Dutch Connections in Unexpected Places

Dr. Joseph Howell (1808-1888)

 This past week I made an unexpected discovery in Jim’s family. It turns out that Dr. Joseph Howell and wife, Letitia VanDuyn, who settled in Macon, Michigan in 1831, also started a church in Macon. It is not unexpected that they helped to start a church, what was surprising (to me) is that they chose for it to be affiliated with the Dutch Reformed Church. 

Reformed Church of Macon

Jim’s Howell ancestors  arrived in the new world sometime before 1765 from (unconfirmed) Wales, so they would not have been familiar with the Dutch Reformed Church. VanDuyn’s, although a Dutch name, were part of the early Dutch immigration in mid-1600s, exact date is unknown but Jim’s 8th great-grandfather Gerret Corneliszen Van Duyn was married to Jacomina Jacob Swart in October 1663 in New York. 

So, it was surprising to me that they might be members of the Dutch Reformed Church and help to found the Reformed Church in Macon, Michigan. I found their names sprinkled throughout the US, Selected States Dutch Reformed Church Membership Records, 1701-1995. Dr. Joseph Howell and his wife were 2 of the original 8 members and Joseph served for decades as a church elder. His son, Dr. George Howell (the one who helped build the Lenawee County court house) was also an active member and helped the church to build the new beautiful church when they outgrew the one room building. (See a recently acquired postcard photo I found at a local antique store, mailed in 1908.)

Postcard, postmarked 1908

To learn more about the church, I read a reference to The History of the Churches of Macon (1934) and tracked it down in HathiTrust (an incredible repository of out of print books). This centennial celebration book talks about the history of ministers and members of the 3 churches in Macon: Methodist, Reformed Church, and Baptist. The only one that remains a church is the Methodist Church, but in a town of 1,330 in our contemporary times maybe that’s all that can be supported?

Connections to Hope College

While reading the history, I learned that in the 1850s and 1860’s there were not an abundant number of ministers willing to serve one (or even two) churches when the membership numbers were less than 20, so they were served by a lot of itinerant pastors. But in 1869, they found a pastor willing to move to the area and serve the Reformed Church of Macon along with the Southern Macon Reformed church, a Reverend Peter Moerdyk. Rev. Moerdyk immigrated with his parents as a young man from the Netherlands to (eventually) west Michigan. He was the  youngest member of the first class of Hope College graduates in 1866! After graduation he went on to be a member of the first class of Western Theological Seminary graduates in 1869. 

Top right, Peter Moerdyk

Rev. Moerdyk’s first official post as pastor was in Macon. He served there for 2 years before being enticed to join Hope College as an Assistant Professor of Latin in 1871. It is very likely that Jim’s great-grandmother, Viva Amelia Howell (born in 1870), would have been baptized into the church by Rev. Moerdyk!

Viva Amelia Howell
(left, 1870-1933)

For those that don’t know me, Hope College is where I met my husband, Jim, and where we graduated from! It feels kind of full circle to find this connection.

But what’s even more interesting, is that our daughters also attended Hope College, making them 2nd generation. Hope loves to see the multi-generational family members and for each new class entering will catalog all of the students who are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th generation Hope College. Well, by happenstance, when I google searched for Peter Moerdyk, it turns out that there was a 5th generation descendant of Peter Moerdyk’s in the same class of 2021 with our daughters!! How fun (for me) that our daughters attended college (one of our daughters even had a class with him) with a young man whose 3rd great-grandfather probably baptized their 2nd great-grandmother in a little Reformed church in Macon, Michigan in 1870.

I guess the old saying, “we are all just 7 degrees of separation” continues to hold true, even with our long lost relatives!

Connections at the Court House

 Last week, I was doing research on the owners of the cottages on Sand Lake. For background, my family has had a cottage on the west shore of Sand Lake in Lenawee County for over 60 years, but most of these cottages were built in the 1880’s by farmers and businessmen from Lenawee County. My family lives in 2 of the 13 cottages built on lease land from the Brighton-Marsh family. Since they are built on Lease Land the sale of the house (personal property) is not required to be registered with the county, so tracing their histories takes ingenuity and a lot of digging. I helped my dad in the 1990’s to search the tax assessment records and we figured out quite a bit, but we are still unsure about 4 cottages and whose names go with which cottage. Something sparked me to think about this now and I contacted the Lenawee County court house to ask if they might have different records. The Deputy Register of Deeds offered that it might be possible and welcomed me in.

The Court House

A few years back when I was doing different research in Lenawee County I was directed to the “new” County Court Building, a 1978 boxy uninspiring building, so that’s where I first went last week. It turns out that the old County Court House was recently refurbished and the Register of Deeds office is now housed on the first floor of this building. I was so happy because it is an absolutely beautiful 1885 Romanesque Revival building and was excited to have a reason to go in.

It is just as striking on the inside as it is the outside. I would love to work in this building with the vaulted ceilings, wood, plasterwork, and ceramic tile floors. I know that some people prefer the new austere, white, windows, and stainless steel look, but for me, I prefer the craftsmanship of the 1880s!

