History

During the years this family tree has been worked on by several different persons. Jan Schroer JHzn started mapping the descendants of his grandfather Jan Schroer in 1982. An extensive job, that cost him a lot of his spare time. He finished the job in 1984 and besides a little work there is a handwritten pedigree brought into circulation which many members of the family have in their possession. Around the same period in America Mrs. Stella Mathison and Mr. Paul Schreur did the same thing by collecting the descendants of their ancestors. After all this was completed the names have been connected. After that almost no further work has been done and the mutations also have not been updated.
In October 2005 I intended to add the generation born after 1984, besides modifying the changes in existing data. Again an extensive job, but with the willing cooperation of all family members it did succeed.

To be able to distinguish persons often the name of the father was added behind the name of a person, e.g.: Jan Gerrits - this is Jan, the son of Gerrit. This is called a patrimonium.
Often the profession of a person was mentioned or the region or farm where the person worked or lived, e.g. Jan Timmerman (Carpenter).
That is the reason why sometimes a last name was changed; this certainly happened when a young man was married and moved to his wife’s parents’ farm to continue the business. The last name of the wife was maintained to preserve the family name for the farm. It is almost certain that it happened this way during the lifetime of our ancestors.

The last name of our ancestors has been changed a view times during the past few centuries. Jan Schroer at that time dived into history and ended up in Wilsum in Germany. He got stuck in a note in a church book, where was written that a certain Hendrik Leeuwe and Geert Schroer had subscribed the marriage between Arend Leeuwe and Geese Woertel. At this marriage Arend took the last name Schroer. For a long time people thought that Arend was adopted by the Schroer family. During my investigation I found out that this was not the case. The community archives directed me to the site of Ds. Herbert Juling. This retired minister had decoded many German church books and we can assume that names and family ties mentioned here are correct. Then turns out that we can still go five generations further in history and we end up with a certain Berend Mardink from Wilsum.
The first last name is Mardink, this one later changes in Leeuwe and later again in Schroer. The names are written differently all the time. Both matters are easy explainable: in earlier days it was common to obtain a different last name, as a matter of fact no one had an official last name, this was only instituted by Napoleon.
It is still possible to adopt the name of the wife through marriage. This certainly still happens in our family nowadays, especially in Germany; in our family Harald Edmund Götker has adopted the last name of his wife Anke Ranters upon marriage. The last name often is written differently, in bygone days information of persons was recorded in the church book, there was no municipal registry, the pastor or minister often was one of the few persons who could write and it often depended on the pronunciation of a person and the handwriting of the writer how something was put on paper.
In our family tree the name Schroer is written in different ways. I myself have reproduced all names as Schroer.
As for the last name, often this is written as Schröer, with the diaeresis on the o. Linguistically, this is not correct, because the diaeresis makes an eu-sound of the o-sound, but that already happened by putting the e behind the o. In German the e makes an eu-sound of the o, as in Goethe. Therefore it is either a diaeresis or an e behind the o.
Actually it is Schrör - ór Schroer. Cause Schröer with the dots is two times the same.
By the way, Hermannus Schroer Jzn was so fad up with it, that he began to write Schreur (with the amusing short-temperedness, characteristic of our family)
His oldest half-brother Lucas even officially changed his last name to Schreur.

The name Schroer is a derative of the professional name from the Middle Dutch Schroder: schrooier.
Schroder, De Schrooder(e), Schrooders, Schroeder(s), Schro(u)ders, Schroer(s), Schroër, Schroeyers, Schroijers, Schruyers, Schreu(d)er(s), Schreur(s), Schruers, Schrurs, Schrure, Screurs, Schreer(s), Schreus, Schrieder(s)
It can have the following meaning:

1. Snijder (cutter): clothing cutter or tailor.
2. Wijnschroder (wine schroder): wine-cask carrier, crane master.
3. Muntschroder (coin schroder): he who strikes coins, who files the edges