Ancestors

John Tiemeyer

John Tiemeyer was born Jan Tiemeijer at Sappemeer, a canal village in the peat colonies east of the city of Groningen, on 23 August 1861. His father, Pieter Tiemeijer, thirty-six, was a praamschipper, the skipper of a praam, the flat-bottomed barge that carried peat and goods along the colony canals; his mother, Marijke Kasemier, was thirty-seven. Pieter had been a widower when he married her in 1854, and a son Jan of the first marriage had died in 1849, so the new boy carried a dead half-brother's name. The family moved along the canals to Wildervank and then to Veendam.

Jan became a barge skipper like his father. He served his conscription year in 1882, and on 26 January 1884, at twenty-two, he married Maria Bartelds at Veendam, with the permission of the colonel commanding the 1st Regiment of Infantry. She was twenty-three, the daughter of a seaman. Eight children were born at Veendam and its hamlets between 1885 and 1901: Marie Frances, Minnie, Nellie Helena, Jantena, Frances, Jan Lambertus, Peter Hendrik and Lambertus. By 1894 he was a werkman, a labourer, and in 1899 he lost a child at Nieuwe Laan.

In 1901, the year his wife's father and both his own parents died at Veendam, the family left for America. The provincial emigration list entered him as Jan Tiemeijer, thirty-nine, boerenarbeider, a farm labourer, with Maria, forty, his wife, and the children, bound from Veendam to Grand Rapids, Dutch Reformed. He went farming at Grandville, south of Grand Rapids, and belonged to the Grandville Avenue Christian Reformed Church. His sons John, Peter and Bert farmed at Cutlerville. Maria died in May 1928.

John retired about 1928 and spent his last years at the home of his daughter Mrs. Jurrien Vander Molen at 630 Vries Street SW in Grand Rapids, where he died after a long illness on Thursday, 29 July 1948, aged eighty-six. The Grand Rapids Herald headed his obituary "John Tiemeyer Passes; Had 103 Descendants": three sons, John, Peter and Bert of Cutlerville, five daughters, Mrs. Peter Boss and Mrs. Joe VanderKaay of Redlands, California, Mrs. John Ritsema and Mrs. Vander Molen of Grand Rapids and Mrs. Sam Groothuis of Grandville, forty grandchildren and fifty-five great-grandchildren. He was buried from the Kuiper chapel in Rest Lawn Memorial Park under a bronze marker that reads FATHER, JOHN TIEMEYER, AUG. 23, 1861, JULY 29, 1948.

If John Tiemeyer is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "John Tiemeyer (1861-1948)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-tiemeyer-1861-1948-01c219.