Background

The information on this website has been taken from a publication written in 1985. It begins with a discussion of the name vanderMost in the Netherlands:

Southern Province Origins
In the Netherlands phone book of 1984, the name Van der Most appears 331 times*, 21 of which list the name vanderMost van Spijk. The majority of names reside in the Schiedam/Vlaardingen/Rotterdam area (101) with further concentrations in the Delft/Rijswijk/Den Haag/Voorburg (29), Heerde (11), Enschede (8) Slagharen (8), Utrecht/Zeist/Bilthoven (10) and Amsterdam/Badhoevedorp (10) areas.

If we look at these concentrations in terms of province, is looks to be a "Southern Holland" family name. Over half the names in the telephone book in 1984 were living in Southern Holland, followed by the much smaller concentrations of Gelderland (~10%) and Overijssel (~10%).

The First
Apart from three exceptions, the 331 names in the 1984 telephone book can be traced back to two sons from Schiedam, Arij Gijse and Jan Gijse. These two brothers were sons of Gijsbrecht Evertszoon. His grand father, Gijsbrecht (ca 1575) was known only from his sons Arijen Gijsen and Evert Gijsen. He is therefore the forefather of all the vanderMosts alive today.

The three exceptions that do not trace back directly to the two sons of Schiedam instead base their name from a Pietersz van der Most from Overschie who, in 1660 in Rotterdam, met and married Maartje Jacobs. However, his forefather, Pieter, was possibly Pieter Corstiaensen ca 1600 married to Lijntgen Wilms, a contemporary of Evert and Arij from Schiedam. A family relation to Gijsbrecht (ca 1600) is still speculation but with Overschie and Schiedam being adjacent municipalities, it seems likely a connection exists.

In The Netherlands Today
From the 331 Van der Mosts in the 1984 telephone book, 251 were male. The remainder being unmarried daughters and widows listed under their late husbands name. Considering that, for the time, approximately 80% of the general population had a telephone, this put the number of men and women living in the Netherlands with the name vanderMost at approximately 600-700 in 1984. [ed. I have no updated information on this]

The information presented on this website is incomplete. While the information on this website relates mostly to the carrying on of the Vandermost name, it does not include information on the birth and death dates of spouses or the many children that died at a young age. Also, missing are the later generations of the married daughters that no longer carried on the name.

Around The World
Information regarding the use of the name outside the Netherlands would have been very difficult to obtain in 1984. Hopefully the internet will give us the opportunity to follow up on the generations that left the Netherlands and emigrated to other countries around the world (Canada, Australia, USA and South Africa and others). If you have any information that might help fill in the missing areas of the vanderMost story and would like to contribute to the information already known about the vanderMost name, please send me an email.

vanderMost's At Work
The vanderMost's of the 17th and 18th century were found in ordinary occupations such as Porters, Dock Hands, Bricklayers, Welders, Builders and Farmers. One notable exception was Jan Gijse (1670), the 'Captain of the Maze' which, at the time, was an important position that he achieved largely on his own merits. He received an extravagant (free) burial and left behind a considerable legacy.

In Rotterdam, in a more or less died out branch, a gold and silversmith, Abraham (1718-1761). Also notable were Adrianus (1748-1808) and Gijsbrecht Wolphert (1780-1830) who were Notaries.

Life Expectancy
Overall, the Gijsbrecht line produced many children, six, seven, eight, even ten children were not uncommon. Jan Gijse (1670) had 10 children from two marriages. Tobias (1731-1792) had 15 children from two marriages. Arij (1761-1846) also had 10 children from two marriages and so on. The high mortality rate as well as the disease epidemics of the time (Plague around 1650 and later Cholera), kept the numbers of surviving vanderMosts low. Childhood illnesses such as Chicken Pox and Measles also took its toll.

On the other hand, some vanderMosts achieved long lifetimes. Arij (1801) reached 80 years, Tobias (1810), 82 years and Gerrit (1873) reached 83 years. Later generations managed even longer lifetimes. Gerrit (1866) lived to 94 years old!