As part of Mom's photo project, Chris has been going through old slides and getting them scanned in. There are a bunch from Dad's mission years. As Chris found these photos of windmills, he asked Dad/Lamar about them. Here's Dad's answer ...
Yes, families did live in the windmills. I looked at some of my photos, from the years 1957-1960 in our Dropbox, and there are some with me at the door of a windmill. Very often, the families living in the windmill, might have a surname, Mollenaar, translated to Miller.
When the Dutch reclaim land, the reclaimed land is called a polder. When I was in the Netherlands on my mission, 1957-1960, there were only 11 provinces. In 1986, after the Dutch reclaimed more sections of land, and called them Polders, they combined three of the new Polders, and created a new Province, called Flevoland. Some of the land area in Flevoland used to be Islands in the inland sea, but now they are no longer islands. See the blog post about the visit to the town of Urk. Two of the three new polders are actually not connected by land to the mainland. There is a narrow strip of water, of the Ijsselmeer between the polder and the mainland. The two polders are connected to each other, and are reported to be by far the largest created island in the world, with an area of 970 square kilometers. The next largest created island in the world, is by contrast, only 10.7 square kilometers. The two polders are connected to the mainland, and to each other, with bridges.
The history of the polders goes way back, and requires some study of Dutch history and geography. Some Polders were built way back in the 12th century, and it is reported that there are 3000 polders in the Netherlands. The three newer polders that make up Flevoland, were created 1940-1980. Back before the year 1932, Netherlands had a large inland sea, called the Zuider Zee, translated, South Sea. It was open on the North end to the North Sea and was all saltwater. At the southern end of the Zuider Zee lies the city of Amsterdam, which has an elevation of about 6.6 feet below sea level, and is full of canals, with waters from the Zuider Zee. The Dutch had built up dikes all along the North Sea, and also on the shores of the Zuider Zee, to protect the land from flooding. However some flooding did happen from time to time, especially in the Zuider Zee. A flood in 1916, gave the Dutch the impetus to close the Zuiderzee connection to the North Sea. The work was started in 1920 with the building of a dike that closed off the shallow bay in northeast Netherlands.
In 1932, the dike was completed between the provinces of North Holland, and Friesland. The new dike was named the Afsluitdijk – "Closing dam". It is said to be an engineering wonder. It was 20 miles long, and built to a height of 23.8 feet above sea level, with a width on the top of 300 feet. A highway was built on the top of the dike. When I was in the Netherlands, in 1960, I visited Friesland, and we drove on the Afsluitdijk. I believe I have seen a photo of me on the dike. We’ll have to look for that. I checked my mission journal. I was in Friesland off and on between 15-24 March 1960, and visited the small town where my grandfather was born, Achlum, which was very near to the Friesland end of the afsluitdijk, but I couldn’t find any entry in my mission journal about a visit to the dijk.
After the dike was completed, the Zuider Zee now became the IJsselmeer also known as Lake IJssel in English. It has a maximum depth of 23 ft, but is mostly 7 feet deep. When the Afsluitdijk was completed, the surface elevation of the Ijsselmeer would have been sea level. But there are pumps that can pump water out and into the North Sea. So the surface elevation of the Ijsselmeer fluctuates between 7-15 inches below sea level. The river Ijssel comes into the lake, and the pumping of water from the new polders adds more water to the Ijsselmeer, and if the level rises to near sea level, or even above, the pumps can pump more water out and into the North Sea. For the little towns around the banks of the Ijsselmeer, and for the islands in the Ijsselmeer, many of the men were fishermen, fishing in the Zuider Zee and the North Sea. These could still get to the North Sea via locks and channels through either end of the Afsluitdijk.
In the olden days, windmills were used in other parts of the Netherlands to pump water from polders and into drainage canals. Many of these older windmills were built 1738-1740. The windmills from the photos in my photo collection (shown above) were probably from Kinderdijk, in another part of the Netherlands, and not from the new polders in the Ijsselmeer. I will have to find an entry in my mission journal that tells of our visit to Kinderdijk, so I can properly date those photos. Many of the old windmills still work today, but are not generally used for daily water pumping. The new polders used diesel or other powered pumps to do their pumping.
Since the depth of the Ijsselmeer is between 7 and 23 feet, the polders, after being drained, are up to 23 feet below sea level. The lowest populated place in the Netherlands, is in another area of the Netherlands, and it is about 23 feet below sea level. The new polder that is connected to the mainland, has two different dikes built out from the mainland, to the Island, Urk. The first dike was from Friesland to Urk, and completed in 1939, making Urk no longer an Island. The two new polders that are not connected to the mainland, had to have dikes on all sides, with pumps always ready to pump out more water in the event of heavy rains and flooding in the polders.
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