In looking through some documents for my 3rd great grandfather Teunis Paak (or Peek), something on a document relating to one of his children caught my eye. Whenever I use the surname Paak, it could also be Peek. In fact, the history of the family in the Netherlands seems to indicate more usage of Peek, but in the United States there was more usage of Paak and Paake.
My great-great grandmother Alice Paak DeKorn, born 1852, was the oldest daughter, second oldest child. The third child was Anna Catherina or Annie, born 6 January 1855 in Lexmond, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands. In 1865, their mother Jacoba Bassa Paak passed away. Three years later the family immigrated to the United States. They lived for some time in Cooper, then moved to Kalamazoo.
In this portrait is she wearing a cloth coat with a fur scarf/stole of some kind and a fur hat?
Although she must have been a pretty woman, Annie doesn’t seem to have married until she was 35 years old, possibly living at home with her father, a celery farmer, until she did marry on 20 March 1890. Her new husband was a fairly recent immigrant (8 years before) from the Netherlands, Jacob (possible middle name Salomon or L.) Verhulst, another celery farmer or farm worker, the grandson of a Flipse woman. You may have read my posts about the Flipse family; there are interconnections between several of the branches in my extended family. Jacob was 41. Was this his first marriage or had he been married in the Netherlands? I looked on wiewaswie, but did not find a marriage for Jacob.
Annie and Jacob did not have any children. I find them together, in the 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses.
Here are the locations:
1900: Kalamazoo Township (apparently farmland). The census doesn’t indicate if they owned the home or rented.
1910: North Parker Street, Kalamazoo Township (apparently farmland): I can’t find Parker Street–only Parker Avenue. I doubt that was it. I think this was rural and has changed names, but I could be wrong. The census doesn’t indicate if they owned the home or rented.
1920: 44 Mussel Avenue, Kalamazoo Township: owned the home. What an odd name for a street in Kalamazoo? I can’t find it on Google maps.
I do think they purchased land. This is from the Kalamazoo Gazette on 8 May 1919:
I don’t know who Preintje was, but she was a Kloosterman, another surname associated with my family. Coincidentally, Annie’s great-grandmother was Annigje deWit, which is a variant of DeWitte.
This map showed up on Ancestry for Jacob for 1910, which would be around the time of the 2nd census listed.
You see the section going down on the right, near the railroad? The parcel listed for Jacob is the 7th down from the top. His neighbor, Klaas Mulder, is also listed as a neighbor on the 1910 census. I believe the Mulder family is also a neighbor on the 1900 census, so it’s highly likely that Annie and Jacob lived in the same home in both 1900 and 1910.
This parcel map and the transfer mentioned in the newspaper can’t be the same land parcels, since the transfer was in 1919, 9 years after the map showing a parcel owned by Jacob and Annie. Perhaps after this 1919 transfer, the couple moved to the Mussel address and that is what is mentioned in the transfer? Or the transfer could have been an additional piece of property.
FIRST UPDATE: Sharon at Branches on Our Haimowitz Family Tree kindly did some research for me, and this is what she wrote: “I tried finding Mussel Ave myself on old street names. I noticed that there is a Mosel Ave ..checking the 1920 census it was written Mussel however looking at street directories 1929 & 1931 I found Anna and also Jacob with the listing on Mossel Ave 3 e of N. Westnedge (formally simply West) so ‘Mossel or Mosel’ was spelled wrong on census. definitely rural RFD – also I would say they possibly owned the farm land or leased it. It does indicate he was working on his ‘own account’ as opposed to ‘wage or salary.'”
Jacob passed away in 1923, and I do not yet have his death record.
What happened to Annie after Jacob’s death? This is where my interest was piqued!
I have not found her on the 1930 census. But I do have her death record for 6 October 1933. She died of an intertrochanteric fracture of the right femur and hypostatic pneumonia, which means she got sick and died from lying down too long with that broken leg.
Look where she died:
The Kalamazoo State Hospital. It says she lived there and died there. But why? Was it for a mental issue or was the hospital used at that time for other illnesses? THIRD UPDATE: Note that Jacob’s death certificate indicates that Annie lived at Amsterdam Avenue, not the State Hospital, in 1923.
I took the matter to the Facebook group “Vanished Kalamazoo,” a private group of 30,000 members. There are some great local historians on that site. This is what I discovered: What we know of as nursing homes really began around the time of WWII, so Annie died too early to have been in a nursing home. As an elderly woman, if she had mobility, mental (dementia), or illness issues, she would have needed to be taken care of somewhere. She had no children, and her husband was gone. According to these historians, the Kalamazoo State Hospital was used as a place for the elderly needing home and care. Remember, too, that her aging years were in the midst of the Great Depression. I am not sure if this had any bearing or not, but it is important to look at all the possible information.
One thing that troubles me is that she broke her leg at the State Hospital, so what was her care at the hospital like?
When I look at the Paak branch of the family, there are not a lot of descendants. which is a bit sad. Annie and Carrie had no children at all. Mary had three children, but zero grandchildren. Only Alice and George have descendants still living today.
The Family Kalamazoo 
It’s very sad to think of what her last weeks must have been like.
Oh, Merril, I can’t imagine That hospital is not one of the really bad ones of the era, but just knowing the era and what institutions were like and then seeing the evidence in the form of a broken leg . . . . Poor Annie.
😢
Excellent post filled with intrigue here, Luanne, as all of your posts contain. I do wonder about Annie, her later life marriage, her later life alone. Fascinating to dig through. I also do love that photo of her – another treasure for you.
Thanks again for your inspirational work.
I so wonder about Annie, too. Why did she stay single at home with her father all those years? Was she the sister who took care of him? Did she have a broken engagement? So many possibilities!
Yes…or did another woman break her heart??
