Pilgrim Home Cemetery

I took a ton of pictures while visiting the Pilgrim Home Cemetery and I still haven't sorted through them all! I was working on adding photos to find-a-grave but I am having some problems which have soured my liking of the site, at least for now.

The picture posted here was one of the ones I was excited about getting! This is my great-grandfather Brandt's sister. I think she and her husband Obbe helped my great-grandparent's out during the Depression with a place to live in Oakland. I will have to double check on that part though. I think I need to spend a bit more time on this portion of the family.

Book recommendation

I have been working my way through The American Resting Place: Four Hundred Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds by Marilyn Yalom. Let me just say, you need to look at this book just to see the pictures (by Reid S. Yalom) that are all at the beginning of the book. They are very cool to look at! The cover is one of the pictures and I really like it :)

I am enjoying the book and finding it very informative. I have been reading a bit at a time since it is hard to digest 400 years of history in three weeks! I am not even half way so I will be spending a few more weeks with it. (I actually read really fast but right now I have to read for a committee I am on so I don't have as much time to devote to non-teen books.)

But if you are at all interested in cemeteries, which most genealogist are, check out this book!

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!

Design your own Tombstone

Okay, this one is a little weird. My children talked about the stones they liked when I dragged them to the cemetery and I didn't like that! But Genea-Musings has issued a challenge to create one for yourself. So here is mine. I chose a flat stone for no reason at all. I would also like black stone but I forgot to switch the color. I choose a single stone with a book (because I am a librarian) and the flowers to dress it up. I like having my full name as well as complete dates.

iFamily for Leopard, Updated!

I think I mentioned in a previous post that iFamily didn't seem to have any updates so I thought I would have to switch programs. Fortunately, this is not true any longer! There is an update available to previous owners so now my program has stopped asking me to check for updates. Frankly, I didn't even care what the updates were, I just wanted the message to stop!

After I updated, I started a new file that would include sourcing for everyone in the file. This was a lot easier than I thought it would be for my mother's side of the family. I actually reached the 4th great-grandfather generation (for my children), at least with names. But I did discover that I don't have my father's birth record so I am not able to go farther on that side until I get a hold of him. I also have nothing added for my husband's family for the exact same reason. Something to work on!

Cemetery / 3rd day

Today I spent a lot of time in the Zeeland Cemetery. This is a large cemetery. It started out overcast but got hot, again! My daughter was forced to come along with me and soon tired out and had to go to the bathroom. I think the bathroom was a ploy since I ignored it and she didn't ask to go when we did leave!

I actually had a map with the sections shown. I also had some of the plot numbers. This helped somewhat but the numbering system used never became clear to me! I still had to walk up and down each row looking for the names on my list. My favorite tombstone of the day is shown above. I am actually not related by blood to this person but I think we are related in spirit!