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Trijntje Keever

Tallest female (1616-1633)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ2419232
Source-derived summary

Trijntje Cornelisdochter Keever (10 or 16 April 1616 – 2 July 1633), nicknamed De Groote Meid ('The Tall Girl'), was a Dutchwoman alleged to be the tallest female in recorded history, standing 9 Amsterdam feet, an archaic measurement used in the Netherlands which measured 1 foot as 28.313 cm or 0.929 feet. In modern measurements, she measured 2.60 metres (8 ft 6.75 in) tall at the time of her death at age seventeen.

Biography

Trijntje Keever was the daughter of Cornelis Keever and Anna Pouwels. Cornelis was a Dutch skipper and Anna was his maid; he married her on May 24, 1605. Trijntje was born on April 10 or 16, 1616, in Edam.

Keever's parents took her to carnivals to earn some money by letting people see her. Trijntje first received public attention when she was nine years old and had reached the height of 2 metres (6 ft 7 in). A royal company consisting of the Bohemian king Frederick V, Elector Palatine, his wife Elizabeth of Bohemia and the princess Amalia of Solms-Braunfels, living in The Hague at the time, visited her, curious about the "nine-year-old girl taller than every man in Europe".

Keever died of cancer at the age of 17 in Ter Veen. She was buried on 7 July 1633 in Edam, her town of birth.

Editorial summary

“Trijntje Keever” enters the record as tallest female (1616-1633). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Trijntje, Keever and Tallest can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1616, 1633, 1605—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1616-01-10, 1616-01-16—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Trijntje, Keever and Tallest.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Trijntje Keever” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Trijntje, Keever and Tallest provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2419232. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1616, 1633 and 1605.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Locating named sources
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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Trijntje Keever”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Trijntje Keever primary sources, Trijntje Keever archive and Trijntje research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Trijntje Keever” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.