Sweere: A Book of Generations

Fifty-five years ago…

Source: Looking Back, Chilton Times-Journal, May 9, 2002, page 13

People sleep peaceably
in their beds at night
only because rough men stand ready
to do violence on their behalf.
~George Orwell

Veterans Day

World War I ended with the armistice, which went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918.

November 11 then became known as Armistice Day, first recognized as an official U.S. holiday in 1926, and a national U.S. holiday 12 years later.

On June 1, 1954, the name of this holiday was changed to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans.

New legislation in 1968 changed the national commemoration of Veterans Day to the fourth Monday in October. It soon became apparent, however, that November 11 was a date of historic significance to many Americans. Therefore, in 1978 Congress returned the observance to its traditional date.
Our American family has many individuals who have answered the Call to Duty. Thank you…to all who have courageously answered that call.

This news clipping shows the grandsons of Maria Johanna Sweere, sent to me by their proud mom….thanks Donna!

Word from a proud aunt, Annemieke tells us that the Sweere family has expanded to Russia…

The Sweere Clan welcomes our newest angel, Lukas Daniël Sweere, born 4 September 2006 in Moscow, Russia to Michael Johan Gerard Sweere and Natalia Fedyushina.

Grampa Hans sent a picture:

I received an email this month from Hans Sweere, who is the grandson of Gerardus Sweere, b. 1870 and Hendrica de Groot.

This is an exciting event because Gerardus is the oldest brother of our founding American patriarchs, Theodorus and Hendrickus Sweere by their father’s first marriage to Henrika Arts.

In the information I received from Hans, he suggests that our earliest proven Sweere, Hermannus Sweere, was married twice, first to Anna Maria Nabben and second to Henrica Creemers. I had been aware of these marriages of Hermannus Sweere recorded in Boxmeer, but have no proof that the Hermannus is question is the same man.

The marriage records of Gerardus Johannes Sweeren, b. 1797 in Boxmeer, married 1827 to Jacoba Vermaeten states that Hermannus and Anna Maria Nabben’s are his parents.

However, I have no marriage records for Hermannus and Anna Maria to tell me who Hermannus’ parents are. Later, I have a marriage record for Hermannus Sweere and Henrica Creemers, which states that the parents of Hermannus are Cornelis Sweere and Dorothea Verhaert.

If Hans is correct and the Hermannus of both marriages are one and the same, then we have moved back a generation and now the task will be to figure out who the father of this Cornelis Sweere is.

I suspect this Cornelis is the oldest son of Adrianus Corneliszn Sweere and Anna Antonisse Anemaat but I need proof.

The digging continues.

-ex animo ~J

Late afternoon update:

I received another email from Hans stating that my suspicion is correct. His records show that the grandfather of our Hermannus, is in fact, Adrianus Corneliszn Sweere, b. 1715 Made en Drimmelen, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. This break through effectively takes our Sweere line to the mid-1600’s.

Cees..we’re related!

~J

Mathias Leimkuhler arrived from Prussia in New York on December of 1856 with Wilhelm Duren via the ship Constitution.

Together, the two men traveled to Cazenovia in south central Wisconsin, where they carved out their homes and raised big families in Westford Township along the banks of the Little Baraboo River in Richland County.

In 1864, Mathias mustered in with 3rd Wisconsin Calvary Volunteer Infantry, 52nd Regiment, Company E to serve with the Union in the War of the Rebellion.

His name is recorded as Mattias G. Leimkiller on page 591 of The Roster of Wisconsin Volunteers, War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865 and Mathias G. Limkihler on page 919 of the Fifty-second Regiment Infantry, Company E.

In 1878 at age 50, Matt Leimkuehler died the week before his eleventh child and baby daughter, Maggie, was born.

His his young wife, Gert, age 38, was left with all her eleven children under the age of 19 living in her house.

Two years later, Gertrude (Bauer) Leimkuehler and her eleven children are recorded on the 1880 US Federal Census.

Mathias Godfried Leimkühler (1828-1878) was my third-great grandfather.
He is buried in Saint Anthony’s Catholic Cemetery in Germantown,
just outside the city limits of Cazenovia, Wisconsin.

