Jan Hendrik Stapel I

Jan Hendrik Stapel 1758 Eickel (Gelsenkirchen) - 1806 Gendt on Waal
Seeman, contractor, agricultural labourer,

Johann Henrich was born March 7, 1758 in the Prussian churchvillage Eickel, an agricultural community of around 300 inhabitants near Gelsenkirchen. His parents were David Stapel and Anna Margaretha Böger who, shortly after his birth, went on board one of those Rhine-barges sailing down the river to the low countries. On the Waal they went ashore in Gendt, where Johan Hendrik grew up with his little brothers and sisters born there. He did not attend classes, but he stared his eyes out in the shipyards, the brickfactories and other workshops around the place. Once grown-up he could earn his living in any of those when farms had no work on offer.
Twenty three he was when his sweetheart Johanna Cornelia Ederveen from Bemmel told him of his child she was expecting. Normally they would have married without much delay, but this was impossible now his father had died. He did not earn enough even to support his mother and family, with Jan Willem yet aged under ten. An additional family of his own was out of the question. After careful deliberation Jan Hendrik was to engage for five years with the VOC, the Dutch East India Company. As a junior sailor you got only 7 guilders a month, but that was during all seasons and included bed and board. Bargemen in Gendt thaught him to keep the crimps at arm's length, to allow him and sign a 150 guilders VOC debenture in the name of his mother Margriet. Early 1783 Jan Hendrik sailed from Gendt to Amsterdam, where after his application on March 4 his name was entered in calligraphic writing in VOC Paybook 6714 page 209. He had to undercross his contract, as writing was yet beyond him. That was why it took so long for those in Gendt to hear from Jan Hendrik again. Only when mother Margriet happened to recieve a next share of his VOC credits she knew him still to be alive.
As late as October 1787, after an uncertain existence of nearly five years as a seaman, Jan Hendrik set foot on shore in Gendt again, wiser and 160 guilders savings richer. Mother Margrieth was not so well, she did not live much longer. Jan Hendrik kept caring for his parental family, but in the meantime planned his wedding with Johanna Ederveen, who decidedly waiting for him already had moved over to Gendt. Until his brother Jan Willem reached seventeen and Joanna was pregnant of his later namesake. Then they married as the first of dozens Gendt's Stapels in their little church on the Waaldike, simultaneously ligitimizing their earlier son Hendrik. During their marriage they yet had four children: Jan Willem in 1791, David in 1793, Johannes in 1796 and Hendrik in 1801, so their pre-marriage child Hendrik did not reach adulthood.
After his VOC years Jan Hendrik did not loose his spirit of enterprise: he and business associate Gerrit Cornelissen started as dike maintenance contractors. They sought professional advice, prepared an adequate labour force and were lucky enough to receive an interesting order from the dike-reeve: Two dike partitions along the Pannerden Canal. The result of this effort is documented in a 1794 request, which he was able to sign himself with "Hendrik Stapel". After this enterprise he preferred working on farms and as such he must have witnessed Napoleon's troops, crossing the frozen river Waal in January, 1795 1).
After confession in April 1799 Jan Hendrik, aged 41 and his housewife were confimed as churchmembers and again mentioned in the 1804 Churchbook, together with sister in law Dora Jacobs, his brother Frederik's housewife.
Jan Hendrik died September 7, 1806 as an agricultural labourer, hardly 48 years old. He saw none of his children reach adulthood. Johanna Cornelia, called member Maria in the Churchbook, almost reached 80 years and participated at all of her four children's weddings. She died Februari 17, 1837 in Gendt.

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¹⁾ He could not know that they were to stay for 20 years, leaving behind a new national administration geography which would stay for another 2 centuries. What this meant for the civil service and its labour force is shown undisguisedly in the marriage certificates of the first 3 generations Guelders' Stapels, counting 2, 9 and 60 lines respectively in 1755, 1790 and 1828.