Last week, for Women’s History Month, I shared the death certificates of my 2 grandmothers and 4 great-grandmothers. I then searched for death certificates for my eight 2x great grandmothers. All eight were born in other countries: Netherlands, Germany, and Alsace (now France).
MATERNAL SIDE
This one is for Alice Paak DeKorn, who died 5 May 1908 in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The cause of death is heart disease. Since she was only 55, that seems somewhat unusual. She is the woman who survived a terrible fire. Could that have caused permanent damage to her heart?
Next up is Jennie Bomhoff Zuidweg who passed away 13 December 1924 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, at age 86 of senility.
That cause of death as senility is a bit mystifying to me. Grandma remembered his grandmother. After all, he was born in 1908, so when she died he would have been 16 years old. He never said anything about her having dementia at all when he talked about her, and I have to believe he would have mentioned it. She looks pretty old in this photo, and she looks like she knows her own mind, so to speak.
But can I quibble with a death certificate when I wasn’t there at the time?
Alwine Noffke Waldeck died 9 June 1912 in Caledonia, Kent County, Michigan. She was 65 years old.
The cause of death is “interstitial nephritis” and dropsy. Dropsy means edema, a subject close to my thoughts because I have lymphedema. Hmm, here is another kidney disease death, like the two in last week’s post. Only this one is on my mother’s side and not my father’s.
Alwine is the mother seated in the middle.
My fourth maternal 2x great grandmother was Nellie Gorsse Mulder who died in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 12 October 1932. Cause of death was pulmonary tuberculosis, which she had had for 15 years. She also had had diabetes for 5 years.
This is Nellie who died at age 63.
PATERNAL SIDE
I’ll be darned, but I don’t have a single death certificate or death record for these four women. Note that my maternal 2x greats all passed away in the United States, but the paternals did not (to my knowledge).
Elisabetha Adelseck Wendel and Elisabetha Wink Klein were both born in Budesheim, Germany. Presumably they both died there. I wrote for records, but have not received a response. I am not sure how to obtain these records on my own if I can’t get responses to my emails.
Same problem with the other two.
Anne Reihr Schirmer from Leumschwiller, France, and Madeline Groll Scholler from Muespach, France. Again, I think they both died there. But nobody has responded to my requests.
Until I can get those records, it’s hard to feel that they are “real.” I have no photos of these women either, but feel very lucky to have the four above.
As to the 3x great grandmothers and beyond, I do have some records of many of the Dutch ones because the Dutch records are so easily available online. They makes things so much easier for me! Of course, none of these have causes of death listed.
The Family Kalamazoo 
Two words Luanne… ROAD TRIP !
First you fly into France and then after a month or two you saunter over to Germany.
Oh, wait, I guess it would be Germany first and then you march into France.
You might even look for relatives in Spain, Italy and Greece while your at it.
Hey, you never know where you’ll find them.
Good Post Thank You.
Jose from Clarkston, Michigan
I like the way you think! That would be so much fun! How did you know I have some DNA from those other areas?!
OK, now I know why you were skeptical of a 14 year old dying of heart disease—you are also skeptical of a 55 year old dying of it. But remember that for one thing, they had no scientific basis for making some of these determinations. Also, there were diseases like rheumatic fever that cause heart damage as well as infections like endocarditis. So it might not be the same kinds of heart disease we hear about now, but it surely could kill a younger person. And I bet smoke inhalation could have damaged her heart and lungs.
As for the other death certificates—-I assume you’ve searched familysearch? Are there any FB groups for France? Have you tried the German genealogy group on Facebook? I sure wish I had some brilliant idea.
Those photographs are so amazing. How lucky to have photographs of these women!
Yes, I do wonder the details that we can never know about these deaths! You are right about rheumatic fever. Or even a heart that has congenital abnormalities. But I also have a family member whose death was recorded as heart disease in her 20s, and it’s likely it was a suicide.
Cathy has found Madeline’s record! woot!
