Albertina Johanna de Jager - schoolteacher

Over Albertina Johanna de Jager

• Lived: 1848–1919
• Employer: various
• In which maritime sector did she work? None

What kind of work did she do?

De Jager was a schoolteacher for most of her life. She began as an assistant teacher (1867) and was likely a private tutor in Surabaya from 1868 to 1872. In 1872, she became a head teacher. She likely founded a girls’ school in Surabaya in 1872, for which she received a license that year. After she married in 1874, she was forced to resign from her job. It does not appear that she was active in the maritime world, but it cannot be ruled out that she sailed with her husband between 1874 and 1878.

What else is there to say about her maritime life?

Albertina de Jager came from a somewhat maritime family, as her father had been a ship’s doctor for some time. The de Jager/Benders family often had people living with them, both relatives and non-relatives. The most notable among them was the painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, who lived with the family on Weenaplein in Rotterdam in early 1850. Albertina met her future husband, Meinard Frans van den Kerkhoff (1832–1897), in 1868 while traveling as a passenger to the Dutch East Indies on the ship Madura, of which he was the captain. They married six years later, when she was nearly 26 and he was 41. The couple had one daughter, Albertina Françoise van den Kerkhoff (1886–1986). Albertina was 37 years old at the time, and the family was living on Leuvehaven. It is not known what she did for work during her marriage. Her husband worked for sixteen years as a helmsman and then captain on large sailing ships, and from 1878 as an expert at the insurance company Germanischer Lloyd.

*In the exhibition