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Archive for the ‘Michigan history’ Category

Kalamazoo Families: The Burdick and Balch Neighborhood Again

Posted in DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Michigan history, Photography early 20th century, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 22, 2017| 20 Comments »

I have written about the Flipse family in Kalamazoo and my connection to them. My great-great-grandfather Richard DeKorn’s niece Frances DeSmit married Jacob Flipse. Now it looks to me as if there are least two connections between the Flipse family and the Kallewaard family, so when I use the name Kallewaard in the future know that I mean Kallewaard/Flipse.

Jan Denkers from the Netherlands contacted me with some information about the Kallewaard/Flipse family that lived in the Burdick and Balch neighborhood in Kalamazoo near my family. His father had carefully kept information about the family.

I will be writing another post or two about the family before too long.

In the documents that Jan shared with me was the above photograph. This house was probably the 3rd house north from my great-great-grandfather’s house on the corner of Burdick and Balch. Inside it lived the Kallewaard family: Cornelius, Mary (Flipse), and their children.

The next photo is my great-great-grandfather’s house at the corner. You can see the variety in styles of homes, although each is special in its own right.

 

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could find a photo of each house in the neighborhood and put them together to see the neighborhood in its heyday?

Although the DeKorn house is still standing, the Kallewaard house is not, unfortunately. Thank you, Google Maps.

 

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Kalamazoo’s Blizzard of 1978: Burdick Street

Posted in Adrian Zuidweg, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo mid 20th century, Michigan history, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 16, 2017| 19 Comments »

In “honor” of the weather some of the United States has been having this week, I am posting photographs from the Burdick and Balch neighborhood in Kalamazoo during the blizzard of 1978.The yellow house was my grandparents’ house at the corner of Burdick and Emerson.The white building was my grandfather’s Sunoco station.The other houses are from the neighborhood. As befitting a 1970s camera and film, the color is poor–yellowy and faded.

I’ve posted the house and gas station in the past. Here is the house from 1947:

Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Burdick Street

You can find the station at Down at the Station.

Meanwhile, Phoenix was about 90 degrees yesterday :).

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The Treasure that Arrived in an Email

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kent County history, Michigan history, Mulder, Netherlands history, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2017| 33 Comments »

When Peter Mulder contacted me, he had a treasure that involved Jan Mulder and also my great-great grandfather, Pieter Mulder. After the death of his wife Neeltje, Pieter wrote to his brother Jan in the Netherlands. And here is the beautiful and heart-breaking letter.

Since the letter is written in Dutch, here is a translation that Peter provided for us:

October 23 1932

 

Beloved brother,

It is with sadness and a heavy heart that I must tell you my wife  has died  October 12th.

It’s a heavy day for me Jan,  there I have a daughter who always must be under my eye . She is not trusted to just go out unless a person familiar is with her. Oh, what I am missing Neeltje, she was everything to me. As children, we came together and we have been almost 48 years together, so we shared so much in life.

Now I am just about to the end all alone. Fortunately that Neeltje has passed away with the assurance that she went to the father House above. Often, she prayed for salvation  of this earthly life, yet she could not leave us because she knew I would be left behind with our daughter.

God gives my strength to the heavy loss.

I can not go longer Jan, write soon back to your brother. I’m moved now and living with my oldest son on the farm that gives me a little resistance.

 

My address is now

P Mulder

Caledonia

I will admit that this letter made me cry. I felt so bad because it sounds like Neeltje had suffered for a long time, which was why she prayed for salvation. Also, that Pieter felt worried about his youngest daughter. And I was so happy to see that Pieter felt close to Jan, his younger half-brother, even though they had been separated as children and had not seen each other in decades (because Pieter was in the U.S. and Jan was not). I was also happy to hear that he was content living in my great-grandfather Charles Mulder’s home.

Thinking about Neeltje’s health caused me to look for her death certificate, but I do not have it. If I can’t find it online, I might have to order it.

