Family History

The surname Hoftiezer stems from “Hof te Ijzerlo,” an estate in what is now present-day Germany. The Lord of Anholt held title to the hamlet of Ijzerlo for most of its existence and collected taxes from the town via his agent, the owner of the “Farm at Ijzerlo,” a.k.a. the Hof t’Ijzerlo. At other times the Lord of Bredevoort held the title of Ijzerlo, but this was the exception rather than the rule. For centuries the Hof te Iserlo was the center of the hamlet of Ijzerlo and the largest farm in the area.

In 1670, Hof te Ijzerlo was sold to Jan Hoftijzer, also known as Jan Willem Hof te ijzer Vossers from Ijzerlo. Jan’s father is listed as Tobe Vossers. The name change from Vossers to Hoftijzer may have come when Jan took charge of the farm known as Hof ’t Ijzerlo — his surname changing to match the farm he ran. Jan had probably descended from the serfs who had tended the farm of the Lord of Anholt over the centuries.

The term “Hof” comes from Old High German and is still used in modern German today; in its earliest uses it often referred to a courtyard or enclosed space surrounded by buildings, much like a farmstead. “Te” is similar to “at” or “to” in English. “Ijzerlo” is a concatenation of two words: Ijzer and lo. In Germanic place names influenced by Old Saxon, the suffix “-lo” often refers to a forested area or clearing in the woods, typically on sandy or sparsely vegetated soil — “woods on a sandy height.” That fits the hamlet of Iserlo, sited on a long sand ridge between a marshy lowland and woods on the other side.

The meaning of “Ijzer” is less clear. It “seems certain that it is not derived from the metal iron (ijzer in Dutch).” Most likely the first part comes from a personal name, Iso or Esau — we don’t know who Iso might have been, but he may have been an important man in the area, or an ancestor of Jan. Together, Iserlo means “Iso’s woods on a sandy height,” and Hof te Iserlo means “court at Iso’s woods on a sandy height.”

Jan and his wife, Enneken Bijvincks, had at least three sons; little else is known of Jan and Enneken te Hof ’t ijzerlo. It is from their union that everyone with the surname Hoftiezer, Hofteizer, Hoftyzer, Hoftijzer, Hoftieser, and the many other spelling variations is descended.

Their second son, Lambert, inherited the estate from his parents — which may indicate a preference for the second-born, since his older brother, Tobe, died young. Interestingly, Tobe shared a name with his grandfather, Tobe Vossers — perhaps the first family tradition. About 40% of Hoftijzers (and other spelling variations) in the nearby city of Aalten today descend from Lambert Hoftiezer, b. 1680, and his wife, Tryntje Catherina, b. 1694.

Much later, Willem and Lamberta Hoopman Hoftiezer emigrated to the northwest of Gibbsville, Wisconsin, arriving February 25, 1868 — carrying the name to America.

Ijzerlo is about 3.5 miles southwest of Aalten, in Gelderland, the Netherlands, and about half a mile from the German border. This part of the country is known as “the Achterhoek,” or “backcorner,” of the province of Gelderland — a portion of the Netherlands that juts into Germany. Ijzerlo, Lintelo, Barlo, Dale, Haart, and Heurne are all hamlets in the town of Aalten.

The first farms in Ijzerlo were established between 600 and 1000 AD, with the forested sand ridges providing the best locations. Forests were cleared for arable land that wouldn’t flood in winter, while the remaining woods fed horses, cows, and pigs from spring to late autumn. As more farms were founded along the edges of the sand ridge, the arable lands grew together into what became known as the “es.”

Whatever your holding — a full farmstead (“vol erf”), half a farmstead (“half erf”), or a smallholding (“kavensteden” or “katersteden”) — you owed something to a noble lord, such as the Lord of Bredevoort or Anholt, or to the church: transportation, rent in crops, poultry, and livestock. By the mid-16th century, Ijzerlo had 25 full farmsteads, including Hoftijzer. The Hoftijzer farm sat about a quarter mile southwest of the center of Ijzerlo, and whoever inherited it lived in what locals called “the castle” — likely not a grand structure, but the largest and finest farmhouse in the area.

Over the centuries the farm grew smaller and the land less fertile. Chunks were sold off, and other Hoftijzer homes were built, lived in, torn down, and replaced. The original house was destroyed during World War II and reconstructed in brick in the 1950s. When the family visited in 1975, the building was being used as a horse riding academy and was no longer owned by the Hoftiezer family. A weather vane from the original “castle” is said to still sit atop the reconstructed building, marked “Es 1672.”

A Hoftiezer coat of arms was researched and reproduced by a family member at the library of Castle Anholt, in Anholt, Germany — just a few miles from Ijzerlo.

Much of what’s known about daily life in Ijzerlo comes from Nestiezern Centraal and its companion book, edited by H.J. Westervelt, both drawn from the memories of people who grew up there. Contributors recall the village school (later merged into ’t Warmelinck), the arrival of the telephone network in 1923, and threshing days that drew 200 farmers to watch a steam thresher clear 70 bags of grain in eight hours.

One chapter, written under the hiding name “Johan Jansen,” recounts two and a half years spent in hiding on the Lurvink farm during the German occupation — learning to milk, bringing in the rye harvest, and, toward the end of the war, sharing a room with German soldiers who no longer believed they could win. Another, from a teacher who arrived at the one-room school in the 1930s, describes a community with no cars, no electricity, and school holidays timed to the ripening of the rye.

A cousin of the book’s compiler, Jan Westervelt, wrote at length about neighborliness in Ijzerlo — how families with very little leaned on each other more than on distant relatives, and how the loss of a neighbor was mourned like the loss of family. It’s a reminder that the Hoftiezer story isn’t only about a name and a farm, but about the small, tightly-knit community that surrounded it for centuries.

Much of the Hoftiezer family history was pieced together by Scott Hoftiezer — son of Allen Loyd and Lois (Josing) Hoftiezer, and great-grandson of Hendrich Jan Hoftiezer (b. 1872), the younger brother of our ancestor Garrit Jan Hoftiezer (b. 1864). Scott shared his research with LaVerne (Hoftiezer) Lemmenes, and it forms the backbone of much of what’s recorded here.

Sources differ slightly on details: the “On the Origins of the Name and Estate Hoftiezer” manuscript doesn’t give Jan a middle name, while family records elsewhere list him as “Jan Hein,” and the VerVelde document gives his birth year as 1648 rather than 1645. It’s also possible that Jan and Enneken’s eldest son, Tobe (b. January 22, 1671), died young and was named for his grandfather, Tobe Vossers — which would make Lambert’s inheritance of the farm the more usual pattern of eldest-surviving-son succession rather than an exception to it.

When Eugene and LaVerne (Hoftiezer) Lemmenes visited Ijzerlo in 1975, someone they spoke with referred to the Hoftiezer home as “a castle.” LaVerne recalled that the weather vane from the original house — marked “Es 1672” — still topped the reconstructed building at the time.