My name is Pieter P Vreugdenhil and I live in 56, Hallmark Ave, Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, BB4C-3P5, Canada. I’m married, a father of four sons, a grandfather of five girls, and was born in 1945 in Maassluis (Netherlands) as one of nine children born to Cornelis Jan Vreugdenhil (K X z) and Johanna van der Eijk.
The family emigrated to Chatham, Ontario, Canada, in 1952. I studied at Toronto University and graduated with a pharmaceutical degree. I worked in a hospital pharmacy for several years, before serving as a pharmacy officer in the Canadian Armed Forced for 19 years, after which I went back to hospital pharmacy work until retiring in 2018. My hobby has always been genealogy-research and during my retirement I focused on that. My interest in logging Vreugdenhilfamily information started in the ’60s. I was lucky in two ways: first was my dad’s incredible memory and his ability to easily cite names of family members from memory along with dates of birth, marriage, and death. This was a huge help since he was one of twelf children, and his father Abram (K IX 1) came from a family with 24 children!. Second bit of luck was that in 1976 I was able to travel to the Netherlands where I met many of my relatives, as well as visit the town halls of Maasland, Maassluis, and Naaldwijk where I was allowed to read through 200-year-old books and reports of births, marriages, and deaths to look for information for “my genealogy”. This was before everything was digitally accessible.
I remain deeply interested in the genealogy. In 2016 I self-published a family-history book about my close family. In 2021 I self-published a book about my mother Johanna and her ancestry – the families Van der Eijk, Klapwijk, Van der Lely, and Van Hoboken. Nowadays I’m working on another book – about my father and his ancestry – the families Vreugdenhil, Zegwaard, Mosterd, and Van der Mark. It made me even more enthusiastic about ‘the orange book’ of the Vreugdenhil Foundation. I’ve used it a lot to find Vreugdenhil families who emigrated to Canada and the US. One of my goals is to find and identify the Vreugdenhil-families currently residing in Canada and the US in order to find out how we could be related. Four of my grandfather’s (Abram) brothers – Jan (K IX j), Jacob (K IX k), Arie (K IX n), and Cornelis (K IX o) emigrated, first to South Dakota, US, in the early 1900s before moving away from there. I would like to find their descendants to see where and how they’re living now. A great chance for a family reunion! Because of my interest in finding Vreugdenhils in Canada and the US I’ve contacted Aat Vreugdenhil of the Vreugdenhil Family Foundation and asked him for help. He really like the idea and said he was already looking for a volunteer to do exactly that within the foundation, so I offered my help.
If you have any information about Canadian family members, please send an email to us via: info@vreugdenhil-online.com