Johanna Maria Proot

Johanna Maria Proot-Sterck (18681945) was a Dutch historian and teacher. She published articles and books on the history of Haarlem in North Holland, and the surrounding area.

Biography Jo Proot was born on 25 July 1868, in Leiden, the youngest of seven children.

On 26 November 1907, she married the literary scholar and widower Johannes Franciscus Maria Sterck (1859–1941) in Amsterdam. Sterck was a school inspector and an expert on the Dutch poet and writer Joost van den Vondel. Their daughter, Geertruida Juliana Johanna, was born in 1909, and a year later the family moved to Heemstede, a locale that Sterck-Proot wrote about extensively.

Despite her affiliation with the women's movement, Sterck-Proot published the pamphlet "What Speaks Against the Women's Suffrage Movement" in 1916. However, this philosophy did not appear to apply to her own life as Sterck-Proot was actively working as a writer. She wrote on familiar topics such as the genealogies of the Proot and Sterck families, as well as articles and books about Haarlem. In 1931, she distanced herself from her 1916 anti-feminist pamphlet with a text called "A Historical Mirror of Women," a historical overview of women's achievement from many eras. It was well received and was even performed on 28 February 1931, at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam to raise funds for the International Alliance for Women's Suffrage and Equal Rights.

Her papers and materials are preserved at the North Holland Archives.

Selected works Sterck-Proot, Joanna Maria. The Saint Agnes Convent in Amsterdam. 1909. Sterck-Proot, JM "Nutcracker." De Levende Natuur 18, no. 18 (1914): 432-432. Sterck-Proot, JM "The Kuifmees in the Dune District." The Living Nature 20, no. 23 (1916): 459-459. Sterck-Proot, Johanna Maria. What argues against the women's suffrage movement. De Spaarnestad, 1916. Sterck-Proot, JM "New additions to the Haarlem courtyards." Yearbook of the Haarlem Association, Haarlem (1937). Sterck-Proot, JM, "History of Aerdenhout" (1939)