Stuff my great-grandpa probably didn't know

As I wrote in my first blog, my great-grandpa's refusal to answer my questions is what fueled my genealogy interest, resulting in 26 years worth of research.  Now that I'm changing directions in my "goals" I thought I'd start with what I was able to find about his parents.  I'll start with his father Nicolaas Denhof.

Nicolaas was born 30 Apr 1854 at Uithuizen, Groningen Netherlands, the 7th of 9 children to Jacobus Jacobs Denhof (1819-1896) and Lammina van Heuvelen (1817-1889).  I paid a researcher in 2006 to research this family and in his notes he wrote "in 1863, Lammina went to a hospital for the mentally insane in Delft. She died there on 6 October 1889."  There is no documentation in the file he sent me but I have no reason to doubt the validity of this.  Jacobus remarried a year after her death to Elizabeth ten Boer (1841-1928).  He also noted that the family was Roman Catholic.  Interestingly, although my great-grandpa took great pride in being Dutch, both of his grandfathers list Germany as their place of birth in their records.

Nicolaas' siblings included:

Jacob 1841-1910 - came to America in 1866, coming to Grand Rapids MI before settling in Chester Township, Ottawa Co MI (Nicolaas followed him here).  Was married to Margaret Drieborg.
Klaas 1843-1847
Jan 1844-1869 - also came to America in 1869, also to Grand Rapids but died there 12 Mar 1869.
Albertus 1846-1848
Bernardus 1848-1860
Trientje 1851-1909 - married Hans Diemers Veenstra and had 7 children in Uithuizen but ends up in Buenos Aires Argentina prior to the birth of their last daughter Paulina in 1892.  Trientje died as Catalina Fenstra and her husband as Juan Fenstra.
Willem Guillelmus Fredericus 1857-???? - appears to have followed his sister to Buenos Aires.  He married Geessiena Nieman and had 2 children at Uithuizen before having a son Federico in 1892 in Argentina.  In census records Geessiena is married to Federico Stoffel by the birth of their daughter Cherina in 1894 so I'm guessing Willem is deceased by then.
Petrus Jacobus Frederikus - 1858-1883 (never married).

Nicolaas left the Netherlands, and came to America via Liverpool on the "SS Nevada", arriving in America May 1873.

This is the manifest from when Nicolaas left the Netherlands.  Interesting that Jan Kuis is with him - more on that in a bit.........

 This is the manifest that was turned in in New York.  The snippet with Nicolaas' name gives no further useful information.

So why did Nicolaas leave the Netherlands?  I don't have any definitive proof but I have to guess it's related to this snippet below:

1119. Amongst others Nicolaas Denhof was mentioned in the “Politieblad”, a kind of paper, which was sent to the police stations as a kind of “wanted” paper.

Mentioned he was living in Uithuizen and probably left for North America.

He was sentenced for 3 days imprisonment or paying 25 guilders because  he didn’t show up for his military service.

Still wanted in 1875 and 1878.

It's interesting that Nicolaas fled the Netherlands to avoid a 3 day imprisonment and even more interesting that his brother Willem appears to have fled to Argentina for a petty issue as well:

Wilhelmus Fredericus Gulielmus Denhoff.

Inprisoned in (hard to translate) a kind of prison in which mostly poor people are placed for little crimes. I guess just want to put them away.

Willem was deserted the 5^th of July 1888 and was wanted. Description: farmhand, length 1 meter, 74 centimeters, face: round, hair, blond, nose and mouth ordinary, chin round

Nicolaas married Margretha "Margaret" Cook 5 Nov 1877 at Wright Township, Ottawa County MI.  I have misplaced that marriage record so will have to see about getting another copy.  I do know that the marriage was found in the parish records only, not at the county clerk.  Remember Jan Kuis from that ship log that was with Nicolaas?  His sister Johanna (Kuis) Cook was Margaret's mother.  I'm only speculating at this point but I'd bet that's how they were introduced.  I'll blog about Margaret next.

On Feb 4, 1888 Nicolaas became a naturalized citizen in the Kent County Circuit Court at Grand Rapids:

Nicolaas and Margaret settled in Chester Township and attended St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, which his brother Jacob's family was one of the founding families of.  Nicolaas was a farmer and lived the typical farmer life of the day.  Between 1878-1901 the he and Margaret had 10 children, my great-grandfather Nicholas being the youngest.  

