The story of my great-great grandmother killed by the spinning sails of her windmill , the Middle Mill in Stompwijk, Holland.
My great-great grandmother, Petronella van Dorp, was killed June 9, 1881, by the Middle Mill of these Three Windmills of Stompwijk. A row of windmills built in 1672 to drain water out of the Driemans polder in Stompwijk, Holland.
She was feeding the chickens, when the wind turned the windmill sails that grabbed her skirts and killed her, on June 9, 1881.
She was a miller’s wife — a widow at the time — of Leendert (Leonardus) van der Burg, my great-great grandfather.
Her eldest son Albert (my great-grandfather), a water miller too, and a former Papal Zouave (see below), reported her death the next day at the village town hall in Stompwijk.
Albert must have lost his Dutch citizenship after he had taken up ‘military service with a foreign power’, as a 16 year old boy, joining the Papal Zouaves from February 5, 1868 until 1870.
That might have had consequences for work as a water miller. He married in 1883 and appears to have lived a few years in Vlaardingen (near Rotterdam) – where my grandfather Machiel was born – before returning to Stompwijk with his wife Johanna van der Togt.
Albert’s brother, Pieter van der Burg, married May 8, 1882 with Magdalena de Bruin — a year after the fatal accident of his mother — and was a water miller on this Middle Mill (Middelmolen) in the Driemans polder in Stompwijk until 1892.
Notes
Death Petronella van Dorp. Municipal archive The Hague in Den Haag (Netherlands), Civil registration deaths
Ambachten en gemeenten Leidschendam (1812-1817), Stompwijk en Veur, Stompwijk, archive 5270-01, inventory number 910, 10-06-1881, Overlijdensakten Stompwijk, record number 1881-29 . Permalink https://hdl.handle.net/21.12124/01783BA8766C46A0A57A16DB227ABC38
Open Archives URL https://www.openarchieven.nl/hga:01783BA8-766C-46A0-A57A-16DB227ABC38
Middenmolen (van de Driemanspolder). Molen Database Ten Bruggencate-nr. 00966 . URL https://www.molendatabase.nl/molens/ten-bruggencate-nr-00966?paging=true
Pieter van der Burg . Zoetermeer City Archive URL https://zoeken.geheugenvanzoetermeer.nl/detail.php?nav_id=1-6&id=14010664
Papal Zouave • 1-memo•com • 20220313 • URL https://michelvanderburg.com/2022/03/13/papal-zouave/
Great-great-great grandfather ‘Pieter’ van der Burg was a water-miller too, 200 years ago . https://michelvanderburg.com/2014/08/21/water-windmiller-pieter-van-der-burg/
Video recorded January-February 2022.
Citation info : Killer Windmill • Michel van der Burg • Miracles•Media • @1MEMO 20250216 • TakeNode 03fa6ccb-3254-411c-9922-240eb28e7509
