Introductions

Hello, anyone who happens to be reading this!  Welcome to my genealogy page! 

I'll introduce myself in a bit, but first, a few words about this site.  If you want to look at just the genealogy I have on this site, click Genealogy Reports in the menu above (please note, these posts each have their own Ahnentafel numbering system).  Profiles will be more in-depth posts about an individual, or maybe a couple of individuals, but it will be primarily in narrative format. Stories is just what it sounds like, as are Photos and Corrections & Additions. News will be where you can find my articles about specific genealogical topics- like where to look if you want to research people from the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands.  There are also labels and a search bar along the right hand side if you want or need to quickly find an individual.

Now for the introductions. As you may have guessed from the title of this page, my name is Kristi.  I've been researching my family history with my mom's help since I was in middle school, and have grown more and more interested in it as time has gone on.  We've been able to make such discoveries as having ancestors on the Mayflower, a third-great-grandfather who died in a shipwreck on the Great Lakes, some cousins in the White House, and another cousin who died in the worst school-related disaster in US history (the Bath School Disaster).  On one side of my family, I am a fourth (and in some lines fifth) generation Michigander, and on the other, the family has barely even been in the US that long. My family, as near as we can tell, is Dutch, English, German, Scottish, and Irish.

Thanks for checking out my site!

The Mystery of Alexander Petrie

Every so often in genealogy, you come across a line that flummoxes you.  You know an individual exists but can find only scant information about him or her, and often you end up hitting a brick wall.  It's the most frustrating thing about genealogy (yes, even more frustrating than having to pay for access to records that are otherwise free, haha).

Provision in the Great Depression

Of all the people affected by the Great Depression in the United States, perhaps farm families- particularly those in the Dust Bowl- were most affected.  South Dakota was not as badly affected as, say, Oklahoma, but they still had it rough.

Jacob Walburg had emigrated from the Netherlands in 1915, first to Iowa; by 1920 he had moved with his brother's family to South Dakota.  In 1922 he married Minnie te Krony, and they eventually had seven children.  (You can read their family histories under the "Genealogy Reports" tab above.)  The Depression hit their young family hard- poor farming conditions and six to eight mouths to feed led to many struggles.  On at least one occasion they ran out of food and didn't know where their next meal would come from.  I quote now from a 2010 letter from their oldest daughter to her brother and sister-in-law.

The folks had a hard time feeding us all.  It was often bread and milk for supper, usually pancakes for breakfast.  I don't remember cereal from a box.  Oatmeal, ya- and sometimes I'd eat leftover oatmeal cold.  We often had a "stucky broad met net & stroup" [some sort of bread with molasses?] for breakfast, even supper sometimes.  I don't ever remember going hungry, but I remember our Dad's prayer at the breakfast table one morning for food.  The flour was gone and eggs and coffee.  I think it was fall.  Dad had been walking behind the plow so the horses would have it a bit easier with plowing when they didn't have him riding on the seat of the plow.  Well anyway that was the morning after breakfast he plowed up what was left of an old pocketbook (billfold, maybe) bills in it were rotted away, but there were coins, enough to buy flour, eggs, and syrup and a pail of tobacco.  I think we were all so happy.

I have been told that the money found in the wallet (which, by the way, contained no identification, so they had no idea who it belonged to- in any case, it seems to have been there for a while) was enough to tide them over until Jacob got a job with the WPA, I believe.  The money in that wallet helped them get through that extremely difficult time.

Needless to say, I'm extremely grateful that God provided for the family- I maybe wouldn't be here if things hadn't happened the way they did.  And even in the depths of the Depression, there was still hope and faith.