Posted in Family History, Genealogy, Mulder, tagged Birthday, Greeting card, happy birthday on June 7, 2013| 8 Comments »
We hope your day is as lovely
as you are.
Count the candles: 89 of them!!!
Ruthann and Charles (Chuck) Mulder
For a circa 1980s photo of that whole Mulder (Waldeck) generation, my father took a lovely photo I shared here. As far as I know, Aunt Ruthann was the last secretary of the Waldeck family reunion “club.” (Thanks to Michelle for that info!)
Posted in Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Mulder, Waldeck, tagged Caledonia, family history, genealogy, Michigan history, Waldeck on June 4, 2013| 13 Comments »
In my last post I wrote about my great-grandmother Clara Waldeck Mulder, of Caledonia, Michigan.
Today I have a confession to make. The Waldecks are my most unknown branch of the family.
And why? Waldeck is a fairly common name. There are two Castle Waldecks. Lots of places share the name Waldeck. There are many Waldecks listed on Wikipedia, including the first Waldeck, who was a count, and some Waldeck princesses. I bet there are a lot of paupers named Waldeck, too.
But so far I can’t find the town or region in Germany where my Waldeck family came from.
Look at the sorry state of the family tree:
Godfrey (Gottfried) and his wife Alvena (Alvina) immigrated to the United States with their family and then had more children. I don’t even know if all those children listed on this tree are theirs! Clara is.
And so is Godfrey (junior) because I remember him when I was young. He managed a grain elevator or something like that, but he also farmed his own land. He was blind from glaucoma when I met him, and he still walked down the road each day and drove his tractor in the fields. As an aside, glaucoma runs rampant in their family.
I know that Grandma used to like to go to the Waldeck family reunions, and I went to at least one myself, at a lake (of course).
Look at Alvina Waldeck above. The tree lists her as Alvina Neffka, as if that is her maiden name. But is it? I’ve also seen it listed as Noffke and on her death certificate her father was listed as Louis Koffler. Her mother was listed as Dora Couch.
Noffke is a German name, and so is Koffler. Neffka is not German. Neither is Couch.
One person I’ve spoken with has wondered if the family was more Polish than German, but I have no proof of that either.
I need some help with this and hope that somebody reads this blog and gives me some clues about the family!
I am going to take a stab at identifying the people in the photo.
Back row: Fred (according to a rumor, he was in a terrible accident), Ada Steeby (who had a daughter Ruth), Anna (did she marry a Stewart or Christianson or both), August (died in WWI, a bachelor)
Front row: Gottfried, Clara (my great-grandmother), Alvina, Godfrey
Looking at this photo and the names, can we write off Adolph, Rudolph, Max, Herman? Are they not part of our family? Or were they older, born in Germany, and already living their own adult lives when this photo was taken? And why isn’t Fred even on the family tree?!
You can see that I am going to need some help with this project!
Posted in Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Mulder, Waldeck, tagged Caledonia High School, family history, genealogy, history of the Mulders, history of the Waldecks, Michigan history, Mulder, Waldeck on May 28, 2013| 9 Comments »
My maternal grandmother, Lucille Edna Mulder (Zuidweg), who was born in 1912 at the time of the Titanic disaster, was raised on a farm in Caledonia, Michigan. If you’ve read my blog for any length of time you know that I have a beautiful scrapbook which she made to commemorate her high school graduation in 1929.
You’ve met her parents, Charles and Clara (née Waldeck) Mulder.
I’ve shared with you the book collection and gavel which belonged to my great-grandfather Charles. I have not said much about my great-grandmother Clara.
What I know about her is that she raised five children on a farm in Caledonia.
Clara’s parents and older siblings were born in Germany (and perhaps at least one sibling in Kentucky, but don’t quote me on that). She was born August 31, 1884, in Michigan. She died September 6, 1953, of uterine cancer. I was born less than two years later.
I have an Eastern Star ring which belonged to her, so I know she belonged to that organization. I had a sapphire bracelet, which I lost at my first job and was heartsick over, and a couple of other small items.
Here is Clara’s calling card, which my grandmother placed in her scrapbook along with the graduation cards of her classmates:
I wish I knew more about Clara and her life. I think if I keep researching I will find more and maybe I will be able to put some pieces together.
Maybe my mother and her siblings and cousins remember their grandmother and can add to my paltry information! Hint hint.
