Janmaat from Almelo
In the course of my research I have accumulated various bits and pieces of information about Janmaats living in and around the city of Almelo.
For many years I have assumed that somehow these Janmaats would link back to those from Waddinxveen.
When this did not happen, I started to pay some closer attention to this group. It was not long before I decided to see if I could resolve the origin of these Janmaats.
With the help of Jan Ten Hove, a historian associated with the State Archives (Rijksarchief) of Overijssel, the following picture emerged.
In my section on the "Origin of the name Janmaat" I explained how people in this part o f the Netherlands used to take on the name of the farm where they lived and worked as their "surname".
It followed that when somebody moved from one farm to another, the name of the new farm would become this person's new "surname".
In November 1774 Abraham van 't Janmaat (Abraham from the farm named Janmaat) married Johanna Hammink in the Dutch Reformed Church of Almelo.
Their marriage record states that Abraham is the son of the late Jannes van 't Kroezenhuis.
The baptism records of Almelo show that on 9th April 1747 was baptized Abraham, son of Jannes Kroezen(huis) and Hendrika Hemmink.
These two facts clearly
illustrate the naming convention explained above.
When Abraham got married he was living
on a farm named Janmaat and so his
name was Abraham van 't Janmaat.
At the time of Abraham's baptism his father
was living on the farm Kroesenhuis, and so
the father's name was Jannes van 't Kroezenhuis.
This naming convention proves without much doubt that the Janmaats from Almelo are not related to those from Waddinxveen. Here the name Janmaat was well established as early as the 16th Century.