1899 preserved, 1909 lost
When a firm was founded, two kinds of paper came out of it. One was the deed itself, the notary's signed original, which stayed in his archive. The other was a short public notice the law required, printed in the government gazette so that anyone dealing with the firm could see who stood behind it. Van Duffelen & Pelt produced both kinds twice, in 1899 and again in 1909, and what survives of each is uneven. The firm itself, its trades and premises, has its own deep dive: .
1899: the founding, and where it sits
By 1899 the firm was already nine years old. On the first day of 1892 it thanked its customers for a completed tweede jaarkring, its second year of trading, so it had been at work since about 1890, out of Lange Warande 77. Its earliest advertisement we have found, from November 1890, invites customers te bezichtigen bij Van Duffelen en Pelt, Meubelmakers en Stoffeerders, Lange Warande 77. The deed gave that partnership a legal form.
The partners first set it down before the Rotterdam notary C. M. H. Minderop on 24 June 1899, for ten years, from the first of June 1899 to the last of May 1909. A few days later, on 27 June 1899, the notice below appeared in the government gazette.
> ⁂ By deed executed on 24 June 1899 before the notary mr. Cornelis Marie Henri Minderop, at Rotterdam, there has been entered into, between the undersigned Gijsbert Johannes van Duffelen and Cornelis Pelt, both furniture makers, residing at Rotterdam, a partnership whose purpose is the carrying-on of the business of furniture manufacturers with everything that may be deemed to belong thereto. The partnership is established at Rotterdam and entered into for a term of 10 years, commenced 1 June 1899 and therefore to end 31 May 1909. > > [Should one of the partners wish the partnership to end at that date, he shall be obliged to notify the other in writing at least 6 months beforehand … until such notice has been given.] The firm under which the partnership's business shall be conducted shall be "van Duffelen en Pelt". It shall be signed by both partners in and concerning all matters directly relating to the partnership, without being usable for borrowing money, entering into or signing sureties, mortgages, or private engagements generally — for which, to bind the partnership, the private signature of both partners shall be required. > (3028) G. J. van Duffelen. Corns. Pelt.
It names both partners as meubelmaker, furniture-maker, and gives the ten-year term. The deed itself still exists. Minderop's minute is in the city archive of Rotterdam, among the notarial records under toegang 314, at inventory number 2932, with his register of deeds at 2926. None of it is digitised, so what a reader can see today is the gazette notice. Still, the original is there to be read, which cannot be said of the deed that followed it.
A humbler source told the public who the partners were. The Rotterdam address book of 1906 printed the firm's line and then, in plain type, its firmanten: G. J. van Duffelen and Corn. Pelt.
> Duermeyer, widow of P. A., housekeeper — Aert van Nesstraat 79a > Duffelen & Pelt, van, furniture manufacturers — Rochussenstraat 169 > partners: G. J. van Duffelen, Corn. Pelt. > Duffelen & Pelt, van, furniture warehouse/showroom — Witte de Withstraat 57 > Duffelen, G. van, warehouseman — Erasmusstraat 6 > Duffelen, G. J. van, furniture manufacturer — Rochussenstraat 169 > Duffelen, T. van, coachman — Kromme Wiekstraat 17 > Duffelen, widow of C. van, private means — Bergweg 184 > Duffelen—Tiegeë, widow of G. van, private means — Goudschesingel 134 > Dugtern [Dugteren], B. G. E. W. van, specialist physician for skin diseases — Haringvliet 58 > Dugteren, M. A. van, private means — 2e Pijnackerstraat 3a
The firm appears twice on that page: as a meubelfabr. at Rochussenstraat 169, and as a meubelmag., a furniture warehouse, at Witte de Withstraat 57. The two entries follow one another on the page, though they are different addresses in different streets. The 1907 edition repeated the firmanten line unchanged.
Naming a firm's partners in a trade directory is a small thing. It is worth noticing because of what the directory later leaves out.
1909: the renewal, and what is gone
As the ten years ran out, the firm was renewed and enlarged. A new deed was executed on 12 June 1909 before a second Rotterdam notary, Willem van Traa, and the gazette printed its notice on 15 June. This time there are three partners. Gijsbert Johannes van Duffelen and Cornelis Pelt now both appear as furniture manufacturers, and the third is August Frans Antoon Maria Wille, entered as a man of private means . Wille has his own deep dive: .
"By deed executed on 12 June 1909 before Willem van Traa, notary residing at Rotterdam, a partnership has been entered into between Messrs Gijsbert Johannes van Duffelen, furniture manufacturer, Cornelis Pelt, furniture manufacturer, and August Frans Antoon Maria Wille, gentleman of independent means, all residing at Rotterdam, under the firm of Duffelen & Pelt, whose purpose is to carry on the business of furniture manufacturers with all that may be deemed to belong thereto, and this in continuation of the business previously conducted by Messrs Gijsbert Johannes van Duffelen and Cornelis Pelt together under the same firm and for the same purpose at Rotterdam."
The notice gives more than names. The firm's object was the business of furniture manufacturers, with all that might belong to it, and the new partnership was expressly a continuation of the firm the two founders had already kept together under the same name. The term was eleven years and seven months, to the last day of 1920. A clause kept the firm going by default, though: unless a partner gave at least six months' written notice, the partnership simply rolled on for another year, and then from year to year until such notice came. Any partner could sign for the firm in ordinary trade. Standing surety, dealing in property, and lending or borrowing money needed the private signature of all three.
That rolling-renewal clause narrows a question that had looked open.
What the sources do show after that point is a move rather than a winding-up. The last advertisement traced for the firm at Rochussenstraat 169 dates from 20 March 1916. Instead of dissolving when it left that address, it moved downtown, and by 1922 it was trading on the Coolsingel as a constituent firm of N.V. Beens' Woninginrichting Maatschappij. Whatever happened to the 1909 partnership on paper, the business itself did not end at 169. It relocated.
The directory said nothing of the change. In 1910, the year after Wille joined, the address book still printed only the two founders as the firm's firmanten.
That omission does not cancel Wille's documented partnership.
Why the second deed cannot be shown
The original of the 1909 deed is lost, and it cannot be recovered from the place it should be. The archive's finding aid to Van Traa's records says so plainly: Het archief over de periode 1902–1921 is verloren gegaan, the archive for the period 1902 to 1921 has been lost. His surviving minutes stop in 1901, so the minute that admitted Wille does not exist to be read. That signed minute is lost; the gazette notice shown above survives. The district court kept duplicate repertoria of notaries' deeds, and the National Archives hold separate partnership indexes, registers and deposited-deed series. These are possible leads, not a known substitute record. The items to ask for in the reading room are inventory numbers 3994 (the court's duplicate of Van Traa's repertorium, 1896 to July 1921), 3651 (the name index of partnership deeds, 1907 to 1913), 3611 (the register of partnership deeds for 1909) and 3460 (deposited deeds, January to June 1909). Like the 1899 minute, none of this is digitised, and reading it would mean a visit to the reading room. Until someone goes, the two deeds stand as they are: one founding document a reader could hold, and one renewal known from the notice the law made it print and from the court records that still shadow it.