Posted in Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Mulder, Netherlands history, Photography early 20th century, Photography late 19th century, tagged Blog award, Kalamazoo, Liebster on May 11, 2013| 23 Comments »
This post is meant to show my gratitude to two wonderful bloggers who have nominated this blog for awards and to pass on the shout outs to some bloggers who are so deserving of mention. Actually, there are too many bloggers deserving of mention to mention, if that doesn’t sound too confusing! I’ve got my “regulars” I read, but every day I find new blogs I want to add to my regulars list.
The Red Man and Sheila from Red’s Rants and Raves visited me bearing the WordPress Family Award. They say that the award “was started by someone who wanted to say what being a part of cyberspace had meant to her and what a family atmosphere existed in her WordPress World.” Yes! I can relate to that.
Thank you, Sheila, Red Man, and Team Red Man. Check out their fun blog-with-personality right away!
I’m supposed to nominate 10 bloggers for this award. I’ll raise it to 11 and include it below.
Later, Martha at Home Thoughts from Abroad came calling with the Liebster award. It means dearest and is meant to help promote new blogs. I’m not sure which blogs are new and which are old standards, so I won’t be too fussy about that. Thank you so much, Martha!
Martha keeps up so well with her blogging. She alternates yummy food and fascinating history posts as fast as I can read them. If you haven’t checked out her blog, you will want to run there.
These are the rules from Martha. The award is a “pay-it-forward” thing as you must complete these requirements:
1. Post the award on my blog.
2. Thank the blogger who gave me the award and link back to her site.
Thank you, Martha at Home Thoughts from Abroad!
3. Post 11 random facts about myself. I’m going to post 11 family stories and whether or not I have discovered anything about their veracity.
a. That my grandparents were cousins. Yes, they share a common ancestor way back. I shared that in this blog post
b. That we have French Huguenots as ancestors. The genealogist Yvette Hoitink believes the name DeKorn could have its origins in ancestors who moved from the village of Corné in France to Holland.
c. That my grandmother was smart. Yes, she was because as you know she did very well in school.
d. That Uncle Lou and Aunt Jen owned a general market in Kalamazoo in the early 1900s. When I searched the name Leeuwenhoek in the newspaper archives at Genealogy Bank I discovered ads for their store.
e. That my great-grandfather Adrian Zuidweg owned a fish market in downtown Kalamazoo. When I searched the name Zuidweg in the newspaper archives I discovered ads, but I also saw a notice that you could get fresh halibut at Zuidwegs. I also found a photograph of the store, which can be found in this blog post.
f. That we had a wee smidgen of African ancestry. I took the 23andme DNA test, and nope, that was not true. I think it might have been a story that came about because of ancestry from countries where the people might have had darker hair, eyes, and skin tones, in the way that people talk about “black Irish.”
g. That Uncle Joe went to the University of Michigan to study engineering. His son, Phil DeKorn, confirmed to me that he also went to Kalamazoo College, before he moved on to UM. He took a majority of our old family photos, and Phil says that his father continued his love of photography into his later life.
h. That Richard DeKorn was a prominent mason and contractor in Kalamazoo, and through the research I have done, especially old newspapers it appears that that is the case.
i. That my relatives came from Goes in the Netherlands. Yvette Hoitink discovered that many of them did come from Goes–both my grandfather’s and my grandmother’s families. But they also came from other villages in the province of Zeeland. Grandma told me it was pronounced Hoos, rhyming with goose, and Yvette confirmed that it is pronounced that way in the dialect.
j. That Uncle Lou was a descendent of the inventor of the microscope, Anton van Leeuwenhoek. I don’t have a confirmation on that because that would involve a lot of research far back, using sources written in Dutch. Grandpa told me that and he also told me that Uncle Lou and his brother Gerrit (the boy who died in the Spanish-American War) were orphans. I thought it was just them in the world, but apparently they had other siblings we didn’t know about who had stayed behind in Holland.
k. When my mother-in-law, who was an artist, met me she said she thought I must be part Chinese. I thought she was kidding, but then a rheumatologist told me he found a “Mongolian spot” on me. This is a birth mark that looks like a bruise. He said I had to have Asian ancestry. I thought it was an apocryphal story, but my DNA test confirmed that I do have .1% East Asian ancestry. I’d love to find out the story behind that! This was mildly interesting to me since my kids, both adopted, are Korean ;).
