ABSTRACT
Montias discovered Cornelia’s name in the accounts of a Delft bookseller from 1671, presumably connected with an errand she performed for her father, but no other record of her exists; Montias assumed she was the third child, since she was old enough to perform this task.2 Of the three open years after Elizabeth’s birth, 1658, 1659, and 1661, Cornelia was most likely born in 1661, since she must have been named partly for her mother’s aunt Cornelia Thins who died in that year. Montias assumed on the basis of the eight children Catharina was still raising in 1684 (excluding Maria) that two children had died by that time: the youngest and another he does not identify.3 Since the youngest seven children were still alive in 1687, and Cornelia was not recorded in any other document, she was most likely the other child who died. Ironically, she was likely named partly for her mother’s sister Cornelia Bolnes, who also died in her youth.
