Duncan Livingston's first marriage

So my husband has an ancestor named Duncan Livingston.  And he is really hard to pin down because the dates of his birth and immigration from Scotland keep changing with every census.  I did have his marriage to Ida May Cook (who is another problem, at least for her birth record) proven with a record but beyond that and the census, not much.  From the census (and family information) I knew he had been married before Ida but the family really didn't seem to have much information.  I had been searching around for a while, looking for a marriage record without any luck.  Then I happened upon a death record for Kate Livingston who died in 1898.  The name of the reporter was given as D. Livingston.  Not much to go on really but it did seem like a good fit.  So I kept looking for the marriage record without much luck.  But there were two useful things on this death record.  One was that Kate Livingston had 1 child and Kate had been born in Canada.

I followed the child lead and actually located a marriage record for Ella Livingston in 1903.  Her birth fit with the possible marriage date for Duncan's 1st marriage and Ella's parents were given as Duncan Livingston and Kate Mc Intire.  (Yep, the death record did give Kate's father Michol Mc Intyre.)  But the really exciting information was the witness named Ida M Livingston!  Oh yeah, this was a really good fit!  But Ella had a daughter too and at her marriage, Ida M Livingston again was listed as a witness!  So know I had the names of three women that had been lost!

It does make you wonder how this information was forgotten until I found the death records for both Ella and her daughter Kathleen.  Kathleen died in 1929 from Ilaus with contributory induced abortion.  And Ella died in 1930 from a strangulated hernia after a surgery.  Duncan didn't die until 1945 so he had already lost his entire 1st family.

But I still had to find his marriage record to Kate Mc Intyre.  And that is when the born in Canada helped out.  Because what if they didn't get married in Michigan, where Duncan lived but in Canada where Kate was born?  So Family Search helped out again with marriage records from Canada.  Of course these records where divided by province and I didn't have a clue where to start.  So I picked the closes province to Michigan, Ontario.  And the very first record that showed up was the marriage record of Duncan and Kate in 1882.  Case closed!

Groenhof Immigration from the Netherlands to America

The Nederlandsch-Amerikaansche Stoomvaart Maatschappij Company was founded 1871 as

Plate, Reuchlin & Company in Rotterdam and became known as the Holland America Line. The ship which transported the Groenhof family to America was built in 1881 and purchased from the White Star Line. It was renamed the Spaarndam and was 4,529 tons. This ship was scrapped in 1901.

Minne Groenhof (age 40) arrived in New York on April 12, 1890 with his wife Maria (age 37) and their 6 children: Gerben (age 10), Berend (age 8), Aafke (age 6), Lucas (age 4), Wepkje (age 2) and Klassje (age 6 months). Minne was listed as a farmer from the Netherlands with 6 pieces of baggage. The family probably left from Rotterdam and would have spent about ten days aboard the ship.

Although the reason for the family's immigration is not known, it could have been because of the cheap fare available at the time or that they had family already living in the United States.

Maria had at least one brother living in Michigan. The family would have received news and might have felt it was a good time to move. Minne's parents had also passed away, which might have made the move easier to make at that time.

New project

This week, I was contacted by my cousin's mother-in-law. She is interested in genealogy and had been researching my cousin's father's side. My aunt had her contact me because of my genealogy information for the Naber's. Now it wasn't hard to just send her a tree with the ancestors but she really wanted something she could share with my cousin that he would be interested in. And only genealogist are interested in looking at family group sheets! But a narration of the family history with stories is something different. Unfortunately, I don't have anything written out. And I am not even sure I will ever be able to do so.

But last fall when I attend the Western Michigan Genealogy Society's Got Ancestors Conference, I attended a session with George Morgan about creating time line/outlines for each ancestor. This is something I would like to do and I think it would be easier to create a narration from this than off the cuff. On the other hand, I did do one interesting thing for my father's side of the family that everyone (non-genealogists) seemed to think was interested. I created a one page document about his ancestors immigration to the United States with pictures. So this is something I can do for the other immigration family's as well. I will be posting the information from the one I already did and then any future ones as well!