4. Answer 11 questions that the presenter of the award has asked.
1. What is your favorite book? The Dollmaker by Harriet Arnow
2. What person influenced you most when you were growing up? My grandmother and Captain Kangaroo
3. If you could travel the world, where would you go first? Let me check my schedule
4. What is your dream car? Jaguar from days past
5. What are three things on your bucket list that you hope to do soon? I’ve been thinking about starting a bucket list . . .
6. Which was your most memorable birthday? My 40th at my parents’ lake house
7. What was your favorite year and why? 1984 and 1988 when my kids arrived from Korea
8. Who is your favorite singer or musician? My daughter
9. What did you do for the Millenium New Year’s Eve 1999/2000? I can’t remember
10. What is your greatest accomplishment? My kids
11. Of what are you the most proud? My kids
5. Nominate 11 new bloggers with fewer than 200 followers who I want to pass the award on to. These are the 11 blogs I nominate for the Liebster AND for the Family Award. A few of these blogs I nominated last time as well, but they continue to be inspirations.
6. Ask my nominees 11 questions of my own. Please share 11 facts about your ancestors (yes, parents count) and come tell me after you post so I am sure to read them!
Posted in Caledonia Michigan history, DeKorn, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo late 1800s - early 1900s, Mulder, Netherlands history, Paak, Peek, Remine, Zuidweg, tagged DeKorn family, Dutch Genealogy, genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Kalamazoo Michigan, Michigan history, Mulder, Netherlands, Paak genealogy, Peek family on May 7, 2013| 16 Comments »
This post has been edited to correct errors!! I will continue to do so as necessary.
Just for fun I thought I’d post the Dutch surnames that pop up in my family tree.
Only a few of these surnames are found on lists of common Dutch names.
Mulder is on every list as it means miller.
My grandmother told me that Remijinse is a name which originally came to the family from Spain.
Zuidweg, meaning south way, also might have similar origins–it’s unclear. The results of my 23andme test does show that I have Spanish ancestry, and the likely source would be the Spaniards that left Spain at the time of the Inquisition and made their way to Holland.
When I visited the Netherlands, a man told me that DeKorn meant that the first DeKorn came to the Netherlands from Switzerland.
Yvette Hoitink has another idea. This is what she wrote about the name:
Boudewijn de Corne (sr.) was called De Corne and De Kooren. “De” is the Dutch word for “The” but can also be the French word for “From.” Since “Corne” is not a Dutch word and “Kooren” (corn) would have a different article (“het” instead of “de”), a French origin is possible. One possible explanation for the name is that the family originated in a place called Corné. A village called Corné is located near Angers [on map it’s located in western France]. A lot of French Huguenots came to the province of Zeeland in the period after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685.
Yvette’s theory fits with the family story I heard very often that we were descended from French Huguenots.
Posted in Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Kalamazoo history, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Mulder, Photography early 20th century, tagged 1916 photograph, Caledonia High School, Charles Mulder, family history, genealogy, Michigan history, Mulder on April 27, 2013| 17 Comments »
I just found a photo which goes with one I posted last week. Last week was the anniversary of my grandmother’s birthday and I posted a page from her high school graduation scrapbook. Then I posted a photo my father had taken in the eighties of her with her four siblings and all their spouses–the whole Mulder family.
Here is a beautiful image of the four oldest Mulder children (Dorothy, Edna, Vena, and Pete) with their parents, my great-grandparents, Charles and Clara Mulder.
This photo would be before 1917 as Charles wasn’t yet born. Notice how Dorothy and Edna have matching plaid dresses on. Although they were a year apart in age, they graduated high school at the same time. It looks like they were almost treated as twins. Vena (Alvena), the youngest daughter, is wearing an outfit which matches the older girls’ dresses, but appears to be a skirt with straps. How do you like those “Dutch boy” hair cuts from almost 100 years ago?!
Posted in Adrian Zuidweg, Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Mulder, tagged Adrian Zuidweg, family history, family photo, genealogy, Richard DeKorn on April 20, 2013| 2 Comments »
Photo by Rudy Hanson
After reading another post on Wednesday about Grandma’s high school graduation scrapbook, I thought you might like to see the Mulder family from Caledonia. Remember that in Edna’s scrapbook she memorialized the graduation of herself and her sister Dorothy. This photo must be from the 1980s.
