Ancestors

Rentje Smidt

Rentje Smidt was born at Upleward, a village in the Krummhörn, the flat marsh country of East Frisia on the North Sea coast of Germany, on 17 March 1875, and baptized there on 11 April. Her parents were Meindert Warners Smidt and Enke Janssen, and she was named for her grandmother Renktje.

In 1902 Boyd Pannkuk, a widower and early settler of northern Kossuth County, Iowa, came to Germany on a visit. His own family had come from Loquard, a few miles from Upleward, and had left for America in 1864, when he was six. According to his obituary he met Rentje while traveling there, married her and brought her to America. She was twenty-seven, and he was forty-four, with ten living children by his first wife, Hilka Wiltfang, who had died in 1899.

Rentje's own children were born at Titonka between 1902 and 1920: Everd Everett, who died as a baby, Everett, Minert, John, who became a Lutheran minister, Agnes, Ben, Fannie and Alice, and a last son, Warner, who died in 1920. Their son Minert grew up to marry Sadie Ruter, born in 1911 at Upleward, the same village as his mother.

Boyd died in 1939. Rentje lived on at Titonka for twenty-three years. She died there on 31 March 1962, aged eighty-seven, and was buried at the Ramsey Reformed Church Cemetery on 3 April. Her death certificate gave her parents' names as Minort Smidt and Anne Johnson.

If Rentje Smidt is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Rentje Smidt (1875-1962)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/rentje-smidt-1875-1962-8a9c61.