On 28 March, 1888, ten years after Mathias Leimkeuhler died, his seventh child, Mary Leimkuehler, married Nicholas Jax, the son of Civil War Veteran, Peter Jax, and his wife, Anna Margareta (Steffes) Jax.

Peter Jax served in the War of the Rebellion with the 12th Wisconsin Volunteer infantry, Company F.

On the 12th of May in 1891, Mathias’ oldest son, Hubert Alexander Leimkuehler married Anna Adelman, the daughter of his neighbor, Benedict J. Adelman, who also fought in The War of the Rebellion.

~ex animo~J

On Saturday, July 15, 2006 Myrtle (Schmidt) Sweere was honored by a Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Carrington, North Dakota. A flower arrangement of pink carnations, red roses, and purple filler was ordered. At the gravesite each daughter released a pink balloon and lay a red rose on the gravesite.

Myrtle’s ashes were then buried alongside her late husband and venerable patriarch, Leo (Alphonso) Sweere and her final resting place was marked by a stone that matches his. After the graveside service a luncheon was served at noon in the church hall.
On July 16, space #1 at Carrington City Park was reserved for a catered family reunion.

Donna (Amdahl) Marvel was kind enough to take pictures of the gravestones and email them for use on this site. Along with Leo and Myrtle, she also sent (finally!) a picture of Theodorus Johannes Sweere’s headstone.

Richard Theodore Sweere attended the memorial for Myrtle, and is planning a stop in Butler, Minnesota on his way back to the midwest. He has promised to take lots of pictures in the Holy Cross Cemetery there. Stay tuned!

ex animo,

~J

The descendents of Frank and Pauline (van Steenvoort) Dykhoff will host a family reunion July 1st and 2nd, 2006 in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Frank is the third oldest child of Gerardus and Johanna (Ploegmakers) Dijkhoff, whose family immigrated to the United States from Lithoijen, Noord Brabant, Netherlands in 1908.

All Dykhoff descendents are invited. Several events are planned for the weekend, ending with a picnic at Wylie Park and Storybook Land.

If anyone is interested email me for contact information. A head count is needed by June 1st so meal arrangements can be finalized.

Wouldn’t it would be great to meet other descendents of the George and Johanna Dykhoff family?

Sixteen new ancestors were added to the Dykhoff lineage this past week. Twenty one civil records of marriage were also added.

ex animo ~J

Running reports and documenting sources.

I found time to scrutinize the Database Statistics today and inspected the info it was drawing on for the Top Ten “Longest Lived” individuals. I knew there were inconsistencies and looked at those briefly several times in the past few months, but it was a low priority task. Today I found time to review and verify the top five candidates.

The original list looked like this:

1. Petrus (Piet) Paulus Antonius Mulder 115 years 351 days
2. Lena 112 years
3. Cornelis Sweere 111 years
4. Adrianus Corneliszn Sweere 107 years
5. Truus Dijkhoff 106 years 313 days
6. Pauline Ernestine Catherina Van Steenvoort 105 years 346 days
7. Mathijs-Hubert Rutten 104 years 256 days
8. Cornelius Hendricus Sweere 103 years 98 days
9. Suzanne Antisdel 99 years 265 days
10. Mary Louise Buysse 99 years 259 days

One glance at Petrus Mulder’s birth date raised red flags. I had no source documented for his individual entry. His parents were shown as Antonius Maria Mulder married to Theodora Maria Anna Dijkhoff. Antonius’ birth date is documented in Brabant Archives as 17 Sep 1857. It’s unlikely that he would have a son born in 1870.

Source documents also show Antonius and Theodora married in 1899 with 5 children born between 1 Apr 1900 through 26 Jan 1905. After some hunting around in the Brabant and Gelders Archives, I determined that the data for Petrus Mulder was non-verifiable.

A search of name variations in the archives for a Petrus born in 1870 yielded zero. Nothing connected him to those parents, so he (and his wife, Stephina Cornelia Kooimans) have been removed from our family tree. I suspect they were a result of the database merge I did about a year ago, since I had isolated fragments of Dykhoff information from another GEDCOM in my original file.

Next, I looked at “Lena”, wife of Charles Horsch. She was an easy fix, since source documents were cited for death, burial date, and burial location. Her date of death was incorrect by nearly 20 years at 1981 while the source stated 1963.

