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!

History of Today for Tomorrow

The Tulip Tree

 Does family history always have to be stories of the distant past? Last week, as I was mowing our lawn, admiring our Tulip Tree and appreciating its provenance and meaning, it made me question this notion. Aren’t the stories of today histories for those in the future? If we don’t capture them today, then those who follow us may never know!

So, today, this blog is about the history of today written for those of tomorrow. The subject is this huge tulip tree and its story that goes back 25 years, nearly to this date.

Tove Moon

My husband worked at Barnes & Noble in Kalamazoo, MI with a lovely, caring woman named Tove Moon. Tove was a free-spirit always wearing billowy full length dresses with sandals and a beautiful smile. She was the epitome of a bookseller who could choose out exactly the right book for you after a quick conversation getting to know you. Tove was fond of Jim and not having any children of her own was ecstatic when she found out I was pregnant with twins. 

The black pot to the right of my husband
holds this year-old sapling.

In 1999, when our daughters were born, Jim was helping out doing odd jobs around her (and her mother’s) house. She had a tulip tree in her back yard and there was a sapling growing up next to it. As part of some yard clean up, Jim asked if he might have the sapling–tulip tree for twins, get it? Tove thought that was a delightful idea!

We knew that after I finished my graduate program we would be moving, so we didn’t plant it in our yard in Kalamazoo and just kept it in a pot. It lived like that for 3 years until we found our current home. It was an afterthought for those 3 years while we were managing twin babies, a dog, and finishing my PhD. The poor tulip tree lived through a lot, toddlers knocking it over repeatedly and  even a bird landing on it and breaking off its leading shoot. Instead of dying, it grew two main shoots!

Once we found our home in Pennsylvania, Jim planted it in the back yard where you see it today. It grew fast like most tulip trees do, but probably faster since it was so delighted to finally get the nutrients it needed. It was a beautiful green large-leafed tree, but for years that’s all that it was, until one May when our daughters were in middle school.

I guess I didn’t know what to look for in a blossom. One of my daughters had made it to a middle school state computer competition held at Dickinson College within a day or two of her birthday in the middle of May. It was a beautiful day, so I found an adirondack chair on campus waiting for my daughter to meet up with me. As I was sitting there I spotted a beautiful tulip tree…I recognized the leaves and on the ground scattered below it were these little orange and yellow petals. Wondering where they came from I peered up into the tree and saw, for the first time, a tulip tree blossom. These blossoms were scattered in and amongst the leaves, often hidden.

See? They are easy to miss!

We returned home that day and I immediately went out back to our tree and sure enough I saw a dozen or so blossoms sprinkled throughout the tree. I was stunned and amazed and wondered how many years had I missed this? (After looking up how many years before a tulip tree blossoms, chances are that I didn’t miss it many times.)

This year, they are easy to see and prolific!

Every May, right around our daughters’ birthday, I thoroughly enjoy the sight of these beautifully delicate tulip shaped blossoms. This year, as I look to the tulip tree blossoms I happily think of our daughters’ 25th birthday and Tove Moon, who passed away in 2011.

Apparently tulip trees can blossom for over 200 years and now since I’ve written this story down, (hopefully) people will learn the how and why this huge beautiful tree came to be in our yard long after both we and our daughters are gone.

Inspiration in Surprising Places

 

Bertha "Birdie" Elizabeth DeBoer
(Enhanced by MyHeritage)

Nearly a year ago, I wrote about my great-aunt, Helen (Tubbs) Judson, my genealogy angel providing so much insight and research on the Tubbs and Orcutt families. The Orcutt family, my great-grandmother Cora (Orcutt) Tubbs’ line is the one that takes me back to the Mayflower.

Today, I would like to share about a different type of genealogy angel who provides me (and hopefully you) with inspiration. This is Bertha “Birdie” Elizabeth (DeBoer) Breyfogle, my husband’s paternal grandmother. I never had the pleasure of meeting Birdie, she passed away our freshman year in college. All four of Birdie’s grandparents emigrated from the Netherlands to the United States in the 1850s & 1860’s and settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her mother Aafke (Eva) Van Dam born in 1871 was the 2nd oldest of 10 children and her father William DeBoer also born in 1871 was a twin (definitely not identical!) and the 4th/5th of 11 children. Family, the Dutch Reformed Church, the United States, and education were extremely important to them. Bertha was born in 1901 and the youngest of 4, with 3 older brothers. Her three brothers all served in World War 1 and ended up in careers in various government agencies. She was a woman ahead of her time and given opportunities that a lot of contemporary women were not offered. She was given the opportunity to attend Olivet College and transferred to the University of Michigan to finish her Bachelors and also Master’s degree.