Register of Deeds Office

As for the Sand Lake research, the 4 hours didn’t really net much. Of the cottages that I searched, there were no records of sales, but I did find 4 lease agreements (which also don’t have to be registered) but for some reason these 4 were. They were from 1887 (one of the first, if not the first!), 1905, 1908, and 1943. They are interesting but the true value was finding a name in 1908, Nellie Palmer Wilcox, that was completely new to us. Turns out, she was the wife of a Austin Wilcox, but curiously the Lease is not tied to his cottage but another cottage previously owned by Miner Finch. (A mystery I am now investigating!!)

But since my husband’s family is from Lenawee County, I took some time to search for some records for them. I was able to find, in one easy place, the “Location of Lands Book” that had lists by section and township of each of the land sales from the federal government to pioneers. (You are not allowed to take photos while in the office, so I could only hand record the information.) I was able to find Joseph Howell (1830 & 1833), James Wheeler (1833), and Abner Spofford (1824 & 1832) land records, Jim’s g-g-g-grandfathers and g-g-g-g-grandfather. It also identifies where they were living at the time, such as “Seneca County, NY”.

More Searching

The Register of Deeds office may not have answered a whole lot of questions, but it did spark my curiosity about the Sand Lake Cottage owners and what connections there were among the owners. I have been spending the last week searching the family histories of all of the names that I do know and the connections are actually more like a web! I won’t bore you with the details here’s just one example Jonathon Howland (1833-1899) was the uncle to Lewis Cass Baker (1844-1917) through his sister Almeda Howland (1812-1897) and during the same years, the Howlands and LC Baker’s two different cottages on the shore! 

So, while I was searching the lives of these men, I came across a reference to one of those books of history and biographies I’ve written about before. (Illustrated history and biographical record of Lenawee County, Mich by Knapp, John I., & Bonner, R. I. (Richard Illenden) 1903. Adrian, MI.) I decided to search for some of Jim’s relatives, too, and came across the most interesting biography of his great-great-grandfather Dr. George Howell.

Back to the Court House

In addition to learning that his wife, Ann Amelia Remington, attended Michigan State Normal College (now Eastern Michigan University) in the 1860’s and that he attended Hillsdale College in the late 1850s before attending medical school at the University of Michigan, I learned that he played a significant role in the building of the Lenawee County Court House! Dr. Howell was elected (and re-elected) Supervisor of Macon and served on the Board of Supervisors in the 1880’s and was appointed to the committee on public buildings. The original court house had burned in 1852 and they were using Dean’s opera house. He offered the resolution to submit to the voters to raise the money ($50,000) to build a new court house on March 22, 1882. Without his resolution and associated politicking, we might not be enjoying this beautiful example of Romanesque Revival architecture and its Register of Deeds office! 

Lenawee County Court House, c. 1885

So I come full circle and back to the Court House!

Sometimes You Really Luck Out!

Me at Tecumseh Historical
Society Museum

 For nearly 35 years, Jim and I have lived every summer about 10 miles from Tecumseh, Michigan (where lots of Jim’s ancestors are buried). I have visited Brookside Cemetery often where 14 of his direct ancestors are in their final resting place (from grandparents through great-great-great-grandparents) and spent hours in the History Room of the Tecumseh Public Library, but for whatever reason I never knew that there was a Tecumseh Historical Society with a Museum! Last week in my Facebook feed, I saw a posting about Memorial Day activities sponsored by the Society and it dawned on me that I should stop by. It is open once a week on Saturdays from 10:30-3pm. So, last Saturday I stopped in, not knowing what I would find, I was expecting to only spend about 30 minutes to an hour there. Well, 4 hours later I was smiling and so very excited by my finds and looking forward to going back! Let me give you a little perspective and background about Tecumseh and Jim’s ancestors before I share my finds!

Bi-centennial or Semiquincentennial?!

When I think of bicentennial, I think of 2nd grade and wearing a colonial outfit that my friend’s mother made for me (Thanks, Mrs. Wennerberg!), and this year as part of a DAR Meeting someone brought up that we need to start preparing for the 250th celebration of the Constitution. What? How is it possible that we’re already at 250 years when I swear it was just the bicentennial?! (I guess you now know how old I am.) Yep, 2026 the US will be celebrating its Semiquincentennial!

Michigan is a little younger, though, it wasn’t given its statehood until 1837, so we have a little while before even its bicentennial. In 1824, it was a territory and towns were popping up all over and Tecumseh was founded, when Musgrove Evans, a surveyor, arrived to the area. Tecumseh will be celebrating its Bicentennial anniversary this summer and I’m delighted to be here!

