Sorry I've been away

It has been nearly a year and a half since I last posted here.  A lot has happened, family- and research-wise.  But I am hopeful that now I will get back to a sort-of-routine of posting bits of family history.
For now, the explanation (or excuse) for being gone so long.  I was doing a lot of research for my friends.  Their 8 grandparents came from at least 6 locations in Europe.  Two grands married in the old country and one I believe came from a town near her American-wed husband's birthplace.  I did a lot of research in US records and also in online indexes and microfilms.  I ordered records from England, films of Polish records, worked with a researcher in Buffalo, learned a lot about Jewish research and entered data into the database.  With the native towns identified (2 cities in England, one now in Belarus, 2 in Poland and one in Ukraine), my friends are now about to hire overseas researchers to trace the lines back further.
In the meantime, there were changes in my own family.  My Mom, who had moved to Texas in 2009 to be near my sister, passed away in May 2011, a month after her 90th birthday.  She was ready to go, and fully expected to join my Dad, my sister and brother, so I can't be sad for her.  Just for me.  I still miss her - especially about 9:30 at night when she used to call just as I was getting ready for bed.  We had a lovely service in Holland in June with all the grandkids and great-grandkids (including the week-old great-grandson!),  my 2 aunts, cousins, second cousins, and a lot of Mom and Dad's friends of old.  We stayed at a fabulous beach house and had a great family reunion.  Then, a lot of paperwork to deal with after.
Now, with my friends pretty much set (I have reached the end of my capabilities in that case), it is time to get back to my own research.  To give me a kick-start -- last week at work, a visitor came to the Library asking about descendants of New Netherland settlers (That's old New York.)  My coworker suggested he talk to me.  So we had quite a chat (me doing most of the talking as usual).  Turns out, he works at the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague, a major source for Dutch genealogical research.  So I was inspired to get myself moving and start back on this blog!

So.  That's the long and the short of the explanations.  Next time, real info!  I did have one great research trip in that time, so new things to write about.

Morren marriages

Once I found the birth registrations for the Morren children naming their mother as Lubbertje Aalts Hop, I had to resolve this conflict. Up 'til then, I had named Neeltje Dekker as the mother. After all, she is named in the list of the family in the North Holland Church register, census records and she is buried beside Willem Morren. SO next up was a search of the marriage registers.

Here is the marriage certificate of Willem Morren and Lubbertje Aalts Hop.

What this says is (briefly) that on the 19th of January 1848, Willem Morren, bachelor, age 24, farmer, born in Ermelo, living in Harderwijk, son of Jan Morren and Cornelia van Welsum
and Lubbertje Aalts Hop, maiden, age 24, no occupation, born and living in Harderwijk, daughter of Aalt Lubbertsen Hop and Petertje Willems, both deceased
were married, having filed the following papers: certificate of groom's military service, extract of the groom's birth record, extract of the bride's birth record, and extracts of the death certificates of both of the bride's parents. (That last part I cropped off)

Next to find was if there was a death certificate for Lubbertje Hop.  And, for sure, it was there.

It starts out with a staement of who is making the report of death and then states that on Wednesday the 26th of December 1860, Lubbertjen Hop, wife of Willem Morren, born and resident of Harderwijk, daughter of Aalt Lubertsen Hop and his wife Petertje Willems, died at the age of 36.

Thanks to all the detail in these records, it is easy to see that they are talking about the same person.
Just to put the final piece in place, I next found a marriage record for Willem Morren and Neeltje Dekker. I don't have the certificate scanned, but here is the online extract of the marriage:

This gives Willem's parents, so we know it is the same Willem, and also identifies him as the widower of Lubbertje Hop.  In 1865, Willem married Neeltje and a couple years later they came with the children to America.

