Voorhelm family

Voorhelm and its lateral branch Voorhelm Schneevo(o)gt, a Mennonite family at Haarlem in the 17th-19th centuries, now extinct. Dirk Voorhelm was a preacher of the Jan-Evertsvolk or Kruisstraat congregation, which had separated from the main Flemish body in 1680. In 1690 he was present at Nijmegen when Elder Jan ter Mehr of Krefeld ordained some preachers and deacons. The years of Dirk Voorhelm's service are unknown. He published a funeral sermon for his co-preacher Matthijs van Dalen, Lyck-Reden . . . (Haarlem, 1707). Two of his sons, Dirk Voorhelm, d. 1764, and Pieter Voorhelm, served the same church as preachers from 1711 and 1715 respectively until 1747 when this congregation merged with the Vlaamsche Blok congregation on the Klein Heiligland, and then served the united congregation until 1764 and ca. 1755. Both Dirk and Pieter were trustees of the Flemish Mennonite orphanage from 1732 and 1707. The Voorhelms at Haarlem were business­men; in the 18th century they specialized in bulb raising.

A member of this family was Maria Voorhelm, of Haarlem. She was baptized in 1740 at a private meeting in the home of her parents by Pastor Jo­hannes Deknatel of Amsterdam, into "the general Christian Church," i.e., not into a special branch or congregation. At first she worshiped with the Moravian Brethren (Herrnhuter) at Am­sterdam; later she joined the Klein Heiligland Men­nonite congregation at Haarlem. In 1742 she was married to J. H. Schneevogt, who was a partner in the bulb nursery of the Voorhelm family. Their descendants took the family name of Voorhelm Schneevoogt. George Voorhelm Schneevoogt, d. 1850, was a deacon at Haarlem 1808-d.50 and a trustee of the Haarlem Mennonite orphanage until 1837; his son Carel Godfried Voorhelm Schnee­voogt, d. 24 Oct. 1877, at Haarlem, bequeathed 1,000 guilders to the  Algemeene Doopsgezinde Sociëteit, of which he had been a trustee 1856-77; this donation is still administered as the Schneevoogt Fund. He was a deacon at Haar­lem 1836-d.77. His brother Gustaaf Eduard Voor­helm Schneevoogt (1814-71), who in his youth was educated in the Herrnhut school at Neuwied, was a physician and a pioneer for a better medical and social treatment of the insane. From 1851 he was a medical professor at the University of Amsterdam.

Bibliography

Annual report of the Algemeene Doopsgezinde Sociëteit (1878): 9, 14.

Church records o£ Haarlem.

De weeshuizen der Doopsgezinden te Haarlem 1634-1934. Haarlem, 1934: 24, 31, 32, 90.

Doopsgezinde Bijdragen (1863): 145; (1874): 16.

Hoop Scheffer, Jacob Gijsbert de. Inventaris der Archiefstukken berustende bij de Vereenigde Doopsgezinde Gemeente to Amsterdam, 2 vols. Amsterdam: Uitgegeven en ten geschenke aangeboden door den Kerkeraad dier Gemeente, 1883-1884: v. II, 2, Nos. 72 f.

Lütjeharms, J. W. Het Oecumenisch-philadelphisch streven der Hernhutters. Zeist, 1935: 59, 143 f.

Molhuysen, P. C. and  P. J. Blok. Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek. v. 1-10. Leiden, 1911-1937: IV, 1234 f.

Author(s)	Nanne van der Zijpp
Date Published	1959

Cite This Article

MLA style

Zijpp, Nanne van der. "Voorhelm family." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Web. 16 Apr 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Voorhelm_family&oldid=119798.

APA style

Zijpp, Nanne van der. (1959). Voorhelm family. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 16 April 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Voorhelm_family&oldid=119798.

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Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 852. All rights reserved.

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