The marriage of Charles Duquet and Cornelia Roos

Charles Duquet and Cornelia Roos’s marriage was both a family union and a commercial bargain, negotiated with Cornelia’s father, Piet Roos, as carefully as a business partnership. Its terms placed Cornelia and their children in Amsterdam while Duquet pursued trade across the Atlantic; their children and Duquet’s adopted sons would later make the distinction between blood and legal family consequential to the fortunes associated with his name.

Courtship and negotiation

Duquet’s pursuit lasted another year, and much of it was directed not at Cornelia but at Piet. In Amsterdam in 1711, Piet examined Duquet’s account books, listened to his plans, and questioned him before considering the marriage. The business arrangement took shape first: Duquet proposed a China-trade partnership among himself, Piet, and Outger Verdwijnen. Piet considered that arrangement agreeable, but treated the marriage as a separate and more delicate matter.

Piet did not want to send his youngest daughter away from her parents and sister. He offered her a house in the next street, close to her family, and proposed that any children remain with their mother in Amsterdam. Duquet could live there, or travel between Amsterdam and New France, with a ship and crew made available for the Atlantic passage. The conditions protected Cornelia’s closeness to her family while making her household a continuing link between Duquet and his Dutch partners.

Duquet accepted. He understood that the arrangement would leave him free to travel and would connect him by marriage to Piet and Verdwijnen. His private calculation was that he could have a Dutch wife in Amsterdam while avoiding what he regarded as the constraints of domestic life. He also understood that, wherever he lived, he would remain a stranger; the bargain was a price he was willing to pay for the commercial connection.

Marriage and household

The wedding was celebrated over several days of feasting and drinking. Verdwijnen gave the couple a set of silver forks, then a new eating implement. Duquet publicly admired the gift but privately took it as a rebuke to his coarse table manners. The coffee mill pleased him more, and he valued the rich tapestry given by his father-in-law. Cornelia did not speak for a week; what she eventually said was known only to her and Duquet.

The agreed geography shaped the marriage from its beginning: Cornelia’s home and family were in Amsterdam, while Duquet’s business and ambitions drew him across the Atlantic. The evidence presents this arrangement through negotiation and practical terms rather than through an account of shared daily life. It nevertheless made the marriage an active connection between households and trading interests, not simply a private pairing.

Children, adoption, and inheritance

Within eighteen months, Cornelia had given birth to a daughter and a premature stillborn son. Duquet remained preoccupied with the lost boy and envied men surrounded by sons who could carry on their fathers’ work. Verdwijnen suggested that Duquet might adopt boys from an orphanage. Cornelia agreed to choose several for his consideration, and in 1713 nine-year-old Jan and Nicolaus became Duquet’s sons. They began schooling and instruction in manners and conduct; Duquet framed their prospects as a chance to escape poverty and help build a great fortune.

Later that year Cornelia gave birth to a healthy son, Outger, named for his godfather, Verdwijnen. Duquet now had three sons by adoption or birth, though the family’s later history would not treat those lines as equivalent. A genealogical account distinguishes Cornelia’s legitimate children, Outger and Doortje, from the adopted Jan, Nicolaus, and Bernard, whom Duquet treated as sons and left his goods in equal shares. It identifies Lavinia Duke’s descent through Nicolaus, while the surviving blood descendants of Duquet came through Outger’s daughter Beatrix and her sons with Kuntaw Sel. Thus the marriage’s household and its descendants become the ground for a later conflict over whether inheritance belongs to adopted heirs or to blood relatives.

Long consequences

The marriage’s family history is carried forward through separated branches. Cornelia and Duquet’s son Outger later lived for a time on Penobscot Bay; his daughter Beatrix remained there when he moved to Leiden. Beatrix married Kuntaw Sel, and their sons included Francis-Outger Sel and Josime Sel. Generations later, Jinot Sel’s search for relatives led him to write to Francis-Outger, who answered with news of Elise and Josime and reopened ties across the family’s dispersed descendants.

When Lavinia Duke asked whether the family had living descendants, R. R. Tetrazinni explained that her line descended from Nicolaus, an adopted son, whereas the surviving bloodline ran through Outger and Beatrix to the grandchildren of Josime and Francis-Outger. His report made explicit the distinction the marriage’s history had carried forward: Duquet’s household was formed through both birth and adoption, but claims to the family fortune could privilege one kind of kinship over the other. The marriage therefore connects personal decisions about residence, children, and belonging to the later question of who counts as Duquet’s heir.