To the FHL for research

In 2002 I went to Salt Lake City with a friend for a week of research at the Family History Library. We went with the NGS group, which was nice as it gave you someone to meet for meals, discuss problems or finds and just chat. The members of this group came from all over the US. We found it interesting how some of these people headed straight to the US Census films. For them, this was a goldmine!! (There was not so much content on the Internet back then.) Since we had all the census near to hand at home, we headed out for filmed local records.
I had prepared for the trip by searching the FHL catalog from home and found my own goldmine. Since my family is all Dutch, I had one specific area to work. Lucky for me - zillions of records from the Netherlands are filmed. Also, they have civil registrations of births, deaths and marriages starting quite early (relatively speaking!). When Napoleon took over the Netherlands, he instituted a system of civil registrations. For most of the country these began in 1811. A couple years later, Napoleon was out but the civil registration stayed. For a few short years (it seems to vary by locality), the records are in French, but then revert to Dutch.
So there I was, with thousands of rolls of microfilm covering all the areas of the Netherlands I was interested in. And many of them have indexes! In many cases they have other films called tienjarige tafels - literally ten-year tables, or indexes covering 10-year spans.
Of course, you do need to know where the person or family of interest lived. There was no overall index for the country. Now there are many online sources, but most of these are for a province or smaller area. The most comprehensive is Genlias (www.genlias.nl) which has indexed records from many parts of the country (though not all). Many more sites are now adding digital images of the records. But when I started this, film was the way to go.
And I was in seventh heaven! I was going back and forth from microfilm reader to printer, saying "thank goodness for Napoleon!" and "Gotta love bureaucracy!!" for making so much material available for research. And also, of course, thanks to the Genealogical Society of Utah for filming these records and the records keepers for allowing that.
And so, armed with names and dates from the North Holland Church register, and a place name from the gravestone of Willem Morren, I looked for the birth registrations of the children, including my great-grandmother.

Where I began on this line

Lately I have been sorting out the masses of paper I have accumulated from personal research, client research, teaching and whatever else. I came across this:


This is a printout from 1992, when I first computerized my genealogy. (The old dot-matrix printer!) This starts with my grandfather's mother and shows what little I knew then of her family.
One of the first things I did find on this family was the North Holland Reformed Church record at the Joint Archives of Holland. This register lists all the members of the family with birth dates, sometimes marriages and often continues with the children of the next generation. I do not have a photocopy of the page, but was able to transcribe the data so I had birthdates for all the Morren children. As they were all born in the Netherlands, I had to go on to other sources. It was quite a few years later when I finally made a trip to Salt Lake City to the Family History Library, which has millions of rolls of microfilm of records from all over the world -- including from the Netherlands.

Wordless Wednesday - in Hulshorst

This is the village of Hulshorst, Gelderland, Netherlands. Willem Morren was from here.



The view from the mill.


This is a flour-mill, not water mill. Karen went up - not me!

The family across the chart

So now I set aside the Cole family and move to my paternal side. I have recently been researching my father's grandmother's family. Her name was Aaltje Morren and she was born 1854 in the Netherlands. My uncle had directed me to the part of the cemetery where the family is buried and I found the graves of Willem Morren and Neeltje Dekker, as described last time.
In 1870, the family is living in Olive Twp., Ottawa Co., Michigan.

This record lists Willem and his wife Neeltje and three of the children living at home. But here's where things go wrong -- Aaltje is recorded as Albrecht, male, 15 and Willemtje is listed as Willem, a 10 year old male. The ages are correct for these two, but the names are garbled and the sex wrong. None the less, this is the family. Pietje, 20, is living in the city of Holland working as a domestic.

Looking ahead to this family - I find Willem in 1900 living with his daughter Pietje van der Schraaf. One column on the 1900 census asked year of arrival in the US and Pietje and father both answer 1867. Aaltje also reports the same year of arrival as does sister Willemtje ("Wilcey") Hop. Son Jan ("John") reports the same year of arrival.

In the 19th century, the Netherlands kept records of emigrants leaving the country. Robert Swierenga published a book of abstracts of these records from the middle of the century.

Here we can see W. Morren listed, traveling with wife and 5 children in 1867. The age is right for the man in the census, his death certificate says he was the father of 5 children -- looks fine -- except daughter Cornelia died in the Netherlands in 1866! So who is the extra child traveling with them?? So far I have not found an actual passenger list for this family. They are not listed in Swierenga's book of arrivals and they don't turn up in online searches. So I'm still looking.

Tombstone Tuesday - the Morren family

Another Geneabloggers weekly prompt, and a good way for me to move on to the next research topic.
Many years ago when I first went to the cemetery where some of the ancestors are buried, I was disappointed to find many of the gravestones worn or vandalized and unreadable. I went back in July 2009 and took new pictures:


This is the gravestone of Willem Morren, my great-great-grandfather. The stone is just barely legible.

Alongside it is the stone of his wife, Neeltje Dekker Morren. All that can be read is his name where is says "wife of." When I first saw these, her stone was lying in pieces on the ground - it has since been repaired.