I always keep that in mind with each story like this, but it seems to be the most buried story unless of course someone was in a famous family like Alice James, sister to Henry and William.
Does make you wonder about the care, doesn’t it?
It really does. Although this was not one of the really bad mental hospitals, I found articles that spoke of a shortage of employees. That is one of the biggest problems of nursing homes still today!
I’m very grateful that my mother is in a very good facility. I know that not all are the same level of care.
They definitely are not!
How sad that she died from something that would presumable have been straightforward today
Yes! It’s so sad. And how any older people break their legs? Isn’t it usually hips? to break a femur would take an extreme accident, I would think. And then to die because they didn’t move her around enough!
Hi Luanne 🙂 I found this post fascinating for some reason and really enjoyed it. I tried finding Mussel Ave myself on old street names. I noticed that there is a Mosel Ave ..checking the 1920 census it was written Mussel however looking at street directories 1929 & 1931 I found Anna and also Jacob with the listing on Mossel Ave 3 e of N. Westnedge (formally simply West) so ‘Mossel or Mosel’ was spelled wrong on census. definitely rural RFD – also I would say they possibly owned the farm land or leased it. It does indicate he was working on his ‘own account’ as opposed to ‘wage or salary’ . It is so sad to think in terms of no descendants for so many of the family and for Anna – all alone in the end. I can’t even begin to imagine what that State Hospital may have been like. Great post and love the picture of Anna, that fur stole is something 🙂
Sharon, you ROCK. This is amazing. It is so so helpful. I can’t tell you how much I love this. Thank you so much for taking the time to figure it out. I might do a little update on this post to incorporate this and something else I found out. THANK YOU!
Your so welcome ~ Happy I could help 🙂
Both of Clabe Wilson’s parents died in a state hospital here in Iowa, 1917 and before. I don’t think there was anywhere else for them to go. Leora had a sister who died in 1922, probably from a brain tumor, and she also lived there a few weeks before she died. Yes, very sad, away from family.
This must have been commonplace for the elderly and the infirm to go to a state hospital because there was nowhere else to go. Can you imagine?! I simply can’t. It’s too painful to think of it.
What a sad way to die, and you do have to wonder whether neglect contributed to it. Sadly, much of our care of the elderly hasn’t improved much, though certainly it is better than it was 90 years ago.
Great post, Luanne! Did you say you found that map on Ancestry? I’ve never seen something like that in my research on Ancestry.
Yes, I found it on Ancestry! Ever so often, I find something unique like that on Ancestry. There is no consistency to it at all.
So sad. Poor annie. The problem is usually–then and now–a shortage of caregivers working at the institution. I read this a couple of years ago about nursing homes. I was unhappy that even at my dad’s good nursing home there were not enough people working any given shift. He had to wait too long for everything.
Now that I have been educated about assisted living facilities (not yet at the nursing home stage), I am amazed at variations in quality. Fortunately where my mom is now is quite well-staffed and still, so far, COVID free. Knock on wood…
Yes, so blessed that her place is free of the virus. Praying it stays that way, Amy!
Thanks, Luanne.
That death certificate represents such a sad ending to Anna’s life. My great-great-great uncle died in the Concord State Hospital in the 1880s. Mental illness was listed as a contributing factor on his death certificate.
Oh, I’m sorry. Do you have an idea of conditions at that hospital in those days? I almost hate to ask . . . . Some things you find in family history research you almost wish you didn’t know!
From what I’ve read about the hospital, the conditions weren’t as bad as some. The oddest thing about this great-uncle’s history is that we have no family records that the man even existed except for a tiny footnote on a family photo of “Seven Brothers and Their Wives.” His illness was discussed in a 19th town history. (He had developed “brain fever” from studying too hard to pass the bar exam.) The most detailed information was in a Dartmouth College alumni magazine. His treating doctor at the hospital had been a classmate, and the man gave out all the details of his case, including his symptomology as “alumni news”! (In a sad and respectful way, of course.) From reading the doctor’s account, I think it would be safe to say that my great uncle suffered from schizophrenia.
And the development of that disease would be consistent with the age of onset, I’ll bet. So sad to think of the forgotten ones! So glad you discovered him!
Yes, around the time he graduated from college. Another sad discovery was his occupation in the 1850 census listed as “insane.”
Liz, that gives me chills. I’m so sorry.
Yes, I keep feeling that I should be doing something for him. I wrote a poem called “Occupation Insane,” but it doesn’t seem enough.
Have you found a home for the poem? I would love to read it. What about setting up a Findagrave memorial page to him?
“Occupation Insane” hasn’t found a home yet. I’ve just started sending it out. When I went to Find a Grave, I discovered that someone had already created a memorial for him, so I left flowers and a note.
Hi Luanne. Lovely post – and what a lovely photograph! I love it when a tangent takes me somewhere new.
I also have De Witt in my tree (Aajge de Witt who married John Pawling) but the US side was based in Ulster, New York and not in Michigan – although I do have family very close to Kalamazoo!
Dominic, oh, that’s a coincidence about the name! I suspect de Witt is a common surname because I learned it means “the blond one.” In fact, my sister-in-law’s husband and hence my niece and nephew are DeWitts. That’s another coincidence about having family close to Kalamazoo. Southwest Michigan?
Haha absolutely. In my mind I equate it to the surname “White”! Oh yes, very close – Battle Creek and Marshall, I believe.
Another interesting post. I looked up the hospital on Google an the buildings in the images that came up were huge places. I remember going to the Plymouth hospital on a field trip when I was in high school and the buildings reminded me of that now gone hospital.
[…] more recently, I wrote about my great-great grandmother’s sister Annie Paak Verhulst. I discovered that she passed away at the State Hospital, and the best guess is that she went there […]