From left to right, standing:
From left to right, sitting:
The five Mulder siblings in order:
Dorothea Rosa Mulder (1910-1996) who married Conrad Plott (1905-1889)
Lucille Edna Mulder (1912-2000) who married Adrian Zuidweg (1908-2000) [my grandparents]
Alvena Mulder (1913-2000) who married Alton W. Stimson (1911-1996)
Peter Godfrey Mulder (1915-1986) who married Ruby Elizabeth Ayers (1920-2007)
Charles Peter Mulder (1917-1989) who married Ruth Ann Holton (born 1924)
Ruth Ann, a very special lady, is the youngest of the group, and she lives near her daughter.
Posted in Adrian Zuidweg, Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Mulder, Photography early 20th century, tagged Caledonia, Caledonia High School, Edna Mulder, family history, genealogy, Michigan history, Mulder, Public Schools of Kent County history, Zuidweg surname on April 17, 2013| 19 Comments »
Today would be the birthday of (Lucille) Edna Mulder Zuidweg, my wonderful grandmother, born April 17, 1912. We lost her on September 21, 2000.
In honor of Grandma, I’ll share more from her high school graduation scrapbook, which has quite a few goodies in it. I wrote about it before in the post Who Put the Ring Stain on the Scrapbook? Today I’d like to share one page of the scrapbook.
This page is my favorite because I learn more about my grandmother here. In the upper left is a photo of my grandparents, which means that they were dating by the point she glued that photo in the book. Aren’t they cute? When and where did they meet?
In the upper middle is a photo of Grandma’s best friend Blanche Stauffer, Class Valedictorian. Grandma was Class Historian and her older sister Dorothy was Salutatorian. The newspaper clipping on the upper right explains all that.
The congratulations note by Elsa looks treasured. At the bottom left is a newspaper clipping which is from April 1920:
Miss Edna Mulder celebrated her eighth birthday anniversary with a party Saturday. Twenty little people were present.
In the bottom right corner is another clipping. This one is also from 1920:
The first of the spring flowers again comes to our desk through the thoughtful kindness of little Edna Mulder. Flowers while we live to enjoy them are far sweeter than those at death for does not some one tell us that “Flowers on the casket can cast no fragrance backward over life’s rugged way.”
One more scrapbook treat is the “entertainment” for Grandma’s 8th grade graduation, which took place in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on June 12, 1925:
Posted in Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Mulder, tagged American Tract Society, Charles Mulder, Christian literature, DeKorn genealogy, family history, Michigan history, Mulder, Religious Tract Society on March 7, 2013| 21 Comments »
When I was a little girl and my great-grandfather Charles Mulder and his wife Margaret sold the farm and moved to a different house, I was given my great grandfather’s old books. These were books which dated back to his childhood and youth. One of the books was signed with the date December 25, 1903; I shared that on a recent post and will re-post a thumbnail here. However, I think these books date to the late 19th century. Great Grandpa was born in 1885.
The most beautiful set were little bone colored books with light blue and gilt, and I read every one of them. 
My favorites were the one which were rags to riches stories with strong morals. These were similar to Horatio Alger stories in that the riches were not truly great wealth, but the ability to have self-respect within our society and to do good for others. My least favorites were the ones which sounded too much like prayers.
These were published by The American Tract Society, which is still in business. 
According to Wikipedia:
The American Tract Society (ATS) is a nonprofit, nonsectarian but evangelical organization founded on May 11, 1825 in New York City for the purpose of publishing and disseminating Christian literature. ATS traces its lineage back through the New York Tract Society (1812) and the New England Tract Society (1814) to the Religious Tract Society of London, begun in 1799. Over the years, ATS has produced and distributed many millions of pieces of literature.
I wish the books were in better shape, but in the nearly 50 years I have owned them, they have really started to show their age. They are spotting, and the bindings are getting loose. Before too long, I will have owned them for half their lifetime.
Book #89
I wonder how many there were!
In case you would like to start reading one:
Posted in Adrian Zuidweg, Caledonia Michigan history, Family History, Genealogy, Lucille Edna Mulder Zuidweg, Mulder, tagged DeKorn family, Dutch Genealogy, family history, genealogy, history of Kalamazoo, history of The Netherlands, Kalamazoo, Michigan history, Mulder, Peek family, Yvette Hoitink, Zuidweg surname on March 4, 2013| 7 Comments »
This gavel belonged to my great-grandfather Charles Mulder of Caledonia, Michigan.