Cornelis Sweere was recorded at 111 years due to an estimated death date based on an event in one of his son’s lives. I found a death record in the archives that fits his age and place of residence, with no other individual contesting that identity, so for the time being I believe this is his correct death date.

Adrianus Corneliszn Sweere’s age was listed at 107 years also due to an estimated death date based on an event in one of his son’s lives. With no corresponding death date source verification, I simply removed the “aft 1827″ from his death date field and he was removed from the calculation.

Truus Dijkhoff was investigated and the same issues applied to her data as to Petrus (#1 above) only the undocumented birth date recorded was earlier than her father’s recorded date. I found no birth records, so left cleared the birth date field and left her in the database for further research on her marriage to determine whether or not she is a daughter of Jan Coen Dijkhoff and Geertruida Liefkins.

For Paulina van Steenvoort the birth date of 5 Jul 1896, Kampenhout, Belgium, is unverified. The hunt for this source jumps up on the priority list, since her family will be gathering this summer for a family reunion. Until proven otherwise, Paulina reigns the list of Longest Living individuals.

You’re the Queen, Paulina!

Locating sources in Belgium will take effort, since I haven’t had luck in the past, finding comprehensive record indexes with an English option.

For that same reason, I skipped Mathijs Rutten after a quick search of Genlias turned up zilch. The Rutten family spreads along both sides of the Noord-Barabant / Belgium border.

Of the three remaining candidates I’m certain of the dates for Cornelius Dykhoff and Mary Buysse since they died within a month of each other less than a year ago. Suzanne Antisdel has a documented death date, but I need to confirm her birthdate. The present date seems reasonable but I’m out of time for this day. And after those corrections five new individuals have moved into the Top Ten Longest Lived list.

ex animo ~J

Update: 02 May 2006- The United States Social Security Death index confirms the birth date for Pauline is, in fact, 5 Jul 1896, which makes her the Longest Lived Individual in the database.

You Will Never Be Forgotten…

Charles George Rutten
3 February 1917 - 26 February 2006

Awarded the Bronze Star for his courage with
7th Division, Company H, 32nd Infantry
in four WWII battles against Japanese forces:
Attu, Kwajalien, Leyte and Okinawa.

Well, cousins, spring is upon us and I actually saw the first fat robin 3 weeks ago. Work continues behind the scenes on both direct and collateral lines. The second week of this month I spent an entire day cleaning up stray import source notes…5000+ of those little buggers were annihilated in one sitting. I finally finished standardizing the place names made easy by TNG through an administrative “merge” function. Whew.

Rollie is back from his spring break in Texas and is resting from his vacation, but he still found time to email on return and ask if it might be a good idea to browse news articles and obituaries for a lead on his aunt Maria’s date and place of death. Which reminds me, I have been meaning to get a “Most Wanted” page built for our brick walls ie; those indivduals who seemingly dropped off the face of the earth, or into it, as the case may be. I finally got the Adopt a POW page created.

So…I got to thinking about what Rollie said about newspapers, and I spent a few evenings this week browsing articles from the Sheboyan Press. It took hours to make my way through 20 years of scanned images, but I found my great-grandpa Albert’s obituary, the auction ad for the sale of his farm by his widow 3 years later, and the wedding article for her second marriage.

While going through the individual entries, a clear pattern emerged. 95% of the news articles linked to the search term “Richart” were linked to the social life of my grandpa’s cousin’s wife, Mrs. Anton Richart of Elkhart Lake in Sheboygan county, Wisconsin.

I struggled not to dislike this woman after waiting for images to load only to find blurbs of who-visited-who for the weekend. I try to see the good side of it, but somehow, I still feel if there had been soap operas during her era, my research would go so much faster!.

Rollie sent more dates with expressed wishes that something will turn up but I’m certain if there as a funeral in the family during her marriage, rest assured MRS. ANTON RICHART will have made sure we know of it. If you don’t believe me, here’s the proof:

There are now 6806 souls in the database with hundreds more waiting in the wings. Click on my GoogleAds and it generates spare change to support this site.

