More from creepy old castle in Gent

steep tight stairs

Next, on to more pleasant subjects; chocolate.

Das torture chamber...

Guillotein - not sure how to spell it as it's not a word that gets used much.

I asked dad to stick his head in cuz I thought it would be a cool photo but...

..one hefty sword! I can't imaging the strength it would have taken to wield something like this WHILE wearing all that heavy armor stuff.  Because we have a twisted sword we know that if that twisted metal gets stuck in you, you ain't gonna heal!

Torture chamber jewelry - nice necklace. See diagram to learn how its was used.

the stretcher...also a little drowning by funnel..ancient waterboarding?

creepy old medieval castle

This is old castle in Gent is the "Castle of the Counts". It has been repaired a lot but that's because it was originally built in 868!! 

Tomorrow - the torture chamber!!

More from Gent

Incredible architecture 

Gent

This is Gent (pronounce the G with with a lot of spit in your mouth) It is a beautiful OLD medieval town with castles, cathedrals, dungeons, canals and chocolate

An old archbishop just laying around

There is quite the story behind the construction of one of these cathedrals. Two brothers murdered 2 brothers from a rival family.  Their penance or punishment was to build this cathedral and they would receive complete forgiveness... wow. Quite the slam on the atonement.

Jacob Pronk

Jacob Pronk is not a direct ancestor: he's kid of a distant cousin, but family all the same. Here is why there is a street named after him and a conference room at the Kurhaus and probably a whole lot of other things. There is a lot of interesting history on this but when the exiled prince of Orange sailed back into the Netherlands he was carried to shore on the shoulders on Jacob Pronk. (There were no docks back then) Well for this amazing (?) feat he was given all kinds of perks, one being rights to some land on the beach (maybe the actual area where the royal carrying occurred) At some point he invented a way for modest women to go out into the ocean to swim/bathe : "the bathing machine." 

These little house carts were brought out into the water, the attendant would go back to shore and  the ladies would strip down, get into the water and have a fun little skinny dip in private. Notice that the dummy in the photo above is clothed...well they couldn't very well display her au naturel could they...all those little school children who are brought here to learn their town's history and all) But all the info says they swam in the buff. Just a quirky little bit of history I thought I'd toss in.....now we'll really go to Belgium.

Here a Pronk, there a Pronk, everywhere a ...

Part 2 of the hunt for the Pronk /Overduin house. (See part 1 below first) 

Turns out that Pronk is the most common surname in this town! 

Well we found the lighthouse and the street, we even found some beautiful old art of the lighthouse....

...and a painting of an old street by the lighthouse which is in about the right spot as Vuurbaakstraat (which is, by the way, right off Jacob Pronk Straat) This art work is in the museum. The thought of theft actually went through my mind, I really wanted this painting.

...and we found the street, but were there any of the original houses there?

...and just yesterday Elyn sent me this wedding photo of Henri Overduin and Jacoba Pronk. 

One of grandma's funniest stories is about this couple. Henry was a fisherman and the boat he was on went down at sea. He was presumed dead. About a year later Henry pops up at the door of his home. Johanna presuming she was seeing a ghost exclaims. "Ya vas dead and ya stay dead" and slams the door on him!!  Poor Henri! He hadn't died, he had made it ashore on some island where he recouped for many months and then  was finally able to make it back home. He'd probably been dreaming about the day that he would come home to his loving wife... those thoughts might have been what kept him alive ( my imagination likes to think!) and he gets the door slammed in his face. 

Well that's how grandma tells the story. Her sister Toos told her daughter Cobi another detail. Cobi told us that Joanna had been collecting widow pension and didn't want to have to pay it back, so she was upset that he was alive. Wow, that's rough.

