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ZEELAND COLONEL WHO FOUGHT IN BRAZIL 1634-1649
WIC & VOC DIRECTORS, AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND & BURGOMASTERS OF DELFT, MIDDELBURG, VEERE, WESEN (THOLEN), BREDA & AMSTERDAM
[MANUSCRIPT - GENEALOGY & HERALDRY]. BRANDE, Cornelis van den, and family. [drop-title:] Geslaght Register van de Familie van Van den Brande sedert die in Zeeland sijn gekomen 1572.
INCLUDING: [drop-title:] De Familie van de Heeren Van der Graaff. (with 19 fragments of a ca. 1651 parchment family tree with coloured coats-of-arms, and 1 fragment from another, pasted in or loosely inserted at the relevant places.
INCLUDING: [drop-title:] Copia Litterarum Patentium ... Johannes Petrus van den Brande a Rege Guillielmo III Magna Brittannić ... Eques Baronettus Creatur 9 Junii 1699.
[near Middelburg (Kleverskerke?) in Zeeland], written ca. 1690? (with additions to 1721) & ca. 1735 (with additions to 1754).
WITH: 17 Additional Documents Concerning the Genealogy, Heraldry and History of the family Van den Brande and many related families, mostly from Zeeland, especially Van der Graaf, Van der Dussen, Bosschaert, Persijn, De Vos, Honich, De Meyer, Borselen van der Hooge and De Witte van Blois, including a signed letter from Mattheus SMALLEGANGE.
[mostly near Middelburg (Kleverskerke?) in Zeeland], ca. 1625-ca. 1716 (with additions to 1736). 1 volume plus 17 loose documents. Folio (40.5 x 26.5 cm) and various formats. With about 250 depictions of about 50 different coats of arms, mostly coloured (many of the repeated arms in two documents left incomplete or uncoloured). Most of the loose documents are family trees, some with and some without coats of arms, mostly full sheets, but including large folding family trees assembled from 2, 6 or 10 sheets (the 2 largest 79.5 x 150 cm and 79.5 x 149 cm). Together they provide genealogical data from 1325 to 1754, mostly concerning Zeeland families. The bound volume in contemporary sheepskin parchment with leather ties.
| Orders and Information | € 17500 |
A remarkable collection of genealogical, heraldic and family history data from the family archive of Elizabeth Cornelia van den Brande (1713-post 1754) and her husband Pieter Scheideruit de Vos van Nieuvliet, tracing their families back to the early sixteenth and in some branches even to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and also including descendents in the collateral branches. Many of the documents begin with one individual or a husband and wife and record in some cases their ancestors and in other cases their descendents. Five of the documents are illustrated with (mostly coloured) coats of arms. The bound volume opens with four striking armorial leaves before the main text begins, each devoted to one sixteenth or seventeenth-century member of the family, including Elizabeth's great grandfather Cornelis van den Brande (ca. 1605-post 1649), an army Colonel who fought for the Dutch in Brazil in the years 1634-1642 and 1647-1649. Each of these four leaves shows the large and elaborately crested and mantled arms of the subject and his wife in the centre, with detailed notes below, in three cases flanked by the eight coats of arms of their grandparents. Boxer, The Dutch in Brazil, pp. 264-265, gives a biographical sketch of Cornelis van den Brande (noting that he was "perhaps" a Zeelander) but was unable to find information about him beyond his military career in Brazil. The present documents provide extensive information on his ancestors and descendents. His father-in-law Cornelis de Meyer was a director of the VOC (Dutch East India Company) and his son Johan Pieter van den Brande became burgomaster of Middelburg, ambassador to England and was created Baronet by King William III of England (an appendix in the bound volume gives his son's eight-page transcription of the 1699 Latin letters patent, with a note in Dutch). In 1679 Johan Pieter bought the estate in Kleverskerke where the family lived for a century and where many of the present documents were probably compiled.
The bound volume devotes eleven pages to the Van der Graaf family (giving data from 1325 to 1690, with additions to 1721), and inserted fragments of an earlier parchment family tree show 39 coloured coats of arms (20 different arms). This parchment document included a couple married in 1651 and was probably drawn up in or soon after that date. One fragment from a different family tree shows the arms of a husband and wife from the family of Arent Jacobsz. van der Graaf's wife's family. One of the loose documents is a signed letter from the famous chronicler of Zeeland, Mattheus Smallegange (1624-1710), who was apparently supplying genealogical and heraldic information to the Van der Graaf family (in this case concerning the family Persijn van Beverwaerde. Another loose document provides detailed records from the period 1642-1654 about Arent Jacobsz. van der Graaf (1557-1642), burgomaster of Delft, and his family, originally written by his grandson Pieter van der Graaf (d. 1653) and Pieter's brother, and transcribed by Pieter's grandson. The De Vos documents include data concerning Hendrik Somer (1598-1647), a director of the WIC (Dutch West India Company), who married Maria de Vos.
The bound volume was originally an album of 48 leaves collating [A]-[H]6, all from a single paper stock probably from ca. 1690 (I VILLDARY = fleur-de-lis on crowned shield above "4," "WR" and monogram CVH or GVH: see Heawood 392, 1792 & 1793, dated ca. 1684-1700). The binder removed the first and last leaf and pasted down the second and second to last. A few more leaves were removed from the first and last quire, at least one with writing, probably when the album was no longer needed for its original function and was used to record Van den Brande family data ca. 1735, for the heading to the second double-page spread notes that it records descendents of one part of the family "soo als die nogh in wesen sijn ao 1735" (as they still exist in 1735). The sections devoted to the Van der Graaf family may have been written earlier, for they originally recorded data to 1690, with additions from 1692 to 1721 clearly added later. Four other leaves were removed from the album, but two of them were used to for two of the four armorial leaves pasted to stubs before the beginning of the main text (the other two armorial leaves come from a different but contemporary or possibly even slightly earlier paper stock).
The two largest folding genealogies are somewhat tattered, but most of the documents are in very good condition. An extensive collection of archives of a Zeeland family with ties to the VOC, WIC and Brazil, no doubt containing a great deal of information that has not survived in any other form.