Yes, so lucky. I know how most people feel regarding these other 4. I can’t even imagine what they looked like or what they wore.
Oh, that’s great! Yay, Cathy!! Hope you post it soon. One more down, three to go?
She cautioned me about one thing: you can’t post French records online (unless found through FamilySearch), but can only post the link to them! Have you found anything like that for German records?
Hmm, not that I’ve noticed. Instructions are in German….so I haven’t tried to translate. I see them all the time on Facebook, so I assume not.
Yeah, I am thinking I don’t even want to know about the Dutch or German ones! haha
Ignorance can be bless. I also argue fair use and public interest, but if a site has a specific contractual term, that is different. But when the site is public like the German archives are, I don’t worry about it. Not sure how the French ones work.
Well, they ARE public, but then wouldn’t it depend on French law? Ugh, law. I don’t know how you did it ;)!
It’s probably more a question of contract—the terms of service for using the site. Like Ancestry tries to limit uses of the records it has—not very successfully!
It’s all public. If I post a link, you can read it. Nobody has to agree to anything to search or see it. Though. hah
True, but some sights make you click on their TOS before you can use the site, and often one of those terms is that you cannot copy or display or distribute any of the images on the site. You can post a link, but not the image itself. My guess is that that’s what the French website does.
I don’t remember doing that, but I probably did and thought nutten of it. After all, we do that all the time!
Yep, that’s why those terms rarely get enforced. They know most people don’t read them and will argue that they aren’t bound by them. Not worth suing people for putting a record online….
😀
Death certificates, especially when you have accompanying photos, are something I always find fascinating. I wonder if I’m just morbid sometime (“Gee, I wonder what I’ll die of?”)
Haha, you and me both! It is really fascinating. But when they die young it’s heart-breaking!
We have a silent heart disease killer in my family. My dad’s uncle died at 43. My brother at 55.
Oh, Eilene. I’m so sorry. That is sad, and it must be scary. I hope that you and the rest of your family get all the necessary medical tests!
Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up; I just meant to say that heart disease or latent defects can affect anyone at any age.
No, I’m glad you did. Yes, that is true. We lived for years next to a family whose youngest had had a heart transplant as a very young child.
My Mum’s mum had rheumatic fever when she was about 8 or 10; they didn’t expect her to survive, and she could never get life insurance. Rheumatic fever often follows strep, and before antibiotics there was no way to treat either one. Once you start looking at the causes of death back in the day, you have to wonder how anybody survived. But – given that RF obviously affects the heart, it is not impossible that these family members did die of “heart attacks” and such at much earlier ages than we this logical.
They are still asking people with certain heart problems if they had rheumatic fever as a child. I imagine you are right–it was probably almost common. Yesterday I saw someone with a big bandage on his neck. He told me he had an ingrown hair and it got very bad and it was cut out and he is on antibiotics. We were chatting about “what would have happened in the old days before antibiotics”!!! From an ingrown hair!
Ack! “Think logical”, not “this”!
Calvin Coolidge’s son died of blood poisoning caused by a blister on his foot. That was in 1924. Penicillin was discovered around 1940 or so, just before WWII. At first is was used strictly for “our boys overseas” but became available to the public around 1945.
I don’t know how anybody older than me (born 1955) survived!
Hi, Luanne. I was going to suggest rheumatic fever too–as a reason for heart issues. It’s hard to believe that people died of complications from it in the 20’s and 30’s until the discovery of antibiotics. You might try church records for your other relatives in Germany and France. Often the churches kept better records than the state-run offices.
The German records that I do have are all church records, but they were obtained in person. I feel so clueless about this from afar. As far as antibiotics, my gosh, we are so lucky to live with antibiotics!
I like what you say about your ancestors becoming more real once you find written records about them.
Part of it is also that they become individuals this way to me, rather than being “the ancestors,” if that makes sense. I love your blog, Marysia!
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Thank you for your wonderful family stories.
Thank you so much saying so :)!