So Dad and I were looking up and down this street wondering where that house may have been, and we kept looking at this cute old Dutch house. There was an old man doing some work at the house beside and I asked Rob to go talk to him and see what he knows. Dad didn't want to but I knew we couldn't let this opportunity go by so I got out and started to talk to this man who knew no English. I said we were looking for the familie Pronk Haus and he said he was a Pronk! I understood that much. I waved dad over and we had the nicest visit with this old guy. He invited us into his house (clean and neat as a pin) and he got out his genealogy records. There were no familiar Pronks up the line, even though his father AND mother were Pronks...(see blog title, everywhere a Pronk Pronk!)  but.... he said the house next door had a Pronk living there years ago and that it was the only original house on the street! The other houses had been demolished  before the year Johanna died. Since she had lived in her house till she died we assume this is it!!

So here is Mr Pronk and here is the house we believe to be the Overduin Pronk house! Ta Da!

We felt like such successful sleuths! It's obvious the old place has had a face lift since Joanna died but the original structure and style is still there. Notice right behind the front door you can kind of see the stairs going up to the loft.  Cobi and Dick said that it was typical for the master bed to be built into the alcove right under the stairs. I think it was also more likely that the kids all slept in the loft upstairs a la  Little House on the Prairie. 

next blog...we're off to Belgium

On the hunt for an Oma

Meet Johanna Pronk Overduin, grandma's  grandma 

Born in Scheveningen 1890 - 1947. 

Dad and I decided to go on a hunt for the house where she and her fisherman husband Henri lived in Scheveningen. Grandma visited her often and has such tales to tell because of how obsessed with cleanliness Johanna was. I always say that there is a good reason why there is an old dutch woman on the packaging of Old Dutch scouring powder because they have that reputation for being obsessively compulsively clean! (I think that trait only dribbled down to Nikki)

Every time she visited her grandmother she would lift up mom's skirt to check her underwear to be sure it was clean! The inside of her wood burning stove was as clean as the outside. (I'm assuming that was only in the summer but you never know)  I don't think I've poked my head in our fireplace once in ten years.  Well Grandma's sister, Tante Annie remembers going to visit her grandmother also but barely. She remembered the street name though and that's what started our hunt for the house, looking for Vuurbaakstraat by the big lighthouse. 

She told us that her grandparents had about 16 children!! "I'm not sure how many there were because I never saw them all.  When they turned 16 they had to leave home." Sheesh! Andy consider yourself lucky.

 Dad and I visited his cousin Cobi and probed her memories of her great grandmother. She told us that the Overduins lived in a one room house with a wood stove in the middle of the room and one bed built into an alcove where the parents slept. At night the kids would just pull out bedding and sleep all over the floor. Cobi remembers going to visit one time when her gr grandmother was sick in bed. She and her sisters had to sit very still and silent in a row of chairs that faced great grandma in her sick bed while the grownups talked. They were not allowed to use the toilet because they might get it dirty!?!

This photo of Johanna P. Overduin reading her Bible is part of a permanent photo archive at the museum. I'm sure you could eat off that brick area.  The photo was most likely taken in the back door area.

This is the street Tante Annie said the Overduins lived on. We were  getting closer.

...and here is the the lighthouse. 

At the museum, there is a street map of where families used to live. You push on a name and the houses with that name lights up.

This is how many Pronks and Overduins there were! And look , a house lights up that is at just the right spot.

Our search continues next blog.

Dad playing at the beach by in Scheveningen, back in the day!

You know which one he is - the cute little girlie one!

The Kurhaus

So this was a pretty tough shot to get, I'm not that great a swimmer.

Wow, the "Oh moms" or "corny Lornie" are pretty loud. 

 There is a really really long pier that is challenging to walk along when it is really windy, as it was.

Here is the main salon of this grand old hotel. I think this hotel is one Europe's oldest and finest. It sits on the North Sea in a little coastal town where Grandma's family all came  from.

Below is the main dining salon and the hight of elegance. They have a slide show going on the wall at all times showing historical photos.

Beach side view of the hotel. We had a corner room that had a fabulous view overlooking the beach and sea. Pricey but worth it, except that I left my favorite light weight dressing gown behind the bathroom door!!

Ceiling in the dining salon.