Jacob Teunis Guijs was born in Sliedrecht on 4 November 1917. He was the youngest son of labourer Arie Guijs and Barbera de Waard.
Jacob was among the Dutch workers who travelled to Australia in connection with the post-war dredging project. He left the Netherlands on the KLM flight departing Schiphol on 22 June 1950. The surviving seating plan records him in seat I4. He arrived in Melbourne at the age of 32.
Passenger records held by the National Archives of Australia indicate that Jacob subsequently travelled between Australia and the Netherlands on several occasions. He appears in at least three sets of passenger documents.
Records from December 1959 and April 1960 describe him as a 42-year-old mate or ship’s officer. By then, he had become a naturalised Australian citizen. The documents record Christchurch as his arrival airport and state that he was married and returning to Australia after a holiday in the Netherlands. This suggests that his journey may have continued through New Zealand, although the precise itinerary requires further investigation.
In Australia, his surname was generally recorded as Guys rather than Guijs. A death notice published in the Herald Sun on 5 May 2009 reported that Jacob Guys had died the previous day, 4 May 2009, at the age of 91.
Little is presently known about Jacob’s wife, family life or employment in Australia. Further information is sought about his wife’s name, whether the couple had children, where they lived and the vessels or companies with which Jacob worked as a mate. Family recollections, photographs and genealogical information would help complete his story.
This article was prepared with the assistance of Kees van der Sluijs and Fred Stuij of the Sliedrecht Historical Society.
For genealogical information and research, see Fred Stuij’s website: Alblasserwaard Genealogy.
