gathering ground for our families
research
Tombstone Tuesday – 23 March 2010
Mar 23rd
This Tombstone Tuesday brings an unknown. Somebody (I wish I knew who) provided me with this photo of an urn. I’m having problems reading it. The only thing provided with the photo was “schoterhof”. Does that mean anything?
So genealogy detectives, the game is afoot. Who is this missing relative?
Update 8 May 2010:
Along with the help of Henk Doddema, we’ve been able to figure out that her name was “Gonnie” Doddema. She died in 2002 and was cremated. Her urn is kept at the Yarden Crematorium Schoterhof in Heerenveen, Friesland, Netherlands. She was married to an Oosterwerff but we have no further details. Gonnie appears to be a nickname; again nothing concrete.
Please keep us updated on the mystery of Gonnie Doddema.
Welcome Belgium Doddemas!
Jan 18th
Recently I joined Facebook to give DoddemaGen greater exposure and let’s admit it, I need help. The flow of information coming my way is starting to slow way down. That’s where Facebook comes in. I immediately noticed that there was not just one Doddema but many, many Doddema’s out there! An untapped resource. I’ve already made many contacts and my greatest find and admittedly joy comes from, of all places, Belgium! While some of us headed west to the United States, there are those that headed east….
My newest family members are Ronald and his father, Tjerk. Tjerk’s parents and children emigrated to Belgium in May of 1957. That’s a story I’d like to hear! Although Tjerk doesn’t speak English, Ronald has been translating our correspondence. Within a couple days, Tjerk sent me this message full of genealogy – 4 generations worth. My head is already spinning.
Why? There’s names that I’ve never seen before! I have Ronald’s great grandfather in my database but never any of Jakob Doddema‘s (1888-1979) children. Tjerk takes it a little further back with the Jakob’s own grandfather, Geert Hinderks Doddema (1831-1908). While I thought I had this completed…Tjerk and Ronald hand me some more names that weren’t in the Genlias database, which is understandable since it takes time to add records.
I’ll be adding the message to the forum for further research in another post.
At this point, I just want to thank Tjerk and Ronald for their help! Without them, I wouldn’t be able to put all this together.
For those of you interested, how are we related? Ronald’s great grandfather, Jakob Doddema and my grandfather, Tammo Doddema were 4th cousins. Small world indeed.
Thomas Bernard Wheeler
Dec 14th
I have to apologize for not recognizing Thomas Bernard Wheeler immediately. Last month (November 2008) I received an email from an address I usually don’t check. I thought I had shut down all domain related emails and forwarded everything to my Gmail one. Obviously, that isn’t so. So a big apology goes to Robert Klukas, the great grand-nephew of Thomas Bernard Wheeler.
The following are the contents of the email that I received:
Thomas Bernard Wheeler is the son of Mary Byrnes Wheeler. Following the “death” of her husbanc in Ireland MBW and her 3 sons migrated to USA. Stayed a time in Pennsylvania. Bought land from a speculator in what is now Kandiyohi country, just north of Atwater, between Wheeler and Schultz lakes. They came to Minnesota from Pennsylvania around 1854-1855. Patrick W. Wheeler now farms the homestead. If you do the math, the Wheeler farm is now in the Wheeler family for 150+ years.
My mother is Hannorah Monica Wheeler Klukas. Her Father is William Wheeler. William Wheeler is the son of one of Mary Byrnes Wheelers’ 3 sons who came with her from Ireland, who is also named William Wheeler. Thus, my great grandfather and my great-great grandmother came to Minnesota with Thomas B Wheeler.
I had heard that some of the Wheelers went to Montana to try ranching, etc., but it sounded to me that things did not go too well due to drought and the Great Depression.
If you know more family history please feel free to add information.
robert klukas
Thank you Robert! I gave it to my mother-in-law and she was ecstatic! How am I related? I’m the husband of the 2 x great granddaughter of Thomas Bernard Wheeler. Now that’s pretty cool.
If you’d like to provide more information about Thomas Bernard Wheeler and his relatives, please feel free to contact me. Although registration is not required to participate in the forum discussion of Thomas Bernard Wheeler, it helps.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Join the forum discussion 
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Found–lots of Doddemas!
Dec 5th
I would like to welcome some new Doddemas to DoddemaGen:
- Vincent
- Ronald
- Wim
- Bianca
- Johanna
- Karin
- Christian
- Jan
I met them on Facebook and the Dutch version called Hyve. A few have been helpful, a few hesitant but overall everybody wants to contribute in one way or another. Most of the information received so far has been corrections to what I already have. Nice!
Hopefully, I’ll be able to contact more as time goes on. The language barrier makes it a little more difficult but thank goodness for online translator tools.
Again, welcome. Please feel free to post in the forum your family stories, recipes or just plain getting to know each other. If you’d like to submit information, please leave me a message or a forum post.
