The year is 1745.
Jean Jacques Rousseau is 33 years old, Voltaire is 51, Carl Linnaeus 38 and Benjamin Franklin 39. The author of Gulliver’s travels, Jonathan Swift died. In England king George II ruled. Bonnie Prince Charley came to Scotland to claim the English throne, but was defeated at Culloden the year after. In France king Louis XV sat on the throne, in Austria empress Maria Theresia and in Germany the philosopher-king Fredrick II. In the United Dutch Republics the people called for a prince of Orange-Nassau, who was invited to become the ‘stadtholder’ under the name of Willem IV in 1747. More >
Posted by Bernard in Found
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.
Posted by Bernard in Found
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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Posted by Bernard in Found
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.
Posted by Bernard in Found
I haven’t opened my email for the last couple days and for that I apologize (I need to start that World of Warcraft Anonymous group that I was talking about a while ago). Fortunately, I opened it today and was pleasantly surprised and ecstatic to find that a family member found our site and contacted me. This a big deal for me. Most of the information on this site has been gathered due to the work provided by those that found this site on the Internet.
Here’s the contents of the email:
Good Morning,
I stumbled on your site by accident-I had no idea that there was anything out there on our family. I started looking around a few years ago and contacted someone in the Netherlands and was going to continue, but life got in the way.
Anyway, you’ve got some awesome work going here? I want to spend more time looking around.
I am the daughter of Harm and the grand-daughter of Dries and Johanna and the great grand-daughter of Drees and Altja (sp). Where do you come in?
I just spent a couple of hours with Ray Dykhouse this week. He has been researching his Dykhouse roots and has some great pictures, a few of them were Doddes.
He is the son of Drice Dykhouse who is the son of Emma Dodde who is the sister of my grandfather Dries.
If you get some time let me know a little about you? Meantime thanks again for the work you’ve done.
Happy Saturday! Gotta get the walking shoes on, there are five mile of pavement to hit before I start my day.
Shirley
Welcome Shirley! I look forward to working with you and would love to learn more about your family.
(I’ve had this post saved since 12 July 2008. Finally getting around to posting.)
