Peter Doors and his wife Lyssgen (Elisabeth) lived in Kaldenkirchen, in the lower Rhine in the late 1500s and early 1600s.1 This was a border town, just a few miles from the Netherlands, where the Dutch had been fighting for their independence from Spain since the 1560s.2 It was a time of upheaval and religious wars, when different religions vied for the allegiance and faith of the people. We can assume that Peter and Lyssgen were resilient in their ability to make a living and raise a family.

In the 1600s Germany was not a unified country. It was a patchwork of hundreds of duchies, counties, margraveshafts, and other jurisdictions, each ruled over by different rulers. Sometimes a few villages were under the control of a count and in other cases hundreds of towns might be under the control of a neighboring duke.3

Kaldenkirchen belonged to the Duchy of Jülich, also known as Jülich-Berg. The dukes were historically wealthy, because the flat country of the northern Rhineland was fertile.4  At the time when Peter and Lyssgen married, it was ruled by the Duke Johann Wilhelm, son of Wilhelm the Rich. When Johann Wilhelm died childless in 1609, the duchy was plunged into a struggle for the succession, which helped lead to the Thirty Years’ War in 1618.5

Peter and Lyssgen were probably not directly affected by the wars. “The civilian population—except in the actual area of fighting—remained undisturbed at least until the need for money caused an exceptional levy on private wealth. Even in the actual district of the conflict the impact of war was at first less overwhelming than in the nicely balanced civilization of to-day. Bloodshed, rape, robbery, torture, and famine were less revolting to a people whose ordinary life was encompassed by them in milder forms.”6

Life in early modern Germany was very different from ours, almost beyond our ability to imagine. “Underneath a veneer of courtesy, manners were primitive; drunkenness and cruelty were common in all classes, judges were more often severe than just, civil authority more often brutal than effective and charity came limping far behind the needs of the people. Discomfort was too natural to provoke comment; winter’s cold and summer’s heat found European man lamentably unprepared, his houses too damp and draughty for the one, too airless for the other.”7

The family surname in the late 1500s was Doors (sometimes spelled Daers, Dorss, Dohrs, or some other variation). An early record of Kaldenkirchen suggests that the family had been there for generations.8 A population record for the town in 1473 to 1475 includes Peter an gen Daere.9 In March 1615, a Tisken Doors died in Kaldenkirchen.10 If Tisken was a form of Theiß, short for Mathias, then Tisken might have been the father of Peter Doors.11 Tisken was a Catholic, and Peter was too, at least initially.

Peter was a grocer. In some records he was called “an gen Door alias Küppers”. “Küpper” could mean barrel-maker (like the English name Cooper), but apparently could also mean merchant (possibly someone who sells goods in barrels). Both of his sons were listed years later as retail merchants, presumably inheriting the business from their father Peter.

By 1638, Lyssgen appeared in a Mennonite record.12 In a land where most people were Catholic or Reform, she had turned away from the official religions in favor of an often-persecuted sect. Mennonites or Anabaptists, as they are also called, followed the teachings of Menno Simon. They rejected infant baptism, refused to fight, and often did not respect the authority of civil governments. It is not clear whether Peter shared Lyssgen’s faith, but at least one of their children, Mattheis, became a committed Mennonite.

Peter died in December 1638, possibly of bubonic plague, “which raged in that area at the time”.13 A Mennonite record made at the time referred to “Lyssgen Daers widow whose husband died a few days ago. Their property, after all debts are paid off out of principal, shall be worth about 36 Reichstalers.”14 Did Peter’s sons inherit his property? Presumably they did, since two of them were in business in Kaldenkirchen for years to come. It is not known when Lyssgen died. Peter and Lyssgen are believed to have three sons and at least one daughter. Perhaps she lived with one of them after Peter died.

Children of Peter and Lyssgen15

Reiner, m. Trinken —, died after 1663, lived in Kaldenkirchen. In 1638 he was listed as owning three acres of orchard and fields, and in 1652 as a retail merchant, with two acres and about thirty rothen, worth about 220 Reichstalers.16 He had a daughter Trinken (Katharina) baptized as an adult in 1663 at the Reformed Church in Kaldenkirchen. The witnesses were Jan Strepers and Neesen Doors, wife of Theiss.17 The records of the Reformed Church are lost before 1663; Reiner probably had other children as well.18

Peter, baptized 1609, no further record.

Mattheis (Theiss), christened at the Catholic Church in 1614, married about 1636 Neesen —, became a Mennonite19, died after 1663. In 1652 list he was listed as a “retail merchant, with a building lot and small house and a quarter of an acre of arable land and alongside it a quarter of an acre of fishery rights, worth altogether about three hundred and fifty Reichstalers”.20 The fishing rights were presumably in the Königsbach creek, which flows through the town and into the Nette, which in turn flows into the Rhine.21 Theiss and his wife Neesen were Mennonites and faced fines and penalties for their refusal to pay the war tax. They raised a large family in Kaldenkirchen. It is not known when Theiss or Neesen died. Children: Anna, Peter, Gertrude, Johanna, Leentien, Elisabeth, Margarita, Maria, Reinier, Agnes, Hermann.

(probably) Grietjen, married Isaac Op den Graeff, son of Herman and Grietjen22, a Mennonite23. After Isaac died in 1679, she immigrated in 1683 with her three sons and a daughter to Pennsylvania, and died soon after their arrival. Known children of Isaac and Grietjen: Adolphus, Dirck, Herman, Abraham, and Margaret.24 Adolphus stayed in Germany, while the others immigrated.