1880 Chester Twp - living next door to Margaret's parents Bernardus and Johanna (Kuis) Cook

1900 Chester Twp - living next door to Ida (Cook) VanderLaan, 1st cousin of Margaret

1910 Chester Twp (not in order due to split pages)

I don't know much about Nicolaas but the little bit that my grandma's brother told me stands in stark contrast to what his obituary tells about him.  From what I was told he drank quite a bit and could have a terrible temper, so bad that my great-grandpa and his brother Pete buried his pistol somewhere on the farm to keep it away from him.

Nicolaas passed away 4 Sep 1917 at his home in Chester of carcinoma of the liver and was laid to rest in the church cemetery at St. Francis Xavier.

Nicolaas was even tough in his will, leaving everything to his wife until her death, at which time the children were to split everything unless of course, she had the gall to remarry (instead of spending her last 20 years as a widow like she did) then everything was to go straight to the children.  I guess this wasn't that uncommon back then so perhaps I'm judging the time he lived in more than his words.  I'm thankful to live in an age where women aren't treated like this.

Where has the time gone (and have I lost my mind)?

Well well well.....here I am again with another year between posts.  I'm rather disappointed in my blogging prowess.  I'm not even sure if anyone will see my posts anymore but I still want to blog so I will try to do better.  My biggest issue has been my working with my tree at ancestry.com.  It seems that every time I'm on my laptop I find myself working on that instead of pretty much anything else.  How big of a problem was that?  In my very first blog post (13 days shy of 5 years ago) I wrote that I had been working on my tree for 22 years and had 44,993 people in my tree.  Where am I today, 5 years later?

Yep, in the last 5 years I've added 62,902 people to my tree.  I've also now sourced/added almost a quarter of a million records from ancestry's little "shaky" leafs.  When I started blogging I wasn't using that ancestry feature so that's 50k/year that I've matched up.  This has obviously kept me quite busy.  So why am I on here posting tonight?

Xfinity sent me an iPad last month as part of a promo.  I'm not an Apple guy but I wanted a tablet so I thought I'd give it a shot.  I've explored the iCloud and decided that is a pretty good deal and would be great for allowing me to make my genealogy information mobile.  I didn't want to move my genealogy folder into the iCloud until I finished organizing my files so I decided to let my ancestry.com and newspapers.com subscriptions lapse so that I could accomplish that.  This is where I think I may have lost my mind........

I had almost 1000 files (obits, death certificates etc) on my laptop that needed to be renamed and sorted.  I got that done and then found a folder that I forgot about on my thumb drive that had almost 1700 more files that needed to be renamed/sorted.  I opened a few and I didn't even recognize the names.  I have been feeling overwhelmed by how large this project is and this put me over the edge.  I decided that most of these files I've downloaded are available digitally and that all of this renaming and sorting is just draining and is sucking the joy out of working on my tree.  So I started deleting..........

I deleted all birth/marriage/death records that weren't for my DIRECT ancestors or their siblings.  I went into my census records file and did the same thing (deleted 5 gigs worth of data in this folder alone).  I then went into my obituaries folder and I have over 7000 files in there - 7000!  I started doing the same thing there and hope to finish that tomorrow.  I realize that the digital files aren't guaranteed to be there forever, let alone tomorrow but I also realize that almost all of the files in these folders are files that I downloaded, labeled and then never opened again (and probably never will).  I also know where to find them if I decide I need them again someday.  

I'm a big proponent of doing the ancillary lines.  My last blog post pointed to a very distant DNA match that may have helped solve a brick wall but I'm tired and I need a break.  I want to get back to my main lines and I think this is the start I need to get me there.  I plan to blog a lot more as part of this process.  Wish me luck!  

Now we're getting somewhere....maybe? Sigh........

Well, I see it's been 14 months since my last blog post.  It's not that I don't think about doing it.  I just keep getting caught down another rabbit hole in my family tree and working on that instead.  I really should commit to a post a month or something since I really do enjoy this -and- it's yielded some positive results for me.  The most positive is a follow up to my blog of 5 May 2014 regarding my 3rd great grandfather Clarence Perkins.

In that blog comments you'll note that a woman named Denise who is actively searching the Perkins family tree commented several times with a theory, which has taken me (with her help) months to work through.

