Chinsura

The earliest record found of the Deefholts family in India is the listing of "F.Doefholfz" [sic] in 1813 as a Dutch subject at Chinsura, at that time under British occupation. [1]

The Dutch Factory at Hougly, 1665 (Hendrick van Schuylenburgh)

Moorhouse gives the following historical background:

"The Dutch [...] had settled twenty-five miles upstream [from Calcutta] at Chinsurah in 1653. [...] There was a bonny scrap in 1759 when a Dutch fleet of seven ships come up the Hooghly without pilots - either a marvellous or a lucky piece of navigation in that treacherous river - and attacked a handful of East Indiamen anchored below Melancholy Point. They were beaten off after they had shot the "Duke of Dorset" through and through, leaving ninety cannonballs in her hull, without even managing to kill one of her crew, because the Englishmen had lined their quarters with bags of saltpetre, a crazy fire risk to take. This was the occasion when Colonel Forde, observing Dutch soldiers put ashore, and knowing the two countries were nominally at peace, wrote to Robert Clive - no longer a depressed Company bookkeeper but a brilliant soldier and Governor - for an Order-in-Council to fight. And Clive, who was playing cards when the message came, wrote back in pencil; 'Dear Forde - Fight them immediately and I will send you an Order-in-Council tomorrow.' " [2]

It had not been all hostility, however. Three years earlier, in 1756, the survivors from the Black Hole had escaped upstream and "were received with much care and attention by the Dutch Settlers at Chinsurah". [3]

With the outbreak of war in Holland in 1781, Chinsura was temporarily annexed by the British. In 1795, during the Napoleonic wars, the settlement was again occupied by a British garrison, to be restored to the Dutch at the peace of 1814. By then the Dutch East India Company ("VOC"), which had been in decline for a number of decades, had finally succumbed to bankruptcy and been liquidated, and in March 1824 Chinsura was exchanged with the British, together with Malacca and all Dutch possessions in India, for Sumatra and a cash payment of £100,000.

"F.Doefholfz" is almost undoubtedly Frederick Deefholts, who died probably around 1840 and, according to the last will of his son, Robert, was buried in a family vault in the Catholic Cathedral, Portuguese Church Lane, Calcutta. [4] How and when he found his way to Chinsura is a mystery. According to Mervyn, Frederick was one of two brothers who emigrated to India from Holland. Another family story tells of five Dutch brothers going to India, one of whom married an Indian princess! Yet another version was that the founder of the dynasty in India arrived from South Africa. [5]

The two most probable theories are that he was from the Utrecht branch of the family established by Bishop Rudolf some 350 years earlier, or he could have been one of many employees of direct German descent who enlisted with the VOC despite the official ban on foreigners and was subsequently considered as Dutch by association. From the earliest days the Company had difficulty in recruiting Dutchmen to its ranks, relying instead on "louts from the heart of Germany", and the proportion of foreign employees reached a crescendo in the second half of the 18th century. [6] Falk Liebezeit, Diepholz City Archivist, adds an observation that, "As the living standard in the Netherlands since the sixteenth century was a lot higher than in the western parts of "Hanover", or rather the electorate Brunswick & Lunenburgh, lots of the population that had no farms of their own went to dig peat in the Hollandish and Frisian peat bogs (or swamps) from March to September, or for grass mowing during six weeks in June. So it was not unlikely for them to be found on a vessel of the Dutch East or West India Companies."

A record has also been found of a Jacoba Deefhout, born on 7th November 1799 in Makassa, Sulawesi-Utara, Indonesia, the daughter of Diederick Deefhout and Helena Voll. [7] Whether there is any connection or not with our Frederick is unknown. Could Diederick have been Frederick's brother? The dates certainly provide a good match. Note that "hout" is the Dutch equivalent of "holt" or "holtz".

Whichever of the theories is correct, the journey from Europe was a hard voyage. V.S. Naipaul makes the following observations in connection with a (well to do) emigré from England in 1783: "There were no railways or steamers then, no short cut through Egypt; the journey to India was round the Cape of Good Hope, and could take five months." [8] Boxer notes that, "In 1782 ten East Indiamen left the Netherlands, carrying 2,653 men, of whom 1,095, or 43 per cent, died before reaching the Cape of Good Hope, where 915 survivors were admitted to hospital. This institution, incidentally, seldom enjoyed a good reputation, being sometimes dubbed a cemetery rather than a hospital." [9]

The Vrouw Maria, a VOC trading vessel which sank off the Finnish coast in 1771.

How did Frederick earn his living? In all probability he started out as an employee of the VOC, although this has been impossible to verify since the considerable volumes of records which still survive have yet to be indexed. After the VOC disbanded in 1795, he probably stayed on as an independent trader, exporting the same goods that his former employers had specialised in: cotton fabrics, silk, saltpeter and opium. [10] Whatever his business, Frederick certainly earned enough to raise and educate a family of six children.

According to Reginald, the author of the earliest extant family tree, the family primogenitor was named Lewis and had five sons and a daughter (this explains the “five brothers going to India” story). Reginald names them as Lewis, Richard, Robert, Henry, William and Constance. Only the parentage of Robert, who names his father as Frederick in his will, is documented elsewhere. There is no record of a Lewis senior, so either there were two brothers only one of whom survived, or possibly they were one and the same. Lewis was born in 1806, Richard four years later, Robert in 1815. On the basis that he was probably at least 21 when he started his family, Frederick would therefore have been born around 1785 at the latest.

With the assimilation of the former colony into British India in 1825, Frederick's eldest sons eventually made the move from Chinsurah to Calcutta, now part of the same sprawling conurbation, then a distance of 26 miles. They are mentioned in local directories from 1834 onwards, although it is known that the third son, Robert, had started work at the General Post Office two years previously. Lewis, who in 1834 started a family of his own, lived at 43 Chitpore Road, whilst Robert and Richard shared lodgings at 75 Doomtollah. The Calcutta Annual Directory and Register 1835 refers the three of them as “East Indians” and also lists an F. Deefholts living in Chinsurah, with no stated profession. The last mention of Frederick is in the Bengal Almanac of 1840, where he is listed as "F. Deefholt [sic]" under "List of Chinsurah Residents". The same directory now lists the three brothers as British Subjects, Richard now living separately at Chattawallah Gully, Lewis and Robert together at Sukeas’s Lane with an F.H. Deefholts – the fourth son, Henry - who is mentioned for the first time.

Lewis, Frederick' Eldest Son

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