Pieter and Neeltje’s daughter must come in a later post as I have much to research about her. Pieter himself died in 1953 after moving between his children’s homes for 21 more years.

 

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Growing Up in The Paper City

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Kalamazoo mid 20th century, Michigan history, Photography early 20th century, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 16, 2017| 34 Comments »

When I was a kid growing up in Kalamazoo, it was known as “The Paper City.” Our fifth grade teacher–a very eccentric personality–told us about the way paper was made and emphasized that the reason we were not to eat paper (a common habit in elementary school) was that the workers in the paper mills would chew tobacco and spit it at random into the vats of liquid paper. That was why we would occasionally see a little burst of tan, like a star or partial star, on a sheet of white paper.

Kalamazoo was home to several paper mills and companies. Here is a little info I found online:

Taking advantage of the area’s bountiful water resources, in 1867 the Kalamazoo Paper Company opened its first mill. According to historian Larry Massie, the company provided a training ground for paper makers and “was one reason for the amazing proliferation of paper mills throughout the Kalamazoo Valley.” The area’s proximity to Chicago, its excellent railroad network and its large labor force further aided the industry’s development. By the early twentieth century, Kalamazoo County was the state’s dominant paper producer. According to 1904 state census figures, its five paper and wood pulp mills (one-sixth of the state’s total) represented 25 percent of the industry’s capital value. By World War I, Kalamazoo was the center of the largest paper-producing area in the United States. The industry employed one-half of the city’s labor force.

My mother-in-law, Diana Dale Castle, painted one of the mills in 1970. This is the Monarch Paper Mill, owned by Allied Paper Company.

 

The Kalamazoo Library has a terrible image of the Monarch mill from 1910 here. And this one slightly better.

Here is a photo of the machine room and of the male workers in 1915. There is also a photo of one John Bushouse at the mill in 1915. All this is left now of the Monarch Mill is the pond. In a Facebook group for old Kalamazoo, people talked about swimming at the mill pond. I can’t imagine this because I remember driving past the pond and thinking ICK and SCARY.

A quick search on Ancestry for John Bushouse reveals that it is a somewhat common name in Kalamazoo and that the owners of the name are immigrants from the Netherlands or their children. I could not find the John Bushouse that worked at the mill in 1915.

I found an unidentified photograph made from one of Joseph DeKorn’s glass negatives that seems to be from the heyday of paper manufacturing in Kalamazoo. Since it was one of the DeKorn negatives that means that the photograph was probably taken between 1903 and 1918. I suspect that it is an image of a paper mill. If you agree that it is probably a paper mill, do you think it is the Monarch mill or a different one? Before you answer that, you should check the photo in the second library link so that you have enough information.

According to one source, at one time, paper mills were the 5th largest employer in Kalamazoo. According to the source I quoted above, HALF the labor population worked in the paper industry! But that business dried up in the 80s. Obviously, paper is still being made, so why not in Kalamazoo?

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The Mauls of Kalamazoo and Portland

Posted in DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Jennie DeKorn Culver, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Leeuwenhoek, Michigan history, Netherlands history, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 4, 2017| 13 Comments »

Finding neighbors and friends of my ancestors is always fun. Alice Leeuwenhoek received two postcards from girls who posted them from Portland, Oregon. Luckily, one girl, Eva Maul, signed her entire name so it was easy to look them up.

 

As Eva’s July 28, 1909, postcard states, the Maul family moved from Kalamazoo to Portland, Oregon.

 

On the 1910 census they are living in Portland:

Peter and Jennie Maul, with their children: Henry, Gertrude, Maurice, Eva, Jeannette, Garrett, and John. Eva was fourteen, so when she wrote the postcard, she was about thirteen. Gertrude was 17. She wrote the other postcard in 1912, when she was 19.

Notice she complains Alice hasn’t been writing, which makes me wonder how many friends the Maul girls made in their new home.

“Lovingly” seems to indicate that Gertrude and Alice had been very good friends. Alice was born in 1897, so in 1912 she would have been 15, so she was actually closer in age to Eva–even a bit younger.

