Today, we are looking at the burial entry of Michel Trico (1742).
Translation
Sunday 29th April [1742] Michel Trico, in the Laatste Blomdwarstraat between Blomstr[aat] and Roosegr[ach]t.
Comments
The burial registers show a lot of abbreviations. In Michel Trico’s entry we see, for example:
– WAG stands for Waals Gereformeerd which means he was a member of the Walloon Reformed Church;
– B&R stands for baar en roef; a baar is a bier and a roef is a roof-shaped assembly of slats, placed on a coffin to make the pall fall nicely;
– M.K. stand for mondig(e) kind(eren) which means he left one or more adult children.
On the right we see the fee that was paid for his burial: 1 gulden and 12 stuivers.
Michel Trico’s entry does not tell us a lot about the deceased himself, only his name and the street where he lived (Laatste Bloemdwarsstraat). We can find the street on the ‘new’ map of the city of Amsterdam that was published in 1829. This map shows the Bloemstraat and Rozengracht, and three cross streets (dwarsstraat). Michel Trico lived in the last of these cross streets. If we study the map a bit more, we see to the right of the Bloemstraat and Bloemgracht the Westerkerkhof, the graveyard of the Westerkerk Parish. This is where Michel Trico was buried.
More revelations
What else do we read about Michel Trico in the parish registers? First, that he married in 1704 with a woman from Amsterdam, named Elisabeth Manchez. Second, that he was a native of Picardie, a region in the north of France. Third, at the time of his marriage he was 22 years old and a stoffewerker, which means he worked with fabrics. And last, between 1705 and 1724 Michel and Elisabeth became the parents of nine children; six of them died in childhood.
As often happened to family names with a foreign background, Michel’s first and last names were written in several ways: Miché / Misel / Michiel / Michel / Michee / Maghiel and Trico / Tricourt / Triquot / Trikoet / Triquet / Tricou / Trikoo / Tricoo. The same goes for the names of his spouse. When looking for families with foreign names, it is always wise to search for as many spelling variants as possible.
