I showed up for the voyage on time this week for Sepia Saturday! Yet again this week, when I saw the preview image a few weeks in advance, I had no idea what photo to use. Thankfully that new acquisition of family photos from my husband’s family yielded this amazing find which fits in fairly well. This appears to be a photo of Hilje (Dijkema) Jaarsma and a class of some sort. The back is labelled, “Knapen en Meisjes ver:, 27,” which translates to, “Boys and girls far: 27.” The 27 doesn’t seem to mean 1927, unless of course it’s a 21 and then it’s 1921 which fits better since Hilje was born in 1914 and would have been 7 in 1921 and better matches the ages of the children in the photo. The little “X” on the photo marks where Hilje was sitting and is directly over her head. Also included in the box was her report card book (Rapportenboekje) which shows that in 1922, she attended some sort of Christian School (probably around Groningen, though the exact school isn’t listed on the card). It starts with the first grades on 24 January 1922 and goes through 24 December 1926. Family history says that she only attended about 5 years of school so that lines up rather nicely! I know that Hilje’s father, Hendrik Dijkema, was a turfschipper (so hard to translate to English – it’s something like “peat boatman” which is a person who sold peat fuel logs from a barge type boat). I wonder if perhaps this was the school bus for children of other families in the shipping industry. Northern Holland, around Groningen, is full of canals, and it’s entirely possible that this was her first-day-of-school photo as they were going off to the school house on their “school bus.” The ages of the children vary – from some that look to be in their early teens to younger children who look to be about 5 or 6. The only solid piece of data I have is that Radio Foto in Paterswolde took the photo! It’s another treasure though for sure, and I’m glad to have it travel through the internet for you to view!
Sepia Saturday 294: Travel, Overcrowding, Blankets
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Oh my word! Can you imagine anyone today being allowed to transport children crowded in a boat like that – especially with some sitting so precariously in the front & back?! It might have been a posed picture – except the boat is actually moving! Yikes!!
Wow — that’s a lot of people on one boat! The Coast Guard would be there in a flash — no lifejackets, no nothing! A canal boat for a school bus is fascinating to me!
That is a most unusual photo, water transport in daily use. Not many places would make use of that. Lucky you.
A super photo and much better than the typical formal posed class photo. The background of farm buildings and canal life really add to the history.
What a wonderful photograph to have amongst your family collection. I counted around 40 passengers on that boat – I wonder what the limit would be on a boat that size in today ‘s health & safety regime.
I wonder if the boat was really used as a mode of transport, or just as a prop for a school photograph. It certainly looks hazardous, if the former!
Hard to tell! I thought it might possibly be a prop, but other school photos from that time period are very posed and the kids are sitting on chairs outside the school. One factor leading me to think it’s a “school boat” is that Hilje was the daughter of a man who ran a barge up and down the canals, and her family lived on that barge as well. It’s possible this boat collected all the students on the way to the school house and deposited them back with their parents at the end of the day since the barges would’ve been scattered up and down the canals. I don’t think any of the parents would’ve had the money to send their children off to boarding school, so it would make sense that a boat would pick them up, take them to school and back.