I could not (then or now) read her dates of birth and death. Luckily, there was a book with that information:


The name is misspelled as "Marren" but it does give her place and date of birth (Ned Sept 10, 1830) and death (North Holland, Mich. July 10, 1881).


I found this information in a Genealogical Records Committee report of the local DAR Chapter. Back in 1932-1941 when the DAR ladies went out and recorded the gravestone data, Neeltje's stone was still legible.

Recently, Michigan death records for this time frame have become available on two fabulous websites. I searched for Neeltje's official death registration at www.familysearchlabs.org but was unable to find it by searching for her name. Because I knew from the book that she died in 1881, I could search for all deaths in Ottawa County in 1881 and narrow it down.



Her name is recorded as Neetje (or Neltje) Maren. She was married, 53 years old, died of Billious Fever, born in the Netherlands. She was a housekeeper [housewife] and her parents names are not given, just the fact that they died in the Netherlands.

Not perfect, but it does give me more to go on.

The second death record, that of Willem Morren was found at seekingmichigan.org



He died Feb 10, 1908 (same as the gravestone says). The stone says he was born "te Hulshort, Ned" - in Hulshorst, Netherlands. The death certificate gives his birhdate (July 28, 1823) and his father's name (Jan Morren)and reports he was the parent of 5 children, three still living. He was a farmer and died of apoplexy. His death was reported by Mrs. Douwma -- that would be his daughter Aaltje who was my great-grandmother.

So now -- on to this line of the family and a big surprise.

Wives of the Coles

One of the wonderful things about the Dutch records is that women usually retain their surname. This make it much easier to find their children - especially when there may be a number of men with the same name - and also to find their parents.
Levi Cole, born in Michigan, was the son of the immigrant couple Pieter Koole and Thona van Beek. Thona was born 1829 in Zeeland, Netherlands, daughter of Barend van Beek and Neeltje Kramer.

Pieter Koole was the son of Lieven Cole and Adriaantje (Aarjaantje) Leeuw, daughter of Barend Leeuw and Cornelia van Bloois. Aarjaantje was born 24 Jul 1787 in Dreischor, Zeeland, Netherlands.



Lieven Koole's mother was Ariaantje (Adriaantje) Jonker. She was born 3 Nov 1765 in Oosterland, Zeeland, Netherlands, daughter of Lieven Jonker and Jannetje Onderdijk.



The parents of Cornelis were Pieter Mattijsse Koole and Maria Beluijts. She was the daughter of Cornelis Borluijt and Adriaantje Bouman. No exact date of her birth has been found, but she was baptised 19 Oct 1732 in Zonnemaire, Zeeland, Netherlands. Customarily, in this time and place, children were baptised the Sunday following their birth. Which would make Maria born somewhere between Oct 12 and 18.




The next step back in time is Pieter Matthijsse, son of Mattheus and Maria Stoudens. This Maria was born in Dreischor and baptised 25 Oct 1705. Her parents were Joost Stouten and Adriana Cornelisse. The database index gives her the surname Kleijn, but it is not shown on Maria's baptismal record. One more thing to investigate.



This takes us back to Pieter Koole and Lijsbeth Robberegts, the earliest couple identified in this line (so far!). And now I have these surnames to research: van Beek, Leeuw, Jonker, Borluijt, Stoutens, all the spelling variations, and the wives of these fathers!!

other Cole marriages

So far I have only reported on the Cole surname line. As I worked back in time to my earliest Koole, I found marriages for each generation in the records. Each gives the maiden name of the woman, so I now have more names to track through the records, which I will be working on in the future. Here are prints from the online index at Zeeuwengezocht.nl and scans from copies made of microfilm of the early 20th century copies made of records of some of the marriages:

From my immigrant ancestors Pieter Koole and Thona van Beek (see my April 12 post), his parents were Lieven Koole and Adriaantje Leeuw:

Lieven Koole
Bridegroom on Friday, March 12, 1813 Dreischor
Gemeente : Dreischor
Aktenummer (number) : 1
Aktedatum (date) : 12-03-1813
BRUIDEGOM : Lieven Koole
Leeftijd (age) : 25 jaar
Geboorteplaats (place of birth) : Zonnemaire
Beroep (occupation) : Journalier
BRUID : Ariaantje Leeuwe
Leeftijd (age) : 25 jaar
Geboorteplaats (place of birth) : Dreischor
Beroep (occupation) : Particuliere
VADER BRUIDEGOM (father bridegroom) : Cornelis Koole
Beroep (occupation) : Cultivator
MOEDER BRUIDEGOM (mother bridegroom) : Adriaantje Jonker
VADER BRUID (father bride) : Barend Leeuw
Beroep (occupation) : Particulier
MOEDER BRUID (mother bride) : Cornelia van Bloijs

