Jan Havenith and Ida Magermans - Marriage Plate

This beautiful plate was made by Frans van Gerwen, a cousin of Ida Magermans, who worked at a factory that made that porcelain. This factory called Mosa, is based in Maastricht and is still going.

These days the focus seems to be on tiles and since 2005 have had a turnover of 100 million. However, searching the Internet reveals a healthy market place for the old Mosa plates and ceramics.

I've always appreciated this plate as I saw it hanging on the wall everytime I visited my grandparents. It's in such amazing condition for a plate that's over 60 years old.

The company can be found here.

Ida Magermans: social smoking

When I visited my grandparents bac in 2017, I spent a lot of time talking to them about current events as well as past events.

My opa (Jan Havenith) suffers from COPD from smoking when he was younger and from this he told me that oma (Ida Magermans) used to smoke in social situations. He mentioned that the height of her smoking was while they lived in the US, but that when the returned to the Netherlands, she eventually stopped.

I'm certainly glad that she did. It would be horrible if they both had to suffer this horrendous condition.

Friese staartklok

This clock is very important to me as it has been hanging on the wall of my grandparents houses my whole life. In fact, it has seen many generations and was bought by Johannes Saris (1873-1959) and then passed down to his eldest child, Hubertina Saris.

Web Resources: Google Street View

When conducting genealogical research, I find that it's far too easy to fall into the trap of spending a lot of time chasing birth, marriage, and death records to further the line you're working on. Often (depending on the country you're researching), these BMD records, along with other sources, such as obituaries will provide addresses of where our ancestors lived at the time.

So, when I want a break from BMD records, I head straight over to Google and have a look at Street View. Of course, houses may well have changed since your ancestors resided there - or that street you're looking for may not even exist these days, but it's enjoyable to have a virtual wander around these locations.

Web Resources: zoekakten.nl

24/07/2018, ETA: THIS WEBSITE HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN.

This website is a fantastic in that it has allowed me to go from reading transcripts on wiewaswie to actually being able to view and download the original documents.  This website interfaces with the Family Search database and provides links to the exact document you're looking for - often with an index for easier searching.

While the website is only in Dutch, copying words into Google Translate provides translations that will help you select the right type of document for the information you are seeking. I'll take you through a simple search by way of introducing you to this amazing resource.

Family Tabletop Games

I've always enjoyed tabletop games, mainly playing different board games. For the past few years, the tile-placement game, Carcassonne, has been our game of choice due to the mechanic of picking tiles blind out of a bag, which provides a randomness that keeps the game interesting - and, of course, the many expansions that provides a wide range of extra tiles and features.

Carcasonne has been played by three generations of my family; myself, my mum and my niece. However, there is a game that has been played by at least five generations of my family over many decades. The game is called veertigen, veertigleggen or the name favoured by my family: Jokeren.

Resolving a name confusion

In this post, I'll be writing about a brick wall that I've faced for some time. I'll write about the method
I used to get past it. While it may not be exactly the same as a name confusion in your family tree, I do hope that it will provide some potential ways you can get past your brick wall.

The Brick Wall

In my family tree I have people called Henri Magermans and Ida Ackermans, but I didn't have their date of birth. When looking online, I could only find a few records. This was odd as I was expecting many more.
I was missing their birth, death, and wedding records as well as the records some of the children I already knew they had. I was also stuck because I didn't have any information on their parents or siblings.
This was 4 years ago in the days of the old site Genlias; so I decided it was time to tackle this again...

What I already knew
I knew that they both lived in the Netherlands. I also knew that Henri was a  joiner as it says this on the marriage record for my great grandparents. I also had a note from 2010 when my Oma told me that there may have been another child called Gonda.
I also knew some of the children they had, including Johannes Joseph Magermans, for whom I had the birth and marriage record.

Next Steps

Using wiewaswie, I found people called Pieter Hendrik Magermans and Johanna Ida Ackermans. They lived at the same time as Henri and Ida and in an area close by.

With this information, I found that Pieter Hendrik Magermans was also a joiner and that he had a child called Hubertina Aldegonda Magermans.

I asked one of the Facebook groups I'm a member of to give me some help with this and they thought that Henri and Ida were also Pieter Hendrik Magermans and Johanna Ida Ackermans, but I wanted a way to be sure. Someone gave me a link to scans of their birth certificates and I saw that this site also linked to scans of the old Netherlands Bevolkingsregisters.

I made a spreadsheet to make a timeline of all the births, marriages, and deaths for ‘both’ couples and their children. I colour-coded the children who had multiple entries, so I could see if the parents name stayed stable for multiple records for individuals. What I found was:

1. The parents names did stay stable for individual children, for example a parents name on the birth record and marriage record for Johannes Joseph were the same. 
2. That each child was born in a different year - if multiple children were born within a year, this would have hinted that I was looking at two couples rather than one.
3. That the main 'name change' seemed to occur after they moved to Oud-Valkenburg from Schin op Geul. But that one birth had the full name and then they went to middle names.

A spreadsheet timeline to understand the individuals I was following.

BUT, importantly, this didn't 'prove' that they were the same couple. So I starting thinking about how to prove whether Henri and Ida were Pieter Hendrik and Joanna Ida.

The solution
At this point, what sprang to mind was that I needed to find the whole family documented at the same place and at the same time. The most obvious thing to do was to check the population records. 

After scrolling through many MANY scanned pages, I finally found the whole family in the Oud-Valkenburg census for 1850-1900.

My ancestors in the Oud-Valkenburg census for 1850-1900

This population register showed the couple as Henri and Ida, but has all of their children, including the children I already knew about and with dates I already had. Finding Henri and Ida's birth records, also led to finding the names of their parents.

So, I’m excited to have found that even though they both decided to go by their middle names in later life, that they are the same people! I had read that this name change was fairly common, but I hadn't come across it before and felt daunted that both of them had opted to use their middle names.

In future posts, I'll be writing about the resources that I used to find out all of this information, so add me to your blog reader, or sign up to receive new posts by email!