur Geschichte der Aachenen Patrizier Familie III, pages 124. http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/w/index.php?title=Datei%3AFuerth-Aachener-Patrizier-3.djvu&page=138
7. Aus Aachens Vorzeit, Mitteilungen des Vereins Aachens Vorzeit, Heinrich Snock, page 12. 1906, https://archive.org/details/ausaachensvorzei19vere/page/n3
8. Beihefte zum Zentralblatt für Bibliotheks-wesen, Nummers 15-19, O. Harrassowitz, 1896, page 20, http://libsysdigi.library.illinois.edu/OCA/Books2013-04/3337870/zentralblattfrbi1518leip/zentralblattfrbi1518leip.pdf
9. Fürth, Beiträge und Material zur Geschichte der Aachenen Patrizier Familie III, page 171. http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/w/index.php?title=Datei%3AFuerth-Aachener-Patrizier-3.djvu&page=185
10. Fürth, Beiträge und Material zur Geschichte der Aachenen Patrizier Familie III, page 180 . http://wiki-de.genealogy.net/w/index.php?title=Datei:Fuerth-Aachener-Patrizier-3.djvu&page=194
11. Kurtzer Versuch Des heiligen Geistes in Matthäi Ehre zu rächen; Ueber Matth. 2, 23. De Jesu Nazareno, Leopold Immanuel Jacob von Dort, 1752, printed by Christian Ehrenfried Förster, Leibzig. https://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/id/PPN648003884
12. Die so nöthig als nützliche Buchdruckerkunst und Schriftgiessereij, Volume 4, Gessner, Christian Friedrich, 1745, Leipzig, page 166. https://books.google.nl/books?id=eplcAAAAcAAJ
13. Die evangelische Christenheit und die Juden unter dem Gesichtspunkte der Mission geschichtlich betrachtet. Lic. J. F. A. de le Roi, Karlsruhe und Leipzig. Verlag von II. Reuthe 1884. Page 341. https://archive.org/details/dieevangelischec01lero/page/n6
14. Elswoud (1748), in 1754 hernoemd in Eendracht https://www.vocsite.nl/schepen/detail.html?id=10313
15. Resolutions of the Council of Policy of Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town Archives Repository, South Africa. Reference code: C. 132, pp. 430-432 http://databases.tanap.net/cgh/main.cfm?artikelid=23698&zoekwoord=Kieviets%20heuvel
16. Kievitsheuvel (1749). https://www.vocsite.nl/schepen/detail.html?id=10543
17. Rijks geschiedkundige publicatiën: Groote serie, Volume 257. Generale missiven van gouverneurs generaal en raden aan Heren XVII, M. Nijhoff, 2007, page 578 http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/retroboeken/generalemissiven
18. The Star of Jacob, ed. by M. Margoliouth. https://books.google.nl/books?id=rTAEAAAAQAAJ
19. Meir Bar-Ilan (ed.), Words of Gad the Seer: Printed for the first time from Cambridge MS O0.1.20, Copied at Cochin, India in the 18th Century (Hebrew: Divrei Gad haozé Meir Bar-Ilan, 2015. xv (English), 377 (Hebrew).
20. Zend-Avesta, Ouvrage de Zoroastre, Vol. 1 : Contenant Les Idees Theologiques, Physiques Et Morales de Ce Legislateur, Les Ceremonies Du Culte Religieux Qu'il a Etabli, Et Plusieurs Traits Importans Relatifs A l'Ancienne Histoire Des Perses, Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, page clj. https://fr.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:Zend-Avesta,_trad._Anquetil-Duperron,_volume_1.djvu/197&action=edit&redlink=1
21. Researches and missionary labours among the Jews, Mohammedans, and other sects. Joseph Wolff, 1835, page 126. https://books.google.nl/books?id=hCPSAAAAMAAJ&pg
22. A Hebrew Qur'ān Manuscript, Myron M. Weinstein, Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, Studies in Bibliography and Booklore, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (Winter, 1971/72), pp. 19-52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27943437
23. [ אלקוראן ] Al-Koran in Hebrew translation. 255 ff. Paper. 18 x 12 cm. Cochin (India), 18th cent. (ca. 1757). Ashkenazic semi-cursive script. https://www.loc.gov/rr/amed/hs/HebrewManuscriptsPdf/LC%20Hebr.%20MS%20183.pdf
24. אגרת רבי יוחנן בן זכאי, Igeret Rabbi Joḥanan ben Zakkai, Royal Library in Copenhagen http://www.kb.dk/manus/judsam/2009/sep/dsh/object38486/da/#kbOSD-0=page:1
25. Hanne Trautner-Kromann, 'The Enigmatic Iggeret R. Johanan ben Zakkai: A Polemical Letter against Christianity', Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 1994, B, I, pp. 69-75. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23536299
26. De Maandelykse Nederlandische Mercurius, Volumes 8-11, page 211. https://books.google.nl/books?id=47M1AAAAMAAJ
27. Hasseltse uithangborden en gevelstenen, De Vrienden van het Stadsmuseum, 1979, p. 63. https://www.hasel.be/de-kempische-hoeywagen-demerstraat?page=2
28. Hasselt intra muros, Guido Caluwaerts Kluwer, 1989, https://www.hasel.be/de-kempische-hoeywagen-demerstraat-uit-hasselt-intra-muros-1989?page=3
29. https://www.hasel.be/multimedia/287517
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