Groningen is the capital town of the

Saramacca District Saramacca is a district of Suriname, in the north. Saramacca's capital city is Groningen, with other towns and cities including Batavia, Kampong Baroe, Uitkijk, Maho and Boskamp. Saramacca has a population of 17,480 and an area of 3,636 km ...

Suriname Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America, also considered as part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. It is a developing country with a Human Development Index, high level of human development; i ...

. Groningen only began to grow after 1960. Around that time the East-West Link, a road linking Albina via

Paramaribo Paramaribo ( , , ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of Suriname, located on the banks of the Suriname River in the Paramaribo District. Paramaribo has a population of roughly 241,000 people (2012 census), almost half of Suriname's p ...

Nieuw Nickerie Nieuw Nickerie. Retrieved 17 November 2009. is the third largest city in Suriname with a population estimated at . It is the capital (political), capital city of the Nickerie District, Nickerie district, and the terminus of the East-West Link (Sur ...

was built. This let Groningen become accessible by road. The town features: an office of the district commissioner; a post office; an office for the police commander, an office of the State health foundation(SZF) and the J. Eliazer football stadium, named after the founder of the Football Federation of Saramacca and president. There is also a Moravian Church and a Roman Catholic church. In 1910, a nursing home for

yaws Yaws is a tropical infection of the skin, bones, and joints caused by the spirochete bacterium ''Treponema pallidum pertenue''. The disease begins with a round, hard swelling of the skin, in diameter. The center may break open and form an ulc ...

sufferers was established. It was closed after it was discovered that the disease could be cured within days by applying

Salvarsan Arsphenamine, also known as Salvarsan or compound 606, is an antibiotic drug that was introduced at the beginning of the 1910s as the first effective treatment for the deadly infectious diseases syphilis, relapsing fever, and African trypanosomias ...

History

A pentagonal fort was built on this site in 1790, which was named by Governor Jan Wichers, after his birthplace in

Groningen Groningen ( , ; ; or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen (province), Groningen province in the Netherlands. Dubbed the "capital of the north", Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of ...

, in what was at the time the

Dutch Republic The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...

. Across the river was a

leper colony A leper colony, also known by many other names, is an isolated community for the quarantining and treatment of lepers, people suffering from leprosy. '' M. leprae'', the bacterium responsible for leprosy, is believed to have spread from East ...

by the name of ''Voorzorg'', meaning 'precaution'. Fort Groningen was part of a cordon of forts. However the fort itself had only a few plantations and therefore was not very developed. There were plans to expand the fort and build a town that would be called Columbia, however not much more than the fort itself, a few blocks, a cemetery and an 1830s Moravian Church was ever built. During his time as a soldier in Suriname (1836–1842), August Kappler described the area, and notes about Groningen that "on this place (...) a city would be built. Several streets have been laid out (...); however for the main issue, houses, one searches in vain." The fort was rediscovered in 2011.

Colonisation attempt

At the end of 1845 the survivors of a group of Dutch farmers, led by Pastor Arend van den Brandhof, arrived in Groningen. They emigrated to Suriname from the Dutch province of

to help build a new life on the other side of the

Saramacca River Saramacca River is a river in Suriname. The Arawaks named this river "Surama", and today's name "Saramacca" is probably derived from it. It originates in the Wilhelmina Mountains and flows northwards and enters the Atlantic Ocean together with t ...

. Within six months nearly two hundred people had died of

typhus Typhus, also known as typhus fever, is a group of infectious diseases that include epidemic typhus, scrub typhus, and murine typhus. Common symptoms include fever, headache, and a rash. Typically these begin one to two weeks after exposu ...

and/or yellow fever and the remainder resettled across the river in Groningen. Countless other settlers died. From 1849 small groups of survivors began to move to the areas of

Kwatta Kwatta is a resort in Suriname, located in the Wanica District. Its population at the 2012 census was 14,151. Kwatta is named after a former cocoa plantation located here. It used to be an agriculture area, but due to its close proximity of Par ...

and

Uitvlugt Uitvlugt (pronounced "owt-flut") is a village in the Essequibo Islands-West Demerara region of Guyana. On the coastal public road on the west bank of the Demerara River, it lies immediately to the west of Stewartville, Guyana, Stewartville and to t ...

near Paramaribo. Colonisation was considered a failure in 1853, when there was a total of 43 people left living in Groningen. The following year their leader, , departed, heading back to the Netherlands. His wife, Anna Pannekoek, had died in 1845 and been buried in the cemetery in Groningen. ''Pannekoekstraat'', a street running through Groningen, is named after her. When the districts were established in 1863, Groningen became the capital of the Saramacca district. Van den Brandhof's house, now left alone, became the residence of the district commissioner. In 1945 a monument was built to commemorate the presence of the Boeroes in Groningen. It was unveiled on 20 June 1945. On the 150-year anniversary in 1995, descendants of the Boeroes donated a medical laboratory to Groningen.

References

{{Authority control Resorts of Suriname Populated places in Saramacca District

History

Colonisation attempt

See also

References