Where Is John Stap Going Today?

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....

Happy 90th Anniversary!

Happy 90th wedding anniversary to my Great Grandparents, John and Alice Stap, married on 12 October 1924!

Wedding Wednesday - Common Ancestor

My grandparents, Lloyd and Catherine Broersma are 5th cousins. That means that they have the same 4th great grandparents. My grandparents were married in 1951. 183 years before their marriage, their common ancestors were married on 5 March 1768, in Paesens in the Netherlands. Their names were Sybe Jans de Jong and Dieuwke Dirks.

I recently got to visit the church that they were married in, in Paesens. It was built sometime in the 13th century originally as a Catholic church. Later during the Protestant reformation in the 16th century, most churches in Friesland were converted to the Dutch Reformed church.


The church is still in use today and I got the chance to go inside and look around. It has been remodeled inside, but still has a traditional look similar to what would have been over the centuries.


I thought it was pretty cool to see where these two family lines met in history. Another interesting thing was that on the wall it had the names of the pastors of this church through the years. So in 1768 the pastor who married my 6th great grandparents would have been Jan Adam Kesler.

     

Jacob Hendriks Stap Memorial

66 years ago, on 30 October 1945, my GG Grandpa Jacob Hendriks Stap died in Lynden, WA. On a recent trip up there I was able to find the program from his memorial service and I scanned it.


The next time that I'm up in Lynden, I think I'll take a small broom with me to the cemetery and get a better picture of his grave. The grass stuck in the letters makes it more difficult to read. I wasn't an expert grave-picture-taker back then.

Gerben Jans and Dieuwke Douwes 290th Anniversary

On the Stap side of my family, the furthest person I have found in my research is Gerben Jans. He was born around 1700, possibly as early as 1690, in the Ferwerderadeel municipality of Friesland in the Netherlands. 290 years ago, on 26 October 1721, Gerben Jans married Dieuwke Douwes in the village of Hallum. They are my 8 Great Grandparents.

Here is a picture from Tresoar's Flickr page of the village of Hallum. This is from a collection of engravings called "Vaderlandsche Gezigten" published by K.F. Bendorp and J. Bulthuis around 1790. And is that guy doing what I think he's doing next to that building?


I haven't had the chance to visit the Netherlands yet, but I did do a quick search for pics of Hallum and found this one that is of a similar view of a street looking toward the church.


From their marriage they had at least 8 children, all baptized in Hallum:
1. Jan b: bef 1 Nov 1722
2. Grietje b: bef 9 Apr 1724
3. Douwe b: bef 11 Nov 1725
4. Froukje b: bef 25 May 1727
5. Trijntje b: bef 13 Mar 1729
6. Barteld b: bef 16 Apr 1730
7. Jacob b: bef 1 Feb 1733
8. Jetske b: bef 11 Jul 1734

For more info on their descendants, check out my stuff on World Connect on Rootsweb.com

2 wedding anniversaries in 1 day!

Today is the 60th anniversary of my Grandparents, Lloyd and Kay Broersma (see previous post). But it is also the anniversary of my Great Grandparents, John and Alice Stap.

John Stap and Aaltje "Alice" de Jong were married 87 years ago, on 12 Oct 1924.