She sent me this gem from "Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois, by Newton Bateman, LL.D. & Paul Selby, A.M. (1903) in the sketch about Rollin Waite" (Rollin is a descendant of Mary Ann Perkins, daughter of Thomas Harlow Perkins that I have surmised was Clarence's grandfather).

The highlighted section is where Denise was showing me where she got Thomas Harlow Perkins' date of death.  Down near the bottom in the Perkins family bible entries...."Clarence Linden Lathrop, at Fremont, Vt., April 4, 1836".  This matches up quite well with my Clarence but even more when you consider his death certificate listing his parents as William Perkins and Adeline Perkins.  Note that Thomas Harlow Perkins had a daughter Adeline born at Weathersfield, VT Aug 20, 1813.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XFKD-V6J

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XFKD-V6F

So Clarence was born a Lathrop and I find a marriage for Adeline Perkins to William Lathrop?  This is looking like an open and shut case - brick wall down!  But alas, why is there a 2nd marriage date, a month before Clarence's birth?  Via familysearch.org I found birth records in Vermont vital records for William and Adeline's children Lucinda, Augusta, John and Darwin between 1830 and 1834 but nothing for Clarence.  To further confuse things, I found the Lathrop family genealogy book  that mentions William's marriages on one page (245) and his children on another (298) and there is no mention of Clarence anywhere.

https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XFVG-32Z

I posted on the Vermont Genealogy Facebook page to see if anyone could help me figure out why there are 2 marriage records listed for William and Adeline.  I got a response with the original marriage record from Mar 7th, 1830, which shows that whoever trancribed these records got them wrong both times.

So William remarried about a year and a half after Clarence's birth and I see the births of many children after that.  The census records contain Augusta and Darwin (born to Adeline - Lucinda and John died young) so he obviously took those children with him.  Where the hell is Clarence?

Denise suggested to me that I see about getting a yDNA test done on a Perkins descendant.  I'm not at all well-versed on DNA testing yet and the yDNA stuff makes my eyes gloss over -but- it does test something passed only from father to son so if I had a candidate he could at least prove that Clarence was or was not a Perkins.  From my 2014 blog I mentioned I talked with the wife of Jay Perkins in NY.  Their son Danny agreed (thank you Danny!) and Denise contributed toward the cost of the test, with the help of the Perkins group at familytreedna.

The results came back last week.  Danny does not match the Perkins line (of which a fair sample has been collected) AND doesn't match the Lathrop line (which admittedly doesn't have as many samples).  These results leave me scratching my head.  The lack of a match on the Perkins line makes sense if Adeline was his mother but no Lathrop matches possibly rules out William as the father.  Danny matches with 6 tests, with the surnames Ames, Comptin, Rankin and Engelen.  Obviously the disconnect in the male lines could have happened at any generation, but given the points I've laid out it would appear that Adeline was unfaithful to William and Clarence was a result of that.  Yesterday I received an email that solidified to me that Adeline is Clarence's mother:

During my wait to get Danny's test done I decided to tackle the descendants of Thomas Harlow Perkins and add that family to my tree, as somehow they are connected, even if I had to edit relationships at some point.  This email right here is why you research the ancillary branches.  This woman would have been a distant DNA match, which I wouldn't have pursued at all as I would have figured it'd be tough to find the connection.  Because I added them, Ancestry did the work for me and the DNA connection means I was right.

Not sure where to go with things from here but I'm in the middle of adding William Lathrop's children to my tree in the hopes of another DNA match down the road.  If nothing else, a few of them are half-siblings to my ancestor.  Hopefully it doesn't take another 4 years to figure out who Clarence's father was :).

New connections abound

I'll admit my thoughts have been there to blog but I just haven't had the time. I've been working so much on sourcing my ancestry.com tree (almost 100,000 records linked now) that when I'm on the computer, that's what I'm doing. Something happened on the 6th to give me pause and redirect my efforts for the moment. I got a message from a woman named Lori, who isn't even related to me. She's researching for some cousins and wanted to know about "Helena Andersdotter b. 1858" in my tree. My tree is set to private so she couldn't see the details. I responded back that Helena was the daughter of my 4th great grandparents and she responded that it was indeed who she was looking for.

