Ancestors

Gertje Ruurds Nicolai

Gertje Ruurds Nicolai was born on 23 July 1823 at Ee in Oostdongeradeel, Friesland, the daughter of Ruurd Gooitzens Nicolai, a farmer of about fifty-three, and Ettje Johannes Douma. Sisters married at Oostdongeradeel in 1838, 1844 and 1845; one of them, Folkjen, married Sjoerd Tjeerds Heeringa. Her father died at Ee on 2 March 1847, aged seventy-seven. On 11 October 1851 the widow Etje and her children, Gertje and her sister Neeltje among them with their husbands and brothers-in-law, sold the family's house, garden and yard at Ee at auction for 545 guilders. Her mother died in 1860.

She married late. On 16 May 1857, aged thirty-three, she married Jacob Wessels van Tuinen, the village shoemaker, who was twenty-three. Their daughter Aukje was born in 1858 and their son Johannes in 1863, when she was forty. In May 1881 the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Michigan, at Lucas in Missaukee County.

Gertje died at Lucas on Wednesday, 20 September 1905, aged eighty-two years and two months. Jacob wrote the notice for the Dutch-language paper himself: that the Lord had taken from his side his faithful mate and the children's caring mother, that for forty-eight years they had been allowed to share sour and sweet together, bound by the band of marriage, and that those who knew her believed she was among the dead who died in the Lord and now rejoiced before the throne of God. She is buried with him at Lucas under the stone that reads GEERTJE 1823-1905.

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Cite: Heirology, "Gertje Ruurds Nicolai (1823-1905)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/gertje-ruurds-nicolai-1823-1905-e7d9f8.