I started to wonder if these girls had been neighbors of Alice and could be found in my old photographs.  So I did another search. Well well well. In the 1906 Kalamazoo City Directory Peter Maul was a butcher who lived at 112 Balch Street, right next door to Alice’s family! Uncle Lou was a grocer who lived at 110 Balch Street with his family. Alice’s mother’s name was Jennie–and so was the mother of Eva and Gertrude. I guess they all had a lot in common.

But why would Eva have to send Alice a postcard saying that they had moved when they lived next door? How odd.

Although I couldn’t spend too much time on this, a naturalization document popped up from decades later for father Peter Maul in Portland. His history is convoluted. He listed his race as Dutch, but his nationality as British. He emigrated from Calgary, Canada, but was born in Zeeland, Michigan, in 1866. WHAT? It makes no sense. By 1933 he was married to a woman named Blanche who hailed from the western part of the country. Before you think it’s a different Peter, the document lists all his children as well as an additional child.

This would be a fascinating thread to follow, but alas, there is so much to be done in my own branches, I have to stop here for now. For those of you who follow this blog and have been in contact over family branches–and posts you have not seen–I plan to spend a little more time in 2017 on genealogy and share some of the information I’ve been blessed with from all of you!

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Who was William DeKorn (circa 1869-1870)?

Posted in DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Michigan history, Richard DeKorn, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2016| 8 Comments »

Blogger buddy José at Enhanced News Archive sent me a link to the 1869-1870 Kalamazoo City Directory that lists only one person with one of my family surnames. His name was William DeKorn, and he was a laborer who lived right downtown (194 S. Burdick Street). This seems much earlier than my family came to Kalamazoo. “My” DeKorns first settled in Ottawa County, near Holland, Michigan, before they made their way to Kalamazoo.

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.

First I went to Ancestry and discovered that  this City Directory is the only item that comes up for the name William DeKorn, living in Kalamazoo.

Next I went to the Dutch genealogy website, WieWasWie , and there were not any William DeKorns or DeKornes, with or without a space between the De and the Korn. So, knowing that Willem is the Dutch version of William, I looked up that name. Only one Willem DeKorne who had any documentation in the years before 1869-70. He was from Hoedekenskerke, which is apparently 6.5 miles from Kapelle where my DeKorn/DeKornes come from. The Willem documents that come after 1869 are from a town in between these towns, so all the DeKornes seem to be in the same general area. The Willem I found is the son of Paulus. So I looked up Paulus, and they were all connected with those same three towns.

At that point, it would have seemed logical to try to connect Paulus with my ancestors. I have the DeKorns going back five more generations before Boudewijn.

Instead, I thought I would check to see if my ducks were in a row first. In other words, instead of searching farther outward, I went inward and took a peek at my family tree.

I was astonished to see be reminded how early those first immigrants, Boudewijn and Johanna (Remijinse) DeKorn, must have moved to Kalamazoo. In the 1860 census, they were still living in Ottawa, four years after immigrating from the Netherlands. But Johanna died in 1864 in Kalamazoo. Boudewijn died in Kalamazoo in 1873 or 1875. As you can see, Johanna’s death predated the City Directory publication.

So I took a look at the 1870 census. There was William DeKorn, much as he was in the City Directory, except the census recorded that he lived with his three children: Richard, Mary, and Jennie. In short, William WAS Boudewijn. And why wouldn’t he have changed his name to an “American” one? With a name like Boudewijn . . . . Richard was already listed as a brick mason in the census, although he was only nineteen years old.

 

There never was an earlier DeKorn in Kalamazoo, after all. Boudewijn was the first of the family to venture to Kalamazoo, probably because of the housing boom. I’m not sure if there if a way to locate the address on the census since every entry is listed in numerical order, but apparently not tied to a particular address.