Anders Börjesson 1815-1900 and Ingrid Petersdotter 1827-1867 were my 4th g-grandparents. They had 7 known children:
Peter Andersson 1849-1857
Emma Andersdotter 1852-1911 (my 3rd g-grandmother)
Anna Maria Andersdotter 1855-1934
Helena Andersdotter 1858-1880 (from above)
Mathilda Andersdotter 1860-1943
Lydia Maria Andersdotter 1863-1897
Johanna Andersdotter died at birth 17 Oct 1865

 
Emma and Mathilda came to America, settling in Bridgeton, Newaygo Co Michigan. I've talked with a descendant of Mathilda and obviously descendants of Emma but other than the children of Anna Maria and Lydia Maria (that were available via Sweden birth records that I found online) I knew nothing of the remainder of this family. I had thought that Helena died childless. The message I received proved that wrong. It turns out she died 14 days after giving birth to an illegitimate child Hildegard Maria, and that although Hildegard was obviously raised without her parents she did have a family of her own and eventually had contact with her grandfather Anders. She married Per August Ström and had 4 children. 

I got added to a private Facebook group called "Ström Sweden-America Relatives" and it turns out that one of Hildegard's children came to America and had a family in Pennsylvania and in this group are several descendants of that family and several descendants of one of his brothers. Now I was connected with descendants of Helena but there are 2 more sisters that I know had children. I talked with Lori about my desire to find photographs of them and hopefully of their father Anders, my 4th g-grandfather. 

Lori went to work with a friend of hers and within a couple of days she's added a 2nd great granddaughter of Lydia and a 2nd great granddaughter of Anna, both of whom have added their fathers to the group. I'm not sure if this will lead to the photos that I'm looking for but I'm getting to see photos of the nieces and nephews of Emma and am realizing just how magical the internet can be. With one simple email request 11 days ago, we suddenly have descendants of the 5 children that lived to adulthood of a family from 150 years ago all introducing themselves to each other. I wonder what our ancestors would say?

Emma Andersdotter Johnson 1852-1911

 

Mathilda Andersdotter Olson 1860-1943

Hildegard Andersdotter Ström 1880-1945, daughter of Helena Andersdotter (photo from great granddaugher Annica)

Per August Vilhelm Andersson 1890-1964, son of Lydia Andersdotter (photo from 2nd great granddaughter Sofia)

My 2nd great grandmother's sewing machine

Finally getting around to blogging about one of the items that I received during my visit with my grandpa's cousin (from my last post).  This cousin asked me if I was interested in my 2nd great grandma Burke's Singer treadle sewing machine.  I wasn't sure what it looked like or where I'd put it but I knew I was interested.  She sent me a few photos and my wife agreed that if it needed a new home that we could do that.

I have a cousin in Australia that got me in touch with a friend of hers that specializes in these and she says it's a Singer 66, manufactured in Elizabeth New Jersey in 1914.  She gave me some ideas for how to fix the finish (refurbish, not refinish) and how to get replacement parts.  My goal is to now get it cleaned up and working and have it be a part of our home for years to come.

Progress leading to another mystery

I recently met with one of my grandpa Korstange's cousins on his mom's (Burke) side of the family.  It was a great visit filled with new genealogical finds (some that I will probably blog about in the relatively near future).  One of the reasons I wanted to meet up with her was to get another shot at scanning some of the photos her father Paul had.  I visited him with my grandpa in January of 2005 but I did a poor job scanning the photos and passed on some that I've been chomping at the bit to scan lately. Her father passed away in January and had been staying on the east side of the state so I was unable to meet up with him again (which I regret).

One of the photos that I had scanned the 1st time is labeled "Grandma Burke's Grandma", which I believe makes her a 4th great grandmother to me, grandmother of Paul's mother Hilma (Kiviniemi) Burke.

The problem is, I don't know which grandmother as I have birth and marriage records for both of them but no death dates for either of them:

Hilma Kiviniemi (and her sister Anna) was born to Benjam Henriksson Kiviniemi and Lisa Greta Johansdotter Känsäkangas 21 Jun 1879 at Karleby Finland.  Benjam's mother was Anna Kaisa Andersdotter, born 18 Dec 1830 at Vahanga Finland and Lisa's mother was Helena Johansdotter Hotakainen, born 06 Jul 1817 at Halsua Finland.  I've corresponded in the past with a descendant of Anna who also had no information on what happened to Hilma and Anna's parents, let alone grandparents.  One of Lisa Greta's sisters settled in the Houghton MI area and the descendants of her have no information.  One of Helena Hotakainen's nieces settled in the Chicago area and I'm starting to work that line now. 

