Introductory

Hello.  Welcome to my Genealogy Blog.  Let me introduce myself.  My name is Evelyn.  I am single, the sixth child of six children, AND The only girl in my family.  My ancestry includes Dutch relatives on my mother's side and German relatives on my father's side.  I'm getting on in years and realize more and more that time is precious and needs to be spent wisely.  I use to dabble in genealogy.  Do some work here, do some work there, but I was never consistent and never did it for a very long period of time.  I've always had an interest, and when my Church Ward had Family History/Genealogy classes during the Sunday School hour I always attended those because I wanted to learn as much as I could about how to work the programs and do research.  

It was only recently when all of a sudden something changed inside me, almost as if I received a personal revelation that basically told me I need to work more full time on Family History work.  I need to stop making it a casual hobby and make it more of a lifetime goal and legacy for myself to achieve as much as I can in finding and documenting my ancestors.  If I don't do it, no one else in my family will, so it literally is left up to me.   Ever since then I have been on a mission with genealogy work.  Spending as much time as possible learning the programs, organizing my paperwork and research and spending time cleaning up records and adding names to my family tree.  I am a work in progress and continue to learn, grow and excel in this most important work.

My brothers expressed interest when I come upon a relative find that I think is exciting is lukewarm at best.  I've realized that given those type of responses I have no one to talk to as a sounding board or to talk to when I have an exciting find and want to share my news.  I had an exciting find awhile back and told a couple of my brothers and I was met with "oh that's nice" or "why is that exciting" or some other comment, or no comment, to squelch any joy I might have had.  Needless to say, sharing my exciting finds with them won't take place all that often.  Which brings me to the point of this Blog.  I want to use this space as a place to document my finds, to talk about any difficulties I may be having or to just document my journey.  I named it "Going Down the Rabbit Hole" because you know when you get really going in your research and you are searching in this website and go to another website and you find a name, and then you find more names and you are adding them to your tree and you keep going and going and lose track of time and next thing you know its past midnight and you really should be getting to bed?  Well, that's what I call, "going down the rabble hole".    I do that more often than not.

I'd love for you to come along with my on my journey as I work on not only my genealogy for my Dutch and German ancestors, but also work on those family pictures, journals and life stories.  I'll document my progress here on this Blog.  I'll try to post at least once a week, we'll see how it goes.  

Thanks for reading, and if you stick around, I hope to get to know you and maybe we can help each other in our individual genealogy work.

Life

 Life has not been kind so far in 2025.  I started out the year sick with a bad cold.  Started in my head, down to my throat and finally in my chest.  Lost my voice for several days when it finally hit my chest.  I've had a rough voice before with a cold, but never completely lost it.  What fun.

 Now, here we are the 10th of February and I still have a little bit of a cough and I will, on occasion have a raspy voice.  This sucks.  I am feeling better, but ai hve to be careful to get enough sleep and eat right.

Then add insult to injury, my water heater sprung a leak and flooded my apartment a little bit.  A month later the underlayment flooring is finally dry and I am waiting for someone to come in and install new flooring in my bedroom and bathroom.  My furniture is everywhere, my apartment is in chaos.  Not liking the mess that exists.  I'm someone that thrives better in an organized environment rather than a messy one.  I'm hoping the installation will take place sometime this week.  It's been a month since the flooding.  Time to get my life back and organized.

Because of all this sickness and havoc I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like on my genealogy work.  In fact, days have gone by where I haven't even touched it.  I miss it.  I need to get back to work.  Too much to do and too little time to do it all in.  Hopefully this week I can get back a little more normalcy and start doing some work again.

My Contributions to My Family Tree on Family Search in 2024

 At the end of each year, Family Search compiles your contributions to your personal Family Tree. It's a way of measuring for yourself the work you have done for your ancestors.  

I first started measuring my contributions in 2023.  At the end of 2023 these were my Stats:

• Total contributions to Family Tree:  238
• New people added to your Family Tree:  9
• New memories added to your Family Tree:  110
• New Sources added to your Family Tree:  119

For having just started out in real earnest that year, these were nice numbers, but numbers like these would not be acceptable for future years.  I had to grow those numbers for each consecutive year.

So then, at the end of 2024 I was anxious to see what my numbers would be.  

Overall, I had 501 Contributions to my Family Tree in 2024.

This is more than double what I did the previous year.

I was very excited.  Hopefully each year from now I can grow on that number.

Here are my stats:

• New people added to my Family Tree:  73
• New Memories added to my Family Tree:  57
• New Sources added to my Family Tree:  371

I look forward to seeing what I'll do in 2025.

Military Records

 One of my most frustrating things right now is finding military records for my grandfathers. My paternal grandfather, Robert Woller, fought in WWI on the German side.  We know next to nothing about his service.  I would love to know what battles he fought in, where he was during most of the war, his rank, anything I can get my hands on as far as his life in the military.  I do know that he had a hard time adjusting back to civilian life once he returned.  But we really don't know much else.  I have searched some records for any information on him and I am met with nothing.  I still have some deeper dives to do for his information as I have learned of some other places to search.  I'm hoping I'll be able to discover something.