 

It did strike me as odd that there was only one Willem DeKorne listed before 1870 on WieWasWie because, for centuries, the Dutch consistently reused the same names, giving a child the name of a grandparent, most typically. If Willem had been a family name for the DeKorns I would have seen more Willems from earlier years.

 

Knowing that Boudewijn changed his name to William might make it easier to search for other traces of his life in the United States.

 

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High Fashion Grandpa

Posted in Adrian Zuidweg, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Michigan history, Photography early 20th century, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2016| 13 Comments »

I remember my grandfather wearing his Sunoco “uniform” and his Sunday sportcoat, but I never thought of him as at the height of fashion. At least not in his attire.

But take a look at him as a 22 year old in 1930!

At first I saw his sport coat, sweater, shirt, fancy belt, and plaid pants as a spiffy outfit, but didn’t stop to think: why is he wearing bloomers? haha

Well, he’s wearing knickers (no, I don’t mean those kind of knickers), which are short for knickerbockers. Copied from this website:

Knickerbockers, later shortened to knickers, were popular sports wear for wealthy gentleman. Knickers were baggy pants that fit low on the natural waist and tight below the knee, ballooning out around the thighs. For upper class gentlemen wearing white or light striped knickers in summer with a matching Norfolk jacket was the look of the teens and early 1920’s.

Grandpa is not wearing a Norfolk jacket, but one that does look a little preppy over that sweater and shirt collar.

 

Plaid Plus Fours

Variations of knickers included plus-fours, plus- sixes, plus-eights and plus-tens. The plus is how many inches below the knee they hung. Plus fours came in tweeds, linen, corduroy, and flannel. Many were solid colors but to be really trendy men wore stripes, checks, and plaid patterns.  They were already on trend when the prince of wales went on tour in American wearing plus fours. His approval meant any man NOT wearing plus fours was out of  fashion.

Notice that “to be really trendy men wore stripes, checks, and plaid patterns.” That’s Grandpa–“really trendy”!

Knickers were worn for more than just sports and casual entertainment. They were common among both fashion forward industries such as the movies, but also among working classes who found the sturdier material knickers quite useful on the farm, for making deliveries, and for some factory work. The short legs and light weight clothes made them cool to wear in summer.

Not sure what beach this photo was taken at, but his outfit is sporty for the time period, as befitting a walk on the beach. By today’s standards, he’s a little over-dressed!

 

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A Baby Born in 1912?

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kent County history, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Michigan history, Mulder, Noffke, Waldeck, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 1, 2016| 8 Comments »

This postcard belonged to the Mulder family. As you can see from the reverse side, it was addressed to a Mulder, but which one? What is that bizarre looking letter in front of the surname? Is it C for Charles? For Clara? Is it CC for Charles and Clara? My great-grandparents were Charles and Clara Mulder. Or is it a weird M for Mister? N. Boltwood Street, City. But what city? If I could read that postmark, I would know, but I can’t.

When I look at the 1910 census, I can see that Charles and Clara Mulder lived on Boltwood Street in Hastings, Michigan! They boarded with another young couple, Otto and Mildred Jahnke. Great-grandpa was a machinist at the time–not yet a farmer with his own farm.

It almost looks like a self-addressed card. But not necessarily. If it is, I can take a guess at who the new arrival was: my grandmother! Lucille Edna Mulder was born April 17, 1912. It is also possible that a friend had a baby that same year, and that this was their birth announcement, but I like the idea of it being my grandmother’s.

It was amusing to see that the stork brought the baby through the roof. I’ve never noticed that idea before, figuring that Santa had the roof market to himself. But it makes sense. Storks, with their nests on the roofs of the buildings, are part of the folklore of the Netherlands. That said, the card was printed in Germany, and the family of Grandma’s mother Clara was German, whereas the Mulders were Dutch. So I looked up storks in Germany and, while they do have storks in Germany, they are more common in Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Note: this postcard uses the same way of addressing that the one last week did: using “city” instead of the name of the city itself. The assumption is that it’s used for intra-city correspondence.

