The Second Move

Backblip ALERT! ... but I'll write it as though it's current.

After the physio today, passed by the dry cleaner's (thanks, Evelyne!) to pick up what I'd left with them last week, and then took a circuitous route home looking for a shot.  I just didn't drive around, though.  I specifically went to the area where hubby's great (x3) grandfather settled in Etten-Leur after moving from Rijsbergen in the early 1770s.  It was the second major move of the family and proved to be a turning point genealogically.  Not only did they use Etten-Leur as a springboard westwards but it was here that the guy we now call 'John the Great' married three times and begot 13 children, thereby guaranteeing the continuation of the line.  Where the old man's house originally stood is no longer known, nor is it visible, although there are still farmsteads here dating a couple hundred of years, at the least.  I wish it was in the records somewhere.  That would have been interesting to look up and look for.  But no such luck.  Etten-Leur is just a village and has always been, meaning that no important aristocrat had a villa or mansion here that would have made the area worth mapping.

The Old John had brothers but the line is dead with them.  One went to Breda and all his children died before him.  Another went somewhere else and got married but probably died childless.