According to Clara Waldron’s One Hundred Years: A Country Town (1968) another man arrived that year with his family, an Abner Spofford, who traveled with livestock from Jefferson County, NY to Tecumseh. Note that the Erie Canal did not fully open until 1825, so they could not take it, and as long as the ice was cleared on Lake Erie they could take boats to Buffalo. For Abner, his route was to travel by land from Jefferson County along the southern shore of Lake Ontario to Buffalo. At Buffalo, they took  a ship across to Detroit. Since he had livestock, he herded them from Detroit to Tecumseh along the Sauk Trail. His wife and their 8 children made the same trip to Detroit, but they then boarded a schooner named the Firefly to Monroe. The last leg was a 29 mile journey from Monroe to Tecumseh that took them almost 2 full days with carriages and oxen with a stop in Macon. I can’t even imagine! Abner is Jim’s great-great-great-great-grandfather and lived 1778-1859.

Lenawee County

Dr. Joseph Howell

Tecumseh is in Lenawee County, which includes a few other important towns for my husband’s family, all within 7 miles of Tecumseh. They are Macon, Ridgeway, and Raisin Township. To these towns 5 important early settlers came between 1824 and 1837 and a “latecomer” in the late 1840’s. They were Abner Spofford (4th great-grandfather) in 1824, Dr. Joseph Howell (3rd great-grandfather) in 1831, James Wheeler (4th great-grandfather) in 1833, Anson Bennet Webster (3rd great-grandfather) in 1834, James L. Remington (3rd great-grandfather) in 1837 and Samuel Conklin (3rd great-grandfather) sometime between 1840 and 1850. You should know by now how important photographs are to me and I’m pleased to say that I have photos of 4 of these 6 men.

Samuel Conklin 

Why am I so lucky?

Well, as I was perusing the Memoirs of Lenawee County (1909) again, a book that I have read and known about for decades with a fresh view keeping in mind these various settlers. I found a few tidbits that were new. I also reviewed the Atlas from Lenawee County (1893), and found a few maps of homesteads. There was a 3rd resource I was provided and that was the Directories of Tecumseh from 1869. I knew that Dr. George Howell, son of Dr. Joseph Howell was a Dr. in Tecumseh, but it was fun to see his office information and also Samuel Conklin(g) now retired and living at the “s e cor Pearl and Pottawatamie st” and a map that shows where that was! Here’s a rendering from 1868 of the houses in Tecumseh.

"Scary Woman"

But the really lucky thing was that I went into the research room and found a binder (actually many) filled with cabinet cards and other photographs, some unlabeled and others labeled. It’s needles in haystacks, but once you find one needle you can’t help yourself from going back again and again. And sometimes it pays off, like today! I didn’t find photos for people I didn’t already have photos, but I did end up with numerous photos representing different times in people’s lives. I only need one photo to hang on our family tree wall, but having a variety of photos provides insight into people’s lives, one photo just doesn’t capture a life. (I’ve written about this before, see A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words)

Ella, Harriet, and Virginia

Harriet Spofford, 1897

The first new photo to me is this one with three women. The mother in the photo is Harriet Spofford Hoag Webster. She is the daughter of Abner Spofford who moved his family to Tecumseh with the original settlers in 1824 at the age of 8. She outlived 2 husbands (Milton Hoag & Anson Bennett Webster) and lived as a widow for over 30 years. My daughters are very delighted to have a new photo to put on the wall because the only photo I had of her they used to run by fast down the hall fearing the “scary woman”. That “scary” photo was a photo I had found as part of a collage of early settlers to Tecumseh in the Tecumseh Library. This photo shows Harriet with her two of her three children, probably about 1880. Harriet had 3 daughters, one with her first husband and two with her second. The eldest daughter died in 1874, so this is a complete family photo of her immediate family with daughters Eleanor (Ella) on the left and Virginia on the right. Eliza Virginia Webster was married at this time to Myron Henry Conklin. In the same album a few pages later is an older Harriet Spofford in July 1897, a year before she died. 

I couldn’t stop at just one binder, so I searched through another and was rewarded by what appears to be the engagement photos for Eliza Virginia Webster and Myron Henry Conklin when they were married in 1870. I love these photos for two reasons-the first is that while I have several wonderful photos of Myron and Eliza, they are all taken in their older years and I love seeing them as young newlyweds (See Close to Home for a beautiful family photo). And the second has less to do with the photo and more to do with who took the photo. 

Eliza Virginia Webster, 1870

Myron Henry Conklin, 1870

Back of Virginia, taken by
Cynthia Spofford Bissell

Famous Tecumseh Resident

Virginia’s photo was taken by her aunt (Harriet’s sister), Cynthia Webster Bissel Tilton. Cynthia was famous in Tecumseh for being the first white woman to be married in the town, when she wed Theodore Bissell in 1827! She was a celebrity in the town, so much was written about her and also by her. She appeared to be a force to be reckoned with. She went with her husband (Bissell) to Texas but didn’t enjoy the lifestyle so she left him and returned to Tecumseh and became a photographer! She owned her own studio and as you can see from the photo of Virginia touted her award winning photography prowess in 1869. She owned her own house and made her opinion known in the newspaper. If she had lived long enough to be suffragist, I’m positive she would have been.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to go to the Tecumseh Historical Society Museum but you better believe that I have learned that sometimes the treasures are right under our noses!