Welcome new users: Carol Sweere, Catherine Sweere, Jeff Sweere, Kevin Sweere, Jim Sweere and two Dykhoff descendants from Lakota, ND: Cindy Falk Larsen and Connie Falk Rose, who have generously volunteered to work on the data entry tasks of their line.

Thank you Cindy and Connie!

Happy Birthday, Sonny, Heather and Peggy.

ex animo ~J

I found an image of Theodorus’ WW1 Draft Registration Card. Here’s what his signature looks like:

I noticed there are a lot of new visitors to the website. I’m averaging 45 page views per day now. The odd thing is that these are page views for living individuals.

If you haven’t been to the website before, please take a moment to read the Privacy Policy. Also, if you believe you are part of this family or connected to the family, please consider registering for a User account. Details for all individuals are visible to Users who have logged in.

Lastly, don’t waste time copying incomplete information from the pages. As a User, full Group Sheets are available, and I’m working on a project behind-the-scenes that will make a text file of the complete tree available to Users, who can then open and print it from their home computer.

Membership has benefits!

ex animo ~J

99 new individuals have been added to the Adrian Hofland line, including several ancestor records from Noord-Hollands Archief that I didn’t have previously. Many new birth, marriage and death records were also added for exising individuals of that line, but I didn’t keep track as I updated those.

One interesting observation I made as I was “sorting” Hofland names into family groups…there are several Norwegian families in the Minnesota counties surrounding Otter Tail that have the same surname, which appears to be a variation of “Hovland”. Those of you who know the history behind the Dutch abd Norwegians in that neck of the woods might get a chuckle out of that bit of trivia.

ex animo ~J

There are 6,288 individuals in the database as of this moment. If you visited the website between last Friday and this morning you may have noticed the server down or a problem with page loading. There were 3 intermittent server problems that I noticed, and behind the scenes I had a database table corruption, which I assume was caused by the server problem.

Because of the corruption I was unable to add records until I had time to troubleshoot the cause and make a repair. I reloaded that particular table data last night and as far as I can tell, everything is working up to par since. Thank the back-up ghods>

Meanwhile, I’ve continued to gather birth, marriage and death records. A conservative estimate of those that I still need to enter sits well over 1000. Most of those records are for collateral lines of descent; names who married into the Sweere line.

Because most of the records are entered into indexes in alphabetical order, I have found that the most efficient way for me to get them into our database is to copy-paste them into a text file, and then work within the text file, by sorting them into families. It saves me time not having to switch between families for each individual alphabetically arranged record while I’m making additions.

Expect to see Dykhoff, Buysee, Stollenwerk, Hofland, Riddering, De Bruyn, Rutten, Geiser and Leimkeuhler additions in the near future from the more recent generations.

I have the following United States Sweere individuals ‘unplaced’ in my notes. If anyone can tell me who they belong to, I would appreciate the help.

Debra Ann Sweere married to John Carl Berg, Minnesota.
Barbara Mary Sweere married to Dean Joseph Frisch, Minnesota.
Patricia Alvina Sweere married to James Normand Murphy, Minnesota.
Jacqueline Rae Sweere married to Duane Jerome Polman in Minnesota.
Rachael Ann Sweere married to Robert Michael Reardon in Minnesota.
Judith Kay Sweere married to Michael James Richter in Minnesota.
Timothy James Sweere married to Julie Suzanne Mellies in Minnesota.
Gerald Sweere married to Betty Jean Johnson in Minnesota.
Brian John Sweere married to Kelly Jo Sandvig in Minnesota.
Judith M. Sweere married to Gary L. DeRosier in Minnesota.
Sherri L. Sweere married to Justin A. Erickson in Minnesota.
Shirley M. Sweere married to Ross M. Weber in Minnesota.
? Sweere, married to Kim D. Marquardt in Outagamie,Wisconsin, 1978.

A special thanks to Dick & Wilma Sweere, Rollie Richards, Cees Sweere, Daniel Meyers, and John & Kathy Sweere for their patronage. Your help is appreciated more than you know.

A warm welcome to new users, Leslie Sweere and Kelly (Hoff) Clifton-Bulger. It’s great to have you aboard!

ex animo ~Jodi

142 birth records were added this week from the Minnesota Department of Health’s Minnesota Birth Index, 1935-2002. Of those, approximately 20 were pre-existing. 21 birth records were added from the California Department of Health’s California Birth Index, 1905-1995.

