Cora DeKorn Zuidweg
One day, when I was a student at Western Michigan University, I was working at the counter in Stanwood’s Luggage and my grandparents came in to look at wallets. We called them billfolds because that was the proper name. My hair was pulled back and clipped at the back of my head. Grandpa startled a bit when he looked at me and said, “You look just like my mother.” My grandmother corroborated that I did, in fact, look like her mother-in-law with my hair pulled back.
Cora DeKorn Zuidweg: in this photo I can see the resemblance.
Of course, my great-grandmother, Cora Wilhelmina DeKorn Zuidweg always wore her hair pulled back into a bun. She was born in Kalamazoo on January 2, 1875, the middle child of Richard DeKorn and Alice Paak DeKorn. Her older sister, Jennie, was two, and when Cora was six, her brother Joseph Peter, the family photographer, was born.
The City Directories show that Cora was a lifelong resident of Kalamazoo. She married my great-grandfather Adrian Zuidweg (who was born in the Netherlands) on May 19, 1897, in Kalamazoo. She was 22 and he was 26. 
Eleven years later, she gave birth to my grandfather Adrian Zuidweg (II), her only child, on October 31, 1908, in Kalamazoo.
Cora and little Adrian circa 1910
Cora at her father’s cottage on Long Lake
My grandfather shared with me some stories about her. My favorite one is about the day she heard a man out in front of her house beating his horse with a whip. She ran outside in a fury, grabbed the whip out of the man’s hand before he had a chance to understand what was happening, and smacked him with the handle.
She must have had a temper. Another story goes that she donated a quilt to her church and then saw it on the clothesline of someone who shouldn’t have had the quilt. She ended up withdrawing from the Reformed denomination to which she belonged and switching to the Methodist Church.
A few years after her husband died, when she was 57, Cora became sick with cancer. Grandpa told me that the illness “went to her brain.” One day she gathered together all the books in the house, except the Bible, and threw them out of the windows. Then she collected them and burned them in a bonfire.
She died less than four months after her son was married to Lucille Edna Mulder, my grandmother. Grandma reminisced to me that it was very difficult to be newly married and taking care of a terminally ill mother-in-law. Cora passed away on September 12, 1932, at her home in Kalamazoo at the age of 57.
Cora and Adrian in chairs. Standing are Cora’s stepsister Marian Sootsman and sister Jennie DeKorn Leeuwenhoek. Seated in front is Jennie’s daughter Alice.
The Family Kalamazoo 
The resemblance is eerie. That’s three generations back.
It shows me I don’t know anything about how genetics works.
[…] and Alice had three children: Joseph, Cora, and Jennie. After Alice’s death in 1908, he married Jennie Sootsman who had two daughters, […]
I love the stories that can straddle these photos! I would love to have met the woman who rescues horses. Your great-grandma must have been a feisty woman!
Kay, I just found your comment on here. Thanks for reading. Yes, what a spitfire!!
Hi. I’m a writer. I came across the wedding picture of Cora and Adrian while searching on clothing of the mid-1800s. I would like permission to use Adrian on the cover of an upcoming release. He would be playing the part of a ghost.
I’d be happy to discuss this with you further. Please contact me: fenraven at gmail dot com.
Did you receive my email, Theo?
I didn’t! 😦 Did you send to fenraven at gmail dot com?
Yes, I’ll try again. Check your spam, too.
[…] If you remember the post with the pretty shawl, that was her shawl. She’s the one with the 3 Peek sisters; Alice was the prettiest one. Poor George was her brother. She was also the mother of my great-grandmother Cora DeKorn Zuidweg. […]
[…] As I mentioned two weeks ago, both my maternal great-grandmothers were born in the United States, but their husbands, my great-grandfathers, were immigrants. At that time I discussed my maternal grandmother’s mother, Clara Waldeck Mulder. Today I will talk about my maternal grandfather’s mother, Cora Zuidweg. I wrote some anecdotes about her life in 2012 at this link: Cora DeKorn Zuidweg […]
Wow Luanne, I never put two and two together until today, I met your relative Jane Peek, when she first came into the Lakeview Nursing home, I was a CNA at that time, I wasn’t there a long time before I con transferred to Three Rivers Nursing home. She was a wonderful woman, wish I would have still been there on her 107th Birthday. Mr. William Eddington lived in Ramona Park too and he died at 113th, he lived in a boat house just next to my Aunts property, just five houses up from the Palace. You have some wonderful pictures, and I would love to use the one of Therese and her parents if thats okay with. Have a great day. I also have the picture of Cora standing by the door o9f the summer cottage at the lake. Paula