# We , close relatives of JACOB VAN DER GROEF , born on march 31 1876 in the small town of Nieuwe -Tonge in the Netherlands , have always wondered - for more than a century anyhow - what had become of Jacob ever since the year 1893 .
In the year 1889 - at that time Jacob was a Dutch boy of 13 years of age - the father of Jacob , Willem van der Groef and Jacob's stepmother , Ida van Maastrigt , had made the very radical decision to leave behind all their sorrows , poverty and misery in their hometown Nieuwe - Tonge on the former Dutch island of Goeree-Overflakkee , and start up a brand new and hopefully far better life , together with all of the children at the other side of the Atlantic Ocean , all the way in Argentina , but unfortunately the stay in this South-Amercan country would end in a complete disaster ........Within a period of four years not only one of the children would die (their son Willem) , but also (step)mother Ida herself ánd father Willem ...... leaving behind the children without parents ánd without breadwinner .......
In 1893 all of Jacob's (half-)brothers and -sisters returned in , what must have been , a very sad , uncertain and desolate mood , on a boat back to their common former homeland Holland , with the exeption of just ONE relative ......and yes indeed , that one person was our Jacob...
Jacob , yet not being older than 17 years at the end of the year 1893 , had decided to stay behind in Argentina , in Rosario , and he would never see his (half-)brothers and -sisters ever again .........
In the beginning there still must have been some contact in the form of letters between Holland and Argentina , but that correspondence must have stopped more than 75 years ago now , and besides sent letters weren't all saved , so that we , distant Dutch family members of Jacob , were and remained fully ignorant of the exact course of his life in Argentina , and we even feared the worst .......until.....rather by surprise , we received some pictures (one of these pictures is visible here) ánd also a letter , once written by Jacob himself way back in the year 1920 , out of which we could somewhat reconstruct Jacob's life , which gave us a rather reassuring image of how his life and that of his family must have looked like in far away Argentina ....
In the beginning there still must have been some contact in the form of letters between Holland and Argentina , but that correspondence must have stopped more than 75 years ago now , and besides sent letters weren't all saved , so that we , distant Dutch family members of Jacob , were and remained fully ignorant of the exact course of his life in Argentina , and we even feared the worst .......until.....rather by surprise , we received some pictures (one of these pictures is visible here) ánd also a letter , once written by Jacob himself way back in the year 1920 , out of which we could somewhat reconstruct Jacob's life , which gave us a rather reassuring image of how his life and that of his family must have looked like in far away Argentina ....
M A R R I A G E
As one can see on the picture , Jacob had got married in Argentina , and we came to know that he must have married pretty soon in his life , very soon after that very crucial and emotional year of 1893 , which gave us the very convincing idea , so to speak , that thát and that alone should have been the real and genuine reason why he , as the only one out of the group of children , had stayed behind in Argentina .
At first we had thought that Jacob had stayed behind just to be able to follow the lawsuit in Rosario against the person or persons who were responsable for the brutal and sudden death of his father Willem - but later , since we were informed that his first child and only son Willem had come to this life in 1895 ór already in 1894 , we fully started grasping the true and sole reason why Jacob had stayed behind ánd why he had never returned to his homeland Holland ......
In Argentina . in the city of Rosario , Jacob must have met a young woman who , just like him , had been born and raised in the Netherlands , nót on the island of Goeree - Overflakkee , but in the northern part of the country , in the province of Groningen .
In Argentina . in the city of Rosario , Jacob must have met a young woman who , just like him , had been born and raised in the Netherlands , nót on the island of Goeree - Overflakkee , but in the northern part of the country , in the province of Groningen .
Her , rather special and uncommon , name was TRIJNTJE THO BOKHOLT ; she was born on february 22 1874 in the Dutch village of Schildwolde .
After son Willem , Trijntje had given birth to four more children , all babygirls - we came to know that all of these five children would attain to a great age (one of the children , their daughter Elisabeth , finally reached the age of 95 !) .
And even though Jacob himself didn't get any older than 54 , we distant members of the extended family , are still much less pessimistic and much less gloomy about the course of Jacob's life than we were before , in particular after we had had the opportunity to read a letter , the onty letter of Jacob that had been saved over the years .
In this specific letter , written in the year 1920 , Jacob comes forward as a content , happily married and also as a very religious man , and as the father of five children he seems to love very dearly - which is indeed a much better 'scenario' of his life than we all could have thought of before we had started looking for traces of his life in South-America .
JACOB VAN DER GROEF was the son of WILLEM VAN DER GROEF and ELISABETH TIJL , the second wife of Willem .
Jacob was born on march 31 1876 in the small town of Nieuwe - Tonge on the former island of Goeree - Overflakkee in the Dutch province of Zuid - Holland - Jacob must have passed away on june 30 , 1930 in the big city or Rosario de Santa Fé in Argentina , at the age of 54 .
TRIJNTJE THO BOKHOLT , Jacob's wife , was the daughter of BERNARDUS JOHANNES THO BOKHOLT and of ANJE DEKKER
Trijntje was born on february 22 , 1874 in the small place of Schildwolde in the Dutch province of Groningen - Trijntje must have passed away on november 10 , 1952 in Rosario de Santa Fé , 22 years after her husband , at the age of 78
The above photo of the married couple was taken in their hometown Rosario , probably somewhere around the year 1925 .
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