16 marriage records were added from the Minnesota Department of Health’s Minnesota Marriages Index, 1997-2001. 21 marriage records were added from the Wisconsin Department of Health’s Wisconsin Marriages Index, 1973-1997.

All new citations include the certificate number.

Earlier in the week I spent a few evenings working on my son’s surname line, Korth. I made great progress via the censuses. Along those lines, I finally discovered why a search of the 1930 census didn’t turn up any Sweere’s in Minnesota (we know they were there!). Apparently the census indexer incorrectly listed the name as Sweese. Boo. Hiss. I found the mistake by utilizing a surrounding neighbor’s search function on the index. I knew the Sweere farm was near the Polman farm in Butler, so I after coming up with nothing on several searches I finally searched the neighbor’s of Polman’s and walla! There was Henry and Willemina Sweere in Butler township…with their name misspelled a Sweese! More Polman info was added, too.

It’s all good.ex animo ~J

I had always thought Grace (Sweere) Ridderink’s birth name was Gerarda Maria. I’m not even sure now where I got that information. I found her birth record in the Civil Archives this morning. It turns out that her birth name is actually Gradina Maria. I’ve not seen this name before, in all the years I’ve been poking through the “Dutch” records. Gradina. It’s pretty, isn’t it?

I found Gradina’s younger brother Cornelis’ birth record as well. His middle name is recorded on it, so that info is new to our records. He was baptized “Cornelis Johannes“.

Now, of Theodore’s children, only John Henry remains in my database with an Americanized name. I’m still waiting for the record of his birth to appear and confirm my suspiscion that he was baptized with the Latin form of that name, “Johannes Hendrickus”.

ex animo ~J

When I first began researching the Sweere line back in 1998 I had a small file fom my brother, Mark, to follow leads on. He had this information from another Sweere in the Netherlands whom he made contact with. There were no sources included with this file.

I spent about a year dabbling with US-Sweere data before I joined a Dutch genealogy list and a generous spirit there pointed me in the direction of Genlias, a website for searching the Netherlands Civil Archives. In the years since, as more records have been transcribed and added to the Genlias databases, I’ve found a goldmine of information there.

But one thing always puzzled me.

Mark had listed a son, Jacobus, born 2 April 1871, for my gr-gr-grandfather, Gerardus Sweere and his first wife, Hendricka Arts. I had often wondered what became of this mysterious Jacobus, the step-brother of my great-grandfather, Hendrickus. I found no evidence of him over the years; no marriage record, no death record. Had he emigrated like his younger brothers? If so, where did he disappear to?

The mystery of Jacobus was solved this week when I discovered a marriage record for a daughter of Gerardus and Hendricka (Arts) Sweere whom I had not known of previously. Of course, I was delighted to find a record of Jacoba…

Further research revealed a birth record for Jacoba Sweere, born 2 April 1871 in Oploo-Sint Anthonis. There is no mention on the record of “tweeling” (twin) for Jacoba. It appears then, that ‘Jacobus’ was an error, and without solid evidence that he actually existed, his name has been deleted from my database.

One more note of importance concerning the birth of Jacoba: her mother, Hendricka Arts, died on 20 April, 1871, eighteen days after her birth. She left behind a newborn daughter, a one year-old son, Gerardus, and a five year-old daughter, Maria.

Less than a year later, her husband found a second wife to care for his young children, whom he married on 5 Jan 1872. She was my gr-gr-grandmother, Johanna Hopmans, who gave him two more sons and a daughter, and she outlived him by more than 25 years.

Interesting stuff, yes?

ex animo ~J

Gerald Martin Sweere, 76, died Jan. 12, 2006, at Merit Care Hospital in Fargo, N.D. He was born Oct. 9, 1929, in Otter Tail County to Harry and Julia (DeBruyn) Sweere.

My deepest condolences go out to the family of Gerald. Expect to see his obituary posted here soon.

I found a few hours each day this week to peck away at more editing. I went through some old emails that Dick forwarded and entered more details from those. I’m grateful that he saved them from back around 2003 since I had lost them having to reformat my hard drive.

