Chapter 2
History before 1907
Land, family and commerce in the polders around Overschie prepared the ground for an industrial company.
Before 1800
The Rodenburgs belonged to the landed farming families of Delfland and Schieland. Their position rested on large holdings in the polders around Overschie, used for livestock and arable farming.
Polder Zestienhoven itself was formed by peat digging and later drained and reclaimed as farmland.
1800 to 1890
Farming capital meets commercial ambition
c. 1826. Cornelis Rodenburg was born in 1805. His mother died in 1810 and his father, Johannes Rodenburg, in 1813, so he was orphaned at a very young age. He probably started his own farm around 1823, and his marriage to Adriana Zeeuw (1806 to 1893) around 1826 marks the founding of the family dynasty. By the middle of the century he was a very successful cattle dealer, and at his death in 1873 he left a fortune of about 8 million guilders.
1874. Roelof Adrianus de Kroes, eldest son of the Schiedam butcher Wouter de Kroes, married Johanna Maria Rodenburg, youngest daughter of Cornelis and Adriana, in Overschie. The Rodenburgs brought land and tradition, the De Kroes family a commercial and entrepreneurial outlook.
1890 to 1907
Preparing the next generation
Under the influence of the industrial revolution the family invested in modern machinery. The idea grew of turning the harvest into industrial products on the spot, rather than selling it unprocessed. Between 1890 and 1893 the four De Kroes brothers, still boys, inherited about one million guilders from their mother and grandmother. With the help of their uncle Pieter Rodenburg they bought land and farmsteads in polder Zestienhoven, among them farm Veldlust at the Bovendijk: about 100 hectares at first, later extended to some 200.
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