P. de Zeeuw
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Pieter de Zeeuw was born on 7 March 1890 in Rijsoord, municipality of Ridderkerk. His father was mayor there. He was the eldest in a family of eleven children, two of whom died at an early age.
When he was twelve years old and attending normal classes, he wrote his first historical story about the hay pickers of Lochem. He turned the manuscript into a booklet himself, complete with a fictitious publisher's name. It was the first of an extensive oeuvre of more than two hundred titles.
At the age of fourteen he was a breeder with a certificate for a salary of one hundred guilders a year in front of the class in Slikkerveer. It turned out that he was a born storyteller, who could captivate his class with stories from Dutch history. At that time he also began to write such stories for a weekly newspaper edited by L. Penning.
Successively he taught in Giessendam, Barendrecht and Ridderkerk and from 1918 in Nijkerk. In 1924 he was appointed head of the Reformed school. He remained in that position until his retirement in September 1955.
He held many ecclesiastical and social positions in his hometown. In addition, he was a contributor to various columns and magazines. From 1924 to 1931 he was responsible for the youth section of the Protestant Christian newspaper De Rotterdammer, and from 1935 to 1942 he was editor of the Christian youth magazine Vrij en Blij and of De Paleispost for the youth.
De Zeeuw was married and had three children. He died on August 1, 1968.