I’ve been slowly making my way through my copy of “Our Family Tree” by Verla Davie Sweere, wife of William C. Sweere. It’s tedious work because I’m not a great typist, and also because I find myself looking up counties for nearly every family.

There’s a method to this madness.

My goal is to record vital information for each individual so that any future genealogist who looks at this work can easily find the source of that information.

In order to do so, each person should have a first, middle and last name entered. The middle name is critical in some cases where names are repeated from generation to generation. You can see this tradition in my own paternal line where there are several men named “John” in every generation. In some cases there are even men named “John” in the same generation which have the same middle name! This is where the birth certificate comes into play. A birth certificate gives the mother’s maiden name, and that’s a definite way to determine which family this “John” belongs to.

But where do you find the correct birth certificate? In the county of birth. So, the county of birth then becomes an important piece of the puzzle, expecially because there are towns and cities in every state with the same names. This is where FireFox comes in handy. With tabbed browsing, I can have the page of the individual I’m working on open in one tab, and the Geographic Name Information Server (GNIS) page open in the next tab. GNIS is the search page for place names on the US Geological Survey website.

The same holds true for marriage and death records, as they are recorded in the county where the event took place.

As I said, it’s tedious work. But I’m doing it right and that’s what matters to me. It’s all good.

ex animo ~J

I found the death record for Johanna Hopmans, mother of the US Sweere-patriarchs, Theodorus and Hendrickus.

I began to explore the Van den Heuvel line and made a large amount of additions there. This Van den Heuvel line is of particular interest to me because both Theodorus and Hendrickus married sisters from that same Van den Heuvel family, and their own sister, Johanna Huberta Sweere, married Martinus Van den Heuvel, a brother of those two sisters.

The Van de Heuvel line is somewhat aggravating to explore in the Civil Archives because there are literally thousands of records for this prolific ‘of the Heuvel’ name. This means I have to narrow my search parameters considerably in order to capture the records I’m interested in.

The mother of the Van den Heuvel siblings who married into the Sweere line was Johanna Van de Logt. I made a large amount of additions in the Van de Logt line today as well.

ex animo ~J

I try to find a few hours every week to review individual data and edit the information in order to achieve a uniform presentation. When I first uploaded my original data from FamilyTreeMaker, a lot of source and note errors were generated due to incompatible event tags between that program and the TNG sitebuilding program I’m using for website presentation. Little by little, those errors are being corrected.

Today I made my way from the beginning of the Sweere(n) line on down, editing sources and notes along the way, and comparing what I had to what information is available in the Noord-Brabant Civil Archives. This will be an ongoing task, since information at that archive is continously updated as new records are transcribed.

Cornelis Adriaan Sweeren is the earliest individual in the Sweere ancestral line. Until now, I only had solid proof of one son, Adrianus (b. 1715), by him with Magaretha Maertens van Gils. Today I was thrilled to discover the birth record of a second son, Cornelius (b. 1717). This gives me a whole new line of at least ten generations to pursue!

I also completed the addition, with reference to the Civil Archives, the offspring of Adrianus Sweere, born 04 Jul 1829, Standaartbuiten, Noord Brabant, Netherlands, m. Johanna Jacoba van Baal. Those individuals are:

1. Gerardus Godefridus Sweere, b. 10 Apr 1855, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant
2. Cornelis Hubertus Sweere, b. 01 June 1856, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant
3. Jacobus Josephus Sweere, b. 1859, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant
4. Elisabeth Antonia Sweere, b. 15 Feb 1865, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant
5. Johannes Antonius Sweere, b. 05 Mar 1874, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant
6. Antonia Jacoba Sweere, b. 11 Jul 1875, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant
7. Godefridus Maria Sweere, b. 08 Jan 1877, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant
8. Maria Elisabeth Sweere, b. 06 Feb 1861, Willemstad, Noord-Brabant

Last but not least, I discovered the death record of my own great-grandfather’s son, Leonardus Johannes Josephus Sweere. Previously, all I knew from informal family information was that there was a son named Leo born in 1903 who did not immigrate to the US with the rest of family. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for Leo’s birth record. RIP, Leo.

ex animo ~J