Monday, March 16, 2015

Where Is John Stap Going Today?

John Stap Car 1920s

My great grandpa John Stap grew up in Lynden, Washington. It was, and still is, a small town. Today it  has about 13,000 people, but back in 1910 when the Stap family started living there, it had about 1,000 people.

They have their own paper, the Lynden Tribune, and because it's a small town, they had a tendency to print things in the newspaper on the everyday things that people were doing. On Newspapers.com, they have some searchable copies of the Lynden Tribune from 1908-1922. And since they liked to print the goings on about everyone, I found some fun things my great grandpa did.

November 23, 1916 


March 15, 1917


January 1, 1920

The cool thing is that you can see his handwriting in the 1920 federal census for Lynden.

Now, the mentions are not limited to John. There are many others from his family. Here is one that I liked about his mom, Trijntje.

July 31, 1919

This next mention about John's older brother Henry I found particularly loaded. Henry fought in France during World War I, and had been injured because of the gas that was used by the Germans. His return home had been delayed because he was too sick to travel. This one sentence simply states that he is back.

April 17, 1919

A few years later, Henry Stap would contract tuberculosis, and as a result had to be treated.

July 20, 1922

Not all news was sad news though. There were many more mentions of births and other things. This last one that I'll share was a discovery of a story that I hadn't ever heard before, about John's dad Jacob Stap. After finding it I asked relatives if they had heard it, and no one had because it had happened before any of them were born. So I guess that because of the diligence of this small town newspaper, at least one more family story has been preserved for history.

December 30, 1920

I hope that someday that they will add more newspapers to this collection. John Stap lived in Lynden the rest of his life and died in 1995. I wonder how many more parties and debates he attended during that time. I would like to find more stories someday....