POPS ON BAAL

My fear is that when slavery was abolished in the mid-1800 and my great grandfather was given a name I fear that he was some kind of religious freak who because of that was given some biblical name to keep him happy. Other than that I have no idea. My grandfather who died in the mid-1950s was 75 years old when he died which suggests that he was born a free man but that there is a far chance that his father, my great-grandfather, was born a slave or if you allow for people having kids very early on perhaps it was my great-great-grandfather.

Another possibility of course is that there was some randy Dutchman who was called Baal (or ‘van Baal’ which is the more popular Dutch name and there was a governor of Surinam I believe by that name) and fathered kids on the side so to speak and in order not to cause too much trouble these kids were given the name Baal. Again that must have happened around the time my grandfather was born – maybe he was one of those kids. Have no idea.

Most of this is of course speculation. I once tried to get Sonja who lives there to find out but she could not be bothered.