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A Leeuwenhoek Thanksgiving 1911 Postcard (or Who was Elizabeth?)

Posted in Cora DeKorn Zuidweg, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Jennie DeKorn Culver, Joseph Peter DeKorn, Kalamazoo history, Leeuwenhoek, Michigan history, Netherlands history, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2016| 19 Comments »

Alice Leeuwenhoek received a postcard wishing her a Joyous Thanksgiving (and a Cordial one) in 1911.

The card was postmarked November 29 because the holiday fell on November 30 in 1911. If this seems late, Thanksgiving didn’t fall on the fourth Thursday of the month until 1941 when FDR changed it.

This card was sent by Alice’s cousin’s Elizabeth. Who in the world was her cousin Elizabeth?

Alice’s mother, Jennie DeKorn, had 2 siblings: her sister Cora had only my grandfather who was 3 in 1911. Her brother wasn’t even married yet and his children weren’t born until the 20s. So what about the Leeuwenhoeks? The only one I know that came to this country (and would have written in English and MAILED A CARD FROM KALAMAZOO) was Gerrit who died single at the age of 21 in the Spanish-American War.

Elizabeth appears to be young–by her handwriting, her slang (kinda), and the general sloppiness of the writing.

Since Alice lived in Kalamazoo and the card was postmarked Kalamazoo, it is also curious why Elizabeth said she wished Alice would “come down sometime.” It’s possible that she just lived on the other side of town since that can seem an enormous distance to children who can’t travel that far by themselves. Alice was 14 in 1911.

Could Elizabeth be a friend?

More mysteries.

What is not a mystery is that I wish you all a blessed Thanksgiving.

 

 

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Who Were the Ebelinks of Kalamazoo?

Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Kalamazoo mid 20th century, Michigan history, Zuidweg, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 9, 2016| 15 Comments »

In the 1970s, Grandpa identified some of the old photographs as members of the Ebelink family–from Kalamazoo, of course. He didn’t mention just who they were, but I wrote down the names on the back of the photos. I’ve labelled the photos as my grandfather told them to me and corrected them if I found an error.

Anna Ebelink Fisher Fletcher 1891

Ann Ebelink Myers

John Ebelink: 1891

The father (Benjamin Ebelink) and stepmother (Van de Giessen) of John Ebelink

So who were these people? According to the 1880 census, Benjamin and Wilhelmina, both born in Holland (the Netherlands), had three children: Frederich (age 6), John (age 5), and Joanna (age 2).  Since there is no existing 1890 census for Michigan, I had to skip ahead to 1900, where I found John married for four years to Jennie, with one child, Wilhelmina, age 3. A quick search for the death of John’s father Benjamin and I find the year 1916 in Ottawa, Michigan. He was a widower, so he must have already buried at least two wives.

But who were Anna and Ann? I can see Joanna being one of them. Are these two different sisters? And were they really married to Fisher and Myers?

It appears Anna married a Fletcher, not a Fisher. Could have been Grandpa’s memory–or my hearing.

Name: Anna Ebelink
Gender: Female
Race: White
Birth Year: abt 1878
Birth Place: Kalamazoo, Michigan
Marriage Date: 12 Jul 1900
Marriage Place: Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA
Age: 22
Residence Place: Kalamazoo, Michigan
Father: Barend Ebelink
Mother: Wilhelmina Stroup
Spouse: Claude H Fletcher
Record Number: 5305
Film: 68
Film Description: 1900 Delta – 1900 Mackinac

Benjamin was also Barend, a Dutch male given name, and it looks like John and Anna’s mother’s maiden name was Stroup. A bit curious about Anna’s photo is she appears to be in mourning, doesn’t she? I wonder when their mother died.

I can’t find Ann Ebelink Myers. Was she Anna or a different child?

I didn’t want to go too far down this tangent without knowing how these people are connected to my family. I found it by looking at the 1940 census. John and his family lived on Balch Street, right near my family. I would think that my mother and uncle must have known the family.

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