Finding Jessie... a Case Study in Locating Female Ancestors

One of my recent clients hired me to solve a missing person case. In her recent travels to Friesland she visited with family who told her of a sister to her grandfather who allegedly traveled to Grand Rapids, Michigan. But they knew nothing further. What had happened to her? Did she make it to Grand Rapids or did she decide against it? Did she marry? Die young? Bear children?

My job was to find her and to determine what became of her.

Female relatives can be quite the daunting task to decipher: they marry and change their names. And if you don’t know where to look, or who they married, it is easy to lose track of them. For instance, in order to follow any sort of paper trail on a female relative it is pertinent to know: 1) whom they married so as to continue the trace and 2) where they married in order to locate the marriage document. Without any of this information it is a total crapshoot. You would have better luck in Vegas.

I took the case not expecting to find her. I really had some serious doubts because I had nothing to go on. I had no proof that she ever stepped foot in Grand Rapids and a preliminary check in immigration databases drew a blank.

So what to do?

Her name was Tjitske POSTMA. Tjitske POSTMA was born 8 May 1887 in Wymbritseradeel, Friesland. Her father was Hendrik Pieter POSTMA (1841-1921) and her mother was Petronella GROENHOF (1850-1919). This was the information I was armed with.

I knew I had to first place Tjitske in Grand Rapids. That would be my first step. Ancestry.com is placing many city directories online: Grand Rapids, Michigan is included. My client’s grandfather arrived in New York City in 1906. Tjitske would have been 17. The earliest that I would think Tjitske might come to America would be 1907 when she was 18. But why?

What would be the reason for her coming to America? It makes sense that she would go where she had relation, and in this case that would be to South Dakota where her brother, Douwe, resided. But she didn’t. Family legend claims she went to Grand Rapids.

I could think of two reasons why Tjitske might have chosen Grand Rapids as a destination. First, she may have married OR planned to marry. Perhaps her husband (or fiancé) had family in Grand Rapids.

I searched the marriage records for the Friesland Province within the Netherlands but came up blank. Tjitske did not marry there or anywhere else within the Netherlands. So she did not marry and then decide to come to Grand Rapids as a new couple to make a better life for themselves.

And the fact that I could find no immigration record for Tjitske was elusive.

I poured through the city directories for Grand Rapids. Voila… there was a Tjitske Postma listed in the 1910 directory, page 884, as a maid living at 618 Wealthy Avenue. Could this be her? Did she come to Grand Rapids because of the promise of work?

The next logical step was to determine who she was working for to see if there was some possible connection. I cross-referenced the address of 618 Wealthy Avenue within the street listing of the same directory, page 1471, and determined that the home was owned by a Mr. Harm Hamstra. Now who was he?

Come to discover that Harm Hamstra owned a huge Dutch import business based out of Grand Rapids. He was the one to go to for anything “Dutch”: wooden shoes, food products, decorations, etc. His booming business venture had him traveling to and from the Netherlands to trade for goods – and this meant returning to his homeland… in Friesland.

It is possible, though not proven, that Harm Hamstra during one of his visits was in search of a maid. And perhaps his family knew the Postma family and he was aware of Tjitske.

Looking back at the 1910 Federal Census I was able to find the Hamstra family listed but not with Tjitske. They had another servant girl listed by the name of Cora Monsma. Cora left the family to pursue a teaching position in Muskegon, Michigan, so there was a vacancy.

There was no evidence that Tjitske came to America to work for the Hamstra family, that is only theory. She could very well have come to America and learned of the maid position through her church.

In any regards Tjitske curiously disappears from Grand Rapids after 1910. I searched the City Directories post-1910 and could not find her.

This could mean that she married and changed her name or… worse case scenario, she had died.

I had discovered that the Hamstra family attended the Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. There was at that time three main Reformed bodies: the Reformed Churches of America, the Christian Reformed Church, and the Heritage Reformed Church (or True Dutch). That the Hamstra family attended the Christian Reformed Church made the church archives of this body the logical place to search for marriage records.

Again I came up blank. No banner ads (marriage announcements) had been published.

I then decided to search whether Tjitske had died.

Using FamilySearch.org I searched for “Tjitske Postma”. There were 1155 results. I refined this by adding the surnames of both father and mother: still way too many results and nothing relevant. Thinking that if Tjitske had been married and died young OR if her name had been Anglicized as so many Dutch names were, perhaps a better search might be for her parents.

I did another search for “Postma” adding a spouse surname of “Groenhof”. The first result on the list looked very promising. Found in the Michigan, Death Certificates database, 1921-1952, was a Jessie Veltman with parents, Heindrich Postma and Petermella Groenhof.

I clicked the link to discover that this Jessie Veltman died on 16 February 1929 at the age of 41. She was born on 8 May 1887. There she was!

Tjitske’s name had been Anglicized to “Jessie”. And apparently she had married into the Veltman family.

I then turned to SeekingMichigan.org where the State Archives have digitized many death certificates from the years 1897-1920. Jessie’s death didn’t occur until 1929; however, I have found numerous post-1920 death certificates that have been scanned.

I was in luck. Jessie’s death certificate was on file and it proved, without any doubt, that this was my client’s Great Aunt. From the certificate the following information can be gleaned:

1) that Jessie Veltman’s name was “Tjitske”.
2) that Jessie died from “cancer of the stomach”.
3) that Jessie was married to a Sijske Veltman.
4) that Jessie was born May 8, 1887 in the Netherlands.
5) that Jessie’s father was Hendrich Postma.
6) that Jessie’s mother was Peternella Groenhof.
7) that Jessie’s last residence was at 1200 Hall St. in Grand Rapids.
8) that Jessie died on February 16, 1929.
9) that Jessie was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery on February 19, 1929.

Some very decent information. From that information I was able to trace Jessie back to 1910, discover the man she married, follow them up to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, find the names of their children to include a pair of stillborn twins, follow them back to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and to the place of Jessie’s death.

I was also able to find living family who had an old picture album that once belonged to Jessie. It contained pictures of her family… pictures that the present owner of the album knew nothing about.

So the point of this article is: never, never, never, give up. You never know where you will find an important lead that will snowball into further information. All it takes is one simple document, one tiny piece of information, to unlock the door for you.

I had never expected to find Tjitske Postma. Finding her was a real treat for me… and for my client. And I definitely never expected to find pictures of her and of her family: pictures that may have been lost to all time. In order to break through brick walls in your family tree you need to think differently: look for hidden resources and consider all the possibilities.

And should you ever need a lending hand... my services are available at GRAncestors.com.