this week's favorite...

As a regular feature I will choose an ancestor and this week's favorite is Gerardus!
Gerardus is the son of Petrus Johannes de Bilde and Maria Pieters. Petrus Johannes was my grandfather's 2nd brother just mentioned for perspective. Back to Gerardus, he was born in Vlissingen on May 20, 1913.

       As I was looking for the distribution of the name de Bilde in the world I came across the National Archives of Australia and there were 4 that emigrated from the Netherlands. Well, one was de Bilde, Gerard born 1913; nationality: Dutch, arrived Jan 19, 1962 in Sydney. I double-checked with archieven.nl and there was only (1) Gerard or Gerardus born in that year!!  So, it had to be ours... unfortunately this was all the information I could find. He was 49 years old when he left Europe. He may have been married in 1934 but I couldn't find any birth records for children or a marriage record for that matter. It would be interesting to know why he left and how his life went in Australia?!

notes:  do you have any information about this person?? by all means contact me or leave word in the comment section...