Source · provenance
The document
A typed folder from a box in the garage
This site began with a folder carrying a handwritten title: Gesprokkeld in Oud-Nieuwveen — “gleaned in old Nieuwveen”. Eleven typed pages, found among old papers while clearing out the garage. A foreword, then a run of dates from the village’s history, from the first peat digging up to 1970.
The folder names no author. That is no longer the case.
Who wrote it
The text is by J.J. Roovers, a former municipal clerk of Nieuwveen, and appears at the back of his booklet Vertellingen over Nieuwveen, from page 163 onward.
This was established by Gert Rijlaarsdam, chairman of the Historische Kring Liemeer, who got in touch after this site asked who had typed the folder. Curiously, then, the series is not in Roovers’ booklet Gesprokkeld in Nieuwveen, despite how close the titles are.
The Historische Kring Liemeer still has copies of Roovers’ booklets for sale. Anyone who wants to read the full text — and it is worth reading — can go there: Oudheidkamer, Kerkstraat 31, Nieuwveen.
What kind of text it is
Roovers says in his foreword what he was after:
Hieruit moge blijken, hoe belangrijk de in het jaar 1800 ondernomen droogmaking der veenplassen voor Nieuwveen wel is geweest.
“Let this show how important the draining of the peat lakes, undertaken in 1800, has been for Nieuwveen.”
That is the register throughout: a municipal clerk setting his village in order. Plain, precise, with an eye for the small facts nobody else would have written down — who bought the first bicycle with pneumatic tyres in 1898, and from whom.
One line from the series is almost too fitting for a typescript out of the clerk’s office:
Voor het eerst wordt op de gemeente secretarie gebruik gemaakt van een schrijfmachine, merk ‘Underwood’.
“For the first time a typewriter is used at the municipal office, an Underwood.”
What we still don’t know
- Whether this folder is Roovers’ own working draft, or a copy someone typed from the printed booklet. The typing errors left standing in it — Stchting, epedimie — and a contradictory date for the Kattenbrug point more to a draft than to a careful copy. It is not certain.
- How the folder came into this family. Gert Rijlaarsdam suspects my father knew Roovers well. That is a suspicion, not a finding.
- Where the rest is. After the dates, the foreword announces two more parts: a set of loose topics, and a list of old Nieuwveen names and terms. Neither is among the pages I found.
Do you know more? The Historische Kring Liemeer at Kerkstraat 31 — or me.
Why the full text is not here
This site used to show the whole series word for word. That came down once its origin was known: a published booklet by an author whose work is most likely still in copyright, and which is still on sale at the Historische Kring.
What this site carries are the facts from that series — dates, events, names — checked, supplemented from other sources and carried through to 2026, in my own words.