WINTERWERP
In the spring of 1999 I started researching the origin of the given names of my paternal grandmother Anna Martha Gonda Sterringa née Winterwerp, after who I've been named. This has led to a truly serious, genealogical research with the following results sofar:
Descent
All the Winterwerps in the Netherlands, the U.S.A., Germany, Australia and
elsewhere are descendants of Johann Philip Winterwerp and his second wife Anna
Metta Kunegunda Neslau
(Nessler, Neßler). He was a Nassau,
Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany born soldier; she was born in Bremen,
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. They married in
Groningen in 1794 and got five sons, two of who died very young as did
the eldest son and the only daughter from his first marriage. The descent goes via the youngest two sons:
Pieter Winterwerp 1800-1851 (trade) and Johan Christian Winterwerp 1803-1879
(teaching).
The offspring of their older brother Georg Andreas Winterwerp 1796-1834 (army)
did run out in the male line in 1892. The brothers were a close-knit lot; they
named sons after each other. They also went to the Registry Office for each other to
report a death in the family.
The American branch came into being in 1900 and the German one
in 1906. In the 1960s three Winterwerp sisters emigrated to Australia.
Apart from the first wife of Johan Christian 1803 being an aunt of the second,
intermarriage hardly occurs.
Names
Johann Philip Winterwerp had probably taken his name from the town of
Winterwerb near Nassau. He himself used both spellings, Winterwerp with -p and
Winterwerb with -b for signatures. The surname Neslau (Nessler,
Neßler)
changed in Groningen into Nesselaar and even Snesselaar; the
given names Anna Metta Kunegunda changed into Anna Martha Gondagonda. These
names have remained rather popular in the Winterwerp family like those of two other
Winterwerp wives, Dolfien Rigter and Christina Margrieta Heikens. The latter was
named after both wives of her legendary grandfather and Napoleontic soldier Geert Adriaans Boomgaard
1788-1899. Winterwerp
sons do still carry the names
Johan Christian, Pieter, Johan Philip and Hendrik Köhler; the names Johan
Christian and Hendrik Köhler have especially survived in the teachers' line.
The names Hendrik Köhler have come into the family as a result of a promise
made by a Winterwerp ancestor to a fellow-soldier (Sgt Johann
Rudolph Köhler?).
Further research
The relation to a certain Philippe Winterwerp who died in
Boxmeer in 1810 needs further research as does that to Johannes
Antonius Winterwerp who had daughters christened in Maastricht in 1768 and 1774.
Likewise the relation with Engel Nesla (Nessler,
Neßler) from Bremen Germany, who
had children baptised in Amsterdam in 1757 and 1761; she married in Amsterdam in
1766 and in 1774. In 1766 she couldn't sign her name; in 1774 she signed 'Enngal
Naßler'.
Gondagonda chart
Winterwerp genealogy text + index , chart + map , tree
Winterwerp-Waalkens pedigree text + index , chart + map