JACOMIJNTJE de Winter had a problem that at the time was quite common in the Netherlands. They fell in love with a boy with a sexy accent who turned out to be from a Huguenot family. Those were French Protestants who had fled to the north. All well and good, but no one could pronounce their last name.
Miss De Winter told her young husband Isaac that no one in Breskens could pronounce Seloivre. She wanted to turn that into Slover. They had a son, also Isaac, who took the new surname with him to America, but when he registered there, they added an extra E anyway: Selover. With that name, the family went down in history.
AND WHAT history it became! Especially when grandson Bram named his daughter Sijtje, and Johnny Davison thought he heard him say Cynthia, his favorite girl name. He promptly asked her to marry him, and suddenly Sijtje Slover from Zeeland was named Cynthia Davison from New Jersey. She gave birth to two daughters of her own. One was named Marjan, who married Kees VanDuyne. The other was Els, who listened to Eliza, and also got married.
To a Rockefeller.
John D. Rockefeller, the patriarch of the uber-wealthy family, the oilman, the man of Standard Oil, ExxonMobil and Chevron, he himself was of Zeeland descent. Sijtje Slover was his grandmother. The D in his name was her married last name, Davison.
John became the richest man in American history, converted to today’s dollars. Not bad for a child of a womanizing father who had two marriages at once, and a Zeeland-blooded mother who became the incarnation of “ons bin zuunig,” making ends meet. In line with her ancestral homeland’s motto, she fought, came up, and John floated up with her.
HE ALWAYS remembered where he came from. Through mother Els and grandmother Sijtje from Breskens, Schoondijke, now part of Sluis, Middelburg, Oosterland. There are the roots of the Rockefellers. Ancestors who were teachers, and wheelwrights (“Anyone could build a cart,” he said, “but getting the wheels under it, that was an art.”) Families with names like De Winter, De Zaaier.
His youngest son John junior, like his father, gave away most of his inheritance. But a portion he kept. With that, he built one of New York’s most famous skyscrapers.
Rockefeller Center. With distant greetings from Zeeland.
