Hendrik Jan Warnshuis emigrated to Clymer, NY from Winterswijk. He was married three times. Hendrik Jan was not an agreeable man and had frequent problems with the law. His first two wives died under mysterious circumstances, although nothing was ever proven.

Life in the Netherlands

Hendrik Jan Warnshuis was born in Winterswijk on 19 April 1829 as the son of Garrit Jan Warnshuis and Catharina Grooters. He came from a family of craftsmen and farmers. His grandfather and one of his half-brothers were tailors, while Hendrik Jan and one of his other brothers worked as weavers. Father Garrit Jan was a farmer.

Emigration

Hendrik Jan Warnshuis emigrated from Winterswijk in 1847. He settled in Clymer, NY, together with several of his siblings and their mother.

The mysterious deaths of Hendrik Jan's wives

Carolina Meerdink, born in Winterswijk on 10 August 1836, was a daughter of Gerrit Jan Meerdink and Gesiena te Hofstee. She came to America in 1856 from Dorp 89 in Winterswijk with her widowed mother and twin brother, Jan Willem Meerdink.

Carolina made the mistake of marrying with Hendrik Jan Warnshuis. Circumstances of Carolina's death are suspicious. She and their baby daughter accompanied Hendrik Jan to the woodlot when he went to chop wood. Supposedly, one of the trees which he was felling accidentally fell on her head and killed her. The child she was holding was not injured. Her family was suspicious, but nothing was proved. This happened at sometime between 1860 and 1865 in French Creek, NY.

Another Meerdink girl, Anna Geertruid, fared no better. Anna Geertruid was born in Winterswijk on 3 October 1841 Winterswijk as the daughter of Teunes Meerdink and Catharina Gesiena Wesselink. She came to America with her parents in 1866 and became the second wife of Hendrik Jan.

Hendrik Jan Warnshuis and Anna Geertruid Meerdink were the parents of Anna Caroline, known as Carrie, who was born on 22 March 1868. The family also lived in French Creek. The story, as printed in the newspaper, was that on Christmas Eve of 1870 Anna Geertruid set out from home to visit her parents, a distance of about one mile. She did not reach her destination. About three weeks later her dead body was found buried in the snow. Supposedly, she had lost her way in a blinding snowstorm and perished. Foul play was again suspected, but nothing was ever proved.

As the family story goes, Hendrik Jan's third wife was Irish and he didn't get the best of her. Hendrik Jan died at some time after the 1880 census was taken. He was a reprobate, arrested several times for stealing, but most times avoided being put in jail.

Last week, my friend Mary Risseeuw from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin and I gave a presentation at the International Congress for genealogical and heraldic Sciences in Maastricht. The title was "We're all fresh and healthy. Emigration from the Netherlands to the United States in the 19th century. The slides are now available online.

I've just added a Dutch genealogy store to the site. In this store, visitors can buy books, DVDs and prints about Dutch genealogy, history and culture. I've selected publications that I think would benefit somebody researching his Dutch roots. The store is powered by Amazon. This website receives a commission for all sales, enabling this website to remain free.

When Dutch people arrived in the United States or other English-speaking countries, often their names got changed. This was either done on purpose, to make the name easier to write and remember, or by accident because the clerk didn't know how to spell the name and wrote it down phonetically. For this reason, a single family name can often be found in many different spellings in different documents.

This article gives an overview of the types of changes that names underwent and also gives a list of English versions of Dutch last names. This list is not complete and even for the names that are listed, chances are that many people with those names used even more exotic variants as well.

Death records are a part of the civil registration. A death record lists the following data:

• Place, date and time of death
• Names of parents
• Names of spouses
• Name, profession and age of the one registering the birth
• Names, profession and age of the witnesses
• Often: address where the death took place

Utrecht is a province in the middle of the Netherlands. It borders on Gelderland in the east, Gelderland and Zuid-Holland in the south, Zuid-Holland and Noord-Holland in the west and Noord-Holland and Flevoland in the north.

The capital city of Utrecht is called Utrecht as well. Other larger towns are:

• Amersfoort
• Zeist
• Soest
• Nieuwegein

The first larger emigration wave from the Netherlands took place in the seventeenth century. A new colony was established in the Americas, which was called the New Netherlands. After a rough start, this colony attracted emigrants from all over Europe.