Then there is my maternal grandfather, Anthonie Hartman.  I have been told that he was in the Navy and he was an officer.  I have been told that before WWII broke out he was already stationed with his troops and they were heading out to do something.  My mother has written a lot of her history.  I need to go through her pages around the time of the war and see if she wrote any detailed information on his service.   Again, I am anxious to find any type of information on his life in the military.  As far as finding records on him I have, again, been met with snake eyes.  I spent a lot of the day today going through the National Archief and the CBG to see if I can find him anywhere and get any information on him.  Every link I searched through, hoping upon hope this might be the one.......NOPE.  Big snake eyes.  I finally ended up sending an email to someone at the National Archief hoping they can direct me where I might go to find his records.  They say it will take several weeks for them to respond, so I am in a pattern of a waiting game right now.   I just hope the response I get gives me some helpful information as far as a direction I should take.  

Finding records on my grandfathers military service is a high priority for me.  I will keep digging until I run out of places to search.  I hope God will be on my side and help light the way for me.  

Happy Birthday Catrijna Elisabeth Vuijls

 Today, December 25 marks the birthday of Catrijna Elisabeth Vuijls.  Catrijna was born on December 25 in 1769 in Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands.  She was born to parents Govert Vuijls and Alegonda Maas.  She was the 4th of 5 children.  There were 2 boys and 3 girls in the family. Of the 5 siblings in the family Catrijna and her younger brother Gerardus were the only siblings that lived into adulthood.  The first child, a boy, passed away at 10 years old.  The next child died at 4 years of age.  The next sister it is unknown at this time when she passed away.  Those records have not been recovered.  The youngest child lived to 63 years of age.

It is unknown what profession Catrijna's father was employed with.  None of the records I found listed his profession.  At the time of Catrijna's birth the Netherlands, still a Republic, was known as the "United Provinces of the Netherlands."  They were experiencing a period of relative decline following its "Golden Age" of immense economic and maritime power.  They still remained a significant player in international trade, with its merchants actively involved in global commerce.

At the age of 20 Catrijna married Manta van Nieuwland on May 5, 1789 in Rotterdam, South Holland, Netherlands.  As is custom in the Netherlands, you must notify the local municipality on your intention to marry at least two weeks before the ceremony.  For Catrijna and Manta, that notification took place on April 19, 1789.

Catrijna and Manta didn't waste any time having children.  They had their first of 12 children later that year.  Out of all their 12 children, unfortunately, only 4 children lived to adulthood - living to adulthood were Adrianus 50 years, Catrijna's namesake Catrina lived to 74 years of age, Alegonda 80 years, and Manta 79 years of age.  The other 8 children lived for 2 years, 1 year, 1 year, 4 years, 1 year, Stillborn child, 2 years and 1 year.  Such a heartbreaking life for this couple to have that many children (12) and more than half pass away in infancy.  

Sadly, Catrijna passed away at 50 years of age on May 7, 1819.  She left behind a  9 year old, 18 year old, 20 year old and a 30 year old.  Quite the age difference between the youngest and oldest child.

Her husband, Manta, lived for 4 more years and passed away on October 11, 1823 at the age of 57.

I would love to know more about Catrijna's life.  I will continue to search through records and try and find more documents or information on this family.  I would love to know what Manta did for a living.  With all those children I'm sure Catrijna stayed home and took care of the family.  Mostly I wonder what was in her heart as she lost child after child to some unknown cause or disease.  It must have broken her heart each time she had to bury another little baby in the ground.  I mourn for never having my own children, so to have 12 children and all but 4 die at 1 or 2 years of age - that's tragic.  

So, Catrijna, on this your Birthday, I honor you and the life you led and were dealt.  The strength you must have had to get through all the heartbreak.  At least now, with all your temple work being done, you will be able to be with all your children once again and raise those little ones that died so young into adulthood.

Happy Birthday Catrijna.

Catrijna and Manta are my 3rd Great Grandparents.

My Great-Granduncle - Hendrik

 Hendrik Willem Christiaan Spruit was born in December of 1851 in a small hamlet village, located in the province of Utrecht, named Barwoutswaarder.  He was the oldest of 12 children.  At the time of his birth there were probably around 400 people living in the village.  

Hendrik married Anna Maria Blom in 1877.  They resided in Haarlem where Hendrik worked as an Administrator in a Military Hospital.  Together they had 3 children.

In 1906 Hendrik was awarded a Knighthood of the Order of Orange-Nassau.  

The Order of Orange-Nassau is a Dutch order of chivalry that has six degrees of chivalry. An appointment to the order is granted for special merits towards society. In addition, awards also play a role in diplomatic relations with other countries. For example, it concerns social and cultural volunteer work. This does not only concern administrators, but also people who keep associations running and make organizations accessible to society through their efforts. Military personnel receive the Order of Orange-Nassau "with the Swords", which means that instead of a gold or silver laurel wreath, they wear a pair of crossed swords in the arms of the cross. The laurel wreath was also replaced by swords on the earlier medals of honor.

If you are wanting to know more about this order, you can go here.

At this writing it is unknown what Hendrik had done to be awarded this honor, but given his position as administrator in a military hospital I surmise it might have had something to do with his work in the hospital.  I have ordered some documents about this award.  It may take some time to get them, but I'm hoping these documents will contain some valuable information about the purpose of his receipt of this award. 

Hendrik passed away at the age of 61 in 1913 while living in Hilversum.   

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