When I grew up in Kalamazoo in the 1960s and 1970s (OK, the 1950s, too), the name DeKorn as it applied to my family was no longer known. Richard’s only son, Joseph, had moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he raised his two sons.
At some point DeKorne’s Ethan Allen store opened up in Kalamazoo. I know it was there when I got married in 1975 because I bought my first couch and chairs there.That’s when I first heard the rumor that we were “shirttail relations.”
Nobody could ever give me any facts about this connection.
In 2000, with the beauty of the internet, I discovered that there was another family connected to Boudewijn DeKorn. Boudewijn, my great-great-great-grandfather, was born in 1816 in Kapelle, the Netherlands, and died 1873 in Kalamazoo.
This other family who had a Boudewijn was the furniture company Dekorne family from Grand Rapids.
But their Boudewijn didn’t match ours. Theirs died in 1929 in Grand Rapids! Ours died in Kalamazoo in 1873!! But how odd, considering that the name is unique, Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids are not far from each other, and there was that rumor about us being related.
At the time (2000), I found an article about their Boudewijn and a rough family tree. I printed it out and saved it, never knowing if it would be useful.
Here is their family tree:
Other Dekorne family tree
I’m going to post the article that went with their family tree because I find it very interesting in light of Richard DeKorn’s talents as a mason and general contractor.
It’s an interesting story, but are they relatives of mine?
I didn’t know, and I couldn’t figure it out because on Ancestry more Boudewijn DeKornes starting popping up with different birth and death dates, but always from the same general area of the province of Zeeland in the Netherlands.
Then I gave Yvette Hoitink their family tree and she put it together with our family tree and investigated.
This is our family tree:
Do you see a connection? Look at their Boudewijn who was born in 1700. He’s married to Piatarnella Pieterse Michielse. That is the same woman as Pieternella Machiels who is also found in old documents under the name Petronella Pieters. We have a match for a husband and wife in both family trees.
That means that my “7th great-grandfather” Boudewijn de Corne, born approximately 1730 and died 1734 in Goes is (I believe) the “3rd great-grandfather” of Boudewijn the wood-carver and furniture maker who died in Grand Rapids in 1929.
In the history of the family it seems that branches moved away from each other and then maybe moved near each other again, always staying in Zeeland and then in southwestern Michigan. It’s fitting then that Joseph DeKorn moved to Grand Rapids and raised his family there by the other Dekornes.
Note: so many spellings of the name!! It makes it very difficult even to work at cleaning up my family tree on Ancestry. Also, notice how the Dutch tend to name their children after the grandparents.
The Family Kalamazoo 
Very interesting. Yes, how confusing the name changes must be. My mother’s side of the family had the same issues with her German ancestors’ names. I thought ours was hard, but yours must be next to impossible. It’s like solving a mystery, though, one piece at a time.
Sheila, I’m having a real pickle with my great-grandmother’s German family. I can’t break through that wall (Yet, I hope) from the U.S. to Germany–can’t find where in Germany they came from!
It’s so hard to find out about Germany. I assume it has to do with WWII somehow. Someone in my family finally traced our Schlinke relatives to a little town in Northern Germany near Berlin. I’m in SC now and all my genealogy work is in Texas so I don’t know the name of the little town, but I will let you know. It would be funny if we were very distant cousins!
Hahaha, it would be an hysterical coincidence! I’m looking for the Waldecks, maybe the Noffkes, but apparently those names are spread out throughout Germany.
Good Job!
Thank you, sir!
Great sleuthing!
Haha, thanks!
In my grandmother’s family I always heard about three other families who, it was said, were related to us, but no one really knew how even though her generation called each other “cousin”. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I delved into the family tree and found the missing link. It turned out each family descended from three different brothers all born in the 1830’s and each with their own very different lives. The eldest became a prominent man of law and led a long life; the next, from whom I descend, led a more debauched life and died at 38; the youngest lived a long life but alas moved far from his hometown, which explains why my branch “forgot” about him.
I guess stories like yours and mine teaches you that very often family legends about distant family connections tend to be true, though sometimes that connection goes back many more generations than one expects them to.
Keep on blogging (and visiting!)
Dawsr
It has been amazing to me how often the old stories are true. Your story is fascinating. I love that you are descending from the one with the “more debauched life” and are the one working on the family history. Isn’t it interesting how quickly family forgets connections, though, even one or two generations away. And we so rarely ask anything and if we do, don’t process the answer. Thanks for reading!
It’s interesting that you find your Dutch ancestors named their children after the grandparents. I’m finding the same thing with my Sicilian and Italian ancestors. It gets very confusing sometimes when there is no nickname or middle name to distinguish one from the other.
Do you find that as well with your Jewish relatives, or were the grandparents often still living and the names went back to the great-grandparents? I wonder if the grandparent naming was a European thing. I’m also seeing the grandparents often were witnesses at the baptisms.
Have you tried FamilySearch.org to confirm or find relatives? It’s free. I’ve had amazing success, tracing one line practically back to 1100 AD.
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing your research. One side of my family immigrated from Sweden, but they were stowaways on a ship. The spelling of the name changed a bit once they reached the USA. Interesting stuff.
Wow, you are so lucky that you know that they were stowaways! If you didn’t have that info, you would be searching forever!
any updates on the deKorn and De Smit family trees in the last couple years?
are you saying Jacobus deKorne and Jan deKorne (both born ABT 1730 were brothers?
[…] I decided to see if this William DeKorn could be related to my family. There is another branch (connected much further back) that settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, so I wonder if he connected with them or with my family that first went to the Holland, Michigan area. I wrote about the other branch in this post: The Confusing Saga. […]