One of the wonderful benefits of blogging about family history and genealogy is learning from my fellow bloggers. Last week I read a post by Amberly, The Genealogy Girl, about a site called Genealogy Gophers. I’d never heard of it, but she made it sound easy (and free), so I hopped over to the site and entered (somewhat randomly) one of my family surnames in the search form.
“Zuidweg” brought up several entries because I hadn’t narrowed down to time or place. This isn’t surprising because my Dutch cousin Elly thinks that Zuidweg might be a fairly common name, especially in Zeeland.
Before I could search the entries individually, one popped up, clamoring for attention. It was one of those rare finds that I probably could have never found without this source.
An Honor Roll
Containing a Pictorial
Record of the War Service
of the Men and Women of
Kalamazoo County
1917-1918-1919
The entry in this book mentions my great-great-grandmother Jennie Zuidweg. Born Jennegien Bomhoff on 5 March 1838 in Zwolle, Overjissel, Netherlands, Jennie married Johannes Zuidweg in 1869, at age 31. She was a maid at that time and both her parents had already passed away. They had 3 children, but Lucas passed away at age 21. In 1901, Jennie and Johannes immigrated to the United states. She was sixty-three years old. She was older than I am. I can’t imagine uprooting my life at that age and moving so far away that I would never be able to return to the country I’d lived in all those years.
Johannes died in 1911, when Jennie was 73. She lived on, a widow, until her death in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on 16 December 1924 at the age of 86. My grandfather was the only child of her remaining son, Adriaan. He was 16 when his grandmother died. She had many grandchildren through her daughter Johanna VanLiere.
Between the death of Johannes and her own death, WWI occurred. So what was Jennie doing with her time when she was 80 years old?
According to this honor roll she had some remarkable knitting skills.
The Social Service Club had five centers in Kalamazoo. During 1917-1918 women who volunteered for these centers contributed a total of:
128 sweaters
14 caps
148 pair of socks
148 pair of wristlets
34 helmets
37 mufflers
5 wash cloths
Kalamazoo Country contributed a total of 514 knitted articles, 377 sewn articles, as well as 600 shot bags and 1,000 gun wipes.
The only volunteer singled out here is Mrs. Jennie Zuidweg, 80 years of age, at the Burdick Street Center, (who) knit 38 pairs of socks.
I used to knit when I was a kid, and socks sound like a lot of boring work to me. That is true dedication.
An impressive output. I guess she had plenty of time on her hands.
She probably did have time on her hands (is that a pun?), but she must not have had arthritis in her hands! 80 years old and all that knitting!
Another awesome find! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading :)! Isn’t it amazing? I’m starting to think there is a lot of material out there for us to find if only we had all the time in the world!
I have a particular interest in WW1 so found this aspect fascinating, the contribution made by those back home, especially women. Love the Red Cross sock knitting instructions – but don’t think I’ll be giving them a go!
I know–they look very difficult and especially tedious. She must have felt good knowing she could still make a valuable contribution like that at her age. WWI is a very fascinating subject!
I love this! I’m so glad you found this little gem. I almost wrote about a different website that Friday. 😉
Amberly, thank you so much for this tip! I’m so glad you wrote that particular post and shared the information with your readers! When this popped up, it was so exciting!!!
I’m so glad! 🙂
Good for Jennie!
I know! Now I have 2 great-great-grandmothers I can be proud of for things I’ve discovered they accomplished–Jennie and Alice of the stove fire.
What a great discovery! I also saw The Genealogy Girl’s blog post and took a quick look, but now I am inspired to go back and spend more time with it. Your GGGM sounds like quite a strong woman. And I agree—I can’t imagine uprooting myself at this point. But given the current situation here in the US, it sounds tempting….
Amy, what you find on that site is bizarrely random, but look at this treasure! Go, check it out!
Haha, I know what you mean sometimes.
I agree with Amy that Jennie sounds like a strong woman. I can’t imagine emigrating at the age of 63. And, it’s awesome how she was involved in the Social Services Club and knitted all those socks.
I am very impressed with her. When I was young, she was this funny looking old lady in the photo and now she is a hero!
How wonderful you found this info on her. I learned of the knitting efforts by watching the Cary Grant movie, Mr. Lucky!
I’m trying to remember if I’ve seen that movie. I better check it out :)!
Love seeing the sock pattern! 🙂
Such tedious work IMO!
Knitting socks is one of those things I would like to do, but have never been inspired to do!
[…] He was married to Jennie Bomhoff Zuidweg. I wrote about her knitting skills for U.S. troops here. Johannes and Jennie were my grandfather’s paternal grandparents. He talked about Jennie to […]
[…] Kalamazoo Woman Supports WWI Troops […]
What a find that Honor Roll was! I know from my mother’s experience that knitting socks is very tricky.
She was probably a big knitter. I figure one of the reasons she had a lot of pockets in her skirts was to carry her knitting around with her!
Makes sense to me!