Pieter Willems van Houten
Pieter van den Houten was born on 11 September 1843 at Goedereede, the old harbour town at the western tip of the island of Goeree-Overflakkee in South Holland, the son of Willem van den Houten and Leuntje Prol. Willem lived from 1792 to 1854 and died in the Netherlands; Leuntje lived from 1808 to 1870 and died at Grand Rapids, so the widowed mother came to Michigan with her children. Pieter himself came over in 1863, when he was twenty. These dates are unconfirmed.
About 1868 he married Roelfke Jacobs Oosterhuis, called Rose, a Groningen girl six years younger who had come over about 1867 or 1870. They were married in Michigan; the place and date are not yet found. Their children were William (1869-1938), Folkelina, called Lena (1870-1967), Edward (born 1877), Arthur (1879-1960), Katie (1884-1911), Clarence (1887-1970), John (1889-1954) and Nellie (born 1892). Lena married the Frisian schoolmaster's son John Van Tuinen in 1888.
Peter farmed at Richland Township in Missaukee County, near the village of Lucas in the cut-over pine land north of Cadillac, where other Dutch families from Grand Rapids took up cheap land. He was attended by Dr. H. B. White of McBain from November 1913 for chronic valvular disease of the heart, which he had carried five years, with hardening of the arteries, and he died on 28 May 1914 at eight in the evening, aged sixty-nine years, eight months and seventeen days by the reckoning of his son John of Lucas, who reported the death and could give his grandfather's name, Wm Van Houten, but not his grandmother's. He was buried at Lucas on 1 June 1914 in Richland Township Cemetery, under a grey marble stone shared with Rose that reads FATHER PIETER 1845-1914. His birth year is written three ways, 1843, 1844 and 1845; the 1843 of the Goedereede register is the one written at the time.
Parents
Leuntje Prol (1808-1870)
Willem van den Houten (1792-1854)
Children
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Pieter Willems van Houten (1843-1914)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/pieter-willems-van-houten-1843-1914-1471d5.