D. Jan De Bruijn - Portrait of Henri Leyssius
Henri Jean Louis Leyssius was born in Utrecht on 13 December 1819 and died in Brussels on 27 May 1887. He was a financial controller for the Javanese government from 1838, administrator of the Parakantroes company in Krawang, the Temoeloes in Surakarta, and finally was the founder and chief administrator of the Deli-Batavia tobacco company. He married his first wife, Johanna Frederika Abrahama Botter, in Poerwakarta (Java) in 1843, who died while on a voyage to the Netherlands. They had 9 children. He remarried Joséphine Caroline Sophie Marguerite Gertrude Olijve, from Batavia five years later, in 1853. His father, Pieter Frederik Leyssius (1793-1846), was a municipal government official in Utrecht, elevated to the Dutch nobility by Royal Decree of 10 February 1842, whereby the title was passed down to his descendants.