G3F - Galama - Postma Family

Gatske Postma is 19 when she marries Haye Michiel Galama (who is registered as Haye Gaeles Galama) on August 19, 1879. We have no picture of their marriage although I assume pictures were made, because we have pictures of Gatske as a young girl.

The family album, i.e. the pictures of her parents in-law, and the generation before them, is probably passed on to her husband, and she continues it.

Their first house is “Donia State”, a farm in Burgwerd, and later they move to  "Maskebûrherne", a farm on the Himdyk 2, at the entrance of Blauwhuis. (more about the origin of the name and the farm). 

Gatske and Haye have 15 children, but 3 die before they reach their first birthday. A daughter, Baukje, dies while at boarding school in Harlingen, she is 10, and their youngest son, Titus, drowns in the ditch in front of their farm. He is four. This must not have been easy for the coupe, but not unusual in those days. Fortunately, the remaining children all grow quite old.

They do have pictures made of all of them (click here for the original pictures).

Haye is known as a rather ‘frugal’ person, the 3^rd generation to have that reputation. We do not know about Gatske though. Haye changes the name of the farm into ‘Werklust’ (which translates into 'having a desire to work'), because he believes that work is all important in life. He is also active in the town municipality of Wonseradeel, and apparently quite devout as he is a prefect in the 3^rd order of the Franciscans.

But he is famous for the story of his right arm. While servicing a windmill on his land that pumps off the excess water, his right arm gets caught in the mechanism. This is in 1896, he is already 43 years old. Apparently, as the story goes, his arm is suddenly ‘quite long’ and he either drives, or is driven home, on a cart, where two doctors amputate his lower right arm.
For more information about this mill (mill #6).

It seems he quite quickly regains his ability to function. He can write almost as neatly with his left hand as with his right. He gets a prosthesis, made of wood, and my father (his grandson) remembers that he played with that as a child. He does not wear the arm often, as it almost 'drowns' him.
The hand is connected to his bicycle steering wheel with a leather strap, but when he ends up in the ditch one day while biking, he cannot get it undone quickly enough, hence the 'almost drowning'.

He is quite the provider and makes sure he purchases a farm for each of his sons, except for Jan, who becomes a priest, and Jacob, who has a bicycle accident at 18, which causes serious brain damage. He lives in an institution for most of his life.

Doniastate (28 ha) for Michiel
Ruurda State (24 ha) for  Anno
Landlust in Dedgum (39 ha) for  Ijsbrand
naast Senserhuis (28 ha) for  Sjoerd
Maskeboerherne (25 ha) for  Nicolaas

Gatske dies quite young, in 1920. She is only 59. Haye dies 3 years later, at the age of 70.

They are both buried in the cemetery of Blauwhuis. 

Five of their 10 children are also here: Sjoerd Martinus, Jacobus Franciscus, Theresia Maria, Nicolaas Haye and Ysbrand Haye. His parents and grandparents are buried on the other side of the path. Theird is one of the oldest graves of the cemetery .

The story continues with their son Ysbrand Haye.