I posted the photo and my "quandry" at the Finnish Genealogy Facebook page.  This put me in touch with June Pelo, who's a veritable wealth of knowledge when it comes to "Swede-Finns" and their genealogy.  Utilizing her resources here and in Finland she was able to tell me pretty definitely that Hilma and Anna's father Benjam abandoned the family and came to America (in 1881, prior to Anna's birth).  The scant records available initially said that Lisa Greta joined him with the daughters in 1884.  From communion books found by one of June's contacts this was not only proven false, but proved that Lisa Greta had a child out of wedlock (meaning there is a sibling for my 2nd great grandmother that nobody had any knowledge of) and remarried in Finland.  *Captions are the notations of the researcher, not my work.

Karleby Communion Book, 1873-1882 (page 587): Benjamin Henriksson to America in 1881...but the last notation for wife Lisa Greta Jonasdr could be a communion marking for 2.6.1884...and not a move to America...

 

 

 

Karleby Communion Book 1885-1894 (page 625): Benjamin Henriksson shown on page 587 in the previous book (1873-1882)...Communion markings for Lisa Greta Jonasdr in 1887, 1888 and 1889...and a move to the farm on page 690 in 1894...also, she gave birth to a daughter Selma, born 19.8.1885...Selma shown with the patronymic Lisasdr...

Karleby Communion Book 1885-1894: Lisa Greta Jonasdr shown here with 3 daughters...all came here from the farm on page 625 in 1894...Hilma Johanna to Uleåborg, 26.11.1894...

Lisa Greta Jonasdr married again...on 8.7.1894, with Gustaf Robert Väyrynen, born 17.10.1851...also shown here are Anna Elisabeth Kiviniemi, born 1882 (to Maxmo in 1901); and Selma Lisasdr, born 1885 (to Wasa in 1901)...

Selma, born 19.8.1885, Karleby (right page, 3rd name)...the record shows she was born out of wedlock (oä) to Henrik Kiviniemi's son's wife from Storby, Lisa Greta...

Shown here in Vaasa Communion Book, 1896-1905...Selma gave birth to a child out of wedlock, Nils Ragnar, born 18.2.1904, Vaasa (birth records at SSHY only until 1902). There are no communion markings shown for her...and nothing to indicate a move out of Vaasa...

 

These communion books are absolutely amazing resources that I'd have never considered to look for.  Because of them and the help of June's researcher I now know that my 3rd great grandmother Lisa Greta didn't come to America as I suspected, and that she had another daughter who had a son (which means potential cousins in Finland on this side of my family).  But alas, nothing about the 2 grandmothers so my photo is still unidentified!  I'm going to beat on this brick wall until it finally crashes down, no matter how long it takes........

Living genealogy heirloom

Hi - long time, no blog.  I know, I know - I keep saying I'll do better but I've got myself into a huge project that's taking all of my online time.  I got my AncestryDNA test done and after years of refusing, I finally uploaded my tree and got to see what the little "shaky leafs" do.  I quickly saw the benefit of sourcing my file that way and I was off.  I'm currently working through every name in my tree (currently 67,740 people) and clicking off on the sources.  I've corrected some errors, added some people and am learning a lot.  So......when that project is done I plan to blog quite a bit.  Until then, bear with me.

I've had a lawn company redo my front lawn this year so my lawn's been a mess.  I really haven't done much in the way of maintenance in the front yard but when I got home from work the other day I noticed my grandma's hostas.  I say my grandma's, because they came from her yard.  When I bought my first house in 1999 she gave them to me and I planted them in the front landscaping.  When I moved in 2003 I ended up in an apartment for awhile so I dug them out and put them in my mom's landscaping (my grandma passed away in 2000).  When I bought my current house in 2004 I dug them out and brought them with me.  Every year they come up and flower and it's a small reminder of my grandma.  Gardening gave her such joy and I'm sure she'd be happy to know I still have them. 

My wife and I have talked about selling the house and moving and even had a realtor list it a couple years ago.  I had the hostas written into the contract as something I would be taking with us.  I've got no green thumb ability and they aren't your typical "front line" landscaping plant but I will keep them as long as I can. :)