He was my maternal grandmother‘s father and his name at birth, in 1885 in Goes, Zeeland, the Netherlands, was Karel Pieter Phillipus Mulder. His great-great-grandfather was Carel Mulder, born March 8, 1780 in Goes, the Netherlands. His occupation was a jailor’s hand.
This same Carel Mulder is also an ancestor of my maternal grandfather. I wrote about the discovery of this coincidence in an earlier post.
Great Grandpa was a working farmer for many years. I remember his farm with great affection because it had a rope swing from an apple tree, a barn, a chicken coop, outhouse, and fields where we once went on a hayride. Across the country road, a the thick woods nurtured a colorful assortment of wild flowers.
Great Grandpa, me (the first great-grandchild), and Margaret
In the above photo, Great Grandpa is with the only “great-grandmother” I knew, his second wife, Margaret, a very sweet lady. My great-grandmother Clara passed away from uterine cancer two years before I was born.
Charles and Clara (Waldeck) Mulder
My father told me that Great Grandpa held the position of Township Supervisor years ago and that is where he used this gavel.
On pages 252-256 of Ernest B. Fisher’s 1918 book, Grand Rapids and Kent County, Michigan: historical account of …, Volume 1, I discovered more specific information about Great Grandpa and Caledonia.
Fisher explains that Caledonia was a “wilderness” with narrow trails by the local Native Americans (“red men,” according to Fisher) when Europeans first arrived there. He states:
At the mouth of Coldwater river was a great Indian camping ground and burial place. The Indians did not leave there entirely until a comparatively recent date. One of them, old Soh-na-go, or “Squirrel,” was seen at quite a late day visiting the burial place and the hunting grounds of his fathers, but the “white man’s axe” had been there and it was no longer a home for him.
He goes on to say:
Caledonia, situated on Section 29, is a prosperous village of 600 people. It was settled in 1850, the first plat was made in 1870, and it reached the dignity of an incorporated municipality in 1888. It is situated on the Michigan Central railroad and hence has good shipping facilities which make it the center of trade for a wide extent of fertile country. It has one Methodist and two United Brethren churches, a bank, and a weekly newspaper, the News, and the requisite number of mercantile establishments and general industries.
The township of Caledonia is one of the best agricultural districts in Kent county, and the thrifty farmers are profitably engaged in all classes of diversified farming.
What interested me is that I saw that inside one of Great Grandpa’s books he went to a (Dutch) Reformed Church in 1903. He was so ensconced in life in Caledonia by 1915 that he was Township Supervisor (and Grandma was born in 1912 in Caledonia). The quote above says that there was one Methodist and two United Brethren churches, and I do know that my grandmother was a Methodist and that we used to have family reunions in the basement of the Methodist Church in Caledonia when I was a kid. So where did he go to the Reformed Church?
According to records I found through ancestry.com, he immigrated to the United States with his family when he was two or three and grew up in Grand Rapids, not out in the country on a farm, after all.
Back to what Mr. Fisher had to tell me about my great-grandfather:
Below is given a list of the supervisors of the township from its organization down to the present time: 1840, John P. McNaughton; 1842, Norman Foster; 1844, Roswell F. Tyler and William Gibson; 1845, John A. Cornell; 1846, Justus G. Beach; 1848, Reuben H. Smith; 1849, William H. Brown; 1854, Lyman Gerould; 1857, Zabin Williams; 1858, William H. Brown; 1860, Warren S. Hale; 1861, William H. Brown; 1863, William J. Wood; 1865, Adam B. Sherk; 1868, William J. Wood; 1869, Marcus Buell; 1870, Adam B. Sherk; 1871, Robert S. Jackson; 1872, William J. Wood; 1873, Martin Whitney; 1877, Austin W. Hill; 1878, Marcus Buell; 1879, Sherman T. Colson; 1889, Alfred W. Stow; 1891, Sherman T. Colson; 1895, Eugene Ward; 1900, Joseph E. Kennedy; 1901, Alfred Newman; 1904, EugeneWard; 1906, Alfred Newman; 1907, Frederick W. Ruehs; 1912, Merrill M. Kriger; 1914, John J. Luneke; 1915, Charles R. Mulder, present incumbent.
Great Grandpa was the Supervisor of the Township of Caledonia. He used this gavel to call the meetings to order. Maybe this desire for order comes to him from his great-great-grandfather, the jailor’s hand.
The Family Kalamazoo 