The parents of Lieven were Cornelis Koole and Adriaantje Jonker:

Cornelis Koole
Bridegroom tax of marriage on Friday, April 14, 1786 Zonnemaire
Bruidegom : Cornelis Koole
Bruid : Arijaantje Jonker
Datum betaling trouwgeld : 14-04-1786
Plaats : Zonnemaire
Bron : Archief Rekenkamer Zeeland D inv.nr 45401



Cornelis was the son of Pieter Matthijs Koole and Maria Borluijd:


And the parents of Pieter Mattijsse Koole were Matthijs Koole and Maria Stoutens:



More later on these women!

So, before the wordless day, I mentioned that I have this Cole line traced back to my 7th great-grandparents. We very boringly call them great-great-great, etc., grandparents. Dutch is way much cooler - they have a name for each generation of grandparents up to the 64th generation and beyond!

Parents are ouders and grandparents are grootouders. So far, pretty much the same. But then they start a system of names for each earlier generation. Great-grandparents are overgrootouders. Great-great-grandparents are betovergrootouders. then come oudouders (3rd great-grands), oudgrootouders (4th), oudovergrootouders (5th), oudbetovergrootouders (6th) and stamouders - 7th great-grandparents. This, to me, would be Pieter Koole and Lijsbeth Robbregts.

If you notice the pattern - after the first four are repeated with a prefix term. First "oud-" is added before each of the four terms. Then "stam" is added to each term (8th great would be stamgrootouders). But then it carries on with the next four - so "stam" is added to the "oud" series of 4 also. Then "edel" is added before the whole string and after that "voor" is added to begin the string.
That takes one up to generation 64. So you eventually get to vooredelstamoudbetovergrootouders. What a kick!!
Of course, not many of us have documented lineage going back that far, and not many people use these terms. But fascinating, anyway.
You can look up the whole string, plus additional terms to continue on for generations more on Wikipedia < http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voorouder >

Oh, by-the-way -- child is kind, grandchild = kleinkind. Next comes achterkleinkind. But that's it - no more special words.

Wordless Wednesday

It's Wordless Wednesday - a tradition among the Geneabloggers. So here is a look at the part of Zeeland when the Koole family left:


And here is how it looks today, from Google Maps:


View Larger Map

And here are some pictures of the area when my daughter and I visited 2 years ago:

my first Cole/Koole

I have been working my way back in time and records and have traced the paternal line of Pieter Koole (the immigrant) to his great-great-great-grandfather Pieter Koole and his wife Lijsbeth Robbereghts in Zonnemaire, Zeeland, married 1702. That would make this Pieter Koole my 7th Great grandfather (or great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather). Pretty cool, huh? I have copies of baptismal records and marriages for each of these generations (civil records for those after 1811, personal records for those after 1900). The church records from the 1700s are from microfilm of copies made in the 1918-1920 time frame. Apparently the originals were sent to the provincial archives in Middelburg, Zeeland and were destroyed in bombing in World War II. I am trying to learn more about this, but have yet to find any English accounts. So far my Dutch is only fair and I'm not too good at translating some of the more detailed websites. (I dropped out of Dutch class this year!!)
There is always the possibility that I made an error in linking people, or that the transcripts were in error. However, each of these marriages identifies the place and the baptismal records usually includes "getuige" (variously translated as witnesses, sponsors or godparents) who are usually parents and siblings of the birth parents. This helps to link families together. And, best of all for me - there is only this one cluster of the Koole family in town at this time - all tracing back to Pieter and Lijsbeth.



