The Farret in Farret Jentink

From 1570 to today

The first half of my surname comes from the Farret family, English Protestants who settled in Amsterdam around 1600 to escape religious persecution. Among their descendants are Johan Farret, who exchanged poems with Petrus Stuyvesant while both served the Dutch West India Company on Curaçao, and Johan Pieter Farret, who was a member of the committee that drafted the first constitution put to a vote in the Netherlands. On this page, I outline what is known about the direct line from the earliest documented ancestor to my great-grandfather.

As the sources differ in reliability, each section is marked according to the type of evidence it relies on:

1570 to 1930

Each bar shows the lifetime of one ancestor in the direct line, from birth or baptism to death. Faded ends indicate approximate dates. The line continues with my grandfather, father, and myself.

  • Thomas Farret c. 1570–after 1647
  • Johan Farret 1611–1650
  • Dirk Farret 1644–1681
  • Johannes Farret 1670–1714
  • Dirk Farret 1704–1772
  • Johan Pieter Farret 1744–1822
  • Dirk Pieter Farret 1777–1856
  • Amarentia Theodora Farret 1813–1896
  • Dirk Pieter Farret Jentink 1846–1918
  • Pieter Cornelis Farret Jentink 1873–1930
My 10× great-grandfather c. 1570–after 1647 From family research

Thomas Farret

Embroiderer and religious refugee, from Hereford to Amsterdam

The earliest ancestor that can be identified with some confidence is Thomas Farret, who was probably born in Hereford around 1570. In early 1593, he was imprisoned in London for attending a meeting of Brownists, a group of Protestants who rejected the Church of England, and he was released on bail only after promising to conform. The leaders of the movement, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, were hanged in April of the same year.

By 1607, Thomas was living in Amsterdam, where he worked as an embroiderer and was listed among the members of the newly founded English Reformed Church. In 1617, he bought a house on the Rechtboomssloot, which he kept until 1644. The church minutes suggest a rather stubborn character: in 1637, he demanded that the minister publicly confess to having omitted a psalm after communion, and he maintained this demand even after being reprimanded twice by the church council.

He made his will in Woerden in January 1647, while staying at the house of his son Josua. Most of what is known about Thomas comes from the archival research of Menno Tjoelker, another descendant, who describes his life in more detail.

My 9× great-grandfather 1611–1650 From peer-reviewed work

Johan Farret

WIC official on Curaçao and friend of Petrus Stuyvesant

Johan, a son of Thomas, was baptized in the English church of Amsterdam in December 1611. In 1635, he sailed to Curaçao as fiscael of the Dutch West India Company (WIC), the officer responsible for maintaining the legal authority of the company, including its rights to levies and taxes. The island had been taken from Spain only a year earlier and, at the time, consisted of little more than a garrison of a few hundred men around a newly built fort.

In 1639, Petrus Stuyvesant, who would later become director general of New Netherland (modern day New York, USA), arrived on the island as commissary of merchandise. Although a fiscael outranked a commissary, the two became friends and started to exchange poems. The initiative appears to have come from Johan, as Stuyvesant writes in his first poem that his friend had often asked him for verse as a pledge of true friendship. The exchange continued after Johan returned to the Dutch Republic in 1640 or 1641, and it lasted until at least 1645.

In total, fourteen poems have survived, of which eight were written by Johan and six by Stuyvesant. The first eight form a linked series in which each poem answers the previous one using the same rhyme sounds, a form modeled on a well-known series of sonnets by P.C. Hooft, Constantijn Huygens, and others. The remaining six were written for specific occasions, such as the promotion of Stuyvesant to director of the island and the loss of his right leg to a Spanish cannonball in 1644. In the latter poem, Johan writes that the blow also struck his own heart and that he would, were it possible, carry half of the pain.

After his return, Johan married Cornelia Scheij in Woerden in 1641 and became a member of the town government. He copied the poems into a manuscript album of 92 pages, which he had illustrated by two local painters. He died in January 1650. The album is currently held in the library of Het Scheepvaartmuseum in Amsterdam, and it is through this copy that the poems have been preserved.

It should be noted that these poems were written in a colonial and military setting. The WIC was founded to wage war on Spain and to capture prizes, and it became increasingly involved in the trade in enslaved people. In the year before Stuyvesant arrived, about forty enslaved Africans owned by the company lived on Curaçao, and the island later developed into a major hub of the slave trade. Almost none of this is reflected in the poems. The authors of the 2018 study on the album describe it as incongruous to read verse about Greek goddesses written by men who devoted their working hours to war.

Three generations 1644–1772 From the published genealogy

Woerden, Tiel, and Amsterdam

An apothecary, a minister, and a merchant

  • Dirk Farret, 1644–1681 My 8× great-grandfather Dirk studied medicine in Leiden and worked in Woerden, first as an apothecary and later as a physician. Additionally, he served as one of the magistrates of the town.
  • Johannes Farret, 1670–1714 My 7× great-grandfather Johannes was a Reformed minister in Tiel from 1694 until his death. In 1703, he published a eulogy for the late stadtholder-king William III. Note that his grandson would later side with the opponents of the House of Orange.
  • Dirk Farret, 1704–1772 My 6× great-grandfather Dirk was a tobacco merchant on the Singel in Amsterdam and, in 1757, served as one of the schepenen, the magistrates who formed the court of the city. A portrait of him at the age of 32, painted by Rienk Keijert in 1736, has been offered at auction by Christie's.
My 5× great-grandfather 1744–1822 From official reference sources

Johan Pieter Farret

The first Dutch constitution and Amsterdam under French rule

Johan Pieter Farret was a lawyer in Amsterdam, where he lived on the Keizersgracht. During his lifetime, the country went through five successive regimes, from the old Republic to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and he held public office under each of them. Of all the family members described here, he was the most directly involved in national politics.

