Pietertje's granddaughter

Last week I received an email that made me pause. Someone wrote to me in response to the blog post about Pietertje van Wezel. Her name is Pia de Blok-de Korte.

Pietertje van Wezel was her grandmother. Pia never knew her - she was born in 1950, eight years after Pietertje died. But she has been researching her family tree, and that is how she found my blog.



And the sampler her grandmother stitched at the age of thirteen. The house in the centre of the sampler resembles the houses along the Voorstraat in Middelharnis, where Pietertje grew up, close to the Kerkring. Step outside and you were in the middle of village life, and from there it was a short walk to the harbour.

The Schoonejongen family - her mother's side - was a prominent family in town, with properties and land around the Voorstraat and the Zandpad. After her marriage to Jacob de Korte, Pietertje moved to the vissersstraatje - small houses, a husband often at sea, five children. It cannot have been an easy life. Pia's father was Dirk, one of those five children. He went out with his father three times as the coffee boy - the lad who walked the length of the boat all day with a pot, filling cups. But he was seasick every time, and eventually became a house painter instead. What he did tell Pia: as children, he and his brothers would walk out to meet their father when the boat came in. The long route along the canal from the harbour toward the Haringvliet. And the first thing they received were the ship's biscuits - the emergency rations Jacob had brought home. "They were so good," Dirk said. "We were always hungry."

Jacob held a good position as skipper for a shipping company. But fishing was unpredictable, and there were years when there was little to share. Pia also sent me photographs. One of Pietertje and Jacob together - a couple who, as Pia puts it, had a hard life. The steel hull of the MD10 that Jacob sailed still lies at the old shipyard in Middelharnis.


Photo: Menheerse Werf

Pia does stitch herself too. Her granddaughter doesn't, but she is very much into miniature painting and art. She wrote: "My granddaughter and I also used to always sit and still sit fiddling with small things."

And Pia is going to start on the little pincushion herself. I am glad I told this story. And I am glad Pia found me. Pietertje's sampler is the basis of the Summer SAL 2026. You can join via the newsletter - sign up here.