The Family Kalamazoo

Two weeks ago I wrote about a pioneer of Kalamazoo, Michigan, John DeSmit, Sr., and last week I wrote more about his family.

I mentioned that it appears that his first wife was Jennie (perhaps Van Sluis) and she was the mother of John’s oldest child, John Jr. Then he married Jacoba Lamper. But I really didn’t have too much information sorting out the wives.

I know I said I would write about the next generation next, but before I do that, I want to clarify a little more about Jacoba and Jennie.

Adri Van Gessel has been very helpful in this matter. According to Adri:

Jacoba Lamper emigrated to the USA in 1855, together with her mother Christina de Bart and her brothers Marinus, Adriaan (Adrian) and Lauris (Louis). Her father died in 1840.

Marinus was never married. Adrian married on May 31, 1860 at Kalamazoo to Hermania (Minnie) Reidsma (in the presence of a.o. Jan Smith). Louneres (Louis) married on September 9, 1858 at Kalamazoo to Gertrude Elizabeth VanEst (in the presence of a.o. Jan Smit).

In the book “Emigranten naar Amerika……” all emigrants are listed in alphabetical order.

So there’s no Jennie listed on the page of Jannis.

Only Jannis is listed as emigrating. No wife and no four other couples are listed with Jannis, although his newspaper interview account states that five couples traveled together. Adri then did more painstaking work on this to try to locate Jennie’s emigration information by scanning an entire 200 page book. No luck. He also considered other first names. For instance, Jennie is a common nickname for Adriana in the Netherlands.

Interesting that Jacoba married 7 August 1855. She must have married the minute she stepped off the boat! Also intriguing is her mother immigrating to the United States with her children, although her husband had been gone for fifteen years. It makes me wonder if there was some connection between the Lampers and either the DeSmits or another Kalamazoo family. Since Jacoba married so soon after arriving, I wonder if the wedding was planned ahead of time. Of course, John would have been eager to remarry with a baby to take care of.

What I need to do is to try to get more information about the family from Holland, Erie County, New York. Or Long Island. Because therein lies a big problem. While Jannis/John talked about working on Long Island to the newspaper and his son’s death certificate says he was born there, there is another record, the marriage record of John DeSmit, Jr. and Mary DeKorn that indicates he was actually born in Holland, which is the far western part of New York State, about 400 miles from Long Island! Holland is 30 miles SE of Buffalo. Must be pretty cold there in the winter . . . .

Death Certificate of John DeSmit, Jr.

Marriage Record of John DeSmit Jr. and Mary DeKorn

(Yes, you read that right. Mary’s brother, my great-great-grandfather Richard DeKorn’s marriage record is right above John and Mary’s!)

According to Wikipedia:

HOLLAND, NY

The town of Holland was established in 1818 from part of the (now defunct) town of Willink, which once included all the southern part of Erie County. The name was derived from Willem Willink, one of the original investors of the Holland Land Company, which owned most of the land in western New York and sold it off to cities and townships that exist today. The name “Holland” is one of many surviving remnants of the Dutch investors who once owned this region. As with the town of Willink, the locations named after these investors have been given new names. Many of the original town buildings met their fate due to fire. Today the Holland Historical Society resides in the original fire hall on Main Street.

LONG ISLAND, NY

In the 19th century, Long Island was still mainly rural and agricultural. Suburbanization started modestly on Long Island when reliable steam ferry service allowed prosperous Wall Streeters to get to new Brooklyn Heights homes in time for dinner. Rural traffic was served by the new Brooklyn and Jamaica Plank road through Jamaica Pass, among others. After the American Civil War, streetcar suburbs sprawled out onto the outwash plain of central and southern Kings County. Trolleys also brought workers from other parts of western Queens to Long Island City jobs.

The Long Island Rail Road was begun as a combined ferry-rail route to Boston via Greenport. The predecessor to the Long Island Rail Road began service in 1836 from the ferry terminal (t o Manhattan) through Brooklyn to Jamaica in Queens, and completed the line to the east end of Long Island in 1844. Other rail lines to Coney Island, the Rockaways and Long Beach serviced the beach resort towns. The growing and merging railroads opened up more than 50 stations in (present-day) Nassau County and over 40 in Suffolk Country, laying the foundation for the future suburbanization of the island.^[9]

From 1830 until 1930, population roughly doubled every twenty years, and several cities were incorporated, such as the City of Brooklyn in Kings County, and Long Island City in Queens.

I am not used to researching the mid-19th century in the United States because most of my ancestors were not here that early. I’ve learned that birth records were not required before 1880 in New York State, so the hope of finding that record for John, Jr., died a swift death. That is no excuse for not finding his baptism in the Reformed records, though. It seems that everything that has to do with the DeSmits between arrival in the United States and John, Sr., marrying Jacoba Lamper is missing. Where is Jennie buried, for instance?

Missing (or what I wish I could find)

• Ship manifest
• Emigration records of Jennie and the other four couples
• Any Dutch records on Jennie at all
• Birth record and/or baptism of John, Jr.
• Jennie’s death record
• Kalamazoo record of John’s marriage to Jacoba Lamper (what we have is a church record only)

Well, this brick wall isn’t even truly one of mine since Mary DeKorn married into the DeSmit family. I’ll continue my tangent, though, by writing about the next generation of DeSmits (I hope).

I really was trying to imagine what Kalamazoo was like when John DeSmit, Sr. brought his family to the town. A population of 1,200. What were the streets and houses like? When I tried to research 1854, this is what I found: the Kalamazoo State Hospital (asylum) began being built in 1854!

My own earliest relatives in Kalamazoo were the DeKorns–Mary DeKorn’s family. Her father, Boudewin, and mother, Johanna, arrived in the United States in 1855 or 56, right when Jacoba arrived and married John. The DeKorns, however, first settled in Zeeland, Michigan. Within a few years they moved to Kalamazoo with their three young children. Johanna was unfortunately gone by 1864 and Boudewin by 1873. They were my 3rd great-grandparents.

Therefore, Boudewin and Johanna were the same generation as John and Jacoba DeSmit. John’s oldest child, John Jr., would marry Boudewin’s middle child, Mary.

In my first post about the DeSmits there is a newspaper article about how John, Sr., worked on Bronson Park. Here is a great article with photos that show the history of Bronson Park.

I requested photos of John and Jacoba’s headstones for their Findagrave memorials a couple of weeks ago, but no response yet.

Speaking of Findagrave, the person who has my OWN FATHER’S memorial page has not responded to my two demands for management of it. We’ll see about that . . . .

UPDATE ON FINDAGRAVE: Findagrave responded to my request immediately and transferred my father’s memorial page to me. They were very accommodating even if the original site creator was not.