From this point, it will be more difficult. There are few earlier church records. And many records not online. Notarial records may help - for that I need to improve my skills with Dutch language and handwriting . And - in this particular case - Pieter Koole is identified as widower of Isabella Carels from "B op den Z." Have no clue where this is - possibly Brouwershaven, which is nearby and sort of on the sea? Thought possibly the larger city (now anyway) of Bergen op Zoom (I know of it from 20th century relatives living there) but is is some distance away. I do find some Carels family in Brouwershaven in what is now online, as well as in Zierikzee, but will need to do much more searching. Lijsbeth is from Zierikzee - it will be quite a search to try to find her parents.
Another problem getting back this far is that surnames are less common. Sometimes records only use a given name and a patronym (father's name). This is wonderfully helpful when the patronym is included as a middle name with the family name (as is the case with almost all of these generations of Kooles) but so far I have not found the earliest Pieter with any other identifiers. No patronym, no occupation, nothing other than the one reference to "from B op den Z." None for Lijsbeth either (although at least that is a less-common given name)
And, the time consuming part - when searching online records or indexes, I have to try many spellings. Robbereghts, Roberechts, Robrechts, etc. as well as all the K/Co(o)l(e) spellings!!!

Back to the Cole family

Levi Cole, the father of my grandmother, was born in Kent County, Michigan in 1854, about a year and a half after his parents arrived in the United States. He died in 1904 at the age of 49. As the first son, in the Dutch custom, he is named for his father's father.
In 1876 Levi married Kate Snyder. She had been born in the Netherlands and came to the United States with her parents and two older brothers in 1856 when she is just 3 months old. Two other Snijder children had died in the Netherlands before the family left for America. Kate lived to be 76 years old. in 1932. She died after being stricken with what was most likely a stroke the night the house next to hers caught fire. The story I heard (about 65 years later) was that she was taken to daughter Grace's house nearby where she later died.


Tona Cole was born Thona van Beek in Nieuwerkerk, Zeeland, Netherlands in 1829. She died in 1919 in Grand Rapids, Kent County, Michigan. She married Lieven Koole in Zeeland, and they came to the US in 1852. This is image is the only one I know of of the immigrant generation. I have never seen or heard of any pictures of her husband Peter or of Kate Snyder's parents.

my other project

While I am spending a lot of time on the Cole family right now, with film from the Family History Library and new online databases and record images, I also am chipping away at another project involving a different line altogether. This other project focuses on the Hop family from the Harderwijk area of Gelderland.
As I did further research on the collateral lines (on my father's father's side) I started finding some surnames recurring in many lines. So, I started trying to find how - or if - these people were actually related. Thus started my Hop surname study. It now numbers over 700 people in the database and I have information on many more to add. At this time I am concentrating on those families I have definitely linked to my family. I have added many first and second cousins to the family, now I am adding their children and spouses. And, interestingly, I am finding that some of these relatives also came to the United States, mostly also to Ottawa County, Michigan.

More family here than we knew of!

Early on in my research I found the immigration record of Pieter Koole. Nothing in any of the family stories gave me any indication any other relatives also came to the US. But after masses amounts of research tracing the lineage back in time, I started to search sideways - the siblings of my ancestors and even spouses families. Well, I'd always had some information on them, but not much. And, of course, someone had invented the Internet by now, and more and more information was available there. (Many Dutch record indexes are online, now more scanned records are going up.)
Well, surprise, surprise! Leendert Koole, brother of Pieter, also came to the US. Leendert was about 5 years younger and arrived with his wife in 1853, one year after Pieter and Tona arrived. Leendert also went to Kent County, Michigan where he was known as Leonard.
Indexes are wonderful things, but no match for the actual records. On the passenger list, next after Leendert and Willemijna, was listed Barend Koole - another brother. But the list also notes that Barend died aboard ship.
Just recently, doing some more searches with the online indexes, I found long after, in 1881, a nephew, Adriaan Koole, son of a fourth brother Cornelis, also came to the US. Adriaan traveled with a wife and 2 children. So far I have not found his family in the US.
By just 2 generations later no one in the family seems to have had any contact with these relatives. Pieter was my great-great grandfather, so Leendert was a great great grand uncle to me. Maybe one of these days I'll track his or Adriaan's descendants to find present days cousins.

The last Dutch marriage for the Coles

I've had a lot going on this week, writing a new class on DNA testing for genealogy and getting side-tracked with fun research on my brother-in-law's ancestry, so have not had time to work on this Cole line.
But working backwards from the immigrant couple's arrival in the US, here is a certificate from their marriage record.


Pieter Kole, age 26, laborer, son of Lieven Kole and Arjaantje Leeuw and Tona van Beek, age 20, daughter of Barend van Beek and Neeltje Kramer have filed the appropriate marriage notices on the 6th and 15th of September 1850. Recorded in the municipality of Nieuwerkerk, Duiveland, Zeeland, Netherlands.