In the 1780s, he sided with the Patriots, a reform movement that opposed the stadtholder William V. When the Patriots forced a purge of the Amsterdam city council in the spring of 1787, he obtained a seat, which he held for only five months. A Prussian army restored the authority of the stadtholder that autumn and, after Amsterdam capitulated in October, he was removed from the council. He was subsequently prosecuted for his membership of the Patriot defense committee of the city. The outcome of this case is not yet known to me.

The Draft Constitution of 1796–1797

French troops reached Amsterdam in January 1795, after which the stadtholder fled to England and the Batavian Republic was proclaimed. For the first time, a national parliament was elected. Johan Pieter was chosen as the representative of one of the Amsterdam districts, and he was a member of the First National Assembly from its opening on 1 March 1796 until August 1797.

Two weeks after the opening, he was appointed to the committee of twenty-one members that was tasked with drafting a constitution. The main point of disagreement was whether the Netherlands should remain a federation of provinces or become a unitary state, and Johan Pieter is counted among the moderates between these two camps. The committee presented its plan in November 1796. The subsequent history of this draft, and of the constitutions that followed, is summarized below.

  1. 1796The committee of twenty-one drafted its plan, which was a compromise between the federalists and the unitarists.
  2. 1797The Assembly amended the plan into a text of such length that it became known as the Dikke Boek (thick book). In August, it was rejected by the voters by a margin of roughly four to one.
  3. 1798Following a coup by radical unitarists, a new and more centralized text was adopted. This was the first Dutch constitution to enter into force.
  4. 1814After the departure of the French, a new constitution was written for the monarchy. The present constitution formally derives from this text.
  5. 1848The revision led by Thorbecke made ministers accountable to parliament.
  6. 1983The most recent general revision was carried out.

The constitution that Johan Pieter helped to draft therefore never entered into force, and the present constitution does not derive from it. However, the question that was debated in the Assembly was settled in favor of a unitary state with a single citizenship and a written constitution, and this outcome was retained after 1814.

Amsterdam Under French Rule, 1795–1813

French influence on the Netherlands can be divided into three phases: a client republic, a kingdom under a brother of Napoleon, and finally annexation by the French Empire. Johan Pieter held office during all three. In the overview below, the marked entries refer to his own career, while the remaining entries describe the events of the period.

Career of Johan Pieter Farret

  1. 1795French troops entered Amsterdam in January. The Batavian Republic was established, which was formally independent but in practice a client state of France.
  2. 1795–96He was among those charged with publishing the census of 1795, the first national population count.
  3. 1796–97He was a member of the First National Assembly and of its constitutional committee.
  4. 1801He joined the interim administration of Amsterdam, followed by the city council in 1803.
  5. 1803–04He served as alderman (wethouder) of Amsterdam. Because of this office, his coat of arms is included in the Burgomasters' windows of the Oude Kerk.
  6. 1806Napoleon converted the republic into the Kingdom of Holland and placed his brother Louis on the throne.
  7. 1807He left the city council.
  8. 1808King Louis made Amsterdam his capital and took the town hall on the Dam as his residence, which is still the Royal Palace today.
  9. 1810Louis abdicated, after which the country was annexed by the French Empire. Amsterdam was designated the third city of the Empire, after Paris and Rome.
  10. 1811He was appointed judge at the court of first instance in Amsterdam, as part of the newly introduced French court system.
  11. 1811Napoleon visited Amsterdam in October.
  12. 1813The French withdrew in November. In December, the son of the last stadtholder entered Amsterdam as sovereign prince, and he became King William I in 1815.
  13. 1814He retained his position as judge under the new regime, as did many former Patriots.
  14. 1822He died in Amsterdam at the age of 77.
Four generations 1777–1930 From the published genealogy

From Farret to Farret Jentink

Friesland, The Hague, and the Dutch East Indies

  • Dirk Pieter Farret, 1777–1856 My 4× great-grandfather Dirk Pieter was the eldest son of Johan Pieter and became a minister, serving in Harlingen for more than thirty years.
  • Amarentia Theodora Farret, 1813–1896 My 3× great-grandmother Amarentia Theodora married the minister Rudolph Jentink in Harlingen in 1845.
  • Dirk Pieter Farret Jentink, 1846–1918 My 2× great-grandfather Dirk Pieter was a colonial administrator and served as assistant resident in Borneo. In 1890, he was permitted by royal decree to add the surname of his mother to his own, and all people named Farret Jentink descend from him.
  • Pieter Cornelis Farret Jentink, 1873–1930 My great-grandfather Pieter Cornelis was born on Sumatra and worked as the administrator of the Soemobito sugar factory in the Dutch East Indies.

Two of these generations thus made their careers in the Dutch East Indies, one in the colonial administration and one in the sugar industry. Both careers were part of a colonial system that relied on the exploitation of the local population, which should be acknowledged when telling this family history. For a detailed account of the Dutch colonial slavery past and its lasting effects, I refer to the study Staat en slavernij (2023), which was commissioned by the Dutch government.

Today

The line continues with my grandfather, father, and me.

Corrections and additions are very welcome.

Sources

Used for This Page

Last updated: October 2026.

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