About Us : : Family History

| Balfoort | Balfour | Koopman | Ledeboer | Mat Darus | Polack | Van Popta | Westrik |

Koopman (1843 - Current)

| Introduction | Origins of Koopman | Opa GW Koopman |
| Early years in Surabaya | Surabaya connection to Scotland? |
| Oom Chris Koopman | Dutch Club in Singapore | Family time in Singapore |

Introduction

In this section of our family history I am covering a number of critical and coincidental events which encouraged me to firstly commence and then continue the family research of the past 23 years. It is logical to cover the early years and these various stimulii in this section, which are related substantially to the family Koopman, my maternal ancestors.

The following content is based on numerous family stories which my maternal grandmother (Omi) told me, as well as extensive and on-going research. From Omi I learnt that there is an art to story telling and a great pleasure in listening. The family stories were often repeated, not because Omi was forgetful, because she was teaching schoolchildren bridge at the age of 81, but more to cement the stories and their lessons in my brain. I learnt first hand, during this process, how oral history used to be transferred before the age of writing during the times when no writing equipment existed, and how easy it is to forget certain details and nuances. But above all, it was the cautionary aspects of the stories which Omi was able to freely pass on as she was at an age where the negative emotions had mostly faded, leaving the joy of life and survival to be transmitted to me. This is one of the reasons why I, having had this privilege of partaking of 100 or more years of stories, am writing these family chronicles.

These stories are a small overview of all the stories which I would like to put on paper and include a small sample of photos. Over time I would like to be able to put together a book to be printed for future generations, in the family tradition, incorporating all the research. I am inviting the interested reader to contact me if you have any further information and am very happy to share scanned copies of documents and photos if these are off interest to others undertaking similar research.

My maternal grandmother, Sophia Anna Geertruida Koopman, (born 5 March 1919), was a very important person in my life from an early age, and from her I learnt about the family from my mother's side, as well as to appreciate history, etiquette and traditions. To an extent the stories told by my mother, Aleida Margaretha Theodora Westrik, (born 17 June 1943), and my father, Ferdinand Coenraad Balfoort (born 18 March 1937), emphasized the lessons learnt from Omi, but the main impetus and reinforcement came from her. This includes my appreciation of art and antiques as well as the finer things in life and the correct way of doing things. These "correct ways" are nowadays covered in courses on ethics and values, a subject that has come in vogue of late due the apparent loss of ethics in society in general. This is a subject close to my heart as I deal with the end results on a daily basis in my professional life.

Omi was born around the time when the Victorian age was in its final chapter, right before the roaring twenties, the Charleston and the flappers. She was brought up in an environment where the old traditions established in the Victorian age were still passed on at home and reinforced by a strong societal sense of community, with both advantages and disadvantages. This etiquette, covering issues such as table manners, conversation, presentation and dress sense, communication styles, ethics and values, were repeated over and over again when I was a youngster and visited her at her home in Rotterdam, where she lived some very good years with Oom Cor, a retired bank director. A lot of these descriptions are well reflected in a book written by Geert Mak, a Dutch writer and journalist, who wrote a book called "The Age of my Father" several years ago.

Below is a photo of Omi and Oom Cor in 1975, possibly during a function related to their bridge playing which they both enjoyed very much. Oom Cor was a Leo Snake (born in August 1905, and therefore exactly the same astrological sign and element as I am, an unusual coincidence) and was also an Internal Auditor like me, something which I did not know when I visited him as a small boy of about 6 years old. He gave me my first wind up watch when I was 8 years old. He used to walk the family Rottweilers with me and showed me tree huts built by other boys in the Rotterdam suburbs, took me to libraries to borrow books and was a very kind and loving 'grandfather' to me.

When I returned to Europe in 1996 after an absence of 15 years (I emigrated in 1981 to New Zealand with my parents) I had the pleasure and enjoyment of spending time with my wife and children at Omi's home in Dronten during vacations. Sometimes we hosted Omi at our house in the places where we were stationed on professional contracts, in Poznan, Poland, Riga, Latvia, and finally Antananarivo, Madagascar. During these visits I was able to learn more about family, history and traditions, as I was then more mature and more able to link the stories together and make sense of them.

The parallels in these stories with our own global travels and enterprises made me understand that family history is a repetition of lives and loves, triumphs and tragedies. Regardless of the age and the technology we live with, the basic issues remain the same, and can either be solved correctly or incorrectly, based on immutable laws of the universe. Many of these generally accepted principles were once enshrined in the rules of etiquette I was made familiar with by Omi and which you can read about in books written by Emily Post, titled Etiquette, first published in 1922, around the age my Omi was born. I obtained an original copy of this book in Thailand in exchange for a packet of small Dutch cigars, while working on an assignment. The origin of the book was a gentleman of a similar age to Omi, originally from the USA, who had relocated to Thailand during the 1960's, passed away recently, and whose good Thai friend in the village he lived, became the proud owner of a library of books which he could not read or understand.

Omi visited us in Riga, Latvia, in the year 2000. This photo was taken just after the birth of Sophia, named after Omi and Omi's aunt. In this photo, the two Sophias are sitting below a painting of Gerrit Jan Koopman, who was Omi's grandfather, and my daughter's great-great-great grandfather. Six generations of the family are represented in this photo taken in Riga, in what proved to be for us a very interesting place from a family history perspective, as noted in other parts of this family history.

Click to "Origins of Koopman".