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.

more on the Morrens

So now I know that the woman listed with the family in the church register is NOT the mother of the children.  But another interesting finding is that one of the children listed, Cornelia, actually died in the Netherlands and never was at the North Holland Church!

On the 17 April 1866, Cornelia Morren, age 14, daughter of Willem Morren and Lubbertje Hop, deceased, died.  It reported and signed by Willem Morren, father.  Signature is the same as on his marriage record.

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.

Morren children

At the Family History Library, I set out to get copies of the birth registrations for the immigrant ancestors - or as many as possible. For the Morren family, I had birth dates as recorded in the North Holland Church register. [see Dec. 6 post] So it was not necessary to look in the tien-jarige tafel (10-year index). I started with Aaltje Morren, as she is my direct ancestor (great-grandmother). I pulled the film covering the time of her birth (according to the church record) 30 Nov 1854.
What this says is that on the first of December, 1854, Willem Morren, age 30, farmer, came to the the registrar in the town of Harderwijk to report that on the 30th of November in the village of Hierden, his wife Lubbertje Aalts Hop, age 29, gave birth to a female child named Aaltje. Hmm, right date, but not the mother I'm looking for. Could there be 2 Willem Morrens having 2 daughters named Aaltje? Born on the same day????
Well, maybe a mistake was made.

What about the other children? The oldest was Petertje, born 11 May 1849.

Hmm, right date and name, same other woman for the mother.


Kornelia, born 3 November 1851. Same story. Aaltje was next, born 1854.





Jan was the next child after Aaltje, born 2 September 1857 according to the church, and his birth registration -- and also the child of Lubbertje Hop.



And the youngest was Willempje, born 18 December 1860.


Not likely that an error was made in recording the name of the mother 5 times!! Not likely that there are 2 Willems each having five children of the exact birthdates and names! No, clearly the mother of the children of Willem Morren was Lubbertje Hop. So who is Neeltje Dekker, named in the North Holland (Michigan) Reformed Church register and buried beside Willem Morren in North Holland Cemetery???
A new puzzle to solve.

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.

Back to the Morren family

Back in August I started with the Morren family, posting pictures of gravestones, later photos from the village in The Netherlands and a chart of what I knew to start with.When I began gathering information on my ancestors, I had copies of family information my Dad's aunt had compiled. Aunt Nellie had written out her siblings and spouses and all the siblings of her father and their spouses.
Then I found the North Holland Reformed Church register at the Herrick Library in Holland. This listed my grandfather's family and also his father's.

Grandpa is Wietse, the third from the last child of Halbe and Aaltje.
My great-grandfather is also listed as a child in his father's family.

Foeke and Jeltje came to the US with the 4 oldest children.
Also at this same little church was the family of my grandfather's mother - the Morren family. Here Aaltje is recorded as a child in her parents family. It was easy to make the step backward because this church register follows the Dutch tradition of retaining the maiden names of the women after marriage.


For the most part, the church records match Aunt Nellie's. In general, census records also match this family group. In 1870 Aaltje is listed as Albrecht, but everyone else is right - it is definitely the family. This was all I knew for a long time, until I went to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City on a research trip.

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!!