P.A.C. Prins-Poorter

Author of several books on the history of Zuiderzee skippers,  the St-Bartholomew church in Noordlaren, and the village of Glimmen, P.A.C. Prins-Poorter was born in Harderwijk in 1921.  Since 1956, she has lived at "Huis ter Aa" in the village of Glimmen, in the Gorecht district of Groningen, northern Netherlands. Known to her friends as Ita (short for Pietertje Anna Catharina), she is a graduate of the Christelijk Lyceum in Harderwijk (1939), and completed her secretary training at Schoevers Institute in Utrecht soon after the German invasion in May 1940. During the occupation(1940-1945), few opportunities remained. She briefly worked at a law office in her home town of Harderwijk, followed by a stint at the Heide Maatschappij in nearby Amersfoort.

A month after the Allied Forces invaded Normandy, she met her future husband Peter (Adriaan Hendrik Johan Prins) , who then served in the Dutch resistance movement and was soon incorporated as a 1st Lieutenant in the Special Force of the British Army. He had studied social geography at the University of Utrecht. After the war, soon after their wedding in Harderwijk, he completed his doctoral studies in social anthropology at the London School of Economics and did ethnographic fieldwork in the Teita Mountains of Kenya.  Meanwhile, the couple had their first three children, all born in Harderwijk (1946-1948). After a two-year stay in Alphen aan den Rijn, where two other children were born, the couple moved to the northern Netherlands. In 1951, Peter joined the University of Groningen and founded the Institute of Cultural Anthropology.

In the summer of 1956, the growing family moved to Glimmen, where they still maintain their residence at "Huis ter Aa." In 1964, her last child was born. In total, the couple raised nine children (four girls and five boys). Because her husband was abroad for extended periods of ethnographic fieldwork, primarily in East Africa and the Middle East, Ita headed the household for much of the time by herself. She documented the early years of all her children in detailed diaries (1946-1978). She also documented her own early life, growing up up in Harderwijk before and during the war.  In 1974, Ita started the four-year Catecheten (lay preacher) training in Groningen, which she completed with a thesis on Basilius the Great in 1978. Two years later she was elected to serve as church elder and warden (1980-1988), and edited the church journal during this period.

Meanwhile, her husband retired from the university in 1984. Prof. Dr. A.H.J. Prins continued his anthropological and historical research until he was felled by a debilitating stroke. After a long illness, he died in early 2000 and was buried at the old church cemetary in Noordlaren. Since her husband's death, Ita has edited their extensive correspondence in a dozen volumes, primarily concerning long periods when he was overseas--mainly in Britain, Kenya, Zanzibar, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia, and the Mediterranean from the late 1940's to the early 1960s.

Since the 1990s, Mrs. Prins-Poorter has been active in various local church, maritime family, and regional history projects requiring considerable research in local, regional and national archives. These projects resulted in a series of reports and books which she published herself, including those listed below. In April 2009, she was formally inducted as a Member of the chivalric Order of Orange-Nassau, a royal honor on the basis of her special, personal merits for Dutch society (equivalent of the Order of the British Empire).

Publications [in Dutch]:

       [Nota bene: The underlined titles are hyperlinked to the full text and can be accessed by clicking.]

-1."Het Doop en Naamsregister van Noordlaren'' (1990) [uitgewerkt vanuit de oude kerkelijke archieven.]

-2. ''Begraven in Noordlaren: Een Kleine Historische Kerkhofsociologie'' (1993) [183 pagina's]

-3. "Noordlaren van Vroeger," door Albert Timmer, uitgegeven door Kruideniersmuseum 'De Vier Geslachten' in Noordlaren (1993) [123 pagina's]

-4. ''Sijmon Pietersz Poorter gaat naar het Heilige Land [1614]''(1993) [84 pagina's]

-5. "Poorters in Haringkarspel." (1993) [84 pagina's]

-6. "Poorters in de Zijperpolder." (1989) [39 pagina's]

-7. ''Varen voor de kost, Kolhorn in de 17e en 18e eeuw'' (1994; uitgave Jan Smit, Winkel (N.H.), 2006.) [172 pagina's]

-8. ''Kolhorn aan de Zuiderzee: zes generaties Westfriezen tijdens de Republiek'' (1994; uitgave Jan Smit, Winkel (N.H.), 2006.) [248 pagina's]

-9. ''Anna Catharina; Zeven generaties Vrouwen in Harderwijk''(1997) [347 pagina's]

-10. "Een Schaap in de Renbaan"(1998) [143 pagina's]

-11. ''Op Stap!: Kinderverbeeldingen in twee culturen''. Een vergelijking van schoolopstellen en kindertekeningen uit Glimmen en Lamu(Oost-Afrika) in 1961-1965 inzake een veldonderzoek door Prof.Dr.A.H.J.Prins. Verzameld en voorzien van een inleiding door P.A.C.Prins-Poorter (1998) [236 pagina's]

-12. ''Een Marktschipper in Oudesluis: het leven van Claes Poorter(1655-1721)'' In: Zijper Historie Bladen, 18e Jaargang (2000), Nr. 5 (extra uitgave), pp. 3-22.

-13. “Onder het Wakend oog van de Stad: Noordlaren aan de Hunze en Glimmen aan de Drentsche Aa''(2005) [321 pagina's]

-14. "Boerenland and Herenhand in Glimmen: Een Gehucht aan de Drentse Aa van de 12e tot de 17e Eeuw" (2007) [364 pagina's]

-15. "Kijken naar de Geschiedenis van Glimmen: Drie Wandelingen langs Historische Plekjes" (2008) [87 pagina's]. (De opbrengst van de verkoop van dit boekje gaat naar een jongensopvangcentrum in Tanzania,Oost Afrika). Dit boekje wordt via de kerk te Glimmen en Noordlaren verkocht voor het goede doel en via de schrijfster zelf.