William DeBoer & Eva Van Dam Family
c. 1911 (Enhanced by MyHeritage)

Women & College

Women might be inspired by her being among a small number of women earning a bachelor’s degree ’22 and also a master’s degree before 1925. Just imagine, when she graduated from high school and began college it was 1918 and women didn’t have the right to vote! 

I was curious, how unique was it that she was attending college in the late 1910s and 1920s? In investigating how many women were graduating from high school and college, I came across some very interesting and enlightening statistics. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in a table that collected the percentage of persons 25 to 29 years old with selected levels of educational attainment by race/ethnicity and sex (estimated from census data): 

• 

  Bertha DeBoer 
  University of MI Diplomas

  in 1920, 22% of White and 6.3% of Black people completed high school,

• Also in 1920, 4.5% of White and 1.2% of Black people earned at least a Bachelor’s degree. 

• For comparison, in 2013, 40.4% of White and 20.5% of Black people earned a bachelors or higher. 

What was striking to me was the ratio of men to women. I had always assumed that women were significantly underrepresented in college, like 5-10% of the people in college were women. It turns out that in 1920, 47% of the people in higher education were women! (We won't, however, talk about what they were welcomed to study!) So while it is true that a very small percentage of White women were in college in the 1920’s, it wasn’t that they were women, rather so few people, overall, were college-attending. After 1920, the number of college attendees began growing but the number of men outpaced women, so women's attendance did fall to 40% of the total college-attendees by 1930 and 30% in 1940 but unsurprisingly in 1944 it surged to 50% and the women have (for the most part) kept pace or exceeded the college attendance.

Birdie as a young woman
c. 1920s

 

Birdie’s Inspiration

Additionally, I am inspired by Birdie’s record keeping! As I peruse her scrapbooks of her time in college, I am in awe of the meticulously detailed notes that she kept, especially of photos. I am sure that I would have loved knowing Birdie and we would have gotten along famously well and might have even scrapbooked together! My scrapbooking friends always make fun of me for my need and desire to “journal” on the scrapbook pages. (For those not familiar with scrapbooking, journaling is the text that you put on a page to help conjure up memories from the event or highlight the importance for the viewer.) But Birdie is my hero and inspiration!

As I flip through pages of her sorority and musical events, I am getting a sense of some of the social things she engaged in and what college would have been like for her and other people at the time. Here’s an example. She became a member of the Sigma Beta Society at Olivet College (it still exists today at University of Olivet-yes, name changed this past year!), this is the same college that my great-grandparents, Florence Stoddard and Edward Leach, attended and met at in 1903 (yes, funny coincidence!). 

Birdie's Scrapbook Page 

Billboard Advertisement for the silent film (1920)

Sigma Beta’s held an “Annual Public”, which appears to be a night of performance. I’m  not sure if Birdie was the photographer (I’m guessing so), but she had two photos of the scene/performers along with the program. The performance was a stage adaptation of the book “Old Lady Number 31” (1909) by Louise Forsslund (Mary Louise Foster) and made into a Broadway Play in 1916-1917 and a silent film starring Emma Dunn released 20 April 1920. Birdie included on the back the names of all of the women in the photo. I’m not sure why, though, that she wrote at the top “Old man 33” at the top of the back of the photo. I was confused, was this a different play, a spoof on the one that they were actually doing? I compared the photo with the program and indeed all of the people seem to be the same as the program. Was this just an inside joke? I’m not sure that I will ever know, but what I do know is the names of every person in the photo and the parts they were playing! I can’t say the same about most of my photos. 

"Old Lady Number 31"
Sigma Beta, April 1919

What I am so inspired by is the way that on EVERY photo, she identifies (almost always!) every person in the photo! I recognize that they took much fewer photos back then, but she always included as much as she could remember and that can’t be said about the thousands of photos I see in flea markets.

We probably all have thousands (if not tens of thousands) of photos with few of them identified. I, for one, am trying to make it a habit to enter in a title or description and name (tag) the faces in my electronic files. Maybe not all of them, but the special ones you upload into MyHeritage or Ancestry or some other format and the ones that shouldn’t ever be deleted!

I hope Birdie inspires you, too, so that all of your great photos don’t end up in the trash by some relative who hasn't a clue of who is in the photos or at a flea market with no prospect of being picked up my someone like me looking to reconnect them with possible descendants!